Mini-Reviews: Mystery Round-Up

I'm neck-deep in a slump at the moment and, unfortunately, it is rooted in a lot of factors feeding off of each other.  I'm super busy at The Day Job, current events are depressing me, and my habit of checking Twitter is making me increasingly passive aggressive (not a good look for me).  It's also sapped my blogging mojo to the point where, for the first (serious) time in 15 years of blogging I'm wondering why I bother (note to self: stop checking your stats).  But nobody wants to hear me whine and frankly I'm kind of sick of myself - so desperate times call for desperate measures.  Yep, it's comfort food of choice for Wendy: mysteries.  I fell in love with reading because of mysteries so it makes sense I turn back to them when I'm feeling a mite low.

I'm still completely swept up in my nostalgia trip with the Sharon McCone series by Marcia Muller.  I read the first 19 or so books in my teens/early 20s, then dropped off when I fell head over feet for romance.  I've been positively gorging on them in audio and it's been just what the doctor ordered.

I recently finished Book #7, Eye of the Storm, and it has been the highlight of the nostalgia gorge so far.  Why?  Because I didn't remember a lick about it, and frankly, that shocks me.  Why?  Because it's like Muller wrote this book specifically with Teenage Wendy in mind.  Imagine if a Gothic and a really good episode of Scooby Doo, Where Are You? had a baby - and that's Eye of the Storm.  Sharon heads to a tiny, nothing town in the Sacramento Delta area after her baby sister gets in over her head with a new beau (who fancies himself a chef) and a rundown old mansion she wants to turn into a B&B.  The locals are insular, the mansion is on an isolated island (you need to take a ferry to get to it), there's a creepy old legend (because of course there is) and someone is trying to scare them off.

I liked this story quite a bit, again for the nostalgia.  The rest of it doesn't work quite as well because other than Sharon, you pretty much end up disliking every other character in the story.  Even Sharon's nieces and nephew (still kids!) - which takes some doing.  Plus Sharon is operating outside of her usual San Francisco setting, which is half the charm of this series (if I'm being honest).  Still, I'm a Scooby Doo nerd and the "creepy old house" angle always (ALWAYS!) reels me in.

Loren Estleman writes what I call Macho Guy Books.  He's best known for his crime novels set in Detroit, despite the fact he's got a couple of different series (including westerns!) under his belt.  I read the Amos Walker (private detective) series where everyone talks like they've stepped out of a noir gangster film and there's not a single honest person in the entire city of Detroit.  Black and White Ball finds Amos working for Peter Macklin, a hitman featured in another series by Estelman.  So this is #27 in the Walker series and #7 in the Macklin series.  Technically speaking.

The story opens up with Amos looking for the wayward husband of a former flame.  The guy embezzled money from Chrysler, hooked up with a blonde half his age, and is suspected to be somewhere across the border.  However, just as Amos is ready to storm the motel near Toronto, his mark is found dead, a bullet to the head while the blonde was taking a shower.  It has professional job written all over it - which is how he comes into the orbit of Macklin.  Amos has no stomach for those that make their living off murder for hire, but through a series of circumstances, he takes a job to protect Macklin's soon to be ex-wife.  Someone is threatening to kill her, Macklin knows who it is, he just needs time to run the guy down (literally and figuratively).

I've hopscotched my way through about a dozen of the Amos Walker books, haven't read a single Macklin story, but didn't have a problem keeping up.  But this is a read that takes some getting used to.  The Walker stories are in first person, the Macklin's in third, and Estleman shifts between the two styles.  Luckily he does this during chapter breaks (and not mid-paragraph) but shifting between the two within the same book isn't always easy going, even though I didn't find it to be a completely terrible authorial decision (but I can totally see how it will drive some readers batty).

What I liked about this one is what I tend to like about all the Amos books.  The tough guy cliches, the femme fatales, the crooked cops, the noir-ish shroud Estleman spreads over the city of Detroit.  I also loved how this book started (the Canada scenes) and ended.  Given that this is the most recent book in two long-running series, newbies aren't going to find a ton of in-depth character development here - which is mainly where I'm going to ding this one.  But if you're already a fan of one, or both, of the series, this was time well spent.

Chit Chat and Various Book Ramblings

It's been a while since I've done one of these updates.  Couple that with some books I want to mention that I don't have a lot to say about and general holiday brain-melt, here we are.  So what's going on with me?

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First, the big news - that Big Ol' Leadership Management Class Thing that I did for work?  Yeah, it's now done.  I survived 15 weeks, a group project (20 page written report + presentation), and had "graduation" last week.  Let me tell you how glad I am that's over.  Yes, it was a great experience, I learned stuff, and it looks shiny on Ye Olde Resume but....still.  I'm glad it's over.

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In other news?  Star Wars.  Meh.  Look, I'll go see it.  Eventually.  But I have not been excited about this thing since it was first announced.  Now James Bond?  Spectre?  I was twirling around in circles....months ahead of time.  Maybe they need to put Han Solo in a tux and shove a martini in his hand?  I'd feel like I was missing out but....meh. 

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I've gotten through some mystery/suspense reading and audiobook listening of late.  Chalk this up to buying a new car last year (built-in bluetooth!!!) and finally getting around to downloading the Overdrive app on my new phone which has WAY more memory than old phone.

I listened to Black Irish by Stephan Talty, mostly because the Buffalo, New York setting intrigued.  I went to college in Buffalo and lived there for almost six years.  Verdict?  Meh.  It was OK.  Mostly it was a Buffalo I didn't recognize (hey, I lived there almost 20 years ago and I was a college student pretty much "isolated" to campus life).  You know what this read like?  Like Talty wants to do for Buffalo what Dennis Lehane did for Boston.  It's on the gory side, so be warned, and while I didn't love it - I also didn't hate it.  It was also a fast listen.  I'll try the next book in the series.

On Keishon's recommendation I'm currently listening to The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo.  I'm glad she warned me about the slow start.  There's a lot of set-up and it seems to be all over the place.  I'm thinking I'm finally at the point where we're going to settle in for a more "linear" story - and think it will likely pick up for me now.  The Scandinavian crime "thing"  has largely eluded me - but I've been meaning to try Nesbo for a while and he's one of Keishon's favorites - so here I am.

Over the weekend I read The Sundown Speech by Loren D. Estleman, which is the 25th (!) book in his Amos Walker, Detroit PI series.  This was another OK read.  Estleman originally published it in a local paper as a serial about 10 years ago, expanded it, and now we have a book.  Amos is in Ann Arbor this time out so we have crunchy granola clients and a villain too smart for his own good.  It's not a book I would recommend to someone new to the series (Estleman's style is better suited for the darker noir world of rundown Detroit), but I read it in two gulps so....what am I complaining about again?

In the romance world, I tried but ultimately failed to listen to Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren.  As most of you already know, this book sprang to life out of fan-fiction and that actually isn't my complaint about it.  It also has a boss/secretary trope which, as we all know, Wendy loves despite knowing better.  No, the problem was I loathed these people.  Seriously.  The hero is an asshat and the heroine's body keeps "betraying her."  Seriously, those words are used in the text.  Her body "betrays her."  That's a romance writing tic that just needs to die a thousand burning deaths already.

Anyway, he's a jerk - keeps ripping her panties off - and even though she's a smart-mouth and fires back at him a lot - we still have Ye Olde Betraying Body thing.  I just couldn't see wasting my time on two characters that I literally loathed.  I've DNF'ed books for a lot less.

On the bright side?  While I normally have a hard time with romance on audio (it's a quirk - I have issues with someone "reading" me sex scenes), the narrator here (Grace Grant) was really quite good.  If you like romance on audio, you might want to look her up (my brief search turned up narrating for Christina Lauren, Lisa Renee Jones and Colleen Hoover).

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I'm hoping to squeeze out a couple more reads before the end of the year - which is time to remind folks that if you're waiting with bated breath for my Best of 2015 list?  Keep waiting until early January.  Outside of mentioning a mere three titles as part of H&H's round-ups - I always wait until the new year arrives.  Because, you know, I could read something awesome-sauce on December 31.

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If blogging doesn't happen again this week (and you know, it might not) - I hope that everyone has a nice, relaxing holiday.  Ho ho ho!

The Left-Handed Dollar

I'm a no-frills sort of reader.  I tend to favor novels that are written "cleanly."  No muss, no fuss, no frippery frou-frou.  I tend to dislike writers who throw in $50 words just to show-off, when honestly the $1 words work just as well and keep my brains from bleeding out of my ears.  About three-quarters of the time "lush" is totally lost on me.  However a girl does need to flex her grey matter every now and then, which is a niche that Loren Estleman fills for me.  His Amos Walker crime novels sound like the author still writes on a typewriter (which he does), and it always takes me a couple of chapters to capture the way he writes dialogue.  It's the stuff of 1940s noir.  They'd have to reanimate Bogart if Estleman ever sold the film rights.

The Left-Handed Dollar is the 20th book to feature Detroit private investigator Amos Walker, and this time out he's hired by local lawyer Lucille Lettermore (known as "Lefty Lucy" for her choice in clients), to help spring aging mobster Joey "Ballistic" Ballista.  Lucy's plan is to clear Joey's record of an earlier conviction, thereby trotting him into court as a "first time offender."  Amos is all set to turn down the job, until he meets with Joey.  Damn if he doesn't believe the man when he says he didn't do it.  What was Joey convicted of doing?  Packing a reporter's car full of dynamite.  The reporter in question didn't die, identified Joey in a police line-up, and oh yeah - happens to be Amos' only real friend in the world.  Sticky, sticky.

Detroit has quite a bit in common with California - the truth tends to be stranger than fiction.  Which is why I think it's one of the all-time great settings for crime novels.  The more things are effed-up in Detroit, the more they stay the same.  Amos Walker works in this milieu, and it gives these books a wonderful, gritty, and dirty sense of place.  It's also the perfect setting for the type of dialogue that Estleman tends to favor in these books.  I'll be honest, nobody talks like this in real life (well, at least nobody I know), but you don't really care as the reader because it makes you think, gets your grey matter firing on cylinders, and is a throw-back to an era when dialogue in movies wasn't inane chatter.  It's not for everybody, but if you like the craft of how words can be strung together to sing, it's good stuff.

I classify this series as "crime novels" because while they're decent mysteries, they're not real puzzlers from the Agatha Christie school.  It's basically all about Amos running around, wise-crackin', and trying to shift through the lies that suspects inevitably tell.  This book is no different.  Ultimately Amos has to take all those lies, spin them around, put them back together, and come up with the truth.  Which he does here, with an inspired ending that really worked for me.

I'm not sure how much longer Estleman can keep writing about Amos, but for now I'm content to hold out hope for at least a few more entries.  There's a reason Sue Grafton hasn't let Kinsey Millhone escape the 1980s - it saves her from aging her heroine.  Estleman has aged Amos.  He's a Vietnam veteran, which means even if he was 18 at the tail end of the war, he'd be in his late 50s in 2011. I've read six books in this series so far, and by my count Amos has suffered from about 25 concussions.  I'm not sure how much longer he can go on - but it's kind of fun to see his character enter the 21st century.  He still doesn't have a computer (!), but at least he's got a cell phone now.  Time is marching on, even if he's still the same guy he's always been.

This is a good, solid entry in a series that allows me to break-up all the "girl" books I read.  I liked Amos.  If I ever needed the services of a private investigator, he'd be my guy.  Not the smoothest operator around, but tenacious, smart, and amusing enough to allow you to overlook any foibles he has.  It's one of the oldest gags in fiction - the tough guy who always gets his man...or woman...or whatever.  But just because it's old, doesn't mean it still doesn't work.

Final Grade = B