The Spellman Files (Book Review)

The Spellman Files (Izzy Spellman Mysteries)
Lisa Lutz

A good book to start on a plane. Frothy, sometimes funny, good beach read of a mystery. Set in San Fransisco, the plot name-checks places like Nob Hill and the Tenderloin. The Spellman family and the mysteries they solve could have been in any city large enough to allow for sarcasm, driving and the eccentric Spellman family who run a private eye agency. Mom and Dad met as investigators, and run the agency as a team. Both Spellman daughters work for the agency: narrator Isabel (Izzy) in her very late 20s, and the wisecracking kid sister Rae, a teenager with a penchant for sugar cereals and stakeouts. Theirs is not a normal childhood. Too-perfect older brother David works as a lawyer, further making the point that the Spellman children don’t have a normal upbringing. They learn things from their investigator parents like how to pick locks, evade tails, and search court records. Having PI parents makes for running jokes about normal parent-teenager arguments cracking under interrogation, background checking boyfriends, and the normal teenage rebellions getting a funny twist from the PI genre.
The family that spies for a living and on each other is full of zany eccentrics. Good-natured blackmail abounds, between Rae and her older sister, Rae and her hard-drinking uncle Ray. It’s fun, has a few surprising turns, but is mostly insubstantial.

It almost works as a mystery novel. Got this from Lynn, at work, who said “A fast read, but I wasn’t sure whether I liked it.” I could see that. I think the setup of a sarcastic 20something single woman, with eccentric, flexibly moral relatives looks a little familiar, at least to avid mystery readers. You could swap Isabel for Stephanie Plum seamlessly. (The result would definitely be fun!)
What I’d want to do is recast the premise as a YA novel, starring Rae, the high schooler. Keep the rest of the bantering cast of characters, and scale down the crimes to YA-friendly, and the result would be a funny suspense teenagers would love.

Published in:  on March 25, 2009 at 6:38 am Comments (1)
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Manhattan is My Beat (book review)

Reviews of the books I read on vacation, continued.
Manhattan Is My Beat
Jeffrey Deaver

A slick little mystery set in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. Full of iconic 80s touches, from Rune, the protagonist’s fading dyed hair, to the video store where she works (that rents VHS and Beta videos) to other small touches about characters’ appearances- a stroke of green eye shadow here, leather there. Rune is barely 20, prone to rootlessness and vivid imagination. She’s also good at the Holden Caulfield aimless intellectual whine. She goes to an older gent’s apartment, to pick up a video he’s returning, and finds him murdered, shot dead in his easy chair. Convinced that his favorite rental, a black and white true crime story from the 40’s, holds the key to his death, Rune tries to solve the mystery. Along the way, she, and those she meets become endangered. Fast paced, and definitely gritty (some of the descriptions of the murder scene, and New York streets had me wincing) Deaver builds a definite sense of Rune’s dangerous path. She’s closed in on every side, not sure who to trust. And the reader has an excellently unreliable narrator, swayed by her fairy-tale infused patter into not being sure how much to believe, how much she’s actually plugged into reality or might be outright delusional.

I’m starting to wonder whether Deaver’s appeal as a writer might be mostly in his gimmicks. (Lincoln Rhyme, quadriplegic forensic investigator, anyone? They might be good mysteries, but they hang on their gimmick.) But this protagonist, this setup returning Rune’s analogies and passions to movies and fairy tales, doesn’t feel all that surprising or innovative. Organized crime and NYC grime- there are more dated details than New Wave haircuts and rewinding videos. Naming his protagonist Rune, and having her reluctant to reveal her real name is coy, but not very original. Maybe this book hasn’t aged well since its first publication. “Manhattan is My Beat” was not my cup of tea.

Published in:  on March 24, 2009 at 5:57 am Leave a Comment
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The Secret of Lost Things (book review)

The Secret of Lost Things
Sheridan Hay
Anchor Books, March 2008
$14.95, 354 pages

I love reading fictional versions of landmarks and cities I recognize. This coming of age novel is set in the Strand, renamed “The Arcade” and populated by insular, hyperverbal eccentrics, who make me wonder about the lives of the people stocking shelves and tallying up used book sales at the Strand. Told from the point of view of eighteen year old, orphaned Rosemary, “The Secret of Lost Things” showcases the kind of densely packed, erudite prose you’d expect from a novel about a sprawling warren of a bookstore, and the brittle but strange people who work there.
Sometimes the language gets so richly poetic it’s almost suffocating (not unlike the sensation of wandering towards the back of the Strand basement, actually.) I think, though, that it’s good for me to read a book with such self-consciously literary language. It helps me remember to stretch my own sentences beyond the words I use too often.
The most active part of the plot, involving a rare Herman Melville manuscript, and the rivalries between avid bibliophiles, including store staff, becomes incidental to the novel’s meditative pacing. Reading “The Secret of Lost Things” is more like browsing the Strand’s shelves idly, and overhearing some of the conversations between employees and book lovers. It is more about Rosemary’s process of growing up and growing into the city (in that wise, verbose way women always seem to do as protagonists in this kind of literary novel.)
On the whole, though, I’m pleased with it. Thanks to Raphy, my Brazilian friend, for recommending it.
The meandering descriptions and rhythms of language were lovely to read, and I enjoyed the process of getting to know the cast of characters in Rosemary’s life, from her terse landlady to George, the albino store manager, to Oscar, who works in nonfiction and commands Rosemary’s infatuation for reasons I couldn’t entirely fathom.

Published in:  on March 16, 2009 at 4:34 pm Leave a Comment
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Off to the Beach!

I’m off to the beach with a stack of books! Back in a week, with a stack of book reviews!

Published in:  on at 1:03 pm Leave a Comment

Musing Mondays 3/16

This week’s Musing Monday asks:
We were all warned as children to ‘never talk to strangers’, but how do you feel about book-talk with random people? When you see people reading, do you ask what it is? Do you talk to people in the book store or the library? Why or why not? What do you do if people talk to you?

Books break the ice. Nobody is a stranger when there is a book involved. In bookstores, on the subway, even at the gym. If someone’s reading, or if I’m reading, I love the conversations that crop up when strangers start talking about books. Recommendations, opinions, the shared stories about a book’s place in our lives. My friendships need to have some bookish element. I want you to read my favorite books. Or, I want to know what your favorites are, and how to find books that speak to both of us.

I joke about the introductory stages of a friendship including “standing in a bookstore for a few hours and flinging books at each other.” Hey, have you read this? What did you think? If I am getting to know you, reading your favorite book will help me get to know you better. (thus far, I’ve only drawn the line at Ayn Rand. Everything else, I’ll try a few pages, at least.)

I also like conversations with strangers in bookstores or about books generally. A few words or opinions about the books, then we resume our separate lives. I’ll never be able to read Neruda without thinking of the older gentleman who saw me reading The Captain’s Verses and told me stories about growing up in Spain. I’ll never see him again, and never know his name, but my reading is better for that conversation.

Published in:  on at 1:15 am Comments (6)
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Jaye and I discuss e-books and real books

In which Jaye and I discuss book formats, reading too much, portability, pages, and reading whims.  Also, women’s basketball.   Conversation basically verbatim from our online chatting, when we both should have been asleep ages ago. (more…)

Published in:  on March 13, 2009 at 11:55 pm Comments (2)

Poetry Friday at WVFC

From WVFC

Muhammed_Rumi
 What does a 13th Century Persian/Afghanistani poet/philosopher mystic have to say to women who weren’t born yesterday?  One has only to come to the end of a mid-March week after the clocks were sprung an hour ahead and the light was struggling to imitate spring to understand.

We all get stagnant at times.  We are all in danger of believing what’s in the jug is the only water around.  Perhaps today’s Poetry Friday offering from the great old man himself might remind us otherwise.

– Laura Sillerman

Come!  Take a pickaxe
And break apart
Your stony self.
The heart’s matrix
is glutted with rubies.
Springs of laughter
are buried in your breast.
Unstop the wine jar
Batter down the door
to the treasury
of nonexistence.
The water in your jug
is brakish and low.
Smash the jug
and come to the river!
Published in:  on at 4:02 pm Leave a Comment
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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies! Predictions.

I think I have been looking forward to this book more than anything since Harry Potter.  I’d seen it mentioned on a few other book blogs and websites.   I love that it exists. And I love that I get to review it. Thank you, Quirk Books!

I read the real Pride and Prejudice, without zombies, in high school. I remember being annoyed by the shallow social manipulations, and thinking that I just didn’t like the time period. Well, we all know that’s not true (if spies and flowers are involved).

As I begin reading, my predictions. Hopes, actually.

Characters who Become Zombies:
Mrs. Bennet (actually rooting for her to get eaten full-scale.)
Her silly daughter who runs off with a soldier.
The other, also silly, daughter.
Several soldiers.
The butler. I’m sure there’s a butler.
Various foppish society folks.
Elizabeth’s friend, Charlotte. Amid much wailing and rending of garments, because at least someone I like has to die.

Characters Who Kick Zombie Butt:
Elizabeth Bennet
Mr. Bingley
Mr. Bennet
Mr. Darcy

Published in:  on at 2:13 pm Leave a Comment
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Kindling my enthusiasm

I got my hands on a Kindle yesterday.  A client showed me his, and let me poke around it.  As predicted, I’m not a fan.   Granted, my mind was somewhat made up before I had it in my hands.  But the actual tactile sensation confirms that it’s the texture and pages of a book that I like, not purely the information.

However,  as I am about to go on vacation, loaded with fiction, I find that I’ve got a use for the Kindle’s capacity, if not the sensory experience.  If I enjoyed holding and reading it, found its layout relaxing, I’d be ready to get my own and load it with poetry anthologies.

I have my fiction covered, and my contrary mind had the treacherous thought- what about poetry?  But which poetry?  I want a good anthology.  Something like Billy Collins’ Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry but I have both in the series. Is there a third? Or something similar?

Published in:  on at 6:52 am Leave a Comment
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Booking Through Thursday: Book- The Movie!

I love today’s question, because it’s something I think about anyway:

What book do you think should be made into a movie? And do you have any suggestions for the producers?

Or, What book do you think should NEVER be made into a movie?

I have so many lists and daydreams about books I love being turned into movies.   Comfort Food, by Kate Jacobs would make a fantastic movie.  Mostly because I have a crush on Oliver, even without entirely being able to picture what actor would play him.  (I really want to see the scene with the shoes.) I wish American Gods by Neil Gaiman could be a miniseries.  I picture it being filmed in the same sepia tones and bluegrass soundtrack as “O Brother Where Art Thou.”

I think it would be impossible to make The Westing Game into a good movie, but I wish they would try.  And yes, I’ve heard of the movie they did make in I think the early 90s. They gutted the plot.  I’m sure it’s awful, and I don’t want to see it.

Books that should never be movies?  The Alienist. (Too scary at the end.)  Twilight (Perhaps, should never have been a book.  But we all know my opinions on that score.)  The seventh Harry Potter, because it has the road trip that never ends, and I defy them to make that interesting to watch on film.

Published in:  on March 12, 2009 at 7:06 am Comments (10)
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