A Trace of Smoke (Hannah Vogel Novels)

Rebecca Cantrell’s debut novel, A Trace of Smoke, introduces journalist Hannah Vogel, who writes under the pen of Peter Weill for the Berliner Tageblatt right at the end of the Weimar period. Readers first meet the Teutonic girl Friday at the The Hall of the Unnamed Dead, viewing photos of recent victims. One photo in particular captures her attention: the naked corpse of her gay and transvestite brother Ernst, a cabaret performer at one of the gay clubs in Berlin.

Found on a riverbank, Ernst wasn’t just a drowning victim, but appeared to have been murdered. After viewing the photograph, Hannah is determined to investigate under-cover who murdered her brother, and from there what initially seems to be a tragic death evolves into a never-ending maze of Berlin’s underworld mixed with Nazi politics.

Surprises pop up for Hannah about her brother and his sexual escapades, butthe big one is five year-old Anton who is left at Hannah’s doorstep, claiming that he is Ernst’s and her child. Perplexed that her gay brother had fathered a child, Hannah’s quest to find her brother’s murderer is interrupted in trying to locate the child’s mother. The situation grows more complicated when Hannah discovers that Ernst kept a priceless ruby ring that belonged to well-known and very wealthy Nazi sympathizer and a collection of love letters from the head of the SA–Ernst Roehm.

Cantrell does a fine job in creating the seamier side of Weimar Germany, but the plot chugs along to a silly denouement that is predictable. After a certain point, you stop caring who killed the  superficial Ernst, why he has the letters, and who really are Anton’s parents.

For the most, part many of the characters are flat and these include Hannah’s childhood best-friend is now a house-frau married to a policeman, who is also one of Hannah’s contacts. The rich suitor Boris who appears to be what any woman wants in a man also has an agenda, and the seemingly adorable, blonde moppet Anton-who captures Hannah’s heart–are all characters that should have been further developed.

Perhaps A Trace of Smoke would be a better book for readers who have little knowledge of the period in question and with the better known characters presented in the story. But for those who have studied Weimar Germany and the rise of the Nazis, A Trace of Smoke lacks the edge of seat suspense of a very dangerous time in modern history.

The Second Son: A Novel

The Second Son is the final installment to Rabb’s Berlin noir trilogy. Set in 1936, during the Olympics held in Berlin, Chief Inspector Nikolai Hoffner has just been ousted from his position because his mother was Jewish.  His forced retirement comes at an opportune time for him to travel to Spain to search for his son Georg, a Pathe Gazette cameraman, who is filming the People’s Olympics in Barcelona.

When Hoffner learns that Pathe Gazette is in fact a front for British Intelligence and that Georg was in Spain following a list of names, Hoffner decides to travel to Spain with the aid of his gangster connections.

Once in Barcelona, the hunt for Georg  becomes a quest of where the names lead to and how far Georg has traveled through Spain in search of a mysterious cache of weapons. In Barcelona, Hoffner meets Piera, a Catalan Communist, and his daughter Mila, a doctor, who helps the former cop in getting through checkpoints in both Nationalist and Republican territory.

In writing about Civil War Spain and its major players like the anarchist leader Buenaventura Durutti, Rabb’s research is exemplary. He plots Hoffner’s moves like pins along a map, marking each spot in Spain with historical facts about the war that will push many readers to learn more about this period.

Many of the relationships that Hoffner has held in the past are plagued with Hoffner’s sens of guilt especially with his older son Sascha, an angry young man who joined the Brown Shirts and later became a disciple of Joseph Goebbel. Rabb subtly weaves Hoffener’s indirect connections with the Nazis, leaving readers with the hope that the street smart detective will somehow escape the inevitable end to Germany’s half-Jews.

Other relations like his affair with Mila is deftly handled without the sentimental schmaltz that could weigh down the story. And Hoffner’s friendships with gangsters, may come across to some readers as a flaw in Hoffner’s character, yet these scenes add color and a touch or realism of how police officers used all their contacts to their advantage.

Questions of political  intrigue are all handled with expertise. The story’s tempo builds and crescendos with a surprising denouement that will leave readers satisfied.

Fans of Alan Furst, Philip Kerr, and Olen Steinhauer will feel very much at home with Rabb’s The Second Son, and readers of the Spanish Civil War will nod their heads in approval of how well Rabb researched this very important time in history when the world was at the cusp of a long and tragic war.

A Very Simple Crime

Kick off your holiday reading with Grant Jerkins’ hypnotic debut novel A Very Simple Crime–a whodunit worthy of Hitchcock–that will give you chills, and keep you guessing until the very last page.

Narrated by Adam Lee, A Very Simple Crime opens with him on trial for the murder of his disturbed wife Rachel. His beloved, older brother Monty, a charismatic attorney, takes on Adam’s case and asks him point blank whether he killed his wife. Adam quietly responds, “No, I loved my wife.” The answer is short and simple, but Jerkins’ story is far more complicated.

A Very Simple Crime is a gloomy and disturbing tale that grabs readers’ attention by way of Adam’s calm, and cold voice. Early on we discover that both Monty and Adam have been shaped by a mysterious event that occurred one summer when they were boys. Since that time, this emotional wound has been festering, waiting to erupt. Jerkins leaves readers guessing about the event, and doesn’t reveal it until near the story’s conclusion, but subtle hints are dropped at its wrongness and the psychological hold it has on Adam as he describes his relationship with the unstable Rachel and his mentally handicapped son Albert.

Prone to violent outbursts, Albert attacks his mother with a crystal ashtray that lands her in the hospital. Not able to control Albert, who is fourteen years-old, but with the mind of a five year-old, Adam and Rachel send the teenaged boy to an institution for the mentally disabled. This action further disintegrates Rachel’s emotional health now that she has no one to focus her energies. As time passes, Rachel becomes more unhinged and during one weekend to placate his wife, Adam brings Albert for a visit while he goes on a secret lovers’ tryst with a young nurse he met at Albert’s hospital.  When Adam returns, he finds Rachel with her skull bashed in by Albert’s weapon of choice–a crystal ashtray.  Next to her is Albert covered in blood, rocking back and forth, and repeating over and over, “Albert did bad wrong, Albert did bad wrong.”

The evidence all points to the mentally challenged young man given his previous violent history, and it appears to be an open and shut case. That’s until Lew Hewitt enters the scene in the novel’s second part where the narrative shifts and is told in the third person. Once holding the position of Assistant District Attorney, Hewitt has fallen from grace after a botched up murder investigation that let a notorious child killer go free. Now demoted to working in a dingy cubicle and dealing with minor traffic court cases, Hewitt is convinced that Albert did not commit the crime. He sees this case as his chance to redeem himself with the District Attorney, and begs his replacement to let him investigate the crime. As Hewitt uncovers leads and questions Adam’s lover, the evidence seems to point more and more to Adam, until Hewitt stumbles upon a major twist and starts to question his own findings.

Jerkins clever and tight plot twists keep you riveted to the story and at every page turn there’s the question of Adam’s innocence or guilt. However, it’s the deep psychological profiles the make A Very Simple Crime an engrossing read. Very early on in the book when Adam first meets Rachel, we see the red flags waving wildly in his face that Rachel is terribly sick. But as Adam notes that in spite of the signs, he was attracted to her mental illness and that “darkness is drawn to darkness.”

This darkness permeates throughout the entire story, and is not for the faint of heart. There are scenes that are violent and will make you shudder, but what makes A Very Simple Crime so intriguing is Jerkins finesse and style with characterization; he doesn’t dilute his characters’ personalities with redeeming traits or actions. Each one–from the hopeless Albert to the charming Monty–has a fatal weakness that eventually will doom them.  A Very Simple Crime is far from simple–it’s a murder mystery, a gripping legal thriller, and a complex study of the flawed human psyche, and one hell of a read that will stay with you for a very long time.

Hush

Rape and sexual abuse is everywhere. We read about it every day and it happens in the most surprising and even sacrosanct communities. The Hasidic community is no exception and thanks to the bravery of one author, Eishes Chayil (pseudonym, meaning “Woman of Valor”) we learn about the horrors and consequences of remaining silent and ignoring these terrible crimes.

Hush takes place in Brooklyn’s Borough Park neighborhood, one of the largest enclaves of ultra-orthodox Jews in the United States. The story, aimed for both young adults and older readers, is narrated by Gittel Klein from the ages of eight and nineteen.

