Too complicated by half

Sue Scriven comes to our house regularly to help us stave off the dust bunnies, sticky crud on the dining room table, and general sediments of daily living. We are grateful and usually enjoy a week after she's been here because we don't have to dust or vacuum much. The following week we grumble and clean.

Sue knows about all the reading that gets done here and recently recommended The Coffee Trader, a book by David Liss. When I went to the library, that book wasn't on the shelf, but Liss' first book, A Conspiracy of Paper, was. So I brought it home.

The book, though written a dozen years ago and set in early-18th century London, is full of contemporary American memes. Like presidential candidate Ron Paul, there were lots of people in old London who were fearful of the "new" paper money. Like many 21st century politicians, there were many people worried about the "new fangled" national debt. And there were entrepreneurs and con men hawking derivatives based on the national debt and even lotteries based on the derivatives. Oh, and there were criminals working behind the scenes to create financial panics and sell forged shares of financial companies and ponzi scheme investments. ["There's an old saying about those who forget history. I don't remember it, but it's good." - Stephen Colbert]

At the end of the book, when it was too late to matter to me, Liss explains that "British money in the eighteenth century broke down this way: twelve pence equaled a shilling, five shillings a crown, twenty shillings a pound, and twenty-one shillings a guinea." (Remember these are the same people who came up inches, feet, yards, perches, and miles.) That complicated currency probably made sense to people who used it and didn't have much of it. A London laborer, Liss says, "might earn twenty pounds a year." Nevertheless, it seems overly complex from my 21st century vantage point. So does the story that Liss tells.

If I saw a diagram of the plot, I might admire the cleverness that went in to creating it and the creativity that linked elements. But, it was over complicated by half.

Same goes for the story telling in my mind. Maybe I am just a streamlined reader thrown back into a horse-and-buggy environment. But while trying to recreate the feeling of 18th century London, Liss spends a lot more time describing things that seem irrelevant than I thought necessary. When he wants to move the story along, the author can have a character send a message by street urchin across the city and get a reply in a couple hours and a couple paragraphs. Other times he takes pages of dialogue to reveal one tiny bit of information. I spent a lot of time frustratedly skimming for details that mattered.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book to me was that the main character was a non-practicing Jew in the London of 1720. After a career as a bare knuckle boxer and petty criminal, his uncle tries to bring him back into "the tribe" and an observant family. (In some scenes I was reminded of the outsider Easy Rawlins from Walter Mosley novels, and his struggles to reenter respectable society.) The anti-Semitism and legal restrictions on the roles Jews could play just a few decades after being allowed into the country were another of those things I was vaguely aware of, but had never thought about in detail. (BTW, that new national debt and the decision to allow Jews to once again live in England were related to the English Civil War, the Commonwealth of England, and Oliver Cromwell. Without a king, the nation had to borrow money to finance itself. And that borrowing required an international banking network. Since Jewish bankers in Holland were keys to the economic success there, Cromwell sought to expand the bankers' activities to England. That meant he promoted toleration and Jewish immigration.)

I might be tempted to pick up another of Liss' novels when I have lots of down time to enjoy the leisurely story telling, but I will know not to expect contemporary pacing. I'll still probably skim for relevancies, though. Maybe I should have begun with The Coffee Trader.

Have you read A Conspiracy of Paper or another of Liss' books? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought.

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• David Liss' web page for A Conspiracy of Paper
• Andrew Roe's review at Salon.com
• James Polk's review in the New York Times
• Brad Katz's review in Mash Magazine

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Dan was right, again

A couple years ago, Dan Conrad said that Kate Atkinson's When Will There Be Good News? was one of the best books he'd read that year.

I've had mixed experiences with Atkinson's novels. Case Histories was really good. I couldn't even convince myself to finish Behind the Scenes at the Museum. The last half of Started Early, Took My Dog was good, but it took me a lot of work to get to the good bits.

Hoping for the best, I picked up Atkinson's When Will There Be Good News? the last time I was at the Northfield Library.

I was confused at the beginning, not because of how Atkinson wrote it, but beause I thought I'd already read the book. But I knew I hadn't read this one. Finally, I remembered that the stories in this book were in one of the BBC productions called Case Histories. The BBC producers created a miniseries out of the first three novels featuring Jackson Brodie. The setting of the first scenes in When Will There Be Good News? was different from the televised version, but the basic story was the same. Confusion resolved I read on.

There were fewer characters waved around as red herrings in the beginning than in Atkinson's other books, so I found it easier to keep track of what was going on. I also had vague memories of the television version, but I didn't remember a lot of details. I'm glad I didn't, because it made reading the stories better.

There are three stories in the book that revolve around the main characters. And there are interesting connections between the characters -- as there are in the other novels Atkinson has written.

I agree with Dan. This is the best of Atkinson's books I have read so far. Jackson Brodie, the "star" of several books, is relegated to a minor role in most of this book. He's in the hospital after nearly being killed in a train wreck. Not to worry, he heals enough and becomes a vital part of resolving things. And he's the victim of major fraud.

Brodie survives the train wreck because of first aid applied by a 16-year-old who was staying at her tutor's house next to the tracks. The tutor's car accident caused the train wreck. The teenager is also a nanny for a doctor and her baby. The doc and the baby go missing under suspicious circumstances. One of Brodie's old flames, still on the police force, is the lead investigator in that case. Oh, and the young nanny also has a brother who is dealing heroin and not being honest with his suppliers. Just to bring things full circle, there's a 30-year-old back story that ties the doctor to Jackson Brodie.

Jackson Brodie survived the train wreck and the loss of his wealth. The teenager who was the link between all the stories inherited part of her tutor's estate and is headed to university. The doc and her baby survived and got some revenge. There are loose ends that lead to the next book.

More Kate Atkinson? We'll see. There's so much to read and not enough time.

Have you read When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought about it.

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• Kate Atkinson's web site
• Patrick Ness' review in The Guardian
• Lizzie Skurnick's review at NPR Books
• Kate Atkinson reading from When Will There Be Good News?

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Sacred Treasure

On the top of Gary Sankary's Best of 2011 Reading List was Rabbi Mark Glickman's book Sacred Treasure: The Cairo Genizah. The subtitle is "The Amazing Discoveries of Forgotten Jewish History in an Egyptian Synagogue Attic."

Gary explained to me (and probably to most of us) that a "Genizah is a storeroom/closet/attic that synagogues use to store scared texts that are no longer legible or usable." Often the old documents a genizah are collected and buried in a cemetery. But, the The Ben Ezra Synagogue Genizah had basically never been emptied since the synagogue was founded in the 9th century CE.

Scottish sisters on a Victorian-era adventure in Cairo bought an old document from the Ben Ezra Genizah they couldn't identify, in spite of their expertise in ancient languages. Cambridge don, Rabbi Solomon Schechter identified it for them. It was a one-page fragment of "a Hebrew manuscript of the book of Ben Sira or as it became known in Greek, Ecclesiasticus. Today that book is found in the Catholic Bible, it was excluded from the Hebrew and King James versions." It had been written around the year 900.

That discovery sent Rabbi Schechter out looking for funding and then off to Cairo. There he found the Genizah stuffed with hundreds of thousands of documents. The Genizah which began as a place to store old sacred documents had become a place to store old written documents of all kinds.

In Sacred Treasure, Rabbi Glickman tells the story of the Cairo trove of documents. Rabbi Schechter is only the first in a century-long line of scholars who have worked to identify, read, analyze, and catalog the thousands of documents.

Rabbi Glickman looking into the Cairo Gehizah, Photo: Jacob Glickman

Back in the '70s, I spent a lot of time volunteering on archaeolgical field work projects. I have a real appreciation for the careful work that goes into uncovering and interpreting material culture from long ago. I still recall the thrill of uncovering a large clam shell, cleaning it off, drawing it into the unit's map for its level, and photographing it. When it came time to remove the shell, I (we, because no one can do all this alone) found a small, 800-year-old corn cob under it. Wow!

So, there was Rabbi Scechter, peering into a room full of a thousand years' of history. He was able to purchase most of the documents and take them to England. Back in Cambridge, he began the process of cataloging, reading, translating, identifying, and understanding documents. It was tedious and tremendously exciting work. I understand that. What would any philosopher, historian, or religious scholar give to find something written by Moses Maimonides? What was the value of many things written by the famous sage? But that just begins to tell the story of what was found in the Cairo Genizah.

Rabbi Glickman does a great job of telling this story in all its complexity. He profiles the people and the problems -- like institutional competition. I really appreciated how well the various threads of the story track in Rabbi Glickman's skilled narrative.

I learned that Medieval and modern Jewish religious movements are as numerous and varied as Protestant demoninations. If I thought about my little knowledge of Israeli politics, I sort of knew that, but reading about the varieties of Jewish ritual and rules made that diversity come alive. Rabbi Glickman makes a point of that and a few other ways that the Genizah's contents illuminate the present as well as the past.

I wish he'd written more about what the documents tell us about beliefs, worship, diet, families, law, economics, and other things that are described in the Cairo documents. But, this is not a long, scholarly tome. It's an adventure story. And a darn good one.

Thanks, Gary for recommending the book. I'm passing on his recommendation.

It's not hard to get the book. It's available from Amazon.com. I ordered my directly from Rabbi Mark Glickman, 15030 232nd Ave. NE, Woodinville, WA 98077. The cost is $24.99 plus $3.50 shipping (Continental US) and $2.25 tax if you have it delivered to an address in the state of Washington. And he'll autograph your copy.

If you read it, write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it.

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Expedition: Genizah, Rabbi Glickman's web site
"Cairo Genizah author describes treasure trove" from The Jewish Review
"Cairo’s Jewish medieval manuscripts" from PRI's The World (includes some great photos, including the one above)

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Writing by recipe

I'm beginning to think that somebody, somewhere wrote an instruction manual for mystery writers and that Kate Atkinson and Camilla Läckberg followed the instructions.

I thought that the first Kate Atkinson novel I read, Case Histories, was well done. I even liked the way she began the book -- in snippets of story that seemed unrelated until well into the book. I wasn't quite as taken by the second Atkinson mystery I read, Started Early, Took My Dog. Alerted by my earlier experience, I began taking notes early in the reading. It still didn't measure up by my lights.

Then I tried to read Atkinson's first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. I couldn't convince myself to even finish that one. Okay, it was her first try. But it won awards! Not from me.

Dan Conrad wrote a comment on my description of trying to read Behind the Scenes... about Camilla Läckberg's The Preacher. (I'd forgotten until I looked up the blog entry.) He was disappointed after reading Läckberg's The Ice Princess.

So I headed into The Preacher without Dan's warning in my head or The Ice Princess experience.

