Review CONCLAVE by Robert Harris

 

Harris, Robert Conclave

Robert Harris writes potboilers. In 2016 he wrote CONCLAVE-- a book about the inner workings of the Catholic church when in the throes of election of a new Pope. The current hot movie of the same name starring Ralph Fiennes is adapted from the book.

There are plotters a plenty amongst the Cardinals who are vying for the throne of St. Peter and some of the activity seems a bit far-fetched. For instance, Harris manages to get the Cardinals all housed in a sort of Motel Six with paper-thin walls, but has it also contain the living quarters of the former Pope. It’s justified by the old guy's preference for poverty, but it just makes it convenient for one of the Cardinals to burgle the apartment in order to find the secret materials that have caused the current Conclave to be so compelling.

Otherwise, it is smoothly organized around the sequence of ballots that show who’s up and who’s down and the intrigue that goes on between all of the nominees. It’s a good ride in print and I am looking forward to seeing the film. 

I give it a 4  out of 5.

Review Kathy Reichs FIRE AND BONES

 

Kathy Reichs, Fire and Bones

Ms. Reichs has written twenty-three crime procedure novels featuring a forensic anthropologist named Temperance Brennan. The jacket sidebars are quite giddy in their claims of excellence.  She is top-notch, amazing, and an incredible plotter. Her science is on-target, her characters are fascinating, and every paragraph carries menace. I wish I could join in affirming this praise, but frankly I found Fire and Bones  rather disjointed and tedious. We do get plenty of gory details of what it is like to autopsy people killed by fire, but the villains don’t seem to draw out compelling interest while the victims get little emotional attention aside from their existence as statistics.

The story is fairly simple. Temperance Brennan puts off a great weekend with her current squeeze to help investigate two nasty fires that came complete with four fatalities so badly burned that they are hard to identify. One of the burned-out structures also contained a much older unidentified corpse that is discovered in a burlap sack in a sub-basement. The first four deaths turn out to be connected to old criminal gangs and bootlegging and the other goes back even further in time. As we cycle between the two different cases, the last one seems to get lost until the author decided she must tie that one up with a final twist. It came off as a forced afterthought.  

I found the supporting characters to be either unbelievable, like Ivy Doyle, the way too rich sidekick telejournalist. She just doesn’t make a very satisfying Dr. Watson and the various arson detectives come off as pretty traditional types rather than people.

In sum, I found this a pretty modest offering. I won’t be heading back to the library to search out any of the earlier books.  I give it a two out of five.  

Review Dona Leon The Jewels of Paradise

 

The Jewels of Paradise

 The authorial reputation of Donna Leon rests comfortably on her twenty-plus novels featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, who investigates crime in the atmospheric confines of one of the most enchanting cities in the world—Venice. 

This is a leisurely, contemplative stand-alone novel that will be too slow paced and too much dependent on an interest in 17th-century opera and court intrigue to attract a lot of readers.  The main character, Catarina Pellegrini, a Venetian musicologist, is working as a researcher in England when she gets a strange invitation to apply for a job that will require her to return to her hometown of Venice and research the contents of two ancient chests that may contain valuable items. Two venal relatives of the original owner of the chests are now vying for the riches that may or may not be inside. 

The ensuing search for the rightful heirs allows Leon to do what she does best and that is to immerse the reader once again in all of the pleasures, the food, the history, and the corruption of Venice as it is and was.  What is discovered at the end is an enduring truism that is operable in any century and any country. “If enough people choose to believe something is what other people say it is, then it becomes that to them.” The just completed election seems to prove that. 

I give it 3 out of 5 

Jim De Young, 10/25/24