Ross Macdonald. Black Money (1966)

 

     Ross  Macdonald. Black Money (1966) Several murders connected to a tennis club, gamblers, gangsters, and a university French Language department resolve into a psychological motive: A prof has a thing for young women, a streak of possessiveness, and a fragile, deteriorating nervous system. Macdonald’s style, a cut or two above Hammett’s in my opinion, carries the rather thin story and makes for a satisfying entertainment.
     The characters are believable, but Lew Archer keeps himself to himself, and despite his carefully complete narrative we don’t get a good sense of the man. He is a point of view, a conscious camera, an artistic temperament. The metaphors that express his responses to the weather, the landscape, the anonymous streets don’t tell us about his inner life. The occasional comments on life, distilled from largely bleak experience, are the only clues we have, and they are so gnomic that they lack personality. Once in a while a profound sympathy slips past the mask. Yet we read on, because Archer is such a precise observer of the people he encounters and the places he goes. We can see what he sees, hear what he hears, but our feelings are our own. *** (2008)

Dale Wilson. Canadian Passenger Chronicle 1, 2, 3 (1998, 2000, 2006)

     Dale Wilson. Canadian Passenger Chronicle 1, 2, 3 (1998, 2000, 2006) Just what it says: three albums of photographs, timetables, a handful of first person accounts, and some general history. Nicely put together, each volume is roughly chronological by railroad and region. The photos vary from excellent to barely acceptable, most of the latter good examples of why one should never scan at a low resolution, and never “resize” digital images prior to fitting them into a page. Wilson and his coworkers have been able to trace the histories of most of the cars and engines depicted. I hope the series continues, and that Wilson finds more travellers’ stories for the next couple of volumes. Although the provenance of all the material is carefully documented, these are not scholarly works, thank goodness. Their audience will be limited largely to railroad fans, and the odd student of transportation who needs something to liven up an academic dissertation. Recommended. *** (2008)

Arthur Upfield. Winds of Evil (1937)

   Arthur Upfield. Winds of Evil (1937) An old-fashioned detective yarn, set in the outback of Australia, where secrets of the past obscure the truth about the present murderer, told in the leisurely manner that guaranteed a pleasant railway journey (a bus journey in my case). Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, a half-caste of exquisite diction and manners, solves the riddle; the murderer does the honourable thing by killing himself, and two couples tie the knot. The author is casually and unmaliciously racist, which would no doubt be a stumbling block to younger modern readers, and would need to be delicately excised in any conversion to video.
     Napoleon is an odd mix of the Saint and Hercules Poirot, having the one character’s secretiveness, and the other’s vanity. Upfield also likes to surprise the reader with the results of his ‘tec’s brilliant ruminations, but does play fair in setting all the necessary clues before the reader. The characters are pleasant, with only an very officious policeman being a truly nasty piece of work (but he gets his comeuppance). The plot creaks here and there, and the murderer’s motivation is “sensational” in the early 20th century style: he’s a somnambulist who perpetrates his crimes without conscious memory after he recovers from his trance. (This has been used successfully as a defense in a couple of Ontario cases recently). Apparently it’s the weather that triggers these trances, especially the buildup of static electricity. Tosh of course, but at the time of the book’s writing as plausible as any other explanation.
     Upfield has a good sense of place and society, and gives us a clear and rather attractive picture of life in the Australian outback of the time. The book lists 19 novels by Upfield available in Scribner’s Crime Classic series, but I’d never heard of Bony before this. I don’t think I’ll seek out other of his adventures, but won’t pass them by if I find them. High class pulp fiction, written by a man who mastered the craft, and as far as I can tell was content to make a living at it without pretentious ambitions towards literature. **½ (2008)
   More about Upfield here .

A. A. Fair. Give ‘em the Axe (1944)

     A. A. Fair. Give ‘em the Axe (1944) Donald Lam is invalided out of the US Navy and returns to his partnership with Bertha Cool. They are asked to find some damaging info on a woman who has married the secret love (and boss) of a naive young woman, who wants to split up the marriage and get her man. Along the way, Cool and Lam encounter blackmail, car insurance fraud, and murder. Lam puts it all together, hands the murderer over to the cops, and gets a girl with good legs, too.
     A. A. Fair is one of Erle Stanley Gardner’s pseudonyms. The story is a mildly tough PI yarn, with a faintly film noir atmosphere. Plotting is perfunctory but complete. Fair lays out all the clues and a few red herrings in classic fashion. Characterisation is cartoonish, dialogue fake tough-guy and slick. Fair’s lawyer background shows in the legalities that entangle Cool and Lam, and in a legal deposition scene, where the good lawyer mounts a brilliant cross examination. A pleasant read, worth a place on a collector’s shelf. It would make a good B movie. The copy I have is a Dell pocket book of 1950 or later. Nice cover art. ** (2008)

Ruth Rendell. A Guilty Thing Surprised (1970)

     Ruth Rendell. A Guilty Thing Surprised (1970) An early Wexford, with little of the backstory about Wexford and Burden that give the later books the depth I prefer. Short and to the point: the murder comes about because of an incestuous brother-sister relationship. Rendell here exhibits her interest in morbid psychology which she indulges in most of the non-Wexford books. A good read, but not a great one, with the solution presented in a letter. **

Rex Stout. Prisoner’s Base (1952)

     Rex Stout. Prisoner’s Base (1952) A typical noir Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin romp, quite funny in places, relying on Archie’s ironic point of view and snappy dialogue to move the story along. And it does move. A fair damsel in distress arrives at the brownstone, Archie puts her in the third-floor front room, Wolfe sends her packing, and she’s murdered. Inheritance, control of stocks, conflict in the executive suite, and a few scraps of dirty laundry combine to make a convoluted plot with a simple solution: the fair damsel’s murder is prompted by pure greed. Three women die; Stout is rather cavalier with the corpses. A mild entertainment, with none of the gore that mars the late 20th century version of the genre. **

W. J. K. Davies. Vale of Rheidol Light Railway (1970) & British Rail. Vale of Rheidol Railway (1970?)

     W. J. K. Davies. Vale of Rheidol Light Railway (1970). British Rail. Vale of Rheidol Railway (1970?) Tweo pamphlets giving us a brief but thorough overview of the line, its history, rolling stock, track layouts, and operations. Built to haul freight, from very early on it attracted tourists, and that’s become its only business. When Davies wrote his pamphlet, it appeared the line might close. I don’t how it was kept open, but British rail was certainly wooing the tourists a year or so later, when it published its booklet, in colour yet. A lovely little line, located in a lovely part of Wales, these two booklets inspired an extensive web search, and a desire to ride the line the next time we are in the UK. *** (2008)
     Update 2013: we haven't visited this line yet.

D. E. MacIntyre. End of Steel (1973)

     D. E. MacIntyre. End of Steel (1973) A charming memoir, in the form of reminiscences. MacIntyre starts with his childhood in Montreal, but most of the stories are about his early working life as a clerk for the CPR. He worked in northern Quebec, on the Prairies, and on the CPR branch from Toronto to Sudbury (the Mactier division). He’s an unassuming chap, who obviously got on well with people, and would have risen faster had he been older. He left the CPR when he was barely 22, and set up in business; but this book does not tell of his later life. I enjoyed this book, and found a few nuggets, such as the fact that the CPR was replacing the 60lb rail on the main lines with 80lb rail. The lighter rail was reused on branches and sidings. *** (2008)

Herbert Fritz. KDL 11: Kriegsdampflokomotive 11 (1986)

