A Fistful of Rain

June 9, 2003
Loaded with grim, brooding detail—from the title quote (a Warren Zevon lyric) to the gallons of Jack Daniel's and beer with which rock musician Mim Bracca marinates her life—Rucka's latest thriller is bleakly atmospheric. His dark portrayals of the music scene, especially in his native Portland, Ore., are pitch perfect. Even the wildly improbable plot has strong moments of real terror and palpable personal tragedy. The real problem is Bracca herself. As a tough female cop shouts at her, "I have never encountered someone as stupid as you about helping herself." Sent home to Portland from the world tour of her hot new rock band, Tailhook, after her drinking gets way out of hand, Bracca immediately finds herself in another kind of nightmare. She is stalked and her privacy is violated; nude photos of her flood the Internet. She is also suspected of murdering her deceptively solid older brother and then of kidnapping and possibly killing their father, just released from prison, where he served 15 years for running over their mother in a drunken rage. Rucka, author of five other thrillers, including the popular Atticus Kodiak series (Finder; Keeper), knows how to create and sustain suspense. But Mim—despite what we learn about the various foster homes she was sent to before finding the musical family that nurtured her—remains such a boozy enigma that readers are likely to find their interest in her problems ebbing long before the tangled denouement.

June 1, 2003
You're young, beautiful, and the guitarist for a popular rock group. Then, without warning, you're fired from the group (you also like to drink a little too much), and, when you come home to L.A., you're immediately abducted, piled into the back of a truck, ordered to strip naked, and then, inexplicably, returned to your doorstep unharmed. Oh, and your father, serving a lengthy prison term, has been released without warning. This is Mim Bracca's story (or the beginning of it, anyway), and it's told with such immediacy, in such you-are-there detail, that readers will feel like they're living it, too. Narrated by Bracca, it's a thriller in which the heroine is totally incapable of dealing with the pressure yet somehow manages to dredge up the strength to fight. It's a story about family secrets, about a past that can't be kept hidden forever, about love and betrayal and murder. Rucka has already written a fistful of successful novels, but this may be his most memorable so far.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)