Justin Kifer Kifer itibaren 8530 Rettenbach, Austria itibaren 8530 Rettenbach, Austria

Detective Jane Rizzoli has the feeling that she is gazing at her doppelganger when she looks at the body of Boston pathologist Dr Maura Isles stretched out on the slab that was her own work surface. Maura Isles has Jane’s physical appearance, birth date, and even blood type. And when tests reveal that the women are twin sisters, Jane is plunged into a dangerous mystery, travelling to Maine where she must investigate the identity of a mother she never knew. And, all the while, a savage murderer is indulging in nationwide slaughter. This was an excellent thriller which I could not put down. Good characters and a plot which kept me guessing.

I saw Jonathan Safran Foer speak at a reading a couple of years ago, and he mentioned that there are a lot of books that you read and like, or even that you love, but there are only very few books that you read and you feel as if they were written especially for you. I felt like this book was written especially for me. One of the central characters is a nerdy 13-year old girl interested in politics and journalism; her best friend starts out as a tape cutter at the public radio station and ends up an animator of magical realist films and Super 8mm home movie hobbyist; almost all of the adults in the book are neurotic UofC alumni; and the city of Chicago is so beautifully written it's a major character in and of itself. How many nostalgia points does that hit for me? Yep, that's right. It also has some of the funniest, most vivid writing I'd read in years, and is really elegantly structured (surprising for a novel about 13-year olds in 1980--not the most elegant time period or age group). The characterizations are so strong--my friends and I sometimes find ourselves talking about Muley Scott Wills and Michelle Wasserstrom like they were people who went to high school with us. The world of this novel exists, fully realized, intricate, and suspended in time. At one point in the book Muley begins to animate over film footage he's taken of his neighborhood, with the goal of creating a film that "would illustrate all of the invisible borders that existed between" he and his friends, family, and neighbors. That might actually be a good way of describing the goals of most of my favorite books, and I think it's something this novel succeeds in doing, spectacularly.