The Coffin Dancer by Jeffrey Deaver

This is Deaver’s first book after The Bone Collector, which was made into a very good suspense movie with Denzel Washington, as Lincoln Rhyme, and Angelina Jolie, as Amelia Sachs. Rhyme is the quadriplegic criminalist and Sachs is his understudy, his feet and eyes for investigation. This story involves the same two characters and continues the development of their relationship. Despite Rhyme’s handicap, the sexual tension between him and Sachs is obvious. The name the “coffin dancer” comes from the tattoo on the arm of the highly successful assassin that Rhyme is tracking, which is the only information about him that anyone has. Throughout the book, Deaver makes fun of the book’s title and the name of this character as being overly melodramatic, which it is. This is the same assassin that Rhyme has encountered before failed to capture him. The character Dancer has apparently been hired by Phillip Hansen, a guy who is about to be indicted by the Feds for selling stolen military armaments, and Hansen needs three witnesses killed before they testify before the grand jury. The three people, Edward Carney, his wife Percey Clay, and pilot Brit Hale, who are starting a small private airline company, all witnessed what were apparently bags of evidence being thrown from a plane that carried Hansen. The action of this book all takes place in the 45 hours before the grand jury is scheduled to convene to consider the evidence against Hansen, so the action is fast. A line that Deaver repeats over and over about Dancer and his successful past assassinations and Rhyme’s inability to find him during the course of this book was, “His deadliest weapon is deception.” Deaver makes use of deception throughout the book. This was another good read, and Deaver is right in the middle of my power rotation.

The Dramatist: A Novel by Ken Bruen

This was another Jack Taylor novel by Ken Bruen. The detective story itself is good, but it is the writing that captivates me, as well as the literary references that he frequently makes. For example, the entire plot is built around the murderer's fascination with J.M. Synge, an Irish writer who lived from 1871 to 1909, and Bruen repeatedly refers to his books. Bruen quotes Scott Peck in People of the Lie: “For evil arises in the refusal to acknowledge our own sins.” He quoted James Lee Burke from Jolie Blon’s Bounce: “But this was no ordinary AA group. The failed, the aberrant, the doubly addicted and the totally brain fried whose neuroses didn’t even have a name found their way to the ‘work the steps or die motherfucker meeting.’” Mostly, this is a book about life in Ireland and Taylor’s fight with alcohol, coke and cigarettes. Bruen wrote about one man with cirrhosis, who Taylor went to visit shortly before his death. The Dublin guy said, “Jack, I’d rather be dead than teetotal.” Taylor mused, “Got his wish.” In reference to Taylor, he wrote, “I didn’t know much about humility but I was well versed in humiliation.” This was a very quick read, totally enjoyable even though the plot itself was not totally gripping. I’m a Bruen fan.

Liberation Movements by Olen Steinhauer

1968. Prague. Peter Husak is a student in music theory when the Russian tanks are rolling into town. He and 2 student friends make a dash for the border, but Peter is captured. In his interrogation, the Slovak security officer notices something very peculiar about Peter. He sees just how adept Peter is at lying. A trait that the secret police might find valuable.

1975. Detective Libarid Terzian is unhappy in his marriage and the upcoming conference on terrorism in Istanbul gives him a chance to maybe bolt from his current situation. In the waiting area of the airport, he notices a reasonably attractive woman accompanied by a brute of an escort. He also spots a couple really nervous looking guys, constantly at the pay phone, sweating and smoking cigarettes. He also spots, amongst the ministry watchers, an odd character watching everyone else (Libarid is a detective after all).

He is seated on the flight next to the woman who, in casual conversation, tells Libarid who the others are and what each will be doing in the next few minutes. And each does as she said they would do. She must be part of some plot.

At the Istanbul airport, Detective Brano Sev and the young officer he is mentoring are awaiting Libarid's arrival when word comes that the flight blew up over Bulgaria with 80-some people aboard. The hijackers were Armenian as was Libarid.

