Book News
PM’s dull image burnished
The British prime minister’s dull-as-dishwater image is getting a revamp from an unlikely source: U.S.-based comic book publisher Marvel.
Gordon Brown, who has been in the political doldrums of late and is often described as buttoned-down, is depicted in a heroic light in “Captain Britain and MI:13,” a new comic that shows the prime minister helping stave off an attack of evil, green-skinned aliens.
To do so, he works with a fictional intelligence agency known as MI:13 that seems closely modeled on MI5, the real British domestic agency, and MI6, the overseas intelligence agency.
It is all quite a makeover for Brown, who has been tumbling in national opinion polls since taking over for the more charismatic Tony Blair less than a year ago.
Saving the world from alien domination, even in a comic book, can only burnish your reputation. So it is no surprise to find that the comic was written by a Brown fan, Paul Cornell, a successful novelist and television writer. The Associated Press
First Line
Executive Privilege, Phillip Margolin
Dana Cutler’s cellphone rang moments after Jake Teeny’s pickup disappeared around the corner and seconds after she closed the door of Jake’s house, where she was house-sitting while he was away on an assignment.
“Cutler?” a raspy voice asked as soon as Dana flipped open the phone.
“What’s up, Andy?” she asked.
Andy Zipay was an ex-cop who’d left the D.C. police force under a cloud a year before Dana had resigned for different reasons. Dana had been one of the few cops who hadn’t shunned Zipay, and she’d sent business his way when he’d set up shop as a private investigator. Six months after her release from the hospital, Dana had told him that she wouldn’t mind working private if he had some overflow and the jobs were quiet. Zipay gave her assignments when he could, and she appreciated the fact that he had never asked her what had happened at the farm.
BookSense BestSellers
Fiction
1. The Host, by Stephenie Meyer
2. Careless in Red, by Elizabeth George
3. Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri
4. Snuff, by Chuck Palahniuk
5. Bright Shiny Morning, by James Frey
Nonfiction
1. The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch
2. Audition: A Memoir, by Barbara Walters
3. The Post-American World, by Fareed Zakaria
4. Just Who Will You Be? Big Question. Little Book. Answer Within, by Maria Shriver
5. The Downhill Lie: A Hacker’s Return to a Ruinous Sport, by Carl Hiaasen
booksense.com
