Fiction, Reviews

‘An Ace and a Pair,’ by Blake Banner

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He blinked, but it was probably just his time for blinking that month.

Having discovered the pleasures of reading Blake Banner, and having exhausted the available books in his Cobra series, I moved on to his Dead Cold Mystery books, about a pair of police detective partners in New York City. An Ace and a Pair was not as much fun as the Cobra books, in my estimation, but entertaining, and with some superior moments.

John Stone is a successful detective with a high case clearance rate. But his superior doesn’t like him. Aside from personal animus, she considers him a dinosaur who ought to retire and make way for younger people. So she assigns him to the Cold Case squad, and partners him with Det. Carmen Dehan, a very attractive (of course) Jewish/Mexican officer with an attitude problem. They mesh immediately, united by their mutual dislike for their superior and a visceral commitment to going to any length to solve cases. There’s some sexual chemistry too, but they both avoid that issue.

The first case John selects is a bizarre one. Ten years ago, a gangster named Nelson Hernandez was found dead at a poker table, along with his chief lieutenants. Each had been shotgunned to death (though Hernandez himself was also grotesquely mutilated), and apparently not one of them moved to defend himself. The chief suspects have solid alibis. Also, the crime made no sense. It didn’t seem to profit anybody.

Stone and Dehan delve into the evidence, which involves a fair amount of travel (even a trip on a gangster’s private plane). Only Stone’s intuitive detective work will enable them to cut through a lot of lies and subterfuges and put some old wrongs right.

Although author Banner employs his trademark technique of jumping quickly into the action, without a lot of preliminary stage setting, the story didn’t take off for me until a little way in. But it grew on me, and I started to care. I had a vague idea what the outcome would be, but a number of impossible problems needed solving first.

I thought I found a couple weak spots. At one point, Stone locates a vital clue through driving around in Texas – which seemed to me an improbable needle-in-the-haystack thing, considering the size of Texas. Also, the author used “begs the question” wrong, which disappointed me. This guy’s better than that.

But it was an enjoyable novel with a satisfying conclusion. Recommended, with the usual cautions.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Einstaat Brief,’ by Blake Banner

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Book three of Blake Banner’s interesting – and modestly impressive – Cobra series is The Einstaat Brief. Once again we follow our hero, “ethical” assassin Harry Bauer, as he fights international evil.

This time out, Harry is facing a situation he never looked for. He’s in love, with a beautiful, red-haired Texas girl. He knows he can’t bring her into the life he’s living, but he figures he’s done enough killing, even in good causes. He’s going to retire, and move with her to a ranch in Wyoming.

Then a team comes to kill him, and they seem to be government agents. Harry’s superiors at Cobra make him an offer he can’t refuse – one last emergency job, and he can retire and they’ll guarantee his and the girl’s safety.

The job is a rush assignment, without adequate preparation time. Harry will have to improvise. He is to infiltrate a luxury resort hotel in Andorra, and assassinate three of the world’s most powerful internet moguls. These three are plotting to inject an algorithm into the world wide web which will give them control of all the world’s markets. But money isn’t their goal. They want to manipulate international economies in order to incite wars in the Third World – to control overpopulation.

Harry manages to get in, but he interprets his instructions freely – he steals the men’s laptops, and kidnaps one of them. But when he gets home, he finds a more dangerous, personal challenge in store.

I am enjoying this series, but this is the last installment available to date. Another is coming in December. Fun reading, with cautions for a high body count and mature language.

Fiction, Reviews

Don’t Bob for Apples in Hallowe’en Party

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I picked up Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party recently, because it’s the season for it, and I found the most interesting part of it on the dedication page.

To P. G. Wodehouse

whose books and stories have brightened my life for many years. Also, to show my pleasure in his having been kind enough to tell me he enjoyed my books.

It’s too bad this story isn’t a real zinger. Even a bold or ambitious effort that doesn’t quite pay off would have been good. But Hallowe’en Party is a somewhat fluffy tale that needs content editing.

A thirteen-year-old girl is drowned in a large bucket of water for apple bobbing during a Halloween party. Who would do such a thing? Perhaps it was a disturbed boy–they’re everywhere nowadays. But the girl did boast of seeing a murder a few years ago. Is it possible someone felt threatened and silenced her?

Many pages are spent rehashing mundane details that don’t advance the plot or open cans of red herring. How many characters need to complain about disturbed individuals who should be cared for in psychiatric wards or the dreadful mental health of modern children? “I don’t need to tell you,” they say repeatedly just before telling you the same thing you heard a few pages back.

Add to this Poirot pulling local history out of the air at a few points and his occasional observation on how remarkable this common something is. And why is he wearing apparently sensible shoes when he climbs into the quarry garden on page 85 and not again for the rest of the book, even though he continues to walk all around the place? He says he wears tight, patent leather shoes that hurt his feet because he thinks they present him properly. How did he ever put on the sensible shoes if he can’t do it again later?

My initial guess of the murderer at a third of the way into it proved true. That was unsurprising but good; any other explanation would have ruined the book.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dying Breath,’ by Blake Banner

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Here we slowed, but not much, and moved, hooting and honking, among cars and motorized rickshaws, in a city that looked like it was built in the twenty-fifth century to be inhabited by people from the fifth century.

Book 2 in Blake Banner’s Cobra series, about elite assassin Harry Bauer, is Dying Breath. It’s as much fun as the first one.

As I read the Cobra books, I’m reminded, in a way, of Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Except that I like Bauer better than Bond (though I’ll admit I’ve only read a couple Bond books). I find James Bond kind of flat as a character. Harry Bauer is an interesting person, and he occasionally hints at opinions I can get behind. On the heroic indestructibility scale, he’s certainly Bond’s equal.

As I mentioned in my last review, Harry Bauer is a former commando, now employed by a super-secret, non-governmental security organization to take out the worst people in the world. His latest assignment seems relatively straightforward – to infiltrate a New York hotel and execute two Chinese scientists who are working on a plague that could become pandemic.

But, as any reader will expect, things don’t go according to plan. The set-up isn’t what Harry expected, and he ends up on a quest that takes him from New York to Casablanca to Bangkok, and which will introduce him to an intriguing femme fatale with lots of deadly secrets.

What any reader of this book will note is that it’s relevant in a very particular way. A moment of recognition comes packed inside at no additional charge. You’ll know what I mean.

I noted one plot problem: Harry makes use of an EMP (Electro-magnetic pulse) machine to knock out electronic systems, but they don’t seem to affect his or his partner’s cars. This is not explained.

Highly recommended as entertainment. Morally problematic in diverse ways.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dead of Night,’ by Blake Banner

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The maître d’ sat me next to a table of noisy, overdressed beautiful people; the kind who leave their plastic surgeon’s designer label hanging out of the tucks behind their ears.

Harry Bauer, hero of Blake Banner’s Dead of Night, is an American and an orphan. Somehow his wanderings led him to Britain, where he joined the Special Services. He’s a valued and effective commando, until the night in Afghanistan when he nearly kills a prisoner – an Al Qaida leader who raped, tortured, and murdered an entire village. He gets kicked out of the service, and is soon back home in New York without job prospects.

There is one party willing to hire a guy like him for security work, however, in spite of his hazy military record – a Russian gangster. Harry goes to work for him, but he goes in with a plan – one that will leave a lot of bad guys dead, and Harry considerably richer.

But then he’s detained by some mysterious agents, who escort him to an interview with the head of a secret, international security operation called Cobra. Cobra is not directly sponsored by any government. Its sole purpose is killing – eliminating the worst of the worst, whom the law cannot touch. Harry agrees to join them with little hesitation. Especially because his first target is the same terrorist he had to let go in Afghanistan.

Trouble is, the CIA is holding that monster as an information source, and Harry will have to get through them to get to his target.

Piece of cake.

I occasionally read military action thrillers, but they aren’t my favorite reading fare. But Dead of Night went down real easy with me. I finished it quickly, and had a good time with it. The action never lags, the prose is good (it even made me chuckle occasionally), and Harry comes through as a complex, fully developed character. I hastened to buy the second volume in the series.

I hesitate to recommend this book wholeheartedly, because it’s very bloody, and the body count is high. There’s also the moral question of revenge and whether it’s right to kill just because the victim “needs killing,” so to speak. So the moral ambivalence here is greater than in your average mystery. And, of course there’s always the language and adult themes.

But it sure was a fun read.

Goofing

Trick or Treat Tongue Twisters

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With 600 million pounds of candy sold for Halloween, it seems we’ve given up the tricks in favor of the treats. Here are a couple tongue twister skits from Studio C to sooth your appetite for trickery.

The goal in each skit is a perfect run-through. One flub sends them back to the beginning.

Dana’s Dead (Oct. 2012)

Sam Sloan (Oct 2015)

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Reluctant Detective,’ by Tom Fowler

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C. T. Ferguson is the scion of a wealthy Baltimore family (his given name is, I kid you not, Coningsby). His only distinctions are skills at martial arts and computer hacking. He just returned from three years in Hong Kong, during which he helped some dissidents out and spent a horrific 19 days in a Chinese prison, before being deported.

Now he wants nothing more than to spend his parents’ money, but they are determined to make something of him. They’ve offered him a deal – work for free at some occupation that helps people, and they’ll provide a generous allowance. After some dithering, he settles on becoming a private eye. Thus he is The Reluctant Detective.

C. T. doesn’t really know anything about private investigation, beyond what he’s learned from TV and novels. But he sets up his office and goes to work. His first case is, as might be expected, a domestic. Alice Fisher is convinced her husband is cheating on her. C. T. uses his hacking skills to examine the husband’s life, does some discreet surveillance, and decides the man is faithful – even devoted. But now he’s curious about Alice, the wife. There are certain irregularities in her life that make him suspicious about what this whole exercise is in service of. Then somebody gets killed, and C. T. is hip deep in trouble and danger.

The Reluctant Detective wasn’t awful. The prose was generally good, which is a distinction in our times. But two elements kept me from getting engaged in the story.

First of all, I didn’t like the hero/narrator. C. T. never comes to life as a character, or inspires sympathy. His actions and thoughts seem uncoordinated, not rising from any central motivational core. I had the idea the author might have intended him to be a modern Lord Peter Wimsey, but Dorothy Sayers did it better. Perhaps C. T. needs to get a monocle.

Secondly, I didn’t believe the story. The author seems to be as clueless about the law, police procedure, and what a private detective does as his hero is. He seems to think that P.I.s carry some kind of official authority. He thinks a private citizen can just waltz into a police station and drop into an interrogation observation room without being challenged. And he greatly overestimates the willingness of cops to invite P.I.s into their investigations (even when, as in the case, the cop is the P.I.’s cousin). He also raises intuition to the level of evidence, which just doesn’t wash.

I read The Reluctant Detective all through, and that sets it above a lot of other books. But I really don’t recommend it. Cautions for language, as you’d expect.

Fiction, Reviews

Keep It Light, the Fat Man Says

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I know you aren’t used to me blogging every day. Coming here and finding I haven’t posted anything is like walking out of a cramped corridor onto an open patio. The emptiness feels fresh, and you need a bit of air after wading through the ever-swirling stream of political social media. Filthy memes, floating GIFs, and faux deep thought that rises to the surface leaves a reader feeling foul. So naturally you come here, hoping I haven’t written anything.

Well, friend, today is not your day.

I recently finished Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas, the first of his Odd novels. It was published in 2003. That’s about how long a book has to sit on the shelf before I read it. Trendsetters are like that.

Odd Thomas is amusing, despite a story the steers into dark territory. Odd, the young man narrating his own story, says he must keeps his tone light, because his editor and literary mentor is a very large man who has promised to sit on him if he doesn’t. But keeping a light tone can be a bit of challenge with what Odd is called to do.

If Odd Thomas is known for anything, he’s known for seeing dead people. And fluffy pancakes hot off the Pico Mundo Grille. And seeing these terror-eating shadow dogs he calls bodachs. He sees a few of these things slinking around a customer at the Grille and is compelled to follow him. This guy is probably planning to commit a terrible evil in Pico Mundo. Plus, his hair looks like it’s growing fungus. Maybe Odd can find a way to stop the Fungus Man.

Then the ghost of Elvis appears and doesn’t help one bit.

The plot and all its twists work well. I can’t say the story is scary. It has some grit that leans into scary, but nothing like many of the Koontz novels Lars has reviewed. More common are lines like this: “Mr. Thomas, you have a rare opportunity for perfect bliss, and you would be ill advised to poison your life with either academia or drug dealing.”

I’ll be reading the next Odd novel sometime, but I’m picking up a different Koontz book next, after the library sterilizes it or finds it in the stacks or something.

Uncategorized

Quarantine journal

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The book I’m reading now is taking a while, so what shall I say to you tonight? Went out for a walk this morning and exchanged a few words with a neighbor I barely know. That counts as a major social event these days. Alert the Society columnists!

Went out for lunch (the daily deal at Red Lobster), and then stopped on the way home to do my civic duty and get my flu shot.

Consumer report: I preferred the nanorobots they included in last year’s vaccine. Those gave me dreams of the University of Timbuktu, and produced a compulsion to vote for the Green Party, though it was an election off-year. So far this year’s nanorobots have only turned my toenails teal, and I think I detect the beginnings of a vestigial tail, for which I can think of no good practical use.

I streamed an old movie, “In a Lonely Place,” with Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame. It’s about a screenwriter with homicidal inclinations, who may or may not be preparing to kill his fiancée at the end. I can’t say that it matches my own experience in the film industry, but my participation has been limited so far. Once I start doing power lunches with producers, I may see more action.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Elsewhere,’ by Dean Koontz

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There was a time to take refuge in the arms of those you loved, and there was a time to stand up to great evil and not be bowed. If you didn’t know the difference, then you were doomed to perish about two-thirds of the way through the story, when the narrative needed a jolt of violence and emotion. (As a reader who hoped one day to be a writer, she was always alert to authors’ techniques.)

Dean Koontz is back with a new adventure, entitled Elsewhere – this one is sort of a sci-fi/fantasy cross. It’s very much in the familiar Koontz style, but (also in his style) it’s significantly different from his other books in concept. Also, there’s no mystical dog in this one (there is a pet mouse, but it has no special powers).

Jeffy Coltrane and his daughter Amity are mostly happy in their life in Suavidad Beach, California. He repairs and sells antique Bakelite radios, and she is a smart, well-adjusted kid. Their great sorrow is the disappearance of their wife and mother, Michelle, some years ago. Michelle abandoned them to pursue a career in music, and they have never heard from her since.

One day Jeffy gets a visit from a local eccentric, a homeless but fastidious man they call Spooky Ed. Ed gives Jeffy a box, which he says contains “the key to everything.” He is to hide it somewhere, and if Ed doesn’t return for it, he’s to sink it in the sea in a barrel of concrete.

Then a group of armed men who claim to be official invade their house, searching for the “key.” Jeffy and Amity are suddenly forced to consider the possibility that Creepy Ed knew what he was talking about. They take the “key” out of the box and examine it. It gets activated, and suddenly they’re transported to an alternate universe. This universe appears pretty much the same as the one we know, but it turns out to have a few sinister differences. Soon they’re flitting from universe to universe, trying to not get separated and to escape a dangerous enemy who considers them expendable and understands the multiverse better than they do.

Elsewhere scared me to death, and touched my heart. In other words, it’s pretty much what you pay your money for when you buy the Koontz brand. A couple political points are hinted at, but they were points I liked, so I didn’t mind. It’s a charming and compelling novel. Cautions for language.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture