Monthly Archives: November 2014

Where the Heart Is, by Billie Lett ****

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wheretheheartis  I recently read and enjoyed another title by this author. A quick internet search brought me to this title, which the same search told me had made Oprah’s book club. I rarely watch daytime television and have never seen that show, but I know that books she recommends are often titles I like as well. Such was the case here.

Just imagine it: seventeen years old, basketball-belly pregnant, and riding in a car so beat-up that when you nod off, your shoes fall off your feet and through the rusted-out spot in the floor of the car. There they go! And what could be worse than that?

Then the man of your dreams, who to be fair doesn’t seem all that engaged in your relationship, drops you off at Walmart to get some house shoes, and floors it as soon as you enter the store. There he goes, too.

This story is fascinating because it forces us to examine the difference between innocence and ignorance, between the trusting nature that being a trustworthy person sometimes engenders, versus straight-up stupidity.

Novalee Nation is innocent and maybe a little bit ignorant, but when given the chance to improve her own knowledge base, she does it with enthusiasm. She isn’t stupid; she suddenly realizes, as she enters the Walmart, that Roger would not have given her a ten dollar bill when she only asked for five, if he hadn’t planned to dump her there. She runs back out to the parking lot, but she’s too late. All she has now is Walmart.

Once in awhile the fringe characters in this affable tale are a tad overdrawn (all those bandaids; really?), but most of them–Sister Husband, Forney, Moses Whitecotton, and others, not to mention our protagonist– are so palpable that I found myself inventing other scenarios for them as if they were actual people. That’s always a good sign.

So get your copy–I got mine at the Seattle Public Library–and hunker down in your favorite reading spot. This is engaging fiction from a writer I’ll be following in years to come.

The Christmas Train, by Rexanne Becnel****

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I read and reviewed this wonderful holiday book in October. Now that the season is here, let’s shoot it down the pipe one more time.

seattlebookmama's avatarSeattle Book Mama

thechristmastrainRexanne Becnel has written a brief, sweet, sentimental story that can only play at Christmas time. Were I to read this story in February, I would roll my eyes. In April, I would stick two fingers down my throat and make little retching noises.

Note that although the publisher bills this as a romance, it is really a love story between many family members, and the protagonist is a child. A great big thank you goes to Net Galley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC.

In October, in November, in December, I sigh contentedly. It really is about the season. Maybe those of us who celebrate this season find permission in it to drop our guards and bury our noses in sentimental stories. It did me a world of good!

Anna is ten years old, and her beloved Nana Rose, the grandmother with whom she has lived most of…

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Nora Bonesteel’s Christmas Past: A Ballad Novella *****

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norabonesteelI’m a long-time fan of Sharyn McCrumb’s ballad novels (and now a novella); they are sure fire hits. Thank you to Net Galley and Abdingdon Press for the ARC.
I feel compelled to mention that the kindle galley was so full of formatting issues as to render it unreadable. I hope the publishers will correct this issue before it is released. I was able to read it with no trouble at all once I moved it to my desk top.

But back to our story.

We have parallel stories, and the setting is Christmas, of course. The story lines, one of Christmas present, which features Sheriff Arrowroot being ordered to drag an elderly man to jail on Christmas Eve, appears to have a dead-sure predictable ending, except that it doesn’t. That’s all I’m giving away in this case.

The more flavorful thread is Nora Bonesteel’s. The Bonesteel women have “the sight”. Those who have followed McCrumb’s novels already know that, but a reminder doesn’t hurt. Nora is asked out to solve a haunted manse issue for some new-comers. I found this part vastly amusing.

The setting, for those unfamiliar with McCrumb’s work, is in the Appalachian Mountains. It was one of her novels that taught me how to pronounce the word correctly (all soft “a”s, as in apple). Her love of place comes through on the page, and as much as I love the Pacific Northwest where I have lived for most of my life, while I read this, a part of me positively yearn for the Smoky Mountains, which I only visited once as a (oh the shame) tourist. It’s a rare kind of engagement. You can say she casts a spell over the reader, if you wish.

