On Beauty

by Zadie Smith
2005

In the college town of Wellington, Massachusetts, two academic families, the Belseys and the Kippses, are ideological and personal opposites whose lives become deeply intertwined. Howard Belsey is a politically liberal professor of art at Wellington College, a white Englishman married to an African-American woman. Their three children — Jerome, Zora, and Levi — grapple with their own identities and conflicts in the face of their parents' tumultuous marriage. Howard, an atheist and iconoclast, has not published recently, and brings chaos to his marriage with infidelity and his outlook which rejects the important or sacred; he seems not at home in the world.  In contrast, Monty Kipps, a British-Caribbean art historian, is conservative, confident, larger than life, popular, and successful.  When the oldest son, Jerome Belsey, becomes romantically involved with Monty's daughter, Victoria, an awkward entanglement of personal, political, and professional conflicts is set in motion. As the story unfolds, and minor characters flit in and out of the families' orbit, the characters confront themes of race, privilege, identity, and fidelity while struggling to reconcile their ideals with the messy realities of life.

The novel draws heavily on its academic setting, portraying the complexities of campus politics, ideological divisions, and personal hypocrisies. It's densely layered yet is a smooth, alluring read, has a mordant wit, and the prose style is beautiful.  It won the Orange Prize, was nominated for the Booker, and ended up on countless Best of the Year lists.  Smith acknowledges an explicit comparison to E.M. Forster's Howard's End in both its plot and its concern with human relationships, but I haven't read that novel, so perhaps I'm missing something.  I very much enjoyed reading it, and I think Smith is an excellent communicator of complex subjects.  I liked especially the critiques of intellectualism's failings regarding the hard realities of the world, and the nuanced depiction of race, especially Kiki's experiences as a non-academic black woman in a white man's academic world.  I was put off, somewhat, by the overstuffed narrative, with its many subplots and secondary characters vying for attention.  I am also the type of reader who seeks some form of closure to be fully satisfied, and this novel, essentially a slice of life, albeit a complex one, begins in media res and ends with all possibilities open.  In sum, this is a masterfully-written work that I enjoyed reading, but upon completing it, I felt a bit let down, as if I'd had a whirlwind dance with someone I can now no longer find.

four stars

The King of Torts

by John Grisham

Clay Carter is a lawyer, but a lowly one, earning about a teacher's pay at the Office of the Public Defender. His finacée's snobby, nouveau riche parents (cartoonish villains, environmentally-unfriendly urban developers and social climbers) dislike him and urge him to venture into higher-paying arenas of the law. But when Clay is tapped to defend a young man who shot an acquaintance for seemingly no reason, his fortune changes. It seems that a new drug was rushed through trials, and an unintended consequence is that it temporarily gives some takers an urge to kill. In his quest to defend his client, Clay gets too close to the truth. But is he targeted by an infinitely rich corporation? No! He is turned into a big-time tort lawyer on the victims' behalf and becomes a multimillionaire almost overnight. Instead of walking away, he embraces the life of a tort lawyer and finds complaints about diet pills and other drugs. As the massive tort cases come in, the nine-digit payoffs become regular, but Clay is spending nearly as much as he earns to get the cases. The private jets and islands are tempting, but a single mistake and he could be on the receiving end of a lawsuit himself.

So, this is a very tightly plotted legal thriller very much in the Grisham vein, with a large cast of characters and no shortage of thrills, not so much from suspense as through Clay's roller-coaster whirlwind race through the world of big tort settlements, very much out of his depth. There's drama, romance, obscene amounts of money, and social critique. The pacing is good, the characters are well drawn, and the commentary is cutting. What doesn't work so well, though, is the setup. This science-fiction idea, about a drug that turns people into killers, could have been the basis for the whole novel. Governments, radical groups, and other NGOs would pay vast amounts or kill to get their hands on that drug. Yet Grisham drops this element, treats it only as the basis for a tort claim, and then it's off to the exciting world of greedy tort lawyers. It seems to me that Grisham might have let this idea develop a little more and gotten a real thriller out of it. 