Gittel, as a pre-teen, writes about her friends, her community, her family, and about her best friend Devory, a troubled and rebellious girl. At this point in Gittel’s life it’s all about the innocence of childhood, but after one sleepover at Devory’s house that innocence is shattered when she witnesses Devory’s rape by her brother Shmuli. Things to turn from bad to worse for Devory when the trauma of her sexual abuse drives her to hang herself in Gittel’s bathroom.

The suicide and the sexual abuse is swept under the carpet, Devory’s family moves to Israel, and life goes on as usual in this insular community. Until Gittel is visited by Devory in her dreams. Gittel feels the pain of keeping silent and writes letters to her dead friend for forgiveness, but the haunting images of Devory appear to her nightly.

Hush is a disturbing novel in part because of the rape and suicide of a young girl, but even more troubling of how the community reacts and shuts down by ignoring that sexual abuse happens even among Hasids.  Readers might be put off by the comments made about the Christian world, and also shake their heads and wonder how it’s possible that girls, even in such an insular community, can be so naive about sexuality.  Yet, the story has a hypnotic pull and draws the reader into a world that’s a throwback to the pre-Holocaust shtetls of Eastern Europe and serves as a primer what life is like for 21st century Hasidic girls.

Although marketed for young adults and older, Hush easily makes an impression on adults. It’s a story that needed to be told and one that is unforgettable.

In the sixth mystery featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, Penny starts the story with a bang, then quickly fast forwards to Gamache in Quebec City during Carnival. Gamache is not there to celebrate, but instead to recuperate from his emotional injuries of an investigation gone wrong.

During his stay with his former mentor, Emile Comeau, Gamache spends his days playing with his dog, eating well, and spending time in Quebec City’s Literary and Historical Society’s old library reading about the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, a battle between the British and the French, but Gamache’s R&R is disturbed when the body of August Renaud, an amateur historian and archeologist, is found in the basement of the Lit and His. Renaud, known for his obsessive quest in trying to  find Samuel de Champlain’s remains, the father of Quebec, apparently had asked permission to dig up the basement–a request that had been denied.

Although Gamache starts as an impartial observer into Renaud’s murder, slowly he starts investigating who could have killed the tenacious historian. When he is not making inquiries concerning Renaud, Gamache is recalling the tragedy that brought him to Quebec City–the murder of several of his officers by a panicked pot-growing farmer. In the meantime, Gamache’s right hand man, Jean Guy Beauvoir, is looking at reopening a case of a man that may have been wrongly accused of murder.

Penny has effortlessly woven these three different storylines, and, although the murder of August Renaud is the main story, she puts equal weight into the other two sub-plots, leaving readers wanting to know what happens next as each story transitions into the next one.

Her use of history along with contemporary politics and relations between French Canadians and those of English descent, induces the reader to learn more about the state of affairs in Canada, particularly in Quebec.  But it’s her vivid descriptions of old Quebec City that makes one want to book a flight and spend time in the quaint old city.

In spite of the believable characters and dialogue, there are some craft issues that might confuse readers, and those were point of view violations that suddenly shifted from one character’s thoughts to another one’s. However, to be fair, I was given an advanced reader’s copy, and hopefully this transgression was corrected.

Bury Your Dead is a well-structured mystery with each storyline ending in a satisfactory manner. It will appeal to all mystery readers and keep them guessing until the very end.

[Editor's Note: This review appeared in Dan's Papers on July 1, 2010.]

Joseph Wallace’s debut novel, Diamond Ruby, would make a terrific movie. It has all the elements: a historically interesting setting (Brooklyn in the 1920s) a savvy, talented teenage heroine and baseball. Throw in a few shady characters, the Ku Klux Klan along with Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey, and you have a blockbuster.

Wallace, an author of four non-fiction books (four on baseball), was inspired by the true story of Jackie Mitchell, a teenage girl and player for the all-male Chattanooga Lookouts in the all-male minors, who could throw a baseball hard and fast enough to strike out both Babe Ruth (four pitches) and Lou Gehrig (three pitches). What would have been a soaring career in the game came to crashing halt thanks to baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Landis banned Mitchell-and all women-on the premise that the game was “too strenuous” for them.

