A Very, Very Short Book Review -- Fatal Lies

Photo: the paperback book's cover, from Google images. Finally, an image of the edition I actually read. This is one of the five books I bought for $20, because I like the series so much. Can't find the sixth one I'm missing...

Done with Frank Tallis yet? I wouldn't blame you. I'm binge reading these, but they're worth it. Thank Stephen King for mentioning Tallis in an interview, when asked to name a recent, good mystery series.

Another successful Max Leibermann novel, #3 in the series. In this one, a young man has been murdered in a military school. Cadets and administrators are suspected, a la A Few Good Men. The guy in charge is named Eichmann, which Tallis had to do on purpose; the most violent cadet is named Wolf. There are clues galore, from hypnotism, from dream interpretation, from basic common sense and noticing when people very obviously lie. There's an unhappy beautiful woman, a rather psychotic master addicted to cocaine--which Freud says is definitely not used for headaches--and there's other assorted malcontents suffering around.

Depending on your tolerance for the weird and arcane, there's also a hillbilly mountain man who scavenges and lurks around. (He's responsible for an out-of-left-field circumstance at the end.) There's a witch he sells stolen things to. There's a beautiful gypsy who isn't who she seems. And, is Ms. Lydgate stepping out on the good doctor? (Why not? The good doctor steps out on her!) And there's a really, really catchy song by Schubert (based on a poem by Goethe) that you must YouTube. This is so necessary, in fact, that I'll do it for you.

Go to that link. I'm tellin' you. It'll stay with you.

It's sort of Rheinhardt's running thematic element, but not Leibermann's. This struck such a chord with me that I'm stealing it for one of my great many WIPs. Apparently this is a famous little ditty, and Schubert apparently wrote over 600 of these things, somehow, though he died at age 31. I Wikipedia-ed Schubert, as you should, too. I mean, the guy was productive, and famous, and apparently not a complete jerk. He did probably die of syphilis--he had mercury poisoning, too; mercury was used a lot to treat syphilis at the time--but, then, so many of the famous of 1900 or so died of that. Including Neitzsche, by the way, who also plays a small role in this book. His teachings of the Ubermensch (literally, Superman, but not the reporter with the cape) get misunderstood again!

Anyway, I digress. (Big-time.) Though a couple of books in this series purposely closed the main plotline before the novel's end, this one closed it a long time before the end, about 85 pages. This sat less well with me, as it may with you, but it wasn't a complete breaker. The subplots, including the bit with the gypsy and the mystery surrounding Ms. Lydgate's mysterious man, plus tying up a few loose ends at the military school, take up those 85 pages. You may be most interested in whether a cadet will get caught for the murder of another cadet, as I did. Don't. You'll be disappointed. More than anything else, the tying up of that loose end, with the aloof woodsman and the body of that cadet--that's something I wish Tallis had handled differently.

Overall the book is worth your time. Not one of my favorites from the series--that's Vienna Twilight--but it's still a lot better than most of the stuff in this genre. Another plus, as usual, is that you'll want to YouTube stuff to listen to, and Wikipedia stuff to learn about, and by now that kind of thing goes with these books as much as Leibermann and Rheinhardt do. For me, anyway.

Post A Book-Selfie and Support Schools and Libraries

 

 

Photo: Kami Garcia, and a good book.

 

Dear Blog Readers:

 

Below is an email sent to me from Kami Garcia, author of the Dangerous Creatures series.  Rather than using her publisher's marketing budget to, well, market her book, she has nicely asked for that money to be used to buy books for schools and libraries in need.  (This is an unbelievably nice thing to do, considering the book market today.)  Unfortunately, I don't Tweet, and I don't have a Twitter account, so I'm hoping my readers will take part in this worthy campaign, in place of my un-technologically advanced self.  Please and thanks!

 

[Now that I went to the website, I see that this is something I can do because it's not a Twitter page.  Or is it?  This sort of proves my point about my tech savvy, but whatever.  I'll post a book-selfie--but you should also do the same!]

 

Here's her email to me:

 

_____

 

Hi guys! 

Reminder: The #booksarentdangerous campaign kicks off today at 9 AM PST / 12 EST. 

Short explanation: Dangerous Deception comes out in a week, and instead of a traditional campaign, we got our publisher (LBBYR) to donate our marketing budget to buying books for underfunded schools and libraries.

You are all invited to join in the fun & help get books onto the hands of needy kids!

Attached is the campaign graphic, in case you wanted to share it anywhere, and/or point people to booksarentdangerous.com which is where we will be posting campaign details as well as resources for book donations in the days to come. (Feel free to share yours as well!)

 

But also hopefully this: donate a book and encourage your readers to put up a pic and do the same!

Remember to use the hashtag #BooksArentDangerous. It can be any book that you loved, that mattered to you, or that you recommend.

LBBYR will take each picture as your pledge to donate a book to an underfunded school or library and will match these donations throughout the next two weeks.

Let's get some books into the hands of kids in our local school libraries! Pass it on!

Again, questions to shanepangburn@gmail.com. 

And this concludes our spam. Love to all!

XOXO Kami & Margie

Damned If You Do--Book Review: If You Read It, You're [see title]

 Photo: Book's hardcover, from robertbparker.net. 

The real title is Robert B. Parker's Damned If You Do, but if you read my reviews, you know how I feel about using a name as part of the title, especially if he's dead, so I won't further go at it here.  But...argh...

And that's pretty much what I have to say about this book itself, as well.  This is a giant step back from the other two Brandman novels, neither of which were exemplary to begin with.  What a horribly written story!  The dialogue is wooden and preposterous.  The story is tired and distant.  It's told and not shown.  And it's got little writer edits at the end of some sentences, like Brandman's explaining it to us.  (Note to Brandman: Mystery and procedural readers like to remember such things for themselves.  Even if they're unimportant--because you don't know until the end what was important and what wasn't, right?)

There are too many examples to cite them all.  There were so many that I had to put the book down and do something else.  I actually groaned and complained out loud.  And I can't find the one now I really wanted to put here, so...From page 247, after Jesse Stone saw a character, who he'd liked, die: "He hoped that the scotch would accomplish what he was unable to achieve himself...He wanted it to erase the haunting look in her dying eyes from his mind and his heart."

First, that's just bad writing.  Second, that's telling, not showing.  Third, if you've read Parker's--and even Brandman's--Jesse Stone works before, Stone (and the 3rd person narrator) would never think or speak like this.  Fourth, we all know why people drink after they've seen someone they like die.  Fifth, we all know why borderline alcoholics (or former alcoholics, which Stone is) drink after such an event.  Sixth, that last sentence--melodrama, anyone?  And Stone, and Parker--well, they're so anti-melodrama that this is just blasphemy, in of itself.  And I know that comparing Brandman and Parker is unfair because they're different people--but Brandman is so obviously trying to emulate Parker's sparse style, and failing so miserably at it, that the comparison is just here.  I feel certain that Parker would be upset with this book.

And the action sequences are just as bad.  This from page 239: "Suddenly everyone was on the move.  Chairs scraped loudly and tables were overturned as people began to anxiously respond.  There were shouts of panic.  The crowd began a confused surge towards the exits."

Again, this is just bad writing.  The word "suddenly" was used tons of times in this book.  That's bad.  When chairs scrape, it's loud.  So that's redundant--and it tells.  And it overuses adverbs, which I learned in high school and college is bad to do.  When people are "on the move," what is that, exactly?  When settlers are on the move, they're just walking along, and slowly.  There's probably lots of dust.  And when there are "shouts of panic" and scraping chairs and overturning tables--that's not how people "anxiously respond."  That's chaos.  Stuttering is anxiously responding.  And notice the word "began" is used twice in this one short paragraph.  Nobody begins to do something.  That's a huge pet peeve of mine, and it's used a million times in this book.  You're either doing that thing, or you're not doing that thing.  In this image, the people were well beyond the "began to anxiously respond" stage, whatever that is.  They were panicked and running over each other.  By definition, a surge is an action in progress, so there's no "began" there, either.

Literally almost every sentence and every paragraph has an instance of lazy writing, bad writing, passive writing, and...Oh, man, it was just plain horrible.  What a disappointment!  I don't want the reader to think I'm just nitpicking here, or in a bad mood, or whatever.  I'm telling it straight--the writing of this book is that bad.

So bad I was shocked at its badness.

So bad it gives hope to all unpublished writers out there--if this can find its way into Barnes & Noble, your book can, too.

So bad I pictured Parker rolling over in his grave.

So bad it was a blight on all the Jesse Stone books I've bought and read before--all in hardcover, too.

So bad that if someone else hadn't bought this book for me for Christmas, I would've stopped reading it.

So bad that I can't even say to save it for bathroom reading, which is the advice I usually give for bearably bad books.  But this isn't even bathroom reading--unless you need to use its paper.  Which you probably should.

This is so bad that it reminded me of Dorothy Parker's quip: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly.  It should be thrown with great force."

By the way, the characters and story are bad, too.  Stone, a police chief, tells a mass murderer that he feels "surprisingly comfortable" that he's watching his back.  I'm not kidding.  I actually disliked Stone at the end.

The best things about this book are the title, and the cover.  And that it ended.

Skip it, even if you have all the others.  It is worth having a hole in your collection so you don't have to put yourself through this.  It is that bad.

Don't even buy it in the remainder bin.  Don't start off the new year with this.  Don't do that to yourself.
   

Mackenzie and Nick from Longwood University in Virginia, and Other Cool People in Baltimore

I met a lot of cool people at all of the sporting events this year.  I met a few in Baltimore on Sunday.  I especially remember eating after the game at a Chili's near our (By "our," I mean my friend Chris and me) hotel, and meeting Mackenzie and Nick, from Longwood University, in Virginia.  They were nice enough to laugh at all my silliness.  Nick even tried a "Well, you know, Susan..."--which is my rendition of the New York Yankees' radio guy, John Sterling--and Mackenzie did an outstanding Inappropriate Slap.  (Don't ask.)  Funniest moment was when I told Nick that he was overachieving with such a pretty girl with him--and he agreed with me!  The smart ones know when they're overachieving.  (I'm always overachieving.)  She's going to be an elementary school teacher (the world always needs good teachers) and Nick's going to be something in the law, either a lawyer or a policeman.  Good luck to both of them, and if you're reading the blog, guys, please comment or email me!  The email is to the right of this entry, below my other pages.  (And I'm upset that I didn't take their picture, while I did take the picture of the other cool people I spoke to, below.)

--Others I met in Baltimore include a Santa / Grinch cameraman:

   


And a very cool Ravens fan / Santa who was such a good guy that he deserved better.  He was such a solid fan that he was one of the few Ravens fans to stay to the bitter end.  And what did he get?  Two garbage-time touchdowns scored against his team.  Here he is taking a beard break:

--And, if you've never been there, here are a few pics of M & T Bank Stadium.  I was pretty high up, but I had such a great view that I was able to see every single play of the game, a rare occurrence at any football stadium.  (And the fireworks before the game were cool, too.)  I saw each play so well that I correctly overruled the refs on some plays, even in the Ravens' favor. That shows you how brutally bad the refs were that night.  And for the record, Ravens fans know the first name of one of the refs personally--that's how often, they say, he has screwed them over.  So, the pics:

 --I watched a Patriots game on December 22nd, sans jacket, and with my sleeves rolled up.  It was sixty-one degrees at game time.  Sure, it rained all the way back, but there were only a few scattered drops during the game itself.  What a great night!

A great, big, hearty thank-you to my friend Chris for inviting me along, and for driving me a total of about 13 hours, to and fro--including 6 1/2 hours in a pouring rain the entire time back.  Thanks for all the Fenway games, too!

Robert B. Parker's Ironhorse

 
Photo: Book's cover, from Amazon

I've gone into how I don't like it when publishers sell a book with the (more popular) deceased author's name in huge letters on the top of the title, then the actual author's name in smaller letters below it.  Just a pet peeve, but the practice clearly says that the money made from the book is more important than is the name of the guy who actually wrote it, or the memory of the guy who created the series, who is no longer with us...But that's not much of a surprise, is it?  The copyrights are owned by The Estate of Robert B. Parker, so maybe it has to be titled like this, legally.  Whatever...

Anyway, nobody would get confused about the authorship once they've read it, because, although it's very good, nobody would believe that Parker wrote it.  Just not his thing.  There's no message here, no statement of any kind about honor, or the code of being a real man, etc.  Nothing even about the knight-in-shining-armor thing, though there are women saved by the strong, silent types of Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch.  They save the day without saying much, and they're both great shots and they're great at what they do, so what else can you ask for?

I read this very quickly--371 pages over a day and a half or so--and the writing flows as quickly as a river with rapids, so it's worth your time.  Even Ed Harris says so, in a blurb on the back.  If you liked the series with Parker writing it, you'll like it with Knott writing it.  He is his own writer, and he may or may not have been trying to emulate Parker--I'm guessing half yes, half no--but it will go off now in Knott territory, I'll bet.  This was a mostly-smooth transition.

Except for a few spots.  One that glared at me is on page 212:

"What do you allow, Virgil?"

"Hard to speculate."

I didn't say anything else as we continued walking.

"You?" Virgil said.

"Don't know," I said.  "Been sort of expectant about it."

"Sort of?"

"More than sort of."

And so on.  You get the idea.  So what was glaring here to me?  The clipped responses and the distant first-person were always done well by Parker, even when it was all perhaps too spare. 

But it isn't Knott's thing, exactly.  He writes better when he writes medium-length sentences and paragraphs.  When he writes short, clipped stuff like this, it's a low word count that doesn't say much.  Which is fine, but when Parker used few words, he did so to say a lot.  When Knott uses few words, he just says fewer things.  With Parker, less was often more.  With Knott, less is just...less.

Again, there's nothing wrong with that.  But look at the excerpt above.  See the sentence where Everett Hitch, the first-person narrator, says that he walked and didn't say anything?  And then see where he almost immediately responds to Cole's question?  With Parker, they both wouldn't have said anything, and that would have said something.  Here, Hitch says he didn't say anything, and then he says something, and there's nothing said or meant by that odd interchange.

That's Knott trying to be Parker there, and not succeeding at it.

Which is fine.  But now it's time to move on, as much as I hate to say so.  I liked Parker as a writer, and I really liked him as a person.  I'd spoken with him three times: once when I worked at a Borders he was signing at, and twice at a Barnes & Noble, once extensively, during a Q&A.  I'd asked him about his apparent bias against the high school and college education system.  He admitted to the bias, and blamed it on an experience at a college where he used to teach.  And I had to chase after him when he left his prescription glasses behind at that Borders.  And he was even gracious enough to give me his agent's name, and permission to speak with her.  (I've yet to do so.)

Knott goes into many things that Parker never would have, including everything you'd ever want (and not want) to know about how to operate a coal-powered train, and about how to operate, and trace the operation of, a telegraph.  It was mostly good stuff, though I'm biased because I like accurately-told, well-researched, historical fiction.  You won't have to like westerns to like this, either.

Anyway, it's time now for Knott to ONLY write like Knott.  From what I saw here, that should be more than good enough.

Signs You're Gettin' Old

Photo: Bon Jovi, from its Wikipedia page

These are ways that are a little more subtle than, let's say, your hair thinning, or you just plain losing your hair.  Neither of these are happening to me, of course.

--You hear yourself constantly comparing yourself, or your generation, with the younger, and you constantly begin such comparisons with, "I don't mean to sound like an old fuddy-duddy, but..."  And then you hear yourself sounding like an old fuddy-duddy.

--And you hear yourself using phrases like, "Fuddy-duddy."

--You take naps not because you want to, but because you have to.

--And such naps are unplanned.  You just suddenly wake up on the couch, and it's a few hours later.

--Friday nights are no longer nights you go out, but are just an extension of the workweek, just another night in which you're tired from the workday.

--If you're lucky, Saturday nights are party nights.  But more often than not, it's just a go out night, when you're happy to just go out for dinner somewhere.  Dinner and a movie in the same night is a truly special night.

--You pull a muscle simply by getting out of bed in the morning, or during the morning shower.

--You look forward to your garbage and recycling stuff getting emptied on Monday mornings.

--You pat yourself on the back whenever you manage to be utilitarian about something.  Today I brought five DVDs I don't watch anymore to F.Y.E., got $5.50 for them, and then turned that over, with $14, to get a DVD I've wanted for a long time, The Verdict.

--Speaking of which, you find yourself wanting DVDs of movies made in 1982.

--As a comic has said somewhere, you find your body is losing hair where you want it, and growing it in abundance where you don't want it.  (I'll leave the rest to your imagination.)

--It's possible that the high school you went to may be closed due to lack of enrollment.

--And your junior high school has already met the same fate.

--Your birthdays remind you more of the finish line, and so you no longer enjoy them.

--You find yourself thinking that a forty-five year old actress looks attractive.  Forty-five used to be old and ugly.

--You notice that it's been a very long time since your favorite musicians have recorded something new.

--And that actors you remember as a kid have started dying off.

--Or you're amazed that your favorite actors are still alive and kicking, if not exactly making movies anymore.

--And you realize that favorites like Kevin Bacon and Tom Cruise and Bruce Willis are the exceptions, not the rule, of longevity.

--And that Meryl Streep is the exception in terms of favorite actresses who are still a little bit of a force in Hollywood.

--Your favorite recent actors are younger, or, if they're your age, they're newer to the business.

--You don't know the newer musicians and singers anymore because you're too busy wearing out your CDs.

--And that Bon Jovi and David Bowie and Green Day are the aforementioned exceptions, not the rule.

--And that you tend to listen to the one station playing 80s music, which you realize is in existence solely for those who, like you, have realized that they're gettin' old.