From Chapter 14 of Alaska Traveler: I followed the tram track outside to a line of miniature rail cars hooked together, a two foot-by-four foot flatbed, a mucking machine, a GE electric locomotive, a one-ton ore car. Each ore car was rolled out of the mine one at a time by trammers. The ore cars…
10 Ways of Looking at Blade Runner Click here to read Annalee Newitz’ full list on io9, and the comments of the people disagreeing with her. And here’s the trailer for the director’s cut of the filmed version. If you haven’t seen it, you should.
From Chapter 13 of Alaska Traveler: Meanwhile, back up on stage…Keys in top hat and tails and aloha shirt at the keyboard is joined by Alice Welling on the lungs, Mike MacDonald on the drums, Ed Bourgeois on the channeler, and Jelly Roll Jim on the bass. Also Martha Stewart (And you’re not, which must…
Read more Nothing is sacred, and these people will do ANYTHING for a laugh.
The Empty House by Michael Gilbert
Brilliant genetic scientist Dr. Alexander Wolfe drives his car over a cliff one evening in southeastern England, and insurance adjuster Peter Manciple comes along behind to make sure that there is no reason that his firm shouldn't pay out on Dr. Wolfe's very large and oddly written insurance policy. All, as you surely knew, is not as it seems, and mayhem and bloody murder ensue.
Can I get away with using "quiet" to modify the noun "thriller?" Because that's what many of Michael Gilbert's books are, quiet thrillers. He has the endearing habit of elevating ordinary people by way of extraordinary circumstances to heretofore unthought of actions, and after the authorities come gallumphing in to investigate and inquire and pry and explain and justify, our not quite Ordinary Bloke carries on with his life. And then there are the always perceptive comments on Life, the Universe and Everything, and the sly asides that yank you up with a jerk and make you read them twice to make sure he really said that.
Another thing I like about Gilbert is that he doesn't always tie things up neatly at the end. The Empty House's conclusion is more neat than most, but you certainly understand Peter's ultimate decision.
***SPOILER***
Also, I'm not all that certain that Dr. Wolfe is really dead. He's been dead before.
# Permanent link to A quiet thriller
From Chapter 12 of Alaska Traveler: I rode the Alaska Railroad from Anchorage to Fairbanks in the early Seventies to get to the University of Alaska. It took a minimum of twelve hours, because the train would stop what seemed like every five minutes to let off a hunter, or pick up a fisherman, or…
The Famous and the Dead by T. Jefferson Parker
Here, in the sixth and final installment of the Charlie Hood series, Charlie literally wrestles with the devil himself, over the narcotraffickers on the USA-Mexican border, for the lives of his friends, and maybe even for his own soul as well. A very satisfying conclusion, although I'm actually a little spooked at the way he left it.***[spoiler below]
These books are desert noir, a lone hero walking the harsh sands beneath a merciless sun, Sam Spade among the cholla, and always with the hero's past somewhere rearing its malevolent head. Here it shows up up front, on page 36:
The past again, he thought. Barreling right in like it's welcome.
Raymond Chandler Himself would expire from sheer envy.
There is as always great craft, both undercover agent and writer's:
Hood ignored him. Let them come to you, he thought. This was a favorite rule of his old Blowdown boss, Sean Ozburn, a crack undercover agent, always cool and never made: Don't be eager. Ozburn had been the best of them unti mike Finnegan tore him to shreds--mentally, spiritually, and finally physically. Oz's lovely wife, too. All of that, without touching them.
There is so much going on in that paragraph I hardly know where to begin. It illustrates Hood's experience as an ATF agent. It lets you in on a little secret about working undercover. It sets up the villain, and it invokes the reader's sympathy for past (and passed) friends. That, folks, is not an expository lump. Later on:
To Hood, Dale Yorth was the combination of boyish adventurism and deadly adult mission that constituted law enforcement at most levels.
Ever see what cops call a trophy shot, with all the arresting officers grouped around big piles of marijuana bales or bags of cocaine? Reminds me of Holmes -- "Quick, Watson! The game's afoot!" If they didn't enjoy the chase, they wouldn't be in the game, and Jeff captures that here in one sentence.
There is, as always, some great social commentary:
Hood had always thought that, just for starters, ATF had it rough because most Americans liked alcohol, tobacco and firearms, and disliked regulation.
And then we come to Mike Finnegan, the Big Bad. He explains himself to Bradley, the struggle for whose soul has occupied much of the Charlie Hood series:
My partners have all been very, very successful. I try my best to get to them by age eleven, and I have rigorous standards. The single best prognosticator for success as a partnered human being is ambition. This is where everything begins. Second greatest? Appetites--indulged appetites. Third? Perfectionism. I look for monstrous, gigantic egos linked closely to a sense of entitlement and possessing a simple can-do attitude.
[Shudder.] Practical, isn't he? And prescient. And persuasive. And...political, if you want to look at it that way and I don't see how you can avoid it. Jeff has made me believe in the devil in the way no church has ever been able to.
