WHERE, WHERE THE HELL IS LOU? (Reading Elizabeth George)

For a while I had a pretty good thing going here.  And then around a year and a half ago, I just crapped out.  I didn't crap out with my blogging-- I've been pretty regular about posting on Loueyville-- I just couldn't get back on track with my reading.

As many of you loyal readers-- if you still exist-- know, I was diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2008.  Between the stress of the very "idea" of cancer and the subsequent chemo treatments, my mind became... a little fried.  Turns out "Chemo Brain" is a very real thing.  And some studies say it can last as long as five years.  Chemo brain gnaws at your short term memory, makes you forgetful, and disrupts your ability to concentrate.  My Mama has been calling me "the absent minded professor" since I was a wee lass; dump a steaming load of chemo brain on an already scattered soul... and it's kind of a whole mess of "what was I saying? Hey look at that pretty flower!"

Reading takes stamina.  It takes focus.  And if your short-term memory is shot, it's pretty hard to keep a story in your head once you put the book down.  

After a while of trial and failure, I got tired of be frustrated all of the time, of having to go back ten or twenty pages every time I picked up a book.  So for a long time, I just didn't read anything longer than a light short story. 

But sometimes, after you've failed at something over and over, you have this glimmer of success.  And whatever it was that gave you that feeling of succeeding?... Well, you tend to get kind of attached to that thing.  If it made you feel good once, maybe it will make you feel good again...

... gosh, I sound like I'm talking about addiction.  And maybe I sort of am.  

That thing that made me feel like a successful reader again?  Well, that thing was Elizabeth George.

After years of listening to Big Mama wax lovingly about George's characters, I decided to pick up her 1988 debut novel A GREAT DELIVERANCE.  And something about those characters just clicked with me.  And so I tried again with PAYMENT IN BLOOD.  And I became hooked.

Last week, I turned the final page of George's August 2010 release THIS BODY OF DEATH.  And that means I have read all eighteen books of George's Inspector Lyndley series... in a row... with almost nothing in between.

If that simple fact is not an endorsement of George's writing, I don't know what else to tell you.

Of course I do....

The first thing that everyone notes about Elizabeth George is that she's a woman from San Francisco who writes convincingly about a whole cast of characters, from various walks of life, who work in and around New Scotland Yard.  "Convincingly" doesn't do George justice.  Her grasp of all things British is extraordinary. Not only does she write "convincingly" about New Scotland Yard and middle and upper class Brits, she wrote an entire novel, WHAT CAME BEFORE HE SHOT HER, from the perspective of and, largely in the dialect of, an inner-city, mixed-race ten year old.  

But more extraordinary still, to me at least, is George's daring. (Mild spoiler alert... if you're familiar at all with this series, you've heard this before)  A great number of books into the series, George dared to kill off one of the most beloved regular characters, in a numbingly tragic sort of way (I thought I was prepared for it... I could not have been prepared for it).  And then she had the unmitigated gall to follow that book with a book that entirely abandoned the regular cast of characters to rewrite the murder of the beloved character from his/her killer's perspective!  AND she made that killer not only sympathetic, but desperately tragic... perhaps even as tragic as the death that he/she had caused.

And finally... most extraordinary is the fact that this most recent book, THIS BODY OF DEATH, ranks among my favorites.  Eighteen books into the series, and George is still hitting them out of the park.  After you've read seventeen of George's books, you come to trust her unconditionally.  Sure, for the first 500 pages or so, you have no idea why she seems to be recounting two separate and disconnected stories of graphic, horrible murders.  But you know, you just know, that it's going to somehow gel before the end.  

I hope George has eighteen more books in her.  Certainly her characters' personal lives have nowhere near completed whatever journeys they seem to be on.  And every new book-- there was one clunker in the bunch, but I forget which one it was, and I'm loathe to stigmatize any book in particular-- presents new, interesting crimes and new, interesting challenges for her cast of many.  Yes, these are Lyndley novels-- or so they are called-- but I figure most female readers, at least, are as invested, if not more invested, in his train-wreck of a female partner, Barbara Havers.  That being said, I'd be crushed if the series ended without solid resolution for at least five or six of the minor cast.  

I've tried watching the PBS (BBC) series, but two hours doesn't do these books justice.  Many viewers complain that the actor who plays Lyndley isn't handsome enough (uh, yeah he is) or that Havers is too pretty (yes, she is, but what a lame complaint).  But for me, it's about the fact that George's novels average around 700 pages in paperback; that means I've spent upwards of 12,000 pages of my reading life with Elizabeth George's characters.  Try replicating that on film.  

So, that's where I've been, kids.  I hope I am back.  Here's to me finding my next Elizabeth George!

FIND ME by Carol O'Connell

I'm not an expert on any given genre of fiction, let alone crime thrillers, but it just doesn't get much better than Carol O'Connell's Kathy Mallory novels. Mallory (because no one dares call her "Kathy") is a child criminal turned NYPD detective of the coldest, most calculating, enigmatic type. Only through her strange and often one-sided relationships with the people who love her (despite everything) do we get a peek at a tiny sliver of her inner workings.

FIND ME may be the best Mallory novel yet. This time around, Mallory is broken-- more broken than she naturally is. Her systems are falling apart, her guard is down, and she is far from home-- tracing two paths: the path of a piece of her past and the path of a prolific and gruesome serial child killer. Both roads lead her down Route 66.

The compelling foil to both of her goals is a caravan of parents of missing children, pulled together by an online psychotherapist of questionable character, tracing the same route seeking both their lost children and publicity for their sometimes decades-old cases. As the caravan grows from dozens to hundreds, the serial killer follows, and as the body count grows so too grows their hope that they're closer to finding out what happened to their kids.

Of course, Mallory is followed into this quest by the two men who love her most, her partner Riker and her... friend?... Charles Butler. But this time it's not because they care; it's because they want to get to the bottom of a death back in NYC. A death that occurred in Mallory's apartment, on the same day that she left town.

O'Connell's effortless omnicient point of view slides you into the minds of at least a dozen characters, major and minor. Getting to know the pschology behind these characters adds to the overall suspense and confusion (in a good way).

I devoured the book in two days. With the Mallory series it helps to start at the beginning but that's not by any means necessary. Dive right in with this one.

THE MOOR by Laurie R. King

Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes return to the site of his most famous case-- the moors surrounding Baskerville Hall-- for another crack at a ghostly hound and case buoyed by the folklore and superstitions of the people of the moors.

A MONSTEROUS REGIMENT OF WOMEN by Laurie King

THE BEEKEEPER'S APPRENTICE by Laurie R. King

There are few things better than liking a book and a character so much that it borders on obsession. Ever since my cousin loaned me THE BEEKEEPER'S APPRENTICE, I've had dreams about Mary Russell and her world. And now that I've spent a little bit of time on Laurie R. King's website and read a little of her blog, I'm discovering that the author is as totally charming as her creation.

The Mary Russell novels are set in Post WWI England. A troubled teenaged orphan literally trips over a man while strolling in the countryside, her nose buried in a book. The man, it turns out, is the very real and semi-retired Sherlock Holmes, who, well into middle age, has become a pop culture myth in his own time created by (and in his opinion much maligned by) the too liberal pen of Arthur Conan Doyle. This chance meeting becomes the apprenticeship in the title, and eventually a partnership and eventually more.

I have always had a deep love for Holmes, whether in the books or on television. My love for Nancy Drew immediately led me to Holmes who led me to Agatha Christie and a subsequent passion for the classic detective novel in general-- the dusty, library detectives specifically. And King's Holmes is a masterpiece in his faded and sometimes ridiculous brilliance. He's a genius but emotionally stunted. He's callous and cold but also wounded and vulnerable. But he's got this sexy, Indiana Jones at 60-ish thing going on too.

But of course, it is Russell who becomes the iconic figure through King's series (I'm on Book 3). She ranks right up there with the Great Women of Fiction, in my opinion. I used to want to be Jane Eyre when I grew up, now I want to be Mary Russell (yes, I recognize that I am more than a decade older than either of these women at their literary height).

Russell is exceptionally smart and is an equal to Holmes almost immediately. But where he is coarse, she is gentle and emotionally intelligent. She, too, is wounded, but she is not scarred over (well, yes she is, physically). She's the tomboy, preferring her father's clothes to her own (for sentimental reasons as well) and the independent woman of the age of sufferage, even as a girl. She is a wit. And let's face it, the cover image on every book of the series paints her as sexy as hell.

King's writing is exceptionally rich and engaging, and perhaps most impressive is her brilliant command of the time period-- not just the history, but the social sentiment, the attitudes, the mores-- you feel as though you are in the hands of not just a fantastic writer, but a scholar. In addition, King brings her background in theology to bear through Russell's studies at Oxford.

Yes, I gush. But really, this is what you dream of (or at least I do) when you think about summer reading-- something that reads like a dream and leaves you smarter... and dreaming.

ONE FOR THE MONEY by Janet Evanovich

The first of the Stephanie Plum novels.

DEEP SIX by Randy Striker (Randy Wayne White)

Re-published early thriller/mystery from South Florida's Randy Wayne White writing under the pseudonym Striker.

BIG MONEY by Jack Getze

My grandfather, bless his dear departed heart, came to fiction late in life. He was kind of a thinky person's Archie Bunker-- Old school New England and Irish-- and although he married an English major, fiction struck him as a frivolous waste of time until he was hospitalized for an extended period for heart problems and he realized that nothing was as frivolous a waste of time as daytime TV.


G-pa was a tough nut to crack, and it wasn't until, as a pre-teen, I placed in the top ten of the Boston Globe's stock picking challenge for kids that we ever had anything to talk about. For years after, each time I'd visit (before I moved across the street from him), he'd take me out for a banana split and we'd talk stocks until the shared split was gone.


(While I picked those stocks like I now pick football teams-- Dolphins are preeetty-- this one sucess led to a good decade and a half of wandering around miles away from my path. G-pa shipped me off to Business Summer Camp. When I applied to college, five of my eight schools were business schools. Even though I switched my major from Econ to English within a year, I still went almost straight to the business world after college.)


(Sorry kids, Mama's been laid up for a whle. The mind is the first to go. I ramble.)


Point being, when G-pa did "find" fiction, the man hit a formula he liked, began to devour nearly a book a day, and did so til he died.


"Sex and violence, Miss," he'd tell me. "I won't read it unless it's got a heavy helping of sex and violence."


If only my grandfather had lived long enough to meet Austin Carr. The old coot's big blue eyes would have teared up from joy. Sex and violence AND finance? It would have been almost too good to be true. AND Getze's books would have given G-Pa and me one more thing to talk about. Because Getze is a good writer-- a seriously good writer-- and with BIG MONEY one gets the sense that, despite having been a writer for most of his life, he's really just getting cooking.

BIG MONEY is the opposite of a sophomore slump. I dug BIG NUMBERS and gave it a very positive review last June, but Getze's second book features a far more nuanced and and charming Carr and an attention to detail in the prose that kicks the book into a deeper level of richly enjoyable zippy reading. Every metaphor and similie clicks neatly into place. The English teacher in me wanted to write "Great Verbs!" in the margins of nearly every page.

Sure, as a woman, I get a bit tired of the fact that Austin is always thinking with his little Carr, but how do you not love a man who, when all the cards are stacked against him and he's forced to stare into the dark abyss of life, he cries out like Streetcar's Stanley to the symbol of all that is right and good with the world, the holiest of holies-- Shania Twain?

Fun Fact: True Getze fans will recognize yet another alter-ego of the author making a cameo about midway through the book.

As with BIG NUMBERS, Getze will surely be cheated out of readers due to production value of the book. Both Carr and Getze deserve much better. An Amazon reviewer compared Getze to Evanovich, and as I just finished ONE FOR THE MONEY right before I picked up Getze (as with Block, I'm late to the Evanovich game too), I find the comparison apt indeed.

BIG MONEY, no whammies indeed.

HIT LIST by Lawrence Block

I know. As a fairly avid consumer of genre fiction, I'm seriously behind the eight-ball with just now "discovering" Lawrence Block. But it wasn't until I read The Best Mystery Stories of 2007 that I first came across Block and his sympathetic hit man, John Keller. Yesterday (yes, just yesterday) I hunted down Hit List at a used book store and devoured it in around 24 hours.

The first hit in the book takes place right here in Louisville, and I appreciated Block's careful rendering of my fair city. I don't know if there was ever a stamp collector's store in the Mid-City Mall, but I think I pegged the MCM from the description of the mall on Bardstown Road.

Keller is charming and thoughtful and Block does an amazing job of making him heroic despite his profession and the vaguely callous way he carries it out. My favorite character, though, is his agent, Dot and despite the lack of plot motion during their endless Seinfeldian "conversations about nothing," they're some of my favorite parts of the book.

Both thriller and mystery, Hit List has almost a picaresque feel to it. Each "hit" is a story unto itself as well as a building block to the larger mystery.

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

The "what the hell happened?" ending of Shutter Island is as thuddingly fantastic as the "what the heck was that?" ending of Bad Monkeys was terrible. This thrilling, terrifying book kept me on edge and confused (in a good way) from beginning to end.

Lehane, author of Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone, opens the book with a mystery and then plunges us back in time nearly forty years and begins again with a second mystery. Around eighty pages into this book, I was so hooked that I told Roommate: "This ought to be a series-- Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule are so well-drawn." He just gave me a look and said, "Wait."

Wait, indeed.

Primarily set on a island in Boston Harbor, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Shutter Island takes place during a 1954 hurricane. Maybe. New partners, Daniels and Aule, US Marshalls, are called in to help find an escaped female inmate who has been hospitalized after murdering her four children. Maybe. Once on the island, trapped by the incoming storm, they're confronted by resistant faculty, the possibility of unethical practices, and a deeper, more personal mystery for Daniels. Sort of.

This cinematic novel is, appropriately enough, is in pre-production for a movie release in 2009. Directed by Martin Scorsese, the movie will reportedly star Leo DiCaprio as Teddy Daniels (Leo seems too young for the part, to me) and Mark Ruffalo as Chuck Aule. Michelle Williams, the mother of the late Heath Ledger's child Mathilda, is slated to star as Teddy's wife. Ben Kingsley and Patricia Clarkson have also been cast. (The movie name has reportedly just been changed to Ashecliffe).

I haven't read any of Lehane's other novels, but they're heading for my bullpen right now. This past weekend, I was lucky enough to attend Lehane's keynote reading for Eckerd College's "Writers in Paradise" Workshop in St. Petersberg, Florida. He read a chapter from his upcoming historical fiction A Given Day about the 1919 Boston Police strike. Absolutely gripping stuff and he's a gifted, engaging reader. (And, I'm not too proud to say, easy on the ol' peepers.) This may be a book I buy in hardcover.

Shutter Island wins the prize for the best book I've read in the past few months. I've read a bunch of clunkers, I'm afraid. Yes, The Road may be the "best" book that I've read lately, but it left me feeling so thoroughly roughed-up that I can't classify it as a "good read." Important, yes. Good, not so much.

Briga-DOOM!: A Kate London Mystery by Susan Goodwill

See the full disclosure statement from Getze's Big Numbers. I don't know Goodwill as well, but she's part of the same posse.

You know, I am pretty sure if I caught my future husband, the mayor, caught with his pants down making whoopie to the town bitch, I would probably mow down his porta-potty with my golf cart, too. I'm just hoping that my local judge wouldn't send me to anger management with the off-her-gourd Dr. Al.

So what if Mayor Ass turns up dead in the trunk of my car, right? I can handle it. And so can Kate London.

I really enjoyed this breezy mystery featuring Kate London, newly returned to home town Mud Lake to be closer to Aunt Kitty. Kitty, formerally a B-movie bombshell, is the real star of the show with her Kool-Aid hair colored hair topped with a fez, her passion for musical theater and bongos, and her side-kick, the equally whacky Verna.

Goodwill is a great writer with an excellent knack for humor and pushing the limits of "just how bad can it get?" The book is really well crafted and moves along at a strong clip. The interwoven mysteries had me guessing until the end. I wish the love-connection hadn't been made so early on, especially because this is a series and I know the second book is in the can. I'd be more than willing to wait through two or more new books before Kate gets her Man.

I think I am supposed to refrain from calling this chick-lit, but it's hard to not go there. If Kate mentioned her Jimmy Choos one more time. . . but see, that's just a personal peeve of mine. I dig some good ol' chick-lit now and again, and this was more mystery than girl fare, but Lordy, am I the only woman in the world who's happy as can be in Payless?

Damn damn damn Carrie Bradshaw and the fact that she made "loves expensive shoes" shorthand for being feminine. Kate had it in spades before the shoe obsession.