Pick it up, put it down, pick it up, it sticks. That was my experience with Diamond Dust, the seventh novel in Peter Lovesey's Peter Diamond series. Diamond Dust was part of my big purchase from Soho Press right before Christmas. I had intended to get the second book in the series, Diamond Solitaire, but ordered wrong. Given that I dislike reading series out of sequence, and that I didn't adore The Last Detective (and had completely forgotten about Down Among the Dead Men) I grumped about with this a bit, starting and then stopping. In the end, I'm glad I started again.
Peter Diamond, of the Bath (England) CID, is your standard grouchy, I-did-it-my-way, occasionally self-destructive and occasionally brilliant detective. Sort of a more mature and therefore somewhat less obnoxious Danny Reagan from "Blue Bloods." He's had a long career in Bahhth with the requisite ups and downs, presumably chronicled in the novels between The Last Detective and this one. I still don't particularly like Diamond. I don't find bull-headedness appealing, especially when it seems mostly used to further the plot, and other than that, he's surprisingly one-dimensional for someone with so many years experience.
THAT SAID. I did ultimately quite enjoy Diamond Dust, Diamond himself notwithstanding. The plot here seems simple: Diamond's wife is murdered, and he may not be involved in the investigation. He's also considered a suspect which, I suppose understandably, pisses him off. So, he runs his own parallel, stripped-down investigation, angering the officials and occasionally blundering into trouble. There is another plot thread about a diamond heist that doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything until pretty late in the story. How it all sorts out I'll leave for you to find out.
What's great here is the way Lovesey twists the murder plot, just as it seems to stall. The turns occasionally feel a bit too serendipitous, but who knows, maybe that is how police work goes - 10% effort 90% luck or some such sage saying. You might suss out the intersection of the two plots earlier, or you might think, as I did, why did we spend so much time developing that aspect of that plot, was it because there really wasn't anything going on in the other one? But by then you'll be caught in it and reading to see if the killer will ever be discovered.
I did have an inkling of whodunit, but then I decided (as I'm sure Lovesey wanted) nah, can't be . . . .
If I liked Diamond better, I might go back and look at more of this series. Might anyway, it is not a bad way to pass 30 minutes on the stationery bike every day.
Saturday, February 6, 2016
All Night Long
How did I get to a somewhat hackneyed Erskine Caldwell novel about Russian partisans in World War Two? Via H-War, of course! The H-lists started in the dawn of the Internet age, listservs on various topics where academics (mostly historians) might ask questions of one another, get teaching and research ideas, advertise conferences and journal articles, and so on. I signed up for H-War a billion years ago, and then it seemed to vanish, only to start populating my inbox again a couple of years ago.
Anyway, a couple of months ago someone had a thread on novels about unconventional warfare, and the works cited sounded interesting so I sought some of them out. (Side benefit of doing a deep-ish literary dive: you don't have to buy it if you have access to Widener Library, and you might end up with a first edition that was last checked out in 1973 or something like that, which is pretty cool.)
Caldwell is best known as a chronicler of the down-and-out Depression-era South, but he spent time as a correspondent in the Soviet Union during the Second World War, and wrote several books about and inspired by the experience. All Night Long: A Novel of Guerilla Warfare in Russia (1942: Duell, Sloan and Pearce) is exactly what it says: a fictionalized account of partisan efforts in Russia, against the invading German army during the Second World War. Set against the story of husband and wife Sergei and Natasha, All Night Long is essentially a litany of death and destruction, both sides determined to subdue or repel the other by any means necessary. Over the course of the book, Sergei makes his way to the partisans, with whom he fights fearlessly, causing great destruction to the local German forces. Natasha was to meet him at the partisan camp, but gets delayed, and Sergei must make hard choices when the time comes to rescue her.
It is hard to imagine a world like this one, where one act by a villager could lead to the devastation of an entire town, but Caldwell does his best to make you understand. In one scene, Sergei and his comrade Fyodor come upon a village that was destroyed, along with its entire population, in retaliation for an act of sabotage. Pages 159-166 are an extended description of the burned village, complete with the expected charred remains and "blackened chimneys jutting like weather-stained tombstones from the scarred earth" but somehow made more horrifically human with the "stiff and swollen carcasses of horses and cows," the charred remains of beds, tables, and chairs, the wrecked and burned tanks and trucks, and a large tank simply standing on end down one street. The scene reads almost like a movie script, so vivid are details like "the sign, which once proclaimed the existence of a headquarters unit, lay beside a staff car which still contained the black fire-shrunken bodies of four Germans who had not been able to escape a final assault by the guerillas." The citizens who lived here were all executed and the trench holding their bodies is filled with snowmelt, blood, and the "floating swollen grey bodies of field mice." Just out of town, Sergei and Fyodor come upon the nude body of a young girl, terribly abused, lying in a wheat field. (159-66) I don't think Caldwell was really piling on here. Could Sherman have imagined this hell?
Written in 1942, All Night Long unabashedly takes the side of our then-friends the Russians. Every Russian character is noble and sacrificing, lean and windburned, strong and dedicated, the very embodiment of the propaganda posters as a friend suggested recently. The Germans are either ignorant youth or raping, pillaging, murdering Nazis. I don't necessarily disagree with this characterization. The Nazis considered Russians sub-humans, barely a step above Jews and other degenerates, and Nazi depredations over the course of their ultimately disastrous campaign in the East are well-documented.
But, but. Also well-documented is the fury unleashed on German citizens as Soviet soldiers made their way into that country in 1945. You can say the Germans deserved it, and you can say that the Russians were not innocent of their own crimes committed in the name of war. You'd both be right. Neither side would win any humanitarian awards.
Still, in his zeal to make his point, or perhaps to prove authenticity, Caldwell lays it on a bit thick. There is the incredibly awkward use of transliterated Russian words like Nemetski (German) or Tovarish (comrade). Everyone sits around saying things like "There's nobody more cruel than a Nemetski." (I don't have the page reference for this one, but you could find a similar reference on just about every other page.) And the characters are straight out of Central Casting: Sergei Mikhailovich Korokov is "a tractor driver from the Lenin Collective Farm" (57) and Natasha his young and spirited wife, with golden blond hair cascading like a waterfall. Sergei's comrade Fyodor lost his wife and daughter in a ghastly attack by the Germans so is hell-bent on revenge, and of course there is young Vladimir, who wants nothing more than to fight with the partisans. (You know that ends up.) A lot of potatoes and cabbage soup are cooked.
"I don't understand why the Nemetskies are like this," Fyodor insisted. "Why must they always be killing our women? Do they do this to their own women?" He paused and looked off across the field. "Only degenerates would come to our country and do such things. You would expect it of savages, or of wild animals, but human beings don't rape and murder unless they're insane or -"
"Or Nemetskies," Sergei broke in.
"Or Nemetskies," Fyodor nodded. (165)
Or Russians in Berlin.
Anyway, a couple of months ago someone had a thread on novels about unconventional warfare, and the works cited sounded interesting so I sought some of them out. (Side benefit of doing a deep-ish literary dive: you don't have to buy it if you have access to Widener Library, and you might end up with a first edition that was last checked out in 1973 or something like that, which is pretty cool.)
Caldwell is best known as a chronicler of the down-and-out Depression-era South, but he spent time as a correspondent in the Soviet Union during the Second World War, and wrote several books about and inspired by the experience. All Night Long: A Novel of Guerilla Warfare in Russia (1942: Duell, Sloan and Pearce) is exactly what it says: a fictionalized account of partisan efforts in Russia, against the invading German army during the Second World War. Set against the story of husband and wife Sergei and Natasha, All Night Long is essentially a litany of death and destruction, both sides determined to subdue or repel the other by any means necessary. Over the course of the book, Sergei makes his way to the partisans, with whom he fights fearlessly, causing great destruction to the local German forces. Natasha was to meet him at the partisan camp, but gets delayed, and Sergei must make hard choices when the time comes to rescue her.
It is hard to imagine a world like this one, where one act by a villager could lead to the devastation of an entire town, but Caldwell does his best to make you understand. In one scene, Sergei and his comrade Fyodor come upon a village that was destroyed, along with its entire population, in retaliation for an act of sabotage. Pages 159-166 are an extended description of the burned village, complete with the expected charred remains and "blackened chimneys jutting like weather-stained tombstones from the scarred earth" but somehow made more horrifically human with the "stiff and swollen carcasses of horses and cows," the charred remains of beds, tables, and chairs, the wrecked and burned tanks and trucks, and a large tank simply standing on end down one street. The scene reads almost like a movie script, so vivid are details like "the sign, which once proclaimed the existence of a headquarters unit, lay beside a staff car which still contained the black fire-shrunken bodies of four Germans who had not been able to escape a final assault by the guerillas." The citizens who lived here were all executed and the trench holding their bodies is filled with snowmelt, blood, and the "floating swollen grey bodies of field mice." Just out of town, Sergei and Fyodor come upon the nude body of a young girl, terribly abused, lying in a wheat field. (159-66) I don't think Caldwell was really piling on here. Could Sherman have imagined this hell?
