Digital Book Today, a website dedicated to “helping book lovers find authors in a digital age,” chose Mad Dog House as one of their Weekly Featured Great Reads.
Mark’s Guest Post on Omnimystery News
Mark recently wrote a guest post for Omnimystery News in which he discussed the inspiration for his new psychological thriller, Mad Dog House, what went into his writing process, and where he found some of the ideas for the novel. His guest post can be found in its entirety here.
The genesis of a novel
Readers often ask how an idea for a novel comes to an author. I’ve been asked how MAD DOG HOUSE (due October 23rd) came into being. It’s a very strange—almost dreamlike—process for me. I’ve found it the same way for the other three novels I’ve written which will be published over the next two years).
It’s as though my mind went through some semi-conscious period where things from the past and present seemed to coalesce and began building on themselves. In all honesty, once the story was on paper, I was unable to reconstruct its genesis. It seemed very strange, almost the way you feel when you wake up some mornings knowing you’ve dreamed, but the dream dissolves before you’re completely resurrected from a sleeping state.
“The Caller” by Karin Fossum
Okay, this is a Norwegian mystery…one of the many Scandinavian novels flooding the market since the success of the Millenium trilogy.
The premise is interesting: A 17 year old boy with a deprived homelife sets about playing malicious pranks on people in and around his village. Some of them have dreadful consequences. Kids can be really vicious, for sure.
The novel’s problem is simple: there is very little suspense or tension. Much of it is written from the POV of the boy and you know his motivation and his objective. After a while, the only question is whether or not his pranks will escalate to something more serious.
I found the writing to be simplistic and naive, and have trouble understanding Marilyn Stasio’s good review in the NY Times. There was little to sustain my interest, and I think this novel proves the old saying that sometimes, less is more.
There is far more tension (at least for me) when the true culprit is unknown or unknowable, which is not the case here. This novel suffers from what is often called these days TMI (too much information). Two stars.
“And When She Was Good” by Laura Lippman
Heloise runs a prostitution ring in suburban Baltimore. She comes from a deprived background with a verbally abusive father and a passive mother. Having escaped her beginnings, she has, by virtue of grit, brains and determination, made herself into a sophisticated woman who has a young son and who lives quite well. Unfortunately, her son’s father is in prison and is Heloise’s former pimp and ringmaster. He doesn’t know Heloise is the mother of his child.
Heloise (formerly known as Helen) leads an intricately mapped double life, not only because she’s in the business she’s in, but because she visits Val (the father of her son) in prison, and still pays him a substantial percentage of her earnings, because she must. He has connections on the outside, and peril awaits Heloise if she should meander from her incredibly successful business model, some of which she’s garnered from her former work for Val, and from businesses like Amazon and eBay.
Heloise is quite clever, is self- educated, (intelligent beyond her formal education) knows the ropes, and can read people very well. When a madame in another county is discovered dead (murdered) things become dangerous for Heloise, and the life she has so painstakingly constructed comes under threat of exposure. Or worse: she’s afraid that she may become a target as well. At 37, she must cope with a threat to her life and to the secrets she holds–from Val, from her son (who thinks his father died before he was even born) and secrets she holds from the entire community.
Heloise’s situation becomes more tenuous when another prostitute (and former worker for Val) is found dead. Heloise must decide what (if anything) to do, especially when a former employee attempts to blackmail her. The tension mounts and Heloise’s dilemma reaches frightening proportions.
The story, told in a hip, contemporary style, moves toward a harrowing conclusion and the reader comes to the conclusion that this is not so much a story about prostitution as it is about a bright, self-sufficient woman who rises above her humble and degrading origins and is a master at finding creative solutions to seemingly insoluble problems. Heloise is a true entrepreneur and at heart, a person with a conscience and a soul. Four and a half stars.
“One Breath Away” by Heather Gudenkauf
Given the spate of school shootings over the past few years, you would assume a novel about a gunman taking children hostage at a school in a small town would be as suspenseful as it is timely. Unfortunately, I found the suspense lacking and the tension watered down by the novel’s construction which was skillfully done, but slowed the novel’s narrative drive.
The story is told through the eyes of five narrators, all experiencing the horror and processing it in different ways. They are a mother of two student hostages, their grandfather, a teacher (also held hostage), a police officer,and the mother’s 13 year old daughter who is in the school when the gunman appears.
The different perspectives offered by each narrator (either in the first person or third person, in the present or past tense) are interesting, though the first part of the novel can be a bit confusing until the reader sorts them out. Once things fall into place, the story should flow to a furious and compelling conclusion. But the author delves into far too many cul de sacs about each narrator, and bogs down the story’s natural flow, which waters down the tension.
