CERRI ELLIS - MOSTLY MYSTERY REVIEWS

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	Curiosity may have killed the cat, but Cerri Ellis never let a little thing like fear stop her from playing sleuth. When she's not snapping photos of ghosts, solving riddles or sifting through dusty tomes in library catacombs, she writes articles and book reviews for magazines and web sites. Her hobbies include reading mysteries, herbal gardening, and searching online and estate auctions for arcane curios. She is currently at work on a paranormal thriller set in Southern Appalachia.

BROKEN MEN AND FALLEN WOMEN
Rod MacDonald
FrontList Books, 2003, £7.99, 220pp.
ISBN 1-94350-087-6

All women have secrets, but Ruth Munro's secrets are dark and deadly. When her past intrudes on the present, she takes matters into her own hands--landing herself in jail. For Paul Munro, the woman he loved and married was an impostor, their life together merely an illusion. While he fights his own shattered dreams, a dangerous psychopath plots his own revenge.

Rod MacDonald's debut novel is dark and malevolent, filled with plucky characters that walk the seedy, menacing streets of Edinburgh's red light district.

Kudos to the author for giving readers a wheelchair-bound hero complete with flaws. Paul Munro feels all the more real because of such depth. He goes through the stages of grief, at first in shock over his beloved wife's actions and then anger at her for not trusting him with her secrets. While readers may get confused with the lengthy cast of characters, point-of-view shifts and an ending some may not appreciate, BROKEN MEN AND FALLEN WOMEN is a gem in the rough--a glimpse into the harsh reality of a world most of us will never see beyond the pages of a book. Thankfully.

Cerri Ellis

BROOKLYN NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS
Edited by Tim McLoughlin
Akashic Books, June 2005, $15.95, 309 pp.
ISBN 1-888451-76-9

I was recently asked to review BROOKLYN NOIR 2, a mystery anthology. I love gritty stories about long-legged dames, private dicks and shady deals in back alleys, so I figured this would be a snap. I was in for a surprise--I found something much better.

The stories were so raw with passion--some disturbingly violent, laying bare the depravity at the farthest reaches of humanity; others were filled with an innocent nostalgia seldom found in crime fiction. The main thing these short stories had in common besides their locale? They were some of the finest examples of character studies I'd ever read. I was, in a word, awed.

The anthology included work from such writers as H.P. Lovecraft, Thomas Wolfe, Irwin Shaw, Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, Carolyn Wheat, Maggie Estep, Lawrence Block, Donald E. Westlake, Pete Hamill, Stanley Ellin, Hubert Selby, Jr., Salvatore La Puma, and Gilbert Sorrentino.

The fourteen stories are cleverly arranged in four sections: Old School Brooklyn, New School Brooklyn, Cops and Robbers and Wartime Brooklyn. Set in different neighborhoods, every tale echoes with authenticity. Readers can easily visualize Lovecraft's "Red Hook" setting with its squalid brick houses, cacophony of languages and rough dialect along the piers, or smell the pungent aroma of garlic and hot Sicilian blood lingering like a memory through La Puma's story, "The Boys of Bensonhurst."

The New School Brooklyn selections are at times poignant, as in Jonathan Lethem's "Tugboat Syndrome" and Maggie Estep's "Luck Be A Lady." Carolyn Wheat offers up a classic legal whodunit in "The Only Good Judge," while Colson Whitehead's tale, "The All-Night Bodega of Souls," is a sharp reminder in the degrees of addiction.

BROOKLYN NOIR 2 is gritty nostalgia served with a side dish of modern noir, always insightful and colorful without apology--much like the borough itself.

Cerri Ellis

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