Fiction

Plugged

Eoin Colfer, Overlook Press, 256 pages.

Eoin Colfer, primarily known for his children's books, shows he can write a terrific crime novel for adults with "Plugged."

Daniel McEvoy, a bouncer for a strip club, has feelings for a woman who works there. He's brash and sarcastic, but his size and military background let him get away with behavior that would land other people in jail. While visiting a seedy doctor for hair plugs, McEvoy is forced to kill a man with mob ties.

Thinking he's covered his tracks, McEvoy then discovers the woman he likes has been murdered. The police believe he's guilty of her murder and the boss of the man he actually killed begins to pressure him to confess to that crime. With the help of some not-so-nice colleagues and a ghost, he tries to get his life back to normal.

"Plugged" is that rare book that mixes terrific suspense with laugh-out-loud humor. McEvoy and his attitude will appeal to fans of both the crime novels of Elmore Leonard and the wacky characters prevalent in the novels of Carl Hiaasen.

Good Graces

Lesley Kagen, Dutton, 352 pages.

Lesley Kagen's "Good Graces" evokes the joys, sorrows and complexities of growing up in a multiethnic, largely Catholic urban neighborhood before the volcanic changes of the later 1960s.

The best thing about this follow-up to "Whistling in the Dark" is the relationship between Kagen's preteen narrator, Sally O'Malley, and her impetuous younger sister, known as Troo. The girls and their high-strung, lousy-cook Mom live with Dave Rasmussen, a police detective and possibly Mom's next husband, if they can obtain an annulment to wipe away Mom's disastrous second marriage.

Lighter summer adventures of tetherball, visiting the library and decorating for a Fourth of July contest sit next to dramas such as an older sister's rocky marriage, an elderly neighbor's serious illness and the inconsolable grief of parents who've lost children. Kagen deftly depicts many characters, such as Wendy Latour, a girl with Down syndrome, and Henry, a gentle boy with hemophilia who's Sally's crush.

Two questions thread through the novel: What happened to a boy who busted out of reform school in Green Bay and might, in the girls' imagination, have a reason to come back at Troo? Who is the cat burglar stealing valuables from the neighbors (and, secondarily, cutting into Dave's date time with Mom)?

Pursuing the latter leads Sally to discover an authority figure gone bad. It also leads to a Lifetime-ish climax that's my least favorite part of the book. Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel