Today’s Post by Joe Farace“
Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.” ―
You have questions? Here another —
Q: What happens to the books you review after you finish reading them? —Melissa, San Diego, CA
A: With library books, I return them after reading as I just did with Karla’s Choice. With books Mary buys for me and ones I occasionally purchase for myself, I stack them up in my overflowing book shelves or they get stacked on the guest chair in my office.* After I read and review books provided by publishers, I donate most of them to my local library. The library has a used bookstore in it’s lobby and sells books to fund books they want to buy. For some car books, like the recent , I keep them on a small bookshelf in my living room along with several other automobile books. With some others, they’re donated to the library too.
My TBR LIst
Next up on my TBR list is Charlie Chaplin vs. America by Scott Eyman and William Kent Krueuger’s Iron Lake, both of which are currently sitting on the same chair pictured above. I just picked up a paperback of The League of Frightened Men, a Nero Wolfe novel–the second book in the series—and am looking forward to reading it. Th
In the next Book Club, I’ll be starting a new section called “Near Misses” about books that tried hard but, for many reasons didn’t quite deserve my “Highly recommended” rating. This new section may give you enough information to make you either want to give it a try and read them or maybe just give’em a pass.
Review Karla’s Choice
In last month’s Book Club I said, “Right now I’m reading Karla’s Choice by a new novel set in the world of John le Carré’s iconic spy, George Smiley. Now I know what you might be thinking: How could anybody even think about writing a book like this? Le Carré’s real name is David John Moore Cornwell and ”
I haven’t read many different le Carré novels, certainly not enough to directly compare ‘s prose to his father’s but what I do know is that Karla’s Choice captures the same Cold War ethos, mood and claustrophobic feeling that attracted me to le Carré in the first place. Harkaway makes the wise choice to set the book in 1963 just after the events of The Spy Who Came in from The Cold and the impact of the events of that book hang heavy over this one. I haven’t read that book or even seen (what is supposed to be) the excellent film base on it but that didn’t prevent me from making inferences based on what Harkaway includes in Karla’s Choice.
This book is built around an incident that occurs in a London publisher’s office when a Russian spy turns up and confront his assistant but the publisher has disappeared and the spy makes an tearful confession to the assistant. All this triggers the events of the book, which brings George Smiley out of retirement for a “one time” assignment to find the publisher. The publisher is really the MacGuffin in the story and the search, which as you might imagine for a le Carré novel, goes horribly wrong but Harkaway fills the book with such luscious detail and a sense of immediacy that you can’t wait to find out what’s next. All that makes the book more that just a page turner; it is an elegantly written and thoughtful page turner. Highly recommended.
Review: The Waiting
Michael Connelly’s The Waiting is the latest book in his Bosch and Ballard series that follows the continuing adventures of an aging Harry Bosch along with the irrepressible Renee Ballard, who is really the star of this current book. Bosch is just a guest star. The book starts out with Renee Ballard’s gun and badge being stolen from her car while she’s surfing and then follows her informal unauthorized investigation into their return. Next thing you know Maddie Bosch—who seems ripped directly from the Bosch TV series—shows up and wants to work with Ballard in her “cold case” unsolved murder group. So I think, OK she’s replacing Harry Bosch, who for some reason Connelly gave cancer several years ago and I figure Bosch is going to bite the bullet. But no, Bosch is still an integral part of the story. All hell breaks out when Maddie drops a bombshell on Ballard telling her that she’s solved an iconic and true 1947 LA murder case—NO SPOILERS—that’s when my eyeballs popped out of my head.
I’ve been reading Michael Connelly’s novels from the very beginning —The Black Echo—in 1992 and have enjoyed all of them. As he expanded his novel’s breadth I followed him into the Lincoln Lawyer series but when he introduced Renee Ballard with The Late Show I was hesitant and put off reading that book for a long time. Then I ran out of stuff to read one day and picked up the a copy at the library and quickly became fascinated by Ballard, who was a surfer, loner and dog lover. She was also a vegetarian but based on the new novel she seems to have gotten over that.
Once thing that Connelly’s Bosch novels feature is the stories are always messy. There are no neat tied-in-a-bow situations or solutions and things always go sideways much like real life. Near the end of The Waiting, one of the series characters on Ballard’s unsolved murders team is murdered and Ballard in true Bosch-like fashion takes it upon herself to single-handedly solve it and she does–kinda. The big 1947 mystery? Is it solved too? Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. Because that murder is a real-life case, I don’t know, as I write this if the LAPD has announced who they believe the murderer was although there are several books that have been about this case, including one I reviewed here (hint) that states who they think the murderer is and even has a photo of the guy in the book!
Connelly’s last book in this series, Desert Star, was a remarkable piece of mystery fiction. I didn’t think it could get better than that but The Waiting is a terrific book and it’s highly recommended.
*about my stack of books: My wife complained I “was ruining the chair” and since I made this photograph, I’ve been moving books around. Paperbacks went to a shelf in my work room that had other paperbarks, books about Peanuts went into the built-in shelves in my office, I shuffled some books into the bookcase attached to one of my computer desks and, so far, one went into the garage where it will be, no doubt, joined by others to be donated to the library.