All Day and a Night
Alafair Burke
Alafair Burke tells a compelling tale that combines a police procedural and a legal thriller in All Day and a Night.
Anthony Amaro, convicted of killing six women 18 years ago, has always claimed he is innocent and that he was coerced to confess. Now the murder of a psychotherapist puts his convictions in doubt, and a hot-shot attorney named Linda Moreland sees the case as a way to further her career.
She hires a woman named Carrie Blank who works with federal appeals in a prestigious law firm to assist her. Carrie, whose sister was one of Amaro’s victims, is eager to help find the killer.
NYPD Detectives Ellie Hatcher and JJ Rogan are assigned to give the case a fresh eye, even though it’s out of their jurisdiction. Ellie is dating the lead prosecutor in the case, and she’s forced to question whether she earned the job or it’s preferential treatment. There isn’t much time to ponder why she and Rogan got the assignment, because the investigation of the psychotherapist’s death appears to prove Amaro’s innocence.
Burke’s talent as a writer continues to grow along with Ellie’s character. Although this is the fifth book in the Ellie Hatcher series, there isn’t a better starting point than All Day and a Night, which will keep the reader up all night.
— Jeff Ayers
Associated Press
Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II, Led Zeppelin III
Led Zeppelin
Perhaps we should admit the truth about Led Zeppelin: It’s time to move on.
Yes, even you superfans.
If the unreleased material included on reissues of landmark albums Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II and Led Zeppelin III is any indication of what’s to come, there’s little hope of hearing anything truly new — let alone interesting — over the rest of the band’s ambitious plan to rerelease all nine of its studio albums.
Zeppelin probably should have let the 2012 Celebration Day box set stand as its final message. Capturing the band’s brief 2007 reunion for a live stadium show in London, it had a fresh feel despite its age upon release. It was meant to salve the feelings of fans hoping Zeppelin’s living members — Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Robert Plant — would reunite for one last run.
The reissue project seems intent on soothing fans who’d forgo the tour if they could just get another song, something fresh and new.
There’s nothing like that on the bonus discs that accompany Page’s remastered versions of the original albums, which rewrote rock ’n’ roll. Even completists will probably be disappointed at the collection of castoff mixes, alternate takes and work tapes. The few pieces we’ve truly never heard before are ephemeral bits, rightly abandoned as Zeppelin blazed ahead with better material.
The best thing here is the live concert included with Led Zeppelin. The set, recorded in Paris in 1969, is energetic and on the verge of falling to pieces. It’s a pretty fascinating glimpse of the band pre-fame, but the group hadn’t quite pulled it all together and there are other live sets that are more fulfilling.
Like Celebration Day.
— Chris Talbott
Associated Press
The Farm
Tom Rob Smith
Tom Rob Smith’s fourth novel opens with a vivid conflict: Daniel receives a phone call from his father with troubling news. “Your mum’s in hospital. She’s been committed.” Then the phone rings again and it’s his mother, who offers a conflicting tale: “I’m sure your father has spoken to you. Everything that man has told you is a lie.”
This, of course, is the very definition of high concept. (Not surprisingly, movie rights to The Farm have already been sold.) Unfortunately, it’s also the high point of Smith’s novel, which is as turgid and undramatic a thriller as I’ve read.
Unfolding, for the most part, over a single day, as Daniel debriefs his mother and seeks to keep her from his father, The Farm is a book with almost no urgency, no sense that anything’s at stake. In part, this has to do with its structure, which relies, until the final 60 pages, on a series of monologues by Daniel’s mother, punctuated by clarifying questions or scenic details. But even more, the issue is that we don’t believe it, that there is too much here that seems contrived.
This ranges from the action (which revolves around a series of vague “crimes and conspiracies”) to the writing, which all too often shows its bones. “My dad had set in motion a ticking clock,” Daniel declares about a third of the way through the book, as if to amp up the suspense. The most effective suspense, however, doesn’t need to be amped up. Daniel’s comment reads as little more than stage direction, as if even Smith were aware that the conflicts in his story remain under-felt.
— David L. Ulin
Los Angeles Times