Shakespeare's Christmas (Conclusion)

Shakespeare’s Christmas (Conclusion) 

I guess I’m getting better in this Mystery Reader role, guessing the outcome of a whodunit, or at least how it will play out at the end.  True, my personal prime suspect was not the real killer, but I had suspected that was the case anyway; that the seemingly most incriminating incident was a decoy, albeit a subtle one, designed to distract us from the real killer.  The resolution, or what might be called the Exposition (the explanation near the end of a mystery of how the clues and other details all fit together at last) was interestingly facilitated by letting us listen in on Jack calling his colleague to tell him how it all came down. 

But yes, the babysitting stint was the scene of the culmination of the action in which the crime was actually solved, at least for the reader.  Lily’s lack of experience in babysitting and the subsequent mishaps that occurred before things got serious were amusing, beginning before the parents of the family whose house it was even left.  She burped the baby without putting anything on her shoulder, with predictable results.  Even I know that you’re just asking for a wet mess down your back if you do this!  This is followed by the older girls getting into the make-up, spilled milk going into Anna’s lap, and the boy toddler being stopped just short of applying sharp fingernail trimmers to the baby’s toenails.  Yikes. 

But when Eve’s father shows up unexpectedly to pick up Eve and the baby, Jane, Eve’s reaction is what tips Lily off to what is really going on.  “’Maybe … you could tell him me and Jane need to spend the night here, like we were supposed to?  So he won’t take us home?’  She’s intended to tell me something else.  I wondered how much time I had before Emory came to find out what was keeping us.  ‘Why don’t you want to go home?’ I asked, as if we had all the time in the world.  ‘Maybe if he really wanted me to come, Jane could stay here with you?’ Eve asked, and suddenly tears were trembling in her eyes.  ‘She’s so little.’  ‘He won’t get her.’  Eve looked almost giddy with relief.  ‘You don’t want to go,’ I said.  ‘Please, no,’ she whispered.  ‘Then he won’t get you.’  Thus the stage is set for a very intense confrontation, a fitting climax to a beautifully paced, slow-build of a story. 

On the surface, this is rather a modestly wrought work, minus the chase scenes, the explosions, the numerous fist-fights and brilliantly deduced conclusions made from momentary flashes of brilliance.  No, the author gives her readers much more credit than that, relying on them to fill in a lot of the blanks and to be able to appreciate a much more subtle treatment.  And like Ms. Harris’ other works, the story rides on the strength of the characters themselves, reminding us that it doesn’t matter how clever the plot is if we don’t connect on a deep level with the characters.  The front cover of my copy of the book features a quote from “Booklist”: “Lily Bard is one of the best-drawn and most compelling characters.”  An understatement, in my opinion (which is very strange indeed for a cover blurb!). 

Jack, as a character, is adequately fleshed out (the movie version, if and when, will probably “flesh him out” to the extreme…) but only just.  He does show some complexity on the occasions when he is forced to admit that Lily is right when he is not.  He just manages not to eat crow when, in the aftermath, Lily innocently asks, “’What were you doing last night?’  ‘While you were confronting the real kidnapper?’ Jack looked at me darkly.  ‘Well, sweetheart, I was rear-ending your soon-to-be brother-in-law.’”  In order to get a peek into Dill’s car trunk to see whether there was any incriminating evidence, he was planning to run his car into the back of Dill’s car.  Probably not by-the-book detective technique.  But when you’re running out of ideas while your girlfriend solves your case for you … whatcha gonna do?





January’s book of the month; “The Fault in Our Stars,” by John Green.
(Segment chapters: 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, Conclusion)

 TIME Magazine’s #1 Fiction Book of 2012!

“The Fault in Our Stars is a love story, one of the most genuine and moving ones in recent American fiction, but it’s also an existential tragedy of tremendous intelligence and courage and sadness.” —Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine

Shakespeare's Christmas (Chapters 5-6)

Shakespeare’s Christmas (Chapters 5-6) 

Lily continues to sink her teeth deeper and deeper into the puzzle of the murders and the case that her boyfriend, Jack, is working on.  There still isn’t enough evidence collected on either case to tie them together, but the two seem to have a working assumption that there is a connection.  The newest murder, Meredith Osborn’s, threatens to tear the town apart to the point of cancelling the wedding, and Lily is half convinced that Dill, the groom-to-be, is the murderer anyway.  Meredith’s husband shows every sign of being devastated by her murder, making it seem a stretch to suspect him.  Dill is another story. 

The only way that Lily can see for her to make headway into the case – an option not open to Jack – is to offer to clean the Osborn house and Dill’s house.  In the Osborn house she does find the yearbook with the page missing that is was sent to Jack and is his most valuable tangible clue, but she also finds another intact copy of the same book.  She also manages to steal one of Meredith’s old hairbrushes in order to secretly obtain her fingerprints to see if there is a match with the ones on the yearbook page. 

Her meeting with the police chief, Chandler Brainerd – an old school buddy that she had had a short-lived relationship with – doesn’t produce much, but serves to clear the air with him and put most of the cards on the table.  Their meeting ended amicably enough but “I knew that if Chandler thought I was concealing something that would contribute to solving the murders that had taken place in the town he was sworn to protect, he would come down on me like a ton of bricks.”  Her encounters with another old school friend, Mary Maude Plummer, were a little more productive.  It’s hard to put a finger on any specific clues, but one gets the feeling that when the case does get resolved, Lily will remember something from one or both of these encounters that was said that will help everything fall into place. 

Her cleaning of Dill’s residence – the one he and her sister are planning to share after the wedding – was interrupted by her turning to suddenly find him there; a tense moment that he either doesn’t notice or pretends not to.  He makes the mistake of trying to play on her emotions:  “’Lily, I know you and I have never gotten close.  But I don’t have a sister, and I hope you’ll be one to me.’  I was repelled.  Emotional appeals were not the way to make a relationship happen.  ‘You don’t know how hard it’s always been for Varena.’  I raised my eyebrows.  ‘Excuse me?’  ‘Being your sister.’”  Wow.  This is Dill trying to “connect.”  He tries to explain that Varena feels that she’s always lived in Lily’s shadow, but the damage has already been done.  His ineptness here would seem to preclude any guilt on his part in the murders, but then she blindsides him with a reference to his previous wife … “’Did your wife ever threaten to hurt Anna?’  He turned white as a sheet. I’d never seen anyone pale so fast.  ‘What – how – ‘he was spluttering.  ‘Before she killed herself, did she threaten to hurt Anna?’  ‘What have you heard?’ he choked out.”  This seems practically an admission that he has something to hide.

