REVIEW: The Cutting Season by Attica Locke

Rating: 3.5/5 Stars
Genre: Literary Mystery, Southern Fiction
Audience: Adult

Summary: Caren Gray is a strong, educated African American woman and a single mother. She has mixed feelings about managing Belle Vie, the sprawling plantation where she grew up and where her ancestors were once slaves. Despite the unease that the former slave cabins instill in her, she feels tied to the place. But when an immigrant sugar cane worker is found dead on the edge of Belle Vie and Caren decides to launch her own investigation, all of her latent misgivings are stirred up again. And even as centuries-old secrets from the past rise up from the past, in the present Caren begins to fear that her nine-year-old daughter may know more about the murder than she's telling.

First Line: It was during the Thompson-Delacroix wedding, Caren's first week on the job, that a cottonmouth, measuring the length of a Cadillac, fell some twenty feet from a live oak on the front lawn, landing like a coil of rope in the lap of the bride's future mother-in-law.

Tracy's Thoughts:
A nuanced mystery with gothic undertones, Attica Locke's second novel (after Black Water Rising) is far more than a typical whodunit. The atmospheric Southern setting and eerie history of slavery permeate the plot, adding depth and weight to the story. Issues of race, class, and history are key, but these themes are seamlessly and subtly integrated into the plot rather than a carelessly tacked on "moral."

Attica Locke's writing is stellar, descriptive and even poetic at times: "[B]eneath its its loamy topsoil, the manicured grounds and gardens, two centuries of breathtaking wealth and spectacle, lay a land both black and bitter, soft to the touch, but pressing in its power." However, I did not find the characters quite as captivating as the setting. I had a bit of a struggle warming up to Caren, who is a bit of a mystery herself. I appreciated that she is a strong but flawed woman, and I was pulling for her 100%, and yet, for me, she remains distant throughout the novel.

But despite my quibbles (and, if you haven't noticed by now, I almost always have quibbles), I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. The linkage of past and present, along with the blending of history, social issues, and various relationship issues make for a complex and satisfying read.

REVIEW: I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga

Rating: 3.5/5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction/Suspense
Audience: Older Teen/Young Adult
Series: Jasper Dent #1

Summary: What if your father is the most notorious serial killer of the century? What if you were trained to be the perfect killer from the time you were a child? Seventeen-year-old Jazz, son of the infamous Billy Dent, has to live with that reality every day. Jazz never truly understood how wrong his childhood was until the day Billy was arrested four years ago. As a child, Jazz played with human teeth like dice; by nine, he knew how to dissolve a body in quicklime. His father brainwashed him to believe that Dents are superior and above the laws that govern the rest of mankind. For Jazz, it is instinctive to size up his "prey," quickly assessing the best ways to charm and immobilize his victims. But Jazz hasn't killed anyone. Yet. Or, at least no one that he remembers.

Jazz's greatest fear is ending up a killer like "Dear Old Dad." Ever since his father's arrest, Jazz has been living as normal a life as possible, despite the fact that his grandmother/official guardian suffers from dementia and is notoriously strange. But now a new serial killer in on the loose in Lobo's Nod and Jazz fears his past is coming back to haunt him. So he decides to use his inside knowledge of a serial killer's mind to be on the side of good, launching his own investigation into the identity of the "Impressionist," whose crimes are eerily similar to those of Billy Dent.


First Line: "By the time Jazz got to the field outside town, yellow police tape was everywhere, strung from stake to stake in a sort of drunken, off-kilter hexagon."   


Tracy's Thoughts:
Do you love Dexter and Criminal Minds? Or maybe Chelsea Cain's Archie and Gretchen series is your cup of tea? Perhaps you wish there were more (or, any) books like this in the YA genre? Then you won't want to miss the first installment of Barry Lyga's Jasper Dent series! It's deliciously twisted—taking an all-too-realistic look at the thoughts and actions of a sociopath—without becoming overly explicit. But the restraint regarding gratuitous blood and gore actually makes I Hunt Killers all the creepier.

The mystery aspect of this book is compelling if not wholly original. For me, the true appeal was in the characterization of Jazz. Every dark thought and insight into the mind of the killer causes him to wonder if he is destined to become a killer himself. While he doesn't mind using his childhood lessons to his advantage—Jasper is a master of reading and manipulating people, knowing exactly how to smile and push the right buttons to get what he wants—he can't help feeling a prickle of guilt at the ease of it and worry that one day he will step over an invisible line he can't come back from.Still struggling (understandably) with the brainwashing of his childhood, Jazz has a personal mantra to keep himself human: "People matter. People are real." He considers it a way of "casting a shield against his own evil." And  even more intriguing than the who-is-the-killer plot thread is the mystery of Jazz's past. His mother disappeared years ago and Jazz is almost sure is father killed her, but he can't know for certain. Also, there are those events from his past that Jazz can't quite recall.

Unsurprisingly, given its parallels to other popular TV shows, I Hunt Killers may also be coming soon to the small screen—it was optioned by Warner Bros. for development early on. As for book two in the series? We'll have to wait until April 2013.