Three Books -- A Conjoined Review

              

Like Nature, I abhor a vacuum. (A misuse of a metaphor if ever I misused one -- horror vacui is a postulate attributed to Aristotle: to wit, nature contains no vacuums because if there were a vacuum, the denser surrounding material would immediately fill it and it would no longer be a vacuum.)

All that to say, I hate to finish one book without another or two or three waiting in the wings. So I check books out of the library. I buy books at book stores. And I save them from the dumpster.

And how does this work out for me? Well, let me tell you.

I was in Barnes and Noble last month, gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket and a coupon in hand for a classic. Wuthering Heights was right on top of a stack of classics in the front of the store, wearing a beautiful olive, faux leather cover. I hadn't read it since high school, and, as I remembered, it was tragic and romantic and fixed Emily Brontë forever in my mind as the best writer of the Brontë sisters.

When next the opportunity to start a book presented itself, I started Wuthering Heights. Alas, I have passed the age where tragedy is synonymous with romance. Wuthering Heights is a litany of mental and physical cruelty against Heathcliff as a child and into young adulthood. By then he is so emotionally scarred, his humanity so disfigured, as to make his character as repulsive as the people who had mistreated him. 

Spoiler alert: Nothing ends well for poor Heathcliff.

I avidly read murder mysteries. Unlike Wuthering Heights, the dastardly deed is usually done and over in a few pages with the rest of the story devoted to bringing the miscreants to justice.

Luckily I was saved from reading the rest of  Wuthering Heights. I got an email that the third in Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Gamache series, The Cruelest Month, was waiting for me at the library.

But alas and alack. It seems I am not yet old enough to appreciate Ms. Penny's cozy mysteries. They are simply too cozy. I started the series, because several of my friends really enjoy her work. 

CBS Sunday Morning had a piece on Louise Penny (click here) just before I started The Cruelest Month. I very much enjoyed the interview with her. She is much more interesting than her characters. She said when she developed Chief Inspector Gamache's character, she wrote a man like she would like to marry.

I find the character altogether too perfect. Gamache never gets upset, or if he does, he doesn't show it. If I were to meet him, I would be sorely tempted to pinch his nose to see if I could get a rise out of him.

One thing I've got to say for Ms. Penny -- she employs the most creative methods of murder I have ever read. And another positive, her characters do not abuse children.

What am I reading now? Jodi Picault's House Rules, a book my daughter rescued, along with two bags full, from outside the dumpster near her home. (Her mother raised her right.)

I have not read Picault before, so we shall see.

So far my only complaint is that the book smells of tobacco smoke. I wonder what happened to the previous owner that all those books were discarded. They had had the books long enough that they should be so impregnated with the smoke. Do you suppose they died? Of lung cancer, maybe? Did they have a pet? What happened to it?

Can I get lung cancer from the book? Sort of second hand smoke once removed.

Ahhh. Mysteries everywhere.

Locavore Reading -- Book Review

Stephen White image from Denver Post

How do you find the next book to read? I've heard it said that some people go to a bookstore and open a likely book, read whatever page they've fallen upon, and decide whether or not to read the rest of the book. Other people read the back cover or the endorsements from famous authors just inside the front cover. I even know people who actually read the reviews in the New York Times.

Me? I listen to interviews on NPR. Or my retired librarian friend Lou brings me the book she's just finished so I can read it and return it to the library before its due date. Sometimes my husband recommends a book he's just finished. Or my daughter, the poet, Grace Wagner assigns a must-read.

When I worked at the Edmond Public Library in Edmond, Oklahoma, I often read books that were being checked out and in a lot. This, dear friends, is not nearly as successful as recommendations from family, friends, and NPR. One rule that I developed while reading those books was that if I didn't like a book, I read one more by the same author before I write them off completely.

I am an indiscriminate reader, but I especially like mysteries -- thrillers, not so much. I value characters over plot. And, in my own work, I take pride in writing dialogue.

Richard in my walking group happened to mention that Stephen White wrote what he thought to be the best dialogue he'd ever read. The scene was a woman in shock trying to tell a police officer that she'd been raped. But he couldn't remember the title of the book. And bye-the-bye, White is a Colorado writer.

I will gladly eat grapes from Chile in January and strawberries from Mexico in February. But I'm an unabashed locavore when it comes to consuming books. I believe in supporting local authors.

White himself was a practicing clinical psychologist in Denver. His book The Last Lie opens with the scene my friend described and its dialogue is very well done. The Last Lie is the 18th of 20 books about Alan Gregory, a clinical psychologist who practices in Boulder. (My husband derisively refers to Boulder as San Francisco East because of its unapologetically left-leaning politics. Not a problem for me.)

I was, however, put off by White's first-person writing style. I have good reasons for preferring third-person. I'm sure I do. The only one I can think of off-hand is that the writer can't show the reader anything the protagonist can't see.

Plus, I'd never followed murder mysteries solved by a clinical psychologist. A Los Angeles cop. A San Francisco lawyer. A Colorado caterer. A little old lady who lived in Cabot Cove. Okay, so why not a psychologist?

Three things hooked me right away.

1.) White's language is a good three steps above most mystery writers. Who but a psychologist would describe a song getting stuck in his head as "one of those songs that could stick to my dendrites like a wad of gum adheres to the sole of my shoe."

2.) And he's a bit snarky. He describes "A waitress--some people wear their Boulder-ness so visibly that it is as obvious as a brightly colored outer garment....She had a touch of glittery makeup on the lids above her pale eyes. Maybe some eyeliner. I pegged her as waiting for the ski resorts to gear up so she could spend her days doing some serious boarding. For an underemployed recent grad, being a ski bum had to be more alluring than slinging Scottish ale and grilled cheese sandwiches."

But the pièce de résistance.

3.)  Lucile's Creole Cafe. On page 59, White's hero has breakfast at Lucile's. Yes, it is a real restaurant! there are now six of them scattered across the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. You can get red beans and rice, shrimp and grits, and beignets from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Maybe not Café du Monde, but I can attest to their beignets being the next best!

The book itself was a little too Agatha Christie for me. In one of the chapters toward the end it tells you what happened, because of course, being first-person White couldn't give us enough information to figure it out by ourselves. So what's to keep a reader from skipping to that chapter and finding out who done it and why?

To give White a fair chance, I went back and read his very first in the series, Privileged Information, which I think is the much better of the two. It's rather interesting, in that it goes into some detail about means and methods of psychotherapy. It also discusses at some length the concept of privileged information. Both food for thought.

Will I read another of his novels? Maybe. But I can guarantee I'll eat at Lucile's again the first chance I get.

 

#atozchallenge

The Art of Misdirection

image from  ite.org

"The cat made a mess on the floor," my husband announces in disgust.

I am half asleep and, truth be told, I don't want to wake up. The bed is warm and I am snuggled into that perfect place where the pillow fits your head just right, the blankets are swaddled close so there are no drafts anywhere. And nothing aches. This early in the morning, any morning, having no aches is a miracle and I don't want to tempt fate by moving.

As you may know, I write murder mysteries -- Murder on Ceres. To begin the mystery, there must be a murder, or at least a dastardly deed. In this case a catastrophe. So I, the reader, am on the hook wondering exactly what has happened. And the misdirection is a simple lack of information. I'm allowed, nay encouraged, to imagine my own misdirections.

A mess? Without moving a muscle, my mind races through the possibilities -- in descending order the worst possibilities first.

Diarrhea. Cat diarrhea would surely be the worst. Kocka has never had diarrhea. (Kocka, pronounced kotch-ka with a long o. It means cat in Czech.) I know he hasn't had access to anything unusual to eat. Though I did see him toying with a small jumping spider. Would that upset his digestive system?

A hairball. The damned cat has long hair. Ooooh, I hate stepping on a fresh hairball, barefooted. No wonder my husband sounded disgusted.

I don't open my eyes. I don't ask what kind of mess. I just hope my dear, sweet, kind husband will clean it up and let me go back to sleep.

I read murder mysteries -- John Lescroart is my favorite. I watch murder mysteries on television -- Midsomer Murders, which my husband refers to as the Gilligan's Island of cop shows. Mysteries use misdirection.

To make a good story, misdirection must be done properly. Like the picture at the top of this post. The misdirections must let the reader imagine several directions, gradually moving through the possibilities.

The best misdirections do not seem contrived. They don't flash like neon No Vacancy signs. They just offer a nod toward the husband as the killer. If the misdirection were too obvious, we Americans would be convinced it was a red herring.

(Having been raised on Oklahoma Prairie and now living at the foot of the Rocky Mountain foothills, I don't have a clue what a herring is -- red or otherwise. I do know it's a fish of some kind. Not a trout or a farm-raised catfish, both of which are tasty, tasty.)

Maybe I should write a murder mystery involving a husband who not only is the most obvious killer -- BUT who, in fact, done the dirty deed. Oooooh. Then the misdirections would have to be tasty, tasty. He'd be so aggrieved -- mostly. And solicitous of his poor, dead wife's family -- maybe a little too solicitous of his wife's younger, blonder sister.

"He's shredded paper," my husband declares, merely disapproving.

That's not so bad, I think.

Maybe this is the most devious misdirection of all. A possibility that it's not a crime. Maybe an accident. Suicide. I can relax a bit. Have some sympathy for the poor widower -- errrr, cat.

And then the mystery writer drops the hammer. Our hero is about to be bludgeoned in the dark, dank basement.

Did I leave one of those checks from the insurance company where Kocka could get it? Or is it the latest iteration of  my last short story. Have I backed that up? What changes had I made? God, I hope it's not really my "last" short story. Surely I can write more.

In the end, the solution to the mystery must be congruent with the general direction of the story. Nothing out of the blue.

"It's toilet paper," my husband says.

Toilet paper? But my husband is discussing a mess the cat made at the door into the hall. Our bathroom is all the way across the bedroom. Kocka is famous for unrolling the toilet paper beside the toilet, but how could he get toilet paper from the bathroom unrolled all the way to the hallway door?

I can't lay in bed any longer.

Indeed, my husband is standing over a mostly shredded, one-quarter-full roll of mangled, only slightly damp, toilet paper.

Oh, I see.

A couple of days before I'd discovered that same partial roll of toilet paper in the toilet in the main bathroom. No doubt knocked into the toilet by a certain long haired cat. I'd fished it out (the toilet paper not the cat) and dropped it into a plastic basin on the counter beside the sink, intending to return soon and dispose of it properly. (What is it they say about the road to hell?)

The main bathroom door is a scant two feet down the hall from our bedroom door. Figure maybe four more feet to where the basin in question -- now empty -- rested upside down on the floor. Kocka carries things in his mouth. (Maybe he was a dog in one of his last lives.)

No more misdirection. Mystery solved. In fact, two mysteries. We'd heard a muted crash in the night, my husband and I. We both said, "The cat." Rolled over and went back to sleep.