Everything I Consume: The Daughter of Time and The Crown Crime Companion

Years ago I read an interview with V.S Naipaul, I have no idea why, where he said he would give a book 100 pages or so and if he didn't like it he would just stop reading. I've never actually read any of V.S Naipaul's books but I figure if a Nobel Prize-winning author would quit on a book he didn't like I certainly could. This was a revelation. I've been much more aggressive about giving up on books ever since. So, I bailed on The Daughter of Time after about fifty pages. I'd only been reading it because The Crown Crime Companion said it was the fourth-best mystery ever written. Better than Murder Must Advertise, Red Harvest, The Long Goodbye or Murder on the Orient Express. Better than anything written by Jim Thompson, Ross Macdonald or Ken Follett. I beg to differ. After fifty or so pages I found myself with that familiar feeling on involuntarily skimming paragraphs, then whole pages and then not caring enough to go back.

The story is about a English policeman stuck in the hospital who decides to solve the mystery of whether Richard III actually killed his two nephews. This was an interesting premise but there's too much of that breezy British dialogue that I can't stand. I just don't see the point of reading this book when there are still Agatha Christies and Dorothy Sayers I haven't read.

Since I only read this book because The Crown Crime Companion recommended it that book gets sent to paperbackswap.com too. Go, false guide to mystery novels, go! And I'm not going to read Presumed Innocent, either.

Everything I Consume: The Guns of Heaven

This was a good, quick read from Pete Hamill about a reporter who gets involved with the IRA. I liked this book but even at 250 pages there's a lot of padding about Irish history and New York City locales. For some reason the author even threw in an albino near the end of the book. I guess you toss the rulebook when you're trying to make a deadline, I don't know. Here are a couple of reviews.

New Poll

So I got this book from paperbackswap.com called The Crown Crime Companion : The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time and truth be told it's pretty lame but I'm a sucker for lists and I thought I'd go through the book and find some classic mysteries I haven't read yet. I've read the top three (Complete Sherlock Holmes, The Maltese Falcon and Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination) and ordered number four (Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, a book I'd never even heard of) but number five is Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow and after you say to yourself, how the fuck is a Scott Turow book the number five mystery of all-time I have a question. I saw the movie of Presumed Innocent when it came out, it's the one where Harrison Ford has that terrible haircut, and I'm pretty sure, but not certain, I remember who did it. So, should I read the book? One one hand it might be interesting reading it knowing (I think) who the killer is. On the other hand it might just be a waste of time. The poll is up, you decide!

My last poll, about whose t-shirt to buy, was deadlocked 1-1-1 between Lidstrom, Hasek and Backstrom so I decided on Backstrom because he was the most obscure of the bunch. I think the odds are pretty low I'll see another Minnesota Wild t-shirt on the streets of Brooklyn, much less a Niklas Backstrom one. My NHL t-shirts were a jinx anyway, the Wild lost in the first round of the playoffs and every time I wore my Sidney Crosby shirt the Penguins lost. So, by not buying the Red Wings t-shirts I un-jinxed them to the Stanley Cup, I mean it makes perfect sense.

Though, if I had to do it over I would have gotten a Henrik Zetterberg shirt.

Everything I Consume: The White Lioness

I used to belong to a writer's group where everyone loved Henning Mankell. I like the guy but I always have the same reaction to his books. I start them and I'm totally hooked and make a mental note to ask for his next book on paperbackswap.com, then I start to lose interest, then I want it to end soon and then I enjoy the ending and think it was a decent read. About a year later I pick up another one. That was the reaction I had to this book. It's a little different from the earlier books in the series (I recommend Dogs of Riga if you've never read Mankell) in that it switches between various characters and is more of a thriller than a mystery after the opening murder is explained.

The detective, Kurt Wallander is unusual for a few reasons. He is a detective in the small Swedish city of Ystad. Unlike a lot of modern writers who saddle their detectives with all manner of tragedy and handicaps Kurt is merely divorced, drinks a little too much, weighs a little too much and has a difficult but not impossible relationship with his father and daughter. It's not ideal but I think we can relate.

Wallander also seems to take longer to solve his cases than any other detective I've ever read. His cases take weeks if not months to resolve themselves. This book is about two months in book time from start to finish but I know some of his earlier cases took even longer. I find that endearing for some reason.

Everything I Consume: City of Tiny Lights

This book is a mystery set in London centered around a Ugandan-Pakistani private detective who is looking for a missing prostitute. It has a great cover.

This is one of those novels where a writer of "serious" fiction decides to slum as a mystery writer. This kind of book can work if the writer understands the mystery genre but author Patrick Neate clearly doesn't. The book is filled with numerous lengthy asides that do nothing to illuminate the plot or reveal character. The plot eventually grinds to halt at the middle when the private detective finds the woman he's been hired to find and then spends a couple of chapters getting him motivated again to solve the murder that, I guess, is at the heart of the case. I stopped reading about halfway through after the detective's father gave a lengthy biography on the terrorist who is somehow involved in the murder.

It reminded me of two other books, Like a Hole in the Head by Jennifer Banbury, another book that sought to "transcend" the mystery genre with poor results and Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers. Murder Must Advertise is a great book and has a climactic cricket scene that is one of my favorites. Oh, geez, my bad, the protagonist of City of Tiny Lights is constantly making references to cricket.

This book does raise the interesting question of what counts as consuming a book or movie. I read a little over half of this book and I think it counts but the other day I watched bits and pieces of Infamous, maybe about a third, and I don't think that counts as watching so it's not on my list of movies seen in 2008. A question for the philosophers I guess.

Everything I Consume: Pictures At A Revolution

Lately, almost everything I consume has been Purim candy and over-the-counter allergy or cold remedies (depending on what I think is causing this endless cough and runny nose) and I've fallen way behind on my Everything I Consumes. Heck, I'm two books past this one!

Pictures at the Revolution by Mark Harris was fantastic, I kept sneaking time in to read it and I was sorry when it was over. Starting with Robert Benton and David Newman conceiving Bonnie and Clyde in 1963 it tells the interwoven story of the five Best Picture nominees from 1967 (Dr. Doolittle, In The Heat of The Night, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner? and The Graduate). The stories of how movies are made are always fascinating and this book goes from conception to creation to production to distribution to Oscar night. There's incredible detail and great interviews with Warren Beatty, Mike Nichols, Dustin Hoffman, Buck Henry and many of the people involved in the five movies. Hovering above it all is Sidney Poitier, the biggest star in the world in 1967 and about to flame out. Harris has some great observations, my favorite being that Hollywood has as much trouble dealing with unexpected successes as unexpected failures. I give it my highest possible recommendation.

When you read a book about a slice in time you can't help but think of how the characters paths diverged after the end of the book. Some on the way up (Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman) and others on the way down (Rex Harrison and Sidney Poitier).

Another reason I was interested in this book was that I was born in 1967. Incredibly, that year's Oscars were midpoint in their history. That year was the 40th Oscars and this year's was the 80th. In my mind 1967 is the edge of current history but it's really quite a while ago.

Everything I Consume: Grotesque

Natsuo Kirino's Out was the best book I read in 2006. I've recommended it to everybody and if I haven't told you to read it you're probably not my friend or uncomfortable with extreme violence and vivid sexuality. So I had high hopes for Grotesque (and kudos to The Wife for buying me a book she knew she wouldn't want to read or even hear about) and I was not disappointed.

The story goes back and forth in time and perspective between a nameless narrator, two murder victims (the narrator's sister and a friend from high school, both prostitutes) and the confessed killer of one of them. The less you know the better but it's a gripping read, filled with bizarre characters, twists, weird sexual relationships and a look inside Japanese society. It strains belief that all the characters seem to have left secret journals but if that bothers you just let go.

It's always been a struggle to find Japanese mystery writing, even the best writers are rarely translated. Luckily some more of Kirino's books are being translated and we should get one a year from her for the next three years.

If anyone reads this I'd love to discuss the ending and what you thought of it. It's just out in paperback which is good news for you and bad news for me trying to sell a used hardcover.

Everything I Consume: And Then We Came to The End and Juno

I've fallen way behind in recording my consumption so I'm lumping And Then We Came To The End and Juno together. This may seem odd, or you don't care, but they have a lot in common. Both were over-hyped, have a hipster vibe and are overrated but certainly worth reading/seeing.

And Then We Came To The End or ATWCTTE is the story of an imploding Chicago ad agency in 2000 and 2001. I'm a big fan of workplace fiction—100% of my unpublished novels are set in an office—so I enjoyed looking at the relationships of the people we are forced to spend most of our lives with and often discard in an instant. The book is told in a first-person plural that takes some getting used to but is very effective.

WE WERE FRACTIOUS AND overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen. Most of us liked most everyone, a few of us hated specific individuals, one or two people loved everyone and everything.

Quickly, you feel like part of the story and part of the agency. This helps relate to the characters since there is no one main character. The writer, Joshua Ferris, is very effective at going back and forth in time. The problem with the book is the office is filled with only colorful characters and ridiculous situations. It quickly went from slice-of-life to over-the-top. There are murdered children, rumors of cancer, fired employees who won't leave and even a totem pole. All this stuff is better handled on The Office or Mary Tyler Moore. But, you know, that's not really fair, because the week-in, week-out of a television show is so much better at capturing the feel of office life than a novel. I know Joshua Ferris lives in Brooklyn and I don't want him to get mad at me if I see him on the street or my neighborhood bookstore.

As you probably know, Juno is about a too-cool-for-school high school student who gets pregnant. I liked it but I wanted to punch the soundtrack in the face. It had the subtlety and charm of someone yelling, "I am Quirky! Look at me!". Oddly, the annoying lead, Ellen Page was nominated for an Oscar yet the excellent supporting cast was overlooked. Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Michael Cera and J.K. Simmons were all fantastic.

Finally, I have to call out to the world to stop making movies where a woman's water breaks and she rushes to the hospital. It happens in 90% of movies and TV shows and 1% of the time in the real world. Show a scene where a pregnant woman argues with a nurse that she's in labor and should be admitted to the hospital and not sent home. That would have been hilarious in this movie. It would have made up for half the soundtrack's annoyance. Don't make me do your job for you.

Books Piled Up, Chapter 2

In the two and a half months since my previous post on this topic I've managed to get my to-be-read pile down from 41 books to, wait for it, wait for it, 40 books! I really thought I was doing better than that. Can I blame Christmas? Actually, no. I got two books and I just finished And Then We Came To The End.

Sorry, America. I thought I was doing betterthan that. I feel like those people on The Biggest Loser finding out they only lost one pound.

Everything I Consume: The Subtle Knife

The biggest surprise in this book was that there actually was a subtle knife. I mean, it sounded like a metaphor so I was pretty surprised when it showed up. Anyway, this was an enjoyable sequel to The Golden Compass, which I loved. The book starts in "our world" and spends a lot of time here which is quite a shock after Golden Compass' fantasy world of deamons, talking polar bears and zeppelins.

Being an atheist in 2008 is like being a lesbian in 1995. This is our moment, especially if you look at the best-seller lists filled with the un-holy trinity of Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins. I don't know why this is happening. Maybe people are finding courage to admit their beliefs in an increasingly theocratic world. Maybe people are waking up. Maybe it's just fashion.

While we're on the subject check out this article on my man, Nick Clegg, new head of the Liberal Democratic Party in the UK. He admits he doesn't believe in God and he's opposed to the Iraq War. Imagine someone saying this in the US! I know the Lib Dems aren't going anywhere but still I wish he could get my vote.

Everything I Consume: Aurora 7

It's 1962 day here in the Fuselage…

About fifteen years ago I worked for Bettmann, a large stock photo agency that has since become part of a very large company called Corbis. We had a lot of free time (no web or blogs back then) and every week I would read Entertainment Weekly. Entertainment Weekly loved this book. It got a great review (an "A" I'm sure) and they would recommend it almost every week, for weeks, in their book column. Oddly, I never heard about it anywhere else. The premise sounded interesting: one day, specifically May 24, 1962, in the life of an 11-year old contrasted with Scott Carpenter orbiting around the Earth in his Aurora 7 capsule. Other people pop in and out of the book with several of them meeting (or not) at the climax. I'm sick of all that baby-boomer crap and everyone-is-connected plots now but it was still kind of interesting in 1992. Back then I loved thirtysomething and JFK and I'm sure I would have thought Syriana was amazing.

Over the years I looked for it but I'd forget who the author was or changed my mind about buying it or decided I'd rather get something else but I never forgot Aurora 7. I don't know why. Maybe it reminded me of being 25 and believing it was important to read new fiction. Maybe I like a quest. I spent over five years hunting down Horace McCoy novels before I found one. Maybe I felt it would complete me somehow. Anyway, I finally broke down and ordered it on paperbackswap.com.

It's a good book, even if not worth a fifteen year wait. It has this self-referential way of writing that I find addictive:

He remembered the first time he was the 23rd street subway station. It was for a seventh grade party and thinks about how much the world has changed. The Home Depot and Bank of America, a plasma tv in the diner. Because he doesn't drive he doesn't think about how different the cars look and because he takes it for granted, he doesn't think about the computer and software he works on to create advertising for a credit card that didn't exist then.

Really, it's not that hard to do when you've been doing it all week.

One thing I found ironic about the book was that it uses a voice of God narrator who freely goes back and forth in time showing the future fates of many of the characters. At one point the book mentions Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 space capsule as being "lost forever" but it was recovered in 1999, after this book was written. I guess you can use the voice of God but you can't be God.

Books Piled Up

I've written previously about my obsessions over my to-be-read pile. Sometimes I think it is like a mania. I know The Wife does. Right now my to-be-read pile consists of 41 books. I like to think I would have made some serious headway if not for Ghost Wars, probably could have gotten it down to 35-38 books. I say this not to impress you but to state that I may have a bit of a problem. At a book a week I'll finish all these books on August 23, 2008. Of course, between Hannukah, Christmas and my birthday and my own buying this pile will grow even if I read them at a steady pace.
Where did these books come from? It turns out I've spent virtually no money on them.

• 17 are from paperbackswap.com. I've received 46 books and sent out 40 since I joined in December 2005. And the thing is, as I read these books I just exchange them for even more books.
  
• 6 are books The Wife has read.
  
• 4 were picked up on the street. People are constantly leaving books out on the street in Brooklyn and few things scare The Wife more than seeing a pile of discarded books while taking a weekend family stroll.
• 3 were bought when I was a member of the Hard Case Crime Club. These are the only books I paid retail for with my own money and weren't first read by somebody else. (I sound like a White House press secretary with all these qualifiers.)
• 3 were bought used.
• 3 are hand-me-downs from my father-in-law. He gives me lots of books but these are the few I actually want to read. Mostly, they sit unwanted on paperbackswap.com.
• 3 were gifts.
• 2 were bought on a gift card I got for my birthday in January. I picked these books out of all the ones at Barnes & Noble and still they've been sitting around for more than six months.

I'll check in on this later to see if I've made any progress.

Everything I Consume: The Golden Compass

I was reading this book on the subway when a woman started talking to me about what a great book it was. She felt it was much better than Harry Potter and the writing was fantastic. No one had ever done that to me before but I think I would have done the same thing if I saw someone else reading this book.

I loved The Golden Compass. I've never been a big fantasy fan — I read the first Harry Potter and stopped there - but this kept me hooked from start to finish. I was even sneaking to the bathroom to sneak in some reading. It's the first part of the His Dark Materials trilogy and begins the story of Lyra, a twelve-year old girl in Oxford in an alternative universe where everyone has an animal daemon. She begins and epic quest involving disappearing children, talking bears, her mysterious uncle and an even more mysterious woman. The less you know, probably the better so forget I told you even that. Except that Iorek Byrnison is now my fifth favorite fictional character.

The writing is really first rate. The fictional world felt real to me and the action scenes were thrilling. There's a serious theme of the danger of organized religion and government's control over the truth. In fact, the controversy over whether this book is anti-religion was the first place I heard of it. I think this book is more about how any giant organization bends the truth and performs awful acts to support its own agenda but I have two books to go.

This series is so popular it has it's own Wiki, which is pretty cool.

Everything I Consume: Fright

I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed reading Cornell Woolrich. He's just so creepy. All his novels and stories seem to involve questions of sanity and what really happened. Characters are always trapped with no way out. Often main characters are suspected of a crime and they're pretty sure they didn't do it but not totally. And the books end with a cruelly ironic twist that could put The Twilight Zone to shame. In The Bride Wore Black the main characters husband is killed on their wedding day. She spends years chasing down the men she believes responsible for his death only to find out at the end it was an accident and she's been killing the wrong people. That's cold and I think you have to be pretty cold to write something like that.

Woolrich's writing could be a little stiff and over-the-top with the plot proceeding proceeding at a glacial pace. I admit I was getting a little tired of Fright as it reached it's climax. Sometimes he seems like he's padding and it seems a little weird out of context but on the whole his books are very suspenseful. For example:

Death of a chocolate bar. Death and burial of a chocolate bar. Death of a man? What was the difference? Death was death, always death.

Woolrich's books inspired some great movies like Rear Window, Phantom Lady and The Leopard Man.

Anyway, back to Fright. It's about a man who sleeps with woman who then blackmails him. She keeps coming back for more until on his wedding day, he's taken all he can take and kills her. But things don't get any better as his fear of getting caught takes over and destroys his life. I liked it and recommend it but it's not as good as the best Woolrich like Black Alibi, Black Path of Fear and Deadline at Dawn. The main character just gets worse and worse and it pained me to read about how awful he made the life of his wife.

Everything I Consume: Ghost Wars

This book was like Afghanistan itself. I struggled mightily and picked up the book in stops and starts but, after much longer than expected, I finished it. Ghost Wars is the history of American involvement in Afghanistan from just before the 1979 Soviet invasion to September 10, 2001. It's a story of failed opportunites and general half-assing it by the U.S. government. Despite enormous resources and dedication the government never comitted to actual action agains the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. Unreliable foreign govenments like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were consistantly used to acheive American objectives instead of making a serious commitment. There was always something more important to do. After giving a detailed picture of Afghan politics the focus shifts away from Afghanistan to Washington after the Taliban takes over which is pretty telling. Highly recommended.

Everything I Consume: Kill Now, Pay Later

This was another Hard Case reprint. Kudos on a wonderfully lurid cover, yowza! I got a lot of stares of the subway for reading this one. The rest of the book wasn't so hot. The writer just seemed to keep throwing out plot and hoping it would stick, much like the women in the book who keep throwing themselves at detective Ben Gates. I mean, he doesn't even try with these women and they're all over him.

The story starts with Gates being drugged at a wedding he is working and involves blackmail, dirty movies, hidden identities and arson. It's a big mess and by the end we're not really sure how we got there. The beginning reminded me of The Gutting of Couffignal and the end reminder me of Rebecca, which are two better stories. So, a servicable read that I was able to trade quickly on paperbackswap.com.

My favorite part of the book was the blurb by Brett Haliday, creator of the Michael Shayne series. Author Robert Terrall was one of the ghost writers of the Michael Shayne series at this time so he may have blurbed his own book. Good for you, Robert!

Everything I Consume: A Deadly Shade of Gold

This is classic John D. MacDonald. Our hero, Travis McGee, sleeps with three women, gets shot twice and there are about a dozen corpses. In between detective work and gunplay there's a lot of philosophizing and critical observations of American culture, circa 1965. Travis is every man's fantasy; he's great with the ladies and a gun, more sharp than smart, doesn't take crap from anyone and lives on a houseboat. He sleeps with women but never takes advantage of them. Here's a good description of McGee from an article by Doug Bassett: "McGee is an odd duck, no doubt about it – to use Ed Gorman’s memorable phrase, he was 'a Rotarian’s fantasy of the Cool Guy.' And at his worst, mostly in the early books, he’s quite contrived, an odd bundle of Fifties morality paired with Sixties ratpack 'coolness.' "

I like MacDonald but his writing and plots are often too complicated for my taste. He's definitely a link between the spare style and shorter books of early hardboiled writers like Chandler, Hammett and Ross MacDonald and the more modern style with more characterization and longer stories of writers like Robert Parker and Robert Crais.

