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Thursday, September 19, 2013
big damn recap
I'm not going to individually post for everything I've read since February. At this point, I'm pretty sure this page only exists as a personal log of what I've read (it's existed longer than Goodreads, and nobody tracks me here). A gift of a nook for Christmas let me go through lots of books I downloaded from the library, and our new building has a little library in the basement. Between those, and a couple real books, I've read:
All of Michael Connelly's novels published up to today. Echo Park was my favorite. Good characterization and dialogue. The novels which do not fit into one of his series tend to be a bit weaker than the rest, but Harry Bosch is still the king of the Connelly version of LA. Mickey Haller makes a good read, though his slippery ethics make me a little uncomfortable sometimes, but even he can't hold a candle to his half-brother the cop. They have a combined story coming out this fall, The Gods of Guilt, and I look forward to it, but more for the detective than the somewhat shady defense attorney. Haller's a fun character, but there's a pattern to all of his stories, while Bosch continues to get into new situations, with unique twists and clever plots.
The first two books in Sue Grafton's Alphabet series. A little dated, but fun. Made me wish more of her books were on the shelf downstairs.
I've caught up with Alan Bradley's Flavia De Luce series (the most recent to date being Speaking From Among The Bones). Still entertaining, and he finally got to the twist I predicted in the first book, but I will have to wait until the next book (The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches), due out next year, for any resolution.
Craig Johnson continues to amaze me with Walt Longmire. I've read up to the short story Divorce Horse, wedged into the series between Hell Is Empty and As The Crow Flies, and, as always, Johnson inspires and intimidates me. As I read his books, I want to be able to write that well, and am constantly dogged by the feeling that I can't. However, Divorce Horse was a little disappointing. I'm glad I didn't spend any money on it. Too much guessing is left in the resolution (even calling it a "resolution" feels like a sham), and it feels too much like what it is: table scraps thrown out to keep ravening fans busy until the book release. I'm still two books (and a few short stories) behind in the series, but Steamboat Springs is due out next month. If I play my cards right, I think I'll be ready for it when it gets here.
Lamb, by Christopher Moore, is just as clever, funny, ribald, and entertaining as everything else I've read by him. I liked the new take on Jesus's youth (not being a religious person, I could tell there were several references I didn't get, but I was still pleased with the story and the references I did get), but I think the part that was most personally significant for me was the Author's Bio at the end, which assured me that Moore was a "late-blooming child prodigy" who published his first novel in his mid-thirties. That's about where I am, so I feel a little better about my late start in writing. Hopefully, I can get my book out to agents soon, and maybe I'll be a late-blooming child prodigy, too.
I think that's everything that matters. I've also been re-reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series on my nook, because sometimes I feel like reading, but I don't have a fresh book handy, and I've read that entire series so many times that I can dip in and out of it with aplomb, and not even care if I finish a chapter (though I usually do).Labels: decomposing bodies, demonic possession, ethics, girl power, mystery/detective, poison, western, young protagonists
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Friday, February 01, 2013
to live and investigate in LA
Title: The Harry Bosch Novels
Author: Michael Connelly
bookmark: nookmark
I got an ebook from the library that had the first three Harry Bosch novels in one package. I had already read the last one, but that was years ago, so I read Black Echo, Black Ice, and The Concrete Blonde (again) in about a week, maybe more.
I'm only writing one post, because I am lazy, and I'm the only one who even looks at this anymore.
Harry was a tunnel rat in Vietnam; this plays heavily in the first book, when a fellow tunnel rat's body is found (in a tunnel, no less) near the Mulholland Dam. In finding out whodunit and why, Harry also cracks open a year-old bank robbery case, draws the attention of IAD (who have been on his case since the Dollmaker shooting a couple years before the series starts), and gets freaky with a hottie FBI agent with her own skeletonized closet.
In Black Ice, Harry's service in Nam is mentioned, but it's not as big a deal--though he does still end up in a tunnel. His boss, Harvey "Ninety-Eight" Pounds, wants a case closed before the end of the year so the books balance better, so when a flaky detective takes a leave of absence because the stress is breaking him down, his caseload ends up on Bosch's desk with an order to find an easy case, and close it. Now. By the end of the book, Bosch has solved four or five murders and destroyed a drug-smuggling operation, but most of those murders happen during the course of his first investigation, so it's not clear whether they count for the Lieutenant's quota. Oh, and he ends a relationship with the ME and starts one with a freshly-widowed cop's wife. Because that scene was TOTALLY plausible.
All I remembered about The Concrete Blonde (before re-reading it) was something about ankles, and a porn cop. That's a cop who investigates and helps regulate porn, not the one who shows up in short-shorts at your bachelorette party and says "there's been a noise complaint ladies, and I'm gonna need you to stuff money in my pants." Anyway, there's a civil suit related to the Dollmaker shooting that Bosch keeps mentioning in his internal monologue, and he has to deal with that while there's a new investigation because a body has turned up that matches the Dollmaker's MO, and a note which also matches, but at least he's still with Dead Cop's Wife (she may not know the SPOILER ALERT that her dead husband was a dirty cop who tried to take over the drug-smuggling operation in Black Ice by faking his death, killing the real kingpin, and taking over his life, which was spoiled when Bosch figured it out and killed him in a kill-or-be-killed confrontation, but SPOILER ALERT OVER at least she and Bosch have settled into a comfortable domestic situation, and Bosch tells her he loves her awwwwww).
