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In Bed with the Phantom: more book news by Diannek |
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December 09: well into the long reading season. If you are like me, you aren’t too interested in reading to improve your mind. What you are looking for is escape. However, it needs to be good stories, well written, timely and intrinsically interesting, not the same old stale “whodunits”. Am I right? A pal of mine works in a bookstore so she has access to Advanced Readers, which she passes along to me when she thinks they might fit my reading criteria. Often, they are disappointing, unfortunately. I do like to give good reviews of books that publishers have gone to the expense of manufacturing and handing out freely. One unfortunate title Advanced Reader is A Duty to the Dead, by Charles Todd, another British WWI nurse story. This one is probably the worst of the lot (see earlier posts for the others in this category). Apparently the Brits love this sub-genre. Our heroine, Bess Crawford, is charged with the sorrowful duty of visiting the family of a dead soldier she nursed to death in France. She chose to call on them rather than simply sending them a note with the soldier’s last words on it. The words form a mystery that Bess feels duty bound to solve. It’s a rambling, meandering, totally unbelievable and unnecessary slog through the family history to ferret out the mystery. The story reads like mid-Victorian melodrama rather than turn-of-the-century wartimes. I found it boring. Lisa Scottoline is a mystery writer that most women read when they must get on an airplane and have to sit in the middle seat. It’s a sort of amusing tale and if you get bounced around a little or elbowed and miss a few words on the flight, it won’t matter. Scottoline’s Killer Smile is perfect for such an occasion. Lisa’s protagonist, the widow Mary DiNunzio, is an attorney working a very cold case dealing with American internment camps in WWII. This time it’s the Italians in the camps. (I didn’t know the US rounded up Italians too. Apparently we did. Will our stupid ideas and goof ups ever cease?) Anyhow, nobody in her office even wants her to work on this case, so she has to sneak around while collecting evidence. The closer she gets to solving the crime, which involves an inheritance, the more people start dying. I’m not terribly amused by funny murder mysteries, so this book was somewhat trying, but it actually ended well with a personal note from Lisa about her own family members and their time in the camps. Then somebody handed me a thick paperback called Devil Bones, by Kathy Reichs. Fox television has made a TV series called Bones, based on Reichs’ stuff. That’s a hint about what you are in for. Her main character is a forensic pathologist, working part time for the coroner’s office, in addition to teaching classes at the local university. She goes into great detail about decaying flesh and stuff like that, sort of in the CSI vane. If that’s your cup of tea, then Reichs is for you. However, I won’t be reading another one. Somebody told me they loved Faye Kellerman’s work. Faye is married to Jonathan Kellerman, of Alex Delaware fame. So I read The Mercedes Coffin. She’s a really clunky writer. It’s so apparent. She’s writing along and then decides she needs to throw in some color, so she will describe somebody’s clothing. She does this over and over. It has nothing to do with the story and we really don’t care. All the characters speak in the same tone of voice and use the same diction (probably Kellerman’s), also not good. The story was formulaic. No surprises, no new knowledge gained from wading through some 400 pages. Very disappointing. On the other hand, Jonathan Kellerman’s Twisted, which features Petra Conner, is very good. It’s one of those hard boiled police procedurals, but don’t let that get in the way. It’s yet another complex cold case that Conner wants to unravel, even though her boss doesn’t want her to (how stale is that concept getting, I ask you?). She’s mentoring a grad student who is studying biology data in criminal cases. He’s onto something. Petra just feels it in her bones, but it sounds too weird to share with the department heads, so she takes on the case by herself, with some able assistance by her lover, who just happens to be an ex-cop. It sounds hackneyed, but the story hangs together and the characters are interesting and believable. The ending is somewhat gruesome, but we can take it, if it doesn’t go over the top. I’m really beginning to like Petra. I hope he writes her into more of his mysteries. I usually love Elizabeth George mysteries. She writes those British Inspector Lynley stories. For those of us who follow the tribulations of Lynley, we know that he’s in real emotional trouble these days, ever since his wife was gunned down. In Careless in Red, he’s stumbling around, literally, along a Cornwall footpath, not caring whether he lives or dies, when he comes across a body. He must pull himself back together, temporarily, to help the locals sort things out. It’s all very British, which is brilliant writing for George, who is an American. I enjoyed it, but I would like Lynley to get back on the job. It’s time. Ken Follett has been writing for ages. He did a detour from his usual thriller writing to write a couple of British historical novels that were very well received. I didn’t like them (but I’m picky). Before that detour he wrote a sort of thriller called Night over Water. I enjoyed it mainly because the bulk of the story takes place in a Pan American Flying Boat. You might not even have ever heard of them. They were pontoon planes that had to take off and land in water. Apparently they were like flying in the lap of luxury in those pre-WWII days. Follett is a competent writer who knows how to keep people entertained. This is an “old” book, written in 1991, but it kept me interested throughout. I finally finished Christine Falls, by Benjamin Black (pen name of “acclaimed” Irish author John Banville). It’s billed as a dark, ambitious crime novel. That’s the truth, very dark, very brooding, and very boring. Again, we learn nothing, which