Category: Fiction Page 292 of 351

Updraft by Fran Wilde

On October 22, 2015

It’s been awhile since I’ve re-written, honed, revamped, etc. a blogpost so much. I think this is coherent. I should’ve just probably put up the publisher’s description and said “Read it, it’s special.”
—

Updraft

by Fran Wilde
Hardcover, 362 pg.
Tor, 2015
Read: October 15 – 17, 2015

I don’t normally do this, but let me start with the Publisher’s Description:
In a city of living bone rising high above the clouds, where danger hides in the wind and the ground is lost to legend, a young woman must expose a dangerous secret to save everyone she loves.

Welcome to a world of wind and bone, songs and silence, betrayal and courage.

Kirit Densira cannot wait to pass her wingtest and begin flying as a trader by her mother’s side, being in service to her beloved home tower and exploring the skies beyond. When Kirit inadvertently breaks Tower Law, the city’s secretive governing body, the Singers, demand that she become one of them instead. In an attempt to save her family from greater censure, Kirit must give up her dreams to throw herself into the dangerous training at the Spire, the tallest, most forbidding tower, deep at the heart of the City.

As she grows in knowledge and power, she starts to uncover the depths of Spire secrets. Kirit begins to doubt her world and its unassailable Laws, setting in motion a chain of events that will lead to a haunting choice, and may well change the city forever—if it isn’t destroyed outright.

You know how (if historical fiction I read/watched as a kid taught me anything), fathers used to throw their kids into a creek/river/lake to teach them to swim? That’s pretty much how I felt about Wilde’s treatment of readers: just throw us in, and if we make it out of the first chapter, we’ve learned how to swim. Sometimes that approach works, sometimes it doesn’t — Wilde pulled it off. Like with Uprooted earlier this year, I just want to hang out in this world for a while, it’s so rich. I actually don’t want to live in it (unlike, say, the Tufa’s land), between my acrophobia and aviophobia, I’d be a wreck (at best). But I want to keep reading about this world.

Honestly, this is such a rich world, I’m tempted to talk about it for this entire post — the feel, the history — both myth/legend and what really happened — it’s so rich and real-feeling. We get hints at the economics of the place, the values, history, but just hints. Just enough to make you know that there’s something there. Honestly? I think I prefer not knowing, just being teased when it comes to this world. Can’t forget about the skymouths — these very, very, very strange predators at work here — I don’t know when I’ve last read something so strange. The way that Wilde writes flying is just great, it’s the literary equivalent of the original Christopher Reeve flying scenes. You buy it, you feel it, you want to do it (or you’re filled with paralyzing fear at the idea).

But, obviously, I’m not going to talk about the worldbuilding for the whole post, or I wouldn’t have said that. As great a creation that it is, it’d be nothing without the people and the story. We’ve glanced at the story, so what about the people?

Kirit has ambition, drive — she wants to fly with her mother and trade between with towers, and that’s pretty much it. A nice, happy, well-off life. When that’s thwarted (at least temporarily), she pushes back against the inevitable until she’s convinced that it’s the best option; there’s a little coercion involved, but not entirely. Her best friend, Nat, is similarly driven — but where Kirit is forward focused, all Nat wants are answers about the past. The question for their relationship becomes: can it last when the two have such divergent goals?

In the Spire, there are three main figures that she interacts with, learns from, and is shaped by. There’s Rumul, who’s been calling the shots in the Spire (and therefore the city) for so long that both he and everyone else have a hard time thinking there’s another option. Wik is the Singer who started her trouble, and realized her true potential, and is responsible for her fulfilling that potential. Sellis is her contemporary, who can’t believe that her future is tied to this novitiate doing well.

There’s a couple of younger twins — Moc and Ciel — that are of invaluable help to Kirit as she adjusts to her new reality — every time I read about them I saw WilyKit and WilyKat from the original Thundercats. And honestly I don’t think that’s too far off. There’s Sidra, who might as well be named Nellie Oleson — we don’t spend as much time with her overall as it appears we will at the beginning. I wouldn’t have minded a little more time — but I’m glad we didn’t get too much of her.

Looming over everything are Kirit’s and Nat’s mothers, Ezarit and Elna, and the shadows of their absent fathers. I wish we’d been able to see more of these mothers in action, get to see them being as wonderful as Kirit says they are (assuming she’s right). I understand why we don’t get to see that, why we just have to learn about it, but still, it’d have been nice. And we have to assume that Kirit’s appraisal of them is correct, but that’s probably easy to do.

Each of these characters (and others I don’t want to bog this down further with) are so well drawn, fully fleshed-out, that half of them (if not more) could be edited out and this would still be a compelling read. There are so many overlapping, competing, contradictory, at cross-purposes, motives, plans, hopes that it’s easy to see why any character (particularly young and unknowing) characters would be confused and unsure what to do. Maybe even sure what to do, for a time, and then seeing how they’d been used/mistaken. How often do you get something like that?

This isn’t a YA book, but it’s totally appropriate for that audience, and in many ways it aligns with YA stories/interests — Hunger Games, Divergent, or Red Rising fans will find a lot of the same themes at work. But don’t go into this looking for something like them, you’ll be disappointed. Especially if you’re looking for a love triangle — or any romantic storyline at all.

I saw on Goodreads that Wilde said this was written as a stand-alone, but that there are two sequels coming. This is one of those books that I don’t think needs a sequel, we got a good complete story here — but I’m going to be in line for it. A great piece of worldbuilding, a compelling story and some characters you want to spend time with — Updraft has it all.

—–

4 Stars

A Serpent’s Tooth by Craig Johnson

By HCNewton

On October 20, 2015

In Authors, Craig Johnson, F-J, Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, Walt Longmire

A Serpent’s Tooth

by Craig Johnson
Series: Walt Longmire, #9

Paperback, 335 pg.
Penguin Books, 2014
Read: October 17 – 19, 2015

So it seems that Craig Johnson had some things about religion that he wanted to get off of his chest. It almost felt like that came first, and the story came second — maybe not, maybe he just took the opportunity that the story gave him, what do I know? Raised by a Methodist mother and an atheistic/agnostic/irreligious father, Walt and Martha repeated that pattern once he came home and married (although it appears Walt attended services fairly frequently with her), after her death, he’s left the Church behind. As he told Henry, he’s spent more time in Indian religious ceremonies than Christian since Martha.

So, he’s in a jaded state of mind when he encounters a LDS splinter group — add in Vic’s lapsed Catholicism, and the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department spends a lot of time almost offending a few World Religions. It helps (both the insulting, and insulating Walt/Johnson from giving actual offense) that this particular splinter group is a little more unhinged than normal.

On the one hand, there are comic elements involving the cult — a senior citizen of indeterminate age claiming to be a historic figure over 200 years old, a yet-older nude sunbather who builds spaceships in his backyard. There are also heart-tugging elements, the teenager who’s never seen a television or movie before (and becomes obsessed), him and other teens being cast out of their homes/families and left to wander, the little girl with a developmental disability abandoned on the roadside for entire days to sell baked goods. But, at least for Walt, more importantly there suspicious elements surrounding a Texas-based cult that moved to South Dakota and now seems to be expanding in a handful of Western and Mid-Western states — and the missing mother of the movie junkie. And guns, lots of new, expensive guns.

In addition, we get a lot of good time with the citizenry of Absaroka County (not as much time in the diner as usual), learn a little bit more about the youth of Walt and Henry, see things move along for Walt and Vic, and see a major shakeup for the Sheriff’s Department. Throw all this together, and you get a solid, satisfying read.

Absolutely nothing here did anything to remove the worries Walt has for Cady thanks to Virgil’s warning/prophecy/vision from Hell is Empty. Hoping that gets resolved soon, if only so Johnson stops teasing.

Not Johnson’s best, but there’s nothing to complain about here, and plenty to enjoy.

—–

3 Stars

Opening Lines – If I Fall, If I Die

By HCNewton

On October 20, 2015

In Blog Series, Currently Reading, Fiction, General Fiction/Literature, News/Misc., Opening Lines, Quotations

We all know we’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover (yet, publishing companies spend big bucks on cover design/art). But, the opening sentence(s)/paragraph(s) are fair game. So, when I stumble on a good opening (or remember one and pull it off the shelves), I’ll throw it up here. Dare you not to read the rest of the book

The boy stepped Outside, and he did not die.

He was not riddled with arrows, his hair did not spring into flame, and his breath did not crush his lungs like spent grocery bags. His eyeballs did not sizzle in their sockets, and his heart’s pistons did not seize. No barbarian lopped his head into a blood-soggy wicker basket, and no glinting ninja stars were zinged into his throat.

Actually, incredibly: nothing happened–no immolation, no blood-bath, no spontaneous asphyxiation, no tide of shivery terror crashing upon the shore of his heart–not even a trace of his mother’s Black Lagoon in his breath.

Somehow Will was calm.

from If I Fall, If I Die by Michael Christie

Whirligig by Magnus Macintyre

By HCNewton

On October 15, 2015

In General Fiction/Literature

Whirligig

by Magnus Macintyre

Paperback, 301 pg.
Marble Arch Press, 2015
Read: October 13 – 14, 2015

This is the story of a self-centered, shallow, city-dwelling fat man who takes an opportunity to reinvent himself and travels to a small town in Scotland to be the voice of a proposed wind farm. Which, of course, he knows nothing about. So, our fat man, Claypole, spends the next week bouncing around from here to there in this community, finding himself in one embarrassing/catastrophic situation after another. I think this is where we’re supposed to find humor — it never struck me as funny. These all just seemed like a guy acting without thought and finding himself being taken care of like some sort of bumbling Candide.

As anyone who’s read this setup knows, once this particular Englishman went up this proverbial hill, he developed an understanding of this community, learned some important life lessons, and whatnot before he came down the proverbial mountain.

I couldn’t tell, really, how sincere we’re to take the “green” portions of this story — there are a couple of true believers, and a cartoonish doubter or two — but the rest, their interest in/commitment to the cause seems pretty shallow. Now, that’s the characters, not the author, I grant you. But when the central plot revolves around the establishment of an environmentally friendly source of power, I expect a bit more than that.

Those people that do actually end up liking Claypole — I don’t get it. Particularly those who take a seemingly instant liking to him. He’s such an offensive buffoon that it’s hard to understand. I guess I can understand those who grow to like him when they see the man behind the awkwardness.

The people of this small town are sketchy, outside of one family, they’re fairly generic stock characters. And that family? I can’t buy them either, a little more fleshing out and I probably could’ve believed them. But pretty much, they’re just a collection of characteristics, tics, and odd wardrobes.

Whirligig has very sweet ending, and it was not exactly the one a reader would expect, but pleasant, and – like “crap telly” (Claypole’s words) had taught him, one that tied everything up nicely.

Not funny enough, not “green” enough, and I couldn’t connect the way I wanted to with anyone. Near miss after near miss after near miss takes me to a 2 1/2 Star rating.

—–

2 1/2 Stars

Review Catch Up: Walking the Perfect Square; The Drop; and A Bitter Feast

By HCNewton

On October 14, 2015

In Authors, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller

Time for another catch-up post because: A. I should’ve had these taken care of months ago, and B. because I’m having a really hard time writing up Butcher’s The Aeronaut’s Windlass

Walking the Perfect Square

by Reed Farrel Coleman
Series: Moe Prager, #1

Hardcover, 264 pg.
Permanent Press, 2002
Read: April 19 – 23, 2014

Moe Prager is waiting to call his daughter on her birthday, but before he can do that he answers a phone call that may lead him to solving an old missing persons case. It’s a case that he investigated twenty years previously, shortly after an injury forced his retirement from the NYPD. We spend most of the novel in the 70’s, with brief looks at Prager’s present, tracing his work on the case.