Again, I don't know if it's an error in the originals, or something that happens when they're sloppy about making ebooks, but I saw a lot of errors. The one that bothered me most was when Sylvia handed Bosch the same cup of coffee twice in one scene during Black Ice. And I don't know if there are really as many corrupt cops in LA as these books imply, but if I were in Public Relations for the LAPD, I might write Connelly a nice letter asking him to maybe cut the force a little slack and let a bad guy the bad guy every once in a while.Labels: drugs, mystery/detective, series
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Tuesday, January 22, 2013
no man is an island, except Jesse Stone
Title: Trouble in Paradise
Author: Robert B. Parker
Bookmark: nookmark
I celebrated figuring out how to check out library books on my nook by continuing the Jesse Stone series, though I sometimes wonder why. I guess I hope he'll mature as it progresses.
Plot first, then gripes.
Bad guys plan an epic heist: isolate the Rich People Island off the coast of, but under the jurisdiction of, Paradise, Massachusetts, where Jesse Stone happens to be Chief of Police. Later, said bad guys execute planned heist (and a few locals who get in the way). Jesse handles the situation as he always does: saying as little as possible, and generally being more clever than people give him credit for being. Oh--and having sex with far more women than might seem reasonable for a guy who should be more busy with his job. One of his officers notes this, and buys him an extra-large bottle of multi-vitamins to show his concern.
Now the gripes.
Jesse's kind of an alcoholic. Fine, I get that, whatever. He's divorced, and carries a lot of related baggage. Sure, ok. He also carries an inextinguishable torch for his ex, who moves to Boston and becomes a weather girl to (in my opinion) continue to cruelly string him along. She makes me a little crazy. Jesse's mooning over her makes me a little crazy. Seriously, dude--get with Abby. She's better for you. Move the frick on.Labels: mystery/detective, series
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Sunday, December 16, 2012
Philadelphia Story
Title: Kindness Goes Unpunished
Author: Craig Johnson
Bookmark: same lizard, same stick
I may have mentioned that one of the reasons I love the Longmire series is that it makes me homesick for the West. Despite taking place in Philly, Kindness Goes Unpunished still managed. Weird, huh?
Walt thinks he's going on vacation. He expects to be gone from his post two weeks, maybe three. Henry Standing Bear is driving Lola (the powder-blue T-bird) across the country to exhibit the Mennonite photographs of life on the Reservation (discovered in the previous book) at an art museum in the City of Brotherly Love, and Walt is riding shotgun, with Dog, who will apparently never get a real name, in the back seat. Walt hopes to spend some time with his daughter Cady, who works in Philly as The Finest Legal Mind of Our Time. On their first night in town, Bear lands a date (no surprise there), and Walt is left to his own devices. He meets Lena Moretti, mother to his trusty deputy Vic, and she is with him when he learns that his daughter will not be returning home that night.
Cady has been hospitalized, in a coma after a head injury, and may not wake up. As one might expect, Walt immediately begins investigating, arousing the interest of the local detectives, getting himself in trouble, and quickly gaining able assistance from several Morettis. They discover a much deeper plot of drugs and corruption whose surface Cady had barely scratched when she met with ill will, and although Walt learns early who hurt his little girl, he stays in it until the finish to find out who has been secretly sending him help along the way.
Johnson always does an incredible job of putting very real, believable characters in very real, dangerous situations, and reminding you of how real it is by not flinching from hurting them, sometimes badly. Throughout the story, Walt remembers how he, Bear, and Dog have been injured in the earlier books, and worrying how much of his daughter will survive her injury in this book. Whenever he is not actively pursuing a lead or grabbing a quick bite outside, he sits at his daughter's bedside, tears in his eyes, remembering her childhood and hoping for her future.
By putting Walt in a big East Coast city and putting his daughter in a coma, Johnson lands our hero firmly in territories both alien and terrifying, but Walt proves that determination, love, and a little help from his friends can get him through anything, anywhere.
I love these books.
Labels: murder, mystery/detective, Native American
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Merry Christmas, Flavia
Title: I Am Half Sick of Shadows
Author: Alan Bradley
Bookmark: lizard in a stick
Christmas comes to Buckshaw, riding on the coat-tails of a film crew. The Colonel, increasingly desperate in his efforts to pay the bills, has allowed a production crew to set up shop in the family manor, with clear rules as to which areas are available to them and which are entirely off-limits (namely, the boudoir of his late wife and life's great love, Harriet). Hoping to leverage the star power of Phyllis Wyvern, the movie's headliner, the vicar of Bishop's Lacey arranges a showing of Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene in Buckshaw's expansive foyer, selling tickets to the townspeople. Then a blizzard blocks the roads and seals off the estate during the show. Naturally, someone goes and gets themselves murdered.
Flavia is in the middle of dual festive chemical schemes: a fireworks show from Buckshaw's roof, and heavy smears of birdlime at the chimney entrances to capture Saint Nick and prove his existence once and for all to her noxious sisters. Luckily, she still has time to investigate the crime.