One of my favorite parts of the book, and something that tells you a lot about the kind of writer MacDonald is, is when he Travis asks his lady friend if she is Catholic. She give a page-long response about how she had faith as a child and it meant so much to her but lost it when her brother died young, and now she clings to it as nostalgic link to her past. It turns out he wants her to ask the priest a few questions about some people they're looking for. Here's how a few other writers would handle the situation.

Arthur Conan Doyle: "A papist such as yourself should have no trouble asking the priest a few questions"
"I…I will do it , Mr. Holmes," Nora said bravely.
"Holmes, how did you know the woman was a Catholic?"
"It is simple Watson, the vast majority of Italians are Catholic, I merely took an educated guess and was proven correct."
"Astounding!"

Mickey Spillane: "Listen, Padre, the last time I saw my friend he was lying in a pool of gore in a motel room. Are you gonna tell me what I want to know?"

Dashiell Hammett: "Luckily, Nora was Catholic and after hearing too much of her life story agreed to talk to the priest. She found out plenty."

Ross MacDonald: Lew Archer would just ask the priest himself who would answer all his questions and tell Archer the entire backstory.

I Am Reading Three Books

In one of the many iterations of The Odd Couple Oscar Madison tells the story of Felix Unger introducing himself by saying, "I have two colds."

Only slightly less annoying is the fact that I am reading three books at the same time. I've been reading Steve Coll's Ghost Wars, an excellent account of the Afghan Wars from the seventies to September 10, 2001. It's a great book but very long so I've been taking breaks to read other things. Partially for myself and partially so I can keep up the insatiable demand for Everything I Consume posts. What's with you people?

Anyway,That's when I started John D. MacDonald's A Deadly Shade of Gold. This is a fun read. I never seek out John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee books but I always enjoy them when I stumble onto them. I was about four chapters in when I got an e-mail saying my copy of Donald Westlake's Slayground had sold on Amazon. This was great news except I'd never read Slayground. I had posted it on Amazon for $13.99 and was astonished when it sold so fast or at all. But I really wanted to read Slayground (Donald Westlake is one of the three people I consider America's greatest living author) so I had to put down the MacDonald and am now trying to read the Westlake as fast as I can.

Everything I Consume: The Lady In The Morgue

This was a very good book, screwball and hardboiled at the same time. The story concerns the theft of an unidentified body from the Chicago Morgue and the chase to find it and identify the body. The detective, William Crane, is dedicated to the case but still finds time to have nice meals (on his expense account) with the two detectives helping him out, drink heavily and go to "penthouse parties". It was a nice change from some of the more obsessive detectives of the era. This is definitely a book where the journey is more important than the destination. I had trouble following the solution but I didn't really care that much. Hey, does anyone remember if they ever found the Maltese Falcon or who the killer was in Murder on the Orient Express? The writing is first rate but Crane's detective agency owes a lot to the agency in the Continental Op stories.

My copy was the cool 1942 printing shown above. I got it at a local antique store but the book seems to be in print or at least available in a cheap used version. I've read a couple of other Latimers including the excellent Solomon's Vineyard. Here's a great interview with Latimer.

Chicago was the home of the other great screwball/hardboiled mystery writer Craig Rice as well as the indescribable Harry Stephen Keeler both of whom I highly recommend.

Everything I Consume: Blackmailer

I had high hopes for this book. It was written by George Axelrod, who wrote Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and Manchurian Candidate, two of my favorite movies. He also wrote Paris-When It Sizzles, an unfunny movie that seems to be on TCM every other week.

After a swift start this one fizzled and got bogged down in a plot that really didn't need to be so confusing. It's about a publisher who gets offered the final manuscript of a Hemingway-esque writer who recently committed suicide. The characters live in a world that revolves around a bizarre townhouse with two-way mirrors, secret recording devices, an elevator and lots of telephones. There's also a character who can duplicate any voice.

Like Chekhov said, if you introduce a character who has a gift for duplicating any voice in the first act you know he's going to do it by the end of the book.