Harry Bosch Searches for the Black Box

Reviewed by James L. Thane
Four out of five stars


During the course of the L.A. riots in 1992, Harry Bosch, then a young detective, was the first investigator on the scene of the murder of Anneke Jespersen. Jespersen, an attractive photo-journalist from Denmark, was found executed in a dark ally in the middle of the riot zone by national guardsmen who were attempting to provide crowd control. But at the height of the rioting, Harry had no opportunity to do anything more than make a cursory examination of the scene before he was ordered away to another homicide. In the wake of the riots, the Jespersen killing was assigned to a special task force and the case was never solved.

This is one of those cases that has always haunted Harry and now, twenty years later, the same gun that killed the young journalist is used in another murder. Bosch, who is now assigned to the department's Open-and-Unsolved Unit, jumps at the chance to reopen the Jespersen case and finally provide a very belated justice for the victim.

It will not be easy. The chain of evidence is almost hopelessly murky and would frustrate any detective less tenacious than Bosch. In addition to confronting an almost impossible case, Harry is also soon up against department bureaucrats who are interested only in posting statistics that make them look good, who do not share Harry's sense of the Mission of a homicide detective, and who for their own nefarious reasons, would rather this particular case not be solved.

Bosh will not be deterred. He makes an end run around his supervisors and doggedly pursues the case as he believes he should. He's desperately searching for the "Black Box," which will provide the solution to the case, but in the end, the term will become much more than a metaphor as Harry uncovers a particularly dark and disturbing series of crimes.

As he investigates the case, Harry continues to grapple with the complex challenges involved in raising a teenage daughter by himself. He also has a new woman in his life and this relationship is difficult as well, but watching him juggle all of these responsibilities is a treat, as always. All in all, this is an excellent entry in one of the best crime series in the history of the genre. Twenty-five years after first introducing Harry Bosch, Michael Connelly just continues to keep getting better and better.

Columbus, Just Look At The Mess You Made!

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann
Review by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

1493 is all over the place...and that's a good thing.

Charles C. Mann's follow up to his spectacular 1491 look at the pre-Columbian Americas is quite an admirable undertaking. Here he looks at the consequences of Columbus's voyages to the Americas. For better and/or for worse they had far reaching affects, especially biologically.

Mann's premise seems to state that Columbus was not a morally good man, but he should be celebrated as bringing about the world's biological homogenization. Though this is no murder mystery, I'm going to refrain from giving examples, because that would spoil the fun of reading 1493.

Hmmm...well, that doesn't give me much else to talk about.

Before Columbus Came To Town

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
Review by Jason Koivu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was like a coloring book of pre-Pilgrim North America for me in that it filled in a lot of unanswered questions and brilliantly illuminated some areas of my knowledge that were mere outlines. It stays within the lines and makes my early attempts at coloring in the past look like spidery, seizure-induced scrawlings.

Being originally from New England, I'm well aware that there were inhabitants here long before the Europeans arrived. Early on in school we were inundated with stories of Samoset and Squanto, the first Native Americans to make contact with the Plymouth Colony pilgrims, and how in 1621 they strolled into the transplanted Englishmen's village and a big party broke out, thus began the tradition of Thanksgiving. I was (mis)taught in a Massachusetts classroom where heritage and history are king, so much was made of this. We were led to believe the story by elementary schoolteachers who probably wholeheartedly believed it themselves. What about the Virginia Colony of 1607 and their contact with the native inhabitants? It failed, so sweep it under the rug. Something tells me this version of America's founding by Europeans was not the one being taught in Virginia at the time...

Never was explained how the two natives could speak English (from Englishmen fishing off of the Maine coast and, in Squanto's case, from abduction and internment for seven years in England) or anything that happened in the Americas prior to the pilgrims landing. Oh sure there was talk of Incas and Mayans and their all important maize. But the extent, the sheer size of the native tribes, clans, and cosmopolitan societies of the Americas, north and south, and how Europe brought it all down upon their heads, none of this was discussed. Why? Because even during the late 1970s and early 80s when the movement to turn the Native Americans into mystical caretakers of Mother Earth, there was still a prejudicial sense of 'white is right' prevalent, at least in the neighborhood I grew up in. The other reason is a plain lack of knowledge. My simple teachers simply did not know. They can't wholly be blamed. The information wasn't readily available or flat-out wasn't available. School books were traditional and outdated. The grey-area material was swept under the rug. Now there is less grey-area material - advances in technology and archaeological practices have greatly advanced our knowledge of the past in just a few short decades - but there's still plenty of unknown patches of time in the western hemisphere. In 1491 Mann does not shy away from them.

Having said that, it should be noted that this is not just about North America. No, in fact more time is spent on everything below it. Through discovered texts and deciphered inscriptions there's just more known about Mesoamerica than the other areas, so yes, there are pages upon pages about those Incas and Mayans.

In general what I love about 1491 is that it doesn't take the Indians' side or the Europeans'. It doesn't try to cast a glowing angelic light upon the native inhabitants to transform them into woodland spirits whose only concern was the preservation of the trees and the birds, etc blah blah blah (Earth Day is quaint and misguided, but I digress...), nor does Mann attempt to attack or defend the actions of the Europeans. All is more of a statement of fact or, if lacking concrete evidence, a statement of possibility based on sound theory.

Sure, this distills oceans of scholarly study down to a more manageable duck pond, but it never tries to pretend it is doing otherwise. Mann is no pretender to vaunted erudition. He's a journalist who's done some research. He's a guy who realized his own grade school education was lacking, and when he found out the moldy stuff he was taught way back when was still being taught to his son he decided to do something about it. I'm glad for it.


View all my reviews

Fly By Night by Frances Hardinge. Or, ‘A is for awe’

Fly By Night
Frances Hardinge
2005

reviewed by Carol
Read October 2013

★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2

 

 

 

Fly By Night is a playful, sophisticated story, as suited to the older reader as the young adult.  The story of a twelve-year-old misfit girl–she can read–weaves an antagonistic buddy-trip, a spy caper, guild wars, city revolutions, freedom of the press and a journey of self-discovery into a satisfying book that I wholeheartedly recommend.

I knew I was going to be in for something fun when I read on page one:
“Celery had every reason to feel strongly on the subject of names. Her eyes were pale, soft and moist, like skinned grapes, but at the moment they were stubborn, resolute grapes.“

Clearly, this is an author that enjoys playing with words.  I understand the simile doesn’t work–grapes can’t be resolute–but that’s exactly why I find it amusing. But Hardringe doesn’t just love playing with words; she’s written a book where themes of reading, words and books have been woven into the core of her story. Just how much does her heroine love words?

Since the burning of her father’s books, Mosca had been starved of words.  She had subsisted on workaday terms, snub and flavorless as potatoes. Clent had brought phrases as vivid and strange as spices, and he smiled as he spoke, as if tasting them… Mendacity, thought Mosca. Mellifluous. She did not know what they meant, but the words had shapes in her mind. She memorized them, and stroked them in her thoughts like the curved backs of cats. Words, words, wonderful words. But lies too.

Surely readers can relate.

A barely-spoilery summary: Mosca’s father died, trapping her in a dreary existence in the book-fearing, water-logged village of Clough. A traveler indirectly enchants her with his wily, silver-coated tongue–not because of his lies, but because of his words–inspiring her to disobedience. Escaping Clough, they head to a nearby village, securing access on  Captain Partridge’s suspiciously weighted barge.  Forced off, they catch a ride on a peddler’s cart until encountering a wealthy woman’s damaged coach and a highwayman with a flair for the dramatic. Landing in the village of Mandelion, they take rooms in a ‘marriage house’ and then the real confusion starts.
Since that’s just the first 94 pages, it’s clear that this is a fast paced story. Layers upon layers are added, paralleling Mosca’s intellectual and emotional growth as she experiences the world beyond her village. I found myself challenged, and admit that I was surprised by a number of twists (all probable!) the plot took.

Characterization is fascinating. I’m not a fan of the current trend of anti-heroes, so I appreciate that these characters have the flavor of real people, with obsessions, grudges, hopes and misconceptions. Starry-eyed idealism doesn’t play nearly the role in their decisions that perseverance and determination do. Still, the characters aren’t unconditionally likeable; they have flaws. Mosca is irascible and Eponymous Clent is a con artist with a strategy for every situation. Our first glimpse of him is more telling for the adult readers than the younger:
“The mouth was moving, spilling out long, languorous sentences in a way which suggested that, despite his predicament, the speaker rather enjoyed the sound of his own voice.“

Yet what I loved most was Hardinge’s prose. It will surely having me buying and gifting this book. Instead of telling us how Mosca and Clent traveled the forest, we get the perspective of the path:
“The path was a troublesome, fretful thing. It worried that it was missing a view of the opposite hills and insisted on climbing for a better look. Then it found the breeze uncommonly chill and ducked back among the trees. It suddenly thought it had forgotten something and doubled back, then realized that it hadn’t and turned about again. At last it struggled free of the pines, plumped itself down by the riverside, complained of its aching stones and refused to go any farther. A sensible, well-trodden track took over.”

I don’t know that I would call this fantasy, although the top Goodreads shelf is ‘fantasy.’ But truly, there aren’t really any fantastical elements, only extreme, storybook ones. Even the goose, swaggering and ill-tempered, is goose-like. In fact, in the afterward, Hardinge states her land is “based roughly on England at the start of the eighteenth century.” If so, it’s a history lesson in heavy disguise, the Robin Hood version.

Whimsical, clever, empowering and satisfying, I may just bump this up to five stars. After I buy and re-read.

cross posted at  http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/fly-by-night-by-frances-hardinge-or-a-is-for-awe/

Heist Society

Heist Society
by Ally Carter

Reviewed by Sesana
3.5 out of five stars

Publisher Summary:

Since she can remember, Katarina's relatives have been grooming her for the family business — thieving. But when Kat tries to go straight and leave the Life for a normal life, she's promptly kicked out of her new school for stealing the headmaster's car and mounting it on the school fountain. Although she could have done it without breaking a sweat, ironically, this time, she's innocent.

In fact she was framed — by another highly-skilled thief. Her friend and brother-in-trade Hale, with his mischievous smile and limitless bank account, has appeared out of nowhere to bring her back to the Life, back to the family Kat tried so hard to escape. Hale has a good reason: A powerful mobster has just been robbed of his priceless art collection and he wants to retrieve it. Only a master thief could have cracked this vault, and Kat's father isn't just on the suspect list, he IS the list. Now, caught between Interpol and a far more deadly predator, Kat's dad needs her help.

For Kat, a consummate thief in her own right, the solution is simple: track down the paintings and steal them back. So what if it's a spectacularly impossible job? She's got two weeks, a teenage crew, and maybe just enough misguided pride to pull off the biggest heist in history — or at least in her family's (very crooked) history.

My Review:

Heist Society is essentially a teen heist novel. Realistic? Maybe not. Hale sure isn't. Fun? Yes, it's definitely that. Good enough to keep going with the series? Well, maybe not.

There are definitely things to like here. The characters, especially Kat, reasonably act and sound like teens who grew up surrounded by organized, career criminals. For the most part, I found their actions and reactions believable, and they were mostly likeable without being dull and overly perfect. I also loved that Carter quietly made this book about more than just a daring art theft. As Kat discovers, the paintings she's been set to retrieve were looted by Nazis in the 1930s. At this point, Carter could have thrown the rest of the story out the window and hammered on this one point. And she didn't. It takes a good bit of restraint to let a (sadly, realistic) plot point about Nazis remain in the background for much of the book.

That said, I was reminded a few times that I'm not really the target audience anymore. Hale is a strange character, complete wish fulfillment for Kat. He's rich, he's handsome, he fits into her world, and he's (apparently) exclusively interested in her. As a whole, he just isn't believable. That said, when he's interacting with Kat and money (specifically, his oodles and oodles of it) isn't entering into the conversation, I like him, and I like how he interacts with Kat. But as a whole, he just didn't work for me. And even at the end of the book, I'm still confused as to why Kat originally left the criminal life in the first place. Attack of conscience, I guess, but what prompted it? I kept waiting for an explanation, and I just didn't get one.

Right now, I'm not sure if I'd read any further in this series. On one hand, I do like most of the characters, and I think Carter is good at writing believable interactions between them. I like the Robin Hood-esque direction that Carter seems to be taking Kat in, and I think this could end up being a fun, exciting series. But I do have my doubts about how things will develop going forward.

Side note: if the idea of looted art really interested you, I'd recommend reading Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World for the real-world debate that Carter only touches on here.

Hawkeye: My Life As A Weapon

Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon

Hawkeye: My Life As A Weapon

Matt Fraction

Marvel NOW!

Available now!

When I walked out of the theatre after watching The Avengers last year, I was too blown away by the awesomeness of The Hulk to even remember Jeremy Renner’s performance as Clint Barton (a.k.a.Hawkeye; a.k.a. the guy with the arrows). His role as a member of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes had felt rather diminished and seemed like an afterthought. Hawkeye wasn’t nearly as exciting, memorable or as flashy as Thor, Iron Man or even Agent Colson. So when I heard all the buzz behind Matt Fraction’s take on Earth’s Mightiest Marksman, I had to see this for myself.

Fraction basically approaches Hawkeye by treating him as that outsider, the guy in the Avengers without the mind-blowing super powers. He’s not a God, he’s not a super soldier and he’s certainly not a giant green rage monster – Clint Barton is just an exceptionally skilled archer. How he deals with that fact is the core of this series, his missions seem almost secondary – which I’m completely OK with. Marvel has always been known for its strong character development, trying to make the heroes as relatable as possible in an effort to tie the story to the reader in the most emotional way possible. You could write a story about a hero constantly saving the day, taking out the villains over and over again but in the end, it’s the guy behind the mask that keeps the reader coming back and Fraction gives us that in a strong opening to his new project.

I do have a few small complaints though. I absolutely loved David Aja’s work in the first three issues, giving it a style reminiscent of Sean Phillips (one of my favorites). What confused me was the sudden shift to Javier Pulido for issues four and five. Pulido isn’t bad per se, it just made me wonder where Aja went. The final chapter, which is an issue of Young Avengers Presents, seemed tacked on to pad out the book.

I’m interested to see where things go from here. Bring on Volume Two!

Shards

Ismet Prcic
Grove Press
Reviewed by: Nancy
3 out of 5 stars

Summary

Ismet Prcic’s brilliant, provocative, and propulsory energetic debut is about a young Bosnian, also named Ismet Prcic, who has fled his war-torn homeland and is now struggling to reconcile his past with his present life in California.

He is advised that in order to make peace with the corrosive guilt he harbors over leaving behind his family behind, he must “write everything.” The result is a great rattlebag of memories, confessions, and fictions: sweetly humorous recollections of Ismet’s childhood in Tuzla appear alongside anguished letters to his mother about the challenges of life in this new world. As Ismet’s foothold in the present falls away, his writings are further complicated by stories from the point of view of another young man— real or imagined— named Mustafa, who joined a troop of elite soldiers and stayed in Bosnia to fight. When Mustafa’s story begins to overshadow Ismet’s new-world identity, the reader is charged with piecing together the fragments of a life that has become eerily unrecognizable, even to the one living it.

Shards is a thrilling read, a harrowing war story, a stunningly inventive coming of age, and a heartbreaking saga of a splintered family.

My Review

I enjoy gripping, personal stories about surviving hardship during war, the mundane details of life that go on despite such major upheaval, and fitting in and finding one’s identity in a foreign land.
This fragmented tale is told from multiple perspectives, that of Ismet while he is living in California, Ismet growing up in war-torn Bosnia, and another Bosnian teenager named Mustafa whose experiences fuse with Ismet’s so strongly that it is difficult to tell what is real and what is imaginary. It is brilliant, unsettling, funny, and beautiful. It is also somewhat lacking in focus and felt too long in places.  

There were gorgeous, moving passages like this one:

"It was like we were driven to put that frame in front of us. To make a difference on those people’s faces, you know. Something. We let it sit in our laps, held it erect, and ceased all movement. We became a painting, staring out through the frame into the real world. And soon the real people stopped to stare at us, the painting, forgetting for a moment about the war, the oppressive psychosis that permeated everything. People have to look at art no matter what.

A bunch of children swarmed around us trying to catch a facial twitch and laughed giddily, waved their little hands in front of our eyes, and scratched their little heads when we wouldn’t think. Adults mostly stared from a distance, wondering why anybody would do this. Two elderly men with their hands behind their backs looked at us with brutal disgust, shaking their heads like the end of the world was coming and we were somehow responsible. And it would all have been an exercise in craft, a spur-of-the-moment performance-art piece, something nobody would remember for long, had it not started shelling and had we not, in our madness, remained motionless in spite of it, among the mad-dashing citizens."

Laugh-out-loud funny passages like this:

"I was the first one up there in my tighty-whities, screaming giddily, staring one moment at the blue sky, the next at my white feet slapping the hard surface of the white cement, until the whiteness ended abruptly in a horizontal line and I found myself airborne above the blue, beneath the blue, in the blue and going up, up, up, I swear to God I would have been the first human to really fly had I not remembered, going up into the blue like that, that all my money was rolled up in a tobacco pouch hanging next to a pouch of another kind in my underwear."

And other passages that were a jumbled, pretentious mess. My favorite parts of the book were the stories about Ismet’s childhood in Bosnia, the heartbreaking stories of his depressed, chain-smoking mother and cheating father, the sweet stories of first love, and the funny stories about his acting in theatre. 

 I really hate the derogatory use of the word “pussy” to mean cowardly, and found the author used it frequently enough to annoy me and take me out of the story a few times.  

Through his characters, real and imaginary, the author shows how difficult it can be to adjust to a new way of life. Though not a perfect story, it was a compelling one. 

Also posted at Goodreads.

Happy Halloween!

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Sixteenth Annual Collection

Ellen Datlow (Editor), Terri Windling (Editor)

Authors (Various)

Four Stars

Summary

The critically acclaimed and award-winning tradition continues with another stunning collection, including stories by Kelly Link, Kim Newman, Corey Marks, Eric Schaller, M. Shayne Bell, Helga M. Novak, Terry Dowling, Michael Libling, Zoran Zivkovic, Bentley Little, Carlton Mellick III, Brian Hodge, Conrad Williams, Tom Disch, Melissa Hardy, Joel Lane, Nicholas Royle, Tracina Jackson-Adams, Karen Joy Fowler, Jackie Bartley, Peter Dickerman, Ramsey Campbell, Adam Roberts, Robert Phillips, Jay Russell, Luis Alberto Urrea, Margaret Lloyd, Stephen Gallagher, Robin McKinley, Haruki Murakami, Theodora Goss, Kathy Koja, Lucy Taylor, Elizabeth Hand, Kevin Brickmeier, Sharon McCartney, Susan Power, Don Tumasonis, Nan Fry.

Rounding out the volume are the editors' invaluable overviews of the year in fantasy and horror, Year's Best sections on comics, by Charles Vess, and on anime and manga, by Joan D. Vinge, and a long list of Honorable Mentions, making this an indispensable reference as well as the best reading available in fantasy and horror.

My Review

I've always liked short stories. They are a great way to fit in a good read when reading time is limited or you just want a tasty morsel you can finish quickly. The whole problem with them is balance. Considering I grabbed this by mistake, thinking it was a fantasy, sci fi mix and not horror, it turned out a lot better and more balanced than a lot of anthologies I have read.

That might have to do with the editors. Datlow and Whitling have done not only a fine job of selecting the authors but also which of their stories were included in this volume. While not all were my cup of tea I can say that the majority of the writers managed to convey the mood they wanted in a short amount of time.

A couple of my favourites were represented, such as Gaiman and Murikami, but I've also discovered a few new authors that I've had on to read lists but now will now get bumped up the list a lot faster. China Mieville, Jeffrey Ford and Brian Hodge come to mind.

It's odd because I've already forgotten the misses in this book and can only remember the hits. Maybe that says something about the calibre of writing. A must read on Halloween night!

Snake Charmer

Two Serpents Rise
by Max Gladstone
Published by Tor

4 Out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by Amanda

**This review is of an Advance Uncorrected Proof provided by Tor in exchange for an honest and fair review**

A burgeoning desert city, Dresediel Lex depends upon Craft and the power of fallen gods to quench its ever growing thirst. When demons are planted in the city's water supply, Red King Consolidated, the utility that provides water to the city, suspects religious fanatics eager for the return of the gods or good old-fashioned corporate competition. Caleb Altemoc, a risk manager for the omnipresent Red King Consolidated and son of Temoc, a wanted religious terrorist, is sent to investigate. He soon finds himself falling for a potentially dangerous woman, questioning his loyalties to his employer and to his father, and learning that the deified twin serpents of Dresediel Lex survived the God Wars and slumber as they await an eclipse that will awaken a hunger that can only be sated with blood sacrifice.

Two Serpents Rise returns us to the world--if not the characters and city of Alt Coulumb--presented in Three Parts Dead, and this is a brilliant move on the part of author Max Gladstone. Neatly side-stepping the tendency of many authors to get locked into one character and a formulaic plot structure for a never-ending series, Gladstone continues to create this unnamed world of magic and technology that is at once primitive and futuristic, where humans and gods coexist. This world provides Gladstone with a broad canvas for his impressive, imaginative world-building, and he is at his best when writing of the terrible majesty of the gods, as fantastically varied as the cultures that spawn them. However, these gods, brought into existence by man's faith, have been destroyed or harnessed after the God Wars, when mankind realized they could kill what they had created or restructure the power of the gods to serve the needs of modern man.

The mythologies created by Gladstone capture the primal need for the divine and the rational, "civilized" mind's rejection of religious fanaticism--a dichotomy represented in the character of Caleb. The son of a once powerful Eagle Knight priest desperate to cling to the old ways of blood sacrifice, Caleb rejects the brutal and barbaric religion of his father, but is uncomfortable with the manner in which defeated gods have been utilized by concerns like Red King Consolidated to meet the needs of the people. As Caleb seeks the source of the water contamination, he must come to moral terms with Dresediel Lex's problematic history and the cultural divide created in the wake of the God Wars. Caleb's contentious relationship with his father provides the novel with more depth than one might expect of a standard fantasy novel, and I found myself wishing that Gladstone had jettisoned Caleb's strained, awkward, and perplexing romantic relationship with Mal in favor of more interaction between father and son.

The mystery at the core of Two Serpents Rise, when stripped of its magical accouterments, is fairly standard, but serviceable to moving the plot forward. There are few surprises and maybe a few too many red herrings and segues into nonessential plot elements, but these quibbles are fairly minor when stacked against the entertainment to be found in exploring Gladstone's complex, layered world.

The Last Good Lady Lover

Butch Fatale, Dyke Dick-Double D Double Cross
Christa Faust
2012
reviewed by Anthony Vacca
3 out of 5 stars

A labor of lust from everyone’s favorite hot mama of a pulp-noirist, Christa Faust’s Butch Fatale, Dyke Dick - Double D Double Cross is a breezy romp of an e-book starring the titular tough-talking, hard-hitting, sex-driven private detective as she finds herself knee-deep in a tricky case involving a missing call girl, some Armenian gangsters, a gorgeous mercenary, a corrupt rich person, and lots and lots of sex. To say that this book is an, um, eye-opening experience about the anatomical dynamics of girl-on-girl action is an understatement. If anything, the real star of the show is Faust’s energetic, unadorned zest for writing raunchy lesbian sex. If you don’t like reading about energetic, zesty, raunchy lesbian sex, then this is a book you might have to take a pass on, you philistine. Recommended for fans of PI novels looking for something fresh, and for all horny teenagers with a computer and a gift card for Amazon.