I love the series. I'm a big fan of Flavia, and Bradley. They are both very clever. This book is not the best showcase of their talents. Yes, it's still a lot of fun, and it's festively festivish, for what that's worth, but I felt like not as much effort had gone into the mystery of this outing. (is it still an outing if the entire novel takes place in Flavia's house?) I wouldn't go so far as to say that I was disappointed, but I wasn't as overwhelmed with this one as I had been earlier in the series. Maybe that's ok. You can't get better with every single effort, or you'll burn yourself out, and I look forward to seeing more of Flavia in the future.Labels: girl power, murder, mystery/detective, secrets
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Monday, October 08, 2012
much more than murder
Title: Bad Business
Author: Robert B. Parker
Bookmark: leather bookmark from University Hospital's Ireland Cancer Center (I got it with purchase of Lisa's Story)
Spenser is one of Parker's longest-running heroes. I don't think his first name is ever mentioned, he doesn't seem to age, and apparently the characters that surround and support him are equally immortal. I surmise a little here, because I think this is the only Spenser book I've read, but I have it on good authority.
In this case, Spenser is hired to discover who killed Trent Rowley, CFO of a major energy borker called Kinergy, in the halls of the business. His wife wants to know who did it, but she mostly wants Spenser to prove she had nothing to do with it. This gives you a good sense for the wife's (Marlene) character. Trust me, she never gets more likable, and isn't meant to.
It doesn't take Spenser (and his buddy Hawk, and World's Greatest CPA Marty, and Spenser's longtime girlfriend Susan, who turns out to be the shrink from another Parker series) long to figure out that there's shady things happening at Kinergy, and far more than you might think, even knowing there'd just been a murder there.
Ably assisted by his merry band, Spenser uncovers extremely iffy bookkeeping, a large and prospering sex ring, and what may be the mother of all long cons.
I wasn't really interested in Spare Change. I enjoyed reading it, but when I finished it, I didn't feel an urgent need to go hunt down another Sunny Randall mystery. Spenser is a different matter. I like the character, his style, and his voice. He reacts to jokes that other people don't realize they make, and plays word games with as much self-serving vigor as me, plus he's a total badass, with friends who are also total badasses, even if I didn't learn much about them in this episode.Labels: cooking, corporations, dog, hunky armed forces or government operatives, murder, mystery/detective
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Sunday, August 26, 2012
Where the schemers and the meth addicts roam
Title: Death Without Company
Author: Craig Johnson
Bookmark: I shouldn't even bother anymore.
Sheriff Walt Longmire had a rough month. He nearly lost an ear to frostbite, his best friend to a twitchy and paranoid young man with a target on his back, and his (smoking hot) deputy to three prestigious job offers. He kept all three of them, but the woman he loved is gone and his prime suspect in a recent series of killings stuck the barrel of a high-powered rifle under their chin and pulled the trigger.
Naturally, there was a period of adjustment. He grew a beard. He adopted the woman's dog when it arrived on his back porch (though he still hasn't given Dog a real name), and he hardly ever itches his ear anymore. Henry Standing Bear has recovered from his injuries, and Santiago Saizarbitoria is on his way up from Cheyenne to interview for the position vacated when Branch joined the highway patrol. Vic is her usual (gorgeous) foul-mouthed self, and nobody would have her any other way, but her husband is gone and the divorce finalized.
Walt is doing much better. His friend and predecessor Lucian Connolly is not. Mari Baroja has died in her room at the Durant Home for Assisted Living, and Lucian suspects foul play. Walt isn't convinced at first, but he plays along and soon learns there was far more to the Basque woman than met the eye. Like her three-hour marriage to Lucian, the granddaughter who owns a bakery in town, and the millions she holds in mineral rights on her land.
As Walt and Vic keep digging (with able assistance from Saizarbitorio--rechristened "Sancho" by Vic--, Henry, and Dog), they find that this mystery spans generations, and includes more bodies than anyone would have guessed. Lucian won't tell what he knows, key players are brutally attacked, and more subtle attempts are made on other lives. Walt has to find his way through all of these obstacles to find out who is behind the killings, and why. Meanwhile, an official from the treasury department is in town to go through abandoned safety deposit boxes, and she has her eye on the sheriff of Absaroka County.
I could go into the list of reasons I love the book, but they're the same reasons I love The Cold Dish. Great characters who work well with one another, an intriguing and believable plot, and Wyoming. It's still not Oregon, but it's close enough to make me homesick in the very best of ways. Reading Longmire books is like taking a trip back west for me, even if my days were never so exciting as Walt's.Labels: drugs, mystery/detective, o pioneers, western
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Thursday, August 23, 2012
I knew it was you, Steggy
Title: Hot and Sweaty Rex
Author: Eric Garcia
Bookmark: library receipt. I haven't been very creative here lately.
This is the third book in a series I started reading... well, a very long time ago. I think it predates this online collection of Everything I Read. Anyway, I was much younger, and the idea of dinosaurs living in human disguises in the modern world really appealed to me. Almost as much as it still does. Sure, Julia Roberts doesn't seem like a Stegosaurus, but according to Garcia, the cheekbones give her away. The trick in accepting this premise is to not think too much about how much the various species must have shrunk and adjusted to be able to fit inside human-sized costumes, even with their various horns, tails, claws, and unusually long necks tucked inside.
