”Crossing frontiers is my profession. These strips of no man’s land between the checkpoints always seem such zones of promise, rich with the possibili”Crossing frontiers is my profession. These strips of no man’s land between the checkpoints always seem such zones of promise, rich with the possibilities of new lives, new scents and affections. At the same time they set off a reflex of unease that I have never been able to repress. As the customs officials rummage through my suitcases I sense them trying to unpack my mind and reveal a contraband of forbidden dreams and memories.”
I was thinking of Paul Bowles when I read this opening to Cocaine Nights. Bowles could have written that paragraph, but then I’m reminded of many of the writers I’ve enjoyed the most in my reading career whenever I read a J. G. Ballard. He makes a reference a few pages later to Graham Greene. ”You used to say that your only interests in life were opium and brothels. Pure Graham Greene, but there was always something heroic there. Do you smoke a few pipes?”
Certainly, Joseph Conrad also lurks around the edges of any Ballard novel, sailing his ghost ship from one chapter to the next.
Charles Prentice is a travel writer who has come to Estrella de Mar not to write about the place but to see his younger brother who is in jail for incinerating five people. He finds it hard to believe that his brother, Frank, is capable of such an act, but he is even more baffled by the fact that his brother has...confessed. He decides to launch his own amateur investigation because the police, with a confession in pocket, are not really interested in muddying the crystal clear waters of a slam dunk conviction.
As Charles talks to Frank’s associates, acquaintances, friends, and lovers, he is struck by the fact that everyone believes Frank to be innocent, but they don’t offer any alternative guilty parties. A bit odd, that, but then Estrella de Mar is proving to be a rather odd place. There is a placid calmness to the setting, with menacing overtones of impending chaos. The site is an enclave of bored, rich people who have need of some impetus to do...something.
Bobby Crawford, the tennis pro at the club, nearly stupefied with boredom may be the spark who shatters the peaceful tranquility. “You’ll bring them back to life--with amateur porn-films, burglary and cocaine?” As Charles becomes more and more enamored with the charismatic Crawford, he actually starts to believe that Bobby might be onto something. It reminds me of the Matrix movie when a perfect society was built and people killed themselves in alarming numbers, so the designers added strife back into their lives, and everyone was happier. Do we need strife? Something to fear to feel alive?
We see Charles becoming more enmeshed in the life of this community. It’s as if he seamlessly steps into the life of his brother, fulfilling a role that would be missed once Frank goes to jail. He even takes up with Frank’s girlfriend, Dr. Paula Hamilton, who seems to know more about the night of the fire than what she is willing to share. As Charles becomes more tangled with Bobby’s seemingly demented plans, his thoughts about his brother become a secondary concern. Even his plans for assembling a book on the architecture of the world’s brothels becomes a hazy and distant fancy. One of those ideas for a book that G.G. would cock his eyebrow at, but would shake his head in doubting wonderment as he poured himself another few fingers of bourbon.
Did Frank do it?
”Guilt is so flexible, it’s a currency that changes hands...each time losing a little value.”
If not Frank, who? And does Charles even care anymore?
Everytime I read another book by Ballard I move him up the list of my favorite authors. He deftly explores the concepts of man against man, man against nature, man against himself. His books are sultry, sexy, and humming with elegant intelligence. His themes continue to be relevant today, whether they were written early in his career in the 1960s or in his twilight years. If you like some of the writers I mentioned in this review, give Ballard a try. He might prove to be a favorite of yours as well.
”I’m twenty-five years at the auction house, forty-three years of age. They call me Rilke to my face, behind my back the Cadaver, Corpse, Walking Dead”I’m twenty-five years at the auction house, forty-three years of age. They call me Rilke to my face, behind my back the Cadaver, Corpse, Walking Dead. Aye, well, I may be gaunt of face and long of limb but I don’t smell and I never expect anything.”
Rilke has been called out to a deal of a lifetime. A house brimming with antiques that will put Bowery Auctions back in the black. The sister of the deceased owner wants a quick sale, not for the usual reasons of greed, but because she wants to free herself from a distasteful association. She instructs Rilke to personally dispose of all the contents of the attic, not in the usual way, through the auction block, but by burning.
There are books up there, you see, very unusual books in matching green and white bindings (some of you will know the publisher from the banner colors). There is an old saying that a lot can be learned about a person by their bookshelves. I’m not sure what my bookshelves would tell someone, except that I have a wide range of interests, that some might say is unfocused. In the case of McKindless’s books, they give Rilke an idea of some of his predilections, some of his fantasies, but it is the stack of photographs that Rilke finds that might give a clearer picture of what lurked behind the man’s eyes.
When Miss McKindless tells Rilke to burn the books in the attic, he crosses his fingers and assures her that he will do the deed. ”I can smile and smile and be a villain still.” I’ve never been in a circumstance where I’ve been instructed to burn a valuable book collection, but I can tell you that I wouldn’t be able to do it, nor would I be able to stand by and watch it happen either. I’ve been in a situation where they haven’t even thrown dirt on the man’s grave and the widow is demanding that I haul away her husband’s book collection. Not because the sight of the books made her grieve more for her husband, but because she had a deep-seated resentment towards books that he quite possibly adored more than her. So Rilke will not burn the books. He’s not sure what he will do with them, but he will not be party to something that is certainly an aspect of cultural genocide, even though these particular books are considered to be abominations by a certain percentage of the population. Whether they are trash or treasure is a matter of perspective.
”Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me, and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life.”--Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
He has bigger problems. The woman in the progression of photographs is shown with her throat slit by the end. Are these true snuff photographs or are they staged? Is McKindless a garden variety pervert or is he a murderer? Rilke might tiptoe back and forth across the line between right and wrong, but sadistic murder is firmly on the side of wrong. He launches an investigation that will take him deep into the Glasgow underbelly of sexual deviancy. What consenting partners choose to do with one another is one thing, but what these pictures show is too sinister to contemplate. The water is rising swiftly, and Rilke’s thrashing about only seems to drive him deeper under the water. His own sexual desires might land him in more trouble than he can handle.
This was funny: ”Shelves of videos. I slid one out...featuring real girls from Glasgow. Why not Real Girls from Rio? Taut, tanned buttocks losing out to the Pillsbury Dough cellulite of the girl next door. It cheered me to think that given a choice the average Scottish pervert wanted to wank to the robust Scottish girl in the street. Then I wondered if all straight men liked these big-busted, well-fed young women, or if it was just the perverts. The thought depressed me again.” Rilke is much more interested in the taut, tanned buttocks of Brazilian men than women, but he is not impervious to an attractive woman. I have to admit there is something strangely sweet about the pervs of Scotland preferring the reality of the girl next door compared to the surgically altered glamour girls of Rio. To me, fantasy is best grounded with at least a modicum of reality.
I really enjoyed the moral dilemmas of the book. As Rilke unwinds the McKindless secrets and deals with his cash strapped boss, he is constantly having to reevaluate his sense of right and wrong and the really wrong. People disappoint him, and sometimes he feels like a fool for even trying to do the right thing. He has to interpret the ambiguous prophecy of a ”strung-out sibyl, amphetamine seer.” He has to survive the religious ferver of a demented bookseller who believes he is the left hand of God, bringing justice to bear on those in need of punishment. He has to weigh his own greed and decide if he can live with the consequences of his own decisions. Most importantly, he has to find out the truth about the woman. His future can not begin until he solves the mysteries of the present.
I also really enjoyed the auction house aspects of this story, which were not that dissimilar from my own experiences in the book biz. I was hoping that Louise Welsh had written more stories about this unusual detective, but alas, that does not seem to be the case.
It’s been a while since I saw the movie Get Carter (1971) with Michael Caine, but it’s a movie that leaves an indelible impression on the watcher. The grit, the steel girders breaking up the skyline into geometric shapes, and the hardboiled, clipped dialogue had me feeling like I needed a pint just to stir the rust from my throat. This book was published in 1970 and was optioned for film when it was still in manuscript. I don’t know exactly how this happens given the number of great books that wait decades to be optioned for films. The book was originally titled Jack’s Return Home, but after the cult fame of the movie, publishers quickly changed subsequent editions of the book to the title Get Carter.
Mike Hodges wrote the introduction, and there was one section from it that really stuck with me. He quotes Steve Chibnall, who wrote the definitive book on the movie. ”’If Shakespeare could have written a gangster film, Get Carter would be the one.’ If that’s the case just remember that Ted Lewis wrote it; I only adapted it.” This is high praise for what many people would think of as a B British movie, but he is right. The Bard would have loved Jack Carter and certainly would have loved writing a play with him as his lead character, leaving a bloody trail of revenge in his wake.
As I read the dialogue, of course I hear Michael Caine’s voice, and much of the dialogue was lifted almost directly from the book for use in the movie. Hodges, ruefully, admits that he may have kept the movie script too faithful to the book, but frankly I can’t imagine why he would be second guessing himself. Maybe he feels the movie is too much Lewis and not enough Hodges. It was his first movie, so looking back maybe he thought he was too careful. He knows all too well if you fuck up in the movie biz your first film might be your last. Fortunately the film was a financial success and now enjoys a robust cult following.
Jack Carter gave his brother Frank several really good reasons to hate him. He was banished from their hometown, which was fine with Jack. He quickly makes a name for himself in the rackets as a brutal man. Frank didn’t believe in fighting, and that was one of the many reasons why Jack had some misplaced contempt for his brother. As we get older, we start to realize it takes a bigger man to walk away than the man who plants the fist in the center of some mouthy asshole’s face. Frank walked. Jack hit. A difference in philosophy that was one reason for the parting of the ways.
There were other reasons, too, unforgivable reasons. They say blood is thicker than water, but the water can sure seem way more important when you have a brother like Jack.
So Frank was about the last person that Jack would ever expect to meet with a misadventure. Something went really wrong, and as Jack starts shaking the rusty girders of his home town, he realizes that everything leads back to his niece Doreen. There’s always something that will make any man ball up his fist, even a peace loving man like Frank, and. Jack is determined to find out the truth. He might be booted out of the rackets forever, and he might have to look over his shoulder for the rest of his life...if he lives...but he is going to finish this one way or another.
If you love hardboiled novels, you are going to be asking yourself, just like I have, why has it taken you so long to read this? Considering how memorable the movie was, you would think a guy like me would have wanted to explore the origins of the plot. The book has certainly been buried by the popularity of the movie. I should have done my best a long time ago to put it back on the radar for those readers who would really appreciate the atmospheric smokestacks, flash talking hardcases, dark rust, and volcanic heat of the book that launched a genre of British hardboiled crime in the 1970s.
”The only places where the illustrated discourse radically departs from the written narrative are the graphic (in every sense of the term)
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”The only places where the illustrated discourse radically departs from the written narrative are the graphic (in every sense of the term) depictions of Hyde’s deportments (and Jekyll’s sexual phantasms). These are most often voyeuristic, reflecting Jekyll’s basically passive sexuality, but they can on occasion turn to cruel sadistic games, which represent in Jekyll the eruption of the Hyde element, characterized by the doctor as pure evil. It is the combination of these two elements, the passive and the aggressive, in the human psyche that conditions our total sexual being--a classic Feudian view.”
I often wonder what the first version of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde portrayed that Robert Louis Stevenson’s wife, Fanny, thought of as perverse. RLS was so angry at her reaction. He was a fiery Scot, though a very sick one, and he flung the manuscript on the flames of the fireplace. The first version of DJMR is lost to history. After reading this Guido Crepax interpretation of DJMR, I wonder now if Stevenson did not provide more detail in the first version about the perversions that Hyde was getting up to in the red light district. Hyde could do anything he wanted, knowing that the next day he would simply go back to being the respectful Dr. Jekyll. How would they ever hang him if they couldn’t find him?
If we were able to be unfettered, uninhibited, and knew without a doubt there would be no consequences for our actions, what beastily things would the rest of us get up to? Would Hyde be leering over our shoulders, chuckling at the hypocrites we are for judging him, when our own dark desires match the worst of his own?
The pictures of Hyde’s excessive behavior are graphic. Some would call them pornographic or just simply filth, but they are neither of those things. They are unsettling, but at the same time have a Victorian elegance about them. The participants still have a civilized deportment about them, even as someone is inserting an enema tube in their uplifted buttocks. As the intro quote alludes, Hyde is mostly an observer. With the lurking, deformed figure peering around a doorway or squinting around the arm of a chair at the depravity, it is clear he is directing.
There is a dream-like participation by the men and women caught up in his depravity, as if they have come under the magnetic sway of his persuasion.
Let’s not forget that Hyde is Jekyll and Jekyll is Hyde. It is Jekyll’s dark desires that drive the actions of Hyde. The real evil manifested itself in Jekyll long before Hyde was ever allowed out of his cage.
”I inherited a large fortune and always longed for the respect of society’s better class, yet I had a disposition for certain indecorous desires. Desires which I couldn't’ reconcile with my need for a reputation beyond reproach. Therefore I concealed my pleasures. Feeling shame and guilt. I lived a life of duplicity, but loathed hypocrisy and truly both of me were in dead earnest. My scientific studies went in search of a solution. A formula that could actually separate my conflicting personalities. On one side I would still be the upright Dr. Jekyll. On the other, a new man would be born more primal... free of any scruples.”
