59. Cybernia by Lou Cameron

This is another one that I picked up on a whim at Zoinks Music and Books in Toronto.  The design of this book hits my sweet spot.  I love the wacky but clear illustration and the choice of typeface and colours works for me.  The weird three (or maybe four) -eyed surveillance signpost on the cover even caught my daughter's eye, who asked me twice what it was about.  The image only symbolically represents anything that happens in the book as there is no Ridge or Centre streets, nor a signpost with a rubbery sphere with humanoid eyes atop it in the story.

The premise quite good.  A small town nestled in the remote forests of Norther New Jersey is run entirely by computer.  It does the maintenance, much of the security and manages all its own billing and paperwork. The protagonist, Ross MacLean is called there by his friend, who is starting to get paranoid that the town is out to get him.  Quite soon after the arrival, the friend is indeed killed in a freak accident.  I was hoping for some combination of The Demon Seed and The Corbin Affair but the book never really goes there.  There is a lot of early '70s engineering nerdiry that seems specific enough to suggest the author knew what he was talking about, but any science specifics are undermined by the inconsistent plotting.  It can't decide if it wants to be a thriller or a mystery and the one blocks the other, where we are guessing when it doesn't advance the story and everything is revealed too quickly and then we don't care.  There is also a lot of really dumb sexism which I can usually accept as an artifact of the time. Here the author seems to want to make a point of how woman can only push buttons and not understand any theory. It's honestly offensive. He also has to make a weird point of heterosexuality.  At one point, the town's elderly founder, a well-known theorist, invites Maclean to stay at his place, since he needs a place to stay and says "Don't worry, I'm heterosexual."  WTF early 70s?

There is a little bit of mayhem at the end where the programming of a sex robot gets wire-crossed with the town alarm system while all hell is breaking loose that is fun.  I also enjoyed learning about the Jackson Whites, but overall not a great book.  Too bad, because it sure looks beautiful!

I have found that Lou Cameron was an extremely prolific pulp author and comic book artist, who wrote the Longarm series (basically sex-western series, that I learned about from Paperback Warrior).

58. Spook Country by William Gibson

I found the hardcover, first edition (from 2007 so not a huge deal, but still) of this for $1 at Value Village on Bloor St. West in Toronto.  My nephew expressed zero excitement when I gleefully showed him that it was signed.  William Gibson is probably one of my favourite authors.  Neuromancer was a massive influence on the way I see the world and love science fiction today.  I suspect it hit me at such a vulnerable age that some of his style and outlook imprinted on me so that today I may lack a critical eye on his work.  All that is to say I really enjoyed Spook Country.  

I actually haven't read Gibson since I think Virtual Light, when it came out, though I have a vague memory of having also read All Tomorrow's Parties as well.  Now that I have been re-introduced to him, I am going to have to keep an eye out for his other books.  Spook Country is a moden-day spy story from 2007 where the tech is actually outdated today.  Despite that, Gibson delivers all the tech theory stuff in a really interesting way that makes this book a marker of that time with some interesting thoughts for the present.

Ultimately, it's just a cool spy story, not particularily epic in nature, but the cool characters and intriguing set up keeps you turning the pages.  It has 3 main characters, each their own storylines that will of course eventually collide.  Milgrim is the educated addict kidnapped by a mysterious operative who makes him translate intercepted Russian text messages.  Hollis is the ex-lead singer of a semi-popular '90s band turned journalist hunting down a virtual reality designer.  Tito is the young member of a Cuban-Chinese espionage/crime family trained by Castro's KGB allies.  The last is really cool, a migrant parkourist and expert in systema, the family's anti-surveillance technique, who is basically kept in the dark until his skills are needed.

It doesn't quite end as satisfyingly as one would like, given how compelling their set-ups are.  The world and the characters are so enjoyable that you nevertheless don't want it to end and can forgive the mellow conclusion. 

57. The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin

This was the Edmund Crispin that came so highly recommend.  I think by Kenneth Hite, but I can't remember exactly.  I actually bought this new at one of the big bookstore chains.  I like but did not love the other Crispin I had read, so approached this with moderate hopes.  After having read it, I better understand his deal now.  These books are supposed to be funny, which I don't think I fully appreciated with The Case of the Gilded Fly.  The Moving Toyshop is not a masterpiece.  It goes on too long and the interesting part of the mystery is revealed early on.  I think it's main raison d'etre though, is not so much the mystery but to showcase the town of Oxford and the kinds of characters that live there.

The book starts with Cardogan, a poet (clearly of the upper classes because though he struggles with money he somehow has a home and a servant) who feels like he wants adventure in his life.  He also wants to avoid a poetry tour of America that his editor is pushing on him.  He goes to Oxford but has to hitch a ride and then walk in late at night.  Passing a toy store with a door ajar, he decides to go in.  Upstairs, he discovers the body of a woman and is then knocked out.  When he wakes up, he is in a closet at the back of the building, which no longer houses a toy store but a grocery shop and the proprietor and the cops think he may be suffering from delusions due to the concussion.

Enter Gervase Fen, literature professor and don.  This begins a madcap adventure of deduction and college hijinks, much of which is quite funny.  I will not seek out Crispons book, but I may well take the next one I stumble upon. 

56. The Q Document by James Hall Roberts

I found this book at the super cool Eyesore Cinema on Bloor in Toronto.  My nephew and I were tooling around the streets as we are wont to do when we get together and found it open.  We had come here a couple years ago and seen a backroom late-night screening of The Howling II so I had always wanted to stop by.  I was quite pleased to see they have a small bookshelf of paperbacks for sale. I first thought this was some bad non-fiction exposé that was some actual substantive origin of the nonsense behind those qanon fucks.  My nephew, in his teenage certainty was like "No, it's fiction." and he was right.

It is a bit hard to categorize this book.  It's sort of a thriller but not really thrilling.  The story is about, Cooper an academic living in Japan in the early 60s who has recently lost his wife and daughter in a fire.  He now translates ancient documents for a brothel owner with a side business in trafficked antiquities.  The brothel owner brings him a strange set of documents that were smuggled out of China and appear to be quite valuable.  As Cooper digs into them, he discovers that they seem to be proof that Jesus Christ was just a charismatic rebel who died and was never resurrected.  At the same time, he gets connected with an 11-year old girl who was sold into the brothel and then escaped.    

So the existential theme here is can Cooper take the responsibility of verifying the document that disproves Christ, thus destroying Christianity.  The more practical matter is protecting the girl.  The two become opposed.  

It's a very well-written book and I found myself absorbed in the narrative.  The descriptions of Japan, including lots of train scenes and a ski lodge, were enjoyable and seemed to be fairly accurate.  There is a lot of reflection by Cooper and the Pulitzer prize winning war journalist who has lost her mojo that he alllies with.  I usually don't go for that kind of wanking but for some reason it worked here.  Finally, the bad guy, the brothel owner is just a great character.  Always super polite and verbose, while being weirdly clean and yet also somehow kind of disgusting.

The big reveal that resolves all the conflict felt a bit cheap, as the author breaks some basic premises established earlier in the book so you couldn't have figured it out yourself. Despite that, I put it down satisfied.  Not a masterpiece or anything, but a nice obscure find and a good read.

55. Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio by Derf Backderf

A friend lent me this graphic novel (same person who lent me Trashed and possibly even the Dahmer one; an excellent resource).  I plowed through it overnight.  It is thoroughly researched and does an excellent job of capturing what life was like on campus and in the town of Kent in the days leading up to the murder of 4 students by the National Guard in 1970.  It's really infuriating to read. Both because of the ignorance and authoritarianism of the time but also to know that the same kinds of assholes still have power and voices in America today.

Emotions aside, a graphic novel was an excellent way to enrich and remind me of the details of what went down.  It also really captures the horror of what it must have like to first have your campus taken over by redneck soldiers led by armchair fascists and then to have them actually open fire and gun down fellow Americans.  It is a period from which I have absorbed a lot of cultural and historical material, but now that we are living in a similar time of rupture, I realize that I had always treated it with some distance.  It's very scary to see your society fall apart and this comic captures that well.  

54. The Galton Case by Ross Macdonald

I think I haven't been fair in my own mind about Ross Macdonald.  It's not his fault that his name remains as a pillar of the detective genre while his wife, whom I consider a better writer, is only remembered by a minority of genre fans.  I am also tainted by the last book of his that I read that I found to be overly melancholic.  I found The Galton Case at Valu Village in Toronto for a buck so had to take it, especially with this cool cover.  This is a paperback on its last legs, with pages ready to fall out, but it got one more read out of me and my friend wants it afterwards.

And I am glad I did read pick it up because it was really good and reminded me why Macdonald has his reputation.  There is a lot of detecting in The Galton Case!  Macdonald is hired by a lawyer to find the long lost son of the elderly matron of a vast fortune.  The investigation takes him up and down California, from hipster jazz bars and seedy hotels in San Francisco to new housing developments in mid-coast towns.  The first half of the book is a very enjoyable hunt for this missing man.  Once he is sort of found and a rough narrative of what happened to him becomes clear, we then move into another mystery of what did actually happen to him and if the newly discovered grandson is indeed who he says he is. There is even a strong Canadian connection, with Macdonald maybe even making a brief detour back to his own personal background.

This is pretty much a classic P.I. book, with the obligatory beatdown and unconsciousness (Archer actually gets knocked out 3 times in succession, which really can't be healthy), multiple twists that of course bring it all back home and just a lot of great dialogue.  The way that he talks to people to get information from them is particularly well done here.  Great stuff, I am glad to have re-opened my reading to Ross Macdonald.

53. StreetLethal by Steven Barnes

I found this in the very pleasant Zoinks Music and Books on west Bloor street in Toronto.  I liked this store because it was small and open but the shelves were stocked with a nice selection of used paperbacks in sci-fi, fantasy and crime.  It wasn't trying to be anything fancy while remaining easy browse with a good selection.  I grabbed StreetLethal because of the trashy 80s cyberpunk cover. 

It was the kind of read I was looking for, a gritty urban dystopic sci-fi with lots of action.  Unfortunately, it is kind of a mess.  The story contains too much so that much is left poorly explained and narratives die off.  It starts off with Aubry Knight, a weightless boxer, who I thought was just a contender, getting  betrayed and sent to a maximum security prison underground in Death Valley.  This was all really cool, the scenes of future LA and the idea of the prison itself.  But even early on there is a lot of time spent on Aubry's psychology, which is really unclear.  Somehow he is a total badass, yet also a rube and underling in the criminal organization that betrayed him.  He escapes, which was also cool, and meets a prostitute with a plastiskin implant that also makes her somehow unique, yet she too is sort of on the skids.  

He goes for payback against the gang and they end up in an underground society of scavengers and a much grander plotline involving a new drug that works with couples.  This is where the story really started to drag for me as there is a lot of time spent on their relationship most of which was neither compelling nor convincing.  They are both supposed to be damaged and need to learn to love themselves, each other, the Scavenger society but they are fighting and then not.  Then the drug is introduced and turns them into total junkies in about two pages.  It all got quite tiresome.  The bigger problem was that I never really felt a foundation of either of their personalities or backgrounds, so their struggles which were already somewhat incoherent, held no weight for me.

There was some cool ideas here and the cyberpunk ideas and locations were quite interesting at times.  One really impressive thing was that the future tech rarely felt dated, which is tough to pull off. It also had some decent fight writing.  It's too bad some of the major elements were not well thought out, especially the drug, which was either socially devastating and yet also going to bring love into the world.  The acknowledgements section suggests that Barnes was quite connected, perhaps in LA, as he drops some big martial arts names (Danny Inosanto for one) and sci-fi authors.

Damn, I just realized after reading some reviews that the cover art depicts a white guy but Aubry in the book is black.  White supremacy, indeed.

52. Greenmantle by John Buchan

I am writing this review a few weeks after actually having finished reading the book.  I was having some trouble typing for long stretches so had to take a break.  I've read a few John Buchan books and it is only now that I am starting to understand the culture from which he comes that makes some elements of his book really weird.  It's not that complicated.  It's basically imperialistic jingoism but of a very specific period before we fully appreciated the enormity of World War I, so not always easy to parse for this modern reader.

Greenmantle is at its core a straight ahead espionage story.  Richard Hannae and a few of his other public school colleagues (and a rough-hewn Afrikaaner tracker) are sent into middle Europe in disguise to discover the source of rumours of some kind of prophet who will  unite the Moslem allies of Germany and turn the tide of the war.  There are several really exciting sequences such when he is on the run in the German countryside or trying to maintain his identity while being heavily scrutinized by an enemy agent.  There are also several really weird sections made weirder by the war is glory/just good sport that all men long for propaganda.  The reaction of the heroes to the female antagonist is also really twisted and full of bizarre sexual dread.  There is a very good piece here on the book that goes into in much better depth that is worth reading if you are interested.

One of the things that I found particularly difficult to swallow was how all these various British public school boys could not only go completely undercover in Arabic cultures, but also end up as their spiritual leaders.  It really is the stupidest kind of colonial "privilege".  Still, most of Greenmantle is really fun, just keep your critical monocle on as you read it.

51. Shoedog by George Pelecanos

Found in one of the many free little libraries in the residential stretches that grid Toronto.  While I love living in a bilingual world, it is nice to have only english books to choose from. On the street I was staying there were three free book boxes alone (although it was the longest block in Toronto).I've read quite a few of George pelecanos novels and always enjoy him. However I feel I have a pretty good sense of his style and I'm not always interested in checking any of his newer books out. I am not sure what compelled me to take this one but I'm glad that I did.

This is a standalone crime novel about a young drifter who gets picked up by an older drifter slash criminal. At first it seems like they're just going to ride together to the South but then the older guy has to stop off to pick up some money. The place they stop at it's a big well secured house in the middle of nowhere outside of Washington DC with a big doberman in acage. Instead of the money the two of them get caught up in a double heist of liquor stores in Washington.

There is a secondary character, an African American shoe salesman in DC who also participates in the heist. The Narrative goes back and forth between the initial Drifter and the shoe salesman (who has the nickname Shoedog, thus the title).  What was cool about this book is that it really was a self-contained heist novel.  There are even parts that felt a lot like a Richard Stark book and I wonder if Pelecanos' had that in mind when he wrote it. However there's a lot more introspection and feelings about the characters than would ever occur in a Parker novel.

The drifter character felt very much like a young white male fantasy of the criminal life. He comes from a lower middle-class background with a mother dead of alchoholism and a disciplinarian, unfeeling father..   instead of going to a good college as his father had hoped he joins the military where he learns how to kick ass and shoot guns and then spends much of his life travelling all over America and the world working in restaurant and having sex and sometimes cool conflicts. Where the novel begins he is as aimless as ever and maybe looking for something but all that really seems to get him off is that buzz when he starts to do something Criminal. So the job is very appealing to him.

The shoe dog character on the other hand is more grounded. He's a Black guy who is one of the best salesmen at the shoe store and augments his income by doing heist jobs on the side and other crimes. He's basically an honourable fellow and you want him to succeed.

It's a fast-paced easily digestible crime novel with some cliches that were well portrayed and wrapped up in a unique enough exterior that they were never annoying. I would also add that if you are a car person there are several a detailed descriptions of very specific old style hot rods that you might find enjoyable. This is a great read for the summer.
 

50. Double for Death by Rex Stout

I have been looking for a Rex stout book for quite awhile as I am a fan of the Nero Wolfe old time radio shows. So I was quite happy to discover this book in the free box in my neighborhood. However when I got it open and started reading it I discovered it wasn't actually a Nero Wolfe book. I was mildly disappointed but soldiered on. 

The protagonist here is Tecumseh fox and his setup was equally as cool as that of Nero Wolfe. Tecumseh fox lives in a beautiful old estate in upstate New York with a diverse mix of querelous servants and helpers. His driver and dogsbody for instance has the title of vice president of his company and he also has a housekeeper and cook with whom they seem to have a slightly tense relationship. He also has various guests who stay with him in times of need. He just seems to be the gentleman detective who has enough money to lead a very pleasant lifestyle not far from New York City and indulge in exciting investigations in and around New York City with a panoply of resources both financial and social.

I later read that this was the best of the Tecumseh fox stories the other ones were not quite as interesting and I think were even considered sort of boring but I may be wrong about that I just went read one review. The setup itself ended up being more entertaining than the mystery which involved a wealthy man who was murdered in his secret cabin that nobody but his manservant knew about. Well almost nobody has the uncle of a young woman in distress who's come to Tecumseh had happened to sneak up to the cabin at night to try and beg the man to give him his job back. There is a switched identity and a lot of procedure around trying to find a missing man which was somewhat interesting and gave you lots of looks into New York City during this time. It's a decent novel but won't blow you out of the park I liked it mainly for Tecumseh Fox's world. I will continue to look for Nero Wolfe books.

I am not sure how the publisher convinced Bob Newhart to do this cover photo; maybe they were old friends or maybe Bob needed the money at this stage in his career.

49. Trickster Drift by Eden Robinson

This is the second in the extremely readable Trickster trilogy.  I just keep enjoying these books more and more.  Among the many things I like about them, I particularily appreciate the way that they are structured.  It doesn't feel like it has to achieve some epic conclusion.  The structure feels much more like real life.  There are two broad stories going on here.  The first and the biggest in this book is just Jared Martin navigating his move to Vancouver, dealing with family and friends and enemies and school.  The second storyline is him being the Trickster's son and the risks and weirdness that comes with that.  It sounds fairly banal written like that, but Jared's life is so full of craziness that it is never boring.  I found the pace steady and engaging.  It never feels like you are being dragged into some "quest", rather you are just following along this young man as he tries to stay out of trouble and stay out of any kind of dependence on other people.

Given that he is a poor First Nations kid from Kitimat on a small scholarship to BCIT, he is actually relatively quite privileged.  His aunt is a successful author and activist. He has one grandmother who is super wealthy and another one who knows magic really well.  Despite this, Jared is super guarded and won't put his trust in anybody. People are also just really mean to him.  Felt very B.C from back in the day where everybody has to act super hard-bitten and people who are happy and confident are to be suppressed and distrusted.  It does become frustrating in the beginning.  The few people who are nice, Jared constantly pushes away and the rest who are total dicks, he just passively accepts.  The richness and realism of the people and the world of First Nations Vancouver that Robinson so well portrays pushes you past the frustration and when the supernatural part of the story explodes, it's just so insane that you are fully on board.

And the supernatural storyline, which hovers around and remains interesting but seems secondary for most of the book, really does explode at the end and really is bonkers with real ramifications for all the characters.  Robinson doesn't pull any punches.  It's an amazing mix of science fiction and indigenous mythology, which can be quite nasty.  I loved it and am using strong self-discipline to wait before jumping into the third.

48. The Cricket Match by Hugh de Selincourt

Another street library find, along with a few other very British novels that I didn't take, that suggests to me an anglophile in the neighbourhood somewhere.  Though the game of cricket still utterly baffles me, I suspected this book would be enjoyable enough for everything else.  I am led to understand by the forward that this book is somewhat of a minor classic.

It takes place in a small British village in Sussex after WWI and before the threat of a second world war had started forming.  The whole thing takes place in a single day as we follow the various players on the village team as they prepare, play and celebrate a game of cricket against neighbour village Raveley.  There are conflicts and situations but nothing substantial gets resolved, there are no arcs, just the game and these people's (mainly men) lives.  

I really do not get cricket at all. Part of the problem here is also that even if I sort of understood how the game works (which I do very broadly), the vocab is completely lost on me.  Also, culturally, I can't always tell if some behaviour is an actual way of playing or if it is just British sportsmanship in this period.  It honestly felt like sometimes the opposing sides were working together.  Despite that, I was able to mostly follow what was going on and definitely enjoy myself and get caught up in the competition.  Even better, at times de Selincourt's descriptions of moments of athleticism were exciting and I wanted to reread them.  Somehow he really gets across the feel of the bat hitting the ball or a tough catch.

This was a very satisfying summer read.

47. The Backup Men by Ross Thomas

The Porkchoppers is probably somewhere in my top 100 favourite books and I generally love the design of Ross Thomas's paperbacks, but I have to admit not loving the rest of his actual books that much.  He usually has a group of interesting characters and creative crime situations in cool locations that reflect the time well.  He has a tendency, though, to write in a simplistic, American macho style that lacks subtlety and makes said characters seem kind of annoying and trying way too hard.  In the end, it doesn't ruin the story for me, but I will only pick up his books if I find them for free and they look cool, as was the case with this copy of The Backup Men that I found in the free shelf.

McCorkle is the narrator as usual.  This time after some overly complex confrontations involving past relationships, they end up working on a job to protect a soon-to-be king of a new oil-rich middle-eastern country.  He is the last remaining heir to the throne and has to sign some papers which will make him the king and give a big deal to some oil companies.  A smart but gotten old assassin has hired a young killer and the two of them are trying to take the king out.  These are all connected to Padillo's past.  I am not sure if they actually do show up in other books or if they are just dragged out to make a plot, but it all felt a bit convoluted.  There was some decent action but nothing in it really seemed to matter to me.  I would give it an okay.  You can feel that the critic at the New Yorker is really trying hard with this blurb.

46. The Intercom Affair by Eric Ambler

It is the plot of The Intercom Affair that stands out for me. With Ambler, you are always going to get well-written european mid-century spy milieu scenarios with a nice gang of eccentric characters, euro-mongrels of equally mixed morality.  We had all that here, but it was the setup that made this a stand-out Ambler for me that I am glad to have re-read as an adult when I could appreciate it better.  Two mandarins of small unnamed NATO countries' espionage department meet over the years socially and over time, develop a plot to make a bunch of money and disappear into a luxurious retirement.  

It takes a while for the reader to figure out what the plot actually is, as the action moves to Ted Carter, the lone writer, editor and publisher of a jingoistic, right-wing conspiracy journal bankrolled by a wealthy retired American military officer.  Said officer and owner dies and what Carter expected would be the end of a soft but paying gig, gets weird as he gets purchased by a distant Swiss investor who only asks that he add certain articles to his paper.

I will not expand any further, as the fun is in the elements being revealed and then connected as you read the book.  It is cleverly structured with multiple perspectives in the form of transcripts of interviews, letters, etc.  Semi-epistolary, you could call it.  It has fun little digs at the rigid Swiss security forces and other players in the European circus that immerse the reader nicely.  I think that I am old enough now to properly appreciate later Ambler.

45. The Tin Men by Michael Frayn

I took this from the free bookbox on Esplanade solely because it was a cool looking Fontana. I had not idea what it was about. I still struggle to explain it now that I have read it. It's a satire of British professional culture in the 60s and quite funny at parts. The plot centers around an institute of automation, somehow affiliated with a big television company. The Queen is coming for an official inauguration. 

There is a weird mix of academics, technicians, administrators and really weird upper-class "directors" who seem to do nothing at all. I think the culture of work and technology has changed so much since this book was written that a lot of the humour loses its impact. Nonetheless, it was very wittily written and has some very funny characters, like the super sporty guy with a horrible colonial past now obsessed with security risks.

43. The Black Assassin by James-Howard Readus

I think I bought this at S.W. Welch because it was $5 and has there pencilled-in price in the upper right hand corner.  As a paperback artifact, it is a beautiful find, an original Holloway House with a cool cover.  I'm a big fan of the assassin/sniper rifle scope view for a cover.  I am also very into black power conspiracies to take over America.

Unfortunately, this book was kind of a mess. It never really got to the government takeover that the back blurb promised.  It spent way too much time on the excessive side characters, most of whom got their own paragraph and then were promptly forgotten.  It felt like Readus was trying to copy the style of thrillers of the time, but left out most of the meat of what would have made this story great.  A group of Black American elites conspire to train an elite assassin and send him on kill missions that will propel a Black senator to become the president.  Again, a great plot.  The assassin himself, Adrian Baker, ex-military is sent to Algiers where he is broken down and then built up again by Chang, Soviet-trained Chinese scientist.  He is then sent to DC and NYC in the guise of the Tanzanian ambassador.  There he hooks up with a supermodel and carries out two hits.  The story ends up focusing on Adrian and the girl who I guess sneak off and live happily ever after while the conspirators try again with a new assassin.  

42. The Ravine by Phyllis Brett Young

Ricochet Press does great work.  They publish out of print Canadian genre fiction, mainly in the mystery and thriller category.  I've bought most of the Montreal-based ones and found this one somewhere.  The author is Canadian (and I guess was quite succesful back in her day with several books, including The Torontonians which I would like to get my hands on), though The Ravine takes place in an anonymous American small city.  I was a bit disappointed because I was hoping it was going to be about the ravine that goes through the northern part of Toronto.  I suspect she was inspired by that one.

The town is shaken up by the second rape and murder of a young girl in the aforementioned ravine (though the first girl actually survived but was a near-catatonic shell of herself).  The protagonist is a young woman artist and teacher who left her NYC upper-class background because her own sister disappeared.  She discovers the second body and sees just a flash of the killer, who looks to her like a devil.  Though she is ridiculed at the inquest for this and in the local newspaper, a doctor senses she is telling the truth and then from this figures out that the killer is one of his esteemed colleagues.  Together, she and the doctor work to capture him.  I am not spoiling anything because this is all spelled out quite early on.  I guess the suspense was supposed to be more psychological but the lack of mystery took the energy out of the book for me.  

The ravine itself is portrayed as a source of evil, in an almost Stephen King way.  It's treated as a dank, marshy tangle, dark and hateful.  This really felt like that very 20th century hatred of nature.  This bugged me.  Uncontrolled nature is not just a location where human evil can thrive but its very existence encourages human evil.  The newspaper has a campaign to cut all the trees down and build a road through it.  There is also a part where this super excellent police dog gets killed and there is zero aftermath.  His police handler doesn't even seem to care!  

41. The Little Broomstick by Mary Stewart

This was a nice little find that did not disappoint. I would say at this point I am a Mary Stewart fan with some minor misgivings.  I have read all of her Arthurian works and 8 of her thrillers.  I had a feeling that she would bring her skill to a young adult tale with excellent results.  My only disappointment is trying to get my daughter to be interested in these kinds of books.  My agenda is to expose her to the classic young adult fantasy books from the mid to late 20th century before her mind gets polluted by Harry Potter.  She showed zero interest so far in this book and I must be prepared that she never will but I am going to keep i lurking around on the off-chance that something inspires or forces her (like boredom) to open it up and discover the magic within.

It starts off with the pretty classic situation of the younger child being left alone at her boring great aunt's house, so bored she wishes she could be sick so she could go to the friends' house she where was supposed to be staying (but couldn't because those kids got sick).  Of course, it is a beautiful old lodging house with a cool old gardener, gardens and a mysterious forest nearby. She meets a small black cat who leads her out into the forest where she discovers a very special looking flower.  Things start gradually at first, which some might find a bit slow but I just loved, particularly when you get a nice mix of local folklore (the gardener expressing surprise at her finding such a rare flower which used to be used for healing) setting the stage for the real magic to come.

I won't go into the details because the fun is in going on the journey with Mary.  A lot happens and it gets pretty wild and fast-paced.  This is the thing about these older YA books.  Mary Stewart did not need 16 books and a theme park to deliver satisfying escapism.  It's all here in less than 200 pages.  It's also not soft as the bad witches are up to some pretty nasty stuff.  I also liked the theme of animal alliance.  Just a really great little book.  It was also made into a Studio Ghibli movie called Mary and the Witch's Flower which we will have to check out.

40. In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes

zzzzzzz

So from struggling to find them at all, I have no read 4 books by Dorothy Hughes in the last year or so.  In a Lonely Place has been sitting on my on-deck shelf for a long time, a bland NYRB reprint (redeemed by putting an excellently written by Megan Abbot afterward instead of a forward) which kept calling at me "when will the time be right for you to read me?".  Well maybe it would have been sooner if you weren't such an odd size and with a super boring ass and forgettable cover.  "It's not my fault fake highbrow readers will only approach genre fiction if it doesn't threaten them with appearing lower class in their hands."  Indeed, this is not your fault book and we should not judge you by your cover, so read you I finally shall.  And did.

Once again, we have a female crime author whose masterpiece is obscured and lost while people continue to freak out about big-name male authors.  I was really glad to read Abbott's analysis at the end, because I didn't fully appreciate how thoroughly Hughes twists the genre inside out, gender-wise.  Even without smarter analysis, this book is possibly one of best and probably earliest of the serial killer point of view sub-genres.  Serial killers are really not my jam at all.  I have found them played out even when Silence of the Lambs came out and now they are as ubiquitous as zombies.  They always seem like an excuse for a male author to express "creative" violence against women.  Simply because of the subject matter, I am not inclined to love this book.  But I have to recognize its craft.  It also feels like it establishes several cliches that become commonplace in noir and pulp fiction (and even later movies and books): the class resentment motivation, the killer who is friends with the detective, the killer's perspective.  As Abbott states, this book came out before Jim Thompson (who is today almost a household name among crime readers with movies getting made).

One of the great things of this book is that it is super dark but never nasty or titillating.  All the real violence takes place off stage, yet their impact is no less minimized.  Likewise, the unreliable narrator (because of their own insanity) is handled so deftly that there is very little fake mystery for the reader.  Hughes doesn't need to play those jump scare fake-out games with us as she is so deep in his sad, twisted head that you get enough horror from beginning to understand his thinking.  The natural social concerns of anybody with status (worrying about how you look, worrying about what the neighbours may think, etc.) get all mixed up with Dix Steele's paranoia so that he is both constantly obsessing about what evidence he may have left behind as well as whether or not to park his car in the street or in his garage (which is a minor pain in the ass, but lets him enter his apartment via the alley unseen).  The latter worry is not about avoiding getting caught but because he doesn't want the neighbours to think he is someone who stays out late.  Likewise, he is also super angry with anybody who is working class. Hates the gardener and thinks he will punch him if he says hello again, hates the "slattern" who cleans up his apartment.  It's almost funny at times.

One element this book has that didn't get copied is strong female characters who end up saving the day without any fake suspense generating risk to them.  The ending doesn't remove any of the darkness and yet left me satisfying.  It is not explicit, but you really feel for the soldiers who come back from a world war to a complex world with their status often back to zero.  In a Lonely Place really gives you the feeling of how quickly and artificially post-war America imposed a vision of suburban ease on itself.  The violence coming out of Dix Steele in some ways prefigures the violence of Vietnam and the 60s yet to come.  I tease NYRB for their design above, but I commend them for reprinting this book.  

This is no masterpiece of a cover
but at least it has something going on!

39. The Hard Sell by William Haggard

Another excellent, "sophisticated" thriller by Haggard, this time the plot revolves around a British engine manufacturing company struggling with industrial sabotage in Vittorio, Italy where they have partnered with an Italian airplane firm (the brits make the enging and the italians the plane).  Colonel Charles Russell of the Executive branch takes some personal time to deal with the problems, since the owner of the British company is an old friend of his.  Russell is very scrupulous to pay for everything himself, but once he gets to Italy, he sniffes out that the mystery impacts England on the global industrial stage and his overnight stay becomes two weeks and real work.

Though I would consider Haggard's spy stories to be "above" Fleming's in that the actual espionage is subtle and complex and the conflicts mostly psychological. Victory requires knowledge, self-control, profound understanding of other humans rather than brand names and gadgets.  That being said, The Hard Sell feels very similar in its aspiration to a James Bond book. This is spy escapism for older men with a higher education level.  Russell gets to stay in a really nice hotel with a great bar, slum it in the older working class part of town (and of course stumble upon a little unpretentious bistro that has the best food and service) and even get knocked out and end up in an old school brothel with a super hot and experienced courtesan who appreciates him for being a gentleman ("She might be forty-five but looked much less, still a warmly magnificent woman").

There is a bit of action, but most of the story is Russell and the other major players all scheming and trying to second-guess what all the others are doing.  The cast of characters is rich with amoral euros playing the game: the chief of police hiding that his cousin is a Communist, the Swedish expat fixer way over his head in debt to Americans pulling his strings, the aforementioned Communist who is well educated and rich but doing good in some weird way that Haggard approves.  It's all very enjoyable and in this very beautiful Penguin paperback that I tried to keep in good condition but had to read.