Book Review - The Age of Innocence, Stress Fracture

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920) If I am honest I must confess that I had no idea what to expect from this book (in fact in my head I had confused it with Dreiser's "American Tragedy".  No idea why).  What I discovered was a truly astounding story about people for whom I would have very little respect.  No doubt fans of the book are now appalled but there it is.  At the same time they'll be astounded I'd never read the book before.

"The Age of Innocence" is the story of the highest caste of American society in the 1870s.  The wealthy families of New York City were an attempt to create an American aristocracy.  One the wanted nothing to do with the Old World aristocrat but were every bit as straight laced and bound by tradition and social standing as anything from the French court.  In the middle of this we find Newland Archer, scion of one of those families and engaged to the beautiful May Welland.  All is exactly as it should be.  Maybe.  When May's scandalous cousin Ellen arrives, fleeing her unspeakable husband the Polish Count Olenski, things suddenly come off the tracks.  Ellen operates from a different set of rules and expectations.  She is like nothing he has ever met before and the attraction is mutual.  The dance they dance is intricate and filled with potential land mines.  They will both chose the social order over their own happiness and live out lives that are shallow charades.

Wharton became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize with this novel and I can't argue with that honor one bit.  While the world she weaves for us is alien to most modern readers she does it with an expert touch.  The characters remain intensely real even as they navigate through this decorum strangled social paradigm.  Newland and Ellen and Mae and all the other characters make the choices they feel they must.  Those choices will feel terribly wrong to most modern readers.  Certainly the ending made me crazy.  At the same time it offers the chance to examine the expectations of our modern social strata.  The laces can draw just as tight only in different places.

Still a brilliant book all these decades later.

Rating - **** Recommended (and for someone desiring a well made personal library probably a
 *****-Must Own)

Stress Fracture by D.P. Lyle (2010) - The first in what is promised to be a series surrounding Dub Walker a forensics expert from Alabama.  In this case he has to investigate the brutal murder of his long time friend Sheriff Mike Savage.  Walker has been at this for a while and thought he had seen it all.  But this killer is about to go on a spree and simply doesn't fit the established patterns.  Walker has to try and get ahead of the killer before he kills again.

This is pretty solid police/forensics procedural stuff (the author is a cardiologist as well as a sometime technical consultant on shows like "Cold Case" and "CSI - Miami") and is very well written.  Beyond that Lyle gives us something a little different with this killer and that's nice for a change as well.  Beyond the twist with the character of the killer there's not a lot that's surprising here but if you like these kinds of books that won't bother you much.  There's a pattern and format to this kind of book that works.  Only a very skilled or very foolish writer chooses to diverge to far from the standard.  Lyle walks that line quite creditably.

The second book in the series "Hot Lights, Cold Steel" came out in 2011.

Rating - **** Recommended