I think Michael Jecks changed editors with Dispensation of Death. It's a much more tightly plotted and cleanly paced book than his last several Sir Baldwin novels. Or maybe he just realized he didn't need a subplot to get his novel past the 450-page line. He's still keeping Baldwin and Simon away from their Devon homes, but at least he allows them to work as a team.
Baldwin and Simon have travelled to London; Baldwin to serve in Parliament and Simon at the request of the Bishop of Exeter. They are thrust into a court in disarray - Edward II has essentially imprisoned his Queen Isabella with his niece (and his lover's wife) Eleanor as her de facto jailer. Soon, a masked attacker kills one of her ladies in waiting and a known assassin's mutilated body is found behind Edward's throne. Baldwin and Simon set out to solve both murders, despite Sir Hugh le Despenser's disguised threat to reveal Baldwin's history as a Knight Templar and the King's disinterest in solving the original crime once Hugh is himself targeted by an assassin. Jecks effectively uses shifting POV to move the story along and neatly interlaces the plot threads, ending with a slight twist. For the first time in a while, I'm looking forward to reading the next Sir Baldwin mystery. I just hope that I'm not disappointed - the final page implies that his next adventure will be in France, and the knight's last overseas trip when the series started to decline.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Monday, October 1, 2012
The Young Elizabeth
I'm fascinated by Elizabeth I, but her biographies, no matter how well written, can be slightly exhausting. She was born into intrigue and chaos, alternately neglected and used as a political pawn, formed and and ruled a nascent empire, and then allowed her kingdom to slide back into intrigue and chaos as she crept towards death without clarifying her line of succession. Alison Plowden avoided this problem by ending her biography with Elizabeth's coronation. The Young Elizabeth shows how Gloriana developed from such an unpromising childhood.
The shorthand tale of Henry VIII is of a brutish man who cast off wives for frivolous reasons. The truth, of course, is more complicated. He and Catherine of Aragon had a companionable marriage, but only one surviving child, and England had not yet successfully been ruled by a Queen Regnant. He fell in love - or in lust - with the sharp-witted, sharp-tongued, strong-willed Anne Boleyn. Her charms led to a crisis of conscience (or so he told himself), telling him that his marriage to Catherine was cursed because it was adulterous for him to have married his late brother's wife, and he began the long political chess match that eventually led to the formation of the Anglican Church. He married Anne, and when the disappointing birth of Princess Elizabeth was not followed by the birth of a prince, Anne's imperious ways meant that she had no one to help her when she was accused of adultery and treason and beheaded by a French swordsman.
Elizabeth was not quite three years old when her mother died, and if not exactly left to fend for herself, not exactly lavished with attention, either. She, like her father and siblings, was highly intelligent and benefited from the best education available to a Renaissance royal. By her teens, she was fluent in several languages, an accomplished horsewoman, and a talented and enthusiastic musician - in other words, ideally suited to be the bride in an alliance-cementing marriage.
The short reigns of both her younger brother and older sister made marriage negotiations difficult and her marketability questionable, particularly with the shifting religious lines in 16th Century Europe. Henry VIII, despite the break with Rome, died as a self-identified Catholic whose widow nearly missed being tried for treason over her Protestant beliefs. Edward VI, naturally a rather priggish boy, had been raised as strong and narrow-minded a Protestant as his eldest sister Mary had become a Catholic in the years she clung to her discarded mother and her faith. Elizabeth's beliefs were apparently a more moderate form of Protestantism and her years in exile and captivity may have allowed her to develop the political compromise which was the Anglican Church. Those years also taught her to be wary, trusting no one in a world where her stepmother's husband could nearly ruin her reputation with a few ill-advised games - and then suggest that he marry her after Katherine Parr died in childbirth. Eleven years spent wondering whether she would be married off in an internal or international alliance, or simply beheaded on trumped-up charges like her mother could have destroyed her. Instead, they forged the intellect that turned an almost forgotten girl into Gloriana - the first great Queen Regnant in Europe.
The shorthand tale of Henry VIII is of a brutish man who cast off wives for frivolous reasons. The truth, of course, is more complicated. He and Catherine of Aragon had a companionable marriage, but only one surviving child, and England had not yet successfully been ruled by a Queen Regnant. He fell in love - or in lust - with the sharp-witted, sharp-tongued, strong-willed Anne Boleyn. Her charms led to a crisis of conscience (or so he told himself), telling him that his marriage to Catherine was cursed because it was adulterous for him to have married his late brother's wife, and he began the long political chess match that eventually led to the formation of the Anglican Church. He married Anne, and when the disappointing birth of Princess Elizabeth was not followed by the birth of a prince, Anne's imperious ways meant that she had no one to help her when she was accused of adultery and treason and beheaded by a French swordsman.