 

four stars

Inkheart

by Cornelia Funke
translated by Althea Bell

Meggie and her bookbinder father live alone in a house crammed with books and the joy of reading.  When a mysterious visitor named Dustfinger arrives, calling Meggie’s father “Silvertongue,” Mo acts secretive and alarmed.  They take a trip to the house of a relative, Elinor, who is just as book mad as they are.  There, however, they are set upon by kidnappers who want a specific book, and Mo himself.  When they’re captured, Mo reveals his terrible secret.  When he reads aloud from books, he brings the characters to life, literally. Ten years previously, he read so lyrically from the book Inkheart that a pair of the book’s villains appeared in our world, while his wife was spirited into the book!  With some help from Dustfinger, who is by no means an ally but wholly self-interested, the three try desperately to work out a plan that will end the villain Capricorn’s reign of terror as well as get his wife back – a plan that depends on help from Inkheart’s own author.

I was not bowled over by this book.  It’s an interesting premise, even if it has been done before, but the book is overlong at 540 pages or so.  The characters are flat (the villains uninterestingly and thoroughly villainous; Meggie and her father are selfless and beatific), as well as obtuse, which I found irksome.  It’s absurd to think after you’ve been kidnapped from your own home by a mad, violent, powerful man who wants something from you, and then escaped, that you can simply meander back to that home with your ordeal over.  It’s downright stupid to think that situation can be resolved by talking. Some of the conceits of the plot are also a bit ridiculous: a normal, illiterate man from a magical but medieval world appearing here with nothing but the clothes on his back, somehow rising to become a crime lord?  And even established as he is in the story, Capricorn is the sort of tyrant who could be dealt with by two men with handguns; hardly an indefatigable enemy.  Finally, once the main conflict has been established, the book drags; the plot repeats itself and Funke takes a dreadfully long time to get to the real point of Capricorn’s plan, to unleash a murderous magical creature on this world.  For all that it is a love letter to classic children’s literature (Tinkerbell is appropriated as a minor character, as is a figure from The Thousand and One Nights), I found it more boring than engrossing.  I’d rather reread E. Nesbitt.


three stars

Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable

by Dan Gutman

Twin 12-year-olds Coke and Pepsi McDonald, on a cross-county vacation with their professor father and writer mother, uncover a secret government plot to use “YAGs,” or Young American Geniuses, to solve the complex problems of the nation, and find that they are on the list.  When they learn that a shadowy group is preparing a terrorist attack at (one of) the country’s biggest ball(s) of twine, their road trip becomes a race against time, made all the more desperate by the fact that their parents know nothing about their mission and by the fact that dangerous “dudes with bowler hats,” as well as their old health teacher, are trying to kill them.

It’s a very light, silly book, crammed with gimmicks like codes presented within the book and a suggestion that readers follow the trip via Google Maps.  With lots of actual spots of Americana oddities mentioned, such as the Donner Party Memorial, the PEZ museum, a Yo-yo museum, and the House on the Rock, the book is at times more gimmick than plot.  Some parents might find it troubling that the preteens are instructed by a stranger to keep secrets from their parents, but it’s all in fun, with no real violence.  It’s a simplistic kid’s book with some humor, such as when the kids gets their spy bags with Frisbees, cards, and fruit, which the kids are disappointed to learn are not laser Frisbees, spy camera cards, and bomb fruit, but actually just plastic toys and food.

four stars

Boomsday

by Christopher Buckley

In the not-so-distant future, America teeters on the brink of economic disaster as the baby boomers start retiring. Enter beautiful young ex-Army-turned PR flak, coulda-gone-to-Harvard-but-Daddy-spent-the-tuition-money crusading blogger Cassandra, who on her blog suggests that Baby Boomers voluntarily kill themselves for tax breaks, saving Social Security costs.  When young people take to the streets, the ineffectual president (who happens to be in cahoots with her father, who is now a software tycoon and party patron) makes her an enemy, as does a TV preacher.  But the cause is taken up by a young congressman who shares an eyebrow-raising past with Cassandra, and soon people are starting to talk about actually passing the “Transition” bill into law.