As a mystery novel, it’s okay. Nothing special, but it kept my attention, kept me guessing, and was entertaining enough. Which is a decent start for a series. By the end, I’d really started to enjoy Prager and wanted to see where he goes from here — either the 70’s or 90’s (although I’m pretty sure the series sticks with the latter).

Stylistically, this was pretty cool. Though published in the early 2000’s, the flashback segments feel like they could’ve been written in the 1970’s/80’s. The present day material felt like it was written in the late 1990’s, and yet they were definitely of a piece. I’m very impressed that he pulled that off.

The last few paragraphs turned this from a decent mystery novel into a really good one — and if my mood had been a bit different at the time, they could’ve earned it a 4-start rating. The ending really does elevate the whole — while it sends you reeling from a serious gut punch.

I really should’ve gotten back to this series, but I didn’t want to color my take on him as he started his tenure with Jesse Stone — but that’s passed now, time to get busy.
3 Stars

The Drop

by Dennis Lehane

Paperback, Large Print, 229 pg.
HarperLuxe, 2014
Read: September 30 – October 01, 2014

For Lehane, this was light and breezy. Bob Saginowski is a bartender in his cousin Marv’s bar (well, it’s not really Marv’s anymore — the Chechen mafia owns it now, Marv just runs it). Bob’s down-on-his luck, living in his deceased mother’s house, going to her Church, and trying to get by. A couple of days after Christmas, he finds a dog in a trash can. He takes the dog home and finds himself a reason to keep going — it doesn’t hurt that there’s a woman tangentially involved, but he’d be a devoted dog owner regardless. There’s a possibility for romance on the horizon, but there are a few obstacles.

Said Chechen mafia, for one. Marv’s dreams for getting one over on them. A couple of armed robbers. A Boston PD detective that attends the same Masses as Bob. The guy who disposed of the dog and seems to be having second thoughts. And Bob’s own mysterious past — and penance can’t seem to erase it for him.

But if Bob can manage all that, he just might find himself a little slice of happiness.

It’s not a typical Lehane story, but it works. Lines like these help:

Happiness made Marv anxious because he knew it didn’t last. But happiness destroyed was worth wrapping your arms around because it always hugged you back.

and

The traffic had thinned considerably as they drove past Harvard Stadium, first football stadium in the country and yet one more building that seemed to mock Marv, one more place he’d have been laughed out of if he’d ever tried to walk in. That’s what this city did — it placed its history in your face at every turn so you could feel less significant in its shadow.

(the movie based on this novel — adapted by Lehane — ain’t too shabby, either.)
4 Stars

A Bitter Feast

by S. J. Rozan
Series: Lydia Chin & Bill Smith, #5

Hardcover, 309 pg.
Minotaur Books, 1998
Read: December 11 – 13, 2014

Throughout this book — but especially in the first chapter — if you don’t feel the foreign-ness, the other-ness, of Lydia’s Chinatown, you aren’t reading it right. Which doesn’t really make it different from the other books in this series that are from Lydia’s POV, it just seemed particularly strong in this one.

There’s more than a clash of cultures with this case — there’s a clash of generations. Between those who think like transplanted Chinese, and those who think like American Born Chinese. Some restaurant workers are trying to unionize, and some owners (who may or may not have less-legitimate other businesses) aren’t too keen on it. There are some bullets and some bombs involved — which is pretty much where Lydia comes in. If she can identify, once and for all, who is taking this clash and making it violent, it can be stopped (and, well, the other side will probably end up carrying the day).

