who is the worst in this BAD SUMMER PEOPLE (Flatiron, 261 Pages, $28.99) In Emma Rosenblum’s addictive thriller Manor set in the wealthy and socially insecure of Salcombe, a sleazy village on New York’s Fire Island?
Could it be Jason, who is married to Lauren but cheating on his best friend’s wife, Jen? What about tennis pro Robert, who ends an affair with a married older woman against a racket restringing machine? Are you a tending hedge fund man Brian?
The book opens with Danny Leavitt, a “crazy eight-year-old with a severe peanut allergy,” discovering a disfigured body in the sand while riding his Schwinn bicycle down a boardwalk. “Good, now he’s going to be a ‘corpse’ child. This is Dalton’s topic,” says his mother, Jessica.
who is it Who? Rosenblum returned early in the summer, lining up a gallery of rogue gossip, hypocrites, and scammers. She is someone who pays close attention to small details. “As the summer progressed, women’s fillers and injections became less effective,” she wrote. “By Labor Day, they all seemed closer to who they really were.”
For Rosenblum, who spends his summers in Saltaire, it’s a debut and a clear inspiration for Salcombe. (Except for the part about possible murder.) With so many obnoxious characters, no one knows who will die before the summer is over.
Numerous attractive elements of Daniel Trussoni Puzzle Master (Random House, 362 Pages, $27) Among them is Mike Brink, a transcendental genius who is called “the most talented puzzle writer in the world”. There are also women in prison who are unable or unwilling to speak after being convicted of the brutal murder of their boyfriends. And then there are the cryptic ancient texts and rituals that speak of the nature and existence of God itself.
Does any of this ring a bell? (Hi, “Silent Patient” and “The Da Vinci Code,” for starters.) There’s a lot of work to do, but Trussoni, who until recently was a horror fiction columnist for The Times plunges headlong into a dizzying tale that is partly romantic. A quest, part erudite discussion of an esoteric subject, part outrageous adventure story.
The story begins when Blink, who suffers from “Idiopathic Acquired Savant Syndrome” after suffering a head injury in a high school football game, is summoned to a forbidden New York state prison by chief psychologist Tessary Moses. One of her patients, an inmate with a five-year mute problem, created a mystery puzzle and scribbled Blink’s name on the back.
“Something strange is going on here,” Moses tells Blink. “There is something I cannot explain.”
She’s not the only one confused by things beyond her comprehension.
Kidnappings, car chases, shootings, a dachshund named conundrum, a deep dive into the history of porcelain, the death of a famous French puppeteer, and “How does the transfer from pure energy to the material world happen through words?” Ancient Kabbalist beliefs about–the factor increases with the speed of the rotation of the head. Trussoni tends to combine compelling ideas with rapid-fire storylines that strain the patience of even the most tolerant reader.
The best thing about this book is Blink. You can’t help but applaud when he carves the apple skin into a “perfect Archimedean spiral” and finds “a sense of order and happiness” in “getting farther and farther from the core of the skin.” not.
Four days after Delilah Walker’s college love and missing man, Lars Obak, left her a cryptic voicemail message (“You were right, I’m sorry”), she discovers that he is out hunting. found dead after being shot in an accident.
Amy Souter-Clark’s cautionary tale of small-town religious extremism, Lying down (tomorrow, 345 pages, $30), Bringing Delilah, now in her late twenties and known as Del, back to the town of Bower, Minnesota, where she thought she had left for good. The Bower is more or less run by the Messiah Church, whose credo dictates that a woman is “made to serve, to be pure, to submit, and to please her husband.” (These poor creatures are known as the Noble Wives, and their philosophies are shared by Eve, the woman Lars abandoned Del for to marry, in a popular blog titled “The Noble Wife’s Journey.” widely disseminated.)
Alienated from both his parents and the church after a conflict with the church as a teenager, Del decides to investigate Lars’ death on his own. Especially when Eve opens her investigation by publicly accusing her of having an affair and conspiring with her lover to murder Lars, she appears to be an incompetent detective. But as we slowly learn more about her horrible things that her church has done to her, we’re able to forgive Del for her impulsive self-destructiveness somewhat.
Using excerpts from Dell’s old diaries and unpublished entries on Eve’s blog, Suter Clark paints a devastating portrait of the cult-like organization and its enslaved town. It’s even worse than we imagined.