First of all, Läckberg must have read the same instructions that Atkinson did. I didn't take notes, but there were time when I wished I had. The first half of the book is made up of bits and pieces of story and characters in little seemingly random order. Trying to get a handle on who is who and what's going on in the various settings is a chore. Not enough to disuade me from reading on, but a chore. The only bits that are clearly identifiable are two-page descriptions of sadistic, misogynistic torture that are scattered throughout the book. After the first two of those, I just skipped the rest of them.

And there's so much filler in this 400-page book. Where was the persuasive editor to convince the author that losing 100-150 pages would not be a disaster. Of course you couldn't tell all the stories and you couldn't describe all the details, but the novel would be better. Write another book with the things you leave out.

So, the main story, crazy as it is, is okay. If Läckberg's early book had a strong, active woman character, this one doesn't. It might have helped. The side and back stories seemed really superfluous to me. I wanted this to be a "choose your own adventure" type of book which gave me choices at the end of chapters about what story I wanted to continue and which ones to abandon.

No such luck.

I still want to go back and read The Ice Princess. I hope Läckberg wrote that one before she read the instruction manual about writing a bunch of little stories, cutting them into 3-paragraph sections, and then randomly pasting them onto pages in the first half of the book.

Have you read The Preacher or The Ice Princess? What did you think of it (them)? Write and tell this little bit of the world.

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• Dennis Drabelle's review in The Washington Post
• Peter's review at Nordic Bookblog
• Review by an unnamed Aussie at Reactions to Reading

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End it already!

I've read several of Charles Todd's mysteries featuring WWI nurse Beth Crawford. She's the one whose stories remind me of the Masie Dobbs stories, and they're as good as the lesser Masie Dobbs' stories.

I picked up another Charles Todd mystery at the library recently, and it made me wonder again about all this writing about the time between World War I and World War II. Todd has set "his" books in that time, as does Jacqueline Winspear. Laurie R. King sets some of her Mary Russell stories in that time frame as well. It doesn't seem -- Gatsby notwithstanding -- a very attractive period in Western history. Maybe it's attractive as a literary setting because it's far enough in the past so there are few people around with first hand experiences, but for which there is good and accessible documentation of the time. (I especially think of the descriptions of material culture in the Masie Dobbs stories.)

In any case, this book was not a Bess Crawford mystery, but an Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery. I read one of these before and liked it, with reservations. Looking back, I have some of the same reservations about Wings of Fire.

Inspector Ian Rutledge is a WWI veteran suffering what we'd now call a severe case of PTSD. It gets in his way, but -- stiff upper lip and all -- he tries to push through and do the investigations he has to do. Interestingly, but less so than the first time around, Rutledge carries a memory that is a constant voice in his head commenting on what's going on. It's sort of like a Greek chorus, but I thought it became tiresome.

I wrote about A Test of Wills (the Rutledge mystery that preceded this one), "Rutledge's investigation seems to reach the same conclusions as the local one did, but he can't tie up all the loose ends. The voice in his head taunts him. People tell him only what they think is relevant. He keeps probing to find out what they are keeping from him. Of course, he's relentless."

Well, I found slight differences in Wings of Fire, but hardly enough to note. It's just a variation on the earlier story.

There's a textbook I'm familiar with in which the first third of the book endeavors to explain theory and concepts before it tackles the subject matter those things apply to. I find it difficult to deal with because I best understand the methodology when it's applied. (I also know that other people want all the abstract stuff organized in their heads before they tackle real-world topics.)

Well, the last third of this book is an extended unwinding of the mystery that only Ian Rutledge (even in his damaged condition) has figured out. Well, one of the murdered people had figured it out, but her letter explaining things wasn't found until after Rutledge had unraveled the mystery. That last third of the book was not much fun for me. I'd figured out what Rutledge had long before he had the climactic meeting with the bad guy. When I read A Test of Wills, I wrote that I was dissatisfied with the resolution. Same here. If another Charles Todd novel falls into my hands, I'll probably begin reading it. I don't know if I'd slog through another resolution like this one.

So, have you read Wings of Fire or another of Charles Todd's novels? What did you think? Write and tell this little bit of the world about your reactions.

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• Charles Todd's home page
• An interview with Caroline and Charles Todd in January Magazine
• Lee Gilmore's review at The Mystery Reader

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Macro- and micro-novels

Many years ago I worked my way through a macro-novel called Centennial by James Michener. It was the kind of marcro-novel that Michener became famous for. It was one of a number of macro-novels I plowed through long ago. [The last one was probably Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. Or maybe Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (okay, it wasn't a novel, but it read like one).]

By macro-novel, I mean a novel (or history) that takes a wide view of "life, the universe, and everything." (See Douglas Adams' Life, the Universe and Everything. Michener begins his historical novel about Colorado with geology and lots of anthropology. Follett writes about the generations who built a cathedral. Tuchman writes about the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, religious politics, peasant uprisings, aristocratic politics, and the Little Ice Age. They are huge books that include enough ideas, characters, and stories to hold my interest for a long time.

I thought of Centennial twice recently. The first time was when I had a bad cold and cough. I went looking for tea and the local grocery store didn't carry lapsong souchong. I had fond memories of lapsong souchong from the time I read Centennial. Michener described how French fur traders in 18th century Colorado carried bricks of lapsong souchong. So I had to try it. I found it easily, but I was living in the big city then. Now, I'm shopping in a small town grocery store. Oh well, I found a soothing tea that worked to relieve my throat.

The second time I thought of Centennial was when I began reading Susan Vreeland's Luncheon of the Boating Party. The reason I thought of Michener's tome was that Vreeland's book is a micro-novel as opposed to Michener's macro-novel. Almost everything in the first half of the book took place in the head of Auguste Renoir. Vreeland paints some images of late 19th century Paris and illustrates some characteristics of Renoir, but there isn't much in the way of stories.