This sets the stage for an investigation of the disaster by Detective Sev and Gavra Noukas. What first appears to be a political statement gone wrong takes multiple unforeseen twists as Sev and Noukas uncover tiny bits of information that may or may not have some connection with some disruptive operations by Socialist operations.

Was this all about the hijackers and their political cause? Was this a hit on Libarid and if so, why on an airplane with so many innocents on board? And what about this odd women with the seeming ability to read people's thoughts and predict with such accuracy what people will do? Was she the target? If so, by whom? And just who the hell is/was Peter, whose capture and interrogation opens the book and what does his past have to do with the bombing of the flight? Just how do the bombing, a homosexual encounter, Libarid, Sev, Peter, psychological experiments, a years old murder all connect?

This is the 4th Steinhauer book and I can guarantee you it will not be my last. His more recent titles (The Tourist and The Nearest Exit) are current CIA thrillers full of complex plotting and intricate deceptions. He has a series of books, based as 1 per decade, about crime and espionage in Eastern Europe. The first, Bridge of Sighs, was set in the 1940s. I skipped a couple decades to the 70s with this book and in doing so, missed the introduction of Detective Sev (Emil Brod, the rookie cop in Bridge, is a minor character as a police chief).

I've offered high praise for Steinhauer's storytelling. His carefully layered plots are intricate, deftly paced, revealing tiny bits and pieces of the intertwining stories for the reader to assemble until the puzzle's final image becomes clear in one of those, "Aha" moments so eagerly awaited. I think I would be wise to jump back to the 1950s with The Confession and work forward in order. Don't let the Slavic names, locations, and geographic references to a fictional country stop you from venturing into these crime/espionage mystery-thrillers. It's worth the effort for readers who like complex plotting reminiscent of LeCarre, Deighton, Forsyth, et al. Lovers of spy/mystery novels in the 'old sense' (not the current wave of techno-thrillers ushered in by Tom Clancy), should be on the lookout for Steinhauer.

East Coast Don

When the Sacred Gin Mill Closes by Lawrence Block

East Coast Don reviewed “Eight Million Ways to Die,” the first of the Lawrence Block books reviewed in this blog. That was one was written in 1982, the fifth in the 18-book series, and originally, Block was going to end the series with that one. After a little research, I chose “When the Sacred Gin Mill Closes,” the 1986 book that revived the series and the hero. In this story, Scudder gets involved in some crime solving, but I was nearly halfway through when I realized I was just not interested in finding out how Scudder solved the mysteries and how the author resolved the various dissonances that he created with his characters. Simply put, it was not gripping enough to keep me interested.

Faithful Place: A Novel by Tana French

This is Tana French’s third novel, and she won the Edgar Award for her first novel, In the Woods. My wife suggested this, knowing I love detective/murder mysteries. While the plot is great, mostly this is a book about the relationships amongst the family members of a highly dysfunctional family from the poorest and most crime-ridden area of Dublin. The story is told in the first person from the point of view of the main character, Francis “Frank” Mackey, so the author, a woman, chooses to write from the perspective of a man. I thought that convention usually worked. At the age of 19, Francis is in love with Rosie Daly, and they both know they have to escape Faithful Place where they both have grown up, but the poverty, poor education, and hardships of the place act like quicksand to keep people from leading, force them to repeat the pathetic lives that their parents and grandparents led. The place is crowded, too many family members in every flat, everyone knowing everyone’s business, there are no secrets. But, Francis and the beautiful, vivacious Rosie have a plan to escape, a plan which they think they have kept secret from everyone. On the night they are to escape, Francis waits for Rosie, who never shows. Then, he discovers her note which he interprets to mean that she has decided to escape, but without him. Devastated by this turn of events, Francis chooses to leave anyway, without telling anyone. The Mackeys and Dalys, who have been enemies for years, are left to assume that the two lovers have eloped together. It is 22 years later that Francis is drawn back to Faithful Place, and in those years, he has become a detective in the Guards (about which we’ve learned so much from Ken Bruen’s novels), has married and divorced Olivia, and has a 9-year-old daughter, Holly. Upon his return home, he receives a very mixed welcome from his parents, two brothers, and two sisters. His ex-wife and daughter are drawn into the family drama, something Francis had worked for 22 years to prevent. Rosie’s body was discovered in a nearby derelict house, and there is clear evidence that she was on her way to meet Francis when she was intercepted and killed. Francis spends the rest of the book unraveling the mystery, which involves his family, only it is not clear how they were involved and who were the main characters. He has to unravel and understand the old rivalry between the Mackey and Daly families. There were good plot twists that I did not see coming, and the final mystery is not what I predicted it would be. The writing in this book was excellent, and there were passages that were gripping, such as the opening paragraph beginning with, “In all your life, only a few moments matter.” My only criticism was the length and depth of the extensive family interactions and dialogue, which I thought sometimes detracted from the plot, but that was the very feature that my wife loved. I think I’ll probably read French’s first book before I make a decision about where she ranks in my list of authors.

