Poison by Ed McBain
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"'Twas brilliant when the slimy toads, set fire to Gimbel's underwear. Aunt Mimsy was in Borough Park, and the Nome rats ate her there."

I enjoyed this funny tribute to Lewis Carroll more than the police procedural aspects in Ed McBain's Poison, the 39th installment in the famous 87th Precinct series. The moderately interesting plot begins with Monoghan and Monroe, McBain's cliché Homicide detectives, looking at the dead body, lying "in his own vomit and shit." The 87th Precinct detectives, Steve Carella and Hal Willis, who caught this "squeal" are present too: they will be handling the investigation.

This is a Hal Willis novel, not a Carella novel, which is good news as Det. Carella has appeared way too many times in McBain's books. The other central character in the novel is Marilyn, who was the deceased man's girlfriend. In fact, the thread that focuses on the relationship between Det. Willis and Marilyn is, to me, the best thing about the novel. Unfortunately, 'best' does not mean 'very good.' I like the thread mainly because it does not conform to Mr. McBain's (Evan Hunter's) usual template of storytelling.

Another interesting component of the story is the non-exclusive nature of the relationship between Marilyn and the victim. Marilyn as a "woman with a past" is a cliché touch, but the author handles the trope in a little unusual way. The choice of the title poison is also uncommon.

Naturally, we have an awful lot of apparently authentic police procedure: to emphasize the realism the author even encloses copies of four weeks of the victim's weekly calendar (the reader would be OK without this material). The reader would also be better off without transparent "red herrings" in the later part of the plot: the author could have very well announced: "And now, dear reader, here's a red herring." The standup-comedy-style routine at the precinct reads stale and unfunny, as opposed to the story about the murder in a movie theater. Summing up, I would be hesitant to recommend this novel.

I am a little sad that my year 2019 in books ends with a whimper...

Two-and-a-quarter stars.

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Professor at Large: The Cornell Years by John Cleese
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"[...] a danger that has been developing in our society for several years. This danger is based on three separate wrong beliefs. The first is the belief that being decisive means taking decisions quickly. The second is the belief that faster is always better. The third is the belief that we should think of our minds as computers."

The quote above comes from the first page of Professor at Large. The Cornell Years (2018) by John Cleese, one of the six members of the legendary Monty Python troupe, the funniest and most intelligent comedy team that has ever graced this Earth. The original BBC show ran from 1969 to 1974; the team also produced several famous motion picture movies, such as Monty Python's the Meaning of Life, Life of Brian, or Monty Python and The Holy Grail. John Cleese, who has frequently been called the "funniest Python", is the author of many celebrated sketches. He is also the writer (along with his then wife, Connie Booth) and the performer in another hilarious TV show, Fawlty Towers.

This is not a comedy book nor a book about comedy. It is quite a serious collection of writings that deal with sociology, psychology, religion, and art in general. In the Introduction, Stephen J Ceci, an eminent psychologist from Cornell University, explains the circumstances of nominating John Cleese as a Professor-At-Large. The book makes it evident how inspired the choice was.

Professor at Large is composed of several separate pieces: Mr. Cleese's lectures, seminars, and interviews. I will highlight a few selected pieces that I have found outstanding in this absorbing collection. Most readers will probably be interested in two chapters that refer to Monty Python's popular movie Life of Brian, which had been denounced by some as blasphemous, sacrilegious, or profane. Mr. Cleese explains

"Life of Brian was not an attack against religion. Our intention was to make fun of some of the ways some people practice what they claim is religion."

The chapter Sermon at Sage Chapel unequivocally confirms this point. Mr. Cleese writes about religion very seriously yet, naturally, he would not be himself without throwing in some hilarious passages like

"I don't think this [making people feel guilt] works psychologically because if Dick Cheney were scourged for hours and then crucified, I would genuinely feel sorry for him ... eventually."

I find the chapter The Human Face fascinating as it deals with topic, which I am currently working on with my undergraduate student - image recognition technology. While we are focusing on computer algorithms Mr. Cleese - whose objects to be recognized are human faces - writes about related social issues, and about human perceptions of beauty. For instance, he mentions studies that have shown that fictitious faces, created by averaging many real faces, seem to be more attractive to people than the actual faces, likely because of eliminating natural asymmetries.

I love the hilarious passage (I mean the writing is hilarious - the subject matter is grim and depressing) about a fundamentalist novel that envisions the final battle between Good and Evil, where the evil is embodied by the forces of globalism, and the evil army - in the service of Lucifer - is commanded by the Secretary General of the United Nations. Fortunately, the forces of Good triumph and the flesh of globalist scoundrels dissolves on their bones and "their tongues dissolve[d] in their mouths."

Strongly recommended read!

Four stars.


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The League of Frightened Men by Rex Stout
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"'I always need money. That is of course my affair. I will undertake to disembark this gentleman from his ship of vengeance, in advance of any injury to you, for the sum of ten thousand dollars.'"
(Nero Wolfe, speaking to one of the "frightened men")

The League of Frightened Men is the second novel in Rex Stout's famous Nero Wolfe series. It was published in 1935, 84 years ago: not many people born that year are still around. The prose indeed reads dated yet in a good way. In fact, I prefer Mr. Stout's earlier writings over the ones from 1960s and later: his early style is more elaborate and sophisticated.

The story begins in a way similar to many other Wolfe novels: Archie is unhappy with zero cash flow and bugs Wolfe to do something about it. Naturally, an opportunity soon arises: a young woman calls to ask Wolfe for help. Her uncle, who had unsuccessfully tried to hire Wolfe few weeks ago, has disappeared. This time Wolfe agrees to take the job and the setup of the plot is thus revealed. Twenty-five years ago, during a sort of a hazing prank at Harvard, one of the students suffered a serious injury which resulted in permanent disability. The man, one Paul Chapin, has now supposedly "embarked on a ship of vengeance" and seeks the ultimate retribution by killing the participants of the fatuous prank. Already two men are dead, the woman's uncle is missing and also presumed dead.

Wolfe soon has 11 members of the "league of frightened men" in his office: they are haggling about the details of Wolfe's potential involvement in the case. And then... Paul Chapin arrives in the office. The plot is quite complicated, the sequence of events rather plausible, and the action moves at a leisurely but steady pace. In fact, I managed to follow the plot with interest, which does not often happen. I particularly liked Wolfe's conversation with Mr. Chapin that occurs later in the novel - great dialogue. Also, (in hindsight) imagine that at one point Nero Wolfe is forced to leave the house!

The prose is dated not only in that it is more cultivated. The reader will notice the usage of many un-PC terms: 'the cripple', 'the runt', 'the lop' (for 'lopsided'). I can imagine a PC brigade valiantly working to censor the prose so that readers will enjoy only the safe material. I bet the brigade would censor the following as well:

"I felt uncertain too, when I saw her. They don't come any uglier. [...] it was more subtle than plain ugliness, to look at her made you despair of ever seeing a pretty woman again."

(I apologize for venting my anti-PC sentiments.) I learned a cool word - 'rodomontade'. I also learned that a typewriter cost $100 in 1935, an equivalent of $1874 in current dollars. Wow! The reader is also told that the previous time Nero Wolfe left home was to dine at the same table that Albert Einstein sat at.

To sum up: a good read. Interesting plot and accomplished writing.

Three-and-a-half stars.


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Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"The seamen were usually loaded. If they were too big or too sober theyd hit them over the head with a brick. If they looked easy one would hold him and the other(s) would lump him. [...] Theyd hit him until their arms were tired. Good kicks. Then a pie and a beer. And Tralala. She was always there."

I am too old to cry but I somehow managed to get my eyes wet when reading a passage from Last Exit to Brooklyn (1957 - 1964). The momentary sadness that led me to tears soon morphed into extreme anger at the despicable, miserable species that we are: the only species on this planet who tortures their own for entertainment or for no reason at all, just to pass time and escape boredom. It is highly ironic that the adjective 'bestial', which means 'cruel', 'savage', 'depraved' comes from 'beast', meaning animal. It would be more fitting to call rabidly aggressive animals 'humanistic'.

Last Exit, the highly acclaimed work of Hubert Selby Jr. owes some part of its renown to the so-called taboo topics it deals with and graphic scenes of violence and sex, which were the reason for its prosecution in the UK under obscenity statute. It's curious that the other best-known work by Selby, Requiem for a Dream, also became more famous because of non-literary reasons: it was adapted as a classy and successful movie under the same title.

One might disagree with classifying the book as a novel since it is a set of six stories that are independent of each other. They are connected by Brooklyn location, lower-class protagonists, focus on naturalistic depiction of human activities that are usually not shown in literature, and the use of rough, seemingly anti-literary writing style. The prose reflects the way of speaking of low-educated people, with their misuses of words and grammar.

In the best of the six pieces, unforgettably called Tralala, a soldier, happy to be finally coming home after three years of service, is brutally beaten just for the fun of it. The attackers take his wallet, continue beating him, and his blood mixes with tears when he begs them to give him back the military base pass so that he can get home:

"Thats all I want. Just the ID Card. PLEASE PLEASE!! The tears streaked the caked blood and he hung on Tonys and Als grip and Tralala swung at his face, spitting, cursing and kicking."

There are strong sexual scenes in Last Exit, but to call them obscene takes a really deranged mind. The violence and savagery are obscene, the beating of bloodied people to pulp is obscene. The sexual scenes test the limits of the reader's endurance because of the pervasive violence that they entail. It's not the sex that is so disturbing, it is the participants' celebration of power, domination, subjugation of their victims. Brutality is the most elemental human trait, screams the author.

Protagonists of several stories are strongly memorable: how can one forget Georgette from the story The Queen is Dead, a transvestite prostitute, "a hip queer," "high most of the time on benzedrine and marijuana"? Nor will the reader forget Harry, from the longest story, Strike, which intermingles labor issues with tribulations of a married gay man, a masterful example of a literary counterpoint.

The prose that incorporates street language snippets of dialogue into the narration may take a while to get accustomed to but the reader stops noticing it soon. Fragments like

"Whattayamean its not cold enough yet. Im dyin a thirst. How inthefuck can yadrink warm beer. Wit my mouth, what thefuck yathink."

read completely natural. There are some passages that I don't particularly care for, like the extremely detailed and vivid description of a woman picking her nose and playing with the drying snot. Inclusion of that scene makes me a bit less impressed with the novel as it is hard not to agree that the author used it for shock value. On the other hand, I love the totally beautiful, lyrical passage that closes The Queen is Dead. It forms a gorgeous juxtaposition with the group sex scene, just a few pages earlier. That scene features an unexpected literary jewel:

"Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe."

Overall, Last Exit is an utterly unconventional and uncompromising statement of disgust with humans. Very hard to read yet the pain is richly deserved.

Four stars.


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Tricks by Ed McBain
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"The stripped pajama bottoms that showed beneath the hem of the robe were spattered with blood that seemed to have dripped from an open wound in his belly, where a dagger was plunged to the hilt."

The above quote comes from the first page of Ed McBain's novel Tricks (1987), the 40th novel (if I am counting right) in his famous 87th Precinct series. I am not a fan of series of novels in general, but because of heavy workload in recent weeks I had to reach for lighter, easier reads. McBain's books are perfect for this purpose: short and extremely readable. Actually, I am happy to say that I quite like this novel, which is a sort of surprise. Maybe it is because of this strong first page? I certainly got fooled by the author, and I love when it happens.

To be precise, calling Tricks a novel is sort of a reach; it is rather a patchwork of several separate threads that do not have much in common except that criminal activities and 87th Precinct cops are involved. In fact, I find it refreshing that the threads do not eventually merge together in a cliché literary device.

The most prominent thread features Eileen Burke, known from other novels in the series, who serves as a decoy to ambush a suspect in murders of several prostitutes. We witness how she and her support crew prepare for the dangerous job and how the ambush plays out. The second thread - where one of the main characters is a magician - involves human dismemberment: body parts have been found in various locations of the city.

Then we have a thread about children doing holdups of neighborhood stores; yes, children enter stores, demand money and kill the shop personnel. It does sounds a bit incredible, but when one reads the book, things get neatly explained. In yet another thread teenagers are getting shot. Moreover, in the background we have the Halloween night's wild activities.

I like the author's play with words: what is common between magic, Halloween, and prostitutes? Not a very difficult yet cute puzzle! There is a lot of humor in the novel: not only the low-brow yet funny bits like the "Have Mouth Will Travel" job description or identification of the deceased by a beauty spot located on a normally invisible part of the body, but the reader will also find a hilarious passage where Andy Parker, one of the 87th Precinct cops, pretends at a party that he is a cop, and suddenly he begins feeling like an actual cop. A viciously insightful observation of human nature.

True, the novel is a trifle, yet a thoroughly entertaining trifle! It made me want to read more of Ed McBain (i.e., Evan Hunter (i.e., Salvatore Albert Lombino)).

Three-and-a-quarter stars.

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The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think."

The Last Lecture (2008), a New York Times bestseller, is a wonderful book indeed. For once, even such an avowed cynic and elitist as this reviewer agrees with most other readers. The book was written by a professional author, Jeffrey Zaslow, from tapes recorded by Randolph Pausch, a professor of computer science who died of cancer before reaching the age of 48. The book expands on the main topics of the actual last lecture that Dr. Pausch gave at Carnegie Mellon University after he had been given a diagnosis of only a few months to live. Yet The Last Lecture is not about dying, but an upbeat meditation on how to live:

"I lectured about the joy of life, about how much I appreciated life, even with so little of mine left. I talked about honesty, integrity, gratitude, and other things I hold dear."

The leading motif in Dr. Pausch's book is the life-driving importance of striving to achieve one's childhood dreams:

Whatever my accomplishments, all of the things I loved were rooted in the dreams and goals I had as a child... and in the ways I had managed to fulfill almost all of them."

Naturally, there is a lot about teaching in this short book and as a university professor myself I read these passages with great interest. I agree with the author that although

"[i]t is an accepted cliché in education that the number one goal of teachers should be to help students learn how to learn"

a better teaching goal is

"...to help students learn how to judge themselves."

One will find a lot of first-class, non-trivial advice on how to live, where some of the recommendations are real pearls of wisdom. Just take this:

"I'll take an earnest person over a hip person every time, because hip is short-term. Earnest is long term."

And the deepest and most beautiful sentence in the entire book about one of these things that make life worth living:

"It's a thrill to fulfill your own childhood dreams, but as you get older, you may find that enabling the dreams of others is even more fun."

Down-to-earth, simple wisdom is there too, for instance about shortcuts to success

"A lot of people want a shortcut. I find the best shortcut is the long way, which is basically two words: work hard."

Very, very strongly recommended read.
(This review is dedicated to EVK.)

Four-and-a-half stars.

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Restless by William Boyd
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"[...] face it, everything you thought you knew about your mother was a cleverly constructed fantasy. I felt suddenly alone, in the dark, lost: what does one do in a situation like this?"

A blurb on the cover promises "Boyd has written a crackling spy thriller" (New York Times Book Review), which made me reluctant to read the novel. "Crackling thrillers" usually contain not much more than the plot - not enough of a reason to read a book. Yet I know William Boyd's work from Brazzaville Beach that I reviewed here and rated with the extremely rare five-star mark so finally I decided to give the book a try. And I am pleased to report that the novel is a little more than a thriller, certainly not "crackling", well, maybe, toward the end it is crackling a little. A pity!

The year is 1976, London. The narrator, Ruth Gilmartin, a young single mother working on her PhD and teaching English as a second language, visits her mother, Sally, in her cottage in Oxfordshire. Sally is in a wheelchair, although she appears to be able to walk fine, and her behavior seems a bit strange. Ruth begins to worry about her mother's mental state, but then Sally gives her a folder with a story to read - The Story of Eva Delectorskaya, and tells Ruth that she is actually that Eva, the subject of the story.

The novel alternates between two threads: the "current" one that is happening in 1976 Great Britain, and the story of Eva D. that begins in 1939 Paris and continues through the war years on two continents. Eva is half-Russian and her family emigrated from Russia in 1917, after the October Revolution. Eva's brother died in intelligence service for the British government and his boss recruits Eva to continue her brother's work.

The 1976 thread is well-written, unlike most crackling thrillers, and I find the characters vivid and believable. I have problems, though, with the other thread: not only do the characters seem less realistic, but first and foremost there is no feeling of the war, the Second World War, going on in the background of the events in the plot. The events could as well be happening in the 1950s or 1960s.

Readers who love thrillers will be excited by the passages about events happening in Las Cruces, New Mexico, late in the story. Not only do the events move fast, but their logic seems to be quite believable to the extent that this reader, not a thriller fan, got quite captivated by the action.

References to disinformation business may be amusing as they are particularly relevant to today's world. We read about "feeding careful and clever false information out into the world" and we learn about the mechanics of such fake news factories. Disinformation was a big business even before Facebook or other "social media".

Considering my limited abilities of expression in written English it is arrogant to criticize Mr. Boyd's prose, which, in general, is high quality. Yet there is one passage in the novel where the author clumsily uses three awkward adverbs - "unthinkingly", "unreflectingly", and "knowingly" - virtually next to each other. Overall, though, I have found Restless a good read.

Three-and-a-quarter stars.

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Lenin to Gorbachev: Three Generations of Soviet Communists by Joan Frances Crowley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"For both Stalin and Khrushchev, the speech fundamentally altered the way in which history would record them. In Stalin's case, the speech revealed the enormity of his crimes, while in Khrushchev's case, it lessened the esteem for his leadership."

Yet another review of a book about 20th-century Soviet leaders. The authors of Lenin to Gorbachev (1989), Joan Frances Crawley and Dan Vaillancourt, explain that the idea of the book was born based on the course on Marxism and communism they were teaching at Mundelein College in Chicago. Indeed, some passages of the text, have the characteristic college textbook "feel," a combination of rigor and simplifications needed because of the target audience. I am reviewing the original version of the book, which - as I understand - was updated in 2012.

The authors begin with a rather brief exposition of Marxism. They stress some of the main tenets of the Marxist philosophical system: the concept of history as a process of development and grounding in the method of dialectics. They also make it clear that Marxism distinguishes economics, particularly the "relations of production," as the main factor influencing human beings and societies.

The book's subtitle is Three Generations of Soviet Communists. According to the authors, Lenin, the revolutionary represents the first generation, Stalin, the social architect (and mass murderer on a scale unprecedented in the history of mankind), represents the second generation. They are followed by Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and Gorbachev, called "businessmen" by the authors. While in hindsight, 30 years after the book was published, lumping Gorbachev with the other four leaders, is obviously a mistake, the generational classification is helpful for readers who want to learn about the history of Soviet communism.

Having been raised and schooled in a Soviet-influenced educational system in Poland I had been taught a lot of the material included in this book. Yet I still have learned many new facts and discovered new interpretations. For instance, I now know more about the events of 1905 in Russia, the times that preceded the October Revolution and brought the creation of the first ever country in the name of ideals of communism and purported 'dictatorship of proletariat.' Naturally, only dictators enjoy the dictatorship, the proletariat has always suffered, is suffering, and will likely always suffer. I did not learn much about the subsequent Soviet leaders above what I had already known. Obviously, the book written in 1989 could not predict the role of Gorbachev in accelerating the fall of communism.

I am unable to read about Stalin's atrocities without getting emotional: This 'genius of social architecture' is directly responsible for deaths of tens of millions of people. Further millions had their lives turned into torture and suffering in the "archipelago of labor camps." Yet further hundreds of millions of people lost their chances for living their lives with even a minimum of happiness and comfort. The authors indicate how simple chance might have affected history: we read about Lenin who had plans to demote Stalin but suffered a series of strokes:

"A third stroke, however, permanently debilitated the party leader until his death ten months later. Had Lenin recovered from the stroke and lived perhaps a year longer, Stalin probably would have fallen."

Interesting and worthwhile read.

Three-and-a-half-stars


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F is for Fugitive by Sue Grafton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Southern California seasons are sometimes to subtle to discern [...] What's true, though, is that every day is a season in itself. The sea is changeable. The air is transformed. The landscape registers delicate alterations in color so that gradually the saturated green of winter bleaches out to the straw shades of summer grass, so quick to burn. Trees explode with color, fiery reds and flaming golds that can rival autumn anywhere [...]"

I am continuing the Sue Grafton re-read project with the sixth novel in her famous "Alphabet Series", F is for Fugitive (1989). Like in the previous installments I am more interested in Ms. Grafton's vivid depiction of California in the 1980s than in the plot. In fact, I am sure that even if there was no criminal intrigue in the novel at all, I would read it with the same level of interest and satisfaction of not wasting time with nice prose and always fascinating character of Kinsey Millhone, Mrs. Grafton's intrepid PI from the fictitious Santa Teresa (which is modeled on Santa Barbara.)

Yet, since F is a detective novel, at least the outline of the setup is required. Royce Fowler, a Floral Beach motel owner, hires Kinsey to help his son. Sixteen years ago Bailey was mistakenly arrested, then released, but re-arrested when his prints matched the prints that the police had. At that time, Bailey, accused of killing his ex-girlfriend, pleaded guilty of voluntary manslaughter, and later escaped from prison. Now he claims his innocence, explains that the guilty plea was a result of bad advice of his court-appointed public defender, and Mr. Fowler wants Kinsey to assist Bailey's current lawyer help clear his son.

Kinsey stays in Mr. Fowler's motel in Floral Beach, a (fictitious) California town, "six streets long, three streets wide." She meets Fowler's wife, the son's lawyer, and talks to Bailey himself at the prison. There is a spectacular and well-written scene in the courtroom in San Luis Obispo during Bailey's arraignment. I find the ending overly theatrical, and for readers who like the mystery aspect of Ms. Grafton's novels, I have a warning: I managed to figure out who the killer was quite some time before the denouement, even if I did not much care about the "mystery." Similarly to D I have a problem with the author having people too conveniently volunteering information to Kinsey. Come on! These were the 1980s - we weren't used then to the idiocy of baring our innermost secrets on Facebook and similar scams.

Anyway, F is a nice, pleasant read, and I will certainly continue with at least a few of the next installments.

Three stars.

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