I received an email coupon for 20% off at Borders and decided to see if I could go find something to use it on last Sunday. I had nothing in particular in mind this time, so I wandered aimlessly among the shelves, checking out the SF, the mysteries, some sports stuff, some non-fiction, and really didn't see much that jumped out at me. In other words, none of my very favorite authors has anything new out that I don't already have. So finally, wanting to leave, I settled on an author I'd seen here on Journalscape: S.J. Rozan.

I had been reading a book by Richard Morgan, a futuristic SF detective story. It's a good read, interesting, but doesn't seem to compel me to pick it up at ever break I get. (The story is about a detective who is asked to investigate a murder, asked by the victim himself. See, in this future, people's minds can be digitized, copies can be made and stored, and they can be "resleeved" when and if necessary. It's a pretty interesting concept.)

Anyway, I had left that book upstairs,and so I grabbed my new S.J. Rozan book, called WINTER AND NIGHT, which is a detective story which ends up having a few ideas layered into the story. Aside from the usual drugs and sex and murder, there is a missing kid, tons of family issues, steroid abuse, and the biggie, high school culture and the Littleton/Columbine type of crimes.

I read this book in one day. It was one that I could barely put down, unlike Morgan's ALTERED CARBON, and I finally finished it late yesterday. I loved the main characters, the interactions, the settings, the description, and the plot.

Now I have to go and find everything else she has written and read it. Darn. Just what I needed: another must-read author.