Ah. But that leads us to the descriptor I read in Net Galley. It is described there as a “Christian” novella. I confess it gave me pause. There are Christian novels, and there are Christian novels. Some are so heavy handed that they make terrible literature, from a critical viewpoint: we’re racing along, plot-wise, when someone announces that they should go to the Lord with their problem. A page and a half of long-winded prayer follows. Lather, rinse, repeat. I didn’t want to find myself stuck with a book like that, but a strong writer builds a bond of trust with her readers, and my sense was that McCrumb was unlikely to trash her own work in such a manner. I was correct, and the story is great. The single religious reference is central to the plot and is entirely consistent with the setting. Also, sometimes “Christian” is a sort of code to let the reader know there will be no profanity or sweaty sex scenes, and frankly, I was just as glad to be spared those.

To sum up, McCrumb is a master writer, a mystery champ, and a brilliant novelist whose work with Appalachian setting and tradition stands alone in an otherwise crowded field. Pick up a copy now. You can enjoy it and then pass it around for family and friends to enjoy. The quirky humor and redolent, traditional setting are sure to please anyone who loves Christmas and a good read.

The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries, by Otto Penzler *****

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I received this wonderful collection last year as an ARC from the “first read” program via the Goodreads.com giveaways. At the time, I didn’t have a blog; I reviewed it on Goodreads and because I liked it so well, I also reviewed it on amazon. Then, while I was on the site, I bought two copies to give as gifts. I have never done that with an ARC before or since (so far), but it is so wonderful that I wanted others to have it, and I wasn’t willing to share mine.

Now the season is upon us. This blog will be punctuated by worthwhile Christmas books of a secular variety. I guess it is a typical retired-teacher behavior to decorate my home with brightly jacketed Christmas books when others are getting out their craft supplies and hot glue guns. At any rate, if you buy just one Christmas book for yourself or someone else, and if the reader enjoys mysteries, this is the best you will find.

The stories are organized according to category in a format and layout that is congenial all by itself. There are ten sections, starting with “A Traditional Christmas”, with the first entry being one by Agatha Christie; it is a story that has aged well, and I don’t remember having read it even though I thought I’d read everything by that writer. There are a few more, and range from just a few pages, double columns on each page, to 25 or 30 pp. Then we move on to “A Funny Little Christmas”. The first there is a story by the late great Donald Westlake, and I gobbled it up and then felt bad that I hadn’t saved that story for last, because I adore his work and he’s gone and can’t write anything more. But I perked up when I noted that yet another section, “A Modern Little Christmas”, has an unread (by me) story by Ed McBain. There are many others. The final section, “A Classic Little Christmas”, bookends the anthology neatly by finishing with Dame Agatha. All told there must be about sixty stories, maybe more.

The anthology, edited by the brilliant and acclaimed Otto Penzler, is billed as having a number of rare or never-published short stories, and I think it’s a true claim. There are many mystery writers I’ve read and enjoyed here, and others I had never even heard of, but found immensely entertaining. I haven’t skipped any yet, but even if I find something I don’t care to read, the book is worth owning. I know that already. It is also billed as an anthology to warm the heart of any grinch, and indeed, there has been at least one story with a satisfyingly creepy ending.

One of the charming things about anthologies is that one can read a single story in a sitting and not feel too bad when it’s time to put the bookmark in and go get something done. Then it waits there to greet us as we return from executing less pleasurable tasks, a reward that invites us to sit down, curl up with good cup of coffee or the dog or both and have a cozy read. It also makes the book a lovely thing to keep where guests can access it, because they can enjoy it even if they haven’t time to read more than a story or two in between other activities.

…but I’m keeping you. You could be reaching for your car keys, your bus pass, or even better, going to another window to find this book online and order it. Once you see it, you will most likely feel as I do…unwilling to part with your own copy, yet yearning to get at least one more for somebody else! Get the plastic out and do it right away.

Soldier Girls: the Battles of Three Women at Home and at War, by Helen Thorpe*****

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soldiergirlsNow that this title has created some buzz, I thought I’d reblog this!

seattlebookmama's avatarSeattle Book Mama

I was able to read this before its publication date, courtesy of NetGalley.com. Thanks, guys!

