The Tilting House, by Tom Llewellyn, published by Tricycle Press, hardcover, 160 pgs., $15.99.  ISBN: 978-1-58246-288-2.  Release date: 6/8/2010.

                The story may be aimed for middle-graders (age 8-11), but I thoroughly enjoyed reading this imaginative, fully-realized mystery/suspense novel, with its bits of “magical realism,” science, and fantasy that enliven the plot. 

                The Peshik family is looking for a home to buy in the Tacoma, Washington area, and their choices are limited by income.  Dad works at an art museum and Mom, part-time at a school.  They’ve been living in a two-bedroom apartment where the narrator, Josh, has been sleeping on the living room couch, while his younger brother, Aaron and Grandpa are in one bedroom and his parents in the other.

                A real estate agent shows them a large house in a decent neighborhood, built by a reclusive eccentric, with floors tilting three degrees inward and writings, diagrams, words and drawings scribbled in pen and pencil covering the walls.  When the agent lowers the price by $20,000, the Peshiks are able to buy the home.

                Josh is determined to find out what the scribbling means and sets out to discover what he can about the previous owner and the house.  He meets a neighbor, Lola, a year younger than Josh, who tells him that the house is weird and there are rats that live inside.

                Yes, a whole family of them—the Dagas—with a wiseguy patriarch named John—who is furious that Hal Peshik killed Jimmy, a member of the family, and he vows to get even.  Talking rats?  Yes, and characterized as if a talking rat is something natural to the order of things.  Most important, they are key to the furtherance of the story.

                A house that holds many mysteries and perhaps a dead body, with the Daga family of rats dropping clues (among other things) along the way.  Icky green moss that almost engulfs the boys and their dad while camping, a dimmer switch that makes the house disappear, a neighborhood thief and The Mumbler, who lives across the street, a mysterious pair of funeral directors: put them all together (not necessarily in that order), and first-time novelist, Tom Llewellyn, delivers a most satisfying read for any age.

                Check out the web site for the book: www.thetiltinghouse.com. 

                This novel, last of a trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl who Played with Fire), delivered to the publishers after Stieg Larsson’s death in 2004, has risen like a rocket to the top of every best seller list as of this date.  And for good reason: it wraps up the story of the mysterious misfit and computer hacking genius, Lisbeth Salander, and her erratic relationship with the journalist, Mikael Blomkvist.

            This is a tale of multiple conspiracies, complex characters and morality.  Unfortunately, the novel begins where The Girl who Played with Fire leaves off, so in order to fully understand what is going on, it helps to have read the two prior novels.  That said, Lisbeth Salander lies in critical condition after being shot in the head by an assailant who has murdered three other people, but Salander is about to be charged with their murders anyway.  The Swedish clandestine service (similar to the CIA) needs to put her away in order to stop her from exposing their activities to the light of day, including the crimes of her father, a Russian defector and hit-man, who abused her mother to the point where she ended up in a nursing home.  After Salander tried to kill him, she was committed to a psychiatric facility for children, where she languished for years until she was rescued by a guardian who put her computer skills to work in his business.

                Blomkvist, who Salander had assisted in a case that would have sent him to jail, considers her a friend, even though Salander keeps pushing him away.  He is determined to rescue Salander from the fate that that awaits her and hires his sister, an attorney, to help defend her.  Salander recovers slowly and with the aid of Blomkvist, a sympathetic physician and smuggled-in electronics, she works from her hospital room to expose the criminals and their reasons for wanting to incarcerate her.  The last section of the novel wraps up loose ends and races through her trial and follows Salander as she frees herself from the past and begins life as an independent woman. But it’s still not over.  Salander is left one-half of her late father’s estate.  When she decides to check out one of the properties, she unwittingly steps into the lair of the real killer, and the resulting battle is a fight to the death.