May

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, 2006

Oh, man. How long has it been since I've read a novel that was this well-written, this sharp, this thrilling, and this much fun? A really long time. The Lies of Locke Lamora is fantastic, y'all. It's the kind of book where just about everything works just as it's supposed to, where you can find yourself excited, horrified, amused and shocked all in a row. The fact that this is author Scott Lynch's first novel is kind of staggering, because Lies is a crisp, vivid, perfectly calibrated read from start to finish.
 

The novel is set in a sprawling, fantastical city called Camorr that's a mix between Venice and London. Our (anti)hero is Locke Lamora, a silver-tongued conman who leads a group of thieves called the Gentlemen Bastards. The Bastards gleefully plunder from the nobles of Camorr, right under the nose of the city's most formidable crime boss. Locke's life of merry derring-do is plunged into chaos with the arrival of the Gray King, a mysterious figure who starts a deadly war in the city's underworld – and he wants Locke's help.
 

Where do you even start with a book like this? Every just worked, start to finish. The novel is fat, over seven hundred pages long, but the pacing is so good that it just zips by. The plotting – my God, the plotting is fabulous. It's somehow completely straightforward and deftly complex, a mixture of fantasy thriller and crime caper that's so logical you wonder why you don't see it more often. Lynch is as good a conman as his protagonists; he's got a real knack for smooth plot twists and tricky authorial maneuvers that always took me by surprise (seriously, be ready to yell “No!” out loud at least twice). And I know I already mentioned the pacing, but seriously: absolutely top-notch. It's a common gripe, especially when dealing with a long fantasy novel, that the pacing is “off” or “slow.” Not here. This novel is perfectly calibrated. Even the constant flashbacks interspersed throughout the narrative fit without bogging things down. There's the odd tangent that strays from the main plot, but nothing like the myriad of subplots that clog the novels of Jordan or Martin. Lynch's plot is clean and crisp.
 

Lynch's worldbuilding is terrific, too. His fictional universe is a complicated and fascinating hybrid of medieval fantasy, steampunk and even an intriguing dash of sci-fi. The mythology and politics of Camorr are integrated into the story perfectly (no artificial info-dumps for Lynch). Instead, he builds his world in a natural way, while still keeping the story front and center. His lavish and tactile descriptions of the city are superbly handled, for the most part; there's plenty of description, but the pace of the story never lags because Lynch is busy describing a church spire or something.

His writing is self-assured, smooth and excellent. Great facility with language, and a Diana Gabaldon-like talent for immersion through careful description. You can see, hear and smell his world – which, thanks to his Quentin Tarantino streak, is not always pleasant. His dialogue is a huge highlight, too. It's incredibly colorful, nimble, often laugh-out-loud funny and features some of the most creative and lyrical vulgarity I've ever read. There's the occasional stylistic hiccup, but nothing that would rise above the level of a personal preference.
 

Most novels, in my opinion, live or die based on the characters, and thankfully, Lies has a cast jam-packed with great ones. At first, I thought Locke and his fellow thieves might end up a bit too cookie-cutter to be compelling protagonists. Nope. I was very, very wrong. Locke is one of my new favorite characters. He's devious, short, quick on his feet, incredibly proficient at all forms of deception, fiercely loyal, and completely useless in a fight. I ended up totally adoring him. And I loved Jean, the badass bruiser with a gentle heart. Even the supporting players get fully developed characteristics. The main villain is perhaps a bit mustache-twirl-y, but he's appropriately formidable, and he gets a nice dash of development towards the end of the novel.
 

If I have a nitpick about the novel as a whole, it would be the lack of introspection on the part of the main characters. The novel has so much forward momentum that it seems like we don't often slow down to get inside Locke's head. Of course, Lynch makes up for this with flashbacks that illuminate the characters' pasts, but I still would have liked a bit more internal narrative. Also, there are a few super minor plot shortcuts taken throughout the book, which are acceptable, but sometimes a tad noticeable. But yeah, those are both very, very minor issues in an otherwise stellar novel.
 

In summary, Lies is wickedly clever, often hilarious, and cruel enough to make George R. R. Martin proud. It's one of the most purely entertaining books I've read in a long time, and it's crafted with incredible skill. Most exciting of all, there are more adventures to come; although Lies could stand on its own well, it's just the first in a projected seven-book series, thank God. I'm not sure I could have let this world and these people go after just one novel. Bring on book two.

I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman, 2010

I'd Know You Anywhere begins with Eliza Benedict, a seemingly ordinary suburban mother in her late thirties, receiving a letter. It's from Walter Bowman, the man who kidnapped her and held her hostage when she was fifteen. Now on death row for the rape and murder of another girl, Walter is about to executed. And he wants a favor.
 

From this simple, chilling premise, Laura Lippman weaves a novel of incredible psychological tension and astounding depth. The book isn't quite a thriller (there's no action or pyrotechnics, no real mystery to be solved), but it reads like one, a white-knuckle journey full of subtle horror. This book gave me a genuinely sleepless night, I was so involved in the story. It's horrifying because the characters are so well drawn and the emotions so expertly evoked - not because Lippman splatters blood and gore all over the place.

A novel like this can only work if the author is exceptionally talented at sketching complicated and interesting characters. Lippman is. In Eliza, we have a very unusual and very complex protagonist, and in Walter, we have a chillingly realistic and strangely sympathetic villain. The interplay between these two characters provide the bulk of the novel's tension, but the pages are also crammed with colorful supporting characters, all realized with enormous sympathy, balance and intelligence. Even walk-on players like Eliza's liberal parents or a put-upon attorney have multiple dimensions.

Lippman is an extremely well-regarded crime writer, and it's easy to see why: she manages the very difficult trick of creating prose that is resoundingly literary (you would not mistake this novel for an airport mystery) while still being completely readable. She rarely uses flourishes or fancy devices to show you that she is writing, dammit. She just draws you in with the force of her storytelling; this novel is definitely a page-turner. If I have a critique - and it's extremely nitpick-y - it's that Lippman's dialogue sometimes has a touch of sameness to it.

The central question of the novel is the true nature of Eliza and Walter's somewhat twisted relationship. It's a complicated question with a complicated answer, and Lippman deals with it beautifully. It's an incredibly suspenseful device, and it's absolutely to Lippman's credit that she doesn't make it into a big twist at the end. The solution to the mystery - if you can even call it a mystery - is that Eliza and Walter understand each other in ways that no else does. To paraphrase Lippman's gorgeous title, they'd know each other anywhere.

Honestly, I wish there were more thrillers like this - novels that used emotion and character development to shock and thrill us, rather than cheap plot twists and gunfights. Ultimately, this is a novel about people who have a limited ability to understand their own emotions. What makes it amazing, in my opinion, is not only Lippman's deep understanding of grief and pain, but her equally great knowledge of strength and grace. For a novel as deep and dark as this one, it ends on a surprising moment of melancholy, deeply earned triumph.

Savages by Don Winslow

Savages by Don Winslow, 2010

Lado and Hector take them to a big date farm out near Indio and put them in a shed where they keep tractors and shit. The two sit on the dirt floor leaning against the corrugated-tin wall and they develop verbal diarrhea. Keep shitting on and on about how there were two of them, a shotgun and two pistols, real pros. . .

Lado already knows they were pros-- they knew when, where, and what, and they knew to look for the GPS.

"Two of them? You sure?" Lado asks.

They're really sure.

Two tall guys.

Lado thinks that's interesting.

Wearing masks.

"What kind of masks?"

Yanqui television hosts.

Jay Leno and. . .

"Letterman," the driver says.

The other one got the car make and license plate.

"It's a wonder," Lado says, "that neither of you two got hurt at all."

Very fortunate, they agree.

Yeah, well, that ain't gonna last. ---- (page 182)

Savages is a wickedly twisted and brilliant piece of crime fiction, and a sick little experiment on readers to boot. I love amorality and antiheroes, novels where good and evil are varying shades of gray. To say that Savages' morality is gray is to a massive understatement. I'm not sure I've ever read another book where every single main character is, to some extent, a villain, or at least someone who has made terrible choices. Winslow's style can only be described as unique and his plotting is brutal, intricate and complex. Here's a book that you have to chew on for a while before you can decide how you feel about it.

