Monday, February 25, 2019

Guilty by David Baldacci (2015)

The fourth Will Robie story. When I started reading it I thought I had read it before, as I remember Robie taking his assassin's shot and also hitting a little girl behind the intended target. But it must have been one of those first chapter introductions at the end of a previous book to get you hooked, because the rest was new territory. 

This opening event throws Robie off his game and he is told to take some time off to get his shit together and oh yes, his father has been arrested for murder, so he might want to go down to Cantrell, Mississippi to check up on him, though he hasn't been home nor seen his father for over 20 years. Jessica Reel, who is often his partner, is out somewhere on assignment, so he doesn't have the one person that understands him around to talk to.

The plot thickens quickly, as it usually does in Baldacci stories and the body count piles up.Officially it is a young woman who was the first to be murdered, then the guy who supposedly killed her that the elder Robie is in jail for. But hen we have bad guys from casinos, and Jessica Reel shows up and it is like a combat zone. I am glad I didn't read the Amazon reviews before I read this, as I just let the plot twists and turns grab me and spit me out at the end, like in a giant water slide. Most people found them unbelievable and I have to admit I had a few places where it was a bit much. 

We do get Robie's back story - successful high school athlete with a strict military father who beat him and never thought to praise his son. I like that Robie visits his old teammate Billy, who is dying of cancer, though I didn't get how he recognized Billy's son, if he hasn't been back home at all. And then we find he had the love of his life in Laura, out of his league, but they were high school sweethearts and she was going to leave town with him, when he left. But she never showed up and he thought that she just changed her mind. He had written and called a lot afterwards, but never got to talk to her. This is the one that sounded off to me from the start. One does have to suspect that the letters and phone messages were never received. Robie persevere's in everything else, why not here. Anyway, a lot of characters from both his past and new ones. The usual sympathetic female cop in Taggert, the beautiful Victoria that has married his dad and her son Ty, the sleazy Clancy's etc. But one gets a glimpse in what poverty can bring people to (the three daughters of the preacher) or how important casino jobs are to an area like this. Still an engaging read for me.

Sunday, February 24, 2019

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland (1748)

I like to list the first time the book has been published, so I know that I have been reading a classic and at least what century or decade it has been from, though of course most of my reading is current. I read the 1963 Putnam edition with an introduction by Peter Quennell with the cover pictured here. I found this book in a collection I was processing and realized that I had heard of Fanny Hill, but had no real idea what that referred to, other than she was a spunky woman of the past. From the introduction: "Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure is the product of a luxurious and licentious, but not a commercially degraded era.... For all its abounding improprieties, his priapic novel is not a vulgar book."  There is also a note on the American history of the book, as it was one of the suppressed books of its time. I liked the aspect that names and dates of editions were not printed on the various versions printed in the U.S. and though many shabbily printed copies have been found, there were also nice limited or collectors editions printed for subscribers only, and were found in Ben Franklin's library and that of other well known men. The last thing I'd like to note from the introductions is that since Cleland lived in India for a while before he wrote this book (for 20 guineas), he would have learned that the Indian gods "would have stressed-the supreme delights of sex in all its forms."

I wanted to learn more about this books, so good old Wikipedia explains how well Cleland used euphemisms and that the book actually doesn't contain any dirty words or actual names of body parts. And then, it turns out I was reading the first official edition printed in the U.S. (In the book it claims all rights reserved, but the text is so old, it is in the public domain, so....) The book was banned in Massachusetts, but the publisher took it to the courts and the Supreme Court ruled that "Fanny Hill did not meet the Roth standard for obscenity." Wow.

The story itself is as if written by Fanny herself to some Madam in the form of two long letters, where she will explain her early scandalous life. She grows up in the country, but heads to London at 14, after losing both her parents. She is pulled into a brothel, but Charles helps her escape and loses her virginity to him instead of some highest bidder. But then Charles gets sent off to sea. She becomes the mistress of Mr. H. and when that falls apart, takes on high end clients, finally ending up with an elder gentleman. when he dies, she is left with his fortune and ends up living a respectable life as wife and mother. But before that she has plenty of adventures that are described in a witty way that was fun to read, even if at times the long winded older form of the language did bog down a bit. I enjoyed the descriptions of the times, customs and fashions.

It has been fund to do minor research on this and I might look up Erica Jong's version of this story too.

Thursday, February 07, 2019

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny (2011)

Clara Morrow - one of the first characters I remember meeting in the first book of the Armand Gamache series - is finally having a major exhibit of her work in Montreal, but the joy of it is dampened by the discovery of a childhood friend murdered in Clara's garden during the party after the opening. Clara feels that the former friend has again taken the spotlight away from her. Her husband Peter is feeling great pangs of envy. There are art dealers waiting around like vultures to sign Clara as their artist. Complex sets of emotions that Gamache has to wade through to get to the truth in the deceptively quiet setting of Three Pines. Read a few months ago, so details have already faded, but glad that there are plenty more books in this series to enjoy.

44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith (2004)

I read some of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by McCall Smith and thoroughly enjoyed them, but wasn't as thrilled by the couple of other books I picked up by him. A colleague suggested this series and it looks like it will be fun.

This book was written as a daily serial in a Scottish newspaper, so the chapters are nice and short. The characters start out with some of the people living at the address in the title and then branch out to the people at their jobs, their friends and family. All the places in the book are real, and even some of the characters are actual people that gave the author the right to portray them in this series. I realize I know squat about the Scots, as none of the writers or artists mentioned ring a bell. So at least I will learn something about Scotland, Edinburgh and the Scots. In this book our fictional characters go to meet Ian Rankin, a real life famous Scottish crime writer.

Pat is a young woman in her second gap year, still finding herself, who rents a room in 44 Scotland Street in an apartment inhabited by narcissistic Bruce, who works as a building inspector. Pat lands a part time job in an art gallery run by rich and feckless Matthew. Much of the story-line centers around a possibly valuable painting. Dominica is an eccentric widow, who lives at 44 S. St. and is one of the more colorful characters and has interesting friends. Six year old Bertie lives in the building with his mom Irene, who is out to make him super child. Looking at the titles in the series, looks like we will be following Bertie's development. We also meet Bruce's bosses and the boss' daughter.