The Quiet Game

It is always a pleasure to find a Sticky book – one of those that, once picked up, remains so difficult to put down that it seems to stick to your hands. “The Quiet Game” by Greg Iles is one of those.
Iles is a bestselling writer who lives in Natchez, Mississippi, and several of his books center around a bestselling writer who lives in the Deep South – Natchez, in fact. Hopefully, there the similarities end, since the high adventure his character endures would otherwise leave little time for real-life writing.
The story begins with Penn Cage returning to his parent’s home in Natchez. The fictional author has lost his wife to illness, and his young daughter is still painfully distraught over her mother’s death. Settling in, he finds time has changed some aspects of the old home town, but there are lingering reminders of the racial tension of earlier days.
The townsfolk consider him a celebrity of sorts – local boy turned novelist – and the widow of a man killed during the civil rights movement asks Penn’s assistance in solving the thirty-five year old case. He initially declines, believing some things best remain in the past.
He agrees to an interview with the attractive publisher of the local paper, who prints some inflammatory “off the record” comments, and before the ink has dried, he is knee-deep in a murder investigation.
From associates of the victim to members of law enforcement, everyone is playing “The Quiet Game,” holding secret truths close to the vest and saying nothing, knowing that a single revealing word might bring down the entire house of cards. Iles continually raises the stakes, and plays out “The Quiet Game” with the confidence of a card shark, turning up aces in the political back room dealings of the old south.

View more book titles online at

http://mchustonbooks.com

and click on the Collectibles tab for our Alibris listings.

The Seventh Unicorn

It is almost a sub-genre altogether – those stories piecing together clues to find missing artifacts, treasures, or manuscripts. Most are Indiana-Jones-type chases to the finish, but author Kelly Jones keeps a slower pace in pursuing a medieval tapestry in “The Seventh Unicorn.”
The six real-life tapestries – The Lady and the Unicorn set – hang in a Paris museum, and Jones uses imagination to weave a fictional seventh tapestry. Her What if? tale stitches together historical facts and flights of fancy in constructing, hiding, and finding a priceless work of art.
In the world of artifact chasing, the women are always beautiful and the men are ruggedly handsome – Jones pens it no differently. Alex Pellier is a curator at the Cluny Museum in Paris, whose wealthy husband died in an accident. She runs into her art-school flame, who gives up teaching to return to Paris to resume painting.
They barely have time to talk over old times when she discovers evidence that indicates the existence of another tapestry, and since Jake has never gotten over his thing for Alex, when she asks for his help, he can’t put the paints away quick enough.
The clues appear amazingly, as though Alex is walking through the story with a shopping cart. She looks down on the floor and spots a torn page with a poem written hundreds of years ago. She opens a book and finds two drawings signed with the same marking as the famous tapestries. Workmen are knocking down a wall, and – what do you know? There is the missing tapestry hidden among the masonry.
Despite its lack of urgency – or perhaps because of it – “The Seventh Unicorn” dances along quite nicely, and finishes with a satisfying flourish. It’s a story with a heart, and it beats steadily from start to finish.

View more titles online at

http://mchustonbooks.com

and click on the Collectibles tab for our Alibris listings.