Dan Webster

If you know the name Robert Clark, it's likely because of his 1999 novel "Mr. White's Confession." The story of a murder investigation set in 1939 Minnesota, Clark's novel received the kinds of reviews that some of us would consider pinning to our pajamas.

We're heading into the second week of the new year, and you know what that means. We need to start thinking about limericks. The ninth annual Spokesman-Review Limerick Contest, to be specific. As in the past few years, three limerick writers will win prizes (sometimes gift certificates, sometimes books) while all authors whose work is chosen for publication in the newspaper will be invited to read publicly on March 17 at Auntie's Bookstore. Notice that date? It just happens to be St. Patrick's Day. Nice timing, eh?

Spokane is used to unfortunate headlines. Serial rapists, eccentric county commissioners, downtown parking-garage controversies, serial killers, eccentric city council members, mayoral recalls – the list goes on and on. That's one reason why the paperback book that just landed on my desk might make for some interesting reading. If nothing else, it proves that other Washington cities have problems, too. "Tacoma Confidential: A True Story of Murder, Suicide and a Police Chief's Secret Life" (Signet, 359 pages, $7.99 paper) by Paul LaRosa is just what its title indicates: an exploration into what happened on the afternoon of April 26, 2003, when David Brame shot his wife and then turned the gun on himself.

What with Christmas coming up, it seems only appropriate to talk about religion. To be specific, Catholicism. And to be absolutely precise, a book titled "Key Moments in Church History" (Rowman & Littlefield, 195 pages, $17.95 paper) by Mitch Finley. Finley, as some of you may recall, used to run the literary readings at Auntie's Bookstore. He quit that job to take a position as staff writer for the Inland Register, the official news magazine of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Spokane. Which means that he knows a bit about the church. He's proven that amply enough by having written more than 30 other books on various aspects of Catholicism, as it exists both now and in the past.

James Welch wrote well enough to make even the harshest criticism go down smoothly. A Blackfeet/Gros Ventre novelist and poet from Missoula, Welch – who died in 2003 – wrote books that bridge the expanse of the Native American experience.

There are more locally based authors than you might expect. Auntie's Bookstore will give you a chance to meet seven of them on Saturday when it hosts an unusual gathering of area talent. The event, which will occur between 12:30 and 2:30 p.m., is being called a "Booksigning Extravaganza." No exaggeration needed. Scheduled to appear is a varied collection of writers, led by the nationally acclaimed Jess Walter, author of "Over Tumbled Graves" and "Land of the Blind." Walter's most recent novel is "Citizen Vince."

National Book Awards can make a career. And that's a good thing for, say, William Vollman. Because unlike some of the other finalists in the fiction category of the 2005 awards – specifically, E.L. Doctorow – Vollman is relatively unknown. Yet his novel "Europe Central" beat out not only Doctorow's "The March" but also Mary Gaitskill's "Veronica," Christopher Sorrentino's "Trance" and Rene Steinke's "Holy Skirts." "Europe Central," an 832-page compendium of literary styles that explores a "reimagining" of World War II, is – according to the judges' citation – "scrupulously researched, rigorously designed, scarifingly voiced … this omnibus is heroic art, the writer's courageous immersion in totalitarian ugliness to retrieve forgotten moral heroes."

In August, The Spokesman-Review Book Club read Jonathan Raban's poignant 1999 memoir "Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meaning." Raban has a new book out, titled "My Holy War: Dispatches from the Home Front" (New York Review Books, 193 pages, $21.95), and it's taken up a topical subject: post-9/11 America and its war against Islamic extremism. As Raban wrote for the book's introduction, shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, he began getting calls from editors both in New York and London.

"Happy Endings" ••1/2

Spokane is a great place to … Well, you can fill in the blank yourself. Just know that Rich Karlgaard could do it and say a lot of nice things. Just as he does in his book "Life 2.0: How People Across America Are Transforming Their Lives by Finding the Where of Their Happiness" (Three River Press, 373 pages, $13.95 paper). Karlgaard includes Spokane in his list of "150 Cheap Places to Live."

The best thing about a festival of short films is that if you don't like one, all you have to do is wait a few minutes for the next one to start. And the best thing about the short-film festival tonight at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture can be summed up in its very name: The Best of the 31st Northwest Film and Video Festival.

