Category: Book Report

I paid $4.95 for this book at Downtown Books in Milwaukee one weekend when I accumulated a number of biographical pieces about Raymond Chandler. (See also my report on Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe earlier this year.)

Perhaps this book could better be called The England of Raymond Chandler; twenty years after his death, it collects a few essays but a number of interviews and memories from people who met him in England in the year or so before he died. Perhaps I only think that because the book’s longest piece, “His Own Long Goodbye” by Natasha Spender, chronicles in excruciating detail the shape he was in in London in the late 1950s and how the writer of the piece and her friends helped him survive England. All right, it’s probably accurate in its detail of his failing health, his end-of-life melancholy and suicidal tendencies, but it’s not what I wanted to dwell on about Chandler.

Some of the essays do discuss Marlowe and the evolution of Chandler’s writing and his storied past, so it’s worth it if you’re a big fan of the man, but to the casual reader who likes hard-boiled mysteries, it’s a bust.

I read this book, its ninth printing from 1960, starting in February. I got bogged down around the time where Mr. Kennan began discussing what to do about the Soviet Union since I know how it turned out, but I buckled down and finished it last week.

The book starts with a brief recap of some of America’s oversights and missteps in foreign policy in the first half of the twentieth century, including the Spanish American War, missteps in China and the Orient (which is what they called Asia until 1960 or so), World War I, and World War II. It also proffers some plans for how to deal with the Soviet Union, including a brief history of Russian communism and its relationship to the native population.

Wow, it’s an intelligent book written by someone with a slightly different point of view, but I never felt like throwing the book. Perhaps I’ve spent too much time in the contemporary slums of political thought, but at no point did Kennan offend me with his politics. He explains his logic and frames his arguments on historical fact and his interpretation of him. One suspects one could have a discussion about the policies of containment versus confrontation without raising one’s voice–or maybe one could, if one remembered how gentlemen did it.

However, as a lifelong diplomat (and future ambassador to the Soviet Union), Kennan’s approach sees diplomacy as the end-all, be-all of international relations. As such, he would prefer that military force only be used at the behest of the diplomats and only as a sort of mailed-gauntlet slap at an international cocktail party. Undoubtedly, he would fit into the sort of philosophy that perplexes Mark Helprin:

If you must go to war, do not do so hesitantly, with half a heart.

Instead, the stiffening of sinews and making like tigers might offend Kennan’s sensibilities or protocols of restraint, but that’s the nature of war. It is a last resort, it is very bad, and it must be prosecuted to its end.

Kennan argues passionately for engagement and containment with the Soviet Union, which ultimately worked to end communism. However, one must ask upon reviewing Kennan’s lessons from this book, originally a series of lectures, can we apply these lessons and these techniques to current rivals or enemies–China and non-stated organizations formed around radical Islam and other aggrieved groups. I would hesitate in trying, for the Soviet Union was a Western power, based in Western thought and philosophy, which we can easily understand. Modern and future opponents are not.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, I bought the book for a quarter at some yard sale or estate sale in the midterm past (probably after 2000). Occasionally I do try to elevate myself through reading, and this book helped.

If future archeologists unearth a copy of this tome, they will undoubtedly think that the 1970s were a repressed period. I mean, this book collects some jokes that might have been considered dirty circa 1948, but in the 1970s, mildly off color words weren’t shocking enough to cause startled laughter in joke listeners, much less joke readers.

This book was originally published in 1976, but I purchased a special 1979 printing at the YMCA for a buck. Let that be your guide. I bought it at a fundraiser at the Young Man’s Christian Association in 2005. Jeez, I knew better dirty jokes in 1979, and I was in elementary school.

It’s hard to belive that only a couple of years later, local radio personality Frank O. Pinion released the definitive dirty joke book–which I read surrepitiously during my middle school years. The book featured the famous Willy Nelson joke, which I remember and can recite to this day. But the contents of this book–The World’s Best Dirty Jokes, I remind you, gentle reader–I have already forgotten.

