Winkler’s memoir a charming surprise

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This article was published 02/11/2024 (335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We all know The Fonz — or at least we think we do. In Being Henry (Celadon, 256 pages, $25), the man who played Arthur Fonzarelli on Happy Days, Henry Winkler, takes us through his life and career, and it’s a story full of surprises (for instance: he’s dyslexic, which is a serious challenge when your profession involves reading scripts).

Winkler, who’s in his late seventies, has had a long career; if you look at all the things he’s done, as an actor and as a producer, Fonzie represents a relatively small part of his life.

And yet, as Winkler explains in this page-turner of a memoir, it’s difficult to overstate the importance of the character. Would Winkler be the man he is today if he hadn’t lucked into the role of The Fonz (which, we should remember, was supposed to be a relatively minor supporting character until his performance caught on with audiences)?

Refreshingly free of the name dropping and snide talking that turns so many Hollywood memoirs into painful experiences to read, Being Henry is charming, eye-opening and thoughtful.

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Lincoln Rhyme is the star of a series of thrillers written by Jeffery Deaver. In a genre stuffed near to bursting with action heroes, he’s something different: a quadriplegic criminalist. Rhyme tackles cases whose complexity render them almost unsolvable, and does it almost entirely from the confines of his home (which doubles as his office).

In The Watchmaker’s Hand (Penguin, 528 pages, $15), Rhyme’s investigation of a supposed terrorist attack on a construction site leads him to a shocking discovery: the brilliant psychopath known as The Watchmaker has come out of hiding and has hatched another plan to kill Rhyme.

As usual, Deaver keeps us on the edges of our seats, trying to guess what plot twists the author has in store for us or to predict which character might not be who he or she seems to be. Lincoln Rhyme isn’t Deaver’s only series lead, but he’s certainly his most complex and compelling character.

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In Allison Brennan’s The Missing Witness (Mira, 464 pages, $13), Detective Kara Quinn is preparing to testify in the trial of David Chen, who’s accused of human trafficking. When the man is gunned down in front of dozens of people and a key witness against Chen disappears, Quinn and FBI Matt Costa realize Chen might have been merely a small piece of a much larger puzzle. But they won’t be able to put the puzzle together without the missing witness.

Brennan published her first novel in 2005; since then she’s been quite prolific, turning out several trilogies and a few series. This is the fifth Quinn and Costa thriller, and it’s very good. Brennan’s books are often called “romantic thrillers,” which is a bit misleading. You won’t find these in the romance section of your local bookstore; they’re straight-up thrillers that explore the personal lives of their characters, and they’re damned good.

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Gilly Macmillan is on a roll. She’s been publishing for about a decade, but, beginning with 2019’s The Nanny, she’s written one smash hit after another, the latest being The Manor House (William Morrow, 336 pages, $24). It’s the deeply unsettling and nail-bitingly suspenseful story of Tom and Nicole, who buy a new house after winning a lottery. And not just any house — this one features a high-tech, unbeatable security system.

So it’s something of a puzzler when Tom turns up dead in the pool.

That security system? Utterly useless: if somebody murdered Tom, there’s no record of it. Nicole is devastated, but we can’t help thinking that if somebody subverted the security system, she’s a likely candidate.

Macmillan keeps us guessing; even after we’ve finished the book, we still have niggling little doubts, questions that were not, perhaps, fully answered.

And that’s no accident: Macmillan wants us to keep thinking about Tom and Nicole. It’s another winner from a writer who just keeps getting better.

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Halifax freelancer David Pitt’s column appears the first weekend of every month. You can follow him on X at @bookfella.