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In Bed with the Phantom:
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by Diannek

Turn out that light!

In bed with the Phantom- the latest news from my bedside table:

Summer 2010: Summer reading is one of my favorite pastimes, it's just head of spring, fall and winter reading. But I can justify more "guilty pleasure" reading in the summertime than any other part of the year. Let's start with the so-called "good" books I read during the past few months.

I'll begin with the fiction. The first is The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver, a prize winning novel, and well deserved. This novel follows an odd boy/man-writer called Harrison Shepherd, an American who grew up in Mexico and in Washington DC. His mom was an American who left his dad to follow a string of other men, back and forth between Mexico and the US. (Not a great way to raise a child, me thinks.) Due to some rather odd historical circumstances, Harrison lands back in Mexico where he works for Diego Rivera and Freda Kahlo, then Leon Trotsky. You have to suspend disbelief here in order to swallow the plot points that lead him to be in such company. Eventually, after Trotsky's death, Harrison returns to the US to become a recluse-writer, and has some success, even though he is odd and psychologically damaged. He then gets caught up in the anti-communist scare of the late 1940s. I guess Kingsolver wanted to write a slightly critical social history of the US, so this story reflects American attitudes and prejudices and how the public can so easily be manipulated. I didn't think it was quite as brilliant as her earlier works, but it certainly was imaginative.

Somebody recommended The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee to me, and sheep that I am, I read it. Claire Pendleton is the piano teacher who comes to Hong Kong after WWII. She is the title character but she isn't exactly the most important character, she's more like a vehicle used to tell the unflattering portrait of British ex-pats living through WWII in HK. The book, told through flashbacks, is like Chinese music, beautiful, but unending and nearly unintelligible.

Finally, the third book in the Stieg Larsson trilogy was released so I ran right out and picked up a copy of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. As Salander convalesces in lock down at the local hospital somewhere in Sweden, Blomquist tries to unravel her history and prove that she is innocent of serial murder. It's a long story, with lots of twists, so at times it seems to cover the same material again and again, but eventually everything gets resolved. Larsson was originally going to produce eight volumes, but this book glues all the loose ends together, Salander finally gets her revenge, and we can hope that she will now live her odd, sort of Ashbergerish, life in peace.

The most brilliant and most well-remembered book I read in the past few months is called The Help, a novel by Kathryn Stockett. Apparently this is her first book. Happy to hear that. Maybe she'll write us something else just as compelling -- soon. It's 1960s Mississippi, and a southern belle, called Miss Skeeter, with nothing worthwhile to do with her life decides she wants to become a writer. She gets an assignment from a New York editor to write stories about the black women (who are known only as The Help), who have worked for the local white women for years. It’s difficult to get the black women to cooperate and actually reveal what's been going on, especially to a white southern woman. A real eye opener. Loved this book.

I only read one piece of "non-fiction" in the past few months. It was called Game Change by Heilmann and Halperin. It's "current" history, a meander through the 2008 presidential election with nice, long portraits of all the contenders. It's a well-rounded picture and good reminder of what we all went through. Not too many surprises, mainly the most interesting was how clueless McCain really was about every aspect of his campaign, and what an incredibly bad choice he made picking Sarah Palin as his running mate. She continues to boggle our minds.

So finally to the guilty pleasures: I discovered John Lescroart, a local writer (Bay Area, California), who's been at it for years. I've seen his name and books here and there for years but I was ignoring him. So that's good news for me. I have something like 18 mysteries to plough through, starring defense attorney Dismas Hardy and his cop-friend Abe Glitsky. The stories are court room dramas, and each book focuses on some aspect of what it's like to be a defense attorney working on "big cases".

Here are the ones I have read so far:
The 13^th Juror, a woman is suspected of killing her husband and child, there is much evidence against her, she is found guilty and receives the death penalty, but it's really a case of SODDIT (some other dude did it).
In Guilt, the client, happily married attorney Dooher (I would pronounce this "Do-er"), is attracted to a young female attorney, plots how to get her into his firm, and eventually to become his wife. He is charged with killing his first wife, evidence against him mounts up, there is plenty of guilt to go around for Hardy and Glitsky to figure out.
Betrayal has a quirkier set up than his usual fare. The first two-thirds of the book involves the three people who will be involved in the eventual trial. It's about a private contractor-war profiteer-assassin, a soldier serving in Iraq and his girl friend. They end up in the Bay Area where the murder takes place. Again, the main suspect might not actually have done it.
The Suspect is about an angry husband, who gets mad at wife, has a huge argument with her and then takes off for Tahoe. While he's away, his wife is killed, and he is the suspect. Is he guilty or is this another case of SODDIT?

This is the recurring theme of these mysteries, but the added benefit is the insight into the mind of a well-meaning defense attorney (if there ever was such an animal). I'm calling these Lescroart mysteries a treasure trove of guilty pleasure. They are well-written and smart, the characters are not stereotypes and they help us understand the games that lawyers, cops and judges are playing. It's not really a pretty picture.

Here's a quick review of the other mysteries and thrillers that I've read this summer. None compare as favorably as the Lescroarts:
Jonathan Kellerman's Evidence: Alex Delaware goes through the paces in a totally forgettable story about a half-built and abandoned LA mansion and a predator. One has to wonder why people keep buying this stuff.
Steve Martini's The Arraignment, where attorney Paul Madriani gets involved with a fellow attorney who is accidentally murdered outside the courthouse. As Paul tries to figure out who done it, he ends up in Mexico with a bunch of Mexican land developers who also steal rare artifacts. Complicated but also forgettable.
Lee Child's Nothing to Lose: talk about conspiracy theories! Two small towns in the middle of the desert called Hope and Despair are apparently so far off the beaten track that totally weird and desperate things can happen and nobody outside of town ever hears about them. But Jack Reacher is walking through the desert (it’s complicated) and uncovers an impossible problem in Despair. So far fetched, yet readable mainly because it’s mystifying that anybody could dream up such junk.

Stephen White's latest is called Dead Time. The Boulder, Colorado psychologist Alan Gregory’s long time ex-girl friend is involved a flash back mystery involving a camping trip to the Grand Canyon that can only be unraveled by Alan. Not terribly interesting. The best Whites are Kill Me and The Program. In both of these stories, Gregory remains on the periphery.
Undone, by Karin Slaughter – 2 homicide detectives, Will Trent (who cannot read) and Faith Mitchell (generally screwed up) are working on a murder case, where women are kidnapped, tortured and raped by a serial kidnapper. It's nearly unreadable because of the awful acts that occur. I tried to read Faithless but it was just too grim.

Finally, as the summer winds down, I'm looking forward to my book club starting up again. Perhaps they will have some great choices for "good books" for the coming year. A girl can hope. If not, I have a passel of mysteries and other guilty pleasures on hand. So if something keeps me out of the bookstores and unable to fire up Amazon, I'm still set with plenty of books on the nightstand.

Here's hoping you all get through the Dog Days of summer with a book in one hand and a cool one in the other,

The Phantom

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