Darkest Fear by Harlan Coben -- A Quick Book Review

Photo: from google.com/books, at this address

Another very appealing Bolitar novels, again proving the series is better than the stand-alones. In this one, a 13 year-old boy needs a bone marrow transfusion. A donor has been found, but then goes missing. Can Bolitar find him?

He can, and does, of course, and along the way he punches a bloated, soft-in-the-middle lawyer, kidnaps a millionairess, captures a serial killer, gains a great client, annoys the feds, and deals with daddy issues--with himself, and with his own father. The result is another mystery in the series that works well because it deals well with the real problems of its main character, problems we all face, especially guys in our 40s, as both Bolitar and myself happen to be.

One aspect here--the identity of an older man living by himself--was as obvious to me as it will be to you, but that's okay. You want to get some it yourself, right? Umberto Eco and James Joyce are great writers, but they're smarter than we are, too--and who wants to be outsmarted all the time, and condescended to at the end because the writers know they're too smart for us? I'm not calling Harlan Coben a dummy here--and he wouldn't want to be thought of in the snooty vein anyway. I'm saying the opposite: Coben knows his genre, and he knows he can't outclass the reader all the time. You've got to let them in on the fun sometimes.

I've said before that Coben, like Bolitar himself, tries too hard, and he does here as well. It's an okay too hard, like when he always (and I do mean each and every single damn time) admits to the cliche before he springs the cliche upon us. Sometimes he admits the cliche so he doesn't have to spring it upon us--but by doing so, he's springing it upon us, and it's cliche at this point to admit to the cliche in this way, and for this reason, anyway. But he makes it work. If you know the genre, you know the cliche, and you know the admission of the cliche, and when it comes, and you're already expecting it, he's got you in his hands, don't you see? It's all part of the game. Coben knows you're smart enough to know it, and he knows you'll be happy to know that he knows you're smart enough to know it. So in the end he's giving the reader what he wants. And, if you listen closely to the minor characters in this one, he's telling you why you're so happy to be acknowledged and pseudo-complimented.

And how easy it is to just go along with the game all the time. We stay on that path, right?

I Voted to Protect Those Who Apparently Didn't Need Protection

In a quick vomit, because my gorge rises at it, a few things about Election Day:

--I'll call them the Reality TV Voters: they apparently are so de-sensitized by bad behavior, like they see on reality TV (which was heavily controlled and scripted), that when it happens in actual reality, they don't care--or perhaps they don't notice the difference. This is exemplified by the fact that Hillary did not get the younger vote like Obama did. (Or not enough of them voted.) I also have to conclude that today's society simply doesn't care as much about decent behavior. I don't want to sound like that old guy, and certainly I'm no paragon of appropriate (or even good and decent) behavior, but then I'm not running for President, either.

--Also, obviously nobody cares about experience. Hillary's vast experience, as Secretary of State, as Senator, and tons of other things, worked against her. The voters wanted someone who literally has never held a political office of any kind. Not even as someone on a school committee or city council. Possibly for the first time in history, we have a President with absolutely zero political experience of any kind, not even on a neighborhood level.

--53% of all white women who voted did so for He-who-must-not-be-named. While this means that they frankly just didn't like her (which is Hillary's fault), it also means that, overall, voting American white women did not care that he sexually assaulted other American white women. This speaks volumes about our current stance towards women, sex, and men who sexually assault women. And the women who do not give a sh-t about it. We should not support those who oppress us.

--Hillary did not get the female vote. Not that women should automatically vote for a woman, but probably they should vote for any candidate who a) is a woman, AND who b) has not sexually assaulted women. Probably women should not vote for a man who not only sexually assaulted other women, but who also bragged about it. And who obviously assaulted many other women who have not come forward. And who has bragged about it when he was not being recorded doing so. It makes no sense to me that the oppressed and the suppressed support those who oppress and suppress them. Unless they believe that he really didn't do these things. If so, they better also believe that Bill Cosby also didn't do the same things. Which he clearly did. Is it possible that many of them believe that the black guy did these things but not the white guy? Or does Cosby not matter? What does matter?

--Apparently we were not ready for a female president, specifically this one. I conclude that angry bitter white men, who for the past 8 years have seen a) a black president; b) gay rights; c) gay marriage; d) transgender rights and e) free health care for the very poor, looked at a woman president and that's where they drew the line. (And so did the white bitter angry women married or related to them.) Okay to A through E, but a woman president? "F--k no!" they said, and voted that way.

--Let's not also forget to be angry at Hillary herself. Fact is, she ran a sh-tty campaign. Though I don't understand it, she did not carry the female vote, the black vote or the Latino vote. (Or, not enough of them voted overall.) I have to conclude that the majority of those three groups didn't vote at all, which is also strange, since they have the most to lose if she lost. It's like they didn't feel the need to protect themselves, like he didn't scare them enough that they felt they needed to vote against him. I, a middle-class white guy, felt I needed to vote against him in order to defend them, so the fact that they didn't feel the need to defend themselves strikes me as inexplicable. But while we blame them, let's also blame her, because she needed to court them and she didn't. She felt, I guess, that she automatically had them, because of how vile his behavior was towards them, and she was wrong. Her assumption, while understandable, is not forgivable in the political game. All she had to do was bury the media with TV ads of him saying these horrible things, especially from a clip of the tape (even if something needs to get beeped out), and constantly remind those three groups of what they had to lose, and she probably would've had them. Had she gotten the female vote and the minority vote, especially the Latino vote (or if more of them had voted overall), she would've carried Florida and Pennsylvania and she would've won. She didn't even try to do that. So she didn't win.

Why American Horror Story: Coven Really, Really Sucked

Photo: Stevie Nicks, from her Wikipedia page.  Read on for the AHS: Coven connection, especially if you haven't seen the show.

It's over now, anyway, and the ending was so disappointing that I didn't even want to write about that.  That's bad, and that's how bad it was.  The only reason I felt even slightly motivated to write about it was because of how bad it was, and now I'm over it enough to do just that.  So, Coven sucked because of:

--Mona's end.  She was by far the most interesting, the most dynamic character, and the way her end was handled was indeed very sloppy.  What about all those scenes of her knowing about her darkness?  What about how she wanted to be better, and asked for forgiveness?  She knew Stevie Nicks, for God's sake, so how bad could she be?  (And I'm unsure of how I feel about unabashedly plugging Stevie Nicks so much.  I mean, the last episode began with a video for her.  But...she always did strike me as kinda earthy, kinda wispy, kinda Misty Day-like, actually.) True, her daughter saw her future killings of everyone, but could that really have been the case if she was dying of cancer the whole time?  And why not have the Axe Man do her in, if you're only gonna have her use him, which does him in, and then have her disappear for awhile so that we think she's dead, only to have her return, but be dying of cancer?  Does that make any sense at all?  And that Catholic / Hell / Purgatory judgment thing at the end, with her character and a few others?  No thanks.  That's as old and as unnecessary as the movie Ghost.  Didn't like it there; didn't like it here.  Writers do not judge their characters.  They only write about what happens.  Understandable that they wouldn't want Lange's character to seek redemption, as I said above, and then work to get it, since that's exactly what they did with her character last season--but this?  Did they have to do this?  And was that really a purgatory for her character--suddenly she doesn't like the guy (if she ever did) and she has a fit about the wooden floors and walls?  Incidentally, that voodoo-whatever guy was apparently responsible for that end, but remember, Mona was unable to make a deal with him to begin with because he said she lacked a soul.  No deal, so no punishment for reneging on that deal.  Stupid, ridiculous, and really, really bad writing.  Made me angry.

--Misty Day's end.  (And what a great character name!)  So, speaking of judgment, someone is supposed to remain in Purgatory, or just die (or, what exactly did happen to her?) because she doesn't want to kill anything?  And she feels like this to begin with because she was burned at the stake herself?  Why did she live just to be in Purgatory because she didn't want to kill anything--which, by the way, is normally seen as a good thing?  Why not just stay in the swamp, or go back there once the threat of getting killed was gone?  (A serious threat that Mona, by the way, took care of.)  Ridiculous ending to what could have been a good character.  After Mona, she was my favorite character.  Stupid, ridiculous, and really, really bad writing.  Also made me very angry.

--Misuse of Kathy Bates and Angela Bassett.  So Angela Bassett's character gets conked on the head by Mona's former slave / servant--who had died but not died, like almost everybody else--and then buried alive somewhere, and nobody knows where?  What was her character around for, anyway?  And was she that evil at the end that she would shove hot pokers in the throats of Bates's daughters?  If so, why wasn't she in her own Purgatory?  That's the thing about judgment: Once you judge a character for reason X, you have to judge every character by that same reasoning.  Or it's a mess.  What a waste of a good actress and a role that could have gone somewhere.  Speaking of judgment: What exactly did Bates's daughters do that was so bad that they deserved to be killed like they were, and then to be pokered like they were, for eternity?  Again, that's where judgment goes bad.  Stupid, and really, really bad writing.  And Kathy Bates...Well, at least her end was a little more understandable, though I'm still not keen on the whole judgment thing.  And her character had her scene-chewing moments.  But...again, did her daughters belong there, as well? And if the argument is used that those aren't really her daughters, but representations of them for Bates's own Purgatory--then wouldn't she get that, sooner or later?  I mean, she has all eternity to figure that out.  Once she does, it's not Purgatory-like punishment, because she knows it's not really her daughters getting it, anyway.  And does Bassett's character need to be there for all eternity as well?  Stupid, and really bad writing.

That's what really gets me about Lange's, and Bates's, and Bassett's characters (and maybe Misty Day as well, who had a certain flair): They were the only interesting ones, the ones with any sort of character arc, or personality, or sense of humor.  Or anything.  Like, at all.  And they get punished for that?  Stupid.

Have I gotten across how stupid I thought the whole thing turned out to be, and how bad the writing was?  And don't get me started on FrankenCarl.  What, exactly, was he around for?  And Madison.  She was, at least, interesting.  Did she get a Purgatory?  We didn't see one.  Misty Day gets one, completely undeserved, and she doesn't get one, when she mauled a bus-ful of boys (as understandable as that was, considering what they did), but then kills, but doesn't kill, Misty Day?  (So that she can later have a breakdown in eternity in a science class with a frog.  Reader, repeat that sentence again to yourself.)  There's perhaps a certain irony there, considering Roberts was later arrested for assaulting the real FrankenCarl.  They also later become engaged.  And--

What a mess!  What an incredibly horrible stinking mass of excrement that was still--because of the acting of Lange and Bates and Bassett--at least still shockingly bearable.  Until the end.  And coming on the heels of Season Two, which I thought was one of the best shows that I have seen in a very long time, perhaps ever...

So bad that it defies explanation, despite my reasons expressed here.  Unbelievable that the same writers who wrote Season Two also wrote this.  Like the Brandman book of a few blogs ago, this was so egregiously bad that it actually crossed the line and became offensive.  It's hard to screw up a series in which essentially anything goes, with really good actors and a talented writing crew--but they somehow managed.

And that's why American Horror Story: Coven really, really sucked.

Did you think it sucked?  Why?

Click here for American Horror Story: Freak Show, my new blog.  Each episode will be reviewed in the blog.  Let me know what you think!