Author: Brian J. Noggle

Hey, sometimes you’re in the mood for a Hardy Boys book, and if that’s the case, don’t make the same mistake I’ve obviously done.

Just kidding. I read Tess of the d’Urbervilles in college and saw The Marriage of Bette & Boo that same year, so one has to wonder why I didn’t become a total Thomas Hardy head. Except that it’s Victorian literature, and I’m a contemporary American, more Hemingway than Faulkner much less Victorian.

Still, when this book was remaindered from the Bridgeton Trails branch of the library, I couldn’t pass it up (I also got A Pair of Blue Eyes). It’s a fair enough into to Hardy, as it’s only a hair over 200 pages. It tells the story of a young man named Dick Dewy and the new school mistress Fancy Day. It comprises a fairly short number of scenes, some of which are less important to the forward progress of the story than their overall length would suggest. However, like with any serious novel and any old novel, you have to read it for the joy of the language and the archaism of the world it depicts.

Is it a good Victorian novel? Heck if I know; I haven’t read enough bad Victorian novels to know the difference. But I know a little more about the time period in which organs replaced quires in the Anglican church and a little more about Thomas Hardy’s work, so it was worth the quarter. Also, I’ve read more Hardy than you have now (probably), so feel my arrogance. Go ahead, put your hand right here on the monitor -> X <- Feel it?

In March, I read Ringworld’s Children, but that book did not mar my longstanding default view of Larry Niven’s work enough that I didn’t pick Oath of Fealty right away.

The book centers on a collision between the city of Los Angeles and an “arcology”–a large, mostly self-contained living structure housing hundreds of thousands of people with its own government, economy, and security. A humanist terrorist group wants to destroy “The Hive,” so they send some young people on a dry run with only mock weapons. The security force of Todos Santos responds with deadly force, leading a showdown with the political and law enforcement forces of the city that surrounds it.

The book presents a lot of thought-provoking themes, such as a contrast of the way of life for regular city dwellers who live freely and the residents of Todos Santos, who accept certain security measures–the omnipresence of cameras, for example–to make living together in a confined area possible. Todos Santos, aside from the cameras, offers many amenities and philosophies–police are again peace officers, the government does not regulate business and in fact offers loans on good terms, and the citizens are not citizens, they’re also shareholders in the corporation that runs Todos Santos.

It’s got a bit of the political going on and a large cast of characters, but because it’s not built on a number of books preceding it (as Ringworld’s Children was), these flaws are forgiveable and aren’t so dramatic; one only has to pause to sort out who the character is, not try futilely to remember who the character was from a book one read a decade ago).

Written with Jerry Pournelle and published in 1981, this book precedes the Reagan era and comes out of the 1970s milieu, but it doesn’t seem dated. One of the characters carries a communicator/calendar/portable computer that, unfortunately, he has to plug in. Sounds familiar enough 26 years later. Unfortunately, the characters do describe a large set of computer files (27,000,000 bytes) that will take a long time to download at 300 baud. True, but I was downloading faster than that a mere five years after the book was written.

So it’s a good book, and I’d recommend it. Especially if you can snag a cheap copy like I did.

For those of you keeping track at home, this is my 38th book of the year, so I am on a good pace to reach my annual goal of 75.

I bought this book at the Kirkwood Book Fair this year; I think all of these book club edition plays come from the same fellow’s library, but different ones are available each year. I wonder what’s up with that.

This play, originally from the early 1980s, was made into a movie in 1992, and I wonder how David Mamet could have stretched this into a 100 minute film; it took me less than that to read it. Perhaps the profanity took longer in the performances than in reading.

The story deals with a high pressure real estate group who sells lots in Florida. Some sales people are rising, some are falling, and a new office manager puts pressure on them to sell. One night, one of the men breaks into the office to steal the all-important leads that identify prospects; working in concert with another salesperson, the new burglar will take the leads and sell them to another office for a job there. Hokay. Not exactly Shakespeare here. A quick read, and it will give me something to compare the movie against if I ever see the movie.

I say lots of glowing things about Ed McBain and how his books are immortal, how he uses series business lightly to keep things moving along but never at the expense of pacing or plot, or how his passages are lyrical. His 87th Precinct series stands as an example of how to do things right. This book, on the other hand, shows what happens when you do everything wrong.

This book is part of the Alex Delaware series. I’ve never read any of the others, so I’m lost and don’t give a weevil’s willie about the two and a half chapters of series business that starts the book as Alex breaks up, almost, with his long time girlfriend. In the middle of chapter 3, the “action” begins when someone mails a book of crime scene photos to Delaware and he shares them with his police detective compatriot, who recognizes one photo among many as a case he never solved before a sudden transfer pulled him off of it. That’s the motivation, the driving factor. To solve a 20 year old cold case, with no threats of immediate repeats or contemporary peril.

Meanwhile, Kellerman writes like the Michael Douglas character in Wonder Boys; there’s no detail too miniscule to leave out, no scene worth cutting. When the main characters go to New Mexico to interview someone, we get pages covering the drive from the airport, including getting lost and asking for directions; when the main characters need food, we get paragraphs about what they eat; when one character has nothing better to do, he washes his car, and we get a long paragraph about his car. In lieu of investigation, we get lots of time with the characters talking out what might have happened.

What happened? Ultimately, a bunch of rich kids killed a stoned girl, and their parents covered it up; 20 years later, the rich kids are now rich adults, and they’re still covering up. The psychologist of the detective’s dead partner sent the book, and he kept Delaware and the detective pointed in the right direction. Except when the Chief of Police was pointing them in the right direction or trying to obstruct them. Finally, we get an absurd climax 360 pages into the novel and some denouement with nothing really gained. Someone, not the protagonists of the novel, kill the bad guys, and they read about the deaths.

Geez, once I started finding flaws with the book, I didn’t want to put it down because I wanted to see how bad it could be. Changing POV from first (Delaware) to third (the detective) for apparently no reason? Got it! Actually, it might have been to provide insight into the characters, but I didn’t care enough about either of them to want to know more. And hey, who the heck was logging into their computer and downloading Google in 2002. Downloading Google. Lord, love a duck.

Yes, that bad.

Do not buy this book or read it. I will go as far as to not read another Alex Delaware novel. I’m so down on it, if a good series with riveting characters and good pacing came out written by Ed McBain’s son Joe Hunt but the series featured Chris Connecticut, I’d stay away just because all characters named after states have been tainted.

But hey, if you don’t want to take my word for it, here’s the link to buy it on Amazon.