night fire

The Night Fire is a recent Michael Connelly novel in the Harry Bosch series that has more recently evolved to include another LAPD detective named Renée Ballard. I get the feeling we’ll be seeing the two of these characters for a while and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more of Ballard, perhaps in a novel of her own. 

Bosch and Ballard make a pretty good team but it's clear that they aren’t partners in the traditional police detective mold and that gives them more flexibility to pursue things on their own when they need to. That aspect of their relationship, along with the fact that they are often working on different cases, is what makes me think we may see Ballard on her own at some point, much the way we saw the Lincoln Lawyer step out. Do I have that right? Was the Lincoln Lawyer a spin off of Bosch, or vice versa? so i checked According to this site, the Bosch books began in 1992, and Mickey Haller, the aforementioned enLincolned lawyer, showed up in 2005.*

This was the last book I had around so I’ll have to venture back out to the library to find some other things to read.** This was a good installment in the series but by no means the best. There were a couple of plot points that made me say really? I not sure they could pull that off. But Connelly had the answers for the most egregious of those things and only the fiddly stuff got by, so good on you Mike. Can I call you Mike? Seems like I’ve known you for years. 

I assume Bosch fans are all aware of the Amazon TV series about Bosch. While I was rabbit-holeing why does that sound off-color? around on the internets, I learned that a new Bosch series, as well as a Lincoln Lawyer series are both in the works, and Michael Connelly is reportedly involved in both. And on a related note, I'll leave you with this tidbit, which I thought was charming. Michael Connelly dedicated The Night Fire to Titus Welliver, and thanked him for bringing Bosch to live.

* I read The Lincoln Laywer, but it doesn't show up on this blog, which only dates back to 2009. For the record, it was pretty good. I enjoyed it enough that I also watched the movie, which was also pretty good.

** UPDATE: I found a Brad Thor book called Near Dark in the house that I'm going to read.

identical

Identical is a novel written by Ellen Hopkins--in verse--for the teen lit market, based on the labeling from the library (weeded and discarded by my local library) the tone of the blab on the back cover, and the front matter, the subject matter, and feedback from my oldest. Some of that feedback included a summary of books chosen by school departments for students, usually being centered on teen suicide, drug use, Nazis, or all of the above.

No Nazis in this one. but just about every other horror

I picked this up from the library book sale for two reasons. The first, and most import reason is that I needed something to read. The second reason is because a quick flip through this told me it was a novel written in poetry. I mean, come on, sign me up for the crazy stuff. What's this, Beowulf up in here? hwæt!

I can imagine middle school kids reading this for English class, thinking: Why do I have to read this? That's not to say this isn't any good, just seems a little grim for the young adult market. Now, will the harsh realities and horrors described in this story help some kids who have to deal with things like this to feel better, or at least better understood? I guess so. Will it help some dealing with the things described here--or knows someone who is--to get up the strength to ask for help? I guess that may be true as well. But is it worth it to expose the rest of the young population to this, I'm not sure. But, is any kind of discussion about these awful realities which helps to drag them out of the shame and silence that typically surrounds them, and into the light, better than the traditional response of ignoring them. I think the answer to that is a clear yes.

This is an interesting way to spin a tale, and the twists and turns this story takes because of that, makes it worth the read alone. The layering and symmetrical construction of the verse in this story adds to the charm and depth of of the story, in spite of the subject matter.

october list

Jeffrey Deaver is probably best known for his Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs crime procedural novels. Of course, that's not all he writes. He seems to have another returning character named Colter Shaw, whom I haven't read about, and another one called Kathryn Dance, who I may have read about, but I'm not sure. a quick check of the blog seems to indicate: no And a few years ago he was tapped to write a James Bond novel.

This story seems like a one off, although I guess its possible that we may see Gabriella in another story. Or perhaps the Kepler and Surani duo of police detectives? I guess we'll wait and see. In any case, this is an interesting take on a novel; The October List is sub-titled, A Novel in Reverse (with photographs by the author.) And when you open up, it begins with chapter 36. I don't think I'm giving too much away there, but as you can imagine, the story unfolds backwards, and we learn what we need to know to explain the things we've read, buy the time we get to the beginning.

This is not the first time we've ever encountered something like this, the movie Memento comes to mind right away, and there have been others--Deaver mentions a few more examples in the Foreword, at the back of the book, or course. It seems like a trick to plot out a story that works in reverse, and when successful, as this seems to be, I'm not sure it would work if read chronologically. Oh, I'm sure the story would hang together, it just wouldn't have any suspense, and I'm not sure it would actually go anywhere.

This one took a little while to read, so I wasn't on the edge of my seat, dying to find out what happened, and it was only at the end that the pieces started to drop into place and the pace picked up. The pace is a strange term here, in that speed is distance times time, and in this case, time is a negative number, so the product of that equation is negative speed. So does that mean it sped up, or actually slowed down, at the end?

Beginning?

Math.

devices and desires

Devices and Desires was written by PD James in 1989; I read the first Vintage Books edition, printed in May 2004. The front matter includes information about PD James, indicating that she authored 20 other books, many about Commander Adam Dalgliesh who appears in this one. James won a number of awards including being named Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991. James died in 2014. I think I’ve read something else by James, and after a quick look I find that I read The Black Tower in 2011.

Adam Dalgliesh is visiting the (imaginary) Headlands on the north-east coast of Norfolk. In an authors note PD James adds that “Lovers of this remote and fascinating part of East Anglia will place it between Cromer and Great Yarmouth.”

D & D has a pretty big cast of characters, and James does her job giving us a reason that just about anyone of these characters could have done the deed, leaving us guessing until the end. Now, if you were an avid reader, and were really motivated to figure out whodunit before the end, I guess there may be enough information given for you to figure it out, but I' not that guy. I'm the guy that lets the author do their thing and tell me a story. Trying to figure it out, like a puzzle, is someone else's job, I'm here to be entertained. I was.

This was a slow read, which tells me I wasn't on the edge of my seat, dying to know what happens next. That doesn't mean I didn't have a good time. I'll keep my eye out for other PD James books, I just won't run out and buy everything she's ever written tomorrow.

recursion

Recursion is a novel by Blake Crouch that seems to be a riff on a time-loop theme that we've all seen before in movies like Terminator, Edge of Tomorrow, Looper, and even Dr. Strange. There are piles of movies, and even more books. A search of 'time loop books' actually brought back another book by Blake Crouch called Dark Matter. its promoted on the of this book! see! its right there.

Anyway, I got distracted. Its Sunday and dinner won't be ready for hours, so pre-dinner drinks and a quick visit from the in-laws have taken a small toll on my train of thought... read: ability to for coherent thoughts I'm pretty sure that what I was trying to say is that Crouch has taken a shot at a well worn trope, but he has managed to build a story that surprisingly has an interesting new twist. You'd think that ground this well plowed would have little fruitful crop to be harvested how's that for a tortured metaphor? or is it a simile? gulp

Recursion follows the exploits of New York City detective Barry Sutton, who is driven to understand the suicide of a random jumper with a wild story of false memories; and Helena Smith, the creator of a new scientific breakthrough she has been working on to try and record, retrieve, or recreate her dementia-ridden mother's memories. You can perhaps see how these two might meet in the Big Apple, but where their story leads is not what I was expecting. There was even a small taste of Freaky Friday on this one, altho I expect that anyone else who has read this may find that a stretch. i said there were drinks! But maybe we'll just agree that it was freaky, and leave it at that. There was a small amount of repetitiveness, that repeated itself a little, but only a few times over again, before we got to the climax, but it was only a little bit, and then it was over, and we got to the climax.

Crouch is apparently pretty well know for Dark Matter, and maybe I'll take a look if I run across it. This one was pretty good.

machines like me

I don't think I'm giving too much away when I say that Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me is an alternate history soft-SciFi story that takes place in the 1980s. This is an interesting take in that it isn't set in a what-if future, rather its set in a possible past which may have been different for all of us if just a few things had played out a little differently. That premise, al by itself, is a fun thing to think about and is a little brain-bendy.

The main protagonist, Charlie Friend, tells the story first person, which is where the 'like me' comparative phrase in the title comes from. Mr. Friend sounds made up (scoff) is a little insecure, has some vague experience writing, and maybe some office-type work in his past but has given it up for self-employment. A venture he is not always successful at, but keeps at it nonetheless. Mr. Friend admits that he hasn't always made sound monetary decisions, but that doesn't keep him from pushing on. 

Just upstairs lives Miranda, Charlie's friend, who is also a graduate student and mid-twenties to his early thirties. Charlie's insecurity extends to his feelings for Miranda, which complicates their friendship, if only because Charlie is in his head too much and not really living. Into this complicated dynamic, Charlie brings a machine, and what he (and we) thought was complicated before, gets even more complex.

McEwan has spun an intriguing story here that reminds me of Asimov's I, Robot series in its examination of what it means when thinking machines become part of our lives, both for us, and for them.

knife

Harry Hole is a recurring character in a series of books written by Jo Nesbø, a Norwegian writer, and there have been a bunch of them. Knife was published in 2019, and translated into English by Neil Smith the same year, which is what I read. I'm pretty sure I've read at least one other Jo Nesbø book, and I'm also pretty sure it was a Harry Hole story, but I guess I didn't write about it here on the blog. Maybe it was during that blackout period in the latter part of 2019 and a large portion of 2020. looking at the Harry Hole list, it may have been The Devil's Star, I'm not sure

Knife is a murder mystery, and Harry Hole isn't approaching this the way he normally would, I assume, as a detective with the Oslo Police Department, as he doesn't have the resources of the department to back him up on this one.

The story arc is varied and kept me guessing as the story progressed, always with a nagging concern in the background about this one would end up. Nesbø has done a fine job of knitting together a fine story in the tradition of Hercule Poirot and other old timey mysteries where there are many possibilities, and one is not sure until the very end who may have done it.

ship breaker

I've had a few books tucked away in my public library account read list; Ship Breaker, a young adult novel by Paolo Bacigalupi, is not one of them. Drowned Cities by the same author is, but it wasn't until after I read that one that I discovered that its part of a series, and this current read is the first in that series. Good news is, it doesn't seem to matter much in what order these were read, at least that is my impression after reading two of the three in the series.

Ship Breaker definitely takes place in the same dystopian future Earth as the The Drowned Cities, after what I assume is run away global warming has led to massive ocean level rise and the breakdown of organized governments in favor of a few massive corporations and the rest of humanity living hand-to-mouth in a kind of Mad Max lawlessness, which pockets of semi-civilized population centers that are just mentioned as remote and inaccessible to the poor protagonists that inhabit this series.

One of the characters from The Drowned Cities features in this story as well, so I predict that it may be that character that ties these stories together. I guess we'll see. The third in the series is called Tool of War so I've made my bet already and I'm feeling pretty good about the odds.

thousand autumns

I put the novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet on my read list because of other books I've read by the author David Mitchell. Mitchell writes on that wobbly line between--or maybe its the smeary overlap in the Venn diagram--of science fiction, speculative fiction, and fantasy. Maybe David Mitchell would hate that description, I don't know. I guess he could describe it better himself, and perhaps has, elsewhere. What I do know is that Mitchell seems to have a fascination with time, and how we, as humans (and perhaps other human-adjacent creatures) move through it.

This novel seems to fall more squarely into the historical fiction genre, but I wasn't too far in before I began to get a sense of time as a character in this story. de Zoet is a carefully told story, of Europeans in c. 1800 Japan, where they were not welcome, and were mostly segregated from the populace to prevent European influence in the general culture. The pacing of the story recalls that attachment to history, tradition, and sameness the leaders of Japan held dear tat the time. Jacob de Zoet himself is a classic reluctant hero, in the form of a mid-level clerk who see himself as an uphold of what is righteous and true, which is mostly expressed in his manners and dignity, until he is called upon to uphold those ideals in a more taxing sense.

Mitchell thumbs his nose at the demand for fast paced, action drama and paints a picture of 'modern' Europeans, doing their best to take advantage of the closed Japanese culture, while the Japanese did the same from their point of view, all the while both looking at the other as the barbarian. Mitchell uses this backdrop to explore the relationships between the very few people on either side of this cultural divide who saw one another as human, with similar feelings, thoughts, and goals, and who reached across this divide toward one another, while early geopolitics tried to hold them back.

There is a whole chapter where Mitchell gives himself up to the poetry of what he is doing. Its like a treasure or a hidden message for us in the midst of of this love letter to an earlier time, which tries to express how different we are, and how much the same.