The protagonists (not heroes, but protagonists) of the novel are Ben and Chon, best buddies who run a massive marijuana ring in southern California. Their aim--well, Ben's aim, really--is to run the most peaceful operation they can. When a powerful Mexican cartel looking to expand its business instigates a hostile takeover of their business, Ben and Chon are faced with a choice: give up or wage war against a far larger and more powerful enemy.

The plot quickly becomes much more twisted than that, as both sides begin a riveting game of chicken in order to feel the other out. Dirty tactics, power plays and some highly spirited negotiations ensue. Winslow gives every character dimension and complexity, from the brutal head of the Baja Cartel to a corrupt and pathetic DEA agent. As hard as it is at first to root for a band of marijuana dealers, Ben and Chon are hard not to empathize with, even as they are forced to be more and more ruthless and cruel. O, their shared girlfriend and a pot-smoking hipster, is likewise both difficult to like and difficult not to like. Winslow is damn good at that--forcing you to understand or even admire some truly bad people. Grey morality is the name of the game in Savages.

Winslow's prose is bizarre: a hybrid of gonzo poeticism, clipped Elmore Leonard-style dialogue and terse, action-movie bursts of violence and action. Some chapters are only a word or two long (seriously), and some are in script format. And the amazing thing is, it works. Sure, there are a couple of times that Winslow goes too far into stylized nonsense and comes off as pretentious, but for the most part the story and the style complement each other perfectly. Winslow can be a damn funny writer, too; his humor is as dark and sharp as the rest of the story.

The climax, when it comes, is moving, riveting and oddly graceful. The biggest plot twist is completely terrific-- surprising, but obvious in retrospect. By the end, Winslow has elevated the novel into a surprisingly affecting tragedy. Ben, Chon and O are not heroes by any means, but they were people looking for some modicum of peace in a savage world.

NEXT UP: Plenty of new reviews coming, starting with a brand-new Jeeves novel.

Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin

Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin, 1994

His eyes were closed. If he opened them he knew he would see flecks of his own blood against the whitewashed wall, the wall which seemed to arch toward him. His toes were still moving against the ground, dabbling in warm blood. Whenever he tried to speak, he could feel his face cracking: dried salt tears and sweat.

It was strange, the shape your life could take. You might be loved as a child but still go bad. You might have monsters for parents but grow up pure. His life had been neither one nor the other. Or rather, it had been both, for he'd been cherished and abandoned in equal measure. He was six, and shaking hands with a large man. There should have been more affection between them, but somehow there wasn't. He was ten, and his mother was looking tired, bowed down, as she leaned over the sink washing dishes. Not knowing he was in the doorway, she paused to rest her hands on the rim of the sink. He was thirteen, and being initiated into his first gang. They took a pack of cards and skinned his knuckles with the edge of the pack. They took it in turns, all eleven of them. It hurt until he belonged.

Now there was a shuffling sound. And the gun barrel was touching the back of his neck, sending out more waves. How could something be so cold? He took a deep breath, feeling the effort in his shoulder-blades. There couldn't be more pain than he already felt. Heavy breathing close to his ear, and then the words again.

'Nemo me impune lacessit.'---- (pages 5-6)

The great thing about the recurring series character is the pleasure of an established world and cast. No one would argue that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wasn't a gifted mystery writer, but it's the beautifully structured little universe of 221b Baker Street that caught the reader's imagination. Agatha Christie could spin out a whodunit with the best of them, yet her most successful novels, most fans would agree, are the ones featuring Poirot or Miss Marple, sleuths whose habits and methods are well established. Ian Rankin's Rebus series is likewise structured, although with more complexity than Doyle's world, or Christie's. Each Rebus novel is a treat just because we get to re-enter the world of Rankin's Edinburgh and the large cast of coppers, criminals and civilians who inhabit it.

Once you feel an affinity for a particular fictional character or universe, it sometimes becomes easier to criticize the plots as not being worthy of the characters, or not measuring up to what came before. With each Harry Potter book, readers held their breath, willing J.K. Rowling to spin a story that lived up to the rest of the series (the fact that she did, every single time, is one of the many, many things I love about the Potter books). Mortal Causes is the sixth book in the Rebus series, and it has a tall order to fill, considering how much I've loved some of the past installments. Causes, like Strip Jack and The Black Book, is a bit of letdown in terms of plot, despite some great elements and a handful of truly memorable moments.

Edinburgh's yearly Festival, a citywide event that attracts thousands of tourists, is in full swing when a gruesomely tortured body is discovered in a subterranean street. John Rebus is one of the first on the scene and the mode of execution immediately suggests paramilitary terrorists. Sectarian radicals, both Catholic and Protestant, have been waging a furious war in the UK, and the Scottish Crime Squad suspects that the victim was executed by a mysterious group of terrorists known as the Shield. Working for two separate agencies and hounded by gangsters, Rebus digs into the mystery and discovers a vast network of violent extremists with something deadly planned for this year's Festival.

While most of the Rebus novels are more classic murder-mystery narratives, Causes is set up as more of a thriller, with terrorists, spies and multiple government agencies in play. Unfortunately, the book's plot is choppy and a bit schizophrenic. Rankin packs a lot of characters and a lot of narrative into one relatively short novel, and the result is an overstuffed story with too many divergent subplots and separate threads. Rankin never totally commits to the thriller-like elements, instead vacillating between missing grenade launchers and routine police work. He can do ticking-time-bomb plots as well as anyone (Tooth and Nail is a compact, spring-loaded serial killer thriller), but Causes lacks the urgency its story requires. If the book was longer, the tangled plot threads and two dozen significant characters might have had time to breathe. Barely three hundred pages isn't enough.

Rankin's clue-dropping remains adept; he's very good at making an offhand reference to something that later proves vitally significant in a way that doesn't feel too obvious. It's his plotting that's a bit of a mess--haphazard,sprawling and overly intricate. It can be fun to follow all of his little threads, but it can also be tiring and confusing. In these last couple of books, Rankin seems to have trouble giving the reader a clear picture of the story; everything seems jumbled in pell-mell.

Luckily, those separate elements, while not combined very smoothly, are usually pretty great on their own. The addition of Big Ger Cafferty to the mix adds a nice undercurrent of danger and a sense of continuity to the novel. Cafferty's weird, half-friendly rivalry with Rebus promises to be a really interesting story for the future. I also quite liked the return to the Pilmuir ghetto, now with a new youth center that seems to be doing more bad than good. It's an interesting little slice of Edinburgh life, and I would have appreciated it if it had been more neatly folded into the plot. The major "mole" reveal is another reasonably well-handled element; it's definitely unexpected, although it might have made more of an impact if the character in question had been more developed.

Causes is the first book in the series to rely heavily on 1990s current events as a backdrop. The conflict between loyalist paramilitary groups, IRA-style terrorists and UK law enforcement is the heart of the story, as well as the longer-running contention between the Protestants and the Catholics. A lot of the finer points were somewhat lost on to me, since it's not a subject I know much about, and Rankin logically assumes that a UK audience will be familiar with the conflict. The fact that I was a bit behind on some of the context definitely made the book's plot a bit murkier for me. That's hardly a real fault (since Rankin isn't writing for international readers), and it wasn't even a major distraction. Rankin's portrait of a place torn apart by splintered forces who are fighting over ancient grievances is interesting in of itself, and Rebus's detached observations are as amusing as ever.

Rebus's home life definitely takes an odd turn in this installment. Now living with Patience in her cozy basement flat (his own taken over by the amorphous group of students from The Black Book), Rebus find his relationship with the good doctor becoming ever more distant and strained. Things become more complicated when Rebus begins a fling with an unhinged barrister, who quickly goes Fatal Attraction on the hapless DI when their relationship turns sour. It's kind of a weird plotline, one that I kept expecting to intersect with the main story (even though it never did). Rebus's erstwhile paramour spraying him with paint--although darkly funny--is a bit more over-the-top than Rankin's domestic stories usually are. It's the tense, unhappy, dysfunctional undercurrent between Rebus and Patience that elevates the plotline beyond a bit of texture. Rebus's inability to find a functional relationship, and his increasing dependence on alcohol, is becoming one of the series' hallmarks.

Mortal Causes is another solid installment in the Rebus series, but the instant-classic feel just isn't there. Despite its many good points, there's not a lot that's especially memorable or noteworthy; it's just an entertaining, well-written crime novel with a terrific protagonist and a good supporting cast. If it wasn't for the fact that I know Ian Rankin can do better, I would probably have been perfectly satisfied (plot holes and a lack of narrative cohesion aside). Causes may not be as good as some of its predecessors, but it's still good enough, certainly. Maybe looking for the novel to recapture the intensity and pitch-perfect plotting of some of the earlier ones is unfair and unreasonable, although inevitable when reading a series. I will try to go into the next installment with suitably lowered expectations.

NEXT UP: The final book of the Hunger Games, Mockingjay.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, 2008

Salander looked through the door to the living room at Blomkvist pulling out CDs and taking books off the bookshelf. He had just found a brown pill bottle that was missing its label, and he was holding it up to the light. He was about to unscrew the top, so she reached out and took the bottle from him. She went back to the kitchen and sat down on a chair, massaging her forehead until he joined her.

"The rules are simple," she said. "Nothing that you discuss with me or with Armansky will be shared with anyone at all. There will be a contract which states that Milton Security pledges confidentiality. I want to know what the job is about before I decide whether I want to work for you or not. That also means that I agree to keep to myself everything you tell me, whether I take the job or not, provided that you're not conducting any sort of serious criminal activity. In which case, I'll report it to Dragan, who in turn will report it to the police."

"Fine." He hesitated. "Armansky may not be completely aware of what I want to hire you for. . ."

"Some historical research, he said."

"Well, yes, that's right. I want you to help me identify a murderer."---- (page 365)

I tend to get annoyed when everyone jumps on a cultural bandwagon, and then begins acting as if this one song, or TV show, or movie, or book, is the only one of its kind ever created. This kind of mania often leads to a kind of "Emperor has no clothes" situation, where everyone who's a critic or who considers themselves cultured has to pretend to like a certain thing, like Glee or gangsta rap or The Social Network. Too often, the object of everyone's adoration isn't very good, or at least isn't as good as it's cracked up to be (there are of course exceptions to this rule, like the Harry Potter series). For some time now, Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy has been treated like it's the first series of mystery novels ever written and Lisbeth Salander is the most original character ever put to paper. I honestly expected The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to be less than its inflated reputation; maybe I even harbored a snobbish desire to scoff at something everything else was excited about.

I was wrong. They were right. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is very, very good, fabulous even. And Lisbeth Salander is indeed one of the most uniquely riveting characters I've met in a while.

Tattoo is at heart a very old-fashioned murder mystery, but done in a truly original way. The plot concerns the Vanger family, a very old and wealthy clan of Swedish industrialists, whose checkered past includes Nazism, corruption and incessant infighting. Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger, a seemingly innocent teenage girl, vanished during the annual family meeting on the Vanger's northern island. Not a trace of Harriet was ever found, and her uncle, family patriarch Henrik, has devoted most of the ensuing years to uncovering the truth. He is convinced that his niece was murdered by a family member, who continues to taunt him by sending him flowers--Harriet's traditional gift--every year on his birthday.

As a last resort, Vanger hires Mikael Blomkvist, a disgraced financial journalist convicted of libel, to solve the mystery over the course of one year. Blomkvist is at first skeptical that any crime has been committed, but he enlists Lisbeth Salander, a tattooed, emotionally unhealthy young hacker, to help him track down a cunning and twisted killer. As the pair dig into the Vanger family history, they uncover secrets, corruption and a blood-drenched trail that hints at an evil far greater than the murder of one girl.

This is a novel that delivers hugely on several levels. It's as ingenious and finely-plotted as any mystery I've read this year, as well as bone-chillingly scary and, by at its climax, utterly thrilling. But as good as the plot is, the characters are even better. Throw in the exotic and finely evoked sense of place and Larsson's unique pacing and rhythm, and you have the makings of a real modern classic.

Originally written in Swedish, the novel was translated into English by Reg Keeland, and it seems to have been a smooth translation. You can tell that it's a translation; there's the occasional word or sentence that seems awkward or somehow uncomfortable, but for the most part it doesn't detract from the book at all. The unusual rhythm is part of what makes the novel so interesting. Larsson has an odd style, both leisurely and compulsive. He has no qualms at slowing the story down to deliver a large chunk of exposition on Swedish business or guardianship laws. This is the kind of thing that I usually get annoyed at, but I'll be damned if it doesn't work for Larsson. The information dumps that occur here and there usually work for the story, and the slower pace gives the central mystery more depth and gives the characters more time to develop.

The plot is indeed a gorgeous thing, twisted and complex and perfectly executed. A mystery narrative this good is extremely rare and incredibly difficult. Larsson infuses the story with melancholy and loss; the question of what happened on that day has settled over Hedeby Island like a blanket. The mystery is not just a dry intellectual exercise: it has palpable influence over the present. Larsson lets us feel the frustration of the investigation, as Blomkvist spends long hours trying to make even a small amount of headway. There is a great deal of sifting through old documents, searching for old pictures, hunting through files for the smallest clue. It sounds dull, but it's much more realistic than our heroes immediately finding huge leads in a forty-year old cold case. When the breakthroughs finally begin to come, Larsson completely avoids the classic mystery-novel fumble (the mid-book tangle of clues and suspects) and instead gives us a logical puzzle that twists every time we think we have a handle on it. The double-pronged solution is brilliant, and the confrontation with the book's main villain is incredibly intense and chilling--like, try not to hyperventilate while reading a book, intense and chilling.

But the plot is still window dressing, because it's the characters that make the novel such a success. Although Salander gets all the attention, Blomkvist is a finely drawn protagonist. Erudite, intelligent, reserved in word and action, we spend a lot of time in Blomkvist's head and yet we learn more about him from the narration of other characters. He could have been simply the straight man to Lisbeth's unusual personality, but he's a lot more complex than that. The minor characters are uniformly interesting, from the personable, but hardened, Henrik Vanger to the emotionally unstable Cecilia Vanger to Blomkvist's fellow editor and part-time lover, Erika Berger. Larsson likes a meaty characterization and there's hardly a single figure in the book without a somewhat memorable personality; even Frode, the dutiful family lawyer, has some layers.

It's Lisbeth's book, though, and she owns it. She really is one of the strangest characters I've ever read about, and certainly one of the most fascinating. The quintessential loner, Lisbeth is an incredibly gifted researcher and computer hacker who has seemingly no interest in human contact. Sometimes unresponsive to the point of catatonia, sometimes eloquent and well-spoken, Salander is capable of extreme violence and fits of rage, which she hides behind a frosty exterior. Seemingly bisexual, possibly autistic and lacking any social skills, she is an outcast from society, not dependant on anyone anyone except herself and her legal guardian. Lisbeth is a cipher, a conundrum, a mystery to everyone around her. She comes very close to the edge of being an outright antihero, but she seems to function within her own moral guidelines. Larsson does not bring Salander into the main story until more than halfway through the novel; instead, we are privy to a highly unpleasant episode in her life that functions as a lengthy subplot.

Salander's horrific rape by her legal guardian and subsequent revenge is by now the book's most famous sequence (people are inevitably drawn to anything that's extremely violent or sexual). It's a truly horrifying turn of events, described in matter-of-fact terms by Larsson, who, to his credit, mostly resists reveling in the salaciousness of the storyline. The scene is still rather difficult to read, and it's hard to say whether it was truly necessary or not. I give Larsson credit for not showing too much detail, as that would have come off as nasty and James Patterson-esque. Lisbeth's vengeance is powerful and satisfying, although almost as brutal as the rape. The whole story exists mostly to establish Lisbeth as a character (and to further illuminate the novel's theme of violence against women), and this it certainly does, in a memorably visceral way. Although Lisbeth is angry and violated by the rape, she does not seem to regard it as something very much out of the ordinary, and that may be the most chilling part of the whole affair. Her backstory, when it comes, will be inevitably traumatic.

