Musings from Brian J. Noggle

This book is the first of the Jesse Stone novels written by the new guy. So we’ve got a little whiplash to account for, as the series jerks back from the television writing to long paragraphs and entire chapters composed of tiny bits of plot development and a whole lot of “nice little moments” that take individual characters within the storyline and give them their time in the sun. And the night. And the light of dawn. And the grey of twilight.

I was going to digress a bit on describing the plot, but let me stay on general lamentation for the structure of the book for a moment: We’ve got dozens of chapters of each major player in the book getting his or her say in what’s going on, which builds some depth and maybe richness to the plot, but at the expense of the plot and a sense of movement. Pacing. This is supposed to be a suspense novel, but not a mystery: we know early on who has done it and what they’ve done, sort of. What we’re supposed to be in suspense for is the ultimate resolution. So I slog through hundreds of pages, and then we get a resolution triggered not by detection but the potentially uncharacteristic confession of a minor character (who gets his chapters, brah) that leads not to a complete resolution, but one of the Parkeriana solutions: A meeting with a bad guy arranged by a bad guy but accepted because they all agree Stone is a man of his word, a brush with danger, and a cliffhanger ending that might lead into the next book or it might not.

Sadly, with what I’ve been reading this year and what I’ve seen in this series, the Parker legacy is a set of series that are destined to be nothing better than fat, wordy men’s adventure novels. Whipsawed between authors seeking to put their stamps on the books, readers get continuity flux, differing styles, and characters who are similar to those who come before in name only.

Seriously, in this book, we get the following changes:

• Jesse is now a hard core drinker.
• The cat companion is gone, passed off in a paragraph-long bit of exposition.
• Molly is back to the previous Irish incarnation.

Amid others.

The plot revolves around a former teammate of Jesse’s, a second baseman who made the big leagues after stealing Jesse’s girlfriend and who is rumored to have intentionally caused the play that ruined Stone’s big league career. After baseball, the fellow got into investments and after the markets fell in 2008, he turned to the mob to help finance a pyramid scheme. He throws together a reunion of his minor league team to get to talk to Jesse to see if Jesse can get him out from under, but before he does, his mob associates kidnap the son of their next target to apply pressure to the reluctant father, and they kill a girl in the process. So the ball player doesn’t get to talk to Jesse before the murder and can’t after the murder. An FBI agent has gone undercover on her own to get the goods on the ballplayer. And the father of the kidnapped boy has put out a hit on the ball player. So we have 300 pages of slow motion resolution that gets wrapped up unsatisfyingly at the end.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting older and cynical, but I’m not really enjoying modern suspense fiction as much as I did when the modern was late twentieth century and I was younger. But I have to wonder if I’m going to give up on the Parker properties much like I’ve given up on the Sandford series these days.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book is a 1952 classic-style science fiction novel by Asimov. Its plot centers on a spatio-analyst who studies elements in deep space who uncovers something apocalyptic about an agricultural planet and its impending doom, but when he tries to deliver the message to the authorities on the planet, someone wipes his mind and releases him, senseless, on the surface of the planet. A simple native woman takes care of him, but as his memories start to return, they find themselves on the run from interplanetary intrigue and harsh fuedal masters.

The book has a lot of threads going on: The agricultural planet in danger (Florina) is a fiefdom of different masters from another planet (Sark) and is the only source of a particular fabric (kirt) in great demand throughout the million worlds. Another galactic empire (Thantor) wants to get a hold of Florina, and its agents intrigue to do so and see this amnesiac as their way to do it. Meanwhile, on Florina, one regional Sarkite overlord thinks this is just the excuse he needs to unite the different lords under his control. And there’s the story of the spatio-analyst on the run as his memory returns, and the story of his local Florinian overseer benefactor’s efforts to protect the spatio-analyst and his own skin.

So the book jump cuts an awful lot and probably suffers for it, but Asimov was clearly going to include the macro-events and intrigues because exploration of this particular fuedal system was important to him. But it makes the book a bit scattered and thin in the individual story lines.

As I read it, though, I wondered if this influenced Dune. Both deal with a planet that has a monopoly on a commodity, a fuedal system in charge of the commodity, an independent space agency/guild with political powers of a sort, intrigues about who controls the commodity, and a protagonist undergoing an awakening of sorts….

