A Racketeer with an Ace Up His Sleeve

Reviewed by James L. Thane
Three out of five stars

When a federal judge named Raymond Fawcett is found murdered in his isolated mountain cabin, mysteries abound. The most important question is why did a judge of very modest means need the large state-of-the-art safe that was found hidden behind a bookcase?

Not surprisingly, the safe is now empty. The judge's young secretary who was found murdered beside him, had been tortured before she was killed. the assumption is that the killers tortured her to force the judge to open the safe before killing the two of them.

Since Fawcett is only the fifth active federal judge ever to have been murdered, the F.B.I. assembles a huge task force to track down the killer or killers, but the task force is virtually at a standstill. No one has any idea what might have been in the judge's safe and the careful killers left no trace of themselves behind. There are no witnesses, no clues of any kind, and no real suspects.

Meanwhile, not far from the crime scene, disbarred attorney Malcolm Bannister sits in a federal prison camp near Frostburg, Maryland, with five years left on a ten-year stretch. Bannister is actually an innocent victim who got caught up in a net thrown by an ambitious prosecuting attorney who abused the RICO statues to convict him. Naturally Bannister is unhappy, but he now has an ace up his sleeve because he knows what was in the safe and who killed Judge Fawcett to get it.

Through the warden, Bannister contacts the F.B.I. and offers to make a trade: his freedom for the information he alone possesses. His offer sets off a great game of cat-and-mouse between Bannister and the authorities. As usual, Grisham keeps you turning the pages, one after another, and the first half of the book is especially gripping.

My only complaint about it is that the second half doesn't really live up to the promise of the first half. There's a significant turn in the action that occurs about halfway through and from that point on the action gets a bit sluggish and the book starts to feel like it's gone on perhaps a bit longer than necessary. But that's a relatively minor complaint; this is a fun read and a good way to spend an evening or two. It also raises some chilling questions about the way in which federal authorities may use and possibly abuse their powers. At a time when the news is focused on the ways in which the NSA and other government agencies are tracking our phone calls, e-mails and other activities, this theme takes on an added relevance.(

Operation Wakkadoodles!

Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory by Ben Macintyre
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When a dead man becomes a highly effective spy, fools the enemy and helps win a war with the world in the balance, well, that sounds like something James Bond writer Ian Fleming would concoct. Oh wait, he did.

To be specific (and more correct), Operation Mincemeat, a plan devised by Britain's intelligence agency MI5 to convince Germany that a southern attack on Europe via the Mediterranean by Allied forces, was signed off on by Fleming, one of many in Britain's spy ring.

Though Fleming may not have been top dog, he was what drove me to this bizarre tale. Certainly, there was an interest in the story itself, but I also wanted to hear about those familiar names of history, literature and even the culinary arts (even tv chef Julia Child did her bit for secret service during WWII) that had a hand - underhandedly - in taking down the Axis powers. Ben Macintyre provides plenty of background information on these shadows. With the declassification of files, writer's like Macintyre are able to cast light on the actions of agents for both sides, and some of it is as exciting as any fiction you'll ever read!

Those of you into WWII spy craft may be familiar with Macintyre's other relatively popular work on the subject, Agent Zigzag. As of the writing of this review, I haven't gotten around to reading that one yet, but if it's as competently and enticingly written as Operation Mincement I'll be on it like a tail that can't be shaken.

Stray Souls by Kate Griffin

STRAY SOULS
Kate Griffin
Orbit 2012


Reviewed by Carol
 ★   ★   ★   1/2


No doubt about it, Stray Souls was a fun, fast read, an urban fantasy exploration rife with British and topical humor, mostly about the self-help movement.  Which is, depending on your mood, either a strength or a weakness. Choose your timing accordingly.

Sharon is working as a coffee barista at a job she rather hates. She’s been making do, sharing a flat with two roommates and reading self-help books for encouragement. Mantra of choice: “I am beautiful. I am wonderful. I have a secret.” We meet her as she first rents St. Christopher Hall from the vicar, and then opens the inital meeting of Magicals Anonymous. We meet Rhys, an almost-druid with allergies; Kevin, the hypochondriac vampire (not that there’s anything wrong with that); Sally, the banshee who needs to use a whiteboard for conversation (her voice drives humans insane); Mrs. Rafaat, who isn’t at all magical but knows something is wrong with London; Chris, the non-confrontational exorcist; Jess who turns into a pigeons; Gretel, the gastronomic troll; and Mr. Roding, who seems to be aging fast enough to become one of his own necromantic subjects.
It turns out Mrs. Rafaat is spot on; spirits are disappearing in London. The Lady Greydawn is missing, and since her role in the city is to help maintain the division between seen and unseen, the gates to the unfriendlies are open. The Mayor of Midnight wants Sharon and Magicals Anonymous to find her and her over-large dog. To do so, Sharon will need to develop her shaman skills under the tutelage of a goblin (the world’s second [or third] best shaman), and Magicals Anonymous members will need to face their individual barriers to take action.

Clearly, such a cast of characters is ripe for fun, even if it feels a little like “X-Men: Island of Misfit Toys.” There are two problems with the misaligned alliance, one of which Griffin mostly avoids, and the other less successfully. First, when writing a semi-spoof, it’s a challenge to maintain the balance of funny and tension, especially when your plot line involves evil and murder. For the most part, Griffin successfully balances the two, a rare feat in urban fantasy. A supernatural quad of hired killers and a wendingo in disguise prove frightening, with just a touch of comedic. Second, if care isn’t taken to add character dimension, a composite cast risks becoming stereotypes, or even worse, single-note props. Rhys, Mr. Roding, Gretel and Sally turn out to be interesting people.  Jess and Chris are less explored, mostly serving to round out the team, and Kevin becomes the one-note character. I was somewhat annoyed by Kevin’s characterization at first, because it was clear Kevin was supposed to “be comfortable with his sexuality, even if the rest of the world wasn’t,” and really, it was such a stereotype. I became slightly less annoyed as the running joke was framed around vampires/blood, contagion and hypochondriacs, but then returned to annoyed because characterization never went beyond. Much like those skits in Monty Python–funny for the first three minutes, less funny at minute eight and a half. 

Plot generally moved steadily, and largely avoided wandering off into too many side stories. However, it was sadly compromised by a multi-voiced narrative that included just about everyone in the cast, including murder victims and supernatural killers. The transitions were rough, especially at first, but I was accustomed to it by the end. While narrative switching does serve to help round out characters and perhaps add a little plot tension, it really needed to stick to fewer characters to be more effective and maintain congruity.

Writing style feels like Douglas Adams on a poetic day. Dialogue is frequently in monologue bursts sans punctuation, in keeping with the style of characters that are uncomfortable taking center of attention, even in their own lives.  Then there are moments where poetic-like style intrudes, a voice focused on cadence rather than structure. It is especially used during magical or emotionally tense scenes, perhaps using form to capture nebulous feeling. I didn’t particularly mind it, and think it’s a useful technique to describe something as vague as magic or a feeling of disquiet. However, I mention it because it has the potential to drive both lovers of punctuation and concrete details batty. A sample passage, with spacing identical to the text:

“A single iron staircase let up to a fire escape whose door was drifting shut behind the man, and there was something here, something…

Missing.

…which she had no better name for.

She stood on the cracked concrete of the yard, and looked up at broken windows, at walls with crumbling mortar, where even the graffiti artists couldn’t be bothered to paint. She saw the yellow lichen flaking off the bricks behind the stair, smelt raw sewage from a neglected gutter, saw purple buddleias sprouting from a crack in the wall.

Missing.

A thing missing here.

She put her hand on the stair rail and felt rust, sense the metal warp and hum beneath her step, thought she heard voices a long way off, and bit her lip and climbed.”

Then there’s the other side of Griffin’s writing style, the phrasing that reminds me of Douglas Adams’ lovely narrator voice with its matter-of-fact sarcasm/oddball metaphors. It must be the fabled British sense of humor, which I first encountered in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which, come to think of it, is likely why he’s my reference point. At any rate, my first page marker went in on page 25 when I read:
“She threw herself upwards in a single motion, not so much an act of strength against gravity, as a moment of pure intimidation in which the forces of nature considered their adversary and decided it wasn’t worth kicking up a fuss.”

followed by a member summing up the strangeness in the city:

“‘So… you’re experiencing hollowness, emptiness, doubt, despair and a great sense of wrongness,’ she clarified, ‘but you can’t exactly say what it is. Have you tried acupuncture?’“

But then there were moments of fine descriptive, atmospheric writing:
“There were shadows here trying to be seen, but afraid to go that final step and be perceived.“

Then quickly back to the silly:
“‘Nice? Nice? Magic ain’t supposed to be nice. You want nice, go look after baby penguins at the zoo!’
As career advice went, Sharon had heard worse.“

But silly often works. A confrontation with a Big Bad by phone using the verbage of self-help along with a modified ‘pass-the-message’ game had me laughing out loud. Pacing was strong enough that I didn’t want to put the book down, despite the variety of voices chopping the story up into small chapters. Overall, it was a fun read, with re-read potential just to appreciate the wordplay and absurdities. I’ll definitely check out the next in the series.


Cross posted at  http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/stray-souls-by-kate-griffin/

Fairyland

Alysia Abbott
W.W. Norton
Reviewed by Nancy
5 out of 5 stars

Summary

After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation—few of whom are raising a child.

Steve throws himself into San Francisco’s vibrant cultural scene. He takes Alysia to raucous parties, pushes her in front of the microphone at poetry readings, and introduces her to a world of artists, thinkers, and writers. But the pair live like nomads, moving from apartment to apartment, with a revolving cast of roommates and little structure. As a child Alysia views her father as a loving playmate who can transform the ordinary into magic, but as she gets older Alysia wants more than anything to fit in. The world, she learns, is hostile to difference.

In Alysia’s teens, Steve’s friends—several of whom she has befriended—fall ill as AIDS starts its rampage through their community. While Alysia is studying in New York and then in France, her father tells her it’s time to come home; he’s sick with AIDS. Alysia must choose whether to take on the responsibility of caring for her father or continue the independent life she has worked so hard to create.

Reconstructing their life together from a remarkable cache of her father’s journals, letters, and writings, Alysia Abbott gives us an unforgettable portrait of a tumultuous, historic time in San Francisco as well as an exquisitely moving account of a father’s legacy and a daughter’s love.

My Review

Last year at this time, I was reading lots of sweet romances with holiday themes. This year I was drawn to bleak, sad stories in books, movies and TV.

Though I wouldn’t say that Fairyland is bleak, there were some extremely sad moments that triggered old memories and made me tear up.

Alysia Abbott had a very difficult childhood. She lost her mom in a car accident when she was two years old and was raised by her father, an openly gay activist and writer. With the current rise in same-sex parenthood and the legalization of same-sex marriage in more than 30 states, I believe that Alysia would face much less social stigma today than she did in the 1970’s and 1980’s. In her later childhood and teen years, when acceptance is so important to young people, Alysia had a hard time fitting in.

As a small child I had no problem accepting Dad, in all his beautiful queerness. Whether in pants or a dress, he was still my daddy, the one who stirred my oatmeal with milk and honey, the one who pushed me on swings in the park each time I yelled “Again!,” the one whose lap quaked whenever he laughed his enormous up-and-down laugh.

But as I got older and became attuned to the world around me, I craved, more than anything, acceptance. His queerness became my weakness, my Achilles’ heel. Not only might it open me up to possible ridicule and rejection, it was something I could not contain. Fine, I thought, if Dad was gay, he was gay! But did he have to look so gay? And in public?

Though her father, Steve, had the opportunity to let Alysia be raised by relatives, he was adamant about raising his child on his own. Steve’s writing and editing work didn’t provide much money and he took odd jobs to provide for his family. He was very committed to his literary ventures and to the promotion of new writers, often at the expense of his own creative work. This dedication meant that Alysia had to fend for herself a lot. As difficult as her childhood was, in some ways I envied her life with a father who was open about his life and sexuality, was proud, political, and exposed his child to poetry readings and introduced her to writers. Other children grow up being babysat by the TV and live with parents who labor at jobs that may provide decent income, but no satisfaction.

So, yeah, Steve may not have been such a great parent and I would probably have been dead a long time ago if I had the freedom Alysia did, but I admire his determination to raise his daughter on his own and enjoyed reading Alysia’s account of her father’s life and work, his journals that documented her growing years, and her growth and sacrifice while dealing with her father’s AIDS diagnosis, subsequent complications and death in 1992.

I was enraged and sad all over again at the ignorance, stigmatization, and apathetic governmental policies that allowed AIDS to decimate the gay community. Steve Abbott, along with a huge number of writers, artists and other talented individuals were victims. It broke my heart to read of writer Sam D’Allesandro, his denial of his disease and refusal to get medical treatment. Just 31 at the time of his death in 1988, he was one of the first friends the Abbotts lost.

Reading Alysia’s story brought me back to the early 80’s and my anxiety about my younger brother, who had already begun frequenting gay clubs that had signs cautioning men about a mysterious “gay cancer”. I also thought of my best friend, Mark, who died of AIDS in 1995 at the age of 36 and I remember hearing of new drugs that came along too late to help him.

This is a story about life, loss, grief and the depth of a father’s and daughter’s love. It is a story about the New Narrative movement in San Francisco. It is also a glimpse of history and AIDS politics and a grim reminder that in spite of treatment advances and a change in attitudes, the AIDS crisis is far from over. Alysia’s story is honest, intimate, heartbreaking and frustrating at times. Father-daughter relationships, no matter how loving, are complicated and never easy to navigate.

I came across an article by Alysia in the November edition of Out magazine that mentions the people that re-entered her life since she wrote her father’s memoir.

It can be read here.

As she says, there is enough material to write another book. I hope she does.

Also posted at Goodreads.

Stressful Family is Stressful

The Corrections

Jonathan Franzen

Review by Zorena

Four Stars

Summary

After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson’s disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man—or so her mother fears. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home

My Review

I don't think you could find a more depressing and dysfunctional family. Well you probably could but let's just deal with the one we have. I might as well state that this is what drives this book. You'll find no warm fuzzy characters lurking here. These people are miserable and the ironic thing is that they pretty much deserve it. Poor choices are the bywords.

Mama wants a last family Christmas even if it means making some unreasonable and guilt ridden demands. The results are almost tragicomic. Her husband would like one as well. That is when he can remember what year it is. One brother strains to put as much distance between himself and home, St. Jude, while another brother seems to be on the losing end of their own immediate family's plans to not go under any circumstances. Then there's the sole hold out, a daughter who thinks it might just be the right thing to make the effort to be there. Each of them struggling with their own identity crises of the moment.

Franzen writes the dialogue and pathos so well that you can't help but become invested even if you can't stand any of his characters. His prose becomes essential to the telling. Otherwise I'm not so sure I would have either finished or enjoyed this book so much. The writing rings of sincerity once you get over the initial almost manic “look at me” feel that the book starts out with.

I knew I liked Franzen as soon as I read that he dissed Oprah and her book club. She's usually the criteria for why I will give what could be a good book a miss. I'm really glad I didn't this time and I don't think I'll be skipping any of his other books.

Source*Forged Armor by Paul Bartusiak

Source*Forged Armor by Paul J. Bartusiak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

”For the secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for.” From The Grand Inquisitor part of The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

John Angstrom has devoted his life to serving his country. He does the dirty work that the rest of us don’t want to know about. His last assignment went sideways leaving him shattered, and bounced out of his elite unit. He lands a desk job with DARPA, an acronym for Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, a branch of the Pentagon. His job is to sort through contracts for building the new MAV (Marine Amphibious Vehicle). Most of the contracts are from major defense contractors (friends of DICK Cheney), but the Pentagon is also receiving ideas and concepts from anyone who wants to submit a proposal. The result is a mound of mostly worthless folders, that regardless, have to be sorted, and read through enough to know they can be safely rejected.


The MAV in this story would replace vehicles similar to this one.

One of the submissions is a porn magazine with a CD inserted in the middle. A creative way to submit a proposal, but it could have been easily passed over without a look except that something about the CD grabs Angstrom’s attention. He loads the CD into his computer and pop up windows of naked ladies doing rather interesting things flood his computer. I remember those days when clicking on what seems like an innocuous picture will launch those porn pop-up windows. You click them off and more are launched. As you are fighting this Hydra of sexploitation, of course, that is the very moment that you see your boss is heading your direction for a little howdy time. Angstrom has the same problems, only his computer has been taken over, and something is being downloaded to his computer.

Angstrom isn’t sure, but he thinks he knows what is going on.

”One of those (technology) briefings dealt with what was, at the time considered to be an area of research that was receiving a lot of attention: a method of covert data transmission referred to as ‘Steganography.’ It was a way of secretly embedding an information payload into another file, or carrier, such as in a JPEG image. In essence, a JPEG image could serve as an ‘envelope’ and cary secret, covert information embedded within it, undetectable by the naked eye. A special computer program was needed to process the resulting modified carrier and extract the covert data, or essentially, to open the envelope.”


Russian Porn might lead you to more than you can ever imagine.

Angstrom is able to read enough to know that this is a serious application and he is given instructions on how to retrieve more of the data in a few days.

Meanwhile his ex-wife, recently jilted by a young lover, asks him over for some, reassuring to her self-esteem, no strings attached sex. He feels a little used, but ultimately great sex is...well...pretty great.

At the next meeting of the people who will ultimately decide which proposal will be awarded a contract Angstrom floats a few of the ideas from the Porn delivered file with mixed results. Some find the technology intriguing, but there is one forceful presence in the room that for some reason feels threatened by this new technology. Susan Rand is of the long legged, sexy, universally attractive segment of the population. She is used to working with “boys” and knows what “boys” want. It isn’t her job to be right. It is her job to be convincing. She decides that Angstrom needs some very special convincing. Being an operative, used to manipulating and being manipulated, Angstrom purely from a “research” standpoint wants to find out just how far she is willing to go. It turns out there is no “too far” in Susan Rand’s vocabulary.

On the other side of the world Professor Romanov Czolski, with ample reason to distrust and even despise his government, is setting a trap for someone he should be able to trust. He is the originator of the steganography that Angstrom is wrestling with back in Washington D.C. His goal is to deliver a package to the West and his calling card is the technology that will design the most advanced MAV the world has ever seen.

Things get dicey as enemies on both sides of the globe are closing in on Czolski and Angstrom. A second too late can be detrimental to everything they are trying to accomplish.

The book starts a little slow. Thrillers in recent years have started moving a very pivotal, action scene to the beginning of the book to hook the reader immediately. I like the fact that Paul decided to go a little old school with this book. He has read the classic spy novels. He gets extra points for having one of his characters reading The Miernik Dossier by Charles McCarry. Despite the slow start, soon, you are caught in the flow of the plot, and must find out how Paul Bartusiak is going to resolve the growing impossibility of the East making it to the West.


Paul J. Bartusiak was born and grew up on the South Side of Chicago. He obtained his BSEE from Tennessee Technological University, his MSEE from the University of Texas at Arlington and his Juris Doctor from Chicago-Kent College of Law. He knows the technology.

Be sure and read the 3rd edition with the cover shown on this review. The early editions were not as well edited and if you look through the reviews it was irritating to first readers. It is a tribute to Bartusiak that he spent the money to improve his book.

To those that are intending to publish their own books, please pay the money to have your books professionally edited. There is nothing more frustrating to reviewers than to be distracted by awkward sentences, grammar issues, typos, and wrong dialogue attributed to the wrong character. It can cost you reviewing stars that are lost forever. My good friendCathy Dupont has helped many writers get their books ship shape for publication. If you don’t know anyone already that can help you, please contact her. Her rates are reasonable, and believe me you will be happier with the results when GR reviewers start reading your book.


View all my reviews

My Top Ten Favorite Reads of 2013

by mark monday

10. THE WAYWARD BUS by John Steinbeck

I didn’t like this book. I didn’t like its deterministic perspective on humanity or its pessimistic outlook on the way people interact and love and hate and live. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t like it. The Wayward Bus is gorgeous. It details heartbreak in miniature, lives that cross each other briefly, sadness and pettiness and barely understood anger…  the striving to be more, understand more, live more, no matter the hopelessness of that striving. I didn’t like this book, but you don’t need to like a thing to love that thing.

9.  MARTYRS AND MONSTERS by Robert Dunbar

My favorite book of horror read in 2013 was this masterful collection of short stories. Martyrs, monsters, and the danger and potential toxicity of self-enclosure. Dunbar is a thoughtful author who specializes in menacing ambiguity, but in this book he also illustrates the flexibility and fluidity of his talents. By turns eerie, funny, scabrous, and inexplicable, each story is its own strange and vividly imagined world.

8. THE TOWERS OF TREBIZOND by Rose Macauley

Macauley’s 1956 novel takes its reader on an amusing and whimsical trip through Turkey. She’s like an aunt who is full of all sorts of stories but whose breathless storytelling style is its own reason for listening. Aunt Rose serves you some nice herbal tea and tells you this wry story; at the end of her tale, she picks up that teapot and smashes you across the head with it. Her story is not meant to be amusing. Wake up!

7. RED CLAW by Philip Palmer

Dense and action-packed, Red Claw is a rollicking saga and a demented, bloody massacre. This bizarre future society is ingeniously imagined; the alien anthropology on display is even more impressive. Palmer is an aggressive and brazen author who wants his rollercoaster to be as appalling as it is fun. Plus genuine bravery and an uplifting ending! Sorta. My favorite science fiction novel of 2013.

 6. LONDON FIELDS by Martin Amis

Amis continues his lifelong thesis on the insect nature of mankind in this lavish and spiteful death-farce. Humans Off Earth Now!

5. THE AIRTIGHT GARAGE by Moebius

Moebius is surely one of the most likeable geniuses to ever write and draw a comic. His visions are as loveable as they are obscure. Worlds within worlds; super-powered humans who never bother to show those powers; characters who jump off the page and then disappear forever. Circular narratives! Mind-bending visuals! Demented plotlines! Nonsensical dialogue! This charming epic is candy for the brain.

4. THE PYX by John Buell

How is this 1974 crime novel not a classic? Each sentence, each paragraph is a work of art. Follow the haunting heroine as she walks inexorably down her tragic path. Sit back and try to figure out the mystery with the stalwart and humane detective as he sorts out this shadowy tragedy. Gape, agog, at a truly fearful ending.

 3. MEMOIRS OF HADRIAN by Marguerite Yourcenar

"But books lie, even those that are most sincere…” but not this one. Yourcenar finds her way to the heart of a man, his own truth, by reimagining not just an ancient world, but all aspects of the man who lives in that world. By the end of this book, I felt as if I looked through Hadrian’s eyes and thought Hadrian’s thoughts. The man is the world is the book. O Death, sometimes you come not with a sting, but with an embrace.

2. QUEEN LUCIA by E.F. Benson

My favorite reread was Benson’s classic first novel in his Mapp & Lucia cycle. Rose Macauley is your eccentric spinster aunt with a heart of steel; E.F. Benson is your quirky queer uncle with a mouth full of ironic innuendo and ludicrous, hysterical tall tales. Except these tall tales don’t involve giants or beanstalks; instead they detail a fantastically petty and obsessive little English village full of smaller-than-life characters who do larger-than-life things. Pure pleasure from beginning to end.

1. THE GRAVEYARD BOOK by Neil Gaiman

Gaiman wrote something wondrous, something perfect. Again.

 

Rich Stories

Tenth of December by George Saunders
2013
Reviewed by Diane K. M.
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars


I like reading short stories but I hate writing about them. A short story is so fleeting and ephemeral -- it's like trying to describe a cloud.

This collection of 10 short stories by George Saunders is especially difficult and elusive. His writing is rich and visual, but there is always danger lurking for each character. I had to take a pause break after finishing each story because I felt so unsettled.

My favorite stories were "Victory Lap," which involved two high school students and a traumatic incident; "Escape from Spiderhead" about a prison inmate who is enrolled in a chemical testing study; "Puppy" about two women trying to make the right choices for their children, albeit in very different ways; and "Exhortation," which is a company memo written to boost employee morale in a challenging job.

I wanted to read this book because of a fantastic article written about Saunders in The New York Times earlier this year. That article references a lovely convocation speech he gave, in which he advocates for treating others more kindly:

"What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly.  Reservedly.  Mildly.

"Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope:  Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth? Those who were kindest to you, I bet.

"It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder."

Hotel Clerk Tells All

Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky
2012
Reviewed by Diane K. M.
My rating: 3 out of 5 stars


In this Age of Memoir, I guess we were due for one by a hotel clerk.

Jacob Tomsky's book focuses on his experiences working at two hotels: a luxury one in New Orleans and a Midtown one in New York. (All names have been changed, so there's no point stating them. He even changed his own name in the text to Tommy/Thomas.) In his introduction, he brags that he has worked in hotels for more than a decade and that he's probably checked us in before.

Jacob/Tommy/Thomas promises to give the reader advice on how to get the best deal and the best service, which I will summarize for you: Tip the front desk clerk when you first arrive. This may get you a room upgrade, free movies, a late checkout time, etc. BOOM! I just saved you 240+ pages.

OK, so there's a bit more to it then just sliding a $20 to the clerk. He also recommends being nice to the staff -- which is generally a good policy to live by -- but in a hotel, if you manage to piss off the wrong person, you could end up with a string of annoyances, such as getting a room near a noisy elevator, getting mysterious wrong-number calls, having your key card not work, etc. He frequently says that a hotel staff is like a family, and they will trade stories about the guests who are mean, and the ones who are nice. (So always be nice!)

Jacob/Tommy/Thomas has some decent stories about learning the hotel trade -- he started out as a parking valet, worked his way up to the front desk and later became a housekeeping manager -- but he comes across as an arrogant jerk, which made me like this book less. For someone who boasts that he has a philosophy degree and that he's wicked smart, he could be more philosophical in his attitude.

I used to be a hotel clerk, so I could relate to some of his stories. But there was so much padding in the memoir that this would have made a better essay in The New Yorker. It didn't need to be upgraded to a book.

One of the promotional blurbs on the back cover is from Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote: "Jacob Tomsky is a star. The kid writes like a dream. Heads in Beds is hilarious, literate, canny, indignant and kind -- revealing an author who manages somehow to be both a total hustler and a complete humanitarian. I love this book. Keep an eye on this writer. I'm telling you, he's a star."

I agree with one word in that paragraph: hustler. Tomsky is a hustler. He even uses that word to describe himself in how he hustles for tips from guests.

When I started this book, I expected to give it a 4-star rating for Tomsky's fun hotel stories. But his arrogance and narcissism wore me down and I dropped this to 3 stars.

Masked Decisions

Masked Decisions: The Triangular Life of Dick 'The Destroyer' 'Doctor X' Beyer; From American Athlete to International Icon by Vincent Evans
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When the wrestling bug bites, Dick Beyer takes his family on the road and wrestles in various territories. In Los Angeles, he gets saddled with a masked gimmick that he initially hates, only to use it to change the wrestling world on two continents...

Masked Decisions is the biography of wrestler Dick Beyer, aka The Sensational, Intelligent Destroyer, aka Dr. X. It had a few things going for it from the get-go. Unlike most wrestling biographies, it's not written in the first person and doesn't spend a lot of time talking about how great the Destroyer was. Secondly, it's pretty well written and feels a lot more professional than most similar books I've read.

As I've mentioned in several other reviews, I was a wrestling fan for the first three decades of my life. Still, I knew nothing about The Destroyer until I discovered the Legends of Wrestling card game. Since the Destroyer sounded like an interesting character and had a pretty good card, I figured he was worth learning more about. And I was right.

The book starts out with Dick Beyer getting The Destroyer gimmick forced upon him by booker Jules Strongbow, then flashes back to Beyer's early days as a high school and college athlete, building toward his dual career as a pro wrestler and coach of Syracuse's football team. While I loved that Masked Decisions unfolded like a story rather than a typical biography, this is where my first gripe reared its ugly head. It took close to 40% of the book to get to Beyer wrestling full time. However, it was interesting reading about him juggling his two careers and competing with Freddie Blassie, Ray Stevens, Illio DiPaolo, and others.

Once Beyer hits Hawaii and Los Angeles, things really start picking up. Beyer decides the mask seperates him from the pack and he plays the roll of an arrogant heel to the hilt, drawing crazy money considering it was the 1960's. He took on Freddie Blassie, declining legend Gorgeous George, and visiting Japanese wrestlers Giant Baba and Rikidozan, which leads to the Destroyer going to Japan and becoming a Hulk Hogan level of celebrity there.

Before Masked Decisions, I had no idea how much the Destroyer helped build Japanese wrestling, from helping Rikidozan draw amazing money, to helping Giant Baba hold things together after Rikidozan's untimely murder at the hands of the yakuza. There's a picture taken from directly over the ring of Destroyer with Rikidozan locked in his patented Figure Four Leglock, both men and the mat smeared with blood, that will stick with me for a while.

Destroyer's relationship with his family was another interesting part of the book. He raised his kids to protect the business but his travels eventually destroyed his marriage. There's a picture of him in public with his kids also wearing Destroyer masks that I quite liked.

The book chronicles Destroyer's career right up until his retirement in 1993, handing the mask over to his oldest son. All in all, it was a pretty enjoyable read.

Still, it wasn't perfect. Like all wrestling books, there was too much pre-wrestling backstory for my taste and not nearly enough road stories, although Harley Race driving drunk at 100 miles per hour is becoming a wrestling biography staple. Also, the tone was a little weird. It didn't pretend professional wrestling was legit but it didn't go very much into the inner workings other than Destroyer's clashes with promoters. It was pretty good but not in the upper echelon of wrestling books with Pure Dynamite: The Price You Pay for Wrestling Stardom, Terry Funk: More Than Just Hardcore, or Wrestling at the Chase: The Inside Story of Sam Muchnick and the Legends of Professional Wrestling. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

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