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By the Rivers of Babylon by Nelson DeMille (1978) – BR00014 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

The PolyBlog
February 18 2001

Plot or Premise

Peace in the Middle East is almost assured and two Concordes fly to New York with delegates for final negotiations. Terrorists try to derail the peace conference by planting bombs on board and taking the passengers hostage. After one plane is destroyed, killing all on board, the second plane is forced to land near Babylon. At the last minute, the hostages manage to escape to the top of a small hill from which they attempt to defend against the terrorists through several days of sorties, knowing that the military probably doesn’t know where they are and therefore can’t swoop in and rescue them.

What I Liked

Long before there was Clancy, there was DeMille. This book takes the international realm and stands it on its ear — there are (excruciating) details of the relations between the characters on both sides of the peace conference who are forced to work together to fight the terrorists. In addition, the battle tactics are first-rate, the writing is almost perfect, and the story is superb as the “hostages” fight in small groups with every weapon they have — gas bombs from the plane’s fuel tanks, sounds from a war movie blasted over speakers to simulate larger weaponry, etc.

What I Didn’t Like

There are a LOT of characters at the start of this book and it is hard to keep track of them all. Up until the end, there are too many small sub-plots — some are good, and necessary to flesh out the experience, but not all of them. There are fewer characters by the end though and it helps speed up the plotting. However, the ending is a little over-the-top, resembling a scene from a Die Hard movie more than keeping with the slightly more realistic tone of the rest of the book. As well, there is a meeting between the hostage-leaders and the terrorist-leader that is absolutely surreal. The likelihood of both parties treating it like a military battle with truces, etc., is virtually nil but it was at least interesting to read.

The Bottom Line

DeMille is the master of the game.

Ruined by Reading: A life in books by Lynne Sharon Schwartz (1996) – BR00010 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
February 18 2001

Plot or Premise

Schwarz starts with a commentary by a Chinese scholar that some people are handicapped by reading too much, and not thinking enough about what they read. From there, she looks at the books she has read in her life and the role they have played. It is not a heavy analytical tone throughout, but rather a personal commentary on the books that have been important to her in her life, and the elements of her life that took place in and around books.

What I Liked

There are a number of sections that are quite well done, such as:

  • Emptying your mind for meditation vs. filling it up during a life spent reading (pg. 14);
  • On the un-importance of the authors vs. the impact of the words themselves (pg. 17);
  • A life spent reading (pg. 96);
  • Choices of reading material (pg. 107);
  • Ruined by reading (pg. 114); and,
  • On self (pg. 119).

What I Didn’t Like

Some of the sections could have benefited from a bit more analysis and historical context, not just the personal impact on her own life.

The Bottom Line

The tone was pleasant, but not a serious work.

Hit Man by Lawrence Block (1998) – BR00015 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
February 18 2001

Plot or Premise

Keller is a hitman. The contracts come from White Plains, from an unseen man upstairs and the man’s assistant named Dot. He gets the jobs and he does them. A pro…no mistakes. Life is good. And every time Keller goes to a new town, he gets real estate agents to show him houses he’ll never buy. Then he kills the target and goes home. And goes to therapy, gets a dog, gets a girlfriend, meets an agent from the government, and generally cruises through life piling up bodies. But there are always little problems — like the man who hires him through a front and then neglects to pay the second half. Or the two rivals who both hire Keller to kill the other and he has to choose which one. Or the three “innocents” that the government has him kill. In the end, he decides to retire. And find a hobby. And even that doesn’t work out as planned.

What I Liked

The character is interesting and business-like. He has trouble killing a man he likes because he knows the man is waiting for it and Keller had saved his grandson from drowning, so he is somewhat conflicted. And the search for explanations about his life and his past are at once both deep and superficial — deep questions that Keller can turn away from any time he wants and simply shrug. And mean it. On the lighter side, he uses various identities when he travels, identities of real people. So, just for fun, he occasionally calls the wives from the hotel he is staying in so that when the couple complains to American Express that they weren’t there, the call appears to be from them to their own home, just to mess with them. But then he feels guilty, so he sends the wife flowers from the husband – charged to the husband’s card, of course. And his depictions of some places in New York City were a nice “”homecoming”” since I was there a while ago and know all too well the places he was describing. Favourite lines:

  • “Keller, what difference does it make how Lyman Crowder pronounces his last name?” “I just wondered.” “Well, stick around for the funeral. See what the minister says.”
  • There were eight million stories in the naked city, most of them not very interesting, and he was one of them.
  • “He had killed a thousand miles to ride a woman he’d never met” (A deliberate misquote of a Louis L’Amour advertisement: “He rode a million miles to kill a man he’d never met”).
  • It was an unusual experience for him to travel under his own name and use his own credit cards. He sort of liked it, but felt exposed and vulnerable. Signing it at the restored downtown hotel, he wrote down not only his own name but his own address as well. Who heard of such a thing?

