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December 22, 2009

Aunt Agatha knows what's best

LAST KNOWN ADDRESS makes the Top 10 books of 2009 for Aunt Agatha's Bookstore:

"Theresa Schwegel keeps getting better. She won an Edgar for her first...but every book since then has gotten better—fresher, tougher, tighter. They’re difficult books, told in the first person/present tense, but once you’re into them they’re impossible to set aside.

This one is the story of a serial rapist in Chicago, and Schwegel’s straight on look at what happens after a rape—almost as bad as the rape itself—ties in thematically with her central character, a female cop sometimes struggling in the macho police culture. Never told as a polemic, it’s instead almost as if an incredibly gifted reporter had gotten inside the heads of all the characters.

Schwegel’s true gift (aside from telling great police stories) is taking a hard look at the way human beings both treat and react to one another. A young woman, she seems to have the wisdom of someone much older. This is an original writer, one whose books should not be missed."

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