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| 0099446782
| 9780099446781
| 4.19
| 422,032
| 1988
| 2002
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it was amazing
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Editor's Note: I'm reposting this review because my original posted on May 9 has been infested with fake "likes." Some of you have also accumulated
Editor's Note: I'm reposting this review because my original posted on May 9 has been infested with fake "likes." Some of you have also accumulated suspicious follows and likes beginning in late April. These are accounts created in April, May or June 2019 and feature western user names, "China" as the location, 0 friends, 0 books (or close to 0) and no profile photo. Goodreads has notified me that these are "real people." Thanks for nothing, Goodreads. I've blocked hundreds of these accounts and noticed too many similarities in their activity to believe these are real people. Please be on the lookout for followers with new accounts and no profile photo claiming to be from China. This user is not up to anything legitimate on this site. It's my thesis that Goodreads can come together and agree that The Silence of the Lambs is a great novel. Published in 1988, this was the third novel by Thomas Harris, his follow-up to Black Sunday and Red Dragon, the latter of which introduced Dr. Hannibal Lecter and put Harris--who takes years to publish--into the FBI Behavioral Science Lab vs. Serial Killer business. I've seen the Oscar winning Best Picture several times but bumped the source material up as Sean Coyne, author of The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know and the next book on my list, uses it to illustrate the application of his many story tips. Other than a handful of scenes and a couple of story threads omitted from the screenplay by Ted Tally for the 1991 film directed by Jonathan Demme, the movie follows the novel very closely, so I won't bother to recount the plot. The Silence of the Lambs is currently streaming on Netflix and really should be in your Blu-Ray/ DVD/ laserdisc/ VHS library if it isn't already. Let's just pick up the 25th anniversary edition and jump right in: -- The iconography of the Death-Head's Hawkmoth is such a brilliant representation of this story. Both beautiful and sinister, the nocturnal moth emerging from its pupa relates to both Clarice Starling and Jame Gumb as these characters grow into something new. If your edition of the book doesn't include the moth on the cover, you're being robbed. It was featured prominently in the movie marketing. [image] -- Opening paragraph. Behavioral Science, the FBI section that deals with serial murder, is on the bottom floor of the Academy building at Quantico, half-buried in the earth. Clarice Starling reached it flushed after a fast walk from Hogan's Alley on the firing range. She had grass in her hair and grass stains on her FBI Academy windbreaker from diving to the ground under fire in an arrest problem on the range. Harris doesn't describe Starling's eyes, hair, build, etc. We know who she is by where she is and what she's doing there. And her name--Clarice Starling--summarizes her beautifully. -- For a novel that's under 100,000 words and very fast-moving (I finished it in two days) I loved how complex it is. Harris doesn't approach things in a straight-forward fashion, but at a slant. Hour-length TV cop shows have given writers the impression that criminal investigations or manhunts can be wrapped up in under an hour. Jack Crawford doesn't send Starling to ask Hannibal Lecter who "Buffalo Bill" is outright. He knows Lecter would rather toy with authority for his own amusement than help. Instead, he sends a young female cadet on a seemingly trivial matter in an attempt to establish rapport with the doctor. -- I'm a fan of master/pupil stories and am struck with how throughout the book, Starling is a consummate student rather than some kind of crime fighting genius. This is established in the book by how hard Starling and her roommate Ardelia Mapp are studying for their exams at the FBI Academy and cramming their heads with knowledge. Starling knows a little about a lot of things--like the difference between a patent and a copyright or what triangles on a dressmaking pattern are for--as well as a lot about her specialties: forensics and psychology. She's acquired her knowledge by reading. What book lover doesn't love a protagonist who loves to read? -- Most horror books and films involve creatures run amok or jumping out from behind corners. The Silence of the Lambs involves a serial killer interned at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane who, as long as you obey the rules and respect what he is, cannot get at you through his cell. Yet Dr. Hannibal Lecter is terrifying because he can't be contained to his cell. He sees through his visitors, reduces them to their weakest natures and takes advantage of them. I like how Dr. Lecter can discuss murdering his former patient and serving the pancreas to unsuspecting dinner guests, but stresses politeness and nice manners at all times. "Raspail's dream of happiness was ruined. He put Klaus' head in a bowling bag and came back East." "What did he do with the rest?" "Buried it in the hills." "He showed you the head in the car?" "Oh yes, in the course of therapy he came to feel he could tell me anything. He went out to sit with Klaus quite often and showed him the Valentines." "And then Raspail himself ... died. Why?" "Frankly, I got sick and tired of his whining. Best thing for him, really. Therapy wasn't going anywhere. I expect most psychiatrists have a patient or two they'd like to refer to me. I've never discussed this before, and now I'm getting bored with it." "And your dinner for the orchestra officials?" "Haven't you ever had people coming over and no time to shop? You have to make do with what's in the fridge, Clarice. May I call you Clarice?" "Yes. I think I'll just call you--" "Dr. Lecter--that seems most appropriate to your age and station," he said. "Yes." "How did you feel when you went into the garage?" "Apprehensive." "Why?" "Mice and insects." "Do you have something you use when you want to get up your nerve?" Dr. Lecter asked. "Nothing I know of that works, except wanting what I'm after." -- If profiling a serial killer and tracking him down--Harris establishes that as of 1988 there was no precedent for a female serial killer--wasn't hard, Starling has to manage the feelings of men she comes into contact with doing her job. Hospital administrator Dr. Chilton hits on Starling within a minute of her entering his office and when rebuffed, goes out of his way to make her work difficult. Noble Pilcher, entomologist at the Smithsonian Institute, asks Starling out while she's trying to determine why Buffalo Bill has inserted an insect pupa into his victims' throats. A sheriff's deputy tries to chat with Starling while she's searching Catherine Martin's apartment and she has to tell the lawman to hush in the sweetest way possible. These are all concerns Will Graham never had to deal with in Red Dragon. -- As thrillers go, the climax is sensational. (view spoiler) I love how Harris shoots through Starling's decision-making process on whether to find Jame Gumb, confirm that he's fled the house or help Catherine Martin out of the well in the basement. It's like an FBI Choose Your Own Adventure. -- Closing paragraph. Far to the east, on the Chesapeake shore, Orion stood high in the clear night, above a big old house, and a room where a fire is banked for the night, its light pulsing gently with the wind above the chimneys. On a large bed there are many quilts and on the quilts and under them are several large dogs. Additional mounds beneath the covers may or may not be Noble Pilcher, it is impossible to determine in the ambient light. But the face on the pillow, rosy in the firelight, is certainly that of Clarice Starling, and she sleeps deeply, sweetly, in the silence of the lambs. Perfect ending to the perfect novel. Length: 94,827 words ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 09, 2019
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May 11, 2019
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Jun 02, 2019
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Paperback
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| 1785861743
| 9781785861741
| 4.09
| 256
| Oct 05, 2014
| Jan 17, 2018
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really liked it
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My run for cover with my favorite literary character Lisbeth Salander continues with The Girl Who Played With Fire. Nobody does it better than Stieg
My run for cover with my favorite literary character Lisbeth Salander continues with The Girl Who Played With Fire. Nobody does it better than Stieg Larsson's data security consultant and amateur vigilante and rather than read the novel, I'm on to the next book in a graphic novel adaptation of Larsson's trilogy by Belgian author Sylvain Runberg, with artwork by Manolo Carot and English translation by Rachel Zerner published in 2017 by Titan Comics and Hard Case Crime. I won't keep on gushing about why Salander is my favorite literary character but this book suffers a bit from Middle of Trilogy Syndrome. The story picks up with investigative journalist and national hero Mikael Blomkvist and two married freelancers who join Millennium seeking to expose human trafficking in Sweden. Lisbeth Salander is incognito in the Caribbean, spending the funds she embezzled from Erik Wennerström. She returns to Stockholm and learns that her legal guardian woke from his coma, while her rapist Nils Bjurman is trying to remove the tattoo Salander marked him with. Keeping tabs on Blomkvist's investigation, she realizes that his freelancers are in danger. Seen fleeing the scene of their murder, Salander goes fugitive. Rebelling against his own newspaper, Blomkvist seeks to prove her innocence. While I'd already read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as a novel and seen both the Swedish and U.S. film versions, I'd been briefed on the story and didn't mind the abridged nature of the graphic novel. I didn't feel as if the story was thin or I missing anything. Unfamiliar with Larsson's next two installments, I did feel as if vital material was locked up here. Carot's illustrations are very good and of the two, I prefer his work over José Homs'. The jury is still out on whether I like or dislike Middle of Trilogy cliffhangers. I'll give Larsson points for building a mansion with more rooms and hidden passages to explore, but do often feel like I'm being cheated out of a full story. Cover by Claudia Ianniciello. [image] Artwork by Manolo Carot. [image] Cover by Claudia Caranfa. [image] ...more |
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Feb 06, 2019
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Feb 09, 2019
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Dec 25, 2018
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Paperback
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| 1785863452
| 9781785863455
| 4.33
| 49
| unknown
| Apr 01, 2018
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liked it
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My run for cover with my favorite literary character Lisbeth Salander concludes with The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Nobody does it better than
My run for cover with my favorite literary character Lisbeth Salander concludes with The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Nobody does it better than Stieg Larsson's data security consultant and amateur vigilante and rather than read the novel, I'm on to the next book in a graphic novel adaptation of Larsson's trilogy by French author Sylvain Runberg, with artwork by José Homs and Manolo Carot and English translation by Rachel Zerner published in 2018 by Titan Comics and Hard Case Crime. I won't babble on about why Salander is my favorite literary character, but I feel that Larsson let her down with an action-oriented shoot 'em up as opposed to a mystery befitting her talents. In the adaptation, Larsson's trilogy concludes with Lisbeth Salander having disappeared after sustaining multiple gunshot wounds in her confrontation in the woods with her evil father Alexander Zalachenko and the outlaw Svavelsjö Motorcycle Club, who are part of a human trafficking ring that investigative journalist and Salander's lover Mikael Blomkvist is set to expose. Accused of murdering two journalists and her vile legal guardian, Salander has become Sweden's most wanted fugitive. While Blomkvist searches for her, a secret, hard right division of Swedish Security Service (Säpo) running the trafficking ring seeks to silence Salander and Blomkvist permanently. I haven't read The Girl Who Played With Fire or The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest as novels, but I was disappointed by the direction of the story in these back-to-back sequels (think The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions compared to The Matrix). Rather than an absorbing mystery, Salander spends the vast majority of the sequels on the run and separated from Blomkvist. The villains are not only bad but pure evil, leaving a trail of bodies that Freddy Kruger would think of as overkill. The story lacks the character development of the The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, an exception being Blomkvist's editor and married girlfriend Erika Berger. Erika is such an attractive package of free spiritedness and resolution and she's illustrated beautifully in these books, which are gorgeous to read. Cover by Claudia Ianniciello [image] Artwork by José Homs [image] Cover by Claudia Caranfa [image] ...more |
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Feb 20, 2019
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Feb 20, 2019
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Dec 25, 2018
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Paperback
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| 4.20
| 676
| Oct 21, 2013
| Aug 30, 2017
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it was amazing
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After bad customer service experiences with three of the last four novels I've read, it was time to run for cover with my favorite literary character:
After bad customer service experiences with three of the last four novels I've read, it was time to run for cover with my favorite literary character: Stieg Larsson's data security consultant and amateur vigilante Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. For a different take, I purchased a well-reviewed graphic novel adaptation of Larsson's trilogy by Belgian author Sylvain Runberg, with artwork by Spanish illustrator José Homs and English translation by Rachel Zerner published in 2017 by Titan Comics and Hard Case Crime. I loved this graphic novel, which holds the same sort of kinetic thrill for me as rocketing underneath a city on the subway, complete with a few of sketchy-looking characters or strange smells along with it. If Larsson's detective story was too graphic in print for your taste (or the Swedish or U.S. film versions starring Noomi Rapace or Rooney Mara as Salander) the graphic novel won't change your mind. I'll talk about why I love this character and some of the changes Runberg made to the story. If I repeat myself from my review of the novel, ask me to stop. [image] What's your deal with Lisbeth Salander? Do you have a Goth fetish? The reason Lisbeth Salander is my favorite literary character has to do with her abilities and moral code, not her looks. Lee Child's Jack Reacher is a literary cousin, but unlike Reacher, an ex-soldier helping the little guy, I identify with Salander, a solitary alpha female more comfortable with watching and helping from afar. Like the best literary vigilantes, she uses her skills set (data analysis, computer hacking) to avenge victims of the rich and powerful. She keeps those she likes at a remove, but as her partnership with Mikael Blomkvist grows, she craves connection. In spite of her looks, she's not a vampire, but a human. Larsson completes that loop, and so does Runberg. Isn't this story about financial crime and serial murder and Swedish weather and other things that are gross? Yes. It's not for everyone. By necessity, Runberg's adaptation distills much of the detail of the novel while Homs' panels bring others life in living color. The story juxtaposes the rape of a nation by a financial criminal with the rape or murder of marginalized women by an unknown criminal and how in a just world, we'd prosecute both with equal force. We need activist journalists like Blomkvist and antisocial data hackers like Salander. Without a free press or free Internet, the people lose. The story ultimately says that no matter how terrible the world seems, reconciliation is possible, hope is sometimes rewarded and people from disparate backgrounds can learn from and comfort each other. [image] Okay, smart guy. Why should I buy the Runberg/ Homs adaptation if I already read the novel or saw the movie? The same reason you'd watch a favorite play interpreted by more than one cast. My favorite aspect of Larsson's novel is intact: the gender reversal. Salander is the hard-boiled sleuth and Blomkvist is the hot reporter in over their head. She rescues his investigation and his newspaper. She saves him from death. She asks for nothing in return, or does she? Among Runberg's alterations, Salander's estranged mother and twin sister make appearances, while Blomkvist's relationship with his married managing partner Erika Berger is also developed. I love the way Homs depicts Erika and how no one is possessive about who, when or where someone else fucks, at least a no-strings-attached sexual partner. Northern Europeans are ahead of Americans on that. I'm on to Runberg/ Homs' The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest next, three terrific books to run for cover with, particularly during winter. This will conclude my jag through novels set against freezing weather. If you're a fan of Stieg Larsson's original trilogy, I'd highly recommend this adaptation. The artwork is by and large lavish and the story compelling. Beware a graphic novel adaptation of the trilogy that exists by DC Comics/ Vertigo adapted by Denise Mina, which Ashley warns takes ill liberties with Larsson's text. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 02, 2019
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Feb 04, 2019
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Dec 25, 2018
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ebook
| ||||||||||||||||
| 1936070030
| 9781936070039
| 3.53
| 101
| Apr 01, 2010
| Apr 01, 2010
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really liked it
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My introduction to each author featured in this collection is Orange County Noir. Published in 2010, the volume is a part of the Akashic Noir Series
My introduction to each author featured in this collection is Orange County Noir. Published in 2010, the volume is a part of the Akashic Noir Series that travels from Baltimore Noir to Toronto Noir and dozens of cities in between. I was a little dubious that anything deadly or seductive could materialize in the shadow of Disneyland, South Coast Plaza or sushi joints, but attending a panel on art of the short story at the L.A. Times Festival of Books, I was impressed by Susan Straight and interested in authors based in my region. The 2018 midterm elections proved that Orange County is no longer "where the good Republicans go to die" but with a growing Latino and Asian population, growing diverse. Five-star noir: ***** Susan Straight, Bee Canyon. In which California Highway Patrol officer Jerry Frias recounts his encounters with "the phantom," a homeless Vietnam vet who in 1977 terrorizes motorists along the Riverside Freeway in the Santa Ana Narrows by chucking rocks at their windshields. Jerry is his latest victim and joins a manhunt for the man, wary the phantom might identify Jerry for shooting and burying a redneck the officer encountered in Bee Canyon while off-duty. This is more "literary fiction" and less "thriller" but I loved the dreamlike nature of Straight's storytelling and choice of the Santa Ana Narrows for her setting when the area was still agricultural. The words were still in my head when I got dressed. The tracker was from Oklahoma, and his voice was country. They'd hired him from the El Cajon Border Patrol and he'd been here off and on since May, when the deputy got stabbed. George and some deputies had been out on a bunch of occasions, sometimes on motorcycles and horseback, and they hadn't seen anything. So they got Kearney. He didn't say much, but I heard him tell someone, "I plain love putting together a puzzle like that." They'd been looking at maps for weeks. I couldn't tell what he thought when he glanced at me, so I hadn't said anything except that I used to hunt with my father in the canyons. "What you hunt?" "Rabbits." He had a mustache like a black staple turned upside down. A brimmed hat. They called him a sign-cutter and a man-tracker. Some of the other guys in the locker room joked that he was like Disneyland--Daniel Boone or some shit. He'd been working for Border Patrol for seventeen years, tracking Mexicans trying to cross. ***** Nathan Walpow, A Good Day's Work. In which an unnamed narrator who lives in the Leisure World retirement community in Seal Beach develops an unlikely friendship with a fellow "old fart" named Hank, who the narrator knows hides a past in which he was acquitted in the second degree murder of his wife. The narrator and his wife still grieve the loss of their 11-year-old son and when Hank's daughter Rae reveals to the narrator that her father's life is in danger, the narrator gets involved. Walpow's recipe of retirement living, beach community, dangerous right wing politics and blackmail is dashed off with a touch of dark pasts and finishes strong. ***** Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Crazy For You. In which drama teacher Mimi left her job and husband rather than let a relationship with a teenage student named Levi ruin her. Settling into a crap apartment in Westside Costa Mesa, Mimi is joined by Levi when he turns eighteen and searches the want ads for a job. When he's not boning Mimi on the kitchen floor, Levi works as a handyman and proposes she interview for a nanny job with a rich widower whose home Levi has access to and would like to rob. Mimi starts to see the widower as a better score than her boytoy. Sex, doublecross, murder and Wahoo's Fish Tacos! DeMarco-Barrett's noir story is very well-written and has it all. We sat across from each other at Wahoo's Fish Tacos, a popular haunt on Placentia, down the street from where we lived. The exterior was covered with chipping teal paint. Surf stickers smattered the windows. The menu offered Mexican entrees that weren't gourmet, but were good enough, priced for artists and people on limited incomes, and for rich Orange Countians who wanted to feel they were getting away with something. As he talked about what we'd do with the money--a new truck for him, a kitchen for me--you'd think I was one hungry fish, the way I went for it. I must have been beyond bored. We'd go slow and easy, figure things out, and when we had all the pieces, we'd make our play, he said. But I had a bad feeling. ***** Robert Ward, Black Star Canyon. In which TV writer-producer Johnny Mavis is fired from his hit show and to go someplace where no one knows his name, posts up at a friend's empty second home in the O.C., Dana Point to be exact. Johnny's plan to smoke a little weed, play some pickup basketball and maybe chase blonde surfer girls gets complicated when he befriends two house painters and their girlfriend. I really value a writer who can lock his subject matter expertise into a story and Ward's acumen with the TV industry + pickup basketball + remote Santa Ana Canyons come together in blood curdling and psychologically compelling way. ***/ ** The rest of the fourteen stories, many which follow convention too closely for my taste, rate an okay. The best of those are The Performer by Gary Phillips in which a piano player in Los Alamitos is seduced by a young Army widow into ripping off her employer and On the Night In Question by Patricia McFall, in which an income tax preparer in West Garden Grove romances a convicted felon via InmatePlaymate.com who gets more than she bargained for with her patsy. Disneyland® is not mentioned by name but plays a role in The Happiest Place by Gordon McAlpine, though any conversation I've had with any park employee would've made wilder and crazier fiction. Orange County Noir introduced me to some terrific local writers and inspired me to sketch out my own Orange County Noir story, set in Irvine, the safest large city in the United States which isn't represented here (San Juan Capistrano, Tustin, Laguna Beach, Santa Ana, Orange, Laguna Niguel and Balboa Island round out the tour). [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 08, 2018
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Dec 12, 2018
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Nov 27, 2018
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Paperback
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| 031623107X
| 9780316231077
| 3.42
| 35,266
| Jul 26, 2016
| Jul 26, 2016
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really liked it
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My latest foray into the fiction of Megan Abbott is You Will Know Me, in which the Edgar-winning author's tempest of murder and deceit settles over a
