The Dime
By Kathleen Kent. (Mulholland Books/Little Brown, 341 pages, $26.)
Only a fan blowing in the right direction could flip the pages of this lightning-paced tale any faster. It may be her crime-fiction debut, but Kathleen Kent writes with the hard-boiled confidence of a veteran.
Red-haired, Brooklyn-raised detective Betty Rhyzyk lands a drug enforcement job in Dallas, where her fellow cops tease her about being a lesbian, and she f-bombs them right back. We dodge from a suburban stakeout gone horribly wrong to a western-style shootout between drug runners, police and a regiment of Civil War re-enactors. When Betty is violently abducted by Bible-quoting meth kingpins, our hopes for her survival dim almost to black. More action hero than sleuth, Betty is buff, brave and believable. She is a terrific, fully realized addition to her genre.
CLAUDE PECK
The Genius of Jane Austen By Paula Byrne. (Harper Perennial, 334 pages, $16.99.)
Jane Austen is often depicted at her writing desk, cloistered among family. But the lady liked to get out and have a good time. Austen's passion for the theater helps explain why so many of her stories wind up on stage and screen, says biographer Paula Byrne.
Through letters, Byrne tracks Austen from the amateur theatricals staged by her older brothers to London's Covent Garden. All this eventually shows up in her work.
Byrne connects the dots in a way that brings the era's dramatic scene to life. Look, Byrne says, and you can see Austen taking cues from "The Rivals." Read "Mansfield Park," and there's the Bertram family putting on a family theatrical.
This book was published 15 years ago under a different title but has been renamed and repackaged as a companion to Byrne's biography "The Real Jane Austen." It offers substance for students of theater history, excerpts for Janeites and a new Hollywood ending that explains why "Clueless" works and Gwenyth Paltrow's "Emma" doesn't.
MAUREEN McCARTHY
