Cataloochee by Wayne Caldwell, Random House, Fiction, 368 pp., $24.95

A gripping saga set in the post civil war Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina, this novel is destined to become an American classic and should share a shelf with The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and even Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Just as Faulkner has three brothers juxtaposed with a beautiful woman, Caldwell presents three families whose Siren is the land. Harper Lee gives us the unforgettable Scout and Atticus Finch and Wayne Caldwell presents to us the eternally devoted Maddie and Zeb Banks. Where Fitzgerald explores the tragedies spawned by love and the insanity that is schizophrenia, Caldwell explores alcoholic insanity and the death of love.

As is the case with all great novels, woven through the entire plot are eternal questions with possible answers. What is community? What forces bring it into being and what forces help it to survive? Is the unthinkable ever forgivable? Can a jury really answer that question? Can a man be both a devil and a saint? Are the sins of the father always visited upon the son?

What need does religion fill? Where does faith fit in?

In poetic language interwoven with skillfully chosen dialect Caldwell attempts to answer these questions and more as he relates the stories of three families who came to carve out a life in a place they chose as much for its breathtaking beauty as for its farmland. The Carters and the Wrights have been in Cataloochee since at least the 1830’s. Ezra Banks first sets eyes on the land when he traipses through it as a boy soldier during the Civil War. For him it was love at first sight. He spends some years farming elsewhere after the war but the government decides to lay a highway next to his land and he finds someone willing to buy him out. He decides to inquire about land in Cataloochee and in his effort to buy some of the Carter land he says to Will Carter, “…A man gets a place in here, ain’t nothing going to bother him. Not roads, not even government.” As the story unfolds we learn that things aren’t always so simple.

Caldwell’s characters come alive and the story moves the reader forward the way the outgoing tide pulls the river to the sea-at first slowly with action building quickly as we near the end of the tale. The antagonist is not always hateful and the heroes are not always perfect. They are all, always superbly human. When you finish this book you will not be finished with Ezra or Mattie or Zeb or Jake or Hannah. The Carters, Wrights and Banks will move into your heart and won’t move on and perhaps that is the writer’s intent. This is the quintessential American story told by a man who, if he did not live it himself, clearly listened closely with love and respect to those who did. It is a beautifully written and well-edited historical novel and it leaves the reader both hopeful for the future even while saddened by the past. It is also Wayne Caldwell’s first novel and I for one pray he has a few more in him. Review by Alice Hawrilenko

A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny, St. Martin’s Minotaur, Mystery, 314 pp., $23.95

Warning-effusive review follows.

This is the second in a series, after last year’s Still Life, set in the tiny village of Three Pines, south of Montreal. For its denizens, it is life inside a snow globe, safe, peaceful, and exquisitely lovely until murder once again shatters the calm, but not so much as you would expect. The victim is a newcomer to town, one CC De Poitiers, a vain, troubled, and cruel woman whose ambition exceeds her gifts. She has an ineffective husband and an overweight daughter whom she reviles publicly. CC was murdered in plain sight during a curling competition. Enter the enigmatic Inspector Armand Gamache. Gamache is a fascinating character. He is secure within himself, erudite, and sensitive. He loves people, and he knows he has seen God. On his team is the utterly devoted Guy Beauvoir and the detested Agent Yvette Nichol, a disturbed young officer who owes her bitterness and fears to lies told early in her antiseptic childhood. The villagers include Clara and Peter Morrow, both artists, with Peter being the recognized of the two, though Clara may be the more talented. There are three elderly women who together hold a secret relevant to this investigation and to another. The victim’s death overlaps with one of Gamache’s unsolved mysteries, the death of a homeless woman in Montreal. There are other characters, a loving gay couple who own a charming B&B, a cranky old poet, and a refugee from the city who’s opened a bookstore in the village. All together, they comprise a grand buffet of noble humanity, wounded to greater and lesser degrees.

Penny creates layer upon layer of things to ponder like the intricacies of the marital union, the origins of people’s personal agonies, our deepest needs for space and respect, ethnic prejudices, the power of words to heal and to lacerate, and she does all this with stark, unflinching honesty. This book is a rich thing to digest, and it requires pause and reflection.

Still Life was set at Thanksgiving, The Fatal Grace at Christmas. If Easter is next, perhaps the underappreciated Clara Morrow will have her own resurrection.

This book is a small and perfect literary jewel. Louise Penny is the best writer of traditional mysteries to come along in decades. I haven’t read a book this beautifully written since A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell. Louise Penny is a writer’s writer and a reader’s delight, and as one of her French Canadian characters might say, c’est vrai.

Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich, St. Martin’s Press, Fiction, 310 p., $27.95

he Plum is one red hot Jersey tomato in this spectacularly silly and wonderful 13th installment starring the big-haired bounty hunter from Trenton.

