Over the years, several bad guys have tried to stop Spenser by going after his girlfriend, Susan. Somehow not one of them managed to even seriously inOver the years, several bad guys have tried to stop Spenser by going after his girlfriend, Susan. Somehow not one of them managed to even seriously injure her. It makes one wish that Boston had more competent criminals.
Spenser gets hired by Dennis Doherty to find out if his wife is cheating on him. Following adulterous spouses isn’t Spenser’s favorite part of the detective business, but he takes the job and quickly finds out that the missus is indeed stepping out on Dennis. What should be a routine gig takes a violent turn with people getting dead, and Spenser is likely the next target. Fearing for Susan’s safety, Spenser whistles up some of his favorite thugs to protect her while he tries to put a stop to it.
Spenser’s experience with Susan cheating on him before their temporary separation way back when has him relating to Dennis to an extreme degree so that he seems to go above and beyond to stand up for the guy. Because the threat to Susan is a part of this, she’s in the book even more than usual, and that ain’t a good thing. Although Spenser does get fed up with her at one point and yells at her a little. Which was fun, but I wanted more. At this point, anything less than Spenser giving her a brutal pistol whipping wouldn’t be enough to make me happy.
This one again shows that RBP had run out of gas with the repeating of the same observations, themes and dialogue. The jokes about Susan being a Harvard graduate were tired many books ago, but it’s still used at least four times in this one. The rest of it is all too familiar to any long time Spenser reader. It’s not bad. It’s just been done before.
Treasure of the Rubbermaids 19: Big Rock Candy Mountain
The on-going discoveries of priceless books and comics found in a stack of Rubbermaid containerTreasure of the Rubbermaids 19: Big Rock Candy Mountain
The on-going discoveries of priceless books and comics found in a stack of Rubbermaid containers previously stored and forgotten at my parent’s house and untouched for almost 20 years. Thanks to my father dumping them back on me, I now spend my spare time unearthing lost treasures from their plastic depths.
Francis Phelan is living the romantic life of a hobo during the Great Depression. Drifting from town to town by hopping trains and with no responsibilities to tie him down, Francis enjoys the company of his fellow bums as they share cans of beans and jugs of wine.
OK, that’s bullshit. Any notions of the hobo lifestyle having some kind of appeal are dealt with quickly and brutally here. Francis’s existence is a daily grind of trying to avoid freezing or starving to death, and a hobo’s corpse quickly becomes food for wild dogs. With few teeth left in his head and a simple shoestring being beyond his means, Francis dispels the myth of the carefree hobo. Particularly cringe worthy is a scene in which he is trying to take advantage of a visit to a friend’s apartment by cleaning himself up and his underwear falls to pieces when he tries to wash them in the sink. Think about how skeevy those drawers had to be and tell me you want to hang out by the campfire under the bridge.
Francis is also dealing with a fair amount of guilt. He hit the rails the first time after killing a scab during a strike, and while he eventually came home after that incident, another tragic turn sent him on the bum for good when Francis dropped his infant son who broke his neck in the fall. (Way to go, butterfingers!) His life as a hobo added to his regrets as the rough existence of a drifter forced him to kill others along the way. As a wise man once sang:
Nothing beats the hobo life Stabbing folks with my hobo knife
Back in his old home town of Albany, Francis is stuck trying to work off a debt to a lawyer and dealing with the many ghosts that his past has haunted him with. He’s also trying to look out for his hobo girlfriend Helen and his buddy Rudy. Running into his grown sons provides the shocking realization that his family doesn’t hold a grudge for him abandoning them, but can Francis ever forgive himself?
Francis story is sad and compelling, and he’s an interesting character. He makes no excuses for the things he’s done or how he lives. Despite his capacity for violence, he doesn’t look for trouble. He’s generous with what little he has as well as compassionate. He’s got a kind of cheerful pragmatism despite the regrets he has.
The story of Francis makes this worth checking out, and it’s certainly well written, but I’m a little shocked that it won a Pulitzer. It seems very good, but not at a level of greatness that kind of prize would indicate. ...more
Treasure of the Rubbermaids 18: The Great Train Robbery
The on-going discoveries of priceless books and comics found in a stack of Rubbermaid containerTreasure of the Rubbermaids 18: The Great Train Robbery
The on-going discoveries of priceless books and comics found in a stack of Rubbermaid containers previously stored and forgotten at my parent’s house and untouched for almost 20 years. Thanks to my father dumping them back on me, I now spend my spare time unearthing lost treasures from their plastic depths.
(Note: For the purposes of this review, any references to the movie are about the 1974 version with Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw. I like to pretend the remake with John Travolta and Denzel Washington doesn’t exist.)
In the early 1970s, four armed men hijack a New York subway car with sixteen passengers and demand a ransom of one million dollars be paid in an hour or they’ll start shooting hostages at the rate of one a minute. Various city, police and transit officials scramble to meet the deadline while dealing with their internal politics.
There are a couple of things setting this apart from the typical crime thriller. The third person narration shifts from the individual hijackers, the passengers, the cops, the politicians, and assorted other people. The different viewpoint makes the scope bigger than just a subway car held hostage underground.
Another departure from the genre is that no one in the book acts heroic in a traditional sense. The Walter Matthau character in the movie is a composite of a couple of people from the print version, but there’s no one individual that negotiates with the hijackers and then takes to the streets to track them down. A police officer hiding in the tunnel does something incredibly stupid for no reason that gets a hostage killed. There’s a subway official who is more worried about the upcoming rush hour than the people on the train. The mayor just wants to stay in bed and nurse his head cold.
Even the hostages seem more concerned with things other than the threat of imminent death. An undercover policeman can live with being branded a coward if he doesn’t act, but he’s more worried about his relationship with his hippie girlfriend. A prostitute thinks that if she stands up her next appointment that she’ll lose one of her most profitable regular johns. There’s a nicely done element of denial that there’s little panic or real feelings of fear among the passengers despite having every reason to think they could be dead in an hour.
