The Violinist's Thumb

Paganini, regarded as the world's greatest violinist, had freakishly flexible fingers.  Due to a genetic quirk, he could stretch and bend his thumbs and fingers into remarkable positions with ease whereas the rest of us who play (or attempt to play) the violin have to stretch and twist and pull our fingers, often to the point of discomfit and rarely with such easy dexterity.  What blessed his music career cursed the rest of his life.  Paganini's flexibility was probably due to Ehlors-Danos syndrome, a hereditary disease affecting the amount of collagen people can produce.  His tendons broke down and his lungs and colon stopped functioning properly, leaving him in pain and leading to his early death.

Sam Kean uses Paganini's story to title his follow-up to The Disappearing Spoon, but it's an aside in the story of genetics.  Kean traces the science from the first knowledge that parents pass on traits, through Mendel's pea plants (and the administrative and political headaches that interfered with his work), past horrifying experiments in cross-breeding primates, and to the success of the Human Genome Project.  Along the way, he outlines the conflict between genetics and Darwin and spends a few chapters with fruit fly scientists.  I particularly enjoyed that part, because the scientist, instead of giving their genes dry alphanumeric names, decided to be descriptive, giving us Tudor (leaving males childless), Lost in Space, and Cheap Date (for those of us with low alcohol tolerance).  Like his prior book, The Violinist's Thumb is accessible without being condescending and slips in the right amount of humor.

Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases

I've read two of Paul Offit's other books and mostly enjoyed his mix of righteous indignation and scientific explanation.  Vaccinated could have used a better editor.  Part history of vaccine production, part "as told to" memoir of Dr. Maurice Hilleman who developed or co-developed nine vaccines, and with a few chapters of public health warning tacked on, Offit's book never fully comes together.  I think the problem is that he's telling two stories linearly, one the life of an important but paradoxically ordinary man, the other of the diseases Hilleman's work prevents.  It's a bit jarring to move from the small, generally ordinary, glimpses into the life of a man who appeared to be fairly ordinary if driven to the history of a now-vanquished communicable disease and its horrifying consequences, to the discovery and development of a vaccine, and back to Hilleman's personal life.  Definitely worth reading, Vaccinated requires the reader to mentally shift gears each chapter and would have been a better book either without the Hilleman biography or with that thread in its own section.

A Guilty Thing Surprised

Several books in, I'm still not sure how I feel about Ruth Rendell's Wexford mysteries.  They're compelling and well-crafted, but the psychology she used so well in her stand alone novels (both written under her own name and as Barbara Vine) feels archaic.

Elizabeth and Quentin Nightingale are the Lady and Lord of the Manor, owners of Mayfleet Manor and the social pinnacle of the community.  When Elizabeth's body is found in the woods, Quentin is a natural suspect.  He's not the only one - a recently patrolled murderer is in town, and Elizabeth and Quentin both had an odd relationship with her brother and sister-in-law.  While I followed the reasoning and psychology and enjoyed the "detection," I still feels like it falls into the uncanny valley.  I'm going to keep reading the Wexford novels because I enjoy them, but I hope that they begin to feel more natural as Wexford enters the 80s.

The Wyndham Case

A few years ago, I read Jill Paton Walsh's last Imogen Quy mystery, The Bad Quatro.  I enjoyed it, but Walsh's books appear to be out of print so it took a while to get to her first.  The Wyndham Case has a double meaning, both the mystery to be solved and a literal case of 17th and 18th Century books which St. Agatha's college must guard in exchange for a fairly generous stipend.  Once a century, a Wyndham representative makes a surprise inspection - if anything is missing, the college loses the money and Imogen's friend Roger, the librarian in charge of the Case, loses his job.

Needless to say, finding a dead body in front of the open case would violate the Wyndham will.  The body had been Philip Skellow, a scholarship student who had problems with his upper-crust roommate and a mysterious influx of funds.  It looks like someone surprised him while he was stealing from the Wyndham Case, but that doesn't feel right to police officer Mike Parsons.  He asks Imogen for some low-key help and she obliges, uncovering bullying, corruption, romance with a townie, and a calendar problem.  Walsh sets a brisk pace through the 223 pages she allots to her case, and produces a well crafted mystery that can be read in one sitting.

Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero

I'm the odd geek who isn't interested in superheroes or comic books.  They just never grabbed me.  I do have a soft spot for Superman and Superman II.  Some of that affection is nostalgia - they were the first crush-movies for my friends, one of whom kept me on the phone for 45 minutes in 5th grade as she wrote (and tore up) a very gushy fan letter.  She was not one of the friends I invited over two years later to watch the movie on VHS (later that day, my mom found kiss-marks on the TV).  Despite my relative indifference, I realize how important Superman is to the American psyche.  Created by two Depression-era teens, he's a prime example of what my History and Fiction professor said - our literature shows both who we are and who we want to be.  A war hero (fighting racially stereotyped villains) in the 40s, the square-jawed hero of low-budget 50s TV, a Saturday morning member of the Legion of Justice in the 70s, and a modern teen in the 2000s, Superman has been both constant and altered to our ever-changing times.  Larry Tye's Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero traces our hero's history.

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two outcast kids in a hardscrabble Cleveland high school, dreamed up Superman in the early 1930s.  Siegel was the writer, and the hustler - he wanted to make it, somehow.  Superman was his idea, but he needed someone to draw his creation so he turned to (or used) his classmate.  They hired a local model (actually another teenager who a decade later married Siegel), and poured their fantasies onto the page.  They should have been set for life.