Stephanie’s ex, the sleazy lawyer and career womanizer Dickie Orr, is missing and believed dead. Steph is naturally the number one suspect since lots of people saw her with her hands wrapped around his throat. The truth is that Steph was planting a bug on Dickie on behalf of Ranger who is conducting an investigation into Dickie’s dirty doings himself. Steph must prove her innocence while still trying to make a living. Additionally, Grandma Mazur has a beau. Oy Vey!

If you haven’t read this series yet, I don’t know what you’re waiting for. Stephanie Plum works for her cousin Vinny, a pervert, as a bail bondsman. I say pervert because it is believed he had an unnatural relationship with a duck. Stephanie’s parents are normal, but her Grandma Mazur, a pistol packing senior, is not. Steph has a sister who’s married to a lawyer who bought his degree from J.C. Penney or some such and they have three daughters, two by her first marriage to an idiot. Now to the really fun part. Steph mostly keeps company with a gorgeous cop named Joe Morelli, and he is special, but not so fast, there’s a mysterious and luscious Cuban security specialist who goes by the name of Ranger who is irresistible to Stephanie. Who could blame her? So it’s back and forth from one hotbed of temptation to another. The question is settle down with Morelli or have fun with Ranger. You’ll be glad you don’t have her problems.

Steph’s sidekick is Lula, a large delusional black woman who thinks she’s a size six and that sequins make the woman. The more you shine, the more you’re fine.

If you’re a fan of this series, drop what you’re doing right now and get to the bookstore. If you haven’t read this series, please redeem yourself immediately and start with One for the Money. No need to thank me; I’m just doing my job.

Death by Pantyhose by Laura Levine, Kensington, Mystery, 256 pp., $22

This sixth entry in the very entertaining Jaine Austen series is the funniest yet. Jaine is a mostly out of work freelance writer in Los Angeles. She lives in an apartment with her cat Prozac. She’s not exactly a guy magnet unless you count the gay man next door. Her diet is so appalling that if she ever let a vegetable touch her lips trumpets would blare in her colon. She exchanges e-mails with her nutty parents who have retired in Florida, and it’s clear the acorn fell right next to the tree.

This time out, Jaine is desperate for work and agrees to accept a poor paying job writing comedy for Dorcas, a feminazi , the denouement of whose act involves the shredding of her pantyhose which she then tosses into the crowd. Can you believe it, the act isn’t working. Poor Dorcas is ridiculed by her fellow comic, an evil creep named Vic, who turns up dead with a pair of Dorcas’s pantyhose wrapped tightly around his slimy neck. Dorcas is arrested for his murder, and Jaine needs to prove her innocence, but it’s not like Jaine doesn’t have some problems of her own. Her 10 year-old car was stolen by a con man, and her new rental agent, fresh from Odessa, or somewhere like that, rents her a lemon from hell’s own farm. She finally lands a date with the man of her dreams, but alas, complications arise in the form of a devious and malevolent competitor for Andrew’s affections. I don’t want to give anything away, but let me say you will kvell with pride for Jaine.

Levine is wickedly witty at all times, but especially in this latest. She’ll have you giggling like a schoolgirl.

The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin, Picador, Trade Paperback, Fiction, 368 pp., $14

Goodwin, the author of Lords of the Horizons (1999), a history of the Ottoman Empire, sets this who-done-it in the waning days of the House of Osman. He takes us on a walking, running and riding tour of 19th century Istanbul as he, in the person of Investigator Yashim, unravels a plot which opens with the disappearance of four top young army officers. Yashim’s task is further complicated when the sultan himself requests that Yashim solve the murder of one of his concubines – a murder which coincides with the disappearance of his mother’s jewels.

Goodwin’s descriptions of Istanbul and the Sultan’s court are so detailed that we are literally transported to that world for the duration of the novel. It is easy to imagine yourself riding on the Bosporus, sipping Turkish coffee at a café or steaming in the baths. As we observe the intrigue of the Sultan’s court and the power struggles between those who want sweeping change modeled after western Europe and those who would revert to earlier times of sterner Muslim rule we recognize how little we humans change over time. The parallels between Istanbul then and Baghdad now are obvious.

Yashim himself is a likeable character with the cultivated air of a Sherlock Holmes combined with the friendly humility of a Fr. Brown. His friend Stanislaw Palewski is humorous and likeable. As the ambassador from Poland, Palewski is the perfect Dr. Watson to Yashim’s Holmes.

In a few places the novel gets a bit bogged down in extraneous detail and the introduction of one character who will eventually save Yashim’s life is a bit contrived. However, the book is still a good read, especially on a sunny day at the beach or under a tree. Review by Alice Hawrilenko

More Books...

Serious students of Russian politics will want to read A Russian Diary, A Journalist’s Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin’s Russia ( Random House) by Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who was murdered last year. Politkovskaya was a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Politkovskaya is one of 13 journalists murdered since Putin ascended to power in the year 2000. Again for serious readers, there is The Pentagon, A History, The Untold Story of the Wartime Race to Build the Pentagon-and to Restore It Sixty Years Later ( Random House) by Steve Vogel. This is a fascinating history, exceptionally well written and entirely accessible, a little gossipy even.

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