I wasn’t too impressed with the previous Buckley I read, Supreme Courtship, and this book is of about the same weight.  Buckley’s satire, as I said about that book, is the toothless satire of the contented conservative shooting blanks at straw men.  The fact that his heroine must be “hot” and blonde “with liquid, playful eyes and lips” shows how concerned he is with serious ideas.  In over 300 pages, none of the characters seem very interesting, and the dialogue at times is positively ridiculous; his ideas about software are equally out of touch. His scenarios are mildly amusing but not actually comic, and he has no real point to make about Washington, just a modern modest proposal.  Light, frothy, somewhat arch, but it lacks punch.

three stars

The Zero

by Jess Walter
2006

In the days after 9/11, New York police officer Brian Remy tries to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head, but succeeds only in causing a sort of temporal brain damage, in which he flits in and out of awareness of his own life as though through staccato, disconnected snippets of film.  Apparently recruited for some black ops anti-terrorist unit, he sporadically comes to his senses to find that he has gotten involved in some unpleasant and untenable situations – taking mysterious packages, going through citizens’ correspondence, beating and intimidating Arabic suspects, sleeping with women he doesn’t know whether he loves or is just using for information.  He has no idea what the reason for it all is – his genuinely confused question about what he’s doing inevitable taken as kidding or rhetorical musing – and as the black ops sting heads toward an insane, disastrous conclusion, he is helpless to stop it.

It’s written with more of a satirical black humor than this plot summary implies, a sort of modern Catch-22 as written by Don Delillo, with the typical distant lens he views humanity through to make it seem foreign and alien.  There are, indeed, a couple of scenes that pay almost direct homage to Joseph Heller’s masterwork, such as when Remy’s high school son pretends that Remy is dead, and he, his wife, and son have a straight-faced, absurd conversation about honoring grief and having respect for the son’s wishes.  Or another scene where some intelligence officers looking at some evidence, including a photo of a man eating in a restaurant, begin an earnest, utterly irrelevant discussion of how to properly cook it, and what wine might go best with it.  But the mordant humor gives way to a spooky noir feel in the second half of the book, and although the botched terrorist sting is clearly political satire, it lacks the deadpan absurdity of the earlier half, and comes to a comparatively predictable ending.  Altogether, this a tense, readable, original political satire, the work of a major modern talent.

four stars

The Get Rich Quick Club

by Dan Gutman

A girl whose goal is to be rich forms a club with her friends to further that goal.  Their idea is to create a fake UFO picture and shop it around to news outlets.  Against all reasonable expectations, this actually succeeds, until one of them has a crisis of conscience.  This is a silly, over-the-top, very kid-centric story, with the sympathy all on the side of the kids, who are materialistic, lying, and scheming, but not at all malicious.  One of the characters speaks in an absurd faux-Australian which grates after a while, and there’s little consequence to the kids’ machinations, but it’s all in good fun.

three stars

Crispin: The Cross Of Lead

by Avi
2002

Winner of the 2003 Newbery, this historical novel is set in England, 1377.  Crispin, an orphan peasant, is told by his village priest that there is a secret regarding his birth.  But after stumbling upon the cruel village steward making a secret plan in the woods, Crispin is declared a “wolf’s head” – a non-person whom anyone may kill for a reward – and he is forced to flee.  He comes upon Bear, a jester who secretly works to bring a worker’s revolution to England, and together they travel to the “big city” of Wexly, where to Crispin’s horror the steward has followed them, and both their lives are in danger.

This is an interesting choice for the Newbery – Avi strives hard to recreate the historical milieu in which Crispin lives, so first and foremost, the prose is absolutely drenched in medieval Christian thought.  Although Bear is an apostate, Crispin and many other characters are literally “God-fearing,” expecting swift and horrible punishments for their every transgression and believing utterly that a broken vow to Jesus (no matter how profane or involuntary) will result in immediate damnation.  Then, just so everyone has something to be offended about, Avi has Crispin, if not explicitly reject this mindset, at least question it; he stops praying and pledges to make his own decisions, and later uses the binding power of an unwilling vow as a tool for his own ends.  Finally, there’s the vocabulary: in addition to words like “trepidation” and “disconsolate,” Avi doesn’t shy away from the archaic terms: mazer, patten, kirtle, withal.  It’s a terrific historical adventure story, I would think suitable for older teens and up; its value is not so much in the plot (which is fairly straightforward, hardly original, and rather far-fetched at the end) as it is in recreating the highly religious, hierarchical, nasty, sometimes brutish and short lives of the medieval European.

four stars

Jake

by Audrey Couloumbis
2010

A few days before Christmas, ten-year-old Jake’s single mother slips on the ice and breaks her leg badly, requiring an operation.  A very kindly neighbor and Jake’s gruff, estranged grandfather (and his small “nightmare” dog), plus a few other relatives and family friends come together to take up the slack, and soon things are bustling along more richly than ever.  Jake’s grandfather gently pushes him to get over his fear of swimming, the dog gets used to walking with strangers, chess games and movies are enjoyed, and hot meals and extra sandwiches are the order of the day.  Indeed, each of the principals learns a bit from the other, and though the book’s action only lasts a few days, there are indications that Jake’s idea of what a family is might be expanding.  There’s no melodrama or big crisis in this heartwarming, at times moving book, just an underlying message of caring for others, hope, and the supreme value of human connections.  It’s a beautifully written, warm, charming book.

five stars

EllRay Jakes Is Not a Chicken!

by Sally Warner

EllRay (short for Lancelot Raymond), the smallest kid in his third grade class, is being physically and verbally assaulted by a large bully and his follower. Something of a cut-up, and with a short temper, normally EllRay would react to this stress with verbal comebacks or acting out in class, but he’s trying his hardest to avoid all trouble this week, because if he can do that, his normally demanding father will take him to Disneyland.

This is an interesting book that tries to tackle a rather important subject, and despite its humorous tone and slight word count, it manages to hit some points about what gives bullies their power. The book’s message seems to be that parental and teacher involvement is crucial to arriving at a resolution, and that a child’s physical safety is dependent on other students changing their attitudes toward bullying from standing by to directly intervening. Of course, this is a bit of a cop-out, since parents and teachers often remain unaware of silent, persistent bullying, and students almost never rise up en masse to take the side of the weaker party, except in TV shows and books.

Aside from the bullying issue, I admired how Warner kept her prose simple, and used EllRay’s narration to explain some expressions that kids might not get such as “enlighten me” or “bad vibes” which she has the adults employ. I was distracted by how many times EllRay made flat pronouncements about what boys and girls do, such as: “boys don’t skip,” “girls are neat,” “girls don’t tattle,” “girls know how to spread their misery around,” and so on. I realize this is an eight-year-old boy talking, but I’m not sure I approve of perpetuating these stereotypes in kids’ books. I also wondered at Warner’s depiction of the teacher, who while wise in the ways of her kids’ behavior, must “check her notes” constantly while giving lessons or defining unusual words. What might be Warner’s point there – that no one has all the answers, teachers are too overworked to prepare themselves for lessons, or what? In any case, I think kids will identify with the funny, put-upon EllRay, who explains himself and his world so well while dealing with pressure from parents and peers alike.

three stars

Gooney Bird Greene

by Lois Lowry
2002

An eccentrically-dressed and apparently over-imaginative second grade girl, Gooney Bird, comes to a new school and entrances the other students (and teacher) with her surprising, “absolutely true” stories.  With her deliberate, exact way of speaking and unusual phrasing, she describes her stories before telling them in ways that make it seem as though they’ll be tall tales – but there is always a humorous, prosaic explanation.  For example, “I was in jail when this happened” actually refers to Gooney Bird playing Monopoly and having landed on that square on the board; and getting a reward from “the prince” at “the palace” turns out to mean something quite different, though similar-sounding.  The same goes for “driving from China” and “arriving on a flying carpet.”

It’s a humorous, very brief book that also serves as instruction to children on how to formulate interesting stories, as well as to encourage them to believe that everyone has a story to tell.  I enjoyed the clever twists of language that revealed what Gooney Bird’s stories were really about, as well as the demonstration of how well “write what you know” can go when served by expressive language.  I did not at all like Gooney Bird’s personality, which is smug and self-satisfied, her too-adult speech patterns, or how she is portrayed as more clever and authoritative than the teacher of the class.  I think that’s a terrible example for kids who already often think they know more than they do.

three stars

Coraline

by Neil Gaiman
2002

The young girl of the title moves into a big new house with her kindly but preoccupied parents. She meets some humorously daft neighbors, like the two elderly ex-actresses steeped in nostalgia, and the old man upstairs who says he is training mice to play oompah oompah songs. There’s also a spooky door which seems to open onto a brick wall but actually leads to another world, similar to our own, constructed just for Coraline. There she meets her "other" family, with black buttons for eyes, who want only to keep her forever in this world that has better food, the colors she likes, and attentive parents, if only they can make her just like them. With the help of a mysterious cat, Coraline determines to rescue her real parents, and some additional captives, from the evil force behind this other world.

This is a deliciously dark novel, sure to delight children with the chills it sends down their backs. Gaiman’s descriptive prose and Dave McKean’s illustrations work together to enforce the menacing tone and creepy air: “Her other mother's hand scuttled off Coraline's shoulder like a frightened spider;” the voice “made Coraline think of some kind of enormous dead insect.” And just like a good horror movie, there’s a false ending of eerie calm before the truly final showdown. Gaiman offers a lesson in maturity here, as well, underneath the supernatural thrills. Coraline realizes that getting whatever she wants, all the time, which the other mother tempts her with, wouldn’t be fun or “mean anything.” This ominous, funny, offbeat, scary, sweet modern fairy tale is superb. I can’t imagine why it wasn’t at least nominated for the Newbery.

five stars

Because Of Winn-Dixie

by Kate DiCamillo
2000

India Opal Buloni (DiCamillo has a fondness for zany names), a preacher’s daughter newly arrived in town, has trouble dealing with the empty space left by her mother, who left the family seven years previously. One day she adopts a stray dog she finds making trouble in a Winn-Dixie. Having an overly attached, inquisitive dog puts India in new situations which lead her to meet some interesting townsfolk, like the good-natured old librarian with plenty of stories, a woman rumored to be a witch (another DiCamillan name: Gloria Dump), and a guitar-playing ex-con pet store clerk. Getting to know these complex characters helps India realize that the “perfect” girl she views from a distance is also dealing with loss and sadness, and the “bullies” she verbally spars with are basically friendly kids.

Deceptively lightweight, it’s a book that deals with deep, important feelings – friendship, loss, hope, acceptance, and new beginnings – in DiCamillo’s usual minimalist prose. I enjoyed this book a great deal and plan on reading it to my class; this is a story of coping with life, not wishing for fairy-tale endings. In the book’s only trace of non-realism, there’s a fictional candy, Littmus Lozenges, which taste sweet but also deeply melancholy for those who have experienced loss. An apt description of the book itself.

five stars

The Night Gardener

by George Pelecanos
2006

The body of a black teen is found with one shot to the head in a community garden. MPD homicide detective Gus Ramone’s own teen son knew the boy, and Ramone is driven to solve the case. Two ex-cops – one who quit under morals charges and one a retired legend – think this murder might be related to a series of killings twenty years earlier in which the victims were all left in gardens, and take it upon themselves to investigate, though they have no authority. In a subplot, a young banger, inspired by the legend of ‘70s bad guy Red Fury (from the Pelecanos novel What it Was), wants to go on a spree that will have people saying his name for years to come – but he may have stolen from the wrong bad guys.

This is another hard-boiled, gritty, seamy-side-of-the-city crime novel from an established master. Engaging, suspenseful, and intricate, this is a page-turner from beginning to end. Phrases I’ve used to sing the praises of Pelecanos’ unflinching prose in earlier novels also apply here: he “creates a grim tableau of the modern city and its culture of poverty, crime, and drugs;” he “delivers the seedy underbelly of DC without rose-colored glasses or glorification;” he “knows DC streets, restaurant culture, the way criminals move and talk, types of weapons, and all the other little details that bring characters and plots to life.” I repeat myself because with every book, he proves again that he can deliver the human side of crime: the problems in the school system that foster cycles of ignorance and violence, the culture of expensive clothes and hyper-masculinity where appearance and reputation are king; the economic disparity; the undercurrent of race resentment, always bubbling near the surface. His minor characters are richly drawn and have an air of tragedy because Pelecanos knows that even drug addicts and gangsters have dreams and goals. In this book, Pelecanos tones down his irritating foible of defining masculinity in his work, though the stupid line “he checked out her backside, because he was a man” (which I found needless in Soul Circus) is here as well, and his nearly defensive preference for voluptuous women results in cartoonishly predictable body shapes for characters, as if this were a Disney cartoon: curvy women, whether wife or whore, have a lust for life and good heart, and slim hips are a near-sure sign that that woman is a humorless prude. I know this is nitpicking; I just continue to find it odd that an author who can bring empathy to killers and corrupt police can’t seem to shake his neurosis about manliness and body shape.

four stars

A Tale Dark And Grimm

by Adam Gidwitz
2010

An amalgamation of Grimm tales, using Hansel and Gretel as the protagonist for nearly all. The brother and sister, here the children of a king a queen, run away from home after discovering their parents have committed a crime against them (though they don’t know the whole story). They arrive at the well-known candy house of the child-eating witch, but when that story ends, their adventures continue, in adaptations of “Brother And Sister” (in which the brother turns into a beast of the forest), “The Devil And His Grandmother,” “The Seven Ravens,” and others. Throughout, Gidwitz inserts his authorical voice to comment, using an ironically exaggerated concerned tone for “little kids” and their delicate sensibilities, warning of gory sections in the book; he also breaks into the story to lecture about bravery and forgiveness and coming through troubles as a better person.

It’s a well-done conceit, this consolidation of several Grimm tales into one shakily linear plot with an over-arching challenge and a resolution. Gidwitz reshapes the stories into suspenseful tales, in which both girl and boy are heroic and brave. I do think he over-uses the third-wall narrative device a bit, but older kids probably enjoy being addressed directly as if over the heads of younger ones. I read this to see if it could be a read-aloud in my class; the answer is unequivocally no. The author is a teacher of first and second graders and seems to think his tales are appropriate for them; I might even give a pass on the gore and violence (some of which is directed at children), but there’s a couple of rather creepy scenes – an evil, charismatic man whom Gretel has a crush on sucks the blood off of her head wound, for example. Yes, so I wouldn’t read this to fourth graders in a school. For older kids and adults, though, it’s a pretty clever horror/morality tale.

four stars

The Graveyard Book

by Neil Gaiman
2008

After his family is killed by a mysterious assassin, a toddler wanders into a graveyard, where he is adopted by a ghost couple named Owens, and formally given the Right of the Graveyard by all, which means he can fade from view, walk through walls, and so on. Under the tutelage of the mysterious “neither living nor dead” Silas, the young Nobody Owens, as he is called, sees the underworld of goblins, werewolves, and macabre dances, as well as the more prosaic world of school bullies and money-grubbing adults. Eventually, however, he grows old enough to seek vengeance upon the man Jack who killed his family, and no one, not even Silas, can dissuade him.

This 2009 Newbery winner is an amazingly inventive riff on Kipling’s The Jungle Books, not only in its overarching theme of the orphan brought up among powerful non-humans but including the scenes of the buried treasure that brings death, the mindless hooting greedy apes (here cast as goblins) who have pretenses to greatness, and so on. But you don't need to have read and enjoyed the Kipling to be amazed and delighted by this dark, thrilling tale. With black humor, real suspense, a righteous hero the reader can't help but cheer for, all told as if through the innocent eyes of a child (only a child is innocent enough to both believe in and to not be afraid of ghosts, after all), this is both a brilliant homage and a wonderful adventure book.

five stars

Little Women And Me

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted
2011

Emily March, a middle sister who constantly schemes to get boys’ attention from her sisters, is magically drawn into the 1860s world of Little Women, as a fifth sister. Deciding that she has been put into the story for a reason – to save Beth’s life – she charges forth, oblivious to her anachronistic speech and behavior… only to get sidetracked by rivalry with the similarly creative Jo and by the arrival of Laurie, the love interest for one or more of the girls.

This is a generally simplistic novel, aimed unabashedly at teen girls (there’s talk of bras and strategic shaving and periods). The “romantic” plot and Emily’s lesson that she doesn’t always need to get boys’ attention just for the sake of attention is fairly heavy-handed, and there’s very little a young reader could learn about the world of Jo and Amy March in these pages. I thought Baratz-Logsted was trying to have her character both ways – literate and book-loving, yet completely, like, spacey about language and customs the way any teen girl would be. The extra twist at the end was unexpected and rather fun, but the plot ran too much toward the boys-and-makeup line than the trapped-in-a-good-book story I was expecting.

two stars

Flat Crazy

by Ben Rehder
2004

The third Blanco Country mystery.  In this episode of game warden John Marlin’s adventures in law enforcement, a corrupt hunting guide named Duke Waldrip kills an angry client who demands a refund after discovering his mounted head was faked; the country goes loco after a chupacabra sighting makes national news thanks to a less-than-dignified gossip show’s attention; loveable redneck crooks Billy Don and Red try to catch the goat-sucker with typically amateurish planning; a man specializing in Asian midget porn procures some deer antlers as an aphrodisiac for an unconfident star; and someone has been illegally shipping in and shooting exotic animals (which just might explain the chupacabra sightings).