Elizabeth was not quite three years old when her mother died, and if not exactly left to fend for herself, not exactly lavished with attention, either. She, like her father and siblings, was highly intelligent and benefited from the best education available to a Renaissance royal. By her teens, she was fluent in several languages, an accomplished horsewoman, and a talented and enthusiastic musician - in other words, ideally suited to be the bride in an alliance-cementing marriage.
The short reigns of both her younger brother and older sister made marriage negotiations difficult and her marketability questionable, particularly with the shifting religious lines in 16th Century Europe. Henry VIII, despite the break with Rome, died as a self-identified Catholic whose widow nearly missed being tried for treason over her Protestant beliefs. Edward VI, naturally a rather priggish boy, had been raised as strong and narrow-minded a Protestant as his eldest sister Mary had become a Catholic in the years she clung to her discarded mother and her faith. Elizabeth's beliefs were apparently a more moderate form of Protestantism and her years in exile and captivity may have allowed her to develop the political compromise which was the Anglican Church. Those years also taught her to be wary, trusting no one in a world where her stepmother's husband could nearly ruin her reputation with a few ill-advised games - and then suggest that he marry her after Katherine Parr died in childbirth. Eleven years spent wondering whether she would be married off in an internal or international alliance, or simply beheaded on trumped-up charges like her mother could have destroyed her. Instead, they forged the intellect that turned an almost forgotten girl into Gloriana - the first great Queen Regnant in Europe.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
The Accidental Billionaires
I'm probably the exception, but I thought that the weakest part of The Social Network was the dialog. With the exception of Andrew Garfield's Eduardo Savarin and Rashida Jones's lawyer, everyone sounded the same. I chalked that up to their otherness - Jones appeared in framing scenes rather than the main story, and Garfield's natural accent is English rather than American. Whatever the reason, this distinctiveness made me find Savarin more sympathetic than the rest of the young men involved in the founding of Facebook.
Savarin does not come across quite as well in the source material. He was Ben Mezrich's main source for The Accidental Billionaires, and serves as the narrator as well. Saverin met Mark Zuckerberg at a fraternity event and they bonded over the pathetic nature of the party. A few months later Zuckerberg created The Facebook - a database combining photo databases from the Harvard dorms, crashed the university's system, and altered how we keep in touch. He's the brains - Savarin is the money. An econ major who'd used a weather algorithm to make hundreds of thousands of dollars on the commodes market, he's not really up on the technical aspects of Facebook, but he has the cash to bankroll the startup and the business savvy to start the legal battle against the Winklevoss twins who'd asked Zuckerberg to develop a similar database for them.
That division of labor seemed to work until the semester ended and they ended up on opposite coasts. Savarin had an internship in New York, and even though he gave it up before lunch on his first day, he remained there, soliciting investors. Zuckerberg took the company to Silicon Valley, where he met Napster founder Sean Parker and immersed himself in programming, with breaks for raucous parties and occasional meetings with angel investors. Saverin felt squeezed out, withdrew his funding, and another lawsuit began.
The Accidental Billionaires is largely a synthesis of he said/he said transcripts. Mezerich examined court filings and interviewed some of the participants - but not Mark Zuckerberg. Perhaps this is why Zuckerberg appears more sympathetic than his compatriots. He's a cypher, but at least he's not a jerk. Saverin talks about him, but never seems to know what is (former) friend actually thinks, and compared to Saverin's social-climbing, money-hungry insecurity and the Winklevoss twins' entitled arrogance, the almost personality-free programmer wins Mr. Congeniality by default. He's a geek, but unlike the thin-skinned Olympic athletes and the socially awkward financier, he's comfortable with who he is.
Saverin is a striver, who seems more focused on status (and joining one of Harvard's exclusive clubs) and has the sort of misogynistic streak that comes from ignorance rather than hatred of women. His offhand comments about unattractive female classmates and "Asian girlfriends" are rather distasteful, and not the sort of comments I remember my geeky college classmates making (although, to be fair, they might not make them in front of an actual girl). His final scenes are rather pathetic, showing an almost unimaginably wealthy 20-something, trading on his fame to pick up "hot Asian girls" and his membership in the Phoenix club to impress students at his alma mater. Zuckerberg seems to have remained so uninterested in his image that he still dresses like a 15-year-old, but maintained a long term relationship with the former classmate he married the week she graduated from medical school and Facebook went public. I doubt he's a saint, and he might even be a jerk, but if you take money out of the equation, he still won. And I wonder if that bothers Saverin even more than having his Facebook shares diluted.
