Review: Unexpected Charms
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 7, 2012
Wow! I read the Prologue and decided I wasn't going to like this book. Then I read Chapter One and was hooked. I read Chapters Two and Three. I had to put it down and do other things, but took it up again at bedtime, waking in the morning to find I had left my light on and my Kindle still beside me.You might be, like me, turned off by gangster land and torture chambers. And, like me, you'll fall hopelessly in love with Peter Talbott, a computer dude working for Symbiotic Software in Boston, who gets mixed up with slimeballs and scumbags because he still loves his wife Terri, who died young of cancer. Soon afterward, our hero reads his own obituary. It's a case of mistaken identity and he thinks it is cleared up until he reads another obituary for the both of them, described as car accident victims. That's when protecting Terri's memory becomes his obsession and drives him to Columbus, Ohio, where he stumbles onto more fake deaths and a major mafia operation. He has to hitchhike to Chicago. From that point on, all modes of transportation come into play.I especially liked the juxtaposition of familiar and weird details in the Chicago scenes. Imagine bringing an injured man to a cozy suburban house with a swing on the porch, geraniums, Spider-Man curtains in the kid's room windows -- and four Chinese men in surgical garb greet you in the alley. Brown's originality peaks in his use of one of the most bizarre weapons you could imagine ('bet you can't). He writes a good romance, too, psychologically deep and yet amusing. The clever, kick-butt Sandy accompanies Pete all the way back to Boston, New York and D.C. They are constantly changing their disguises.Brown has a crazy imagination, but there are enough references to familiar landmarks in these cities that you will go along with him as the plot races toward a deadline.The Devil in the White City:  Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America