The Electric Mayhem – Looking For A Kiss

    
Dooley Takes the Fall by Norah McClintock

Dooley Takes the Fall is a Canadian YA novel but as with the best that YA fiction has to offer don’t let those two letters fool or scare you. This is as tough a crime novel and as good a mystery as you’re likely to find anywhere anchored by one of the best characters to come along in years.

The story is anchored by two mysteries, one for the reader and one for the plot. You see Dooley, age 17, has a criminal past. But he’s now living with his retired cop uncle and is trying really hard to straighten his life up and do good. But if Dooley didn’t have bad luck then he would have no luck at all so when he is walking home from work and see’s a kid come off of a bridge, of course its Dooley that is first on the scene; of course Dooley knows the kid and of course they have a history together. So of course Dooley is the prime suspect and his carefully cultivated existence will start to unravel. Dooley sets out to clear his name by investigating the death on his own. The second mystery, the one for the reader, has to do with the nature of the crime that Dooley committed to initially get into so much trouble. Even though it is hinted at (and can be guessed) the final reveal is saved for near the end.

Dooley is a great character that invokes a wide array of feeling from the reader but becomes one that you ultimately root for.

If John Hughes wrote a crime novel it might look something like this.

The Foreigner by Francie Lin

The Foreigner is about a man without a country without much of a past in search of his only family after his mother dies and discovers himself in the process. Emerson Chang is a messy, contradictory and complexly drawn character. He has no sense of identity, self or worth and lacks any vocabulary of self expression. He’s been emasculated by an over bearing mother and scorned by a brother who left many years earlier. The only family member who gets off lightly is his father but only because he died when Emerson was young. This is a deep exploration of identity, the loss of it, and the role that we play in creating our own; the conflict of the identity that others put on us and the one that we consider for ourselves and the vast gulf that can lie in between the two. All of this told in an atmospheric way that makes Taiwan come off the page and on to the minds screen in a vivid way. The only thing that holds the book back is the very ending, which is a little weak and fails to hit as hard as it could have.

Borderlands by Brian McGilloway

The setting of Borderlands, situated right on the border of Ireland and Northern Ireland, lends itself to some subtle and humorous commentary on the history of the region (which is always in the background) and where they are now. Like this exchange near the beginning after the body has been found and detectives from both sides are called out to determine jurisdiction:

“They might have been from your side,” I said to Hendry, motioning towards the top of the embankment, where those who and left her must have stood.

“They possibly are,” he agreed,” but this one’s yours. This must be your first murder since–”

“1883,” replied one of ours. “And he was hung!”

“Rightly bloody so,” agreed another northerner.

“Oh, there’s been more since,” I said. “We just haven’t found all the bodies yet.”

Hendry laughed. “We’ll help any way we can, Devlin, but you’re the lead on this.”

Borderlands is a dense book; packed with a lot of details, plot points, history, story lines and characterization especially given its size. It really becomes the kind of book that you can’t race through for fear of missing something. But my usage of the word dense shouldn’t imply plodding because it unfolds at a ripping pace and became **reviewer cliché alert** quite the page turner for me as I became more and more absorbed in not only the story but the characters lives, particularly the main character Devlin.

My closing observation isn’t one that I can quantify though. When I finished the book I was left with the feeling that McGilloway had left it all on the table, particularly for a book that is the start of a series. I think it will be interesting to see what the next book brings. Will it be another case that links up timelines and introduces us to more citizens of the towns or will it be more of character study that deal with the fallout. I don’t really know but I look forward to the answer in the next book.

Go With Me by Castle Freeman Jr.

Probably the most dominant thing that I heard about Go With Me before reading it was that there was a group of old men who acted as a Greek Chorus for the novel. I’ll admit to being skeptical about this device and I couldn’t really see how it would work or that it would be successful. But I quickly saw how this simple idea transformed the idea of expository passages and found a new way to convey necessary information. Even a simple description just doesn’t do it justice; the casual conversations of a group of men sharing some beers shedding necessary light on the actions of a concurrently running storyline really shouldn’t be that radical of a concept yet it is. I’m not too sure that I’ve ever read another book that puts so much under a simple facade.

One of my favorite things in a book is coming across unlikely protagonists. In Go With Me the primary narrative thrust surrounds some very unlikely protagonists. If a girl was in trouble and was being harassed by the local hard man most authors would send tough guys with her of a more, shall we say, clichéd and stereotypical variety. Freeman takes a different route and sends her out with, as Lillian puts it, “They had sent her out here with sixth-grade dropout and a senior citizen who could hardly walk.” But like the book these two will prove to have more behind them then first thought would suggest.

The bottom line is that Go With Me is a great book that more people need to read.

About Brian

Brian loves both kinds of books -- fiction and non-fiction. He is an all around book john and reviewing roustabout. His semi-regular columns at BSC include BSC Radar Screen, The Electric Mayhem, Conversations with the Bookless and Short Thoughts on Short Fiction. He blogs at Observations From the Balcony.