Justin Peacock’s A CURE FOR NIGHT is one of the better first novels I’ve read lately. Joel Deveraux, Columbia Law School grad, is working for a prestigious New York law firm and making scads of money when he gets involved with Beth, a paralegal with a heroin habit. Joel gets hooked on heroin, too, and disaster follows. After his rehab, Joel finds a job as a Public Defender and assists on a murder trial. A good editor could have fixed some of Peacock’s rambling and tightened up the courtroom scenes. But this is just nitpicking. A CURE FOR NIGHT is an impressive debut novel. I’ll be watching for Peacock’s next work. You should too.

A Swedish journalist and an enigmatic computer hacker investigate the mysterious disappearance of the niece of powerful corporate mogul. The story starts slowly, but builds to a startling conclusion. This is the perfect thriller for the beach.

This isn’t quite as good as The Road, but for the creepiest experience of realization of an author’s work ever read this and then immediately see the Coen Brothers film.

Or just read this because I enjoyed it. McCarthy’s graphic landscapes and sharp, concise, nearly trivial (which is what makes it realistic – i believe) conversation fragments fit both post-apocalyptic England and the cowboys of the south/west quite well.

I understand Neal Stephenson has a bit of a reputation by now for writing books and, er, not stopping. The three volumes of the Baroque Cycle, for instance, have never been read by human eyes, but they have been used successfully in several recent late-night muggings, as blunt weapons.

Zodiac is from before he developed this habit. It’s snappy, fun, full of golden Neal Stephenson wit, and just the right amount of confusing and plot-twisty. Sangamon Taylor is a typical Stephenson hero, a super nerd who makes you wonder why your super-nerdy life isn’t nearly as exciting as his. In this case, it involves zipping hither and thither in Boston Harbor on a crazy custom boat that gives the novel its name, fighting ecological bad guys straight out of “Captain Planet”, having sex and angst with hot, assertive, ultra-granola chicks, and continuing to be surprised at how he almost gets killed like every other chapter.

I don’t know nearly enough about the scientific details to know whether he’s totally getting the chemistry wrong in several places, but hey, the story about Randy doing unix and X11 programming in jail in Cryptonomicon was spot on, so for all I know it’s probably right.