Notes on book reviews:
- I’m going to forgo synopses in these because there are more than enough of them out there, and others are more adept at writing them than I could ever hope to be.
- It’s unlikely I’ll ever be asked to write a blurb for a book cover, but I’m volunteering them here because I think they’re fun.
So without further ado…
Sometimes a book falls into your life unexpectedly and brings with it a membership card to a super hip insider’s club. Lynn Kostoff’s LATE RAIN is such a book.
What’s the deal with the club, you ask? Simple. Kostoff is a superb scribe. He is, as RobAroundBooks might say, literary. To be a fan when his fiction career is still fairly new is to be the best kind of insider. This one was recommended to me by the incomparable Ben LeRoy of Tyrus Books, LATE RAIN’s publisher, and I am immeasurably grateful for him telling me I needed to read it.
To call LATE RAIN crime fiction is certainly accurate—it has its fair share of crime like all the best books do—but it’s not just genre fiction. It has a bit of humor, a dash of history, some social commentary, and even medical information in the form of narrative from the perspective of a character with Alzheimer’s, which taught me quite a lot. It’s a tale of murder, but not a whodunit.
I’ve seen Kostoff compared to both Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard. I don’t agree with the Hiaasen comparison—his tone is entirely different—but the Leonard comparison is well deserved. I’ve also seen some discussion that focuses on the setting (small town South Carolina), but to me, this is a character-driven book…the setting is not really part of the story. Most readers, I expect, will feel strongly about some—if not all—of the characters.
Blurb: Kostoff has crafted a world of characters on a par with the greats.
Author’s Website: www.lynnkostoff.com
This book sounds amazing. I can’t wait to read it!