I’m not really certain that I need a case — or a plot — I could read a short novel-length work of Lydia and Bill just chatting over tea and espresso. Outside of Wolfe and Archie — or maybe early Spenser and Hawk — I can’t think of two characters I enjoy “listening” to more conversing with each other.

Narrative-wise and character-wise there’s nothing particularly interesting here, instead it’s just what you expect from a Lydia Chin book. Good, solid entertainment from a very reliable author.
3 Stars

Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? by Stephen Dobyns

By HCNewton

On October 13, 2015

In Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller

Is Fat Bob Dead Yet?

by Stephen Dobyns

Hardcover, 351 pg.

Blue Rider Press, 2015

Read: October 8 – 12, 2015

Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? is essentially an Elmore Leonard book written by . . . someone else. It doesn’t have the zip, style and the panache of Leonard, though. It has a style and panache all of its own (almost no zip, though, but that’s okay).

Things get kicked off here with a nasty motorcycle accident that may not have been quite so accidental. The “accident” was witnessed by a homeless man named Fidget, a man too tan for Connecticut, and a man sporting a pompadour, the three of them spend the next few days finding several ways that their lives intertwine. The accident is investigated by Detectives Streeter and Vikström, who might be really good at their jobs if they spent a little less time bickering than the Battling Bickersons (one of the most reliable jokes early on is Vikström’s constant confusion over being asked if he was one of those famous Swedish detectives)

The tall, tan man is named Connor Raposo, a recently downsized teacher turned casino employee turned assistant to con-artists. Connor’s our entry point into this world, he introduces us the various and sundry scumbags, deadbeats, and other miscreants. Some of whom seem to have hearts of gold buried underneath a whole lot of cosmetic surgery or some sort of developmental delay. Others are just plain evil. In the middle is pretty much everyone else — Prom Queens whose life didn’t turn out the way they wanted them to, single moms working less-than-legitimate jobs, beagle owners, motorcycle aficionados, or guys just trying to please/impress the women in their life. There’s a real hodgepodge of humanity in all it’s strangeness on display here.

After a few chapters the narrator started dropping the royal “we” into the descriptions, which surprised me, but it worked. The further on you get into the novel, the narrator intrudes more and more into the story, editorializing as well as narrating. The stronger the narrative voice grew, the better the book got.

My one complaint is that it’s just too wordy — I’m not saying this should’ve been as minimalistic as something by Leonard, but it could’ve been a bit more streamlined. Was this amusing? Yes. Comic? Yes. Absurd? Absolutely. But I didn’t find it funny until the last few pages, and then I laughed a lot.

This novel is almost impossible to explain without giving everything away, before the setup is done, things are really underway — it’s not exactly fast-paced, but well-paced, slowly building up steam until it just barrels through the final events. A satisfying and very entertaining read. Give it a shot.

—–

3.5 Stars

Indexing: Reflections, Episode 5: Sleeping Beauty by Seanan McGuire

By HCNewton

On October 8, 2015

In Authors, Fiction, Indexing, K-O, Seanan McGuire, Urban Fantasy

Indexing: Reflections, Episode Five: Sleeping Beauty

by Seanan McGuire
Series: Indexing, #2.5

Kindle
47North, 2015
Read: October 7, 2015

Henrietta Marchen was a perfect exemplar of her kind. Her skin was white as snow, and never tanned or freckled; the best she’d ever been able to accomplish was a violent burn that turned her entire body as red as her lips, which were the color of fresh-drawn blood. Once, in the third grade, she had gotten in a fight with another student who insisted on calling her a clown. She had blackened both his eyes, and he had mashed her red lips back against her white teeth, until real blood appeared to make the contrast in her coloration even more glaring. She had smiled, bloody toothed and feral, until he started crying for his mommy, and he’d never called her clown again, and her classmates had stopped looking her in the eye.

Thanks to the events of the last episode, Henry’s not available to narrate this one. Which is frustrating because we readers want to know what’s going on with her, but is ever so cool and rewarding because we get this episode narrated by Sloane instead.