Vincent Rubio, our long-time hero, is a velociraptor private investigator, and he's really stepped in it this time. Sure, he's cleaning up his act, he's joined Herbaholics Anonymous and goes to regular meetings. His creditors don't bother him nearly as much as they probably should. Things are looking better for the scaly protagonist, even if business is slow lately.
Then he gets conned into attending the party at Frank Tallarico's place. Worse, he is requested to join Frank for a private conversation. You wouldn't think that was so bad, but only if you didn't know Frank was the west coast boss of the velociraptor crime family. Naturally, after Vincent has been a guest at his house, eaten his food, and listened to the second-rate musical talent, he is obligated to hear Frank's job offer, and after hearing it, he is compelled to accept. It seems simple enough, and comes with a hefty sack of cash when Vincent leaves the meeting, but Vinnie knows it's never simple when you deal with the dinosaur mafias.
The sack of cash is quickly distributed to most of the places and people to whom Rubio owes money, with some left over for new clothes. His task is to follow the second-in-command of the Miami Hadrosaur family for two weeks and regularly report back to Frank. Then Hagstrom, his mark, leaves town and Rubio is ordered to follow him back to Miami.
When he lands he is taken in by Frank's brother Ernie, who runs a decidedly seedier operation in the East, and is told that his two-week contract extends to whatever Ernie decides Vincent should do. Vincent quickly finds himself deeply embroiled in two rival dino crime families, a stack of illicit dealings as high as your tail, and hasty preparations as a hurricane nears the sunshine state.
It was certainly more entertaining than most mob books, if only for the dinosaur angle and Rubio's constant noir-style wisecracks, but I never got as excited about the book as I had the other two. Maybe it's been too long, or I've gotten too jaded, or maybe the hook has been played out, but I've finished the trilogy, I feel good about that, and now I can go back to Absaroka County.Labels: dinosaurs, evolutionary biology, mafia, mystery/detective
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Saturday, August 18, 2012
Crime, Crime on the Range
Title: The Cold Dish
Author: Craig Johnson
Bookmark: Library receipt. I'm pretty sure that's why they provide those things.
By the third page of this book, Sheriff Walter Longmire was drinking a beer as he drove across town to meet his deputy, a foul-mouthed young lady from Philly. That was about two pages after I decided I really liked the book, and Craig Johnson.
Walt is sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming. I loved the book because it was well-written, had great characters, a very good, very believable ending, and because I enjoyed the sparse dialog between Walt and Henry Standing Bear; a language borne of decades of friendship and two-sided sarcasm. I also loved it because, although Wyoming is not Oregon, it is similar in many ways, and reading Johnson's descriptions of the mountains, people, wildlife, and weather made me a little homesick.
Full disclosure: I discovered this series because I found episodes of Longmire on Hulu, enjoyed them, and found that they were based on a series of books. One of the episodes ("Unfinished Business") lifts its major plotline from this book, but there are significant changes, so that the two or three people I naturally suspected were not guilty of the transgressions for which I suspected them. I liked that.
Walt commits his open-container violation on his way to either visit a scene where was body was discovered or dispatch Deputy Victoria "Vic" Moretti to same. Vic gets the case. A young man had been shot in the back with what turns out to be a large bore rifle round. The weapon is rather particular; a .45 caliber Sharps rifle (according to Walt, the source of the term "Sharpshooter," thanks to its extraordinary range and accuracy, though Wikipedia is less clear on this point) which, except for some Italian reproductions which lack the legendary accuracy, are all historic weapons. In most areas, the rarity of such a rifle would alone break the case, but as Walt point out, this is Wyoming. Everyone has a good rifle, and most know how to use them.
They originally hope that it may be a simple hunting accident, but Walt and Vic both suspect otherwise; the victim was one of four boys convicted a year earlier for raping a young Cherokee woman with fetal alcohol syndrome. They try to reach the other three boys, but two are twins in a family apparently on vacation; the last was deemed least guilty in their collective crime, and his own family is tearing itself apart at the seams. He is the only one they are able to secure in protective custody, and he seems more broken than the Indian girl.
When a second boy is killed, Walt and Henry go into the mountains to find his twin brother, braving an early Wyoming blizzard swirling in off the mountains. Walt must fight the boy's urge to run, withstand the elements, and contend with an ancient, priceless, and possibly haunted Cherokee rifle which could be the murder weapon, were it not safely alibied. Plus, he has lady troubles.
Because there are other books in the series (this is the first), you know he survives, and probably prevails, but I think the book really excels because Johnson, like Walt, is from Wyoming, and he knows that people scar. Walt has scars, he bleeds, he hurts, and though he prevails, he still needs time to heal.Labels: murder, mystery/detective, western
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Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Jack Bauer-esque
Title: The Overlook
Author: Michael Connelly
Bookmark: I finished it in two days; I really just tucked handy items inside while I got up to make dinner and do other chores.
Harry Bosch is a pretty great, if less well-known, literary detective. He doesn't have quite the hang-ups of so many others, and isn't over-the-top with a narrow field of brilliance, like the ones who eventually end up with TV shows these days. Bosch is determined, and maybe narrow-minded. Rather, he's focused.
