The Four Stages of Cruelty

by Keith Hollihan

Reading this book did exactly what I'd hoped: it reminded me of watching the TV series Oz. Could have used some hot gay sex, though. A solid stay-up-late thriller set in a penitentiary, this story follows the intertwined fates of a lonely middle-aged female guard and a 19-year-old guy convicted of accidentally(?) killing his ex-girlfriend. The creepy old prison itself and many of the characters have hidden secrets and simmering tensions. The ending is kind of odd, in that it doesn't fully answer one of the central mysteries, but, to my surprise, I actually liked that it didn't.

The Ax

by Donald E. Westlake

I've dissed "thrillers" before, and been chagrined after liking one, and I did read quite a bit of Stephen King in high school. This book was decently amusing, if predictable, and the reading was smooth and fast. Still, I'm not sure how much I'd've enjoyed it if I hadn't been sick on the couch and bored of watching TV. Does have some funny bits, maybe like a Carl Hiaasen book (though I've never read him).

Although the book was written a bit over a decade ago, during the workforce "downsizing" of the mid-to-late '90s, it's interesting to read now during our current economic "downturn." The story is about a guy, unemployed for nearly two years after being laid off from a job he had for 30 years. As an older dude with a rather specialized set of skills, his options are quite limited. In a trade journal he finds an article about some other guy who has exactly the job he wants and for which he is qualified, but he knows he's not the only unemployed polymerized paper production manager in the Northeast. So he hatches a plan: he places a fake help-wanted ad, receives a bunch of résumés, then sets out to kill the five guys who are as qualified or more qualified than he, before killing the guy who has the job he wants. But will everything go according to plan?

The Maze Runner

by James Dashner

Oh, damn bloody hell! This excellent young adult book is the first of a planned trilogy; the second book might be out in October, but my library doesn't appear to have it on order yet. I dare say it's very close to almost as good as The Hunger Games, and finishing it certainly gave me similar feelings of elation laced with frustration, despair and impatience.

I heard about it in a short article about teen dystopian fiction in the June 14, 2010, issue of the New Yorker. It's an interesting article comparing/contrasting adult and young adult literary dystopias (dystopiae?), and it mentions The Hunger Games, of course, and several other books I decided to read based on what it said about them. This is the first of those that I've read. It's exciting, filled with danger and death, combining elements of Hunger Games, Ender's Game, 13 Monkeys, in a wrapping of fresh mystery and cruel unknowing: memory wiped, a young man wakes in the center of huge maze that changes every night, as yet unsolved by the 40-some young men already trapped there. Oh, and there's scary mechanized creatures that mostly come at night, mostly.

Just as a side note, I think the author might be Mormon. A page on the website for the book has a link to a profile of him in the Deseret News, a Mormon newspaper. Interesting, since Orson Scott Card (author of Ender's Game) is Mormon, as is Stephenie Meyer (Twilight series). Wonder if Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games) is too?

Catching Fire

by Suzanne Collins

Gaaaaaah!!! This book is sooo good, it almost hurts to read it, but you'll read it really quickly anyway. It hurts even more to tear oneself away or — quelle horreur — to finish it.

This sequel absolutely lives up to the promise of its predecessor, The Hunger Games. The best plot twist comes at the beginning; once you get half to three-quarters through, the ending won't come as a complete surprise, but that just makes the anticipation all the sweeter. Even so, I don't want to give away even one bit of the story.

My only complaint is that the protagonist, Katniss, is acting like a typical 16-year-old. But that's as it needs to be; as in the Harry Potter series, if she actually listened to the few trustworthy adults and stopped being so self-centered, it would be a pretty short story.

The Thirteenth Tale

by Diane Setterfield

If you want the excitement and suspense of a "thriller" without the spies, terrorists, viruses, or serial killers, this might be the book for you. It's a gothic Victorian-ish story with ghosts, twins, probably incest, bastards, foundlings, cats, skeletons, a governess, scars, a fire, a blizzard on the moors. It's very gripping and exciting, and I got really into it and had a hard time putting it down. (Unfortunately, I got interrupted really close to the end and couldn't get back to it for several days, which deflated the ending a bit for me — so make sure you plan enough time to read through to the end once it gets going.)

It feels as if a certain kind of teenage girl would really like this book. What comes to mind as a comparison, aside from Jane Eyre, is Gentlemen and Players, which caused me to get sunburned because I was so engrossed I forgot to turn over.

Addendum: I just realized it could also be compared to Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which I've previously compared to The Secret History.

World War Z: an oral history of the zombie war

by Max Brooks

Wow, I'd heard about this book so long ago, and over the years I've suggested it to a few friends but only recently got around to reading it myself. Probably, we're in the decline of the coolness of zombies, but they'll never drop out of the zeitgeist entirely.

The cool thing about this book is sort of captured in the subtitle: it's a collection of interviews of people who lived through and witnessed the zombie-pocalypse. Partly because of that, and also because it's a book instead of a big-budget-special-effects movie, the book offers a more detailed look at aspects of humans vs. zombies that often are left out. It really gets into the practical, military, political, psychological, and moral issues related to battling a worldwide zombie infestation instead of just relying on the inherent scariness of zombies for focus.

I read it pretty quickly, and ravenously. Hard to put down and fun to read, without the careless, uninspired writing that sucks the enjoyment out of a lot of thrillers.

The Ruins

by Scott Smith

Holy crap, this book is awesome!

This is the kind of book that keeps you up late at night, waaaay past your bedtime, struggling to stay awake so you can find out what horrible thing is going to happen next. Everything is fine and normal, then something bad happens, then something worse, and worse — and when you think it can't get any worse, of course it does. It makes you wonder what kind of freak could imagine this stuff, let alone write it down.

I got this book after reading a review, but I can't remember what it said that convinced me. One of the back-cover blurbs compares it to Stephen King and Thomas Harris, which would have been a turn-off. (Yes, I read tons of that stuff when I was a teenager.) The plot summary sounds stupid; there isn't much you could say without spoiling the suspense, but a longer description would probably sound even stupider. The premise is very simple (Smith's last book was A Simple Plan) and kind of stupid, yet it works. The jacket is very well-designed, but if I had started there and then read the blurbs and the inside flap copy....

It's hard to explain; you just have to trust me.

You have to trust me, OR ELSE WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!!!!!

Montmorency and the Assassins

by Eleanor Updale

The third installment in Updale's series about reformed (or is he?) criminal Montmorency is another rip-roaring read. Although it's been quite some time since I read the other two, I'd say this one's better than the second and nearly as good as the first. Assassins is the thickest of the three, but it was so hard to put down I still managed to finish it in only a few days — despite the demands placed on my attention by my mother and my sister in Las Vegas in 100+ degree weather.

Though this story is set 20 years after the original, the interval hasn't slowed our hero. On the other hand, like a well-aged wine, the themes have matured and become even more young adult-y: antique pornography, anarchism and class struggles, murder, murder, murder, workaholism, and a mysterious paternity that strongly implies a generous sexuality on the part of the mother, to name a few.

The book's pace seemed a bit off, with the major crisis happening with only 30 pages left for denouement, yet somehow the author makes it work. And then she goes and throws in a very hurty ending that made me almost cry. I saw it coming, but I didn't want to admit it to myself, and it still hurt.

The other two books in the series are Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman? and Montmorency on the Rocks: Doctor, Aristocrat, Murderer?

Gentlemen and Players

by Joanne Harris

I don't normally read thrillers. To be honest, I consider the genre to be rather dumb — unintellectual, formulaic, opiate-of-the-masses type of drivel. The review of this book that I read (from the Powell's review-a-day e-mail service) probably didn't call it a thriller per se, otherwise I probably wouldn't have read it.

What attracted me to Gentlemen and Players was it's setting: an ivy-encrusted, tradition-steeped English boys' school (with the implied aura of homosexual, or at least homoerotic, goings-on). While my hopes in that regard were not entirely borne out, neither were they completely dashed.

Where the book really delivers is in the characterization and, I must admit, the thrilling plot. Oh, I thought I had it all figured out, but the author skillfully drew my attention elsewhere for just long enough to surprise me with a final plot twist that, in retrospect, I should have expected — since I'm so smart, and thriller's are for dummies. Well, this here dummy got a bit of sunburn because I was too engrossed to turn over or go inside even after I'd been good and truly baked.