The Damage Done, by Hilary Davidson ($7.99)

This book won a lot of accolades and the Anthony Award for Best First Novel. It wasn't until three-fourths of the way through the book, however, that I was sold on it.

Travel journalist Lily Moore is called back from Spain to New York to identify her sister's body, found drowned in the bathtub of her apartment. It's more than upsetting when Lily finds that the body is of a stranger, a woman who had been pretending to be Claudia, her sister, for the last few months, including running up credit card bills in her name. Who is the woman and where is Claudia? Answering these two questions defines the rest of the book.

There are many other characters, some of them more unsavory than others, from Claudia and Lily's lives whom we meet as Lily searches for clues. My favorite is Jesse, Lily's gay photographer friend. He is sympathetic, has a moving family history, provides the right amount of support for Lily, and carries a gun but speaks softly. Lily's ex-boyfriend, a wealthy businessman, is plain creepy. Claudia's ex-boyfriend, another wealthy entrepreneur, is a little less creepy, but he's right up there.

The reason I had trouble getting into the book is that Lily is a hard person to like, and not because she had run far away and left her sister to her addictions (heroin, methadone, whatever). There was something so passive-aggressive about Lily and her relationships with people, including the aforementioned creepy boyfriend. Undoubtedly, there is something broken about Lily, too. Later a potential new boyfriend for Lily enters the picture, and I wanted to say, "Why? What do you see in her?"

Well, for starters, she apparently resembles Ava Gardner, the 1940s-50s screen godDESS. (I could hear the lush music from the "Laura"-type movies of that era playing in the background while I read this book.) And Claudia was no slouch either. Maybe that's enough to explain the romantic mayhem that follows both of them.

What the last fourth of the book provided was a sterling drawing together of all the pieces. Lily sloughs off her torpor/simmering rage/misdirected sentiments and gets down to it.

I felt that this book was written for a younger generation's sensibilities. There's a dark, sophisticated, vaguely louche quality to the characters, good and bad. The book begins from a point of view that I couldn't relate to immediately. There's an underlying set of unarticulated ground rules, a copy of which I didn't get in the mail. Why would I be more likely to apprehend Elmore Leonard's Raylan country than Davidson's New York? I think it's a question of human motivations. One set I get, the other I have to work at.

I rarely read the previews for the author's next book invariably stuck at the end of paperbacks, but I wanted to know if Lily's character would be carried forward. Indeed, the next book finds Lily and Jesse in South America. Now that concept makes me want to read it. Lily (and author Hilary Davidson) IS a travel writer. I miss Lyn Hamilton's travel mysteries, and while Davidson's writing is certainly darker, I welcome the opportunity to become an armchair traveler again.

Wild Thing, by Josh Bazell (hardcover, $25.99)

I loved Josh Bazell's first book, Beat the Reaper. I awarded it an MBTB star. It was original and funny. It had footnotes. Footnotes!

Unfortunately, in Wild Thing, the epilogue, footnotes, and appendix are far more interesting than the story, which continues the adventures of Beat the Reaper's Pietro Brnwa/Peter Brown/Lionel Azimuth, a mafia hitman/doctor/bodyguard.

Some kind of man-eating monster may be haunting a fresh water lake in the Minnesota wilderness. Azimuth is hired to protect a paleontologist who suspects the creature is a dinosaur. There was the potential for primo goofiness, but the writing was awkwardly coarse, and I really disliked Violet Hurst, the paleontologist and Azimuth's love interest. And who were all those superfluous people in the monster safari party and why should I care?

What did I like? Bazell has a wicked sense of humor and it still shone through, mostly in the aforementioned footnotes. The appendix gave the background for many of the side issues Bazell brought up in his story. Sarah Palin appears as a bizarre character in the story, and the appendix says she may be nuts but not quite in the way depicted in the fictional portion of the book. (I found that highly entertaining.) The epilogue should have been the story -- but then the book would have been four pages long. But they would have been four really good pages.

Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins (hardcover, $17.99)

Okay, the madness has now passed. I've read all three "Hunger Games" books.

In each subsequent book, the clever, trap-eluding games part has diminished, until it barely exists towards the end of Mockingjay. What's left is bleak and unromantic, but generally thought-provoking. Two-thirds of the book is really a roll call of all the people who've died or are going to die on behalf of the rebel cause. The only bright spot is provided by Buttercup, Prim's indomitable cat.

There's not much left of heroic, thinks-well-on-her-feet Katniss Everdeen, our heroine of The Hunger Games. She's physically and mentally damaged from all that has happened to her. In fact, she's nothing but a symbol in Spandex, hoisted away by rebel handlers at the slightest whiff of danger. She trades more active involvement in the rebellion for the lives of her family and few friends -- and the right to kill President Snow when the time comes. However, it turns out she can't help her friends or herself very well.

There are still clever ploys and heroic actions to move the plot along, but this was definitely the most somber of the books. We are meant to think about the cost of both compliance and rebellion, how much individuality to trade for the common good, how we should never turn a blank face to suffering, and what loss is acceptable for a greater good. We are meant to see that small acts are sometimes as great as big actions, that the worst behavior is no action at all.

I'll leave plot specifics to other reviewers because you deserve to be as surprised at the plot twists as I was. Collins has created an unusual book, one whose ambiguous morality calls for mature readers. Years ago, The Lord of the Flies engendered the sort of discussion that I'm sure Collins' trilogy will inspire.

Tribulations of a Shortcut Man, by P. G. Sturges (hardcover, $24)

I loved this book! P. G. Sturges has created an original character. He also sports an original style, with an intoxicating mixture of gladness, badness and sadness. Bonus: The chapters have titles! This is the follow-up to The Shortcut Man ($15). I'm sorry to say that I have not (yet) read it, but Tribulations stands alone quite well.

Dick Henry is a fix-it man in L.A. for people with problems, and we're not talking a leaky sink or an overgrown hedge. He gets his clients to their desired ends, not all of which are legitimate, by bypassing normal methods and channels, thus creating a shortcut. That's all right, Dick Henry is not quite legitimate, nor is the odd bunch of people who helps him. Among his colorful associates, I'm most fond of the world's stinkiest man. I will say no more. You will enjoy meeting him and finding out how he fits into Dick's world.

Here's Sturges introducing his Shortcut Man:

The thing was this: Kiyoko [estranged girlfriend] believed all human suffering sprang from the denial of death. That denial took the form of greed, anger, and foolishness. And I agreed. Hell, I couldn't agree more. But before everybody wised up there'd be problems here and there. That's my line. My name's Dick Henry. They call me the Shortcut Man.

All is not raucous and irreverent humor, however. There are poignant moments as well, and they mostly have to do with Dick's children and an old girlfriend, perhaps the one true love of his life.

The majority of the story is concerned with the problems of Judge Harry Glidden and his TV star wife, Ellen. They are in a financial pickle and their solutions involve, willingly or un-, Dick Henry. They were the highest of the high and now they are on the verge of becoming the lowest of the low. Once catered to and fawned over, soon Harry and Ellen will be lucky to own a hotplate. Their plans to remedy their situation are incredibly stupid and hilarious. Let's just say that Mensa won't be knocking down their door.

One more funny tidbit from the book. At one point, Dick must pretend to be a gas repairman, and he uses the name "Dave." His cohort forgets and calls him "Dick," so he is henceforth forced to use the name "Dick-Dave."

So some of the book is first-person Dick Henry narrative and some of it is third-person, the latter mostly used to follow the increasingly unsteady footsteps of Ellen Glidden. Sturges writes well from both viewpoints.  

Here's one last bit to give you a taste of what's in store:

Kiyoko [although my two quoted passages star Kiyoko, she really isn't in the book] was on my mind. My on-and-off girlfriend, Kiyoko was a Buddhist who hadn't yet come to appreciate my line of work. Last night, to the accompaniment of Japanese imprecations, she'd thrown me out of her house. It didn't help that I'd laughed at her insults. I couldn't help it. I understood only a few words of Japanese. Forku, steaku, porku, elephanto. Americanized additions to the language. Not the words she had chosen from the other side of the kitchen island. So I laughed, hoping to bluff my way through; a sitcom, a new take on the Odd Couple.

You. Must. Read. This.