Without question,
PIRATE LATITUDES is one of the year's most bittersweet reads, simply for being the final novel by superstar novelist Michael Crichton, who died last fall at the too-young age of 66. Speaking of young, this is the kind of pure adventure story he wrote early in his career, like
THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY or
EATERS OF THE DEAD, being comparatively short at 320 pages and unconcerned with tackling a hot-button topic.
No cloning, global warming or nanotechnology here. This one's all about pirates — specifically, Capt. Charles Hunter, who prefers the term "privateer." After all, that term is befitting of one hired by the government — in this case, Jamaican governor Sir James Almont — to do the pillaging.
Hunter's target? A rumored treasure at the seemingly impregnable — and certainly savage — island of Matanceros. To do so will require help, and Hunter quickly assembles a crew,
OCEAN'S ELEVEN-style: the mute African, The Moor; the murderous Frenchman, Sanson; the disguised French female, Lazue; barber/surgeon Mr. Enders; and the weapons expert known as The Jew.
The ensuing adventure entails not only swashbuckling on the high seas, but also trips through the jungle and detours to prison. Those adverse to rats, snakes and sharks may contract a mild case of the willies along the way.
Now in paperback, PIRATE LATITUDES is like a kid learning how to ride a bike: There a few clumsy starts at first, but once he gets the hang of it, he's off. The ride is pleasurable, but really only mildly rousing. It's not among Crichton's best, but I'd prefer to have it over nothing at all.
—Rod Lott
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Superman and Batman have been pals for so long, we take that friendship for granted. So Kevin J. Anderson uses his novel
ENEMIES & ALLIES to go back and imagine how the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight might have met initially. It didn't exactly start off on the right foot ... but the book sure does!
Set in the Cold War (and thus, not too terribly long after the characters' actual creations), Superman is so new to the scene that he hasn't yet been given that nickname. Batman, meanwhile, is still considered a public menace, a vigilante — despite a real knack for taking the lowest of the low off Gotham City's mean streets.
Out of his cowl, Batman is millionaire playboy and martini drinker Bruce Wayne. In one of his weekly board meetings at Wayne Enterprises, a member suddenly resigns without explanation, which Bruce finds odd. Doing some digging, he learns the man quit because — unlike his fellow board members — he refused to accept bribes and sell trade secrets to the competition: LuthorCorp.
LuthorCorp's CEO is, of course, the bald-headed bad guy Lex Luthor. He's in bed (figuratively) with a KGB general, hatching a devious plan to make himself a superpower of his own, involving a death ray he's developed. On a visit with his Soviet comrade in Siberia, he also comes across a chunk of some strange green mineral.
Superman spends much of his time as Clark Kent, sniffing around Area 51 with
Daily Planet photographer Jimmy Olsen and vying (against himself, strangely) for the affections of ace reporter Lois Lane. Of course, she'll find herself into serious trouble that'll require her rescue. The unusual thing is, so will Superman. And Batman will be the only one who can help him.
Yet their initial meetings are wrought with misunderstanding and distrust, both wrongly assuming the other to be on the LuthorCorp side. It's not until much later that the heroes shift into
WORLD'S FINEST mode, and fight together for the greater good.
Although lacking the gravitas of 2007's
THE LAST DAYS OF KRYPTON, Anderson's semi-sequel stands tall as superior sci-fi entertainment. If set in the present day, it wouldn't seem like a big deal, as the plot isn't exactly epic. But in choosing a Cold War backdrop, Anderson drapes the story in a sort of "gee whiz" nostalgia that recalls the characters' Golden Age, when America first fell in love with them.
Making Luthor a conspirator with Sen. Joseph McCarthy is another masterstroke — one not driven into the ground, but brought up just enough to make its point. The disgraced Congressman isn't the only historical figure to make an appearance; look for Marilyn Monroe, Eleanor Roosevelt and Nikita Khrushchev. And for followers of the comics, there are cameos by Oswald Cobblepot and Selena Kyle.
