Need For reads

Fiction Losers hating Steubenville A WELCOME MURDER By Robin Yocum 256 pp. Seventh Street Books Reviewed by Eric Petersen Journalist turned writer Robin Yocum is back with his fourth novel ( A Brilliant Death is also reviewed on this site). That book was a haunting, heart-wrenching murder mystery set in a once great Ohio steel mill town. A Welcome Murder has the same setting, but it’s unlike anything the author has written so far – a comic mystery with an undercurrent of tragedy and featuring alternating first person narration from several characters who all knew each other in high school. Johnny Earl, the main character, begins the novel by introducing the story of how in 1989, he became the prime suspect in a murder not long after returning home to Steubenville, Ohio, following a seven-year prison sentence. Once a great steel mill town, Steubenville is now a decaying shell. In high school, Johnny was the most popular boy – a good student and star baseball and football player who da...

Fiction The stratosphere of Tibet SKELETON GOD: An Inspector Shan Tao Yun Mystery By Eliot Pattison 305 pp. Minotaur Books Reviewed by Alan Goodman This is Edgar Award winner Eliot Pattison’s ninth installment in the Inspector Shan series. The world of Inspector Shan moves along quite slowly as murder mysteries go, particularly in the opening sections. Pattison is a deliberate writer, apparently intent upon setting the detailed backdrop of Tibetan culture as much as he is on drawing the scene of the obligatory opening murder itself. I mention this because while popular mystery writers such as Michael Connelly, with his detective hero Harry Bosch, rush you along with staccato-like narrative, Inspector Shan moves at a much more leisurely pace. Maybe because I had just finished the Harry Bosch series, it took some time to get down to the new speed limit. The reward for making this adjustment was to be introduced to a world that one knows mostly from myth – the stratosphere of worlds – the...

Nonfiction Thinking like humans ALGORITHMS TO LIVE BY The Computer Science of Human Decisions By Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths 368 pp. Picador Reviewed by Sue Ellis An algorithm is a process, a series of logical steps taken to solve a problem, and is typically used to program computers to “think” like humans. In Brian Christian’s and Tom Griffiths’ new book, Algorithms to Live By , they explain eleven algorithms and the applications where they have been useful, and then suggest ways in which the same problem-solving process might help us in our daily lives. A few of the problems covered in the book are: prioritizing one’s way through a list of tasks, how to filter a list of job applicants and make the smartest pick, how to make better use of your memory and understand its limitations, and how to organize a closet. The suggestions are smart, thoroughly explained, and personable. Here’s a tongue-in-cheek excerpt about the roommate of Danny Hillis, inventor of the famous Connection Ma...

Fiction Cancer vaccine and letter puzzles ... THE GIRL AT THE BAR By Nicholas Nash 383 pp. Fireflies Publishing Reviewed by David E. Hoekenga, M.D. Despite a completely nondescript title, The Girl at the Bar is a well crafted mystery set in the vicious, high-finance world of cancer drug research. Rebecca is a beautiful, brilliant young researcher who disappears after a night of drinking in New York. The next morning she is slated to deliver an important paper about a vaccine that could protect humans from all forms of cancer. For several weeks despite finding a bloody dress of hers with stab marks in it, Rebecca’s fate remains unknown. A variety of denizens from bosses, associates, a fiancé, a one-night stand, a Triad member and a research subject come under suspicion. Nash effectively weaves the timeline of the story, and casts a bright light on the various denizens mentioned above as possible killers. The actual killer turns out to be more vicious and focused that could easily be im...

Nonfiction Unstoppable FIRE IN MY EYES By Brad Snyder and Tom Sileo 248 pp. Da Capo By George O’Har Fire in My Eyes is the story of one man’s journey to hell and back. Ever since he had watched the towers come down on September 11, 2001, Brad Snyder knew what he wanted to do: become a warrior. Snyder’s grandfather had served in the Navy in World War II, and later spent his life building ships for the Navy.  His influence, and his patriotism, infused Brad. He joined the swim team in high school, and then ended up attending the U.S. Naval Academy, where he was selected to become an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) expert. This was a choice that would ultimately cost Snyder his sight.  The book recounts, in vivid and exciting detail, Snyder’s training as a bomb disposal expert, his deployment to Iraq in 2008, and his subsequent deployment to Afghanistan in 2011. The story of his first attempt to disarm a real IED mortar in the field is told with heart-stopping detail. But on the...

Fiction Desperate cries muffled UNIVERSAL HARVESTER By John Darnielle 224 pp. Farrar, Straus and Giroux  Reviewed by Sarah Corbett Morgan Jeremy works at the Video Hut in Nevada (pronounced Nev-ay-da), Iowa. It’s the sort of store where we rented VHS tapes back in the ’90s before the advent of Hulu, HBO, and other streaming services. Things are pretty low-key in Nevada, as well as at his job, but one afternoon a woman returns one of the tapes and says, “There’s something on this one.” And so begins John Darnielle’s second novel,  Universal Harvester,  a beautiful, haunting, and at times creepy story full of loss. It takes Jeremy a while, but he finally gets around to watching the film at home where he lives with his dad, Steve. His mom died in a car wreck some years before, and the two grown men share a pleasant enough bachelor’s life. Steve does suggest to his son from time to time that there might be better opportunities for employment beyond the Video Hut.   While...

From the Tundra to the Trenches By Eddy Weetaltuk Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2016 $24.95 Canadian/ $27.95 US Reviewed by Kenn Harper To say that Eddy Weetaltuk lived an eventful life, unlike the lives of his fellow Inuit, is an understatement. He was born in 1932 on Strutton Island in James Bay, one of twelve children. His surname, he points out, means “innocent eyes” (and should really be spelled Uitaaluttuq). His grandfather, George Weetaltuk, was a guide for the film-maker Robert Flaherty in the making of his ground-breaking documentary, Nanook of the North . Eddy’s childhood was what one would expect for an Inuk boy growing up in the 1930s and 40s at the southern limit of traditional Inuit land, in James Bay and on the Quebec coast – periods of joy and hunger in the comfort of a large family.  He went to school in Fort George, and finished the eighth grade at boarding school. By the time he reached adulthood, he was multi-lingual, speaking English, Inuktitut, Frenc...