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Book Review: Tail of the Blue Bird by Nii Ayikwei Parkes (Ghanaian Lit Week)
Summary:
When the girlfriend of the minister for roads and highways spots a disgusting red lump of flesh in a hut in the village Sonokrom, what normally would have been ignored and left to the villagers suddenly becomes a matter of national importance. Inspector Donkor wants a promotion, and he believes that one of the only forensics specialists in Ghana–Kayo–can get it for him.
What Kayo finds in the village is a people still steeped in the culture of the countryside, in touch with Onyame and the ancestors, drinkers of palm wine mixed with aphrodisiacs. Although he arrives with the mind of a scientist, soon his perceptions begin to change.
Review:
Kinna is one of the international bloggers I discovered through Amy, and she is awesome! She lives and works in Ghana and is interested in spreading literacy and love of reading in her own country, as well as interest in African lit everywhere. So when she announced that she was hosting a week in hour of Ghanaian lit, I knew I wanted to participate. Using the wonderful resource of tags in LibraryThing, I hunted down a book that LibraryThing was “mostly sure” I would like and ordered it from my library. Yet again, the book blogging world has brought me to a book I never would have read otherwise, but am glad I did.
This book reminds me a lot of The Summoner, only with the distinct bonus that it is a crime mystery set in Africa written by an African instead of a westerner who has visited. This means our detective hero is distinctly Ghanaian. Like all detectives, he drinks, but his drink of choice is palm wine enhanced by the village medicine man. Just typing out that sentence gave me the shivers of delight I got when I was reading the scenes of drinking and eating in the hut, which is the village pub managed by a woman and her adult daughter. It felt simultaneously familiar and new, which is one of the thrills of reading literature not written by one of your own countrymen.
Unlike western detective stories though, Parkes does not seem to feel a need to give a scientific explanation for every mysterious event that occurs. In fact, it is actually easier to believe the magical explanation than to wonder about the scientific explanation. For that reason I would definitely categorize this as “magical realism.” It is almost as if Sonokrom is a world unto itself, existing in some sort of parallel universe where magic is just an ordinary part of life.
The characters are all richly drawn and well-rounded. I had no trouble telling them apart in my mind. The method of switching perspectives from Kayo to the old man in the village works well. It allows the reader to see both the scientific and traditional perspectives and make up her own mind.
Some people may be bothered by the ambiguous/open-ended ending, but personally I feel that this is what the story needs. It leaves the reader to ponder upon the values of both tradition and modernity. Perhaps that is the point of the whole story.
Now, the book does throw in some Twi words here and there, but those are easily decipherable by context. The more difficult aspect as a non-African reader is the presence of Pidgin. Since whole sentences are written in Pidgin they were much more challenging for me. I must admit this small book took me quite a while to finish, compared to my usual reading rate. The Pidgin is not impossible, though, particularly if you have read widely among the various American dialects. An English dialect is an English dialect, after all.
Overall, I recommend this to those who enjoy both mystery and magical realism and don’t mind exploring a new dialect.
4 out of 5 stars
Length: 200 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: Public Library
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Book Review: Symphony of Blood by Adam Pepper
Summary:
Hank Mondale wanted to be a cop but his gambling, alcohol, and drug addictions ruined his record. Instead, he is now a private detective barely scraping by, so when a wealthy and famous man named Blake hires him to figure out where the monster pursuing his daughter is hiding out, he takes the case in spite of the odd sound of it. Particularly since Blake and his daughter insist that this is a literal, shape-changing, lizard-like monster after her.
Review:
This is a book that suffers from bad structure, a plethora of unlikable characters, and a serious lack of editing.
I don’t need to go into too much detail about the lack of editing. Suffice to say it’s a combination of grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. For instance, Jaeger is spelled “Yager” at one point (when being spoken about by an alcoholic character, no less). Also, although most of the book is told in past tense, periodically present tense shows up. Similarly, other errors show up that simply jar the reader, such as calling a character “rippled,” when the author meant “ripped.”
These are all editing problems, though, so I always try to look beyond them to see if they were fixed, would the story be a quality one? Alas, the case in this instance is simply no. The first half of the book is told entirely from the detective’s point of view, only to abruptly switch and have the next 25% or so back-track and tell what occurred from the monster’s perspective. Then the last bit of the book reverts back to the detective’s perspective. This gives the book an incredibly odd structure and simultaneously removes most of the mystery and suspense. Where before the creature was an enigma, we now understand it intimately. Similarly, whereas the section told from the creature’s point of view could be an interesting story in its own right, it is instead smushed between two ho-hum detective sections. Either choose to be investigating the monster or be the monster or alternate more quickly between the two to maintain some mystery. This structure simply feels like two different books willy-nilly slammed together.
There’s also the problem of the characters. The only sympathetic one is the monster, which would work if the story was told entirely from the monster’s perspective, yet it is not. Plus the monster itself just doesn’t make much sense. It’s hard to picture or imagine how it operates. It seems the author used the excuse of it being a monster to let it bend all rules whenever it was convenient to the storyline. Beyond the monster, the detective, his friends, Blake, and the daughter are all completely unsympathetic. They are the kind of people you’d move away from on the subway or roll your eyes at behind their backs. Readers, particularly in a mystery, need at least one character they can relate to.
All that said, Pepper does have some writing abilities. He clearly has a creative mind and is capable of telling a story one can follow. This would be a good draft, but not a final published work. He needs to decide if he wants to tell the monster’s story or the detective’s, then rewrite entirely from that point of view and also invest in an editor. If these steps are followed, Pepper could have a solid book here. As it stands now, though, I can’t in good faith recommend it to anyone, even staunch horror fans.
2 out of 5 stars
Source: Copy from the author in exchange for my honest review
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Book Review: The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler
Summary:
Everyone’s favorite hard-boiled private eye Marlowe is back, and this time he’s been hired to track down a respectable entrepreneur’s wild wife. She sent a telegram weeks ago stating she was going to marry her boy toy, Lavery, but Lavery was spotted in Hollywood and claims to have no idea where Mrs. Kingsley is. The last place she was known to be was at the Kingsleys’ lake-side country cottage, so that small town is where Marlowe starts his investigation.
Review:
I first encountered Chandler in a film noir class I took in undergrad. Ok, so that class was my first encounter with noir too, but it introduced a whole new genre to me to fall in love with. So whenever I stumble upon a Chandler book in a used bookstore, I absolutely must buy it. There’s simply no question. This will probably continue until I have collected them all.
The entries are always narrated by Marlowe, and The Lady in the Lake does not fail to smoothly represent everything there is to love about him. He’s darkly cynical yet possesses a striking wit even in the face of getting a beat-down from the cops (which happens in pretty much every book. Lots of dirty cops in Marlowe’s world). Without Marlowe’s voice and ever-present intelligence, the books would not be what they are. Thankfully, his presence is just as perfect here as in the other Chandler books.
So what about the story? Well, this time the story is not set entirely in LA. A solid half of it is in the countryside. While I enjoyed those scenes, I must admit I did miss the LA grittiness a bit. Although the scene where the grieving husband drags his wife’s corpse out of the lake on his back was every bit as gritty as any city scene.
The mystery made so much sense in the end that I was kicking myself for not figuring it out. I still can’t believe I didn’t figure it out! How Chandler came up with these twists and turns and managed to write them without giving it away is beyond me. I doubt anyone will be disappointed with the mystery. I literally had no idea what was going on into Marlowe explained everything in the classic film noir wrap-up scene.
The femme fatale was a weak point in this entry, however. I think this is why I really liked it but didn’t love it. She just didn’t seem sexy enough. Violent, yes. Brutal, yes. But sexy? Ehhhh. Personally I always perceive the femme fatale as a gorgeous black widow spider, and well this one just failed a bit on the gorgeous glamor aspect. She was still a femme fatale, but perhaps a bit disappointing.
Overall, I truly enjoyed my time in Marlowe’s world with this entry. Marlowe is someone whose presence it is always worth being in, regardless of whether his surroundings are perfect or not. I recommend this to noir fans, highly. Those new to the genre, I recommend start with The Big Sleep.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Harvard Books used book cellar
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Book Review: The Egyptian by Layton Green (Series, #2)
Summary:
Dominic Grey, previously a government worker and before that a champion jiu-jitsu fighter, is now working for Professor Viktor Radek on private detective cases frequently involving religious mysteries and the occult. His first case seems straight-forward enough–retrieve a vial stolen from a biomedical company in Egypt. But there’s more to this biomedical company than meets the eye, and Dominic soon finds himself racing around the globe from New Jersey to Bulgaria to Cairo in an attempt to unravel a mystery involving what just might be the elixir of life.
Review:
This follow-up to The Summoner (review) lives up to the excitement and global noir feel of the original without retracing the same steps. This holds promise for the series as a whole as one issue in writing serial detective novels is keeping everything fresh for the reader.
Green has either traveled the world extensively or done a ton of research, as his writing shows an intimate knowledge of the various areas of the world Dominic’s work takes him that is only evidenced by those who have been there. It is easy to tell when a writer intimately knows the setting they are speaking of, and this is clear in Green’s work. This lends an extra edge of excitement to the work.
Dominic’s character develops at a believable rate in this entry of the series. Who he is at the core is still the same, but his work and his encounters with a variety of people lead him to question himself, his life, and his intentions. I also appreciated that instead of pulling a 007 and moving on to the next woman without thinking much of his love interest from the first book, Nya, Dominic struggles with his emotions about the women he sleeps with. He is certainly no saint when it comes to the opposite sex, but the way he deals with women strikes a believable middle.
Unfortunately, Viktor does not feature as prominently this time around, and he also appears to be on a bit of a downward slope in his fondness for absinthe. I hope his character will be addressed more fully in the next entry in the series.
Two of the new characters added this time around are particularly enjoyable–Veronica (the love interest) and Jax (an international mercenary). I actually fell for Jax much harder than I’ve fallen for Dominic. He is from small town America with no ties to family, completely confident in the most rural corners of the world. He’s brassy, witty, and clearly has a bit of a good streak buried in him somewhere. I think both the ladies and the men reading the series will enjoy his presence, and I hope he’ll pop up in later entries (or even get his own spin-off series). Veronica is enjoyable for different reasons. She’s a career woman starting to question where her life is heading and falls for the guy she can’t have. It may seem cliche, but that sort of thing happens all the time in real life. She’s sympathetic without being pathetic. Also, personally, I found her a lot more enjoyable than Nya. She’s more assertive with Dominic; let’s just leave it at that. ;-)
The writing style itself still struggles in places on the sentence level. Sometimes Green tries too hard to sound philosophical, and it comes across as forced. Similarly, some paragraphs lean a bit too heavily on showing, not telling. The instances of this occurring are fewer than in the previous book, though, and it is obvious that Green is working hard on improving his craft. Personally, I did not find that these instances distracted me from the exciting plot at all.
Overall, The Egyptian is a fast-paced, unpredictable detective mystery, perfect for those looking for a light-weight, page-turner for their evenings or the beach.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Free kindle copy from the author in exchange for review
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Note: The Egyptian and The Summoner are on sale for 99 cents for this release weekend only (August 27th and 28th)
Previous Books in Series:
The Summoner, review
Book Review: Mai Tai One On by Jill Marie Landis (series, #1)
Summary:
Newly-divorced Em jumps at the chance to move to Kauai, Hawaii to assist her aging uncle in running his tiki bar. She hires a young, punk-style waitress who seems to be running from bad choices, and she gets to know the aging hula dance group that performs for free (it’s not like anyone would willingly pay them). Em is managing to increase business for the tiki bar and is starting to feel refreshed from her new life when the tiki bar’s neighbor shows up dead in their barbeque pit–with a machete slash through his skull. The gorgeous fire knife spinning detective Roland sees Em, the waitress, and her Uncle Louie as the prime suspects, so clearly Em and the hula group must work together to find the real culprit.
Review:
This was my first foray into the fairly newish cozy mystery genre. A cozy mystery is one involving something violent, but the violence is never particularly shown in a gruesome way, and the characters handle the situation in a humorous fashion. It’s kind of like a modern version of Agatha Christie. They also are really well-known for having puns in the titles. (Another one that springs to mind is The Long Quiche Goodbye
So what about this particular cozy? Well, the pun in the title is cute but doesn’t really have anything to do with the story. I can’t quite figure out what, exactly, is supposedly being tied on or tied up or what have you. No one is killed by ties. Basically, the title is a bit witty, but confusing.
The humor is excellent. I found myself laughing out loud multiple times while reading. In fact, this is the strong point of the book. Think of the wittiest, snarkiest person you know, then imagine that everyone around you has that same sense of humor. It’s delightfully funny and relaxing.
The characterization ranges from really well-done to painfully one-dimensional or lacking in vividness. For instance, all of the Hula Maidens are richly drawn elderly women who still have a lot of spunk and life left in them. Yet the main character, Em, is so dull that I kept mixing her up with the waitress. Similarly, some characters are so over-the-top as to be a bit offensive. For instance, a new addition to the island are Fernando and his boyfriend Wally who are both quite possibly the most flamboyant characters I’ve ever seen in a novel. Now, given the extremes of the Hula Maidens, that’s fine, but Wally is never given another element to his character. Whereas it is later revealed that a lot of Fernando’s flamboyance is an act for his career, Wally is such a gay stereotype he even repeatedly faints and is never given any other realm of possibility besides fabulous gay boyfriend. This is odd because the situation certainly arose to make him more compelling and well-rounded without diverting from the main storyline. Although I appreciate the inclusion of gay characters in the book that the other characters simply accept, I do wish Landis had been a bit more careful with her characterization of them.
The mystery itself isn’t too mysterious. Landis’s one attempt at misleading the reader into believing someone else is the murderer is so obvious as to be painful. I actually cringed on her behalf when reading the passage. The characters and humor are allowed to be obvious, but the mystery shouldn’t be.
I can give a pass to both of those issues considering that this is a cozy, and from what I’ve heard from friends who are fans, these sort of things are common in them. The one big problem though is that this book sorely, direly needed better editing. There were mistakes everywhere, which is baffling considering it comes from a publishing house (who supposedly are better because of the “professional” way they handle things….but that’s an issue for a different post). There were multiple sentences with verbs in the wrong location or written twice. Spelling errors and typos were present throughout. This really distracted me from my enjoyment of the story, because the flow would be interrupted while I double-checked that I read the sentence correctly. There is simply no excuse for such shoddy editing, although it is obviously the fault of the publishing house and editor, not the author.
These things said, though, looking at the book overall, it is still an enjoyable read. Ignoring the editing issues, it is an enjoyable cozy, but not an amazing one. The setting and rambunctious characters of the Hula Maidens hold much promise for future entries in the series. Hopefully it will go uphill from here. I recommend it to people who already know they are fans of cozies, but those who are uncertain should probably give it a pass.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
Book Review: The Summoner by Layton Green (Series, #1)
Summary:
Dominic Grey is a rogue US government agent currently assigned to Zimbabwe when a friend of the US Ambassador disappears in the middle of a tribal religious ceremony. Grey finds himself investigating the disappearance under the watchful eye of the beautiful Zimbabwean government official, Nya and with the aid of a religious studies professor aka cult-buster, Viktor. The investigation soon leads them deep into the dark world of Juju–the religion from which Voodoo originates–not to mention the seedy underbelly of Harare.
Review:
Take Raymond Chandler, transplant him to Africa, update mores to modern liberal ones, toss in some African Juju, and you have Green’s first entry in the Dominic Grey series. If that combination doesn’t make detective mystery fans sit up and say “yes please,” then I don’t know what will.
Dominic is the classic wounded and dark but ultimately has a heart of gold detective hero. He broods. He has far more energy than is logical. He is missing the classic addiction to alcohol of yore, but the side-kick Viktor has that (to absinthe no less), so that is easily forgiven. His backstory is unique, yet relatable, plus there’s Japan and jiujitsu tossed in, which is never a minus.
The love interest is, refreshingly, a bi-racial, self-reliant woman with her own issues and priorities. She is smart, yet not lacking in vulnerabilities. Nya was a refreshing depiction of a female character in a detective mystery, and seeing an inter-racial relationship develop in a book that is not a romance novel was fresh and exciting.
The plot is complex and actually fairly terrifying, even for this hardened horror fan. I did figure it out before it was revealed, but only just barely. I did not, however, predict the ending, which is a definite plus. Those who like some horror and torture in their mysteries will certainly enjoy the plot.
The one draw-back is that Green’s writing struggles a bit on the sentence level. Sometimes the sentences are too simplistic, or he tells the reader a bit too much instead of showing. There are also times when his descriptors are a bit off. For instance, at one point the reader is told that the room smells of vivisection. Most readers do not know what vivisection smells like (thank goodness), so that kind of leaves a blank for the scent in the room. Instead, Green could have said something like, “The room smelled of vivisection–a dark musk mixed with the unmistakable scent of blood.” These issues are less of a flaw than weak characterization or bad plot, though, and I have no doubt that Green’s writing on the sentence level will improve with time and exposure.