Anderson has a lot to offer in ENEMIES & ALLIES, which is now in paperback: an alien invasion, detection and adventure, even a smidge of romance — all making for an appealing, spirited look at the early days of two pop-culture icons.
—Rod Lott
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Two-and-a-half hours is all I could give Lee Child's
61 HOURS before giving up. That put me a third of the way through and it had yet to grab me. This is highly unusual, as all of Child's past Jack Reacher novels I've read — no summer by the pool is complete without one — have caught fire with an immediacy, often from page one. He's never disappointed me.
Instead, this one — now in paperback, and the 14th adventure for ex-military cop Reacher — ambles, beginning with what seems like parody as our hero is among the passengers on a senior citizens' tour bus when it crashes on an icy road. (I couldn't help but think if Leslie Nielsen's Lt. Frank Drebin might also be aboard.) Stranded in this South Dakota town, Reacher is at first suspected by the cops of being one bad dude.
He's not, of course, but the town is full of them, primarily in the ripped-from-the-headlines form of members of a Mexican drug cartel, headed by a guy with the ironic name of Plato. Their lucrative meth manufacturing gig is threatened by the impending testimony of a 70-ish former librarian who Reacher agrees to help the cops protect (and dubs "a storybook grandma").
As per the title, the clock counts down, but to what, we don't know. That's a bit of an annoyance, especially since it left me unable to wrap my head around the prologue fully. The strange thing is, I didn't feel compelled to find out what lay on the other end of the ticker.
All of Child's regular Reacher trademarks are here: the stranger-in-a-strange-town scenario, the answering-a-question-with-a-question dialogue, a plot driven by speech rather than narrative. Everything, that is, except for the breakneck pace. If this were
24 — to which Child's series has been rightly compared — 61 HOURS may be Jack Bauer's trip to Mexico, if not quite Kim's encounter with the cougar.
—Rod Lott
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The press materials for Sarah Jane Stratford's
THE MIDNIGHT GUARDIAN peg the debut novel as a mix between
TRUE BLOOD and
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. Who am I to argue with that? After all, this history-rewriter plops vampires smack in the middle of Hitler's Germany, and if there's one thing
der Fuehrer wants to rid Europe more than Jews and homosexuals, it's those who feast on blood.
So, yes, this is another novel in which the vamps are the good guys — up against Hitler, who isn't? The protagonists are two fanged lovers: the young (for a vampire) and beautiful Brigit and her bald, musically inclined beau, Eamon. A de facto family is formed when she sneaks two Jewish kids out of the country for the safety of England.
Although I love a lot of genres — and even mash-ups of genres — I often find myself overwhelmed by historicals and bored by paranormal romance. GUARDIAN contains elements of both, but luckily keeps them in check so that its fantasy/thriller core remains upfront.
Stratford mines the richness in her writing to give the proceedings a coat of class. While I think the end hits just the right note — and before the story wears out its welcome — the book is threatened to be the first of a series ... of course. Ah, well. Now in paperback, THE MIDNIGHT GUARDIAN may not be a must-read effort of vampire fiction, but it's arguably the most notable since Elizabeth Kostova's
THE HISTORIAN.
—Rod Lott
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The urban hipster has redefined American cool with a sighing disdain for everything mainstream. Hipsters are easily identified by their worn-out shoes, fixies and PBR tallboys, but until now, no one had investigated beyond the hipster look to the even more hilarious hipster psyche. Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz's
STUFF HIPSTERS HATE: A FIELD GUIDE TO THE PASSIONATE OPINIONS OF THE INDIFFERENT exposes the bottomless well of impassioned scorn that motivates the ever-apathetic hipster, including texting back in a timely fashion, muscles, full-time jobs and enthusiasm.
We have three copies to give away, going to:
• Dena Martin of Pasadena, Calif.
• Gavin Woltjer of Sturgis, S.D.
• Mary Lake of Winner, S.D.
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