Tag: pop-fiction

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The Secret Adversary

Pure nostalgia baby! I read this book for leisure when I was in high school (or maybe even before). It was the first Agatha Christie for me and remains the only one I’ve ever completed. Which I don’t understand because I loved it and I love the mystery/thriller genre. Why I haven’t read more of Christie’s books is somewhat of a mystery itself. Upon the second reading, it did not disappoint.

I should note another item; this is the first free, public domain electronic book I’ve read on my Kindle. I just went to Feedbooks and did some searching and eventually arrived at the Agatha Christie page. As soon as I saw this I grabbed it because this book has been stuck in the back of my mind for a few years now. It has always remained a memorable book for me for some reason, but I can’t recall why. I’ve entertained thoughts of purchasing it for years but just never pulled the trigger. Now that burden is lifted.

Most people think of detective Hercule Poirot when they hear Agatha Christie. But he’s not in this novel. This book features Tommy (Beresford) and Tuppence (Prudence Cowley), two “young adventurers” who meet up one day in London after not seeing each other for awhile. In no time, they get up to date on each other and decide to start their own little detective agency. This leads to all sorts of intrigue and danger.

It feels a little like young adult literature. Or maybe it’s just kind of old-fashioned (written in 1922). Or maybe I just don’t have any idea what Christie’s writing style is like. It’s very upbeat and although there is danger and death, I never really got to the edge of my seat. But then again, I’ve read it before, albeit about 30 years ago. Here’s a passage that I found kind of humorous, it occurs when Tommy is captured; he’s trying to figure out what to do if he’s able to lure his captor into his cell:

Therefore, why not wait in ambush for Conrad behind the door, and when he entered bring down a chair, or one of the decrepit pictures, smartly on to his head. One would, of course, be careful not to hit too hard. And then—and then, simply walk out! If he met anyone on the way down, well—Tommy brightened at the thought of an encounter with his fists. Such an affair was infinitely more in his line than the verbal encounter of this afternoon.

The detective novel certainly has changed over the last 90 years huh?

Another technique Christie uses in this book is the big reveal. You know, when the smart detective goes through the deductive process they used to arrive at the solution. I’m not used to this because I don’t read that many classic mysteries. I read a lot of crime fiction, which I think is how I would classify Grafton or Burke. I don’t feel like Grafton ever uses the big reveal.

I will read The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Christie’s other public domain book in the US. Maybe I’ll do that this year or next, so I’ll get a better feel for her writing.

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Once a Runner: A Novel

Are you passionate about your sporting endeavors? Are you a weekend warrior? I’m NOT talking about a rabid fan who always watches their favorite team on TV or studies real hard for their fantasy draft. I’m talking about a deeper level of involvement. I’m talking about something that goes beyond knowing all the statistics and reading all of the articles. I’m talking about feeling the pain; the pain of running a 5k on a bad day, the pain of missing a four-footer on the 18th hole that lost you the match, or the pain of being in the stadium when your team got laughed out of the park. If you’ve felt this pain, and have even grown to embrace it, you need to stop everything you’re doing at this moment and find this book.

This is a book for people who like to step on to the field of play. For people who love sports and games because of the emotion and the theatre, because of how they feel when they are involved. This book will stir your emotions, make you laugh, and make you want to train for a distance event. I can’t remember a piece of sports fiction this great, period! The only thing comparable is the movie One on One. You know, the Robby Benson classic. This book may be the stepping stone needed to get me pumped up to start running more…or maybe not.

Have I mentioned that I loved this book. It’s the story of Quentin Cassidy (Cass), a miler on the track team of a fictional college in the Florida panhandle called Southeastern University. He has a girlfriend, hangs out with some cool running buddies, and is quite the team jokester. But he’s deathly serious about cracking the four minute mile barrier, and even more serious about beating New Zealand great John Walton at the same distance (fictional character modeled after John Walker, the first guy to break 3:50 in the mile). And he’ll get his chance to race Walton because Walton has agreed to come to Southeastern for the “big invitational.” So Cass just needs to train like a madman. However, life throws him some curveballs.