I am usually good for half a dozen books at a time, but I have to admit that this one story has dominated my reading hours for the past week or so. I had so many preconceptions (and yes, stereotypes) that I didn’t even realize I’d developed until I read about these brave souls who have gone to Afghanistan and in some cases, Iraq.

What kind of woman leaves the home she knows and signs up for the National Guard? Sometimes (often!) it is someone who needs money quick. Sometimes it’s a woman who is desperate to get out of her current living situation. And once in awhile, it is something done, at first, when one is dead drunk and out of control; the Guard will fix that quickly!

I’ve been a Marxist my whole…

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Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief, by James M. McPherson *****

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embattledrebelThis was my first biography of Jefferson Davis. I have studied and taught about the American Civil War for decades, and read biographies and memoirs of and by some of the other principals in this conflict; I have avoided biographies and memoirs of Southern generals and politicians that smacked of nostalgic yearning for that Lost Cause. I would swear some of their authors would cheerfully go back to the enslavement of people of color given half a chance, the way they carry on. In any case, when I found this gem recently released by one of my favorite historians who has proven his scholarship trustworthy, I knew I had to read it. Sadly, I didn’t get the ARC when I requested it; hey, it happens! But my spouse popped through the door with a copy of it and I was in business at last. It was well worth his time and effort. James M. McPherson won the Pulitzer for Battle Cry of Freedom, the best single volume treatment of the Civil War I have read. He didn’t disappoint this time either.

If you read this biography, don’t skip the introduction. All of the details that follow are succinctly outlined in interesting and readable form; in fact, I read it before I read the book, and then I read it again afterward.

The book is punctuated by photographs of commanding generals in excellent resolution when read on an e-reader. I was also pleased to see that the maps could be zoomed to where I could generally tell what was on them when I held the e-reader near the light. This is a huge improvement over earlier history texts produced digitally. I used to suggest to those reading military history that they spring for a paper copy so that they could read these, which are often key to understanding what is being said. This time if you buy the book digitally, it will serve just fine.

The thing I was most curious about was whether it was true that Davis was insane by the time the war ended, and that the proceedings were mostly left to Robert E. Lee. Whereas Lee made his own decision to surrender to Grant, Davis, though undoubtedly in denial and out of touch with the reality of Northern conquest, was not insane nor near death, as the terrible textbook I was assigned to use with my teenagers had it. Happily, I noted that the sections on the Civil War had a number of other incorrect entries, and so I greatly limited my use of that book. Now I am really glad I did. Davis didn’t want the presidential nod, but he got it and took it; in fact, when he died many years later, he was entirely unrepentant. McPherson believes he was a strong politician who did a creditable job with a damnable task; Lincoln was a better president, but the Confederacy did not lose the war because of Davis’s failures. It was almost surely going to lose anyway.

Prior to reading this biography, I had believed that the south held on for as long as it did because its military leaders were stronger than those of the Union. This actually isn’t saying much about Confederate leadership.Union General McClellan cost both sides a lot of years and bloodshed that didn’t have to happen. It isn’t so much that the South had amazing generals; it was more that the Union had nobody who was both dedicated and proven. In fact, says McPherson, the Confederate military was practically tearing itself apart through gossip, infighting, and rivalry. Jefferson probably was guilty of promoting his friends beyond their level of competency; yet the cabals and gamesmanship practiced by those assigned to answer to General Bragg were at best a morale-draining waste of time, and at worst may have cost the Confederacy some battles. And the now-venerated Robert E. Lee was castigated in the Southern press for the number of Confederate soldiers who didn’t walk away from his battles. He was dubbed “the king of spades” for the graves that had been dug.

One Confederate general I had wondered about was John Bell Hood. My impression of him, I admit, was that he was a bad-ass general. He never seemed afraid to attack, even with one leg and one arm gone. Who does that? Still up there on his horse; “Charge!”  But this was one more hole in my scholarship that McPherson quickly filled. Hood would fight unwinnable battles. He destroyed an army during the last-ditch effort to save the Confederacy, losing a full fifty percent of the tens of thousands of men he led into just one fight, and most of the rest of them soon thereafter. The “reserves” consisted of old men; children too young to sign up initially; and those proud wealthy souls who had originally paid someone else to fight on their behalf. (I can imagine how well the latter took orders!)