The Devil by Ken Bruen

Jack Taylor sees a new life in America as a possible answer to his demons. But immigration seems to have a problem with a little dustup a few years ago that landed him in jail for a brief stay and promptly sends him back to Galway. At the airport, he has a chance meeting with a guy in the bar. As he leaves, a flight attendant cautions him about his choice of drinking mates. Shortly afterwards, she is killed in a hit and run.

Once home, Jack returns to being that person people go to in order to get things fixed. A mother of a college kid is worried because her son hasn't been heard from in days and also missed her birthday. Jack learns from a friendly waitress at a student bar that the boy has come under the spell of a Mr. K. Soon, he learns that the son was murdered, gutted, and hung upside down on a cross in a cemetery. Then, the waitress is found gutted in her apartment in the company of a slaughtered and beheaded dog. Jack retreats into repeated pubs to hide in a shot of Jameson, a pint of Guinness, and Xanax . . . a lot of Xanax.

The mom of a Downs Syndrome girl hopes Jack could talk to the parents of 3 classmates who are bullying the girl. Problem is that the father is and importer . . . of drugs.

Taylor's old partner in the Guard, Ridge (now Sgt. Ridge), and her husband are having a party and where he again meets this charismatic stranger, Carl, who has a business proposition for Ridge as well as with Jack. As a favor, Jack asks Ridge to stop in on the parents of the bullying girls and ends up in the hospital for her efforts.

Jack tracks the dad's habits all the while he is starting to put 1 and 1 together about Carl/Mr. K. and coming up with Lucifer. We learn that most of the world's worst events could be traced to Mr. K.'s travels. Karl and Jack play a dangerous game of cat and mouse leading to the eventual confrontation that Jack thinks he and his 9mm have won, but later learns of some other mysterious deaths in London where the police want question someone who goes by simply K.

Bruen in one of the best selling of Irish authors and a number of his mysteries have been posted here. I like his style, almost poetic in it's presentation. I also like his mingling on current music, books, and authors (Taylor is a prolific reader. I've actually found a couple other authors to read based on mention in Bruen's series about Taylor). And there are a number of mentions of one of my favorite songs by the Stones - Sympathy for the Devil (one of the best bass lines in rock).

A number of Bruen fans posted on various review sites that they were disappointed that Bruen had ventured into the supernatural with this book, but I couldn't disagree more. I thought he perfectly united the mystery and supernatural aspects of the story. One other complaint of the fanboys was that the book just sort of ended. OK, if you like your books tied up in a nice neat bow, I'll give you that. But I suspect that we might see Mr. K. pop up in future twisted tales from one of my favorites of Ireland.

BTW, Jack does track down the drug running father of the bullying girls and in no uncertain terms, advises him to rein in his girls. A very satisfying chapter.

