Susan's Picks

You'll be hearing a lot about this book, and every praise is
true.

THE IMPERFECTIONISTS is a quirky, engrossing look at the life and
times of an international newspaper, and Rome is as much a character
as the staff: Lloyd, the impecunious stringer in Paris,
looking to an inflated word count to pay the rent or buy a decent shirt;
Arthur the obituary writer ("Claw your way to the bottom, did you?"); and
Corrections Editor Herman Cohen ("See also: Excessive dashes;
Exclamation Points; and Nitwits").

As a former copy editor (is there any other kind than disgruntled?),
I love the feel of this scruffy newsroom.

The police procedural started here.

The Martin Beck police mysteries set the foundation for the form—the daily accumulation of paperwork and setbacks, intuition and the hard slog, that closes a case. ROSEANNA, the first of the series by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, is as fresh now as it was 25-some years ago when I first read it. The 10-book series is being reissued, with THE FIRE ENGINE THAT DISAPPEARED, the fifth, out this month, and THE ABOMINABLE MAN to come in October. Scandinavia is well-policed by the likes of Kurt Wallander (Mankell), Inspector Sejer (Fossom), and Harry Hole (Nesbo). Martin Beck taught them well.

Patty Dickerson, pregnant, 27, gets a call in the middle of the night that ends her remembered life. Her husband, Tommy: "Listen, me and Gary got in a little spot tonight. I'm in jail." "The little spot" becomes 25 to life for second-degree murder, and O'Nan builds, detail by detail, year by year, Patty's side of the sentence. From O'Nan's masterful writing, I know these people--Patty, Tommy, son Casey, her family, the people who shun her and the few who don't--and I know them as people. And "the long pause that's kept them from their real life"? At the end: "It's over. He's home. They made it." Wonderful!