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For the
last year, I’ve been posting my reads on
rec.arts.mysteries. For the first time, I’m also
posting them on Dorthyl. The reason for these
"quarterly" reports is that I just can’t
keep up with the speed most of you read. It is not
unlikely that I’ll only get one book done in a month
and now that my "day" job has me doing less
traveling, I don’t go through Books on Tape as
often. |
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I
departed from mysteries a bit this quarter. I did this
for a number of reasons, which kind of cascaded on me. I
just felt like something funny, so I picked up Jeff
"You might be a redneck if…"
Foxworthy’s No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problem.
It is amusing, but I thought some of the practical jokes
he’s played during his adolescence were a bit rough.
It doesn’t appear that he has much remose about them
eiteher. It is supposed to be a humorous book and though
it is amusing, I thought it was a bit too vicious. Late last year, I
wrote a couple articles for the newsletter that goes out
to the computer users in the "arena" I work.
These articles as part of my "Courageous
Consulting" series and I introduced it with a quote
from Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage. I remembered the
quote from the old TV Series back in the sixties while
Kennedy was still president. It had his Massachusetts
accent saying over the ending credits, "These
stories of past courage can teach, offer hope, can
provide inspiration…." Since these were to
be humorous, tongue in cheek articles, I thought I'd
quote that passage for the articles as a kind of
"over the top" send up.
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I already
broke away from mysteries, and I’d been meaning to
read Profiles
in Courage for the last 35 years anyway, so I figured,
there’s no time like the present. These are a
collection of historical acts of political courage,
typically from US Senators. Some of these stories, it can
be argued, are not so much "courage", as they
are testimony to the individual’s obstinacy and
complete disregard for the powers that placed them (and
could keep them) in office. However, as Kennedy points
out in the final chapter, whether history has proved
these men right or wrong, whether they continued in their
careers or were forced into retirement, these men, by
their actions, chose their course – always for what
they believed as a more global concern – with the
full knowledge and in spite of the consequences to their
careers. It was a fascinating, academic, and surprisingly
multi-partisaned account from the earliest times in our
nations history to the present (well, to the 1950s,
anyway, as it was first published in 1956).
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While I
was in the middle of that, my daughter-in-law said that
she and a friend had gone to see Thirteen Days at
the theater and said she was fascinated by the story of
the Cuban Missile Crisis. I remembered that I had a
couple books on that and lo and behold I found this one,
the basis of that film. It was apparently written shortly
before his assassination. In fact, it was publish
posthumously early in 1969. It is Robert Kennedy’s
account of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The account shows
that JFK was more culpable in the crisis than I thought
and that the USSR had some justification. Nevertheless,
both JFK and Khrushchev, as well as a number of other
international figures, brought us closer to a nuclear war
than we have ever been in, before or since. Yet, they
managed to avoid it.
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The
Missiles of October by Robert Smith Thompson is a
blistering account of Kennedy’s handling of the
Cuban missile crisis. The expose, supported by
"recently declassified documents" (circa 1992),
begins by traceing the history of US
"imperialism" since the Spanish-American War.
He then attempts to show that Kennedy was carrying out a
policy of his predecessors. However, after a series of
"failures", Thompson goes so far as to suggest,
the crisis was "manufactured" by JFK in order
to score a "win" for the democrats to help
bolster the mid-term house and senate elections. He even
paints Khrushchev as the real "hero" of the
crisis, by backing off AND working out a trade for the
Missiles in Cuba for the Missiles in Turkey and Italy. I'd like to digress
for a moment. I has been a while since I read any
non-fiction. I had forgotten that "non-fiction"
doesn’t mean "the truth". Rather, it is an
opinion or a "take" on actual events, therefore
is subjective. How does the saying go? The difference between a
traitor and hero depends largely on the side that won. There is wide
descrepency on historical events and all are painted with
a political brush (as well as, some could argue,
conclusions garnered by the reader). Prior to getting
"into" fiction back in 1993, what reading I did
read was usually non-fiction, mostly that was cosmology
and other sciences (A Brief History of Time and other
"popularized" scientific accounts for the
general audience). There is very little interpolation
with such reading and virtually no politiziing.