Savarin does not come across quite as well in the source material. He was Ben Mezrich's main source for The Accidental Billionaires, and serves as the narrator as well. Saverin met Mark Zuckerberg at a fraternity event and they bonded over the pathetic nature of the party. A few months later Zuckerberg created The Facebook - a database combining photo databases from the Harvard dorms, crashed the university's system, and altered how we keep in touch. He's the brains - Savarin is the money. An econ major who'd used a weather algorithm to make hundreds of thousands of dollars on the commodes market, he's not really up on the technical aspects of Facebook, but he has the cash to bankroll the startup and the business savvy to start the legal battle against the Winklevoss twins who'd asked Zuckerberg to develop a similar database for them.
That division of labor seemed to work until the semester ended and they ended up on opposite coasts. Savarin had an internship in New York, and even though he gave it up before lunch on his first day, he remained there, soliciting investors. Zuckerberg took the company to Silicon Valley, where he met Napster founder Sean Parker and immersed himself in programming, with breaks for raucous parties and occasional meetings with angel investors. Saverin felt squeezed out, withdrew his funding, and another lawsuit began.
The Accidental Billionaires is largely a synthesis of he said/he said transcripts. Mezerich examined court filings and interviewed some of the participants - but not Mark Zuckerberg. Perhaps this is why Zuckerberg appears more sympathetic than his compatriots. He's a cypher, but at least he's not a jerk. Saverin talks about him, but never seems to know what is (former) friend actually thinks, and compared to Saverin's social-climbing, money-hungry insecurity and the Winklevoss twins' entitled arrogance, the almost personality-free programmer wins Mr. Congeniality by default. He's a geek, but unlike the thin-skinned Olympic athletes and the socially awkward financier, he's comfortable with who he is.
Saverin is a striver, who seems more focused on status (and joining one of Harvard's exclusive clubs) and has the sort of misogynistic streak that comes from ignorance rather than hatred of women. His offhand comments about unattractive female classmates and "Asian girlfriends" are rather distasteful, and not the sort of comments I remember my geeky college classmates making (although, to be fair, they might not make them in front of an actual girl). His final scenes are rather pathetic, showing an almost unimaginably wealthy 20-something, trading on his fame to pick up "hot Asian girls" and his membership in the Phoenix club to impress students at his alma mater. Zuckerberg seems to have remained so uninterested in his image that he still dresses like a 15-year-old, but maintained a long term relationship with the former classmate he married the week she graduated from medical school and Facebook went public. I doubt he's a saint, and he might even be a jerk, but if you take money out of the equation, he still won. And I wonder if that bothers Saverin even more than having his Facebook shares diluted.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Elephants Can Remember
Agatha Christie was over 80 when she wrote her last two books, and Dame Agatha had clearly lost her touch. I remember reading Postern of Fate (her final novel) on vacation when I was 16, and thinking that it just didn't add up. In 2009, a pair of Toronto academics analyzed several of her books, and determined that by the time she wrote her penultimate book, Elephants Can Remember, she may have been suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. The authors also suspect that Christie may have realized that something was wrong.
Elephants Can Remember is a murder in retrospect, but one in which the past is shrouded in fog. A domineering middle-aged woman confronts Ariadne Oliver after a literary luncheon and asks about the parents of one of Mrs. Oliver's goddaughters. Did Celia Ravenscroft's mother murder her husband and then commit suicide, or was it the other way around? Mrs. Oliver can barely remember Celia - she's one of a dozen or more godchildren - but she's more troubled by the fact that she's forgotten the death of her friend, Celia's mother. She consults with Hercule Poirot, and the two decide to "hunt elephants" with Mrs. Oliver hunting down former hairdressers, maids and nannies and Poirot interviewing retired policemen and Swiss au pairs. The answer is the sort of twist more worthy of an afternoon soap opera than a canonical mystery writer, but she supports the conclusion and ties it up reasonably well. The rest of the novel, though, is a bit messy - a few characters appear and disappear without warning, the past scenes are indistinctly written, and while Christie has clearly set the book in 1971, it's a 1971 set barely fifteen years after the glory years of the British Empire.
