Reading and not reading

A friend's mother asked me once why I only read mysteries. My defensive response was that I read other things too. But I quickly realized that nearly every bit of fiction I read was a mystery of one kind or another. I did develop some answers to the question that revolved around the limited environment of most mysteries, not too many characters to keep track of, and endings that were pretty final.

But there's another thing.

Another friend's 14-year old daughter has been a reluctant reader. This fall she was assigned to read To Kill a Mockingbird. The book looked pretty daunting and my friend volunteered to be the audience to whom her daughter could read the book. The ploy worked to get the reading started. One evening, after reading the second chapter to her mother, the young student asked, "Mom, can we read another chapter? I want to find out what happens next." What could make a mother's heart fly more at that moment? So, yes, they read another chapter.

That's another thing about mystery novels. Things happen. There are stories. Some stories unfold slowly, some quickly. Stories often take unexpected turns, but there are stories and things happen.

When my inferiority complex kicks in I think to myself, "I should read something besides mysteries. I should read some real literature." Last spring as I hung out at a Barnes and Nobel coffee shop a couple times a week, I looked at reviews and bought a couple books with good reviews that had been labeled (by reviewers) as real literature. One of them is even a finalist for a Man Booker Prize (winner to be announced on October 13).

In neither of these books did much happen. Well important things happened that seemed to be in parentheses. Lots of internal analysis was laid out in long passages. (I'm not big on long internal analysis.)

Viet Thanh Nguyen's book, The Sympathizer, had lots going for it. If I'd seen the plot summary, I probably would have approved it for publication. The main character was a Vietnamese man who had been an exchange student in the USA and then returned to his homeland. He was a Communist spy all along. He held a high level job in the retinue of a South Vietnamese general. In 1975, he escaped with the general, his family, and some of the retinue to southern California. (Think Nguyen Cao Ky.) The main character's spy job was to keep track of the general and his efforts to raise money and an army in Cambodia to fight the Communists in Vietnam.

When the spy accompanies the general back to Vietnam, he is captured by his Communist "colleagues," imprisoned, and tortured for questionable acts of disloyalty. The spy, a faithful and dedicated Communist, accepts his persecution because the Party imposed it.

That's about where I stopped reading the book. I don't understand the total abandonment of self. I wasn't enjoying what story there was. It wasn't a book for me.

Chigozie Obioma's The Fishermen as another bit of literature I didn't like much. Obioma's book is on the list of finalists for the Man Booker Prize. Okay, one of the reasons I picked it up was because one of the reviewers said the Obioma wrote like Chinua Achebe, one of my all-time favorite authors. (Obioma and Achebe both come from the same ethnic group and the same part of Nigeria.)

The fishermen in Obioma's novel are brothers in a Nigerian village. Their father is a successful businessman who works in a nearby city during the week. The boys get into trouble and one of them gets a fortune from a local "village idiot" predicting his death. He dies shortly after.

The two older surviving brothers set out to get revenge. When they do, one of them is prosecuted and spends years in jail. The other runs off and hides. When the convicted brother comes home from prison, his brother comes out of hiding and comes home as well. Three hundred pages of very little happening. I'm not sure why I finished this one.

Thankfully, the last book on the pile was not literature. I bought it for $3.00 at the used book fair that raises money for the local hospital. It was a "cozy mystery" by Louise Penny. Well, almost a cozy. As in her other books, Penny's main character in Bury Your Dead is Chief Inspector Gamache and part of the setting is the little rural village of Three Pines, Quebec, while much of it is in Old Quebec City.
Penny tells four stories in this novel. One of the stories is sort of 400 years old, another is 60 years old, another is just over a year old, and one is only months old. The most recent story is told in PTSD flashbacks that Gamache is trying to recover from. The year-old story is told in conversations with friends and rethinking evidence that put a man in jail. That story has its tangled roots in World War II. The ancient story is somehow connected to a murder and to surreptitious excavations around the foundations of Old Quebec City buildings.

For a guy who is supposed to be recovering from PTSD and grievous wounds, Gamache is pretty driven. And he drives his dear friend and assistant Jean Guy Beauvoir, who is also recovering from psychological and physical wounds, to dangerous action.