What I Didn’t Like

Some of the chapters seem somewhat disjointed, which is likely a reflection of the fact that many of the chapters appeared “as is” in magazines as short stories. The only other complaint is that in a couple of places the story jumps back to New York City a little too fast and the reader is left wondering exactly what happened and how he killed the target. Particularly for the guy who initially stiffs Keller on the second half of his fee — there is no explanation as to whether Keller kills him or not. He plans it but then has to go back to New York City suddenly. No explanation. A good set of stories overall, although it’s hard to get into the character since the character is presented as rather cold and superficial. Almost like a description of someone’s life in the past, it’s hard to feel tension or great interest in the day-to-day happenings.

Disclosure

I am not personal friends with the author, but I have interacted with them briefly on social media.

The Bottom Line

Maybe you’ve met a hitman and didn’t know it.

Motion to Suppress by Perri O’Shaugnessy (1995) – BR00009 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
January 21 2001

Plot or Premise

Misty Patterson has problems: an abusive domineering husband and amnesia from her childhood. And now she has a new problem: her husband gets abusive again and she conks him with an Eskimo statue, hard enough seemingly to hurt but not to kill. Then she blacks out. He’s found dead a few days later after having been hit a second time with the same statue and dumped in the lake. And Misty doesn’t know what happened. Enter her lawyer, Nina Reilly, who is newly separated from her husband, newly separated from her neat legal firm, and new to the Lake Tahoe area. And her idea of a perfect introduction to the area is NOT a high-stakes murder case where everyone thinks Misty did it. Maybe even Misty herself.

What I Liked

The Lake Tahoe community comes alive as do some of the characters — Nina, herself; Misty; and Nina’s assistant. Lots of interesting facts about the area and the impact of the lake on a dead body. Well-written, all the characters are real, and adequately developed for the story. In fact, it’s an impressive array: Nina’s ex-husband on the peripheries along with her brother, sister-in-law, and Nina’s son; Paul, her investigator who’s warm for her form; a string of Misty’s lovers and their very jealous wives and girlfriends; Misty’s parents; and a couple of doctors who are trying to help Misty remember her past. A few loose threads are left for the next story in the “series”, if it does indeed become a series. And, on the legal side, the solution is handled in an interesting courtroom finale that is not like simple Perry Mason reruns. A good beginning for “Perry O’Shaughnessy”, which is a pseudonym for two sisters: Pamela (a lawyer) and Mary O’Shaughnessy (a writer).

What I Didn’t Like

The point-of-view switches from Misty to Nina to Paul in various chapters, and the switch does not really develop Misty’s or Paul’s character enough to justify the switch. Unfortunately, I figured out the three key elements of the “mystery” before the end of the story. Didn’t expect the ending, at least not exactly, but I did expect the “baddie”. There are a couple of places where it is a little heavy on the “legal” side, interpreting case law, which is a likely result of one of the two authors being a lawyer.

The Bottom Line

Should have suppressed some of the legal side.

Where The Bodies Are Buried by Janet Dawson (1998) – BR00007 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
January 21 2001

Plot or Premise

Private Investigator Jeri Howard is back and she’s lost a client. Rob Lawter comes to Jeri and retains her services, tells her that he’ll brief her later, but then takes a header out of his apartment window — suicide, accident or murder? Jeri investigates and takes a job as a legal secretary (her previous employment) at the company where Rob worked as a paralegal. All she has is a determination to help her now-dead client and an anonymous threatening note he received warning him about “blowing the whistle”. Lots of people enter stage left, and most of them stick around for the duration making it hard for Jeri to pin them down. Was it one of the lawyers? Was it the corporate bigwigs who took over the company in a hostile takeover and are they going to take the company apart piece-by-piece? Was it the plant managers conspiring to hide some terrible secret? Was it the brother-in-law who is trying to convince everyone that Rob committed suicide? And what do Rob’s neighbours know about what happened that night?

What I Liked

There are no super-human powers of deduction shown here by Jeri. She is a plodder — one piece of the puzzle at a time, turning it around and around to see if it fits anywhere. And a lot of the time, she doesn’t know what to do with the pieces and doesn’t try to make them fit anywhere. The writing is up to Dawson’s normal first-rate level and it is particularly interesting to see how Jeri goes about her non-investigating tasks around the office. The office, and the office politics, are made real by describing Jeri’s experiences — all of them, including the rules for working the photocopier. They set the tone for the workplace and most writers would have left them out. Dawson includes them, and the story is better for having them.

What I Didn’t Like

Jeri can be a bit of a dunce at times. Several “clues” leap off the page at the reader, but Jeri misses them, or rather, completely misses their significance — at the time. There are a couple like that, so the reader knows where the story is going when Jeri apparently doesn’t, and it is only to the credit of Dawson’s writing that you don’t say “Hurry up and get there already.” However, at the end, Dawson doesn’t play fair — there are two “clues” that turn everything around for Jeri, the final pieces of the puzzle, and the reader doesn’t get to see them until the solution is revealed. “Foul!”, I cry.

The Bottom Line

Worth digging this one out for a read.