Author Archives: Anna

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries

by Anna

By Kerry Greenwood

Cover photo: Miss Fisher's Murder MysteriesThe Australian television show is hugely popular on Tumblr, but I’ve been resisting it because it just looked a bit twee for me. However, when trying to unpack those last random boxes from my latest move (including one marked “desk stuff” that I never unpacked from the previous move that turned out to include a large set of random pens, at least half of which had dried out), I ran a couple of episodes from PBS in the background, and I was hooked. Literally, it appears to take two episodes. I finally caved and checked out the first season on DVD from the library, and Rebecca wandered in and out of the room for the first episode, sat down for the second, and then demanded that we watch the remaining ones together. We finally ended up with Netflix primarily to have access to the third and most recent season.

In case you are not on Tumblr and have somehow avoided all the Miss Fisher love, she is a flapper in 1920’s Melbourne, who sort of falls into detection through lack of anything better to do with her life. It is really hard to put my finger on what makes it so addictive, but I think it is primarily due to the characters and the actors. The plotlines are fun, but not too noticeably different from the many, many other mystery shows. Miss Phryne Fisher is unrepentantly wealthy, frivolous, feminist and raunchy, and that is actually very rare in television these days. I think this is probably the biggest aspect of her popularity – we are so parched for portrayals of sex-positive femininity that we will fall all over any and all portrayals like rabid dogs. Which is not to say that Miss Fisher doesn’t deserve all the fandom, but just to try to explain the level of adulation that even the show-creators seem a little puzzled by.

She has endearing friendships with both her best friend, a gay lady doctor, who assists in some of the cases and is wonderfully dry, and her paid companion, Dorothy, who is a relatively conservative Catholic girl slowly falling (rising?) to Miss Fisher’s influence. Her flirtation with the local police inspector is masterful, as he clearly respects her, is attracted to her and finds her intrusive and annoying all at once. Rebecca pointed out that the actor playing the inspector deserves more than whatever they are paying him just for his very restrained but communicative expressions alone.

So, after enjoying Season 1 so much, Rebecca and I checked out a large stack of the novels it is based on. Each one is barely 200-pages long, and we anticipated a lovely month of entertaining fluff, but neither of us cared to actually read more than the first one. There was no obvious flaw to point at, but the charm of the television show just wasn’t there. Miss Fisher is described as significantly younger, and is more sarcastic and dissatisfied, which comes across as sort of bratty. The other characters are similarly diminished – Dorothy is somehow both more bitter and naïve, Inspector Robinson almost nonexistent, and the communist cab drivers more zealous and confrontational.

I started to think of this series as the flipside to the Haunted Bookstore series that I reviewed earlier. With the Haunted Bookstore novels, I could list several concrete reasons why I shouldn’t have enjoyed them, and yet I loved them all completely and read them straight through until I was so sad to reach the end. With the Miss Fisher novels (or at least the first one), there were so many reasons I should have really enjoyed it, and yet I just didn’t. I even found that while I was reading the book, my enjoyment of the television show fell off a little, so while I finished the first book, I determined not to read any more and just enjoy the show on its own.

—Anna

On The Beach

by Anna

By Nevil Shute

Book Cover: On the BeachOn The Beach, published in 1957, is by far the most relaxed post-apocalyptic book I’ve ever read. The basic premise is that large-scale nuclear warfare broke out in the northern hemisphere, apparently destroying all civilization. Because of something about wind patterns that I have no frame of reference for, the blasts and radiation have not hit the southern hemisphere, though they are expected to slowly come over with the changing of the seasons.

Our two main protagonists are an Australian naval officer and an American submarine commander who was undersea during the war. The two of them, and about a dozen other military personnel and neighbors and such, all get along very well, hosting small dinner parties and beach outings, while the Australian navy sort of desultorily sets up an exploratory mission to search for survivors or intact land or such.