By the time I got to the middle of the book, I was tired of reading about Renoir's struggles to gather his models, get them to sit still, manage his love life, worry about the light... I would much rather have read a treatise about Renoir's painting or an analysis of Luncheon of the Boating Party. I would have much preferred to go to Washington, D.C. to see the painting and some of its contemporaries.

I quit reading the book and put it on the pile to be returned to the library.

Jeanette Hohman is a 92-year old acquanintance and reader of this blog (when I send her print outs). She asked not long ago why I read so few things besides mysteries. I replied that I was lazy and that mysteries are usually easy (Kate Atkinson, perhaps an exception). I should have added that I read a lot of serious stuff about government and politics -- including lots of news from six selected countries (you're probably fortunate that I write about that on a separate blog). And, I should have added that experiences like trying to read micro-novels like Vreeland's, Connie Willis' science fiction, Per Petterson's micro-novel, and even James Gleick's The Information, send me back to mysteries.

That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to pick up the Charles Todd mystery I got at the library. But, thinking about the macro-novels that I still have fond memories of, maybe I should devote a couple months to reading to something like Follett's World Without End (I've heard it's good). I've also heard good things about Edward Rutherford's London (a sequel to Sarum, another macro-novel which was based on an exhibit I saw at the City of London Museum).

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• Susan Vreeland's web site
• Donna Bird's review at Greenman Review
• Kathy Jones' review at Blog Critics
• Kristin Merrihew's review at Mostly Fiction

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Fast books, slow books

Bird Loomis writes from a Democratic enclave (Lawrence) in a Republican utopia-to-be (Kansas). Luckily, the Kansans still allow the importation of books from the outside -- even those from outside the USA. And they allow e-mail out of Kansas as well. Thank you, Bird.

Over the past few months I’ve read five books by two authors, neither of whom I’d read before. Jo Nesbo is the better known, with his series of Norwegian novels (deftly translated) about detective Harry Hole. The other is Rebecca Pawel, a native New Yorker, who writes a fascinating series of mysteries about a Guardia lieutenant in Franco-era Spain of the 1940s.

I’ve come to enjoy both authors immensely, but my approach to the books has been quite different. Nesbo writes long, fast-paced, intricately plotted mysteries. I thought that I’d just about had it with alcoholic detectives, but Harry H. has won me over, in part because his drinking is not a constant, and it’s integral to his character and his up-and-down personal life. I haven’t read his work in any particular order, which is a little, but not too, problematic. I find that I read the long Nesbo books at a whirlwind pace. I start, and even if I’m not on vacation I find it hard to put the book down. (Not quite the 6-day Girl with the Dragon Tattoo marathon for all three books, but close.)

Pawel, on the other hand, is a “few pages a night before nodding off” kind of author for me. Like KC Constantine’s Western Pennsylvania novels about Rocksburg and its fictional police chief, Mario Balzic, Pawel’s books are less mysteries and more character studies. And what a set of characters – most notably Lieutenant Tejada, from an aristocratic, Fascist family, and his wife, who comes from a communist background and constantly makes life challenging for the family (as does Tejada). Still, they love each other and their son, and the series develops these relationships slowly and unpredictably. They genius of Pawel’s work is to make a sympathetic character (Tejada) out of someone whom most readers would ordinarily detest. But like Harry Hole, Wallander, John Rebus, and others, he is a good cop and, ultimately, a fair-minded individual.

I think I read the Pawel books slowly because I need time to keep following the various characters, placed back in history, but mostly because I want to ponder the relationships of Tejada with his wife, child, family, and social class. To be sure, there is a mystery to be solved, but the books’ resolutions are more about how personal ties evolve than the solving of a crime. In many ways, there is more to savor here than in the latest Connelly or Child or Nesbo.

In the end, I have no desire to read just “fast” books or only “slow” ones – but good ones. Nesbo hooked me almost immediately; Pawel took more time, but ultimately both made me go looking for more volumes, ever eager to read more.

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• Jo Nesbo's web site
• My thoughts about The Snowman
• Monica Hesse's profile of Jo Nesbo in the Washington Post
• Kjetil Stensvik Østil's interview with Jo Nesbo in The Browser

• Ilya Marritz' profile of Rebecca Pawel in The Sun (New York)
• Steven Torres' interview with Rebecca Pawel on the blog named after him

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The last of Louise Penny's books

I was happy I got to read the first of Louise Penny's books, Still Life. It was charming and interesting.

So I picked up a second one, A Fatal Grace, when I was at the library. I evern renewed it because there were so many interruptions over the holidays (if grand daughters can be safely called interruptions.)

It took too long to read. It wasn't as charming or as interesting. The plot was far fetched. Most of the interesting characters from Still Life were in this book, but they weren't as interesting the second time around.

I did finish the book, so it wasn't awful. It just wasn't as wonderful as the first one of Penny's that I read.

Tiny, improbable village in southern Quebec where a second murder in as many years takes place. What are the odds? About the same as the odds of there being a second-hand book store there that supports its owner, as Penny contends. Now, I've read Carol Bly and Kathleen Norris and I'm willing to concede that there's probably more diversity in rural towns than I saw growing up in one. But the diversity in Three Pines stretches my sense of the possible. And like Cabot Cove, Maine, the violent crime rate is pretty high. I wouldn't want to live there and I doubt I'll visit again through Louise Penny's novels. (It's not the last of Louise Penny's books, but it's probably the last one I'll read.)

Have you read A Fatal Grace (published in Canada as Dead Cold and Sous la glace)? What did you think of it? Read other of Louise Penny's mysteries? What did you think of them? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought.

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• The author's web site
• Carol Wallace's review at Book Group of One
• Poet B. Morrison's review on her version of a reading blog

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Started early, took a long time

I wasn't totally discouraged by my attempts to make sense of Kate Atkinson's first novel. I still had good memories about Case Histories. Besides, I'd bought a paperback copy of the newest of Atkinson's books about the adventures of Jackson Brodie, Started Early, Took My Dog. Not only was it a paperback book, I bought it at the end of term sale at Carleton's book store.

As with Case Histories, the book starts out with a plethora of names and few other identifiers. I finally resorted to taking notes, like I did when I read Queen of the Night. Some of the people figured prominently in the stories. Some of the people just happened to be in the area. I was over two-thirds of the way into the book before I could stop checking my notes every couple paragraphs. Here are the notes I took at the back of the book. (I long for the days of the huge Russian novels I used to read that had the casts of characters listed at the front of the book.)

It was about two-thirds of the way into the book that Atkinson began to really tell her main story. That's probably why I didn't have to refer to my character notes as much. Atkinson has stories, lots of them: backstories, side stories, distracting stories, main stories. At the beginning there are few hints about which is which. And she writes little scenes from these stories and seemingly throws them into the book, often without warning. No chapters to speak of. Sometimes a date, sometimes not. Sometimes a horizontal line between scenes, sometimes not. And there are lots of people. Did I say that already?

I really don't want to work this much for a diverting mystery story (or two). I'm having second thoughts about going back and reading the two other Jackson Brodie books. In addition, the plots of the two main stories are, to my mind, overly complex. And the resolution was too quick and slick. It was almost as though Atkinson's word processor told her she had written 100,000 words and she felt she needed to end the book before she got to 105,000 words. [The endings of the television series Bones are like that. (It's one of the three or four TV series that gets watched at our house.) Big mystery, fantastical scientific investigation, a little detective work, and in the last 2 minutes the bad guy confesses or is said to have been arrested. Quick and slick.]

I liked wondering about the main mystery and one of the subsidiary ones. There was one good red herring. Some of the over-complexity was caused by a less than interesting back story. Jackson Brodie needs to get over himself before there's another story about him. Atkinson has to get over over-complicating her novels. Complexity and obscurity do not make for better story telling. (Although at times I think that's what critics imply.)

Have you read Started Early, Took My Dog? What did you think? Anyone besides Dan read other Kate Atkinson books? How did you react? Write and tell this little bit of the world about your response. Or you can just post a comment at the end of this blog entry.

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• the author's website
  
• Jack Goodstein's review in the Seattle Post Intelligencer
  
• Janet Maslin's review in the New York Times
  
• Justine Jordan's review in The Guardian
  
• Emily Dickinson's poem, "I Started Early -- Took my Dog"
  
• Emily Dickinson's poem, "Hope is a Thing with Feathers"
  

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Skipping

I have read half a dozen of Thomas Perry's books. I have really liked them. (Search for Perry at the Delicious index for this blog.)

I picked up a recent Perry book at the library. It's one of a series he's written featuring Jane Whitefield: Runner. Jane Whitefield is a kind of magician who helps make people disappear because really bad guys are threatening their lives. She pulls out wads of cash, piles of previously established identities, formidable martial arts skills, and years of experience to create new people out of old ones.

Here are the Heart of Gold and Green Lantern awards for improbabilities and super heroism. The story is overwhelmed by those characteristics.

The other thing to note is that Perry's skills in creating and maintaining tension and suspense are as great as his sense of humor (that appears in his other books). Given the nature of the story: professionals searching across the country for a scared, pregnant, 20-year-old, tension and suspense cannot be relieved until the end of the story. Okay, but I'm not obligated to read 440 pages of gripping fear and anxiety. I read about half way through the book and then skipped to the last three chapters just to see how Perry tied up the loose ends.

Have you read Runner or another of Perry's "Jane Whitefield" novels? What did you think of it (them)? How did you deal with the tension? Is my imagination just too active? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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• The author's web site
  
• An unsigned review at Epinions.com
  
• John O'Connell's review at The Guardian
  
• Niki Masse Schoenfeldt's review at Curled Up With a Good Book

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Help. What am I missing?

Back at the end of September, I had the pleasure of reading Kate Atkinson's Case Histories. In October, I had the pleasure of seeing the three mystery novels about Jackson Brodie (the first of which was Case Histories) turned into BBC mysteries on the PBS series Masterpiece Mystery. I'm still looking forward to reading the other two Brodie mysteries. But not because of Atkinson's prize winning first book.

Because Case Histories was so good, I headed for the library with Atkinson's name on the top of my to-read list. I had several books to choose from and checked out Atkinson's first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum.

Back in '95, the book was named the Whitbread Book of the Year (now called the Costa Book of the Year). It's a respectable British prize. According to the prize's web site, "The Costa Book Awards is one of the UK's most prestigious and popular literary prizes and recognises some of the most enjoyable books of the year by writers based in the UK and Ireland."

According to the relevant Wikipedia page, the awards "are given both for high literary merit but also for works that are enjoyable reading and whose aim is to convey the enjoyment of reading to the widest possible audience. As such, they are a more populist literary prize than the Booker Prize."

