Sometimes authors’ homages to other mystery authors are a little mystery in themselves.

Take Sean Doolittle’s new novel Safer about married college professors whose move to a small Iowa city turns into a lesson in terror and obsessive neighbors.

Safer is Doolittle’s first hardcover after four quite good paperback originals.

Like his other novels, Doolittle shows the tension and fear that can erupt in a small town. It’s a refreshing change from the myriad novels set in big cities and Doolittle works this to his advantage.

Here’s a link to a review I recently did on Safer.

Doolittle also has a nice little mystery in his mystery that astute readers (that’s all of you) will pick up on.

In Safer, Paul Callaway has to contend with a burglar on the first night in his new home. After the ordeal and the questioning by the police, Paul relaxes with a novel.

Naturally, it’s a thriller.

Although the title and author are not named, Paul gives enough hints about what he is reading: “The main character . . was a guy who drifted from town to town fixing people’s problems. It was a hell of a story and I couldn’t stop turning the pages.”

Sure sounds like one of Lee’s Child’s novels about Jack Reacher to me.

And no, I don’t know which Child novel Doolittle was alluding to in Safer; I just pulled a copy of his latest thriller.

Anyone want to take a guess about the title of the novel that Doolittle’s character is reading?

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 at 5:41 pm and is filed under Jack Reacher, Lee Child, Oline Cogdill. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.