I was familiar with a lot of the primary information provided here and was therefore free to focus on, and enjoy, the details. One new bit of amusing minutiae was that Southern women saved “the contents of chamber pots to be leached for nitrate to produce gunpowder”. Those of you more familiar with chemistry will know whether the women were lined up with their number one or number two. For me, it was a stitch to envision all those fine ladies dressed up in their hoops and bonnets standing in the potty-donation line!

I was particularly interested in what McPherson had to say about guerilla warfare. Lincoln was intent upon making it as easy as possible for the Confederate states to rejoin the Union. Some of us, had we been present, would have made a strong case for executing Davis and some other leaders—particularly those in South Carolina who started the whole mess—for treason. And some who were in Washington DC at the time made that case, too; but the decision was for quick, peaceful reunion. One reason for this was the concern that rebels made bitter by the price of losing the war might take to the hills and wreck endless havoc upon the offices of government and the economy long after the war had officially ended. But guerilla actions during the period when the Confederate government was in place and holding out for official recognition would have been unwise. Says McPherson:

Guerrilla actions as the main strategy are most appropriate for a rebel force trying to
capture the institutions of government, not defend them. And a slave society that
practices guerrilla warfare is playing with fire, for it opens up opportunities for the
slaves to carry out their own guerrilla actions against the regime.

But what of Beauregard? What about General Johnston and General Johnston? (Of course, there were two.) Bedford Forrest? What was the deal with Kentucky? Ah, there’s so much more to discuss.

I write really long reviews. If you are still with me by the end of this one, your interest is sufficient to go out and get this wonderful book. I don’t recommend it for those unfamiliar with the Civil War; for that, you ought to read Battle Cry of Freedom first. But once the basics are in your tool kit, you will find this biography accessible, interesting, and rewarding. Go for it!

All the Time in the World: New and Selected Stories, by E.L. Doctorow *****

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allthetimeinWhen I was a kid, I often bore the distinction of being the second-smartest kid in the class. You’d think it would be an honor, but then, how often do we watch silver medalists at the Olympics stand ashamed, tears streaming, because they were not the very, very best? And so as I read these gob-smackingly brilliant short stories by Doctorow, I know exactly who he would have been in my life. He would have been that smartest kid, that gold medalist. I could never even touch his writing ability with anything I produced.

Back when I was that second-smartest student, I would have burned with envy at Doctorow’s brilliance, but now I can only bow in awe. What talent—and what a work ethic! He has produced prodigious prose over his lifetime, and I don’t think he has ever published anything that wasn’t top drawer work.

Here’s his author blurb, lifted from Goodreads.com:

“Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle Awards, two PEN Faulkner Awards, The Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. In 2009 he was short listed for the Man Booker International Prize honoring a writer’s lifetime achievement in fiction, and in 2012 he won the PEN Saul Bellow Award given to an author whose “scale of achievement over a sustained career places him in the highest rank of American Literature.” In 2013 the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the Gold Medal for Fiction.”

I rest my case, at least in terms of the author’s overall prowess. And no friends, I did not read this as an ARC; I don’t think Doctorow even needs people like me reviewing him, but I do so because it brings me joy. I ferreted this hardcover treasure from among the stacks at my favorite Seattle used book store, Magus Books, in the University of Washington neighborhood. I considered the used-book price a steal, and have enjoyed all of the stories included here.

One section is devoted to “Liner Notes”, and this one is from the liner notes to Billy Bathgate (also highly recommended). He describes a fugue state in which he is walking, yet dreaming:

“…it walks me through the underworld of the dreaming masses, where this pudgy demon of truth, W.C. Fields, with his dirty top hat, his run-down elegance of manners, his drunken scrollwork of a personality, presides over the technology of our souls…the clown won’t go away, you see…leading him through the window over the great landscape of the underworld that looks so beautiful from the window of this safe house and showing him what it really is. And he sees the bubbling sulfur pits of intentions, and the slake mountain of ideals, and great gray ash as far as he can see, the ashes of innocence creased by rivers of blood.”

Not everything he writes is in this flowery style, lest it exhaust us; instead, he intersperses it with other brilliantly funny work. “A House on the Plains” is dry wit at its best. Earle and his mother roam from one town to another, and gradually we come to understand why they have to keep moving. In one location, Earle is to call his mother “Aunt Dora”, and his mother has really outdone herself. Earle is used to a certain level of weirdness, but he can’t help inquiring, in the wake of her many troubling preparations for what is to come, “Aunt Dora, I said, what are we up to here?” (The author uses no quotation marks in this story, but it won’t muddy the meaning at all…and he makes up for it with his grammar police references in the final story, for which the book is titled.)

“Walter John Harmon” was one of my favorites; it features a religious cult, and is so wry and cutting that it made me laugh out loud in places.

The final piece, in which the writer makes better use of repetition as figurative language than anyone I have ever read before, is the coup de grace, and one can see why it is placed last; it leaves one holding the book with the sure and certain knowledge that it cannot be given away to a friend or relative, but must be nested softly back on the shelf. In my case, it will go in a small section of novels written by this remarkable word smith.

Has it just been published? Oh no no no. You will have to work to find it as I did. Well, of course you could check with various online retailers, and likely you would find a copy more easily than my breathless treasure hunt in the back stacks at Magus.

But if you love and respect good writing, you will do yourself a favor if you get a hold of it, one way or another, and dive in as soon as you can offer your complete attention.

The Given World, by Marian Palaia ****

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thegivenworldThree and a half stars, rounded up. Thank you thrice to Net Galley, Edelweiss Books, and Simon and Schuster for the ARCs. This novel, which has generated a fair amount of buzz, comes out in spring of 2015.

The story takes place about fifty years ago in the western USA. Riley’s brother has been sent to fight in Vietnam, and Riley has gone to pieces without him. She takes every drug known to humanity, or nearly so, including alcohol, and in liberal doses, too. When her lover goes to Vietnam too, she dumps the baby on her parents in Montana and takes off in her car. She has always wanted to see the ocean. And see it she does; all that water, all those bridges. Many times she considers jumping, and the only thing that tells us she won’t is that the story is told in the first person. Her self-destructive impulses are in high gear, though; she doesn’t jump, but she dares fate to take her out in about every other imaginable way.

In a narrative that is strangely disjointed—possibly deliberately so on the author’s part, given all those drugs—she travels to Vietnam, where her brother has been listed as Missing In Action. Though most of those whose remains go unreturned are, according to the Pentagon, people who died over water, she is obsessed with the notion of him burrowing into a tunnel somewhere and just not coming back out. She goes there to see if she can ferret out his remains.

Here, I confess that a half star fell off my rating by the stereotype she assigned the people of Vietnam. The war came, and all they probably wanted to do was go back to farming their rice paddies, she says. And I find myself wondering why so many people who are not Vietnamese have such a rough time envisioning the Vietnamese, or at least a portion of them, as intelligent, political thinkers. After all, they gave just about everything they had, right down to their children and their jungles, in order to repel the invaders who came to tell them what kind of government they ought to have. They farmed out of the fucking CRATERS. Go ahead and tell me that all that was in their heads was rice. I dare you.

Ahem. Moving on.

Inevitably, Riley returns, and though I don’t want to spoil the rest of the story, she encounters more loss. Rivers of loss; oceans of loss; entire mountain ranges of loss. This is a really sad story, and if you are in need of a good hearty cry, this book just might do it for you. Think of San Francisco in the 1980’s. It was a rough time; lots of us lost people then.

At times I had difficulty figuring out the character’s motivation. Is she just so deep into her grief that she can’t come up with a plan? Has she been overtaken by some mental illness? Is she alcoholic? Or is she passively trying to avoid the pain? I suspect it’s the latter, but I am never quite sure. Maybe the ambiguity was intentional.

Time shifts, and Riley has reason to return to Montana. Will she stay once she is home, or will she return to San Francisco? One thing is certain; she won’t get on an airplane. Instead, she takes the Coast Starlight train northeast, across the California line into Oregon.

This is one of those little quirks that is bound to come up once a novel hits a certain number of readers. I too have taken the Coast Starlight, and I have also sent many loved ones on it. The Coast Starlight is a train that goes through from San Francisco (and maybe further south for all I know), to Portland, Oregon (my hometown), to Seattle. And it’s a lesson to writers everywhere: if you are going to describe an actual place, be sure you know what you are talking about.

Riley’s narrative explains that when she got off the train in Portland in that big old station (so far so good; it’s huge and historical, a glorious place), she wants to walk around the neighborhood, but unfortunately, the station is surrounded on all sides by freeways.

Whoopsie! The station is located in Chinatown. It is chock full of tourists at all but the grimmest time of year, and Portlanders take a great deal of pride in its rich heritage. Like San Francisco, Portland attracted large Chinese immigrant populations during the boom period of railroad building. It’s true that there are freeways on two sides of it; one of them parallels the river. But that train station is a long way from being some island in the middle of a bunch of concrete and girders. Not so much.

For those of you focused solely on the story line and character development, I think this will be about a three or four star read, depending upon how stringent your own personal rating guidelines are. I am glad I had the chance to read it; I just wish I understood where it was going and what the writer intended.

The Boyfriend, by Thomas Perry ****

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TheboyfriendThree and a half stars, rounded up.

I’ve been a fan of Thomas Perry’s for decades. In the past, he has written such adrenaline-coursing thrillers that I’ve actually had to put his novel down in order to calm down and breathe normally for a moment. And while The Boyfriend is an interesting story, it doesn’t measure up to the body of work I associate with this writer.

Here is the premise: we have two protagonists, a good guy and a bad guy. Our bad guy is a hit man and a serial killer. At first I really liked the author’s work here. It’s a twist I hadn’t seen before. The bad guy is hired by clients from Latin America who he hypothesizes are perhaps having him take out individuals who are also from Latin America, but who fly north to assist Washington D.C. in its attempt to take those cartels apart. He doesn’t really know, though. He was recruited by an American who also worked for them, and who became his partner. The partner was killed by one of the targets, and now our hit man, who takes a variety of names throughout the book, is a one-man killing squad. He makes a lot of money, but needs to stay below the radar and be impossible to track. The women he kills are escorts that he persuades to trust him. He behaves like the opposite of a typical john, nonthreatening, considerate, and gets them to invite him to live with them. Voila, free lodgings where the Feds won’t be looking for him. And each time he leaves, he kills his hostess in order to avoid leaving a witness behind, even though they have no idea he is a killer. The dead men he has assassinated cause a lot more flash and ruckus, so the death of a high-priced hooker doesn’t get much air time on the news or much attention from police.

I had a little trouble buying this scenario, but the author also draws out a story from the killer’s youth that shows that in shopping for an escort wherever he is staying, the man subconsciously looks for the same woman over and over again. They look alike. Again and again, he finds and kills this woman. Taken from that sort of perspective, I could buy the premise. But this part of the premise falls apart halfway through the novel with a one-sentence explanation that left me scratching my head. What the hell?

Our second protagonist, of course, is the guy who is tracking the killer. He Needs to Find Him Before He Can Kill Again. Jack Till is our good guy. Till is a private detective working for the parents of one of the escorts. They loved their daughter; they have money; they want their daughter’s killer found and brought to justice.

Till uses the internet to track where he believes the killer will go next. The clues he uses at first are believable, and the story line, if not gripping, is interesting. But I had real problems buying into the amount of wealth he was able to expend in order to not only travel all over hell and back, but in buying breathtakingly expensive gadgets to assist him:

“He drove into Boston and bought several items: a night vision scope, a sixty-power spotting scope, and a plug-in microphone that he could listen to by telephone.”

