Review: Gravesend

Gravesend by William Boyle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you live in a neighborhood called Gravesend you should probably expect things to be kind of depressing, but damn…

Ray Boy Calabrese is being released from prison after sixteen years for causing the death of Conway’s brother, and Conway wants revenge. Meanwhile, Conway’s old school classmate Alessandra has returned home from LA following the death of her mother, and Ray Boy’s nephew Eugene has heard all the stories about his bad ass uncle and dreams of being a neighborhood legend like him.

I’d read William Boyle’s excellent The Lonely Witness without realizing that it’s a follow-up novel to this one, and while they can be read as self-contained stories I wish I’d read this first because it does add some layers to it. Better late than never though, and this one is just as good, maybe even better in some ways, than that one.

This isn’t the kind of crime novel that the set-up makes it sound like. It’s much more of a Richard Price style of thing with the characters and place being far more important than the plot or action. Boyle does an exceptionally good job at establishing this Brooklyn neighborhood which feels more like a small town then a part of New York in many ways. The characters are all extremely well-done, and all of them feel like confused and sad human beings rather than stereotypes in a book which they easily could have been.

That’s two books from Boyle that I thought were top-notch, and I can’t wait to get to the third which is being released soon.

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Review: Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, by Brian Michael Bendis, Volume 2

Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, by Brian Michael Bendis, Volume 2 by Brian Michael Bendis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mile Morales has only been Spider-Man for a few days, but he’s already finding out that being a masked superhero is a complicated business. Especially since his shady super-villain uncle has figured out who the new Spidey is.

This is pretty much set-up for what’s to come, but it’s very well done. Miles continues to be an engaging character that you can’t help but like as he struggles at learning how to do the whole Spider-Man thing. There’s also some intriguing groundwork laid for future stories with things like J. Jonah Jameson seeing a new masked vigilante to vilify while Aunt May and Gwen Stacy are shocked to see someone else taking on Peter’s old role.

There’s also some nice character work being done with Uncle Aaron in his role as the Prowler who uses a combination of blackmail and appealing to Miles’ desire to put some bad guys in jail to suit his own agenda. Miles has been told by his parents that Aaron is a bad guy, but now we’re starting to see it even if he can’t yet.

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Review: My Detective

My Detective by Jeffrey Fleishman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.

I know the dating scene can be tough, but if you’ve resorted to murder as part of your plan to hook up with your dream guy then maybe you should give Tinder another try.

Sam Carver is a LAPD homicide detective working the case of a prominent architect who got his throat cut. What Sam doesn’t know is that the killer is a beautiful woman who is infatuated with him after she read a story about him in the local paper. Dylan Cross has scores to settle and romance with Sam on her mind so she’s come up with a plan to get her revenge while stalking him.

This is kind of an odd one. I guess I’ll call it character based crime fiction because it mainly shifts first person perspective from Sam to Dylan, and through this we get their history and personalities. Sam was a bit of bohemian in his younger days, playing in rock bands and backpacking around Europe before he settled into the role of detective which is due in no small part to being haunted by the memory of his father’s murder which was never solved. Dylan was a college tennis star and rising architect in an industry dominated by men. Both have an appreciation for the finer things like classical music and art. Thanks to Dylan they’re now linked together by murder.

And that’s kind of it. There’s not really much else going on other than Dylan killing a few people, Sam going over the evidence, and then they both brood about things. There’s not much detecting going on and very little action, either. It’s also awfully one sided with Dylan knowing everything about Sam thanks to her magical hacking ability and his habit of writing down all his thoughts and feelings on his computer.

This could have worked as a thriller with some crazy stalker getting obsessed with a detective and carrying out murders to create a bizarre connection between them, but here that’s undercut because Dylan isn’t full-on crazy town banana pants. She actually has very good reason for being angry with her victims, and the plot is designed to create sympathy for her. However, her fantasies about Sam undercut it as a revenge story, too.

I also had a hard time with the lack of reality with Sam’s role as a cop in this. Even though he’s a homicide detective in a huge city he only has one case he’s working on, and Sam somehow has enough juice to refuse to work with a partner instead of being told to shut up and quit being such a diva. He tells his lieutenant that he’s going to fly to New York to interview the ex-wife of the victim, and for some reason his boss doesn't tell him to use the phone and spare the budget. There’s the trope of the lieutenant complaining about how the mayor is on his ass because of the prominent nature of the victim. It’s also never explained how Dylan knows that Sam will be the detective who works the murder in the first place, but I guess since he's apparently the only police detective in LA that it was a safe assumption.

Despite all of this, there were things in this book I liked. It’s got a nice tone to the melancholy observations about LA and modern life, and both Sam and Dylan are interesting as characters. I just wish they’d found a few more interesting things to do in a more realistic and less TV-movie-of-the-week kind of way.

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Review: Taken

Taken by Robert Crais
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If I ever get kidnapped I want Joe Pike looking for me.

Private detective Elvis Cole gets hired to find a young woman because she dropped out of sight for a few days. The mother suspects that her daughter is with a boyfriend that she disapproves of, and that this is a case of college aged kids just off having some irresponsible fun. However, Elvis quickly figures out that the couple were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and were swept up as part of scheme in which illegal immigrants crossing into the US are kidnapped and held for whatever ransom their loved ones can scrape together. Cole enlists the help of his partner Joe Pike and has a plan to locate the missing kids, but things go sideways and Cole ends up being held, too. With the help of a fellow mercenary Pike begins a methodical hunt for his friend.

This one has all the hallmarks of your typical Cole & Pike novel. Elvis runs around doing some clever detective work while Pike shows up at opportune moments to unleash hell, and Crais has mastered using that formula with these characters to deliver exciting crime/action novels. Unfortunately, I think Crais fell into a trap of his own making here that hurts the story.

It’s clear from the title and book jacket summary that Elvis is going to get kidnapped and that Pike will have to find him. I saw Crais in an interview at Bouchercon back in 2011 in which he mentioned that the book he was writing at that time involved Elvis being taken and Pike getting him back. So that’s obviously the hook he started with and built the novel around. It’s a good idea for a story so I understand why Crais committed to it early on.

However, to really do that idea then Elvis should probably get snatched by the end of the first act, and that means that rest of the story would be on Pike’s shoulders with Elvis being a supporting player. Crais has done that before in a couple of Pike-centric book so it shouldn’t be a problem, but for some reason he wanted Elvis to be a big part of this one doing his usual detective thing. So to keep the core idea of Elvis being kidnapped in place while still making him an active figure in the plot Crais structured the book so that it flash forwards to the point after Elvis has been taken with Pike on the hunt along with the parallel story of Elvis trying to find the woman.

The problem is that by telling us that Cole is going be kidnapped from the jump it just makes his story a foregone conclusion which robs it of its drama. At the same time even with the flash-forwards he doesn’t get the Pike on the hunt piece really moving until the third act. Since that’s the story I was told this book was about and because the structure keeps reminding me that it’s coming, I was kind of tapping my foot the entire time I was reading and just wishing that we’d get to the fireworks factory already.

I probably would have liked this better if Crais had just fully committed to Cole kidnapping plot and had it happen much sooner and told the story in a linear fashion. Or he could have sold this book as it just being another Cole/Pike case about them looking for a kidnapped woman and saved the Cole kidnapping as a plot turn at the end of the second act. Crais is pretty good at throwing unexpected twists in at times, and that could have been a real doozy. Then the third act could have been Pike’s relentless hunt to find his friend, and it would have been a lot tenser.

As it is, it felt like Crais really fell in love with that elevator pitch of “Cole gets taken. Pike has to find him.” But then he couldn’t bear to just let Cole play that role. So he tried to have his cake and eat it, too.

It’s still a pretty solid book in an entertaining series, but I still feel a little disappointed in the way it played out.

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Review: Work Done for Hire

Work Done for Hire by Joe Haldeman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The only good thing about having a major snowstorm knock out power to your house for three days is that you can really catch up on your reading. Thankfully once the Kindle ran out of juice I still had a stack of stuff from the library as well as some recent purchases from a used book store to keep from thinking about how my toes were growing numb.

It’s the near future and America is still so tangled up in various conflicts overseas that the draft was re-instituted. Jack Daley was one of the reluctant citizens called to duty. Jack turned out to be a pretty good shot and was trained as a sniper and during his deployment he killed several people before being wounded and sent home. Despite some dark times thanks to his PTSD Jack has started building a career as a writer as well as enjoying his relationship with his girlfriend Kit.

Jack receives a chance to make some serious money by writing up a novelette based on the idea for a horror movie about an obese serial killer who might be an alien. The assignment comes from a famous film director who has the basic story concept but is looking to get it written up as a book to see if it would make a good film. With a potential fat payday on the line Jack throws himself into the work and is making good progress. That’s when he receives a mysterious package with a rifle inside it as well as a demand: If Jack follows instructions and uses the gun to kill a ‘bad man’ he’ll make a small fortune. If he refuses then Kit will be killed.

Since he doesn’t want to murder anyone Jack and Kit try to alert the authorities as well as make themselves impossible to find. However, they can’t get anyone to take them seriously, and the bad guys have an uncanny ability to keep tracking them down.

I’ve been a big fan of Joe Haldeman for some time, but his novel is hard to get a handle on. Even though the concept seems easy enough as a sci-fi thriller it takes a long time to get going. The first part is mainly about Jack’s life as he works on the book and goes on some bicycle trips as part of his research for it. We even get a chapter in which he meets Kit’s parents for the first time that really serves no purpose. There’s also the book-within-the-book with Jack’s chapter’s about a really gruesome serial killer doing his business. The rifle and the threat don’t even arrive until about halfway through a book that isn’t that long.

Even when we get to the aspect you’d think would be the conspiracy thriller it seems disjointed and low key with Jack and Kit kinda sorta trying to lay low, but there’s not really a sense of danger in any of it even when they get found. The ultimate resolution doesn’t make a lot of sense either.

So this book is a mess, but it’s an oddly fun mess. I really liked the character of Jack who is a funny guy just trying to live his life. Despite being a decent sniper in the army he’s not really a bad-ass, and as he points out several times he’s not a super assassin. He wasn’t even the best shot in his platoon, and he really doesn’t want to ever hurt anyone again.

Despite the plot not making a lick of sense and the book seeming kind of aimless overall, I had a pretty good time reading it just because I liked Haldelman’s story about this guy writing a serial killer story. Maybe I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much if I had anything else to do, but it was fun enough when you’re huddled a blanket with no TV or heat.

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Review: Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, by Brian Michael Bendis, Volume 1

Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, by Brian Michael Bendis, Volume 1 by Brian Michael Bendis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What's up, danger?

I’ve been meaning to read this title for years, but it took the utterly amazing Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse movie to finally motivate me to get to it. And I’ve really been missing out.

The idea of a new Spider-Man could have been yet another cheap gimmick yet the old Marvel Ultimate universe allowed them to take some chances like killing off Peter Parker for realsies, and then introducing MIles Morales as the new kid under the mask. It turns out that actual consequences make for good drama in stories. Who knew?

Bendis did a great job of crafting a new character as well as coming up with a plot that mirrors the the classic Spider-Man origin story yet still has a fresh and original feel to it. Miles has many of the same qualities that Peter has, but he’s not just a clone of him. (Which is good because Spidey doesn’t have a great history with clones.)

I was also surprised to discover that the new Marvel movie version of Peter Parker pretty much lifted the idea of Miles’ best friend who knows his secret. Only steal from the best, even when stealing from yourself.

It’s a great take on Spider-Man, and I can’t wait to read more about Miles and his adventures.

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Review: A Time to Scatter Stones: A Matthew Scudder Novella

A Time to Scatter Stones: A Matthew Scudder Novella by Lawrence Block
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.

I’ve read several interviews with Lawrence Block where he’s talked about how there were multiple times in his career when he thought he would never do another story about private detective Matt Scudder, but then something would happen that would make Block bring him back. So I guess fans shouldn’t be surprised that Block had one more story to tell years after we thought Scudder was done.

Matt is retired and living happily with his wife Elaine. Even though Elaine left prostitution many years ago she joins a support group of women who have quit the life, and she’s become a kind of sponsor to a young lady who has a problem with a client that flatly refuses to accept that she’s no longer in business and begins aggressively stalking her. The problem is that he used a fake name so she has no clue who he is. Matt agrees to help, but even if he can find the guy the law isn’t very good about protecting women from obsessive men so stopping him is another problem.

Like many crime/mystery readers I’m a huge fan of Lawrence Block and consider him one of the legends of the genre, and Matt Scudder is the bar by which I judge all other detective fiction with very few being close to the same level. So I was beyond excited to get the news about this new novelette being published. However, I was just a touch disappointed in this.

It’s still Block writing Scudder and much of what I love about the series is here. There’s some solid detective work to be done, and then Matt has to come up with a creative solution to a problem when he knows that there’s no way that the system will help this young lady. The core story and how it’s solved is Block doing what he does best without missing a beat.

Part of the appeal is Matt roaming around New York and getting into fun conversations with various folks that often have nothing at all to do with the case he’s working on. That’s here once again although with a bum knee now Matt doesn’t walk quite as much as he used to, many of his old haunts are gone now, and most of the people he knew in those stories are retired or dead.

That’s been a factor creeping into the last Scudder stories much like how life itself creeps up on all of us, and Matt’s aging in real time as New York has changed around him over the years is one of the points I enjoy about the series. However, a chunk of this book is reminding us of the people Matt used to know, and it’s kind of a bummer at this point. I was especially sad when conversation between Matt and Elaine reveals that they’ve fallen out of touch with TJ, the street kid who became a kind of surrogate son for them at one point in the series. And yeah, that’s life, but I always liked to think it was going to be TJ helping them out in their old age so it kind of hurts that he’s just drifted away from them apparently.

I also wasn’t thrilled with the ending to this after the central problem has been resolved. Back in 2011 Block released a new Scudder novel A Drop of the Hard Stuff as well as short story collection The Night & the Music that felt like the perfect goodbye. The story written just for that collection One Last Night at Grogan’s was especially fitting as Matt's swan song. Frankly, I found the conclusion here odd and off-putting, and it kinda spoiled that classy ending for me.

Still, it’s a new Matt Scudder story when I never thought I’d get another, and I am grateful to Lawrence Block for having him work one more case for us. I think in future rereads I’ll shift this around to still read One Last Night at Grogan’s as the last word from Matt.

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