Pennyworth Books

In The Great Gatsby Scott Fitzgerald presents a study of wealth and ambition through the prism of pathetic characters for which one can find almost no socially redeeming values.

What The Great Gatsby portrays is the sordid story of small band of feeble characters engaged in cheating, adultery, deception, and debauchery. The lavish parties -Jazz-age style- that Jay Gatsby throws to recover Daisy Buchanan (his lost illusions and perfidious lover) are all but wild bacchanalians.

When one thinks about of the rest of the nation, we can breathe a sigh of relief to see that the rest of Americans are engaged in productive enterprise, in rebuilding the nation after the waste of resources that was the First World War. The sordidness of the story applies, almost in its entirety, to that small band of marginal, misguided, and unsavory characters. It isn’t a book about the spiritual dismemberment of America (as many have interpreted…

Blonde to the Bone

By Mike Johnson

Suncoast Publishing (2006)

Reviewed by Irene Watson for Reader Views (1/06)

In the mystery novel, Blonde to the Bone,?Mike Johnson captures a plot that is hilarious as well as entertaining in many aspects. Johnson focuses on the constant feud between twin sisters who seem as different as night and day. After the mysterious disappearance of their father they find themselves in middle of a conspiracy to blow up the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Then to top off all that, each falls in love with the others fianc? As the plot thickens, so does the candor of the story.

While reading Blonde to the Bone?I was drawn into Johnsons writing. He describes each scene and scenario to the fullest leaving me with no questions. In most cases I felt I was right there in the story, often taking on the roll of the character.

Unlike many mystery novels, the sequence…

The novel Down River proves that genre writing can also be literary. Its protagonist Adam Chase is a wrongly accused young man who, with or without meaning to, clashes with almost everyone around him and has to peel himself out of trouble constantly. The first chapter opens aptly with the description of the river in Rowan County, North Carolina, Adam’s family home and the Red Water Farm, and a mention of his childhood trauma.

Adam has returned home to find his old friend Danny Faith, after five years of staying away from everyone including his girlfriend Robin who is a cop. Five years ago, Adam was tried for murder and acquitted, but the townspeople still see him as the murderer. Adam is bitter because his family especially his father did not believe in his innocence. Instead of going home, Adam goes to Danny Faith’s father’s hotel to rent a room, where…