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Author and MG co-owner Jeff (JJM)reads mostly thrillers with well-drawn characters and lots of tension. If there's a supernatural element to them, that's even better.
Jeff and fellow author Robert Englund admire a blow-up cover of one of Jeff's novels at Comic-Con 2009.
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From the very first pages of
this debut novel, the reader is propelled through the adventures of
59-year-old protagonist Brigid Quinn, a retired FBI agent now living in
Arizona and trying to enjoy a tranquil life with a new husband and a
couple of pugs. When echoes from her past intrude upon her present,
Brigid must rely on skills she thought she’d left behind—on violence
and dishonesty and a disturbing familiarity with the worst of
humanity—to try to put her personal history to rest, once and for all.
Becky has created a thoroughly original heroine, given her a believable
life and realistic challenges, and written a first novel that reads
like an old master’s best. Do not pass this one up.–Jeffrey Mariotte
Wow.
That’s pretty much the only reasonable reaction to Stephen King’s magnificent 11/22/63. The time-travel novel nominally focuses on an effort to change the future by preventing Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating JFK, but it’s about so much more, including personal responsibility, the costs (and benefits) of love, the differences between America in 2011 and in the late 1950s and early ‘60s. It includes nods to earlier favorites (including Christine and It), but this one, while offering suspense of the highest order, rejects the supernatural and instead offers an explanation for its events rooted in current theoretical physics. 11/22/63 is a seminal work by an American master at the peak of his powers. Don’t miss it. -- JJM