It’s not a 1:1 parallel, but they share a number of elements.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book finds Caine in the mountains, looking for his brother. He encounters some fellows who don’t like Chinamen and calmly dissuades them from attacking him and then walks into a local fort to inquire about his brother and to talk to an accused murderer who shared a mining claim with his brother. The murderer is accused of killing one of the other mining claim partners. Of course, the guys in the fort recognize Caine as a wanted man and shackle him to the accused murderer. These are the physical chains of the title.

The duo escape and try to make for the mining camp to find out what happened to the other partners, including Caine’s brother. Along the way, they encounter hostile Indians, a trapper who doesn’t like Caine’s chainmate and the sister of another partner in the mining claim and her tenderfoot husband, and the fellows from the opening reappear with hostile intent.

The story moves along more linearly than the first volume of the series and more like a teleplay. It’s a quick and engaging read and lightly heady enough with traces of lightweight Buddhist thought to make one think a bit and compare some of the tenets to Stoic thought if one happens to be reading both at the same time. So better than a lot of men’s adventure novels.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book is badged by Microprose, which you old timers will recognize as the company behind military simulators such as F-15 Strike Eagle and Gunship (as well as the original Civilization). 1991 is near the end of its run as an independent game company (according to Wikipedia, so it’s possible they’re branching out into other revenue streams to create synergy at this point.

The book is primarily a photography book, with lots of images of the F-15E Eagle’s exterior and cockpit with a bit of text describing it, its history, and its recent successes in the Gulf War. If you’re a regular reader of Jane’s Defense Weekly, this stuff is old hat. But if you’re old timey like me and remember Top Gun fondly (which was not the F-15 but the F-14, but you know what I mean), you’ll find a lot to like in this short little book. Plus there’s bits like the fact that they painted over the kill counts on some of these machines as they continued to fly after the action where the saw the combat. Or that the names on the planes are not necessarily the names of the officers in the planes as crews take the available planes, not their plane on missions.

It makes me want to power up my Commodore 64 for another sortie. How come they don’t make good flight simulators any more? Oh, yeah: 9/11.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book is a little chapbook containing a single ‘story’ from Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. It’s part of a series, and this ‘story’ first appeared in another volume, so I’m not sure why this appears in a slim chapbook edition twenty years after Thomas’s death.

At any rate, “Holiday Memory” is not so much a story as a stream-of-consciousness prose poem about being on vacation on the seashore in Wales in August of probably the late twenties or early thirties. Jeez, I’m going to have to start adding nineteen to the decades now, ainna? It’s a colorful, vivid recounting and a pleasant read, although there’s no plot to drive one along. It’s a pretty short work, though, so you don’t have far to go from morning to the beach and night at the fair.

Worth a look if you’re into this sort of thing as I am.

Books mentioned in this review:

It’s been three years almost since I read an Ed McBain book (Doll in April 2012). It’s hard to believe because they were such a staple of my early adulthood, but he was producing new books at a rate of one or two a year until his death in 2005, and I had a source of new books to read then. By now, I’ve been through most of them more than once, and any reading is likely to be re-reading.

As is the case with this book.

An actress reports threats as she rehearses a play about an actress getting stabbed. Then she gets stabbed for real, superficially, which leads the detectives of the 87th Precinct, in particular Carella and Kling, to investigate. It turns out to have been a stunt cooked up by the actress and her lover/agent, but someone really stabs the actress good and dead, which complicates things.

The book makes good use of the play within the play trope (wrapping it in a novel–Ed McBain was nothing if not novel and clever as a writer). It has some series business in it–Kling is starting a new relationship with a deputy chief who is black–and some of the characters only make walk on appearances (although Ollie Weeks appears, and I’m not sure why McBain focused so much on him at this point in his, McBain’s, career). The beginning of the relationship–the first dates and whatnot–give McBain an opportunity to explore The Race Question especially in terms of personal relationships. Some of McBain’s books have crime-based subplots, but this one only has the one crime plot and the relationship plot. So it reads a little like an episode in a television series.

Which is what you expect when you’re picking up one of these books after having read others. And it’s not a bad thing. And McBain is an excellent writer in the genre. So it’s worth reading more than once.

Books mentioned in this review:

I don’t want to make you feel old, old man, but Calvin and Hobbes hasn’t been in the newspapers in twenty years. One day soon, you’ll have a doctor born so late that he’ll never have read it in the funnies, and how can you trust a doctor that young?

This book is not a comic collection. Instead, it describes an art exhibition that took place in 2001, fourteen years ago and six years after Watterson ended the strip. Watterson’s Sunday work was rolled into an art exhibition, and this book describes some of the history of Calvin and Hobbes as well as some of the Sunday comics. Each included comic includes the rough sketch and the finished product along with some commentary about the comic. Readers also get insight into how the Sunday comic is structured–in many cases, the first line of a three line comic is expendable as editors might have to cut it out to fit it into a particular newspaper or they can be sold “as is” as a half page, wherein the panels can be sized differently than normal and won’t be cut (Calvin and Hobbes started as the former but ended as the latter).

It’s a good bit of information, and the cartoons themselves are timelessly humorous.

The cartoon has been gone twice as long as it actually appeared in the paper; however, that’s probably a good thing, as Watterson got to end it on his terms, and readers were spared the endless “vote which cartoon stays” sorts of polls pitting Calvin and Hobbes against the Boondocks or having to write letters to the editor to get it restored.

I’m glad these books appear, though, because my children are coming to enjoy the strip. To be honest, my oldest son borrowed this book from the library and I poached it.

Books mentioned in this review:

I received this book for my birthday this year; it’s definitely the kind of book bought new as a gift. Or perhaps by serious, institutionizable fans of the show. It contains no narrative, no fan stuff: It’s basically an introduction by the fictional Carson (the butler) writing for new hires at Downton Abbey followed by tips and tricks for each job and their attendant responsibilities.

I’ve said recently what I think of the show these days, but there’s not any of that to dislike in the book.

Carson’s introduction is a nice bit of Stoic philosophy encouraging new workers: You are part of something meaningful and grand, and you should do your best at it. Then the tips and tricks are pretty much polish it with chamois leather. That’s two things I learned from the book: That chamois leather is good for polishing, and the source of the pun inherent in the ShamWow name.

Yes, friends, there are gaps in my classical education, and I’m unlikely to get certain French puns, especially those relating to cleaning products and practices, until decades later when reading gift books tied into British soap operas. Which probably means the chamois/ShamWow joke is the only one I’ll get.

So the book is an interesting little read if you get it as a gift or pick it up at a book fair, but it might not be a thing you order. But just in case you’re institutionizable, note this post is full of convenient links.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book starts out with an interesting conceit: The Gunsmith is playing poker when a group of ranch hands come into town and claim that he has killed their boss who was planning to hire him for something. It turns out he’s playing cards with the mayor, the judge, and the town’s attorney, so they call an impromptu town council meeting to order the sheriff to keep the men out of the saloon. So we’re presented with something novel: Clint tries to find out who killed the rancher by interviewing people while playing cards.

Ah, just when we’re wondering exactly how the author will handle this conceit throughout the book, it ends, and Adams sneaks out the back door to do a little, erm, investigation in that way he does. And he uncovers a pretty staple Western trope that ends with a gunfight in the street where (spoiler alert!) the title character of the series wins.

It’s unfortunate that the book couldn’t carry on with the novel setup to its conclusion, but that’s not what buyers of the series want or expect.

Me? I expected a thin bit of book to read that I spent a quarter on. And I got it.

So it’s the least bad of the books I’ve read in this line because of the novelty. I’ve only got one more in the series, and I don’t expect I’ll buy any more, though.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book is another in the 1982 Bolan books; at this time, they seem to have gone to the monthly model, which means of course that individual entries are passed onto different authors, which accounts for an uneven series.

This entry isn’t bad, but its plot is exceedingly similar to the others reviewed recently (Terrorist Summit, Return to Vietnam, and The New War especially). In each, Bolan gets wind of someone being held in an enemy camp (twice a jungle, once a desert, now a swamp). Bolan infiltrates the compound, leaves the compound, and then has to go into the compound with the bad guys on alert to extract the hostage and blow everything up.

In this case, the hardsite is a compound in the Everglades run by a right-wing corporate government contractor who wants a biological weapon to facilitate the invasion of Grenada, where he can then start properly trying to take over the world for right-wing reasons, which seem to be just being corporate and having a military.

This book preceded the actual United States invasion of Grenada, so its author was a little prescient in recognizing the political situation with the small island nation making it unstable. So I got a little history lesson on that which covers some of the gaps I didn’t gather when it happened because I was eleven years old at the time and dealing with boyhood things, like my parents’ divorce and my mother’s nascent plans to uproot us from Wisconsin to Texas.

So, as a book, it’s too much in the line with then-recent Bolan offerings but an interesting artifact in a meta way.

Books mentioned in this review: