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.
Monday, July 22, 2019
Sunday, July 21, 2019
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.
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.
Sunday, June 30, 2019
Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974
I'm not sure I'm ready for 1974 to be history, because I remember it quite clearly. OK, so I remember t things like learning how to roller skate, starting first grade, and getting a bike for Christmas more than I remember politics (other than Nixon's resignation, which my parents made me watch because it was history - the same parents who kept 6-month-old me awake so I could say I saw Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon). As I read Fault Lines, I remembered where I was, or what I was doing when I heard about the events of the last 45 years. The section on Phyllis Schlafly brought back memories of being a tween feminist at a conservative school, and the fall of the Berlin Wall coincided with an all-nighter (history paper and Calculus test). I graduated into the early 90s recession, and a decade later had friends caught up when the dot-com bubble burst. When I watched Barack Obama's 2004 Democratic Convention speech with my dad, he was an obscure Illinois candidate - how can it be that he left the White House over three years ago, and that my dad is gone? Kruse and Zelizer wrote an engaging overview of recent history, although it reads too much like a survey course. I would have liked a deeper analysis and a bit more attention to non-political culture, but that would require 3580 pages, instead of the more practical 358.
The Shakespeare Wars
I need to read more Shakespeare. Maybe then I'll appreciate The Shakespeare Wars more thoroughly. That's not to say it wasn't interesting with my scattershot knowledge of his works, because it was. Ron Rosenbaum started out as an English department grad student but changed to journalism because he didn't quite fit into a department run by one of the acknowledged Bardologists. A few years later, Peter Brook's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream which rekindled his interest. Decades later, Rosenbaum used Shakespeare as a palate cleanser after a particularly grueling assignment and The Shakespeare Wars is the result.
Rosenbaum wanders through the plays, spending a few chapters on the three versions of Hamlet and how different scholars reconcile them. He explores the plays through the eyes of actor Steven Berkoff and director Peter Brook, and explains how attempts to scrub The Merchant of Venice of its anti-Semitism actually makes it more anti-semetic. It's all fascinating, but I felt at times like I hadn't done the required reading.
Thursday, June 13, 2019
Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession
Alison Weir's second installment in her Six English Queens series presents at technical problem. How can you write a compelling and original novel about whom there's very little reliable documentary evidence but scores of previous fictional portrayals? Weir draws on her previous biographies of Anne and her sister Mary, and fills in the rest with reasonable speculation.
What we do know about Anne is that she was an intelligent woman with ambitious parents. That led to her positions in European courts where she acquired polish, and learned about both courtly love and the new learning from her first mistress, Regent Margaret. her frivolous sister Mary, who joined her when Anne moved to the French court of Henry VIII's sister Mary, did not learn these lessons but still did not deserve to be raped by one king and to become the unwilling mistress of another. Using, in part, her sister's fate, Anne focused on fending off Henry's advances when she came to court as one of Catherine's Maids of Honor
Here Weir departs from the popular, romantic view of Anne's relationship with Henry. As the title says, Henry was obsessed with Anne, and she didn't love him. She held off his advances until, in a particularly manipulative move, Henry explains his theological qualms about his marriage to Catherine and convinces Anne to accept his proposal
As she waits for Henry's annulment, we see Anne change from the well liked lady she'd been to the suspicious, imperious woman who had little support available when she needed it. Elizabeth's birth and a stillborn son leave Henry without the male heir he wants and needs, so he begins to doubt the validity of this marriage as well. Anne becomes desperate, but her vindictive treatment of Catherine and Mary, along with her increasingly imperious behavior, leave her with little support. After two miscarriages, both of male fetuses, Anne finds herself accused of adultery with several men, including her brother George. As Weir outlined in The Lady in the Tower, most of these charges were impossible because Anne and the men in question weren't in the same place at the time of the alleged encounters and because Anne was pregnant or recovering from giving birth during at least half of them. The executioner had already been sent for, though, and it would be a waste not to convict. Weir ends her novel with a few seconds of Anne's final thoughts, where she rightly takes credit for some of Henry's religious reforms. Anne Boleyn proves herself no less compelling than Catherine of Aragon.