East Coast Don

Eight Million Ways to Die by Lawrence Block

Pay attention boys and girls. I’ve come to learn that Lawrence Block has the rep as one of the few modern day noir authors that has successfully edged out from under the shadow of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. The is one of 18 (!) Matthew Scudder novels. Not that I should know all the modern day noir authors, but how did Block fly under my radar? This title came out in 1982.

Scudder is a former NYC cop who left the job because an errant bullet killed a little girl and his downward spiral destroyed his marraige. He now lives in a residential hotel and makes ends meet as an unlicensed PI while working oh so hard to keep from seeing life from the blackout-induced haze of a bottle of bourbon.

A friend of a friend connects Scudder with Kim Dakkinen, a Wisconsin-bred lovely who wants to get out of ‘the life.’ She is afraid to tell her pimp, so she asks Scudder to approach Chance with the news. Chance is terribly private person, a lover of African art and nothing like the comedic image of a pimp, but once Scudder meets him, the news is certainly OK with Chance. He wishes her well and appreciated her service. Life moves on.

Within a couple days, Kim is dead, hacked into smithereens by a machete in a downtown hotel. She wasn’t assaulted or robbed, just hacked to bits. The killer even took a shower afterwards and took the bloody towels. Obviously, the cops think Chance is behind the slaughter, but Chance hires Scudder to find her killer and an unlikely tango between Chance, Scudder, and the cops ensues.

A couple days later, another of Chance’s girls is dead of an apparent suicide. Is someone targeting Chance’s girls? A few days later, what appears to be a random transsexual waiting for sex change surgery is hacked to death just like Kim. The press is having a field day.

Scudder is trying to find the connection between the victims. A mink stole was left in Kim’s apartment and the hotel room, but a green ring, an emerald, was not on Kim’s hand. Scudder trades interviews and other clues with daily trips to AA, a fall off the wagon, and countless cups of coffee. On a venture into Harlem, he is mugged, but disarms the perp, knocks the kid out and breaks both the kid’s legs. A day or two later, a passerby after another AA meeting hints to Scudder that he should back off else he experiences the same broken legs.

It seems like so many PI stories are tales of an awfully flawed former cop. Scudder lives his days in “the smells of spilled booze and stale beer and urine, that dank tavern smell that welcomes you home.” The book is essentially told in 3parts: the day-to-day grind of AA, a certain level of hatred for what NYC has become, and of being in ‘the life’.” If books like this are reflections of the life of the writer, Mr. Block has seen a very nasty side of the human drama that he expertly exposes to his readers by seductively drawing us into the underbelly of New York. Block has another series about a contract killer named Keller, which I will explore next. But Scudder will again sit on my nightstand in the not too distant future.

East Coast Don

Legacy of the Dead by Charles Todd

Amazon was pushing the newest in a line of 14 books by Todd about Inspector Ian Rutledge, A Lonely Death. Rutledge had been a promising inspector at Scotland Yard, and then he left in 1914 to fight in the Great War. Upon his return, he was badly injured and obviously suffering from the effects of PTSD, then known as shell shock. Still, he attempted to resume his job at Scotland Yard, much to the dismay of those around him, especially his boss, Chief Superintendent Bowles. I decided to try one of the early books in the series, so if I liked it, I could read them in order. I was hopeful about having a new series to love. Also, the books cover the time period from 1916 to 1920, and I found that to be of particular interest. It did not turn out the way I hoped. I read, Legacy of the Dead, but put it down about 1/3 of the way into it. It just did not hold my interest. In the war, a man under Rutledge, Corporal Hamish MacLeod went crazy and Rutledge then drew up a firing squad and executed Hamish for his refusal to move forward to take out an enemy machine gun nest, a task that would have cost many lives. Thereafter, Rutledge takes on Hamish as an internal voice, one with which he must always contend, and one that follows him through his assignments as an inspector. At times, with regard to a new case, Rutledge was thinking one thing while Hamish was debating two other possibilities. Also, I found the peripheral characters to be stiff and unreal – so I gave it up. Too bad. While the writing itself was quite good, the plot just did not carry the day.

