Mini Reviews III: A Convenient Artistic Malice

This parcel of mini reviews features a contemporary romance set in New Zealand, a classic Regency, and a mystery/thriller from Japan. Enjoy!

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Artistic License by Elle Pierson

Art student Sophy is so distracted by a museum security guard with a face "Picasso would love" that she doesn't duck out of the way in time to avoid colliding with his impressively muscled torso. When she asks him to model for, Mick feels like he can't say no, and he's not sure he wants to. Will these two crazy kids get together???

I'll readily admit that I have a weakness for any book involving artists or art. Sometimes this leads me astray, but in this case it didn't. While Artistic License isn't a perfect novel–the clothing descriptions in the first chapter were enough to drive me bonkers; the author apparently has an obsession with jackets because I literally knew what kind of jacket every single character was wearing, or had ever worn–the story drew me in and, for the most part, I enjoyed reading it.

Sophy is an Anastasia Steele type of character: young, uncoordinated, shy, awkward, and not very confident. Normally this would be eye roll inducing, but here it felt authentic, possibly because Sophy is also quirky and accepting of herself as she is. Mick is slightly less well-drawn, but I loved the details in his mannerisms that gave the book a well-needed dash of realism.

This is one of those stories where the hero/heroine don't hook up for a long ass time for no good reason, and there were some niggling little details that bothered me, but overall Artistic License is a good–not great–read. If you're at loose ends searching for a romance, you could do worse.

The Convenient Marriage by Georgette Heyer

I've tried to read a couple of Georgette Heyer books in the past and pretty much gave up on that. But then I saw a post on Angieville about how she loved The Convenient Marriage, and one of the commenters said the audiobook version was narrated by Richard Armitage. RICHARD ARMITAGE, said my brain. And, lo and behold, said audiobook was on Hoopla. I immediately started listening to it and I'm glad I did, because it's a hella entertaining coming-of-age story full of adventure, duels, and social contretemps.

The Convenient Marriage is kind of like Pride & Prejudice, if Mary Bennet had decided to take matters into her own tentacles and propose to one of Jane's wealthy suitors. Horatia *seems* like she would be a shy, uncertain young woman, because of her stutter. But in fact she's feisty and a grab-life-by-both-hands sort. She's self-conscious about her stutter but still insists on going out in society and doing what she wants, which also makes her seem really brave.

Lord Rule is a bit more of a caricature, all laconic and superior all the time (except when he gets really pissed off), but whatever. It works here. And there are many other characters and a ton of stuff happening in the book that has nothing directly to do with the "romance" between Rule and Horry, so much so that you could almost turn this book into an entire TV series!

Finally, I really have to mention Armitage again, because he is an AMAAAAAzing narrator. Every character had his or her own voice and it was hard to believe one person could embody so many different personalities and accents. Honestly the best audiobook narrator I've ever listened to; I will definitely be listening to every other audiobook he's ever worked on.

Highly recommended!

And now for something completely different...

Malice by Keigo Higashino

I received Malice as a birthday (or Christmas?) present, and honestly didn't know what to expect from it. It's not the type of book I would normally pick up on my own: the summary makes it sound like a dark and gritty police procedural, which is not my jam at all. After reading it, I would still say it's not "my type" of book. But because the writing is so fantastic, Malice transcended its genre and completely won me over.

The story is about two writers and their books: one, Kunihiko Hidaka, is a bestselling author; the other, Osamu Nonoguchi, is a literary unknown and Hidaka's childhood friend. When Hidaka's body inside his locked office, Nonoguchi decides to write about the investigation, much to the consternation of Detective Kaga.

I wish I could say more, but I don't want to ruin the twists and turns for you. I'll admit that the last twist went way beyond the bounds of plausibility and sense-making for me, but it was a thrilling ride getting there nonetheless. I can definitely see why Higashino is one of Japan's bestest-selling authors: his writing is compulsively readable. This is the type of novel you want to consume in great big gulps because it grabs hold of your imagination almost immediately. I'll definitely be on the lookout for more of Higashino's books in the future!





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A Heap of Mini-Reviews

I've been neglecting book reviews on this blog for much too long. The problem is, while I do have things to say about the books I've been reading, I rarely have bunches to say about them. So, enter mini-reviews!

For this batch of mini-reviews, I'm looking at a mystery, YA dystopian, fantasy novel, and thriller. Which were worth my time and which made me want to set fire to something? Read on to find out!

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Noblesse Oblige by Cynthia Smith (mystery)

Emma Rhodes has a very unusual job: essentially, she's a private problem resolver. Rich people hire her to solve their problems, big or small, in just two weeks for the low low fee of $20,000. Business is strange, but good: Emma wears the best clothes, drinks the best booze, and jets between her three homes in NYC, London, and Spain. On this particular week, she's house-sitting in Bruges when she happens to be in the right place at the right time to stop the kidnapping of a member of the Belgian royal family. The royals quickly retain her services, but Emma soon realizes she may not survive the two weeks until she can collect her fee.

I read this book when I was a teenager, and I remember being all about Emma Rhodes. She has everything a girl could want: a life full of travel, handsome men, excellent food, exciting puzzles to solve, and best of all complete independence. She's practically the female version of James Bond. As an adult, I found this more irritating than anything else (jealousy? perhaps) and also found it hilarious how Emma goes into rants that leave her sounding like an octogenarian whig. Some of the things Emma has issues with:

• Kids these days! They blame their parents for everything!
• Cell phones: terrible invention of the 20th century, or WORST invention of the 20th century?
• People who don't say good morning. Even if you're a not a morning person, there's no excuse for being rude!

Anyway, I did like this book, but Emma probably won't be my role model. Anymore.

The Heir by Kiera Cass (YA dystopian-ish)

Princess Eadlyn is the first female to ever be in line for the crown, thanks to her politically progressive parents. But despite their open-minded policies, her parents think forcing her to submit to the traditional Selection–where suitors are gathered from all over the kingdom to compete for a royal's hand in marriage–is a good idea. Eadlyn disagrees, but is forced to go along with it. Nevertheless, she is determined never to fall for any of these "boys."

This is the first Selection book I've read. It was okay. I liked that Eadlyn was a total bitch, but in a good way. Cuz, you know.

I found the details of the Selection often vague or illogical. For example, the cameras–when and where are these people being filmed? Sometimes it sounds like there are hidden cameras on them all the time, and sometimes it's only when they're permitted. If they're only allowed during official times, how would they have "caught" her kissing Kyle? Makes no sense. Perhaps it's explained in the previous three novels.

The book ends on a cliffhanger, sort of, and there's another book to wrap everything up, but I'm not sure I'm going to read it. I don't really care who Eadlyn winds up with and the drawn-out passages about other couples in love and how mayyyybeeee she might want that (or not) made me want to scream. How on earth has this been stretched into five books?

Masked City by Genevieve Cogman (fantasy)

Librarian Irene has been permanently assigned to Viction Steampunk London with her apprentice, Kai, a dragon. Then Kai is kidnapped by the fae, the dragons' mortal enemies, and taken to a fae-controlled Venice that's a mix of fantasy, dream, and nightmare. Will Irene be able to rescue him and prevent a war between the dragons and the fae that could stretch across worlds and destroy everything the Library has accomplished?

I liked previous book in this series, The Invisible Library, but I adored Masked City. First of all, Venice! And not just any Venice, but the Venice of imagination, with prisons straight out of a Piranesi sketch and a constant whirl of masked balls and mysterious happenings. Another highlight was Sherlock Holmes–oh, sorry, he's called Vale in this alternate–who remains true to the Holmesian tradition by being at once an irritating jerkface and completely awesome. I am totally shipping him and Irene, I don't care about the canon. The ending of the story was very abrupt but left me wanting more and more. I definitely recommend this series!

The Chemist by Stephenie Meyer (thriller)

The Chemist is basically Meyer channeling David Baldacci or Lee Child. Unfortunately she's really bad at it. Basically, you've got a woman of several names and unknown age, hiding from an evil government department she used to work for. What exactly this department does, is called, how she got the job, and what she did there, is never specifically addressed. At some point someone decided she and her mentor were expendable (again, we're not really told why) and attempted to kill them both. They succeeded with the mentor, but she survived. Now she's on the run, dodging assassination attempts. Perhaps she would have more luck with this if she moved beyond driving distance of DC (just a suggestion on my part but what do I know). But then! The department contacts her, asking her to return to the fold and stop a nonsensical terrorist plot that only she can prevent.

I appreciate that the smart, ruthless main character in The Chemist is a woman–you'd never see her like in a Child novel, for sure–but nothing in this book sounded plausible, and reading the long-ass explanations of our paranoid heroine's daily routine was like watching paint dry. Meyers gives us all the details we don't give two shits about and skips over the information that would make this book feel at least slightly grounded in reality. When the secret twin showed, I was done.

Major ugh.


Stay tuned next time for more mini-reviews!


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Review: THE ART FORGER by BA Shapiro

Claire Roth, expert Degas art reproducer and aspiring painter of original works, is approached by gallery owner Aiden Markel to paint a copy of a Degas masterwork. It would be business as usual for Claire, if only the painting wasn't the one stolen in the infamous 1990 Gardner Heist. But is the painting *really* the one painted by Degas? And will Claire and Aiden get away with switching one painting out for another?

Setting the very dodgy art history in this book aside–which I'm willing to recognize few besides myself would care about–The Art Forger had some major narrative issues that prevented me from thoroughly enjoying it.

Spoilers ahoy, mateys!

First and least of all, The Art Forger is a bit predictable and some plot points rely way too heavily on convenient coincidences. For example, Claire's only friends include a curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, plus a lawyer with a passion for art. You can see where this is going, can't you friends? Hint hint: the curator will intervene on her behalf and the lawyer will keep her case from turning into the next Netflix true crime documentary series.

Secondly and more annoyingly, the plausibility issues were occasionally mind-boggling. The one I kept getting stuck on was that she approaches her curator friend with the story that: 1., the recently returned Degas painting is a copy that she painted; and 2. that she thinks the "real" Degas is hidden in a museum sub-basement.

This is not suspicious in and of itself, but given that said curator friend knows she's been shacking up with the man recently arrested for selling the stolen Degas painting, I find it incredible he didn't add two and two and come up with THEY WERE IN ON IT TOGETHER. I mean, that's a pretty odd coincidence, no? Yet instead of exhibiting natural skepticism, he swallows Claire's story whole and winds up endangering his job–something I can tell you for a fact is NOT easy to come by–by letting her into the museum after hours. Don't even get me started.

Another point that made my brain hurt was Claire's belief that if she found this mythical "real" Degas painting, Aiden will no longer be charged with selling stolen goods.

OKAY, BUT WHAT???? Just because the stolen painting wasn't a real Degas doesn't mean Aiden didn't sell stolen goods. It was still the painting that was stolen from the Gardner. Whether it's a Degas or a Dr Seuss isn't really relevant to the question of his guilt or lack thereof.

Not to mention there's this whole thing about intent and, since far as Aiden was concerned the painting WAS a real Degas, and he did fully intended to make money off it, you can't really argue he's not guilty. Unless you're delusional, have never watched TV, and can't be bothered to read up on basic US laws.

Finally, there's a whole bunch of pointless, boring stuff. Tip: go ahead and just skip over Belle Gardner's letters. The characters sum up what they were about for you at the very end of the book, which is handy. The scenes in the prison, which I imagine were supposed to make Claire seem like not quite as much of a greedy sad sack with a broken moral compass, were simply irritating; and the flashbacks to her contretemps over her first forgery didn't impress me with her emotional maturity or intelligence.

Basically, I found this book to be pretty difficult to buy into. Maybe I just know too much about art, but I'd like to think whatever knowledge I posses or don't wouldn't matter with an author who does their homework and takes the time to establish character motivation. And besides, at least half of the stuff that bothered me wasn't about art at all.

I did enjoy Xe Sands narration on the audio, but I probably won't be checking out any of Shapiro's other books.





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Review: THE DEVIL'S GRIN by Annelie Wendeberg

By day, Dr. Anton Kronberg is one of the leading bacteriologists in the world. By night, Anton becomes Anna, a nurse living in the worst slum in London. Since women are barred from practicing medicine, Anna pretends to be a man so she can pursue her passion for science. No one's ever seen through her disguise–no one except the famous consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes. Now Anna and Sherlock must work together to solve the mysterious death of a man found floating in the Thames. Was it disease, or murrrrrderrrrr? I'm guessing the latter.

I have mixed feelings on The Devil's Grin. The story moves very fast, I loved Anna, and the mystery was somewhat chilling. But there seemed to be a lot of gaps in logical storytelling, and by the end I found myself wondering why Sherlock was included in the book at all (aside from marketing, of course).

I'm always a little hesitant going into crossdressing stories like this because they tend not to resonate with me (one word: Yentl. Uhg), but actually the crossdressing was one of the least-problematic aspects of the book. What did bother me was that Wendeberg took what started off as a very interesting character and turned her into something over-the-top and cartoonish. So not only is Anna a crossdressing, famous scientist, she runs through the woods barefoot like a little gazelle and swims in lakes on the moors. Naked. At night. In my head, I was picturing those drawings by (male, naturally) explorers of Indian women swinging from trees bare-breasted. Realism! Anna also exposes her naked self to Sherlock. Cuz, you know, why would a Victorian female who spends most of her life hiding the fact that she's a woman have body issues, AMIRITE?

The investigation also didn't seem like it progressed logically–or, to be more specific, the solution to the problem that Anna came up with didn't seem like a good default option. SPOILERS AHEAD, YE'VE BEEN WAAARNED: When Anna and Sherlock discover that the murder victim came from an asylum where they're performing medical experiments on their patients, Anna's solution is to:

1. get a grant to study the diseases they're experimenting with; 
2. become the world's leading expert on said diseases; 
3. lure them into asking her to work with them (see: become an expert); 
4. gain their trust; and finally, 
5. expose their activities. 

This, she says, is the ONLY WAY TO STOP THEM. What? Huhn? There are a lot of assumptions running through that plan. What if she doesn't get the grant? What if they move on to other diseases by the time she's an expert? Meanwhile, there are a bunch of people still being experimented on and dying! Why didn't she and Sherlock do what they ended up doing anyway and just call the police to raid the asylum? Sure, they found a few more of the people working behind the scenes to run the experiments by following Anna's plan, but they probably could have discovered all that just as easily through other investigative methods. I would have expected Sherlock to be more dedicated to the principle of Occam's razor.

And speaking of Sherlock: let's be honest, the only reason I decided to read this book was because Sherlock Holmes was in it. Yet I wasn't very impressed by his role in the story. He never actually investigates anything–indeed, he doesn't seem to think there *is* anything to investigate (to be fair, he's mostly right). And the "romance" between him and Anna made me roll my eyes. Part of the Sherlock canon is that he's asexual. I'm not opposed to breaking the canon, but if you're going to do it you have to do it in a convincing way–like in the Mary Russell series, for example. Here it just felt rushed and uninformed. Wendeberg could have given Holmes another name and made him just another detective, and I never would have identified him as based on Sherlock Holmes.

This all makes it sound like I hated The Devil's Grin (additional question: what is the meaning of this title?), but I actually didn't. It was an overall enjoyable read with some weird moments. And honestly, I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it as much if it HADN'T had those WTF moments. Without them I might have (probably) gotten bored. Also, how many books do you read with crossdressing female detectives? Not a bunch!

Since this is a fairly original book and a very fast read, I'm willing to forgive a lot. I'll probably wind up reading the second book in this series (against my better judgment, what there is of it). If Sherlockian books about Victorian lady scientists who don't put up with any crap are of interest to you, definitely give The Devil's Grin a shot.



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Review: THE BOOKSELLER by Mark Pryor

Hugo Marston is the head of security at the US Embassy in Paris and a bibliophile, which is how he comes to know Max, a bouquiniste—one of the people who sell used books from stalls along the Seine. While chatting with Max one wintry day, Hugo witnesses his old friend being kidnapped, but the police refuse to do anything or even believe Max is in danger. So Hugo takes matters into his own tentacles and decides to do some investing on his own time, with assistance from his CIA friend, Tom, and a beautiful Parisian journalist. Will he be able to discover why Max was taken and if he's still alive?

I am on a serious Paris kick lately—not intentionally, but maybe subconsciously. First there was The Chocolate Touch, Chocolate Thief, and Chocolate Heart by Laura Florand (I basically spent all of April reading Florand novels), and now The Bookseller. But this novel shows a very different Paris from the one in The Chocolate Touch or Thief—this is Paris' dark side, locked in gunmetal grey skies, where a person can disappear as if they never even existed. I kind of loved it. The Bookseller isn't a perfect novel, but it has a lot to recommend it.

First of all, this is the type of book that has everything you want in a noir-ish type mystery: mysterious women who may not be trustworthy, friends who drink too much and have their own agenda, hidden messages, Nazi hunters, gangs, lying cops, corruption, aristocrats, a smart-mouthed secretary, an American who wears cowboy boots. Add in a bunch of Agatha Christie references, a glimpse into the culture of bouquinistes (which I had never really thought about), and several books with incredible histories attached to them, and it would be pretty difficult to make me NOT like this novel.

The main character, Hugo, was also really well-drawn. He has an extensive history; at times The Bookseller felt like the second or third book in a series, not the third. And unlike many mystery heroes, Hugo is uniquely qualified to investigate a kidnapping on foreign soil—in addition to being head of security, he used to work for the FBI (or was it CIA? Anyway...), and he knows his way around guns and stuff, because 'Merica.

That being said, there were a lot of coincidences in this novel that were just too convenient and never explained, aside from being coincidences. Why does Tom just show up suddenly in Paris? Even if he did have a thing going in Marseilles—which sounds fishy—that's not exactly in the neighborhood. And the sexy reporter who hits on Hugo just HAPPENS to be tangentially involved in Max's disappearance? Mmmrkay.

But on the plus side, at least there was more to the investigation than just walking and talking, and you really can't beat the setting. The Bookseller is a very promising start to a series, a book about books, and I wouldn't be averse to reading the further adventures of Hugo. Definitely worth checking out!


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Movie Review: PAPRIKA

Originally Released: 2006
Starring: Megumi Hayashibara, Katsunosuke Hori, Tōru Furuya
Directed by: Satoshi Kon
Based on: the novel of the same name by Yasutaka Tsutsui

Chiba is a psychologist and ice queen, but she's not a stone cold bitch—she's just sleep deprived. Every night she uses an experimental device called a DC Mini to traipse through other people's dreams as a manic pixie dream girl named Paprika. It's all in the name of therapy, of course, but unfortunately someone else at her corporation has also decided to misappropriate a few DC Minis. And unlike Chiba, they're not using their newfound abilities for good. Will Chiba (or Paprika) be able to restore the balance of dreams and reality?

Don't mess with me, bud.

I first heard about Paprika from Bridget at Portable Pieces of Thoughts. I was intrigued by the premise right from the start, mainly because I love animé and am always looking for good animé recommendations. But when Bridget described Paprika as making the movie Inception look like child's play, I knew I HAD to see it. I'm glad I did, because Paprika is an awesome movie—and it is a film, not a cartoon. I would not recommend parking your little kids in front of this one.

As Bridget said, Paprika has definite similarities to Inception: In both films, there are dreams within dreams within dreams, the characters are in danger of having a psychotic break between reality or even dying in the dream world, and people with DC Minis can implant ideas into someone's subconscious mind while they're dreaming. Yet for me, Paprika was more reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound. Just as in Spellbound, you have a beautiful but royally uptight psychiatrist with an awesome old guy mentor, who uses dreams to help solve a mystery. Whereas Inception was an epic journey hidden inside a caper plot, Paprika is a coming-of-age story framed in a suspense plot. With, obviously, crazy-ass dreams.

Not the bendy floors!

The execution of Paprika is flawless. Not only is the animation gorgeous and hallucinatory, but I've seen movies with human actors that convey emotions less eloquently and have less chemistry than these animated characters do! For example, almost as soon as Chiba and Osanai appear on screen together you KNOW he has a thing for her. How I don't even know. And the moment Konakawa, a detective Chiba is treating, meets Chiba IRL for the first time and realizes she's Paprika is priceless.

I also thought the use of art in Paprika was interesting. Normally one would expect filmmakers tackling the subject of dreams and the subconscious to reference surrealism in some way, like in Hitchcock's Spellbound. Paprika doesn't, at least not overtly, and I applaud them for it. Not only is surrealist art in movie dream sequences practically a cliché at this point, but that would be redundant considering the film animation as a whole is very surreal. Instead, the filmmakers give a nice shout-out to the symbolists, who helped inspire the surrealists.

Paprika and Osanai entering Gustave Moreau's Oedipus and the Sphinx.

Other things I loved about Paprika:

• The soundtrack for this film is awesome. I immediately downloaded it.
• Points for creepiest use of a doll EVER.
• The fact that the film touches on the similarities between dreams and the internet and movies, and then LEAVES IT AT THAT. I wasn't repeatedly hit over the head with it.
• The ending! It was so unusual and sweet and happy-making, not to mention the type of conclusion that Hollywood would NEVER, not in A HUNDRED MILLION YEARS have the balls to put out there.

So, yeah. I enjoyed this one and recommend it. If you're a Prime member, you can stream it on Amazon for free. Thanks to Bridget for letting me know about it!

Rush out and see it!

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Review: THE DARK HORSE by Craig Johnson

Mary Barsad confessed to killing her husband, Wade, after he set fire to their barn and burned all her horses to death. And who can blame her! But for some reason Sheriff Walt Longmire doesn't believe she did it. So he goes undercover (read: people start figuring out who he is within five minutes) in the town of Absalom, Wyoming, to find out who did kill Wade, and why they framed Mary for his murder.

You know that town from the movie Unforgiven, Big Whiskey? Well, Absalom is kind of like that. It is godforsaken. No one wants to be there, even the people who live there. It's like the gate to hell ("Abandon hope, all ye who enter here"). Not the greatest place to live, but a REALLY great setting for a novel. Combine that with Walt's flashbacks of Mary Barsad's stay in his jail, and The Dark Horse definitely has the feeling of a western noir. It's very dark, but balanced nicely by Walt's trademark self-deprecating humor.

So basically, I really liked The Dark Horse. The regular gang—Henry, Vic, Lucien, Rose, etc.—aren't in this volume very much, but the new characters Craig Johnson introduces are full of personality and interesting. There are also flashbacks, and as anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I'm not a fan of the flashbacks and backstory. I usually skim over them, which is exactly what I did in the previous Longmire novel, Another Man's Moccasins. However, the flashbacks in The Dark Horse actually aren't unnecessary backstory; they're where about 90% of the detecting happens, and I really wanted to find out why Walt was convinced Mary didn't kill her husband. I can also see where breaking up that section into small segments throughout the novel told the story more effectively than if Johnson had written the book with a more linear timeline. So this is one of the few times where I can wholeheartedly endorse flashback scenes.

Another aspect of The Dark Horse I found really interesting is that Johnson kind of takes a What If scenario with modern medicine. Usually his mystery plots are pretty straight-forward and based on things that everyone already knows is a problem: human trafficking, drugs, etc. etc. But in The Dark Horse, Johnson lays out a scenario where zolpidem is used to commit a murder. Kinda creepy.

Unfortunately, the last fifty pages of the book were a major drag. It seemed like Walt just rode around on a horse for a reeeeeally long time. And the conclusion was a joke—the book just abruptly ends, after which there's an annoying epilogue.

But overall The Dark Horse is a good novel with one of Johnson's more twisty mysteries. Can you imagine the type of person who would set fire to a barn and just let the horses inside it burn while he watched? That's a bad un.



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Review: THE SALINGER CONTRACT by Adam Langer

I received a digital copy of The Salinger Contract for review consideration, which didn't influence my opinion of the book in any way.

Adam Langer is an emasculated writer playing house husband in Bloomington, Indiana. His life revolves around laundry, dirty dishes, and his daughters' ear infections. Adam hasn't finished writing a story in YEARS--creatively, he's impotent. But all that changes when he happens to meet up with a fellow author, Conner Joyce, a best-selling writer of thriller novels whose star is on the wane. At least, until he's approached by a bespoke Waldo Lydecker type named Dex. Dex has an offer Conner can't refuse: write a novel just for Dex, for two and a half million dollars. The catch? No one else can ever know about the novel or their deal. Of course, Conner accepts. But it isn't long before he suspects he's made a deal with the devil and turns to Adam for help.

Basically, I loved this novel. When I started it I was in one of those Simon Cowell moods. You know, when everything you pick up makes you go, "BORRRRING. Next!" Or maybe that only happens to me. ANYWAY, The Salinger Contract managed to capture and hold my attention from page one despite my mood. It's fast-paced, unputdownable, and positively delightful, especially if you're a fan of olde-timey crime novels or film noir movies.

Like his friend, Conner, Adam uses an excess of detail to make what would be an otherwise outlandish plot convincing. Thankfully this detail does not involve unnecessary clothing descriptions or other crap I don't care about; instead, the details focus on books, which apparently does not bother me at all. For example, instead of reading his kids an unnamed book before bedtime, Adam reads them Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile. Love that. I also found the portrait Langer paints of life in a small university town to be wry, cynical, and dead-on accurate. One of the university professors Langer describes is so exactly like a former professor of mine that I actually checked to see if he ever taught in Indiana (he hadn't).

Adam's portion of the book was so realistic and pitch-perfect that when Conner's completely bizarre story began, I was 100% ready and willing to be sold on it. The only glitches that niggled at me were Conner's hesitation in signing Dex's contract—I'd be like, "Givemethatthankyoubyenow." And also, it didn't sound like Conner put any money aside for taxes. I think the IRS would probably notice if your bank account suddenly went up by 2.5 million, don't you? I'll also say that I saw all the twists coming pretty early in the novel. But neither that, nor my little niggles about the tax thing, prevented me from thoroughly enjoying The Salinger Contract and wanting to know what happened next.

The thing about this novel is that it tells the type of story that any author or reader would WANT to be true. I mentioned at the beginning of this post that Adam starts the story as emasculated, incapable of creating anything. The same could be said of the other major character, as well: Conner is having problems with his wife, looking at having to sell his house and car, and feeling like his entire career consists of rewriting the same book over and over. Then he agrees to write a novel for Dex and suddenly everything's coming up roses, and not just in the financial department: he's full of inspiration, writing constantly, and his wife and he start trying for another baby. Likewise, in listening to and then telling Conner's story, Adam finds a way to save his family from destitution and discovers who he is—again, not just through money, but by using stories. The Salinger Contract isn't just a fast-paced thriller (though it is that), but a book about the power of stories to inspire people to the point that they're empowered to act out those stories in their own lives.

It's also about the connection between an author and reader that's formed through books. It's one the author's usually completely unaware of and not responsible for; but for the reader it feels very personal, possibly because it says more about them than the book. It's that relationship that gives a story life, and one that every author wishes for their work.

If you're a reader (and since you're visiting this blog, I'm going to assume that you are) who enjoys mysteries, thrillers, or books about books, I would definitely recommend The Salinger Contract. Oh, and I'm totally drinking at the Coq d'Or the next time I'm in Chicago. Cuz you never know.



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Review: ANOTHER MAN'S MOCCASINS by Craig Johnson

When the body of a young woman is found off of I-25, within spitting distance of an underpass where a homeless man with obvious psychological problems is hiding, the murder seems like an open-and-shut case. But not to Sheriff Walt Longmire. Despite the fact that the man in question, Virgil White Buffalo, attacked him, Walt isn't so sure Virgil would kill anyone without a reason. And when a photograph of Walt taken in Vietnam is found among the victim's possessions, he knows there's something more to the woman's story—he just has to figure out why she's in Wyoming and how she's connected to his past.

This is the fourth (I think? Yes, fourth) book in the Walt Longmire series by Craig Johnson, and it's a quick read. I enjoyed it, even though I do have to admit I completely skipped the backstory scenes set in Vietnam. You know me—I don't have the patience for backstory. I did read the first few, and young-Walt and -Henry were adorbs, but I have to say the novel didn't suffer for my having skipped over those scenes at all.

Okay, I'm about to get spoilery, so if you can't handle gigantic hints about who the murderer is, skip the next paragraph.

Another Man's Moccasins is one of those mysteries where whodunnit is obvious pretty early on, but Johnson tricks both Walt and the reader into questioning their instincts by using their insecurities and sympathies against them. I have to say, it was pretty well-done. All of the main suspects are strangers, people passing through Absaroka County on their way to somewhere else. All of them have some history with violence, and two of them are part of racially discriminated groups—Indian and Vietnamese. Is Walt targeting the other two suspects more than Virgil because he sympathizes with a fellow Vietnam vet (as Henry says after Virgil's arrested, "He's one of us," and he doesn't mean Indian. Cue band of brothers reference), or because his experiences in Vietnam have prejudiced him against Vietnamese people? Some of the new guys on Walt's staff assume it's the latter, which kind of hurts his feelings. So he spends the rest of the book asking his friends if they think he's prejudiced, and I would be tempted to say the novel is about prejudice if the mystery hadn't shook out the way it did. Instead, I think the point is that you shouldn't judge someone's reactions as unreasonable or crazy or prejudiced until you know where they're coming from.

Anyway, the mystery in Another Man's Moccasins is pretty straight-forward, which is probably why this book is so short. Even if you don't skip the Vietnam scenes, it's still less than 300 pages. But it gives Johnson an opportunity to explore the effects of war on Walt, his BFF Henry Standing Bear, his mentor and the former Absaroka County sheriff, Lucian, and Virgil.

Another of the things I really enjoyed about Another Man's Moccasins is that Johnson's background in playwriting really shines through, especially in the second half of the book. The climax is perfect: spooky, dramatic, with an almost Shakespearean conclusion. And the book plays around with concepts of perception and knowledge that demonstrates a more sophisticated use of storytelling than in the previous Longmire books.

So as Walt would say, Yep. Another good book in the series.



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Review: THE GREAT MISTAKE by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Patricia Abbott is the social secretary to Mrs. Maud Wrainwright, the mistress of a huge mansion called the Cloisters because a good portion of it is a medieval monastery, shipped stone-by-stone from Europe to the idyllic hill overlooking the small town of Beverly. Pat likes her employer and her job, but a pall is cast over the Cloisters when a series of attacks and murders take place in the estate's ominously-named Playhouse. Will Pat and her friends from Beverly be able to discover who the murderer is, or will an innocent person go to jail?

As long-time readers of this blog know, I'm a fan of Mary Roberts Rinehart, the so-called American Agatha Christie (I somewhat disagree with that statement, but if it inspires other people to read her books, I'm good with it). The Great Mistake reminded me of another book of Rinehart's, The Swimming Pool—not just because the covers look similar, but because three quarters of the people who are attacked in this novel wind up either in or next to a swimming pool. I'm going to guess "the great mistake" was installing a pool. Never put in a pool! That way murder lies.

The Great Mistake also deals with similar themes to The Swimming Pool: wealth, the precariousness of the American dream, and so on. It's less successful than The Swimming Pool at fleshing those themes out, but I do think The Great Mistake is much better than The Swimming Pool at telling a good story with sympathetic characters.

The beginning of The Great Mistake immediately sucked me in. I loved Pat and how she definitely had people she liked and people she didn't. I also loved the chemistry between her and Tony Wrainwright, Maud's son. He's definitely charming, whereas Pat isn't, and it takes her a while to warm up to him. And then his wife shows up. Dun-dun-dun!

The mystery was also very complicated and difficult to figure out. For most of the novel I thought this was a good thing. But after the attack on Maud, I felt like it was time things started wrapping up. They didn't; there was a good 100 pages to go and people STILL kept being attacked. It was annoying because these attacks didn't further the plot of the book at all, nor did they provide me clues as to who the murderer was. Keeping readers in the dark is all well and good, but at some point one does need a collection of viable suspects. Even after the detective explained how he figured out who the killer was, Rinehart STILL kept the name of the murderer from us. I was like, "JUST TELL ME WHO THE FUCKING MURDERER IS ALREADY!" Seriously, I said that aloud, while banging the book against my forehead. I was THAT annoyed. If this novel had had a neck I would have strangled it.

The Great Mistake also employs a strange narrative device where Pat describes scenes to the reader as if she witnessed them personally, when she didn't (it's written in the first person, from Pat's point of view). I didn't hate the device, but it was a little odd, and it stretched the story out by a good third or maybe even a half. I don't need to sit in on every freaking conversation the police have, you feel me? If Rinehart wanted to include scenes that didn't involve Pat, why write The Great Mistake in the first person? It was just odd.

Because of the ending, my feelings toward The Great Mistake are mixed. I loved the first half and all the drama between Tony, his wife, Pat, and the other drama going on in Beverly. But by the second half neither Tony nor Maud do very much except panic because another person's dead in the Playhouse, which made them pretty boring; and the final quarter tried my patience to the nth degree (not that that's very difficult to do). There was a point where Rinehart just really needed to stop and wrap things up, and she went way beyond that point. That being said, Pat was a great character, and for the most part it was good mystery. Overall I think The Great Mistake was an okay read, but it's a bummer how a terrible ending can completely alter one's opinion of a novel.



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J'ai Deux Amours, Neither of Which Are These Books

I really need to stop reading every book that crosses my path and has the word "Paris" in the title, you guys.

In the past two weeks I've read two books that both take place in pre-War Paris (well, kinda). And they both kind of sucked, although for different reasons.



The first was The Bones of Paris by Laurie R. King. It follows the walking and talking of Harris Stuyvesant, an itinerant PI who's trying to find a missing girl in what the author continually reminds us is 1929 Paris. As in, "But hey, it's 1929 Paris!" The "twist" is that Harris slept with Pip before she disappeared. Quelle horreur, y'all. As he follows Pip's trail, he discovers artists are assholes, and one of them might have killed Pip.

Now, I didn't pick up this book JUST because it had the word Paris in the title; I was also intrigued because I like King's Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes novels (or I did, until I DNF'd two in a row because they were boring me). Based on those books I expected better research and writing from King than I got in this novel. It was almost as if she got all her research from watching Midnight in Paris and Discovery Channel documentaries: everything from the historical characters to the bone-filled catacombs has been treaded and retreaded a thousand times. Even the scenes with Sylvia Beach (whom Harris naturally knows, because I'm sure she loved hanging out with aging private investigators) are so obviously based on those two photographs of her that are in every documentary about Paris in the 1920s. And naturally Picasso, Salvador Dalí, F. Scott Fitgerald, and Cole Porter all have to be mentioned. Come on, I can get this stuff from any book. I had to roll my eyes when it turned out Harris knew Ernest Hemingway, and Kiki de Montparnasse (but never even heard of the guy Kiki lived with for nearly a decade, Man Ray? Makes no sense).

The lack of original and unexpected story lines wouldn't have bothered me too much if King actually brought the city and society of Paris to life, but she didn't. There was a whole lot of tell and not show going on—some passages read distinctly guidebook-y—and while King might have been going for a crime noir type novel, the tone of the writing was too light to pull it off. I was also a little bothered by the way some of the surrealists, like Man Ray and Lee Miller, were portrayed. But to be fair, that's probably because of my background in art history.

In the end The Bones of Paris just wasn't interesting enough to hold my attention. I only read it for a few days, but it felt like WEEKS because nothing happened and I didn't give a damn if Harris found Pip or not. Or if he threw himself into the Seine, for that matter. The Bones of Paris was a DNF, and I think it will also be the last book I read by King.





The second novel, Midnight Train to Paris, was originally released as a Kindle serial and is about a journalist whose twin sister is kidnapped from a train along with two other women. Just so happens, 75 years earlier three other women were taken from the same train, at the same place and time. Coincidence?! Soon Jillian is traveling to Switzerland with her ex-luvarh (who used to be in the CIA but is now a private super-investigator) to find her sister and solve both kidnappings, in both time periods!

There is sooo much going on in this book: corrupt US senators, child abuse, murrrrder, betrayal, scandal (sounds like an ABC lineup), art, time travel, train mysteries, castles hidden in the mountains, insanity... LORDY LORDY. I have to admit that I enjoyed it a lot more than The Bones of Paris because there was stuff going on (what a concept), even though the writing was much worse. For example, the author took care to describe, in detail, the driving routes her characters took to get from one place to another, yet didn't bother to research average weather patterns in the Alps or what people wear when it's cold outside. Hint: it's generally more than a pencil skirt, heels, and a light jacket.

Nevertheless, I was having fun reading it. But about halfway through Midnight Train to Paris, I started to lose interest because there was a complete lack of plausibility. Not just the inconsistencies in clothing, but in the characters' behavior and the numerous incredible coincidences. I didn't care if Jillian and her cookie cutter hero got together, if her sister would survive, or even if Jill would. When the hero and heroine traveled back in time and the heroine started getting messages across space-time from her sister, it got to be too much. I skimmed to the end, so trust me when I say it only gets more ridiculous as the book goes on. Also, there are only about three pages that actually take place in Paris. You can definitely feel free to skip this pulpy mess of a novel.


Have you read any good books set in Paris lately?


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Review: KILLER IMAGE by Wendy Tyson

I received a copy of this book to review from Netgalley via TLC Booktours.

Allison Campbell is a fashion consultant to the wealthy socialites of Philadelphia, particularly older women who've been divorced. When a teenage client is accused of a ritualistic murrrrrderrrrr, Allison is the only person who believes this Goth girl is innocent. Can Allison give her client a makeover AND find the real killer?

Killer Image was SO not my thing. Based on the cover (which has recently been changed to something awful), I was expecting a light, fun, cozy mystery about fashion and high society. What I got was one of those depressing, hard-boiled mysteries where everyone has Problems. I'm talking needs-to-seek-psychiatric-help, capital-P-problems. EVERYONE, from the main character to the murder victim, to the suspect, to the suspect's parents, to every single person the main character knows. And I knew everyone single person in the main character's life had problems because I was told about it in great detail, even though it had zippo to do with the plot.

This novel also needed to be edited way, way down. It has a prologue that's labeled Chapter One, and it follows the activities of the most random-ass minor characters FOR NO REASON other than to tell me about their Problems. For example, Allison's assistant was a very intriguing character—possibly the most interesting thing in the entire novel—until we got to follow him around, day-in-the-life-of style, as he makes his weekly visit to his ma and the whores (literally, women who abide in a brothel and have sex with men for money) he sleeps with. What does this have to do with story??? Nothing, other than to let me know HE HAS PROBLEMS. Maybe I'd care more about everyone's Problems in Killer Image if I was given a chance to wonder what they were; but not only did I not wonder, I didn't want to know.

Despite über-long info dump descriptions of everyone's psychological and socio-economic Problems, there were no unnecessary clothing descriptions. Which is kind of weird, considering Allison is a fashion consultant and wrote a book about clothes.

As I said, Killer Image was very much not the type I go for. I wound up DNFing it out of frustration and boredom. But if you like hard-boiled detective stories where everyone's a psycho and which take forever to get to the point, you'll probably enjoy it more than I did.




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Review: CROCODILE ON THE SANDBANK by Elizabeth Peters

Having just inherited a large estate after the death of her father, Amelia Peabody decides to indulge herself with an extended around-the-world vacation. Along the way, she rescues a younger woman named Evelyn who's been abandoned in Italy by a fortune hunter. Together, they travel through Egypt fending off a mysterious mummy and helping a pair of archaeologists named Walter and Radcliffe Emerson.

So the plot to Crocodile on the Sandbank is basically the same as Pride & Prejudice, only instead of two wealthy friends rescuing two sisters from genteel poverty, two wealthy women friends rescue two brothers from genteel poverty so they can dig in Egypt to their hearts' content. And there's a mummy. If anyone can take Jane Austen and create something completely original, it's Elizabeth Peters—I love the way she turned traditional romance tropes upside down. Evelyn's rescue, for example: in a typical romance, it would be the hero who saves the damsel in distress and insists on buying her clothes and sweeping her off to some exotic foreign country. In Crocodile on the Sandbank, it's Amelia; and the two become friends, not lovers. I also liked the fact that she and Evelyn are the independently wealthy characters in this scenario while the Emersons are in need of money (see my review of The Bridge).

I actually read Crocodile on the Sandbank when I was a teenager, and to be honest I didn't like it. As an adult, I can see why: Amelia is exactly the type of personality that would have annoyed the crap out of me as a teen. She takes over everything, thinks she's always right, and she is very much a nineteenth-century British colonialist, swooping in to save the ignorant natives from their primitive medicines and beliefs. She can be kind of insufferable some most of the time. As an adult, though, I actually found Amelia to be pretty awesome. Yes, Amelia can be annoying, but she also gets shit done. And while she might not be polite, she is genuine and kind. Amelia is a fantastic, well-rounded character who's totally of her time period, flaws and all, yet still sympathetic.

As for the other characters, Evelyn wasn't as annoying as I remember her being, either. She's not as take-charge as Amelia is, but she also isn't wishy-washy and in her own way is just as independent as her friend—she just has better social skills. I honestly didn't remember anything about Walter or Lucian. As for Emerson... well, who can resist someone that grumpy? He's like if Dr. House was an archaeologist.

I also listened to this on audiobook, narrated by Barbara Rosenblat. I've listened to audiobooks narrated by Rosenblat before (a few of the Mary Russell mysteries, for instance), and she was good in those. But Rosenblat + Amelia Peabody is like magic! She embodies the character of Amelia and brings so much humor and depth to the story. It was a joy listening to her narrate.

I'm glad I decided to give Crocodile on the Sandbank another shot. The mystery plot's kind of weak—it's obvious who the mummy is from the beginning—but the book isn't really about the mystery, it's about British Egyptology in the Victorian era and a woman who finds her place in the world. Definitely a must-read, especially for those of you who enjoy listening to audiobooks.


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Review: KINDNESS GOES UNPUNISHED by Craig Johnson

Walt Longmire and his bestie, Henry Standing Bear, drive from Durant, Wyoming, to Philadelphia to visit Walt's daughter, Cady. When Walt gets there, however, Cady is too busy to meet him for dinner. Like, really, your dad just drove 2,000 miles to see you and you can't take off work early? ANYway, that night Cady is pushed down a staircase and nearly dies. Naturally, being a cop, Walt starts investigating. With the help of Henry and the Moretti clan (the family of his deputy, Vic), he discovers a web of City Hall corruption and drug dealing connected to his daughter's attacker.

I'll be honest, I wasn't crazy into Kindness Goes Unpunished. Maybe it was the setting or maybe it was the fact that I found the plot nearly incomprehensible, but uhg. Just thinking about the last quarter of the story makes me TIRED. Also, by weird coincidence Kindness Goes Unpunished is the second book this month I read with a coma patient in it. Writing protip: talking to people in a coma isn't that exciting.

So, yeah. It wasn't a DNF but it tested the bounds of believability and patience for me. However, I do have to say that I find the differences between Cady in the Longmire books and Cady in the Longmire TV show interesting. In the books, she's a high-powered, career-focused attorney with her own life. That's obvious even though the story is told from Walt's point of view. In the TV show, she lives in Durant and her life revolves around her dad and "taking care of him" after her mother's death (even though it feels closer to nagging). She had some sort of job before she moved back to Durant, but I'm not clear on what that was exactly. In the second season, she starts working as a waitress at Henry's bar, The Red Pony, so her dad can lecture her about hanging around drunk people.

Now I know in order for Cady to be on the show regularly she has to be in Durant a lot, but I find it interesting that the TV show made her a lot less independent and, well, ADULT than the Cady in the books. At one point on the show, Branch, Walt's most annoying deputy (whom I think is modeled after Turk from The Cold Dish), asks, "It's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your daughter is, Walt?" You mean his 30-year-old daughter who can go anywhere she wants and is capable of taking care of herself, that daughter?

Even Cady's affairs have something to do with Walt: she starts dating Branch in secret because he's running against Walt in the sheriff election and she doesn't want Walt to get upset. EYEROLL 1. Uncomfortable Oedipal associations; 2. I think Walt can deal with who his daughter is dating because he's a grown-ass man and not her high school ex.

Basically what I'm saying is I find Cady to be a nearly intolerable character on the TV show. I was actually dreading her appearance in the books; but in the books she's an independent adult who obviously loves her dad but is living her own life, and she's pretty awesome. Furthermore, Walt is definitely into giving her her own space and not telling her what to do or who to date. Complete one-eighty from the TV show. Needless to say, I prefer the books' version of these two characters and their relationship.



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Review: DEATH WITHOUT COMPANY by Craig Johnson

Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire is still recovering from the events of The Cold Dish, but at least he's out of the house and voluntarily speaking to people, so that's a step in the right direction. Meanwhile, former Absaroka County sheriff and Walt's mentor, Lucien, keeps telling him there's something fishy going on at the nursing home. Walt's like, "Whatever you say, Agatha Christie;" but then one of the nursing home residents dies and Lucien insists it was murrrderrr. Walt agrees to investigate out of respect for Lucien, and winds up opening a whole worm-filled can of ugly secrets he didn't want to know.

I know when I reviewed The Cold Dish I was kind of like, "Sigh," and "Meh," but then I realized I was really missing my guys. That would be Walt and his BFF, Henry Standing Bear. At what point they became "my guys," I'm not sure, but I decided to read the second book in the series, Death Without Company, immediately after finishing the first. It's been more than a decade since I've done something like that, and I'm not sorry I did now.

Death Without Company is much better than The Cold Dish. For one, it's shorter. A mystery series with books that keep getting shorter? I must be in a reading utopia right now. For two, a lot more things happen in the course of Death Without Company than in The Cold Dish. Walt is on go mode for the entire novel, what with people getting murdered, and attacked, and the police department setting up sting operations, and Lucien being a curmudgeonly nuisance, and suspects escaping, and the new deputy showing up.

Like in The Cold Dish, the mystery is kind of depressing. It hinges on a star-crossed love affair between Mari Baroja and Lucien, and the shitty life Mari had after her family separated them. But also like in The Cold Dish, that aspect of the story was balanced nicely with snappy dialog and Walt's wry sense of humor. As usual, Henry gets the best lines in the book. My favorite was,

"How many murders have we had in this county since you became sheriff?"
I counted up quickly, then recounted. "Five."
"Three in the last month?"
"Yep."
He picked up the sandwich and looked at it. "You should retire... quickly."

Of course, the resolving of the plot depends on a series of incredible coincidences, and I guessed who the murderer was almost immediately (though not their motive), but those are minor quibbles.

One scene that did really bother me, though, was when Lucien told Walt what happened to Mari's husband, Charlie Nurburn. It was described in incredibly graphic detail—how? Lucien wasn't there, and I doubt any woman would have told him what happened to her at that level. Also, why? I didn't need to know most of that to understand what happened and it didn't drive the story. None of the other acts of violence in the book were treated to such highly expressive and intense description, even when Walt himself is attacked, so it seemed like a gratuitous depiction of violence against women with a tone of grotesque fascination to boot. Dislike.

Aside from that, Death Without Company was a perfectly enjoyable mystery novel. I'll definitely be reading the next book in the series.



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Review: THE COLD DISH by Craig Johnson

The biggest crimes the town of Durant, Wyoming, usually sees are escaped ranch animals and drunk cowboys. But when a young man convicted in the gang rape of a Cheyenne girl is found in a sheep field, Sheriff Walt Longmire senses his days of phoning it in are over.

The Cold Dish is the first book in the Longmire series. It's not as good as Hell is Empty, but that's a good thing—after seven years and six books, one would hope that an author's work would improve, right? I basically got really impatient reading The Cold Dish because: 1. it's the first book in the series, which means there's a lot of exposition about things I'm already familiar with from watching the TV show; and 2. it took me forever to get through. This is mainly my own fault: I started it when I was busy and lucky to carve out fifteen minutes of uninterrupted reading time. Unfortunately, this isn't the type of book you can just pick up and get into right away, so I struggled through the first half and almost DNF'd it.

The Cold Dish finally starts to get interesting around the 150 page mark, when Walt goes onto the rez with his BFF, Henry Standing Bear, to question the father of the girl who was raped. Yes, it took him that long. The father's not a suspect because he can't walk, and Walt doesn't have any jurisdiction on the Indian reservation, but still. When he visits, the girl's dad gives Walt the legendary Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead, which was used in the Battle of the Little Bighorn and, it's implied, killed General Custer. The rifle is haunted by the Old Cheyenne who sometimes use it to call people to the land of the dead. Intriguing, no? Then things get really exciting because more of the rapists start dying.

So I did like the second half of the novel, but it was a long dang walk up to that point. On the plus side, even with the slow start, The Cold Dish definitely has its redeeming qualities. First of all, despite the dark subject matter, there's a lot of humor in the novel. Craig Johnson is as familiar with the universe of rural Wyoming as Jane Austen was with the gentle society of Regency England, and takes a similar tolerant-yet-ironic tone when describing the characters and foibles that populate his world. Aside from Walt, the secondary characters are awesome: Henry of the non-contractions has a very droll sense of humor, and gets most of the best lines in the book; and there's also Lucien, the former sheriff of Absaroka County and Walt's mentor, who's a crazy kamikaze badass living in a nursing home. Really all the main secondary characters are very well-realized except for Vonnie, but that's another story.

As I read The Cold Dish, I couldn't help but compare it to The Cuckoo's Calling. Unexpectedly, the two novels have a lot in common: they're both debut mystery novels that are reinterpretations of the classic noir set-up, with a down-on-his-luck, depressed, ex-military hero who's practically homeless; tons of literary references; and walking and talking. What is it with the walking and talking?! But The Cold Dish feels like a more original and organic twist, is more fully populated with characters and locations, has a better mystery (although the conclusion still made me roll my eyes), and the literary references are much more clever and integrated into the story. So I would say overall The Cold Dish is the better book.

Even though this book didn't wow me like Hell is Empty did, I'll definitely keep reading the Longmire series because I think Johnson is a great writer and the characters he's created are awesome.




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Review of THE CUCKOO'S CALLING by JK Rowling/Robert Galbraith

Proposed alternate title: "Lucky Strike" (it's ironic... or is it?)

Comoran Strike is down on his luck, to say the least: he just broke up with his rich fiancé, is sleeping in his office because he can't afford a hotel, is one more missed rent check away from losing his business, and on top of all that he only has one leg. Pretty sad story. But his fortunes turn when temp secretary Robin shows up at his door. Soon he's garnered a case that seems impossible to solve: the death of a famous supermodel, which the police ruled a suicide. Her brother believes it was murrrderrrr and wants Strike to prove it. Will Strike be able to solve the not-actually-a-murder and get his shit together by the end of the book???

JK Rowling and a mystery novel, what could go wrong? I heard The Cuckoo's Calling described somewhere as a classic hardboiled detective mystery but without the misogyny, and that's actually a perfect single-sentence summary of the book (not that it passes the Bechdel Test--it doesn't). You've got everything from a His Girl Friday to antagonistic police detectives and a slew of suspects, so it definitely aims to please crime novel fans, of which I am one. That said, the mystery is truly ridonkulous and the story ain't exactly gripping.

When The Cuckoo's Calling begins, it's surprisingly funny and entertaining. Like I was literally laughing out loud. Robin and Strike have great chemistry and I loved that Robin's dream as a kid was to be a private detective (you have to admit it sounds like a cool job). She is alllll up in the gumshoeing. Strike is also a great character, very sympathetic and with a Dark Past. I was enjoying The Cuckoo's Calling so much I was actually considering buying it. In hardcover! If you know anything about me, this is a supreme vote of confidence.

BUT. As the book went on, it got pretty boring. There is a lot of talking in this novel. Walking and talking, talking and walking, that's all Strike does for 150 pages; and it feels like an exercise in futility because there are no clues or information about the supposed murder. Instead of an actual mystery, we're treated to meditations on some of Rowling's pet topics: celebrity, daddy issues, blah blah blah. I don't mind mysteries that are just an excuse to talk about other things by any means, but one generally does need some plot in there to keep the whole thing moving. The Maltese Falcon's mystery was a metaphor, too, but The Maltese Falcon was also only about 200 pages, not 450.

The story does pick up later in the book, when Strike finally gets around to interviewing people who might actually know something, but the conclusion... UHG. It was unholy annoying. First of all, as I mentioned, the mystery was head-shakingly silly. I guessed who the murderer was about halfway through the novel, so that wasn't a surprise, and I had kind of figured out the how and why by the time the big Poirot-style reveal came around, too. But the clues Strike used to figure everything out stretched the bonds credibility. The puddle on the floor made him think flowers instead of snow even though it was snowing outside, really? This man's ability to wildly speculate on what evidence means is mind-boggling.

Also, the end of the novel left a whole bunch of loose threads hanging. Such as: why in the name of god is this book title The Cuckoo's Calling? The model is only called Cuckoo once in the entire course of the novel, and the main character is named Strike! Does Rowling not watch Castle at all?? How can you have a detective named Strike and not use that as a play on words in the title? Also, why did Strike start a PI business? Who does that anymore? He could have done anything: gone back to university, worked for the police, started a security consulting firm (which, if the romance novels are to be believed, is a much more lucrative profession). I still have no idea what his motivation is. After 450 pages of walking and talking, have I mentioned that???

