The Skystone by Jack Whyte

24 March.

Another recommendation from a former student. Curiously enough, he showed up at my office this morning with his copy of this, returned to him by a friend, for me to read. Having him drop by is never a waste of time, at least I think so, I hope he does. There aren't many with whom I can talk fantasy genre at depth. We don't always agree, but that makes the discussions far more interesting. On this one we agree.

This is a saga of the fall of the Roman Empire, focused specifically on Britain, and the birth of Arthurian legend. Not the full-blown "knights of the table round" but of barbaric Celtic tribesmen who style themselves "Pendragon" - the current leader is a fellow named Ullic, it's easy to imagine him having a son or grandson named Uther - and their interactions with the Romans who realize that they are actually of Britain not Rome and build a new life as the Empire collapses. After all, the Roman occupation of Britain lasted for about three hundred years, that's time for lots of generations to grow up and develop a new perspective.

The story is loaded with hints toward classic Arthurian bits. The central character is an upper class Roman born in Britain who served as an officer in the Legions, even did a tour in North Africa. Sounds kind of like WWII British army. Uncharacteristically, he is also a smith, taught by his grandfather who acquired a metallic meteorite (skystone) and smelted and worked it. I've been trying to figure what alloy we are talking about, but I'm no metallurgist, and not quite curious enough to spend an evening Googling the subject. Our hero, Publius Varrus, has acquired meteorites of his own and has finally managed to work it to the point of making a somewhat crude statue which he has named "The Lady of the Lake" after the site where the stone was found. His friend is bugging him about making a sword -- do you suppose we are talking about Excalibur??

It's a bit predictable, but that is the nature of the beast. If you are dealing with Arthurian legend, you are rather bound by the classical elements. The rest is about, perhaps, pointing the light in a different direction. The truly great stories can support it.

An intriguing element is the formation of a semi-communal colony modelled after some unpronounceable group in Gaul. Gaul, of course, became France, and I suspect that the tribe who provided the model evolved into the Basques, but that will call for another trip to Google.

Bottom line: I really enjoyed it - I hope the next volume holds up to the standard set by the first.

Rumpelstiltskin by Ed McBain

21 March

I'm going to have to start concerning myself with titles again. It is interesting reading two series by the same author more or less simultaneously - actually, alternating, I suppose. The 87th Precinct stories have terse cop names - appropriately. The fairy tale titles of the Matthew Hope books are a little problematical. The title series suggests that the title came first and the story was fitted around it to a certain extent. The Brothers Grimm made the final clue the dwarf's name and the evidence against the killer here hung on figuring out what his true name was. The killer does point out that it isn't his legal name, he had changed it, but when he needed an alias he went back to it - and besides, his chosen legal name was a translation of his birth name. There is also a pointed reference - one of the witnesses is an illustrator, who happens to be working on a new edition of Grimm, and specifically Rumpelstiltskin. The final bit of cleverness is in the last few lines of the book. Hope and the cop, Bloom, are shaking their heads over a man who could perform such appalling acts. Bloom says something about the fact that the man had been "a giant" in his chosen field, and Hope caps the whole thing with, "Yes, but he was a dwarf inside." Cute, McBain, very cute.

I have the impression - quite possibly totally erroneous - that the title of the first of these may have been an after the fact sort of thing. The ex and her kids referred to the new wife as Goldilocks, and to them, certainly, she was an interloper. So the title could easily have arisen from the story itself. This time the fit seems much more conscious.

On another note, it strikes me that McBain spends a lot of time complaining about the weather in Florida: too hot, too cold, too wet. Maybe he is conducting a defensive campaign like we real New Mexicans carry on habitually. We make sure that visitors enjoying the sunshine and blue skies are fully informed about the wind and the dust storms and tumbleweeds and range fires, and the general lack of precipitation in any form in the hope that they will be alarmed enough to go back home and stay there, since one of the major charms of the place is the population - rather, the lack thereof. And if all those folks who see our home at its best retired here, we would be no better off than Arizona in no time. I think it is too late to save Florida, so he might as well give it up. Of course, the books were written some time ago, and maybe there was still a faint hope back then.