For all the stories and all the characters in Penny's novel, I never lost track of the people or story lines. I can't say that much for other mysteries I've read. The stories kept unfolding. And I learned things about myself near the end of the book. Can't be much better literature than that for me.

Have you read any of these? What's your take on it (them)? What's your take on literature? Write. Tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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• Philip Caputo's review of The Sympathizer in The New York Times
• Ron Charles' review of The Sympathizer in The Washington Post
• Fiammetta Rocco's review of The Fishermen in The New York Times
• Michael Schaub's review of The Fishermen at NPR
• Louise Penny's web site
• Anonymous review of Bury Your Dead at the Literary Corner Cafe
• Susan Flynn's review of Bury Your Dead at You Can Never Have Too Many Books
• B. Morrison's review of Bury Your Dead on his blog

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Artistry

A few years ago, I invented an Improbability Award for books whose plots contained unlikely or wishful events. My inspiration for this was the spaceship Douglas Adams created in The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The spaceship, called the Heart of Gold is powered by the infinite improbability drive, which is governed by the Browian motion in a cup of hot tea. The absurdity of the whole idea startled and amused me. Other authors have startled and amused me with highly improbable events and circumstances to power their stories.

I think I have to hand out an Improbability Award in the nth degree to Steve Hamilton for The Lock Artist.

Adams' Heart of Gold

This book was on my "to read" list and I have no idea how it got there. It was an Edgar Award winner. It is well written, however, Hamilton often seems intent on slowing down the plot in order to describe everything he can imagine. I skipped and scanned through many paragraphs. If I later discovered I'd missed something important, I went back and skimmed more carefully. But that happened only rarely.

But the whole story and all the plot lines in the story are solidly based on improbables. The main character survives a tragedy that kills his family. He is left mute because of the experience. So, it's ironic that the whole book is told by that character in the first person. Hamilton does that part well.

The main character becomes a professional safe cracker by the time he's 17 years old. Even though he's a social outcast in school, he wins the love of a nearby school's most beautiful. Several people he "works" with on major thefts are killed, but he's left unharmed. His uncle gives him a motorcycle. Without practice or training (or a license), he speeds across the country a few times without accident or traffic ticket. On probation for his first theft, he's assigned a restorative justice project. The guy he is to work for is in a tight spot with some gangsters who lent him money. That leads to more safe cracking work. Later, one of the cops who "knows" our hero, saves him just before another of his partners in crime is about to blow his head off. And of course, it all ends happily ever after.

Hold it. Was I reading a mystery, a coming of age story, or a romance?

If you can deal with the unlikely circumstances and sequences of events, you might well enjoy reading The Lock Artist.

If you read it or another book by Steve Hamilton, write. Tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it.

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• The author's web site
• Fiona Zublin's review (in the last paragraph) from The Washington Post
• Marilyn Stasio's review (in the 5th paragraph) from The New York Times
• Cathi Unsworth's review (in the only paragraph) from The Guardian

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Comfort food for thought (or non-thought, as the case may be)

When it comes to comfort food, I think of chocolate -- especially chocolate frosted chocolate cake. Cookies work too. Dark European-style candy bars are great as well.

Then there's comfort reading. Something easy to understand that tells a story. Mysteries are good for that. And for containing the story to a specific, small universe. Beginnings and ends are obvious. Good "guys" and bad "guys" are usually obvious, even if sometimes the good "guys" engage in legally or morally questionable behavior.

Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware novels fit into this category quite well. So, when I saw Evidence on the remainder pile at Barnes and Noble, I picked it up. (It was a better buy than the Margaret Coel paperback I bought, since I didn't realize until too late that I'd read the Coel book. Another volume to add to the stack going to the hospital auxiliary book sale.)

I wasn't disappointed with Evidence. Then again, my expectations weren't great. I just wanted some entertainment.

And I learned to take care of what generalizations I make. When writing about Tana French's The Likeness, I said that "Coversation is a slow way to tell a story..." Well, Kellerman proved me wrong. Then again, the dialogue in Evidence is quite different than the dialogue in The Likeness.