In a weird way, the most well adjusted guy may be the leader of the hijackers, Ryder. A former mercenary who ran out of profitable wars, Ryder has a unique outlook that he has boiled down to his personal motto: You live or you die. And Ryder doesn’t think it matters much way either way. His implacable calm and refusal to budge on his demand of one million dollars in one hour makes him the only character that seems capable of getting what he wants in a city full of angry and irrational people that react to everything like overgrown children.
This has the grit and grime of other ‘70s New York crime stories like The French Connection, Serpico or the early Matt Scudder novels by Lawrence Block, and it also delivers a kind of day-in-the-life component that gives you an idea of how a big city of the era would react to a crisis.
Random trivia note: The hijackers in the book are identified by name, but in the movie they use code names like Mr. Blue and Mr. Green. IMDB tells me that Tarantino was inspired by this idea for his characters in Reservoir Dogs....more
Imagine an America where the wealthy people in power rule a system in which they are free to reap enormous profits through unregulated businesses whilImagine an America where the wealthy people in power rule a system in which they are free to reap enormous profits through unregulated businesses while every privilege that society can offer is given to them. These titans of capitalism underpay their employees for hard labor that lasts at least twelve hours a day in unsafe conditions with no overtime or benefits. If any of these workers dare complain, then the government will happily label them as dangerous socialist terrorists who threaten the American way of life and do anything within its power to crush any attempts to organize the labor.
Ah, it’s enough to make a right wing conservative weep with joy.
Danny Coughlin is a Boston patrolman at the end of World War I. Since his father is a legendary and politically connected police captain, it seems like Danny’s got a bright future ahead of him with the department. Danny’s father and some other power brokers offer him a chance to make detective by going undercover in various subversive groups including the social club of the Boston Police Department which is looking more and more like a union.
Danny doesn’t want to cause problems for his fellow police men who have been shafted by the city. Working a minimum of almost 80 hours a week at a wage below the poverty level and forced to pay for their own uniforms and equipment, the men of the BPD literally can’t feed their families but when their grievances are brought up, the men in charge insist that the cops are vital government personnel and therefore can’t strike so they can safely be told to go fuck themselves. When the men complain about this treatment, the politicians are shocked and insist that anybody who wants to make enough money to buy his kids some food is nothing but a damn Bolshevik. Danny eventually finds an actual danger to the public in the form of a bomb happy anarchist, but his superiors continue to be more concerned with those who might force change on the economic system.
Meanwhile, a black man named Luther Laurence, who is on the run following a messy incident with a local kingpin in Tulsa, is trying to lay low in Boston and ends up working for Danny’s family. Luther has a hard enough time just working around the racism that runs through all aspects of life, but things get worse when he runs afoul of a psychotic police crony of Danny’s father. Danny and Luther eventually strike up a friendship that defies the odds as they get caught up in the conflict between the old world and the changes being forced upon it.
Lehane’s books have often a crime oriented social component to it, and it seems like his time working for HBO’s The Wire encouraged him to add a depth and complexity to his work in this historical fiction. This is the story of a bygone era, but it seems familiar since the tactics employed by the powerful are still in use. One of their favorites is getting half of the working class to turn on itself by claiming that anyone who questions the fairness of the economic system is an American hating socialist as well as probably being a secret terrorist. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
The only parts that really didn’t work for me were the interludes with Babe Ruth. It seems like Lehane was trying to point out some things regarding a common guy who could barely read becoming rich and famous as a city ripped itself apart while refusing to pay its police a living wage, but those segments just didn’t seem to sync up with the other action.
Still, it’s one of Lehane’s best and most ambitious books yet. ...more
Treasure of the Rubbermaids 17: Marvel At Marvel’s Marvelous ‘Marvels’!
The on-going discoveries of priceless books and comics found in a stack of RubbTreasure of the Rubbermaids 17: Marvel At Marvel’s Marvelous ‘Marvels’!
The on-going discoveries of priceless books and comics found in a stack of Rubbermaid containers previously stored and forgotten at my parent’s house and untouched for almost 20 years. Thanks to my father dumping them back on me, I now spend my spare time unearthing lost treasures from their plastic depths.
I would hate to be a New Yorker in the Marvel universe because it seems like the city is constantly being threatened by super villains, invaded by aliens, flooded by pissed off Atlanteans, or beset by some other form of comic book mayhem. I’ll bet it’s impossible to get property insurance at all.
Comic book readers get a ring side seat and full explanations for everything that’s happening, but what would your average man on the street think about all this insanity? That’s what Marvels explores beautifully.
Phil Sheldon is a young newspaper photographer during the Great Depression who witnesses the public unveiling of the original Human Torch followed shortly after by the appearance of Namor the Sub-Mariner. Like most people, Sheldon is initially shocked and disturbed by these new super beings he thinks of as Marvels who routinely turn New York into a battleground. With the coming of WWII and the introduction of Captain America, Phil embraces the costumed heroes who fight the Nazis.
Years later in the early ‘60s, an explosion of superheroes creates an odd mix of emotions in Phil and the general public. The Fantastic Four and The Avengers are celebrities who get put on magazine covers while some don’t know whether Spider-Man is a good guy or a criminal, and the mutant X-Men are feared and persecuted. Phil’s work as a photojournalist puts him in the middle of almost every big event Marvel did during the Silver Age, and he frequently finds himself conflicted about how he feels about them.
This does a great job of exploring that idea of how the public responds to larger than life characters and events that make them feel scared and insignificant, and one of the things I’ve always liked about Marvel’s comics is how they've always portrayed the public's attitudes towards the superheroes as being full of contradictions. People cheer the heroes like Iron Man and Captain America, but some blame them for the fights that cause so much destruction. The mutants are the target of hatred and bigotry while stores sell clothing lines based on the many costumes of Wasp. New Yorkers will cheer on the Fantastic Four as they battle Galactus to save the entire world, but just days later their landlord will try to evict them from the Baxter Building for the danger they attract.
