Dan's Reading Journal

The Professional by Robert B. Parker

Spenser, Hawk, Susan Silverman, Sgt. Belson, Captain Quirk, Vinnie Morris and Bernie Marcus -- after 36 Spenser novels, these characters are good friends that I very much look forward to visiting.  The Professional is Parker's best Spenser novel of the past few years. Quite frankly, the plot hardly matters.  Spenser and Hawk live by their very unique codes of honor and conduct, trade quips, and outwit the bad guys.  Susan continues her career as a therapist, loves Spenser unconditionally, and trades quips with the guys. Quirk and Belson keep Boston safe from the bad guys, grudgingly lend a hand to Spenser when he needs it (because he has earned their respect) and trades quips with each other and with Spenser.

Oh, yeah and in The Professional, Spenser tries to figure out how an apparently sex-addicted good-looking nebbish name Gary has managed to successfully blackmail a significant number of rich women.  The plot thickens (well, at least there is a noticeable increase in viscosity) when some of the women start turning up dead.  Spenser discovers that not all the women are rich, Gary isn't all that bad a guy, and some of the husbands are dodgy.  Susan lends a hand by contributing her insights and Hawk watches Spenser's back.  

Needless to say, all's well that ends well.  Parker and Spenser provide much entertainment.

Last of the Summer Reading

Looking back, the last of the true summer reading have clearly been (mostly) a search for escapism. Not that I have a lot to escape from, mind you, but I have always been able to waste time on good junk -- so, here are three places for you to waste your time.

Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child - When you really need to blow a couple of hours with no mental exertion and the latest Robert B. Parker (Spenser) or Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch) is not available, reach for one of the 11 Jack Reacher novels written by Lee Child.  As I have noted before, many times the plot device is not believable and Reacher is definitely a strange bird.  Jack Reacher is a 13 year MP veteran who, having been cut loose due to the peace dividend, is now a drifter with no fixed address and a paranoiac fear of any hint of permanence, i.e.,  he owns nothing but the clothes on his back and a toothbrush.  He does, however manage to save the world from really bad guys, has a mean streak that won't quit, and enjoys his revenge as a dish served hot or cold but demands to be served.  Bad Luck and Trouble is no less (or more) believable than any of the others, and that is not a bad thing.

Saturn's Children by Charles Stross is a very clever sci-fi adventure with some very neat twists and turns. The initial premise is pretty cool and quite definitely intriguing -- sometime very far into the future the universe has been populated for some time by androids who have done and continue to do the heavy lifting.  Oh, yeah, one complication -- all the humans have all died off, leaving a very robust and active android society complete with unfulfilled pleasure models (programmed to love humans)and a caste hierarchy that at its bottom rung holds the majority of the population as slave-chipped serfs.  Replete with plenty of sex and violence, this may not be (or on the other hand....) everyone's cup of tea.  Like most good sci-fi, Stross has created that alternative universe....but also successfully mirrors the human condition and frailties.  Identity politics and philosophy do not merge all that seamlessly with cruelty, sex, and violence, but the kernel of the idea is strong and pretty much carries the book.  With the main character Freya reminding us of characters past written by Heinlein, Varley, Asimov and others, it was an enjoyable read.  Probably not for everyone.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman presented this reviewer with two problems.  First, I had previous read Gaiman's American Gods which, by the end of it, I thoroughly detested.  Second, this is fantasy and typically I have a huge allergic reaction to trolls, witches, warlocks and their compatriots.  However, Gaiman is a prodigious author, acclaimed by many (a Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker award winner as well as a Newbery Award winner) and multi-genre - children's books, sci-fi, comics (now known as graphic novels) as well as fantasy and film screenplays.  I thought it only appropriate that I give Gaiman another try. 

Neverwhere was Gaiman's first solo novel and it was entertaining. The plot (the protaganist, Richard Mayhew, a resident of London, learns that being the good Samaritan often carries a heavy price.  In this case Mayhew is drawn into the world of "London Below", a shadowing city of mysterious, dark, and oft-disappearing people and places.  Magic abounds as he helps Door find the who and why of the assassins that murdered her family.  Other colorful characters abound and the pace does not tarry.  If you can tolerate fantasy (and not just a little whiff of Dungeons and Dragons), this could be some fun.  It also motivated me to try some more Gaiman -- but I haven't done so yet.

Summer Vacation Reading

Most of my vacation reading is escapist stuff....and this vacation was no exception. I will review the important, heavier, mostly non-fiction stuff individually.  Here is the "junk" reading....

Thrillers, Mysteries, and Such

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson is really worth reading.  For whatever reason, I have been drawn to Swedish mystery and cop stories for some time. Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo wrote ten Martin Beck police procedurals from 1965 to 1975 and while they were clearly reflections of the times (the authors were pretty determined to show how their socialist country was exhibiting many of the same problems as capitalist countries) these 10 novels were wonderful minimalist mysteries.  Stieg Larsson has written a very interesting action story though the action is somewhat muted by Larsson's style.  The style does not detract, however, but seems to mirror my recollections of the "Swedish style". No punches pulled, but there is a bit of minimalist in Larsson as well and that sharpens some of the prose.  The title character is not the lead character, and while she is integral to the main mystery, her own backstory is equally absorbing. 

The quick synopsis -- Mikael Blomkvist is given a chance to redeem himself from professional misconduct when he is employed by a Swedish industrial tycoon (and head of a strange and dysfunctional family) to spend a year writing the family history as the cover for investigating the disappearance of the tycoon's grand-niece some years before.   In the course of events, he is introduced to and hires Lisbeth Salander (her of the tattoo) to assist in the investigation.  Lisbeth has her own story and her own style -- she is more than modestly anti-social and is an absolute wonder in her ability to ferret out information.

So, an interesting crime story, a pretty good mystery, a couple of terrific characters, a fabulous recrafting of the closed-room crime story (all the family lives on the same island -- calling Mrs. Marple!!), and a true anti-hero in the character of Lisbeth.  Enjoy.

Only bummer was finding out that Stieg Larsson - an investigative journalist in Stockholm - died in 2004, leaving behind a trilogy of which The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first published in the the US.

Bad Elmore Leonard is better than most people's best.  No one typically writes a better gritty, more real than reality story about crime, criminals, and damage than Leonard.  In Road Dogs, Leonard brings back Jack Foley, the star of Out of Sight (played by George Clooney in the movie of the same name) as well as Cundo Rey, the Cuban gangster who first appeared in La Brava and Dawn Navarro, the psychic from Riding the Rap.  Foley and Rey befriend each other in prison by watching each other's back (the prison term is "road dogs") and when Foley gets out he heads for Rey's homes (he owns two) in California (at Rey's request) to stay for a while and check in on Rey's wife, Dawn.  Dawn is a temptress who has been waiting 8 years for Rey to get out of prison so she can get his money.  Rey is a borderline psychotic with a temper and an imagination that focuses on infidelity.  Foley is a bank robber and con man and ladies man and there we go.  While Leonard throws in some pretty good tricks, Foley comes off a bit too smart -- he is never fooled and he's never without a comeback or response.  Rey and Navarro seem more contrived and less possible with each passing page.  The witty dialog is good, but the plot seems pre-ordained and a bit tired.  Still fun to read - as I said, Elmore Leonard on his worst day is a pleasure, but this is certainly nowhere close to his best.

  

Persuader; Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child are only two of some 14 Jack Reacher action novels.  Jack Reacher was an Army MP for 13 years (in the early stories, Jack is still in uniform) and is now a happily unemployed drifter who just happens to end up in some outrageous situations for which he is more than adequately prepared to act.  Think Spenser without the civilizing accoutrements of girlfriend, apartment, sidekick helper and the ability and desire to cook and eat good food.  Reacher has commitment issues...like he take clothes to the cleaners because he just isn't sure he will be in the same town when they are finished.  Like he trusts no one - not the government, not the cops, not the crowds, not the bad guys -- no one but himself.  At six-five and 250 pounds of all the MP training the Army could provide, he is a whole lot of skill waiting to happen...and Lee Child gives him the opportunity in every book.

Often, that opportunity is really contrived.  In Persuader (#7), Reacher just happens to be in Boston and just happens to spot a guy who was murdered 10 years previously (on a case Reacher was investigating).  Trying to get some information on the guy's limo lands Reacher in the middle of an unsanctioned FBI sting on what the FBI believes is a drug tycoon.  Fur flies.  Reacher to the rescue!

In Gone Tomorrow, the opportunity is (if you would consider this possible) even more far fetched.  Reacher is in New York, on a subway at 2 am and is one of 5 passengers -- when he looks at one of them, he goes through the entire Israeli 11 point list of what makes a suicide bomber and she nails all 11 --  but he is wrong about the bomber part....as he approaches her she pulls out a gun and kills herself.  And we are off to the races as Reacher gets hip-deep into the war in Afghanistan, a Senatorial election, and a major babe whose mother is an ex-Soviet political commissar looking for an American soldier.  PS, it turns out that of the 5 people on the subway car at 5am, one is Reacher, one is the suicide, one is the Congressman who wants to be Senator's chief of staff, and two are FBI agents. 

So, other than the fact that the story origins are completely unbelievable, Lee Child can write tight action and create very good mystery stories.  The Reacher novels are wonderful in their ability to suck the reader in and help waste a couple of otherwise perfectly usable hours.  Lot's of tight scrapes, twists and turns, feats of incredible physical activity, bad guys getting what they deserve, and Reacher's dry, skeptical, ironic, and totally sarcastic view of life in America (and some other places).

Silks by Dick Francis and Felix Francis is the second collaboration between the father (Dick) and son (Felix).  Dick Francis has written some 40 mystery stories and unlike Robert B. Parker (whom I adore, but must be honest with myself) Francis does not write the same book over and over again. Quite the opposite, in fact.  While all of Francis' books involve horses and horse racing of one sort or another, they also always include some other area of professional and technical expertise.  In Dead Heat (2007) the protagonist is a chef and we learn a lot about what it takes to be a professional chef and own and run a restaurant; in Banker (1982) the key character is a merchant banker.  In Silks, our hero is an English barrister (lawyer, but the kind that try cases) working towards becoming a Queen's Counsel (a status conferred by the Crown).  The double entendre is that while all race horses and their jockeys were specific silks, so are the Queen's Counsels required to wear silk gowns to distinguish their status.

In Silks, barrister Geoffrey Mason is an amateur jockey who takes on case of a professional jockey accused of murder.  Under threat already by former client he begins to be pressured to lose the case by parties unknown...and off we go.  Francis has never written a boring book, he is always interesting, his research is always good, and the mystery has enough to it to keep the reader interested and anticipating what comes next. If you have not read any Dick Francis, pick any one of the 40 up and you will not be disappointed.