Evidence may be labeled an "Alex Delaware Novel," but Delaware is pretty much an observant yes man in this book. Detective Milo Sturgis is the active character. Instead of French's real time conversations, the dialogue in Evidence takes place between Delaware and Sturgis, between Sturgis and the people he interviews and questions, and between him and other investigators. Delaware as an observer adds observations and narration along the way. Kellerman is very good at creating dialogue and at moving the story along with a combination of conversations and narration.

This book was just what I wanted. A suitably complicated story, told in ways that kept me interested and intrigured. What was it that Annie Murphy Paul said? "Stories... stimulate the brain and... narratives activate many... parts of our brains..." My brain was stimulated and activated, but I had no trouble falling asleep after reading.

Have you read Evidence by Jonathan Kellerman? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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• Kellerman's web page for Evidence
• Jackie K. Cooper's review at Huffington Post
• A summary of 1,900 reviews at Good Reads

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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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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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Not everything can live up to expectations

We were getting ready to head for California to see the incredible granddaughter and the incredible Yosemite. Luckily, our flight was non-stop, but still long. I paused at Target in front of the paperback best sellers and grabbed Jonathan Kellerman's True Detectives. Kellerman's reliable, isn't he?

Well, yes, he's reliable. But he's not always great. This book features a couple characters who evidently appeared in one earlier book, but they aren't the usual stars of Kellerman's mysteries. Instead of the aristocratic psychologist, there's Aaron Fox, trendy fashion plate private investigator, and instead of the gay veteran detective Kellerman creates Fox's half brother LAPD detective, Moses Reed.

Of course, these two guys are as different as Kellerman can think to make them. It's an investigative odd couple. Aaron is a few years older and making piles of money he spends on fancy cars and fancier clothes. Moses is a straight arrow cop with a chip on his shoulder. Neither of them knew their fathers, who were cops and killed in the line of duty. They never got along as kids and they still don't, according to Kellerman's telling of the story. They run into each other once in awhile when spending time with their mother.

A cold case murder brings them together and neither of them is excited about the prospect. But the conflict/rivalry/opposition never really came to life for me. And, by the end of the book, the brothers are joking and sharing mutual admiration. But the progression of the realtionship was never really explained to me. I don't really know how that happened.

The book kept my mind off flying between those brief naps I always take on long flights. The story was nothing special. At least the playboy didn't make a move on the cop's wife.

Both the granddaughter and Yosemite lived up to expectations, and that's why we got on the plane in the first place.

If you agree with me about True Detectives or think it was special, write and tell this little bit of the world why.

When I finish it, I'll have a few things to say about the Oliver Sachs textbook I read on the way home.

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An old Kellerman mystery

I hinted at this a few days ago, but I read another Jonathan Kellerman book awhile back. It was Private Eyes, An Alex Delaware Novel.

This was an old one. First published in 1992. It's even older than any of our cars. But, enjoying it was sort of a guilty pleasure. Then again, movies and books about the rich were popular during the Great Depression, so maybe a book about rich people is attractive now. Why that should be so I don't know.

Maybe when people are anxious about their economic futures, reading about people who have more money than god is reassuring. I know I've lived through recessions before, but never with the anxiety I've felt recently. Of course, I've never been retired before. In any case, a story about wealthy people who are different from the rest of us, was attractive, not repulsive.

Kellerman's Dr. Delaware is rich enough to work only when he wants to. And his client in this book is a lot richer than that.

In the first fourth of the book, Delaware recalls the little girl he treated and describes his analysis and the course of therapy. (That's what inspired me to pick up Oliver Sacks' book.) The rest of the book is about what happens after the nearly grown-up little girl calls Dr. Delaware because she's convinced her mother has been kidnapped.

As is common, I guess, in Kellerman's novels, Dr. Delaware recruits his LAPD detective buddy Milo Sturgis to help investigate the disappearance.

I told David, when I was about two-thirds of the way through the book, that the exchanges between Delaware and Sturgis were well-done. Kellerman really moved the story along through the dialogues. Instead of describing things from some distant third-person perspective, the story is told by the investigators as they share what they've learned along the way. I really liked it.

That all broke down at the end of the book. When the evil bad guy talks and talks and talks about what he's done and why. It's boring. The evil bad guy deserved to be shot on the spot just for blabbing on and on.

