The Grouchy Editor

by Ross Macdonald

As I was reading this mystery, I was reminded of a Hollywood legend about the movie script for another classic detective story, Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep.  Supposedly, the novel’s plot was so convoluted that at one point the screenwriters contacted Chandler to ask him who was responsible for the death of one character.  “They sent me a wire,” Chandler later said, “asking me, and dammit I didn’t know either.”  The Chill, in which Southern California detective Lew Archer attempts to solve several murders, is all plot, plot, plot – but Macdonald’s dialogue is snappy, his action is fast-paced, and his characters are colorful.  Best of all, the denouement features a wonderful twist –  and it doesn’t cheat.

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by Mel Ayton     

True-crime books can be literary gems, like In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song.  Or they can be luridly entertaining, like The Stranger Beside Me and Deadly Innocence.  Unfortunately, true-crime books can also be plodding and dull, which brings me to Dark Soul of the South, historian Mel Ayton’s bland chronicle of Joseph Paul Franklin, the racist sniper who shot Larry Flynt and Vernon Jordan.  Serial-killer biographies like this one are inherently unpleasant; they require a gifted writer to keep the reader absorbed, but Ayton’s workmanlike approach is only mildly engaging.

As a side note, do book publishers no longer hire editors and proofreaders?  The level of sloppiness in this book is embarrassing.

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by Arthur Marx

Arthur Marx (Groucho’s son) wrote this tell-all, an odd-but-compelling mix of typical showbiz biography and lurid sex anecdotes about the famous comedian.

The Good:  I loved the showbiz stories, and they are legion in this book because Hope’s career spanned 1920s vaudeville to 1990s television.  Despite the unflattering tales of Hope’s adulterous affairs (also legion), Marx’s reporting seems fair and balanced.  For every unsavory sex episode, there are examples of the entertainer’s outstanding philanthropy.  Hope is a fascinating subject and Marx sheds light on much – but not all – of his life.

The Bad:  Even though I gobbled up those show-biz tales, there might be a few too many of them.  Marx covers nearly every benefit, tour, movie, radio show, and airplane ride of Hope’s storied career.  Some of Marx’s critical allegations would benefit from footnotes, which are conspicuously missing.   The book’s editing and proofreading are horrendous – or nonexistent.

The Verdict:  When I finished the book, I had a strong desire to watch Hope at his best in some of his 1940s Paramount pictures.  But I was also disillusioned by his hypocrisy and embarrassing career windup – pretty much everything he appeared in from 1960 until his death at age 100 was dreadful.  If you idolize Hope the man, this book will shatter your illusions.  Yes, Hope’s USO tours are legendary – but so are his adulterous flings, misogyny, right-wing politics, and miserliness.

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by Katherine Boo

Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers is in many ways an astonishing piece of work.  Yet it’s also the type of “nonfiction” narrative that triggers nagging doubts (thanks a lot, James Frey).

The good.  Boo spent three years recording the lives of slum-dwellers at Annawadi, a squalid settlement adjacent to fancy tourist hotels and Mumbai’s international airport.  Boo avoids sentiment and, in depicting a world so harsh, unforgiving, and corrupt, has no need to embellish the facts.  (But does she?  See below.)  She uncovers a small slice of poverty and in the process sheds volumes of light on income inequality in India.

The suspect.  Imagine this:  A group of male street-toughs, all of them teenage thieves or scavengers, are gathered on a corner.  They discuss the sort of things that young boys discuss:  girls, music, movies.  They spot a white woman who is middle-aged, well-educated, privileged – and American.  “Hey lady,” say the boys, “come join us and we’ll share our secrets and dreams with you, and treat you like just one of the guys.”  See the problem?  And yet Boo manages to probe the innermost thoughts and dreams of these kids.  Great journalism, or creative license?

In an author’s note, Boo proffers a fairly convincing explanation of the techniques she used to get Indians like those boys to open up.   In a separate interview, Boo calls narrative nonfiction “a selective art.”  That leaves the reader with a choice:  buy into the reporter’s “selective art” … or not.

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by Elmore Leonard

When it comes to crime fiction, there seem to be two types of consumers:  fans who want Martin Scorsese to keep making mob movies until the day he swims with the fishes, and who gobble up books like Elmore Leonard’s “tough-guy” novels; and people who enjoy a good gangster story – but only to a certain point.  There’s no question that Leonard is a skilled writer, especially with pacing, but a little bit of his clichéd bad-guys routine goes a long way with me.  I don’t automatically smile because the hero has a Brooklyn accent, and I’m not on tenterhooks because the characters carry guns. 

And Leonard’s female characters?  The main woman in Get Shorty is thinly drawn and exists primarily to lust after our “cool” hero, a loan shark who goes Hollywood and who barely has to lift a finger to attract her and (the few) other women in the story.  But if you love this tough-guy stuff, well, then this is a book for you.

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 by Janet Evanovich

These Stephanie Plum novels are like mom’s meatloaf:   The ingredients never change, but they still taste good on occasion.  The only news from this 17th installment in the series is that “good girl” Stephanie finally stops fantasizing about cheating on longtime boyfriend Morelli – and goes ahead and does it.  Several times.  Morelli, supposedly an ace cop, either suspects nothing or doesn’t care.  Problem is, if he doesn’t care, why should readers?

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by Philip Coppens

I’ll admit it, this stuff fascinates me:  rocks weighing hundreds of tons that our ancestors were somehow able to move; cryptic references to “gods from the heavens” found in many ancient manuscripts; science’s acknowledgment that there is likely life out there in the universe.  So when I pick up a book like Coppens’s The Ancient Alien Question, I try to have an open mind.  But then ….

There are so many problems with this book.  For starters, it should be called The English Language Question.  I don’t know if it was poorly translated, edited, or written, but much of it is incomprehensible, crammed with irrelevant (at least to the layman) details about disputes within the scientific community, or dull minutiae, such as the components of old cement.  Coppens’s favorite adverb is “clearly,” but there is very little I’d consider “clear” about many of his conclusions.

Consider this example:  On page 202, Coppens cites “evidence” that nuclear technology existed in ancient India by quoting an expert named Francis Taylor.  On the following page, Coppens writes this:  “The first question is whether the named archaeologist Francis Taylor existed.  Alas, no one has ever been able to identify him.”  In an attempt to confer an air of impartiality and credibility to the author, the publisher’s blurb claims that Coppens is “labeled a skeptic by the believers, and a believer by the skeptics.”  Don’t buy it:  The man is “clearly” a believer.

It’s too bad this book is such a mess, because there are a lot of mysteries from antiquity, and it seems unlikely that humans could have accomplished some of their amazing feats without help – from someone or something.  There must be better books on this subject.  Clearly.

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by Susan Faludi

As I read Susan Faludi’s (Backlash) depressing opus about the “crisis” in American manhood, I kept changing my opinion of its author.  At times I wanted to laud Faludi for her insightful reporting – and sometimes I wanted to throttle her for general cluelessness.  As a former journalist, I appreciate the sheer amount of legwork that went into her book.  She interviewed scores of men, from construction workers to porn stars, and much of her analysis is thoughtful.   But occasionally Faludi adopts the tone of a victor perched atop the pedestal of feminism, sitting subtly and condescendingly in judgment of pitiful males.

Random thoughts: 

• Faludi’s conclusion is that most American men are unhappy (and resistant to feminism) because their fathers – those heroes of World War II and members of the “greatest generation” – were cold, distant, and silent parents, providing little or no guidance to boys growing up in a consumer culture that rewards image over true worth.  I’m sure there is some truth to this theory.  But what about all of the mothers – do they make no impact on their sons?  Other than in passing, Faludi makes no mention of the mothers.
• Feminism, like motherhood, gets a pass from Faludi as a contributing factor to modern male distress.  Men who criticize any aspect of the women’s movement are unreasonable, delusional, or scapegoating.  Yet I was struck by this assessment of feminism by one of the men Faludi interviewed:  “It doesn’t seem to have made anyone very happy.”
• I’m not convinced that the average American male is quite as tormented as Faludi would have us believe.  But a 600-page volume of interviews with men who are generally content would be an awfully dull read.
• Faludi’s final words of advice to men who are unhappy or confused by our Brave New World?  “Wage a battle against no enemy.”  Great.  That helps.

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                                                    by John W. Campbell                                                              

This is why, in some literary circles, science-fiction gets so little respect.  Campbell had a great idea – malevolent, alien life force, frozen in Antarctica for millennia, is thawed by a small group of unwitting scientists – and he put his pen to paper.  But Campbell had one problem:  He could not write.  Let me rephrase that:  Campbell writes abominably.  He never uses an adjective when two or three will do, he indulges in hyperbole, and he garbles grammar.  Huge chunks of the novella are incomprehensible.  I have no idea how Who Goes There? found a publisher, but I can see why Hollywood found it attractive.  Campbell’s premise was one that filmmakers could build upon – and improve with very little effort (The Thing movies are based on this story).  Yes, in this case, the movies really are better than the book.

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                                                     by Mary Roberts Rinehart                                                              

I keep asking myself why Agatha Christie became a household name while Rinehart – an author quite similar to Christie – has faded into obscurity.  I think the answer might be that Rinehart, unlike her British contemporary, never created a charismatic, recurring protagonist.  Her books have no Poirot, no Miss Marple, no hero to capture the public’s fancy.  At any rate, The Window at the White Cat is vintage fun from the American writer.  One thing I’ve learned:  It’s never safe to put out the lights and go to bed in a Rinehart mystery, because someone is always breaking into your house.

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