   

Science Fiction

Joe Haldeman writes intriguing sci-fi. I reviewed The Accidental Time Machine back in March (see Spring Break 2009 Reviews) and I also very much enjoyed The Forever War.  Haldeman has the really good ideas and the story telling knack that puts him very close to the Robert Heinlein/John Varley school of science fiction.  Camouflage is no exception. The idea here is a really good twist on and combination of the "we have been visited before" theme and the "they walk among us" theme of science fiction.  In Camouflage, an egg shaped artifact is found on the ocean floor and all attempts to communicate with it, open it, or even scratch it fall way short of success.  In parallel, we are made privy to the fact that not one, but two different alien intelligences are (and have been for quite some time) on earth observing us.  One, known as the changeling, has been on earth a very long time, but only recently has it taken human form.  The other, known as the chameleon, has always been in human form.  The changeling has the capacity to learn and to love.  The chameleon is a conqueror, looking for victory and delighting in war and its process.  The Changeling and the Chameleon are ignorant of each other's presence, but with the discovery of the artifact, that is about to change.  Haldeman writes a good story, and shows really good character development in our aliens (and others).

Jack McDevitt is also a good story teller.  I really like his Alex Benedict/Chase Kolpath series (Polaris, Seeker, The Devil's Eye, A Talent for War) and branched out beyond those with Ancient Shores.  It was worth the risk.  Simple premise, big impact -- a farmer in North Dakota uncovers a sailboat on his property.  Interesting given that there has been no lake in the area for about 10,000 years.  Even more interesting is the material of the boat and sail has an atomic number on the periodic table well beyond what we currently have identified.  A search for other artifacts (along the shores of the ancient lakebed) turns up a building made of the same material as the boat -- and it is on Sioux land. The building houses a transportation device that links instantaneously to other habitable planets.

McDevitt takes us through some interesting suppositions and possibilities like what will the US government do about something like this when it sits on Sioux territory?  What happens to the world economy when industries like transportation (air, rail, ship) start to be questioned as to viability?  Or what happens when oil is discovered on one of the planets -- what happens to the power politics in the middle east?  How do governments and media coexist in such situations?

An interesting story with some cool sci-fi tidbits. Only bummer was the ending which comes straight out of nowhere and is pretty damn ridiculous.  Other than that....a good waste of time.

Time travel...of all sorts is a constant sci-fi theme.  Parallel universes...ditto.  Paul Melko combines the two themes in Walls of the Universe and turns in a really nifty story.  A high school kid named John Rayburn is tracked down and tricked into changing places with John Prime -- a parallel universe version of Rayburn who just happens to have a device that allows the user to travel to parallel worlds.  Only problem is that this device is busted....Rayburn can't return home.  Turns out there are many travelers and many planets, but not all of them are nice and comfortable.  Melko takes this traditional track and makes it interesting and most important, personal.  We get to know both Johns and the whys and wherefores of what makes them tick.  Personal ethics get confronted and bad guys are met and friends get made.  The story of how and then if John can return to his original universe is well written and engaging.  Melko (a new author for me) does a very good job of personality development and writes a very readable story.  I look forward to reading more by this author.

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

If you have been the brave, attentive reader of The Reading Journal that I presume, you know that I am a big fan of Neal Stephenson.  You can review most of his work in my review of (CRTL-Click on the link) Neal Stephenson.

Now, having said that, I did have trouble finishing his last effort, The Baroque Cycle, Stephenson's massive three-volume fantasy-cum-swashbuckler-political thriller-mathematics history lesson bounce through 18th century Western Europe. I ended my review of Stephenson with Volume 1 (which I loved) with the prophecy that Volume II was on its way and it was "probably worth it".  Volume II was -- sort of.  Volume III however, nearly killed me and by the time I had choked my way through it, I was done with Stephenson for a while. So, when Anathem came out to some terrific raves, I succumbed to the temptation and ordered both the book and the Kindle version.  When this massive 935-page tome hit my mailbox I was convinced that Stephenson had caught a bad case of authorial-extension disorder -- that terribly debilitating malady that strikes some writers causing them to substitute volume for quality.  Think of it as "Dickens Disease", though Dickens had an excuse -- he got paid by the word.

I hated the first 25 or so pages (perhaps it was the first 50 -- hard to tell on the Kindle) -- where Stephenson commits all the sins (as far as I am concerned) -- he introduces a whole new planet, a new language with new meanings but close enough to what you understand for it to be monumentally confusing; he gives things weird names (like in a bad sci-fi story); he spends pages describing arcane features of a society's architecture (this for me a torture - my ability to conceive of three-dimensional space is limited at best); and worse -- he begins to describe the integration of philosophy and meta-physics.  To top it off, he introduces the novel with a review of a made up 7,000 year history and starts the reader off with trying to understand the practices of his made-up religious order.  I was ready to throw in the towel.

But Stephenson is nothing if not a practiced artist, so I stuck with Anathem and I am glad that I did. Anatham finally succeeds for me in creating a different world in a different place. and the world of Fra Erasmus is very definitely different.  The "mathic" world is separated from the "saecular" world.  The world of higher math and philosophy has morphed into what we would see as quasi-religious orders - different orders with different orientations towards math, physics, and philosopy and the integration thereof.  The orders live in a concent (co-ed monastery) and are removed and separate from the outside world.  Stephenson ultimately succeeds in delivering these separate worlds/lives to us - thought the use of new words to describe things is always something akin to irritating.

Once every 10 years (or once every 1, 10, 100, or 1,000 years depending on which "order" you belong to) the concent is opened for 10 days and the "mathic" and "saecular" worlds are allowed to co-mingle.  It is on the eve of one such 10 year "apert" that our story begins and we get to know Fra Erasmus.

Fra Erasumus was "collected" to the order 10 years ago as a child - and now as a teenager he is about to get his first look in a decade at the world he left behind. It is the beginning of a grand adventure - one that puts him, his friends, his order, and his world in the midst of a global drama with potentially cataclysmic consequences.  It is Stephenson's skill as both a story-teller, researcher, and futurist that kept me engaged and interested (after I got through the architecture) and after a while, I was simply fascinated.

Like his work in The Diamond Age, Stephenson is a master at combining history and future - creating a world at the same time familiar and wildly different, combining real science with science-fiction, and creating characters that we can identify with mostly - but not totally.  Anathem turns out to be a terrific mystery story, an intriguing exploration of philosophy and mathematics, a pretty cool sci-fi concept (or perhaps more than one) with good dialogue, real humor and warmth, and some decent action. Also, it contains a couple of really good twists that are both entertaining and surprising. 

Warning - you must be patient -- this story takes a while to grab you.  Now, to be honest, if you don't like sci-fi, or have no interest in math, science or philosphy you might find Anathem to be dull and uninteresting. A number of other reviews have remarked that Stephenson is not for everybody and that is certainly true.  But if you liked The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon or are a big fan of William Gibson or perhaps even Larry Niven (e.g., Ringworld), give Anathem and Neal Stephenson a try.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a wonderfully written and inventive work of fiction.  Do not let the fact that it was chosen by Oprah's Book Club set you off of it.  Wroblewski's first novel is an intriguing story that weaves multiple (but very familiar) themes together with great skill, terrific prose, and gut wrenching emotion.  Edgar Sawtelle is also  fantastical in very interesting and compelling ways.

At its simplest, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a family story -- and as it has been said, each family is dysfunctional in its own ways.  The Sawtelle family raises and trains a (fictitious) breed of dog whose reputation for companionship, courage, and comportment has made them popular and desirable.  Edgar, born mute, is the only child and dog raiser and trainer-in-training for the family business set in the beautiful country of rural Wisconsin.  Trouble comes when Edgar's paternal uncle, Claude returns to the farm and with the subsequent unexpected and sudden death of Edgar's father. At its most complex, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a rural American retelling of Hamlet with a bit of fantasy built in.

Wroblewski's prose is lyrical and detailed, lovingly crafted and a delight to read.  One of the various small sub-stories within the novel is the art and science of naming the pups -- a job of heavy import and responsibility that falls for the first time to Edgar early in the story.  Wroblewski's exploration of the meaning, the options, the seriousness and love and care that Edgar devotes to this task is a small wonder.  I for one would not have thought that dog-naming would be a topic that held much interest.  Wrobelski makes it fascinating and engaging.

Intertwined with the other details of dog-raising and training that Wrobelski makes interesting and even fascinating, he has also made the dogs into characters themselves.  The litter of pups that Edgar gets responsibility for training (also his first go at this task) each develops real, individual personalities.  Edgar's best friend, and a first-rate example of what the Sawtelle dog breed represents, is his companion Almondine.  In a way that seems to fit the story, without being overly weird or fantastical, Almondine narrates a few chapters -- Wroblewski's use of the dog as observer of the human condition while not original, is very well done and believable.  The reader comes to feel for Almondine as one would for a human character that was well drawn.

Of course, the idyllic existence is not to last.  I give nothing away by telling you that the plot convention is that Edgar suspects Claude's nefarious involvement in Gar's (Edgar's father) unexpected death.   When a well-developed but ultimately failed attempt to implicate Claude goes disastrously wrong, the mute Edgar takes to the wilds of Wisconsin with three yearling dogs.  Wroblewski's ability to bring you close into the life of the family is equally well done as he describes how a young teenager and three spectacularly trained dogs can survive on their own in the woods of Wisconsin.

This book has marvelous touches.  The description of Edgar's mother taking her "unusual" child to the local wise-but-strange old woman after having endured the long run of doctors with no diagnoses and no suggestions is but a glimpse of Wrobelski's weaving of the normal with the 20-degrees off normal and making it work.  Later in the book there are interactions between the humans and an almost ephemeral stray dog that seems to appear and vanish.  Wrobelski's painting of the rural Wisconsin environs - the wind, the rain, the sunlight are pictures painted with words.

This is a book worth reading for its wonderful use of language and its details of life.  Upon my first reading of the book, I was angry with the ending.  Upon reflection and with a couple of re-readings of the ending, I have come to appreciate what Wroblewski has created with The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Remember how I describe the book at the beginning of this review.  I encourage you to pick this up and enjoy it.

The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar

I do not know what fascinates me more about India -- the fact that it is the world's largest democracy, a technological nuclear-armed marvel with the greatest disparity imaginable between the haves and have nots or the fact that it is so entirely foreign to me - caste system, Hindu-dominated, unbearable weather, and an education system that graduates more superior engineers in one year than the US does in 5 years.

Regardless of the source of my fascination,  The Space Between Us reminded me that yes, again, the things that make cultures different are dwarfed by the things that are similar -- in this case, the fact that all families are dysfunctional in their own way, that the gulf between the servant under-class and the well-to-do is more about opportunity and luck than it is about desire and wisdom and finally, that power corrupts -- those that have the ability to exert power over others and do so for their own pleasure do so because they can - plain and simple.