Before I spoil it, let me digress from the plot a little. The coolest part of this book are the running-specific digressions by the narrator and the track-centric rants by Cass. Let me give you a long example of a Cass conversation with his girlfriend and buddy (Mizner) that I loved:

“Everyone likes to think they have their own little corner; it can be anything: needlepoint, lawn bowling, whatever. Some guy may gratify himself by thinking he’s the best goddamn fruit and vegetable manager the A & P ever had. Which is fine. It gives people a sense of worth in a crowded world where everyone feels like part of the scenery. But then mostly they are spared any harrowing glimpses into their own mediocrity. Pillsbury Bake-Off notwithstanding, we’ll never really know who makes the best artichoke souffle in the world, will we?”

“Gotcha. Don’t filibuster, tell me Demons,” she said.

“Right. The thing is that in track we are painfully and constantly aware of how we stack up, not just with our contemporaries but with our historical counterparts as well. In that regard it’s different even from other sports. A basketball player can go out and have a great day and tell himself he’s the greatest rebounding forward to ever hit the hardwood, but he’ll never really be troubled by the actual truth, will he? Maybe he’s just in a weak league. Maybe Jumping Joe Faulks would have eaten him alive thirty years ago. But he’ll never know. He’ll just have to leave such judgments in the sorry hands of the sportswriters, many of whom it has been pointed out can be bought with a steak.” Mizner nodded vigorously from behind a pile of popcorn.

“In track it’s all there in black-and-white. Lot of people can’t take that kind of pressure; the ego withers in the face of the evidence. We all carry our little credentials around with us; that’s why the numbers are so important to us, why we’re always talking about them. I am, for instance, four flat point three. The numerals might as well be etched on my forehead. This gentleman here, perhaps you’d like to meet him, is 27:42, also known as 13:21, I believe.”

I love that passage. I love that type of conversation about sports. Especially conversations that compare sports, like he compares basketball to track. Some people view it as testosterone-riddled drivel. I call it keen insight into why sports are so beautiful, why they are so important for understanding what makes us, as humans, tick.

I also like metaphysical discussions in one’s own mind, like this one that Cass has in Chapter 17 (titled Breaking Down), as he’s thinking about his training schedule:

Cassidy sought no euphoric interludes. They came, when they did, quite naturally and he was content to enjoy them privately. He ran not for crypto-religious reasons, but to win races, to cover ground fast. Not only to be better than his fellows, but better than himself. To be faster by a tenth of a second, by an inch, by two feet or two yards, than he had been the week or year before. He sought to conquer the physical limitations placed upon him by a three-dimensional world (and if Time is the fourth dimension, that too was his province). If he could conquer the weakness, the cowardice in himself, he would not worry about the rest; it would come. Training was a rite of purification; from it came speed, strength. Racing was a rite of death; from it came knowledge. Such rites demand, if they are to be meaningful at all, a certain amount of time spent precisely on the Red Line, where you can lean over the manicured putting green at the edge of the precipice and see exactly nothing.

Man, that’s cool huh? Taking it to the edge where you have nothing left, that’s a glimpse into the meaning of life; finding that point where you have exhausted all efforts and you have nothing left. It doesn’t matter how fast or how strong or how smart at that point, you’ve done all you can. The rest will take care of itself.

** SPOILER ALERT **

So back to the plot. Everything is clipping along fine for Cass until he gets involved in a little protest that the athletes at Southeastern University undertake, and Cass takes the fall for it. He gets booted out of school and therefore can’t race against Walton in the invitational.

However, that does not deter him from his training. Cass’s running mentor , Denton, loans Cass his house in the woods and Cass sets about training there. He becomes a bearded hermit and trains for the sake of training, unsure if he can get reinstated in time to race Walton. Kind of reminiscent of when Rocky trains in the Russian countryside by snowshoeing and carrying logs.

At the same time, Denton tries to pull some strings with the administration to get Cass back in school, but to no avail. In the end, Denton hatches a scheme that results in Cass having to impersonate a Finnish runner named Seppo from a fake university in Ohio. This is great stuff I tell you.

The book culminates in a detailed retelling of Cass’s race against Walton. I was riveted and teary-eyed at the end of it all.

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The Given Day

Reading huge, epic novels has always been complicated for me. The best time to read them is on vacation, but hauling a huge book through airports and rental cars, along with other reading, is cumbersome. But not anymore now that I have a Kindle. I was out of town getting some R&R and the cumbersome aspect of carrying around a large work of fiction, a sports book, Newsweek, the WSJ, and the Chicago Tribune is no more. It even makes me think I can justify the Kindle from a cash flow perspective.

