Same Damn Good Reads

For whatever reason, (well, there is a reason, but I'm not going into that here), in 2006 I hit a reading mother lode. Now, 2006 just happened to be the year I read these books.


Here they are:


Life and Fate (New York Review Books Classics) by Vasily Grossman. Most of these books are extraordinarily funny. This one isn't. Life in Stalin's Soviet Union during WW II. NYRB page. My review.

Excerpt from an essay on Grossman, a WW II Sovier war journalist:

It has proved almost impossible to write about the Holocaust without becoming bathetic or cheap, but Grossman did it as both a reporter and as a novelist, when he once again metamorphosed the material for Life and Fate.

“What music resurrects in the soul of a man about to die is neither hope nor thought,” Grossman writes, “but simply the blind, heart-breaking miracle of life itself,” and the gas chamber sequence in this book is a requiem that rises in rhapsodic detail and intimacy until it becomes virtually impossible to read without weeping. Beginning with the long, agonizing transport in a cattle-car, these chapters hook upon the characters of an educated Red Army doctor named Sofya Levinton and a foundling boy named David and follow their memories and minutest impressions from the train into the “bathhouse” of the death camp. Again each firmly shaped paragraph lends its weight to what follows, culminating in prose of nearly unbearable heaviness and grandeur:

The shuffling quietened down; all you could hear were occasional screams, groans and barely audible words. Speech was no longer of any use to people, nor was action; action is directed towards the future and there no longer was any future. When David moved his head and neck, it didn’t make Sofya Levinton want to turn to see what he was looking at.

Her eyes—which had read Homer, Izvestia, Huckleberry Finn, and Mayne Reid, that had looked at good people and bad people, that had seen the geese in the green meadows of Kursk, the stars above the observatory at Pulkovo, the glitter of surgical steel, the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, tomatoes and turnips in the bins at market, the blue water of Issyl-Kul—her eyes were no longer of any use to her. If someone had blinded her, she would have felt no sense of loss. . . .
The boy’s movements filled her with pity. Her feelings towards him were so simple that she no longer needed words and eyes. The half-dead boy was still breathing, but the air he took in only drove life away. His head was turning from side to side; he still wanted to see. He could see people settling onto the ground; he could see mouths that were toothless and mouths with white teeth and gold teeth; he could see a thin stream of blood flowing from a nostril. He could see eyes peering through the glass; Roze’s inquisitive eyes had momentarily met David’s. He still needed his voice—he would have asked Aunt Sonya about those wolf-like eyes. He still even needed thought. He had taken only a few steps in the world. He had seen the prints of children’s bare heels on hot, dusty earth, his mother lived in Moscow, the moon looked down and people’s eyes looked up at it from below, a tea-pot was boiling on the gas-ring. . . . This world, where a chicken could run without its head, where there was milk in the morning and frogs he could get to dance by holding their front feet—this world still preoccupied him.

Flashman: A Novel (Flashman) by George MacDonald Fraser. The British anti-hero. More Hilarious, outrageous, anything-but-PC. 





The Last Crossing: A Novel by Guy Vanderhaeghe. 2004. My review. Christian Science Monitor review. The Guardian review and excerpt:

The last crossing, the second in Guy Vanderhaeghe's nineteenth-century prairie-lands trilogy, comes heralded with praise from Annie Proulx and Richard Ford. Charles Gaunt's twin brother, Simon, has gone missing in Montana and Charles and his elder brother, Addington, are dispatched by their overbearing father, from his deer-filled estates in nineteenth-century England, to attempt their brother's recovery.

The Big Sky by A. B. Guthrie Jr. My review. He won the Pulitzer for the sequel, The Way West in 1950, but start here. Heading West in 1830.

"You can't beat God for bein' picky. No, sir. If he catches you playin' cards or sayin' one swear word...it's to hell with you forever and ever...Even thinkin' is mighty dangerous. As a man thinketh, that's how he is, and to hell with him ag'in. Why you reckon he gave us a thinker then?...God is some busybody."

The Towers of Trebizond (New York Review Books Classics) by Rose Macaulay. This book was outrageously funny as only the late Victorian British can pull off. My review. From the NYRB page:

"'Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass." So begins The Towers of Trebizond, the greatest novel by Rose Macaulay, one of the eccentric geniuses of English literature. In this fine and funny adventure set in the backlands of modern Turkey, a group of highly unusual travel companions makes its way from Istanbul to legendary Trebizond, encountering potion-dealing sorcerers, recalcitrant policemen, and Billy Graham on tour with a busload of Southern evangelists. But though the dominant note of the novel is humorous, its pages are shadowed by heartbreak—as the narrator confronts the specters of ancient empires, religious turmoil, and painful memories of lost love. 

Friends of pancho villa by James Carlos Blake. My review. I thought I was one of the few people ever to have read this book. Great historical fiction and also laugh out loud funny (really, not just LOL). But, hey ho! Johnny Depp is making it into a moving picture!

Blake's Pancho:

"From now on their books will have to say, 'Nobody ever invaded the United States except for Francisco Villa, the magnificent Mexican patriot who tried so hard to be our friend but who we treated so shamefully because we are such stupid sons of bitches and have no honor.' "

The Tears of Autumn by Charles McCarry. My review. One of the great spy stories of all time. The Kennedy assassination made simple. A WAPO review from 2005 Passing the Test of Time.

A Dozen Good Reads Or More - Fiction

Casting back from 2007 to 2009, here are a dozen of my favorite fiction reads (OK, actually thirteen). Some titles will be familiar, others not. Some are literature and others are genre fiction (if that has any meaning at all). All are good.