 

Before we get to the last chapter, we see the climax being set up.  Because of a flu outbreak, there is suddenly a shortage of babysitters.  Lily sees her opportunity to get into the thick of things (and out of yet another socially awkward pre-wedding situation!) by volunteering to be the babysitter of a whole roomful of rugrats, thoroughly shocking everyone who knows of her aversion to dealing with children.  Yes, a truly tense resolution to this mystery in the making!




Next week:  Conclusion




January’s book of the month; “The Fault in Our Stars,” by John Green. 
(Segment chapters: 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, Conclusion)

 TIME Magazine’s #1 Fiction Book of 2012!

“The Fault in Our Stars is a love story, one of the most genuine and moving ones in recent American fiction, but it’s also an existential tragedy of tremendous intelligence and courage and sadness.” —Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine

Shakespeare's Christmas (Chapters 3-4)

Some of the observations about the Christmas Holiday Season really hit home.  Regarding public Christmas displays - “Unlike Shakespeare, Bartley was holding onto its manger scene, though I had never found plastic figures in a wooden shed exactly spiritual.  Carols blared endlessly from the speakers around the square, and all the merchants had lined their store windows with twinkling colored lights and artificial snow.  If there was a true religious emotion to be felt about Christmas, I had been too numbed by all this claptrap to feel it for the last three years.”  Aren’t most of us more than a little jaded by said “claptrap”?  It’s the people who continually get sucked into The Wonder Of Christmas year after year that I’m a little concerned about!

The arrival of Lily’s detective boyfriend, Jack, in Bartley is less of a surprise to us than it is to her.  Is it too much of a coincidence that a case he’s working on brings him to this small town at exactly the same time she is there for the wedding?  We’re not as amazed when these things happen in real life as we are skeptical when they happen in fiction.  And is it just a further coincidence that murders are suddenly taking place; murders that are unrelated to Jack’s investigation, as far as he or anyone else can tell?  And if that isn’t coincidental enough, Lily happens to be the one to stop the homeless purse snatcher, who seems to be in possession of what might be the weapon used in the murders. 

“I shook my head as I stared out the living room window.  I was not a law enforcement officer or any kind of detective, but several things about the homeless-man-as-murderer scenario just didn’t make sense.”  She may not be a detective, but she analyzes the data she does have with razor-sharp logic.  “If this man was clever enough to hide Diane Dykeman’s purse, which he almost certainly had stolen, why hadn’t he been clever enough to get rid of the evidence of a much more serious crime?”  The fact that the doctor was still sitting at his desk when murdered tells her that the murderer was someone he knew and trusted – otherwise, he would have gotten out of his chair to deal with the stranger, who couldn’t have snuck up on him.  Lily may not be a detective (or a murder mystery writer!) but she sure thinks like one. 

In Jack’s hotel room that night, along with some very steamy bedroom action (Harris leaves just enough to the imagination, thank you very much) Lily gets the full explanation of the case he’s working on.  Is this realistic?  Does a private investigator share everything he knows about a case with his girlfriend?  If he does, should we suspect his professionalism?  Yes, the case revolves around Lily’s sister, so the outcome of the investigation is very much in her interest.  But doesn’t that make it even less excusable to divulge sensitive information to her about the case?  He understandably trusts Lily with the information, but if it should come to light later that she knew all the details, that could reflect very badly on his professionalism to most observers.

 

Chapter 4 ends with the discovery of yet another murder.  With the homeless purse snatcher presumably behind bars, our prime suspect can be crossed off.  We saw that coming, of course, with the suspected murder weapon having been clumsily planted near his “nest” of cardboard boxes, but the characters had to consider him the most likely suspect until now.  If anyone has guessed who the murderer(s) is/are, out of the possibilities presented so far, they’re a much more seasoned Mystery Reader than I am.  That’s not saying much; I’m content to just let the plot unfold and see how the mystery gets solved.  That’s Jack’s job – and Lily’s, too, I guess!





Next week:  Chapters 5-6

Shakespeare's Christmas (Chapters 1-2)

Charlaine Harris never lets me down.  She has a huge and loyal fan base because of this, and I’m definitely one of them!  In the first three pages of this story, I was already chuckling at her acerbic wit and admiring her technique.  Lily Bard, the reluctant protagonist of this series, is a distinct personality, and a stark contrast to Sookie Stackhouse of the outrageously popular “Trueblood” series.  Lily comes with a lot of emotional (as well as physical) scars from her past and just wants to be left alone.  “In what I thought of as my previous life, the life I’d led in Memphis … I had believed that all women were sisters under the skin, and that underneath all the crap, men were basically decent and honest.” 

A LOT happens in the first chapter, enough to fill 4 or 5 chapters in a similar book.  This economy of writing space is refreshing and appreciated.  It’s a relatively short book, just over 200 pages with only 7 chapters, but it doesn’t feel “skimpy” at all.  And, although the early action centers around an event as commonplace as the preparations for a wedding, the perspective of our heroine keeps the narrative interesting, focusing as it does on her discomfort with people in general, and this crowd in particular. 

The occurrence which makes this a mystery is completely absent – not even hinted at – until the book is one quarter underway: this might have been frustrating to someone who was dying to sink their teeth into a whodunit right away, but I hadn’t even missed it.  The storyline minus the murder mystery element, plus the engaging writing style had me satisfied for the moment.  But the discovery of the bodies is especially jarring in light of the relative mundaneness of the preceding events. 

Lily’s hometown, Bartley, where all this is taking place, is about as “small town” as small towns get.  It’s described as being in “The Delta,” - apparently there is a large section of Arkansas a few hours east of Little Rock that is as flat as Kansas is supposed to be, and the Texas Panhandle really is.  This is where Lily grew up and it hasn’t changed much; even the names of her old acquaintances and relatives - most of the townsfolk - have a “backwoods” ring to them.  The latest crime news in town is that there is a purse snatcher on the loose.  “A purse snatching did not seem as remarkable as it would have a few years ago.  Now, with gang presence and drugs in every tiny town up and down the interstate and all in between, what happened to Diana Dykeman, a sales clerk at one of the local clothing stores, didn’t seem so bad.  She seemed lucky to be unhurt, rather than unfortunate to have her purse snatched at all.”