Magdalen Martyrs by Ken Bruen

This is another one in the Jack Taylor series, after Guards and the Killing of the Tinkers. As always, Taylor is struggling with his multiple substance problems, at times giving into mighty indulgences, but sometimes fighting off the demons that keep calling him to self-destructive behaviors. Ken Bruen writes about this material better than any other contemporary author that I’ve seen. He drops in lines like, “Alcoholics are almost always charming. They have to be, because they have to keep making new friends. They use up the old ones.” Meanwhile, he tells a story. It really is not much of a story, but it centers around a group of young women in the 1950s who get pregnant out of wedlock and then are put into the Magdalen Convent in Galway, Ireland, where they are badly mistreated, sometimes killed. The girls are the Magdalen Martyrs, the Maggies. They work in the service of the convent, doing the laundry under brutal conditions, the brutality being led by the queen of sadists, a lay person hired by the nuns to help out who the girls refer to as Lucifer. Jumping forward to the present, Taylor is given a job to find an old woman. He is hired by Bill Cassell, a Mafioso type, to find Rita Monroe, who Cassell said helped his mother escape from Magdalen. Meanwhile, there are murders being committed of a couple young men for no apparent reason. Bruen successfully ties the story lines together, but one of the magics of Bruen’s writing is that the story line is not the only thing. He presents his ideas with multiple literary references across a wide spectrum of authors, and he even uses Taylor to lecture others about the importance of some forgotten authors. He even makes a reference to a current author, one of our favorites, George Pelecanos’ book Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go: “The thirst for knowledge is like a piece of ass you know you shouldn’t case; in the end, you chase it just the same.” (And now I know East Coast Don will read this one.) This was not Bruen’s finest work, but I was entertained, and I’ve already acquired a couple more of his books to read.

Havana by Stephen Hunter

Thought I'd get some deeper backstory on Bob Lee Swagger with a book about his daddy.

As you may recall, Bob Lee is an Arkansas native who became the #2 sniper in Vietnam. His dad was a state policeman and winner of the CMH plus a bunch of other medals for heroism on Iwo Jima and other hellholes in Pacific. Havana begins with Earl teaching a young Bob Lee the intricacies of deer hunting. In a bit of irony, young Bob Lee has a deer in his sights (shades of his sniper future) but decides not to pull the trigger.

It's 1953. And lots of people have noticed a young lawyer with a charismatic aura and is a fiery orator. The Cuban Secret Police is out to stamp out any anti-government voice. The Soviets see a potential pigeon to head a new communist satellite. The US government wants to keep the status quo going for big business like sugar, coffee, bananas, tourism, and more. And the mob wants to keep the money faucet open from gambling, prostitution, and drugs.

The Soviets pull an old operative out of a Siberian gulag and charge him with grooming the young Castro. The CIA is worried about Castro and decides to take off the gloves by hiring Earl Swagger to carry out the hit. The mob is also concerned and posts a nutcase NYC hitter to join a secret police enforcer known as Beautiful Eyes (for his creative interrogation techniques using a scalpel - use your imagination). What results is a complex interaction of the various players with inopportune alliances all conspiring against Earl.

Earl is tasked as part of a Congressman's delegation. Problem is the Arkansas representative has a taste for some nasty sex which Earl steps in and protects the victim hooker. What follows includes an ambush on the drive to Guantanamo, an opportunity for Earl to take out both Castro and his Soviet handler in the jungle, and a massive shootout on the streets of the Havana red light district before escaping, with the help of his Soviet counterpart, to Key West.

What was interesting is that when Earl has Castro and the Soviet in his sites for the kill, he doesn't pull the trigger. Killing face to face during war is one thing, but this hunting a man and killing him while he drinks water just ain't right (son Bob Lee won't have any problem with it when he grows up).

In the end, everyone's kind of happy. Castro ends up in prison so the secret police, the US, and the Cuban government are happy. The CIA has managed to get rid of a sadistic policeman and rearrange the local spy hierarchy. And the mob has survived a potentially thorny problem to keep the money flowing. Earl gets back home. Only the Soviets are disappointed.

