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McNair, Cici: Detectives Don't Wear Seat Belts

2009-11-06T14:46:06-05:00

Note: Review copy received from publisher. Amazon affiliate: Links pointing to Amazon contain my affiliate ID. Sales resulting from clicks on those links will earn me a percentage of the purchase price.

In her book Detectives Don't Wear Seat Belts, Cici McNair introduces readers to her very unusual life. As the title suggests, she's a private detective (see Green Star Investigations), and stories about her experiences as a detective form the backbone of her memoir: her initial attempts to break into the business, stake-outs with guys with thick accents and foul mouths, investigations into counterfeit property or accusations of rape or lunchtime shenanigans, wearing a wire in the diamond district, in seedy warehouses, in a massage parlor. The author walks us through her role in a great many cases. It's fascinating, real-life stuff, the nitty gritty of detection, from paperwork to phone calls to the innumerable times the author has had to fake her way through a meeting to get information. She assumes an identity, swallows the information she'll need to pass herself off, and walks into a dangerous situation to lie her way through it and get her mark to say something incriminating on tape.

Woven through this main narrative are two equally interesting threads. The first has to do with the author's family: brothers and a sister whom an ex-homicide detective and friend of McNair's described as "the worst people I've ever met in my life"; Cici's mother, a likable, genteel Southern lady who was, however, abused during parts of her life; and the author's father, a menacing figure for whom an early death was insufficient reward. Finally there are the pre-detective days, which McNair spent rootless, traveling around the world and consorting with exciting characters--gun-runners and princes and the occasional fiancé. She's been suspected more than once in her life of working for the CIA, which is not the sort of thing that's said behind the back of your average suburban housewife.

McNair's book is--I'll use the word again--a fascinating read. It could have been a bit shorter: those descriptions of the guys she's worked with--and in particular, some of their dialogue--could have been cut back. (Readers should persevere if they're put off by this in the book's early chapters.) But I'm very happy to have read it.

Maugham, W. Somerset: The Hero

2009-10-28T14:35:56-04:00

Note: Amazon affiliate: Links pointing to Amazon contain my affiliate ID. Sales resulting from clicks on those links will earn me a percentage of the purchase price.

In The Hero, which was originally published in 1901, Somerset Maugham tells the story of Captain James Parsons, who comes home to Little Primpton a wounded hero. He's been away for five years, first at Sandhurst and then in India and South Africa. During that time he has not seen his parents--his "people," as Maugham consistently refers to them--nor his fiancé, Mary Clibborn, to whom he was engaged shortly before he left home. Upon his return he finds, unhappily, that everything has changed. Or rather, he has: his experiences have broadened his mind, and he now finds the dogmatism and puritanical attitudes of his parents and their circle unbearably oppressive. His parents adore him and yet their love is conditional upon his adherence to the rigid code by which their lives are circumscribed. Mary is no better. Ostensibly an angel of mercy, whose good deeds toward the ill of Little Primpton are outdone only by the kindnesses she heaps on James and his parents, she is in fact an odious creature, small-minded and convinced of her own rightness and out to change James into the sort of husband she should like. It doesn't help that during his time away James experienced real passion, falling helplessly in love with the wife of a friend, a woman who made a habit of collecting and toying with admirers. His burning infatuation for this woman made James realize that his relationship with Mary, which he'd taken as love, had never been anything more than a comfortable friendship.

Maugham fashions of this private drama a surprisingly suspenseful story: will James free himself before it's too late from the obligations of an oppressive marriage, or will his conscience not allow him to disappoint Mary and his parents? One doesn't know until the last sentence of the book proper (there is a brief epilogue as well) how things will end.

Maugham allows himself a purple passage or two, but apart from those occasional bits the book reads very quickly. His characterizations are superb: one can imagine very well the vile people with whom James is forced to consort. (In fact I'm sure I recognize a relative or two in these pages.) At over a century old, the book does offer the occasional head-scratcher, dialogue-wise:

"'How d'you feel?' I asked. 'Bit dicky; but comfortable. I didn't funk it, did I?' 'No, of course not, you juggins!' I said."

But there's in fact very little of that sort of thing. The Kindle's built-in dictionary did prove very helpful on this one, though ("glebe," anyone?).

Readily available for free or cheap in electronic form, Maugham's Hero is worth the download.

Myers, Tamar: The Witch Doctor's Wife

2009-10-23T09:36:04-04:00

Tamar Myers' The Witch Doctor's Wife is set in the Belgian Congo in 1958. There are increasing demands at this time for Congolese independence from Belgian rule. But before they are compelled to cede power to the natives, the Belgians mean to extract as much profit as possible from the country's diamond mines. The town of Belle Vue, situated near a waterfall in the Kasai River, is largely under the authority of the mining consortium that owns the mineral rights to much of the surrounding area. The social divide between the white colonialists and the black natives is enormous, almost unbridgeable, and most of the Belgians in the country are racist and dictatorial in their relationships with the natives.

Against this backdrop Myers introduces a handful of characters: a witch doctor/post office groundskeeper and his two wives, the witch doctor's Belgian boss, a young American missionary, a Portuguese store owner. There is also a mysterious Nigerian who flies into the country with the missionary and then makes himself scarce for reasons that are not at once divulged. Myers explores what happens to this cast when one of them discovers an impossibly large gem, a diamond larger than anything that's ever been found in the area. It's worth a fortune, but profiting from it, given the iron grip of the Consortium on the country's resources, may not be possible.

The Witch Doctor's Wife is an unusual and unusually interesting read. It offers fascinating information about the culture of the Belgian Congo--the author was born and raised there--both within the story proper and in the explanatory paragraphs with which each chapter opens. The book defies the reader's expectations, in part because some of the story's threads end quite abruptly. One could argue that this is bad storytelling: to an extent it feels like the author is cheating, cutting out complications with, say, a death that comes out of nowhere. But I didn't feel cheated myself, just intrigued by the author's strange decisions. The one thing I did have trouble with is a decision made by one of the characters, a brave bit of selflessness that motivates much of what happens at the end of the book. But the decision that character made was an irrational one, I think, the sacrifice offered unnecessary under the circumstances (as far as I can see), so that to my mind much of the book's plot rests on an unacceptable premise. (This complaint is very vague I understand, but I don't want to give anything away.)

Despite this one difficulty, I enjoyed this book very much, and I highly recommend it.

Melikan, Rose: The Counterfeit Guest

2009-10-17T08:33:02-04:00

Mary Finch, orphaned teacher at a girls' school turned wealthy heiress, was introduced in Rose Melikan's 2008 novel The Blackstone Key (see my review). In that outing, Mary found out about her late uncle's surprising bequest, fell in with smugglers, and met the dashing artillery expert Captain Robert Holland. The Blackstone Key was delightful, a slow but still compelling pseudo-Victorian novel. Having finished it, I was eager to read the second installment in Melikan's proposed three-book series.

In The Counterfeit Guest, Mary is again required to act in a manner ill-befitting a proper 18th-century lady of means. After her father's death, Mary's friend Susannah Armitage--a cousin, as it happens, of Captain Holland--marries an older man, Colonel Crosby-Nash. When suspicions arise that Crosby-Nash is in league with the French, Mary stays with her friend and acts as a mole in the Crosby-Nash household, a dangerous business if in fact he is a traitor. Meanwhile, against a backdrop of general unrest in the military, Captain Holland is required to deal with mutinous gunners at his own base.

Unfortunately, though The Counterfeit Guest offers much the same elements as Melikan's first Mary Finch novel, the book doesn't quite work. The story plods along as slowly as an evening spent in the tedious company of Susannah and Colonel Crosby-Nash. The writing itself is good, taken sentence by sentence, but the book is too long and the plot mostly uninteresting. There is too little development in the relationship between Mary and Holland, who don't share the same stage, as it were, as often as one would like.

If I had not so enjoyed The Blackstone Key, I'm afraid I would never have stuck with this one to the end. As it was, I was just curious enough about the development of the book's romance to see it through. The third book in the series is due out in 2010. Here's hoping Melikan will be able to recapture the magic of the first novel.

Halloween Book Giveaway! Win 5 Scary Books!

2009-10-16T13:45:28-04:00

This contest is now closed. Thanks, everyone, for taking the time to participate! I enjoyed reading the responses and was very pleased with the enthusiastic reaction to the contest.

I've now selected three entries using the random number generator over at randomizer.org. And the winners are:

Rhonda Struthers (comment #40)

Glenn (comment #43)

Jeanette Huston (comment #60)

I'll be notifying them by email as well.

Hachette Book Group is at it again with another themed giveaway! Three lucky readers of book-blog.com will win a box of five scary books:

The Heretic's Daughter By Kathleen Kent ISBN: 031602449X
Sins of the Flesh By Caridad Piñeiro ISBN: 0446543837
When Ghosts Speak By Mary Ann Winkowski ISBN: 044658133X
BoneMan's Daughters By Ted Dekker ISBN: 1599951959
The Historian By Elizabeth Kostova ISBN: 0316070637

On top of this, Hachette will randomly select 20 winners (from their contests across a number of blogs) to receive a galley of Ted Dekker’s next book, THE BRIDE COLLECTOR.

--- --- --- --- HOW TO ENTER --- --- --- ---

Anyone who knows me well at all knows that I loathe Christmas with a great and shudder-inducing loathing. I hate that it's an overly-commercial behemoth that clogs up our highways and emporia for weeks or months at the end of every year. I hate that participation in the frivolities is just assumed by well-meaning people, as if opting out or simply not being Christian is unthinkable at that time of year. I hate that people waste money buying crap for other people who don't want it when that money could be better spent and when they very often don't like the people they're buying the crap for. I hate that participation on some level is obligatory, despite how hard you try to get out of it. Christmas is big and ugly and far removed from whatever respectable roots it had.

On the other hand, I really really like Halloween. Halloween is everything a holiday should be. It's small. It's not religious, for all practical purpose (yeah, yeah, All Hallow's Eve, but get over it; nobody cares). It's not very commercialized (a bit sure, but nothing on the level of Christmas). It's children-centered. It's candy-centered. The customs connected to it are passed down from generation to generation, kids catching on to the requirements of the event almost through osmosis, like they learn playground rhymes. And kids look forward to Halloween not because they're going to be buried under a mound of bank-breaking presents, and I'd argue not really because they're going to be buried under a mound of candy, but simply because it's fun. Putting together a costume is fun. Dressing up is fun. Vampires and ghosts and witches are fun. Walking around the neighborhood is fun. Probably what I like most about Halloween, though, is that in its informal way it brings the community together. When else do your neighbors go out in the dark in such numbers and walk around together? How often do the youngest people in your neighborhood interact with the oldest? The feelings that I assume are supposed to be connected with Christmas--all that alleged cheer and good wishes--I think that's really in evidence on Halloween, and without the crowds and aggravation and expense.

But enough about me. By way of celebrating Halloween, you might want to enter this drawing for the aforementioned box of scary books. To enter, just leave a comment below explaining why you like Halloween and/or describing some noteworthy Halloween-related memory. That's it!

The fine print:

1. Entries must be submitted by 12:00 PM Eastern Time October 31st, 2009.

2. Three winners will be selected in a random drawing. I'll notify the winners by email on October 31st and will ask then that you provide your shipping address.

3. Please include your email address when leaving your entry so that I can contact you if you win.

4. Contest open to US and Candian residents only. No PO boxes please.