I got bad guys fueling an incredibly out-there conspiracy thriller in Iris Johansen’s Face of Deception, an random paperback exchange selection by another ex-romance-genre author. This is the first in an apparent series about a forensic sculptor; in this one, she’s bullied into reconstructing a skull’s face by a rich alpha male, with unexpected results. The forensic stuff is interesting, and the plot certainly moves briskly, carrying me past the “oh come on” moments, of which there are many. This is actually fairly far from the genre romance conventions, as there’s an implicit love triangle that isn’t resolved in this volume. I was at the library just after I finished this and actually checked out the next; I got it home, picked it up, and only then came to my senses: I don’t actually like either of the two guys in the triangle. I skipped to the end, just to see if it turned out the way I guessed (it did), and then put it aside to be returned.
Roberts, Nora: Birthright
Another lunchtime read: Nora Roberts’ Birthright. I’d basically stopped reading Roberts’ mainstream hardcovers, as she’s best at people forming relationships and living their lives, and I found the ObVillains distractions from that. (Her mainstream paperbacks have lately tended towards dopey New Age plots, alas, so I haven’t read the latest sets of those either.) Somewhere I saw a favorable review of Birthright, however, and when it turned up in the paperback exchange, I decided to give it a try.
It started out fairly well: there were only two couples instead of the three Roberts tends toward, which kept the focus tighter; and the fallout from one character’s secret adoption is nicely nuanced, even to my hyper-sensitive reading. But the villain is really just tedious. Can’t I please get some rational bad guys for a change?
Brockmann, Suzanne: Heart Throb
Here we go with the catching-up. First, a batch of trash read at work [continued to two next posts for import into MT]:
Heart Throb by Suzanne Brockmann is a genre romance that was re-issued with a special $3.99 cover price. I saw it at the grocery store one day, recalled that I’d heard the author’s name before, and said “Why not?” So, publishers, this stuff works—except you want to make sure it’s a good book you’re trying to get people to pick up. This is not, and I will be strongly reluctant to try other Brockmann novels as a result.
Heart Throb does have its strong points. It is a romance of the “force characters into close proximity by any means possible” type, and the proximity-forcing device sounds completely idiotic when summarized (movie producer desperately needs star for movie, must stay with star every waking moment to make sure star doesn’t relapse into addiction); however, the book does put a fair bit of effort into making the premise a teeny bit plausible, kinda-sorta. It has an actual interracial romance—as a secondary plot, granted, but still.
Unfortunately, the central relationship—well. Bujold readers, remember when Ekaterin asks Miles if he’s trying to one-up her dead? All the central protagonists do is one-up each other’s angst; it’s what passes for relationship development, the constant revelations of even deeper levels of angst. I might have loved it when I was younger, but it’s astonishingly tiresome now. Not recommended.
Sayers, Dorothy L.: (04) The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
I’m almost pleased that I didn’t like Dorothy Sayers’ The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club much better on this re-read; I was starting to be afraid that I’d gone all uncritically fangirlish or something. It’s a clever mystery, and does some very nice riffs on veterans and wars, and continues to move Peter’s character forward as a character, and is generally pretty good. But I simply cannot believe that part of the ending is happy, and the narrative fairly clearly wants me to. [*] For some reason, I’m not willing to forgive this the way I’ve forgiven the plot holes and unpleasant social bits of prior books.
[*] It’s only one sentence, so I’ll rot-13 the spoiler: v fgebatyl qvfyvxr eboreg sragvzna naq pnaabg pbaprvir bs naa qbeynaq orvat unccl jvgu uvz.
Random other comments:
- I read by recognizing word shapes and beginnings/endings, not phonetics, especially with names. As a result, I always think of this book as taking place at the Belladonna Club.
- One of the wills in this book is a really excellent example of a reasonable-seeming will with hidden defects. Consider every contingency when drafting your will, no matter how remote: every permutation of gains and losses of property, of births and deaths, marriages and divorces.
- Before this re-read, I hadn’t disliked any recurring character but the Duchess of Denver. I didn’t want to agree with some disparaging remarks about Parker that I’ve seen here and there, but his limitations are more apparent to me now, alas.
- I think I read this wildly out of order the first time, because somehow I hadn’t noticed that Ann Dorland is kind of a trial run for Harriet Vane. And Peter’s patronizing to her, too.
- I think Peter must have had a shell-shock attack after the end of the case, because of the line “He sent you all sorts of messages, by the way,” in the epilogue; at least, it seems the best explanation of why Peter would have been unavailable.
Obviously, I was mistaken when I thought that a short story collection came before this one; short stories next, and then Strong Poison—Harriet at last, and more Miss Climpson!
Heyer, Georgette: Foundling, The
Last Sunday was the changeover to Daylight Saving Time, and after running some errands in the morning, I wanted nothing so much as to sleep. But as that would have been a terrible idea, I picked up Georgette Heyer’s The Foundling as something undemanding, and it worked very well indeed to keep me awake and amused for the afternoon.
I’m going to be extremely lazy and refer you to Trent’s post for a description, because I’m behind on booklogging and I couldn’t improve on his description. I didn’t like it quite as well as Trent; part of the romance element rubbed me the wrong way (this has romance in it, but isn’t a romance novel, unlike the other Heyer I’ve read), and I had the feeling, looking back on it, that the frothy lightness was precariously balanced and could have popped at any moment. However, it served its purpose very well, so I shouldn’t be too critical of it.
Sayers, Dorothy L.: (03) Unnatural Death
Another Sayers novel, namely Unnatural Death, and another pleasant re-discovery. I mean, it has a happy, lifelong lesbian relationship with admirable and admired partners (broken only by one partner’s death in 1922, before the book opens), legal neepery—neither of which I remembered—and Miss Climpson! What more could I ask for?
(Okay, I could ask for correct legal neepery. Apparently Sayers made a considerable error, though just enough is accurate to suffice for plot purposes. But never mind that.)
Agatha Dawson is the surviving partner of the relationship I mentioned above; when she dies, her doctor is baffled, as there doesn’t appear to be any immediate reason for the death (despite her suffering from cancer). Peter gets on the case by accident, partly because he has a meddling nature [*] and partly because he thinks he may have found a successful murder—no obvious means, no obvious motive, quietly going along under the radar, and who’s to say how many of the type there might be? (I couldn’t, myself, but I bet there are lots with this method.)
[*] Which, to be fair, troubles his conscience here and throughout the series. As a priest says to himself after encountering Peter, “‘Dear, dear, how nice they are. So kindly and scrupulous and so vague outside their public-school code. And much more nervous and sensitive than people think. A very difficult class to reach. I must make a special intention for him at Mass tomorrow.’ Being a practical man, Mr. Tredgold made a knot in his handkerchief to remind himself of this pious resolve.”
Probably non-lawyers roll their eyes and skim through the legal neepery in this book, but it amused me—”hey, I know what this is about!” And I certainly don’t want to meet Miss Climpson in person, but I really enjoy reading about her (even if Sayers ends up forgetting the existence of one (1) of her messages, this book). It’s a pretty good mystery, I think, but really, the main thing that pleases me so much is the positive portrayal of Agatha Dawson and Clara Whittaker’s relationship. (Note, however, that it does contrast oddly with the casual generalized racism of some of the characters, which itself contrasts oddly with the entirely sympathetic portrayal of the only Black character. If you don’t mind book-destroying spoilers, Jo Walton has interesting comments on British racism in the comments to this LiveJournal post.)
I think I’m going to re-read the short stories too, so a collection of those will be next up.
Robb, J.D.: (18) Divided in Death
One of the benefits of an ongoing series is that an author can build up an extended cast: for instant conflict, just put one of the cast in danger. Over the many “in Death” books, the friends and colleagues of Eve Dallas have been attacked by serial killers, charged with murder, and beaten up by her husband, Roarke. In the latest, Divided in Death, J.D. Robb turns to one of Roarke’s most trusted employees, his admin Caro (who finally gets a last name): her daughter is framed for a double murder.
This is the first solo Robb book in hardcover [*], and perforce I checked it out of the library. (They’re guilty pleasures, not worthy of purchase in hardcover; besides, I was counting on these to help fill up the paperback shelves.) I speculate that the jump to hardcover affected the plot. On the personal level, it’s almost a reset in Eve and Roarke’s relationship, as they have their most serious conflict since they got married. I have become steadily more annoyed with Roarke as the series has progressed, and this book didn’t help that any. And on the mystery level, it has one of the more complicated plots that I can recall in these; which is not to say that it’s terribly interesting or plausible, because it isn’t. I really, really wish someone would dissuade Robb from doing computer-based plots, because they are just laughably bad.
Guilty, yes; pleasure, not so much. Too much angst—and just how long can Robb keep milking Eve’s tragic past, anyway? Sheesh.—and too many things running up against my willing suspension of disbelief. The next book looks to be a more traditional serial killer story, judging by the excerpt in the back of this book, and maybe that will be a return to form.
[*] Remember When was co-written with Robb’s other persona, Nora Roberts (her real name).
(But hey, these last few have been logged right after I finished the book in question. Except for half-a-dozen collections I’m partway through, and Sethra Lavode, which I will log when it’s released, I’m all caught up and can start making a dent in all the new releases I’ve been eagerly awaiting.)
Walton, Jo: Tooth and Claw
Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw is about, well, why don’t you go look at the cover?
Yeah. It’s about dragons that are people, specifically people in a Trollope novel, or what a Trollope novel might be if its characters were literal dragons. And, not-so-incidentally, ate each other. It is, in other words, a book in which the omniscient narrator can say
It has been baldly stated in this narrative that Penn and Sher were friends at school and later at the Circle, and being gentle readers and not cruel and hungry readers who would visit a publisher’s office with the intention of rending and eating an author who had displeased them, you have taken this matter on trust.
and this reader, at least, laughs at the “gentle reader” reference while remarking on the tricky balance between the tone and the content.
The book open with a dispute over how much of a father’s body should be eaten by each family member. From there spin out a lawsuit, social and religious dilemmas, hats, and numerous confessions and proposals (until one of the last chapters is titled “The Narrator Is Forced to Confess to Having Lost Count of Both Proposals and Confessions”). I agree with Chad that the end might wrap up a little too neatly, mostly because I don’t quite understand why one character didn’t tell another an important piece of news, but I love the end all the same: the resolutions are both what’s expected for the genre, modulo the teeth and claws (or at least what I imagine that to be; I’ve never read Trollope [*]), and an inversion, or subversion, or progression, thereof. That doubtless makes no sense at all to people who haven’t read the book, for which I apologize.
[*] Sherwood Smith has, and wrote an interesting review for the SF Site.
This is pretty well entirely unlike Walton’s previous novels (The King’s Peace and The King’s Name, and The Prize in the Game), except in its meticulously observed narrative voice and excellently rounded characters and world. (I even liked Felin, and I was fully prepared to dislike her when we first met.) This was good light fun with deeper substance behind it, and a gorgeous cover to boot. Being a gentle reader, I could hardly ask for anything more.
Sayers, Dorothy L.: (02) Clouds of Witness
Dorothy Sayers’s second Wimsey novel, Clouds of Witness, was another lunchtime read. I liked this a lot better this reading, probably because this time I noticed the theme:
Truly enough the ’47 port was a dead thing; the merest ghost of its old flame and flavor hung about it. Lord Peter held his glass poised for a moment.
“It is like the taste of a passion that has passed its noon and turned to weariness,” he said, with sudden gravity. “The only thing to do is to recognize bravely that it is dead, and put it away.” With a determined movement, he flung the remainder of the wine into the fire.
This is very much a book about the need to clear away old, bad passions and romances, and the unfortunate consequences of failing to do so. (I think, by the way, that this might be one way to read the odd ways a couple of the plot threads wrap up: rewards to the characters.) In a way, the opening is a clue, as Peter vacations in Corsica and “stud[ies] the vendetta in its natural habit,” and then fetches up in Paris, which I tend to think of as representing elegantly decadent passion and romance. Of course, the first page made me snarf for a different reason, but that’s not relevant right now.
This is a better mystery than Whose Body?, with its complications and obfuscations very much proceeding from its theme. I know some people, including Pam [spoilers at the end] and Truepenny [spoilers throughout], have complained about the opening and closing set-pieces, but I confess to a certain fondness for them; no surprise there, I suppose, as I am a trial lawyer, and you just don’t get lines like “My lords, the barometer is falling” these days (or in this country). It’s not a perfect plot by any means; besides the odd wrappings-up, Sayers appears to have completely forgotten the existence of one (1) broken bone and one (1) child, neither of which is really justifiable. But I’m inclined to give this a bit of pass, just because I appreciate the way this book moves the characters and sets the stage for later books.
(I’m reconsidering leaving my The Lord Peter Wimsey Companion at home, by the way. It’s a gorgeous volume, very well done, but it’s just not the same looking up references after the fact. On the other hand, I hate to bring it into work; it weighs a ton, it’s too nice to leave in the bottom drawer of my battered filing cabinet, and dragging it out during quick lunches at my desk seems inexpressably geeky. Decisions, decisions . . . )
Snicket, Lemony: (07) The Vile Village
The seventh Lemony Snicket book, The Vile Village, continues to ramp up my interest in the ongoing plot. Someone named Snicket appears, more things with the initials V.F.D. pop up, Klaus has his thirteenth birthday, and Sunny learns to walk. And, of course, all of the adults are either actively harmful, or very kind and completely feckless. They really are the quintessential YA books in terms of the absent parent/adults-as-enemy theme.
I feel like I should slow down in reading these, because I don’t want to have to wait for the release of new ones; there are still three more to come. But they’re such quick and easy reads that it’s hard to resist. We have the eighth out from the library as well, and it will probably be appearing here fairly soon.
I shall leave you with these words of wisdom:
Entertaining a notion, like entertaining a baby cousin or entertaining a pack of hyenas, is a dangerous thing to refuse to do. If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you. But if you refuse to entertain a notion—which is just a fancy way of saying that you refuse to think about a certain idea—you have to be much braver than someone who is merely facing some bloodthirsty animals, or some parents who are upset to find their little darling at the bottom of a well, because nobody knows what an idea will do when it goes off to entertain itself, particularly if the idea comes from a sinister villain.