Good story telling in the Peak District

I've been recovering, just not very quickly. I keep feeling guilty because I haven't excelled at recovering. (Will the docs give me bad grades?) Now that I'm not sleepy all the time, I do have energy to read.

From the Northfield library I picked books by two authors who have entertained me before: Thomas Perry and Stephen Booth.

I started the Perry book, Silence, first, but I didn't finish it. It reminded me of his Jane Whitefield books that I have read. The good guys are practically super heroes. The bad guys are practically super villains. Silence is a chase story, like the Jane Whitefield stories. About half way through the book I got bored with the cat and mouse chasing.

Booth

Then I picked up Stephen Booth's Scared to Live. I read all of it and enjoyed just about every minute I spent following the stories and "listening" to the characters. Like his other books, this one is set in the UK's Peak District. It's an area of hills, lakes, mountains, and abandoned farms which is dominated by the UK's first national park. It's a park that has 4 to 5 times as many visitors per year as the USA's Yellowstone. (It's near metropolitan Manchester.)

But there are villages and towns, private dwellings, and private farms within the park. So there are also British police. Booth's stories revolve around the crime fighting of Derbyshire force. DC Ben Cooper and DS Diane Fry are the main cops on the job, but there are others on the force. And, whenever things get busy, people are called in from other places. In this story a cop from Bulgaria even joins the hunt for bad guys.

A reclusive woman is murdered. A mother and her two children die in an arson fire. Two people are killled by hitmen in Bulgaria. A Bulgarian immigrant dies in his isolated caravan on a farm where he had been working. A baby disappears, her nervous father is attacked, and her uncle jumps off a tower meant for sight seeing.

Once again, Booth tells several stories, some seemingly related and others not. However, before everything comes to a conclusion, some of the stories that seemed related turn out not to be and others turn out to be connnected. Booth does this well.

None of the stories get neglected or falter. The connections that appear and disappear seem unforced. The ending, when everything has to be explained seems a little contrived (as with the other Booth novels I've read), but I can live with that since the rest is so well done.

Did I say I really like reading Scared to Live? Well, I did.

Have you read Scared to Live? How did you react to it? Write and tell this little bit of the world about your reaction.

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• The author's web page
• Andy Plonka's review at The Mystery Reader
• Missuswolf's review at StoryLand
• Sjhigbee's review at Brainfluff

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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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Reading what I write

I guess I better read what I write as well as what comes to me from other hands.

A couple days ago, as I concluded my thoughts on a new book, I wrote, "I liked reading Fidelity. Now, I'll have to go looking for a Jane Whitefield mystery and see how Perry handles a series."

When I looked at the plot summary of the first Jane Whitefield novel I thought it looked familiar.

Then I searched this blog. I neglected Bird Loomis' advice and didn't read the first of Thomas Perry's Whitefield novels (Vanished), but I did read Dance for the Dead last fall.

I even wrote about it: First romance, now fantasy. I sort of liked it, but I wasn't terribly impressed. It must not have been very memorable. I'd forgotten about it. I guess writing about things I read isn't a way to remember forgettable things.

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Murders most foul

After reading about Montana at the beginning of the 20th century, I picked up a book about southern California at the beginning of the 21st century. That hundred years might have been the least of the differences between the two books.

First Bird Loomis and then Gary Sankary recommended Thomas Perry's books, and I've read a bunch of them. (Search for Perry in the search box at the top left.) No series of books centered on a few stock characters in Perry's bibliography; the books stand alone and the characters are unique (except for the "Jane Whitefield series" which I haven't come across yet).

Fidelity is one of the books I bought on my most recent Sunday afternoon expedition to a bookstore.

While Dancing at the Rascal Fair was an antique Western romance, Fidelity is a murder mystery thriller. Doig writes about people's lives over a 30 years span; Perry writes about events during a week (with some narrative flashbacks); the tensions in the story of last century Montana came from the ongoing nature of relationships while the tensions in the southern California story come from the murderous intent of a couple of the characters.

