Ms. Amused

I just read it again for the third time and it’s still a very fun and entertaining read. I say fun for Jack’s sardonic personality and the way she does her job and navigates around obstacles.

In the debut novel of the world of Jack Daniels, she is on the trail of a vicious killer who dumped a badly mutiliated body in a garbage can at the 7-11. A shellacked gingerbread man is found in the garbage with the body and so the hunt is on for the Gingerbread Man Killer.

The hardback is rather thin so it was a fast read. I notice this time around that some of the characters are rather one dimensional such as the “feebs”, a pair of FBI agents who are so completely out of touch with reality that you wonder how they manage to get through the day. But I already know from having read some of the other books in the series that just like the Law & Order/CSI serials on TV, character development does happen, just not at all once.

I remember finding Sue Grafton’s Kinsey rather stick in the mud until we started seeing more of her past and background in the later books. I remember the G book being the one where Kinsey finally displayed real human emotions.

Jack feels real right from the start. About what you’d expect for a female detective hitting 40ish, who grew up with a single mother who was also a cop. No nonsense, practical, cynical, but still with hope.

My favorite of the supporting cast is Phinaeous Trott (I know I butchered the spelling) who gets trotted out in the book in what appears to be the obvious set up for a romantic match. Or at least that’s always how it seems to go when you have a single (or about to be) female lead and a strong male character enters the picture with no clear purpose.

We also meet Herb Benedict, Jack’s partner who can’t seem to stop eating. We don’t really learn much more about him in Whiskey Sour but we will later. Then there is also Harry McGlade, a thorn from Jack’s past, and Latham, an accountant with a taste for danger who finds plenty in dating Jack.

The Gingerbread Man is particularly gruesome but it’s an interesting cat & mouse game. I had a hard time putting the book down even though I’d read it twice before and remembered enough of the ending to know how it was going to end. Just following Jack through her days was too much fun to skim through.

Now I’m impatient to go home and get Bloody Mary.

He’s an author of yet another detective series but his gimmick is interesting. His detective is an unapologetic middle aged woman who is attractive but has no idea what feminine wiles are. Her name? Jacqueline Daniels, Jack for short.

As you can probably guess, that sets up a lot of liquor related word play and all the books are named for drinks. It was the bright neon orange/yellow cover of Whiskey Sour that led me to pick up that book and I really liked it.

Bloody Mary & Rusty Nail were excellent reads as well. Now that James Patterson has jumped the shark with his Alex Cross novels, it’s nice to have a new author to read.

And JA takes it to a new level with a website that he produced & maintains himself. He really believes in author driven promotion and tries to connect personally with his readers as much as possible. This is what made me “A FAN”. My personal rating system for authors goes like this: “good story that I’ll re-read again and again = own it in pb”, “excellent story that I love and I really like the author’s style as well = BUY IN Hardback”. JA Konrath is a hardback rating and sitting on myself are the first four Jack Daniel books in glorious (and colorful) hardback form.

If you love a good murder mystery/suspense thriller (ie you watch all the Law & Order shows), you can check out the first book for free on his website: www.jakonrath.com. Whiskey Sour is available as a free download (pdf).

Also look on his website for his unpublished novel, Origin. I’ll dig up my previous review of this and post it again but I recommend reading that too.

It’s been a while and Fuzzy Navel (book #5) is coming out soon so I think I’ll re-read the series again soon. I’ll post more in-depth reviews of the books when I do. His latest blog post mentions finishing Cherry Bomb (#6) too! So exciting to know about good books on the horizon.

BTW if you’re at all curious about the world of publishing and how to be a successful author, add his blog to your daily rss reader: A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. He posts every couple weeks or so and they’re always informative and entertaining even if you’re not a writer. All that’s required is a love of books.

Photo: JAKonrath.com (many more hilarious pictures found in the Mug Shots, doesn’t he look like a bookish Jack Black?)

Is one of my favorite authors in the “you’ve never heard of him but you must READ his books!” category.

The only reason why I even know of his work is thanks to a weekend in Arcata, CA where I stopped at a cozy (and somewhat giant) used bookstore. Near the entrance on the top of a bookshelf at eye height was a garishly pink hardcover book, Sewer, Gas & Electric.

Something made me pick up the book and glance at it.

What made me sit up and take notice was a blurb on the back by Neal Stephenson. Something to the effect that “I hope Matt Ruff keeps writing books so I don’t have to.”

My boyfriend at the time was a serious NS fan and had turned me on to his work as well. So this was of much excitement to us.

SG&E turned out to be a read that was very enjoyable and themed not unlike NS’s own “Zodiac: an eco thriller”. I got Fool on a Hill next which was kind of a hard read the first time around. But then so was NS’s The Big U. I now really enjoy Fool on a Hill though I’ve never been able to really get NS’s counter part novel.

Several months ago, I finally got Matt’s 2003 novel, Set This House In Order, which I’d been avoiding reading because somewhere I caught a whiff of it “being different” than the other books and I was afraid of being disappointed. But I finally picked it up to read one night in bed. I don’t think I slept that night. It was definitely different than the other books which isn’t that surprisingly when you consider the differences between some of NS’s own books.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book where the protagonist is one of several personalities in one body. It was a little odd to begin with because I didn’t realize at first what the setting was and so it’s an abrupt mental shift that is required when it becomes clear that your narrator is just one of many people in his own head.

Which reminds me that around this time I was also very taken with another book that I’d read for the first time… Kindred by Octavia Butler. I think I blogged about it elsewhere so I’ll find it and repost here when I can.

Back to Matt Ruff. Today I was surfing around the web and various subject matters when it occurred to me to look up Matt Ruff on Wikipedia. From there I was led to his LJ, Myspace and own website which announced his new book: Bad Monkey.

I’m excited!

But more to the point, I was thrilled to find a recommendation from him in his own LiveJournal…

P.S. We also saw The Da Vinci Code. I agree with the critics who found it mediocre, but still enjoyed it more than X-Men 3 (not that that’s a hard film to top). It also reminded me of a really good story in the same genre that didn’t enjoy a fraction of D. V. Code’s success: Wilton Barnhardt’s 1993 novel Gospel (currently out of print, but findable in Amazon’s used book section). No albino monk in that one, but it’s a great read, definitely worth the trouble of tracking down.

I loved the book (not the movie) so I’m really excited about this. I immediately requested it through the LA Library.

I need to remember to buy Matt’s new book as well as a copy of the Set This House In Order.

I should also check into what Neal’s writing these days… I quit reading him after being unable to get into Cryptomonicon or the next one, Quicksilver. And as far as I know, the rest of the books he’s written since then have continued in that series?

Wikipedia says…

He hasn’t written anything since finishing the Baroque Cycle which started with Quicksilver. However, in the subsequent surfing on NS esp on his own website, gives me hope that perhaps I could at least read the Baroque Cycle. I’ll give Quicksilver a try at least.

Back to Matt… I’m pleased to find a whole page of his thoughts on various books thanks to his Liptree Judge duty

Now I’ve got a bunch of books to try and read.

Photos Source: Matt Ruff’s homepage

Adding this to my “read” list because of this interesting review in USA Today