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…

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

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.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

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.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

The Murder Wall by Mari Hannah

Posted on April 21, 2021 by pagesofjulia

From Shelf Awareness I got this list of “One Author’s Top 10 Queer Protagonists in Crime Fiction,” which sounded like something I needed. This is the book I chose to buy (and it had to come all the way from the UK).

As a murder mystery, I found this one engaging, not lightning-paced but with enough momentum to pull me right through its 450 pages. In Newcastle Upon Tyne, DCI Kate Daniels is on a career fast track; she’s a favorite of Detective Superintendent Bright, who is also a dear friend. (He and his idealized wife reminded me a bit of Elizabeth George’s Detective Lynley and his Deborah. And Daniels is just a bit of a Havers.) Daniels is not without her secrets, which are uncovered slowly, or her traumas, which we know more or less at the outset: eleven months before this novel’s events begin, she discovered two bodies in a church, whose unsolved murders still haunt her. Now she lands her first case as Senior Investigating Officer, which is a rush–until she sees who the victim is.

Daniels is dogged; she is good; and she has that self-destructive thread that all good fictional detectives, it seems, possess. Her buddy DS Hank Gormley is a treat, too: loyal, smart, funny. All the troops in fact are well written and more or less likeable (there’s always that one guy). This is the start of a series, and the elements I’ll want in a series are all here; I’m ready to follow these characters forward. In the world of murder mysteries, this is a darkish one, focusing on the evil that lurks in some (all?) of us, and the novel does not shy away from sexual assaults (heads up, if you need it). I’m in for more. I will say, though, that the LGBTQ angle isn’t as developed as it might be. If you come to this book chiefly for that element, you might be mildly disappointed. I didn’t necessarily feel shortchanged, because the mystery is strong. Daniels as queer protagonist counts as representation, which is the point of the article that brought me here, and that is significant. Her queerness isn’t central, which cuts both ways: it’s cool that it’s allowed to be no big deal, but it also doesn’t add much as a framing element. Her sometimes-partner is a bit underdeveloped as character, too, but I suspect she’ll come forward as the series does. Daniels is not out at work (this was the breaking point for the erstwhile partner), and her fear of repercussions is a minor plot detail that could also develop nicely; this is the 2000s, but it’s still very true that she’s already at some disadvantage in a men’s world, before inviting homophobia in as well.

I am intrigued and shall continue. I’m also keeping my eye on the possible television series adaptation – that would be fun!

Rating: 7 bags of donated clothing.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (audio)

Posted on April 5, 2021 by pagesofjulia

A classic whodunit from Agatha Christie, starring Hercule Poirot, but told through the first-person narration of a character that (as far as I know) appears for the first time in the Poirot-universe. This means we get to see him from afar at first, and recognize him before the narrator understands who we’re dealing with. It’s pure fun. I love the humor and the characters – all of whom, admittedly, are a bit cartoonish, but in entertaining ways. Perhaps the best part of this audio production is the reading by Hugh Fraser, who plays Hasting in the long-running television series I was raised on. The protagonist and first-person narrator of this novel is a Hastings-like character, a stand-in if you will, during the period that Hastings is off living in the Argentine. To have the Hastings actor playing the Hastings-like character, bouncing off Poirot in the loveable way that they do, was just a harmonic moment for me.

Also in classic fashion, the mystery here is clever, ever-twisting and chock-full of red herrings, and the murder takes place in a literal locked room. Everyone is hiding something and harboring overlapping and hidden loyalties. The plot is far from central, however, at least to my enjoyment. (As an aside, I might be a special kind of mystery reader. I can reread the same mystery with no memory of the solution; the plot-level puzzle is rarely my focus; I’m there for characters and relationships. But I might be weird in this regard.) It’s all in the people – here, the caricatures – and the humor. Christie is comfort food, and this is quintessential Christie.

Rating: 7 dropped items.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

The Sentinel by Lee Child and Andrew Child

Posted on March 24, 2021 by pagesofjulia

Here we have it: the first book of Lee Child’s transition to his brother’s eventual takeover of the Reacher series. The Sentinel credits Lee Child and Andrew Child together, as will the next (Better Off Dead is due later this year). I have had my doubts, but I really enjoyed this installment. Hooray!

