Fun Christmas reading: Garrison Keillor clones Lake Wobegon in North Dakota

"A Christmas Blizzard,"

by Garrison Keillor

Nobody's literary comedy stands a snowball's chance in Honolulu against Garrison Keillor and his takes on communities in the northern clime.

"A Christmas Blizzard" is just 180 pages long, but it's as fun and funny a 180 pages as anything you'll ever read, with a moral worth remembering and celebrating throughout the year.

This time the creator and host of public radio's "A Prairie Home Companion" has found Lake Wobegon-like characters in Looseleaf, North Dakota, and he brings a prodigal native son back to his home town just in time for Christmas and a typical northern plains white-out.

Main character James Sparrow fell into a lucrative business that made him the wealthy CEO of a Chicago beverage company. He's rich enough to not want to spend time doing anything at Christmas that he doesn't want to. What he wants to do is take his private jet to his palatial Hawaii second home and look at the calming waves of the Pacific.

A tug of the heart strings -- or is is a guilty conscience? -- has that private jet flying into good ol' Looseleaf instead, and stranding Sparrow in a town with wacky but lovable relatives, fruitcake townfolk from his past, and even quizzical story walk-ons, like the busload of psychoanalists who are afraid to fly!

No scripted storyline here

If you think this is going to fall into that simplistic story genre of the guy who doesn't like Christmas celebrating like no one else on the big day -- well, maybe.

Keillor puts so much that's laughable in his fictional characters -- pieces of the human condition that you'll identify in your own family, friends and acquaintance, and may yourself, plus identifiable references to real people and real events -- that the storyline almost becomes secondary to the eccentric population of Looseleaf and how rich Mr. Sparrow comes to terms with them -- how they impact him and how he touches their lives.

Finally, throw out anything you ever learned about the Greek dramas and "deus ex machina" endings.

In this Viking novel, Keillor out-deus-ex-machinas any contrived ending you could ever imagine. What a fun read! -- bz

Catholic values pop out of major novelist's mystery

"Where Are You Now?",

by Mary Higgins Clark

With more than 30 titles under her belt, Mary Higgins Clark knows how to write a mystery.

In "Where Are You Now?" she pulls out the expected array of clues and characters.

The story-line starts 10 years after a college senior disappears. Once again on this Mother's Day he calls home. His attorney sister decides to try to locate him, but the police detectives she turns to quickly make a connection: the brother may be their best suspect in a murder and the disappearance of three young women in the same New York neighborhood.

All the good mystery pieces are there: the passionate protagonist, the love interest that may or may not be true, the greedy landlord, the nervous apartment caretakers, the demented perpetrator, the likable victims, the suspicious chauffeur, the pain of post-abortion trauma.

What?

A major American novelist works the pain of post-abortion trauma into a book that a major publisher -- Simon & Schuster -- prints and promotes?

Catholic writer includes her values

Okay, I'll be clear: "Where Are You Now?" is not a mystery about abortion.

It's just that the way abortion usually is found in mainstream publishing is that it is extremely one-sided, treating the taking of the life of the in utero baby either casually and matter-of-factly or sympathetically toward the pregnant woman with no regard whatsoever for the other living being in the picture.

It's usually "Abortion? Nothing to it. Get it done and get on with your life."

Author Mary Higgins Clark has found a way to live her Catholic faith in the marketplace in which she is one of the high-ranking celebrities.

And it's a good read!

Like all good, page-turner mysteries, Clark works interesting characters through clues and dead ends, throwing suspicion on a number of them, challenging readers to ponder motives and to try to guess "who-dun-it."

Oh, did a mention the kindly and wise old Irish monsignor? -- bz

Fine mystery, fine writing woven into politics surrounding fall of Communism

"Victory Square,"

by Olen Steinhauer

Characters you find yourself cheering for get involved in the chaos of an Eastern European country as its Communist government falls.

That's the storyline behind this well-written novel with flashes of -- even a foundation in -- real-life history.

There's global politics, too, and international intrigue as people on a list start dying. Emil Brod, the chief of detectives just days away from retirement, and detective/spy Garva Noukas search for answers.

Olen Steinhauer makes you care about what happens to these two, and that's key to any good novel. The plus is that "Victory Square" is as much literature as it is mystery.

What's unique in a mystery, too, is that it offers an other-than-American point of view of the global politics of that time when the Soviet empire was crumbling, and seeing historical events through others' eyes can bring clearer vision to readers.

Pick up this 355-page St. Martin's Minotaur paperback for a great read. -- bz

If you like ‘Cold Case,’ you’ll like ‘Shadows’

Shadows,
By Edna Buchanan

“Shadows” is a good, “Cold Case”-type detective story with interesting twists that go back to the Cilvil Rights Movement days of the 1960s.

Author Edna Buchanan has at least a half-dozen good novels to her name, and you've gotta love her writing.

When you get a chance, pick up a her non-fiction work, “The Corpse Had a Familiar Face.” It’s filled with stories Buchanan picked up as a crime reporter for The Miami Herald. At a journalism workshop I went to not long ago, one of the presenters said he makes it must reading for all new hires and interns, because it models the colorful, interesting writing he wants in his newspaper.

"Shadows" offers much the same as a work of fiction, and its plot is complicated enough to keep you turning the pages. - bz