The Caustic Critic

CBR4 #7: The Crime at Black Dudley by Margery Allingham

2012-01-25T14:04:00.000-05:00

In some ways, The Crime at Black Dudley is a very typical British country house mystery. A bunch of upper class people are invited to a party weekend at some god-forsaken, off-the-beaten-path estate. They arrive to find they don't necessarily know each other, and are a bit curious as to why they have been chosen. The house comes complete with creepy relative, hostile manservant, and a very weird family tradition. When a murder occurs, it's only the beginning of what will turn out to be a simply disastrous weekend. The women weep, the men engage in fisticuffs, there are secret passages, hidden identities, and a few fiendish plots.

The main character is Dr. George Abbershaw, a mild-mannered physician who occasionally consults for Scotland Yard. The actual detective of the piece is Albert Campion, who both extremely intelligent AND extremely weird. Although Dr. Abbershaw in some ways functions as a Dr. Watson, he is less privy to Campion's actions and motivations. It's a bit like seeing a Sherlock Holmes story from Lestrade's point of view--glimpses of the great detective at work, hints of his motives, some short and somewhat confusing explanations, but never a full picture of what is going on.

The characters were pretty well drawn and interesting. Although Campion was used sparingly, I can see why Allingham decided to make him the star of her series rather than Dr. Abbershaw. The plot was all right, though nothing particularly surprising or thought-provoking. On the whole, it's a decent murder-mystery, but nothing special.

CBR4 #6: Emergency! True Stories From The Nation's ERs by Mark Brown

2012-01-23T16:07:00.000-05:00

I work in a hospital. I'm not a medical professional, mind you. I am a mere officemonkey, making appointments, pushing papers, gathering information. But even from where I sit, I can still observe some of the patient interactions that go on. I've been on the phone with people who've yelled at me, burst into tears, chatted at me for more than half an hour, and a few 80 year old men who have flirted with me. I've been given gifts, and one time a woman chucked a clipboard at my head for no apparent reason. However, the department I work in isn't an emergency area. We're basically a M-F operation, and we usually close up shop around 6pm. I can't imagine what it would be like to work in a place that is open 24 hours a day and deals with people suffering from life-threatening trauma.

Mark Brown's book, Emergency!, is a compilation of short essays from emergency room personnel around the country. Some tales are a few pages long, some are just a few lines, but almost all of them are interesting. They're not organized in any special way, though there are some that are grouped together. Some are funny, some are sad, and some are both. There is a chapter that is all stories from nurses, and one that is letters from a single doctor, explaining how he has ended up totally burnt out. It's clear that working in an ER is an extremely stressful job (duh), but can also be quite rewarding. It's not the insane drama that television makes it out to be, but it seems that there are nights when unbelievably weird things happen. The human factor makes every shift an adventure, even if it's a "So THAT is the story you want me to believe about how that object ended up stuck in your butt?" adventure.

In general, I'd recommend this to people who work in the medical field, but anyone who likes stories of the human condition might enjoy it as well.

CBR4 #5: Haunted by James Herbert

2012-01-20T15:10:00.000-05:00

I love a ghost story. I'm not especially picky about them, but I prefer those in which the ghost is a definable character rather than a mysterious evil force. While an anonymous angry spirit is certainly spooky, a specific vengeful ghost is much more interesting in my opinion.

James Herbert's Haunted is such a ghost story, though the actual existence of the ghost is in question most of the way through. Protagonist David Ash works for a London supernatural society as a sort of ghost hunter. Mostly, he travels around and tries to debunk hauntings with science, equipment, and modern thought. He's a notorious skeptic, even though he does work with people who do seem to have paranormal gifts.

When he gets invited out to Edbrook by the young Mariell siblings and their spinster aunt, he agrees to go without much thought. Since Ash believes very little in the spiritual realm, he doesn't think he has much to worry about. Unfortunately, when he arrives, he finds that everything is just the slightest bit off-kilter. He isn't sure whether the problem is with the house or with himself, but something is certainly wrong. The longer he stays, the more perilous circumstances become.

I liked the book quite a bit, and only partially figured out the twist ending. The character of David is fairly well-drawn, though the others are all a bit vague. However, the story is more about the plot, which churns along at a decent clip. All said, it's not a bad book--definitely entertaining--but nothing special.

CBR4 #4: Dissecting Death: Secrets of a Medical Examiner by Dr. Frederick Zugibe

2012-01-17T17:46:00.001-05:00

For some reason, I am really into forensics right now. It's a shame that I am both poor at science and rather squeamish, because it seems like such a fascinating job. However, between having to know all that biology and having to deal with maggots on a fairly regular basis, I am sure it is not for me.

Dr. Zugibe, who penned this book, did an excellent job. He wrote the most widely used textbook in the field of forensics, so he is great at making this interesting but also extremely informative.

Before the mid-seventies or so, a town's coroner wasn't a medical professional, but someone elected to the position by being bright enough to manage the paperwork. Often they were lawyers or business owners, and they didn't know anything about dealing with bodies. They could declare someone dead, but were unable to determine any causes that weren't blatantly obvious. Later, these laypersons were slowly replaced with trained medical examiners--people who knew what they were looking at and why it mattered.

Zugibe's book starts out with the basics -- how dead bodies are found, and what happens to them once they are. He then goes on to describe various illustrative cases, explaining how each one was (or was not) solved using forensics.

The author has a solid, knowledgeable voice, and his tone is professorial but never dull or too dry. He's obviously interested in both educating AND entertaining his reader. As far as books on this subject go, this is one of the better ones, and I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in forensic science.

CBR4 #3: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

2012-01-12T13:30:00.000-05:00

I did not want to read this book. I heard all the hype, and saw about a zillion people reading it on the train, but I resisted. I thought it was going to be badly written crap like the Twilight series (and I don't want to hear it about the Twilight series...I did try to read them, but after ten pages in the first book, I felt myself developing a brain aneurysm from the terrible, terrible writing and had to stop.) You know, lame YA series for girls coated in unbelievable fantasy tropes and damsel-in-distress behavior. However, several ladies I trust seemed to enjoy it, as well as The Boyfriend, so when someone offered to loan me the first book I decided I might as well give it a chance.

I'm so glad I did. Each year, two teenagers from each of the twelve "districts" must compete in "The Hunger Games," a bloody battle to the death that is mandatory viewing for everyone in the nation. This particular year, Katniss Everdeen ends up as one of the twenty-four competitors, representing District 12, the poorest and weakest district. Along with Katniss is the baker's son, Peeta Mellark. I hate to give away more plot, but it's a bit like Battle Royale meets Stephen King's "The Long Walk".

The character of Katniss is great, and has a very distinctive voice. (Oddly, the character reminds me very much of Ree Dolly, the main character in Winter's Bone--a hard girl, mature beyond her years, scratching out a living in Appalachian country, trying to take care of the family herself because her father is gone and her mother is useless. The funny thing is, Jennifer Lawrence, who played Ree in the film version of Winter's Bone will be playing Katniss in The Hunger Games movie.) Katniss is torn between her feelings of self-preservation, her desire to rebel against "The Capitol," and curious new emotions with regard to Peeta. Katniss soon realizes that nothing is what she first thought, and that The Hunger Games are dangerous in ways she never could have imagined.

I loved this book--I really enjoy stories of survival, and having a tough, interesting heroine is definitely a plus. The secondary characters were for the most part well-drawn, though obviously many of the lesser Games competitors were merely caricatures. On the whole, I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoyed any of the books/films mentioned above, or for anyone who likes fiction with a strong female lead.

CBR4 #2: Cross Fire by James Patterson

2012-01-11T16:24:00.000-05:00

This is James Patterson's 17th Alex Cross mystery. Now, I haven't read all of them -- I think I've only read the first two or three -- but I seem to recall that the ones I read were considerably better than this.

Detective Alex Cross finds himself chasing down a pair of deadly snipers while trying to plan his wedding. AND there's a killer carving mathematical equations in the foreheads of his victims! AND his youngest child's unreliable mother is giving him stress. AND his arch nemesis--serial killer Kyle Craig--has returned!

It's frankly a lot going on, and most of it is a lot less exciting than it sounds. Kyle Craig reveals his plan very early, so there is no suspense at all for the audience. The two murderers are left mostly unexplained, and one (the more interesting one, actually) is pretty much used as a plot point and then immediately discarded. Alex's home drama churns but goes nowhere and changes nothing. Maybe this was a book designed only to lead up to the next chapter of Alex Cross's saga, but it didn't feel like it was leading up to anything (the main plots tied up pretty neatly at the end). Instead, it just felt slapdash and unfinished.

Maybe if I'd invested sixteen books worth of effort into this series I'd be more interested. As it was, I was mostly bored and disappointed. I knew I had serious problems with the tale when I found myself rooting for Kyle Craig, hoping he'd perhaps bump off two or three of Cross's dull, poorly fleshed out family members. Actually, if he'd murdered everyone except Nana Mama, Cross's sassy grandma, I would have been totally psyched.

Recommended only for those who are Alex Cross completists.

CBR4 #1: Whom the Gods Love by Kate Ross

2012-01-06T11:54:00.001-05:00

So 2011 is over, and I missed my goal of the elusive "Double Cannonball" by five books. Still, 99 books read and reviewed in a year is really pretty impressive. And Cannonball Read IV has already started (more information here) so here's another opportunity for me to beat my personal best. 104 in 2012!

The first book of the new year is the third book in Kate Ross's Julian Kestral series. With each book I get a little sadder, since I know there are only four books...meaning that the series will end soon. That's tough to handle, because these are SO GOOD. They're everything I look for in a mystery novel, and I could read about Julian Kestral for at least twenty more books. (Kate Ross is dead, and Dan Brown plows forward...life is obviously NOT FAIR.)

In this story, 1830s English dandy Julian is contacted by the father of Alexander Falkland, a young man who travelled in Julian's high class social circle. Alexander has been brutally murdered in his own home during a party he was hosting, and the authorities have no idea why or by whom. His father Malcolm Falkland has heard of Julian's past adventures and engages him to help solve the mystery. As Kestral begins to dig, it becomes quickly apparent that nothing about Alexander Falkland (or the people who surrounded him) is as it first seemed. It will take all of Julian's cleverness (as well as help from his loyal manservant Dipper) to come up with the answers.

Once again, Kate Ross has written a story that is both entertaining and believable. The twists in the plot are tough to guess but easy to follow. None of them come out of nowhere, and all the clues can be seen clearly in retrospect. The characters are also wonderful--this book delves a bit into Julian's enigmatic past, and gives a new perspective on his character and motivations. There were also some clever ties to Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice which I didn't necessarily notice at first, but found intriguing once I recognized them.

I would obviously recommend this series, though one definitely needs to read them in order to avoid missing out.

CR3 #99: But I Trusted You: Ann Rule's Crime Files #14 by Ann Rule

2011-12-30T15:38:00.000-05:00

I really wish I hadn't read three of these Ann Rule books in a row. They're a major pain to try and blog about, because frankly they are all basically the same. As with the others, this book includes one novella length story and then several very short cases.

The main story in this volume is about a man who was murdered by his estranged wife, mostly over money and child custody. She was under the impression that her rich boyfriend in Hawaii was going to take care of her, if only she could get her husband out of the way. Unfortunately, she wasn't nearly as clever as she thought she was and got caught. It's an all right story, but for some reason doesn't feel nearly as well fleshed out as much of her previous work.

The other shorter stories are all pretty good, though rather old. Two of them are unresolved, and remain mysterious to this day. One of the unsolved cases involves a tragic family boat trip with not one but two mysterious deaths. The rest of the tales are not quite as engaging, but all are interesting in their own ways.

To save time, here is what I learned from this book:

1. The police are often smarter than one might expect.
2. Most criminals are stupider than one might expect.
3. Letting someone who's been in prison for a violent (non-lethal) sexual crime out early is a bad idea, because the main thing HE'S learned while locked away is not to leave witnesses next time.
4. Your loved ones are equally or even MORE likely to murder you in a horrific way than a stranger is.
5. Apparently Washington state in the 1970s was a death trap for pretty young women.
6. DO NOT GO WITH THE CREEPY STRANGER. IT NEVER TURNS OUT WELL.

For those who like Ann Rule's books, this one is more of the same. I think she's losing her touch a little, but after all, she IS in her seventies now and not as able to chase down sources. Still, it's a great beach/bus/plane read.

CR3 #98: Titanic's Last Secrets: The Further Adventures of Shadow Divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler by Bradford Matsen

2011-12-30T11:12:00.000-05:00

This is the most recently written book I've read about Titanic, and it frankly blows up all previous theories of how and why the great ship sank.

In the mid-2000s, Richie Kohler and John Chatterton--known for their previous wreck diving work and their television show exploring underwater wrecks--were contacted by a man who had been on a recent journey to the Titanic's wreckage. He claimed that he had seen some interesting debris--"ribbons of steel" on the sea floor that might provide new information about how the ocean liner sank the way it did. The divers arranged for an expedition out to the remains with a Russian group of submersibles. What they found revolutionized the way that they thought about the way the sinking occurred.

Basically, they found large intact pieces from the bottom of the ship. When closely examined, the way these pieces were broken suggest that instead of the ship breaking in two because it was tilted 45 degrees up out of the water, it may have only had to be tilted 11 degrees before it snapped in the middle and sank. This theory explains some of the mystery that has persisted for years about the sinking itself. The fact that the ship was not tilted far up in the air, but rather only slightly up may explain why so many passengers either didn't believe there was any danger (and thus refused to get in the lifeboats) or never even left their cabins before the ship went down. It also explains why the ship sank so quickly--other large ships that had experienced major accidents at sea had managed to stay afloat for hours or even days.

Another revelation is proved by a gentleman who worked for many years at the shipyard where Titanic was first built. He worked in the archives, and had access to many of the internal documents and memos regarding the construction of not only Titanic, but of her older sister ship, Olympic and her younger sister, Brittanic. What he discovered was that the company--and the designer, Thomas Andrews--knew that there were flaws with the ships' designs. The Olympic had serious issues with her hull during her first voyages that required emergency repairs, and these flaws led to changes in the Titanic's design. Unfortunately, not enough changes were made. The engineers at Harland & Wolff calculated after the sinking that the ship had broken up on the surface, not as it went down. They never shared this information, however, in order to save the business.

The book follows Kohler and Chatterton's expedition to Titanic, then takes several chapters to discuss the men who financed and built the great ship. It provides a very different view of White Star Line owner Bruce Ismay, who has been portrayed as the villain of the tragedy for many years. Those chapters are written in more of a historical fiction style (though the author has provided copious notes at the end of the book to explain where he has gotten his facts). It's an odd tonal shift, but I did enjoy finding out more about the process of shipbuilding at the time, and the financial maneuverings that led to production of the giant ships.

The book finishes out with Kohler and Chatterton diving the wreckage of the Britannic (which sank after hitting a mine during WWI), trying to prove their theories. All three ships were made from the same original plan, but Andrews tried to fix flaws that showed themselves on Olympic when putting together the Titanic. The divers figured that the engineers at Harland & Wolff probably made changes to the design of Brittanic to fix the flaws that had brought down the Titanic, so they wanted to look at Brittanic's wreckage and compare the areas they suspected had caused the problems with the Titanic. What they found seems to confirm their ideas that Harland & Wolff had quietly discovered Titanic's fatal errors, and attempted to correct them on Brittanic.

The book is fascinating, and despite the minor issues I had with structure, it is an amazing read for someone who is as interested in the Titanic disaster as I am. The author did a great job showing where he found his information and digging up useful facts. In general, it was a really interesting book that gave me a whole new perspective on the sinking.

CR3 #97: The Bone Lady: Life as a Forensic Anthropologist by Mary H. Manhein

2011-12-29T16:55:00.000-05:00

Since nothing says "holiday season" like books about rotting skeletons and murder most foul, here's another about my latest obsession, forensic anthropology.

Mary Manhein has written a book similar to my last review, Dr. William Maples's Dead Men Do Tell Tales. It is part memoir, part collection of cases she has worked on. She discusses her work with identifying historic remains as well as assisting law enforcement with victims of violent crime. She also tells stories about how she entered her career, and how she handled it in the early days.

The book is mostly made up of short vignettes, many between two to three pages long. They are brief snippets from her past, all put together somewhat randomly. Frankly, while her mini-stories are all very interesting (some are funny, some sad, some spooky, some bizarre) they aren't organized in a particularly coherent fashion. She leaps around in time, neither using chronological nor thematic organization, which made this a little confusing. Also, her vignettes seem to have more to do with emotion than with the science of forensic anthropology. While Dr. Maples used his cases to illustrate useful scientific information, this author is mostly telling anecdotes from her long career. The tones are quite different -- one that of a college professor speaking to a lecture hall, the other an extremely amusing, fascinating dinner companion.

I enjoyed this book, but the tone and subject matter were a bit lighter than I'd expected. Not a bad book, but nothing all that special, either.

CR3 #96: Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist by Dr. William Maples

2011-12-28T16:23:00.000-05:00

This book is partly case studies and partly a memoir of Dr. Maples's journey to becoming one of the world's preeminent forensic anthropologists. Maples gives history of both himself and of the field of forensic anthropology, explaining how and why it developed. He also explains how and why he became interested in it. He goes on to detail some of the cases he's worked on, including some famous ones like investigating whether President Zachary Taylor was actually poisoned, whether the bones in a chapel in South America really belonged to Francisco Pizarro, and whether the bones found in a mass grave in Russia did in fact belong to the assassinated Romanov family. He also discusses more mundane cases, using them to illustrate various aspects of the forensic anthropology field; burned bones, chopped bones, buried bones, and hidden bones--all have their own stories to tell if they're read properly.

This book reflects Dr. Maples's scholarly nature (his "day job" is being a professor at a college as well as running his very impressive investigative lab) and is quite detailed (sometimes overly so.) He presents his cases in methodical fashion, illustrating his lessons as clearly and as simply as possible. He treats his reader like an interested student--gently leading without patronizing, though sometimes getting a little too wrapped up in his thoughts to be as clear as one would prefer. However, the book was extremely informative and full of information I hadn't come across before.

I'd certainly recommend this to anyone who likes true crime or enjoys the show "Bones". Dr. Maples has a strong, distinctive voice, and his style is for the most part quite relateable.

CR3 #95: The Cases That Haunt Us by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker

2011-12-28T16:12:00.000-05:00

John Douglas is widely recognized as one of the earliest criminal profilers. He worked for the FBI for years, and has had a great effect on both the world of crime solving and the world of pop culture. In this book, he collaborates with filmmaker Olshaker to analyze some of history's most puzzling crimes, using his modern methods of profiling. He's careful to point out that these are merely his own observations, based on whatever evidence he's been able to access along with his years of profiling experience.

Douglas goes through some of the best known crimes in recent history--Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, the Black Dahlia murder, the Zodiac Killer, up to the murder of JonBenet Ramsay. He lays out all the available evidence and then tries to understand what the killers might have been like. He makes his case for why he thinks Jack the Ripper never actually wrote the letters that gave him his famous name, why he believes no one but Lizzie Borden could have killed her father and stepmother, what the Zodiac Killer might have been like, and why he doesn't believe that the Ramsays killed their daughter. Applying new methods to old cases makes for interesting reading, and Douglas explains his reasoning every step of the way, illustrating the process involved in criminal profiling.

It's a well-written book, though occasionally a bit dry in spots. The author provided specific reasoning for all of his deductions, and at no point did I feel he was stretching too far or making anything up out of thin air. I'd definitely recommend it for true crime enthusiasts (get used to that phrase -- it's the end of the year and I am on a true crime tear!) though it's a bit graphic and not for the faint-hearted.

CR3 #94: A Rage to Kill and Other True Cases by Ann Rule

2011-12-28T15:59:00.000-05:00

I am a fiend for true crime. Particularly now, when I am a little burned out with CR3 and brainwork in general. True crime is an easy and quick read for me. It's fascinating to me what humans are capable of doing to one another. It's also fascinating to follow the path of those who solve these mysteries.

This is the sixth of Ann Rule's "Crime Files" series, and it consists of one longer story and several short ones. The main story is of Silas Cool, a man who climbed on a city bus in Seattle, shot the driver, and managed to send the bus careening off a bridge. The police who worked the case had little to go on because they couldn't figure out WHY this had happened. Through all their research, they still only have a few clues as to what might have gone wrong. It's fascinating to see how the detectives try to solve the case, and all the various avenues they travel to find information.

The rest of the stories in the collection are also for the most part about "stranger" killings, several involving spree killers or murderers who stalked their unknowing victims before their savage attacks. Once again, each time the police have their work cut out for them because there are no obvious motives.

Ann Rule always does a good job fleshing out her stories, even the very short tales in this collection. She provides imagination-grabbing details, as well as including (sometimes graphic, but definitely illustrative) photographs. The one issue I had with this collection is that it's rather old. Some of the stories end with the murderers being jailed, and a note like "He won't be eligible for parole until 2003" but I don't know if he DID get out in 2003!

On the whole, while this is nothing spectacular, new, or original, it is reliable reading for a true crime enthusiast.

CR3 #93: A Broken Vessel by Kate Ross

2011-12-22T12:40:00.000-05:00

Oh man, I am SO CLOSE to reaching my goal for the year, but I simply do NOT want to write these reviews. However, I am going to battle through it, just so I can say I managed to complete a double Cannonball in a year. (Also, speaking of, if any of you are interested in joining the Cannonball Read this year, you can find the information here. It's a lot of fun, and there are a lot of cool people involved.)

A Broken Vessel is the second book in Kate Moss's Julian Kestral series, and the British dandy once again finds himself embroiled in a mystery. This time, the action starts with Julian's valet Dipper's sister. Sally is a prostitute, and while stealing from her johns one evening, she discovers a letter from an anonymous woman begging for help. Unfortunately, it's impossible to know who the woman is, and Sally isn't sure which of the three men she saw that evening had been carrying the letter. When she runs into her brother Dipper, he gets Julian involved. Soon, Sally has to go undercover, and a woman is murdered in a house full of suspects.

Once again, Kate Ross has done a great job. The plot of the book is twisty and engaging. I followed all the clues carefully, and was still surprised by the ending (but not in a "where the hell did THAT come from?" sort of way). The characters of Julian and Dipper, as well as Julian's elderly doctor friend are all wonderful. I liked them very much and was definitely invested in what happened to them. Sally was not as believable, and I frankly found the romantic subplot a little ridiculous. However, on the whole this was another very enjoyable mystery.

CR3 #92: Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters by John Waters

2011-12-09T12:04:00.000-05:00

The works of John Waters are not for everyone. Most people can figure out whether they are fans or not after a mere ten minutes of one of his films. I find his gleeful devotion to raunch, camp, and blatant bad taste hilarious, but even I find it a bit overwhelming at times. I think the thing I most enjoy about John Waters is the sense that underneath the determinedly trashy exterior, he's actually a very sweet person. He can say things that--coming from anyone else--would probably be horrifying.

