....don't say anything at all. That's the saying you heard from you parents, right? And it makes sense, it does, but what if you're advising people about books? Can you be truthful without being hurtful? And, if you think about it, is any author really ever going to see what I write about them anyway? After all, who am I in the big scheme of things? So many thoughts run through my mind as I go about my day and I so want to get here and write them down as a means of sorting through them.
Library Journal sent me a book recently that I read rather quickly but which I just wasn't enamoured of. It was a young man's first novel and he'd received some rather hefty accolades already. I wrote and submitted the review, trying to be objective but not gushing - as I was for Barbara Kingsolver's new book The Lacuna. I received an immediate email from my editor - a lovely email but insightful. She suspected that I didn't think the book would be a big seller but that the publisher was expecting huge things. She wanted to know what I REALLY thought. Ouch! I laughed. How did she see through me so easily? I'm an open book on my blog but with LJ? Not so much. After a few back and forths, I expressed my opinions and she moved some sentences around, took out a word or two and changed the entire tenor of the review. It was perfect.
All this is to say that while there's something for everyone, it may not always be right for us. So when Stephen Carter came out with his fourth book, after Emperor of Ocean Park, New England White, and Palace Council, three suspenseful, eye-opening looks at the elite, rather secretive, African American movers and shakers of the 20th century who wielded much political power "behind the scenes," I was all set for more of the same and looking forward to it. Jericho Falls is, instead, a stand alone, about a former CIA deputy, facing major illness, mental as well as physical, whose paranoia envelops and almost destroys everyone he holds dear. Now, because I'd read all of Carter's previous work and enjoyed it immensely, I didn't want to have a negative attitude toward the new book which, from the jump, just didn't hold up. I stayed with it because I kept expecting it to get better but the plot was just inconceivable.
Joshua, the ex-spook, supposedly close to death, is holed up in his Colorado mansion, surrounded by extreme technology, booby traps, and his two disparate, feuding daughters. He calls Rebecca, an old flame, thirty or forty years his junior, a single mother living a very circumspect life, and asks her to come out from the East coast for a last goodbye. Of course, he tells her that someone is after his secrets and he can only trust her to keep them safe, and with absolutely no training or physical skill, Becca manages to hold off terrorists, CIA operatives, the local police dept. and every bad guy known to man. Hmmmmmm - not likely. The sad thing is that authors I really like blurbed this book saying it was the finest espionage they'd ever read. I guess I'd have to say, they haven't been reading their local papers lately!
On the other hand, someone I'll bet you've never read, a man named John Darnton, wrote a very witty sendup of the newspaper business in a flat out, old fashioned murder mystery called Black and White and Dead all Over. A few years ago, Maryellen and I heard Mr. Darnton speak at a reading festival in Sarasota and he was everything you'd expect a "mild mannered reporter" to be.
His novel on the other hand, is anything but mild mannered. In fact, it hits you over the head with the discovery of a dead body on the printing room floor, an editor, adept at making enemies, with a stake through his heart. The jaded reporter who gets the job of writing up the story befriends the police detective, a sharp, tough gal who knows the ropes (moonlighting as a jazz singer) and, between the two of them, they have a rip roaring time sifting through the motives and evidence looking for a perp.
Darnton introduces us to some pretty funny characters who would be recognizable to anyone with any cursory knowledge of the politics of publishing a small town newspaper let alone a NYC daily, with all the rivalries and petty jealousies at work between the obit writer, the "society" maven, the tv chef and the Internet. It all falls together nicely and the characters are believable and likeable. If you listen, as I did on my mp3 player, you'll also be treated to some rather lovely jazz riffs in the background to go along with the excellent narration.
Tonight I get to begin a new book, That Thing Around Your Neck, a series of short stories by a remarkable young author whose name I'm ashamed to say I can't pronounce, Chimamanda Adiche, whose novel Half of a Yellow Sun was one of the finest books I read last year.
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