Gordon Snell. More Marvellous Canadians (2002), Dik Browne. Hagar the Horrible’s Viking Handbook (1985)

     Gordon Snell. More Marvellous Canadians (2002) Ill. By Aislin. Verses and Aislin cartoons form sketch-bios of miscellaneous Canadians. The quality varies, as one might expect, and the pieces on living persons are of course out of date by now. I wonder, for example, what Snell would have to say on Conrad Black’s jail time. A nice little gift book, which this was: Fay gave it to me. A pleasant diversion from more serious concerns. Aislin's cartoons are generally more informative than the text. ** (2010)

     Dik Browne. Hagar the Horrible’s Viking Handbook (1985) Hagar the Horrible enjoyed a vogue in the early 1980s, and still appears in many comics pages; this book exploits it. Amusing enough, for Hagar is really a lovable rascal, but quite tame and in places even lame. Browne mixes fact and (Hagar-) fiction to good effect. ** (2010)

J. M. Coetzee. Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)

      J. M. Coetzee. Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) This is a gloomy book, about oppression, “interrogation”, and the power of the State. Worth reading, I suppose, but I’m not in the mood for gloom and doom.
     Coetzee (pron. Koo-tzee) was one of the white South African anti-apartheid writers, which gained him an international reputation and a Nobel Prize (the Nobel Prize committee prefers tendentious writers who deal with serious themes, preferably political, which I think is a serious mistake). His fiction, what I’ve read of it, has a strong political tone, it is in fact more concerned with theme than with character, plot, or setting. This makes his work heavy going. I read some of his short fiction (perhaps excerpts from longer tales) some years ago, and my impression then was that Coetzee is somewhat fixated on cruelty. Not that this is a bad thing in itself, but his descriptions of torture and violence verge on the pornographic. The opening pages of this book allude to torture; I have no need of descriptions of torture, however sketchy. I stopped reading on page 17.
     Odd fact: Coetzee is about two weeks younger than I am. * (2010)

Garrison Keillor. Pontoon (2007)

     Garrison Keillor. Pontoon (2007) “A novel of Lake Wobegon”, according to the subtitle. It’s a novel only in the sense that there is am extended central narrative line that ties all the stories past and present together. Evelyn Peterson has died, her daughter Barbara arranges the disposal of her ashes as requested, and realises that like her mother she needs freedom to be herself. She has spent too much time adapting herself to other people’s wishes and expectations. A couple of other stories intersect, making for a bizarre finale, but much of the book deals with Evelyn’s and Barbara’s history. Each chapter advances our knowledge of these two central characters, as well as several other citizens of Lake Wobegon. The style and form is that of Keillor’s radio tales, rambling, apparently formless, yet always arcing back to whatever motif or theme began the tale. A good read, improved if you’ve heard Keillor’s News From Lake Wobegon, and can read with his voice in your head. *** (2010)

Agatha Christie. Murder on the Calais Coach (1934) (Murder on the Orient Express)

     Agatha Christie. Murder on the Calais Coach (1934) This is Murder on the Orient Express, by which title it is now known even in the US of A. This copy is dated 1973, well before the Poirot movies and TV series, as well as a number of nostalgia videos about the great trains of the world, made Americans aware of the Orient Express.
     I reread it because a friend had sent us a video of the current Poirot version. The book is a straightforward puzzle, with minimal characterisation. Possibly inspired by the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, it deals with retribution: the acquitted murderer of a kidnapped child is killed by a dozen people involved in the case. Since the case is solved before the authorities arrive to rescue the snow-stranded train, Poirot has to decide whether to reveal his solution (to which the perpetrators confess, albeit indirectly), or whether to present the intended misleading solution that they had devised to hide their vengeance. Poirot leaves it up to the director of the Wagon Lits company, through whose good offices he had obtained a 1st class berth despite the (unusually) heavily booked train.
     The movie reinvented the story, taking Poirot’s well-known merciless judgement of murderers as a clue to his character. Even a horrible woman has a right to live, for example (Appointment with Death). Here, he has to wrestle with this principle, a character trait that is reinforced by depiction of his bedtime prayers, in which he thanks God for making him a Catholic. The allusion to the Pharisee in Luke is I think deliberate, especially since we also see the child killer at his prayers for forgiveness.
     But the jury of executioners has made up their minds. They will kill the man in such a way as to make it look like an attack from outside the train. It is only as their links to the murdered child are revealed that Poirot edges towards the truth, which brings with it an ethical dilemma The child killer got off because he had connections with the Mob, who suborned the police, the prosecuting attorney, and the judge. Poirot does conceal the truth, but at great cost to himself. Ginger thought the movie somewhat melodramatic. But I think it was a well-done re-invention of the story, and a consistent extension of Poirot’s biography.
     The book is vintage if somewhat perfunctory puzzle crime fiction: **½ The movie is modern psychological crime fiction. ***

Shelby Spong. The Sins of Scripture (2005)

     Shelby Spong. The Sins of Scripture (2005) I’ve heard an interview with Spong (on CBC's Tapestry, with Mary Hines), and looked forward to reading this book. It says much that needs to be said, but I gave up on it about 1/4 of the way in. Spong’s writing is verbose and cliched; he’s much given to exclamation marks, too! * (2010)

Edith Pargeter. She Went to War (1942)