I bought this book at the Carondolet YMCA book fair. I spent a $1.00 on it, but I justified it on these factors:

• It’s a stated first edition.
• It’s a signed stated first edition, with the inscription “To Stevie – My favorite stud-puppy–bend over! Love, Judy Tenuta”.
• In the late 1980s, I thought Judy Tenuta was kinda hot.

So I picked this book as my most recent nonfiction reading material. It’s 212 pages, but those pages make judicious use of white space, drawings, and photography that proved that Judy Tenuta was kinda hot in 1991, in a disturbed sort of way. Hey, I was in my late teens. Disturbed but hot would continue to feed my tastes for another half decade yet. She’s also got another luminary of the era, Emo Phillips, in some of the photos. Hey, where did he go? You know, I thought he had a cult following when I was clicking through Hot or Not profiles and saw a lot of chicks born in 1985 continued to appreciate emo. But I digress.

The book, coupled with the last book by a comedienne I thought was hot in 1990 (Rita Rudner, Naked Beneath My Clothes), defines the difference between humor and shtick. Judy Tenuta, with her Love Goddess persona and accordion, represent one, and Rita Rudner, with her musings on life and pointed pauses with lips pursed, represents the other. One translates well to books, and the other doesn’t. One ages well, and one does not–I cannot imagine Judy Tenuta running around with the same observations and act now that she’s about to trip 50; however, Ms. Rudner can continue with her observations and pursed lips without missing a beat.

I also thought Judy Tenuta was kinda amusing ca. 1990, too, but come to think of it, I don’t know I ever saw any extended performance. I think I saw some promos for MTV or VH1 featuring her, but no specials. Otherwise I might have skipped this particular purchase, which depicts how one should worship her and participate in her religion, Judyism. She inserts observations and jokes about commoners and celebrities as they relate to her, but ultimately, it’s only one note played on a variety of instruments and called a symponme.

Not to say that the book was totally meritless, as its value as an artifact of history and my personal life (remember 1991 B.C.–before Clinton?). Still, nothing in the book made me laugh out loud or really chuckle. I didn’t rush to my beautiful wife to tell her what Tenuta said. Nor, probably, will I ever. But she was kinda hot in 1990. For someone almost my mother’s age.

Since I didn’t group it with the Prey novels I inherited from my aunt (Easy Prey, Chosen Prey, and Naked Prey), I overlooked this book until now, and it worked its way to the back of my “to read” bookshelves.

The book centers upon a series character named Kidd who’s a computer hacker. The book is five years old, but it’s weathered fairly well; Sandford keeps the specifics of the technology to a minimum. Ergo, he’s not made laughable mistakes in the world of 2000 which computer people would spot and it prevents early obsolescence of the book. Also, Kidd gets out of the basement and doesn’t spend a whole lot of the book hacking. Instead, he’s social engineering, reconnoitering, and breaking and entering. So it’s more gripping, less dated.

The plot: a former associate of Kidd’s has gotten killed after inadvertently poking into some conspiracy among NSA or near-NSA types, and he left a message for Kidd just in case something were to happen to him. That something does happen, and Kidd’s skeptical. However, Kidd finds himself listed as the member of a non-existent hacker group identified as a high priority target for law enforcement, they force Kidd to investigate and retaliate–not so much out of his sense of vengeance, but his instinct for survival.

It’s a serviceable book, better than the Prey series where the main character, Lucas Davenport, field marshals a team as they deal with political pressures and solve high-profile cases. Still, Kidd depends upon a support network, so he doesn’t fit the lone wolf archetype in suspense novels. He’s also a Democrat, like Davenport, whose political asides tend to run to the sniggering at the Republicans. The asides don’t detract from my enjoyment of the book, but I am aware of them.

So it’s worth a buck or two in the used book store, certainly. Perhaps even five on the remainder table, and perhaps I’ll explore the other books in the series once I get through the hundreds of volumes remaining on the “to read” shelves.

I bought this book at the Carondolet YMCA for $4.00, but it’s in almost new condition, and I hadn’t read this book, and Ed McBain died this summer. So again I set aside my normal reluctance to spend that much money on a book.

Hark! is a Deaf Man book. There’s no other way to put it. Normal crime goes out the window in this book, as the Deaf Man again taunts the boys (and girl) of the 87th Precinct with a set of clues about what he plans to do, knowing that they won’t be able to stop him. Or so he thinks.

As always, these books include a lot of details in the lives of the characters. McBain kept up a tight schedule on publishing these novels, particularly in the last couple of years, so we can forgive him for what might have been an increased serialization of the private lives–although the books always had some of that. Something else striking about this book is that it refers to actual contemporary political figures–Bush and Blair–, contemporary musicians–the John Pizarelli trio–, and contemporary events–the war in Iraq. His earlier books used common nouns or made-up details, which has preserved their longevity and readability into the present. For example, a veteran returning from “the war” proved a relatively malleable archetype: it could have been Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, or the current wars depending upon the decade in which the reader encounters the book. By naming specifics, McBain has limited the future reach of these books.

But one can become as morose as Travis McGee lamenting that not only is the concept of reading books becoming meaningless in man’s blithe march into media-mandated illiteracy and technologically-enabled idiocy, but with Ed McBain’s death, the potential number of 87th Precinct novels (or at least those for which Evan Hunter is responsible) has become finite and the actual number of books I have not read will now slowly tick down to zero, much like life itself.

Man, that’s depressing. I think I’ll while some of that time away mindlessly by playing Civilization.

I paid a whole $3.00 for this book at the Carondolet YMCA Book Fair last weekend. It’s a lot for me to pay for a book, I know, but this one is a stated first edition. So I threw it in my box. As you know, gentle reader, John D. MacDonald is one of my favorite authors, and to get one of his first editions for only three dollars, well, I’d make that purchase any day of the week. Because of my love for JDM, I didn’t evaluate the book coldly, rationally, like a true book collector, otherwise I would have noted the pen scribbling–hopefully by a child–inside the front and back cover and perhaps the slight molding on the spine. But since I’m thrilled to have this first edition for my collection and not for investment purposes, it will do.

An old seafaring acquaintance of Travis McGee commissions the salvage expert to find and return his good name. Captain Van Harder was found passed out aboard the ship he was piloting after its owner fell overboard. Although he battled and conquered drinking demons in his youth, no one believes him that he only had one drink on the job, and his license and livelihood are revoked. McGee travels to the gulf coast of Florida with his friend Meyer to investigate the disappearance of the owner. As his business was on the rocks, could the owner have slipped a mickey to his captain and friend to stage a disappearance to Mexico? It certainly looks that way.

I cannot really say anything bad about this novel without trying very hard, so I won’t bother. I paid $3.00 for a book I’d already ready and might already own and I read it the same week I bought it. Let that guide your thinking about my opinion of the book.

I paid $1.00 for this book last week at the J. I totally consumed it because I’m into trivia. Speaking of which, this book has the longest title of anything I’ve read in the last two years.

This book is kinda like a FAQ, especially FAQs like a former employer wanted me to write back when I was a technical writer: Just make up some questions. Actually, this is a little different, as someone did ask these questions of the New York Public Library.

The book focuses on movies, mostly classic movies, and television, mostly early television. Hopefully I have absorbed enough information to keep me competitive with MC Jazzy Pianist, the other anchor of the North Side Mind Flayers but sometimes a rival in non-official trivia events.

So I now know where RKO studios went and who played Joe Friday’s partner in the second television go-round of Dragnet (although I already knew that–perhaps I’m not keeping up after all). I did note an interesting confluence, whether real or perceived: a lot of long-running television series went off of the air in the early 1970s. A lot of shows seemed to run from the radio days through the new medium and right up until 1971 or 1974 or whatever. Someone could make a persuasive paper about how this reflects the changing of the guard from the “Greatest Generation” to the “Me-est Generation.” No doubt more academically-minded people than I have tried.

So is the book worth a buck? Of course not, Mike. Nothing to see here. Move along.

I paid $1.00 for this book at the annual J book fair last Sunday. I’ve already read it. I like Carl Hiaasen. Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t write series (of which I’m aware), so he has something different going on in each one and can’t just phone in a rehash of previous novels without any forward momentum on recycled characters.

This book starts off too slowly, really, with a hodgepodge of characters with something happening, but little risk or empathy to drive me along. When an out-of-control philandering Congressman goes nuts in a strip club and beats a bachelor attending his bachelor party unconscious, his fixers have to deal with the aftermath: a customer infatuated with a dancer who recognizes the Congressman despite his disguise, a smalltime chiseling lawyer soon-to-be-related to the bachelor by marriage who thinks blackmail, a well-read bouncer who wants to get rich on fraudulent lawsuits, and a stripper who only wants to get her little girl back from her felonious ex-husband, and the ex-husband who wants more pills and a better buzz for more audacious wheelchair theft.

It’s a crime fiction farce of the Hiaasen mold, with the southern Florida landscape to explain the eccentricity and a social message hidden among the shenanigans. Man, 1993. What an innocent time.

As I mentioned, the book starts jumbled and slow, but if you stick with it, you’ll come to enjoy it. Although it’s hopefully excused for its shortcomings by being early in Hiaasen’s career, it’s worth a buck.

I received this book as a Christmas gift from my mother-in-law, so I feel almost bad about savaging the book, but since she doesn’t read the blog any more, like everyone else but you, gentle reader, I will do so.

For starters, when I opened the book, I thought I would hate it more than I did. Because I don’t like the sound of Sean Hannity’s voice. I can’t fathom how someone with a voice like that could make it big in broadcasting whereas someone with a deep, soothing voice like mine toils away on a backblogwater like this, but there you go. So I prepared to trepid (to coin a verb from a noun like all the cool kids do) this book.

I’ve found myself avoiding books of the current events polemic sort since I spend a lot of time reading blogs and commentary on the Internet. These books don’t add a lot to the columns, to the radio program commentary, to the blog entries of writers who collect or stretch them. Nor do they expect a long shelf-life of backlist sales or continuing relevance. Face it, any of these books with the commentator’s picture on the cover is designed to face outward on the book stores’ shelves. The minute they’re turned spine out, forget it. They’re on the remainder shelf.

But I digress. The point of the book is that appeasers of evil are themselves evil. That is, Democrats who didn’t oppose the Nazis, the Communists, or the Islamofascists are evil. Hardly a novel idea, but Sean Hannity draws from voluminous sources, duly end-noted, to support his thesis. Unfortunately, my cursory glance at the end notes indicates that most of Hannity’s support comes from other commentary making his same arguments. So it’s just like reading a log blog entry.

A year after this book was written, it’s already showing its age. His roll-up of potential 2004 Democrat candidates for president, for example, was worthless in its handicapping and won’t even merit a footnote in history, since history will pick better sources. Considering it collects common arguments, thoughts, and clichés, I will have forgotten this book by the time next Christmas rolls around.

But, on the bright side, I didn’t hear Hannity’s voice in my head after a couple dozen pages. And the book didn’t challenge me, like Sartre, Doestoyevski, or George Frost Kennan, so it didn’t take too long.

Sorry, Ms. Igert.

I bought this book at the library at the same time as I bought Partisans, and for the same price. So pretty soon after I completed Partisans, I cracked open this book.

It, too, presented a quick read with a typical MacLean plot. A caravan of gypsies has come to France, bearing dark doings and dangerous characters. A British layabout and a French Duc, as well as a couple of vacationing British hotties, encounter dark doings and dangerous char–oh, I said that already, didn’t I?

There’s something familiar about MacLean’s works when one has read a number of them, more than once. Since he eschewed series characters and instead worked with similar heroes, the books carry enough difference when looked at as a whole to remain engaging without becoming metronomic. So if you can pick it up for a quarter, I’d recommend this book. Maybe even a buck.

This book represents the last of the Star Trek paperbacks I bought at three for a dollar at Hooked on Books in Springfield, Missouri. I don’t have much to say about it that I haven’t said with the others (most recently Star Trek 9, oddly enough).

Still, as I read it, I wanted to brag about it. This represents the 67th book I’ve read this year. Nyah nyah. I read a lot and therefore am better than you, at least in this regard, most likely.

I read a large number of Alistair MacLean books in high school. Because we were poor, living in a poor community, my reading was indelibly guided by the reading tastes of the all-volunteer Community Library’s volunteers and donors. Ergo, I read a lot of McBain, Parker, and MacLean because the storefront library had a large number of old paperbacks by its donors’ favorite authors, some of whom became my favorite authors, too.

Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that I bought this book at the Bridgeton Trails branch of the St. Louis County library for a quarter as it sells off its books to make room for more Internet connections. So I happened upon a couple of Alistair MacLean books I’d read before and would like to revisit.

This book, as its title suggests, takes place in the former Yugoslavia during World War II. A Royalist sympathizer helps to smuggle a group of other royalist sympathizers into Yugoslavia from its ally Italy, where they can help the war effort of their friends the Germans and the leaders against the Partisans. One does need a bit of grounding in history, particularly World War II in the middle of Europe, to understand the overarching framework of the novel. Since it’s less straightforward than the English versus the Germans, a reader might be forgiven for forgetting which group is the good guys and which group is the bad guys.

Of course, as it’s MacLean, the master of the suspenseful switchback, regardless of which group is the good guys and which group is the bad guys, the main character is either not on the side that he starts on, or he is actually on the side he starts on but is pretending to be a double agent to find out the real double agents, or…. Well, it’s enough to say that MacLean books are quite romps in which anything can happen.

But this book, with its slightly more obscure setting and almost esoteric historical plotline, doesn’t work on all levels because of the unfamiliarity with the macroplayers. It also doesn’t present a very clear picture of the problem that the group is supposed to solve at the end of the book. Take down the artillery on a Mediterranean island? Breach an impregnable Alpine fortress? Nah, just get into Yugoslavia. It strikes me more like a Star Trek device: We’re traveling through the Adriatic, and something happened. Since it’s MacLean, it’s something complicated, but nevertheless the reader lacks a compelling goal to draw one along.

Still, it’s a pretty good book. Its writing style alone merited my enjoyment. British and mid-century in its character (although written later), it plays with longer sentences and more elaborate phrasing than contemporary suspense fiction. That alone carried me through the substandard (for MacLean) plot and characterization.

Based on my previous experience with Foster, I bought a number of Alan Dean Foster books last May at Downtown Books in Milwaukee (including Codgerspace, The Dig, and Midworld). Like those, I paid $2.95 for this book, and I offer the same criticism: It reads like a stretched out short story.

Foster does have a predilection for prediction though; in this book, written in 1989 or before, future police officers carry PDAs and hook into the Internet frequently. However, as he wrote the books before Netscape opened the World Wide Web, things have different names (mollyspinners and whatnot), but the intervening 15 years have not rendered the futuristic technologies obsolete; instead, life has developed along those lines, making the book very approachable in 2005.

When an art collector is murdered in Tampa, the methodical detective Vernon Moody draws the case. The industrialist collector died in his art display room, and the murderer also destroyed a Navaho sand painting. Early investigations indicate that someone had argued with the collector about the painting on numerous occasions. The department sends the homebody Moody to the southwest to determine the Navaho connection. Unfortunately, Moody not only finds a murderer, but a world beyond his imagination where sandpaintings and medicine men can tap into something more powerful than police.

An enjoyable, imaginative short story stretched into a short novel with the addition of a lot of filler talk and speculation. Worth a couple of bucks undoubtedly, particularly if you appreciate Alan Dean Foster.

As those of you who have revelled in these book reports know, I bought five of these old Star Trek books last autumn at Hooked on Books in Springfield, Missouri, at three for one dollar. As such, I only paid 33 cents for this paperback, and it was well worth it.

Like the others in the series, it collects and short storiates a couple of episodes from the original television series because, back in the day, they didn’t have the Internet to provide a resounding board for scifi fans to resonate. As a matter of fact, the introduction to this book describes the unexpected success of the first Star Trek convention. This book was originally published a number of years after Star Trek went off of the air and a decade and change before Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted. For crying out loud, it preceded Star Trek: The Motion Picture by a number of years. So pardon me while I repeat my awe at these books. They were old school fandom, werd.

This book collects the following episodes:

• Return to Tomorrow
• The Ultimate Computer
• That Which Survives
• Obsession
• The Return of the Archons
• The Immunity Syndrome

I only remembered “Return to Tomorrow” certainly, although I suspect I might have seen “The Ultimate Computer” and “The Return of the Archons” before. As such, they really urge me to spend the THREE HUNDRED SCHNUCKING DOLLARS that a set of the original shows would cost on DVD, but then I remember that it’s THREE HUNDRED SCHNUCKING DOLLARS, which doesn’t really add up since I could buy THIRTY OTHER DVDS or TEN YEARS OF THE SIMPSONS for the price, or if Hooked on Books could find them, NINE HUNDRED COPIES of these books.

But still, I grew up when these were the only things science fiction things in syndication, with Buck Rogers and (the original) Battlestar Galactica and Space 1999 only coming onto television, so the stories and the original crew–especially now that two of them have passed on. So I’ll enjoy the books at three pages per penny, but not the actual shows AT A COUPLE BUCKS PER, you hear me PARAMOUNT?!

I bought this paperback book from Downtown Books in Milwaukee for $1.95, but that comes as no surprise to you, gentle reader, if you’ve paid attention to the book reports I’ve proffered. I love John D. MacDonald and had I not sworn allegiance to Robert B. Parker at an early age, you know I would be a paladin in the service of John D. MacDonald. But that explains why I have this book, but not what I thought of it.

The book, like most paperbacks of the era, runs about 190 pages, unlike the unwieldy behemoths published today (to justify their $30 price tags). Working within these constraints, MacDonald provides an interesting riff. He spends the first half of the book detailing a number of separate travellers’ lives, from the failed businessman moving back to New York to the agent at the end of his vengeance quest to the prison escapees. travelling north on Florida’s west coast as a hurricane strikes. They’re thrown into an abandoned house to weather the storm, with the results one might expect from the collision of Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, and Man vs. Himself conflicts colliding. Brother, it’s bad enough to collide, but when collisions collide, watch out.

Still, within the compact framework, MacDonald spends the first 100+ pages on individual character studies discussing whose lives will come into conflict at the last half of the novel. That’s okay if you’re going to read the novel in a sitting or two, but if you’re going to spread the novel over a week or so, you might find yourself at a critical moment wondering who is Stark? Who is Mallard? Are they even characters in this book? Heck’s pecs, I don’t know. But when the separate lives come together circa page 110, the book becomes unputdownable.

Unfortunately, those first 100 pages do make the book seem as though a series of short stories lacked resolution which was grafted on, or as though a novella had been padded into a novel. Still, if you’re a fan of MacDonald or if you’re wondering what a cynic would have thought of Florida development throughout the fifties, you’d find the book enjoyable. I’d read one of MacDonald’s shopping lists if he were to characterize each item on it.

But this book probably only acted, for MacDonald, as a rough draft for Condominium. Thirty years earlier. Brother, if I am recycling my underread 2005 material, successfully, in 2035, I will consider myself a successful writer worthy of paladinage decades into the future.

I bought this book last autumn at a clearance book store for $5.00 because 1.) I have a fond memory of an old Scholastic copy of Ben Bova’s Escape and 2.) I have a fond college-era memory of Cyberbooks. So I opened this book as a break from the suspense I’d been reading lately, and….

I was underwhelmed.

Sure, I see that this is Book 1 of the Asteroid Wars, which unfortunately means that there’s some greater arc that the book will set up and that some plot lines will be unresolved at the end of the book, unfortunately. When my brother was in the Marines, he gave me all of his basic training reading material before he shipped off to Hawaii. This reading material comprised numerous books one or one and two of a trilogy, but never a book three….unless it was to a separate trilogy with no preceding books to set the plot up. So I have some experience with this sort of thing. Besides, every trilogy or whatnot begins with Book 1. So I got in on a ground floor opportunity here.

The premise: As the world runs over the “greenhouse cliff” (the Precipice), a space industrialist bucks cutthroat competition and overregulation to use a fusion drive to go to the Asteroid Belt to claim resources that can help the Earth alleviate its disaster.

Sounds kinda stock, with a topical interest whose political ramifications made me put down the book after a couple of pages once before. But I soldiered on this time, friends, For you.

Unfortunately, to accommodate its arc (and its past, which I will hint at now and later), the book spends the first half (200+ pages) on the political and corporate wrangling leading to the funding and the initial reaction to the prospect of the mission. Major yawn, and it was only through discipline that I really made it through. After the midpoint of the book, when the industrialist and his plucky pilots and capable geologist steal his ship to go to the Asteroid Belt without the approval of the government, the pacing picks up, and we’re in a rollicking science fiction book instead of some sort of corporate drama set tomorrow. Lester Del Rey, who was clawing his way out of his grave to beat Ben Bova, settled back to rest.

Unfortunately, after 180 pages of a good science fiction story buttressed by 250 pages of corporate wrangling. I found the end unsatisfying because of the extensive lengths Bova went to make the villain available for future novels in the series.

And while researching the book for this report (read: Clicking around on Amazon on related links), I discovered that the industrialist, Dan Randolph, is the subject of a long-running series of novels by Ben Bova. So perhaps I’m not privy to the nature of that series, nor of the significance of this book in that particular pantheon. Perhaps if I had bought the last ten years’ worth of Bova work, I’d be satisfied with the book and would recognize its position in the constellation, and admire its beauty as part of the whole.

But I’m too steeped in the world of suspense series, where the books are discrete units that build upon one another, and although later books might refer to earlier works in the series, one doesn’t have to read earlier books to understand the significance, and the current book does not have cliffhangers and hooks into the next or the next several for resolution.

So this novel got better as it went on to the new reader, but I don’t expect to buy the remainder of the series nor of the preceding series unless I can get them for a buck or less each sometime after I’ve diminished my stack of to-read books.

I picked up this book from my to-read shelves for two reasons:

• I just read a book based on a movie starring Madonna, and this book shares the title with one of her early hits.
• The Robert B. Parker endorsement on the front cover: “Gerry Boyle is the genuine article.”

Man, I hope I get a book published before Robert B. Parker dies so I can get a quote. That would be the highlight of my life, werd. (Except for you, honey, but fortunately you’re not entirely consistent in reading this far into book reports, so I might be safe.)

The book chronicles a freelance writer, former New York Times reporter (not that there’s anything wrong with that), who is working on a travel story following Benedict Arnold’s march and assault on Quebec when he finds a mystery. A man has stepped off of a bus at a rest stop in a small Maine town and didn’t get back on. Jack McMorrow’s curiosity is piqued, and when he finds the man was travelling under a false name and paid for his ticket with a bad check, his big city reporter instincts take over.

So McMorrow investigates this possible crime amid his paying job, an article that follows the path of Arnold’s march on Quebec and ultimate rebuff at the hands of the English at Quebec. As he meanders through his investigation, the police don’t believe him, and actually offer to set him up for a crime to get him out of their small town.

As such, this book has a very Existential subcurrent running through it; McMorrow’s connection to history, personal life, and alienation from the professional law enforcement led me to think of it in those terms before the author/main character invoked the names of Camus and Sartre. So I related to the character in a way I hadn’t before, and I didn’t mind so much the slow pace of the book or the ultimately less-than-climactic resolution.

I won’t dodge Boyle’s work in the future, and I might even spend a couple bucks on further hardbacks in this series. I’m wonder, though, whether prolonged exposure to the book’s pacing and its ultimately only slightly heroic main character might wear upon me.