Why I Just Want to Smack the "Woman in White"

For years I've had this on my classics tbr pile but for some reason my attention always veered away. This summer the Wilkie Collins mystery moved to the top, and I dove in, eager for a good old-fashioned 19th-century yarn, my favorite kind.
I haven't been this disappointed since Anna Karenina, another doorstop of a novel which fails in every way except one, Anna, for whom Tolstoy has utter contempt and who only comprises about one-third of the aforementioned girth of the book (yeah go ahead, make my day. You know I'm right).
As I was saying, while  The Woman in White works as a thriller (or "sensation novel" as it was called at the time of publication) I found some of it, particularly parts of the ending to be dreadful.
If you're going to take readers on  a six-hundred page ride, you better give a good bang at the end, but here, you're left asking questions. Who is Percival and how did he meet the evil Count? I have no idea, and Collins apparently didn't think this was important. The bare bones of the central crime are explained, it's not the thousand percent solution that a book with this kind of longevity should have. Percival and the Count's true identities are never revealed and this is a major flaw.
Surprisingly, I thought there was an excellent balance of female characters -- the half-sisters Miss Fairlie fair and simple, Ms. Halcombe, plain and smart are cliches but balanced,  and all the other women, especially the redoubtable Mrs. Catherick, the stone-hearted mother of the woman in white in the title, are portrayed with exceptional skill and clarity. The Woman in White herself, not so much. Of course her place in the story is to set up the mystery, but for some reason I find her annoying and whiny beyond measure. Every time she appears in the story instead of sympathy I just want her to get to the friggin' point before the bad guys show up. Of course she's doomed, but even that can't endear her to me. Oh well. And by all means if you think I'm wrong, feel free to comment. The Moonstone anyone?

Got Book?

If you've got an idea for a whodunit rattling around your head, or are trying to write one but are stuck one way or another, the Mystery Writers of America has your back. The prestigious organization behind the Edgar Awards, has launched MWA University, which is dedicated to "giving back to the mystery community."
On August 13 they're holding a one day event where aspiring writers will be taught by established authors. Described as "not your grandmother's writing class," the full-day program is designed to teach participants the essential skills needed to write a novel, from the idea stage to the final editing. The focus is on the craft of writing.
The seminars will be available around the country. If there isn't one in your area ask your local MWA chapter to request one.

And when they say low cost, they're not kidding. $50 gets you a seat. For more information or to register (space is limited) click on the link above or call 212-888-8171.

Deja Clue

Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane
William Morrow/HarperCollins ($26.99 324pp.)
Review by Vivian Lake
Twice reading Lehane I've had to stop and skim back over what I've read to get my bearings. Once, at the jaw-dropping twist in Shutter Island (one of the best novels I've ever read) and now reading Moonlight Mile, to make sure I haven't missed anything, because situations seem to arise out of nowehere. Lehane's latest, a sequel to Gone, Baby, Gone seems to be written by someone else entirely.

Lehane's well-documented writing chops (he's also the author of Mystic River, which was made into an Oscar-winning film by Clint Eastwood) make Moonlight Mile doubly disappointing, because by now you expect him to blow you away.

That said, this was my first time reading a Kenzie-Gennaro story, which may have made a difference but shouldn't have. Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro are two detectives now-familiar to Lehane fans, but as all avid readers know, you should be able to pick up any one of a series of detective novels and not feel you've missed anything. As far as the history of the two investigators goes, the story is solid, the problems are all in the current story, which isn't that compelling or believeable.

Straight, No Chaser

It never fails. No matter what I've planned to read for this blog and how carefully I've penciled it in my to-do list, the minute I walk into a bookstore all bets are off. Anything could happen, and usually does. LeCarre's latest languishes on my nightstand because  I found a spectacular anthology that I just had to read right away, and lucky for you, I'm going to tell you all about it.

Blood, Guts, and Whiskey  (Kensington books, trade paperback, $14.00), is a collection of hard-boiled stories from the editor of ThugLit.com, Todd Robinson. Robinson curated these  24  tales of moral turpitude by 24 kick-ass writers, and, ladies and gentlemen, this is .44-caliber prose.
It's all here:  Cynical anti-hero/heroines of dubious repute, murky pasts, dames up to no good, and use sex as a weapon, and enough violence so that the blood spatter brightens up the dark mood. The characters and scenes fairly jump off the page, immersing you so quickly the beer and desperation hit you like a wave of humid air.
 Jordan Harper's Red Hair and Black Leather, the opener, sets the tone and starts this trip to the dark side where you'll meet a mobster with a bloody side job, a writer who discovers the darkness within, a couple of mobsters who run into trouble when someone flips the script on them, a shopkeeper at the end of his rope, and a mother who gives up her soul to make amends.  That's just the tip of the iceberg. This is a stellar collection that won't disappoint.

I Know, Therefore I Am
Memory by Donald E. Westlake
HardCaseCrime 368 pp. $7.99

This is not your average hard-boiled mystery. There is no crime per se, no detective punching out bad guys and chasing down clues, no gorgeous dame with an inconvenient husband batting her eyelashes. And yet the mystery here is as noir as it gets.

