45. The General by Alan Silittoe

I picked this one up at the same garage sale where I got the Maracot Deep.  I'm not a huge fan of the British Angry Young Men, but they can write and I thought this might be interesting.  I suspected it would be one of those parable books where ideas of humanity and politics are explored in a semi-surrealistic setting, but hoped there might be enough of a real story to keep me interested.

The book begins with an orchestra being sent via train to the front lines of an unnamed 20th century war to both bring morale to the troops and to demonstrate to the enemy how superior their own culture is.  They tried to object but were overruled by the government and the conductor, who is the de facto leader and one of the two main protagonists, thinks to himself that in war everybody is a soldier who has to obey orders.  The beginning is pretty wild as the train runs through a crazier and crazier battle, while the orchestra cowers in the back, unable to act or even decide if they are supposed to be this far forward in the front.

An enemy soldier on a horse rides down the train and they are taken prisoner.  It is here we meet the general, a loyal soldier, strict disciplinarian and an elite tactician. He knows she should shoot the orchestra immediately, as they serve no purpose other than a drain on resources.  However, he hesitates, not sure why until he realizes that he does want to hear them play.

So the rest of the book is his internal struggle on whether to go against his loyalty and training and the orders of high command (confirmed via signal) or give in to his desire to hear the music and perhaps something else.  This is interspersed with the orchestra themselves contemplating their future.  

It's an interesting read, going beyond the simple "war is stupidity" and looks at our motivations as political beings.  This kind of thing isn't really my bag, but it's short and Sillitoe's descriptions of the landscape of war are grim and effective.  The metaphor of the train with the orchestra riding right into the battle and not even bothering to go to the engine or pull the emergency cord is all too parallel to the American populace right now.

44. Barking Dogs by Terence M. Green

My friend both discovered the existence of this book and then found it himself.  He gave it or lent it to me (need to clarify that).  I was very psyched at every step.  I mean who doesn't want to read about a rogue cop in future crime spree Toronto?  Unfortunately, the book itself is decidedly mediocre, so much so that I am not sure if it will make it to my bookshelf, despite its interest as a physical and cultural artifact.    

The protagonist is Mitch Helwig (🤔), a cop who has recently lost his partner.  He's on  the edge, takes 10k, the bulk of he and his wife's nest egg, and buys a Barking Dog, an infallible portable lie-detector.  He then stumbles on one of these new laser pistols on a perp he took down (cops still only carrying .38s because budget cuts), returns to the same shop and buys a super awesome bullet proof vest that is super light and blocks even lasers for a time.  He's basically armouring up and then goes over the edge and starts lasering perps.

This is a weird book.  It has several indicators of 80s crime hysteria, including the streets running wild with rapists, dope peddlers, you name it and nobody doing anything to stop it because the bigwigs are all in on it. His wife has an inner  monologue asking pre-internet stupid internet rhetorical questions like why don't we have capital punishment when everybody wants it and why not build work camps in the North and shoot any escapees?  These parts feel like half-hearted cookie cutter Dirty Harry or Death Wish  (the movies), but they stop there.  We don't even get the entertainment of the over the top right-wing crime hysteria.  

The other major thread is a somewhat thoughtful and well-written yet ultimately banal exploration of Helwig's wife Elaine contemplating and then having an affair, as Helwig spends his nights patrolling Toronto.  It feels like this part of the book is the actual real story the author wanted to right.  I almost feel like Terence wrote all the cop vigilante stuff and handed it to his wife to do the romance, but that she is actually the superior writer.

Helwig is supposedly driven by vengeance for his partner's death.  There is no detecting, he just strikes out randomly and as he closes in on a big-time mob boss running a huge industrial district bringing in guns, drugs and kidnapping little girls for snuff films and then harvesting their organs (yes, this is in the book).  Interspersed with Helwig in the present and his wife's storylines, we also get flashbacks of Mitch with his partner Mario whom he seems to love more than his wife.  There is a lot of badly written jocular back and forth between the partners (some painful puns and dumb safely racist humour), culminating like it is some big climax with Mario (with a new baby boy, of course) getting shot at the donut shop (also yes in the book).

The climax is Helwig taking out the warehouse and then the boss, but he never discovers who actually killed his partner.  He comes home and realizes that value of his family and his wife realizes she made a mistake and they I guess live happily ever after.

Very odd tone, as if a Canadian was hired to write an Executioner novel and also thought he might have a shot at the Governor General's Award.  On the plus side, the gear was cool and the descriptions of the laser wounds were gruesome and effective.

43. Some Must Watch by Ethel Lina White

I have the good fortune of being at the side of a lovely lake as I write this and as I read the second half of Some Must Watch.  A very enjoyable book made infinitely more enjoyable by being able to read it in such a lovely spot.  A red-tailed hawk chased some prey (I only caught a white blue) through the trees and then landed for just about a second on a stair post near me before taking off.  I caught a very good look at him and he looked miffed at missing his prey.

I can't remember where I found this book and I have never heard of Ethel Lina White before it.  There certainly were quite a few best-selling women mystery authors in the 20th century who were household names (or close) and have now all but disappeared.  I would love to read an essay on the phenomenon of second-tier woman mystery writers from the thirties and fourties.  Did they know each other?  Was it a bit of a scene?

Some Must Watch centers on young Helen, the orphaned and poor servant woman, who  came from some class before her parents died and a mixed education after.  She has spirit and imagination and a new posting at a Victorian home quite far from town.  She starts this job right after another young woman (the fifth) is murdered in the area, this one's body being found not 5 miles from where she is working.

It's a pretty classic gothic horror/parlour mystery, with a broken up family, the Warrens led by a nasty matriarch confined to her bed, her stepson The Professor and his sister (and son whose hot wife has some very hot pants).  There is a student (the one the wife is hot after) and Mr. and Mrs. Oates (handyman and cook) and finally Nurse Baker, the bitter nurse who looks like a man just sent from the agency.

There is a stormy night and gale keeps everyone inside as well as orders from the cute visiting Dr. with the doors and windows locked.  Slowly, people keep dropping out one by one and Helen realizes or imagines that a noose is tightening around her and the killer approaching.

White structures the novel so not only do you not know who the murderer is, but you also doubt there even is one (at least in that house) until almost the last page.  It was driving me nuts!  At one point, I had so few pages left and so many questions that I had a mild panic that this was only the first book and there was a sequel'!  Not to worry, all is revealed masterfully (prompting me to go back and re-read several sections at the beginning).  I wouldn't call Some Must Watch a masterpiece, but it is definitely among the better crafted and entertaining mysteries of this genre.

I didn't cotton onto it consciously (hello male privilege!), this great blog post (with spoilers so only read after you've read the book) made me appreciate how most of the primary characters are women and the longest dialogues are between women.  White describes a very feminine world, where all the dangers are those that impact the female characters (serial killer, unrequited love, lazy men, dangerous men).  Quite an interesting book in that light, which may also point to its success and then quiet erasure from literary appreciation.