Notice how I haven't said much about my reaction to the book yet?

I figure I need some instruction about this book.

I only got a bit past half way through it. And I only read that far because I recalled that at about the half-way point the elements of Case Histories began to come together and become a book and a story.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum didn't come together and gave no signs of coming together. It's a mish-mash of partial characterizations, incomplete anecdotes, and confusing descriptions of events.

And it took a long time for me to get half way through the book. I had the tendency to fall asleep after reading a few pages.

By half way through the book, I'd begun to distinguish between some of the characters, but not all of them. There was the narrator, who began telling the story at her conception. Some people in Mississippi might have appreciated the fetus' omniscience, but it was confusing, especially since after her birth, the narrator seemed not to know everything. There was the narrator's sister, Patricia, whose life would have made a more interesting story. The narrator's parents were intriguing, but not terribly interesting. And there were a bunch of other people, most of whom I could not distinguish from one another.

When I gave up on this book, I picked up Thomas Perry's Runner. By page 10, I was hooked on the story and caring about the characters. I really should have dropped the Atkinson book and picked up the Perry book long ago. I'll write something about Runner soon.

So, has anyone read this who can instruct me about why Behind the Scenes at the Museum was a prize-worthy novel? Or has anyone had an experience like my discouraging one? Write and tell me and the rest of this little bit of the world what you think.

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• The author's web site
  
• John Mulan's review in The Guardian
  
• Laura's review at Musings
  
• A reading guide from Reading Group Guides (that wouldn't have helped me at all)

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One good read deserves another

I finished the C. J. Box book on a good note. The end of the book was its best section. So I was anxious to read some more. Nancy took the first draft manuscript I was working on to Chicago with her, so I couldn't keep revising that. To keep me off the streets and out of the bars, I read some more.

The other book Mary had left for us was a J. A. Jance book, Fatal Error. This Jance book features Ali Reynolds, former LA news reader and a wanna be cop now living in Arizona on a pile of money she inherited from her late husband. (There's a Jance theme: Reynolds and the star of the Jance book I finished not long ago, J. P. Beaumont, are both rich as Croesus because of what they were left by now-dead spouses.)

The Beaumont book, Betrayal of Trust was a great one for me.

This Ali Reynolds book was nearly as great. I did decide to award it one Heart of Gold for improbabilities and I almost gave it a Green Lantern for superheroics.

But, the stories that Jance tells in this book flow so well and are so integrated, that I enjoyed reading it. It even kept me up past my bedtime last night so I could finish it.

The story begins with a former LA rival of Ali's who was also "let go" by a television station becsause mature women don't attract the right audiences for newscasts. Ali's "friend" starts drinking too much, eating too much, and chasing the wrong men too much.

One of the men she "chases" is online, and when she discovers that the online boyfriend is stringing several women along, she decides to expose the guy and begins interviewing the women he's been virtually involved with. The problem is that one of the names on the list she finds is his employer in a scheme to build and sell drone bombers to really bad guys.

The employer is a no-nonsense, heartless crook who begins offing the people involved with the scheme when they're no longer needed. Ali's friend is down the list, but she is on the list.

The murders involve city and county cops all over east LA and central California, so lots of cops get involved. (I did have fun looking at Salton City in Google Earth since that was one of the settings in the book. Man, what a dump -- even from satellite photos!)

Ali, who has finished police academy training, but is not a cop, works with lots of real cops who are suspicious -- especially when she drops a few thou on a private jet to get an off duty homicide detective from one crime scene to another.

There are lots of complicaitons and lots of nooks and crannies in this story, but they fit together so well. (That is what earns the Heart of Gold award for too many coincidences.) Jance tells the stories well, both through dialogue and narration.

J. A. Jance talks about the origins of two of the stories in Fatal Error.

It's such pure entertainment, that I almost feel guilty enjoying the reading so much.

So, have you read Fatal Error by J. A. Jance? or another of Jance's 43 novels? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it (them).

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• The publisher's web site
• A review from Kirkus Book Reviews
• Andy Plonka's review from The Mystery Reader
• Liz Nichols' review from The Mystery Maven Blog

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Wilderness adventure

Another book that family pusher Mary left with us was C. J. Box's new book, Back of Beyond.

I approached this book with a fair amount of caution. I've liked some of Box's books and disliked others. I was especially cautious after the enthusiastic pleasure of reading J. A. Jance's Betrayal of Trust. Some of Box's books were so violent and intense that I couldn't read the at bedtime. I do need my beauty sleep, you know. Besides, I was in the midst of a writing project of my own. (Be assured, you won't be interested in reading lesson plans for teaching comparative politics.)

So I began slowly and read a chapter at a time sporadically. I was trying to get a feeling for what was to come later. There was a lot of foreshadowing in the early chapters, and I wondered how far I would get into this story. I began anticipating a suspenseful, long, frightening drama of good guys hunting bad guys in the wilderness of Yellowstone.

The main character (Why is it that I resist using the term "star?") is disgraced Denver detective Cody Hoyt. He got a second chance at his career in a county cop shop in rural Montana. Box has created a character so flawed, that he's almost a parody of the mystery/adventure novel "star." Hoyt goes off the deep end (again) when his AA sponsor is killed and his son heads off on a wilderness pack trip with a man who is to become his step-father. Of course, the killer might also be on that pack trip. And no one knows who that killer might be.

Fortunately, to my little mind, Box exercises his writing skills in complicating the plot rather than creating frightening suspense. Horses and bears and wilderness plus competing evil plots and a couple fathers trying to bond with adolescent children, accompanied by an old codger who knows how to handle horses, make a good mix.