So yes, some of the pictures in this book might be offensive to some people. If you are rather sensitive to graphic material, then this is not the right book for you. For those who have an adventurous nature, who always wondered...what exactly did Hyde get up to...then you will enjoy Guido Crepax’s vision of what he believed happened off screen in the book. You might even disagree with him or think up your own version of Hyde’s dastardly deeds, and that will make the Hyde in you delighted. After all, this story is only a reflection of our own dark desires, but before you whip up your own potion to let your Hyde loose upon the world, be sure to read the book to the end.
1st. War on the adjective. 2nd. Death to the optic nerve.
‘Death to the optic nerve,’ Stevenson repeated to him”He made a note of his two literary aims:
1st. War on the adjective. 2nd. Death to the optic nerve.
‘Death to the optic nerve,’ Stevenson repeated to himself, but it was useless because the landscape unfurled itself like a scroll and he felt obligated to read the writing on it, the colours, the shapes, the patterns and sequences, which he translated into words, almost unconsciously, like a man unable to stop speaking to himself.”
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Robert Louis Stevenson with Samoan friends.
Robert Louis Stevenson didn’t want to write about what is seen, but that which is unseen. Not the robust, pleasing, Jekyll aspects of life, but the hideous, lurking in the shadows, Hyde aspects of life. After all, anyone can write about what they see, but only a writer like Stevenson is willing to venture into the pitch black jungles of a man’s being to see what creatures skulk about on the dark side of the moon.
It all begins with Stevenson attending a tribal dance on the island of Samoa. There is a young girl, one of those lit with an inner fire that makes her skin glow, a ripe peach in a barrel full of prunes. Stevenson can not take his eyes off her, and when she is found ravished and murdered, he becomes the chief suspect, not because of what the desire in his eyes was implying at the dance, but because his wide brimmed straw hat was found near the body. The Samoans love and respect Stevenson, so it is difficult for them to attribute such a horrible crime to the man they know.
Stevenson must prove his own innocence.
The question, of course, is, Has his Hyde escaped the bonds of his restraints? Could such an unhealthy man be capable of such a dastardly deed? He has been, of late, leaping from his bed with vigor to write his horrific tale of dueling personalities. Couldn’t a lovely girl evoke the same passion as the scribblings of a tale?
I’m a huge fan of Alberto Manguel, and like me, he is a mega fan of Robert Louis Stevenson, not just of his works, but of the man himself. One of my favorite moments while I was on the road in the book business was when a patron of the California bookstore I was frequenting at the moment came up to where I was hunched over a desk in my dark jacket and said, I would have sworn I was seeing Robert Louis Stevenson. I was more gaunt in those days, sporting a moustache, and my hair was brushing my shoulders. Maybe I was subconsciously wanting to look in the mirror and see my literary hero. Stevenson died way too soon, at the tender age of 44, and I can’t help wondering what he would have done with another decade or two of life.
So I had a lot of reasons to want to really, really love this book, but at the same time my expectations for the book were riding about as high as they have for any other book I’ve read this year. There are some wonderful sections of writing that are spot on with their associations with RLS. The Stevenson created woodcuts that Manguel included are a lovely addition to the text. I also really like the wonderful dust jacket design. The one nagging irritation I have is Manguel’s decision to move the writing of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Samoa, which, of course, I’m just too aware that it was written in Bournemouth, England, and was published in 1886. Stevenson moved to Samoa in 1890. For those who are not as invested in the facts, they will not be as bothered with Manguel’s reinterpretation of events, and even though I’ve made the case many times that a fiction writer has the right to play fast and loose with the facts to create a better plot, in this case I just felt like it was unnecessary. I believe the same effect could have been achieved with flashbacks.
”I awoke with foreboding. My hand closed in a reflex on the Luger under the pillow. I listened, acutely attentive. No sound. No quick surreptitious sl”I awoke with foreboding. My hand closed in a reflex on the Luger under the pillow. I listened, acutely attentive. No sound. No quick surreptitious slither, no rub of cloth on cloth, no half-controlled pulse-driven breath. No enemy hovering. Slowly, relaxing, I turned half over and squinted at the room. A quiet, empty, ugly room. One third of what for want of a less cozy word I called home.”
Gene Hawkins is on a forced vacation from a British agency that remains unnamed, but could quite possibly be some entity of MI6. He would rather stay busy because mental repose leads to thoughts of melancholy. His life is empty outside of his service to his country. The love of his life, Caroline, is married to another man, and whatever hope he once had of having a life with her sailed away when her husband refused to divorce her. This is the 1960s, and getting a divorce is not as easy as the perfunctory wham, bam, see you in the funny papers style of today.
While attempting to relax on a boat, an attempt is made on the life of one of his shipmates, which leads, after he fishes the chap out of the water, to a job offer to find some stolen thoroughbred horses. I knew that Dick Francis would be working horses into the plot. What intrigues me is his decision to have his protagonist, a man with little knowledge of horses, be on the outside of the business, unlike most of his other books where the protagonist is someone working in the horse business.
To find these horses, he has to go to America. That’s okay. He globe-trots for his day job, so moving about in America on his moonlighting gig will be easy peasy. He decides to be German because his German accent is better than his American one. Three expensive horses, past their racing days and now being used as studs for future generations of hopefully fast horses, have been stolen over a series of years, but it is baffling as to why. Their value is in their papers, so someone can’t sell their sperm without rolling out their ancestral tree. If they can’t show their prestigious background, they are, for all intents and purposes, nearly worthless. Gene will have to unravel the reasons for the theft if he has any chance of finding out who took them. He has to be careful because, if he tips his hand before he can secure the creatures, it will only stand to reason that the thieves will have the horses killed.
Gene has a bigger problem named Lynnie Teller, daughter of the man he fished out of the water in England. While trying to get a line on his investigation, he is spending time with her and her mother. Both are attractive, and both are interested in finding out more, a lot more, about Gene Hawkins. Lynnie reminds him of Caroline because she matches up well with Gene on a mental level, and she is pretty and trim, a delight for any man’s eye. ”But if I’d learned anything in thirty-eight years it is who not to go to bed with.” Maybe so, but loneliness weighs on Hawkins like a five hundred pound gorilla, and the girl makes him feel good about himself. ”Too young in experience, understanding, and wickedness.” Aye, but that also lends charm to her beauty. Despite the pitfalls, he can’t help flirting with her.
”She laughed gently, stretching like a cat. ‘Isn’t this heat just gorgeous?’
‘Mm.’
‘What are all those scars on you?’
‘Lions and tigers and appendicitis.’
She snorted.”
It’s hard to decide who is more dangerous, the thieves or the pretty and smart seventeen year old temptation.
The plot has a few tricky parts that don’t quite work, but in the later part of the book, the well crafted action scenes make the reader forget about the snags in the beginning of the book. There are inexplicable sections of minutiae that are kind of dull at times, but the basis of the plot proves to be fascinating, especially for those of us who have dealt with blood lines in animals before.
I sort of fell into owning this book. I was actually looking for a copy of Whip Hand, which is the second book in the Sid Halley series. I stumbled upon first American edition copies of Odds Against and Blood Sport, sold by the same dealer at unbelievably good prices. They have the lovely Frederick E. Banbery covers, and this is one of the few times where I prefer American dust jackets to the British designed ones. Blood Sport is sun faded on the spine, but otherwise is a very good copy. The Odds Against is really lovely, near fine, and just like that, I’m no longer just a reader of Francis’s books but a collector of his early titles. Fortunately, it is a gentle madness.
”Just when he became infatuated with roses, he couldn’t remember. Much as with one’s taste in art, music and other pleasures mature, what had started ”Just when he became infatuated with roses, he couldn’t remember. Much as with one’s taste in art, music and other pleasures mature, what had started as an amusing dalliance had developed over many years to become a passionate love affair.”
It is interesting to think about the things that we have loved so long that we have forgotten the source of our infatuation. Some of those things predate our love for a person, except for maybe the affections we might have held for our parents and siblings. Of course, over our rambling lives, we collect new proclivities, new endearments, new delights. For me, I have always adored tulips. Because we didn’t have daffodils, they were the first flower to emerge in our gardens on the farm. I love the shape of them, the vibrant colors, and as I got older, I became fascinated by their history and the madness their beauty caused in the Dutch Republic in the 17th century, leading to the term Tulip Mania, as nearly everyone in Dutch society was caught up in the speculation on rare tulip bulbs. My love for roses came later. Like Lawrence Kingston, I don’t remember when I first became infatuated with roses, but it has been a long relationship that will endure until I become worm fodder...hopefully for my own garden, but then there are laws that frown upon such disposing of one's final remains.
When Kingston gets the call from Jamie Gibson, the American who bafflingly inherits Wickersham Priory, he isn’t sure if he wants to accept the task for which she wants to hire him. Committing to a garden, especially one that will require so much work, is not a promise given lightly. Wickersham Priory has been overgrown for decades, and parting the foliage of this garden will be like parting the negligee of a lover for which one has longed to caress for what feels like eons. There is always the chance as well that, once Kingston has fallen in love with the gardens of Wickersham Priory, the owner may run out of funds to continue or decide that his services are no longer needed.
It is not an easy decision, but then like with that lover whom we pine to make ours, he decides he must take the chance and plunge ahead.
There are a plethora of mysteries being uncovered about Wickersham Priory. The garden is revealing her treasures, a buried potting shed, a reflecting pool, a Victorian greenhouse, a chapel. All buried beneath decades of growth. It does not take long for nature to take things back once we stop trimming, plucking, cutting, and training the foliage that expands quickly to take what space they can grab. The mysteries are not all in the garden. What happened to the books detailing the life of the garden, the plans, those realized and those dreamed about? Who is the Frenchman who shows up demanding paintings that were in the possession of Major James Grenville Ryder, Jamie’s mysterious benefactor? There is no discernable connection between Ryder and Gibson, so why did he leave his estates to her? And whose bloody bones, well no actual blood left, are residing at the bottom of the chapel well? The mysteries continue to emerge, going back all the way to the dissolutions in 1540 when Wickersham Priory was seized by the crown.
These mysteries are the sort of thing that Kingston, despite his vast responsibilities with restoring the gardens, can not leave alone. The further he digs, the more baffling the roots of these puzzles become. Jamie though is becoming less thrilled about discovering the truth the more Kingston becomes caught in the brambles of the enigmas. There is a real fear that what they discover may lead to the revelation of something that will cost her the dream of what she intends to make of Wickersham Priory.
Despite his employer’s wishes, Kingston can not quit pulling on the strings of what little he knows. He must have resolutions even if the truth is starker than anyone wants to know.
Anthony Eglin was inspired by the Herculean effort that Tim Smit accomplished in restoring the gardens of Heligan. Every day was a treasure trove as elusive and rare plants were discovered hiding beneath the brambles. To restore order and beauty to something that has become buried beneath the weight of neglect must have been a most rewarding experience. Eglin does a great job of letting us peek at some of the process. If I had any complaints about this book, I wish he’d spent more time showing us the process of bringing a garden back to life. Hopefully, Kingston will continue to work on Wickersham Priory in the next book in the series.
The perfect book to further inspire my own gardening adventures this spring.
”Dima mightn’t exactly have been spoiled for choice when it came to selecting a messenger, confessor, or prisoner’s friend, or whatever it was that Pe”Dima mightn’t exactly have been spoiled for choice when it came to selecting a messenger, confessor, or prisoner’s friend, or whatever it was that Perry has been appointed, or had appointed himself. She’d always known there was a slumbering romantic in him waiting to be woken when selfless dedication was on offer, and if there was a whiff of danger in the air, so much the better.”
When people are in desperate straits and in need of help from a stranger, they scan the faces around them for something in their features to reassure them, intuitively, that this person is the one most likely to render aid. In the case of Dima, the face he decides to entrust his life belongs to Peregrine Makepiece. Perry, an Oxford academic, and his barrister wife, Gail, are on vacation in Antigua. They are there during the off season to keep the cost of the trip within the means of their cash-strapped budget. Dima is a force of nature, a whirling dervish of expansive energy, and surrounded by an entourage of family, friends, and bulky men with heavy hands and dead eyes.
Dima challenges Perry to a tennis match, but this game isn’t about footfalls and line calls. Oh no, it is a much more dangerous sport of international intrigue. Dima has found by complete chance the perfect man to shoulder the burden of his problems. He is a money launderer not only for the Russian mafia but, as it turns out, a bag man for high ranking British politicians. Lots of dirty Russian money is about to be moved through British banks, and Dima knows the players, the method, and the origin of the money. He has suddenly become a huge liability to powerful men in Russia and Great Britain, who simply have too much to lose to take a chance on being exposed. Perry is left-leaning, suspicious of his government, but still patriotic. A man who has waited his whole life to step into the subterfuge of a Graham Greene novel. Dima needs him to help him broker a deal with MI6, and something in Perry’s romantic soul lights up like the London Eye.
Perry knows a guy who knows a guy, and the flash drive that Dima palms off to him to tempt MI6 makes its way through the labyrinth of offices until it lands on the desk of someone who finds Dima’s information intriguing enough to pursue.