But, but. Also well-documented is the fury unleashed on German citizens as Soviet soldiers made their way into that country in 1945. You can say the Germans deserved it, and you can say that the Russians were not innocent of their own crimes committed in the name of war. You'd both be right. Neither side would win any humanitarian awards.
Still, in his zeal to make his point, or perhaps to prove authenticity, Caldwell lays it on a bit thick. There is the incredibly awkward use of transliterated Russian words like Nemetski (German) or Tovarish (comrade). Everyone sits around saying things like "There's nobody more cruel than a Nemetski." (I don't have the page reference for this one, but you could find a similar reference on just about every other page.) And the characters are straight out of Central Casting: Sergei Mikhailovich Korokov is "a tractor driver from the Lenin Collective Farm" (57) and Natasha his young and spirited wife, with golden blond hair cascading like a waterfall. Sergei's comrade Fyodor lost his wife and daughter in a ghastly attack by the Germans so is hell-bent on revenge, and of course there is young Vladimir, who wants nothing more than to fight with the partisans. (You know that ends up.) A lot of potatoes and cabbage soup are cooked.
"I don't understand why the Nemetskies are like this," Fyodor insisted. "Why must they always be killing our women? Do they do this to their own women?" He paused and looked off across the field. "Only degenerates would come to our country and do such things. You would expect it of savages, or of wild animals, but human beings don't rape and murder unless they're insane or -"
"Or Nemetskies," Sergei broke in.
"Or Nemetskies," Fyodor nodded. (165)
Or Russians in Berlin.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
The List
I bought a bunch of books from Soho Press in December, because they promised a free copy of Mick Herron's novella The List with my order. The books I paid for are uneven in quality, but The List delivers.
Herron likes to write about the losers in intelligence work. He is best known for his Slough House trilogy, wherein he discusses the pathetic existence of those who've messed up spectacularly but whom "it'd be impolitic to sack." They eke out a living doing mindless back office work that sometimes actually results in something. Even Herron's stand-alones reference one or more of the Slow Horses, as they're known, and this one is no exception. In The List, the sort-of protagonist John Bachelor - you can't really call him a Hero, or even an Anti-Hero - misses an obvious signal with one of the assets he babysits, and sets in motion a small, inconsequential chain of events that sends another character to Slough House, where he with the infamous Jackson Lamb. The story is so short, and there isn't a lot more than this but it has a nifty trajectory and ends, well, it won't take you long to read and find out.
The story doesn't move fast, and there isn't much action, but the writing is economical, and the precise description and careful language bring John le Carré to mind. As does the way Herron somehow manages to keep the Cold War relevant, even in the 21st c. There is a palpable sense that the Park, as MI5 is referred to given its location in Regent's Park, is not so much coasting on earlier laurels, as it is perpetually teetering on the brink of disastrous failure. Somehow the modern world, with all its technology and vague but every now and then very real global threats, is more difficult for intelligence operatives to navigate than the previous bilateral one. Herron sums this up beautifully when he notes that Bachelor, who "worked for the secret service in an era where half the population aired its private life on the web . . . wasn't sure the Cold War had been preferable, but it had been more dignified." JlC would approve.
Herron likes to write about the losers in intelligence work. He is best known for his Slough House trilogy, wherein he discusses the pathetic existence of those who've messed up spectacularly but whom "it'd be impolitic to sack." They eke out a living doing mindless back office work that sometimes actually results in something. Even Herron's stand-alones reference one or more of the Slow Horses, as they're known, and this one is no exception. In The List, the sort-of protagonist John Bachelor - you can't really call him a Hero, or even an Anti-Hero - misses an obvious signal with one of the assets he babysits, and sets in motion a small, inconsequential chain of events that sends another character to Slough House, where he with the infamous Jackson Lamb. The story is so short, and there isn't a lot more than this but it has a nifty trajectory and ends, well, it won't take you long to read and find out.
The story doesn't move fast, and there isn't much action, but the writing is economical, and the precise description and careful language bring John le Carré to mind. As does the way Herron somehow manages to keep the Cold War relevant, even in the 21st c. There is a palpable sense that the Park, as MI5 is referred to given its location in Regent's Park, is not so much coasting on earlier laurels, as it is perpetually teetering on the brink of disastrous failure. Somehow the modern world, with all its technology and vague but every now and then very real global threats, is more difficult for intelligence operatives to navigate than the previous bilateral one. Herron sums this up beautifully when he notes that Bachelor, who "worked for the secret service in an era where half the population aired its private life on the web . . . wasn't sure the Cold War had been preferable, but it had been more dignified." JlC would approve.
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Buddha's Money
Buddha's Money (1998, Bantam, this edition 2005, Soho Crime), the third installment in the Sueño and Bascom series from Martin Limón, reads like it was written to get a movie deal. There are exotic and dramatic settings, beautiful and dangerous women, lost treasure, children in peril, chase scenes, and lots and lots of fights. There are even dangerous beasties and fighting monks, and at times, the whole things has a Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon vibe. (I know, completely different country - except not entirely, as you'll find if you read this story.) Extremely fast-paced, with lots of twists at the end, and more history than one might expect, Buddha's Money is entertaining but not deeply thoughtful. Action - not contemplative investigation - drives this plot.
That sounds like more of a criticism than it is. This story has a lot to commend it, but it moves so fast into hard-to-imagine territory that it loses investigative nuance in all the dust-'em-ups. Our Heroes, George Sueño and Ernie Bascom, are cops with the Eighth Army's Criminal Investigation Division in Seoul, Korea, in the early 1970s. There's definitely a later-day Vietnam vibe in all of Limón's stories set here. The red-light district is referred to as the ville, a number of the characters are Vietnam veterans with the psychic scars to prove it, and there is a sense of Americans running the show and not a damn thing any local can do about except make money off of dumb GIs in ways both legal and not.
As the story opens, Our Heroes are called to intervene in the mugging of a Buddhist nun in the red-light district Itaewon. They are quickly drawn into the kidnapping of an adopted girl from her hot-mess-of-an-American-vet father and her former-hooker/thief Korean mother (no angels, either one), which leads to the complex story of a missing rare antique that just about everyone in Korea wants a piece of - and are willing to double-cross or kill to get it. There is a long history to the missing antiquity, and whoever gets it will have the path to untold riches as well as a legitimate claim to the long-defunct Dragon Throne in China.
So you've got your Buddhist monks, your Mongolians, and some ancestrally-royal Chinese, all looking for this thing, and willing to kill or worse to obtain it. Sueño and Bascom are enlisted by the parents of the kidnapped girl, but quickly get involved with a mysterious and beautiful antiques dealer, some nasty Mongolians, and a sweet little nun. S and B drive all over Korea following leads, meeting beautiful ladies, and beating up pretty much anyone who gets in their way. These two must be ironmen or something, they get their lights punched out almost every day (and give as good as they get), and somehow survive to keep going to the next rendezvous. They also drive like maniacs, swim underwater for seemingly endless minutes, row boats across the sea, and drink heavily when the opportunity presents itself.
I'm not going to attempt to say more about the story than this, because it would take too long and I'd probably miss a key piece. But in the movie, a younger Jimmy Smits would play Sueño and if I can go x-generational, I'd cast Matt Damon as Bascom.
What do I like about these stories? I like Limón's obvious command of place. He writes vividly of both the gritty red-light district, where neon shimmers in the ever-present rain, and the green fields and mist-shrouded ricky islands away from the Korean capital. The only setting that doesn't really come alive is Eighth Army HQ, which remains, perhaps intentionally, bland and even opaque. Maybe that is because none of the action take place here. Limón's writing is clean and does not distract either, although I can't quite decide if the story is being told by narrator Sueño in real-time, or after the fact. And I do take issue with repeated descriptive tropes like bubbling saliva, little nuns, and sparkling neon. There is also a lot of damp, and puddles, and fat raindrops, but it is monsoon season, so this works.
I also like Our Heroes. Ernie is a psychopath: violence and policing provide the high that heroin did for him in Vietnam. But that bad-boy aura is magnetic for the ladies: he attracts them all, from hookers to nuns. George is the good cop but emotionally vulnerable - army life provides a kind of family for this Cali-Mex orphan. He is also the more thoughtful of the two, having learned some Korean and made an effort to understand the local history and culture. And that's what keeps this story from becoming just a series of fights.
Finally, I appreciate the background. The only way you can possibly follow this story is because George takes the time to explain the historical background to you. I feel like I may just possibly have learned something about Korea, even if it is history-lite. George does this in manageable bites so not overly pedantic, but you have the sense that his partner really could not care less and is just interested in the next creep he can demolish or lady he can conquer with his ginseng gum.
These guys are smart, and in their way, they care about the local population. So I wish they didn't have to beat confessions out of their subjects, or the next plot-point out for the reader.
That sounds like more of a criticism than it is. This story has a lot to commend it, but it moves so fast into hard-to-imagine territory that it loses investigative nuance in all the dust-'em-ups. Our Heroes, George Sueño and Ernie Bascom, are cops with the Eighth Army's Criminal Investigation Division in Seoul, Korea, in the early 1970s. There's definitely a later-day Vietnam vibe in all of Limón's stories set here. The red-light district is referred to as the ville, a number of the characters are Vietnam veterans with the psychic scars to prove it, and there is a sense of Americans running the show and not a damn thing any local can do about except make money off of dumb GIs in ways both legal and not.
As the story opens, Our Heroes are called to intervene in the mugging of a Buddhist nun in the red-light district Itaewon. They are quickly drawn into the kidnapping of an adopted girl from her hot-mess-of-an-American-vet father and her former-hooker/thief Korean mother (no angels, either one), which leads to the complex story of a missing rare antique that just about everyone in Korea wants a piece of - and are willing to double-cross or kill to get it. There is a long history to the missing antiquity, and whoever gets it will have the path to untold riches as well as a legitimate claim to the long-defunct Dragon Throne in China.
So you've got your Buddhist monks, your Mongolians, and some ancestrally-royal Chinese, all looking for this thing, and willing to kill or worse to obtain it. Sueño and Bascom are enlisted by the parents of the kidnapped girl, but quickly get involved with a mysterious and beautiful antiques dealer, some nasty Mongolians, and a sweet little nun. S and B drive all over Korea following leads, meeting beautiful ladies, and beating up pretty much anyone who gets in their way. These two must be ironmen or something, they get their lights punched out almost every day (and give as good as they get), and somehow survive to keep going to the next rendezvous. They also drive like maniacs, swim underwater for seemingly endless minutes, row boats across the sea, and drink heavily when the opportunity presents itself.
I'm not going to attempt to say more about the story than this, because it would take too long and I'd probably miss a key piece. But in the movie, a younger Jimmy Smits would play Sueño and if I can go x-generational, I'd cast Matt Damon as Bascom.
What do I like about these stories? I like Limón's obvious command of place. He writes vividly of both the gritty red-light district, where neon shimmers in the ever-present rain, and the green fields and mist-shrouded ricky islands away from the Korean capital. The only setting that doesn't really come alive is Eighth Army HQ, which remains, perhaps intentionally, bland and even opaque. Maybe that is because none of the action take place here. Limón's writing is clean and does not distract either, although I can't quite decide if the story is being told by narrator Sueño in real-time, or after the fact. And I do take issue with repeated descriptive tropes like bubbling saliva, little nuns, and sparkling neon. There is also a lot of damp, and puddles, and fat raindrops, but it is monsoon season, so this works.
I also like Our Heroes. Ernie is a psychopath: violence and policing provide the high that heroin did for him in Vietnam. But that bad-boy aura is magnetic for the ladies: he attracts them all, from hookers to nuns. George is the good cop but emotionally vulnerable - army life provides a kind of family for this Cali-Mex orphan. He is also the more thoughtful of the two, having learned some Korean and made an effort to understand the local history and culture. And that's what keeps this story from becoming just a series of fights.
Finally, I appreciate the background. The only way you can possibly follow this story is because George takes the time to explain the historical background to you. I feel like I may just possibly have learned something about Korea, even if it is history-lite. George does this in manageable bites so not overly pedantic, but you have the sense that his partner really could not care less and is just interested in the next creep he can demolish or lady he can conquer with his ginseng gum.
These guys are smart, and in their way, they care about the local population. So I wish they didn't have to beat confessions out of their subjects, or the next plot-point out for the reader.
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