Out on the Cutting Edge by Lawrence Block

Meh. There's nothing bad with this one, but it didn't grab me. Again, we have the introduction of an interesting new character - Mick Ballou - but the mysteries this time just don't add up to much. Scudder's work was interesting enough on the Paula Hoeldtke disappearance, but the resolution on it as well as on Eddie's untimely demise just don't add up. And I didn't like Willa at all. Maybe it's time to take a break from Scudder for a while.

When the Sacred Ginmill Closes by Lawrence Block

Now this was interesting! Scudder is still drinking in this story, but the narrator is future Scudder. Sober Scudder. The contrast is fantastic. Story Scudder is a train wreck, but completely lacking in insight or concern about his life. It's painful to watch him move from one self-destructive choice to another and to see how close he comes to disaster, how often. I wonder how much the other early novels in this series would change if Sober Scudder was narrating them. I wonder how much Drunk Scudder glossed over. There's a lot of terrible crap about drinking that certainly never got mentioned before. Still, they say there's no zealot like a convert, and Sober Scudder has definitely drunk the kool-aid. You'd think there was nothing but drinking (or not-drinking) going on in these stories, to hear me tell them. The mysteries this time were excellent. Despite never having heard of any of them before, the mystery-bringers in this case seemed closer to Scudder than usual, and it was good to see him passing the time in friendly relationships. I suppose there's a bit of a foxhole mentality among fellow drunks, but these guys all seemed to be peas in a pod. I enjoyed the multi-threaded plot and look happily forward to the next installment.

Eight Million Ways to Die by Lawrence Block

I knew from the get-go that Scudder starts out the series as an alcoholic and gains sobriety somewhere along the way, but not where or when. I wasn't ever bothered by the drinking, but was looking forward to the journey to see what happens. This one was the transitional book, and was really hard to read. I'm more than a little disappointed by how black-and-white things became, though. Obviously drinking all day every day is never healthy, but Scudder wasn't so messed up at the outset. I guess things escalated over time, but I didn't really see it happening. I suppose the story mirrors his own awareness as narrator - drinking was fine until he realized it wasn't - but it felt like a light switch was flipped rather than an awareness grown over time. Scudder was okay, then he was in the hospital, having seizures, blacking out, brutally assaulting people, etc., etc. I wouldn't have begrudged any of the drinking arc if the mystery had been better, but it wasn't. We got a great new character - Chance the pimp - but everything else was strictly second-rate.

Wideacre by Philippa Gregory

Perhaps the most interesting thing for me with this book was how much it made me think about the author. I'm sure that's not what she would have wished, but I can't help it. This is the first novel she ever wrote, published almost 20 years ago. Since then, she's published 24 books and gone on to some acclaim. I've read her four Tudor novels this year and liked them all quite a lot. I know she's written some contemporary stuff, but I love the historical setting and wanted more, so I went back to the beginning. I don't know what I expected, but it surely wasn't this. I'm not easily shocked by novels, and this one completely threw me. I like some spice in the story-telling, but this was entirely over-the-top. While the supplemental & peripheral characters were lovely, the protagonist was completely twisted and horrible. It's not just by 18th century standards that her moral code is shocking - she's depraved in any time. Each time she ratcheted up the sordidness, I considered again how funny it is to see what authors will write when they think no one is looking. I caught myself wondering over and over again whether this novel is more true to Gregory's real interests - she wrote it before she had a brand to protect - or whether she was consciously crafting something sensational to in order to sell. Is this the sellout book, or are her later works compromises to make a buck? How much of Beatrice's depravity does Gregory get off on? It took me a long time to decide how much of her character's actions the author thought were justified. She seemed to be trying to make - very clumsily - a feminist point that none of Beatrice's actions would have been necessary if women in 1770 had the rights we have today. She seems to be saying all along that she only did what she had to in order to secure her natural rights. And she seems to find it thrilling to write such a liberated character. But then things change towards the end, and again I wonder how much of it was the author's vision and how much was the editor and publisher. I guess that's the way it always is with controversial books. I wonder how much was cut, how much softened, how much changed in order to attract or repulse. In the end, the protagonist's single-minded focus and the destruction it brings were strangely resonant. It's a classic "destroy what I love in order to save it" theme, but the tragedy of it in this case was compelling. Despite the jaw-dropping, stomach-churning twists, it worked for me as a reminder of the obligations we have to one another as humans, and it stayed with me for days afterwards. I'll continue on to the next one and hope it's not a car wreck.

Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich

This was disappointing. All the freshness and interesting new directions of the last couple of books in the series are gone, and we're right back where we started. In fact, the full reverse was so strong and so sudden that a few minor character bits got retconned along the way. This annoys me quite a lot. I'm not a fan of Ranger anymore. I can't remember how much I liked him before, but I'm not a fan now. I see the appeal, but given where each of the three leads (Stephanie, Joe, Ranger) are in their lives, the right answer is clearly Joe and the avoidance is starting to get lame. Things made sense when Ranger was simply a badass bounty hunter, but now that he's also this sexy businessman I just don't see it. And his apartment is not the batcave, so don't even get me started on that little bit of discontinuity. I know it's weird, but I've really been pleased with the absence of Joyce Barnhardt in the past few books. At the beginning, I really responded to Stephanie's outrage at her ex-husband and the story of Joyce's role in their breakup. My ex-husband and I had just split up as well, and I really related to Stephanie. In the past few books, when she's talked about Joyce it's been without mentioning Dickie, and it felt like a completely-right sign of progress that she'd be past it. I appreciate that Joyce has been an arch-nemesis all Stephanie's life, but I wish she'd stayed away.

A Stab in the Dark by Lawrence Block

Okay, the alcoholism and related issues are starting to get really disturbing. Scudder has been a heavy drinker from the outset, but he's always been functional. Now he's decompensating and it's getting ugly. He's also starting to play around the edges of acknowledging it, which brings its own issues. I can't decide if this is the darkest book of the series yet (he's losing control), or the lightest (he knows it and will fix it soon). Still, despite appearances here this wasn't a whole book about Scudder's drinking. I guess it just feels like it. The actual crime to solve was a good one, and I can see why it tripped all of Scudder's wires. It is a solid addition to the series, but I am apprehensive because I don't know what's coming or how it's going to change the character or if I'll still like it. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan

Aaaauuuuugh! This should have been a fantastic book. I should have loved every line. I was so excited to find a novel that brings together all the things I love best in fiction, which makes my disappoint all the more bitter. I'm a sucker for fictional history, royalty, India, and can't find anything wrong with a nice romantic yarn about star-crossed lovers. This is supposed to be a great sweeping romance set in 17th century Mughal India, and there's nothing I don't love about the places and the period. I've visited all the towns and cities and toured the palaces. I've studied the histories. Every italicized word in the book was one I already knew, as was every taste described, every clothing type named, every cultural tidbit explained. I know the stories of all the great Mughal emperors and how they lived. And the author obviously shares my passion and then some, as all the details are exquisite and right. The problem? The book is BORING. The characters are stiff, unmotivated cardboard cut-outs. The great romance has all the depth of a Disney picture - love at first sight, never explored but inexplicably enduring decades apart for no discernible reason. The heroine is repeatedly, endlessly called special and different by everyone around her. They tell us she is brilliant, cunning, unlike any other woman, a breed apart, special in every way. But she is never shown to be any of these things. She's boring. She's inane. And there's nothing particularly special or interesting about her at all. I am so offended by how bad this book is. With everything it has going for it, it should be not just good but GREAT. This is such fertile territory, and there's just no excuse for a failure of these proportions. Bah.

Eleven on Top by Janet Evanovich

The happy character growth that I noted in the last book is even more evident here. I couldn't be more pleased! Stephanie is at a crossroads here, and it's so much fun to see her moving in new directions. I would never have guessed that she could walk away from the bounty hunter thing and still be entertaining, but Evanovich has really pulled off the perfect balance of all the characters we love in an all new context. Masterful. I was uncomfortably aware this time out of how much I would hate this book - and really, the whole series - if it was a TV show or a movie. I just know it would be accompanied by a terrible laugh track, and the wacky hijinks would be completely eye-rollingly, cringingly horrible and not-at-all funny. What makes it work is being inside Stephanie's totally disarming matter-of-fact head; on the outside it's just terrible. So I guess I should be thankful it hasn't been adapted. This realization came on the heels of an observation that I have a much stronger picture in my mind of these characters and environments than is normal for me. I'm not sure why. But the fact is that I can't think of any other character or series that I can see in my mind's eye as vividly as I do these. My imagination is not usually very visual, and I couldn't even begin to tell you what any of the series characters I read actually look like. I don't know if they're tall or short, fat or thin, dark or light, handsome or plain. But I know exactly what all the Plum series characters look like, as well as their apartments, homes, places of work, streets, malls, and businesses. I don't have the faintest clue why, but there it is.

Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich

When I walked away from the Stephanie Plum series a few years ago, one of the things that drove me out was the sense that nothing ever changes. Stephanie never learns, the men in her life never evolve, and every entry in the series follows exactly the same formula. I'm a bit more forgiving now, perhaps because it's a formula that just plain works for this series. Still, there's signs of growth even amidst the swirling chaos of the story. This time, we get to see more of Ranger's world than I ever expected. Joe continues to grow and mature, Stephanie is a bit more self-aware than usual, and we meet a few new characters that seem poised to make re-appearances in future stories.

To The Nines by Janet Evanovich

After devouring the first eight books in this series, I stalled out in the first chapter of To The Nines three years ago and never went back. I think my reading sensibilities were just moving in a different direction at the time, and I couldn't get past the absurd screwball opener. Three years away from Stephanie Plum did the trick, and I thoroughly enjoyed having her back again. She's such a breath of fresh air after all the darkness of the other mysteries I read. I think the key was to label it as an outright screwball comedy in my mind. It's supposed to take place in a crazy reality outside my own, and I'm therefore not supposed to trouble myself with realism or comparisons to the world I inhabit. What makes the series work is that Stephanie herself is completely believable. Absurd situations and characters swirl around her, but she's got a bubble of truth and honesty that I adore. She's terribly flawed, but she's up front about it and neither she nor the author make any excuses for it. She reminds me of the best of Susan Isaacs's characters, if a little more lively.

In the Midst of Death by Lawrence Block

One of the things I like about the Scudder series so far is how small they are. I don't mean the length of the book, though they are all very short. I like that they are not sweeping epics that depict earth-shattering events. I love the sense of futility and hopelessness, of having no control, of being played. These for me are the best of the noir conventions. Everyone's just doing their thing and trying to get through the hours and days, and nothing makes a difference in the end. I don't know why I find that so comforting and familiar, but I do. I'd call myself a realist rather than a pessimist, but I guess your mileage may vary. Another thing that really draws me to the series is Scudder's alcoholism. As someone with no addictive habits, it's so far outside my own experience as to be fascinating. I've honestly never thought about addiction much before - what drives it, what it's like from the inside - and I feel for the first time the tiniest bit of understanding what this experience is like. Perhaps the best part is that it is never acknowledged. Scudder drinks obsessively, but never calls himself a drunk or an alcoholic or angsts over what it means, and this works for me. I'm sad to know that the series leaves the 70s at the end of this book. The next in the series was published in 1981, and marks the beginning of a period where NYC was far less interesting.

Time to Murder and Create by Lawrence Block

Lawrence Block is two for two so far. I can't believe this series has been around all my life and I never found it until now. It's such a pleasure to uncover new treasures, and to know that there's more than a dozen other novels in the series just waiting for me. I had a little bit of a problem with the plot itself this time. Scudder is trying to find out which of three blackmail victims murdered their blackmailer, so that he can expose the guilty and let the others off the hook. The problem is, while only one of the three is the murderer in question, the other two did terrible things that in my mind need to be exposed and brought to justice. I'm not used to straddling this moral line, and it's an uncomfortable place.

The Sins of the Fathers by Lawrence Block

Wow, did I ever love this book. I've had it on my shelf for literally years, after caving to pressure from a friend to try out the series. Apparently, my definition of "try out" includes buying a book but not actually reading it, because I never quite got around to picking it up. Thankfully, the friend recently emphatically repeated her confidence that I must read this series right bloody now, and at last I gave in to the pressure. I think I might have actually read a chapter or two when I first brought it home because some things seemed familiar, but if that's the case I can't believe I wasn't immediately sold. This has absolutely everything I like in a main character: a deeply flawed loner on the fringes of society, troubled by his past and on the verge of self-destructing. Yes, please. But the best part is how perfectly it evokes the squalid atmosphere of New York City in the 70s. First published in 1976, this isn't a period piece but an honest-to-god throwback. Phone booths on the streets that take dimes! Corruption in law enforcement! Greenwich Village apartments that go for the staggeringly high price of $400/month! I tell you, it would be hard to swallow this in a contemporary novel set in the 70s, but as a 30-year old excavation I could just lap it up with a spoon.

Echo Park by Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly really hit on something special when he assigned Bosch to the open-unsolved unit. An aging hangdog detective who seems to be from another time himself, he's perfectly suited to work on unsolved cases rooted in the past. There's a mournful quality to Harry's work that never fails to draw me in. I wasn't terribly taken with the bad guy this time around, and am growing tired of the repeating cycle in each book of Harry finding a girl only to lose her through his obsessive focus, risky behavior, and inner demons. I like seeing Harry with a woman, but I grow weary of watching him burn through someone new each time. I know it's a time-honored forumula for detective stories, but it's grown just a bit stale. Still, this series continues to be a cut above the rest. I am amazed at the consistently high quality of the writing and can't think of anyone else who compares. I don't recall how I was originally turned on to Bosch & Connelly anymore, but I'm so thankful I was.

Any Place I Hang My Hat by Susan Isaacs

I have very little to say about this book. Yes, it has the textbook Susan Isaacs heroine: the gutsy Jewish dame with trust issues and a messed up family. Everything good about this book can be summed up in that sentence. All of the best scenes involve her filmmaker (ex-)boyfriend, the long-lost Floridian grandmother, and the long-awaited maternal confrontation. These people and situations challenge her equanimity and reveal her character, and their scenes are worth the price of admission. On the other side is... everything else, sadly. The political plot is dull, as is anything dealing with the heroine's career as a journalist. Her best friend Tatty is like fingernails on a chalkboard, completely lacking in any redeeming features. There just isn't enough of a story here. The book is shorter than most Susan Isaacs novels, which leads me to speculate that she didn't really have much to say either. I am of the paradoxical belief that the book would have been better had it been longer. More depth would have made it all less boring. At least, that's what I'm telling myself today.

The Virgin's Lover by Philippa Gregory

I am having a hard time figuring out where to start on this one. My reaction is more contradictory and conflicted than usual. At the most basic level, it's fair to say that I enjoyed the read while hating the characters, but not in that delicious love-to-hate-them kind of way. I appreciated the fresh, non-sainted, unlikeable take on Elizabeth I. I'm as familiar as her reign as any non-Brit, non-scholar, royalty & pop culture fan can be, but all the portrayals of her that I've seen to date emphasize her strength rather than her vulnerability. Some of her weakness got on my nerves - her neurotic whining was as irritating as neurotic whining always is, and narcissistic preening picked up wherever that left off. She was venal and weak and generally horrible to behold. I have a colleague who's a descendant of the Dudleys, and it always gives me a happy to read and hear about her messed up family. This is as rich a portrait as I've encountered of Robert Dudley, though I preferred seeing him from a bit more distance as in The Queen's Fool, where he was far enough away to still be mysterious and charismatic. I suppose he's someone that needs to be viewed through soft focus in order to like him. Interestingly, the person I really wanted more of was William Cecil. He's always been a bit of a cipher, a stock character - the reliable bureaucrat, menacing and ruthless, but not overly ambitious or reaching. However, his layers here and the glimpses of his relationship with his wife were the best in the book. I'd love to see him take center stage in the next outing.

Dead Watch by John Sandford

For some reason, I failed to notice the absence of the word prey in the title of this book, and so sat down expecting to see my good pal Lucas Davenport. After taking a while to regroup and reset my expectations, I was pleasantly surprised by how good this story was. I don't know if this is intended to be the first installment in a new series, but I for one would welcome it. I love political stories, and this one is interesting enough without going too far over-the-top into "political thriller" territory (Dan Brown & Tom Clancy, I'm looking at you here). The main character is a straight up political operative and all-purpose fixer, and one who is plausibly good at his job. He's smart and interesting and his limits are realistic. The whole narrative rang true and I just enjoyed the heck out of it. More, please.

Gone by Jonathan Kellerman

So long, Kellermans. I stopped reading Faye a while ago, and now I'm done with Jonathan too. I stuck with it for longer than most series (20 Alex Delaware books!), but this one was so disappointing I just can't hang on any longer. The magic has been gone for a while, but until now I was still hoping to get it back somehow. About the only interesting thing about the book is the continuing relationship negotiations between Robin & Alex, but that's not enough to keep me around any longer and I already feel that I've given them more than enough time to get with the program. My complaints about the last Delaware book are out in force again this time - it's all way too linear. Delaware never takes a wrong turn, never explores multiple threads or more than one solution at a time. This spells B-O-R-I-N-G reading. And, of course, the actual mystery / whodunit is about as implausible as it can be. So, whatever - I'm Gone too.

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

I really really wanted to like this book. Sarah Vowell's pieces on This American Life amuse me to no end, and she was lovely in person when she made her appearance at work. But this book just bugged the crap out of me. Far too much emphasis on how quirky and special Sarah Vowell is, and not nearly enough focus on the topic at hand. Very disappointing.

The Closers by Michael Connelly

I'm caught up on Bosch! Sweet fancy Moses, that took me a long time. Seriously, 11 books (plus 5 Bosch-verse-but-not-Bosch entries) never seemed like such a big number. There were times I thought I'd never get to the end. And it's funny to be so relieved, because I loved almost every book and I'm sorry to see the end of them at the same time. But it still felt like I had a big Bosch-shaped monkey on my back a lot of the time, and I'm just glad to be caught up to current so I don't have to worry about being spoiled for future events. I think this is the perfect setting to show Bosch at his best. The cold cases he's worked - three of the eleven novels to date - have all been among the most interesting and best written. Putting him on open unsolved cases as a permanent assignment is perfect. Of course, now Connelly will change tacks between books and the next one will open on Harry as a volunteer zookeeper. Just you wait. I realized towards the end of the book how little time had passed in the world of the story. I think the entire novel takes place over the course of a day or two in the lives of the characters. The book is two thirds over before anything really gets moving on the plot, but that felt okay to me too. The tone, the plot, the story - all were vintage Bosch and left me gazing hungrily at the release date for the next book (in October) with a desperate need to find out what!happens!next! for my guy. Not a bad for an author churning out more than a book a year since 1992.

No Touch Monkey!: And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late by Ayun Halliday

Oh. My. God. When am I ever going to learn to stifle the urge to hand over money in response to a brilliant title and funny cover? It's never been worth it. Not once have the contents of such a book lived up to the promise of that first "Bwah!" reaction in the bookstore. First off, there are no lessons here. There is instead a muddled series of rambling yarns that feature activities in exotic locations, but the lessons if they exist are completely incomprehensible. Nor does there seem to be any actual learning happening anywhere, since she makes the same stupid naive mistakes over and over again, but we'll come back to that in a moment. The chapters have helpful titles like "On Health" and "On Religion" and "On Freedom", but the body of the essay never really comes together into a coherent message on any of these big ideas. And let's talk for just a moment about the complete lack of appeal in Ayun Halliday herself. Bless her for letting herself come off as so unattractive in her own book, but I found her to be completely repugnant in pretty much every way possible. It was all I could do to finish the book. I saw a woman that displayed absolutely no pleasure in her surroundings or her experiences. She seemed completely lacking in joy or gratitude for the things she saw and the people she met. I spent most of my life longing to travel, regretting the fact that I never grabbed a backpack after high school or college and hit the global road. For the first time ever, I am thankful that I missed out on this experience. Thinking that I would be keeping company with such self-absorbed, naive, terminally stupid and narcissistic makes me glad I stayed home, though I would like to take a tour to apologize to the people of the world and to show them we're not all like this nitwit.