This Lehane book is that “large work of fiction” I just mentioned. It’s a mighty piece of historical fiction that takes place at the end of WWI. I started it and finished it in the middle of my vacation, which was perfect. It was great reading material for a vacation; long and involved, but exciting and thought-provoking. I’m going to classify it as popular fiction, but I don’t think it’s quite as “popular” as Lehane’s crime novels like Mystic River or Gone, Baby, Gone.

Like those books, it’s set mostly in Boston. It’s the story of the Coughlins, an Irish-American family of cops and politicians, set during the years of 1917-1919, a tumultuous time in Boston and all over America. Tumultuous because of the rapidly changing landscape in the seats of power in America. The labor movement was in full swing, race relations were heated, women were on the brink of getting the right to vote, and fear of communism coupled with paranoia about radical immigrant groups was especially acute. Lehane brings them all into play.

I term this book epic because it intertwines other families and individual personalities with the Coughlins. So even though it doesn’t span a long time-period like a traditional epic, it switches back and forth between these people and places, giving it an epic feel. For example, the story of Luther Laurence, a black factory worker/domestic servant whom trouble seems to follow around, is just as involved as that of Danny Coughlin, a white cop bucking the establishment. Eventually they become intertwined forming the backbone of the story, highlighting issues of race and class that were so warped back then. Other stories involved an early-career Babe Ruth, a young J. Edgar Hoover, the Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge, and the Coughlin’s domestic help. It’s a wild, roaming ride through post WWI America and I was engrossed from the get-go.

I often hold off reading these long stories regardless of the convenience factor, which is why I’ve only read two (labeled as epic) in the last few years. Besides hauling it around, staring down the barrel of 700+ pages is sometimes daunting because it takes a lot of focus and locks me out of reading other fiction at the same time. But the rewards are great, so I’ve purchased another epic that I’ll read this year for sure (World Without End).

Lehane’s tone is kind of gloomy. There’s a lot of evil and heartbreak in this book, along with some solid family carnage. So I had that going for me, which is nice. Lehane’s characters spend a lot of time ruminating about their situation and his narrative style is thoughtful and descriptive. At times I found myself welcoming a section of crackling dialogue because it didn’t seem that common. I don’t have empirical evidence to support this, that’s just the way it felt. I would like to see book stats come out that measure items like this. How about a ratio that compares dialogue to narration? The quant head in me would welcome that.

I’ve said it before, this is why we read. The only time I turned on the TV this vacation was to measure the screen and see how well we could see it from the back of the room. It was on for about four minutes. No need for it when you have a captivating work of fiction, a solid sports book (Breaking the Slump), and a few newspapers and periodicals handy. Gail read three books and mentioned that it was the most relaxing vacation we’ve ever had. I agree.

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Black Cherry Blues

I’m starting to get it. I didn’t get it at first when I read The Neon Rain about two years ago. I said, “It’s quite dramatic and over the top. A little too much so, that’s why I say the jury is still out on this series.” But now I’m hooked on Burke and the jury is in; I will continue to hammer through Burke’s crime series and I’m becoming a big fan of the main character, Dave Robicheaux.

I wonder where Burke gets all the character traits for the dark and tormented Robicheaux. According to his bio, Burke lives in Missoula, MT and New Iberia, LA, which are the very locations that this novel takes place. So I’m guessing that he has melded together some local characters and himself. Grafton does this I think, but her style and main character are a lot different (but there are similarities). I like reading the the author biographies and sorting through these things. I just found out that Burke has a daughter named Alafair, which is the name of the child Robicheaux adopted in his second book. This, coupled with the setting, means that there’s a lot of Burke in Robicheaux.

That’s cool. Things like that bring me closer to the characters, the books, and the authors, making it an extended reading experience, so to speak. It just makes the pursuit more fun.

Burke’s novels throw some variety into my crime reading. So many crime novels have a single, childless, independent, often smart-alecky protagonist (at least the ones I read do). Robicheaux kind of conforms to this caricature. He’s a widower now and his daughter is adopted. But he’s not a smart alec. And he’s not very independent; leaning mostly on his therapist, AA group, housekeeper, bait shop employee, and adopted daughter for support. But in return, he helps these people out a lot and shows them much kindness. They are often the reason why he has to unleash some brutal attacks on the bad guys of the world.