The Sins of the Fathers Lawrence Block

19 March

Since I read this, the first of the Matthew Scudder stories, hard on the heels of the first Bernie Rhodenbarr book, it was interesting to note some definite parallels - which I had not expected. The tone of the two is about as dissimilar as can be. The characters, however, have quite a lot in common. They are both loners, living in small spaces. They both are deeply committed to their own view of justice. Logical, I suppose, since they are "sons" of the same father, Block, their author and creator. Both have family, but they are rather remote from them. Bernie has a mother off somewhere that he contacts by phone, Matt Scudder has an ex-wife and a couple of kids that he talks to on the phone. Neither is seriously involved with a woman, they both have encounters with multiple women in the course of their stories.

Okay, about this book. I was delighted again with Block's use of language and allusion. One of my favorites was a reference by Scudder, a former cop, to police talk as "Coptic" jargon. It's a nice word twist all by itself, but there is no doubt that he knew who the Copts were and that sets up a whole range of subtext.

The crime is far more gruesome than the one in the other series. A young woman who supports herself by casual prostitution is butchered and her roommate, a young gay man, is accused of the crime and within twenty-four hours has hung himself in his cell. In defense of the cops, he was found wandering about in the street covered with her blood. Two dead, and neither victim seems to have deserved their fate.

There's plenty of guilt to go around. And the fathers of the two victims come in for the lion's share. Making the title a play on the Biblical quote in which the guilt for the sins of the fathers is passed down to the third and fourth generation, here the guilt turns back to reveal the sins of the fathers.

Burglars Can't Be Choosers by Laurence Block

18 March.

What fun! I read a couple of these years ago. One was titled something about Mondrian - and that is all I remember. Every now and then it occurs to me to wonder if keeping this blog is improving my memory of what I have read. Hard to say.

Block is another amazingly skilled craftsman. Like McBain, he has two significant series (plus a bunch of other stuff). The "burglar" books about Bernie fairly light, the Matthew Scudder books much darker, all set in New York City.

Bernie is a great character. In this, his first outing, we learn that he carefully considered his options and decided that being a burglar was a logical career choice - flexible hours, self-employed, no taxes, non-violent. There are a few drawbacks - the occasional prison sentence, for example. He trained for his line of work with as much commitment as any professional in any other field.

The only jarring bit was after the cops have discovered Bernie in the murder victim's apartment, and later discovered the body - since Bernie hadn't gotten around to touring the entire place. Having just bribed the cops to forget the incident, when the body is discovered, he bolts thereby making himself the prime suspect. Of course, he was a convenient suspect anyway. So now he is barred from his own apartment and must manage as a fugitive. Which he does successfully, and solves the murder into the bargain.

There is a fine line between making the solution to the mystery blatantly obvious (boring) and failing to give the reader the necessary clues. Nero Wolfe and Hercule Poirot come to mind, they, through the exercise of their little gray cells alone, unravel the works in a final mass confrontation scene. This one balanced quite neatly on the line, I suspected, maybe even was pretty sure, but not totally.

Block does a nice line in literary allusion. There is a priceless scene in which Bernie explains the "purloined letter" concept to the murderer who is disguised by Block in exactly that manner.

The Mugger by Ed McBain

17 March.

Back to the 87th Precinct. So far, I'm enjoying these. The writing is very good; that isn't really a surprise, but it is a continual delight to find truly brilliantly crafted sentences sprinkled in so liberally in what I had dismissed for years as formula "tough cop" stories. I'm going to have to read one of his books that I have heard of for years, but managed to avoid getting around to reading - Blackboard Jungle. It was published under another name, Evan Hunter, which is his legal name if not his original name. Another one of my gifts as a reader, besides forgetting who done it, is never getting around to reading the books that I "should" read. I had one of those "you know, I never actually read ..." conversations with someone just recently ...

Anyway, he reused a plot device from the first in the series here in the second. Gave a little twist, but it is still the same game, I think. The earliest story I read using it was by Agatha Christie, I think it was The ABC Murders or something like that - maybe. The murderer hides his target murder inside a string of apparently random killings. For example, some guy wants to kill his wife, so he murders a whole bunch of women who have the same first name - or who shop at some particular store - or who belong to the same club - or something. In McBain's first 87th Precinct book, Cop Hater, the victims were all cops. In this one, the murderer disguises his murder as one of a long series of muggings (sort of fits with the title, right?). The muggings and the murder are unrelated, but the detectives of the 87th pursue the red herring for quite some time. The case is solved almost by accident when someone makes a connection.

