Review of The Killing of Strangers by Jerry Holt (Lucky Press, 2006)

Another of my Ohio/Kentucky reads.

Sam Haggard left the police to take up a job as a security guard at the local university and in turn his wife left him. He’s now been sacked by the university for yelling at her new partner. As he picks up his stuff to leave the head of security offers him details on a baby-sitting job – keeping an eye on Crystal Jones, a local counter-culture celebrity, who’d been an agitator at Kent State University during the 1970 civil guard shootings. In the aftermath her partner, Delbert ‘Lucifer’ Jones, disappeared and now it seems he might be back, twenty five years later, stalking Crystal. Haggard is hired by Corrie, Crystal’s daughter, to keep an eye on her alcoholic mother, but her grandfather soon pays him off. Not long after Crystal dies in a mysterious fire, the Feds are taking an interest in Haggard, and the local cops are trying to bury the story. Everything seems to lead back to the Kent State killings and Haggard is determined to find out why to save himself and Corrie, the young woman he feels compelled to protect.

I found The Killing of Strangers a rather frustrating book in many respects. Some of it was well written, the contextual story of the Kent State shooting was interesting, and it certainly had a lot of action, but I found it quite patchy and uneven in quality and there were parts I just couldn’t buy into. For example, Haggard getting the sack for yelling ‘Get your fat arse out of that window’ at a professor who was illegally entering a university building at two o’clock in the morning and who had set off the fire alarm. I can’t see that standing up to any kind of legal scrutiny. The ending also stretched credulity to the limit, with coincidence after coincidence, and a very careless special operatives abductor. The older, downtrodden but worthy man falling for the girl half his age is also a well worn path at this stage. Some of the scenes were very well done, but others were pedestrian or redundant or below the standard set elsewhere in the book. The characterisation is generally good, and I thought the Mac character was excellent with his bitter wisecracks, but he was underused. My sense is a book, written in the third person, that focused on Mac and his wife would have great potential. All this, of course, is my opinion, and the book gets a raft of strong reviews on Amazon. It just didn’t click with me, even though I enjoyed parts of it.

Freakin' Loser

Things have been pretty hectic lately. On Thursday and Friday last week I was up in the North-South Ministerial offices in Armagh meeting about ICLRD (International Centre for Local and Regional Development) projects that focus on cross-border spatial planning. I also spent time giving my views to the Innovation Task Force that's meant to be setting out how Ireland can realise a 'smart economy'. Not unsurprisingly my message was you can't expect an innovation and knowledge-led economy if you disinvest in education and research and development (which is what is presently happening). The weekend was spent preparing for a site visit that was held yesterday that concerned a large collaborative bid for a National Audio and Visual Repository for which I'm the chair of the coordinating committee. It brings together researchers in the humanities, social sciences, computer science and libraries from ten higher education institutions across the island, plus the main cultural and media institutions, and industry. Thankfully things went well on the day and I think we made a compelling case. Hopefully there's a bit of joined up thinking between the government funding body and the Innovation Task Force! Today I'll have spent the morning contributing as a member of the Census Advisory Board where we'll have been going over the pilot results for the 2011 census and finalizing the questions. In the afternoon I have to reprofile the Institute's budget which will no doubt be a joy. We're presently audited every three months and I've just been told I now have to sign-off on daily timesheets for the 31 people whose salary/scholarships we cover. If only the politicians received the same level of scrutiny! What all of this means is that I don't have anything meaningful to say today because there's too much other stuff going on (yeah, I know, I'm a freakin' loser). Back to a review tomorrow, when hopefully things are back on an even(ish) keel.

Review of Satan’s Lamb’s by Lynn Hightower (Felony and Mayhem, originally published 1993)

Satan's Lamb's by Lynn Hightower is another of the Ohio/Kentucky novels recommended to me.