Yes, it's violent and bloody, but I wasn't tempted to quit reading. I actually read the last 100 pages avidly.

I really liked Back of Beyond. The flawed main character actually had some redeeming qualities. I'm sure I wouldn't like the guy, but he was brave and smart (mostly). His efforts to find and protect his son were admirable (mostly). My immediate reaction would be that the ends didn't justify the means, but this story is is like one of those ethical dilemmas that appear regularly in philosophy texts. So, maybe the ends did justify the means in this case. (Philosophers can jump in at any time here and present arguments.)

Have you read Back of Beyond or another of Box's novels? Write and tell this little bit of the world how you reacted?

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• The author's web site
  
• Maxine Clarke's review at Petrona
  
• Bonnie Brody's review at Mostly Fiction

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Losses and Recoveries

After struggling through Laurie R. King's latest book, I grabbed a book from a small stack left at our house by Mary, the family book pusher. I wanted to read something entertaining and, if possible, interesting. The book I picked up was J. A. Jance's Betrayal of Trust. It was entertaining and some of the characters were interesting.

There's a story in this book; actually several stories. It's what I was missing in Pirate King. Of course, maybe it was just me and "where" I was when I read it. There are events in Betrayal of Trust. One after another. Some of them seem to causally related (even when they are not). There are a couple of tragedies, some betrayals (as I would expect from the title), there's a revelation, and the beginning of a story of hope warm the hearts of Horatio Alger fans everywhere.

It's a "J. P. Beaumont novel" according to the cover. That means the main actors are Beaumont and his wife and detective partner Mel Soames. They work for the state's attorney general on special investigations. Going back at least as far as Nick and Nora Charles, they are independently wealthy and doing cop jobs because they want to.

The story begins with a snuff film found on the cell phone of the governor's step-grandson. The story expands from there to a suicide, two murders, at least three betrayals, an arson, and another murder. Luckily J.P. and Mel aren't expected to do all the investigating themselves. The AG keeps pulling more people into the case to follow up on clues.

In the midst of this complicated investigation, Beaumont gets an e-mail from an aunt he didn't know he had. He'd grown up with his mother who had been rejected by her family and the family of her lover who died before Beaumont was born. J. P.'s mother never told him who is father was and named him Beaumont after his father's home town. Suddenly there was the prospect of filling in the second half of his family tree. But first there were bullying, murder, and sex abuse cases to resolve.

I enjoyed reading this one. The story swept me along and kept pulling me back to the book as I tried to do other things. Luckily, it was cold and windy at the little cabin on the lake and I didn't really have to work at cleaning and closing during the first 24 hours we were there. I finished in time to write this before I had to tackle spider webs, dirty floors, and cupboards and a refrigerator that needed emptying.

Have you read Betrayal of Trust? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it.

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• The publisher's web site
  
• Christine Sedlacek's review in the Desert News
  
• Erin Andersen's review in the Lincoln Nebraska Journal Star

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King's Pirate

Back in September, Nancy and I had the pleasure of meeting Laurie R. King. She is the author of the Mary Russell mysteries featuring Ms Russell and her mentor Sherlock Holmes. King was in town to sign and read from her latest (11th) Russell mystery, Pirate King.

Besides being novelties, Nancy and I thought that the first few Russell mysteries were terrific. We also discovered King's Kate Martinelli series, written about a San Francisco detective. To us, they are equal to the best of the Russell mysteries.

The gems of King's books, in my mind, are the dark, yet hopeful novels about the lengths to which good people will go to do good things. I still wish those books are somewhat based on reality.

But back to Pirate King. The book required lots of research and travel to distant lands. We enjoyed hearing from King about her experience of writing the book. It was a bit weird to have her lead her audience at the reading in an amateurish and off-key new version of a Gilbert and Sullivan classic. (The new words were relevant to the new book.)

It was a treat to hear King read the first chapter. I often imagine an author's voice when I read, and now I'm pretty sure I had King's voice right in my head.

We gladly bought a copy, had King sign it it, and went home looking forward to reading the book that had been so much fun for the author to write. I got to read it first because Nancy was busy finishing a couple big projects.

It took a long time for me to read this book. Things began slowly in this mystery. In fact, the first real "event" didn't take place until half way through the book when one of the main characters pushes the other overboard during a crossing of the Mediterranean. And things didn't pick up much fro that point on.

I came away from the book feeling like I'd read an essay on movie making in the 1920s. (Remember all that research King enjoyed?) Following that was a little travelogue about Portugal, a briefing on heteronyms, a short history of the pirates of Morocco, and a description of an old Moroccan palace where the women of the movie company were held prisoner. (Remember the exotic travel King enjoyed?)

In my mind, stories are made up of events — one following another, often causally related. Essays and travelogues sometimes include themes and even events, but they are not mystery novels. This novel includes a flimsy plot, a bit of intrigue, and a dash of adventure, but it's more essay and travelogue than mystery novel. Enough said (for me).

I know the Russell books sell and they're what the publisher wants, but I want another Kate Martinelli mystery or another Darker Place.

Have you read Pirate King? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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• The author's web site
  
• 168 reviews at GoodReads
  
• Rick Keiffel's review at the Santa Cruz News

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Old gem

I'm working my way through Laurie R. King's latest book very slowly. So, I'm posting a 2002 entry from the old ReadingOnTheWeb site. It's about a book full of important ideas that's still one of my favorites.

To keep my sanity and to keep my brain cells functioning I must read something besides mysteries and depressing things like Michael Moore's commentary.

Chinua Achebe, like Stephen Jay Gould, is one of my heroes. A wise and perceptive man, he's written several beautiful novels about Nigeria. They may have been works of fiction, but they were true stories.

I picked up his most recent publication, Home and Exile at the Carleton bookstore. It's based on a series of lectures he gave at Harvard a few years ago.

Achebe gave me hope and made me doubt that hope in the span of these few pages (105 to be exact).

He makes the case for the power of story telling. His thesis reminds me of George Orwell's.

In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative.

Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like. Just as in corrupt, totalitarian regimes, those who exercise power over others can do anything..."

He then cites an epiphanal experience he had in a university classroom as the central metaphor for a discussion of how the "civilized" world captured the African narrative for over 400 years. At first it was done out of wonder, then to justify slavery. Later, the civilized world wrote to rationalize colonialism and then to defend its reputation.

He and his generation of African students, scholars, and writers began recognizing their loss and began inventing their own narratives.

Even today, as "the empire writes back," Westerners fight a rear guard action to maintain possession of the Third World's narrative.

V.S. Naipaul wins plaudits and is discussed in suburban book groups for describing the depravity and deprivaton of the Third World and deploring the childish resistance of Third Worlders to assimilation into Western civilization. And conservative scholars react to multiculturalism as if recognizing validity in something other than Judeo-Christian civilization threatens the importance (not to mention the superiority) of Greek, Roman, and Anglo Saxon values.

Achebe offers hope that more peoples will reclaim their own narratives, but one bit of pessimism startled me. It's possible, he says, that the damage done by "civilization's" control of the description of Africa and Africans for so many centuries and the propaganda sown by those narratives has made it impossible for us and them to see each other as equally human.

My idealism was challenged directly in a humanistic way. The shock was a danger to my naivete. At my age I shouldn't be vulnerable to such shocks. It does mean I'm still learning, but has my idealism been that superficial? Perhaps so. When confronted by Achebe's words, I knew I shared his fear.

Dehumanization of Africans by Europeans began before slavery. It grew more powerful and even scientific later. In the USA, slavery and the accompanying racism has shaped our culture in powerful ways. Can we, the purveyors of the toxic myth, overcome it? I sure don't know. We've made some progress in our civic behavior during my lifetime, but internalizing common humanity may be beyond us. Furthermore, can the victims of such description overcome the lies, the insults and the dehumanizing treatment? I can only accept Achebe's doubts.

This is an important book. If we're going to survive as a world, as a civilization, as a culture, and as a nation, we need to learn the lesson taught by this wise man. Read the book. If your library doesn't have it, ask them to find it. If you can afford the $10 it costs, buy it. It's Home and Exile by Chinua Achebe, published by Anchor Books A Division of Random House, Inc. The ISBN is 0-385-72133-1.

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• Alastair Niven's review in The Independent (UK)
• Kole Omotoso's review at Africa Resource
• Amy Reads' review

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Surprise! Surprise!

My expectations for a good book are probably pretty low. I don't demand big truths like Barbara Kingsolver. I like a story well told. I want to read about characters who are more than marionettes or caricatures. I like realistic stories to remain realistic and for fantasy stories to make me wonder.

As I finished Case Histories while sitting in front of the little lake named Blake, I realized I'd gotten more than I expected from a good book. Kate Atkinson's book took me by surprise because I expected just another mystery novel. This one was more.

The story is well told, but it's told in little episodes from different points of view. Sometimes the episodes were only a paragraph long. Sometimes the voice telling the story switches from one character to another with little warning. As a reader I had to constantly be "on my toes" -- no groggy reading or skimming through this one.

The book begins with three tragic and horrific short stories set in 1970, 1979, and 1994. A child disappears, a young woman is murdered, and a girl runs away from neglectful grandparents after her father is killed by her mother. Gradually these disparate events begin to come together in the files and investigations of a private investigator in Cambridge (UK). Former police investigator Jackson Brodie is approached in the course of a few days by people involved in these three "cold cases" for help in resolving them.

There are two or three principals involved in each of the stories, and Brodie is an experienced investigator who asks good questions and has good instincts for evaluating the answers he gets. Most of the people he meets and talks to are interesting and complicated, and, as the story progresses, so is Brodie. Atkinson sends him off into very personal internal daydreams in the middle of interviews sometimes, and they are very revealing. As distracting as those were to me as a reader, they didn't seem to distract Brodie from his quest for more information. However, Brodie's past includes a couple horror stories as tragic as the ones he's investigating.

I thought that Atkinson's writing was so evocative of the characters' emotions that often I could only read short bits at a time. It's realism without improbabilities. Well, there's one big and one smaller improbability, but I can always let a remote coincidence or two slip by. Neither the story nor the characters depended upon the improbabilities.

Case Histories is the best book I read this summer. Since summer is officially over, that's a wrap.

So, who recommended Kate Atkinson? Come on, out with it. You deserve some credit somewhere in karma. Have you read Case Histories or another of Atkinson's novels? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it (them).

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• Kate Atkinson's web site
• Nymeth's review at her blog, Things Mean a lot
• Michael Allen's review at his blog, Grumpy Old Bookman (this one's better than mine even though he's likes the book less)

Jason Isaacs (actor who plays Jackson Brodie) interviews Kate Atkinson about the BBC adaptation of Case Histories

Trailer for the BBC series Case Histories

Teaser for the BBC series Case Histories

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