Gunman's Rhapsody, by Robert B. Parker

Return with me to the days of the wild, wild West.  In a departure for Parker, he tries his hand at a western novel and tells a fictional version of the life of Wyatt Earp.  It's 1879 and Wyatt has tired of Dodge City.  Ready for something new, he and two of his brothers move to Tombstone, Arizona, a lively, bustling town due to the nearby silver mines.  Wyatt is appointed a deputy sheriff and becomes friends with Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson, among others.  More importantly, he falls in love with beautiful Josie Marcus, a stage performer.  Unfortunately, she is engaged to Johnny Behan, a powerful and dangerous schemer.  When Wyatt steals Josie away, Behan seeks his revenge with dire consequences for the Earp brothers.  Parker is consistently good and this was a nice change of pace for him and his readers.
 

The Bonesetter's Daughter, by Amy Tan

Ruth Young is an Asian-American ghost writer residing in San Francisco.  For the past several years she has been living with Art and his two teenage daughters in a rather open relationship.  LuLing Young, Ruth's elderly mother, lives nearby and she has started to exhibit the signs of Alzheimer's Disease.  As LuLing's only child, Ruth must face the problem of what to do with her mother.  At the same time, she is increasingly dissatisfied with the uncommitted status of her life with Art and his children and she realizes that she is at a crossroads in the relationship.  In trying to make her decisions, Ruth moves in temporarily with her mother to care for her since LuLing can no longer be trusted to live by herself.  While Ruth is there she finds a journal her mother has written about her strange and tumultuous life growing up in China.  As Ruth reads the journal, she discovers many things about her mother that she never knew and she gains a new insight into herself, her history, and her place in the world.  This is a wonderful novel of a mother and her daughter and through LuLing's journal we are transported back to the fascinating world of early twentieth century China.
 

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon

And now for something really different.  I have to confess that I checked this book out twice before I finally got around to reading it.  A new book would come in that looked more interesting and I'd put this one on the back burner.  Big mistake because this book is terrific.  The story begins in 1939 in New York City.  Joe Kavalier, a young Jewish magician and artist, has just managed a miraculous escape from Nazi-occupied Prague and he has arrived at his cousin Sammy Clay's apartment.  Sammy has big dreams of creating his own action hero for the newest rage--the comic book--but his artistic skills are limited.  He and Joe strike a fast friendship, become business partners, and create The Escapist, an immediate success.  Although Joe has escaped from Prague, his family is still there and he must try to get them to America before it's too late.  Helping him is Rosa Saks, a pretty, bohemian artist who does volunteer work with an agency trying to rescue Jews from Europe.  Working together, Joe and Rosa fall in love but are separated when Joe enlists to fight in the war after Pearl Harbor.  The action follows the intertwined lives of Joe, Rosa, and Sammy through the war years and into the fifties.  Along the way the reader gets a fascinating look at this period of American history and the Golden Age of comic books.  Great story and beautifully developed characters--WHAM! you'll like it.
 

Birds of Prey, by J. A. Jance

J. P. Beaumont, a former Seattle homicide detective, is back in this latest Jance suspense novel.  Beau is on an Alaskan cruise with his grandmother, Beverly, and her new husband, Lars, when they all get caught up in an apparent murder.  Margaret Featherman, one of their fellow passengers, is gagged and thrown overboard.  Nobody witnessed the event but the action was caught on the ship's video security cameras.  Margaret's former husband is also on the cruise.  Is he involved in what happened to her?  Another possibility is she was the victim of a shadowy terrorist group called Leave It To God--which is targeting doctors involved in advanced medical research.  Several agents of the FBI are on board investigating the terrorist group and Beau is recruited to assist. But, Beau being Beau, he ends up doing a lot more than assisting.  I always enjoy novels set aboard ships and I liked this one with the Alaskan locale.
 

The Jury, by Steve Martini

Dr. David Crone, a medical researcher involved in the mapping of the human genome, is accused of the brutal murder of one of his colleagues, Kalista Jordan.  Kalista was young, bright, beautiful, and gunning for Crone's job.  They had had several public arguments and evidence linking Crone to her murder is found in his garage.  Lawyer Paul Madriani, the central character in several previous Martini novels, is asked by Crone to defend him.  Madriani decides to take the case even though he suspects that Crone might be guilty given all the evidence uncovered by the police.  Madriani likes a challenge, though, and this high-profile case, if successful, could help him establish his new practice in San Diego.  This was an enjoyable read but maybe someone could tell me why the book is titled The Jury.  There is scarcely a trial in the book and the jury is an almost non-existent element. Martini has already written The Attorney and The Judge so maybe the publisher is trying to establish a signature series along the lines of Sue Grafton's 'alphabet' books or Janet Evanovich's 'number' series.  I'm not sure it's going to work, though.  Who's going to be waiting with bated breath for The Court Stenographer?
 

 

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