This good and evil in the extreme is very interesting. It’s almost unnerving because the people he loves are often in harm’s way. Especially his daughter. In this book she needs constant protection because he hauls her along while he is tracking the bad guys. But he needs to do so because she’s a target. The tension is always there.

** SPOILER ALERT **

Luckily his daughter doesn’t get killed like his wife did in the last book (she was a one-book wife). This is only book three so I’m really anxious to watch the development of these two. It just seems that he has a lot of crimes to solve with kid in tow. It would be overly formulaic if she was threatened in book after book. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I have the next one in paperback queued up, but I probably won’t get to it until later this year.

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Q is for Quarry

Grafton has made her main character so rich and enthralling that it’s like having an imaginary friend. Strange you say? Yeah, I can’t argue with you, I may very well have some issues. I read through Kinsey’s bio on Wikipedia like it’s for real. I think it’s a testament to just how crafty Grafton is. The woman can write some fun stuff.

In this iteration of the adventures of private detective Kinsey Millhone, Grafton throws in a few new things and a fresher take on one of her favorite topics.

For the first time that I can recall she bases the mystery on a real-life case. She talks about it in an extended author’s notes section (I don’t recall her doing that before either). She gives the reader insights into her methods and goes into some detail on the journal she keeps during the writing of each book. Do you ever think that the next generation will study these journals posthumously like we study Van Gogh’s sketches? Hey, pop culture often ends up being termed classic after a period of time. Don’t rule it out.

Additionally, she really pushes the envelope on Kinsey’s fast food fetish. The reader gets a detailed description of a McDonald’s meal no less than three times. Kinsey even gets a colleague addicted to fast food. At one point, Kinsey heads out to grab some McDonald’s shortly after her colleague had just finished dining at Burger King. Her colleague says:

Oh, I’ll be eating again. The Whopper was good, but it didn’t fill me up. I’ve been thinking we should do a study – purely scientific – a side-by-side tasting, a Whopper and a Big Mac, to see which we prefer. Or go vertical – McDonald’s hamburger, cheeseburger, a QP with cheese, and a Big Mac. What do you think?

That vertical tasting idea is pretty funny. Grafton, I think, is rebelling against the healthful, agricultural, Santa Barbara lifestyle. Kinsey runs and lifts weights, but loves fast food. So she’s healthy, but unapologetically cheats a lot. I’m guessing that she’s flaunting this in the face of the granola eaters in California.

I may just blast through R, S, T, and U this year so I can catch up.

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A Spectacle of Corruption

This is the sequel to A Conspiracy of Paper, which I read a few years ago. I said then, and I’ll say it again, I will continue reading Liss. But I didn’t think it would be three years. This book continues the adventures of Benjamin Weaver, a private detective in 18th Century London. Ahh, I do like historical fiction and I’m starting to love period pieces.

This book is set in 1720’s London, about 30 years after King James II was dethroned. I did a little rooting around in Wikipedia and came up with a few things. King James II was the last Catholic to be king (1688). There was much “upheaval” in England at this time. Protestants and Catholics didn’t trust each other. France and England didn’t trust each other. Whigs and Tories didn’t trust each other. And underlying all of this was the chance that the Pretender (the son of King James II), was trying to plot the overthrow of the government from his base in France.

To put this in perspective, the time frame was about 100 years after the Golden Age of Queen Elizabeth. King James II was part of the Stuart line of royalty. The Stuart line included Mary, Queen of Scots, who was executed for trying to kill Queen Elizabeth, her father’s first cousin. Be sure not to confuse Mary, Queen of Scots, with Mary I of England (“Bloody Mary”), who re-established Catholicism in England, which was eventually reversed by her half sister, Queen Elizabeth. Thanks Wikipedia for taking this full cycle. Where would I be without you. So yeah, there was a lot of intrigue and treachery happening, which provides a great backdrop for some solid historical fiction.

