Category: Fiction Page 346 of 349

Last few trips to the library, I’ve been dipping into the Leo Waterman mysteries by G. M. Ford. They don’t carry the interestingly titled debut, Who in Hell is Wanda Fuca?, so I started with Cast in Stone and The Bum’s Rush, the second and third entries. While I can’t say that I’ve been blown away by them, or addicted to the characters, I’ve definitely enjoyed my time with Leo. And then we come to the fourth installment, Slow Burn–and Ford earns me as a loyal reader. I still might not rush to get him like I would say, Levine or Butcher (my two favorite “finds” of ’06), but I will read anything by him I find.

Why’s that? Because while telling a pretty entertaining story and developing the characters naturally, but clearly; Ford reveals himself to be (like myself) an unabashed Nero Wolfe fan. He blends in direct references, subtle references and an homage or two to “my favorite fatty” (to quote Archie Goodwin) seamlessly into his story. Now, if you have no idea who Wolfe is–or only a passing knowledge–it won’t make a difference to the story, you still get Leo and his crew of homeless operatives cracking an interesting case in their inimitable fashion. But if you know that the hours of 9-11 and 4-6 belong to the plant rooms, and are not to be violated; you have always wanted to drink a bottle or two of Remmers beer; beam at being told something is “satisfactory” (want to do backflips when told “very satisfactory”); and have ever averred “contact is not a verb in this house;” well then–this book is so much more than Leo and the boys.

There’s the client–Sir Geoffrey Miles–who in bulk, mannerisms, and appetite is clearly Wolfe (though he pronounces the interjection “phooey”). Miles’ butler, Rowcliffe, who owes his name, but certainly not his attitude to the Lieutenant from Homicide. The plot tips it’s cap to both Too Many Cooks and Some Buried Ceasar, two of the most popular Wolfe novels. And at the end there are some direct references made by Leo to Mr. Wolfe. There’s quite likely even more than that (oh, like the book’s dedication), but that’s enough for now. The suspects themselves could’ve appeared in the yellow chairs in Wolfe’s office.

I just loved that. Now, Kinky Friedman tried this in one of his earlier novels. But it didn’t work quite as well. It felt forced, sometimes even tacked on. Ford’s doesn’t.

Again, that’s just one part of the novel–it is more than just a Wolfe Geek trip. There’s a decent murder, there’s the Rebecca-Leo banter, a quick visit from Hector, the ex-ACLU lawyer, the strange family connections that open every door Leo needs, etc., and some very funny scenes. Well worth the read.

Oh, for the .5 of you who might’ve read this far–a back cover blurb on an earlier Ford novel welcomed Leo Waterman to the ranks of fictional Seattle PI’s (or words to that effect). There are other Seattle PI’s? Anyone know who? Sure, Gideon Oliver’s based out of UW, but I can only think of one case of his in Washington–and that wasn’t in Seattle.

If I started it before Labor Day Weekend, it counts, right? For the record, it’s not that I’ve stopped reading since July 27, my last Summer Reading post–but it seemed that no one really cared, as much as I found the discipline helpful (even had a complaint or two). So I’ll limit these to the books I really want to talk about. ‘Sides, school’s back in session, and I don’t have that much time for extra-curricular reading period (but one of my professors last year impressed upon us the importance of doing so to keep our minds fresh. So I’m going to try).

Enough of that. Steve Solomon, Victoria Lord and all the rest are back for #3 in Paul Levine’s series about mystery-solving lawyers in love, Kill All the Lawyers. Weighing in at an anemic 368 pages (the first book was 576!), I wondered if it would stack up as well. It did.

The weaknesses I felt about book 2 weren’t present. First, there was more Bobby. The heart of the series is Bobby. Period. Let Steve grow/mature. Let Victoria loosen up/accept Steve. Let the supporting cast become more well-rounded characters. Fine. But the emotional core will always be Bobby. He has to be a player in each book. Just don’t see who Levine can pull it off otherwise.

Secondly, there was a real element of risk involved. Trying to avoid spoilers, I’ll put it this way. The bad guy set out to frame someone for a horrible crime. And it really looks like that person was going to fall into deep legal trouble–maybe so much so that it’d have to be resolved in the next book. Sure, utlimately, there’s no doubt that the team of Solomon & Lord will save the day at some point. But I fully expected arrests, interrogations, trials, fall out, etc. I just didn’t get that feeling last time out.