Phil’s a great character to use in the midst of this because he’s a decent, ordinary guy who is still fully capable of giving into his worst instincts at times. He makes a career out of documenting the craziness that comes with the superheroes and thinks deeply about what the heroes mean to all of them. At times he almost worships them but can easily swing to resentment and jealously. Phil’s attitude towards them mirror how the superheroes have always been portrayed with a mixture of admiration and fear in the Marvel comics.
The stunning artwork has a retro realism to it that really makes you feel like you’re looking at people wearing tights in the 1960s, yet still conveys all the wonder of seeing someone otherworldly like the Silver Surfer.
By showing us how one regular person reacted to some of Marvel’s greatest hits, this moving tribute to the past gives a fresh perspective on how fans relate to the characters in these wild and amazing stories....more
A year after stopping the Hulk’s rampage in New York and then beating an army of alien invaders to save the world, The Ultimates are now famous heroesA year after stopping the Hulk’s rampage in New York and then beating an army of alien invaders to save the world, The Ultimates are now famous heroes whose popularity has made their government sponsors SHIELD incredibly powerful and influential.
But it isn’t all peaches and gravy. SHIELD covered up that the Hulk is really the nerdy scientist Bruce Banner whose transformation was caused by a super soldier serum he was developing on the government dime so Banner spends his days hidden away and doped up in a cell while wracked with guilt over the hundreds of deaths he caused. Hank Pym (Giant Man) has been kicked off the team in disgrace after abusing his ex-wife and fellow Ultimate Janet (Wasp), and he’s desperate to get back into SHIELD’s good graces. Janet is realizing that having Captain America as her new boyfriend is kind of like dating a senior citizen.
The rest of the world is getting very nervous about America’s advantage in People of Mass Destruction and after Captain America is deployed on a rescue mission to the Mid East, there’s an international outcry against the use of super humans against foreign governments. Thor (Who is kind of a hippie in the Ultimate Marvel universe.) quits the Ultimates in protest while claiming that the US will soon be using them as soldiers for future invasions instead of to defend against super villains.
When the news breaks that Banner is The Hulk, the scandal causes further tension and forces a public trial that everyone knows will probably result in Bruce’s execution. Thor is blamed for the leak, but he denies it and claims there’s got to be a traitor on the team as well as warning that his brother Loki is on Earth and planning something big.
Nobody feels much like listening to Thor when they learn from the European super soldier team that the granola head claiming to be the Norse god of thunder is actually a former mental patient who stole some tech from Norway that gives him super powers and now he has to be stopped. The Ultimates reluctantly go after their former ally, but whether he’s a damn dirty hippie or a god, Thor is one powerful dude.
Millar provides a disturbing and interesting look at what the world would be like if the US really did have super powered people working for them. With politics, fame, money and power at stake, he created a story in which The Ultimates are getting increasingly uneasy about what they’re doing and who they’re doing it for. This is the kind of stuff that made the Ultimate universe a darker and more adult version of its original stories, and its comic’s gold for fan boys and girls. ...more
A little movie called The Avengers came out last week and grossed all the money that’s ever been printed by the US Treasury according to the entertainA little movie called The Avengers came out last week and grossed all the money that’s ever been printed by the US Treasury according to the entertainment news.
This will probably mean that a bunch of people who don’t ordinarily read comics will see the flick, get all excited to get more stories so they’ll rush to the comic book stores and grab something with Avengers in the title, and then probably be extremely disappointed when they don’t see anything that looks close to the movie because Joss Whedon smartly boiled his film down to several core members that have been on the team in it’s nearly 50 year history.
As a public service to people who don’t have boxes of comics preserved in Mylar wrappers in their basements, but who would like to read some of the funny books that inspired the movie, I humbly suggest you try The Ultimates.
“But wait, that’s not even called The Avengers. What’s that got to do with the movie?”
A lot actually, especially this volume. Marvel realized that their regular line of comics with decades of history was putting off potential new readers and launched a line that rebooted some of their most popular characters like Spider-Man and X-Men. For some reason they decided to rename the team in this version The Ultimates instead of The Ultimate Avengers like they did the other books in this line. I don’t know why. Maybe they got tired of everyone asking what exactly they were supposed to be avenging.
Anyhow, when it comes to the Marvel movies, the film makers have used elements from both the original and Ultimate lines, and Whedon borrowed several elements from this series for his film like the idea that Nick Fury and SHIELD essentially create the team, and this one involves huge alien invasion by the same guys that they fight in the film so this book will at least seem recognizable to the film fans.*
*Marvel has launched a tie-in book with the same characters as the movie called Avengers Assemble, too, but it’s only been out for a few months so there’s only going to be a few issues available.
Plus, it’s just a great comic story. Millar’s rebooted heroes are a slight twist on the original versions. Captain America is still a legendary hero from World War II, but he’s a bit more of a grumpy old Republican than the original Cap. (Millar has said that Ultimate Cap looks like Brad Pitt but smells like your grandpa.) Thor uses his hammer and lightning to lead anti-war and environmental protestors, and he may be an escaped mental patient rather than a god of thunder. Bruce Banner’s anger at being a geeky nerd make this version of the Hulk apt to eat people rather than just smashing them. Tony Stark is even more of a crazy drunken playboy than the Robert Downey Jr. portrayal of him. This also includes Hawkeye and Black Widow as well as original Avengers who didn’t make the film Hank and Janet Pym, but they’ve got severe domestic issues.
The fine folks at Onion’s AV Club have also provided some helpful info here....more
To most people a lullaby is a soothing song meant to help coax a child to sleep, but in Chuck Palahniuk’s hands it becomes a death spell that can killTo most people a lullaby is a soothing song meant to help coax a child to sleep, but in Chuck Palahniuk’s hands it becomes a death spell that can kill anyone. Of course, that’s not twisted enough for Chuckie P. so he had to throw in some witchcraft, necrophilia and dead babies to really make it a party.