     Herbert Fritz. KDL 11: Kriegsdampflokomotive 11 (1986) My cousin Roger gave me this book because KDL 2821 eventually became ÖBB 699.103. From 1971 to 1982 it was owned by the STLB, and in 1982 was bought by ÖGEG for use on the Steyrtal Lokalbahn’s Grünberg section, which they operate as a museum railway. Fritz has given as complete a history as was possible, considering the number of documents etc that went missing in the aftermath of WW2. A number of drawings and photographs complement his text. It seems he has found just about every extant photo of any interest of this class of narrow gauge engines. A few were rebuilt to standard gauge, and ungainly looking critters they are, as only the frame was widened to accommodate the longer axles. An interesting book, and an essential reference for anyone who might want to build or operate the engines. Maps of the lines that used them would help. **½ (2008)

Peter Wegenstein. Bahn im Bild 96: Die Salzkammergut-Strecke (1996)

      Peter Wegenstein. Bahn im Bild 96: Die Salzkammergut-Strecke (1996) Over 100 pictures cover this line from Stainach-Irdning to Attnang-Puchheim. A couple pages of text provide a brief history, which reveals that the kilometres are numbered from the south, not from the north as I had always assumed. I rode this line a couple dozen times or more when I went to school in Graz: it was the first or last leg of the journey, and I always felt I was home when I climbed aboard the 4-wheel passenger cars standing on Track 2 at Stainach-Irdning. Good photos, although too many of them focus on the locomotives at the expense of the surrounding landscape. Almost all photos are dated, but most were made in the 1980s and 90s. Earlier photos are hard to come by, probably because many of them were lost or confiscated during WW2. My cousin Dieter gave me this book. *** (2008)

Berke Breathed. The Night of the Mary Kay Commandos & Classics of Western Literature (1989 & 1990)

     Berke Breathed. The Night of the Mary Kay Commandos & Classics of Western Literature (1989 & 1990) Opus and his friends have given me many hours of pleasure, both the original strips that I occasionally came across in the newspapers, and these and other collections. Bloom County is a place of naivete and malice, of comfort and pain, of bloody-mindedness and co-operation. Like all great cartoon strips, it both documents and critiques the obsessions of the culture. The strip ran from 1980 to 1989. Apart from names, the politics haven’t changed much. They are merely more extreme, enough so that straight reporting of today’s US politics in the 1980s would have been read as satire.
   More here: Bloom_County ****

Sarah Paretsky. Indemnity Only (1982)

 

      Sarah Paretsky. Indemnity Only (1982) Searching for a missing young woman, V. I Warshawski stumbles onto a murder, and eventually links it to a scheme to use a trust account to deposit fraudulent workmen’s compensation claims. A crooked insurance excusive, a crooked banker, a crooked but naive union boss, a too-good-to-be-true young woman of 14, Chicago’s upper crust and its warts, and other such things mark this book as an adventure romance of the knight errant type. Vic is the knight, Chicago is the murky forest, the crooked executive is the dragon, the mob supplies various monsters, the young women are the princess, and of course there’s the treasure, a man’s soul.
     Nicely done, the book supplies a few hours of more or less innocent entertainment. Another of those books that would make a good TV series, but now original material in the same genre has supplanted adaptations. Pity. **½

James Clavell. The Children’s Story (1963)

     James Clavell. The Children’s Story (1963) A little fable demonstrating how easy it would be to change a whole society by taking over the schools. It’s clearly an anti-communist tract, but if it applies at all, it applies to all schools and societies everywhere, and as such does makes one reflect on how we establish and maintain social controls.
     But Clavell’s notion that a simple change in teachers and curriculum would bring about a change in values is so simplistic it’s not even wrong. It oversimplifies teaching and learning to a mind-boggling extent. Clavell has obviously never been a teacher. It also ignores the subtle but nevertheless powerful effects of culture, which always bend ideologies to a culture’s deepest values, not the other way round. Thus, the totalitarianism implicit in Lenin’s reading of Communism made it palatable to the Russians, who were used to tsarist tyranny, and to the Chinese, who were used to a central government exerting power via familial loyalties translated into hierarchy. * (2008)