This book is a collection of essays he wrote over the years for various publications, and this particular edition has some extras that he wrote later on. He discusses his love for the National Enquirer, Baltimore public television, Christmas, and things that hates. My favorite essays were "Going to Jail", "John Waters's Tour of LA," and one he wrote about bringing "Hairspray!" to Broadway. "Going to Jail" is about time he spent teaching classes in prison. It's very funny, because Waters and the prisoners are equally bewildered and starstruck by one another (as a crime aficionado, Waters recognizes some of his students and is fascinated by their crimes). He teaches them a little about film theory, as well as scripting and improv, coming away feeling as though he's contributed at least a tiny bit to society. Plus, he finds the whole experience of going to the prison and dealing with the prisoners all great fun. In "John Waters's Tour of LA," he gives a detailed explanation of the best tourist sights in town (hint: most normal people would NOT be interested, as a lot of them are morbid/creepy/bizarre).

On the whole, I really enjoyed this book. It was hilarious, but also occasionally poignant. Waters's voice comes through very clearly, and it's easy to picture him sitting in an ostentatious chair, smoking a cigarette and reading it all to you. Definitely good for those who enjoy his films. (For those who don't, I'd probably skip it.)

CR3 #91: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson

2011-12-06T17:19:00.000-05:00

This book happens to be one of those very, very rare cases in which the movie is actually better.

The basic story is that Miss Pettigrew--a middle-aged spinster--receives a new post as a governess in 1930s London. When she arrives, however, she finds no children. Instead, she meets beautiful young nightclub singer Delysia LaFosse. Delysia is trying to juggle three men and a burgeoning social calendar, and things are beginning to get too difficult. Decisions have to be made, and Delysia isn't sure she's up for it. Luckily, Miss Pettigrew finds that she can be of help.

The book is quite clearly a fantasy, something of a Cinderella story. Miss Pettigrew makes new friends, gets a makeover, and finds a happy ending. Nothing too difficult happens, and nearly everyone goes away better off. It's an adorable story, but frankly a bit light.

The movie, on the other hand, is stellar. Frances McDormand stars as Miss Pettigrew, and Amy Adams plays Delysia. They're supported by an excellent cast of gentleman (particularly Lee Pace as the brooding piano player Michael and Ciaran Hinds as lingerie designer Joe Blomfield) and Shirley Henderson as the poisonous Edythe DuBarry. The movie has more conflict--Miss Pettigrew has more to lose, and is forced to make tougher choices. Miss Pettigrew in the book tends to drift along in everyone elses's wake, whereas McDormand shows the steel that lies beneath Miss P's frumpy exterior. Adams's Delysia is a bit more scatterbrained than the one in the book--she's not as strong a female character in the film, and requires more rescuing--but she is still charming and lovable. Both Adams and McDormand are able to communicate volumes with a small look or tiny raise of the eyebrow.The fact that the film is set against the run-up to WWI also helps to put the characters in a more precarious position. The plot contains more conflict, but it all resolves rather well. In addition, the costumes, sets, and music are all gorgeous. They set the mood very strongly, as well as making the movie a pleasure to see. As usual, Focus Features has done an excellent job bringing a period piece to a modern audience.

On the whole, although I enjoyed the book, I'd recommend skipping it and going straight to the film.

CR3 #90: The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad by Stacy Horn

2011-12-06T16:05:00.000-05:00

I was always a big fan of 'Cold Case Files' on Discovery (back when the Discovery channel wasn't entirely populated by strange reality shows about creepy diseases and truck drivers). It was fascinating to see what a determined detective could do with scientific advancement and sheer perseverance. Cases that seemed unsolvable were closed, and people who had spent years thinking they'd gotten away with murder found themselves behind bars.

This book by Stacy Horn illustrates that these cases can take years to solve, if they are ever solved at all. And all the while, the detectives have to fight both the public and their own administration, pinching every penny and defending their unit's existence to all-comers.

The author spent a few years checking in on several detectives in New York City's cold case squad. She follows the progress of four cold cases, the earliest committed in 1951, the most recent in 1996. As the detectives backtrack, retest, and rethink their cases, Horn squeezes in a lot of information about how the cold case squad was formed, how it has continued to function, and the daily stumbling blocks that the detectives face in trying to accomplish their goals.

The dominant emotion to permeate this book is frustration. The detectives are frustrated by a multitude of different things: poor police work in the original investigations, reticent witnesses, the loss (or destruction or non-collection or mishandling) of vital evidence. Bureaucracy, red tape, and the usual petty office politics that plague any multi-tiered workplace. Knowing that a suspect is guilty, but being unable to come up with enough tangible evidence to satisfy a DA concerned with his win rate. It's a never-ending cycle of beating one's head up against a brick wall. Yet these men (at the time, there were no women on the squad, though that has probably changed by now) continue to try and find justice for the victims, be they an innocent child, a "fallen woman", a police officer, or a drug dealer. Some of the crimes detailed in the book get solved and the perpetrators go to prison. Others are deemed too old or too difficult. One gets passed along to another unit because it turns out to be mafia-related. This book has very few tidy endings.

This book is a great work of non-fiction, and the author does a great job of making each detective distinct. There is some issue with the organization -- the information related to each case is scattered through the book, which can be confusing until you realize that it's organized more or less chronologically, chronicling the detectives' progress as years pass. I think I might have preferred a different structure, but at the same time it does illustrate the way that these cases don't get solved all at once, but instead take years (and sometimes several detectives) before they can find any resolution.

I'd recommend this to anyone who is interested in true crime and/or police procedure, but it's a bit dry for entertainment reading.

CR3 #89: In the Night Room by Peter Straub

2011-11-23T11:45:00.000-05:00

Up until now, I've mostly enjoyed Peter Straub's books. I found the plots interesting and the characters compelling. I also enjoyed the way they were all slightly related to one another, by either plot or character. However, this book seems to be where he went down the rabbit hole.

In the Night Room features Tim Underhill, who has previously appeared in Koko and The Throat. Underhill is living in NYC, working on his latest novel, when he begins to have a problem. The ghost of his nine-year-old sister April (whose murder was unraveled in The Throat) has started appearing to him, trying to communicate a very important message he can't quite figure out. He's also started receiving emails from dead people, which is disconcerting, to say the least. He's not sure what's going on, and when his "guide" turns up, he's not nearly as helpful as one would hope. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, a woman named Willy Bryce Patrick has been losing chunks of time, she suspects her fiance might not be what he seems, and she hears the calls of her dead daughter from the inside of a produce warehouse. Soon, these two characters are drawn together by fate...or are they?

I think frankly this book got a little too "meta" with the "author-writing-a-book-within-a-book-about-himself" thing. Although I like Tim, I suspect it has more to do with liking him a lot in the two previous books, rather than anything that was added to his character here. And while Willy was pretty cool, she didn't really get enough time to actually do anything. The side characters were okay, but nothing to write home about. The plot barely made sense to me, so I can't really say I liked that too much. I get the sense that perhaps there was another book that belonged between The Throat and In the Night Room, and maybe if I'd read that, it would make more sense? I just don't know.

This book is okay, but I'd only recommend it for the hard-core Straub enthusiast. Perhaps if I ever find the book that belongs in the middle of the series I'll be able to appreciate In the Night Room more effectively.

CR3 #88: Dead Famous by Carol O'Connell

2011-11-23T11:18:00.000-05:00

(I received this book for free from the publisher through a Goodreads.com give-away. Don't worry, I'll still be honest.)

Dead Famous is apparently the seventh in Carol O'Connell's Kathleen Mallory series. I haven't read any of the others, so I can't comment on how this fits in to the series. However, I will say that I did enjoy the book quite a bit.

At the heart of the story is a serial murderer--he's been hunting down and murdering the members of a jury who let a killer go free. The tale is told mostly from the perspective of Riker, a former-cop who has turned to crime-scene cleaning work. There's also the view of his employee Johanna, a hunch-backed but beautiful mystery. In addition, there's Mallory, who is a brilliant and devoted--if slightly sociopathic--police detective. She is trying to get Riker to return to the police department, but he's got other plans. She hopes perhaps this new murderer will help convince him. Complicating matters is a shock-jock, who has been using his program to provide information to the killer about the locations of the remaining jurors.

The plot was twisty enough to keep me interested, and I was mildly surprised at the identity of the killer. I was also a little shocked at the way things turned out at the end. The characters were interesting, particularly Riker and Johanna. Mallory was not at all likable in this story, but I can see how she might be, in story told from mostly her point of view. I think this would probably be a good book for those who enjoy the Rizzoli & Isles mysteries. It's not spectacular, but it was good enough that I'm considering getting the earlier books to see how they might change my view.

CR3 #87: The Intern Blues by Dr. Robert Marion

2011-11-16T14:07:00.001-05:00

As many of you may know (or have guessed by now), I work in the hospital system. I'm not a medical professional by any stretch of the imagination--I am strictly administrative--but I work with physicians, and occasionally I wonder how some of them managed to get through medical school. After reading The Intern Blues I am still wondering how they managed to get through, but this time it's because I'm not sure how ANYONE could make it through that insanity.

Dr. Robert Marion worked with a group of interns (first year of medical residency out of medical school) who were going to spend a year rotating through two pediatric hospitals in the Bronx. The year was 1985, and on top of all the normal childhood ailments, AIDS infections, crack-addicted babies, and domestic violence were on the rise. Dr. Marion asked three of his interns to record their experiences over the course of the year, which--along with his own observations--are what he used to put together this book. The interns begin completely overwhelmed by how much they don't know, and also by how often they are put in positions where they have to make decisions they don't feel at all qualified to make. They work endless shifts, sometimes thirty-six hours on at a time, and are pushed to the brink by exhaustion and stress. However, they also start to develop confidence in their abilities as well as an affinity for the work they're doing. By the end of the year, they all look back at their experiences and try to decide what they want to specialize in.

The book is extremely well-organized. For each rotation (usually about a month long) there is a chapter from each intern and an explanatory chapter from Dr. Marion. All the medical terms (as well as intern slang) are defined within the text, so reading the book isn't a struggle form someone not familiar with pediatric terminology. Since each of the interns' sections are transcribed from tapes they made, they come across as very personal. Another interesting thing is that since all three rotated through the same areas of the hospitals, you can often get three different perspectives on the same environment, sometimes even on the same patients.

Two of the interns, Mark and Andy, were great to read. Although both succumbed to the stress at various points, they both managed to maintain a sense of humor. They were likable and fun to read. Mark specifically has a biting, sarcastic, cynical sense of humor that I really enjoyed. His battles with sickly preemie called Hansen are the highlight of his sections. The third intern, Amy, was...not likable. She had just had a baby two months before starting the internship, and spends most of her time whining about no one understands how HAAARRRD it is to be away from her BAAAAAAAABY! And why don't they all let her leave early without complaining? After all, SHE HAS A BAAAAAAABY! Why do the people who have to cover for her complain when she wants to take off on a night when she's on call (even if means that someone else will have to work an extra all-night shift on top of their usual three per week?) Don't they understand that her BAAAAAAAABY is sick? Or when she wants to call out on another day she is supposed to be on-call to sit with her father after he's had minor surgery? She spends nearly half of her chapters whining about everyone else and how no one is nice to her and no one makes allowances for her and how everyone is OUT TO GET her for NO REASON AT ALL. Then when she turns up pregnant again toward the end of the year, she is SHOCKED that everyone is more concerned about who will be responsible for coverage during her six weeks of leave the next year rather than showing unfettered joy for her MIRACULOUS FUTURE BAAAAAAAAABY! Oh God, how I hated her. I certainly understood why no one liked her, and why they seemed put out at her insistence that having a baby should result in some kind of special treatment. All of them were working 100+ hour weeks, and if anyone slacks off, that work has to be made up by someone else somewhere along the line. Having a BAAAAAAAAAAAAABY doesn't make you special. It makes you a mammal. Women like Amy give other women who want to have both careers and families a bad name. There are plenty of women who can balance both without behaving as though they deserve some kind of special treatment.

Hmm. I hadn't really realized how strongly I felt about that until I got all CAPS-lock ragey back there.

Anyway, the edition I read had a new forward and epilogue. It turns out that not too long after the events in the book took place, regulations were enacted that limited the amount of time interns could spend working. It prevented the long, sleepless weeks and endless shifts that had pushed these interns nearly to the breaking point. Dr. Marion discusses how this happened and the effect it had on medical training. He also looks up the three interns that participated in the book to see where they are, more than a decade after they had done their internships.

On the whole, I think this is a great read for anyone who works in or is interested by the medical profession. It definitely gave me a lot more respect for the physicians I see on a daily basis (most of whom probably did their internships back when this was the way things were).

CR3 #86: Cut to the Quick by Kate Ross

2011-11-16T12:59:00.000-05:00

It's a real shame that Kate Ross passed away after writing only four Julian Kestrel mysteries. Her hero is an 1820s-era English dandy, possessed of a keen fashion sense and an even keener set of wits. He's a fascinating and well-drawn character, and I could probably read about fifty more books about him quite happily. Unfortunately, it looks like I'll have to settle for four.

In this novel Kestrel finds himself at a country home inhabited by the Fontclairs, a high-class and very proud family. Having provided a much-needed service to young Hugh Fontclair, Julian is invited to be a groomsman in Hugh's wedding. It turns out that things are murkier than expected--the wedding is based on secrets and blackmail, the families are at each others' throats, and then a beautiful dead woman turns up in Kestrel's bed. His valet Dipper (a former pickpocket) is suspected, and this (aside from the fact that the girl was apparently murdered in his bedroom) drives him to involve himself in solving the mystery.

The plot is quite twisty, and this is helped by the book's shifting perspectives. Although the main POV is Julian's, nearly everyone else in the story gets a chance to express his or her own opinions and thoughts, from Sir Robert Fontclair, the head of the family, down to the housemaids and Hugh's eleven-year-old sister Phillipa. I am pleased to say that I didn't figure out "who done it" until the very end, but when the solution was presented, it fit neatly with all the evidence previously shown. The story was intriguing, and the characters were all interesting. Julian especially was likable and entertaining without being too good to be true. His personality was quite charming, which makes it easy to see why he is so popular with all the other characters.

I really enjoyed this book, and as I said I can't wait to get the rest of the series. Great for anyone who enjoys smart period mysteries.

CR3 #85: Swan Song by Robert McCammon

2011-11-15T15:34:00.000-05:00

My favorite books and some of my favorite movies involve groups of very different people who are thrown together by circumstance and must work together to accomplish a goal (IT, 'Salem's Lot, The Stand, The Westing Game). It's particularly effective in post-apocalyptic scenarios, since it's up to the survivors to try and recreate society.

Swan Song has drawn many comparisons to The Stand, and it's easy to see why. Due to a world-wide catastrophe (nuclear holocaust, basically) society has collapsed. The climate has changed and nearly all the plants are dead. Those who survive are left wounded and sickened, some with hideous, tumorous growths. People will do anything to survive, including form large armies that travel across the country, pillaging and stealing anything they can. In this mess we find our main characters, which include Sister Creep, a homeless woman from New York city, Roland, a boy whose survivalist parents perish early in the process, Colonel Macklin, a Vietnam vet who finds himself in a hard spot again, "Black Frankenstein," a travelling semi-pro wrestler, and Swan, a young girl with magical abilities. All of them are criss-crossing the country until the time comes for them to meet up. Following them is "The Man With Many Face" who has nothing but trouble on his mind.

The characters in this book are great--even the secondary characters are vivid and memorable. The plot marches along at a good pace (though there were a few spots I found it a little draggy) and the descriptions are good. Although I didn't find the language as intriguing as King's The Stand (and the book therefore not as viscerally effecting), the ending was a hell of a lot better. It was a great book for those who a enjoy a good post-apocalypse fiction.

CR3 #84: The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse by Robert Rankin

2011-11-11T14:39:00.000-05:00

I think I've mentioned here before that I draw a very fine line between "quirky and whimsical" and "desperate and over-the-top." Sometimes that line is tough to define, and many people disagree with me--Sacred Cow and I have very different feelings about Terry Pratchett. Many of my friends love Christopher Moore and I am not a fan. Robert Rankin's The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse falls just to the side of the line where I like to place Douglas Adams and Neil Gaiman.

Toy City used to be a sweet place, but it's really gone down hill. Mother Goose is now Madame Goose, and she's running a brothel. Georgie Porgie is a child molester and Little Miss Muffett has a talk show. All the old fairy tales have been corrupted, and the toys of the city are getting very jaded. Into this rotten mess arrives Jack, a not-especially-bright farm boy, come to seek his fortune. At the same time, someone begins inflicting painful (and somewhat apt) deaths on the nursery rhyme stars. Jack joins up with detective Eddie Bear--a stuffed bear with all the chutzpah of Humphrey Bogart--to try and solve the mystery.

The descriptions, dialogue, and general tone were all hilarious to me. For example:

Yet another theory is that there was more than one Humpty Dumpty, but no wall involved: one Humpty fell from the side of a grassy knoll and another from the window of a book depository. This is known as 'The Particularly Stupid Theory'.

It's sort of a very twisted children's book. All the childhood cliches are there, but turned on their heads (much like Eddie Bear when he's drinking). The characters were not exactly deep, but I did enjoy the developing friendship between Jack and Eddie. I also enjoyed the idea of Toy City--reminded me a lot of Toon Town in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The idea that a city full of these characters exists along-side the "real" world is interesting to think about.

On the whole, I found this book to be a lot of fun and an engrossing read.

CR3 #83: Castaways by Brian Keene

2011-11-09T11:50:00.000-05:00

I know, I know, it's been ages since I've popped by to babble incoherently about what I've been reading. My only excuse is that work has been madness. (Speaking of work -- word of advice to you gentlemen in the audience: If you are age 50 or above, be sure to talk to your doctor about starting to screen for prostate cancer every year. It's a simple blood test, and the earlier prostate cancer is detected, the more easily and successfully it can be treated. For you gentlemen between 17 and 50: Feel your balls. You are in the prime age group for testicular cancer, another disease that can be treated fairly simply and successfully if detected early. *Shooting star graphic* The More You Know!) Since I need to get 22 reviews in before the end of the year in order to make my Double Cannonball, I guess I'd better get cracking. I can't promise genius literary criticism, but I'll do the best I can.

Castaways by Brian Keene is the story of a group of people left on an island for a Survivor-type show. Unfortunately, as it turns out, they aren't as alone as they'd originally thought. There are natives on the island, and they are very unfriendly. The main characters, Jerry and Becka, are about as bland and All-American as you would imagine, and the rest of the show's participants all fit into their own stereotypes...not unusual, because it's explained that they were actively cast that way. The plot isn't anything special--there's some creepy things in the jungle, they're mean, furry, and hungry. A big storm is coming. The castaways have to try and survive both those external threats as well as the threats that they pose to each other. It's a little more gory and a lot more rape-y than I prefer my horror fiction.

It's interesting to compare this to Andrew Foster Altschul's Deus Ex Machina. Although both books have the same very basic plot--reality television run amok--Altschul has more of an introspective perspective. His work spends more time analyzing the effects of reality TV on the participants and the audience, wondering how each reflects on and changes the other. This book, on the other hand, was just a horror story. There was no real thought about reality television, no statement to be made. The reality show was just a plot set-up designed to get a bunch of attractive, treacherous young people alone on a deserted island to have sex, be terrified, and be sliced to bloody ribbons. While I don't always look for (or even want) a deeper meaning to my fiction, I feel like an opportunity was missed here. The thing is, I wouldn't have noticed the missed opportunity if the writing had been better--I don't always need a "message" but I do always want a good, solid, entertaining, engrossing story.

CR3 #82: Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub

2011-10-19T12:43:00.000-04:00

Houses Without Doors is a collection of short stories by Peter Straub. Some of them are tied to his Blue Rose trilogy, but most are unrelated. I was not a fan of this book--it was simply too dark for me, and not in a fun way. The stories were technically quite good, but I just found them unpleasant. Topics include fraternal abuse, molestation, infantilization, murder...It's all too much, even for a morbid person like me. The characters were all right, but the short story format doesn't necessarily allow the amount of depth a novel does. Besides, some of the characters (the main character from "The Buffalo Hunter" for example) were people I wanted to get to know anyway. I thought some of the short vignettes between longer stories were interesting and thoughtful, but the full-length stories really put me off.

For those who like short stories, I'd say skip this collection and read Stephen King's short stories instead. He manages to make them both well-written AND fascinating.

CR3 #81: Moonlight Mile (Kenzie & Gennaro #6) by Dennis Lehane

2011-10-13T12:32:00.000-04:00

Twelve years ago, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro got involved in tracking down Amanda McCready, a missing child from the tough Boston neighborhood of Dorchester. The case was a moral quandary, and nearly destroyed their relationship. Both of them still have doubts about how the girl's problems were solved, and whether returning her to her substance addled mother was the right decision. Now, time has passed, Patrick and Angie are married with a daughter of their own, they've both grown dissatisfied with the private eye business, and Amanda is missing again. Patrick sets out to find her, perhaps to quiet his long restless conscience.

The plot on this is good and interesting, though rather far-fetched. My problems had more to do with the characters. Although the characters of Patrick and Angie were more or less believable, everyone else was a cartoon. Amanda was too smart, the adults around her too stupid. The eastern European gangsters were stereotypes. It's almost as if Lehane were revisiting his old characters not because he wanted to or felt particularly inspired, but because he thought that's what his fans want--a book to tie up the series and leave Patrick and Angie to live happily ever after. The writing was funny and clever, and for the most part I enjoyed it. However, it felt like there was no soul there--the previous books are so firmly set in time and place, full of the little details that evoke those special parts of Boston, and this one was adrift. It could have taken place anywhere.

On the whole, not a bad book, and one to check out for those who have followed the series. However, there's no point in reading it unless you have at least read Gone, Baby, Gone.

CR3 #80: Floating Dragon by Peter Straub

2011-10-05T12:40:00.000-04:00

Floating Dragon is the story of a town that isn't quite right, and has never BEEN quite right. From its earliest beginnings, the town has been off-kilter, and every thirty years or so, really bad things seem to happen. Unfortunately, this time not only is the evil back, but it has help from a man-made toxic agent. The people in the small town are going mad, there's a serial killer on the loose, and the only people who can stop it are a former child star, an old man, a teenager, and a battered wife.

This story has a lot in common with the work of Stephen King, which is probably part of the reason I like it so much. In some ways, it's a lot like IT, and also shares some traits with the TV show Haven*, in that evil has come to rest in a small town and has been devouring the people who live there for centuries. I will say that Straub moves his plot along better than King usually does, and he also manages to put together an ending that doesn't make me want to kick the wall out of sheer frustration with the nonsense. However, although his characters were detailed and distinct, I didn't necessarily feel them very clearly. For example, although Richard Albee was one of the main characters of the story--of the four of them, he was focused on the most--I still only have a vague impression of him. To compare, in The Stand, there are probably at least twenty featured players, but I can see each and every one quite clearly in my head, and I understand their motivations. Straub often explains a character's motivations to the reader, but doesn't do a good enough job showing the character's motives in motion. I guess that's why the two authors did such good work together--they're both very talented, and their strengths and weaknesses complement each other perfectly.

I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who's a fan of the genre. It's well-written and fairly exciting. I've seen that some reviewers found it too long, but I think it actually suffered from being a little too short. I really liked finding out the history of the town, and would have loved to see even more of that.

*Did anyone else watch Haven this summer? What a great show! Aside from my obvious pleasure in the multitude of Stephen King references, the actors are doing a fantastic job with their characters, and the over-arching mystery is taking shape without completely swamping the show. I'm really excited to see where they're going to with the "Troubled" vs. "Normal" showdown in Haven, and which sides the main characters will fall toward. Plus, the love triangle between Audrey, Nathan, and Duke is enticing. They've used guest stars judiciously--brought them in for actual arcs, rather than stunt casting (I was pleasantly surprised by how WWE's Edge was used, and also by his not-at-all-terrible acting)--and have also slowly worked in some other town regulars. It's so disappointing that I have to wait almost an entire year to find out the next chapter in the story! On the whole, I think that SyFy has done some great things with their original programming (Warehouse 13 is also a lot of fun), though I refuse to stop pointing out how stupid the whole "SyFy" branding is.

CR3 #79: Gone South by Robert McCammon

2011-10-05T11:12:00.000-04:00

Dan Lambert is a Vietnam vet whose whole life is falling apart around him. He's broke, unemployed, and dying slowly from a combat-related disease. Just when he thinks that things can't possibly get any worse, they do. In a moment of rage and panic, he accidentally kills a man. Alone and on the run, he isn't sure what to do. Along the way, he meets up with a disfigured young girl who is searching for a mythical healer. Dan finds himself unwillingly helping her in her quest, all while trying to figure out what his next step should be. The situation is further confused by the advent of two very, very unusual bounty hunters.

This was a really great read. The main characters are all quirky and interesting without being over the top. Even bounty-hunters Flint and Pelvis--who could definitely come off as cartoonish--are drawn in such a way that they are totally believable. I was deeply interested in the characters and rooting for all of them. The plot moved along quickly, and I never found myself bored or skipping ahead. McCammon's writing style is engaging and he moves between pathos and humor with equal skill. The scenes at the beginning with Dan explaining his situation are gut-wrenching, and some of the scenes between Flint and Pelvis had me giggling aloud.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys an odd caper now and then.

CR3 #78: Treachery at Sharpnose Point by Jeremy Seal

2011-09-30T11:23:00.000-04:00

The full title of this book is Treachery at Sharpnose Point: Unraveling the Mystery of the Caldonia's Final Voyage. And that is a fairly accurate description of what this book is about.

The author, Jeremy Seal, begins by discovering an antique masthead planted in the ground at a quaint Cornish cemetery. He finds that it's a memorial to several sailors who died during a shipwreck in 1842. Seal is intrigued with the possible story behind this monument, and decided to do some research to find out who these men were, what might have happened to them, and how they came to be buried in this particular graveyard. In his research he uncovers the history of shipwrecks along the coasts of Cornwall, and the effect these wrecks had on the locals--plundering the battered wrecks of ships was a village effort, especially due to food shortages and high taxes. Seal starts to suspect that perhaps the people of Morwenstow had more to do with the wreck of the Caledonia than noted in the historical record. After all, rumors persisted for decades that some of the people along the country's coasts were less helpful (to the point of blatantly destructive) to ships that found themselves in trouble. The author tracks both the men on the ship and some of the villagers--their larger-than-life vicar, for example--to try and understand what happened.

Unfortunately, this book isn't quite sure what it wants to be. In some ways it is pure non-fiction. The author not only writes about the researched facts of the case, he also details his pursuit of them, and his feelings about what he finds. It's straddling the line between scholarly non-fiction and memoir in a strange but not unworkable way. However, on the other hand there are fiction chapters interwoven in with the factual chapters. In these sections, Seal writes a tale about the men who sailed on the Caledonia's final voyage, and tries to imagine what brought them to their doom. It's a weird combination of fact and complete fiction, and I think some might find it rather confusing. I wish the author had chosen either fact or historical fiction and then stuck to his plan.

On the whole, not a bad book but not one of the better ones in its genre.

CR3 #77: 48 by James Herbert

2011-09-29T10:45:00.000-04:00

James Herbert's 48 begins three years after the end of World War II. In this world, Hitler's final act before committing suicide was to release the Nazis' top secret bio-weapon over London. The weapon is a blood disease that causes most people to drop dead wherever they may be. Some take slightly longer to die, some linger for years as their blood slowly turns black and congeals in their veins. Some, it turns out, are totally immune due to a sheer fluke of genetics. One such person is an American pilot named Hoke. He's spent the past three years surviving alone in London, accompanied by a stray dog. As the book begins, he's on the run from a group of "blackshirts," a group of "slow-death" suffers lead by a mad nobleman. Hoke runs across a small band of fellow survivors, and soon all of them are fighting for their lives in a post-apocalyptic world.

This was not a bad read. The characters are a tiny bit cliched, but it is after all not a character study but a thrilling empty-world adventure book. For the most part, the main character is a typical action hero, full of cutting one-liners, bravado, and a slightly tragic back story. The other characters are distinct, but not particularly engaging. The story is frankly too short to get attached to any of the secondary characters. There are some really great chase scenes, and one through the London tube system is dark, creepy, and a little bit scary. On the whole, this is not a bad action book, but there's not much more to it than that.

CR3 #76: Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

2011-09-28T11:29:00.002-04:00

Gaudy Night is technically part of Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey series, but it isn't narrated by Wimsey. Instead, he is a secondary character, and the narrator is author Harriet Vane. Harriet has returned to her alma mater, Shrewsbury College at Oxford, for her "gaudy" (reunion). She finds while she is there that there is a malicious poison-pen writer stalking the current students and faculty, and what begins with childish pranks soon becomes more and more terrifying. Harriet, as a mystery novelist, is called upon by the dean to try and investigate the situation while ostensibly staying at the college to work on some academic writing. Eventually, she finds herself beyond her depth and calls upon Lord Peter Wimsey--who managed to save her from hanging a few years previous when she was accused of murder--to assist her. He brings with him his own set of difficulties, as their relationship isn't really what either of them wants. They have to work together to both find the suspect and figure out what they mean to one another.

The book is set in the early 1930s, and women who pursued higher education were looked on very differently than they are now. Woven in with the mystery is the debate over what a woman's role in society should be. Should all women be in the home? Should they all be attending college? Is one group superior to the other? Harriet has to navigate through a variety of viewpoints, and also decide what her opinion is, and that adds another dimension to the book, elevating it above a simple mystery tale.

Sayers has people this story with many different and interesting characters. The professors at the college, as well as the domestic staff, the students, and the male students at the institution of learning next door are all detailed and entertaining. The plot is interesting, and made sense logically. There were some points where things dragged a little bit--some of the philosophical debates ran a bit long for my taste--but the pace would always pick up again. Also, the interactions between Harriet and Lord Peter are adorable.

I highly recommend this book to fans of old-fashioned mystery stories, and I intend to pick up more of Sayers's work in the future.

CR3 #75: Deus Ex Machina by Andrew Foster Altschul

2011-09-15T14:36:00.000-04:00

I know that reality television is destroying our brains. I know that it's irreparably damaged the scripted television industry. I know that it is a worthless waste of time. And yet...I still love some of it.

I'm picky about the reality I watch. I don't like anything medical-related. Both Hoarders and Intervention are deeply psychologically upsetting to me. I generally avoid dating shows (with the notable exception of Rock of Love--that was trashy in ways I had previously never imagined). I feel particularly strongly about not watching reality shows featuring children (they are at the mercy of their attention-whoring parents, and thus unable to avoid the damage that comes from being exposed to the world). I try to be ethical about my reality show choices. I don't want to give my support in any way to shows that include the word "wives" in the title, nor do I want to support shows that reward people for popping out an unreasonable number of children (both that show about those people with 19 kids and Teen Mom would fit into this category).

As for things I like: I will watch anything with a drag queen on it. I love to watch pretty girls cry on America's Next Top Model. I like shows like Project Runway or America's Best Dance Crew where talented people have to overcome challenges to try and create something. Watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition makes me feel good about myself because they are actually helping people. But the gateway drug is definitely Survivor. Take a group of people, drop them in some out of the way spot, force them to participate in challenges, and make them vote EACH OTHER off the island until only one is left. The show has the potential to be tremendous--in past seasons, there have been moments of wild humor, pathos, and extreme drama. All of the players attempt via different strategies to be the last one standing. There have been years when the least likely players have managed somehow to make it to the end. And of course there is the joy in watching the heat, hunger, lack of sleep, constant stress, and sheer inability to have a moment of privacy get to these people. Some of them just lose their minds, and then they become REALLY interesting. Obviously, the show has changed a lot over the years. Now there is more product placement ("And now we are heading to our Charmin Toilet Paper toilet hut!"), more manipulation of the game itself (dividing tribes by age or race, immunity idols, making sure the women are all stranded in totally inappropriate clothing), and worst, the players now understand being on TV. They plan to play a character, instead of allowing their genuine personalities to emerge. They know they can turn three weeks of Survivor into a career of club appearances, TV guide channel shows, and other reality television. It's changed the way they approach the game, which has in turn changed the game.

Deus Ex Machina is the story of "the producer." He created a show called "The Deserted," which seems to be a Survivor clone. The original concept was to drop ten people off and just watch them exist. However, by the time the book begins, The Deserted has mutated into something unbearable. It's all product placement, network meddling, and online polls. The producer doesn't know what's happening, but he knows that it's not what he originally wanted. Meanwhile, this season's Deserted stumble around the island, playing for all they're worth. The production crew follow, documenting everything that happens, and trying to figure out where the line is between improving and intervening. After a while, the whole mess begins to go mad, and the producer starts to lose his grip.

The story feels very similar to a Chuck Palahniuk novel, in that it starts out sort of reasonable, then starts to spiral out into more and more insanity. The language is fairly stark, and in some places the plot can be a bit difficult to follow, since the producer is both experiencing what's happening now and flashing back to things that happened in the past. It's tough to say whether the characterization is good or not, because most of the characters are meant to be caricatures, especially the Deserted players. For anyone who has watched at least a season of Survivor, this book feels familiar, but also slightly disturbing. I definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys reality TV or at least discussing the ethics of it.

CR3 #74: Stand Firm Ye Boys From Maine: The 20th Maine and the Gettysburg Campaign by Thomas Desjardin

2011-09-15T12:29:00.000-04:00

One of my peculiar enthusiasms is the Battle of Gettysburg. It's probably in the "Top Five Subjects I Know a Lot About" along with the Titanic, the Lincoln assassination, the Holocaust, and the American campaign in Europe in WWII. I've always been particularly fond of Colonel Joshua Laurence Chamberlain and the exploits of the 20th Maine regiment during the second day's battle at Little Round Top. This book details how that particular regiment arrived at that point in history, who their opposition were, why the battle turned out the way it did, and what happened to the group after that notable day.

Unfortunately, Hollywood has apparently over-dramatized slightly the impressive feat that was accomplished on July 2, 1863. Apparently the brave bayonet charge that swept the 15th Alabama down off the hill was less a brilliant strategy from Chamberlain and more something that occurred almost organically. And it might not have even worked had the Alabamians not been split off from many of their fellow troops...and also without any water. Chamberlain actually spent the rest of his life trying to correct some of the misconceptions about his deeds, and many of the men became estranged due to their varied ideas of exactly what happened that day.

It's kind of a sad story, really. When portrayed in the movie Gettysburg (an AMAZING film that I highly recommend), the bravery of the charge and the glory of the moment are breathtaking. It's too bad that some (if not most) of that tale is untrue, or at the very least highly exaggerated. However, it's important to keep in mind that while the story may be hyperbolic, it's still a fairly impressive moment. Regardless the reasons for the charge or the way it began, a group of battered, exhausted men who were under attack by a determined enemy and had little to no ammunition left did charge down a hill and drive off the enemy, protecting the extreme left flank of the union army from being collapsed. Had that short battle--it's estimated to have been just over ninety minutes of fighting--turned out differently, the battle of Gettysburg might have turned out very differently.

The book itself is rather dry--it's clearly written to be a scholarly text rather than a pleasure read. It's extensively footnoted, and it's clear that the author was very careful in his research. He does his best to support his every argument with documented evidence, which is reassuring. He also includes several lists at the back of the book with information about the individual men who fought in the battle.

I've visited the 20th Maine memorial at Gettysburg, and it's fairly impressive. Although there's a neat path there now, it's still a surprisingly steep hill, and hard to imagine anyone trying to charge either up or down it without serious injury (let alone dressed in layers of wool on a July day in Pennsylvania). While the book does ruin some of the romantic notions about what these men did, it's still a great reminder of the things they accomplished and I'd recommend it to any Civil War enthusiast.

(I took this photo off the top of the Pennsylvania State Memorial at Gettysburg. It overlooks the memorials to the 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry, the 4th New York Cavalry, and the 2nd New York Cavalry, as well as the 8th Pennsylvania infantry and an information plaque about the Cavalry division of the Army of the Potomac.)

CR3 #73: The Crossing by Serita Ann Jakes

2011-09-09T11:01:00.001-04:00

(I received this book from WaterBrook Press free through Goodreads.com. I appreciate their generosity, but my opinions cannot be swayed.)

When first reading the description of The Crossing, it sounded intriguing. Years ago, at a railroad crossing, a gun-wielding man got on a bus coming back from a high school football game. He shot one of the players in the arm and killed the young cheerleading coach. Many years later, the assistant DA husband of one of the girls who was on the bus, along with the football player--who has now become a police officer--reopen the case to try to get to the bottom of things. The premise sounded good...what I didn't notice was the last bit of the description: "As the Campbells and Casio teeter on the bring of losing everything, will they be able to discover that what begins at the crossing ends at the cross?"

Yes, I had somehow gotten myself involved with contemporary Christian literature by mistake. "Well," I figured, "too late to do anything about this now. Might as well read the book. The premise is still fairly interesting." As it turns out, this was not a bad book at all. It was just not a good book for me.

The characters are all right, though it's a little tough when the introduction to one of the protagonists (Casio, the former-football-player-turned-cop) begins with him raping and beating the crap out of his girlfriend. Apparently, his experiences back on the bus have led to a life of untamed rage (though I found myself wondering if perhaps some of his rage was due to having been named after a cheap brand of plastic keyboard). Claudia, the other main character, is also a wreck--the teacher killed had been her best friend, and she knows some secrets about the possible motive. Her husband Vic, the assistant DA, opens the case to try and bring Claudia peace, but finds that his help is just making everything worse. Luckily, he is understanding of her issues, because he is almost too perfect to be true. Narration is also provided by BJ, the teacher who died. The shifting perspectives actually work pretty well, and provide a variety of ways to look at the story.

The story itself is all right, though there are many diversions from the heart of the mystery, instead focusing on Claudia's relationships with Vic and God, and also on Casio's relationship with his girlfriend Hannah. I often found myself bored with Claudia and her philosophical and theological tangents. The author tried to bring in some other issues, including her relationship with her pastor father and critical mother, but I found those mostly distracting. Another problem was that the stakes for the characters never got very high. The plot plodded along as Vic and Casio investigate the old case, but really no one is ever in danger, and aside from possible closure, there is no real drive to solve this murder. The only real shock in the whole novel doesn't even have anything to do with the murder. Personally, I didn't find "Will Claudia be able to reconnect with her husband AND God?" to be a particularly pressing motivation to keep reading.

As I said, I am sure there are people who would enjoy this book. It is well-written, and the characters were for the most part reasonably realistic and interesting. However, my lack of interest in the Christian aspect of the story served as a major turn off for me.

CR3 #72: Lights Out in Wonderland by DBC Pierre

2011-09-02T15:57:00.000-04:00

(This book was graciously sent to me for free by W.W. Norton & Co. via Goodreads.com. I think they're going to wish they'd sent it to someone else.)

I hated Catcher in the Rye. I know it's supposed to be some kind of iconic book about about teenage angst or something, but to me Holden Caulfield was just sort of a whiny twit who created most of his problems himself. Boohooo! My parents don't understand me and my lack of effort is resulting in poor school performance and OMG SOMETIMES ADULTS LIE ABOUT THINGS! I tell you this because Lights Out in Wonderland is like all the worst things about Catcher in the Rye combined with a book Chuck Palahniuk might write after a serious head injury.

Gabriel Brockwell is twenty-five. He comes from an upper-class British family, and at the beginning of the book, finds himself in rehab. Deeply unsatisfied with his life, he decides that the best solution is to kill himself. However, before he does that, he feels that he should have at least one brilliant party first. From there, he travels around the globe, inadvertently fucking things up for almost everyone he meets. In between, he whines about how his daddy wasn't nice to him and his job was unfulfilling, and how people liked his friends more than they like him (unsurprising, really.) He has no direction in life! Things have not turned out the way he hoped/expected! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

The writing was not terrible -- there were some interesting descriptions along the way. However, it was often repetitive, but not in an interesting, witty, Palahniuk-type way, but in a repetitive way. Not to mention the mind-numbing, self-indulgent, and wholly unnecessary footnotes. YOU ARE NOT DAVID FOSTER WALLACE.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who might enjoy this book. I am just not one of them.

CR3 #71: A Winter Haunting by Dan Simmons

2011-09-02T11:51:00.000-04:00

This book is the sequel to Simmons's Summer of Night. Dale Stewart--last seen as a terrified child in Summer of Night--has grown up. He was a literature professor and writer, but now his life has begun to fall apart. He left his wife for one of his grad students, only to be unceremoniously dumped. He's taken a sabbatical from teaching and was pushed to the brink of suicide. At the beginning of the book, he makes the decision to go spend some time in his old hometown. He rents the farmhouse where his (late) friend Duane grew up, determined to work on a novel about the summer of 1960. As it turns out, that summer isn't nearly as distant as Dale would like to think, and real life (represented by a pack of skinheads who dislike Dale's ideology) isn't exactly peachy, either.

This is a ghost story, similar perhaps to Stephen King's Bag of Bones or even The Dark Half. The past dredges itself up and begins to assert itself on the "real" world. Dale's struggle to understand what's real and what isn't drives him to the edge of sanity. The novel is mostly first-person, though some sections are narrated by Dale's friend Duane, who died at twelve during the events of the previous book. The Duane sections are a bit weird, since it's not clear if he's a real presence or something more similar to the narrator of The Lovely Bones, merely a partially-omniscient narrator. Although the previous book is suspiciously similar to King's work, this book--while in the same vein--is definitely more original. The character of Dale is a consistent (though unreliable) narrator. There are also some interesting secondary characters, but for the most part this is totally Dale's story. There are some good action scenes that keep the story moving right along, too.

I made it through this book pretty quickly, and though I would not necessarily call it a "good" book, it was enjoyable enough to keep me interested. I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Summer of Night (don't try to read it without reading that first--it won't make any sense.)

CR3 #70: The Burning by Jane Casey

2011-09-01T11:27:00.000-04:00

(St. Martin's Minotaur press sent me this book for free through a Goodreads.com giveaway. Fear not, my opinions cannot be swayed by free books. Now, were they to send foodstuffs...)

Maeve Kerrigan is a detective in the London police department. She and the rest of her colleagues are on the hunt for a serial killer called "The Burning Man" who beats women to death and then sets them on fire in parks. The stress is building because there have been four deaths already and the murderer doesn't show any signs of slowing down. Then, late one night, another body turns up. Twenty-eight year old Rebecca Haworth is found and it looks like she's become the eighth victim. However, things don't add up for Maeve. Something about this is off, and she makes it her mission to figure out what's going on.

The story is told from both Maeve's perspective and that of Louise North, Rebecca's mousy best friend. Both women's stories entwine as they seek the truth about Rebecca's demise.

Maeve is a great character (though she can get a little whiny and defensive, being the only woman on her squad and constantly determined to prove herself to her superintendent) and I think a book series could easily be built around her. Although most of the story revolves around the murders, there is also a certain amount of personal issues going on for Maeve, and a minor romantic subplot. On the whole, I'd happily read another book about her. The other characters were also pretty distinct, particularly the people in Rebecca's life and those in the police department.The mystery was complicated, but I figured it out a ways before the end. However, I didn't mind because I was enjoying finding out what Maeve (and to some extent Louise) were going to do.

This book is nothing mind-blowing, but it was an enjoyable and well-written mystery. I hope Jane Casey will write more Maeve Kerrigan books, because I will read them.

CR3 #69: Wicked Autumn by G.M. Malliet

2011-08-29T11:25:00.000-04:00

(St. Martin's Press was kind enough to send me an advance copy of this book via a giveaway at Goodreads.com. Fear not--my scathingly honest criticism cannot be swayed by free gifties.)

Wicked Autumn reminds me very strongly of an Agatha Christie mystery. It takes place in a small English village in the countryside, the protagonist is somewhat unlikely (a MI5 spy-turned-vicar), the murder victim is almost universally disliked, and there is no sex, no swearing, and nothing even the slightest bit provocative.

I don't mean to imply that the book was bad. On the contrary, it was a very serviceable mystery story. Max Tudor--former spy and now the vicar of Nether Monkslip--finds himself at the center of a mystery when the town's pushiest, most unpleasant society matron turns up murdered during the local harvest festival. There's no dearth of suspects, since Wanda Batton-Smythe had a wonderful way of making people hate her with very little effort. Although Max wants to stay out of the whole thing, his MI5 instincts can't help but draw him in.

The characters (aside from Max himself, who is the tiniest bit dull) are the kind of charming eccentrics that populate BBC sitcoms, and the plot proceeds along at a logical speed. The clues were available, but not obvious, and the solution to the mystery was not shocking or out of left field. I didn't figure it out until Max did, which is a win for any mystery story. I thought Max's back story should either have been more prominent or referred to less, since it didn't really add much to the narrative. I suppose since this is ostensibly the first in a series, it was intended to be some added exposition to develop the character. I felt that his past was a little misused--he was a charming, witty, and very sharp vicar, but for a former spy he seemed a bit dim.

As I said before, this is not a bad book at all. It is exactly the kind of book my grandmother loves, and it would absolutely be appropriate for slightly older children as well. However, I personally found it a bit tame for my taste.

CR3 #68: The Throat

2011-08-29T10:32:00.000-04:00

The Throat is the third novel in Straub's "Blue Rose" trilogy, and I'm still not entirely sure how I felt about it.

First of all, unlike the other two books, The Throat is not a stand-alone work. Without having read both Koko and Mystery, you will be totally lost. The main character in The Throat is Tim Underhill, the free-spirited writer from Koko. He explains that the previous two books were works of fiction that he wrote based on true experiences. Therefore, you need to know the events related in the previous two novels, but they are now somewhat unreliable, since Underhill explains that he definitely changed some things. This work begins when Tim receives a call from a long-lost army buddy, whose wife has been attacked. John Ransom wants Tim to come back to their hometown of Millhaven to look into the case, since it appears to be connected with a series of murders from fifty years before. The Blue Rose murders (mentioned briefly in the other two books) are thought to be long solved, but now it seems that the killer has returned. Tim--with the help of eccentric genius Tom Pasmore (hero of Mystery)--has to delve through current events as well as those from the time of the original murders and from Ransom's service in Vietnam to figure out the truth.

This is a pretty good book, but I didn't feel quite as connected to it as I did to Koko. That one felt a little more visceral, and the variety of characters added a lot to the story. In this one, Underhill is mostly on his own, and while he is interesting, he could use a little help. Straub has once again done a good job with the secondary and peripheral characters--Ransom's semi-senile father-in-law, an elderly jazz musician, and a visiting nurse, for example--all of whom are interesting and vibrant. One of the only problems I had with The Throat is the same as the one I had with Koko--I figured out the twist far before the characters in the story did, and I found it frustrating. I couldn't figure out why they were so unable to see what was obvious to me.

Aside from that one issue, this is a pretty good book, and I recommend the series to anyone who likes mysteries that are a little outside the norm.

CR3 #67: Koko by Peter Straub

2011-08-25T17:11:00.000-04:00

Koko is the first book in Peter Straub's "Blue Rose" trilogy, but it stands alone quite well.

Dr. Michael Poole and three of his friends--all former members of his unit in Vietnam--travel to Washington D.C. for the opening of the Vietnam War Memorial. While there, they discuss a spree of grisly murders in East Asian cities that are reminiscent of something they witnessed during the war. They suspect that the murderer is another former member of their unit, so they decide to travel overseas to hunt him down before it's too late. Unfortunately, for some of them it's already too late. Their collective past has come back to haunt them, and it becomes a race against time to save themselves.

This was a great book. Dr. Poole and the other main characters were very well-written, and I was definitely captivated by their hunt for the killer Koko. The secondary characters were also really great, including the mystical Maggie Lah and the psychotically arrogant Henry Beevers. All the characters were distinctive, and each brought his or her own special something to the story. Even the sections from Koko's perspective--though distorted--were interesting.

The plot of the novel was relatively good, following the men around both East Asia and New York City, dealing with both the trouble of the present and the ghosts of the past. However, I was a little frustrated because I figured out the twist quite a while before the main characters did, and it seemed quite obvious to me. However, the resolution of the book is satisfying, and it was a good, suspenseful read.

CR3 #66: Flesh Eaters by Joe McKinney

2011-08-16T14:24:00.000-04:00

I have read a surprisingly high number of zombie books for someone who had--up until relatively recently--a fairly strong phobia about zombies. There is something about them that just bothers me. Perhaps it's the mindlessness--unlike vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and other classic literary/movie monsters, the zombie has no motivation. It has no feeling except hunger, and it can't be reasoned with, cajoled, convinced, or threatened. There's no conscious thought, only a need to feed. A zombie is more closely related to an alligator than a human, but it's nearly unstoppable. An alligator can be trapped, injured, slowed down. A zombie is like an eating machine, except it looks like your family, friends, and neighbors. I'm not sure I can think of anything more horrifying.

Unfortunately for me, I've been rather badly spoiled as far as zombie books go. World War Z may be the definitive work on the subject, and all the others I've read since have paled in comparison. The sheer scope of WWZ makes it unlike any other book. However, there have been a few novels that have come close by having really great characters. In a book about zombies, your protagonists need to be very lively in order to compete. Otherwise they just blend in to one big ball of terrorized humanity.

Joe McKinney starts with an interesting premise in Flesh Eaters. He's set it in the city of Houston, just as a devastating hurricane is about to hit land. The main character is Eleanor Norton, a wife and mother who works in the local emergency preparedness department. After the storm hits, most of Houston is under water, and survivors are directed to a local college campus. The crowded conditions and the destruction of ANOTHER hurricane lead to squalor, disease...and zombies.

Most of the story consists of Eleanor trying to get her family to safety and of her boss and his sons trying to pull off a heist. Although the original concept is good, and both Eleanor and her boss are decent characters, the secondary characters are fairly boring, and I felt like the tale rapidly lost steam after the initial panic. This is certainly not a BAD book, but it's also nothing special, and there are many much better zombie books out there.

CR3 #65: Mystery by Peter Straub

2011-08-10T11:35:00.000-04:00

This is the second book in Peter Straub's "Blue Rose" trilogy, but I read it first and didn't find myself having any problems (the first book is Koko, which I am reading now).

Tom Pasmore is the only grandchild in one of the ruling families on a small Caribbean island. Unfortunately, that's not enough to protect him from suffering an accident that nearly kills him. He was an odd child to begin with, but his near-death experience changes him in ways he can't understand. Years later, when he's a teenager, he gets involved with a mysterious neighbor, who points him in the direction of crime-solving. Soon, Tom finds himself investigating a decades-old murder and trying to figure out how it connects to his family and to the richest family on the island, the Redwings. Tom's grandfather sends him to the family's summer compound in Wisconsin, and from there things just get more suspicious...and dangerous.

This was a long book, and it started off a bit slowly. I was about a hundred pages in before I really started to get pulled in. After that, though, I couldn't put it down. The character of Tom is very well-drawn, and the secondary characters are also very well-defined. The plot was twisty, and I didn't figure it all out too far before the conclusion, which is great. I first discovered Peter Straub because of his collaborations with Stephen King, and although they definitely have some similarities, Straub's work is both less supernaturally-based and also less tangential. This book is a straight-up mystery (hence the title) but still quite suspenseful.

On the whole I'd recommend it, but it does take some time to really get into.

CR3 #64: Summer of Night by Dan Simmons

2011-08-04T17:16:00.000-04:00

Summer of Night by Dan Simmons desperately wants to be IT by Stephen King. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but then again IT is probably one of my very favorite books of all time. However, the influence--to me--was extremely obvious, right down to some of the character descriptions, plot points, and peripheral events. I'm not saying the books are total duplicates--there aren't any clowns, thank goodness--but the similarities are enough that a Stephen King fan may find him or herself suffering a strange deja vu feeling while reading.

The plot consists of a group of boys between eight and thirteen (and later one girl), who notice that things in their small rural town aren't quite right. There are disappearances, some of the adults are acting very strange, and some of the places around town have become downright disturbing. Each boy starts to experience spooky events, and soon they realize they will need to band together to save themselves and their town from a recently awakened ancient evil.

See? Doesn't that plot sound kind of familiar? Not to mention the kid in the cast, the scary basement, a moment with a bloated, floating corpse, and I'm not saying there are creepy alien spider eggs, but...well, there are some similarities.

Please don't think I intend to steer you away from the book though. Despite (or perhaps because of) the close ties to Stephen King, this was a pretty good read. The characters were distinctive and interesting and the plot, while not the most original I've ever seen was still pretty good. On the whole, this was a fun summer read I'd recommend to people who enjoy this sort of book.

CR3 #63: Nightmare in Pink by John D. Macdonald

2011-08-01T12:32:00.000-04:00

Nightmare in Pink is the sequel to Macdonald's first Travis McGee novel, The Deep Blue Good-by. In this adventure, Trav finds himself doing a favor for an old friend's sister, investigating the circumstances of a suspicious death and accusations of embezzlement. Unfortunately for Trav, it turns out the situation is significantly more complex (and more dangerous) than he ever would have guessed. He gets himself wound up with some unsavory characters while investigating the circumstances of an eccentric New York businessman, as well as finding himself forming romantic entanglements with his client.

This book is a solid mystery story, but nothing especially exciting. The character of Trav is all right, but I think the series suffers from a lack of repeat secondary characters. Some of the best series are good specifically because of quirky, interesting sidekicks, villains, or peripheral characters. After all, what would Sherlock Holmes be without Watson, Moriarty, and Mrs. Hudson? Where would Nancy Drew be without Bess, George, and Ned? Lehane's Kenzie and Gennaro novels wouldn't be nearly as interesting without their gun-wielding friend Bubba. Dr. Alex Delaware would be lonely without his friend Milo, the gay police detective. A mystery series needs to have more characters recur than just the lead. Particularly when the lead is somewhat cynical and not very exciting.

As I said, this was a perfectly serviceable novel, but nothing about the plot or about Travis McGee makes me the slightest bit anxious to get the next book in the series. It's a shame, since there are so many of them, but I think I'll go back to the Nero Wolfe mysteries instead.

CR3 #62: Kings of Colorado by David E. Hilton

2011-07-27T11:31:00.001-04:00

(Disclaimer: I received this book free from Simon & Schuster in a giveaway through Goodreads.com. My opinions are my own.)

William Sheppard is a kid from mid-60s Chicago who--in a moment of desperation--stabs his abusive stepfather with a pen-knife. Although the man survives, Will is sent away for two years to Swope Ranch, a reformatory for boys in the Colorado mountains. He makes few friends (though the ones he finds are something special) and a few (brutal) enemies. He spends time learning how to break horses, how to survive in a completely hostile environment, and trying to figure out who he will become. The majority of the staff are at best uninterested and at worst actively dangerous. Soon, Will and his friends find themselves in a situation none of them could have imagined when they arrived.

Kings of Colorado reminded me a lot of Lorenzo Carcaterra's book Sleepers, in that both take place in a prison for boys, and the circumstances vary from grim to downright deadly. Sleepers begins with the main characters already being friends, while Kings of Colorado has the boys meeting once they reach the ranch. Also, in Sleepers the story spends almost as much time on the boys' adult lives (and their revenge on the reformatory) as it does on their youth, while Kings of Colorado is almost 90% about the time spent at the ranch. The characters are well-drawn, and the plot for the most part moves along. The descriptive passages are pretty enjoyable, and the author definitely has writing talent. My main complaint with this book is that it was almost relentlessly depressing. There were a few very brief occasions of happiness or humor, but for the most part the book consisted of terrible things happening to mostly nice people. Since I connected closely to the characters, it made it worse that nothing good ever happened to them. I did enjoy the way things ended--it tied the book together and gave the reader a (albeit very tidy) conclusion.

I'd recommend this because it's a pretty good coming-of-age story with some really great descriptions and characterizations. One thing to note, although this may look like a YA book, it would probably only be appropriate for older teenagers, since it is--as I mentioned--pretty dark. On the whole, a great debut effort from David Hilton. I look forward to seeing what he does with his next work!

CR3 #61: Carrie by Stephen King (King REreview #3)

2011-07-27T10:47:00.000-04:00

(Sorry people -- I've been reading just as much lately, but work has been sort of horrifying, and when combined with this ridiculous heat wave, it doesn't do a whole lot for my motivation to accomplish...anything at all, really [well, except maybe eat popsicles and drink mojitos, but neither of those things exactly counts as productivity]. I have a couple reviews to write, but I'm hoping they'll get done in the next couple days.)

Carrie is the first Stephen King book I ever read. As I share a name with the protagonist, I figured I might as well read the damn thing so I would at least get the allusions people made to the novel. Therefore, at 13, I walked into the local library and hunted down the Stephen King section, which at the time was entirely made up of paper backs crammed into one tall rotating rack. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

The story concerns Carrie White, a teenager living in Maine. She is neither attractive nor particularly bright, and due to her upbringing by a religious fanatic mother, her social skills are also nothing special. She has spent most of her life as the butt of every joke, tortured by her classmates and ignored by almost everyone else. The one thing Carrie has going for her--as she discovers one day during gym class--is a latent talent for telekinesis. Several stories--including that of Carrie, her classmate Sue, antagonist Chris, and the rest of the town--are entwined, coming together in a final explosive confrontation.

The story is probably familiar, as it's become a part of popular culture due to the film version with Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie. However, the book is definitely worth reading. It's set up as an epistolary novel, combining news clippings, "witness testimony," and "scientific papers" as well as sections from the characters' points of view. In style, it has a lot in common with Dracula, which King has often mentioned as a strong influence on his writing. The characters are compelling, and you definitely find yourself sympathizing with Carrie, even if you do what is going to happen in the end.

I highly recommend this--it's a quick read, free from King's usual ramblings and tangents (which, though I do enjoy them, can lead to bloat in some of his works). It's a good introduction to his style without the thousand page commitment.

CR3 #60: Think of a Number by John Verdon

2011-07-15T10:19:00.000-04:00

(Disclaimer: I received this book for free from Crown Publishing Group in a giveaway through Goodreads.com.)

Dave Gurney was a superstar detective in NYC homicide. He was well-known for his work putting dangerous serial killers away, but now he's retired and has moved to the countryside. He fills his time with his new hobby--despised by his wife, Madeleine--of doing digitally enhanced portraits of the serial killers he's put away. Life is going along quietly until one day he receives a call from a college friend he hasn't spoken to in 25 years. The friend has been receiving some strange, threatening notes in the mail, and is more than a little worried about his own safety. As it turns out, he's right to be.

Eventually, Dave finds himself getting more and more involved in the case, both due to concern for his friend and because he misses the joy of detection. The criminal is the smartest Gurney has ever encountered, and catching him is going to take every ounce of intelligence and experience Dave possesses.

The plot of this book was great and moved along quickly. The case was interesting, and the clues were intriguing. I really enjoyed the character of Dave, particularly watching the way his mind was organizing and analysing things. There were also some good side characters, like Detective Hardwick, a foul-mouthed veteran of the local homicide department, and Mr. Spline, the local DA with political aspirations. They were all well drawn (if occasionally a little two-dimensional) and I liked them. The only character I absolutely couldn't stand was Gurney's wife, Madeleine. She spends 99% of the book as a relentless, passive-aggressive harpy, and I was hoping she'd end up murdered so I wouldn't have to listen to her obnoxious and ceaseless sighing. Utterly horrible. Without her, I think the book would have been even better than it was.

On the whole, this is a great, quick-moving mystery novel with good characters and an exciting plot. I'd definitely recommend it.

CR3 #59: The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey

2011-07-12T11:49:00.000-04:00

The Franchise Affair is another well-written, classic mystery by author Josephine Tey.

The book takes place in a small British village called Milford. Robert Blair is a lawyer there, as has a member of his family for more than 150 years. He's a stodgy, forty-something who lives with a doting aunt and has his routines down so pat that he knows exactly what kind of cookies his secretary will be bringing him at tea time every day. Then, one afternoon as he's preparing to leave for the day, he receives a phone call. Two women who live on the outskirts of town need assistance--they've been accused of kidnapping a teenage girl, holding her hostage in their attic, and beating her unmercifully until she was able to escape. Robert would prefer to give the case to someone (anyone) else, since he is much more familiar with cases of probate issues and civil matters. However, the ladies will accept no one else, and he soon finds himself headed out to The Franchise--the dilapidated house where mother/daughter pair live--to see what can be done. Before he knows it, Robert is wrapped up in a game of intrigue, drawn further into the lives of Marian Sharpe and her mother. If he can't prove that the kidnapped girl is lying, his clients could find themselves in jail for quite a long time.

Tey does an excellent job of weaving the plot together, as well as keeping track of a fairly large cast of characters. Robert and Marian Sharpe are particularly well done, as are some of the side characters like Marian's mother, Robert's Aunt Lin, and Robert's old friend (and famous defense attorney) Kevin MacDermott. The plot makes sense, and while not easy to solve, it certainly proceeds in a logical fashion. This is a good solid mystery story by a very successful author.

Sequels: Clerks II and Road House 2: Last Call

2011-07-11T11:47:00.001-04:00

Sequels.

Sometimes they work and sometimes they do not. Recently, I ran across examples of both in the same evening. In the course of ONE EVENING, I watched both Clerks II and Road House 2: Last Call.

Actually, let's say I "watched" Clerks II and "subjected myself to" Road House 2.

Perhaps I should define for you what I think makes a good sequel, and explain why these two films do/do not qualify.

1. A good sequel is a rational extension of the original film. In this case, CII is a continuation of the lives of the characters from the first film. RH2 takes place in an entirely different place, with different people, and an almost entirely unrelated plot. There IS a bar, and there ARE some bad guys, but that's about as far as the resemblance goes. With the exception of a few mentions of Dalton and how he's the father of the main character in RH2 (as well as a few admittedly funny "I thought you'd be taller" jokes) this movie had absolutely nothing to do with Road House. In fact, it feels like it was written as a separate film and then adjusted to satisfy some studio suit. According to IMDB, this was originally meant to star Patrick Swayze reprising the role of Dalton, but he backed out (likely because the damn thing was so obviously bad) and it lingered in development hell until 2006, when it was changed to accommodate a new actor.

2. A good sequel will generally include the majority of the original actors/actresses. Unless the first film was an ungodly trauma to film, or unless the stars have have become SO HUGE that doing a sequel is beneath them, they should want to come back and do a sequel, even if a lot of time has gone by. Obviously, you don't want exactly the same cast--new cast members keep things fresh, as Rosario Dawson and Trevor Fehrman do in Clerks II--but the audience wants to see familiar faces. The Ocean's 11 franchise is an example of a group that did well with consistently adding new blood while still managing to bring back the original cast. A sequel without a single member of the original cast spells very serious trouble. That means they either waited too long or it was soooo bad that no one wanted to get near it.

3. A good sequel will acknowledge he time that has passed between the original film and the sequel. In CII, the whole idea is that time has passed and Dante and Randal have reached a point in their lives where things have to change. The gap between the events of the first and second film are explained as the natural passing of people's lives. The crux of the characters' problems have to do with that time passage. RH2 definitely takes place after Road House--theoretically about three decades later, since Dalton did not have a son (he barely had a girlfriend) in the first film and now his son is about thirty and working for the DEA. There are references to Dalton and his death, but the events of the first film are not even mentioned--they just took the name and referenced it once or twice. Not very creative, frankly.

4. A good sequel brings something new to the table without losing sight of what made the original so likeable in the first place. Kevin Smith has done a good job with this in CII. The things that made Clerks so great were the relationship between Dante and Randal, the conversations they had both with each other and with the people who surrounded them, the pop culture references, and the pure grade A raunch. He's done all that in Clerks II, and has also added some new elements. The familiar has been effectively combined with the new in a way that--IMO--is both comforting and intriguing. RH2 feels as though they've used all the same pieces that were combined to create Road House, but somehow they don't fit together quite the same. The older mentor, the girl in distress who is secretly connected to the villain, the crazy villain who likes to smash things, the final showdown (right down to the car that hurtles up to the bad guys minus driver)--they're all there, but somehow they feel forced. It wouldn't have been a particularly bad movie on its own, but it suffered from comparisons to the original.

Basically, what I am trying to say here is simple:

A. Road House 2: Last Call was an abomination that never should have been made, or at least should not have pretended it had anything at all to do with Road House. They could have called it Bar Brawl: Guns, Drugs, and Pelicans or DEA on Airboats or Punching and Explosions in the Bayou and it would have been the same film without all the undue expectations. Plus, as much as I enjoyed Jake Busey's performance as the villain (and God knows I do enjoy Jake Busey and his giant, terrifying Busey teeth), the acting was nothing special, leaving the whole thing just on this side of blaaaaah.

B. Clerks II was everything I wanted it to be. If you liked Clerks, and if you like Kevin Smith's films in general, you will probably enjoy Clerks II. However, if you DON'T like Kevin Smith's movies, don't bother seeing this one. To try and convince an anti-Smith person to like it would be a tremendous waste of time because it is so very him. The subject matter is raunchy, the language is appalling, and it consists of a LOT of time spent watching people stand around a fast food restaurant and talk to one another. Dante is still a whiny baby, but I loved Randal just as much or more than I ever did. There were some great conversations and quoteable moments, and I also really really liked the scene in the prison, because I think it illustrated well the relationship between the two main characters. Rosario did well as the love interest, and the dance scene was a pleasant surprise. It was also wonderful to see Jay and Silent Bob one more time. (I will say that although I find Jason Mewes a sexy beast, the 'Goodbye Horses' bit was a little disturbing. I suppose it's more funny if you realize going into it that this is something he does to Kevin Smith randomly on a regular basis.) I guess I just loved the movie, but I'm kind of a fan girl. Take that as you will.

Maybe someday I will favor you all with my opinions on the second Boondock Saints film and why it sucks and I think Ghostbusters 2 is my favorite. Do any of you have thoughts on sequels?

CR3 #58: The West End Horror: A Posthumous Memoir of John H. Watson, M.D. by Nicholas Meyer

2011-07-08T11:25:00.000-04:00

So this is another "lost" Holmes story written by Nicholas Meyer. Although I very much enjoyed The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (Look! Look! My review was posted on Pajiba!) The West End Horror leaves much to be desired.

This story begins with the murder of a theater critic during the winter of 1895. Holmes and Watson are drawn into the case by Sherlock's friend Bernard Shaw (yes, THAT Bernard Shaw). Soon, they are wending their way through the dark and shady world of London theater as more murders soon pile up. In the course of their investigation, they meet several notable theater figures of the time: Gilbert and Sullivan! Bram Stoker! Oscar Wilde (just as he gets involved in the libel trial versus the Marquess of Queensbury)!

Unfortunately, it seems that the author go so carried away trying to stuff in as many historical figures of the time that he forgot about the other minor but necessary details of writing a book, such as character and plot. As thrilling as having Oscar Wilde as a character was, I would much rather have had more time with Holmes. Even though he was ostensibly the main character, I didn't feel like we got much of Sherlock's personality in the story at all, and ordinarily I find him the most interesting thing about any story he's in. In The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Sigmund Freud was a character, but he felt integral to the tale, rather than a last minute add-in to make things more exciting. Also, the plot was not just thin but stupid. It made almost no sense, and did not fit together until a giant burst of exposition toward the end (as the murderer confesses his deeds and motives, of course.)

I was quite disappointed in this novel, since I enjoyed the other so much. I recommend stopping with Meyer after finishing The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. You'll probably be much happier.

CR3 #57: Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub (King REreview #2)

2011-07-07T12:34:00.001-04:00

The first time I read this book, I didn't like it very much. It seemed scattered, bringing in characters that seemed like they should be familiar but weren't, and referencing things that were treated like common knowledge but weren't mentioned fully in the course of the story. The whole thing felt like a mess. I thought perhaps the trouble was the collaboration between the two authors--perhaps they hadn't been able to mesh their ideas and styles together as easily as originally intended?

It wasn't until later that I realized this book is actually a sequel. The first book the two authors wrote together is called The Talisman, and that tells the whole story of young Jack Sawyer and his trip over into "The Territories" to find the talisman and save his mother. After I read that book, Black House made a LOT more sense. And after reading the Dark Tower series, it makes even more, since the world of The Territories seems to be inextricably linked to that of Mid-World. There's also some carry-over from Hearts in Atlantis as well. Basically, this is NOT a book to read on its own--it is okay by itself, but loses a lot if the reader is unable to pick up all the connections.

Jack Sawyer is now an adult, and has left his job as a hotshot Hollywood homicide detective to retire to the Wisconsin countryside, taking up residence just outside the town of French Landing. He isn't sure why he chose this place, but has an inexplicable feeling that something has called him. Unfortunately, not long after he arrives a serial killer dubbed "The Fisherman" begins to kidnap and kill--and dine on--children from around French Landing. The police are stumped, and although Jack doesn't want to get involved (he's retired, after all!) it seems the more he tries to avoid being pulled in, the more the universe seems to push. Before long, another child is kidnapped, and Jack discovers that this all ties back to the adventure he had as a child in The Territories. It's up to him (and some new friends he's made along the way) to solve the case, save the child, and perhaps even save the world as we know it.

This is a great story. I very much enjoyed the plot, which moved along at a good clip--only occasionally getting bogged down in King's trademark descriptions. All the characters were interesting and well-drawn, even the smaller bit players. In particular, blind DJ Henry Leyden and biker Beezer St. Pierre were fun and interesting to follow. The dialogue was excellent, and it was often very funny. Not to mention it had some very spooky, very disturbing parts for the horror fans. Also--probably due to Peter Straub's influence--the ending wasn't stupid. It all actually made sense and worked out properly.

On the whole I'd definitely recommend this, but ONLY after reading the Talisman (and preferably after reading at least the first five Dark Tower books as well).

CR3 #56: The Deep Blue Good-by by John D. MacDonald

2011-07-01T11:26:00.000-04:00

This is the first of John D. MacDonald's novels about Travis McGee, a sometime private eye who lives on a boat and takes jobs when money runs low. Basically, Trav hunts down things that have been taken (or lost or stolen) and returns them, keeping half the proceeds for himself. In this particular case, he gets a little more than he bargained for when he agrees to help a woman get back her late father's nest egg.

The story takes place in Florida during the sixties, and I very much appreciated MadDonald's sixties vibe--it felt very natural. The character of Trav is quite likable--tough but funny, and sensitive when the situation demands. I pictured him as sort of similar to Jim Longworth of The Glades (if you haven't been watching this show on A&E, you should. It's a fun summer procedural), very laid-back but capable of violence if sufficiently provoked. The other characters in the story were also interesting and fairly well-written. MacDonald's style of writing is really what sells the book, though. He has a way with descriptions that actually reminds me a little bit of Stephen King. He's one of few authors that can write a multi-page description of something and manage to keep me interested enough not to skim.

I'd recommend this to anyone who likes traditional mysteries (i.e. girl in distress seeks help from tough detective, hijinks and gun play ensue), particularly those that are well-written, funny, and clever.

CR3 #55: The Case of the Guilded Fly by Edmund Crispin

2011-06-29T15:24:00.000-04:00

This is another work in my summer mystery series. Set in the late 30s in England, it's sort of an upper-crust society murder. The main character (the Watson, of the piece) is journalist Nigel Blake, on holiday to his college town of Oxford. Although the narration is a third-person limited-omniscient, Nigel is character who does most of the heavy lifting. The main detective is Gervase Fen, a professor of English literature, a friend of Nigel's who has done some detecting before. The rest of the characters are members of a repertory theater company, gathered with the playwright, his companion, the Oxford organist, and several other hangers-on, all of whom become suspects when a widely disliked member of the company is murdered days before opening night.

The mystery is quite twisty, and I couldn't figure it out until the end when it was all laid out for me. I did have trouble for a while keeping all the characters straight, as there are eleven or twelve of them, and several are very similar. There were times when things got a bit dull, since it was just page after page of characters speaking to one another about what had already happened. There was not much action of any kind in it.

I know this book is part of the "Golden Age" of mysteries, but it was just slightly too boring for me. I'm not saying I won't try another mystery by Crispin, as he may have worked out the problems in later works. However, I'm not inclined to ever read this one again.

CR3 #54: Her Wyoming Man by Cheryl St.John

2011-06-27T12:26:00.000-04:00

(Disclaimer: I won this book for free in a giveaway on Goodreads.com. Doesn't mean I shall be even slightly less critical than I normally would.)

Her Wyoming Man is the story of Ella, who begins the story as a high-class hooker in Kansas City during the late 1800s (I think, I can't recall if any specific dates were ever given). After a change in circumstances, Ella and a few of the other women from the "house of pleasure" make a run for it, answering an ad from a city in rural Wyoming that needs marriage-worthy women. Ella quickly finds herself married to a young widower named Nathan, who has three small children and political aspirations. How long can she keep her past a secret? And what will happen if it comes out?

In general, this is a pretty standard Harlequin-style romance. The heroine is beautiful, the hero is dashing, there is a certain amount of conversation, a problem comes up, is overcome, and everyone basically lives happily ever after. It is not especially original, but the story is serviceable, and the characters are fairly likeable. The sexy bits were pretty good, though definitely not explicit. I really only had two issues with it; my first problem was the sometimes dizzying switches in perspective--the story is mostly from Ella's point of view, but often it moves to Nathan's, generally without warning, often mid-paragraph. My other problem was purely personal--I had trouble enjoying the story because I was so dreading the point when the truth about Ella's past comes out.

I'd recommend this for anyone who enjoys the occasional fluffy historical romance. It's a great way to spend a rainy evening or an afternoon lying on the beach.

CR3 #53: Bag of Bones by Stephen King (King REreview #1)

2011-06-24T12:04:00.001-04:00

At the moment, I am running low on new books. Partly because I am running out of space to store them (I have a gigantic Ikea bookshelf, I just haven't had the wherewithal to shift all our furniture around to create a space and then put it together), and partly because as I mentioned before, it's summer. I lose motivation in summer, which is not helped by the fact that I managed to complete the full Cannonball. I'm waiting for some new ones to arrive, but what to do in the interim? As I stood in front of my bookshelves the other day, the idea came to me: Stephen King. I own nearly all of his books, and have only reviewed a few. New goal: Re-read and review all (previously unreviewed) King works I own. That should keep me busy during any slow points. Plus, it will give me the opportunity to think a little more critically about his works and express what it is that I enjoy about them to others.

I have already done Cannonball reviews for a few of his works:
1. The Cell
2. The Gunslinger
3. Lisey's Story
4. The Drawing of the Three
5. The Wastelands
6. Wizard and Glass
7. Under the Dome
8. Hearts in Atlantis
9. Song of Susannah
10. The Tommyknockers
11. The Bachman Books

Hmm. That is more than a few, huh? Okay, well, anyway, now you know that there are more coming. On to today's addition to the list!

Mike Noonan is a reasonably well-known author of thrillers. His life was going along just fine until his wife Johanna died of an aneurysm one sunny August day. After her death, Mike finds himself totally unable to write. Merely opening the word-processing program on his computer causes intense panic attacks. He has several unpublished novels put away to live on, but when four years go by and he is no closer to being able to write again, he decides a change is in order. Mike packs himself up and goes to his summer house in northern Maine, Sara Laughs. Not long after he arrives, he finds himself wound up in the custody battle of a young mother fighting to keep her daughter, having increasingly disturbing dreams, and having experiences inside the house that can't possibly be real. As time passes, he discovers the deep, dirty secret of the small Maine town, and what it has to do with the angry spirits of Sara Laughs.

This is a traditional ghost story, though filtered through the Stephen King lens. I actually didn't like this one the first time I read it--I much prefer King's more ensemble-type stories, and sometimes find myself a little annoyed at his writer characters. However, on second reading I found that I liked it a lot better. I am usually a fan of old-fashioned ghost stories--the kind wherein the ghost is haunting for a specific purpose, rather than being a simple random evil presence--and this surely fits the bill. The characters are interesting, although there were points where I found Mike to be a little dense (of course, all horror story characters HAVE to be a little dense sometime, or the story would end awfully quickly). I enjoyed the character of Kyra, who might be a little precocious, but still struck me as adorable. The plot was interesting and made sense, though I thought it got bogged down a bit in places. I also would have liked to see the "history" information spread out through the book a little more--as it is in IT, for example--rather than piled up in a big discovery at the end.

On the whole, I'd say this book is definitely flawed, but it also had some genuinely spooky moments, and some interesting wordsmithing. I'd probably rate it about a 3 of 5.

CR3 #52: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer

2011-06-21T10:28:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I was sitting around with nothing to do, unable to watch TV because The Boyfriend was thoroughly engaged in some sporting event. I found myself in front of the computer, poking around through the Netflix OnDemand list. Suddenly, I remembered the Pajibans recent flurries of praise for the BBC's Sherlock and figured I might as well give it a try.

Ten minutes in, I was completely hooked and already bemoaning the fact that only four episodes had been made. I mentioned this in a previous entry, but bring it up again because it led me back to the original source material. I already own the collected works, but upon further investigation, I discovered that (unsurprisingly, really) some other authors have created their own Holmes tales. I happened to purchase The Seven-Per-Cent Solution simply because it seemed to be the top-rated of the group.

In this story (purported to be a lost work of Dr. Watson, dictated years after the death of Holmes), Dr. Watson tells the story of what REALLY happened during the period that Sherlock Holmes was thought to be dead (spanning Doyle's stories "The Final Problem" and the one about the airguns, the title of which I can never remember). Watson tells us that the truth is that Holmes had fallen victim to his cocaine addiction, and required serious treatment. The doctor manages (with the help of Mycroft Holmes and a twisty plan) to get Sherlock to Vienna, where he places him in the treatment of Sigmund Freud. From there, a mystery begins to unfold.

I enjoyed the story very much, and felt that the characters were fairly true to the original works. Meyer did a good job with his "alternate history," and I also enjoy the footnote "corrections" and additions the author made on Dr. Watson's "original manuscript." The plot itself was perhaps a little thin when it came to the mystery, but as I said, the characters were enjoyable, there were some very exciting parts--a wild chase on a train, for example--and the little in-jokes to readers familiar with the previous works were enjoyable. I would definitely recommend this for any fan of Sherlock Holmes.

Huzzah! I have completed the Cannonball Read! Fifty-two books read and blogged! I AM A GOLDEN GOD!

...Okay, well maybe not. But I AM very pleased with myself. Now I have to decide whether stop here, or to continue on and attempt the death-defying double Cannonball. I'm not sure I could actually do fifty-two more before the end of the year, but I don't see why I shouldn't try. Might be interesting to see how far I get, at least.

CR3 #51: The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

2011-06-20T14:31:00.000-04:00

I was talking to my mum the other evening, and she asked about what I'd been reading lately (partly because she is genuinely interested, and partly because I pass along a lot of my books to her, and she hoping to get some good stuff instead of YET ANOTHER BOOK about a horrific fire or shipwreck or something). I said that since it is now summer, I have shifted into trashy fiction/mystery gear. I explained that is what summer is for...even though I am no longer in school and thus get to pick ALL my own reading material. I then went on to explain that my latest trash mystery was a defense of Richard III, using historical documents to show he was innocent of the murder of the two young princes. She said "That doesn't sound trashy at all."

Tey's detective Arthur Grant is laid up in the hospital after a painful accident. He has hurt his back, is unable to move, and is slowly losing his mind from inactivity. Soon, a friend drops by with a stack of photos, some of famous historical criminals and some of their alleged victims. One reproduction of a painting catches his eye, and soon he finds himself trying to gather all the information he can on the infamous King Richard III. With help from his friends, Grant begins to investigate the case against Richard (using his modern methods of detection). He discovers in short order that everything he thought he knew about the situation could very well be false.

Tey quotes historical documents as she lays out her case for the innocence of Richard, as well as pointing the blame in another direction. Obviously, hers is not the first book to bring this information to light (a fact that is mentioned within the text itself) but it does so in an easy to read and entertaining way. I enjoyed the character of Detective Grant, and was right there with him as he reveled in his discoveries and vented his frustration. The story moved along a good clip, tying the historical facts together in an unintrusive literary frame. I felt like I was learning, but not being lectured to.

I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who is interested in historical mysteries or in quiet detective stories.

CR3 #50: The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart

2011-06-15T10:55:00.000-04:00

The Circular Staircase was written in 1908 by Mary Roberts Rinehart, a woman many considered to be the "American Agatha Christie." This particular novel is one of the first mysteries in the "Had I but known" style, in which the first person narrator is telling the story from a point after the events, and often throws in small hints about the danger that is to come.

In this particular case, Rachel Innes--a middle-aged spinster--decides to take a house in the country for the summer, along with her niece and nephew, whom she has raised for most of their lives. The house, Sunnyside, turns out to have some very strange issues, including many suspicious things that go bump in the night. As if that wasn't bad enough, shortly after they arrive, a man is shot in the house during the night, even though all the doors were closed and locked. Soon, both of Miss Innes's wards are wrapped up in the mystery, and the house continues to be haunted by noises and uninvited guests. Miss Innes, along with Detective Jamieson and the comedic maid Liddy, manage to untangle the deadly mystery.

This is not a bad book, and the mystery was logical but not easily figured out. Some of the dialogue was funny, and the characters were relatively well-written. One thing that I did find a bit disconcerting was the casual racism throughout the book. The character of Thomas the butler is written as a blatant Uncle Tom stereotype, and the other characters make flippantly disparaging remarks--i.e., using the word "darkies" and discussing their tendency toward laziness, stupidity, and inability to handle money--in passing conversation. It's not unusual, I suppose, for the time the book was written, but it feels very strange now that a character in a book can be nonchalantly racist. Nowadays, racism is used as an indicative character trait, not just some conversational filler.

Aside from that small issue, this is a tolerable book, though it's nothing special.

CR3 #49: Under Observation: Life Inside a Psychiatric Hospital by Lisa Berger

2011-06-14T11:33:00.000-04:00

So it looks like my new obsession for fall (once I'm done with the summer's mystery challenge) will be mental hospitals. I checked my to-read list and discovered about six mental hospital-related books.

Lisa Berger spent about a year observing one unit at Massachusetts's McLean Hospital (for more information about McLean's history, here is a link to a previous review). The book was written in cooperation with the doctor-in-charge of the unit she observed, and benefits greatly from his observations. She focuses on a few specific patients over the course of two weeks (roughly the average stay for a patient in the hospital.) They each have different issues, and are treated in different ways. The book also gives some information about how new psychiatric drugs are developed, what the new (in 1992, anyway) advances in mental health are, and the different ideas regarding the treatment of psychological problems. There is also a certain amount of discussion on the way things like insurance companies and profit margins effect the treatment of patients at McLean.

On the whole, this isn't a bad book. The observations are good, and the characters are life-like. The only problem I had began with the introduction, which explains that the book is not entirely true, but (due to issues of ethics and patient privacy) that the patients portrayed are not real, but rather "compositions" made up of many different patients the author and her consulting physician observed. That took me out of things quite a bit, because I found myself thinking about how the patients portrayed were more fiction than reality. It also made me wonder which parts of the entire book are true and which are not. Another down side is that some of the chapters talking about drug research and brain chemistry can be a little dull for someone who is not particularly science-minded.

I would probably only recommend this to someone who is deeply interested in the subject but not bothered by the fictional aspects of the story. It's not really a book for the mildly interested.

CR3 #48: The Laughing Policeman by Per Wahloo

2011-06-09T15:58:00.000-04:00

(Okay, let's get this out of the way right now: Per Wahloo is a funny name. I know I shouldn't laugh because it's Swedish and for all I know Wahloo is just as average in Sweden as Smith is here. But come ooooooon! Say it to yourself: Per Wahloo. Now out loud. And again. And again. See?)

I have only recently become aware that the Swedes are quite the mystery novelists. I bought Steig Larsson's Lisbeth Salander books, and enjoyed all three to varying degrees. After that, Amazon.com started getting very Scandinavian in its book recommendations. I tried to explain that just because I enjoyed one Swedish mystery did not mean that I wanted to explore any further. However, Amazon can be very stubborn when it so chooses. Unsurprisingly, so can I when I make my mind. No Swedish books, goddammit! My motherland (or like 1/8 of my motherland, anyway, being something of a mutt) has no literary pull on me!

Unfortunately, I had reached a point where I was at a loss for things to read. My obsession with disaster books has waned considerably, and my WWII fascination seems to be in hibernation at the moment. It's summer! My strongest instinct is to read mind-rotting junk, because THAT'S WHAT SUMMER IS FOR! I happened to wasting time on Facebook when I came across a "Book List Challenge" of "100 Best Mystery Novels of All Time." I do like mystery novels, and it turned out I'd never even heard of most that were listed. Clearly, something had to be done! Luckily, it also turned out that used mystery books are extremely cheap, so I ordered some. One was the previously reviewed Fer-de-Lance, and another was The Laughing Policeman.

The Laughing Policeman begins with a mass murder on a Stockholm bus. A mysterious suspect managed to gun down nine people--including a young police officer--in just a few minutes and escape without leaving a clue. The police are stymied--they aren't even sure who all the victims are, and have no idea what the motive could be. The whole force pulls together (including some out-of-town guests who are called in to assist) and combine intuitive thought processes with old fashioned police work to solve the crime and find out who murdered one of their own.

This is apparently one of a series of books featuring Detective Martin Beck. I guess this book falls somewhere in the middle of the series, but I didn't feel like I was terribly lost having not read any of the previous novels. I'm sure I'd appreciate the character development more if I'd had four or five books to watch it develop, but this can definitely be read on a stand-alone basis without any problem. The characters were mostly well-written, though some of their personal interactions were a little strange. Also, the only women in the books were either whores, victims, harpies, or sex objects (kind of weird since Wahloo apparently co-wrote this with his wife.) There were no strong female characters, but since it was written in the mid-seventies, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. The plot moved ahead reasonably quickly, and there were very few jumps in the logic of what was happening. My only problem was one that I often have with foreign literature--I had a bit of trouble keeping the names straight. I had the same issues with Larsson's books--here there were characters named Gunnar, Guntar, and Grunvald all running around detecting, and it took me a while to be able to recognize who was who. However, the characters' personalities soon became distinct and I had no more problems.

On the whole, I'd recommend this, and I plan to see if I can track down the other books in the series.

Random Things That Are Not Book Reviews

2011-06-07T16:27:00.002-04:00

For that four of you out there who read this blog on a regular basis, you must be getting exceedingly tired of my endless book reviews. I'm not going to STOP with the books, mind you, but I thought at least today I could talk about something different. Besides, I also watch MOVIES!

1. Cannonball Fail #1: Before I get into movies, I have to make mention of my first Cannonball Fail. I tried to read Jane Austen's Sense & Sensibility, but after about 100 pages, I just had to throw it against the wall and give up. I couldn't stand any of the characters--I wanted to take every single person in that story out behind the barn and beat him/her unconscious with a rock. They were all so snooty and archaic. Anyway, I very very rarely give up on a book--sometimes I take...very long breaks, but I nearly always come back and finish--but I couldn't do it. I don't really understand my problem, either. I know several bright, interesting people who truly enjoy Jane Austen's work. And I enjoyed the film based on this book (though I felt that Emma Thompson would have made a much better couple with Alan Rickman than with that stuttering ninny Hugh Grant.) Oh well. Can't win them all, I guess.

2. I am really disappointed by this whole "Congressman Weiner Sends Photos of His Junk to Young Women" scandal. It's a shame that someone who could have been such a beneficial force for the democratic party turned out to be a slave to his penis. Seriously, dude. Have you learned nothing from...every celebrity who has been caught in one of these stupid scandals since the internet began? Don't you know that the girls are GOING TO SELL THE PICTURES? They may weep about how intrusive everyone is and how their lives will never be the same and oh woe is me, Gloria Allred, why has this happened to me? Why won't the media leave meeeeeee alooooone? What they will NOT do is delete the damn pictures and then be like "What pictures?" Do not ever think they will delete the pictures and keep their mouths shut. There is no money or trashy tabloid fame in that. "Ohhh, I just had to tell my story!" Why? How exactly are you enriching the national discourse? ARGH! I am so annoyed by the whole situation. Just once I'd like a politician I like to turn out NOT to be a pervy hobbit-fancier*.

3. The Boston Bruins are in the Stanley Cup finals. I would like to believe it is possible for them to win, but in my (admittedly limited) experience with them, they are really just trying to find the most frustrating and heart-crushing way possible to lose. I have to say I do love when one of the local teams is in championship contention, because the whole city gets excited about it. Total strangers are talking to one another in bus stations, and wearing their related gear with great city pride. I've been pretty lucky since I moved here--the local teams have been having a rather impressive streak of successful seasons. Even someone who was totally anti-sports (like yours truly) can't help but be swept up in it all.

4. The other night, Netflix finally had a copy of Death Race 2000 to send me (the darn film has had been listed as "Long Wait" for about a year). Turns out it is one of the cheesiest films I've ever had the good fortune to be exposed to. For those who are unfamiliar, this is NOT the Jason Statham version but rather the original, where the Death Racers are out on the open roads, trying to both cross the country first AND kill the most pedestrians. David Carradine stars as the masked driver Frankenstein, and he can strip down to his wee speedos all he likes, Jason Statham is going to beat him every time in that competition. Also, he doesn't really measure up in growly witticisms or intense glaring. The whole movie was a cheese fest, and the cars were like something out of Wacky Races. The second best part of the whole thing was that a movie made in 1975 could predict (to an almost eerie degree) our current world of reality TV and government-by-media-based-terror. The best part was that Sylvester Stallone was in it, back before he had the clout to demand that he not appear short in movies. Plus, he spends most of the movie dressed as a gangster (except a notable scene wearing only a towel) and smears cake on people's faces. Good show.

5. On a related note, after finishing up Death Race 2000, I felt the need to continue into a "Sylvester Stallone Marathon." Here's another embarrassing fact about me: I love Sylvester Stallone. I love him almost as much as I love Nic Cage, and for many of the same reasons. First off, they both started out hotter than all hell. Come on, you can't tell me that early 80s Stallone was not attractive! Hell, even in the early 90s he was still doing all right. Okay, yeah, then he stuffed his face full of botox or plastic or wombat glands or whatever and had his eyelids sewed to his forehead and did every steroid in the universe and now he's kind of scary like a Michael Myers Halloween mask. But still! I'm not a fan of the Rocky movies, and I found Rambo rather upsetting to be honest ("That man needs to be in a hospital being treated for his PTSD! It's not right that he's been left to wander the roads alone without any psychiatric treatment!"). Where it's at is definitely Stallone's comedies. I adore Demolition Man and Tango & Cash. I like Judge Dredd a lot. I even giggle at Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot! Something about his whole "muscle-bound--but still intelligent!--jerkface in an upside down world" scenarios tickles my funny bone. And his voice just makes it that much better. The Boyfriend does not get the appeal, but I think that's because he is totally immune to the draw of camp. I keep hoping that one day, Stallone and Cage will share the screen somehow. Should that happen, I might just explode with joy.

6. Another thing I've been enjoying recently is the BBC show Sherlock. The first season is currently available via Netflix OnDemand, and so far (two episodes in) I've been very impressed. The relationship between Holmes and Watson is just as I always pictured it to be--less combative, as in the recent film version--and more of a symbiotic and occasionally truly affectionate friendship. Benedict Cumberbatch (is that not the most British name you could possibly imagine? I think the only one I can make up that even comes close is Second Leftenant Percy Q. Hufflefufshire, which, BTW, is what I am going to name my dog, should I ever get one) makes a great Holmes--you can often see the wheels in his head actively turning. Martin Freeman (whom I really enjoyed in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and look forward to as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit) is also quite good as Dr. Watson. He's a slightly more complex character than Watson was originally written in the stories, and he does a great job showing both the frustration and the awe that dealing with Holmes on a daily basis inspires. If you have the technology, I highly recommend watching these. There's only 4 episodes in series one I think, so it's not a giant commitment.

