HELPLESS - Daniel Palmer

First line: Love can make you do surprising things.

The bitter divorce is not a foreign concept in the United States. And Tom Hawkins deals with that bitterness from his ex-wife Kelly. He could tolerate the cold shoulder from her if she wasn’t poisoning their daughter Jill’s view of him as well.

Tom coaches Jill’s soccer team and makes extra efforts to overcome Kelly’s negativity, but there’s still a chasm that exists between he and Jill. It’s that chasm that wreaks havoc on Jill’s ability to trust Tom when Kelly is murdered and Tom is accused of inappropriate behavior with his soccer players. When evidence starts to surface proving the accusations, Tom has to race time to protect Jill and find out who is working to destroy his life.

Daniel Palmer proved his thriller-writing chops with his debut novel, DELIRIOUS. Now back for Round Number Two, he’s honing those skills and the readers reap the benefits. HELPLESS is a fast-paced, timely novel that will have parents checking their children’s cell phone daily, if not hourly. Building on his foundation of suspense-writing, he moves away from the techno-thriller and into our everyday lives. We don’t wonder if technology like that can exist. We’ve read about sexting in our newspapers and heard related crimes on the TV news shows. Tom’s experience seems less like a conspiracy and more like a terrifying reality.

The greatest growth I see in Palmer’s writing between DELIRIOUS and HELPLESS is his character development. This may be in part due to the circumstances he’s created for his characters in this second go round, but the depth of Tom’s character intermingled with his struggling father-daughter relationship creates an empathetic protagonist. And likewise, Palmer does an exceptional job of illustrating the conflicted teen-age girl. His uncanny representation of all of the teens in this novel would lead you to think there are several living in his house with him. That’s not the case, so the fact that he’s done so well with them is a credit to his skill.

If I highly recommend this novel, I must also give it a warning. If you pick it up, you’ll be HELPLESS to put it down.

HELPLESS is available today in hardcover (ISBN: 9780758246653 ) from Kensington and on audio (ISBN: 9781611063516) from Brilliance, narrated by Phil Gigante.

Odds and Ends and the 2012 Theme Week

Time is already trying to speed by me in 2012. Goodness. To bad this snow isn't speeding by. I'm over it already.

I wanted to share a few odds and ends with you. The first being a "full disclosure" type of thing. I have been doing some work now for awhile with Maddee James at xuni.com, as you know. And I've also started to do some support work with Erin Mitchell for her business HEW (which handles author PR). Some of the authors I read are clients of Maddee or Erin. Their status as clients doesn't change the stipulations for reviews here. I still have to be interested in a book to read it and I have to like it to post about it. There are no expectations that my blog will be used for anything related to either organization. It is my personal and private endeavor - so my opinions reflect only ME, not xuni.com and not HEW.  That being said, I am also going to label any of those authors with the "xuni" tag or the "HEW" tag, so you know if they have that connection. You may take that into consideration when deciding whether  you're going to heed my advice on a book. It's very important to me that I'm up front about it.

O.k., on to fun stuff, like World Book Night. Have you all heard about this? I've mentioned it on Twitter and Facebook because I put my name into the hat for consideration as a book giver. I hope you'll take a minute or two to check it out. And if you're interested, sign up to be considered as a book giver!

There are a couple of book giveaways that Regal Literary is holding you might be interested in. First they have Josh Bazell's WILD THING and then also Donato Carrisi's THE WHISPERER. You have to enter by February 8th to be considered for those.

Speaking of giveaways! Congratulations to Michael A (CA) and Bobbie R (IL) who won the TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY giveaway here. I have passed on your mailing addresses to the folks at Focus Features (trying saying that three times fast) so you can receive your loot! I loved all of your spy names.

And the last item I have for this post is the blogger sign-up for this year's theme week. The theme is "Heroes & Villains" and will encompass all sub-genres. So no matter what crime fiction you fancy, it will fit in this year's theme week. The dates of the theme week are April 16-20. I hope you'll join in. And I hope you'll encourage others to join in as well. I'd love for some folks who aren't typical readers of the genre to give it a try. Really, what do you have to lose? Bloggers interested in participating, please just complete the quick form below and I'll be sending out an info sheet with all the specifics.



Stay warm and happy reading!