As the great detective Adrian Monk would say, OK, here’s the thing: When your father is known for being one of the best at something, and you try your hand at it, you’re going to be judged against his work. And unless you’re a superstar like Junior Griffey, who is, and has always been, a far more gifted and superior ball player than his dad, you’re likely going to be more like say, Dale Berra, who never even came close to being the ball player his father, Yogi, was.
Such is the problem that Peter Leonard faces in his second novel, Trust Me. It tries way too hard to be like any one of his father, Elmore Leonard’s novels. No one created outlandish criminal characters like Elmore Leonard, with the sole exception of maybe Ed McBain, doing the crazy things that they did. I mean, really, it takes genius to create a Chili Palmer. That being said, by about page 30, I tried to stop comparing them.
On its own, Trust Me really is pretty good. One problem I had was I found some of the characters tended to blend together too much in the beginning, causing a great deal of confusion. I had a great deal of difficulty separating which bad guy was working for who, and why. At least until they started getting killed off. Once they started weeding down, it was a bit easier to see who the players were.
The basic premise is a simple one. Two thugs break into the home of Lou Starr and Karen Delaney to steal the $9600 he just won at a casino. Delaney offers them a better deal. Leave them alone and she’ll show them to a house where there’s a safe with over a million in it they can rob.
Her last boyfriend before Lou, a crazy Arab named Samir, stole $300,000 from her and she wanted it back. This was a perfect opportunity for her to get some revenge. She gets her money back, and she gets to see Samir lose a lot more at the same time.
Of course, complications ensue and before she knows it, Samir is in the hospital, people are dead, and Karen has Samir’s people scouring Detroit and Chicago looking for her, as well as several others.
There is a lot of action and adventure, as you would expect in a crime caper. Nothing too heavy or overly violent. Very much in the same vein as, well, Elmore Leonard and Ed McBain. And, quite honestly, if this wasn’t Elmore Leonard’s son, we might be saying, it’s a pretty good second novel with some minor flaws that he can work on for his next book. But, here’s the thing: When you take on the exact same job that not only your father had, but was the master of, you better be damn good or expect the criticism.
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Right from the very first page, you just know that Beat the Reaper (Back Bay, 336 pp.), by Josh Bazell, is not going to be your run of the mill book. Peter Brown, a doctor on his way to work, is mugged. Or, at least someone attempts to mug the good doctor. Brown immediately explains to us in excruciating detail how he unarms the assailant. He takes great care to describe what bones and muscles are affected when pressed in certain areas and how certain bones in the leg are similar to bones in the arm. All fascinating stuff, really. He even has very interesting use of footnotes. Of course, Brown gets away and makes it to work.
The year is 1906 and much of the nation is still getting used to the post-Civil War ideals regarding race relations. Parts of the south have yet to come to grips with these new ideals and lynchings are still a way of life in some of these parts.
As Communism falls in the USSR, and free market and capitalism is still in it’s infancy, Alex Konevitch is making millions. He quickly figures out quickest way to make money, buying construction supplies from a falling, corrupt government system, and selling the same on an open market at a much higher cost. All of it legal and surprisingly simple.
There are certain things that we have come to expect in a Quentin Tarantino screenplay: Great dialogue, non-stop action, and violence immediately come to mind, and his newest fare, Inglourious Basterds, doesn’t disappoint in any of those areas.
Best known for his Saturday Night Live characters “Matt Foley, Motivational Speaker” and “The Fat Chippendale Dancer”, as well as the film, Tommy Boy, TV and film actor Chris Farley died three days before Christmas, 1997, much too young at the age of thirty-three.
Jimmy Boone is an idealist. He thinks things should be a certain way. That’s what got him in trouble in the first place. That’s how he lost the best damn job he ever had. That’s how he gets into huge trouble in Richard Lange’s new debut novel, This Wicked World. 
We have known Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, John Wayne Gacy, and of course, Jack the Ripper. None of these real-life psychopaths compare to the calculating madness that is Henri Benoit, James Patterson’s villain in his upcoming novel, Swimsuit.
Here we are, almost a decade into the 21st century. Times have changed and we need new guidelines to go by. Jeff Wilser’s The Maxims of Manhood fills this role. Wilser gives us 100 rules for the modern man to live by.
Cemetery Dance, the new novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child starts off with a shocker and doesn’t release its grip until the end. The book opens with the violent murder of reporter William Smithback and near murder of his wife, anthropologist Nora Kelly, in their Dakota apartment in Manhattan and takes the reader on a roller coaster thrill ride right to the end.
In the latest installment of Stuart Woods’ Stone Barrington series, Loitering with Intent, Barrington heads to Key West to track down Evan Keating, who needs to sign documents which would allow his father to sell the family business. Sounds easy enough, but things don’t quite work out the way they should. Keating doesn’t want to be found, and when Stone does find him, he isn’t interested in signing the papers. 
If you’re looking for a good read, full of suspense and action, with a bit of humor tossed in for good measure, Harlan Coben’s new novel, Long Lost (release date March 31, Penguin/Dutton), may be just what the doctor ordered.
