Sep 16 2005

The Diviners by Rick Moody

It’s Fall, at least by the publishing calendar. That means the big hitters roll out big books, influential titles designed to stoke reader interest and fiscal results, summer tans fading, back to work, back to school. Time to get literary.

The Diviners is a maddening novel, brilliant, funny, annoying, over the top. Don’t think of it as a novel, not in terms of scene and sequel, storyline or plot. Don’t do that, because if you do, you might take the book back to the store and hit someone in the head with it.

The book is enjoyable once those expectations are held in abeyance, immensely rewarding at times. It is perfectly safe to skip the prologue and head for Chapter One, because the prologue sets up a dimension of the story you can probably take for granted, that we toil on this earth deaf, dumb, and blind to the majesty of nature. But you knew that.

Once the characters get rolling, there is no stopping them. Moody introduces tangent upon tangent, many of which are funny and insightful, all of which serve multiple masters, including ambition, wealth, fame, celebrity, colitis, driving directions, the fall of Rome, the cycle of failure in cultural dress, greed, envy, and good places to drink. He also presents Adam and Eve as both myth and screenplay material. Read the book in sections, front to back or the other way around, the writing is well worth the exasperation.

By davidthayer • Reviews • 0

Sep 6 2005

Blonde Lightning by Terrill Lee Lankford

Blonde Lightning is TL Lankford’s follow up novel to Earthquake Weather. The setting is Hollywood during OJ Simpson’s low speed chase memorialized in our collective memory banks as a prelude to travesty. Mark Hayes has lost his job as a d-boy after the murder of his boss, but hopes to catch on with a low budget company making a film called Blonde Lightning.

The heart of the story becomes the making of the movie on a shoestring budget. Lankford makes skillful use of his knowledge of filmmaking to produce a tense and enjoyable ride, the kind of story that gathers force as it progresses. I’ll skip the plot details to avoid spoilers, but this novel delivers the goods with a resolution of the Mark Hayes story as a cautionary tale.

The story’s disfigured beauty provides Mark with a sembalnce of a love life as well as central metaphor for the author’s view of the movie business. The cast of secondary characters is excellent, made plausible by the world they inhabit. My only complaint is that the book felt short. Lankford’s guiding sense of understatement leads to a number of summary paragraphs, perhaps a vestige of his days writing coverage for screenplays. His passion for the subject prevails, making this his finest novel to date.

By davidthayer • Reviews • 0

Aug 26 2005

Vanished by Tess Gerritsen

Tess Gerritsen doesn’t fit the profile of unknown author. She’s been a successful romance writer, conquered the medical thriller genre and seems to moving toward the traditonal thriller. Vanished is her newest novel, just released by Ballantine. The subject matter is reminiscent of Robert Crais’ work rather than Patricia Cornwell despite the fact one of the principal characters is a medical examiner.

Vanished is one of those ‘what if’ stories, what if a body in a morgue isn’t a body, but a living breathing woman? That’s a tough one for a writer to execute, great concept, but how do you bring her back from the dead? Tess Gerritsen pulls it off, largely by underselling the situation, by putting her character to immediate use, creating a hostage crisis in downtown Boston.

Thrillers need complications, and this one delivers them in a plausible and enjoyable barrage, until the immediate crisis is resolved. One of the principal charcaters, Jane Rizzoli, is a Boston homicide detective. Her husband, Gabriel, is an FBI agent. A visit to the hospital becomes a nightmare for Jane. She is nine months pregnant and is taken hostage by a pair of desperate fugitives.

The hostage takers are killed. Jane and Gabriel are disturbed by their memories of the take down. Jane is having nightmares, reliving the crisis, haunted by a phrase uttered by Olena, the mysterious woman from the morgue. Meanwhile Maura Isles, the ME, is forced to release the bodies of the doers to the Feds. To avoid plot spoilers, I’ll leave the set up description at that.

Tess Gerritsen takes many familiar elements of the genre and turns them a degree or two for good effect. Her structure and pacing are close to perfect, that is to say, to dissect the modern thriller, it would have to have the elements present here. She brings the backstory into focus just as the pace of events slows in the middle of the story. The characters are likable, with Jane Rizzoli the most developed and appealing. There are alot of secondary characters to meet, the dialogue sounds forced at times, and the villains of the piece are underrepresented, forcing archetypes into play to satsify plot requirements. Overall, Vanished is one of the better thrillers I’ve read. Tess Gerritsen is setting up series characters in this one and I hope she keeps them coming.

By davidthayer • Reviews • 2

Aug 19 2005

Oblivion by Peter Abraham

All the noir elements are present in this fine novel from Peter Abraham. Nick Petrov is a PI with celebrity status. Armand Assante portrayed him in a movie. In film conscious LA that could carry a man for a lifetime of “hey, aren’t you the guy?” Nick is the guy, finder of missing women, a fellow as relentless as a Santa Ana. When he is approached by a woman who needs help finding her missing daughter, the reader feels uneasy. This lady is unreliable. She lies. Therein lies a tale.

The setting is Los Angeles. Nick lives in Venice, canals and all. Like most Angelenos, Nick has maps in his head, freeway maps, primary and alternate routes, a matrix for navigational purposes. Nick has a cabin in the mountains, an ex-wife, a teenage son. He bought his house before prices soared, he’s got it made.

Any number of contemporary authors set their stories in LA. Michael Connelly, Barbara Saranella, Peter Moore Smith, Terrell Lee Lankford, Gregg Hurwitz, Pete Dexter, James Ellroy, just to name a few. Why not? Nowhere else does stunning beauty coexist with brutal ugliness with such panache.

Nick Petrov is smart, tough, successful, but flash bulbs are popping behind his eyes. Penny sized headaches, lost moments, blank spots. He has brain cancer, diagnosed after what he calls The Lost Weekend. The disease is nearly always fatal, and so is bad judgment. Nick is searching for a missing girl, at least that is what he thinks. What he is really looking for becomes the novel’s most compelling aspect, a tangled web of memory, history, passion, and betrayal.

Peter Abraham is not try to bust any genre boundaries, in fact, he takes all the classic elements of noir, shakes them up, serves them cold. This book is right from the opening scene to the climax. If you are not familiar with Abraham’s work, this novel is a great way to get acquainted.

By davidthayer • Reviews • 0