Denise Mina: Slip of the Knife

Genre:
Mystery - Contemporary, Tartan Noir

Escape Experience:
Experience the gritty city of 1990 Glasgow, Scotland -- its blackened, soot-covered buildings bearing mute testimony to the daily struggles of its hardboiled, resilient denizens.

Read this if you're into...
Keeping abreast of international affairs. You start your day with a cup of Starbucks coffee (caffeinated, of course), The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. You end your day with a glass of ruby port, CNN and CNBC.

Plot:
Newspaper columnist Paddy Meehan learns that her ex-lover (also a news journalist) has just been killed. He's also left her everything in his will, including his old notebooks and photos. Then on the heels of launching an investigation into his murder, Paddy's apartment is ransacked and someone is following her every move. Is it the IRA?

Pace: Reading this is like walking in a pair of...
Climbing shoes -- but you're not walking: you're free-climbing up a sheer rock wall, groping for each tiny handhold and foothold, inching your way up to a summit you can't see.

Cast of Characters:

• Patricia "Paddy" Meehan - A single mom and journalist known for her ranting newspaper column. Chain smoking, junk food loving (and unapologetically overweight), verbally explosive (she cusses like a fisherman with a finger caught in a hook), Paddy is an icon for the unconventional and fiercely independent woman.
• Callum Ogilvy - A 19-year-old boy just released from a nine-year jail term for murdering a child, Callum gropes his way to a life outside his prison walls.

Books in the Paddy Meehan Series:

1. Field of Blood
2. The Dead Hour
3. Slip of the Knife

Other authors you might like:

• Val McDermid - For more Tartan Noir, enter the world of journalist Lindsay Gordon in Report for Murder.
• Ian Rankin - For another unapologetic and hardboiled Scottish protagonist, follow the exploits of Inspector Rebus in Knots and Crosses.

Links:

• About the author - Official site; Wiki site
• About Glasgow, Scotland - Wiki site; tourism
• Careers in journalism

Richard Feynman: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Genre:
Nonfiction - Essays

Escape Experience:
Ever wonder what's it like to see the world through the eyes of a certified genius? Read this book to rediscover and reaffirm that life, with all its fleeting and often unexpected moments, is a wonderful, glorious gift.

Read this if you're into...

Wearing Sheldon t-shirts(you know: those geeky but decidedly cool looks from "Big Bang Theory"), under either a hoodie or a tweed jacket, along with vintage straight-legged jeans and tastefully tattered sneaks. On your wrist, you sport a night-glow digital watch, made from recycled materials. You also love playing on bongo drums or just about any kind of drum -- even on your sibling's head in your wild and wicked childhood (light, loving taps of course!), although not necessarily to your sibling's amusement. In short, you're an unconventional, bright, free-spirited individual (emphasis on "individual") who's got the gumption to be your own genuine self and to live life to its very fullest. Your motto is carpe every single diem!

Plot:

This is a collection of Feynman's best short essays and transcripts, delivered in quintessential Feynmanese, on a wide array of topics: Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project; science and religion; doubt and uncertainty; and a delightful set of annecdotes about his father, teaching a young, impressionable Richard about the wonders of nature, awakening in him the pleasure of finding things out.

Pace: Reading this is like walking in a pair of...

Comfortable-to-the-nth-degree Keds sneakers, strolling through the neighborhood, alert and attuned to even the faintest flutter of a dragonfly wing, beating to its own life rhythm.

Cast of Characters:

Richard P. Feynman - Winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in physics for his work in quantum electrodynamics. A truly lovely man who geniunely cared about his fellow man and embraced every facet of life (including the experience of his own death), yet ironically assisted in the development of the atom bomb.

Other Books by Richard Feynman:

• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
• The Meaning of It All
• What Do You Care What Other People Think?
• Tuva or Bust!
• The Feynman Lectures Complete Audio Collection
• Six Easy Pieces

Other authors you might like:

• James Gleick - Genius, a biography on Richard Feynman
• Sylvia Nasar - A Beautiful Mind, a biography on mathematician John Forbes Nash

Links:

• About Richard Feynman - Wiki site; Nobel laureate page
• The Feynman Lectures Website
• Drawings by Feynman 
• Infinity - A movie based on Feynman's life, with Matthew Broderick as Feynman
• YouTube interviews with Feynman - On doubt, uncertainty and religion; on The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5)

Bruce Alexander: Person or Persons Unknown

Genre:
Mystery - British, historical fiction

Escape Experience:

Go back to a time of no smart phones, cell phones, pagers or other pesky mobile devices; no text messaging, e-mail or Internet, wireless or otherwise; no telephone or telegraph; no GPS, radio, satellites or cable television -- the bliss of (almost) absolute disconnectivity. No automobiles, gas or electric stoves, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers or Swiffer mops and dusters -- the simplicity or drudgery (depending on your personal proclivities) of a pre-technological, pre-industrial world. It's 1770, London, England -- a time of nascent laws and an infant police force.

Read this if you're into...

Tuning into the History Channel and tuning out of your frenetic, hyper-connected, modern-day existence. You devour any and all documentaries on pre-Revolutionary War America and England, often imagining yourself living in that time period. You're also one of those rare creatures who still sends hand-written notes on personalized stationery.

Plot:

London, England, 1770: Scotland Yard is in its infancy and a mere 20 constables and a local magistrate shoulder the burden of preserving peace in the land. Prostitutes are turning up dead in the dark alleys of London, stabbed with a stiletto or vivisected with surgical precision. Blind magistrate Sir John Fielding and his 15-year-old assistant Jeremy Proctor lead the chase for the killer (or killers).

Pace: Reading this is like walking in a pair of...

Penny loafers, as you wander through the stacks in Oxford University Library's history room. You want to be comfortable because you'll be browsing a long while: you don't want to overlook that obscure but fascinating historical volume, tucked among dusty, leather-bound tomes.

Cast of Characters:

• Sir John Fielding - The "Blind Beak of Bow Street" and co-founder of the New Scotland Yard. A blind magistrate who established and formalized much of modern-day policing procedures, including the first criminal database. Through his other (heightened) senses, the Blind Beak "sees" what the sighted often miss: the deceits and insecurities hidden under the most practiced masks.
• Jeremy Proctor - Narrator and fictional character. Orphaned 15-year-old Jeremy was rescued from unjust imprisonment by Sir John Fielding and given a permanent home and the opportunity to study the law. In return, Jeremy renders whatever services are necessary in running Fielding's household and assists Fielding in his investigations.
• Gabriel Donnelly - An Irishman formerly serving as a surgeon in the British navy. Donnelly pioneers the role of medical examiner, aiding in the investigations of Sir John Fielding.
• The Bow Street Runners - Established by Sir John Fielding and his half-brother, novelist Henry Fielding, a constabulary force that lays the foundation for the New Scotland Yard.

Books in the Sir John Fielding Series:

1. Blind Justice
2. Murder in Grub Street
3. Watery Grave
4. Person or Persons Unknown
5. Jack, Knave and Fool
6. Death of a Colonial
7. The Color of Death
8. Smuggler's Moon
9. An Experiment in Treason (featuring Benjamin Franklin)
10. The Price of Murder
11. Rules of Engagement

Other authors you might like:

• Robert Lee Hall - Nicolas Handy assists Franklin in Benjamin Franklin Takes the Case.
• Anne Perry - Begin the William Monk series with The Face of a Stranger.

Links:

• About the author
• Sir John Fielding biography
• About the Bow Street Runners
• History of New Scotland Yard (Metropolitan Police)  
• London Horror Tours - Book a walking tour through London's macabre past