Character-wise, I did think Victoria got the short end of the stick this time out, but not sure where Levine could’ve stuck more of her in. Maybe in Book 4, which the back cover assures us he’s hard at work on. Although I didn’t mind too much. Rather have Steve’s voice than hers dominate the book. They were on their home turf–so most of the supporting cast from Book 1 was back, just not as prominent. Which was good, Levine needs to use them regularly, but sparingly.

The pacing was excellent, yet again. Note to my writer friends out there who haven’t picked Levine up: You should just to study this aspect (and you’ll discover yourself enjoying the read anyway). The way he can jump between having you chuckle and having you lean forward in anticipation. Good action scene to wrap things up.

Another solid outing for the team, looking forward to the next..

Imagine that you have to break someone’s arm.

Right or Left, doesn’t matter. The point is that you have to break it, because if you don’t…well that doesn’t matter either. Let’s just say that bad things will happen if you don’t.

Now, my question goes like this: do you break the arm quickly–snap, whoops, sorry, let me help you with that improvised splint–or do you drag the whole business out for a good eight minutes, every now and then increasing the pressure in the tiniest of increments, until the pain becomes pink and green and hot and cold and altogether howlingly unbearable?

Well exactly. Of course. The right thing to do, the only thing to do, is to get it over with as quickly as possible. Break the arm, ply the brandy, be a good citizen. There can be no other answer.

Unless.

Unless unless unless. What if you were to hate the person on the other end of the arm? I mean really, really hate them.

This was a thing I now had to consider.

I say now, meaning then, meaning the moment I am describing; the moment fractionally, oh so bloody fractionally, before my wrist reached the back of my neck and my left humerus broke into at least two, very possibly more, floppily joined-together pieces.

So begins Hugh Laurie’s The Gun Seller. Of course, Laurie is best known to the world as Blackadder’s Georges (the nasty German Prince Ludwig in Blackadder II, the spoiled Prince George in Blackadder III, the bumbling Lt. the Honorable George Colhurst St. Barleigh in Blackadder Goes Forth, etc.); Bertie Wooster; the tall crook (Jasper) in 101 Dalmatians; Stuart Little’s Dad; The Gentleman on the Plane who has to listen to Rachel blather on; and Dr. Gregory House (among many, many other roles). Okay, so he can act–but can he write? That very question kept me from buying the book years ago when I first saw it. Finally took the plunge thanks to the local library. The answer is: Yes. Maybe he’s better at the latter. In fact, once House, M.D. finishes it’s 10th and final year, maybe he should take a break from acting and write more–just to appease me.

This is one entertaining book. Very funny. And what else would you expect of a global-ranging book about terrorism, the weapons industry, and the role of government; involving the CIA, the British Ministry of Defense, a terror cell, multinational corporations, conspiracy nuts, and, naturally, an art gallery. Stumbling through it all is Thomas Lang, a former Scots Guards officer turned general ne’er do well, trying not to become an international terrorist.

I remember going through the Director’s Commentary to The Whole Nine Yards, and he said something like how they could’ve easily used the same script (only changing a couple of words) and made it into a very noir movie instead of the comedy it was–changing the lighting, the score, the cuts…little things. This book is very much the same. It would’ve been very easy for this to be a Robert Ludlum clone–the plot, most of the characters (if not all), the settings, etc. We’ve seen them all a million times before. But the way Laurie narrates the events prevents that from happening. Instead, it becomes charming, droll, and occasionally, laugh-out-loud funny.

He does this fairly seamlessly. In lesser hands (say, Dan Brown’s), this would be jarring, jumping back and forth between comedy and suspense. But I don’t think Laurie hit an off-note once. In a matter of pages you read a very graphic torture scene, a line like: “There’s an undeniable pleasure in stepping into an open-top sports car driven by a beautiful woman. It feels like you’re climbing into a metaphor”; a description of a complicated espionage set-up, and then a paragraph like:

Somewhere a clock ticked. Quite fast. Too fast, it seemed to me, to be counting seconds. But then this was an American building, and maybe Americans had decided that seconds were just too [bleep] slow, and how’s about a clock that can do a minute in twenty seconds?

That’s not to say you’re laughing at a grisly murder or anything–in fact, violence is depicted in such a way that it highlights the depravity, the bleakness, the pointlessness of it all. It’s the people, the settings, the non-life ending events that are treated with a light touch.

