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Eisler, Barry: The Detachment

Thomas & Mercer, 324 pages
1st published: 2011

The Detachment is the latest novel by Barry Eisler featuring John Rain, an assassin for hire who's been off the job for some four years when the book begins. He's lured out of retirement to take on a high-risk assignment, the assassination of a high-ranking U.S. government official. But the job soon morphs into a multi-hit deal and teams him with an old friend, Dox, and two new guys, linebacker-sized killers Rain can't trust not to turn on him when the time for teamwork is passed.

This is the first John Rain novel I've read, and it won't be my last. I love this type of protagonist, a smart bad guy who is extremely adept at his job. (He reminds me a bit of Richard Stark's Parker.) Eisler walks us through Rain's planning as he out-thinks various opponents: the book isn't so much action-packed as planning-for-action-packed, which I like a lot. The book is a bit preachy at times, which slows down the narrative, but apart from that I enjoyed it, and I'm excited to have discovered the series.

Maslakovic, Neve: Regarding Ducks and Universes

AmazonEncore, 344 pages
1st published: 2011

Thirty-five years after the universe replicated, there are tens of portals through which the residents of one world can cross over to visit the other. The universes were initially identical, but small changes across the decades have added up: a car accident here but not there, a missed bus here, a chance encounter there. One can see the allure of visiting a world in which, say, the Golden Gate Bridge was not destroyed in an earthquake or one's family wasn't killed in a car accident, as things fell out in your universe. There's also the attraction of seeing what the other universe's version of you is up to. In the world--worlds--imagined by author Neve Maslakovic, dropping in on one's "alter" unexpectedly is a no no--it's kind of like adopted kids tracking down their birth parents without permission--but that's Felix A's motive in making the crossing to Universe B. Specifically, as a would-be author of a cooking-related murder mystery, he wants to find out if the book he thinks he has in him has already been written by Felix B. While in Universe B, though, Felix A gets caught up in a fight between competing research teams that are both set on figuring out what caused the universe to bifurcate in the first place.

I very much like the idea of a pair of linked universes, with all the complications that could bring to the characters' lives. I can also see this turning into a series: Felix A as an amateur sleuth/mystery writer who occasionally recruits his alter and other buddies in Universe B for help. In fact, this strikes me as a very promising set-up for a series. But if this book leads to more, I'd want the plot of subsequent installments to be stronger. While I enjoyed Regarding Ducks and Universes because of the clever idea behind it, and I grew to like Felix A as a character, I never found myself caring about the plot or the secondary characters. And, actually, it's hard to imagine why the characters themselves cared about their quest to find the reason the universe divided: the answer just doesn't seem to matter very much even within the story. But beef up the plot and bring the secondary characters to life and a series could be great.

Kaelin, Lauren; Friaioli, Sophia: When Parents Text

Workman Publishing, 256 pages
1st published: 2011

When Parents Text, by twenty-somethings Lauren Kaelin and Sophia Friaioli, is a collection of text messages culled from their site whenparentstext.com. As the title suggests, the texts included are communications between parents and children, and they tend to highlight the divide between the texting generation and their less with-it parents. Reading the texts I was initially disappointed because they're not laugh-out-loud funny in the way that the texts featured on damnyouautocorrect.com are. I didn't laugh out loud once reading When Parents Text, but I did smile: reading more I realized that if these aren't drop dead funny they are awfully sweet. The picture they paint of contemporary familial relations is a very heartening one. So I've come away from the book happy about that and also amused that I'm not the only dorky parent out there embarrassing my kids (often on purpose). Here are a few choice examples from the book:

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Dad: Lake Whitney is covered with pelicans.
Me: That's great, but you do know that now 50% of your all-time texts to me are about pelicans.
Dad: And? I like pelicans. 66%

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Mom: Hey! Check out the birthday greeting I put up on your brother's FB!
Me: Okay.
Me: It just says, "Happy birthday!"
Mom: Yeah. I thought it would be nice.

---

Dad: How are you feeling?
Me: Not great. Throat hurts.
Dad: Sorry. Drink more emergency
Me: I'm doing everything I can. Nasal spray, cough drops, oral decongestant, vitamin c...
Dad: That a girl. I am very proud of you
Me: For using nasal spray?
Dad: Everything

Dolan, Harry: Very Bad Men

Amy Einhorn Books, 432 pages
1st published: 2011

I really enjoyed Harry Dolan's debut novel, Bad Things Happen, so I was looking forward to reading its follow-up. Perhaps my mistake was that I didn't read it. I listened to it, which is probably not the optimum medium for me. It took me, literally, months to get through. Largely this is because I don't have the time to listen to audiobooks all that often. In part, though, it's because the book is long--at 432 pages, I would argue, over-long. The story felt very bloated to me. I note that it weighs in at 80 pages longer than its predecessor: those 80 pages, and perhaps as many more again, should have been cut. The story itself is okay, if nothing exciting: a bunch of modern-day murders that are somehow connected to an old bank heist and a politician's campaign; a serial killer with an aversion to adverbs. But when the serial killer part of the story is tied up there's STILL, I don't know, maybe a hundred pages left to get through. Perhaps Dolan can bring the magic of the first book back with a third installment in the series, but I'm not sure I'll have the stomach for giving it a go when it comes out.

Atkinson, Kate: Case Histories

Back Bay Books, 336 pages
1st published: 2004

I came to Kate Atkinson's Case Histories after seeing several episodes of the PBS Mystery series based on the book. The series, which stars Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter's Lucius Malfoy!), is excellent. The book, I'm happy to report, is at least as good. But different. Unusually, I can't say whether I prefer the story as it develops in the novel or its slightly altered version on screen. In this first novel in the series Jackson Brodie, ex-cop turned private eye, divorced father of an eight-year-old girl, works on several old cases--the disappearance of a little girl from her backyard in 1970, the murder of a teen in her father's law office in 1994, and so on. The stories tend to touch on the theme of familial love--children who are loved too little or, if it's possible, too much; the devastating long-term effects of violent death on a family. Jackson himself is not immune: his life was upended when he was twelve. The tragedy haunts him as he solves other people's crimes.

It's a lovely book, occasionally heart-breaking. My fervent hope is that the other books in the series match up to this one, as I want to enjoy Jackson's company for a long time to come.

Brandt, Richard: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon

Portfolio, 224 pages
1st published: 2011

Richard Brandt's One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon (great name) is about the company more than the man. It tracks the rise of Amazon from its genesis (in a garage, albeit converted) to the modern Kindle era. It ends, however--not surprisingly, given its publication date of October 2011--before the introduction of the fourth generation of Kindles (the Touch) and the Kindle Fire. Readers interested in an insightful profile of the man behind the empire will be disappointed, but I wasn't. As far as I'm concerned, Bezos is a modern Prometheus who's stepped away from Olympus for a bit to improve the lot of man. If he's doing something bad in his spare time, I don't want to know about it.

It's interesting to re-watch Amazon grow up in Brandt's pages, alongside the use of the internet itself. (I placed my first order on Amazon, for Alison Weir's The War of the Roses [I STILL HAVEN'T READ IT!], on October 25, 1997. I had always thought of myself as an early customer, but my bubble has now burst: Amazon was already pretty far along its path, with its initial public offering of stock already in May of 1997, when my book shipped.) And it's nice to be reminded of the things that have changed along the way: Amazon's old logo, A9 search, zShops. There is a weird gap in the book when the author skips from 2002 to 2007. I also would have liked to see some pictures, maybe screen shots of Amazon's front page over the years, a picture of the original logo so I didn't have to look it up online. Perhaps also a timeline to tie it all together. There are a lot of details--stock prices and expansions into new product lines--that some may find boring, however readable the author's prose. Certainly if the book were about any other company on the planet, including Apple, I would not have had patience for the minutiae. But since it's Amazon....

Hocking, Ian: Proper Job

Writer as a Stranger, 333 KB
1st published: 2011

Seventeen-year-old Andy Carrick is spending the summer before he goes off (maybe) to college ineptly wooing a girl from his past and working--often ineptly as well--alongside his friends Doogie and Old Boy. (The latter is so named because--shades of Seinfeld's Mulva episode--Andy didn't catch his name when they first met and had too soon "passed that conversational Rubicon beyond which it is simply no longer cricket to re-enquire what your new friend is called.") In their quest to hold down a job for more than a day without getting fired, the trio find themselves in increasingly unlikely, often quite dangerous situations. The bulk of the story has to do with their stint as ice cream men, a more hazardous profession, apparently, than most of us would assume going in.

