Book Review: The Room of White Fire by T. Jefferson Parker

The Room of White Fire

Author: T. Jefferson Parker

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Date of Publication: August 22, 2017 (Hardcover)

July 3, 2018 (Paperback)

Pages: 352

     T. Jefferson Parker is an accomplished author who has won 3 Edgar Awards: Best Mystery Novel Edgars in 2002 (Silent Joe) and 2005 (California Girl) and a 2009 Best Short Story Edgar for Skinhead Central.   I have read and enjoyed a number of his earlier books, including the two award winners, but have not read any of his recent work.  That will change after reading The Room of White Fire.

     This book starts a new series featuring former Marine, former boxer, former sheriff and current private investigator Roland Ford.  Ford is hired to find a young Air Force veteran who has escaped from a private Southern California psychiatric facility.  Clay Hickman is the escapee from a facility named simply Arcadia.  He is also the son of a prominent local builder and a veteran of war in the Middle East.  He harbors dark secrets from his time in the service.

     As Ford begins his investigation he encounters a wide cast of characters, including Hickman's psychiatrist, fellow patients at Arcadia and some shady security people at the facility.  He finds out that Arcadia is owned and operated by Briggs Spencer, a former military psychologist who literally wrote the book on enhanced interrogation techniques (water boarding, etc...).  Spencer worked as an independent contractor during the war on terror.  Ford eventually pieces together that Hickman did not spend his time in the service in Iraq as everyone, including his family, believed, but was in Romania at a secret prison and interrogation facility working for Briggs. 

     What follows is a three dimensional cat and mouse game between Ford, Hickman and Briggs and his security forces.  Fearing what Hickman knows and is willing to expose, Briggs is willing to go to any lengths to silence him.  Ford is the proverbial man in the middle.  The truly anguishing part of The Room of White Fire is the descriptions of the tortures inflicted in Romania and the long lasting effects it has had on the perpetrators.  This is an uncomfortable fact that the author boldly confronts.

     Like in his award winners, Parker uses Southern California as his canvas.  His descriptions of San Diego and the county lend a steady realism to this fast paced story.  His characters are all complex and well developed.  They each have their own set of demons.  Since this is the first installment for Roland Ford, the author tells us a lot of his backstory, all of which is interesting and adds dimension to this otherwise prototypical "tough guy" investigator.

     I'm glad that I re-discovered T. Jefferson Parker.  While The Room of White Fire doesn't really approach Silent Joe or California Girl (or Laguna Heat for that matter) it is a splendidly written story with an important social message to boot!

Book Review: Heart of Ice by Gregg Olsen

Heart of Ice

Author: Gregg Olsen

Publisher: Kensington

Date of Publication: March 1, 2009 (Hardcover)

March 28, 2017 (Mass Market Paperback)

Pages: 480

     Gregg Olsen has written many wonderful books, both fiction and non-fiction.  Unfortunately, Heart of Ice isn't one of his better efforts.  This novel is really two stories which seem totally unrelated until the very conclusion.  

      

     The first story is about a missing pregnant wife with an irascible and totally unlikable husband (who quickly becomes the solitary person of interest).  The investigation into the disappearance is led by small town sheriff Emily Kenyon.  Sheriff Kenyon is dealing with several personal issues, including a recently college graduated daughter who is traveling the country as a national representative of a sorority, an ex-boyfriend who happens to be a local defense attorney and all-around cad, and a new love interest that despite his obvious perfection, she just can't commit to. 

     The second story is a serial killer tale regarding a young man with a seemingly perfect life (wife, kids, steady job, etc...) who preys on sorority girls.  A lot of this story is told in flashbacks of the killer's tumultuous childhood in foster homes where he suffered countless acts of cruelty and abuse.  The motive for the killings (which don't seem to make much sense throughout the book) is not revealed until very late.  The modus operandi of the killer is described in graphic and gory detail.

     The book does have its strengths.  The settings are the Pacific Northwest, areas in and around San Diego, California and a few chapters in Tennessee.  The author aptly uses descriptions of locales to create mood and (often) a sense of dread.  He has done his research regarding the effects on adults of childhood abuse.  The sections dealing with the killer's and his sister's abandonment by their mother at Disney Land are particularly heart breaking.  

     The weakness are several.  First, I found the characters fairly stereotypical and in the case of the many minor characters, very quickly and inadequately developed.  Second, the two disparate plots are disconnected throughout most of the book creating a disjointed story line.  Just as the reader gets drawn in to one story line, the next few chapters will jump back to the other.  I found that distracting and frustrating to say the least.  Finally, the love entanglements of Sheriff Kenyon made this seem like a romance novel in spots, which is not my cup of tea.

     In summary, this book had its high points but all in all was disappointing to me.

Book Review: Florida by Lauren Groff

Florida

Author: Lauren Groff

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Date of Publication: June 5, 2018

Pages: 288 (Hardcover Edition)

    This is the second collection of short stories for this author (she published Delicate Edible Birds in 2009).  She also has published three novels.  This outstanding collection was published in 2018 and won the Story Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award, Kirkus Prized and Southern Book Prize.  The author now lives in Gainesville and Florida paints a vivid and somewhat unflattering picture of her home state.  This is a "warts and all" view of the Sunshine State.

     There are eleven gripping stories here, all dealing with aspects of contemporary life.  There are treatments of homelessness, caring for aging parents, strained marriages, work-life imbalance and single parenting.  There is also an undercurrent in several stories of overpopulation and encroachment of development on natural territories   All of the stories are told with an economy of words but with striking description.

In Ghosts and Empties a young mother walks nightly in her new neighborhood after putting her children to bed:  "On my nighttime walks, the neighbors' lives reveal themselves, the lit windows domestic aquariums."

In "Flower Hunters" a woman on vacation in a remote cabin with two small children (while her husband is at home working) endures a violent summer storm: "The rain knocks at the metal roof, and she imagines it licking away at the limestone under her house, the way her children lick away at Everlasting Gobstoppers, which they are not allowed, but which she still somehow finds in sticky rainbow pools in their sock drawers."

In "Yport" the author describes the climate in her home state: "Florida in the summer is a slow hot drowning."  Later, the main character who is doing research on a book about Guy de Maupassant describes the town of Yport, France : "Look!  she tells them, gesturing up the harbor at a little cluster of nineteenth-century houses on the other side of the channel, which huddle together, distrustful of the twenty-first century industry around them."

   In summary, this is an outstanding collection of stories, exquisitely written with evocative descriptions.  Florida features many contemporary social issues woven into the fabric of entertaining and gripping stories.