But it's not Salander's rage that is the heart of the book, it's her slowly developing quasi-romantic relationship with Blomkvist. Theirs is a pairing that is almost immediately a classic dynamic, like Holmes and Watson, but, um, different. Very different. The way that Blomkvist gradually attempts to forge a friendship with Lisbeth, and her push-pull response, is a slightly mesmerizing bit of character work, and indicative of Larsson's excellent character work. It's a smart move to keep the two central characters apart for so much of the book, because by the time they finally meet, both have been clearly established. The novel's two sequels will undoubtedly deepen their relationship, judging by the rather heartbreaking little vignette that ends the novel. The love triangle between Blomkvist, Salander and Berger should be highly interesting, especially considering the extreme contrast between the two women.

If I have a quibble with the book, it's the subplot regarding Blomkvist's war with a corrupt Swedish industrialist, which is really only important at the very beginning and the very end. At the end of the novel, Larsson lovingly devotes a huge segment to the conclusion of the story, ignoring the fact that the mystery plot wrapped up fifty pages ago. It's a jarring leap from a dark, grisly serial-killer thriller to a complex account of financial crime and Swedish journalism. It's not a bad storyline by any means, just misplaced, and it makes the book's ending feel long and anticlimactic. The storyline has a distinct whiff of fantasy wish-fulfillment about it: Larsson was a crusading financial journalist himself, and it's easy to imagine that the whole plot is a thinly disguised version of real events. In any case, it's not the book's high point and it's a shame that it couldn't have been moved to one of the sequels or dealt with before the true climax.

That (fairly small) problem aside, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was one wonderful book. Oddly enough, what it reminded me of was the Harry Potter series. Not in style, content or tone, but in the sense of being totally swept up in a near-perfect marriage of plot and character. This is a book that combines the appeal of the fast-paced thriller and the big, climb-in-and-live saga. It's a good thing that are two more books to develop Blomkvist and Salander, because they promise to become an iconic crime-fiction pairing, and the Millennium trilogy, or its first entry, at least, may well become a classic in the genre.

NEXT UP: My "Best of 2011" post should be up soon, and I'm currently reading Lev Grossman's critically acclaimed fantasy novel, The Magicians.

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

The Godfather by Mario Puzo, 1969

Hagen had taken the call in the kitchen, with Mama Corleone bustling around preparing a snack for the arrival of her daughter. He had kept his composure and the old woman had not noticed anything amiss. Not that she could not have, if she wanted to, but in her life with the Don she had learned it was far wiser not to perceive. That if it was necessary to know something painful, it would be told to her soon enough. And if it was a pain that could be spared her, she could do without. She was quite content not to share the pain of her men, after all did they share the pain of women? Impassively she boiled her coffee and set the table with food. In her experience pain and fear did not dull physical hunger; in her experience the taking of food dulled pain. She would have been outraged if a doctor had tried to sedate her with a drug, but coffee and a crust of bread was another matter; she came, of course, from a more primitive culture.

And so she let Tom Hagen escape to his corner conference room and once in that room, Hagen began to tremble so violently he had to sit down with his legs squeezed together, his head hunched into his contracted shoulders, hands clasped together between his knees as if he were praying to the devil.

He was, he knew now, no fit Consigliere for a Family at war. He had been fooled, fake out, by the Five Families and their seeming timidity. They had remained quiet, laying their terrible ambush. They had planned and waited, holding their bloody hands no matter what provocation they had been given. They had waited to land one terrible blow. And they had. Old Genco Abbandando would never have fallen for it, he would have smelled a rat, he would have smoked them out, tripled his precautions. And through all this Hagen felt his grief. Sonny had been his true brother, his savior; his hero when they had been boys together. Sonny had never been mean or bullying with him, had always treated him with affection, had taken him in his arms when Sollozzo had turned him loose. Sonny's joy at that reunion had been real. That he had grown up to be a cruel and violent and bloody man was, for Hagen, not relevant.--- (page 236)

Few 20th-century novels have become ingrained in cultural consciousness as quickly as The Godfather. Most of its popularity is due to the wildly successful and highly lauded film adaptation, but the book is where all of the indelible images and ideas come from: "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse." The horse's head in the bed. Don Corleone's awesome power and influence. The bloodbath in the diner. Michael's journey to taking over his father's business. Even though I've never actually seen the movie (yes, I know, it's embarrassing), I had a rough idea of what to expect from Mario Puzo's original novel, storywise. But I didn't know what to expect from the actual storytelling, and the novel ended up surprising me with its uninspiring prose and meandering narrative.

The Godfather begins on the day of Connie Corleone's wedding. Don Vito Corleone, one of the most powerful Mafia bosses in New York, is a brilliant, ruthless leader tactician. Two of his sons have joined him in the "family business," but the youngest, Michael, is a peaceful college graduate who only wants to marry his girlfriend. On Connie's wedding day, events are set in motion that will result in carnage and bloodshed: an up-and-coming underworld businessman offers the Don a risky deal, which he refuses, setting off a vicious Mafia war that will ravage the Family and set its members on a violent date with destiny.

The plot is absolutely bursting with possibilities from the start, and if nothing else, Puzo has come up with a killer premise. The hidden world of the Mafia, the unshakable Family loyalty, the power structure, the constant danger and double-crossing: it's a setting that just cries out for a story. Puzo has created an incredibly compelling world; it's no wonder that the novel has gripped the public imagination so feverishly (even real-life gangsters are reputed to have been influenced by the book and film's portrayal of the Mafia). The novel's central structure is equally solid. Michael's journey from innocent bystander to ruthless Don is the stuff classics are made of. There's a Shakespearean feel to his arc that Puzo, to his credit, sells.

My main problem with the book is simple. Puzo may have come up with a wonderful premise, but he's not the right writer to carry it out. His prose is actually rather bad--flat, stilted and awkwardly oscillating between pulp-novel purple prose and an inept literary style. He's an inveterate violator of the show-don't-tell rule, which makes many passages feel like colorless exposition. His dialogue is not terrible, just a little tin-eared at times and, in the tradition of a lot of 1960s-era novels, the characters talk a bit too much to be believable. Puzo does believably capture an Italian accent and Italian diction without going over-the-top, though.

His characters are mostly interesting (at least in theory), but for the most part they're inadequately drawn, exhibiting fairly one-dimensional personalities. Don Vito, I have to admit, is a memorable creation: prickly, cerebral, subtly eccentric. It's a shame that the other figures in the book aren't better-realized. In the hands of a subtler and more accomplished author, this is a cast that would offer incredibly rich and layered characterizations. I'm guessing that this is probably an area the movie improves on. Characters like Sonny, Kay, Fredo, Tessio and Sollozzo would benefit a lot from closer attention.

One of the oddest things about the novel, to me, was the stagnant pacing, frequent discursions and lengthy, useless subplots. Puzo has storytelling gold in his hands in the form of the main plot, yet he wastes huge chunks of time on baffling side-plots. One of them involves Hollywood star Johnny Fontane, formerly a singing sensation, now a has-been with a throat condition. It's just an odd story, strangely distant from most of the goings-on, and not highly interesting in of itself. Likewise, the story of Lucy Mancini, Sonny's ex-lover with the genital birth defect, is seemingly added to provide padding to a novel that definitely doesn't need it. Puzo's main story is way too strong for this kind of device to be necessary, and the fact that the subplots are both mildly boring doesn't help.

Considering the fact that the Godfather was written as pulp fiction, the pace is hardly fast. The first hundred pages move fairly steadily, but there are big sections with little forward momentum or relevant action. Puzo is not a good enough writer to justify some of the meandering segments and he seems largely uninterested in delving into the emotional and moral lives of his characters. I would have liked to know how the various members of the Corleone family justify their crimes, how they live every day with the knowledge of the atrocities being committed for their sake. Puzo does dip into these themes towards the end of the book.

Although I was surprised by the book's messiness and lack of narrative drive, there are unquestionably some moments of pure inspiration. Moments like Sonny's murder by tollbooth, or the Don making a false peace with the Five Families, or the masterfully choreographed revenge plot that serves as the novel's climax. Puzo's writing may lack polish and finesse, but there's a strong imaginative force behind his storytelling that almost makes up for it. The world he's created and the characters that live in it are somehow indelible, one of those feats of creativity that has grabbed the imagination of millions. Conceptually, The Godfather is a work of genius. It's the execution that's somewhat lacking.

NEXT UP: John D. MacDonald's The Deep Blue Good-By.

The Black Book by Ian Rankin

The Black Book by Ian Rankin, 1993

The hotel had once been a traveller's paradise. It was sited on Princes Street, no distance at all from Waverly Station, and so had become a travelling businessman's home-from-home. But in its latter years, the Central had seen business decline. And as genuine business declined, so disingenuous business took over. It was no real secret that the Central's stuffy rooms could be hired by the hour or the afternoon. Room service would provide a bottle of champagne and as much talcum powder as any room's tenants required.

In other words, the Central had become a knocking-shop, and by no means a subtle one. It also catered to the town's shadier elements in all shapes and forms. Wedding parties and stag nights were held for a spread of the city's villains, and underage drinkers could loll in the lounge bar for hours, safe in the knowledge that no honest copper would stray inside the doors. Familiarity bred further contempt, and the lounge bar started to be used for drug deals, and other even less savoury deals too, so that the Central Hotel became something more than a mere knocking-shop. It turned into a swamp.

A swamp with an eviction order over its head.

The police couldn't turn a blind eye forever and a day, especially when complaints from the public were rising by the month. And the more trash was introduced to the Central, the more trash was produced by the place. Until almost no real drinkers went there at all. If you ventured into the Central, you were looking for a woman, cheap drugs, or a fight. And God help you if you weren't.

Then, as had to happen, one night the Central burnt down. This came as no surprise to anyone; so much so that reporters on the local paper hardly bothered to cover the blaze. The police, of course, were delighted. The fire saved them having to raid the joint.

But the next morning there was a solitary surprise; for though all the hotel's staff and customers had been accounted for, a body turned up amongst the charred ceilings and roofbeams. A body that had been burnt out of all recognition.

A body that had been dead when the fire started.--- (pages 30-31)

The Black Book is a very good crime novel, like all of Ian Rankin's books. The plot engages and holds your interest throughout, the characters are as vibrant as always and John Rebus' personal life takes center stage. There seems to be everything a fan of the Rebus series needs. So why did The Black Book, good as it was, leave me feeling a bit disappointed?

As usual, John Rebus's life, both personal and professional, is a mess. His girlfriend has kicked him out, just as his brother Michael returns to Edinburgh to crash in his flat (already rented out to several college students). When Rebus's friend and colleague, Brian Holmes, is brutally attacked, he begins digging into a ten-year old arson case with an unsolved murder attached. As the plot thickens and the bodies stack up, Rebus finds himself once again on the trail of the truth, with a dangerous gangster intent on either framing him or getting him out of the way.

I'll do the good first. There's certainly plenty to like about The Black Book, which is as readable and well-written as anything you're likely to find in the genre. I especially liked the emphasis on Rebus's chaotic home life and relationship with Michael, who hasn't shown up since Knots and Crosses. Rankin remains excellent at reflecting how the little things in life (like sharing a messy flat with five other people) can reflect on everything else.

The addition to the cast of Siobhan Clarke, a new officer under Rebus's supervision, is also totally successful and I very much like the way that Rankin has gradually built up the world of Rebus's police station, complete with petty politics and rivalries. Rebus being Rebus, naturally he gets pulled into more than one conflict with superiors. At least Clarke seems to be his ally for now (and possibly a love interest down the line?).

Another new character introduced is "Big Ger" Cafferty, a notorious gangster that we've been hearing about for several books now, and a figure that I believe turns out to be the series' Big Bad in the future. Cafferty doesn't disappoint; he's a suitably quirky nemesis for the equally quirky Rebus. Here's a man capable of stunningly brutal violence one minute, and general chumminess the next. The scene where Rebus goes jogging with him is delightfully weird and deliciously tense.

While the ancillary elements in The Black Book may be stellar, the main plot has problems. Unlike Strip Jack, which kept its focus squarely on Gregor Jack, Book juggles new characters, myriad plot threads (some of them only loosely related) and dozens of clues and misdirects. As a result, the plot feels looser and less foolproof than in previous installments. There are too many coincidences and Dickens-style tenuous connections propping up the plot, which also, unforgivably, lacks the gut-punch climax that I've come to expect from the Rebus series. Not that the ending isn't good (it mixes together several separate plot strands in a satisfying way), it's just not the car-chasing, house-burning, glass-punching finale that the previous books had conditioned me to be waiting for.

The other main thing that bothered me about Book (and about Strip Jack, too) is the subtle. . . mellowing. Rankin has stepped away from some of the unusual choices that made the first three books so damned good: Rebus's amorality and general loser-ness, the raw emotional power of the stories, the grit and darkness of the themes. There's a comparatively lighter touch here, and in Strip Jack, a broader feel, a greater conventionality, if that makes any sense. The Black Book reads as a more standard crime novel than its predecessors. That feeling of taking a peek into the fiery pits of human evil (and the equally strange world of the man who fights it) is missing. The solution to the central mystery is not scorching or horrifying or emotional; it's shrug-worthy.

I know that what this is is Rankin settling the series down for a prolonged run, which he probably wasn't anticipating earlier. Keeping up the early books' intensity and bleakness for twenty-plus novels would probably have been impossible, if not downright unsatisfying. I think Rankin still has the old craziness in him--he's just decided to pull it out less often.

The Black Book, then, is perhaps a bit of a series placeholder. The dip in quality is not that enormous or shocking--it's still a great read and would look even better if its predecessors hadn't been so excellent. A tighter plot and more emotional oomph is what I'm looking for from Mortal Causes. I don't want to sound like I don't appreciate how good Ian Rankin is. Because I do. Even at his weakest (and Book is the weakest novel of the series), he can still blow 95% of his competition out of the water.

NEXT UP: A short little potboiler, Make Death Love Me, from Ruth Rendell.

The Turnaround by George Pelecanos

The Turnaround by George Pelecanos, 2008

The Turnaround is an odd book and one that took me a while to warm up to. Although not a huge popular success, George Pelecanos is an author that I've wanted to read for some time. A successful TV writer as well as a novelist, Pelecanos writes gritty stories of urban crime set in Washington D.C. The Turnaround is a lot more than just a crime novel; it's a strange, literary tale of consequences and redemption, of fathers and sons.

The novel begins in 1972 when diner owner's son Alex Pappas and two friends drive their car into a rundown black neighborhood as a prank. A confrontation with three black teenagers (the Monroe brothers and a scarred psychopath named Charles Baker) ensues, and one of the boys is killed and Alex is badly beaten. In 2007, blowback from that fatal day finally begins, as Raymond Monroe reaches out to Alex and Baker begins plotting the downfall of those who ruined his life.

For the first third of the novel, I wasn't really tracking with the rather loose plot and Pelecanos's reserved style wasn't making me too enthusiastic. My patience was definitely rewarded in the end, though. Pelecanos has no intention of spoon-feeding readers and he makes them work for payoff, since most of the novel's early pages are set-up for what's to come.

It's a good thing the payoff is worth it. Pelecanos writes with subtlety and grace of the effect of the shooting on the lives of his four main characters. His themes reveal themselves at a leisurely pace, well suited to Pelecanos's crisp, clear, almost relaxed, style. He's in no hurry to get to the thrills; this is a story of emotions and lasting impressions, not of gunfights and fisticuffs.