So yeah. Apparently I had a lot to say and didn't even get to half the movies I intended to mention, as well as my obsession with NBC's The Voice and the reasons I hate watching Rafael Nadal play tennis. Guess I will have to save those for another entry.

*"Pervy hobbit-fancier" is the invention of the hilarious Cassandra Clare in The Very Secret Diaries. If you have time, and enjoy Lord of the Rings, you should read them. I laugh until I snort every single time.

CR3 #47: Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout

2011-06-06T10:58:00.003-04:00

As far as I can tell, this is the first of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries (it's tough to be sure, because there are so many and they are not labled "Number 1 in the Series!" as they bloody well should be.) I had never read any of the previous books, but I greatly enjoyed the short-lived television show A&E put together a number of years ago (2001? Was it really a whole decade ago?) with Timothy Hutton as narrator Archie Goodwin and Maury Chaykin as the titular Wolfe.

The basic set-up takes place in the 30s, and has Nero Wolfe as the eccentric genius, and Archie is sort of his eyes and ears (and legs and arms--Wolfe is both hugely fat and somewhat agoraphobic, so Archie does pretty much everything that requires leaving the house.) In this particular adventure, a young Italian immigrant comes to Wolfe requesting that he locate her missing brother. Shortly after that investigation begins, a mysterious murder occurs on a golf course, and Wolfe suspects that the murder and the disappearance might just be connected. Archie (who narrates the tale) soon finds himself running all over New York, tracking down golf clubs and airfields and a number of other important clues.

The main draw of this novel is the narration itself. Archie is a great character, both witty and charming and frustrated and occasionally childish. His voice is very engaging, and I enjoyed following the mystery from his perspective. The character of Wolfe is not as developed, although his pride at being an "eccentric genius" is definitely kind of fun. The plot moves along at a good clip, and I never found myself bored or anxious to skip ahead. I will say that I figured out "whodunnit" rather before the book decided to make the reveal, but since it was not an "aha!" ending, that wasn't such a problem.

I definitely enjoyed this, and will probably pick up other books in the Nero Wolfe series. It made a great summer read: not totally mindless, but definitely easier on a heat-melty brain than some of the things I've been reading this year.

CR3 #46: Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

2011-06-03T14:17:00.003-04:00

Fat Charlie Nancy didn't really understand his father at all. Imagine his surprise when he discovers that his recently deceased father was the personification of the mythical figure Anansi. He's also very surprised that he has a brother--an out-going, magical party boy named Spider--that he never knew existed. Once Spider shows up, Fat Charlie's calm, normal, boring life takes a turn for the crazy. He has to ask for help from some strange sources, and discovers that his father had some fairly dangerous enemies. Besides all that, his fiancee may be falling for Spider and his boss might be a high level criminal out to frame Fat Charlie. It's a wild and satisfying ride.

At first I was excited about the book, since the character of Anansi is featured in American Gods. However, it started out pretty slowly. It took me a while to warm up to Fat Charlie--in the beginning, he was kind of a whiny fuddy-duddy, but eventually he gets it together and becomes a pretty cool hero. The side characters are great, and the plot moves along fairly quickly. It has parts that are funny, weird, sad, and scary, all within the same novel. I'd definitely recommend this, perhaps for after American Gods, since Anansi Boys is kind of a spin off.

CR3 #45: Pronto by Elmore Leonard

2011-06-01T12:28:00.002-04:00

Elmore Leonard's work (so far as I can tell) is populated by a rich and eccentric group of characters. Each one has a distinct personality, and each seems to act for reasons that make sense with his personality--I never got the feeling a character was doing something just to suit the author's plan.

The main character of Pronto is Harry Arno. He's an aging bookie who has been forced into retirement earlier than planned by local crime lord Jimmy Cap. In fact, he hasn't just been forced into retirement, he's been chased right out of Miami. Harry's insistence that he's been set up by the local feds in order to get him to testify against Jimmy falls on deaf ears, and soon men with shotguns are turning up outside Harry's apartment. The US Marshall service sends Marshall Raylan Givens (yay!) to keep an eye on Harry, but Harry is just a little too slippery for his own good. Soon, Raylan is chasing Harry through Italy, with Jimmy Cap's men close on his tail.

It's a good story with solid characters. I was--as always--happy to see Raylan Givens, though his character in the book is a little less charming than Timothy Olyphant plays him on Justified (the beginning of the show actually picks up right where this book ends). The side characters were also entertaining, and I was invested in what happened to them (even though Harry is not particularly likable, the people around him were). Even the bad guys were written to be interesting and at times sympathetic. The plot moved along briskly, and I never found myself feeling either bored or rushed. The way the story ended left some openings, but was not unsatisfying. On the whole, I'd recommend this to anyone who likes a well-written crime caper.

CR3 #44: Kaboom by Matthew Gallagher

2011-05-26T10:54:00.003-04:00

(Please excuse any mistakes in military terminology--I am woefully ignorant when it comes to the differences between squads and platoons, or which rank is higher. Therefore, I am going to try and use generic terms whenever possible.)

Matt Gallagher's Kaboom has a lot in common with Evan Wright's book Generation Kill. They are both stories that involve a small, young, tightly-knit military group trying to stay alive in Iraq. However, there are also many differences.

1. Generation Kill is a story about a group of Marines who are one of the first groups to enter Iraq. They face the difficulties of overthrowing the current regime and figuring out exactly who the enemy are. Gallagher's group is Army, and they are there in 2007 - 2009, doing more of the clean-up and maintenance work. The Marines spend their time driving around hostile countryside throughout Iraq, constantly meeting with enemy fire. Gallagher's group are for the most part stationed in one city, and spend their time investigating reported insurgent activities, trying to assist in the training and organization of the new Iraqi army, the Iraqi police force, and the other quasi-military groups which are supposed to be taking over the country's security, and interacting with the general populace. Gallagher has more direct contact with Iraqi civilians, and spends more time discussing what life is like in Iraq. He and his men spend a lot of time trying to figure out just who is on their side and who is not...or where the lines are even drawn.

2. Matt Gallagher was a lieutenant (and then captain) in the Army when this book was written. All of his experiences are filtered through his own lens, since this book was originally his own personal blog. It is mainly a first-person story, with himself as the main character. Although his writing shows a certain amount of talent, it's often florid and overwrought. Some of his "stream-of-consciousness" sections are completely unintelligible. In his favor, this makes everything about the book a little more raw--you don't feel he is necessarily editing, holding back, or even THINKING about the things he is saying before he puts them on the page. There is a great sense of immediacy to the whole thing, like he is someone you know writing you a letter about what is going on with him. On the other hand, Evan Wright was an embedded journalist, so his writing is much more professional. He tries to include facts as much as possible, and although he closely identifies with the men he is shadowing, he knows he is not really one of them, and keeps some small, objective distance. His writing is considerably better, with much much less tendency to rant, ramble, or use unnecessarily flowery descriptions.

3. Because Gallagher is looking at the ongoing Iraq conflict from a point of view several years behind Wright, he has more opportunity to go into "Where is it all going/what does it all mean?" When Generation Kill was written, it was expected that the war in Iraq would be over in a year, maybe two. By the time Kaboom was written, it had been going for nearly half a decade, with no evidence that it would be over any time soon. When Gallagher discusses the problems they have dealing with the locals, often finding themselves caught between the needs of the people they are supposed to be helping and the directives of the "higher ups," he takes more time to discuss what the situation in Iraq is really about as far as he can tell. He shows examples of the problems of dealing with people who have been oppressed for so long that are not sure how to be free. Or people whose attitude is "Thanks for freeing us--now how are we supposed to survive?"

4. Both books have a lot of humor. Generation Kill's comes mostly from the men in Wright's group, but in Kaboom, there is also a lot of humor to be found in the interactions with the Iraqi locals. Gallagher's group, due to the nature of their work, spends a lot of time visiting the local sheiks and dealing with their personal guard squads (who have mostly been contracted by the US as part of local security). They are also often in the company of the interpreters, many of whom offer a unique perspective as non-Iraqi middle-easterners.

5. On a completely irrelevant note, Gallagher seems like kind of a self-important jerk, and Evan Wright seemed a lot more pleasant. I don't know if that's writing style or portrayal of truth, but I don't think I'd like Matt Gallagher much were I to meet him in person. He talks a lot about how he was a complete slacker before joining up, and spends a lot of time implying how above-it-all he is. He's very cynical, and sometimes snarky in a slightly unpleasant way.

On the whole, this is not a bad book, but I don't feel it's one of the most informative books one could read. Although it's interesting to get a view of what is going on in Iraq now that the US is entering a draw-down phase, it's really just one man's view on his service, and that one man seems like kind of a dick.

CR3 #43: Velocity by Dean Koontz

2011-05-24T10:30:00.002-04:00

I wish I enjoyed Dean Koontz's books as much as I want to. They've got most of the elements that I usually enjoy in books: murder mysteries, characters making tough choices, sometimes some supernatural stuff is involved. His writing is tidy and the plots are tied together relatively coherently. I guess my issue is that his work is...workmanlike. Stephen King's books might be over-wordy and the endings are almost universally stupid, but his writing seems to have more passion--his characters seem to have more life. You could say that--in my opinion, anyway--Dean Koontz's books follow the letter of the law, but not the spirit.

In Velocity, we find (seemingly) average bartender Billy Wiles faced with a choice: Someone has left a note on his car, saying that if he contacts the police, an elderly woman heavily involved with charity will die, and if he does nothing, a young red-headed school teacher will die. Billy is a person who normally keeps to himself and tries to get through life as quietly as possible. He is forced to get involved when the killer continues to press him for choices, and begins to make threats toward those Billy cares about, including his girlfriend, who is in a coma (I know, I know, it's serious) and those who work at the bar with him.

This book was competent, and I developed an interest in Billy and his misadventures, but I was never on the edge of my seat about the whole thing. I enjoyed reading it, but it's not like I couldn't put it down. Plus, the ending was one of those dopey endings the reader can't see coming because there is no logical evidence anywhere else that would lead to that particular conclusion.

On the whole, this wasn't a bad book, exactly, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend anyone seek it out.

CR3 #42: The Walking Dead 1 - 11 by Robert Kirkman

2011-05-19T10:58:00.003-04:00

I've been trying to figure out if these are worthy of being part of the Cannonball Read, and have finally decided that putting them all together as one entry is probably okay. And if it's not okay, who exactly is going to stop me?

So I'd heard of The Walking Dead graphic novels before the show debuted on AMC. One of The Boyfriend's co-workers happens to be an avid comic fan, and one evening when we were all out, I asked if it might be possible to borrow the books from him. The next day, issues 1 - 4 arrived.

The beginning of this reminds me very much of the beginning of the movie 28 Days Later, in that it is one man (in this case, police officer Rick Grimes) waking up in a deserted hospital and staggering outside to discover that the entire world has fallen apart while he's been unconscious. He's not sure where his wife and young son have gone, and also...it turns out that the dead have risen to walk the earth.

The books follow Rick and his journey, first to find his wife and son and then--as he collects a small band of survivors--to look for a safe place to settle down. The first several books are pretty good, though there are a lot of characters, and at times it can be a little confusing. Also, Rick's wife is a gigantic whining pain in the ass. The drawings are really very cinematic, which definitely adds to the tone of the whole set. However, as things go along, the plot becomes very melodramatic...most of which doesn't even have to do with the zombies. By book 9 I was turning every other page and muttering "Really? REALLY? So that's where we're going with this?" I think that while one one hand it was great to have this epic and continuing story unfolding, on the other hand it takes a lot to fill 11 books, and toward end it was getting ridiculous.

On the whole, I'd recommend this to fans of zombie lit or graphic novels, since it is extremely well-drawn, and does have some great moments. Unfortunately, I don't think it would be very good for an introduction to either genre.

I pity the fog!: The A-Team and The Fog

2011-05-18T15:52:00.003-04:00

So I thought it might be nice to take a break from my never-ending onslaught of book reviews to talk about some movies I watched recently. Yes, I know, it's just yet more "What did the Caustic Critic think about things?" but since this is a blog, and therefore nearly the pinnacle of self-involvement anyway...I figured it would be okay.

Last weekend was gross and wet for the most part, so I had plenty of time to sit on my butt and watch movies. I FINALLY got to two of the three Netflix movies that have been sitting on the TV table for about a month (whimpering "Watch us! Watch us!" as they collected dust).

First off, I watched the new film version of The A-Team. I figured it would be right up my alley, seeing as I love movies that are made up almost entirely of wisecracks and inexplicable explosions. Mind you, I've only ever watched about 3/4 of one original A-Team episode, so I wasn't really bringing in any prior baggage. But I had some questions:

Liam Neeson, what are you doing in this film? Were you so deranged by grief at the loss of your wife that you accepted this without looking at it closely? Did you just need something sort of mindless to do as a version of a vacation? Because you are a very very good actor, and you were WASTED here.
Why is Hollywood trying to sell me Bradley Cooper as a "hot guy"? I know he's kind of funny, and I thought The Hangover was an okay movie, but this guy is NOT Brad Pitt, nor will he ever BE Brad Pitt. He looks like an emu, all right? (If you don't believe me, google it. You'll understand soon enough.)
Jessica Biel: see #2 re: Bradley Cooper, and replace "Brad Pitt" with some Hollywood star like Sandra Bullock or Angelina Jolie or...anyone who has more than one facial expression, really.
Why wasn't the crazy guy crazier? The guy who played the crazy guy in the TV show packed more crazy into the 30 minutes I saw than this guy put into the whole movie. I was very disappointed at the lack of sock puppets.

To be fair, here are an equal number of things I enjoyed:

I know it is totally stupid and not real and physically impossible, but that bit where they parachute out of the sky in a tank while shooting down drones was pretty awesome. Also the big explosions at the end were cool.
The bumbling bad guys were kind of funny. Actually, there were quite a few funny bits.
Even though he clearly did not belong in the movie, Liam Neeson of course did an excellent job.
The plot made at least a minimum of sense. It wasn't one of those films where you can't even follow because the whole thing is so convoluted and dumb.

So in conclusion, I wouldn't exactly recommend The A-Team, but it's not a complete waste of time.

The other movie I watched was John Carpenter's 1980 version of The Fog. Now THAT was a surprisingly good film. It's amazing how many scares you can get out of fog and things moving that shouldn't. The set up was great, the acting was very good--particularly Hal Holbrook and Adrienne Barbeau. The plot was perfectly reasonable and made sense in the context. The people behaved in realistic ways for the most part, though as an audience member you find yourself yelling at them to pool their knowledge, since if the three or four people who each partly figured out what was going on got together, they'd have it solved in no time. Another great thing about this movie is that the cinematography is really impressive. The way the movie is shot contributes a lot to the tone and the way the whole thing feels. I haven't seen the 2005 remake, and I suspect that it won't be nearly as good...they'll overuse the CGI and fuck the whole thing up, I bet. Anyway, if you haven't seen The Fog, you should, particularly if you like scary movies but don't like gore.

CR3 #41: When the Women Come Out to Dance by Elmore Leonard

2011-05-18T10:35:00.003-04:00

If it weren't for Timothy Olyphant, I never would have picked up this book.

Let me clarify: I started watching Justified on FX because Timothy Olyphant is basically sex on a stick. It turned out the show is actually pretty awesome, and not JUST because of Olyphantastic, there. It's a well-written show with some truly fascinating characters, set in an unfamiliar but richly detailed world.

I noticed recently while watching a note saying the show was "Based on the short story 'Fire in the Hole' by Elmore Leonard." I figured that since I enjoy the show so much, I should give the source material a chance.

Lucky me!

This collection of short stories by Elmore Leonard is exactly what a short collection should be: each piece is a small, detailed, stand-alone world. The characters, though briefly sketched, definitely come alive. We find the first run-in between Marshall Raylan Givens and his childhood friend and current target Boyd Crowder (basically the pilot episode of Justified, with a slightly different ending). There's a run-in between Karen Sisco (played on the big screen by Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight) and a new boyfriend. There are other stories, nearly all of which could easily be expanded into films or TV shows. Leonard's writing is interesting, funny, and to the point. Most of the stories are set in the west, either in the past or modern times.

I often have trouble with short stories, because they either are too short and I find them unfulfilling, or they are trying too hard to be "artistic" and miss out on being GOOD STORIES. Leonard has avoided both of those pitfalls--although I would have been happy to follow almost all of these characters beyond their stories, each story was put together in such a way that I didn't feel I was being shortchanged when the end came.

I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys well-written short stories, or to anyone who likes old-school stories of the American west.

CR3 #40: Sweet and Deadly by Charlaine Harris

2011-05-17T13:51:00.003-04:00

Six months ago, Catherine Linton's parents both died in a suspicious car accident, leaving 23-year-old Catherine to fend for herself in her small hometown. After she has finally gotten her life back together (more or less) she goes out to do some target shooting one morning and finds a horribly mutilated dead body. Things go downhill from there. There follows another dead body, some romance, some intrigue, and the usual mystery story tropes.

This is Charlaine Harris's first published novel, and although it's definitely not up to her later work, you can see where she is headed. The small town, the quirky heroine, the budding romance--all of these are things that will show up later in her other series. The character of Catherine most closely resembles Ro Teagarden, in that she is nothing more than a petite and often frightened woman. However, she uses her brains to solve the murders and catch the perpetrator. However, she can be just a tiny bit too nervous and whiny for my taste. The side characters aren't bad, though it seems Harris hadn't yet developed her knack for interesting secondary characters yet.

This isn't a bad book if you like this kind of mystery story, but it's nothing I'd recommend vigorously.

CR3 #39: Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott

2011-05-16T11:00:00.002-04:00

Eight Cousins is a fairly typical Alcott tale. It touches on her themes of teaching good behavior by example, sacrificing for others, and not over-taxing children's minds while neglecting their bodies and spirits.

Rose is a twelve year old whose invalid father recently passed away. Since her mother died when she was very young, the young girl is sent to live with her elderly aunts under the care of her Uncle Alec. Rose is weak and ill, having spent many years tending her father and living without the companionship of people her own age. Uncle Alec thinks that the best thing to do with Rose is to build up her constitution with exercise, fun, and frolic. In this, he engages the assistance of Rose's seven male cousins who live nearby. The story takes place during her first year at "Aunt Hill," and covers all the little adventures of the group.

There are some bits that can be rather patronizing and preachy. Although I think Alcott's basic philosophy about how children should be treated is just as sound today as it was back when she wrote the novel, she can sometimes become too emphatic. The part where everyone acted like Rose getting her ears pierced was akin to her worshipping Satan was particularly annoying. Also, some of the characters have a tendency to be too good to be true. Maybe things were different then, but I just can't see teenage boys behaving the way the cousins do very often. However, this is mostly a very sweet book and excellent reading for children.

CR3 #38: City on Fire by Bill Minutaglio

2011-05-13T14:47:00.003-04:00

Nearly every book I've read about disasters has had a common theme: They were probably preventable. Most of the non-natural disasters were directly caused (or at the very least helped along) by greed, negligence, or a combination of the two. Cutting corners to save money or time has been the cause of an untold number of deaths in our nation's history. And yet very rarely is anyone at the top ever punished--on occasion, a lower-level middle management type will end up as a scapegoat for whatever happened, but almost never does anyone who actually made the decisions wind up taking the heat. I thought I had almost reached a point where I could no longer be surprised.

Well, I was wrong. City on Fire: The Forgotten Disaster That Devastated a Town and Ignited a Landmark Legal Battle is the worst of the worst. It is both the worst disaster I think I have read about thus far AND the worst example of the danger of corporate (and governmental) greed and neglect I have encountered. This book made me want to puke--first from the descriptions of the injuries suffered by the people of Texas City, Texas, and then from the way they were treated by the people directly responsible for the disaster...their own government.

In 1947, Texas City was a booming coastal town. It was almost entirely made of huge chemical plants and smelting factories, and the harbor was the door all those chemicals exited to be distributed around the world. The most dangerous of all the substances that flowed through the little Texas town was ammonium nitrate. During WWII, the US government discovered the dual benefit of this compound--on one hand, it is a very powerful fertilizer. On the other, it is a lethal explosive. After the war was over, the US government--in an attempt to win over the people of Europe by providing them with a means to grow food--boosted the production and shipping of ammonium nitrate. Unfortunately, as in nearly every case I've read about so far, safety was pushed aside in favor of speed and low cost. One day in April of 1947, a ship carrying a large load of ammonium nitrate caught fire while docked. Despite the best efforts of the town's fire crew (left without a fire boat because they couldn't afford one--the huge companies that worked in Texas City had managed to avoid paying the city any taxes, so the town was nearly broke) the ship exploded, leveling half of the town. Another ship--also full of ammonium nitrate--also exploded, destroying the little that remained surrounding the harbor. Planes were knocked out of the sky, and the effects of the explosion were felt more than 150 miles away. The explosion was similar to the one that occurred in Halifax harbor in 1917, except in this case the survivors had to contend with the continued explosions and raging fires of the chemical plants--and water so full of toxins it couldn't be used on the fires for fear of making the worse.

Minutaglio begins his book by introducing the reader to several main characters--Bill Roach, an idealistic priest, Curtis Trehan, the young mayor of Texas City, Elizabeth Dalehite, the wife of a local sea captain, Ceary Johnson, an African-American longshoreman, and Walter Sandberg, a chemical company executive, as well as high school students, homemakers, and dock workers. He sets up the scene in Texas City, where "The Company" controls everything, and the poor African American and Latino populations live in slums. Then, he takes the reader through the explosion, giving the perspectives of each person. He continues on to the aftermath of the disaster, and then spends a relatively short time on the legal aspect of what happened--survivors of the disaster were the first US citizens to bring a class-action lawsuit against the United States government.

The descriptions of the explosion and its effects were gory and horrific. I definitely found myself feeling a little faint in one or two places, simply due to the graphic descriptions. The author has done a great job researching and making the reader feel like he or she is right in the middle of the story, suffering along with the people we've gotten to know in the early chapters. He details their struggles, and goes on to finish with a short epilogue to let you know their fates.

This is an amazing book, showcasing another piece of barely acknowledged American history. I had never heard about this until I stumbled across an article on it in Wikipedia, and was shocked that the largest industrial disaster on American soil could have been almost entirely forgotten. It is simply mind-boggling, and I think that everyone should read Minutaglio's book.

CR3 #37: Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris

2011-05-10T11:06:00.002-04:00

Dead Reckoning is the eleventh book in Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire (aka True Blood) series. I pre-ordered it as soon as the option existed, and it arrived last week, much to my delight.

Did any of you see the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie? If you did, maybe you'll understand my feelings about this book. I LIKED the first PotC movie a lot, and I liked the second one quite a bit, too. I was invested in what was going to happen to the characters I cared about. The third movie had bits that I really really enjoyed. I got to find out the continuing story of Jack Sparrow and Elizabeth Swann. However, the plot was a complete disaster, and it was as if the writer accepted some kind of dare to wedge in as many old AND new characters as possible. Even though I mostly enjoyed it, the whole thing was a sloppy, wildly overdone wreck, saved only by the main characters' sheer presence, the exit of several unpleasant and/or boring characters, and by the fact that the set-up for the sequel leaves openings for some really exciting stuff to happen.

