Book Review - Tor/Forge Blog

Fall from Grace receives is Library Journal’s Mystery Debut of the Month!

April 7, 2011May 10, 2024torforge

Fall from Grace by opens in a new windowWayne Arthurson is Library Journal‘s Mystery Debut of the Month and receives a starred review in their April 1st issue! Below is the full review.

“Edmonton, Alberta, reporter Leo Desroches gets the inside scoop on the dead body story handed to him, but after that he fights hard for every clue. The victim—a local prostitute of Native heritage—was strangled and dumped, and not a lot more is known. Leo, a deeply flawed, recovering gambling addict, questions the system when he realizes a serial killer has been knocking off prostitutes and disposing of them for at least 20 years in fields around the region. Seemingly, no one in law enforcement has cared enough to investigate a possible pattern. As Leo obsesses about the victims, grapples with his own Native heritage, and interviews sources, his own life is threatened more than once. Arthurson slowly pulls in all the elements to conjure the writing of a feature story, but his pace picks up exponentially, and this makes for a very satisfying debut. Leo’s gambling addiction is alive and well, which adds yet another unsettling element. VERDICT Think Nancy Pickard for region and atmosphere, Brad Parks for journalism, and Timothy Hallinan for social concerns and attitude. Highly recommended.”

Fall from Grace is available now.

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Lucky Stiff receives a starred review from Booklist!

February 1, 2011April 8, 2024torforge

Lucky Stiff by Deborah Coonts gets a starred review in this month’s print edition of Booklist.

Below is the full review:

Lucky Stiff: With a mother who runs a bordello, a boyfriend who’s a female impersonator, and a job as a “problem solver” for her father’s luxurious Babylon Resort and Casino, Lucky O’Toole is quintessential Vegas. Rounding up a swarm of bees that escaped from an exhibit and helping District Attorney Daniel Lovato, who is stranded naked in a hotel closet, are all in a day’s work. But Lucky’s life gets even more complicated when Evelyn Wabash “Numbers” Neidermeyer is dumped into Mandalay Bay’s shark tank. Numbers was last seen alive at the Babylon, and, worse yet, Lucky’s good friend Jeremy Whitlock, an ace private investigator, is the prime suspect. Fast-paced, witty, and full of colorful characters, Lucky Stiff is a sure bet to be a readers’ favorite. Although this works as a stand-alone novel, Coontz’s hilarious tale, so full of delicious details you can almost hear the slot machines, is actually the second book in the Lucky O’Toole series (Wanna Get Lucky?, 2010). Libraries will definitely want both titles.

What others are saying about Lucky Stiff:

“[A]s lively and endearingly wacky as Wanna Get Lucky?”
Kirkus Reviews

“Very much in the spirit of Carole Nelson Douglas’ Midnight Louie mystery series (sans talking cats), Coonts covers similar Sin City territory with a dash of CSI and Janet Evanovich in her second glitzy, lighthearted novel featuring Lucky O’Toole.”
Publishers Weekly

Lucky Stiff
Coonts, Deborah (Author)
Feb 2011. 368 p. Forge, hardcover, $24.99. (9780765325440).

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Another Starred Review For The Officers’ Club!

December 16, 2010May 10, 2024torforge

The Officers’ Club by Ralph Peters gets another starred review in this month’s issue of Library Journal.

Below is the full review or you can read this and others on Library Journal’s website.

The Officers’ Club: In 1981 at Fort Huachuca in southern Arizona, several young intelligence officers spend their off-duty hours in pursuit of no-strings-attached sex. Why then do these presumably carefree affairs lead to murder? The victim is First Lt. Jessie Lamoureaux, a gorgeous but “reptilian” seductress. Lt. Roy Banks, who narrates the tale and is himself having an affair with a married female officer, had resisted Jessie’s wiles, but other officers were less fortunate. He knows at least four casualties left in her wake. But Jessie, whose past, like Roy’s, is mysterious, also had connections to Mexican drug bosses and plenty of discarded civilian lovers. Anchored by his friendship with a fellow jazz fan, a gay man who owns a music store in nearby Bisbee, and by his respect for the army, Roy lets us see with gripping and convincing detail the “sexual vandalism” that had turned the intelligence school into a “Peyton Place without the moral restraint.” VERDICT Peters, a strategic analyst for Fox News and author of The War After Armageddon and over 20 other books, offers an absorbing and finely crafted portrayal of complex characters whose intertwining relationships come apart under the strain of differing expectations. In the tradition of James Jones, Norman Mailer, and Nelson DeMille.—Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson

What others are saying about The Officers’ Club by Ralph Peters:

“The murder of 1st Lt. Jessica Lamoureux at Arizona’s Fort Huachuca kick-starts Peters’s excellent mystery thriller… Peters (The War After Armageddon) shows he can explore the conundrums of love and the battlefield of the human heart as successfully as he navigates international military strategy and tactics.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Peters mixes a time and place rich with storytelling potential, vividly drawn and multidimensional characters, murder, sex, deception, and rival drug gangs into a superior crime novel… It’s likely that Peters, who writes nonfiction on military affairs as well as novels, is writing about a place and time he really knows, and the result is a hugely entertaining tale.”
Booklist (starred review)

“Part murder mystery, part character study, totally entertaining. Peters has created a character worthy of a sequel.”
Kirkus Reviews

The Officers’ Club by Ralph Peters will be in stores soon, publishing January 18th, 2011.

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Among Others receives a starred review in PW!

November 17, 2010May 1, 2024torforge

“World Fantasy Award–winner Walton (Tooth and Claw) turns the magical boarding school story inside out in this compelling coming-of-age tale… Never deigning to transcend the genre to which it is clearly a love letter, this outstanding (and entirely teen-appropriate) tale draws its strength from a solid foundation of sense-of-wonder and what-if.”

Among Others by Jo Walton receives a starred review in the 11/15/10 issue of Publishers Weekly!

The full review is below.

Among Others by Jo Walton Tor, $24.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2153-4

World Fantasy Award–winner Walton (Tooth and Claw) turns the magical boarding school story inside out in this compelling coming-of-age tale. Welsh teen Morwenna was badly hurt, and her twin sister killed, when the two foiled their abusive mother’s spell work. Seeking refuge with a father she barely knows in England, Mori is shunted off to a grim boarding school. Mori works a spell to find kindred souls and soon meets a welcoming group of science fiction readers, but she can feel her mother looking for her, and this time Mori won’t be able to escape. Walton beautifully captures the outsider’s yearning in Mori’s earthy and thoughtful journal entries: “It doesn’t matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.” Never deigning to transcend the genre to which it is clearly a love letter, this outstanding (and entirely teen-appropriate) tale draws its strength from a solid foundation of sense-of-wonder and what-if. (Jan.)

Among Others will be on-sale January 18th, 2011.