What we do know about Anne is that she was an intelligent woman with ambitious parents. That led to her positions in European courts where she acquired polish, and learned about both courtly love and the new learning from her first mistress, Regent Margaret. her frivolous sister Mary, who joined her when Anne moved to the French court of Henry VIII's sister Mary, did not learn these lessons but still did not deserve to be raped by one king and to become the unwilling mistress of another. Using, in part, her sister's fate, Anne focused on fending off Henry's advances when she came to court as one of Catherine's Maids of Honor
Here Weir departs from the popular, romantic view of Anne's relationship with Henry. As the title says, Henry was obsessed with Anne, and she didn't love him. She held off his advances until, in a particularly manipulative move, Henry explains his theological qualms about his marriage to Catherine and convinces Anne to accept his proposal
As she waits for Henry's annulment, we see Anne change from the well liked lady she'd been to the suspicious, imperious woman who had little support available when she needed it. Elizabeth's birth and a stillborn son leave Henry without the male heir he wants and needs, so he begins to doubt the validity of this marriage as well. Anne becomes desperate, but her vindictive treatment of Catherine and Mary, along with her increasingly imperious behavior, leave her with little support. After two miscarriages, both of male fetuses, Anne finds herself accused of adultery with several men, including her brother George. As Weir outlined in The Lady in the Tower, most of these charges were impossible because Anne and the men in question weren't in the same place at the time of the alleged encounters and because Anne was pregnant or recovering from giving birth during at least half of them. The executioner had already been sent for, though, and it would be a waste not to convict. Weir ends her novel with a few seconds of Anne's final thoughts, where she rightly takes credit for some of Henry's religious reforms. Anne Boleyn proves herself no less compelling than Catherine of Aragon.
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
The Secret History of Wonder Woman
Im' not a comic book fan (which greatly limits my movie going at the moment). Wonder woman has an extra impediment. I can't erase my memories of the cheesy, cartoon-but-serious Lynda Carter series. My cousin loved it (and would strip down to her Wonder Woman Underoos in public, at least partially to embarrass me), but even at 7 or 8, I was more of an art house movie girl. I also didn't see the connection to feminism.
Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman reclaimed the character's feminist roots, which had been buried since shortly after World War II. Created by William Moulton Marston, a psychologist better at self promotion than keeping a job, Wonder Woman was a strong, independent woman behind the kinky costume and frequent bondage references. He based her on his wives, Sadie Elizabeth Holloway (Betty Marston) and Olive Byrne.
Yes, wives. He was "married" to two women who supported him, Betty Financially and Olive by running the unconventional household. Both were intelligent and educated (Betty met Marston at age 13 and held an LLB and an MA in psychology; Olive was one of his grad students who dropped out of her Ph.D program to raise their children - two by each wife), and yet they spent decades catering to a man who claimed to be a feminist. It makes me wonder (as does Wonder Woman's outfit) how deep his views went, and whether they only existed as much as they could serve his interests.
Everything, though, Marston did was to his advantage, and Lepore's research couldn't untangle all the lies he told about himself. Some stories turned out to be true (he had written a few silent movies), but even then the reasons were unclear (did he need tuition money because his father's business was in trouble, or because he had gambling debts?). Marston's serial failures (businesses that lasted a few months, a decade-long slip down the academic ladder, a fraud conviction) and perpetual self-promotion don't lend themselves to a coherent story and it shows in the first half of the book. People appear and disappear, as I'm sure they did in Marston's life, leading to a disjointed narrative. Lenore's attempts to tie in Margaret Sanger's life (she was Olive's aunt) feel like padding and could have been handled in occasional paragraphs rather than chapters. Lenore also includes Marston's other claim to fame - his "invention" of a lie detector (using only blood pressure), bolstered by (probably) rigged tests gave us the Frye tests which says that scientific evidence hast o be "generally accepted" before it can be used in court. A test which the later invented polygraph fails. To his death, he touted his invention, which, if accurate, he'd never pass.
So what about Wonder Woman? As interesting as Lepore's explanation of her creator's life was, I'd rather read about her history and influence. She was the first, and most lasting, female superhero. In the bro culture that permeates the genre, we need her, and a better book about he.
Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman reclaimed the character's feminist roots, which had been buried since shortly after World War II. Created by William Moulton Marston, a psychologist better at self promotion than keeping a job, Wonder Woman was a strong, independent woman behind the kinky costume and frequent bondage references. He based her on his wives, Sadie Elizabeth Holloway (Betty Marston) and Olive Byrne.
Yes, wives. He was "married" to two women who supported him, Betty Financially and Olive by running the unconventional household. Both were intelligent and educated (Betty met Marston at age 13 and held an LLB and an MA in psychology; Olive was one of his grad students who dropped out of her Ph.D program to raise their children - two by each wife), and yet they spent decades catering to a man who claimed to be a feminist. It makes me wonder (as does Wonder Woman's outfit) how deep his views went, and whether they only existed as much as they could serve his interests.
Everything, though, Marston did was to his advantage, and Lepore's research couldn't untangle all the lies he told about himself. Some stories turned out to be true (he had written a few silent movies), but even then the reasons were unclear (did he need tuition money because his father's business was in trouble, or because he had gambling debts?). Marston's serial failures (businesses that lasted a few months, a decade-long slip down the academic ladder, a fraud conviction) and perpetual self-promotion don't lend themselves to a coherent story and it shows in the first half of the book. People appear and disappear, as I'm sure they did in Marston's life, leading to a disjointed narrative. Lenore's attempts to tie in Margaret Sanger's life (she was Olive's aunt) feel like padding and could have been handled in occasional paragraphs rather than chapters. Lenore also includes Marston's other claim to fame - his "invention" of a lie detector (using only blood pressure), bolstered by (probably) rigged tests gave us the Frye tests which says that scientific evidence hast o be "generally accepted" before it can be used in court. A test which the later invented polygraph fails. To his death, he touted his invention, which, if accurate, he'd never pass.
