Neighborhood Watch by Cammie McGovern

Some children hover adoringly forever, others want nothing from you but their freedom. I know that. I've been watching mothers with their children all my life. I've never thought it would be easy, but I also never pictured heartbreak like this: estrangement, mental illness, love that grows an edge and expresses itself only in the pain it inflicts

from page 103

It didn't take long to finish this book (as compared to the one I read right after this: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake from which I took a break of several days before I decided to finish reading the last half in one night). I've never read anything by Cammie McGovern, but I think I'll try some of her other books. This particular novel, I think, will have a special place in every librarian's heart because the narrator is a former librarian who goes away for a murder she believes she committed but didn't really. That's right. And no, the murder victim was not a patron from her library.

Betsy is a mousy, former librarian who has spent the last twelve years in prison for a neighbor's murder that, it turns out, she did not commit. Upon her release, she is advised by her attorney to poke around the old neighborhood and contact former neighbors in an effort to put the pieces together that will reveal who really killed Linda Sue that long ago night. And so Betsy returns to her old neighborhood where everyone who once lived there while she did has since moved away--all except Marianne and Roland who have taken her in and provided her a place to stay in the wake of her release from prison.

Betsy embarks upon a reflective journey of introspection: examining both her memories of that night and the days leading up to it and her perceptions of events occurring at the time, analyzing those perceptions and the lives of her neighbors, the secrets they kept and how these memories and perceptions reflect upon the present. Betsy realizes that both her married neighbor and her husband's childhood friend, Geoffrey, had secrets of their own to hide. Not least of which was Geoffrey's affair with Linda Sue that everyone believed made Betsy jealous enough to kill her in the midst of a somnambulatory episode.

Slowly Betsy's narration reveals the incidents of damage suffered during her childhood that are alluded to and that first sparked her somnambulatory episodes and the unexplained infertility that has robbed Betsy of the children she wanted so much have caused their damage. Indeed it was damage enough for Betsy to confess to a murder she didn't commit because in that moment she no longer cared about her future or what it held for her. All of this leads the reader to wonder just how reliable is she as a narrator. Consider her childhood trauma, her somnambulatory episodes, the brood of children that live so vividly in her imagination, and her years spent in prison because while Betsy claims to have an unusual memory for small details from years ago, she also admits that certain periods are for her a blur or a blank.

Soon it becomes clear that Marianne and Roland have secrets they want to keep hidden, and the more Betsy discovers of their secrets, the more she wonders just how it is connected to the events that took place on the day Linda Sue was killed.

This beautifully written book reads almost like a thriller; it was a page turner right up to the last page.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

In The Woods by Tana French

"What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with the truth is fundamental, but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies ... and every variation on deception. The truth is the most desirable woman in the world and we are the most jealous lovers, reflexively denying anyone else the slightest glimpse of her. We betray her routinely ... This is my job ... What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this--two things: I crave truth. And I lie." opening lines of In The Woods chapter 1, pages 3-4 In The Woods by Tana French, an Irish writer, is an extremely well-written and well-crafted mystery novel. The downside is that this is French's debut novel, and her website (located at http://www.tanafrench.com/ ) does not off...

Broken by Karin Slaughter

Before I begin the formal review there are a few things I need to get off my chest in the wake of finishing this book; I'll do so without giving away too many (or any) spoilers. The OUTRAGE!: the identity of Detective Lena Adams' new beau; the low depths to which Grant County's interim chief has sunk and brought the police force down with him; agent Will Trent's wife, Angie's, sixth sense/nasty habit of reappearing in his life just when he's slipping away from her. Thank God for small miracles though because while Angie was certainly referred to during the book, the broad didn't make an appearance. One sign that I've become way too invested in these characters is that I'd like to employ John Connolly's odd pair of assassins, Louis and Angel, to contract out a hit on Angie; do you think Karin Slaughter and John Connolly could work out a special cross over? Hallelujah: Dr. Sara Linton and agent Will Trent are both back. There is no hallelujah fo...

Generation Kill by Evan Wright and One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick

Non-fiction books aren't really my thing; generally, this is how my relationship goes with non-fiction books: I see a really interesting one, I borrow it, I start to read it, and then I ditch it a chapter or two later when the dry, boring writing and non-existent plot fail to hook me. However, this a review of two non-fiction books that I read back to back after a five year old three article series that I dug up on the internet; it was written by Evan Wright and preceded his book Generation Kill , which is basically a book version of the article series that he wrote and published in Rolling Stone Magazine . Recently HBO adapted Generation Kill into a mini-series that ran sometime last year; I got the series on DVD and in the midst of watching it, I decided I wanted to get my hands on the book to read. In the meantime, I stumbled across One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick, the lieutenant of the platoon that Wright embedded with, and I read that book while I waited for Generation K...

A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

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