In case you're wondering, that's exactly how I felt about Dead Reckoning. If you follow the series, the obviously you must read this. But under no circumstances should anyone attempt to read this as a stand-alone book. It'd simply be impossible.

CR3 #36: American Gods by Neil Gaiman

2011-05-06T10:12:00.004-04:00

There is something about Neil Gaiman's style that I really really enjoy. His work is fantasy, and it's often got some dark humor to it, but it's neither obnoxious nor unbelievable.

The main idea of American Gods is that when people came to the United States, they all brought versions of their own native gods (or legends, or mythological beings) with them. As time went on, however, the people began to stop worshipping--or forget entirely about--those ancient gods (for example the Norse god Odin, Mad Sweeney from Ireland, the Zorya from Russia, or the ancient Egyptian gods). The gods were left to try and fend for themselves as personified, but still magical beings. Even worse, they now much compete with the modern gods of Media, the Internet, and the other things that Americans tend to worship. The main character of the story is Shadow, an ex-con who suffers a tragic event and then finds himself mixed up with the mysterious Mr. Wednesday. Mr. Wednesday is preparing for an epic battle, and needs Shadow's help.

The story is great, and I really enjoy trying to figure which gods were which. Gaiman often alludes to history, literature, world religions, and pop culture, and I love stories where an author will allow his readers to draw their own conclusions instead of banging them over the head with every reference. In addition, Shadow is a very sympathetic character, and I found myself really rooting for him no matter what happened. Actually, I was very disappointed when the book ended, because could happily have read another several hundred pages about him.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fantasy, or even just a really good, very smart story.

CR3 #35: Grave Secret by Charlaine Harris

2011-04-29T11:00:00.002-04:00

Grave Secret is the fourth book in Charlaine Harris's "Harper Connelly" series. Harper was struck by lightning when she was young, and now has the ability to not only sense dead bodies, but to know what killed them. She travels with her former stepbrother/current boyfriend Tolliver, going to whatever clients might request her services. In this book, she and Tolliver return to Texas at the behest of a wealthy ranching family. Unfortunately, Harper senses more than she should, and soon she and Tolliver find their lives in danger. Tied up in all this is their blended family, and the mystery of what happened to Harper's older sister when she vanished eight years ago.

This book is okay, but it's frankly a little bit blah. The plot often seemed far-fetched, and hardly ever made use of Harper's "skills" like the previous novels. Also, a lot of the family dynamics seemed to run off into dead ends. The secondary characters were not as well fleshed-out as they could have been, and it seemed like a lot of the book was spent sitting around in various places waiting for things to happen. Although it provided a lot of back story for Harper and Tolliver, a lot of that seemed either unnecessary or repetitious.

Not to mention that the whole "He used to be my brother and now he's my boyfriend" things is kinda weird. Luckily, the other characters in the book bring that up nearly every other page so no one can forget.

On the whole, I found this fairly disappointing. Since the overarching mystery of Cameron gets solved in this one, I am guessing this may be the final book in the series. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone except a true Harris enthusiast.

CR3 #34: Coraline by Neil Gaiman

2011-04-28T10:36:00.003-04:00

Coraline, like The Deathly Hallows, is a children's book that is actually slightly inappropriate for children. Although the language is simple and clear, the plot itself is a bit disturbing, and would probably have given me some nightmares as a child.

Coraline is a young girl who moves with her parents to a new house. She spends her time exploring, meeting the eccentric people who share the house with them, and vaguely wishing that her parents had more time and energy to spend with her. Then one day she discovers a door to a parallel world, where her "Other parents" want nothing more to dote on her every moment. Unfortunately, there is something about their black button eyes that Coraline finds disturbing. Pretty soon, she is playing a dangerous game that--if lost--could leave her stuck in the parallel world forever.

The book is a simple, quick read, but I really enjoyed the character of Coraline--she is a smart, capable, and pragmatic child who never became too whiny or annoying. The plot moved along at a good pace, and I never felt like it was dragging. The characters--aside from Coraline--were a little two-dimensional, but I realize that since they are all described from her perspective perhaps they're meant to be a little flat.

On the whole, this is a cute little book, and would be great for middle-school goth girls.

CR3 # 33: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

2011-04-28T10:20:00.003-04:00

Man, was that a ride.

It's tough to write this review without giving spoilers to the six people out there who have yet to read this but are planning to do so. However, I'll do my best.

This final book in the Harry Potter series is the most dramatic and the most bloody. It's basically about the final showdown between Harry and Voldemort, with all the other characters taking up arms on one side or the other. Rowling has done a great job of tying together a lot of small points from the previous books which make the revelations in this one feel genuine. None of that "And poof, he was a hamster the whole time!" bull. Nearly everything that happens has its origins in the other books of the series. Plus, the "Battle of Hogwarts" ranks right up there with the battle of Helm's Deep as far as fantasy battles go, IMO.

This book is also a LOT darker than I was expecting. There is a lot of death in this one, and it gets pretty emotional. Yes, I might have been that near-thirty-year-old you saw riding through Boston on the T during rush hour, bawling her eyes out. I didn't even realize how attached I was to these characters, but considering this book in itself is massive, and combined with the other six books I've been with them for THOUSANDS of pages, I guess it makes sense. Anyway, although this is technically a children's book, this is NOT for children. I think this is definitely PG-13.

The only thing I disliked (and I find I disliked it strongly) was the epilogue. It seemed to be slapping a neat bow on to the end of a book that had been dark, twisted, and wrenching. It almost felt like the ending of a fan-fiction--nineteen years in the future, the surviving characters gather with their numerous Children With Significant Names to talk about how wonderfully life turned out and how lucky they all are to be alive. Although I was interested in the lives the characters went on to lead, I found the last chapter frankly a little insulting. It was the only real low point to an otherwise gripping book.

Clearly I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who hasn't read the series. However, for anyone who might have gotten bored at book five and given up, I highly recommend you get books six and seven--they are totally worth it.

CR3 # 32: The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

2011-04-21T11:06:00.004-04:00

I have an embarrassing confession to make: I LOVE the Disney version of The Three Musketeers. I love it, even though fully 1/2 of the leads are potentially violent children of Hollywood with multiple arrests and a history of substance abuse. I love it even though the actor playing the main character has all the charm and personality of a mung bean. I love it even though there are endless sword fights and yet no one ever loses a single drop of blood, even after being run through. The whole thing is an adorable fairy tale. I always assumed that it is totally historically inaccurate, and figured that it probably deviated from the plot of the book somewhat, because that is how Disney does things. Little did I know...

The main characters--who are named D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis--meet when D'Artagnan arrives in town and accidentally agrees to a duel with each of the other on the same day. There are international plots and a dark lady involved. The Cardinal Richelieu is very shady.

Here is where the similarities end.

The novel is a complex story full of intrigue, plotting, and murder. It is also a humorous tale of friendship, struggle, and doing almost anything for money. The characters are distinct, though sometimes leaning toward caricature. The plot for the most part moves along, though there are several sections that drag--it's a tough transition to go from murder plots and kidnappings into three chapters about how the musketeers scammed money to pay for more horses. However, the characters were entertaining enough to keep me reading until the main plot picked up again.

This book was more challenging--on a purely literary note--that most of what I've been reading for the past several years. Dumas's language and sentence structure is decidedly early 19th century, which meant there were passages I had to read more than once to understand--a true rarity for me. It was nice to be reading some "classic literature" though, and as far as that goes, the plot and characters were a lot more fun and relateable than, say, Melville or Hawthorne (IMHO).

I'd recommend this to anyone who wants to read something classic, but has a hard time with some of the more preachy or stately works. This is definitely a rollicking adventure story.

CR3 #31: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

2011-04-14T12:28:00.002-04:00

I know, I know. I am waaaaay behind on this whole Harry Potter thing. Both my parents have managed to finish the entire series at least once (I'm pretty sure my Dad has read them all half a dozen times) and I am just now getting around to it. I am, like, five years behind the rest of civilization. I KNOW. Here's how it happened: in the summer of 2003, when I was living by myself, recovering from the departure of The Sacred Cow and The Prancing Prince, I was quite depressed and didn't leave my house for about two weeks. During that time, my sub-letter loaned me the first five Harry Potter books, which I read over the course of about 3 days. I love the first four, but the fifth? I kind of hated Order of the Phoenix. There was not enough Hogwarts and far too much of Harry's self-absorbed whinging. I thought about pre-ordering book 6, but then wasn't sure if I could take another 500 pages of "Booody-hoo, why must I be special? Woe is me, this is all so annoying for ME, the marvelous, talented, and oh-so righteous Harry Potter!" I decided I'd wait. And then...somehow...nearly 8 years passed. The other day, I was flipping through the channels and saw that Half-Blood Prince was available on OnDemand, and I had a sudden desire to watch it. However, I didn't want to be one of those people who just watches the movie, so I went ahead and ordered the book.

I am so glad I did! I remember now what I enjoyed so much about the first four books in the series. The plot continues without a lot of dragging, and it is interesting to get more of Voldemort's back story. Another great thing is that Ron and Hermione are back front and center, which is great, as they are my favorite characters. Harry is still self-absorbed, self-righteous, and whiny, but at least he has calmed down somewhat, and also has begun to recognize that behavior in himself. There are many side characters, and nearly all are intriguing, funny, or endearing. Rowling deftly weaves a story of good, evil, betrayal, and intrigue into typical high school hijinks like first girlfriends and sports rivalries. There are some surprising revelations, and from this point on, no character is safe. On the whole, it's a fun story and I'm glad I finally relented and decided to read it.

Of course, now I MUST get hold of book seven -- I went to a bookstore and tried to buy a copy, and they tried to charge me THIRTY-SEVEN DOLLARS for it! I guess I will have to wait for my used copy ($4) to arrive from Amazon before I can find out how the saga ends!

CR3 #30: The First Wives Club by Olivia Goldsmith

2011-04-11T10:27:00.003-04:00

I saw the movie of The First Wives Club before I read the book. It's a cute chick flick, in which scorned women take comedic revenge on their former spouses. They become better friends and everyone winds up happy in the end. I was somewhat surprised (though not much--the differences between film and literature are often wide) at how different the book was--I am used to changes in plot or small character changes (combining two characters into one, or perhaps changing to a more pleasant ending) but the major change here between novel and movie was the tone.

The story is basically the same; After a close friend's suicide, three middle-aged female friends get together and beginning reviewing their lives. They realize that much like their late friend, they have been screwed over by the men in their lives--the men used them to get to their high social and financial positions, then screwed them over both personally and financially. The three women decide to use their wits and their connections to punish the men who have treated them poorly.

The book is much darker than the movie--the husbands are terrible people, but then again so are most of the society people the women meet. The worst is their dead friend Cynthia's husband Gil, and the wives vow that he will pay for the way he drove Cynthia to her death. He plays a much larger part in the book, and is closely connected with the other three husbands. The wives are all complex characters with their own strengths and flaws. Annie is a reserved housewife, who has spent most the past sixteen years devoted to a daughter with Down's syndrome. She dreams of being a writer, but gave up her ideals when she married her husband Aaron. Now, Aaron has left Annie to marry her former therapist. Brenda is an Italian-Jewish woman who fills the void in her life with food now that her husband--an appliance salesman and local TV celebrity--has left her for a young gallery owner. Elise, the last member of the group, is an aging actress from a very wealthy family. Her repressive upbringing combines with the difficulties of being an aging woman in Hollywood and the desertion of her husband Bill to lead to drinking and bad choices. All three women realize that beyond taking revenge on their former husbands, they also need to take charge of their own lives.

On the whole I liked the book--the punishments for the husbands were more brutal (though not as creative) as in the movie, but seeing the men getting what they deserved was definitely satisfying. The women were also multi-dimensional, and not just harpies out for revenge. The side characters were definitely amusing--including a gay interior decorator who learned English watching Desi Arnaz, a crusading SEC investigator, a naive paparazzo, and the other eccentric members of New York's high society--and lent a certain amount of variety to the proceedings. This is definitely "chick lit," but it's at least both well-written and not insulting to women of intelligence.

CR3 #29: We Who Are Alive and Remain by Marcus Brotherton

2011-04-08T10:07:00.004-04:00

This book is a companion piece of sorts to Stephen Ambrose's incredible work Band of Brothers. Basically, it is the combined recollections of several more soldiers who served in the 101st paratroopers but were not featured in Ambrose's book. It begins with each man's background, then moves through his training, into his combat experiences, and finishes with a little bit about their lives after the war. There are also three chapters written by the children of men who passed away before the books were written.

As much as I wanted to like this book, I really was somewhat unimpressed. My lack of interest had little to do with the actual content--each man had some amazing, touching, impressive recollections--and more with how the book was arranged. Each chapter had a section by each man revolving around a particular topic, like training, or a specific campaign of the war. For example, the chapter on training was particularly confusing, since it spanned nearly two years--most of these men were replacement soldiers, so they did not train at the same time or in the same places. The author did not tie the stories together, but simply organized them exactly as the men told them. There is no real context or objective fact, since it is solely the subjective views of a small group of soldiers. Another issue is the chapters written by the deceased soldiers' families--it's nice to hear how great their fathers were, but since none of the men had been particularly forthcoming (if at all) about their war experiences, those chapters--while touching--are basically "my father was a great man who didn't like to talk about the war."

Although it might be considered unfair to compare this work to Band of Brothers, I find it perfectly reasonable, since it was written as a reaction. One of the main problems is that while some of the soldiers vehemently disagree on the way some incidents were portrayed in the original book and mini-series (for instance there is much debate on whether drill instructor Sobel was the unstable martinet he was portrayed as by Ambrose), there are no facts or evidence, only personal opinions. Ambrose's book combines the men's memories with solid research, which lends him more credibility.

On the positive side, the men interviewed by Brotherton are all very interesting people, and they have some great stories to tell. There are many humorous anecdotes, including untold stories about the men featured in Band of Brothers. There are also some very poignant sections, including the reactions of the men who had a hand in liberating concentration camps. In my opinion, the author's work interviewing these veterans is amazing--they all have such interesting views, and I'm glad the time was taken to record their stories. The content in the book is definitely interesting and worth reading, but it is just sorely lacking as far as broader context is concerned. Only someone who already knows WW2 history will be able to follow a lot of the events.

This is not a bad book for those who really enjoyed Band of Brothers and are interested in hearing about those events from a slightly different perspective. However, it is a very poor stand-alone book, since it is lacking in facts and context as well as making constant references to Ambrose's superior work.

CR3 # 28: Shadows in the Asylum: The Case Files of Dr. Charles Marsh by Dave Stern

2011-04-04T12:15:00.003-04:00

I wasn't quite sure what to expect with this book. It appeared in a list of recommendations based on some of my recent mental hospital-heavy choices, and the description sounded intriguing. The book had its ups and downs, but on the whole it's an interesting read.

The story is that of Dr. Charles Marsh, a psychiatrist working in an asylum in northern Wisconsin. His first patient is a young girl who had a bad experience out on one of the islands near the asylum. When Dr. Marsh first arrives, she is beginning to have visions of "shadows" that are coming out of the walls and threatening her. Dr. Marsh of course starts out believing that these are mere hallucinations, but soon he is forced to consider other possibilities. As this is going on, it also begins to spread to some of his other patients. Dr. Marsh takes it on himself to document what is happening and what it all might mean.

The book is written in an epistolary style--the story is told via Dr. Marsh's notes, transcripts of his sessions with patients, historical documents, newspaper articles, and various other bits of paper. It's a really interesting way of doing things, though in the middle the story seems to drag a big before winding up to its disturbing conclusion. The format does keep things moving along surprisingly well, by cutting back and forth between the different patients and Dr. Marsh's interpretation of what might be occurring.

This isn't a book for people who like their scares to be gory, violent, or graphic. In this case it is more about atmosphere and creepiness. It's also just interesting to read because the format is one I don't see very often, though it seems to work quite well for this style of book. I'd give this a conditional recommendation--the style and subject matter are not for everyone, but some may enjoy it.

CR3 #27: Crazy All the Time: On The Psych Ward of Bellvue Hospital by Dr. Frederick Covan

2011-03-31T11:41:00.003-04:00

In the early 90s, Dr. Fred Covan was the head psychologist at New York's busy Bellvue Hospital. Bellvue, of course, is where all the "crazy" in NYC eventually lands--where the doctors make their best efforts not necessarily to cure, but to at least help. It is a fast-paced environment, and anything can happen at any time.

During the year detailed in the book, Dr. Covan is advising a group of young residents, assigning them each to a variety of patients, and attempting to teach them how best to handle each situation that arises. The residents are a diverse bunch: male, female, rich, poor, black, white, Hispanic, traditional, and radical. However, they are drawn together by their desire to help those who are unable to help themselves. Some of them struggle more than others. Some get too attached to their patients, others can't find a way to identify. They find their patients difficult, frustrating, and heartbreaking. Most of the residents eventually realize they are doing a thankless job that will never be done.

The book sounds depressing, but it is actually quite funny. Many of the patients are both pathetic and exceptional, and the residents' reactions to the patients' misbehavior can often be hilarious. And of course at every turn the administration is there to make life tough for everyone, whether be a shortage of Rorschach tests, a total lack of pencils, patient secretaries that either won't type or don't have time because they are wiping down every visible surface, or endless "diversity surveys" that do nothing but take up valuable treatment time. I even ran across the enemy of hospital admin workers everywhere: JCAHO -- the hospital accredation body, who exist solely to make sure every piece of paperwork that drifts through a hospital has its Ts crossed and Is dotted.

Sometimes, it becomes hard to decide who is sane and who isn't...though rollerblading naked through the streets, swallowing razors, and a self-inflicted pinking shear penectomy (go look it up--I'll wait) are certainly good indicators of disturbed psyches. There is a long and very interesting section about defining what is normal and what the goals of psychology should be. One resident argues that the goal is to make a schizophrenic patient take all her meds until her delusions go away--by committing her if necessary--while Dr. Covan argues that the goal is to allow her to function as best she can out in society while not being a danger to herself or others. It's an interesting debate.

The book is definitely a good read--it's well-written, fast-paced, interesting, and sometimes emotionally challenging. I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in mental health work, or is just interested in a great story.

CR3 #26: Pegasus Bridge by Stephen Ambrose

2011-03-30T10:49:00.003-04:00

Pegasus Bridge is another in Stephen Ambrose's series of books detailing the actions of the Allied army in the European theater of WW2. This particular book is actually the first he wrote, so it is good, but does not have the polish that some of the later works, like Citizen Soldier or D-Day have.

The story is much more compact than any of his other books--this is basically the actions of one small group of soldiers during one battle. The soldiers are part of D-Company "Ox and Bucks," a group of specially trained British commandos, and they are arguably the first allied soldiers to be engaged on D-Day. They arrived behind enemy lines in Normandy via glider plane, with the assignment to take and hold two strategically important bridges. One of those would be Pegasus bridge. The soldiers spent months training (although they weren't told what their actual goal would be until shortly before they went into action) and learning ways to attack and defend their goals. Their commander, Major John Howard, did everything he could to be sure his men would be prepared for any obstacle they faced. Due to their excellent training, courage, and determination, the men of D-Company managed to take their bridges intact and fight off fierce German counterattacks until they could be relieved by first paratroops and then soldiers coming up from the beaches.

As always, Ambrose has done a wonderful job incorporating facts and anecdotal stories into his narrative. It is both an excellent history and an entertaining read, which I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys WW2 history.

CR3 #25: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

2011-03-28T11:51:00.002-04:00

Well, this book has confirmed that I do like Neil Gaiman, and that it's Terry Pratchett's fault that I didn't like Good Omens.

Neverwhere is the story of Richard Mayhew, a dreadfully average Londoner during modern times. He leads a quietly ordinary life until one night he stops to help a girl he sees lying on the sidewalk. Soon, he finds himself trying to survive in "London Below," a subterranean world full of feudalism, magic, and danger where the people that "London Above" have forgotten wind up. There are rat-speakers, kings, lords, beasts, and angels. Richard is on a quest with the girl, Door, to try and help her avenge the death of her family. He also discovers there is more to life he ever expected.

I loved this book because it was both touching and funny. The plot moved along at a good pace, and all of the characters were interesting. The character of Richard is your standard cubicle-drone--a person whose personality could be easily described as "beige." He is sort of an Arthur Dent character who is thrown into totally unbelievable circumstances and has to adjust accordingly. His relationship both to Door and to the world around him grows and changes through the story. The secondary characters are also really great, from the antagonists Mr. Croup an Mr. Vandemar, to Old Bailey the Bird Man, to Hunter the bodyguard, to the Marquis de Carabas...a character who walks a fine line between good and shady.

On the whole, this was a great story was a lot of good writing and very funny bits. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a little fantasy now and then.

CR3 #24: Ice Cold by Tess Gerritsen

2011-03-24T10:38:00.002-04:00

The last several books I've read have been heavy, dull, or generally not particularly exciting. I decided I needed a break, and picked up a good old-fashioned murder mystery book. I wasn't disappointed--this was exactly the break I needed.

This is the eighth book in Tess Gerritsen's "Rizzoli & Isles" series, and focuses more than any other on medical examiner Maura Isles. Maura has gone to Wyoming for a pathology conference, and while there meets up with an old college friend, Doug. Wanting to get away from her life for a little while and do something besides think of her failing relationship with priest Father Brophy, Maura agrees to join Doug and his friends for a quick ski trip. Unfortunately, things go horribly wrong and Maura soon finds herself lost in the wilderness, surrounded by danger and dead bodies. Meanwhile, back in Boston detective Jane Rizzoli begins to worry about her friend, especially after Maura doesn't arrive home at the scheduled time. Jane, her husband Agent Gabriel Dean, Father Brophy, and the mysterious Anthony Sansone travel out to Wyoming to look for Maura. The action and suspense continues from there, winding up with a rather surprising conclusion.

This book is not going to rock your world or anything, but it is a good mindless-fun read. Although it could perhaps be read as a stand-alone, it's much better when read along with the rest of the series. The characters of Jane and Maura both continue to be tough, smart women, which is great. Some of the side characters were a little two-dimensional, but they served their purpose well enough. On the whole, this is a fun book as long you don't think or expect too much.

CR3 #23: House of Windows by John Langan

2011-03-23T11:46:00.005-04:00

House of Windows is the story of Veronica, a young widow. She tells the story of her short marriage and of her husband's mysterious disappearance to a writer she meets during a Cape weekend. It's a tale that begins as a love story between a young woman and her much older (and married) professor. They fall and love and eventually are married. Things seem to be going well, but soon the professor's son from his first marriage arrives to cause trouble. When he dies shortly after in Afghanistan, things begin to go horribly wrong for the couple, and the trouble seems to center around their home, Belvedere House.