The Space Between Us is reminiscent of A Fine Balance but is set in modern-day urban India.  It is a very personal and intimate story of three women -- Sera Dubash, an upper middle class housewife trapped in an abusive marriage; Bhima, her servant of twenty years and Bhima's pregnant college-dropout grand-daughter, Maya Phedke.  There is also Sera's daughter-in-law, Dinaz and her son, Viraf and her husband, Feroz.  This book is about family drama and culture and the intermingling of both.  This book is also devastatingly drawn around the pain of everyday life.  While caste, religion and culture color everything - -and India is very clearly a foreign place (to this reader), the themes and results are universal, they happen everywhere, to everyone.

The magic and miracle of The Space Between Us lies in Thrity Umrigar's ability to have us feel for Sera, Bhima, and Maya while despising Viraf and Feroz without it becoming a parody.  We have empathy for the women and disgust for the men and it feels right.  So, culture, tradition, and economic disparity all combine to create empathy amidst tragedy. Umrigar is able to put us in these people's homes and lives in a way that creates familiarity - or at least a sensitivity - regardless of the foreignness of the reality.  I have never lived in an urban Indian slum, but I have visited there with Bhima and Maya.

The Space Between Us is not for the faint of heart, nor is it a great book for those who are depressed.  The themes and outcomes are dark and full of hurt and injustice -- and are very, very real.

Blonde Faith by Walter Mosley

I can not believe I have never reviewed any of Walter Mosley (or if I have, I can not find it).  In either case, it is an error in judgment.  Mosley is a prodigious author, 11 Easy Rawlins novels, 13 or so other fiction novels and a number of non-fiction works.

I have read a number of the Easy Rawlins novels, including the latest, Blonde Faith and I recommend them all for a variety of reasons. Mosley writes mystery fiction very well.  His plots, while not complex, are interesting and intriquing.  His characters (developed over many years and many novels) are even more interesting and intriguing.  However, Mosley's towering accomplishment is to invite the reader, particularly the white, middle-class (or better) reader, into a world we rarely see and often work hard to avoid.  Want to know why black men are angry?  Want to know what it is like to be suspected, scrutinized, scorned, and excoriated simply because of the color of your skin?  Want to know what it is like to operate in a world where almost every member of the "establishment", from governmental official to policeman to doorman makes an immediate (and typically negative) assessment of who you are and your purpose with one look at you?  Read the Easy Rawlins books and you will know....and once you know, it will eat at you and make you feel ashamed of your own, even unconscious behavior.  Because, as they say on Avenue Q, "we are all a little bit racist, you know".

Easy Rawlins is an unoffical private investigator who lives a sometimes hardscrabble and sometimes not-so-hardscrabble life in the Los Angeles of the 50's and 60's.  He is a WWII vet who saw all of man's inhumanity to man in the European theatre and returns to a different, but unfortunately similar, world in the post-war LA.  He grew up in Houston's famously dangerous Fifth Ward, and his best friend as a child (and as a man) is a cold-blooded killer and expert thief with the antithetical nickname of "Mouse".  Within all of this, and with all his work, he assembles a relatively non-traditional family and becomes a caring and dedicated father.

In Blonde Faith, Mouse's wife tells him that Mouse is wanted for murder (another friend of Easy's) and is missing.  Knowing the LAPD's obsession with Mouse, Easy is convinced that they will shoot first and ask questions later - regardless of the truth.  To complicate the feeling of loss, Easy has lost the woman he truly loves - she is about to marry another man.  Easy's typically difficult search for dignity and lack of pain in the world is very much multiplied by his personal life.

Mosley writes about what it is to be a man as much as he writes about what it is to be a black man.  Sometimes they are the same thing, often they are not.  Being a black man in 1960's LA is more complicated than being a white man -- and Mosley demonstrates this with amazing fluidity without turning to polemic.  The truth is so apparent that all he has to do is show it to you -- and that is an art form in and of itself.

Blonde Faith's plot plays out nicely but it is the characters - Easy, Mouse, the bartender, Easy's friends, including a restaurant manager, a black technology whiz and the supposed murder victim (a special forces vet by the name of Christmas Black) and the cops who make Mosley's Easy Rawlins novels work so well.

Mosley also has range.  He has written everything from good non-fiction to good and inventive science fiction (try Futureland).  Be entertained and learn something.  That's a pretty good one-two punch.  Walter Mosley delivers in style.

Crow Lake/The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson

Mary Lawson does not write action adventures.  There is plenty of action, and lots of adventure, but it is of the unfolding, slow reveal type.  Lawson's two books are engaging and captivating and carry the hallmark of what I love about great fiction -- they transport the reader to an unknown place and make it familiar and understandable and interesting.  Mary Lawson does that by taking us to rural farming communities in Northern Ontario.

In Crow Lake, we follow the trials, tribulations, and family interplay of the Morrison family as narrated by Kate Morrison as they work through how to survive the loss of their parents.  Kate has two teenage brothers and a younger sister and is reflecting back 20 years (from the present time) on the difficulties of that time.  Kate does this while trying to sort through her personal life in the present.  That present is more than a bit confused:  a relationship with a lover who wants more from her and her relationship with her favorite brother, who, while helping to develop in her the love of science which is her current profession, gave up his own promising development for reasons that are best discovered in the book.

Lawson is not breaking new ground here.  There is family tragedy and sacrifice.  There are incredibly dysfunctional families as neighbors.  Nature is capricious and cruel.  Being orphaned is both unfair and a tremendous challenge to overcome. Young men have sex drive.  As in most things, it is not the "what" as much as the how and why and where.

It is both the complete nature of place (the town, the farm, the weather), the people (Kate's family, the extended Morrison family who wants to help, the Pye's (the neighbors) with problems of their own, and the (pardon the multi-syllabic intervention) juxtaposition of what is happening in Kate's life in the present with what happened to Kate's life in the past that makes the "what" so captivating.  And captivating is the right word.  Lawson's prose is comfortable and familiar, yet rich and robust.  While there is some mystery to the story - it is not a mystery and it is not difficult to surmise what might happen or come next.  None of that diminishes the story nor the reader's delight in the short time spent in Crow Lake.

Lawson takes us back to Northern Ontario with many of the same themes in The Other Side of the Bridge.  The story begins in the depression and is focused on the characters and world of two brothers (Arthur and Jake Dunn) and the circumstances are once again familiar.  Arthur is a big, kind, and socially awkward boy (then man) who loves farming and hates school.  Jake is the prodigal son, effective in avoiding any semblance of work on the farm, smart, bright and accomplished in school (when he cares), good looking and attractive to women, and (at its most benign) a complete scamp.  Jake is expert at both getting what he wants and getting Arthur in trouble. The story is the relationship of the brothers, the relationship of a man to his land, a husband to his wife (and vice versa), a man and a woman to their honor.

It is also the story of Ian Christopherson, the son of the small town doctor, who both chafes severely at the assumption that he will assume the mantle of his father, is wounded severely by being abandoned by his mother, and is (as only a teenager can be) enthralled the significantly older woman who is Arthur's wife.  In a totally unexpected move (at least to his father and friends) , Ian takes a summer and weekend job working for Arthur on the farm.  It is through Ian's eyes that we see the town, its inhabitants, and its situation as other than fairy tale perfect.

As in Crow Lake, Lawson introduces some mystery into the story and again it is not hard to figure out.  And, once again, that in no way diminishes the power of the story.  There are two (perhaps two and one-half) plotlines here -- first, why did Laura marry Arthur and how does the relationship between Arthur and Jake resolve itself and second, what kind of person will Ian become and what will he become.

For the first, it is the universal situation of brothers in conflict and here there is conflict and manipulation and expediency and cruelty and kindness and redemption.  For the second, it is the universal coming of age story.  In both cases, Lawson does a masterful job of retelling these universal themes and the book, like her first, is captivating and engaging and powerful.

Enjoy Mary Lawson.

The Jew of Home Depot by Max Apple

"If I could just write like Max Apple......"  My guess is that most existing and aspiring authors will utter something along those lines after reading Max Apple's latest collection (his first in 20 years), The Jew of Home Depot.  These 13 individual gems sparkle and delight.

As the ad said, "you don't have to be Jewish to enjoy" Max Apple, but as my Jewish mother would say, "it doesn't hurt either".  Many of Max Apple's characters are Jewish, but in most cases their Jewishness serves to bring the human condition into brighter relief.  Apple can develop a full-formed character in a flash (or a couple of pages, at most) - in many cases, I have a better sense of Apple's characters after a few paragraphs than I get from some authors mid-way through their novels.  It is a wonderful and entertaining gift. He truly is a peer of Garrison Keillor and Calvin Trillin, who possesses similar gifts.

Apple ranges pretty wide.  In Yao's Chick, it is the saga of the abnormally tall first-generation Chinese from Vietnam daughter trying to make her way in America while dealing with her immigrant parents.  But it could be ANY first-generation American dealing with immigrant parents (or grand-parents)...Apple gets the nuances, but also captures the larger human experience that all first-gen folks go through.  In Stabbing an Elephant, a new senior Rabbi faces his first true political test -- how to deal with a powerful board member and a 4-year old child.  In the space of a couple of short paragraphs, Apple is able to demonstrate why the old Rabbi was beloved, how elastic Judaism can be, and how the personal and professional can become so incredibly tied together.  I am also sure that any person well versed in the clergy/congregation relationship will find humor and truth in the story.  In the Jew of Home Depot, it really does help to be Jewish, but the essence still rings through.  What happens when New York Lubuvitcher Orthodoxy meets Texas small town?  What happens when teenagers, no matter how sheltered, discover a new and different world.  What happens when desires are thwarted?  Apple gives a look inside, a glimpse of the way things are and they way things could be -- both for the better and for the worse.  In Sized Up, Apple ponders the fate of a man whose middle-aged crisis creates an inescapable desire for a child ("yet at 46, and not in love, he wanted a child").  When one amour, an attractive 40 year-old 6 confesses her horror at the idea of a pregnancy that would destroy her life-long size 6 and the another, a 30 year-old flight attendant insists that it is more important that she can always walk down the aisle of the plane with no problem, our protagonist becomes fixated on larger women.  Apple makes it believable, real, and terrific.

In my favorite story, Proton Decay, a middle-aged, very successful, never married Cleveland business man (3 pharmacies and a package store) falls for, then schemes to meet, a scientist who spends months under water in an abandoned salt mine looking for evidence of ....well, you get the point.  After seeing the article in the newspaper and the segment on 60 minutes, he is in love.  Max Apple makes it an interesting, engaging, and all together like-it-so-much-you-will-read-it-again story.

