The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets by Kathleen Alcott

Published by Other Press on September 11, 2012

Jackson and James are brothers. Jackson is only a year older but he seems determined to be middle-aged well before he enters his teens. A freakishly obsessive kid, Jackson memorizes all the bones in the human body "in order to understand and own how they carried him." Ida is Jackson's inseparable friend from infancy and his lover from adolescence. Jackson and James virtually become part of Ida's family; Ida's father treats them as if they were his own children. As they get older, Jackson starts having nightmares that lead to nocturnal violence; sometimes his somnambulism produces art, other times mayhem. Meanwhile James becomes a mentally ill, suicidal drug addict.

Ida and Jackson are no longer together when the novel begins. Their paths depart about halfway through Ida's recollection of her life. As she tells her story, seemingly random incidents loom large in Ida's young life: her exploration of Jackson's body when she is seven and he is eight; Ida's shameful response to the kidnapping of a neighborhood child; the meanness Ida directs to a preacher's daughter who wants to befriend her. During too much of this short novel, as Ida reflects upon her life, I found myself asking "Why is she telling me this?" Kathleen Alcott provides no clear answer. On other occasions, Ida recalls seminal occurrences from her adolescence that are just too contrived to resonate as formative events in a young life.

None of the events in this short novel are eventful; none of the drama is dramatic. The motivation for Jackson's decision to leave Ida is ludicrous. The characters are tedious, as are Ida's mutating relationships with Jackson and James and her father and an art gallery owner named Paul. Ida's lifelong obsession with Jackson is inexplicable, particularly given that she spurned him before he spurned her. Ida writes: "Since childhood I've spent my heart and words and a catalog of tiny, insignificant moments trying to merge with a bloodstream not mine." I wanted to yell, "Get over yourself!"

Ida's actions and reactions are too often unexplained. I don't need authors to spell things out for me but I do like things to make sense. Ida's thoughts and deeds rarely do. When a character is as pathetic as Ida, I want to know how she came to be that way, but Alcott offers no insight into Ida's psyche. At bottom, I didn't believe the characters were real and I didn't believe the story that Ida narrates.

Alcott's writing is strong but it often amounts to flash without substance. She strives for (and sometimes achieves) an eloquence that overshadows the story she's trying to tell. At other times (as in the title), she's just pretentious. Clever phrasing and surprising word choices do not a novel make. How does a reader evaluate a novel that has nothing to say when the nothing is said beautifully? If I could rate them separately, I would recommend the prose but not the content.  Since they are inseparable, however, I have to say ...

NOT RECOMMENDED

A Fistful of Collars by Spencer Quinn

Published by Atria Books on September 11, 2012 

If you’re looking for a light, amusing detective story, it’s hard to beat Chester Quinn’s novels about the two partners in the Little Detective Agency:  Bernie Little and his loyal dog Chet.  Even when the plot is weak, Chet is always good for a laugh.  Fortunately for fans of the series, this is one of Quinn’s better books.

A movie is shooting on location in the Valley.  The mayor (prompted by the city’s insurance company) hires Bernie to keep an eye on the star.  Thad Perry has a taste for drugs and a knack for getting into trouble.  If the three weeks of filming pass without incident, the town will attract more filmmakers -- or so the mayor believes -- and the city’s insurer won’t have to pay any claims. Yet once filming begins, trouble of an unexpected nature ensues:  murder.  In the end, three murders come to light (albeit considerably separated in time) and it’s up to Bernie and Chet to determine how they are related. Bernie is in charge of deduction; Chet (as he frequently reminds the reader) brings other things to the table.

The mystery is a good one, much better than the plot that drove the previous novel in the series.  Still, the story exists largely as an excuse to give Chet something to talk about.  Chet is the narrator and, as you might expect of a dog, he has trouble staying focused.  Chet’s thoughts tend to meander (often in the direction of his next meal) but they always end up in a happy place.  Chet might ponder a profound question for a few moments -- If Bernie has a word on the tip his tongue, why can’t Chet see it? How can Bernie’s bark be worse than his bite when Bernie doesn’t bark? -- but Chet doesn’t sweat the small stuff.  His running commentary on life (“a fluffy white towel can be fun to drag around”) is hilarious.

Like all dogs, Chet enjoys eating (ribs are a favorite), napping, and riding in cars.  He has some impulse control issues, particularly when cats are around, but the beauty of Quinn’s writing lies in his illumination of the canine mind.  Bernie might think Chet is misbehaving, but Chet’s behavior is perfectly natural ... to Chet.  Whether he’s shredding the leather seats in Bernie’s new Porsche or making an uninvited leap into someone’s swimming pool, Chet’s actions always make perfect sense … to Chet.

A Fistful of Collars moves at a steady pace and features enough action and detection to satisfy mystery and light thriller fans, but the story is clearly geared to dog lovers.  This is neither a hardcore thriller nor a complex mystery.  The writing is breezy, the language is clean, and humor (invariably generated by Chet’s antics and commentary) is the animating force.  New readers can enjoy the story even if they haven’t read the earlier installments, but series fans will appreciate the mild intrigue surrounding Bernie’s changing relationship with his girlfriend.  Chet doesn't quite understand what that's all about, while readers will have to wait for the next book to learn how Bernie's romantic life will unfold.  Until then, Bernie at least has Chet at his side.

RECOMMENDED

Quarantine by John Smolens

Published by Pegasus on September 5, 2012 

In the summer of 1796, Newburyport's harbormaster recruits Giles Wiggins to perform a medical inspection of the Miranda, newly arrived from France. Wiggins discovers that most members of the crew are dead or dying. Although the doctor quarantines the ship, several crewmen row into Newburyport. Soon the fever spreads through the town. Since Newburyport's doctors have no clue as to the cause of the disease and no effective means to treat it, it becomes necessary to quarantine the town.

Although the plot involves drugs that have been stolen from the town's apothecaries -- drugs that cannot be used to treat the ill unless town leaders pay an extortionate price to reclaim them -- the story revolves around a prominent Newburyport family, one that has replaced family spirit with murderous intent. Enoch Sumner owns the Miranda, a ship he named after his matriarchal mother, who is also the mother of Giles Wiggins, Enoch's half-brother. Enoch's son, Samuel, is a ne'er-do-well spendthrift who, returning from France on the Miranda, joined the crew members who escaped from the ship in a rowboat. Marie de Monpellier, a French girl who was a passenger on the Miranda before she swam ashore, becomes a guest of the family after Leander Hatch saves her from drowning. Leander eventually joins the family's staff as a stable hand, although (unlike the reader) Leander won't understand his true relationship to the family until the novel's end.

Quarantine often has the flavor of a melodrama as characters and storylines intersect in coincidental and improbable ways. At times I was reminded of Dickens, particularly when a character named Uriah entered the mix. There is, however, considerably more sex in Quarantine than you'll find in Dickens, making this, I suppose, a modern form of melodrama. As is typically true of melodrama, the story is far from subtle. Quarantine is often more interesting for its background details -- the belief that the fever sweeping the town is retribution for the town's sinful ways, the arguments about appropriate medical care, the role played by privateers who made their fortunes seizing British ships during the war -- than for the family drama that occupies the foreground.

Despite being melodramatic and a bit scattered, Quarantine is engaging. John Smolens' prose is lively and his characters have enough personality to make up for their lack of depth. The period and place are convincing. I had difficulty believing Miranda's motivation to engage in certain nefarious behavior that is central to the story, and I was less than enthralled by the uninspired love stories (Giles is the focus of one, Leander of the other). Given the emphasis that melodrama places on emotion, the love stories -- particularly Leander's -- seem surprisingly hollow. For the most part, however, Quarantine is entertaining and, like any good melodrama, it leads to a satisfying conclusion.

RECOMMENDED

My Uncle Oswald by Roald Dahl

First published in 1979; republished by Penguin Books on August 28, 2012 

Oswald Cornelius takes pride in telling us that he is the greatest Lothario of all time. Portions of his "diary" are finally being published by Oswald's nephew, who appears in My Uncle Oswald only long enough to introduce volume XX of Oswald's diary. Oswald made his first fortune at age 17 by selling an early version of Viagra to men and women, his second by creating a forerunner of the sperm bank. His plan for stocking the sperm bank is both cunning and wicked.

As these delightful tales unfold, Oswald occasionally boasts of his sexual prowess. With rare exceptions, Oswald follows the self-made principle of "no-woman-more-than-once," a rule he commends "to all men of action who enjoy variety." More often, however, we follow the efforts of the woman he recruited to gather sperm (using a powerful aphrodisiac) from the kings, artists, writers, musicians, and scientists of Oswald's time, including (among many others) Einstein, Monet, Joyce, and Puccini. Unsurprisingly, Picasso proves to be a troublesome subject, but the episode involving Proust is the funniest.

Roald Dahl is acclaimed for his children's stories. Perhaps he found a need to balance his life by adding this decidedly adult novel (and two "Uncle Oswald" short stories that were published in Playboy and reprinted in Switch Bitch) to his oeuvre. Despite the subject matter, however, My Uncle Oswald is far from pornographic. The stories are ribald but restrained. Most of all, they are hilarious. My Uncle Oswald is a novel that deserves to be on any reader's shelf of comedy classics.

RECOMMENDED

Fires of London by Janice Law

Published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road on September 4, 2012 

Fires of London follows a classic thriller formula:  a falsely accused man must avoid the police long enough to prove his own innocence.  In addition to its plot, Fires of London shares other attributes of memorable thrillers:  strong writing, solid characters, and a swift pace.  Yet in its protagonist and milieu, Fires of London departs from the classic formula to achieve a result that is fresh and fascinating.

To support his painting and gambling, Francis Bacon works as a “gentleman’s companion.”  His preference, however, is for “rough trade” -- clandestine meetings with strangers under circumstances that carry a hint of danger.  One of the men he meets, a man he believes to be Chief Inspector John Mordren, roughs him up during their encounter in a park.  Soon thereafter, a young man Bacon vaguely knows from gay bars is found beaten to death in Hyde Park.  Bacon wonders whether Mordren might be responsible. After Bacon stumbles over the dead body of an RAF pilot while making his way down a dark street, Mordren recruits Bacon to assist him in finding the serial killer.  Does Mordren really want Bacon’s help, or is Mordren setting up Bacon as the fall guy?  When Bacon finds a third murder victim after a bombing raid, Mordren has reason to identify Bacon as a suspect in all three murders.  Bacon, of course, must find the killer on his own while he tries to avoid arrest.

Francis Bacon is an unlikely thriller hero.  That’s consistent with the convention of the “innocent man” formula -- the innocent man is usually an ordinary guy thrust into a sinister world, relying on wits rather than training to solve the mystery -- but Bacon is truly a unique thriller protagonist.  Bacon describes himself as “a connoisseur of extremity, of excess emotion and extraordinary sensation,” for whom there exists only pain and pleasure.  He likes to live on the edge -- both in his sex life and in his nighttime work as a warden, enforcing blackout regulations and helping Londoners find shelters -- but he balances a life that is “dark and full of violence” with the brightness of art and the joy of celebration.

Bacon’s personality is carefully developed, but even minor characters are made real and complex with a few well-chosen words.  Wee Jimmy, for instance, is a criminal and thug, but he pitches in to help rescue crews clear rubble left by the Blitz, doing his part to help his countrymen in wartime.  From Bacon’s resourceful (and thieving) grandmother to his hard-drinking companions, every character is full of vitality.

Janice Law based the fictional Francis Bacon on the British painter of the same name, who (according to Wikipedia) is “known for his bold, graphic and emotionally raw imagery.”  The same adjectives could be used to describe Law’s prose.  Law writes in a style that is both elegant and playfully lurid.  She recreates the climate of a weary London as pub crawlers carry gas masks, blackouts lead to traffic accidents, and everyone waits for the first bombs to fall.  Her description of the fiery aftermath of the air raids that finally come is just as vivid.  You can smell the smoke, hear the dogs howling at death.

Fires of London is a quick but engrossing read.  The plot is simple yet elegant, spiced with the addition of a tangentially related blackmail scheme, and leads to a satisfying (if slightly ambiguous) conclusion.  While the novel works as a mystery/thriller (although the identity of the killer isn’t difficult to guess), it is even better as a character study, a portrait of an artist who is drawn to more than one kind of peril in the dark nights of wartime London.

RECOMMENDED