CBR4 #25: The Grin of the Dark by Ramsey Campbell

On its surface, this book sounded like something I would like. A movie critic/historian sets out to write a book about Tubby Thackeray, a silent-era film star who has been all but forgotten by the modern era. Unfortunately, it turns out that things would have been a lot better if Tubby had stayed forgotten.

The problems I had with this book were probably mostly personal. I didn’t like the narrator at all–I found him to be something of a spineless twerp–and none of the other characters appealed to me either. Frankly, I was a bit disappointed that Tubby didn’t crawl out of the screen Ring-style and eat everybody in the first 100 pages. Plus, I am very iffy about unreliable narrators. Although sometimes the effect can be used really well, in this one I found it extremely obvious and therefore a bit lame.

Some of the imagery was good, and I did appreciate the tone of ever-rising paranoia and tension, but there were long bits that consisted of the narrator arguing via message board with an anonymous commenter…who spelled terribly.  I know it was intentional, but as a word nerd, that just irked me no end. I got what the author was going for, I just didn’t like it very much.

Allegedly, this book is very Lovecraftian. I don’t know about that, as I haven’t gotten around to reading any Lovecraft yet. I’ll just say that while others might enjoy this book, it wasn’t for me.

CBR4 #24: The Sword-Edged Blonde by Alex Bledsoe

In some ways, this is a stereo-typical noir parody. The detective, Eddie LaCrosse is an embittered cynic, just trying to get by and deal with his dark past. His office is above a bar peopled with tough characters and an even tougher barmaid. An old friend (who is now a pretty important guy) drops by with a problem — it seems that his wife has gone crazy and killed their son. The friend wants Eddie to investigate and see if everything is as it seems to be (hint: it’s not.) Eddie has to not only solve the mystery, but also confront some of the demons of his past.

Now take that story, and move it to a time of swords and horses. Eddie’s friend is a king, and magic is involved in daily life. Eddie still has to solve the mystery, but now there are sword battles and curses and all the tropes of fantasy.

It’s an odd cross between Sam Spade and Lord of the Rings, but it somehow works. The character of Eddie is great, and the mystery was intriguing. It’s particularly entertaining for anyone who enjoys both of the parodied genres, but the author–while certainly working the parody angle–is serious about the plot and making the story work on its own. The details are great, and I often found myself chuckling aloud at the dialogue or at Eddie’s take on how events unfold.

I really enjoyed this, and look forward to picking up the other books in the series.

CBR4 #23: What the Corpse Revealed by Hugh Miller

As you well know, I’ve read several of these medical examiner books, and frankly, I was least impressed with this one. It’s not that it was bad, necessarily. There were several cases laid out wherein forensics were used to find out what had happened to the victims. The writing was clear and relatively easy to read. The main issue was that all the stories were second-hand–the author, unlike the authors of the previous works I’ve read on this subject, was not personally involved as a forensic professional, but is just documenting the cases of others.

While I don’t like TOO much personal stuff intruding into the case histories (see this season of Bones for an example of a perfectly-balanced procedural tipped over into “crappy family drama”) there is something to be said for seeing a glimpse of the forensic pathologist behind the mask. The kind of people who seem to get into this profession are often interesting characters, and have a lot to add to any story that may involve them. It seems a shame to go too far the other way, leaving out the personal touch almost entirely.

As I said, this isn’t a bad book for the genre, but it doesn’t have any additional spark or personality to lift it above “informative” and into “exciting reading” territory.

CBR4 #22: Her Majesty’s Spymaster: Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern Espionage by Stephen Budiansky

Strangely, this is another book I picked up due to my viewing habits. I am a huge fan of the film Elizabeth starring Cate Blanchett. Although it’s obviously very fictitious historical fiction, it’s still a tremendous film full of amazing performances. My favorite character in it is definitely Sir Francis Walsingham, played by Geoffrey Rush as a cunning strategist and loyal ally. I figured that while he’s obviously been made more interesting for the film, somewhere there must be a grain of truth to his role, and I bought this book to try and find it.

Walsingham was in fact one of Queen Elizabeth’s most trusted advisers. He was a devout protestant who had spent a great deal of time outside of England, acting as an ambassador. He was a quiet, frugal person, a devoted family man and conscientious civil servant. He was also a master of strategy; he managed to place double agents, crack codes, use misinformation to achieve his goals, and handle a rather indecisive monarch. At the time, there were plots against the queen from every direction, and Walsingham used his network of spies to stay one step ahead of every one.

The other historical personalities who appear in the piece are pretty well fleshed out as well. The queen herself doesn’t come off very well–she’s shown as often refusing to take action until circumstances are already out of hand, making Walsingham’s job more difficult than it needed to be. There is also a lot of petty jealousy from other members of court, as well as some traitors within the walls.

The book is well-researched, but it is not entirely chronological, which leads to some confusion about the sequence in which events happened. However, it’s a fascinating depiction of the work of a man far ahead of his time.

CBR4 #21: Soiled Doves: Prostitution in the Early West by Anne Seagraves

I am a big fan of westerns. I love the old ones–anything with Clint Eastwood on a horse will probably make me happy–and I like the newer ones, like Tombstone and the Coen brothers’ excellent remake of True Grit. I am especially fond of HBO’s (entirely too short-lived) TV show Deadwood. If you haven’t seen it, I’d suggest you run out and get seasons one and two immediately (season three is…not as good.) The show is graphic (it’s HBO, there are going to be boobs), the language is EXTREMELY salty, and some characters require the use of subtitles to get anything out of their dialogue. However, the acting is top-notch, the plots and dialogue are nearly Shakespearean, and Al Swearengen is about the coolest character to ever grace my television.

I told you that story to tell you this one:

Several of the characters on Deadwood are prostitutes. During the first season, pretty much the only women in the fledgling city are the hookers that were brought in to make money off the miners. The actresses who play them were great at their jobs, and they made me wonder about the lives of the real women who made their living on the wild frontier. Hence, this book.

Soiled Doves is not a bad book. It is filled with interesting anecdotes about famous prostitutes and madams of the time. However, I feel like the author glossed over some of the reality of their situations. While she does point out that many of the women who ended up as wild west hookers did so out of desperation, she tends to focus more on the ones who were successful. I realize that that makes for a more entertaining and enjoyable book, but sometimes I felt like the message was “Here’s some adorable stories about prostitutes!” The writing is a bit repetitious, and could have used a more strict editor.

The other problem I have is that while I am sure the author did extensive research, I wonder how accurate many of these stories are. They seem very tall-tale-ish to me, just as the stories of Wild Bill Hickok or Wyatt Earp have become more palatable over time (for example, Kurt Russell’s portrayal aside, Wyatt Earp was in reality kind of a scumbag con-artist — still an interesting guy, but not the folk-hero he’s made out to be). The danger of a book like this is while Seagraves does point out the downside of prostitution in the era, she also does a certain amount of romanticizing. I wonder if she would find the habits of modern prostitutes as quirky and their drive to survive in difficult situations as “courageous”.

This is not a bad book to start with if one is interested in the subject, but I think I may have to dig a little deeper to get any real information.

Also, seriously, watch Deadwood. It’s tremendous.

CBR4 #20: San Francisco Is Burning: The Untold Story of the 1906 Earthquake and Fires by Dennis Smith

In 1906, a massive earthquake struck the young city of San Francisco. While still suffering the aftershocks of the quake, fires broke out in several locations. Due to poor preparation and some very poor decision-making by those in authority, the fires would grow and rage out of control for days, destroying large swaths of the coastal city.

This book did a great job of explaining the events that led to the fires, as well as the context of how the city functioned at the time. Corruption in the local government was indirectly responsible for the lack of available water to fight the fire, and an unclear chain of command resulted in an unqualified member of the military taking charge of the fire-fighting process. His decisions to evacuate citizens (instead of allowing them to stay and try to save their homes), authorize the use of dynamite (by unqualified, untrained soldiers) to create firebreaks, and to declare martial law in the city resulted in the death of many people and the destruction of much of the city.The local firefighters, some local businessmen, and some members of the military–particularly the Navy–are portrayed well in the tale, but for the most part it is a litany of incompetence and poor planning.

The book is written well, and is clearly well-researched. My main issue with it is the switch back and forth between somewhat dry historical tome and historical fiction. I feel that the author should have gone in one direction or the other. However, I find this is often the case in books about historical events like this, since they can get very dry and impersonal if left without the emotional impact of having relateable “characters”.

On the whole, I’d recommend this to any history buffs who might be interested in the event, but not to someone looking for pleasure reading.

CBR4 #19: Miracles on the Water: The Heroic Survivors of a World War Two U-Boat Attack by Tom Nagorski

In the fall of 1940, London was becoming an increasingly dangerous place to live. The German blitz was raining down destruction on the heads of Londoners, and anyone who could manage to get out of town did so. Many wealthy families moved to their country estates, or at the least sent their children to stay with friends outside the city. Since this was not an option available to the poor, the British government developed a program which would allow children from low-income families to travel to Canada and remain safely across the Atlantic from the hazards of war. Many thought that having their children accepted into the program was a lucky break. Unfortunately for those whose children boarded the S.S. City of Benares, it became a nightmare.

The ship, which carried ninety displaced children (as well as chaperones, crew, and paying passengers, totalling about four hundred people aboard total) was torpedoed by a German U-boat in the middle of the Atlantic, nearly 600 miles from shore. The weather was rough, and despite the best efforts of crew and passengers, most of the lifeboats capsized, dumping adults and children alike into the cold seas. Most were forced to wait almost 24 hours for rescue, clinging to whatever bits of wreckage they could find. One lifeboat, which had been tossed away from the others, drifted for eight days with forty-six passengers aboard, among them seven of the children.

Although the story is extremely sad, as all but fourteen of the children perished, the tale of those who survived is inspirational. The lengths the surviving adults went to in order to save the children were positively heroic, and the actions of the children themselves border on the miraculous.

The book is written extremely well, keeping the story moving along while still incorporating as many facts as possible. The author has done extensive research in order to make everything extremely realistic as well as captivating. He also had a personal connection to the story, as his great-uncle was an adult passenger on the lifeboat that was adrift.

I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys inspirational stories of survival .

CBR4 #18: The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western By Richard Brautigan

[Okay, so I am about 16 books behind in my blogging. I wish I had better excuses (you know, like "I was in a shipwreck!" or "I was kidnapped by a cult!" or "The zombie apocalypse happened and I was holed up in a grocery store without wifi!") but really it's just that work has been busy and by the time I get home I really don't feel like spending any more time staring at a computer. However, today is quiet, and I figured I should probably make an effort at catching up before the hole is so deep that the mere thought of trying to dig out is overwhelming. That means the reviews will probably not be very long, but at least there will be SOMETHING getting done around here.]

It’s tough to describe The Hawkline Monster. I suppose that the author’s view of it as a “Gothic Western” is not exactly inaccurate, but at the same time it’s not very descriptive. Then again, I’m not sure there’s a word (or even a group of words) that could have prepared me for this book.

The premise–at its most basic–is that two gun-slingers in the old west are approached by a young Indian girl who asks them to come out to the Hawkline mansion and kill a monster. They agree, and ride out to the solitary Hawkline mansion and meet the young Miss Hawklines (not a typo–there are two), who claim there is a monster under their house. The two gun-slingers investigate and discover there IS something odd going on, though it’s maybe not what they were expecting.

This sounds pretty straight-forward when described this way, but it’s really not. The plot doesn’t flow neatly forward, and large chunks of the action don’t exactly make sense. One character morphs into another and no one seems to notice. The Miss Hawklines are so alike they can’t even tell themselves apart. Conversations wander, time is lost, and one of the shadows in the house is a little more active than a shadow should be. It’s all very absurd, but at the same time the style of writing is so prosaic that the weirdness becomes even MORE disconcerting because the reader is the only one who seems to notice.

Another thing that might not be obvious from the description is how funny this book is. Some of that comes from the tone, which is hysterically dry. Utterly bizarre occurrences are narrated as though they are common daily habits. The chapters are all very short and precise. Many deal with a single event, or even a single thought process. The dialogue is often so surreal it’s tough NOT to laugh.

On the whole, I am pretty sure I enjoy this book, though I found the plot a little lacking. There is plenty of bad language and sexual situations, so not for children or delicate adults. However, for those who enjoy some determined weirdness, this isn’t a bad way to go.

CBR4 #17: The Tomb by F. Paul Wilson

Repairman Jack is a fixer. He isn’t likely to fix a leaky sink or malfunctioning dryer, but he WILL help get rid of a stalker, deal with vandals who won’t leave you alone, or track down property you might not want the cops to know is missing.

In this tale, Jack finds himself tracking down a special necklace for a Bengali diplomat. He also is called upon (grudgingly) by his ex-girlfriend to help locate an elderly friend who has gone missing. Unsurprisingly, the two events are related. What might be surprising is how things end up shaking out.

I liked the character of Repairman Jack very much. He’s interesting, with a distinctive voice and clear motivations. His girlfriend Gia was not as likable, but at least her motivation to make the choices she did was also clear. The side characters were also well done, including Jack’s pawn-broker friend and Gia’s adorable daughter Vicky.

Frankly, I did see one of the twists coming from fairly early on, but it didn’t effect how much I enjoyed the story. The characters managed to hold my interest even when the plot got a little obvious. It is a little formulaic, but in an enjoyable sort of way. I will definitely be looking into this series, as it seems to be some light, fun reading.

CBR4 #16: Midnight Mass by F. Paul Wilson

A nun, a rabbi, a lesbian, and a disgraced priest survive the vampire apocalypse…

It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it’s actually the plot of this pretty good little page-turner by F. Paul Wilson.

Whereas most books about vampires taking over the world begin early in the process, this one starts after it’s all over but the shouting. The vampires took over Europe, then swept into the US, destroying the power structure and rounding up the people to use as cattle. Some humans have remained free, but they live in fear. During the night, they hide from the vampires, and during the day they hide from the “cowboys” — humans who work for the vampires. Most people scrape out survival as best they can, with little hope that things will ever change. However, a small group led by Father Joe–a priest who was thrown out of his parish in disgrace–discovers the will to fight back.

This is exactly the kind of book I like. A group of people who seem to have very little in common band together and fight for the common good. The baddies are ruthless, the good are flawed, and there are a few surprises along the way. I’ll definitely be investigating the sequel to this one. sequel to this one.