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JANUARY - FEBRUARY REVIEWS JUDAS
HORSE
The pleasure in reading JUDAS
HORSE is in the fascinating details Smith offers of an agent undercover.
Ana, after attending the FBI’s special training program for undercover agents,
connects with a group of anti-development types in There are lots of threads and many do not get woven in. Laumann is supposedly selling the horses, although no one can say why this is so, no one can prove it, no one even asks for proof. The “terrorists” are at times moronically stupid, and clearly “anarchic” in their behavior, but don’t’ seem to come together for any purpose that makes sense. There’s the meek girl, the young man who lives to bust things and break stuff, the earth mother who lives with the very paranoid group leader -- but there’s no focus. While political activists take every shape and form, I’ve known dozens in my life, from true anarchists, and anti-development “live off the grid” anti-technology types to everyday peaceniks. These characters here seem to be more caricature than real people. While I don’t doubt that much of what Smith describes exists in some form, much of it seemed over the top to me. Trust is not instant in the movement – any movement – so Ana’s almost instant acceptance (the second you get into town, go to a bar, throw some money around, talk about how you love animals and you’re in) wasn’t plausible. The planning is too vague, there are too many factors and who’s the guy in the cowboy boots? Paranoid anti-government activists have, as we have learned, reason to be paranoid; dozens of people who protest against government policies have been targeted and wiretapped, followed and photographed. Despite claims of police departments since the ‘60s that they don’t spy on activists, there are numerous cases of police departments infiltrating legit and not so legit causes. I’m not arguing that this is good bad or indifferent, just to remind the reader that much of what these “wackos” seem to fear has a basis in reality. They’re not completely nuts. Not always. They are, however, extremely hard to like or to find sympathetic. The bias here is going to be pro-authority, pro-FBI since that’s Ana Grey’s training and her job. Much of what Smith presents in JUDAS HORSE is really interesting, although I sure would have liked a few more pages showing the workings of this “underground school” at the FBI which helps train agents how to stay in character and how to survive. What she showed was very interesting but then, abruptly, that was that. There are lots of things that start and never finish, side stories that just fizzle. And again, I had trouble with Smith’s rather stunning ending of the book. It did not make a lot of sense. Did I like JUDAS HORSE? I….don’t know. I just don’t. I’ve had days to think about it and I still cannot make up my mind. Did I like it better than the last Ana Grey book from 2003, GOOD MORNING KILLER? Absolutely. JUDAS HORSE is a better book than that one. Ana is smarter, and has spent some time dealing with a lot of issues, from trying to please people who cannot be pleased to coming to terms with her own background. But time and again, Smith suddenly introduced a new character, or there is a sudden change of plans, or the hint that some big deal radical event is happening with nothing to show for it. JUDAS HORSE was, for me, an exercise in frustration.
The story involves Eddie Cero, a boxer (there’s the “not interesting” part for me) who hasn’t had much of a career and really needs to find another way to earn a living. While Eddie’s not exactly the most introspective guy you’ll ever meet, and isn’t all that interesting at the start, he has promise. And that’s probably what brings him to the attention of Sal Giambroni, who suggests to Eddie that he hang around, pick up some skills. Sal’s a private detective, a former cop and MP not a big shot but he’s a good guy, and he has smarts and connections in the community. Eddie Cero could do worse. The jobs are typical low-rent P. I. jobs, following someone, insurance fraud, “is my wife cheating?” but low-rent is still real money. A good portion of the story is Eddie’s pursuit of a cold case, the disappearance of a singer with the local group, the Excels (if you can’t imagine them singing just by hearing that name, you’re probably a lot younger than me.) Just as the group was getting good, three years back, Johnny vanished. There are rumors of women, of drugs; there are more rumors that Johnny Pope wanted out of his contract, that he wanted to go solo, but everyone shrugs. It’s over, what do you want to dig that stuff up for? But it’s unresolved and Johnny was Valerie’s brother. So while he’s sitting in cars watching teenagers shacking up with adult men, or checking how a bartender is cheating his boss at the Blue Door, Eddie takes on the puzzle of whatever happened to Johnny Pope. There’s an odd sort of timelessness
in the story; it’s set in 1962 and while most of the time it works,
occasionally I fell out of the narrative. This might be the reader, not the
writer. I’m not sure. Fulmer
certainly makes no major errors of anachronism; there are no cell phones or
iPods, and may be the sort of life Eddie leads, sort of under the radar – he
lives in a boarding house until Sal helps him move up to a real apartment.