Perry thinks he’s done his bit. ”That’s it. You’re on your own. I am, therefore I don’t spy.”
He is wrong.
Dima insists that Perry must stay involved. In a business rife with lies, double crosses, and deceptions, Dima can’t and shouldn’t trust the spies at MI6. Dima’s primary concern is the safety of his family, but to MI6 that is definitely a secondary concern. Perry and Gail both find themselves in over their heads, but they also find themselves caring about the fate of Dima and his family, and their faith in their own government will be sorely tested in the process.
One thing I really enjoyed about this story was the way Perry and Gail pooled their intelligence, keeping each other informed, and both contributed fairly equally to the process. I think there are too few examples in literature of couples being real partners in life. This is not a top tier Le Carre, but the chances of him writing a masterpiece that would rival his early work is improbable. Regardless, he is still writing spy thrillers that are better than 90% of his supposed competition. The negative reviews I’ve seen of his later work are frankly doing him a disservice and not giving him enough credit for writing intelligent but maybe breezier books than what he did earlier in his career.
The 2016 Ewan McGregor movie has the same basic plot as the book. There are some annoying changes. They move the setting from Antigua to Morocco, which is okay. They make Perry a lousy tennis player, where in the book he is a really good tennis player. I actually like that aspect of his character. It makes the whole tennis match between him and Dima much more intriguing in the book. Most of the changes are irritating to this John Le Carre fan, but do not hamper my overall enjoyment of the movie. I would definitely recommend reading the book before watching the movie. Le Carre still has a deft hand with prose and building intrigue that movies struggle to replicate.
”And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him…”
A certain Mrs. Davis dies suddenly in a bo”And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him…”
A certain Mrs. Davis dies suddenly in a boarding house. Her death is not remarkable, but the list of people’s names that she shared with a priest before dying turns out to be very interesting indeed. This list includes the names of some people who have recently died of natural causes, or was it? When the priest is found murdered, the police are confounded by how it all ties together.
Mark Easterbrook (who will be played by Rufus Sewell in the upcoming BBC adaptation of the book) finds himself drawn into this fascinating series of events. He says the writing on his book is going very well when anyone asks him, but in reality, I think he would use any excuse to escape writing further about the history of the Moguls’ way of life. If the writer is bored with the subject, how can a reader possibly find what he’s written interesting? The Moguls simply can not compete with a real live murder mystery.
There is a nice foreshadowing as he goes to the theatre with his pseudo girlfriend Hermia Redcliffe. ”One needs some really good food and drink after all the magnificent blood and gloom of Macbeth. Shakespeare always makes me ravenous.” Watching or reading Shakespeare does always produce an appetite for me as well, but what is interesting about the mention of Macbethis that, during the course of his impending investigation, he is about to meet three witches.
He hears through an unreliable source (good time girl Poppy) that, if someone wants someone done away with, she needs to see the three women at The Pale Horse Pub. Rather brazen, don’t you think? If you are in the murder for hire business, to operate under the name The Pale Horse is almost an admission of guilt. It is all poppycock anyway; you can’t use witchcraft to kill someone. Voodoo, a sect of witchcraft, if one is to believe the more sensationalized presentations. But doesn’t one have to believe in Voodoo for a Voodoo curse to work? Doesn’t one have to believe in witchcraft for it to work?
When Easterbrook meets these three women, he is certainly unnerved. As he starts to assemble the evidence, he begins to question his own beliefs and wonders if he has stumbled upon something beyond the pale of his understanding. Despite the hazards, it is either putter about with this investigation or return to the dry desert of the Moguls. He chooses to continue to poke about.
Of course, this is an Agatha Christie novel, so one must expect there will be twists and turns. No worries, she doesn’t disappoint.
She has this interesting passage about the dangers of life and our destructive tendencies towards the planet: ”In the end, perhaps, not only great natural forces, but the work of our own hands may destroy it. We are very near to that happening at the moment…” This would have special resonance with people who happened to pick this book up to read during The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. The book was published in 1961 in the UK, but was published a year later in the US. Living under the threat of nuclear annihilation was all too real in 1962.
There are other nice foreshadowing elements that I won’t discuss that are actually clues to the resolution, but only become clear for me at the end. I read the bulk of this book in an afternoon, so all the evidence was freshly presented to me as I reached the conclusion. I can see the way she uses misdirection, but also plants seeds that sprout into flowers of understanding during the reveal.
Another interesting aspect of this novel is that it is considered the fifth Ariadne Oliver novel. She is a writer of mysteries who is a background character in several Hercule Poirot novels. I was unaware of the use of this recurring character, but alas, she only has a few scenes in this novel. One is a humorous discussion with Mark of the frustrations with trying to write clever mystery novels. I did want to see more of Ariadne, but unfortunately she isn’t imperative to the plot.
The movie is going to eventually be released on Amazon Prime, but I don’t have a date for when that will happen. As an Agatha Christie fan, you can choose to wait and watch the movie, or you can do as I like to do and read the book before watching the movie to analyze the plot decisions made by the writer of the screenplay compared to the original.
”He was sitting in a chair, facing the window. He didn’t respond as I drew closer and I felt a cold sweat, itching out from my scalp. I wiped my face ”He was sitting in a chair, facing the window. He didn’t respond as I drew closer and I felt a cold sweat, itching out from my scalp. I wiped my face with my forearm, eyes not leaving the shape. As I came alongside him I saw that he was dead. His own sweat was glazed across his face, and I thought I could feel the heat pouring out of him. He looked well groomed for a midnight intruder, cleanly shaven with a sharp haircut. I stopped when I saw that his eyes were wide open. They were cobalt-blue and staring into the next life like he was done with this one. It was his teeth that sent me out of the room, though. The muscles in his mouth had contracted viciously, and locked into a wide, wincing grin.”
Detective Aiden Waits has been assigned to the night shift with the most loathed and lazy detective on the force. Let’s just say, if there is a negative connotation describing a human being, it probably fits Detective Peter “Sutty” Sutcliffe. Waits has landed at the very bottom of the detective food chain. To go any lower, he would be unemployed.
Waits has earned his way there. After the shenanigans he got up to in book one, I am frankly surprised to find that he’d kept his job for book two. ”One benefit of quitting speed, cocaine and ecstasy was that it made drinking feel like a healthy choice.” Besides his struggles with addiction, he is also undisciplined, has issues with authority, and frequently shoots himself in the foot trying to do the right thing. Doing the right thing proves to be very subjective indeed.
The night shift is full of the loneliest of the loneliest people. Most of his shifts are spent sorting the normal things that occur between drug dealers, hookers, and the rest of the disadvantaged people who have landed on the margins of society, but when he catches the murder of the grinning corpse, the Smiling Man, Aiden has no idea the attention this is going to bring to him and to his past.
To further compound his problems, a young woman has reported that she is being blackmailed for sex by a rich fuck named Oliver Cartwright. She doesn’t want to make an official report, and fortunately or unfortunately depending on your opinion, she catches the right/wrong detective.
“Don’t do it, Aiden!” I say from my reading armchair, inspiring a puzzled look from my Scottish Terrier.
He does it.
How he fixes this problem will never show up in any policing manuel. Is it immoral? Well, all of you will just have to judge him for yourself. I won’t cast any aspersions upon the lad. There really isn’t room for more anyway. ”I moved the rear-view mirror so I couldn’t see myself and pulled out into traffic. Sometimes you confound expectations, sometimes you grow into the thing that people think you are.” Ambiguous morality is always a bugger to figure out.
As his indiscretions come to light, not in a provable way but certainly where there is smoke with Aiden there is always fire, his boss knows without knowing that Waits pulled a Waits on Cartwright. In the shadowy underworld where cops and crime bosses meet, there is an agreement that, as long as Waits stays employed as a cop, his ticket won’t get punched. The moment he is canned, the protection he enjoys as a cop will dissipate, letting loose the hounds of retribution. Needless to say, Waits has made a plethora of very powerful enemies. He’ll be fish bait in a week.
Now you would think that this Damocles sword looming over his head would keep Detective Aiden Waits flying straight and playing it safe. It does not, much to this reader’s consternation, even though I am anxious for him and rooting for him to find a way to survive, but also find some semblance of happiness. To make matters worse, as if he doesn’t have enough anxiety built into his life, he also has a creature from his past dogging him, calling him, pulling him back into the skin of whom he once was, reopening a wounded place in his soul where his destructive ways originated.
Dare he say his name?
I really appreciate that Joseph Knox gives us more of Aiden’s back story in this book. We learn about his flawed character in Sirens, but in The Smiling Man we discover the true reasons behind his struggles with addiction and his quest for justice by whatever means. His past could have made him a bad man intent on hurting other people, all people, but it turns out he inflicts the worst punishments upon himself. Knox is certainly writing the next generation of British Noir with hardboiled characters and gritty plots that are tough and cynical enough to fit seamlessly in a James A. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, or a Cornell Woolrich novel.
The third Aiden Waits book has just been released this month and is titled The Sleepwalker. I’m certainly interested to see what demented and disastrious circumstances Aiden will have fallen into by the time I reconvene with him.
”Banks drove through Keighley and Haworth into open country, with Haworth Moor on his right and Oxenhope Moor on his left. Even in the bright sun of t”Banks drove through Keighley and Haworth into open country, with Haworth Moor on his right and Oxenhope Moor on his left. Even in the bright sun of that springlike day, the landscape looked sinister and brooding. Banks found something magical about the area, with its legends of witches, mad Methodist preachers, and the tales the Bronte sisters had spun.
Banks slipped a cassette in the stereo and Robert Johnson sang ‘Hellhound on My Trail.’ West Yorkshire was a long way from the Mississippi delta, but the dark, jagged edges of Johnson’s guitar seemed to limn the landscape, and his haunted doom-laden lyrics captured its mood.”
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The Crossroads Man himself, Robert Johnson.
Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks is an introspective man. He likes a good bitter in the pub, but when he is at home listening to jazz or blues, he likes a few fingers of Scotch while he relaxes with a good book. If the fact that Banks is slipping a cassette tape in his car’s music system didn’t properly tip you off, this book is set in the 1980s, otherwise known as the age of Thatcher and Reagan.
There is unrest all across Britain as young people are discovering that their futures are being mortgaged and destroyed by a cold, unfeeling, conservative government.
A nuclear protest march gets out of hand, leaving PC Edwin Gill stabbed to death in the street. A hotshot detective from London named Burgess is sent out to help Banks and his team track down the killer. Dirty Dick Burgess, his name says it all, is all bluster and threats, which doesn’t mesh well with Banks’s more cerebral and respectful interrogation methods. Burgess wants a quick resolution so he can bunk off back to London, but as Banks keeps reminding him, I have to live with these people.
The investigation quickly centers around the ex-hippies living out on a place they call Maggie’s Farm. This is a nod to the Bob Dylan song, but also an ironic jab at Margaret Thatcher. After all, she is doing her level best to help give everything of value to the top 1%. The serf system of the Middle Ages wasn’t so bad after all, was it?
Banks starts to realize that the line of investigation needs to shift back to the murder victim. Who did he know? Did he have any enemies? From what Banks has gathered, Gill was a right bastard who volunteered for riot duty every chance he could so he could indulge his thirst for cracking heads. In other words, he had been a natural born thug. Maggie Thatcher would never be caught dead having a pint with such a man, but she wouldn’t hesitate to release him from a cage to go hurt people she considers to be the scum of the earth.
You know, people like you and me.
Burgess wants to keep the focus on Maggie’s Farm. He doesn’t want to muddy the water with Gill’s backstory. He knows there are too many hooks and crooks in that story that would only confuse a jury. Banks isn’t one to let a string go without giving it a tug, and as he keeps pulling on that particular thread, a clearer picture of events emerges.
The first Alan Banks mystery I read was In a Dry Season, which is fabulous. It is the 10th book in the series. I read the next one Cold is the Grave and loved it as well so I decided that I really needed to go back to the beginning of the series and catch up all that happened to Banks before In a Dry Season. The early books are more like Agatha Christie who-done-it mysteries. The later books are plotted and written more like thrillers, with more physical action. I happen to appreciate both styles. The interesting thing for me, as I get caught up on the series, is discovering which novel is going to prove to be the moment when Peter Robinson changed his style.
It is a mystery within a series of mysteries, and I am the detective who happily is gathering information for a grand reveal. May we all assemble in the library, and everyone leave their candlesticks, knives, ropes, bent pipes, and monkey wrenches on the table in the hallway.
Here are just a few blues musicians that Banks plays during the course of this investigation:
Blind Lemon Jefferson Charlie Patton Sara Martin Leadbelly Scrapper Blackwell Blind Willie McTell Leroy Carr Walter Davis Robert Johnson
I have a feeling that most of you will not be listening to them on cassette.
Next up in my tour of the Yorkshires is The Hanging Valley.
”Standing shoulder height in front of them was a rose bush, thick with thorns and silky dark green leaves. It was covered with blooms the size of tenn”Standing shoulder height in front of them was a rose bush, thick with thorns and silky dark green leaves. It was covered with blooms the size of tennis balls--dozens of them. They were plump and perfectly formed.
They were blue.
A brilliant blue. Not lavender or mauve, but an electric sapphire blue.
Kate edged closer and knelt until her face was inches from one of the blooms. She gripped it lightly and gently tugged one of the petals.
‘Oh--my--dear--God!’ she said, quietly. ‘It is real!’”
For those who may not know, a blue rose does not exist in nature, and so far, it doesn’t exist in a greenhouse laboratory either. They can make lavender roses that have blue tints, and in the right lighting, at a bar late at night, after a couple of tall martinis, one might believe he has just had a saucy conversation with a seventy year old woman, who looks twenty-five, holding a sapphire rose.
And people would believe you about the seventy year old woman looking twenty-five (It is always possible that Helen Mirren is hanging out in your local bar and thinks you are the sexist man there. The lighting is that good, erhh bad!), but they would not believe she held a sapphire rose.
Alex and Kate Sheppard have just recently bought the grand old manor called The Parsonage with its extensive walled gardens. They are yuppies or yippies or whatever young, preppy, upwardly mobile couples are called these days. She runs a fussy antique store, and he is a handsome, edgy architect.They would be people that most of us would love to have as friends. They know enough about this and that to be good hosts and good conversationalists. Their perfect world is about to explode into intrigue, murder, and deception.
The worldwide rose industry is worth billions, not millions per year, but billions. The acres and acres of roses that are grown each year to be sent to enhance the lives of gardeners all over the world is staggering to contemplate. Large companies are struggling to compete with mega large companies. Getting your hands on a legitimate blue rose would take a struggling company to the financial stratosphere. Let’s just say, desperate or even just immoral people will do almost anything to get their hands on a blue rose. The recklessness and audacity ratchets up when any of the companies vying for the rose think about what will happen if their competitor gets the rose before they do.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, the expert that Alex and Kate call is Dr. Lawrence Kingston. He is a botany and gardening specialist who is routinely called upon for his opinion by the highest garden authorities in the world. One would be hard pressed to come up with a subject matter that Kingston doesn’t have an opinion about, whether it be gardening, world politics, or history. He is a man interested in everything. He is a fine man to have in your corner, but beware; if the alcohol continues to flow deep into the night, so will his stories and pontifications.
I find him fascinating. Of course, Alex and Kate do, too, but maybe in smaller doses.
It is interesting for me to read reviews of people who don’t like him, think he is a smarty pants, which really surprises me because, as readers, don’t we aspire to know more? Isn’t that why we read? Isn’t Kingston a font of knowledge just waiting to be tapped? I do understand being looked down someone else’s nose does get a bit old and having to listen all the time instead of talking is not most people’s cup of tea, but for me, the few times I’ve had the opportunity to meet a person like Kingston, I’ve just kept my mouth shut, except to gently nudge him in the proper direction to talk about something I wish to know more about.
Besides the character of Kingston, I also really like that all the chapters begin with quotes about roses. This is one of my favorites: ”Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you”---Richard Sheridan. Ahhh, if he says this to a young lady, he is not only smooth but also informing her that his garden has a hold on his heart, too.
Will the garden approve of her? How will she look among his roses?
I’ve been watching quite a bit of Monty Don recently. I’ve enjoyed traveling with him around the world to see these simply stunning gardens. I’ve also enjoyed his shows based in his own garden at Longmeadow. He has inspired me to begin contemplating my own backyard and the numerous possibilities for turning it into a gardening paradise.
I’ve been infected with gardener’s dreams.
So it is due to Monty Don that I decided to track down a gardening mystery. I wanted a series sprinkled with all that geeky gardening guidance, with a bit of skullduggery, and a twisty gardening conundrum. Anthony Eglin provided me with plenty of what I was looking for. I definitely plan to see where he sends my man Kingston next. Somewhere I hope a cup of Earl Grey and a shot or two of Scotch can readily be had.
”Murder may have been his occupation, but poetry was his delight.”
You may call her Elizabeth, Lambeth Marsh Lizzie, or just plain Lizzie. With the dea”Murder may have been his occupation, but poetry was his delight.”
You may call her Elizabeth, Lambeth Marsh Lizzie, or just plain Lizzie. With the death of her abusive mother, she is cut loose from a life of degrading poverty and, by a quirk of fate, finds herself thrust into the world of the stage. Dan Leno is at the top of his game, and he is the first person to see Lizzie as someone more than just a bit of fluff or a go for it girl. She is a natural entertainer, quick witted, and has the singing voice of a angel. She has finally found her place in the world.
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Olivia Cooke plays Lizzie in the 2017 movie.
This is Victorian London, and the city has seen its share of vice, exploitation, debauchery, and oh yes, even murder. Thomas de Quincey’s collection of essays titled On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts has scandalized the town. The Ratcliffe Murders, a dastardly family homicide that happened seventy years ago, he considers to be one of the finest examples of murder as a fine art on par with artists’ renditions of beauty, fine literature, and exalting music.
There is one burgeoning murderer who reads De Quincey’s account with great interest, one might say with reverence. ”And what a marvelous touch by De Quincey, to suggest that Williams’ bright yellow hair, ‘something between an orange and lemon colour’, had been dyed to create a deliberate contrast to the ‘bloodless ghostly pallor’ of his face. I hugged myself in delight when I first read how he had dressed for each murder as if he were going upon the stage.”
Details such of that may have been induced by De Quincey’s own feverish opium influenced mind, but they do put the reader right there in the bloody room, looking the murderer in the face.
The murderer dubbed the Limehouse Golem, an understudy at this point, gains experience by killing the most easy prey. The same, least protected members of society whom Jack the Ripper made quite a mess with at a later date. Like any skill, practice makes perfect, and the goal is to elevate murder to a level at which those who see the tableau will gasp, not only at the grotesqueness of the scene before them but also for the artistry of the composition.
When the bookish, Jewish scholar Solomon Weil is murdered, the Limehouse Golem starts to see the nuances of the art of murder. ”The body is truly a mappamundi with its territories and continents, its rivers of fibre and its oceans of flesh, and in the lineaments of this scholar I could see the spiritual harmony of the body when it is touched by thought and prayer. He lived yet, and sighed as I cut him--sighed, I think, with pleasure as the spirit rose out of the open form.”
This murder brings The Reading Room in which Weil spent so much time under scrutiny and a whole host of potential suspects. It is becoming readily apparent that the Limehouse Golem is something more than just a crazed killer. Leaving bloody messages on the wall in Latin would lead one to believe that this murderer has been inspired by literature. There is the writer George Gissing in the Reading Room, hanging on as best he can to a shabby gentility. He is saddled with a whore for a wife, who will lie with anyone for a chamber pot of gin. Could he possibly be murdering whores in lue of murdering his wife? There is Karl Marx, a man of grand passions. Could he have finally snapped and be expressing his ideas in blood? Inspector Kildare has been given the case because he is expendable. If he succeeds, wonderful, but if he fails, he will be shuffled off into disgraced retirement. The political elements of the force simply do not want to risk one of their golden boys on the rise.
Dan Leno is also a suspect due to some circumstantial evidence. Could his madness on stage have finally spilled out into nights of grand artistic expression?
The other man at The Reading Library on the proper occasions to potentially be a suspect is the journalist/failed playwright John Cree. He has married Lizzie and taken her away from the stage or, in his opinion, has saved her from a life of destitution and sin. When he dies under suspicious circumstances, Lizzie is in the frame. The only way that Kildare can save her is to find out the identity of the Limehouse Golem.
This is a wonderful, evocative, Victorian era murder mystery that has recently been made into a spectacular film titled Limehouse Golem(2017), starring Bill Nighy who lends gravitas to every role he decides to play. The plot is a twisty one that will lead the reader down many a dark alley, chasing a red herring. I decided that I would just hang with Peter Ackroyd and let him tell me the story. I didn’t worry about the subterfuge or even trying to figure out the mystery. I wanted to enjoy the ambiance of Victorian London and found myself laughing at Dan Leno’s bawdy jokes along with the rest of the motley, gin swilling crowd. There is a murderer on the loose, but isn’t that just the spice that London after dark craves?
”Just as the low winter sun was sinking in the sky, in a little shop near the bridge in Richmond, I struck gold. An original Elvis RCA red label. It w”Just as the low winter sun was sinking in the sky, in a little shop near the bridge in Richmond, I struck gold. An original Elvis RCA red label. It was in beautiful shape. My first impression was that someone had really looked after it. Or, better yet, never played it. I wondered what domestic upheaval--death, house move, existential crisis--had let it being discarded here. When you thought about the series of coincidences that were required for this object to be right here and right now, in my hot little hands, it was dizzying.”
When I was working the book buying counter for a used bookstore in Tucson, which will remain nameless, we would see what seemed like epic tons of books, CDs, vinyl, and bluray/dvds ever day. An avalanche of cast off entertainment that the owners hoped to trade for some jingle in their pocket or trade credit to exchange for some new entertainment. We saw a lot of crap. Books with missing covers, orange Cheetos (please don’t read while eating Cheetos) stains on the edge of the pages, tea stains, wine stains, pages missing, spines cracked nearly in two, and in one case, the remains of a dead cat at the bottom of a trash bag of books. I first knew we had a problem when I found an ear stuck to a Sidney Sheldon book. The CDs/Vinyl/BluRay/DVDs would come in without the case, without the artwork for the case, the wrong discs in the wrong cases, discs that were so scratched that one can only assumed they were used as skateboards, and discs that were actually cracked. So when one of the buyers had something magnificent appear, all the envious buyers would come over to have a look.
”The cover was immaculate. But what was the record going to be like? My hands trembled as I took a look. The LP crackled as it came out of the sleeve, the static electricity causing the hairs on my arms to stir. The black vinyl gleamed. Pristine, virginal and perfect. I could see my reflection in it, grinning foolishly.”
So let’s just say, I know the feeling when the self-styled Vinyl Detective finds this beautiful Elvis LP.
The Vinyl Detective is turning his vast knowledge of music into some sort of a living. He puts on his crate diving shoes, low cut to allow him to squat comfortably as he flips through a crate of LPs. He begins the day always hopeful he will find something he can pop on eBay and keep himself in food and his cats in kibbles. He also is a collector of Jazz, so sometimes what he finds slides onto his own shelves, joining those other precious discoveries that make up a pretty impressive collection.
The Vinyl Detective moniker is a joke. Something he dreamed up late at night when he was whiskey snozzled and decided that was the moment to order business cards.
It is all a joke until Nevada Warren shows up on his doorstep. ”Her face was pale and there were lilac shadows under her eyes. She looked like an undead beauty in some erotic Euro horror flick.”
She takes his card seriously and offers him an outrageous amount of money to find an LP called Easy Come, Easy Go. One of only a handful of records produced by the Hathor label. Given the state of his financial affairs, he really can’t turn down any paying gig, but this proposition makes perfect sense given that looking for LPs is what he does for a living, so why not take the woman’s money? He is going to be in every vinyl shop, fleamarket, second hand store, or charity shop in the city anyway, flipping through their crates of orphaned music. Sure the LP is rare, but that will just make it all the sweeter when he actually finds it.
If he could see the future, he might very well have given her money back and patted her taunt fanny as he ushers her out the door, but then again, as desperate as his financial situation is looking, he may have made that crossroads deal anyway.
Of course, Nevada does not tell him everything, which the bizarre events inspired by this commission soon becomes so mixed into his normal life he can’t separate the nefarious events from his own life.
There are the psychotic Aryan Twins, Heidi and Heinz, who are looking for the same record. There is the Wales dope dealer, Hughie, who pushes his tomatoes, used to disguises his “cash crop,” almost as fervently as he does his dope. There are LP collectors/sellers/buyers who keep turning up dead. There are people following him wherever he goes. There is a grand mystery about not only Easy Come, Easy Go but all the records produced by Hathor. There is his dope smoking, Rolling Stones collector friend, Tinkler, who keeps falling down his stairs. And we mustn’t forget his arch enemy, Stinky, who keeps showing up at inopportune times.
There are even people pointing guns at him. ”It was hard to know the etiquette of being held at gunpoint by a madman.”
There is something about these records that is worth killing for. Our Vinyl Detective does have a theory.
”I said, ‘I think it’s what’s written in the dead wax.’
‘Okay, what’s that?’
‘It’s after the run-out groove, where the needle ends up at the end of the record. There’s a space there where information is written, etched into the vinyl itself.’”
It becomes a mystery that, regardless of the risks, the Vinyl Detective must solve. Each record gives him a few letters of the puzzle.
EA__EG__YIST__FA__________BY
He is going to have to find all the records to solve this ambiguous riddle because no one is going to let him buy any vowels. (I can’t believe I just used a Wheel of Fortune reference.)
The book is frankly hilarious, maybe more so for a consumed, mad collector, like myself, because collectors, whatever they may choose to seek, can understand the insane lengths a collector will go through to complete a collection. You will learn a lot of great insider technical jargon about the record industry. Don’t worry, you won’t find yourself lost in the weeds because Andrew Cartmel has a deft touch with his vinyl geekiness. I would almost call this a cozy for collectors. A guilty pleasure of madness run amok among the crates of castoff LPs. Needless to say, I’m on board for the rest of the series.
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