51. A Quiet Life by Beryl Bainbridge

I picked up this book in Amsterdam with the weird feeling that my wife might like it. I ended up reading it because it was thin and I've been enjoying the British writers a lot these days. Now I am not sure that I would recommend it to my wife. A Quiet Life is about a young adolescent growing up in a dysfunctional family in postwar Britain. It's very well-written, but wow is it unpleasant. I have a kind of mild crush on British culture. This book was like discovering your crush has genital warts. Man, I forgot how totally depressing and crushingly class-conscious the British were (and probably still are, though it seems to have improved significantly). The boy is 15. His father and mother are in a constant passive-aggressive battle. They once were quite rich and lost it all and she is obsessed with maintaining the two livable rooms in the small house completely clean so the family spends the whole time cramped into the back kitchen. The daughter is "creative", doesn't where shoes and goes out every night to meet a German POW. The son is trying to hold all this together, desperate to try and prevent his parents from getting into conflict, totally shamed by his sister's behaviour. He gets in a suppressed fury when she does anything that might call attention to him or the family.

In short, it is almost entirely depressing. There is one light moment when the parents laugh about something an unannounced guest said. It's so deftly done and well captured, that it made me smile. Bainbridge is clearly a talented writer. But other than that moment and a dark but enjoyable moment when the father flips out and decides to burn a chair that he is always bumping into, it's basically non-stop bourgeois angst of the most annoying kind. Even in the British kitchen sink genre, there is always at least a rebellious energy, a certain anarchy as well as an appreciation for the rich social culture of the working classes. Here it is just all blandness and suppression.

Even worse, as the book goes on you see that the most sympathetic character is the sister. She is revealed to be sort of creative and fun-loving. The whole book seems like an attack on the brother (who really is a pill, dude, just get over it!) and I see that Beryl Bainbridge actually did have a German POW lover, so I wonder if this book isn't her own angry woman attack. It sounds like her works matured and broadened in scope, but A Quiet Life just seemed like a lashing out and though well-written, I must condemn it.

50. The Roald Dahl Omnibus

As I have previously revealed, one of my techniques to keeping the numbers up in this 50 Books game is to have a book of short stories going, where you read a story in between novels. This was the case with the Roal Dahl Omnibus which I picked up at a moving sale of an acquaintance. However, Dahl has such an enjoyable prose style and his stories are so intriguing that I would often end up reading two or even three stories in a row before turning out the light.

These are dark and sometimes even nasty little stories, but the twists are often quite subtle, gently slid in to the reading so you don't even realize they are there until the story comes to an end. I think my own expectations played a role, because I often was waiting for some big twist or climactic ending, a feeling I think spurred by the intrigue of the stories' set-ups. However, once I realized that there wasn't going to be a big bang of a reveal, I settled down to enjoy the subtler stuff going on underneath.

A lot of the stories tend to deal with an individual who has some behaviour trait or assumed understanding of the world who has it turned around often for the worse. Revenge hovers throughout many of the stories and a certain cruelty, more often than not to women. It is difficult, though, to categorize these stories, as there is such a range of situations and subject matters (though they are all contemporary and in the civilized english speaking world, generally of the middle and upper classes). Many of the stories were published in mainstream manly magazines of their time like Playboy and Esquire.

A very enjoyable read. My favourite story is Royal Jelly. You should read that one alone if you can.

49. When the Tripods Came

This was a nice little find, something I've been keeping my eyes out for a while. It's a prequel to John Christopher's well-loved and much-read Tripods trilogy. He wrote it in 1988, many years after the trilogy. I don't know if this is true, but I have read in two places that other science fiction authors, particularly Brian Aldiss, scoffed at the low-tech nature of the tripods and didn't believe that they would have been capable of taking over the world without even having infrared. A pretty annoyingly geeky critique, if it's true. The story goes that Christopher wrote When the Tripods Came in response. In your face, sci-fi geeks!

I'm glad I didn't know anything about that backstory when I started reading it. It opens with two boys on a camping trip, hiding in a farmer's barn, when they hear the thumps of an oncoming tripod. They watch as it snags and captures the fleeing farmer, whips the family dog into the ground and destroys the farmhouse. Then the military comes and quite easily destroys the tripod when it tries to lift the tank. Later, the boys learn that 3 other tripods had landed on the planet and they were all easily destroyed. The tripods become a bit of a laughingstock (emphasis is made on how awkward they look when they walk). There is even a TV show for children, which starts to become quite popular, even amongst adults.

Things start to get weird when the protagonist notices how angry his sister gets when he forgets to record an episode of the Trippy Show. She completely loses it. Soon the Trippy show starts spawning a social movement of people called Trippers. They start to migrate out of cities and gathering in large groups in the country (mimicking a hippy movement in some ways). Again, I stop going into any more detail, because the deliciousness of the book is how the Tripod conspiracy unfolds. Even in a fairly short young-adult novel, Christopher's very dark view of mankind comes through and he is extremely effective at creating the atmosphere of real dread when a previously open society starts to tighten things down.

It's a very quick and entertaining read and definitely worth it if you have read the original trilogy.

Hey also look what I discovered: The entire trilogy was serialized in comics form in Boys Life in the '80s. It's never been collected, but you can still find them on Google Books. Even better, this dude collected the scans in order on his blog here at the Haunted Closet blog. Nice work!

48. Whit by Iain Banks

The only other Iain Banks book I have read is The Wasp Factory and I liked it okay, but didn't love it. That was before I discovered the genius of Iain M. Banks, most of whose Culture novels I've read (though I am fast falling behind having not read his last two). It turned out that several of my international colleagues had quite good taste in books and several of them recommended Whit as one of the better Iain Banks books. I happened to find it at a used bookstore in Amsterdam (though I doubt this book is hard to find).

It's the story of a young girl, Isis (and a whole bunch of middle and surnames finally ending in Whit) who is a member of a peculiar but pretty happy-seeming sect in Scotland. They are kind of like the Amish, because they are forbidden to use technology, but they are also pretty mellow about sex and licentious behaviour. The heroine is actually a very important figure in the sect, as she, being born on a leap year and having the ability to heal is the next in line to be the leader when her grandfather, who is also the founder, dies.

The catalyst for the plot is that Isis's cousin, who is a successful concert performer sends a letter saying she is leaving the sect and won't return to perform for an important upcoming festival. Isis is sent out to London to find her and to try and bring her back. The first half of the book follows Isis, who is very capable and self-assured, but also utterly inexperienced with the modern world (naive is the word that comes to mind, but it wouldn't be right because she is well aware of the potential dangers and evils out there), on her journey. That story is interspersed with Isis slowly revealing how her sect works and its history.

As she gets closer to her cousin, she starts to learn strange things and the second half of the book follows her as she looks more closely at her sect and starts to unravel the truth behind its background and also strange things that have been going on there under her nose all this time. I'm being very vague because I really don't want to give anything away. It's a very engaging and fun book and you get caught up in both parts. In the first, it is just a great adventure of a headstrong fish-out-of-water character in modern Great Britain and she gets caught up in several quite fun situations and handles them in a very entertaining way. In the second part, you really want to know what is going on and you very much sympathize with Isis. It was a hard book to put down and I cranked through its 400+ pages in 3 days, even prioritizing work errands that I knew would have me waiting so I could finish it.

I'm not sure if Banks is saying anything too deep here. It's just a fun ride. The first half reminded me of Isabelle Allende, where adventure is found in the story of a normal but peculiar person in the normal world.

Amsterdam is for (book) lovers!

A happy used book nerd!

I had the good fortune of getting sent to Amsterdam for a work conference and I took advantage to stay another 5 days after doing the tourist thing with my wife. I was so busy leading up to the trip, that it didn't dawn on me that there could be some serious used book potential in this northern european city with many expats and lots of anglo traffic. My wife had already done some excellent research and asking some of my well-read colleagues who work in Amsterdam helped as well.

My first stop was The Spui (pronounced spow), which is pretty centrally located on the tram line (though that city is so labrynthine, that getting from the stop to the actual square a distance of maybe 100 metres is not obvious at all). It's a square and every Friday they have booksellers. There are also several large english-language bookstores right near there as well. The American Book Centre is almost entirely new stuff (and quite an excellent selection and layout) but they have a tiny shelf of used books that is really a treasure. Super cheap prices and some good stuff. I found a Duncan Kyle and a Sven Hassel, each for a Euro.

I was particularly excited by the stalls, though. The emphasis was more on art books and they did have way too many english classics (snoooze, like those are hard to find), but there were two stalls with a lot of good paperback genre fiction. One in particular was exactly what I was looking for: an older gentleman dressed sensibly and smartly, but slightly shabbily who totally knew his crime fiction. He told me that John Christopher was out of vogue now and it would be very hard to find anything but his young adult novels. We had a good discussion about C.S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian, which was joined by another book browser. They both agreed that Forester was the real deal, but the vendor drew the line at the browser's attempts to make O'Brian seem like a bit of an imposter. The vendor did have an entire series of naval fiction by some real impostor that he said he was ashamed to carry (but I guess they sold okay). I ended up getting Commander Hornblower and another WWII Forester book. He also strongly recommended me Ross Thomas (I was attracted by the cover) and he was definitely on point with that recommendation. Prices were kind of what one expects in this day and age except inflated by the high price of living in Europe, so like 4 Euros a book. A very satisfying start to my Amsterdam tourist experience!



The other good place to check out is the Book Exchange. A pretty classic looking used bookstore that had tons of promise. I was very psyched just walking in there.

Alluring, no?

Unfortunately, despite a decent mystery and sci-fi section, I found nothing in paperback that really interested me. I did find a shelf of hardbacks and found a nice edition of Anarchaos. It was some kind of reprint, because though it was a first edition, it had Donald Westlake as the author. Still, I am glad to have it finally. The guy working the desk was friendly, but a bit distant when it came to actual discussion about books. He was forthcoming about how they got books and the history of the store. As we were talking, I noticed three stacks of fruit boxes filled with books. On the top of one was a very promising box indeed. I could see several british paperbacks with the kinds of covers and paper that I know could spell quality and I really wanted to look through. Unfortunately, all the boxes were of books that had just been sold to someone else (another bookseller presumably). The guy was a bit cagey on this point (probably more out of motivation of avoiding adding any work to his life of standing behind the counter). I kept eyeing the box and seriously considered just stealing it. Maybe getting my wife to get the guy to help him in the back and then just grabbing the 40-box and running into the Amsterdam streets where I don't know my way at all. It just seemed crazy enough to work. I'm an ethical guy and would have found a way to pay the store back. As these thoughts were running through my mind, the guy started doing some re-arranging, moving the boxes around and put the one I was eyeing on the bottom of the pile! I guess I didn't case the joint subtly enough. I came back a couple days later and the boxes were all gone. Strike while the iron is hot, man! I could be on the lam now in Central Europe, trading rare paperbacks on the black market to buy some charred rat on a stick, clinging to the two Samuel Youd novels, refusing to give them up even though I desperately need some boots to make it through the snow to get around the checkpoint! Ah, lost opportunities.

When will this discrimination finally end!

47. Commodore Hornblower by C.S. Forester

I probably should not have read this book. The gentleman who sold it to me was very persuasive and said it was one of the best of the series. For those of you who don't know, C.S. Forester is Patrick O'Brian of his day and more. His Horatio Hornblower series are considered the true classics of British naval fiction and some may even consider O'Brian a bit of a pretender. I shouldn't have read Commodore Hornblower because it is quite far into the series and it makes a lot of references, both about stuff that actually happened and Hornblower's own change in perspective and outlook that I think would have been much more satisfying and rich had I arrived there along the same path as the main character himself.

Well blow me down, I just did a bit of perfunctory research and it turns out that the books are not written in chronological order of Hornblower's life and that Commodore Hornblower is in fact the 4th book (of 10 and a partially written one). So maybe I'm fine. Also, ten novels is a lot more digestible than the twenty of the Aubrey-Maturin series, so it is conceivable that I could read this entire series. Also, when I say digestible, I also felt that, at least in this one novel, the terminology was much lighter than in the O'Brian books. A lot of Commodore Hornblower takes place on land (they are stationed at Riga to defend a siege by Napoloenic forces), so perhaps the other books are harder to parse. I found the relations between the characters in the one Patrick O'Brian book I read to be much richer and more complex, but I also felt lost for a lot of the naval warfare stuff, which is something I actually do want to enjoy. With this book, I found it much easier to understand what was actually going on and there are some tricky miilitary maneuvers, including a cool long-distance mortaring of a trapped french cutter that normally would have been safe in a friendly harbour.

I didn't really mean to make this review a comparison between the two series, and it is specious at best since I've only read a single book from each. On its own, Commodore Hornblower was engaging, entertaining and a great read. It has excellent British mettle, great strategy, even a bit of sex and some rip-roaring adventure. Thoroughly satisfying. It has given me a taste for more.

46. First Blood by David Morrell

Looking back through the last month or so of books I've read, I realize that I have just read 3 books in a row from the early 70s (Syzygy from '73, The Porkchoppers from '72 and now First Blood from '73) and I just tore through all three of them. I'm starting to wonder if this isn't my wheelhouse of genre fiction. The Parker series by Richard Stark (who just crushed the crime genre landscape) comes to its brilliant conclusion in 1974 and I'm sure if I go through my past reads, I'll find some more. It's interesting, because I otherwise generally consider the popular culture in that period to be pretty frickin' terrible. The music sucked for the most part (it was the heigh of AOR FM radio rock), Hollywood was at its nadir (and I'm no fan of the supposed "auteur" cinema of that period either) and of course fashion, architecture and interior design were about as terrible as it will ever get (famous last words right there). So I wonder why the writing is so good for me?

When I first saw this paperback, the cover really grabbed me (how cool is that drawing of Rambo so small in the upper right hand corner above the stark letters of the title; great layout). But I assumed it was a novelization of the movie (which I actually only saw this year for the first time and really enjoyed). When it turned out to be an original novel, I decided to pick it up. Another solid move. My instincts have really been strong this year! (Not to give myself too much credit, as a teeny bit of internet research will show you that this book is quite well respected.)

What I enjoyed about the movie (and what I hadn't expected due to my impressions of the later Rambo character) was its counter-culture attitude. Rambo is basically a hippie in the first part of the movie, a drifter who wants to do his own thing but gets harrassed by the petty authority of a small town sheriff. It's very lefty for the first two-thirds until the bizarre deus ex machina pro-military ending (which presaged the next two jingoistic films).

The film coloured my reading of First Blood and though the basic set-up is the same, thematically it is very, very different, much subtler and much more nuanced. Rambo is a sympathetic character at the beginning, but so is the sheriff. Rambo is also kind of a cypher and you don't really understand (nor do you sympathize with him entirely) why he pushes back so hard against the sheriff, who is actually kind of doing him a favour when he drives him across town. He also does it in a fairly decent way at first. But Rambo keeps on pushing.

The other major difference is that Rambo really does kick some serious ass. He kills tons of people (and dogs and a fucking innocent owl for christ's sake!) in the book and does so coldly and brutally. By the end, he goes totally hogwild, making the movie look like Terms of Endearment. The novel is about a human trained for war who is let loose in a civiilian society that is not prepared to handle him. It is clearly a reaction to the returning vets from Vietnam and touches upon that theme in a much darker and more complex way than the movie (you could also make an argument that Rambo is a metaphor for American imperialism). It's so dark that at times it was almost unpleasant for me to read. But it is also an intense and exciting manhunt story with all kinds of cool techniques as well as great use of the landscape. I suspect that the famous mud wall scene from Rambo: First Blood II was taken from a scene in this book.

I found this awesome snippet from the wikipedia page on David Morell: "Morrell is a graduate of the National Outdoor Leadership School for wilderness survival as well as the G. Gordon Liddy Academy of Corporate Security". How do you get into that school?

45. The Porkchoppers by Ross Thomas

This was recommended to me by a bookseller at the Stui in Amsterdam where they have a book market every Friday (more on this visit when I get the picture from my wife's camera). He said that you always knew there is a real intelligence behind Ross Thomas' stories. It had a tough look to it and the opening sentence (which I always check when deciding on a book) was very strong indeed: "They were old hundred-dollar bills, a little limp now, even a little greasy, and one of them had a rip in it that somebody had neatly mended with a strip of Scotch tape."

The Porkchoppers is the story of a union election, told mostly through the eyes of its current president, though it has a big cast of characters and spends some time with each of them. This truly is a novel told in the omniscient voice, except for one small mystery that holds it all together. It almost felt a little removed to me, the way the perspective jumps from location to location, coldly (and richly, I must add) describing each character, their background, their hidden foibles, their own take on the situation. But it builds up a real momentum and the characters are all so engaging that its hard to put down. The president is a total alcoholic, barely able to make it past noon without being blotto, but he is still very charismatic and has a certain driving will. A lot of the action is him going from campaign stop to campaign stop, supported by his advisors, handlers, wife and son. These scenes paint a complex and entertaining picture of the big union machine of the early 70s, all the corruption and politics. Only adding to the cynicism are the scenes of the real power players who are competing in the background to pull the strings and make sure their money wins out. This goes all the way up to the White House and paints a very bleak picture.

I really enjoyed this book and am really appreciative of the Dutch bookseller with excellent taste who steered me to Ross Thomas. He is definitely on my list. Great stuff.

44. Syzygy by Michael G. Coney

I'm proud of finding this little book. I picked it up in Winnipeg two years ago (tempus fugit!) based solely on the neat cover, British heritage and publication date (1972). I was not disappointed. It takes place on a human colony that is mostly made up of water. I really enjoyed the setting, because the science fiction in it is subtle, it could almost be Australia, if it were settled in the 70s. The issues are more about how the settlers have adjusted to the new world after two generations, the conflicts between the people at the regions and the distant administrative center. The protagonist is a marine scientist who works at the local research station. There is a slight divide between the people from the station and the locals, whose economy is mostly based on fishing. Every 52 years, the six moons of the planet align and weird things happen. What actually happened the last time is mostly lost in history, but there were tales of people losing control, riots and murders. The human behaviour is somehow connected to the biology of the planet and the book is the story of the hero and others figuring this out while they also slowly deal with their own crazed behaviour. I don't want to give away too much, but it has to do with a slow awakening of a telepathy that allows one to feel the emotions and thoughts of others. The problem is that you don't realize you are reading their thoughts and their hidden feelings, especially their negative ones, come out to you so directly, you think you are hearing them. And it gets worse from there.

What made the book enjoyable for me is that the characters are all very well portrayed and you get a great sense of this claustrophobic community and how easily it could all go really ugly if everybody's worst thoughts were revealed and amplified. It does have a particularly 70s British pessimism to it that I love reading about but don't necessarily adhere to myself.

The internet tells me that Syzygy is an astronomical term referring to the alignment of three or more celestial bodies. It also tells me that Michael Coney was quite prolific and lived in Victoria, B.C. until his death in 2005. That means we were in the same town for 4 years! I'll keep an eye out for other works by him.

43. Three-Ten to Yuma and other stories by Elmore Leonard

If you want a good read with a strong moral backbone that will give you some feeling of righteous satisfaction, pick up any Elmore Leonard western. I snagged a bunch of his westerns last year and this sat on my on-deck shelf for a while before I finally took it with me on my trip to Amsterdam, thinking it would make for great plane reading. I had held off mainly because it was short stories and I tend not to like reading one after the other when I am at home. I was right about this being a great travel book, because I devoured it and even convinced my wife to read one of the stories (Jugged, in which a young kid gets thrown into a cell with a serious criminal), which she quite enjoyed.

Each of these stories was a little snippet of life in Elmore Leonard's wild west, where scary violent men are everywhere but someone with a bit of grit and courage and the will to do what they think is the right thing can sometimes just win out. Skills and training are also important here, almost to a heroic level, where one man can size up another and know he is an expert by how still he is. Really good stuff.

42. The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson

I picked up this book in the Eastern Townships at an antique shop among a mostly complete collection of Airmont Classics paperbacks. It was a beautiful collection in great shape, but this was the only one that interested me so I took it out from its brethren. It had been there for quite a while and I doubt a collector was going to pick up the entire thing. I hope not because I left the book at a bed & breakfast in Amsterdam for some other lucky reader to find.

As a kid I read and was read to Kidnapped and Treasure Island and loved them. The Black Arrow is an adventure that takes place during the War of the Roses. The hero is Richard Shelton, a young knight under the rapacious and immoral knight Sir Daniel Bracklely, who unbeknownst to Shelton was responsible for the murder of his father. The politics are confusing at first (especially since everybody keeps changing sides) and the language is written in I guess what is a 19th century american interpretation of 16th century British country jargon. It's very rich and fun to read, but much slower to read than what we are used to today. It makes me wonder if Kidnapped and Treasure Island are written in a more straightforward manner, because I remember having no trouble as a youth parsing the dialogue. It took me about a third of the book before I really caught the rhythm and style of the language, but then I really got into it. It makes for fun reading and also demonstrates how much we have lost in today's Orwellian and Strunk & Whitian straightforward style.

It really is a rip-roaring adventure with a moving romance at its heart. There is lots of great bow & arrow action, excellent woodsman skills and intriguing political machinations. This is just rock solid stuff that many of today's writers (especially of action screenplays) could benefit from. It's also motivated me to look up Kidnapped and Treasure Island and re-read them as an adult.

41. Deluge by Richard Doyle

I picked this one up on a whim at S.W. Welch who was having a dollar sale. There were a few '70s disaster thrillers, many of them with an environmental theme, but this one had the best cover. I'm a huge fan of post-apocalyptic novels, so I should also like the disaster genre, but for some reason I'm wary. I guess I feel like the latter just don't take it far enough, but I could be basing that on my experience with the classic disaster movies of the 70s (Towering Inferno, Earthquake, The Swarm, etc.). I went through a phase of watching them and always found them enjoyable, but they were ultimately so soft and lame in the way that most '70s media was. As you can see, though, the cover here seems to take the flooding pretty over the top and that was enough to sell me on it.

It was a good choice. Deluge is a solid, entertaining disaster thriller in the mold of Desmond Bagley. Even better, it doesn't pull any punches. The main theme of the book is the inability of modern society to mobilize and prepare itself against potential disasters, with the short-term perspective of selfish politicians being the main individuals responsible. The protagonist is an engineer responsible for management of the Thames. Right at the beginning of the book, his project to put in a large breakwater at the head of the river is blocked by a municipal politician looking to get favour with a cost-conscious national government. That politician is a very nice character to hate and becomes especially hateful when he takes the call of the engineer's wife and tells her that the storm is already dying down and there is no reason for her not to go into the lower part of the city to her artist studio.

The first third of the book is a procedural build-up, describing in detail how the various municipal bodies work to inform and prepare the population against the potential of the Thames breaking its banks. They base their decisions on a massive storm in the north and growing reports of flooding, but because communications are inconsistent (due to the severity of the storm), they don't get the real data on how much the water has risen until it is too late.

At that point, the novel has already established several locations, including a subsidized apartment building, a metro train (with the hero's wife on board), a hospital, a construction site where a homeless man has gotten trapped and so on. The novel is well-paced and though the procedural section gets a bit confusing, you are pretty much caught up in the tension. It moves forward like the inevitable flood waters, if you will allow me the obvious metaphor.

When the flood finally comes, it really is some satisfying disaster porn. Shit gets seriously destroyed and tons of characters that you kind of thought Doyle was taking time on because they would eventually get rescued actually end up getting totally killed. One after the other. It's quite awesome. They recently made a movie out of this and it's a shame because it sounds like it totally sucked. It would make a great movie and you could do it today with all the CGI. But you would need some decent writers and smart producers and it doesn't sound like that was the case. Too bad.

In any case, a really enjoyable read and it has awakened me to the potential of the '70s disaster genre in written form. I'll have to try another one, perhaps even dare to read an American author.

40. A Rocket for the Toff by John Creasey

I'm a fan of old-time radio (or OTR as it is known among aficionados) and the Radio Detective Story Hour is a pretty good podcast to get a nice sampling of OTR shows. They played a 6-part BBC series called Inspector West at Bay that was an effective and entertaining Scotland Yard procedural right in my wheelhouse. I did a bit of research and found out that Inspector West was a popular series by John Creasey, who was one of the most prolific detective fiction writers in the 50s and 60s in the UK.

I found this Toff book at a garage sale right around the corner from my house and picked it up. The Toff is an upper class lad in London who is a fulltime amateur detective. He has trophies in his library of past victories over crime and an older manservant who is an expert fighter and driver among other things. The story begins with a girl at Heathrow waiting for her fiancé who is coming back from a two-year business trip to the States. She is attacked by a dog and gets knocked unconscious. When she comes to her, fiancé is nowhere to be found, even though his plane emptied. The airport doctor takes her to the Toff for help in finding her fiancé and figuring out what happened to her.

It's an intriguing story and it moves along at a steady clip with no shortage of action. Once you start to see the pieces to the puzzle, the mystery isn't all that interesting and there is a certain distance from the antagonist. He is cool and on top of everything, with a superior air, and it renders him opaque. Interestingly, some of the way the story was structured reminded me of the BBC radio play (Inspector West at Bay). Interesting because he was famous for writing such a wide spectrum within the crime genre and that even the tone of his books was different depending on the sub-genre.

I probably wouldn't read another Toff novel, but it wouldn't hurt if an opportunity arose and I'm glad I read this one. I have another Inspector West novel in book form this time and am looking forward to that.

39. Millenium People by J.G. Ballard

I've read quite a few of Ballard's books and I rank him very high, but I'm not such a big fan of his later works and don't totally get the hype around that period. For me, it's his early post-apocalyptic books, The Empire of the Sun and High Rise that really stand out. But the pundits seem to consider Crash the peak of his career. I picked up Millenium People because the premise was so appealing. It's about a revolt by a bunch of upper middle-class people in London. It was an interesting read, but it felt bogged down by the constant, and arguably repetitive imposition of its themes into the story. And the story, unfortunately, lacked the energy and fervour it needed to carry those heavy themes along. High Rise is a very similar theme, but that story had such ferocious and unbuckled savagery that its premise is driven home organically. Here, I felt like Ballard kept interrupting me to remind of what he is really talking about. Furthermore, he uses way too many metaphors that don't seem to serve much of a purpose: "I could still taste the smoke in the doomed auditorium, rolling above my head like a compulsive dream" and "Hungerford? The name flitted through my mind like a trapped moth as we drove back to London."

The thing is, he is a really good writer, so even some of the seemingly meaningless prose is still often enjoyable to read. He does a good job of poking fun at the upper middle class and there is some pretty classic Ballardian weirdness, particularly the story about the nurse who masturbated the severely handicapped children in her ward. But I would not recommend this book unless you are a serious Ballard completist.

On a publishing/marketing note, the end of the book had some neat additions, I guess an initiative the publisher (Harper Perennial) was doing at the time. There is an interview with Ballard, a good analysis of the book that actually made me like it a little better and some recommended readings. I usually find this kind of stuff distracting, but here it was quite nicely laid out, easily digestible with some real information. I hope it did well for them.

38. The Jugger by Richard Stark

It has taken me a couple of weeks to sit down and write this review. As this is a blog, I reserve the right to be quick and sloppy about my reviews. However, I make an exception in the case of the Parker novels as that just wouldn't be respectful. Furthermore, each re-read gives me so much to think and write about that they must be treated seriously. Usually I am quite motivated to write my latest Parker review. This time, with the Jugger, I feel some strong trepidation. The Jugger was far better than I remembered it and I may be getting ready to argue that it might be the best book of the series, a potentially outrageous claim that may have fists banging on desks across the Parker-verse and leading ultimately to my expulsion from the Academy.

Before I read the Jugger on this go-around, my memory was that it was far from my favourite. I respected it, but it was just way too sombre and lacked a heist, so I couldn't really count it among the rest of the series. I realize now that I just wasn't old enough and hadn't read enough other noir and crime fiction when I last read it. Because to put it bluntly the Jugger is fucking awesome. Despite the lack of a heist, Westlake succeeds here in both revealing the profound potential for evil in the human soul and in delivering Parker as a cold angel of vengeance against that evil in a deeply satisfying, yet still ambivalent way.

The Parker series has cycles within it. Parker's cover gets blown and he has to deal with it. He deals with it and some of the fallout and then we get a few straight heist books. Then his cover gets threatened or blown again. For me, the deliciousness is in the heists. I love the planning, the preparation, the actual execution and the fallout. I used to feel that the transitional novels (the first book, The Hunter, definitely falls into that category and interestingly I didn't read it first) were a bit of a distraction from the true heist novels. In The Jugger, Parker goes to a small town in Nebraska because his old friend and contact-man, Joe Sheer has sent him a weird, desperate letter. Sheer is a retired safecracker, from the generation of heisters one before Parker. They worked together a lot until Sheer retired, where he now acts as a middleman for people looking for Parker. Joe makes sure the guy is cool and then gets in touch with Parker. With his knowledge, if he is compromised, Parker's fake identity could be blown.

So Parker shows up to this dry, baking hot small town and Joe Sheer is dead, a loser petty criminal that Parker knows is strangely in town and the local Sheriff, Captain Younger (once again, Westlake with the perfect names), is paying too much attention. Something is messed up and Parker simply by being there messes it up even more. In order to figure out what is going on and find out where he is compromised, he has to stick around the town and deal with all these losers.

Westlake is always tough and direct in the Parker books. In a few of them, he gets really tough with the reader and some nasty shit happens that leaves you with a nasty feeling in your stomach. However, it is usually a single sentence, just evocative enough to really freak you out. In The Jugger, he draws it out slowly and it is painful to read it as he unravels what went on: the psychological and physical torture of a poor old man who had finally found a restful way to end his days. It is brutal and you hate the guy responsible! And it just keeps getting worse and worse.

And while this backstory is being revealed to the reader, the pressure is also mounting on Parker. A smart and experienced FBI man comes to town and other random elements, possibly even more dangerous for Parker because of the difficulty in controlling them, start to appear on the scene. The reader is both agonizing over the fate of a good man and sweating Parker's future. However, very subtly, underneath that, Westlake is quietly revving up the Parker engine and deep down you know he is going to handle this situation.

Younger looked up, smiling his smug smile, tapping a finger against the list of names. "See that there? It wouldn't surprise me one bit if your name's down there. Don't think I ever bought that Willis name."

Parker looked at him, seeing him definitely for the first time as a dead man. "Let's get on with it," he said.

Younger's smile faded. Looking at Parker, his eyes began to get a little uncertain. He lowered his head, cleared his throat, and tapped the sheet of paper. "This is it, here," he said. "Never mind that other stuff, that doesn't matter. This is what matters."

Parker waited.

Right there, in the middle of your greatest anxiety as a reader, Westlake reminds us of the difference between a small-minded petty scumbag and a true badass. And we rejoice. (Or at least I did, pumping my fist and crying out "fuck yeah! Don't fuck with Parker!" and startling my wife in bed next to me.) Whenever Parker waits, somebody is going to get screwed.

The Jugger is also one of the stronger examples of what Westlake saw as true evil. It's not some mastermind in a cave full of slave-minions. Nor is it the big businessman or powerful politician. Rather, it is the small man who manages to rise just high enough in a small environment to get some authority. In the case of the Jugger, this is personified in the sheriff, the career military man who never did anything much but be in the right place, doing the right things and having a slightly clever mind. He is smart enough to take control of his surroundings but too stupid to have any sense of the bigger picture. Couple that with a lack of moral sense and you have a very dangerous and nasty man. This character appears often in the Parker books (Mal, from the Hunter being another prime example) but also in Westlake's other novels as well.

Furthermore, this evil functions best in a limited environment and the location in the Jugger presages the gangster-run town in Westlake's masterpiece, and the crescendo to the Parker series, Butcher's Moon. As an aside, I should mention how clear one can picture this town, the layout of the neighbourhoods, the way the streets look when viewed through the big picture windows, the still heat reflecting off the parked cars downtown. Westlake was one of the best at capturing a certain time and place in the American small town, one that exists in ever-shrinking pockets.

I suspect that there are a certain sub-set of noir fans for whom the Parker series is not the ultimate expression of crime fiction (shocking as that may sound to some of you). For those readers, The Jugger may well appeal to them much more than the rest of the series. It is probably the most purely noir of the Parker books, focusing more on the darkness of man's soul than the difficulty of switching trailers on a rig or dealing with Almas when planning a heist.

In any case, the Jugger is mandatory reading. Get on it.

37. H.M.S. Ulysses by Alistair Maclean

I respect Alistair Maclean, but I am not a huge fan. I always find his books a bit too realistic and straightforward, dealing often with espionage and management rather than the slightly over the top manly action that you get with a Desmond Bagley or Duncan Kyle. That is my impression anyhow, as I have never actually read any of his books until this one, which I picked up because it was just such a beautiful book and Nicholas Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea gave me a real taste for good WWII naval books.

Actually, Ulysses is very similar to the Cruel Sea, except that it details a single voyage, rather than a series. The Ulysses is the lead destroyer escorting a fleet of merchant ships from Scapa Flow to Russia at the height of the Nazi command of the sea. It is a brutal tale of attrition. The moment they get out into the open sea, they are battered by a harrowing winter storm. And from there it only gets worse, with constant Nazi sub and air attacks. The boat is sort of doomed from the start, as it suffered a mild mutiny and was forced out on this trip without rest as a punishment. So the men are already past the breaking point, except for the profound decency of their captain Valleray who holds them together and even manages to inspire them when they are at their lowest point.

If there can be said to be any kind of narrative in the book, beyond the voyage itself, the captain's role is probably it. But this book is more of a long series of anecdotes, giving us insight into the men at all levels of the ship. At times I lost track a bit of who was who and was even more lost by some of the nautical terms. But if it made it a less enjoyable read, I don't know, because I was just caught up in the brutal desperation of it all. War is hell and reading about life on those boats really brought it home. Just the constant cold (and really cold, making a Montreal winter look mellow) and total lack of sleep is hellish enough, let alone all the horror of war they had to face. I was reading this book during some uncomfortably humid moments here in Montreal and it really helped me to put the discomfort of the heat in perspective.

This is Maclean's first book and considered in some circles a classic tale of the merchant fleets in the North Sea during the Second World War. If that is of interest to you, then you should definitely read this book.

I also found some very cool historical flotsam among the pages, which gives some clues as to its history. It was in such good condition, I wonder if it had been purchased and not read or perhaps only read once?





You really need to click on the bookmark to see the bigger image of it. I guess it was a chain of bookstores in Montreal back in the 60s. [edit: a bit of research showed me that Classic Bookshops got bought up by W.H Smith which was then bought up by Chapters.) I love the cool 60s design, with the fingerprint. You can see the designer's name, Alan Harrison, in the upper left hand corner. I wonder what happens if I google him...

Judging by the receipt, the book was purchased at the airport, perhaps someone on their way back from a trip? (I bought the book at used bookstore here in Montreal). It was purchased weeks after I was born, along with what could be two other books. I wonder what they were?


Finally, there is a neat insert advertisement for a mortgage showing the classic 50s/60s suburban dream home.

36. Little Tales of Misogyny by Patricia Highsmith

My aunt gave this to me. It was the remnants of an art project/book giveaway. She said she didn't like it too much and I think that coloured my perception of it, as I started it and then found the short, impersonal parables to be too distancing. I was looking for an engaging narrative. Since I've been waiting in line at Fantasia, I picked it up again, thinking its structure would be good for short bursts of reading. Turns out that once I got into it, I couldn't stop! Ah, Patricia, how could I have ever doubted you?

Little Tales of Misogyny is exactly what the title states: a series of short vignettes, each one describing a different woman who encompasses a certain negative trait. There's the breeder, the slut, the perfectionist, the one who finds religion and so on. Each is told in Highsmith's cold, removed style and are quite damning. Though her style is distant, it manages to evoke emotion in the reader, though I imagine it depends on your political perspective. In my case, I found myself angered by the behaviour of many of the women in the stories, probably because they touched on bad characteristics of my own past girlfriends. Taken collectively, it truly is misogynist. Men are not portrayed positively either, but she paints them as fundamentally weak and passive and thus victimized by the females.

A great little find and another great read from Patricia Highsmith. I was hoping to move this book on, but it is slim and now will most likely get a place on the over-stuffed bookshelf.

35. The Black Mass of Brother Springer by Charles Willeford

I'm grateful to my friend John whose serendipitous discovery of my copy of this book and subsequent appreciation spurred me to re-read it. Back when Black Lizard was really doing its thing, I worked for a remainder book distribution company in Berkeley who had a connect with Barry Gifford. So we had almost the entire Black Lizard line in stock. During that period and after, which was my college years, I read a lot of the Black Lizard line, which opened my eyes to a very different world of the 50s than I had previously imagined.

I have a funny anecdote about Barry Gifford (who was the owner of Black Lizard press). Everybody at the warehouse hated him because supposedly he had come to drop-off a delivery of his books and somehow an altercation started, either with the boss or possibly the guys unloading the trucks. I suspect it was the former, as he wouldn't have been the first to have been royally pissed off by the management of that place. Anyways, the dint of it was that he supposedly started throwing boxes of his books at the workers who were unloading them into the warehouse. This was before my time there, but it was confirmed by a couple of guys. What was believable was that the Black Lizard books tended to be thin paperbacks and came in relatively small boxes (roughly a cubic foot or so) that you could throw at somebody.

True or not, Barry Gifford long redeemed himself in my eyes for bringing back to light so many great books and authors (I'm pretty sure Black Lizard deserves the credit for rightfully lifting Jim Thompson's literary reputation) and for one of my all-time favourite movie books "The Devil Thumbs a Ride and other unforgettable films" (pick it up if you ever find it).

So I had read The Black Mass of Brother Springer at least over 10, possibly 15 years ago and remembered it fondly, but had very little memory of anything that actually happened. It's a thin book and starts quickly. I was reminded how pleasurable it is to read these thin, quick-moving and intelligent books. In this story, Sam Springer is an accountant who has an itch to write. He succeeds in getting a book published, which allows him just enough money to quit his job, move to Florida and start writing full time. Unfortunately, he finds he isn't able to write with any productivity or financial success and soon his money starts to run out. Furthermore, his wife is not too happy in Florida (having left all her family and friends in Columbus). Quite early on in the book, he makes a series of snap decisions that culminate in him being the new minister of a small black church in western Florida.

I won't go too much more into the details of the narrative. More interesting is the protagonist himself. He starts out as an accountant with an itch for more but his behaviour is almost that of a seasoned con. He lies with ease, boldly manipulates complex social and political situations either for his own ends or just to stir shit up, he steals, he gets effectively physical when necessary and generally behaves like a mostly rational sociopath. Yet the dialogue in his head is almost as a passive observer to his own behaviour (and he explicitly talks about the power of his own voice and how it often seems to act of its own accord). It's a very strange juxtaposition, and one that was not uncommon to this generation of noir writers (Thompson, Goodis and a few others I'll need to re-read now). It also left me slightly removed from the narrative when I first read it. It just didn't seem believable to me. It still doesn't seem entirely believable to me. The protagonist is just too cold-blooded, too unafraid of the consequences of his actions (and they are serious). I can't tell if Willeford wants us to think he is a sociopath or if this is some kind of wish fulfillment fantasy. At the latter level, it really is quite effective. It's kind of an adventure book for the wannabe writer who would really wish to have the guts to live the kind of life he writes about.

What is funny is that the whole motivation for Springer to do everything he does is so that he can continue to write. But he doesn't write at all. When he does have the time to write, he can't get anything written because he has nothing to write about. When he does start living, he's too busy living to have any time to write. And the climax of the story is when his one published novel is basically revealed to be empty of any substance by an oracle-type character.

So though I still find a slight distance with the protagonist that puts the book one step from true immersion for me, at my advanced age, I really appreciate it much more. It's a rich, energetic book with a sympathetic but critical eye on humanity and a gentle, wry humour throughout. Definitely check this book out.

34. The Score by Richard Stark

The Score is the 5th Parker book and in some ways one of the most straightforward. The emphasis in this book is on the heist itself, the planning, the preparation, the execution, the getaway and the spoils. There is an "Alma", of course, but it's a surprising one. The first time I read The Score, I was totally blindsided by the complication and it was awesome. It is done so abruptly and you are so caught up in everything that is going on in the heist, that when it happens, it's a total double-take. You're like "Wait, what, did I just read that?" It's an awesome little moment and one that was lost to me this time around, as I already knew it was coming.

The Score is also the first Parker novel that has no direct narrative string to the betrayal that launched the series in the first place. This time he's simply in between jobs and one presents itself to him. It's a doozy and at first he doesn't want to do it. An outside connects with one of Parker's colleagues with a plan to rob an entire town. It's a small mining town nestled at the closed end of a canyon (where the mine is situated). There is only one way in and out. There's the mine payroll, two banks, a savings & loan, two jewelry stores and a bunch of other shops, all protected by a 3-man police shop, a fire station and a highway patrol station 2 miles south of town. Go in at night, take the whole town over and rob everything as fast as possible.

A job like this takes a lot of men and we get to meet a bunch of cool heisters, all with their specialties and personalities. A lot of these guys will show up later on in the series. Of all of Westlake's manifold writing skills, his work with names is the one that I find the most impressive. He manages to always find names that are evocative, appropriate to the period, but somehow always a little unique so you'd remember them. Paulus, Salsa, Littlefield, Wycza, Elkins and Wiss. Does anybody know how he came up with them? It also takes a lot of tools and planning and we get some juicy heist foreplay in The Score.

So it's a great read, with some textbook heisting techniques and the bang when it happens is awesome. But The Score doesn't quite resonate with me as much as it should. I think it lacks a certain intensity and Parker himself never really gets deep into the shit. Don't get me wrong here, this is a great book and still ranks in the top tier of any heist or crime books. But we're talking about Richard Stark here, the top of the top and as all is relative, there are going to be some of the books that aren't quite diamond perfect. The Score is an important volume, nonetheless, because it sets the rhythm of the books, where Westlake could just do a heist story without it having any connections to longer narratives. This also helps to underline Parker's raison d'être, which is fucking stealing shit. We know we aren't going to get bogged down in a bunch of stupid internal prevarication or mid-life crises. Parker is going to steal stuff to the best of his ability and the only issues he'll confront will be other people's.

There are two minor female characters in The Score who play interesting roles, both in the narrative and in the way Parker interacts with them.

Finally, the forward, by John Banville, of the University of Chicago edition was disappointingly weak. It's basically a broad overview with no new information nor interesting analysis. Some of his points I'd even take issue with, such as that the violence in Parker is "always quick and clean." Yeah, um, no it's not. It may sometimes be quick but there's nothing clean about the nasty feeling you get in your stomach when you read one of Westlake's quick lines describing some poor sucker's fate delivered by Parker.

I'll conclude on a positive note by sharing two great quotes from The Score. One is another awesome Westlake simile and the other is an example of the kind of information one wants to absorb when reading a Parker book.

He put his beach robe back on over his trunks, stuck cigarettes and matches in the pocket, and walked through the sand and bodies toward the hotel, which was squatting there like a big white birthday cake.

Littlefield leaned closer to him. "You're a young man, you can still learn. Pay attention to this. You can steal in this country, you can rape and murder, you can bribe public officials, you can pollute the morals of the young, you can burn your place of business down for the insurance money, you can do almost anything you want, and if you act with just a little caution and common sense you'll never even be indicted. But if you don't pay your income tax, Grofield, you will go to jail."

So cynical!

33. The Best of Fredric Brown (edited by Robert Bloch)

Fredric Brown was a prolific writer of science fiction in the 50s and 60s. He wrote for all the major magazines (and not just in the genre ghetto, but for Playboy and Esquire and so on), wrote books and screenplays (the episode "Arena" where Kirk has to battle that lizard dude is based on a Fredric Brown short story). I know him mostly from his novels (The Mind Thing is one of my all-time favourites). He is known for his humour and his really super short stories, like a page with some kind of clever twist. I'm usually lean away from short stories, but this Richard Corben cover (which depicts a scene from a story about the world's best hunter going after a yeti with a twist ending that made me laugh out loud) was just so awesome, I had to pick it up.

I'm glad I did because it was an enjoyable read. I liked the Yeti story. There was also a really good one about a printing press that started to learn. The problem for me with short stories is that just when you are getting into a writer's style, the story ends. So what I do is keep several books of short stories going and I read them when I am in between novels. So I actually started this book several years ago. I forgot a lot of the earlier stories, but a general sense of enjoyment remains.