Dean Koontz, always a prolific author, turned out several thrillers under pseudonyms early in his career. He wrote The Mask, published in 1981, under the name of Owen West. That’s not the very beginning of the author’s career, but the book struck me as rather underbaked Koontz.
Carol Tracy is a psychologist in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She gets the job of treating a teenaged girl known only as Jane Doe, who has shown up with total amnesia about her past. Jane is beautiful, well-mannered, and sweet. Somebody must miss her, because she’s a child any parent would cherish – Carol herself, who’s been trying vainly to conceive, begins to cherish her, and soon takes her into her home. But why has Carol begun to to have terrible nightmares? And why is her husband hearing unexplained thumping noises in their house?
There’s also Carol’s friend and mentor Grace, who starts receiving cryptic phone calls from the voice of her own deceased husband, warning her to keep Carol and the girl apart.
The book escalates, in typical Koontz fashion, to a violent, wrenching, and abrupt climax.
I was not greatly impressed by The Mask. It seemed to me a conventional supernatural thriller, lacking the deeper themes the author would later bring to his work.
It was okay, if you’re not too offended by reincarnation.
A murder story set on a Norwegian fjord cruise? I could hardly turn that down, especially getting it cheap. I assumed it was a sort of a mystery, but it’s more of a suspense story. The mystery in One Green Bottle isn’t whodunnit, but who didn’t?
The tour guides leading a group of cruise ship hikers up a mountain in Norway assure them that they’ve never lost a customer. Well, that’s about to end. They’ve hit a perfect storm today, because there are eight people in this particular party, nearly all of whom are planning to kill either themselves or someone else.
There’s an English couple getting away from home for a while to deal with the tenth anniversary of their only daughter’s death. The experience is complicated by the husband’s growing conviction that his wife is having an affair with another man – who just happens to show up with his own wife on this cruise (surprise)! There’s an American financier planning suicide because he knows his embezzlement is even now being discovered by his co-workers. And a psychopathic American heiress worried that her alcoholic sister will blab to the police about how they murdered their father.
Yet we learn at the beginning of the book that only one of them actually dies. Which one will it be?
There’s much to admire in One Green Bottle. The prose is good. The characters are admirably faceted – the most sympathetic among them can be annoying, and the most annoying have sympathetic moments. The story was fascinating and engaging.
But it left a rather sour taste in my mouth. This is a fictional universe whose God, if there is a God, is Irony.
I recommend it moderately. Cautions for language and disturbing themes.
The heavens were purpling when I reached Washington, DC. The sun had disappeared beyond the simple Federal-style architecture found in Georgetown as I drove through, and beyond into Spring Valley, a spacious, secluded neighborhood inside the city with grand estates and private yards. If you were rich, you couldn’t live here. These residents looked down on the rich. These residents blew their nose with the rich.
I think I’ve now caught up with Alan Lee’s delightful Mackenzie August series, about an upbeat Raleigh, NC private eye who lives in a house with several family and friends, because he believes in community. I haven’t read all of the Manny Martinez books, though, so there’s always that.
To Have Everything features two main plot threads. First there’s a rich old woman who wants Mack to surveille her three grandchildren. She wants to leave extra money to the one who’s most responsible, but Mack suspects she’s already made her mind up – possibly very badly.
Then there’s the problem with Sheriff Stackhouse, Mack’s father’s girlfriend. She’s running for mayor, and a shoo-in – if she lives. Unfortunately, people keep trying to kill her (which Mack, of course, has to stop). Mack has contacts (some surprisingly friendly) in organized crime, but nobody seems to know who put out the contract. Mack will have to get proactive. Fortunately, as he confidently asserts, he can handle anything.
Lots of fun, as usual. I think To Have Everything was one of my favorites in the series. My only quibble is that (possibly due to an autocorrect mistake) the word “diffusion” keeps appearing where what’s wanted is “defusing” (as in a bomb).
Otherwise, great. Cautions for language and violence.
George began to sit up and take notice. A cloud seemed to have cleared from his brain. He found himself looking on his fellow-diners as individuals rather than as a confused mass. The prophet Daniel, after the initial embarrassment of finding himself in the society of the lions had passed away, must have experienced a somewhat similar sensation.
I posted a song from the Fred Astaire musical, “A Damsel in Distress,” a few days ago, mentioning that the film was based on a novel by P.G. Wodehouse. I hope to view the movie as soon as I can, but I wanted to read the book first, as it’s one I’d missed so far.
A Damsel in Distress was published in 1919, which puts it fairly early in the Master’s career. It’s highly interesting as representative of a key moment in his artistic development. He hasn’t yet made the decision to slip the narrow bonds of earth and sail into comic fantasy, but it definitely shows signs of things to come.
Lady Maude Marsh is the daughter of the Earl of Marshmoreton. She has fallen in love with an American, but her imperious aunt, Lady Caroline, who effectively runs the family estate, has utterly forbidden it. Maude manages to slip away to London one day, but is horrified to sight her status-conscious brother Percy approaching up the street. So she quickly jumps into a cab with a young man, imploring him to hide her. With perfect aplomb, the young man, an American musical comedy composer named George Bevan, conceals her, managing to knock Percy’s silk hat off in the bargain. Maude is very appreciative, but leaves George (who has fallen in love with her on the spot) with no information on her identity.
Nevertheless, George manages to discover who she is. He makes his way to the neighborhood of her home, and sets about insinuating himself into brother Percy’s birthday party. And it goes on from there.
A Damsel in Distress is full of Wodehouse themes in embryo. Maude’s father Lord Marshmoreton is a dreamy man, devoted to his flower gardens, oppressed by his sister. Obviously we have here Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle in embryo – but Lord Marshmoreton is more realistic. He is not an amiable idiot, but simply a highly suppressed man.
George poses as a waiter to get into Percy’s party. This is another standard Wodehousian device, but George is not as blatant an imposter as the imposters to come, and he gets out of the false position as quickly as he can.
In other words, Wodehouse hasn’t found his full powers yet. It hasn’t occurred to him to cut his ties to realistic psychology and turn his characters into cartoon figures. He has not yet found the courage to fly – but that doesn’t mean A Damsel in Distress isn’t a very enjoyable comic novel in its own right. If Wodehouse had ended his career in 1919, the book might still be remembered as a fine, funny romance.
[W]hat bothered me about Islam was that the Quran and its rules seemed to undo all the new covenant changes bought by Christ on the cross. The Quran took its followers back to the Old Testament.
What bothered me about Christianity was, I sucked at it. I kept shooting people.
I’m catching up on a couple books I missed in Alan Lee’s Mackenzie August series, about an upbeat Roanoke, VA private eye.
I’ve often expressed (tediously, no doubt) my idea that the average fictional male PI character is a masculine wish fulfillment figure. What man juggling a marriage, a mortgage, and rambunctious kids does not, now and then, imagine how nice it would be to live like Philip Marlowe or Travis McGee, having adventures, seeing a series of attractive women, no responsibilities except to one’s personal code?
Mackenzie August is a different kind of fantasy figure altogether. He’s the man we aspire to be. Big, buff, brave. Women hit on him all the time, but he brushes them aside easily, because he’s married to a gorgeous woman who’s all he ever wants. He lives, not alone, but in an extended family, featuring his wife, his toddler son (who doesn’t seem to ever age), his father and his girlfriend (who’s the county sheriff), his buddy, the hyper-patriotic US Marshal Manny Martinez, and (now and then), Manny’s partner Noelle.
Mack August does not agonize over futility. He is optimistic and happy. For him, being a detective is a calling, a way to help people.
In Old Guns, Mack begins to suspect that his generous nature is being taken advantage of. A woman accountant who has hired him before asks him to take her son Elijah as an apprentice. Elijah already has a license (which he got without studying), but it’s been confiscated, because he didn’t know the rules of surveillance and was arrested for breaking and entering. Mack is not interested at all, until the boy’s father, an illegal gun dealer, makes the same appeal, offering Mack a lot of money plus a bazooka, a weapon Mack has always wanted.
Elijah is a nightmare to work with. He’s lazy, he’s unmotivated, he’s always on his phone and he thinks he can lie because objective truth doesn’t exist. But gradually, Mack begins to care about the kid, who’s been dismally raised and desperately needs a male role model.
Then people start trying to kill Elijah. It turns out there’s a hit out on him, at an exorbitant price that’s bringing top assassins in from all over the world. What could this feckless kid have done to deserve that? And can Mack keep him alive long enough to find out?
Old Guns was, like all the Mack August books, a lot of fun. Not exactly a Christian novel, but Christian-adjacent, and full of interesting characters and plenty of action. Highly recommended, with cautions for language.
The Duke shot back in his chair, and his moustache, foaming upwards as if a gale had struck it, broke like a wave on the stern and rockbound coast of the Dunstable nose. A lesser moustache, under the impact of that quick, agonized explosion of breath, would have worked loose at the roots.