My latest foray into the fiction of Megan Abbott is You Will Know Me, in which the Edgar-winning author's tempest of murder and deceit settles over a teenage gymnast shooting for Olympic glory. Published in 2016, this is not a great thriller, but it's an exciting and eerily effective one. Abbott's work enthralls me for the same reason the late Elmore Leonard's does; their coffee may only rate three stars, but unlike Starbucks, their ambiance is a five. As with Dare Me and The Fever, Abbott demonstrates a willingness to write about teenagers for adults, with the depth that a conventional Young Adult novel would gloss over. The story takes place in the present day in an anonymous suburb (the weather suggests the Midwest, but it could be anywhere). Katie Knox is a wife, mother of two and freelance designer. No athlete--art class and boys and sneaking off to see bands her focus when she was a teenager--her fifteen-year-old daughter Devon is a regional champ on the cusp of qualifying for elite gymnast status, putting her in a class of forty to sixty girls nationwide, five of which will be selected for the U.S. Olympic team. Katie's husband Eric is an audio engineer as indifferent to sports and competition as she was until fate intervenes in the life of their firstborn. What Katie refers to as The Foot occurs when three-year-old Devon slips on wet grass into a Sears Craftsman riding lawnmower that Eric left idle, shearing two toes off her foot. To help with her balance, their doctor recommends enrolling Devon in kiddie soccer, or ice-skating, or tumbling. Katie takes Devon to Tumbleangels Gym, where within a year, her daughter is the star. Gym tuition fees, booster fees, meet fees and travel expenses swell the Knox's credit card debt. By age seven, Devon's tryout tape gets to Teddy Belfour, the most decorated gymnastics coach in the state, who offers to train Devon if they dump their strip mall gym and enroll her in his training facility. And overnight BelStars became their whole world. Twelve thousand square feet, a virtual bunker, it had everything that jolly Tumbleangels, run by two sweet women both named Emily, didn't. The color-coordinated foam wedges and cartwheel mats were replaced by mammoth spring floors, a forty-foot tumbling track, a parent lounge with vending machines. All of it gray, severe, powerful. And BelStars had Coach T., nearly all his energies devoted to Devon, beneath her on the beam, the bars, spotting her at the vault. Barking orders at everyone but Devon. ("She doesn't need it," he said. "She just needs our faith.") This was the place Devon began spending twenty-five hours a week, before school, after school, weekends. And, because it was thirty minutes from their house and Eric's work schedule was unreliable, it was often the place Katie and thus little Drew spent four, five, seven hours a day, Katie's default office, her laptop open, trying to do her freelance design jobs. But it was impossible not to watch Devon. Everyone watched her. At age thirteen, Devon's qualifying run for Junior Elite culminates in what Katie calls The Fall, with Devon's vault dismount disqualifying her by seven-tenths of a point. Rather than end their dream, Eric concludes that equipment is holding Devon back and with a landing pit in the gym, she could go all the way. In what Katie comes to call The Pit, Eric takes a leadership role in the BelStars Booster Club and with generous funding from a restaurant owner named Gwen Weaver, a landing pit is dug. Helping with construction is one of Grace’s employees, nineteen-year-old Ryan Beck, who every girl at the gym and some of the BelStars moms go googly-eyed over. Ryan becomes a fixture at the gym once he starts dating Coach T's twenty-two-year old niece Hailey, a tumbling coach whose body development disqualified her from an athletic career, but like everyone else, recognizes in Devon a once-in-a-generation talent and is willing to do her part to help her. Everything is back on track for the star, until Ryan is killed by a hit-and-run driver at two o'clock in the morning. While Devon remains true to her nickname "Ice Eyes" and remains focused on her training, stress fractures show at BelStars when Coach T disappears from the gym to attend to Hailey, who has become a suspect in Ryan's death. When Eric is unable to get their clunker out of the shop promptly, Katie attends Ryan's funeral service alone. She's confronted by Ryan's mother, who mentions that the other parents don't seem to want her there and then Hailey herself, who accuses Katie of betrayal. Katie's son Drew is given to dreams about his sister and tells Katie that Devon flew out the window and drove away in a car one night. Eric spends more time than ever holding the boosters together, from which Katie feels excluded, and picks up on things dad is telling her daughter and not her. Devon begins receiving threatening text messages from Hailey. Katie wonders how long she can hold it all together. There were furtive thoughts she tried never to linger over. Like maybe Eric never would have married her if she hadn't gotten pregnant (the night it happened, drunk on a softball victory, the company team, and three jubilant hours at Rizzo's Tavern with everyone toasting his grand slam, Eric had been the one sweet-talking her into the back of the SoundMasters van. The one who promised her it would be okay; promised her everything). Or the other thought: that he never would have stayed married to her if it weren't for Devon. It's just, he'd said once, that shaky first year, Devon swaddled to Katie's chest, I don't need you the same way. But thank God, everything was different later, and had been ever since. Before he left, that kiss on her cheek, his breath tanged with mouthwash--she loved him so much. Then the last week sharp-kneed its way back into her brain. What glues You Will Know Me together and kept me turning the pages is how well Megan Abbott knows her world and her characters. Like a sculptor, she starts chiseling away at both, revealing what's underneath. This is a far more compelling approach to me than coming up with a plot and forcing characters to act it out. Readers may not find gymnastics interesting or the identity of the murderer difficult to suss out. I'll never need to read this novel again but did admire the choices the author made. Devon is developed into a facsimile of a real teenager as opposed to some Midwich Cuckoo, while Katie's strength is not superhuman but pure devotion to her children. Wending her way past the practice beams and uneven bars, Katie started to pick up her pace. Some feeling in her chest. Approaching the locker room, eyes fixed on the long line of red cubbies veining through the door's cutout window, she heard the scream, like a tear in the throat. "Stop it! Stop it!" Heart pommeling against her chest, Katie charged through the double doors. At first, she couldn't see anything, just heard a tight shriek, a hard clang. "Devon?" Katie cried out. Running past the locker stalls, her chest lurching, everything was a red blur until she saw them: Two girls interlocked on the floor, almost like an embrace. Katie could only see the tall one on top, golden hair sprayed across the back of a red BelStars hoodie, and beneath her a pair of tanned legs scrambling, sneakers squeaking on the tiles. "Help!" came a strangled voice as Katie forked her arm under the torso of the hoodie girl and lifted with all her might, which seemed infinite. Wrenching the girl by her hood, barring the tanned expanse of her broad shoulders, Katie hurled her aside, somehow stronger than ever in her life, and found beneath the bloodless face of her daughter. "Devon," Katie cried. Sprawled on the floor, her daughter still grasped the girl's hoodie cord so tightly it had cut into the center of her palms, blood-whorled. "I'll kill you," the hoodie girl screamed, and Katie's head whipped around to see who she was. Though she already knew. Rather than write the Young Adult version of this story from Devon's (dramatic) point of view, Abbott's focus is Katie, who as an adult has been shaped by experience as no teenager would. Her happy marriage includes one moment of negligence from her husband that resulted in dismemberment of her child and that she cannot forgive or forget. She questions what sort of career or life she might have had if she hadn't gotten pregnant, and whether her decision to enroll Devon in gymnastics was wrong. These lingering doubts and terrors make for a deeper, more compelling read than a novel about mean girls or stage mothers. I really liked it. Length: 82,725 words ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 27, 2018
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Dec 29, 2018
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Oct 23, 2018
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| B0064T4ZPC
| 4.09
| 17,362
| May 1974
| Nov 20, 2011
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it was ok
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My introduction to the fiction of James Grady is his 1974 debut novel Six Days of the Condor. Even more so than Peter Benchley, the author is one
My introduction to the fiction of James Grady is his 1974 debut novel Six Days of the Condor. Even more so than Peter Benchley, the author is one whose credentials are easily established by mentioning the movie version of his book: Three Days of the Condor, released the same year as Jaws. Like Jaws, Three Days of the Condor made liberal changes to its source material. Like Jaws, that source material is so far away from the movie in terms of quality that it isn't in the same ballpark, parking lot, or zip code as the film, a ridiculous star vehicle that was nonetheless memorably well-produced. This book is not. The action takes place in Washington D.C., four blocks from the Library of Congress, where the most edible chicken nugget of the book introduces the "American Literary Historical Society," a front for Department 17 of the CIA. The Society keeps track of all espionage related acts in literature, monitoring potential security leaks and looking for new ideas. Far from books, Ronald Malcolm is an analyst obsessed with an "incredibly beautiful" blonde who mounts the steps of the Library of Congress each morning. He yawns his way through a meeting with their new accountant, who's puzzled by a shipment in which seven crates appear on a billing order but only five were received. Following a memo the accountant sends to Langley, two plainclothes men visit him at his apartment. The next afternoon, Malcolm slips out a coalbin exit in the basement to pick up lunch. While he's out, three assassins gain access to the office and gun down Malcolm's four male and two female co-workers. Discovering the grisly scene, Malcolm phones Langely from a pay phone using his code name "Condor" to let the agency know his substation has been hit. The head of Department 17 goes into the field to bring Condor in but attempts to kill him. Malcolm abducts a young paralegal named Wendy Ross and enlists her aid to outwit his assassins. "I don't believe you." The girl sat on the couch, her eyes glued to Malcolm. She was not as frightened as she had been, but her heart felt as if it was breaking ribs. Malcolm sighed. He had been sitting across from the girl for an hour. From what he found in her purse, he knew she was Wendy Ross, twenty-seven years old, had lived and driven in Carbondale, Illinois, distributed 135 pounds on her five-foot-ten frame (he was sure that was an overestimated lie), regularly gave Type O Positive blood to the Red Cross, was a card-carrying user of the Alexandria Public Library and a member of the University of Southern Illinois Alumni Association, and was certified to receive and deliver summonses for her employers, Bechtel, Barber, Sievers, Holloran, and Muclkeston. From what he read on her face, he knew she was frightened and telling the truth when she said she didn't believe him. Malcolm didn't blame her, as he really didn't believe his story either, and he knew it was true. "Look," he said, "If what I said wasn't true, why would I try to convince you it was?" "I don't know." "Oh, Jesus!" Malcolm paced the room. He could tie her up and still use her place, but that was risky. Besides, she could be invaluable. He had an inspiration in the middle of a sneeze. Oh, Jesus. Six Days of the Condor is full of flat and shabby prose. Characters are introduced in much the way a ten-year-old might: a distinguished looking man, a second man, etc. Malcolm is so devoid of personality that a stereotype would've been an improvement. He is not a book nerd, nor is he a soldier type, nor is he a rake. Any of these personalities might explain his ability to evade professional killers, but instead, Malcolm lives by virtue of his blind luck and the fallacies of his pursuers. Wendy is a nubile piece of candy as useless in the field as Malcolm and so dumb enough that's she'd rather fuck this bar of Spam than escape him. Grady's approach reminded me of Tom Clancy, who'd debut ten years later with guy-oriented espionage thrillers that jumped between government agencies, with detail only someone obsessed enough by the CIA to read technical manuals could divine. Grady doesn't demonstrate the hard-on for hardware that Clancy would and as a result, Six Days of the Condor is 90,000 words lighter than The Hunt For Red October. The disappointment of Grady is the monumental disinterest for books he demonstrates given his literary set-up. Other than one mention of Poe, Malcolm's skills as a librarian go completely unused. The 2011 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/ Open Road contains a preface by Grady that constitutes a whopping 15% of the book. The author recounts how influential he was on the geopolitical scene and what it was like working with director Sydney Pollack on the movie. Ugh. Released in 1975, Three Days of the Condor moved the action to New York City. Robert Redford played CIA analyst Joe Turner and Faye Dunaway, playing a photographer named Kathy Hale, his captive. Rather than (view spoiler)[heroin smuggling (hide spoiler)], a rogue operation to seize Middle Eastern oil fields is the plot. The assault on Redford's office is a highlight of the film, along with a terrific jazz-infused score by Dave Grusin. [image] Length: 57,411 words ...more |
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Apr 04, 2019
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Apr 05, 2019
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Sep 23, 2018
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| 9781785858642
| 3.48
| 175
| Jun 14, 2017
| Jan 30, 2018
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My favorite approach to criticism came from Gene Siskel, who sometimes asked rhetorically when on the fence about a movie, "Is this film more
My favorite approach to criticism came from Gene Siskel, who sometimes asked rhetorically when on the fence about a movie, "Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?" Here we have Normandy Gold, a graphic novel written by Megan Abbott & Alison Gaylin, with artwork by Steve Scott & Rodney Ramos, published in 2018 by Titan Comics and Hard Case Crime. This orgy of gratuitous sex and violence has its heart in the right place, but would drinks at a dive bar with Abbott & Gaylin to discuss their favorite movies of the '70s have been more interesting? Way more. The plot--which could be any Pam Grier/ AIP picture--concerns Normandy Gold, '70s-era sheriff of Dealy, Oregon, who travels to Washington D.C. to search for her missing half-sister Delilah, a call girl. Normandy regrets abandoning Lila at age 14 to run away from their junkie mother and in the best moment in the story, recounts this. Taken in by the sheriff of Dealy, Normandy learned survival skills and can track and hunt game with a knife, even bears. This is bad news for Lila's killers, which might include her manager Felicia Vane, or the prostitute Shanna, or Senator Selvyn Grange or skeevy adult nightclub owner Johnny Deeper. My favorite aspect of this book next to the wonderfully R-rated artwork is a brief interview with Abbott & Gaylin at the back where they discuss their influences. A fan of '70s conspiracy thriller films, I did enjoy being taken on this ride. Normandy doesn't speak much except with her knife and the decision to have her go undercover as a D.C. call girl both strains credulity and makes her unlikable. Normandy's spare human qualities make her difficult to relate to and this story, in addition to being derivative, is thrifty derivative. Lunch with the authors would be more interesting and lasted longer. Titan Comics and Hard Case Crime do put together an exciting and titillating book. Cover by Claudia Iannicello [image] Cover by Kody Chamberlain [image] Cover by Elias Chatzoudis [image] ...more |
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Feb 21, 2019
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Feb 23, 2019
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Sep 01, 2018
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Paperback
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| 0735224625
| 9780735224629
| 3.54
| 47,663
| Oct 09, 2018
| Oct 09, 2018
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The Witch Elm is the seventh novel by Tana French and though it features Dublin and a dead body, it's her first break from the Dublin Murder Squad
The Witch Elm is the seventh novel by Tana French and though it features Dublin and a dead body, it's her first break from the Dublin Murder Squad series. Published in 2018, French replaces the inner workings of a homicide investigation with the inner workings of a law-abiding citizen, perhaps, a man in the wrong place at the wrong time or maybe something more sinister. French's confidence as a storyteller has expanded with each novel but I grew terribly bored with this departure, not nearly committed to the page length or drawn out remembrances as the author. The story is the first-person account of Toby Hennessy, a twenty-eight-year-old public relations hotshot employed by an art gallery in Dublin. Toby has coasted on good looks, charisma and what he thinks of as "luck." After five years with the gallery, Toby has his sights set on greater rewards, possibly a house for him and his devoted girlfriend Melissa, an antique store owner. Toby's dark journey begins at work, looking the other way when he discovers an exhibition promoting the work of street artists is a scheme by the gallery manager to sell his own paintings. Nearly fired by his boss, Toby celebrates by getting ossified with his two best mates, Sean and Declan. Bumbling home rather than going to Melissa, Toby falls asleep with his windows open. He awakens to confront two burglars and ends up in the hospital with a skull fracture and injuries to his brain. Discharged after two weeks, tasks like walking, articulating certain words or accessing certain memories prove burdensome. He treats his anxiety with Xanax and keeps indoors. Toby ultimately accepts an offer to watch after his paternal Uncle Hugo, a genealogist suffering from inoperable brain cancer and running out the clock at "Ivy House," the secluded family mansion Toby has always considered home. The garden had the same look of low-level unkemptness as the front of the house, but that wasn't new. For a city garden it's enormous, well over a hundred feet long. It's lined along the side walls with oak trees and silver birches and wych elms, behind the rear laneway by back of an old school or factory or something--adapted into a hip apartment block during the Celtic Tiger--five or six stories high; all that towering height gives the place a secret, sunken feel. Gran was the gardener; in her time the garden was artfully, delicately crafted till it felt like somewhere out of a fairy tale, slyly revealing its delights one by one as you earned them, look, behind this tree, crocuses! and over here, hidden under the rosemary bush, wild strawberries, all for you! She died when I was thirteen, less than a year after my grandfather, and since Hugo has loosened the reins a lot ("Not just laziness," he told me once, smiling out the kitchen window at the summer confusion of growth, "I prefer it running wild a bit. I don't mean dandelions, they're just thugs, but I like getting a glimpse of its true colors.") Gradually plants had strayed and tangled, long tendrils of ivy and jasmine trailing from the wall of the house, tumult of green leaves on the unpruned trees and seed-heads poking up among the long grass; the garden had lost its enchanted air and taken on a different quality, remote and self-possessed, archeological. Mostly I felt that I had liked it better before, but that day I was grateful for the new version; I was in no mood for whimsical charm. With Melissa moving in to Ivy House with her boyfriend while he recuperates, Toby completely blanks that Sunday is family dinner day. Among the many people his girlfriend is introduced to are Toby's cousins Susanna and Leon, as close to siblings as only-child Toby has known. Susanna, a brainy, socially conscious type in high school, went through a wayward, wild phase before settling down with a husband and two kids. Leon, an acutely sensitive homosexual who was bullied quite a bit in high school, doubts that his cousin has the will to stick out a potentially tough scene with their uncle, though Susanna assures Toby that rather than a nurse, what they need is someone to keep watch over Hugo. Initially, while Melissa is at work, Toby and Hugo have Ivy House to themselves. This changes when Susanna's six-year-old tyrant Zach is out playing around the witch elm, which has a massive hole in its center. The boy discovers a human skull inside the tree. Gardai determine it to be real and the garden is soon filled with medical examiners in white jumpsuits. No one in the family has any notion of who the skull might belong to but Toby feels intimidated by the presence of Detective Rafferty, unable to answer simple questions as confidently or sharply as he once did. A skeleton is recovered from the tree and dental records reveal the remains belong to Dominic Ganly, a classmate of Toby's and his cousins who disappeared fifteen years ago, presumed a suicide in the sea. Toby has no helpful memories of Dominic, who he remembers as an okay guy who hung around their social circle and sometimes, the Ivy House. Yet the questions Rafferty pose to Toby unsettle him. How the spare key to the garden gate went missing and when. Whether Toby used to wear a red sweatshirt missing its cord, a garrote recovered inside the witch elm being the murder weapon. Hugo's health or mood or both gradually worsen due to the investigation. It wasn't just Hugo. Around him, Melissa was her usual happy self (and even now he never turned on her, with her his voice was always gentle, to the point where I actually found myself getting absurdly jealous); but when my family came over she went quiet, smiling in a corner with watchful eyes. Even when it was just the two of us, there was a subtle penumbra of withdrawal to her. I knew something was bothering her, and I did try to draw it out of her, a couple of times, maybe not as hard as I might have; I wasn't really in the right form for complex emotional negotiations myself. I was still hitting the Xanax every night and now occasionally during the day, which at this point made it hard to be sure whether my array of resurfacing fuckups--brain fog, smelling disinfectant and blood at improbable moments, a bunch of other predictable stuff way too tedious to go into--was cause or effect, although obviously I had a hard time going for the optimsitic view. Hugo and Melissa pretended not to notice. The three of us maneuvered carefully around one another, as though there was something hidden somewhere in the house (landmine, suicide vest) that at the wrong footfall might blow us all to smithereens. The Witch Elm has a good deal of momentum early. Whether she's detailing the machinations of a hip art exhibit or the pub banter of three mates or a burglary, Tana French knows her passage through the worlds she's describing. Ivy House is not necessarily a place with dark menace around every corner but she establishes it wonderfully. The dialogue is sharp. The intrigue is passable; I wanted to know where the skeleton came from. My favorite of French's novels Faithful Place dealt with flushing a killer out among family and while nowhere near as suspenseful, this one also presents childhood memories or family dinners as being loaded with booby traps. My first complaint is how long this is, which is another way of saying that the story got boring. Toby theorizes that his burglary and the body in the tree could be related and that a conspirator is out to frame him, but other than experiencing anxiety, no one is placed in physical danger. The book is low stakes: if Toby is responsible for the body in the tree, he's a bad human being, or if he's not responsible, he's a tragic one. 54 of the 509 pages are devoted to a confession, which is entirely too much ink for a conversation between three characters. I skimmed or quickly read the last third of the novel. French's prose is sharply detailed, vibrant and at times witty, but with The Witch Elm, I never felt the urge to update my Goodreads status with any of it, which is usually a sign that I'm not really connecting with the world of a book or the point of view of its characters. I've worked with plenty of guys like Toby Hennessy and his character is a familiar one in noir movies or crime fiction that I've enjoyed. I would've preferred a novella or short story from French here, perhaps one with a little more venom or passion to it. Her novels tend to be thick with the fog of unreliable memory covering up trap doors but even that degree of danger felt absent without the Dublin Murder Squad on the case. Length: 195,658 words ...more |
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Jun 28, 2019
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Jul 2019
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May 28, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 0316363294
| 9780316363297
| 3.84
| 9,386
| Sep 12, 2017
| Sep 12, 2017
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really liked it
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Bluebird, Bluebird is one of those novels that I felt was written for me. Published in 2017, this is the fourth book by Attica Locke, a native
Bluebird, Bluebird is one of those novels that I felt was written for me. Published in 2017, this is the fourth book by Attica Locke, a native Houstonian who after nearly fifteen years as a highly sought-after screenwriter (on projects that all went unproduced), began moonlighting in mystery fiction, using the geography, culture and racial divides of East Texas to inform her stories. Like Tana French, Locke writes literary novels that happen to involve a homicide investigation. Her ability to unlock doors mysterious to me even as a Texan and her examination of what it means to be a Texan in today's political climate are two of her greatest strengths. Darren Mathews has been suspended from the Texas Rangers pending a grand jury investigation. Ignoring a plea from his wife Lisa, Darren drove to San Jacinto County to help Rutherford "Mack" McMillan, the caretaker of the Mathews family house in Camilla. With Mack's granddaughter being terrorized by a no-account cracker named Ronnie Malvo, an armed standoff ensued and two days later, Malvo was found dead in a ditch, shot by a .38 like the one Mack had pointed at the dead man. While Darren's career dangles by a thread, he separates from Lisa, who wants him to resign from law enforcement and return to law school like the Princeton grad she married. Darren receives a call from Greg Heglund, an FBI agent that he went to private high school with in Houston. Itching for a "come-up" that will advance his career and get him out of the Houston field office, Greg asks Darren to look into a double-homicide in Shelby County, where the town of "Lark" has produced two dead bodies in six days despite having a population of two hundred folks. Located off U.S. Highway 59--the north-south route that has long carried blacks to visit family, or in some cases, completely out of state for jobs or an environment less hostile to them--Darren is in many ways going home. He was Texas-bred on both sides, going all the way back to slavery. Since Reconstruction, no one had ever left the piney woods of the eastern edge of the state save for a few uncles and cousins fleeing the law on his mother's side. Her people stayed because they were poor; the Mathewses stayed because they were not. From early on, they owned farm-rich land, bequeathed by the same man who gave his favored slaves the surname Mathews, or so the legend went, and black folks didn't just up and leave that kind of wealth to start over someplace foreign and cold. No, the Mathewes dug deeper into the soil, planting cotton and corn and the roots of a family that would be theirs alone--and not a pecuniary unit, convertible to cash at will. They farmed hard and made enough to raise generations of men and woman and send dozens of them to college and graduate school; they made a life that could rival what was possible in Chicago or Detroit or Gary, Indiana. They were not willing to cede an entire state to the hatred of a bunch of nut-scratching, tobacco-spitting crackers. Money allowed for that choice, sure it did. But money also demanded something of them, and the Mathewes were willing to give it. They built a colored school in Camilla, offered small-business loans to colored folks when they could, and dedicated their lives to public service, becoming teachers and country doctors and lawyers and agitators when the times called for it. What they were not going to be was run off. Darren is struck that the sequence of deaths in Lark--a black male from Chicago traveling alone and a white female who works at a local icehouse--buck the historical trend in the South: a white lady's real or imagined assault followed by the murder of a black man. Michael Wright was a thirty-five-year-old lawyer who grew up in nearby Tyler and for reasons unknown, had returned home. His body found decomposing in the bayou, Michael's death is presumed to be robbery by the sheriff, who fears the attention a hate crime would bring, but Missy was married to Keith Avery Dale, an ex-con whose prison record is a red flag for affiliation with the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. Leaving his badge in his truck, Darren finds Lark divided along racial lines, with Geneva Sweet's Sweets offering home cooking and haircuts to black travelers and Jeff's Juice House, where Missy Dale worked, a hangout for whites. With Missy's body discovered in the bayou behind Geneva's, the sheriff is operating on the theory that the perpetrator is black. Little urgency has been placed in finding Michael Wright's killer despite the presence of his estranged wife Randie Winston seeking answers. A photographer, Randie has zero sensitivity for southern social norms, but Darren recognizes a kindred spirit whose spouse was also uncomfortable with her long working hours. Nosing around the two homicides and doing his best to salvage his marriage in spite of it, Darren confronts questions that have long divided his family. His father killed in Vietnam and his mother a deadbeat alcoholic, Darren was raised by his twin uncles William and Clayton, a Texas Ranger and a defense attorney, respectively. While William--shot and killed during a traffic stop--long maintained that the law would achieve parity and justice for blacks, Clayton disagreed, believing the law to be a lie that has always been used to oppress blacks and must be challenged. Randie is incredulous that Michael or Darren feel partial to a place that doesn't seem to want them. "He should never have come down here," she said, her hands balled into fists, the bottoms of which were pressed into the thighs of her jeans, as if she were holding tight to an invisible buoy, as if she believed her anger at Michael might keep her from sinking into the tide of grief that had only begun to lick at her toes. "What the hell did he think was going to happen in a place like this?" "Coming home is not asking for it." "This was not his home," she said. But it was, and Darren understood that in a way Randie didn't. Not Lark, of course, but this thin slice of the state that had built both of them, Darren and Michael. The red dirt of East Texas ran in both their veins. Darren knew the power of home, knew what it meant to stand on the land where your forefathers had forged your future out of dirt, knew the power of what could be loved up by hand, how a harvest could change a fate. He knew what it felt like to stand on the back porch of his family homestead in Camilla and feel the breath of his ancestors in the trees, feel the power of gratitude in every stray breeze. He wanted to say all this and more to Randie. But she was closed off by then, sitting rigid, her chin jutted forward an aggrieved anger that would never hold. God help her, Darren thought, when that wall comes down and the hurt comes calling. Bluebird, Bluebird does often feel like issues or concerns in search of a story. The most compelling material involves Darren Mathews' family history, his decision to join the Texas Rangers and struggle to maintain his marriage along with it. The murder mystery is necessary to expose the reader to secrets lurking in Lark and some of the crime solving has the convinient nature of a '70s cop show to it. What Locke does is investigate a crime from a completely fresh point of view, with the anxieties and aspirations and secrets specific to blacks in East Texas at the forefront of her storytelling, which is filled with marvelous prose. He told Randie he had to make a call, mumbling something about his lieutenant, anything to grant him a few minutes alone to read the medical examiner's report. He could not take in the information and protect her from it at the same time. He would tell her what he had to and no more. He left as a John Lee Hooker record dropped on the jukebox, and Randie sank into the booth below the guitar, staring at the Les Paul. Bluebird, bluebird, take this letter down South for me, Hooker sang as Darren opened the cafe's front door, the bell clinking behind him. The air outside stung the sweat breaking out across his forehead. He stepped into the cab of his truck, warm from the midday sun. The file came attached to an e-mail that reported that Missy Dale's final examination was still in progress at the Dallas County Medical Examiner's office. Darren opened the file on Michael Wright. In addition to writing descriptions that deliver the food, weather and blues of East Texas as a sensory feast, Locke makes a sound decision introducing a cop under grand jury investigation. Darren's role in covering up Malvo's murder or possibly even pulling the trigger is not resolved until the final pages and through watching how his character juggles morality versus legality, I became a juror weighing his culpability. While the book doesn't implicate the acting president in the behavior of its racist deplorables, it does flip over the rock of American society and reveal the snakes that Barack Obama's presidency, despite its hopes, seemed to do little to exterminate. ...more |
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Apr 14, 2019
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Apr 16, 2019
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Dec 10, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 0449144410
| 9780449144411
| 4.15
| 4,255
| 1981
| Feb 12, 1982
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really liked it
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Spring is finally here and it's time to work on my tan. John D. MacDonald published twenty-one Travis McGee mysteries (between 1964 and 1984) narrated
Spring is finally here and it's time to work on my tan. John D. MacDonald published twenty-one Travis McGee mysteries (between 1964 and 1984) narrated by his weary "salvage consultant" who often agrees to locate missing persons or items, 52-foot houseboat The Busted Flush docked in Fort Lauderdale serving as McGee's office. MacDonald was one of the earliest authors to use themed titles for their series and his brilliant use of color not only offered a visual motif to help readers distinguish each one, but generated some of my favorite titles: The Deep Blue Good-By, A Tan and Sandy Silence, The Lonely Silver Rain, etc. Concluding my MacDonald/McGee jag is Free Fall In Crimson. Published in 1981, this entry combines at least three areas of interest for the author--dirty motorcycle gangs, moviemaking and hot air balloons--that make for very unlikely running partners, but propel the novel forward with the detail and menace that MacDonald keeps supplying with each novel. Our sleuth is introduced aboard his boat talking with Ron Esterland, a talented young painter who harbors some guilt for his estrangement from his father Ellis, a ball-busting prick who, while suffering from cancer, was mysteriously beaten to death nearly two years ago at a rest stop outside Citrus City. An estate worth $3.5 million after taxes was left to Ron's half-sister Romola, who suffered a severe skull fracture from a bicycle fall in L.A. and died before her father. The IRS took a chunk of the estate, leaving $1 million to Romola's mother, Josephine Laurant, a film actress. No arrests were made in the beating of Ellis Esterland. His son dangles a $10,000 expense account at McGee to provide him closure with his father. McGee consults with his neighbor Meyer, a retired economist, who knows Ellis Esterland's personal secretary and partner Anne Renzetti. Traveling to Naples, where Anne works as a hotel manager, McGee finds what he feels is a kindred spirit with Anne, who like him, has had to pick up the pieces after the death of someone she loved, or felt she loved. "I've been over it ten thousand times. It seems so pointless, dying like that. I wouldn't admit it to myself at the time, but I did later: I was relieved. I'd been bracing myself to go all the way with him. Through all the pain. Caring for him when he became helpless. I was getting myself charged up to really do a job. But at the same time I dreaded it. Which is natural. He didn't love me. He sort of liked me. I had good lines and I was obedient, like a show dog. And I sort of loved him. "There can be a habit of love, I think. You justify the way you are living by telling yourself that love leaves you no other choice. And so you are into love. Women stay with dreadful men. You see it all the time. You wonder why. You know they are wasting their lives. You know they are worth more than what they have. But they stay on and on. They grow old staying on and on. They say it's love so often to themselves, it does become love. I can't understand the Anne Renzetti I was then. I look back and I don't understand her at all. We're all lots of people, I guess. We become different people in response to different times and places, different duties. Maybe in a lifetime we become a very limited bunch of people when, in fact, we could become many many more--if life moved us around more. "Well, it moved me here and I know who I am now, and I will stay with this life for as long as I can. I never even suspected who I might really be. If it hadn't been for that new manager falling asleep at the wheel, I might never have known about this Anne. You can't miss what you don't know, can you? Maybe that's why we all have that funny little streak of sadness from time to time. We are missing something and don't even know what it is, or whether it will ever be revealed to us." McGee and Meyer visit the River County Sheriff and after Meyer presents credentials as a "Certified Guarantor," McGee gets to study the case file on Ellis Esterland. He concludes that the victim was at that rest stop for a business meeting gone bad. The deputy investigating the murder is a member of a motorcycle club and found bike tracks he suspects could have been made by the killer, laying in wait for Esterland. While Meyer returns to Fort Lauderdale to entertain a newspaper publisher he's fancy with, McGee heads back to Naples to chat with Esterland's doctor, who reveals that he had suggested his late patient try hallucinogens to manage his pain. McGee and Anne take a roll in the sheets. He shares his theory that Esterland was murdered in a drug buy gone bad, but this is shot down by Anne, who thinks she can account for all of her ex's finances. Recalling that some unaccounted for Krugerrand was discovered in one of Esterland's suits after his death, she has to admit he could've had some funds stashed on the side, used to spend on a treatment he'd have been too proud to tell anyone about. McGee connects the biker tracks with Josie Laurant's boyfriend Peter Kesner, a film director who shot to prestige with two low budget biker pictures that were hits, starring two real-life bikers as anti-heroes "Dirty Bob" and "The Senator." Seeking out an Army buddy named Ted Blaylock who runs a biker bar and tattoo parlor, McGee confirms a biker "legend" that Dirty Bob and The Senator killed Ellis Esterland. Operating on the theory that their director Peter Kesner put them up to snuffing out Esterland so that Josie would inherit his estate, McGee visits an old flame in L.A., TV game show producer Lysa Dean. She shares the gossip she has on Josie & Peter and Dirty Bob, alias Desmin Grizzle, all in Iowa shooting a runaway production about hot air ballooning called Free Fall. She provides McGee cover as a network consultant making a TV show about the film business and McGee heads to Iowa to confront Esterland's killer or killers. I had begun to feel a little bit like Sellers in his immortal Being There. I felt no urge to enrich either Ron Esterland or myself. And no urge to punish Josie Laurant any more than she was going to be punished by the gods of stupidity at some time in that future which was getting ready to crash down on her. I was a fake consultant in the employ of Lysa Dean, queen of the game shows. I represented, to Kesner, a chance for free promotion of a motion picture that would probably never be shown in the unlikely event it was ever completed. I had zigged and zagged until, finally, I had completely confused myself. I had spent some of Ron's money and had myself a nice balloon ride, and I wished heartily that Meyer would happen along, listen, and tell me what to do next. There's a lot of zigging and zagging in Free Fall In Crimson, the nineteenth entry in the Travis McGee series. The good part in that MacDonald never tires, holding so many hoops for the reader to leap through--estate beneficiaries, a dark haired and dark eyed hotel manager, straight motorcycle clubs, outlaw motorcycle clubs, a biker bar brawl, Hollywood, movie stars, hot air balloons, behind the scenes intrigue--that he can't be accused of getting too old in the tooth. Desmin Grizzle/ Dirty Bob develops into a grim reaper who kills more people than Freddy Kruger and strikes such existential terror into Meyer that MacDonald would need to resolve it in Cinnamon Skin. I glanced at Meyer. There was going to be no help there. It happens sometimes. I think it is the deep unwavering conviction that life is about to end. It is an ultimate fear, immobilizing, squalid. It crowds everything else out of the mind. There is no room for hope, no chance of being saved. I have seen it happen to some very good men, and most of them did indeed die badly and soon, and the ones who did not die were seldom the same again. Were a man to awaken from sound sleep to the dry-gourd rattle of a diamondback coiled on his chest, head big as a fist, forked tongue flickering, he would go into that dreadful numbness of the ultimate fright. I don't feel that Anne Renzetti, motorcycle gangs or Hollywood gel in terms of story well enough to rank this as the best entry I've read so far--that would be The Empty Copper Sea--but what thrills me about the Travis McGee series is how MacDonald uses his iconoclastic sleuth to explore questions about happiness and a life well lived, questions that are far more compelling to me than what weapon Mr. Body was killed with and in what room. In these mysteries, I never cease to learn something about criminal activity, self-defense or how to lie to the police, info I hope I never need, though John MacDonald has me convinced I'm far more likely to at some point than how to order a martini or acquit myself in one of Ian Fleming's casinos. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 04, 2018
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May 05, 2018
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Dec 03, 2017
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Paperback
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| 0397013620
| 9780397013623
| 4.09
| 3,187
| 1979
| Sep 01, 1979
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really liked it
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Spring is finally here and it's time to work on my tan. John D. MacDonald published twenty-one Travis McGee mysteries (between 1964 and 1984) narrated
Spring is finally here and it's time to work on my tan. John D. MacDonald published twenty-one Travis McGee mysteries (between 1964 and 1984) narrated by his weary "salvage consultant" who often agrees to locate missing persons or items, 52-foot houseboat The Busted Flush docked in Fort Lauderdale serving as McGee's office. MacDonald was one of the earliest authors to use themed titles for their series and his brilliant use of color not only offered a visual motif to help readers distinguish each one, but generated some of my favorite titles: Pale Gray For Guilt, The Long Lavender Look, Cinnamon Skin, etc. Next up is The Green Ripper. Published in 1979, this entry picks up six months after The Empty Copper Sea, but rather than granting McGee the mobility and resources he's enjoyed in solving previous cases, here he goes on a mission of vengeance with little freedom to move and nothing to survive on but his wits. It's a darker novel and an immensely thrilling one. McGee is introduced aboard The Busted Flush in the winter of his discontent. Meyer has just returned from two months abroad at an economic conference and offers a pessimistic view of where the global economy is headed. Meanwhile, McGee's girlfriend Gretel Howard has moved out, taking a job in the north suburbs in order to maintain the space she feels their relationship needs. Gretel works at a fitness resort as an instructor and office manager. She confides to McGee that while out on the jogging trail searching for a pin she'd lost, her boss Mr. Ladwigg raced his Toyota past her toward the airfield. In the car was a man she recognized and who recognized her: a cult leader she knew as Brother Titus. Gretel and her ex-husband confronted Brother Titus five years ago near a commune in California when her sister-in-law joined the so-called Church of the Apocrypha. Before McGee or Meyer investigate, Ladwigg falls dead biking. Gretel then presents at the hospital running a high fever. Her last words are "Trav, I feel so hot. I'm burning up. I feel terrible, Trav. Terrible." I sought refuge in a child's dreaming. They had spirited her away, mended her, and would soon spring the great surprise upon me. She would come running, laughing, half-crying, saying, "Darling, we were just fooling you a little. That's all. Did we scare you too much? I'm sorry, Trav, dear. So sorry. Take me home." On the way home she would explain to me how she had outwitted the green ripper. I had read once about a little kid who had overheard some adult conversation and afterward, in the night, had terrible nightmares. He kept telling his people he dreamed about the green ripper coming to get him. They finally figured out that he had heard talk about the grim reaper. I had told Grets about it, and it had found its way into our personal language. It was not possible that the green ripper had gotten her. Returning to the Bahia Mar Marina from Gretel's memorial service in South Beach Park, McGee discovers two men waiting aboard his boat. They wear three-piece suits and despite their ignorance of marine protocol, convince McGee that they have the leverage to make him talk. They identify themselves as belonging to the Select Committee of Special Resources in the Senate Office Building. McGee answers their questions about his relationship with Gretel, omitting her sighting of Brother Titus. Something foreign in the dress and manner of his inquisitors strikes McGee as odd, and when Meyer checks them out, discovers no such committee or agents exist. McGee and Meyer visit Gretel's employers and discover that these inquisitors showed up at the resort, using different names and questioning the office about an airplane that touched down there, whether anyone else but Ladwigg knew who was aboard. McGee and Meyer discover that before his death, Ladwigg quietly sold twenty acres to a consortium from Brussels. Meyer concludes that someone trying to cover all traces of Brother Titus murdered Ladwigg and Gretel with a toxin. McGee is dubious, but when he's summoned to a nearby hotel for a clandestine Q&A session with two real government agents investigating the spycraft in Ladwigg and Gretel's deaths, foul play is confirmed. McGee hops a flight to San Francisco to bury Gretel's ashes at her family plot. Armed with a fake ID under the name "Thomas McGraw," cash and a background he's created for herself as a commercial fisherman, McGee heads to Ukiah and finds his way to the Church of the Apocrypha commune. He encounters seven able-bodied men and two women on patrol, armed with automatic weapons and allows himself to be taken prisoner. Claiming to be on a search for his missing daughter, McGee stays alive by impressing upon the cult leader, the infirm Brother Persival, that he knows seamanship and explosives and might be of use to them. McGee learns of the cult's capabilities, plans, links to foreign financing and imagines discussing it with his murdered girlfriend. It has nothing to do with me, I told Gretel. I never think about stuff like this. It hurts my head. I think about the blue sea and tan ladies and straight gin with lots of ice. I think about how high out of the water a marlin might go, and how much of Meyer's chili I can eat, and how very good piano sounds in the nighttime. I think about swimming until I hurt, running until I wheeze, driving good cars and good boats and good bargains. Sure, I do my little knightlike thing, restoring goodies to the people from whom they were improperly wrested, doing battle with the genuinely evil bastards who prey on the gullible, helpless, and innocent. I was to keep on doing that from time to time, to support you and me, girl, in the style we like best, if you had consented. I know from nothing about terrorism, funny churches, and exotic murder weapons, like the one they killed you with. But here I am. In a sense, I was hunting for you. Published in a time when the Symbionese Liberation Army were grabbing headlines, the PLO was hijacking airlines and global economic collapse wasn't out of the question, John D. MacDonald's eighteenth entry in the Travis McGee series is a page turner, using the specter of domestic terrorism by groups who knew what they were doing as a plot engine. Even if though this scenario remains dark fantasy and seems far fetched today, the novel is a white knuckler all the way. The Men In Black who show up on The Busted Flush and the web of Murder Inc. proves an elusive enemy for McGee, aging in the ring in roughly the same time span as Muhammad Ali. I had tried to give myself another advantage too. During the field exercises I had tried to keep going when it called for endurance, but I had dogged it when it was something calling for quick. I had blundered around when the order was for silent approach. When we ran the improvised obstacle course, I arranged to finish almost last every time. In unarmed combat, I let the men drop me with a certain amount of fuss and trouble. I was rounding off into top shape, putting on a nice edge. As I clumsied along, I studied each of them to see their flaws. Barry was muscle-bound from too much body building. Haris was very quick but without adequate physical strength. Sammy was too wildly energetic. He didn't plant himself for leverage, and he tried to move in too many directions at once. Ahman was quick and strong and crafty, once he had made up his mind, but he was prone to fatal hesitations. Chuck was the best of them, without a weakness except perhaps a tendency to exhibit more grace than was required, to turn his best profile toward an imaginary camera, to leap a little higher, spin more quickly than the exercise required. Limiting his scope to real estate scams, drug smuggling and murder in South Florida would've doomed MacDonald to writing the same book over and over, so in spite of the far-fetched plot introduced here, I welcomed the change of scenery and stakes. McGee is stripped not only of his ocean, but of his Dr. Watson, with Meyer remaining behind in Fort Lauderdale, which puts the detective on a high wire without a net. Though set out on a mission of revenge, McGee still has to put in detective work to stay alive. As an undercover thriller, MacDonald does a terrific job mixing false identity and subterfuge in the cocktail shaker and producing another delicious drink: lean, mean and imaginative. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Apr 29, 2018
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May 02, 2018
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Dec 03, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 4.13
| 3,525
| Jan 01, 1978
| 1978
|
it was amazing
|
Spring is finally here and it's time to work on my tan. John D. MacDonald published twenty-one Travis McGee mysteries (between 1964 and 1984) narrated
Spring is finally here and it's time to work on my tan. John D. MacDonald published twenty-one Travis McGee mysteries (between 1964 and 1984) narrated by his weary "salvage consultant" who often agrees to locate missing persons or items, 52-foot houseboat The Busted Flush docked in Fort Lauderdale serving as McGee's office. MacDonald was one of the earliest authors to use themed titles for their series and his brilliant use of color not only offered a visual motif to help readers distinguish each one, but generated some of my favorite titles: A Purple Place For Dying, A Deadly Shade of Gold, Bright Orange For the Shroud, etc. Next up is The Empty Copper Sea. Published in 1978, this novel continues a trend that finds McGee threatened by greater physical dangers and existential dread as he ages, and MacDonald's facility with plot and character getting sharper as the author aged. McGee is introduced replacing the rail posts on his boat, his body wearing down much like his vessel. He receives a visit from Van Harder, a charter captain who McGee hasn't seen in six or seven years. Harder gets around to stating that he's lost his license after his employer, businessman Hubbard Lawless, went overboard off the coast of Timber Bay and Harder was found by the sheriff below deck, passed out drunk. A born again Christian, Harder maintains that he blacked out after sharing one customary drink with Hub, a family man and community pillar who had asked Harder to take Hub, Hub's loyal yes-man John Tuckerman and two local girls out on the water at night. With no body recovered, word around Timber Bay is that Hubbard Lawless is alive, living like a king in the Yucatan. Harder asks McGee to clear his name and figuring its value to be $20,000, agrees to pay McGee half that amount back over time. McGee agrees to discuss the matter with his neighbor Meyer, a sharp-witted retired economist, answering questions over drinks at Dorsey Brannigan's pub. "What do you think about Van Harder's story?" "He's a reliable man. So let's say it was a heart attack, a stroke, a savage bout of food poisoning, or somebody put something in his drink. In any event I think we can say that Lawless left the boat before it returned. He left on purpose or by accident. And in either case, he died or left town." "I don't know what I'd do without your help." "It's simple mathematics, Travis. Permutations and combinations. You have three sequences--of four choices, two choices, and two choices. So there are sixteen possibilities." I stared blankly at him. "Such as?" "It was a heart attack. Lawless fell overboard by accident. He made shore and realized what a good chance it was for him to try to disappear forever. Or--Lawless put something in the drink, went overboard on purpose, miscalculated the risk, and drowned. Do you see why I say there are--" "I see, I see. You don't know what a help that is." "Break it down and you can't find one of the sixteen where Harder is at fault." Looking for a cover story to get them through doors shut after investigators and newspapermen have overrun Timber Bay with questions, Meyer cashes in a favor owed to him by a CEO and furbishes letters of introduction declaring that Meyer is in town to invest in the community. While Harder pilots The Busted Flush around the Florida peninsula to pick them up, McGee and Meyer fly to Timber Bay, impersonating money men. In the lounge of the North Bay Yacht and Tennis Resort, McGee gets familiar with piano player Billy Jean Bailey and gets on the last nerve of Nicky Noyes, a construction foreman and one of many who lost his livelihood after Hub disappeared. After outlasting Noyes in a parking lot fistfight and sharing Billy Jean's bed, McGee learns that Hub had something going with a bombshell architect named Kristin Petersen, who left town a day after Hub. Visiting Coast National Bank with Meyer in the morning, the men are received by the bank president and learn that Hub was in debt, his bet on developing real estate into a condominium and shopping center gone bust. McGee pays a visit to Sheriff Haggermann "Hack" Ames, who proves sharper than the good ole boy McGee expected. Ames has dispatched a deputy to assist an insurance investigator in Guadalajara, where an anonymous tipster has placed Hub after his disappearance. McGee and Meyer eventually locate Hub's yes-man John Tuckerman, who's blasted his mind with alcohol and drugs since his boss vanished and is squatting in a shack on the beach Hub left to him. Looking after Tuckerman is his sister Gretel, a laid back Amazon in her mid-twenties. McGee repairs their generator and Gretel informs him that her brother conspired with Hub to help him disappear, but the big boss got sick in his swim to shore and that Kristin Petersen took off with him, leaving her brother in the lurch. It still doesn't answer the question of where Hub Lawless, his girlfriend or the money they embezzled are hiding. McGee ultimately becomes smitten with Gretel. It was a great day. Eating and swimming and napping, walking and talking. A simple day. I can remember the precise pattern of the white grains of sand on the round tan meat of her shoulder, and the patterns of the droplets of seawater on her long thigh. Gretel filled my eyes. I learned her by heart, wrists, and ankles, mouth corners and hairline, the high arches and slender feet, downy hollow of her back, tidy ears, flat to the good skull. There would never be enough time in all the world for us to say to each other all the things that needed saying, time to tell all that had happened to each of us before the other had appeared--a sudden shining in the midst of life. In so many ways she was like a lady lost long ago, so astonishingly like her--not in appearance as much as in the climate of the heart--that it was like being given another chance after the gaming table had already been closed for good. She had a great laugh. It was a husky, full-throated bray, an explosion of laughter, uncontrolled. And she laughed at the right places. The Empty Copper Sea is dazzling in how many gears MacDonald switches in this detective story. There's the mystery of what happened the night Hub Lawless disappeared and where the businessman has absconded to with his money--Mexico or the bottom of the sea. There's the fantasy of the man living off the grid who can lift anchor and move on anytime he chooses. The relationships, romances, really, between McGee and Meyer, McGee and Gretel and McGee and the supporting characters resonate with the ways human beings attract and repel each other; love and hate, trust and deceit. And there is as always McGee's cranky social commentary, the Korean War veteran making his way in the year of our lord 1978. Once I found my way into the Mall, I located an orientation map, one of those YOU ARE HERE! things, and found where I was in relation to Top 40 Music. I plodded along the tile-finished concrete under the perpetual fluorescence, past all the jewelry stores, shoe stores, cut-rate blue-jeans stores, gift marts, caramel-corn outlets, and health-food hustles. I plodded along in the din of canned music, in the perpetual carnival atmosphere of everyday, past the custom T-shirts, the pregnant ladies eating ice cream cones, and the lines of children on school holiday waiting to get into another revival of Star Wars, shrieking and jabbing at one another and pretending to die of serious wounds. When I came to Top 40 Music, I turned out of the slow parade and went in, feeling as if I were leaning into the blare of somebody electronically amplified, yelling "Babybabybabybaby ..." Music stores? Sounds like the good old days. John D. MacDonald is of my grandfather's generation and I'll be damned if anyone can read a Travis McGee novel and not learn something, about boating, construction, alcohol, how to throw a punch, how to talk to a cop, how to enjoy sex without ruining it in your head (for those who don't know that stuff already). MacDonald is never in a hurry to throw plot at the reader and move on to shipping the next product, but truly seems to enjoy thinking about the world and what shape we should leave it in, or if we should even try. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Apr 22, 2018
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Apr 27, 2018
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Dec 03, 2017
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||||
| 0449132854
| 9780449132852
| 4.06
| 3,441
| Sep 01, 1974
| Jul 12, 1978
|
it was amazing
|
Spring is finally here and it's time to work on my tan. John D. MacDonald published twenty-one Travis McGee mysteries (between 1964 and 1984) narrated
Spring is finally here and it's time to work on my tan. John D. MacDonald published twenty-one Travis McGee mysteries (between 1964 and 1984) narrated by his weary "salvage consultant" who often agrees to locate missing persons or items, 52-foot houseboat The Busted Flush docked in Fort Lauderdale serving as McGee's office. MacDonald was one of the earliest authors to use themed titles for their series and his brilliant use of color not only offered a visual motif to help readers distinguish each one, but generated some of my favorite titles: Nightmare In Pink, The Quick Red Fox, Darker Than Amber, etc. Next up is The Dreadful Lemon Sky. Published in 1974, this is a terrific detective thriller that loiters between some familiar markers, but allows the MacDonald to share his guardedly pessimistic world view and magazine knowledge of all things from sailing to ballistics to cocktail dip. Travis McGee is asleep aboard his houseboat when his alarm bell alerts him to a visitor. She is Carrie Milligan, nee Dobrovsky, who McGee knew six years ago when she worked for Peerless Marine and was a party fixture who McGee rescued from a frat boat rapist and spent one night with. Carrie opens a box packed with $94,200 cash for McGee to hold, $10,000 for his troubles, and no questions asked. McGee hides the stash in the flooded double hull and while Carrie takes a much needed bath and sleeps off whatever she's running from, her host inspects the contents of her purse and car. He discovers little more than that Carrie now works for Superior Building Supplies in Bayside, has some industrial abrasive in her trunk and in spite of her paranoia that he keeps the lights on The Busted Flush turned off, no one suspicious lurking around the Bahia Mar Marina at four in the morning. Seeking someone to corroborate his version of events in case the law moves in, McGee seeks out his friend Meyer, an acerbic retired economist, on the beach to discuss. Meyer was curious about the money, so I described the stacks to him, each neatly tied with a white cotton string, each of mixed denominations, each totaling ten thousand. And, of course there were the loose bills, probably from a broken stack, which could mean that she had spent fifty-eight hundred. Each stack had an adding-machine tape stuffed under the string. Yes, all apparently from the same machine, but I hadn't examined them closely. It was used money, but reasonably clean and tidy. Under black light, it might fluoresce. Or somebody might have a list of serial numbers. Or it could all be funny money, printed in a small room by night. Eager to be on her way, Carrie asks McGee give her money to her sister should anything happen to her. Two weeks later, Meyer shares a newspaper clipping that reports Carolyn Milligan was struck dead while walking on a road in Bayside. Needing to do nothing more than deliver the stash to Susie Dobrovsky, McGee seeks to assure himself that the money comes with no strings attached. Sailing The Busted Flush up the coast to Bayside with Meyer along for the trip, McGee reserves a slip at a marina that earns his approval, operated by an able young man with a Jesus face named Jason Breen and managed by a stoic, tall and tan woman with a wedding ring named Cindy Birdsong. Cindy's sideways husband Cal bursts into the office, pops his wife in the lip and comes at McGee. Two cops subdue the drunk and take him to jail for the trail of destruction he's left behind in town over the last several hours. McGee rents an AMC Gremlin with busted A/C and visits Superior Building Supplies, where a saucy, ginger haired file clerk named Joanna Freeler and office manager Harry Hascomb are busy conducting inventory for a going out of business sale, owner Jack Omaha having secretly sold off the warehouse stock at less than cost and disappeared. McGee visits Omaha's home and finds the missing man's wife getting friendly with a tall, slender lawyer named Freddy Van Harn. McGee's investigation leads him to an exclusive apartment building where Carrie lived. He discovers she was mixed up in a marijuana smuggling operation with her boss Jack Omaha, whose boat made pickups in the Gulf with the help of Cal Birdsong, with packages air dropped by Freddy Van Harn, piloting his own Cessna. Van Harn would appear to have no need for such risks, marrying up into a ranching family and whose future father-in-law has promised to get Van Harn elected to state legislature. The only problem is that all of Van Harn's drug running partners have mysteriously disappeared or been killed lately. McGee keeps digging, putting his own health at risk. Suddenly, I thought of one slim chance. If I couldn't make it work, I was going to be no worse off. I was going to be dead. And if I didn't try it, I was going to be dead. A mockingbird flew over, singing on the wing, a melody so beautifully sweet it pinched my heart. I do not want to leave the world of mockingbirds, boats, beaches, ladies, love, and peanut butter from Deaf Smith County. Especially do I not want to leave it at the hands of a fool, at the hands of this Van Harn who thought he could wipe out an event by killing anybody who knew anything about it. It has been tried. It never works. Any lawyer should know that. With The Dreadful Lemon Sky, John D. MacDonald does click multiple boxes for the business traveler or beachcomber looking for escapist detective fare. Here we have the young girl mixed up in a caper, a box o' cash, a houseboat, lowlifes, an attorney criminal, women with tans, long legs and brains, and a dogged beach bum with nothing but time and an inquisitive mind. What I enjoy so much about the Travis McGee series--when MacDonald brings the quality control--are the keys to modern living wrapped in the often bemused, sometimes bummed philosophies of a Korean War veteran in the 1970s, surrounded by credit cards, pills, free love and easy living that seems anything but easy. Instead of barreling the reader down a plot, MacDonald stops to think. At drinking time I left Meyer at the wheel and went below and broke out the very last bottle of the Plymouth gin which had been bottled in the United Kingdom. All the others were bottled in the U.S. It isn't the same. It's still a pretty good gin but it is not a superb, stingingly dry, and lovely gin. The sailor on the label no longer looks staunch and forthright, but merely hokey. There is something self-destructive about Western technology and distribution. Whenever any consumer object is so excellent that it attracts a devoted following, some of the slide rule and computer types come in on their twinkle toes and take over the store , and in a trice they figure out just how far they can cut quality and still increase market penetration. Their reasoning is that is it idiotic to make and sell a hundred thousand units of something and make a profit of thirty cents a unit, when you can increase the advertising, sell five million units, and make a nickel a profit a unit. Thus the very good things of the world go down the drain, from honest turkey to honest eggs to honest tomatoes. And gin. The sixteenth novel in the Travis McGee series benefits from a well written sociopath in Freddy Van Harn who has the sorts of civic connections and respectability that the beach bum veered away from long ago. He often succeeds at charming McGee rather than acting evil. Cindy Birdsong is an unlikely choice as romantic interest, but I liked how she was as worn out as McGee, though in a much less affected way. The perils McGee gets himself into are harrowing and suggest that amateur criminals are more dangerous than professional ones due to poor judgment they attempt to compensate for with worse judgment. And then there's Florida, where there always seems to be a construction site or swamp to hide a body. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Apr 16, 2018
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Apr 20, 2018
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Dec 03, 2017
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Paperback
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| 4.04
| 2,857
| Jan 01, 1971
| Jan 1972
|
it was amazing
|
Spring is finally here and it's time to work on my tan. John D. MacDonald published twenty-one Travis McGee mysteries (between 1964 and 1984) narrated
Spring is finally here and it's time to work on my tan. John D. MacDonald published twenty-one Travis McGee mysteries (between 1964 and 1984) narrated by his weary "salvage consultant" who often agrees to locate missing persons or items, 52-foot houseboat the Busted Flush docked in Fort Lauderdale serving as McGee's office. MacDonald was one of the earliest authors to use themed titles for their series and his brilliant use of color not only offered a visual motif to help readers distinguish each one, but generated some of my favorite titles: The Deep Blue Good-By, Dress Her In Indigo, The Lonely Silver Rain, etc. First up is A Tan and Sandy Silence. Published in 1971, this dazzling detective thriller introduces Travis McGee pumping the bilge of the John Maynard Keyes, a cabin cruiser belonging to his neighbor Meyer (first or last name unrevealed throughout the series), a retired economist who shares in McGee's sardonic world view but is less a sailor, his boat taking on eight inches of water and at risk of sinking to the bottom of the Bahia Mar Marina where the men live. The rainwater pumped from the bilge, Meyer alerts McGee that the Busted Flush has a visitor. Harry Broll is a real estate developer who McGee last saw at the marina when the man came down to beat on him. Broll's attack was centered on Mary Dillon, his newlywed wife, who during an argument revealed to Harry that she was not only intimate with McGee prior to their engagement, but how much fun she had with him on a two-week cruise into the Keys and around the peninsula to Tampa Bay. Despite the bruises he endured, McGee invites Broll onto the Busted Flush, assuming water under the bridge. McGee hasn't seen or heard from Mary in three years, but that fails to satisfy Broll, whose wife has gone missing for three months and he believes, shacked up with McGee. And the dumb little weapon came out from under his clothes somewhere, maybe from the waist area, wedged between the belt and the flab. A dumb little automatic pistol in blued steel, half-swallowed in his big, pale, meaty fist. His staring eyes were wet with tears, and his mouth was twisted downward at the corners. The muzzle was making a ragged little circle, and a remote part of my mind identified it as a .25 or .32 caliber, there not being all that much difference between a quarter of an inch diameter and a third of an inch. There was a sour laugh back in another compartment of my skull. This could very possibly be the end of it, a long-odds chance of a mortal wound at the hand of a jealous husband wielding something just a little bit better than a cap gun. The ragged circle took in my heart, brain, and a certain essential viscera. And I was slouched deep in a chair facing him, just a little too far away to try to kick his wrist. He was going to talk or shoot. I saw his finger getting whiter, so I knew it was shoot. Broll empties his pistol at McGee but both are grateful for it to run out of bullets without hitting flesh. Broll calms down and tells McGee that he needs Mary by the 30th of the month, some business thing. It strikes McGee as unusual that Broll would let three months slide before asking around for his wife. That evening, at a party thrown by their neighbor Jillian Brent-Archer on her motor-sailer trimaran Jilly III, Meyer advises McGee that the next man to shoot at him might not be as generous with his aim. McGee is comforted between the sheets by Jillian, who needs a compatible man in her world and offers to take care of McGee should he accept the position of her houseguest. McGee instead pokes into the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Broll. While Meyer uses his friends in the banks to investigate what Broll is in to, McGee traces him to Casa De Playa, a Broll Enterprises condominium. McGee charms a broker named Jeannie Dolan, who tells him that her girlfriend was dipping in the company ink with the boss, who left her for a Canadian named Lisa Dissat. An anonymous phone call to Mary sent her to Lisa's apartment, where Mrs. Broll discovered the infidelity. Meyer learns that Broll is in business with a Canadian investor named Dennis Waterbury, whose land development offering is about to go public in a deal which would net $2.5 million for Broll. Canvasing Mary's block, McGee gains the trust of a friend who confides that unknown to anyone else, Mary is living off her bastard husband's dime on the Caribbean isle of Grenada, from which she regularly sends her friend postcards. For Harry's land deal to go through, Broll needs to secure a loan using Mary's trust fund as collateral, hence his desperation to locate his missing wife. McGee is troubled by the fact that Mary's car is still at Miami International, which contradicts the frugality of his ex-flame. McGee traces Mary to the Spice Island Inn and boards a BWIA flight to Grenada, where he confronts a woman using his ex's identity. McGee determines this to be Lisa Dissat, a honey pot involved in a scheme hatched by her cousin Paul, a prime cut sociopath. He was single, she said, and did not look like anybody's idea of an accountant. Bachelor apartment, sports car. She said he was a superb skier, proficient at downhill racing and slalom. She said that three years ago, when she was working in Montreal, she had run up bills she was unable to pay. She was afraid of losing her job. She had gone up to Quebec to see Paul, whom she had not seen in several years. He had taken her to dinner and back to his apartment and made love to her. He had paid her bills and arranged for her to work for Waterbury. After they had been intimate many times, he had told her of his plan to share in some of the fat profits from Waterbury's operations. He would arrange the necessary leverage through her. He said he would let her know when the right opportunity came along. The aspect of John D. MacDonald that has influenced Stephen King, Lee Child and other genre fiction writers aren't his plots, doled out with the detail of someone holding expert level knowledge in South Florida sleaze, but the stark beauty of MacDonald's prose. His stories often contrast legality with morality, Travis McGee wanting to do the right thing, as soon as he figures out what that is. MacDonald invites the reader to learn the answers along with McGee, never once stopping to hector or preach. The moral center of the novel is Meyer, who often compels McGee that when confronted with an emotionally difficult decision, the right one is the one that would take the most effort, paying now rather than putting yourself in debt. I knew but did not want to tell her. You see many such couples around the yacht clubs and bath clubs and tennis clubs of the Western world. The man, a little younger or a lot younger than the moneyed widow or divorcée he has either married or is traveling with. The man is usually brown and good at games, dresses youthfully, and talks amusingly. But he drinks a little too much. And completely trained and conditioned, he is ever alert for his cues. If his lady unsnaps her purse and frowns down into it, he at once presents his cigarettes, and they are always her brand. If she has her own cigarettes, he can cross twenty feet in a twelfth of a second to snap the unwavering flame to life, properly and conveniently positioned for her. It takes but the smallest sidelong look of query to send him in search of an ashtray to place close to her elbow. If at sundown she raises her elegant shoulders a half inch, he trots into the house or onto the boat or up to the suite to bring back her wrap. He knows just how to apply her suntan oil, knows which of her dresses have to be zipped up and snapped for her. He can draw her bath to the precise depth and temperature which please her. He can give her an acceptable massage, brew a decent pot of coffee, take her phone messages accurately, keep her personal checkbook in balance, and remind her when to take her medications. Her litany is: Thank you, dearest. How nice, darling. You are so thoughtful, sweetheart. It does not happen quickly, of course. It is an easy life. Other choices, once so numerous, disappear. Time is the random wind that blows down the long corridor, slamming all the doors. And finally, of course, it comes down to a very simple equation. Life is endurable when she is contented and difficult when she is displeased. It is a training process. Conditioned response. "I'm used to the way I live," I told her. A Tan and Sandy Silence is the 13th Travis McGee novel and has a riveting beginning, middle and end, with McGee evading Harry Broll's cap gun aboard the Busted Flush and confronting the depraved, committed killer who Meyer has warned him about, on a deserted beach and later on a construction site. MacDonald made me a partner in wanting to find Mary Broll and whoever was responsible for her vanishing. The ambiance of an April in Fort Lauderdale and Grenada are intoxicating in their natural beauty and deadliness, the dialogue is superlative and research is woven into the story with finesse. Without expecting it, I got notes on how to tell if a man wants to shoot or talk, and how to make life decisions that are a bit more practical. ...more |
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Apr 11, 2018
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Apr 15, 2018
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Dec 03, 2017
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paperback
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| 0743291719
| 9780743291712
| 3.73
| 1,229
| Jan 02, 2007
| Jan 02, 2007
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The Song is You is the second novel by Megan Abbott and the second that the author published in 2007. Like Queenpin, this lurid tale careens into the
The Song is You is the second novel by Megan Abbott and the second that the author published in 2007. Like Queenpin, this lurid tale careens into the reader with its collar unbuttoned and the aroma of rye mixed with Lucky Strikes on its breath, but it's a more ambitious effort, taking place in a specific place and time--Hollywood at the dawn of television-and mingles fictional characters with the real Tinseltown players of the day. It's a desolate, occasionally repulsive depiction of Los Angeles, where everything is for sale and depravity knows no bounds, but through electric prose and sharp dialogue, builds into an invigorating and haunting mystery. After some convoluted and unnecessary prologue, the story begins in September 1951 with Warner Bros. publicity man Gil Hopkins. An ex-reporter for the movie magazine Cinestar, in his new job, Gil describes himself as a fireman. "I put out fires. I start fires. A little of both." Johnny on the Spot with a quip, he's the sort of fixer heavily in demand in industry towns, spinning news of arrests, break-ups and embarrassing exposures into publicity for the powers-that-be. His soon-to-be ex-wife Midge has abandoned their marriage of three hateful years and moved in with Hop's best friend, a publicity agent named Jerry Schuyler he worked with in the war. Hop receives a visit from a chorus girl named Iolene Harper. The two met in Hop's journo days and were among the last people to see Iolene's friend, dark-eyed starlet Jean Spangler, before she disappeared two years ago. Drinking the night away at a roadhouse, the trio were joined by song and dance team Marv Sutton and Gene Merrel, their press agent Bix Noonan and a burlesque performer who gave Hop the name "Miss Hotcha." Hop and Iolene knew that Sutton & Merrel had a rep for roughing up women, but were unable to talk Jean out of partying with them. Hop took Miss Hotcha home for a night cap and Iolene accompanied Jean and the dancing derelicts to a sleaze pit called the Red Lily. A search of Griffith Park turned up Jean's purse, with a broken handle and a cryptic note inside which read: Kirk, can't wait any longer, going to see Doctor Scott. It will work out best this way while mother is away. Her body was never found. Several eyewitnesses told the press that they saw Jean at a restaurant that night with an unidentified tall man. Sutton & Merrel were kept out of it and Iolene correctly assumes that Hop's promotion had something to do with that. She confesses to Hop that she tried to get Jean to leave the Red Lily with her that night, but the starlet refused, and Iolene took a ride home from the press agent while his clients did God knows what to Jean. He thought for a long thirty seconds about his part in the drama. He'd kept his mouth shut. And lied to a few cops. Really, who doesn't lie to cops? What else are cops for? All he did was make sure a few names never found their way into the papers or to the police. And to take care of that, sure, he made the girl's name disappear from the studio logs just to be safe. And then dropped a few hints to the cops and maybe a reporter that the girl was known to keep company with some less-than-reputable boys about town. The purse with the broken strap in Griffith Park only helped, gave more likely reasons for the girl to fade to black. Nagged by his conscience, Hop dives into the abyss and starts rubbing shoulders with all manner of sorted characters who might hold a piece to the puzzle of Jean Spangler's disappearance. A reporter for the Los Angeles Examiner who dropped the story mentions that Davy Ogul, one of gangster Mickey Cohen's boys, was rumored to be Jean's boyfriend; Ogul disappeared shortly after Jean did. A botched abortion seemed to be the most likely fate of the missing starlet and is the reason the press dropped the story. Hop visits the Examiner where the reporter who inherited it--a spitfire named Frannie Adair--doesn't have anything for Hop either. Meanwhile, Iolene disappears. Hop gets soused and pays a visit to his friend Jerry at two o'clock in the morning to talk things over. He remembers too late that his wife Midge is living there and how easily she gets under his skin. Feeling even lower after the encounter, Hop drops by Frannie Adair's bungalow and confesses to the reporter that he saw Jean Spangler the night she disappeared and that Sutton & Merrel might have been involved in her disappearance. Realizing the damage he's done when he sobers up, Hop notifies Sutton & Merrel's manager that a reporter might start asking questions about Jean Spangler. Hop is troubled by how quickly the manager seemed to recognize the name and knew what action to take. Hop begins to tail Frannie. At the studio, she learns that Jean Spangler actually was working for Warner Bros. when she vanished. Hop makes sure Jean's glossies disappear from the studio files but is unable to remember enough about his date that evening, "Miss Hotcha," to find her and quiet her. Frannie confronts Hop and guesses that he's up to his tricks, making everyone who might have seen Jean Spangler that night unavailable for comment. Haunted by Jean Spangler and filled with remorse, Hop locates the Red Lily, where a thirteen year old named Lemon Drop tells him it took two men two hours to clean up the blood in the room after Marv Sutton was done with Jean. He'd seen his fair share of lunatics in his years in Hollywood: hysterical actresses who liked to smash windows with their bare hands, gloomy-faced actors who played with loaded pistols at parties and then retired to darkened rooms for days or weeks at a time. Glamour girls who pulled their dresses over their heads in public. The elegant leading man who stole teacups from restaurants, and another, same sort, who asked his lovers to throw tennis balls between his legs from across the room. Hop was rarely surprised these days. But this ... this disordered man. And everything so close, right before his eyes. Hop's guilty conscience spirals him closer to a date with Jean Spangler. Shadowing Frannie Adair, he is led to the familiar apartment of "Miss Hotcha," who turns out to be (view spoiler)[Jean's cousin, Peggy. (hide spoiler)] Hop is later able to get the woman to spill that Jean and Iolene were mixed up in a dirty picture and blackmail racket sponsored by Jean's boyfriend Davy Ogul. She directs Hop to Iolene's hideaway, where he discovers (view spoiler)[Iolene's body with a gunshot wound to the temple (hide spoiler)] and an empty file cabinet with a tab marked "Dr. Stillman." Learning that the good doctor has disappeared, Hop breaks into the office for clues and finds one that connects Jean's disappearance to someone who's been right in front of him the entire time. The Song is You has a title that I loved and ten opening pages that I did not. Rather than introduce Hop--who you'd guess correctly is the main character--Abbott begins the story with her victim, muddying the waters of a story that's already an oily puddle. It's a flaw in what is otherwise a beguiling mystery soaked with tabloid grandeur. In addition to prose that fluctuates between being breezy and punchy, and dialogue that feels clipped authentically to the times and to the characters, I was impressed by how dexterously Abbott fit her fictional characters within the world of real A-list and B-list movie stars, as well as hoodlums and social stigmas of the day, back alley abortion being key. Her research is top notch and her apparent legal clearances with the names of real stars perplexed me, much like a good magician's act. This is not a book for the faint of heart, not because of graphic violence or sex, but a palpable level of psychic violence that hovers over it. This Los Angeles is a primeval swamp, with ground that opens up and swallows those who aren't watching their step. That might be repellent to some readers and it frequently is, but what Abbott does so well is pry open the closet of 1950s Hollywood and examines the skeletons still hanging there. Her missing persons mystery piqued by curiosity and threw me forward into the climax, which was unexpected, vivid and haunted me, sort of like hearing one of those skeletons in the closet move when I closed the door. Fans of James Ellroy should be thrilled. ...more |
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Sep 23, 2016
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Aug 30, 2016
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| B001QN7DWS
| 3.91
| 12,513
| 1964
| 2008
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liked it
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This is a novel that put John D. MacDonald (1916-1986) on my short list of favorite authors, between Elmore Leonard and Stephen King, even though I
This is a novel that put John D. MacDonald (1916-1986) on my short list of favorite authors, between Elmore Leonard and Stephen King, even though I can just barely recommend it. Published in 1964, The Deep Blue Good-by is the debut of Travis McGee, "Salvage Consultant" in south Florida who over the course of twenty-one novels--titled with every color in the spectrum save for "black" or "white"-- recovers missing items. As plots go it's as routine as any airport paperback, but is wet with nautical atmosphere and in the wake of President Kennedy's assassination, also stiff with a historically keen male nihilism that sets it apart. Moored in Lauderdale aboard the 52-foot houseboat Busted Flush (won where else but in a private poker session), Travis McGee is introduced idling the afternoon away with Chookie McCall, a dancer and choreographer who hasn't known Travis long enough to figure out whether he really does find things for people, keeping half of its value. Chookie just so happens to know someone looking for something and has invited her over. McGee hears the woman out. Cathy Kerr is a dancer whose father served in the Air Transport Command in India and Burma during the war and brought home an item of awesome value. Cathy just doesn't know what it was. Wally Kerr was taken away when Cathy was nine years old, sentenced to Leavenworth for beating an officer to death. A year ago, a smiling man named Ambrose A. "Junior" Allen arrived in Candle Key, claiming to be a cellmate of her father's. Shacking up with Cathy, Junior spent most of his time digging around for something. Waking one morning to find the man gone and their two driveway markers smashed, Kathy is sure that he stole an object her father had meant for her. Junior Allen returned to Candle Key with money and a cruiser registered as the Play Pen., seducing another vulnerable woman in the area named Lois Atkinson. Kathy asks Travis McGee to help her. She looked at me with soft apologetic brown eyes, all dressed in her best to come talk to me. The world had done its best to subdue and humble her, but the edge of her good, tough spirit showed through. I found I had taken an irrational dislike to Junior Allen, that smiling man. And I do not function too well on emotional motivations. I am wary of them. And I am wary of a lot of other things, such as plastic credit cards, payroll deductions, insurance programs, retirement benefits, savings accounts, Green Stamps, time clocks, newspapers, mortgages, sermons, miracle fabrics, deodorants, checklists, time payments, political parties, lending libraries, television, actresses, junior chambers of commerce, pageants, progress, and manifest destiny. Driving a 1936 Rolls Royce that's been converted into a pickup truck and that he calls Miss Agnes, Travis starts by checking out Junior Allen. He judges Junior to be a formidable man. 38, in good shape, capable of forcing shy women to give him what he wants, stealing something of value and converting it to cash in New York, then possessing the nerve to return to the scene of his crime for a new victim. Trav accompanies Cathy on a visit to her younger sister Christine in an attempt to learn about their father and what he might have brought back to interest Junior so much. McGee then ventures to the end of Candle Key to pay a visit to Lois Atkinson. Finding Lois Atkinson to be a tall, slender woman in her early thirties, McGee is surprised to find her falling apart from her experience with Junior Allen. Malnourished and alcoholic, she is actually close to death until Travis invites himself in and begins to care for her, calling a doctor to examine her and slowly gaining her confidence. He learns little to nothing about Junior Allen except for what Lois says in her sleep and once she's recovered physically from her ordeal, Travis invites her to stay with him aboard the Busted Flush. Travis soon takes off to New York and Harlingen, Texas to speak with two army buddies of Sergeant Wally Kerr. Travis determines that Cathy's father started out swapping Missionary Bonds purchased in China for cash in the States before ultimately graduating to (view spoiler)[buying gemstones in Ceylon and smuggling them home in canteens (hide spoiler)]. Returning to Lauderdale, Travis and Lois' relationship blooms into an intimate one. Junior Allen runs into Cathy at the nightclub where she works and luring her away, beats her within an inch of her life. Travis discovers Junior has settled on a new woman to corrupt and destroy, plotting to isolate her and her friends on a cruise to Bimini. Travis hatches a scheme to get himself on Junior Allen's cruiser, get his client's heirloom and get Junior Allen. A.A. Allen, Junior, came through as a crafty, impulsive, and lucky man. He had gone after the sergeant's fortune with guile and patience, but now that he had begun to have the use of it, he was recklessly impatient to find his own rather perverse gratifications. Sanity is not an absolute term. Probably, in the five years of imprisonment, what had originally been merely a strong sexual drive had been perverted into a search for victims. He had indulged himself with erotic fantasies of gentle women, force, terror, corruption. Until, finally, the restolen fortune became merely a means to an end, to come out and live the fantasies. If titles alone were enough, The Deep Blue Good-by would be one of my favorite all-time novels. MacDonald does a intoxicating job evoking a hard-boiled and sun-drenched nihilism here, establishing a resourceful entrepreneur in Travis McGee who seems more content to keep his own company than run one, scraping his boat and scraping by in a world he barely notes worth saving. John F. Kennedy isn't mentioned specifically, but the year of publication hints that the president's assassination and direction the country was headed in had a lot to do with McGee's skepticism of America, traveling as far south as he could without needing to speak Spanish. She was what we have after sixty million years of the Cenozoic. There were a lot of random starts and dead ends. Those big, plated, pea-brain lizards didn't make it. Sharks, scorpions, and cockroaches, as living fossils, are lasting pretty well. Savagery, venom, and guile are good survival quotients. This forked female mammal didn't seem to have enough tools. One night in the swamps would kill her. Yet behind all the fragility was a marvelous toughness. A Junior Allen was less evolved. He was a skull-cracker, two steps away from the cave. They were at two ends of our bell curve, with all the rest of us lumped in the middle. If the trend is still supposed to be up, she was of the kind we should breed, accepting sensitivity as a strength rather than a weakness. But there is too much Junior Allen seed around. Travis McGee respects Lois Atkinson, but where the novel sputters and stalls is her introduction. Lois is a victim who wallows in it, playing from a position of weakness whether than strength. Rather than help McGee, she's a drag on him and the story, which needed to propel forward. Junior Allen is a good antagonist on his own, but doesn't interact with the protagonist in a compelling way. Other than Travis McGee, there aren't really any compelling characters in the novel, shocking when the Florida locales are taken into account. Still, MacDonald's prowess as a writer, his delicious prose and offbeat sensibility made me a fan. The hardcover of The Deep Blue Good-by that I found at the library lacks the stunning artwork of Robert McGinnis, who in addition to illustrating paperback covers for the Travis McGee series produced many movie posters in the '60s and '70s, including those for the Sean Connery 007 pictures. [image] ...more |
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Aug 13, 2017
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Aug 16, 2017
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| 0316099082
| 9780316099080
| 3.85
| 3,671
| Apr 01, 1984
| Jun 19, 2012
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liked it
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My Lois Duncan jag continues with The Third Eye, a supernatural thriller first published in 1984 and revised by the author in 2012 with superficial
My Lois Duncan jag continues with The Third Eye, a supernatural thriller first published in 1984 and revised by the author in 2012 with superficial updates including what the Young Adult reader of today is wearing and how they're communicating. "Superficial" might be too strong for a book that dispenses with high school soap opera to plunge its eighteen year old heroine into existential dread involving ESP, an aloof mother, a mysterious young cop and a gang of kidnappers. It's a lightning fast and mostly engaging read that seemed as if it was written lightning fast, with a main character who's a little too perfect to sustain sufficient levels of unease. Set in New Mexico-the Duncan novels I've read so far transverse the AAA Road Atlas--the story concerns unusual high school senior Karen Connors, who's babysitting seven-year-old Bobby Zenner and his two-year-old sister for the afternoon. While Karen is feeding the baby, she receives a visit from her cocky boyfriend Tim Dietz, a popular senior who swept Karen off her feet two months ago and propelled her from ugly duckling to white swan status at school. Karen has always had difficulty fitting in with the crowd and walks on egg shells getting Tim to leave the Zenner house without risking he might get angry and break up with her. Karen notices that Bobby is missing. Her efforts to locate him end with Bobby's friends telling her they last saw him playing Hide n Seek two hours ago. An intuitive sense tells her that Bobby isn't close by, so Karen contacts the police. She's questioned by Officer Robert Wilson, a blue-eyed cop who seems to her too young for this job. Reassured that actual kidnappings are rare, Karen has a gut feeling that Bobby is in a box. The Zenners arrive home hysterical. By now, Karen is picking up more feelings and is able to tell Officer Wilson that Bobby is locked in the trunk of her boyfriend's car. Bobby is rescued from the open trunk he crawled into and Tim shut after Karen had him leave. Karen returns home to be lectured by her mother Wanda for breaking the Zenners' house rules for Tim. She interrogates her daughter on how she knew where to find Bobby. It reminds Mrs. Connors of an incident in their old neighborhood when Karen was five and she "knew" that a missing boy had been trapped in a drainage pipe. Driven out of the neighborhood by the gossip, Mrs. Connors is worried it might happen all over again and affect her daughter's new social life. Karen could care less. Tim wants to put the incident behind him and is nowhere near as curious about Karen's abilities when she returns to school. In fact, Karen is even asked to join the Prom Committee. Life is good. Someone who is interested in Karen's intuition is Officer Rob, who pays a visit to the Connors home and asks for Karen's help locating another missing child, an eight-year-old named Carla Sanchez who disappeared a week ago. Objections by Mrs. Connors convince Karen to give the experiment a try. Driving to the outskirts of Albuquerque, Officer Rob shares with her the theory that Carla's indigent father took her. Carla's mother allows Karen into her daughter's room, but rummaging through the missing girl's possessions fails to conjure any feelings. Once in the car, Karen leads Rob to a path along a riverbank where her visions of the missing girl intensify and dread creeps in. The knowledge was undeniable. Carla Sanchez was dead. Somewhere in that rushing river, there was a body of a barefoot, blue jeans-clad child. The bright new bike would go unridden; the yellow bear unhugged. The dresses in the closet of the tiny bedroom would be taken from hangers and given to Goodwill. The portrait on the television set in the living room would be enshrined forever now, no longer just a photograph, but the last school picture--the final picture--"the way Carla looked the last year of her life." Mrs. Sanchez would show it to everyone who entered the house. She would speak in the past tense, her pride shrouded in pain. She was so beautiful, my Carla! Haunted by her experience at the river, Karen's problems get worse when Carla's mother tells the media that her daughter's body was located by a psychic named Karen Connors. The house phone starts ringing with calls from reporters, Karen's parents are upset with her for getting involved and Tim is suddenly interested in Karen's ability to see the answers of their English literature test. She goes through the motions for the rest of her senior year, hoping that college will let her put the events of the spring behind her. Passionate about children, Karen takes a job at a daycare center, where a mysterious van and the couple driving it have their own plans for her. The text was revised unnecessarily by Duncan in 2012 to give her characters contemporary gadgets like mobile phones, computers and DVDs. Roller skates are changed to skateboards and Karen's prom dress underwent a makeover, but unlike I Know What You Did Last Summer which involved a criminal conspiracy between four teenagers, the heroine of The Third Eye actually prefers to socially disconnect. Karen's first experience using her wild talent to help law enforcement is the most vivid and the creepiest section of the novel and I liked the way Duncan turned her heroine inward, threatening to dissolve her like The Incredible Shrinking Man from the inside out. Different novelists might've taken this opportunity to chart Karen's descent into social stigma and possibly madness, but this is a Young Adult novel and Duncan is handicapped by the form rather than liberated by it. Karen's emotionally estranged relationship with her mother is the most important in the book but her character is essentially a Mary Sue with only superficial imperfections. A good student who loves babies, there's never any possibility Duncan could torture with the reader by sacrificing Karen and in addition to a pair of weak antagonists, the book is unable to sustain suspense. It's an entertaining read whose pieces fit together well enough, but not a riveting thriller. ...more |
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Sep 05, 2016
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Sep 07, 2016
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Aug 15, 2016
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Paperback
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| 0316098973
| 9780316098977
| 3.61
| 3,472
| 1979
| Oct 03, 2011
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really liked it
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My Lois Duncan jag continues with Daughters of Eve and it's the best from the author I've read so far, a big, unwieldy but enthralling thriller with
My Lois Duncan jag continues with Daughters of Eve and it's the best from the author I've read so far, a big, unwieldy but enthralling thriller with so much going on between the notes that it even develops a minor key in the paranormal. This one was first published in 1979 and revised by the author in 2011, not so much due to changes in technology or fashion, but in politics, with a high school in a fictional Michigan town curiously frozen in an era before feminism. Dry as a tinder box, this conservative setting provides the fuel for the charismatic art teacher and adviser to a club called the Daughters of Eve to ignite primal retribution within her students, with tragic results. The ambitious novel introduces ten teenage girls as their school year begins at Modesta High School. Three underclassmen have received invitations to join the Daughters of Eve, a national organization that raises money for the community and promotes sisterhood; the Modesta chapter restricts its roll to ten. Members are sworn to secrecy and no outsiders are admitted to meetings. The new class each have secrets: freckled Kristy Grange, whose older brothers Peter and Niles have been excused from domestic work which falls on Kristy with both parents eking out a living; Laura Snow, an overweight teen with no friends and poor self-esteem who's in love with Peter Grange; and delicate Jane Rheardon, whose mother exhibits symptoms of battered wife syndrome from Jane's abusive father. Daughters of Eve is led by president Erika Schneider, "the coolest girl in the Senior Honor Society" toiling on a top secret science project involving rats which has virtually no competition on its way to the state level science fair; club treasurer Madison Ellis, cheerleader and homecoming queen, is dating Peter Grange but refuses to go all the way with him and threaten her modeling career with a pregnancy; club secretary Ann Whitten, budding artist whose future is uncertain when her farmer boyfriend Dave proposes marriage. The other members of the club are finding their voices. Kelly Johnson is a bright girl who has lowered her expectations to a middling career as a secretary. Holly Underwood has musical talent on the maternal side but has seen her mother squander that talent by marrying young and sacrificing for a husband and children; Paula Brummell plays basketball but laments the sad state of the neglected girls' program in comparison to the boys'; Tammy Carncross has writers for parents and is known at home as "our oracle" for her "funny feelings" which often portend the future. Faculty adviser to the Daughters of Eve is Irene Stark, art teacher from the Windy City who far from being pretty or hip looking, has earned the respect of the students for her attentiveness and ability to find solutions to their challenges. Remember all of these names because there's going to be a test later. During the initiation ceremony in the art classroom, Tammy Carncross has a vision of candle wax turning blood red and hit with a nauseous feeling, bolts as quickly as she can. She resigns from the club, only to reconsider. Kristy reveals to her new sisters that her parents have asked her to resign due to obligations at home. The others are outraged that Kristy's older brothers Peter and Niles aren't expected to help and begin to see a pattern of discrimination: Scholarships are determined by male faculty and male students seem to be awarded more often than female students. The boys' athletic department receives funding and priority while the girls' department is left in disarray. Rebellion begins. Kristy refuses to resign from the club and accepts grounding by her parents, ultimately bringing her mother over to her side. When her brother Peter protests the amount of time his girlfriend Madison is spending on Daughters of Eve, in addition to being an "ice queen" when they're alone, she breaks up with him on the spot. Peter takes his urges to a girl he can manipulate and begins hooking up with lonely Laura, keeping their activities down at the creek on the QT. Jane speaks to her mother in a failed effort to get her to leave her abusive father. Kelly's perfect parents divorce when her father leaves her mother for another woman, stoking Kelly's isolation and hatred. "You need your friends more than ever now," her mom had told her. Concerned about her. Loving her. Worrying over Kelly, not over herself. Wonderful, self-sacrificing Mom, and what had it gotten her? A load of crap, that's what. A load of shit, is what Madison would call it--outspoken Madison, who called a spade a spade. Kelly had never called anything by an ugly curse word like that. Words like "shit" weren't used in the Johnson household. Maybe that was why Madison didn't have any hang-ups and Kelly did. That's why I can't go downstairs, Kelly told herself now. It's because I have a hang-up. A hang-up about being stupid, which, in its way, was just as terrible as being cruel because both things hurt equally in the long run. Her mom had trusted in love, and that was stupid. Her mom had built her whole life on the premise that she was half of a perfect couple, and now she wasn't anything. She was a cartoon character, walking around the house, emptying ashtrays that didn't need emptying, cooking big meals that no one could eat, changing sheets that didn't need changing, and it was all so stupid because she should've known. She should've known! Laura urges Peter to take their relationship public by taking her to the homecoming dance, but realizing he ruined a good thing with Madison, Peter charms his ex back. Attending the dance with Madison, Peter not only stands Laura up on the night of, but his younger brother Niles pays Laura a visit in the hopes she'll put out for him too. Forcing himself on her, Niles is fought off by Laura, but subjects her to a stream of insults before he leaves. Shame and a bottle of sleeping pills spell Laura's resignation not only from the Daughters of Eve, but force her to leave Modesta. Miss Stark--aware that Laura had gotten herself into a sexual relationship she wasn't equipped to handle--is able to determine the identity of the creep with Kristy and Madison. "That bastard! Freaking bastard!" Madison brought her clenched fist crashing down on the surface of the table. "And I thought he'd changed, that he really cared about me and about our relationship! How could I have been such an idiot!" "You're not an idiot," Tammy said, trying to soothe her. "You believed what he said, and why shouldn't you? There was no way you could've guessed this was going on with Laura." "I believed him because I wanted to, that's what was stupid. And Laura--well, at least she had the excuse of not having a lot of experience. I can see where she might fall for this crap, but with me--I've been going out with guys since middle school! I should've known better!" "So should Laura," Kelly said coldly. "Maybe she hasn't had dating experience, but she had a dad who walked out on her and on her mom. That should be enough right there to teach her that you can't trust men." "We don't really know--" Ann began. "Of course we do! Irene and I had a long talk about that very thing the other night. All of us know a whole lot of things deep inside, but we close our eyes and our minds to them. Like Madison just said. We believe what we want to believe. It's easier than standing up for ourselves." Lois Duncan sculpts with a blunt instrument. Inspired to write about a fanatical, charismatic adult who exerts influence among his pupils, Duncan's story morphed from one about a youth pastor to one about a feminist high school teacher. As a result, some feminists have accused the author of anti-feminist bias while some anti-feminists believe that Duncan is as guilty as Miss Irene Stark of pushing a feminist agenda on teenagers. Miss Stark isn't chiseled with a great deal of nuance and some of her counseling techniques seem completely inappropriate for a story taking place in 2012. Then again, if Modesta is lost in a time warp, maybe Miss Stark knew she could get away with more. The novel is titled Daughters of Eve and its power is its raw, honest depiction of teenage girls who are strong together but vulnerable to the priorities and whims of adults when alone. The club meetings evolve into discussions of gender inequality and as the teenagers begin to ask questions, I found it fascinating how many of them thought that the problem was in some other family, rarely their own. Unwilling to write about a club and focus only on two or three characters, Duncan's inkwell is deep here. She's able to explore not only gender inequality, but domestic and sexual violence, abortion and the less overt pressures women experience daily to subordinate their lives. The broad canvas of the novel also has the effect of multiplying the suspense. Duncan does a skillful job of placing her characters into positions of vulnerability in very short amount of time. The author draws out whether Madison will have sex with her creep boyfriend or Ann will reject her scholarship to marry or Jane will suffer the same domestic violence as her mother. If it sounds over-the-top, it is, but Daughters of Eve doesn't need to manufacture its evils. Duncan exposes how many exist under the surface of the perfect high school and explores ways to survive them. By the last page, there wasn't any doubt I was being let go from the grip of a master storyteller. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 08, 2016
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Sep 10, 2016
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Aug 15, 2016
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Paperback
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| 0316098981
| 9780316098984
| 3.79
| 6,400
| Sep 01, 1974
| Apr 19, 2011
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really liked it
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The first Young Adult novel I've read as an adult is Down a Dark Hall, the supernatural mystery by Lois Duncan first published in 1974. This revised
The first Young Adult novel I've read as an adult is Down a Dark Hall, the supernatural mystery by Lois Duncan first published in 1974. This revised edition released in 2011 modernized the novel by introducing cell phones, texting and the Internet; "Why don't those girls call 911?" or better yet, "Isn't there an app for that?" being considerations for the suspense author of today. Antiquated usages like "Mother" were also updated, but what I was thrilled to find preserved was a sense of Gothic dread that reaches back to the early 20th century and beyond, where haunted manors, creepy headmistresses and raving lunacy were the top existential threats to teenage girls. The story begins with sixteen year old Kit Gordy being driven through the countryside by her new stepfather and her newly remarried mother, who are off to honeymoon in Europe while Kit is enrolled at Blackwood School for Girls. A city girl, Kit is despondent at being dumped in the sticks and separated from her best friend, who applied to the same boarding school but did not pass the entrance exam. Arriving in Blackwood Village, Kit's stepfather receives directions from a gas station attendant, as well as some exposition: the school was once "the Brewer place," recently purchased and renovated by "some foreign lady." A townie named Natalie Cullers has been employed as cook. Pulling onto the grounds of Blackwood School, Kit senses something evil under the eaves. The headmistress, Madame Duret, welcomes Kit, who has arrived a day ahead of the other students. Kit's apprehension is initially soothed by the decor of her private room, which is furnished with antique comforts including a canopy bed. Above all, Kit doesn't want to ruin her mother's honeymoon by making a scene. Joining Madame Duret for dinner, Kit is introduced to Professor Farley, who teaches math and science and the headmistress's dashing son Jules, who teaches music. Kit is alarmed that along with Madame Duret, the languages and literature instructor, this is the entire faculty. After a night of restless sleep, exacerbated by a door that only locks from the outside and a forebodingly dark corridor outside, Kit meets the school's cook Natalie, who she learns will be preparing food for the entire student body. Even stranger, the townie has been instructed not to converse with the student body. Kit finally locates the first of her classmates, a shy redhead named Sandra Mason. The girls watch a limousine drop off two more students--a blonde beauty later introduced as Lynda Hannah and a mousy brain named Ruth Crowder. The gates to the property are sealed and Kit gets the sinking realization that they are the only students enrolled at the school. Kit is awakened by a shriek from Sandra's room. Braving the dark corridor, Kit finds Sandra's door locked, which should be impossible if she's behind the door. Kit forces her way inside the chilly room where Sandra is troubled by a nightmare in which she imagined a woman standing over her bed. Returning to Kit's room for the night, they realize that they both had psychic experiences as children--Kit being visited by her father the morning he was killed in a traffic accident, Sandra receiving a premonition of her parents disappearing over the Caribbean. Kit is confident that Lynda and Ruth were both enrolled by Madame Duret, and not her friend, due to similar experiences. Strangeness is afoot at Blackwood School For Girls. Lynda discovers she can sketch a detailed portrait. Kit catches Jules listening to a piano composition she knows she's heard somewhere, even though the headmistress's son tells Kit he doesn't know it. Natalie confides that Mr. Brewer, the previous owner of the house, lost his family in a fire and withdrew from village life until he lost his mind. Madame Duret notifies the girls that Natalie has quit. Kit is confident that something sinister is going on. Isolated at the school fifteen miles from the village without Internet and with their handwritten letters going unreturned, the girls have no choice but try to survive until Christmas break. To a critical thinker, Down a Dark Hall is one of the most implausible books I've ever read (keep in mind it's my first foray into Young Adult fiction). Even by the standards of the day it was originally published, it's difficult to accept that parents would enroll their little princesses in an uncredentialed boarding school overrun by ghosts, particularly one where their daughter is unable to contact them by phone, fax or email. The girls are discouraged from simply going AWOL by the presence of some spikes atop the fenceline (I'm for real). All of this makes the belief in psychic phenomena and ghosts seem credible by comparison. At 49,000 words, the novel is a quick read and an elementary one. On a superficial level, Kit seems unburdened by anything that Nancy Drew hadn't encountered in one of her mysteries, or Scooby Doo for that matter. What elevates Kit above other children's sleuths and makes Down a Dark Hall compelling is its emotional depth. From the beginning, Kit is given reason to mistrust adults and feel both alienated and powerless. She is driven from her home and her support network. She's cast off to fend for herself. She taps into a reserve of power, but also something inside her that is new and terrifying. Duncan calls these "spirits" but "sex" can easily be read between the lines. Time has demonstrated that Duncan, author of I Know What You Did Last Summer and Killing Mr. Griffin among other tales of terror dealing with the isolation and victimization of teenage girls, is operating on another level here. It says something for the existential dread of her writing that readers in the 1970s, 1990s and present day can inject their own fears into her text and with a few minor adjustments for technological progress, the story can be as unsettling as ever. I also liked the solution to the mystery, which involves (view spoiler)[the exploitation of psychic teens for the common good, as Madame Duret sees it, of communicating with geniuses like Vermeer, Schubert and Emily Bronte who deprived the world of major works by their untimely deaths (hide spoiler)]. Like any scheme devised by an adult, greed is never to be underestimated. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Aug 13, 2016
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Aug 14, 2016
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Jul 20, 2016
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Paperback
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| 031609899X
| 9788723905222
| 3.50
| 10,770
| 1973
| Oct 05, 2010
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really liked it
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Before it was a '90s slasher movie, I Know What You Did Last Summer was actually a novel by Lois Duncan and believe it or not, a very good one.
Before it was a '90s slasher movie, I Know What You Did Last Summer was actually a novel by Lois Duncan and believe it or not, a very good one. Published in 1973 and revised by the author in 2010, I had superficial issues with her decision to rebrand everything from fashion to geopolitics to telephones for the Young Adult reader of today--a decision that felt financial as opposed to creative--but where it matters, the book generates a terrific amount of suspense and delivers a satisfying payoff without throwing graphic violence, sex or much foul language at the reader. In this sense, it's more like an Alfred Hitchcock thriller with teens than slasher fare. Set in the vicinity of Silver Spring, Maryland with its mountain roads, the story begins with high school graduate Julie James getting summer off to a promising start when an acceptance letter to Smith College, the alma mater of her widowed mother, arrives in the mail. Mrs. James has sensed a change in her redheaded cheerleader daughter over the last year, studying harder but having less fun, breaking up with a boy named Ray Bronson, who left town about a year ago and headed to California. Julie almost ignores a second letter she's received, one with no return address on the envelope. The message in big block printing ominously reads I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. We next meet Barry Cox, freshman at the local college and a football hero in his high school days whose winning ways still get the attention of the girls. For this reason and others, Barry has cooled to his girlfriend of the past year, Helen Rivers, a high school dropout whose ambition and golden looks have secured her a lucrative job with Channel Five as a station rep and on-air personality. Helen's success seems to be the only reason Barry hasn't broken up with her and when she telephones with something important to talk with him about, he has no choice but go to her apartment complex. Barry finds Julie there as well, who shares the threatening letter with the couple. Making reference to a "pact" they made last summer, Barry blames the letter on Ray, who Helen reveals is back in town. Neither of the women believe Julie's ex would do something like this. The football hero offers that Julie might be getting teased about something else she did last summer. Helen is not comforted by this. Julie returns home to prepare for a date when she encounters Ray waiting for her. While he's missed Julie, she explains that she needs to move on, haunted by a tragic accident in which the car that Barry was driving with Helen in the front passenger seat and Julie & Ray in back struck a twelve-year old boy on a bicycle named Daniel Gregg. Driving too fast while under the influence of a few beers and a little pot, Barry feared prosecution and fled the accident scene that night. Julie's vocal plea that they go back to help the boy was opposed by Helen, who then as well as now is in love with Barry and wants to protect him. Casting the deciding vote to stay silent was Ray, who at that time lacked the nerve to stand up to Barry and instead made an anonymous call to 911. Their victim died on the way to the hospital. Julie shares her letter with her ex, dreading that someone else knows their secret. Ray believes they should confess to the police, not breaking the pact, but dissolving it by convincing Barry and Helen to agree with them. While Julie makes a fresh start with an Iraq war veteran she's dating named Bud, Helen continues to feel distance from Barry. Growing up in a low income household and sharing a bedroom with her dumpy and vindictive older sister Elsa, Helen's self-made success and minor celebrity has only made her feel more ostracized by her family and peers. She makes a friend with a handsome new neighbor named Collie but comes close to falling apart when Barry is lured away from his frat house by a telephone call and shot. His ability to walk again in doubt, Barry claims that the phone call came from Helen, who denies this. By now, both Helen and Ray have received ominous messages as well. Taking the initiative, Julie and Ray go up up to Mountain Highway to visit the Greggs. They meet Daniel Gregg's sister Megan, who reveals that her mother blamed herself for Daniel's death and fell ill. She's convalescing in Las Lunas with her father. Julie is certain that none of the Greggs could be responsible for the threats, while Ray notices a fresh coat of paint on the house and men's shirts drying on the clothesline. The mystery thickens when Ray sneaks into the hospital to confront Barry about his fatal phone call. He conceals the truth, which is that a caller threatened to blackmail him with photos of the accident and lured Barry into a meeting, where he was shot. Meanwhile, Mrs. James has a very bad feeling about all of this. Not that the feelings were foolproof and could be taken as gospel. Last summer, for instance, there had been a time when she could have sworn that she felt something terrible approaching. It was during a period in which Julie was seeing a great deal of Ray, and for a while Mrs. James had wondered if that was it, if the young people's feelings for each other were growing too strong and would create a problem. Fond as she was of Ray, she was aware of his immaturity, and she wanted another year of high school for Julie and then hopefully college. The idea of an unwed pregnancy or a very young marriage was not easy for her to accept. In the 2010 revision of I Know What You Did Last Summer, Lois Duncan made a number of superficial changes to her 1973 text. A few are hard to spot, like a blue pantsuit changing to blue pants and a blouse. Vietnam and an antiwar demonstration are changed to Iraq and an indiscriminate campus demonstration. A noticeable change is the juggling act Duncan has to do with mobile phones, which could have solved her mystery in half an hour if characters were easily able to contact each other or authorities in an emergency. In the inferior revised edition, all manner of dead batteries, dropped signals or landlines still strangely in use are offered to keep the plot going. There are reasons why a novel written in the 1970s or '80s should not be revised for the Information Age, even a novel that on the surface seems to be little more than a Young Adult thriller. The world has changed so much in forty years that relabeling is not sufficient to pass Duncan's story off as one that could take place today. The catalyst of I Know What You Did Last Summer is a boy on a bicycle being struck by a hit and run driver at ten o'clock at night, plausible and effective in 1973, but today, when all bicycles have reflectors and all children are cocooned in safety gear, not to mention guarded by anxious parents who rarely let their children out of sight, this scenario feels like a stretch. This sort of reboot feels more like a financial gambit than one made to improve quality of the book and I Know What You Did Last Summer is compelling enough not to need it. Duncan does a wonderfully subtle job of generating tension with characters who've committed an irrevocable crime and are wrapped so tight with guilt that the slightest tug might force them to snap. This is a thriller where I was able to feel empathy not only with the protagonists, but their tormentor, who unlike the boogeyman in the derivative 1997 slasher film and its sequels, inflicts psychic violence as opposed to mostly physical. The reveal in his identity, also altered for the movies, is novel as well. Duncan, who allows her teenagers some illegal substances but lets the reader imagine how much sex they've experimented with, should be respected for writing a terrifying book without racking up dead bodies. More sinister and imaginative is how Duncan keeps the teenagers alive. In addition to the guilt that's been building over a year, each character is dragged into their own level of hell. A sports hero (view spoiler)[may not walk again (hide spoiler)], a beauty queen has to (view spoiler)[climb through broken glass (hide spoiler)], a college student (view spoiler)[feels her future being choked out of her (hide spoiler)] and the boy who loves has to watch. It's a restrained, evocative thriller and one I more often that not found myself able to relate to. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 04, 2016
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Sep 04, 2016
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Jul 09, 2016
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Paperback
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| 0670026336
| 9780670026333
| 3.96
| 54,368
| Oct 04, 2016
| Oct 04, 2016
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it was amazing
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**spoiler alert** The Trespasser is the sixth novel by Tana French and the sixth in her vivid, beguiling and compulsively thrilling "Dublin Murder
**spoiler alert** The Trespasser is the sixth novel by Tana French and the sixth in her vivid, beguiling and compulsively thrilling "Dublin Murder Squad" series, which follows a contemporary Irish homicide investigation from the point of view a detective who played a supporting role in the previous book. Published in October 2016, this is the first novel whose publication date I've anticipated, reserving the first hold at my favorite library and racing over to pick it up like a zombie-eyed Black Friday shopper craving a markdown on an HDTV. No living author has a hold on me like French and her new novel--psychologically rich, sociopolitically charged and structurally brilliant--proves why. The story is told by Antoinette Conway, a thirty-two year old rising star promoted from Missing Persons into the elite Murder Squad operating out of Dublin Castle. A tenacious detective with solid interviewing skills--which her wholesome thirty-three year old partner Stephen Moran observed when she assisted him in locking down a girls' boarding school and interrogating eight separate teenagers in The Secret Place--Conway is prepared to resign. Her gaffer Superintendent O'Kelly slots the single Conway & Moran the thankless night shift cleaning up alco murders, while anonymous harassment from a person or persons on the squad keeps Conway watching her back. Handed a domestic violence case by O'Kelly at the end of their shift, Conway & Moran are dispatched to the scruffy neighborhood of Viking Gardens, where an anonymous call to Stoneybatter station alerted Garda to the body of twenty-six year old Aislinn Murray, dead from a skull fracture on the floor of her apartment. Moran's hopes that a serial killer might be on the loose are dashed by evidence Aislinn was preparing a romantic dinner at the time of her death; text messages indicate her date was Rory Fallon. Conway has seen Aislinn before but is unable to place where. She's also puzzled by their gaffer's order that she and Moran bring in vainglorious Detective Don Breslin, "someone who's good with witnesses" as backup. Domestics are mostly slam-dunks; the question isn't whether you can arrest your guy, or girl; it's whether you can build a case that'll hold up in court. A lot of people love that--it pretties up your solve rate, looks good to the brass--but not me: it means domestics get you fuck-all respect from the squad, where I could do with it, because everyone knows the solve came easy. Which is also another reason they piss me off: they've got a whole special level of idiotic all to themselves. You take out your wife or your husband or your Shag of the Day, what the fuck do you think is gonna happen? We're gonna be standing there with our mouths open, scratching our heads at the mind-blowing mystery of it all, Duh, I dunno, musta been the Mafia? Surprise: we're gonna go straight for you, the evidence is gonna pile up way over your head, and you're gonna wind up with a life sentence. If you want to kill someone, have enough respect for my time to make it someone, anyone, other than the most gobsmackingly obvious person in the world. Conway & Moran keep Breslin in the dark long enough to have a crack at their first witness, Aislinn's best friend Lucy Riordian. Assuming the D's are there about Aislinn, Lucy maintains that while her friend hadn't known Rory long and was taking things slow with the bookstore owner, everything was fine between them. Aislinn's da vanished when she was a child and her mother, who did not take the separation well, recently passed away, liberating Aislinn to give her life a makeover. Lucy reveals that Aislinn had a habit of breaking dates, hinting that she might have had a fella before Rory, but claims she never confided who this man, if he existed, was. While Conway has no doubt that Rory Fallon is their man, Moran presents other theories. Aislinn Murray, who Conway refers to as "dead Barbie," seemed to be putting her life together out of magazines. Her story remains a mystery, and while the D's agree that Lucy was holding something back, Conway doubts that this other fella existed. It strikes Moran that the call came in to a cop shop--not 999, where the calls are recorded--and while civilians wouldn't have known that, gangsters would've. However, when Breslin joins Conway to interview the cloying Rory Fallon at the squad room, their suspect leaves nearly half an hour in his evening unaccounted for and little doubt that he killed Aislinn. Conway feels pressure from Breslin to book Rory Fallon. Considering her enemy or enemies on the squad, it occurs to Conway that someone wants this case closed quickly. She discovers that one of the Murder D's ran a criminal background check on Aislinn Murray months before her death. Moran conjectures that if Aislinn's fella was a gangster, he might have a cop on his payroll, like Breslin or his miserable partner Joe McCann. Conway comes upon the men whispering about taking care of the woman and putting things back to normal, which might have been about Conway, or about McCann's estranged wife. Conway becomes aware of a tall dark stranger lurking around her house. She begins to doubt herself. My instincts are good--not bragging, every D's are, specially every D who makes it as far as Murder--and I know how to use them. They've come through for me when all the solid detective work in the world would have run me into a brick wall. But this time they're being bugger-all use. Not that they're out of commission--every sensor is firing wildly, red lights flashing, beeping noises everywhere--but they just keep sweeping, can't pin anything down. Rory's keeping something back, but I can't tell whether it's the murder or not; Breslin's fucking with us, but I can't figure out why. I feel like I'm missing the bleeding obvious here, but the harder I concentrate, the more all the signals turn to noise. Something is scrambling them. The Trespasser has the quality control that's been a staple of Tana French's work from the beginning and with this mesmerizing new entry, she proves again how complete an author she is. French's prose ratchets technical detail into a larger story incorporating the culture, geography and weather of modern Ireland. Her dialogue crackles with passion and wit, exploring one of my favorite sub-genres: the workplace drama. I don't know why, but I love reading about people going to work. The political content of French's books--not as in public policy, but the art and science of influence at any level--is bar none. She writes superlative interrogation scenes. And for French, relationships, whether friends, family or co-worker, are essential. The murder stuff is coincidental. French has employed a female homicide detective as narrator before (in the undercover themed The Likeness) but by setting The Trespasser predominantly in the office and surrounding Antoinette Conway with co-workers the detective doesn't trust, this novel more than any other is about the challenges warrior women may face in the workplace, waging a campaign on two fronts: against the enemy they can see as well as the saboteurs they cannot. Conway's past is largely kept submerged--a likely development for an author publishing her sixth novel as opposed to her first--but her fury is righteous, her angst is unmistakable and the novel is unputdownable. For readers unaccustomed to the riches of Tana French who are ready to dip their necks under the yellow tape, her "series" does not need to be read in any order due to each novel being narrated by a different character, as well as her commitment to start and end one story with each book. It is not necessary to commit to multiple books or purchases to get through one story. Here goes my ranking of the series from most favorite to least favorite. Keep in mind this is like ranking the six James Bond movies starring Sean Connery from most favorite to least favorite--there are no losers. 1. Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad #3) 2. In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad #1) 3. The Trespasser (Dublin Murder Squad #6) 4. The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad #2) 5. The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad #5) 6. Broken Harbor (Dublin Murder Squad #4) ...more |
Notes are private!
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Oct 09, 2016
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Oct 16, 2016
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Jun 26, 2016
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Hardcover
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![The Executioners [a.k.a., Cape Fear]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1244221681l/6525539._SX50_.jpg)
| 4.08
| 12,331
| 1957
| 1958
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really liked it
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The Executioners is the 1957 thriller by John D. MacDonald, the prolific author of pulp mystery and science fiction; the scent of nearly sixty year
The Executioners is the 1957 thriller by John D. MacDonald, the prolific author of pulp mystery and science fiction; the scent of nearly sixty year old paper in the edition I purchased was one of the book's mainline pleasures for me. MacDonald is best known as author of the twenty-one Travis McGee mysteries--with titles like The Deep Blue Good-by, A Tan and Sandy Silence or The Lonely Silver Rain color coded for airport travelers--and this novel, which received not one but two classic film adaptations as Cape Fear, in 1962 and 1991. Returning to the source material didn't compare with the cinematic experience of this same story, but it works. Set on MacDonald's turf of Florida and around a lakeside village he calls "New Essex," Sam Bowden is a married man, a family man, the straight flyer in the law firm of Dorrity, Stetch and Bowden. He met his wife Carol at the University of Pennsylvania where they became friends. They married and Sam enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a lieutenant, serving the JAG Department. He returned home in 1945 and has three children with Carol--Nancy, fourteen; Jamie, eleven; and Bucky, six--and a dog named Marilyn. The Bowdens just purchased a house on ten acres outside of town and even own a twenty-six foot day cruiser, the Sweet Sioux III. Life is good. On a lake picnic with her family, Carol can sense something troubling her husband. Sam tells her about an encounter in the parking lot after work with a man named Max Cady, a staff sergeant who Sam served as key witness against in a court martial case in Melbourne during the war, a rape case. Sam came upon Cady in an alley assaulting a fourteen year old girl, landed a punch on the sergeant's chin and called the Shore Patrol. Cady, a seven year army veteran who'd seen two hundred days of combat and been pulled from action with a severe case of jungle nerves, was sentenced on Sam's testimony to life at hard labor. He remembered how the sergeant had looked in court. Like an animal. Sullen, vicious and dangerous. And physically powerful. Sam looked at him and knew how lucky the punch had been. Cady had looked across the court at Sam as though he would dearly enjoy killing him with his hands. Dark hair grew low on his forehead. Heavy mouth and jaw. Small brown eyes set in deep and simian sockets. Sam could tell what Cady was thinking. A nice clean non-combat lieutenant. A meddler in a pretty uniform who'd never heard a shot fired in anger. So the pretty lieutenant should have backed right out of the alley and gone on his way and left a real solider alone. Snatching the keys out of Sam's station wagon, Cady did not threaten Sam explicitly. Released after thirteen years, he shares the effort it took for him to find Sam's office and home address. He reveals that he's been thinking about the lieutenant for fourteen years. He offers Sam a cigar. Then he tells the attorney to give his best to the wife and kids. Sam's summary is that Cady is not sane. But that isn't the scary part. Carol tells her husband that last week while the kids were at school, Marilyn was barking at something. She spotted a man sitting on the wall of their property, about a hundred yard away, smoking a cigar. Assuming he was a salesman, Carol still had a case of the creeps. Sam reports the encounter to police captain Mark Dutton, who later recounts pulling Cady out of a bar and having him checked out. There were no arrest warrants in the hill town in West Virginia he comes from. A search of Cady's car and room didn't turn up a gun or anything out of line, so Dutton let him go. Sam's next move is to hire a private investigator named Sievers who comes recommended by Sam's firm. Sievers reports to Sam that he tailed Cady, but their target made him, and is so wily that he'll likely slip anyone he could hire to have Cady followed. Sievers recommends Sam drop the case. Alarmed that Cady intends to harm him and his family, Sam is advised there are ways to "change" Cady's mind. Refusing to take the law into his own hands, Sam rejects Sievers' suggestion. Then the family dog, Marilyn, is brutally poisoned and dies in front of the children. Fearing for the safety of her family, Carol confronts her husband about not doing more to protect them. Sam convinces her that he's thought this through and is doing all he can. He puts the kids on a tight summer schedule and even discusses the Cady situation with the fifteen-year-old boy that Nancy is dating. When Cady shows up at the marina where Sam and Nancy are working on the boat, Sam is baited into throwing a punch at him. Contacting Sievers, Sam inquires about changing Cady's mind. "Can you do what you said?" "It can be done for three hundred bucks, Bowden. I won't dig up the talent myself. I've got a friend. He's got the right contacts. He'll put three of them on him. I know the place, too. Out in back of 211 Jaekel Street. There's a shed and a fence near where he parks the car. They can wait in the angle of the shed and the fence." "What ... will they do?" "What the hell do you think? They'll beat the hell out of him. With a couple of pieces of pipe and a bicycle chain, they'll do a professional job. A hospital job." His eyes changed, became remote. "I took a professional beating once. Oh, I was a hard boy. I believed that short of killing me they couldn't hurt me. I was going to bounce right back like Mike Hammer. But it doesn't work that way, Mr. Bowden. It marks you through and through. It's the pain, I guess. And the way they won't stop. The way you hear yourself begging and they still won't stop. The guts and pride run right out of you. I wasn't worth a damn for two long years. I was perfectly healthy, but I had the jumps. I had them bad. I wasn't ready to have anybody start hurting me like that again. Then I started to come back. It happened eighteen years ago and even today I'm not sure I got all the way back to where I was. And I'm tougher than most. There isn't one man out of fifty--and understand, I've seen those figures work--who is ever worth a damn after a thorough professional beating. They have rabbit blood for the rest of their lives. You're doing the right thing." According to MacDonald, The Executioners was the result of a $50 bet he made with his friend, author MacKinlay Kantor, that hardly resting on his laurels, MacDonald could write a novel in thirty days, have it serialized in magazines, published as a book club selection and adapted into a movie. Retitled Cape Fear in 1962 for its paperback issue the same year the film--starring Robert Mitchum as Cady, Gregory Peck as Sam and Polly Bergan as "Betty Bowden"--was released, the novel was brutally but vividly remade under the direction of Martin Scorsese in 1991. Starring Robert DeNiro as Cady, Nick Nolte as Sam and Jessica Lange as "Leigh Bowden," with Mitchum and Peck in cameo roles, this is a glorious thriller I must've studied a dozen times growing up. The experience of reading the book doesn't live up to the emotionally wrenching experience of the Scorsese picture, in which Cady is portrayed as a vengeful but cunning Pentecostal, straight out of a southern Gothic and whose physical and psychological brutality is depicted throughout. Then again, not many novels can live up to a Scorsese picture that's hitting on all cylinders. MacDonald's story unfolds passively for the most part, with Sam or Carol relating a number of their encounters with Cady after the fact, and the dilemma of what to do about him hanging over the story more like a mysterious shadow than a physical threat. While the Scorsese picture explored the creepy relationship between the Bowdens' daughter and Cady in ways the book doesn't, the aspect of the novel that grew on me was Sam and Carol. MacDonald does an excellent job depicting a 1950s woman, educated and refined on the surface but a creature of instinct and untapped power underneath. The give-and-take between the couple is playful and endearing. While the prowler business with Cady proves anti-climactic, I liked the characters and was invested in how their troubles would be sorted out. The Executioners ends up a compelling and wonderfully drawn mystery, enough to make me interested in what MacDonald published on a longer schedule. ...more |
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1
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Aug 14, 2016
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Aug 17, 2016
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Jun 25, 2016
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| 0670910481
| 9780670910489
| unknown
| 3.62
| 22,223
| Apr 05, 1954
| unknown
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liked it
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There are moments of great luxury in the life of a secret agent. There are assignments on which he is required to act the part of a very rich man;
There are moments of great luxury in the life of a secret agent. There are assignments on which he is required to act the part of a very rich man; occasions when he takes refuge in good living to efface the memory of danger and the shadow of death; and times when, as was now the case, he is a guest in the territory of an allied Secret Service. From the moment the BOAC Stratocruiser taxied up to the International Air Terminal at Idlewild, James Bond was treated like royalty. So begins Live and Let Die, the second novel by Ian Fleming. Published in 1954, this continues the exploits of British Secret Service agent James Bond following his literary debut the previous year with Casino Royale. That novel was a terse, exciting gambling tale, with racist and sexist epithets kept in the deck for the most part. That prejudices existed at all seemed appropriate for the story of a man who kills enemies of the state for a living. Agent 007 reminds me of a salty sailor or crusty marine at a bar who can be fascinating as long as you keep him talking about skin diving, but once the conversation turns to current events, he gets flagrant in a hurry. A lot like this novel. In the sequel, Bond is coming to the Americas. He passes through customs with a British diplomatic passport and is greeted by the Justice Department, who drive him into Manhattan, where he's been booked in to the St. Regis Hotel. Waiting for Bond is his friend Felix Leiter, the CIA-FBI liaison who 007 worked with on the Casino Royale job. Bond recalls how the head of his department, M, met with him in London to put him on his new case. Someone is spreading gold coins--believed to be the long lost Jamaican treasure of 17th century pirate Bloody Morgan--throughout the States. One of the coins was found in the possession of a FBI double agent working for Moscow. Determining that the treasure is being used to finance a Communist spy ring in the U.S., British Secret Service believes that the diesel yacht Secatur is smuggling the booty from an island on the north coast of Jamaica to St. Petersburg, Florida. The owner of the yacht and the island is a Harlem gangster known as "Mr. Big," hailed by M as "the most powerful negro criminal in the world." Mr. Big is head of the Black Widow Voodoo cult and a member of SMERSH, the Soviet spy smashing organization who tortured 007 and blackmailed his girlfriend Vesper Lynd in the Casino Royale job. In addition to SMERSH, Bond has a rather prejudiced view of foreigners. "I don't think I've ever heard of a great negro criminal before," said Bond. "Chinamen, of course, the men behind the opium trade. There've been some big time Japs, mostly in pearls and drugs. Plenty of negroes mixed up in diamonds and gold in Africa, but always in a small way. They don't seem to take to big business. Pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought except when they're drunk too much." Bond bones up on his adversary, born Buonaparte Ignace Gallia (BIG) in Haiti and initiated into voodoo as a child. The Big Man was a truck driver in Port au Prince and emigrating to the U.S., worked as a stickup man for the Legs Diamond gang before moving in on the Harlem underworld. Mr. Big's fluency in French brought him to the attention of the Office of Strategic Services, which used him to combat Vichy collaborators in Marseilles. Mr. Big disappeared for five years after the war, finally popping up in Harlem in 1950 to take over three nightclubs and a chain of brothels. He's rumored to be the zombie of voodoo boogeyman Baron Samedi and feared far and wide. Among parcels of American men's fashions and books on voodoo that arrive for 007, a time bomb is also sent to him as a warning. Bond, Leiter and an NYPD captain named Dexter go on a field trip to Harlem. Leiter confides that he likes the negroes and they seem to know it somehow, perhaps due to some pieces on Dixieland jazz he wrote for the Amsterdam News. After visits to both Sugar Ray's and the Savoy Ballroom for some local history, Bond and Leiter drop in on a nightclub called the Boneyard where Mr. Big is rumored to be appearing. Not surprisingly, Bond and Leiter are ambushed and 007 is taken to meet the Big Man. Rather than torture Bond for information he already knows, Mr. Big summons Solitaire, a French colonial born in Haiti whose telepathic cabaret act vaulted her from Port au Prince to the employ of the Big Man. She lies to the boss, telling him that 007 is telling the truth. Bond gets let off with a snapped left pinky finger but exacts revenge by killing three of Mr. Big's men (Tee-Hee Johnson, Sam Miami and McThing) on his exit from the gangster's lair. Returning to his hotel, he's phoned by Solitaire, aka Simone Latrelle, who asks 007 to help her escape. Booking passage on the Silver Phantom, Bond and Solitaire sneak out of New York. Some friskiness ensues. Solitaire called for him. The room smelled of Balmain's "Vent Vert". She was leaning on her elbow and looking down at him from the upper berth. The bedclothes were pulled up around her shoulder. Bond guessed that she was naked. Her black hair fell away from her head in a dark cascade. With only the reading-lamp on behind her, her face was in shadow. Bond climbed up the little aluminum ladder and leant towards her. She reached towards him and suddenly the bedclothes fell away from her shoulders. "Damn you," said Bond. "You ..." She put her hand over his mouth. "Allumeuse is the word for it," she said. "It is fun for me to be able to tease such a strong silent man. You burn with such an angry flame. It is the only game I have to play with you and I shan't be able to play it for long. How many days until your hand is well again?" Bond bit hard into the soft hand over his mouth. She gave a little scream. "Not many," said Bond. "And then one day when you're playing your little game you'll suddenly find yourself pinned down like a butterfly." She put her arms round him and they kissed, long and passionately. Finally she sank back among the pillows. "Hurry up and get well," she said. "I'm tired of my game already." Aware that Mr. Big has men aboard the train, Bond and Solitaire slip off in Jacksonville and meet up with Felix Leiter in St. Petersburg. Bond and Leiter put in an appearance at Ourobouros, Inc., the exotic fish operation run by Mr. Big's henchman, The Robber, as a front for the treasure smuggling operation. Despite telling him she did not want to be let alone, Solitaire is abducted from the safehouse 007 left her at. When Leiter goes to snoop around The Robber's warehouse, he ends up maimed by a shark. Bond avenges his friend, then heads to Jamaica, where he trains for a deadly SCUBA mission to Mr. Big's island in Shark Bay. Live and Let Die is a delight as long as it stays off certain subjects, which it does about seventy-five percent of the time. Fleming provides a fantastic amount of escapism: a license for fine hotels, fancy clothes, a .25 Beretta, martinis, fast cars, dangerous women and bad guys to strangle the truth out of. The fanciful title alone is one of my favorites of any suspense yarn. The novel contains little in the way of karate fights or gun battles that power the film series and a lot of the spy action even takes place off the page, like Solitaire's escape and recapture. Instead, Fleming devotes considerable energy to the Jamaica chapters and to describing ... SCUBA diving and ocean life. And I liked that. At least twenty-five percent of the novel is mean. Irredeemably mean. Bond doesn't think much of American fashion, cars, food or alcohol, and in a contrast to Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale, has no use for Solitaire other than as a door prize, but Fleming is just getting warmed up. Bond and Leiter can't stop disparaging the elderly community in South Florida, hung up on their mortality, perhaps. But when it comes to race, the urbane gents prove themselves plain provincial. Bond doesn't hate the people of Harlem as a cop might, but regards them as feeble minded children at best, animals at worst. This is all very Don Draperesque and there's no Peggy Olson to put these caveman views in check. Aside from some pathos on the subject of life and death, neither Bond or Leiter learn anything in Live and Let Die. Except for (view spoiler)[ Leiter losing an arm, a leg and some of his face in a shark attack (hide spoiler)], these are the same characters at the end of the book that they were at the beginning. And they're lousy field agents. These guys know how to order their eggs, yet stroll into Harlem asking who knows Mr. Big. 007 won't listen to Solitaire, a psychic, when she warns him the safehouse is anything but. Without the help of a Jamaican mariner or American porter, 007 would have died very quickly. None of this seems to inform his world view. It's a thrilling tale, particularly the way Fleming moves 007 around the world, but today, frequently reads like a narrow-minded one. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Feb 26, 2017
