Pleasantville by Attica Locke (audio)

Posted on November 20, 2023 by pagesofjulia

Attica Locke is a very strong mystery writer. I was utterly absorbed by her characters, who felt perfectly real to me, such that I worried about them when I stepped away from the book. It’s a fully-fledged world. I will say that I was a good reader for this one, too, because it’s set in my hometown of Houston, and Locke’s Houston is extremely detailed and true to the original. I loved this aspect of it as much as any other, and that won’t be quite such a nostalgic, moving experience for just any reader; but the strong sense of place and that level of detail will certainly work for anyone who appreciates those strengths.

The plot of Pleasantville is quite complex, again quite detailed, and operates at the intersection of crime, criminal and civil law, and politics, in a particular milieu. This is both a great strength and a potential liability: it asks of the reader a fair degree of attention. If you bring that to this book, you will be amply rewarded. I am still a bit reeling from it, and my admiration of Locke is solidified.

It’s 1996, and a hotly contested mayoral election in Houston is expected to hinge – as they often or always do – on the neighborhood of Pleasantville, an early-established haven for middle-class African Americans 50 years earlier and a continuing close-knit community. Then a teenaged girl disappears off the streets of Pleasantville on election night, and the criminal case clashes strangely with the political drama, and both threaten to swallow whole the man we meet on the first pages: lawyer Jay Porter, whose office has just been burglarized. Porter is still reeling from the loss of his wife to cancer a year earlier. His teenaged daughter and grade-school son are struggling in their own ways. His law practice is on its final legs. He specializes in class-action suits handling issues of environmental racism, like one at work in Pleasantville; he does not want a criminal defense case, but the most powerful players in Pleasantville have other ideas.

There are so many compelling characters in this story that my head almost spins, but it’s all woven together incredibly well, keeping me both engaged and on track (if I put in a bit of effort myself – and I’m happy to). I’m very much still thinking about Jay Porter and hoping his daughter Ellie comes through okay; I can’t wait to get more from Locke. Whew.

Rating: 8 blocks.

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The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North (audio)

Posted on November 17, 2023 by pagesofjulia

I am doing the unfortunate thing where I’ve waited too long since I listened to this one. In my defense, it was a whirlwind two-week road trip that allowed me to listen to several (!) audiobooks.

Another recommendation by Liz, this one’s pretty mind-bending. Harry August narrates the story of his lives himself, beginning with the first time, when he lived unremarkably. He was born in a train station washroom in 1919, and was then adopted but didn’t know it; his adoptive mother died when he was young, and his adoptive father remained distant; he served in World War II and then returned to the estate where his father had served as a sort of maintenance man, which role Harry takes over until his own death in old age. Ho hum. Then… it all starts over again. In his second life, he does not handle well the knowledge that this has all happened once before. In his third life, he uses what he knows of the war (for example) to his advantage, staying away from high-casualty battles and the like. With each life, he gains a little better understanding of what he’s experiencing. But he struggles to make meaning of it all, even as he meets others like himself: ouroborans, they call themselves, or kalachakras. Until, that is, he meets one man in particular, a fellow ouroboran who will become perhaps his greatest friend and nemesis.

I’ve already said too much, and will let you discover Harry’s many lives and acquaintances for yourself from here.

It’s quite a thought-provoking concept, and a new twist on time travel and the tricky question of the butterfly effect. (Would you kill Hitler? What if he’s only replaced by something worse?) The novel is not plot-driven, precisely, and it’s not character-driven at all. Harry has remarkable drive to learn, understand, and explain; this intrigues me about him, but he’s a bit short on actual personality (and has more of it than anyone else in the book). So, a concept-driven novel, which is a change. I found it perfectly absorbing, one to get lost in, and to occasionally pause and ponder. I will say, there weren’t characters I liked, and that can make it a little tough to hook in. I was very intrigued, but often bemused too.

The audiobook was a strong production on the whole. Peter Kenny does a wide range of voices, which are often pleasing, but I must say his American accents are not convincing.

It will be interested to see how this one sticks with me.

Rating: 7 beakers.

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Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (audio)

Posted on June 3, 2022 by pagesofjulia

I got this title off some list of bests somewhere, and queued it up behind In the Woods on the return trip from Texas. It was a delightful, weird, engrossing adventure. I am going to be careful and vague with this one, as it hinges on big reveals that I don’t wish to spoil.

Set in Victorian London, Fingersmith begins with the first-person narration of Sue Trinder, an orphan who has been raised by a household of ‘honest thieves’ and a mother figure, Mrs. Sucksby. Sue and her comrades are fingersmiths, or pickpockets (and they partake in other crimes and cons, mostly of the property reassignment category). One day Sue is invited into a masterful heist: she will pose as lady’s maid to an innocent, sheltered woman of just her own age, the also-orphaned Maud Lilly, to aid in a fellow crook’s seduction of the lady. He will then marry her, steal her fortune, and have her locked away in a madhouse (which is sinfully easy to do to women, in those times and into quite recent history). Sue has never been a lady’s maid before, so she has much to learn about the job, but off she goes. The plot proceeds, but Sue’s loyalties become split, as it turns out she rather likes her mistress.

This is just the very beginning of the complications. But then! Part two! The first-person perspective shifts, which I did not see coming. And everything the reader thought she knew about this story gets turned on its head. I will stop writing about plot now, but it continued to surprise me, repeatedly, and Waters gets full marks for this feat. Also, I was not expecting erotica, which popped up a few times to (again) surprise me and was remarkably well done. Fingersmith is absolutely a plot to get thoroughly lost in; really great road trip fodder. I did feel in the middle that it dragged on a bit longer than it needed to – especially when the victim of this or that plot must wallow in her misfortune. I could take much less of the wallowing. But eventually we stepped out of that puddle, and the story continued to twist and turn; I was riveted right until the end, and was sorry to be done. Masterfully plotted; do recommend.

Rating: 8 ink stains.

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In the Woods by Tana French (audio)

Posted on May 27, 2022 by pagesofjulia

Loading up on audiobooks for the big drive to Texas and back, I made an unusual call: I chose to reread a book, or rather to listen to one I’d read years before. Life is mostly too short for rereads, but: 1, I love Tana French and have read everything of hers already. 2, I found this one on a best-of list of some sort, I think specifically referring to the audiobook (or else it’s just that I discovered late that she is especially good on audio, because of the Irish accents). 3, I am that lucky mystery fan who forgets plots and can therefore enjoy them again and anyway 4, I read this one of hers first and (mostly importantly) before I had this blog. So, off on the big drive with this excellent book…

…which it turns out I had forgotten wholly, because the plot scarcely felt familiar at all past the introductory scenes. First, a prologue flashback: in 1984, in a Dublin suburb, three 12-year-old best friends don’t come home when called for tea. Two of them, a boy and a girl, will never be seen again. The third, Adam, is found with his broken fingernails dug into a tree’s bark, with blood in his shoes but unharmed. He is catatonic and unable to help the police with their investigations. He goes away to boarding school; his family moves away; and then the reader discovers that he is the novel’s narrator, now a grown murder detective who goes by the name Rob Ryan (having taken his middle name to avoid his rocky past). Hilariously, Rob believes that his career choice has nothing to do with his lost childhood best friends.

In the present, some twenty years later, the body of a murdered child turns up in the very same suburb, in the same woods (now much abbreviated by development, and under controversy as a freeway expansion runs up against an archeological dig). Ryan and his partner and best friend, Cassie Maddox, pull the case, despite being rather the young misfits of the department. Unbelievably, the murder squad does not know that Rob Ryan was once Adam Ryan, the very famous found boy of that old–and possibly connected–crime. Cassie is the only one, beside Rob’s parents (whom he feels he barely knows), who knows his identity.

