Books Newsletter

Over break, I had the treat of reading Michael Connelly's "The Burning Room," which is a well-loved late-career book about Harry Bosch.

(Janet Maslin said that "Burning Room" was a kind of renaissance for Michael Connelly.)

The thing I love most about Connelly is his plots; it would be hard to outpace his imagination. In "The Burning Room," a man carries a bullet in his body for ten years, then finally dies from long-festering infections. There is a race to solve the ten-year slow-motion murder -- and it's soon clear that the bullet had a different target's name attached to it. (It's also clear that the mayor understood -- and hid -- certain facts about the wayward bullet. What a treat to piece together the puzzle of one mayor's cover-up.)

"The Burning Room" also has nine children dying in a horrific act of arson. The act seems not to have any kind of linked motivation -- but of course, in Connelly, the appearance isn't the reality. Discovering why the fire happened is another thrill in the book.

After Connelly, I turned to "The Wife," by Alafair Burke. Here, a young woman lives through three years of torture before escaping from her kidnapper. She then marries a smarmy man who may or may not get involved in a few Bill Clinton-ish assaults. These two plotlines seem unconnected -- but they're connected. The way Burke pivots, in the fast fifty pages, and the way that multiple stories cohere .......This is pure pleasure.

Now I'm reading "The Cry," a novel that seems to have been inspired by the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. It's lively and frightening.

Down the road....I look forward to Connelly's "Lost Light," and to "Patti LuPone," by Patti LuPone.

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