Dark deeds
I am a big fan of the books of Sharon J. Bolton. A mystery-reading friend turned me on to her and (being a little obsessive in my reading methodology) I decided to start with her debut, Sacrifice, written in 2008, and work my way forward. Her protagonists are women in unusual professions and offbeat settings, and the books cross that line from mystery to thriller, almost to gothic. They are definitely dark, but also compelling enough that I have been undeterred by subject matter that might make me stop reading another writer’s book.
I like both her series, featuring Detective Constable Lacey Flint (yes, British), and her stand-alone novels, which encompass a far wider array of characters and situations, with settings from Dorset to the Scottish border to the Falkland Islands, and plots that range from mistaken identity to serial killers to something eerily reminiscent of Children of the Corn. They are uniformly well written, well plotted, and harrowing to various degrees.
After having read her latest, The Craftsman,
I concluded that the name of the book should rather be reserved for its author. Bolton is truly a craftsman of storytelling, and her latest is even creepier than some of her former offerings, which I wasn’t sure was possible.
The central modus operandi of the killer in this one is something I wasn’t sure I could persist in reading about, it horrifies me so much. If it’s not your worst nightmare, it will be after you read this.
The character of WPC Florence Lovelady, a green but smart and enterprising 22 years old in 1969, immediately engaged me, particularly her trials with smoothing it over and dumbing it down in order to operate as a policewoman in those misogynistic times (not that things are leaps and bounds better today…). The setting—the bleak beauty of northern England—was likewise captivating. And the mystery was topnotch, wandering as it did from past to present and infecting the reader with certainties and doubts in almost equal measure.
In 1969, three teenagers have gone missing (one at a time, over a period of months) from the small town of Sabden. There is speculation each time one disappears that they could be runaways, out there in the world somewhere doing just fine; but after the third disappearance, the police (and particularly newbie Lovelady) are starting to think otherwise. Detailed to follow up on the claims of some children who swear they heard a voice coming from a recent grave, Florence makes a horrifying discovery that starts her on a chase that will make her career…and change her forever.
In 1999, the death of the imprisoned serial killer brings Assistant Commissioner Lovelady back to town, in company with her son, to attend the funeral. But subsequent events suggest that what she thought was buried in 1969 with the confession of Larry Glassbrook may just emerge from the grave to haunt her.
This is apparently the first of a trilogy, with the next book not due out until October of 2020. I don’t know if I can wait…
Big Little Lies
I hadn’t previously read anything by Liane Moriarty, although several librarian friends had recommended her to me, so I decided to start with Big Little Lies, since the TV series stars some of my favorite actors and I’d like to have read the book before embarking on that.
I didn’t know anything about the book, except that it’s classified by some as “women’s fiction,” a category title I have always found insulting. Joyce Saricks, readers’ advisory guru, defines women’s fiction as consisting of “books written primarily by women for women, that feature female characters, and that address the issues women face in their professional and domestic lives.” I find the descriptor “women’s fiction” to be dismissive and ghettoizing. When men were the primary writers of fiction, it was all just fiction, whether literary, mainstream, or genre-based. Why do we need to use condescending terminology that puts female writers in a “less than” category?
It is true that the three main protagonists of Big Little Lies are women with issues (some of them dark): Madeline, Celeste, and Jane. It’s also true that this is primarily a book about white privileged people whose children attend private school. But it’s ultimately a story of parents acting badly, and it features the real lives of children, teens, friends, husbands, wives, second wives, and exes. And the interplay between all these characters, primary and secondary, is smart and witty, making the book completely engaging.
It’s also suspenseful, given that the pivotal moment (which is mentioned at the beginning and then built up to in timed chapters) is a death at the annual Pirriwee Public School Trivia Night, an annual fund-raising event. You know what happens, but not to whom, nor how, nor why. There are small glimpses fed to you in the guise of gossip shared with an unknown interviewer by various secondary characters at intervals throughout the book, which lend further tension as some get it entirely wrong and others come perilously close to guessing secrets they’re not supposed to know.
I loved the way Moriarty sets up the story—the countdown to the trivia contest, the fragments of gossip and commentary, the glimpses into all the lives involved in the broader story. But I particularly loved the entire array of characters, both main and secondary. This is a quintessential example of a character-driven plot, and although its stated theme is suspense, the real content of the book lies in understanding every woman portrayed here. The character development is fresh, intuitive and nuanced, and doesn’t stop with the first few moments of set-up on their personalities, but portrays complex, flawed people with real issues. Moriarty is equally good at capturing the quirks and personalities of all the children involved, and she seasons serious interactions with moments of humor and even hilarity.
I didn’t figure out the climactic moment ahead of time, and honestly spent the second half of the book hoping passionately that she wouldn’t kill off any of the people in which I had invested so thoroughly!
I have put three more books by Moriarty on hold at the library.
Reacher
Past Tense is Jack Reacher book #23, by Lee Child. I read a bunch of the books in this series in long-running binges, and then got tired of them and went away for a while. But after reading a surfeit of quirky and thoughtful mainstream fiction and some angsty teen fantasy, this was the straightforward, somewhat creepy dose of suspense I needed in the moment.
The Reacher books are, admittedly, pure formula, but when it’s a good formula (as with so many mystery or suspense series), it’s easy to go with it. Jack Reacher is former military police, but in a way he’s been ruined by his career. The typical nomadic existence of military life, constantly picking up sticks and moving to a new base, a new assignment, doesn’t lend itself to putting down any roots. People who retire from that either react by finding a home and never leaving it, or they remain perpetually restless. Reacher is an extreme example of the latter, roaming randomly and impulsively back and forth across the United States with no baggage but a toothbrush and no transportation but his thumb stuck out by the side of a highway. (If he gets work and makes some money, he occasionally takes a bus or train.) Because of a combination of his background training and his hardline personal ethics, no matter where his curiosity leads him, Reacher inevitably becomes embroiled in some local trouble and acts as a knight errant to help the innocent and punish the guilty.
If you’ve seen the two movies starring Tom Cruise, most faithful readers will tell you that you haven’t met Jack Reacher. There was major outrage when he was cast, since Jack is a rangy six foot five in his stocking feet, 220-250 pounds, with blond hair—scarcely a description of the tough and enigmatic but nonetheless short and dark Cruise. I always thought, if he’d been 30 years younger, that the recently deceased Rutger Hauer (the replicant from Blade Runner) would have been good casting. Ironically, when she first sold the film rights to Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice had pictured Hauer as perfect for the role of the vampire Lestat, which role Cruise also bogarted, to his and everyone else’s eternal regret!
In this particular book, there are two parallel story lines that persist throughout and only come together near the end. Reacher’s part of the story is initially fairly benign; with autumn coming on, he is departing soon-to-be-chilly Maine with plans to take a zig-zag path that will eventually lands him in California for the winter. He puts his thumb out and gets a ride that promises to take him a good ways on his first day, but then the driver’s business calls him back to town, and Reacher is stuck out in the middle of the New Hampshire woods. A road sign for Laconia, New Hampshire decides him on his next leg; he’s never been there, but recognizes the name from family stories as his father’s birthplace, and decides to explore for a day before continuing his journey.
Meanwhile, a young Canadian couple is traveling to New York City to sell something valuable and parlay that into a new life in Florida; but car trouble sends them limping down a long country lane in search of assistance. From the minute Shorty and Patty arrived at the out-of-the-way motel, their old Honda knocking and backfiring, and met the four co-owners, I knew something was up; the guys’ bouncy, friendly affect was too much like Mormon missionaries at the door to be for real. The elaborate web of lies they wove to keep Shorty and Patty from going anywhere kept amping up my nerves as I waited to see what was intended for these two, even as they rationalized and justified their way from uneasiness to optimism and back again. The whole story line was fraught with anticipation.
At first, I assumed Reacher’s part of the story was simply designed to put him in the neighborhood of the hotel when it came time for whatever terrible thing was going to happen there to require his services. But his accidental and fairly casual research into his father’s small-town origins revealed more and different facts than he expected, puts him up against a couple of tough customers, and leads to some trouble of its own.
Although some people thought both story lines were drawn out too much, I really liked the switching back and forth between them as a vehicle to build suspense. The situation with Shorty and Patty eventually blows up, and Reacher is instrumental in his familiar role as a fixer. Despite a few departures from Reacher’s usual modus operandi, I enjoyed this quite a bit—it kept me reading until my Kindle died at 1:30 a.m., and I recommenced at 7:30 after the Kindle (and I) had recharged! There’s something to be said for a recurring theme with individual characteristics enlivening each iteration!
Is privacy overrated?
Almost a month ago now, I read two thrillers by author B. A. Paris that I enjoyed quite a lot. At the time, I mentioned that I still wanted to pick up her debut novel, recipient of many rave reviews on Goodreads, and I put it on hold at the library. On Wednesday I had a bunch of errands to run over in North Hollywood and decided that when I was done with them, I would treat myself to breakfast at Jinky’s in Studio City. I had heard good things about the café and wanted to try it.
When I was only a few blocks from the restaurant, I suddenly realized that I had no book in my purse! I had finished Kate Morton’s tome yesterday, and hadn’t started anything new yet. I don’t know how you feel about eating alone; I don’t mind it a bit, but the catch is that if I’m going solo, I must have a book to read with my breakfast! Fortunately, I was only about a mile from the Studio City Bookstar (Barnes & Noble), so I turned right instead of left, parked, dashed, remembered my desire to read Paris’s book, grabbed Behind Closed Doors off the shelf, paid, and was back in the car five minutes later on my way to Jinky’s.
What a story! Unlike the slow build-up of her other two books, you find out what’s going on between Jack and Grace almost immediately; even the opening scenes, when you’re still not quite sure, are redolent with a vague feeling of dread and anticipation. The picture the pair paint for the world is of a couple madly in love after a long wait for the right person (Grace is 32, Jack is 40, and neither has ever been married). Jack is a successful attorney who is revered for his work championing battered wives against their abusive husbands, and he has never lost a case. Grace, post wedding, has quit her job to become a charming and talented housewife and hostess for Jack’s friends at perfectly cooked and served dinner parties. But a nervous twitch here and there lets you know there’s something not quite right about the pair, although you don’t dream of the extent to which the picture is false.
Grace has a 17-year-old sister, Millie, with Downs Syndrome. One of the reasons she hasn’t so far married is that she is adamant that she and Millie are a package deal, and that once Millie turns 18 and leaves school, she will come to live with Grace. Jack has no problem with that condition—he says he loves Millie and would never separate them. Jack buys Grace a beautiful house, furnishes it perfectly (including a bright and cheerful bedroom set aside for Millie in her favorite color, yellow), and tells Grace she will see the house when they return from their honeymoon in Thailand. They tie the knot and embark on their honeymoon…but from the first night of marriage, everything has changed. Jack reveals an agenda that has Grace both horrified and defiant, but no matter how badly she regrets throwing in her lot with Jack, Jack manages to anticipate her every move, and seemingly her every thought, and Grace is unable to maneuver her way out of this disastrous decision.
The brilliance of this book is the fact that you know almost everything up front, and the suspense lies not in discovery, but in action. What will happen next? What new psychological trauma will Jack visit on Grace? Will she be able to escape from her marriage (or even from her bedroom), can she protect her sister from Jack’s plans, and how will she effect any of this when Jack controls her life so completely? The answers ramp up the tension and horror from the beginning right to the last sentence.
I will freely confess that I read a good bit of this last night before I went to sleep, and had nightmares half the night. It’s a truly disturbing book, scarier in its way than any horror novel full of zombies or monsters. The emotional investment, the headlong pacing, and the nerve-wracking build-up to the finish filled me with both fear and fury. I loved it.
YA authors, adult fare
This week, I picked up two books to which I had been looking forward: Jane, Unlimited, by Kristin Cashore, and Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil, by Melina Marchetta. I didn’t look forward to them because I’d heard anything at all about their contents, but simply because of my sheer adoration of both authors’ previous work. Both have been exclusively young adult authors up to this point, Cashore with her fantasy series set in the Five Kingdoms that begins with Graceling, and Marchetta for a combination of realistic stories (Saving Francesca and sequels) and her fantasy series (Finnikin of the Rock, Froi of the Exiles, and Quintana of Charyn).
These two YA authors share something else that I have puzzled over since I have been reading YA: Their work doesn’t necessarily appeal to teens as much as it does to adults. Although Marchetta’s contemporary realistic books seem to have teen fans, the teens I coaxed into reading Finnikin liked it well enough but not sufficiently to go on and read the two sequels (which is a shame because I think they are her two best books). Similarly, the minute I read Graceling, I was raving about and recommending it to every teen fantasy fan I knew, and although a certain percentage connected with it, that percentage wasn’t nearly as high as I estimated it should be, given that it’s a brilliant story with a feisty, personable heroine. I keep talking it up, but I have sometimes wondered, in both authors’ cases, if they shouldn’t have released their fantasy series as adult books rather than sequestering them in the teen section. Certainly many adults I know have loved them.
It’s always interesting when a teen author branches out into adult, or when an adult author writes for teens. I have previously blogged about the sometimes disappointing results when adult authors tried to write teen books and only succeeded in diluting the spirit of their adult books in the mistaken belief that teens need things to be dumbed down. Similarly, there are YA authors I adore whose books for adults have left me cold. Of the two books I read this week, one incited that reaction, while the other was exactly the opposite.
My friend CeCe on Goodreads says about Jane, Unlimited, “It’s a bizarrely delightful puzzle box of a book, and I enjoyed every second of it.” Other friends similarly adored and raved about this book. I’m glad they had that experience, and extremely sorry that I can’t echo their enthusiasm.
After I somewhat guiltily decided to put the book down at 132 pages and not finish it, I went back and read Kristin Cashore’s afterword about it, and discovered that it had started life as a “Choose Your Ending” type book and then evolved into its current incarnation. This might offer a possible explanation for my poor reaction, because I have read two of those books in the course of my tenure as a book club leader for teens, and greatly disliked the experience both times.
Before anyone accuses me of such, I want to say that it’s not that Cashore didn’t follow in previous footsteps by providing another gripping fantasy story set in the Five Kingdoms; I am eclectic in my tastes, and perfectly willing to read from all genres. But to me, this book didn’t know to what genre it belonged (which is, according to some reviewers, one of its delightful strengths), and the beginning of it was so disjointed and confusing that it just never took hold in my imagination.
It reminds me of The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin, beloved of middle-schoolers everywhere, apparently. We read it for my teen book club, the kids gave it an 8.5 out of 10 rating, and I hated every minute of it. It was confusing, went off on tangents, provided no character development for its quirky tribe, and left me floundering.
That’s exactly how I feel about Jane, Unlimited, which begins with a similar setting—a strange mansion, set on an island, belonging to a reclusive millionaire, with a lot of puzzles to be solved. (It harks back to Agatha Christie as well.) I had an inkling of a feeling for Jane, the one person in the story with a tiny bit more character development, but as the rest of the array rushed past in dizzying numbers, I couldn’t muster up any enthusiasm for learning more about them; and if I did, I was doomed to disappointment. For instance, at one point Jane’s mentor and host, Kiran, offers a private conversation that seems to promise more enlightenment about what her thing is (for the first 100 pages she has been merely a sulky looming presence), and just as my interest was piqued, Jane thought to herself, No, there are more interesting mysteries than this one to solve in this house, and said “See you later!” to Kiran, who wandered, off, disappointed. She wasn’t the only one! There was instance after instance of this, when I thought a story was about to take off, but nothing ever did.
I guess that if I had stuck around for something to finally gel, there are interesting developments to be had (CeCe says so), but my patience was exhausted, and I decided to go read something else. So sorry, Kristin. I know you worked hard on it.
Providentially, the “something else”
I decided to read (not without trepidation, considering this experience) was Melina Marchetta’s adult suspense novel, Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil. In this instance, not only was I not disappointed, but I finished the 400-page book in two days. Although this book contains a bunch of teenagers as significant characters, it is from the adult point of view that the story unwinds, and the adults in the story have the typical hard time fathoming the teen mindset.
Bashir “Bish” Ortley is a cop who is “on leave” from his department after having lost his temper and threatened a superior officer. His daughter, Bee, is on a school field trip in France when word arrives that her bus has been bombed in Calais, and that children are dead and injured. Bish rushes to the scene, and discovers that his daughter is shaken but unharmed, but the same can’t be said for other people’s children. Partly on his own initiative and partly because the French inspector on the scene seems to need the help, Bish finds himself getting involved in the conundrum of who did it and why. Then it’s discovered that one of the girls on the trip (who has been rooming with his daughter the whole time) is the grandchild of one of the most notorious bombers in recent British history, and the daughter of the woman who confessed to making that bomb. The question is whether Violette is a suspect, a simple victim, or the intended target of the bus bomber? Things get more complicated when Violette and a boy she befriended on the trip disappear, somehow making their way across the Channel to England, and fears for their safety combined with the need to find out how they were involved cause the Home Office to unofficially but peremptorily commandeer Bish to do their research and liaise with the girl’s family.
I loved that the principal protagonist, Bish, plays dual roles in this book—frantic father and analytical cop—and that he is such a flawed human being and yet somehow capable of connecting with everyone in his effort to arrive at the truth and also to protect the two wayward children. The differing viewpoints, the lack of trust of everyone for everyone else, the convoluted nature of the crimes, past and present, all add to the suspense and provide for a truly satisfying reading experience. I felt like the book portrayed sensitivity in its dealings with a difficult topic, and yet was honest and true to people’s natures. The story arc held my attention throughout, and I loved the ending and even the epilogue (not usually a fan of epilogues, but this one didn’t end the story, it added to it).
Bravo from me!
I’d like to say that it’s possible Jane, Unlimited truly is something new and innovative that some readers may love, and that it may be my lack of imagination that causes me to prefer a more traditional story arc discernible as such. You’ll have to try them both and see for yourself.