Carl Streator is a newspaper reporter working on a feature about infant crib deaths, and he has his own tragic experience in that area. When Streator sees a book containing an African chant at several homes where the baby died, he does more digging and discovers that it‘s a culling song that can be used to kill just by thinking it. Since Carl has a few anger problems, this leads to a lot of deaths of people who annoy him as he tries to get control.
Streator seeks help from Helen Hoover Boyle a realtor who specializes in flipping haunted houses and who also knows the culling song. He convinces her that they should take a road trip to destroy all the copies of the book, but her secretary Mona, a witch wannabe, and her animal rights activist and all around asshole of a boyfriend Oyster end up coming along for the ride. Mona also convinces them that the culling song probably came from a powerful spell book they should try to locate.
The culling song is a nifty hook for the story and Streator’s tendency to off anyone who’s pissing him off provides some dark hilarity. My biggest problem with this one is that Streator is a complete moron. He instantly realizes the chaos that would occur if anyone else figured out the culling song and how to use it, but then he promptly blabs about it to Mona and a disgusting EMT with a penchant for corpse sex. He often can't control himself with the culling song and kills people for offenses like having their TV’s too loud or bumping into him on the street, yet somehow he manages not to whack the ultra-annoying Oyster.
Then he invites Oyster and Mona on the road to destroy the book. So you’re trying to destroy a dangerous spell that can kill people and you bring along a guy who spends every waking moment telling you all the crimes people have committed against animals. Guess how well that turns out?...more
Ever wonder why comic book fan boys are a little nuts?
Well, for starters, there’s the kind of stuff we have to keep track off. Like this for example:
WEver wonder why comic book fan boys are a little nuts?
Well, for starters, there’s the kind of stuff we have to keep track off. Like this for example:
Way back in days of yore, Marvel just did one book called The Avengers. Several years ago, they essentially destroyed the original team to make way for stuff like The New Avengers and Young Avengers and The Mighty Avengers and Dark Avengers and Avengers Academy.
As that was going on, Marvel had also launched it’s Ultimate line of comics as a way of rebooting and updating their characters and when they did a version of the Avengers, they chose to call them The Ultimates instead of Ultimate Avengers like they did Ultimate Spider-Man or Ultimate X-Men. And then, they released some animated movies called Ultimate Avengers which borrowed ideas from both the original and revamped title. Oh, and if that wasn’t enough to screw you up, then they actually launched an Ultimate Avengers title.
Plus, you have to wrap your head around the idea that the Ultimate version of Nick Fury had been changed from the original recipe version of an old white dude to a black superspy based on Samuel L. Jackson, and now Samuel L. Jackson is going to play Nick Fury in The Avengers movie coming out later and for god’s sake there’s even a joke in this comic about how Samuel L. Jackson would play Nick Fury in a movie even though it was written years before the first Iron Man movie where Samuel L. Jackson did that cameo as Nick Fury after the credits that kind of started this concept for an Avengers movie and there’s another joke in this about being smashed like Robert Downey Jr. which is really funny because now he’s playing Iron Man but this all happened before he was Iron Man and they talk about Brad Pitt playing Captain America but Cap is now played by Chris Evans who was also the Human Torch is those terrible Fantastic Four movies but he was really good in Captain America where they did a reference to the original Human Torch not the one that Chris Evans played in the Fantastic Four movies but ha-ha it’s a Human Torch reference and oh by the way Captain America was dead for a while but he’s back now and Joss Whedon who in addition to creating Buffy, the Vampire Slayer also has written comics like X-Men and now he’s directed/written The Avengers movie and a few years ago he was writing a Wonder Woman movie for DC but they fired him and don’t you think they feel stupid now and wish they’d kept him on and I wonder if that new Wonder Woman TV show that David Kelly developed was really so bad that it couldn’t get on the air or if it was just TV executives being stupid and why are they rebooting Spider-Man instead of just continuing stories from the first movies and there’s no way Dark Knight Rises is gonna be as good as The Dark Knight but it should still be pretty good and I really liked that X-Men: First Class movie and I guess they’re doing a sequel to it and…..
Wait. What was I talking about?
Oh, The Ultimates. It’s a really great comic with a modern twist on the superheroes as both celebrities and political pawns.
And Marvel also brought back a book just called Avengers with a lot of the old line-up like Thor and Iron Man and Captain America and Hawkeye which you know they did because the movie is coming out but it’s still really cool to see kind of a classic Avengers line-up but I hate the way they stuck Wolverine and Spider-Man in there just for sales and….etc. etc....more
The on-going discoveries of priceless books and comics found in a stack of Rubbermaid containers previously storTreasure of the Rubbermaids 16: YUUUP!
The on-going discoveries of priceless books and comics found in a stack of Rubbermaid containers previously stored and forgotten at my parent’s house and untouched for almost 20 years. Thanks to my father dumping them back on me, I now spend my spare time unearthing lost treasures from their plastic depths.
When I was picking my next Rubbermaid Treasure to read, this one jumped out at me because Dan got me hooked on the A&E reality series Storage Wars. For those unfamiliar with the show, storage lockers with unpaid fees are auctioned off to bidders who only get a few minutes to look at the contents without going into the locker or opening any boxes. Some of these bidders are thrift store owners looking for stock and some are hustlers who make their living in the swap meet and flea market trade. While used clothing, furniture and tools make up the bread-n-butter of this second hand economy, what really gets all the bidders amped up is the possibility of finding valuables or rare collectibles that they can sell for a small fortune. Antiques, jewelry, coin collections, rare toys and other assorted bits of odd treasure are sometimes pulled out of the lockers and it’s that ‘JACKPOT!’ element that makes the show compelling.
Storage Wars and its spin-off Storage Wars: Texas are part of a bigger trend that capitalizes on everyone’s fantasy that Aunt Petunia’s collection of coffee cans you inherited are really worth a fortune or that vase you picked up at a garage sale for fifty cents dates back to the Ming Dynasty. Antique Roadshow, Pawn Stars and American Pickers all capitalize on this fascination with finding treasure among junk And if someone ends up with more trash than treasure, they get to be on Hoarders.