When a body found on the Mulholland Drive overlook is discovered to have access to radiologic materials used in hospitals, the FBI becomes interested in Bosch's case. Then a large quantity of cesium is discovered missing, and the FBI quietly bulldozes Bosch out of his case, demanding access to everything he finds while sharing nothing they have. This makes Bosch rather... uncooperative. And who could blame him? The federales are so consumed with tracking down the cesium before it finds its way into a dirty bomb that they keep all their information from Bosch, who still wants to find the man's killer. He has a job to do, and whether the FBI likes it or not, nobody stops Harry Bosch from doing his job.
A few days ago I was at a bookstore and was disheartened to find that while there were only single copies of two or three books each by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, there were entire shelves full of modern tripe by James Patterson and Janet Evanovich. I'll be fair: while I know that both authors are ridiculously popular, I've never read any Evanovich, so I'm in no position to judge her, but I've read a lot of Patterson, and I've never been impressed. Chandler and Hammett may not have been as prolific, but they were founders and masters of the craft, and some credit is due. At the risk of disproportionate praise, I'd like to see more shelf space dedicated to Connelly. The man knows how to write a good mystery, and as I'm finding in my own recent efforts, it's much harder than I ever realized. The characters are solid, with long shared histories and distinct personalities, and the plot, which covers only about twelve straight hours, is taut, well-executed, and all too believable.Labels: murder, mystery/detective, terrorism
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Friday, July 13, 2012
Gypsies, scamps, and thieves
Title: A Red Herring Without Mustard
Author: Alan Bradley
Bookmark: library receipt
Remember the Angela Lansbury series "Murder, She Wrote"? My cousin said that she'd never go to Cabot Cove or go on vacation with Jessica Fletcher because "all her friends get killed." As much as I enjoy the Flavia de Luce books, I'm starting to wonder about the safety of the sleepy English village where she lives. By the series' own chronology, only a couple months have passed since the first book, and in that time (including this book) three people have been murdered, one savagely beaten, two cold cases involving the deaths of children have been uncovered, and in this book, during the course of her investigations, Flavia also cracks open an antiquities forging ring. I came from a much larger town, and in three decades, we've had maybe a dozen good murder cases. Bishop's Lacey had three in two months. Wow.
I mean, I get it--if she ages naturally, eventually she'll stop being an endearingly clever little girl and become a cloyingly clever teenager (with even fewer friends), but there has to be a good way around that, right?
Don't get me wrong--I still loved the book. Flavia starts by accidentally torching a gypsy's fortune-telling tent at the church bazaar, then offers a place to park her caravan on the family estate. When she discovers that the old woman has been beaten nearly to death, her quick actions save the gypsy's life, and she feels compelled (naturally) to find the culprit.
I liked that this book broke a couple patterns of the series, even though I missed some of those patterns (no chemistry-based revenge upon the evil sisters, far less time with Dogger), because it made things feel less formulaic. I've been asked "was it as good as the others? Was it better than the others?" and I don't really know how to answer. I like all of them; they're well-wrought stories with engaging characters and excellent humor. Reading each one of them makes me want to read the next one, write something, learn about chemistry, ride my bike, and find a dead body. What more could you ask from a murder mystery?Labels: girl power, murder, mystery/detective, young protagonists
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Tuesday, June 26, 2012
snips and snails and puppeteer's tales
Title: The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag
Author: Alan Bradley
bookmark: library receipt
I got a dirty look from my girlfriend when I acknowledged that I might be falling in love with a fictional eleven-year-old girl. Admittedly, it sounds terrible, but I would like to reiterate that I only want to hang out with young Flavia de Luce, talk science (I could learn so much!!), and trade barbs about her astoundingly horrible sisters. I have no sinister or untoward intentions, which is good, because she has a habit of pondering how to poison people in various and nefarious ways.
However, in this adventure she finds no clues of poison at the scene when a popular puppeteer is killed during a very public performance in Bishop's Lacey, and must thus investigate through more pedestrian avenues. She returns to the pit shed where the library stores old newspapers, visits again with Miss Cool, the local postmistress/candy purveyor, and gleans more wisdom from the eminently sympathetic and intriguing Dogger, but we find that Bishop's Lacey has much more to offer. Aunt Felicity has come to visit, the vicar is hiding something, Flavia seeks intel from a tea room and the undertaker next door, and an unusually artistic madwoman lives in the woods at the edge of town--the woods where an old gibbet sits slowly rotting in a clearing.
Inspector Hewitt and his trusty sergeants are once again on the case, but this time they are well behind Flavia, rather than simply arriving at the same conclusions via variant paths. Aunt Felicity, despite offering bewilderingly supportive words of encouragement, has some unconventional thoughts on raising children ("Children ought to be horsewhipped," she used to say, "unless they are going in for politics or the Bar, in which case they ought in addition to be drowned."). Daphne is, as usual, buried in books and evil looks, while vain Ophelia is courted by a German pilot and former POW who knows more than he tells, and is thoroughly obsessed with English literature.
Bradley--and Flavia--is consistently brilliant. I had to put the book aside for a week when I was nearing the conclusion, and if I hadn't been so occupied during that time, it would have driven me mad. I was still disappointed that when I returned to the library, someone else had checked out the next in the series, and I now have to wait even longer to find out what Flavia does next.Labels: girl power, hunky armed forces or government operatives, infidelity, mystery/detective, young protagonists
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Monday, June 11, 2012
sugar and spice and dead in a thrice
Title: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Author: Alan Bradley
Bookmark: library receipt
Enter Flavia de Luce. Youngest daughter of vanished (presumed dead) adventuress Harriet de Luce and British veteran Colonel de Luce, resident of the sprawling and storied Buckshaw Estate near Bishop's Lacey, England, expert in poisons, and chemical genius, aged eleven years. Easily the most entertaining, engaging, and endearing protagonist I've met in a long time. I want to hang out with Flavia. Scratch that--I want to be smart enough to cope with hanging out with Flavia. She still has a touch of youth's naivete, but for an eleven-year-old (or most adults), she's positively brilliant.
She is also, upon discovering a body in the family garden just in time to hear the dying word (and smell the suspiciously-odored dying breath), completely fascinated. Who was the red-headed rogue, what was he doing arguing with her father in the study late the night before, and how did he come to be dying amid the cucumber patch?
At first motivated only by her youthful (and occasionally misguided) curiosity, and later by her father's incarceration, Flavia sets out to learn answers to all her questions encountering more along the way, and discovers a decades-old philatelic scandal that reaches all the way to King George himself. Following her path, we are introduced to her home, the characters of her village ("Communicating with Ned was like exchanging cabled messages with a slow reader in Mongolia."), and her self-involved older sisters, Ophelia and Daphne. Mrs. Mullet comes by to do the cooking at the estate, and Dogger, a faithful and battle-addled army buddy of the Colonel's, tends the gardens (occasionally taking an opportunity to teach Flavia useful skills, like picking locks).
Inspector Hewitt, meanwhile, pursues a parallel investigation, learning many--if not all--of the same secrets as our young heroine, and begrudges her intermittent interruptions into his work.
There are many good reasons that Bradley won a Debut Dagger Award, but the simplest is this: Flavia is amazing. Add to that a colorful cast, delicious descriptions (see above, re: Ned), and a sweet, if sticky with death, narrative, and there's only one more thing to do: go get the next one. Excuse me; my library beckons.Labels: girl power, murder, mystery/detective, poison, science, young protagonists
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Monday, May 21, 2012
Batman was an amateur
Title: The Knowland Retribution
Author: Richard Greener
Bookmark: the library receipt
You know that new TV show, The Finder? The credits say that it's based upon "The Locator" series by Richard Greener.
There are two books in the Locator series. I'm not sure that qualifies as a "series."
On the other hand, the show is really more "inspired by" than "based upon," so I guess they can apply that poetic license however they please.
Anyway. This is supposed to be about the book, not my various beefs with TV. The good news is, I really liked the book. Gripping story, interesting characters, timely plot. (man loses family to tainted beef, goes after all the corporate muckety-mucks who saw the disaster coming, ran cost-benefit analysis, and said, "we'll risk it. let's take the money.") All good stuff. Plus, most importantly, it's a lot of fun to read, and there was at least one point when I cackled with triumphant laughter. For a freshman novel, it's an impressive effort. I've read stuff by far more popular and well-known authors that wasn't nearly as interesting, nor as compelling.
I only have two complaints.
The first half of the book jumps around in time. A lot. I'd be ok with that, but there's no indication that it's happening until you realize that one of the people in the conversation died in the previous chapter, or that they're talking about some future event that happened 80 pages earlier. There's also a tendency to use characters an awful lot before you have any idea of who they are. I frequently found myself flipping back several pages--or several chapters--to make sense of an earlier scene after I finally got an idea of who was in it. That had settled down by the second half, but it was really distracting.
Second, I don't think Greener, a "retired broadcast industry executive" (from the author bio at the end of the book) has a good grasp of how us working stiffs actually live. After describing the opulent home and lifestyle of his main character, Greener has another, far more wealthy character tell our hero "you are by no means a wealthy man," and throws out a number, purportedly Walter Sherman's annual income, which is nearly five times more than I made at my last job. Granted, I paid taxes on mine, and he didn't, but I'm doing the math with pre-tax numbers. I don't know exactly where the line is drawn demarcating the "one percenters," but even if we're both below it, I know I'm a whole lot further from that line than Walter Sherman. I couldn't get over that conversation for the entire book. I'm still not over it.
But I'll probably read the next one anyway. If only to finish the series.Labels: commentary, corporations, food, mystery/detective
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4:13 PM
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one-way ticket
Title: A Ticket to the Boneyard
Author: Lawrence Block
I like Bernie Rhodenbarr in short stories; it gives him the space to be witty without the onus of filling the vast volume between covers. Keller, in my limited experience, does a better job of filling those considerably larger shoes, if only because of his tendency to wax philosophic, rely upon Dot, and take his sweet time to do what he needs to do. To be fair, I've only read one Keller novel, but I've also only read one Matthew Scudder novel, and of Block's various protagonists, Matt is the reigning king. He regales with short stories, and easily holds his own through this brutal novel.
Years ago (book time), Matt put away a monster. An exceedingly cruel man with strong hands, knowledge of all the body's pain centers, and a disturbing skill at inflicting psychological damage. Now, long off the force, devoid of a PI license, and working for an agency, he finds out that James Leo Motley is free, and he's coming for Scudder. But first, he vows to kill "all your women." Matt is divorced; he has no family; he has no "women." Motley kills any woman connected to Scudder, starting with a woman who testified at his trial.