I read a piece he wrote about the genesis of the series and all the research he did. According to him he made himself a complete nuisance at a real NY precinct trying to get enough information to make his books plausible. There are moments in the reading when I think he may have picked up too much of the jargon because I am not always sure that what I seeing is actually some obscure east coast big city cop reference - or what I have seen called "electronic transcription artifacts." I had the same problem with JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy and her intense "Britishness."

The Wives of Los Alamos by TaraShea Nesbit

15 March

Our next book club selection. I got it and read it early with the expectation that the hostess will be more prompt in arranging our next meeting than I was. She did not care for my selection, so I did know to expect something quite different from the (I thought) classy murder mystery that I gave them. It forced me to remind myself of the reason that I joined the book club in the first place - and I was one of the original members. And that was longer ago than I can figure at this moment. At any rate, I decided that it would be good for me to be dragged out of my reading rut every once in a while. The motivations of the others may be very different, I'm sure that many of them are. There are a couple like me who have our reading ruts, but read voraciously in those genres. There is one who reads not only voraciously, but eclectically - far more so than I do. And there are a number who just like the people and think it is nice to get together with the group. Some of them seldom actually read the book - one made a point of coming to "my" meeting to very sweetly tell me that she didn't think the book was very nice - seriously, I'm not meowing, she is a very genuine person and concerned for the spiritual well-being of people she likes. Oh, well.

All the above to lead to the statement that this book was not at all like my book. I had no real idea what to expect from the title and the overview given by the next hostess - except perhaps that the book was "nice." The title on its own would have led me to expect one of those rather risque numbers like Army Wives or Desperate Housewives or almost anything with the word "wives" in the title. It wasn't. And it was "nice" under the meaning implied by the ladies mentioned above. And a quick read.

It did lack two major items which I expect in a novel: characters and a plot. Lacking those, I was left rather stumbling around searching for a category or genre for it. It wasn't a history; it was clearly fiction, although there were many real people embedded in it, a couple of whom I actually have been personally acquainted with. But without characters or plot, it certainly wasn't a novel. The setting was a real place with real events, but since this was about the wives not the scientists, the real events were included only obliquely.

Which leaves only the style for comment. The entire thing is written in first person plural. Yes, go back and read that sentence again - first person plural. "We came from ..." "We had been ..." "Our husbands ..." "Our children ..." "We were pregnant ... (try THAT one on for size)" "We named our babies ..." It made me think of the Stepford Wives. There was never any indication of which of them was married to which of the scientists. Well, maybe - I think she did once refer to Kitty Oppenheimer by name. She couldn't help naming some names occasionally, but almost exclusively by first name. Were "Bob" and "Jane" the Wilsons? Who knows? She didn't even give "the Director" and "The General" names - and goodness knows, those are public record now.

The saddest thing is that Nesbit undertook to write about the unrecognized people who were part of a truly unique time and setting which produced work which fundamentally changed the world, and she marshmallowed it into a generic nonstory. I was left seeing it as no different from the experiences of any group of military wives - moved willy-nilly from pillar to post and forming communities of women in places and situations even more foreign that the highlands of New Mexico with restrictions as severe as those imposed on the Los Alamos community and as unaware of the actual work of their husbands as those women.

Bolt by Dick Francis

15 March

And Dick Francis repeats another character. I think I mentioned that when I wrote up the previous book about Kit Fielding, Break-In. It wasn't as blatant a set up as in the fantasy novel that I read just before this reread, but the uber bad had not been dealt with. His plan to earn a knighthood has been thoroughly demolished and Kit holds the videotape that takes him off the list of those being considered for a knighthood. All rather odd for the American audience, but apparently a BIG deal to the British.

There were two unrelated plots which converged on Kit and his sponsor/employer, the Princess Casilia and her family, which includes his fiancee, Danielle. The events of the two lead to considerable complication in the investigation and solution because each of the bad guys uses the actions of the other to advance his own cause although there was no actual connection between the two. Rather more complex than Francis's usual plot.

