My Surrender
by Connie Brockway
This is along the lines of a eulogy, because Connie’s going over to the Dark Side. Yep, she’s going to contemporary - and not even romance. She’ll be writing diva lit, or whatever the newest term is that describes books about women over twenty. So… My Surrender is a swan song by one of the greatest writers of historical romance ever.
She’s a good friend, so I twisted her arm while saying mean things about traitors and turn-coats, and it all paid off. Lots of insider info. My Surrender is Connie’s nod to The Count of Monte Cristo. If you don’t mind a Scottish abbey standing in as a French prison, I see her point. And she says that Dand was patterned physically after David Wenham, the actor who played Faramir in Lord of the Rings. Nice looks, in other words. I know this because my ten-year-old has a huge poster of the man on his bedroom wall so I just checked him out.
One final note that won’t matter to you unless you happen to have gone to college with Connie. Apparently 80% of the secondary characters in this novel are named after friends from college though (she hastens to say) the characterization is nothing like them. Thus the dedication in the front to the Buckhorn Beirgardeners… I needed an explanation for this. Apparently Buckhorn Beer is “comparable to rat piss in taste but was, at the time, the cheapest beer available by the case in a five state area.”
That little fact casts such a sad light on Connie’s college career that we’ll just leave it there, OK? The book’s great though. And the last one! Waaaaaaa! Here’s Connie’s website so you can leave nasty remarks about deserting the historical romance: www.conniebrockway.com. Or read an excerpt of My Surrender.
All Those Other Books
Bangkok 8
by John Burdett
This is a hilarious, totally weird thriller. The hero is a cop, who’s also a Buddhist monk. It reminded me of John LeCarre, in those early books when a spy would be wandering around some exotic place, and you would fall in love with the city as much as the story. Bangkok is absolutely mesmerizing: exotic, crazy, on the take… it takes on a character of its own. This book is so good because it’s creative, genuinely creative. Not just because there’s a murder in chapter three by cobras. That’s creative in the tired vein of Dorothy Sayers murders where the man had been copper-plated. But this book is darkly hilarious. Burdett is a beautiful, ironic writer. His picture screams British Writer (you know, almost gay, intense, losing his hair, black and white photo). I can forgive him that, and his law degree, for being able to write funny and real on the same page with death-by-cobra.