Taking parts of this story, Wallace created the engrossing Diamond Ruby. Set a year before the Great War, we meet Ruby Thomas and her family at a baseball game at Ebbetts Field. Ruby’s early fascination with baseball is triggered by catching one of Casey Stengel’s foul balls. She later discovers one afternoon while playing with Stengel’s ball that her extra long arms (the neighborhood kids call her ‘monkey girl’) and her strength provided her with an incredible ability to throw a speedy and hard ball.

Baseball is set aside for several years, and life goes on for Ruby and her family until tragedy strikes three times with the loss of her brother, mother and father from the 1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic; her sister-in-law’s untimely death in the Malbone Street train wreck; and her widowed brother’s acute depression and alcoholism. By the time she’s 14, Ruby has become the primary provider for her nieces and her brother. However, with her pitching skills and sharp eye, Ruby manages to kill squirrels and birds to feed the family, but it’s not enough.

With the idea that her arms are freakishly long, Ruby offers herself as sideshow attraction at Coney Island, but the carnival’s owner is not overly impressed until he sees her throw a ball, and from there Ruby Thomas becomes Diamond Ruby-a major draw, but also a target of thugs, and the Klan. When the sideshow’s owner unexpectedly dies, his partner, (who also dabbles in rum-running) takes over and works Ruby to the point of exhaustion. With the help of some wealthy friends, Ruby escapes and is later hired to be the pitcher for the Brooklyn Typhoons. All seems well, until she finds herself embroiled with the underworld.

Some readers might be put off by the narrative tone of the book, which comes across as more young adult. Brooklyn, New York City and baseball history buffs will appreciate how beautifully Wallace weaves fact with fiction. The true gem of Diamond Ruby, though, is getting readers who have little or no interest in baseball intrigued with the physics of pitching. Who would have thought that throwing a ball could involve so much strategy and tactics? (Obviously this reviewer has no knowledge of baseball).

Wallace expertly weaves in celebrity with bigger than life (even in real life) characters like Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, and even Judge Landis. These historical figures are scene stealers, but although they appear in fiction, Wallace justly portrays them as they actually were: Landis, the autocratic and uncompromising commissioner; Dempsey, who was generous to a fault; and Ruth who addressed everyone as “kid,” and who had a soft spot for children.

Diamond Ruby is absorbing, fast-moving, and a hard to put down story, but it’s not perfect. Dialogue at times seems a bit stilted. Ruby’s young nieces are precocious and act older than their presumed ages. Wallace also introduces characters who have key supporting roles in the story, then disappear. Readers might want more answers concerning the relationship between Ruby’s friend Helen and her beau Paul. And in the case of Ruby’s brother, Nick, his story peters out too early within the narrative.

In spite of these distractions, how can you go wrong with a story that features real life sports heroes, a pretty and smart heroine, gangsters, Coney Island, and America’s national past time? Like the Wazier of Wham, Wallace has hit it out of the park with Diamond Ruby.

The Lion

[Editor's Note: Review first appeared in Dan's Papers on June 17, 2010]

Anti-Terrorist Task Force officer and former NYPD detective John Corey is back in full force in Nelson DeMille’s latest release, The Lion-a sequel to the author’s 2000 blockbuster, The Lion’s Gate. The Lion essentially picks up the storyline three years later when the Libyan assassin Asad Kahlil, otherwise known as “The Lion,” disappeared. Before vanishing into thin air, Khalil promised to return one day and kill Corey and his new bride, FBI agent Kate Mayfield.

Like all psychopathic assassins, when Khalil makes his threats, people listen. So it’s not much of a surprise when he makes his way back to the United States and is hell-bent on killing the people he missed the first time around. The reason for the first murderous spree had to do with the Libyan bombing of Qaddafi’s compound back in 1986 in which Khalil’s entire family was killed. So it’s payback time and The Lion manages to avenge his mother, brothers and sisters by murdering each of the pilots who flew on the bombing mission, but he fails at one attempt, thanks to Corey and Mayfield’s intervention. Foiled by the two ATTF agents, Khalil promises revenge sometime down the road.

