Friend of the Devil is Robinson at his best -- and that is very good indeed

Books now read in ’07: 84
Title: Friend of the Devil
Author: Peter Robinson
Genre: Mystery
Date Completed: 8-24
Pages: 424

Books now read in ’07: 85
Title: Skeleton Man
Author: Tony Hillerman
Genre: Mystery
Date Completed: 8-26
Pages: 241

I once had the foolish idea that, as a writer, Peter Robinson was secondary to Ian Rankin. Any doubts as to Robinson’s ranking, firmly alongside Rankin, are put to rest in his thoroughly diverting new mystery, Friend of the Devil. What is secondary, or almost so, are the two murders that drive the narrative. The real feature of this and all of Robinson’s novels is the splendid development of his main characters, principally Inspector Banks and Annie Cabot. Robinson even manages to offer up a genuine surprise – it’s a shocker and I guarantee fans of this fine series won’t see it coming.

This is the second time I’ve read Hillerman’s Skeleton Man, and I liked it better this time. Since the first time, I’ve went back and read several of Hillerman’s books. Consequently, I now understand and care more about his characters – Leaphorn (who has only a small role here), Cowboy Dashee, Sgt. Chee and Bernie Manuelito. It’s not Hillerman’s best – but that still means it is better than most.

Gibson rocks in Spook Country

Books now read in ’07: 83
Title: Spook Country
Author: William Gibson
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 8-20
Pages: 371

Late in William Gibson’s new and entirely amazing new novel a character explains that he found himself engaged in a particular mission because someone was looking for a person with a “really odd skill set.” As it happens, just about everyone in Spook Country has a really odd skill set.

• There’s Hollis Henry, a journalist who was the former lead singer in a now defunct alt-rock band.
  
  
• There’s a mysterious old man with incredible connections, inside and outside the government.
  
  
• An agile, young Cuban-Chinese man with acrobatic skills who channels a stable of small “g” gods and who can call on the resources of his family, which is both a family in the sense that they are all related and a family in the sense that are a way-below-the-radar crime family.
  
  
• There’s a Russian-speaking, sedative-loving fellow who has been gang-pressed into aiding a cranky man, who is clearly the novel’s resident bad guy, trail the agile kid and translate messages passing between him and his family.
  
  
• And, certainly neither last nor least, is the brilliant but geeky Bobby Chombo who does amazing things with locative art and GPS tracking.

Gibson takes all these disparate characters, combines a seemingly random and disparate assortment of elements – locative art, GPS tracking, pirates, container shipping and just a whiff of terrorists – into an engrossing and thoroughly entertaining novel. A thrill ride if you are given to blurbs.

How Gibson makes this all work is a testament to his skill as a novelist. Gibson made his reputation writing about a not-to-distant future. He’s abandoned the future recently for the present. One suspects it’s because the present is infinitely more interesting. Or, perhaps, Gibson simply tired of the burden of the predictive – he’s given to telling fans who gush about his futurescapes – “Did you notice there were no cell phones in the future?”

Spook Country is divided into three stories: the primary one features Hollis, who has been employed by the mysterious and wonderfully named Hubertus Bigend to write an article on locative art for a magazine that doesn’t yet exist. Bigend is really interested in what Hollis can learn about Bobby Chombo and his fixation on a particular container at sea. There’s a story line with the old man and the agile young man and his family, which eventually intersects with the final story line, that of our Russian-speaking drug user and his handler. Those story lines ultimately merge with that of Hollis and Bigend and Bobby Chombo.

Trust me, it works. And it works well. Late in the novel (where have we heard that phrase?) – just before the part about really odd skill sets – there’s a discussion about laundering massive, as in billions, amounts of cash. At about that point it becomes clear where the novel is headed. But what isn’t clear, until the end, is whether this ambitious and outrageous scheme will come to pass.

No spoilers here. You have to read Spook Country for the answer. I envy you. It’s huge fun.

Happy Birthday, Ray!

Ray Bradbury is 87 today. Here's a nice story on Bradbury in the New York Times.

Yesterday, CNN.com published a story on American reading habits, or the lack thereof. It is not a pretty story.

My Girls take their back to school photos

Time out from books. This is Dolly -- she's almost four months old -- and her sister, Gracie, about 15 months old. They are Pembroke Welsh Corgis. Predominately black and white, with brown accents, they are technically tri-colors but more commonly known as black-top Corgis.

Books now read in ’07: 78
Title: Black Dogs
Author: Ian McEwan
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 8-5
Pages: 149

Books now read in ’07: 79
Title: Enduring Love
Author: Ian McEwan
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 8-8
Pages: 262

Books now read in ’07: 80
Title: The Zero
Author: Jess Walter
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 8-12
Pages: 326

Books now read in ’07: 81
Title: Foreign Affairs
Author: Alison Lurie
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 8-16
Pages: 291

Books now read in ’07: 82
Title: Saving Daylight
Author: Jim Harrison
Genre: Poetry
Date Completed: 8-19
Pages: 121

Can you forgive me, dear reader? Will you? I have broken our pact – I write, you read. Understand, all six of you have not been far from my thoughts, but it would not been easy, or convenient, to post. I have been traveling. For work. 10 days on the road. (Isn’t that a song?)

Traveling is good and bad. It allows you to visit new bookstores, attend book sales, track down authors, but it does not allow you time to post. And, more importantly, it is time away from the comforts of home. From the wife and the puppies.

I was in Iowa and Illinois. Des Moines and Chicago. The State Fair. Republican candidates for president. The straw poll. Mrs. Romney and family in first class on the flight from Des Moines to Chicago. That sort of thing, if it makes any sense at all. If it doesn’t that may be a good thing for you.

Such travel means airports, and airports mean reading. First in Washington and then in Des Moines and, finally, waiting to return home, in Chicago, where the weather was blissfully cool and free of humidity. Unlike Iowa or Washington where it was (and has been) uncomfortably hot and damnably humid.

On to the books.

Two early works by Ian McEwan. Black Dogs appeared in 1992, it is his fifth novel. Enduring Love, his seventh, appeared in 1997. I find it instructive to read an author’s early works – themes appear, stylistic tendencies, interests. You can see the writer that you love beginning to emerge from these early efforts.

Black Dogs is a study of faith vs. rationalism. A couple, united by their belief in Communism, are pushed apart soon after their marriage by the wife’s near mystical experience when she fights off two vicious black dogs. Do the dogs truly exist? The wife believes so. The husband does not.

This novel begins as a “talky,” philosophical exercise until late in the book when the dogs appear (or not). In that scene, as the wife fights for her life, while her husband is distracted by an unusual caterpillar, we witness McEwan’s emergence as a writer in command of his craft. The novelist’s techniques, still transparent in Black Dogs, become palpable and powerful in Saturday.

Enduring Love might be a less interesting novel than Black Dogs, certainly that would be true in the hands of any other writer. The protagonist finds himself joining a group of men trying to rescue a young boy from a runaway hot air balloon. In the attempt, one of the men is killed.

It seems obvious where this novel might go – who let go first? Who failed? Was it our protagonist? – and McEwan seems to be headed in that direction when Enduring Love veers into wholly unexpected terrain. One of the men engaged in the rescue attempt falls in love with our protagonist, begins to stalk him. And, yet, no one believes our protagonist. Not his wife. Not the police. Not the reader.

Enduring Love becomes, like Black Dogs, an exploration of reality. Whose experience is genuine? By the time, McEwan unveils the answer there’s a contemporary horror sitting in the living room wielding a knife. And yet the novel still refuses to follow a conventional conclusion.

Neither Enduring Love nor Black Dogs is as skillfully wrought as Amsterdam, Atonement, Saturday or McChesil Beach, but they point, solidly, in the direction of these superb novels and to an accomplished author.

The Zero by Jess Walter was shortlisted for the 2006 National Book Award for fiction. It is a weird, paranoid, ironic exploration of a cop’s life in the days following 9-11. The Zero refers to Ground Zero, and is a horrifyingly magnetic reality in the life of the cop, Brian Remy, and his comrades.

Brian has gaps in his life. He seems to be working as a special agent for one of the myriad intelligence agencies that sprang into existence in the days following 9-11. Brian flits from one scene to the next like Billy Pilgrim popping in and out of time. In his saner moments, or perhaps his maddest, he seems horrified by the work he does. Yet there seems to be nothing he can do to stop it. He leaves notes to himself. Notes that he doesn’t remember answering, yet does.

As with Being There, the film featuring Peter Sellers, Brian is like some autistic savant. Everyone thinks he knows more than he does and mistakes him for a wise man. The reader truly isn’t sure whether Brian is a wise man or Forest Gump. Our deliberate confusion is part of Walter’s skill in walking us through a confusing new world.

The Zero is deliciously ironic, and what seemed like paranoia in 2006 seems like only the most recent news report of 2007. Among the books shortlisted for the 2006 National Book Award this is the best and most interesting I’ve read so far.

Alison Lurie’s 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Foreign Affairs, is the best example I can offer for wandering away from the bestseller list. Written more than 20 years ago, Lurie’s novel is still as humorous and incisive now as the day it was written.

Something of a comedy of manners, it is the story of the love affairs of two Americans, both professors of English from Cornith University, who are in London, ostensibly for purposes of research. Fred Turner, a handsome man still in his 20s, hates London until he embarks on a love affair with an older actress. Vinnie Miner has convinced herself that her English friends do not see her as American. She believes she has been thoroughly assimilated. Thus, Vinnie’s love affair with a large and loud Tulsa engineer is an uncomfortable as it is irresistible.

Lurie’s novel, too, is irresistible. Let’s put it this way, how can you not adore a book with the following line: “A person without inner resources who splits infinitives, Vinnie thinks.” Now that’s deliciously funny as is Lurie’s novel.

Finally, a small collection of poetry by Jim Harrison. Saving Daylight is sometimes humorous, sometimes opaque as poetry should be I suppose. Considering Harrison’s age it is not surprising to note that many of the poems are concerned with the approach of death or its aftermath. Fortunately, Harrison still waxes poetic about dogs, wild birds, women and food.

Mann Booker long list announced

Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach heads the 2007 Man Booker long list. McEwan is one of the few notable novelists to make the long list this year, which The Guardian described as “low key.”

It’s also briefer than in the past. There are 13 nominated books. Normally, 18 to 24 books make the long list.

Also on the long list are:

• Darkmans, Nicola Barker
• Self Help, Edward Docx
• The Gift Of Rain, Tan Twan Eng
• The Gathering, Anne Enright
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid
• The Welsh Girl, Peter Ho Davies
• Mister Pip, Lloyd Jones
• Gifted, Nikita Lalwani
• What Was Lost, Catherine O’Flynn
• Consolation, Michael Redhill
  
• Animal’s People, Indra Sinha
• Winnie & Wolf by A.N. Wilson

The Man Booker shortlist will be announced September 6 and the winner will be announced October 16.

The Felsenfeld Collection

The July 30 issue of The New Yorker has an interesting article about Brooklyn classical composer Danny Felsenfeld showing up as a character in several recent novels.

He’s Inspector Felsenfeld in Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. He also appears in The Secondhand World by Katherine Min (as a youngish teacher), At the Feet of the Divine by Benjamin Anastas (a half-mad, pre-Anschluss Talmudic scholar), Every Visible Thing by Lisa Carey (a pipe-smoking high school principal) and in a forthcoming novel by Ellen Slezak as a University of Michigan student in the late seventies who works on the grounds crew at the school’s athletic complex.

Altogether Felsenfeld appears in seven books: three that have been published in the U.S. since 2006, one in an Austrian bestseller and three in works that are still in progress, according to The New Yorker.

Slezak started the movement after arriving at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. “I needed a Jewish name, and I didn’t have my usual sources to find one – I don’t know, looking through a phone book or taking a walk in a Jewish cemetery. I was sitting there in my little studio that day, and I started saying to myself, ‘Felsenfeld, Felsenfeld, Danny – that guy who’s always around.”

New Yorker writer Brian Thomas Gallagher describes Felsenfeld as “quirky and charismatic.” He also writes, “Felsenfeld is gregarious, bespectacled, and possessed of the uncanny ability to be present anytime someone was looking for conversation . . . Charmed by him, and by his memorable last name, they (the authors) began inserting namesakes into their manuscripts.”

Now here’s how I think: This is a great opportunity to assemble the Felsenfeld Collection, a small, but intriguing collection of novels featuring characters all based on the same individual. It would be an especially nice collection if all the books were signed by Felsenfeld.

James Lee Burke a little like the City of New Orleans

Books now read in ’07: 77
Title: The Tin Roof Blowdown
Author: James Lee Burke
Genre: Mystery
Date Completed: 8-2
Pages: 373

The anger and sadness that James Lee Burke feels as a result of the destruction of New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina, the subsequent graft and corruption that tainted efforts to rebuild that historic city and the wholesale abandonment of the city and its largely black inhabitants by politicians, the press and the public sweep through The Tin Roof Blowdown in a refreshing wave of indignation and righteousness.

Unfortunately, that is the only element of Burke’s new novel that one can recommend. It is tempting to satirize Burke’s style and to write about what one believes will be the fate of any writer who betrays their great talent. For it seems to me that is what Burke has done. His recent books are so unoriginal, so derivative of everything he has written before, that to read him now only generates disappointment and sadness.

It is not only the plots and the actions of the characters, but the predictability that we find in the narrative, the set pieces that he re-uses from book to book as well as the descriptions that begin to re-appear not only from book to book, but chapter to chapter.

Burke is a little like the city of New Orleans – something once great, but no longer.

A Good Hanging is a good read

Books now read in ’07: 76
Title: A Good Hanging
Author: Ian Rankin
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 7-30
Pages: 253

A dozen early short stories featuring Rankin’s Inspector Rebus. The book was issued in 1992 in England, but didn’t make appearance here until 2002 after Rankin began to enjoy acclaim on this side of the Atlantic.

The tales are especially enjoyable for fans of this series – providing additional insight into Rankin’s memorable Scottish inspector.

Books now read in ’07: 75
Title: The Gravedigger’s Daughter
Author: Joyce Carol Oates
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 7-29
Pages: 582

I’ll say this about Joyce Carol Oates. She’s consistent.

Her 2000 book, Blonde, a fictional hatchet job on the life of Marilyn Monroe, rankest among a very short list of books I dislike the most. Since reading Blonde I had vowed never to read Oates again. I broke that oath this month to read her newest book, The Gravedigger’s Daughter. That short list has gotten larger by one book.

The Gravedigger’s Daughter is a tedious, over-written work that’s also emotionally dishonest and whose characters ring false. In one scene, Oates’ main character, the gravedigger’s daughter of the title, thinks that another character has “a deep-sea predator’s eyes.” This from an illiterate high school drop-out. It’s an instance of a writer exercising her chops, but not honoring her character who has no context whatsoever to see this man’s eyes in this way.

What’s worse, is that The Gravedigger’s Daughter is a book in search of an ending. It builds to what we think may be an explosive climax only to taper off in a series of pointless letters that go on far too long.

Bury this book. Deep. Very deep.

My home library

These pictures, taken today, are of my recently completed home library.

Books now read in ’07: 74
Title: First Among Sequels
Author: Jasper Fforde
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 7-20
Pages: 395

In order to reverse a precipitous decline in reading rates, the governing council of BookWorld makes Pride and Prejudice into a reality television show. Once a week one of the Bennet sisters will be voted off the show and, as viewers “rewrite” the novel, the venerable classic will cease to exist as we know it.

This is only one of the nefarious schemes confronting Thursday Next in her triumphant return in First Among Sequels. The ChronoGuard is tinkering with the time stream, the Goliath Corporation is suspiciously friendly, Thursday’s illegally selling cheese, the government’s stupidity surplus is dangerously high, her deceased uncle returns as a ghost – he has something to tell her but can’t remember what, someone’s trying to kill Thursday and she has not one, but two, Thursday Next clones yearning to be Jurisfiction agents.

Thursday has been noticeably absent for two books as author Jasper Fforde introduced detective Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crimes Division and took a new look at the death of Humpty Dumpty and the relationship between Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

It's a welcome return. Since her first appearance in The Eyre Affair Thursday, and Fforde, have promised a thoroughly entertaining and humorous adventure in BookWorld. Neither Next nor Fforde disappoint in this action-packed fifth book in the series. It’s a delightful, delicious romp.

Books now read in ’07: 73
Title: The Maytrees
Author: Annie Dillard
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 7-17
Pages: 216

I wanted to like this thin, awkward novel – the first by Annie Dillard in more than a decade – but could not. Ultimately, it is too slight, too opaque and, at times, to much like a writer’s notebook than a polished work to be truly satisfying.

Words like pauciloquoys, (which I think is spelled wrong. I think pauciloquy was intended, which means brevity of speech), thigmotropic (a biological term meaning 'oriented growth of an organism in response to mechanical contact, as a plant tendril coiling around a string support', which could be extended to mean “fond of touch”), and epistomeliac (I don’t know, I really don’t) had me cringing.

As do sentences such as: “So might a seeing white statue, aware and at ease, over whose feet and plinth wash wild seas, guard a greasy harbor.” I don’t know what that sentence means – standing alone or in context. Is there a context?

The atmosphere is compelling and the setting vivid, but the narrative (in keeping with the novel’s themes) is a shipwreck, run aground on the thinness of Dillard’s prose, which wants to be poetry, and which can’t support the weight of her philosophical musings on mortality and love. A beautiful story is lost in sentences that twist and turn and never emerge into a consistent coherent whole.

Five more mysteries add to 2007 reading total

Books now read in ’07: 68
Title: Skin Tight
Author: Carl Hiaasen
Genre: Mystery
Date Completed: 7-8
Pages: 318

Books now read in ’07: 69
Title: The First Eagle
Author: Tony Hillerman
Genre: Mystery
Date Completed: 7-9
Pages: 278

Books now read in ’07: 70
Title: Blood at the Root
Author: Peter Robinson
Genre: Mystery
Date Completed: 7-11
Pages: 309

Books now read in ’07: 71
Title: Double Play
Author: Robert B. Parker
Genre: Mystery
Date Completed: 7-12
Pages: 288

Books now read in ’07: 72
Title: Red Square
Author: Martin Cruz Smith
Genre: Mystery
Date Completed: 7-15
Pages: 418

The reading rampage has ended – 10 books in 15 days, not bad considering it was largely interrupted by a three-day trip to New York. A final Hillerman and an early Peter Robinson were among the final five. Both solid reads, as was Red Square by Martin Cruz Smith. Skin Tight, an early Carl Hiaasen, isn’t one of the author’s best. And I can’t recommend Robert B. Parker’s Double Play.

Still reading the new biography of Edith Wharton and a collection of poetry by Jim Harrison.

On reading rates

Received the following yesterday:

Lola has left a new comment on your post "Five books in five days, a reading marathon":

How many hours did you read in one day (on average?) You must read really fast, OR you read nearly 24 hours straight! I can't do that unless it's a really good book.

PS: I added you to my short list of biblioblogs links. Hope you don't mind! (..?)

:)

First, Lola, I'm delighted that you've added this blog to your short list of links. Of course I don't mind. My goal is to have a dozen readers by the end of this year. I think I'm halfway there!

Your question about how fast I read is a question that I’ve often asked myself. The simple answer is that I read about 50 pages of fiction in an hour. The more complex answer is that the actual number of pages read in an hour might range from 35 to 70.

Factors that contribute to my read rate include the author’s style, the genre of the book, where I’m at in the book (beginning, middle or end) and any external distractions – from TV, a wife who wants to converse or a barking dog.

As to author’s style, some authors just read “faster” than others. I’m a fan of Charles Dickens, but it always takes me about 100 pages to become re-acclimated to his writing style before my reading pace picks up. It’s the same with Edith Wharton. With Shakespeare, the pace never does pick up. On the other hand, I can pick up Tony Hillerman's newest book and read 70 pages in an hour without breaking a sweat.

That leads to the genre of the book. Mysteries are quick reads. I think there are several reasons for this – mysteries are not laden with loads of descriptive text, but are rich in dialogue and mysteries generally have a propulsive plot that propels the narrative and the reader along. This holds true for some of the authors I enjoy such as Robert Crais, George Pelecanos and Michael Connelly. It’s less true of P.D. James.

I always read at a slower pace when I’m just starting a book. Refer back to my point about the author’s style. Usually there’s a small adjustment period as I familiarize myself with a writer’s style, the characters and setting. I always feel that by the point I’ve reached 60 to 100 pages I’m well on my way – and the pace picks up – and the pace always picks up again in the final 100 pages. I don’t know why. I’m like a horse who smells the barn.

Eliminating external distractions are important. A quiet, well-lit room with a cozy chair and a couple of hours uninterrupted is the ideal. No TV. No dogs. No one else around. That’s when the world slips away and I slip into something like an alpha state. I’m not aware of the passage of time, the turning of pages. Nothing. I am one with the book. Or, more accurately, one with the story.

When I find my thoughts wandering, my pace slows down. That’s often a time to put the book down, take care of what’s on my mind or engage in some other activity.

I said a few hours of uninterrupted time is the ideal, and it is. But many people seem to believe if they don’t have a block of two or three hours what's the point of picking up a book at all? I think the failure to take advantage of interstitial time is one of the biggest mistakes non-readers make. An interstice is the space between things. Interstitial time is that time you spend in doctor’s waiting rooms or in those dingy rooms at the car dealer while you’re waiting on the oil change and safety inspection. Fifteen minutes here, 30 minutes there and it all adds up. I never go on an appointment without a book. It’s a good use of time and helps the time go faster.

My goal, each day, is a minimum of 100 pages. I read an average of 50 pages during my morning commute and another 50 pages on the trip home in the evening. I try to read at noon, generally about 35 pages. I read at in the evenings at home, but less than you might suspect. Perhaps a few pages before dinner and then for 60 to 90 minutes after dinner. But I don’t always pick up a book after dinner. My wife and I might spend the time talking. The kids may call. We might pop in a DVD; currently, we’re working our way through Season 1 of The Closer or catch the most recent airing of Gray’s Anatomy.

I read less on the weekends then you would imagine. Weekends are for me and my wife. That’s the time we spend together; shopping at the farmer’s market, running errands, dining out, sightseeing.

All in all, I have the same attitude about reading as I do running. It’s not how fast you are that’s important, but that you’re doing it. Both are good for you.

Five books in five days, a reading marathon

Books now read in ’07: 63
Title: A Thief of Time
Author: Tony Hillerman
Genre: Mystery
Date Completed: 7-1
Pages: 209

Books now read in ’07: 64
Title: Baltimore Blues
Author: Laura Lippman
Genre: Mystery
Date Completed: 7-2
Pages: 324

Books now read in ’07: 65
Title: Coyote Waits
Author: Tony Hillerman
Genre: Mystery
Date Completed: 7-3
Pages: 292

Books now read in ’07: 66
Title: Bleeding Hearts
Author: Ian Rankin
Genre: Mystery
Date Completed: 7-4
Pages: 374

Books now read in ’07: 67
Title: Sacred Clowns
Author: Tony Hillerman
Genre: Mystery
Date Completed: 7-5
Pages: 305

OK, I got little crazy. Took some time off from work. I travel all the time as part of my work so I didn’t want to go anywhere. What I wanted to do, what I did, was go on this reading jag – five books in five days. It’s going to end tomorrow. It’s the wife’s birthday and we’re heading to New York City. I think she would frown on me carving out a few hours a day to toss off another book or three. But it's been fun, sort of like running 20 miles just to see if you can. (I should mention this isn't all I'm reading: I'm also working my way through the new biography of Edith Wharton, which is a bit of a slog, and a collection of Jim Harrison's poetry, a few comics and the newest issue of The New Yorker.)

Three Tony Hillerman mysteries. I’ve read Hillerman in the past, but sporadically. This concentration gave me new appreciation for his genius. These are great books with vivid characters. Lots of opportunity to enhance your knowledge of Southwest history and culture, especially regarding the Navajos.

Baltimore Blues was re-issued in observance of that book’s 10^th anniversary. It is Lippman’s first book and her first book featuring Tess Monaghan. I know Lippman was a reporter for years, but there’s very little evidence of the fits and starts and stumbles of a beginning novelist. This is good. All the ingredients that make the Tess Monaghan series so fine are here.

Rankin’s Bleeding Hearts is also a re-issue. The book, first published in England in 1994, made its first U.S. appearance last year based on the success of Rankin’s Inspector Rebus series. The premise of the novel is improbable if you pause to give it much thought. Fortunately, it’s such rollicking good fun it’s not necessary to examine the premise all that closely. Rankin is one of the few writers who can make a hit man a sympathetic figure. If you’re a Rankin fan, pick this one up. If not, go directly to an Inspector Rebus novel.

Thumbs down on Updike's Terrorist, appreciation for Peter Robinson's Close to Home

Books now read in ’07: 61
Title: Terrorist
Author: John Updike
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 6-27
Pages: 310

Books now read in ’07: 62
Title: Close to Home
Author: Peter Robinson
Genre: Mystery
Date Completed: 6-30
Pages: 389

Sixty-two books completed at the mid-point of 2007.

John Updike’s Terrorist was a disappointment. It is the story of Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy, the son of an Irish-American woman and an Egyptian man. The 18-year-old Ahmad is a devout Muslim. He’s recruited to participate in a suicide mission – setting off a truck loaded with explosives in the Lincoln Tunnel. Naïve, but intelligent, Ahmad is easily manipulated by his imam and his employer who are part of the scheme.

Two issues with this novel: several unlikely coincidences involving Ahmad’s school counselor and the moral ambiguity at its center. Ahmad is not a villain, but a tool; that much seems clear. But Updike seems intent on assigning some responsibility to the American people, as if their actions have justified the terror visited upon them. That’s an judgment I don’t accept.

Close to Home is a 2003 mystery featuring Peter Robinson’s Chief Inspector Alan Banks. Banks and Detective Inspector Annie Cabot find themselves investigating two murders – three decades apart – of two young men in their early teens. One of the youth was a childhood friend of Banks who mysteriously disappeared; now his bones have been uncovered and the investigation into his death re-opened. The other death, which seems the result of an ill-planned kidnapping, involves a young man who is the son of a famous model and a deceased rock star.

Close to home, of course, is where you first look in any murder. Robinson’s Alan Banks series compares favorably with Ian Rankin’s series featuring Inspector Rebus. Banks and Cabot are exceptionally well-drawn and the plots intriguing. If you are not familiar with this fine British series, it’s time you were.

Marvel's Planet Hulk a masterful blend of word and art

The Hulk, Marvel Comic’s green-skinned monster, has been in existence nearly 50 years. In that time, I’ve thought of the Hulk as largely a one-note super hero. “Hulk Smash.” “Hulk Strongest One There Is.” That sort of thing. There wasn’t much gray matter behind that green façade and any super villain he inevitably defeated seemed more the result of serendipitous rage than from any sense of justice or moral outrage. He could just as likely pound the Thing or Thor into the dirt as the Leader. All that changed in a remarkable series by Greg Pak that originally appeared in issues #92-105 of The Incredible Hulk.

Pak has reinvented old Greenskin. In this series the Hulk is smarter, stronger and more capable of channeling his anger into constructive paths, although that doesn’t mean he doesn’t administer a beating or two. As the Green Scar, the Hulk takes on a dignity and depth that’s been absent for five decades. He assumes tragic dimensions and suddenly that anger that always so diffused and misdirected is focused squarely on a foursome that’s stood tall in the Marvel Universe and one can’t help but cheer for the Hulk.

The Planet Hulk mini-series has now been assembled into a handsome hard-bound graphic novel of the same name. As the series begins the Hulk has been shot into space by those relentless do-gooders Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), Iron Man, Dr. Strange and Black Bolt, leader of the Inhumans. Their intent was to send the Hulkie to a lush, uninhabited world. Instead, the Hulk ends up as a gladiator on Sakaar, a savage world of pink-skinned humanoids and intelligent, mind-linked insects, which is ruled by the cruel Red King.

By the conclusion of Planet Hulk, the Green Scar, aided by his War Bound, who meet in Sakaar’s version of the gladiatorial arena, and a handful of native rebels, overthrows the Red King and is himself crowned king. He takes a queen who soon announces that she’s preggers. In the comics, like the soap operas, nothing ends on a happy note and events lead to the destruction of the entire world, including Hulk’s queen and impending child. Only the Hulk and his War Bound survive. That sets up round two, now unfolding in a comic shop near you in World War Hulk. The Green Scar is pissed and he’s returned to Earth, along with his War Bound, seeking revenge.

An entertaining aspect of the series is that among the War Bound,” largely a motley assortment of “monsters,” are several minor characters who made long-ago appearances in Marvel Comics, including Korg, part of the Kronan race, stone creatures who once fought Thor in Journey Into Mystery #83 and a member of the Brood, a race of insect-like, parasitic beings, who first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #155 That’s a nice touch by Pak. Another deft touch is Pak’s handling of Bruce Banner, the Hulk’s alter ego. Banner, the nerdy scientist who Hulk hates most, makes only a cameo appearance in the series, but that brief appearance is in a touching scene in which the Hulk demonstrates great vulnerability and trust. It’s a testament to Pak’s skill as a writer that he can evoke such emotions from this green-skinned behemoth.

Planet Hulk demonstrates the power and popularity of the comic book and, by extension, the graphic novel. I’ve been around longer than the Hulk, yet I continue to become deeply caught up in a comic’s narrative arc. Pak’s writing drives this book, but it would be incomplete without the exceptional artwork, principally that of Aaron Lopresti and Carlo Pagulayan, who offer up several full-page set pieces, sans text, that are marvelous, as is the one-panel snapshot of the Hulk – almost an aside – when he realizes he is to be a father. A superlative blend of word and picture, Planet Hulk easily ranks among the finest comic book efforts in a half century and is a testament to that special blend of storytelling that makes the comic book such a special, enduring medium.

Eig whiffs in Opening Day

Books now read in ’07: 60
Title: Opening Day
Author: Jonathan Eig
Genre: Baseball
Date Completed: 6-23
Pages: 275

In 1997 Jackie Robinson A Biography by Arnold Rampersad appeared. Five years later, in 2002, Scott Simon, of National Public Radio fame, wrote Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball. Rampersad’s fine effort is clearly the definitive biography of Robinson, the first African American to play Major League baseball in the modern day, while Simon’s tidy volume neatly put Robinson’s accomplishments into a social and cultural perspective.

Consequently, it’s difficult to understand exactly what need Jonathan Eig’s Opening Day -- subtitled The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season – fulfills. Eig does focus on that historic first season, bracketing his account of that season with a brief introduction of the pre-Major League Jackie and a quick round-up of his career following that first season and his subsequent retirement.

There’s nothing new here. Eig’s prose is serviceable, but not evocative or compelling. He’s not, for example, Roger Angell. (For that matter, who is.) Nor does he do for Robinson what Jane Leavy did for Sandy Koufax in her book of that name. I’m not suitably disciplined to resist a baseball analogy in summarizing this book – Opening Day is the literary equivalent of taking a third strike looking.

Eat the Document a disappointing effort; Everyman is Roth's meditation on mortality

I'm tardy posting. Work took me to Iowa for the entire week. That did furnish me with an opportunity to visit Prairie Lights, the Iowa City independent bookstore that clearly warrants its reputation as one of the best in the country. Three levels: children’s books in the basement, new fiction and non-fiction on the main floor, travel and graphic novels and science fiction and an array of genres on the second floor along with a very nice café.

Books now read in ’07: 58
Title: Eat the Document
Author: Dana Spiotta
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 6-20
Pages: 290

Coincidence plays too great a role in this implausible novel of sixties radicals on the run by Dana Spiotta. Eat the Document was among the books short-listed for the 2006 National Book Award.

The novel alternates between the past and the present. In the past, we follow a young woman on the lam from the law after a misconceived protest goes horribly wrong. In the present, she’s a mom living in suburban Seattle. Coincidentally, her former lover and fellow radical has also settled in Seattle. And coincidentally, her son is acquainted with her former lover and fellow radical, who now runs a bookstore that appeals to – surprise – present day radicals, malcontents and the like.

Naturally, the son discovers the truth about both their past lives effecting a brief reunion. If this unlikely narrative weren’t objectionable enough, in present day, a few characters talk in a near incomprehensible gibberish apparently reflective of a kind of self-referential, radical rap.

It’s a disappointing book on multiple levels.

Books now read in ’07: 59
Title: Everyman
Author: Philip Roth
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 6-21
Pages: 182

Everyman is Philip Roth’s meditation on mortality. It begins with the funeral of his narrator and ends with his death. In between, he ponders the inevitability of that long slide into oblivion. It’s an interesting read, although far from Roth’s best work. This gloomy narrative is best tackled on a sunny day when you're a very, very good mood.