Optional reading
The Effect of Living Backwards by Heidi Julavits (Putnam, June 23). Even tortured souls need something to read by the pool. Two sisters are traveling to Morocco for the elder's wedding. Their plane is hijacked--or is the crime actually an antiterrorism field exercise or some sort of twisted game? The real terrorism, however, is from this very un-Ya-Ya sisterhood. Both in their 30s, Edith is a narcissistic seductress and Alice a virginal neurotic. Sibling rivalry congeals into something entirely nasty and new when Alice is asked to interpret for the hostage negotiator. Julavits pokes and prods at altruism and its attendant anxiety, suggesting we're all driven by the secret shame of acting in self-preservation.
FILM RIGHTS: Nothing. You'd think people weren't into hijacking movies or something. TAKE-HOME MESSAGE: There's no time like a hostage crisis to tell your sister she's fat. CASTING CALL: Alice is supposed to be plump and plain, which translates into Renee Zellweger in a heavy sweater and glasses.
Bangkok 8 by John Burdett (Knopf, out now). Every backpacker in Southeast Asia plans to write a book, but Burdett is one of the few to actually do it. A former lawyer, he seems to have enrolled in one too many vipassana courses (meditation retreats de rigueur for any long-term traveler in Thailand) and swallowed Buddhism for beginners whole. What's come back out is a cop thriller that mixes up the dharma with the underbelly of Bangkok. Our guide to this den of drugs, thugs, and whores is one Sonchai Jitpleecheep, a Buddhist cop with vengeance on his mind. He's the half-white son of a Thai prostitute. He's also a former meth head, sociopolitical commentator extraordinaire, and, it appears, the only honest police officer in all of Bangkok. And he has to use his super Buddhist powers to solve the case of an American marine killed by cobras on methamphetamines.
FILM RIGHTS: Nothing completed. QUOTABLE: "He will be reborn as a louse in the anus of a dog." CASTING CALL: Keanu Reeves has played the Buddha. And a cop. Ergo, he could play a Buddhist cop. (Reviewed by Caroline Hsu)
Where the Truth Lies by Rupert Holmes (Random House, July 1). Maybe this book was a game Holmes played with himself: Could he think of an unexpected, funny, and original way to write each and every sentence? His free-flowing pastiche of 1970s culture is free of cliche and convention (except the ones he's mocking). The heroine is wiseass 26-year-old K. O'Connor, a reporter chasing a Brat-Packy comedy duo for its True Hollywood Story (in which a woman's suspicious death lurks). O'Connor's tough-girl commentary nails the era: "Everyone was named Tracy these days. Even people named Jennifer were secretly named Tracy."
FILM RIGHTS: Canadian indie director Atom Egoyan. INEVITABLE CAMEO: Holmes won three Tonys for his The Mystery of Edwin Drood. And he wrote and sang "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" in 1979. CASTING CALL: He suggested Kukla, Fran, and Ollie to USA Today.
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