The Walking Dead Invasion by Jay Bonansinga

I have already read several of the Walking Dead series of books, written by Jay Bonansinga, which have little in common with the television series seen on AMC network. This book, “The Walking Dead Invasion” deals, for example, with a villain not seen on the show (yet?) – a crazed preacher named Jeremiah. His nemesis here is Lilly Caul, the woman who takes over Woodbury after “The Governor” – another villain who was used on TV – is dead and gone.

I really like Lilly, and I like the storyline where the survivors of Woodbury have had to go underground, using the old “underground railroad” tunnels between towns, to avoid the hoard of zombies on the streets above them. I also like Jeremiah as a villain, since he has that nasty, “Governor” edge. He is able to charm people with his slick and handsome preacher persona, but deep down, he is one troubled pup. He often sees his father, who didn’t treat him very well, in visions, and in one of those, he decides that the answer to the plague is to turn the undead into a controllable army. Like the insatiable hatred the Governor felt for Rick Grimes, the hero of the television series, Jeremiah has it in for Lilly, and will do anything, even destroy his flock of survivors, in order to destroy her first.

The story begins when Jeremiah and some of his flunkies come upon an almost abandoned church. Some zombies are chained into the pews, and a lone human woman is holding down the fort there. She tells them a friend of hers had run away to join a mobile group of survivors, and Jeremiah decides that’s just the place he wants to be. Fortuitously they find the group, which consists of a caravan of various vehicles and a number of families. The group is being led by a Catholic priest, but using a trick the Governor would have used, Jeremiah leaves the Reverend’s RV door open and lets the zombies do their magic. Unfortunately, the priest is hardier than that, and Jeremiah has to shot him himself, taking charge of the caravan in the power vacuum that results.

Next he overpowers some nasty bikers, using them as bait to draw his zombie army. He finds out which tunnels Lilly and her friends are using, and makes his plans to kill them all. It culminates in a showdown, but if you’ve seen either the TV version of the Governor’s showdown with Rick’s group, or have read the books or comics, you’ll find this all very familiar territory. Another crazy baddie gets what’s coming to him.

Along the way, Bonansinga writes great characters, undead and living, although I did get tired of working my way through another yet description of a “squishy” demise of a zombie. I don’t know how many of these books Bonansinga and Kirkman plan to put together, but I do enjoy them as a whole, some more than others. This one – “Invasion” – falls in the middle. I love reading about Lilly, but Jeremiah just seems like a more religious Governor character. Still, I think it would be worth reading for true fans of the AMC series, or Kirkman’s comics.   

 

The Two Mrs. Grenvilles by Dominick Dunne

This novel by Dominick Dunne is everything the backcover blurbs promise – compelling, steamy, engrossing, fast-paced, and diverting. Dunne has a reputation for being on the inside when it comes to information about the rich and famous, and this novel is no departure from that. His tale takes a sexually promiscuous showgirl and turns her into a society stunner after she marries the only son and heir to the New York Grenville fortune.

While not an original plot, Dunne’s treatment of Urse Mertens, a little nobody from Pittsburg, Kansas who turns into Ann Arden Grenville, arbiter of style and member of the jet-set and ultimately murderess, is fascinating. Dunne writes well, and only a few glitches (like saying that someone is a direct relation to Katherine Howard, Henry VIII’s 5^th wife, who got her head cut off before she could produce any children for him) shows him to be fallible with the facts. His other details about the right place to buy one’s flowers, linens and clothes in New York, I’m hoping, are more en pointe.

Mostly, Dunne has a good sense for what makes people tick. His portraits not only of gold digger Ann, but of her stuffy mother-in-law Alice, and her hapless husband, Junior “Billy” Grenville, are rich and layered. He is not content to make them caricatures of themselves, but allows them to grow as people who make decisions and choices for very understandable human reasons, even if those decisions are not the right ones to make. Dunne shows Ann’s cleverness, which of course must face off against that of her wealthy boyfriend’s snobbish family. He shows their snobbishness, and that of their friends, but in the end it is only Ann’s crime that brings her back to being a person of little consequence.

It is not a short book, being over 300 pages, but it is an interesting one from beginning to end, as Ann is pursued by a writer who wants to know the truth behind the night her husband died, and to get a little revenge of his own for being marginalized by her years earlier. I sense hints of Truman Capote’s story here, a story Dunne would also know well, but he could be talking about his own experience of getting to the heart of high–profile, high-class crime.

I strongly recommend this book for adults, because some of the sexual escapades would probably be a bit much for young teens. I think you need to be a bit cynical to enjoy the story, which is a story of luck and ambition, both of which eventually run out for the younger Mrs. G. This would make a great book to take along to a spa or resort, because it will take you some hours of leisure living to get through, but you won’t want to put it down until you do.  

All Dressed in White by Mary Higgins Clark

Reviewed by Gerti

This is the second novel I’ve read where famed mystery writer Mary Higgins Clark teams up with Alafair Burke, and I must say, it’s better than their first joint effort! I have to praise “All Dressed in White” for not suffering from an overabundance of characters, with all those presented pretty clearly delineated. The plot is also less than simple, even if the villain in the end turns out to be less than plausible.

In the series, Clark and Burke are writing mysteries for a character named Laurie Moran to present in her Under Suspicion television specials. Each show in the series is supposed to be about a cold case, generally about wealthy, beautiful people, and this case is no different. It’s about “The Runaway Bride”, a woman named Amanda Pierce, who survived cancer to end up at the altar, planning to marry a poor-boy turned lawyer who wants to become a public defender. The wrinkle in the fairy tale is this – her maid-of-honor Meghan also had a crush on this fellow, named Jeffrey, and Amanda’s parents suspect he may be the man behind her disappearance and murder.

Laurie and her wacky team of producers dig up his past, learning that Jeffrey was also pictured with a girl from their college days who disappeared. Is he a serial killer? Or is it his crazy stalker wife behind both murders? The plot takes you in one direction, and then another, as Laurie and her team are helped by her retired NYC detective father to track down clues to the real identity of the person who took Amanda away all those years ago.

Add to the suspect list Amanda’s older sister, who inherited her place in the successful family business thanks to Amanda’s untimely disappearance. Charlotte is, as described in the book, “a weed growing next to a rose” in the family’s eyes, and both mother and father give her short shrift. Amanda’s mother is still obsessed with her one daughter’s disappearance, and that has led to a rift between the long-married couple, since the dad is tired of all the stress and just wants them all to go back to their normal lives, under the assumption that Amanda was dead, or if not dead, wanted to go missing, so probably happier after she ran away.

This book provides little sexual tension between TV producer Laurie and her sexy show host, the famed lawyer Alex, and that makes this book a little less exciting than the previous edition, since there is virtually no romance in this novel. Still, the mystery is good enough to hold your attention, and the twists and turns will keep you guessing. I applaude “All Dressed in White” for being a good effort by this writing duo, although not the best book Clark has ever written. And as I mentioned before, the villain, when unmasked, seems implausible. I’d have chosen the wimpier of the pair of friends to be the one with deep-seated psychological problems.