Books in Brief
Winter House: A Mallory Novel by Carol O'Connell (Putnam, 306 pp., $24.95). Since the 1994 publication of Mallory's Oracle--an Edgar-award-winning debut novel--no crime novelist has surpassed Carol O'Connell in excellently crafted works. O'Connell's latest, Winter House, is no exception: displaying the author's graceful prose, astringent humor, and psychological acuity.
This is the eighth book featuring Detective Sergeant Kathy Mallory, O'Connell's ambiguous heroine. A former child of the New York City streets who survived by theft and guile, Mallory is a sociopath who has somehow fashioned her own idiosyncratic set of principles. And to those principles she rigidly adheres. Mallory is that rare fictional character who is both original and good.
Winter House--in contrast to the series' other novels--begins on a more or less positive note. Upon breaking in to a place called Winter House, a serial killer is deftly dispatched by an ice-pick-wielding householder, a charming, elderly lady by the name of Nedda Winter. All would be well were it not that more than half a century earlier, Winter House was the scene of one of the more spectacular and grisly unsolved crimes in New York's history: the slaughter by ice pick of nine members of the Winter family and the more than suspicious disappearance of twelve-year-old Nedda "Red" Winter--whose fifty-eight-year absence has been "the most enduring mystery in the annals of NYPD."
One does not read O'Connell for reassurance that justice will unambiguously triumph. Her books are driven by their characters and their wit, their humanity and their insight. Mallory's partner, Riker, exemplifies these qualities in Winter House when he sagely observes: "You know it's a dysfunctional family when the one you like the best is a mass murderer."
--Steven J. Lenzner
American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country by Kay Bailey Hutchison (William Morrow, 384 pp., $24.95). Following a spate of books by members of Congress, Texas senator Kay Bailey Hutchison offers American Heroines, a compilation of profiles of women who pioneered their professions--and thus, Hutchison says, paved the path for modern women.
"Pioneers led the way, running the family businesses and opening schools; then came Rosie the Riveter and the WASP, who flew ferry missions in World War II for no credit; now we are doctors, mayors, generals, admirals, and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies," she writes in the introduction.
The book's eleven chapters are organized thematically according to profession, and each begins with biographical sketches of Hutchison's subjects: women like Elizabeth Seton, Clara Barton, Amelia Earhardt, and Margaret Chase Smith. American Heroines follows up each chapter with lively interviews (something Hutchison mastered in her pre-Senate days as a television reporter) with women who have broken barriers in their own fields, such as Lynne Cheney in education, Barbara Walters in journalism, Sally Ride in space, and Sandra Day O'Connor in law. These interviews are the real core of the book.
One problem with American Heroines is its lack of consistency in the length and substance of the profiles. Some go on for far too long, while others, such as the short section on Jacqueline Cochran (a pilot for the United States in World War II), make you wish the author had done a little more research.
The book is also a bit self-important, as the cover jacket compares the senator to the people she writes about--describing Hutchison, the first female senator from Texas, as "a pioneer in her own right."
Still, American Heroines is a handy resource. It's quick, easy, and full of facts. What more do you want in a book from a member of Congress?
--Rachel DiCarlo