FICTION

Tom Rachman, The Imperfectionists (The Dial Press). "This first novel by Tom Rachman, a London-born journalist who has lived and worked all over the world, is so good I had to read it twice simply to figure out how he pulled it off.... it takes place in Rome. The characters are, for the most part, the staff of an unnamed English-­language newspaper founded in the 1950s — for reasons not revealed until the end — by an eccentric American businessman with the perfect name of Cyrus Ott. By 2004, his grandson, Oliver, will be in charge of the fates of the staff members whose stories make up the novel. More’s the pity, since Oliver’s only concern in life is for his basset hound, Schopenhauer. nytbr.

Scott Turow, Innocent (Grand Central). "All of which makes for an intelligent, thoughtful novel: a grownup book for grownup readers. It is marred somewhat by the narrative device Turow has chosen. The individual voices of Rusty, Nat and (less frequently) Anna tell Rusty's side of the story, while an omniscient narrator tells Tommy's. This means more or less constant gear-shifting on the reader's part, made all the more puzzling because all the voices sound more or less like . . . Scott Turow. He is always a pleasure to read and sometimes an education as well, but at times here he gets in his own -- and the reader's -- way." Jonathan Yardley, wp.

Eli Horowitz and Mac Barnett, Clock (McSweeney's). (v. foto) "...is a house-shaped board book chock full of mystery, humor and stunning artwork... The mystery takes place in an urban apartment building where detective Roy Dodge and his assistant Gus Twintig, who also serves as the narrator, have been summoned to interview a dozen eccentric residents as they investigate the theft of 12 emerald-encrusted numbers from the tower clock's face. sfc.

NONFICTION
Mark Pendergrast, Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). "... tells the story of the EIS and of the men and women who served as investigators in its ranks and helped bring about some of the biggest medical triumphs of the last century." bg.

DA LEGGERE

Why men don't read books, di Laura Miller. salon.