Author: katenepveu

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Ross, Kate: Cut to the Quick; A Broken Vessel; Whom the Gods Love; The Devil in Music

More backlog clearing: the Julian Kestrel series, four mystery novels set in 1820s England written by Kate Ross: Cut to the Quick, A Broken Vessel, Whom the Gods Love, and The Devil in Music. (Ross died young, so sadly these are the only Kestrel novels there will be.)

Kestrel is set on the path of a detective in Cut to the Quick, when he must clear his servant of suspicion in a murder (having otherwise spent his time in the feverishly pointless life of a Regency man of fashion). This is a well-constructed and engaging countryhouse murder mystery, seething with family secrets and suppressed passions. It does have its rough spots. For one, getting Kestrel to the murder, and giving him the very last piece of the solution, both feel a bit forced. For another, Ross has some point-of-view issues that grate a bit: it’s not apparent at first that it’s in an omniscient retrospective, and regardless of that, it’s never a good idea to have three consecutive paragraphs of this form:

X thought: [stuff]

Y thought: [other stuff]

Z thought: [still other stuff]

Those nitpicks aside, I was interested enough in Kestrel to keep reading the series (and also interested in the very suggestively-named Phillipa, the younger daughter of the family, who Kestrel befriends and corresponds with in future books).

I didn’t think that the second volume, A Broken Vessel, was as good. There’s a new viewpoint character who we spend a lot of time with, and I just didn’t find her as appealing as I was apparently supposed to. Relatedly, the story didn’t feel as tight as the first. However, it was an interesting shift from a countryhouse mystery to an investigation into the high- and low-life of London.

I liked the third volume, Whom the Gods Love, very much. It is perhaps a touch over the top, but I found very effective its slow, inexorable descent into revelations of duplicity and doubles. (I could say it reminded me a bit of two other books, but I think to name any of them would be to spoil all.)

The last is The Devil in Music, and the only one not set in England. It’s an Italy novel, political and passionate; I think it feels a bit long, and I’m not entirely sure it doesn’t cheat here and there. We also see a lot of a doctor sidekick that Kestrel picked up in the first novel, who I just don’t find that interesting either as a character or a sidekick.

Kestrel is an interesting detective, and I’m very sorry that Ross wasn’t able to take his career up to the founding of an English professional police force as she planned (and that I didn’t get to see what she had in store for Phillipa).

(Edited the next day to add: I meant to say something about the Regency setting. My principal associations with the time period are Heyer and Sorcery and Cecelia, so I tend to expect wit and archness with my Regency-era novels. I would say that this isn’t my principal impression of the Kestrel novels; there’s some witty dialogue, because that’s what a man of fashion does, but I remember the narration and the general tone as more serious. Also, they do spend time in settings other than the social life of the Ton or countryhouse parties.)

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Robb, J.D.: (19) Visions in Death

Visions in Death, by J.D. Robb, was this fall’s installment in the ginormous Eve/Roarke series. No Roarke being awful, no relationship angst, just a (nearly) straightforward serial-killer tale—refreshing. I do think Robb ought to kill off one of the repertory company, though, just to bump the suspense level back up; I’ve stopped believing that she’ll kill or permanently disable anyone we’ve seen for more than one book, and the ending’s suspense suffered for it. It did have a little twist at the very end, though, which I thought worked pretty well.

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Crusie, Jennifer: Faking It

Jennifer Crusie’s Faking It has the perfect title, about 1/4 to 1/3 too many characters, and a poorly-integrated murder (my brief notes to myself on it read, “[murderer’s name]???!”, as in, you must be kidding). This is the art forgery & fraud one (among many other meanings of faking), with Davy Dempsey from Welcome to Temptation (which I also wasn’t crazy about). I’m beginning to think there are two kinds of Crusies, ones with nasty stuff that jars, and ones without (either it doesn’t jar, or it isn’t there). While I read this fast over a few lunches, I’m still pretty sure that there really was not any particular need for a murder in this book.

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Butcher, Jim: (01) Storm Front

Jim Butcher’s Storm Front is the first of the Dresden Files, following the career of a hardboiled first-person P.I. who is also Chicago’s only professional wizard. This was fun, fast-paced, and snarky, with some nice touches in the magic system—just what you want out of that setup. I read this while we were in San Francisco this summer; I started the second out there as well, but it got lost in the shuffle of coming back. I’m looking forward to the rest.

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Stark, Richard: The Outfit

I also read one of Westlake’s books under the name Richard Stark, The Outfit (Westlake may be unique in doing the silly stuff under his own name and the dark stuff under a pseudonym). This is the third Parker book, which I read because Chad described how the middle section is a lovingly-detailed series of descriptions of organized crime rackets and the ways in which Parker’s acquaintances knock them over. That was good stuff, but the rest is too brutal for my taste. I know it’s silly and escapist, but I prefer not to read caper novels with actual, you know, hardened criminals (as Kelp says sometime or other, I prefer “crooks,” it’s jauntier).

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Westlake, Donald E.: Put A Lid On It

In the interests of clearing up some of my backlog, here are some quick hits on books that I don’t have much to say about (there are a few things that I’m just skipping completely as not worth the electrons):

[note: split into five parts for MT import; use “next” if you’re here via an old link]

Donald E. Westlake, Put A Lid On It. This is a caper novel that’s not quite as comic as the Dortmunder books, but is still pretty light-hearted. It’s a well-constructed, low-key take on a Watergate-style scenario: some political hacks want to steal something incriminating about the President, but have learned from past mistakes and tap a professional robber (using his pending criminal trial as carrot). Not his best work, but there are considerably worse ways to spend an afternoon. And for Dortmunder fans, there’s an amusing commentary on planning:

Meehan had noticed over the years that crooks in stories and movies always make all kinds of plans, contingencies, maps, timetables, charts, maybe even scale models of things. He’d also noticed over the years that he himself and the guys he knew never did any of that, wouldn’t have the first idea how to go about it. You work up a general idea of what you want and how you think you might want to go about it, and then when you get there you improvise, based on the situation, which is never exactly, precisely what you thought the situation was going to be.

That’s the way it had always worked with him and the guys he’d met along the way, though he could see sometimes that those careful plans had a lot to be said for them. Like as though you were building a house, you’d certainly want that plan, but in fact they never were building a house. Robbing a house is a different kind of thing.

Also, people who make plans in their lives and people who make robberies are two pretty distinctive character types. People who make plans are likely to make plans that eliminate the necessity of having to make a robbery in the first place. So Meehan and company, not being planners, would just get a general idea, knock back a little bourbon right before the job to calm the nerves, and invent to suit once the job got under way.

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Bujold, Lois McMaster: (201) The Curse of Chalion (audio)

[originally part of an audiobook roundup post, which is where the comments all are, and split up for MT import; use the previous links]

The current audiobook is The Curse of Chalion, because I was going through these 6-8 hour audiobooks too quickly. The narrator isn’t so good at the female voices, but his portrayal of Cazaril is growing on me, and I like the book quite a bit. After that, I may try some Austen, or maybe The Orchid Thief. Anyone have favorite unabridged audiobooks to recommend?

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Hiaasen, Carl: Hoot (audio)

[originally part of an audiobook roundup post, which is where the comments all are, and split into five parts for MT import; use the previous and next links]

The other new thing, also from the library, was Carl Hiaasen’s Hoot, read by Chad Lowe. Hoot is my first Hiaasen, and probably my last unless he writes another YA, as Chad tells me that his adult novels tend to have bloody and unpleasant endings for the bad guys. This was both well-read and well-written; it was the one that tempted me to drive around the block to keep listening. Chad’s summed up the premise of this in his own book log entry (of the print version), so I’ll just say that I liked the oddities of the characters and the way that they mostly stayed odd, and also that Roy (our point-of-view character) actually had a good relationship with his parents. It’s nice to see that the absent adult is no longer a necessary characteristic of the YA genre.

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King, Stephen: “L.T.’s Theory of Pets” (audio)

[originally part of an audiobook roundup post, which is where the comments all are, and split into five parts for MT import; use the previous and next links]

One of two new things I listened was to Stephen King’s “L.T.’s Theory of Pets”, a one-hour live reading of a short story, from the library.

The King was well-read as always, but I’d somehow acquired completely the wrong impression of it from the CD jacket, which made it a distracting hour. It’s certainly got its strong points—who hasn’t known that their pet likes someone else better?—but on the whole, I think I would have liked it better with an actual resolution.

It is quite bawdy, by the way, if that bothers you.

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Pierce, Tamora: (201-204) Circle of Magic series (audio)

[originally part of an audiobook roundup post, which is where the comments all are, and split into five parts for MT import; use the previous and next links]

Another set of four short books I listened to is Full Cast Audio’s performances of the Circle of Magic books, by Tamora Pierce. As the name suggestions, these are narrated by the author, but with a different actor for each major character. In addition, these are YA novels, with the Circle of the title made up of four young mages, and those parts are played by young people (though not as young as the characters).

Obviously, this is a cool way to do audiobooks if you can manage it. (Pierce has a longish essay on the recording experience that I found interesting.) It’s more natural-sounding, and if you’ve cast properly, it will reduce the “which character is that?” confusion that even good readers sometimes fall afoul of. For the Circle books, some of the casting was very good indeed; particularly spot-on were Niko and Rosethorn of the adults, and Tris and Sandry of the kids (for the first three books; different actresses were used for the fourth). Of the other kids, there was nothing wrong with the actress playing Daja; it’s just that the “lilting” accent her character has seems to translate as “snippy and sarcastic” to my ear. The other main child character, Briar, was also played by someone different in the fourth book, who was somewhat stiff.

I actually know these books quite well—they’re comfort reads—but as the first set I listened to, they were still an interesting example of how listening is different. There turned out, for instance, to be a key scene in one book that I’d been mis-visualizing, somehow managing to skim over a couple of key words every time. And they were a good example of the perils of audiobooks: I’m going to hear Daja with that annoying lilt in my head from now on, where before I had no clear idea what it sounded like, and that was just fine. (I don’t usually visualize appearances either, or try to figure out what music sounds like.)

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