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Moore, Bob: Don't Call Me a Crook!

2009-07-15T21:21:26-04:00

Don't Call Me a Crook is probably one of the stranger books I've ever read. The memoir was originally published in 1935 by Bob Moore, whose real name was Robert Macmillan Allison. The author was a Glaswegian and an engineer who wound up traveling around the world while working on various ships. He was also an incorrigible rogue--a thief (despite the book's title and the author's protestations), a drunk, a racist. He stole from people who trusted him. He abandoned his wife and child. (At least, he apparently never gave them a second thought after sending them back to Glasgow when family life became burdensome.) One is tempted, given Moore's immorality throughout the book, to call him a sociopath, but I don't know if that's right: he does show signs of humanity at times in the book.

The stories Moore has to tell are often fascinating. Here he is, trying to save a woman who's jumped off a yacht, or he's shooting at Chinese pirates, or he's stealing a bag of diamonds or setting a ship on fire or lying to a man about his wife after he's stolen a wad of the couple's cash:

"But I was not to be diverted by such uncouth tactics, so I just said, 'Yes, I think you should, because it is all wrong to say I was seen kissing your wife, Mr. Flight. I was seen doing no such thing. I would not dream of being seen kissing your wife, Mr. Flight.' (And neither I would for that matter, for where is the sense in being seen?) But he thought I meant I had not been kissing her at all so he said, 'Well, I'm sorry Bobby.' And I said, 'Aw, that's all right,' so we parted quite good friends.
"But I did not go back to their house anymore after that because Mrs. Flight and I went away until all her money was spent.
"But she did not know that it was her money we were spending, or she would have been mad at me, but I told her I had been lucky and won some money at the dogs.
"She thought I was taking her for a holiday on my money, and that will show you what a funny woman she was. For why should I have taken her for a holiday with my money, when she was not really young anymore and she had a house where I could go without spending any money at all?"

Moore's life was anything but dull. This, combined with the conversational tone of the book--if Moore wrote this himself, then he was a natural storyteller--make for a winning combination. The book is also interesting as a historical document. In it we see the Prohibition era from a drunk's eye view. It was a lawless, violent, very alien world that Moore inhabited.

For a while, then, the book is good fun. Sure, Moore is a scoundrel. It's clear from the start that he can't be trusted. But we're willing to forgive him some of his offensees because he has a certain charm. For all his adventures and crimes the book even becomes tedious about halfway through...until we're woken up again. On page 202 Moore does something terrible. And he mentions it almost in passing, as if it were nothing at all. It is so shocking that I had to reread the paragraph to make sure I'd understood him correctly. What he did thoroughly undermines any positive thoughts we might have had about the man. It's a strange thing, 200-odd pages into a memoir, to find out something like this about the narrator, to have our feelings for the character upended.

So in the end this was a uniquely disturbing book, unique as I've never experienced anything quite like this--the shocking revelation from a narrator I thought I understood, his deadpan delivery, his apparent indifference. A very strange book, but worth reading.

Biddle, Cordelia Frances: Deception's Daughter

2009-07-13T11:51:15-04:00

Deception's Daughter is the second book in Cordelia Frances Biddle's series of Martha Beale mysteries. Martha is an heiress living in mid-19th century Philadelphia. Her enviable financial situation has made her more than usually free to determine her own fate with respect to marriage. She has her sights on Thomas Kelman, an investigator working in conjunction with Philadelphia's mayor, despite that he's an unsuitable match for her by society's standards. In this outing Martha and Thomas must contend with a series of problems in addition to their romantic fumblings and misunderstandings--most seriously, the disappearance of the daughter of one of Philadelphia's leading families. The book takes readers from the well-appointed drawing rooms of Philadelphia's finest to the sorry confines of an almshouse to the city's lowest dives, where some of the aristocratic suspects in the girl's disappearance are wont to go slumming.

This is the first historical fiction I've read from Cordelia Biddle, but I doubt it will be my last. (Biddle is also the co-author, with her husband, of a series of crossword mysteries published under the pseudonym Nero Blanc.) Deception's Daughter offers a solid mystery, rich period detail, good writing, and likable characters who protest against but are ultimately hemmed in by the starchy confines of their times. On the negative side, there are a couple of chapters in which the tone of the book shifts subtly, when the author is describing a trip taken by the fiancé of the girl who's gone missing, which I found mildly distracting. Also, there is one passage in which Martha appears to have a prophetic dream, though this seems out of keeping with the rest of the narrative and isn't explained.

While the main mystery of Deception's Daughter is solved at the book's end, Martha's romantic life and smaller family-related problems are left unsettled, awaiting the next book in Biddle's series. I'll be happy to pick up the story when number three is released. Fans of Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series may find the Martha Beale books to their taste.

St. John Mandel, Emily: Last Night in Montreal

2009-07-08T23:21:47-04:00

"No one stays forever," reads the first line of Emily St. John Mandel's debut novel Last Night in Montreal. Certainly Mandel's main character can't stay in one place for longer than a few months, if that. Abducted when she was seven by her non-custodial parent, Lilia spent her childhood in a car--nine years of motels and chain restaurants and public parks, dyed hair and name changes, her picture and her grieving mother on their room's flickering TV screen before they fled again in the middle of the night. The book slowly circles around Lilia's story until we get the whole of it, skipping around in time and among perspectives: Lilia's own, when she was younger; and later we see her mostly through other's eyes--the private detective who became obsessed with her case, his daughter, and Eli, the latest of her abandoned lovers.

Last Night in Montreal is a powerful read--an unusual story, very well told. It's also dispiriting, not only because of the facts of Lilia's life, but because the principals of Mandel's story are all rootless and unsatisfied. But it's a compulsively readable book. I downed it in two days and might have been quicker if the obligations of my own rooted existence hadn't interfered. In the end I did have problems with the story's credibility. Mostly I find it hard to believe that the private detective on Lilia's tail would abandon his life in order to track her down, that he would continue tracking her after he found her. But the book raises any number of interesting questions, among them the reasons for this obsession of his, which leads him to treat his own daughter more horribly than the kidnapper he's chasing treats Lilia. I also am not sure that it made sense to make the private detective and his wife former circus people, but perhaps I'm missing some thematic relevance here. That the book raises so many questions would make it a good selection for book discussion groups. And maybe for Oprah as well, if she's reading this. (And I know you are, Oprah. I know you are.)

Thornton, Rosy: Crossed Wires

2009-07-06T13:17:00-04:00

Peter Kendrick is a charmingly self-effacing Cambridge don who has smashed up his Land Rover's front end at the start of Rosy Thornton's Crossed Wires. The girl behind the phone at his insurance company's call center is Mina Heppenstall, who finds his bumbling and the fact that he'd swerved to avoid a cat charming. From that inauspicious beginning, and after another accident on Peter's part, a long-distance relationship develops between the two, though they're divided by the telephone wires as well as differences in age and station. But they're situations are otherwise similar: both are single parents--Peter's a widower with twins; Mina, now in her 20's, was pregnant at 17.

The above summary of the book, as well as its rosy cover and the brief description on its back, would lead one to expect a light romance--Hugh Grant as Peter in the movie version, maybe, falling for a younger Meg Ryan type. It is a sweet romance, as it turns out, but much more than that as well. In fact the book is more about parenting than dating. For most of the book Peter and Mina's stories unfold separately, though the two update one another in weekly phone calls. They both have concerns about their children's social development, and both of them wind up facing a similar, more serious problem with their kids in the course of the book. What's nice is that the issues they face are very true-to-life. Their children are good kids whose small crises aren't ripped from the headlines material; their problems are realistic, the sort of thing any parent might face, and thus heartbreaking in the small way kids' problems sometimes are.

Crossed Wires is definitely a good read, deeper than you'd expect and as sweet as its cover suggests.

Craig, Daniel Edward: Murder at Graverly Manor

2009-07-02T13:21:16-04:00

Murder at Graverly Manor is the third book in Daniel Edward Craig's 5-Star Mystery series, featuring hotelier Trevor Lambert. Trevor, between jobs and back in his hometown of Vancouver, Canada, comes across a Victorian mansion turned bed and breakfast with a for sale sign in its yard. Intent on buying the creepy house, Trevor agrees to the bizarre demand of its current proprietress, Lady Graverly, that he live and work at the inn for a month while she decides if he's worthy of the property. It's not a thoroughly pleasant prospect: the allegedly haunted manor is saddled with a violent history. Rumors abound that Lady Graverly's husband, not seen for fifty years, was involved in the disappearance of a chambermaid. There are weird noises at night, the staff are hostile or incompetent, and Lady Graverly herself, who is alternately sweet and scary, is less than forthcoming about her plans for Trevor.

I really enjoyed this book. It's cleverly plotted and well-written. But I most appreciated it as an entree into a different world: Craig himself has worked in the hotel industry--he was Vice President of Opus Hotels in Canada--and his experience subtly informs Trevor's character. My only complaint about the book is that there's a sort of information dump early on, as the author summarizes what we've missed (or forgotten) in the first two books in the series. This might work for readers familiar with the earlier books, but not having them read them myself I found the information rushed and poorly incorporated into the current story. A minor negative, though, in an otherwise very pleasurable read.