MCCLOSKEY: ART AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF ROBERT MCCLOSKEY

By Jane McCloskey

Down East Books, 2015

264 pages, $35

Maine has a well-deserved reputation for producing wonderful, accomplished artists, and Robert McCloskey is in good company.

As an award-winning artist and illustrator, Robert McCloskey (1914-2003) is perhaps best-known for his beloved children’s books, such as “Make Way For Ducklings,” “Blueberries For Sal” and many others, but he was also equally adept at drawing and painting people, places and activities.

The author is his daughter, Jane, who lives in the family home on Deer Isle. She has created a vibrant, colorful and fascinating history of her father’s work, revealing much about the man, his life, his methods and his imagination.

This attractive volume is part biography and part art history, as she tells of McCloskey’s life growing up in Ohio, going to art school, raising his family, living on an island in Penobscot Bay and traveling to Mexico, Europe and the Caribbean.

She also wisely provides excellent examples of his artwork, highlighting his versatility with different mediums — pencil and charcoal on paper, oil on canvas, wallboard and masonite, woodcuts, mosaics, watercolors, acrylics, linoleum cuts and even designing, making and painting puppets. A man of many talents, he could also play the harmonica.

She describes her father as a quiet, reserved man who said little about his work, didn’t sign most of his art (preferring artistic anonymity) and favored the mantra “Don’t talk about it, do it.” He wanted his art to be “pictures that had meaning and action and told stories.”

The last chapter, “Design and Dynamic Symmetry,” cleverly explains his five elements of design — repetition, rhythm, color, texture and form. It also includes complex descriptions of spatial relationships in art, defining the intricacies of the “Divine Proportion” and the “Golden Triangle.”

BLACKOUT

By David Rosenfelt

Minotaur Books, 2015

320 pages, $25.99

Lieutenant Doug Brock is a New Jersey State Police detective with an impulsive, insubordinate nature. Suspended from duty, he is working on an off-the-books investigation that gets him shot. When he wakes up from a coma, the last 10 years of his memory are gone — he can’t remember a thing. But somebody still wants him dead.

“Blackout” is David Rosenfelt’s sixth stand-alone mystery novel after the 13 books in his wildly popular Andy Carpenter mystery series. He used to be the president of marketing for Tri-Star Pictures, but now lives and writes from his home near Damariscotta Lake.

Rosenfelt’s mysteries are fast-paced, smooth reading with plenty of humor, action and suspense, and very smartly concealed plot twists. “Blackout” won’t disappoint.

Brock’s partner and other cops try to figure out what he was working on, but he can’t remember anything, including how, who, why or where he was shot. His cellphone offers valuable clues, and Brock is determined to retrace his steps from the cellphone location records. However, several people are watching him, both from inside and outside the state police. Someone is very worried his memory will return, and they can’t allow that to happen.

As pieces of Brock’s memory start to fit together, he and several federal agencies uncover odd suspects, but don’t understand any possible connections — a powerful local crime lord and an Islamic terrorist everyone thinks is dead. Add murder, multiple double-cross, a terror plot, a couple of suspicious police officers, an ambush, clever technology trickery, a jilted fiance and Brock’s terrific showdown with Mr. Left and Mr. Right, and Rosenfelt spins an exciting mystery tale.

Brock is a good cop, but watch out, he has his own blunt-force, expedient way of doing things —and somebody usually gets hurt.

Bill Bushnell lives and writes in Harpswell.