The Penelopaid - The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus - by Margaret Atwood
In The Odyssey, Penelope has a minor role as the faithful wife of Odysseus who waits quietly for the return of her husband from the Trojan War. She's merely a side character to the great battle and subsequent adventures of her husband. In this novel, Atwood fleshes out Penelope's life and writes a novel where she is the main character and her husband merely a supporting actor.
I like the premise of this book - the idea of retelling a myth from another perspective. When done well, the result is mesmerizing. See The Mists of Avalon. Unfortunately, this book didn't quite work. The voice is Penelope herself from the underworld and she's a bit of a bore. Most of the story is a long monologue full of complaints. There is almost no dialogue and aside from Penelope, no other characters are fully developed. Atwood also throws in a chorus of 12 maids and I wish she had actually made each maid a character instead of lumping them together. I thought their story would have been much more interesting. This idea just fell flat and was a terrifically boring read. Ah well. It was worth a try.
Blindsided by Karin Slaughter
This novel introduces the character Sara Linton, coroner, and her ex-husband Jeffrey Tolliver, police chief, of a small Georgia town. A serial murderer is on the loose and it is up to Sara to piece together the clues and stop him. I liked some parts of this novel. Good characters, nice chemistry, great mystery. But it was too gory for me. Way too gory. The murders were gruesome rapes that were explained in great detail that just went too far for me. Also, it suffered from the Star Trek ensign disease. An away party beams down with Capt Kirk, Spock, Bones, and a nameless yellow shirt. Guess who's going to die? Yup. In this book there is this one random character who gets way too much face time for his role. Unless, of course, he's the killer. So about 1/3 of the way through, it became pretty obvious who dunnit. That I can forgive. The gore, well, no. But if you like a nice graphic violent series, this one may be for you.
Twelve Sharp - a Stephanie Plum Mystery - by Janet Evanovich
Ah, Stephanie is back!
The twelth in the Stephanie Plum series had all the right elements. Morelli, Ranger, Lula, donuts and bad hair days. The only thing missing was the fact the Stephanie didn't destroy her car somehow.
I love these books and just fly through them. Personally, I'm a Ranger girl so I was glad to see him featured prominently in this plot line. In between rounding up skips, Stephanie must help Ranger find the mad man who has kidnapped his daughter and stolen his life. Stephanie bumbles through and Janet teases us with the age old question of who Stephanie will pick. Stable cop Morelli or man of mystery, Ranger. At the end of this book, it's once again unresolved so I guess I'll have to wait for No. 13. Sigh. Ah well!
Persuader - A Jack Reacher Novel - by Lee Child
This was a staff recommendation that I picked up on a lark. It features Jack Reacher, a former military MP who is now an independent agent. There are about a dozen books in this series and this is one of the later ones. Jack is recruited by a group of federal agents trying to break open a suspected drug ring and rescue one of their own who went in undercover and never resurfaced.
This book is all action. Lots of car chases, explosions, hand to hand combat and discussion about various types of guns, ammuntion and bullet holes. The body count is high and the plot very simple. There are bad guys. There are good guys. They kill eachother. The end. I suppose as a shoot 'em up thriller it was good. For me, the characters were too 1 dimentional. Everyone had tightly controlled emotions. Everyone was very professional and deadly. After a while, it gets a bit old. I think I'm been spoiled by by Elvis Cole's series. I need a little humor and human fraility in my heros so Jack Reacher wasn't my cup of tea.