JIGSAW by Johathan Kellerman

 

Jonathan Kellerman has written an Alex Delaware novel each year for the last 40 years.  Jigsaw is his latest, and I’m sure his fans will be lining up to see the latest adventures of the two main characters. Detective Milo Sturgis, an overweight, gay man who has always been an outsider in his department, has survived in a profession that has never been keen on women or gay men, because his solve rate is higher than anyone else's on the force.  He gets a call on a run-of-the-mill murder case that at first glance seems a slam dunk. DNA on cigarette butts found at the scene point directly to the victim’s former boyfriend. Shortly, another murder occurs. This one turns out to be a retired detective who is now a recluse and major league hoarder. This victim was partially dismembered and stuffed into a deep freeze. The mental aberrations inherent in the case calls for deeper psychological consideration, and Milo’s good friend, child psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware is called into service. 

A third, even more egregious murder, goes down before the pair begins to suspect there are some connections between the crimes. As usual, plenty of red herrings swim into view before the real perpetrator is uncovered and the jigsaw of the title is explained. Whether you are a Kellerman fan or new to his books, you’ll find this is a quick and satisfying read. It’s a perfect bedside table or summer beach read. You won’t be disappointed as the two sleuths work their way toward the solution of another complicated murder puzzle.  

A solid 3.5

WHISTLER by Ann Patchett

 

I have never read a book by Ms. Patchett. I may read another after reading this one. It is, above all, a restful, meditative story peopled by nicely delineated characters. Throughout, you are hit with phrases that can be pulled out and thought about. Some carry a touch of twisted humor as in “You miss out on a lot of experiences if your parents stay married,” and some go deeper as in “by recognizing impermanence, you might have a happier life and an easier death.”

The story is simple on the surface. Daphne Fuller and her husband are walking through New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which by no coincidence houses a thorough history of human relations as depicted in art. By chance, Daphne’s former stepfather, Eddie Triplett, encounters them.  Daphne was only nine when her mother divorced Eddie and went on to remarry and have more children. The pair renew their brief time together and begin to confront an auto accident that they experienced together. Bits and pieces of the past are slowly recovered they begin to see how long-buried actions of love and courage influenced their lives and all of their families’ lives.   An aphorism is trotted out. “Everything is sentimental. All of it matters and none of it matters.” I identified with this when Daphne’s husband has to help his sister empty out and sell their mother’s house. We spend a life accumulating memories and things, and then we have to deal with the emptying out. Selling the family home for many of us has been a traumatic experience.  You won’t ever enter it again or sleep there again.  It’s a feeling “ like you’re going to fall into the past and it’s never going to let go of you.” You must come to grips with the fact that “Everything will end. Get used to that.  No one wants change, but it will.”

What more do you need in a good novel? Ms. Patchett creates substantive, believable characters. In stages they are both human and humorous while they demonstrate an affirmation that love and acceptance are the glue that holds human life together.  

I give it 4 out of 5.   

 

Review--Smiley, Jane. Lidie: The Further Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton

 

Smiley, Jane. Lidie: The Further Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton

This is a 2^nd novel covering the life of Lidie Newton. In pre-Civil War Illinois, she is a tall and kind of horse-faced woman from a poor family who is thrown into dependence upon her sisters after the violent death of her abolitionist husband in the Kansas Territory. The opening of this book moves slowly because it spends a good deal of time on the backstory of Book One, which covers information on her family life in Quincy, IL before the war and her tragic marriage.

 As we meet her, Lidie is still mourning the violence that took her husband, but is now ready for more of life. She is a woman who thrives on assisting others, and she now finds herself assisting her niece Annie in developing a career as an actress. This happens because a successful local production catches the eye of a touring British producer/actor. He is so convinced of Annie’s talent that he sends Annie and Lidie, now functioning as Annie’s protector and maid, across the Atlantic to his home in Liverpool. His stated intention is to develop Annie’s talents before launching her toward potential stardom in London.

 You must now accept that the producer has a remarkable nose for latent talent or just more money than sense. The two women want to change their lives so intently that they literally take new names for their overseas adventure. Annie becomes Anne Revere and Lidie becomes Helen Longbourn, a name built up out of a Jane Austen novel. After they arrive in England, they live as guests in the producer’s elegant home. Lydie (now Helen) not only assists Annie(now Anne) in her theatrical development but also becomes a sort of family dogsbody. She runs errands for everyone. She does the shopping for the cook, picks up purchases for the master of the house and his wife, and even stands in for the butler on occasion. This gives her time to walk Liverpool’s streets and soak up its general history, its beauty, its commerce, and its religious and ethnic diversity. This is presented in great detail and was for me interesting as a contrast to life in a small midwestern town in the mid-19th century.

While I admit to finding this entire plot angle a stretch, Anne Revere’s theatrical talent does seem to be real. Lidie, however, develops in a wholly different track. She finds intellectual enlightenment in Britain, where slavery has already been abolished. She also finds some male contacts in town that add relational uncertainty. Barnsby, the family butler, John, the pastor of a small church, and Regie, a gardener from another household all start to see her in more intimate terms. This puts her life in more flux than Annie’s, although both women are still pursuing a more independent life than most women in the 19^th century.   

Lidie’s story presents an unsuspected finish that may be as big a stretch as the finding of a drama queen in a tiny Illinois town in the 1860’s. Is it giving too much away, to say that it all seems to be a setup for a third book featuring the further further adventures of the same characters.

I give it a three out of five.  

Bertie's Theory of Ice Cream by Andrew McCall Smith

 

Welcome once again to the gossamer world of Andrew McCall Smith. The 2025 addition to his 44 Scotland Series is titled Bertie’s Theory of Ice Cream, and all the familiar characters have new adventures that connect them to life’s notoriously crooked and uncertain paths. McCall Smith sets the tone when he has Bertie maintain that ice cream is better when shared. And so, since uncertainty is certain, it is best to get on with the eating of it before it melts.

 Irene Pollack, Bertie’s mother, has taken up with a Scottish fisherman and is now splitting her time between a small north-east coast village and Edinburgh. Bertie has remained in the city with his father Stuart, and Stuart’s mother Nicola. He continues to have problems at school with classmates Olive and Pansy, who have forced him to join their Jane Austen book club.  There is more hilarity when Angus discovers that Sister Maria-Fiore has hidden a piece of the famous Stone of Scone in the Scotland Street Garden. We also get updates on lightning-struck Bruce, who has recovered and is back to his old self-centered ways.  His latest real estate venture comes to a halt when his proposed modifications run afoul of listed building requirements. Another recurring theme is the inner psychological makeup of dogs.  At one point, we learn that Angus’s dog Cyril is really just a “sophisticated sausage.” You will also meet,  Ralph, a “vegan dog” who has deserted Mathew and Elsbeth’s new neighbors for the more meat-loving household of Mathew and Elsbeth’s. They seem to have an endless supply of sausages.  

We could go on with plot details, but I must admit that the adventures of Bertie and his sidekick Ranald are more delightful than the more erudite adult characters like Angus, Domenica, Mathew, and Elsbeth. No matter. As we near the end, when things grow more reflective, all the participants gather to share a meal that concludes with Angus’ poem about love and human community.

“To the land I love so much it hurts,” he says. There is always Scotland.

                                   

I love these books and the characters that McCall Smith populates them with.  I give it a 4.75 out of five.

Suspect by Scott Turow

 

This “legal thriller” from 2022 by established author Scott Turow supplies courtroom, bedroom, and investigative action in roughly equal doses. It is told from the viewpoint of Clarice “Pinky” Granum, who is an investigator for a lawyer named Rik Dudek. Dudek has been hired to defend Lucia Gomez a high flying long-time successful police chief who has been accused of soliciting sex in exchange for promotions.

Pinky has had a checkered career and is now a tattooed bisexual who is still looking to find the right lover and the right fit into today’s society. When a mysterious man, who has just moved into her apartment building, attracts her, she finds her work for lawyer Rik now merging with her obsession. The guy, who has now become her lover, turns out to be a security expert in the employ of the Ritz--a former cop and old enemy of the Chief.

The Ritz is the head of an extensive criminal network that runs to real estate fraud, sex, and drug peddling in the city. The police chief’s trial is barely underway when one of the trial witnesses is murdered, possibly by the Ritz. Pinky and her guy are now center stage and each positioned to either help solve the case or crash and burn.      

Most of the characters in this book, even the supposed good people, are just too sleazy for me.  I simply could not like Pinky or the Chief. Rik Dudek, the lawyer, never rises to the fore and the arch villain, the Ritz, was so shadowy that he never came alive in my mind either. 

Definitely not Turow’s best work.

I give it a 2.5   

Stoppard Gets a Theatre

 A friend in London has just informed me, coming on the heels of the renaming of the Shaftsbury Theatre  the Judy Dench, that the Duke of York's Theatre has just been renamed The Top Stoppard. The naming will be celebrated by the limited run of Stoppard's marvelous play ARCADIA.

This blog has featured a quote from ARCADIA as its namesake since it was started many years ago. This honor is well deserved. 

Strangers in Time by David Baldacci

 

As most avid readers know, David Baldacci is one of America’s most prolific writers. He has been translated into over eighty languages and has sold over 150 million copies of his books worldwide. And I must confess that I do not remember reading a single one of them until now. The jacket, featuring a recognizable image of London, pulled me in, and the plot did keep me turning the pages even though it depended on the rather improbable intersection of the three main characters--all from radically different layers of British society--during the Blitz.   

A young girl of means, Molly Wakefield, who has been shipped out of the city to avoid the bombing, returns to the family home in posh Chelsea at the age of fifteen. Her mother is in a mental institution in Cornwall and her father has disappeared. She connects with Ignacious Oliver, a mysterious bookstore proprietor in Covent Garden, and a fourteen-year-old street urchin, Charlie Matters, who has lost his family and is now living rough.  All three bond as the destruction goes from bad to worse. Molly’s Chelsea home is leveled by bombs; Charlie is running from the law because of possible involvement in the death of a policeman; and Ignacious, while mourning the death of his wife, has a strange visitor who comes and goes at all hours. The trio all end up living in Oliver’s bookstore as the German attacks increase in ferocity.    

Every time you think WWII has been picked clean of plots, an author returns to the well with a new twist. Baldacci manages this with practiced ease. The mystery of Oliver's visitor ultimately merges with Molly's father's disappearance, and the ending produces more sadness and violence. I still find the coincidences that throw these three characters together a bit much, but the history remains compelling.

In sum, Strangers in Time is a workmanlike thriller that holds you right up to the last pages.  It is not  great literature, but it sure is vintage Baldacci.   

I give it 3.5 out of 5

THE CORRESPONDENT by Virginia Evans

 

Finished reading THE CORRESPONDENT by Virginia Evans yesterday. Ms. Evans’ novel is a hot best seller and one of the best reads of the year. It has some similarities to Allen Levi’s Theo of Golden in that both books feature a singular main character who is hiding an element of the past that is slowly revealed as the book progresses. The difference is that Evans uses letters (an epistolary form) to reveal the world of Sybil Van Antwerp and her friends and family.

Sybil is, a divorced and now retired lawyer, who spent her working life as a legal clerk to a highly successful judge. She is now experiencing retirement alone and exposed to all those things that she may have given up to serve him. Her marriage has produced two living children and one who died at the age of eight. She is also an orphan, working through how much she wishes to know about her DNA, her birth parents, and her previously lost family.

A hand-written letter writer all her life, Sybil is now facing blindness and the loss of her ability to write and read responses without help. The letters she has sent over the years are carefully and beautifully composed in a style that would make Jane Austin proud. They inch us slowly forward in time and reveal the path of her own failures and successes in relationships, marriage, and parenting. Central to the plot are the little clues to the identity of one person she often writes a letter to, but never puts in the mail. As her sight declines, she begins to see more clearly the lingering grief that has haunted her and how forgiveness can heal her suffering soul. 

This may be an especially engaging book for older readers who may, like Sybil, be spending some time assessing their past. It may also be attractive to a younger reader who is thoughtfully contemplating the future. For every reader there is a lucid analysis of the impact of a female’s career choices and behavior on her future.  There is also an implicit shout-out to the efficacy of the very act of writing letters by hand--an act that has almost disappeared from our culture.

This is a significant novel. I give it a five out of five and not just because she apparently wrote the entire book in a closet from 4:30-7:30 AM while raising two small children and working full time.

Jim De Young

REVIEW Hillerman, Anne Shadow of the Solstice

 

Hillerman, Anne Shadow of the Solstice

The summer solstice is the day in June that contains the most daylight of the year. Even with that length, Anne Hillerman’s Shadow of the Solstice just barely manages to encompass the slightly over-complicated plot. It begins with the potential arrival of a high government official to Shiprock, a promotion of Lieutenant Jim Chee to Chief of Station when a heart attack fells the current head. Chee then needs to take up the slack and work with the FBI on the identification of a body just inside the fence at a no-go nuclear waste site. Before you catch up on this apparent murder, a strange Jim Jones-style cult that preaches love through abusive violence is deemed dangerous enough to need on-site monitoring by Chee’s wife, Bernadette Manuelito. Shortly after that, Bernie’s not always reliable younger sister, Darleen, who is now employed as a home health aide, gets embroiled in the disappearance of an elderly client and her grandson. They have been whisked away to Phoenix in a scam that is sold as a program to treat drug and alcohol abuse among the native population. It  bills the government for providing programs that do not exist and sends its addicted clients off onto the city streets, often worse off than they were before.

What saves the book from being buried in its multiple plot lines is that the major characters, Chee, Bernie, Mama, and Darleen are already well known to readers of the Hillerman father and daughter franchise. They need little addition to character development or to the overlay of Navajo customs, history, and land. The climax does neatly pull all the threads together. It all feels like you are slipping your feet into a pair of well-worn hiking boots. First-time readers might find themselves a bit more at sea.

4 out of 5

 

 

Fedarko, Kevin A Walk in the Park

 

                                  “The true story of a spectacular misadventure in the Grand Canyon”

                 Fedarko meets his potential readers at multiple interest levels. If the history of the human occupation of the canyon interests you, it’s there. If the long-term geology of the chasm floats your boat, it is covered in detail. If you have a penchant for exploring the environmental changes caused by the contemporary commercialization of one of our largest and oldest national parks, you can get full coverage of the various arguments. .

If you are just an adventure hound who revels in reading in great detail about the trials and tribulations of long-distance hiking in one of the world’s most inhospitable locations, you will be satisfied in spades. Although the walk described is long, dangerous, and accompanied by real pain, and several miscalculations, the ability of the human body to continue to push a dream is beautifully portrayed. 

Fedarko’s nice sense of descriptive humor is always on tap to help you over the hardships. For instance, as he and his trail companion sit down to a  dehydrated dinner of Shepherd’s Pie, he comments, “It tasted like somebody tore up a cereal box and poured ketchup on top.”

In dealing with the ancient peoples who lived in the canyon, he says, “I found myself confronting, for the first time, the notion that any understanding of this landscape that fails to embrace the story of these people and their descendants is fundamentally incomplete.”

And literally every step of his journey confronts the nature if the layers of rock that the river has cut through. That stone occasionally helps but mostly impedes the dedicated walker.

The environmental works of Edward Abbey are often cited—from Dessert Solitaire for instance, “when traces of blood begin to mark your trail, you’ll see something, maybe.”  When the day’s noise is put to rest, the author concludes, perhaps they weren’t meant to see or learn anything. Perhaps, they were just supposed to listen.  “What “we were meant to hear was silence.” He ends by citing his father, a Pennsylvania coalminer, who believed that any day spent outdoors walking, even if it was on spilly piles, was a good day . . .”

It is a slog at over 400 pages and some may find the preamble takes up too many pages. I still had a hard time putting it down once the group was out and walking.

I give it a good solid 4.

 

 

Eleanor by Alice Loxton

How about some more walk books? When I was eight or nine, I remember being enthralled reading about the journeys of Marco Polo. Much later, I reveled in Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods.  That one even had a movie starring Robert Redford made about it. And then, there was the pride and lost shoe leather that goes with putting together the two editions of my own book--London Theatre Walks. It should not be surprising then that my eyes perked up when this title appeared on the new publication shelf at the Marion library.

Eleanor, by British writer Alice Loxton, is subtitled “A 200 mile walk in search of England’s Lost Queen.” In 1290, when Eleanor of Castile not Aquitaine, the wife of England’s King Edward I died, her embalmed body was carried from Lincoln to London before its burial in Westminster Abbey. At each of the twelve overnight stopping places on the route, her devoted husband decreed that a stone cross be built to commemorate the journey. Few of these so-called “Eleanor Crosses” have survived, but Loxton put on a stout pair of boots and decided to make an on-foot pilgrimage along the entire cortege route. Her impressions of the towns she passed through, their ancient and current history, the people who accompanied her or met on the way, and the English weather she faced because it was December in the midlands, make for a sort of modern Canterbury Tales. There is trial and tribulation, flooding and sunshine, humor, and above all, a fine historical portrait of an almost forgotten Queen. You can even enjoy this book if you aren’t a history buff, because it is filled with some lovely fellow hikers and quirky citizens of the mainly small towns along the way. One little nugget I remember was about the two rival inns in a tiny town called Stony Stratford (a place where a bridge of stones forded the river Strat). It had two rival inns across from each other on the high street. One was called the Cock and the other the Bull.  Both were hotspots for local gossip and each became famous for their, sometimes wild, embellishments of the stories. Thus, we have the true origin of “a cock and bull story.” Can’t leave without noting that the photo reproduction is pretty shabby, but the book is blister-free.

I give it a four out of 5.

Book of Forbidden Words by Louise Fine

 

Book of Forbidden Words by Louise Fine

Book of Forbidden Words by Louise FineThe Book of Forbidden Words is what I would label a Cozy, Dan Brownish, mystery, romance.  Ms. Fine tells her story in alternate chapters that move back and forth between Paris in the 1500’s and Levittown NY, during the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and McCarthy Red Scares of the 1950’s. Her choice of times quickly reveals her theme--the continuing problematic status of women throughout the ages.    

In the sixteenth century, Paris was aflame with book burning and heretic hunting as Protestant ideas were spread via the new medium of printed books. A former nun, Lysbette Angiers, brings a revolutionary manuscript written in a strange code to the printing establishment run by another woman--Charlotte Guillard. Angiers is brutally murdered shortly after she turns the manuscript over and the female printer comes under suspicion of printing heretical material.

In New York in 1952, Milly Bennett, an English war bride, is having a hard time adjusting to her role as an American housewife. Her husband, who was an American pilot in the war, is now a successful businessman who departs each day from their Levittown house, leaving Milly at home to keep house, shepherd the children, interact with other local housewives, and provide dinner for the family when he returns each evening.

A complication develops when a strange older man turns up bearing a 16^th manuscript that is beautifully illustrated but written in a strange code. We now learn that Milly was a math whiz, who was recruited to Bletchley Park to help break the German codes during the war. The visitor catches the eyes of neighbors and Milly calls him an old relation because the British Official Secrets Act still prohibits her from mentioning anything about her war activity. The visitor is actually her former commanding officer at Bletchley, who is now an antique bookseller. He wants Milly to use her old skills to decipher an old manuscript written in a code. Milly jumps at the opportunity to alleviate her current boredom. She is successful and the knowledge leads her into a writing career under an assumed name. It doesn’t take long for her identity to be discovered and that turns into more serious problems with America’s McCarthyites.   

The author’s evocation of American life (She is a Brit.) is not completely convincing, but she does do a good job of connecting the status of intelligent women in multiple ages. The explanations of code breaking are well done without being overly technical and the style is   straightforward without much color or imagery. All told good, but far from great.

I give it a 3 out of 5.

The Lost Language of Oysters by Andrew McCall Smith

 

I am particularly fond of Alexander McCall Smith’s Professor Dr. Von Igelfeld novels because they are imbued with delightful satire about college professors. These are the kind of people who can have long arguments about whether there is a case for the development of a new linguistic tense called the “past-trivial”, which would refer to things so unimportant that they should be forgotten immediately.  

The Lost Language of Oysters is set in a fictional hidebound German university, and the lead character is the good Professor Dr. Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, whose claim to academic fame rests upon the publishing of his seminal and highly regarded study of Portuguese irregular verbs. His coveted Chair is so august that it has no required teaching responsibilities and “almost unlimited funds for conference attendance.”

His friend, and also rival, is Professor Dr. Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer. Their coffee lounge sparring is constant, but goes astray when two female American scholars arrive for a visit. One of them is an avid motorcycle rider, and Professor Von Igelfeld develops quite an interest in her—so much so that he lets her take him for a ride on her rented bike. This unusual behavior is so out of character for him that Professor Unterholzer believes his colleague has gone insane. This allows him to suggest to higher authorities that Von Igelfeld should be sent to a rest home for treatment. This, by happenstance, would also allow him to take over Von Igelfeld’s plush and much envied office space.

These events could be the basis for major interpersonal warfare or even lead to a fine murder mystery,  but this is Andrew McCall Smith, and all the skirmishes end pleasantly amidst a full measure of amusement and gentle chuckles. Pick this little volume up for a quick, and enjoyable read.  There will be no need to ponder the great issues of life.   

I give it a solid four out of five

---

 

 [JDY2]

Theater Kid by Jeffery Seller

 

Theater Kid is a newly published theatre memoir and Jeffery Seller is the almost perfect person to write this show business miracle story. He was adopted, ping ponged between a hard-working mother and a mentally unstable philandering father, and was gay. Although his early sexual awakenings were unrecognized, salvation came in the form of a love for the theatre and a literal worship of musicals. This culminated in a deep desire to make theatre happen.  

He goes to New York after graduating from the University of Michigan and gets a job in a booking agency. From there, he learns show business from the bottom up, finds boyfriends in spite of the scourge of AIDS, and ultimately captures the golden ring by producing Rent. That opens the floodgates of success and he follows up with Tony Awards for Hamilton, In the  Heights, and Avenue Q.

Yes, all this, can be in your future too, but little time is spent on reminding the myriads of wannabees that Broadway Roulette, like all gambling operations, produces far more losers than winners.   

4 out of five

 

Review: Andrew Shaffer, Hope Rides Again

 

It’s bit early for a beach trash novel, but Shaffer’s Hope Rides Again earns a spot on the list. As Joe Biden is feeling out running for the presidency, he visits Barack Obama in Chicago. Obama’s Blackberry goes missing and the two men set out to solve the crime. There are improbabilities galore and lots of inside political jokes about Chicago and both men. It is occasionally funny, but mostly it is confusing and lame. Save your money. Go swimming at beach and take this book in the water with you.

Review The Brothers of Baker Street

 

Since the expiration of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s copyright, there have been numerous books that feature further adventures of Sherlock Holmes, his wife, his daughter, or one of his relatives. The Brothers of Baker Street by Michael Robertson was touted as the first modern crime novel series to use a Sherlock Holmes connection to anchor a modern story. Robertson introduces the Heath brothers--Regie and Nigel. Regie is a Barrister and tries cases. Nigel is a Solicitor who offers up legal advice and recommends a Barrister if a case goes to trial. In a strange coincidence their offices just happen to be located at  221 Baker Street in London and letters addressed to Sherlock Holmes keep arriving at this address. In another coincidence, their lease contract includes a provision that requires the current occupant of the address to answer all letters to Holmes to the best of their ability.

In the modern day, brother Regie is having a problem keeping his girlfriend out of the clutches of a wealthy pulp newspaper owner and Nigel is advising on a case in which a London black cab driver is accused of murdering two American tourists. Regie takes the case to court and manages to clear the driver, but things get more dicey when that driver is murdered and Regie is accused of killing him. Nigel does manage to get Regie out of the pokey and now all that needs to be done is to figure out whether the real killer is another frustrated black cab driver or the inventor of a GPS system that could put London’s venerable black cabs out of business by eliminating the need to pass the so-called “knowledge” in order to qualify as a driver.

Meanwhile, letters to Sherlock Holmes keep piling up at the law office. Most are ignored until one until one arrives signed by someone called “Moriarity” who claims to be a descendent of Sherlock’s old nemesis Dr. James Moriarity. The letter also seems to reveal things about the Black Cab murders that have not been known before.

The plot is clever and moves briskly.  There is a good deal of sly humor along with information on the world of London taxi drivers and the British trash press. There is also some mild sexual language, although in the end, Nigel’s girlfriend, Laura, turns out to be more than a pretty face with a great figure.  

 I reported on the 2^nd book in the series a while ago--titled The Baker Street Jurors, and I enjoyed it enough that I searched out its predecessor.  There is a 3^rd book in the series and I may see if I can find it in the next month or so.

I give this one a nice 3.5 out of 5. (i.e., never going to compete for the Nobel Prize, but a good read within its genre.)  

The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown

 

Book Review The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown

We begin with a quote from the book. “The high ground can be defended only if we are actually on it.” The problem for this book is determining where the high ground is: in a Russian insane asylum, in the twisted mind of a rogue CIA operative, in the equally twisted mind of a Jewish “golem”, or in the modern research on the nature of Symbology, Noetics, and Cosmic Consciousness.  If this already seems crazy, I suggest you leave Mr. Brown’s latest novel unread. If you still want to take the plunge, welcome to the historic city of Prague, under whose sacred ground lies a darker realm called Threshold, which will, when activated, control the world. The Prague background works well, especially if you’ve been there, and the thriller portions are engaging, but this is still not much of a novel.

Enter Robert Langdon, professor of Symbology, who travels to Prague to hear a lecture by   Noeticist scholar Katharine Solomon.  Langdon has a thing for Ms. Solomon, but unfortunately, after a rousing sleepover on the night before the lecture, Solomon disappears along with the manuscript of her most recent breakthrough book about the nature of human consciousness.

From here on, Brown keeps you on pins and needles as Langdon engages in a frenzied murder filled chase through and under the streets of Prague to find her. Complications multiply and it gets harder and harder to determine who the good guys are. As Langdon notes, “Quis custodiet Ipsos custodes.” Who will guard the guards?

All this running around is punctuated occasionally by philosophic ruminations about ancient mysticisms and the nature of cosmic consciousness. You are peppered with multi-syllabic words and fears of what might be hidden in the dark recesses of American and foreign intelligence operations. I finally cried ‘ENOUGH’ when every new underground door required a different secret code for access.

If you are really searching for inner wisdom and how the brain works, I would recommend David Brooks’ latest essay on that topic in The New York Times. Mr. Brown tries very hard to put  depth into his work, but I’m afraid he only succeeds in making the whole enterprise more ridiculous.  

I give it a 3 out of 5.

Book Review: Theo of Golden by Allen Levi

 

This gets my vote for "sleeper of the year" just past. It seems to have  grown to a lovable best seller month by month over time.  

An old man named Theo (no last name provided) turns up in a bucolic, picture-perfect southern river town named Golden. He goes to a local coffee shop called “The Chalice.” Think about that for starters. On the walls of the shop are pencil portraits of customers drawn by a local artist and a notice that they are for sale. Since sales of the pictures seem moribund, Theo decides to buy the pictures one at a time, search out the sitters, and then arrange a meeting with them on a bench by a fountain in a local park, where he gives them the portrait and chats with them about their lives. It is a clever structural gambit that gives the entire novel a beautiful narrative push. Right from the beginning, the past becomes something that the main character is artfully hiding.  

Theo last lived in New York City and the fountain in the book reminds him of the Bethesda Fountain in New York’s Central Park. It had particular resonance for me because it reminded me of the symbolic importance of cleansing waters in a major play of the 1990’s titled Angels in America. Both feature an angel with spreading wings looking over those seated or walking by. Take note—What do angels do?

The giving of the gift of each portrait becomes a blessing, a small act of kindness with no strings attached that begins to reveal the life and inner soul of each recipient.  They are a varied lot. Among them are Mr. Whitaker, the custodian with a crippled daughter, Basil the street musician, Simone the cello student, and most moving of all, a woman on the spectrum who sleeps under bridges or at the local mission and carries all her possessions with her on an old bicycle.    

Some of the sitter’s stories are happy, some lightly touched with humor, some full of yearning, and some carry a full measure of sorrow and pain. Each little bio adds to the texture of the town of Golden. And each new revelation from one of the town’s residents brings with it a reminder of Theo’s mysterious concealment of his own history. It is literally what keeps you reading. Why did this man begin this unusual project, and what was he hiding from those he befriended as well as from the reader?  What was the cross Theo was carrying?  

Theo loves the natural world and especially birds. At one point, he describes a sunset that reveals a cloud of thousands of starlings and red wings each flying “with synchronized precision, a dancing funnel, undulating in perfect union.”  This spectacle he recalls has a name. It is called a “murmuration.” The same word was used just last week in David Brooks’ NYT essay on the strange way the brain works. This swirling image of the complicated yet unifying nature of life was a new word for me and it neatly encapsulates the whole book right up to its shocking and violent conclusion.  It leaves a reminder to Theo that beauty and goodness can exist right alongside his own and others’ grief. A carried cross can be lightened by the long view that the town of Golden, in spite of the presence of evil, can still have a “prevailing goodness.”  

A definite 5 and I don’t give “A’s” out lightly.

 

 

Book Review Baker Street Jurors by Michael Robertson

 

Michael Robertson’s 2016 novel, The Baker Street Jurors, is a bit silly at times, but it has a clever premise and enough character development and wry humor to make a quick and pleasant read. A solicitor who, now happens to work at the world famous London address of 221 B Baker Street, finds himself on a murder case jury. The group is barely empaneled before some of its members begin having accidents. As the pool grows smaller, the judge and jury take a trip to the island home of the defendant, and the accidents begin to turn even more deadly. The twists now would surely have confounded even the Holmesian aphorism of “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, must be the truth, however improbable.” Some of the goings on do stretch credibility, but it’s all in good fun when Sherlock has a hand in it. There are few more titles listed on the slip cover and I think I will check for their availability at our local library.

I give it a good  3.5 out of 5