Larry McMurty’s publishers should think about re-releasing this book and doing some creative marketing to tap into this trend. Written in the mid-80s, the book’s narrator is Jack McGriff, a former rodeo cowboy from Texas turned ‘scout’ who makes his living by cruising America in his Cadillac and looking for valuables hidden in estate sales, flea markets and second hand stores. Jack loves buying objects like well made antiques or rare curiosities like the jewel encrusted hubcaps from one of Rudolph Valentino’s cars, but once he’s acquired something, he wants to flip it for a profit as quickly as possible so he doesn’t hang onto the things he buys. As a self-described superstar of the flea market circuit, Jack knows a variety of oddball traders and collectors all across the country.
Jack has journeyed to Washington D.C. to unload some merchandise and visit his rich friend Boog and his wife Boss. Jack seems to have the same desire to acquire women that he does for finding objects. He’s got two ex-wives in Texas, and openly lusts after Boss to Boog’s amusement. Then Jack starts a fling with a beautiful woman who owns an art gallery named Cindy.
Cindy is engaged and an unapologetic social climber who only wants a no-strings relationship, and Jack tries to keep her attention by proposing a western exhibit made up of cowboy boots that he’ll acquire, including the pair that Billy the Kid was wearing when he was killed. However, once Cindy starts making increasing demands on his time and attention, Jack becomes attracted to a single mother and antique dealer named Jean. Unwillingly sucked into D.C.’s social intrigue and batted about by strong willed women, Jack falls into a funk and begins questioning a life spent questing over oddities.
McMurty created a really interesting character in Jack McGriff, but then he just didn’t seem to know what to do with him. The best stuff in the book revolves around Jack’s stories of objects he’s found and the unique people he’s met in the process. There’s a lot of funny stuff in this, and when McMurty sticks with themes about the value we put on objects, the transitory nature of ownership and the types of characters who have built their lives around this, it’s a very good book.
However, far too little time is spent on those ideas and far too much is spent with Jack being a unreliable jerk to the women in his life yet somehow also putting up with far too much crap from them in the process.
For a guy who supposedly spends all his time drifting around looking for stuff, he spends the first half of this book in Washington D.C. dealing with overstuffed politicians and arrogant journalists. There’s an odd subplot concerning the outlandish idea that the objects of the Smithsonian are being sold off secretly while fakes are put on display that Jack seems like he’ll get involved with, but ultimately that just drifts by with no resolution or consequence.
When he finally does hit the road, it’s on a doomed quest to satisfy Cindy whose increasingly outlandish demands would make any sane man leave her at the nearest airport or bus station, yet Jack continues to play along for some reason.
It’s still an entertaining read with a unique main character, but more horse trading and less romancing would have made it a better book....more
And you thought the tabloids were bad when they were just bugging phones….
After a child rapist and murderer gets released on a technicality, a New YorAnd you thought the tabloids were bad when they were just bugging phones….
After a child rapist and murderer gets released on a technicality, a New York columnist writes a piece openly wishing for the man’s death. Someone helps make this become a reality by stringing the pedophile up and then writes to the columnist taking credit and calling himself the “Will of the People”.
Apparently murder is just like eating potato chips because Will can’t stop after just one and begins writing more letters identifying other targets like a Mafia don and a violent anti-abortion advocate and then making good on his threats. Will becomes a media sensation as New York is both captivated and horrified by his actions.
When a prominent defense attorney is named as Will’s next target, the lawyer hires Matt Scudder to try and find the killer before he’s the next victim. Matt helps arrange some personal security, but isn’t sure what he can do that the police can’t to find the killer. He also finds his attention drawn to the case of a man in the late stages of AIDS who was murdered.
As usual, I find any of the Matt Scudder stories compelling reads that are some of the best crime novels that money can buy. This rereading of the series has definitely convinced me that Scudder deserves to be in The Detective Hall of Fame along with the likes of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. This one isn’t quite up to the creative high that Block was on from Eight Million Ways to Die through A Walk Among the Tombstones, but it’s still an intriguing mystery.
It’s also a bit of a departure because for the first half of the book, we don’t really see Matt do his usual detecting thing which usually consists of him wandering all over New York talking to various people. Instead, a lot of the legwork is glossed over, and it focuses on Matt thinking about a previous case and having dreams that leave him trying to figure out what he already knows on a subconscious level that hasn’t registered with him yet.
As a bonus, this one also has a bit of a Christmas epilogue with Matt giving a special gift to an old friend, and it’s enough to make even a cynical bastard like me want to say, “God bless us, every one.”...more
Ben and Chon are the oddest of odd couples. Ben is a brilliant botanist and liberal do-gooder who spends his spare time in third world countries settiBen and Chon are the oddest of odd couples. Ben is a brilliant botanist and liberal do-gooder who spends his spare time in third world countries setting up clinics and schools. Chon (a nickname based on his real name, John) is an ex-Navy SEAL and Afghanistan veteran with a bad attitude and sincere belief that most people are just pretending to be civilized. Despite their differences, the two men are best friends and even knowingly share a girlfriend, Ophelia (also known as O.), who loves sex and shopping almost as much as she loves Ben and Chon.
The guys aren’t just friends, they’re also business partners. They’ve been the premier pot distributors in Southern California for years thanks to Ben’s talent with weed and Chon’s ability to discourage any unsavory types who threaten their operation. Unfortunately, the guys just got a video from a Mexican drug cartel showing several people getting decapitated. The message is clear: join up or get the Marie Antoinette treatment.
Ben is tired of the dope trade anyhow, and neither of them want to go to work for the cartel so they reject the offer with plans to take their money and disappear overseas. Unfortunately, drug cartels aren’t used to taking no for an answer, and they kidnap O. If the guys won’t keep growing pot for the cartel, O.’s neck is going to meet the business end of a chain saw. Ben and Chon have to play along, but to get O. back, they’ll have to go to war without letting the cartel know who is waging it.
