9. The Pale Criminal by Philip Kerr

I've been hunting down the original British versions of Philip Kerr's now classic Berlin Noir trilogy (or close enough that the first three have been reprinted in their own "Berlin Noir" entitled omnibus), since I discovered them at a great open air book market in Amsterdamn.  They only had the second and third and I thought it was a trilogy and so held off on buying them.  I've been looking for the first one ever since, to no avail.  I stumbled on a decent copy of the second one (Penguin, 1991) in pretty beat up condition with a fade spine, so I thought I could actually read it.  But again, I wanted to start with the first one, March Violets.  I was at my friend, paperback aficionado Hannibal Chew's recently and he had the above-mentioned omnibus and lent it to me, but of course I forgot to take it.  So I just decided to relax my stringent policies for this one case and started The Pale Criminal.

I was glad I did, because I jumped right into it.  I was a bit surprised by the tone at first.  It really is a straight-up detective mystery.  I was expecting something else, not sure what, but from the first page, The Pale Criminal follows all the tenets of the form.  The protagonist, Bernie Gunther, is the ex-cop loner with some sadness in his past and a dogged determination to do the right thing, no matter what it costs him.  He gets hired by an obese, wealthy woman to track down some blackmail letters showing her son to be a homosexual. 

After this traditional setup, things do veer into a deeper place, as Gunther gets picked up by the Gestapo for an interview with Heydrich himself, who reveals that there has been a string of serial killer like murders, the victims being blond, female teenagers, exemplars of Aryan youth.  I won't say anything more about the plot, but the storyline does open up and takes full advantage of the Nazi Germany setting.  The mystery is solid, but the portrayal of the Nazis in full power just before the invasion of the Sudetenland as seen by the eyes of a working stiff with some policy authority is what really makes this book resonate.  Nazi Germany and Hitler get thrown around a lot as internet memes and references to fascism, but whenever one is reminded of the actual reality of it, it is profoundly disturbing.  I am fortunate to have had a good high school education with a lot of emphasis on how the Nazis came to power as well as spending some time in college on it.  It really is something we should never forget, because humans unfortunately have an all to easy tendency to head down that road.

8, Fletch's Fortune by Gregory McDonald

I'm really going back to my original reason for buying paperbacks, which was to be able to carry them with me anywhere and not worry about them getting damaged.  That means I am buying books these days that I don't want to worry about and this Fletch fell into that category (also a dollar).  I remembered enjoying a few of these as a teenager.  This one was just okay.  Fletch is a post-60s anti-establishment James Bond of a journalist who also solves murders.  He can be funny but I think the establishment he is mocking has changed so much that he comes off today as just being kind of trying too hard.  This story takes place at a journalist's convention where the president of the association gets murdered just as it begins.  It got moving near the end, but ultimately lacked weight and I've already moved on.

7. The Black Company by Glen Cook

Not Tor's finest effort, cover-wise.

It took me forever to read this book.  It comes highly recommended in the well-read nerd community, but the prose style was just not doing it for me.  I think I sort of got it after a while.  It's supposed to read like those gritty war novels, except in a fantasy setting.  I like that conceit, but even with that understanding, I felt distanced.  The setup is cool.  The narrator is the medic and chronicler of a historic band of mercenaries in some fantasy land embroiled in war.  There is lots of cool fantasy battle scenes and fantasy grunts doing what they do in their downtime.  It gets epic, but ultimately didn't do it for me.  Another problem for me, and this may have been the edition, but it is very geographical (lots of strategic discussion about the war and which side has control of which region), but no friggin' map!  Come on. 

6. The Body on Mont-Royal by David Montrose

This is the third and last David Montrose book published by Vehicule Press.  I enjoyed it more than the other two.  Things actually happened, characters interacted and a rough mystery and crime narrative unfolded more or less amidst all the drinking.  It's also really violent, exaggerated to the point of being unrealistic at times (especially the beating the protagonist takes).  Still, it wasn't particularly enjoyable, beyond seeing 50s anglo Montreal in the noir detective context.  Even the portrayal of Montreal is lacking in how insanely un-French it is.  It's like Montrose lived in Toronto, had never met a francophone Quebecois and was writing about some fantasy Montreal.  The only french character is the police detective, who is shown as sympathetic, but not super bright (a Lestrade character basically) but with the goofiest accent. I mean it's fine to do a francophone speaking accented english, but if that is the way they spoke english in the 50s, shit has changed a lot.  This sounded to me more like Pepe le Pew.  I guess that probably does reflect the anglo reality before the Quiet Revolution, but you'd think at least detective fiction would try to portray the underclasses and oppressed a bit more realistically.

Also, I find the cover deeply uninspiring.  They couldn't have paid an illustrator to do a real pulpy cover or just copy the original Harlequin, which is actually quite nice?  I mean compare and contrast:

5. Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber

My wife picked this up and enjoyed it with some reservations.  It was thin and seemed like an important book in a sub-genre of fantasy.  Also Fritz Leiber (I need to reread his Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories).  It is the story of a successful professor in a small, stuffy northeastern university in the late 40s who discovers that his wife has been using magic to protect him and boost his career. He is a rationalist and believes she is deluded and the book is about the mistakes he makes because of this and his slow realization of the truth. It actually gets pretty intense and all the spell details and magic explanation are well constructed and fun.  The setting too, with the various flawed faculty and their malevolent wives juxtaposed against the free spirit that is his wife and his own independence, is instantly sympathetic.  The ending was a bit pat and deflated some of the import and horror that the narrative had built up.  It's a short and enjoyable read, and lives up to the reputation touted by the publisher.  Recommended.  (heh heh, my wife recommended Conjure Wife.)

4. Reamde by Neal Stephenson

I was sort of done with Neal Stephenson.  I loved Snow Crash and The Cryptonomicon (the guy who recommended this to me accurately described it as "the kind of book you feel sad about when it is over") but just could not make it through the first book of the Baroque cycle.  So much nerdy diversion that was not in service of the story!  My brother-in-law helped bring me back into the fold first by convincing me I might like Reamde and then by giving it me for xmas.  I picked it up at the end of January and while it was a beast (1000+ pages) I had a hard time putting it down and was able to crank through a huge section during two train rides to Toronto.

It's still really nerdy, but the nerdiness is a light peppering rather than a deep sauce.  Actually, the very foundation of the book is pure nerd ideology.  That ideology says that if only people would base their existence on rationality and skills and not get caught up in social convention, they will then succeed and kick ass in all kinds of situations.  There is some truth to this and it is very appealing to an old ex-nerd like myself.  The dark side of this is the libertarian techbro dolt that we see all too often today and I'm sure a lot of them loved Reamde.  Stephenson doesn't take us down this far because he maintains a human, sympathetic side, but also because the priority here really is the story.

And it's a great, crazy story.  It somehow manages to be both empirical and theoretical at the same time.  It's empirical because he brings in a wild mix of characters and situations, whose behaviour and premises driver what happens next.  Yet at the same time the whole thing is structured into some neat unities (it all takes place in 3 weeks) and maintains several consistent, interesting themes (the virtual world vs. the real world; terrorism as a thing, far right rural wingnuts as real people, family).

Ultimately, it is a teeny bit too American jingoistic and the ending wasn't quite as satisfying as I had hoped (by the time you get to it, you can kind of guess how things will play out).  But the ride itself was thoroughly enjoyable and I will keep my eyes out for his next book.

3. Dressed for Murder by Donna Leon

My mom left this when she came to visit last year, said it was quite readable but not top-notch.  I have to agree. The detective is intelligent, rational and moral in a world of corruption and politics. The setting, modern-day Venice, is cool, as the detective's lifestyle around it (buying fresh tomatoes and figs to prepare dinner).  They mystery was compelling and intricate.  A man's body is found in a field behind a slaughterhouse, a place where local prostitutes sometimes ply their trade.  The face is badly smashed and he is in woman's clothes.  The investigation leads to the transvestite prostitution scene in Venice and follows (of course) to well-placed and powerful political figures.  It all felt a bit light and the ending was a bit too easy.  Nevertheless, an enjoyable read and would work fine on a beach or winter cabin vacation.

Reading this, watching Foyle's War (about a similarly rational and moral detective but in England during WWII) and watching Making a Murderer, really makes me think about the idea of the fictional character of the detective.  Why do we love them so much?  Why are they so good?  Especially in the light of reality (at least in America and Canada) that most of them seem to be unethical bureaucrats at best and downright sociopathic murderers at worst.  I want to read more books about detectives where they are bumbling around, forcing cases into pre-conceived ideas, badgering witnesses, planting evidence and even straight-up murdering people.  What is going on in those detectives' heads?

2. The Shadow of the Lynx by Victoria Holt

I picked this up at the new (to me anyways) Pulpfiction Books East on Commercial in Vancouver.  It was in the dollar bin in front of the cash register.  I also found an intriguing Colin Wilson there.  The store was small and nicely curated, with a relaxing vibe to it.  I'll go back next time I'm in Vancouver.

Anyway, my interest in gothic romance had waned a bit since the last Mary Stewart, so I was wary.  Something about the cover and the masculinity of the title made me feel that it might hold my interest.  It did.  It promised some of what I had hoped the form would deliver in fast pace and dynamic storyline, similar in structure though not in content to the genre of men's action.  The Shadow of the Lynx starts with a young orphan on a ship to Australia, chaperoned by the son of her dead father's business partner.  There is drama right away, as the learns of her chaperone's father, a wronged British prisoner who, through the power of will, had become a wealthy entrepeneur and has a almost godlike charisma. The story twists and turns and comes full circle.  The resolution was a bit deflating, but the ride there was so enjoyable. 

It's cool the way a female protagonist (the orphan on the boat) has power and implements her will in the strictures of the patriarchy of that time (of both times actually, the narrative, which takes place in the Edwardian period, and the early 70s when it was written).  She is hemmed in by the constraints of masculine rule.  But within those constrains, it is the forthrightness of her character and the use of her wit to analyze situations that allows her to succeed.  She is also passive to events around her and decisions made by those more powerful than her (mostly men, probably entirely).  Yet somehow those parts of the book didn't feel frustrating to me.  I think because her inner monologue never gives up her spirit, so you respect her.

So yes an enjoyable read. Victoria Holt is a pro and I see was quite prolific. I don't think I am up for a steady diet of her books, but she will be something I will continue to look for and read when the time is right.  Nice to have discovered her. 

1. The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly

Yes, I did read the movie cover one

I found this in the apartment we were staying in and felt it would be an easily digestible start to the new year of reading.  It was a quick and enjoyable read, though it felt a bit more simplistic than the Harry Bosch books I had read by Connelly.  I liked the set up of the protagonist, he is kind of like the pre-Better Call Saul, not quite as full on sleazy but playing the same game.  He has no office, but just rides around in his Lincolns, talking on the cell phone and keeping his files in a storage locker.  The actual plot, once it moved out of the mystery mode and into the thriller mode, was less engaging.  You kind of knew where it would go and the bad guy wasn't given enough depth to make him interesting.  Still, I definitely kept turning the pages to find out what was going to happen next. 

31. Crysis Legion by Peter Watts

This is possibly the worst book I have read since I started this blog.  That's not necessarily so bad as there have been few books that I truly hated in that time and the quality mean is quite high.  It's more frustrating because I paid $5.50 for it at a used bookstore on West Broadway in Vancouver, that should have known better (or perhaps they did, I bought it after all).  I had high hopes as well.  I like Peter Watts' work a lot, but always found it a bit conceptual and science heavy.  When I heard that he was writing a fiction based on a videogame, I thought it might allow him to focus on his badass action writing.  It did, but the result was not what I had imagined. 

Currently, for the things I enjoy in fiction, videogames are just not a medium that allows for creativity.  Crysis Legion does have tons of cool action, but it's mostly repetitive.  Even worse, the main character has barely any character and even less agency.  It's a first-person shooter, so the story is basically on rail road tracks.  Watts writes it like he is an observer, which I suspect he was, probably basing the storyline on watching walkthroughs of the actual game.  Worse, he relies on a few gimmicks over and over again, in paticular italicizing words constantly (really, like when describing big destruction he will do it several times in a paragraph).  It gets really grating.

It has bits and pieces of Wattsian crazy science reality gussied up into science fiction and the way he describes the final exposition is pretty compelling.  Also, at times you can feel Watts himself exasperated with the constraints and even poking fun at them (or at least pointing them out).  It's a valiant effort, but ultimately, nobody is connected to anything going on (neither Watts nor us) and it became a real slog to get through.  I have been reading this book for over two years!  (and man, what a relief to get it done.)

I love the idea of real authors doing the story behind videogames (Richard Morgan was the writer for the videogame and Watts worked under him for the novel) and I hoped it made the game better.  But going the other way, taking a game to make a novel out of, seems like basically cheap heroin for the Crysis addict who has already finished the game and wants more.  I also hope that it made Watts a good chunk of cash so he could go on writing the books he wants to write.

30. My Brother Michael by Mary Stewart

I really picked up steam on my reading over the xmas holidays this year and am now trying to get through books I stopped and started in the past.  I've been labouring over My Brother Michael for most of the year.  I expect Mary Stewart to be slower and more thoughtful than what I prefer, but this one really took a long time to get going.  The ending paid off, but I almost abandoned it at several points.

It's the story of a young divorcee traveling by herself in Greece when through some mix-up ends up delivering a car to an unknown man in a small village near the Oracle at Delphi (which had been on her tourist wish-list).  The man turns out to be a dashing British archaeologist who was also looking for the dying place of his brother, who had been killed at the end of World War 2.  It takes a ton of meandering, having to do with visiting a bunch of ruins and the picturesque greek town and a bunch of random people about two-thirds of the book before we figure out that there is a solid story here.  Maybe Mary Stewart wanted to do justice to a place she had visited or maybe that kind of travelogue is a big part of the sell of this genre, but it wasn't working for me.  Also, there is always that weird layer of British female romance of this period where they are all weird and coy about whether they are into the guy or not, trying to always be all practical while there are constant looks and finger brushings on cheeks or backs of arms ("like a moth"). 

It all did tie together and the ending is actually quite intense and brutal, restoring my faith in Mary Stewart.  But this one needed a tougher editor, in my opinion.

29. Play Dead by Peter Dickinson

Peter Dickinson was one of my parents favourite authors, but I never got into him (other than his young adult series starting with the Weathermonger) the way I did with other British mystery writers of that period.  It may be that he is just a bit too adult and sophisticated compared with Gilbert, Ambler, etc.  He died this year and received the appropriate respect and I thought I should, being practically an adult myself, read more of his books. 

Play Dead is told from the perspective of Poppy Tasker, a 50-year old recent divorcée in late 80s London who has reluctantly taken on the job of nannying her grandson.  She struggles with the role, feeling pegged into the role of a gran when she still has career and romantic aspirations.  Despite her reluctance, she does begin to enjoy the social complexities of the other caregivers at the play group where she takes her grandson.  Things get more than interesting when a man is seen creepily peeping at the children, then ends up dead–stripped naked, his genitals decorated with flowers– a few days later, in the park where the children play.  There are also several other plotlines going on, involving a squat of radicals, the local election and her own romantic involvement with several men in the community.

The mystery was really quite good and complex and I enjoyed reading from the perspective of this different character, who was not happy with her situation, but never became maudlin or annoying.  You slowly realized what a remarkable person she was despite her own inability to see it.  Still, it was all just a tad too reflective (though some of the reflections were quite interesting) for me to be drawn in and I'll definitely continue to read Dickinson, I believe my initial hesitations were not misplaced.  He is a great author, but perhaps just a tad too intelligent for a simpleton like me.

28. Capital by John Lanchester

This was recommended by every member of my immediate family and happened to be in the bookshelf over the xmas holidays.  A bit of a brick for the year-end reading rush, but I tore through it.  It's a real page-turner.  I guess it falls under the category of literary fiction.  The story follows the lives of several characters, all of whom interact with a specific street in London in 2007 and 2008.  The opening chapter lays out the history of the street and how it went from primarily a middle class neighbourhood to suddenly becoming super valuable with the money and real estate boom in London at the beginning of the 21st century.  The anchoring element is that somebody has been putting postcards in people's mailboxes with photos of their front door and the words "We want what you have".  The characters are a wealthy financier and his materialistic wife, a Pakistani shopkeeper and his family, a Polish builder who does lots of renovations in the neighbourhood, the non-citizen but can't be deported East African meter maid, a young Senegalese soccer star and a dying woman who lived her whole life on the street.

It's a thoroughly enjoyable read, that I am guessing really captures many of the major issues of living in London today, it's massive increase in wealth, the political and social challenges of the muslim populations living there (and other immigrants) and an overheated real estate market.  Lanchester treats the characters with a lot of respect and bad things happen, but never extremely so and you hope the best for all of them. 

27. Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C.S. Forester

Found this on the shelf of free books lining the window of the grocery store near my parents house and hesitated to take it at first, but then was drawn in upon realizing it is the first of the Hornblower books (at least within Hornblower's own fictional chronology).  As usual, it is a series of vignettes and I found this to be my favourite so far.  Each vignette describes a stage in Hornblower's early career and I found the contrast between his own lack of confidence and the boldness of his actions quite endearing (as did his senior officers, evidently).  There is also tons of great action, straight up mercenary action like attacking a galley with a jolly boat or jumping on to a burning fire ship to steer it away from its target.  Though I could not agree with it, my biased anglo-saxon side took perverse pleasure in the portrayal of the french and spanish militaries (cruel and inefficient).  Great stuff.

26. White Leopard by Laurent Guillaume

I picked this up on a whim in new trade paperback format at a nice bookstore in Berkeley I had been browsing at for way too long and felt like I should support with real dollars.  It was a good choice, though I wish the format had been a traditional paperback and I wish I had the discipline to have hunted it down and read it in the original french (and maybe I will with some of his other books as this one was pretty short).