In the Woods is an atmospheric, contemplatively-paced mystery novel in two timelines. As Ryan works on the present-day murder, he also probes at his own lost memories of that childhood trauma. It is also the story of relationships: Rob and Cassie share a very special bond, a very special friendship, which both resists and succumbs to stereotypes. I think it’s worth remarking that I do not actually like Rob Ryan, our narrator, protagonist, and therefore one might expect our hero. He isn’t that. Cassie is a compelling and likeable character, but since she is only seen through Ryan’s eyes (we get the story from him), I fear she never quite becomes fully known–not only in the way that none of us ever really knows anyone, but also because for all his adoration and attempts to understand her, she is finally a cipher for Ryan’s own issues. Perhaps what disappoints me most about him is that even after all his complexities and soul-searching, Ryan winds up predictable after all. I do not like him in the end.

The plot is however not predictable, even to this rereader. In fact, as I think about other Tana French books, it’s not actually the whodunit solution that I remember, but the atmosphere, the experience of being in the story as it unfolds. There were times when the pacing felt a bit off, when I felt we spent too much time wallowing, and that feels perhaps familiar from other T. French novels as well, but that’s a fairly minor quibble when I think about how real these characters felt. Also, the accents are completely wonderful on audio, which I think is the best way to do Tana French.

As I write this review, I’ve let too much time pass (because vacation), and already the denouement’s details are fading for me, but the relationships – between Ryan and Maddox, and other ones – still feel very near to me, the personalities and the conflicts. And I’ll always be back for more French.

Rating: 8 home-cooked meals.

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The Late Show by Michael Connelly (audio)

Posted on October 4, 2021 by pagesofjulia

We have another mediocre showing from Connelly here, I’m afraid. This one is a departure from the Bosch series: The Late Show features Detective Renee Ballard, who is also a renegade anti-establishment figure who gets shit on by the LAPD, but with an added woman-in-a-man’s-world angle. (She is also younger.) I was once more a little indifferent as to plot for most of the novel, but I was pleased with some significant twists and reveals in the final denouement, so that was nice. The narrator again felt awfully wooden – what is up with this trend? And why are there so few contractions? (I am instead of I’m, can not instead of can’t) …Connelly’s writing feels consistently awkward over the last many books. I wonder, is it him or is it me? I keep meaning to go back and read some early Bosch (in print!) and investigate this question, whether Connelly’s writing has become less good or I have become harder to please. But devoting that time feels like asking a lot at this point.

Ballard is appealing in some ways but doesn’t quite feel fully fleshed. She has interesting relationships with other cops, and an interesting backstory, referring to various traumas; but all of this feels told and not shown. I kept feeling like I was waiting for the story to ramp up, but instead it ended.

Maybe one more experiment with this formerly beloved author before I give up, with deep regrets.

Rating: 6 and a half black buttons.

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Lee Child shorts: “Public Transportation” and “Wet with Rain” (audio)

Posted on September 13, 2021 by pagesofjulia

“Public Transportation” was available from Audible as a standalone short (originally from the collection Phoenix Noir), and “Wet with Rain” comes from Exit Wounds: Nineteen Tales of Mystery from the Modern Masters of Crime. They were, I think, 13 and 28 minutes respectively, give or take. Just a few quick indulgences during a drive to the next county to my local bike shop.