Hamstrung by lack of hard evidence and the police department's disbelief that it's happening, Matt is on his own to stop a vicious killer. In true hard-boiled form, he gets his ass kicked at least once.
Block's version of New York is all seedy underbelly. Scudder navigates it well, and has contacts with contacts. The real question is whether he's good enough to get Motley and put him away for as long as he deserves. The writing is as brutal as the antagonist, and the descriptions of what Motley does were enough to make me feel uncomfortable, but it's extremely well done. It makes me want to read the entire Scudder canon.
...On a nice, sunny day.Labels: murder, mystery/detective, noir
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3:35 PM
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Tuesday, December 06, 2011
bones to pick
Title: City of Bones
Author: Michael Connelly
Bookmark: a bookmark
Many years ago I read The Concrete Blonde (so long ago that it predated this blog), and was reminded of it recently when I saw someone reading it on a Kindle during a flight. I saw enough to recognize the story, but I had no memory of how it ended. Connelly's good like that. Even if a step or two in the investigation is predictable, there are enough weird turns to make the ending feel clever.
City of Bones opens with Connelly's usual hero Harry Bosch fielding calls on New Year's Day. After two suicides, he gets called into one of the canyons of LA where a doctor's dog has retrieved a bone from the woods, which the good doctor assures Harry is from a child.
As Harry and his partner Jerry Edgar investigate a case which hits home for both of them (Edgar has a son; Harry was a foster kid after his mom died), Harry gets close to the rookie beat cop who was on scene at the doctor's the first night, and the deputy chief takes every opportunity to try to force Harry out of his department.
HERE THERE BE SPOILERS
I just wish there were more depth in the death of one of the main characters. When it happens, it seems abrupt and perfunctory, and we never get a clear explanation of what happened. Character traits explained by Bosch to the department shrink at the funeral feel like they were introduced at that very moment; there really isn't much sign of any of it before he mentions them. It feels like Connelly ran out of ideas for her and killed her off so she wouldn't be his problem anymore, which is unfortunate for other characters and the reader.Labels: murder, mystery/detective
posted by reyn at
4:01 PM
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the butler, but only once
Title: Whodunits: More Than 100 Mysteries For You To Solve
Author(s): Tom Bullimore, Hy Conrad, Derrick Niederman, Stan Smith
Bookmark: a picture of a deer attacking a police cruiser
The book is split into four sections; it seems like each author did his own thing, because there are pretty obvious stylistic differences between them. I don't think they all got the same memo describing the collaborative project.
There are big differences in what each of them thinks constitutes a "mystery." The first does a solid job of laying out a short story, giving you just enough information to solve it, and explaining the answers well (all solutions are in a separate section in the back of the book). The second also does well, but the stories are more like elaborate logic puzzles, or simple logic puzzles dressed in a new story (lots of variations on "X always tells truth, Y always lies, Z just likes to set fires" kind of puzzles). The third apparently set up the stories on a website and invited people to ask questions to help them solve the mysteries. The questions asked and answered are not always very relevant, and certainly not what a real investigator would need to know. One particularly annoyed me because the solution hinged on obscure sports trivia and the date of the "crime," which was never mentioned until the solution. The final section was a long parade of simple (in execution and presentation, though not always in solution) logic puzzles. Several times I encountered one which I didn't think included enough information for pure logic to derive the answer, and at least once it was just flat-out wrong. Most annoying was that the solutions offered no explanation whatsoever, so that if you weren't clear on how to find the answer, you would always stay that way.
For the most part, it was still a lot of fun. The first two sections were great, and I think the third offered a neat concept, but the execution was a little bit flawed. If they ever make Volume II, they will hopefully have the wisdom to not call the fourth guy.Labels: fun, mystery/detective
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3:40 PM
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Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Swedish Mess
Title: The Man From Beijing
Author: Henning Mankell
bookmark: a normal bookmark
This is the guy who wrote the Wallander novels (which I only know about because I saw trailers for the TV show when I watched the Sherlock series). Intro portion concluded.
Picture a lovely tiny forest village in Sweden. Very tiny. About a dozen homes, and through marriage, most of the residents are relatives. Nice, if a bit creepy, right? Oh, one more thing: one night in February, somebody with a big damn knife (or maybe a sword) slaughters almost everyone in the village. Even the dogs, cats, and a parrot (who was decapitated). The police find out about it when a photographer fleeing in terror has a coronary and drives into an oncoming truck. His dying word is the name of the village.
Judge Birgitta Roslin finds out about it in the papers a few days later, recognizes the name of the village, and discovers her mother's foster parents were among the victims. Then, like any good fictional character, she launches her own investigation. Unlike every other fictional character investigating outside normal police channels, the cops blow her off.
Roslin keeps digging, pursuing a completely different line of inquiry from the police, and travels to Beijing and London before she has all the answers. Sounds great, right? Except... I still haven't decided whether I like the book. I can't really say it wasn't compelling, because I've started other books, gotten bored with them, and set them aside permanently. I kept reading this one. I'm just not sure there was a good reason for it. I liked that there was an unlikely protagonist, a sort of late-middle-age Miss Marple without as many unlikely gimmicks (I never bought how Marple could easily imitate anyone's voice, nor how she used that trick to get people to confess to the murder of the voice's real owner), but I never really cared about her. At one point, she realizes that someone has given her suspect her home address and thinks the man an old fool, but she spends a great deal of time in the book making really stupid choices and trusting people she's only just met with far too much. The final resolution feels forced, and there's a lot of discussion about China, its politics, economy, and leadership which would be fascinating if I had any idea what opinion the author actually has--it's never clear how we're supposed to feel about things.