The art of the short story is nowhere near dead.  Max Apple alone ensures that it stays that way.

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

Let's cut to the chase quickly here.  I hated this book.  Not dislike, not did not care for, not indifferent or ambivalent or so-so or take it or leave it.  Hated it.  Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2007 and was one of the New York Times Best Books of 2007.  With all due respect, they could not be more wrong.

First, it is verbose and overlong - 614 pages that might (just might) have been a decent enough novel if cut roughly in half.  Second, for all of its descriptions, prose, and philosophy, only a very few of the many characters really are developed enough for the reader to really understand.  The characters that do stand out tend to be the ones making the shorter appearances (notably, Bill and James Houston's mother).  Third, you have read or seen all of this before in different places, and it was better the first time.  The insanity of war (Catch-22), the surreal nature of Vietnam (Apocalypse Now), how the government misrepresented the war (Bright, Shining Lie and The Best and The Brightest), the absurdity of it all (Going After Cacciato), what war can do to a individual survivor (Paco's Story and Close Quarters) and the 20/20 hindsight of what really happens to the "gung-ho" guys (Bright Shining Lie again) and many, many others.  Nothing in Tree of Smoke struck me as good as the same/similar character or situation I read/saw previously.

Finally,  this book was pitched as showing us the "moral and spiritual extremes of the Vietnam War" and for all of the clamor, really shows neither.  I could not find much spiritual about the book, let alone an extreme.  As far as the moral lessons, Tree of Smoke offers nothing new and the rehash of the old is mildly entertaining at its best and tedious most of the time.

I would not make the effort on this one.

Everyman by Philip Roth

Philip Roth is revered, and I suspect he should be.  Philip Roth did not (according to the New York Times Review of Books) write the best work of American fiction in the last 25 years.  That honor went to Toni Morrison's Beloved.  Roth was runner up with American Pastoral, but also received votes for 5 other novels.  Interestingly, out of the 20 odd books nominated with multiple votes, Roth wrote 6 of them.  So I do believe he might be termed the best American novelist of the past 25 years.

Everyman returns to a common Roth theme, the common human theme of diminished vitality due to aging. We follow our protagonist from child of immigrant father and younger brother to young man rising in the business world, to husband and father, to illness and recovery, to health and then illness, decline and then death. Roth has the knack of creating and explaining entire relationships in a few sentences -- with a few, brief phrases we recognize the situation, the drama, the complexity, and the frustrations and joys.  It is truly the work of an artist at the top of his game. True, Roth's common themes (this is his 27th book) are still there -- his Jewish upbringing (both the plusses and minuses from Roth's perspective, family ties (and the lack thereof); sex (never enough)....these will be familiar to the Roth reader.

Roth has a memory for detail and situation that rings true - sometimes so true it is unbelievable.  Perhaps that is the mark of artistry - to take an event and make it ring true to so many, for each individual reader to say, "oh my, that is exactly how I felt" when we all know that all of us could hardly have felt the same....and yet, there it is.  Roth did that for me as he described the young boy's trip to the hospital to have a hernia repaired.  I would have believed that he was describing my experience, the fear, the anticipation, the fascination with what was going on with the child in the bed next to mine - all of it seemingly my life, not Roth's character.  In that lies genius and for that alone it is worth reading Everyman, for I have no doubt that many of us will find the moment of our unique experience that Roth has captured so incredibly well.  Whether it is accomplishment or loss; the relationship you had with your father, mother, brother, sister, daughter, son; the thoughts of envy or superiority; winning or losing; or elation or depression; I am betting one or more of those emotions/feelings come alive for you from Roth's pen.

Everyman also reminds me of either how far away from normal I have come, or how far away Roth and his experience are from my notion of normal.  Roth's character marries thrice by choice (that is, no spouse dies); is estranged from his children by the first marriage; has numerous affairs including one with a women half his age and is invited to engage in sexual practices that are, shall we say, unusual.  Reality?  Fantasy?  Or is this some strange combination of the above?  Most of us do not marry three times.  Most men do not have affairs with women half their age, do they?  When did I veer off so far from this so-called normality?

With that, however, many of the Roth's other observations continue to ring true - the wistfulness of past virility/energy/power; the regret at having not said what should have been said to both loved ones and enemies; the loss of friends and family, all this Roth has nailed down beautifully.  Certainly, there is as much, if not more, to dislike in this man's life as there might be to admire but just as certainly there are those things -- good and bad -- that we recognize as true of and for ourselves.  That is indeed what Everyman set out to do and did indeed accomplish.

A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell

If you have not yet read anything by Mary Doria Russell (MDR), you are in for a treat. She is an intriguing, wonderfully engaging writer whose eye sees both the grandeur and the minutia and is able to bring both to the reader with terrific prose and equally terrific character development.

I first encountered MDR in her first book, The Sparrow, which ranks in my world as one of the better science fiction novels (although it is that and more) I have read.  Read my sci-fi reviews to get a sense of my taste, and look for a review of The Sparrow as soon as I re-read it.

A Thread of Grace is a both worlds opposite and quite alike The Sparrow in a number of ways.  Quite different in that A Thread of Grace is set in WWII Italy while The Sparrow is set in the future (and partially on another planet). One novel is truly science fiction and the other historical fiction. But both books deal interestingly and meticulously with issues of character and context - exploring the question (and then playing it out) of what in a person's history makes them the person they are in the present.

In A Thread of Grace, MDR intertwines a variety of story lines.  These include (but certainly not limited to) a)the fates of a group of Jewish refugees (centered on 14 year-old Claudette Blum and her farther) fleeing the Germans from a previously safe zone in France (not Vichy, but an Italian controlled area in the Southeast) to Italy (just prior to the Italian surrender to the Allies and the subsequent takeover by the Nazi's); b) the extended friends and family of a former Abyssinian war pilot, medal of honor winner, and prisoner (jailed by the Facists in Italy) Renzo Leoni centered in and around the fictional town of Porto Sant'Andrea (in the Piedmont); c)the German Officer/Doctor/ Deserter Werner Schramm.  MDR puts all of this and more in the context of the German occupation, the Allied invasion, and the denouement of WWII in Italy.

While the war, the Nazi preoccupation with Jewish extermination, the role of the Fascists in Italy are very well illustrated, it is the development of the individual characters and their reaction to all this context which MDR makes jump from the page. 

First, MDR makes the geography a character with a serious role.  The towns, villages, farms, the remoteness of northern Italy, its peaks and valleys play an important role in the book and it all happens easily, quietly, and subtly....all of a sudden the reader has a fabulous mental picture of how the land played such huge role in the lives of these people. 

Second, there are intricately drawn people -- heroes and villains (but not always are they that cleanly delineated).  Renzo Leoni must deal in the present with his WWI past while playing the most dangerous of games with the Nazi's and Italian Fascists.  His mother Lidia must deal with being both Jewish and Italian but mostly must deal with growing older and bored.  Claudette Blum must deal with separation - first from her mother and siblings, then from her father, then from her childhood and then even more.  Werner Schramm must deal with his retarded and deformed sister, his inadequate parents, his Nazi medical responsibilities and his desertion.  The Rabbi, Iacopo Soncini and his wife Mirella must deal with being community leaders and balance that with being a family.  The priest Osvaldo Tomitz must deal with the horrors of knowing what real evil can accomplish and try to balance that with his duty to both the confessional an the confessor.  The Nazi commander Von Thadden must deal with an over-reaching Gestapo and his own ineffectual actions (though he hardly recognizes it).  Each character is made very real and, with great efficiency, we come to understand their motivations, their reactions, their failures and successes.

Third, MDR is able to draw out the moral quandary of war - how do some people decide to do the right thing and others not without any lecturing, posturing, or polemic.  This is not (as the reader will come to see) anywhere near black and white -- it is very many shades of gray and messy as hell.  But Russell's characters and their situations capture the reader so well that all of a sudden you are starting to ask yourself the hard questions about the character(s), i.e., why would they do that?  How could they do that?  It is a subtle art, and MDR is quite the artist.

Finally, it is a captivating story.  I have no idea how long MDR spent in Italy (or whether she got it all from her parents), but her Italy was very, very authentic to me.  Her characters are complex and interesting.  Her prose is terrific.  And yes, war is hell.

I find MDR a fascinating author and give you this description of her from her website (http://literati.net/Russell/) -- "Mary Doria Russell was born near Chicago in 1950 to a Navy nurse and a Marine Corps drill sergeant and, as a consequence, had a remarkable if dismaying vocabulary prior to attending Sacred Heart Catholic Elementary School, where she learned discretion. She was an A student, a Girl Scout and a virgin bride, and waited until she was 29 to have her adolescent rebellion. She does not recommend this lifestyle to others, although it worked well enough for her."  Let me add that she is a convert to Judaism and writes intelligently and touchingly about both Judaism and Catholicism (in both books mentioned in this review).

Now my confession, I first listened to A Thread of Grace -- unabridged and downloaded from Audible.com -- before reading the book.  The narrator was Cassandra Campbell and she was truly phenomenal.  Maybe I am just a sucker for a beguiling female voice and an Italian accent, but Ms. Campbell was a joy to listen to and narrated with a variety of voice inflections and great emotion.  If you have 17 hours of plane time, I do not hesitate to recommend this one as a "book on tape".

Highly recommended.  I hope Mary Doria Russell writes a whole lot more stuff. 

Postscript: I sent this review to Mary Doria Russell, and she was kind and patient enough to respond and correct a number of errors I made in recounting the action (revisions have been made). Her response to my email was gracious and lengthy.  She also included a couple of really interesting insights -- like the fact that the character of Renzo Leoni is based on a real person and the fact that up until the Italian surrender Jews in Italian controlled areas (parts of France, Russia, Greece, and Yugoslavia) were relatively safe until the Germans took over.  She also reported good news in that she has a number of books in progress.  We will be impatient until publication!

Spook Country by William Gibson

Before we start here, let me warn my readers that I adore William Gibson.  It was to my dismay that I looked back at all of my posts and realized that I have reviewed only one book prior to this review (see Pattern Recognition by William Gibson).  So, before I go on, let me recommend not only Pattern Recognition, but Burning Chrome, Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Virtual Light, and Idoru as well. Often labeled as the "father" of cyberpunk, what William Gibson truly does is give his readers a view of an almost (but not quite) familiar future that is alternatively wonderfully/weirdly influenced by technology, particularly information technology and its influence on human interactions.

I must also admit that I do not always "get" all of the connections that Gibson is making (or, to help myself out, that Gibson is trying to make).  Gibson's world assumes a fair amount of knowledge - of technology, of current fads, trends, and movements, and of politics.  Gibson does not always make it easy, but he does, typically, make it very, very interesting.