Classic Child, so not much to report here, but in the best ways. “Public Transportation” offers a surprise twist and no serial characters. A cop is talking with a journalist about an old unsolved murder case; we get a fairly quick summary of the crime, the investigation (in hindsight, botched), and the problematic conclusion eventually settled on by the police department. “Wet with Rain” is also Reacher-free, but slightly more involved. We get a little less context, but eventually understand that two Americans with a certain agency have traveled to Ireland to run a secret operation, about which information is doled out slowly and out of order, so that we’re still putting things together even as they happen. Each of these stories represents a sort of puzzle – for the reader and for the players involved. Only one has a quick punch of a surprise; the other is more of a slow burn. And, again, neither involves our hero Reacher. But each serves as a good example of Child’s skill with intrigue, detail, and apparently effortless storytelling (which actually may be the hardest kind), as well as a certain dark side of human nature. I enjoyed both as quick jaunts, and would love to have access to more of the same: quick, punchy stories by authors I know I love. My lifestyle doesn’t support longer audiobooks these days. Look for more podcast reviews to come, I guess…

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did not finish: Horns by Joe Hill (audio)

Posted on September 6, 2021 by pagesofjulia

Horns is a horror novel by Joe Hill, son of the horror novel empire of the world, and author of Heart-Shaped Box and NOS4A2. So I had high hopes, and indeed was moving along smoothly enough, feeling engaged and interested, until about the halfway point of this audiobook’s 14 hours.

This is the story of Iggy Perrish, who wakes up at the beginning of the book with dim memories of the night before, and horns growing out of his temples. His (apparently perfect) girlfriend was brutally raped and murdered a year prior, and although Ig was never proven guilty or innocent, his community assumes his guilt; this, on top of his loss, has quite ruined his life. When the newly horned Ig encounters anyone at all, they go into a sort of trance of perfect honesty, mindlessly confessing their worst desires and asking his permission to act them out. He’s become sort of everyone’s personal demon. Then the story flashes back to when he first met the late girlfriend, ten years previous, when they were just kids; and occasionally forward, to later in their relationship; and back to the horned present, where adult Ig tries to figure out what to do with his horns and unwanted magical powers, and solve the mystery of his girlfriend’s murder.

This was intriguing, if often awful. It’s a horror novel. And I have a taste for the occasional horror novel, as evidenced by previous Hill and King novels I’ve enjoyed; I certainly have a high tolerance for graphic violence and horrific acts in fiction, as evidenced by the fiction I love by Connelly, Child, James Lee Burke and others. I was okay with Ig’s sad story right up until a scene involving a decapitated snake, bullying, and a nasty nickname. It’s weird what will turn me off. (I’ve noticed before that it’s often cruelty to animals.) But there was a moment, listening to this book, and hearing the bleating of the bullies, when I just really didn’t want to hear any more. So I turned it off.

Fred Berman’s narration was a solid performance, I guess, which is to say often off-putting in the way that this scene was off-putting – as Hill intended? I know that sounds like faint praise. Berman does different voices and accents that I found effective; the effect was not pleasant. I wonder if I would have tolerated this book better on the page.

No accounting for what works for me. I thought I had a stronger stomach for the awful than this! But Hill wins this round? Or loses? As ever, your mileage may vary.

Rating: think I’ll skip this one and leave it at ‘DNF.’

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The Crossing by Michael Connelly (audio)

Posted on August 20, 2021 by pagesofjulia

The first, good news is that this one went over better than my last Connelly effort, Two Kinds of Truth. I found the plot absorbing throughout. I repeat my criticism of Titus Welliver’s narration, though – I’d forgotten until I reread that earlier review, but I again find him uninflected or occasionally putting the emphasis in what feels like the wrong place in a phrase or sentence. I like him onscreen but not here.

Harry Bosch has been retired from the LAPD for a few months, having been pushed out against his will; his half-brother and lawyer Mickey Haller is suing the Department on his behalf, so the blood is generally bad. (To place us in time, Bosch’s daughter Maddie is finishing her senior year of high school and getting ready to go off to Chapman for college.) Haller then asks Bosch to do some investigation work for a client who Haller is sure is innocent of the murder he’s accused of. Bosch has a strong reaction to the idea: working for the defense would be crossing a line. Defense = bad. (I easily believe that many officers feel this way, so I don’t doubt the realism, but it rankles. The whole point of the adversarial court system is to push back against all charges, forcing their proof, and protecting against false convictions. No one is served by law enforcement’s insistence that it never ever gets anything wrong [even leaving aside purposeful wrongdoing].) Bosch does come around to the idea: if this accused client is innocent, that means there’s a murderer out there roaming free. This activates his sense of justice; plus he’s gotten pretty bored with his motorcycle rebuild project. We all know Bosch needs to be crime-solving. So he agrees to just take a look at the case for Haller. And we’re off and running.

For a little added plot interest and complication, the novel mostly follows Bosch, but also switches over to the bad guys here and there, so the reader has more information than he does (although far from all), which is a fun narrative device.

I like that the title has several meanings within the story. The narrator makes reference to a crossing between murder victim and murderer, where events get set in motion; a crossing over from public heterosexual lifestyle to same-sex relations; and the crossing over that most troubles Bosch throughout this story, as he moves into investigative work for the defense. There are a number of other crossing-the-line references, which might even be considered heavy-handed – I again feel that Connelly flirts with over-explaining – but in the case of the title’s role I ended up appreciating the multiple connections.

There’s something just a little stilted about the dialog and characters here, like Bosch’s (and I think Haller’s) avoidance of contractions, but I’m not even certain how much is Connelly and how much is Welliver. There was again a bit much explaining, especially between Haller and Bosch. I understand that it’s a trick, as the writer, to let your reader in on need-to-know information without having your (expert) characters explain in dialog. I just didn’t remember Connelly being as clumsy about it as I find him here.

That’s nit-picking, though. The plot and intrigue was sufficient to keep me engaged and generally distracted from minor quibbles. Neither Connelly’s best nor his worst work; a perfectly serviceable listen.

Rating: 7 references to Walmart.

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The Searcher by Tana French (audio)

Posted on August 13, 2021 by pagesofjulia

Tana French never disappoints. This 2020 novel (her latest to date) reminded me quite a bit of her second book, The Likeness (2008), which is still my favorite, I think. In line with all her work, The Searcher boasts intriguing characters with shadowy pasts; a very strong sense of place; and some of the most atmospheric writing I know. What most reminded me of The Likeness was a general, foreboding suspicion about the people around our protagonist, a low-level nagging sense that we’re not sure who everyone is really and what their motivations might be.

It’s still set in Ireland, now in a rural area of tiny villages, but in a departure from her past work, French’s protagonist is American. Cal Hooper is a recently retired detective from the Chicago Police Department, trying to renovate the dilapidated little farmhouse he bought from afar, not too hopeful of making new friends but amenable to the gifted-in-gab locals like his new neighbor Mart. He talks to his adult daughter about once a week. He misses his ex-wife. The reader has to wait to find out what these dim shapes, back in the States, exactly mean to Cal. Meanwhile, he’s getting cautiously adjusted to no longer looking over his shoulder for crime all the time, but somebody’s definitely been watching him – aside from the rooks in the tree out back, whom he rather appreciates – and it’s creeping him out. His peeping tom turns out to be a 13-year-old kid named Trey. What does Trey want, exactly? It will take Cal a certain amount of interview skills to find out. And what he discovers threatens to launch him back into the kind of crime investigation he’d hoped to leave behind.

There are many layers to absorb here. In its handling of gender, The Searcher subtly offers commentary or at least food for thought; the tensions of changing times in a rural setting (technology, employment options, young people moving away, the urban/rural divide, options by gender) are a minor but important focus. Moral ambiguities and the importance of having a “code” feature throughout – other reviewers have placed this novel at least partly within the Western genre. Another slight but important thread deals with police brutality and race in the United States, too, for currency. I appreciated the natural world as… more than backdrop. Events play out against a natural world that can be cruel but only in the ways of nature, with parallels that inform the human dramas. Those rooks, which (tellingly) open the book, provide a keystone for Cal’s experiences. Finally, this rural Ireland made me think repeatedly of small-town Appalachia where I’ve settled. And of course many Scots and Irish settled in Appalachia, so it’s not too strange to think of cultural threads crossing over. But it felt a bit uncanny, and comforting.

