“2666” by Roberto Bolano is looking like it will safely steal the title of 2008’s most acclaimed novel. For those unfamiliar with the back story: Bolano, a writer of significant renown in Spanish literature, succumbed to liver failure in 2003, at age 50. Knowing the end was coming because of an early diagnosis, Bolano spent the last five years of his life on “2666,” a novel that he fell just short of completing before his passing.

In “Simon Says: A True Story of Boys, Guns and Murder,” journalist Kathryn Eastburn turns her news coverage into a full-length nonfiction book that, commendably, never seems to collapse under its own detail.

To enthusiastic purveyors of contemporary literature, the debut novel is … well, a novel thing.

Remove the unfortunate-but-true factor of acclaimed authors coasting on their brand and what do you have? A novel with virtually nothing to recommend it other than what’s on the pages, ideas that may have been rolling around in the writer’s head since childhood. In a literary world that can be choked with hype, a debut novel brings a do-or-die excitement.

The time following the American Civil War and the beginning of World War I was a period with a power to tease the imagination like no other. This is primarily so because of a pervasive and seemingly credible interest in spooks.