All sorts of books...one for everyone's tastes...
So, over Christmas I reread Traveling With the Dead (still well-written, I still liked it a lot) and Declare (ditto). I also read Altered Carbon and Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan, , Chasing the Dime by Michael Connelly, The Two-Minute Rule by Robert Crais, The Crimewriter by Gregg Hurwitz and Dust by Martha Grimes. I read Dust most recently, but it's the most problematic, so that's where I'll start.
Who knew Martha Grimes would be THIS problematic? I've loved her books for many years-her Richard Jury series has seen me though many tough times-and i could always count on her (usually) for an engrossing, well-told story. Tall, good-looking Richard Jury, with his endlessly bad luck with women, his Sargent, Wiggins, who has never met a cup of tea, a scone or a cold remedy he didn't like, his friend Melrose Plant, who gets involved in Jury's cases whether he wants to or not...these people all seem like old friends to me. However, after the terribly unhappy ending of (I think it was) her last book, I had to give her up. I decided to stay with the series that began with Hotel Paradise (and that's a really great story line) and give up on Superintendent Jury for awhile.
Until my sister gave me Dust. Yes, it's a great book. The main characters are onstage, the bit players aren't intrusive and the storyline kept my attention. Jury is having very good luck with women in this one, but it's not particularly making him happy. But the story...a man is killed in a hotel, not far from his partment in London. Who did it? His uncaring father? His sexy stepmother? His assistant who took care of things for him? Why does his father has two very expensive paintings in his house that he claims are copies but that his son believed to be real? And what does WWII, the Kindertransport and a ship to Canada have to do with all of this? There's a part in Dust where man Jury believes is a criminal (from a past book) tells him that he needs to look at the crimes like a photograph and a negative. The two don't quite match up-and it's Jury's job to find out how they match-and when he does, he'll know who committed the crime and why and how all the other pieces fit. I'm pretty sure he does this, but the reader (okay, me) never quite figured it out. Yes, I know who killed him and i think I know why (but maybe not) and I'm still not clear on all the other pieces either. I AM sure that Jury's not-great luck with women was still fairly true at the end of this book, everything else is a bit up in the air.
I'll cover Chasing the Dime, The Crime Writer and The Two-Minute Rule all at once. I liked them all and if you like a good story, each of them is up to it. Each is fairly well-paced, good characters and a good story line. They aren't interchangeable but neither are they each author's best work. If I had to pick one as the best, I'd say it The Two-Minutes Rule-the characters were the most real, the action was believable (although I did find it a bit hard to believe that the main character who never seemed to go to school and spent his life stealing cars, robbing banks and doing drugs until he went to jail for ten years could be that bright but what do I know?) but his is the best-told of the bunch.
Richard K Morgan...my friend Y told me to read Market Forces awhile ago-I bought it but didn't read it-in fact it went on a couple of trips with me and I still didn't read it. And on this trip, I read Altered Carbon first, thinking I'd put off Market Forces again-but I'm now VERY glad I didn't put it off. The two books do have some things in common-taking place in the future (although AC takes place much further in the future than MF) and a fairly dystopian one at that. It's pretty easy to see the origins of Market Forces-some friends who work investment banking in London are out to dinner to one night and talking about how cutthroat it is the office and one says "we might have to kill the Director (or the competition) to move ahead" and from that idea, this novel was born. The corporate warriors in this future really are warriors-they issue challenges to their peers in other companies in order to win contracts and they battle on the road in specially designed cars made to kill. And they do kill-if they've wounded their opponent, they move in and "kill them and take their plastic". The hero, such as he is, starts out as not too bad a guy. He moved ahead in his old company by making a very strategic kill (although, it turns out, not to move ahead in the company). And the other person he fought, he ended up taking to the hospital himself. That won't fly at his new company-they of the "kill them" motto. And not only is he in investment banking, he's in Conflict Investment. (I thought this might have been the idea that launched this book as well but decided it had to the killing your boss and peers idea). The company backs a side in a conflict-whoever it is they think will win. They supply them with whatever it is that will help them win-food, medicine, arms...and in return, when they win and take over the country, the company gets a small percentage of the GNP. Not a bad trade off, if you don't mind dealing with crazy psychopaths. Of course, you probably ARE a crazy psychopath if you work in this version of investment banking. And if you aren't, you become one, like Chris Faulkner, the hero/antihero of MF. Does Chris really go over to the Dark Side? Permanently? It's kind of hard to tell. Yes, he does some bad things and behaves badly but he (at least to me) marginally redeems himself. This book is worth not just for the excellent premise but for everything else. Faulkner is not only a believable character but everyone around him is as well. It's very well-written and a killer (sorry) story. Altered Carbon is more of a noir story, set in the future. Takeshi Kovacs is former military who now is pretty much a hired gun. People use him, lie to him and torture him-but unlike Faulkner, he always knows right from wrong. He may make a bad decision or two but he's one of the good guys-it's easy to picture as the literary descendant of Sam Spade and Travis McGee. However, the hard science fiction setting is very cool. There is quite a bit detail describing not only the setting but the political landscape of Altered Carbon and that, ultimately makes it a deeper and richer book than just your average noir thriller. Like John D. MacDonald, Morgan comments on society as a whole and how people behave in both good and bad situations-it's that that makes this book more than just another thriller.
On a side note-I was reading this book when I heard that Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated and I thought of a poem attributed to a female leader that Kovacs had followed that said:
When they ask
How I died
Tell them
Still angry
I couldn't help but think that she would have liked it.
Who knew Martha Grimes would be THIS problematic? I've loved her books for many years-her Richard Jury series has seen me though many tough times-and i could always count on her (usually) for an engrossing, well-told story. Tall, good-looking Richard Jury, with his endlessly bad luck with women, his Sargent, Wiggins, who has never met a cup of tea, a scone or a cold remedy he didn't like, his friend Melrose Plant, who gets involved in Jury's cases whether he wants to or not...these people all seem like old friends to me. However, after the terribly unhappy ending of (I think it was) her last book, I had to give her up. I decided to stay with the series that began with Hotel Paradise (and that's a really great story line) and give up on Superintendent Jury for awhile.
Until my sister gave me Dust. Yes, it's a great book. The main characters are onstage, the bit players aren't intrusive and the storyline kept my attention. Jury is having very good luck with women in this one, but it's not particularly making him happy. But the story...a man is killed in a hotel, not far from his partment in London. Who did it? His uncaring father? His sexy stepmother? His assistant who took care of things for him? Why does his father has two very expensive paintings in his house that he claims are copies but that his son believed to be real? And what does WWII, the Kindertransport and a ship to Canada have to do with all of this? There's a part in Dust where man Jury believes is a criminal (from a past book) tells him that he needs to look at the crimes like a photograph and a negative. The two don't quite match up-and it's Jury's job to find out how they match-and when he does, he'll know who committed the crime and why and how all the other pieces fit. I'm pretty sure he does this, but the reader (okay, me) never quite figured it out. Yes, I know who killed him and i think I know why (but maybe not) and I'm still not clear on all the other pieces either. I AM sure that Jury's not-great luck with women was still fairly true at the end of this book, everything else is a bit up in the air.
I'll cover Chasing the Dime, The Crime Writer and The Two-Minute Rule all at once. I liked them all and if you like a good story, each of them is up to it. Each is fairly well-paced, good characters and a good story line. They aren't interchangeable but neither are they each author's best work. If I had to pick one as the best, I'd say it The Two-Minutes Rule-the characters were the most real, the action was believable (although I did find it a bit hard to believe that the main character who never seemed to go to school and spent his life stealing cars, robbing banks and doing drugs until he went to jail for ten years could be that bright but what do I know?) but his is the best-told of the bunch.
Richard K Morgan...my friend Y told me to read Market Forces awhile ago-I bought it but didn't read it-in fact it went on a couple of trips with me and I still didn't read it. And on this trip, I read Altered Carbon first, thinking I'd put off Market Forces again-but I'm now VERY glad I didn't put it off. The two books do have some things in common-taking place in the future (although AC takes place much further in the future than MF) and a fairly dystopian one at that. It's pretty easy to see the origins of Market Forces-some friends who work investment banking in London are out to dinner to one night and talking about how cutthroat it is the office and one says "we might have to kill the Director (or the competition) to move ahead" and from that idea, this novel was born. The corporate warriors in this future really are warriors-they issue challenges to their peers in other companies in order to win contracts and they battle on the road in specially designed cars made to kill. And they do kill-if they've wounded their opponent, they move in and "kill them and take their plastic". The hero, such as he is, starts out as not too bad a guy. He moved ahead in his old company by making a very strategic kill (although, it turns out, not to move ahead in the company). And the other person he fought, he ended up taking to the hospital himself. That won't fly at his new company-they of the "kill them" motto. And not only is he in investment banking, he's in Conflict Investment. (I thought this might have been the idea that launched this book as well but decided it had to the killing your boss and peers idea). The company backs a side in a conflict-whoever it is they think will win. They supply them with whatever it is that will help them win-food, medicine, arms...and in return, when they win and take over the country, the company gets a small percentage of the GNP. Not a bad trade off, if you don't mind dealing with crazy psychopaths. Of course, you probably ARE a crazy psychopath if you work in this version of investment banking. And if you aren't, you become one, like Chris Faulkner, the hero/antihero of MF. Does Chris really go over to the Dark Side? Permanently? It's kind of hard to tell. Yes, he does some bad things and behaves badly but he (at least to me) marginally redeems himself. This book is worth not just for the excellent premise but for everything else. Faulkner is not only a believable character but everyone around him is as well. It's very well-written and a killer (sorry) story. Altered Carbon is more of a noir story, set in the future. Takeshi Kovacs is former military who now is pretty much a hired gun. People use him, lie to him and torture him-but unlike Faulkner, he always knows right from wrong. He may make a bad decision or two but he's one of the good guys-it's easy to picture as the literary descendant of Sam Spade and Travis McGee. However, the hard science fiction setting is very cool. There is quite a bit detail describing not only the setting but the political landscape of Altered Carbon and that, ultimately makes it a deeper and richer book than just your average noir thriller. Like John D. MacDonald, Morgan comments on society as a whole and how people behave in both good and bad situations-it's that that makes this book more than just another thriller.
On a side note-I was reading this book when I heard that Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated and I thought of a poem attributed to a female leader that Kovacs had followed that said:
When they ask
How I died
Tell them
Still angry
I couldn't help but think that she would have liked it.
posted by SHbookworm at 8:14 AM
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