The Burglar in the Rye by Lawrence Block
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"I don't know how the dictionary defines 'anticlimactic.' I suppose I could look it up, but so could you, if you care. I don't, because I know what it is. It's standing in a bathtub, desperate for a pee, after two people in the next room have finished making love."

90% of Lawrence Block's The Burglar in the Rye (1999) is absolutely delightful! I have been oohing and aahing about the cute prose and giggling loud. Already the third paragraph of the novel, still on the first page, made me burst out laughing:

"He was a bear, of course, but not the sort whose predilection for sylvan defecation is as proverbial as the Holy Father's Catholicism."

And a few pages later:

"[...] the room was so small you had to go out to the hall to change your mind."

Then:

"People say it all the time. 'oh, really? Both the dog and your mother-in-law? That's funny, because you didn't seem drunk at all.'"

Enough of that! Let the readers find the sweet nuggets of prose on their own.

The witty prose is not the only reason to love this novel! The title offers a clear hint and - if I am allowed to hint at the nature of the author's hint - it is not because many characters in the novel frequently drink rye whisky. This installment of Burglar transcends the conventions of the series and is a high-class meta-literary joke. Something exactly perfect for us here on Goodreads!

With the witty prose and the "meta" who cares about the plot! I certainly did not pay much attention to it. But let's at least explain the setup. As usual in the series, it starts promising. Bernie Rhodenbarr checks into a room at the Paddington Hotel. From his conversation with Carolyn - a delightful conversation that touches such topics as whether gold hoops would go well with a dirndl - we understand that he is in the hotel to do his real job, that is breaking and entering, rather than the daily job of owning a used book shop.

And indeed, Bernie does break into a room in the hotel but... As usual in the series, many complications arise and their complexity only keeps growing throughout the novel. I did not even try to follow what was going on; I just kept enjoying the light touch of Mr. Block's pen. No writer's block for this bloke!

But there is the disappointing business of the remaining 10% of the novel. Well, again as usual in the series, we have a Nero Wolfean ending, with the characters gathered in one place, etc. etc. A horrid convention! (Hey, is it another pun? I should be pun-ished!)

For the Paddington bear, sylvan defecation, dirndl, for both the mother-in-law and the dog, I would really love to rate the novel with four-and-a-half stars. Alas, the cliché ending deflated my enthusiasm.

Four stars.

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The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus by Richard Preston
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

""The surface of the tongue turns brilliant red and then sloughs off, and is swallowed or spat out. [...] The tongue's skin may be torn off during rushes of the black vomit. The back of the throat and the lining of the windpipe may also slough off, and the dead tissue slides down the windpipe into the lungs or is coughed up with sputum.""

I need to begin with a disclaimer. This is a better book than the two stars I am rating it with. But I am angry at the author of this bestseller for using cheap literary devices and for being coy with the readers: titillating with purposefully gory language and phrasing. I am angry at the author for blatantly selling pornography of illness, suffering, and death under the guise of medical objectivity.

Richard Preston's Hot Zone (1994), which became a world-wide bestseller, is a non-fiction book about the extremely lethal Ebola virus. This is not Covid-19 whose lethality is in low-teen percentage range even for vulnerable people. Ebola has the death rate of about 90%, and its effects on the human body are terrifying: the author is truly enthusiastic about describing human bodies - still alive - dissolving in the hospital beds, with the accuracy and clarity of detail rivaling the anatomical precision in triple-X movies.

Now that I have vented, let me try to be objective. If we remove all the porn of gore and all patently irrelevant passages (see later) - the volume of this extraneous text amounts to well over 100 pages - we will have a truly great book telling stories of human fight against viruses. And it is not just Ebola. We also have stories about the Marburg and AIDS viruses.

It begins with a captivating tale of one Charles Monet who lived near Mount Elgon in Western Kenya. He might have gotten infected with Ebola-like Marburg virus when he was walking in the Kitum Cave. He died in the hospital but not before infecting Dr. Musoke, who miraculously survived. The gratuitous and excruciatingly gory details of Mr. Monet's last hours and particularly the vivid description of how the doctor became infected will provide a captivating read for the fetishists of death.