Ian Lancashire, one of the Toronto researchers, saw a kind of heroism in Elephants Can Remember, and I agree. Her avatar can't seem to remember where she put things and people who were important to her twenty years ago may as well not exist (although she has very clear memories of her own early childhood). Mrs. Oliver fights the fog, though, and learns what truly happened to Celia's parents. It's almost as if her creator were fighting to escape the mist which may have been clouding her formerly sharp mind.
Elephants Can Remember is a murder in retrospect, but one in which the past is shrouded in fog. A domineering middle-aged woman confronts Ariadne Oliver after a literary luncheon and asks about the parents of one of Mrs. Oliver's goddaughters. Did Celia Ravenscroft's mother murder her husband and then commit suicide, or was it the other way around? Mrs. Oliver can barely remember Celia - she's one of a dozen or more godchildren - but she's more troubled by the fact that she's forgotten the death of her friend, Celia's mother. She consults with Hercule Poirot, and the two decide to "hunt elephants" with Mrs. Oliver hunting down former hairdressers, maids and nannies and Poirot interviewing retired policemen and Swiss au pairs. The answer is the sort of twist more worthy of an afternoon soap opera than a canonical mystery writer, but she supports the conclusion and ties it up reasonably well. The rest of the novel, though, is a bit messy - a few characters appear and disappear without warning, the past scenes are indistinctly written, and while Christie has clearly set the book in 1971, it's a 1971 set barely fifteen years after the glory years of the British Empire.
Ian Lancashire, one of the Toronto researchers, saw a kind of heroism in Elephants Can Remember, and I agree. Her avatar can't seem to remember where she put things and people who were important to her twenty years ago may as well not exist (although she has very clear memories of her own early childhood). Mrs. Oliver fights the fog, though, and learns what truly happened to Celia's parents. It's almost as if her creator were fighting to escape the mist which may have been clouding her formerly sharp mind.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
The Hound of the Baskervilles
I'm a bad mystery fan. I've read very few of the Sherlock Holmes stories. I don't think it's been a conscious decision, although I found The Hound of the Baskervilles more creepy than compelling when I read it in 8th grade English, but I don't remember being particularly enthralled by the few stories I read in a college class on mystery fiction either. I have been impressed with Sherlock, though (and not just because of Benedict Cumberbatch's cheekbones, fantastic though they may be), so when my classic literature group chose The Hound of the Baskervilles, I was ready to give it another chance.
Arthur Conan Doyle became bored with Sherlock Holmes and famously killed him off in "The Final Problem." A decade later, in response to public desire and probably financial considerations, he brought him back. The Hound of the Baskervilles was Holmes first novel after his return and Doyle, apparently still bored with his creation, sends him off to hide in a cave for most of the investigation. As for the rest of the story...well, I enjoyed it more than when I was 13, but not by much. The plot is a bit contrived; I'm not fond of Victorian prose; and when Holmes explains how he solved the mystery, I felt that Doyle held back some of the information needed for the audience to reach those conclusions. I'd much rather watch "The Baskerville Hounds" - the early scene where a nicotine-withdrawing Sherlock orders a witness to blow smoke in his face alone is more entertaining than the original source.
Arthur Conan Doyle became bored with Sherlock Holmes and famously killed him off in "The Final Problem." A decade later, in response to public desire and probably financial considerations, he brought him back. The Hound of the Baskervilles was Holmes first novel after his return and Doyle, apparently still bored with his creation, sends him off to hide in a cave for most of the investigation. As for the rest of the story...well, I enjoyed it more than when I was 13, but not by much. The plot is a bit contrived; I'm not fond of Victorian prose; and when Holmes explains how he solved the mystery, I felt that Doyle held back some of the information needed for the audience to reach those conclusions. I'd much rather watch "The Baskerville Hounds" - the early scene where a nicotine-withdrawing Sherlock orders a witness to blow smoke in his face alone is more entertaining than the original source.