As usual, Hocking's prose is crisp and clever (see my review of his Déjà Vu and Flashback):

"His hair was a dandelion of grey, each hair statically repelled from its neighbour."

"Then he sprinted into the building with the desperate scramble of a father who has left his infant daughter in a receding taxi."

It is also very English, which is to say that the occasional sentence may leave American readers baffled:

"I nodded to indicate that, indeed, I was still at the crease, and any googlie Big Jeff sent my way would dispatched to silly mid-off in short order."

Cricket, that, I gather.

The story proceeds at a breakneck pace, with amusing scenes piled on one another. But I would have preferred to take things a bit more slowly, with more time to linger on the characters and perhaps even the romance side of things: the book is more about the working than the wooing, it turns out. That said, I enjoyed seeing this romantic comedy side of Hocking and would like to see more should he take a break from sci fi in future.

[Disclaimer: since reading Hocking's novel Déjà Vu I have become virtually friendly with the author, and so am not entirely un-biassed.]

Blauner, Peter: Slipping into Darkness

Little, Brown, 386 pages
1st published: 2006

Julian Vega looked good for the crime. His prints were on the murder weapon, and as the super's son he had a key to the apartment. Besides, he and the victim had a history. But twenty years later another murder throws Julian's 1983 conviction into doubt. In Slipping into Darkness Peter Blauner tells the story of the two crimes that bookend Julian's period of incarceration. Impressively, Blauner manages to make both Julian and the policeman who put him behind bars sympathetic figures. Neither is the bad guy, though both are flawed, the one emerging from and the other approaching the darkness of the book's title. The mystery of the murders is an interesting one, though I had an inkling of whodunit long before it was revealed. I'm left with a few questions--for example, Blauner mentions the scars on Julian's chin several times; were they significant in some way I missed?--but was generally impressed by how well the story hung together. Definitely worth the read. (But keep your eyes open for an unintentionally funny sex scene on page 250 [hardcover version].)

Vincent, Norah: Self-Made Man

Penguin, 287 pages
1st published: 2006

Norah Vincent spent 18 months pretending to be a man. She adopted the persona of "Ned" to see what life was like on the other side of the gender line, becoming a man to gain entree into male-only establishments--a monastery, a men's bowling league. But even in environments that aren't exclusively male--strips clubs and a sales office, for example--being a man allowed Jones to experience interactions very differently from what she was used to as a woman. She came away from the experience with a lot of guilt--because she'd spent a year and a half deceiving people, including women she dated in her guise as Ned--and in fact the whole business ended with her suffering a nervous breakdown. But she also gleaned some insight into the male condition. In short, men struggle with their sexual urges and their masculine identities whether they're truck drivers or monks, they are enormously burdened by the responsibilities and expectations imposed on them by society, and at the same time they are unable to express their feelings about all of this because they are emotionally stifled. Maybe nothing very new here, but Jones wound up feeling a great deal of empathy for men, and I gather that is not what she expected to feel going into the experiment. I came away from the book thinking that I might understand men a little more than I did before. On the other hand, I'm not sure that Vincent's experiences can really amount to a representative cross-section of the male experience. If a man similarly went undercover and set out to experience life as a female, I very much doubt that his forays into, say, beauty shops and modeling agencies and a convent would give him a taste of what my life is like. Still, an interesting read, and I'm certainly impressed with Vincent's courage in going undercover as she did.

Moore, Christopher: Fluke

Harper Collins, 321 pages
1st published: 2003

Christopher Moore's books are all about playful dialogue and weird creatures. They're fun to read. And I really did like aspects of Fluke: a likeable foursome--a marine biologist, a photographer, a faux-Rastafarian, and...Amy--are studying whales off of Hawaii hoping to learn why the mammals sing, and in the process they throw around a lot of witty banter and get themselves in trouble in a big, this-could-lead-to-the-end-of-the-human-race kind of way. I liked the banter part. But the story dragged for me as soon as the weird creature came on the scene. It's not a likeable weird creature, and that's part of the problem. It's the sort of thing you'd want to stomp on with your shoe if its size didn't make that impossible. But also I think the plot dragged once the beastie hove into view. The story became less about the interaction of the principals and more about the biology and history of the creature, which wasn't particularly interesting. So, read it for the dialogue and the interaction, maybe, but if you might be turned off by cetaceous goo and/or living quarters fitted out with more than the usual number of sphincters, maybe give this one a pass.