In many ways (as others have said) the future caught up to Gibson -- his 1984 novel, Neuromancer, brought him fame (Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick awards), and introduced us to cyberspace, the internet, and being wired-in.  The fact that none of that surprises us or even sounds strange is testimony to the fact that reality has definitely caught up with his vision.  The age of Google and Second Life were very much anticipated by Gibson.  Read his stuff for the first time now and it will seem like some very good fiction writer on too much speed was paid for authoring your "modern culture" textbook.

Spook Country does not break trend in that it, too, is a vision of a not-so-strange (but just a little) future with heavy doses of information technology influence on contemporary media and entertainment.  It is, like much of Gibson, very noir and a mystery. It is not, however, compelling in any of the ways that I found previous novels to be.

Amazon wrote that "it's a stripped down thriller that reads like the best DeLillo, with the lives of a half-dozen evocative characters connected by a tightly converging plot and by the general senses of unease and wonder in our networked, post-9/11 time".

Let's parse this sentence a bit.  Start with "reads like the best DeLillo" - I know this will put me in the category of the not-so-with-it and not-as-bright-as-he-thinks for some of the crowd, but reading like the best DeLillo is not an enticing comparison for me.  Having gagged on Libra and nearly died of the pretentiousness and pomposity of White Noise, I would not compare Gibson to DeLillo - Gibson is readable.  To me, DeLillo is like pushing your own face through a screen sieve. So no matter what I say beyond this, it is always more fun to read Gibson (even this one) than DeLillo.

That said, Spook Country lacks some of the connectedness of Gibson's previous writing and perhaps that is DeLillo-esque. So, if by connectedness, the Amazon reviewer was referring to the fact that there is a reporter hired by a shadowy media mogul (who also speaks in code) tracking down an alternative media producer who also does software "interventions" for a bunch of crime figures who are being followed by an FBI type guy with a code breaking anti-depressant addicted prisoner all of whom are tracking a mysterious container box arriving somewhere in the US, well then, I guess that's really connected.  To me, it was really obvious and not that mysterious.

I never could figure out what Mr. DeLillo was thinking and that is sometimes the case with Spook Country as in the Cuban refugee, Russian speaking crime family that speaks in code no matter what language and for whom every interaction seems to be a zen experience - for the characters and the reader.  The plot is not tightly converging, but rather time constrained, and the ultimate denouement is not as much a thrilling surprise as it is an underwhelming confusion.  Yes, some of the vehicles Gibson uses are very interesting, some details fascinating and his story-telling style I have always liked and admired...but that is not enough to carry the day.

The most disappointing aspect of Spook Country is that Gibson creates the material for some very fine and fascinating characters and only slightly develops them.  Our protagonist, Hollis Henry, has a terrific backstory but ends up underdeveloped.  Her band-mate Reg Inchmale (for this name alone, Gibson deserves a prize) now married and living in Argentina dispenses terrific wisdom (or is it just really good aphorisms) and could have been (should have been) a much larger presence.  Hubertus Bigend (ok, maybe some deductions for this name) is the shadowy, slightly nefarious owner of the agency Blue Ant and publisher of the yet to be produced magazine that Hollis is now working for - he's wired into everything but goes nowhere in this novel.  Finally, Milgrim, the Ativan addled addict who happens to know an arcane Russian code, is a fascinating character.  He is threatened/blackmailed into cooperation, knows more than a simple addict should, and has terrific observations - but he, too, remains only a shell of what he could have been.

All in, this is not Gibson's best.  But, Gibson's worst is still pretty interesting reading.  While the plot is not enervating, the droplets of insight regarding technology, politics, media and art are always interesting and thought-provoking.  Looking at the world through William Gibson's eyes is always worth the time.  So, if you have never read Gibson, don't start here.  But if you have read Gibson, wait for the paperback and read this one, too.

Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

Meet Misha Vainberg -- all 350 plus pounds of him as he tries to wangle his way back into the United States (and back into the bed of his beloved Rouenna, a Latina beauty with fractured English becoming an English major at Columbia) after having his entry blocked for the silly reason that his father (Beloved Papa) is accused (correctly) for murdering a business rival from Oklahoma. Meet Misha Vainberg, who's idea of roughing it is a bad luxury hotel room with ordinary tap water and no decent prostitutes to choose from. After all, he is the son of the 1,238th richest man in Russia. Meet Misha Vainberg, a Russian Jew is a land of anti-Semites. Meet Misha Vainberg as he tries desperately to escape by scheming to get a Belgian passport that requires him to reside for a while in the tiny, ostensibly oil-rich country of Absurdistan where he is installed as the Minister of Multicultural Affairs (you should read about the job he turned down). Meet Misha Vainberg, caught up in a civil war between the Sevo and Svani (sound familiar) and where his American Express Travel Agent and bed companion (who's father is taking over the government) is also a senior in an US University and only traffics in human refugees during vacations at home.

Visit beautiful Absurdistan, where the Sevo and Svani are blowing up the country in order to secure contracts for KBR (Kellogg, Brown & Root - favorites from our Iraqi sojourn) from the US government to rebuild (didn't Peter Sellers make a movie very similar to this -- "The Mouse That Roared"??). Meet the Mountain Jews - a beloved, but forgotten sect of Hebrews living in the hills unnoticed by their Muslim neighbors for centuries.

OK, enough -- all this should and could be hilarious. It is not. While Absurdistan has a couple of tricks; the fat Russian Jew with a passion for America, the civil war for profit (praise be to Gollyburton), and the corrupt Russians/Politicians of all stripes; these do not wear well. It is not until near the end of the book that a true belly laugh gets produced.  The Jewish joke ran thin for me quite early (perhaps I am not the best judge, but there it is)and as much as I relish belittling the relationship between Dick Cheney, Halliburton, and the current administration, it is hard to create chortles and giggles from war profiteering and the wanton waste of human lives -- even if it was all orchestrated for TV.

This is not as much madcap as it is monotonous.  You can tell that Gary Shteyngart has enormous promise - he writes very well and he has a distinct sense of the weird and funny.  He does a good job of writing of Misha's appetites (food and women, sometimes together) and he does irony and political satire (Misha is a graduate of "Accidental University " in the United States).  Misha is (in the tradition of other, greater Russian writers) a "holy fool", but produces only intermittent insight or real humor.  Some have compared this book to A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.  They might be right, as I almost died trying to read that unfunny, dense compilation of prose -- a task I ultimately had to leave unfinished.

I hope Shteyngart keeps writing (and I will try his first book, The Russian Debutante's Handbook), but Absurdistan appears to be that typical second book letdown.  I would pass unless you really have a yen for this type of stuff.

George P. Pelecanos

More summer reading (or anytime reading, really).

George P. Pelecanos lives in, and writes about, Washington, DC. This is not the DC you are used to reading about. Not a lot of politicians (except major jibes at incompetent, drug using mayors). Rather, the tougher, seamier side of the District and its near suburban environs is Pelecanos territory and believe me, he owns the turf. This is about bad guys and good guys, and the guys in between trying to make a decision. Pelecanos writes about bad cops who try to do good and good cops who die. He knows about drug dealers and whores and working men and women trying to get by – day-by-day – in a very, very tough neighborhood. He is particularly familiar with some very bad habits – hard drinking, hard smoking, hard lovin’ and hard living folks. On top of it all, he knows the city and its neighborhoods and how it has all changed for the worse over the past 25 years.

Pelecanos has a particular knack for getting into the head of his primary characters of which there are two. Nick Stefanos is the downtown electronics store salesman cum marketing guy, sometimes bartender and all times guy who can “look into things”. The son of a very tough owner of a Greek diner (Big Nick) that became a city institution (and there is the occasional story and at least one book about Nick’s father), Nick is a hard drinking guy who can find trouble who somehow ends up with a Private Investigators license and a new career that doesn’t always end up as a health enhancing experience. You can find Nick in A Firing Offense, Nick’s Trip, The Big Blowdown, Shame the Devil, and Down By the River Where the Dead Men Go

Derek Strange is a middle-aged African American who appears in such light classics as Right as Rain, Hell to Pay, Soul Circus and Hard Revolution. Pelecanos plays around with time – sometimes writing when Strange is middle-aged, occasionally going younger. Hard Revolution, for example, takes place during Strange’s first years as a DC cop during the 1968 riots following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Strange has to deal with his pot-smoking, drug dealing older brother while trying to make it as one of the first black men on the DC force. Strange also knows the city, is a doggedly persistent PI with a good heart but commitment problems (who also visits his mom on a regular basis). Right as Rain (and a few others) pair Strange up with Terry Quinn, a white ex-cop who Strange employs to help him on a few cases. Quinn has quit the force after he kills a man – and is having trouble getting right with himself. Together, they do right while dealing with tough problems and tough people – but it ain’t easy.

Pelecanos also has some non-series books. In Shoedog, “Constantine is a burned-out, jive-loving, booze-guzzling, sex-junkie, chain-smoking, longhaired druggie loner who's searching for something he'll never find. Leaving his Washington, D.C., home at age 17, Constantine has circled the globe, traveling light, sleeping in fleabags and flophouses, working every kind of odd job from slinging hash to cleaning toilets. Back in the U.S. after years of roaming, Constantine hitches a ride with Polk, an old geezer headed for Florida. But there's one stop Polk needs to make, and it turns out to be a stop that changes Constantine's life forever” (this is a quote from Booklist and it is a pretty good introduction)

Pelecanos is gritty, tough and rarely (if ever) shirks from showing the unpleasant parts of a life most of us don’t know and are glad not to. He writes tight action prose and seems to have an inside track on the rhythms of a big city and what it takes to survive in it. He can tell the immigrant story, the cop story, the drug story, and the mystery story and he does all of them well. He is no stranger to violence and despair – but also a believer in redemption and resurrection.

Out of many, here is one particularly wonderful moment. In Shame the Devil, Dimitri Karras asks the name of a fellow bar patron. Hearing that he's called Happy, Karras comments that he doesn't look too happy. The response is: "He's pacing himself."

Many sources call George P. Pelecanos “the best kept secret in crime fiction”. If you like Robert B. Parker, Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly, Raymond Chandler or Ross MacDonald, you should not allow Pelecanos to live in obscurity – search him out and read his stuff.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

It was only after I read this book that I found out that it had been an Oprah selection. In fact, had I not run out of books while on a trip (and thus had to poach from my spouse’s hoard), I doubt I would have ever picked this one up…... I am glad I did.

