Knowledge is Power

   Those of you who were courageous enough to attend the Locust Street Festival on a stormy June 8 had your hardiness rewarded with a performance by The Trusty Knife, a local band whose eclectic sound betrays a clear affinity for ’70s-inspired rock ’n’ roll with a somewhat glammy edge. When he’s not strumming on a guitar or crooning into a microphone, band member Zack Pieper writes poetry that’s appeared in several small press publications, including Dodo Books and Rust Buckle. He will be reading at Woodland Pattern Book Center on June 20 at 7 p.m., along with Wisconsin poet Abraham Smith, whose fecund verse conjures up both the shrinking and swelling of the earth.

  Also this week, a veritable crime-fest takes shape with not one but three mystery authors visiting Milwaukee on Tuesday, June 24, to read from their new works. Jeffery Deaver comes to Mystery One at 5 p.m. to talk about his new book, Broken Window, an alarming take on the probing surveillance to which we are increasingly subjected. The antagonist of the novel invests new meaning into the term “knowledge is power,” mining the information from the seemingly innocuous surveys conducted by financial, commercial and medical institutions in order to select his victims and frame others for the murders. The book is the eighth in the popular Lincoln Rhyme series, and sees the return of the quadriplegic detective and his trusty aide, Amelia Sachs (memorably played by Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie in the 2000 film version of Deaver’s book The Bone Collector).

  Later in the evening Irish author John Connolly and Ohio-born novelist Nathan Singer will come to Muskego Public Library (S73 W16663 Janesville Road). Connolly, who garnered critical acclaim for his first novel, Every DeadThing,and is also the author of a collection of tragic and unsettling ghost stories, will be reading from his seventh book in the Charlie Parker series, The Reapers. His new novel is said to be lighter in tone than others in the series, owing to the fact that it’s told from the point of view of Parker’s comical accessories Louis and Angel. Meanwhile Singer’s new work, In the Light of You, offers a harrowing glimpse into the frenetic world of neo-Nazi gangs and the tumultuous world of adolescent anxiety. The event begins at 7 p.m.