Ricky felt a lot worse about himself at this moment; most probably because he’d managed to get himself into one of those situations where you’re naked in the cellar of a strange building, in a strange country, with strangers staring at you, some of whom have obviously been hurting you for awhile, and others of whom are just waiting to take their turn. Flickering across the back of Ricky’s mind, I knew, were images from a thousand films, in which the hero, trussed-up in the same predicament, throws back his head with an insolent sneer and tells his tormentors to go screw themselves. And Ricky had sat in the dark, along with millions of other teenage boys, and duly absorbed the lesson that this is how men are supposed to behave in adversity. They endure, first of all; then they avenge.

…Ricky had neglected to notice the important advantages that these celluloid gods had over him. In fact, there really is only one advantage, but it is a very important one. The advantage is that films aren’t real. Honestly. They’re not.

In real life, and I’m sorry if I’m shattering some deeply cherished illusions here, men in Ricky’s situation don’t’ tell anyone to go and screw themselves. They don’t sneer insolently they don’t spit in anyone’s eye, and they certainly, definitely, categorically don’t free themselves in a single bound. What they actually do is stand stock still, and shiver, and cry, and beg, literally beg, for their mother. Their nose runs, their legs shake, and they whimper. That is what men, all men, are like, and that is what real life is like.

Sorry, but there it is.

Thomas Lang begins the novel seemingly care-free. A man unattached from friends, job, love…anything but himself. He seemingly as a moral core, but runs from the question, “Are you a good man?” As the novel develops, and the stakes get higher and whatnot. The ironic detachment transforms into commitment to people, to right and wrong. While there are “trigger points” to this transformation, where it takes a significant leap forward–the gradualness to Lang’s growth belies Laurie’s experience in fiction.

The Gun Seller was published in ’96, and thanks to the events of the past few years, the views on terrorism espoused by Lang, the MOD, the CIA, etc. are a bit dated. And that’s really the worst thing I can say.

Grade: A. Bonus points because one of his chapter’s epigraphs is from John Owen, my favorite puritan.

So I come back from GA, and not only had my wife finished Solomon vs. Lord on my recommendation–but she’d procured and finished the sequel. However, she warned “It’s not as good.” Only slightly daunted I dived in (no pun intended). She was right. But that’s not to say the book isn’t good, it is. But it doesn’t feel as fresh–that’s the nature of sequels. When I finished the book, I uttered a Nero Wolfean “Satisfactory.”

2 main story lines, and a few nice subplots to keep things interesting. Plot number 1: Victoria’s “Uncle” Griff (her dad’s old business partner) runs his yacht onto shore in the Keys–conveniently enough, he almost kills Victoria and Steve in the process, but at least they’re the first on the scene to discover that Griff’s passenger has a spear through his chest, so they can get to lawyerin’ as soon as possible.

Plot number 2: Victoria wants to split the firm up–get out on her own, so she’s not standing in Steve’s shadow. She’s not looking to split from him personally, but there are subconscious undertones in that direction.

Plot 2 is further complicated by Uncle Griff’s son, her first love, childhood friend, etc. who she hasn’t seen in years is back on the scene. And is a total hunk. And rich. And not a frequently uncouth jerk.

Some of the supporting cast from the last book wasn’t around, which is good, I think. But those present were still a pleasant addition. The cameo by (and several references to) a certain salt-shaker seeking musician was a nice touch. The mystery was craftier than last time, and I think the plotting was a little better. But the latter are secondary to me–esp in this kind of book. It’s about the characters–do I like them? Do I want to spend time with them? And for almost everyone in this book, it’s yes. I spent about half the book really not liking Victoria…seemed like a prissy little brat with a healthy dose of finicky on the side. By the end of the novel, I’d come around again, but that left a bad taste in my mouth.

Here’s my major complaint. Plot line #2. I never, not for one second, thought that Victoria would split up the team or the couple. So that entire thing was an endurance test “how much longer do I have to put up with this?” Contrast that compare/contrast to Kenzie and Gennaro in Lehane’s books–or even Spenser and Susan in The Widening Gyre and Valediction. Sure, those aren’t comic novels (esp. Lehane’s), but there was real risk of loss, there was real pain, real conflict. I think Levine is capable of putting these two in a situation where I could worry about them–but this wasn’t it.

That said, I’d give the first installment an A and this a B+. Well worth the time and money (or trip to the library). Looking forward to #3 in the series in a month–thanks Gerald, for the tip.