THE KILLING SONG by P.J. Parrish

    I am going to make this review fairly short and sweet. Suffice it to say that after the first several paragraphs I will never ever look at a cellist the same. The opening paragraphs are so evocative and creepy that  the reader, in this case moi, is totally unable to put the book down.
   The Killing Song is what they call in the business a "Stand Alone" which has become quite popular with mystery novelists as of late. There are authors that can write "stand alone's" and those that cannot. The team of two very talented sisters that comprise the nom de plume of P.J. Parrish most definitely can and did pen a very exciting novel. As a huge fan of their main protagonist, Louis Kinkaid, the African-American P.I. living in Florida after a stint as a police officer in Michigan, I was somewhat hesitant to read this book. I mean, you get to know an author/s and develop an empathy and relationship with their central characters and then they send their readers a curve ball and write a "stand alone". This book was definitely a "home run" using the vernacular of baseball once again. I read this book in one sitting; staying up late into the night to finish it. While there are  few missteps in character development and what I thought was an unnecessary desire to imbue a monster with a sense of pathos (my only complaint) the story moves along with a deftness, a soupcon of the Gothic tradition , i.e. Wilke Collins and Daphne DuMaurier, and absolutely riveting descriptions of a Paris most people never will encounter. As one who has spent time in Paris, and it's never enough time, this made me wish so very much I could just hop on a plane and return to the Most Beautiful City in the World.
     If you are a reader who appreciates well-researched books with a sense of place and an unerring ear for detail along with a crackerjack plot this book needs to be on your list of "Must Reads".

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

      Suffice it to say I read this book in twenty-four hours. I honestly felt like I had fallen down the proverbial Rabbit Hole and ended up back in Prep School. Granted the novel takes place in the 1930's in Manhattan, but the characters were interchangeable with those with whom I grew up. Delightful, frightening and oh so observant of the "Social Class", Mr. Towles hits the wicket with extreme ease. Part F.S. Fitzgerald, part Edith Wharton, Amor Towles rolicks the reader into the High Society that was New York  after the Crash. Characters are oh-so flawed, oh-so perfect and oh-so relevant in today's culture of "reality shows", economic uncertainty and the attitudes of those "Titans of Industry "and "Hedge Fund Wizards"  towards rest of us who cannot afford eight hundred dollar Christian Louboutins  and Hermes Birkin bags. I went to school with these people, I saw their insouciance to the world around them, unless of course it was a black tie benefit to attend. There, the men in their tuxes with inherited cufflinks and shirt studs and the women in their understated diamonds and pearls wearing perfectly fitted gowns with a mere hint of decollete  could drink wine, eat canapes and pretend that the money they were raising for some far-flung charity was more than what the  actual event with it's heavy linens, top shelf liquor and imported floral centerpieces cost. This is the world that Amor Towles creates in his fascinating and spot on depiction of Society in the 30's. His gift for understanding and dissecting this higher stratosphere is akin to the late great Domminic Dunne who wrote searing but ultimately entertaining stories of the upper class in the later part of the twentieth century; their foibles, downfalls and highlights. Although Rules of Civility is relatively short in terms of a novel it is packed full of wonderful prose, great characterizations and a spot on dissection of Society. In short, read this book.