A Fine Balance is a novel of modern India – the Emergency of 1975 to be specific. But it is really much more (and much less) than that. Indira Gandhi’s emergency (which saved her position as Prime Minister from an impending corruption scandal) is really only part of the context and only part of the cause in this sweeping story about 4 people thrown together by circumstance in the same apartment in an unnamed large seacoast city. A Fine Balance will introduce the reader to the complexities and grinding inhumanity of the caste system, to the consequences of partition, the religious tension between Hindu and Moslem and Sikh and the masala that Indian society has created from its disparate parts. This story will remind the reader of the injustices of male-dominated societies and that, as always, absolute power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This novel moves effortlessly from Indian village to city, from beggar to Brahmin, from street to hut to apartment as the exact same combination of fate and luck throw these strangers together and later tear them asunder.

As a political statement, A Fine Balance is not subtle. Those in power (and who want it) behave badly….whether that is a Prime Minister, a village Brahmin, a brother to a sister, a policeman to a citizen, or simply the city to a villager. There is no love for the Congress Party (Mrs. Gandhi’s party) or its minions and the “Emergency” is used to explain all sorts of governmental excess, including forced sterilizations.

This is not a kind story, nor a particularly happy one. The unbelievable poverty – the hunger, the filth, the sickness and disease, the enormous work just to stay alive, and the exploitation and abuse is a continuous burden that begins to weigh on the reader. Kindness is found property in Mistry’s novel – it happens regularly, but its source is almost always unexpected, i.e., the Muslim adult to Hindu children, the head honcho criminal to the widow and cripple, the night watchman to the homeless. This combination that Mistry weaves gives the reader a taste of the capriciousness that the Indian poor must experience every single day and in that little set piece – and the way in which Mistry weaves the lives of these 4 people together – lies both the genius and appeal of this book.

This is a long story at 600 pages, but does not read long. In fact, Mistry recreates this world so completely that the reader loses sight of the density of pages with the understanding of the details of the characters’ lives, their history, their dreams, their families, and their struggles. Mistry has made each of the characters whole, but each is a victim….sometimes a victim more than once. The overall picture is a terrifically powerful indictment of the cruelty and corruption created by the society overall, and the “state of emergency” declared by Indira Gandhi that exacerbated and abetted the worst behaviors. In spite of all of that and all that happens to our main characters, (Dina, widowed young and now approaching her 40s; Maneck the reluctant student torn between home and independence; Ishvar and his nephew Om, Untouchables who have managed to throw off their traditional caste “profession” to become tailors but at the cost of having to leave their village to find work), there remains both stoic resolution to persevere and human kindness to share….and maybe that is the continuing human condition.

If you ever had an interest in looking at the India that technology outsourcing has likely not – as yet – “transformed”, this would be a great place to start.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

DO NOT read this book if you are depressed, down, slightly unhappy or even moderately disgruntled. Cormac McCarthy has put together a terrifically written but unbelievably depressing, scary, and disheartening post-apocalyptic travel journal. This is art in gray and black, music saturated with downbeat thirds. The impact of reading this book (and it is worth reading) is not unlike the impact of "The Depressives Movie Marathon" back in college...the all night revue consisting of "Midnight Cowboy", "They Shoot Horses, Don't They", "Tell me you love me, Junie Moon", "Klute", and a whole bunch of early Bergman.

Starting in no place we can recognize, the father and son are trying to make it to the west coast of the United States. This is a destination as an objective only as there is no reason to believe it will be any better. Set in what appears to be either the aftermath of an ecological holocaust or post-nuclear war (it is left unexplained), this lonely pair walk "the road" in search of food, shelter, and in a desperate attempt to avoid the gangs of predator humans that have resulted from survival of the fittest (or the most brutal).

What is redeeming about this novel is the bond between father and son, rendered both wrenchingly and tenderly by McCarthy. The human drive to survive and to protect our children is starkly drawn. This work will scare you, keep you up at night, and make you cry. It certainly will make you think twice about not having a stockpile of food, water, and weapons.

This is the first Cormac McCarthy book I have read, but if this is representative of his descriptive writing ability, I will search out the rest.

December 6 - Martin Cruz Smith

If you liked Gorky Park or Polar Star or Havana Bay, you will really like December 6. Martin Cruz Smith is a terrific action and mystery novelist and this newest does not disappoint. Set in the confused, chaotic, and pride-charged Japan just prior to Pearl Harbor, December 6 presents us with the conundrum of Harry Niles. Niles is the American son of missionaries, raised in the streets of Tokyo while his parent proselytize, taken on as a project by a Japanese artist as a youth and grows into a fixer, con artist, gambler and business man but Japanese to the core.

Flash forward to the eve of war between the United States and Japan. Whose side is Harry Niles on, what is his game, and how will he win? Is he a spy? If he is a spy – for whom is he spying? Will he abandon his Japanese mistress and head home with the wife of the British Ambassador? Will he help the Japanese Navy with his gift of the con? That ‘s the story Smith gives us and it is a wild ride.

December 6 provides a great and gritty view of the streets of Tokyo, what it may have been like in the early 1940’s as an American and what it may have been like even earlier as an American child running wild with the other street kids of Tokyo. It also provides a fascinating look into the education of a Japanese – the lessons of discipline, standards of behavior, honor, and obligation. It explores the concept of friendship that can transcend culture.

December 6 has (as always with Martin Cruz Smith) great dialogue and good suspense. A really terrific escape book. Have fun with it.

The Crimson Petal And The White - Michael Faber

Sometimes you just have to go with the book jacket. In the case of The Crimson Petal and the White, the book jacket, the reviews in The New York Times, on Amazon.com, and even the local bookstore were unbelievably consistent. To quote the book jacket,” a gripping tale of Victorian England -from whores to high society - by a twenty-first-century Charles Dickens. Twenty years in its conception, research, and writing, The Crimson Petal and the White is a singular literary achievement - a gripping intoxicating, deeply satisfying Victorian novel written with an immediacy, compassion, and insight that give it a timeless and universal appeal”

Interestingly enough, despite the fabulous hyperbole, the book jacket is fairly accurate. At 838 pages set in 10-point Van Dijck type, the novel is indeed Dickensian. For 90% of this novel, it really is a gripping and intoxicating tale. I suppose the same words used for Crimson Petal have been used at various times on many of James Michener’s novels. In at least one respect, Mr. Faber is truly more like Michener than Dickens. Neither can figure out how to get out of the tangled web they weave, so to speak. Both Michener and Faber write terrific period pieces as intricate stories..., so intricate that they both seem to get so confused they forget how to bring the denouement to a satisfying close.

So, if you can steel yourself for a disappointing end, you can revel in about 750 pages of superlative prose, fascinating insights into the mercantile class of Victorian England, and fabulous descriptions of the plight of the working poor and, pardon the pun, working women of the age.

Faber paints a dismal picture of married life for our protagonist (truth be told, Faber seems to have a certain distaste for the institution overall). William Rackham is married to Agnes (who becomes progressively more disconnected from reality as the novel goes on), and is father to a young daughter (Sophie) for whom he is more myth than reality. Rackham takes refuge in the pleasure pits of London with his old school chums — whose dissolute hobbies include working their way through — for practicum credit, if you will, the encyclopedic review of London’s best and most interesting whores. It is through this process that William meets, and is totally besotted with Sugar, a nineteen year-old whore with particular talents and a reputation for catering to the “rough and odd” trade.

William Rackham is also the scion of Rackham Perfumeries. William lives the life of a wastrel until circumstances dictate he give up his life of dissipation and take the reins of the family business from his aging father. In an odd twist of fate, not only is Sugar installed as William’s mistress, but she also becomes a consultant of sorts. Sugar provides William with quite savvy and accurate advice and counsel with regard to what women want in the perfume and cosmetics trade. William finds himself oddly successful in the trade he always disdained and ends up being rather more the businessman than his father, in no small part due to the help he receives from Sugar.

Faber does a masterful job of describing the workings of a rich man’s household in Victorian England. Faber’s intricate depiction of servants’ duties and intrigues, the obligations of the social season, the invalid and incapable wife, and the demanding and unreasonable head of household is wonderfully written and unusually captivating, and provides a unique mirror into this world.

The story takes its most interesting turn when Rackham is able to install his exclusive whore/mistress as his daughter’s governess. The relationship that takes shape between the ignored and unloved child and the governess née fallen woman is delicately developed and exposes the maternal instinct in quite inventive fashion.

There is a second story line — that of William’s older brother Henry. Henry is an almost priest. He desperately wants to be deserving of the priesthood, is as pious and sanctimonious as they come, and a complete puzzlement to his brother and his father. Henry’s conscience is hyperactive — he is prevented from pursuing his religious calling because he lusts in his heart for the Widow Fox, a physically unattractive woman to everyone but Henry. Henry’s unbalanced balancing act is painful to observe and even more painful in its resolution.

The great comic irony of the book is that the Widow Fox, with Henry helping, is devoted to The Rescue Society, a group of holier-than-thou types dedicated to saving the souls of fallen women by teaching them a trade. Henry’s increasing contact with women who seem to be able to read his most feared desires sets up some interesting contradictions for him. Although I found the Henry/Widow Fox story line to be less interesting than the William/Sugar one, it clearly has its moments.

I will not spoil the ending for you other than to say I was disappointed. I don’t believe the last 10% matched up well to the first 90%, but I would be happy to be wrong, and if I am, you will really enjoy this book.

Up Country - Nelson DeMille

Well, I let my enthusiasms (as Robert DeNiro playing Al Capone said) get the better of me. Slightly euphoric after discovering Nelson DeMille in The General’s Daughter - a gritty and sometimes disturbing crime drama featuring Criminal Investigation Division Warrant Officer Paul Brenner – I went after DeMille’s next book starring the same main character. Big Mistake.

Up Country picks up Warrant Officer Paul Brenner just after he ends his career in the Army (not the least reason being his kind treatment of officers in the previous book). Bored with retirement after only a couple of months, estranged from his lover from the previous book as he won’t move to where she is and vice versa, Paul is convinced to return to Vietnam to investigate the 30 year-old murder of a Lieutenant by a Captain – both US Army officers. Vietnam conjures up all sorts of memories – all bad. Brenner did two tours of duty, first as an infantry grunt during the Tet offensive of 1968 and then as an MP in 1972. Thirty years later (or so) he is back.

Unfortunately, DeMille is reconstructing a bit of his own history here – having served during the war and then returning in the mid-1990s – and the book turns out to be much more of a memoir and travel guide than taut, gripping mystery. The plot is simplistic and borders on the moronic. A small sampling to follow:

This murder is uncovered when a 30-year-old letter taken off a dead North Vietnamese soldier is re-discovered in an old chest of war memorabilia and sent off to the Department of Defense and when translated, describes the murder of the Lieutenant. The letter -- written by one NVA soldier to his brother – is never seen by Mr. Brenner. He trusts implicitly that the copy of the translation provided to him is accurate and true. Well, not really, but he goes anyway – his mission – find the letter writer. It is Tet (again) and all good Vietnamese return to their ancestral villages to celebrate the New Year. Of course. They think they know the name of the village but not the location. They think the letter writer is alive. So, Mr. Brenner -- your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find the village and find the man. Oh, by the way, you will know what to do when you get there because we ain’t telling you. Mr. Brenner accepts. Little or no hesitation. Few questions. He must be really bored at home.