We don’t have a sense that Catherine Hamilton’s parents are members of that bottomless, one-percent, ruling rich. They give him 100k and tell him to let them know when he needs more, but for all we know, they could be looting their retirement accounts or double-mortgaging their home. It’s believable that grieving parents would do these things. But multiple plane tickets, hotels, and expenses like the ones in the quote above (not his only stop, not his only purchases) gave me pause.

In addition, I wondered at the blithe assumption that a store, even in a major metropolis such as Boston, would have these items sitting under glass ready to be sold. Wouldn’t some of these items have to be special-ordered? That’s expensive, very specialized stock. But I will admit I don’t know a lot about firearms or spying devices; it just felt like a stretch to me.

If you are concerned about spoilers, by the way, I have confined myself to the first twenty percent of the story. Most of it is not in this review.

But I am thinking back now to the series that hooked me and a lot of other readers, when Perry was a relatively new writer. This man wrote the Jane Whitefield novels, stories about a modern-day Seneca Indian woman who uses the skills of her culture to cover the trail of endangered individuals. The series was absolutely riveting, but the nature of her work also kept it from being a more or less permanent series. Each time she did her good deed, she was that much closer to being discovered and murdered. Perry had to close that series off and write some other things, and he came up with a number of other really strong novels, some of them on par with that beloved series. And because of his sterling track record as one of the best thriller writers out there, I came to this novel with higher-than-usual expectations.

The Boyfriend holds together really well in places, and is a little clunky in others. I was lucky enough to read a free copy, not as an ARC, but as a library book brought home for me by a thoughtful family member. As such, I enjoyed it, even though I was a trifle disappointed. But at the same time, I was glad I had been able to knock it off my Christmas wish list, because there are many things I would rather unwrap than this book.

My advice to you, reader, is similar. If you find this book lying on a table of 99 cent paperbacks, or if you can read it free from the library or borrow it from someone, give it a try. See what you think. If you are new to Perry’s work, you can read it free of the high expectations I brought with me when I read it.

But don’t toss the full jacket price on the counter unless you have a budget as generous as Jack Till’s.

Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn ****

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gonegirlGone Girl is famous and has had numerous awards heaped on it, made its way to the top of best seller lists, and been lauded by reviewers far more widely read than I am. Rightly so. It’s one hell of a story, and just when I thought perhaps I saw what was happening, I would find that I had merely played into the writer’s clever trap, and that the roller coaster was about to go around a bend or through a tunnel entirely unexpectedly.

Since so many others have reviewed it before me, and since I did not read the book as an ARC, I’m going to approach it in a slightly different way than usual. I want to look at how this story reflects today’s society, because that part of it jumped out at me, grabbed me by the hair and told me that these are tense times, and they aren’t improving any, not right now. And how we deal with certain issues in fiction is perhaps not as well partitioned off from real life as we might prefer to believe.

The assumptions inherent in my definition of “society” are that we are looking at the English-speaking world, and my own experience is limited to North American English-speaking society. I can’t really speak for what lies elsewhere, since the media often distorts the real picture, and I haven’t gone anywhere.

Two things jumped out at me, and one of them is something that is popping up in literature all over the place now. It’s like playing whack-a-mole: there it is! Whoa, there’s another example! And another! And another! Here’s what I see in this book, and all over the place: the police can’t help you. Or they won’t. In many situations they are equal parts disinterested in exacting real justice, and perfectly happy to do what seems easiest and most likely to complete their task with the least exertion and unhappy attention from their superiors. And not only are you not going to get help from the cops, but that means it’s okay to just go take care of it, using whatever means you deem necessary. That’s point number one of two.

So when Amy gets gone from home in a small Missouri town, the local cops do a serviceable job and look at all the possibilities. They aren’t crooked or brutal as often happens in large cities, but they also lack imagination. Our male protagonist does not really trust them very long.

I don’t mean to belabor the point, but it does bear examining, this trend in contemporary fiction. During the 1950’s, 60’s, even the 1970’s, the police, when depicted in fiction and in film, were 99 percent of the time really decent and extremely clever. They put in extra hours of their own time, went sleepless, and let their personal lives deteriorate because Catching the Real Killer consumed them. But they succeeded, in the end, and the reader (or the viewer) fully expected that to happen. They did it all within the letter of the law, because that was what good guys did. It was fiction, of course, but we believed it.

These days I read story after story, from funny capers like the Stephanie Plum series, to any number of gritty urban tales (you can probably think of half a dozen without trying too hard, if you read a lot of crime thrillers and mysteries) in which someone else has to step in and take care of the job because the cops are not up to the task. These cops aren’t always bad guys; sometimes they are underfunded, understaffed, or just plain dumb as a box of rocks. But it is the vigilante (the word is seldom used; it’s not a nice word, but it’s accurate) who will ultimately solve the crime. Sometimes there are variations, like some of James Lee Burke’s more recent work, in which a rogue cop of sorts gets sick of the rule book and goes off on “vacation” time in order to do the things that cannot be done on the clock.

The oldest story in the book is the I-have-to-solve-the-crime-cause-I’ve-been-framed plot line, although a writer who is fresh and original can still sing that same old song and make it seem brand new, not unlike the-killer-has-got-my-loved-one as a vigilante motivator.

Here’s the part that I hate and try not to think about too often, but because I see it recurring so much right now, I feel as if I have to mention it: in well-written novels such as this one, I just love it when someone who is not a cop takes matters into his or her own hands and metes out justice. That’s not sarcasm. A good writer can sell it to me and make me enjoy it, and I will look for more of that writer’s work. Because I can tell myself it’s just fiction.

In real life, when some frustrated unemployed neighbor takes to stalking the local teens to try to catch them doing something illegal; when Stand Your Ground laws enable some insecure, bumbling ass to follow young Black men around till he’s had the satisfaction of shooting one dead, once he has sufficiently goaded the man into taking a swing at him; it’s absolutely nightmarish.

One could argue that this is what fiction is for; it gives us the chance to see wrong things done right, if only subliminally. But it disturbs me that it has become so popular, and even more so that it has become thrilling to me personally. It can’t be a good sign.

I should end this here because it’s plenty to think about, but I need to talk about the equally disturbing issue number two . In Gone Girl, there are some really amazing, excellent feminist mini-manifestoes squeezed in between the many damning things that our bad-girl protagonist says and does. Again, I find myself bothered that we can’t see a strong, wonderful woman who notes that “I like strong women” is usually said by a man who hates strong women; that expecting one’s husband to tell her why he was out all night is deemed ‘shrill fishwife’ behavior that will destroy a marriage (because goodness knows, the marriage can’t fail over a guy who can’t find his phone or his front door at night.)

In this harrowing so-called era of post-feminism, when the states are shooting down women’s right to control their own bodies with abortion laws that are so restrictive as to be either very expensive or impossible, and ‘personhood’ amendments (which I was happy to see fail) that order the woman to honor a garbanzo-bean shaped spot of tissue and blood more than she values herself, her family, and her future, why oh why must the character who issues some genuinely truthful and brilliant statements regarding the worth of a woman also be a conniving, manipulative, narcissistic monster? With domestic violence not in abeyance and the word “bitch-slap” being considered only slightly edgy when included in a joke, why can we not have real heroes who are strong women—not slinky, young femme fatales who use their bodies as bait, but women who use their brains and social skills to get at the truth?

If I sound like it haunts me, it’s because it does.

If you want to know the standard book review information about story arc, character development, and setting, go and read what the New York Times had to say, or better still, go look at the string of awards garnered by this novel. It’s very strong writing, and of course it is not (as far as I can see) intended to make a political point.

On the other hand, people that live in war-torn nations will tell you everything is political. At dinner time, who eats and who doesn’t, that is political. Who lies, and who tells the truth; who can see a doctor and who can’t; these are every day issues that are also massively political.

As for me, I frowned and flagged the pages when I saw these hot buttons pop up, but I kept turning the pages, because I wanted to see how the story would end. And it’s a great book, sure to keep you up way past your bedtime if you aren’t careful.

But there is no ducking the fact that it is also a product of the time in which we live. Let us come up for air from time to time, and view things as they are, lest we get sucked into the oily abyss of socially sick ideas without even realizing we’ve been had.