Grotesque Vulture Park vintage Burdett

Book 19: Vulture Peak by John Burdett

Since his first Bangkok novel, Bangkok 8, John Burdett has entertained readers through the creative use of the grotesque – via the sex and violence that populates his novels.

Burdett set the standard for all his subsequent books early, in a scene in Bangkok 8, when an American serviceman dies a gruesome death from a nest of snakes planted in his car.  Fans, who have learned to savor such moments, won’t be disappointed by his newest novel, Vulture Peak.

As with all of Burdett’s Bangkok novels, Vulture Peak features Royal Thai detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep. The son of a Thai prostitute and an American serviceman, Sonchai, a Buddhist, may be the only honest cop in Bangkok.  

In Vulture Peak, Sonchai is called upon to investigate the grotesque death of three people. The bodies, found in a wealthy Thai enclave in Phuket that's nestled on the cliffs above the Andaman Sea, are missing their finger tips, their faces and all their useable body parts from eyes to kidneys.

Sonchai is soon on the trail of twin Chinese sisters, who appear to be the Wal-Mart of worldwide suppliers of body parts.   Attempting to get close to the sisters, Sonchai flies to Dubai with a cache of “medical supplies” that turns out to be 1,764 human eyes.  (Grotesque, remember?)

During his investigation, Sonchai learns that the sisters have an extensive collection of body parts. The collection includes penises that they’ve harvested and now use as sex toys.  (I did say grotesque.)

Burdett attempts to make some serious points about the “commodification” of the human body. Sonchai’s wife and mother were in the trade and his mother still operates a successful (read lucrative) sex club. From the Thai vantage point, sex for money represents a reasonable exchange.

The girls are treated well, and are paid well. Each girl represents an important source of income for their families; perhaps the only income. 

Contrast the Thai whores with the worldwide trade in body parts. Some of the body parts come from executed prisoners, but others are harvested from unwilling victims or from the poor, desperately willing to sell a kidney in exchange for half a year’s income.

Not to worry, Burdett’s meditations on the commodification of the human body don’t get in the way of his plot or pacing. 

Vulture Peak builds to a satisfying denouement atop the cliff house, with ample grotesque moments en route to satisfy every Burdett fan.

On Rankin, Robinson, Crumley and Lippman; three thumbs up, one down

Rankin, Robinson and Lippman complete my reading in January. Opened February with James Crumley as I continue to plow through a towering to-be-read pile by reading nothing -- or almost nothing -- but mysteries and thrillers.

Book 15:  Let It Bleed by Ian Rankin

Book 17: Cold Is The Grave by Peter Robinson

Recently, I've been whining about a couple of my favorite British writers who've wandered off in new directions. Rankin has retired Rebus and taken up with a new guy named Fox who works in the Complaints, Britain's version of America's Internal Affairs.  Robinson shelved Banks for a one-off, featuring a mysterious death in a haunted house.

The solution -- return to Rankin and Robinson's early works.  Let It Bleed was issued in America in 1996, Cold Is The Grave is from 2000.

Let It Bleed is an unusual Rebus mystery in that there are no murders to solve. Instead, two suicides lead Rebus to investigate corporate-government malfeasance.  It is an especially appropriate book for our times.

Cold Is The Grave has Banks heading off to London as a favor for Chief Constable Jimmy Riddle. Riddle dislikes Banks, but when the chief constable's daughter shows up on a porn site, he knows Banks is the man to locate her.  A favor for his boss leads Banks down a convoluted path of intrigue and murder.

Both books are perfect examples of why Rankin and Robinson have been successful writers here, and in their native Britain, for a couple of decades.

Book 18:  Dancing Bear by James Crumley 

Rankin and Robinson's mysteries are positively genteel when stacked against the hard-boiled thrillers of James Crumley. If you're seeking sex, drugs and a climbing body count, Crumley's your man.

His hero, or anti-hero, is Milo (short for Milodragovitch), a general layabout who likes his cocaine and drinks peppermint schnapps to keep some distance from whiskey.

An old (literally) girlfriend of his late father asks Milo for a favor, which promises a hefty payday for a little work.  Here's an ironclad rule for such novels -- there's no free lunch or the easier the pickings appear to be, the more dangerous the case becomes.

Soon after hiring on, Milo watches as a man is blown up. Naturally, he soon finds a grenade rigged to blow beneath the driver's seat of his own car.  From that first explosion, the body quickly starts to rise.  Milo is reluctant to kill, but his reluctance only goes so far.

There are two mysteries in Dancing Bear: What are the bad guys up to? And why was Milo ensnared in the whole thing to begin with? The answers matter a whole lot less than an exhilarating ride with Crumley

Book 16: The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman

Laura Lippman and I are parting ways. The bond between writer and reader has come apart.

The Baltimore writer is talented. I thoroughly enjoy her mysteries featuring Baltimore P.I. Tess Monaghan. But Lippman doesn't want to write about Monaghan quite so often any more.  Her latest works have been a series of one-offs, leaning toward a sociological exploration of bad things that happen to people, rather than outright mysteries or thrillers.

The latest, The Most Dangerous Thing, from 2011, is dull.  Lippman explores the lives of three families, all very different, but united through their children's friendship.  The kids spend most of their summers exploring a vast forest near their homes.   

They stumble upon a homeless man living in a rundown shack.  Let's just say the man isn't leaving this book under his own power.

Part of the problem with The Most Dangerous Thing is that the man's death is more unfortunate than mysterious or compelling.  And the another is that none of the families are all that interesting.  None of the characters can carry the weight of a novel.

There's a cameo by Tess Monaghan and that's a serious mistake on Lippman's part.  Tess soaks up all the energy of the novel during her brief appearance.  I wanted to stay behind with her, rather than go where Lippman wanted to take me. 

I've decided to take a pass on Lippman's future one-offs.  If she wants to bring Ms. Monaghan back, it will be as if I'd never gone away.

Flavia's next appearance: 2012

Alan Bradley reports that Flavia de Luce "isn't going anywhere."  The next book in this delightful series will appear in 2013. The details, however scant. are available here.

Gail Collins provides a lively and entertaining biography of the shortest serving American president

Book 13: William Henry Harrison by Gail Collins

William Henry Harrison is the most recent entry in Times Books’ The American Presidents series.

It’s also one of final books in this uniformly superb series of brief biographies of American presidents.  Upcoming books on William Howard Taft and John F. Kennedy complete the series up to (but not including) Bill Clinton.

William Henry Harrison is a highly readable book. Collins is a journalist, not a historian, so she knows how to tell a story, and Harrison’s story is an intriguing one.

He was president for only 31 days.  In his late sixties when elected, it is widely believed Harrison attempted to display his stamina by delivering a two-hour inaugural address on a cold and rainy day in Washington in early March.  A month later he was dead from the effects of pneumonia.

Vice President John Tyler became president and that’s a story in itself. A half dozen political leaders, including Daniel Webster, had declined the vice presidential nomination. “It was one of those moments when you can imagine an alternative path into the future closing itself off,” Collins writes.

Harrison became the first presidential candidate to actively campaign for the office. He took to the campaign trail, in part, to defuse rumors that he was too old and feeble for the job. 

Harrison was helped in to office by his overly inflated reputation as an heroic Indian fighter; principally at the Battle of Tippecanoe. (Hence the phrase, “Tippecanoe and Tyler too,” which most of us remember, but don’t necessarily connect to Harrison.) 

I am a long-standing fan of this series. Each biography runs less than 200 pages. This particular book is only 125 pages, but, frankly, how much needs to be written about Harrison? 125 pages seems about right.

Collins' William Henry Harrison is a lively and entertaining look at the shortest serving American president.

On Rereading and Forgotten Bookmarks

Reading about books or about reading is a genuine pleasure for the bibliophile. January brought two books on those topics.

Book 4: Forgotten Bookmarks by Michael Popek

Forgotten Bookmarks is unadulterated book porn.

The author, Michael Popek, works in his family’s used bookstore.

As books were purchased for sale in the store, Popek observed that occasionally there were objects tucked into the pages of the books . . . letters, photographs, pressed flowers, baseball cards and recipes.

He began to catalog his finds on forgottenbookmarks.com. Now, he’s doing the same thing in the pages of this book of the same name.  Each page features a high-resolution photograph of a book and the object that was found within it.

Popek tells about the book . . . the title, author, publisher and year of publication. He also furnishes details about the treasure hidden inside.  A photograph, for example, is reproduced along with any writing on the flip side.  Letters are transcribed.

Among the more unusual items are beer coasters, four-leaf covers and seven razor blades inside Stenciling With Style.

It’s a lovely book that will resonate with habitués of used book stores, who have certainly uncovered their own treasures through the years. 

Book 11: On Rereading by Patricia Meyer Spacks

Spacks is a professor of English at the University of Virginia, about 50 miles down the road from me through Civil War battlefields, Virginia horse country and the Piedmont.

In On Rereading she explores rereading. Some people scorn it, but others – such as Spacks – understand that rereading has values uniquely its own.

She explores those values, which include the pleasure of revisiting a favorite book from childhood, uncovering new depths of meaning within a novel or stumbling upon the realization that the book may not have changed, but the reader has; a realization that can be equally disturbing or gratifying.

“I want to use rereading as a way to think about reading . . . but questions about the worth of rereading as an act in itself lie at the heart of my present investigation, which aspires to discover the significance and consequence of this activity. Rereading can appear like avoidance, yet I believe that it constitutes a form of engagement,” Spacks writes.

There’s an academic undertone to On Rereading, but it’s not a trudge. Spacks clearly loves reading just as much as anyone who is attracted to this book. Her love of reading guarantees that there will be moments, perhaps many of them, when the reader sees himself reflected in Spacks’s work.

Ellis delivers while Mosley, Burke and Block stumble

Book 10: Breach of Trust by David Ellis

This is the second novel by Ellis featuring Chicago attorney Jason Kolarich.

Determined to solve the murder of a potential witness in a trial, Jason uncovers evidence of corruption in the Illinois Governor’s Office. (Now that’s a stretch.)

Jason agrees to aid the Feds in their investigation, believing that his efforts as an undercover informant will also lead him to the men who ordered the witness murdered.

It’s a compelling thriller. Ellis is a solid writer and the book is given a boost by Ellis's inside knowledge of Illinois government – he was the impeachment prosecutor who convicted Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich before the state Senate. How's that for credentials?

Book 9: When The Thrill Is Gone by Walter Mosley

Book 12: The Glass Rainbow by James Lee Burke

Mosley and Burke have been at this a while.  I think it’s time they retired. Both books feel tired and as if the author is mailing in it.

Mosley is trying to gin up energy with Leonid McGill, a character he introduced a few books earlier.  It isn’t working as Mosley is more interested in sorting through his attitude toward this country’s race relations than he is in any plot points.

Burke is simply retelling the same story book after book after book. If you’ve read any of his earlier novels featuring Dave Robicheaux you’ve read this one. 

I could enumerate a host of faults, but I don’t care to do it. There are some indications this could be Burke’s final Robicheaux novel. The ending is unresolved, and the outcome could go either way. Wish I cared what that outcome was.

I started reading both authors long ago and I’m only reading them now to satisfy some obsessive-compulsive need to keep a series going. Gotta stop that.

Book 14: Getting Off by Lawrence Block

A female serial killer finds true love.  Lots of gratuitous sex and violence. Not my cup of tea.

James and Austen is a perfect pairing

Book 8: Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James

A lot of people who would enjoy this book may well pass it by.

Some because they are unfamiliar with P.D. James, a grandmaster of the British mystery.

Others because they have had their fill of all the Jane Austen knock-offs.  The tipping points may have been when Pride and Prejudice and Zombies made its appearance on bookstore shelves. 

Granted, that’s a bit much, but Death Comes to Pemberley is a perfect pairing.

James is a superb writer. She’s a literary descendant of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. A better, more muscular writer than either, in her books James has complete command over the plot, characters and setting.  

And more than a few mystery writers today have studied her work.  She specializes in littering her stories with little clues that lead to the guilty party, but she’s so skillful it doesn’t all come together until the denouement. 

 

As for Miss Austen – she occupies a rarefied pantheon of literary giants.  People have been reading and enjoying her books for two centuries now.  She’s definitely stood the test of time.

I’m not an Austenphile. I haven’t read all her books, but I admire the ones I have read. (And I do enjoy those lush period-piece movies based on her work.) And this isn’t the book Austen would have written if she had penned a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, but . . . 

Death Comes to Pemberley works – at every level.  It’s a satisfying whodunit that also works as the next chapter (literally) in the lives of the characters who inhabit Pride and Prejudice.

James is true to the spirit of Jane Austen.  Death Comes to Pemberley is James’ homage to Austen; it’s one great British writer paying her respect to another, greater author.

Like chocolate and wine, James and Austen is a pairing for the ages.