I recently reviewed P. G. Wodehouse’s Uncle Dynamite, which I enjoyed immensely. So I was happy to see Uncle Fred in the Springtime show up on sale soon after, and I snapped it up. I knew I’d read it before, and had been somewhat disappointed. I consider the classic short story, “Uncle Fred Flits By,” the funniest story ever written, and I felt (this was many years ago) that “Springtime” was just a little below the Plimsoll line. Perhaps, I thought, a re-reading would show me the error of my judgment.
Alas, no. I won’t say Uncle Fred in the Springtime is a bad book (a bad Wodehouse book is an oxymoron), but I still felt just a tad disappointed, like a lion in the Coliseum (as Wodehouse might have put it) sitting down to devour his daily Christian, and suspecting that someone has substituted a Gnostic in heavy French sauce.
The plot is the sort of thing you’d expect, and features the added pleasure of taking us to the familiar precincts of Blandings Castle, where the wooly-headed Earl of Emsworth desires nothing more than a quiet life in contemplation of his prize fat pig, the Duchess of Blandings. But he’s bedeviled by a neighbor, the Duke of Dunstable, a choleric and officious busybody who’s convinced the earl’s pig fixation is unhealthy, and who demands that Emsworth give it (the pig, that is) to him.
Meanwhile, Uncle Fred, himself an earl, is concerned about the fortunes of Miss Polly Pott, daughter of his friend Claude “Mustard” Pott, a former bookie and confidence man. Polly wants to marry a poet who’s looking for 250 pounds to enable him to purchase an onion soup bar in London. Uncle Fred, who is kept on an allowance by his wife, is hunting for a way to find her the money. This leads, through complex narrative paths and byways, to Uncle Fred and his nephew Pongo traveling to Blandings Castle, where Fred, as is his custom, takes up residence under an assumed identity, in this case that of the esteemed brain disease specialist Sir Roderick Glossop. The theft of the pig becomes a central theme.
My problem with this story – and it may just be me – is partly that it contains about one more main character than I can easily keep straight in my head. Also, though it’s always a delight to watch Uncle Fred lie with a straight face when caught in a previous lie, this time out I thought his prevarications sometimes a little thin. I had trouble believing anyone would fall for some of them, in spite of the old man’s charm.
Nevertheless, it’s Wodehouse, so it’s fun to read. Recommended, but a little less than other books from the Master.
Tonight, not a hymn, but “A Foggy Day in London Town,” a show tune loosely connected to the sainted P. G. Wodehouse.
“Damsels in Distress” is a 1937 Fred Astaire vehicle, co-starring Joan Fontaine. This was the first movie Astaire made after his partnership with Ginger Rogers broke up, and the project was complicated by the distressing discovery that Miss Fontaine couldn’t dance. Oops. (I find it hard to understand how anyone, even a very pretty young woman, could make it in the theater/movie world without learning to dance a little. Maybe she just wasn’t up to Astaire’s standard. That I call highly plausible.)
The film’s story, in any case, is based on a 1919 novel of Wodehouse’s, incorporating his personal experience in Broadway theater. Sadly, he didn’t do any lyrics for this show.
The movie, I’m sorry to report, did not do well, despite the presence of a young couple of comedians who called themselves George Burns and Gracie Allen. But its reputation seems to have grown with time.
I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen it. I need to check it out.
Looking at my old reviews on this blog, I see that I stopped reading Blake Banner’s Harry Bauer books mainly because they featured cliffhanger endings, which I hate. I absentmindedly picked up Justice Without Mercy, and was relieved to find that it did not end with a cliffhanger. So that’s good. But I still wasn’t entirely happy with it.
Harry Bauer works with Cobra, one of those super-secret semi-governmental security organizations so vital to the survival of the thriller genre. In Justice Without Mercy, he is sent to the small island of I-Takka, between Guyana in Surinam. The island, he is told, is essentially ungoverned. Control is in the hands of a mysterious corporation mining lithium and (according to rumor) carrying on mysterious human experiments. There are reports that children are being abused and murdered. Harry’s brief, which he welcomes, is to see if it’s true – and if it’s true, to take out the main people with extreme prejudice.
Harry Bauer suffers as a character from his extreme aptitude for his job. He’s big, strong, fast, trained to the limit. Throughout the story, whenever he needs to kill somebody (which happens with increasing frequency), he has so little difficulty that the author has to throw in a dozen hyperdeveloped mutants at the end to give us a dramatic climax. Harry is given a few meditative moments in which he ponders the morality of killing, but to someone who just finished reading Mark Helprin’s Elegy in Blue, it was pretty perfunctory. Also, the ending was a little incoherent, I thought.