A little like Blue Moon, this plot has Reacher step into a scene in media res, where he sees something bad about to happen. (This is not an uncommon Reacher device, actually; I’m thinking of Gone Tomorrow too.) In a little town in Tennessee, the streetlight is out and the police phones are down. Something’s a little odd here, and why does everybody seem so angry at one rather nerdy man in particular?

There is nothing new about the broad strokes: Reacher takes on the PI role even though nobody really wants him to, let alone the local cops, whose job he can do better than they can. The details are rather fascinating, though. I’m not sure it always works for me when Child tries to be uber-timely (here, the Russians might be trying to hack an American election, which is a subject I’d like a break from in my fiction, I think). But that’s a personal call, maybe. I do like when Reacher finds himself a team of local amateurs, or quasi-amateurs, as he did in Blue Moon, to my great enjoyment then and again here. And I think I appreciated that we took a bit of a break from Reacher’s amorous exploits.

Instead, Reacher ends up the knight in shining armor for a dweeby, dreamy (male) IT manager, and that relationship struck me as sweet and a bit of a departure for our hero. Knight-in-shining-armor is a bit of a theme here, actually, because the opening Reacher scenes involve both his love for quality live music (and especially blues), and his tendency to stick up for the little guy. I liked that the action didn’t open with Reacher, but jumped around among a few characters whose relationship is not immediately clear. I found a few lines of dialog here and there a bit out of character – and I’m sorry I didn’t mark those to share with you, but I read this book in a day, staying up too late to finish it, which doesn’t happen much these days (because it shouldn’t; teaching has me busy and exhausted). Being a smidge out of character may be a result of bringing in a new coauthor (who, we assume, knows the Reacher oeuvre as well as anybody, but still). However, my need to finish this book in a single day is an excellent commentary. It’s been a while.

I’m shying away from plot here, as I sometimes do with Reacher, to say that this is pretty straight-on Reacher with just a few twists, already mentioned, which worked well for me. If this is the new Andrew Child style, I am sorry I doubted, and I’m looking forward to more.

Rating: 8 cables.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke (audio)

Posted on March 8, 2021 by pagesofjulia

I reviewed Heaven, My Home, which comes second in this series. My father reviewed the highly-regarded first novel Bluebird, Bluebird, and now I’m finally catching up.

Pops did a good job with the high points of this one, and I remember Heaven very fondly (I rated it 8 fingers). There’s no question in my mind that Locke is at her best in handling the complex, nuanced, contradictory nature of Texas history and relationships (particularly in regards to race, but of course there’s more there too). The social justice questions, with no easy resolutions, are Locke’s greatest strength. I found the murder mystery part of this novel less compelling. And I should acknowledge that this audiobook took me way too long to finish, so maybe I didn’t give it the fairest shot in terms of my slow reading (listening) pace. It did get a little draggy for me in the middle; I think the contemplative interiority of Ranger Mathews’ thought processes and turmoil was a mite slow for my personal tastes. Which is related to my bigger concern with the book: I had trouble believing in Mathews (as a fictional character who ‘rings true’), and I had trouble caring deeply about his problems, because he exasperated me.

I had trouble with some of his unprofessional behaviors. Not morally, but in terms of believability: does he really get away with it? The drinking on the job, and the blurred boundaries with the murder victim’s widow, and with Geneva, a powerful matriarch in the small town where he’s investigating a couple of murders. It often felt to me like he was amateur at his job – I expected him to have it together more, or at least be better about hiding his boozing. He sure does rush off half-cocked. And while the widow’s character also made me a little impatient, I bought that this is who she would be. Everyone else feels believable; it’s just Mathews. I’m familiar with the self-destructive, loner, problems-with-authority police detective in fiction – it’s a type, and one I rather specialize in. But this one feels like he’s not very high-functioning in his self-destruction, if that makes sense, and it just rang less true for me.

I do not require that I like a character in order to care what happens in a plot. But there has to be some stakes that I can engage in, and I struggled with that here. My problems with Mathews were distracting.

More compelling was the conflict Mathews feels about the law, nicely encapsulated in his two role models, twin uncles who respectively work(ed) as a lawyer and a Texas Ranger. He’s been drawn in both directions, and still feels the pull of the law, although most of all in the pressures applied by others.

It made him sad, the degree to which this kind of credit hogging mattered to Greg, that three years behind a desk had made him so desperate for the climb that a double homicide was seen as an opportunity first and a crime against nature second. But wasn’t Darren a little guilty of this, too?