Some people would call this a “thriller” because of the subject matter. I think it’s more a portrait of a small town, and the dynamics of people involved in a terrifying situation, but the read itself is neither terrifying nor thrilling.
While character development in a novel is very important, it should not feel to the reader like some sticky adhesive holding back the story. After all, when you get down to it, the story is what counts. Three and a half stars.
Gillian Flynn: The Evolution of an Author
I just finished reading “Dark Places” by Gillian Flynn, the author of the current best-seller, “Gone Girl.”
I’ve commented on how much I enjoyed “Gone Girl” and why it was such a compelling read. The most valuable thing (for me) about reading “Dark Places” was the chance to see how far Gillian Flynn has evolved as a writer with the publication of “Gone Girl.”
While I would give “Dark Places” a solid 3 1/2 stars, it can’t compare to the masterful storytelling of Flynn’s latest novel. It’s interesting to see how the author’s writing matured between the two novels. It shows that we tend to get better at doing things by simply doing them.
“Gone Girl” without any spoilers
Okay, I hate book reviews with even a hint of a spoiler, or a whisper about what will happen in the story. Unfortunately, I read some reviews of “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn that clued me into some of the plot mysteries. I won’t do that.
Let me first say this is a wonderful novel filled with plot complexity and wonderful characterizations of Nick and and Amy, husband and wife.
The story unfolds with Amy gone, just disappeared like a vapor into thin air. The narrators are Amy and Nick. The first part of the novel as told through Nick’s and Amy’s eyes has alternating chapters told by each of them.
In a sort of reverse sequencing, Amy’s chapters focus on the past, when she and Nick met and describe the onset of the problems that beset their seemingly perfect marriage. Nick’s chapters, on the other hand, begin on the day of Amy’s disappearance and progress day by day as this nightmare unfolds.
Slowly and inexorably, Amy’s story melds with Nick’s as their respective chapters move closer in time.
Eventually, we get to part 2 describing what happens when the police get involved and slowly, the puzzle of Amy’s disappearance begins to be solved. But that’s only the beginning of the story.
I won’t tell you any more than that. I’ll simply say the story is a chilling tale of duplicity and devilish manipulation. As a reader, you can’t help but turn the pages to find out where it all ends up.
Five out of five stars for a cleverly constructed tale and for hip, stylized storytelling. This is wonderful, contemporary fiction.
The Old Man and the Sea
Okay, I admit to regretting all the classics I never read as a kid, or even as an adult. There were many I did read, but was “forced” to as a school kid. One of them was “The Old Man and the Sea.” As I kid, I thought it was an “okay” story, and I sort of enjoyed the film with Spencer Tracy, too.
But I recently re-read the novel and realized something had changed within myself. I could actually feel and understand the depth of Santiago, the old man, and understood his feelings about the sea, the marlin he caught, about the sharks, and about his life and the lives of others, as these things are depicted in the novel
And, I could truly appreciate the power and beauty of Hemingway’s prose in this novel. His descriptions are magnificent, and Santiago’s character emerges in great depth, and the meaning of his struggle with the sea, too; all of it comes out in relatively few pages at the hand of a master.
I guess it pays to re-visit some of the classics that were thrust upon us in school, but with the perspective we now have. It was an awakening for me–a realization of the power of time and maturity and how they impact on one’s perceptions.
A fine read it is-“the Old Man and the Sea”-even if you read it long ago when you were a different person.
“Next” fabulous stream-of consciousness writing
I am re-reading “Next” by James Hynes. This novel is worth every second of the time spent to read it, and then some. On the surface, it’s a story about a man named Kevin, a middle-aged editor living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who has flown to Austin, Texas without telling his live-in girlfriend about his one day trip for a job interview. Yes, Kevin, in middle-age, may yet change the direction of his life.
The story starts out simply enough as you traverse the inner canyons of Kevin’s mind: his thoughts, ruminations, regrets and memories of his life over the years. He has a few hours to kill while waiting for the interview, and in a moment of hormone-driven impulsivity, decides to follow through the streets of Austin, a young woman who had been sitting next to him on the plane. It’s benign enough, except that during this travelogue through Austin’s streets, Kevin’s life story (and all his foibles) emerge in this interior novel, and some strange (and revealing) things happen.
I never throw spoilers into the mix but let me say Kevin’s few hours in Austin turn into quite an adventure with the book’s climax coming out of nowhere like a freight train on steroids.
This is a wonderful read, and the reader gets not only a penetrating view of the workings of Kevin’s mind-all his mistakes and regrets, his loves and losses-but luxuriates in an hilarious dissection of the culture in which we live . A true gem of a novel. Five well-deserved stars!