The gentle reader quickly guesses that a 30 year-old murder of a Lieutenant by a Captain (who remains un-named for most of the book) means that some bigwig in either politics or industry is really bothered by the finding of this letter. Even the not-so-astute reader knows this by page 30. In the book, Mr. Brenner – who is supposed to be bright – finally gets it about 450 pages later.

More silliness abounds. Mr. Brenner is teased, wooed, and alternatively assisted (once in country) by the “beautiful American expatriate Susan Weber”, who, while denying any involvement with any US government agency using a three letter identifier, is able to procure travel plans, modes of transportation (cars, bus tickets, and a almost new BMW motorcycle), and clothing when ever needed. Indeed, she even comes up with a 45 caliber pistol in this tightly controlled police state -- with which, after claiming only moderate knowledge, she manages to use to off two Vietnamese policeman in a jeep who are chasing Paul & Susan’s bouncing motorcycle down a dirt road a truck at 100kph. Yup, just the innocent girl next door, all right.

This same said innocent is ultimately unmasked as the CIA agent she is, but only after she goes ballistic when the evil Colonel Mang of the Vietnamese Security Police (Section A) manages to take photos of the two professionals cavorting on a nude beach. CIA training indeed. Killing people for your country is one thing, having a long-range shot of your front- and backside shown to your fellow agents is just an outrage, isn’t it?

Dumb plot. Simple, dumb plot. Simple, dumb plot with simple, dumb dialogue and dumb or dumber characters. Colonel Mang is a complete caricature. As written, he might not make it into a old Bond movie, perhaps not even one of the dozen or so Chuck Norris “rescue-the-Americans-from-the-bad-evil-awful-cruel-North-Vietanmese-while-inflicting-more-damage-upon-them-than-Operation-Rolling-Thunder” films. The character is terribly stereotyped and badly developed.

Not the same vociferous criticism for the descriptions of the war or the country. Ho Chi Minh City (the former Saigon), Hanoi, and the Vietnamese countryside are described in detail and are pretty amazing, assuming it is true. Beautiful country ravaged by long and terrible fighting. DeMille does provide tough and gripping descriptions of battles and fighting through the eyes and minds of both American and North Vietnamese participants. A hint of what war does to people…but only a hint. Here too, some silliness – the depiction of the young Paul Brenner throwing down his M16 in response to the challenge by a wounded NVA solider armed only with a knife. Mano-a-mano. I don’t think so. My mind’s eye goes towards a solution more like that of Indiana Jones (in Raiders of the Lost Ark) when confronted with the crazed Egyptian with the huge scimitar…you take your gun our of your holster and shoot.

So, I am now batting .500 with DeMille. In Up Country, he misses badly. Time to try another of his 11 or 12 books in print. The General’s Daughter was good enough to earn him one more chance.

Subsequent Note: I did try many other DeMille's....and none of them came close to The General's Daugher.

Shrink Rap - Robert B. Parker

It appears to be the season for disappointments. Robert B. Parker, the honest successor to Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald and other tough-guy Private Eye novels, has been one of my favorites for years. The Spenser series, now some 25 years old with 20 or so books in the series, is admittedly slowing down, but still good for a great one-liner and some lessons in independent living. And it is always good to visit with an old friend – even if they have good and not-so-good days. That’s Parker and his Spenser mysteries.

Wish I could recommend Shrink Rap – a Sunny Randall book. I just can not bring myself to do so unless you have the same enormous soft spot for Parker that I do and are willing to wade through 300 or so mediocre pages for the 10 or so bright spots – and that might be an exaggeration of your reward.

Although Sunny Randall isn’t a “spin-off” from Spenser in the Cheers to Frasier sense, Parker is already having trouble separating attitude, orientation, and personality. Randall talks, thinks, and usually emotes very much like Spenser. Problem is that Parker can’t seem to make her work nearly as well. This is the third Sunny Randall book, following Family Honor and Perish Twice. Family Honor was interesting in introducing Sunny – daughter of a Boston Police Captain, spent some time in the job but found it too confining (sound familiar?). Sunny was married to Richie. Now divorced, but can’t quite seem to leave each other. Love is like that, I guess, but this comes off like a simple parallel of the Spenser/Susan Silverman relationship – in love, inseparable, to death do us part, but never to marry or live together. Sunny and Richie seem most connected by some never described attraction and affection, and are demonstrably connected to each other due to joint-custody of their miniature pit-bull Rosie. Rosie’s existence in their lives seems to me to be a very awkward transference of emotion (love, caring, affection) and promotes some of the strangest and off-putting dialogue in the book. I suppose the dog thing is supposed to make Sunny and Richie caring people…it comes off as making them downright weird. Parker has duplicated the role of Pearl the Wonder Dog from the Spenser novels and it is strange there and even stranger in Shrink Rap. Truth be told, I think the real Spenser would off the mutt the first time it cold-nosed him after a romp with Susan. Just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Another example of an interesting concept left undeveloped and then overused is Richie’s family history. Sunny’s ex is the relatively going it straight son and nephew to the heads of the ‘black Irish” Boston mob. Sunny, while vocally wanting to be independent in her pursuit of bad guys as a private eye, is always offered and only occasionally accepts the totally amoral back up muscle of folks who will kill you because Sunny asks them too. Richie helps always, but he is a good guy…his knowledge and ability of how to do the heavy lifting comes from having grown up with guys who do it for a living. Yeah, right. If that were true, Fredo Corleone would be Don instead of dead and George W. Bush would be President (wait a minute here…..).

Forget the plot here – it is obvious and sounds a bit like a variation on the Spenser adventure, Looking for Rachel Wallace. Writer on a book tour is threatened – this time by her psychiatrist ex-husband who (surprise!!) tries to intimidate her psychologically. The bad doctor has a history of treating his women patients – particularly the good-looking ones with great bodies – very poorly. Psychological manipulation to enable sex abuse. Sunny saves the day by becoming a patient and escapes his evil clutches at the last moment. End of evil ex-husband.

The only real twist is the use of another psychiatrist to help Sunny analyze the sicko psychiatrist. An interesting depiction of the best and the worst of the same profession working simultaneously.

Other reviewers have said that this book is “an intriguing look at the psychology of manipulation combined with a knockout plot that builds to a truly creepy, hair-raising climax”. My take is that Shrink Rap is a relatively pedantic perspective on the worst (but always suspected and occasionally titillating) behavior of male psychiatrists with all-female clientele combined with a relatively ordinary plot that creeps its way to a completely ordinary denouement.

Like I said at the beginning, only the hard-core Parker fan is going to want to do this one.

The General’s Daughter - Nelson DeMille

Ever run across a new author, read one book, love it, and then become closely approximate to orgasmic when you discover the author has written lots of other books? Well, that did not happen to me here….but it was very, very close. I have lots of reason for optimism.

What happened was I watched The General’s Daughter on late night cable a while ago. The movie (based on the novel being reviewed here) was a gritty and sometimes disturbing crime drama starring John Travolta as Criminal Investigation Division Warrant Officer Paul Brenner; Madeleine Stowe as his partner Sara Sunhill; James Cromwell as Lt. Gen. "Fighting Joe" Campbell (you will remember him as the farmer from Babe and the Police Chief in LA Confidential) Timothy Hutton as Col. William Kent; Clarence Williams III as Col. Fowler; James Woods as Colonel Moore. An ensemble cast and, I thought, a taut, tough, sometimes brutal, and well executed drama. I set out to find the author and came up with Nelson DeMille – one of those New York Times best-selling authors I had heretofore placed along side Danielle Steel and Sidney Sheldon. I picked up the book. I am delighted to report that I had been wrong, very wrong, about this author.

The book is not the movie. As much as I liked the movie, I liked the book more. The book is less brutal, less focused on the prurient details of the key event (a supposed rape-murder on an Army base) and much more focused on dialogue and the relationship between the two key CID (Criminal Investigation Division) officers (Paul Brenner and Cynthia Sunhill) and military criminal investigation procedure (with a deep exploration of how many rules one Warrant Officer can break and still survive in this man’s army). Not surprisingly, the movie had more sex, bigger and more evil bad guys, and portrayed Army officers more bleakly and cynically.

The book has very good dialogue – told from the first person perspective of Brenner. Crisp, staccato, with humor, and very realistic. The bad guys are human, but are not forgiven in the end. Brenner is a professional and suffers from a tad of idealism that comes off well as righteous morality when it is applied to expectations about other people – and Army officers in particular. Sunhill is a professional as well, a rape investigator, specifically. While that should give Cynthia every right to be cynical and skeptical about all criminals and men in particular, DeMille gives her a much defter touch.

There are plenty of less-than-perfect people. There are bad guys who are sick and a very twisted victim. There are guys who are cowards and guys who are just plain stupid, and guys who are bad because they have terrible judgment – but mostly it’s hard to know who is truly bad. A great example is the local Sheriff - a terrific bit character design and development. He acts the very stereotype of the Southern town cop, is thought to be (but never not once demonstrated to be) a racist, he is implicated in the crime, redeemed by telling the truth (though his past behavior can only be seen as absolutely reprehensible) and then keeps his word when he could have easily done otherwise. It would have been easy for DeMille to make this guy nothing more than your “typical” dumb Southern cop. DeMille, thankfully, puts more thought into character development than that. Moreover, DeMille makes interesting choices about where to invest in character. The Sheriff is one example. The key women in the book are another example. Admittedly, there are not a lot of women in this story, but there is the interesting balance – in attitude, in action, and in orientation – between the victim and the CID investigator. You end up knowing the victim, Ann Campbell (who is dead as the story opens) at least as well as Cynthia Sunhill the co-protagonist. I found that to be an interesting twist and trick of reveal and hide by DeMille.

For those of you who like (or more likely devour), Robert B. Parker, Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy, and/or Carl Haiisen – try Nelson DeMille. This is not great literature of the 21st Century…it is a good action book, with plenty enough humor, subtlety, and suspense to keep you engaged. All in all, a very good read.

Subsequent Note: What a huge disappointment to find out that every other Nelson DeMille I have picked up has been nowhere near the quality, excitement, and tense drama represented by The General’s Daughter. Ah, well, such is life. As in most affairs, this one too was fleeting.

Trouble in Paradise - Robert B. Parker

Short Summary: A book you will not miss if you leave it on the airplane.

Beating your best is always hard to do, but you have to give credit to those who try. Parker really does try in this one -- it doesn’t beat his best by a long shot (Spenser and Hawk are hard to beat), but Parker’s OK is better than many authors’ best. Thus it is with Trouble in Paradise, it qualifies as much less than Parker’s average and that makes it only an OK read.

