The Literate Kitty

A pretty young thing does a swan dive into a hotel pool part-way through a splashy  production number, surprising the hundreds of people watching.    It’s a cool effect. Problem is, she’s not par t  of the show, and her unscripted entrance—tumbling from a helicopter—is also her exit... her very, very  final  one.   Meanwhile, in another hotel... an enormous fellow is sleeping off a bender in a not-so-out-of-the-way stairwell, clad in nothing more than his pasty-white Birthday Suit.    A Japanese billionaire has just crashed the brand-new Ferrari he’d put on his room tab.    A national group of swingers is due to arrive any minute, as is a huge contingent of techno-geeks ready to get their nerd freak on.    And absolutely everyone who is—or aspires to be—”someone” in the adult film industry will also be converging shortly, for a XXX-rated version of the Oscars.   In newcomer Deborah Coonts’ delicious  W...

An old rivalry that has morphed over the years into an obsessive quest for revenge and blood...   Long-buried guilt over a series of tragic events that took place a decade earlier...   A sometimes-partnership that’s gradually progressed from wariness to tentative respect and trust (and maybe, to something  more )...   And a group of hapless young Chinese women, who’ve become prey for a sadistic madman bent on making a point.   These various elements come crashing together for one terrifying twelve-hour period in S. J. Rozan's latest tale of suspense featuring her New York private detectives Bill Smith and Lydia Chin,  On the Line .     The chain of events leading up to this eventful half-day begins with the mundane ringing of a cell phone.    Bill, concentrating on the new piece he's been struggling to learn on the piano, stops what he's doing and picks up because the ring tone is Lydia's—the  only  person for whom he's willing...

Fairy tales are made of magic. I wonder how many of you are sitting there right now, nodding (with the large, up-and-down head movements which signify your enthusiastic agreement, or maybe with those small, I'm-incredibly-uncomfortable-in-my-own-skin head bobs which indicate a more-cautious accord), compared to the number of you with a pained look plastered across your faces. "Fairy tales?", the skeptics among you are thinking. "Didn't we leave those behind in grade school?" Well... yeah, most of us probably did... but why we did that is what I'd like to know. Look at it this way-- most books do a decent job of throwing "real life" in our faces. It may not be the real life you or I have (and in the case of murder mysteries or horror stories, that's a really good thing ), but you know what I mean. It's either the stuff we do, or the stuff we see on TV or in the news. Fantasies, on the other hand, are sort of like grown-up fairy ta...

Addiction. According to the dictionary definition, it's "the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming... to such a state that its cessation causes severe trauma". How unfortunate that the word itself sounds so innocuous, considering that it refers to something so unpleasant. Far better if it were an ugly word, guttural and harsh... something to be spat out, distastefully. I don't suppose it really matters what it's called, though--either to the person dealing with the addiction, or to his/her friends and family. As far as the addict is concerned, the addiction is what defines him or her and drives most of his/her actions. For everyone else, it means a grim acceptance of the fact that life can really suck. Most of us have at least a passing familiarity with some of the more-obvious signs of addiction; it's easy enough to spot the chain-smoker addicted to nicotine, and nearly as e...