Pelecanos has an Elmore Leonard-ish grasp of dialogue and shares Leonard's ability to write compelling, dangerous villains purely from the way they speak. Charles Baker's section of the book is quite possibly the most effective. Baker himself is a magnetic, chilling character that stands in sharp contrast to the more conventional characters of Alex and Raymond:

Time was, he carried a gun regular and cared less than nothing about the consequences. Used to be, back when he was staying with a woman he knew, over there in the high forties, off Nannie Helen Burroughs in Northeast, he'd get up in the morning, drop a pistol into his pocket, head out the door, and go to work. Walk the streets until he came up on people who looked to be weak, older females and men he could punk, then take them off for what they had. He fancied himself a beautiful, strong animal, like one of those cheetahs walking out on the plain. Going to work natural, doing what hunters did.---(page 95)

I do think that Baker's subplot could have been woven more effectively into the main storyline, but it works well on the sidelines, too. His tangle with a dangerous gang of drug dealers provides the novel with a needed shot of violent suspense.

The main dish is the story of the Pappas and Monroe families through two generations, with special emphasis on the Pappas's coffee shop. The coffee shop details add a lot of color and realism to the novel; Pelecanos, whose family owned a diner when he was growing up, writes with authority on grill schedules, changing menus and the importance of choosing the right decor. It's a relatively small touch that hugely contributes to the novel's atmosphere.

At first, I didn't think that Alex and Raymond displayed that much depth, or even personality, but like everything about this novel, it's all about patience. Pelecanos's ear for dialogue is so good that it's almost impossible not to believe his characters. By the end, I was really appreciating his skill in drawing the people of his story, in a way both subtle and compelling.

The Turnaround is, as I said before, a rather strange novel, laid-back, detached, somehow calm. It takes time for the story to get going, only for it to end abruptly. It's a book with a message artfully entwined in the storytelling, but Pelecanos avoids giving the readers huge flashing signs saying "IMPORTANT MOMENT HERE." He shows his characters and their actions with honesty and fairness, and then steps back to let the reader decide.

My main conflict about the book is whether I liked it or whether I liked it liked it (yeah, I know that sounds high-school-ian). It's definitely a book to remember and consider. The rather hauntingly clear passages of forgiveness, redemption and acceptance are not going to fade away soon.

NEXT UP: More delicious George R. R. Martin with A Clash of Kings.

LaBrava by Elmore Leonard

LaBrava by Elmore Leonard, 1983

It's always a pleasure to discover an author with an entirely original, distinctive writing style and a quirky way of freshening old tropes. Elmore Leonard's two main genres are Westerns and crime novels, two genres that are well known for hackneyed devices and cliched storytelling.

Leonard doesn't go for that. He writes fast-paced, dialogue-heavy novels that are completely his own in tone and content. Take any paragraph out of any of Leonard's mature novels, and he will be instantly recognizable. At his best, he's a wild breath of fresh air, at his worst he gives you light, entertaining reading.

LaBrava ranks among the best of the Leonard novels that I've read. The dialogue sizzles, the characters pop and the plot is a coherent, twisty thrill ride. As always, Leonard creates a world and a prose style so vivid and unique that it could only be his own.

When he was twelve, Joe LaBrava fell in love with femme fatale movie actress Jean Shaw. Now an ex-Secret Service agent turned photographer living in a Miami hotel, LaBrava runs into Shaw, who's being menaced by a couple of mysterious thugs. It's up to him to save his boyhood crush from her enemies, but like the characters she played on the silver screen, Jean Shaw may not be what she seems.

In classic Leonard style, the villains are more interesting than the heroes. LaBrava gives us two excellent ones: redneck security guard Richard Nobles and deadly Cuban go-go dancer Cundo Rey. Leonard is always comfortable writing villains and the segments from Nobles' and Cundo's points of view are some of the strongest in the novel.

LaBrava himself is a pretty solid main character, too, although he gets upstaged by Nobles, Cundo and Franny Kaufman, a girl with wild hair who lives at his hotel. Leonard has an incredible gift for character and dialogue; nearly all of the major players in LaBrava are memorable in some way.

If Leonard tends to have a fault, it's his plots. Generally, they're either too loose and unstructured or they're too structured and overly predictable. LaBrava strikes a nice balance. The story moves swiftly, keeps you guessing and delivers one major shock mid-book that catapults the novel to even higher tension. So what if the climax is a bit expected? This is definitely one of Leonard's most tightly-plotted novels.

His prose remains a gift. Leonard ignores all the rules of punctuation and grammar to get the story told, and he does it without seeming pretentious. Other writers attempting his style would seem like authors deliberately trying to be "experimental" or "cutting-edge." Not Leonard. He is simply telling the story in a direct, true-to-life way. From his pen drop gems like "I see 'em come in with no socks on, I know they've got a portfolio full of social commentary." There's such a striking combination of wit and realism in his writing.

There was a discussion when LaBrava went around the block from Ocean Drive to Collins and headed south to Fifth Street to get on the MacArthur Causeway. Maurice said, we're going north, what do you want to go south for? Why didn't you go up to Forty-first street, take the Jessica Tuttle? LaBrava said, because there's traffic up there on the beach, it's still the season. Maurice said, eleven o'clock at night? You talk about traffic, it's nothing what it used to be like. You could've gone up, taken the Seventy-ninth Street Causeway. LaBrava said, you want to drive or you want me to?--- (page 11)

The novel's ending is fairly satisfying, if a little truncated-feeling. Another few pages of wrap-up would have been welcome, but that's not Leonard. He rarely has much falling action; he prefers to wrap things up at the climax.

In short, LaBrava is another excellent novel from Leonard, probably one of the finer ones of his that I've read. It's a highly original story of crime that's neither a mystery nor a thriller, but something all its own. And Elmore Leonard can write a line of dialogue like practically no other author.

NEXT UP: Death of a Gossip by M.C. Beaton, a popular author of "cosy mysteries"

Three Men Out by Rex Stout

Three Men Out by Rex Stout, 1955

Although not particularly well known to contemporary readers, Rex Stout and his series of Nero Wolfe novels are a crucial step in the establishment of the mystery/crime genre. They're also enormous fun: neatly plotted, engagingly written, funny and devastatingly well-characterized.

When Stout first started writing the series, there were two basic kinds of crime fiction: the English "drawing-room" mysteries, as written by Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, and the hard boiled American pulp/noir, as written by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.

Stout ingeniously combined the two with the characters of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Wolfe, a snobby, brilliant gourmand and eccentric who leaves his Manhattan brownstone on only the rarest of occasions, is very much an old-school detective in the style of Hercule Poirot.

His assistant and companion, Archie Goodwin, is a street-smart man of action with a charmingly laconic style of narrating the adventures of his sedentary employer. He's not a Watson who stays on the sidelines of the story either; he's usually right in the thick of it.

These two and their wonderfully structured life in Wolfe's huge house are a perfect framework for Stout's plots, which, like the main characters, are an offbeat mixture of the old and new.

About half of the books in the Wolfe saga are novels. The rest are books containing three or four short novellas. Three Men Out has three middling-length novellas in it and they're all excellent. Stout's style is better suited to tighter, shorter stories; his full-length novels can sometimes drag.

The first entry, "Invitation to Murder," is probably the weakest overall, but it's still a crackerjack tale of crime. The novella's middle sags a tad and the mystery is not as intriguing as could be, but when Wolfe arrives on the scene things perk up significantly.

Number two, "The Zero Clue," is even better, a crisp, entertaining narrative that forces the fastidious Wolfe to put up with a house full of policemen, as well as his nemesis, Inspector Cramer. The puzzle would be pretty much impossible for the layman to unravel, but it's terrific fun to watch Wolfe do it.

"This Won't Kill You," the final story in the book, nicely represents what makes the series so unusual. In one novella we have classic body-in-the-library mystery (there's a dramatic unveiling with all suspects present; Wolfe must solve the crime in a single location), hard boiled pulp (Archie's take-down of a possibly insane druggist armed with sulphuric acid) and a dollop of pure originality (the whole affair takes place at a baseball park).

All three novellas have tropes and devices in common--like Christie, Stout loves to develop a small group of suspects--but unlike many mystery writers, Stout has a knack for keeping his plots fresh, rather than just re-doing the same story over and over.

His prose, as narrated by Archie Goodwin, is quirky and entertaining. A few awkward, outdated words and phrases present themselves to the modern reader, but in a way that adds to the charm. Stout is very good at characters and his dialogue is fast-paced and believable, as is Archie's inner monologue. It's always nice to find a writer who can mix wonderful stories with prose that goes beyond the ordinary. In this passage, a potential client is being interviewed by Wolfe:

Weighing rather less than half as much as Nero Wolfe, he was lost in the red leather chair three steps from the end of Wolfe's desk. Comfortably filling his own outsized chair behind the desk, Wolfe was scowling at the would-be client, Mr. Herman Lewent of New York and Paris. I, at my desk with notebook and pen, was neutral, because it was Friday and I had a weekend date, and if Lewent's job was urgent and we took it, good-bye weekend.

Wolfe, as usual when solicited, was torn. He hated to work, but he loved to eat and drink, and his domestic and professional establishment in the old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street, including the orchids in the plant rooms on the roof, had an awful appetite for dollars. The only source of dollars was his income as a private detective, and at that moment, there on his desk near the edge, was a little stack of lettuce with a rubber band around it. Herman Lewent, who put it there, had stated that it was a thousand dollars. ---(page 3)

Wittier than Christie, more character-based than Doyle, more elegant than the pulp authors of the period, Stout is a wonderful find for the consummate mystery lover, as is Three Men Out, a sharp, focused collection of very good stories.

The Wolfe/Archie series as a whole is quite excellent, and so much fun to follow. Like P.G. Wodehouse (who was a friend and admirer of Stout's), Stout has created a whole universe teeming with recurring characters and little nods to previous adventures. Three Men Out is an exceedingly strong, highly entertaining installment in the ongoing saga.

NEXT UP: Probably The Fiery Cross. Stay tuned.

Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin

Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin, 1990

The first novel in Ian Rankin's celebrated Inspector Rebus series, Knots and Crosses, (1987), blew me away with its emotional power, well-written mystery and its compelling, complex main character.

I'm tempted to say that Hide and Seek is even better. It is not as emotional or as quite as psychologically complicated, but it is a riveting, dark look at a rotting city, as well as being an excellent, ever-twisting mystery. It's a small masterpiece of crime fiction.

John Rebus, a detective in the Scottish city of Edinburgh, arrives on the scene of an apparent overdose, a drug-addicted young man who lies dead surrounded by signs of Satanic worship.

Rebus thinks there's more to the case than a simple overdose. With the aid of the deceased's rebellious girlfriend and a wary young constable, Rebus follows a trail of drugs, blackmail, occultism and murder, a trail that leads from the city's lowest depths to its most affluent heights.

The most important thing in a mystery novel is the mystery itself, and this one's a doozy. Rankin is a master of pacing. He doesn't go for big action scenes, but there's an undercurrent of constant danger that keeps you frantically flipping pages.

The detective is the second-most important component of the mystery novel, and in John Rebus, Rankin has hit a gold mine. Rebus is cranky, lonely, self-destructive and often cruel to his inferiors at the police station, yet he's a surprisingly likable protagonist. He's the kind of fascinating character that I would willingly follow through fifteen or twenty books.

The large cast of supporting characters is equally well-drawn. One of the highlights of the novel for me was the partnership of Rebus and young, up-and-coming constable Brian Holmes. Their relationship never became a one-dimensional buddy-movie rivalry; it's nuanced and understated.

Rankin's prose and dialogue is as quirky and razor-sharp as in the previous installment, a nice combination of readable and poetic:

What was it the old man, Vanderhyde, had said said? Something about muddying the water. Rebus had the gnawing feeling that the solution to these many conundrums was a simple one, as crystal clear as one could wish. The problem was that extraneous stories were being woven into the whole. Do I mix my metaphors? Very well then, I mix my metaphors. All that counted was getting to the bottom of the pool, muddy or no, and bringing up that tiny cache of treasure called the truth.

He knew, too, that the problem was one of classification. He had to break the interlinked stories into separate threads, and work from those. At the moment, he was guilty of trying to weave them all into a pattern, a pattern that might not be there. By separating them all, maybe he'd be in with a chance of solving each. ---(pages 152-153)

Perhaps best of all, the novel's conclusion is perfect, a difficult feat to pull off in a mystery novel. The central puzzle is satisfyingly resolved, we get a short, intense burst of action and then some sly set-up for the rest of the series.

As much as I enjoyed Knots and Crosses, Hide and Seek is in some ways a stronger, more mature novel. It's a thrilling, sometimes shockingly deep ride into the dark side of humanity, and I loved every page.

NEXT UP: The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett.

All Mortal Flesh by Julia Spencer-Fleming

All Mortal Flesh by Julia Spencer-Fleming, 2006

I recently met Julia Spencer-Fleming at a book festival. She was charming, witty and personable, and I was lucky enough to get two of my books autographed. Her Millers Kill series is truly superior mystery fiction, and All Mortal Flesh is the best one yet. It's a pretty incredible read.

During the previous four novels, Russ Van Alstyne and Clare Fergusson have faced down murderers, helicopter crashes, near-drowning and bombs. But the stories have all been crimes that they are investigating, not crimes that directly involve them.

The fifth installment changes that with its jolting shocker of a beginning: Russ's wife Linda is found murdered and mutilated in their home, mere weeks after the two of them seperated because of Russ's feelings for Clare.

Russ goes on the hunt for Linda's killer, aided by the increasingly guilty Clare. Things become even more complicated when a state policewoman becomes convinced that Russ is the murderer, forcing him to go on the run.

I really can't say anything more about the plot except that A) it would make Agatha Christie green with envy, B) it's stay-up-all-night-riveting and C) it delivers one shocking twist that ranks among the finest I've read in a contemporary mystery.

But, as always, it's the two main characters that really matter, and both Russ and Clare are in top form here. The two have emerged as such deep, well-rounded creations, and their relationship only gets more compelling and complex in this novel.

Making the novel revolve around Linda's death is a brilliant move. This is what fans of the series have been waiting for since the first book, but Spencer-Fleming masterfully demonstrates that this event can only push Russ and Clare farther apart.

The prose is better than ever, too. Spencer-Fleming brought her A-game to this novel and it shows. Russ finding out about his wife's murder:

The terrible thing was here. He felt himself crack open, his jaw unhinge, his lungs constrict. His field of vision shrank, and his head filled with a loud, dry-edged shuffle as his mind laid down every card in its deck. Linda relaxing in her favorite chair at the end of the day. The two of them shouting at each other over the hood of her car. A funeral--he had never planned a funeral, didn't know how to do it, didn't know who to call. Oh, God, he was going to grow feeble and old alone, without his wife, his beautiful wife. . .

The way it would feel, his finger tightening on the trigger as he pumped onetwothreefourfive rounds into her killer. Just like that.

Memory. Guilt. Confusion. Self-pity.

Rage. --(page 37)

The plot twists and turns until the teriffic climax, which brings the mystery to an unexpected and satisfying close. There's no over-the-top action, but it's an excellent conclusion. It's the shattering emotional moment that closes the novel that really leaves you hungry for the next installment, though.

All Mortal Flesh is a triumphant acheivment for Spencer-Fleming and the series. It's a pretty fantastic novel, from every angle. It's a wonderful mystery, but it's also a deep, insightful look at a tragic love triangle.

NEXT UP: The Hard Way, by Lee Child.

Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin

Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin, 1987

Although Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus series is wildly popular in the UK, it's lesser known in the US. The seventeen-book series has a reputation for being at the top of the crime fiction genre. I definitely expected to enjoy Knots and Crosses, the first Rebus novel, but I didn't expect to fall in love with it forty pages in.

