Rumpole on the Defense

Rumpole for the Defence by John Mortimer
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

That champion of the downtrodden, oppressed and falsely accused, the aging London barrister Horace Rumpole is at it again in another addition of his memoir-esque reminiscences in Rumpole for the Defense.

In just about every one of former barrister-turned-author John Mortimer's books his hero Rumpole, that witty grump, is almost invariably set upon by an antagonistic judge. Often his client is not guilty, but harboring a secret he/she doesn't want to give up, not even to his/her own counsel. Usually, Rumpole is even at odds with his own firm!

About a half dozen stories/cases make up Rumpole for the Defense. I don't know if there's a common thread among them more than, say, Rumpole's continual defense of those accused of crimes they (usually) didn't commit and the aforementioned recurring formulas. I suppose Mortimer was leaning most heavily on Rumpole's unflinching defense of those in need, and the need in general of those at the mercy of the merciless.

This is a very solid 3 stars. If there's any real fault it's that it is rather repetitious, treading on past formulas already well-tread. However, these are good stories that will delight any Rumpole fan and should engage those who like courtroom drama.

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Another Good One From Lehane

Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lehane, that guy can write!

I'm climbing on to the Dennis Lehane bandwagon really late, but I am fully on board! Even though Moonlight Mile wasn't ragingly exciting, it's so well-crafted I couldn't put down this story of a Boston-area private detective who gets into new trouble because of an old case.

This PI's career is coming to an end, but he doesn't know it yet. Russians, wunderkind and drug freaks all get the poor, aging family man deeper into the shit than he realizes he's about to fall into.

Just like me! I didn't know I was getting into a series and that it was the last book! It wasn't a problem. I could tell these were people with a past, but I was never overwhelmed by my ignorance. This is the second jump-into-the-middle-of-a-Lehane-series I've done and in both cases the author does a fine job of giving enough detail to keep the reader abreast of the haps. In other words, the books are self-contained.

I could see others giving this perhaps only 3 stars. It does drag with the chit chat here and there. I don't know, perhaps I've given this an extra star because it artificially kept my interest at times due to the setting being New England-based, which is where I grew up. Name-place dropping happens often in Moonlight Mile and that didn't bother me none!

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Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

Tom Franklin
William Morrow
Reviewed by Nancy
5 out of 5 stars

Summary


Tom Franklin's narrative power and flair for characterization have been compared to the likes of Harper Lee, Flannery O'Connor, Elmore Leonard, and Cormac McCarthy.

Now the Edgar Award-winning author returns with his most accomplished and resonant novel so far; an atmospheric drama set in rural Mississippi. In the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas "32" Jones were boyhood pals. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother. Yet for a few months the boys stepped outside of their circumstances and shared a special bond. But then tragedy struck: Larry took a girl on a date to a drive-in movie, and she was never heard from again. She was never found and Larry never confessed, but all eyes rested on him as the culprit. The incident shook the county— and perhaps Silas most of all. His friendship with Larry was broken, and then Silas left town.

More than twenty years have passed. Larry, a mechanic, lives a solitary existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has returned as a constable. He and Larry have no reason to cross paths until another girl disappears and Larry is blamed again. And now the two men who once called each other friend are forced to confront the past they've buried and ignored for decades.



My Review

It was Kemper's review that made me add this book to my shelf. It was Stephen's that made me rush to the library after work and grab a copy.

After reading Shine and Winter's Bone, I was hesitant about reading another depressing story set in the south, but I’m so glad I did.

Larry Ott had a tough childhood growing up in rural Mississippi. He was sickly and he had a stutter. He never quite fit in among his classmates, usually the butt of a joke or the target of a bully. His dad was cold, distant and unaffectionate. Reading books was his only escape, until he met Silas Jones. The two boys were friends for a short time, enjoying activities like shooting, playing in the woods, and hanging out.

Larry’s life was forever changed when popular Cindy Walker asked him on a date. Though no evidence was found linking Larry to her mysterious disappearance, he has been the object of scorn and speculation, resulting in his isolation from the close-knit, rural community he grew up in. Silas, meanwhile, has moved on.

Now 41, Larry’s days are spent repairing the cars of the few out-of-towners who visit his late father’s garage, tending his chickens, and reading his favorite Stephen King novels.

Silas returns to Mississippi as a town constable. He and Larry’s lives intersect again when another girl disappears.

This beautiful, sad and unforgettable story weaves back and forth, between the past and the present, revealing details about childhood and the awkward teenage years. It paints a vivid picture of a depressed town and the secrecy, silence and judgment of its inhabitants. While crime plays a significant role in this story, it is the friendship between Silas and Larry and Larry’s aching loneliness that make the greatest impact.

No Honor Among Thieves

Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If Elmore Leonard meant for there to be a theme running through this book it's probably: There is no honor among thieves...

In Road Dogs, two buddies get out of the joint and immediately hatch up plans for new heists. But then a girl muddies things up. Then another one makes it even more complicated. And what about the loyal prison bitch of one of the buddies? Which side is he taking? And for that matter, whose side are any of them on?

This probably deserves 4 stars. It's good writing. It's an interesting story. But I think I was expecting something more "Hollywood," if you will.

That's ironic, because the setting for most of the book is Los Angeles. Specifically, the expensive houses along the canal system just off of Venice Beach. I've been there and the tiny area has a very movie set look about it. In fact, everything about this book feels like it should be an action-packed, Hollywood heist flick, but it's not. There's a low-key con. People go down. However, Road Dogs never does kick into high gear. It's very talky and more cerebral than I expected.

On second thought, three stars does seem fair for a good book that I enjoyed, but what didn't light any particularly burning fires within my reading soul.

Perdita Durango es una mala mujer. Muy mala!

PERDITA DURANGO
Barry Gifford
Grove Press, 1996
reviewed by Anthony Vacca
5 out of 5 stars

Brief, brutal, and bizarre, Perdita Durango is my kind of pulp noir, and my kind of woman. A self-proclaimed Tex-Mex (Half American, Half Mexican) Perdita is also a thief, a whore, a killer, and an all-around sociopath. Skinny, lithe, and dangerous, this novel follows Perdita's misadventures after shacking up with Romeo Dolorosa, a Mexican drug dealer who fronts his border distribution racket with a church where he serves as voodoo high priest, sacrificing goats and chickens and sometimes even people.

In a lot of ways, this novel, also anthologized in the collection Sailor's Holiday under the title 59° and Raining, is the anti-Wild at Heart in that the previous novel was about a couple that represented the idea of love being something stronger than the chaos at the heart of the Americas, but here we have Perdita and Romeo as celebrants of death, two evil souls who see killing and fucking as essentially two sides of the same coin, the only real way to prove that you're alive.

Even the roadtrip trajectory of this novel mirrors the one Sailor and Lula took in Wild at Heart but instead of goinng to California to make a chance at a life together, our two Latin-flavored killers are transporting a truck-load of human organs that are to be used in a mafia-run illegal skincare scheme. Without giving away the particular sordid and disgusting contents of their cargo, know that it certainly only adds to the over-all theme of the complete disregard of life that we children of God are more than capable of perpetrating upon one another.

Gifford is in rare form here, carrying the free-wheeling, digressive narrative along quickly enough with cigarette-smoking-cool existential back-and-forths between its characters; these are the kind of deviants and delinquents who love to tell each other stories for the pure bliss of hearing the sounds of their own voices. The action is jarring and sparesly rendered in a way that reads almost like beat poetry that doesn't suck.

This novel (or novella, if we want to split hairs) can be read in a single sitting, as the chapters are short and charged with enough sex and violence to leave a throat dry and in serious need of a refreshing cervaza. It's a hell of a story, and like its eponymous femme fatale, it's bad. Very bad.

A Return to Blue Deer, Montana

This is the second of Jamie Harrison's quirky mysteries set in the small fictional town of Blue Deer, which is nestled up against the Crazy Mountains in southwestern Montana. All the principal characters from the first book, The Edge Of The Crazies, appear again, including the county's laid-back sheriff, Jules Clements, who is the main protagonist. It's now the middle of summer, and Jules and his fellow townspeople are gearing up for the annual Wrangle, a rodeo that draws large numbers of tourist...more Reviewed by James L. Thane Four out of five stars Reviewed by James This is the second of Jamie Harrison's quirky mysteries set in the small fictional town of Blue Deer, which is nestled up against the Crazy Mountains in southwestern Montana. All the principal characters from the first book, The Edge Of The Crazies, appear again, including the county's laid-back sheriff, Jules Clements, who is the main protagonist. It's now the middle of summer, and Jules and his fellow townspeople are gearing up for the annual Wrangle, a rodeo that draws large numbers of tourists into the small community for a party that, even under the best of circumstances, can be a headache for the tiny sheriff's department. Things begin to go downhill in a big way when someone reports a tent floating in a reservoir near Blue Deer. Jules heads out to investigate, anticipating a nice, lazy afternoon away from the office. But when it turns out that there are two bodies floating inside the tent, Jules' lazy afternoon quickly melts away. The victims are a local environmental attorney, Otto Scobey, and his young girlfriend who had been camping near the reservoir. It quickly becomes apparent that their deaths were no accident; someone in a very large truck ran over the tent and then pushed it and its occupants into the water. The dead lawyer had been a principal in the development of a major new resort complex. Everyone insists that Otto was well liked, that he had no problems, and that he was totally cool with the fact that his ex-wife, Sylvia, also a partner in the development, was now in a relationship with film director Hugh Lesy, the third major partner. As Jules investigates, however, he senses problems below the surface of the relationship among the resort's developers. While he attempts to tease out the truth of the relationship and find the killer, he's also forced to deal with a wide variety of other eccentric characters who have made their way to Blue Deer, including a sexy blonde who quickly has Jules in her sights. Jules' problems will only multiply several times over when the Wrangle commences and the fun really begins. Jamie Harrison has woven here another entertaining story set against the background of the new West where, in places like Blue Deer, Hollywood celebrities and other newcomers are mixing with long-time natives, not always harmoniously. Jules Clement would remind no one of Matt Dillon or of any other Old West lawman and it's great fun to get reacquainted with him and the other characters who populated the first book in this series. Anyone who enjoyed The Edge of the Crazies will certainly want to find Going Local.