This is a book that wants to be both deeply suspenseful as well as literary. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it doesn't necessarily succeed on either point. On one hand, there is a great deal of literature involved, as the professor is a Dickens expert, and Veronica follows in his literary footsteps, with a concentration in 19th century literature. Perhaps I just missed the allusions, since I have read very little Dickens, and absolutely no Melville. I suppose it's possible that some of the book's themes may have gone right over my head because I wasn't able to pick up on the references. My main disappointment came from the lack of suspense. It becomes obvious fairly early on what is happening to Veronica and the professor, but then it seems to take forever for the story to come to a head. There are moments of suspense and horror, but then they dissipate and we spend another 20 - 30 pages rehashing repetitive relationship arguments or talking extensively of the history of painters who don't exist and are mere red herrings in terms of the story. It's almost as if John Langan wanted to write a haunted house story and a ghost story, but didn't connect them properly.

The was the second book in a row that I found myself looking at and going "There is still THAT MUCH left to go? I feel like I've been reading forever!"

I wouldn't recommend this one--it will be unsatisfactory both for those who are looking for good writing and for those looking for a good scare.

CR3 #22: Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

2011-03-18T11:18:00.003-04:00

I wanted so very badly to like Good Omens. Many people for whose opinions I hold great respect think this is a great book. They find it funny and interesting and a 4 or 5-star read.

Unfortunately, I was just this side of hating it. I am pretty sure this is not due to Neil Gaiman's involvement, since I enjoyed the book of his that I've read. I have come to the conclusion that despite my best efforts, I do not like Terry Pratchett. This is hard for me to admit. One of my very dearest friends, Sacred Cow, loves his work. In all other things I bow to her expertise, but on Terry Pratchett I am afraid we shall just have to disagree. I find his work desperately wacky...not dryly wacky (Douglas Adams) or whimsically wacky (Ellen Raskin) but more like Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair or the work of Christopher Moore--wacky for only wacky's sake.

The plot of Good Omens concerns Armageddon. A small mix-up at the birth of the Antichrist results on a case of mistaken identity. Two representatives of of Good and Evil, Aziraphale and Crowley, are trying to make things right before it's too late. There's also two witch-hunters, a young witch, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, some demons, the Antichrist, a fortune teller...to be honest, there is simply too much going on. I enjoyed some of the characters--the interactions between Aziraphale and Crowley in particular were really terrific--but there are just too damn many of them. There are POV sections from far too many people which do nothing but distract. If the authors could have settled on perhaps three or four characters and stuck with them, I might have enjoy this more. However, all the bouncing around combined with the aforementioned desperate wackiness did nothing but give me a headache. There were bits that I enjoyed, and some things that were very clever--having the Four Horsemen as bikers, with War as a war correspondant and Famine as a diet guru was pretty cool. I was delighted any time Crowley came on the scene, since he was such an interesting and funny character.

I wish I could have enjoyed this book more, but instead I just kept finding myself checking to see how much more I had to go. I can't say whether I recommend this or not, since I seem to have a very rare opinion of it.

CR3 #21: Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital by Alex Beam

2011-03-15T11:20:00.003-04:00

Alex Beam's book details the rise and fall of McLean Mental Hospital, once the go-to destination for New England's elite and eccentric.

The book begins with the creation of the original hospital in Charlestown in 1818, and follows it from its decaying neighborhood out to the rolling hills of Newton, where donations from Boston's wealthy allowed for the construction of an asylum that more closely resembled a cluster of beautiful mansions. The grounds were designed and arranged by one of the most famous landscapers of the time (shortly to become a "guest" of the hospital himself) and the staff treated every client as though they'd never left their Beacon Hill mansions.

The story continues, chronicling the history of McLean itself, the lives of several of the more notable patients (many of whom were the black secrets of their rich families), and the evolution of psychology--the changing beliefs that led from dunking, cold sheets, and electroshock to insulin comas, Freudian analysis, and lobotomies, to pharmacology and talk therapy. He discusses the counter-culture of the 60s and 70s, and their effect on the population at McLean--no longer was the place stuffed with batty elderly Boston Brahmans--it was instead filled with their grandchildren, suffering the consequences of drugs, free love, and having the audacity to challenge authority.

Beam includes many tales of McLean's more famous inhabitants: poets Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton, landscaper Frederick Law Olmstead, murderer Louis Agassiz Shaw II, musicians James, Livingston, and Kate Taylor, and Ray Charles, and Susanna Keysen, who memorialized her time at McLean in the book Girl, Interrupted.

Beam's book is well researched, and he has interviewed bother former patients and former employees. He also meets with Stephen Bergman, the author who wrote about his experiences as a resident at McLean in Mount Misery. It's an interesting tale, combining history and science with amusing anecdotes. I'd recommend it to anyone who has an interest in mental health or Boston history.

CR3 #20: Tunnels of Blood by Darren Shan

2011-03-11T13:08:00.003-05:00

Tunnels of Blood is the third book in the Cirque Du Freak series. This installment follows young half-vampire Darren Shan as he and his vampire mentor, Mr. Crepsley, leave the Cirque Du Freak for a secret mission. They take along Darren's friend Evra the Snake Boy as a companion for Darren while Mr. Crepsley pursues his mysterious agenda. Through the course of the book, Darren gets a girlfriend and figures out Mr. Crepsley's secret, which puts them all in mortal danger.

This is a decent follow-up to the first two books, but it is not particularly exciting. It definitely leans more toward YA fiction (Does the girl like me? Do I like her? Should I kiss her?) than toward horror. Although it does get fairly interesting near the end, I found it on the whole to be a little dull. It's not a bad book, and would be particularly appropriate for a middle-schooler, but it's not a great piece of stand-alone work.

I am not sure that I'd recommend this -- I am not even sure if I will bother getting the next book in the series. Although there are some threads of the story that I'm really interested in, I don't know if it's really worth my time.

CR3 #19: D-Day June 6, 1944 by Stephen Ambrose

2011-03-10T11:54:00.002-05:00

Stephen Ambrose writes some of the best historical non-fiction I have read (and I have read quite a lot.) His work regarding the European theater of WW2 is stellar--richly detailed and extremely well-researched.

This particular book deals with D-Day--there is some lead-up, details about how the invasion was planned and prepared for, but it is mostly just the events of June 6, 1944. Ambrose goes through each group that participated--paratroopers, bombers, sailors, infantry, engineers, Rangers, commandos, etc--and takes them from the staging ground up on to the beaches of Normandy. He explains, with the aid of photos and maps, where each group was, what their objectives were, and how successfully they completed the planned objectives.

The Allied invasion of France was a success due to several factors. The first was the ability of the Allies to create and produce the sheer amount of materials needed to move and equip a force of this size and nature. The second factor was the amount of planning that went into the process; the military personnel participating were trained so thoroughly that even unexpected changes and challenges were met without much panic. A third factor was the ability of the Allied troops to make adjustments--many of the commanding officers were killed early in the landing, and lower-level officers, noncoms, and even enlisted men were able (due partly to their extensive training) to stand up and lead their fellow men to the objectives. Another reason for success was the Allies' access to information--between Allied spies, Air Force photography, and members of the French resistance, the Allies were able get a very good idea of what would be waiting for them, which allowed them to plan accordingly. A final factor was the German command's almost opposite situation--the soldiers were ill-prepared (many were either too young or too old, and had spent little time combat training, and instead spent most of their time building the Atlantic wall defenses), their information was poor (the Allies' use of misdirection led the majority of German forces to be in the north of France, preparing for an assault on Norway), their troops were often disinterested (many were prisoners from the Eastern front who were perfectly happy to surrender), they had trouble moving the supplies they had (bombing raids had disabled many of the roads and train tracks, making it difficult to get any supplies to the area), and the command structure was set up in a way that did not allow for initiative--everything had to be approved, sometimes directly by Hitler himself. By the time the Germans were aware of what was happening, it was already too late.

This book is extremely detailed, and it's clear that the author was very diligent about his research. He quotes hundreds of interviews and oral histories from men involved in all areas of the conflict, so much of the book is told in the words of the men who lived it. That adds a wonderful feeling of realism to the whole thing. It is amazing, funny, exciting, and sad by turns.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys American history. It is both well-written and jam-packed with information.

CR3 #18: Dying to Live by Kim Paffenroth

2011-02-25T12:40:00.002-05:00

Dying to Live is the story of Jonah Caine, a man who is aimlessly wandering the countryside, trying to survive after the zombie apocalypse. He had been at sea when the trouble started, so he'd come on land to try and find his family. Unfortunately, they had disappeared, and were most likely dead. He continued to wander for months, trying to decide what to do, until he came upon a group of fellow survivors holed up in a museum. He joins their group, and begins the process of reintegrating into society. The group has to deal with the struggles of day-to-day living, as well as the fact that not all survivors want to cooperate and help each other.

On the whole, this is not a bad book. The story is interesting, and there is quite a bit of action. However, I felt that the characters were pretty one-dimensional, and the narrator himself was not all that interesting. No one really seems to develop or change. The book is really not long enough to allow much character development. Also, with the exception of Milton--sort of zombie messiah--both the plot and characters are very similar to that of the Walking Dead comic, right down to the sadistic warlord making others fight for his entertainment.

I'd recommend this book only to zombie literature enthusiasts--it is not a great example of its genre, but will be entertaining to fans with undiscriminating tastes.

CR3 # 17: Mount Misery by Samuel Shem

2011-02-24T12:02:00.003-05:00

Mount Misery is the sequel to Samuel Shem's first book, House of God (review here). It follows Dr. Roy Basch as he leaves the House of God and moves to psychiatric hospital Mount Misery to begin his psychiatric residency. Unfortunately, it turns out that psychiatrists are just as crazy, confused, and often detrimental as medical doctors. As Dr. Basch cycles through the various sectors of the hospital (talk therapy, admissions, Freudian Analysis, drug therapy) he is horrified to discover that it seems everything he is being taught is not only wrong, but potentially dangerous. He begins to fall into terrible patterns of behavior, mirroring the problems his patients are having. Each area is worse than the last, with one doctor who thinks the best way to treat is to be aggressively hostile, one who cares only about insurance premiums and efficiency, one who treats with silence and "regression," and one who thinks the only viable treatment is to pump every patient full of experimental drugs. Ray has few personal connections, and those he does have with fellow residents, patients, and his inexplicably supportive girlfriend Berry suffer unbearably before he finally surfaces and figures out what is going on. He loses several patients, and is forced to come to terms with what he's been able to accomplish, and what mistakes he has made.

In my opinion, this book is not nearly as good as House of God for several reasons. First, it is basically a rehash of the first book: Roy enters enthusiastic, loses confidence, meets a mentor, becomes disillusioned, is pulled nearly to the edge of a complete nervous breakdown, at his lowest point manages to turn things around with the help of his mentor, happy ending. The story--and even some of the characters--was surprisingly close. There was an attempt at the end to add in some kind of resolution--of Roy trying to fix some of the problems he sees--but it feels a bit tacked on.

Another issue is that the first book was written in the 1970s during the Nixon administration, and the feeling of that era permeated the story. This one--although allegedly taking place only a year or two later--clearly takes place in the 1990s. It mentions the Clinton administration at one point, and the doctors are all prescribing Zoloft and Paxil and ritalin. However, it's never explicitly explained that this is so much later, and it's just a very odd feeling. I was pulled out of the story by this several times, because on one hand, the characters and some of the situations are very 70s, but then the doctors start diagnosing ADD. I feel like the author started this directly after House of God, then put it aside for 20 years, until he finally decided he wanted to release the sequel.

My third issue is that this book got extremely dull for a while. The third quarter of the book is Roy's stay in the Freudian analysis area, and he spends an awful lot of time explaining and contemplating Freudian theory. This is the point at which his mental state really begins to fall apart, so it's all very jumbled. I had to reread bits of the section because I'd get to the end of the page and have no idea what I just read or how it connected to anything that came before. I was interested in Roy's interactions with his patients and colleagues, not in his masturbatory theories about his own Freudian progression.

The last thing that bothered me about this was it was not nearly as entertaining. House of God had its moments of cynicism and darkness, but there was also a lot humor. Even in the worst situations, Roy had something amusing--if cynical--to say. I felt this book was considerably darker, and didn't have the same underlying sense of humor and hope.

On the whole, I would probably not recommend this book, except perhaps to those who are in the psychiatry field and might have a better perspective on it.

CR3 #16: The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie

2011-02-18T12:00:00.002-05:00

I have found that Agatha Christie's body of work feels very uneven to me. Some of her novels are blow-your-mind fantastic, filled with interesting characters and unexpectedly twisty plots. However, some of them are bland, flat, and slightly smug. It's hard to tell what you're getting really. I avoid the Poirot mysteries all together, and find that I have much better luck with her non-series works.

The Pale Horse tells the tale of Mark Easterbrook, a young writer who finds himself embroiled in the mystery of the Pale Horse Inn. One night, on his way home from hearing a dying woman's confession, a priest is murdered. Found on his body is a list of names. But who are these people? What do they have in common. Through chance encounters in a coffee shop and on a country weekend, Easterbrook begins to look into the case, trying to figure out what is going on, and what it has to do with three very spooky self-avowed "witches" living at the Pale Horse Inn.

This is definitely a plot book--the characters are adequate, but nothing particularly special. Luckily, the plot moves along well, and the pieces of the puzzle seem to fit together rationally once all is revealed. I didn't know who the murderer was until almost the very end, which is unusual for me.

I enjoyed this a lot, though it was a pretty quick read.

CR3 #15: The Zombies of Lake Woebegotten by Harrison Geillor

2011-02-16T11:36:00.003-05:00

This story of a small Minnesota town's reaction to the zombie onslaught is nothing genre-changing. It is not going to blow your mind or change the way you look at zombie literature forever. However, it's a fun story, well-written and entertaining.

Lake Woebegotten is a town in rural Minnesota. It is the sort of place that has only two police officers, and where the mayor doubles as the town's used car salesman. Things are going along in fairly normal fashion until one night there is a crazy celestial event which seems to lead to some surprising problems. The issue begins with zombie fish, and soon the whole town is trying to handle the risen dead (human and animal alike) while still continuing to deal with their typical small-town problems (who is sleeping with whom, who is worshipping Norse gods, who is keeping an arsenal in his home, who is a prolific serial killer.) The characters are not exactly deep--most are simply caricatures--but a few of them do manage some development. My favorites were probably Father Edsel, the priest, and Julie, the owner of the local cafe. The book is written in shifting perspective, so we get to drop in on quite a few of the residents of Lake Woebegotten.

The dialogue and in particular the descriptions can be very funny, and are an effective parody of Garrison Keillor's "Lake Wobegone" stories. The middle of the book is non-linear and takes place over the course of several months, so it can get mildly confusing. However, in some ways it was very effectively done, because the characters would say something and you'd be left wondering just what exactly happened when baby Jesus tried to eat everyone at the Catholic Christmas pageant?

As I said before, this is not going to knock you off your seat and change your life, but it is a fun read. The plot moves along, and I found myself laughing quite often. I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoys zombie fiction and also has a sense of humor about it.

CR3 #14: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

2011-02-14T12:20:00.002-05:00

It has been three days since I finished this book, and I am still not entirely sure whether I liked it or not. The story is of Thursday Next, a "Literary Special Ops" agent who lives in an alternate universe version of 1985 England (a place where the Crimean war continues, reincarnated dodos walk the earth, and Jane Eyre ends with Jane marrying St. John.) After a mission goes disastrously wrong, Thursday heads back to her hometown to recuperate. However, it turns out that her past is not really past (how can it be, when her father is a time-traveller who occasionally stops time for a short chat?) and that dangerous arch-villain Acheron Hades is still a hazard. When her Uncle Mycroft's new invention comes into the mix, it's a race to see who will end up with a potentially world-changing technology.

Does that explanation make any sense? I didn't think so. I was trying to write without spoilers, but the plot is so twisty and convoluted that I just wind up tying myself in knots trying to explain. Perhaps I should make a list of pros and cons for this book and leave you all to make your own devices.

Pros:
1. Thursday is a smart, interesting, and tough heroine. I enjoyed her voice through the book.
2. The idea that in the alternate universe Richard III gets the live Rocky Horror treatment.
3. The plot becomes interesting and I kept wondering what the villain's next move would be.
4. Some of the side characters were very quirky and interesting.

Cons:
1. The plot was at some points so convoluted and buried in tangents and exposition that it was almost impossible to keep up. During the first two-thirds of the book I found myself several times considering not finishing it.
2. Sometimes the alternate universe was too much. It was difficult figuring what had changed and why. Plus, sometimes it seemed the author was going off on long descriptions of the changes (Baconists -- people who believe Shakespeare did not write the Shakespearean works and go door to door advocating that it was Sir Francis Bacon--for example) just for his own amusement.
3. The romantic subplot was rather stupid and badly done.

By the time I got to the end of the book, I think that I liked it, but as I said, the first bits were so exhausting that I'm not it averages out. There are several other books in the Thursday Next series, but I am not entirely sure I'm interested in reading them.

CR3 #13: The Bachman Books by Stephen King

2011-02-11T12:17:00.003-05:00

The Bachman Books consists of four novellas that were published by Stephen King under the assumed name "Richard Bachman." Bachman was King's escape hatch--he could write non-supernatural thrillers without "tarnishing" his brand. Three of the four pieces in this collection are stories that I consider some of King's best work.

"Rage": This is actually out of print now, I believe, since one of the Columbine shooters allegedly quoted it as an inspiration and King asked that it not be printed again. It's the story of Charlie Decker, a high school senior who--on a bright spring day--shoots his algebra teacher and takes his class hostage. The story is told from Decker's point of view, as he tries to explain what drove him to this point. However, the truly surprising part is the reaction of his classmates to the situation, and the way that the tables unexpectedly turn on Charlie and on Ted, the BMOC. I like this one because the reactions of Charlie's classmates are truly surprising. Although it is at sometimes uneven, and is obviously the work of a young writer (Stephen King wrote this when he was 17 himself, and it shows...nowadays, he'd probably be expelled for writing something like this!) it certainly has its moments.

"The Long Walk": Ray Garraty is a sixteen year old from Maine who is participating in his society's big yearly event: the Long Walk. One hundred boys from around the country gather to walk as far as they can without stopping, starting in Northern Maine and maintaining a pace of at least 4 miles per hour. Ray starts out excited, but soon realizes that the walk is no laughing matter: walkers who drop below 4mph more than three times are summarily executed. It's a battle for survival and sanity. This is a great story as far as character development. The plot is fairly static (boys are walking, talking, and dying), so we'll probably never have to worry about this being made into a movie, thank God. However, the interplay between the characters and their gradual realization of what they've gotten themselves into is gripping.

"Roadwork": This is my least favorite of the four. It's basically the same original premise as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, except instead of being zipped off the face of the earth when it turns out a new freeway is going to be going directly through his house and business, the main character of this story tries to fight the man and eventually loses his mind. It's trying very hard to be "deep" and "serious" but instead it is just deeply and seriously "no fun."

"The Running Man": The movie of the same name starring the Governator is VERY VERY loosely based on this story, but the novella is 180% better. In this story, a healthy but extremely poor man living in a dystopian future needs money to provide for his sick child. He applies and is accepted for a part on the television show "The Running Man." The idea is that he has to survive for thirty days while being hunted by both trained assassins and the viewing public. As he runs, he discovers that there is more going on in the world than he could have imagined, and the giant TV conglomerate has its own dirty secrets. This is another really great story, with both a lot of action and a certain amount of character development. This would actually make a great movie, if it were done properly instead of becoming a campy cartoon.

On the whole, I'd definitely recommend getting copy of this collection -- make sure you get an old version, though, so you get all four stories.

CR3 #12: The Stone Monkey by Jeffrey Deaver

2011-02-10T13:01:00.003-05:00

The Stone Monkey is the fourth in Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme series. In this novel, the quadriplegic detective and his beautiful assistant/girlfriend Amelia Sachs are working with the NYPD, INS, and the State department to try and track down a dangerous Chinese human smuggler. The smuggler, nicknamed "The Ghost" blew up a ship full of undocumented Chinese immigrants, and then began tracking down the survivors and trying to kill them too. Rhyme and Sachs try to figure out what The Ghost plans to do next, and figure out how to capture him. They receive help from a Chinese cop as well as some inter agency cooperation.

The plot moved along pretty well, though I didn't know the chapters from the POV of The Ghost or the terrified immigrants. I would have been perfectly happy to just follow the investigation as it unfolded. I enjoy the characters of Rhyme and Sachs--they are book very different, but both are interesting to read about. Some of the side characters were also every entertaining, and I was deeply sorry when one of the was killed.

On the whole, this isn't a bad book -- it's just light fluff reading to take my mind off all the heavy non-fiction I read all of last year. I'd recommend this to anyone who likes an easy beach-read style mystery. Also, it is not necessary to have read the previous books for this one to make sense, although it's certainly more interesting to be able to spot the references.

CR3 #11: The Vampire's Assistant (Cirque Du Freak #2) by Darren Shan

2011-02-04T12:46:00.003-05:00

The second book in Darren Shan's Cirque Du Freak series picks up exactly where the first ended. Young Darren has been taken in by Larton Crepsley to be trained as a vampire's assistant. Darren has difficulty coming to terms with his new existence (half-vampire) and with having to leave everything he's ever known behind. However, Mr. Crepsley decides that they should rejoin the Cirque Du Freak, which is great for Darren. He makes some new friends, including Ezra Von, the snake boy. Unfortunately, danger and mystery are still in the mix for Darren--Mr. Tiny and his carnivorous "Little People" are disquieting at best, and it turns out that having normal human friends can prove more challenging that Darren originally realized. The ending of the book is both surprising and disturbing.

I like this one better than the first--it is less exposition and more action, in my opinion. Sometimes Darren comes close to "Harry Potter in #5 unbearably whiny" levels, but the author manages to pull him back to humor most of the time. The side characters are great, and the atmosphere of the Cirque itself really adds to the interest. If you were sort of on the fence about the first one, I recommend trying this and seeing if you end up with a definite opinion. I am not rabid for more (it's no Sookie book, after all) but I certainly look forward to the next installment.

CR3 #10: A Living Nightmare (Cirque du Freak #1) by Darren Shan

2011-01-31T13:45:00.003-05:00

I watched roughly half of the film Cirque Du Freak, and thought to myself , "This is vaguely entertaining. I wonder if there is a book?" And as it turned out, there was!

The first book in the series introduces us to main character Darren Shan, an average 15 year old British schoolboy. He lives with his parents and younger sister and is almost totally average. Then one day, he and his best friend Steve (who seems the very definition of a bad influence) get the opportunity to visit the Cirque Du Freak, a very mysterious freak show. After seeing the show, things begin to go awry for Darren. Steve has some dark secrets, and Darren's adventures with a poisonous spider bring things to a head. Pretty soon, he ends up becoming part of the Cirque Du Freak as a vampire's assistant.

This is not a bad book, particularly if you keep in mind that it's a YA novel. It is probably perfect for the 10 - 14ish range, though I will admit I mostly enjoyed it. The author does very well with using and defining vocabulary words without making it obvious or sounding like a douche (the main reason I couldn't handle reading any of the Series of Unfortunate Events books was the unbearably pompous narrator). This book suffers a bit from "first book in a series" issues, in that there is an awful lot of exposition. On the whole, though, it is a fun little book to breeze through in an afternoon.