A Mansion and Its Murder by Robert Barnard
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"The great joy of my early womanhood was not love, not 'sex', but learning my trade of banker. [...] I was learning to take my place as one of the country's leading bankers, [...]"

The non-traditional persona of the narrator, Sarah Jane Fearing, who had read maths in Cambridge, worked on breaking German codes during World War II, and became the first, and so far the only woman in charge of a major British bank, is the most interesting component of Robert Barnard's suspense story A Mansion and Its Murder (1998), the 20th book by this author that I am reviewing here on Goodreads. I keep returning to Mr. Barnard's work - even if he is not successful with many of his books - because his novels are mostly free of horrible clichés of the genre that plague the majority of American mysteries. Perhaps it is because his are British clichés, ones that I am not that familiar with. Alas, in my view Mr. Barnard has failed in this instance.

While Sarah Fearing is telling her story in 1946, the events begin in 1884, when she was five-and-a-half-year old child in a very rich and powerful family of bankers. Sir William Gladstone, British prime minister, who was the guest at the extravagantly opulent dinner took note of little Sarah and predicted a great future for her. Ms. Fearing reminisces about her youth and her enchantment with Uncle Frank, a bon vivant, and a sort of black sheep in the family. Uncle Frank is forced into an unwanted marriage which does not end well. One night Sarah overhears a heated argument among several family members, and Uncle Frank disappears. It is said that he left the country but Sarah suspects he has been murdered.

Sarah's efforts to find out the truth about that fateful night provide the narrative axis of the novel. The plot is relatively interesting until almost the very end. Most readers will enjoy well-written visuals that describe the stupendously huge Blakemere mansion and its grounds: when the mansion opens for public, it takes three days to visit it in its entirety. In addition the reader gains nice insights into the rigid British class society a hundred years ago - with the clear distinction between the "us" and the "below stairs people," the stratified staff of the mansion.

I am quite disappointed in the author's use of a cliché component in the denouement, which cheapens Mr. Barnard's work. It is a pity because the combination of interesting story, atypical protagonist, social commentary, and the usual good writing could produce a memorable novel of suspense. I wish I had not read the last few pages.

Two-and-a-quarter stars.


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Coltrane: The Story of a Sound by Ben Ratliff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"I feel this music, or rather, as I said, it opens up a part of my self that normally is tightly closed, and seldom-recognized feeling, emotions, thoughts well up from the opened door and sear my consciousness."
(From Don DeMichael's review of Coltrane's Meditations, 1965.)

I wish I were able to describe my feelings about Coltrane's music as eloquently as in Don DeMichael's quote shown above. Along with Johann Sebastian Bach, John Coltrane is my favorite artist in music. Coltrane is known as the most accomplished saxophone player in the history of the instrument, but he also was a phenomenally gifted composer, great band leader, and a true visionary whose quest for perfection made a profound impact on the 20th century jazz and music in general. In 2014 I reviewed here Lewis Porter's biography of Coltrane, John Coltrane: His Life and Music , widely recognized as the most authoritative source on the composer's life and music. While Ben Ratliff's Coltrane: the Story of a Sound (2007) is not as acclaimed I think it largely matches the quality of Porter's work and in some aspects surpasses it.

The book contains two rather distinct parts: the first tells, in chronological order, the story of Coltrane's music, and the second - called by the author a "posthumous mirror" - describes the story of Coltrane's influence on jazz, other music, and culture and society in general. In Part One the author takes us from Coltrane's first listening to Bird (Charlie Parker) in Dizzy Gillespie's group in 1945, through joining Miles Davis band in 1955, working with Thelonious Monk in 1957, to the first album he released on his own, Giant Steps. Then, in 1961, come the famous Live at the Village Vanguard recording sessions and the so-called classic quartet is formed (Coltrane, Tyner, Jones, and Garrison) whose art culminates in late 1964 with A Love Supreme, to me the most breathtaking piece of music ever created along with several Bach compositions and the Late Quartets by Beethoven. Finally, comes the so-called "free-jazz period," Coltrane's experimentation with expanding the band, and other tremendous albums like Transition or Meditations.

Part Two - the story of Coltrane's influence on other artists and on society - is drawn on the backdrop of social and cultural changes of the 1960s. The author offers fascinating insights like, for instance:

"Love of God emboldened [Coltrane] toward a position of silence about music and about politics. As the ambient noise of sixties culture grew louder around him, the more he desired to block it out and hear only himself; the more he went inward."

Yet, to me, that part of the book suffers a little from the author's attempts to find some unifying theme, an overarching motif that would explain the evolution of Coltrane and his music. It almost feels as Mr. Ratliff were trying to develop a Grand Unified Theory of Coltrane's music. I doubt any such thing is feasible - human stories and stories of art are influenced by so many factors that they are in effect random. Still, it is a great book about one of the most important artists in human history. Highly recommended!

Four stars.

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Too Many Clients by Rex Stout
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"We were now out about five Cs on the Yeager operation, and we had four clients and two bucks in retainers, plus a damn good chance of ending up in the coop for obstructing justice."

Too Many Clients (1960) is the seventh book in the Nero Wolfe series that I am reviewing here and the thirty-fourth installment, chronologically, in this deservedly acclaimed series of mysteries featuring the obese genius, Nero Wolfe, and his intrepid, manly, and charming helper, Archie Goodwin.

Archie is worried: with just $14,000 bank balance and $5,000 monthly household expenses things do not look good for the occupants of the brownstone on West 35th Street. Luckily, a Mr. Yeager, the executive VP of a large company, arrives at Wolfe's office and wants to hire Mr. Goodwin to find out who is following him. But when Archie arranges the details of the tail-the-tail operation, Mr. Yeager is found murdered. And to complicate things, Archie learns that his visitor was not in fact the deceased Mr. Yeager.

Archie commences the investigation, using - in Wolfe's words - his "discretion and sagacity." The case brings him to a house owned by the deceased; the house holds a secret, crucial for the plot. The manager and his family who live in the building play an important role in the story. Even though the purported client is dead Wolfe and Goodwin have no scarcity of clients: the president of the company, the deceased's wife, and a famous actress are among them. The problem is that while there are too many clients none of them is a paying one. Inspector Cramer of the police arrives and demands Wolfe's cooperation. There is another murder and things really begin to look bleak for the detectives.

Obviously, Wolfe and Goodwin solve the case and eventually get paid. The plot is interesting and keeps the reader's attention. The setup of the plot, with the fake Mr. Yeager, is first-rate, one of the best I remember of all Wolfe's stories. This installment of the series is not as outstanding as the unforgettable Murder by the Book but it is a solid and very readable mystery. I like the prose, which has some nice passages as, for instance:

"'Curiosity creeps into the homes of the unfortunate under the names of duty or pity. [...]'
'Is that Pascal?'
'No, Nietzsche.'"

Three stars.

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Herzog by Saul Bellow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"[...] he wasn't stable enough, he could never keep his mind at it. His state was too strange, this mixture of clairvoyance and spleen, esprit de l'escalier, noble inspirations, poetry and nonsense, ideas, hyperesthesia - wandering about like this, hearing forceful but indefinite music within, seeing things, violet fringes about the clearest objects."

I have finally read Saul Bellow's Herzog (1961-1964), one of the most acclaimed novels written in this country in the 20th century. A very difficult book to read but fully worthwhile the effort. I would venture a guess that of all fiction books I have ever read in my life this one may have the highest amount of content per page. I had to focus almost as much as if I were reading a math textbook. It took me a whole week to read the mere 340 pages and - at the end - I was sad that it was over.

Herzog is thoroughly un-American: it is mainly about human failure. Failure as an academic, failure as a spouse, failure as a father. Failure and its consequences in the form of a near nervous breakdown and depression. Failure is the most interesting of all possible topics in literature: we all fail, constantly, continually, and inevitably as we tend to always want more than we can get. A mathematician/computer programmer in me would say: failure is the human default while success is a random event. Mr. Bellow puts it succinctly in one of the greatest sentences I have ever read:

"Looking for happiness - ought to be prepared for bad results."

Moses E. Herzog, a once promising assistant professor of history of literature, author of an outstanding PhD thesis and an unfinished book on the history of Romanticism, now teaches in an adult-education night school in New York. He is twice divorced and his second wife, Madeleine, an aspiring academician herself, cheated on him with his best friend. Mr. Herzog does not have much contact with his two young children. Struggling with his emotional and intellectual crisis he seeks help of a psychiatrist. He also seeks contact with women to satisfy his sexual needs but having been burned by two failed long-time relationships he is unable of emotional engagement.

Characters in the novel are superbly portrayed - those are real, full-bloodied people. Characterization of Madeleine, "a highbrow broad", is an absolute masterpiece. I am totally convinced I personally know her and I feel I have personally witnessed her predatory, manipulative, and egotistic behavior. By the way, it would be so cool to read a novel written from her point of view, all about Herzog's faults.

