Book Review: Out at Night by Susan Arnout Smith

Out At Night, a mystery by Susan Arnout Smith

Grace Descanso is having a hard time, even while she's on vacation in the Bahamas with her five-year-old daughter Katie. Her estranged husband is along, after many years' absence. Her feelings about him are ambivalent.

To top it off, she gets a call from an uncle who works for the FBI, summoning her to Palm Springs, California, where there has been a murder. He asks her to help investigate.

Background: Grace is a former medical doctor whose regular job is in the police forensics lab in San Diego. Her uncle wants her expertise to study the crime scene and the body in Palm Springs. This is no ordinary case, however. The victim, Thaddeus Bartolomew, is a professor of biology who has been actively protesting genetically modified foods and the upcoming world agricultural conference to be held in Palm Springs.

The professor was killed by a bolt from a crossbow, in a field of genetically modified soybean plants. His last action was to send a text message on his cell phone - just a name, her name - "contact Grace Descanso."

Comments: Almost all the people we meet in the first chapters of the book are entangled in this very elaborate and original plot. There are radical protesters against genetically modified foods, childless women who have had multiple miscarriages, scientists who are actively modifying foods for use in developing countries, and even farmers of organic foods.

Grace reached for a chip and ate it. Fabulous chips. Salty, slightly greasy, cracking and melting, the sweet taste of corn in her mouth. She chewed.

"I don't know how much you know about babies, and if you've lost a bunch, maybe not too much."

There are hints that the protesters will disrupt the international agricultural conference in a big way, but nobody knows how far they will go.

I enjoyed the unusual plot and setting, the surprising and multiple roles played by some of the characters, the hunt for a killer, and the suspense that increases to the very end. Susan Arnout Smith's vivid descriptions of setting and place give you a clear picture image of the action.

The dialogue is so realistic that in a few cases when Grace is investigating and probing, you can feel her impatience to have the conversation move to the main point.

The only sticking point for me was having several chapters end with a surprise that is not explained or followed up immediately in the next chapter. I had to wait till further on to find out, and back track to what happened.

Overall, I recommended the book highly for mystery and suspense fans, especially those interested in the controversy over organic foods, food production, and genetically modified foods. There is a good dose of romantic suspense in this novel too that readers of romance will like.

See my Interview with author Susan Arnout Smith

Published by Minotaur Books, New York, 2009.
Thanks to Authors on the Web for the review copy of this book.

Booking Through Thursday: I Miss My Books

This week's Booking Through Thursday questions remind me of the books I sold or gave away years ago and now wish I had.

In response to the Booking Through Thursday questions, here are my answers:

When’s the last time you weeded out your library? Do you regularly keep it pared down to your reading essentials? Or does it blossom into something out of control the minute you turn your back, like a garden after a Spring rain? Or do you simply not get rid of books? At all?

I almost never get rid of books except older text books, magazines, and some paperbacks to the local library, which puts them up for sale. My better half has weeded down my library for me, throwing out and giving away books that he thought I didn't want. I soon put a stop to that practice by telling him about the libraries of old which kept every single scrap of print. (Read The Shadow of the Wind, I told him). He hasn't read the book, but he believed me.

And–when you DO weed out books from your collection (assuming that you do) …what do you do with them? Throw them away (gasp)? Donate them to a charity or used bookstore? SELL them to a used bookstore? Trade them on Paperback Book Swap or some other exchange program?

I have passed on books to friends and family and even entrusted some of my precious ones to my children, with a warning that I want to have them back after they have read them. (I didn't want to encourage them to throw them away or leave them around.)

So I'm a book pack rat. I'm only forming my own medieval-style library, keeping everything. There are books however, that I don't like at all and there are books that are too old to keep (paperbacks), and those get donated or given away. I have only once in my life thrown a book away.

My book pack rat status is a throw back to the days when I lived in a small town without a library and read the same books over and over again. My first Booking Through Thursday post ever, and it really got me going.

Why I Miss My Books:

When I moved from one continent to another some long time ago, I had a grand sale of books, including most of what I had collected through university. I sold many books I'd love to have today, including Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese classic by Tsao Hsueh-Chin in several volumes. I don't think I can find that today for the price I got them for. Now the novel is available at a reasonable price, but abridged and in paperback.

Before coming back to the U.S., I sold another set of books I had carted around with me, including a condensed version of the Oxford English Dictionary, about 20 volumes squeezed into two thick volumes, complete with accompanying magnifying glass. I don't know if the condensed version is still available. If it is not, what would it be worth today?

Read more responses to Booking Through Thursday here.

Even Money by Dick Francis and Felix Francis, a review

Ned Talbot has been running his independent bookmaker business at racetracks since his grandfather Teddy started it years before. Everything is routine until a customer shows up one day and claims to be Ned's father, who was supposed to have died years ago. The man is then killed in front of Ned by a mugger demanding money.

Ned confirms that the mystery man's fatal stabbing was not random. He gathers more information about this man who claimed to be his father and finds out about his relationship to the horse racing business.

Sub-plots: Three sub plots add to the interest of the main story: the amusing love life of Ned's assistant Luca, the touching story of Ned's wife Sophia, and Ned's family history.

Comments: Easy reading, spare prose, excellent dialogue and character development, a solid plot and good subplots worked easily into the overall book. I enjoyed this mystery and also learned quite a bit about modern day horse racing in Britain.
Thanks to the Penguin Group for an ARC of this book.

Here's a review of Second Wind by Dick Francis by Rose City Reader.

"To Read" List on Goodreads

I add books to my Goodreads list as I go along. That's one way I keep track of my TBR list, although not every book I like and want to read is there. Took a look this morning at the To Read section and found 30 books.

Starting with the mysteries: There are a noir mystery, The Devil's Whisper by Miyuki Miyabe; Black Hole: A Novel of Psychological Suspense by Kitty Sewell; Murder For Hire: The Peruvian Pigeon by Dana Fredsti;

two cozies, To Hell in a Handbasket and A Real Basket Case by Beth Groundwater; a mystery series set in Shanghai, The Mao Case: An Inspector Chen Novel by Qiu Xialong;

plus an Alaskan series, Whisper to the Blood by Dana Stabenow, and a British mystery, Green for Danger by Christianna Brand. There's a mixture of authors - Japanese, Chinese, American, British. With mysteries set in different locations, I often learn about new places while enjoying a good plot.

The other genres I'll look at later. It's hard to tackle the list when other books keep cropping up, screaming at you to read them first.

Sunday Salon: Busy, Busy

My first time on the Sunday Salon! Got three new books from Hachette, which was truly a delight:

- Morning Sunshine by Robin Meade
- Friends Like These by Danny Wallace
- 9 Dragons by Michael Connelly

This week, I finished reviews of Nibble & Kuhn , Even Money by Dick Francis, and How I Write: Secrets of a Bestselling Author by Janet Evanovich.

Then I tended to my long neglected garden blog, Wood Water Garden, and posted a few pictures of California flora. Hope gardening lovers will check it out.

My hubby and I went back to Blockbuster to start watching DVDs again: saw The Line and will try the comedy, The Ramen Girl, today. Hope it's funny.

I got through this week, plus went to one-hour classes for four days.

Interesting note: Only 29.7% of my blog readers are from the U.S. It's 37% from the U.K. and 35% from other countries. Go figure! Can I trust these stats from Alexa?

Book Review: Nibble and Kuhn, a Novel

Synopsis: Two young lawyers at Nibble & Kuhn have fallen in love even though one is engaged to be married. Working in the same law firm, they are not supposed to be romantically involved. Derek and Maria face disapproval from their colleagues, her parents, and of course, her fiance. In addition, Derek is in line for partnership in the law firm, so he has to toe the line to make the grade, as well as win a complicated case against a factory with polluted runoff that may have caused cancer in several area children.

The shenanigans in the firm, Nibble & Kuhn, including a move of offices into a marble Triumph Tower, and the personalities in the firm, leave Derek less than enthusiastic, as he continues to work toward partnership, while still in hot pursuit of his colleague Maria.

My comments: The love story and the rest of the plot are low key. The conflicts are not earth shattering, satire is very subtle, and the drama is minimal, except for a very big surprise during the factory pollution trial. In this sense, the novel is more true to life and realistic than most novels dealing with law firms, lawyers, and law cases. This is not a legal thriller in the style of John Grisham. It is basically a love story and the story of a young, up and coming lawyer and his reactions to the corporate law environment he is in.

Lawyers who know and work within the corporate law system will be very interested in Derek, the main character in Nibble & Kuhn. The book will be released Nov. 1 and is written by Boston lawyer David Schmahmann, John Gardner Book Award winner of Empire Setting.

Advance review copy provided by Academy Chicago Publishers.

Wordless Wednesday, Oct. 7

San Diego Zoo - it may look like a painting, but it's not. Click on photo to enlarge.