Before we're introduced to the protagonist, Paul Cole, he's been beaten nearly to death by a jealous husband who caught him en flagrante.  When he wakes up he's in the hospital, and he has no idea who he is, where he's from or where to go next.  Released from the hospital and intimidated by the local cops, he decides to skip town and try to track down his former life. 

As he accumulates bits and pieces of information regarding his identity, Cole faces a tragic obstacle of his own memory, which no longer works as it should. He wakes up every morning to a series of notes explaining himself to himself, a la Memento.  The picture that starts to emerge of his life before is at odds with who he seems to be now, but of course, he wants want anyone in his shoes would want, for everything to get back to normal as soon as possible. But if he isn't the man he used to be, who is he?
You'll be thinking about this long after you've finished, and wondering about the nature of identity.
Donald E. Westlake, who died in 2008 ,was an award winning crime writer who wrote under several aliases because he was so prolific. Memory is his last book.

James Ellroy: Haunted by his mother's ghost | From the Observer | The Observer

James Ellroy: Haunted by his mother's ghost From the Observer The Observer
I've long been a fan of the UK Guardian's literary reporting. Click on the headline for an astonishingly well-written profile of crime writer James Ellroy, the reigning king of noir, whose latest, Blood's a Rover is out this month.

Downtown Noir

Serious as a Heart Attack by Louisa Luna ($23.00 Atria Books, 227 pp.)
The anti-heroine of this blisteringly raw tale is the most original character to hit crime fiction since Lynda La Plante’s Lorraine Page. Queenie Sells is a hard-drinking smart-ass who elicits both disgust and compassion while making you laugh at the same time.

Shortly after loses her job as an editor at a calendar company (yes, there is such a thing) she bumps into an old acquaintance on the subway who offers her the possibility of some quick cash for doing him a favor, and she decides to take him up on his offer. Trouble ensues.

This is a classic noir detective story in the tradition of the greats --- Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet, with a twist. The hard-drinking loner “detective” is a woman, the client who rains down trouble on her is not a rich dame with legs from here to there but a clueless rich guy with the same sense of entitlement and a stupidity are so pronounced it’s hard to keep from smacking him in the head.

Things get complicated when Queenie becomes the prime suspect in a murder and her friend wants another favor. There are two guys following her, and neither of them are cops.

Swigging everything from beer to Margaritas to Jack Daniel’s, Queenie doggedly pursues the truth (even when she has to pull her day’s wardrobe out of the dirty laundry) in order to evade arrest. Traveling from her Lower East Side home base to El Barrio to the Upper East Side, The Four Seasons and The Waldorf-Astoria, Queenie wise-cracks her way through the mayhem.

The dark humor here is broken by a couple of moments of breath-taking poignancy mostly in flashback which display the author’s serious talent. We’re left wanting more of Queenie and more of Louisa Luna.

Uptown Noir

Blood Red Blues, by Teddy Hayes (Kate’s Mystery Books/Justin, Charles & Co. 192 pp. $12.99 paperback original)

From the sex and violence-soaked opening scene you know that noir is back with a vengeance. This is the first in a new series of mysteries set in Harlem featuring Devil Barnett, a former CIA operative who returns to the neighborhood after his father’s death.
Barnett’s plan is to quietly continue running his father’s bar, the Be-Bop Tavern, but when the police come calling in the form of Deke Robinson, a corrupt local politician, and ask him to help in solving the murder of a Japanese diplomat at another Harlem club, try as he might, he can’t stay out of it.

What does a horny diplomat have to do with Harlem real estate? Why are the Asian gangs so interested in his investigation? What does all this have to do with his uncle’s new romance? Barnett combines his CIA skills with his neighborhood connections to find out between dodging a decidedly homicidal attacker.

Along the way he has to deal with pimps, whores, informants, Asian gangsters, beautiful women and oh yeah, the cops. You can smell the whisky and cigarette smoke and hear the music. This is a hard-boiled but loving look at contemporary Harlem.

Voulez-vous Mourir?

Murder in the Bastille by Cara Black ($24.00 Soho Press 276 pp. hardcover)

No good deed goes unpunished, goes the saying, and for Aimee Leduc that’s an understatement. She’s in a restaurant when she notices that the woman at the next table (who’s wearing the same jacket she is) left her cell phone at the table. She rushes out to give it to her and next thing she knows she’s in a hospital. The good news is that she’s alive. The bad news is she’s blind from the beating. It could be worse: the other woman was found dead.

Aimee barely pauses long enough to acknowledge her blindess (at first) before calling her business associate Rene to her side and applying her investigative skills to the case. To keep hysteria at bay, she goes after the facts like a heat-seeking missile, despite the fact someone may still be trying to kill her.

The police are intent on blaming the attack on the Beast of the Bastille, a serial killer with the same M.O., but Aimee isn’t so sure. She isn’t even sure she was the intended victim. There are a slew of suspects and the sexy Parisien mystique to make it all even more compelling.

This is the fourth Aimee Leduc mystery. For more information about the series, go to www.carablack.com