strange and random happenstance

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
Published by: Orbit
Publication Date: August 30th, 2016
Format: Paperback, 592 Pages
Rating: ★★★
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Little does Julie Mao realize that when The Scopuli was taken it would sent in motion a chain of events that will forever change the solar system. Jim Holden and his crew make their living as ice miners. Their ship, The Canterbury, receives a distress call from The Scopuli and they go to investigate it. Holden, Naomi, Amos, Alex, and Shed board The Knight to go get a closer look. The Scopuli is derelict. No signs of any life. No signs of Julie. But Holden knows something is wrong, so they head back to The Knight and that's when The Canterbury is blown out of the sky. The Canterbury, the rest of their crew, gone in an instant, by what Holden assumes is a stealth ship belonging to Mars. In his rage at such senseless waste Holden broadcasts the destruction of The Canterbury to the whole solar system, not caring if this triggers a war between Earth and Mars. Not caring about any ramifications, just hoping for justice for the friends he lost. But Holden hasn't quite connected the dots. The five of them should have died on The Canterbury because whatever they found on The Scopuli is worth killing for. He's determined to find out exactly what it all means, damn the consequences.

Detective Miller has been taken off his usual beat on Ceres. His higher ups have given him the case of a missing girl to be investigated as a favor to her wealthy Lunar family. The girl is Julie Mao. She was a decorated pinnace pilot who gave it all up. She became active in politics and moved to Ceres and joined the OPA. The Outer Planets Alliance is a thorn in the side of Detective Miller, but a thorn he can deal with. He understands their desire to not be controlled by Earth. People on Earth can't comprehend what it's like out in the belt so why should they be allowed any say? Of course they're also the ones who call the OPA terrorists. But none of that matters to Miller, he is consumed with the disappearance of Julie. He might not be the best at his job, and he might drink a little too much, but he's also like a dog with a bone, he will figure out what happened to Julie, even after his boss demands he drop the case. But it's too late for Holden, he's a man possessed by Julie. He must find Julie even at the cost of his sanity. It's not long before he learns about The Scopuli and realizes that Holden might be the only one who can answer his questions. But when they finally meet at Eros Station things are much more complicated than either of them imagined and everything is about to change.

It's rare that I pick up a straight up science fiction book. Usually there's some kind of aspect that draws me to the book, a favorite author like Douglas Adams wrote it or it's Star Wars. So out and out science fiction usually gets pushed aside for books with more paranormal elements, thus pushing them into the fantasy end of the spectrum. Leviathan Wakes was actually a book that was thrown in the hat for book club and I can honestly say that when it arrived from Amazon it's heft made me a little hesitant to dive in. Yet I was quickly sucked in, even preaching to other members of my book club that it was a surprisingly fast read that overcomes it's flaws. Because Leviathan Wakes does suffer from a typical science fiction problem, it wants to be the pinnacle of science fiction and to that extent it incorporates so much of everything that has come before it's hard to really laud it on it's own merits. Yes, it stands on it's own, but so much is borrowed or re-interpreted that it's sometimes hard to let it stand alone. You can't help thinking what else it reminds you of. Here's a little Firefly, here's a little Battlestar Galactica, here's a little Doctor Who, here's a little Red Dwarf, here's a little Bladerunner. Each and every one of these instances pulls you out of the book. I can almost forgive Fred Johnson being Yaphet Kotto from Alien, but when Kaylee literally walks onto Holden's ship, well, that's a step too far.

Yet of ALL the references crammed in the most obvious is Bladerunner. Because Detective Miller is just Rick Deckard under another name and without the whole is he, isn't he a replicant controversy. Now, I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I'm just saying it's a thing. It's actually the Noir aspect of this book that is a little divisive, not the Bladerunner homage. And it's not among readers but among the story itself. It's hard to get a Noir story right. You have to have just the right amount of hard drinking, bitterness, and delusions, which Miller does have. But the problem is balancing Miller's plot with Holden's plot. While they do eventually connect and Holden's plot has a mystery at it's center, it is in no way Noir. And when the two storylines merge, the Noir aspect is sacrificed to the bigger storyline. So then why do it at all in the first place if you're going to eventually ditch it? I just feel that this dichotomy between the two narrators should have been thought out more in advance. Yes, it's good to have two very distinct narrators, but they shouldn't feel like they inhabit two different genres. A book needs to be some sort of cohesive whole to work and the styles of these two characters seem to be constantly fighting. In fact I wonder if perhaps this book was written more like the letter game, seeing as James S.A. Corey is actually two people. That might account for the two narrative styles being at such odds. They really needed an editor to fix this.

But then Leviathan Wakes needed an editor in general. There are long sections of the book that could have been excised and the story would have still have been successfully conveyed. This book clocks in at almost six hundred pages and probably two hundred pages could have been omitted. Two hundred pages of battles in spaceship corridors and hiding in spaceship corridors and just hanging in spaceship corridors. And the Amos/Alex thing should have been fixed, because their names are too similar. Oh, and internal monologues! Yes, I know Noir needs these, but as I've already said, the Noir was sacrificed so why not sacrifice a few of these monologues? Oh, and don't think the irony is lost on me that half of James S.A. Corey, the Ty Franck half, is the assistant to George R. R. Martin, an author known for mighty tomes that could use a little tightening up. The extra irony is that he claims he doesn't want to write like his boss... um, ok, so you've totally failed there. But where the editing could have really been used is in the space politics. Yes, I get that with the conflict between Mars and Earth politics have to be included, to an extent, but please, as I've said time and time again, don't bog down your book with politics I don't care about. Contain what needs to be contained and omit the rest. I get too much of regular politics, I don't need to add space politics to this as well. In fact this was a flaw that always grated on me with Battlestar Galactica, too much politics! There's only so much I can take and only so much needed. So bring on the editor!

Though the faults of the book don't take away from the fact that in the end it was still enjoyable and I look forward to reading Caliban's War. The reason for this is that James S.A. Corey has created a believable future. Sometimes when writers imagine the future and how our future will look like in outer space it's just ludicrously wrong. They think too big, too broad, too many aliens. Instead mankind has had about two hundred years in outer space and human genetics, language, and politics are shifting, but not radically, instead at a normal pace that we can see as possible. Outer planets resent the control exerted by Earth, we still can't go beyond our own galaxy to the far reaches of the universe. Mining the other planets for ice to have enough water is big business. These little things like survival and control are big concerns. As for humans themselves, it's interesting to read about what would hypothetically happen to people born outside the confines of gravity, known here as Belters. How it would effect not just their genetic makeup but how their bones would be effected. They are taller and thinner because of this lack of gravity. Reproduction is more difficult. They've developed sign language from the necessity of spacesuits, and therefore their own linguistic mutations with the Belter patois. They are also viewed as different and therefore racial tensions erupt. But this is all believable. This could happen. This might happen. This makes me really need to start the next book.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alien, Backlog Bonanza, Belters, Bladerunner, BSG, Caliban's War, Deckard, Doctor Who, Firefly, GRRM, Holden, James S.A. Corey, Julie Mao, Kaylee, Leviathan Wakes, Miller, Noir, Outer Space, Red Dwarf, Science Fiction

The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike Book 1) by Robert Galbraith aka J.K. Rowling
Published by: Mulholland Books
Publication Date: April 30th, 2013
Format: Hardcover, 464 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Cormoran Strike's day starts in free fall. Charlotte and him have been on and off for years. After he returned wounded from Afghanistan she walked right into the hospital and back into his life. But this breakup is different. For the first time it was Cormoran's decision. This signals the end. And at his little office, now his home, if things don't pick up this will also signal the end of his career as a PI. He has one client and one stalker and had hoped to have no assistant, having given the previous temp the heave-ho. But in walks Robin, his new temp, which he can't afford. But then in walks a lifeline. A new client. A new client who has money and is willing to pay double. Cormoran knew John Bristow's brother Charlie when they were little. Charlie died in a tragic accident over the Easter holidays and Cormoran viewed it as yet another loss in a life full of them. John has come to Cormoran because his other sibling has died and John won't accept the police verdict of suicide. He needs Cormoran's help.