I am also—and perhaps unreasonably—annoyed that there wasn't more of Robin in the book. For one, the only entertaining scenes, aside from one notable exception (Strike club crawling with a ditsy model), were the ones with Robin in them. I can't help but feel that The Cuckoo's Calling would have been much more interesting if it had been framed as Robin's story rather than Strike's. And I think there's an argument to be made that the book IS actually Robin's story, but the series needs to play out a bit more before I'll commit to that.

I'm not saying that The Cuckoo's Calling is an awful book, just that it's a mixed bag. It's too long and Rowling could do with putting more work into her mystery plots. But like I said, the beginning is delightful and Rowling's writing is as clever and sharp as ever. I think if you're a fan of Rowling's you'll want to read The Cuckoo's Calling, and you'll probably even enjoy it. Despite my general annoyances with this one, I'll definitely read "Robert Galbraith's" second book.


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Review: THE SALARYMAN'S WIFE by Sujata Massey

Rei Shimura is a Japanese-American (father's Japanese, but she was raised in the US) living in Tokyo. Why I'm not sure, since she hates her job and is so poor she has to live in one of Tokyo's worst neighborhoods, sharing a crappy apartment the size of a postage stamp. Obviously, she needs a vacation, so for New Year's she travels to the small mountain town of Shiroyama. Unfortunately, while she's there, one of the guests in her hotel dies. The police think it's suicide, but Rei knows there's something suspicious about the death of the salaryman's wife.

Penny from Penelope's Romance Reviews recommended The Salaryman's Wife to me when I said I love anything having to do with Japan in my review of Ink. I'm so glad she did! I loved Sujata Massey's voice and the setting was fantastic. Rei was also a very sympathetic, intriguing character, even though her determination to live in Japan never made total sense to me. If it's because she likes Japanese antiques, that doesn't seem like a strong enough reason to work at job you hate and live in penury. I can understand her deciding to take a chance and move to Tokyo without a job lined up, but most people who do something risky like that give themselves a time limit to make things work, which Rei apparently didn't.

I had some other minor quibbles with the book: who the murderer was and the motive was pretty obvious, and other plot twists and clues practically had a notation next them in the text saying, "This will play a role later in the novel!"

But none of that bothered me too much because The Salaryman's Wife tells a great story. It's not so much a mystery as a book about a young woman finding her place in the world. When The Salaryman's Wife starts, Rei is very sensitive about her mixed heritage and the fact that she's a foreigner who doesn't fit in. She doesn't know what she wants to do, just that she's not doing it. What she does know is she wants to stay in Japan. By the end of the book she's confident, knows what she wants, and is pursuing her dreams. And the way in which this happens is incredibly implausible and 100% delightful.

I also liked Massey's writing style. She doesn't spell everything out and lets the reader do some work to discover what's going on sometimes. The personalities and motivations of the secondary characters are slowly revealed over the course of the book, too, and the story never dragged or seemed boring.

Plus, romance! There's a romantic subplot with Rei and a Scottish lawyer named Hugh. While I did like the romance (of course), I'm still not too sure about Hugh. He can be pretty insensitive sometimes, and what was with the coterie of women that kept treating him like a gigolo? I'm a little worried he won't be there for the long haul, which would be upsetting since I am sort of attached to him, despite my reservations. But he's coming back in the next book, which makes me happy since I'll definitely be reading it!

This is a great mystery I'd recommend, especially if you're a fan of Elizabeth Peters.


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Review of THE LADY VANISHES by Ethel Lina White

(Actual title is The Wheel Spins, but Amazon and Goodreads have apparently decided to rename it. To be fair, The Lady Vanishes is a much better title.)

Iris Carr is a spoiled, wealthy young woman on holiday at some vaguely Alpine resort filled with English tourists. After catching the last train out to Trieste, Iris meets the bubbly Miss Froy, a middle-aged governess returning to England after years abroad. Iris decides to take a nap and when she wakes up, Miss Froy has disappeared. Even more strange is that everyone denies she was even on the train! Certain that something terrible has happened to Miss Froy, Iris enlists the help of the men folk, but they think she's crazy. After a while, Iris starts to wonder if they aren't right.

If you've seen the movie by Alfred Hitchcock, The Lady Vanishes, Ethel White's novel is very similar (in Fear in the Sunlight, Nicola Upson painted Hitch as someone who had no respect for the original work when adapting novels to film; she obviously knows shit-all about Hitchcock movies), right down to the time symbolism and British ethnocentrism. Honestly, the only difference between the book and the movie is that White gives us a ton of backstory about all the other English passengers on the train and why they don't mention they've seen Miss Froy, plus scenes of Miss Froy's family waiting for her in England. So we know from the outset that Miss Froy is real and not a figment of Iris's imagination, which kind of takes the fun out of the whole thing. I also really didn't care about the other English passengers. At all.

In other words, the movie is better than the book. Don't feel the need to read The Wheel Spins/Lady Vanishes, even if you love the movie.

That being said, I found the elaboration of themes in the novel interesting. You might be familiar with a story Hitchcock told François Truffaut in their 1962 interview about The Lady Vanishes and how it was based on a "true story" of a mother and daughter who traveled to Paris at the start of the Paris Exposition and checked into separate rooms in a hotel. When the daughter woke up from a nap, her mother was gone, her luggage had disappeared, and the room didn't appear to have been slept in. When the daughter asked the desk clerk, he said she'd checked into the hotel alone, and everyone else from the maid to the coachman who'd taken them to the hotel confirmed the desk clerk's story. People assumed the daughter was crazy. In fact, during the daughter's nap, her mother had died of the plague. The hotelier and city officials, fearing a plague scare would keep people away from the Exposition, decided to bury the body and pretend as if the woman had never existed.

That story is actually in the novel, along with several other urban legends that underscore how women are presumed to be neurotic and delusional until proven otherwise, and also how easily a woman's identity can be erased. I really liked that there are stories-within-stories in The Wheel Spins that served to create an atmosphere of paranoia on the train, although I don't think White cashed in on this as effectively as Hitchcock did.

Another thing I found interesting was the role of men in the story. There are only a few male characters, but the women are completely dependent upon them because only the men can communicate with the outside world (well, except for Miss Froy: she speaks 10 languages, although we never actually see her speaking any foreign language during the course of the book). The Professor and "Hare" (a reference to the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland?), two Englishmen who help Iris, are both linguists and fluent in whatever language the locals speak; but even men who don't speak the language can communicate with the outside world. For example, the clergyman who stayed at the same hotel as Iris left every day to sit with the locals in the village, leaving his wife behind to remark that she didn't know how he communicated with them when he didn't speak one word of the language. A big deal is also made of the fact that Iris is absolutely terrible with languages, so that everything she says to local people on the train is interpreted through a male voice—and a misogynist male who thinks she's by turns annoying and delusional, at that. The Wheel Spins really underscores female dependency on men, much more so than The Lady Vanishes.

I actually did enjoy the first half of The Wheel Spins, but Iris started to get annoying because she constantly runs to either the Professor or Hare to fix things for her when that is CLEARLY not working. Why doesn't she do something herself? The second half is also filled with literally paragraphs upon paragraphs of exposition telling us about character motivation. TELLING, not showing. The conclusion of the novel was also a disappointment. I love the end of The Lady Vanishes movie because Miss Froy turns out to be a badass, and there are a ton of fun magic references and a shoot-out. That does NOT happen in The Wheel Spins. I won't spoil the ending for you, but it was really lame, drawn-out, and anti-climatic.

Basically, you could spend five hours of your life reading this book, or ninety minutes watching the movie. Not to mention the book isn't in the public domain (and yet the movie is... makes no sense), so you actually have to pay for it. Not worth it. I'd only recommend The Wheel Spins/Lady Vanishes to those with a vested interest in Pre-War women and literature.



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