Judging from all accounts, the vampire romance novel is here to stay for a good long time. As with any other venue, there will be some good practitioners and some who also ran.

After reading Fanged & Fabulous, Michelle Rowen’s second novel about new vampire Sarah Dearly, I’m inclined to believe that the author and heroine are both going to be around for a bit. Or a bite.

Rowen drinks deeply in the same vein (and I’ve got to stop that soon) that MaryJanice Davidson (Undead and Unemployed) does. In Rowen’s world, as in Davidson’s, vampires are a many-splendored thing, but not necessarily to always be taken seriously.

Sarah Dearly is a riot and a mess, a combination which always seems to strike gold in the romance market. In the previous novel, Bitten & Smitten, Sarah was turned into a vampire by a blind date and very nearly killed by vampire hunters. She also became the lover of an ancient vampire named Thierry de Bennicoeur, who apparently wants to keep Sarah at arm’s distance. During the events of that novel, she ended up becoming known as the Slayer of Slayers, a reputation that guarantees her eternal enmity with the vampire slayers stalking her kind – but it also kind of serves to keep them at arm’s distances as well.

The new novel brings Sarah a lot of problems. Her relationship with Thierry isn’t going well. To make matters even worse, she seems to be getting along better with her lover’s wife than her lover (there’s a definite problem with getting a divorce when you’re a vampire, as Sarah discovers). And there’s only so much sympathy Sarah can take from the wife before she’s ready to snap.

To complicate things further, Sarah is also invited into the inner circle of vampires, called the Ring, by another ancient vampire, Nicolai. It doesn’t help that Nicolai seems to be at odds with Thierry for reasons known only to them.

Then someone blows up Sarah’s apartment. She loses her “shard,” a mystical object that is the only way she has of seeing her reflection (she can’t even check her look without it and has to depend on the honesty of her friends!), a pair of secondhand Pradas that were to die for, and all her other belongings.

With her vulnerability brought into sharp focus, and wanting to do a little butt-kicking in revenge, Sarah starts taking self-defense lessons from the two bodyguards Thierry assigns to keep watch over her. But even as she starts learning to take care of herself, things take another turn for the worse when Gideon Chase – the master hunter of the vampire slayers – locks onto her trail and determines to stake her himself.

Rowen keeps the book moving along quickly. Her wry humor is a lot like Davidsons, and readers of both series may enjoy the resonance between the books or be disturbed by it, but she’s definitely one to read as the vampire romance novels start getting a bit long in the tooth. (Sorry. Compulsive.)

The plot circles a little bit before striking out into new territory, but the scenery is pleasant and the company is good. Fanged & Fabulous is only Rowen’s third novel, so she’s entitled to spend some time sharpening her craft. However, she’s off to an outstanding start and I’m eagerly awaiting her next books.

Stephen Hunter’s book, Pale Horse Coming, is the second book in his Earl Swagger series, following Hot Springs. Like the first book, I listened to the abridged audiobook read by Jay O. Sanders.

The plot gets tangled from the beginning, but I trust Hunter’s writing implicitly. I may be confused for a while out of the blocks, but by the end of the race I know he’ll put all his cards on the table and I’ll know everything. Part of the excitement of this book is trying to figure out everything that’s going on behind the scenes. I had most of it, but Hunter is a master storyteller that threw some surprises and curves my way.

Before I get into the book, I want to talk about Jay O. Sanders’s reading. I found the man absolutely amazing in both books I’ve listened to. Sanders has an ear for Southern dialect and thinking that’s unparalleled. Growing up in Oklahoma as I have, I know when people are affecting the local accent without truly knowing it. Sanders talks the talk like a native. He should. He was born in Austin, Texas. His rendition of Earl Swagger is fantastic and I truly hope he does more of Stephen Hunter’s books. He’s a good fit for the series, just as Will Patton is a good fit for James Lee Burke’s novels.