Lula Landry was a world famous supermodel when she plunged to her death on a cold night in January. Even Cormoran had heard about the tragedy. Another shooting star that burned too bright and died too young. It's almost baffling that the myopic man in front of him was related to the angelic Lula. But Lula, like John and Charlie, was adopted. Cormoran feels a kinship with John over his unconventional family, Cormoran being the bastard of a famous rock musician with famous siblings strewn all over the world. John's belief in Lula convinces Cormoran to take the case. He is soon shoved into the shadowy world of celebrities and their hangers-on. Where paparazzi blind you with their flashes at every chance. This is a world Cormoran's siblings know well, one he has always studiously avoided. But the deeper he digs he starts to have the same conviction as John. Lula didn't jump, she was pushed. Which means there's a killer out there who might strike again...

For someone who doesn't just love, but adores the Harry Potter books as much as I, it's kind of shocking to admit that I've never read any of Rowling's other books. Oh, don't get me wrong, I have them all ready to read, The Casual Vacancy, the next two Cormoran Strike books after this one, I've just never gotten around to them. I think there's a bit of the fear of the next. When you love an author who has written a series the first time they step outside that comfort zone, be it your comfort zone or theirs, it's a seismic shift. It's something entirely new. That new could be good or it could be bad, but one thing is certain, it will be different. Which I think is one of the reasons that Rowling tried to step back and release The Cuckoo's Calling under a pen name. She was harshly judged for The Casual Vacancy and she just wanted to write a book to write a book and avoid the PR machine that would swing into action. In fact I actually had this book on my "to be read" list long before it was revealed who the true author is. But reading this book I was struck by one thing, I think you NEED to know that Rowling is the author to get the full impact.

What I mean by this is that the celebrity of Lula has an extra punch because Rowling wrote her story. Rowling is, let's face it, the most famous author in the world. Just the hype building up to a play set in the world of Harry Potter is causing mass hysteria. If an unknown author had actually written The Cuckoo's Calling the viciousness of the paparazzi couldn't have been as viscerally real and accurate. You the reader get that Rowling is exorcising some of her demons, giving the press a little bit back of what they've done to her over the years. This isn't some imagined horror of what the press could do, but what they have actually done, and done to her. The sad fact is this practice continues. We still have paparazzi hounding people because their readers just have to know every detail of famous people's lives. To me, this world that Cormoran is shoved into in his investigation, a world where paparazzi can hound celebrities to death, is what grounds this book. This is what I connected to. Would I have connected to it as strongly had I read this without knowing Rowling had written it? I don't think I would, because I think I would have doubted the veracity. I know that this world exists, but it's something more to read about it from someone who has experienced it firsthand.

Yet beyond this grounding I was expecting something more. The Cuckoo's Calling was billed as a Neo-Noir. Hence I thought the book would be dark and mysterious. The book isn't. And that's letting you down easy. Yes, it has the building blocks of Noir. We have the down and out protagonist with a bad history with women, or in this case, a woman. We have the starlet who died too young. We have the world of celebrities and it's seamy underbelly. Heck, I almost sound like I'm writing a loose outline for my favorite movie, L.A. Confidential. But it just falls short. The sheer number of cigarettes smoked can't ever bridge the gap between what it is and what it wants to be. Noir needs that something more. We connect to Cormoran, but we don't really get true insight into his mind and thought processes. This I think is where it fails on the Noir front. We understand who he is and what he is like, but not really what he's thinking, what he's figuring out. There's just a void where we need to connect to him on a visceral level, to key into his feelings, his ups and downs, and instead we like him, but we just don't quite get him. Noir is never about liking, it's about understanding.

This in fact is the fatal flaw of the entire book. While the way the characters are written give us people we like and make them real in our eyes there's just too much character development. Now this makes sense for a long series, because the groundwork is being laid and it's best to have a solid foundation, BUT for the initial outing it's so overlong that the mystery suffers at the expense of making these characters fully rounded human beings. There needed to be a balance between character and forward momentum. I am honest when I say I fully love Robin and her lifelong desire to basically be Nancy Drew and Cormoran and the complete mess he is because of his childhood and his injuries, both physical and mental, but this needed to be either trimmed down or balanced by the case of Lula. I picked up this book expecting a twisty-turny murder mystery, instead I got a really well written character study. In fact a lot of my friends think it's sacrilegious the rating I gave this book, but it's how I felt. If I adjust my expectations for the rest of the series, perhaps I'll come to love these books, but my love of the characters can't forgive the narrative all it's flaws.

And boy does this narrative have it's flaws. More than any other genre mystery books have to have a constant forward momentum. That desire to keep turning the page long into the night until you're shocked that there are birds chirping and the sun is actually cresting the horizon. Now I'm not going to be all superior and say that I had figured out the mystery in five minutes and the solution was a foregone conclusion, because I actually didn't. I had one key aspect early on, but by the time that Rowling actually planted the final two pieces of evidence that were essential to solving the death of Lula I no longer cared. I was bored by the mystery. The plot just limped along while the characters were luxuriated with detail. As time went on it got harder and harder for me to pick up this book because I just didn't care anymore. Obviously Cormoran and Robin lived to fight another day, seeing as there's another book, and they were all that mattered to me, so why should I care about the murderer? Why should I pick up to book again? The final thirty pages took me almost two days to get through because it didn't seem pressing. For me to willingly put aside a book... right there is the answer as to why I thought it was just meh.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Backlog Bonanza, Character, Cormoran Strike, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, L.A. Confidential, Mystery, Noir, Paparazzi, Robert Galbraith, The Casual Vacancy, The Cuckoo's Calling

The Colorado Kid by Stephen King
Published by: Simon and Schuster
Publication Date: October 4th, 2005
Format: Kindle, 184 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Dave Bowie and Vince Teague are reminiscing about an old unsolved case to their new intern at The Weekly Islander newspaper. A man was discovered on the beach twenty-five years earlier, cause of death unknown, whose last few hours defy explanation. A year after his death the victim is nicknamed "The Colorado Kid" because of a pack of cigarettes he had on him when he died. He is eventually identified as James Cogan, but an identity doesn't solve a crime. Vince and Dave speculate on how in all their years as newspapermen this is the only true mystery they have come across. They have their theories, but the truth might never be found; they are getting up their in age, now the intern must carry the torch. She must remember "The Colorado Kid."

For quite a few years now I've had two close friends addicted to the television show Haven. I have spent the barest minimal energy to occasionally mock their love of a show with Eric Balfour in it. Come on, there's a reason he dies like five minutes into the first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer! Yet their love of the show combined with Netflix having every season available to me meant that my willpower was broken over one summer by my love of marathoning shows. That and there's just something that's cheesy and fun about Stephen King shows, why else would I have Rose Red on DVD and stayed with Under the Dome to the bitter almost incomprehensible end? While falling for the show, because I did despite Eric Balfour's presence, I was also impatient. Could I figure out the mystery of "The Colorado Kid" before they did on the show just by picking up the book? So that was my grand plan, spoiled by Stephen King.

If you're going the way I went, from the show to the book, or even the other way around, from the book to the show, know now, they have minimal resemblance. In fact the mysterious murder of "The Colorado Kid" and the two lovely old codgers running the newspaper, Vince and Dave, are the only resemblance you are going to find betwixt the two. Though on the show they do love to liven things up with as many Stephen King references as they can, which is fun for his fans. I do find it interesting that in a television show that's basically Smallville without the superheroes, that the two characters I connected with most are Vince and Dave. Because the book, and in some regards the show, is Vince and Dave's story. Still, it is a flawed story, both on the page and on the small screen.

The main flaw, and hence the crux of my problem with the book is that it has no ending. Vince and Dave spin a yarn, that might have certain clues as to the outcome, but it is never spelled out, never revealed. For a person like me, this lack of closure is infuriating. I want to know if my theory is right! Life is full of ambiguity, fiction is there to give us some closure that we won't find in life. King has had a love of experimenting with endings for quite awhile. The ambiguous ending is the easiest cop out, but he has also serialized his tales, like with The Dark Tower, so that you can't skip to the end, thus having a drawn out conclusion. I have a feeling a lot of this has to do with his being raised by a mother who would read the end first, but that's just my opinion. Yet, even though he set out to try something new, I can't help myself wanting something old and concrete. This was like sitting around with your grandparents while they told you this fantastical tale but then five minutes before they were done they forgot the ending.

But the biggest question I'm left with is why this is part of the Hard Case Crime imprint of Simon and Schuster? How is this a hardboilded mystery? Hardboiled is noir and dark and Dashiell Hammett and dames and guns and lots of smoking... what hardboiled isn't is two codgers telling an intern over soda in a cozy Maine newspaper office about an unsolved murder. This story is far more Murder She Wrote and Jessica Fletcher than Sam Spade. Seriously, I am baffled by this. Was Stephen King's outline for this story "Would She Learn the Dead Man's Secret" and then he punked them? Was he purposefully subverting the genre? I haven't read King extensively, but this was just, odd. So odd in fact that he apologized in the afterword for what he did. I think I'll stick to the show, the early episodes before it got too weird and cancelled. Thanks for the effort Stephen, but you should know you shouldn't make excuses for your work.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dashiell Hammett, Dave Bowie, Eric Balfour, Hardboiled, Haven, Murder She Wrote, Noir, Rose Red, Smallville, Stephen King, Superhero, The Colorado Kid, The Dark Tower, Under the Dome

Rising Sun by Michael Crichton
Published by: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: January 27th, 1992
Format: Paperback, 339 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Lieutenant Peter J. Smith left homicide for the more stable hours and better pay of being a Special Services Officer. He's called in when a diplomat gets drunk or there's a translator needed at the scene of a crime. When he gets the call to come to the scene of a murder that occurred during the Nakamoto Corporation's grand opening of their new Los Angeles headquarters Smith's world gets turned upside down. The first thing that happens in this unusual case is that he is requested to bring Captain John Connor with him, who, while in semi retirement, is fluent in Japanese and has a divisive relationship with them. Up on the 46th floor the victim, Cheryl Lynn Austin, seems to be nothing more then an inconvenience. But as the two cops dig deeper Cheryl had strong ties to the Japanese community and quite probably was a pawn in their business. The one clear thing is that the Japanese will do anything to delay and obfuscate the investigation so that the police reach the decision that is most convenient to them. This is business and to them business is war; casualties are to be expected and they are willing to exert pressure where it is needed, even on the police.  

Rising Sun has the unique distinction of being the first Michael Crichton book I read under my own steam. This wasn't homework. No matter how great Jurassic Park is it still was for school not for me. Therefore reading Rising Sun was something to luxuriate in, so obviously I took it on vacation with me. Though me and reading on vacation oddly don't go together very well. I have several books that have taken long journeys with me but were never picked up once on that trip. Pride and Prejudice went to D.C. and New York, Soul Music went to Ontario, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy went to San Francisco, Thyme in a Flask went to Arkansas, and I never read a page of any of them while on vacation. There's just too much else to do. But there's something about the driving force of the narrative in Rising Sun that made it different then all these other books.

Despite being set during a chilly February in Los Angeles, I will always associate Rising Sun with the heat and humidity of a Wisconsin summer in Door County. We had a three bedroom suite at the Pheasant Park Resort in Sister Bay. I had the dubious honor of having the room with the whirlpool tub. Which was right next to the bed. In a room that didn't have air conditioning. And yes, everyone insisted on using the tub. Let it be known this is a mistake I never repeated. Even if the room hadn't conspired against me to keep me awake all night the book would have anyway. I lay up all night sweating through what little sleepwear I had on being just absorbed by the story. While yes, I had read quite a fair amount of The Cat Who... mysteries by Lillian Jackson Braun at this time in my young life, there's nothing like the first time you read a well plotted mystery, and that is exactly what Rising Sun is. Re-reading it all these years later I again devoured it in only two days. But it's amazing how much more insight I have over twenty years later.    

What sets Rising Sun apart from almost every other book Crichton wrote under his own name is that it doesn't hinge on his two most used tropes, advanced technology going awry or medicine. This book can in no way be classified as science fiction and this makes it unique in his canon. In fact it almost feels as if Crichton felt the need to show that he could write a solid mystery without any gimmicks. He wrote a straight up first person narrative that has this noir vibe that I didn't pick up on back in high school. In fact, having recently read Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest you can see the similarities and how Rising Sun would fit perfectly in this hardboiled genre. There's organized forces working against the protagonists, there's the cynical attitude of both Connor and Smith to the Japanese, by the Japanese running a slander campaign against Smith you question his reliability, turning him into an anti-hero. Plus, hardboiled fiction is known for it's unlikable characters, even the murder victim is unsympathetic in this case. Crichton excels at this genre and it's no wonder that Hard Case Crime jumped at the chance to publish his John Lange back catalog. I should probably get to reading those.

Though despite all the good there is about this book with it's mystery and driving narrative there is some severe xenophobia going on here. The xenophobia I think is oddly why the book correlates well with hardboiled fiction because writing of that era wasn't culturally sensitive. So yes, while this book entertains me, an older, wiser me is sitting back and going, damn, that's a little racist don't you think Michael? How about we tone it down a bit, make it less of a one sided argument? And saying the Japanese are more racist then Americans doesn't really help your cause, it just makes it seem even more vindictive. With the rants against the Japanese, as well as a few aimed at the Germans, I felt like I was having a dinner conversation with an embittered elderly relative who survived WWII and was going to take their hatred to the grave. Side note, my great aunt did take her hatred to the grave. So, all in all, I can see why this book got mixed reviews. It's a good story, just maybe a little too polarizing and vindictive.

But there is an ironic truth nestled in the vitriol against the Japanese. Their "Saturday Meetings" in the book where they are deciding what to do about America, well, if the meetings were real or just the imaginings of Crichton, they have turned out to be oddly prescient. Basically Crichton states that the Japanese could see us going to hell in a hand basket, and really, look at the world around us? Unemployment, unrest, looting, riots, protests, murders! I mean, what if there was a time that we could have changed the course of our country and turned a blind eye instead? What if there was something we could have done to not get where we are? As usual, after reading some Crichton you are left with more to think about then when you started and also wondering if perhaps he was some kind of precog...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Cat Who, Crichton Celebration, Dashiell Hammett, Hardboiled, Japan, Japanese, John Lange, Jurassic Park, Lilian Jackson Braun, Michael Crichton, Mystery, Noir, Precognition, Racism, Red Harvest, Rising Sun, WWII

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
Published by: Library of America
Publication Date: 1929
Format: Hardcover, 967 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

The Continental Op has arrived in Personville, being sent by the Continental Detective Agency's San Francisco office for their new client Donald Willsson. After setting up their meeting, but before the arranged time, Donald Willsson is killed. The Continental Op approaches Elihu Willsson, Donald's father, to try to get to the bottom of his client's premature demise by lead being pumped into him. Elihu admits that Personville's nickname of Poisonville is pretty accurate. While still the town founder and czar, to all intents and purposes, the town is run by several competing gangs. The town is as corrupt and villainous as you can imagine. Donald was trying to use the newspaper to expose this corruption, and it seems that this is why he died. The Continental Op gets Elihu to hire the agency to clean up Personville. He cunningly has him sign a document so that even if Elihu tries to go back on the deal the Continental Op has the reigns and no one to answer to, except the boss back in San Francisco, but hopefully he won't notice the lack of a daily report for a little while.

Soon the Continental Op is deep within the rivaling gangs. Rumors and hearsay, as well as rigging a boxing match, are all it takes to set them off. Lead whizzing through the streets and gunfire soon become an even more common occurrence in this little corrupt town. The bodies start to pile up all while Elihu tries to get his erstwhile employee back to the city by the bay. But Poisonville has gotten under the Op's skin and he feels he has a score to settle. When it looks like they won't get the Op in a body bag, the corrupt police try to frame him for murder. Poisonville is going to burn, if it's the last thing the Continental Op does.

Up until now I have been concentrating my reading on the other side of the pond. The cozy mysteries of the British Isles set in a manor house with, in all likelihood, a locked room and a corpse. Yet the Golden Age of Mystery wasn't just relegated to our forefathers across the waters. America had a very strong literary tradition during the Golden Age, with authors like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Yet there was a distinct shift in the type of writing. Here in America it was grittier, more gang related, more hardboiled, with a distinct authorial voice that would later come under the Noir heading. While this style is more associated with the 30s, 40s, and 50s, which modern writers like James Ellroy have emulated in their neo-noir books like L.A. Confidential, Dashiell Hammett coined this style with his Continental Op, which would be the forerunner to that most archetypal of Noir characters, Sam Spade.

Reading Red Harvest, I was easily swept up into the Noir style, I could almost hear the first person narration as a gritty voice over as the Continental Op walked through Poisonville planning his next move. I could almost see Hammett, obviously in black and white, sitting in a dingy office, smoke rising above his head, as he typed out the story. While yes, to say all this is now a bit cliched as to my imagery, I was still amazed with the distinct style, which for all it's tropes running around in my head, felt just as fresh and vibrant as if it had just been written. Though the book did have it's rough spots. Red Harvest was Dashiell Hammett's first book. Prior to this he wrote short stories, many of which featured the "hero" of this book, the Continental Op. This fact did not help him, nor did the fact that this book was serialized in four parts in the pulp magazine, Black Mask. Instead of a cohesive whole, the book is basically four interconnected short stories, which makes the narrative choppy, and almost makes you not want to continue reading because everything was brought to a close and then a new aspect of the story was brought into play in the next section. While Poisonville gives an overall framework, everything else would fall under the heading, "and meanwhile in another part of town...."

Then there's the, how should I put this, cavalier attitude the Continental Op has towards death. I mean, I'm used to death in things I read and watch, heck Midsomer Murders is one of my most favorite television shows and the bodies pile up in that County like nowhere else in fiction... till now. I mean, holy geez people, I don't even know what the end death toll was. I lost count somewhere around twenty. Yes, twenty people are dead and the Op doesn't bat an eyelash. Gangs gunned down left and right and at the center is the Op stirring the pot, getting one group to go after another. If his plan to clean up the town was to eliminate every person in the town, then, well... he's succeeded marvelously by the end. He went all blood simple as Hammett coined and the Coen's later used for their first movie. Yet, I have to ask, was this moral ambivalence meant to be a reflection on the Pinkertons? I mean Hammett worked for them and the Continental Detective Agency was unambiguously them... so was he trying to make a statement? The Pinkertons don't have the most sterling of reputations and where to be feared in that at one time their combined forces outnumbered the US army. So was Hammett writing to the new style he was creating, exposing corruption, or perhaps biting the hand that fed him?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Black Mask, Continental Op, Dashiell Hammett, Golden Summer, James Ellroy, L.A. Confidential, Midsomer Murders, Noir, Pinkertons, Poisonville, Pulp, Raymond Chandler, Red Harvest, Sam Spade, San Francisco