Consequently, I’ve associated
"non-fiction" as "factual" or the
"truth. When in the late eighties and early ninties,
a started reading some JFK assassination books, I
intially discovered that which I just re-discovered. That
is, with respect to the above works and the following,
"opinions vary".
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At a
recent signing for a writer who lives near Boulder,
Colorado, the discussion came up about the JonBenet
Ramsey murder and that John Douglas had recently been (or
was about to be present … I can’t remember
which at this time) at a signing and discussed his views.
This writer had a lot of respect for Douglas, we were
informed, until he came out saying that Patsy Ramsey had
nothing to do with the murders. The writer went on to say
that everyone in town knew that Patsy was kind of weird
and if John Douglas lived there, he’d have a
different impression. Who that writer is, isn’t
important. What is important is that here is another
example of a very different view of the same situation.
Because of this, I decided to pick up John Douglas’
book, The
Cases That Haunt Us, next. |
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John
Douglas is a former profiler for the FBI and has written
a number of books on various cases on which he’s
worked. In this book, he takes a look at some historical
cases (and some not so historical) and shows how applying
profiling techniques may produce results that,
historically, have not. He looked at a number of cases
besides JonBenet Ramsey, such as Jack the Ripper, Lizzie
Borden, Charles Lindbergh Kidnapping, The Black Dahlia
and the Boston Strangler (as well as others). His most
controversial position is that of the JonBenet Ramsey
case in which he provides a pretty convincing argument
that neither John nor Patsy (the parents) had anything to
do with the murder. Or, at the very least, why Mr Douglas
believe’s they could not have had anything to do
with the murder. Meeting John Douglas in person and from
this writing, you get the impression that he is pretty
comfortable with himself -- a comfort that borders on
arrogance and conceit. Whether or not he crosses the line
is open to debate. However, if you think about it, you
might expect that someone in the profiling business
… it kind of comes with the territory. There is no
doubt that Douglas believes his professtations, he makes
a convincing argument … and he does give time to
opposing views. However, given the general view from the
public, one wonders if there is something that
hasn’t been said. Unlike most the cases he discusses
in this book, he actually worked on the JonBenet Ramsey
case and claims that has a lot to do with his opinion. He
said that before he got involved, like most people at the
time, he supposed that the Ramseys were involved in the
murder. But from the evidences he saw and from body
language and other aspects of profiling, he felt the
Ramseys did not fit the profile of the killer nor would
killing their own daughter fit the profile he made of
them. I read Steve Thayer's Silent Snow
late last year, which was a story that paralleled and
recounted the Lindbergh kidnapping. Douglas’ book
was also interesting in that it outlined the specifics of
that case. It added awe to my take on Thayer's book.
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That’s
enough of the non-fiction for a while, so I pick up
Connelly’s A Darkness More Than Night. It’s good
transition too, as Douglas was a profiler and so is the
lead in this book, Terry McCaleb. McCaleb, recent heart
transplant recipient from
Blood Work, has
married. They have a new baby girl. They are living the
quiet life on Catalina Island and he is doing fishing and
boating charters to make a living. Terry is approached by
an LAPD Detective to look into bizarre killing scene. He
accepts. It soon becomes apparent that the killer is
setting the stage to look like paintings by the medieval
painter, Heironymous Bosch. Terry begins to suspect Harry
Bosch, but before he has a chance to really get into it,
the FBI gets into case, Terry is taken off and they go
after Harry. Now Terry’s not so sure. It suddenly
seems more likely that Bosch is being set up. |
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I enjoyed
this a bunch. I thought the balance between McCaleb and
Bosch was well done. I might have expected since both
were "leads" in their own right, one or the
other might take a back seat in this one, undermining the
"super-hero" aspect of the characters. I
thought Connelly did an excellent job avoiding that
potential problem. Nevertheless, I haven’t had a
really good Connelly-esc "Wow" ending for three
books now (well, actually, two; Angels Flight had a wow
ending, but I just didn’t like his conclusion). Ever
since Blood Work, I have been wondering how he’d keep
doing that. After all, the mechanics of the surprise
ending require that the investigation is going down the
wrong path until sometime late in the game everything
comes together in a "WOW, where’d that come
from?" ending. The problem, though, is to sustain
that, book after book, your hero has to spend a good
majority of the time being wrong! You’ll get this
tendency to yawn through the earlier conclusions, just
knowing that it is irrelevant. For me, Connelly avoided
that problem in the earlier novels by providing
plausibility to these "red herring" paths.
