Will Clarke
Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles: A Spy Novel (Sort Of)
Simon & Schuster
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There is a stylistic no-man’s-land where many an alleged comic novel has crashed with a resounding thud. But Dallasite WILL CLARKE navigates the terrain with reckless abandon in his wry and inventive debut, LORD VISHNU’S LOVE HANDLES: A SPY NOVEL (SORT OF) (Simon & Schuster). Meet Travis Anderson, whose psychic abilities have not only made him a successful dot-com entrepreneur but have also attracted a federal spy program’s unwanted attentions. He reluctantly signs on because, well, he owes the IRS $5 million in back taxes, which went unpaid while Anderson played games online and his partner snorted away their company’s cash reserves. Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles is flawed—its slapstick action makes for a story that’s broader than it is deep—but a spoof this promising is cause to celebrate. Reviewed by Mike Shea
The 1,081 citizens of Terrell County will recognize their desolate swath of Texas-Mexico borderlands as the backdrop of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (Knopf), CORMAC MCCARTHY’s first novel since 1998’s Cities of the Plain. It’s in this harsh territory—prime country for illicit trafficking—that retired welder Llewelyn Moss stumbles across the bloody aftermath of a heroin deal gone bad and absconds with a leather map case filled with $2.4 million. When he unwisely returns to the scene, he invites pursuit by the morally scrupulous sheriff Ed Tom Bell and a couple of enigmatic figures looking for cash and drugs, freelancer Anton Chigurh and mercenary Carson Wells. McCarthy fanatics may be disappointed to find they waited seven years for a literary thriller, but his patently spare prose and pithy dialogue make for a brilliant read. Reviewed by Mike Shea
San Antonian RICK RIORDAN returns the Alamo City’s most offbeat private investigator to action in MISSION ROAD (Bantam), the most fully realized of his six Tres Navarre novels to date. The road in question was the scene of multiple unsolved sexual assaults and homicides. When the cases, cold for at least eighteen years, land on the desk of SAPD detective Ana Deleon, she winds up dead, and her husband turns to Navarre for help proving he didn’t kill her. Mission Road is well worth the price of admission just for its array of bad cops, good crooks, and swell characters (like Sam Barrera, an ex–FBI agent whose Alzheimer’s doesn’t deter him from fighting crime with his water pistol). Throw in Riordan’s clever twist at the end, and you’re getting top value for your entertainment dollar. Reviewed by Mike Shea
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