It’s bad enough to be laid off because your employer wants to bring in cheaper staff, but an even greater indignity is to be kept around just to train your replacement. That’s exactly what happened to Jack McEvoy, though: the L A Times crime beat reporter might’ve known the local cops inside and out and he might’ve been one of the best writers on the staff, but he was being paid well to write for the Times and the new generation of MoJos – “mobile journalists” – were hungry and a whole lot cheaper. Besides, this bunch didn’t just call in their stories on their phones, they wrote their stories on their phones.

But two weeks’ pay was two weeks’ pay, so Jack took the deal and began showing his replacement – the very young and very pretty Angela Cook – the ropes. All the while, though, Jack Mack had every intention of going out on a high note; and Alonzo Wilson’s story looked to be just the angle he needed. The LAPD had the teenage gang-banger set to take a fall for murdering a young stripper and stuffing her in the trunk of her car… which happened to be one of the few crimes ‘Zo hadn’t committed.

And then Cook horned in on his story, passing him the results of her google search on “trunk murder.” Hoping to stay one step ahead of his in-house competition, McEvoy took off for Vegas… and The Scarecrow took off after McEvoy. Only an out-of-the-blue phone call to Jack’s one-time lover, former FBI profiler Rachel Walling, saved him… and the battle was joined: a short-timer reporter and a disgraced Feeb, up against an unknown subject who can destroy their credit – even their lives – on a whim. Jack McEvoy is about to feel more like a dinosaur than ever – and dinosaurs are extinct.

The decline of newspapers in the age of the internet is no secret, but even though he’s decades removed from his last stint at a daily author Michael Connelly still feels the pain of his former brethren. The reasons are all there in The Scarecrow: declining ad revenues, plummeting readership. Jack McEvoy and his ilk are like the dinosaurs, their habitat destroyed and their niche filled by smaller entities. As Jack’s co-worker said, “corruption will be the new growth industry without the papers watching.” Connelly’s tale is so up-to-the minute that it includes the demise of McEvoy’s former paper, Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, which published its last edition at the end of February.

The Scarecrow, however, is not about the death of newspapers. It’s about the death of young women, tortured and brutalized by one sick sonuvabitch. It’s about a couple of the good guys fumbling in the dark while a very bad guy watches their every move. It’s about the newspaper business and profiling and psychopaths and two people who went through hell once before and haven’t been able to get each other out of their heads since.

Michael Connelly leaves behind both Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller to re-enlist the heroes of 1994′s The Poet, but – as long-time fans well know – it doesn’t make much difference who his protagonist is, Connelly shines. The Scarecrow has, however, irritated some Connelly “purists” (feel free to read that as “people who are uncomfortable with change”) for revealing the identity of the titular villain almost from page one. Somehow, they think that kills all the suspense. To that bunch, I must say, “au contraire!” Knowing the villain’s identity does not in any way lessen the suspense as the intrepid duo close in on their quarry.

That doesn’t mean that The Scarecrow is Connelly’s best, however – it’s not. Though heartfelt (and understood in this quarter, at least), the early focus on McEvoy’s layoff is long and drawn out. The reunion between McEvoy and Walling is pretty much by the numbers; and though the “single-bullet theory” is a nice touch, it still doesn’t make up for the predictability. Connelly’s foray into the world of internet predation, identity theft, and hacking is sadly superficial – but then he’s of Jack McEvoy’s generation himself; an old-style journalist who knows what -30- means when typed at the bottom of a page.

Most Michael Connelly fans will happily welcome The Scarecrow to their bookshelves; except perhaps for a few grumps who think he should never write anything beyond the Bosch series. Ignore them and read it anyway. I’ve said this before and I’ll probably say it again: even when Michael Connelly is not at his best, he’s still a lot better then most of the competition.

: : : :

When Torin Sinclair finds himself uprooted from sunny Southern California and dropped unceremoniously in a little Colorado mountain town – in early December, no less – he’s certain that life as he knows it is over. The frigid cold is bad enough, but the dying snowboarder his Mom (Dr. Sinclair, the new town doctor) is called to treat on his first night in town gets things off to a creepy start. It’s little comfort when he learns that an old Ute woman had cursed the town ‘way, ‘way, ‘way back in 1952; and the curse was that the town wouldn’t be able to keep a doctor.

Though Tor thinks his new life will be a mess, Dr. Mom has the solution up her white sleeve: his first snowboarding lesson is tomorrow! And not only is Tor a natural, he makes two friends at the snowboard shop! Raine, Drake, and Tor become Snow Park’s answer to the Three (Twelve-Year-Old) Musketeers!

Musketeers or no, the three outcasts – the multiple-greats-granddaughter of that curse-giver, the neglected son of a world-class snowboarder, and the son of the curse-target doctor – have full lives. There’s school, riding their boards, removing the curse, and, oh yeah – solving the mystery. Why did a seemingly healthy teenager die of pulmonary edema? And why did the rest of the high school snowboard team blame Tor’s Mom?

The answer awaits, but first Tor will have to blunder through The White Gates.

After three mystery/thriller novels for grownups (Ground Zero, Earthquake Games, and The Thirteenth Skull), Colorado author Bonnie Ramthun turns to the youth market with a slim hardback aimed at middle-schoolers. Based in a Colorado ski town (it sounds a lot like Crested Butte), The White Gate mixes tween angst with the glories of snowboarding, as readers learn the sport’s basics along with the hero. Along with other popular tween themes – bullies and broken homes – the mystery-thriller is also sprinkled generously with a little supernatural action and some “Indian lore.” All in all, it’s a typical YA mystery, with kids outwitting evil adults and plenty of buddyhood as they struggle to unravel their mystery, with some Xtreme danger tossed in to spice things up. The snowboarding angle might be enough to get some kids interested; the same way Chris Crutcher’s sports-based YA stories are attractive.

On other fronts, however, The White Gates falls somewhat short. Tor’s sudden move to Colorado remains unexplained other than a slim back story about his mother’s long-ago departure for medical school and a single mention of his pregnant stepmother back in California. There’s no explanation of why he’s suddenly moved in with Mom, who “had left them… both Tor and his dad, and his parents had divorced.” The kid seems pretty well-adjusted about it, if you ask me – apparently he’s finished the obligatory therapy.

Although kids in YA mysteries are invariably smarter than adults, they still talk like kids. That being said, I have a tough time seeing dialog like this coming from a twelve-year-old:

“Excellent!” Raine said happily. “Pay no attention to Drake. You’re going to love snowboarding if you like surfing.” Raine flipped up a laptop that Tor hadn’t seen amid all the equipment on her desk. She typed quickly. “I’ve got Gloria free at one o’clock. She’ll take you until four.”

“Three hours? Tor asked, disappointed…

“Three hours your first time is enough,” Raine said, still typing. She hit a final key with a flourish and shut the laptop. “She’ll arrange your schedule after your first day, so ask her about your next lessons. Now let’s get you geared up.”

The kid talks like a Pentagon PR flack… as if the author had started to write an adult novel and ended up cannibalizing it for a YA novel. The three children seem strangely adult at times like this.

Overall, a middling middle-schooler mystery that’s held back somewhat by clumsy dialog and a lot of unanswered questions about its main characters.

: : : :

The White Gates

Jack Foley had been called the “Sweetheart Bandit” in the days when he was robbing banks at the rate of about one a month. He’d tallied 126 (or was it 127?) of them before US Marshall Karen Sisco¹ plugged him in the leg and sent him back to prison. Good ol’ Maximum Bob (the judge) sentenced him to rot for thirty years. So much for being a sweetheart…

It was in Florida’s Glades Correctional Facility that Foley and Cundo Rey, Marielito made good, became Road Dogs; cons who watch each other’s back in yard and cell block. One day, Rey made a phone call, and suddenly his buddy’s thirty-year fall had been cut to three – and three was up next month. After he walked out those gates, Jack headed for Venice (California, not Italy) to wait for his buddy-slash-benefactor’s release with Cundo’s wife, Dawn, and his business manager (all the while looking over his shoulder for the FBI agent who’d sent him up – and perhaps a glimpse of Sisco as well).

Dawn Navarro gave Jack Foley quite the welcome… being no fool, Foley figured out that the bodacious part-time psychic and fortune-teller had spent the entire eight years of Cundo’s absence planning how to empty her common-law husband’s nice, fat bank account. And he also figured out that she had no qualms about doing whatever was needed to enlist his aid.

Three crooks, several million dollars, and one lopsided triangle. Who would blink first?

Elmore Leonard brings together three “retired” characters for his latest effort, Road Dogs. Readers last saw Jack Foley in Out of Sight (he was played by George Clooney opposite Jennifer Lopez’s Karen Sisco in the film version). Cundo Rey returns from Riding the Rap, and Dawn Navarro previously worked her magic (and cons) in La Brava. Leonard’s trio of grifters fit right in with the whack-jobs circling them in Venice – like the cadre of teeny-bopper gangsters running 24/7 surveillance on Foley for an FBI agent gone off the reservation. No one in Road Dogs has even a glimmer of a conscience – except perhaps money man Jimmy Rios (The Monk), whose longest speech of the novel begins with “Bless me father for I have sinned. It’s been twenty-seven years since my last confession…”

Gotta wonder, though, about a world in which everyone’s a crook…

What can you say about Elmore Leonard? I mean, here’s a man who’s been writing novels longer than I’ve been reading – and I’m older’n dirt. He’s been at it for more than forty novels and more than fifty years, had about a dozen novels and short stories turned into movies (some twice), written screenplays… in short, he’s pretty much done it all. He’s sometimes called America’s premier crime writer; renowned for his gritty dialog.

So why don’t I like his writing? And, more to the immediate point, why does Road Dogs leave me cold? I guess Elmore Leonard is an acquired taste, and he’s one I never acquired. In looking over his extensive list of publications, I realized that I’d only read one previous Leonard novel  - 1988′s Freaky Deaky – and as I remember, I didn’t much like it, either. A well-known non-moviegoer, I’ve seen as many of his novels on the big screen as in I’ve seen in print (Mr. Majestyk and Out of Sight). Wonder why that is…

Actually, reading Road Dogs reminded me of why Leonard just doesn’t do much for me, and here’s why:

• The characters: Every single character in Road Dogs, with the possible exception of Foley’s lawyer and his ex-wife, is a con artist, a thief, a murderer, or some combination of the three. Great examples…
• Nothing happens: The characters sit around and talk, and every once in a while someone shoots someone else or tries to con another character. Basically, it’s about as thrilling as a cricket match.
• What’s with the dying plot threads? Like this whole thing with Foley and the movie star Danny, which just falls off the page.
• The dialog: I don’t care what anyone says, the dialog is pure-D boring.

More than anything else, however; the idea of an Elmore Leonard vision of a world populated entirely by crooks, cons, grifters, swindlers, and other ne’er-do-wells is Just. Plain. Depressing.

You like Elmore Leonard? You’re welcome to him; all forty-some books. I’ll pass – and here’s my opinion: if you’re not an Elmore Leonard fan already, Road Dogs ain’t gonna make you one.

¹ I’m not certain whether that was the Jennifer Lopez (movie) version or the Carla Gugino (television) version of Marshall Sisco, however.

: : : :

Ellen Gleeson reached the mommy track via an unconventional route: after writing an article about a sick boy in a Philly hospital, the thirty-something single reporter ended up adopting little Will when his birth mother relinquished him. Now three, Will’s the apple of his Mommy’s eye, and there’s no way she could conceive of her life without him.

No way, that is, until the card comes in the mail. You know the ones: white cardboard advertising circulars with the words “Have You Seen Me?” printed beside a picture on the back. Little Timothy Braverman, kidnapped two years ago in Florida, looked exactly like Will. And he was the same age. And some strange form of “adoptive-mother’s intuition” let Ellen know that the two were the same child…

Even though there were layoffs in the wind at her paper, Ellen knew it was up to her to prove that Will was not the missing boy. If doing so placed her job in jeopardy – not to mention maybe never seeing hunky Marcelo, her Brazilian editor, again – there was no comparison. And so Ellen began doing what good reporters do: she started her own investigation. But a strange thing happened along the way: people connected with the adoption kept dying…

Would Will Gleeson turn out to be the son of Carol and Bill Braverman? Would Ellen Gleeson’s worst nightmare come true? You’ll have to look for yourself – and then Look Again.

Veteran courtroom drama writer Lisa Scottoline leaves behind lawyer thrillers in the Rosato Associates series (Lady Killer, Killer Smile) and similar standalones (Devil’s Corner, Dirty Blonde) to parlay her new “career” writing the weekly Philadelphia Inquirer column (“Chick Wit”) into a novel about a reporter. Ellen Gleeson’s vocation notwithstanding, however, Scottoline gains no ground on the formula that has made her previous novels popular among aficionados of the intersection of mystery-thriller and bodice ripper.

Gleeson, a “woman of a certain age” (where “certain” is undefined), follows the inept footsteps of the many Scottoline heroines who precede her. Where she’s different from her predecessors is that the only man in her life is three years old instead of a buffed thirty-something Adonis. Of course, there is the obligatory thirty-something buffed Adonis waiting in the wings… Instead of pencil skirts, man-tailored shirts, and CFMPs; Gleeson’s typical garb is a sweater over a tee shirt, jeans, and a pair of Dansko® clogs. We know they’re Danskos, since Scottoline mentions the brand name several times (a variation from her other novels, where she usually prattles on about Manolo Blahniks). Ellen is, naturally, mortified that – as a mommy – she’s no longer “sexy,” making her secret crush on that gawdawful gorgeous new editor all the more painful for her.

Gleeson has other, more pressing problem, however. First, she’s obsessive; second, she’s a lot dumber than one might expect. Third, she makes bad choices and then refuses to backtrack to correct them. And, of course, as a working mother she’s eternally concerned that her son is being raised by the babysitter, Connie (we’re treated several times to Will’s inability to determine whether he’s supposed to call Gleeson or Connie “Mommy”). Most of all, though, she doggedly insists on going it alone and not letting anyone else help her. Dummy – but typical of a Scottoline heroine.

Like other novels in the Scottoline canon, Look Again is sufficient for light reading. The characters are likeable though exasperating, the premise is fairly interesting; and, for those who are interested in such things, one will encounter the requisite tastefully-done “Oh! My darling!” and “throbbing loins” moments. On the whole, however, Look Again is pretty lightweight stuff, but a step or two above the comedy-based chick lit series such as Stephanie Plum’s adventures. Scottoline livens the character list a mite by tossing in a back-stabbing coworker and the occasional clueless family member; and adds a startling but highly unlikely plot twist to tie a nice bow at the completion of the story

Overall, an average novel that apparently earned its author a few additional pennies for product placement. If I boldface Dansko a few more times, can I expect some royalties, too?

Buy Look Again at amazon.com

: : : :

There are two different kinds of restaurant guides: those aimed at high-rollin’ tourists (e.g., Zagat) and those intended for the common folk who drive the streets every day. As newly-minted residents of Houston, we quickly sought out one of the latter in the local bookstores. A copy of Mike Riccetti’s Houston Dining on the Cheap caught our fancy several months ago, and since then we’ve been using it as a guide to our culinary explorations. After all, you can’t eat at Fogo de Chao, Americas, The Grotto, or Café Annie every meal, right? In a couple of decades of visiting Houston on business, I’ve eaten at a lot of local restaurants and I long ago came to the conclusion that, although Houston is only the fourth largest city in the country, it probably has a larger and richer restaurant selection than numbers two and three (and maybe than number one).

The central premise of Houston Dining on the Cheap is dear to my heart: getting good food at reasonable prices: I’m not the kind of guy who likes to pay more for less food simply because it’s presented on square plates and the waitron is wearing a tux. Apparently neither is Riccetti, for his chief criterion for inclusion among the book’s 300 entries is that the average dinner entrée (not lunch; dinner) cost below thirteen bucks. He also says the food has to be good and that he strove for a “diverse” set of listings. While the first criterion is objective, the others are subjective; and the subjective quality of “goodness” makes or breaks a food critic. We’ll look at that in a minute.

Structurally, Riccetti’s 476-page trade paperback is similar to most restaurant guides. It has all the usual components: alphabetical listings of restaurants, a cross-index by location, a cross-index by cuisine, and a smattering of additional information such as lists of restaurants that are kid-friendly, deliver, serve breakfast daily, are open 24-7, etc.

Individual restaurant listings are likewise typical of the genre, featuring a header with basic data: name, location, phone, hours, credit cards, cuisine, website if any, price range, and average price. Each listing also has a few hundred words to describe the restaurant’s history, special features, and the like. For instance, of Lupe Tortilla (the original location out by BP in the Energy Corridor), he says, “The food might be described as loud and brash Tex-Mex.” Of Kim Son, a Vietnamese restaurant near downtown, he says, “Matriarch ‘Mama La’ arrived in Houston with her husband and their seven children in 1980 from Vietnam with a plentitude [sic] of recipes.” Yes, he said “plentitude”: the writing is clear, but often rather uninspired (so’s the editing). But, just as you can’t eat ambiance, you don’t need great writing to say whether food’s good or not.

If Riccetti especially likes a restaurant, he’ll mark its listing with a single star to signify that it’s “highly recommended.” Fifteen of the restaurants are so marked, between us the Ms and I have eaten at three – we disagree with him on two and are ambivalent about the third… Unlike most other restaurant guides I’ve read over the years, Houston Dining on the Cheap does not rate the restaurants, other than singling out this group as “highly recommended.” On one of them, discussed further later, the Ms heartily agrees with the one-star rating but only if it’s for one out of five. We’d give the other two three of five, though one might struggle up to four. This failure to rank the restaurants in the listings may well be the greatest weakness of the guide.

Houston Dining on the Cheap, according to its author, is meant to be diverse, just like Houston. Riccetti’s concept of “diverse” is different from mine, however. The 300 restaurants include 31 taquerias, 16 Mexican restaurants, and 25 Tex-Mex restaurants – 24% of the listings in total. He also includes a NewMex-Mex restaurant (Santa Fe Flats) under Tex-Mex, saying that it’s “close enough,” (he obviously knows nothing about NewMex-Mex food) and, “[f]or chauvinistic Texans, this is very similar [sic] and almost as good as our own Mexican food.” So much for credibility…

Riccetti also clearly likes Chinese (23 listings), BBQ (16), Vietnamese (26), and Thai (18). On the other hand, he thinks Japanese food is all sushi (just one restaurant listing, plus a sidebar listing “the best places to buy sushi”). So much for “diversity”…

Houston is a large and culturally diverse city, with large African-American (just four soul food restaurants though), Latino (Mexican plus one each of Brazilian, Bolivian, Peruvian, Cuban, and Venezuelan; two Salvadoran; four each Colombian and “Argentina/Uruguay”), and South Asian (Vietnamese, Thai, one Malaysian, four Pakistani, six Indian) populations. Oddly, few if any of the Asian restaurants are in the heavily Vietnamese/Chinese/Thai enclave in the southwest part of the city. In fact, listings are heavily weighted toward gentrified neighborhoods just north, west, and southwest of downtown (the Heights, Montrose, and West University); while listings in the suburbs are, for the most part, limited to outlying locations of local chains. For instance, the golf course communities around Champions (far north Harris County) are the site of just eleven restaurants, of which nine are in local chains. So much for covering the city…

I went through the index and between the two of us, the Ms and I have eaten at 23 of the 300 restaurants, five or six of them on the basis of Riccetti’s recommendations. Of the 23, our reactions were 10 “thumbs up,” nine “meh,” and four “thumbs down.” An interesting feature of those thumbs-down restaurants: at two of them, the waitstaff refused to serve us what we had ordered! Clearly, service was not a criterion; neither, apparently, was cleanliness: one “highly recommended” restaurant not only featured a surly Thai-food Nazi but was also fly-specked and as greasy as a Jiffy-Lube.

As I said somewhere up there, the subjective part of a restaurant guide – whether the food is “good” or not (or whether it’s worth what you pay for it, which may or may not be the same thing) – will make or break a food critic. We’ve enjoyed exploring parts of town where neither of us had spent much time before (mostly the Heights and Montrose, if the truth be told), but frankly we have yet to find a restaurant from this book that either of us would make a special trip to visit again. Admittedly, there are a few in there that one or the other of us found independently that we’d visit again (Lupe Tortillas, for one). By the same token, we found some on our own that we’d pass by without a second thought. On average, however, neither of us much trusts Riccetti’s judgment on the subjective quality of “goodness” of the food: we’ve disagreed with him too many times.

A restaurant guide should inspire you to find new places to eat, and in a sense Houston Dining on the Cheap has done that for us. However, we’ve had better luck in our dining experiments when we merely stopped by an interesting-looking restaurant or asked friends for recommendations. It’s weak for suburban locations – many of Riccetti’s recommendations have been thirty-mile round trips – and heavily concentrated in a few small areas of town. But its greatest weakness is the egalitarian nature of the writing: without restaurant rankings to differentiate the wheat from the chaff, this book just isn’t that great a help.

Buy Houston Dining on the Cheap at The Tattered Cover or at amazon.com

: : : :

Gracie Perkel is just weeks short of her sixth birthday when she asks the wrong person the wrong question. In short, her question is “What’s the big deal with beer?” which she asks of her Mommy, mostly because her Daddy and her Uncle Moe (the uncle with the tragic moustache) seem to like beer so much. That’s even though her first two eensy sips taste “Icky!” and “Double-Icky!” respectively.

When events conspire to ruin Gracie’s long-awaited sixth birthday party, the little lady decides to celebrate like a grown-up instead: two cans of beer go in her tummy and a third gets launched at her birthday cake; then she goes upstairs to dance and spin around in her bedroom. After she cleans up the inevitable Technicolor yawn, Gracie drifts into a woozy sleep; whereupon she receives a visitation of sorts. Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting… the Beer Fairy!

Gracie and her friendly neighborhood Fairy take a magic journey; in which our diminutive heroine learns how to spell “wort,” how to malt barley, and the meaning of “liquid courage.” More importantly, she learns how beer is really a magical beverage that, if ingested in precisely the right amount, allows the rare grownup to peer through the veil separating our world from the next. Nevertheless, Gracie’s in for some serious flack from Mom when she sees the semi-digested chocolate cake stains on that Hello Kitty rug.

And just what is a tragic moustache?

In case the pure goofiness in the story line of B Is for Beer hadn’t already given away the author’s identity, the name of Tom Robbins should make the last pieces fall into place. Following in the wobbly footsteps of Madonna and Jamie Lee Curtis and the more ordered paces of the likes of Carl Hiaasen, Robbins has written his first ever children’s book; a children’s book about beer. There may never have been more unlikely topic for a children’s book, but on the other hand, who better to write about something so outrageous than the madcap redhead himself, author of Still Life with Woodpecker and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (among MANY others).

If you still don’t get the point, the cover of B Is for Beer also mentions that Robbins’ work is “A Grown-up Book for Children,” while at the same time it’s “A Children’s Book for Grown-ups.” Robbins is, of course, joking: B Is for Beer is a children’s book for grown-ups, but it’s only a grown-up book for children if you’re counting your inner child (who will be, I suspect, absolutely delighted).

Robbins’ little novella (a mere 125 pages) is as silly and as thought-provoking as any of his full-length novels, down to Gracie’s sing-sing chant of “Hi-de-ho!” (“Oh-oh, Spaghetti-o,” anyone?). The Robbinsesque text is accompanied by a set of charming pen-and-ink drawings from Robbins buddy Les LePere, who manages to make it pretty obvious that the Beer Fairy is a redhead… naturally.

Being that this is Tom Robbins writing, you’re probably expecting some goofy relationships (got ‘em) a free spirit or two (yup!) and the author’s trademark sideswipe relationship with mysticism and historical fantasy (it’s in there). Robbins shows the results of some interesting research; research that didn’t necessarily involve looking through the bottom of a glass – factoids about beer that most people toting around a suitcase of cans never thought to wonder about; facts like how beer is made and who first made it, for instance… perhaps B Is for Beer is a children’s book – it is, after all educational! And that’s in addition to being fun and funny and just a little heartwarming.

Hi-de-ho!

Recommended age: 21 and up (statutorily defined)

Buy B Is for Beer at amazon.com or the Tattered Cover

: : : :

The Siege of Leningrad lasted 872 days, from just after Lev Beniov’s seventeenth birthday until he was almost twenty in January, 1944. In those twenty-nine long months, nearly a million and a half residents of “Piter” (as the locals called their beloved St. Petersburg) perished from starvation and the Axis powers’ seemingly endless supply of artillery shells. Before a tenuous supply route across the ice of Lake Ladoga reached the city in January, 1943, the residents had burned everything in the city that would burn and, for food, were reduced to boiling books to dissolve the protein-rich glue in the binding. And the bombing continued…

Lev Beniov spent 867 of those 872 days hunkered down inside the blockaded city. City of Thieves is not, however, a recounting of the siege: it’s the story of those other five days…

Caught by the police on the streets after curfew, Lev assumed himself destined for execution at dawn. The morning’s light brought both a reprieve and a strange assignment, however: Lev and his cellmate Kolya, an apparent Red Army deserter, were assigned to find a dozen eggs and return them to the NKVD Colonel within the week. In normal times? no problem; but no one in Piter had seen a chicken since the previous September, which pretty much rendered the “which came first” question moot. What should two young men do when faced with such a conundrum? Simple: it’s time for a quest. There would be no orcs, no dwarfs, no elves; yet at the end of their journey lay the requisite talisman: twelve white spheroids…

That’s how Lev and Kolya found themselves trudging through the winter-dark forests of northern Russia in the depths of January, never more than a few minutes from death by freezing or the tender ministrations of the army that besieged their hometown. It became a toss-up which was more brutal; the frigid cold or the Einsatzgruppe soldiers who directed the encirclement of that wretched, shivering, starving city.

There may have never been two more unlikely comrades: on the one hand we have Lev, the moody son of a disappeared “anti-revolutionary” Jewish poet; and on the other, Kolya, picture-perfect Aryan womanizer as charismatic as an army recruiting poster. Have two young men but a few months apart in age ever been so different? But politics and war have always made strange bedfellows, and there was no way that these two could avoid becoming the best of friends. No way, that was; as long as the two could survive a Russian winter, the lawless streets of Leningrad, and a perilous journey behind enemy lines into the hands of partisans who were but slightly less likely to kill them than the German soldiers. Their quest had just begun, and – for the moment- there was but a fellowship of two…

Better known for his work as a screenwriter¹, David Benioff is nevertheless a top-notch novelist. His second novel (after The 25th Hour and a collection of short stories, When the Nines Roll Over) manages to strike a chord with virtually every human emotion. Most of all, however, City of Thieves succeeds for being heartwarming and sad (of course it’s sad: it is, after all, a story of Mother Russia). Heartwarming and morose, yes – but Benioff beautifully balances the hopelessness inside the surrounded city against the absurdity of the task to which Lev and Kolya have been set. One can almost hear Chekov’s chuckles. On top of it all, Benioff’s depiction of Kolya might have come straight from the pages of Dostoyevsky, so vivid that one can almost see the big blonde’s grandiose gestures and hear him cajole his more timid companion in a great, booming voice.

This is no Crime and Punishment or War and Peace, however; for Benioff is more economical in his style than Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy. In a few deft strokes, he captures the despair and courage of the people of St. Petersburg during that long, dark winter, even as throughout he maintains a sense of humor:

“The boy sold what people called library candy, bade from tearing the covers off of books, peeling off the binding glue, boiling it down, and reforming it into bars you could wrap in paper. The stuff tasted like wax, but there was protein in the glue, protein kept you alive, and the city’s books were disappearing like the pigeons.”

City of Thieves is at times a study in the inhumanity of man – many a scene is not for the faint of heart – and yet at times as gleeful as a chorus line in “HMS Pinafore.” The most powerful themes; however, are the growth of a friendship that could last a lifetime between the two young men and an ongoing reminder that one does not put one’s heart on hold even in time of war:  love can survive even in Hell on earth…

David Benioff has written a novel of war. His is not a novel, however, that glorifies war. In that sense, it shares much with Joseph Heller’s seminal Catch-22. Like Heller’s novel, there is nothing grand and glorious about the young men marching off on a quest, for whatever the outcome of their journey it as absurd an undertaking as anything Yossarian and his squad ever encounter. Benioff pays the odd homage to other works, such as the similarity between Kolya’s bodily functions and those of Gnossos Pappadopoulis in Richard Fariña’s Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me.

Though I’m not much of one for period novels – even if the period was just a few years before I was born – City of Thieves is far and away among the best books I’ve read in years. It is sad without being maudlin yet funny without the slapstick. It’s the record of dark days, yet throughout there is a thread of wonder and of anticipation. If you’re looking for a book to take your mind off your troubles and shed a ray or two of hope, this is where you ought to start looking.

Just be certain to dress warmly…

¹ Benioff wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for “The Kite Runner” and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” and is at work on an adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice. He is the husband of Amanda Peet. Lucky dog.

Buy City of Thieves at The Tattered Cover or at amazon.com

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The optimists around me always say that when one door closes, another one opens (they’re the same people who apparently envision lemonade stands every block…). For Myron Bolitar, however, the action went backwards: one door opened and then the other one closed. Just hours after he received a phone call from Long Lost love Terese Collins begging him to meet her in Paris, his current inamorata Ali informed him that she was moving to Arizona and not to bother following. As Bolitar’s bosom buddy-slash-bodyguard Win pointed out; the delectable Ms Collins had a world-class derriere and the Air France ticket was paid for, so why not? Especially after a little scuffle might’ve put the two in some legal straits…

Welcome to Paris, where Terese – one of those rare women who just get more beautiful with age – had some revelations. The first was that she’d come to Paris at the request of her ex-husband (“Your what?!” he cried), and the second was that Rick Collins was missing: murdered, in fact, according to the gendarmerie. DNA found at the scene was that of the dead man’s daughter – a daughter with Terese. Problem number one: Rick and Terese did have a daughter, who died more than a decade ago. Problem number two: Terese knew quite well she’d had but one child.

Bolitar’s poking around in a French homicide raised not only eyebrows but also suspicions – especially after he became the target of attempted abduction by Islamic fundamentalists. Clearly Rick Collins – one of the best investigative reporters CNN ever had – had been killed for getting too close to something in an investigation. But what could possibly be at the intersection of pro-life activism, fundamentalist Islam, and an infertility clinic? Bolitar would either learn, or die trying.

Myron Bolitar is back: a statement that gives Harlan Coben’s fan base a thrill not unlike that Bolitar feels recalling time spent with on a Caribbean island Terese a decade ago (she in a Class-B-felony bikini)… The ninth in the sporadic Bolitar series finds the one-time Duke (ptui!) All-American roundballer in unfamiliar European territory, with only Win from his usual posse (as if that’s not enough…)

Bolitar is clearly a magnet for disaster, and Long Lost finds him in top form. Reunited with the woman who might have been the love of his life (remember, however, that he’s just broken up with the woman who might have been the love of his life), Bolitar has scant time to enjoy the reunion. A semi-polite visit from the gendarmes is just the beginning, for our hero is about to encounter the kind of people who think of “rendition” as mere parlor games. He’s in big trouble, in other words…

It’s a Myron Bolitar novel: it goes without saying that our hero (with Win) will leave the playing field littered with bodies; lavishly ravish a lovely or two; and keep up a running commentary through it all. Coben’s hero harks back to the classic noir detective, with self-deprecating style and wry humor, as shown in his description of a London nightspot:

“The place was New Wave, which was to say Old Wave, and proud of it. A large-screen TV showed a petulant Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club. The waitresses maneuvered through the boisterous crowd clad in black dresses, bright lipstick, slicked-back hair, and nearly Kabuki whiteface. Guitars hung from around their necks. They were supposed to look like the models in that Robert Palmer “Addicted to Love” video except, well, they were rather, uh, more mature and less attractive. Like the video had been remade with the cast of The Golden Girls.”

My eyes. My poor eyes…

Funny or not, however, Long Lost is intended as a thriller, and it definitely hits the mark. Coben ultimately pays homage to early Robert Ludlum (before that worthy went nuts for italics) and die sonnenkinder, updating that particular long-term plot from Nazi Germany to early 21st-century bogeymen. Coben generally does it well: though a few threads don’t quite ring true; the lies-within-lies theme, wicked humor, and familiar characters of this latest produce a fine diversion. It’s one that Bolitar fans who don’t mind a little variety will surely find to their liking.

Buy Long Lost at amazon.com or the Tattered Cover

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Once upon a time there was a family of loonies. This family lived in San Francisco, where it’s possible that their looniness might not have been noticed by a populace quite accustomed to eccentricity, except that they were demonstrably loony by even San Francisco’s heightened standards. This is their story, the story of the Spellman family.

Meet Isabel Spellman, middle child of three, a Patricia Pan type who has yet to reach adulthood, even though she is well into her thirties. Izzy, as she prefers to be called, is in court-ordered therapy – treatment that, if you ask me, should have been parent-ordered decades ago, but wasn’t (her parents need therapy of their own, in fact). Izzy likes to think of herself as a private detective, following in the footsteps of her parents (Al and Olivia). In point of fact, she’s less a detective than she is a snoop and obsessively nosy, but that’s supposedly part of her charm. As our story opens, however, Izzy is on sabbatical from the family detecting business; instead she’s moved out of her parents’ attic and is currently plying the trade of mixologist in her favorite local pub.

This being a “detective” novel, Izzy – of course – takes on a case anyway, sort of easing back into business. A friend of a friend asks her to investigate his wife, who’s been behaving strangely of late: the usual unexplained absences, expensive clothing and jewelry that don’t appear on the family credit cards; all the things that scream “affair!” to a worried spouse. Izzy will eventually spend more time trying to figure out why a second detective agency is already on this case than she does in figuring out what’s going on…

Her freelance investigation isn’t much of a case at all, to tell the truth, but then this novel isn’t really about detectives: instead, it’s about family dynamics and relationships and learning how to grow up. I’ll save you some trouble here, however: the dynamic of the Spellman family, never stable in the first place, changes not one bit in Revenge of the Spellmans; neither does Izzy’s relationship-challenged life get sorted out in the least. And, most important at all, no one – not Izzy, not her goofy 16-year-old (“sixteen and a half!”) sister Rae, nor her parents – grows up even a teensy bit.

So much for growth. Pbbbbbbbt.

Lisa Lutz’s third Spellman novel (after The Spellman Files and Curse of the Spellmans) breaks no new ground in Isabel Spellman’s maturity-challenged saga. It breaks little new ground at all, in fact – Isabel continues her obsession with everyone else’s business; teenaged Rae continues her obsession with junk food, bad television, and a forty-five year-old cop; and (perhaps worst) Lutz continues her arch “footnotes,” bottom-of-the-page asides to the reader that mainly exhort one to read the previous two “documents,” as she calls her novels. The “mysterious” portion of the novel (mainly surveillance of the wife’s odd behavior) could have been compressed into a short story, and a subplot about a rival detective agency’s involvement in Izzy’s “case” adds nothing other than a bit of intra-Spellman family tension.

I can sort of understand why the Spellman series is popular: it’s squeaky clean (no sex, no profanity, no gore), and it’s not intellectually taxing; features that make for books that can be read for pure entertainment – your call. I, on the other hand, prefer that my entertainment reading give my brain a little exercise. I’ve always thought I was reading lightweight, escapist stuff; but this sort of book has me rethinking my assessment.

Or perhaps it’s just that I find Lutz’s relentless chirpiness and those incessant footnotes referring her readers either to “the appendices” or to the previous novel (“now available in paperback”) a little too much to take on an empty stomach. Whatever the case, sorry, Ms Lutz, Revenge of the Spellmans does nothing to make me “eagerly await” the next installment in the series. This one doesn’t even rise to the level of “cozy.”

Buy Revenge of the Spellmans at amazon.com or the Tattered Cover

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