There were a number of turns with The Poet and one
reviewer had written, "I would have been equally
happy with any one of the seven endings in this
book". It seemed to me, that with very little
effort, any one of those endings could have been the real
one. Unlike a lot a red herrings, it wasn’t like
there were reasons why they were wrong. It was that the
actual reason or the "real" bad guy was also
right for it and fit more clues. |
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Jan
Burke’s first introduces Irene Kelly, newspaper
reporter in Goodnight, Irene. The story opens
where she is actually working in another field after a
spat with her editor. When her friend, O’Connor, who
was still working on the paper is killed, she and the
ex-boss let bygones be bygones. She takes on the task to
uncover the murder. This also requires her to look into
O’Connor’s pet project, the 35-year old murder
of "handless Hanna". This was a bit more hard
boiled than I expected (Okay, I admit it, I didn’t
expect a woman author to write hard boiled. So, sue me.
I’m sorry. I had a prejudice. Not to excuse it, but
I’ll argue anyone who says they don’t have any
prejudices is either a liar or deluding themselves).
I’ve also heard that she gets better …
that’s good news, because I liked this one. |
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While
reading the John Douglas book, he made mention of Linda
Fairstein, who runs the Sex Crimes Unit which is part of
the New York City District Attorney’s Office. He
does not mention that she was also a novelist. I
remembered the name and sure enough, I had her books and
she is the one and the same. Final Jeopardy, her
first, was put on the list (you see, diverting one’s
self from mysteries sometimes is a good thing). And it
was a good read. In this, her debut novel, Alexandra
Cooper, Chief of the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit in the
Manhattan DA’s Office, is initially mistaken for the
woman killed. Actually, her friend, Isabel Lascar, a
movie star, was being incognito and enjoying Alex’s
retreat at Martha’s Vineyard. Iz was killed with a
rifle shot to head while she drove a convertible rented
under Alex’s name. Until it’s ruled out that
the attack wasn’t meant for Alex, she is under close
guard. Alexandra’s visibly shaken by events and
longs for her boyfriend to return from business in Paris
to comfort her. Fairstein’s day job in real life
gives this aspect of the novel a feeling of authenticity.
However, I couldn’t help wonder if a woman so adept
at handling the workload and angst associated with her
grueling job, she would so easily succumb as she does
with revelations of this crime and problems with her
boyfriend. But, it’s fiction, so I go with it.
I’d like to read more of them. Shortly after I
posted this, I discovered that Final Jeopardy was made
into to TV movie and aired April 9, 2001. I posted
another message saying that I thought, all in all, that
it was good adaptation. Specifically:
Just a quick note
to add my observations on the film adaptation of
Linda Fairstein's Final Jeopardy. Though
books to film don't usually do well in the
transformation, it certainly isn't uncommon that they
do. It seems, though, less common for a Made For TV
film to do the original work justice.
I had no sooner
finished the book (I finished it the last week of
March) when I found out it was going to be a TV film.
So it was good to see the film so close after reading
the book. I believe that if you liked the film,
you'll love the book. The two stories were
essentially the same, but there were some contrasts.
The setting of the
ending was a bit different. There was a sub-plot
removed in the film involving one character, which it
then turned into a suspense element. I don't remember
the relationship between the Chapman character
(Burke) and Cooper (Delany) being so laced with
sexual tension in the book. I liked both the Chapman
and Cooper characters better in the film than the
book. The Chapman character, I liked much better and
more quickly. I had a small problem with Cooper in
the book, which I mentioned last week. For a woman
who is in such a stressful position as assistant
DA/prosecutor in charge of sex crimes, which she
handles quite well, I found her occasional
"wimping out" when her boyfriend couldn't
get back from Paris and at some other times, a bit of
a stretch. Thankfully, the TV character didn't
exhibit the same flaw.
All in all, I
thought it was an uncommonly well done adaptation.