The Lion is character-driven and told from two points of view-Corey’s and Khalil’s. The story opens with Corey following an Iranian diplomat to Atlantic City during a routine surveillance tracking, setting the premise that Corey is still with the ATTF. In spite of his feelings for the FBI and the CIA, he’s happily married to Mayfield and everything is business as usual in early post-9/11 New York City. What he doesn’t know is that Khalil has returned and has already made two of his first kills in California-business as usual for the vindictive Libyan, who has finally made good on getting that last bomber pilot.

The story skips along nicely, with Corey and Mayfield sharing a life of catching bad guys and dealing with Homeland Security bureaucracy along with the typical trials and tribulations of married life. Mayfield, who enjoys dangerous extracurricular activities, convinces Corey to go upstate for a relaxing weekend of sky diving. And that’s when the fun begins. It’s an activity that makes Corey a little unsure but he goes along with it to please his bride (they have a quid pro quo sexual arrangement). DeMille implies early on that something will go awry with the jump. Sure enough, that sneaky terrorist has learned of the weekend getaway and has a dramatic first strike planned for Mr. and Mrs. Corey.

Readers who like this sort of quasi James Bond action will be thrilled about how the attack is pulled off. Khalil piggy-backs on Mayfield 14,000 feet in the air and struggles to kill her while Corey watches and tries to stop the terrorist from murdering his wife. The attempt backfires, but Mayfield is critically injured with a stab wound to the neck, but with some crazy parachute maneuvering Corey gets himself and Mayfield back on the ground.

As improbable as the scene may seem, it’s fun to picture and DeMille never lets up in the pacing. Once Mayfield is in the hospital, the question is whether she’ll survive and what will Corey, known to follow the beat of his own drum, do on his own to trap Khalil and put an end to the terror.

Anyone who likes police procedurals will enjoy the interactions between the FBI, CIA, and even a former KGB agent. However, for those who tend to be politically correct, Corey’s derogatory references to people of Middle-Eastern heritage along with the constant sarcastic banter and ruminations tend to get tiring. In spite of these irksome character traits, Corey is a compassionate and very likeable character when he acts like a smart cop, coming up with ways to outsmart a wily, well-informed and organized killer. As political thrillers go, DeMille tucks in enough twists and turns to keep readers wanting to know what will happen next. Sections of the story are somewhat predictable, but overall The Lion is a fast-moving and highly entertaining cat and mouse game

Spies of the Balkans: A Novel

(Editor’s Note: Reviewed appeared in Dan’s Papers]

Alan Furst is back with a powerful new espionage thriller, Spies of the Balkans. This time he ventures out of Eastern and Central Europe and transports readers back to 1940, to the port city of Salonika in Macedonia. It’s the Balkans and there’s no shortage of intrigue or spies.

Spies of the Balkans follows Costa Zannis, an honest senior police official, who has the knack to smooth out problems before they spiral out of control. Early on in the story, Zannis gets involved in helping Emelia Krebs, a German colonel’s Jewish wife, to organize an escape route for Jews from Berlin through Greece to neutral Turkey.

When Mussolini invades Greece, Zannis is called back into the reserve army and it’s there where be he meets his Croatian counterpart, Marko Pavlic. They soon become friends and allies in transporting German Jews to safety.

However, there’s a hitch when the British learn via an informant that Zannis has choreographed all the details of the escape. Zannis is then recruited by Francis Escovil, a spy who is working under the guise of a travel writer, to retrieve a captured British scientist from France. Working with French resistance fighters, the plan goes well until Zannis kills an SS officer in Paris and from there he has to rely on his own contacts and wits to get the scientist and himself safely back to Salonika. But once the Germans goose step into the Balkans, the British lure Zannis back to their corner.

Furst includes two subplots; a suspicious Gestapo officer who notices that his list of deportees have disappeared and who all seem to share a friendship with Emelia Krebs; and a love interest for Zannis, who coincidentally was a childhood neighbor and is now the wife of a wealthy Greek businessman who finances the Jewish escape operation.