Eddie’s one big passion is music, rock and roll, rhythm and blues; he
loves buying records and knows who has the best juke boxes in South Philly.
(You remember, don’t you? The Orlons sang about “
Look for Andi's review of MESSAGE IN THE FLAMES
by Steven Torres NOVEMBER - DECEMBER REVIEWS
SALT
A
warning: there’s not much mystery in this short work, so if you’re in the
mood for, or expecting, a book with clues and detectives and forensics, you’ll
most likely be disappointed. I
don’t mind when books jump the tracks on occasion and go off in a weird
direction. I’ve liked mysteries
where the bad guy isn’t caught, and mysteries which are more about the sleuth
than the investigation. This is
different because, in this case, I’m a Jim Sallis geek and will in all
likelihood read anything put in front of me that he’s written.
I read his bio of Chester Himes and doubt I would have done so had
another author written it. I
admire his talent so much that he’s on the “I’d read his grocery
lists” list. James
Sallis writes wonderfully. I just love the way he tells a story.
That he is a poet somehow must influence his use of language, although he
is not flowery, if that’s what “poet” brings to mind. Hell, his novella DRIVE
was dark, almost bleak, but again, from page one, I was hooked. Sallis’
protagonists grab one’s attention. The books
in his, I-guess-it’s-a-series, CYPRESS
GROVE, CRIPPLE CREEK and now The book
flows. It’s not slow but you just have to let things happen as they happen.
Turner is somewhat philosophical, as are some of his friends, but you
hear down-home cornpone from them. They’ve
seen sorrow in their lives and know that with one more big storm, like the one
they just had and the one that’s coming, the town might cease to exist soon.
Not much can be done about that – it’s not like in big cities where
agencies can mobilize and huge bureaucracies can gear up.
Here, neighbors help each other, retired doctors step in when they’re
available and even those folks who live up there come down from the hills to
pitch in. And there’s nothing
corny about it. These are not “simple” folks, and Turner offers them respect
and he gets them. He makes you pay
attention, often by what he doesn’t say. From one
bit of information in -
Andi Shechter RED
MANDARIN DRESS There’s
no good way to say it when a book fails to work.
It’s dismaying and disappointing. But
RED MANDARIN DRESS read to me like a
bad first novel. It’s Qiu
Xiaolong’s fifth book and I’ve read the previous four.
None of the subsequent books quite
lived up to the promise of the first, DEATH
OF A RED HEROINE, but until now, each book offered enough to keep me
interested. There are so many
problems with this one, however, that I may not continue reading the series. Chief
Inspector Chen Cao is a three-dimensional guy; a police officer in Chen is
technically on leave to attend class, however he’s investigating a serial
murder (one of my least favorite mystery themes) and is apparently looking into
a corruption case. As always, there are political ramifications, especially
regarding the corruption trial about to begin. The
investigation of the serial murder is the main focus and even
that didn’t work. The victims
are all women in sort of lower-rank jobs in hotels and bars and restaurants.
Their bodies are dressed in “red mandarin dresses” and left in public
areas. There’s a lot of discussion
of the style of the dress (I thought I knew what such a garment was, but was
only guessing. It was never described in detail.) and attempts to provide
psychological analysis to the meaning of the dress, the position, you know, the
usual “profiling” we are used to in the West. It’s apparently still not
common in The plot
too often relied on extremely good luck, given how in these books we’ve been
told how many restaurants and bars and tea houses and gathering places there are
in Do we
really need a 30-page dinner conversation/confrontation with Chen rehashing
every single clue with the man he suspects as having committed the crime?
Here, too, the rehashing of the plot is first novel awkwardness. There
are far better ways to wrap things up and to get answers. I’m at least
grateful here is no scene gathering all the suspects into a tea room for the
denouement. Everything
changed so during the Cultural Revolution that Chen is truly daring using
concepts like psychology, not political reasons, as motives for crimes, even
serial murder. The Cultural
Revolution still has an enormous impact on every aspect of life in So why
didn’t I stop reading? I truly
kept hoping the book would be better, The
dinner scene is so late in the book that it seemed pointless to give up so close
to the end. I don’t tend to write
this sort of review often, but I guess I kept hoping that something would make
my disappointment go away. Maybe
I’m right and I am just too Western (though I never felt this before reading
this author). I couldn’t even manage to appreciate learning about
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