The Grouchy Editor

by Marisha Pessl

Is it possible that someone at the Random House editorial department has a vendetta against Pessl?  That’s the only explanation I can think of for the bizarre proliferation of italics in her book.  You eventually get used to it, but the infestation of italicized words in every other paragraph is, initially, a major distraction.

In other respects, Pessl’s thriller is a mixed bag.  Her plot is imaginative:  An investigative reporter hunts a mysterious cult-filmmaker named Cordova, whose young daughter kills herself by leaping down an elevator shaft.  But there are stretches of Night Film that are so poorly written – so illogical or overwrought – that at times it resembles an earnest high-school student’s essay for English class.  A typical simile from page 205:  “The woman’s small black eyes swarmed it like flies over a turd.”  I’m not sure why they failed to italicize “turd.”

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by Charles Todd

A test of patience for whodunit fans, as a Scotland Yard inspector conducts a monotonous series of interrogations with small-town murder suspects.  “Charles Todd” (the nom de plume for a mother and son writing team) has also invested the inspector’s conscience with an annoying presence – the voice of “Hamish,” a Scottish soldier whom our hero sentenced to death during World War I.  I will say this for the authors:  Their “big reveal” at novel’s end is not a bore; rushed, overwrought, and utterly ridiculous, certainly, but not a bore.

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                                                  by Randy Wayne White                                                              

Stop me if any of this sounds familiar:  A rugged loner with a mysterious past lives on the Florida coast, interrupting his sojourn with nature (and beer) just long enough to seduce every woman in sight and to do battle with megalomaniacal bad guys, in this case a militaristic pedophile from Central America.  White’s plot and characters don’t carry a gram of originality, but I suppose that when you buy one of his books, just as when you buy anything by Lee Child, you know what you want and you want what you know.

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by Scotty Bowers

I suppose that when you buy a book written by a Hollywood male prostitute, you really shouldn’t be surprised when it turns out to be about a male prostitute in Hollywood.  Bowers drops famous names and spares no ugly detail in this chronicle of his sexual exploits with everyone from Cary Grant to, possibly, your mother, during a “career” that spanned from World War II to the 1980s.  It’s titillating stuff, certainly, but it’s also a great way to ruin your enjoyment of Turner Classic Movies.  When I put down Full Service, I empathized with movie legend James Dean, whom Bowers quotes from a long-ago Hollywood party:  “Ugh!  Don’t like it,” he sneered.  “Bring me something else.”

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by Franz Kafka

According to biographer Max Brod, Franz Kafka would sometimes share his short stories with pals before publication.  At these informal gatherings, Brod wrote, “humor became particularly clear.  [Kafka] himself laughed so much that there were moments when he couldn’t read any further.”  This anecdote amazes me, because if there is one adjective I would never employ to describe the short stories of Franz Kafka, it would be “humorous.”  I would opt instead for “bleak,” “absurd,” or “depressing.” 

I might make an exception for “The Metamorphosis,” because unlike the other tales in this collection, with their recurrent themes of misery and oppression, “Metamorphosis” is quite funny; there’s no denying the comic aspects of a story in which a man wakes up in bed to discover that he’s transformed overnight into an enormous bug.

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

                                                      by Edmund Crispin                                                       

Toyshop is like an Alfred Hitchcock movie on the printed page, which is ironic since Hitchcock lifted a climactic carousel scene directly from this book for his classic Strangers on a Train (the book predates the movie by five years).  But like one of Hitchcock’s famous chase films, Crispin’s novel is one wild and ridiculous roller coaster as our two heroes, one an Oxford don and the other a poet, race to solve the murder of an asphyxiated heiress.  The plot doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny, but it doesn’t really matter because the action is fast-paced, humorous, and sprinkled with comic British banter.

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

 by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie, queen of mystery, on race relations circa 1935:

“It was one of those enchanted evenings when every word and confidence exchanged seemed to reveal a bond of sympathy and shared tastes. … They disliked loud voices, noisy restaurants and negroes.”

Sigh.  My other complaint with Death in the Clouds is that, once again, Christie’s plot hinges on the failure of people to recognize, at close quarters, someone they really ought to recognize.  Otherwise, Clouds is solid Agatha:  intricately plotted, clever red herrings and, of course, the peerless Hercule Poirot.

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by Charles Graeber

Apparently, there are more things to worry about than your health when you enter a hospital – including serial-killing nurses and butt-covering administrators.  Graeber’s book chronicles the “career” of Charles Cullen, a male nurse whom authorities believe might have murdered hundreds of patients over a 16-year period beginning in the late 1980s.  Cullen’s spree finally ended when another nurse, a single mother and Cullen’s co-worker, agreed to be wired and record her conversations with “good nurse” Cullen, who outwardly seemed a conscientious, if peculiar, caregiver.

I’m not sure why, but Good Nurse didn’t absorb me the way other true-crime books have, possibly because the soft-spoken Cullen is not particularly interesting; he lacks the killer charisma of a Ted Bundy, Gary Gilmore, or Paul Bernardo.  Or maybe Graeber simply fails to shed enough light on his monstrous subject.

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by George R. R. Martin

I don’t poke my nose into fantasy literature very often but, when I do, it’s generally a positive experience.  J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books are enchanting, and T. H. White’s The Once and Future King gobsmacked me with its brilliant take on the legend of King Arthur.

George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones isn’t quite in the same league as Potter and King, but I admire Martin’s ambition.  Creating a huge cast of characters and detailed description (too detailed at times; must we learn the name, lineage, and attire of every knight, peasant, and maiden in the story?), Martin unveils “Westeros,” a mythical land bearing a strong resemblance to medieval England, and one in which warring clans battle for control of its Seven Kingdoms.  It’s a (mostly) believable world, but it never really captivated me the way the Potter series did, and it lacks the charm of The Once and Future King.  It is not, however, short on graphic sex and violence.

Thrones is a long book, the first in a planned series of seven volumes.  This might be one of those rare instances where you are better off watching the TV version on HBO, rather than investing weeks, or months, of your life on this massive written opus.

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

                                                     by Chrystia Freeland                                                              

Plutocrats is the type of book you suspect will make you angry before you turn a single page.  The subtitle alone is hackle-raising:  The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.  The fall of “everyone else”?  This book probably will piss you off – but don’t blame the messenger.

Freeland, a financial journalist, makes the case that there is alarming income inequality in most countries – but you probably already knew that.  She interviews a laundry list of the ultra-rich, determines how these men (almost always men) rose to the top, and speculates on what it all means for “everyone else,” i.e., the 99 percent.  Is vast income disparity the inevitable result of capitalism?  Is it possible that the wealth chasm is actually a good thing?

Plutocrats documents how the actions of Big Business are benefiting, if not the American middle class, then certainly new middle classes in emerging world markets such as China and India.  It’s hard to argue that that’s a bad thing.

But our billionaires and millionaires are not exactly selfless.  Many of them, particularly in the United States, feel victimized by government regulation and taxes, and they don’t understand why they are increasingly demonized by the 99 percent.  They do contribute to charity, but those contributions treat the symptoms of inequality, not the problem itself.

Freeland doesn’t come right out and say it, but she implies that only government can place checks on Wall Street and corporate America.  That might be anathema to conservatives and libertarians, but after events of the past five years, isn’t it common sense to everyone else?  Apparently not, for as Freeland writes:

“That’s the irony of superstar economics in a democratic age.  We all think we can be superstars, but in a winner-take-all economy, there isn’t room for most of us at the top.”

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