"Whether cooking or singing," writes soul diva Patti LaBelle, "I feel at ease, at peace, at one with the world." The stories she tells about cooking for family and friends in LaBelle Cuisine (written with Laura B. Randolph) don't sound all that peaceful, though: Mick Jagger woke her up in the middle of the night and pleaded for soul food for his band (those wacky guys), and while cooking liver for Arsenio Hall, she set off smoke alarms in a Las Vegas hotel. Despite LaBelle's promise to reveal "my ancestors' treasured recipes," most of these dishes can be found in standard American cookbooks. Grandmother Tempie's Flying Biscuits were fine; Slammin' Shrimp Creole tasted too much like tomato paste (she uses an entire can). Glib fare. (Broadway, $25)
Bottom Line: We can't sing for this supper
Robert Crais
Beach book of the week
In Boston, Robert B. Parker's Spenser and Hawk are the undisputed dynamic duo of wisecracking—and head-cracking—gumshoes. On the West Coast, they have some competition in author Robert Crais's Elvis Cole, who describes himself as a "Professional Angeleno," and Joe Pike, a taciturn hardbody in a sleeveless sweatshirt and mirrored shades. Cole and Pike are challenged as never before on this their eighth outing, when a missing-persons case turns into homicide with personal resonances. The dead woman, a daughter of L.A.'s leading taco manufacturer, is Pike's former lover. The ex-cop is now suspected, by a Los Angeles Police Department investigator who hates him, of killing her. As the body count rises, Cole must track down the real murderer while keeping Pike from his former department's long and vindictive arm. Crais paints here on a larger canvas than in his previous I mysteries (Indigo Slam, I Sunset Express). While he keeps his plot pounding along, he delves into the abused—and abusive—backgrounds of his complex characters. (Doubleday, $23.95)
Bottom Line: Whodunit with salsa and soul
by Suzanne Finnamore
"Insta-Shrew: Just add diamonds." That's how Eve, the 36-year-old copywriter at the center of Suzanne Finnamore's amusing debut novel, describes herself. Sure enough, when Eve gets engaged, her fiancé's flaws spark extreme crankiness: He chews with his mouth open; he comes to bed with toothpaste on his T-shirt; he grows moody; he leaves socks on the floor. Therapy and Valium help Eve make it to the altar. Unfortunately, this short, pointed book never transcends Eve's commitment worries. (Knopf, $22)
Bottom Line: Spare, comic tale of prenuptial jitters
by Dan Rather
For the past few years, CBS newsman Dan Rather has been batting out weekly syndicated newspaper columns that form the basis of this odds-and-ends collection. "Batting" is an apt term because of the lazy swings he takes at many hot-button issues. Police brutality? Quizzing a couple of tight-lipped NYPD patrolmen seems to suffice. Monicagate? "Among the [White House] staff, doubt and fear are spreading like mildew in a damp basement," he reports, pre-impeachment. In fact, Rather's own musty prose style (including his frequent substitution of "your reporter" for "I") could use some freshening. Only in the later innings does our reporter reveal a beguiling sense of humor, as Texas two-stepper Dan confesses his fear of tangoing with Mrs. Rather. (Morrow, $23)
Bottom Line: A few clean hits, but mostly pop flies
Emily Grayson
What hath Robert James Waller wrought? Nearly seven years after his The Bridges of Madison County cloyed its way up bestseller lists, the tear-jerking sons of Bridges just keep coming. The Gazebo traces the long romance of two Upstate New York lovers who meet as teens and spend several idyllic months together before they are torn apart by family duties. Both go on to marry others, but every May 27 for 50 years they reunite—as friends—at the town gazebo. The story is often touching, especially when it hints at the quiet passions that burn in otherwise quiescent lives. But it's hard to warm up to characters who seem so determined to be martyrs and leave us feeling so manipulated. (Morrow, $20)
Bottom Line: Poor construction
Ralph Ellison
When Ralph Ellison died in 1994, he left unfinished the novel he had been working on for 40 years, the successor to 1952's classic Invisible Man. He also left a devoted literary executor, John F. Callahan, who has painstakingly edited and assembled Ellison's manuscript. The powerfully written Juneteenth (the title refers to the date in 1865 on which Union soldiers landed in Texas with the news that the Civil War and slavery were over) begins in the 1950s, when a rabble-rousing, racist senator, Adam Sunraider, is shot on the Senate floor. Observing from the gallery is a preacher, Rev. Alonzo Hickman. When Hickman is summoned to the wounded politician's bedside, the two men begin an operatic literary duet touching on their shared personal history—Hickman raised Sunraider, who assisted the preacher on the revival circuit—as well as larger themes of race and identity, violence, truth and fraud.
Ellison wanted his book to be "on the borderline between folk poetry and religious rhetoric," and he succeeds. Juneteenth combines the beauty of a lyric poem with the soaring force of a sermon. (Random House, $25)
Bottom Line: Powerful and poetic achievement
>Yoko Ono
When musician Sean Lennon, 23, was a child, he and his famous father, John, spent hours together in their sunny New York City kitchen drawing animals. Recalls Yoko Ono, 66, Sean's mother: "John would do a drawing, show it to Sean and say, 'What do you think this is?' And what Sean would say quite often became the title: 'That's a horsey.' " She adds, "There was a beautiful exchange, an incredible visual dialogue between them."
Now, nearly two decades after John Lennon's murder, Ono pays tribute to that dialogue in a new book of the artwork, Real Love: The Drawings for Sean, coming out for Father's Day. She hopes the 39 pictures, which include an owl, a monkey and a walrus—a magical animal he wrote a song about, the ex-Beatle told his son—will spark similar exchanges among today's parents and children. Only 5 when John died, Sean is, according to Ono, "very pleased" by the project, a reminder of times he enjoyed with his father. "John would draw a picture of a frog and say, 'Hop, skip and jump!' " she says. "And Sean would start jumping."
- Contributors:
- Max Alexander,
- J.D. Reed,
- Erica Sanders,
- Mike Lipton,
- Cynthia Sanz,
- Francine Prose,
- Vicki Sheff-Cahan.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
