The Detectives of the 87th Precint (and Their Creator) Work Under Pressing Deadlines

First published in 1958, this is the eighth entry in Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series. By this point, the main characters were fairly well-established and needed no introduction, but the book itself is something of an oddity in the series in that most of the books have the detectives of the 87th working at least a couple of cases. This book focuses on a single case, worked by all of the detectives over a the course of a long and frustrating twelve-hour day.

As the team assembles in the morning, a young boy delivers a printed message to the desk sergeant. The man who wrote the message announces that he is going to kill "the Lady" at 8:00 that evening. The detectives have no idea if this is a practical joke or not, but naturally, they have to take the threat seriously.

In a desperate race against time the detectives work along parallel tracks, trying to determine the identity of the victim and that of the man who intends to kill her. As always, McBain provides an interesting and entertaining ride, although this would not rank among the better books in the series.

In a new introduction, McBain explains that he wrote the book under a deadline, in just nine days. His contract provided that he had to produce a manuscript of 180 pages--no more, no less--and that is exactly what he did. In order to do so, though, he added a lot of filler to what otherwise could have been a fairly short novella. There are a lot of extended descriptions of the weather and of various characters where McBain is obviously just attempting to fill space in an effort to hit his 180-page target and to get the book done as quickly as possible.

In less capable hands, this schedule would have almost certainly produced a book that would hardly be worth reading. But McBain is so good that even a book written under this kind of pressure turns out to be very entertaining and demonstrates what a talented and prolific writer could do "back in the day" when pulp novelists regularly produced several books a year. I wouldn't recommend that someone new to the series start with this book, but fans of the series will want to seek it out.

Fame, beauty, and plastic surgery

Sara's Face
Melvin Burgess
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2007

Reviewer: Sesana
3 out of 5 stars

Publisher Summary:  Sara wants to be famous, and when legendary rock star Jonathon Heat offers to take her under his wing and pay for her cosmetic surgery, it's like a dream come true. But beauty comes with a hidden price tag. Is Sara willing to pay?

My Review:  Strange book. Written partly as a faux-true crime book, Sara's Face is about Jonathan Heat (a Michael Jackson expy if ever there was one, with a dash of Bowie for good measure) and a teenager named Sara, who has a tenuous grip on reality, a manipulative streak, destructive tendencies, and a deep dislike of her own appearance. Bad combination. From the start of the book, the reader knows that something terrible will happen, but not the specifics. I think that's supposed to add tension and mystery, and it does, to a degree, but it's so plainly obvious what will happen that it's only the how and the why that remains mysterious. Luckily, the concept alone is hair-raising enough and the personalities of Sara and Heat both so morbidly fascinating that it remains a creepy page-turner.

I do like the idea of a novel written in the style of true crime, but sadly, Burgess doesn't stick with it. He includes far too many specific conversations (nonfiction would have the basic gist of the conversation, with maybe a few specific lines) and sometimes includes Sara's (very detailed) thoughts at exact moments when he would have no way of knowing exactly what she'd seen, thought, and felt. Sticking with the true crime novel would have cut some scenes that he was obviously very fond of, but it would have made a better book. In fact, the parts of the book that stick most closely to the true crime style are the best by far.

Of course, the basic premise is far fetched enough that I considered marking this book science fiction. Or fantasy, since the book hints at supernatural elements in a very underdeveloped way. There are a lot of unanswered questions, which is intentional, but it didn't feel necessary to me.

I have to make note of a scene that happens at the beginning of the book that really took me aback. At Sara's high school, there's a gang of boys who regularly drag girls into a bathroom to feel them up. When they do this to Sara, she calls the police, the local news station, and informs the school. My personal reaction is to be proud of her and cheer her on in this. So when the narrative voice dismisses this as just more of her attention seeking behavior, I'm honestly stunned. Wow, really? Now, because of the style of the book, there's the question of whether the narrative voice reflects the author's voice, so I can't necessarily blame Burgess entirely for this. But it was offensive (if not exactly surprising) for me to read.

I do sometimes like books that experiment with style, and I love a good, creepy read, but Sara's Face fell a little flat for me.

 Also reviewed at Goodreads.

Easy Does It

 

Devil  in a Blue Dress

Walter Mosley

Originally published 1990,

Republished 2002 by Washington Square Press

Price: Free at the public library

 

Reviewer: Carol

Rating: Four out of five easy stars

Recommended for: fans of detective noir

If you don't immediately start humming the song when you see this title, play it while you read. It is a classic:
http://youtu.be/KVbr37_yPeY

Easy Rawlins is just trying to get by. Laid off from his job building jets, he needs to make payment on his mortgage or face the loss of his house.

Drowning his woes at a tiny bar above a meatpacking warehouse, his friend and bar owner Joppy hooks him up with DeWitt Albright. Easy can't help but notice that Joppy, an ex-heavyweight fighter, is nervous, a sure tip-off there's something wrong. But Dewitt's a businessman with a simple job for Easy-- he offers him a hundred dollars to find a white girl known to hang out in the African-American community. In 1948, that's more than a couple mortgage payments to tide Easy over while he looks for his next job.
"'And just exactly what kind of business is it he does? I mean, is he a shirt salesman or what?'
'They gotta sayin' for his line'a work, Ease.'
'What's that?'
'Whatever the market can bear.' He smiled, looking like a hungry bear himself. 'Whatever the market can bear.'

Dewitt shows Easy a picture of the missing girl. Originally black and white, it's been touched up in color. "After staring at her a full minute I decided that she'd be worth looking for if you could get her to smile at you that way."

Everybody's seen her but no one wants to say where she is unless they get a piece of the action. Unfortunately, the devil has a blue dress, no doubt, and she seeds a trail of destruction in her wake. Part of the reason she breathes scandal is that her relationships transcend race, taboo at the time. Part of the reason is that the crowd she runs with includes pimps and underworld businessmen.

Soon the bodies start piling up, and the cops haul Easy in. But Easy fought in World War II, and if there is one thing he can't tolerate, it is disrespect. He decides to take control of the situation instead of letting himself be played.

"Somewhere along the way I had developed the feeling that I wasn't going to outlive the adventure I was having. There was no way out but to run, and I couldn't run, so I decided to milk all those white people for all the money they'd let go of."

His detective work takes him around various hangouts in L.A, including Ricardo's, a rough bar that you don't go into without an inside man. "Joppy had taken me to Ricardo's a few times after we locked up his bar. It was a serious kind of place peopled with jaundice-eyed bad men who smoked and drank heavily while they waited for a crime they could commit." Unsuccessful, he heads for a cut at the local barbershop, sure source of news and a neutral zone in the black community.



Devil in a Blue Dress won Moseley the Shamus award for first PI mystery, and it is easy (ha-ha) to see why. Succinct but encompassing descriptions that create a feel for L.A., the mood of post-WWII America, and an even better sense of what it felt like to be poor and black with the deck stacked against you. The experience of race weaves in and out of the storyline without being dominating or self-pitying, and has all the more impact for being so dispassionate. It affects Easy's life in so very many ways that it is an indirect commentary on race relations in the late 40s. The dialect has the flavor of Easy's southern heritage, contrasting with the more crisp language in his head. It makes for a nice reading balance, as it can be a reading challenge when dialect used for an entire book. This was an enjoyable, fast moving story that put Mosley on my authors-to-watch list.

Four easy stars.

And, of course, there's the movie.






Also published at Goodreads and http://clsiewert.wordpress.com

Frank Bill takes us on a crime spree into the heart of Southern Indiana

Crimes in Southern Indiana: Stories
Frank Bill
FSG Originals, 2011
Available Now

Reviewer: Trudi
Rating: 4 out of 5 blood-soaked stars

Iris kept driving....He reached over and rubbed Spade between his black ears, not knowing where he was headed, but knowing he wouldn't stop until he was several states shy of the crimes in southern Indiana.

This book ::flails helplessly:: How do I begin to review these raw and ruthless stories and do them justice? I probably can't ladies and gents, but I want to try goddammit. Frank Bill's collection of crazies and crimes in southern Indiana deserves that much at least.

This is prose that sings -- not with the sweetness and harmony of a Mama Cass, but rather a whiskey-soaked growl and feverish screech of a Janis Joplin. It's jagged, fragmented, and toothsome; ready at any point to tear a chunk out of the reader and leave him or her panting and bleeding like the sordid cast of cutthroat characters that populate the pages of these 17 inter-connected stories.

The stories piece together a harsh portrait of poor, scrabbling, backwoods people -- where victims become victimizers, and the brutalized do their fair share of brutalizing in return. As Frank Bill weaves together his tales of madness and mayhem, he is not interested in telling mere exploitative snapshots of gratuitous violence; his carefully crafted stories resonate with gritty themes of PTSD, poverty, domestic violence, addiction, greed and corruption. Each story flashes bright and fierce, a powerhouse on its own, but when melded with its brethren featured in the collection, the sum definitely becomes more awesome than the parts.

Frank Bill is writing Southern Noir and making it his bitch. This is Quentin Tarantino meets Cormac McCarthy. For make no mistake Frank Bill convinces his readers that his Indiana landscape is also no country for old men.

Jagged marrow lined his gums like he'd tried to huff a stick of dynamite. But when he stuttered into Medford's ear he sounded like a drunk who had Frenched a running chainsaw.

This isn't a collection to love per se; it certainly won't leave you with the warm and fuzzies. It will shake you up and smack you around a bit though, and you definitely won't forget it easily. It also made me green with envy over how easy Frank Bill makes it all seem. What he accomplishes isn't easy; if it were we'd see the likes of this kind of writing more often. Bill's prose is rough; there isn't the same kind of lyricism to be found in these stories as is in the work of Daniel Woodrell, Tom Franklin, or even his closest kin Donald Ray Pollock. However, if you have a penchant for the raw and brutal side of life, this collection is required reading in my books.

If that doesn't whet your appetite, look for Bill's new novel hot off the presses called Donnybrook. Word on the street is that it's even more an orgy of violence than the short stories that appear in Crimes. I've got a copy in my hands as I type this and you can bet I cannot wait to crack it open and see what carnage awaits me inside. Stay tuned!

A version of this review also appears on Goodreads. 

Kasher In The Rye

Kasher in the Rye

Moshe Kasher

Reviewed by: Brandon

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

I only really know Moshe Kasher from the two times I've heard him as a guest on Stop Podcasting Yourself, an excellent podcast from Vancouver based comedians Graham Clark and Dave Shumka. His appearances were pretty funny, the guy has a quick wit and an interesting sense of humor.

On his most recent two appearances, he talked about writing a book that detailed his pretty sordid past involving drugs and mental health. Having gone through so much before his sixteenth birthday, there was no way this book could be anything but enthralling.

I certainly wasn't wrong.

It can be jarring listening (snagged a copy of the audio book) to Moshe explain how one drug led to another and how serious his addictions became. The combination of drugs that he had been taking at one point was mind boggling, it’s unbelievable just how much memory he retained. When you add a vicious and unforgiving attitude toward any authority figure as well as his mother, it’s a wonder he came out the other end with such a positive attitude and achieved this level of success and comfort.

Oh, and this book is really funny. Kasher is now a stand-up comedian and part time actor so he knows how to entertain. While he’s regaling you with stories of his troubled youth, he keeps certain topics light by infusing his unique sense of humor  It takes a special kind of person to make you laugh while trying to justify being too lazy to walk the ten feet to the bathroom, electing rather to piss in empty soft drink cups and cast iron heaters.

Also posted on Every Read Thing

PHEDRE

Racine, Translated by Ted Hughes

Reviewed by: Arbie Roo

HHHH

Greek families! Histrionics, rash reaction instead of considered response, inability to control emotion. Tragedy.

I don't know much about this play: what was Racine's source? It feels very Classical Greek and very Ted Hughes and not really French at all in this version. The language is not as extreme, stylistically, as in Hughes' version of Seneca's Oedipus put the trademark bluntness, abruptness and anachronisms are all present and correct. If Hughes achieved anything with his translations of Classics and material with Classical sources, it was making gripping reading of them. He really did rescue these plays from lecture theatres and put them in real theatres.

I like this less than Hughes' other Greek-based works but I think it's to do with the source material - it's not as nutty as Oedipus or as philosophically interesting as The Oresteia - but that's not to say I disliked it at all: it got devoured in two short sessions.

Steve Jobs

By: Walter Isaacson
Reviewed by: Stephanie
4 out of 5 stars


Steve Jobs was a damn dirty hippie.

He didn't much like to shower or wear shoes. He believed his diet kept him from getting stinky, not true apparently. In fact he was quite odd and obsessive about his diets, he would go on kicks where he would eat nothing but carrots for long periods of time until he turned orange (maybe John Boehner is on this diet, no pretty sure it's Cheetos). This makes me wonder if these strange eating habits brought on his cancer. Who can say.

Steve Jobs was an asshat.

He was an ass to everyone, even Steve Wozniak, who by everyone's standards is one of the nicest guys there is. Wozniak was Job's only friend at times, and looked up to him always, but Jobs screwed him over time and again. Jobs didn't even claim his first born daughter (until much later) as his own even though there was no doubt she belonged to him. He also was a very emotional man, lots of crying and snot when he wanted something. Impossible to please, even down to the color of things. I seriously don't know how anything got finished, I really don't.

Steve Jobs was a super genius.

Despite of (or because of) all this he created the most amazing things. Because he asked for the impossible, he would get it. I love my Ipod and my Ipad. I'm very attached, I don't think I would like to live with out them now. I use the Ipod for my audiobook and podcast addiction. I'm even learning how to draw caricatures on the Ipad.....so frik'n cool.

Thank you Steve for being a damn dirty hippie, asshat super genius. Your creations have enhanced my life.

Review also appears on goodreads

Salt Sugar Fat: How the food giants hooked us

By Michael Moss
Reviewed by: Stephanie
4 out of 5 stars

I can honestly say I am one of the first people on the planet to have eaten a Chicken Mc Nugget.  

My dad is a mechanical engineer and a total genius.  Before I was born my dad had to find a job to support his family (they already had my older sister).   My parents wanted to stay near family, so dad started looking around in the Sandusky Ohio area……He got two job offers, one with NASA  (yes….NASA)  and one with Stein Associates, a brand new company that saw the need for mass food production…..processing it, if you will.    They needed someone to design breaders and fryers that ultimately went to companies like Mc Donald’s, Tyson, and Mrs. Pauls, and my dad was the man (Stein offered 10 cents more, NASA lost). They were the only ones out there doing this and had a monopoly on the industry.  If it’s been breaded and fried and you didn’t do this yourself,   thank my dad. 

Dad loved his job was good at it.  Really good, he has numerous patents and a Da Vinci Award (a big F’n deal).  For years he stood at the end of the line taste testing the food.  He brought it home for us as well….hey, anywhere you can save a buck with four kids to feed.   He traveled the planet working with various companies to get their production lines working.   Japan, The Soviet Union (where he was followed by KGB, he wanted to turn around and point out to them that they asked him to come, but he  was wise enough not to), England…..pretty much everywhere. 
All of the travel resulted in bad eating habits not to mention the ‘taste testing’ took its toll.   He gained weight and eventually became a type 2 diabetic, and has many other weight related health problems.

I don’t know if working at NASA would have been better for his health or wallet, but it would have been way cooler.  If I would have ended up with a skinny, healthy dad?…..even cooler.
In Salt, Sugar, Fat the author calls out these big food companies.   The CEO’s of companies like Kraft and Nabisco actually sat down one day after studies shown that Americans were getting fat, and it looked like it was their food that was causing the problem.  On the chart (they had) showed a steady rise in the average Americans weight after 1980, while before that date we chugged right along at a normal weight.  What changed?  We didn’t suddenly lose control, in mass, for no reason.  It was because of what was being done to the food…..don’t get me started on high fructuous corn syrup.   So, these asshat CEOs thought about the problem, thought about making a change, actually tried and failed at a few ideas, and in the end they said “fuck it, let’s just make money”.
The stuff they do to the processed food is done in such a way it actually causes a person to become addicted to certain foods.  It activates the same part of your brain as heroin does.   I can’t go into all the details about the subject; you’ll have to read the book for that.
Moral of the story, don’t eat processed foods if you can get away with it.  Don’t eat fast food like Chicken McNuggets.  Shop the perimeter of the grocery store, and avoid all the bad things that taste sooo good.

Review also appears on goodreads

Coming of Age in Mississippi

Anne Moody
Dell Publishing
Reviewed by: Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

Plot Summary

Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till’s lynching. Before then, she had "known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was…the fear of being killed just because I was black." In that moment was born the passion for freedom and justice that would change her life.

An all-A student whose dream of going to college is realized when she wins a basketball scholarship, she finally dares to join the NAACP in her junior year. Through the NAACP and later through CORE and SNCC she has first-hand experience of the demonstrations and sit-ins that were the mainstay of the civil rights movement, and the arrests and jailings, the shotguns, fire hoses, police dogs, billy clubs and deadly force that were used to destroy it.

A deeply personal story but also a portrait of a turning point in our nation’s destiny, this autobiography lets us see history in the making, through the eyes of one of the footsoldiers in the civil rights movement.

My Review

I recently read Kathryn Stockett’s The Help and while I enjoyed this story tremendously, I wanted to read something that was less uplifting, more realistic, and told from the perspective of an African-American.  Anne Moody’s powerful memoir was the perfect choice. 

This is a well-told and fascinating story about the author's life growing up in rural Mississippi, and her fight against racism.   Her story is chronologically told, from the author's youth in rural Mississippi, her education, family relationships, poverty, racism, violence and finally, her involvement with the Civil Rights Movement. 

The last section of the book devoted to Moody’s activism was riveting and deeply disturbing.  She participated in the heavily publicized Woolworth sit-in, which was known for its violence, and was deeply shaken by the deaths of four black girls in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. 

 

1963 Woolworth Sit-in, Jackson, Mississippi

Once a religious child, she questioned her faith in God. 

“Now talk to me, God.  Come on down and talk to me.  You know, I used to go to Sunday school, church, and B.T.U. every Sunday.  We were taught how merciful and forgiving you are.  Mama used to tell us that you would forgive us twenty-seven times a day and I believed in you.  I bet you those girls in Sunday school were being taught the same as I was when I was their age.  Is that teaching wrong?  Are you going to forgive their killers?  You not gonna answer me, God, hmm?  Well if you don’t want to talk, then listen to me.   As long as I live, I’ll never be beaten by a white man again.  Not like in Woolworth’s.  Not anymore.  That’s out.  You know something else, God?  Nonviolence is out.  I have a good idea Martin Luther King is talking to you too.  If he is, tell him that nonviolence has served its purpose.  Tell him that for me, God, and for a lot of other Negroes who must be thinking it today.  If you don’t believe that, then I know you must be white, too.  And if I ever find out you are white, then I’m through with you.  And if I find out you are black, I’ll try my best to kill you when I get to heaven.”

Moody provided details about intimidation, beatings, shootings, and other acts of violence enacted by the Ku Klux Klan against African Americans and their white supporters and about the institutionalized racism that kept many black families mired in poverty.  I just wish that Moody had spent more time with the story of her activism and the efforts and sacrifices of Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, and others,  rather than mundane details about childhood.  

I am thankful to Anne Moody and all the other young people who sacrificed their jobs, safety, and lives to make a stand against injustice and change the course of our history and for their stories that keep them alive in our minds and hearts.  

Also posted at Goodreads

Can't Get Enough of That Doomsday Song

The Next Day

David Bowie

Released by Columbia

Reviewed by Amanda
4 Out of 5 Stars

For decades, David Bowie has been a musical phoenix—consuming himself in the flames of one brilliant persona before eventually rising from the ashes anew.  While time would often lapse between these musical reinventions, his 2004 heart attack worried longtime fans as year after year passed with no new music from Bowie.  The fanfare surrounding the London Olympics rekindled hope that perhaps we would see Bowie return to the world stage during the closing ceremonies.  Such hopes were dashed when his profound influence on music and style was honored with a tribute in the form of a musical montage and fashion retrospective.  The man himself did not appear.  We became reconciled to the possibility that 2003’s Reality might be the final album and, while superb, it just seemed as though the end had come too soon.  Twas a bleak time for hardcore Bowie-philes. 

So the release of the single Where Are We Now on January 8 of this year (Bowie’s birthday) and the subsequent announcement of an album with 14 all new tracks (and 3 bonus tracks on the deluxe edition) to be released in March was met with much rejoicing and, on my part, some trepidation.  A fan of every Bowie incarnation (with the exception of the 80’s Bowie-lite), it was difficult for me to imagine a world in which my idol could create an album I wouldn’t like.  However, with no original music for a decade, it was difficult to predict which direction Bowie’s new sound would take.  My greatest fear was that he would succumb to the same temptations as many other aging rock stars seeking to recapture past glories.  Would he try to imitate or perfect upon popular contemporary music in an attempt to gain a newer, younger audience?  Or would he unsuccessfully try to return to the musical stylings of his past?  Would he, dear God in heaven no, mellow out and release an album of traditional crooner standards, proving he just didn’t have what it takes to rock and was instead content to totter on into old age, lounge lizard style?  (That’s right--I’m looking at you, Rod Stewart.) 

Despite my worries, I’m still a devout Bowie fan so I pre-ordered The Next Day as soon as its release was announced and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Finally, blessed March arrived and a ridiculously oversized package for such a tiny thing as a CD appeared at my door.  With trembling hands, I sliced through the tape, pulled out those annoying-as-hell little air bags that seem to go on forever, feeling like the dad in a Christmas Story as he desperately searches through the packing crate to claim his prize.  I removed the final bit of packing and there it was in all its black and white simplicity.  The first sign that all was well was the cover of the new album:  a white square simply declaring it is The Next Day, defacing the stylized pose from the iconic Heroes cover.  This seems to be Bowie suggesting that, while there are subtle nods to the past on the album, this is Bowie now with no apologies and no need to chase after what has been. 

To say The Next Day is Bowie’s best album would be inaccurate, but it is an excellent album whose sound owes more to 2002’s Heathen and the previously mentioned Reality.  Each song has a unique sound as Bowie puts his own spin on pop, rock, and soul.  The opening track, The Next Day, with a driving tempo and guitar, proves Bowie hasn’t lost his edge nor his ability to infuse a rock song with theatrical attitude.  There are several standout tracks here—my favorite is Dirty Boys, a song featuring a sneering, leering groove, suggestive saxophones, and Bowie’s almost sinister vocals slithering around every syllable.  The Stars Are Out Tonight, If You Can See Me, and Set the World on Fire also deserve honorable mentions, as does the instrumental Plan.  The songs alternate between upbeat, positive pop tempos with sometimes surprisingly dark themes, and rough edged rockers with clever lyrics and word play.   The album makes strong use of Bowie’s ability to create pleasing sounds out of sometimes jarring melodies and discordant vocal harmonies (especially on If You Can See Me).  Most of the songs explore the lower registers of Bowie’s voice (to me, this has always been the most appealing use of his vocal range), which have become more resonant with time.  However, he certainly hasn’t lost his ability to make one song stand apart from another by simply creating a new narrative “voice,” evoking a differing tone, character, or attitude on each. 

As the album concluded with I’ll Take You There, my fears had been allayed and I knew that Bowie was safe from musical oblivion.  Forgive me, Bowie, for I have sinned and doubted you.  Never again.  Just please don’t make me wait another 10 years for an album as my penance.