The Dark Flood Rises by Margaret Drabble

The Dark Flood Rises: A Novel by Margaret Drabble --- 325 pages

This is a scathingly funny and clear-eyed look at those so-called golden years in a world that celebrates youth and desperately avoids confronting mortality.

Probably you have to be old enough to really appreciate it.  If you read the first paragraph and find yourself laughing hysterically as you nod your head yes, oh yes! --- then you are old enough to brave the rest of the story. If not, then put it aside for another ten or twenty years.

Briefly, Drabble introduces us to Fran Stubbs and her circle of family and friends, of various ages and mental and physical frailties, all coping in their own distinct ways with the process of aging and its inevitable conclusion.

Click HERE to read the review in the Washington Post.

Click HERE to read the review in The Guardian (US Edition)

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, 336 pages

I was on the edge of my [train] seat this whole book. Paula Hawkins has written a very engrossing and suspenseful story with The Girl on the Train. Rachel is a divorced and well-meaning, but seemingly disillusion, out-of-a-job drunk who rides the train into London every day. The highlight of the trip every day is watching what she thinks is the perfectly married couple whom she has named "Jess and Jason." This couple turns out to be not what she imagined, and between Megan, the mysterious couple, and Rachel's ex-husband and his new wife, this story will have you pulling out your hair, yelling at the characters, and mentally exhausted. What a train wreck, I mean, train ride.

The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith

The Silkworm: A Cormoran Strike Novel by Robert Galbraith --- 455 pages

As surely everyone who reads bestsellers knows by now, one of the big blockbuster books last summer was a debut crime novel by Robert Galbraith --- subsequently revealed to be the pseudonym of mega-bestselling author J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame.

This summer Galbraith/Rowling published the second in what is planned to be a seven book series, featuring private investigator Cormoran Strike. Clearly few authors can command a seven book contract but Rowling is one of them. Although this is a sea change from her Harry Potter series, and very definitely aimed at the adult market, the evidence shows that Rowling has struck gold once again.

The Silkworm is a murder mystery that reveals a seamier side to the highly competitive world of contemporary publishing.  One of the characters in the book complains that the problem for publishers today is that there are too many writers and not enough readers.

Cormoran Strike, having endured his brief moment of media notoriety for proving supermodel Lula Landry did not commit suicide but was murdered (The Cuckoo's Calling), has settled in to build up his business and pay off his debts. But he's still a sucker for a hard luck story, so when the long-suffering wife of Owen Quine, an author of towering ego and dwindling talent, asks him to find her errant husband and bring him home, Strike agrees to take the case.  How hard can it be after all? As he soon discovers, Quine is a hard case indeed. Not only has he disappeared, but he has left behind a scandalous manuscript that venomously slanders just about everyone in his circle: his wife, his mistress, his agent, his editor, his publisher, and his former friend and literary rival. And when Strike, with the help of his assistant Robin Ellacot, finally tracks Quine to his lair he finds Quine hideously dead in circumstances that exactly imitate the final scene in his scurrilous manuscript.

Clearly someone among the limited circle of people who had access to the manuscript before Quine disappeared must be the killer. The police officer leading the murder investigation owes Strike a favor (Strike saved his life when both were serving with British Special Forces in Afghanistan, during the same attack in which Strike lost his leg), so he keeps Strike informed of progress. But the police are convinced that Quine's wife is the murderer, and they aren't interested in looking any further.

Strike instinct tells him the police are wrong. The problem is, even when he painstakingly constructs an alternate theory of the crime, he has to find the kind of hard evidence that will convince the police, and he has to do so without arousing the suspicions of an utterly ruthless and unbalanced killer.

Click HERE to see a British review of The Silkworm by crime writer Val McDermid in The Guardian.

Click HERE to see an American review of The Silkworm by mystery writer Harlan Coben  in the New York Times.

Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith --- 455 pages

As all the world knows by now, this murder mystery published last spring under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith received moderately good reviews and moderately good sales. This all changed when the news broke midsummer that the author was actually J.K. Rowling (of Harry Potter fame and fortune). Rowling's first foray into the world of fiction for adult readers, the much anticipated The Casual Vacancy was a considerable letdown for Rowling, both critically and commercially. It was an overly long and tedious tale about a group of venal and unattractive people living out the consequences of their poor choices, and not particularly edifying or enjoyable.

The good news about this new book is that Rowling seems to have gotten her game back. Her murder is devious, set in the world of the rich and beautiful people who are famous mostly for being famous, but her hero and his sidekick are clever, complicated, resourceful and just flawed enough to gain our sympathy and support.

Lula Landry, an emotionally unstable supermodel, is found sprawled in the street beneath the balcony of her very expensive flat in one of London's most exclusive neighborhoods in the middle of an icy cold February night. A downstairs neighbor who witnessed the model's plunge insists she overheard Lula and an unknown man arguing violently just before the fatal fall, but her story is debunked by the police, who consider the neighbor hysterical and probably high on cocaine. The death is ruled a suicide.

But Lula's brother John Bristow is convinced his sister was murdered and hires a private investigator to find out what really happened. For Cormoran Strike, ex-Special Forces, wounded Afghanistan veteran, natural son of a rock music legend, a man who is often his own worst enemy, this case could make him or break him. With some unexpected help from his temporary secretary Robin, Strike follows the tenuous clues through the smoke and mirrors of Lula Landry's life to uncover the secret behind her death.