The only internal dialogues and reflections indulged in by Perry's characters are directly connected to the mysteries and the dangers. Doig's main narrator was often thinking about meaning and self as well as destiny. There is some progression in the emotions of the threatened widow of the first murder victim in Fidelity, but it seems to come without anguish. Would a woman still in shock at her husband's murder, who just found out about his long term affair, really approach her husband's mistress with an "I dont' care about that, I care about this..." attitude? Ah, well, even if it's unlikely, Perry tells a good story -- and remember, I'm a story guy.

The story begins with an ambush murder. It continues with sinister and horrific threats against the dead guy's widow, and the circle of horror expands from there. The characters and their back stories are lightly drawn, but it doesn't matter. It's an adventure story and well told.

I liked reading Fidelity. Now, I'll have to go looking for a Jane Whitefield mystery and see how Perry handles a series.

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

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• Thomas Perry's web site
  
• Janet Maslin's review in The New York Times
  
• Kirkus Review on Fidelity

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First romance, now fantasy

Taking Bird Loomis' advice, I picked up a book by Thomas Perry. And then another and another. I liked them. One of the things I liked was that the characters were new to me in each book. There are times when it's a treat to follow characters through several novels. (See Tony Hillerman, Dana Stabenow, and Jacqueline Winspear.) But the novelty in Perry's books was refreshing.

I did notice in the dust jacket bios, that Perry was identified as the author of the Jane Whitefield novels. I was curious enough to look for one the last time I was in the Northfield library (celebrating the centennial of its Carnegie building). I picked out the oldest Jane Whitefield novel I could find and checked out Dance for the Dead, published in '96.

The book starts out like gangbusters. The first two chapters are great short stories. I was ready to read a series of short stories with little ligaments holding them together into a "novel." Turns out that the rest of the book is woven around those stories to create the novel. There are other short stories, but by the time I got involved in the book, I wasn't looking for them anymore.

This novel, like most of the other Perry novels, is a fantasy. Jane Whitefield is a magician, a superwoman, and smarter than any of the other bears. She's a Seneca woman from western New York who helps people disappear when they need to hide from bad people. It's a dangerous occupation, but she's the expert. Like Sherlock Holmes, she has people who help her in small, but essential ways. She always has enough money and another identity with documentation (even ones she can share with her clients). She always knows people she can go to. They're always home. She always wins the fights. She always is the survivor. No villain that Perry can invent can outwit her for long. She's heartless with the bad guys and motherly with victims. She probably does everything except shepherd people into heaven. The ones she sees out of this world are obviously going elsewhere.

I had to put on hold my desires for believability. There's practically nothing believable in the book. The action scenes are well done and suspenseful, as long as you forget that Jane Whitefield is coming out on top a the end. The plot is simple, but the telling is complex. That may be why I liked reading it.

Have you rad Dance for the Dead? Have you read any of the other Jane Whitefield novels? What did you think of them? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought.

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• Publisher's web site for Thomas Perry's books
  
• An Australian bookworm's thoughts on the Jane Whitefield series of novels
  
• Robert Birnbaum's interview with Thomas Perry at identitytheory.com

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Perry's Death Benefits

Gary Sankary, wrote about Death Benefits by Thomas Perry. It's one I'd written about previously: More from a fox of an author.

Hapless

When I had read the available books from West Yellowstone, I was back in Northfield heading for the public (socialist) library. The librarians have a rolling cart positioned just in front of the main desk where recently-returned books are placed before they are reshelved. I always look at the contents of that cart.

The look paid off the last time I was there, and I went no further. I plucked a new Dana Stabenow mystery and Thomas Perry's Strip from the cart, went to the automatic check out machine with my library card, and left the library. I doubt I was there more than four minutes and walked away with several hours of good reading. I'll write about the Stabenow book later, but here's to Thomas Perry.

If many mystery writers are producing episodes of TV series featuring a few main characters and a few settings, Perry is producing movies set in a variety of places and populated with characters unseen elsewhere in the world of fiction. The dust jacket informations says that Perry "is the author of the Jane Whitefield series..." Well, I might have to go look for one of those. But for now, there is a long list of non-series Thomas Perry books that I look forward to.

Strip, like Metzger's Dog and Death Benefits, is a well-told entertaining tale.

