06/10/2007

On the Shelf

Beach-reading season heats up

By AL PARKER

Special to the Record-Eagle

We're kicking off the summer beach-reading season with a stack of novels — some gripping, some insightful, some mysteries, some frothy.

Antrim County author and ex-Navy SEAL Chuck Pfarrer's first novel, "Killing Che,” (Random House, 472 pages) transports readers back 40 years to the steamy Bolivian bush country in search of charismatic Communist guerrilla leader Che Guevara. It's 1967, and Paul Hoyle is working for the CIA as an independent contractor who is sent to Bolivia, which is ripe for a Communist takeover.

Pfarrer uses Che's diaries and other meticulous research to offer fully fleshed characters, interesting tidbits of spying, a love interest and loads of action. If you want a tale of war, betrayal, ambition, politics and the ongoing search for the truth, this one's for you.

"Now You Love Me,” (Three Rivers Press, 212 pages) by Petoskey native and University of Michigan grad Liesel Litzenberger is set against the lakes and resort towns of northern Michigan. This quick read explores the adult world through the simplicity of a child's eye.

When her mother begins dating Shepherd, young Annie Child learns how complicated love and relationships can be. Determined to make Paige his wife, Shepherd launches a dogged, yet zany, campaign to assume the father role to Annie and her little brother, Gus.

Dorothy Cannell's "Withering Heights,”(St. Martin's Minotaur, 248 pages) is the second book in her Ellie Haskell mystery series. Ellie, a happily married mother of three, is a sometime sleuth and Gothic romance addict who gets tangled up in her own drama when she and her husband visit Yorkshire, England, to investigate strange events at a house that her family recently bought with lottery winnings. Can she solve the mystery and get out of Bronte country with her life — and her marriage — intact?

Another new mystery based in England, "The Bad Quarto,” (St. Martin's Minotaur, 246 pages) comes from Jill Paton Walsh. This is the fourth in Walsh's popular Imogene Quy series and finds the college nurse/amateur sleuth poking around to discover why a brilliant Shakespearean scholar fell to his death while attempting a foolhardy and dangerous traditional flying leap at Cambridge University. It's a page turner for those who love classic English mysteries.

Readers who pick up "Purity of Blood,”(Plume, 268 pages) should get ready to buckle their swashes. Author Arturo Perez-Reverte's hero Captain Alatriste, Madrid's most charismatic character, is hired to infiltrate a convent and rescue a young girl forced to serve as a powerful priest's concubine. As the swashbuckler struggles to save the girl, he is drawn deeper into a conspiracy that leads to the very heart of the Spanish Inquisition. This thriller delivers adventure, plus rich historical detail, and has already been made into a movie, starring Viggo Mortensen.

Helena Maria Viramontes offers a gritty look at everyday life in the 1960s and '70s in the Los Angeles barrio in "Their Dogs Came With Them,” (Atria Books, 328 pages). Hardcore and unflinching, the novel looks at the disparate lives of four females — homeless gang member Turtle, caregiver Ana, rebellious teen Ermila and Tranquilina, the daughter of missionaries.

Al Parker, of Traverse City, is an award-winning writer and lifelong bibliophile