Literary Lollapalooza March 2009

This issue of Literary Lollapalooza features a serial-killer obsessed cop, the search for Lincoln’s killer, a crime story about fathers and sons, an action packed Harlan Coben thriller and a sweet story about a Russian Jew in WWII era Leningrad in search of a dozen eggs. It was a busy month and I did a lot of reading. Some were home-work, some personal obsessions. If you must skim, just skip to the last review. It’s the bees knees.

This is Literary Lollapalooza, March Edition.

Books Acquired: The Way Home by George Pelecanos, A Little Bit Wicked by Kristin Chenowith, Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk, and The Lost City of Z by David Grann.

Books Borrowed: Long Lost by Harlan Coben and City of Thieves by David Benioff.

Books Read:

Sweetheart by Chelsea Cain.

This is the sequel to the bestselling thriller Heartsick. Chelsea Cain delves right back into old territory with this continuation, following detective Archie Sheridan and his obsession with serial killer Gretchen Lowell.
This book picks up a few months after the events of the first book and barrels forward with momentum. Archie, our most beloved of F**ked-Up detectives is on the mend. He has moved back in with his ex-wife and children (though sleeping in a separate room), he is still heading a homicide task force dealing exclusively with serial crimes, and he is attending therapy and attempting to control his addiction to pain killers. He has however stopped visiting Gretchen.
And with the discovery of two bodies in a neighborhood park, Archie is faced with another serial killer, and reporter Susan ward is nearby to help identify one of the victims. Trouble is, just as this case takes off the Beauty Killer is back in the news: Gretchen Lowell has escaped from prison. Archie needs to focus but can’t keep his mind off Gretchen. He has a fool-proof plan to both reunite with and capture his one true obsession.
This is a brilliant if not slightly forgettable follow up to the incendiary debut that put Chelsea Cain on the literary map. All the old characters are back, and so are all the old crushes, grudges and emotional baggage. The plot progresses naturally from events set up in Heartsick and the characters follow the trajectories already set in motion. Everything rings true, and while we cheer Archie’s surface progress (the family, the drugs), we know it’s just surface and that the demons that haunt him swim much deeper, and that sooner rather than later Archie will inevitably dive to join those demons.
The case is a good one, and the sub-plot involving Susan Ward and a politician’s affair with a teen is thankfully revived from the first book and brought to fruition.
If there is a problem with the book, it is also its most endearing quality, that it is too intricately tied to the first. This isn’t so much a sequel as it is a continuation of the first. The loose ends of the first book are revived here, and the issues unresolved in the first book are back on display here. It’s almost as if these two books should have been one larger volume.
Again, this is part of its inherent charm. And it is also the reason why it comes across as forgettable. One begins to forget where one book ends and the other begins. When paired together (as Stephen King did when he named these two books among his top ten books of last year) they are phenomenal reads. They are highly engrossing and the characters and likeable and flawed, and we root for them and two minutes later we shake our heads in sympathy because we know why they make the bad choices we wish they wouldn’t. This is top-notch crime writing and Chelsea Cain is a name to watch.

Manhunt by James L. Swanson

Manhunt follows the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and traces the 12 day hunt for John Wilkes Booth and his collaborators.
I have been obsessed with all things Lincoln since reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s incredible Team of Rivals. However that book left me unsatisfied in the fact it literally ends with the assassination. Don’t get me wrong, it provides perfunctory information about what befalls our key players in the following years, but I wanted to know minute by minute what happened following the assassination, as I had grown accustomed to in Kearns’ 800 page opus.
Luckily for me, James L. Swanson, a man obsessed with Lincoln’s death has provided a moment by moment account of Lincoln’s death and the days thereafter where all of the country waited with their breaths held to hear of the capture of Lincoln’s murderer. This is the PERFECT follow-up to Kearns’ in-depth Lincoln bio. It picks up right where Kearns leaves off, and his eye and ear for detail, not to mention his encyclopedic research into all things Lincoln and Booth, provide a thrilling moment to moment account of Lincoln’s murder and Booth’s subsequent escape and the nation-encompassing manhunt that followed.
This book reads like the best mystery/thriller, but of course, it’s all true.
Swanson is an expert on the topic of Lincoln’s assassination, having written three separate books on the topic (and he is currently working on another Lincoln bio), so you know the facts are solid, and he crafts them into a well-told campfire story about honor, duty, conviction, and hubris.
I would recommend this book to anyone. But I would especially recommend it to anyone who has read or is planning to read Team of Rivals. Focusing on Lincoln’s death and aftermath, it is a terrific follow up to a great biography of Lincoln’s life.

The Way Home by George Pelecanos (To be released May 12, 2009)

George Pelecanos is the kind of come crime writer that you read because it rings true. The novelist and Emmy-nominated writer for HBO’s hit series The Wire is a D.C. native, and chooses to place his novels in the heart of the city he loves best.
The Way Home is the latest in Pelecanos’ treasure trove of D.C. crime novels. Stephen King calls Pelecanos “possibly the greatest crime writer working today”.
My first Pelecanos was his last called “The Turnaround” and I immediately fell in love with his writing and his landscape. I had just moved to D.C. and his use of geography in telling the story really served me well as a new resident.

Pelecanos isn’t florid or melodic. He isn’t wordy and he doesn’t try to impress with a fancy turn of phrase. However Pelecanos writes the truth. His books are often short, simple, and to the point. The trick is that his characters are so real and his situations so believable and immediate that you can’t help but be transported. He doesn’t deal with major situations, but rather with simple real-life moral questions that any of us could face on any given day. His characters are not one-sided two-dimensional plot devices, but flawed and complex human beings who try to do their best from one moment to the next but often wind up making the wrong choice, only to have deal with the consequences later.
As a matter of fact, Pelecanos’ books are all about the consequences of our actions. The stupid split second decisions that we spend a lifetime reliving, overcoming, and forgiving ourselves for are his bread and butter.
The Way Home is another in this line. This one is particularly focused on the relationship between a father and a son. The way that we let the silence and miscommunication separate and dictate our relationships with one another.
The story is about Chris Flynn, a tough but uninspired teen who lets his bad decisions land him in a teen correctional facility. His relationship with the outside world, including his parents, is tenuous at best. He has no interest and no concern for anything outside of the here and now—The Pines, the facility in which he is incarcerated and the young men who spend their youths there is his only concern. Day to day survival is enough to worry about. But soon Chris starts to imagine a life outside of his violent environs, and with the help of Ali, a studious fellow inmate, begins to put his life back together.
Fast-forward, and Chris is out and working for his father’s carpet company. He’s got a girlfriend, and a best friend, and he’s mending his relationship with his father. The trouble comes, as it often does, unexpectedly and faced with a tough decision Chris sets his future, his family and friends, onto a crash-course with destiny, rolling with the punches until ultimately he must make one last decision. And he and his father must face the toughest challenge of all: trusting one another.
I love Pelecanos, and find that his writing transports me more fully into the lives of his characters than most any other writer I know. This stuff isn’t pretty, but it’s real.

Long Lost by Harlan Coben (released March 31, 2009)

Long Lost is the latest in a series of novels based around the character of Myron Bolitar, a sports agent turned man-who-gets-things-done.
The book centers around Myron’s re-acquaintance with an ex-lover named Therese, and a mystery involving her ex-husbands’ disappearance, a strange genetic clue, and a faction of terrorists using Aryan children as weapons, bent on utter destruction.
This is kind of a silly beach read. This is a fun and rewarding mystery thriller that doesn’t require much in the way of investment. There are shocks to be had, for sure, but this is good old-fashioned fluff, and it is an enjoyable way to pass an afternoon.
Coben makes this book entirely accessible to anyone, whether they have read the previous Myron Bolitar novels or not. I, in this case, had not. And I enjoyed it immensely. This is the literary equivalent to a Hollywood action blockbuster. It required no deep involvement, the slimmest of character development, and presented action, thrills, and chills galore.
My only complaint is that Bolitar, a funny, self-deprecating ex-athlete is never allowed to fully become a person. I assume that this is because it is part of a series. Along with the ease of dealing with characters we already know is that we don’t have to do all that long boring character development that you get in the first one. However, in a book that is intended to stand alone and entice readers to read the other Bolitar novels, it is important to know who our hero really is. Unfortunately, he never really becomes a solid identity, and his friends and colleagues, cartoonish and two-dimensional at best, while fun and amusing, never lend an ounce of realism.
I said there were surprises, and I wasn’t joking. About midway through there is a jaw-dropper that I still haven’t recovered from, and at the time left me breathless like a punch to the gut. There is lots of international intrigue, twists, turns, and crazy surprises that you’ll never see coming, and others that you saw all along. This is great mindless entertainment, the popcorn movie equivalent of a great read. Sometimes it’s just what the body craves, even while you chide yourself for giving in to the temptation.

City of Thieves by David Benioff (released in quality paperback format March 31)

This is quite simply a stunning novel of grace, wit, horror, and human frailty and courage. I was blown away from the first few pages.
David Benioff is a screenwriter best known for his adaptation of The Kite Runner, and the author of the book 25th Hour, which subsequently became a Spike Lee joint starring Edward Norton. 25th Hour was a good crime story, but held no clue as to the depths and heights of Benioff’s talents.
City of Thieves is a fictionalized account of Benioff’s grandfather’s stories of growing up as a young Russian Jew in Leningrad during WWII. The tale that follows is a wry, sprightly, menacing, and ultimately joyful romp though the Russian countryside. It has moments of great sorrow and austerity, but revels in the all-too-human moments of farts and sexual arousal.
This is a great coming-of-age tale that spans many genres while telling its too-strange-to-not-be-true story. The story centers on 17 year old Lev Beniov who by chance happens on a fallen German soldier, and upon taking the soldiers knife enters into an adventure that will take him to the edge of death’s door and to the heights of love’s kiss.
Sent on a mission to find and bring back a dozen eggs, Lev and his cocky soldier sidekick encounter many odd assorted characters and many life-affirming and defying moments only to discover that the greatest gift they have is each other.
This is a hell of a read. It is by turns funny, sad, heartbreaking, torturous, uplifting, and ultimately satisfying. You will fly through this book as I did. It is a fast read, and you won’t want to waste a moment to put it down. And the good news is, and this maybe giving away the ending, but you will be smiling as you put this book down. It is a charmer, and I am in love with this book.
Go. Read it. Now.