There was only one human casualty - four horses were murdered: probably harder for Francis to write than human murders - and although, as usual, our hero suffers some damage, it seemed to me perhaps less than in most of the earlier books. Certainly less than he got in the previous book about him.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

13 March.

Vaguely reminscent of the Night Angel books by Brent Weeks. Boy with no future manages by luck and persistence to rise to the top of an extremely competitive criminal profession. Locke Lamora is a thief, not an assassin, but the general outline is similar.

Mr. Lynch, however, has less respect for chronology than Mr. Brent. In fantasy of this type flashbacks are a virtual necessity. The reader must be engaged in the story before some lumps of background are inserted at strategic points. It seemed to me that rather than providing the reader with necessary background at the point at which it was needed, Lynch was using flashbacks for a rather different purpose. Remember "The Perils of Pauline"? Probably not, I don't either - but I do know how they worked. Everyone went to the picture show and "Pauline" was one of the shorts. At the point when the hapless Pauline was tied to the railroad tracks or being driven over the cliff by a run-away horse the episode would end and the main feature would begin. Everyone would have to come back the next Saturday afternoon to find out how she escaped for the previous week's peril and what kind of mess she was left in this week. The point is that the audience had that week of suspense waiting for a resolution to the current problem. Whenever Mr. Lamora was facing certain death (I lost count less than halfway through the book), the chapter would end and the next one would be about events from his childhood: some wisdom acquired from Fagin (I mean The Thiefmaker) or Father Chains - wisdom not necessarily related to the present predicament. It seems clear that this was designed to serve the function of that week of suspense. -- and how does he get out of this one -- no, no - you have to wait ---

All of that is not to say that I didn't enjoy it, I did; although, a minor complaint, the level of physical abuse which Lynch visits upon his hero is just a bit excessive.

Then there is the last issue - it is clearly intended to be the first in a series since it is subtitled The Gentlemen Bastards. That's the name of the gang headed by Father Chains and by Locke after Chains' death. That in itself is not the problem - at the end of the story, only two of the Gentlemen are still alive. That did provide him with a revenge motive for the final round, but leaves him a little short for a series. I suppose he and his remaining sidekick can go recruiting - but they are also exiled from their hometown. Minor problems for a hero. And there were certainly enough unresolved threads for him to pick up.

Kris Longknife: Deserter by Mike Shepherd

9 March

After all the grimness and perversity of my last read, I needed a little good clean space opera to settle my mind and stomach. I am rather enjoying the saga of this improbable princess - only a princess because her great-grandfather was elected king. Didn't have the sense to turn the job down like old G. Washington did.

I believe the running cast is now complete. We have Penny, Abby, and Jack all on deck. There is Abby's niece who appears in the later books, and one must wonder where Tommy disappeared to - but that does seem to complete the crew.

In this one, Kris's friend and classmate, Tommy, whom she led from one disaster to another in the first book is kidnapped and she goes tearing off to rescue him. Of course, she knows that she is walking into a trap, but her inevitable line is "I had no choice."

The bad guy is apparently willing to destroy an entire world just to kill her. He does confess that "we" were behind all the attempts on her life from the first book, including the kidnap/murder of her little brother back when she was a child - actually, she was supposed to have been disposed of as well. What we did not learn - since he was blown to atoms - is who the rest of "we" is and why "we" are so determined to have her dead - even as a ten-year-old.

The score? On the one hand, she rescued Tommy, saved the planet, and prevented another war. On the other, she was trapped on the planet by the machinations of the bad guy and overran her leave by a couple of weeks, which made her a deserter. So, naturally, they promoted her and gave her a ship of her own.

The Art of Drowning by Francis Fyfield

Finished on 7Mar.

This is absolutely nothing like Fyfield's Helen West books - based on the two of those I have read. This one has no elements leading to a series, thank goodness. I'm not sure whether it is a mystery or a horror story. In some respects it reminds me of Ruth Rendell at her most ... whatever it is that she is at her most. Grotesque, bizarre, I'm not sure of an appropriate adjective. Insanity, certainly, in its perverse form of masquerading as sanity and manipulating the innocent.