42. The Maracot Deep by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

A neighbour around the block was having a garage sale and he had a pretty nice collection of paperbacks for sale, lots of Pan and other beauties from the peak period.  Unfortunately, they were mostly fairly mainstream authors (lots of Raymond Chandler).  He had a really nice set of Sherlock Holmes, which I also don't need, but would have been a great starter set for a younger reader/collector.  I did pick up two of Doyle's later supernatural adventure books, including this one.  It is a beautiful, illustrated cover and I appreciate the bleed and that the title and author text are part of the illustration.

The basic story is an inspired but manic scientist takes a young American (but civilized to English ways) on a secretive research trip where he introduces him to a deep diving vessel to explore the bottom of the ocean.  The vessel is separated from the ship and they fall to the bottom, seemingly cut off forever and running out of oxygen.  Adventure ensues.  I present it that way but Doyle does the opposite, framing the story first as an omniscient unnamed writer (presumably Doyle himself) collecting all the textual evidence surrounding the loss of the Stratford (the steamer the expedition departed in that was carrying the diving bell).  So we get the transcript from a captain's journal, a letter from the young American before they disappeared and then a final letter that popped up in a transparent ball in the middle of the ocean, also from the young American that goes into great detail about their adventures that followed, leading up to them finally escaping (in a giant version of the transparent bubble that brought the letter up).

It is only then, that we get back to the main narrative, their adventures at the bottom of the ocean.  They meet the people of Atlantis and Doyle describes a really cool backstory of how they got there.  We get lots of neat underwater mini-missions and scrapes as the trio learns about the Atlantean society.  Things get really wild in the end, when the three surface humans explore the ruined city and a dark temple where they awaken the evil that brought Atlantis to ruin initially.

It's a fun read.  Doyle does get into his metaphysical stuff here, but it is all in aid of the story and the excitement of the adventure.  One can easily see the contradictory benevolent colonialism in the tale.  Though the Atlanteans have some seriously advanced technology (they can tranmogrify the base elements into things like coffee!), they just don't have the same gumption as our western heroes.  There is also some getting with the hot native ladies wish fufillment going on here.  All in a fun, quick read that actually delivers a fairly satisfying somewhat epic narrative that ties the origins in with the conclusion.

They hook up a wireless receiver and listen to the BBC with the Atlanteans. 
Love this patriotic aside

41. Benny Muscles in by Peter Rabe

This was a pretty nice find, a Gold Medal original paperback of Peter Rabe's second book.  It's funny how Rabe was almost totally forgotten (by most), then re-illuminated by Donald Westlake (who cited him as a major influence on Parker) to the point that his books became very hard to find and quite high-priced.  Now the flurry seems to have died down and you tend to find his books from time to time.  Also makes you realize he was fairly prolific.

Benny Muscles In is, at least according to the excitable back blurb, Rabe's second book.  I really appreciate the title because it is exactly what the book is about.  Benny is a small-time thug with big ambitions.  He is short and desperately motivated to take over and manage real operations.  At the beginning, he is given an assignment to manage a neighbourhood and do the collections from all the syndicated crimes going on there.  Without being told, he doubles the take.  When his boss, the unflappable Pendleton, demotes him to chauffeur.  I was sort of expecting the more common underdog gangster story here and Benny would make his way to the top because of his ruthlessness.

That is not Rabe's way.  Benny is flawed and the situations all around him do not help him at all.  He ends up siding with Al Alverrato, Pendleton's once colleague and now rival.  A lot of shit goes down, most of it involving kidnapping Pendleton's daughter.  It's quite violent and there are some quite crazy situations that you can feel trace a throughline to the Fargo/Tarantino/90s hot noir wacky setup style of crime movie.  The main narrative, though, is Benny's relationship with Pat, whom he keeps calm with heroine, turning her into a real addict all the while falling in love with her. It's a gross, abusive, twisted relationship on both sides.  I felt the ending was a bit of a cop-out, but the tangled mess leading up to it was an enjoyable exercise in crime and broken characters.  Good fun.

40. Agent of Vega by James H. Schmitz

Once again, Kenneth Hite was responsible for me learning about a new author.  I may have reacted a bit too eagerly to his positive mini-reviews in several Ken and Robin Consume Media posts and hunted down and bought three of his books before reading even one.  I really stalled out on this one (three weeks since my last finished book!).  I struggled to focus on the first two stories because of their removed objective third-person perspective and subtle writing style.  I also have jumped back in head first to the tabletop RPG pool thanks to an excellent OSR actual play podcast which led me circuitously to actually buy Dungeon Crawl Classics and lose my soul in that beautiful madness for a few weeks.

But now I have a week at a cottage and am committed to getting back on the reading train.  I almost put this book aside (it's four longish short stories) but glad I stuck with it as the last two stories really took it home. I also started to get his idiom and structure which made them easier to read.  The content of these stories is as advertised, really imaginative, intelligent large-scale space epics with super high-tech and competent female protagonists (most astonishing for sci-fi stories writting in the late 40s and early 50s).  They are short stories centered around the advanced earth civilization of the Vegan Confederacy, who are kind of like technocratic Jedi whose job is to police the universe and protect civilizations from threats ranging the minor like space pirates to major like a recurrent interdimensional invasion.  They also plant themselves in secret on developing planets to guide them into their network.  You only get hints of how it all works and suggestions of the various opponents (military, political and economic) of the Confederacy.  At least in these 4 stories, it always involves a cool badass space spy with awesome toys and some independence to achieve their manager's goals.

CityTV (one of the 7 channels I get via antenna) for some reason shows Twilight Zone episodes late at night a couple nights a week.  I was so psyched to discover this (such a contrast to today's hyper-packaged media) but disappointed to find that I don't actually love the Twilight Zone.  I only saw a few episodes as a kid and was way into them at the time, but sadly they don't hold up for me.  They feel a lot more like thoughtful, dialogue-driven stage plays exploring social themes of the late 50s rather than mind-blowing excursions into fantastic weirdness.  This is no critique of the show, as it holds up in the writing and acting and ideas.  It's just that with the budgets and production technology of the time, you have to do a lot of telling and not much showing. There is a lot of talking in these shows!

I realized as I was struggling to get through the first two stories in this collection (Agent of Vega, The Illusionists) that their writing style reminded me of the Twilight Zone.  Even though it is written fiction, so production values are not an issue, it still feels like Schmitz's vision wasn't capable (or wasn't inclined) of showing at this time.  A lot of the "action" in these stories is one person telling another (often a manager talking to an agent or to fellow managers within the Vegan bureaucracy) what happened. And the few times there actually is real action, it is elided, with Schmitz just describing the results.  It made it hard for me to connect with the characters and narrative.  On top of that, stylistically for sci fi of this period, his sentences are somewhat complex and indirect.  He also jumps from perspective to perspective with subtle openings to the next character and the formatting in the book didn't always make this obvious.  It also makes it hard to figure out what the main plot is until you are way into the story, juggling a bunch of characters and locaitons.  So I spent a lot of time going back and re-reading sentences and paragraphs as my mind drifted off.  I ended up putting the book down for a couple weeks, reading the amazing tables of spell results in DCC's crazy magic system before going to bed at night.

Fortunately, the third story, The Truth about Cushgar, though equally indirect and all over the place, had a clear revenge plot that I cottoned onto quickly and was able to ingest more consistently.  I think at this point, I also started to get the world Schmitz is creating and better interpret his style.  The last one The Second Night of Summer about the friendship of a young boy in a rural village with an old caravanning gypsy-type woman as these floating light balls appear out of nowhere was really human and satisfying, just a great little story with cool characters that ends with promise of much more adventure.  One of the neat things about Schmitz' universe is that it is done in disconnected short stories and novellas, but characters appear briefly in other stories, so you get a subtle sense of the greater world-building.  His world is about competence and optimism in the face of chaos and evil and I hope to be able to approach is more directly and satisfyingly in the other books I have on deck.  

39. The Tower by Richard Martin Stern

I have a vague memory of somebody on Bluesky recommending this book.  I went through a 70s disaster movie phase in my 30s so thought this might be worth checking out.  It also falls into my sub-sub-niche of post-WWII business man drama novels.  Even though the main story is supposed to be the burning building, much of the plot (and more of the pages) is actually about the men who built the tower, all their internal and external conflicts and the investigation unravelling of the person responsible for the fire.

In the book, the building is called "The World Tower" and it is downtown a block or so from the World Trade Center but towers over them by 40 stories.  This is one of those books, not unlike the movie, with almost a dozen significant characters and a few more recurring side characters.  On the day of the official ceremonial opening of The Tower, we follow the architect, the secondary architect, his wife, the owner, his daughter and son-in-law, the crazed loner who sneaks into the building with a bomb, the two cops standing guard (explicitly and repeatedly Black and Irish, who constantly mention race but are friends), the governor of the state, the mayor, an old-school senator and a young rabble-rousing senator.  Later, we also get two different people from the fire department and the coast guard each as well as a young woman who seems to have no real role in life other than to be invited to the opening ceremony and fall in love with the governor who is twice her age.

The book is a real hodge-podge of 70s themes.  Everybody is depressed and cynical, especially about politics.  There is a huge gulf between the older politicians who fought in wars and the younger generation who just wants to tear everything down or something.  Likewise, anybody who is educated and part of the east coast establishment is suspect while hard-working folk from the Midwest who love the open land and a stream full of trout are the heroes.  Of course, the city itself and people jamming themselves together in big, dying cities is portrayed as some terrible aberration.

If you can't already tell, there is a ton of white male moralistic blathering pretending to be deep philosophy.  It's too bad there is so much of it.  I am always down for a little bit of demonstration of true character and hard, experienced men in books teaching us how to man properly.  But here there is just way too much of it. The portrayal of the governor in particular is just ridiculous.  He ends up meeting and falling in love with a young woman at the party while trapped on the top floor and they have the most painful conversations, with him dropping all this 60s establishment man-talk and she just oohs and ahhs about what an important and real man he is.  It's not quite as weird as John D. MacDonald at his worst, but there is way more of it proportionally and it is very hard to actually parse any meaning out of it beyond strong man with power is sexually attractive and sensible woman should follow.

It's too bad, because interspersed between all this 70s older white male pandering bullshit is actually a really good disaster adventure.  The portrayal of the details of the fire is excellent and terrifying.  The action scenes are really good.  I was genuinely thrilled at the set piece finale.  It's just that all this good stuff takes up about maybe 30% of the book at most.  I was reading it and at times groaning out loud and really questioning why I was taking up my summer with this book and then at other times quite psyched.  It was a real up and down and read.

I think one of the big issues, beyond the author needing to think he was John Updike, is the plot.  Ostensibly, the main story is that this big, complex new building catches fire on the day of its opening celebration, trapping a hundred or so dignataries on its top, 150th floor.  All of its elaborate safety features fail in a complex combination of bad luck and human error.  This is a great premise.  Unfortunately, nobody does anything smart until its too late.  The emergency exit doors are blocked, the elevators stop working.  There is nothing they can do but wait.  So we spend the entire book with the people trapped on the top floor who can't do anything but talk.  The only adventure we get until the end is the various firemen who try to make the stairs to the top floor.  

The real plot for most of the book is a set of change work orders signed by the second-in-command architect (he is the main protagonist, the simple but brilliant midwestern guy who is married to the perfect yet morally empty patrician east coast woman who went to all the right schools, etc.) that cut costs on a bunch of safety features.  These show up in the first few pages and we spend the first half of the book following the investigation to find out who was responsible for them (turns out to be the boss's son-in-law who is an Ivy League scumbag) and then the second half chasing him down to prevent him from destroying the evidence.  It's actually not bad as we get to see some of the inside operations and meet a range of interesting tri-state area characters.  It's just that with the investigation storyline and the repetitive, mid-reactionary philosophizing we barely get any time with the fire and people escaping it.  Just feels like a lost opportunity and one in which if I remember correctly, the movie actually uses much more by splitting people up and having them try and escape in various ways (though the movie is fairly low down in my 70s disaster hierarchy as well).

This problem really hits its climax at the final escape section, where people are getting taken over via cable to the World Trade Center one at a time.  They have all the women go first and draw lots.  As the fire approaches, panic starts to set in among the remaining men (understandable, I guess).  What gets really ridiculous is when the I guess left-leaning congressman who has already been portrayed as you and idealistic goes full-on wimpy protestor by whipping up the people trapped in the tower to what just sort of freak out over the situation and blame the governor? They want answers!  They want blame!  Well damnit, the governor will have to show them how a real man acts.  And of course the young congressman who never worked a real day in his life backs down to the aggressive alpha-male who worked his way up by his bootstraps.  It's just so badly done on so many levels.

This book could only have been written by an American, but it should have been written by a Brit.

38. There's a Hippie on the Highway by James Hadley Chase

JHC delivers once again!  He was so prolific and quite easy to find at used bookstores, that I tend to not buy them when I see them.  I still I believe have two more of his on my on-deck shelf.  So demand is very low, but I could not resist this book with its title and incredible cover photo. I am pleased to report that both the title and the image happen in the book.

The title, though, is more of a framing device.  Harry Mitchell is a Vietnam vet hitching his way down Florida looking for summer work and some "sea and sun".  He gets picked up by a trucker who warns him about the hippies on the road, stoned youth who will ruthlessly set upon anybody who stops. I guess Chase wanted to do something set in Florida (perhaps keying into John D. MacDonald's popularity?) but this feels more like Mad Max.  Mitchell stops at an Italian roadside restaurant run by a really nice old Italian guy and his plump daughter and there confronts a gang of these hippies who chase another traveller inside.  Mitchell busts them up and their pursuer, Randy, tells Mitchell he is heading to a restaurant/ beach resort where he could get him a job as a lifeguard.

See already, I'm trying to write a summary of the plot, but JHC always has so much going on right from the get-go that it's hard to know which details to exclude.  Even before they get to the restaurant, they get picked up by a woman towing a "caravan" (another word that we don't say in North America; JHC is always good for a few of these) who then leaves them with a dead body (this is where the cover image comes from; his wig comes off when they bury him).  I'm already giving away spoilers.  I'll stop there and just say it gets even more interesting at the restaurant.

Among the cast of characters is an over-ambitious cop, the weirdly aggressive and ex-peterman (safe cracker) owner of the restaurant, his over-sexed daughter, the murdered man and his two associates both rough-edged women.  As always with JHC there is a lot of story.  The intricacies of the crime and its fallout are well thought out and coherent.  The characters are colourful and just slightly unreal, but not in a way that lessens the entertainment.

There are two layers of racism in the book.  On one level, the Black characters are portrayed stereotypically (although more for the 50s than the late 60s) and this is racist enough (like more than once, Joe the always friendly bartender goggles his eyes).  There is a second, worse level where the racism feels off and I think it's again because Chase has no actual experience with actual American Black people.  So you sense not only did he copy an ugly stereotype, he also sort of amped it up and made a point to emphasize it.

I am guessing this was perhaps also to reinforce the overall reactionary politics of the intro and outro (where the evil hippies return brutally).  Chase thought that certain Americans would want to read about the hippie scourge and the triumph of a hardworking vet and a little background racism fits right in.

So not without flaws, this book is nevertheless overall entertaining and well put together.

37. The Good Mothers: The True Story of the Women Who Took on the World's Most Powerful Mafia by Alex Perry

I can't remember where I became interested in this book.  It has been on my short non-fiction hunting list for years until I found it for $8 at Encore Books and Records. It is the journalistic account of three women who testified in the 2000's against the 'Ndrangheta Mafia who dominated Calabria (the toe of Italy) and controlled significant portions of international crime in drug smuggling, prostitution, extortion etc.  It is an astounding story worthy of a book like this.  The Ndrangheta at least according to this book, have such a vast criminal empire that it impacts major world financial markets.  The women who testified against them were incredibly courageous (two were brutally murdered) and whose actions triggered a significant culture change in Italy that then dealt a weakening blow to the Mafia.

The thing with these journalistic books, though, is that ultimately I just want the facts.  Because it's not an academic history, the writer has to make it into a "story."  For myself, these two demands make an end result that is not entirely satisfactory either for the facts or the story.  Perry's thesis is that women were ignored by the Mafia and the prosecutors going after them because of traditional Italian machismo and by finally paying attention to them, they were able to break the crime families.  These powerful and brutal families, rooted in the gangster history of poverty-stricken southern Italy, were not able to get past their misogynist culture and this is what undid them.  He does a good job arguing this thesis.  It's the narrative that I found a bit forced, as he hopes between the three women's stories (which were all connected but not that closely).  I was impatient to just find out what happened.  This isn't really a critique of the book, just that as I was reading it, I remember why these kinds of popular non-fiction books are not really my jam.

What this book did really help me with was understanding better the political geography of Italy and the Mafia.  I had heard of Calabria but didn't really get the deal with it.  I'm no expert but this book had excellent maps and Perry does a good job of giving an overview sense of the geography and culture of the region.  He glosses over it with a couple of sentences, but I also can understand how poor brigand families in remote mountain areas who met with revolutionaries could have evolved into a more sophisticated level of crime.  What is missing is how they could all just become so brutal and murderous, even (especially) to their own families.  Are they just this backward?  I would be interested in a more nuanced treatment of the culture of the region.  Still, humans.  We can be as shitty as possible.

The other thing that I still don't understand is how these local thugs who dominate a region can also be controlling major finance and law firms with international scope.  I guess this is the plot of the The Firm and it must be happening, but I'd like a clearer explanation with examples of where an archaic, country family can also be able to make decisions for billion-dollar firms.  How does that work?

36. System Collapse (Murderbot Diaries #7) by Martha Wells

Murderbot Diaries complete!  What a lot of fun.  As advertised, all the way to the end.  I was half-joking about my previous complaints that Fugitive Telemetry and System Collapse were put together in the same book when Network Effect takes place between them, but it really is quite egregious.  System Collapse is more than just a follow-up to Network Effect. It's basically the second half of the story.  System Collapse is entirely dependent on Major plotlines and characters are all established in Network Effect.  It would be quite confusing and spoilery to read it first.  The publishers should at least have put a disclaimer between the two books.  

Network Effect is about rescuing ART's crew and figuring out the mystery of the Lost Colony.  Now that we know what is going on.  And there is a lot going on with factions of colonists, two layers of semi-failed terraforming/colonization, the evil corporation coming and trying to turn the colonists into indentured servants while the good people of ART's university crew (actually more of an advocacy group that secretly rescues and supports lost colonies) and Murderbot's Preservation friends try to save them.

The final act gets a bit confusing and drawn out and was somewhat of an anti-climax.  There were so many moving parts and while it was emotionally satisfying and there was some decent action, I was hoping for something on a grander scale.  An epic battle between secunits riding those crazy alien-contaminated ag-bots for instance would have worked.  I'm nitpicking and as this is an episodic type series, going against my own values.  Still very entertaining.  I'm excited to learn that there is a new novella at work for 2026 and two short stories online that I will read next.

Some thoughts on the Murderbot TV series

I've watched the first 6 episodes and it's not quite doing it for me.  It looks great and most of the actors are excellent (and look correct as well).  I have two issues.  First, while Skarsgard is fine, I hate to be super work but I really have to question the casting.  One of the genius touches of the books is that Wells never identifies Murderbot's gender nor really their appearance.  I realized at some point in that I was vaguely imposing my own masculine default image in my mind, but Murderbot could be any skin colour, gender or body type even.  Like why not a thick, short butch lesbian look?  Skarsgard is about as generic white male as you can get.  It just anchors the show back to the 20th century.  He is an executive producer so maybe a lot of the money came from his work, so I can accept him wanting to star if so, just not an ideal choice.

I can live with the boring safe choice but what really irks me is the obviousness of the writing.  The books are far from subtle but Wells always delivers her various themes with a light touch.  Murderbot is always sardonically commenting on the naivete of humans outside the Corporation Rim, but they are all quite competent (again, for humans) and don't ever flip out unecessarily and screw shit up.  In the TV series, Dr. Mensah has to keep having panic attacks and they even wrote in an entirely new character who would betray them just so Murderbot could blow her head off in front of them all so we could get an entirely new level of freak-out and mistrust by the wimpy liberals.  Yes, they are humanists and soft-hearted, but they are all experienced researchers who come from a refugee colony and have seen some  shit.  I can just see some producer going "we need to punch this up!"  It's just so stupid and obvious and manipulative rather than good characters reacting with complexity to interesting situations (which is what the book delivers so well on).

This concept that progressives are soft and don't understand reality is a long-used propaganda narrative by the right and given that the entire thesis of the Murderbot Diaries is against corporatism and the need for authoritarian control (in the symbol of Murderbot's rejected governor module), it is depressing to see Hollywood once again internalizing it making it a fundamental aspect of the show.  That's your coastal elites for you, always bending the knee to money and the power behind it.

35. Network Effect (Murderbot Diaries #6) by Martha Wells

After a side route down classical literature, I jumped back into the Murderbot Diaries. My plan was to read them straight through, but then I got the publishing curve ball that Network Effect takes place chronologically between Fugitive Telemetry and System Collapse (which are both together in The Murderbot Diaries vol 3!).  So I had to scramble to find Network Effect, which I'd been planning to buy  later.  It wasn't available at any of the independent or chain bookstores in Montreal.  On a whim, I thought I'd check out the new genre bookstore that I had passed on St-Laurent when it was being renovated.  I was quite unsure of the concept yet hopeful.  Well it turned out that it was open and while no used books was definitely a real nerd genre bookstore, in both languages!  And not only did they have multiple copies of Network Effect but the guy at the counter had read and loved them all and we had a nice nerdy back and forth.  Beings, I present to you Joie de Livres.  Go and consume there.

I am happy to say that Network Effect continues all the great elements of the previous Murderbot books:  awesome sci-fi physical and computer action, hilarious techno-neurodivergent yet overly-emotional and sensitive Murderbot commentary on stupid humans (I love the "privacy blah blah blah" line), super cool space setting with evil corporations and mellow hippy planets thwarting them.  And all this goodness in full novel length!

This time, Murderbot is out with a scientific team from Preservation (including Amena, Dr. Mensah's adolescent daughter) when they get raided by a tougher yet weirdly more primitive transport ship that turns out to be ART, Murderbot's old transport bot/secretly super powerful research AI friend that has somehow been deleted and taken over by these weirdly grey humanoids.  Murderbot gets most of the crew off and seemingly saved except for Amena and the two of them get sucked into a wormhole that leads to an abandoned colony planet and a fun mystery.  This narrative has two main themes that keep you turning the pages:  Murderbot needing to save both him and ART's crew while dealing with a corporate that wants to claim the colony and figuring out the mystery of who these gray people are and how could they have taken over ART with some weird mold.

The climax is really cool as we get not only another SecUnit involved, but also a copy of Murderbot in software form only and the three of them work together with ART.  It's complex and fun and also allows Murderbot to get all in huff constantly because he can't deal with his emotions.  I'm turning into one of those fans who will be demanding more when I finish the last book.

34. The Odyssey by Homer (translation and forward by Daniel Mendelsohn)

Years, actually decades ago now, I drove solo from New York City to Golden, B.C.  in a 1993 Nissan pick-up.  I would have made record time if not for the shit birds at Canada Customs who blocked me at the border on a threat (I didn't have proof of insurance in Canada for the truck so the RCMP would pull me over as soon as I crossed the border; a total fucking lie by a power-tripping junior border guard in training but forced me to spend the night and get a fax of the paperwork).  A friend lent me the books on tape (on cassette) of the complete Odyssey for the trip.  I'm ashamed to say that I can't remember who did the reading nor the translation, though pretty sure it was the Lattimore.  I was a bit skeptical but the friend assured me it would be entertaining.  He was totally right, it kept me cruising for two of the three days on the road and had me screaming and pumping my fist in the air at the climax when Odysseus finally lets that second arrow fly.

So I was quite excited when I heard about this new translation, to the point where I once again went against my own rule and bought a new book while my on-deck shelf is full (been doing this a lot this year).  My plan was to take it on our summer trip to Vancouver, both to have as a beach read but also to get in on that Hot Guys Reading Instagram trend. I carried and read it ostentatiously on the plane to absolutely zero effect or reaction.  None on the beach either.  Hey, I tried!

My experience was similar actually reading it.  The Odyssey is a narrative the keeps moving forward. It twists and turns at times and has stylistic repetitions and phrases that tend to keep the modern reader from fully falling into the story.  Despite that, you get caught up in it and it becomes very easy to read.  The primary emotional driver is much more the suitors storyline then Odysseus' actual journey (all the cool parts are actually told in flashback).  Those guys are the worst and the epic draws out there shittiness to the breaking point before you finally get the relief of revenge.  This really is the ur-text of revenge that dominates so much of masculine fiction.  Bad guys threaten my family/home but I can't get to them yet...  There are several side narratives that bolster your emotional connection:  Telemakos learning to stand up for himself, Odysseus' super-loyal swineherd, the faithful older maid who reveals the betraying slut maids (this one is quite rough, actually).  It really is an expertly crafted story that weaves all these elements together into an immensely rich and satisfying tapestry almost equal to something Athena would have crafted (of course, not equal to Athena's level, which is that of a God).

Strongly recommended.  I really do not have the knowledge of Greek mythology nor ancient Greek to comment on the translation but it worked for me!

33. Fugitive Telemetry (Murderbot Diaries #5) by Martha Wells

Now that the initial plot cycle of Murderbot going rogue and then re-uniting (and rescuing) the original survey crew of mellow humans has finished, we can move on to further episodic fun.  This time we get a classic domestic murder mystery, taking place on the space station outside of the Preservation system (the home world of the mellow scientists).  Murderbot has to navigate his new role in this relatively free society, where sentient bots are considered living beings but they have never actually tried this with a secUnit (who have a reputation to be wildly dangerous and most humans fear).  He also is still very paranoid about GreyCris the evil corporation trying to get revenge on Senoir Mensah.

Though fairly straightforward plot-wise and quick reads, there are a lot of layers to this series.  For instance, the portrayal in the media of SecUnits is mostly as out of control killers or every now and then self-sacrificing heroes.  They are basically slaves.  Starting to see the connection?  She doesn't shove it down your throat but the issues are there and explored and exposed subtly to add depth to the reading and make you think about our own world.  Despite that, Wells never fails to deliver the cool sci-fi stuff and action the reader also wants.  The resolution to the mystery in this one works perfectly to do this (won't give away anymore).  I stayed up past my bedtime finishing it.  Enough said.

Now annoyingly, I have to go find the novel, Network Effect, because it takes place between Fugitive Telemetry and System Collapse which are both together in a single volume, argh! 

 

32. Exit Strategy (#4 in the Murderbot Diaries) by Martha Wells

Turns out this is a conclusion of the narrative of the first 4 books in the Murderbot Diaries.  Like so many science fiction series these days, I find the marketing and grouping of the books really confusing.  They should make it clear.  What's also annoying is that Volume 3 contains two novellas (Fugitive Telemetry and System Collapse) but when I went to check for reading order (after seeing that Exit Strategy closed off the story started in book 1) I see that there is a novel that is set chronologically between those two!!  So now I have to go find the novel before I can read the second novella.  Annoying.

Anyhow, Exit Strategy was another fun chapter in Murderbot's attempt to figure himself out and get back at these shitty corporations.  This time, as he heads out to his original boss Mensah's home world to give her the damning evidence of GreyCris illegaly foraging ancient alien artifacts, he learns that she has been kidnapped by GreyCis.  So he has to go back to their corporate hub and kick some ass.  There is some cool surveillance tech fun in this one, as he is now in a very populated place with fancy hotels and cafes and stuff, all already staked out by the enemy.  There is some pretty good space combat as well. Wells gives a nice mix of the humour and human stuff but she never neglects a good robot or space battle, which made doubly entertaining as they are fought on the physical and the network/cyber levels simultaneously.

31. Rogue Protocol (Murderbot Diaries book 3) by Martha Wells

Cruised through another "episode" of the Murderbot series.  Now that he (she? it?) has learned the truth about the massacre for which it felt reponsible, it has now decided on a bit of a whim to investigate the GrayCris company (who was responsible for the sabotage in the first book and the original massacre).  Murderbot learns about a failed GrayCris terraforming investment but suspects it was actually a cover-up for another illegal alien artifact dig.

Murderbot sneaks onto a contracted shuttle that is going to the now shuttered terraform unit to reclaim it and ostensibly use it for some other purpose.  Murderbot makes acquaintances with a humanoid helper bot called Miki that is treated as a colleague and equal by the rest of the crew and uses Mike as its sensors and interface while murderbot remains hidden.  This state of affairs last until the crew arrives at the terraforming station and is attacked.  Much exciting bot on bot action (including three increasingly creative combat bot kills) and several layers of double-crossing, Murderbot once again helps a gang of outmatched and too sentimental human hippies against corporate malfeasance and then makes her getaway.  Still fun.

30. Artificial Condition (Murderbot Diaries book 2) by Martha Wells

Well over 2 years ago, I was enthusiastically looking forward to continuing to read the Murderbot series, but dang these are hard to find used!  I broke down and bought the first 3 volumes (2 books per volume) at Dark Carnival.  I even bought the first volume, half of which I'd already read and it has a super annoying Stream on AppleTV+ sticker on the cover.  I am really starting to lose my principles as I age!

Artificial Condition is truly a novella.  I read it in an afternoon (a deliciously hot day in Montreal).  In the first half, Murderbot learns more about itself against its own will as it is grilled by a very smart data processing transport bot (who runs a ship owned by some university for research purposes but is contracted out for transport in between projects).  In the second half, assisted by this new robot "ally" (murderbot is extremely annoyed by it and reluctant to allow it to get close), he investigates the site of his own early massacre and helps out a family of miners who got screwed out of their data.  It's quick and satisfying.  

What I am enjoying about the series so far is that it is episodic.  There is a loose over-arching metaplot of murderbot figuring out what it wants to do, which seems to be evolving with each novella.  In this one, he wants to go back to the site of his massacre (he has the memory of having killed 57 that was covered up as an industrial accident) to find out what really happened.  It's part of the plot in this book but is secondary to the narrative of the episode.  It makes for me at least for more enjoyable reading.

29. The Floating Dutchman by Nicolas Bentley

I took this purely on aesthetics and the joy at finding a small vein of British 50s and 60s paperbacks at the Rennaissance on St-Denis.  I love the colours of the photo cover, though the image is a bit indistinguishable. It is relevant to the story though I don't think the pouch of stolen jewels ever actually sits in a pool of blood.

Unfortunately, the book itself wasn't so great.  One definitely could (and did) put it down.  There is nothing straight-up bad about it, au contraire, it is very competently written, the characters and situation all feel very real.  It's just super dry and almost anthropological in its look at a narrow slice of crime in 50s London.  The emphasis of the storylines are unevenly distributed as well, so you aren't really sure who is the main character and about whom we are supposed to care.

It takes place around a bar that is run by Victor, a career criminal with a heroic military past in Italy.  He's never been caught and as we learn is involved in a scheme to steal jewels from wealthy people's homes while they are out eating at a restaurant (Victor is in cahoots with the head waiter).  The ostensible other protagonist is Alexander, an undercover cop getting in good with Victor to trace and find proof of his selling the stolen jewels.  We also have a young hostess working at the bar who is of course too beautiful for such a place but there to watch her reefer-addicted brother who plays in the house band.   Marijuana is treated like heroin in this book.

It's quite procedural and detailed but all kind of dull (though an escape from a surrounded luxury apartment building at the end by Victor's right-hand man was quite cool in its detail).  The ending is supposed to be an ironic twist but you don't really get enough of the characters' relationships for it to register.  

 

28. Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

Thought I'd jump right into the next and latest Hunger Games book, Haymitch's origin story (he is the trainer played by Woody Harrelson).  It is another page-turner but I have to say I was disappointed with Sunrise on the Reaping and found it wanting on many levels.

This Hunger games is the second Quarter Quell, so the 50th one and 40 years after The Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds.  It's very similar to the first Hunger Games book in that you see it all from the perspective of a District citizen, how the games and the oppression of The Capitol impacts his world.  It's dark stuff.  Collins does not pull her punches and I have to always respect her for that.  This is Haymitch's origin story, the second District 12 Tribute to win and it fills a narrative gap between Snow's romance with Lucy Gray and the main saga with Katniss Everdeen.  From that perspective and for those kinds of fans, this book does a serviceable job of showing how all the strands connect, especially in the District 12 community (Haymitch's love is Lucy Gray's daughter and his friend Burdock is Katniss' dad).

Unfortunately, the overall plot and portrayal of the Capitol and the Games are not that innovative.  Snow, in particular, is the full-fledged omnipotent evil he is in the main series.  It would have been nice to see a bit more of his evolution to this insane levels of control and cruelty.  Likewise, the plot is not really that interesting.  Haymitch stumbles his way to victory, being confused and bummed most of the time.  There is no real moment of victory or even any kind of catharsis for him or the reader.  And then he just gots screwed and screwed and screwed at the very end.  Again, Collins does not hesitate to portray evil, but I just wish there had been some more development in his personality or some way that he irked Snow and forced a change in the system or something.  If he wasn't from District 12, this story would have just been a basic Hunger Games underdog victory story where the upstart gets punished and we learn that if you try to confront the Capitol you and everyone you love will be destroyed.

Another annoyance for me was that the ending basically reprints almost the entirety of Poe's The Raven.  There is some clever plotting of Snow's evil manipulations but it felt lost in a very long denouement interspersed with way too many stanzas that didn't seem all that relevant.  Kind of felt like Collins was either trying to pad it out or just loves the poem so much she wanted to force it down her readers' throats. 

I hate to say it, but it felt like fan service drove the need for this latest book rather than a true inspiration to to tell Haymitch's story and open up the history of the Games.   

27. The Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds by Suzanne Collins

A couple of days ago, I complained out loud to my family that I wanted a book whose world and story I would get totally absorbed in and would be bummed when it came to an end.  The next day my daughter put The Ballads of Snakes and Songbirds on my place at the dining room table.  I have read the first Hunger Games book back before the movies came out, quite enjoyed it, but didn't continue and then lost interest after seeing the movies (which I quite enjoyed, other than the major flaw of Katniss' unrelenting miserableness).  However, we dump a lot of culture on our child and I thought it was only fair to follow some of her recommendations.  I can't say that I got the full absorption I wanted, but I was definitely caught up in the story and really appreciated the world and history building of this book, which is a prequel and President Coriolanus Snow's (played so well by Donald Sutherland in the movies) origin story.

The setting is 10 years after the war against the Districts that put Panem back in power and instilled an even more ferocious regime as well as The Hunger Games, as punishment and reminder to the Districts for their "rebellion".  Coriolanus Snow is a top student from a famous high-born family, now struggling with poverty and trying to hide it among his wealthy classmates.  As an experiment, the Hunger Games planners have come up with the idea of each tribute getting a mentor from the Academy.  Right from the beginning, Snow forges a special bond with his tribute, Lucy Gray, who is a "Covey" which are sort of like the Romani people of the districts, but now forced to stay in District 12.   She is a performer and her charm and his initiative put them at the top of the popularity.  Snow and his classmates also come up with the idea of gambling on the games and for fans to be able to sponsor the tributes with gifts of food and water.

It's cool to see the early version of the Games, which are super bootleg, in a crumbling arena and bad communications and visuals.  Nobody really wants to watch them in the Capitol as they are so depressing and the Districts don't really have enough access to TV to make them ubiquitous.  We see the seeds of the sophisticated entertainment machine it becomes by the time of the original trilogy (40 years later).  It's all quite well thought out and darkly realistic.  I note that this book was published 2 years after sports betting became legal in North America. And now that we are in the early stages of an authoritarian takeover of the US government, which is as clownishly unrealistic as the goofiest 1980s graphic novel, the Hunger Games does not seem like that much of a stretch.

Ultimately, this is both a bildungsroman and a star-crossed romance and both narratives are woven effectively to satisfying (though not happy) conclusions.  I found the ending a bit rushed, but still believable. It is always tricky to take a major antagonist, who is almost cartoonish in their evil and then go back in time and show them as a decent person to begin with.  Here, you sympathize with Snow because his situation is so shitty, but he displays a coldness and ambition from the beginning that coalesces into a scary worldview and the ultimate betrayal of his love and youthful ideals.  By the end, you can see how he becomes President Snow and how Panem gets to the time of Katniss high-production value Hunger Games.  Note, another advantage to reading books your kids recommend is you can lean on their excellent memories.  Saves so much time to just ask them about some side character or past event than having to flip back through the book.  They remember every scene!

26. The Dervish House by Ian McDonald

Years ago, after reading River of Gods, I had said that I would look for more Ian McDonald books.  I clearly did not live up to my word, as my excellent gift-giver brother-in-law, gave me this one last xmas and I had completely forgotten about who the author was.  I actually didn't really make the connection until after I was finished this one and I went back and searched my own blog.  My overall feelings were very similar for this book as well.  I quite enjoyed it, though without the excitement I had for River of Gods, but in the end it felt a bit somehow empty to me.  That's not entirely fair, as I really got into the narrative of Can, the adventurous 9 year-old boy with the heart condition and to some degree, that of his older friend, disgraced and failed professor Georgios Ferentinou.

The story takes place in near future Istanbul.  Turkey has joined the EU and nanotech is the big technology shift.  We follow several different characters on various quests, the two mentioned above, as well as a young gas commodities trader plotting a secret deal, an art dealer looking for the Mellified Man (this is a really cool concept), a young woman marketing graduate trying to find deals for her cousins' new bionanotech and a broken young man caught in a suicide bomber nano attack.  It's a lot to take in at the beginning.  The organizing motif is the Dervish House, which is a centuries old building they all live in.  It took me a while to figure that out, as well as what was going on.  The writing is really dense at times, almost too much so to my taste, so that it is slow going for the first half.

The portrayal of Istanbul (though I've read it may be somewhat inaccurate in many details that might almost make it laughable to actual people who live there) was what kept it going for me.  Even in the current times, it is a city that has always interested me.  I'd love to go visit there someday.  You really get a sense of the density and chaos and smells and feelings of this complex, layered historical bridge between Europe and Asia.

Once you finally figure out what is going on, the narrative definitely picks up and the book becomes quite fun. The last quarter is a real page-turner, though I could have gone with a bit more of a bang at the end.  

I realize that McDonald's thing is to sci-fi up different countries and cultures.  I guess that's a cool endeavour and I have had fun reading two of them, but it also feels a bit cultural appropriational.  I would prefer to read a sci-fi book about Istanbul by a Turkish sci-fi author, which I bet there are out there.  That being said, McDonald has a lot of intriguing other books out there, including his Luna series, which is supposed to be like a sci-fi Game of Thrones on the moon.  I'm not going to hunt these down because my on-deck shelf is almost spilling off the edge, but if they come to me in the future, I will read them.

25. Striding Folly by Dorothy L. Sayers

this image references
all 3 stories

I probably should not have read this book at this point in time, probably shouldn't have even picked it up, but here we are.  I say that because it is a collection of the final 3 Lord Peter Wimsey short stories with an essay about Sayers and Wimsey.  I was never going to be a completist with this character, so it's not a big deal, but I did feel a bit like I was cheating.  

The first story is about a retired man who is resenting the potential development of the estate land up which his small cottage looks.  When a stranger comes to visit and play chess with him (he is a known chess expert), it is actually an elaborate ruse to frame him for murder of said developer.  The chess match was cool, but they story and mystery were a bit pat and short to be satisfying, involving galosh prints in mud.

The second story has Wimsey, on the day of the birth of his first son, chatting with a perplexed police constable who thought he saw a murder through a mail slot and then returned to find nothing that he thought he saw to be anywhere near the truth.  I guessed this one but the answer seemed so silly that I dismissed it.  It was fun, though, to read the thoughts and dialogue of the aristocratic Wimsey thinking about being a new father.

The third story was the best, because of the funny way it captures the positive side of British upper class mores.  Wimsy is no on his third child, the first of which is accused of stealing prize peaches from a nearby neighbour.  The Wimseys also have a guest, the annoying Mrs. Quint, who keeps lecturing to them about child-rearing.  Wimsey and his son conspire her comeuppance as the former also solves the mystery, to the satisfaction and appreciation of the neighbour.  It's a lot of fun.

The essay by Janet Hitchman is okay.  It's an excellent reference if you want a summary of Wimsey's character and career as well as some biographical info on Sayers herself.  It doesn't have all that much interesting to say, though she tries, other than that.  The book itself is a nice NEL paperback and I hope that some Wimsey completist finds it when I give it away.

 

24. The Goodbye Look by Ross Macdonald

I was a bit wary about reading this one, as I understand there is a peak period with the Lew Archer novels. The Goodbye Look was published in 1969, on the later side and I suspected that this one might not be so great.  When an author works a certain specific style and themes their entire career, it can grow old and repetitive at the end of their work.  I didn’t want to expose myself to a lesser Lew Archer and then find that influencing my perception of his great books.  Nevertheless, it was thin and has a cool cover.  I was on a work trip and knew i could only read in snatches and thought a detective book would be an easily digestible follow.  I was correct on my first worry and incorrect on the second prediction.  The Goodbye Look is a decent read, but it does feel tired, dwelling overly and too heavily on the sins of the past and the lies of couples and parents.  It also had a complex mystery with too many characters so that I got quite confused at times.  This book should be read in one sitting or at least several chunks.  The plot is actually really well-constructed and clever (and messed up) but it takes some focus to keep it all together.

Archer gets hired by a lawyer, Trutwell to help his wealthy clients, the Chalmers, to recover a jewelry box filled with letters that was stolen from them.  The lawyer lives next door to the Chalmers and they have a long history together.  However, the Chalmers don’t seem keen on Archer’s involvement.  Right away, you can tell that there are secrets everywhere and everyone involved doesn’t want to say anything.  Archer, of course, plods along, continuing to probe until he finds out quite quickly that their son Nick is quite likely the culprit.   He has a history of psychological instability and there is a risk of suicide.  He has been hanging out with an older woman and a rougher young man, despite supposedly in love with Trutwell’s nice daughter.  Tracking them down, Archer finds the rougher young man shot to death in his car.  This is where things get complex and we get a bunch of storylines from the past including an embezzled bank (and the disappearance of the money), affairs while boyfriends are away at the war and just a whole lot of lying.

Now that we all know the sad history of the Millar’s, it is hard to extricate their personal struggles from the books.  The themes in The Goodbye Look seem to hit particularly hard in this area and it is troubling to think of the two writers working on this book together which discusses the crimes of wayward children and how their parents dealt with them.  I think part of what makes this book lacking is that there is so much focus on the family and very little on the time and place.  There is also more explicit pscyhological talk, both in the dialogue and Archer’s thoughts.  His metaphors as well were getting a bit forced at this point.

I know I’m sounding really critical.  On its own, it’s an impressively intricate mystery with a pretty good portrayal of the morally bankrupt bourgeoisie.  It just can’t compare to his earlier works and one risks perhaps enjoying them less if you read them after this one.  So I recommend it for Archer completists only.

 

23. Diplomatic Immunity by Lois McMaster Bujold (#12 in the Vorkosigan saga)

Still in catch-up mode, I went to the queen of fun and fulfilling (and quick to read), the Vorkosigan series.  Diplomatic Immunity thoroughly delivered.  It was as enjoyable and rich as the previous books with the added bonus that all the previous background to Miles and his various associates, and especially the galaxy-building all come into play here.  My old man memory has held up enough or perhaps after 11 books, I have internalized much of it, that I was able to stay entirely on top of the big-picture space strategy plot points that came up.  This was what I was looking for when I started researching a sci-fi series so long ago.  So very satisfying.

Here Miles is now newly-married, settling into his role as Imperial Auditor and seemingly a slight more staid life than before.  He and Ekaterina are returning from their honeymoom to prepare to settle down and welcome the birth of their son and daughter, in uterine containers back on Barrayar.  Of course, everything goes to shit when he gets a call to deal with a conflict between a Barrayar military escort with the local authorities of the remote Graf station, in Quaddiespace.  The Quaddies were genetically developed with four arms instead of two arms and two legs, specifically for construction and living in zero-gravity and due to persecution and exploitation set off centuries before to make their own colony. 

It's a complicated situation involving initially a disappeared, either deserted or kidnapped or murdered, security officer, plus an "overzealous" (or brutal) attack by Barrayan officers when they went to return to the ship a late-returning pilot.  Things get more and more complicated and risky as the situation continues to escalate to a galactic level.  I'm not going to say more than that.  This was another fun one, involving a great look at the Quaddie world and how they live, lots of gross bio-weapons and some cool, exciting last-minute space action.  I can't wait to see where they go next.

22. Closed Circuit by William Haggard

boring as hell for a photo cover
but still looks cool

Back to fiction and wow what a boost to my reading!  This book was thin and I burned through it in two days, thoroughly enjoying myself.  I love all kinds of reading but it sure is nice when you don't have to re-read passages, check the maps over and over again and even go to Wikipedia to try and figure out the historical context.  

It doesn't hurt how beautiful these Penguins are.  I'm not a massive Haggard fan, but I keep all of his that I find because the editions are so lovely and look great on my shelf.  I know it is pure snobbery, but I love the back tagline of this book "the 'adults' Ian Fleming".  It is so true.  These are smart espionage books.  Sometimes perhaps a bit too smart, as Haggard loves oblique conversations (and even sometimes narrative passages) where nothing specific is mentioned and the read has to infer what is actually going on.  I think this is often how intelligent spymasters do actually talk, but there are also elements that refer to subtle class distinctions in England that can be tough for a 21st century North American to parse.

The story here contains Haggard's usual elements: skullduggery involving a fictional foreign nation that somewhat implicates Britain as well.  However, it is off to the side from his usual sandbox, only indirectly involving the Security Executive branch.  The protagonist is Francis Mason, the heir of a multi-generational farming family of English descent from the South American country of Candoro (an analogue of paraguay perhaps).  His grandfather and the patriarch of the estancia (named "Seven" because it was the seventh plot of land granted to colonialists in the 19th century) drove off a local official in a humiliating way (knocking him down with bolas just after he had left the property) and that local has recently become the president of the country.  He is making serious trouble for Seven so Mason heads off to England in the hope of getting some support from the British Foreign Office and sympathetic people in the Candoran embassy.  His first "ally" is Kenneth Gibb, an ambitious and less than ethical middle ranking diplomat who also had an affair with Mason's wife.  Mason is portrayed initially as a bit soft and passive, but as the narrative unfolds, we of course see that he is made of sterner stuff, as he threads the needle of all the various enemies working around him.

It's a fun read, though I found the ending a bit too dependent on chance.  I didn't mind as there is an excellent scene here of the kind of subtle badassery that is why I read these books.  Just so fucking cool.  The whole thing about Mason is that he is descended from good British stock and his grandfather was a famous badass landowner.  So he inherited that toughness and also was raised on the estancia, learning to ride, work cattle, but he also grew up with the peons and learned all their sweet knife-fighting skills, which gets revealed to the reader at the best possible moment.  He is shown as deferring and polite, just trying to minimize trouble and save his Estancia, while all these nastier and seemingly more sophisticated players are maneuvering around him to screw him out of his money.  When things get nasty for real as an assassin is sent to take out one of those players (with whom he had become allied and started to respect) in a London park, suddenly Mason is whipping out a 14" facón that nobody knew he had on him and completely besting the assassin to the point where he discusses whether or not he should kill him and decides not to because the body would cause problems for them.

 

The Kenneth Gibb character is interesting as well as in some ways the book is more about him.  Haggard really has it in for him.  He starts out as seeming that he will be quite a problem for our protagonist but ends up just getting utterly screwed left and right, to the point where though he initiated much of it with bad selfish decisions, you start to feel bad for him.  By the end he goes out in the worst possible way.  One feels that he may have been a type that Haggard dealt with in his own life, so severe is his retribution.