One of my (many) pet peeves with police and military dramas is how angry and confrontational all of these supposed professionals get with each other. On The Beach continually shocked me with how each introduced character — the Australian naval officer, the American commander, the civilian engineer, and even the Australian Prime Minister — seemed to enjoy meeting the others and working with them in what should have been an extremely emotionally fraught situation.

The first submarine expedition lasted a week and only one page; I actually had to go back and reread it since I thought maybe I’d missed a part. Truly, the only suspense came from me as a reader not quite believing that there wasn’t going to turn out to be some horribly twisted character or other manufactured drama-for-the-sake-of-drama. I think some readers might struggle with this because nothing much seems to happen, but I somehow found it so reflective of the little things one would fill one’s life with at the end, that is was soothing to read. (To add a caveat to this, after I finished the book, I read some other reviews, in which people did not find it quite so soothing, and described the calmness as frustrating and terrifying, so take that into consideration, I guess.)

I highly recommend it, even if just for the extremely novel experience of reading about a bunch of adults dealing with an unpleasant situation in as mature a way as possible. Seriously, when is the last time you’ve read a book where you liked and understood the motivations of every single one of the characters? Where there isn’t a single ‘villain’ in the piece? One of the women is a little thinly written, but compared to other female characters in 50s and 60s scifi novels, she is still quite a strong character. The other central woman was particularly well done, starting from pretty much a spoiled brat to becoming sort of the heroine of the story, though, again, ‘heroine’ is perhaps too active a word for it.

The book starts with the line from T. S. Elliot, “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper,” and I can’t think of a better overall description for this book than that, quite frankly.

—Anna

The Last Policeman

by Anna

By Ben Winters

Book Cover: The Last PolicemanThe Last Policeman is a murder mystery set in a pre-apocalypse Earth – an asteroid has been discovered that will hit Earth and most likely destroy all of humanity in six months. Lots of people commit suicide (which I don’t understand; maybe this is my laziness speaking, but why bother if the Earth is going to shortly do it for you?) and lots of people have abandoned their homes and jobs in order to fulfill their bucket lists. Our protagonist, Henry Palace, however, was a beat cop who was promoted to detective after enough of the detectives quit or died. He has always wanted to be a detective, and so is very dedicated, driving everyone else crazy with his scrupulous attention to detail and his eagerness to actually investigate a death that he claims is suspicious and everyone else says is yet another suicide.

There are spots of humor (all the McDonald’s and Duncan Donuts have closed, but Panera is still running strong, albeit as a religious organization), but the overall tone of the novel is definitely dark. The world is completely topsy-turvy with internet and cell service collapsing, most major corporations shutting down, and just about every other job, including the government, depending on a skeleton crew of dedicated employees. Inflation is through the roof, of course, though I was confused that there was any monetary economy at all, actually. The people, too, are all different levels of crazy, with depression and drug use way up, naturally, making tracking down motives and following rational clues particularly difficult.

One of my favorite things about the book is that, through showing instead of telling, I am fairly sure that both the detective and the victim are on the milder side of the Autism spectrum. It is cool to see that (possible) representation laid out so matter-of-factly. Separate from that aspect, however, there were the occasional times when I wondered about an unreliable narrator. He isn’t unaffected by the coming doom, either, and there are definitely times when I wondered whether he purposefully twisting the truth to make his case better match the cases he’d hoped he’d be working on as a detective.

This is the first in a trilogy, and I definitely plan to read the next two, so I’ll report on those when I get to them. Rebecca asked me how there can be three if the world only has six months to go, but this book only spanned a month. I wondered, though, if something unforeseen happens and the asteroid does not hit, how do you rebuild after all of Earth’s societies have been living as though it is the end of times?

—Anna

Lost at Sea

by Anna

By Jon Ronson

Book Cover: Lost at SeaChrist. I don’t know how Jon Ronson does it, but he made me feel sympathy for the goddamn Insane Clown Posse in the very first chapter.

After my last review on a book that I discovered through an article by Jon Ronson, I remembered that I hadn’t checked up on his works for a few years, and he had published twice since then. Lost at Sea is made up of dozens of short chapters, each a standalone essay describing Ronson’s interaction with a wide variety of people and groups. (I believe they were actually originally articles for the London Guardian.) It made me laugh several times, but it also made me kind of sad, as each group seemed to be simply looking for connection and meaning in life, and having to go to some extreme lengths to find it.

It took me far to long to realize this, but the title is actually very apt – these are all stories about people who have lost their way in one way or another. The stories get progressively grimmer, too, starting with stories of roboticists attempting to create artificial intelligence and parents raising “indigo children,” thought to be the next evolutionary stage with psychic abilities, to a planned school massacre in Christmas, Alaska, and suicides over mounting credit card debt.

One of the more powerful essays for me, though, was one where he takes the general income disparity in the United States, and divides it into 6 sections, each one five times the income of the previous one. So, the first he talks with a dishwasher earning $10,000; then a family that lives paycheck-to-paycheck on $50,000; then Ronson himself is $250,000 (this is also the briefest section); a high-level executive in the entertainment business who wished to remain anonymous and earns roughly $1.25 million; one of the first investors in Amazon, who earns roughly $6 million, and finally at the top, a man who helped establish the storage unit industry and is worth billions at this point (at this point it is almost impossible to establish an annual income). I have read a lot of articles on income disparity and what it means for our society and economy as a whole, but this was the first that broke down what it means for day-to-day living and helps explain why it is so difficult to understand the lives of people that make significantly different amounts of money.

Several of the stories included the subjects expressing anger at Ronson’s writing style, saying that he including snarky lines like “I’m met with silence” in order to connote something underhanded without actually state it outright. And while I enjoy his style and his snark, I could see their point, that he does offer his own interpretation of pauses and body language in ways that certainly influence readers’ views. I’d mentioned before that one thing I like is how much his own presence is included in his writing, which is unusual in journalism, but after the third or fourth subject lashes out at him, I began to wonder about it. While he is often self-deprecating, he does vary how much he is present in writing in ways that are complimentary to him, so I could certainly see how his subjects felt manipulated and their personal crises used simply to showcase Ronson in one way or another.

So, I guess by the end of the book, I remain a big fan of Ronson’s writing, but perhaps not quite such a fan of Ronson himself.

—Anna

I’m Not A Terrorist, But I’ve Played One On TV

by Anna

By Maz Jobrani

Book Cover: I'm Not A Terrorist, But I've Played One on TVI first read an article in GQ by Jon Ronson (who I love) about Maz Jobrani and other actors of Middle Eastern descent, and about how they are only offered roles as terrorists. The actors describe all the different ways they are killed by the heroes, over and and over again, and how frustrating it is to get no other roles, not to mention feeding into negative stereotypes of your culture in order to make a living. Because it is Jon Ronson, too, it is depressing, but also a bit funny.

I thought it was a really interesting piece on something I had literally given zero thought to before, so when the article mentioned Jobrani’s memoir, I checked it out from the library that day. Jobrani, an Iranian-American, started as an actor, but turned to stand-up comedy when he decided that he didn’t want to play terrorists any more, which I think was a good move since his book made me laugh out loud several times.

Jobrani is an extremely positive person, disappointed by the anti-Middle-East sentiment in the US, but focused on creating a more positive presence. For my own part, I like humor that is a bit angrier and more biting, especially when it comes to social justice issues. However, even his light-hearted jokes revealed how little I know about Iran and the rest of the Middle East and this is a very easy way to learn some very basic truths about Middle Eastern culture. Jobrani has a lot of videos up on YouTube and is a semi-regular on Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, so check him out!