A first-person narrator change can be annoying, no doubt, but sometimes it’s just the breath of fresh air that a work needs (or can find useful). In this case, we get passages like this:

I lifted the apple, turned it to the side without tooth marks, and took a bite. It was firm and crisp and a little too floral for my taste. I’ve never understood the way Snow Whites yearn for apples, but then, they’ve never understood the way I long to kill them all, so I figure it balances out in the end.

Which absolutely makes this change worth it.

So we’re treated to some more of Sloane’s backstory than we’ve gotten before, we learn a bit more about the AFI’s Deputy Director, we get the return of the HR shrink from Episode 1 (we all knew we weren’t done with Ciara). We also see the team through Sloane’s eyes, as well as her unmediated take on Elise and Birdie.

There was nothing not to like about this Episode, it moved the story along well, was entertaining as all get out and shook up the status quo in a way that served the story and characters rather than being change for change’s shake.

If you’re reading this serially, or will read it when the whole is complete, I can assure you, this is going to be a favorite installment.

—–

4 Stars

Cursed Moon by Jaye Wells

By HCNewton

On October 8, 2015

In Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller

Cursed Moon

by Jaye Wells
Series: Prospero’s War, #2

Trade Paperback, 370 pg.

Orbit, 2014

Read: February 6, 2015

I…just don’t know. In theory, this series is right in my sweet spot — Urban Fantasy, Police Procedural (ish) — but it’s just not working for me. It feels like Wells is trying to get gritty and dark, but the results aren’t there. The same goes with the addiction storyline. It didn’t ring true for me, she seemed to be trying, her characters seem more like characters from a bad made-for-TV movie, not actual addicts.

While I’m complaining, I should mention that the Rape magic in the beginning — and the resulting bacchanal — was far too graphic, went on far too long. Then to follow it up with the trip to the sex coven with all the details given there? Overkill — especially because almost none of these details are important to the story. Take out those scenes, or tone them down, and you lose nothing.

The whole Pen story just annoyed me — Pen’s character seemed inconsistent throughout — her mood/actions/attitude fluctuating to serve the needs of the moment, but not arising organically from the situation or character.

And Danny? I don’t know where to start.

So what did work? The MEA stuff, the investigation, the world. Basically the major story, the core of the book was good enough to keep me going — it’s all the surrounding material that drove me nuts.

This has been brief and vague because it’s been so long since I read it, and because I just didn’t care one way or the other. Vaguely dissatisfied with a few significant beefs, would be a good way to summarize my take on this book. I might give this series one more shot, but I doubt I’ll go out of my way for it.

—–

2 1/2 Stars

How to Write a Novel by Melanie Sumner

By HCNewton

On October 7, 2015

In Fiction, General Fiction/Literature

How to Write a Novel

by Melanie Sumner
Paperback, 287 pg.
Vintage, 2015
Read: September 28, 2015

Aristotle — but you can call her Aris — Thibodeau is a 12 1/2 year-old would-be novelist. Under the guidance of her English teacher, school librarian and English-professor mother, she’s trying to write a novel in the next 30 days. Once it’s sold, she figures she’ll be able to make enough money so her mom can quit her job, still take care of her brother with his counseling/medication and find a husband. Aris does have a candidate in mind for her step-dad, but is open to someone else. We get to see precious little of her writing, but we do get to follow her on her journey through the novel writing process, and the family turmoil and drama surrounding it. Actually, as I write that, I have a hard time believing everything that happened outside of her novel took less than 30 days.

There’s a strong self-awareness to the narration — from Aris stopping the action to describe something she’s lacking in her novel, and then providing it in the narration to the sections of the book being labeled “Rising Action,” “Denouement,” etc. Typically, it works, but there were a couple of instances where it seemed forced or overdone.