It starts out intense and brutal and grabbed me right away.  After that, it was the setting of Mali that kept me hooked.  It's the story of a French cop of Malian origin who is forced to flee France after a revenge killing.  He is now a private detective in Mali, who earned the moniker the White Leopard in the local papers, due to his detecting exploits and light skin.  The story is fast-paced and relies too many times on last minute rescues (he is well-connected), but ultimately pulls together well.  Really enjoyable.

Guillaume has written several thrillers in french.  This one was translated by lefrenchbooks, a line that sources out good french genre books and translates them into english.  If White Leopard is any indication, this looks like a line worth keeping an eye on.

25. Hell House by Richard Matheson

Not my copy, but the version I found

(written Dec 26, 2015 catching up)

Another great find!  A woman at the tam-tam this summer had a blanket with a bunch of books spread out on it and a big sign "free books".  She said she was just doing it to encourage reading.  It seemed a bit odd, but I found this book and a few french Winnie the Pooh books for my daughter.  I am not a big fan of horror, but the period and the author and then the blurb made me pick this one up and I am glad that I did. 

Four practitioners of the occult make a deal to try and exorcise a haunted house as the last request of its dying owner.  All of the characters are seriously flawed or damaged and the history of the house that led to its reputation is just awesome.  In its past, it was owned by an insane megalomaniac tycoon with incredible charisma who turned it into first a playhouse in the forest that got darker and sicker until he and his various guests closed off the outside world and then all eventually died.

The four characters are a beautiful medium who used to be an actress, a psychic whose last use of power was in the house where 4 others died and he was left naked and broken outside, a way-too confident paranormal scientist and his sexually repressed wife.  In different ways and at different speeds, each of them is slowly attacked by the house (and all of them together).  It is really delicious to see the weakness of their character lead to their destruction and to have the history and power behind the house slowly revealed. 

A movie of Hell House was also made and got decent reviews.  I have it on standby.

24. Black Man by Richard Morgan

(written Dec 26, 2015 catching up)

I loved Richard Morgan's Market Forces and found this in hardback for cheap at a used bookstore in PEI.  I was a bit disappointed.  It had a lot of cool near future transhuman cyberpunk technology and politics and some good action.  But everybody was constantly grim and mad at each other and full of tension about their past that after a while it just became a bit tiring.  The protagonist is a variant 13 (or "thirteen" perjoratively), a genetically modified human species that was bred for war then abandoned as being too dangerous and exiled to Mars or secure desert colonies.  Our herois semi-legit because he has chosen to hunt down other thirteens who are hiding out in the rest of society.  The conceit is that the thirteens are modified back so their DNA is structured as society's hunters, before we became agriculture.  It was kind of cool, but his social ostracization got a bit heavy after a while and I had trouble seeing anything of value in its metaphor for today's racism.  It was okay but felt a bit patched together and uneven.

23. Tomorrow's Ghost by Anthony Price

(written Dec 26, 2015 catching up)

I found this book on a small shelf at the back of the Co-Op in North Rustico, PEI.  I have to admit that I am quite chuffed to have found this book there.  It demonstrates that the ever-thinning vein of British crime and espionage thrillers in Canadian culture has not dried out entirely.  Ever-fruitful blogger Existential Ennui made me aware of Anthony Price with his great interview with the author.

Reading this book made me respect Anthony Price's style and thoughtfulness, but I don't know if this was the best introduction.  It is late in a series and structured in a somewhat special way, as if Price was toying with the form.  The exercise was a success but it left me feeling a bit cold.

I will not seek his books out, but will definitely pick out the next one I stumble across in the aisle of a rural supermarket.

22. Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks

(written Dec 26, 2015 catching up)

We lost a huge writer when Iain M. Banks died.  I had been rationing his Culture books even before he moved on, because each one is just so delicious.  I found Surface Detail for really cheap in a used bookstore in PEI and it seemed the perfect book to cap off my vacation with.  Excession is still my favourite, but this comes into second place probably.  I won't go into the story details, but it delivered.

21. Under Stone, Over Sea by Susan Cooper

(written Dec 26, 2015 catching up)

I have been meaning to read these books for a while and found the first one in the library.  I never read these as an adolescent, but wish that I had.  It's a story of a family spending the summer with their great uncle by the seaside and stumbling upon adventure connected to him and his mysterious past.  What I love about this genre of British adolescent adventure is both the sense of the slow discovery of something exciting going on around them (because they are left on their own) and the real threat that the bad guys can deliver.  This one delivers both.

(My nephew had read the first two and got the last 3 for xmas, which made me realize that there are 5 books in the series. What is frustrating is that I have not been able to find all 5 in the same format and it is often unclear in any given volume which number it is in the series.)