Not that I'm trying to drum up some early interest or anything, but …Get Lit! is coming. The eighth annual literary festival, sponsored by the Eastern Washington University Press, is scheduled to run April 20 through 23 at various sites in Cheney and Spokane. To get prepared, you might consider attending the Doug Peacock reading on Thursday at 7 p.m. at The Met. It'll cost you $10, but the event is a Get Lit! fund-raiser, so you can feel good about doing two things at once: exposing yourself to, and helping sponsor, art. Peacock, who lives in Livingston, Mont., is the author of "Walking It Off: A Veteran's Chronicle of War and Wilderness" (EWU Press, 208 pages, $19.95). The book has been called "a paean to Edward Abbey," the late writer, cranky champion of the environment and author of "The Monkey Wrench Gang."

You can always learn something from a professional. That's why anyone who wants to learn about writing might find it worthwhile to attend the one-day Spokane River Writers Workshop, a joint Gonzaga University-Whitworth College event that will be held Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at GU's Bozarth Retreat Center, 12415 N. Fairwood Drive. Faculty members from both schools, all of whom boast professional writing credentials, will make up the workshop staff. From GU that includes Dan Butterworth, Beth Cooley and Tod Marshall and from Whitworth, Nadine Chapman, Laurie Lamon and Vic Bobb. Sessions will be held in topic areas such as building character, creating and developing story ideas, and spiritual exploration.

Timing is everything, even when it comes to books and museum exhibits. An exhibit titled "The Mapmaker's Eye: David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau," which offers a look at the journals, maps and other artifacts left from the Canadian explorer, opened Saturday at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. In conjunction with the exhibit, Washington State University Press has published a book bearing the same title. Written by Jack Nisbet, author of "Sources of the River: Tracking David Thompson Across Western North America" and "Purple Flat Top: In Pursuit of a Place," the book, according to a press release, "uses new research and many previously unpublished sketches, maps and photographs to tell the remarkable story" of Thompson.

And with book four, Spokane Is Reading … about art. It's been three years now since a group of area organizations, from the Spokane Public and Spokane County Library systems to Auntie's Bookstore, joined forces to support the formation of a region-wide reading community.

Those of us who spent our early years watching 1950s television remember the golden era of the TV Western. Taking up where the movies left off, the television Western series – from "Gunsmoke" to "Bonanza" and, later, the likes of "The High Chaparral"– offered up the standard stereotypes: the hardy pioneer, the lonely cowhand, the plain-speaking schoolmarm, the tough town sheriff, the cattle baron, the saloon gal, the gunfighter … and so on.

Sometimes films that seem to say nothing end up saying just about everything that's worth putting in words. Or, in the case of the 1992 film "Baraka," everything that's worth putting in images accompanied by music.

According to Michael Gurian, "If Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer were alive today, they'd be diagnosed with a conduct disorder and put on Ritalin." That may be a funny line, but Gurian isn't laughing. In his new book, "The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons from Falling Behind in School and in Life," from which the Spokane-based researcher/author reads at 7:30 p.m. on Monday at Auntie's Bookstore, Gurian passes on some pretty depressing news. Fact: Boys make up 70 percent of the learning-disability diagnoses. Fact: Boys make up 80 percent of the behavioral-disorder diagnoses. Fact: Boys make up 80 percent of the ADD/ADHD diagnoses. Fact: 80 percent of high-school dropouts are boys.

First novels typically don't get rave reviews. They typically don't get reviewed at all. Jim Lynch's novel "The Highest Tide" (Bloomsbury, 246 pages, $23.95) is, then, an unusual creation because it is getting a wide range of good, if not great, comments. Some critics have minor problems with Lynch's book, a tale about a young boy who finds strange creatures in Puget Sound. But all the reviews that I could find end up liking it.

It's not every author who gets a mention in the Los Angeles Times. And authors from the Inland Northwest who get mentioned positively in the Times' Calendar section are even rarer. Yet Cheney's John Soennichsen is among that number. Soennichsen's book "Live! From Death Valley: Dispatches From America's Low Point" (Sasquatch Books, 192 pages, $22.95) was reviewed in the Sept. 4 Calendar section by Times critic Susan Reynolds. "Live!" is a combination nature study, travel book and memoir, not to mention a love letter to a part of the country that to some people has about as much appeal as eating sand. Soennichsen, a freelance writer who's had short pieces included in the "Chicken Soup" series, includes facts (a million or so tourists visit the 3.4-million-acre national park yearly) that he's gleaned in the two decades that he's trekked, camped at and otherwise explored the area.