Benjamin Weaver is a great character and I’m looking forward to the next book in the series. Supposedly it’s due out later this year. This according to the bio at David Liss’ official website. Who, upon further reading of his website, appears to have a particularly, and admitted, liberal view when it comes to “unregulated and overly-exuberant markets.” In fact, he engaged in a little war of words with the NYT over the facts in his latest novel, The Whiskey Rebels, released in late 2008. This is interesting to me because Alexander Hamilton factors into this novel and I really need to learn more about Hamilton, especially since I just finished John Adams, an arch rival of Hamilton’s. I think I need to read Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton.

Wow, I’m glad I did this rooting around. It really opened my mind to a few other books that I can’t wait to read.

So yeah, this is a great book. Weaver is wrongly accused of murder so he sets out to clear his name. During that process, he masquerades as a wealthy tobacco trader from Jamaica and runs in social and political circles that a Jewish private detective wouldn’t normally be accepted in. Throw in a murderous villain and a crooked politician who Weaver has to team with, then mix in a few love interests, and you have a ton of good fun.

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The Hunters

This is the third book in Griffin’s Presidential Agent series. A series which is fast becoming one of my top fiction reading experiences. I think the stuff is genius.

I really like the way Griffin humanizes his characters. He gives them quirks and cool traits that add to their personalities and add a lot to the story. But what sets him apart is the pure volume of characters in which he does this. I lose count of all of the antagonists, protagonists, and supporting characters for which Griffin opens this window into their psyche. He does it sometimes through his standard narration written in choppy, cryptic prose. His main tool, though, is to use the thoughts of the characters themselves, which he puts in italics. The thoughts read like a standard conversation at times, it’s just that it’s a conversation going on in the heads of the characters and not being verbalized. I don’t see this method used that often by any of my other favorite thriller writers, but Griffin employs it extensively.

I think he employs this method because it’s the only way he can throw first person style thoughtfulness into his narration. He can’t take the first person perspective throughout because these books are so big and Bournesque. If he took the main character’s perspective instead of that of a narrator, he would lose a lot because the main character can’t be all over the globe at the same time. But by going into first person mode every so often, you get great character insights. This way, the reader can get a little more emotionally involved and really refine who they like and dislike.

In the end, these books get me involved in the characters like Grafton and Hillerman do, but they capture some of that international intrigue and thrill left out of a crime novel. It’s a good mix.

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One Shot

When you’re reading a book in the middle of a series, you know the hero isn’t going to die. This takes away some of the anxiety you feel when the hero embarks on the “attack on the fortress,” against impossible odds of course. Which is not a good thing because it also takes away some of the excitement of the book. However, series writers usually align their main characters with friends, family, cohorts, and colleagues who fall in harm’s way, thereby putting someone you care about in peril, which restores some of the excitement.

Child is expert at this. He often has Reacher finishing up the book with an “attack on the fortress” and Reacher rarely goes in alone. He’s usually accompanied by at least one highly attractive female and one person with some military or law enforcement experience. It’s always pretty implausible, but who cares. I don’t care how formulaic Child gets with this stuff, he always manages to throw in enough twists and coolness that each book seems fresh and fun.

My wife and I differ on our fiction choices; my tastes are more accepting of a slower paced mystery-style thriller, whereas Gail prefers something that runs at breakneck speed. However, we meet at Lee Child and both like the series. They’re good stories and Reacher, the main character, is outrageous. Who can’t love a guy who lives completely off the grid and only travels with the clothes on his back (which he replaces occasionally and washes almost nightly)?

Chock up another great one. The popular fiction I’ve read this year has been great. Shortly I’m going to sit down and review my year in books. Maybe I’ll do that on Christmas Day, seems like a great Christmas Day kind of thing to do.

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P is for Peril

I’m getting close to catching up with Grafton’s alphabet mystery things. They’re just frickin’ reliable and I can bank on some great fun. I would love to know how Grafton feels about her predecessors like Raymond Chandler. In certain ways she pays homage by creating a hard-boiled, lonesome, private detective embroiled in smartly woven crime novels that highlight greed, corruption, and other human frailties. But she also pokes fun a little and makes things lighter. This book made me think of some similarities and differences.

One method to deepen the persona of said private detective is to build a relationship with coffee, cigarettes, or some other sort of vice. For example, in The Long Goodbye Chandler often had Marlowe making coffee. Real good coffee. I seem to recall rich descriptions of a simple cup and it was easy for me to picture Marlowe hunched over a cup of coffee, reading the LA Times, sorting through the next steps in solving whatever mystery was unfolding.