Don Winslow is a writer I think has been flying under the radar for far too long. This should be the book that finally gets him some serious attention. This is an incredible story about the lengths that some people will go for friendship. I especially liked Chon with his bleak but amusing view of most people. Despite the gritty and violent nature of the story, the book is also laced with a black humor that has a lot to say about how goddamn silly this country can be at times.
I loved the unique writing style of this, too. Winslow has done several books in a conversational So-Cal tone of voice, and he’s also played around with a clipped and brusque style in The Power of the Dog. In this one, he’s fused the two into a unique read that reminds me of James Ellroy mixed with Charlie Huston and a dash of Chuck Palahniuk. Anyone interested should read it and not listen to an audio version because even the layout of the words on the page becomes part of the structure of the story.
Dark, funny, violent, tender, tragic, and a story that makes it an obsessive page turner, this has instantly become one of my favorite crime novels.
**Movie Update** The movie version was decent but disappointing. Although the basic plot remains the same, a lot of the details and plot points are changed for no real reason related to adapting it. And anyone who thought that Hollywood wouldn't have the balls to do the book's ending was right. ...more
And that’s the message of James Ellroy's bloody and brilliant Underworld USA trilogy (American Tabloi“I paid a dear and savage price to live History.”
And that’s the message of James Ellroy's bloody and brilliant Underworld USA trilogy (American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand and Blood’s A Rover) summed up in one sentence. Here at the end, it’s all about remorse, radicals, revolution, rebellion, revenge and redemption. (To borrow some Ellroy-style alliteration.)
The book begins with a brief flashback to an armored car heist in 1964 that might have been planned by The Joker considering the body count and betrayal involved. A fortune in emeralds and cash is unaccounted for years later and is one of the main issues driving the plot.
Cut to 1968, where Wayne Tedrow Jr. is dealing with the aftermath of the last book and his involvement in the plots to kill Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. Wayne’s weird form of racism has been burnt out of him like a fever following the MLK and RFK hits, but he quickly takes over fronting the Mob’s on-going plans to sell Howard Hughes their Vegas hotels and build a new casino empire in a Latin American country so they can recreate Cuba pre-Castro.
But Wayne is now severely conflicted. The guy who processed massive amounts of heroin being run out of Vietnam is now adamant about a no-heroin policy. He worked on the MLK hit and killed several black men, but starts dating a black woman he’s linked to by tragedy, and he’s vowed to find her missing son. Wayne doesn’t want the local population abused while the new casinos are built in the Dominican Republic even though he’s the guy making it happen.
Dwight Holly was also in on the MLK and RFK hits as J. Edgar Hoover’s preferred enforcer with the FBI, but his years of loving a radical woman he’s protected with an informant status are also starting to influence him. He’s worried about how fast Hoover is getting senile, but since Hoover still has a blackmail file on him, he has to keep going along with Hoover’s plans of infiltrating and discrediting the militant black movement.
Don Crutchfield (Crutch) is an idiot kid who uses his voyeur tendencies as an errand boy for low-rent private detectives in L.A. When he accidently finds out some dirt on Wayne and Dwight, he gets pulled into their lifestyle, but he’s so geeky and impressionable that he still thinks rabid anti-Communism is cool even as they waver between warning him off or killing him.
Hanging over all of them is Red Joan, a legendary left-wing radical who is involved with all of their plans in ways they can’t even imagine.
This is a departure for Ellroy. He backed way off his hipster staccato style in this one, going with more simple declarative sentences and dropping a lot of the schtick that made The Cold Six Thousand almost unreadable in spots. It’s his most traditional writing since The Big Nowhere.
Ellroy also steps away from the real history to spin this wild tale of the three men and Red Joan. Hoover still appears in an increasingly delusional state via the usual transcripts of phone calls, and Richard Nixon makes a few very funny call transcripts too as the ultimate political hack who knows he’s been bought and paid for.
But the real people and events start to fade over the course of the book. Watergate is barely mentioned as a planned Nixon black-bag job. The old power structures are crumbling. Hoover and Nixon may be the last ones standing, but the country is growing out of their control. By killing the leaders who would have worked within the system, people are turning to more radical means of change so the Bad White Men revised the rules without realizing it when they killed JFK, RFK and MLK.
The focus here is on Wayne and Dwight’s growing horror at the lives they’re leading, and Crutch’s growth from an idiot geek they call Dipshit to the same lessons that Wayne and Dwight learned. And as always with Ellory, the attempts at redemption have a terrible cost.
Crutch is one of Ellroy’s oddest creations. Supposedly based on a real Los Angeles private investigator who Ellroy claims has some extra knowledge of events of this time frame, Crutch is also part-Ellroy, incorporating his well documented tendencies for break-ins, panty sniffing and window peeping when he was a teen-age homeless drunk and drug addict before getting clean and becoming a writer. Crutch is a weird hybrid of a couple of real guys written as the watcher who sees everything burn when all the old debts come due.
Brutal, violent, profane, but surprisingly tender at times, I don’t think I’d put this one in the class of American Tabloid yet, but it’s going to haunt me for a while....more
This isn’t the last Matt Scudder book that Lawrence Block wrote, but since Matt would now be in his 70s and the one after it, A Drop of the Had Stuff,This isn’t the last Matt Scudder book that Lawrence Block wrote, but since Matt would now be in his 70s and the one after it, A Drop of the Had Stuff, is a flashback novel, this is technically the last case that he works. It seems unlikely that there will be a new one that isn‘t set in the past but Block has seemingly reached the end of Matt’s story before and come back to it so nothing would surprise me. While I‘m not sure about that, I do know that this marks the last book that I’ve reread for reviewing on Goodreads. So it definitely feels like the end of an era all over again.
The melancholy nature of Scudder is one thing I’ve always loved about this series, but I really noticed while rereading how it evolved as Matt grew older. When he was younger and a drunk, Matt had kind of a horrified fascination with violent death that made him ponder the often short and brutal nature of life. Now in his mid-60s, Matt frequently notes the way that the people and places he knew have started fading out of his life. While reflecting about an acquaintance that recently passed away, Matt thinks:
“He died sometime that summer, not too long after the bar closed, but I didn’t hear about it until the fall. So that was one funeral I missed, but these days there’s always another funeral to go to. They’re like buses. If you miss one, there’ll be another coming your way in a few minutes.”
So Matt still isn’t the most cheerful guy in the world, but he’s living a generally happy and quiet life with his wife. Although pretty much retired, when he gets two similar but unrelated requests from women he knows to check out men with mysterious habit that they’ve started dating, Matt decides to help them out. Unfortunately, doing a couple of routine favors leads Matt to one of the smartest and most brutal killers he’s ever faced.
I could nitpick this book and say that it seems almost to be more about the villain than Scudder with long sections spent on first person interludes in the killer’s head while Matt seems mostly reactive versus doing much to seek out the guy. In a weird way that works here because with an older Matt and a little ominous foreshadowing, it feels like the younger, quicker man has the advantage. There’s one other point that I didn’t notice the first time I read it. (view spoiler)[This is the second time that Elaine gets tricked and then attacked in her own apartment by a Scudder villain so that felt a little repetitive despite the hardcore impact of it. (hide spoiler)]
This still end up being one of the most powerful books in the series with a genuinely creepy villain, and while we got another Scudder story from his younger days in the next one, this one kind of feels like Matt’s last stand in a lot of ways....more
At this point Matt Scudder is 62 years old, happily married and semi-retired. But don’t think that he’s content with just hitting the early bird speciAt this point Matt Scudder is 62 years old, happily married and semi-retired. But don’t think that he’s content with just hitting the early bird special at the nearest buffet or spending his time arguing with empty chairs.
The murder of a wealthy couple shocks New York, and the case catches Matt’s interest because he had attended the same event they were at before they were killed. But the discovery of a murder/suicide of two men leaves a mountain of evidence proving they were the killers so whole thing is wrapped up quickly. After meeting a relative of the couple with a few misgivings about the case, Matt slowly drifts into an informal investigation and finds clues that point to a third man behind it all.
As usual there’s a personal subplot with Matt feeling guilty and edgy after a strained encounter with his grown sons at a family funeral. Matt walked out on his boys when they were young and while he supported them financially and tried to be part of their lives, he realizes that he’s never going to be anyone’s nomination for Father-Of-The-Year. Block plays up that angle by using Matt’s young associate TJ a lot in this one and their interactions highlight that while Matt might not have done well by his biological kids, he’s been a good friend and role model to this surrogate son.
There’s also a very nasty and creepy villain at work in this one, and I absolutely loved the process by which Matt eventually starts piecing this mystery together.
Random personal trivia: I met Lawrence Block when he was on tour for this book back in 2001. He politely answered my question about why in the hell Whoopi Goldberg had been cast as Bernie Rhodenbarr in the Burglar movie even though he had obviously been asked this a couple of thousand times before, and he gave a great reading of the Scudder short story The Night and the Music that I still think about whenever I pick up one of these books....more
I used to wonder how Phillip K. Dick came up with all the trippy concepts in his stories until I read A Scanner Darkly. That’s when I realized that thI used to wonder how Phillip K. Dick came up with all the trippy concepts in his stories until I read A Scanner Darkly. That’s when I realized that the drugs probably had a lot to do with it.
Originally published in 1977 and set in the mid ‘90s, the book tells the story of Bob Arctor. Arctor appears to be just another burned out druggie who lives with a couple of other dopers, and they spend most of their time getting high on Substance D and assorted other drugs. Bob is actually an undercover narc for the Orange County CA sheriff’s department, and in the future, the cops undercover are in so deep that even their bosses don’t know who they really are. Arctor wears a special scramble suit that blurs his features and voice when reporting to his boss Hank, who also wears a scramble suit to conceal his identity.
Bob has been trying to buy bigger quantities of Substance D from Donna, a spacey hash addict, so that he can work his way to the source, but he’s actually fallen in love with her even though she refuses to sleep with him. He gets a tricky new assignment when Hank orders him to start keeping tabs on a new target; Bob Arctor.
Since he can’t reveal his identity, Arctor has to play out the fiction that he’s investigating himself, but his brains have gotten so slushed from Substance D that he’s having a hard time keeping track of who he actually is.
Bob’s increasing confusion about identity and reality is the kind of theme that Dick specialized in, and Bob’s progressive meltdown is some of my favorite writing he did regarding that. However, while this has a thin veneer of sci-fi over it with the story being set in what was the near future, it‘s actually a chillingly realistic look at drug abuse. Dick spent a couple of years in the early ’70s where he ran with the Just Say Yes! crowd, and this book is a semi-autobiographical account of that time.
Where it really shines is in its portrayal of the drug culture with long sections dedicated to things like an addict who begins seeing bugs everywhere or a botched suicide attempt that turns into a psychedelic eternity of recrimination for past sins. The long rambling conversations with Bob and his fellow druggies are darkly hilarious in that they show a kind of weird creativity while also being completely devoid of logic and apt to go in paranoid directions. For example, a problem with a car eventually leads to their certainty that the cops have planted drugs in the house and that the only solution is to sell the place.
Dick does a masterful job of showing how people could end up living in a perpetual haze while ignoring the long term damage being done even as they see their own friends die or get turned into little more than vegetables by their own behavior. As he puts it, their sin was in wanting to play all the time but the penalty was far harsher than they deserved.
On a side note, I also loved the movie version of this done by Richard Linklater that featured a hand drawn rotoscope process over filmed scenes to give it a feeling of realistic unreality. Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson give great performances as Bob’s druggie housemates, and Keanu Reeves was born to play the brain fried Arctor. ...more
Let’s see… America gets invaded by a coalition of rogue nations who have built up a small army of super humans, and they’re led by a pissed off radicaLet’s see… America gets invaded by a coalition of rogue nations who have built up a small army of super humans, and they’re led by a pissed off radical Muslim. It’s almost like Mark Millar is just a pen name for Glenn Beck.