One of the many pleasures of reading Furst’s novels is his talent of sending the reader to a distant time and place. He captures the essence of cities and their locales, whether it is a Parisian brasserie where one can almost smell and taste the choucroute served, or a dark, dank bar in Budapest where one can inhale the strong cigarette smoke. He elegantly writes of lively parties where everyone is not above suspicion, but he also writes of mundane, everyday events:

“Emilia carried a thermos of real coffee, hard to find these days, and a bag of freshly baked rolls, made with white flour. Stepping inside, she found the Gruen living room almost barren, what with much of the furniture sold. On the walls, posters had been tacked up to cover the spaces where expensive painting had once hung. The telephone sat on the floor, its cord unplugged from the wall-the Gestapo could listen to your conversation if the phone was plugged in. She greeted Frau Gruen, as pale and exhausted as her husband, then went to the closet in the hall and opened the door. The Gruens’ winter coats, recently bought from a used-clothing stall, were heavily worn, but acceptable. They mustn’t, she knew, look like distressed aristocracy.”

Furst expertly weaves in minor characters whose roles lead to major plot twists and turns, and for the most part, with the exception of the Nazis, many of these suspect characters manage to capture the readers’ interest and sympathy. The only weak point in the narrative is Zannis’ affair with Demetria, who is described by a former lover as the “Goddess.” The love scenes between Zannis and Demetria tend to be lackluster and slow down the urgency of the unfolding political drama in the Balkans. However, romance aside, the major player to all of Furst’s stories is history, and thankfully Furst doesn’t take artistic liberties with the facts to strengthen his story.

Spies of the Balkans is a stylish and intriguing story. For aficionados of  historical fiction, espionage thrillers, or even new readers to the genre, there’s something for everyone to keep the pages turning and  satisfied to the very end.

The Season of Second Chances: A Novel

[Editor's note: Review written for Dan's Papers]

If you’re in the market to remodel your home and need interior decorating ideas, Diane Meier’s The Season of Second Chances might be the book for you.

Schlubby and reserved, Columbia University English literature Professor Joy Harkness is not a happy woman. Readers learn via Joy’s narration that life in New York City and teaching at an Ivy League school has been a disappointment. When she is offered a prestigious and lucrative teaching position at Amherst College, Joy immediately accepts to be part of a group of progressive instructors who are developing an exciting new method of interdisciplinary teaching.

With her new job offer in hand, Joy sells her cramped Riverside Drive apartment, moves to western Massachusetts, and buys a rundown Victorian house that needs a major overhaul both inside and out. To help with the renovation, Joy hires Teddy Hennessy, a talented, but developmentally delayed handyman who is an expert on 19th century architecture, interior design and décor, and who later becomes Joy’s lover.

As the renovation of the house beautifully progresses, Joy also goes through her own transformation; she becomes less introverted and socializes more than she has in years, and grudgingly acknowledges the emotional benefits of friendship. However, in spite of the positive changes in her life, Joy feels on many occasions put upon by her new-found friends’ personal predicaments.

Meier wonderfully portrays Joy as woman who is an intellectual snob, but who is also angry, negative, and guarded. It’s these traits that easily put off the reader, but Meier skillfully softens Joy with humor and insight, and it’s in her moments of concern over Teddy’s potential future and his well-being that one finally warms up to Joy.

However, readers will have to suspend disbelief when it comes to the character of Teddy Hennessy, the man-child handyman who is enslaved by his widowed mother’s narcissistic needs, but who has a flair with paint, wall paper, and wiring. Teddy is an architectural genius with keen eye for detail and refined taste in décor. Yet what Teddy lacks is the maturity of a grown man, and Meier adds adolescent clichés to the character from the way he speaks to the way he dresses. Although Joy and Teddy are the primary characters, it’s the ramshackle Victorian that steals the story with it glorious renaissance. Meier lovingly illustrates Teddy’s sense of style:

He painted the little room sage green with the same creamy white paint on the trim and wainscoting that ran through the rest of the house. He hung a plain craft-paper window shade on the one long window and painted the shade’s bottom hem and irregular line of daubed-on sage green dots. An old wooden desk chair from a consignment shop was painted green … On the far side of the room sat my old bookshelves, now divided into four sections chair-rail high; Teddy had screwed them together, added a top and some moldings, and painted them the same color as the wainscoting behind them.

It’s in these descriptive scenes of home décor in which Meier truly shines, and perhaps it should come as no surprise because the author is the founder of a New York City marketing firm whose clients have included luxury icons such as Limoges China, Orrefors Crystal, and Neiman Marcus.

The heart of The Season of Second Chances is that it’s never too late to build a strong and lasting foundation among the people you’ve come to trust and love. It takes Joy several months to learn this important lesson and when she receives the symbolic whack on the side of her head, she finally grasps the need to change her attitude and that friendship has much to offer, or as she’s told, “there’s the family you’re born with and then there is the family you choose.” Good advice to take to heart-with some decorating tips.

Twelve Rooms with a View: A Novel

[Ed note: I recently started a weekly book review column in Dan's Paper's. I'll post my review here as a well.]

New York City apartment owners might recognize their neighbors, co-op board members, or even themselves in Twelve Rooms with a View, the second novel by playwright and screenwriter Theresa Rebeck, who takes a vicious, but amusing look at Manhattan’s cutthroat real estate market.

Narrated by the main character, Tina Finn, Twelve Rooms opens at a funeral where Tina and her sisters, Lucy and Alison, suddenly discover they’ve inherited from their alcoholic mother the famous 12-room Livingston Mansion Apartment (supposedly valued at $11 million) located at the historic Edgewood Building on the Upper West Side.

Tina is persuaded by her socially ambitious sister Lucy to move into the apartment to stake their claim. Soon afterwards the hapless younger sister finds herself caught in the middle of an all out real estate war between members of the co-op board who want to evict Tina, and in an acrimonious legal battle with the two sons of her mother’s second husband, Bill, who dispute the sisters’ inheritance.

Wanting to play nice and sway the co-op board members to her side, Tina befriends Len a conniving and duplicitous botanist; Vince, the flirtatious son of the co-op board president; and Jennifer, the depressed teenage daughter of one of the board members, who becomes Tina’s eyes and ears during the eviction process. In the meantime, Tina also deals with Lucy’s bossy demands on how to behave.

Rebeck’s marvelously captures the conflict and tension between Tina and Lucy, a manipulative public relations executive whose sole ambition is to sell the apartment in a down market. Tina aptly describes her unhappy sister:

She smiled grimly, as if she found it satisfactory to hear me “okay,” but she didn’t look satisfied. She looked like her suit was too tight and she wasn’t eating enough red meat and her shoes hurt. She had gray smudges under her eyes, and her hair was pulled back in a bun, which was an extremely bad look for her, and usually she knew better than to try it. Her mouth was pinched together, bitter and worried, and for the first time I saw what Vince had seen instantly under the skin of my smart, ferocious sister: an old schoolmarm in a rage because the world had overlooked her.

Even when Tina offers a solution to stop a potential lawsuit over the apartment, Rebeck skillfully conveys Lucy’s disrespect for her younger sister’s suggestion:

“Hey Lucy,” I said feeling completely awful all of a sudden. “No kidding, Lucy. Maybe we could just offer to split it with them. Even split five ways, we’ll all end up with a ton of money. Has anyone offered a split?”

“I don’t believe that’s been discussed, no,” she said, with a kind of infantile brightness that had yet another sneer behind it.

“Yeah, I guess that’s pretty stupid,” I said. “Sorry. ‘Compromise.’ What a boneheaded idea.”

“You said it, not me,” she murmured under her breath.

She left. And I decided to stop asking questions nobody had any answers for anyway and just let things happen.

Subplots abound in Twelve Rooms, and include a cast of characters like the battling brothers, Pete and Doug, who want their childhood home and harbor a secret about their mother-the apartment’s original owner; the eccentric botanist neighbor, Len, who rents out Tina’s kitchen for his moss garden and has a tumultuous relationship with his daughter Charlotte; the snobbish Mrs. Gideon who aggressively campaigns for Tina’s eviction; and the harried and put upon Hispanic doorman Frank who is hopelessly in love with the sweet and beautiful Julianna Gideon; and even a ghost gets a little playtime. The problem with all these ancillary storylines is that we’re getting them all from Tina’s limited perspective and many questions that come up, go unanswered.

Twelve Rooms with a View ultimately comes to a satisfactory, but somewhat rushed conclusion. It’s almost as if Rebeck suddenly realized or was reminded that she needed to neatly tie up the subplots and give readers closure. Although many of the events that occur are highly exaggerated, there is a very big grain of truth in New York’s vicious world of real estate. Maybe renting isn’t such a bad idea after all.