So the last 50 pages or so were a bust. The first 400 or so pages contained a good story.

Now, what did you think of it?

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• Jonathan Kellerman's web site


• cwriter's review at Wacky Web Writings


• Gene Lyons' review in Entertainment Weekly

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For Kindle

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More mystery

Another Jonathan Kellerman book fell into my hands. It seems there are too many avid readers at Jo Ashmore's condo. They keep adding books to the common library. I was there on a day the library committee was deaccessioning books. I walked off with two Kellerman books to aid their effort to keep the shelves neat. Both of them are over 10 years old.

I took Billy Straight to the cabin called Sidetrack recently. I intended to get some yard work done. However, the rain, 30-mph winds, and cold (45°) kept me inside. Instead of cleaning full time, I read.

Billy Straight is an 11-year-old street kid in LA who witnesses a murder in Griffith Park. Kellerman tells a story about the kid's background. He tells stories about the principals in the murder and stories about the cops (lots of cops) who are investigating.

All this took place in the shadow of the OJ Simpson trial, and since one of the suspects is a minor-league celebrity, there are political pressures on the cops of the LAPD.

Kellerman does a great job of telling all those stories. Keeping them coordinated while writing and editing must have been a complex task.

It's not until the very end of the book that Kellerman pulls out his magic wand to save the good guys with narrative sleight of hand. Then he lays it on thinkly by rewarding Billy Straight with promises of happily ever after and one of the lead detectives with hints about better things to come.

It was really needless. Two squares a day and a clean lower bunk would have been luxuries for Billy Straight.

So, I enjoyed reading most of this Kellerman book while the May "blizzard" raged outside the cabin. It was certainly preferable to finding a parka and doing yard work. I could have done more cleaning, but what fun would that have been?

Do you want to tell a little bit of the world what you thought of Billy Straight? Comment here.

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• Kellerman's web site on Billy Straight
  
• Sofrina Hinton's review of Billy Straight in Book Reporter
  
• Leslie Dunlap's review at The Mystery Reader
  

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For Kindle

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Long time gone

I buried another book in the pile on the left-hand corner of my desk after reading it. Honest, I put books there with the intent to write about them the next time I sit down at my desk. Then I cover them with something more urgent. Then I have book orders to ship, and I put more things on top of the "urgent" thing. Pretty soon a month has passed. Then a fortnight more.

Book shipping season is over. That excuse won't reappear until next fall. Urgent? What's urgent for an old retired guy? Getting up to the lake? Reading another book? Cooking supper?

So, I'm catching up. The book I buried this time was Gone by Jonathan Kellerman. I've been on another Kellerman kick this winter and spring. But Jonathan and Faye [at right] have written so many books. Even one of their kids has written a novel.

This book is the 20th "Alex Delaware Novel" by Jonathan Kellerman. Alex Delaware, like J. A. Jance's character J.P. Beaumont, has come into a lot of money. He drives an expensive car and lives in a luxurious home. In both Kellerman and Jance's minds that puts these characters in a situation where they have more freedom than the working stiffs with whom they cooperate. Maybe it makes them more interesting for some people.

Delaware seems to be a part-time clinical psychologist and a part-time, experienced amateur criminal investigator (like his creator who is a part-time clinical psychologist and a part-time mystery writer). Delaware often hangs out and works with his old buddy, L.A. detective Milo Sturgis.

[Latigo Canyon, at left in a realtor's photo, is the site of important events in Gone.]

The story of Gone is complex. A murder here and another there (or I should say one then and another now). A strange family living off the wealth of a previous generation. Wannabe starlets in LA. Kellerman is a good story teller. The complexity might have been overwhelming, but it wasn't -- even though it took me a couple weeks to find time to read the whole book.

I liked reading this book, probably more than I liked the story. One of the online reviewers said that one of the best parts of the book was the relationship and dialogue between Delaware and his buddy Sturgis. I agree. I think it's probably the best part of the book. It's one of the treats that kept me reading all the way through the 360 pages.

Have any of you read this or other Kellerman novels? What did you think of them?

