The Dead
Ingrid Black
Ex-FBI Special Agent Saxon works as a consultant for the Dublin Metropolitan Police when a serial killer she researched for a book appears to have returned after a 5 year hiatus. There was enough misdirection to keep me guessing right up to the end.
As my DH knows, I am a sucker for female investigators, and Black's Saxon is no exception. She is sarcastic, short-tempered, and single-minded. First-person narration provides delightful insights into her snarky personality:
I'd never liked him, and he knew it, probably because I'd failed on every occasion we'd ever met to get to the end of the conversation without pointedly reminding him of the fact. I just felt that he was the kind of person who might benefit one day from being repeatedly told that he was unlikeable. It hadn't had the desired effect so far, but I lived in hope.And:
What I had left of good sense told me I should wait till I heard from Fisher -- but I told what I had left of good sense to go to hell.And Black's writing has its wonderful moments:
I waited as he set to, stabbing fussily at the eggs like some ancestral hunting memory had flashed into his mind and he was worried lest they make a break for freedom before he could free his spear.On the other hand, and here I am the snarky one, all of the American characters in the book use the word "whilst" instead of "while." For the past 8 years I've lived in a country where English still belongs to the Queen, and I can't bring myself to say "whilst." Every occurrence grated.
I rate this largely enjoyable 2005 Shamus Award winner at 7 of 10 stars.
Hit and Run
Lawrence Block
Hit man J. P. Keller is framed for a political assassination. Even worse, he loses his best friend and his stamp collection. He takes to the road to avoid arrest and, in the process, finds true love and a latent talent. I rate this Spinetingler Award nominee at 7 out of 10 stars.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson
I last read this book for a university assignment and visited it again for a Library Thing reading challenge. On this reading, I did not enjoy the style and structure nearly as much as previously. But I come away considering the imprint this work has had on our society. I am struck by its origins in a dream and its historical position as a precursor to Sigmund Freud's conceptualization of unconscious, socially unacceptable urges as drives of the id. And I consider Stevenson's warning as, in this century, we embrace an ever-increasing pace of scientific and technological advancement:
But the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound at last overcame the suggestions of alarm.I will maintain my previous rating of 8 out of 10 stars, not for reading pleasure or literary structure, but as acknowledgment of its continuing legacy and provocative portrait of man's duality.
The Final Solution
Michael Chabon
An unnamed, retired, pipe-smoking, beekeeper is engaged by local police to investigate a murder at a Sussex Downs vicarage. The murder coincides with the theft of an African grey parrot from a young Jewish orphan, and it is this crime on which the beekeeper agrees to apply his formidable, yet failing, powers of observation and deduction. Chabon's descriptions of the old man's episodes of blankness are horrific:
The conquest of his mind by age was not a mere blunting or slowing but an erasure, as of a desert capital by a drifting millennium of sand. Time had bleached away the ornate pattern of his intellect, leaving a blank white scrap.Yet there is also humor, particularly in the single chapter told from the point of view of Bruno the parrot, driving his kidnapper mad through the application of sleep deprivation techniques.
While some questions are answered for the characters of this book, greater mysteries are left for the reader to ponder, unpunished crimes reduced to numbers whispered by a young boy and his parrot. I rate this novella, filled with exceptional descriptive narrative, at 8 out of 10 stars.
[Aside: The author helped me put a name to a phobia of mine, or at least its cousin: gephyrophobia is the morbid fear of crossing bridges; I am afraid of those roller-coaster-like, curving overpasses at the apex of which, hood of car pointed toward the sky, the horizon is no longer visible.]
Flaubert's Parrot
Julian Barnes
This novel tries to be, and is, many things: an exploration of the relationship between writer and reader; a treatise on postmodern life; a view of history as reflections in a rippling pond; a story about the displacement of grief in intellectual exercise. While ultimately I appreciate the fractured presentation, I found this Booker Prize nominee and New York Times Editors' Choice to be a difficult and unsatisfying read. I rate it at 6 out of 10 stars.
Pygmy
Chuck Palahniuk
The anti-hero whose name we never learn, but who is referred to by his American host family and school mates as "Pygmy", arrives in the US on a mission of destruction. The novel is structured as a series of dispatches back to Pygmy's unnamed totalitarian country of origin and are written in an initially humorous yet ultimately tedious pidgin English. Pygmy's language doesn't improve after months in America, but I got more adept at reading it. A taste:
Calibrated tasks assigned to destroy all self-esteem. For official example,
purpose lesson titled "Junior Swing Choir" many potential brilliant youth compelled sing song depicting precipitate remain pummel head of operative me. Complain how both feet too large size for sleeping mattress. Idiot nonsense song. Next sing how past visited arid landscape aboard equine of no title.Satirical jabs at American culture are interlaced with disturbing scenes of violence and sex, making this book definitely off-limits for the squeamish and faint-hearted. I rate this novel, which probably served as source material for the 2010 terror-baby conspiracy, at 5 out of 10 stars.
Cross Bones
Kathy Reichs
Juvenile diaglog, flat characterization, and poor plotting sum up this murder mystery. The book follows forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan and her ever-so-dreamy romantic and professional partner from Montreal to Israel. They are on the hunt for both a murder suspect as well as the identity of a set of 1st-century skeletal remains discovered at Masada. In this latter mystery, Reichs rather unsuccessfully explores the clash between religious foundations and scientific discovery. It's been years since I read an installment of the Temperance Brennan novels, and perhaps I've become spoiled by my enjoyment of the the TV series Bones. I rate this book at 3 out of 10 stars.
Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand
Fred Vargas
This is an author with numerous entries on my to-be-read list. As I write this review on the first novel I read, I am deeply involved in a second. Fred Vargas' crime fiction seems to be written as mythology: killer as fantastical beast and the members of the Serious Crime Squad as a pantheon of eccentric, flawed gods. She builds these characters with care:
Where the names came from, Adamsberg did not know, but probably from Danglard, whose encyclopedic knowledge seems to him sometimes to be unlimited and almost toxic. The capitaine was capable of sudden outbursts of information, as frequent as they were uncontrollable, rather like the snorting of a horse.In this novel, Commissaire Adamsberg's personal quest for a serial killer he has named Trident threatens his career and his freedom. I rate this winner of the CWA International Dagger Award at 8 out 10 stars.
This Night's Foul Work
Fred Vargas
In this installment of Fred Vargas' crime series featuring Commissaire Adamsberg, there is a new member of the Serious Crime Squad: a man who often speaks in twelve-syllable alexandrine verse. Adamsberg's unorthodox hunt for a dissociative serial killer produces rifts between the squad's positivists and the cloud-shovellers who maintain faith in his willingness to incorporate seeming coincidences into the investigation. Backed by a variety of characters serving as Greek chorus, this novel finds Adamsberg hauling around a pair of 10-point antlers, confronting childhood vulnerabilities, and following around a cat tagged with a tracking device. He also takes time out to read to his infant son, as in the following passage:
Adamsberg put the book down, meeting his son's gaze.I rate this novel at 8 out of 10 stars.
"I don't know what the hell the 'opus spicutum' is, son, and I don't care.
So we can agree about that. But I'm going to teach you how we resolve a problem like this when it crops up in our lives. How to proceed when you don't understand something. Just watch."
Adamsberg took out his mobile and slowly tapped out a number under the child's unconcerned eyes.
"What you do is you call Danglard," he explained. "It's quite simple. Just remember that, always keep his phone number about you."
Away
Amy Bloom
This little book's entry on my To-Be-Read list had no indication of having received awards or nominations by its title (although it did ), no notation of it being on anyone's list of best books in 2007 (although it was). No, the entry contained only two words -- "Buy It!" As I sped through the story of Lillian's road trip, from Russia to New York to Seattle to Alaska, I knew I would want to return, soon, for the luscious language, the engaging wit, the heart-rending story, the twin markers of despair and hope that mark her way. I have two words for you: Buy It! Absolutely 10 out of 10 stars.
Bangkok 8
John Burdett
Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep is the son of whore, the only honest cop in Thailand, and a Buddhist saint in this lifetime. A police procedural unlike any I have read before, Bangkok 8 begins when Jitpleecheep's partner is bitten in the eye by a meth-crazed python. The search for those responsible leads the reader through an atmospheric portrayal of Bangkok, Buddhist philosophy, and a biting social critique of the impact of globalization on Eastern culture. I rate this New York Times Notable Book of 2003 at 7 out of 10 stars: it isn't a great book, but I found it transporting and very entertaining.
L'Affaire
Diane Johnson
Amy finds herself wealthy after her dotcom company sells, and she sets off for France for a course of self-improvement. While at a ski resort in the Alps, an avalanche puts two fellow guests in the hospital. Adrian, who is married to Kerry, is not expected to survive his injuries. Amy befriends Kerry's 14-year-old brother Kip as he shoulders responsibility for his infant half-brother Harry. Soon other of Adrian's offspring appear: Rupert, who is content to ski; Posy, who falls into bed Emile, husband of Victoire, a sister she didn't know she had. Insipid and superficial, I rate this New York Times Notable Book of 2003 at 3 out of 10 stars.