…Maybe justice was messier than Darren realized when he’d first pinned a badge to his chest; it was no better or worse than a sieve, a cheap net, a catch-as-catch-can system that gave the illusion of righteousness when really the need for tidy resolution trumped sloppy uncertainty any day.

And,

He got it confused sometimes, on which side of the law he belonged, couldn’t always remember when it was safe for a black man to follow the rules.

Point very well taken. Although, Mathews can occasionally feel like a mouthpiece for these musings, rather than a fully human character.

I did really enjoy the local culture of Lark, Texas, the blues and the home cooking at Geneva’s. And the complex relationships, which Pops refers to in his review, were well drawn (and feel very real).

Narrator J. D. Jackson has a nice voice but sometimes plays this one with a hair more drama than I needed – again, a little distracting.

Some good stuff here, but a lot that bothered me, too. If I’d started here I wouldn’t have read Heaven, My Home, which I think is a superior book. It’ll be interesting to see what comes next for Ranger Darren Mathews.

Rating: 6 plates to go.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

Night School by Lee Child

Posted on January 29, 2021 by pagesofjulia

My mother also reviewed this novel here. We had similar feelings.

Above-average, even for Reacher. I loved this one. It’s set back in the time when Reacher was still serving as a military police detective – maybe we need more of those; they make up a minority of the canon. Here’s the set-up: fresh off receiving a medal for “the thing in Bosnia,” Reacher is sent back to school for a course in “Impact of Recent Forensic Innovation on Inter-Agency Cooperation.” He finds himself in a room with two guys from the FBI and the CIA, respectively, in similar positions: good competent agents who’d expected better than some bullshit course in cooperation. Luckily it’s not what it seems. Reacher and his counterparts are instead assigned a top-secret mystery involving an unknown American trying to sell something to someone for an unknown reason. They can have anything they need; so Reacher gets Sergeant Frances Neagley, who we know from books like Without Fail and Bad Luck and Trouble (among others). I like her.

The action of Night School takes Reacher and Neagley (and some of his new teammates) to Hamburg, back to Virginia, and back to Hamburg again, where they tangle with some far-right Nazi-types and the mostly pretty good Hamburg police. Plus of course the mystery American and the mystery foreign interest who wants to buy the mystery thing.

I thought this one was excellent fun. I enjoyed seeing Reacher do the kind of mental detective work he excels at (a la Criminal Minds), and I enjoy seeing him still in the Army’s grasp; that system gives him something to push-and-pull with in ways that I think serve the narrative well. There is a little less physical ass-kicking here than in some Reacher novels, and that’s fine with me; that action stuff is fun here and there but it doesn’t make a story the way the mental game does. There’s also a little sex (as usual) but not in a way that takes over the novel, either. And again, I really like Neagley. The mystery itself has elements of unreality, but welcome to Child’s fiction: it’s escapist-realism, not hyperrealism.

Without spoilers, I will say that I often thought this was one of the more cinematic efforts of the series; I especially enjoyed thinking of the final action’s setting onscreen. But as long as they keep Tom Cruise as the big screen’s Reacher, nah.

This is the most enjoyment I’ve gotten out of a Reacher novel in some time. Maybe it just caught me at the right time.

Rating: 8-and-a-half backpacks.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

At the Edge of the Haight by Katherine Seligman

Posted on January 13, 2021 by pagesofjulia

In this quietly compassionate novel, a young homeless woman stumbles into a crime scene on the edge of Haight-Ashbury, and eventually reconsiders how she got there.

Katherine Seligman’s gripping debut novel, At the Edge of the Haight, explores a community on the edge of a historic setting and on the edge of getting by, with a compelling protagonist and an array of issues to wrestle.

Twenty-year-old Maddy Donaldo lives in present-day Golden Gate Park, after Jerry Garcia and Janis Joplin are long gone, with a sort of chosen family. There’s Ash, “a skinny upside-down triangle” of a young man, “the most no bullshit guy around” with a talent for effective design of cardboard panhandling signs. Quiet, gentle, strawberry-blond Fleet has a pet rat named Tiny. Spike-haired Hope talks to everyone; she’s good with the tourists, but a bit of an instigator, too. And, most importantly, there’s Root, Maddy’s devoted dog. Together the friends scavenge food, find shelter, protect one another and navigate their tricky streets. It is Root who leads Maddy into the bushes in the first pages of this absorbing novel, where she stumbles upon a young man taking his last breath, and a man standing over him.