I kid, I kid. Actually all the set-up work in the previous volume Gods & Monsters pays off nicely here. With a couple of the Ultimates apparently dead, one locked up for being crazy town banana pants, another arrested for being a traitor who led a deadly attack on a fellow team member’s family, and the entire world angry at the US for using the team to disarm a Middle Eastern country, it’s the perfect time for an all out attack on the US. Almost as if someone had orchestrated all these events…
This one is big on the super powered action and the scale is epic. Millar does a nice job of creating an atmosphere of doom and defeat so that it’s extra sweet when the good guys start fighting back. The Oh-Hell-Yeah! moments come fast and furious then.
This one has some fairly disturbing moments of violence and is definitely geared towards adults and not the kids....more
Talk about false advertising. I read this thinking it was a manual for postal employees that I could use to study for civil service exam. But it was jTalk about false advertising. I read this thinking it was a manual for postal employees that I could use to study for civil service exam. But it was just a story about some guy who starts sleeping with another man’s wife and then they decide to kill the husband. It was a pretty good book, but I flunked the test when there weren’t any questions about plotting a homicide. Oh, and that Kevin Costner movie didn’t help either....more
Maybe it’s my landlocked Kansas nature, but I don’t get surfing. Paddling out into the ocean on a board seems like a lot of work just to get drowned oMaybe it’s my landlocked Kansas nature, but I don’t get surfing. Paddling out into the ocean on a board seems like a lot of work just to get drowned or beaten to death on rocks or eaten by some kind of huge sea creature. Plus, fish pee and poop in the ocean so the whole thing is really just a big toilet. But to each their own, and one of my favorite crime writers, Don Winslow, has had several of his characters surf so I’m more than willing to read about it when he’s telling the tale.
Boone Daniels is a seemingly laid back surfer in southern California who spends every minute possible on the beach with his group of friends nicknamed the Dawn Patrol. Boone is a local legend not only for his surfing ability, but for being an all-around good guy who acts as an unofficial guardian to the people in his community. He used to be a cop but now he runs a surf shop and occasionally does just enough private detective work to keep him a couple of payments behind on his bills.
Boone and the Dawn Patrol are excited that an undersea earthquake has sent a monster set of waves rolling their way that will arrive in two days. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity for surfers, but Boone’s plans get interrupted when a beautiful but pushy and ambitious lawyer insists on hiring him to find a missing stripper who is a key witness in an insurance fraud arson case that‘s going to court the next day. Boone hopes to locate her before the big waves roll in. Unfortunately, a sleazy strip club owner and the local pot kingpin don’t want her found, and the whole things turns into a mess that puts Boone at odds with the police and the Dawn Patrol.
I enjoyed this one, especially the Boone character. While he seems like a beach bum with no bigger concerns than the next wave and who isn’t any more complicated than his belief that all food is better served on a tortilla, he’s actually a smart guy haunted by the case that drove him off the police force.
This isn’t as powerful or dark as some of other Winslow books like Savages or The Power of the Dog, but it’s still a first rate crime story written in his conversational tone and laced with humor. This one also explains surfing techniques and history in such a fun way that even a landlubber like myself was entertained and interested. Even if it is set around the filthy dangerous ocean......more
Eleven books into my rereading of the Travis McGee series and as usual there’s a Good and Bad side to it.
Good = Travis McGee continues to be an intereEleven books into my rereading of the Travis McGee series and as usual there’s a Good and Bad side to it.
Good = Travis McGee continues to be an interesting character who has rejected the responsibilities associated with a modern American life circa 1969 by working as a kind of hybrid detective/con man who gets involved in shady dealings to make a buck. On the surface McGee is just a lazy boat bum on a series of extended vacations, and he’s willing to occasionally risk his life to finance this lifestyle. However, on another level McGee is deeply offended by injustice and the destruction of the individual by society.
Bad - Travis McGee can also be a narcissistic bore and all around Know-It-All-Pain-In-The-Ass. He’s also even more of a man-whore than James Bond, and a bigger sexist than all the male characters of Mad Men combined.
I almost dropped this rereading of the series after I had baited friend Amanda into reading one just for my own amusement because I figured the results would be spectacular, but I outsmarted myself there because she did such a thorough job of blasting 'Sea Cock' McGee in her review of Darker Than Amber that I actually had a hard time picking up another one. But then Audible released new audio versions of the entire series, and I couldn’t resist diving back in.
A wealthy widower was badly injured in a car accident and while recovering is informed that his daughter Bix had died in Mexico. The man had drifted away from her and wants someone to go retrace her steps and find out about her last days. McGee and Meyer fly to Mexico where they learn that Bix had been part of the damn dirty hippie subculture flourishing there as well as being involved with a very wealthy and private woman. McGee begins to suspect that there was more to Bix’s death than just a simple car accident.
As usual if you can get past the depiction of the female characters and how they’re treated, there’s a pretty enjoyable late ‘60s mystery story here. The women this time include an oversexed British expatriate who tries her best to wear McGee out (Guess how that goes.), and a secretary on vacation who falls for McGee‘s manly charms. Hell, there’s an actual scene with a friend of McGee’s slapping his secretary’s ass while she runs out of his office giggling. There are also some homosexual characters in this one and while it’s not as bad as it could be, MacDonald wouldn’t have been winning any GLAAD Awards.
Despite the flaws, I stick around for the Good elements as well as MacDonald’s writing. There’s a particularly nice chapter here where McGee is recounting all the bad luck that the wealthy Bowie experienced and reflecting on how easy it for even a well-constructed life to fall apart that’s a classic example of what redeems the dated parts of these books.
Also, the newly recorded audio versions of this are great. Narrator Robert Petkoff does a superior job of delivering McGee’s extended monologues as well as creating unique voices for all the different characters. McGee fans who enjoy audio books won’t be disappointed....more
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