They weren't.  Siegel and Shuster's character ended up in the hands of Jack Leibowitz, a pornographer who bought the Action Comics (later DC) from the more artist-accomadating but less business minded Harry Donenfeld and spent the rest of their lives alternating between mostly menial jobs and begging Leibowitz for payouts.  Superman thrived at DC, selling millions of comics and an almost unfathomable amount of tie-in merchandise.  He appeared on TV, radio, movies, and even in a Broadway musical.  Everyone knows Superman, and he's the hero you want or need him to be - even a stand in for Jesus.  He's showed us who we are as well as who he is.

A few words on the Superman Curse.  It's easy to believe - Christopher Reeve spent his last years paralyzed after a riding accident, George Reeves died in a suspicious suicide, and Siegel and Shuster lived most of their lives in or near poverty.  Tye addresses the curse, and demonstrates how it's not really true.  Reeve's accident was a freak event, but the other tragedies can be explained.  Additionally, there are the stories of Kirk Allyn (typecast, but not much of an actor, he spent decades happily cashing in on his fame, Noel Neil and Jack Larson (long lives and a life-long friendship), and Bob Holliday, the star of the Superman musical who left show business for a successful career in contracting in Pennsylvania where his former fame is a source of civic pride.

Lionheart

Sharon Kay Penman originally intended to write a trilogy, but she couldn't let go of Richard I.  He was a supporting character in Devil's Brood, completely overshadowed by reckless Henry, scheming Geoffrey, and callow, spoiled John.  Richard was the dashing hero, more valuable but much less interesting.  Penman found something compelling in his character, though, and while Lionheart sprawls across three years and dozens of battles, it doesn't quite live up to her usual standards.  The problem, I think, is Richard.  He's not as compelling as his parents or brothers (or the Welsh heroes of her first trilogy), and the martial focus doesn't leave room for Penman's strength, finding humanity in politically astute schemers.  Richard comes across as more complex than in her prior books, but other than a few scenes with his Saracen opponents, he's working alone.  Lionheart is worth reading, but it didn't transport me the way her best books have.

The Diamond Caper

Peter Mayle's Caper novels are technically mysteries, I guess.  There's a crime, a detective, usually a chase or some sort of counter-scam, and the bad guys get caught.  I don't think of them as mysteries, though.  I solve them much too easily, and think of them mainly as a framework for a series of fantastic meals and postcards from the south of France.

The Diamond Caper adds a slight twist to Mayle's usual blueprint.  This time the crime, diamonds stolen from a well-hidden personal safe, were insured by Knox Insurance.  That's Elena Morales's employer and the crime occurred just as she and Sam Levitt bought their house in Provence.  Between the lure of long lunches and the company's setback, she's decided it's time to become a lady of leisure - after she and Sam solve the burglary.  With the help of their friend, the slightly disreputable mogul Francis Reboul and a detour through several stately homes, they discover the subtle clue to the obvious (to me, anyway) culprit.  Like most of Mayle's books, it's quick. light, and enjoyable, best read either on a beach or in the depths of winter when you wish you were somewhere warmer and less depressing.

All Shall Be Well

I wonder whether Deborah Crombie planned for her main characters to fall in love and eventually marry, or if it just happened.  Knowing that they do, I looked for signs in All Shall Be Well, and while Duncan Kincaid may be feeling the first hints of his attraction to Gemma James, the recently divorced and frazzled single mum doesn't quite have the energy to notice.

Crombie, as usual, shows their relationship against a murder case.  Jasmine Dent was terminally ill, but Duncan, her upstairs neighbor, doesn't think her death scene appears natural.  Her book and glasses aren't by the bed, and the scene just seems wrong.  So was she murdered or was it a mercy killing?  She'd asked Margaret Bellamy, a rather downtrodden young co-worker, to help her die but according to Margaret, Jasmine had changed her mind.  Margaret's sponging boyfriend might have thought that Jasmine would leave Margaret money he'd be able to use, and of course Jasmine's home care nurse would have the means and knowledge to commit a mercy killing.  Jasmine's brother, watching yet another business fail and knowing that his sister would no longer bail him out has a strong motive, and even the retired Major living downstairs from Jasmine and Duncan turns out to have reason to hold a grudge against her.  Once again, Crombie manages a surprise ending that's fully supported.  I've read three of her books and each ending has been a well-founded surprise.  It's going to take some self control to not binge-read her backlist.

Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour

Before the United States entered WWII, a few prominent Americans played a major role in Great Britain's fight against Nazi Germany.  Two are well known, but the most influential has sadly become a footnote.  Averell Harriman was a millionaire who used his connections to be appointed the head of the Lend-Lease program.  The program helped keep Britain supplied, particularly during the early years of the war, but it also allowed Harriman to live in luxury (most of the Americans in Britain before 1942 did) and carry on an affair with Winston Churchill's daughter-in-law Pamela.  His role was important, but in Lynn Olson's book he comes across as more of a dilettante.  Edward R. Murrow is a more familiar, and more vibrant character.  Olson shows him as dedicated to the cause and to his job, a workaholic who feels constrained by the studio where he worked so well.  The third man was Gil Winat, the American ambassador to Great Britain who renounced his isolationist predecessor's policies and worked to bring the US into a real partnership with the UK.  Alongside the the stories of these men's war years, Olson tells of the personalities and personality clashes among the Malta delegates.  FDR and Churchill met with Stalin because it was necessary at the time, but reading the needling and undermining FDR aimed at his British counterpart, I can't help but wonder if it caused their dependence on Stalin and partial led to the severity of the Cold War.