Enough of this imitation Archie Goodwin; I want the real thing. So I got a couple of books out of Yale’s library, including the collection Homicide Trinity (one of the more generically named ones). I grabbed this because it has “Counterfeit for Murder,” which has Hattie Annis, who is one of my favorite characters ever in a Nero Wolfe book. (How can you not like someone who calls Wolfe Falstaff?) I’d forgotten, though, that the other two stories are quite good too. The first is the hideously named “Eeny Meeny Murder Mo,” a satisfying little story about yet another person killed in Wolfe’s office. (This was adapted by A&E recently, though annoyingly I can’t remember if the denouement was presented the same way.) The other is “Death of a Demon,” which starts with a woman telling Wolfe, “That’s the gun I’m not going to shoot my husband with”—except that he’s already been shot, by someone else. This was a pleasant surprise with which to pass dinner.
Crusie, Jennifer: Cinderella Deal, The
I got a copy of Jennifer Crusie’s The Cinderella Deal recently; Crusie is a great author I discovered in the last year or so, and I’ve been trying to pick up her out-of-print category romances used. This isn’t the best one of hers I’ve read, but I liked it very much.
There’s a bit of similarity to her Strange Bedpersons, which is unsurprising as that started out as a re-write of The Cinderella Deal, but developed into a different book; The Cinderella Deal was eventually published a couple years later. The main resemblance is the protagonists, but I like the ones here better. Linc is a college professor who really wants a particular faculty position, and in a moment of insanity tells his interviewer that he’s engaged. Of course, now he needs to produce a fiancée when he goes back to give a talk on his research. He asks Daisy, his downstairs neighbor, because the card over her mailbox reads “Stories Told, Ideas Illuminated; Unreal but Not Untrue.” (Also, she’s friends with one of his ex-girlfriends, who vouches for her. He hasn’t lost his mind that badly.) Daisy’s broke and stuck in a rut with her painting, and agrees to help to get her back rent paid.
Pretending to be a couple is of course one of the standard ways romances throw together their protagonists, and there’s nothing wrong with that when it’s well done, as it is here. Crusie often paces her stories differently than other category romances (the general rule is, when in doubt, flip to the very middle of the book, because that’s probably where the characters go to bed for the first time), letting the story develop around the characters and their relationship with each other. Linc gets the job, Daisy goes home, and that would have been the end of it, even though they miss each other:
. . . Daisy would have loved the house. As he worked patching and painting the walls, he could see her trailing her long skirts across the gleaming living room floor . . . , sitting on the solid oak stairs and explaining the world to him through the ornate railing. Once he found himself holding an imaginary argument with her as he painted, convincing her that it was practical to paint all the walls white. The really irritating thing about that hadn’t so much been that he caught himself doing it as it was that she’d been winning. . . . And it was his fault; he’d started it with that first dumb story he’d told about his fiancée. Everything Daisy had said about stories came back to him: the stories you told were unreal but not untrue; she wasn’t really there, but she was everywhere.
He sighed and kept on painting, and when he moved his chrome and leather furniture into the big old rooms, he knew what Daisy would say, and he had a feeling she was right, so it was a damn good thing she wasn’t there to say it.
But of course circumstances bring them back together, and they learn about themselves and each other and how to accommodate their differences, and about the power and danger of the stories that people create about their lives. And there’s humor and good friendships and the trademark slightly deranged animals and a happy ending, and it’s all good.
Block, Lawrence: Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep, The
Another early Lawrence Block book, The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep. This is the first Evan Tanner novel, and as the title suggests, a head injury in the Korean War means that Tanner doesn’t sleep. He spends his time reading, learning, and writing people’s theses and dissertations for them to earn money. He is also a hopeless devotee of lost causes. From a conversation with a girlfriend and a thesis he’s writing, he puts together a plan to recover $3 million in hidden gold from Armenia.
It’s a daft premise, but an amusing one, though the books aren’t humorous the way the Bernie ones are. Alas, this was another example of books being wrong for people through no fault of their own: Tanner’s hopeless causes include things like the Flat Earth Society, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Libertarian League—but also include the Society for a Free Croatia, the Serbian Brotherhood, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, etc., etc., and he ends up calling on most of them to get across Europe. At one point he talks of intending to bestow some of the gold on the IRA (despite a Republican sympathizer telling him “You’ll want to think that over. What would those bloody fools do with so much gold? They’d be after blowing up all of Belfast, and all be getting into trouble”), and at another he unwittingly foments a short-lived revolution in Macedonia.
This is not exactly the kind of thing I was looking to read about. (I’d decided to save the re-reads of the other Liaden books for when the next one came out.)
There were several Tanner books written in the 1960s, and then another one a few years ago; I might pick up the most recent, but probably not for a while.
[Addendum: I picked this up to bring it back to the library and noticed the back cover copy. Boy, who writes these things? Unlike No Score, this at least gets the genre right, but it was apparently written by someone who’d never actually read the book. “Smuggling [a ravishing blonde] across the border of her native country”? I don’t think the girlfriend is even mentioned again after Tanner decides to go after the gold; she certainly doesn’t come with him.]
Lee, Sharon, and Steve Miller: (05-06) Pilots Choice (omnibus of Local Custom and Scout’s Progress)
Another Liaden omnibus, Pilots Choice by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. This is two novels about the parents of some of the protagonists in Partners in Necessity and Plan B.
First, let me say that I can’t look at the cover of this book. While I like the cover for Partners far & away the best of the reprints, it’s not so much the image as the grating lack of an apostrophe anywhere in the title (choice of a pilot, or of pilots, it’s possessive, damnit).
Second, readers of the previously-published volumes should be aware these are more like Conflict of Honors than the others, being standalones concerned, in varying degrees, with a romance and with someone coming into their own. Local Custom opens with Er Thom yos’Galan being told that he must enter into an arranged marriage to produce his heir, for the good of the clan. (A particularly absurd two-part first name; I can deal with Val Con, but Er Thom sounds like his parents were afflicted with indecision at the naming ceremony.) He goes to find the woman he met three years ago, Anne Davis, and has never forgotten—intending only to tell her that he loved her, before he has the memory of her removed. To find out that she had a son from their relationship.
Much cultural baggage is added to the plot at this point, as the lovers agonize over what’s going to happen to Shan, their son, and to them. Personally, I found some of the agonizing a bit overwrought at times, especially when I wanted to shake them and say, “Just talk to each other!”—though to be fair, a lot of the misunderstandings sprung from the sort of cultural baggage you hardly know is there.
I enjoyed Scout’s Progress more. Aelliana Caylon is a brilliant mathematician who teaches Scouts (explorers) about the practical implications of the math behind piloting and the faster-than-light drive. She’s also abused and thoroughly cowed by her brother, a nasty cruel piece of work who is unfortunately heir to the clan. Realizing at the start of the book she has to leave, she finds herself winning a Jumpship in a card game. She meets Daav yos’Phelium while working for her Pilot’s license, so she can escape the planet. The focus of the book is on Aelliana coming out of her shell and learning to excel at piloting and having friends; the romance is well done and far less wrenching.
I liked this one a lot, but unfortunately, my knowledge of subsequent events put a bit of a damper on things (Aelliana get assassinated while Val Con is still fairly young, and Daav disappears). Also, the lifemates things that I complained about in Plan B is here as well, in both stories, and it still bothers me: it seems to be a manifestation of One True Destined Love of a Lifetime, which I frankly regard as a dangerous myth. (Then again, I might be reacting more than I would normally to this because having my best-beloved 200 miles away makes me cranky . . . )
One last thing. Er Thom and Daav seem to me to sound awfully like their sons (or rather the other way ’round, I suppose); it was a bit disconcerting at times. I guess I’ll have to re-read the other two volumes to check. Oh, what a burden. *grin*
(I meant to add this to the note on Plan B and forgot. At the end of that book is a copy of Clan Korval’s Tree and Dragon seal (also visible at the authors’ website). It’s a perfectly nice seal, of course, and it’s not its fault that the Dragon looks like Aylee, an alien in the comic Sluggy Freelance. In her most recent phase, she eats potatoes (she used to eat humans) and then when she’s full, she changes shape—oh, and releases an EMP, too. She looks fairly like the Dragon in the strip with her first flight, and rather a lot like in the second-to-last panel of this strip, where she attacks a demon-possesed Gwynn. But Korval’s Dragon probably never went water-skiing . . . )
Block, Lawrence: (204) The Topless Tulip Caper
Lawrence Block’s The Topless Tulip Caper is an affectionate homage to Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin books. Chip Harrison (first seen in No Score, a non-mystery) has been hired by Leo Haig, reclusive genius detective, to be his Archie:
“Simon What’s-his-name—”
“Barckover.”
“Barckover, right.” I was supposed to remember things like Barckover’s last name, Haig had told me, just as I was supposed to be able to repeat all conversations verbatim. If Archie Goodwin can do something, I’m supposed to train myself to do it, too. (Sometimes, let me tell you, Archie Goodwin gives me a stiff pain.) “Barckover,” I said again, carefully training my memory. “And Andrew Merganser—”
“You mean Mallard.”
“Well, I knew it was some kind of duck. The hell with Archie Goodwin, anyway.”
Indeed, Haig’s hired Chip in part because Chip’s a writer: “If it weren’t for Dr. Watson, he says, who would have heard of Sherlock Holmes? If Archie Goodwin never sat down at a typewriter, who would be aware of Nero Wolfe? Anyway, that’s why he hired me, to make Leo Haig The Detective a household phrase, and that’s how come you get to read all this.”
The first half or so of the book is quite amusing, laying out the conceit of the book and introducing the characters. (It’s a murder of tropical fish, which turns into a murder of a person. Did I mention that fish : Haig :: orchids : Nero Wolfe?) The second half is less so, as the freshness wears off. I think the weird little interlude with Ruthellen marked the turning point for me; I was going to say that it left a bad taste in my mouth, but that would be a really unfortunate phrase, so I’ll just say that I found it unpleasant. (There was something like it in No Score, which I forgot to mention then. Chip, perhaps because he’s a 1970s kind of guy, has an attitude towards sex that I’m just not so comfortable with.)
More importantly, as the book goes on Haig gets more and more like Nero Wolfe, which just points up the inescapable fact: Chip Harrison is no Archie Goodwin.
Pierce, Tamora: (109-111) First Test; Page; Squire
Re-read Tamora Pierce’s First Test, Page, and Squire, the first three books in the awkwardly-but-accurately named Protector of the Small quartet. (Lady Knight will be out next year.) I read Squire when it came out this summer (suckered into buying it in hardcover by Ms. Pierce’s displaying the beautiful cover at Boskone; tricky, that), but my plan to re-read them in sequence was foiled when I cleverly managed to bury the first somewhere in summer storage.
These are set in a different world from her Circle books, and pitched at a slightly older level. Ten years after the proclamation that girls could be trained as knights, the first has finally stepped forth. (Alanna of Trebond, now King’s Champion, disguised herself as a boy to win her knight’s shield; see the The Song of the Lioness quartet, Pierce’s first books.) Keladry of Mindelan is ten when she enters training, big for her age, entirely unromantic (in the shining-armor sense, not the Cupid sense), quiet, stubborn, and possessed of a fierce hatred for bullies. (She also has no magic or close personal relationships with deities whatsoever. This is refreshing.) She is forced into a probationary year by the training master, a stiff conservative; this is the topic of the first book. Page deals with the rest of her time as a page, while Squire covers the last four years of her training before she is knighted.
I like Kel a lot, and the company she keeps is enjoyable as well. (A couple of her more casual friends have sufficiently small parts that I can never remember who they are, but this is probably inherent in the school setting and the limited word count available to young adult novels.) The stories are a good mix of adventures and interesting training bits; I haven’t the faintest desire to joust, or weave, or do fancy woodwork, or any of the other things that I read about in novels, but I always find it rather soothing. (Occasionally this leads to a slightly episodic feel, because there isn’t a specific overall plot arc like Alanna’s enmity for Roger of Conté.) I’m not sure that these break a lot of new ground, but I like the sensible and realistic tone they bring to the sub-genre, and enjoy them a lot.
Block, Lawrence: (101) Burglars Can’t Be Choosers
Over the weekend, I read Lawrence Block’s Burglars Can’t Be Choosers, the first of the Bernie Rhodenbarr series (not currently in print; I got it from the library). The general pattern, for people unfamiliar with the series: Bernie tries to steal something, gets involved in a murder as a result (often as the suspect), and must figure out who the real killer is, cracking wise along the way and often getting entangled in dubious romantic relationships. In later books, he buys a used bookstore and acquires a henchperson and best friend in Carolyn, whom I like even better than Bernie. (People who’ve read Westlake’s Dortmunder books might like this idea for a cross-over between the series, courtesy of James Nicoll on rec.arts.sf.written.) This isn’t the best of the series, but it’s certainly good enough that I would have kept reading them, if the library had had it on the day I decided to try Block.
Lee, Sharon, and Steve Miller: (04) Plan B
I finished the most recent (in internal order) Liaden book, Plan B by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, before the weekend. Overall, this has both the virtues and the vices I noted in its predecessor, Partners in Necessity. I enjoyed it quite a bit—Anne McCaffrey writes (rather gushingly) in the intro to Partners that they’re her comfort books, which I can definitely see—but I have to say I don’t feel like the plot’s been advanced that much, since the whole book was basically spent dealing with an invasion that happened to be of the planet that Our Heroes happened to be on, which is largely unrelated to the enemy set up by the last books. Also, we have an even more prominent appearance of the weird sfnal theme of lovers merging into one person, living in each other’s heads, taking each other’s injuries, etc. (Yeah, it’s a good line when, in Shards of Honor, Cordelia says of Aral, “When he’s cut, I bleed”—but she was being metaphorical.) It’s a wish-fulfillment theme that I can’t say does much for me (I like being separate people). Will I still buy I Dare the instant it comes out next year? You bet.
[personal] September 13, 2001
I think this will probably be the last post on this topic, at least for a while; I hope to go back to books when I have a minute to put down coherent thoughts about the book I just finished.
On the second day after, some things are just starting to hit. There was a Borders on the ground floor of the World Trade Center, which I went to often over the past two summers (I worked about a half-mile away each summer, though in different places). Last time I was there, a nice staffer found me a copy of The Curse of Chalion, the new Bujold I’d been eagerly anticipating, from a bin or something upstairs; they weren’t out on the floor yet. There was a Godiva store in the underground mall, where a woman slipped some extra chocolates into my bag when she heard I was buying them for a treat after a bad day; I found them when I got home and was touched and surprised. It’s just now become real that those places aren’t there anymore. (Borders says all their people got out safe; I have no reason to think that the rest of the mall wouldn’t have.)
And things still have the power to make me cry. There was an article in this morning’s (okay, now yesterday’s, by just a hair) Washington Post about a man who’s helping search the Pentagon, looking for his wife; reading it, I could very nearly feel my heart being ripped from my chest:
By 11 a.m. — 25 hours after he arrived — Foster found refuge in a Metro bus, parked next to the makeshift morgue he manned the night before. He was determined to stay.
“I’m going to be here to see my wife come out of there alive,” he said, staring out the bus window, his head in his hands, a look of utter exhaustion in his face. “I know she’s alive, I just know it.”
Yesterday evening, he resumed his post near an area now used as a temporary morgue. He prepared to stay another night.
Even pasting that text in now, a full twenty-four hours after I first read it, makes me choke up.
Though I haven’t had so much success in getting back to school work (<sheepish look> I know, I know), I realized something recently. Not only is getting on with my life, in itself, a defiance of terrorists, but even more so is getting my degree and becoming a kick-ass public interest lawyer—being a prosecutor who prevents or punishes civil liberties violations like those I fear, or an attorney for the poor who might, in the process, stave off some despair and alienation, or, well, you get the idea. Law school hasn’t beaten the ideal of public service out of me yet, and if anything, this only strengthens it.
Take that.
So now I really have to get back to my reading . . .
(Oh, and while I’m finding can still laugh at things (like that squirrel carrying in its mouth a snack-sized Nestle’s Crunch bar—fully wrapped), well, no lawyer jokes today, okay?)
[personal] September 12, 2001
I’m feeling better—more stable—today, though still the physical effects linger.
The weird ironic thoughts keep popping into my head. Yesterday morning, I watched the news until about 11 a.m., and one of the things I wanted to hear was someone telling us that it was okay, it wasn’t going to happen anymore (at least today), that it was over. While I was sitting desperately hoping for this, one of the thoughts that popped into my head was “Boy, atheism really isn’t much of a comfort, is it? Can’t pray, after all . . .” And this morning, when I heard more news about the knives allegedly used in the hijackings, out of nowhere I thought, “Geez, Chad wouldn’t have had to lose that copy of The Dragon Never Sleeps if we’d known we could carry knives on” (that being the groom’s gift to his attendants at the wedding we were at, and why he checked the bag). This is, well, strange.
But I’m definitely starting to get angry. I can’t say it’s a cold anger, because it doesn’t feel cold. (Isn’t it amazing how physical strong emotion is?) It’s starting to feel like a determined anger. I keep thinking of messages from people I know, such as this one about setting up dessert as a counter-symbol, who are resolved that this terror (say it, Kate. You just spent two hours in a class discussion, thinking to yourself how hard it was for people to say the words), that these attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, will not force us into unreasoning terror and hopelessness.
In particular, I think of an e-mail a friend sent, asking that it be passed along to a Usenet group so everyone would know he was okay. The last bit just ran through my mind all this morning. It might not be the most eloquent statement I’ve seen, but it resonates with me.
Now, as I look at the gaping hole in the skyline, I *know* that they will be rebuilt like giant middle fingers jutting into the sky.
Also, as I was watching the devastation, the mail came.
The mail came. Take that.
Off to go give blood.
Take that, indeed. I am now ashamed of myself for having contemplated, even (only) for a minute, getting a ride to Boston on Friday instead of taking Amtrak. While I wouldn’t disparage other people’s fears—remembering how afraid I was yesterday, and still am to some degree—what I can and will do, in order to feel myself again, is refuse to let the bastards, whoever they are, dictate my life. Why should I give them even such a minor victory?
Today, I am going to donate money to the Red Cross, if I can get through to their site, and I’m going to donate blood. And then, I’m going to just be myself as hard as I can: sit outside and appreciate the beautiful weather. Continue talking with friends and sharing our feelings. Read the books that I couldn’t bear to look at last night, because they would remind me too much of the day. (I ended up reading tax law before bed, because all my other classes are in criminal law, which would remind me of my fears for civil liberties, and just about all of my fiction had someone dying or at war or otherwise in great peril.) Even do some work for classes.
Yesterday was a terrible day, and I don’t regret having accomplished basically nothing as I glued myself to Usenet and the web. But today is going to be different.
Addendum: The Red Cross web site says that it’s experiencing heavy volume on its online donation form. If you can’t get through, try Amazon or PayPay for other credit card donation links. You can also send a check to your local chapter or to
American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund
P.O. Box 37243
Washington, D.C. 20013