Moonlighting in murder.

Irish author John Banville may very well deserve a break. His work has twice been short-listed for the Booker Prize (his 2005 novel The Sea took top honors), he is a long time contributor to The New York Review of Books, and formerly edited the literary section of The Irish Times. He's earned the respect of literary critics and his work seems bound for the Everyman's Library or Penguin Modern Classics treatment and literary survey courses.

But Banville is taking a different tack, perhaps a little surprising for an author so estabilished in literary circles. The Silver Swan marks Banville's second foray into mystery/suspense/noir fiction, under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. His first novel, Christine Falls, introduced Quirke, a pathologist obscurely laboring (and drinking) away in post-war Dublin. In that novel, Quirke stumbled into a mystery when a particular young woman turned up on his autopsy table, and he reluctantly pursued the cause of her death to the very core of his own haunted story. That novel was marked by Banville's masterful depiction of a brooding Dublin, matched by the delicate shifting family relationships. I actually wound up buying my own copy of Christine Falls, probably the highest recommendation my cheapsake self could give to a book.

The Silver Swan picks up a few years after the events of Christine Falls. Quirke is on the wagon, and he's making an effort to mend his relationship with his newly acknowledged daughter, Phoebe. He wants nothing more to do with detective work. But another young woman, this time an apparent suicide, piques his interest--especially after her grieving husband requests that Quirke forego the autopsy. He discovers that Deirde Hunt died by another's hand, but this time, Quirke isn't sure he wants to see justice done--something tells him Deirdre would rest better as a suicide. But when one of Deirdre's secrets, a con man who's beginning to dabble in more serious crimes. He's also pursuing Phoebe, leaving Quirke with no choice but to follow the clues of Deirdre's death to the answer.

Or rather, I should say, until Banville reveals the answer. Quirke isn't a typical private eye who follows the clues. Rather, most of the story is told in alternating perspectives, with the mystery unfolding alongside Quirke's deepening involvement. As such, traditional P.I. fans might not find Quirke to their liking. But Banville captures the noirish, suspenseful feel of the 1950s, so much so that I was partly expecting Lauren Bacall to sidle into some of the scenes. I did think a fault was the stereotyping of some characters. And I'm bothered by the terrible victimization of women both in Christine Falls and Silver Swan. Perhaps Banville is being true to the period, but in both books, women (albeit well developed as characters) are treated appallingly by the men in their lives. It bears watching if Banville does more with his women in future books.

It's sometimes tough to pigeonhole particular books, and Banville proves that it's getting harder to classify authors. But maybe we just need to get over putting books (and authors) into tidy catagories. Banville mixes the best of literary description and atmosphere with the mystery plotting to create a memorable character.

Princess, scholar, schemer, sleuth.

If there was ever a period in English history more conducive to committing murder without the prospect of getting caught, few can match the reign of Queen Mary. And if you're looking for a prospective victim whose death would be greeted by more approval than dismay by the people in power, then Princess Elizabeth Tudor would be a prime target. Elizabeth knows she's a target, she can trust few, if any, of her surrounding courtiers, and dreads the arrival of every messenger, who might come bearing word of her ascension to the throne--or her death summons. When word comes from her aunt Mary Boleyn, Elizabeth is overjoyed to see someone from the her disgraced mother's family. But an attack on a Boleyn cousin and her aunt's painful death from poison suggests a larger plot to remove all of Queen Anne's relations out of the picture.

Karen Harper's series centered on Elizabeth I adds a little twist to the typical historical mystery, starting out with The Poyson Garden. She's covering familiar ground here: Elizabeth's precarious position during her half-sister Queen Mary's reign is well-covered ground. Where Harper's take on establish historical fact includes vivid reimaging of real people and a pretty good realization of English life at the time. Elizabeth herself is lively and engaging. Less convincing is the inclusion of commoners into Elizabeth's household--it's hard to imagine the young princess taking in (and trusting) an actor from a travelling troupe. But suspending disbelief over that point, the inclusion of Ned Thompson, and the knowledgeable herbalist Meg (who's conveniently a dead ringer for Elizabeth) adds some color and offers all sorts of possibilities to move the action forward.

As far as plot goes, The Poyson Garden moves quickly like any good pleasure read should, but there's little in the way of actual mystery--the only real question of the book is who the poisoner should turn out to be, and that gets resolved about two-thirds of the way through. From then on, it's more a suspense novel, and I can't say that I entirely bought the characterization at the end--but then I don't want to give too much away. It's not a plot spoiler to say that the book concludes with Queen Mary's death and Elizabeth's ascension to the throne. There are at least eight more books to the series, but I'm not entirely sure I'll continue on with it. Respectable mysteries, Harper's Elizabeth whodunits would make a good alternative to readers of Phillipa Gregory's Tudor novels.

The lady herself; or Jane fix part III

More than any other author in English literature, it seems, Jane Austen stymies her biographers.* There really shouldn't be any reason for this: we have letters and some manuscripts in her hand, numerous family recollections have been passed down, and she lived in a family and an age with an almost obsessive need to record their experiences for posterity. Yet it's always so tempting to ascribe the experiences of her heroines to the author. It's hard to imagine someone who wrote so convincingly about relationship battles having nothing in her own life that came close. Claire Tomalin's 1997 bio of Austen avoids the temptation to depict Austen as a real life version of her various characters, but she does do an excellent job portraying how Austen's life, both the tragic and comic phases, constantly influenced her writing. Jane Austen: A Life may not be revolutionary in its conclusions, but I can honestly say that it read as easily as any of Austen's novels, and with more than a few figures that could be directly drawn from Emma, Persuasion or any of the other novels.

Austen herself is always at the center of the bio, obviously, but Tomalin gives considerable attention to the figures surrounding Austen (and, mercifully, a complete family tree to keep all of the similarly named Austens straight). Other than Cassandra, Austen's sister and confidante, no one gets more attention than her colorful cousin, Eliza. Born in India of indeterminate parentage, Eliza married a supposed French count, only to see him go to the guillotine. Eliza later married Austen's brother, the charming but flighty Henry. Another brother, Edward, was adopted into a wealthy landowning family, not unlike many of Austen's heroes. The eldest of the Austen brood, James, and his pushy wife are portrayed as an inspiration for Emma's Mr. Elton and the odious Augusta Elton.

This oblique portrait of Austen only underscores how little is actually known about her, in spite of her letters. Much of what has been assumed about Austen is due to memoirs left behind by her family, flavored by their Victorian-era censorship. There are hints, here and there, of Austen's alienation from the social scene (Tomalin notes the sharp satire of Austen's letters regarding Edward's Kentish relations, whom she considered snobs and only found companionship there with the governess). And there is the undercurrent sense that many of Austen's contemporaries didn't quite know what to make of the author. Austen's obvious cleverness sometimes rankled friends and relations, especially if that barbed wit were directed towards them. We can only assume that sharp wit was the reason Austen's niece, Fanny, burned many of her aunt's surviving letters.

Tomalin doesn't go into great detail in critizing each of the novels, which was my only complaint about the book. She must assume that her audience is more familiar with the films (which do not receive much comment, and that limited to notes) than the books, as she provides plot summaries for Mansfield Park and Persuasion. Coupled with the fluid writing, the well-written endnotes and generous images, Jane Austen: A Life is a good starting point for those interested in the author but aren't ready to delve into more scholarly works.

*With the exception of Shakespeare, of course. At least there's no debate over who wrote Austen's novels.

The tourney is on.

Not a review per se this time, but something much more entertaining. The online Morning News is currently in the throes of its fourth annual Tournament of Books and like previous years, this year promises to be a bloody battle to the end. In round 1, Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke smoked Ovenman by Jeff Parker to take the first victory. Personally, I see the final pairing as Tree of Smoke versus wonderkid Junot Diaz's Oscar Wao, but it's anyone's guess what the zombie round will do this year's brackets. Will What the Dead Know carry the banner for honest-to-goodness genre fiction? Or will the witty Then We Came to the End take on its stiff competition to emerge victorious and claim the (real live) Rooster? Obviously, I'm probably getting more excited about this than it actually warrants, but it's still a highly recommended diversion from the workday grind.

The Buddhist and his AK-47.

I saw this odd little collection of portraits when it came across the desk recently. Not surprisingly, its arresting cover stuck in my mind. In a sense, it's an ingenious idea: take a massively decisive issue and actually go into people's houses and talk to them. Photographer Kyle Cassidy did just that for Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes. In addition to the portraits, Cassidy includes each gun owner's answer to the question, 'Why do you own a gun?'

I have to admit, I'm conflicted about the whole gun control issue. On the one hand, I can understand people's appreciation of guns for recreation--I have, and still do, go target shooting on occassion. But I've also seen the damage these same firearms can do when in the hands of even the most careful marksman. Cassidy, to his credit, does a pretty good job of portraying people neutrally (and as an aside, I loved the humorous touch of including the family pets in the family portraits). There are plenty of people here who own guns for the pleasures that hunting and target practice bring to them. There are some surprising gun owners (a chef who wanted to shoot a wild turkey to get a sense of where food really comes from, the artist who needed a shotgun for a bronze casting, the collector with his 12 lb cannon) and some that make a lot of sense (law enforcement officers, fomer military and engineers of all sorts intrigued by a gun's mechanics). But when I read phrases like 'since the bad guys had guns, I should have one, too' or 'I refuse to become prey,' I can't help but wonder how much gun proliferation has turned into a circular argument: since most everyone can have a gun, I should have one too to protect myself from all those people with guns.

The argument has often been made that many nations (especially in Europe) with stringent gun laws have nowhere near as many instances of accidental shootings or the type of rampages that occurred at Virginia Tech or the Omaha mall. On the other hand, the lawlessness following Hurricane Katrina is cited repeatedly as an example of government breaking down, and citizens needing to defend themselves. Perhaps. With the right to bear arms so deeply entrenched in culture (and the Constitution), it's hard to see where (or if) the line should be drawn. As Cassidy's portraits demonstrate, the distinction between who own a gun and why is nowhere near black and white.

Who are these tacky people?

I confess, I'm entirely transfixed by the idea of royalty. I'm most interested in what went on with powerful families of the past, especially when it came to their penchant for turning against each other, but the current incarnation of the reigning elite does hold a certain fascination. Jeremy Paxman, journalist with the BBC, has something of a royal hang up too. A familiar with some of the swankier circles of society, Paxman uses his access to navigate through the mystique to figure out just who these people are in his 'polite inquiry' On Royalty--and more importantly, whether the modern world really needs them.

Although he considers other nations' royal families (including the recently hired-yes, hired-royal family of Albania), Paxman, not surprisingly, pretty much sticks to The Royal Family: the Windors. The central premise about royalty is something of an oxymoron: how to appear constantly in the public eye, yet maintain enough of an exclusive aura so as not to clue the hoi polloi into the fact that really, there isn't that much that is terribly extraordinary about these people. To be sure, there have been some sovereigns who were gifted in statecraft or scholarship, but the relentless pursuit of hunting is a more accurate picture of a royal pasttime. In fact, they are terribly mundane in many ways (Paxman notes the heavily creased copies of Fredrick Forsyth novels in the Queen's library). But in describing Prince Charles, Paxman gets to the central tragedy of today's royalty: "The prince had consistently misunderstood or ignored a basic truth at the heart of the relationship between royalty and the people. He seemed to believe that his significance lay in what he believed and did. The truth was simply that his significance lay in who he was."

I use the word tragedy as that's the tone that finally emerges. It's perhaps odd to refer to a massively wealthy and priviledged group of people as tragic, but the added pressures of public scrutiny on an already disfunctional (and therefore normal) family, coupled with the expectation that they go through life without expressing the opinions that everyone else is entitled to makes for something of a tragic tale. On the public side, is the magic of royalty really worth the funds spent on maintaining their lifestyles? Paxman makes a well researched, readable argument, regardless of whether you agree with him or not.

Of course, the whole discussion of whether royalty is relevant today owes much of its origin to Princess Diana, possibly the most documented person of the latter twentieth century. Tina Brown, former editor of Tatler, The New Yorker and various other high brow glossys, adds her take to an already crowded field of Diana bios. I found The Diana Chronicles to be a tremendously frustrating book, although I stuck with it to the bitter end. Brown's journalistic take on Diana's life not surprisingly focuses primarily on the princess's manipulation of the press in manipulating her image--an obsession so vital to her that the Wales's marriage was less a menage a trois but a duel between Camilla et al versus Di and the entire press corps. All the well-known details are here, but Brown's portrayal of Diana suggests a much more desperate woman who used downright mean tactics to achieve the sort of stable life that she had always been denied. A convincing argument? Brown bases some of her conclusions on her own conjectures and disclosures which may never be proven definitively, but with a subject like Diana, such sources are the norm. It's as good an argument as any of the other Diana bios out there, at least for now.

But for a book based on one of the most photographed woman in the world, the almost total lack of images or plates is an especially frustrating one. Brown bases much of her argument on the manner Diana manipulated her image on specific photos, yet only a few black and white photos are given in endpages. I have a hard time understanding why Brown and Doubleday opted not to include a set of plates (price couldn't have been an issue, given the sure bestseller status). It's an inexplicable omission and one that ought to be corrected in future editions. Also, The Diana Chronicles is very long, and I was never allowed to forget in the course of 400+ pages that Tina Brown is a fabulous person who lives a fabulous life. Luncheons at the Four Seasons with the princess and reminiscences of state dinners are all very well and good to Brown's research, but I think she wouldn't have hurt her argument by cutting out the name-dropping.

Maybe I've proven part of Paxman's argument about needing the magic of royalty--after all, I've just slogged through 800 pages about them. Will the Royal Family ever lose their status? Judging by the popularity of Diana and her story, it's a fair guess that they'll remain an object of fascination for generations to come.

One day, Death met a thief...

Of the books that I've read lately, Markus Zusak's unconventional 2005 novel The Book Thief has stood out for a couple of reasons. It's the only book that I've read twice in the same year, both being for book groups. I liked it the first time around, and the second go through didn't diminish my regard for it (a rare occurance, believe me). Secondly, I noticed that between the two groups, opinion was decidely divided. In the first group, all pretty much agreed that it was excellent. The second was considerably cooler, most choosing to skim parts that annoyed, and most weren't willing to pass it on to another reader.

Why the divide? On the surface, The Book Thief is something of a hard sell. It's a 500+ page teen novel about Germans during WWII, narrated by Death, relies on images to tells stories within the story, and oh, yes, you'll know from page one how everything is going to turn out. It seems a perfect recipe for a dark and depressing slog in the hands of a lesser writer, but Zusak, on the whole, makes it work. The story centers on Liesel, a gangly, neglected girl on the cusp of adolescence. She is on the way to her foster parents in a Munich suburb when our narrator first meets her, catching her stealing an abandoned book at the freshly dug gravesite of her brother. Her thievery continues as she grows up in the home of Rosa and Hans Hubermann, loving, if unconventional, parents who foster her love of reading. Liesel and her best friend, the Jesse Owens obsessed Rudy, seem to have as usual a childhood as most other kids, but the casual mention of Hitler youth meetings gives way to the images of Jews forced to march through town, pushing Liesel and those close to her to make a potentially life threatening choice between right and wrong.

With Death continually interrupting the story, there's little doubt as to the ending for at least some of the characters. Zusak, rightly, gives Death a wearily ironic tone (could he have any other?) and the narrator's constant interruption of the story can be grating for some. More jarring is Zusak's occassionally ungrammatical writing ('the horizon was beginning to charcoal') and his tendency towards forced descriptions ('cluttered breath', 'shrouded in his uniform as the graying light armwrestled the sky'). This strikes me as contrived, and it's hard to imagine any middle or high schooler keeping themselves from snickering at that florid stuff. But I kept thinking as I read that the effect of such language gives The Book Thief a cinematic sheen; like film, it requires a certain suspension of disbelief to make it work. Then it's not too hard to conjure not just the images Zusak is portraying, but to feel what it would be like to live on Himmel Street with Liesel. It's an ambitious novel, and even if it sometimes it doesn't quite live up to its own expectations, I'd fall into the group that would pass it along. What other novel mixes the mundane and the magical, the worst of human nature with humorous moments, and appeals to both teens and adults?

Not so fantastic.

So there I was, at the library and absolutely thrilled to be holding a copy of the new Doctor Who Encyclopedia. I'm not a huge Whovian--those legions of fans who dissect every episode of the BBC's long running sci-fi series. But having fallen big time for the new series, I was eager to see if the Encyclopedia would help fill me in on all the lore and oddities of the original series going back to 1963, as well as give me some insight into the making of the show.

Alas, it was not to be. I got it home and soon realized, to my disappointment, that rather than being a history of the series, or even a guide to the individual episodes, the Encyclopedia was simply a collection of the most minute factoids of each episode--essentially a massive collection of trivia. Annoyingly, the book only covers the new series, from 2005 onward. Its arrangement of subjects in alphabetical order is helpful if memories need refreshing while watching episodes (in cases, I suppose, when one can't rest until the question of the Face of Boe's age is finally settled). But for the novice, it's t00 much information. To author Gary Russell's credit, each definition is exhaustively dealt with (Russell is involved with the show's script writing). The Encyclopedia is lavishly illustrated with stills from the series, some of which are better in quality than others. Each definition cites pertinent episode(s), and where applicable, which actor portrayed a character.

Still, it feels like a missed opportunity. It's really hard to imagine anyone other than the most diehard Whovians taking an interest in this particular format. Looking at Amazon, I see that there is a Doctor Who: The Inside Guide, which is probably more what I had in mind when I picked up the Encyclopedia. But that book also ignores the earlier series. Apparently it has to fall to some other entity or fan to write the definitive history of the show, as the BBC doesn't seem to be interested in doing it.

Regency lite, or Jane fix part II

It's not a secret that I've got a thing for Jane Austen's books (witness the links at right, or previous posts), but I haven't really gotten into reading any other Regency-era influenced social comedies. One name that kept popping up as a tolerable readalike author is Georgette Heyer, the historical novelist whose works usually end up in the romance section along with the ripped bodice covers of Christina Dodd, Kathleen Woodiwiss and the like. But since I've often mentioned Heyer's name when pressed for books like Austen's, I thought I might determine if her books leaned more towards the heaving bosoms of the romance novel, or if she captured the same battle of social customs as Austen.

Happily, Heyer gets the point behind Austen's novels: namely, her social satire. On the flip side, however, she has none of the subtlety that makes Austen's six novels so great. I randomly chose Cotillion from 1953, roughly from the middle of Heyer's writing career (she died in 1974). The elements of the story are fairly simple: a heroine of reduced circumstances stands to inherit a fortune from a querulous adopted grandfather--with the stipulation that she marry one of said grandfather's nephews in order to receive the money. The plucky heroine here is Kitty Charing, raised in general isolation by a governess overly fond of the romantic poets. Kitty is not in any mood to marry any of her potential suitors, except one: the rakish Jack. But when Jack doesn't show to claim Kitty's hand, she latches onto a plan: enter a sham betrothal with Freddy, the least objectionable of her choices, and get to London to work her charms on Jack. Once in London, a series of misunderstandings, pompous characters and secret engagements ensures that everyone gets exactly what they deserve.

There are scenes in ballrooms, social gaffes, clandestine meetings in shrubberies--basically everything that a Janeite would be familiar with. Heyer lampoons much of the musty social pretentiousness of the day (a Mr. Collins type would find many kindred spirits here). But here it all comes over very heavy handed. Part of this is due to the clumsy dialogue. The men use so much jargon are so preoccupied with their own preening, that it's hard to appreciate even the hero of the story. With the exception of Kitty, all the characters come across as very flat--and Kitty can't be called very deep either. The plot also takes awhile to get going, which makes the lack of well-drawn characters problematic at the beginning. I had to push to get through the first 50 pages.

Heyer has been praised for her attention to historical detail, and she does create a believeable world (Kitty and Freddy's reluctant tour of London? Classic). And I was grinning at various points throughout the story, as Heyer heightened the absurdity. By the end, I was enjoying myself, even if I had to skim over some of the more annoying bluster from some of the more unfortunate characters. Die-hard romantics might not be satisfied--there's no Darcy in a wet shirt moment or swoony letters from Wentworth. (In all honesty, the mental image I was getting of the hero was not so much Colin Firth but more Bertie Wooster). Would I recommend Heyer again? Yes, I think I would, in spite of the clunky dialogue. It's not quite on the same footing as Austen, but at least it's in the same orbit.

What would Jane say?, or Jane fix part I

Let's first off say what Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict is not. It is not serious literature. It is not for those readers who cannot abide serious holes in a plot, or even a plot thicker than a razor's edge. It will not appeal to anyone with a deep aversion to ballroom scenes, clandestine meetings in shrubberies, and polite conversation complimented by meaningful glances over tea and scones. It will make little sense if you haven't read Jane Austen's novels.

Wanting something to read over my own version of tea and scones, I picked up Laurie Viera Rigler's chick lit homage to Jane Austen. Given the current mania for anything Austen, Rigler's slight novel joins a crowded field, and other than is gimmicky plot device, there's really not a whole lot to set it apart from the pack. The premise, in short, consists of dropping current day Angelino and self-described Austen addict Courtney Stone into the realm of one Jane Mansfield, spinster, and inhabitant of 1813 Regency England. Or rather, Courtney is dropped into the body of Jane, automatically taking on some of Jane's memories and abilities. Courtney, not surprisingly, objects to the situation, as much due to the rather lax standards in bodily cleanliness as to the pushy mother who decides Courtney/Jane must marry the local catch. But something in a previous life tells her that this Mr. Edgeworth is not to be trusted. And some portions of Jane's exisance seem beyond Courtney's grasp--such as the odd behavior towards her of a young footman.

For anyone who has read an Austen novel (or likelier, seen a movie), the ending probably won't come as a surprise. But the whole plot comes off as preposterous--it is never explained why Courtney ended up where she did or how, or even more intriguing, what became of the original Jane Mansfield. There are some many places where Rigler could have added more tension to the plot, but she entirely foregoes any deviation from bland formula (even down to the obligatory mention of Colin Firth in knee breeches). Rigler does take a stab at deeper meaning by bringing up the tensions between serving class and ruling class (something never brought up in the novels and largely glossed over in the films). But even this promising lead is dropped.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. Bottom line, Confessions is meant to be fun for dedicated Janeites. It's not too hard convince the addict to indulge in more of their favored drug, but there won't be much to remember after this particular little binge.

Devils among us.

In some ways, The Devil in the White City seemed an unlikely bestseller. Granted, the subtitle (Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America) promises a virtual trifecta of qualities most Americans can't deny. But in addition to the three M's is a reoccuring theme of...architecture and landscape design?

As far as true crime goes, Larson's 2003 book hits the major points: a well-researched account of an almost unbelievably bold murderer whose total body count will probably never be known. In the person of Henry Holmes, Larson has found a character stranger than fiction. A man of purportedly prodigious charm, Holmes had an early fascination with human anatomy and death that led to many of his victims' being turned into lessons--often as skeletons sold to area teaching hospitals. But the manner and the galling ease by which he killed his victims terrified a nation at the cusp of a new century, once his crimes finally came to light.

But the book isn't really about a crime. Rather, Holmes' activities form a perfect foil to the goings on at the nearby Chicago's World Fair of 1893. In direct contrast to the horrors in Holmes' dark building, the White City of the fair seemed to promise a bright future for America and especially the host city Chicago. But the struggle to get the fair going proved to be almost as dramatic as the murder mystery, which Larson recounts with a dramatic flair. Intrigues, squabbles, sudden deaths, and the prospect of building a magnificent city on a swamp makes for unlikely nailbiters, but Larsen pulls it off. He does tend to get occassionally bogged down in detail and the lack of pictures makes the White City a little harder to visualize, but Larsen's ability make historical figures come across in such vivid characterization generally makes up for such deficiences.

One can't help but have Larsen's successful work in mind when considering Harold Schechter's The Devil's Gentleman: Priviledge, Poison and The Trial That Ushered in the Twentieth Century. Like the earlier work, Schechter mixes a charming young man, a bustling, glamourous city, sex and deviously plotted murders. Here, the story surrounds that of one Roland Molineaux, celebrated amateur athlete and rising businessman, who had recently married a young woman after patiently courting her. Or so it first appears. After one of Blanche's former suitors receives a vial of cyanide of mercury in the mail (and unwittingly gives it to his aunt, killing her), the yellow press pounced on the story. Playing up the sensation aspects of sex, society and power (Molineaux's father was an esteemed Civil War general), the media attention assured that Molineaux's trial would command the entire attention of the nation for years--and gave birth to the phenomenon of media circus trials.

Alas, keeping my attention fixated was more difficult. Unlike Larsen, who focused primarily on the crimes of Holmes, Schechter wades into tremendous detail with Molineaux's trial. There are some high points (especially Blanche Molineaux's spectualarly purple prosed memoirs), but even those points became bogged down in the minutae that characterized the trial. I pushed on through to the end, which held a twist worth waiting for, but I nearly gave it up at several times, in spite of reading more than halfway through. For the legally inclined, it might be worthwhile, but for true crime in a historical perspective, it doesn't quite make an enthralling read.

Sunbleached and bland.

In general, I try to avoid this type of book. I get enough of the librarian/role of books in public life sort of stuff at work, so there’s really no need to take it home with me. But it was the current pick of the local book group, so I picked it up for a quick read so I could get to my preferred obscure reads.

Well, it wasn’t terrible, but the overall feel was disappointing. The Camel Bookmobile tells the story of Brooklyn-based librarian Fiona Sweeney as she heads into remote northeastern Kenya to help jump start a program delivering books via camel to isolated tribes. Trouble arises when an outcast from the tribe, the aptly named Scar Boy, withholds his library books, threatening future visits from the bookmobile. There’s also the related drama of a woman contemplating leaving her devoted husband and taking up with a man who has been deeply in love with her for years.

Hamilton tells the story from multiple viewpoints as each character considers the ramifications of Scar Boy’s actions in a society on the cusp of massive change. It’s a little hard to imagine how the book would have worked without the multiple perspectives, as I couldn’t warm up to any of the characters entirely. In fact, I couldn’t shake the feeling of looking at characters through some other medium, lacking any real connection. Fiona, especially, emerges as particularly bland. The various relationships between the characters struck me as bordering on soap opera, and I really didn't feel like I cared terribly where people would finally come to a rest. About the only character I found myself warming to was the curmudgeony African librarian who accompanies Fiona on her trips. But once Hamilton had him talking to one of the camels, he lost his appeal as well.

Hamilton does deserve kudos for taking a tough issue and resisting the urge to resolve it with a nice, tidy ending. Her depiction of the African countryside creates a vivid sense of place (is it possible to read this book without feeling the blinding light of the sun on a dry plain?), by far the best aspect of the novel. If she had similar success with her characters, The Camel Bookmobile would be much more memorable; as it is, the story fades out of mind.

Patience rewarded.

I was drawn to Ariana Franklin's second novel, City of Shadows, mostly due to its setting. The image I have of 1920s Berlin is mostly a combination of decadent nightclubs a la Cabaret and sleek modernist designs from the Bauhaus. But the Berlin of Franklin's novel has a definite dark underbelly, populated by characters desperate to survive in a city that cannot feed its own, in spite of the glittering clubs. Esther Solomonova sees both sides of the city, working for a flamboyant club owner while still recovering from the nightmares of the Russian pograms that left her scarred both physically and emotionally. When her boss, Prince Nick, latches onto a mysterious woman in a local insane hospital who claims to the be the last of the Russian royal family, Esther is given the task of molding her into a believable princess. But with the arrival of Anna Anderson/Anastasia Romanov, Esther finds that the ghosts of her past are not far behind.

Neither, apparently, are the ghosts of Anna's past--and soon more are added. First, the club matron is brutally murdered, then a cabaret showgirl. Esther suspects that anyone with connections to Anna is in the killer's sights, but it is not until Inspector Schmidt of the Berlin police takes the case that Esther's theory is investigated. But as Berlin throws itself into the rising power of National Socialism, the prestige of claiming Grand Duchess Anastasia is a powerful political coup--and at odds with Schmidt and Esther's search for justice.

City of Shadows is a little different from most other suspense novels, in that it took quite a while for the story to really get underway. Franklin uses much of the first portion of the book to create a lush portrait of Berlin and the characters that inhabit it, making the going a little slow at first. But the care Franklin pays in setting the stage pays off in the second half of the book, where the mystery and suspense really start to shift into gear. The depth of characters give that suspense much more of a bite, as I was much more invested in the characters, really caring about the injustices paid to them, and struggling to understand how some could turn to the hateful message of the Nazis.

Anna Anderson was a real person, and many of the events in the book actually happened as Franklin recounts them. But it is as much the nuanced portrait of a city on a brink that gives City of Shadows an authenticity that I sometimes find is missing from many mystery novels. It took a little while to warm up, but I'm glad I stuck with the book as I found myself getting drawn into it more and more. By the end, I was reading at a breakneck pace, hoping it wouldn't end.

The beautiful voice in print.

If you were to ask people in the know about the goings on of the opera world, they would probably agree that Renee Fleming is the closest artist that could be called current American diva. Especially after the release of her most current disc, Homage: The Age of the Diva, it would appear that Fleming herself isn't adverse to the title. So it perhaps shouldn't come as a surprise that Fleming has released (in 2004) The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer: a memoir, not of her life, but of her voice.

It's an interesting concept, but one that has some inherent problems. For instance, where does the voice end and the singer begin? How does such a book different from a singing how-to (or even an extended voice coaching session)? Opera singers sometimes like to refer to their voices as 'instruments,' a concept that almost makes the singer and the voice two distinct entities. Fleming herself has noted that she doesn't like to think of her voice in that manner, but there is the sense from Inner Voice that we're getting a lot on the voice and not so much on Fleming herself. Much of the book reads like the responses to a very friendly interviewer, leaving the singer herself somewhat distant. There's a little bit of confusion over to whom the book is being addressed as well. Fleming offers considerable advice and examples of how she produces her sound and how to avoid the fatigue and vocal damage that often plagues classical singers. Puzzlingly, some simple musical terms, such as legato, are defined in the text, suggesting an audience with little formal training. Yet more difficult concepts ('tessitura') receive no explanation.

On the positive side, Fleming writes with a down-to-earth sensibility that immediately dispells any notion of the stereotypical touchy diva. If Inner Voice suffers from some a lack of focus, at least one can say that it is a breeze to read, and the moments where Fleming does get into some personal history offer honest, engaging depictions of the hectic life of an opera star. As such, I'm still glad that I took the time to read it. Die-hard Fleming fans, voice students and opera enthusiasts interested in the 'how it's done' aspects of singing would probably find The Inner Voice most satisfying. Fleming's artistry and career are likely important enough to encourage future books; perhaps she'll write a more traditional memoir in the future. In the meantime, this interview and performance on MPR's Saint Paul Sunday provides a satisfying portrait of the artist.

Frosty's been iced.

I'm a sucker for macabre twists, so it was just a matter of time before I picked up Snow Blind, P. J. Tracy's procedural set in the frigid expanses of rural Minnesota. The twist to this mystery lies in the method by which the killer(s) go about disposing of their victims. In suitable cold weather fashion, they encase their victims in snowmen, complete with carrot noses. Needless to say, I was intrigued.

The story has some fairly formulaic touches: the detectives are cranky veterans who are leary of venturing beyond their Minneapolis haunts and a rookie sheriff finds herself facing down dangerous criminals before she's even figured out how to get to her own headquarters. The pace is typical thriller, moving at a fast pace and zooming between character perspectives. But most of the story is told from the perspective of Detectives Magozzi and Rolseth of the MPD, and their newbie colleague in Dundas County, Iris Rikker. When a snowman appears in the rural northern county, Magozzi and Rolseth find that all clues seem to lead to the Bitterroot Corporation, a front for an abused women's shelter. While trying to unearth the motives behind the murders, Sheriff Rikker makes some unpleasant discoveries that suggest the mysteries behind the snowmen murders has a much longer history than anyone could have imagined. Snow Blind is a fast read (it took me two working days to blow through it), and it's not wanting for plot turns. Astute readers will probably figure out the ending, but Tracy (in reality a pseudonym for a mother-daughter writing team) wisely creates an ending worthy of the topics surrounding the mystery.

I did have one complaint about Snow Blind, however. This is a Monkeewrench novel, named after the computer security firm that Magozzi and Rolseth enlist to hack into websites for clues. I've never read any of the other Monkeewrench titles, which I didn't think would be an issue as the novels all seemed standalone. In retrospect, I probably should have started with the first title which might have given a little more background. Otherwise, I was rather lost on the first few sections in Snow Blind dealing with previously established characters. On the whole, Snow Blind, while mostly sticking to formula does that formula quite well, providing the excitement that whodunits should.

Short and (sometimes) sweet stories of the heartland.

If it were not for an article published in the Star Tribune last year, I would have had no inkling that a small film called Sweet Land had recently been filmed in the rural streatches of western Minnesota. And if not for seeing the movie, I would have missed Will Weaver's 1989 collection of stories, the title story "A Gravestone Made of Wheat," being the inspiration for the screenplay. I just love it when coincidences all lead to an author that I had almost forgotten, and find a satisfying read in the process.

The stories in A Gravestone Made of Wheat and Other Stories all have connections to the small farming communities of the Midwest, particularly Weaver's home state Minnesota. Weaver's sense of the pull the land has on the Midwestern psyche is pitch perfect in his writing, creating characters that react to their various situations in ways that ring true. In the title story, elderly Olaf's intention to bury his wife Inge on their farm despite the objections of the local sheriff echoes the quiet determination and dignity the young couple faced when postwar prejudices led to snub Inge because of her German birth. With "The Bread-Truck Driver," Weaver creates a humorous take on a delivery man intent on wooing the bored wives of northern Minnesota's lake country, and "The Cowman" gave me a chill when I read the depiction of a marriage breaking under the strain of farming responsibilities. A few stories left me cold: "Heart of the Fields" never captured my interest, "Blood Pressure" was simply strange and "The Undeclared Major" was unremarkable in style and plot.

But in addition to the title story, I was taken with the final story, "You Are What You Drive." Following the ownership of a particular black Buick, the story reveals the cyclical pull of the seasons, life and relationships in a small town. It was a good close to a collection of solid, if not revolutionary writing, but satisfying none the less. Weaver has also released another collection of stories including some from Gravestone and newer publications, which I'll probably pick up soon. And the film is definitely worth checking out, a sincere and beautifully filmed portrait of Minnesota in the 1920s. One good film, a good read and the prospect of another enjoyable collection: not bad for one newspaper article.

A human story hidden in a disaster account.

This is as close as I get to a thriller. And Mark Levine’s F5: Devastation, Survival, and the Most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the 20th Century, a description of the freakish outbreak of storms in April 1974 has a definite ‘thriller’ feel to it. But with weather books such as this, there’s often the issue of exploitation hanging over writers (and readers) who are profit from or are entertained by other peoples’ astonishingly bad luck. Levine generally avoids that here; his account creates real, dignified people who are not entirely defined by the tornadoes that swept through their lives.

The April 1974 outbreak spawned hundreds of tornadoes over multiple states, killing hundreds and flattening more than a few communities. Levine examines the storms through the perspective of Limestone County, Alabama, which was struck twice within hours with deadly twisters. I especially like Levine’s opening scene with a young couple driving through the storm, a motif that reoccurs throughout the book. I should note that Levine, in addition to his journalism writings, is also a successful poet, a background that gives the language of F5 not only an immediacy but stark beauty as well.

Levine makes a few missteps, however. His efforts to cast the disaster in the light of Watergate woes, racial tensions and overall malaise slows the momentum and worse, runs against the notion of natural calamity appearing out of nowhere. Nixon may have been a conniving scoundrel, but the storms were not the result of a vengeful God smiting a morally bankrupt nation. Levine skips over most of the science behind the storms, and even that is mostly tied up in the work of Dr. Tetsuya (Ted) Fujita, at the time very much the public face of tornado research. It’s a humanity driven book, and that coupled with the strength of Levine’s writing, raises F5 a notch above most natural disaster books.

O editor, where art thou?

It seems appropriate that of all the characters in classic literature, Elizabeth Kostova chose to resurrect Dracula for her 2005 tome The Historian. There's no shortage of narrative threads to take up from Bram Stoker's original creation, but most importantly, the central character is notoriously hard to pin down to any one time and place. So voila, your novel can leap from locale to exotic locale, across several centuries and still have a reasonable shot at maintaining a plausible plot.

Kostova's detailed settings are the best aspect of The Historian, a novel that jumps from Cambridge, England, to the bazaars of Istanbul and into the dark forests of Romania and Bulgaria. The reason for all this travel is all a little murky, as the plot of the novel unfolds painfully slowly. The historian of the title is nominally a bookish diplomat, living in Amsterdam with his teenage daughter, who serves as the book's first narrator. She dutifully follows him on his diplomatic travels, but when he suddenly disappears following a trip to the University of Cambridge, she sets out to discover the truth. Coming upon a cache of her father's letters, she learns how intertwinded her history is with the legend of Vlad the Impaler, and how her father's love of scholarship and books sent him on a chase that would put him face to face with the legendary tyrant.

Kostova's plot echoes some of the points of The Da Vinci Code--legendary figures, clues hidden in libraries, mysterious forces trying to thwart intrepid scholars and of course the continuous border-hopping--but while that book had a breakneck pace to keep the reader occupied, The Historian unfolds at a painfully slow rate over its 642 pages. Kostova moves it along fairly well over the course of the first 200 pages or so, but then quickly becomes mired in details that I felt did little to add to the story. Adding to its ponderous pace is the use of several different narrators, a technique that only serves to lengthen the proceedings by requiring backstory for each. The germ of the story is a good idea, and there were portions where I was really gripped by the plot turns. But just as quickly, I was back to slogging through minutae. With tighter editing, The Historian would be more appealing, but asking someone to pick through over 600 pages is a request that only the most dedicated readers would likely undertake.

La vie en rose, Quebec style

The tiny hamlet of Rapide Blanc in northern Quebec would hardly garner anyone’s attention, even if the town still existed. Created in the late 1920s to house workers at the nearby hydroelectric plant, Rapide Blanc was just as summarily wiped from the map when a nationalized utility company determined the cost of manning the dam would be more than simply running it remotely. So in 1971, the people who had founded the town packed their cars and left the area to return to its natural state.

Rapide Blanc no longer exists, but Quebecois artist Pascal Blanchet creates a fine portrait of the town in his graphic novel White Rapids (his own translation from the original French). As far as plot goes, there’s not a whole lot: the bigwigs at the power company decide to build a dam and a town for its workers, people enjoy their lives far in the Quebecois wilderness, the town becomes more connected to the world, the power company decides to put an end to it all. That’s pretty much it. But the story is simply justification for Blanchet’s lovely, stylized silhouetted figures with a sort of composition reminiscent of 1950s era advertising. They’re warm, glowing images, colored in varying shades of brownish gray, brilliant whites and muted oranges. Blanchard’s art conveys not a utopia—this is a working town, not one founded on any particular moral premise—but a definite sense of camaraderie and whimsy. One particular image of a house party in full mid-50s swing practically pulses with the bonhomie of good music, good company and a fine summer night. In fact, not even the eventual decline of the town can cast a shade over the pictorials; the final sensation is not that of loss, but more like the natural passing that comes with sunset.

Blanchet’s errors are limited to the types of fonts chosen for the text. Some were virtually impossible to make out either due to letter design or color. The story of Rapide Blanc would hardly constitute a paragraph, but in graphic format it works. Blanchet has had little else published in either French or English, focusing instead mainly on illustration and cartooning. His other work La Fugue might be worth tracking down, or else hope that more of this talented artist’s work becomes available in the U.S.

Fiction as accessory.

If accolades for fiction were handed out based solely on title or premise, Patricia Marx's first novel Him Her Him Again The End of Him would stand a good chance of raking in the awards. Marx's title is one of the wittist ones I've seen, and that snazzy cover begs to be shown off at your local trendy coffee spot. In fact, Him Her would make great reading for quick lunch hours or coffee breaks, as Marx's slight novel works best in small doses.

Him Her opens with our unnamed protagonist, a throughly neurotic graduate student currently trying to avoid doing her dissertation at Cambridge University. In the midst her studies appears the erudite, uptight psychological philospher Eugene, who quickly sweeps our heroine off her feet with his musings on Newton and sweet nothings that she pretends to understand. No sooner does she commit to this towering intellect than she discovers that he has run off with a Hellenistic studies major to the Dalmatian coast. More irked than heartbroken, she finds a way to get even with him, and--well, from the title you can fairly easily figure out the end.

Him Her is something of a satire of chick lit, but like that genre, the plot is terribly thin. At times I was really pushing myself to get through to the end, waiting to see if the plot would kick in. Marx's strongest writing came with the portrayal of 'Her' work at a lesser-known New York-based comedy show 'Taped But Proud,' where some of her best one-liners were delivered. But what plot there is seems only there for the delivery of such lines, leading Him Her to sound more like a worn SNL sketch or a plumped up humorous short story rather than novel material. Having read and enjoyed some of Marx's work in The New Yorker, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, I know she can write well for articles. As a novel, Him Her Him Again The End of Him has its moments, but even for light reading, it doesn't quite live up to its promise.