In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food
I really wanted to enjoy In the Devil's Garden, but after a promising start, it disappointed me. It has an intriguing premise - the examination of the seven deadly sins as they relate to food preferences and taboos. Lust was interesting, with an aside into why apples eventually became identified with the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge (a combination of the suggestive image of the seed sac and political battles between two branches of primitive Christianity). I also enjoyed gluttony, which was probably an easy chapter for Stewart Lee Allen to write. Pride had some good points, such as how dinner invitations set and keep the social order, but Allen's less than compelling writing style began to wear on me. Sloth and (surprisingly) greed seemed to be catch-all chapters, where Allen threw in bits of information he'd uncovered but didn't know how to present. I expected more from blasphemy, but Allen explored cannibalism rather than religious taboos and seemed to be stretching to fit his examples into his thesis. Finally, I just didn't buy his arguments on anger. Among other things, he claimed that sports fans eat crunchy snacks because those snacks are violent. As a sports fan who is not exactly adverse to said snacks, I have to say that sometimes a chip is just a chip. Or a way to get the dip into your mouth without using utensils.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
A Poisoned Season
I've read the second and third books in Tasha Alexander's Lady Emily Ashton series out of order, and I wish I hadn't - not because A Fatal Waltz built directly upon A Poisoned Season but because the latter was a much more tightly plotted novel. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed in A Fatal Waltz, and if it weren't for my slight obsession with reading in order (and the fact that I'd already bought the rest of the series), I might have just abandoned Lady Ashton.
The titular season is the London social season - an exhausting and expensive whirlwind during which the rich and the well-born try to save the estate or buy some class through an appropriate marriage. Emily has recently come out of mourning for her late husband and is attempting to navigate the season on her own terms, accepting only those invitations that interest her and not being maneuvered by her mother into another marriage with a near-stranger.
Alexander introduces four threads which unravel Emily's plans. A man claiming to be the son of Louis XVI arrives in London, charming the ton and becoming the main prize of the season's marriage market. Soon after, someone poisons an acquaintance of Emily's. As she investigates his death, Emily finds that she is being stalked and that someone has begun to spread scandalous rumors about her. Alexander ties the four threads together quite neatly, and in an unexpected way - she didn't quite "get" me, but I didn't guess the identity of the murderer until a few pages before Alexander revealed the killer's identity. Alexander also gives her supporting characters - Emily's suitor Colin Hargraves, her childhood friend Jeremy, Duke of Bainbridge, her bluestocking American friend Margaret, and Frenchwoman of a certain age Cecile - enough depth that their romantic entanglements and exposition scenes add to rather than detract from the mystery.
The titular season is the London social season - an exhausting and expensive whirlwind during which the rich and the well-born try to save the estate or buy some class through an appropriate marriage. Emily has recently come out of mourning for her late husband and is attempting to navigate the season on her own terms, accepting only those invitations that interest her and not being maneuvered by her mother into another marriage with a near-stranger.
Alexander introduces four threads which unravel Emily's plans. A man claiming to be the son of Louis XVI arrives in London, charming the ton and becoming the main prize of the season's marriage market. Soon after, someone poisons an acquaintance of Emily's. As she investigates his death, Emily finds that she is being stalked and that someone has begun to spread scandalous rumors about her. Alexander ties the four threads together quite neatly, and in an unexpected way - she didn't quite "get" me, but I didn't guess the identity of the murderer until a few pages before Alexander revealed the killer's identity. Alexander also gives her supporting characters - Emily's suitor Colin Hargraves, her childhood friend Jeremy, Duke of Bainbridge, her bluestocking American friend Margaret, and Frenchwoman of a certain age Cecile - enough depth that their romantic entanglements and exposition scenes add to rather than detract from the mystery.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
The Disappearing Spoon
I used to be a chemist, but went to law school when I lost the joy of science. That was a huge mistake (I probably should have taken courses in instrumentation or looked into lab management), but 17 years later, there's not much I can do about that. I have, though regained my love of science through books like Oliver Sachs's Uncle Tungsten and Sam Kean's The Disappearing Spoon. Kean takes what could be a very dry topic - the periodic table - and illustrates it with a series of stories which vary from tragic (the possible suicide of the greatest chemist to have never won a Nobel prize) to the gossipy (Marie Curie's femme fatale reputation) to the simply bizarre (a kid who tried to build a nuclear reactor as an Eagle Scout project). Along the way, Kean stops to mention practical jokes (the titular spoon is made of gallium which melts in a nice, hot cup of tea), expensive pens, office politics with world-wide implications, and why several early Nobel Prizes for physics went to chemists. Science writers have to find a balance between not confusing the less-technically informed audience and not boring readers with a stronger scientific background. Kean manages the task quite well.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Hardball
Last Friday, I was about half-way through Hardball and decided to read a few chapters before bed. I looked up two hours later, having solved the murders maybe two page ahead of VI Warshawski. Vic, I've missed you, and I've missed submerging myself so deeply into a novel.
