As Husbands Go by Susan Isaacs

As Husbands Go is the first book by Susan Isaacs that I've read. I was on the fence for the first fifty pages or so about whether or not I was going to finish reading it or abandon ship. I feel as if the blurb on the inside book flap is slightly misleading (and I always feel gypped when I find this the case with a book)--the blurb makes it sound as if the mystery and intrigue and flashy granny are larger parts of the book than they turn out to be. The mystery and intrigue don't get cranked up in earnest until at least halfway into the book and the flashy granny doesn't make an appearance until halfway through and doesn't become a fixture until well past the point. So those were my main quibbles with the book for the most part.

I like the clever dual meaning of the title. And the characters who populate the story are wild, witty, hilarious, and superficial (though quite self aware of their own superficiality). It is largely the characters' personalities and the clash of personalities that make the story so interesting and for me, it was more the characters as opposed to the story that kept me reading (though it was the characters in the first place that had me on the fence to begin with before they hooked me). Honestly the hysterical narrator grates a little at the outset, but as the story takes off, and she settles down so does the hysteria.

Susie is living the good life with her plastic surgeon husband Jonah and their wild, three year old, triplet sons. Their marriage and home life are happy ones of exhausted contentment. Until one morning when Susie wakes to a nightmare: Jonah never made it home that night and no one, not his practice partners, not his parents, not his wife, has any idea of where he could be. Frantically Susie calls the local police to report her husband missing and as the search drags on for days, she barely holds herself together for her boys.

When Jonah is found stabbed to death in a wannabe-upscale call girl's Manhattan apartment, Susie's life is shattered while all hell breaks loose in the midst of the tabloid frenzy that ensues. In the weeks following Jonah's death Susie clings to what she knows to be true of her life and marriage and of her husband: that they were happy and that Jonah wouldn't cheat on her. The circumstances of Jonah's death do not ring true with Susie. When she realizes that the authorities and her in-laws immediately glommed onto the obvious culprit in Jonah's death to the exclusion of thoroughly checking other avenues of investigation, Susie is determined to find the answers and the truth about what happened to her husband and why.

Susie is aided in her one woman pursuit of the truth and justice by her no-nonsense, glamorous, previously estranged grandmother. Susie soon embarks upon a search ripe with questionable actions that only spiral downward as the story progresses. One can only hope that Susie's actions don't come back to bite in the ass before the story closes.

I recommend you pick up this book the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

How To Be A Heroine: Or What I've Learned From Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis

I feel as if I could write a book subtitled "What I've Learned From Reading Too Much" except all my lessons would be culled from Greek mythology, the Babysitters' Club, the lives of British queens, crime mysteries, suspense thrillers and celebrity and entertainment gossip. I first ran across How To Be A Heroine by Samantha Ellis in an ad in BookPage. The title sounded intriguing and once I looked it up on Amazon, I was in for reading it. It reminds me of the literacy autobiography writing assignment that I had in one of my English composition classes in college--except this is the literacy autobiography on steroids. The premise of this book is that the author revisits the seminal texts that she read in her youth by examining the lessons and impressions of the novels that she had upon her first readings when she was younger. Ellis has then re-read the novels as an adult specifically for the writing of her own book to see if the novels hold up to her original i

Heat Lightning by John Sandford

I'd previously read John Sandford's first Virgil Flowers novel, Dark of the Moon , a few years back and found it to be a quick, well written read. Recently I discovered he has since written three more Flowers titles and decided to start with the second title and read through to the fourth and most recent one. Heat Lightning is the second Flowers installment. The darkness of the crimes committed that must be solved in the novel are leavened by the lighter presentation of Flowers and the story. It works well together--a dark crime doesn't always need dark prose to back it up. Virgil Flowers is Lucas Davenport's go to man in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension when there's a sensitive, tough or otherwise puzzling case to solve. Flowers has a high clearance rate and can often turn around a case in about a week. This particular case is especially perplexing with quite a few red herrings thrown into the mix to throw everyone--Flowers and the reader in

The Whisperers by John Connolly

If there was one thing Jimmy didn't care for, it was competition, ... There were some exceptions to that rule: he was rumored to have a sweet deal with the Mexicans, but he wasn't about to try to reason with the Dominicans, or the Columbians, or the bikers, or even the Mohawks. If they wanted to avail themselves of his services, as they sometimes did, that was fine, but if Jimmy Jewel started questioning their right to move product he and Earle would end up tied to chairs in the [bar] with pieces of themselves scattered by their feet, assuming their feet weren't among the scattered pieces, while the bar burned down around their ears, assuming they still had ears. from page 86 The Whisperers is John Connolly's newest Charlie Parker installment in which some beloved characters reappear and in which previous characters from another Parker installment reappear to shed further light on the big baddie that may or may not be coming for Parker in the future. This newest inst

A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

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