Rankin is just so good. His prose is a marriage of toughened noir narration and lyrical description. His dialogue is lean and believable. His main character, John Rebus, is a spectacularly realized creation.

The novel's plot is straight out of the police procedural fiction handbook. Inspector John Rebus is an asocial, hard-drinking police inspector in the crime-ridden Scottish city of Edinburgh. He has a history of nervous breakdowns, a young daughter and a dark past, a past that comes back to haunt him when a serial strangler begins terrorizing the city and sending Rebus cryptic messages.

The plot may be classic, but Rankin's style is so unique and his characters so compelling that it feels brand-new.

In a lot of ways, the book is more of a character study than a straight crime novel. We really get to know Rebus and yet he remains a bit of a mystery, to the readers and to himself. He's basically a good, moral man, yet he has a habit of stealing rolls from a bakery for his breakfast.

The mystery plot is really more of a Jekyll and Hyde tale. Rebus and his opposite number are two sides of the same coin. One is good and one is evil, but it is more complex than that. As the killer's fiendish plan brilliantly unfolds, we realize that the question isn't who, but why. The novel's final third is as thrilling a piece of mystery fiction as any I've read.

Rankin's prose is beautiful, sometimes hard-bitten and cruel, sometimes more poetic. He can invoke a sense of place or a state of mind with ease.

While a police-car slept nearby, its occupants unable to do anything save curse the mountains of rules and regulations and rue the deep chasms of crime. It was everywhere, crime. It was the life-force and the blood and the balls of life: to cheat, to edge, to take that body-swerve at authority, to kill. The higher up you climbed into crime, the more subtly you began to move back towards legitimacy, until a handful of lawyers only could crack open your system, and they were always affordable, always on hand to be bribed. Dostoevsky had known all that, clever old bastard. He had felt the stick burning from both ends. (page 42)

The novel is perhaps a bit short, and there's a subplot involving a crime reporter that was not quite at the same level of the rest of the book, but these are very small faults. Knots and Crosses is an excellent novel on any level and a pretty fantastic crime novel. The climax is perfect, which is a very rare achievement in this genre. It doesn't go overboard on action scenes; the book is too cerebral to resort to that.

But it's cynical, beaten-down John Rebus that has me excited for future installments. He promises to be a wonderful series character, at least based on this superb first entry.

NEXT UP: The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

The Hollow by Agatha Christie

The Hollow by Agatha Christie, 1946

I've always liked Agatha Christie mysteries, but very few of them really excite me (1934's Murder on the Orient Express and 1926's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd being two of the exceptions). They're quick, pleasant reads with familiar, cozy settings and simple characterizations. In a way, they're the literary equivalent of a crossword puzzle or a brain-teaser.

The Hollow really isn't much different from the typical Christie whodunit, but it's clear that Christie (1890-1976) was trying to branch out a little bit with this particular novel.

As always, the book revolves around a small group of English characters (most of them distantly and confusingly related) who come together for a weekend party in the countryside.

Among them is John Christow, a brash, arrogant doctor obsessed with finding a cure for a rare disease. He's also an insufferable jerk who bullies both his timid wife and his opinionated mistress. He also has a jealous ex-fiance in the background, hungry for revenge.

One morning, while hanging around alone by his host's swimming pool, John is shot:

[S]uddenly, John was acutely conscious of danger. How long had he been sitting here? Half an hour? An hour? There was someone watching him. Someone--

And that click was-- of course it was--

He turned sharply, a man very quick in his reactions. But he was not quick enough. His eyes widened in surprise, but there was no time for him to make a sound.

The shot rang out and he fell, awkwardly, sprawled out by the edge of the swimming pool.

A dark stain welled up slowly on his left side and trickled slowly on to the concrete of the pool edge; and from there dripped red into the blue water. (page 71)

With half a dozen quirky suspects and a missing murder weapon, the police are baffled. Luckily, master Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot is just next door and hot on the track of the murderer.

As you can see, the actual murder doesn't occur until page 71, which is unusually late in the game for a Christie mystery and the preceding 70 pages are a little painful. Things move along at a snail's pace and very little happens.

Christie was a competent writer. Sometimes she would hit on a nice simile or display a dash of wit. She does well when dealing with interrogations and sleuthing and riddle-solving, but elongated scenes of domestic life are not her forte. Her characters are too thin to be interesting without a murder involved.

Still, Christie is trying to make this novel a little more personal and more character-based, and she partially succeeds. There's a little more of an emotional punch than usual.

The mystery itself is solid as usual. The clues are well-placed and the conclusion is surprising if not brilliant. Other than the overlong beginning, the book is well paced.

Hercule Poirot, Christie's fussy main detective, has always been a favorite of mine. He's just fun, with his complete lack of physical courage and his sharp psychological insight. Unfortunately, he seems to be shoehorned into The Hollow in a rather clumsy fashion. He's off-stage for large chunks of the novel and plays no significant role until the end.

Despite some uneven and unexpected elements, The Hollow is a pretty standard Agatha Christie whodunit. It's a good read--especially once you've gotten past the first 70 pages--but it doesn't wander far from the expected formula, which makes for an entertaining, but forgettable experience.

NEXT UP: The 1982 Stephen King novella collection Different Seasons.

Soft Touch by John D. MacDonald

Soft Touch by John D. MacDonald, 1958

John D. MacDonald (1916-1986) is not a showy author. What he does, and does incredibly well, is tell a story and wind it tighter and tighter. His tales of crime and suspense are short and simple--MacDonald's plots are typical of his era's pulp fiction--but incredibly effective.

Soft Touch is the story of Jerry Jamison, a middle-aged married man trapped in a dull suburban life and a loveless marriage to an alcoholic floozy.

Enter his old war buddy Vince, who has a proposition: an easy two-man heist that will leave him and Jerry with over three million dollars in cash, no strings attached.

Jerry goes through with the robbery and gets his share of the loot, only to see his life fall apart in a tangle of greed, betrayal and even murder.

The story itself is not highly original, but MacDonald handles it like a master. The novel is incredibly brief, only 160 pages. I usually like a thicker book, but it's just the right length for the paranoia-inducing story.

Jerry himself is an interesting character to base the story around. He considers himself one of the good guys, at least until he gets his first glimpse of the money. His lust for wealth leads him down a very, very dark path and he eventually murders both Vince and his wife in the novel's most disturbing segment.

MacDonald doesn't cater to the thrill-a-minute crowd. Even though the novel is very brief, Jerry only faces down thugs at the very end. MacDonald, unlike so many other mystery/suspense authors, understands that it's tension, not action that really makes a novel riveting.

Despite his reputation as an author of pulp fiction (most famously the Travis McGee series), MacDonald's prose is tight, yet packed with wit and insight:

A one-dollar bill has a humble and homely look. A five-dollar bill has a few meek pretensions. A ten is vigorous and forthright and honest, like a scout leader. A twenty, held to the ear like a seashell, emits the far-off sound of nightclub music. A fifty wears the faint sneer of race track. It has a portly look, needs a shave, wears a yellow diamond on the little finger. And a hundred is very haughty indeed.

Then there is quantity. A wad of ones in the bottom of a grubby pocket, or fanned between the fingers in an alley game. Or three frayed fives in a flat cheap billfold. Then there is the flashy billfold, padded fat with ones and fives and tens and twenties. Next step is the platinum bill clip, with its dainty burden of twenties and fifties, crisp and folded but once. After that is the unmarked envelope with its cool sheaf of hundreds, slipped from hand to hand in the corridor of a government building. (page 48).

The novel doesn't have pretensions of its own. None of MacDonald's work does. He clearly understood what he was doing. He was a storyteller, and he was an excellent one. Soft Touch is a good read, not as excellent as MacDonald's The Only Girl in the Game (1960), but probably the equal of his A Bullet for Cinderella (1955).

Soft Touch is currently out of print, which is too bad. MacDonald's crime novels are boiled-down little masterpieces of the genre and Soft Touch is no exception. It's a good novel, written by an excellent author.

NEXT UP: I'll be reviewing Ian McEwan's modern classic Atonement.