Though the stories are very close, reading the book
after seeing the film will still allow the reader to
flesh out the characters and other aspects of the
story which were glossed over in the film. I'd
recommend reading the book, especially, if you plan
to gone on to her other novels.
Then, could have blown
me over with a feather, I got the following in an e-mail
from Linda Fairstein, herself:
I was catching up
on my DL's and read your note, which interested me a
lot. Two things (easy one first)....the ending was so
very different in part due to the weather! The movie
was filmed in Toronto, in December....in between two
blizzards. The outside park scene didn't work....so
they moved it to the rail yards, and inside the
train.
On the
Alex-falling-apart-over Jed business.....all I can
say is that some of my colleagues at the office hold
up fine under enormous stress, working on cases and
being a rock for victims/survivors/families,
etc....and then, occasionally falter a bit when their
own personal support system isn't there to shore them
up. I can understand why you may not think it
works....but it's frequently the fact.
Very hard to give
up one's book to be made into a screenplay....and
it's the choice I made. They take a 400+ page plot,
and reduce it to a 90 page screenplay, so - as you
identified -- lots of subplots (some of them my
favorites!) get sacrificed. All in all, once I made
that decision to sell the project, I decided to live
with it. The movie has been great fun for me, and I
appreciate your comments.
What a nice lady!
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A new
guy, Scot Phillips, has his first novel out,
The Ice Harvest. A couple people involved with
managing the affairs of a number of bars, nightclubs and strip joints in
the Wichita, Kansas of 1979 are leaving town. This story chronicles the
evening that they plan to leave and their attempts to keep that fact
quiet and why. Told in third person, it focuses predominantly on Charles Arglist, a lawyer for the
conglomerate and the chief operations manager. Very dark.
It’s a small format book and only 217 pages, so even
I finished it within a few days. I am looking forward to
more from this guy. |
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For the
books on tape, I started off the year with Perri
O’Shaunghnessy’s
Move To Strike. A young girl is
determined to get her uncle to "pay up" for
land he had swindled from her and her mother. While
there, she witnesses his murder. She flees, but is seen
and becomes accused of the murder, herself.
"Perri" O’Shaunghnessy is a pseudonym for
Pamela and Mary O’Shaunghnessy, a sister team that
has written a number of mysteries. This is their sixth
novel and the first one I’ve done. I’ll be
looking for their others. |
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Oh, I did
Nelson DeMille’s The Lion’s Game at the
end of last year and forgot to mention it. It is another
John Correy thriller (follow up to Plum Island).
Again, there were many jokes. This time, Correy is
assigned to the FBI’s task force on Anti Terrorism
(ATTF). A Libyan extremist is bent on avenging the April
15, 1986 bombing of Tripoli. It’s very long (which I
thought was a good thing) and jumps back and forth
between first person Correy and third person terrorist.
Added angst comes from Correy focusing on the terrorist
while the FBI is pressuring him to follow their leads.
The FBI is being distracted by their own procedures and
the CIA liaison.
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I
finished the last two Harry Potter books on tape, Harry
Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Harry
Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I must say, that the
motivation for me to do books on tape is so I don’t
loose the "downtime" while driving. It takes
less effort than actually reading, so I’ll
experiment more with Books on Tape than with reading. I
really enjoy the performance that Jim Dale does on these
tapes … all four of them. The accents, the energy,
the voice characterizations -- What a magnificent
performance! I am distressed to hear that it will be at
least next year before the next one comes out, but, no
sweat. I can re-listen to these.
In Azkaban, Harry is apparently the
target of a wizard named "Sirius Black" who has escaped from the wizard prison,
Azkaban, in order to kill Harry. Serious was a close friend to Harry's
parents (best man at their wedding), but was imprisoned for betraying
their trust and getting them killed by the Dark Lord (He Who Must Not be
Named).
In Goblet, Hogwarts is hosting the
"tri-wizard" championships this year. A champion from each of the wizard
schools (three in all) is chosen and they compete for a thousand Galions
in gold. However, something is amiss when Harry, under-age, is chosen as
a "fourth" champion. And there are signs that the dark lord is getting
stronger maybe re-claiming his reign of terror. |
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