51. Ruler of the Night by David Morrell

I've wanted to read Morrell's more recent historical thrillers for a while now, but can never find them in a used bookstore.  I'm not sure what that means about his publishing success.  His books are published as big populist hard backs, though probably not in the numbers of huge name authors.  You would think some of them would show up used and in thrift shops, but so far they have eluded me.  I was in a different neighourhood and happened upon their library.  Never great pickings for English books in Montreal, so I will some times borrow books a bit recklessly, just because I want to leave with something.  I was psyched to stumble on a David Morrell book, and hastily took it out, without doing a bit of research.  Turns out Rule of the Night is actually the third book in his Thomas de Quincy and daughter Emily as historical fiction detectives.  It's not actually a trilogy, so each book stands on their own, but I nevertheless felt I was catching up and didn't have the connection with the characters that a proper narrative would have developed rather than expository reminders.

I think this added to some of the ungainliness I felt in the book, but much of it was inherent in the writing.  I was disappointed, I have to say.  The set up is really cool, with the early days of the railway and how the public, already hesitant but also fully caught up in the changes trains are bringing, are hesitant, especially after a brutal murder in a first-class carriage.  The ending as well, where we finally learn the truth of the complex mystery, is quite rich and clever.  de Quincy and his daughter are great detectives, with their mutual support and his opium addiction and her burgeoning medical skills.  It's a cool team.

It's the execution of the plot that I felt weakened its actual cleverness.  It goes all over the place, with several intriguing investigative threads and then suddenly about halfway through introduces a major character from de Quincy's childhood as a street urchin (and based on his real-life narrative).  On top of that, we suddenly get a really hateful major antagonist who does his horrible deed and is punished for it very soon thereafter.  It felt like that was supposed to be the climax.  I guess it was done to set up for the twist, but it ends up leaving the reader somewhat deflated and turning pages just to find out the mystery.

Even worse, for me, was the language.  Morrell is a very skilled writer, but it is the rare American writer who can grasp the subtleties of British dialogue.  Here, it's even worse because it feels like he simplifies it even more for the mass audience.  The dialogue between the police detectives, Ryan and Becker (allies of de Quincy and his daughter) and the evil peer is particularly unrealistic, both in the way it sounds and in the class relations that dialogue is supposed to be supporting.  Just felt super simplistic, like the Netflix version.

In the end, the backstory was quite intricate and clever, integrating a historical railway murder and de Quincy's life in a complex and cool mystery that made it overall a decent book to read and I may say for those of you who aren't sensitive to the nuances of British culture and dialogue in detective fiction might enjoy the series.  This may have been my one test of Morrell's Victorian fiction unless I hear that his others are far superior.  One good thing, for sure, is that it did convince me to read Thomas de Quincy!

50. Tales from Watership Down by Richard Adams

Watership Down turned out to be such a hit that, despite my hesitation, my daughter demanded we get this out of the library and read it.  It took us a while as there were a lot of missed reading nights during the vacation and summer nights.  I was hesitant because I worried it wouldn't capture the magic of Watership Down and leave us feeling disappointed (Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator being the biggest culprit of this).  I'm happy to say that Tales is a satisfying and engaging sequel that doesn't try to replicate the epic, original story, but builds on it and lets the reader be in the world of the rabbits a little longer.

The first part of the book are more tales of El-ahrairah.  I wasn't so into this mythology in Watership Down, but here El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle's adventures are more down to earth.  There is magic but it's not so powerful and abstract as the tales from the first book were.  Here they go on cool, scary quests and encounter (and often have to outwit) all kinds of fascinating creatures.

The third section is several short stories that continue the Watership Down story, as the warren evolves, changing its political structure to have co-chiefs one of whom is a doe, welcome new rabbits and expand to new outposts.  Leadership comes up a lot thematically, as Hazel, Bigwig and Fiver are now getting older and there are more and more rabbits who didn't live through the migration and the fight with Efrafa.  It ends with life in progress for the rabbits, there are issues and man is always threatening.  We are left as readers feeling very much that Watership Down is alive.

49. Negroland by Margot Jefferson

I found this in the new free book box in my neighbourhood (actually had an interesting collection of 80s and 90s paperbacks not to my taste but will keep an eye out).  I've long been curious about the Black upper class communities and their history.  I have to also admit that the slick cover design also went some way to me deciding to grab this.

At it's core, this is indeed Jefferson's biography.  We start with several interesting examples of the early histories of wealthy and educated Black families, following their ancestors who came out of slavery.  History, philosophy and social theory mix with her personal narrative to tell us about her and racism.  The racism stuff is really interesting; she demonstrates its complex and damaging impact in so many contexts.  You really get a sense of how all-encompassing race was for an African-American girl growing up in upper middle class Chicago to educated, well-to-do parents.  

The parts about herself were less compelling for me.  I get that its a biography and I do think she was successful in using herself as a vehicle to portray racism.  There is also a lot of adolescent anxiety and adult self-absorption that just doesn't interest me.  I mean we even get a whole section where she talks about which character in Little Women she would want to be and why.  So it dragged a bit for me and kind of fizzled out at the end, though not enough to negate the interesting parts of the first two-thirds.  I think readers who enjoy more poetic and intellectual style of writing might enjoy this book much more than me.  Not my jam, though was worth the time.

48. Beware of the Trains by Edmund Crispin

This post is really an admission of guilt to a crime against books.  I found this Edmund Crispin paperback before I had read any of his books and decided that he wasn't for me.  I kept it in my errands backpack as an emergency read if I ever get stuck somewhere and don't have my main book with me.  Short story collections are good for that. I have become quite consistent in my chore habits and tend to not have much waiting time and when I know I have a wait (like anything health-related), I will make sure to bring whatever book I'm reading.  So Beware of the Trains ended up in my backpack inside pocket for several years, getting more and more beat up as it shared the pocket with plastic bags for shopping and cutlery for lunches.  Taking off a chunk of the cover one day, I finally decided to clean it up and realized I had basically destroyed the book.  I've now taken to scrubbing my hands incessantly to get the little bits of pulp fibre that have dug their way into my skin.

Crispin is a great writer.  I enjoy the way he can paint an English scene and he often has interesting characters.  It's just that his books are primarily built around an intricate mystery that is supposedly solvable by the reader.  Not this reader!  These short stories are the same, which is kind of incredible, that he can come up with so many little mysteries.  These are like Encyclopedia Brown for grown-ups.  So if that is your jam, I would strongly recommend Crispin.

Now what to do with the body? 

47. The Lady in the Morgue by Jonathan Latimer

Latimer is in the "buy everything by him" category in my hunting list. It started with just looking for Solomon's Graveyard and not finding it to now just having his name (and still looking for the elusive Solomon's Graveyard).  His books are really fun!  It took me a bit to understand some of his stylistics as well as the cultural context and now that I do, I enjoy them so much more.

At their base, they are solid mysteries with a level of pre-WWII manly action.  They are also very much escapist entertainment where you get to follow detective William Crane (often with several quirky, competent allies along) as he gets to both party (with the fun lower classes and the fancy upper classes), do cool detecting and kick a little ass along the way.  Latimer lifts these pleasures to a higher level with his writing style, his complex plotting and most of all many interesting characters and locations/situations.  On top of this, like a maraschino cherry, is the drinking.  It's weird and fetishistic!  This was written in 1939 just a few years after prohibition ended and I guess alcohol was a big cultural deal for certain readers.  It's not just that they are almost constantly drinking incredible amounts of alcohol, but he also is very specific about which drinks and how much.  And the characters are always talking and joking about it.  It still feels a bit added; you could remove all the booze mentions and it would not impact the plot at all. 

The story here starts out in the morgue where two journalists and William Crane are waiting around to see if anybody will identify the dead body of a beautiful young woman.  This is all messed up when somebody sneaks into the cadaver room, kills the attendant and steals the body.  Crane was hired initially by a wealthy New York family who believe the body might have been that of their missing daughter.  Two rival gangsters believe it is the body of the moll they fought over.  Things get even more complicated and we get a raid at a taxi-dance hall, reefer addicted jazz musicians trying to get to the next level, multiple graveyard and morgue raids and fights and several parties.  There is a lot going on in this book!  Near the last third, it actually dragged out just a teeny bit too long for me, but it's still a lot of fun and the final climax in morgue is fantastic, involving hiding under the sheets on those rolling metal beds and then a fight in the dark.  

These books should be reprinted today, though they are full of that deep, assumed racism of the early 20th century which might be a deal breaker.  Characters use the n-word in every day conversation the way we might say Black or African-American today.  Even if you edited that out, these are probably a bit too niche to earn a proper reprint.  At least I hope somebody does a retrospective on Latimer's work.

As an aside, the marijuana scene is really wild.  It's a religious ritual where the musicians sit in a circle and chant certain sayings to certain gods, trying to get to the next level.  It requires multiple joints apparently as I guess the weed was much lighter back then.  It can't be a coincidence that in the scene where they are getting ready to go to the back room of the bar where the reefer party is going on, the bartender rings them up and the change is exactly 4.20 can it?!

 

This book is quite lovely. Printed in 1944, the paper quality is quite good and it has beautiful bright red cardstock pages inside the front and back covers.  Below is the promotion for their books for soldiers program which was responsible for both lots of reading from vets coming back from WWII as well as popularity for the various crime and action genres.  In the following pages are lists of various books you can order with quotes from real soldiers appreciating the program. It's very cool.

46. One Pair of Hands by Monica Dickens

I stumbled upon a Monica Dickens book a couple of years ago and brought it out to the family seat to read during the xmas holidays.  My mother and sister immediately glommed on to it, one of them took it to read, then passed it on to the other and it never made its way back to me.  Typical.  They loved it so much that they started looking for her other books and this was one they got that I stole back.

It's a biographical telling of the year and a half that Dickens, born into a genteel family and bored with life, decided to get a job as a domestic in the role of the cook.  She recounts in a light and entertaining way each of the houses where she worked (from bourgeois apartments in London to country family estates).  She is admittedly not great at her job but does really try hard and improves.  It's not laugh out loud funny, but it is, as they say, thoroughly delightful and I would add, quite readable.  She has an excellent way of describing the worst kind of people in a way that is damning and yet excusing at the same time.  A large part of her enjoyment in the experience, which she shares with us, is the eavesdropping of the people for which she works.  Some of them are just awful, whereas others, particularly the last family, are quite loveable.

There isn't really anything deep here beyond perhaps a very nice anthropological exploration of the evolving relations between the classes in the context of domestic service in England at the beginning of the 20th century (it was written in 1939).  Underneath, though, you really do see how hard this work is.  You have to have a significant skill set (cooking is huge but also cleaning those old houses required all kinds of knowledge and techniques) but more importantly be really efficient and organized.  It's one thing to make a meal for your own family (a decent enough amount of work), but with these jobs, everything has to be presented correctly and with the exact right stuff.  It's kind of like running a private restaurant, not to mention that you have to be up before everyone else to get the stove running to make the hot water to prep breakfast.

I really enjoyed this book and will now have another name to look for in the gasp literary section of used book stores!

45. Green River High by Duncan Kyle

I went through my past reviews of Duncan Kyle and at least twice, probably 3 times, I referred to him as a poor man's Desmond Bagley.  I need some new material!  Well I always meant that in terms of perception and now after having finished Green River High, I am discarding it altogether.  Duncan Kyle is good.  He's real good.  I was almost weeping with joy at the setup in the first few pages.  George Hawke Tunnacliffe is at a turning point in his life, where he is about to be promoted to head clerk at the bank where he works and is extremely reluctant to take that step, fearing being stuck in the mediocre stability of such a life.  On his way to work on the day that he will have to decide whether to accept the promotion or not. he is delayed by an old man on the bus getting sick and because of that interrupts a bank robbery at his own bank.

Of course, Tunnacliffe has a background in the army and by foiling the robbery, he becomes a minor celebrity.  This scene in the hospital, where he is talking to his female doctor is the stuff that I absolutely love about good British men's fiction. 

Of course being a hero doesn't help this guy!   And I just love the "you're rather dangerous" with the subtle implication that the doctor is attracted to him, yet still professional herself.  This is what America so often struggles with, the understated nature of the true badass (Asia gets this as well).  Of course, the military background with the rugged but loved superior officer.  It's just all so awesome.

Because of his public exposure, two old contacts of his WWII pilot father reach out to him, each with intriguing, inter-connected opportunities stemming from his father's disappearance in SE Asia at the end of the war.  From then, the story is pretty classic well-researched exploration and struggles in the jungles of Borneo (with a side tour of action in the Essex hills).  There is one great wrinkle in the character of Mrs. Franklin, prim and proper churchgoer who was also a nurse in those same jungles and is a total badass in her own way.  She's a great character that really elevates the story.  Straight-up banger.

On a consumerist note, I really love these Fontana wrap-around covers.  I'd love to have a complete set in good order.  Here is a great site with each of them laid out flat.  Props!

44. The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji

This is another classic in the Japanese honkaku school, I believe actually shin honkaku, or new orthodox/traditional where the authors recreate the "fair play" mysteries of Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, etc. that the reader has all the clues to figure out the mysteries themselves.  This one is hardcore into the classics as the main characters are a group of university students who are also members of the mystery book club and give each other pseudonyms of different classic authors (Carr, Ellery, Van Dine, Orczy, Agatha, etc.).  There are several tropes here that are quite common in much of the Japanese media we get translated in North America: the group of young people isolated on an island, the sad loneliness of the loser kid but the overall style and atmosphere is more straightforward and realistic.

The plot is that 7 members of the mystery club are going to spend a week on a small island that is infamous because the owner who was an eccentric architect built a mansion which then was the site of at least four people being murdered and the building burned down.  One of the students uncle, a real estate agent, ended up buying the island and let the kids stay in the remaining ten-sided building.  For them it is kind of an adventure, but little do they know somebody is planning an elaborate revenge against them.

There are two narrative lines in the book, one with the students on the island first just exploring and being themselves but then dealing with each of them being murdered one by one.  The other narrative is another student who had quit the club who received a threatening letter.  He starts investigating and we learn about the history of the architect and start to piece together what happened before on the island.

At first, it felt a bit wooden.  The characters used their nicknames and it took me a while to get a sense of who they actually were.  Characterization is not strong throughout the book as the emphasis is on the puzzle, but it does get more human as the trauma of the murders starts to impact them (and eliminate them so there are fewer to try and remember).  The mystery is layered and elaborate and I really got into it by the second half.  It's a page turner for sure.  I'm hopeless at figuring these things out, I finally started to cotton just when the author wanted me to.  It's a lot of fun and I can't understand why all of his books are not translated into English.