It’s 1951 and Earl Swagger is an Arkansas State Trooper in this one. His friendship with Sam Vincent, an attorney, that compels him to action. Sam has been hired by a Chicago attorney named Davis Truegood to find out exactly what happened to an inmate of Mississippi’s infamous Thebes prison farm. Sam’s journey through the backwoods country is deftly portrayed and comes to life in Sanders’s narration. The modern world (relatively speaking) drops away in a short time and the atmosphere becomes grim and threatening.

In no time at all, Sam arrives in Thebes and begins asking the wrong kinds of questions. Generally those are the ones that end with a question mark, and even thinking them aloud can get you into trouble. The trouble with the small town sheriff oozes with menace, then things turn even more nasty when Sam realizes he can’t just walk away from the situation and let it go. After he returns in the still of the night to get some paperwork so he can start an investigation, the sheriff frames him for murder.

By this point I was totally immersed in the story. I knew that Earl Swagger was going to saddle up and rescue his friend. That’s what a Marine Corps first sergeant who was awarded the Medal of Honor in Guadalcanal does. And Earl does it in fine fashion. Unfortunately, the rescue goes sour and he’s left behind when Sam makes his escape.

For weeks Earl is held at the prison, and he’s treated unmercifully. The warden’s favorite guard, a hulking goliath called Big Boy, tortures Earl to find out who he really is. Earl sticks to his story that he’s just a man named Jack Bogash who was scouting land to lease for deer hunting. This part of the novel kept reminding me of the Paul Newman movie, Cool Hand Luke — only a lot meaner.

Eventually, though, Earl finds a means to escape. And when he does, he promises to return to the prison and destroy it, burn it to the ground and not leave a stick standing. If you’ve read and enjoyed Hot Springs, you know that a man like Earl Swagger is fully capable of exacting such a terrible promise.

I listened to the novel during several hours of a recent road trip, and I was clinging to every word. The images played through my mind like a movie, and they marched inexorably on to a fine and righteous vengeance. If you like strong male action-adventure novels, Pale Horse Coming is a great one.

The action, the tough-guy dialogue, the reprehensible villains, and the atmosphere of the backwoods Mississippi of the 1950s is awesome. This book would make a good movie, and now that Hollywood has discovered the Swagger family (Bob Lee Swagger in Shooter starring Mark Wahlberg), I can only hope that someone realizes that another great movie franchise would be about Earl Swagger.

Stephen Hunter’s main career focus has been on being a film critic. He’s noted for being a demanding viewer, first for The Baltimore Sun then for The Washington Post. So far he’s written seven novels about the Swagger family. The newest, The 47th Samurai, hits the bookshelves on September 11, 2007 and stars Bob Lee in a story that ties back to Earl’s days in World War II.

Albyn Leah Hall’s book, The Rhythm of the Road, is a great read, but it takes a certain amount of investment on part of the reader till the story gets up and going. The story concerns itself primarily with three characters. Josephine, or Jo, Pickering is a young girl searching for herself. Bobby is her truck-driving daddy. Cosima Stewart is an up-and-coming young country singer who has already gotten a fair amount of fame.

Hall puts these characters into motion, breaks them apart, then pulls them back together in different ways that make for a heart-wrenching story that ultimately satisfies in grand style. But there are a lot of bumps along the highways that Jo travels. This is a hard-eyed coming-of-age novel.

Oh, and I do need to mention that those highways are located in England, not America, and that Bobby drives a “lorry,” not a truck. A cursory glance at the plot makes it seem as though Hall ripped the story right from one of the country and western songs that play on the radio these days.

Jo is dealing with missing mother problems that a lot of readers will probably identify with on some level. A lot of families tend not to stay together these days. Jo’s mom was an American that married her dad, got pregnant and had Jo, and promptly disappeared. Bobby Pickering picked up the parenting slack in ways that most readers will sympathize with and respect, but he made his share of mistakes as well.

Cosima’s story line is good and actually reveals that a lot of the country and western music in the US and in England tends to go along the same lines for a lot of the same reasons.

But it’s Jo’s story, her travels and her quest that ultimately drive the story. Her search for self, especially after Bobby disappears, will captivate readers. Although the plot sounds far-fetched in many ways, Hall makes it all believable by being true to the characters and playing fair with the situations.

The local color of the bars, the highways, the cities and towns, all lend to the willing suspension of disbelief on part of the reader. Everything feels real.

The only problems I had with the novel were the initial slow pacing and the time changes. They contributed to each other, actually, but they also built the characters on several levels at once. Still, it jarred when I was reading a section set in the present, then got yanked back somewhere in the past to meet a different set of characters. Even some of the characters that existed in both time lines tended to be too disparate.

However, once Hall has the ball up and rolling, she doesn’t break pace too often. Everything is at stake and all the characters are involved in following their lives – and it’s interesting and weird how the author brings them together. Their separate motivations are never forgotten, and sometimes they’re at odds with each other.

The dialogue and scene descriptions were especially well done, but my preconceived notions of country and western music and truckers loomed constantly in the background. That’s just not what I imagine when I think of England. But now that those thoughts have been introduced, I know I won’t forget them due to this emotional and evocative novel.

When I saw the title of Marian Salzman and Ira Matathia’s book on trends, Next Now, I was totally lured in. The world is moving at such a frantic pace these days that if you’re not careful, you’ll only be able to keep up with your small part of it. As a father, I like to consider what’s coming down the pipe. I need to be able to advise my kids regarding education, possible job futures, impending medical breakthroughs, health risks, and general states-of-affairs regarding political and economic trends.

I spend a lot of time considering the future and what may or may not happen. And it’s not just about my family. I’m also working writer. The fiction novels I do these days tend to have a lot of research in them. You can’t just write a spy novel with an evil, nefarious villain behind all the bad things that happen to the hero without going into why he’s that way. Readers want to know how that villain is motivated. They want to know what political, religious, or economic sanctions triggered that villain’s point of view.

So I tend to read a lot of online material, periodical magazines, book reviews, books, and watch a lot of television regarding emerging technologies. As it turns out, I’m either more educated in these fields that I thought I was, or the authors of this book didn’t quite go far enough with their explorations of what’s coming next.

Most of material they cover, I was already familiar with to a degree. Moreover, I was disappointed because they usually only superficially skim the surface of material they introduce in the book. In fact, some of the things they write about I’ve already been covering in my fiction for a couple of years. Such as the emerging economic growth of China and the direct challenge to the United States for oil as a consumer. A lot of people blame the oil companies for making vast amounts of profits, and surely they are, but the only reason they’re able to do that is because the market has expanded and the quantity of the product has not. In fact, being more environmentally aware as well as politically conscious of emerging Third World countries has hindered oil production as well.

That increased market has been in the news if you know where to look for it for years. Unfortunately most people, corporate executives are guilty as well, tend not to look at these things. They’re all about the here and now, and don’t focus on the next at all.

Those people will probably be intimidated, shocked, and in awe of what Salzman and Matathia write about in their book. As a primer for the uneducated, Next Now is a great little book that should jumpstart questions and interest. However, those who are fairly fluent in these emerging technologies and trends are going to be disappointed because they don’t get anything really new.

In fact, the book has more focus on the recent past that it does on the next few years it claims it will cover. It’s valuable to a degree in interpreting what is happened and offers some insight into what may be right around the corner.

The writing is workmanlike, though it gets a little clunky of times. Also, there’s a habit of switching topics too quickly. Some of the material begs to be discussed more in-depth and doesn’t receive the attention it deserves.

Furthermore, I would have liked to have more source material available beyond the book. I want to know where the authors got their information, what books or magazines they referenced, who they talked to in order to get the knowledge, so that I might have been able to follow up on some of the information myself.

I’m self-educated in these areas. You almost have to be. By the time a professor puts together a curriculum that will serve to teach you these things, it will be too late to act upon them. I like thinkers. They encourage me to think for myself and to wonder what if.

Next Now is a great book for the uninitiated, but not so much for the professional working in a field that requires glimpses of the coming years.

I love comic books. Every time I open one, it’s almost like holding a movie screen in my hands and watching the progression of action taking shape. However, lately I’ve found it hard to keep up with monthly titles. Too many of them are continued from one month to the next, stretching out least six months or more, and I only get a sense of completion twice a year. This is so the comic book companies can put out what they call “graphic novels.”