In much the same way, Grafton has Millhone eating McDonald’s all the time. Junk food, it’s another vice. But it allows Grafton to throw in some humor. Early on, Millhone has this run-in with breakfast.

I stopped off at McDonald’s and ordered coffee and a couple of Egg McMuffins. I needed the comfort of junk food as well as the nourishment, if that’s what you want to call it. I munched while I drove, eating with such eagerness I bit my own index finger.

It’s easy to picture a Millhone eating in her car while she’s ruminating on the details of the case. Grafton’s methods always keep it a little lighter, but I think it’s just as effective for character development and it strikes the right chords with me for the most part. I don’t think Millhone is supposed to be as dark as Marlowe, and she isn’t.

But both Millhone and Marlowe are alike in that both of them shun the societal norms of marriage, kids, and settling down. Recall that passage I talked about where Marlowe goes on a tirade against any other life but the one he is living. Take a read, I excerpted it in The Long Goodbye post. Millhone has a moment kind of like that when she goes to interview someone for her case. She’s interviewing a woman at the woman’s home, where there’s a handful of screaming, rambunctious kids. The screaming is so loud that Millhone can’t concentrate on the conversation. She thinks:

I tried to concentrate on what Blanche was saying, but all I could think about was that even at my age, a tubal ligation probably wasn’t out of the question.

So, much like Chandler, Grafton crafts Millhone in a manner that you never have to worry about her giving up this detective thing. Maybe we’re wrong though, who knows, maybe at “Z,” Millhone will have a husband and a kid and just ride off into the sunset. Something to look forward to I guess. That would certainly close out Millhone.

Hillerman died a few months ago and I feel like he never closed out his characters. But I may be wrong because I didn’t read the last few with that thought in mind because I didn’t realize how close to death he was. I’ll reread them all when I retire.

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Articles of War

I got this book in Denver, CO. It’s a great town and the Tattered Cover is a great, independent bookstore. It was displayed prominently at the entrance because it was the “One Book, One Denver” offering at the time. Arvin is a Denver resident with roots in the Midwest (he went to U of M). I’m a damn fool for some local flavor so I grabbed it.

This is a story about the horrors of war; World War II in fact. It’s about a fictional kid named George Tilson who lands in France and makes his way across many battlefields dodging German bombs and bullets. Early on, he doesn’t separate himself as a proficient fighter and barely fires a shot. He spends most of his time beating himself up for being afraid.

There was good reason to be afraid. Large chunks of the book are devoted to describing just how awful it is be in battle. He spends his time in dirty foxholes and is always on the brink of starvation. He sees fellow soldiers get shot, blown up by booby traps, and killed by freak mishaps. There is some hope. In the background and often on his mind is a woman he met during his first week in France. Here name is Claire.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

On the violent front, his desire to leave the battleground and find Claire is so great that he raises his hand above the cover of a brick wall hoping to get shot and thus get a ticket out of the war. He takes a flesh wound but it’s not enough to get him sent home. Even worse, shortly thereafter he gets chosen to participate on a firing squad chartered to execute a deserter named Private Eddie Slovik.

The picture of Eddie Slovik struggling to stand after being shot by the firing squad haunts Tilson for the rest of the war. I think it basically desensitizes him to everything in life. This allows him to finish out the war as a respectable fighter and he even volunteers to hang around after the war to help rebuild. He is so desensitized that he even ignores Claire after noticing her in a line of beggars holding a baby. He finds out shortly after from Claire’s father that she was raped by a Nazi.

The last scene finds Tilson in the bunkhouse when he hears a knock at the door. He opens the door but nobody is there. Then he hears the crying of a baby. It’s Claire’s baby girl and note requesting that Tilson take care of her.

The book ends there, leaving the open ended question of whether Tilson has the emotional fortitude take the child in. I’d like to think that he did so and that it changed his outlook for the rest of his life.

Arvin’s inspiration for this book appears to have come from another book called The Execution of Private Slovik. According to the book, Private Slovik was the only deserter during the war to pay the ultimate price of death. It was even made into a movie with Martin Sheen. Check out some of the reviews on Amazon of the movie, it seems to have stoked some passions.

It’s not light reading. I may have to get the movie.