Roger Clark’s performance on this audio edition wound up feeling perfectly pitched, although it took me a while to get used to the American accent when I was expecting an Irish one, based on past experience with French. I think Clark performed the accents well all around. There was a brief howdy-partner backwoods bit that felt put upon to me, but I’m ascribing that momentary awkwardness to French and not Clark. I still love her work in this format.

This novel has lots to sink into for the discerning reader. And there’s a compelling plot regarding young Trey and the mystery Cal finds himself roped into, and all the fine work of suspense and mood that French does best. If this isn’t her finest novel yet, it’s right up there, and more multifaceted than most mysteries. Strongly recommend.

Rating: 8 rabbits.

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Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore (audio)

Posted on July 26, 2021 by pagesofjulia

This audiobook, also part of my cross-country travels, was a birthday gift from my mom. Thanks, Mom!

Valentine is a powerful novel. It’s set in Odessa, Texas in 1976: a central West Texas oil town in a harsh environment filled with hard-edged, struggling people. The setting is definitely part of the appeal, as I know Odessa a little and its region a little better, and Elizabeth Wetmore’s striking writing about place I found very affecting and authentic. Mostly, this place comes across as rough, stark, unbeautiful; but a close read will reveal appreciation for the natural world and the people who find something to love in it. These characters are really well done, too. Chapters shift between the points of view of a number of them, with a firmer focus on three or four. All are women: men are only viewed through their eyes. As a woman, in a world of books historically over-focused on men, I appreciated this, too.

Let me get in a content warning before we go too much further: the event the book opens with, which is also the event that the entire narrative centers around, is a brutal and violent rape. It’s described in what I’d call moderate detail, which is plenty disturbing. Readers for whom this may present a problem should avoid the whole thing.

This rape and its aftermath affects all our characters in various ways. Even those who are initially unsympathetic become three-dimensional and complicated when they get their own chapters, in that way that I love: all people are complex, no one all good or bad, no perfect heroes or villains. I love a complication like nothing else. There is even a brief – failed – attempt to understand the perpetrator of the rape; that impulse and its failure both feel real and right to me.

Gloria, or Glory, Ramirez rightfully opens and closes the book. Fourteen years old, the US-born child of an undocumented Mexican immigrant mother, Glory’s life brings race and racism into the story. Valentine is centrally concerned with women’s lives and violence against women, but this layer is important and (of course) related. Then there is Mary Rose Whitehead, young mother of a young daughter, drawn into Glory’s life by circumstance. She rebels against many of the structures of the world around her, in ways that we applaud, but this is no fairy tale, so she will not necessarily triumph. Next comes Corrine Shepard, an older woman, recently widowed and handling her grief with booze, cigarettes and not giving two sh*ts what you think about any of it, which serves her well, to a point. I think of these three women as the core, although there are probably other interpretations – I haven’t counted chapters. Again, there are others who get less spotlight but make important contributions: I’m thinking of the bartender/babysitter/waitress we get to hear from near the very end.

This book covers so much. Race and racism and immigration, women’s lives and violence against women, economics patterns and the dire straits it puts all kinds of people in; the cultural and ecological milieu of a particular place, in a particular time, including what it looks like for an oil boom to hit a town like Odessa, which my friends who live in the region today tell me about: it sounds like it looks awfully the same after more than 40 years. Valentine‘s contents contain a lot of ugliness, brutality, violence, hate, tragedy: beware. But it’s also a beautifully rendered novel. And I appreciate its glimpses of beauty even in Odessa in 1976. It’s masterful, in other words. I’m very impressed, and I’ll be thinking about these characters for a long time.

Thanks again, Mom. Good pick.

Rating: 8 pistols in purses.

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