A hapless mook lucked out when robbing a strip club owner who was trying to deposit the nightly receipts from his three gentlemen's clubs. A hapless LA newcomer, who has been spening his retirmement savings trying to impress girls, gets fingered for the robbery. A hapless police lieutenant, who has simultaneous twenty-year marriages and a kid from each who is about to enroll in an expensive university, is assigned to investigate the robbery. The mook gets a girl friend/accomplice for the next late night robbery, and she excitedly shoots someone. The newcomer proves that he's not hapless. The lieutenant stumbles along trying to figure out who is doing what to whom and where will the tuition money come from. Then, a Mexican drug boss and his bodyguards are murdered.

Details? You'll have to read Strip. It's a great and complicated tale with an ending befitting O. Henry.

Have you, too, read Strip? What did you think? Write and tell this bit of the world what you think.

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• Thomas Perry's web site
  
• Janet Maslin's review in the New York Times
  
• Carol Wallace's review at Book Group of One

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More from the fox of an author

A couple weeks ago, Bird Loomis recommended Silence by Thomas Perry. Perry was a new author to me, so I went to the Northfield Library and looked for books by him. Silence wasn't on the shelf, but Death Benefits was and I checked it out.

Perry [right] may indeed be a fox compared to other mystery writers. I can't tell yet. I've only read one of his books. I can tell you that I thought Death Benefits was outstanding. It was a delight to read. One sign that Bird is right about Perry's approach to mystery fiction was that this plot didn't follow the conventions of mystery stories. This author does indeed know more than one way to structure a mystery.

He also knows good elements to use. One of the main characters is a private investigator whose skills and connections are nearly magical. Max Stillman lets nothing stand in his way, and he always wins the brawls. He can find out anything through his connections. I began to wonder why this mystery was so difficult for him to sort out because it was hard to see a shortcoming in his panoply of abilities. But without some shortcomings, the book would be pretty short and not very interesting.

When on an assignment for an old-fashioned insurance company, Stillman drafts a young analyst, John Walker, out of the company's cube farm to help him find anomalies in suspect claims. Thus begins a cross-country adventure without any limitation of a budget (thanks to the scale of the fraud). Walker is dragged into late night surveillance, back alley fist fights, attempts to dodge bullets, and unexpected romance. (See what I mean about Perry's awareness of the traditional building blocks of mystery fiction?)

The romance comes for Walker in the form of a seductive computer hacker who works for one of Stillman's contract researchers. If Death Benefits hadn't been published several years before Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, I could easily have been convinced that the relationship between Walker and the mysterious "Serena" had been copied from the relationship between Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander in Larsson's books.

If you've read many of my reactions here, you know that I have trouble with contrived situations and things that don't make sense. Well, Perry's story includes some real whoppers, but I didn't notice them until I was done with the book. I credit that to Perry's story telling: it's like being on a fast-moving train that goes through an implausible landscape that doesn't seem implausible until the train stops. (e.g. What's with a New England town of 3,500 people where the police department has 16 patrol cars? Come on, why didn't the magical investigator or his statistical wizard sidekick notice that obvious anomaly? Even the city of 15,000+ I live in doesn't have that many squad cars lined up in the parking lot behind the "Safety Center.") The final scene was rather like the mob scene from a Transylvanian horror movie, but it was only the arrival of the cavalry that made me realize what a ridiculous ride I'd been taken on.

I'm encouraged enough that when I take this book back to the library, I'll look for Silence or another of Perry's books. Have you read Death Benefits or another of Perry's books? What did you think? Write and tell this little bit of the world about your reactions.

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Thomas Perry's web site


"Putting the "Fun" in Dysfunctional," Patrick A. Smith's review of Death Benefits in January Magazine

Andy Plonka's review at The Mystery Reader

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Mature Mystery Writers: The Hedgehog and the Fox

Bird Loomis wrote from Lawrence, Kansas about the delightful results of forgetting to take a book he'd begun on a quick trip to DC.

By happenstance, over the past couple of weeks, I have been reading simultaneously two separate mysteries, by two of my favorite authors. I started Lee Child's Jack Reacher novel, Gone Tomorrow, but neglected to take it on a quick trip to D.C. Coming home, I browsed Hudson News for a good choice, and happened upon Thomas Perry's Silence, which I snarfed up and began to read on the trip home.

So there I was, smack in the middle of two page-turners (trust me). Now I often have two or three books going at any given time, but I can't think of a time that I had a pair of compelling mysteries. In the end, for no good reason, I finished Silence, then returned to Gone Tomorrow and zipped through it to its predictably violent conclusion. Social scientist that I am, I had the makings of a study: two books, each quite good, and yet very different. So how were they different in what they delivered?

The metaphor of the fox and the hedgehog, made modern in a 1953 essay on Tolstoy by Isaiah Berlin, divides people into two sorts: the hedgehog, who knows one very big thing, and the fox, who knows many things. In politics, FDR was the classic fox, while George W. Bush looks like a major hedgehog to me. Reading Silence and Gone Tomorrow at the same time made me consider what makes writers - and especially mystery authors - so interesting that we come back to them, time and again.

Most obviously, Lee Child, through Jack Reacher, is a classic hedgehog. Child had created a protagonist who strains our sense of disbelief, with his stripped-down style of life, and unworldly skills. Time after time, Child places Reacher in a setting (often a small town, but New York City for Gone Tomorrow), creates a challenge that the stubborn ex-major cannot ignore, and allows us to observe him solve the puzzle with an admirable mix of brain and brawn. Jack Reacher, more than most series heroes, is an impossible character, and I, for one, continue to be drawn to him, as he works through a maze of difficulties, often coming to terms with a powerful background figure (the terrorist Lila Hoth in Tomorrow's Child). Child has written 17 Reacher novels, and they usually work well. It's a testimony to his writing and to the character he's created that his books have grown in popularity over time. Still, he's a one-trick pony with a great trick.

Thomas Perry, to mix my metaphors, is a different kettle of fish. Although he has created a popular series and protagonist (Jane Whitefield), he usually writes one-off thrillers. Perry is not the blockbuster author that Child has become, but he has had great critical success from the get go. His first two books, The Butcher's Boy and Metzger's Dog won substantial acclaim. I happened on them, and have been a great fan, ever since, although I've missed a book here and there, in part because each new novel does not become an event (I was lucky to find Silence at the airport). Still, I always look forward to a Perry book, because I know I'm likely to be surprised, by characters, plot, motivations, and even locale. Perry writes hedgehog novels, where plot and personality intersect to take the reader on unsuspected journeys.

In Silence, we get Jack Till, a jaded ex-cop, but with a twist. He has a Down syndrome daughter, now grown, to whom he's devoted. He's not a drunk or a fool, but he's damaged goods, something of a first cousin to Harry Bosch, Michael Connelly's complicated cop. Till turns out to be reasonably interesting and pretty damned competent, which is a good thing, in that he has to match wits with Paul and Sylvie Turner, a married team of hit artists, whose job it is to kill someone Till is protecting. The growing tensions between the highly intelligent, highly lethal Turners (which escalate up to the novel's final page) and between them and their employer combine to keep the reader thoroughly entertained. And that's without them directly dealing with Jack Till. Perry takes us on a great trip, actually a series of actual travels across California and Nevada. He also creates a terrific bad guy, the ultimate employer of the deadly Turners.

Lee Child places us on Jack Reacher's side - indeed, we often feel as if we are at his side - while he embarks upon his quest. Thomas Perry allows us to get close to Jack Gill and the Turners, and strangely, we're rooting for all of them, another fox-like move. Both Child and Perry provide real entertainment, yet it may be that neither is pure fox or pure hedgehog. For example, in the next Reacher book, it 's reported that he has a burgeoning relationship with a woman who aggressively questions his bizarre life style of traveling with nothing but a toothbrush. Maybe we'll get a little exploration of Reacher's psyche; in fact, the best Reacher novels do move in this direction.

On the other hand, Thomas Perry has created some memorable characters in Silence. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Turners return, or Jack Gill begin to work on a renewed relationship with the woman he has successfully protected. As he's demonstrated with Jane Whitefield previously, maybe this fox has more than a bit of hedgehog in his literary genes. I hope so. Paul and Sylvie Turner, dangerous to others and to each other, deserve another go-round.

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• Lee Child's web site

• Kenneth Turan's review of Gone Tomorrow in the Los Angeles Times

• Perry's publisher's web site

• Eleanor Bukowsky's review of Silence at Mostly Fiction

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