Mystery?
This weekend I decided to read A Drink Before the War, the first book in Dennis Lehane’s Kenzie/Gennaro mystery series, and I admit my feelings about it are mixed. On the one hand, the guy can write—I knew this about him from reading a couple of his stand-alones, and in this one he really paints a vivid picture of both characters and environs, with an atmosphere that has all the gritty feel of the streets of Southie in Boston that we have seen in the movies.
On the other hand, the mystery wasn’t much, it was resolved a little too easily, and everybody in this book was so dark and dour that it was hard to fight against the mood seeping into my daily life. It may account for why I haven’t done much of anything during the past couple of days—a depressed mood makes for lethargic behavior.
I don’t want to jump too quickly to the conclusion, however, that this series (and this writer) are not for me; if I had stopped, for instance, with Still Life, the first book in Louise Penny’s Armand Gamache tales, I would have missed out on a lot, but that first volume was among the worst three in the entire series of 19 and counting.
I liked the main characters of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro quite a lot—enough to want to know what happens to them next. But the story of corrupt politicians, depraved drug lords and their street gangs, and the misery and death that both sides bring to almost everyone around them was a little too much for me. You couldn’t call this noir, since that subgenre’s protagonists have nothing of the hero about them, which isn’t true of Kenzie and Gennaro. But the protagonists of noir are victims, suspects, or perpetrators, and the two private detectives featured here also share those aspects in the course of this story. They are gloomy, they are pessimistic, and there isn’t much that’s pretty about their lives. Still, there is definitely a good-guy/bad-guy divide here that has the pair on the right side, mostly.
To compound my mood, the next book on my list (just arrived on my Kindle from the library) is California Bear, the brand-new book from Duane Swierczynski, who is known for his noirish way with a plotline. I do, however, have an upbeat, kind of funny story that goes with that book (I’ll tell you all about it when I write the review), so that may salvage my attitude going into that one.
Finlay’s road trip
I was excited to get the notice from the library that Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice, the latest in the series by Elle Cosimano, had landed on my Kindle this week. The overwrought novelist-turned-criminal’s story continues right from where Book #3—Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun—left off. The open questions at the end of that book: Will Finlay’s nanny, Vero, get out from under her debts to low-life underworld characters? Will her sister Georgia manage to make things last with new FBI girlfriend Sam? Will Finlay convince ex-hubby Steve that things are over between them, and will she finally manage to have a real relationship with police detective Nick—a problematic quandary since she has participated in so many criminal activities to which she can’t “cop,” pardon the pun. Will Finlay and Vero take back the Aston Martin that someone stole from them and also rescue Vero’s crush, kidnap victim Javi? There were so many dangling threads to remember that I almost immediately wished I had stopped to reread #3 before assaying #4!
Because I had read that book within days of its release more than a year ago, it took me a while to get into the rhythm of this new book. The series is really one long story, so you have to be up on all the events from page one of Book #1 in order to really get what’s going on. You also have to understand what this series is and what it is not; while there is a boatload of illegal activity taking place on its pages, it’s really more of a French farce than it is a mystery or thriller, although the fast pace and quick twists and turns certainly make it exciting. Someone on Goodreads compared Finlay and Vero to Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz and, although they are smarter and more savvy, the relationship between them and among all the other disparate characters, from teen hackers to police officers to mob bosses, does bear a certain similarity—and that chemistry is Cosimano’s real advantage.
In Book #4, the cast all take a complicated road trip to Atlantic City in pursuit of their various objectives—and everybody, and I mean everybody, comes along, from Finlay’s mom, kids, and ex-husband to all the cops (crooked and straight) and criminals (major and minor). There are numerous misdirections of everyone involved, no one seems to have a real handle on what’s going on, and all are giving a good imitation of chickens minus their heads.
My ultimate conclusion after reading this chapter in Finlay Donovan’s story is that it was a little too busy. There were so many things happening to so many people all at once, and their connections were sometimes so confusing (wait—who is Ricky, again?) that it was hard to keep straight at times, which meant there was less focus on the strengths of the franchise—the snarky banter, the romantic entanglements, the misunder-standings that propel the heroine and her cohorts. I did enjoy it, but I’m glad that a few characters permanently exited the page (no, I’m not saying who, though some will be a surprise and others not) so that perhaps the next book will be less frenetic and more tightly focused. I did enjoy getting to know Finlay’s mom, Susan, but I also wanted a little more of the Nick/Finlay inter-action, I wanted to hear about Zach’s progress with potty training and Delia’s latest faux pas; and the characters’ days-long lack of sleep and irregular meals made me almost as tired as they were!
I hope that Elle takes a deep breath and keeps everyone closer to home for the next one. Yes, there will be a next one—there was a significant cliffhanger at the end of Dice about nosy neighbor Mrs. Haggerty that leaves us waiting eagerly for its resolution in (sigh) another year!
Marine biology and spies
While awaiting about six different e-books on my “holds” list at Los Angeles Public Library, I succumbed to one of those BookBub daily reading recommendation emails containing various books they offer for between 99 cents and a couple of bucks—which is unfortunately about what some of them are worth in terms of writing and readability. But I have to say that Immortal Red, by Keith Hummel, surprised me in a mostly positive way, and I enjoyed working my way through its labyrinthine story line and getting to know its many, mostly nefarious characters.
The description of the book in blurbs and on Goodreads leads one to believe that it’s heavy on science: A marine biologist snorkeling off the coast of Cape Fear, North Carolina makes the chance discovery that Turritopsis dohrnii, a dime-sized jellyfish with a bright red stomach, seemingly has the gift of immortality. At the moment of death due to old age or massive trauma, the jellyfish has the ability to fully rejuvenate at a cellular level and emerge as a young adult again. After collecting specimens and observing numerous repetitions of this phenomenon in her lab, the scientist applies for research grants and thus brings herself to the attention of an elderly black-ops CIA mastermind who wants her to develop practical applications for humans—in other words, make him immortal. He has a plan to dole out this secret miracle to an elite group of people who he envisions subsequently running the world, with him, of course, spearheading things.
When the scientist isn’t in agreement with his goals and hides any positive outcomes of her experiments, things don’t go well for her or her husband, a wannabe spy under the sway of the megalomaniacal CIA guy and his minions. Then ensues a breathless search for the scientist’s research, and the story morphs into a full-throttle CIA spy novel.
Reading this was initially a little slow, because almost the entire first half is basically developing knowledge and back story; but once the research is in the wind, things take off and get increasingly exciting. The writing flows naturally, the characters are fairly well developed (for a fast-paced thriller, that is, not at the level of literary fiction), and the conversations and interactions ring true.
This is a first novel for Hummel, who has on his resumé many elements that make him well qualified to write this book: “Keith Hummel has more than 70,000 hours as an emergency medicine physician. He has flown helicopters, driven tanks, and restored classic Porsches. He is currently the medical director for a major defense contractor.” He also operates as DoctorFiction on Tumbler, where he assists other novelists in the effective use of medical and trauma situations.
Word to those who don’t like sequels: The book wraps up some things, but ends on a pretty significant cliffhanger. So don’t put in the time if you aren’t willing to wait to see what happens to the survivors!
Delightful whodunnit
I guess that headline makes my blog post kind of unnecessary; but I could not wait to offer up a reaction to Vera Wong;s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Q. Sutanto.
Let me start by saying something unrelated about the text of this post: I had a rain leak in my roof right above my computer yesterday, and my keyboard got drenched. It is dried out now and still mostly works, but there are a couple of significant issues: The backspace (delete) key instead turns off the sound, and the apostrophe either appears as a semicolon or not at all. So as much as it pains me to write a review in which there are no apostrophes, since the book title itself contains one then needs must if I want to write it before I have access to a new keyboard, which I do! I will attempt to write without contractions as much as possible, apart from the book title, seen above with semicolon.
I previously reviewed two other books by Sutanto, and I liked them well enough (the first better than the second), but this one feels like a whole different level of enjoyment. It is as quirky as those, for sure, but it is less frenetic, more logical, and abounds with interesting and likable characters. The book is solidly based on the main title protagonist, while all others revolve around both her and a circumstance in which she finds herself embroiled; but there is no lack of either detail or interest in every other actor in this little play Vera Wong is creating in her attempt to solve a murder.
Vera is a small but intense lady with a tea shop in the middle of Chinatown in San Francisco. For the past few years her clientele has dwindled down to a single visitor per day, but Vera has not let this discourage her: She still arises before dawn, dons her athletic costume and gets in a brisk walk before opening the tea shop in anticipation of composing the perfect brew for every need from her vast store of jars and bottles full of exotic ingredients. But one morning Vera descends from her apartment to her shop to discover a body on the floor! Mostly unperturbed but intensely curious about who he is and how and why this young man has ended up dead inside her shop, Vera decides she is the ideal person to help the police investigate, and takes a few things into her own hands that would better have gone to the detectives who later respond. But when those detectives are then unable (or, in her view, uninterested and/or unwilling) to solve what Vera has decided must be a murder, Vera waits to see who else arrives and begins to compile her suspect list based on the level of interest each person shows. In her view, nobody is better suited to this task than a Chinese mother of a certain age!
Each of the people who subsequently turns up has some sort of connection to the dead man, and Vera is in her element as she alternatively prods and snoops in her attempts to get at the truth. The fact that she makes a friend out of each of them in the process (and also tries her hand at matchmaking) is not, in her eyes, a deterrent to exposing one of them as the killer. The humor and inevitability of her progression is equal parts poignant and hilarious.
The sole bone I have to pick about this story (and with this author) is the way Vera is persistently described—as a little old lady. The descriptions of Vera—her hair, her clothes, her mannerisms—suit the picture, but then Sutanto reveals her age and everyone reading this book above that age is going to be outraged, because Vera is 60! I think you have to add on a minimum of a decade, and probably half again or even double that, in order to legitimately be referred to in that precise way. As a woman of 68, I feel elderly in some ways (mainly in my crackly knees and blips in short-term memory), but I do not think I will consider myself as a little old lady until about the age of 84! Yes, Vera is a granny, but a little old lady she is not! Read it and see if you agree…
Mistaken identity
The ratings and comments on Goodreads for On Rotation, by Shirlene Obuobi, are so spot-on to illustrate why publishing companies have to be held accountable for the way they promote a book. There were a few people who thoroughly appreciated the story for what it was, which was a combination of “relationship fiction” and and the immigrant experience, with coming-of-age (early 20s variety) thrown in; the rest were disgruntled and showed that in their ratings, because the blurbs had led them to believe this was a rom-com.
Don’t get me wrong: There is a romance in this book that takes up a significant amount of air. But it isn’t a comedy (although there are a few funny moments), and it doesn’t have that coy, somewhat self-conscious vibe that lets you know when you’re supposed to acknowledge the ironies or coincidences or other plot points common to the specific rom-com subgenre.
Instead, it’s a narrative about the experiences of a young black woman in medical school; but moderating that more generic scenario is the specificity of being a first-generation Ghanian, seeing how that sensibility and those traditions differentiate a part-West African, part-British heritage from that of the American descendents of slaves. It’s a showcase for the immigrant point of view—the older generation who gave up much to move their lives to a new arena having hefty, sometimes crushing expectations of and for their children, who are perceived to have every advantage and are expected to make perfect choices. It’s an examination of friendship and love and what place and importance those two levels of engagement can have in life. And yes, it’s also a romance, but from a more complicated context than the usual rom-com fare.
On Rotation focuses on Angie, a 20-something black woman who is prioritizing her career goals and having to juggle wildly to keep up with everything else. The style is engaging, and the cast of characters is lively, diverse, and inclusive. I liked the detail of the story where she decides to enhance her chances at getting a plum residency by doing a study about how the black experience with doctors and hospitals differs from that of white patients. While I am a white woman, the fact that I have a health condition about which many doctors are ignorant and/or dismissive made me able to relate to and appreciate the information she gathered.
The challenges of trying to live up to her parents’ expectations, which are many and encompass both the significant and the trivial—including everything from her success as a doctor and her choice of romantic partner down to the tidiness of her apartment and how she wears her hair—will probably ring true for many of us, but there is definitely an added amount of pressure for children of immigrants. I loved the connections she had and maintained within her circle of “ride or die” friends, and the bewilderment and grief with which she faces the possible ending of one of those relationships. And the shallowness of her past dealings with men who appreciated certain aspects but couldn’t embrace the whole of Angie were a nice contrast to the relationship she wants but doesn’t trust with a man who may be different.
I confess that I would have preferred a little less of what was going on inside Angie’s head at all times for a little more of what was happening in the thoughts or behind the scenes of certain other characters; but this is a minor caveat—it was, after all, Angie’s story.
There was one truly irritating aspect of the book and, perhaps blessedly, something I could blithely choose to ignore: The author appends footnotes to almost every page, in which she didactically explains medical terms, Ghanian customs, black hair, contemporary slang, and everything else she must have believed the reader was either too ignorant to get or too lazy to research. But because I read this as an e-book, the footnotes all appeared sequentially at the very end of the book and, rather than jumping back and forth between whatever page I was on and the last 20 pages of footnotes, which is a major pain when reading on a Kindle, I simply gave up on knowing what she was choosing to share in those addenda, which probably saved the book for me. Footnotes in fiction are almost never a good idea unless they serve an alternate purpose, such as the ones in Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus saga, wherein the main story is about the boy magician Nathaniel who summons an ancient genii, while the footnotes contain the sly side commentary of the genii himself. So I guess my recommendation for enjoying Obuobi’s book is to read the Kindle version and ignore the asterisks liberally seeded throughout the text!
Silly sequel
I just finished the sequel—Four Aunties and a Wedding—to yesterday’s book by Jesse Sutanto. It was, like the first, full of the antics of Medellin “Meddy” Chan and her idiosyncratic Indo-Chinese aunties, this time on her wedding day, and although it still had the trademark 2nd-language bloopers and irrational beliefs and superstitions of the first, it was even more frenetic.
Perhaps too frenetic. On the one hand, the descriptions of the aunties’ signature wedding-day outfits and their acquisition of vernacular Brit-speak so as to fit in when they go to London and meet Nathan’s family (their most favored expression being “the dog’s bollocks”) was highly entertaining, and the few interactions between Meddy and bridegroom Nathan were sweet and soulful. But these things were overwhelmed by a plot that took the hard-to-believe events of the first book to a whole less plausible level. (What I’m trying to say here is, it was way over the top.)
Meddy and Nathan are getting married at Christ Church, Oxford, which solves several problems: It’s the hometown of Meddy’s uptight new in-laws, which makes them happy (plus being a beautiful venue), but it lets her off the hook regarding inviting everyone in her entire insanely extended Chinese-Indonesian family, cutting the guest list from the thousands to a mere 200+. She and Nathan want the aunties to enjoy being guests at the wedding, so they have decided to find other vendors to supply the wedding with cake, flowers, makeup, photography, etc. But, as is typical in Meddy’s life, the aunts have worked out a “surprise” for her that she can’t be appropriately filial and still turn down: They have found another Chinese-Indonesian family of five who also do weddings, and hired them on the couple’s behalf.
The first meeting and all the planning goes unexpectedly smoothly, but then Meddy overhears her contemporary, the photographer Staphanie (yes, it’s spelled that way), talking about “taking someone out” on her big day and learns, to her horror, that the family of wedding vendors is Mafia and will reveal her family’s secret (from the first book) if she tells anyone. After this the entire book kicks up the adrenaline to a ridiculous degree as the aunties and Meddy scramble to keep anyone from killing anyone else while keeping it all from Nathan and his parents.
The parts with which I had the most trouble were the actual mechanics of the wedding day. First of all, if any bride spent this much time behind the scenes, ignoring her bridegroom and her guests in favor of running around with her aunts, neither the groom nor the guests would remain so sanguine. Second, about those guests: A few of Nathan’s business investors are highlighted as Meddy and the aunts try to figure out the intended target of the Mafia “hit,” but the rest remain a faceless mass, which is a bit antithetical to the whole idea of only close family and friends attending the wedding. Where were they, and what was their response when Meddy kept disappearing and the aunts became increasingly more embarrassing? And after the description of Meddy’s dress as being tightly corseted on the top half and unbelievably tulle-heavy (and too wide to fit in elevators) on the bottom half, it was hard to believe the things she was accomplishing while wearing it, especially without ripping it or getting it dirty. The thing that bothered me the most, though, was the thought of the total ruin of what was supposed to be a joyful and important occasion. It leant an air of melancholy to this slapstick comedy that lessened its potential impact.
But…I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it, because I did. One thing I liked about both of these books was the highlighting of Indonesian and Chinese cultures, with the contrasts between the lower and upper socioeconomic families and how different they can be despite common descent. The author states that she hoped to create sympathy and understanding without verging on stereotype, and for the most part she pulled it off, although better in the first book than in the second. I’m a little concerned that venturing on volume three may top off my tolerance for quirky mayhem and send me over the edge into annoyance, but I will probably still read it and then complain about it because hey, that’s what I do!
If you enjoyed such reads as the Finlay Donovan series by Elle Cosimano, as I mentioned in my last review, then the Aunties books may be something you would also want to read.
Lighthearted…and also dark?
I love finding a book that successfully combines light and dark humor. The last book/series I read that did that was the Finlay Donovan series by Elle Cosimano, and I have now found another: the “aunties” books by Jesse Q. Sutanto. i just finished the first and liked it enough that I immediately went to my library website and checked out #2 in the series to start on tomorrow morning with breakfast.
In Dial A for Aunties, Meddelin Chan is the third-generation American 20-something from a mixed-race Indonesian/Chinese family of women who all live in close proximity in Glendale, California, and work together in the family wedding business. Big Aunt does the cakes and food, Second Aunt the makeup and hair, Third Aunt (Meddy’s Ma) the flowers, and Fourth Aunt is the entertainment, a singer at the after-wedding reception, while Meddy herself is the wedding photographer. While she loves photography and does enjoy certain aspects of her job, she didn’t really plan for her future to consist of living and working with the aunties (“Don’t leave your big day to chance, leave it to the Chans!“); but she is a dutiful (and guilt-ridden) daughter, and when her (mostly male) cousins all decamped to other cities or states after college, she swore she wouldn’t likewise desert the aunties.
This led to major heartbreak for Meddy, though, because Nathan, her college love and, she believes, the love of her life, was offered a prestigious job in New York City and, rather than disappoint the aunts or hold him back from choosing success on the other side of the country, Meddy breaks up with him so he is free to pursue his dream while she can keep her promises to the family.
The story begins a few years after the breakup. Meddy has dated a few guys in the meantime, but her heart isn’t in it, and her Ma and aunties have begun to despair of ever having grandbabies. So Ma signs up for online dating posing as Meddy, cultivates a relationship with the rich and handsome Jason, and then springs a date on Meddy that’s “blind” for her but not for Jason, as he feels they have really gotten to know one another online and through texts! Meddy reluctantly agrees to the date, which is to take place the night before the family does their thing at a huge society wedding on a resort island off the coast of California. The evening ends up going horribly wrong, leaving Meddy in a panic, needing the aunties to bail her out of trouble in the midst of preparing for their big job.
I don’t want to say much more than this, because the pleasure of this book is in discovering the mishaps as they occur and trying to figure out how the clueless yet ingenious aunties will fix them. The publishers did a disservice to the reader in outlining too much of the story on Goodreads, so don’t read it if you prefer to be surprised, as I do. It’s well worth the wait! Let’s just say it’s an exciting wedding weekend, and there’s a reason for the title being reminiscent of “Dial M for Murder.” I laughed out loud or shrieked in disbelief several times.
Binchy’s best?
The winning title for that is endlessly debated in Facebook reading groups, but having just completed my third (fourth?) reread, I can say that this is the one for me. It’s hard to synopsize Scarlet Feather, because there’s so much going on all at once in different arenas, but I’ll give it a shot.
Cathy Scarlet and Tom Feather met and became fast and eternal friends in catering school; both of them have had the unwavering aspiration to start a catering company together. Not a restaurant, but rather a company that cooks for large functions and intimate dinner parties alike and delivers (and sometimes serves) the food to whatever venue is required. The story begins on New Year’s Eve; Cathy is catering a party for her harridan of a mother-in-law, while Tom is out walking the streets trying to cool down after a jealous outburst when he saw his girlfriend on the dance floor with a drunken, handsy party goer. Tom happens upon a “premises” that would be perfect for their business, while Cathy encounters her husband’s niece and nephew, the twins Maud and Simon, at the NYE party. This evening kicks off the book.
Cathy is married to Neil, the son of Hannah and Jock Mitchell. Cathy’s mother, Lizzie Scarlet, used to clean for Hannah and bring Cathy along with her when Cathy was small, so the fact that Cathy has wedded the son of the snobbish Hannah is a big deal. Lizzie’s husband/Cathy’s father Muttie is a sweet man whose “bad back” has kept him from doing any meaningful work in his life but hasn’t prevented his frequenting the local bookie’s and spending every penny he can scrounge on the horse races. Neil is a barrister with big ideals to help people with immigration problems and find solutions for the homeless, and is constantly on call to deal with important issues.
Tom is involved with the beautiful Marcella, who aspires to be a model while working as a manicurist at Hayward’s, the big department store. She spends her off hours working out and attending any function where she has a chance of getting her picture taken and into the society pages in the newspaper, all to advance her dream career.
Maud and Simon are the young children of Jock Mitchell’s brother, Kenneth, and his wife Kay; Kenneth travels quite a bit with his friends, while Kay has a drinking problem, and their elder son, Walter, isn’t, shall we say, a responsible individual, so when the twins find themselves alone in the house on New Year’s Eve, they decamp to their uncle’s and become a problem that has to be solved by anyone willing to take it on. This turns out to be Cathy and Neil, aided by Lizzie and Muttie.
The feature that makes Scarlet Feather the one for me is Binchy’s treatment of the characters and how she shows their interactions, changes and growth. Specifically:
- Tom and Cathy and their passionate aspirations. I love a story about people who are determined in every way to do whatever they set their hearts on, and won’t be deterred. And the contrast between what they were doing and the lofty heights to which Cathy’s husband Neil aspired was a good reminder that yes, there are more important things in the world than running a small business, but the truth is, you never know what is your role in life, and how it will impact those around you. So it’s best to be focused on being impactful from whatever position in which you find yourself.
- Maud and Simon, the nine-year-old twins who are tossed from pillar to post throughout this story. There needs to be more emphasis on and exposure (in fiction and in life) of the plight of children who are not wanted by their biological family but who may be badly wanted by the many caregivers who step up to help them when they’re in need, as was also noted in the history between two other characters in the book. Also, the twins are so hilariously written, it’s a joy every time they appear on the page.
The one thing that irritates me about Binchy’s books, because it feels like simple laziness, is her insistence on using the same five surnames (and many of the same given names too!) for every character in every book she wrote. Scarlet and Feather were the anomalies in this one, for obvious reasons (had to have a title and a name for the catering company), but the rest are a small assortment of Ryans, Flynns, Daleys, Hayes, and Nolans, without an O’this or an O’that to be found, and I swear there is a girl named Orla in every book but it’s never the same girl. Since Irish monnikers run to two pages on the internet, a little more imagination in the naming would have been good. But that’s just pickiness—I really do enjoy her books to an extraordinary degree. You might, as well!
The Book Adept 