Vienna Blood -- A Very Short Book Review

Photo: The book's paperback cover.

The sequel to Tallis's slightly better A Death in Vienna, this one is still a success. The Washington Post called it "the first great thriller of 2008." I'm not on top of my 2008 thrillers, but this book is very good.

The mystery is less mysterious than the first in the series, and it shouldn't be hard for the reader to guess the killer. Because there are lots of red herrings, both in the plot and in other characters, the book won't be a disappointment if you correctly guessed the killer. The interesting historical fact this time is that the swastika--forever to be associated with evil and the Nazis--was actually a much older symbol that, ironically, stood for peace and unity. Not anymore, and not ever again.

Which brings up one of the interesting things about Tallis and these books: You learn something. Like Dan Brown's thrillers, you get entertained and you get educated at the same time. I used to sometimes stop reading Brown's books and write something down that I wanted to Google. With Tallis, I've written things down that I wanted to hear on YouTube. Some have been hits, and some have been misses (such as Stockhausen, Studie 1, from a horror novel of his I'm reading now), but I've always been curious and interested. Tallis is more interested in music than in images, like Brown is, and Tallis writes historical thrillers, so you learn about the past--in this case, Vienna in 1902. Brown doesn't do that, as he brings things from the past into his thrillers in the present. But it's all good. As long as you're reading and learning, who cares?

You learn that the main character--and, one assumes, more popular Jews in Vienna, like Freud--were daily victims of bias. For example, both men (at different times) have been the recipient of snide, vulgar remarks about being Jewish, from supposedly learned and sophisticated men. Freud ignored it and Liebermann shrugged it off, but both explained it was a daily occurrence. (On a side note, Freud was apparently a teller of funny, but often crude and stereotypical, Jewish jokes. One of them, about how you could tell Jesus was Jewish, I'd heard before.) There may be a bit too much about the Freemasons of Vienna here, but that's okay, too, and you may think, as I did, that you're learning something new, as they don't seem much like the Freemasons of America I've read about.

Poor Clara is treated a little curtly here, but if you've read the first one, you've seen it coming. She immediately (and a little too patly) recovers, but that was okay with me, because she was likable, and not as dim as Liebermann thought (which he often recognized), and you don't want her to be sad. It wouldn't have worked out with me, either, but I would also have been glad that she was happy. Whatever.

So a very quick read, and worthy of your time if you like historical thrillers. I'm taking a break from Tallis's historical thrillers for now; I'm in the middle of a horror novel, written by him as F.R. Tallis. I'll let you know.

P.S.--For the waltz by Strauss that gives the book its title, click this link to YouTube.

The Phoenix Serial Killer, Trump and the FSU Guy on Bath Salts

Photo: The FSU student who killed a couple at random and was caught eating the guy's face.

Just a few fast random things on my mind:

--Did you see the headline of the FSU student who randomly killed a couple and was caught eating the guy's face? Check it out here if you haven't.  It took four policemen, a canine and a taser to make him stop. He'd been eating breakfast with his family at a restaurant a few hours before, and had left in a huff, apparently yelling about bad service. His family and friends had said he'd been acting bizarrely for about a month. Officials, of course, suspect flakka or bath salts, or similar drugs.

Why do I bring it up? (Besides because of how messed up it is?) Well, I don't want to sound purposely controversial, but a friend of mine said that if the FSU student had been black, and been caught as he had been, by four cops, biting off the face of a dead white guy, he would've been shot immediately. And not with a taser.

I hate to say it, but I'm not sure I disagree.

--Why are people still showing up at Trump rallies? Don't they realize the negativity that says about them? They might as well carry signs that say, I'M A BIGOT AND A RACIST AND I ONLY CARE ABOUT ME.

--There's a serial killer near Phoenix who has shot random people, mostly from his car, though he did walk up to a woman and a couple of girls and open fire on them. Crazy stuff. Read about it here if you're interested.

Why do I bring it up? (Besides because of how messed up this is as well?) Because the police say they're looking for a guy in his early to mid-twenties (based on witness reports) who possibly works at a car dealership (because he's been seen using cars ranging from a Nissan to a BMW and a Cadillac or Lincoln.) The victims are all unrelated, of different races (though most are from the poor neighborhoods of nearby Maryvale), and are shot in their driveways or parking lots, while just talking or just getting out to go into the house. All or most of the killings have taken place between 10 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. (I've read more than just the article linked above.)

I just have one quick thing to add, and a slight correction (based on no experience whatsoever). I read somewhere that nobody has reported any cars stolen that may have been used in the shootings. Because of this (if it's true), and because of the time frame of the shootings, and because of the quality of cars used, I'm going to disagree about this killer possibly working at a car dealership.

I'm guessing this guy has prior training, either in the armed forces, or police or SWAT training, because how many killers have shot right in front of the people at very close range? I'm also guessing that he doesn't work at a dealership (How many are open that late, anyway?), but may instead work as a valet for an establishment that men visit, and who won't report a car stolen because it's proof that they've been there. In other words, authorities should be looking for a guy with up-close combat training who works as a valet for an upscale cathouse or gentlemen's club.

How many guys like that are in their 20s, who've been in the armed forces, who work as valets in places like that in the Phoenix / Maryvale area? It's got to be someplace close by, because though the guys will be busy for a specific amount of time, they may also be trying to make it quick to get home, or to the hotel--though the owners of the cars may not be local guys, but may be visiting businessmen. (Have the local or airport Hertz / car rental guys received cars back with dents, marks, etc. that the renter can't explain? Did these guys complain about paying for gas they didn't use?) Still, the shooter will want to bring the cars back before the guy has to wait too long. This may be why there's been 10 shootings in a confined area. The shooter can't stray too far and get the car back in a decent amount of time. Most owners of those cars won't be all-nighters, if you know what I mean.

And I disagree with the idea that the victims are completely random. Something is tying them together in this guy's head. We may not see the connection, but it's there. It isn't just convenience. There would be way too many convenient victims. Why were these particular ones chosen? Could be something as arcane as the name of the street they live on reminding the shooter of somebody...

P.S.--If you live in the area, and you own a garage, get an electric garage door opener and park the car without getting out of it until you're in the garage. Then press the door opener again and wait until it's closed before you get out. And make sure nobody has snuck in your garage as the door's closing.

P.P.S.--Besides the killer, somebody knows who's doing this.

The Killer of Little Shepherds -- A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science

Photo: The book, from the author's own webpage. Here is an overview of the book itself.

Outstanding book that gives you a real feel for the lives and time of those involved. Written in a newspaper-like fashion, with no author intrusion at all--rare for this genre--and with a distant tone that is just right, almost too-distant, but not quite. Cast of real characters include serial killer Joseph Vacher, the French investigators, lawyers and judges involved in the trial, and his eleven known victims--there may have been as many as 25-30 total. One of my favorite investigators, Alphonse Bertillon, is covered a little. He was a French criminologist, one of the world's first accepted criminal profilers, and he's the author of one of my favorite, true-life quotes: "One can see only what one observes, and one observes only things which are already in the mind." Feast on that for awhile.

Vacher was a psychotic, narcissistic, borderline schizophrenic vagabond who killed ten little shepherd boys (and one or two girls) and one old lady. He sodomized and brutalized the bodies after death. What made him unique amongst killers of his type, besides for how long he got away with it, and the list of ineptness he festooned in others who associated with him, was that he was one if the first to declare himself not responsible for his crimes due to insanity. The prosecution disproved this by showing that his MO was so consistent that the perpetration of his crimes must have taken some thought, and forethought. They also showed that his talent for leaving the area quickly to avoid capture showed that he could rationalize--otherwise, why go to such consistent lengths to avoid capture?

The author concludes that his case is also unique because he was declared fit to stand trial (therefore, sane), and responsible for his crimes (so, not insane), and yet also clearly had at least one mental illness--paranoid schizophrenia, with a healthy persecution complex and fits of sexual mania. Therefore, it's possible that he was responsible for his crimes, yet also classifiably mentally ill. The author says he believes Vacher would also be found guilty today, just as he was in the late 1890s. But this reviewer is not quite so sure.

Photo: Joseph Vacher posing in prison after his capture in 1897. From the book, and this New York Times Review website for the book.  Vacher said that the hat symbolized his purity, and the keys, which he borrowed from a prison guard, symbolized the keys to heaven that he'd receive. Vachon believed he was protected by God and doing God's work. Just in case you were wondering

Certainly this case highlights the question of how much a mental illness can be said to make someone responsible, or not responsible, for his crimes. In today's heavily-diagnosed America (Donald Trump has been said lately to be harboring a potent textbook narcissistic disorder, and one wonders how fit he is to be President because of it. Look up the symptoms and I think you'll agree.), in which it seems that more people than ever may be diagnosed with a mental illness (and I mean that seriously and without judgment), this is a real question for our time. If a great many people are a classifiable something, how much does that make us culpable for our actions?

An interesting philosophical thought came up while I was reading. Another questions posed: If someone is guilty of murder (as Vacher was, and he was guillotined), and if that someone is responsible for his crime, yet is also suffering a mental illness that maybe helped instigate those crimes, can that person receive capital punishment? Again, where is the line drawn? Someone who is against capital punishment, as I am, would say No, no matter what the variables are. But those not against it, or even those on the fence, may use what I'll call the Rabid Lion Theory.

It goes loosely like this: If a lion is charging at you, obviously intent on killing you, don't you have the right to defend yourself and shoot it? If the answer is yes, what does it matter if it has rabies or not? You still have the right to kill it to defend yourself. But let's say it's foaming at the mouth and obviously has rabies. It's therefore, in a way, not responsible for its actions, as maybe it doesn't want to kill you, but the rabies is controlling it. (We can call this the Cujo Theory as well.) But even so, don't you have the right to defend yourself and kill it anyway, even if it's not responsible for its own actions?

Now, you're French society (or any society, including this one), and the rabid lion is Joseph Vacher (or any serial killer who has frequently escaped and who will obviously kill again). Don't you, as the society, have the right to defend yourself against the rabid killer, even if he's not responsible for his actions?

A real slippery slope, especially in these heavily-medicated times. And it's not going to get easier.

But I digress, a little. This book is more a history of really bad rural police work, really shoddy asylum practices, and a completely disorganized system of law if the murderer has the intelligence, good fortune, or whatever, to kill people in more than one jurisdiction. Surprisingly, this is still a big problem today (especially in these United States, and for a great number of reasons), but it was a catastrophic issue in the days before Interpol, before anyone thought to write down similarities of crimes committed across a large area over a number of years. Simply stated, nobody communicated well with each other, across provinces, just like today, where communication between departments, jurisdictions, states, and federal and regional agencies are slipshod and often testy.

This should sound very familiar for those who read about crime. Remember JonBenet? The local cops in Denver and the state and federal people were stepping on, over, and through each other immediately, screwing up the crime scene, the evidence, the witnesses, the testimonies, and every procedure and law, known and unknown to them, beyond repair. One of the guys in charge said the whole thing was botched beyond repair within a few hours of the reported crime.

And so it was with Vacher, until three guys started paying attention to some unsolved crimes, all of which involved the killing of young shepherd boys and girls, in the middle of rural nowhere, with the same MO (attack from behind, cut the throat, drag the body behind bushes or trees, sodomize and butcher the body quickly, change out of your clothes into clean clothes, and walk quickly away, often for a great many miles) and with the same descriptions of a vagabond seen in the area (short, bearded, scarred, gave off a dangerous vibe, couldn't talk correctly, and swelled foully because of yellow pus that drained from one ear). Sounds like something that anyone would put together, right? But with all the crimes happening all across very rural, nowhere France, before computers or phones, and with no system to keep track of such things, and no way to communicate?

So the history of forensics and crime is covered here, and it's all very informative and interesting.

The Murder Room

Photo: Book's cover, from my Goodreads page

For a writer like me (whatever that means), this is a great book, a source of story and book ideas for years to come.

It's also a great book for its content alone.  Capuzzo's writing took some getting used to, and I really didn't like how he sometimes jumped around, sometimes didn't (It reminded me of a recent time when I told someone that someone else we knew wasn't even predictable in her unpredictability), but the content is so compelling, and the cases so interesting, that you'll read on anyway, as I did.  The writing finally grounded itself about three-fourths of the way through, so that finally became a strength as well.

If you like this stuff--and I mean: investigations, tracking down killers, solving cases, profiling, cold cases, etc.--then this is a must-read.  If you don't, I don't know, because there's a lot of that here, even more than usual for books like this.  Much of it is grisly, and if you didn't have a healthy distrust of strangers before this, you will after this.  (Which is ironic, because the old adage is true in this book: 90% of all murder victims knew their killers well.)  If you can't handle the grisliness and sadness inherent in books like this, don't read this.  (The case of The Boy in the Box will especially haunt.)

The book, which is nonfiction, is about the Vidocq Society, a members-only group of the world's best investigators, morticians, detectives, profilers, crime scene analysts, and everyone else you can imagine associated with tracking down killers and serial killers.  (You need to read this if you don't know the difference between them.)  The group was started by three guys, all of them profiled (pardon the pun) here.

Frank Bender is (or, was, as he's died since publication) a bust-making artist of unparalleled excellence.  He could make a plaster bust of a face where one didn't exist.  He first specialized in time-lapse facial reconstruction.  What would a killer on the lam for 20 years look like since his last photo?  Bender made a cast of the guy's face, using a very old photo and a lot of whim, guessing, and innate talent, and the day after it was shown on America's Most Wanted, the guy was turned in.  Even more impressive: a skull is found with the face completely bashed in.  Using lots of research and a guess at what the partial sinus cavity would've looked like, and therefore the nose, etc., he made a bust that the murdered woman's mom saw and recognized immediately.  Fascinating.  He also had an open marriage and an insatiable drive and desire, not all of it artistic.  In essence, a whirlwind of energy you wish you had, used in ways you wish you could use it.  Bender was a very interesting, knowledgeable and, possibly, clairvoyant guy.  He said he could see and hear dead people in his dreams, and that he could feel the universe flow.  Read this book before you call that crazy.

Richard Walter is a profiler like no other.  Police departments take cold cases to him--and I mean, freezing, like over 50 years old--and he tells them where they went wrong, how they went wrong, and who the killer is.  The book makes it seem like he did this quicker than possible--he has to read case files over 1,000 pages long--but he soaks all the information in and somehow sees through all the wrong turns right away.  I've read a few myself, and I can't keep all the facts, wrong facts, suspects, wrongful suspects, theories, wrong theories, evidence, wrong evidence, and everything else straight in my head, or on paper.  He reads it, disects it, and tells you everything when he's done.  And he's always right.  BTW, the killer has over 90% of the time been questioned by police already, often several times.  Much of the time, the killer is who the police knows him (or, glaringly in this book, her) to be, but they can't prove it.  Often, Bender and Walter tell the police what they need to know so they, the police, can say it to the killer and get a confession.

William Fleisher put these guys together and started the group officially.  He's a well-respected investigator and a very well-liked and well-connected guy.  Elected the group's first president, he seems to be the glue that holds everything, and everybody, together.  He started the group with just these three guys, and now manages 82 (one for every year of its namesake's life) and hundreds of associate members.

As the society's website says, "The Vidocq Society is named for Eugène François Vidocq, the ground-breaking 19th century French detective who helped police by using the psychology of the criminal to solve "cold case" homicides. Vidocq was a former criminal himself, and used his knowledge of the criminal mind to look at murder from the psychological perspective of the perpetrator."  Bender was a former criminal as well.

Some of the many cases covered here are:

The Boy in the Box.  (Warning: This one is very depressing and disturbing.)

A robbery that was actually a planned murder.

A skull without a face.

A psychopathic murderess who worked as a waitress.

A guy who brings his case to the Society at their meeting, and is profiled as the murderer.

A young woman from Phoenix whose remains were found in Colorado.

Three cases over 50 years old.

There's so much going on in this book that it may need a second reading.  As engrossing as it was, I read some parts and I thought, "Yup, I can use that," several times.  So get past the scattered writing at first and you'll be taken for an interesting, chilly, intelligent, unbelievable, and--finally--well-written ride.

Bones by Jan Burke

This book has been sitting on my shelf for years, so maybe there were unrealistic expectations.  I was also impressed with the Edgar Award for best mystery this book won, as well.  But I wasn't overly impressed by the end.  It left me underwhelmed.

The first third or half was solid.  Investigators in the mountains; a serial killer with them.  Bodies turn up and you know the killer will get away.

But there were so many missteps after that.  The dialogue is really, really terrible.  Very stilted, very unrealistic.  It talks down to the reader and overexplains really simple things, as if the author didn't think the readers could follow along.

Some scenes just backfired.  When the killer mails to the main character, a reporter, a pair of her own underwear, she and her co-workers break into inexplicable laughter.  The author tries to say that the hilarity is due to extreme tension, but it never comes across that way.  It's just an awkward scene.  There's a lot of those.

An example that blends both of these: a bomb is set up beneath one of the bodies in the mountains, and the killer gets away (after awhile) in the confusion.  The author/narrator (or the first-person main character) asks: How could have known that was going to happen?  I read that and immediately thought, I did.  You will, too, even if you're not a particularly astute reader.  Awkward.

And the end is unrealistic.  The killer, a genius, suddenly comes to her workplace, where there's an armed guard or two, plus co-workers, plus a helicopter that lands on the roof--and he doesn't know any of this, even though he has stalked all of his other victims to the point of knowing their lives better than they do.  The ending is really unfulfilling.  It hinges on the identity of the killer's helper, but you'll figure that out before too long.  You might even see it right away, not too far into the book.

These could be forgiven if the writing was good enough, but it's not.  It's awkward, the dialogue is just plain bad, and it mellows in a sentimentality and, at times, in suddenly jarring religious-speak (the main character suddenly says out loud to someone that they don't have to work on the Lord's day--even more confusing, since the narrator says she's mostly a non-believer)--and, well, the book's an award-winning mess.  I have nothing against a suddenly and unrealistically religious character, or occasionally bad dialogue, or scene and plot missteps--but not all at once in the same book.

This book is the 7th in the series, but you don't have to read any of the previous ones to read this one.  Unfortunately, I have no desire to do so, nor to read any of the next ones.  I see that I have written more negatively of this book than many have, but I don't see any way around it.  If you wish, someone please let me know if the previous ones, or the latter ones, were any better.  I've never seen the show based on these books, but the clips look good, and the show's been successful for some time now.  If you're watching that, please let me know if it's any better than the books.

Police

Photo: An uncopyedited proof, the type given to early readers, or beta-readers.  And, considering the editing job done on this book (see comment below), it apparently remained uncopyedited.  From crimefictionlover.com.

Very, very, very disappointing follow-up to Nesbo's Phantom, a far superior book, even with the ridiculous passages from the rat's POV.  In equal parts boring and frustrating--but mostly frustrating--Police is a book that could've been, and should've been, much better. 

It fails because it's all over the place with its plot and story, and because it doesn't focus enough on its characters.  Nesbo said in an interview that he essentially wrote Phantom and Police as one book, and it shows.  At over 1,000 pages combined, it seems like Nesbo couldn't wait to finish with the ending, that even he became bored and frustrated with it.

How else to explain the inexplicable demise of a major recurring character?  How else to explain how the killer could've had the time to draw and quarter this well-liked character while on the run from everyone?  Could the killer really have chopped off her arms and legs and head in (seemingly) minutes?  Then stash them all in different bags and deposit them in the trash just in time for the trucks?

What?!?  And, by the way, didn't this character deserve so much better?  She's rarely considered for the rest of the book--though everyone was sure not to sit in her chair--and it's never explained why she was done away with when other characters were not, even when we were tricked into thinking they would be.

And that was another thing.  Way too many cheap tricks, like making us think a character's young daughter was in danger when her father calls her friend Emilie's house to inquire about her sleepover.  Turns out, she was at the sleepover after all--just at a different girl's house...another girl in the same class, also named Emilie!!!  Ugh...

Another time a character looks like she's about to get it, but it was just another character sneaking up on her.  She even says that, hey, you're not John Doe--but it turns out he was.  She just meant that he wasn't acting like himself.  Please...

Another time a very distraught father was acting strange at the scene of his daughter's death, just after a character in the previous section said that murders were committed by someone distraught about love, and at the death scene of those he loved.  Turns out, though, that this guy was actually just in grief about his daughter dying, one year to the day...Argh!

The real bad guy is a case of who cares.  The ones you wanted to be guilty--two REALLY bad guys--lose an eye and gets his face burnt off, apparently without too many aftereffects or problems.  They go out in public and live their lives as if nothing happened.  Must've been a great surgery for the guy who lost his eye, though the guy who did it was never a doctor or surgeon, or in any health-related field at all.

And who was that body in the hospital all that time?  Not who you think, but considering how Phantom ended, you couldn't be blamed for not knowing.  Turns out, a character from that book hadn't died after all!  How could the reader have known?  Well, you couldn't, but that's the way it is, anyway.

And where's the REALLY, REALLY bad guy everyone spends most of the book looking for?  Nobody ever says.  Wait for the sequel, I guess.  The only intriguing character is a very beautiful, and very unbalanced (Isn't that always the way?) young woman who does something very touching--and out of character--at the end.  You won't believe it, just like I didn't.

Very cheap.  Very lazy.

And really disappointing, because I like the series and I like the writer.  In fact, I was just thinking of incorporating a technique of his that he uses at the end of every book--what some writers have called his "set pieces," which they essentially are, in a play kind of way.  I now realize that these have to be exquisitely staged and described because a) they end every book; b) they're the resolution of the action / mystery / who-dun-it? / police procedural; and c) they're actually the climax, if you combine them with the next book, which I realize is how Nesbo actually writes these.  So they serve a ton of functions.

But, because of this, they have to be perfect.  Great when they are, as most of them have been.  Really bad when they're not.  And when you combine that with everything I've described above, and throw in a lousy editing job (this could've easily been a few hundred pages shorter), you have a real clunker.

And what he did to that recurring female character--chopped her up into many pieces, without mentioning how important she'd been to the series, or her now-orphaned young son--and throw in the fact that she was apparently alive during most of the chopping up...Indefensibly awful.

So bad I'm driven by it to work on my own book, and to treat my characters much better.  Bad things will still happen to them, but they won't be (or remain) unexplained.  And I'll treat them, as I hope I always have, with much more respect.

So frustrating because, again, Nesbo is a good writer, and though the tricks in this book are cheap, they work because you turn the pages.  You want to figure everything out.  You want to see what happens.  You want to see it all unravel.  And in that sense this book isn't awful, exactly, because I read its 550 hardcover pages in about 24 hours or so.

And I'll read the next one, too.

But...

The Bat, by Jo Nesbo (Harry Hole #1)--Book Review

 Photo: Paperback book cover, at this page.

The Bat is a very well-written and very different entry into the Nordic Noir genre.  It takes place in Australia, first of all, and its chapters differ in length and in substance, as some are there strictly for plot, while others show a quick glimpse into Hole's background and personal life.  Other quick chapters are thematic only.  The result is that you never know what to expect when you begin another chapter, and that's good for any type of writing, and in any series.

The plot plays second-fiddle to the characters and to the mood and tone, for the first half or so of the book.  It then takes off and shoots through its second half, with the body count (and the red herrings) piling up.  But it still manages to pause for some interesting characters, including a parachutist / homeless man, a beautiful woman, a serial killer, a transvestite clown, and other assorted eccentrics.  It's not so quirky as it sounds, and it all comes across very real.

There's a bit of info dump along the way--about Australia, about Aborigines, about the drug climate, about the city of Sydney, about clowns and the history of clown performances...but it never stops the flow of the narrative or of the plot, like in so many Dan Brown thrillers, or others of that ilk.  You learn as you go, and Nesbo is clearly interested in what he writes about.  It comes as close as info dump can to stopping the narrative cold--but it doesn't.  It works.

Two minor caveats involve the length of Hole's drunken binge (a little too long) and the sudden demise of two of its characters, an Aboriginal detective and a pretty barmaid.  The pretty woman especially is given short shrift at the end, but even this complaint is tempered by the mood of the book, as it shows other women in Hole's life who met quick, sad ends.

The book is certainly moody--both in an uplifting and in a sad way.  I found it more the latter than the former, but that's up to the reader.

The bottom line is that this is a welcome change from the harsh climate--both literally and metaphorically--of most Nordic Noir, and yet is similar to it in enough ways that it clearly belongs in that genre.  As one of the blurbs says, it takes on the cliches and starts new ones.

Definitely recommended.

Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King--Book Review

Photo: Book's cover art, from its Wikipedia page.

Mr. Mercedes is a much better book than King's last, the truly terrible Dr. Sleep.  (Is he starting a trend of putting titles in his titles?)  It is compulsively readable, as always--as is even his really bad stuff--but it is also better told, without author intrusion or author judgment.  He does not judge his characters here, and he even seems to go a bit out of his way to not let his characters judge each other, as well.  The result is a quick, satisfying read that's a bit skimpy on the supernatural--a pattern for King now as well, it seems.

It starts like an episode of Law & Order might, with a longishly short segment on some soon-to-be victims of a guy who purposely plows a stolen Mercedes into a line of people.  Soon we turn to a typical burned-out cop who's about to eat his gun--that is, until Mr. Mercedes (Get it?) sends him a taunting letter.  This revitalizes the cop, and the search is afoot.

It's told via differing limited-but-omniscient third-person POVs (another King staple) between the perp (who incorrectly refers to himself as the "perk") and the retired cop.  There's nothing in the perp's life we haven't seen before (including a sad little brother right out of "The Scarlet Ibis"), but it's told directly and honestly, and we believe it.  (If you've been watching Bates Motel, you already know almost everything there is to know.)  There's some good stuff about how this guy is all around us--that such people "walk among us," which is another common theme lately in King's work--and there's a bit of computer savvy here that almost is too much, but stops just short.  The peripheral characters in these guys' lives all ring true.  King took pains not to be as lazy with his characters as he was in Dr. Sleep.  Every single character rings true here.

The obligatory younger woman is here, just as she was in 11/22/63 and Bag of Bones, and it seems as real here as it did in those.  Which means, not so much.  This is one of the two minor caveats here: The protagonist's relationship with a woman almost twenty years younger (He's 62 and she's 44, but still...) is so unrealistic that almost everyone in the novel comments on it--especially the guy, who keeps saying to himself that he's unattractive, very overweight, and almost twenty years older than the woman, who's described as very pretty.  And she, of course, comes on to him.  Very, very directly, I might add.  This worked a lot better in 11/22/63 and in Bag of Bones.  As you read, you'll see why it's necessary for the plot, for the main character's motivation at the end, but still...It doesn't bother me too much, except that it's a pattern by now in his work, and it really sticks out in this narrative.  More of an itch than a problem, I guess.  The reader will roll his eyes and easily move on...

There's a lot to like here, especially with the minor characters.  King gets a bit maudlin with one of them, the way Robert B. Parker did with Hawk, and it works as well here as it did for Parker--which, again, means not so much.  This is the second minor caveat.  It could've been cut and nothing would've been lost.  Now that I write about it, I see that this bothers me more than the relationship did in the paragraph above.  But, again, it was easy for me to roll my eyes and move on.  I actually skipped those passages as they came.  You'll see what I mean when you read it.  Feel free to skip those spots as well.  You won't miss anything.

Anyway, this is a likeable read with mostly-likeable characters, except for Mr. Mercedes, his mom, and a certain aunt.  I read its 436 pages in a few days.  It's not his best, but it's far from his worst, which is sort of all I hope from King these days.  That sounds depressing, but I don't mean it to be.  It's like watching a Hall of Fame ballplayer in his last few years.  Good enough is good enough (exactly the opposite of what I believe for most things in life), and you smile as you compare what's in front of you with what used to be.  Not a bad thing, at least for me.

Though I'm still waiting for him to write something really scary again.  It's been too long...

Crazy '08

Photo: Book cover, from http://cardboardgods.net/2008/04/30/interview-with-cait-murphy-author-of-crazy-08/

I've been a little crazy myself, in the last year or so, amassing a collection of 1908-1911 T206s from various sources, and displaying them in my office.  'cuz I'm awesome and exciting like that.  From behind SGC- or PSA-graded cases peer the faces of Jack Pfeister, Hooks Wiltse, Red Ames, Dave Brain, Red Murray, Solly Hofman, Clark Griffith, Dots Miller, Fielder Jones, Chief Meyers, Laughin' Larry Doyle, Lee Tannehill, Harry Steinfeldt, Wild Bill Donovan, Nap Rucker, Doc Crandall, Wee Willie Keeler, Al Bridwell, Rube Marquard, Frank Smith, and Cy Seymour.  And Joe Tinker, from a 1911 T205.  All of them played baseball in the year wonderfully carzy baseball year of 1908.  They played for the teams most covered in this book: the Chicago White Sox; the New York Giants; the Detroit Tigers; the Chicago Cubs; the New York Highlanders (soon thereafter known exclusively as the Yankees) and the Pittsburgh Pirates. I've got their T206s, and they're all in this book. 

And it is captivating reading.  Like the cards themselves, the book is a time capsule of 1908.  Life.  Baseball.  People.  Living conditions.  It's all there.  The book is not just about baseball.  In it you see the personalities of all these guys, plus the more popular players I can't afford: Ty Cobb; Honus Wagner; Eddie Plank; Frank Chance; Christy Mathewson; Walter Johnson, and so many more.  You see a typical day and a typical life in 1908--equal parts gritty, harsh, hard, yet alluring.

Countless of these guys played baseball because otherwise they'd be digging and dying in the Pennsylvania mines.  They're spotted by scouts and managers playing for semi-pro or mine teams in the middle of nowhere, for teams of towns with populations less than 500.  They're typically given one chance, and one chance only, by a system in which the teams don't have to sell them to the major league team, and often didn't.  The manager--who was a manager, a general manager, a scout, and a bookkeeper, all in one--would take one look at a player, and say Yes or No based on a five-minute appraisal.  The players in this book (and in The Glory of their Times, which will be reviewed soon, too) all say that better players than they did not play major-league baseball not because they lacked the skill--but because they lacked the good fortune.

Honus Wagner politely declined to play baseball in 1908, he says, so he could go home to his farm and raise his chickens.  Turns out, this was a salary clash behind the scenes.  He played it quietly, like a gentleman, and he got the money he wanted.  A similar salary dispute--and not a disagreement about his likeness being sold with tobacco products--led to his insistence that his T206 baseball cards be destroyed.  They were.  Only about 50 supposedly survived the purge.  The one known to be in the best condition is worth, literally, millions of dollars.  I don't have that one, naturally.  So I instead got Honus Wagner's constant double-play partner, the second basemen to his shortstop: Dots Miller.

Ty Cobb was despised by his peers, his own teammates, the umpires, and the fans.  He was considered the second-best player in the majors, behind Wagner--who was the equal to Cobb as a hitter and as a baserunner, but who was a Gold Glove-caliber fielder at every position, and very well-liked to boot.

Christy Mathewson lost a lot of very important games towards the end of that season.

Fred Merkle's mental lapse wasn't the only reason the Giants missed the playoffs that year.  A rookie pitcher beat them three teams in the final ten days of the season.  Mathewson lost a lot of close games--but still won over 30.  The Giants were 10-6 in their last 16 games.  And so on.

A team could lose their chance to make the playoffs by half a game due to a rain-out.  And it happened in 1908.  The rule that all necessary, rained-out games must be played at the end of the year didn't go into effect until 1909.  Unbelievable.

Ballplayers played amidst terrible conditions, on the field, physically, and otherwise.  It was common for teams to play exhibition games during the season, on travel days between cities, in small towns.  They played 154 games that counted, minus rainouts, plus perhaps a dozen or more games that didn't count.  And the stars were expected to play in all of them.

Very good teams counted on their HOF starting pitchers to the extent that such pitchers pitched both games of a doubleheader, or for three or more consecutive days, or in relief--often all in the same week.  The end of 1908 saw Mathewson, Plank, and Three-Finger Mordecai Brown pitching all of the final dozen or so games.

Most games had just one umpire.  (!)  So players would do things like miss third base by fifteen feet as they were running home, and the lone umpire was looking elsewhere.  The league finally bent and put two umpires on each game.

Spitballs were legal.  Pitchers openly spit and loaded up the ball.  Players were expected to use the very same one ball all game long.  Games were often stopped so a player could go into the stands and retrieve a foul ball.

And so on.  Not just baseball: the serial killer of the Chicago-area farms--a large, unattractive woman who lured men to their deaths through soliciting for romantic partners in the paper--gets its own chapter.  This situation, which I will make into a novel someday, has never been conclusively solved.  Some say the woman escaped capture.  Her name was Belle Gunness.  Look 'er up.

Vaudeville--very popular.  Popular New York players could make a second career--or a first--on vaudeville stages during the off-season.  Many of them did.  One of them, Mike Donlin, left baseball for the stage.  And then came back, of course.

The writing is crisp, and clear, and very authoritative--and with a slight bite and attitude.  It is very quick reading, though I cannot say that non-baseball fans will love it, too.  I think you have to be a fan to read it, but there's a lot of history and 1908 reality here, too.

And this, from George Will, reviewing the book for the New York Times:

"Murphy’s book is rich in trivia — not that anything associated with baseball is really trivial. Did you know, for example, that when the Yankees were still the Highlanders (they played at the highest point in Manhattan) they adopted their interlocking NY lettering “based on the Tiffany design for the Police Department’s Medal of Honor”?

Readers of “Crazy ’08” can almost smell the whiskey and taste the pigs’ knuckles. This rollicking tour of that season will entertain readers interested in social history, will fascinate students of baseball and will cause today’s Cub fans to experience an unaccustomed feeling — pride..."

Killer by Jonathan Kellerman--Book Review

Photo, from Kellerman's Facebook page
 
Another step in the right direction from Kellerman, whose last book, Guilt, was also very good.  Both novels are more readable and much less judgmental than were his previous 8 to 10 works, perhaps more.  The last two books are also much less vicious and violent.

By now, if you've read Kellerman's twenty-nine Alex Delaware novels as I have, you've figured out his formula: The first 10%-20% of the work sets up the very large cast of characters, their backgrounds, and any of the many conflicts that may--but often, not--have anything to do with the book's major crime.

Then the vast majority of the book is Q & A between Delaware and Milo and the large population of characters in the victim's lives.  There's a ton of supposition, a lot of maybe this and perhaps that, by Delaware and Milo and many of the supporting cast.  The vast majority of the time, none of it pans out.

About 80% to 85% of the way through, we meet a seemingly-minor character who rings Delaware's alarms.  That starts the unraveling.  The rest of the book is a slippery slide to the ending, which neatly wraps things up.

This has always been Kellerman's M.O., though a few times in the past, the seemingly-irrelevant character would come completely out of left field.  As a consequence, the reader (well, at least this reader) would feel cheated and more than a little aggravated.  In this genre, you have to give the reader at least a chance--however small--to be able to figure it out (or at least to suspect) who the killer might be, and what might have happened.

That's what happens here, with Killer.  (A ridiculous title, as it could have been the name of any of his novels, and there's more than one killer here, anyway.)

The unraveling happened when and how I figured, and I honed in on the seemingly-irrelevant character right away.  The character appears when I suspected, as per the blueprint above.  This was aided because I wasn't buying all of the suppositions Delaware and Kellerman were selling.

Ultimately, this was a very quick and satisfying read, done just right.

American Hustle--Movie Review: Great Acting; Tepid Movie

Photo: Movie's poster, from its Wikipedia page.

Outstanding performances by Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence didn't save this movie for me.  It's worth seeing for their performances alone--especially Adams', who appears like I've never seen her before--but you shouldn't necessarily think that the movie will be great because of them.

Though normally you would, right?  If you have three great performances--it's really Bale's film--and two other very good ones, then the movie should be great.  This is a first for me, that one movie could have so much great acting and yet still not work for me.  I mean, it was alright, but you'd expect much more, right?

The problem is in the writing.  Essentially, the scriptwriters wrote themselves into a corner that they couldn't escape.  The whole point of the film is that everyone's conning everyone, including themselves, and in the end, someone's got to walk away, which means someone's going to get the most conned.  And the way it was pulled off really didn't work for me.  And I mean, really.

For many reasons.  First, I had no doubt who'd walk away.  [Spoilers now.]  Bale and Adams were clearly going to stay together, and Lawrence was clearly going to walk away with her criminal boyfriend, yet stay on good terms with Bale.  You didn't know what would happen to everyone else, but you hoped for the best.

Well, that doesn't happen.  Jeremy Renner's character, who comes across perhaps as the nicest in the movie, gets sent to jail, as do the other politicians whose hearts are in the right places, but whose hands are in the wrong wallets and pockets.  And the FBI agent, who had a hubris problem and ultimately wanted his name in lights more than he wanted to fight crime--but who was still fighting crime, and killers and mobsters!--at the end looks dejected and doesn't get the credit for the politicians' arrests that he deserves.  And he may get fired, as well.  The serial killer mobster gets away, as do the two main characters, who essentially preyed on the pathetic, lost and desperate before they were caught. 

This makes the viewer--at least this viewer--feel like he's had to swallow too much Castor oil.  The acting is so good that you root for Bale and Adams and Lawrence, though you understand that the first two are criminals, and that the last one is an annoyance that her prettiness and crazy courage hide most of the time.  These are not nice people, though they are all trying to be, kind of, though you don't see enough of that to really root for them.  You just take their word for it when they say so, and they're so sad, and they're trying so hard, that you root for them.  And Bale cares about this kid, and Adams and Lawrence are so pretty, and then you realize that you're not really talking about the qualities of the film anymore, or the characters, and that something's amiss.

And that's the biggest problem.  You root for them because of the great acting, and not because of the characters' inherent worthiness.  Bale and Adams constantly say they're trying to be good, but only Bale convinces, and that's only at the end.  And he fails miserably trying to be the good guy who tries to save the actual good guy who's done an unwise thing.  These two characters are also likable more for the acting of those who portray them than they are for any likeability they actually have.  Bale, again, comes across as the more likeable, since he looks so ever-suffering, and since he truly loves both women, and the son of one of them--a boy who's not even his.  Adams comes across as very likeable (and as very very...well, never mind), though the viewer wonders where her loyalty lies, probably because she does, too.  Ultimately she wasn't as strong a character as she could have been, as I wanted her to be.  That was another big letdown.

Another issue is David O. Russell's sleight-of-hand.  The director shows you all of their hustles, all of their swindles, and he shows you all of the conversations about all of the hustles and swindles--but then doesn't show you the one that really matters at the end.  You don't know the hustle is on because you weren't shown it, while you were shown all the others.  That's a writer's and director's cheat.  How could the viewer possibly know it?  You see all of Bale's and Adams' conversations, and heart-rending conflicts, but you don't see the one they put together when it matters?  And when we're finally shown it, it isn't that awe-inspiring.  Essentially, it's just a lie, really.  The one they lie to is a charismatic, fast-talking, hyperkinetic--a role Bradley Cooper has played quite a few times now, in almost every film he's ever been in.  (Sorta makes me wonder if he's acting, or if he's playing Bradley Cooper playing these characters.  But I digress.)  The problem here is that he's at least fighting crime, not doing it (though he walks that fine line for awhile), and he's interesting and funny--and he's the one that loses out.  He doesn't get the credit he deserves, although he ambitiously reached for the stars, and wasn't boring.  Now he's got to go live with his annoying mother and his ignored fiancee--which wasn't very nice of him, either, the way he treats her, but that's really the least bad thing in a movie full of characters who all do some very bad things.  He's at least not hustling her, as he lets her hear as he tells Adams' character that he'll be right over.  Adams, who knows he's engaged, is still more than happy to spend time with him, and...bleh.

Why do some get away with it, and why do some don't, and why does the worst--the serial-killing mobster--get to go home?  It's never explained, and by the end, I was so over it that I just wanted to praise the performances and move on.

The worst thing I can say--if I haven't said enough already--is that this movie is by far the shortest of the ones I've seen recently, but it felt like the longest.  The Desolation of Smaug and Catching Fire were much, much longer movies--but didn't seem it.  American Hustle was much shorter--by about an hour, compared to the other two--yet seemed too long.  True, the others are action films, and the acting in them doesn't come close--yet, they may have been better films anyway.

It's too bad.  Not since Edward Norton's performance in American History X and Denzel Washington's in Training Day have I loved the performance and disliked the movie.  I don't dislike American Hustle as much as I disliked those two--as I mentioned before, this movie was okay--but it was still such a letdown. 

Those other two movies only had one great performance in them.  American Hustle has at least three--and it still left me with a case of Whatever.

Irrelevant Note: It was nice to see in the previews that Kevin Costner will be back soon in two major movies.  There will be other old geezers from the 80s and 90s returning to film this Christmas through February, and all of their movies look good.  (Let's hope they actually are.)

Irrelevant Note 2: Viewers of Boardwalk Empire will note Shea Whigham (who plays Nucky's brother) and the guy who played the assassin with the ruined face (who was really the best character the last few years) in American Hustle.  The director, David O. Russell, came to popularity with Three Kings, which co-starred Mark Wahlberg.  And what does Mark Wahlberg co-produce?  That's right--Boardwalk Empire.  It's not what you know, it's who you know, I suppose.  Of course you know that Lawrence and Cooper followed Russell from Silver Linings Playbook...Don't ask me how I know and remember such things--I just do.  

Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris

Photo: Book's cover, from its Wikipedia page.  Great cover!

Very specifically-written account of the murders committed by Dr. Marcel Petoit, of which there may have been 27, or 150, or anything in between, by David King.  In Nazi-occupied Paris, he would advertize his services as a Resistance-fighter, as a man who could get Jews and others out of the country, to Argentina and to freedom.  His orders were to not tell anyone.  To carry as much money as possible, sewn into their clothes.  To remove all identifying tags.  To pack all of their most valuable belongings into two suitcases and to bring them on the day they were to get away.  He'd have them meet him at an address, at an apartment condo affixed with a gas chamber, a scope that allowed him to see the suffering from the gas, or from the poison he might've injected them with.  He became very rich.

The book shows a lot of the Paris of the time, from existentialists Sartre, Camus, and de Beauvoir (it was cool to hear about them; I studied them while getting my philosophy degree, but I didn't get to learn a lot about their daily lives), to the daily struggles of everyone else at the time, to the way the police department worked in its tug of war with the Nazis in power, to many other things.  Petoit's crimes over so long proved the maxim of the best way to get away with something huge and terrible: To do so in the wide open, because nobody will believe it, and those who do will willfully ignore it.

It covers the trial, which was a farce of the highest order.  In a French trial, the judge, the accused, the prosecution, and any lawyer of any of the other civil defendants can all ask a question, interrupt, and say anything at any time.  So can the judge, and any of the assistant judges he has next to him.  So can any member of the jury.  This, as you may imagine, would create a chaos that I still have trouble understanding.  How anything is proven, or disproven, and judged upon is a mystery.  But Petoit was found guilty, and guillotined.  His last moments exhibit a perhaps-psychotic calm that is also beyond belief.

The subject matter saves the book, in a way, because the author displays a very dry, matter-of-fact writing style that could bore had the subject been more pedestrian.  I had no trouble putting it down, though I did want to continue.  A better job could perhaps be done with all this, though I do understand, perhaps, that the author may have felt such an approach was necessary in order to make sense and order out of all the chaos.  I have not read any of his other work, so I can't say if this is just his style, or not.

Worth a read, though Petoit's manic behavior, and his apparent ability to impress so many very well-educated and otherwise hard to impress people, may turn the reader off a little.  A Jekyll-and-Hyde person, Petoit was both a celebrated and altruistic doctor, and a mass-murderer, serial-killer-for-profit, and perhaps fifty other types of person, all at the same time, and was in and out of institutions frequently.  It was also clear that he worked for the Gestapo, and that he may have started this killing spree getting rid of other Gestapo workers--and then started killing everyone, including Jews desperate to get out of France.

Sickening, yet compulsively readable.

Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub

Photo: The book's cover, from its Wikipedia page

This is probably the last of my unread Stephen King books for awhile, in case you were getting tired of my many Stephen King reviews lately.  At 625 pages, this one took half a week to read, and much of it was pretty intense.  This intensity waned a bit the more it went on; an editor working with two lesser-known names would've done much good here.  The second half, and definitely the last third, are very fat.  Much could have, and should have, been trimmed there.

But it is still a good ride, especially the first third.  It's told in a very third-person omniscient style, and in the present tense, no less.  Lots of the word "we," as in "And now we see Jack Sawyer--."  That takes a little getting used to, but it's not that bad.  It fits, though I can't see why such a different storytelling tactic was necessary.  The last third is so fatuous that even this third-person omniscient, present tense POV does not give the narrative a you-are-there feel.  It's so in need of editing, that such word-bloat takes away from the intensity the reader is supposed to feel by this narrative POV.  You don't get that "Once upon a time..." lean story-telling voice that the authors are clearly going for.  (The book even ends with exactly that phrase.)

Having said that, it's worth reading, especially if you're a fan of the The Talisman and/or The Dark Tower books.  Black House is situated firmly in the Dark Tower universe, much more so than The Talisman, though by the end of it, you get the feel that it's a story from a minor planet of that universe, so to speak.  It is not a major entry in that series; the Dark Tower saga, as it's now complete, can and does exist without this.  It's a side-room behind one of the many doors in the Dark Tower's house.  It's interesting to open that door and peer in, and see what's there, maybe admire the old furniture and to appreciate the character of the room, but when you shut the door, you can move on to the staircase and to the more important rooms.

Black House can't decide which character it wants to follow.  It follows Jack Sawyer more than anyone else, but not like The Talisman did, and when the focused POV of the second half follows a gross old man, a pawn of the Crimson King, it starts getting fat and unfocused.  With that character's demise, it then focuses again as it should, upon Jack Sawyer, and then goes a place or two that the reader wouldn't expect--but shouldn't be completely surprised about, either.  Stephen King has followed the antagonist before--lately in Under the Dome--and you have to wonder about his main character, his protagonist, if even he decides that his antagonist is much more interesting.  The reader had better agree--and this one didn't, in this case.  (I did agree with that tactic for Under the Dome.)

But it doesn't work here because the gross old man is still nothing more than a gross (and murderous) old man.  The power he has is given to him by the Crimson King and his minions, and so he's nothing more than that.  More or less, then, this novel is an examination of the root of evil, of where it comes from.  Where does an evil, murdering, pedophile cannibal like Albert Fish (Mentioned very frequently here, and worth a Wikipedia visit--if you can stomach it.  No sin if you can't.  It's extremely gut-wrenching stuff.) and Charles Burnside (this book's Albert Fish) come from?  Well, apparently from another universe, and its evil incarnate, which uses the (less?) evil and the weak here for its own nefarious purposes.  All well and good, I suppose, except that this book doesn't present a convincing case for that.

Ultimately, the first third of the book is extremely good.  The first half is very good.  By three-quarters it starts to wane, and by the end you're ready for the end to end.  But it still ends well, and so it is still worth reading--if you can tolerate the fat.  I was able to cut it away and dine on the rest.  If you can do that, this book is worth the read.

(The parts written by Straub, in my opinion, stand out from those written by King here.  My guess is that Straub wrote most of the first half, King most of the second.  There are some Straub writing patterns and signatures I recognized, and some from King as well.  For example, Straub does not tend to choose his antagonist as a POV focus as King does, and so I feel much of that is King's.  Since most of the Charles Burnside focus happens in the second half, I feel that's where King's fingerprints are.  The first half, especially, resonates, as all good writing should.  The first half sank into my consciousness enough so that I was compelled to write a previous blog entry, two entries ago.  Ironic, since most of what I wrote about were Stephen King thematic constructs, though it was Straub's treatment of them in the beginning of this book that compelled me to write about them.  But that's art for you.)

The Alienist by Caleb Carr

 Photo: Bellevue Hospital Ambulance, New York Times, 1895--from the Wikipedia page of The Alienist.

Been a few weeks away with illness, exhaustion, overwork, and some good headway on my novel and some shorter pieces.  Sort of an odd time lately, mostly without focus.  I've been reading six or seven books, and writing too many things at once--and not completing any reading or writing at all.  My sleeping patterns have been all screwed up, and...blah blah blah.  I'm tired of my own whining, but it is what it is.

That changed with The Alienist, a novel so well-written that I finished all 597 pages in just a few days, even waking up early to read it.  I read it through my cluster-headache on Sunday; I read it through an otherwise scattered-minded few weeks.  It cut through all that and straightened my focus and psyche out--for quite awhile, I hope.

I'd heard great things about this for a long time, and finally I gave it a go, with regret, since I'm trying to finish about six other things, like I said.  But I'm glad I did.

This novel has a lot going for it.  It's told in a first-person limited POV, by a reporter narrator who's good at describing his world without making it seem like he's purposely describing his world.  But he is, and he needs to for us, because he's describing 1896 NYC (and a little of D.C. and New Paltz, NY, too).  Caleb Carr does a fantastic job making this world interesting and alive, and the crimes he covers--and the investigation they cause--are top-notch.  (But not for the squeamish.) Essentially Carr describes the first wrinkles of what has become known as criminal profiling, which basically can be boiled down to analyzing the crime, and then asking yourself, What kind of person could have committed this crime, exactly this way, in this exact place and time?

As readers of this blog should know, I've long been interested in this kind of thing myself, so it was very cool to see some characters using these methods as the focus of their investigations.  In addition to profiling the crime, they profile a letter the serial murderer sends to a victim's mother--with some handwriting analysis as well, also new at the time--and there's a lot of attention paid to the earliest childhood years of many criminals in the book, also a cornerstone of criminal profiling.  Abusive and criminal parents will, more often than not, create abusive and criminal offspring.  This sort of implies that it's more nurture than nature, and that free will isn't all that strong, either, but that's a misreading that many people today--and many characters in the book--suffer from.

I'll leave that to the reader.  Bottom line is, if you like historical fiction, or crime/criminal investigation, or the 1890s in general, or if--like me--you happen to like all of those things combined, than this book is the one for you.  As I've said about some of Stephen King's books, there's something to be said for a 597-page book that's read in about three days.

As I mentioned, it was so good that it straightened out my psyche for a few days, and made me feel more complete, more whole, more in my own realm--whatever the hell that is.  Next up: his follow-up, The Angel of Darkness.

As the footnote at the beginning of the book says, an alienist is today's psychiatrist, or mental health researcher, as someone who needed to speak to someone like this (because there were few private practices in those days, so most people, especially the poor, would have to be committed to a facility or to a hospital to speak to one) was thought to be alienated, both from their society and from their own true natures.  (Sort of like how I've felt the last few weeks, though not to the extremes you'll read here.)  So a helper to these people would be an alienist.

Caleb Carr himself is quite an interesting guy, as is the story surrounding Lucius Carr, his (in)famous father.  It seems as if his father stabbed to death a man who was hitting on him, and William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac helped him dispose of the body and of some evidence before Carr confessed.  He served a couple of years in an Elmira prison, then worked for UPI for 47 years, though he was apparently also an alcoholic and an abusive father.

Caleb Carr comes off as a novelist of historical fiction who also dabbles in historical articles and books (and, it turns out, screenplays of two Exorcist prequels), but it turns out to be the opposite.  He's a well-respected historian.  Caleb has an injury to his arm and shoulder, similar to his alienist character, and he lives in a beautiful, self-made home with a wrap-around porch, in the mountains--alienated from his society, and recovering, as Carr admits, from being alien to himself.

Art imitates life.

The Last Ten Days--City Hall and Estate Sales

 Photo: Old glove from keymancollectibles.com.  The one I bought looks much like this one.  This one is in better shape, but mine's older.  Yeah, yeah, condition is everything, I know.

Sorry I've been gone for the past ten days.  I was really ill, and my PC is under plastic upstairs due to the constant (but very necessary and very well-done) renovations the last ten days, and plus I'm a bit behind on work for the job that pays The Man.  But some things have been happening these last few weeks, so here are a few quick shots:

--I went to an estate sale today, which is a great place to pick because the company gets paid more to get rid of everything and not as much to get the most they can for everything.  The family hiring the estate sale company usually just wants the house cleared so they can sell the house, and so they usually don't care how much they get for things.  The company will say prices are final on the ads, but that's never the case.  So the long and short of it is that I got about 100 CDVs and Cabinet pictures (pics from between 1870 and 1890), eight baseball bats from the 20s - 40s, a foot-powered scooter from between 1895-1905, a baseball glove that I confidently place in the 1910s (and maybe as early as 1905)--all for a hundred bucks.  I could sell each of the 100 CDVs and Cabinet pics for $5 a piece on Ebay or Etsy (which would be underselling many of them) and thereby make my $100 investment into $500, and that's just with the pics.  The bats would go for $15 to $50 apiece, as soon as I can date them, and the scooter would go for $25 to $40 by itself as well.  And the glove would go for about $35 to $50 because it is clearly very old.  All of these things are very highly collectible.  I might even keep the scooter for myself; I rode it up and down my street earlier.

The key is to bundle and buy in bulk, and then sell them piecemeal.  Not very sexy, perhaps, but this will help keep me busy during those winter nights and days, and make decent part-time money, too.

You would think that a man who had collected bats and a glove from the 1910s and 1920s, and who had a book about collecting old, vintage baseball cards, would've had old, vintage baseball cards.  But there were none, and I asked the people running the estate sale, and they'd never seen any there.  I left them my card and begged them to call me if they found any there.  If you've got bats and a glove from the teens and twenties, and if you've got a book about collecting baseball cards from the 1910s and 1920s, then you should have baseball cards from the 1910s and 1920s.  But, no.  Hmmmm.....I suspect someone from the family, or a neighbor, or someone, walked off with those.  I would've spent a very large sum for those.  I hope they call.

--My new favorite person is Jan, from my town's City Hall.  I needed to get a copy of a deed for a property of mine, and since this house is being renovated, I couldn't find the deed here.  (Truth be told, I probably wouldn't have found it had the house not been under renovations.)  So I had to face City Hall, which can be an arduous experience, not to mention an afternoon killer.  At work, I looked up my town's City Hall website and I found a department with a name that sounded like it might be what I needed.  I sent an email to the department, in essence saying what I was looking for, and mentioning that I hoped this was the right place to ask for it, and if not, where was the right place, and what did I have to do?  Here's the email response I got (sit down while you're reading this):

Good morning Mr. Belanger,

I’ve printed a copy of your deed for you and will leave it in the main office (Recorder of Deeds) in the main town hall.  It’s ready for you, so you may pick it up this afternoon.  There is no charge, I printed it as a courtesy for you.

Best,

Jan

Archives Clerk
My response to that (after I picked myself off the floor):

That's awesome!  Thank you so much!  I really appreciate it.   And now Jan the Archives Clerk's response to that: Most welcome sir! Is this woman awesome, or what?  I don't care if she's a 70-year old, wrinkled and frail-thin woman working part-time or volunteering at City Hall, I'm finding out who this woman is, and I am marrying her.