The narration moves to the USAMRID at Fort Detrick where we meet a cast of characters among the medical and military personnel. The focus is on Major Nancy Jaax and her family as well as on Col. C. J. Peters, MD (by the way, these are real people, if this makes any difference for the readers). Ms. Jaax works in the Biosafety Level 4 areas, the highest biohazard areas in existence. Areas like this are designed for dealing with lethal agents (viruses) for which there is no vaccine and no cure. The narrative about work in the labs is riveting.

Then comes the chapter about the emergence in 1976 of Sudan strain of the Ebola virus. We read about the first known victim, Mr. Yu G., and then a moving story of nurse Mayinga who contracted Ebola while she was caring for a dying nun, Sister M.E. Nurse Mayinga's blood has since been studied in numerous medical institutes all over the world.

Finally, we have the story of the Ebola outbreak in Reston, Virginia, where monkeys imported from Philippines began developing a highly lethal disease. This would be a totally fascinating story if the author did not do whatever possible to stretch the narrative material to artificially create the tension. Meandering plot threads made me almost lose patience with the book.

There is an incredible amount of completely irrelevant detail in the book. Can anyone enlighten me what purpose does the following information serve:

"Usually he wore faded blue jeans with a flaming Hawaiian shirt, along with sandals and dweebish white socks, [...]. His excuse for his lack of uniform was that he suffered from athlete's foot [...]"

I understand that authors of fiction books provide details about their characters to make them seem more real. But this is a real person - what is the purpose of telling us that he suffers from athlete's foot? There are hundreds of immaterial passages like that, whose only purpose is to pump up the volume of the text.

The author knows how to write well. It is so clear from the last chapter, with its accomplished prose, deep wisdom, perspective, and even a degree of lyricism. Why then does he stoop to the cheapest literary tricks in the rest of the book? Well, I have a theory, and it relates to readers' preferences, but I am not courageous enough to divulge it... So, instead of four solid stars that the book would deserve if it were thoroughly rewritten and condensed to one-third its length, the rating is

Two stars


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The Overlook by Michael Connelly
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"Bosch nodded but kept silent. As they waited his thoughts carried him down the streets and up the hills to the overlook, where the last thing Stanley Kent ever saw was the city spread before him in beautiful shimmering lights. Maybe to Stanley it looked like heaven was waiting for him at the end."

I remember that almost a quarter of a century ago I liked Bosch novels by Michael Connelly a lot - but these were the earliest novels in the series. I haven't read anything by the author for quite a long time so I reached for The Overlook, one of the newer Bosch novels (2006). Well, sad to say, I feel quite different about this installment. I find it completely unremarkable. Were it the first novel in the series, most likely I would not read another one. Maybe I am getting too picky and grumpy in old age. Maybe.

This is Hieronymus Bosch's first case after his transfer to Homicide Special. A body of a man, shot execution style, is found at an overlook above Mulholland Dam. Bosch quickly ascertains that the victim was a physician. But when on the scene of the crime he meets Rachel Walling, with whom he had been romantically involved in the past and who is a member of a special unit of FBI, it becomes clear that the case may be related to homeland security. It turns out that the victim was not an ordinary doctor but a medical physicist who had direct access to radioactive materials.

The investigation proceeds almost as a competition between Los Angeles Homicide Special and FBI. The sides keep secrets from each other, but the shades of intimacy that still exist between Bosch and Walling are a convenient device for the author to let the reader know more than any of the sides does.

I find the plot only moderately interesting and the thread that involves Bosch's new partner, who belongs to a different generation, feels superficial and tokenish. Similarly, the Vietnam flashback to Bosch's service as a "tunnel rat" as well as the long passage about an operation commanded by an idiot police captain are incongruous with the plot. The former is too serious and the latter, probably designed as a comedic touch, is too cliché to be funny.

Readers who love plot twists (I don't) will be happy to find them in the denouement. But the whole novel feels so thoroughly unimpressive that I suspect Mr. Connelly wrote it in a hurry when he needed fast cash or maybe it was written to fulfill a contractual obligation with the publisher. Yes, the book is readable and moderately interesting; it provides a harmless way of spending few hours, but one could likely spend the time better. I will look for older Bosch novels to check whether I like them as much as I used to.

Two-and-a-quarter stars.



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And a Voice to Sing With by Joan Baez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Ten years ago I bought you some cufflinks
You brought me something
We both know what memories can bring
They bring Diamonds and Rust."

This fragment of lyrics comes from Diamonds and Rust, the most beautiful song ever written - I am old enough to be certain. A unique combination of heart-rending poetry that conveys deepest truths about love past, spine-tingling melody, and absolutely flawless singing. Joan Baez has written the music, the lyrics, and performed the song. Thirty-three years later, Ms. Baez, now almost eighty, is still making music.

And a Voice To Sing With. A Memoir (1987) is Ms. Baez' autobiography. Its structure follows the standard rules: the artist's life, performances, loves, and social and political activism are described chronologically. During her school years, she avoids ostracism for being "brown" (her father, a physicist, was of Mexican origin) yet not speaking Spanish only thanks to her musical talent and phenomenal voice. She studies at Boston University and performs in coffee shops; in 1960 her first album comes out to become a huge success. Her popularity continues through all decades from 1960s all the way until now. Of all popular artists she has probably been the most involved in social and political activism.

One of the most amazing facts about Ms. Baez' life is that she has been friends with three Nobel Prize winners. First and foremost, Ms Baez recounts her romantic affair with the future Nobel Prize Winner in Literature. Yes, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan were together for quite some time in the 1960s. She beautifully writes about him:

"[...] his eyes were as old as God, and he was fragile as a winter leaf. He was a Sunday child, fidgeting there on the couch in an oversized jacket and new cufflinks and I was Mom. But I was also sister mystic and fellow outlaw, queen to his jack, and a twin underground star. We were living out a myth, slumming it together in the Village."

There is also a beautiful passage about Bob Dylan, written in a second-person narrative - this is first-rate literature. I admire Ms. Baez' talent to write about him with such passion and love and then write about her rather sharp disillusionment with him several years later.

I very much like the chapter The Black Angel of Memphis dedicated to her numerous conversations with another Nobel Prize winner, this time the Peace laureate. She writes:

"You, more than anyone else who has been a part of my life, are my hope and inspiration. [...] Every time I hear your voice, it brings me back to the foot of the mountain. I don't lack the courage, Martin. It's just that in the eighties I can't seem to find where the path begins.

The chapter about Ms. Baez' meeting with yet another Nobel Peace Prize winner, Poland's Lech Wałęsa, resonates with me so much for personal reasons - I lived in Poland when Wałęsa's Solidarity was crushed by the Soviet-influenced government, and when he became a worldwide symbol of push for freedom. The passage about her singing Gracias a la Vida for Mr. Wałęsa is deeply moving.

The reader will also find a dramatic and very well-written account of Ms. Baez' visit to Hanoi, Vietnam, in 1972, during intense bombing. Whatever political "side" the reader is on, this is a deep, thought-provoking chapter. Speaking about "sides," I love Ms. Baez not only for Diamonds and Rust and few other songs but also for rejecting the political orthodoxy. In her activism she has been hated by both right-wingers and left-wingers. She has never subscribed to any particular set of political beliefs, and has always been for freedom, civil and human rights, and non-violence. I have found one chapter absolutely depressing. Ms. Baez was one of the organizers of the Ring Around Congress, where the "women and children of America would go to Washington and join hands around Congress." The tensions and intrigues between activists of different races almost prevented the project from completion. One of the most repugnant facets of politics: left-wingers of one kind hate left-wingers of another kind more than they hate the right-wingers.

I believe Ms. Baez wrote the memoir herself, without ghost-helpers. While the prose is accomplished, with some passages outright beautiful, the text feels too long. There are too many details, and it stretches belief that the author precisely remembers her thoughts from 25 years earlier (she does not mention keeping any diaries). Some of the almost 400 pages are hard to keep one's attention focused on. Still, I recommend the book very, very highly!

By the way, it would be very hard to find a more inspiring person than Joan Baez. If there were a Nobel Prize for the Most Extraordinary Person Overall, she'd been the obviously deserving winner. And the lyrics of Diamonds and Rust are an example of what Nobel-Prize-class poetry is about.

Four-and-a-quarter stars

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The Caverel Claim: A Legal Thriller by Peter Rawlinson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

" Your use of the title of Lady Caverel arises from the no doubt sincere but wrongful usurpation of the title by your late husband [...] [W]e must now invite you to acknowledge Miss Caverel, as she is presently styled, as the true and rightful heiress to her grandfather and thus to all the settled land and estate of the Caverel barony, and we must require you without too lengthy a delay to vacate the estate and the house [...]

To explain the title - the epigraph show the essence of the Caverel claim. Unfortunately, I have found Peter Rawlinson's novel a disappointment. While I very much liked his Indictment for Murder, which I reviewed a few months ago, Claim is altogether in a different category. I had to force myself to continue reading, to plow through the pages of uninteresting trivia, because I follow this silly principle of always trying to finish reading the book that I started.

I had problems since the very beginning of the novel, which I found intensely hard to focus on. The author uses several vignettes to introduce all main characters and establishes the background of the plot. Not only are the vignettes less than captivating but also there are no connections between the individual scenes. I had to write down the names of characters and their brief characterizations to keep track.

Anyway, let's have a brief setup of the plot: Sarah Wilson, a mixed-race exotic dancer in the US, is advised to see a lawyer as she might have inherited a magnificent mansion in the United Kingdom. It seems that she is not really Sarah Wilson but rather Lady Caverel and a rightful heiress of the Caverel barony and the estate. The novel can be rightly described as a legal thriller. The plot describes the machinations of two teams of lawyers, operatives, and public relations people: the "claim team" versus the "Caverel team." The plot culminates in a court case where the judge weighs the presented evidence.

As I mentioned in the review of Indictment the author of the novel has an extremely distinguished past Baron Rawlinson of Ewell, PC, QC, was an English barrister, Conservative politician and author. He served as Member of Parliament for Epsom for 23 years, from 1955 to 1978, and held the offices of Solicitor General and Attorney General for England and Wales and for Northern Ireland. While the author undoubtedly had rich experience as a court counsel I am not quite able to buy his description of the Caverel court case goings-on. The scenes are theatrical, punctuated by grandstanding, intrusions from spectators, etc. Naturally, I might be wrong, but unlike in the case of Indictment I am not buying the account of the legal proceedings.

The one aspect of the novel I like is the incursion of public relations campaigns into legal proceedings:

"'She focused this case [...] on race and class. Race because the claimant is black and the Caverels white; class because she comes from a humble background and is poor and the Caverels are aristocratic and rich.'"

Otherwise, I am unable to recommend the novel.

Two stars.


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The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth by Paul Hoffman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Mathematics is about finding connections, between specific problems and more general results, and between one concept and another seemingly unrelated concept that really is related. "

Yes, I agree. For me, the epigraph gives the best characterizations of mathematics. This is precisely why I love math. I teach mathematics at a university, but I am just an applied mathematician and don't know very much about real math, such as number theory, topology, or abstract algebra. Yet I do love math passionately for the connections it uncovers between seemingly disjoint fields like, say, probability and number theory:

"Erdös, working with Mark Kac, [...] would find a deep connection between a number's roundness and that workhorse of probability theory the bell-shaped curve, or normal distribution."

Yes, I also love math for the exquisite elegance of its constructs and maybe even for the certainties it provides, but connections are first and foremost.

Paul Erdös was one of the most famous mathematicians of the 20th century and one of the most prolific in history. He published 1525 papers, mostly with co-authors. His collaborative working style was notorious. There exists such a thing as Erdös Number: Erdös himself has number 0, mathematicians who co-wrote papers with him have number 1, mathematicians who co-wrote papers with those who have number 1 have number 2, etc. Thanks to my friend in the math department, who published with someone who has number 2, thus getting number 3, I have Erdös number 4 (not very convincingly, though, our paper only tangentially touches math).

I have found Paul Hoffman's The Man Who Loved Only Numbers biography of Paul Erdös an interesting, solid read. I hope that readers who know even less about math than I do will share my opinion. There is a lot in the biography about Paul Erdös himself, about his unconventional behavior, quirks, and eccentricities, like his special words for men, women, children, music, etc. or the fact that "he was twenty-one when he buttered his first piece of bread." The reader will also learn a lot about things that may seem extraneous to the topic - like, for instance, a captivating account of 20th-century history of Hungary, where Paul Erdös comes from (along with von Neumann, Teller, Szilard, Wigner, and several others -- see my review of The Martian's Daughter. A Memoir by Marina von Neumann Whitman.)

While there is a lot in the book about mathematics itself the text should be accessible to most readers, not only people who have connections with math. The long story of Fermat's Last Theorem and Dr. Wiles' proof of it is captivating. Because of my fascination with probability I read the account of the famous story about Monty Hall Problem posed and solved by Marilyn vos Savant in the Parade magazine: several PhD-titled math professors disagreed with her solution and were wrong. I like the general tone of the biography, full of sympathy, admiration, and deep respect for the great mathematician.

Of course the author shows the most beautiful equation in mathematics:

e to the power (pi times i) + 1 = 0

which connects the five most important objects in math - the constants e, pi, 0, 1, and i.

I am really curious whether the non-math readers will appreciate the biography more or less than I do. For me it is not quite a four-star work, but not far from it.

Three-and-a-half stars.

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H is for Homicide by Sue Grafton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"The problem with real life is there's no musical score. In movies, you know you're in danger because there's an ominous chord underlining the scene, [...] Real life is dead quiet, so you're never quite sure if there's trouble coming up. A possible exception is stepping into a strange apartment full of guys in hairnets."

In my Re-read Early Grafton project I skipped H and read I instead, the weakest installment of the series so far (see I Is for Innocent). Finally I got hold of the missing tome and am happy to report that H is OK. As usual with Grafton's novels and most other mysteries and crime dramas, the book reads better at the beginning than toward the end, but at least the quality drop is not so steep here. What distinguishes the novel from all its predecessors in the series is the change of the overall story concept: it is markedly different in H than what the readers got accustomed to in A through G. Naturally, I love it when the author goes against the readers' expectations.

In the setup of the plot, our intrepid PI, Kinsey Millhone, has finished a job in San Diego and is returning to her office, which she rents from an insurance company. She finds the building a center of police activity. A claim adjuster from the company, whom Kinsey knew well, has been shot dead.

Kinsey's current job is to prove insurance fraud by a woman named Bibianna Diaz. She pretends to befriend Bibianna and the reader is treated to best passages of the novel that happen in a "lowlife bar":

"This was where the C- singles came to hunt. There were no yuppies, no preppies, no slumming execs, no middle-class, white-bread college types. This was a hard-core pickup place for bikers and hamburger hookers, who'd screw anyone for a meal."

Ms. Grafton's descriptions of human mating behavior are priceless, to me way better than the crime thread. Kinsey meets an ex-cop whom she knew during her years on the Santa Teresa police force. And then...

And then the pace of the plot speeds up tenfold and dramatic events happen. The publisher probably divulges the whole thing on the cover of the book, but I do not believe in providing spoilers. Anyway, we have an unexpected bonding episode between Kinsey and Bibianna and whole lot of other goings-on.

There are many good things in the novel. Night driving around the Greater Los Angeles Area is described vividly and in nice prose. How about the scene in a doctor's waiting room where all the patients smoke? Ah, beautiful memories of the times where I needed to inhale two long unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes during the 10-minute break between two lectures that I was giving! These were the days! And we learn a lot - a lot! - about how auto accident insurance scams work.

I find the denouement rather implausible but it is told in quite a cinematic fashion. Overall, I like the novel, mainly because of the change in the story pattern and the scenes in the Meat Locker bar.

Three-and-a-quarter stars.


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