is not good in a whodunit. It’s about baby stealing in the pre-WWII era of troubled times for many people. Irish babies are stolen from poor mums and transported to the US and put in Boston orphanages. There’s a crooked priest, some conspirator nuns, a wealthy American and a network of others involved in this complicated, totally unbelievable, story of wretchedness. Don’t go there. It’s not worth it. John Le Carre spy stories are usually treasures. Not so with Our Game. This one reads rather like it has too much autobiography in it and not enough plot. However, the characters are intriguing in a twisted way and it kept my interest at the time. Now, several months later, I’ve totally forgotten what it was about. If you are a Le Carre fan and haven’t read it yet, you might enjoy it. What you’ve just read (if you are still with me) were books I tackled from the late summer and early fall. Things got a little better in the reading department after September. My reading group decided to read about Montana (don’t ask why). We began with Ivan Doig’s This House of Sky, a sort of rambling autobiography of Doig’s Montana in the “early” days. I thought it was too earnest and terribly over written. Next we read Winter Wheat, a novel by Mildred Walker (circa pre WWII). It’s really a coming of age story about a Montana woman, Ellen Webb. She grew up in hard scrabble, really rural Montana, and then goes Back East to college. She loves school but is a fish out of water. The book juxtaposes rural and Back East American values in a nicely plotted and believable story. Walker paints a vivid picture of Montana and it becomes understandable why people choose to live in such a rugged and physically difficult part of America. The club then branched out with the sprawling saga of the pioneer West called The Big Sky, by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. It’s one of those “down the Missouri in a paddle boat while fighting the rapids and wild Indians” books. It did win a Pulitzer Prize. Part way through it I remembered I had read it or something very similar several times already and I wasn’t in the mood to do it again. Maybe once down the Missouri in a paddle boat is enough. I was aimlessly wandering through Borders one day and spotted a paperback of Paul Theroux’s latest travel book, called Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. I immediately put down the mysteries and started in. This book recreates a train trip that Paul took about 30 years ago (that long???). I’m a big fan of Paul’s writing so I totally enjoyed this journey with him. He goes by train from England through Europe, then the Middle East, down to Sri Lanka. Then he flies to Burma and then back on trains from Cambodia, Viet Nam and into China. He then flies to Japan for more train rides, and eventually crosses to Russia for a ride home on the Trans-Siberian. Most places he visited I now feel I can cross off my itinerary, with the possible exception of Hanoi. He rambles around, talking to strangers and trying to figure out the real life politics of each country. And this time he was able to compare how things are now compared to “back in the day.” I totally enjoyed every minute of this book, but I do understand that you have to be a fan of travel writing to like this stuff. It’s not a book about where to stay and what to eat or even what to look at, but it does give you a good idea of what is going on in places I’ll never, ever see first-hand. Bravo, Paul. Good job, well done. My life has been flashing before me in a blaze these last few months so reading at those odd moments between difficult or time consuming stuff was really important. That’s when I love mysteries the most, because they are easy to pick up, and engrossing. I’m sure everybody reads them for the same reason. But sometimes they are so engrossing, that everything has to stop while you finish the damned book. Not so with Michael Connelly’s Brass Verdict, which was sort of predictable and forgettable at the same time. Better was his Nine Dragons that takes Detective Bosch to Hong Kong. I liked that one even though I feel sort of manipulated when the detective’s family members get written into the story. Next I read a truly quirky mystery called Citizen Vince, by Jess Walter. It won the Edgar for best novel of 2005 (?). I’m not even sure I would call it a mystery. Vince, the main character is in the witness protection program (that always interests me for some reason), and is trying to make a new life, but he is not “going straight”. Then things get complicated, both in his criminal and his love life, and his social conscience kicks in. And it takes place in Spokane, Washington. Good story, well told. Then I read the extremely over blown and disappointing Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. He uses the same plot outline for this novel as he used for all of his others. This time he has really crossed the line -- like when a movie becomes a franchise and each successive sequel becomes more ridiculous than the one before. That’s exactly what we have here -- in Washington DC with freemasonry as the subject matter and the bible as the holy grail. Brown’s blacks are too black and his whites are too white and there’s nothing in between. This was garbage. Then I finally was convinced to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson. It’s the Swedish international sensation of a page turner, very nicely translated, by the way. I was captivated by this richly plotted mystery with great quirky characters and totally engrossing story. It does has a grisly aspect, but it’s nice to know that awful things happen in other countries too. It is well worth the time spent to read this book. Now I’m working Larsson’s second one, The Girl who played with Fire. There is one more Larsson book in the pipeline, The Girl who kicked the Hornet’s Nest, due in May and then that’s it. Unfortunately the author died -- what a dirty, rotten shame. Time to turn off the light. Until next time, hope you find something good to read, The Phantom Oh, you wanna find out what the Phantom was reading last year? Really? Click here then.
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