Cool to read about Bob Lee's daddy. Earl isn't a remorseless killer. He has standards, ethics, and a conscious that balances a life of war and right or wrong. As mysteries go, this one has a wider scope than most others I've read. I have an even earlier Earl Swagger novel coming from the library so we'll be checking in with Earl again before too long.

East Coast Don

The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly

In this 2005 book, Michael “Mickey” Haller is the Lincoln Lawyer, so named because he mostly works out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, not an office. He’s in the car as he moves from one courthouse to another in the LA area, always defending the downtrodden and the underprivileged. But, Mickey is no fool. He’s also looking out for the big case, the “franchise” defendant that can pay his “A” fees and who will make his life so much more comfortable. He has been married and divorced twice, both times to lawyers, and both of them still love him. This is really a great plot as he takes on the defense of Louis Ross Roulet, a man accused of attempting to rape and murder a hooker, but who is then linked to other murders. In the midst of the investigation of the attempted murder, Haller’s investigator is murdered. The court room drama is as good as any that I have read. The story is complex as Connelly includes both of Haller’s former wives, his 8 yo daughter, a jailhouse snitch, Roulet’s mother and family attorney, and others. This was a great story and there are great plot twists near the end of the book. I had a hard time putting this one down.

Man In The Dark by Paul Auster

Be warned – this is far removed from the typical fare of Men Reading Books.

Call them the Family Funk. August Brill is a 72 yo retired book critic who is recuperating from a near fatal car wreck at his daughter Miriam’s house who has just had her daughter Katya move back in after dropping out of film school.

Why the Funk? August is still struggling with the recent death of his wife, Sonya. Miriam is a English prof whose husband dumped her and now has retreated into researching the life of a daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne. And Katya is still struggling with the death of her boyfriend Titus. This New England farmhouse has a really black cloud hanging over it. Miriam is mostly absent so August and Katya retreat from their respective worlds with daily viewings of classic film (not “movies” which are so prosaic. The great questions of life are addressed in “film”). In these films they try to find reasons for their weird world.

To make things worse, August has insomnia. To pass the time at night, he manufactures a story of an alternate reality. In his imagined world, 9/11 never happened. The 2000 election plunged the US into a civil war with millions being killed. His hero, a NY children’s magician Owen Brick, appears out of nowhere in a deep hole dressed as a soldier. He is pulled up by a sergeant and told to find a specific source for instructions to kill a man whose imagination has produced this particular reality – a man named August Brill. Kill him and the horror of this war disappears. Fail, and the old reality disappears. Brill takes Owen Brick through the past of August Brill that includes a number of people from Brill’s past.

One night, Katya hears August coughing and checks in on him. The rest of the night (half the book), August answers Katya’s questions about him and her grandmother. August tells of their first meeting, their courtship, the early years of marriage, of a few years living in Paris, his infidelity, divorce, 9yrs of whoring, his reconciliation with Sonya, and then her cancer. August tells Katya of a number of very dark scenes of horrific death (for example, a European neighbor tells of a favored school teacher who was in the resistance during WWII, was captured only to be drawn and quartered in a German POW camp as an example to the other prisoners). Katya and August relive the circumstances around the death of Titus and just how they came to actually see how Titus died.

Was I right? Not our usual fare. I wish I could remember why I reserved this from the library. The jacket liner wouldn’t have convinced me to check it out. But I found myself drawn into Brick’s world, then Brill’s past, and finally Katya’s tragic loss. Austen deftly depicts the guilt and shame of each without requiring pity from the reader.

I read some reviews of this book and author. I must be a bit on the old side. Apparently, Auster is a staple of literature courses in college today and his prior titles are well reviewed. This is a short book, easily read in a couple sessions; a whopping 180 pages in a 5x8” book. Guessing that Auster has quite a knack for dark, disturbing, and psychological tales. Worth another try.

. . . and the weird world rolls on.

East Coast Don