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• Jonathan Kellerman's web site
  
  
• Joe Hartlaub's review of Gone at Book Reporter
  
  
• A less-enthusiastic, unsigned review from The Mystery Site

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For Kindle

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It's a Long Story

What's long is my story about this book. (From September 2002)

When I was very young, my grandfather Wedding [right] owned about 6 books. One of them was dictionary. Three of the others were Zane Grey novels. The other two didn't make a lasting impression.

I'd never read a Zane Grey novel until recently. It's kind of surprising since they made up half of Grandpa's library. As much as I fondly remembered the man who taught me to play checkers and didn't let me win, I didn't have a lot of faith in his literary tastes. I'd always assumed Grey's novels were rather like romance novels and I never pursued one. Well, they are like romance novels. But they're written for men as well as women.

Then I read Peace Like a River. Swede, the little sister (who, by the way, reminded me a whole lot of Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird) of the narrator, was an avid Zane Grey fan.

She was constantly reading one of his novels. Maybe that was a way for the author to keep her in the story, but at the same time keep her busy doing something. Anyway, I thought it was curious that this young character was such a fan of Zane Grey.

Flash forward to early September [2002]. I am driving toward Wyoming. From Minnesota, South Dakota is in the way.

Somewhere near a needed respite from driving is that well-advertised tourist trap, Wall Drug. It's rather like a shrine that those who traverse South Dakota have to stop and pay homage to. Maybe I've worshiped there too often, but the only room that held any interest was the book store. That's where I found a half-price copy of Forlorn River by Zane Grey.

The time was right to buy it, and a month or so later I read the book while listening to autumn arrive at Little Blake Lake (the wind and the rain were a little louder than the falling temperatures).

I began reading skeptically.

"Ben Ide named this lonely wandering stream Forlorn River because it was like his life."

The story is about a young, turn-of-the-last-century cowboy who turned down his father's offer of a farmer's future for life in the nearby wilderness catching, breaking, and selling wild horses. His leaving home broke his mother's heart and distressed his younger sister.

"He gloried in their (the horses') beauty, freedom, and self-sufficiency. He understood them. They were like eagles."

A sharp operator, Less Setter, has arrived in that Northern California area and finagled his way into the business dealings of Ben's father. Then, Ben's childhood sweetheart returns from Lawrence, Kansas where she was getting educated. Her father, too, has been taken in by the detestable, skirt-chasing con man.

Our hero, Ben, has two rather mysterious side kicks who are loyal because of Ben's
good deeds. There's a drought and there are cattle thieves. There's the beautiful wild stallion named California Red. There are some good guy cowhands, an upright sheriff, and a no good one. You get the idea.

It was written in 1927. Some of the language is archaic and sounds strange. But Zane Grey [left] knew how to tell a story! Several times during the day, as I read the book, I stopped as I realized how involved I'd gotten in the story. Not too much detail; not too little. No incredible motivations to overlook (well, maybe one). And good characterization. Most of the main characters are allowed some internal monologue to explain themselves and become more believable.

Now, it wasn't a totally satisfying tale.

The ending left a lot to be explained. The explanations were avoided by three murders and the rapid disappearance -- into the sunset -- of one of the main characters. Some of the transformations necessary for the ending to work happened incredibly quickly. But in its dated (75 year old) way, it reminded me of the stories of Tony Hillerman or Ellis Peters. Grey's luscious descriptions of the northern California mountains and high deserts remind me of Hillerman's meditations on the land of the Navajo. The way Grey lets his characters explain themselves also resembles Hillerman's technique. Self explanation is also a key to Brother Cadfael and other characters in Peters' books. And like Peters, Grey includes a good, though hopelessly dated, love story in Forlorn River. (In some ways Grey's lovers seem more ancient that the couples Brother Cadfael counseled and abetted in 12th century England.)

Zane Grey is a great story teller. He creates wonderful characters--even female characters. (No wonder Swede, from Peace Like a River, liked these stories.) Grey paints wonderful word pictures. I'll read others. Forlorn River is not one of the better-known novels, but it's a good place to start if you haven't read any Zane Grey. If you've only read the famous ones, here's one to move on to. It's the only one set in northern California.

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Evidently, the movie is not very faithful to the book.

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