I recognized the center of the madness comparatively early on, but that, if anything, heightened the tension. Rachel, the main character, is on the fringes, and is forced to examine what she is told by those she trusts in the context of what she senses about the ones she is led to mistrust. And I'm being as obscure as Fyfield in my attempts to avoid spoilers for any who might choose to read it.

If I had this in paper instead of electrons, I would definitely have flipped to the end to make sure that the good guys survive and maybe to find out who they are.

The First Eagle by Tony Hillerman

Finished on 4Mar

Another freebie table book. I'm now trying to figure out when it was I quit reading the new Hillermans as they came out. I suppose the thing to do is go back to the beginning and read them all. At the moment, I can't remember what the stories were like when Chee and Leaphorn did not interact.

These later books seem to have more depth in the background story of the running characters. Similar to the changes I've observed in the later Francis books, although Dick Francis didn't have much in the way of running characters. This book brings back Chee's old girl friend, attorney Janet Pete, apparently for the purpose of completely disposing of their relationship, presumably to clear the decks for his romance with Bernie Manuelito (who has been a character since practically day one). And - since I read an even later book sometime recently - I know that this time he actually gets to the altar, or the Navajo equivalent.

On the other hand, whole categories of people were reduced virtually to stereotypes in this book. Can the FBI truly be as unconcerned with truth, justice, etc. as Hillerman has portrayed them. And, I have known many dedicated scientists and never ran into any that seemed likely to kill to protect their theories. Sadly, he also seemed to have descended to the Cooper vision of the noble native in positive stereotyping.

Also, the whole thing seemed a little transparent - although Hillerman was carefully hiding the scientist/murderer as a secondary character, it was fairly obvious quite early who the real killer was. The romances were pleasant reading, although I was unaccustomed to having them figure so largely in the stories. Chee and Janet are totally done - I thought they were done a long time ago. Leaphorn's lady friend, Louisa, who has been around for quite some time, seems likely to continue to be around in a "just good friends" mode - which definitely does not extend to the bedroom.

There was one significant event in the running story. I'm not sure that Hosteen Frank Sam Nakai ever actually appeared on the scene in earlier books. He was always in the background as Chee's mentor and guide as he worked to become a singer, sort of a permanent symbol of Chee's attachment to Navajo tradition. We meet him here, as he lies on his deathbed outside his hogan, as he passes on to Chee his final counsel.

Break In by Dick Francis

Finished on or about 3Mar

I had forgotten, Francis repeated another hero besides Sid Halley. Here we have Kit Fielding, a jockey - Francis going back to his roots. We also have a British version of the Hatfields and the McCoys - or the Montagues and the Capulets - although these lovers married and are expecting a child. The one is Kit's twin sister, Holly, (BTW Kit is short for Christmas, since the pair of them were born on Christmas Day) and the other is the son and third or fourth generation of the Fielding family's most implacable enemy. Throughout the book Francis drops little anecdotes of the generations of enmity and several theories regarding the trigger incident back in the distant past - "my great-grandfather claimed ...".

Which calls to mind a stylistic thing: Francis always writes in first person. Now I'm trying to think if he ever "cheats" on the first person point of view -- maybe I'll have to go back and read them all again --- or maybe I'll ask my daughter, who has just started reading them, to keep that in mind.

At any rate, there is a deliberate campaign in the sporting press aimed at putting Holly's husband, a trainer, out of business - and that's only for openers. The good news is that Kit and Bobby manage to bury the hatchet - and not in each other - although there are a couple of close calls. And, maybe to make up for the wholesale carnage in the previous book, I don't believe anyone is actually killed. No one important, anyway.

Proof by Dick Francis

Finished on or about 1Mar.

Our hero, Tony Beach, is a wine merchant, but develops as an expert on everything alcoholic. He is a great disappointment to his family who are horse people. The main thread centers on some counterfeit scotch.

I think the opening episode in this one is Francis's most gruesome so far. At a trainer friend/customer's annual garden party, someone releases the brake on a horse trailer and sends it down the hill into the canvas pavilion where the guests are assembled. And so we open with any number of dead and injured. Among the injured is the trainer and Tony is called upon to help his wife keep things running. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, Tony and a guest team up in the rescue effort. The guest turns out to be an investigator who recruits Tony because of his specialized knowledge.

Francis also comes up with a truly macabre form of murder; it certainly leaves no doubt of the truly evil nature of the antagonist.

The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov

Finished on or about 28Feb.

I found this on the freebie table and couldn't resist picking it up to reread for the lebentieth time. I've been reading it at the office during the afternoon hours when I am essentially just hanging out.

I did have a couple of new thoughts about the book - new to me anyway. There is a scene where Lige is trying to explain to Daneel about his wife's name. Her name is Jezebel, but she goes by Jessie - and there is a lot of psychobabble about her self image and the taste of wickedness which she relishes - and Lige destroys. He explains that Jezebel is a person in the Bible, and Daneel asks him "What is the Bible?" Lige goes on to explain that it is a book sacred to a large portion of Earth's population, and Daneel says, "I do not understand the adjective in this context." Lige then realizes that that segment of humanity which moved to the stars has abandoned religion and that Daneel as a product of Spacer society is not aware of these ideas which are so fundamental to Earth society. Seems to me that so much of the language and literature of the human species is laced with references to the Bible that it is unlikely to have disappeared from the fundamental knowledge base within the few hundred years that Asimov threw this story into the future even by those who have left Mother Earth for other worlds.

I could be wrong, I suppose, I have found that many/most young people have very little actual knowledge of the Bible even today. However, those who are the most ignorant are frequently the most strident about the importance of religion - as it has been defined to them by their families. Still, if Shakespeare and the Bible disappeared from Western Literature - there wouldn't be much left. Those two provide a very large portion of the societal analogies which allow us to understand (and misunderstand) each other.

Kris Longknife: Mutineer by Mike Shepherd

Finished on or about 25 Feb

This is the first of the Kris Longknife books and not very different from the two later ones which I have read. Good basic space opera. Having read the later books gave me a little insight into this one - if it is possible to have insight into something no deeper than these. At least, I knew when Jack Montoya appeared to be her bodyguard that he was destined to be around for a long time - since the don't fall into each other's arms until about book fifteen.

There was no jump point disaster in this one, and the situation which causes Kris to lead a mutiny was slightly different from the books I have previously read. I do still have a great deal of trouble telling the good guys from the bad guys; the politics are pretty jumbled - maybe a reflection of politics today which has made the two principal political parties virtually indistinguishable.

The Cuckoo's Calling by JK Rowling/Robert Galbraith

Finished on or about 23Feb.

A reread, of course. Book club in on March 8 - and I didn't remember much about it - and it was my choice. To my delight, I enjoyed it as much the second time as the first - I do occasionally worry about that when I select a book for other people to read.

I liked the detective and Robin his secretary/sidekick even better this time. I did remember (after a few chapters) who did the murder, but that didn't spoil the fun.

I did hear that one club member refused to finish the book because of the bad language. Rowling did sprinkle the f-bomb quite liberally, but it seemed to me that the language suited the characters and gentler speech would simply have sounded silly coming from them.

Apparently, profanity/obscenity does not offend me as much as bad grammar and usage and poor word choice. I seem to remember ranting at some length about that in a post a few weeks ago.

The Girls from Alcyone by Cary Caffrey

Finished on or about 20Feb.

The word of this term is procrastination. Maybe I am making yet another effort to catch up with this record, but I am doing it to avoid doing something that I am supposed to be doing for work. And so it goes.

This features a girl's "school" in a rather distopic future. The students are selected based on some undefined genetic criteria and purchased from their parents. At the school, they are trained in all manner of armed and unarmed combat and subjected to a series of modifications to make them faster, stronger, etc. Sound like the lead in to "The Six-Million Dollar Man"? Is there is anyone out there who remembers that seventies series starring Lee Majors. Of course, I don't think they had "invented" nanites back then.

The girls are the property of a megacorp one branch of which features a corps of mercenaries. The story has two distinct segments: one is the story of their training and modification and the second the first round of adventures; all centering on Sigrid who is physically the smallest of her class but, in the manner of space opera heroes, excels in the end.

Yes, the predictable sequel has been released.