 

When Lily and her sister, Varena (country enough fer ya?), discover the dead and dying victims at the doctor’s office, it takes a moment for Varena’s nurse experience to kick in.  It also seems to take Lily a few minutes to realize that the danger may not be entirely gone.  But she hustles her sister out of the building as soon as it dawns on her.  In an odd twist, the policeman who responds to Varena’s phone call turns out to be a black man.  Yes, this story is set in “modern” times, and yes, the law enforcement profession is one in which blacks are well represented.  But in small-town eastern Arkansas – not that far from Memphis – this is probably a rarity.  He seems to be nervous at first, but settles into his professional policeman persona after checking out the scene, and questions the sisters at length, a model law enforcement officer.  And thus, the plot swings wildly into a full blown murder mystery.




Next week:  Chapters 3-4

Big Red Tequila (Conclusion)

The occasional description of Navarre’s use of tai chi on his adversaries is noteworthy.  (And apparently authentic; the “About the Author” blurb facing the last page of the story says, “He has practiced tai chi chuan for five years…” I almost find it odd that none of the infighting knowledge has found its way into the two Percy Jackson novels I have read; I guess when you have a ballpoint pen that morphs into a magic sword, the martial arts take a back seat!)  About Navarre’s final encounter with Kellin, he says, “I didn’t think he was carrying, but I couldn’t give him time to pull a weapon.  Kellin stepped back and I stuck to him like glue.  That’s the most disconcerting thing about fighting a tai chi opponent; you step back, they step forward; you advance, they retreat; you swing right, they disappear to the left.  The whole time they’re only a few inches away, but you can’t connect a punch.  And they touch you almost the whole time … It’s very annoying.” 

The various clues that he follows up on in order to be at the right places at the right times are just enough to keep his investigation from stalling out.  Locating the site where Lillian is being held by her kidnappers is facilitated by the accumulation of cement dust around the wheel casings of a car involved in the case which means … the local cement plant.  Nice detective work, Tres – except it’s his friend Ralph, not Tres, who makes the deduction and has to point it out to our hero.  But this is realistic; in real detective work, investigators often depend on evidence that falls into their laps while they are diligently following dead-end leads.  The novelized true crime classic, In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote [see our August, 2012 book] points this out beautifully. 

Navarre’s relationships with the ladies continue to be complicated.  Not only is Maia apparently out of the picture, with Tres’s call to her being answered by a male voice, but he effectively puts his romance with Lillian on ice by pretending to be unforgiving about her real reasons for bringing him back to San Antonio.  We’re left with the impression that he just needs some time to get used to being on his own again now that his father’s murder has been resolved and he no longer feels the obsession with that. 

It’s nice irony when we find that the crime boss, Guy White turns out to be uninvolved after all, especially after all the pestering he had received from Tres.  Can we assume that if he actually had been involved, he would have had Tres “rubbed out” very soon after that first encounter?  The fact that he actually helps Tres in small ways is even more delicious, particularly at the end when Tres returns the favor by giving him one of the discs with incriminating evidence against the local politicians who have made White’s live difficult for years.  Tres cleverly arranges things so that his potential enemies all have an interest in keeping him healthy.  No wonder there are a number of sequels to this storyline!  The next book in the series, The Widower’s Two-Step, will be on my shelf very soon!

 

A very nice concluding touch at the very end has his pal Ralph coming to the rescue when he finds himself without wheels to get home:  “‘Hey, vato,’ someone said behind me.  I turned and saw Ralph leaning out the window of his maroon Lincoln and grinning like a fiend.  ‘You lose your wheels man?’ … Ralph laughed and showed me a bottle of Herradura Anejo and a six-pack of Big Red.  ‘You still need friends like these?’ he asked.  ‘Only more than anything,’ I told him, and I got into the car.”

December’s book of the month; “Shakespeare’s Christmas,” by Charlaine Harris. 

(First post on December 6th over Chapters 1-2!)

If you are familiar with the Sookie Stackhouse (“True Blood”) novels, you know how great the writing is.  This series is a little more “hard-core mystery”, without the supernatural twists of Harris’ other books, but still a lot of fun!  Merry Christmas!

 

"Fresher, more unusual, than any other mystery I've read lately."
--The Washington Post Book World

"This one works on every level. The writing and plotting are first-rate."
--The Washington Times

"A seamless story... In her Lily Bard novels, Charlaine Harris blends a noirish atmosphere with a traditional mystery."
--Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

Big Red Tequila (Chapters 34-51)

Did I mention testosterone in the last entry?  As much as I’m enjoying the action, the boldness of the good guy(s) and the butt-kicking in this story, I have to admit that the testosterone levels seem to be leaving the logic and the realism behind, in some instances.  Tres can be given a pass, just maybe, for bending the rules … no, breaking the law … in his quest for justice due to his emotional melt-down.  We’re not really excusing him, but if he’s that fragile, we understand.  But what about Maia?  She started out by trying to talk sense into him, trying to get him to leave town and let things cool down while The Law looks into things.  But when the two of them go to “visit” Guy White, the alleged mob boss of San Antonio, they illegally force their way in to his home and she is the first one to start blasting away, apparently in total disregard not only for the law, but with a seeming willingness to throw away a highly successful career as an attorney and probably face some serious jail time.  Totally out of character, and quite unprovoked. 

Several factors help make up for this infraction of artistic license.  The characterizations of minor players, for instance; here’s more on the rather oversized Larry Drapiewski:  “Drapiewski’s red jeep seemed right at home in the Hill Country.  So did Larry.  Off-duty he was wearing boot-cut Levi’s and black leather Justins that must’ve been made from an entire alligator, a red shirt that made his hair and his freckles seem a little less neon by comparison.  Howdy Doody on steroids.”  And another minor player:  “Drapiewski’s friend with the Blanco County Sheriff’s Department had the unfortunate name of Deputy Chief Grubb.  We met Grubb outside the Dairy Queen, a place he had obviously frequented over the years.  His white hair had a slightly greasy tinge to it, and his upper body, once that of a football player, had swollen up over his belt buckle until it bore an uncanny resemblance to a Dilly Bar.”  Lovely. 

Tres finally works out a clue, in the form of out-of-place notes jotted on a sheet of paper among his father’s old investigation documents; “Sabinal.  Get whiskey.  Fix fence.  Clean fireplace.”  This leads him to the old family farmstead, run by the caretaker, Harold:  “Harold looked like he and the cows had been partying pretty hard the night before.  His shirt was buttoned wrong so his collar stuck up on the right side.  His jeans were half tucked into his boots.  At one point his third-grade teacher had probably told him: ‘You make that face at me and one day it’ll stick that way.’  She’d been right.  Harold always looked like he was trying his best to look ugly.” 