Herzog is technically a novel but there is really no plot to speak of until the ending of the book when a few events begin to happen. This is another reason of my sadness at the ending fragments of the book - I have found reading the ravings of a defeated intellectual much more interesting than his life story. Juxtaposing Hegel's or Kierkegaard's philosophical arguments with Madeleine's caprices and misdeeds is absolutely priceless. The narrator's letters to philosophers, scientists, writers, public officials, (some dead like Nietzsche, Schrodinger, or Teilhard deChardin, some contemporary like Eisenhower), his colleagues, friends and adversaries, constitute a substantial portion of the text. These are wonderful letters - Mr. Herzog is a wonderful writer, just a failed one. Having myself been an aspiring intellectual and having failed at it I can vouch to the truthfulness of the following quote:

"Somewhere in every intellectual is a dumb prick."

I love the literary device of mixing the first- and third-person narration, similar as in another masterpiece
The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B . This simple device yields wonderful effect: it makes the novel sound not like a story of one particular person but rather the story of the times.

Based on what I have written above one might think that Herzog is a relentlessly dark and grim read. Absolutely not! It is in fact (painfully) funny in many places. Observing a human being thrashing about searching for happiness has a strong comic component. We suffer, we struggle, we fail, and then we die. Yet there is good news, sort of. Mr. Bellow writes:

"Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is."

Wonderful! The emergence of a plot at the end of the novel prevents me from assigning the maximum numeric rating but I would have to be insane not to round it up.

Four-and-a-half stars.

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The Empty Copper Sea by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"[...] and then she looked at me, a steady, suspicious, interrogatory look, trying to see through my eyes and into my skull. There was a sudden impact, almost tangible. I wanted to be more than I was, for her. I wanted to stop being tiresome and listless and predictable. I wanted to be thrice life-size, witty and urbane, bright and reliable, sincere and impressive - all for her."

In the famous Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald The Empty Copper Sea (1978) directly precedes The Green Ripper which I reviewed here a few months ago. And I was thrilled to find out that in this prequel we learn how McGee met Gretel, the most memorable character in Ripper. Alas, the Gretel thread, which I like a lot, is - to me - the only remarkable aspect of the novel.

Travis McGee is a marine "salvage expert", but this time he is hired to salvage the good name and employability of an acquaintance of his, Van Harder, who used to work as a skipper on charter fishing boats and family boats. A rich businessman disappears, presumably having drowned, during a marine accident on one of these boats. While the official inquiry determines Van Harder's negligence resulting from his drunkenness on duty the skipper maintains that he was drugged.

The victim had a large insurance policy and some of his business moves before the accident hint at the possibility that he faked his own death. A discovery of a post-accident picture of him in Guadalajara seems to give credence to that possibility. In conducting the investigation McGee is helped by his friend, Meyer, who is an economist and an academician, and who - rather implausibly - always has time to help out. This is only my second book in the series and I am already tired of Meyer, a cliché of an all-knowing, all powerful sidekick.

The implausibility of Meyer thread is balanced by the sweet and in places well-written story of McGee meeting Gretel. The "sudden shining in the midst of life" experienced by McGee reads believable and gives the author a chance to infuse some lyricism into the formulaic plot:

"I turned my head and saw, beyond the shoulder of my beloved, the empty copper sea, hushed and waiting, as if the world had paused between breaths.

And with apologies to my dear Goodreads friend from Texas I am unable to resist quoting a fragment that I find hilarious:

"[...] on some planet far beyond our galaxy a race of sentient armadillos is busy scooping out Texans and selling them at roadside stands, possibly as Lister bags."

The clichéd denouement reminds me a little of Ross Macdonald's work; alas the prose is not exactly at that level. The ending is cinematic and it would be much better to watch it on a screen. I can only marginally recommend the novel.

Two and a half stars.


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Ministry The lost gospels according to Al Jourgensen by Al Jourgensen
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

"That's the weird thing about Al. He has done enough drugs to kill a horse. Every day he wakes in the morning he defies science. But somehow, to this very day, in the end no matter what condition he's in, he comes up with amazing stuff."
(Jello Biafra, Dead Kennedys and Lard frontman, talking about Al Jourgensen)

It may seem strange that having been born in the pre-historic times I may be interested in industrial metal music. Indeed, I am a classical music fan (for example, see my review of The Beethoven Quartet Companion), I am into 1960s jazz (for instance, see John Coltrane: His Life and Music ), and I also listen to the so-called "alternative rock" of the 1980s and 1990s (for instance, see the review of Never Enough: The Story of the Cure ). Yet I also like some music even "farther out there" from classical than rock: I still frequently listen to Ministry, an industrial metal band - commonly considered outrageous - whose career spans the years from 1981 till, basically, the present.

I love their live album In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up and their most celebrated work Psalm 69. This is a kind of music that has convinced my family, my friends, and my grown-up students that I am insane. This is the music that merges "sharp, choppy thrash riff with the sounds of a whirring dentist drill, scraping metal, and screamed distorted punk vocals." My favorite piece is So What, a "sadistic number with a rattling beat, a droning bass line, and samples about murder, backed by wheezing laughter and interjected with blowtorch guitar bursts."

The above descriptions of music by Ministry come from Ministry. The Lost Gospels According to Al Jourgensen (2013) co-written by Mr. Jourgensen, the frontman, guitarist, and multi-instrumentalist of the band, and John Wiederhorn, a renowned rock journalist.

I am writing more about Ministry's music than about the book because I do not like the biography at all. While I admire Mr. Jourgensen's frankness about his extreme, massive, just plain gargantuan drug use - "I would shoot heroin, drink whiskey, smoke crack, do LSD, and then methadone would just keep me from getting sick if I couldn't find my heroin dealer" - I do not approve of the authors' (plural used on purpose) fascination with so many revolting things Mr. Jourgensen has done while not sober like, say, eating his bandmate's still warm vomit. Of course, he has the right to do whatever he pleases as long as it does not hurt anyone, but why do we, the readers, have to know about it? Also, I question the purpose of enumerating all drugs Mr. Jourgensen used while making each of the seventeen albums.

I put the blame on Mr. Wiederhorn for the book sounding like an attempt to gross the reader out or impress them with the depth and breadth of the musicians' chemical dependency. Mr. Jourgensen has miraculously survived and is apparently clean and sober now and praise to him for that. There is not much to praise the biography for. But I still love Ministry's music and am in awe of Mr. Jourgensen's art.

One and a half stars.



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Stolen Blessings by Lawrence Sanders
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

"'McBryde, you ever been around the world?'
'No,' he says seriously, 'but I've been to Europe twice.'
She giggles at such innocence."

Why so many people are interested in celebrities has always been a mystery to me. Why do people find events in the life of, say, a Kardashian more interesting than termite farts? So any book that satirizes the ubiquitous celebrity cult has my pre-approval. In addition, I have a soft spot for Lawrence Sanders, mainly because of his Archy McNally series. I love the McNally novels because of the purposefully florid language and light, whimsical touch in handling sexual themes. Alas Stolen Blessings (1989) is an unmitigated failure. I kept reading, pretending that this is not just a very bad novel but a well executed parody of one.

Marilyn Taylor, also known as The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, a famous movie actress and the owner of Marilyn Taylor Enterprises, Inc. with offices, branches, and stores all over the country, arrives in New York to submit to a procedure in a fertility clinic. Her eggs will be retrieved for use in vitro to help a childless couple conceive.

But we know what happens to best-laid (my pun is of as stellar quality as the author's) plans... etc. Eggs may be subject to eggnapping. In fact, several teams of bad guys compete attempting to conclude the egghheist. But wait, not only bad guys are involved! Since Marilyn is a top-shelf celebrity CIA gets interested and the agency calls its involvement Operation Soufflé (wow, now that's a pun!) Middle East-based terrorist group, Arm of God, is also involved and some events in the plot take place in Cairo. Agents named Ptolemy, Ramses, and Tut are involved and the reader will be likely laughing louder here than in the passages which the author did intend as comedic.

The life of the entire country is paralyzed by the theft: journalists, academicians, church officials, government figures discuss the case. Everybody is watching the crisis on TV. Well, in fact, the entire world is following the case. After all, these are celebrity eggs. A detective from the New York Police Department - the same one who failed the urban dictionary test shown in the epigraph above - plays a major role in the plot and the denouement.

Hilarious last sentence is one of the funniest passages in the novel. But the best thing in this failure of a comedic parody of a thriller is the following passage:

"They move together, hands busy.
'You have beautiful dangling participles,' she murmurs.
'Thank you,' he says, 'and I love to split your infinitive.'"

Anyway, I will still be reaching for Lawrence Sanders' novels, looking for McNally quality of prose.

One-and-a-half stars.


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