—Anna

Interesting eBooks

by Anna

First of all, I’d like to concur with Kinsey’s statement that we are not the sort of people that read a lot because we don’t watch TV; people are amazed at how many books and how much TV we are able to fit into our schedules, as well as our fair share of internet browsing.

Speaking of the internet, I bought a couple of very unusual e-books online over the last month based on Tumblr recommendations that are both absolutely ridiculous and sort of weirdly complementary.

Inspector Pancakes Helps the President of France

By Karla Pacheco and Maren Marmulla

Book Cover: Inspector PancakesInspector Pancakes is a picture book based on those old-school Golden Books in which Inspector Pancakes, a dog detective, helps the president of France track the thief who has been stealing his breakfast croissants. Or at least that’s the regular text. The really ingenious idea behind this is that it is two stories; each page has large bold text for the children’s story, and then much smaller italic text for the adult side, in which Pancakes is actually tracking down the brutal murderer of Parisian prostitutes.

The idea is just brilliant, and the pictures are adorable! The problem is the writing. For this type of thing the writing has to be as tight and spot-on as possible in order to work, and it just isn’t. The connection between the two stories is extremely tenuous and the pictures correspond with the children’s story without any winky reference to the adult story that would help tie them together.

Rebecca and I were brainstorming ways of correcting this problem, and we both agreed that the adult section has to be much more complex. It could be longer, of course, which would help, but theoretically at least, a skilled author could make an extremely powerful short story in just a few sentences. Rebecca thought that the author relied too heavily on ultra-violence to make the adult half stand out, and while I agreed that she needed more to it, I thought the violence was a funny contrast to the pictures.

Sextrap Dungeon

By Kurt Knox

Book Cover: Sextrap DungeonOn the other hand, there is Sextrap Dungeon, which had a promotional free download day a little while ago, so I figured what the hell. I have to say now that I highly recommend it (for adult audiences)! It is a choose-your-adventure book where you play a pick-up artist out to get some action on a Saturday night. (You are asked to select male or female at the beginning, but if you select female, you are told that’s ridiculous, and to try again. You then also have the option of how many dicks you’d like.)

The whole thing is super tongue-in-cheek, with a pretty surprising feminist slant, and mostly ends very poorly for your character. There are three “levels” and you graduate up levels by getting some action. Spoiler(?): I graduated up one level by getting a blow job from a Nazi stripper. It truly is a joke book, and not intended to be erotica at all, so there are no graphic descriptions of the sex (the violence is slightly more graphic, but still not extreme) – it is basically at the level of an extremely dirty joke. Think of a choose-your-own-adventure version of The Aristocrats, though actually a bit cleaner than that.

—Anna

Hopcross Jilly and Shifting Shadows

by Anna

By Patricia Briggs

Book Cover: Hopcross JillyRebecca bought me Hopcross Jilly, a Mercy Thompson graphic novel, by Patricia Briggs for my birthday, and it was awesome because I hadn’t even known it existed! It focuses primarily on Mercy’s stepdaughter Jesse, who is struggling to find her place in high school now that she is known as the daughter of the local werewolf alpha. I’m trying to be as spoiler-free as possible, so excuse the coyness, but the events also take place after the big showdown with the fae, so the main antagonist is fae.

Which is where my problem comes in. From just about the beginning of the series, I’ve been on the fae’s side in their struggle with humans. In Briggs’ world, the fae have been treated somewhat similarly (though better) to how the US treated Native Americans, with extreme prejudice and isolation. So, when they have finally taken as much as they are going to take, it feels like an underdog fighting back, even though they are in fact murdering people. I found myself on the unsupportable side of a debate with Rebecca in which I was trying to hand-wave away the (fictional) murder of innocent children.

Anyway, it was fun to see more of Jesse, who is usually very much a side character, and the fae villain was quite interesting, and it had a satisfying ending, even if it wasn’t as pro-fae as I would have liked. I do also want to qualify this by saying that Briggs is clearly a novelist, not a graphic novelist, so there are times when the action and dialogue gets a little muddled since she isn’t writing in quite the screenplay style that a graphic novel demands.

Book Cover: Shifting ShadowsI have also been reminded that I completely forgot to review Briggs’ Shifting Shadows, which is unforgiveable considering how long I’ve been whining for something exactly like this. Shifting Shadows collects all of Patricia Briggs’ short stories in a single volume, including the Alpha and Omega novella that kicks off that series, as well as some brand new stories. The  new stories feature Mercy, of course, but also a variety of side characters that haven’t been given much backstory before, including Ben, one of Adam’s least pleasant pack members; Ariana, the fae with whom Mercy’s ex, Samuel, falls in love; and Kara, a young girl werewolf mentioned very briefly in the second Mercy novel.

And, of course, it contains all of my favorites from a variety of anthologies, like “Seeing Eye,” in which a werewolf and a witch pair up to bring down an evil witch coven; “Fairy Gifts,” about a vampire summoned to save a trapped fairy; and “The Star of David,” a Christmas story about David Christiansen, a werewolf mercenary from the first Mercy Thompson novel. I am just so happy to have them all collected in one place!

—Anna

The Ghost and Mrs. McClure

by Anna

By Alice Kimberly

Book Cover: The Ghost and Mrs. McClureI have been kind of a cranky reader lately (post Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell), and I was cranky starting this book, too. You may have noticed that I can be a bit snooty about my pulp mysteries, and I only condescended to read this mix of a cozy and pulp mystery on my mom’s recommendation. It has a ridiculous premise: a recently widowed woman leaves her up-scale career and lifestyle in New York City to help her aunt run a small-town bookstore, which turns out to be haunted by a hard-boiled private eye, shot there in 40s.

The private eye ghost is a little over-the-top, our protagonist is often ditsy, and the writing is a bit amateurish (the author definitely hits her stride later in the series, though). It is the fluffiest of fluff, and it just makes me really happy. All of the various oddball characters in the small town are cartoonish in the way that cartoons are awesome: they are quirky, and accessible, and just so comfortable. I’ve read the first three on the last two weeks, so they are each a quick read and quickly addictive, too.

On the flipside, in case I was feeling too pleased with my new series, I also checked out Werewolf Cop from the library, thinking Werewolf! Cop! I should have been warned off by the blurb by Stephen King, but I was just too eager to read a possible supernatural noir novel! This book was so offensively bad that I couldn’t even hate read it for the blog. I won’t go into details or this post will run as long as my last one (and I only made it to chapter 2), but it reminded me why I stopped reading all male authors for a chunk of time in my teens. (I went back and got books four and five of the Haunted Bookshop series instead.)

—Anna

Edited to add more praise: I just finished the fifth and final published novel in the series (though another one is rumored to be in the works), and they just keep getting better and better! In the later novels, the ghost shows Mrs. McClure memories of his old cases, and the novels are build around two mysteries from different time periods in interesting ways. Reading all five books back to back, I also started to notice the subtle evolution of Mrs. McClure’s character. Through the encouragement of the supportive ghost and her successful investigations, she noticeably gains confidence and takes increased control of her life. It is just a really nice through-line.

Also, I meant to write this before, but forgot: with every single novel, about halfway through I would start thinking how obvious the solution was, but every single time, I got it wrong, and not in a disappointing way, either. (Of course, in my defense Mrs. McClure was wrong as often as not as well.)

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, part 7

by Anna

By Susanna Clarke

Book Cover: Strand & NorrellSo, last episode! I’m running a little late with this one since I was on vacation last weekend, but better late than never, right? I thought about never, but just couldn’t quite bring myself to leave it hanging. The conclusion in the tv show was very satisfying, but the book conclusion was particularly gripping, I thought. Here are all the final spoilers in a particularly long post, I’m afraid, since a whole lot happened at the end. Continue reading →