So what about Wonder Woman? As interesting as Lepore's explanation of her creator's life was, I'd rather read about her history and influence. She was the first, and most lasting, female superhero. In the bro culture that permeates the genre, we need her, and a better book about he.
Monday, June 10, 2019
The Suspicion at Sanditon (Or, The Disappearance of Lady Denham)
I held off reading Carrie Bebris's last (?) Mr. and Mrs. Darcy mystery because I'd never read Sanditon. That literary fragment doesn't give much to Bebris other than a setting and some character names, freeing the author to place Lizzie and Darcy in the middle of a cross between a mystery and a screwball comedy, in a setting reminiscent of the house party that inspired Frankenstein.
The Darcys find themselves in Sanditon to investigate a land deal on behalf of Colonel Fitzwilliam. After a few chapters in which we meet the major characters (Mr. Parker's siblings, Lady Denham and her poor relations, a ghost, Charlotte Heywood, Mr. Grenville, and the mysterious Mr. Hollis), the group assemble for a dinner party - but Lady Denham never appears. While a storm rages outside, the group split up in search of their missing hostess...and the single ladies who also disappear one by one. As with Bebris's earlier novels, the mystery is not as good as the novel, but the novel is entertaining. I suspect that she used the mystery as a hook to publish what's essentially well-done Jane Austen fan fiction. I've enjoyed the light, entertaining series, but I'm not particularly sorry that it's now complete.
The Darcys find themselves in Sanditon to investigate a land deal on behalf of Colonel Fitzwilliam. After a few chapters in which we meet the major characters (Mr. Parker's siblings, Lady Denham and her poor relations, a ghost, Charlotte Heywood, Mr. Grenville, and the mysterious Mr. Hollis), the group assemble for a dinner party - but Lady Denham never appears. While a storm rages outside, the group split up in search of their missing hostess...and the single ladies who also disappear one by one. As with Bebris's earlier novels, the mystery is not as good as the novel, but the novel is entertaining. I suspect that she used the mystery as a hook to publish what's essentially well-done Jane Austen fan fiction. I've enjoyed the light, entertaining series, but I'm not particularly sorry that it's now complete.
No More Dying Then
Ruth Rendell's Wexford novels are a bit like Law & Order - not particularly interested in the characters' personal lives, but over the course of the series, you realize you know them fairly well. Before 1971's No More Dying Then, Wexford's partner Mike Burden was a by-the-book, somewhat prudish policeman. Unlike his superior, he's not a reader and Wexford's literary allusions are lost on him. Like Wexford, he was happily married with two children.
The Burden we meet in No More Dying Then is a changed man. As the desk sergeant says in the opening chapter, Jean Burden had been healthy a year earlier and dead by Christmas. In the intervening 10 months, Burden had a near-breakdown and then buried himself in his work, ignoring his pre-teen children and taking Jean's sister Grace, who'd taken a leave of a absence from her nursing career to help out, for granted.
When 5-year-old John Lawrence disappears, Burden disapprovingly interviews his mother. She's a single mother and former bit-part actress, but more than that, she's wearing patchwork dresses and long hair and wrapping herself in shawls. In other words, she doesn't look totally unlike my vague 1971 memories of my grad-student mother. while Burden becomes too enmeshed in Mrs. Lawernce's life, Wexford tries to find a link between John Lawrence's disappearance and that of Stella Rivers. Wexford can't get past his suspicions of Stella's stepfather, Ivor Swan. Information from local criminal Monkey Matthews leaves Wexford to an unexpected solution while Burden solves his case through a forgivable coincidence. I'm looking foraged to the next Wexford novel, not just because Rendell creates intriguing quizzes, but because I want to know what comes next for Mike Burden.
The Burden we meet in No More Dying Then is a changed man. As the desk sergeant says in the opening chapter, Jean Burden had been healthy a year earlier and dead by Christmas. In the intervening 10 months, Burden had a near-breakdown and then buried himself in his work, ignoring his pre-teen children and taking Jean's sister Grace, who'd taken a leave of a absence from her nursing career to help out, for granted.
When 5-year-old John Lawrence disappears, Burden disapprovingly interviews his mother. She's a single mother and former bit-part actress, but more than that, she's wearing patchwork dresses and long hair and wrapping herself in shawls. In other words, she doesn't look totally unlike my vague 1971 memories of my grad-student mother. while Burden becomes too enmeshed in Mrs. Lawernce's life, Wexford tries to find a link between John Lawrence's disappearance and that of Stella Rivers. Wexford can't get past his suspicions of Stella's stepfather, Ivor Swan. Information from local criminal Monkey Matthews leaves Wexford to an unexpected solution while Burden solves his case through a forgivable coincidence. I'm looking foraged to the next Wexford novel, not just because Rendell creates intriguing quizzes, but because I want to know what comes next for Mike Burden.
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