     Edith Pargeter. She Goes to War (1942) Republished in 1989, this book is interesting both as a record of the first couple of years of WW2, when Britain suffered a series of defeats and Hitler conquered most of Europe, and as a character-portrait. These were the years of the Blitz, of Dunkirk, the Peloponnesian defeat, and Britain’s slow fumbling towards military skill and efficiency. It’s quite likely that if the Japanese hadn’t provoked the US into war, Britain would have had to make terms with the Reich.
     Catherine Saxon decides to join up as a WREN because she realises she’s fed up with the complacency of her upper-middle class social group, who take it for granted that other people will fight their wars for them. Her assignment is teletype operator, and she’s soon promoted to command her watch. She writes letters to Nick, an old family friend, maybe her uncle, a paralysed WW1 vet. The letters trace her growing political awareness, which increases when she meets a private, Tom Lyddon, who has fought in the Spanish Civil War. He is killed, but he writes to her from Greece and Crete, and Cyprus. The letters deal more with Catherine’s thoughts and actions than with details of the war itself. She does give vivid descriptions of what it feels like to be in a bomb shelter during a raid, descriptions that gave me enough uncomfortable memories that I had to read them in small doses.
     Tom’s letters give enough details of the Greek campaign to show that in 1941 the generals and admirals were still unable to understand the importance of mobile armour and air cover, the lack of which led directly to the conquest of Greece. The fact that this conquest was welcomed by a large proportion of Greeks is not mentioned, possible because at the time it was not generally understood that Hitler’s racist doctrines were welcomed in many parts of Europe, and for that matter on the Allied side weren’t as vigorously opposed as they should have been. Both Canada and the US rejected many Jewish refugees, for example.
     Catherine slowly becomes aware of how the class system interferes with the war effort itself, as it did in WW1, when the largely aristocratic officer class found it difficult to adapt their strategic and tactical thinking to the new technologies of war. She’s determined to work for real change both during and after the war, a change that did in fact come when the British elected a Labour government instead of reinstalling Churchill and his Conservatives, and embraced the welfare state. It's significant that those who oppose the notion that the state has social responsibilities refer to the “nanny state”. This phrase resonates with undertones of petty tyranny for a certain class of people, but is nearly meaningless to most of the rest of us.
     Pargeter, who later made a name (Ellis Peters) and small fortune for herself as the creator of Cadfael, is good at giving us a portrait of Catherine. She’s a complex person, who at the age 26 has begun to think for herself, and redefine her relationship with the world around her. Her undying love for Syddon is perhaps too much a convention of love romance, but her strength of character makes it plausible if not exactly believable. The politics are a little less convincing, because we read them with hindsight, and so much of what seemed certain or reasonable at the time has turned out to be deceptive and illusory. You can’t go home again, said Tom Wolfe; you can never again be the innocent and naive person you were. Knowledge and experience impede the imagination even as they liberate it. Anyhow, Pargeter used her own experiences, but without research into her life I don’t know to what extent Catherine reflects her own attitudes. *** (2010)

Sue Grafton. L is for Lawless, M is for Malice, N is for Noose, O is for Outlaw

Sue Grafton.   L is for Lawless The title alludes to a psychopath who betrayed his fellow robbers many years ago, killed one of them, and has been waiting to get the loot ever since. There isn’t any loot worth mentioning, but by the time Kinsey has discovered this it’s too late. She also doesn’t get paid, as the family that wanted her to prove their father’s military service (so they would get death benefits) welshes when it turns out he was using stories of war service as a cover. One of the weaker tales in the series, with a surprisingly creaky plot. Even the psycho seems overdone. ** (2010)




    M is for Malice Kinsey finds a long lost black sheep, reformed of course, whose murder does little to help his dysfunctional family mend its rifts. The murderer is the last surviving relative of a girl betrayed by this family, but she has it all wrong: the lost sheep even then had a fine sense of honour. The story ends, uncharacteristically, with the perp suiciding by running into traffic. Grafton is back in top form in this novel, with Kinsey revealing a few more bits about her past, the social satire sharp as ever, and vexing questions of justice, loyalty, betrayal and love left unresolved, as they often are in real life. *** (2010)

     N is for Noose (1999) The noose figures in two murders that a dead small town cop was investigating. His widow wants Kinsey to find out why he was morose and tense in his final weeks, before a heart attack killed him. The perp attacks Kinsey, and nearly kills her in a final confrontation (a staple motif in Grafton’s books), she suffers the slings and arrows of small-town suspicion, and is glad to return to her medium-sized city. The mood and ambience of a late spring with gloomy weather and glooming mountains overlooking the town, the characters as narrow and closed in as the valley in which their town stands, the wary respect of the cops for Kinsey, are better done than usual. The plot is somewhat Patricia Cornwellish, which is not a compliment. **½ (2010)

   O is for Outlaw (1999) The outlaw is Kinsey’s ex-husband Mickey McGruder, whom she hasn’t seen for fourteen years. She walked when he asked her to provide an alibi for the death of Benny Quintero. Now he’s been shot, and two detectives from L.A. visit her because Mickey apparently made a 30-minute phone call to her a few days earlier. A storage-scavenger offers her a box of stuff he found in McGruder’s storage locker, whose contents were auctioned because he hadn’t paid the rent. In the box Kinsey finds a letter that arrived the day after she walked, which exculpates Mickey. So naturally Kinsey has to discover what really happened, who tried to kill her ex, and who killed Benny. She’s of course nearly killed herself before she unmasks the killer, but this time the plot is less important than the characters. Well done, as usual. **½ (2010)