'The Cruelest Month' - Louise Penny - 6/29/2019

The third book in the Inspector Gamache series toys with elements of magic, without letting them overtake the classic detective tropes of Penny's books.  The murder takes place in an old derelict house on the edge of the idyllic town of Three Pines, in the Eastern Townships, just North of the United States, in Quebec.  At first, it appears that the deceased has been 'scared to death', but we later find that premeditated murder was, indeed, committed.

Witches are mentioned, and play a role in the development of the plot, while firmly grounded in the history of the region in which the story takes place.  Religion, philosophy, art, poetry, and painting are regular touchstones in the world of Inspector Gamache and Louise Penny.  Witchcraft is a natural addition to the beautifully realized setting of the series. 

Inspector Gamache, once again, ventures into those areas of the human psyche in which mundane emotions turn into murderous ones.  It is a consistent theme in Louise Penny's books, and one which I feel should be more consistently explored in the genre.  Rather than painting the murderer as a monster, each novel takes us deep into the minds of the characters involved in the titular incident, allowing us to appreciate what led to their eventual descent into sociopathy.  We are allowed to empathize with the antagonist, which is important, in my opinion.  The 'us vs. them' mentality is absent, which is good. 

As such, each book is really an exploration into what turns 'regular' humans into killers.  The novels in the series can be a bit dense at times, but this is to be expected, as they are often driven more by psychology than action.  We are lured deeper and deeper into the depths of our minds which we choose to avoid in everyday life.  the darkness itself, the taboo allure of it, is what keeps us reading. 

Also, Louise Penny writes so well about food.  Her attention to sensory detail is paramount to the stories, and keeps us coming back.  She has succeeded in creating a distinct world, rich with sensation; comforting.  This, as much as the mysteries themselves, is what keeps me reading.

Cheers,
Graham

'A Fatal Grace' - Louise Penny - 6/25/2019

'Morning,

Just finished the second novel about Inspector Gamache, by Louise Penny.  It lived up to the promise of the first installment in the series, and I feel more attached to the characters.  This often happens when I'm reading an extended series of books featuring the same protagonist and backing cast, and it somehow makes the reading of them all the more enjoyable.  In a way, it's comforting to know that there are more books to come, probably in the same setting and focused on the same people.

Sometimes, at the end of a book, I feel a sense of loss that I won't be seeing the characters again, but when the novels I read are part of a long series, there is a reassuring sense of stability.  I know I'll be diving into the same world for days to come.  It gives me a sense of security and joy to know what awaits me when I open a book.  As opposed to the also enjoyable but somewhat more stressful experience of starting a completely new author, whose work I have yet to explore. 

I don't know if I'll write a review for each of the books in Louise Penny's series, but I do know that I'll read them all.  I'd like to explore this further.  It is the same feeling as starting a show that's been running on television for awhile, but you haven't watched.  You know there are many seasons ahead, and, when you begin to love the characters and the place in which the story takes place, it is almost like starting a new life, lived vicariously through characters created by someone else. 

The joy of the binge. 

It is a beautiful sunny day here in Berkeley, its 11:31 AM; I have to go open the bar in three hours, and we'll be moving to LA at the end of October.  Lots to think about.

Graham

'Still Life' - Louise Penny - 6/23/2019

Good Afternoon,

I've just finished the first novel by Louise Penny in her series of mysteries starring Inspector Gamache.  The book is set in rural Quebec, an hour or so South of Montreal.  The events of the story take place in a small village, set deep in the woods, populated by artistically minded folk.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Still Life.  It reminds me of the classic Scandinavian police procedurals I've read, such as those written by Per Mahloo and Maj Sjowall, featuring Martin Beck.  The tension in the work is driven by the characters themselves, whose motivations, dreams, and loves are explored in great detail.

I like when the murder itself comes second in a murder mystery, and such is indeed the case in Still Life.  Instead, one is gifted with insights into the minds of the inhabitants of the small village in which the novel takes place.  After understanding the things that drive the characters, we learn why they do what they do, and what has happened to them that caused one of them to murder a fellow human being. 

The depth of the characters was beautifully explored, and the setting itself played an integral part to the plot, which is important if I'm to lose myself in the telling of the story.  I feel that I'm a part of the village, and, as such, invested in the outcome.

Although we know that evil exists to the extent that someone killed someone else, Louise Penny posits that the innate goodness of humanity balances out the horror of murder.  The community is tight-knit, the inhabitants support each other, and the untimely death is an aberration.  Such a view is divergent from that of authors like Jo Nesbo, who seem to revel in violence to an almost gratuitous extent. 

I'd give the first book of the Inspector Gamache novels an 8/10, and I look forward to reading the next twelve books in the series.  We shall see if the rest of the writing holds up to the high standard set in the initial story. 

Time to go tend bar for a wedding at Comal!
Cheers,
Graham

'Alif the Unseen' - G. Willow Wilson - 6/21/19

Good Morning,

I've just finished reading 'Alif the Unseen', by G. Willow Wilson.  It is set in The City, in an unnamed Emirate in the Persian Gulf,  sometime shortly before the Arab Spring.  The novels protagonist is one Alif, who is a "hactivist" (hacker/activist) living in a poor quarter of The City, which is populated by Muslims, Christians, Princes, Tradionalists, Progressives and, we quickly learn, Djinn. 

The Djinn, which I've read about in other novels, such as those by S.A. Chakraborty, are mythical beings, able to take a number of different physical forms, much like spirits or elementals.  Alif encounters them while deep in cyberspace, initially.  The protagonist makes a living by protecting those who would be cracked down upon by The State on the internet.  His charges may be fundamentalists, dissidents, students, etc.; what ties them together is their opposition to the tyrannical State that seeks to silence their voice.  Eventually, Alif teams up with a gang of Djinn to realize his goal of freedom of expression. 

Essentially, the novel ends up reading as a cry for the spread of free information in the face of oppression.  The protagonist does indeed cross over into the realm of the Djinn, but the struggle around which the novel centers is not at all fantastical.  It is the very real battle between repression and expression. 

The involvement of magic in the book serves to bolster the historicity of the struggle for truth, which extends back into the mists of time and humanity's relationship to the mystical.   There is some cool history of the attempt by ancient Muslim mystics to reconcile the Djinn with their understanding of the world and religion, but it is more of a sidenote than a central theme, and I personally wish it had been more central to the narrative arc.  That kind of thing is so much fun. 

Overall, the novel was mildly original, but I prefer a little bit more magic in my magical realism.  This book didn't allow itself to fully become one thing or another, whether it be fantasy or philosophy, hacking or hero-building.  It was a bit heavy-handed in its call for social justice in the Middle East, which is great but I think edged out the plot a bit in its prominence.

I'd give it a 6 or 7 out of 10.  I was ready for it to be over, and I could have guessed how it was going to end long before I got there.

Meh.  On to the next. 

'The Sentence is Death' - Anthony Horowitz - 6/18/19

06/18/2019

Good Morning,

This is the voice of Graham Feltham.  I'm writing from my desk in Berkeley, California.  The fog lay heavy over Berkeley this morning, but the clouds have parted to reveal a washed-out blue sky high above the tops of the trees.  A cool breeze is blowing up off the bay, and I've just taken my load of laundry out of the dryer down the block.   The windows in our apartment are open a crack, but it's cool enough that I'm wearing a sweatshirt and a beanie.

I'm almost done with 'The Sentence is Death', by Anthony Horowitz.  It is the follow-up to a novel I'd previously read, entitled 'The Word is Murder."  The two books comprise the series Mr. Horowitz wrote which follow the investigative techniques of Hawthorne, an ex-detective with the Metropolitan Police, in London.

The narrator, Mr. Horowitz, as himself, in the first person, is reluctantly dragged into a murder investigation which spins him all over London, as well as Yorkshire, in pursuit of clues.  The detective himself, Mr. Hawthorne, is largely a mystery.  Much of the tension in the book centers around the fact that the author, and we the readers, know almost nothing about his subject.  He repeatedly tries to delve into Hawthorne's personal history, but is rebuffed.  What we do know is that Hawthorne is a homophobe, he endured some sort of hardship when he was young, and he lives in a flat by the river Thames that he neither owns nor has decorated in a way that would reveal anything about himself.

The book is set up very much like a traditional 'who-dunnit', in the sense that the majority of the novel is taken up with the process of tracking down clues concerning the murder which is the focal point of the entire work.  Ultimately, a sort of grand reveal will inform us of the identity of the murder, using clues we, as the readers, have been given access to but haven't been told their significance in the grand scheme of the plot.  Mr. Horowitz is open with the fact that he holds writers such as Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in high esteem, and his writing reads like an homage to their brand of murder mystery.

The overall tone is somewhat dry and self-effacing, and the reading is pleasurable and easy, without any of the visceral angst or violence that predominates much of the writing in the murder genre, especially by Mr Horowitz' Scandinavian contemporaries.  'The Sentence is Death' reads as very British, using London itself as one of the predominant characters in the book.  Overall, it is a light, pleasant foray into a classic genre, which Horowitz hasn't seen fit to change all that much in its presentation.  He comes across as the Watson to Hawthorne's Holmes, and, as the book progresses (I've not yet finished), I'm confident that everything will be wrapped up neatly and tidily in the last chapter.  Indeed, the author has referenced his desire to do so already in the pages of the book.

It is satisfying in its adherence to traditional tropes, but a little bit dry when compared with series by authors such as Jo Nesbo or even Anne Perry.

I feel that I should use some sort of a scoring system for the books I read.  As such, I'd give the aforementioned novel a.....

6.5/10

The approach to the writing itself is unique, in that the narrator is a character in the story; ostensibly the same as the character of the writer in real life.  The writer writes about the act of writing, while experiencing the events that will then comprise the book that said writer will eventually write.  It's all a bit meta.  Something about the writing, the self-awareness, leads me to believe that Anthony Horwitz has a high opinion of himself.

There are some twists and turns, but overall I wasn't particularly compelled by this novel.