Posts
Elizabeth Zelvin
The Malice Domestic convention represents the biggest gathering of avid mystery readers (excluding Bouchercon as drawing lovers of crime fiction and thrillers as well). Malicegoers have a fanatical loyalty to their favorite authors and series characters and an encyclopedic knowledge of the books they’re read (and in many cases, reread over and over). It’s not guaranteed that attendees will have conversations about these books, apart from those of authors who are present and those nominated for the Agatha awards (or the Edgars, which MWA announces just as Malice begins). But it does happen. I had two such conversations during this year’s Malice: one with the old friend with whom I stayed (located conveniently two and a half miles down the road from the convention hotel in Bethesda, MD) and the other with the gentleman who sat on my left during the Agathas banquet, Steve Steinbock, recently appointed book reviewer for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
My friend and her husband are mystery readers, but they aren’t connected to the mystery community, so I had the fun of recommending writers they didn’t know, once they’d told me enough about their tastes to get a sense of whose books they might like. They read James Patterson but find his work “a little too formulaic” and his characters lacking in depth. (They knew nothing of Patterson’s team approach to writing.) They enjoy Robert B. Parker because the formula is redeemed by witty dialogue and characters they have become attached to. (They were surprised to hear that many readers don’t like Susan Silverman.) They don’t mind the gore in Jonathan Kellerman’s books, but think John Sandford goes too far. They had reservations about Linda Fairstein on the counts of characterization and excessive detail in the passages on police procedure.
Between the dealers’ room at Malice and the bag full of books given out to attendees, I was able to give my hosts books I knew they would enjoy along with the fun of making recommendations. Felony & Mayhem Press was selling some of my very favorite traditionals: I bought Janet Neel’s Death’s Bright Angel for them—a police procedural with sophisticated and intelligent characters the reader falls in love with—and Peter Dickinson’s Sleep and His Brother, which I had recently been thinking of and wishing I could reread, for myself. The husband is interested in the World War II era, so he got two excellent books from the goodie bag that I’ve already read: James R. Benn’s Billy Boyle and Charles Todd’s The Red Door. I can’t wait to send my friend a list of series authors she can put on her Kindle, including Margaret Maron, Laurie R. King, and Donna Leon, all of whom I’m sure she’ll love. I think the husband will enjoy Jan Burke, Reginald Hill, and Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.
Steve Steinbock, whom I first met in the bar at Bouchercon a couple of years ago, is a kindred spirit who loves many of the same books I do. He agreed with (or at least let me rant on about) my theory that the middle ground between the heirs of Agatha Christie and the heirs of Raymond Chandler is occupied by the heirs of Dorothy L. Sayers, who introduced the character-driven novel to mysteries of the Golden Age. This goes largely unacknowledged in the perennial cozy vs hardboiled debate, although imho the descendants of Sayers include some of the most extraordinary writers of traditional mysteries, including Maron, King, Hill, and Julia Spencer-Fleming, as well as (arguably) Laura Lippman and S.J. Rozan (usually considered crime fiction writers) and Nancy Pickard and Charlaine Harris (usually considered cozy writers). Steve and I had a grand time talking about Manning Coles’s Tommy Hambledon spy novels. I was able to recommend to him a writer he didn’t know, Michael Gruber, whose The Book of Air and Shadows I consider the perfect thriller (plot, characterization, listen-to-this language, and even humor) as well as a brilliant World War II era suspense novel he didn’t know, the late Ariana Franklin’s City of Shadows. I also recommended Peter Dickinson's superb King and Joker, a refreshing alternative-history view of British royalty (and a propos as the royal wedding competed with Malice itself).
What mysteries do you love? Which authors do you recommend?
Showing posts with label Michael Gruber. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Gruber. Show all posts
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Best Reads of 2010
Elizabeth Zelvin
This is the time when we get to tally up and share with others our favorite reads of the preceding year. This year, I started making my list way back in January 2010, when I was still reading a few of the highly praised mysteries of 2009. I’ve been adding to it and winnowing it throughout 2010, and I think I’ve distilled it to the handful of books I absolutely loved reading. In one case, I got the hardcover by a favorite author the day it was published, read it straight through, then turned back to the beginning and read the whole thing again with equal relish. In another, a book and author I came upon by chance, I thought it was so exceptional that I devoted a whole blog to it.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about readers in my years in the mystery community, it’s that every individual’s taste is different. You may hate the books I love, and vice versa. My own husband and I are yin and yang in this regard. Even with the narrow range of books that we may both pick up—a certain kind of high-quality historical and fantasy fiction—I get bored if the battles go on too long, while he gets bored if the relationships and feelings go on too long. (Same with movies, but that’s another story.) But my list is my list, and I want to write about why I think these particular books are so wonderful.
As I said, I wrote a whole blog about Michael Gruber’s The Book of Air and Shadows (2007), so I’ll repeat here only that it had all three elements of great novel writing: storytelling, writing, and characterization.
The same can be said of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Cryoburn (2010), the long-awaited new volume of the Vorkosigan saga, which I insist in including on my mystery list because one aspect of Bujold’s genius is the deft mixing of genres. Cryoburn is science fiction, mystery, galactic political thriller, and immensely satisfying character-driven novel all at once. Miles Vorkosigan and his family and friends are the kind of people readers like me fall in love with, wish they could meet and befriend, and hunger to hear more about. They are endearing, smart, and funny—intensely real, achingly delicious. I can read about characters like these till the cows come home, over and over.
Margaret Maron’s Christmas Mourning (2010), and her Judge Deborah Knott series in general, shares that characteristic, at a less intense and charismatic level, of endearing characters, of a world of family and friends that the reader would be delighted to belong to. Every time the Knotts sit around playing music, I wish I had been born into a family that did that. In this one, the mystery is neatly done and the personal elements enough to satisfy someone like me who (dare I admit this?) is really reading the book primarily for the relationships.
Also on my list is Sara Paretsky’s latest, Body Work (2010). Paretsky, just named a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America and the chief founding mother of Sisters in Crime, writes a protagonist, V.I. Warshawski, who is a different kind of smart from either Miles Vorkosigan or Judge Deborah and a more abrasive kind of endearing. I have to reread Paretsky’s books just to make sure I can follow the more brainy aspects of the plot, which often have to do with business or politics. I don’t exactly long to know V.I. personally, but I care about her and the circle of friends and supporters she’s gathered around herself. I admire her doggedness—she’s as persistent as, hmm, Rocky, in coming back after a knockout—I like the way she cares about her mother’s memory (and those last ruby glasses, or are we down to one?), and I adore her overt feminism. In the case of this new book, after reading the beginning, I settled into this meaty read with a sigh of satisfaction. Yes! Paretsky is still at the height of her powers; neither the tight plotting nor the development of this installment of the series character arc is going to let me down.
That’s not the whole list—more another time. What’s on your Best of 2010 list, and why?
This is the time when we get to tally up and share with others our favorite reads of the preceding year. This year, I started making my list way back in January 2010, when I was still reading a few of the highly praised mysteries of 2009. I’ve been adding to it and winnowing it throughout 2010, and I think I’ve distilled it to the handful of books I absolutely loved reading. In one case, I got the hardcover by a favorite author the day it was published, read it straight through, then turned back to the beginning and read the whole thing again with equal relish. In another, a book and author I came upon by chance, I thought it was so exceptional that I devoted a whole blog to it.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about readers in my years in the mystery community, it’s that every individual’s taste is different. You may hate the books I love, and vice versa. My own husband and I are yin and yang in this regard. Even with the narrow range of books that we may both pick up—a certain kind of high-quality historical and fantasy fiction—I get bored if the battles go on too long, while he gets bored if the relationships and feelings go on too long. (Same with movies, but that’s another story.) But my list is my list, and I want to write about why I think these particular books are so wonderful.
As I said, I wrote a whole blog about Michael Gruber’s The Book of Air and Shadows (2007), so I’ll repeat here only that it had all three elements of great novel writing: storytelling, writing, and characterization.
The same can be said of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Cryoburn (2010), the long-awaited new volume of the Vorkosigan saga, which I insist in including on my mystery list because one aspect of Bujold’s genius is the deft mixing of genres. Cryoburn is science fiction, mystery, galactic political thriller, and immensely satisfying character-driven novel all at once. Miles Vorkosigan and his family and friends are the kind of people readers like me fall in love with, wish they could meet and befriend, and hunger to hear more about. They are endearing, smart, and funny—intensely real, achingly delicious. I can read about characters like these till the cows come home, over and over.
Margaret Maron’s Christmas Mourning (2010), and her Judge Deborah Knott series in general, shares that characteristic, at a less intense and charismatic level, of endearing characters, of a world of family and friends that the reader would be delighted to belong to. Every time the Knotts sit around playing music, I wish I had been born into a family that did that. In this one, the mystery is neatly done and the personal elements enough to satisfy someone like me who (dare I admit this?) is really reading the book primarily for the relationships.
Also on my list is Sara Paretsky’s latest, Body Work (2010). Paretsky, just named a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America and the chief founding mother of Sisters in Crime, writes a protagonist, V.I. Warshawski, who is a different kind of smart from either Miles Vorkosigan or Judge Deborah and a more abrasive kind of endearing. I have to reread Paretsky’s books just to make sure I can follow the more brainy aspects of the plot, which often have to do with business or politics. I don’t exactly long to know V.I. personally, but I care about her and the circle of friends and supporters she’s gathered around herself. I admire her doggedness—she’s as persistent as, hmm, Rocky, in coming back after a knockout—I like the way she cares about her mother’s memory (and those last ruby glasses, or are we down to one?), and I adore her overt feminism. In the case of this new book, after reading the beginning, I settled into this meaty read with a sigh of satisfaction. Yes! Paretsky is still at the height of her powers; neither the tight plotting nor the development of this installment of the series character arc is going to let me down.
That’s not the whole list—more another time. What’s on your Best of 2010 list, and why?
Thursday, October 28, 2010
An extraordinary book
Elizabeth Zelvin
I almost never blog about a book and always decline any invitation to review one. But Michael Gruber’s The Book of Air and Shadows, which my husband passed on to me because he thought I might like it, is so good that I have to talk about it. I’d call it literary crime fiction in the best way. There’s an element of caper, and it’s certainly a whodunit. Both the bio on Gruber’s website and Publisher’s Weekly classify him as a thriller writer, and he’s a New York Times bestselling author, which I guess makes him mainstream. He ghostwrote somebody else’s bestselling series before starting to write under his own name. And man, can he write.
The Book of Air and Shadows has as its McGuffin a completely unknown Shakespeare manuscript, a play about Mary Queen of Scots. There are two point of view characters, the first person protagonist, a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property, and an aspiring young film maker who works in a bookstore and discovers contemporary documents indicating that the play exists, along with other matters of Byzantine complexity. So what’s so great about this particular thriller? For one thing, all three of the essential elements of the novel—storytelling, craft, and characterization—are brilliantly executed. The plot is twisty and clever, and the tension never lets up. The writing is superb, and the characters are vivid, complicated, and memorable. The reader can’t possibly get them mixed up.
Then there’s voice, that mysterious element of the writer’s craft that distinguishes a master. The voice is delectable. I read page after page with a big grin on my face. He’d treat the reader to a literate sentence filled with educated vocabulary and felicitous turns of phrase—and then pop in a zinger, some colloquial term or trendy reference, to remind us that we’re in the real world and not some ivory tower. Or sometimes he’d drop an apposite apple reference into a grove of oranges at just the right moment.
Here’s an example. Jake, the first person narrator, is talking about a literary forger who almost got away with faking a new bad quarto (don’t ask) of Hamlet.
“And it might have become part of the critical canon had not L.H. Pascoe delighted in delicious young fellows with smoky eyes and pouting lips, and having such a taste, not promised one of these a trip to Cap d’Antibes, and a new wardrobe with it, and having so promised, not reneged, causing the young fellow, naturally enough, to drop a dime on his patron.”
The whole passage is delicious, but it’s that “drop a dime” that makes it sublime.
Here’s another, as Jake describes what started as an ordinary day in the practice of intellectual property law.
“Quiet meetings, billable hours, the marshaling of expertise, and the delicate suggestion that lawsuits in this business are largely a waste of time, for Chinese piracy of rock album cover images is an unavoidable cost of doing business in our fallen world.”
The zinger in this sentence is “fallen world,” a reference, if I’m not mistaken, from born-again Christianity.
Jake is a philanderer. The one aspect of the book that annoyed me slightly was how sexualized most of the female characters were. In my world, you can live an active, well-populated life for years and years without the men and women jumping into bed with one another. (Unless I’ve been missing something about Bouchercon? Or MWA meetings?) But as the story unfolds and the characters develop, Gruber gradually reveals that the charming bon vivant image Jake presents of himself in his narrative is not the whole truth about his character. In one third-person scene, we see him behaving abominably to Crosetti, the young film buff. And when Jake resumes the narrative, we don’t feel quite the same about him or trust completely what he tells us about himself.
But I’d already forgiven Gruber for the sex scenes, because his descriptions are so perfect. Here’s the end of one such passage.
“In the end she made a sharp single cry, like a small dog hit by traffic. Then she rolled over without a word and seemed to go to sleep, in the manner of a guy married for years.”
Believe me, those monkeys with the typewriters could not come up with lines like these, not in a million years. And while he’s writing up a storm and entertaining the reader with this fantastic voice, he’s unrolling the twisty, twisty plot, keeping that feather in the air by blowing it steadily and gently.
This Gruber is a very, very smart guy. He includes a lot about ciphers, which I always skim when I encounter them in fiction because my brain is not equipped to follow that stuff. He also has his fictional 17th-century character describe the unknown play in such a way that you can tell it could have been written by Shakespeare at the height of his powers. The playwright’s commission is to make Mary Queen of Scots a sympathetic character and make Queen Elizabeth look bad. Instead, he shows the nuances and ambiguities of both women’s characters.
I could go on. This is the kind of read that makes me want to say, “Listen to this!” But instead, I’ll say, “Read the book!”
I almost never blog about a book and always decline any invitation to review one. But Michael Gruber’s The Book of Air and Shadows, which my husband passed on to me because he thought I might like it, is so good that I have to talk about it. I’d call it literary crime fiction in the best way. There’s an element of caper, and it’s certainly a whodunit. Both the bio on Gruber’s website and Publisher’s Weekly classify him as a thriller writer, and he’s a New York Times bestselling author, which I guess makes him mainstream. He ghostwrote somebody else’s bestselling series before starting to write under his own name. And man, can he write.
The Book of Air and Shadows has as its McGuffin a completely unknown Shakespeare manuscript, a play about Mary Queen of Scots. There are two point of view characters, the first person protagonist, a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property, and an aspiring young film maker who works in a bookstore and discovers contemporary documents indicating that the play exists, along with other matters of Byzantine complexity. So what’s so great about this particular thriller? For one thing, all three of the essential elements of the novel—storytelling, craft, and characterization—are brilliantly executed. The plot is twisty and clever, and the tension never lets up. The writing is superb, and the characters are vivid, complicated, and memorable. The reader can’t possibly get them mixed up.
Then there’s voice, that mysterious element of the writer’s craft that distinguishes a master. The voice is delectable. I read page after page with a big grin on my face. He’d treat the reader to a literate sentence filled with educated vocabulary and felicitous turns of phrase—and then pop in a zinger, some colloquial term or trendy reference, to remind us that we’re in the real world and not some ivory tower. Or sometimes he’d drop an apposite apple reference into a grove of oranges at just the right moment.
Here’s an example. Jake, the first person narrator, is talking about a literary forger who almost got away with faking a new bad quarto (don’t ask) of Hamlet.
“And it might have become part of the critical canon had not L.H. Pascoe delighted in delicious young fellows with smoky eyes and pouting lips, and having such a taste, not promised one of these a trip to Cap d’Antibes, and a new wardrobe with it, and having so promised, not reneged, causing the young fellow, naturally enough, to drop a dime on his patron.”
The whole passage is delicious, but it’s that “drop a dime” that makes it sublime.
Here’s another, as Jake describes what started as an ordinary day in the practice of intellectual property law.
“Quiet meetings, billable hours, the marshaling of expertise, and the delicate suggestion that lawsuits in this business are largely a waste of time, for Chinese piracy of rock album cover images is an unavoidable cost of doing business in our fallen world.”
The zinger in this sentence is “fallen world,” a reference, if I’m not mistaken, from born-again Christianity.
Jake is a philanderer. The one aspect of the book that annoyed me slightly was how sexualized most of the female characters were. In my world, you can live an active, well-populated life for years and years without the men and women jumping into bed with one another. (Unless I’ve been missing something about Bouchercon? Or MWA meetings?) But as the story unfolds and the characters develop, Gruber gradually reveals that the charming bon vivant image Jake presents of himself in his narrative is not the whole truth about his character. In one third-person scene, we see him behaving abominably to Crosetti, the young film buff. And when Jake resumes the narrative, we don’t feel quite the same about him or trust completely what he tells us about himself.
But I’d already forgiven Gruber for the sex scenes, because his descriptions are so perfect. Here’s the end of one such passage.
“In the end she made a sharp single cry, like a small dog hit by traffic. Then she rolled over without a word and seemed to go to sleep, in the manner of a guy married for years.”
Believe me, those monkeys with the typewriters could not come up with lines like these, not in a million years. And while he’s writing up a storm and entertaining the reader with this fantastic voice, he’s unrolling the twisty, twisty plot, keeping that feather in the air by blowing it steadily and gently.
This Gruber is a very, very smart guy. He includes a lot about ciphers, which I always skim when I encounter them in fiction because my brain is not equipped to follow that stuff. He also has his fictional 17th-century character describe the unknown play in such a way that you can tell it could have been written by Shakespeare at the height of his powers. The playwright’s commission is to make Mary Queen of Scots a sympathetic character and make Queen Elizabeth look bad. Instead, he shows the nuances and ambiguities of both women’s characters.
I could go on. This is the kind of read that makes me want to say, “Listen to this!” But instead, I’ll say, “Read the book!”
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