There are two really strong points to this novel. Sumner can write a sentence that just sings I grabbed three examples from the opening pages — we get voice, humor, and a crystal-clear idea of the character she’s describing (and the one doing the describing):

Diane is forty-three now, short and either curvy or chubby, depending on her mood, with a button nose and blondish bangs that are always falling in her face.

Then he grinned. Papa was old before braces came out, so his teeth are slightly crooked, just enough to make him look like he can tell a good joke.

. . . ladies in the South don’t shake hands. Instead, they fold their cool fingers over yours and press ever so gently, leaning in close until you smell breath mints and the eau de toilette behind each ear. Then they say something awful. A few days after Joe [Aris’ father] died, Grandma and knelt beside Diane’s [Aris’ mother] bed and folded her fingers over her hand. After looking into her eyes for a moment, she whispered, “Why didn’t he ever have a better job?”

Don’t ya just luuuuv Grandma?

The other strong point (maybe half of a point) is her characters — Aris, Diane, her brother Max — are great. Diane’s student, Charles and his mother are pretty well-drawn. The librarian Ms. Chu wasn’t that fleshed out, but she didn’t need to be, and she was well drawn enough that you want to see more. These are real people, you could build a book around any of them alone. But the rest — and I’m only talking about characters that should be well-drawn — just aren’t. Aris’ grandparents don’t become much more than they were described above. The worst is Aris’s choice for her future step-dad, their current volunteer nanny: Penn MacGuffin^*. He’s an accumulation of ticks, quirks, and clichés, but there’s not a person in the middle of that.

The more I think about it, the less I’m sure I like How to Write a Novel as a novel, however frequently clever it is. There are some great scenes, dazzling sentences, charming characters here; it was a pleasure to read. But I’m just not sure there’s much there beyond that.

—
^* I’m not going to mention how long it took me to realize what his name meant — let’s just say it was before this moment, and I felt really, really stupid

—–

3 Stars

The Devil Wins by Reed Farrel Coleman

By HCNewton

On October 6, 2015

In Authors, Fiction, Jesse Stone, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, P-U, Reed Farrel Coleman, Robert B. Parker

Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

by Reed Farrel Coleman
Series: Jesse Stone, #14
Hardcover, 342 pg.

G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2015

Read: September 11, 2015

There’s no good reason for me to have difficulty writing about Coleman’s Jesse Stone, but I twice in a row now, I have. It looks like it’ll take me less than a month to get this up, so that’s something I guess (but it should’ve taken me less than a day!) But man, I love these books!

In this one, on page 3 there was a line I wanted to read to my wife, on page 4 I was grinning. It was so good to be back in Paradise, MA. Chapter 2 served as a a reminder this wasn’t Parker’s Stone, this was Coleman’s. Which is not necessarily better or worse, just different — it’s still the same world, populated with the same people, it’s just told differently. The Devil Wins started strong and stayed that way.

One of the things that distinguished this series from the Spenser series (and later, Randall — which felt like Spenser) was the atmosphere — this was a gray world (so well captured in the movies). Not just morally (and that could be argued, I think), but weather, mood, outlook on life of the characters — economy of the community, even. Later, Parker seemed to pull back on that — either deliberately, or for the same reason that Spenser’s backstory changed. Coleman has returned to the gray, and amped it up a bit, his style brings that into focus. His dialogue might not be as snappy (and it’s not), but it’s thoughtful, as is the narrative and his descriptions. You can almost feel this world as much as see it.

Every town has its dark secrets, the events people don’t like to remember, or discuss, or admit they happened. Paradise has a few of those, I’d wager — one of them was that about twenty-five years ago, two high school girls disappeared without a trace. While most presumed (maybe hoped) that they’d been killed, there were no suspects, no motive, no evidence. Eventually, time moved on and the town collectively repressed the events. A fresh homicide investigation leads to the discovery of two much older bodies — everyone assumes (and it’s quickly confirmed) that it’s these two girls. Now Jesse has to deal with two investigations — one fairly low-priority, and one that is bringing back ghosts for everyone in Paradise (and is attracting plenty of attention from the rest of the world).