It’s another strong entry in Rehder’s series – not actually a mystery, since the murderer is known from the beginning (except for a small twist at the end) and it’s pretty clear what the chupacabra actually is – but it’s a great amount of fun.  The criminal is both dumb and devious; the hillbillies are self-centered, goofy and endearing; Marlin is an everyman, unlucky in love but optimistic, who doesn’t want to solve homicides but deep down enjoys the thrill.  As Rehder brings the disparate plot lines together and apart and together again in brief, staccato flashes of drama and chaos (the porn plot thread impacts the case only tangentially but quite viscerally), the madcap energy keeps the pages turning.  Comic madness plus suspense equals enthralling.

four stars

The Cavalier In the Yellow Doublet

by Arturo Perez-Reverte
2003
translated by Margaret Jull Costa

The fifth Captain Alatriste novel.  The Captain and his young (but now rather handy with a blade) ward Inigo are in Madrid, walking a tightrope between their strict standards of honor and their rather lowly status among the pomp, poetry, and provocation of that city’s many cavaliers and officials.  Alatriste begins an affair with a famous and beautiful actress, María Castro (whose husband serves as some sort of half-jocular, half-bitter pimp), but is warned to stay away, as her favors are being enjoyed by none other than the king himself.  The Captain, of course, cannot be told what to do, and alienates friends and enemies alike by continuing to see the actress.  This, unfortunately, makes him the perfect patsy for a plot against the royal wastrel – and when Alatriste’s old enemy, the Italian mercenary Malatesta, pops up, they both know one of them must die at the hands of the other.

This is a superb historical novel, perhaps the best in the series.  The vanity of swordsmen for a decaying empire, duels over one wrong glance, strict adherence to considerations of honor, pageantry, assignations, plays, poets whose stars rise and fall at the whims of the court: this is Perez-Reverte’s 17th century Madrid, in all its gritty cinematic glory.  The suspense is masterful, with Alatriste and Inigo both independently betrayed by their foolish pride or love, and racing, swords in hand, against a very short deadline separately but toward the same goal.  Alatriste is not at all what the modern reader would think a hero – he’s a tired cynical old killer with no fear of death and his every action is mandated by his sense of pride and honor, not fairness or magnanimity – but he has a shred of sympathy for those over their heads and a few sparks of love in him, and that makes him a complex, fascinating figure.  He’s the perfect centerpiece for these thrilling, swashbuckling adventures of a grittier, prouder time.

four stars

Bone Dry

by Ben Rehder
2003

The second Blanco Country mystery.  Game warden John Marlin is again drawn reluctantly into a homicide investigation.  It starts quirkily enough and in his wheelhouse: a drought has made two prominent local men, Emmett Slayton, crusty old rancher (with loveable bumbling would-be crook hillbillies Billy Don and Red from the previous book working for him), and Sal Mameli, an ex-mafioso in the witness protection program, compete for the suddenly in-demand cedar brush-cutting business; Mameli and his nasty son are willing to turn violent to get the monopoly.  Meanwhile, there are reports of a beautiful blonde anti-hunting activist pretending to seduce hunters and then vandalizing their gear.  But when a hunter ends up shot to death, with one of John’s hunting buddies the prime suspect, things turn grim.  John is forced to take a hand when the suspect grabs a hostage and demands that the game warden help clear his name; with the sexy activist now on his side, he digs for a motive while trying to forget Beth, his separated girlfriend.

This is a briskly paced, amusing, silly, and quite over-the-top ride, with a rather crowded cast of dozens, more than a few plots burning at once, and a handful of twists.  Some of the characters are unfortunate caricatures (Sal’s dialogue, peppered with “dis” and “dat” and references to New Jersey, is poorly rendered and gets tiring, Inga the activist is a one-note fun sexy hippie chick type), but a core group of fleshed-out principals are sympathetic and multi-faceted.  The mystery, hidden beneath all the mayhem and blundering, is solid and Rehder adds a twist that had me smiling admiringly at the end of the book.

four stars