The Frumious Bandersnatch by Ed McBain
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
(Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky)

Ed McBain set up the plot of The Frumious Bandersnatch, the 53rd installment of his monumental 87th Precinct series, during a record launch party to promote Bandersnatch, the debut album of a young singer, Tamar Valparaiso. A recording industry mogul is hoping to transform Tamar into a new pop-music idol and to make millions off her success. The elaborate party is a scene for reenactment of a music video that combines the lyrics of Lewis Carroll's famous poem, sung by Tamar, with an enthralling dance number.

However, it turns out that someone else has quite different plans related to the party. The dance is brutally interrupted, when it is about to reach its climax:

"'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the ...
Don't nobody [...] move!'
Saddam Hussein and Yasir Arafat were coming down the wide mahogany staircase."

Mayhem ensues. I believe the readers will like the vivid writing in the entire party scene, quite lengthy but well worth it, and particularly the description of the dance.

The dramatic events during the party become instant fodder for various TV talk shows:

"[...]two guests tonight were at opposite ends of the political and cultural spectrum in that one of them was a minister who represented a Christian Right activist organization that called itself the 'Citizens for Values Coalition,' [...] and the other was a homosexual who was speaking for a group that called itself 'Priapus Perpetual,' [...]

Steve Carella handles the case for the 87th Precinct until the investigation is taken over by FBI. They request Carella to remain on the case, which causes some tension between him and one of the FBI agents, whom the detective knew during their common time spent at the police academy. The plot is relatively engrossing and it turns considerably darker toward the end of the story.

The other thread in the novel portrays the romance between Detective Ollie Weeks and Patricia Gomez, a Latina detective. As much as I like the author's new emphasis (see Fat Ollie's Book ) on the bigoted and misogynist cop (after all, how long can one live with saintly characters like Carella), I don't find the thread particularly interesting, and the once amazing fact that Detective Weeks is human has lost its novelty.

Overall, I find the book quite readable and am recommending it.

Three stars

[With this review I have completed my challenge of reading (and reviewing) 60 books in 2021. Woohoo!!!]

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Pale Kings And Princes by Robert B. Parker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

" I loved the way her calf tapered to her ankle. I loved the way she chewed slightly on her lower lip as she decided which blouse to put on top. Watching her was timeless. Sound seemed to stop. Light seemed clearer. "

There may be several reasons for readers to like Pale Kings and Princes (1987), Robert B. Parker's 14th installment of his Spenser series. Spenser's love for Susan would be one of them. Hawk's character would be another. For some readers also the occasionally witty writing and some clever repartees. I don't believe anyone would enjoy the novel for its silly premise of the plot that there exists a small town in Massachusetts, which is a center of a big cocaine operation, and most people in town, including the entire police force, are participants in the conspiracy. After all, we know that no conspiracy that involves more than a handful of people is feasible. Oh wait... I forgot...

Anyway, let's recap the setup of the plot. The publisher of a regional paper hires Spenser to find out who killed a young reporter who had been investigating the cocaine operation. Naturally, the local police are all on the take, so they will not give Spenser any help. But don't worry: the author conjures a clever, ambitious, and basically honest state trooper, who will help Spenser find the truth, after two more people are killed. There is also superhuman Hawk:

"'We stay here,' Hawk said, 'we gonna have to shoot up a mess of Wheaton cops.'
'I know,' Susan said.
'There ain't but maybe fifty of them,' Hawk said.
'But then all the other cops in the world will be on our case,' I said.
'We may run out of ammunition,' Hawk said."

The plot culminates in a silly shootout, which inspired me to consider an alternative title for the novel, Pale Plot and Climax.

Despite the silly concept of a massive conspiracy and all the clichés, I almost enjoyed reading the novel, relishing wittyish passages like:

"'Tired?' Susan said.
'And hungry and in the throes of caffeine withdrawal, and sexually unrequited for six days,' I said.
'There are remedies to all those problems,' Susan said. 'Trust me, I have a Ph.D.'
'From Harvard too,' I said."

Two-and-a-quarter stars.


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The Big Bad City by Ed McBain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"First thing you had to understand about this city was that it was big. [...] This city was dangerous too. [...] Bad things happened in this city every hour of the day or night, and they happened all over the city. [...] In this city, things were happening all the time, all over the place, and you didn't have to be a detective to smell evil in the wind."

August in the big city. Oppressive heat despite the late hour. Chaos in the 87th Precinct house. An altercation between two suspects in custody results in one of them getting wounded. The detectives are forced to shoot at the attacker. At the same time, nine handcuffed basketball players are led into the precinct house - the tenth has been killed, and all nine are the suspects.

The body of a strangled young woman is found in a city park. Detectives Carella and Brown lead the investigation. Detectives Meyer and Kling are trying to find the perpetrator in a string of residential burglaries. Sonny, a small criminal, who had killed Carella's father during a robbery ( Widows), is out of prison early. He plans to kill Carella so the detective does not kill him in the act of revenge. The three main story lines of the novel are thus set up.

While it turns out that the strangled young woman was a nun some details soon discovered seem incompatible with the finding. I don't usually pay much attention to the plot, but I have to admit that this story line is captivating, superbly paced and structured, and its denouement is quite logical and plausible, unlike the silly artificial twists and turns in most crime novels. Furthermore, there is yet another story nested within this plot thread.

The perpetrator of residential thefts is known as Cookie Boy in the media because of his "signature" - in the burglarized apartments he leaves a box of cookies he baked himself. Yet his newest burglary does not go as planned and the reader gets a fascinating story within a story about how things go monstrously wrong.

Carella is turning 40, which may bring the reader to realize that the 87th Precinct series time runs much slower than in the real world. Carella was in his late twenties in 1956, when the first novel in the series ( Cop Hater) was published, so it took him 43 years to age about 10 years.

In my view, Big Bad City (1999) is a very good novel, one of the best installments in the series!

Four stars.


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Taming a Sea-Horse by Robert B. Parker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"[...] maybe I had seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker.
I called Susan at home.
'I'm sitting in my office with only one light on,' I said, 'and I'm quoting Prufrock to myself.'
'My God,' she said, 'tell me about it."

In Taming a Sea-Horse (1986), the 13th installment of the Spenser series, Robert B. Parker relies on character continuity to set up the plot. Patricia Utley, the owner of a call-girl business, whom we first met in Mortal Stakes, hires Spenser to find April Kyle (see Ceremony), who disappeared from her stable of "girls." When Spenser talks with April, she seems to be in love with a certain Robert Rambeaux, a Juilliard music student. Rambeaux stupidly tries to outmacho Spenser, and our hero needs to beat him up a little. I appreciate the author's pun of getting a Rambo beaten up. Yet the entire Rambeaux episode reads like a fragment of a 1940s noir.

The plot is typically implausible and quite silly, but at least Spenser does not have all those governmental agencies helping him this time around. There is a lot about the sex business and Spenser uses his muscles, stamina, and boxing training to do his trademark righteous things. The plot even takes him to the Caribbean island of St. Thomas.

With Susan Silverman permanently back with Spenser, the reader can enjoy their banter:

"'Dr. Silverman,' I said [...] 'You are a highly educated Jewish psychotherapist approaching middle years. And here, in this sophisticated island hideaway, I find you talking dirty and giggling like an oversexed teenage shiksa.'
'Talk to me, baby,' Susan murmured, 'whisper in my ear'"

For me, the best thing about the novel is not the silly plot or the series of beatings but the reference to T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I had not known that poem, and I am thankful to Mr. Parker for getting me to read it!

Two stars.

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Mischief by Ed McBain
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"[...] slain by the person the newspapers were currently calling the Sprayer Slayer. In America, everything needed a title because everything was a miniseries concocted for the enjoyment of the populace."

A good entry in Ed McBain's monumental saga of the 87th Precinct! Like in several previous novels, Mischief (1993), the 45th title in the series, has multiple parallel storylines that do not intersect, other than through the characters of the detectives.

A blurb on the cover screams "The Deaf Man Returns," and indeed one of the parallel threads is the story of the Deaf Man, the archnemesis of the 87th Precinct cops. As usual, the Deaf Man (the author has fun inventing the aliases - one of them used here is Harry Gimperde, a pun based on the criminal mastermind's impairment) is planning to cause a major calamity. And, as usual, Steve Carella is the Deaf Man's main target.

The thread that opens the novel deals with serial murders of graffiti writers:

"He shot the boy one more time, in the chest this time, and then he reached down to pick up the can in his gloved hand, and pressed the button on top of the can, and squirted red paint all over the boy's face oozing blood, his chest oozing blood, red paint and red blood mingling [...]"

It is a complex plot thread, with quite surprising twists and turns.

Another storyline features "Granny dumping" - leaving elderly people, who are unable to care for themselves and are too burdensome to care for, in public places, such as in front of hospitals or nursing homes. I hope that in real life police treat these cruel acts with the same seriousness as the 87th Precinct detectives do.

We also have the storyline of a rap group preparing for a concert - that thread is connected to one of the previous stories. The reader will also find two interesting vignettes: one featuring Teddy Carella (the detective's wife) engaged in an act of social activism, and the other about a dramatic hostage situation and Eileen Burke's role in direct negotiations with the hostage taker.

From the plot point of view, the novel culminates with a dramatic situation and its rather unexpected resolution. However, to me, the strongest ending moment comes when the author recites a litany of lofty ideals that are said to have inspired the birth of the U.S. of America:

"In this land of the free and home of the brave, men and women of every religion and creed would loudly sing the praises of freedom while reaping all those amber waves of grain. [...] Men and women would come to respect each other's customs and beliefs while simultaneously merging into a strong single tribe with a strong single voice [...] Here in America, the separate parts would at last become the whole, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Quite biting and bitter sarcasm, and let's not forget that 28 years ago, when the novel was written, the divisions in the American society were likely not as deep as they are now.

Three-and-a-quarter stars.

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A Catskill Eagle by Robert B. Parker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"'This is the first time my ass may depend on whether Freud was right.'
'And Sophocles,' Susan said.
'Him too.'"

Continuing a mad rush to complete my 2021 challenge of 60 books - now five left for 19 days - I read only "easy" books, ones that do not require much thinking, such as Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels. A Catskill Eagle, the 12th installment in the series, begins very strongly, promising a thrilling, madcap story.

Susan had left Spenser for a job and probably for another man in California (see Valediction ). Yet now Spenser receives a dramatic letter from her: Hawk (now a regular character in the series, an all-powerful and uber-cool Spenser's helper) is in jail in a small California town, accused of killing a security consultant, and both he and Susan need help quick. The passage on page 3 sets the tone of the novel:

"I [...] looked at my apartment.
Bookcases on either side of the front window. A working fireplace. Living room, bedroom, kitchen and bath. A shotgun, a rifle, and three handguns."

No need to say that guns do play a role in the story. So does poetry, and even Freud and Sophocles. The essence of Spenser's style: pummeling and shooting baddies while quoting Robert Frost. Still, the setup of the plot is clever and there is a humorous passage that describes how Spenser gets arrested. The zaniness continues for almost the entire first hundred pages. Well, the bad guys are killed left and right, but that's on course for a Spenser story, only here it comes earlier than usual.

The story takes Spenser from Boston to California, then Connecticut and Boise, Idaho. Alas, about one-third into the novel, the humor begins getting a bit tenuous, and the plot implausibility index rises to extreme heights. Police and even FBI and CIA are all helping Spenser. Lieutenant Quirk's outburst:

"'The entire City of Boston Police Department is at your disposal. We've decided to give up crime-stopping altogether.'"

sounds like sarcasm, but, in fact, it accurately reflects the events in the plot.

To sum up: a great beginning followed by silly, deeply improbable plot. Not one of the better installments in the series. As a bonus, the reader will learn some details of Spenser's birth.

Two stars.



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Widows by Ed McBain
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"On the street outside, the crowd behind the barricade was getting restless. This was already three o'clock in the morning, but no one was thinking of sleep. The only thing on anyone's mind was Showdown at the O.K. Corral. Toward that end, and with the seeming purpose of rattling everyone in sight so that the only possible outcome would be a loss of blood, a loss of life, further fuel for the inevitable fire to come."

Accurate and bitter social observations elevate Ed McBain's Widows (1991), the 43rd installment in the 87th Precinct series, to the above three-star rating. The accounts of two hostage situations are dispassionately written and believable. The hysteria of the crowd that watches unfolding events and yearns for a bloody climax is scary even for cynical observers of human nature. So are the interventions of actors from outside, which whip up the crowd's frenzy to further their unrelated political goals. All that on the ever-present backdrop of poverty and racial issues.

As it often happens in the 87th Precinct novels, the plot is multithreaded, with the threads intersecting at various junctures. There are three main stories in Widows: the novel begins with Detectives Carella and Brown catching the case of murder of a young woman. A bundle of erotic letters is found in the room, where the body has been found, and the case grows to include further victims.

The second main thread focuses on a personal loss of one of the detectives, and the investigation connected with it, difficult because of racial undercurrents. The novel was published in 1991 and it shows how little has changed in 30 years, except for current "euphemization" of the language.

The third thread features Detective Eileen Burke, who's beginning her new job on a hostage negotiating team. One of the strongest fragments in the novel is an account of her handling the negotiations with an old man holding a hostage. I am wondering if the author was influenced by Fellini's film Amarcord (1971) and its memorable scene when an elderly man hiding in a tree is yelling Voglio una donna! Brilliant and sad scenes, both.

There is some gentle humor:

"[...] how could you keep an eye on your sister to make sure some sex fiend wasn't dry humping her while you were busy trying to dry hump Margie Gannon? It got complicated sometimes. Adolescence was complicated."

Overall, I recommend the novel, not only because of two captivating and well-written hostage crisis vignettes, but also for the interesting denouement of the first thread.

Three-and-a-quarter stars.


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Valediction by Robert B. Parker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"Then she went out and closed the door and I was alone with my soul dwindled to icy stillness at the densely compacted center of myself."

Susan Silverman, having just received her PhD in clinical psychology at Harvard, leaves Spenser to take a job on the other coast, in San Francisco. There might even be another man involved. And - to use Mr. Parker's flowery prose - Spenser's soul dwindles to icy stillness at his densely compacted center, whatever that center is...

Robert B. Parker's Valediction (1984), the eleventh novel in the Spenser series, follows The Widening Gyre , which I quite liked and recommended. Alas, this is not the case with Valediction, which I find below average.

Paul Giacomin, an aspiring dancer, whom we know from one of the earlier books in the series, is helping Spenser survive the loneliness. He also brings him a case: one of the female dancers in the ballet company where Paul is employed has disappeared, and the company's owner, who has been romantically involved with her, hires Spenser to find the dancer. Spenser confirms that she has joined a religious sect, The Reorganized Church of the Redemption, and is trying to determine whether she is with them voluntarily or under duress.

The plot serves as a pretext to depict several violent scenes: two vicious beatings, where Spenser demonstrates his physical prowess.

"[...] I hit his buddy across the face with my chain flail. His glasses broke and some of the glass got in his eyes. Blood appeared and he dropped the handgun and put both hands to his face. I shook the chain in a short circle to keep it out and away from him and then drove it down against the back of the fat man's neck."

Particularly the second episode, when our hero defeats four skilled and armed men, leaves no doubt that Spenser could beat Superman, using just the little finger. Yet even SuperSpenser eventually gets in trouble, which calls for Hawk's intervention.

I do not mind the cartoonish scenes of violence; they are an integral part of the essence of a Spenser novel. What I dislike is the "romantic" thread of Spenser pining for Susan: it reads artificial and contrived, as if the author wanted to try out a Susan-less variant of Spenser, but went for it without enough conviction. In my view, it doesn't work at all since the Susan-Spenser union is also an integral component of the essence of a Spenser novel.

I find the denouement clumsy and over-explained. To sum up, while Valediction is not entirely a clunker, it does not quite deserve my rating of

Two stars.

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Lullaby by Ed McBain
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"One of the ambulance attendants walked over to where Hodding still had his arm around his wife.
'Leave the knife in her or what?' he asked Carella.
Which was when Mrs. Hodding began screaming."

Another strong entry in the 87th Precinct series. Ed McBain's Lullaby (1989) has a captivating plot and several interesting characters; the denouement is close to plausible - a rarity in the crime novels genre.

New Year's Day, early morning. Detectives Carella and Meyer catch the case of a double murder: a young babysitter stabbed to death and a baby smothered with a pillow. The baby's parents come back from the New Year's party and find the bodies. The detectives quickly find out that the case might be connected to a residential burglary, which occurred in the same building the day before.

The two threads - murder and burglary - are accompanied by two other stories unfolding in parallel. Detective Kling saves the life of a small crook who is being viciously beaten by three thugs and is rewarded by getting information about a major drug shipment to arrive. The author also offers interesting accounts of psychotherapy sessions for cops suffering a nervous breakdown or job burnout. The four threads continue throughout the plot, with the murder thread getting a particularly plausible and logical conclusion.

There is some strong writing in the novel. From this sad passage

"'Yes?' he said again.
And with that single word, identical to all the yesses he'd already said, Carella knew for certain that the man already knew, the man was bracing himself for the words he knew would come, using the 'Yes?' as a shield to protect himself from the horror of those words, to deflect those words, to render them harmless."

to the scene of a savage killing, so cruel that I found it very hard to read.

In several places, the author inserts biting social commentary as a background for the plot. I find it stunning that while the novel was written only 32 years ago, the compassionate and well-meant remarks would be deemed totally inappropriate today, simply because of the language. I much prefer the language of the past, crude and potentially offensive, yet devoid of circumlocutions and euphemisms, thus better conveying the hard truths. The novel is well worth reading even if just for emphasizing how much the acceptable language has changed over the third of a century.

Three-and-a-quarter stars.

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The Widening Gyre by Robert B. Parker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"There was a little coffee left. I drank half of it. If I always drank just half of the remainder, it would never run out."

I like the "mathy" quote shown above and I like Robert B. Parker's The Widening Gyre (1983), the tenth novel in the Spenser series. I have been reading them in chronological order and, in my view, it is the only one, other that the first, The Godwulf Manuscript, that deserves a three-star rating, all the others being two-star, sort of "meh" reads.

Spenser is hired by a Christian Right politician to provide security in his Senate campaign against an opponent who is rumored to have mob connections. Our manly yet intellectual private eye is grumpy: his girlfriend, Susan Silverman, is away on a pre-doctoral internship in a hospital, "succoring the afflicted," and Spenser does not like being alone.

The portrayal of the Religious Right political candidate is quite believable, not just a roughly painted caricature like protagonists in several earlier novels in the series. The author sprinkles in some apt observations of a political campaign, for instance:

"As the candidate spoke with the people, there were no questions, only shared certainties."

The plot is interesting and generally plausible, except for Spenser's uncanny ability to find the right solution in every situation and to figure out the best ways to outwit all the bad guys.

A heavily intellectual conversation between Spenser and Susan sounds a little out of place in the fast-paced plot:

"'[...] I have vestiges of my upbringing, and religious training, and school inculcation that nag me under the heading of conscience. But consciously and rationally I try to do what serves me the most at least cost to others."

It is fun to read, though. I am wondering how much my positive opinion of the novel owes to the very strong first page, which reads like a throwback to the 1940s - 1960s noir or a homage to Chandler or Macdonald:

"When you thought about it, silence was rarely silent. Silence was the small noises you heard when the larger noises disappeared."

I am happy that the series of totally unremarkable novels ("Spenser #2" through "Spenser #9") has been interrupted by a substantially better work. I am also grateful to the author for using a fragment (the first stanza, that contains the widening gyre phrase) of William Butler Yeats' poem The Second Coming as an epigraph, which encouraged me to read the poem - a worthwhile experience.

Three-and-a-quarter stars.


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Lightning by Ed McBain
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"And then, suddenly, a sharp click.
'What's that?' Meyer asked. 'Did he turn off the recorder?'
'No, sir,' Ollie said.
'I thought I heard...'
'You did. That's [...]'"
(A fragment of dialogue in the novel. The readers will have to find out on their own what that click meant.)

It is mid-November and I am three books behind the schedule in my 2021 Reading Challenge. I am overloaded with work this semester and barely have any time for reading. I want to complete the challenge so I will sacrifice the principle of alternating "serious" reads with "unserious" ones, which I have followed for over 900 reviewed books. I may have a chance to read and review 11 "unserious" books in the remaining days of 2021.

Lightning (1984) is the 37th installment in the famous 87th Precinct series by Ed McBain (that is, Evan Hunter). The novel begins when detectives Carella and Genero find a body of a young woman hanging from a lightpost. The narration then switches to a rapist exhilarated about the power he wields over the women he violates.

The multi-threaded narration alternates between the two cases and recounts the 87th Precinct detectives' methodical work on catching the killer and the rapist. Of the 17 novels in the series that I have reviewed on Goodreads, Lightning is the strongest on the procedural aspect of police detectives' work. The investigatory approaches, forensic science methods, and crime scene techniques are described in meticulous detail. The fragments of detectives' D.D. reports are included in the text as are the copies of some of the victims' diaries (chronology happens to play a role in getting closer to solving one of the cases).

The author also includes some sharp social commentary on poverty, crime, and their roots. The novel is only 37 years old, yet I think it could not have been published in 2021 without editing for phrasing; some fragments of the text would violate today's strictly regimented language when referring to certain social issues. I like the straightforward and uncompromising language, and I miss it in today's careful prose. The descriptions of the crimes are chilling, yet certainly not gratuitous.

Despite my aversion to the "conceptual continuity" of a long series of novels - the repeating motifs in most books in a series - I like this installment of the 87th Precinct saga, and recommend it without hesitation. A solid mystery, outstanding procedural, and quite a good read!

Three-and-a-half stars.


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Ceremony by Robert B. Parker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"My jaw was very sore where Marcus had hit me. It had stiffened overnight, and I had to talk through my teeth. I sounded as if I'd just graduated from Harvard."

The minimal amount of humor does not save Robert B. Parker's Ceremony (1982), the ninth installment in the Spenser series, from a below average rating. The setup sounds promising, yet the novel does not quite deliver.

Susan Silverman, Spenser's girlfriend and a high-school guidance counselor, asks him to find one of her charges, April Kyle, who dropped out of school. The meeting between Spenser and the girl's parents gives us an opportunity to meet the world's worst father. Spenser uses his police contacts to learn that they know the girl as the 'queen of gangbangs,' as she often goes with several men, while drunk or stoned.

It does not take Spenser long to discover April's involvement with the prostitution business in the local red-light district. The story grows darker when Spenser's search takes him to a kinky brothel and the connections with a local crime boss are discovered. This being the early 1980s, we have an extended scene of an orgy

"The room was a swarm of debauchery, a maelstrom of naked and part-naked limbs and torsos. It looked like a feverish animation of one of those Gustave Doré illustrations for The Inferno."

This being a Spenser novel, we also have an extended scene of mayhem; even the readers who are not connoisseurs of violence will have to admit that it is written well. I am unable to describe the denouement without spoiling the plot, so let me just mention that some readers may find one of the aspects of the conclusion ethically dubious.

As it often happens in Spenser novels, the ease with which Spenser gets police's approval of and collaboration in his activities, is grossly implausible. He is able to arrange police intervention to come at the right place and time.

Ceremony is an unremarkable episode in Spenser's saga. I can't quite recommend the novel. I will continue reading the books in their chronological order because I am interested in the development of the author's style, and the evolution of the social and cultural background of the stories.

Two stars.

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A Savage Place by Robert B. Parker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"It was a big sunny buffoon of a city; corny and ornate and disorganized but kind of fun. The last hallucination, the dwindled fragment of -- what had Fitzgerald called it? -- 'the last and greatest of all human dreams.' It was where we'd run out of room, where the dream had run up against the ocean, and human voices woke us. Los Angeles was the butt end, where we'd spat it out with our mouths tasting of ashes, but a genial failure of a place for all of that."

The poetic descriptions of Los Angeles are the best thing about Robert B. Parker's A Savage Place, (1981), the eighth installment in his Spenser series. The quoted fragment reminds me a little of my first visit to Los Angeles, in 1983, when I realized that I had never seen a city so different from all other cities in the world - absurdly huge, incredibly diverse, and incomprehensible in its strange and unique allure. The rest of the book is routine, formulaic, and mostly boring.

Rachel Wallace, whom we met in the sixth novel in the series, contacts Spenser and asks him to accept a job of guarding an LA journalist, Candy Sloan, who uncovered a scandal in the movie industry, and who fears that her life may be endangered. Spenser flies to Los Angeles, talks to Ms. Sloan and meets her male companion. The scene of moronic macho posturing and exchange of blows between the two men is painful to read; not because of the physical violence, but because of the utter stupidity of men trying to establish the "alpha maleness."

Ms. Sloan gets beaten, even before Spenser begins his guarding job, and the plot is getting quite serious. Yet, in a lame homage to Anton Chekhov and his "Chekhov's gun,", the author, at some point, mentions the space between the couch cushion and the arm of the couch, to have that space save his life a few pages later.

A cinematic climax follows - stereotypical yet well written. The slightly ambiguous ending and Lt. Samuelson's "Nobody's perfect" quip save the novel from a one-star rating. A small dose of humor helps:

"We were both naked finally, dancing on the balcony. The gun lay holstered on the table beside the cognac bottle. If an assassin broke in I could reach it in less than five minutes."

One-and-three-quarter stars.

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The Cure: A Perfect Dream by Ian Gittins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"After four decades of making some of the most restless, somber, and variegated music in pop history, the Cure's legacy remains mighty and unquestionable - both in abstract and concrete terms."
(Ian Gittins, The Cure. A Perfect Dream)

I love the Cure. I have listened to their music for 36 years, more than half of my life. Yes, they are just a rock/pop band, but their music resonates with me as strongly as Bach's sonatas for solo violin or John Coltrane's Transition. This is the fourth book about the band that I am reviewing here, after "">https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Never Enough: The Story of the Cure, The Cure. Poletko Pana Boba (this one is in Polish), and "">https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys. Thus, instead of repeating the history of the band, I write about the book itself.

I find Ian Gittin's The Cure. A Perfect Dream (2018) the best "biography" of the group. It is very well written and sympathetic virtually to everybody who had been in any way connected with the band. And - of course - the pictures! This is really a coffee-table kind of book, one that not only can provoke house guests to talk about popular music but also can serve as a decorative item. It is a hard-cover, large-format book, 11 by 12 inches, printed on high-quality paper, and it contains probably over 300 photographs (I did not count, but there are often two pictures on each of the 240 pages). About a half of the images depict Robert Smith, the leader of the band, author of all lyrics and the primary composer.

The story of the band, whose first sort-of-official concert, in a secondary school auditorium, took place in December of 1976, and who still performed in 2020, is presented vividly and engagingly. Mr. Gittins knows how to write well - he is a noted ghost-writer, journalist, and editor. In addition to the smooth prose, I suppose some part of my high praise of Mr. Gittin's work is due to the fact that he seems to admire the same pieces by the Cure as I do. Let me quote some samples of the author's captivating prose that may debunk the old adage "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

About The Forest from the album Seventeen Seconds, the author writes:

"[...] nearly six minutes of charged, evocative menace unfurled around a sparsely claustrophobic yet nimbly infectious guitar line."

Strange as it may seem, these orotund phrases resonate with me in the same way as the song does! Mr. Gittins writes the following about one of the most popular Cure's songs - Close To Me:

"[...] the capricious, gorgeous 'Close To Me'. Feather-light, fickle, and fervent, this touched-by-the-hand-of-God song about stage fright has become one of the Cure's signature songs."

Again, how well these pretentious-sounding words capture the essence of this light, capricious, and gorgeous song!

Then comes Disintegration (1989), the Cure's most famous album and - to me - one of the best albums in the history of rock music. The author calls it "Robert Smith's masterwork," and describes every one of the 12 songs with his trademark flowery and visual, yet aptly accurate style. He writes:

"'The Same Deep Water As You' seems like a song to be delivered from a death bed to a lover. Romanticism never sounded so bruised, forlorn and, well, yes, gothic. Here Smith aligns himself more with Percy Shelley [...]"

And:

"[...] the record's title track delivers a frenzied, chaotic mea culpa of past sins set to a killer bassline and subtle, atmospheric synths. [...] It's a fantastically clever piece of writing, the zenith of Smith's lyrics."

The book ends with a short but illuminating exposition of the influence that the Cure had on other bands and on the pop and rock music in general.

An outstanding, engrossing read!

Four-and-a-half stars.


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Early Autumn by Robert B. Parker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"'I could not love thee, dear, so much,' I said, 'loved I not honor more.'
'Shit,' Susan said."

What a guy that Spenser is! Not only does he quote Shakespeare, Robert Frost, or Richard Lovelace, but he can also beat anyone to bloody pulp. And during breaks between reciting top-shelf poetry and pummeling villains, he deeply cares about fellow human beings. What a guy!

Early Autumn (1981) is the seventh installment in Robert B. Parker's saga about the indomitable, intrepid, brilliant, and witty private eye from Boston. I am continuing my quest to read all the novels in the series in chronological order.

A woman whose ex-husband took away their 15-year-old son, Paul, despite having lost the custody fight, hires Spenser to find the boy and bring him back. A victim of neglect and indifference by the feuding parents, a pawn in their bitter fight, Paul hates both of them equally.

Spenser finds Paul and returns him to his mother. Three months later, though, an attempt is made to kidnap the boy, and the mother hires Spenser again, to live with them and guard the boy around the clock. Spenser feels for the boy, seeing all the psychological damage inflicted on Paul by the parents. The selfishness and vacuity of the parents is painted with a broad brush. They seem like caricatures embodying all the wrong things that parents can do.

Spenser frequently dispenses more or less clever witticisms, a standard for the series. The author has an opportunity to provide some bitter observations, like the following fragment of a dialogue between Spenser and the boy's mother:

"'Why is being married so important?' I said.
'Because that's where the bucks are, [...]Men have the money and the power and if a woman wants some, she better get hold of a man.'"

There is a painfully sad seduction scene, fortunately, it ends on a funny note. Hawk shows up in the plot and becomes almost a completely positive character. Spenser's care about Paul is well-meant, yet it may seem naive to a cynical reader (like this reviewer). Overall plausibility of the plot is not a strong point of the novel. Still, a very marginal recommendation, mainly for being slightly different from the earlier Spenser novels.

Two-and-a-half stars.


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Smoke on the Water: The Deep Purple Story by Dave Thompson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

" [...] this is the story of a band as it forms, develops, succeeds, and survives in a world filled with other bands; a document of the ideas, interactions, and inspirations that, for over forty years, have shaped and sharpened, shattered and shadowed the musicians whose names will forever be associated with the one group that they all have in common."
(From the author's Introduction; note the super cool alliteration!)

Deep Purple would certainly be included in any list of Top 20 bands in the history of rock music, probably in Top 10 lists for many people. Arguably, this is the band which brought the so-called "hard rock" genre into existence, and provided one of the main stimuli for the emergence of "heavy metal."

Smoke on the Water, with its unforgettable guitar riff, is the most famous song by Deep Purple. (The riff is attributed to Ritchie Blackmore, who said that he composed it as an interpretation of inversion of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.) While the riff is indeed extremely catchy, and I often subconsciously hum it when in a good mood, I am not a particular fan of this song. I admire Deep Purple mainly for another work, Child in Time, a 10-minute piece of art rock, innovative, dynamic, and exhilarating, one of the best examples of progressive genre in rock. One can watch Deep Purple performing Child in Time live in 1970, in the so-called "official" version, on YouTube. The entire performance is stunningly brilliant, particularly, Ian Gillan's vocals, Jon Lord's keyboard work, and Ritchie Blackmore's guitar.

Dave Thompson's Smoke on the Water. The Deep Purple Story (2004) presents a meticulously researched, extremely detailed history of the band, from 1967 to 2002, and, additionally, individual histories of many musicians that at one time or another were members of the band.

There were eight incarnations of Deep Purple, meaning eight different sets of the band's personnel (they are named "Mark I" through "Mark VIII.") For me - and, likely for the majority of Deep Purple's fans - Mark II was the "real" Deep Purple - the three musicians mentioned above plus Roger Glover and Ian Pace. Deep Purple existed in the Mark II setup three times. First time was the peak period for the band, between 1969 and 1973, when Child in Time , Smoke on the Water, and many other famous songs were recorded. The tensions between Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Gillan caused the singer and Roger Glover to leave the band. They re-joined the band in 1984 but left again in 1987. The second reunion happened in 1993, but it lasted only a few months not only because of the differences in creative and artistic visions but also because of a deep personal animosity between Blackmore and Gillan.

Luckily, the personalities of Blackmore and Gillan do not dominate the author's narrative; he writes in depth about other members of the band, both permanent and temporary. A lot of space is dedicated to Jon Lord, a great keyboardist, and the one member in the band that kept pulling it toward classical music. He was the singular force behind the famous Concerto for Group and Orchestra; he composed the music and persevered in convincing the band to overcome the initial communication difficulties with classical musicians. The concerto was recorded in 1969, and it features the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Malcolm Arnold), in addition to the band. In 1970, Mr. Lord followed with another merger of rock with classical - the Gemini Suite (this time with London Symphony Orchestra).

Mr. Thompson's biography of the band is superbly informative. In addition to the detailed narrative, it contains the discography of the band, solo discographies, and the list of records, for the total of 80 pages of appendices. I strongly recommend the book, which probably deserves a higher rating than mine. I am only interested in the 1969 - 1973 "progressive period" of the band's musical output. It is a good read, although perhaps too packed with details.

Three-and-a-half stars.



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The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken: A Vish Puri Mystery by Tarquin Hall
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Puri would never forget the meal as long as he lived. The marinated mutton was so tender, so succulent, that it melted in his mouth. The yogurt-based gravy was a revelation; creamy with a perfect blend of coriander and chilli and just a hint of lemon. He lapped it all up with the crisp pieces of roghini naan, wiped the container clean with his finger and sucked every last bit of marrow from the mutton bones."

I read The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken (2012) by Tarquin Hall on a recommendation from an outstanding student of mine. It has been a very interesting read, less so in terms of a crime/mystery novel, but much more as a primer on life in Kashmir, India. I have never been to the soon-to-be most populous country in the world, and despite having Indian students and faculty colleagues, I have never known much about the country. Obviously, one should not readily generalize one author's observations, but Mr. Hall, originally a news reporter, had lived in India for many years, and has garnered quite a reputation among literary community for the accuracy of his social commentary, so I tend to have a high degree of confidence in the picture of the country he paints.

This is the third installment in the series of mysteries featuring Vish Puri, "India's Most Private Investigator." We meet Vish (a gourmet, nicknamed "Chubby" by his wife), as he commences work on a strange case where the owner of the longest moustache in the world, nurtured and groomed for more than thirty years, has his treasure stolen "from right under his nose."

Yet this is not the main case whose solution we are following in the novel. The father of an internationally famous Pakistani cricket star dies of poisoning during a well-attended dinner at a luxury hotel in Delhi. Mr. Puri's British friend, the head of the anti-corruption unit of the International Cricket Federation, asks him to help solve the case. There are suspicions that the victim's son participated in a match fixing scheme. As the captivating plot progresses, we learn that the case may have connections to historical events from the past.

For me, the vivid and compelling portrait of Indian life and society is the most valuable aspect of the novel. I found precious the social commentary about the basic ways of life in India (the story happens in the Punjab area; I am not sure how representative it is for other regions of India). The ways of "getting things done," are so very different from our Western norms. Using family and personal contacts is the main way of achieving most objectives in life. The ubiquity of bribery and corruption must be a bit stunning for a Western-born reader (not for me, accustomed to moderate degrees of corruption and bribery in my native country). It is also illuminating how different the crime solving process by a private investigator in India is from the one in UK or US. More importantly, the reader will learn about the horrors of the 1947 Partition of British India into independent India and Pakistan, when at least half a million people lost their lives.

My opinions about the literary aspect of the novel are mixed. I did not particularly care for the prose - I found it hard to focus on the text, generously peppered with Hindi/Punjabi words and phrases. True, it added to the overall feeling of authenticity, yet it made it difficult for me to focus. While the glossary of Hindi/Punjabi phrases at the end helped, I found using it disruptive in my reading.

Also on the negative side, Vish's miraculous escape from the near-death situation seems artificial and not fitting the rather somber tone of the story at that juncture of the plot. It sort of reads as a contrived way of adding "excitement" to the plot. Also, while I like how irreverent the narrator's approach to Mr. Puri's investigating excellence is, the presence of a big army of his helpers offsets the humor.

The best thing in the book, from the literary point of view, is - to me - the author's ability to gradually change the mood of the novel from light and full of humor to very dark and serious. I did not expect this, and I appreciated it a lot! I love when the author does things that I do not expect they will do.

Compellingly readable novel, highly recommended! Thank you, LF!

Three-and-a-half stars.

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All Too Human by George Stephanopoulos
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Two months later, two nights before Clinton's final presidential debate [...] 'The prep went well today,' I said. 'We're ahead of schedule. If you have a solid night Wednesday, the election is over.'"

Wednesday, October 16, 1996. The second presidential debate between Bill Clinton, the incumbent, and Bob Dole, the Republican nominee. My University hosted the debate and I even received a diploma for providing help with the mathematical aspect of the preparations' logistics. Alas, George Stephanopoulos, the author of All Too Human. A Political Education (1999), does not report on the debate itself.

This is the seventh item in my recent series of reads and Goodreads reviews of books on the presidential politics in the US at the end of the 20th century. The links to the reviews of the other six titles are shown at the bottom of this page.

All Too Human is a tale of love for politics, a tale told by an addict of politics. Mr. Stephanopoulos admits that the thing he cherishes perhaps the most is to be where history is made. He writes about his

"[...] desire to inhabit the smallest ring of the inner circle."

About his job at the White House he writes:

"[...] I held a relatively amorphous job that was an amalgam of political troubleshooter, public-relations advisor, policy expert, and crisis manager. [...] So much of the excitement of being a White House aide comes from having the chance to be a witness to history, and to feel like you're making it."

All Too Human is a great read: well-written, engaging, entertaining, highly educational, and it sounds authentically personal.

Several fascinating stories are the focal points of the memoir: preparations for the Clintons 1992 60 Minutes interview, the author's first press conference as the White House communications director, and the absolutely riveting story about selecting a Supreme Court nominee to fill the retiring Justice Byron White's seat. The constantly changing dynamic of the "contest" between Mario Cuomo and Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an edge-of-the-seat reading. Readers interested in "scandals" will also get their fill: the Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones affairs are well reported.

However, to me, the most stunning aspect of the memoir is that the last one hundred pages, almost one-fourth of the entire volume, is basically dedicated to the persona of Dick Morris, the author's arch-enemy among Bill Clinton's staff as well as an occasional tactical ally. The author writes:

"[Dick Morris] was the dark buddha whose belly Clinton rubbed in desperate times."

And later:

"From December 1994 through August 1996, Leon Panetta managed the official White House staff, the Joint Chiefs commanded the military, the cabinet administered the government, but no single person more influenced the president of the United States than Dick Morris."

Mr. Morris' role at the White House remains the focus of the story until one of the last pages of the book:

"Panetta took Dick's chair and gave a perfunctory, thirty-second 'Now that Dick is gone...' speech. That was that. I was there. Dick wasn't. I had won. But Man, I thought, this is one cold-blooded business we're in".

I highly recommend this book! The last item in my list below is Mr. Morris' take on the story; it is also a worthwhile read, yet I find it weaker and more biased than Mr. Stephanopoulos' work.

Four stars.

Other books on the US presidential elections and politics that I have recently reviewed on Goodreads:

David Gergen, Eyewitness to Power. The Essence of Leadership from Nixon to Clinton ,
H.R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power,
Lesley Stahl, Reporting Live,
Tom Rosenstiel, Strange Bedfellows.
Bob Woodward, The Choice: How Bill Clinton Won
Dick Morris, Behind the Oval Office. Winning the Presidency in the Nineties. .


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Looking For Rachel Wallace by Robert B. Parker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"I always had the sense that when I came upon her suddenly in a slightly unusual setting, a pride of trumpets ought to play alarms and flourishes. I stepped up to the bar next to her and said, 'I beg your pardon, but the very sight of you makes my heart sing like an April day on the wings of spring.'
She turned toward me and smiled and said, 'Everyone tells me that.'"
(The 'she' is Susan Silverman, of course.)

Let's begin with a brief summary of the setup of Robert B. Parker's Looking for Rachel Wallace (1980), the sixth novel in the Spenser series. An executive of a publishing company hires Spenser to protect Rachel Wallace, a writer, whose new book about "tyrants in high places who discriminate against gay women" is just about to be published. Being outspoken in her feminist views, Ms. Wallace has received death threats.

Spenser meets with Ms. Wallace: while she is a serious and earnest yet rather humorless person, Spenser persists with his trademark wisecracking, which makes the meeting pretty tense. The tension in their relationship keeps building up until Ms. Wallace disappears.

In a clear contrast with the previous five novels, where Spenser is invincible, he gets severely beaten by four assailants:

"I took a deep breath. It hurt my ribcage. I exhaled, inhaled again, inched my arms under me, and pushed myself up onto my hands and knees. My head swam. I felt my stomach tighten, and I threw up, which hurt the ribs some more. I stayed that way for a bit, on my hands and knees with my head hanging, like a winded horse."

In general, this sixth novel in the Spencer series is a tiny bit more realistic than all the previous installments. It does not read as a pastiche or parody. The psychological portrait of Ms. Wallace even has a degree of plausibility.

The usual banter between Spenser and Susan adds some humor to the novel:

"'Where does it say that cooking steaks is man's work?' I said.
Her eyes crinkled and her face brightened. 'Right above the section on what sexual activity one can look forward to after steaks and mushrooms.'
'I'll get right on the steaks,' I said."

"Chronologically enriched" readers will also notice how social mores have changed in just 41 years since the novel was published. If the book were to be published today, it would unfortunately have to be edited for several impolitic passages, to meet today's exacting standards.

Anyway, I will keep reading Spenser novels in their chronological order; I find this installment a bit better than the previous ones, so things are looking up!

Two-and-a-half stars.

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Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition): by Nick Mason
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Pink Floyd emerged from two overlapping sets of friends: one was based around Cambridge, where Roger [Waters], Syd Barrett, David Gilmour and many future Floyd affiliates hailed from. The other - Roger, Rick and myself - came together in the first year of an architecture course at the Regents Street Polytechnic in London, which is where my recollections of our common history begin."

When I talk with people about Pink Floyd, everybody seems to like them. "Yes, yes, a great band," I invariably hear. And then most people drop the names of albums, such as The Dark Side of the Moon (one of the best-selling records in the history of music) or The Wall. My problem is that I do not like these records; I find them cheap, completely commercial, and musically limited. I love Pink Floyd's early oeuvre, roughly until their Atom Heart Mother album (1970). Basically, I am only into their psychedelic and sort of avant-garde rock music.

I find Nick Mason's Inside out. A Personal History of Pink Floyd an excellent read. Mr. Mason, the band drummer, has been the only constant member of the band for their entire 56-year history. Inside Out (2017) is an extremely detailed and thorough history of the band, a comprehensive account of all their recordings, major performances, and personnel changes, all shown on the backdrop of the music scene evolution between the mid-1960s and the late 2010s.

Obviously, for me, the most interesting are the beginning chapters of the book that focus on the mid- and late 1960s, particularly the times of the intellectual underground movement centered around the Indica Bookshop and the London Free School. These were the times of joint performance with Soft Machine, the times of recording Pink Floyd's first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the times when Syd Barrett was the most important member of the band.

In 1967, Syd Barrett begins to unravel, likely an effect of psychedelic drugs overuse. David Gilmour replaces Barrett in 1968, and, as Mr. Mason writes:

"[...] there was, and still is, a school of thought that Syd's departure marked the end of the 'real' Pink Floyd, a point of view I can understand, even if I don't concede it."

Then come two other great albums, A Saucerful of Secrets and Ummagumma, and the band closes their psychedelic, Barrett-influenced period with Atom Heart Mother:

"[...] an ambitious piece we have [...] recorded complete with French horns, tuba, trumpets, trombones, a solo cello and a twenty-strong choir - the kitchen sink must have been unavailable for session work."

The fans of Dark Side will find detailed analyses of individual pieces on this album. The fans of rock music presented as a theatrical spectacle will find detailed accounts of various opulently staged performances and descriptions of the band's famous stage decorations (flying pigs, etc.)

I like the author's muted, balanced, and unsensationalistic coverage of the well-publicized conflict between Roger Waters, one of the founding members, and David Gilmour. In general, I admire the author for omitting the so-called juicy details so characteristic of any famous rock band's history. Almost nothing about debauchery, and precious little about drugs. Well done!

I love Mr. Mason's admission that there existed many bands with better musicianship than Pink Floyd (oh yes; Soft Machine immediately comes to mind!) I love the generous helpings of understated, British humor, very helpful in reading the rather dense text. But most of all, I commend the author for displaying an unusually sympathetic attitude toward everybody featured in the story, toward every single person he writes about. No personal sniping; all criticisms are expressed nicely and with a dose of humor, whenever possible.

Very highly recommended book, for all fans of rock music.

Four stars.

(I also recommend my review of Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey by Nicholas Schaffner.)


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The Judas Goat by Robert B. Parker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"I put on jeans, a white Levi shirt, and white Adidas Roms with blue stripes. I didn't want the goddamned limeys to think an American sleuth didn't know color coordination."

The reader will also learn how to remove blood stains from fabric:

"I got a can of Spot-lifter off the top closet shelf and sprayed the blood stains on the rug.
'That stuff work?'
'Works on my suits,' I said. 'When it dries I just brush it away.'"

Such a handy yet simple hack! Oh, and raw herring!

"Hawk bought a raw herring from the stand. The woman at the stand cut it up, sprinled with raw onions and handed it to him. Hawk tried a bite.
He smiled. 'Not bad,' he said. 'Ain't chitlins, but it ain't bad.'"

I wholeheartedly agree with Hawk! These three nice passages plus vignettes from Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Montreal during the Olympics are, to me, the highpoints of Robert B. Parker's The Judas Goat (1978), the fifth installment in the Spenser series. The rest of the novel is utterly unremarkable.

Spenser's client is Mr. Dixon, a very rich lawyer, an international-scale genius for business and finance. His wife and two daughters were killed in a terrorist bombing in London, while he himself was horribly maimed. He hires Spenser as a bounty hunter, to deliver at least some of the terrorists dead or alive.

Most of the plot happens in London: thanks to Mr. Dixon's wide-ranging influence, not only are Spenser's activities tolerated, but also the local police share all information with him. To ensure success, Spenser hires Hawk, whom Mr. Parker introduced in the fourth installment ( Promised Land ) (It's fun to see how Hawk, painted mostly as a "baddie" in the previous novel, morphs into an almost half-good guy here.)

Spenser puts an ad in the Times to lure a member of the terrorist group to serve as the "Judas goat," an animal that leads the entire flock to slaughter (by the way, what an apt metaphor for people spreading misinformation in times of the pandemic!)

The novel is strong on brawl and violence and very weak on characterization. The terrorists are pure paper caricatures. Spenser is the usual pastiche of a witty, manly, charming, wise, and strong arm of justice. Even Susan's portrayal is weaker than in the previous novels.

Well, onto the next installment, in the - so far unsuccessful - search for quality.

One-and-three-quarter stars.

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Behind the Oval Office: Winning the Presidency in the Nineties by Dick Morris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"This is a report of an overwhelming experience, two years working with President Clinton as he struggled to save his presidency and win the support of the American people for a second term. But it is also the story of how a presidential campaign operates in the nineties and how a new moderate consensus has formed in America."

I did not have to look very far to find a suitable epigraph for the review of Dick Morris's Behind the Oval Office (1997). The quote uses the very first two sentences of the book. The first one is the shortest possible summary of the book, while the second one shows how tremendously things changed in just 25 years. "Moderate consensus in America" characterizes the situation in 1996 pretty well. 25 years later, in the beginning of the Twenties, things are completely different! From moderate consensus to utter polarization! Anyway, back to the book.

Dick Morris, now a political commentator and author, used to be a pollster and political consultant. Although before working as the chief strategist of President Clinton's 1996 campaign, he had also advised Bill Clinton during his term as the governor of Arkansas, he mainly worked for the Republican politicians. He explains:

"I have worked for both Democrats and Republicans, which strikes some people as the height of cynicism. I would refute that. I do have political convictions , as will become apparent in this narrative, but I am not an ideologue in search of a candidate. I am happiest when I can put my technical skills at the service of someone I admire, [...] "

The most famous word related to President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign is Mr. Morris's concept of "triangulation." Here's the author's version of what he told Clinton:

"Triangulate, create a third position, not just in between the old positions of the two parties but above them as well. Identify a new course that accommodates the needs the Republican address but does it in a way that is uniquely yours."

(I have some trouble seeing the "above the two positions" part in Mr. Morris's election strategy; I just see it as a "mixed strategy" as known in the mathematical game theory, but then I am just a mathematician...)

The reader will find great many insightful (yet often specific to the given times in the American history) observations in the book. I like the bold statement:

"If the GOP was laying claim to 'I,' Bill Clinton was advocating 'we.'"

In my view, this is still one of the main differences between the two parties' political philosophies. On the other hand, here's what the author says about populism, as he summarizes Michael Kazin's work The Populist Persuasion:

"Democrats base their party on economic populism while Republicans use social populism instead. Kazin's basic point is that economic populism is declining, while social populism is rising. The enemy of economic populism is wealth and privilege. The enemy of social populism is the intellectual and cultural elite."

While this was true a quarter of century ago, I am not sure it is still true these days.

The reader will also find accounts of perpetual infighting in the campaign, jockeying for power and influence in advising President Clinton, and ugly intrigues like the story of Mr. Morris's memo to Bob Dole. The author's contempt for some people clearly shows despite his attempts to sound balanced and fair. What a contrast with the masterly neutral tone of Bob Woodward in The Choice that I reviewed here last week!

For me, the worst aspect of the book is the author's insistence of interlacing the interesting and worthwhile political analyses with the story of his personal downfall, caused by a flagrant form of marital infidelity. While I understand that this should have been mentioned to explain certain events, I don't believe the author should have returned to it so many times. Yet, even with that flaw, I recommend the book. A good, thought-provoking read!

Three-and-a-quarter stars.


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Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"'What happened?' I asked quickly. 'What the hell happened?'
'I told you. I looked away for a second and --'
'How could you do that? How could you take your eyes of him?'
Jan tried to speak but no words came out. I was about to ask a third time how she could have allowed this to happen, but realized I was wasting time."

Good advice: when in crowds, never look away from your child! Linwood Barclay's thriller Never Look Away (2010) begins with a half-page teaser that mentions handcuffs and alludes to sawing off someone's hand. I guess this is the author's way of alerting the reader that the plot will be full of twists and turns, and that nothing what one keeps assuming while reading the novel will end up to be true.

I love the Prologue - it may well be the most captivating ten-page passage in any thriller I have ever read. I love the earliest (already on page 7) twist in the plot: just when we sympathize with frantic parents whose four-year old son suddenly disappears in a theme park, we learn that it is not the child who has disappeared. A really masterful setup of the plot!

I find the entire Part One of the novel (until about page 70 in the hardcover edition) outstanding. The narrator, a journalist employed by a local paper, is working on a story about a business scam that involves plans to build a private prison; what's more, he discovers that the scam may be related to assuring the continued existence of the paper. He gradually gets to learn that things are not as they seem, including things about people closest to him.

The author effectively ratchets the tension and suspense in Parts Two and Three of the novel. Although I do not particularly enjoy the constantly changing direction of the plot, I am sure that many readers will be riveted by the surprising twists. However, the last two parts of the novel are, to me, a disappointment. The extremely weak ending - implausible, theatrical, and histrionic - spoils the great promise of the setup.

Unfortunately, Mr. Barclay's work follows the pattern typical for a great majority of thrillers, where a second-rate denouement ruins a good setup of the plot (in this particular case - an outstanding setup!). It is as if, having constructed a top-notch premise, the author did not have energy to work on a satisfactory conclusion.

Five stars for the beginning, barely one star for the ending. Which yields the average of

Three stars.


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The Choice: How Bill Clinton Won by Bob Woodward
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Lots of names would be applied to Morris's strategy. The most common was 'triangulation,' an alternative to the rigid orthodoxy of either conservatism or liberalism. The political spectrum was conventionally thought of as a line running from left to right, and political figures fell somewhere along that straight line. Morris argued that an innovative leader had to move out of the linear dimension to a point at the center but also above the conventional spectrum. That point then formed a triangle with the left and right."

This quote from Bob Woodward's The Choice. How Clinton won (1996) resonates with me not only because I have a strong dislike for orthodoxy of any kind. In mathematics, I am interested in the issues of dimensionality, thus moving from a one-dimensional straight line to a two-dimensional triangle makes me happier. OK, now seriously.

I am continuing my recent reading project that could be entitled "Politics and the media in the US". Mr. Woodward's work is the fourth in the series of my reads, and the fifth one is in the works (I am including the list below the review).

The book begins with the midterm elections of November 8, 1994 - a disaster for the incumbent president, Bill Clinton, a Democrat, as the Republicans capture both the Senate and the House. The reader will find a detailed chronicle of the presidential campaign between the late fall of 1994 and May of 1996. In my view, the coverage is fair and balanced: both sides are covered with a similar degree of depth and detail, and both sides are given comparable amount of space.

I am amazed how sympathetic the portrayals of both main candidates are: Bill Clinton's and Bob Dole's. They come across as well-intentioned, yet very human in their weaknesses and limitations. The faults of both sides and their errors in strategy and tactics are shown with quite some degree of sympathy. The book is also very well written; one of the examples of the literary skill may be how the author implicitly ridicules some minor candidates, without really saying anything negative about them.

On the Democratic side, the author focuses on the critical role of Dick Morris, Clinton's chief political strategist. Mr. Woodward writes:

"Morris was exultant. He had broken the system. He had broken Panetta, and Ickes, and Stephanopoulos. He figured now he could get control of the White House staff, place his people in key positions."

Despite Mr. Morris's ruthlessness in prosecuting his election strategy, he is also painted with a somewhat sympathetic brush. On the Republican side, the glowing portrayal of General Colin Powell, the almost-candidate, stands out, and the vignette about his extended decision-making process is riveting.

The Afterword, written in 1997, is very interesting. True, it benefits from hindsight, yet while the analysis of the election results is brief, I find it insightful. The reader will find there Mr. Woodward's list of ten political fundamentals for a winning presidential campaign.

The Choice is a masterclass work in political reportage. An interesting, captivating read, yet - at the same time - detailed, deep, and comprehensive. It manages to avoid most trivialities, and focuses instead on the important things - the so-called "Big Picture."

Four-and-a-half stars.

Other books on the US presidential elections and politics that I have reviewed on Goodreads:
H.R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power,
Lesley Stahl, Reporting Live,
Tom Rosenstiel, Strange Bedfellows.


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Promised Land by Robert B. Parker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"'[...] She believes some very destructive things. What's that Frost line, 'He will not go behind his father's saying'?'
' 'Mending Wall,' ' Susan said.
'Yeah, she's like that [...]' "

Here's another one for our favorite poetry lover, Spenser. Not only does he have an opportunity to dazzle Susan - as well as the reader - with his familiarity with poems of Robert Frost, but in this novel he also displays superb boxing skills in several fights with bad guys. Love of poetry, professional-level boxing prowess, intelligence, wit, and extraordinary manly charm do not exhaust the list of Spenser's superhuman features. But first about the plot of Promised Land (1976), the fourth novel in Robert B. Parker's Spenser series.

A businessman hires Spenser to find his wife, who ran away from him and from her three children. As soon as Spenser begins working on the case, we meet Hawk. This is his first appearance; he will become one of the main characters in the series. The reader, who has never read later Spenser novels, will likely develop, at least at the beginning, somewhat negative impression of Hawk's character.

Before I start ridiculing the novel, let me first say what I like - not much, so it will go fast. I like the author's realistic account of the marital problems that made the businessman's wife run away. I also like the portrayal of Susan Silverman. In particular, I like her words

" 'What kind of man does the kinds of things you do? What kind of man gets up in the morning and showers and shaves and checks the cartridges in his gun?' "

All the rest is bad. Or very bad. Like the author's attempts to legitimize Spenser's godlike powers to judge people on their actions and to absolve them of their wrongdoings. Like the infantile take on 1970s feminism. Like the embarrassing pop psychology bits. Like the totally implausible plot developments, such as, for instance, Spenser arranging illegal deals with police and FBI.

It is now time to disclose the magnitude of my ignorance. Promised Land won the Edgar Award for the best novel in 1977. This is the first time my opinion differs so much from that of the literary critics. I do not understand how anyone can see greatness in this book. I must have missed a lot of good stuff when reading the novel; it's either this or senility...

I will keep reading Spenser's novels in order in which they have been written since I am curious when the author finds the voice of the later installments, which tend to be much more to my liking.

One-and-three-quarter stars.

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Strange Bedfellows: How Television and the Presidential Candidates Changed American Politics, 1992 by Tom Rosenstiel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"But more dangerous than ideological bias in the media is hysteria. The press has become so large, conducts so many polls, examines so many trivial details, that to audiences on the other end context and nuances are lost. And television compounds the problem by compressing everything into the grammar of two minutes."

Continuing my reading project that could be entitled Politics and the media in the US, having read and reviewed here H.R. Haldeman's The Ends of Power, which deals with the early 1970s, and Lesley Stahl's Reporting Live, which spans the period from the early 1970s to very early 1990s, I have now read Tom Rosenstiel's Strange Bedfellows (1993), which focuses on the 1992 presidential campaign.

Tom Rosenstiel, now a well-known author and journalist, worked for the Los Angeles Times as a reporter and media critic. The book offers an inside, extremely detailed account of the campaign, mainly from the point of view of the ABC news network. The author writes:

"For twelve months, I had access to the editing bays, the assignment editors, the story meetings, and the thoughts of the principal people deciding how the network would cover the campaign. I traveled with ABC's correspondents and producers as they followed the candidates. I watched how ABC's nightly newscast was assembled by the senior producers and editors [...] I had access to budget meetings and internal memos. I saw the struggles over personnel and money."

Chapter 1 describes the events and atmosphere of the Election Day, November 3, 1992, when Bill Clinton, the candidate, defeated George H.W. Bush, the incumbent, and Ross Perot, the independent candidate. Next, the author rewinds to the fall of 1991 and, from then, the book can be read as a chronological collection of well-captured vignettes of hundreds of campaign events being covered by the network. The amount of detail the reader can learn from this book is incredible. The book also delivers many interesting syntheses, summaries, and conclusions. Let's mention several of them:

"Ted Koppel, the anchor of ABC's Nightline, even had a theory he called the 'Vanna-tizing' of American culture, in honor of Vanna White of TV's Wheel of Fortune. Vanna remained enormously popular, the theory went, precisely because she was seen but not heard."

Note how well it matches Ms. Stahl's observations from Reporting Live about the primacy of images over words. Or consider the "expectation game":

"[...] the fragile game in which the media set expectations and then interpreted the vote by watching who succeeds or fails to meet them."

The author also notes that while at the beginning the network was determined to provide a serious, issue-based reportage of the campaign, at the end it devolved into quite a chaotic, event-based coverage.

The reader may enjoy the discussion of how the new technologies and the competition from other news sources, including the emergence of CNN, affect the coverage of the campaign. Finally, the angle, which I find the most fascinating. How much does the coverage of the campaign change the campaign itself and, possibly, its outcome? I would love to see a more detailed study of this issue. The author mentions it a few times, for instance:

"Policing what candidates said changed the relationship between reporter and politician. By labeling a candidate's statement as distorted or false, the press went from being a color commentator up in the booth to being a referee down on the field. Implicitly, this role acknowledged that the press not only reflected political events, it shaped them."

Overall, a very good read, perhaps lacking a slightly higher degree of cohesion. Highly recommended, though!

Three-and-a-half stars.

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Mortal Stakes by Robert B. Parker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"'You gonna cry again, Frankie? What is it? Did your Momma toilet-train you funny? Is that why you're such a goddamned freak-o?'"

When I read dialogue like this, the images of Humphrey Bogart taunting Edward G. Robinson in a 1940s black-and-white movie come to mind. But the words come from a 1975 Spenser story by Robert B. Parker, Mortal Stakes, so the author seems to be back to parodying the dated hard-boiled genre. Luckily, the dated feeling is not as strong as in The Godwulf Manuscript , so hopefully Mr. Parker is on his way to outgrow the pastiche mode, as I keep reading Spenser mysteries in chronological order.

A baseball manager hires Spenser to check whether the best pitcher in their organization has gambling connections:

"'[...] I heard something peculiar about him. The odds seem to shift a little when he pitches. I mean, there is some funny money placed when he's scheduled to go.'"

Spenser begins his investigation, meets with the pitcher and his wife, and realizes that something that the wife has said bothers him. Then, a couple of low-life hoods visit Spenser: they tell him, "you're only a goddamned egg-sucking snoop, a nickel-and-dime cheapie," and suggest that he should cease the investigation.

Making numerous phone calls and using help from his police contacts, Spenser quickly manages to get to the bottom of the case. The plot is implausible, particularly as to how easily Spenser gets all the needed information. But who cares about the plot if we can enjoy wise-cracking hard-boiled detective in his full glory. Oh, and the romantic Spenser! Both Brenda Loring and Susan Silverman return in this novel. Which one will Spenser choose? Stay tuned.

I am usually able to find a nice fragment of prose, even in weaker Spenser novels. No such luck here.

One-and-three-quarter stars.


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