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GRAVE IMPORTS by Eric Stone Bleak House Books, September 2007 328 pages $14.95 ISBN: 1932557474 Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Reading Eric Stone is, in some ways, quite like reading Andrew Vachss: the content is frequently unpleasant and the writing is wonderful. The characters are seldom people one would want to know, but how the writer portrays those characters makes them incredibly real. GRAVE IMPORTS is an impressive second novel from Stone, who writes eloquently about the more sordid aspects of Asia.

Ray Sharp has changed jobs since THE LIVING ROOM OF THE DEAD. No longer a journalist, he uses the same skills to do investigations of businesses for possible investors. His latest client wants to know about a firm that sells art supplies and does framing. Sharp needs a stand for a totem pole of heads from Irian Jaya, the Indonesian part of New Guinea, and he uses that as the reason for checking out the store. He is offered a chance to possibly buy some Khmer antiquities.

Ray can’t walk away from something without knowing everything; he’s not a man whose curiosity, once piqued, is easily appeased. This brings him lots of grief, and seems to be particularly hard on any woman with whom he has any relationship more complex than one might have with a shopkeeper. In GRAVE IMPORTS, he runs afoul of an ex-South Vietnamese general, spends a surprisingly short amount of time in a prison camp, and generally finds himself in unpleasant circumstances.

Stone, in his author’s notes, states that several of the incidents in GRAVE IMPORTS are based upon events which happened to him or to people he knows. Stone takes fact, which is interesting enough, and makes it into fiction that is compelling and troubling. While one may perhaps not want to actually know Ray Sharp personally, he is quite interesting to read about and his particular brand of ethics is not common in today’s world. GRAVE IMPORTS is proof that Stone’s first book wasn’t a fluke. This man can write.

Reviewed by P. J. Coldren, September 2007

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)

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