After putting his own mark on Jesse in Blind Spot, Coleman moves on to Suitcase Simpson and Molly. Don’t get me wrong, this is still Jesse’s book, and his presence dominates the narrative. But it’s in these pages that Coleman plants his flag on Suit and Molly. Suit is possibly at his most self-aware here, almost dying can do that to a person (making Coleman’s tweak totally justified), we don’t get as much time with him as we do with Molly, but what we do is golden. More importantly, Jesse has to be honest with himself about Suit — and that clarity will drive their relationship going forward. If Coleman hadn’t delivered with the rest of the book, but had with this? It’d have been worth it.

Parker, Coleman (and Brandman) hadn’t given us too many details about Molly outside of her outstanding work as Jesse’s conscience, aide, and friend. We got the little fling with Crow, and some references to her family, and that’s it. Which is exactly the way that Officer Crane wants it. But sometimes, you can’t keep that wall between your personal and professional as high as you want to — sometimes the past comes back to haunt you — and it does in spades for poor Molly. In the end, we don’t learn that much about her that we didn’t know, but it’s easy to see how what Coleman shows us helped shape her into the woman she is. (Minor spoiler ahead, skip to the next paragraph if you want) One of the two girls was Molly’s best friend, and by all rights, she should’ve been with her the night they disappeared. The discovery of the bodies, what they learn during the investigation, shake the seemingly unflappable Officer Crane to her core.

One more reason for her boss to take care of business. Not that he really needs it. Especially when more bodies start to show up.

Best part of this book for me? There’s no Gino Fish. There’s no deus ex mafia providing the solution for Jesse. It’s procedure, dogged determination and criminal stupidity — plus a little dumb luck that helps Jesse conclude what happened twenty-five years ago and today.

In addition to the great character work with our old friends, we get to focus on three new friends of Jesse’s in this book — two of whom are long-time residents of Paradise that we haven’t encountered yet, one is new to town. Jesse enlists the assistance of the editor of Paradise’s newspaper with the historical elements of his case (the police files were not up to snuff) in exchange for exclusives on a story starting to get some national attention. An insurance agent/city councilman who has been Jesse’s biggest supporter in Paradise’s government encourages him to keep on track and solve the crimes in a hurry (and when that fails, turns to threats). There’s a new Medical Examiner in the area (whose departure from NYC is similar to a certain LAPD detective’s) who befriends Jesse — she’s smart, attractive, and interested in more — but for now they decide on friendship.

I guess I should quickly mention the other women in Jesse’s life, having talked about Tamara Elkins. She’s talked about a couple of times, but we don’t get to see the new character from the Blind Spot, Diana Evans, which is a shame. I hope that changes soon, Coleman certainly leaves the door open for it, although Coleman’s going to have to start using surnames that don’t sound so similar. I thought Jen was around juuuuuust enough for my taste (I also appreciated the talk about Sunny Randall).

I find it amusing how many people I’ve seen complain about Jesse’s drinking being talked about so much. His battle with the bottle was a focus from Day 1 — sometimes more successful, sometimes less so — but always, always a presence, often discussed no matter if he was drinking or not. It’s there, it’s looming, Stone battles it as he does the rest of his demons (the “it could have been” of baseball, and Jen) — while doing what he can for these girls and the community.

Once again, Coleman strikes the right atmosphere and mood, captures the essence of the characters — while not keeping them frozen in amber, tells a very Parker-esque story in his own manner, and makes me seriously consider moving to a fictional Massachusetts town, despite the troubling homicide rate. It wasn’t as good as his first foray into this world, but I’m not sure it could’ve been, and it was close enough to justify reading it a few times anyway. Please, sir, I want some more.

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4 1/2 Stars