I've been reviewing books pretty steadily on Amazon since 2006, but I had to leave out 2006 to keep my list at a manageable size. For whatever reason, 2006 was a very excellent reading year for me, worthy of a separate post. So, no Flashman, no Richard Sharpe, no A.B. Guthrie Jr. No, Patrick O'Brian, whose 21 tales of naval adventure, scientific exploration, and intrigue featuring Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, I had already polished off before 2006.


The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill. Featuring "72-year-old state coroner Dr. Siri Paiboun...in Cotterill's engaging whodunit, set in Laos a year after the 1975 Communist takeover...". My review is here.

***

The Stalin Epigram by Robert Littell, Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler, and The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge each examines the Stalinist terror, its destruction of its victims, who are often loyal Communists, the manipulation of the human mind and body, and the nearly univerisal failure of resistance. Koestler and Serge were both disillusioned Stalinists, but Serge has the 'advantage' of having experienced the terro first-hand. How Littell manages to keep up is a credit to his skill as a writer. Remarkably, each book is a work of excelling merit. 

The Stalin Epigram: A Novel by Robert Littell. From PW: In 1934, real-life poet Osip Mandelstam struggles to get published in the totalitarian state....Much to the despair of his fellow poets, Osip writes an epigram likening Stalin to a ruthless killer, leading to Osip's arrest, brutal interrogation and exile...Littell is unflinching in his portrayal of Osip's tragic arc, bringing a troubled era of Russian history to rich, magnificent life." My review is here.



Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler.
Here is Christopher Hitchens' retrospective on Slate.com: "Koestler's chief character, Nicholas Rubashov, is modeled on those former Bolshevik intellectuals who made full "confessions" of fantastic and abominable crimes at the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s. And, because Koestler had by no means forgotten what he had learned about the dialectic, he decided to place Rubashov in a dilemma from which he himself had escaped. What if the opponent of Stalin is still half-convinced that Stalin is morally wrong but may be "historically" right? He may decide to put his name on the confession and hope that history will one day vindicate him. His last duty to the Party may, in other words, be suicide."

My review of Darkness at Noon is here.


The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge has been republished as part of the marvelous NYRB Classics series. Here is my review.

NYRB says: "One cold Moscow night, Comrade Tulayev, a high government official, is shot dead on the street, and the search for the killer begins. In this panoramic vision of the Soviet Great Terror, the investigation leads all over the world, netting a whole series of suspects whose only connection is their innocence—at least of the crime of which they stand accused. But The Case of Comrade Tulayev, unquestionably the finest work of fiction ever written about the Stalinist purges, is not just a story of a totalitarian state."

Here is Hitchens again, this time in the LA Times reviewing a biography of Serge by Susan Weissman. And here is a review of that same biography on a web site called Revolutionary History:
"VICTOR Serge was one of the most interesting characters in left-wing politics during the first half of the twentieth century....Serge has been frightfully overlooked at all points of the political spectrum. This is not surprising, as his heartfelt defence of the October Revolution put him beyond the pale of most social democrats and anarchists, his active participation in the Left Opposition did likewise with Stalinists, and his clashes with Trotsky and often heretical views led him to be looked on with suspicion by many if not most Trotskyists."

 ***

Shadow Country (Modern Library Paperbacks) by Peter Matthiessen.
Here is the PW review. And here is my review.

"Oh Lord God," she cries. "They are killing Mr. Watson!"

Shadow Country is Peter Matthiessen's reworked rendering of his earlier trilogy of historical fiction relating the life of the brutal Florida pioneer Edgar J. Watson. (This version still consists of three "books" and runs to almost 900 pages.

Shadow Country is almost entirely set in the 1890's and early 1900's in a frontier region not widely known - the Ten Thousand Islands of south Gulf Coast Florida (the Everglades area). The area was absurdly remote at the time and presented such daunting challenges and dangers to any settlers that it was in fact nearly unsettled. It is brutally hot and humid, resistant to agriculture, possessed of dangerous animals (on sea and land), prone to calamitous storms, infested with mosquitoes, and inhabited by a large proportion of suddenly violent men as well as sociopathic criminals. This is the place Edgar J. Watson chooses to live.

Within the first ten pages of Book One, the reader confronts this sentence: "Oh Lord God," she cries. "They are killing Mr. Watson!"

That Watson is an exceptional man is undoubted. Beginning with nothing, he manages to set himself up as a power to be reckoned with. He is also grandiose, violent, and merciless. But is he a murderer (several times over)? Opinions vary. He drinks too much. He loses what he has and what he wants and what he values. It is a hard life in a hard place. Edgar Watson was a hard man in dire need of some education and civilization, neither of which could be found in any quantity in the islands.

Shadow Country is an American epic of a mysterious historical character (yes, Edgar Watson really lived and died in the islands). The writing is at times exquisite. The story it tells is often brutal or just about plain hard life. The writing is compelling, the reading can be draining.

***

Palace Walk (Cairo Trilogy) by Naguib Mahfouz.
My review is here.

"Naguib Mahfouz, the only Arabic language writer ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, begins Palace Walk with Amina, the devout and devoted Muslim wife of al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad patiently waiting for her husband to return home from another long night of drinking, music, and carousing with his male friends and pursuing illicit sexual relations in Cairo's clubs and cafes. Mahfouz thus immediately establishes Amina's willing and absolute subservience to her husband. Mahfouz takes the next several chapters to develop al-Sayyid Ahmad's position as the unquestioned head of a family of two daughters, Khadija and Aisha, and three sons, Yasin an adult son from a prior marriage, Fahmy a law student, and young Kamal.


About two-thirds of the way into the book, the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 breaks out against the British occupation and draws the family into its vortex. Much of the final third of the book is taken up with the family's interactions with the British occupiers. The revolution provides an important historical background and Mahfouz masterfully recreates the sounds, sights, smells, and tastes of Cairo's streets, but his greatest triumph is the creation of the complete life of this urban yet intensely Islamic and Egyptian family, a family that is perhaps remarkable in some ways, but well within society's accepted bounds.

Take the time to savor Palace Walk. Mahfouz rewards the persistent reader by patiently building the remarkable depth and completeness of his characters. Once the last page is turned, the reader can rest secure in the knowledge that Palace Walk is only the first book in Mahfouz's great Cairo Trilogy. Highest recommendation."

***

The Draining Lake: A Thriller (Reykjavik Thriller) by Arnaldur Indridason is another example of superb Scandinavian crime msyteries. Reviewed here on Euro Crime.
My review is here.
 
 

***

 
The Radetzky March (Works of Joseph Roth) by Joseph Roth. More to follow.
 
 

***

 
 
A Sailor of Austria: In which, without really intending to, Otto Prohaska becomes Official War Hero No. 27 of the Habsburg Empire by John Biggins. Read John Biggins!
 
 

***

 
 
The Singapore Grip (New York Review Books Classics) by J.G. Farrell.
Another gem recovered by NYRB Classics. Farrell specialized tales of the unraveling of the British Empire. He also wrote Troubles and The Siege of Krishnapur. Then he managed to get himself swept off the shore while fishing and drowned.
 
NYRB summary: "Singapore, 1939: life on the eve of World War II just isn't what it used to be for Walter Blackett, head of British Singapore's oldest and most powerful firm. No matter how forcefully the police break one strike, the natives go on strike somewhere else. His daughter keeps entangling herself with the most unsuitable beaus, while her intended match, the son of Blackett's partner, is an idealistic sympathizer with the League of Nations and a vegetarian. Business may be booming—what with the war in Europe, the Allies are desperate for rubber and helpless to resist Blackett's price-fixing and market manipulation—but something is wrong. No one suspects that the world of the British Empire, of fixed boundaries between classes and nations, is about to come to a terrible end.


A love story and a war story, a tragicomic tale of a city under siege and a dying way of life, The Singapore Grip completes the “Empire Trilogy” that began with Troubles and the Booker prize-winning Siege of Krishnapur."

***

The Turnaround by George Pelecanos.
The WAPO journalist takes his crime fiction to a new level in this trip back to DC in 1972 and the echoes into the present. His web site. http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/features/georgepelecanos/turnaround/

***

Little Big Man (Panther) by Thomas Berger. You've seen the movie, now read the book. It's even better.

***

McAuslan in the Rough by George MacDonald Fraser.
The author of the Flashman series also wrote a fictionalized version of his days in the postwar army. 

Novels of the American West

Western Novels

The Old West or the American West has captivated the imagination of readers since even before the Old West had entirely left the stage. (In some cases the myth of the Old West began to influence the way people actually behaved.) The myth rested on some factual foundation. Heroism, savagery, physical hardship, endurance, as well as the breaking of mind and spirit, and the clash of whites and natives all took place against a backdrop of the unparalleled natural beauty found in the western United States. The Old West produced enduring stereotypes, among them: the Cowboy, Lawman, Gunslinger, Gambler, Savage Indian (sometimes the Noble Savage). Take a peak at the list of historical figures at the nd of this post and you'll be surprised how many of them you recognize.

Americans are not alone in their love of the Old West fiction. Europeans, Germans in particular have a thirst for such yarns. (Max Brand, an amazingly prolific American writer and immigrant from Germany has enjoyed popularity in his homeland.) Max Brand Online is the Official web site owned by the writer's heirs.

The Wikipedia entry on the Western genre has some useful classifications.

See also, Wikipedia entry on Western fiction.

The Old West or Western genre covers a wide range of quality from pulp novels to literary works. I offer the following Westerns that I have enjoyed.

Early Days in Texas
Not Between Brothers by David Marion Wilkensen. My review.
From Publishers Weekly:


Spanning three decades in the early 19th century that saw the birth and early years of the Independent Republic of Texas, this well crafted, gripping first novel portrays three cultures-Mexican, white immigrant and Comanche-in bloody collision....Wilkinson is a gifted storyteller who brings Texas history to life with a tale rich in adventure and high emotions.


The Borderland : A Novel of Texas by Edwin Shrake

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. “Cormac McCarthy's nightmarish yet beautifully written adventure masterpiece” of the Texas borderland circa 1830.

“The novel recounts the adventures of a young runaway, the kid, who stumbles into the company of the Glanton Gang, outlaws and scalp-hunters who cleared Indians from the Texas-Mexico borderlands during the late 1840's under contract to territorial governors. Reinvisioning the ideology of manifest destiny upon which the American dream was founded, Blood Meridian depicts the borderland between knowledge and power, between progress and dehumanization, between history and myth and, most importantly, between physical violence and the violence of language.” From the official web page.



Many Westerns also include a good bit of humor:

Little Big Man (Panther) by Thomas Berger

Flashman and the Redskins by George MacDonald Fraser

The Ballad of Dingus Magee by David Markson. An example of “acid western”.

From New York Magazine: "Long before David Markson became critics’ favorite underrated writer of experimental fiction, he was a pulp novelist. This newly reissued 1966 Western is an outrageously ribald take on the genre (marred, unfortunately, by a subpar Frank Sinatra film that was later made of it). A sample sentence: “‘Nice to have you back, you double-dealing, women-and-children-terrifying dishonorable skunk,’ Hoke said, setting aside the pen.” Trust us: there’s a lot more where that came from."


 
Friends of pancho villa by James Carlos Blake. From my review: James Carlos Blake takes the reader through the Mexican Revolution (and civil war) beginning in 1910 when Rodolfo Fierro, the narrative voice, joins Pancho Villa's small gang during a train robbery. Villa's fortunes rise and fall rapidly and Fierro has the ultimate insider access. Thirteen years later political opponents ambush and gun down Villa, by then retired, on the streets of Parral.


In Blake's telling, Villa and his friends had a grand time fighting, drinking, dancing, screwing, and loving (except for Pancho who rarely drank - he seemed to get married instead). At times the book is laugh-out-loud funny, which is a bit disconcerting because the bodies are piling up quickly. The confrontation between the Scotsman William Benton and Villa is hilarious in a profane and violent way. Pancho and Rodlfo inhabit a brutally violent world that frequently turns murderous almost without warning.

One paragraph captures the sense of history, the humor, and Villa's somewhat vague political identity when Pancho describes the impact of his brief invasion of New Mexico. "From now on their books will have to say, 'Nobody ever invaded the United States except for Francisco Villa, the magnificent Mexican patriot who tried so hard to be our friend but who we treated so shamefully because we are such stupid sons of bitches and have no honor.' "

Realist portrayals:

The Big Sky by A. B. Guthrie Jr. Won the Pulitzer Prize in 1950.

Guthrie wrote the Big Sky in 1947 and then a sequel, The Way West in 1949 and a second sequel Fair Land, Fair Land in 1982.

Shadow Country (Modern Library Paperbacks) by Peter Matthiessen (actually on the frontier in Florida)

True Grit by Charles Portis.

Deadwood by Pete Dexter

The Last Crossing: A Novel by Guy Vanderhaeghe

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. If you enjoyed Lonesome Dove, I highly commend the other three books in that series: Streets Of Laredo : A Novel, Dead Man's Walk : A Novel, and Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove)

Wikeipedia provides this handy summary of the Lonesome Dove books:

The order in which the books were written:

1. Lonesome Dove (1985)

2. Streets of Laredo (1993)

3. Dead Man's Walk (1995)

4. Comanche Moon (1997)

Chronology of Events

1. Dead Man's Walk

2. Comanche Moon

3. Lonesome Dove

4. Streets of Laredo



McMurtry also wrote a trilogy of Berrybender books:

The Wandering Hill: The Berrybender Narratives, Book 2 (Berrybender Narratives)

Sin Killer : The Berrybender Narrative, Book 1

***

Americans are not alone in their love of the Old West fiction. Europeans, Germans in particular have a thirst for such yarns. (Max Brand, an amazingly prolific American writer and immigrant from Germany has enjoyed popularity in his homeland.) Max Brand Online is the Official web site owned by the writer's heirs.

Max Brand - King of Westerns: Frederick Schiller Faust Was a Prolific Author of Western Novels
by Matthew Pizzolato

***

A web page with a list of the actual gunfights in the Old West.

***

How many of these Old West historical figures do you recognize?

Billy the Kid

Buffalo Bill

Wild Bill Hickok

Judge Roy Bean

Jesse James

Bass Reeves

Frederic Remington

Annie Oakley

Butch Cassidy

Kit Carson

Bat Masterson

William Breakenridge

Alan Pinkerton

Will Rogers

Sam Bass

Calamity Jane

George Custer

Wyatt Earp

Black Bart

Bill Pickett

Belle Starr

Favorite Detectives - Cops and PI's at War

This is the second installment in an occasional series listing my favorite detective fiction. This post is a sampling of detective fiction set in the midst of war. 


(The first post is here:Favorite Detectives - Introduction)

Favorite Detectives -

Cops and PI's at War

Former Berlin police detective and now private detective Bernie Gunther stars in Philip Kerr's trilogy Berlin Noir: March Violets; The Pale Criminal; A German Requiem.

The books may be found separately or as a compilation of all three books in Berlin Noir.

The opening book March Violets is set in the darkening days of Hitler's Germany; the 1936 Olympics are just coming to town. Kerr's protagonist, Bernard Gunther, is a private detective hired by a very wealthy conservative (i.e. non-Nazi) German industrialist to find out who murdered his daughter and her Nazi husband, burned down their home, and stole a diamond necklace from their safe. My review (permalink).
 
The Pale Criminal is set in 1938. Bernie has taken a partner in his PI business, but Nazi deputy chief Reinhard Heydrich wants Gunther to work for him to stop a serial killer who is murdering young blonde Aryan women. Back on the police force, Gunther is drawn into Heydrich's power struggle with Nazi chief Heinrich Himmler, an even more destructive human than Heydrich (Of course, Heydrich was assassinated in 1942 or he might have surpassed his boss).

(The title refers to Nietzsche's use of the phrase in Thus Spake Zarathustra A “pale criminal” has a particularly malevolent personality disorder.)

From Crime Scraps: "With such disgusting real life characters as Julius Streicher, Reinhard Heydrich, and Heinrich Himmler featuring in the narrative it is a bleak warning from history about what happens when the state does not just favour the criminal over law abiding citizens, but actually becomes the criminal."


A German Requiem  After the Nazi defeat, we find Bernie struggling to survive in post-defeat Berlin and Vienna. Gunther is hired (by a Russian colonel of intelligence) to go to Vienna  get his former Berlin police partner and now black marketeer Emil Becker off on charges of murdering a U.S. Counterintelligence Corps captain. Life is better in Vienna, but only comparison to Berlin. Gunther finds himself in the middle of a struggle amongst the Russians, two wings of the US military, a secret group of former Nazis, and the people of Vienna. Kerr excels at recreating the poisonous atmosphere of post-war Vienna.


Kerr returned to Gunther after a 15 year absence in THE ONE FROM THE OTHER. Here's a WAPO review  Link to the book at Powells:The One from the Other

***

The Inspector Troy series is set in London with WW Two as a backdrop.

Second Violin: An Inspector Troy Thriller by John Lawton 


My review (permalink).
Second Violin is the sixth book in John Lawton's Inspector Troy series (see for example, Bluffing Mr. Churchill (Frederick Troy Novels)). The events in this book occur chronologically earlier than the previous books in the series. (For that reason, I read this book first, which may or may not be the best way to enjoy this book). The story begins in Austria with Hitler's Anschluss in 1938 and ends with the Battle of Britain in the autumn of 1940.

Frederick Troy is a sergeant in Scotland Yard's elite murder squad and Second Violin tells the reader how got there. Troy is the son of newspaper lord and Russian émigré Alexei Troy. He could have done anything (or nothing at all, for that matter), but he chose to become a beat cop. The denizens of Stepney Green, his patrol beat, see him as a toff out slumming.

Frederick Troy's brother, Roderick, is a foreign correspondent for their father's paper. He witnesses the horrible events of Kristallnacht in Austria before being put on a plane and sent packing by the Nazis. While brother Frederick is assigned police duty rounding up aliens for internment, Rod he finds himself more directly involved in the camps than anyone imagined possible. Freddie manages to take on a murder investigation when three rabbis turn up dead.

In perhaps the book's strongest element, Lawton examines the brutal treatment of Jews in Austria through one Josef Hummel, tailor, and the subsequent rounding up and internment of aliens, including not only Hummel, but also long-time London residents who turn out to have been born in a foreign country.

While I recommend reading this book and intend to read other books in the series, I cannot give Second Violin five full stars. Lawton jams too many disparate story lines and a few stand alone bits (like Sigmund Freud) that leave the reader feeling a bit disjointed. (I should also add that it may be that some of the things that seem like loose ends, but may not be so untidy if one has read the previous books in the series). I also found that reading this book made a nice companion for the most excellent Foyle's War: Set 1 (The German Woman / The White Feather / A Lesson In Murder / Eagle Day) TV series.

***

A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson 

My review (permalink).

For much of the book A Small Death in Lisbon is like reading two novels. One book follows the investigation by Inspector Ze Coehlo into the 1990's murder and possible sexual assault of a 16-year old daughter of a powerful Portuguese lawyer. The other one is the tale of German businessman and SS supporter Klaus Felsen who is 'persuaded' to move to Portugal and obtain wolfram (tungsten) for the Nazi war effort. Great fortunes are amassed and powerful connections established.

Wilson sets his tale in 20th century European history. He covers aspects of WW II that were new to this reader and from a German and Portuguese perspective - also unusual - and the reign of the conservative dictator Salazar and the revolution of 1974. Portugal's development as a modern society provides the background for much of the story.

Both those stories are interesting in their own right, but meander along and the reader is left to wonder how the two stories could possibly come together. Finally about midway into the book the author drops a clue. Things begin to pick up.

I partially agree with another reviewer (who, unlike me, did not like the book): there is a lot of drinking, smoking, sex, and violence. The sex and violence passages are descriptive without quite being gratuitously graphic, in my opinion, but others will disagree. To each his own, but some readers may want to be aware of these elements.

I probably would have given the book four stars, but in the last 100 pages or so the twin stories crash together as the tale reaches an exciting and satisfying resolution. As I closed the book cover, I actually said 'wow, what a finish'.

Favorite Detectives - Introduction

Detective stories - mysteries, historical mysteries - are my favorite genre fiction, just ahead of historical fiction. Combining the two genres combined often works well and opens a broad field for storytelling. A historical mystery in the hands of a great writer is sublime.


I just finished a book in this category Morality Play by Barry Unsworth. My review:Morality Play by Barry Unsworth

Detective stories lend themselves to exploration of serious issues; for example, why do people behave the way they do, whether for good or ill or when is it morally sound to do a bad act for a good end. Detective stories can take place anywhere on Earth (or I suppose in the Universe, but I can't think of any sci-fi detectives) and at any time in history (or the future - as in the alternate history mystery Fatherland: A Novel (Mortalis) by Robert Harris).

And anyone can be a detective. And I do mean anyone - a Turkish eunuch, a Laotian coroner and a Russian nun to name three.

The master, of course, was Arthur Conan Doyle. You can buy the "complete" Holmes stories in several editions - none of which seem to be quite the same!

The Complete Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes is my preferred edition because it has Sidney Edward Paget's original illustrations that accompanied the stories in the 19th-century British magazine "The Strand."

Doyle did not invent the detective novel. That honor apparently belongs to the 1859 book The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins: Father of the Detective Novel.

The first detective short story was published in 1841 when Edgar Allan Poe introduced Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin in the short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

(Doyle also wrote several non-Holmes works of fiction that are well worth reading. In particular I recommend The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard. Here is my review.

The Sherlock Holmes' character has been reborn time and again. My favorite Sherlock pastiche is set in Minnesota! Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders: From the American Chronicles of John H. Watson, M.D. by Larry Millett.

***

The next post will list some of my favorites in the detective mystery genre.

The Skull Mantra (Inspector Shan Tao Yun) by Eliot Pattison

Below is my review of The Skull Mantra (Inspector Shan Tao Yun) by Eliot Pattison.

The Edgar Awards are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America. They honor the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television, film, and theatre published or produced in the previous year. The awards are technically the Edgar Allan Poe Awards.

Some Tibet info. Learn about gompas.


(Photo of the Potala Palace near Lhasa is from Pondstone Communications Blog)
Another review at:

BookLoons Reviews - Skull Mantra by Eliot Pattison

"I don't believe everything I read on a book's cover, but when the blurb on The Skull Mantra compares this thriller to greats like Gorky Park and Smilla's Sense of Snow, it's dead on. Pattison has written a remarkable first novel, which places an indomitable protagonist in the disturbing political setting of contemporary Tibet. Who hasn't heard of the plight of the Tibetan people after the brutal Chinese takeover with its erasure of ancient monasteries, genocidal treatment of monks and nuns, and forced labor camps?"

Get Advice on Guru Practice.


My review:

The Skull Mantra earned Pattison the 2000 Edgar Award for best first novel from the Mystery Writers of America. The story is set in contemporary Tibet. The mystery centers around the efforts of imprisoned former detective Shan Tao Yun to solve a string of murders of high-ranking Chinese officials. The powers-that-be are bent on pining the murders on several Tibetan Buddhist monks. When the headless body of the local prosecutor is discovered by Shan's prison labor gang, he is allowed to investigate the crime by Colonel Tan, the local ranking official. Having spent three years sharing close quarters with imprisoned monks, Shan is highly skeptical that a monk is behind this murder.

The lives of the Tibetan monks and all Tibetans under Chinese domination are Pattison's real focus. That focus raises this book above its rather convoluted and, shall we say, unlikely mystery (are disgraced Chinese detectives really given more-or-less free rein to investigate murders?). Pattison also explores beliefs of Tibetan Buddhists. The demon Tamdin is central to the story, but of greater interest we also learn about gompas, the fortress-like monasteries where traditional practices are studied and passed on; and we learn about gomchen or great meditators; and we learn about the painstaking creation of beautiful sand mandalas, which, once completed, are destroyed.

Pattison sheds light on the Chinese treatment of Tibet, and especially the Buddhist monks; the treatment seems to swing between bad and abhorrent. For example, Shan learns that during the Cultural Revolution the Red Guard seized and destroyed ancient Buddhist manuscripts and used the shreds to line their latrine. Tibetans have been killed or imprisoned, as well. The Chinese government has also drastically altered demographics by encouraging Chinese emigration to Tibet to an extent that Chinese are now a majority in Lhasa, the capital city. (The Chinese government disputes these claims.)

While the history and the mystery contribute to the book's value, its transcendental strength is the exploration of Buddhist spirituality. This element comes through not just through the monks' lives, but also through the changes in Shan and his two assistants/minders. The book could have used a bit tighter editing. Physical locations could have been more distinctly identified as it was sometimes difficult to know where things were happening. Pattison has written another five books in the Shan series and two more in a new series set in colonial America (Bone Rattler: A Mystery of Colonial America). The Skull Mantra gives readers a original and creative take on the detective mystery genre. Highly recommended.

My Reads 2009: Classic and Significant Books

For no particular reason, in 2009 I spent a significant chunk of my reading time catching up on some of those books that anyone who takes reading even a little bit seriously should read.

I term them Classics and Significant Books. The classics tag is, I think, self-explanatory. Significant books are books that have endured for at least several decades and remain noteworthy.

I'd like to add links, but the Internet is running in mud this morning. This page has my reviews on Library Thing.

1.    Heart of Darkness and The Congo Diary by Joseph Conrad. Conrad's semi-autobiographical journey up the Congo River. Coppola used it as the basis of his film classic Apocalypse Now.

2.    I, Claudius : From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius, Born 10 B.C., Murdered and Deified A.D. 54 (Vintage International) by Robert Graves.

3.    The Case of Comrade Tulayev (New York Review Books Classics) by Victor Serge.

4.    The First Rumpole Omnibus by John Mortimer. OK, I'm cheating a little here by including this volume in this list, but it's my list and I really love the Rumpole books.

5.    War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. This book is the major reason that my total number of books read was down from previous years! The new translation is the one to read. Yes, it is worth your time.

6.    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. I re-read this book about every five years.

7.    Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding. I read this book as a freshman at the University of Illinois and it was one of those books that introduced an 18-year-old from Southern Illinois to a broader, deeper world of learning. Fielding also wrote the perhaps better known Tom Jones.

8.    The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. On one level, The Name of the Rose is a decent whodunit set in an isolated northern Italian medieval monastery. Mixed in with the mystery, however, are discursions in semiotics, hermeneutics, biblical analysis, religious debate, literary theory, and medieval history. And what would a medieval mystery be without the inquisition? I find Eco's tendency to show off a bit annoying, but the guy is Mr. Smarty Pants. My review.

Saw the movie before I read the book. Both are good. Each has a somewhat different ending. The movie is easier on the little gray cells.



Try this page for a more comprehensive list of Great Books.

Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen

"Shadow Country is altogether gripping, shocking, and brilliantly told, not just a tour de force in its stylistic range, but a great American novel, as powerful a reading experience as nearly any in our literature. This magnificent, sad masterpiece about race, history, and defeated dreams can easily stand comparison with Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. Little wonder, too, that parts of the story of E.J. Watson call up comparisons with Dostoevsky, Conrad, and, inevitably, Faulkner. In every way, Shadow Country is a bravura performance, at once history, fiction, and myth — as well as the capstone to the career of one of the most admired and admirable writers of our time." The New York Review of Books

NYT review:Shadow Country - Peter Matthiessen - Book Review - New York Times
LA Times review:'Shadow Country' by Peter Matthiessen - latimes.com

My review:

Shadow Country (Modern Library Paperbacks) by Peter Matthiessen

An American Epic of a Brutal Man and Place, December 30, 2009 Shadow Country is Peter Matthiessen's reworked rendering of his earlier trilogy of historical fiction relating the life of the brutal Florida pioneer Edgar J. Watson. (This version still consists of three "books" and runs to almost 900 pages. I did not read the earlier version and so cannot offer comparisons between the two.) Shadow Country is almost entirely set in the 1890's and early 1900's in a frontier region not widely known - the Ten Thousand Islands of south Gulf Coast Florida (the Everglades area). The area was absurdly remote at the time and presented such daunting challenges and dangers to any settlers that it was in fact nearly unsettled. And nearly all who did settle there were running or hiding from something, such as the law or deserted family members. Or they were just deeply anti-social. Aside from its remoteness, the area had almost nothing to recommend itself (I usually the qualified `almost nothing' in the vent that I think of some redeeming feature). It is brutally hot and humid, resistant to agriculture, possessed of dangerous animals (on sea and land), prone to calamitous storms, infested with mosquitoes, and inhabited by a large proportion of suddenly violent men as well as sociopathic criminals. This is the place Edgar J. Watson chooses to live. Within the first ten pages of Book One, the reader confronts this sentence: "Oh Lord God," she cries. "They are killing Mr. Watson!" (Killing off the main character in the opening pages of a 900-page work of fiction proves Matthiessen is either brave or foolish.) The story is told with a dozen different narrators recalling Watson's arrival and life in the islands. Matthiessen's remarkable ability to produce so many distinctive voices makes this book incredibly readable. These people can all tell a story (they are in good practice life on the islands providing so much idle time). Matthiessen does not, however, make them all tell the same story; differences of viewpoint produce a fascinating ambiguity. That Watson is an exceptional man is undoubted. Beginning with nothing, he manages to set himself up as a power to be reckoned with. He is also grandiose, violent, and merciless. But is he a murderer (several times over)? Opinions vary. He drinks too much. He loses what he has and what he wants and what he values. It is a hard life in a hard place. Edgar Watson was a hard man in dire need of some education and civilization, neither of which could be found in any quantity in the islands. Book Two traces the story of Lucius Watson's "obsessive quest for the truth about his father" (NYT Review). It is the 1920's and Lucius is writing a history of his father's life (he has a doctorate in history), traveling to courthouse archives and interviewing long-forgotten family members. But he also has "the list" of the armed men who gunned down the elder Watson. The list naturally makes people nervous and some of them are quite dangerous. Book Two reveals some fascinating history, including the mostly unsavory operation of the law in south Florida, such as sheriff's renting the labor of black inmates to business interests (and pocketing much of the money). For more on that practice see Douglas Blackmon's stunning new history Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. Book Three presents Edgar himself as the narrator of his life story from a child in South Carolina to various stopping places in Florida, Arkansas, and finally the Thousand Islands. The brutality of his childhood, the ready violence of white men toward blacks and of his own father toward him, makes Edgar's later actions more understandable person, if not justified. He develops a rigid personal code that demands recompense in full for any slight. He attempts a justification that reveals some complexity and contradictions, but falls short of the mark. Shadow Country is an American epic of a mysterious historical character (yes, Edgar Watson really lived and died in the islands). The writing is at times exquisite. The story it tells is often brutal or just about plain hard life. The writing is compelling, the reading can be draining.

A Sailor of Austria: In Which, Without Really Intending to, Otto Prohaska Becomes Official War Hero No. 27 of the Habsburg Empire

Here's my review of A Sailor of Austria: In Which, Without Really Intending to, Otto Prohaska Becomes Official War Hero No. 27 of the Habsburg Empire (The Otto Prohaska Novels) by John Biggins

Rescue John Biggins From Undeserved Obscurity!, February 15, 2007

In 'Sailor of Austria', John Biggins introduced Otto Prohaska, captain of an Austro-Hungarian submarine during the Great War. The tale is told from Prohaska's perspective as a 100-year old resident of a nursing home in rural Wales. Surprised by the interest of a young worker at the home, Prohaska sets about recording his story. This 'looking back' perspective allows a modern sardonic narrative voice somewhat in the manner of Thomas Berger's Little Big Man.

The manner of telling is reminiscent of George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman: A Novel (Flashman), as others have remarked, but darker. At times the book is laugh-out-loud funny - particularly early in the book when the dire consequences of a submarine crew fed on rotten cabbage stew leads to a serendipitous result. Biggins gives the reader a convincing sense of life and death aboard the absurdly primitive WW I submarines.

As the book moves into the later stages of the war, humor takes a backseat and tragedy takes center stage. Biggins' remarkable description of the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire puts the reader amidst the shock and utter chaos of a crumbling world. And then the Spanish Flu makes its entrance.

It's exciting to see the renewed interest in John Biggins works, which were hardly big sellers when first published in 1991 but are now being brought back by McBooks Press. I was only recently put on to Biggins over on LibraryThing and the discovery's been one of those great unexpected experiences that come along only rare even to devoted readers.

Help rescue John Biggins from undeserved obscurity. The writing is really first-rate and so is the story. Highest recommendation.

Judgment on Deltchev by Eric Ambler

My review of Judgment on Deltchev by Eric Ambler.

Fans of Alan Furst, Attention!, July 5, 2009



Although this book is set in post-World War Two, Alan Furst's debt to Eric Ambler jumps off the page in Judgment on Deltchev. Ambler's protagonist is an amateur at the cloak-and-dagger game, a game that he never really intended to play. Foster (we never learn his first name) is a playwright sent by an American newspaper publisher to cover a show trial in an unnamed Eastern Bloc country. Deltchev, the former leader of the People's Party and the government, now stands accused of treachery, treason and conspiracy to assassinate the new leader.

Foster slowly allows himself to be drawn deeper and deeper into the behind the scenes machinations until he finds himself in very deep trouble indeed. His minder, Pashik, tries to keep him in check, but Foster only sees that as an effort to control what he writes. A former (?) British spy turned journalist lurks around the edges. Can he be trusted? Doubtful. Good old Pashik turns out to be a bit more complex than he first seems, but is he dangerous? Has the reactionary Officer Corps Brotherhood come back to life? At first convinced of Deltchev's innocence, Foster's doubts grow as the trial proceeds. Surely there must be *something* behind the outlandish charges.

In addition to spinning out a fascinating tale of intrigue, on the very first page Ambler lays out an excellent and concise explanation of the purpose and methods of the political show trial. "Where treason to the state is defined simply as opposition to the government in power, the political leader convicted of it will not necessarily lose credit with the people....[H]is death at the hands of a tyrannical government may serve to give his life a dignity it did not before possess....His trial, therefore, is no formality, but a ceremony of preparation and precaution. He must be discredited and destroyed as a man so that he may safely dealt with as a criminal."

Ambler also creates the feel of life under a dictatorship (returning to my thesis of Furst's debt to Ambler). Freedom of movement is constrained and access to information is tightly controlled. For Foster to meet with citizens is pregnant with risks. The triumvirate of life (food, booze, and tobacco) is scarce. (Women aren't exactly abundant either.) The place is gray and bland by day with dark corners and long shadows by night. Are you paranoid or are you really being followed? Or both?

Highest recommendation.

Olive Kitteridge

My review of best-seller Olive Kitteridge: Fiction

Life Hands Out a Licking, September 30, 2009


4.5 stars. The setting of Elizabeth Strout's extraordinary short stories is small town Maine and the people are utterly middle class (and exclusively white or very nearly so). Small town and middle class, yes, but not in a Babbitt (Signet Classics) way.

Retired school teacher Olive Kitteridge holds center stage in most of the stories. I heard her described as `a force of nature', an apt description particularly if one pictures mostly stormy weather. It is a good thing the book consists of shorts because few readers could make it through a full book of Olive. Olive is not easy to take and yet in the stories she is a compelling figure, excruciatingly human but not quite pathetic.

As I read these stories, I kept picturing the `KER-POW' and `BIF-BAM' graphics on the old Batman TV series. People do get battered, seldom physically and only occasionally by Olive. Life hands out a licking. (If you're 50 and haven't figured that out yet, you may be a Panglossian or just incredibly lucky. In that case, your luck could be about to change.) And yet the people in the stories often seem quite placid, quiet, and calm - normal as normal can be. And they are, but then you find that they are dealing with one or another of our utterly human pains, sometimes physical, nearly always emotional. Children, aging, your children aging, marriages, illnesses, adulteries, suicides, insanities, accidents - they are all in here, not sensationally, but just as part of life, if you hang around long enough.

Strout's writing powerfully draws the reader into each story. I found the book to be emotionally exhausting, but very often insightful in direct and uncomplicated ways. Great stuff.
 

A Rumpole Christmas

Here is my review of A Rumpole Christmas: Stories by the late John Mortimer.

Rumpole, One More Time, December 19, 2009

The very idea of reading A Rumpole Christmas evoked several responses: melancholy, because it is likely to be the last publication of more or less new stories from the pen of John Mortimer; a wry smile, because of the unlikely juxtaposition of Rumpole and Christmas; and gleeful hand-rubbing anticipation, because we get to read more Rumpole.

If you are reading this review, you probably know who Rumpole is. If not, I would suggest that start at the beginning: The First Rumpole Omnibus by John Mortimer. Technically, to start at the beginning you should watch the BBC shows from the 1970s starring the inimitable Leo McKern (Rumpole of the Bailey, Set 1 - The Complete Seasons 1 & 2). (I was unaware until very recently that the scripts for the BBC TV show actually preceded the books.)

This collection of stories (most previously published in magazines) is not the best of Rumpole, but they do feature genuine Horace, She Who Must Be Obeyed, Mr. Justice Gravestone, Soapy Sam Ballard, and a sprinkling of Timsons. One story here features an accused terrorist whom Rumpole agrees to defend - when the other barristers make excuses. Rumpole kept fighting the good fight usually with gentle humor and always with an insistence on the rights of each and every person facing the power of the government. So long old darling.

***

Augustus: A Novel

Here is my review of Augustus: A Novel by John Edward Williams, who also wrote Butcher's Crossing (New York Review Books Classics).


Many Suffered From Close Contact with Augustus - But Not Readers of this Work,

January 28, 2007

By	Douglas S. Wood "Vicarious Life"

John Edward Williams won the 1973 National Book Award for 'Augustus' and deservedly so. This amazing piece of literature masquerading as historical fiction (and I like historical fiction) draws the reader into the world of Gaius Octavius, later to be Augustus, first emperor of Rome.

Williams tells his tale by the unusual technique of presenting letters, journal entries, and memoirs. By this method he allows the reader to gradually enter, indeed become immersed in, the world of Augustus, his family, friends, enemies, and most important, his Rome. 'Augustus' traces his rise from the vulnerable adopted son of Julius Caesar through a steady accretion of power as he becomes first a triumvir (with Mark Antony and the nonentity Lepidus), and then settles in as emperor of the world.

The historical record for Augustus's life has gaps that challenge an author and Williams grasps the challenge deftly, just as Augustus grasped power. We see Augustus as an aloof, cold and calculating politician whose assiduous pursuit and cautious exercise of power allows him to hold that power for over four decades, but always using that power for Rome, always for Rome, his Rome.

Yet many people suffer from their close contact with this man - his equally calculating wife Livia, for one, his dear friends Maecenas and Salvidienus, to name two more, but none more so than his daughter Julia. The last third or so of the book focuses on the break between Augustus and Julia. Williams presents an interesting and shocking explanation for Julia's exile - at least an explanation that Augustus believes or claims to.

The penultimate chapter draws Augustus's life to a close with a lengthy letter to Nicolaus of Damascus in which a dying Augustus bemoans his fate and the weight of authority he has had to bear - it is really most unattractive for one of the most powerful men in history to indulge in such self-centered despair, but it also rings true because Augustus spent his life denying himself so many pleasures in order to hold on to power for the good of Rome, as he convinced himself. In the end, Augustus saw himself as the embodiment of Rome - anything that threatened his power, threatened Rome. This is so well done that one finds oneself becoming angry with Augustus, who is after all just a character in this brilliant work of historical fiction.

'Augustus' is not an easy read. Prior knowledge of the historical era certainly aids the enjoyment and comprehension of the book. Ultimately, however, this remarkable work of historical fiction and literature deserves the highest recommendation.

Permalink