Sara Paretsky plays with the timeline in Hardball, but subtly so we don't realize at first that most of the action is in flashback. After interviewing a gang leader she defended decades ago, VI Warshawski arrives at her office to find it's been ransacked and her 20-something cousin Petra has apparently been kidnapped. In Chicago to work on her father's friend's son's Senatorial campaign, Petra seems to have become obsessed with family history, routing through a box containing mementos from Vic's parents and asking for a tour of former family homes. This frustrates Vic, but it's only after several weeks that she realizes that Petra's search ties into one of her active cases.
Lamont Gadsden was a low-level gang member who disappeared the night before a January 1967 snowstorm. His mother always assumed that he'd been killed in a drug deal but his aunt believed he was a "good boy" and now, crippled by a stroke, she wants to know what happened to him. Lamont's friends have either died, disappeared, or refuse to talk to Vic, and no one seems to care about a gang-banger who disappeared 40 years earlier, but as Vic investigates, she discovers that Lamont may have been involved in the murder of a peace activist the prior summer. As she delves deeper into the case, she discovers that her father, whom she always thought of as one of the rare honest Chicago cops, was the arresting officer in the case and that an innocent man may have gone to jail. Paretsky seamlessly weaves Vic's case with Petra's apparently inexplicable interest in family history, and also manages to fit in some Action Nuns, a chase on public transit, and the sad story of a "good girl" still pining after her "bad boy" 40 years later.
I've mentioned in several reviews that series authors have to figure out how to age their characters. Initially, Paretsky aged Vic only slightly less slowly than in real time. In Hardball, written nearly 30 years after Vic's debut in Indemnity Only, Paretsky seems to be using the same technique as her fellow trailblazer Marcia Muller used with Sharon McCone. After a few installments which fudged the age issue, she's rebooted Vic's birth date. Initially born around 1950, Paretsky places Vic's tenth birthday firmly in the summer of 1966 and moves her hockey-playing cousin Boom-Boom's death (a central plot point in 1982's Deadlock) to the mid-90s. Perhaps then it's appropriate that Hardball accidentally dates itself with Vic dipping her toe into the world of social networking - through MySpace.
Sara Paretsky plays with the timeline in Hardball, but subtly so we don't realize at first that most of the action is in flashback. After interviewing a gang leader she defended decades ago, VI Warshawski arrives at her office to find it's been ransacked and her 20-something cousin Petra has apparently been kidnapped. In Chicago to work on her father's friend's son's Senatorial campaign, Petra seems to have become obsessed with family history, routing through a box containing mementos from Vic's parents and asking for a tour of former family homes. This frustrates Vic, but it's only after several weeks that she realizes that Petra's search ties into one of her active cases.
Lamont Gadsden was a low-level gang member who disappeared the night before a January 1967 snowstorm. His mother always assumed that he'd been killed in a drug deal but his aunt believed he was a "good boy" and now, crippled by a stroke, she wants to know what happened to him. Lamont's friends have either died, disappeared, or refuse to talk to Vic, and no one seems to care about a gang-banger who disappeared 40 years earlier, but as Vic investigates, she discovers that Lamont may have been involved in the murder of a peace activist the prior summer. As she delves deeper into the case, she discovers that her father, whom she always thought of as one of the rare honest Chicago cops, was the arresting officer in the case and that an innocent man may have gone to jail. Paretsky seamlessly weaves Vic's case with Petra's apparently inexplicable interest in family history, and also manages to fit in some Action Nuns, a chase on public transit, and the sad story of a "good girl" still pining after her "bad boy" 40 years later.
I've mentioned in several reviews that series authors have to figure out how to age their characters. Initially, Paretsky aged Vic only slightly less slowly than in real time. In Hardball, written nearly 30 years after Vic's debut in Indemnity Only, Paretsky seems to be using the same technique as her fellow trailblazer Marcia Muller used with Sharon McCone. After a few installments which fudged the age issue, she's rebooted Vic's birth date. Initially born around 1950, Paretsky places Vic's tenth birthday firmly in the summer of 1966 and moves her hockey-playing cousin Boom-Boom's death (a central plot point in 1982's Deadlock) to the mid-90s. Perhaps then it's appropriate that Hardball accidentally dates itself with Vic dipping her toe into the world of social networking - through MySpace.
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