Category: book recommendation

Amid all the current events and weather-related entries of late, here is a quick mini-review of Flint Kill Creek: Stories of Mystery and Suspense. I have recently worked my way through the stories in this volume by the extremely prolific Joyce Carol Oates.

Speaking of Oates: she was born almost exactly 30 years before me, in the summer of 1938. Oates will turn 87 this year, and she continues to write and publish. This is a testament to both a sharp mind and a solid work ethic. Her style has not deteriorated, nor even changed much in recent decades. Her latest books are very similar to the ones she published years ago.

Flint Kill Creek, as the full name of the book implies, is a collection of dark tales. Many of these stories involve a crime, but not all of them do.

These stories are what JCO does best: explorations of the dark corners of the human mind and its motivations. These stories often have surprise twists. Oh…I didn’t see that coming.

Joyce Carol Oates is known as a writer of literary fiction. This means, among other things, that her work sometimes requires some effort to get through. And so it is with Flint Kill Creek. Some of these stories are quite accessible and fast-paced. (I particularly liked the opening, titular story.) Others are slower and more abstruse.

As is always the problem (for this reader, anyway) where JCO is concerned: few of her characters, even the innocent ones cast in victim roles, are very likable. I often find that in a JCO story, I have no one to root for.

If you already like Joyce Carol Oates’s work, you’ll like Flint Kill Creek. If you don’t like her style, this book will do nothing to change your mind.

As for me: I have always been somewhere in the middle regarding Joyce Carol Oates’s fiction. I most always admire her work; but I enjoy it to varying degrees.

-ET

**View Flint Kill Creek: Stories of Mystery and Suspense on Amazon

One day in 2004, I was browsing through the bargain books bin at my local Borders bookstore. (Yes, we still had brick-and-mortar bookstores back then, though only for a few more years.)

I came across a hardcover copy of a mystery novel, Chasing the Dime. The author was Michael Connelly, whose name I recognized, but whose books I had yet to read. The price of the hardcover book was cheap, even by 2004 standards: $5.99, or something like that. I decided to give Chasing the Dime a try.

Drawn in by the story, I read Chasing the Dime in a few days. I then moved on to Michael Connelly’s series mysteries: those of Harry Bosch and Jack McEvoy, and then Mickey Haller, aka the Lincoln Lawyer.

Chasing the Dime is a standalone novel, of the “amateur sleuth” genre. Originally published in 2002, this is the story of a tech entrepreneur, Henry Pierce, who gets a new phone number after he changes his residence. The new phone number was recently held by a woman named “Lilly”.

Pierce gets numerous calls from men, many who are phoning from Los Angeles-area hotels. These men all seem eager to make evening appointments with Lilly.

Pierce quickly determines that Lilly is an escort. He also learns that Lilly went missing about two months ago. The phone company reassigned her number when she failed to pay the bill.

Pierce becomes obsessed with finding Lilly, or discovering what happened to her. (Not far into his investigation, Pierce concludes that foul play is involved.) This leads him to neglect his work and personal life. The search for Lilly also leads him to risk his physical safety.

**View CHASING THE DIME on Amazon**

Twenty years have gone by since I first read the novel. I recently decided to listen to the audiobook version of Chasing the Dime. As is often the case when I watch a film or read a story for the second time, I noticed things.

There are two major challenges in any “amateur sleuth” story. The first is: how does the amateur sleuth become involved in the mystery? The second: what motivates the amateur sleuth to investigate?

Michael Connelly plausibly answers the first question. In a big city like Los Angeles, just before the iPhone era, it is easy enough to imagine the phone company quickly recycling abandoned phone numbers, with some odd coincidences resulting.

The amateur sleuth’s motivation is less believable here. Connelly does create a childhood backstory for Pierce that partially explains his sudden obsession with Lilly’s fate. Also, Pierce has just broken up with his girlfriend, so he is emotionally vulnerable.

But as numerous secondary characters tell him, missing persons cases are best left to the police, or a trained private investigator. Also, Henry Pierce is a very busy man in the middle of some all-consuming, high-stakes endeavors. Would such a man really devote so much time to investigate the whereabouts of a stranger?

But that’s a flaw I noticed on the second reading/listening. There is no such thing as a perfect story, and Chasing the Dime is not a perfect novel. But this was the book that got me hooked on Michael Connelly. Twenty years later, I’ve been a fan ever since.

-ET