A big part of the fun of this series for those of us who live in the San Antonio/Austin area is the setting.  Much of the action takes place in the better known areas of these cities, from the La Villita, where Lillian and Karnau’s art shop is, to the Hilton Palacio del Rio, where Karnau meets his end, to the Congress Street bridge in Austin where the tourists go to watch the bats come out at dusk, to the Riverwalk itself, with a very colorful description of a typical tourist season evening.  It’s a treat to be able to visualize the setting as it really exists as the action takes place.

 

The reader continues to get the sense that the plot has been very meticulously mapped out, and that each of the rather short chapters has a perfectly good reason for being placed precisely where it is in the sequence.  With sixty-six chapters in all, one imagines sixty-six sheets of paper tacked up on the wall of Mr. Riordan’s study, or wherever it is that he writes.  I would not usually be interested, but in this case, I wouldn’t mind seeing those notes for myself!






Next week: Conclusion

December’s book of the month; “Shakespeare’s Christmas,” by Charlaine Harris.  If you are familiar with the Sookie Stackhouse (“True Blood”) novels, you know how great the writing is.  This series is a little more “hard-core mystery”, without the supernatural twists of Harris’ other books, but still a lot of fun!  Merry Christmas!

 

"Fresher, more unusual, than any other mystery I've read lately."
--The Washington Post Book World

"This one works on every level. The writing and plotting are first-rate."
--The Washington Times

"A seamless story... In her Lily Bard novels, Charlaine Harris blends a noirish atmosphere with a traditional mystery."
--Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

Big Red Tequila (Chapters 19-33)

Mr. Riordan uses the “mystery plot-formula” as well as anyone.  Normally, as I’m reading I am not consciously aware of the plot as it unfolds.  I’m still not completely comfortable with that feeling and I am distracted by it when I read mysteries.  An English professor would, perhaps, look down his/her nose at me and claim that I’m missing out on half the value of reading fiction if I remain oblivious to the plot as I read a novel.  But I still like the idea of just immersing myself in the events as the story goes along and letting the author concern him/herself with such matters.  In a mystery, however, there is almost always a carefully constructed “schedule” of exposition in which clues materialize at various points in the plot, and it is usually too obvious to ignore. 

I also frequently get the feeling that the protagonist is even aware of the plot, thus knowing which character to talk to next, or which file cabinet or deserted building to poke into at each turn.  In the case of this book - as in many other mysteries I have read – the protagonist even seems to know that the plot is dependent on his not dying.  Even though he apparently doesn’t have a death wish, he seems to be fine with constantly putting himself in situation which might very well be his last.  Yes, his determination is exceptionally strong and perhaps admirable; but he seems to be unaware that he is mortal – after all, the success of his quest kind of depends on his continued involvement.  And yes, this is a work of fiction, so it’s best not to over –analyze these points.  But the author is so clearly striving for realism in so many other ways that this appears to be an oversight, although a not uncommon one, to be sure.

The characterization continues to be entertaining.  Officer Drapiewski is characterized as someone who is a little too in love with food.  “By the time I’d told Larry Drapiewski my tale of woe he had relieved me of my leftover lemon chicken, four Shiner Bocks, a couple of beef fajitas, and half a box of the former tenant’s Captain Crunch, dry…I’ll give him this, the deputy got my mind off my problems.  Now I was thinking about my empty refrigerator and my empty wallet.  I was hoping to God that Larry didn’t want something else to eat.” 

His encounter with the chauffeur/bodyguard is amusing as well.  “No matter how strong your grip is, it’s always unconnected where the thumb meets the fingertips…I was halfway up the side walk before he realized he didn’t have me anymore.  He came at me again, but he had a serious disadvantage.  He was on the job and I wasn’t…even the toughest employees are usually hesitant about cold-cocking somebody in front of their rich boss’s house…He tried to grab me with both arms.  I stepped underneath and flipped him into the gravel…You’d’ve thought he got flipped every day by the calm look on his face.  He just stood up and nodded.  ‘Aikido?’ he asked.  ‘Tai chi.’  ‘How about that.’  Then he cleared his throat and looked at the front door.  ‘You mind if I make the introduction, man?  I don’t feel like job-hunting today.’”

 

There is plenty here for testosterone-laden guys to revel in.  But the ladies are depicted with great realism as well, shaking their heads in disdain at the thick-headedness of the men, especially our hero, Tres.  My guess – and I’m just as often wrong about women’s responses as any other thick-headed guy – is that the female reader will identify very positively with the female characters here, especially Maia, Navarre’s ex-lover.  All the ladies, including his mother, are being very sensible about advising him to stop poking his nose into this dangerous situation.  But if he were to heed their advice, well … we wouldn’t have a story then, would we?





Next week:  Chapters 34-51

Big Red Tequila (Chapters 1-18)

What a treat!  I seem to be accumulating “favorite new authors” in droves lately, especially in the mystery/crime novel genres.  Until now, I had only read Rick Riordan’s novels from his Percy Jackson series, written for a young readership, but enjoyed very much by this not-so-young reader for its pace, wit and creativity.  That led to a curiosity about his books written for adults.  (I technically qualify.)  The fact that his Tres Nevarre series is set in the San Antonio/Austin area is a plus for me, since that is my current stomping ground, but I was anticipating a level of entertainment equal to that of the Percy Jackson series and I am thrilled to find that it is!  Now I look forward to reading everything I can get my hands on by Riordan. 

The first thing that stands out about this author is the wit.  It’s reminiscent of, but different from the narrative quipping of Charlaine Harris, Joan Hess or Sue Grafton, who write equally well in the same genre.  About the house he’s renting:  “The house didn’t look much better on a second take…The right side of the building , where the in-law’s smaller porch stuck out, had shifted on its foundations and now drooped down and backward, as if that half of the house had suffered a stroke.”  About the landlord:  “Gary was an anemic watercolor of a man…I got the feeling he might just dilute down to nothing if he got caught in a good rain.”  And about San Antonio weather in July:  “The sun kept its eye on the city until its very last moment on the horizon, looking at you as if to say, ‘Tomorrow I’m going to kick your ass.’” 

As the story gets more serious and our hero’s situations more dangerous, the humor abates somewhat, but the dialog continues to be sharply first-rate.  Our hero has a James Bond style of fearlessness, barging rashly into tight situations with the confidence that he can get out of them as he needs to.  Following a crime boss to his mansion and grabbing the gun away from the crime boss’s henchman is as brash as it gets.  His confrontations with various law enforcement personnel that try to intimidate him are also quite gutsy.  Many of these people remember his father in a rather negative light, and would rather not have to deal with a case that was dismissed ten years ago, for various, yet-to-be-disclosed reasons.  Anonymous phone calls telling him to leave town and thugs confronting him in public with the same message simply tweak his curiosity more. 

The premise seems a little thin at first:  as the book jacket says, “Ten years ago Navarre left town and the memory of his father’s murder behind him.  Now he’s back looking for answers.”  And no, there is not much more to it than that.  But the storyline propels us forward and clues to the answers he is seeking keep turning up.  When Lillian, his love interest, is apparently kidnapped it seems clear that it is related to his snooping around; now he has a double motive for continuing his quest. 

Of course, it’s a little less risky to boldly go into potentially dangerous situations when you are a tai chi master.  The descriptions of his encounters with people who try to rough him up are very nicely done, with concise explanations of the how and why of Nevarre’s tai chi defensive moves.  “It’s … easier to grab someone who has lots of muscles; it’s like walking around with built-in handles all over your body.”  I am reminded of “Roadhouse,” the old Patrick Swayze movie, in which he portrays a tai chi bouncer cleaning up a rough and tumble redneck bar.  Very entertaining novel so far!

 

 

 

 

 

Next week:  Chapters 19-33

Frankenstein (Conclusion)

Victor is aware that the monster intends to kill off all of Victor’s loved ones, but each time it happens, it’s a surprise.  Not that he can do anything about it; the monster seems endowed with supernatural powers!  I mentioned previously that when I was a kid, the Frankenstein monster didn’t seem so scary to me because he was always depicted as being very slow, wobbling back and forth stiff-legged with his arms stretched out in front of him.  The literal monster here, however, is not only more powerful than any mere man, but much faster as well.  When Victor makes a thing out of spare parts, he doesn’t fool around! 

He has already decided not to continue his Build-A-Bride project and to depart the desolation of the Orkney Islands of Bonnie Scotland, when disaster strikes.  He takes a little sailboat out onto the placid sea at night in order to dump the Bride’s body parts overboard, and on the way back he is so relieved (and emotionally exhausted) that he lays down in the sailboat and falls asleep.  Oops.  He wakes up to a violent sea, no land in sight, and sure that he’s out of luck, only to eventually come to shore in … Ireland.  (And apparently, southern Ireland, as he later takes a short trip to Dublin later in order to leave the country.  Of course, these British Isles look so tiny on the globe…) He is met here with hostility and eventually accused of a murder.  Not just any murder, either, but the murder of his friend Henry Clerval, whom he left and last saw in Perth, Scotland.  Clever monster! 

The monster continues to taunt him, promising to be with him on his wedding night.  This is a warning that when he marries his betrothed, Elizabeth, the monster will attack again.  Somehow it doesn’t occur to him that she is the intended.  Victim.  So on his wedding night, he sends her into the bedroom by herself while he prepares to do battle with the monster.  Oops, again.  This genius who created the world’s first AI (sci-fi acronym for “Artificial Intelligence”) can’t seem to get with the program of victims.  Her screams from the bedroom remind him once again that he is only the indirect target of this menu of mayhem. 

If I seem to be making fun of this excellent work, well, that’s just me.  Any classic can be picked apart like that, (I love the Mad magazine spoofs on modern-day cinematic masterpieces!) but it remains to be said that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one.  The fast pace keeps it moving forward; many of today’s best-selling authors would do well to take this aspect to heart.  The historical significance of this work cannot be over-stated – it really was way ahead of its time.  The fact that its publisher felt it had to be toned down to avoid offending the sentiments of the readers of that time is fascinating; I have a very hard time finding anything in this that I would have felt necessary to change, if I were Mary, trying to please the publisher.  I had honestly expected a lot more gruesomeness, especially in the initial collecting and assembling of the body parts.

 

So Victor pursues the monster to the end of the earth (literally, almost to the North Pole) to try to destroy him, but dies on the stranded ship in the ice.  The monster’s work is done.  Only destroying himself remains, which he plans to do by burning himself in solitude; apparently not “at the stake” because there would be no one to tie him to it.  The captain of the ship decides not to grant Victor’s last wish and destroy the beast himself.  Good decision, since he has no idea how to go about doing that!  And the monster jumps ship and disappears into the night - leading to all the cheesy sequels that kept us awake after the late night movies we watched back in the day!

Join us next month for November’s book of the month; “Big Red Tequila,” Rick Riordan.  We will take an extra week to recover from the pre-diabetic sugar binge of Halloween, and begin on November 9th! 

 

Riordan has loaded his first mystery with lots of genre baggage: this story about a man coming home to San Antonio, Texas, to rescue his old girlfriend and solve the 12-year-old murder of his sheriff father is a virtual homage to James (The Last Good Kiss) Crumley. But Riordan writes so well about the people and topography of his hometown that he very quickly marks the territory as his own. Tres Navarre has put behind him the teenage days when he and his friend Ralph Arguello would cruise through San Antonio, drinking a ferocious mixture of cheap tequila and Big Red cream soda. A University of California Ph.D. in English plus a fascination with t'ai chi ch'uan led Tres naturally enough to work as a private investigator in San Francisco. But one call from the love of his early life--the mysterious and captivating Lillian Cambridge, now trapped in dangerous work and love relationships--and Tres gladly trades his trendy Peet's coffee for the stronger brews of home.  

Winner of the 1998 Shamus Award for Best First Novel and the 1998 Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original!

"A standout...A crooked construction company, corrupt cops, old enemies--you can almost feel the summer storms rolling over South Texas."
---Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Frankenstein (Part Two, Chapter Six through Part Three, Chapter Three)

Although this is not exactly edge-of-your-seat can’t-put-it-down reading, the prose is quite lively and never gets tedious or pedantic.  The action keeps moving forward, with interesting changes of setting and events.  The visit of Victor and his friend Clerval to London and parts north is told at exactly the right pace, with colorful asides describing how different it all is to a couple of young men from Switzerland.  Victor’s reason for being here is to get information he needs to comply with the monster’s blackmail. 

Those old, cheesy movies that would come on late Friday or Saturday night back in the early 1960s keep coming to mind, though this story is told with a lot more style and taste.  One or more of those movies was about The Bride of Frankenstein.  I had always thought that concept was the creation of some over-imaginative director or producer – so I found it surprising to discover that creating a mate for our monster is very much a part of this section of the story!  At first, it seemed that we were definitely on our way to seeing the object of his dreams in all her big-hair-with-silver-streaks glory.  This entire section of the book has Victor anguishing over the fact that he is committed to creating the “Bride” in order to protect his own loved ones from destruction at the hands of the blackmailing monster. 

Only after going through all the trouble of traveling to London from Geneva, then to Oxford and other English destinations to the north, and up through Scotland to Edinburgh (which I find once again described, as in so many other sources, as a place of great beauty and esthetic delight!), followed by his companion’s destination at Perth, and Victor’s subsequent solitary trip up to the desolate Orkney Islands, does he start on his dreaded project of creating yet another monster.  After all this, is finally dawns on him that perhaps the result of this new creation might be worse than the consequences to himself of abstaining.  In a very unscientific turn of thought, (this is, after all the early 1800s upon time of writing) he seems to assume that the two monsters will actually be able to produce offspring!  He imagines that he might be unleashing a horde of nightmarish creatures to become the scourge of humanity.  We have to wonder if maybe he had thought of this before his trip to Great Britain, he might have been able to save himself a lot of trouble, not to mention anguish over what he perceived to be his fate. 

We seem to be giving up a lot to artistic license here, and yet – it’s all a lot of fun!  The writing continues to be very engaging and lively, though I still think it might not appeal to anyone younger than high school age.  It is “science fiction” in the actual meaning of the phrase, which is more accurately termed “speculative fiction.”  And Sci-Fi buffs are typically relentless about picking holes in the theories of their authors, who subsequently have become more conscious of getting the “science” right more often than they did early on.  Even H. G. Wells employed some very scientific-sounding reasoning in the design and theory behind his famous Time Machine.

 

All in all, “Frankenstein” is a great read, flowing along at a nice pace, which is a bonus for a relatively plodding reader like me.  I have already anticipated re-reading it at some time in the not-so-distant future, and that is a pretty rare event for me.  While some people I know read the same books over and over, apparently simply enjoying the ride, I virtually always thirst for something new to read.  It is easy to see why this work has endured, beyond the initial shock factor it had and the utter originality it offered at the time.  Two big green stitched-on thumbs up!







Next Week: Conclusion

Frankenstein (Part One, Chapter Six through Part Two, Chapter Five)

Chapter Six begins with a letter from Victor’s father in which the next phase of the plot is clearly launched.  Victor’s little five-year-old brother has been murdered, and the evidence points to young Justine as the murderer.  On the way home, he passes through the vicinity of the murder site and encounters the amazingly nimble monster he created!  He is convinced that the monster actually committed the murder.  At this point I was reminded that I had watched a movie version of “Frankenstein” many years ago – or perhaps just bits and pieces of the movie – in which a young girl (Justine?) befriends the monster, and that the monster had killed the boy by accident, not understanding what he was doing.  I also seem to remember a scene in which a mob of people with torches pursues the monster at night.  It will be interesting to see how much of this is reflected in the actual text. 

There are several rather odd plot devices that some people might consider just a little too convenient for the author.  For instance, when the monster holes up in an apparently completely unused shed-like structure attached to a shack, he is allowed to eavesdrop through a boarded up window and listen to every word that the inhabitants of the shack utter for months.  The fact that they never hear him make a sound - even snoring when he sleeps – and never think to use or look in the shed for any reason, is just a little too far-fetched.  Mary Shelley is asking us to suspend our credulity here, and in other ways as well.  Perhaps the biggest leap of faith is the fact that the monster employs first-rate diction and elocution in relating his tale to Victor after listening in on the family that lives in the shack for a short while; more than likely a family that doesn’t speak with very admirable elocution itself. 

And looking back to earlier passages, I seem to have missed the segments that I had always been led to believe were in this book regarding the acquisition and assembly of the various body parts and how they were supposedly obtained from questionable sources like a graveyard for criminals.  My understanding is that the version of the story I’m reading is unabridged, so I don’t think these more gruesome details were simply left out.  Also, this copy is supposed to be the original text, before Ms. Shelley was compelled to revise the book so that it wouldn’t offend her readers’ sensibilities.  This classic story has been reworked and embellished in so many ways over the years that I was probably misled on this point. 

The monster’s tale – a story within a story within a story (remember that Victor is relating all this to the captain of the ship in the arctic; our original narrator) – overlooks a number if difficulties and questions left unexplained.  As far as we can tell, the monster “woke up” a blank slate, having no memories remaining from his brain’s previous life.  And yet, he learns how to feed himself, acquires all the survival skills he needs to keep from perishing in the wild, picks up a language by overhearing it, and generally seems to have skipped vast segments of the childhood learning curves we normal people have spent our lives mastering.  But all this serves the purpose of the author in having the monster narrate what happened to him in first person. 

It probably has occurred to most of us that writing in first person relieves an author of many of the burdens of writing well.  After all, any discrepancies, contradictions and even grammatical errors can simply be written off as the idiosyncrasies of the narrating character.  Was Ms. Shelley, at the age of nineteen, perhaps a little apprehensive that her craftsmanship as a writer would be subjected to severe criticism?  So far, her story has had three different first person narrators.  The language to modern ears seems quite erudite, so it’s hard to make such a charge stick.  I particularly like first person prose, so it doesn’t bother me in the least, but I have to believe that was part of the reason.  At any rate, it makes for a very entertaining read in this case!

 

 

 

Next Week: Part Two, Chapter Six through Part Three, Chapter Three

Frankenstein (Up to Part One, Chapter Six)

Of all the people who might put off reading this classic until their Fifties, I might be the least likely candidate.  I’m shaking my head over it even now.  When I was a boy, I loved everything about “monsters”; I put together the prefabricated monster models, watched as many late-night monster movies as my parents would allow, read all the monster-themed comic books and storybooks I could find, and so on.  Even my interest in “The Wizard of Oz,” “Star Trek” and all the other early “space”-oriented TV shows, the soap opera “Dark Shadows,” and later in life my almost exclusive reading of science fiction all had their roots in this Monster Mania.  But Frankenstein?  Interesting, I supposed; but any monster that I felt I could outrun just didn’t terrify me all that much… 

Also, the little information that did trickle through to me about this book seemed to indicate that is was mostly about “boring adult stuff.”  And yes, I would have had a hard time appreciating it at the age of nine, or thereabouts.  When I read Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” a couple of years ago, I enjoyed it immensely more than I did as a child.  (Alternatively, I think I would have enjoyed “The Chronicles of Narnia” more then than now.)  This book does start off rather slow, working its way very gradually toward the main premise, which really only manifests at the beginning of Chapter Four. 

I had known that the story took place partly in the icy Arctic, which to my mind had always seemed a preposterously desperate attempt on the part of the author to add interest to the settings of the story.  But I had not realized that the story practically begins there.  That our first glimpse of the monster was from a distance, being pulled in a sleigh by a team of dogs in extreme arctic regions was an almost ludicrous surprise.  Up till then, we were taken through several personal letters written by a rather minor character in the story, followed by a number of pages describing an arctic expedition by ship.  If this all seems a rather unnecessary preamble to the story as related by the scientist rescued by the ship’s crew, it is at least entertainingly written.  Ms. Shelley wrote this - much of it, anyway - at the age of nineteen, and the verbiage displays that impeccably correct Literary English found in the works of most of the great British authors.  I almost always enjoy this style of writing very much.  Individual words are seemingly chosen very meticulously to impart meaning with great precision.  The level of communication is greatly enhanced (or should I have said “magnified”?) by this means. 

So we finally get to the point of the Scientist (we have yet to be told his name) telling his story.  Here again, we get a lot of background that has little to do with the premise.  But, also again, it is engagingly written with a lot of food for thought bordering on the philosophical.  Most of this prepares us to understand why the Scientist discovered how to do what he did – why his thought processes were so different from his peers as to lead him to discoveries that no one else ever made.  Starting with Natural History followed by an immersion in Chemistry leading to an obsession for discovering how and why life arises; all these steps are nicely illustrated.  When he has his “Aha Experience” the obsession really kicks in – and now we have a more unhealthy obsessive “addiction” to his scientific quest.

 

It’s interesting to watch the process unfold.  “None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science.  In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder.  A mind of moderate capacity, which closely pursues one study, must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study…”  But later:  “Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.”  Here we see the aspect of this work as a Cautionary Tale.  This is “Science as Pandora’s Box.”  And therein lies the “horror” of this classic Horror Story.




Next week's segment: Part One, Chapter Six through Part Two, Chapter Five

Red Mist (Conclusion)

So, how many mystery stories are solved based on the old, “Aha-she-had-an-identical-twin!”  premise?  Well, this is one of them.  Actually, I can’t help but wonder if we really needed it here, if we needed it to explain motive, misidentification or anything else.  Cornwell does a good job of camouflaging all the clues and sudden insights with a “red mist” of irrelevant or only partially relevant information.  It still isn’t clear to me to what degree Kay might have expected to find the murderer living at the mansion where the old murder had taken place.  I suspect not at all, and the murderer’s resemblance to her twin sister, whom Kay had seen before, might have been what tipped her off; but another, more sophisticated and less trite happenstance might have served the purpose just as well. 

Despite all the earlier implications that Kay was involved somehow in the murders, it doesn’t seem to have been a factor in slowing down her own investigations or causing her problems with higher authorities.  Is this simply a matter of misdirection, of distracting us from what the real storyline is so that we are challenged just that much more to solve the riddle of the mystery ourselves?  That would appear to be the reason for including such a twist, along with other more subtle ones.  But I also wonder if, going back over this section, I would begin to see a much more tightly orchestrated plot than I realized on the first read.  Or not. 

Our protagonist isn’t one that is given to starry-eyed philosophizing, preferring to remain coldly pragmatic even in the face of the irrational guilt she’s feeling about Jaime’s death.  The closest Kay gets to considering the big picture is this:  “While I understand the concept of fundamental randomness, the favored theory of physicists that the universe exists because of a Big Bang roll of the dice, and therefore we can expect a mindless messiness to rule our everyday lives, I don’t accept it.  I honestly don’t believe it.”  A Big Bang roll of the dice?  This metaphor seems to me to display a fundamental misunderstanding of the theory.  And the phrase “I honestly don’t believe it” seems to commit the classic error of reversing cause and effect in the form of belief and truth, as if the stronger you believe something, the more likely it is to be true.  (I hope I’m not stepping on any toes here!)  She continues, “Nature has its symmetries and laws, even if they are beyond the limits of our understanding, and there are no accidents, not really, only labels and definitions that we resort to for lack of any other way to make sense of certain events…”  There are so many kinks in this attempt at reasoning that I’m just going to let it go. 

The passages of conversation between Kay and her husband Benton are very convincing.  People do speak to their spouses in a totally different way than they do anyone else, and there is a richly developed juxtaposition of personalities here, possibly mimicking the author’s own relationship with her husband, if she is or was married.  Her daughter Lucy has a very compelling presence as well, reminding me that these characters have all appeared in a number of novels before in the same relationships.  It’s easy to see why Cornwell’s readership would want more of this.

 

If the climax seems a little too easy, with the heroes stumbling onto the solution almost by accident, we should remember that many good mysteries are concluded this way, and that in real life things happen this way as well.  We’ve all experienced it; the “Aha!” experience often just hits us in the face, when we’re least prepared for it.  It’s just that we don’t find ourselves in potentially life-or-death situations the way many of our favorite fictional characters do!



Starting next weekend, October’s book of the month is “Frankenstein,” by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.  The first week's section is up to chapter 4.

“Frankenstein”; or, “The Modern Prometheus” is the original 1818 'Uncensored' Edition of Frankenstein as first published anonymously in 1818. This original version is much more true to the spirit of the author's original intentions than the heavily revised 1831 edition, edited by Shelley, in part, because of pressure to make the story more conservative. Many scholars prefer the 1818 text to the more common 1831 edition.  Shelley started writing the story when she was nineteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley's name appears on the second edition, published in France in 1823.
Shelley had travelled in the region of Geneva, where much of the story takes place, and the topics of galvanism and other similar occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions, particularly her future husband, Percy Shelley. The storyline emerged from a dream. Mary, Percy, Lord Byron, and John Polidori decided to have a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for weeks about what her possible storyline could be, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made. She then wrote Frankenstein.

Red Mist (Chapters 19-27)

Now that the momentum of the story has picked up speed, it maintains a pretty good pace.  Dead bodies are turning up and this becomes a “homicide-by-poisoning” mystery, and a pretty good one.  The body count is up to three, and in a classic twist, the person our protagonists considers the number one suspect turns up as one of the victims.  All the while, we’re served up some really intriguing forensics technique, complete with some nice gruesome details.  This is, apparently, a trademark of Cornwell’s and it is done with real style and professionalism. 

One very surreal moment I liked a lot: upon looking through the first victim’s effects, Scarpetta discovers a somewhat incriminating letter to the victim from … Scarpetta herself!  Here, Cornwell’s tight, almost stodgy prose style poses an almost jarring contrast with the event, and the result is very effective.  The story veers into a new direction with Scarpetta now weighing every new development against what appears to be a plot to incriminate her.  When Jaime suffers the same fate as the other victims, Scarpetta is placed in the rather bizarre position of investigating deaths that may eventually be pinned on her.  She’s very aware of the legal considerations of her situation, and plays her hand accordingly, but it’s a real tightrope she’s walking in terms of legality. 

The detective work, apart from the forensics, is nicely presented as well, with some clues that only professionals would spot that haven’t been explained yet.  The contents of the prisoner’s stomach don’t match at all what the investigators have been told about what the prisoner had to eat that morning.  There is a small burn mark on her foot that, according to the prison’s head honcho, couldn’t possibly be there.   There is a mysterious orange, cheesy substance (I keep thinking of Cheetos, but that would be too funny in this context, “smacking” of the product placement phenomenon in movies!) which appears smeared on the victim’s pants and under one fingernail.  All these little details will eventually help solve the crime, of course, so it’s fun to try and imagine how. 

Amusing, too, is how the dialog occasionally slips into a rather pedantic mode when the investigators begin to discuss interesting scientific and investigative topics.  “Clostridium botulinum, the anaerobic organism that produces the poison or nerve toxin, is ubiquitous.”  This is Kay speaking to a colleague. “The bacterium is in the soil and the sediments of lakes and ponds.  Virtually any food or liquid could be at risk for contamination.”  You can almost hear the deep baritone of a science film narrator intoning these factoids.  “Food-borne botulism is commonly associated with improper canning and poor hygienic procedures or oils infused with garlic or herbs and then not refrigerated.  Poorly washed raw vegetables, potatoes cooked in aluminum foil and allowed to cool before they’re served.”  This sounds like it could have been lifted from a government pamphlet on food safety!  But then Sammy Chang makes it real, “…well, that just ruined a lot of foods for me.”

 

All signs point to a very satisfying ending, both in terms of the science involved and in terms of the conclusion to a well-written mystery story.  If the final quarter of the book plays out as well as the second and third quarters, I will have considered the time reading the book well spent, and certainly consider reading another one of Cornwell’s novels soon; though perhaps one that is not part of a series this time!




Next week: Conclusion.

October’s book of the month: “Frankenstein,” by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.  “Frankenstein”; or, “The Modern Prometheus” is the original 1818 'Uncensored' Edition of Frankenstein as first published anonymously in 1818. This original version is much more true to the spirit of the author's original intentions than the heavily revised 1831 edition, edited by Shelley, in part, because of pressure to make the story more conservative. Many scholars prefer the 1818 text to the more common 1831 edition.  Shelley started writing the story when she was nineteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley's name appears on the second edition, published in France in 1823.
Shelley had travelled in the region of Geneva, where much of the story takes place, and the topics of galvanism and other similar occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions, particularly her future husband, Percy Shelley. The storyline emerged from a dream. Mary, Percy, Lord Byron, and John Polidori decided to have a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for weeks about what her possible storyline could be, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made. She then wrote Frankenstein.

Red Mist (Chapters 11-18)

Cornwell continues to offer a great amount of detail about the relationships of the main characters and their loved ones and acquaintances.  A good author knows that readers care more about the story if they care about the characters, but it begins to get tedious here.  The more she goes on about the details of the relationships the less I care.  These are, after all, fictional characters.  It’s as if she’s begging us to care about them, so that the story will appeal to us.  It has occurred to me quite a few times while reading this that I have neglected the literary genres specifically aimed at female readership.  Once I was told – by a female - that if I were to read a book by Danielle Steel, that I just wouldn’t like it, because I’m a guy.  I took the challenge and she recommended “Message from Nam,” since the setting was a war zone – “which a guy can maybe relate to.”  I didn’t like it.  The main thing I didn’t like was the amateurish prose itself; as if it had been written by a precocious thirteen-year-old, with an understanding of adult issues, but very little training or experience in writing.  But I didn’t like it on other levels as well. 

“Red Mist” is a marked improvement over the Steel book, but I’m still haunted by the “written-for-women” ghost.  I like to think that I’m open-minded enough to “get it” and enjoy it anyway, just like I’m open-minded about reading books for teens (I do very much like the “Twilight” series and the “Hunger Games” books!) or books written for blacks.  I hate to consider the idea that books “written for women” are written at an inferior level, as if women aren’t as smart as men, so it doesn’t matter if you write down to them.  I have been out-achieved, out-smarted, and out-classed by women far too many times to have such a Neanderthal attitude about them.  That’s why this topic – and books like this – are such a disturbing enigma for me. 

Now, to get nitpicky… 1. Switching tenses mid-sentence:  “It was still hot when the sun came up, and by eight a.m. I’m [I was] sweltering in black field clothes…” 2. Wrong word spelling:  “…I realized I can’t afford to waiver [waver] in my resolve.”  3. Confused syntax:  “I’m involved not because I volunteered.”  But it’s not really being nitpicky, because these things keep popping up throughout the entire book so far.  These three examples occurred within the space of one page!  Ms. Cornwell needs to find a good editor and just completely surrender to that person’s judgment.

 

However…  Suddenly, at chapter 16, the story shifts into a higher gear.  All the relationship-oriented small-talk switches to a much more interesting shop-talk; the forensic lab shop-talk of the professional M. E.  Here is where Cornwell shines, and where we finally get a glimpse of her extensive knowledge on the subject.  I have only watched a few small fragments of the TV shows that feature this, but my impression is that the writers for those shows probably pick up where writers like Cornwell leave off.  It’s just more entertaining, to me at least, to read it than to watch B grade actors try to impress me with it.

 

The introduction of the character Colin Dengate is a huge breath of fresh air.  Mandy O’Toole is a welcome addition as well.  This new thread continues through chapters 17 and 18 and I feel that I’m finally past the “introduction” (153 pages worth!) and into the meat of the story.  Suddenly the story is no longer SLOW, and I feel that I’m getting what I came for.  Our main character, Kay Scarpetta, is in her element now, at her impressive best.  Here’s hoping that the “filler,” if that’s what it was, is no longer considered necessary, and the new pace continues!



Next week's chapters: 19-27.