I’m getting old, after all. I don’t enjoy high body counts as much as I used to. The Harry Bauer books are actually quite well-written (I liked the prose), and they fill the much-needed market niche of books tailored to male readers. So I shouldn’t complain.
But personally I found it rather dreary. It’s fine for its target audience. though. Cautions for lots of violence, rough language, and sexual situations.
If I cast back over the wars, famines, pandemics, and plagues, all the afflictions of nature and human nature, it seems clear to me that, as a necessity like breathing, the greater command of existence is to look beyond existence itself. Somewhere in the most delicate and invisible abstract is a point where all things come into balance, time stops, pain vanishes, and love and light are the same.
Imagine Death Wish, but recast in the form of a Baroque oratorio. That’s one way to attempt explaining Mark Helprin’s luminous latest novel, Elegy in Blue. Baroque is an appropriate adjective, because he has a very baroque style – he delights in lists, and catalogs, and endless iterations of ever-increasing granularity in detail, so that finally your brain surrenders and you just get caught up in the beauty of the words. And the beauty of the words is a major element of the meaning.
It’s also a hymn to the borough of Brooklyn, which the narrator loves even as he watches it being corrupted.
This narrator is a retired New York investment banker who never divulges his name. Aside from service in Vietnam and the loss of his son in Iraq, he has generally had a privileged life, especially in his marriage to his wife Clare, whom he loves profoundly.
Then he happens across an act of evil in process, and he does the only decent thing, the thing any man should do. As a result, he loses everything and becomes a pariah, a broken man. When he learns of another evil act which he has the power to stop, will he have the courage to act again, knowing the price of virtue?
In a previous book, A Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin gave us what I consider one of the great antiwar novels. But that should not be misunderstood as an affirmation of pacifism. The pacifists are some of the main villains of Elegy in Blue, cowards who resort to bromides like “cycle of violence” because they haven’t the guts to act against manifest evil.
Elegy in Blue is presented in intertwined chronology, so that sad endings are often described before happy beginnings. I steeled myself at first for the pain that was clearly coming, but on balance the story was mostly about love and joy, and the things that outlive us in the end.
As always in Helprin books, there was also a lot of humor. Dealing here with New York corporations and legal firms, he disports himself with monickers like Angier Francis Diphthahng, Bradford Pear, Simon Yachtsman, Hodgkins Chalmers, and Chalmers Hodgkins.
A Helprin book is a literary experience, intended to be savored and revisited. I loved Elegy in Blue and recommend it without reservation.
I never hesitate about buying one of Alan Lee’s Mackenzie August books (though apparently I’ve missed a couple in the series. I’ll have to remedy that). Common Tragedy is 15th in sequence. Mack August stands in the hardboiled tradition, but he’s taken Robert B. Parker’s sunnier approach and turned the dial up to “cheery.” If Raymond Chandler is “Noir,” Alan Lee has to be described as “Blanc.” Mack August is a big, strong, happy man who loves his life, loves his wife and kid, and enjoys company so much that he lives in a house with his father, his father’s girlfriend (the sheriff), his US Marshal friend Mannie Rodriguez and Mannie’s girlfriend Noelle, his own wife, and his dog, and they take an “it takes a village” approach to raising the kid.
They live in a house in a nice neighborhood, complete with a Home Owner’s Association. One evening, the HOA president hosts a meeting/picnic for the board in his yard, next door to Vickie Plemmons, the past president, a woman with a drinking problem and a rebellious, drug addict daughter. When Vickie disappears inside her house and doesn’t return, a neighbor woman goes inside to check on her. She finds Vickie and her daughter both dead of drug overdose.
It looks like a double suicide. The police want it to be a double suicide. But Mack is dubious. For one thing, it’s unclear how the drugs were administered. Working without a client, just out of a sense of community obligation, Mack starts asking questions. And it’s clear that a lot of his neighbors have things to hide.
Mack’s work is both hindered and helped by another neighbor, a crime podcaster, who has been secretly filming and recording his neighbors for some time, and soon starts racking up followers for his viral podcast.
On top of that, it turns out that Mannie’s girlfriend Noelle is pregnant, and she’s reluctant to tell Manny about it.
Common Tragedy is a fast-moving, amusing, and tragic story with a deeper message. I think the author may be a Christian, though his characters don’t always act like it. Highly recommended, with cautions, mostly for language.
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