Overall, this is an excellent first foray into the world of modern detective mysteries. Grey is an intriguing main character, the plots are unique and modern, and I’m already anticipating the next entrance in the series. I highly recommend it to fans of Raymond Chandler and detective mysteries in general.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Free kindle copy from the author in exchange for review
Book Review: The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
Summary:
In classic noir style, Higashino tells the tale of a mathematician, Ishigami, and a physicist, Yukawa, facing off utilizing only their brilliant minds in a quest to save someone they each love from a life of tragedy. Simultaneously a story of love and betrayal amped up with academia and set against the quintessential backdrop of gritty Japanese city streets–not to mention a lunch box restaurant.
Review:
I fully admit that I put myself in to win this book purely because it’s Japanese literature, and I’m trying to expand my reading horizons to include more non-western lit. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to see so many classic noir elements present in this modern day detective mystery. Noir is one of my favorite genres and adding in the touches of Japan gave it a really fun twist.
It takes a bit for the story to get going and to get into Higashino’s writing style. The sentences lean toward shorter in length than I’m used to. Once I became used to the length difference though I really got into the different type of flow shorter sentences give to a piece of writing. Naturally, this could partly be due to it being a work in translation, but good translators try to give foreign language readers a sense of the original author’s style. I hope the translator succeeded in this regard, because this different style helped give this noir story an extra push in uniqueness.
The mystery itself is nearly impossible to completely solve before the final solution is revealed. The final solution also contains some serious betrayal and an emotional scene that reminded me a bit of some Japanese cinema I’ve seen. So intensely shocking and gritty and occurring in the very last few moments of the story. It moves the story up from a fun way to pass the time to a memorable tale.
The pacing is a bit off, however. Intensity speeds up and slows down repeatedly making it difficult to be totally sucked into the story. A few edits would probably solve this problem leaving the same basic tale but without any unnecessary diatribes. Some may not find the pacing variety as distracting as I did, however.
This Japanese noir piece is artfully pulled off and leaves the reader guessing to the very end. I recommend it to noir and Japanese literature fans alike.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Won from EarlyReviewers via LibraryThing
Book Review: The Devil You Know (Felix Castor) by Mike Carey
Summary:
In the near future London, supernatural creatures, particularly ghosts, zombies, and demons, have suddenly shown themselves. Naturally the religious find this to be a sign of the coming apocalypse, but most people take it all in good stride. Some even discover that they have exorcism abilities. Felix Castor is one of these people. A staunch atheist, he works for hire, rather like a private detective in a Raymond Chandler novel. He takes a case of a haunting in an archive, but gets more than what he bargained for in the form of an overly-interested pimp, a succubus, and a competing exorcist who oddly bound the ghost so she can’t speak in lieu of sending her off to the after-life. Although his employers just want him to exorcise the ghost and be done with it, Castor refuses to do so until he discovers just what exactly is going on…., and he just might become a ghost himself in the process.
Review:
This book held a lot of promise to me. I’m a big fan of both the old-school private detective novels and the more modern paranormal books, so I thought this would be right up my alley. It fell flat for me, though, although I think that has more to do with me than the book.
First, it contains a very British sense of humor instead of the American kind found in Chandler books. I know some people find British humor absolutely hilarious, but it always completely fails to strike my funny bone. I’d read sentences in Carey’s book and know they were supposed to be funny, but they just aren’t to me. That becomes frustrating the more times it happens in a book, and it happened a lot.
I also, frankly, didn’t like the whole archives setting. Maybe it’s that I’m in library science and know archivists personally, but it just wasn’t escapist enough for me. The extensive descriptions of the archives, reading room, and storage, and the librarians’ spaces were dull to me. I wonder if this is the case for anybody reading a book that takes place largely in a location similar to where they work? It could also just be that I find archives dull. I am a reference librarian, after all.
The mystery itself was good and kept me guessing, although I slightly suspect that part of that was due to the fact that the rules of the supernatural are unclear and so Carey has some leeway in taking unexpected turns. It was the mystery that kept me reading, though, so it was well-written.
Overall, although this book wasn’t for me, it was well-written, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys British humor, detective novels, archive settings, and the paranormal.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: PaperBackSwap
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