In the old days, graphic novels were illustrated stories that couldn’t be told in 22 pages (or 24 pages as when I was growing up). At that time, graphic novels were stand-alone stories that might or might not feature recurring characters.

Somewhere in there, graphic novels simply became a format for comic book companies to re-merchandise product. That form is one of the most successful in publishing these days. When comic book monthly sales were down, the sales of graphic novels were growing. Libraries picked them up. Collectors picked them up. Bookstores put them on the shelves and sold them.

And America, young and old, discovered a brand new love for the format. Graphic novels are published in all sizes these days. My nine-year-old reads pocket-sized versions of Teen Titans while I usually pick up the regular-sized editions of my favorites. If a story captures my interest and I know I will read it over and over again, and if it’s available, I buy it in hardcover.

While I was at Comic-Con in San Diego this year, I got the chance to preview a brand-new graphic novel that is a genuine exercise of the form. The actual book won’t be out until November 19, 2007.

Shooting War by Anthony Lappe and Dan Goldman is absolutely amazing. Lappe is a Guerrilla News Network reporter that has provided extensive coverage of the Iraq war. He’s the author of a previous nonfiction book, True Lies, that was unflinching in its view of the existing war. Lappe isn’t a fan of how things are being handled in that part of the world, nor does he appreciate the slanted news coverage and lack of information that’s been given to the American people.

Dan Goldman co-authored Everyman: Be The People, an illustrated satire of George W. Bush’s presidency and the theft of the American dream. Goldman isn’t noted for pulling punches either.

Together, Lappe and Goldman have created a brand new graphic novel called Shooting Wars. The book is about a young, independent newsblogger (someone who has independent access to the Internet and specializes in covering breaking stories – which isn’t too far removed from what’s actually taking place on the Internet these days).

Set in 2011, Jimmy Burns is a sympathetic character still wrapped in innocence when he first appears on the pages. The opening scene reveals him on the front line in the Iraq warzone. We don’t yet know why he’s there. The story cuts immediately to a time two months ago when Jimmy has his brand-new satellite-feed camera that allows him to upload to the Internet in real-time (which is a really scary thought if you think about it, and that technology is not that far off when everyone is going to Wi-Fi. This look at emerging technology is one of the things I liked about the book, and that wasn’t even a primary focus.)

Almost immediately, the action breaks loose as the Starbucks coffee shop beneath Jimmy’s apartment blows up. The art is amazing. It’s a blend of traditional comic art as well as mixed media involving photographs with computer-generated images cast over them. The visualization of the scenes lends itself to screenplay style format. (And I’ll be really surprised if someone in Hollywood doesn’t snap up the rights to this story really quickly.)

The carnage that occurs during the explosion is visceral. The way that the reaction to Jimmy’s broadcast spreads around the world is awesome. This is the way real-time video blogging would work – but only if the blogger had an audience. In the story, Jimmy’s broadcast is seized by a news conglomerate and broadcast everywhere. The whole world sees the newest terrorist attack on American soil.

The conceit used in the story is one that would happen, and has happened, in today’s world already. When something big happens, people are usually there with video recorders, digital cameras, and cell phones with image-capturing functions (the recent Barry Bonds homerun and all the amateur photographers in the stand comes immediately to mind). The American people know they can usually sell these images or digital footage to media corporations. In fact, there have been shows on television that specialized in live footage shot by amateur photographers.

Overnight, Jimmy becomes a media superstar. The news corporation, Global News, pushes Jimmy into the limelight. And that’s exactly where Jimmy wants to go. However, Jimmy isn’t prepared for what the news corporation is going to do to him. He – and we – find out that they’re not that interested in what he has to say. He’s just part of the show.

But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be able to control him. And I know that’s going to cause all sorts of problems.

The preview ends there. But this backstory is intercut with scenes from the Iraq front line where Jimmy looks haggard and desperate. I know that the authors have a political agenda with their story, and I’m fine with that. But they’re also going to be telling a coming-of-age tale that looks to be filled with adventure and heart. That’s plenty to keep me turning pages.

Although this preview is only sixteen pages long, it’s whet my appetite for the rest of the story. November can’t get here soon enough.

I’d seen Margaret Maron’s name on several books but I’d never picked one up. I found out I’ve been missing a delightful writer. Hard Row is the thirteenth novel of her long-running Judge Deborah Knott mysteries. Now that I’ve read this one, I want to go back and read the others, and probably will make time to do so. That’s the best compliment I can pay a writer.

That, and try to tell other people about the book.

So let me tell you about this book. In Hard Row, Deborah has just gotten married to Sheriff’s Deputy Dwight Bryant. They’ve moved in together, with Dwight’s eight-year-old son, and are dealing with the fallout of trying to mesh their lives together, figure out the pecking order of Deborah as stepmother, and handling Cal’s (the son) natural abandonment issues with his biological mother. She just picked up one day and sailed out of the picture to take care of herself.

The book opens with a prologue set in January at a bar. Hispanic migrant workers gather there to drink and socialize after work. One of them gets into a fight with a white customer who’s obviously spoiling for a physical encounter. This is just a little teaser that sets up the coming action. One of the things I’ve learned in this book is that Maron enjoys telescoping her plots and letting the reader catch glimpses of it along the way.

By the first chapter, we’re in court with Deborah as she deals with the fallout from the bar fight. The scenes told from Deborah’s perspective throughout the book are always told in first-person. I enjoyed hearing her voice on the page and peeking in at her thoughts. Maron is a generous writer and leaves a lot of herself on the page. But she mixes up the first-person perspective with third-person when Dwight and the sheriff’s office work their murder investigation.

Deborah Knott is a down-to-earth woman who grew up in the back hills of North Carolina. Her roots show in her speech and in the way she thinks about things. Within just a few moments, I felt like I had gotten to know a new friend. The pages whizzed by with astonishing speed.

The court stuff was interesting. Court cases and a chance to be voyeuristic on someone else’s troubles appeal to a lot of readers. I enjoyed seeing the small town trouble and how Deborah dealt with it. I grew up in a small town myself, so a lot of the people she was writing about seemed very familiar to me.

Chapter Two gives us a closer look at Deborah’s home life and gives us an idea of her relationship and history with Dwight and her new stepson, Cal. A minor family emergency occurs when Dwight gets called in to work a murder and Deborah is plunged directly into her new role as stepmom to save Cal’s evening. The boy is a big hockey fan, and he and his dad had had plans to go to a game. Deborah picks up the slack and discovers she has a love for hockey, finding yet a new way that her sudden family is going to be able to work out.

As enjoyable as that all is, and given that the mystery smoothly moves into first gear, I was totally blown away by the events in Chapter Five. As it is in a lot of small towns, Deborah’s family owns land that they also farm. Over the years the land has been divided up between several families, which forces them to agree on how to work the land together in order to leverage the most profit. Discussion on which crops to grow, and the potential problems that may grow out of the growing, were intriguing. I grew up around a lot of that myself, but I’ve lived in the larger cities so long that I haven’t thought much of it. I enjoyed getting back to my roots by listening to Deborah and her family discuss these problems that loom so large in the lives of small towns.

The biggest part of Maron’s magic is that small community feeling that’s on every page of her novel. Readers will feel as though they know these people in this town within just a few short chapters. Not only that, but they’ll learn the legal system and the personnel involved with it as well. The vernacular and setting reminded me a lot of author Bill Crider’s Sheriff Dan Rhodes mysteries set in Texas.

In the beginning it seems as though Deborah and Dwight are working two separate cases. Deborah is trying to locate a husband in a divorce court proceeding while Dwight and the sheriff’s office are picking up pieces of a murdered man spread around the county. Of course, readers will probably guess that the two cases are connected (even though the body parts no longer are!) and that the two investigations ultimately lead them to the same place.

But it’s the journey Deborah, Dwight, and the reader take to get there, and the things that happen at home and between family members, that make this a real page-turner. You just can’t get enough of the family problems and issues that are ladled throughout the murder mystery. Maron provides a delicious concoction of puzzle and gossip that is guaranteed to keep readers up past bedtime.

I’m a big fan of Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer character on the television show 24. I like the way Bauer is driven to get the job done no matter what, no matter who gets hurt. It sets him up as great flawed hero among his family and peers, but all of us who love the character know the price he’s paying to stop the bad guys. I also have to admit that I can’t stand waiting from week to week for episodes of the new season. I have to make a deal with myself. I don’t watch the first-run showing of the seasons. After they’re finished, I wait until the DVD sets come out and buy those. I watch those straight through, more or less. It’s easier on me than having to wait every week. I know there are some people who enjoy getting together to watch the episodes and then rehashing the twists and turns of the plot as well as making predictions about what’s going to happen. I tried that it first, and it drove me crazy.

When I first found out Harper Collins paperbacks was going to be releasing new books set in the series, I was excited and dismayed at the same time. I was glad to get the extra Bauer adventures, but I didn’t know how the books were going to pull off the immediacy of the television episodes.

Nor did I want anyone to try to sandwich books between the ongoing series seasons. Bauer’s life changes from season to season and I prefer that that be shown within the television world.

Fortunately, with the tight driving plot lines of the series, publishers weren’t willing to risk trying to elaborate on stories set between the seasons. They elected to go back to earlier in Jack’s career and call the series 24 Declassified. This way we get to see the first season CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit) team in action all over again. From time to time, though, a few mishaps with canon will occur, or the characterization will not quite seem right.

One of the biggest problems in the book series is the fact that all of the television fans who read them know what Nina is really like. We know that she was not a good person, yet the authors of these books have to portray her as decent and professional. But no attempt can be made to evoke a lot of sympathy for character because we won’t buy it.

John Whitman and Marc Cerasini together have written six books in the 24 Declassified novel series so far. Chaos Theory is the latest in the successful run. The book opens with Bauer interrupting a poker game and shooting one of the man dead. This prologue is set a few weeks prior to the opening hour of the next 24-hour run. It sets the plot into motion and raises questions. Two pages later, we learn that Bauer is in prison awaiting trial for murder of a man he shot in the prologue. Questions arise immediately, but they take back seat to the action that begins with a bang. Within minutes, Bauer is attacked by an Hispanic street gang in the shower. He has no idea why he’s been targeted, but he knows something has gone drastically wrong.

It isn’t long before the reader understands that Bauer is in jail because he wants to be. He has a mission on the inside. However, his cover has been blown because someone has taken out all three people that know he’s innocent. Bauer has no choice, as usual, but to take matters into his own hands and move events directly toward critical mass. This is typical, great Bauer action.

The plot is convoluted and multi-layered. The CTU team all have parts to play. Whitman does an excellent job of “seeding” events that lead up to betrayals and double-crosses that play out in the television series. This foreshadowing works well and doubles down on the pleasure the reader receives because not only is a new mission unfolding, the fans get to see some of the other pieces of the television series’ twists and turns fall into place.

The title, Chaos Theory, relates to the action in the book and a lot of ways. Everybody seems to take some part in the chaos that eventually unravels. Nobody’s plans, not Bauer’s or the villain’s, go as intended. Some of the twists and turns can be predicted, and some of the action is a little over the top, but there are some surprises.

I read the book on the plane on the way to San Diego Con this past weekend. With three hours of flight time ahead of me, I wanted something familiar to read that would easily grasp my attention and immerse me in a world other than the airplane. By the time I reached San Diego, I was totally engaged in the book. After arriving at my hotel, I settled in, put my feet up, and finished the read rather than going exploring. For me, that’s a sign of a good book.

Now I know there are five other Jack Bauer adventures awaiting me that I’ll probably be able to cram into my schedule before Season Six arrives on DVD. If you’re a 24 fan, and like to read, these books are for you. If you don’t like to read but love the show, I’d recommend giving these books a try. If the others are like this one, they are lean and mean and move with the same blistering bullet speed as the television series. You may find the book interface seems to disappear completely as Bauer’s adventures come to life inside your mind.

If the rest of the books are like this one, they’re just sheer good fun.

Over the years since his death in 1977, many books, big screen and television movies, and documentaries have been written and filmed about the legend that was Elvis Presley. Despite the fact that he’s been dead for the last 30 years (although you’ll still find some diehard fans and conspiracy theorists who don’t believe that), Elvis has remained a high-profile figure.

Hardly a year passes without an Elvis sighting. His birthday, January 8, never passes without commentary in the news and on the street. And most people, not just fans, remember the date of his death – August 16, 1977. Add up those numbers, 8 plus 16 plus 1977, and you get 2001 which was also the name of the number Elvis used to close his concerts, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Channel 13 on Sirius radio champions itself as “all-Elvis all the time.”

With all of the books and other materials available, not to mention the fan sites on the Internet, it wouldn’t seem that another book of interest about Elvis would be possible. That’s what I was thinking when I saw the title of Joe Moscheo’s new book, The Gospel Side of Elvis. Still, I was curious. However, once I started reading the book, I was pleasantly surprised.

But first a little background is necessary. Joe Moscheo was a member of the group of gospel singers called The Imperials. The group has been around since 1964 and has had several member changes since then. The Imperials still exist as a Southern gospel contemporary Christian venue.

Gospel music has roots in the church, primarily in the South, and is attributed to the African-American culture. Since its inception, the music has been divided between white and black singers. Even back in the 1950s, Elvis came under fire for listening to black music and bringing it into the rock and roll scene. While reading Moscheo’s book, I discovered that Elvis’s interest in that music was longer and deeper than I’d previously believed.

Looking back over Elvis’s career, you can see that he’s never been far from gospel music. This is one of the trends that Moscheo brings out in his narrative. In fact after Elvis’s success on NBC in 1968 in a show that’s come to be known as the ’68 Comeback Special, Elvis got the opportunity to play the International Hotel in Las Vegas. Normally his backup band was the Jordanaires. They had been with him on the television show and had sung with him for a number of years. Unfortunately, due to success they’d been having, the group wasn’t able to do the Vegas shows.

Elvis’s next choice for backup singers was The Imperials. That was when Joe Moscheo really got to know Elvis Presley. From 1969 to 1971, the group performed with Elvis for ten weeks every year. They also attended the concerts after the concert up in Elvis’s room every night. They became privy to lot of Elvis’s private life.

Moscheo’s book isn’t a tell-all bash of the man who’s heralded as the king of rock and roll. Nor does the author praise or defend Elvis. Rather, Moscheo presents a fairly even-handed picture of Elvis. He acknowledges Elvis’s strengths and weaknesses, the things that made him great as well as the things that brought about his downfall.

I enjoyed reading the book a lot. I grew up in the Elvis era. My mom had been one of the girls who had fallen in love with his music back in the 1950s, then fell in love with him all over again in 1968 when he did the live television special. I’d watched that special and thought Elvis was cool. I still own it on DVD. I knew most of what Moscheo writes about in his book. There’s no new material here. Nothing that hasn’t already been written.

What makes this book so good is that while I read it, I felt like I was listening to Moscheo tell me his story in his own words. The book is written in first person and is chock full of anecdotes, memories, and interpretations that are uniquely the author’s own. Moscheo only talks about those things that he had personal experience with. He makes a statement as much about himself and gospel music as he does about Elvis Presley.

The Gospel Side of Elvis is thoroughly readable. I finished the book in a couple of sittings and was reluctant to be done with it. Moscheo’s writing is diverting and consuming. I could tell that he had loved and respected the man behind the music and controversy. There are a lot of pictures of Elvis and The Imperials during their performances.

There may be other books that deal with much of material found between the covers of this one, but I doubt any of them explore the material in the same personal and entertaining way that Moscheo does. This book will undoubtedly be picked up by the fans as soon as it comes out. But I think it would be a good primer for those who want to learn about the Elvis phenomena that started in the 1950s and still lingers within this world.