Maddy knows immediately that this sight will haunt her, that she is danger. She’s been handed a problem she didn’t earn; quickly the death of the boy named Shane follows her. The cops have questions. A man shows up at the local shelter and identifies himself as Shane’s father and asks for Maddy’s help. She gets to know Shane’s parents, Dave and Marva, and finds her loyalties beginning to split. Dave is a birdwatcher; Maddy observes the creatures, human and nonhuman, who live with her in the park. She investigates Shane’s murder, and along the way alienates her friends and finds herself nudged toward her own past, which she most wants to avoid.

At the Edge of the Haight is told in quiet prose from Maddy’s first-person point of view, so the reader is privy to her thoughts and fears, including an interiority that both protects and isolates her. All other characters are secondary, but this is a novel captivating in both its story and its characters. It is concerned with the social ills of homelessness, including addiction, mental health challenges and economics, without becoming polemic. The mystery of Shane’s death is a side plot, not the central focus; rather, it’s the situation that pressures the tenuous life Maddy has set up in the park. Seligman’s San Francisco is colorful and detailed. Readers are drawn into a challenging world with sympathetic characters, but it is Maddy’s internal turmoil that makes this novel memorable.

This review originally ran in the December 11, 2020 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 green apples.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

guest review: Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke, from Pops

Posted on October 30, 2020 by pagesofjulia

I reviewed the second book in the Ranger Darren Mathews series, Heaven, My Home. Pops is taking us back to the highly-decorated first in that series, Bluebird, Bluebird. He tells me it ends in a classic cliff-hanger.

This is a great, compelling mystery; by a Black author; about a Black Texas Ranger; about mostly Black characters; set in familiar East Texas locations; interwoven with Blues music (songs on Geneva’s jukebox are our playlist, including “Bluebird” by John Lee Hooker, about a man seeking a lost love ‘down south’, alluding to our plot); and with an epigraph from a Lightin’ Hopkins song, “Tom Moore Blues.”

And besides all that, she discreetly includes insightful social commentary about Black roots in the South, White privilege and racism, and the fraught legacy of biracial offspring from conflicted Black-White intimacy. E.g Ranger Darren Mathews’ family is rooted generations-deep in East Texas soil, stolid landowners now become proud and successful patriarchs of a clan determined not to be moved:

It was an arrogance born of genuine fortitude and a streak of hardheadedness six generations deep, a Homeric shield against the petty jealousies and lethal injustices that so occupied white folks’ free time, their oppressive and intrusive gaze into every aspect of black life – from what you eat to who you marry to the clothes you wear to the music you play to the way you wear your hair to how you address them on the street. The Mathews family recognized it for what it was: a fevered obsession that didn’t really have anything to do with them, a preoccupation that weakened a man looking anywhere but at himself.

And: Darren contemplating how to explain to Randie, wife of murder victim Michael Wright, his desire to return home from Chicago.

[Randie:] ‘Michael always wanted to make excuses for these racists down here, had some kind of twisted nostalgia about growing up in the country that made him blind to all the rest of the bullshit down here.’ [Darren:] ‘It’s not making excuses. It’s knowing that I’m here, too. I’m Texas, too. They don’t get to decide what place this is. This is my home, too.’ …this thin slice of the state that had built both of them, Darren and Michael. The red dirt of East Texas ran in both their veins. Darren knew the power of home, knew what it meant to stand on the land where your forefathers had forged your future out of dirt, knew the power of what could be loved up by hand, how a harvest could change a fate. He knew what it felt like to stand on the back porch of his family homestead in Camilla and feel the breath of his ancestors in the trees, feel the power of gratitude in every stray breeze.

And: that troubled sexual intimacy, and even love, amidst entrenched racist culture.

Michael’s and Missy’s murders were race crimes, yes, but that was mainly because of the ways race defined so much about Lark, Texas, especially in terms of love, unexpected, and the family ties it created. [Darren] had forgotten that the most elemental instinct in human nature is not hate but love, the former inextricably linked to the latter. …[These white men’s] lives revolved around the black folks they claimed to hate but couldn’t leave alone.

Rating: 9 blues songs.

I’m not the least bit surprised that this sounds like an incisive novel, with complicated social issues in its heart. What I remember about book two is that the mystery plot is also worthwhile. I’d love to find time for more Attica Locke! Thanks, Pops.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »
%d bloggers like this: