"The Black Dahlia" by James Ellroy

I first heard of The Black Dahlia when my freak of a friend posted horrifying pictures of Elizabeth Short's mutilated corpse on his facebook page. (Yeah, I have great friends.) If you have kinder, gentler friends who haven’t kept you in the loop, you may not know that the crime in this book is based on actual events, though much of the investigation is fictional.

After seeing those photos (which my lovely friend tagged as “road kill”), I decided I wasn't interested in watching the 2006 movie. I assumed it focused on the repulsive details of the poor girl’s torture and murder. My mind drew parallels to the movie Seven, which--while being a highly suspenseful thriller--left me with the thoroughly depressing feeling of "what is wrong with humanity?"

But I was curious enough to read the book, which I figured wouldn't be quite as bad as the movie in terms of sickening visual images that can be so difficult to expunge from my mind. And it was kind of nice to find that the novel didn’t dwell on the killing, but instead focused on the police work during the resulting investigation.

That’s not to say Ellroy pulls any punches. Nothing is glossed over or whitewashed or made pretty in this story. There is an element of “even the good guys are the bad guys,” but I didn’t end up disgusted with all of my fellow humans. Just some of them.

Even if it hadn’t been written all over the cover, I think I would have been able to guess that Ellroy also authored L.A. Confidential. I haven’t read that book, but I’ve seen the movie, and it has some similarities (namely cops and whores in mid-twentieth-century Los Angeles). Turns out the two books are part of what’s called Ellroy’s “L.A. Quartet,” which also includes The Big Nowhere and White Jazz.

My one complaint about the book: the family of crazies with a crazy friend kind of defied belief. One crazy person would have been enough, but Ellroy kept stacking up the insanity. As soon as we knew one mentally ill character was involved, we learned of another. And another. But, though I gripe, I must admit this did not diminish my ability to enjoy the book.

My favorite “noir” is of the Pinot variety, but Ellroy writes some pretty good crime fiction. I have added The Black Dahlia to my netflix queue (now that I think I can handle it) and will probably read The Big Nowhere at some point.

"Quite Ugly One Morning" by Christopher Brookmyre

Here's a book for those of you who think Christopher Moore is funny. Moore may have the ability to elicit internal chuckles from me (tempered by an equal number of eye rolls), but Brookmyre actually had me snickering out loud in the first few pages. I figured sooner or later Hud would ask me what was so funny, but he never did. That's probably a good thing, though. How is it that I can hear a perfect Scottish accent in my head but utterly fail at making it come out of my mouth? Hud would have been distracted by the hilarity of my awful attempts to channel Sean Connery.

Of course, any book that takes the Lord's name in vain and drops the f-bomb in the very first sentence has got to be as "thrillingly unpleasant" as Esquire claimed. Though I kind of take issue with the unpleasant part. I actually found it to be quite a lovely read, unless we're talking about the first two chapters which treat the reader to a vivid description of the murder scene with all of its excrement and emesis--oh yeah, and a dead body. Hmmm, lovely may be the wrong word. But fun works.

This was my first Brookmyre book. I heard about him here. It's nice to finally find a mystery that doesn't pale in comparison with Agatha Christie's, although admittedly it's very different from hers. In fact, I think nosy investigative journalist Jack Parlabane may be exactly the sort of person Miss Marple always railed against. Contrary to all her sentiments, I am almost tempted to add the rest of this series to my TBR, but the thought of adding four more books at one whack is too daunting for a Monday morning. Maybe I'll do it later in the week.

I learned a lot of new words in this book. All of them were Scottish. Most of them are synonyms for poop. As such, they won't be appearing in any of my Words of the Day posts, but I will throw out a pair for you here: keech and jobbie. (You put them in the bog, by the way.) A few other "Jock" words that I remembered to write down:

smout (a small person, especially a young child)
glaikit (foolish, flighty, giddy)
baw-faced (that of a person with a large, round head; apparently, "baw" comes from the Scottish pronunciation of "ball")

Now you try to channel Sean Connery and see how well you do.

Reading in Retrospect: "Hallowe'en Party" by Agatha Christie

This is your average Agatha Christie book. That’s a good thing, of course. In my mind, Christie is the ultimate mystery writer. I weigh all mystery novels against hers, and most suffer by comparison.

I have read this one enough times that I can actually remember who done it. (Most of Christie’s books surprise me every time I read them. You know. That literary amnesia thing again.) Of course there were a lot of details that I did not remember, so I still enjoyed the read.

In this book, Hercules Poirot is called in by his author friend Ariadne Oliver, who has been visiting in the town of Woodleigh Common. Just the night before, Ms. Oliver had attended a children’s Halloween party during which one of the young guests, a girl by the name of Joyce Reynolds, was drowned in an apple-bobbing bucket. The thing that stuck in Ms. Oliver’s mind was the fact that, earlier during the evening of the party, Joyce--a girl given to telling tall tales and generally known as a liar--had been trying to convince the others present that she had once witnessed a murder. Unfortunately for Joyce, the wrong person overheard her claims.

This isn't my absolute favorite Agatha Christie book (I'd say that slot is claimed by And Then There Were None), but I don't think I've ever read a mystery of hers that I didn't like, and this one was no exception.

Here is what I love about Agatha Christie. Her stories are always so logical. Even if the murderer is slightly insane, it's in such a neat, restrained, British way. There's very little gore, and hardly anyone ever gets hacked to pieces. Many of the deaths occur by a nice, civilized poisoning, or at worst an efficient coshing or a single, well-thought-out gunshot. Poirot and Miss Marple are my heroes, with their amazingly astute observations and keen understanding of human nature. And somehow Christie manages to get me suspecting almost every single character in the story at one point or another. See? Perfection.

Happy Halloween! Don't keep your head in the apple-bobbing bucket overlong. 

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson

I have succumbed to peer pressure. This has got to be the book I've heard talked about the most, and from the most varied venues. I can't even tell you how many bloggers I've seen posting about it in recent weeks. I have studiously avoided reading all of those posts Just In Case. Partly, of course, to dodge spoilers, but also because I didn't want to have my experience with the book colored by the opinions of others. So, get ready for me to color your experience with it. (That is, if you haven't already read it, which somehow seems unlikely.)

The writing was a little awkward as I first began to read, but who knows, this may just have been due to the translation. (The book was originally written in Swedish). I imagine it is difficult to translate an author's words and intent while retaining their unique voice. I guess I will never know whether Larsson's own writing was as awkward as this English translation. But as I read, either the awkwardness disappeared, or I got so accustomed to it that I forgot about it (with occasional reminders by way of little words like "anon"--more than once!--and "alas".)

I'm not sure what exactly I expected of this book, but I hadn't realized it's basically a murder mystery novel, and I was pleasantly surprised when I figured this out. The book may not be as "literary" (or navel-gazing?) as I expected, but neither did it make me feel guilty for reading it. It was certainly not one of those brain-cell-killers, thank goodness.

This is the first mystery novel I've read in a long while that ranks well on my Agatha Christie scale, which would be my method of measurement for all murder mysteries, Christie's novels being the epitome of the genre in my opinion. I must note that this book definitely had more "contemporary" themes than a Christie mystery. (In this case, "contemporary" is a euphemism for nasty-minded.) I can't imagine Agatha Christie ever writing about anal plugs. Especially since I had never even heard of them myself, before reading this book. Well, you learn something new every day. That, by the way, is one of the reasons why I am marking this book as Not Suitable For My Mom. She doesn't need to know about anal plugs (or any of the rest of it, because it gets worse).

Deviant behavior aside, this was a truly engrossing story. The characters were well-written, unique but not unbelievably so, imperfect but still likable. The plot was tight and, for the most part, fast-paced. I loved that I found it unpredictable. (Although I did figure out Who She Was a page ahead of time--mainly just because there weren't any other options remaining). It wasn't exactly like a Christie book, in which I generally suspect every character in turn. But neither was it like a flawed mystery with the perpetrator as a surprise stranger that jumps out of nowhere at the end of the book. I also liked that the mystery kept rolling over into something new. You think it's solved, but wait! There's more! On the other hand, I didn't like that the book started and ended with blah blah blah finance blah blah blah industry. For me, the excitement ended about 60 pages before the book did. Not that I was completely bored by the dénouement, but it wouldn't have hurt my feelings if that whole section had been edited out.

Then the last two pages, ugh. Not that I should have expected a nice pat happily-ever-after ending with these characters. And honestly, with the way things were left, I think I am more interested in reading the next book in the trilogy. (Although I had already planned to, many pages previously). This is not because the end raised more questions that need to be answered in the next installment, but because the characters were true to form, and the unresolved conflict is sure to be interesting when it is addressed. But still, ugh. Any time you end up with Elvis* in the trash can it can't be good.

Now I'm off to read all those other bloggers' posts about this book which I have been evading until now!

*Don't worry--not the real Elvis, lest I be coloring your experience with the wrong hue.

"The Bellini Card: Inspector Yashim Goes to Venice" by Jason Goodwin

I was not especially wanting to read this book. I'm not sure why I bothered to borrow it from Joyce, because although the first two Yashim the Eunuch books were decent reads, I wasn't so wild about them that I wanted to read every one that Goodwin ended up writing. On the other hand, I'm a sucker for a book set in Italy.

Even with an Italian setting, though, it took me a long time to pick up this book. And not just the first time. You would think I'm trying to say the book is boring, but it wasn't. It was, like the others, a decent story with a few tasty-sounding meals thrown in and standing out like jewels. Once again I wish Goodwin had included a more specific recipe for those meals (or that I was a more adventurous cook and could just wing it and end up with a scrumptious meal instead of something to feed to the dogs). Anyway, my main problem in picking up the book probably had more to do with the fact that all of a sudden spring has sprung, and I'm finding more often I'd rather be outside digging in the dirt than reading.

I think I have found a fault in Goodwin's writing. I frequently have trouble picturing the scene he is describing. OK, so I admit, the fault might possibly lie with the reader rather than the author, but somewhere between his descriptions and my brain there is what sometimes seemed like an unbridgeable gulf. This was especially evident during the "fight scenes," where all Goodwin's careful choreography was lost on me. He might as well have just said, "they fought, and he won," because that's about all I got out of it. I also had no idea what the "Sand-Reckoner's Diagram" might look like, so thank goodness for google (again).

Yashim's Polish friend Palewski gets a much larger part in this book, although it is funny that from the other two books I got the idea that Palewski was a friendly, heavy-set, older drunk; in this book he is described as younger, slimmer, and more handsome than I realized. Yashim and Palewski fall into what seemed to me to be Sherlock-and-Watson roles for the first time, probably because Palewski is more involved in the investigation this time.

This time, instead of loaning me more books, Joyce gave me some amaryllis bulbs to plant. I'm heading out to dig in the dirt again.

"The Dark House" by John Sedgwick

This book caught my eye on paperbackswap.com. It sounded like a book my mother would not approve of. It's about a Peeping Tom of sorts, involves an old murder and secrets of the past, and the author is likened to Ian McEwan--what more could I want? The warning in bold face on the back of the book, "Don't read this book alone at night," only made me want to read it more.

As so often happens, this book was not what I expected. First of all, it never got creepy enough that reading it alone at night would have been a problem. (Boo hiss!) Second of all, the main character (Rollins, the Peeping Tom) was really, really weird. I mean, yeah, you have to figure a Peeping Tom would be somewhat weird, but this one is painfully awkward and bizarrely antisocial in a passive way. I had trouble understanding him and connecting with him. Though, now that I think about it, perhaps that was intentional, as pretty much everyone in the book had the same problem. I certainly couldn't see why in the world Marj put up with him. And third, the story seemed to be a rather pedestrian potboiler thinly disguised as a psychological oddity. Reading it was like observing a split personality in the strange love child of Dean Koontz and Sigmund Freud.

I don't know whether to complain that this book was predictable, or to bemoan the fact that so often the plot seemed to be going in a certain direction and then just . . . didn't. So many times the author seemed to be building up to a tense and mysterious revelation, but then he would stop short and take the most obvious route. Rollins would get himself deeper and deeper into a situation that could mean hot water for him even though he was innocent (being alone in his apartment with his neighbor's young daughter? being alone in the house with his dad when his dad shot himself?) and I would be thinking, Oh no, they're going to think he did something . . . and then no one gave his odd behavior a second thought.

There were times that Rollins' attempts to unlock the secrets of his past with the help of his patchy memory reminded me of one of my favorite reads, The Amnesiac, but somehow this one wasn't nearly as delicious.

"Death at La Fenice" by Donna Leon

I am not sure why, but I have been dragging my feet about reading the two murder mysteries that Joyce loaned to me most recently. I have such a good bunch of books to choose from every time I'm ready to start a new one. This is both good and bad; it's wonderful to have a great selection, but it's so hard to choose just one! But I hate to keep books that have been loaned to me for too long, so it's time I tackle them.

Here's one big difference between this book and Agatha Christie's mysteries: in a Christie book, I find myself suspecting just about every single character at one time or another. In fact, if I ever "guess" the murderer, it really doesn't count because I probably guessed everyone else too. This book is the opposite, because throughout most of it, I guessed no one. It sounded like there were three main suspects (the wife, the opera singer, and the opera singer's lover), but none of them seemed guilty to me. In real life it would have been the wife. But I really hoped it would turn out to be someone entirely different.

Although I suspected no one, I sure sniffed out a lot of false trails. First I thought maybe Wellauer's second wife's death might have been a murder rather than a suicide. I also thought maybe the conductor was killed before his "last performance," and an imposter (of course, the murderer--or at least an accomplice) conducted in his stead, which would explain his lack of talent after years of genius. I found myself waiting for a second murder to occur. Then, when it came out that Wellauer hadn't done a good job during rehearsals either, and that he perked up during a crescendo, and his doctor knew he had suffered slight hearing loss several months earlier, I thought he had experienced sudden and devastating deafness, which would explain the poor quality of his recent conducting; and that he killed himself, which would solve the "murder." Really, though, I hoped all of my guesses were wrong and that I would be utterly surprised (but only if the solution were completely logical and exceedingly clever). And I won't tell you which of my ideas I was right or wrong about, because there is no more sure way to ruin a murder mystery than to know "whodunit" before you even read the book, but I will say I didn't guess everything.

I love the way the main character, Brunetti, treats his boss, Patta, for whom he does not have an excess of respect. Brunetti is perfectly polite and correct in his conversations with Patta, but he answers his questions literally or gives ridiculously obvious replies, playing dumb just to get on Patta's nerves. The boss isn't smart enough to see through Brunetti, and I believe that Patta actually thinks Brunetti really is a little bit stupid. It's so subversive.

I was a little bit insulted by the comment in the book that "the American government seemed to fare well with a population that wanted [censorship of the press]." I can't figure out where the author got this idea, and I would love to hear more from her about it. As soon as I read this I thought, "Who is this author, to think such a thought? Is she an American insulting her own people, or is she some other nationality?" I turned to the synopsis about her (which was hiding from me in the front of the book, rather than being in the back where it belonged) and found that she is American but is basically what I would consider an expatriate, having lived in many different countries, including Venice for the past twenty years. Of course, now that I think about it, I do recall friends of mine who have lived both in and out of the country lamenting the amount of world news that is regularly disseminated in America (i.e., not enough). I wonder if that is the same sort of thing Leon was referring to. Anyway,
I was mollified somewhat when she insulted Germans too, by mentioning a "Germanic ability to remove truth simply by ignoring it." I have no idea whether this is true or not, but it made me feel better that the author was not taking potshots at Americans alone.

This was a good book, well-written and enjoyable, but it took me a week to read it. This normally indicates one of two things: either it's a longer book, or I never really got very excited about reading it. This book was 270 pages. You do the math.

"The Snake Stone" by Jason Goodwin

This is the second book in the "Yashim the Eunuch" series. It was a good read, and I think I may have enjoyed it a little more than The Janissary Tree, if only because I had a better idea of what to expect. In comparing the stories, however, I think The Janissary Tree has a more cohesive plot. In fact, I only finished The Snake Stone yesterday and already I can't remember why George the vegetable seller was beaten half to death in the first few pages, or why Xani the water man was killed. Maybe I didn't pay enough attention. Maybe I wasn't interested enough to pay enough attention.

Right or wrong, I tend to compare all murder mysteries to those of Agatha Christie. Her stories never fail to engage me, and generally keep me guessing until the very end by casting suspicion on just about every character in the book. If I look at Jason Goodwin's two Yashim novels as pure murder mysteries, they don't measure up on my Agatha Christie scale. One reason may be that in both of these Yashim books the murders all seem to be politically motivated rather than for personal gain or revenge. This keeps me at arms' length, making it difficult to invest myself in the story.

However, these are not pure murder mysteries. The treasure in these books lies with the vivid descriptions of Istanbul which involve all my senses. I still don't have much of an urge to visit that city, partly because I assume it has changed a lot since the setting of this book and partly because I think of it about the same way as I think of Africa: I would relish looking at a good coffee table book full of beautiful photos of the place, but I have no desire to go there in real life. But this attitude didn't keep me from enjoying reading about 19th century Istanbul. I just wish Goodwin had taken it one step further--I would love it if these books gave an actual recipe for each of the meals Yashim cooked and delighted in, rather than just giving me an enticing hint by tossing out a mouthwatering combination of ingredients.

"The Janissary Tree" by Jason Goodwin

This book was loaned to me by a friend who probably owns even more books than I do (which may partly be because she has a couple of years on me... but only partly) and who usually has similar taste in selections. In fact, she's the one who loaned After You'd Gone to me as mentioned in a previous blog entry. AND I have currently loaned The Time Traveler's Wife and The Amnesiac to her and can't wait to hear her opinion on those! But, once again, I digress... though if you've read any of my other posts that shouldn't surprise you.

This is a murder mystery set in 19th century Istanbul, and it was a good solid read, but for me it never reached "critical mass." I'm sure it's a massacre of physics to use this term the way I do, but that's the phrase I use in my mind to refer to the point I reach in a story where I can't stand to put the book down, every time I'm away from it I'm thinking about it anyway, and I'll stay up until 3 in the morning because, "I only have 100 more pages to go!"

The choice of a eunuch as a main character is a surprising one. I have wondered why the author made this decision, and I have come up with several possible explanations. Perhaps it is just because it is surprising and unique. I'm fairly certain I've never read a book narrated by a eunuch. There is also the fact expressed in the book that, as a eunuch, Yashim is allowed to move in circles that would be forbidden to him otherwise (such as the sultan's harem), an important advantage as a private investigator. I had also wondered if this was a way to simplify the story by avoiding romantic entanglements . . . until Yashim met Eugenia, the Russian ambassador's wife, and that theory flew out the window.

Beyond Yashim's own situation, though, it is almost more surprising that so many other eunuchs are mentioned. The harem guards, Ibou the Library Angel, and Preen the köçek dancer (or was she just a transvestite?), to name the ones that come to mind right away. Maybe Yashim identifies more with these characters because of what he has (or doesn't have, actually) in common with them; maybe eunuchs were much more common in the Ottoman Empire than I realized (although the book itself says eunuchs were "rare even in 19th century Istanbul); or maybe it's even that Goodwin has some sort of unnatural fascination with castration. (I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, though, and say it's not that last option).

It bears mentioning that my friend who owns this book first heard about it on NPR (which I have found in the past to be a wonderful source for interesting suggestions on what to read, watch and listen to). She said that reading it made her very interested in traveling to Istanbul, though I must admit it didn't do that to me. On the other hand, I would love to have sampled some of those meals that Yashim cooked!

My friend has also loaned to me the sequel, The Snake Stone, so expect an entry on that one next!

"The Magician's Elephant" by Kate DiCamillo

This book caught my eye because of the interesting title and cover art, but seeing the author's name sealed the deal. I read her book The Tale of Despereaux a couple of years ago and thought it was so cute and sweet, and then when I saw that it was being made into a movie I re-read it, this time to my kids. (When I finally got a chance to see the movie I was actually somewhat disappointed in it, but that's another story for another time). This one looked like another perfect bedtime story book for the kids.

The Magician's Elephant has the same sweet and dreamy quality as "Despereaux", and it was a nice little story, but I wish I had borrowed it from the library instead of buying a copy. It's not one of those books I feel like I HAVe to own. And honestly, when you get to the end of the book and look back, you find that not much happened. I feel like I could sum up the entire story in two sentences. It may have made a better picture book than a novel. But perhaps DiCamillo "intended only lilies," as the magician claimed, and that is what this book is--though a bundle of sweet white calla lilies, not a bouquet of flashy and bright stargazers.

I have flipped through another of DiCamillo's books, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, several times with the thought of buying it, but for one reason or another have always decided against it. The cover is cute (a bunny in pajamas walking upright down a street at night, casting a long shadow) but after reading The Magician's Elephant I'm pretty sure I'll just look for "Edward Tulane" at the library instead of buying it.