The Narrows by Michael Connelly

Now this was awesome. I am clearly in the minority of entertainment consumers in my lack of enthusiasm for serial killer / FBI profiler / stranger-beside-me / "brilliant sociopath" / cat-and-mouse bullshit. Be that as it may, I thought everything about The Poet was interesting and well done, and I was happy to see him back on the scene. What can I say? I'm complex. Of course, The Poet is twelve kinds of brilliant and crazy and ambitious in a way no one ever really is, but whatever. It was totally over-the-top and fun, and I liked seeing all the characters from so many books come together at last. Even with Terry McCaleb dead (which totally blows), he's still somehow there in spirit. And Terry together with Harry Bosch and Rachel Walling and The Poet is worth the price of admission any day. I still don't like the first-person narrative from Harry, but it seems like maybe Connelly is troubled by it too, since he alternates Harry POV with chapters of third-person Walling POV. Feh. Change it back, dude. We'll still respect you. The ending was a foregone conclusion, but it was still exciting and well-played.

Lost Light by Michael Connelly

This was totally unexpected. I was so excited for Bosch to get back to the elite squad with this book that my jaw actually dropped when this one opened on his retirement. Of course, it makes perfect sense once the initial shock is past, as is always the case with this writer, but I love how I can never predict what happens between the books in this series. This development totally caught me looking. I don't know what was more disturbing, Harry's retirement or actually being inside his head this time around. Third-person limited omniscient narration is perfect for the series and the character, so this novel's abrupt shift to first-person took perhaps more getting used to than Harry's employment status. I love the character perspective of the Bosch series almost as much as I love Harry himself, and I completely wasn't ready for the intimacy of having him tell me the story in his own words. I didn't like it much. The mystery was good, though. :)

Chasing the Dime by Michael Connelly

I think this might be my least favorite of Connelly's work. Okay, I know it is. This one's a dud. The main character is just about the dumbest guy in the history of ever despite being allegedly brilliant, and he's entirely unlikable to boot. The plot is improbable in the extreme, and the world of the novel is just plain boring. The ending was good and almost redeemed the beginning and middle, but there was simply too much badness to overcome. I'm not sure why Michael Connelly thought it was a good idea to take on a story so radically beyond what he knows anything about, but I hope someone talks him out of it next time. Friends & family members of Mr. Connelly - where were you guys on this one? You really let us down.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

First off, this is a brilliant premise for investigative journalism, and the author deserves every bit of acclaim she's received. It's so perfect that I'm almost shocked it hasn't been done a million times before. It's one thing to hack out some stats on poverty and the working poor, but it's quite another to view it from the inside. Of course, Ehrenreich is the first to admit that she's not actually learning anything about the real experience of being poor. Hers is a vacation-poor, and the presence of her safety net plus the light of her real life at the end of the tunnel makes it a hopelessly apples & oranges comparison to the real claustrophobia of poverty. But as a simple exercise in logistics ("what does it take to break even at the end of the month as an unskilled worker?"), it's brilliant. My overwhelming feeling throughout the book is gratitude. I have put in my time at low-wage work, and I escaped. Others in my family have not been so lucky. It's been many years, but I have never forgotten the exhaustion, the frustration, and the futility of the work. It's shocking to me that there continues to be a debate about whether to raise the minimum wage at all, when simple math shows that even a 50% increase to the current minimum is still too low to live on. General discussion about this book tends to describe Ehrenreich as working minimum wage jobs. She didn't. The minimum wage is $5.15, and her jobs generally paid $6.50-$7.00. Never mind that the National Coalition for the Homeless calculated that the full-time wage necessary to afford an average 1BR apartment in America eight years ago was $8.89. My biggest complaint is that the book needed to be longer. I wanted to see more jobs, and more time in each of them. It was a good start, but someone needs to take the next step.

What Love Means to You People by NancyKay Shapiro

This book has been sitting on my shelf, taunting me mercilessly, for more than two months. This is the first time a sort-of friend has been published, and I was desperately afraid to read the book, hate it, and then have to say nice things to the author that I wasn't sure I could pull off. I should have known better, and I am ashamed of myself for having worried. In the end, I read the book in about a day and a half, hating every time I had to put it down. As with all her other unpublished works, the most prominent characteristic of this book is the brutal, gut-wrenching emotion that runs under every scene. The undercurrent of self-loathing and shame throughout the book were very difficult to shake off. There were times when the tragedy and desperatation made it hard to breathe. The inner lives of these characters are so rich that I wonder how one could possibly have so much insight about human urges and such skill at naming the unnameable. My only serious disappointment was with elements of characterization both minor and major. This usually stemmed from the small-town middle-American existence I know intimately, and which I don't think she captured particularly well. There were also some things I would have liked to see fleshed out in more detail, and shown rather than told. But for a good weekend wallow, I'm not complaining. The thing I liked best was the sense of how VERY fucked up things became for these characters, and the sense that their reconciliation faced obstacles that were absolutely insurmountable. There were no punches pulled, and it was hideous and ugly and horrible to watch. It goes beyond burning bridges and passed into the realm of nuclear fallout. And yet... in the end, things work themselves out. That's not to say that things are overly rosy or Pollyannic, but there's an understanding in the narrative that even the worst shit gets better over time, that fences mend, that people come together because they need to no matter what's come before, and that forgiveness and grace are possible against all logic and reason. This squares with my experience and my personal belief system, and it emerged here in a way that was particularly satisfying.

City of Bones by Michael Connelly

After 3.5 months, I'm finally back to the Bosch portion of the Connelly reading list. It's nice to be back with Harry. I've missed the big lug. Harry is again working a non-traditional murder case, in this instance the murder 20+ years before of a young boy whose bones have just been found in the hills outside L.A. Because of the hugely delayed discovery of the crime, a lot of the urgency of a normal murder investigation needs to come from other sources. This case sees the usual amount of collateral damage, but it feels extra tragic in this instance where all the losses clearly result from Bosch's investigative choices rather than emerging as a natural consequence of a recent crime. The peripheral characters and action are as interesting and engaging as always, and Bosch continues to be a fascinating character. There's a twist in the second half of the book that really sets the stage for huge changes in the upcoming novels, and I for one am really looking forward to a big Bosch renaissance as a result.

A Darkness More Than Night by Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly is clearly struggling with Boschboredom. I'm new to the author and new to the series, but it seems like he hit a point where everyone wanted more Bosch but he just didn't know what to do about it. He took a break - actually, several breaks - from Harry, but still didn't know what to do when he could finally no longer avoid getting back on the horse. I can respect that. I like that he never stopped writing even though he didn't know what to do with his main guy, that he didn't write badBosch just to keep to the schedule, and that his non-Harry works are just as good as the main series. This one is a weird transitional Bosch/non-Bosch book that I imagine was very difficult to write. Harry's so large a character it can be hard to have him in a book without letting him take over. Kudos to Connelly for doing a good job with it and for bringing Terry McCaleb back for a third time to share the novel space with Bosch. I liked that it was a non-traditional investigative murder mystery. The detective's focus is actually on a trial for one of his past cases, something that's hardly ever shown. In fact, I can't think of a single instance of a courtroom drama that's focused on police detectives rather than lawyers. All of the detecting around the current murder is done by a non-detective (McCaleb), while the detective is on the periphery. Bosch-as-murder-suspect is also new and interesting and I couldn't wait to see where everything was going. Unfortunately, the same non-traditional structure that makes it interesting also makes it a mish-mash. There are too many disparate things going on at once, too many characters making their reappearance in this greatest hits album of Connelly novels. I respect the effort and creativity involved in making Bosch the object of investigation rather than its driver, but that doesn't mean it worked a hundred percent.

Void Moon by Michael Connelly

I always enjoy it when authors of detective series take a turn on the other side of the aisle, writing sympathetic, interesting criminals, and this is no exception. There were bits that were a bit silly and others that were over-the-top and others that were improbable and others that were just dull. But the central character and her actions were always interesting, and her motivations always engaging and somethind that I wanted to better understand.

The Hard Way by Lee Child

I may have to reconsider my love for this series soon, after the progressively greater disappointment of the last three outings. Most of the issue in this novel is plot-related. I find kidnap plots to be dreadfully dull. There are only a couple of motivations and a couple of possible outcomes, and they've all been done a million times. Or maybe it's just this specific plot (abduction in mid-town Manhattan at daytime, escalating ransom demands, questionable good-guys, etc.) that feels like it's been done before and has nothing new to say about the experience. Reacher's mutable moral compass and tendency to fall into the sack with whatever healthy chickadee is on hand is also becoming tiresome, as is his noble ride off into the sunset at the end. I'm concerned that Lee Child loves Reacher more than I do at this point, which doesn't bode well for the future.

The Poet by Michael Connelly

This ostensibly stand-alone novel actually ties in quite closely with other events and characters in Connelly's "Bosch-verse", as I learned when I was spoiled for the novel's outcome by reading another of Connelly's "stand-alones" out of publication order. Oh well. It's the journey, not the destination, right? I'm not sure the plot and the ease with which this reporter continually negotiates his access to an on-going investigation is believable, but I really don't care. I liked Jack McEvoy a lot, just as much as Terry McCaleb before him. I found his motivations and actions to be totally understandable and relatable. I found the plot - particularly the last-minute twist and twist and twist - to be a bit absurd, but the writing and characterization carried it off.

Blood Work by Michael Connelly

I learned the hard way with this one that Michael Connelley's non-Bosch titles need to be read in the order published, as they all seem to take place in the Bosch universe even when the characters are one-shots. I know this because I actually started in on A Darkness More Than Night (Bosch, published in 2001) before Blood Work (ostensibly stand-alone, published in 1998), and managed to get myself spoiled for both Blood Work and The Poet before figuring it out and backing up. Terry McCaleb is a great character, and I'm glad that he'll be making a re-appearance in A Darkness More Than Night. He's far too well-rounded and complex and interesting to let go after just one book. I definitely want to see more. It was nice to see a hero whose specialty is paperwork rather than action, and still have him feel heroic. Blood Work was full of plot-twisty goodness. Though some of the twists were a bit too ridiculous for my taste, it certainly stayed interesting and wasn't like every other murder mystery on the planet. Nice balance of action and domestic goodness, as well as internal and external drivers for the story. All around, nicely done.

The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory

I'm sort of sorry that I launched myself into this book so soon after the others, because I started to get Historical Fiction Fatigue about halfway through and my interest waned despite how good it was. I needed something set in the modern day, but it was too late to go back. I appreciated the return to first-person narrative, but also enjoyed the the telling of the story from the perspective of a nobody. I'm a little bit skeptical about how trusted Hannah became, and how perfectly she was placed to observe and be swept up in epic events, but I'll overlook it because she is a great character. It's hard to find a good OC that can hold her own against larger-than-life historical figures, but Hannah's the girl for the job. She's steadfast and true and completely believable in her otherwise anachronistic ideas and behaviors. And when her heart breaks, mine bursts into pieces right along with it. I would happily tune in for the Hannah and Danny show, which makes me re-evaluate my previous decision not to read Philippa Gregory's non-Tudor historical fiction. Back to the bookstore for me.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

I have love/hate feelings for this book, though I suppose the fact that I bought the next four titles in the series immediately upon finishing the story puts me a bit more on the side of "love" than "hate". It's one of those books that's best not given too much thought. It seems to be a cerebral, witty, thinking-person's story, but it can't really suceed on that level when there are so many holes in this logic and in the functioning of this fictional universe. Enjoy it on the surface, but don't dig for more. If you do, it'll fall apart. It's absurd and ridiculous and much too clever by half, but it's also sort of refreshing to read something so bizarre and to go along for the ride. In this way, I'm almost reminded of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. The heroine is quirky and plucky and has moxie. The stories are mysteries, yes, but all the action is incidental to the true focus - the telling of really tall tales. Though in this series, the true star seems to be the author ("Look how clever I am! Look, damn you!") rather than the actual protagonist, I'm still willing to keep going with the series and see what happens Next.

The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory

I enjoyed this quite a bit, though not as much as The Other Boleyn Girl. I have two quibbles. First, I didn't like the changing tense of the story, with the bulk of the narrative in third-person followed by (usually) short italicized first-person insights by Queen Katherine. It's a hard trade-off between first-person and third-, but it is a trade. Taking both? Not okay. Too clumsy. Make a commitment. Second, I didn't buy the love affair between Katherine and Arthur. Or rather, I bought it in the moment, but not as a life-long motivator for everything that came after. The interplay between the two was fantastic and terribly tragic, and beautifully written throughout. But the marriage lasted less than six months (with half that time being estranged, according to the book), and she was fifteen years old. In the context of everything that comes before and after her brief marriage, I cannot see it as a sustained motivation for the thirty-five remaining years of her life. Still, it made Katherine of Aragon relevant to me in a way she never was before, bringing her sympathy and context that she's never had, in much the same way that she brought Anne Boleyn to life in the last. I will keep reading for sure.

The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

This was a complete guilty pleasure. Writing fiction about people who actually lived, in which they do all the things they actually did, is just one step away from the secret N'Sync stories scribbled in the notebooks of pre-teen fangirls and popslash fans the world over. Both are meticulously researched but still play fast and loose with the facts by ascribing emotional states and personal meanings and specific motivations to the outward events everyone already gets to see. Still, this is my kind of RPF crack, thankyouverymuch. It's got the Tudors and the sweeping brush of history and fate, and the glamour and the danger and I could just lick it up with a spoon. There were some parts (Mary's approach to child-rearing, for example) that seemed to be informed much more by modern sensibility than historical accuracy, but I was willing to handwave that in light of everything else that was good. Because everything that was good was very, very good indeed. All three of the main Boleyns - Mary, Anne, and brother George - came alive in this book like never before. I loved Anne. Scheming, brutal, viscious, scary-ass, crazy psycho Anne. She's never been full-color like this before, and I loved her to bits even while being more than a little afraid of her. I had this sitting on the shelf for quite some time, half-regretting the purchase and unsure if I was going to give it a whirl at all. I'm so glad I did, and will be checking out more of Philippa Gregory very soon.

A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George

It was nice to see a British mystery that actually involves investigating a mystery. Though there was still much more interpersonal stuff going on in this story, it was balanced with having detectives actually solve crime. A nice change of pace. Apparently, I don't like the British style of mystery stories, which makes my PD James hatred make a lot more sense - finally. Anyway, the odd couple pairing of detectives was really interesting, and Barbara was a particularly compelling character. Finley has a lot of layers to peel I'd guess, but Barbara's the one who breaks my heart. It's nice to see an author make a protagonist that's genuinely hideous and unlikeable, and I enjoy the novelty if nothing else. Still, I don't think I'll continue with the series, despite being vaguely curious about where the characters end up. Too much meandering, too much unpleasant interpersonal stuff for very little gain. It's not that I insist on a happy ending. God, no. I just like to see characters get a tiny bit of insight into their own messed up natures, or at least be able to recognize it even if (especially if) they're unable to change anything. It's one thing to accept messed up circumstances through some sort of misguided sense of nobility; quite another to live with them because that's all there is. The latter is just too depressing.

Knots & Crosses by Ian Rankin

These people may very well be the worst cops of all time. The detectives are part of a huge task force chasing a serial killer, but everyone spends strangely little time detecting anything. They drink a lot of whiskey down the pub, they attend wild parties, they have casual hook-ups, they spend time resting up in hospital just to get a few days off; what they don't do is spend any time at all doing their jobs. They are hands down the most easily distracted and distractable police officers I've ever seen in a crime novel. And I'm just not sure what the point of any of it was, if there was one. No matter how personal, how tragic, how epic the events became, the protagonists still face each day with the same reluctant boredom as any other working stiff. At one point, at the climax of the novel, with family members dead and imperiled, hampered by a gunshot wound and hunting the killer in the next room, the detectives still find time for a little chat about how the roots of modern-day Edinburgh were laid atop the city of many years ago. It's not even relevant, it's just random, and they seem just as bored with it as with everything else. I've heard that the later novels in this series get better. Since there are currently sixteen of them, I believe that must be the case; my faith in humanity refuses to acknowledge that fifteen subsequent novels could be as terrible as this one and still be read so widely. Still, I won't be judging that firsthand. I gave it one shot, and found muddy storytelling, inconsistent characterization, and clunky dialogue. That's three for three, and I'm outta here.

Doctor Who: Winner Takes All by Jacqueline Rayner

Ha! What a turnaround from the last! I'm glad that I bought three of the novelized tie-ins at the same time, or I never would have dipped into this well again after the dreadful last outing. And that would have been a shame because this one is so.much.fun. It's wacky and fun and funny, and absolutely pitch-perfect. The author has an incredible ear for dialogue that reads as natural and in-character as it's possible to be. The story is absurd and out-of-left-field as all the best Who are, with joy and peril and danger and hijinks all rolled up into one messy ball of good times. I will definitely give the next round of books a try after this one.

Doctor Who: The Monsters Inside by Stephen Cole

Oh. My. God. This is one of the worst pieces of crap I've ever tried to read. I lasted 50 pages, and even that much was near-impossible. It's so terrible I hardly know where to begin to describe it. If I had to pick one, I'd say the worst part is that there's nothing of the Whovian sensibility anywhere to be found in these pages. Granted, I only lasted about 50 pages, but I think if it hadn't arrived by then, it wasn't coming. Instead, the main characters are completely inert. The story is all tell and no show, and absolutely lacking in the competence, glee , and bias for action that absolutely define the current Who and his plucky companion. The plot is tired, the characters are so far off base as to be unrecognizable, and the dialogue absolutely stinks. It feels like one of two things happened - either the author has never actually seen the show, or they took any random unpublished manuscript off the shelf and changed the names to Doctor and Rose to make it a Who. If it wasn't one of those, I have no guess what could have made things go so horribly wrong. And I had such high hopes.

Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner

I think I'm probably being harder on this novel than it deserves. The real problem is that I just don't really like Jennifer Weiner's work, which makes me wonder all the more why I keep reading it. They're not bad, they're just meh. And life's too short for meh of any kind, but way too short of derivative meh like this particular novel. This novel read like a collection of elements from other places, each of which was done better in its other form. Ms. Weiner's greatest debts are to Susan Isaacs and the producers of "Desperate Housewives", two sources that bear striking resemblances to this novel. To Susan Isaacs, she owes thanks for the suburban housewife-as-amateur-sleuth from Compromising Positions, as well as the dead-body-on-the-kitchen-floor-with-a-knife-in-the-back from After All These Years. From the produces of "Desperate Housewives", she owes thanks for pretty much everything else. Imagine if it was Bree Van De Kamp dead from murder instead of Mary Alice Young dead from suicide (or Stephanie Tillotson from After All These Years - it seems there's one in every crowd), with Lynette Scavo as the central character, and you can pretty much take it from there.

Doctor Who: The Clockwise Man by Justin Richards

Not a lot to say here. As novel tie-ins to an ongoing series, this one was quite good. It was not outstanding, but fun and funny and a fine way to spend an afternoon. Considering my last experiment with novelized tie-ins, from which I haven't yet fully recovered, I count this as a huge success. As the first in the series, it's good enough to keep me going on to the next, which I hope will represent at least as well.

The Conjuror's Bird by Martin Davies

This was a nice little story. Not too good, not too bad, just... nice. For a story so fraught with emotional land mines, the telling is fairly antiseptic. There's a lot of pain here, but it's never really addressed in any meaningful way. I hate to be all sexist and crap, but I can't help thinking it would have been much more appealingly told if written by a woman. Or a man with any sensitivity at all. Not one of the three main female characters rings true to me, and none have even the tiniest smidge of feminist sensibility. A couple of weeks ago, I was staring at a world map in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. The map traced the three voyages of Captain Cook, and I truly marveled at the acomplishment for the first time. It had never struck me before how astonishing an achievement it was, and I wondered idly about the sort of people who would do such a thing. I didn't know when I bought this book that it was related in any way to Cook's accomplishment, but it should be no surprise that the half of the book set in the 1770s would be my favorite. I seem to be gravitating towards stories written in more than one perspective, and in more than one time period. If the modern-day portion would have been more engaging, or the historical part just a bit deeper and truer, we could have had a real winner here.

The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly

This is my first non-Bosch Connelly, and it took me a while to warm up. I hated the protagonist for the first fifty pages, then absolutely adored him for the next 250. Only Connelly could give me a weasel with a heart of gold, and make me believe it. I'd love to see more of Mickey Haller, but I also sort of like that we only get to see this one glimpse at such an unconventional hero.

Angels Flight by Michael Connelly

For the most part, I liked this one well enough. Bosch continued the professional ascent that began in the last couple of books, this time heading up an even bigger crew on an even bigger investigation. However, it doesn't take long for him to be even more well and truly fucked than before. And I thought he was marginalized and isolated already. Not so. The story kept me guessing and was highly entertaining. I'm growing a little bit tired of ridiculously convenient deaths, but whatever. Really, there's just one problem: the computer lingo. Dear gods, the computer lingo. I didn't think something written within the past 10 years could be so dated. I should know better. I've seen "Hackers". I got muscle cramps from cringing in sympathetic embarrassement for Mr. Connelly, knowing how painful it must be to reread any of this today. It's not just painfully gee-whiz about the internet, it's also glaringly, badly wrong about how internet things work. Oh, the pain.

Trunk Music by Michael Connelly

I'm afraid this may be the beginning of the end for me & Harry. I know others may cheer when the long-suffering hero gets recognized for his brilliance at last, but not me. I want them lonely, marginalized, and one bad day away from losing it all. Sure, Bosch still has his run-ins with the brass and with IA, but now he's got a Lieutenant who's a big fan, and he's in charge of stuff. Bosch shouldn't be giving orders and being listened to and running a crew. The story and writing were still excellent and had me guessing and turning pages well past bedtime and all those reasons why detective stories are great, but I'm not happy with the direction the character is taking.

The Last Coyote by Michael Connelly

When I read the back cover blurb on this one, I sort of dreaded it. I should know by now that this series always picks cliched ideas and characters, just so the writer can make them sing in all new ways. I should learn to trust. The Bosch in this story was very different from the ones we've seen to date, and I'm curious to see what he's like in the next one, and the one after that and the one after that. I'm a little bit afraid that Connelly's going to get too invested in Bosch, and start protecting him from the dark. I've seen it happen to too many characters in popular series - they gain popularity by being dark, edgy, a little bit scary, a little bit crazy, and by giving readers the sense that they're on the verge of blowing everything. Then the writers seem to lose their nerve. I have a little bit of hope for this series, based on Connelly's frequent publication of non-Bosch books. I hope that means he's going to successfully avoid that dependence, that need to protect his main guy, his meal ticket. Anyway, I really loved having Bosch stripped bare (metaphorically speaking) in this outing. Bit by bit, he loses his hold on everything connecting him to the world - job, girl, home, history, mission - until he is completely naked and rudderless. He's clearly teetering on the brink, and I can't wait to see what happens next. I'm still a little bit shocked and not sure how I feel about Bosch's candor and emotional vulnerability in this one. I thought it was out of character at first, but then I came to accept it. He's not Jack Reacher, lethal loner - he's just a sad sack lonely cop caught in a fabulous noir wonderland. The more I think about the events of the story, the sadder I get for him. It's *interesting* to see a writer make such bold choices. Series writers: take note. This is how it's done. One troubling thing about this series is that I keep trying to picture Bosch in my head, and I can't do it. I usually read without having a clear mental image of the characters, but for some reason with Bosch I seem to need it. I've been trying to use various celebrities as templates, but nothing has really taken so far. I usually get a John Spencer type of vibe from him (it's the sadness), but Spencer doesn't have the agility and danger. So then I go with Kiefer Sutherland, who can definitely bring the right mixture of menace, vulnerability, and righteousness, but isn't old enough. And when I try to age Kiefer, all I get is Donald and that soooo doesn't work for me. Lately I've been trying out Al Pacino circa "Sea of Love" and "Frankie and Johnny", and that's worked well. It helps that Bosch actually seems to strike the middle ground between the characters Pacino played in those two movies. If anyone out there has a good Bosch template, let me know.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

My primary feeling on this book is that it is absolutely terrible for the exact opposite reason why Dan Brown's are terrible. This is an excellent story told very very badly, while Mr. Brown tells putrid stories very very well. I'm not sure which offends my sensibilities more. My criticism of The Historian may seem nit-picky, and I understand if others don't suffer from the same distractions as me. But the main problem - perhaps the only problem that is worth a bad review - is how the book is told. There are several different narrators throughout the story: the protagonist in the early 1970s and in the present, her father in the 1950s and in the 1970s, her father's university professor in the 1930s and in the 1950s, her father's professor's lover in the 1930s, and so on. Multiple POVs are not in and of themselves a problem for me. The problem is that these are all told in the "my father sat me down to tell me a story and this is what he said", or "I opened the letter and here's what I found", followed by narration that would never flow from those sources. At one point, a man mortally wounded, in desperate, panicked fear for his life, sits down to type out a missive that runs for about 30 pages of printed book. The first six pages consist of him waking up in a dark place and standing up. This is not what someone does in desperate circumstances. I was irritated by this approach, but I was willing to accept that this is my own quirk as a reader. I had to stop reading Wuthering Heights because it relies too heavily on the same approach, so clearly this is a serious pet peeve of mine. But there was one thing in particular that pushes me over the edge. At one point, nearly 300 pages of text are supposed to take the form of a father's letter to his daughter, written over the course of several weeks in stolen moments late at night. Every line for all of these hundreds of pages is in quotation marks, lest we forget that they're supposed to be coming from a letter, including long sections of flashbacks within flashbacks and more intimate personal stuff than this particular character would share with his daughter. And the best part is, none of it reads like a letter. It reads like the first-person narration of a novel. Anyone who's ever sent or received a letter can tell the difference. Also? All of the writers, speakers, and story-tellers sound exactly alike. There are no obvious differences in humor, education, reticence, talkativeness, writing style, speaking style... they all seem like the same person, advancing the same plot. What's the point of having all these people narrating if there's no difference between them? It would have been so simple to allow all these characters to speak for themselves (rather than all speaking through the daughter), or to rework it another way to avoid this issue entirely. I have to wonder, then, why it wasn't.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

I absolutely, completely loved this book. This resides alongside Kavalier and Clay as a non-genre book dealing very well with genre topics. In this case, as the title indicates, the topic is time travel. It would probably be a hard sell for any hard-core science fiction fan, as the mechanics and details of the time travel are totally glossed over. And for the purpose of the story, it doesn't really matter much. More than anything, this is a tragic love story of star-crossed lovers forced apart by circumstances beyond their control. It's about separation, longing, missing your other half. It's a theme I'm particularly vulnerable to right now, which may be part of the appeal. Despite the scmaltz-potential inherent in that theme, the lead couple is non-traditional in every way, and the author is not afraid to go dark, both of which I sincerely appreciated. I was a bit concerned when the story veered off into Baby Issues, and the story lost a lot of focus throughout that entire section. There was also waaay too much detail about the woman's (Clare's) activities as an artist. I now know way more about the steps involved in making paper than I ever wanted to (no surprise, the author is a papermaker). But unlike the baby stuff that all could be cut completely and the story wouldn't suffer. The structure takes some getting used to. The story is mostly told chronologically in the middle of their adult lives, but there are exceptions everywhere. It's unbelievably well-constructed in that sense. Vignettes appear in order to illustrate or provide context for whatever else is happening, but it never seems overly expositional. And it's remarkably easy to follow once you get the hang of it. The central issue here is that the characters are in love but out of sync and connected on different levels from one another. Even when they're together in the "present", they're not ever at the same point in their relationship with one another; in their emotional lives, one is always ahead or behind the other. She first meets him when she's six years old and he's in his 30s, and they visit regularly for a dozen years throughout her childhood and adolescence. I can see why some people would find this vaguely creepy, but I think it's handled very well and doesn't trouble me at all. He, on the other hand, meets her for the first time in adulthood, when he's 28 and she's 20. And he's been pretty fucked up his whole life by this whole involuntary time travel thing. He's dark and twisted and not very nice, and not at all like the much-older version of himself that she's known her whole life. The fact that this man, this figure who's been a powerful adult presence her whole life, is suddenly the less mature of the pair is only one of the interesting juxtapositions in the story. I've read some criticism of the male character, Henry, dominating Clare too much, intruding too much on her childhood, poisoning her chances for a normal life. What's interesting to me is not whether or not that's true, but instead how that came to pass. In Henry's timeline, he meets Clare for the first time as an adult, and doesn't start visiting her in childhood until well after making a solid connection with her grown-up self. So who is subverting whose will? In fact, the whole idea of free will versus destiny is a huge issue in the book, which leaves a lot open for pondering. In fact, this same issue leads me back to thinking about the title. I've been pondering for a while: whose story is this exactly? Is it Clare's story, or Henry's? Who is in charge? Whose story is it? I can't tell. The author seems to be telling us it's about Clare, but I'm not so sure whose journey I find more compelling. I'm glad I don't have to choose.

The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly

I didn't mean to read this book in just two days - two days in which I was also incredibly busy with other things as well. In fact, after the intensity of Jane Eyre I sort of thought I'd take it easy for a while. But I'm alone on a business trip and I need something to do with myself when waiting in restaurants, so there it was. And once I started this one, I couldn't stop. I didn't mean to stay up late into the night reading it to the end, but kept ignoring my own resolve to put it down and go to bed. In the end, I lay there in the quiet dark of an unfamiliar hotel room in a nearly-empty building in a foreign country, thoroughly creeped out and hardly daring to close my eyes for sleep. There were a number of times when this one nearly jumped the rails into horrible, no good, very bad cliche, but each time the author did the unexpected, turning it around and running off in a totally new direction. I always like it when detectives go down the wrong path - nothing is more boring to me than the "lucky" detective who goes from one astounding intuitive leap to another until the thrilling conclusion - and so this was right up my alley. Each time the detective(s) took a wrong turn, I was absolutely certain that the author was going to keep going, and was thoroughly satisfied with each abrupt pull of the reigns. The repetitive use of the title within the context of the story was irritating, and there were a couple of coincidences that were a little too, well, coincidental, but the whole package was a good enough to hardly justify quibbling. I'm a little afraid by how much I am beginning to like Harry. I can't tell if the author likes him too much, or whether he can be trusted to do the needful. I like to think that he's not so in love with his creation that he won't be able to make him suffer in future volumes. It's no fun if Harry's not struggling through twelve different kinds of trouble and angst. At this point, I'm most annoyed that it'll be at least four weeks until I get my hands on another Bosch, having only packed this one and the previous for this trip. I had no idea I'd whip through them so quickly. Blast.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

I am so in love with Jane Eyre that I'm not even sure I can be rational about it. I don't know that I can begin to explain why. All I can say with certainty is that I've never loved a book more, and that I have an almost-overwhelming desire to rip it into tiny pieces and study them endlessly. I want to devour the details, to consume them and make them part of me. Yes, it does sound a lot like obsession. When I turned the last page, it was all I could do to stop myself from flipping back to the front and starting over again. If it hadn't been the middle of the night, following a 300-page sprint to the end, I just might have done so. My experience of it was similar to seeing the film "The Color Purple". No matter how many times I see that movie, I begin weeping about 10 minutes into the show, and I don't stop until after the credits roll. In this case, I was in tears on the first page (at "she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children") and hardly stopped for the next six hundred. I wept in public, on the bus and in restaurants. I wept even more in private, nearly wearing out my contact lenses with salt. I can't explain why I responded so viscerally to Jane. I wonder how many other women do the same, but I suspect it's a lot of us. Unlike many of the other classics of literature I've read, I was immediately thankful for the wealth of scholarship out there on this book, and can't wait to dig into it. I want to understand Jane, Mr. Rochester, St John, and all the others. I want to study them, to know them, to breathe them in over and over. My biggest regret is that I made it through so many years of my life without ever reading this novel. As with some of the other classic works I've (finally!) discovered in the past year, I know this one will go on the perpetual re-reading stack.

The Black Ice by Michael Connelly

I liked this book slightly less than the first Bosch novel, but still enjoyed it much more than most. The supporting characters on this one were perhaps even richer than the last, but some elements of the plot (especially anything relating to bulls and bullfighting) were considerably less engaging. One thing I liked about the first book was that it was believable. There were surprises, and bad guys masquerading as good and all that, but it didn't stray too far outside the boundaries of believability in the name of a good story. In addition to amping up the characters, this one also amped up the plot, and I personally found the bigger, more epic story to be less enjoyable. Harry needs to stay in his own backyard and deal with the day-to-day soul-crushing work of defending the city against the forces of entropy, vice, and our worst natures. If he has too big a canvas, there's too much opportunity to make a significant impact on the world, and that's not what Harry's about for me. He's about finding justice for single individuals, not the whole world. That's not to say that I won't keep working through the Bosch backlog though. I enjoy Connelly more than any other contemporary genre writer I've found in many years.

The Black Echo by Michael Connelly

This book has almost no business being as good as it is. The marketing copy on the back cover is embarrassingly bad, breathlessly teasing with more crime novel cliches than I ever thought a single paragraph could possess. To describe the leading man or the plot and action of the story is to touch on every tired ingredient of every dimestore noir in history. And yet... there is something of brilliance here. Yes, the characters all have names that are far too clever. Yes, the heroic detective is a chain-smoking misunderstood Vietnam vet with a troubled past, a tragic childhood, many enemies, and a dark cloud of suspicion hanging over him. And a heart of gold. Yes, he's a loner out for justice. Yes, he's the one good cop in a sea of self-serving incompetents. Yes, he gets the girl. Of course he is. Of course he does. And yet... the writing is so good, I forgot all the bad examples of the genre to enjoy this excellent one. I didn't begrudge any of the familiar archetypes because the narrative was so rich that I enjoyed them despite the familiarity. I'm looking forward to a lot more Bosch in my future.