Parker’s first novel featuring Jesse Stone, Night Passage introduced the ex-LA tough cop as a lost soul drowning his divorce in booze and taking the chief’s job is a small Massachusetts resort community – where he demonstrates that a drunk cop should not be underestimated when love and honor are involved. Trouble in Paradise follows up where Night Passage left off. The tale is unfortunately sophomoric in a lot of cases. Bad guy just out of prison with loyal girlfriend decides to hold an entire island community hostage while robbing the rich guys blind. Obviously, he picks the wrong cop’s town. Bad guy assembles a crew of characters that go undeveloped except for their psychotic behavior. Meanwhile, Chief Stone is managing to tick off the city council by hassling rich kids who trash a gay couple’s house while simultaneously trying to control the tendency to drown his misery in scotch as his ex-wife moves to the area. In between he gets to sleep with both the City Attorney and the resort Island’s top realtor. Meanwhile, the ex-wife manages to end up in the Chief’s jail for assaulting one of the rich kid’s parents for making life difficult for Chief Stone. The plot and the dialogue, like the sex in this book, is staccato.

Bad guy’s girlfriend gets bad vibes about the job while casing the island and meeting the Chief, so she kidnaps the attorney – thinking that she is the Chief’s main squeeze. This is a terrific little piece of foreshadowing as the Chief, foils the plot, kills the bad guy, and rescues the girl. Everything ends up resolved but his love life, which is just as screwed up (pardon the pun) at the end of the book as it was at the beginning.

I’d wait until the next Spenser novel appears or until you have a plane trip where you don’t mind leaving the book on your seat – definitely wait for the paperback

Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

Everyone who has reviewed this book has said essentially the same thing -- "an astonishing performance” .Let me add my own quote “…an amazing feat of exploration by a Westerner into the heart of Japanese traditional culture” and a simply wonderful book. Not unlike a reverse Kazau’s Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, the detailed world of the time and place is deftly exposed and powerfully placed in front of the reader.

Memoirs tells the story of a young girl (Chiyo) who’s family tragedy forces her father to sell her - literally - to an okiya (a geisha residence) in the Gion district of Kyoto. She’s the lucky one. Her older sister is also sold, but not into such an esteemed profession as geisha, but to something much further down the line.

There is indeed something both Cinderella-ish and Ugly Duckling-ish about the beginning of the story as we know from the foreword that Chiyo indeed does blossom into the engaging geisha, Sayuri. But even as the “if” is known to us from the beginning, the story is a written as a memoir and thus it is not at all clear (to either Chiyo or the reader) how, when, or where this transformation will take place.

Set in pre-world war II, the level of detail devoted to Japanese life and custom appears painstakingly researched and is woven marvelously into the plot. I have not heard or read that the detail is incorrect or fictitious, so I assume accuracy.

Of particular interest is the world of the geisha. Our introduction to this unique business enterprise is through the eyes of Chiyo who, like us, is learning from the beginning. The okiya is owned and operated by ex-geisha whose time, energy, and effort is devoted to the care, feeding, dressing, and calendar of the current geisha. The current geisha have been, like Chiya will be trained, fed, coifed, made-up, and otherwise pampered (once successful). The geisha is the economic engine, her income goes to the okiya, and out of that income she pays for her upkeep, and the real and invented debts accrued by her during her training period. The only way out of this slavery turned indentured servitude is for a geisha to find a danna – a man to keep her. Once a danna is secured (and maintained), a geisha can live on her own.

Interesting, a geisha with a danna does not cease being a geisha….and therein lies the great education in this book about the life and conduct of this uniquely Japanese institution. Rather than reveal the details -- I found them a real delight to discover - I leave it to you to discover them as well

This book is not for everyone, I suspect. Like The Remains of the Day, it is a cataloging of a life and a culture. It does not move fast and there is no urgency to the book. Insight into the closed world of the Geisha and the Japan of the WWII era (pre, during, and post-war) is gleaned from what happens to Chiyo/Sayuri and the men she has/does entertain. Interesting and intriguing to be sure, but not “action”.

In short, Memoirs of a Geisha is a relatively simple story exquisitely told. I recommend it to you.

The Black Dahlia - James Ellroy

Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane, Ross MacDonald. A great tradition of the hard-bitten, disillusioned, hard drinking private eye/cop who keeps on going no matter what. Driven by the need to solve the case no matter what. Tough guys no matter what. Characters that live in a world where no sunshine ever penetrates – dialogue that drips grim reality and tough luck. A gray world that even an optimist would consider depressing. To the weavers of such lives and complications, that illustrious club consisting of the inventors of the dogged flatfoots played in the movies by Bogart, Cagney, Robinson, and Mitchum, we must now add James Ellroy and The Black Dahlia.

This is a pistol of a book. Ellroy paints a 1947 Los Angeles that out-noirs the originals. Two ex-boxer cops on the LA PD on the hunt for the torturer and murderer of an a once beautiful young woman. After having to box each other for LAPD publicity (and so Patrolman Bucky Bleichert can get a promotion), they end up on the same case, become friends, and fall in love with the same woman. A woman with a past so confused and horrible that she deserves as much sympathy as the title victim - The Black Dahlia. A mystery murder that involves crooked cops, crooked politicians, crooked businessmen, crooked Mexican cops, the drug trade, brothels, and -- a given in LA – the movies. A mystery that seems to resolve at least 4 times – but is not. Good guys that turn bad and bad guys who get worse. This book has got all the bad actors and all the action and right from the beginning.

And I do mean right from the beginning – how many other books are dedicated to the author’s murdered mother with a dedication like this one: “Mother: Twenty-nine Years Later, This Valediction in Blood”. This is really tough. Even the pages are tough (watch out for paper cuts!).

But more than anything, Ellroy captures the seamy side of post-war Los Angeles that existed for Philp Marlowe. The language and dialogue is simply superb. The action rockets along. The spirit of despair permeates everything and every one yet all the while this one young cop keeps putting himself on the line, risking everything, stretching himself to the limit – because he is driven, he just has to get the answer. Because its right and honorable.

Ellroy seems to know his detail too. The descriptions of real police procedure and the investigative techniques of the time are vivid and ring true. He traces the development of Hollywoodland into the Hollywood we all know. Latin Los Angeles comes alive as does a late 40’s trip south of the border to Tijuana.

Did you see LA Confidential? This guy wrote the book. In fact, he wrote six books before this one. I can’t
wait to order them.

A Widow For One Year - John Irving

I admit it; I really like John Irving and have since I read The World According To Garp some twenty years ago. I loved Garp for the strange and improbable, but somehow believable, characters and even more improbable situations. Irving seemed to have some sort of special insight around how people really thought, what they really said, and how they really behaved. Little touches, small vignettes of life, blazing insights and the comic reality of everyday – that’s what I loved about Garp. To this day I remember the child in Garp looking anxiously at the surf waiting to catch a glimpse of “the undertoad” his parents warned him about.

A Widow For One Year has all the same great stuff. Up to now, I have found fiction with authors as main characters a bit self-serving. John Irving breaks that mold by having damn near every main character in the book appear as an author. Yet the book is not about writing – it is about love and loss and family and – once again with his unique touch – it is about how we live our lives and what turns out to be important. Meet Ruth Cole, author. Daughter of Ted Cole (children’s book author and serial philanderer) and Marion Cole (who leaves Ruth at the age of 4, Ted, and her one-summer lover after an affair with Eddie O’Hare, teenage assistant to Ted for the summer and future author). This is the story about Eddie’s love for Marion, Ruth’s father’s love of the chase, Marion’s love of her own self-respect and Ruth’s 40 year search for love on her own terms. Should be icky and sticky…but it is not. A fine description of some high-level dysfunctional family behavior to be sure, but not mushy or maudlin.

When Ruth is 40 and finds her father with her best friend, Hannah:

“Most families have rules, Daddy,” Ruth told her father.

“Most friends, too.” Ruth said to Hannah

“Okay, okay—I’m lawlessness personified.” Hannah told her friend.

“You never apologize, do you?” Ruth asked her.

“Okay, I’m sorry.” Hannah said. “Does that make it better?”

“It was an accident—it was nothing planned,” Ted told his daughter.

“That must have been a novelty for you, Daddy,” Ruth said.

This isn’t your every day daughter to father dialogue.

Everyday life with a twist. Every character developed. Every interaction an adventure. Ruth travels to Amsterdam to do research for her book and learns about real life – she witnesses a murder and leaves the scene of the crime. The Amsterdam detective on the case gets some “anonymous” information that helps to catch the murderer, but he still looks for the eyewitness (as it must have been), even after he retires. Eddie searches for the one love of his life, Marion, while maintaining his infatuation for older women into his 50’s. And Ted is Ted…forever.

An adventure and celebration of life (in the Hamptons) as I have never seen it before. A story within a story that provides startling glimpses into the lives of Amsterdam’s legal prostitutes. The feelings and strange thoughts that people have and how strange all of us behave with, and to, one another. Funny, sad, and memorable. It is Garp updated for today.

An Instance of the Fingerpost - Ian Pears

If you liked Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose , you will adore Iain Pear’s An Instance of the Fingerpost. If you hated Eco’s book, you still might like this one – it’s that good. A mystery in four parts set in 17th century Oxford. With the ascension and fall of Cromwell and the Protectorate and the parallel restoration of the monarchy in the person of Charles II as context, Pears weaves a tale of political intrigue, personal betrayal, and the emergence of modern science, medicine, and philosophy. The playing field of the time is the English xenophobia around the Pope and Church of Rome. The setting is Oxford. A strange Venetian gentleman arrives in London to “take care of the family business” and finds himself involved in the post-Cromwell restoration, Charles II reversion to Catholicism, and murder and mayhem. The supporting cast of the novel consists of historical figures -- John Locke, Sir Christopher Wren, Anthony Wood, and Robert Boyle among of host of other dignitaries. Pears presents his reader with four different perspectives on the same set of political and personal events (a murder, a betryal, an affair, and the politics of the Church of Rome and Church of England). Each perspective brings new light to both the main events of the novel and the discoveries and major events of the times. Pears paints life in the mid-to-late 1600’s so realistically that, at times, his depictions made me shudder. His particular details around living conditions and the state-of-the-art of medical thought and treatment can make one shudder with horror. He has a light touch as he very deftly winds into the story the origins of John Locke’s philosophy, the first attempts at transfusing blood, and the transition of the science of alchemy to the science of chemistry. The historical characters, large and small, play integral roles in the drama and their place in history is delicately used as part of the plot. The fictitious characters are based on real ones, so the credibility of the whole construct is very well preserved.
Wonderfully written.