One day, these novels will be read in history classes, in poly sci classes, and maybe in theological classes as well. Highly recommended.
Here comes the SPOILER:
***Although I guess one should never be entirely certain that the lock on the devil's door is unpickable. Myself, I think Bradley's right, he and Reyes and Charlie should dump Mike down Beatrice's mine shaft. Better yet, just back up a cement truck and unload it into the basement.
# Permanent link to Charlie Hood jousts with the devil. And wins?
What? No stop for Homer? What are we, chopped liver? Buy poster, tote bag, T-shirt here. More about the artist here.
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin
Not to be confused with Samuel Johnson, who wrote the dictionary, which I always do. No, this book is a biography of Samuel Pepys, who wrote the Diary. An up-from-nothing country boy, Pepys' abilities and high-placed relatives put him at the center of English history for the last half of of the 1600's. He witnessed the execution of Charles I, rose high in Cromwell's administration, turned his coat when Charles II was restored to the throne and rose even higher, and then backed the wrong horse when Charles II died and James II took only four years to whistle his throne down a religious wind of his own making. Pepys, the last man in the world to end his life as a Jacobite, does, out of loyalty and a stubborn determination to turn his coat no more.
This is the best kind of biography, not only the life of the man himself but of the time and place as well. Tomalin wisely relegates the Diary to it's own section, the years 1660-1669. In the prologue, she writes
The shamelessness of his self-observation deserves to be called scientific.
and then places his words alongside the narrative of those years.
The Diary, with its tumbling stream of information, is a reminder that the moods and demands of daily life easily blot out politics. Lack of cash was a more pressing problem for Pepys than any possible change of regime...
Tomalin isn't above inserting the occasionally acid and always enjoyable editorial comment, either.
Almost the first advice Pepys got when his promotion was known was from a sea captain telling him how to fiddle his expenses by listing five or six non-existent servants when he went on board and claiming pay for them all. It made an interesting introduction to the workings of the navy.
Tomalin shows a masterly hand at drawing comparisons between that time and this, as well. On Major Harrison being hanged, drawn and quartered for treason:
Pepys, in one of his most famous formulations, wrote that Major-General Harrison looked "as cheerfully as any man could do in that condition."...Pepys did not devote the rest of his day to higher thoughts any more than one of us, turning from famine or child murder on television, remains sombre an hour later.
Due to his high office and connections at court Pepys' had a front row seat to all the goings-on, and as secretary to the British Navy a not inconsiderable hand in affairs himself. On every page you aren't bumping into royalty, you stub your toe on someone out of the Who's Who of British science and literature, John Milton, John Dryden, Andrew Marvell, Christopher Wren, Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, and many more. In the meantime, through Pepys' eyes we singe our eyebrows on the Great Fire of London, and fear for our lives from the plague. It's a marvelous you-are-there.
Highly readable, highly recommended.
View all my reviews on Goodreads.And I found a map of the Great Fire of London on Wikipedia. I have walked those streets, all unknowing.
# Permanent link to And so to bed.
[From the stabenow.com vaults, October 16, 2009] Here’s my top ten list of books that make me want to quit writing, because I’ll never write anything this good, so why am I bothering. 1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I know, kind of obvious, but I defy anyone, whether they’re reading it for the…
[written for Mystery Scene Magazine's "Writers on Reading" column, February 2013 issue]
I was raised on a 75-foot fish tender in the Gulf of Alaska. In port, at low tide, it was a forty-two foot climb up an often ice-encrusted ladder to get to the library, but if you’re a born reader and an icy climb is the only way you can get to the library, you climb.
The Seldovia Public Library was one room in the basement of city hall. It was open once a week, on Monday nights, for three hours, seven to ten. Because there were so few books, each patron could check out only four at a time. Susan the librarian started me on Nancy Drew.
I read all the Nancy Drew Susan had in short order, and then I read everything else on her shelves. Because I was a kid on a boat, I was always looking for stories about other kids on boats. Eventually, Susan found me a copy of The Lion’s Paw by Robb White.
It’s World War II. Fifteen-year old Ben’s father is lost at sea in the Pacific. Penny and Nick are siblings on the lam from the orphanage that would split them up. They stow away in Ben’s sailboat, the Hard A Lee. Ben’s uncle is going to sell it, so Ben, Penny and Nick decide to run away on the Hard A Lee together.My favorite kind of book is a how-to book. You can’t put enough detail into a book about how someone lives their life or does their job or falls in love or commits a crime to suit me. The Lion’s Paw is a how-to book. How to run away. How to sail a boat. How to be a captain. How to be crew. How to hide a sailboat in plain sight. How not to wrestle an alligator.
How to go on a quest.
There is that one book every writer can point to as the story that inspired them to tell their own. The Lion’s Paw may be the first book I ever read where I looked at the author’s name on the cover and wondered, “Who is this guy? How does he know all this stuff?” and more importantly “Did he write anything else?”
He did, and I read it all. And then I started writing my own.
And it is finally again in print. Buy it here. I promise you won't be sorry.
# Permanent link to How not to wrestle an alligator.
