If you haven’t heard, there was a hor­ri­ble tragedy at Vir­ginia Tech today, as a gun­man killed over 20 people.

Vir­ginia Tech is located in Blacks­burg, Va., a col­lege town about three hours away from where I live. It’s scary that some­thing like this could hap­pen — any­where – but espe­cially this close to home.

Let’s take a minute to say a prayer for those who were killed, the other victims, and their families.

Also fin­ished The Rare Coin Score by Richard Stark, the nom de plume of Don­ald E. West­lake.

The Rare Coin Score is one in a series of books about Parker, a cold, cool thief who does what­ever it takes to get the job done — and who isn’t shy about killing peo­ple who get in his way.

I was really excited to read this book because this is sort of a turn­ing point in the series. Through­out the books, Parker has had no emo­tion­ally attach­ments to any­one — not even to his wife who betrayed him before she killed her­self. But this is the book where he hooks up with Claire, his main squeeze through­out the rest of the series.

The book fol­lows the same pat­tern as the other Parker nov­els. Park­er gets togeth­er with a crew of thieves, this time to rob a coin con­ven­tion. They plan the job, go in to exe­cute it, and things get messed up along the way — which neces­si­tates Parker killing a cou­ple of people.

But the scenes with Claire were what really inter­ested me. Parker is attracted to Claire, and he hooks up with her partly to keep her in line so she’ll keep one of the other crew mem­bers in line. Yet, he does feel some­thing for her, even if it’s only a lit­tle spark of some­thing. At one point, Parker actu­ally con­tem­plates killing her, and the only real rea­son they go off into the sun­set together is that Claire fits in with Parker’s world — not the other way around. Which is com­pletely in keep­ing with his char­ac­ter. You can’t help but root for Parker, even if he is a cold-hearted bastard.

So, thumbs up.

Fin­ished High Pro­file by Robert B. Parker. It’s his lat­est Jesse Stone novel.

Jesse is an alco­holic police chief who lives in a small Mass­a­chu­setts town called Par­adise. This time out, he’s got to solve the mur­ders of a national radio host and his preg­nant girl­friend. But really, the mys­tery takes a back seat to Jesse’s strug­gles with booze and his obses­sion with his ex-wife, Jenn, who claims that she was raped and is being stalked by the guy who did it. The story gets even more twisted when Jesse asks Sunny Ran­dall, his cur­rent squeeze, to pro­tect Jenn from her sup­posed stalker. (Sunny is a Boston, female P.I. who stars in another one of Parker’s series.)

I always enjoy Parker’s books and his sim­plis­tic style. If you want to know how to do good dia­logue and min­i­mal descrip­tion, Parker is your man.

But this one had me shak­ing my head. Because the Jesse-Jenn rela­tion­ship just doesn’t ring true for me. Jesse is a smart, attrac­tive, funny guy. Sure, he has a prob­lem with alco­hol, but really, his main prob­lem is Jenn — the fact that he loves her and can’t let her go.

Jenn is no prize. She’s a ser­ial cheater, who sleeps with men to help her career (she’s gone from TV weather girl to reporter over the last few books). When­ever things aren’t going her way, she calls in Jesse to come and fix them, like this time with her stalker. I just don’t see why Jesse would keep on lov­ing her. He’s even gone to a shrink to help him fig­ure things out (another one of Parker’s sig­na­tures), and he still can’t get Jenn out of his system.

I’d had such high hopes for this after the last Sunny Ran­dall novel, Blue Screen, where she and Jesse hook up. I thought in High Pro­file, they’d both move for­ward together. And that it would be inter­est­ing to read about the same rela­tion­ship in two dif­fer­ent series from the POV of two dif­fer­ent peo­ple. But no, Jesse and Sun­ny both devolve into think­ing about their exes, so much so that they decide to call it quits. (Obses­sive love is another one of Parker’s major themes.)

Sorry, Robert, but I have to give this one a thumbs down for not mov­ing for­ward with your char­ac­ters. Here’s hop­ing you go back to Jesse and Sunny in the future.

What about you? What have you read lately? Inquir­ing minds want to know …

Last week, I blogged about try­ing to decide whether to drive or fly to RWA Nation­als in Dal­las this summer.

I’ve pretty much decided to rent a car and drive.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m a big fat chicken because I’m ner­vous about fly­ing. But hon­estly, fly­ing just seems like a big has­sle. And it would take me almost as long to fly back from Dal­las as it would to drive (once you fac­tor in get­ting to the air­port two hours early and a lay­over in Charlotte).

But, I didn’t entirely base my deci­sion on my cow­ardice. I also had to take finan­cial things into con­sid­er­a­tion. I could basi­cally use the money I’d spend on plane tick­ets and go to another con­fer­ence, namely Moon­light & Mag­no­lias in Atlanta.

So, that’s prob­a­bly what I’m going to do … unless I change my mind again. Just ask my sig­nif­i­cant other. I’m com­pletely wishy-washy when it comes to mak­ing deci­sions.

What about you? Are you dri­ving to RWA? Fly­ing? Inquir­ing minds want to know .…

In case you haven’t looked at my Appear­ances page in a while, here are the var­ios blogs and book sign­ings I’ll be doing in April and May to pro­mote Karma Girl. Hope to see you there!  

April

n April 28: I’ll be doing a guest blog about sur­viv­ing the edit­ing process at Mag­i­cal Mus­ings and my reg­u­lar col­umn over at Romanc­ing the Blog.

May

n May 5: I’ll be appear­ing from 10 a.m.-noon at the Thomas Memo­r­ial Branch Library in Bluff City, Tenn.

Then, I’ll be sign­ing books from 1–3 p.m. at Barnes & Noble in John­son City, Tenn.

And finally, from 4–6 p.m., I’ll be at Moun­tain Empire Comics in Bris­tol, Tenn. sign­ing books as part of Free Comics Day.

n May 8: I’ll be doing a read­ing and sign­ing books from 5:30–7:30 p.m. at Mada­gas­car Cof­fee Co. in Kingsport, Tenn.

n May 12: I’ll be sign­ing books from 12:30–2:30 p.m. at B Dal­ton Book­sellers in Bris­tol, Va.

I’ll be sign­ing books from 4–6 p.m. at Books-A-Million in John­son City, Tenn.

n May 26: I’ll be sign­ing books from 1–3 p.m. at Walden­books in Kingsport, Tenn.

n May 27: I’ll be sign­ing books from 2–4 p.m. at Carpe Librum book­store in Knoxville, Tenn.

Whew! I’m exhausted just think­ing about all these …