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Feb 28, 2017
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Jan 14, 2016
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| 0670026328
| 9780670026326
| 3.85
| 55,009
| Sep 02, 2014
| Sep 02, 2014
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really liked it
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The fifth novel by Tana French and #5 in a series narrated by a detective of or working with the Murder Squad in Dublin has the author racking the
The fifth novel by Tana French and #5 in a series narrated by a detective of or working with the Murder Squad in Dublin has the author racking the focus and interfering with the quality control that have made her series such a success. Opening one of French's novels is an act of treasure hunting, of thrills and wonder, like finding an old wooden chest in an attic and unlocking it to discover intimacy, secrecy, history, betrayal and redemption hidden inside. French's themes are back in black this time and a couple of artifacts await, but adjustments in her narration and ambiguity about who the protagonist was this time around left me somewhat wanting. In this follow-up to In the Woods, The Likeness, Faithful Place and Broken Harbor, French continues a beguiling pattern of retrieving a supporting character from previous novels and casting them as the narrator of the sequel. Published in 2014, The Secret Place focuses on Detective Stephen Moran, "first in my family to go for a Learning Cert instead of an apprenticeship." Moran has been promoted with rapid succession and at the age of thirty-two, is working on the Cold Cases squad in Dublin. Ambition is one of Moran's strengths, as well as his greatest potential weakness, and the lad has his laser sights set on Murder. Opportunity knocks when Holly Mackey, the sixteen-year-old daughter of undercover detective Frank Mackey, pays Moran a visit. Six years ago, with events depicted in Faithful Place (my favorite French novel so far, by a nose), Moran was plucked out of the floater pool by the devious Mackey to update him on Murder's investigation into the death of Mackey's childhood girlfriend. In return, Moran took the collar (usurping the lead Murder detective) and received a recommendation for promotion by Mackey. The case required Moran to prep Holly as a witness for trial. Holly now brings Moran fresh evidence in the murder of sixteen year old Chris Harper, student at a boys' boarding school adjacent to St. Kilda's, the girls' school where Holly attends classes and boards during the school term. One year ago, Harper was found by nuns on the grounds of St. Kilda's with his skull bashed in. One of the detectives on the case, Antoinette Conway, questioned Holly and the rest of the students at St. Kilda's; no one saw anything, no one heard anything and no explanation for Chris Harper being on the girls' campus was ever determined. Inside a clear plastic envelope is a plain white card and a thumbtack that Holly removed from a noticeboard outside the art room. Known as the Secret Place, the board allows the students of St. Kilda's to post anonymous notes as long as names are kept off. The card is a photo of Chris Harper with words cut out of a book. The note reads I know who killed him. A cop's kid to the bone, Holly tells Moran that she discovered the card this morning, cut it off the board with a balsa knife and was careful not to leave her prints on it. Holly has told no one. Holly wishes to keep it that way. Seeing his big ticket to Murder, Moran goes for a talk with Detective Conway. Rough, my mam would have called Conway. That Antoinette one, and a sideways look with her chin tucked down: a bit rough. Not meaning her personality, or not just; meaning where she came from, and what. The accent told you, and the stare. Dublin, inner city; just a quick walk from where I grew up, maybe, but miles away all the same. Tower blocks. IRA-wannabe graffiti and puddles of piss. Junkies. People who've never passed an exam in their lives, but had every twist and turn of dole maths down pat. People who wouldn't have approved of Conway's career choice. Quick-tempered when it comes to the boys club and their banter, Conway has been ostracized by the men of the Murder Squad. She has no steady partner and no intention of taking on Moran as one. He's insistent. "You said yourself you got nowhere with Holly Mackey and her mates. But she likes me enough, or trusts me enough, that she brought me this. And if she'll talk to me, she'll get her mates talking to me." Hearing something in his accent or maybe what he has to say, Conway agrees to let Moran tag along as she returns to St. Kilda's to ask some questions. The novel forks away from Moran & Conway to move back in time to the months and weeks leading up to Chris Harper's murder. Holly Mackey is thick as thieves with her three best friends and roommates, the odd crowd. Julia Harte is the smart arse and boss of their outfit. Selena Wynne is the dreamer, an emo beauty. Rebecca O'Mara is headstrong with a strong case of arrested development. Led into battle by Julia, the girls have made enemies of St. Kilda's queen bees, the cool crowd, a group of robots they refer to as the Daleks: Joanne Hefferman, Gemma Harding, Orla Burgess and Alison Muldoon. On the drive to St. Kilda's, Conway brings Moran up to speed on her interviews. Joanne snitched that prior to his murder, Chris had been going out with Selena. He was found with a condom in his pocket and the likely theory is that he sneaked onto the girls' campus to score with someone. His head was split nearly in two by someone using a long handled instrument with a sharp blade. Selena and her mates denied she was with Chris and Joanne offered no evidence. No calls or texts were recovered linking Chris to a girlfriend. His mates, if they knew anything, weren't helpful. "Sixteen year old boys," Conway remarks, "you'd get more sense going down to the zoo and interviewing the chimp cage." The detectives receive token assistance from the school's headmistress, Miss Eileen McKenna, whose priority is to protect the reputation St. Kilda's and keep parents from spending tuition money at another school. Conway & Moran determine that eight students had access to the art room and could've placed the note on the Secret Place: Julia, Selena, Holly & Becca or Joanne, Gemma, Orla & Alison. Having botched the initial interviews when her then partner insisted they be held in McKenna's office, Conway picks the art room and agrees to let Moran do the talking, casting him as Good Cop, with Conway's Bad Cop poised to take over if she thinks he's making a bollix of her case. In the wake of Chris' murder, Holly warns her mates what to expect under questioning. "This isn't going to be like Houlihan going, 'Ooh dear, I smell tobacco, have you girls been smoking cigarettes?' and if you look innocent enough she believes you. These are detectives. If they get one clue that you know anything about anything, they're like pit bulls. Like, eight hours in an interview room with them interrogating you and your parents going apeshit, does that sound like fun? That's what'll happen if you even pause before you answer a question." One of the reasons to keep returning to Tana French are her interrogation scenes, which are in a league of their own. I hope I'm never interrogated or have to interrogate anyone, but am fascinated by the similarities between a gifted interrogator and a performing artist; they both dress a set, put on a costume and play a character, varied from play to play, with the artistic license to say anything if it might compel someone to offer up information. French knows that. Her dialogue is razor sharp and she has the confidence to let these scenes play out without rushing forward from one plot point to the next. The Secret Place crosses the Murder Squad up with their fiercest adversaries yet: eight teenage girls. "Maybe she didn't lie to me," Conway tells Moran, "But girls that age, they're liars. All of them." In many ways, this novel is one intense interrogation, staged on the campus of St. Kilda's over a twelve hour period as the truth of the girls' relationships with each other and with Chris Harper is revealed. Another thing French does artfully well in this novel is explore the nature of a developing partnership, as two detectives, a woman and a man, are pitched together and over the course of the day, learn each others games and determine whether or not they can trust each other. Still giving orders, but her tone had changed. I'd passed the test, or we had: the click was there. Your dream partner grows in the back of your mind, secret, like your dream girl. Mine grew up with violin lessons, floor-to-high-ceiling books, red setters, a confidence he took for granted and a dry sense of humor no one but me would get. Mine was everything that wasn't Conway, and I would've bet hers was everything that wasn't me. But the click was there. Maybe, just for a few days, we could be good enough for each other. What stops this novel from total satisfaction is French's decision to use Moran as a first person narrator of the even numbered chapters and to switch to a third person narrator for odd numbered chapters, which foreshadow the murder. This is something new for French and not only is it a major departure, it's blue balls. Chapter after chapter conclude in anti-climax, with French pulling the reader away from the investigation to hang out with her suspects, like mixing Law & Order: Special Victims Unit with Law & Order: Criminal Intent. French is a skilled enough to gradually invest me in her suspects (even with"OhmyGod" or "Whatever" being fired like tennis balls), but at the moment of climax, she returns to the cops. What French does excel at once more is crafting an intoxicating murder mystery that's more than the sum of weapons or suspects or motives; the story resonated with me emotionally. French returns to a theme she first explored with In the Woods: the elusive nature of friendships. She remembers teenagers and she knows adults. And she's aware not to fix what ain't broke, bringing back the character of (view spoiler)[Frank Mackey (hide spoiler)] to threaten the detectives; the move is similar to introducing a tiger into a gladiatorial pit fight and poses a physical threat to Conway & Moran that teenage girls don't quite muster. Like much of French's work, it's a thrill, but one that doesn't wear off after the murderer is revealed and the plot is over. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Dec 20, 2015
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Dec 26, 2015
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Dec 04, 2015
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Hardcover
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| 0670023655
| 9780670023653
| 3.94
| 67,938
| Jul 02, 2012
| 2012
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it was amazing
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The fourth novel by Tana French and #4 in a series narrated by a detective of or working with the Murder Squad in Dublin would've been a convenient
The fourth novel by Tana French and #4 in a series narrated by a detective of or working with the Murder Squad in Dublin would've been a convenient spot for the bestselling author to go on auto-pilot and take a coffee break. She's earned it, writing three phenomenal novels in steady succession. Published in 2012, there are major challenges with this one, not only to spin another intoxicating murder mystery, but do so with main characters who seem to be running for Prick of the Year honors. In spite of this, French had me wrapped around her pinkie finger and wide awake until I reached the end of her latest novel. In this follow-up to In the Woods, The Likeness and Faithful Place, French continues her beguiling pattern of retrieving a supporting character from her previous novel and casting them as the narrator of the sequel. Broken Harbor centers on Detective Mick Kennedy, alias "Scorcher," a Murder detective considered an also-ran on a squad he knows he should be top dog in. Readers familiar with the previous entry know that Scorcher was usurped on a cold case by one of his own floaters after he locked in on the wrong suspect. Familiarity with French's previous books is optional and not a factor to enjoying this one, which takes off like a rocket. Scorcher is called back into the limelight when a high profile case lands in the squad room and Superintendent O'Kelly gives him the honors: a husband, wife and two kids have been slain in their home. The wife is in the hospital and might not make it, the rest of her family are dead. The victims were discovered by the wife's sister in a village called Brianstown, the sort of housing development that sprang up overnight in Ireland during the housing boom. Scorcher knows the place by its old name, Broken Harbor, when it was nothing but sand dunes, a pub, a few scattered houses and lots for caravans, like those Scorcher's family used to rent for summer retreats there. Also on the case is Richie Curran, Scorcher's rookie partner who's been with the squad for two weeks and hasn't learned how to dress himself properly, favoring hoodies that make him look more like a mugger than a Murder detective. Scorcher vouches for the kid with his superior, taking pride in passing his knowledge on to the youngster. On the hour-long drive to the home of Patrick and Jennifer Spain, Scorcher's radar is already pinging on why Fiona Rafferty dropped work to drive to her sister's house on the basis of one missed phone call. Richie proposes the sister might live next door. "Then why drive? If she's too far away to walk, then she's far enough away that her going over there is odd. And here's Rule Number Two: when someone's behavior is odd, that's a little present just for you, and you don't let go of it till you've got it unwrapped. This isn't Motor Vehicles, Richie. In this gig, you don't get to say, 'Ah, sure, it's probably not important, she was just in a funny mood that day, let's forget it.' Ever." The detectives notice something eerie about Brianstown before they even find the Spains' home. Most of the houses look alike and not many of them have vehicles in the driveway. The grass needs cutting. Some of the homes are simply walls and scaffolding, with no heavy equipment or builders to be seen. There aren't any people to be seen either. The detectives are only able to find the crime scene when Scorcher hears the screams of Fiona Rafferty, who's in the driveway with the two uniformed officers who found the bodies and called the Murder Squad. Scorcher takes Richie inside the house for a preliminary walk-through, curious to see how the rookie will respond to a homicide scene as much as for the opportunity to study that scene by themselves. At first glance, the house appears in perfect order. The Spains had an alarm system. Then Scorcher notices the holes in the walls. One of the holes has been partially covered up by furniture, an indication that whatever was going on here happened before last night. Staring at the holes, Kennedy gets a familiar feeling. That was when I felt it: that needle-like vibration, starting in my temples and moving down the bones into my eardrums. Some detectives feel it in the backs of their necks, some get it in the backs of their necks, some get it in the hair of their arms--I know one poor sap who gets it in the bladder, which can be inconvenient--but all the good ones feel it somewhere. It gets me in the skull bones. Call it what you want--social deviance, psychological disturbance, the animal within, evil if you believe in that: it's the thing we spend our lives chasing. All the training in the world won't give you that warning when it comes close. You get it or you don't. Moving on from Pat's corpse, the detectives head upstairs, where Emma and Jack Spain appear to be been smothered in their beds. Richie is the one who observes the five baby-monitors the Spains have installed around the house. Interviewing Fiona, they learn that she grew up in Monkstown with Pat and Jennifer, who've all known each other since they were kids. Pat worked as a recruiter for financial services until the recession made him redundant, while Jennifer had been afforded to quit her job in PR. There were no problems between the couple, who seemed to have it all. Scorcher finds a different story in their bank statements. Money was getting scarce in the household. Detective Kennedy is a firm believer in simplicity, in taking the explanation with the least number of extras tacked on, but the deeper he gets into the case, the more chaotic it becomes. Along with the holes in the walls, an animal trap is discovered in the attic. Someone erased the browser history from the Spains' PC, but when recovered by Computer Crime, it reveals Pat was seeking frantic help for an animal he was convinced was loose in the attic, and later, in the walls. Jennifer Spain pulls through her injuries, but has no memory of the attack and is resolute to the detectives that nothing out of of the ordinary was occurring prior to the crimes. Scorcher knows she's lying. While Detective Kennedy develops a good rapport with Richie Curran -- who demonstrates a knack for coaxing witnesses and suspects into opening up -- he keeps his personal life personal. This becomes vital when Scorcher's emotionally damaged younger sister Dina shows up at his apartment, pressing Mick to take time off and spend it with her. Dina has been a high-wire act in need of monitoring most of her life, ever since their mother wandered into the surf of Broken Harbor on one of their family trips and drowned herself. Scorcher worries how Dina will react when she learns of his case in Broken Harbor, though it becomes clear to Dina and Richie that Scorcher is the one who needs help. Broken Harbor was not a novel I fell in love with on first blush and much of that had to do with the main character. "Scorcher" is the sort of macho prick that can be found at any 24-Hour Fitness. He has sharp instincts and is a professional when it comes to managing a homicide investigation. He isn't good with people. He admits to the reader that his job would've been easier if Jennifer Spain had not recovered from her injuries; interviewing her in the hospital makes Scorcher visibly uncomfortable. His chilly aloofness is warmed by the inclusion of a rookie partner, who is all too sympathetic to the suffering around him. Scorcher patiently takes Richie, and the reader, through a murder case, beginning with what clothes to wear and why. This I loved. Post-mortems are brutal things. This is the part that always catches rookies off guard; they expect delicacy, tiny scalpels and precision cuts, and instead they get bread knives sawing fast careless gashes, skin ripped back like sticky paper. Cooper at work looks more like a butcher than a surgeon. He doesn't need to take care to minimize scarring, hold his breath making sure not to nick an artery. The flesh he works on isn't precious any more. When Cooper is done with a body, no one will ever need it, ever again. Not only is French's prose intimate, direct and terse, not only is her dialogue cut with wit and vigor, but her confidence is off the charts. She knows her territory so well that she eclipses merely crafting an elaborate whodunit. Her novels are filled with secrets about why human beings get along the way we do, where we've been and where we're headed. Broken Harbor is the first in the series set after the global financial crisis and while we see how those events can transform a housing estate to a ghost town that's picture perfect for a mystery, French also shows us how (view spoiler)[economic despair can drive people into spaces they never imagined they'd go (hide spoiler)]. With each new novel, Tana French has spun together a compelling mystery, an evocative setting and taut interrogation scenes -- Broken Harbor features a four-alarm between Scorcher and a family of nosy white trash neighbors he's had enough of having enough with -- but the reason I've pinned five stars on each of these books has more to do with how they compel me to think and feel something. French finds ways to make the impersonal feel personal: a friendship that proves too painful to endure, a desire to live someone's life, an obsession with the girl who got away. I didn't relate to Scorcher at first, but French isn't exploring a cop living a regimented existence. With Broken Harbor, she's exploring (view spoiler)[the wild, how our defenses can gradually break down and what might happen when that wild animal gets loose. It got loose in the Spain household, fatally took Scorcher's mother away and is loose in his sister. (hide spoiler)] I realized that if Scorcher could figure out one mystery, he could unlock the one that was more important. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Dec 11, 2015
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Dec 17, 2015
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Dec 04, 2015
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0670021873
| 9780670021871
| 3.98
| 81,853
| Jul 13, 2010
| Jul 13, 2010
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it was amazing
|
If you asked me today who my favorite authors are, with thousands waiting for me to discover, I'd reply, "John Steinbeck, Flannery O'Connor, Elmore
If you asked me today who my favorite authors are, with thousands waiting for me to discover, I'd reply, "John Steinbeck, Flannery O'Connor, Elmore Leonard, Stephen King and Tana French." The novel that puts French in that sentence is Faithful Place. The American born (in 1973, younger than me) resident of Dublin had already written two great murder mysteries narrated by detectives of the Dublin Murder Squad. With her third novel, published in 2010, French embraces the qualities of her previous work -- intimacy, secrecy, history, betrayal, redemption -- and surpasses even the high standard those books established. In this follow-up to In the Woods and The Likeness, French continues her unique pattern of retrieving a supporting character from her previous novel and casting them as the narrator of the sequel. Faithful Place centers on Detective Frank Mackey, a legend in the Undercover Squad who's outlived his efficiency as a field agent in Ireland and is running operations now. Frank is introduced on a Friday afternoon in December doing paperwork and preparing for his weekend with his nine-year-old daughter Holly, who lives with Frank's divorced wife Olivia in Dalkey. Frank grew up in a small Dublin neighborhood called Faithful Place. At age nineteen, he left without so much as a goodbye. He's kept in touch with his kid sister Jackie but stayed estranged from his parents and other siblings, refusing to expose his daughter to the mental asylum he ran out on. This changes when Jackie phones Frank in hysterics. Builders working in a vacant building up the road have discovered a suitcase that belonged to Rose Daly, Frank's first love. Rosie disappeared in 1985 on the night she'd planned to run away to London with Frank, who's always assumed his gal had a change of heart and left the country without him. French sets her mystery into motion with all the color, wit and mystique we'd expect of her streetwise characters. You won't find Faithful Place unless you know where to look. The Liberties grew on their own over centuries, without any help from urban planners, and the Place is a cramped cul-de-sac tucked away in the middle like a wrong turn in a maze. It's a ten-minute walk from Trinity College and the snazzy shopping on Grafton Street, but back in my day, we didn't go to Trinity and Trinity types didn't come up our way. The area wasn't dodgy, exactly--factory workers, bricklayers, bakers, dole bunnies, and the odd lucky bastard who worked in Guinness's and got health care and evening classes--just separate. The Liberties got their name, hundreds of years ago, because they went their own way and made their own rules. The rules in my road went like this: if your mate gets into a fight, you stick around to drag him off as soon as you see blood, so no one loses face; you leave the heroin to them down in the flats; even if you're an anarchist punk rocker this month, you go to Mass on Sunday; and no matter what, never, ever squeal on anyone. The Place is two rows of eight houses, including one still occupied by Frank's controlling Ma, his infirm and alcoholic Da and his older brother Shay, who resents being left behind to look after the other two. Frank's older sister Carmel is married with four kids and a wide arse. Frank's kid brother Kevin is a bachelor who sells electronics and is as eager as a pup to formalize relations with Frank. Jackie is a hairdresser with a live-in boyfriend. She's kept Frank updated about everyone, but with most of the people he grew up with petty criminals, few if any want to know Frank these days. Opening his ex-girlfriend's suitcase, Frank finds clothes, cassette tapes, a Sony Walkman he'd saved up to buy her, birth certificate and their ferry tickets. On the night they were set to leave, Rose never showed up at their prearranged meeting point and Frank searched for her in the vacant Number 16, where kids hung out to do anything they couldn't get away with at home. Frank found a note on the floor from Rose in which she apologized for leaving and he'd always assumed was meant for him. Her suitcase was found by the builders stuffed into the fireplace. Hunting for clues, Frank takes the suitcase to the Dalys and brings Kevin along to assist him. Rose's younger sister Nora is happy to see Frank again, while her skittish Ma and temperamental Pa blame Frank for taking Rose away from them. Still a missing persons case if anything, Frank talks the Dalys into letting him make inquiries into Rose's disappearance. He then talks Kevin into returning to the derelict Number 16 for a look. The building has always scared Kevin, especially the damp and foul smelling basement. When Kevin verifies that smell began around the time Rose left, Frank phones a Technical Unit. Because the book is subtitled Dublin Murder Squad #3, it's no spoiler to add that Rose Daly's disappearance does not remain a missing persons case. Running the investigation is Detective Mick Kennedy, a chum from Mackey's cop college days whose competitive streak prompted Frank to nickname him "Scorcher." A laser beam of ambition who's proud of his high solve rate, Scorcher wants to make sure that Frank stays a team player. That doesn't happen. Frank locates Rose's two best friends, Imelda Tierney and Mandy Cullen, certain that someone else knew she was going to be in that building in 1985. Tana French's fiction surpasses mass entertainment to reveal aspects of the world that had previously been hidden from me, Irish culture and murder investigation being two key areas. Bending an ear to the hunters at the forefront of her stories, we learn things. As a storyteller, French's confidence is off the charts. One of the delights of Faithful Place is how Frank Mackey contrasts the techniques of the Murder Squad with those practiced by his squad, the UCD. The detectives are opposed in skill, temperament and philosophy and didn't choose their squads so much as those squads chose them. If Scorch wants into a suspect's house, he fills in a square mile of paperwork and waits for the rubber stamps and assembles the appropriate entry team so no one gets hurt; me, I bat the baby-blues, spin a good story and waltz right in, and if the suspect should decide he wants to kick the shit out of me, I'm on my own. This was about to work for me. Scorch was used to fighting by the rules. He took it for granted that, with the odd minor bad-little-boy breach, I fought the same way. It would take a while to occur to him that my rules had sweet fuck-all in common with his. A candidate for prick of the year, Frank Mackey is not a character I was thrilled to discover I was going to spend 400 pages with. Mackey handles people like they were combustible materials in a lab, but he's a skilled chemist. One, it's fun to read about characters who are good at their work. Two, French keeps Mackey one step ahead of the reader, rather than the other way around (person lousy at their job.) Three, the setting is intimate. I'm not a fan of novels set in The Old Neighborhood that lurk in the past rather than take me somewhere in the present. French makes the familiar lethal, springing more traps on Mackey at a family gathering than he'd face in a terrorist cell. I related to In the Woods beyond its construction as a police procedural because what French was really writing about was the elusive nature of friendships and the emotional damage inflicted when those relationships end. The Likeness, despite its female narrator, was cool and removed, given that the suspects were mostly postgrads at Trinity College. Faithful Place throws us back into an emotional minefield. French isn't writing about a murder case, she's writing about how we hurt those closest to us -- family -- and no matter how badly we'd like not to, will do so again. I could relate to this. There's something I enjoy even more than watching an author load her quill with arrows and that's when she reaches back for those arrows, aims and fires away. Nothing is spared in this novel in terms of information. In a lot of other books, Mackey's kid Holly would be a clue provider or a victim, something to motivate Mackey and be discarded the moment he moved on to the next plot point. Here, the cop's kid is (view spoiler)[instrumental to the climax, a chip off the old block who uses a Sunday dinner with her father's family to lay an ambush, approach her prey with stealth and pounce (hide spoiler)]. Like the characters on the Murder Squad, French is an expert in her field and one of the great hunters of her genre. ...more |
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Dec 04, 2015
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Dec 10, 2015
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Hardcover
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| 0670018864
| 9780670018864
| 4.06
| 107,649
| Jul 17, 2008
| Jul 17, 2008
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it was amazing
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Tana French could probably write a book on organic farming and I'd read it. I'd anticipate a major turf war between the USDA and the IOFGA and
Tana French could probably write a book on organic farming and I'd read it. I'd anticipate a major turf war between the USDA and the IOFGA and actually stay up late to find out whether ladybugs were an effective deterrent against garden pests. Fortunately, French's chosen milieu is much more exciting. With her debut novel In the Woods and this 2008 follow-up, French's finesse with weaving homicide investigation, Irish locale and intense character study together knocked me out. The Likeness is narrated by Detective Cassie Maddox, a cop in her late twenties who recounts her recruitment to the UCD by the legendary head of undercover operations, Frank Mackey. Cassie's assignment was to infiltrate a drug ring at University College Dublin. Cassie and Mackey created a cover which she named Alexandra Madison. "Lexie" exits the assignment when she is stabbed, not because Cassie blew her cover, but because she did her job all too well, convincing her paranoid target that she was a dirt merchant trying to take over his business. Cassie's attack earned her a promotion to Murder, where ultimately, an investigation known as Operation Vestal (chronicled by Tana French with In The Woods) went sideways. Cassie transferred to Domestic Violence and is introduced trying to move on with her life. She takes target practice in the underground shooting range to calm her nerves and spends time with her boyfriend, one of her Operation Vestal partners, Sam O'Neill. On an "almost spring" morning, Cassie receives an urgent call from her boyfriend summoning her to the village of Glenskehy in the Wicklow Mountains. Arriving at a field left to run wild, Cassie gets a bad feeling about the crime scene. Instead of uniformed officers and the Technical Unit crawling all over the field, Cassie spots only two local officers, Sam and joining them, her old handler Frank Mackey, running an investigation which Cassie knows should belong to her boyfriend. The men lead Cassie to the ruins of a "famine cottage," where a young woman lies dead from a single stab wound. The victim's Trinity College ID reveals her name to be Lexie Madison. Her face is a splitting likeness of Cassie's. Frank Mackey, who was brought in due to the possible death of one of his undercover agents, reveals to Cassie his reasons for keeping the scene quiet. "Lexie Madison" was living a half mile away with four Trinity College Dublin students. Mackey has held off notifying the students their roommate has been murdered to grant him the once in a lifetime opportunity of placing an experienced undercover officer in the identity of a murder victim, enabling Mackey to investigate Lexie's death from the inside. I had never seen anyone who looked anything like me before. Dublin is full of scary girls who I swear to God are actually the same person, or at least come out of the same fake-tan bottle; me, I may not be a five-star babe but I am not generic. My mother's father was French, and somehow the French and the Irish combined into something specific and pretty distinctive. I don't have brothers or sisters; what I mainly have is aunts, uncles and cheerful gangs of second cousins, and none of them looked anything like me. Cassie agrees to lay low for three days and to give her boyfriend a chance to solve the murder through conventional means. Sam dislikes Frank Mackey and dead set against his girlfriend returning to undercover work in an investigation he'd be running. He learns that "Lexie Madison" arrived at Trinity College two and a half years ago and was finishing her PhD, "something to do with women writers and pseudonyms." Her known associates were her roommates, a tightly knit group of four postgrads: Daniel March (who inherited their residence, Whitethorn House, from his great-uncle), Abby Stone, Justin Mannering and Rafe Hyland. None of the housemates indcate they knew Lexie was using a false identity. None of them indicate they knew that Lexie was pregnant. Ready for a fresh challenge and intrigued by her doppelgänger's mysterious rise and fall, Cassie agrees to assume Lexie Madison's life once more. Operation Mirror is a go. For a week, Mackey rehearses Cassie, using video obtained from the victim's smartphone to study Lexie's voice, personality and mannerisms. Cassie memorizes every detail of Whitethorn House and the Glenskehy area. She gets Lexie's clothes. She gets Lexie's haircut. Mackey has notified the housemates that Lexie has been unable to recall the night of her attack and Cassie is able to use that trauma to explain any contradictory behavior that her housemates might detect. "Hi," I said at the bottom of the steps, looking up at them. For a second, I thought they weren't going to answer, they had made me already, and I wondered wildly what the hell I was supposed to do now. Then Daniel took a step forwards, and the picture wavered and broke. A smile started across Justin's face, Rafe straightened up and raised one arm in a wave, and Abby came running down the steps and hugged me hard. Authors making a living off a long-running series sometimes claim that it doesn't matter which of their books you start with. The Likeness is a rare sequel where this is actually the case. You can grab this book, start reading and not feel like you've missed anything. Not only is the narrator different, and the mystery and most of the characters new, but French takes us someplace new. It's what I love in a sequel: It's exactly the same, but completely different. Cassie Maddox has evolved. She's no longer the Vespa riding, cartwheel turning pixie goofing off with her partner but a woman who's seen some shit. Operation Vestal, which was covered by In the Woods, is whispered and alluded to in this book but doesn't require familiarity from the reader; Operation Vestal is simply that person or thing that disrupted your life and keeps you on edge wondering if you had it to do over again what you might've done differently. Rather than focus purely on a homicide investigation, this time French plunges us into the world of an undercover agent. The camera lens was always where I wanted it. I was curious about how someone would be recruited to undercover and what skills she'd have. French goes there. I was interested in the dynamic between the handler and his undercover and how trust could be abused. French goes there. I was excited to discover the various ways an undercover can trip herself up. French goes there. And I anticipated the undercover developing intimate feelings for people she was manipulating. French goes there too. And the writing is intoxicating. God, that first week. Even thinking about it I want to bite into it like the world's brightest red apple. In the middle of an all-out murder investigation, while Sam worked his way painstakingly through various shades of scumbag and Frank tried to explain our situation to the FBI without coming across like a lunatic, there was nothing I was supposed to be doing except living Lexie's life. It gave me a gleeful, lazy, daring feeling, right down to my toes, like mitching off to school when it's the best day of spring and you know your class has to dissect frogs. The only matter I'd bring up before the complaint board is the length of the book. Not the number of pages, but how long the chapters are and some of the scenes run. Daniel, Abby, Justin and Rafe are almost always together so the scenes at Whitethorn House take a while to wind down once these postgrads get to talking, particularly about their own feelings for each other. I did like what French did with the house, drawing on the dreamlike elements of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and the naivete of the backpacker utopia in Alex Garland's The Beach. While the novelty of the setting, the mystery and the emotional sucker punch of In the Woods couldn't be repeated, French again uses atmosphere to tantalize (even hinting, artfully, at the possibility of the supernatural once again), introduces colorful jigsaw pieces of suspects and motives, and ties up everything with emotional satisfaction. Great show. ...more |
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| 3.67
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| Sep 18, 2012
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really liked it
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My next appointment with hard-boiled fiction maestro Charles Williams is And the Deep Blue Sea. Williams, who spent ten years in the U.S. Merchant
My next appointment with hard-boiled fiction maestro Charles Williams is And the Deep Blue Sea. Williams, who spent ten years in the U.S. Merchant Marine before working as an electronics inspector until his publishing career took off in the early 1950s, alternated between backwoods noir and seafaring thrillers, with two of his best--Hell Hath No Fury (a.k.a The Hot Spot) and Dead Calm--serving as the source material for multiple movies. Published in 1971 near the end of Williams' life, And the Deep Blue Sea is so exciting in the early going that I wasn't sure it could stay that great. It doesn't, but I enjoyed the ride that the author took me on. The novel takes place in present day and begins with Harry Goddard in a tight spot. Forty-five years old, divorced and childless following the death of his daughter five months ago, things couldn't seem to get much worse for the man until the thirty-two-foot sloop Shoshone he was sailing solo across the Pacific hits an obstruction and goes down in half an hour. Adrift in a raft intended for skin-diving expeditions, he has no oars, no sail and no food. The only water on board is what remains in a Jack Daniels bottle Goddard kept in the cockpit. Death by thirst seems likely until he wakes in the night to spot an old freighter dead in the water a mile away. The Leander carries a crew of thirty and passengers numbering four. Madeleine Lennox is a randy fifty-year-old widow of a U.S. Navy captain getting her sails hoisted by a beefcake steward. Thirty-four-year-old Karen Brooke is headed to Manila for a job with her father's steamship company. Egerton is a sixty-five-year-old Limey and retired colonel. Krasicki is a Pole who's taken ill in his cabin. The engines stopped to allow a hot bearing to cool, Karen is stargazing on the boat deck when she spots a man in the water. She alerts the captain and Goddard is rescued. Ship's mate Lind, the very tall, very capable executive officer, takes care of the new passenger. It was called the hospital but it was only a spare room on the lower deck that had originally housed the gun crew when the Leander was built and put into service toward the end of World War II. It contained four bunks, a washbasin, some metal lockers, and a small desk. Naked and still dripping, Goddard was seated on one of the lower bunks toweling himself after the ecstasy of a freshwater shower, knowing that any minute now the reaction would hit him and he'd collapse like a dropped souffle. Lind had just come back from somewhere, and the passageway outside was still jammed with crew members peering in. Word had already spread that he'd been sailing a small boat single-handed across the Pacific, and as they grinned and voiced their congratulations and the cheerful but inevitable opinion of working seamen that anybody who'd sail anything across the --ing ocean just for the fun of it ought to have his --ing head examined, they tossed in on the other lower bunk a barrage of spare gear includig several pairs of shorts, some slides, a new toothbrush in a plastic tube, toothpaste, cigarettes, matches and a pair of dungarees. A young Filipino in white trousers and a singlet pushed his way through the jam with a tray containing cold cuts, potato salad, bread, fruit, and a pitcher of milk. Goddard discovers their Captain Steen is a Bible pounder and nickel pincher worried about the paperwork that the castaway's arrival will generate. Goddard reveals himself to be a movie producer and has the ship's wireless operator contact his attorneys to wire the shipping company the money to cover his passage and expenses. Assembled in the dining room, Goddard meets the other passengers, thanking Karen for saving his life. He even draws the reclusive Krasicki out of his cabin. The Pole, getting a look at his fellow passengers, seems to recognize Egerton and grows agitated. He returns with a Czech automatic and shoots the Limey twice, killing him. While Lind speaks German, he is unable to get a lucid answer from Krasicki about why he murdered Egerton. Lind and Goddard remove Egerton's eyepatch and discover the eye underneath to be perfectly normal, indicating he might have been traveling under a disguise and was not be who he claimed to be. Lind recalls that Krasicki was a Polish Army POW in 1939 and had been shuffling around South America as a timber surveyor. With no next of kin, Egerton is buried at sea, and as Goddard, Karen and Madeleine discuss the shooting in front of Lind, it occurs to the movie producer that what they witnessed seemed almost staged. Goddard's first prediction--that Krasicki will meet with a tragic death--comes true when the prisoner is found hanging in his cabin. Goddard realizes that if he takes his suspicions to the captain he risks becoming the next passenger to meet with an accident. When Madeleine confides she has suspicions about Egerton's death, the producer keeps his cards close to the vest, not knowing if he can trust her either. Lind shares with him a radiogram from the Buenos Aires police revealing that "Egerton" was Hugo Mayr, a Nazi war criminal believed dead. Goddard is certain now that the shooting they witnessed was staged and the conspirators are still on board. Lind was the ship's doctor, and with an imagination of that order there'd be no dearth of illuminating detail to enter in the log as to cause of death. Found dead in bunk of obvious cardiac arrest. Went to bed drunk, set mattress afire with cigarette, and suffocated. Suffered severe concussion in fall, and died two days later without regaining consciousness. With enough morphine in him to kill a rhinoceros. The findings would be subject to review by higher medical authority, of course, except for the minor difficulty that the body was buried in the ooze five miles down in the Pacific Ocean. But there's still a chance you're wrong, he told himself. You don't really know any of this; you're only assuming it. All you really know is that it could be the greatest piece of illusion since Thurston, you know why it could have been done, and how it could have been done, but there's no proof whatever that is was done. The cabin was lit up by another long flash of lightning, and the thunderclap came almost on the heels of it. A faint breeze came in the porthole now, with the smell of rain in it. Lightning flashed again, and the thunder was a sharp, cracking explosion that was very near. I was carried away by And the Deep Blue Sea through the 80% mark. Though Charles Williams avoids vulgar language or stylized bloodletting that Quentin Tarantino embraces, the filmmaker's fingerprints are all over this, certainly his western The Hateful Eight. Here we also have isolated travelers, a crime, someone or someones who aren't who they say they are and a hunt for the killer while Mother Nature kicks up her heels. Like any great mystery, the location of the body informs the reader about the culture of where the crime occurred: a freighter in international waters. Williams knows his territory. His story structure, characters, dialogue and descriptions are jeweled. Goddard pointed out that single-handed passages in small boats were commonplace by sailors of all maritime nations and sanctioned by yacht clubs, and that there had been a number of single-handed races across the Atlantic. There was a difference between a competent seaman going to sea in a sound boat and some nut going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. He stopped when he realized he was wasting his breath. "But you did lose your boat," Steen said. "And it's just the Lord's infinite mercy you're alive. Your passport was lost too, I suppose?" "Yes," Goddard replied. "Somehow it didn't seem important at the time." "Very unfortunate." Steen frowned and tapped on the pad with his pencil. "There will be complications, you realize, and a great deal of red tape." Goddard sighed. "Captain, every maritime nation on earth has machinery for processing shipwrecked and castaway seamen." "Yes, I know that. But you are not a seaman, legally, signed on to the articles of a merchant vessel. To the Philippine authorities you will simply be an alien without identification, visa, or money. This places the company in the position of having to post bond." I'll be a sad son of a bitch, Goddard thought. "I am sorry, Captain. I guess it was selfish and inconsiderate of me to swim over here and hail you that way." Captain Steen was pained, but forgiving. "I think you'll agree that was uncalled for, Mr. Goddard. We are very happy to have been the instruments of Providence, but the formalities and red tape are something we have to take into account. Now, about your arrangements on here; you can continue in the hospital where you are now and eat with the deck crew's mess, but you won't be required to work passage--" "Thank you." "--unless you feel you'd rather, of course. The bos'n can always use an extra hand, and I am sure you wouldn't want them to carry you for cigarettes and toilet articles you will need." "But I understand you carry passengers." Goddard's voice was still quiet, but there was a hard edge to it. "And the cabins are not all sold. I'll take one, at the full rate from Callao to Manila." This earned him a pale but condescending smile. "Passage has to be paid in advance. And I'm afraid I have no authority to change the company rule." Williams keeps the novel humming with suspense and surprises, sharing his knowledge of merchant seafaring every step of the way. By introducing Goddard as a castaway, I had a vested interest in wanting to see him through the story, even if he does seem a bit like an author stand-in: handsome, prestigious, adventurous and unable for women to resist. When the last fifth of the novel descends into a big raid, I grew bored, able to see the end coming as the book devolved into an action adventure. I had a fun time with the atmospheric mystery that led up to that, though, and look forward to shipping out with Charles Williams again. ...more |
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Jul 02, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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| B07B6BHVB4
| 3.63
| 63
| 1960
| Sep 18, 2012
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it was amazing
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My next appointment with hard-boiled fiction maestro Charles Williams is Aground. Published in 1960, this nautical crime thriller introduced Captain
My next appointment with hard-boiled fiction maestro Charles Williams is Aground. Published in 1960, this nautical crime thriller introduced Captain John Ingram and Rae Ingram (née Osborne). The characters would appear in a sequel titled Dead Calm memorably adapted to an Australian film in 1989 with Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman in the roles. While other authors might write maritime material expertly well but struggle with characters, or craft compelling characters but not know port from starboard, Williams offers both with this exciting story of a man who draws on his knowledge of the sea to stay alive against men capable of arranging a burial for him in it. The story takes off in present day Miami, where John Ingram limps from a plane and checks into a fleabag hotel he recently checked out of, hopping between Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and Florida on business, possibly the unsavory sort given the two police detectives who knock on his door. Ingram reveals that he's in the boat-repair business, having operated a boatyard in San Juan until his partner was killed in the fire that scarred Ingram's left leg. He affirms that he was in Key West to buy a boat and inspected the schooner Dragoon. The detectives inform Ingram that someone has stolen the fifty-thousand dollar yacht he was just aboard. Ingram admits that he was hired to buy a boat for a client named Fredric Hollister, president of Hollister-Dykes Laboratories, and report back to him at his Miami hotel. When the detectives determine that Hollister checked out a week ago, they bring Ingram in for questioning. He proves his innocence through receipts, as well as an offer letter received by the owner of the Dragoon, Mrs. C.R. Osborne of Houston. While the yacht has disappeared, the dinghy has been recovered, with a watch belonging to Ingram's client and some clothes, but no "Hollister." Released from custody, Ingram receives a message from Mrs. Osborne, who's flown to Miami and wants to meet. it was less than ten minutes later when he stepped out of the elevator at the Columbus and strode down the carpeted and air-conditioned quietness of the corridor looking at the numbers. When he knocked, she answered almost immediately, and for a second he thought he must have the wrong room. Even hearing her voice over the telephone hadn't entirely prepared him for this. Somehow, a woman who owned a seventy-foot yacht in her own name figured to be a greying and wealthy widow on the far side of fifty, at least, but this statuesque blonde with the flamboyant mop of hair couldn't be much over thirty. She wore a green knit dress that did her figure no harm at all, and he had a quick impression of a well-tended and slightly arrogant face with a bright red mouth, high cheekbones, sea-green eyes, and a good tan. "Come in, Captain," she said. "I'm Rae Osborne." He stepped inside. The room was the sitting room of a suite, furnished with a pearl-grey sofa, two armchairs, and a coffee table. At the far end was a window with flamingo drapes. The door into the bedroom was on the left. There was a soft light from the lamps at either end of the sofa. The thing that caught his eye, however, was the chart spread out on the coffee table. He stepped nearer, and saw it was the Coast & Geodetic Survey No. 1002, a general chart of the Florida Straits, Cuba, and the Bahamas. A highball glass stood in the center of it, in a spreading ring of moisture. He winced. Having checked him out to verify he's an experienced yachtsman, Mrs. Osborne wants Ingram to help her find the Dragoon. He attempts to talk her out of it. The search area is around eight-thousand square miles, which consists of thousands of miles of uncharted shoals, reefs, coral heads and sand bars. If they do locate the boat, they can hardly call a cop to arrest the thieves. For her own reasons, Mrs. Osborne is serious about finding Hollister, while Ingram is intrigued what the thieves intend to do with a stolen yacht they can't sell or enter any western port aboard. Hiring a pilot to conduct their search by air, Ingram and Mrs. Osborne locate the Dragoon run aground on a sand bar. It appears to have been abandoned. Returning the next morning when the tide allows the plane to land, Ingram and Mrs. Osborne note that someone has made a sloppy attempt to repaint and rename the yacht. Ingram goes down into the after cabin and discovers it filled with long wooden cases. He's ambushed by two armed men: a big, thirty-year-old son of a bitch named Al Morrison who radiates violence and gives orders to his partner, a Latin in his forties named Carlos Ruiz. Ingram is forced to radiotelephone their pilot to take off, that he and Mrs. Osborne are staying to get the yacht loose from the sand. Morrison drafts Ingram into helping do just that, burdened by six to eight tons of guns and ammo bound for Central America. Morrison states that the man who Ingram knew as "Hollister" but Mrs. Osborne knows as her first husband, Patrick Ives, set up the deal and served as navigator, but drowned. Once Mrs. Osbourne starts dipping into the rum, Ingram seems on his own to figure a way out. Worked all day and left on the sandbar by the mercenaries at night, Ingram camps with Mrs. Osbourne, who reveals she's very sober and has a plan to separate Ruiz from his .45. She took a puff on her cigarette; the tip glowed, revealing for an instant the handsome face with its prodigious shiner. There was something undeniably raffish about it, and appealing, and as attractive as sin. Must be atavistic, he thought; the view just before the clinch, after a Stone Age courtship. "What are you driving at?" he asked. "I don't want Ruiz to figure out I might have fooled him. He has a great deal of contempt for me, and I want to keep it alive." "Why?" "I think our only chance is one of us to surprise him while Morrison's over here on the sand bar, and you're never going to get behind him if you live to be a hundred. I watched him all day, and that boy's cool." "Also too tough to be knocked off his feet by a woman," Ingram said. "If he looks easy, it's just because you're seeing him alongside Morrison." "It wouldn't have to be for more than three or four seconds, if we timed it right. However, we'll table that for the moment and get back to Patrick Ives. It doesn't add up. He was aboard. They say he drowned." "Are you sure he was aboard?" Ingram asked quietly. The story of a stolen yacht and the two attractive people who go after and then get trapped on it doesn't move the needle in terms of excitement. What makes Aground special is that Charles Williams likes people and knows how to write them as well as he does boats or bodies of water. Ingram is introduced as if he might be a bad guy, which I found interesting. His background and his fears are woven into the plot supremely well. The same goes for Rae, who's resourceful and independent in a way women weren't often shown to be in this era of publishing. Williams' craftsmanship sped me through the story, hoping that the couple would make it out and get together. They slid aft until they were beside the cleat holding the tackle, and sat down on the sloping deck with their backs against the deckhouse in the velvet night overlaid with the shining dust of stars. There was no sound anywhere, and they seemed to be caught up and suspended in some vast and cosmic hush outside of time and lost in space. They sat shoulder to shoulder, unspeaking, with Ingram's left hand resting lightly on the taut and motionless nylon leading aft, and when he put the other hand down on deck it was on hers and she turned hers slightly so they met and clasped together. After a long time she stirred and said in a small voice, "This is a great conversation, isn't it? I hope I didn't promise anything brilliant." He turned and looked at the soft gleam of tawny hair and the pale shape of her face in the starlight and then she was in his arms and he was holding her hungrily and almost roughly as he kissed her. There was a wild and wonderful sweetness about it with her arms tight around his neck and the strange, miraculous breaching of the walls of loneliness behind which he had lived so long, and then she was pushing back with her hands against his shoulders. One reason that so much of Williams's work has been adapted to film--a number of them French language productions in the 1960s--is how visual his writing is: a couple, a sand bar, a shipwreck, two mercenaries, an arms shipment. Williams knows his milieu extremely well and uses it to inform character. I liked how perturbed Ingram is when introduced to Rae and sees a glass ring forming on a nautical chart from a glass she's left there. No detail goes wasted. Ingram's fear of gasoline leaks or fire at sea is detailed terrifically but also put into service when the Dragoon is threatened by the same peril. My basic seamanship course with this author will continue. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Jul 14, 2019
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Jul 15, 2019
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Aug 27, 2015
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Kindle Edition
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my rating |
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|
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 4.19
|
it was amazing
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May 11, 2019
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Jun 02, 2019
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| 4.09
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really liked it
|
Feb 09, 2019
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Dec 25, 2018
| |||||
|
| 4.33
|
liked it
|
Feb 20, 2019
|
Dec 25, 2018
| |||||
|
| 4.20
|
it was amazing
|
Feb 04, 2019
|
Dec 25, 2018
| |||||
|
| 3.53
|
really liked it
|
Dec 12, 2018
|
Nov 27, 2018
| |||||
|
| 3.42
|
really liked it
|
Dec 29, 2018
|
Oct 23, 2018
| |||||
|
| 4.09
|
it was ok
|
Apr 05, 2019
|
Sep 23, 2018
| |||||
|
| 3.48
|
liked it
|
Feb 23, 2019
|
Sep 01, 2018
| |||||
|
| 3.54
|
liked it
|
Jul 2019
|
May 28, 2018
| |||||
|
| 3.84
|
really liked it
|
Apr 16, 2019
|
Dec 10, 2017
| |||||
|
| 4.15
|
really liked it
|
May 05, 2018
|
Dec 03, 2017
| |||||
|
| 4.09
|
really liked it
|
May 02, 2018
|
Dec 03, 2017
| |||||
|
| 4.13
|
it was amazing
|
Apr 27, 2018
|
Dec 03, 2017
| |||||
|
| 4.06
|
it was amazing
|
Apr 20, 2018
|
Dec 03, 2017
| |||||
|
| 4.04
|
it was amazing
|
Apr 15, 2018
|
Dec 03, 2017
| |||||
|
| 3.73
|
really liked it
|
Sep 28, 2016
|
Aug 30, 2016
| |||||
|
| 3.91
|
liked it
|
Aug 16, 2017
|
Aug 20, 2016
| |||||
|
| 3.85
|
liked it
|
Sep 07, 2016
|
Aug 15, 2016
| |||||
|
| 3.61
|
really liked it
|
Sep 10, 2016
|
Aug 15, 2016
| |||||
|
| 3.79
|
really liked it
|
Aug 14, 2016
|
Jul 20, 2016
| |||||
|
| 3.50
|
really liked it
|
Sep 04, 2016
|
Jul 09, 2016
| |||||
|
| 3.96
|
it was amazing
|
Oct 16, 2016
|
Jun 26, 2016
| |||||
|
| 4.08
|
really liked it
|
Aug 17, 2016
|
Jun 25, 2016
| |||||
|
| 3.62
|
liked it
|
Feb 28, 2017
|
Jan 14, 2016
| |||||
|
| 3.85
|
really liked it
|
Dec 26, 2015
|
Dec 04, 2015
| |||||
|
| 3.94
|
it was amazing
|
Dec 17, 2015
|
Dec 04, 2015
| |||||
|
| 3.98
|
it was amazing
|
Dec 10, 2015
|
Nov 05, 2015
| |||||
|
| 4.06
|
it was amazing
|
Dec 03, 2015
|
Nov 02, 2015
| |||||
|
| 3.67
|
really liked it
|
Jul 12, 2019
|
Aug 27, 2015
| |||||
|
| 3.63
|
it was amazing
|
Jul 15, 2019
|
Aug 27, 2015
|
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