Chosen Prey by John Sandford
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Formed his loop; touched her neck again. Held the loop open, smiled, dropped it around her neck, and...
Snap!"

Chosen Prey (2001) is the twelfth installment in the acclaimed "Prey series" by John Sandford (John Camp in real life). A little while ago (for me this means about a quarter of a century), I had read many novels in the series and found them relatively well-written, interesting, only moderately packed with the usual genre clichés, and compulsively readable. Perfect examples of high-end disposable literature. (Supercilious, am I not? By the way, "supercilious" is a snobbish way of saying "snobbish.") So I was curious about my reaction now, when wisdom and experience (euphemisms for "senility") abound.

Not much has changed. A captivating, fast read, a rather believable police procedural, with a smattering of criminal psychology, yet one that does not leave much of a trace in memory, at least mine. I finished reading about 10 days ago, and I have to look in my notes to remember the general outline of the plot.

The story opens a bit untypically when

James Quatar [...] an art history professor and a writer, a womanizer and genial pervert and pipe smoker, a thief and a laughing man and a killer"

abandons the plan to strangle his lover. The almost laughingly perfect Lucas Davenport leads an investigation that combines several threads: in one of them, a body of a woman strangled over a year ago has been found; in another, drawings begin to appear in which faces of actual women are superimposed on porn scenes. The meticulous investigation is presented in detail and fans of police procedurals will be satisfied. The author provides some neat plot twists before the denouement.

The brutally graphic scene of strangling approaches but, in my view, does not yet cross the boundary into straight porn of violence. The scenes of excavations are well-written and grimly vivid. I quite like the slim office politics thread: Davenport's boss, Rose Marie Roux, is worried about her future as her boss, the mayor, is not running for re-election. On the other hand, the obligatory personal-life thread of the relationship between Davenport and his girlfriend, Weather, is purely and painfully cliché. It does not make Davenport seem more human. Exactly the opposite. It makes him seem like a character from disposable literature.

To sum up: a great read, yet eventually empty, devoid of any depth.

Three-and-a-quarter stars.


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The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee by Sarah Silverman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"[...] I'll take advantage of this mass media format to address a small matter that needs clarification: Those who know of me know that I like doody jokes, but that is very different than loving doody. I make rape jokes, but I certainly do not approve of rape. "

The Bedwetter (2010) is certainly not a read for everybody. Many readers may be grossed out and turned off by Sarah Silverman's memoir and not necessarily because they are prudes. Not everybody has to like reading about doody or "other things that have the potential to be gross" (the author's phrasing). I just hope that people who don't like to read texts that have strong potential to be offensive will not try to prevent other people from reading such texts. Enough preaching.

The subtitle of the memoir is "Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee." Please note the acronym built of the first letters of the last four words in the subtitle. Yes, it indeed is one of the recurring motifs in the story. The main title refers to the condition that the author is afflicted with, and frequently refers to in the text.

Sarah Silverman freely admits that she chose "to build a career on shock and profanity." I think she is overly self-deprecating. I watched several of her stand-up performances on YouTube and in all of them it was clear that she was making points about important issues like human relationships, religion, or freedom of speech. Her performances indeed use profanity and certainly the way she is talking about issues is deeply provocative, yet were she to use "nice" language and polite stage behavior, she would not reach the majority of listeners. The issues would sound too boring.

Naturally, one of the most important issues for Ms. Silverman is the impact that the ubiquitous "political correctness" atmosphere has on comedy. The censorship leads to self-censorship, which George Orwell predicted over 70 years ago. If anything, the stifling effect, the suppression of unpopular ideas, is more overwhelming now, 10 years after the memoir was written, and much, much stronger than in 2001, when Ms. Silverman appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and generated immense amount of controversy by lampooning racial stereotypes, which was received as promoting these stereotypes.

The chapters that focus on the TV show The Sarah Silverman Program are not my favorite parts of the memoir. Indeed, they are very, very funny ("promise of a penis" made me laugh out hysterically), but they would not become less hilarious if there were fewer references to bowel movements. Still, according to the author, the crew on this show is a bunch of "sick, depraved fucks," so maybe there is no other way.

Some literary gimmicks are iffy: like the Foreword and Midword written by the author herself, as well as the Afterword written ostensibly by God, but I have my doubts about the authorship.

I like the author's mantra 'Make It a Treat.' A great recommendation for people who "want it all and want it now." The reader will also find very moving passages about the author's grandmother dying. I absolutely love the pearl of wisdom

"Most events in life are about context."

Oh yes! In fact, everything everywhere is about context. And to relate it to the epidemics of political correctness: it is not true that one should not use certain words or speak about certain things! Instead, one should not use certain words in certain contexts or speak about some things in some contexts. I am clearly getting senile with all this preaching!

I recommend the book without hesitation but probably not for everyone.

Three-and-a-quarter stars.


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Dress Her In Indigo by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"His eyes had that look. [...] Any man who outgrows the myths of childhood is ninety-nine percent aware and convinced of his own mortality. But then comes the chilly breath on the nape of the neck, a stirring of the air by the wings of the bleak angel. When a man becomes one hundred percent certain of his inevitable death, he gets The Look."

My third review of a novel in John D. MacDonald's famous series featuring Travis McGee and colors in the titles. Dress Her in Indigo (1969) is a much earlier installment than The Empty Copper Sea and The Green Ripper which I have reviewed on Goodreads.

We meet Travis McGee and his sidekick (as well as a world-renowned economist) Meyer as they fly to Mexico City to probe the circumstances of a young woman's death in an auto accident in Oaxaca. The woman's father has hired McGee to investigate.

This is the end of the 1960s, the times of the hippies: many young people from the US go to Mexico for freedom, adventure, and to escape the Vietnam drama. McGee and Meyer spend a lot of time talking to American tourists and expatriates in Oaxaca. They begin learning details about the young woman's last months in Mexico.

The ending of the novel is fast-paced and contains one particularly brutal fragment: the reader who will not wince when reading the passage must have no heart. I certainly prefer the earlier parts of the novel which manage to convey the Zeitgeist of the late 1960s, to some degree, at least. In the slow-action parts of the novel the reader will find a few well-written passages like the one I used for the epigraph above. There is some humor like in

"But I discovered I was already trying to pull the trousers off with the shoes still on, so I sat down again and untied the shoes, thus solving that problems with hardly any trouble at all.

The love scenes are quite well-written too.

Therefore I am totally at loss to explain why some dialogues are so badly written: stilted, unnatural, awkward. The conversations between McGee and Meyer on the plane sound completely unrealistic, but the following sentence, spoken by Meyer, takes the Awkwardness Prize:

"I would rather have one handful of cold mashed potato than two handsful of warm young mammalian overdevelopment."

Very marginal recommendation.

Two-and-a-half stars.

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Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue by Marc Spitz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"When we consider the Rolling Stones, we think of the heart and we think of the groin. We don't dwell on the brain. 'Keith is the heart,' [...] the music publicist Keith Altham remarked [...] 'Mick is the brain'."

Mick Jagger, "all brain and no heart." The metaphor appeals to me. Somehow I have never been a big fan of the Rolling Stones, even though in the 1960s I listened to their music every day. In the mid-Sixties I preferred The Kinks, The Animals, and later all progressive bands. In particular, I have never admired Mick Jagger and his scene persona. Mark Spitz's Jagger (2011) partly validates my prejudice. It is a well-written, readable, and quite detailed biography of the Rolling Stones front man and singer as well as a story of one of the most famous bands in popular music history.

We read about Mr. Jagger's childhood (he met his future band partner, Keith Richards, in primary school) and youth, when he aced the A levels and got into the London School of Economics, and about the band's debut at the Marquee in July 1962. Then the American tour in 1964 and the steady and fast rise to the very top of the world of popular music:

"By 1967, the Rolling Stones were more influential than ever, and it's easy to see how they might have felt invulnerable and a bit too messianic."

We read in minute detail about the infamous drug bust, trial, and sentencing of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards as well about the role of The Times editorial in their early release.

I particularly appreciate the author's attempts to characterize the frenetic atmosphere of the late 1960's and the cultural shift happening then - the impending clash of the beautiful yet utopian ideas of Flower Power with the cold and business-driven reality of society. I came of age at that time and, naturally, being "inside" the phenomenon, was not able to observe it.

Goodreads members might appreciate the mention of Mikhail Bulgakov's masterpiece novel The Master and Margarita. Mr. Jagger claims that the novel was one of the main inspirations for Sympathy for the Devil, a song that comes from the 1968 album Beggars Banquet and is my second most favorite piece by the Stones (the first is Paint It Black (1966)).

According to many contemporary historians the "End of the Sixties" was signified by the Altamont Free Concert tragedy in December of 1969. The author provides a detailed account of the events that, as he writes, "burned up a lot of utopian energy, leaving in its place fear and confusion, and, worse, cynicism and selfishness." He also, rather uncharacteristically, as the entire biography is pretty sympathetic to Mr. Jagger, offers a dramatic juxtaposition of the death of Meredith Hunter at Altamont with the mention of Mick Jagger depositing the money earned during the tour in a Swiss bank.

The later years of the Rolling Stones are less eventful as they slowly morph from a rock band into "a band full of rich and famous people." Mick Jagger enjoys an intermittent acting career, with most notable performances in Nicholas Roeg's Performance and Tony Richardson's Ned Kelly. In 2002 Mick Jagger is honored with knighthood by the Queen "for services to popular music," and the author provides slightly sarcastic remarks on that occasion.

Good biography, not quite four-star work, but solid, captivating, and readable. I am unable to refrain from quoting a neat pearl of wisdom:

"[...] canny businessman that he is, he knows that it's the past that has the most currency."

Naturally, that's about Sir Mick Jagger.

Three-and-a-half stars.

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Calypso by Ed McBain
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"He dialed the local police then, and identified himself, and told them what he had here, and asked that they send an ambulance at once.
'It's very bad,' he said. 'I've never seen anything like it in my life.'"

Indeed, there is a horrifying passage in the novel that explains what Detective Carella has seen and what a human being can do to another human being. Calypso (1979) is the 33rd installment in the famous 87th Precinct series by Ed McBain. Unfortunately, it is one of the weakest novels in the series. Not even close to a good installment such as, for instance Tricks that I recently reviewed.

The story begins strongly, with a precise, clinical description of a murder. A calypso singer is shot dead and his business manager wounded. They are ambushed as they walk from their performance. Some time later a black prostitute is shot; the detectives learn that the shooter might have been the same as in the calypso signer's murder, a "tall, slender man or woman dressed entirely in black." About 40% into the novel a new thread appears, one that features the calypso singer's brother. That thread involves a lot of brutality, albeit with a non-standard twist. Naturally, the two threads merge to provide a weak denouement.

Several passages in the novel are quite lame. For instance, a rambling fragment about obscenity, the inability to define it, and about obscenity laws: what Mr. McBain writes may be reasonable and clear, but it is out of place in the novel. There is a strange passage that describes Meyer Meyer's (another detective from the 87 Precinct) thoughts stimulated by the phrase 'plethora of daisies.' The stream of consciousness device is out of character in this police procedural. Sending orchids to potential victims? Come on! I don't believe Mr. McBain (Evan Hunter) spent much time writing this book.

Inclusion of powerful calypso lyrics is one of the few brighter spots of this below-the-average novel.

Two stars.


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Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

" [...] Mozart creates an apotheosis of melody, in which one tune seems to flow out of another naturally, spontaneously, organically, as though the melodic material were breeding within the tissue of the work. "

Five years ago I reviewed here Peter Gay's biography of the composer ( Mozart: A Life ). Now another biography, interestingly enough under the exact same title: Paul Johnson's Mozart. A Life (2013). I don't remember much of the book that I had read earlier, but judging from my review I must have liked it a bit better than the current one. Still, Johnson's work is very readable too and I recommend it.

I will not recap Mozart's life here and will focus on the biography instead. I love the clever and descriptive titles of the five chapters: The "Miracle" Prodigy, Master of Instruments, A Married Composing Machine, Mozart's Operatic Magic, and A Good Life Fully Lived.

The author makes a strong point in contradicting many popular perceptions about Mozart's life, such as that he was poor, that he was poisoned, and that Antonio Salieri was his mortal enemy. Obviously, I have no way to conclusively decide who is right, but my natural instinct is not to believe any biographies fictionalized in the movies, even great movies, such as Amadeus, made by great directors, such as Miloš Forman. So, I would rather tend to assume that the whole Salieri's intrigue story shown in the movie is a fabrication.

The author also strongly objects to vilification of Mozart's wife, Constanze, and makes a convincing argument to explain his position. I find quite fascinating the passages that focus on indebtedness habits among married couples in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

I learned many new facts about Mozart from the biography, some of them rather insignificant trivia, for instance, that he was an avid billiards player or that there are over 2,000 books written about the composer. Some others facts are quite illuminating, like the greatly negative influence of archbishop von Colloredo on Mozart's life. Totally captivating is the extended passage on Mozart's use of percussion instruments, especially timpani, in his compositions!

Mr. Johnson has quite distinctive turn of phrase. Many passages in the biography can be enjoyed just for the language. How about "natural effervescence" of Mozart? Or the powerful statement

"Mozart's beauty prevents one from grasping his power."

I also love the ending paragraph:

"[...] his warm spirit always bubbled. He loved his God, his family, his friends, and above all, his work - which he equated with God-service - and that was all a reasonable man, or an unreasonable one, for that matter, could wish for. God bless him!"

The biography concludes with the Appendix Mozart in London, written also by a Mr. Johnson, but it is Daniel Johnson, the author's son, a journalist and a faculty member at Queen Mary University, London.

Three stars.

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