Lucky You

Carl Hiaasen was a guest at Bouchercon 1998. I wasn't really familiar with him back then, but a few months later I read the copy of Lucky You that had been in the goody bag and may have been given a slightly wider berth on SEPTA that week. I then handed it to my parents who were packing for a cruise, and both separately learned that they couldn't read it in public areas because of the looks they got.  Particularly my dad,who had a distinctive, obnoxious, and loud laugh. Did I enjoy it as much twenty years later?

JoLayne Lucks lives in a town full of questionable miracles and adjacent to a privately owned (but for sale) wilderness.  When she wins the Florida lottery (well, half of it) features writer Tom Krome reluctantly goes to interview her. He finds that she's been beaten by the two-man self-proclaimed militia who won the other half of the jackpot and that she wants the money to protect the baby turtles who live in the tentatively sold wetlands. I remember all that, plus the evolution of Turtle Boy, the militia's kidnapping of a Hooters waitress, and the fact that JoLayne reclaimed her ticket.  I did not remember Krome's soon-to-be-ex-wife (an actress who'd creatively avoided service of the divorce papers for two years), Krome's girlfriend and her husband (a murderous judge with a dim clerk), or the fact that a money-laundering mobster had put in a bid for JoLayne's wetlands. Hiaasen follows his typical formula - quotable and witty descriptions of bizarre, only-in-Florida crimes and characters - but he didn't tie the subplots together as tightly as he does now, either thematically or chronologically (the main plot ends with about 50 pages left in the novel). Anti-government militias, even incompetent two-man outfits, are a bit darker than they were in 1998, so I cringed a bit as I laughed -but I still laughed. Maybe not as loud and as obnoxiously as my dad did, but enough that I didn't pull the book out if the train was crowded.

Kissed a Sad Goodbye

*Warning - minor character spoilers*

I'm reading Deborah Crombie's books as backlist, and I enjoy watching Gemma's and Duncan's relationship unfold.  Now officially a couple (although still partnered at work), they're still working out the details of their relationship.  Duncan is also tentatively building a relation ship with the son he didn't know he had until his ex-wife's murder in Dreaming of the Bones.

Kit comes up from Cambridge to spend the weekend with Duncan, whom he thinks is just a friend, and the rare adult who won't let him down. Duncan, of course, ends up being called out on a case, the murder of a Annabelle Hammond, whose body was left on a footpath in a gentrifying  section of London. She's the CEO of a tea company with warehouses on the Isle of Dogs, and suspicion falls on Lewis Finch, the developer responsible for most of the local redevelopment.  As fits with a mystery set against shifting present-day relationships, the motive is more visceral. Annabelle's father William and Lewis Finch were evacuees together during WWII, and Crombie shifts between the current crime and the men's adolescence in a rural mansion, and we learn that the roots of both their estrangement and Annabelle's death can be found in a 1945 tragedy.

The Hollow

Agatha Christie wrote The Hollow shortly after WWII. That was her most productive period, and she generally receive good reviews.  She was also tiring of Hercule Poirot and began to experiment with ways of including him without highlighting him. He bores me a bit too, but the problem here is one I've complained about with other authors - too many poorly integrated subplots.

The Hollow takes place in a stereotypical Christie setting, a country house party given by Lady Angkatell, and the party includes the property's heir, a doctor and his wife, the doctor's lover Henrietta, an impoverished relative, and another young man with ties to several guests.  One evening, a new neighbor stops by to borrow matches. She's a movie star who the doctor was in love with before she left for Hollywood. The next morning, when no member of the party has an alibi, the doctor's wife Gerda shoots him to death by the pool.

Or did she?  This, after all, is a Christie novel and things are not necessarily as they seem. Garda may have been framed, and the inquest is inconclusive.  Since Hercule Poirot was on the scene (he's taken a nearby cottage as a country retreat and had been invited to lunch on the day of the murder), Henrietta asks him to investigate. He reluctantly takes on the case, and the result isn't totally satisfying for anyone involved. Christie constructed a good puzzle, but the book is weak, with unrequited loves, conflicting careers, and an unexpected and not quite believable breakdown.