Condor in the Stacks by James Grady and The Little Men by Megan Abbott

MysteriousPress.com is publishing (in digital form) a series of stand-alone stories by popular crime authors in which books, bookstores, libraries, or manuscripts play a central role.  I don't usually review individual short stories, but I'm making an exception for the Bibliomysteries series because the concept is interesting and the authors are well known.

"Condor in the Stacks" by James Grady was published digitally on February 23, 2016.

Condor fans know from reading Last Days of the Condor that the Condor, sometimes known as Vin, was heavily medicated and given a (supposedly) safe and undemanding job at the Library of Congress, sorting books into bins for reshelving and recycling. Vin thinks pretty much all books should be saved. That attitude makes him well suited for the Bibliomysteries series.

Vin tries to kick back his sedation long enough to help a library employee named Kim who thinks she is being stalked. Meanwhile, he tries to solve the puzzle of why he packed seven coffins full of books for recycling but nine coffins are being hauled away.

The plot is beyond far-fetched and it isn’t fully developed. I'm not sure it even makes sense. Still, it entertained me. I liked the story, but not nearly as much as I liked the last Condor novel, which had a depth of character and intricacy of plot that can be difficult to achieve in a short story. I probably would not recommend this story to readers who did not read and enjoy Last Days of the Condor.

The text of the story mentions or alludes to about a dozen authors. James Grady acknowledges them at the end, which is helpful for readers who recognize, but can’t quite place, an allusion. I am one of the readers who benefitted from reading the acknowledgements.

Judging from Amazon reviews, some readers are turned off by Grady’s writing style, which is far from conventional. Odd punctuation, sentence fragments, and stream of consciousness sometimes take over the narrative. The frenzied, off-kilter style reflects Vin’s shaky mental status. I like it for that reason but I realize that it puts off readers who are looking for straight-forward prose. If you are one of those, be warned that this might not be the story for you.

RECOMMENDED

"The Little Men" by Megan Abbott was published digitally on September 15, 2015

In 1953, Penny went to Hollywood to pursue her dream of fame. Like most wannabe actresses, she found a less satisfying life that the one she pursued. At night, she consoles herself with the books that came with a surprisingly affordable bungalow that she rents in the canyon. Her neighbors soon reveal that the rent is affordable because nobody wants to rent the bungalow where the bookseller killed himself. Or did he?

This is a story of bad dreams and spooky nocturnal noises and shadows on the walls. A mystery with the flavor of a horror story. Like Psycho, the story asks the reader to divine the secrets of a spooky place. Are the horrors that Penny experiences real or imagined?

A well-crafted story, “Little Men” creates a visceral atmosphere and gives flesh to its characters. The story resolves with a couple of unexpected twists. Most of the stories in this series have been quite good, and this one is no exception.

RECOMMENDED

The Fever by Megan Abbott

Published by Little, Brown and Company on June 17, 2014

Deenie Nash is in high school, as is her brother Eli, a handsome hockey player who is a bit of a rogue. Their father, Tom, is a teacher at the school. Their mother lives elsewhere. The Fever's drama starts when Deenie's best friend, Lise, is stricken not with a fever, but with seizures. Lise is hospitalized and in a coma when Deenie's newest friend, Gabby, has something that appears to be a seizure while performing in a recital. Other symptoms begin to afflict Deenie's other friends, leading high school girls to text all sorts of inane theories to each other involving rabid bats and a polluted lake. As more girls develop symptoms, CNN turns up to report the growing hysteria.

Hysteria is the novel's driving theme. The Fever touches on the controversy surrounding the practice of giving HPV vaccinations to girls before they become sexually active, which proves to be one of the more popular explanations for the phenomenon that afflicts the girls. Other hysterical parents are convinced that a sexually transmitted disease is responsible for the illnesses despite the absence of any evidence to support that theory. The moral of The Fever is that rational thought is preferable to knee-jerk reactions. But are those parental reactions plausible? In a town populated by exceptionally ignorant people, perhaps, but that isn't how this town is portrayed. I wasn't convinced.

Hysteria might have been a better title for the novel than The Fever, which has almost nothing to do with fever. The novel is largely about teenage girls and their endless capacity for drama (not to mention their addiction to texting). The teenage characters are more interesting than the novel's few adults, all of whom spend their time fretting. They are concerned about all the risks to which their children are exposed -- radon, PCBs, lead, mercury, STDs, crime -- without giving much thought to the fact that they all survived those same risks and more.

The Fever sometimes has the atmosphere of a horror novel, other times a thriller, but it runs out of gas before it finds an identity. After a strong build-up, the resolution of the spreading symptoms is less than compelling. I liked the character development well enough to give the novel a guarded recommendation, but the central idea that drives the plot isn't developed nearly as well as the characters. That left me with a sense of disappointment when the novel ended.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS