Injured in a fall, successful novelist Gerry Andersen is confined to a hospital bed in his new Baltimore penthouse, dependent on his colorless assistant and a stodgy night nurse. His drug-addled mind roams through his past and present like Marley’s ghost, but he is certain the woman calling on the phone at night saying she’s Aubrey is not Aubrey. Impossible. Aubrey is the main character in his best-selling novel “Dream Girl.” She’s fictional. Gerry made her up. She doesn’t exist. Or does she?
You’re not wrong if Laura Lippman’s entertaining new novel Dream Girl (William Morrow, digital galley) reminds you of Stephen King’s Misery. Lippman finds inspiration for her crime novels in books, old movies, real-life crimes. But whatever the source, she has a way of turning the material upside-down and inside-out, making it her own. So, yes, her Dream Girl (William Morrow, digital galley) pays homage to King, but also to Hitchcock and her other literary and cinematic favorites. It’s a shout-out, too, to the process of writing and the writer’s life. Gerry’s mind may be playing tricks on him when it comes to phone calls from Aubrey, but the woman who turns up next to him one morning is very real — and very dead. Lippman’s novel is twisty and twisted, quite the nightmare for poor Gerry, who is an insufferable jerk. I didn’t like him at all, but I sure liked Dream Girl.
I detested Alex Michaelides’ second novel The Maidens (Celadon, purchased hardcover). Let me count the ways: poor writing, uneven pacing, unbelievable characters, absurd plot, ludicrous ending. I did like the setting — Cambridge University with its historic, shadowed halls of academe. But the story of a widowed psychotherapist convinced that a classics professor is killing his female students is a slog from slow beginning to ridiculous conclusion, a true disappointment for those who liked Michaelides’ The Silent Witness. Sorry I wasted the time and money, bamboozled by the hype and comparisons to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. If you want to read something else on the best-seller list (keeping in mind that “best” refers only to sales), try Laura Dave’s The Last Thing He Told Me (Simon & Schuster, digital galley), in which a woman’s husband disappears in the midst of a corporate scandal, and she and her teenage stepdaughter go looking for him. It’s a quick, suspenseful riff on the old “you never know really know somebody” plot.
Thank goodness for Elly Griffiths and Laurie R. King. Neither writer misses a beat in the latest entries in their long-running detective series. In Griffith’s The Night Hawks (Houghton Mifflin, digital galley), forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway and her new colleague David Brown are called to a crime scene when metal detectorists discover Bronze Age artifacts, a new corpse and a skeleton on a Norfolk beach. Soon after, these same “Night Hawks” are at the scene of a presumed murder/suicide at an isolated farmhouse, and then one of their own turns up dead. DCI Harry Nelson, the father of Ruth’s 10-year-old daughter, doesn’t like coincidences, and he’s also suspicious of Ruth’s new colleague, who is a first-class meddler. The bits of history and folklore (there’s a gigantic hound) are fascinating, as is the mystery itself and the continuing relationship between Ruth and Nelson. History, mystery and myth also play into King’s lively Castle Shade (Bantam/Random House, digital galley), with Mary Russell and husband Sherlock Holmes helping Marie of Roumania — yes, the real Queen — figure out who is threatening her teenage daughter. Marie is ensconced in her beloved Castle Bran in the Carpathian mountains of Transylvania, once home to Vlad the Impaler. There are whispers of witchcraft and rumors of vampires among the villagers and castle servants, although Holmes’ brother Mycroft suspects Marie’s diplomatic enemies of trying to undermine her popularity. Russell and Holmes think someone inside or close to the castle wants Marie out of the way. King makes the most of the shivery atmosphere as her wily and witty detectives stalk things that go bump in the night.
Having wrapped up the infamous Ellingham cold case in the “Truly Devious” trilogy, teen detective Stevie Bell returns in Maureen Johnson’s nifty The Box in The Woods (HarperCollins, digital galley). The new owner of Camp Wonder Falls offers Stevie and her Ellingham friends Janelle and Nate jobs as counselors in return for Stevie’s help with a podcast investigating the 1978 Box in the Woods murders. Back then at what was Camp Sunny Pines, four counselors were killed and three of their bodies hidden in an old hunting blind. Johnson has a blast moving the story back and forth between past and present, and using every summer camp trope from from familiar books and horror movies. You practically expect Jason to jump out from behind a tree. It’s also fun seeing the friends trying to fit in at camp — engineer Janelle proves to be super at crafts, while Nate, who wrote a best-selling fantasy novel at 14, is plagued by a critical camper, and Stevie discovers previously unknown outdoor skills. It helps that boyfriend David is camping at a nearby lake and knows the way her mind works — and her anxiety grows — when confronted with a puzzle. The Box in the Woods may be even better than its predecessors, The Hand on the Wall, etc., because the various mysteries are satisfactorily resolved by book’s end. But one remains — what will Stevie Bell do next?
Thank you for your review and honest take of Maidens. I thought The Silent Patient was okay but overhyped so I have held off on his new one. I am glad I did after reading your thoughts.
Ti, I generally don’t mention books I don’t care for because there are so many good ones that need the attention. But I couldn’t let this one go….