Lena Padget had been in graduate school completing a PhD in economics, but for the six years since her pregnant sister and nephew were murdered by her brother-in-law, a member of a satanic cult, she has worked as private investigator, helping women who are in trouble. Jeff Hayes got two, concurrent twenty years terms for first degree manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Having behaved himself and supposedly found God he’s being released early. Likewise, Hayes’ old business partner, Archie Valetta, is also being released. Padget and Hayes have unfinished business, and she’s also hired to protect Valetta’s ex-wife who fears that the former biker gang member is going to return to reclaim the stolen money she was supposed to have hidden. Soon Hayes is back on the scene wanting to collect his wife’s life insurance money, and Valetta attacks his ex-wife, making off with her young son, Charlie. With the help of local detective, Joel Mendez, a specialist in occult crimes, and Rick, her hacker ex-husband, Padget is in close pursuit, but when she finds Valetta he’s dead and the boy missing. It’s clear that Hayes is once again mixed up in a satanic cult and that they’re almost certainly holding the small child captive, waiting for the right time to use him as a human sacrifice. With the clock ticking, Padget races to try and save the young boy’s life.

It took me quite a while to get into Satan’s Lambs. Hightower writes proficiently, but the story took some time to develop and whilst the characters were well drawn it wasn’t until well into the book that I started to identify with them. My feeling was that the first half of the book spent too much time trying to set out the context for the story and flesh out the characters and their relationship with one another. In the second half of the book there was a better balance between description, action and contextual material and it morphed into a page turner and I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next. The relationship between Padget and Mendez develops nicely, and there is a good cast of supporting characters. I won’t give any spoilers, but I thought the moral ambiguity of the ending was excellent. Overall, a slow burner that got better as it progressed.

The Lazy Sunday Service

Posts I enjoyed this week
Same but different, pt 1 - Adventures in Writing
Crime Always Pays: That crucial first week - Crime Always Pays
If the Dead Rise Not, Philip Kerr - Crime Scraps
You might be in a Spillane novel if - Do Some Damage
No sleuths please, we're British - Do Some Damage
Raining Dogs and Dogs - International Crime Authors Reality Check
Review of City of Thieves - The Drowning Machine

My posts this week
Review of All the Colours of the Town by Liam McIlvanney
Laughing in the face of danger
September Reviews
On Bus Stations and Restaurants
Forgotten Friday: The Lime Pit by Jonathan Valin
Saturday Snippet: Queenpin by Megan Abbott

Saturday Snippet: Queenpin by Megan Abbott

Megan Abbot’s Queenpin charts the relationship between the legendary Gloria Denton, the city’s chief moll, and a young woman who she takes on as an apprentice (my review here). Abbott sure can write and her two principal characters are multi-layered and complex. Here’s how both are introduced.

I want the legs.
That was the first thing that came into my head. The legs were the legs of a twenty-year-old Vegas showgirl, a hundred feet long and with just enough curve and give and promise. Sure, there was no hiding the slightly worn hands or the beginning tugs of skin framing the bones in her face. But the legs, they lasted, I tell you. They endured. Two decades her junior, my skinny matchsticks were no comparison.
In the casinos, she could pass for thirty. The low lighting, her glossy auburn hair, legs swinging, tapping the bottom rim of the tall, better stools. At the track, though, she looked her age. Even swathed in oversized sunglasses, a wide-brimmed hat, bright gloves, she couldn’t outflank the merciless sunshine, the glare off the grandstand. Not that it mattered. She was legend.

Hell, I’ll admit it, I had a taste for the other from the start. Where would a twenty-two-year-old kid rather be? Setting the table for corned beef and cabbage dinner with her old man, forks scrapping, moths fluttering against the window, the briny smell from the kitchen sinking into my skin with each tock of the imitation grandfather clock? Or gliding my way through the fuzzy dark of the Tee Hee, vibrating with low, slow jazz, clusters of juniper-breathed men and women touching, hands on lapels, fingers on silk nylons, cigarettes releasing willowy clouds into every acid green banquette? Sure, it was no El Morocco, but in this town, it might as well have been. The place felt alive, I could hear it beating in my chest, between my hips, everywhere. Clock-out time and I never wanted to leave. I’d grin my way into a Tom Collins from Shep, the lantern-jawed bartender, and watch from the corner stool, watch everything, eating green cherries, the candied drink soaking into my lips, my tongue.

Tell me you don’t want to get to know these two feisty, scheming women?

Forgotten Friday: Review of The Lime Pit by Jonathan Valin (Felony and Mayhem, originally published 1980)

Harry Stoner is a PI in the classic Chandler mould, but with a more sentimental and romantic side. Having completed a profitable out-of-town job, against his better judgement he decides to take a charity case – an old man with little means to pay is trying to track down a young, homeless girl that he’s befriended. It soon transpires that the girl has been co-opted into a child prostitution ring by a young, handsome couple, and soon Stoner is questioning various low lifes, although it’s clear the answer to her whereabouts lies amongst a circle of rich men that prey on naïve and vulnerable children. With everybody warning him to give up the case, Stoner carries on regardless, knowing that even if he does find Cindy Ann Evans, it’s unlikely to have a happy ending either for her or himself.

As I noted yesterday, Jonathan Valin is a great observational writer of both characters and places. In Harry Stone he created a multi-layered, complex and flawed character that one immediately identifies with and cares about, and the book is populated with a myriad of other memorable and well drawn characters. The pacing is good and the dialogue snappy and realistic, and the contextualisation is strong without being overbearing. I thought the first half of the book was excellent, but the story started to slip a bit in the second half losing a bit of coherence and realism. Without giving any spoilers, my feeling was that Stoner’s judgement becomes suspect and slightly out of character and I think the story could have been resolved more effectively. Otherwise, I thought The Lime Pit was a great read and Stoner is definitely a character I want to catch up with.

On Bus Stations and Restaurants: The Lime Pit by Jonathan Valin

Given that Jonathan Valin’s The Lime Pit was first published in 1980, I’m holding over my review until tomorrow as a Forgotten Friday book. The novel was recommended to me in my plea for crime novels set in Ohio or Kentucky (where I’m heading to in ten days time) and The Lime Pit is set in both – Cleveland (Ohio) and Newport (Kentucky).

This is the first Valin book I’ve read, but what strikes me about his writing is that he’s a great observational writer, both with respect to characters and places. Here are two passages concerning everyday spaces of the city – the bus terminal and the restaurant – that I think capture the essence of both.

No matter how noisy a bus terminal gets – and on a July Saturday they get pretty damn loud – you can always hear your own footsteps echoing above the crackle of the loudspeakers, the hiss of air brakes, the soft sigh of bus doors opening, and the amplified roar of the diesels as they pull out of their loading docks. I don’t know how they do it, how they calculate the eigentones and reflecting angles to bring the click of heels and shoe leather into such crisp prominence. Nor do I understand why bus stations are always made to look so dreary. Or why the people sitting on the hard blue-and-red plastic benches are invariably as cheerless and sullen-looking as the gaunt men and women in Walker Evan’s studies of the rural poor. Even the attendants and guards are seedy and impassive, and everyone looks too damn bored to talk about it. If there’s an urban hell, the bus station must come pretty close to being it.

The Bee shut down at half past nine. I sat alone in the dining room while the waitresses cleared the tables and smoked and joked and toasted one another with empty Coke glasses. A restaurant is a far cheerier place after the customers are gone. Everyone is loose and clubby. Left-overs are eaten. Drinks are poured. No one wants to go home. It’s like leaving a warm, friendly kitchen.

I recognise both descriptions and they’re spot on. And one more for good luck.

When this was just a market town, maybe Cindy Ann could have afforded to come here wide-eyed and unwary. But cities grow up and become delinquents. Even cities as strict and unglamourous as this one. Years pass and what is just a smirk or a piece of conventional wisdom out in the farmlands becomes an industry in the flats.

I like the idea of cities as delinquents. I also managed to find these other covers.