Originally, I thought I might wrap up this book, recommended and loaned to me by a co-worker's wife, then try some Wallander, because as anyone can tell, I love a good mystery. After reading it and letting it marinate in my brain a couple days... I think I prefer to dig up some old Hammett or Chandler.Labels: Africa, China, murder, mystery/detective, vengeance
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4:07 PM
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Monday, August 29, 2011
Brain-puckering
Title: The Dreadful Lemon Sky
Author: John D. MacDonald
Bookmark: UP bookmark
It's not that I'm on a sudden MacDonald kick; it's that I found books in my apartment I'd never read before. I don't even know why I have them, or if they've been borrowed, and I need to return them to a rightful owner somewhere. If I borrowed a book from you years ago, let me know.
I'm glad I found them. I'd never read MacDonald before Cinnamon Skin, but I really like his work, even if some of it is a bit dated (many times during both books I thought "Holy shit! ...Well, it was the seventies..." or pondered how very different the story would have been if the protagonists had access to the internet or cell phones).
This time, an old acquaintance of McGee's (the jacket and Wikipedia article refer to her as "an old friend," but it turns out she was a one-night stand who later borrowed his boat for her honeymoon with a toolbag) shows up in the middle of the night with a box full of cash and a request: hold the cash. If he doesn't hear from her for a month, he should send it all to her sister. As payment, he keeps ten grand (roughly ten percent of the total stash). He quickly surmises that the money was no acquired through entirely legal channels, but she refuses to answer questions, insisting that he is being paid to hold the dough, not ask questions about it.
Naturally, she's dead before the month is up, and he decides to investigate.
SPOILERS ABOUND
The weird thing about the entire story is that while Meyer and McGee gets lots of solid leads and dutifully follow them all over Florida, they don't actually solve the case. They push enough buttons that the answer sort of falls out at their feet, but the answer they get isn't the one they expected--even though their expectations change a couple times along the way. For instance, when a prime suspect gets killed. They may have cracked the case, but I don't know that I'd say they solved it.
END SPOILERS
As any reader of mysteries might surmise, there is a lot more going on than anyone realizes, and by the end they have tangled with a drunken marina master (McGee "tangles" with the man's widow), a serial rapist with political ambitions, a landlord drug dealer, and a big nest of fire ants. Good times!
Labels: drugs, murder, mystery/detective
posted by reyn at
6:44 PM
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Friday, August 26, 2011
Skinnamon Sin
Title: Cinnamon Skin
Author: John D. MacDonald
Bookmark: the official bookmark of the Union Pacific Railroad
Generally, I really like OK GO, but they have one song called "Cinnamon Lips" that I hate. Hate. I can't even look at the cover of this book without that song popping in for a visit. Otherwise, I really liked it.
Travis McGee is some sort of salvage expert who lives in a houseboat (the Busted Flush) that he won in a poker game, so I immediately thought of Jack Spratt and his troubles getting into the Detective's Guild because he didn't have enough entertaining quirks. McGee is also prone to philosophizing over everything from domestic violence to proper physical regimens:
One very sound rule for the care of the body is always to keep in mind what it was designed to do. The body was shaped by the need to run long distances on resilient turf, to run very fast for short distances, to climb trees, and to carry loads back to the cave, so any persistent exercise you do which is not a logical part of that ancient series of uses is, in general, bad for the body. A succession of deep knee bends is destructive, in time. As are too many pushups. As is selective muscle development through weight-lifting. As is jogging on hard surfaces. A couple of years of such jogging and you are very likely never to walk in comfort again. Man is a walking animal, perfectly designed for it. The only more efficient energy use is the bicycle. This book is not about a salvage operation; McGee's friend Meyer's boat is blown up, with Meyer's niece aboard (his only remaining family). Meyer was in Canada at the time; as a world-renowned economist (who also lives on a boat, until it blows up) he is frequently invited to lecture all over the place. It seems that while McGee handles the physicality and rawer, animal intelligence of the investigations, Meyer provides all the book-learnin' and soft speaking--to great effect. The two of them set out to find out why the niece died, why Meyer's boat was reduced to flaming shrapnel, and to find Meyer a new boat on which to reside. They end up solving a decades-old series of murders that nobody realized had been committed, and traveling as far as the Yucatan to track down the culprit. Good stuff.
On a side note, I did some internet poking to remind myself of Meyer's name, and discovered that all twenty-one Travis McGee novels have a color in their title. I have to wonder whether that was an afterthought, because I read two of them this month, and in both cases, the phrase which names the book doesn't appear until the penultimate or last chapter. I spent most of The Dreadful Lemon Sky wondering why the sky was lemony, and what the hell made it so dreadful (besides being a very unusual color for sky)
ghg
Labels: hunky armed forces or government operatives, murder, mystery/detective, ships
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12:25 PM
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