Books: Pompeii By Robert Harris (2003)

“All along the Mediterranean coast, the Roman empire’s richest citizens are relaxing in their luxurious villas, enjoying the last days of summer. The world’s largest navy lies peacefully at anchor in Misenum. The tourists are spending their money in the seaside resorts of Baiae, Herculaneum, and Pompeii. But the carefree lifestyle and gorgeous weather belie an impending cataclysm, and only one man is worried. The young engineer Marcus Attilius Primus has just taken charge of the Aqua Augusta, the enormous aqueduct that brings fresh water to a quarter of a million people in nine towns around the Bay of Naples. His predecessor has disappeared. Springs are failing for the first time in generations. And now there is a crisis on the Augusta’ s sixty-mile main line—somewhere to the north of Pompeii, on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. Attilius—decent, practical, and incorruptible—promises Pliny, the famous scholar who commands the navy, that he can repair the aqueduct before the reservoir runs dry. His plan is to travel to Pompeii and put together an expedition, then head out to the place where he believes the fault lies. But Pompeii proves to be a corrupt and violent town, and Attilius soon discovers that there are powerful forces at work—both natural and man-made—threatening to destroy him.”

Like all historical novels that mix both fictional characters with historical fact, there is a bit of too much soap opera going on. Yes, it’s a disaster novel born out many 1970’s Hollywood films (Towering Inferno, Earthquake, and even Titanic, the 1997 version), but Harris also tries to make comparisons to the Roman Empire and America. This theme appears to come off deliberately, as the English author uses typical American terminology such as describing Pompeii as “boomtown.”

Another aspect to this genre is the creation of a sort modern character. Attilius is such, a man who seems to have little use for superstition and even religion in a time period rife with it. But who also seems to grasp science better than most and can solve almost every problem that folks have. He comes across as a natural leader, which causes friction among the many rich folks of Pompeii. This is the soap opera aspect, where the town leaders balk at his pertinent to know more than them. But even he, in the end, realizes the missed opportunities of what was coming: 

"Still, he tried to convey the power of what he had witnessed when the roof of the mountain lifted off. anand the blasting of the summit was merely the culmination of a host of other phenomena – the sulfer in the soil, the pools of noxious gas, the earth tremors, the swelling of th land that severed the matrix of the aqueduct, the disappearance of local springs. All of these were interconnected."

 Again, it plays out like modern James Cameron Titanic film. And like that film, the books eye-rolling romance falls short. A great book to learn about Pompeii and volcanoes, though.

Books: Real Tigers (Slough House #3) by Mick Herron (2016)

“Catherine Standish, one of their Slough House members, worked in Regent's Park long enough to understand treachery, double-dealing and stabbing in the back, and she's known Jackson Lamb long enough to have learned that old sins cast long shadows. And she also knows that chance encounters never happen to spooks, even recovering drunks whose careers have crashed and burned. What she doesn't know is why anyone would target her. So whoever's holding her hostage, it can't be personal. It must be about Slough House. Most likely, it's about Jackson Lamb. And say what you like about Lamb, he'll never leave a joe in the lurch. He might even be someone you could trust with your life.”

While addiction seems to be the theme of Real Tigers (everyone within in Slough House has their own personal demons, be it a recreational drug addiction, gambling, alcoholism, or someone who needs some action in their lives), there is also the machinations of the back-stabbing bureaucrats that inhabit this world, a desperate war of ambition. Yes, there is violence and death, but the thrust of the book is more a takedown on corporate dysfunction than anything else.

There are considerable shifts in the narrative structure here, which makes the novel a bit more complex and multi-layered in its plotting than the usual fair. While the tale has hooks that grab the reader, what continues to work here is the character development. Instead of keeping people in their boxes, Herron breathes life into them – and reminds us that everyone has their flaws. The introduction of Peter Judd, the Home Secretary, gives us a villain of sorts ripped from today’s headlines – the worst possible politician you can think of who has information on everyone -and is willing to use it to get to his ultimate goal -10 Downing Street.

As with the previous two, there is plenty of comic touches including some that border on slapstick. The dark, sardonic humor is used to great effect. And while Jackson Lamb is the most politically incorrect person ever, I find myself forgiving him for it, because deep down, you know Lamb is right about a lot things.

Books: Dead Lions (Slough House #2) By Mick Herron (2013)

“From the Intelligence Service purgatory that is Slough House, where disgraced spies are sent to see out the dregs of their careers, Jackson Lamb is on his way to Oxford, where a former spook has turned up dead on a bus. Dickie Bow was a talented streetwalker once, good at following people and bringing home their secrets. He was in Berlin with Lamb, back in the day. But he’s not an obvious target for assassination in the here and now. On Dickie’s phone Lamb finds the last message he ever left, which hints that an old-time Moscow-style op is being run in the Intelligence Service’s back-yard. Once a spook, always a spook, and even being dead doesn’t mean you can’t uncover secrets. Dickie Bow might have tailed his last target, but Lamb and his crew of no-hopers are about to go live.”

Like a lot of classic cozy whodunits, I do have an appreciation for some British Cold War Spy novels. Not sure all of them work, but what Harron does here in Dead Lions –the second volume in his Slough House series- is marries those old post WWII spy thrillers with today’s War on Terror. Jackson Lamb maybe a relic from a bygone era – a Cold War Spy- surrounded by the more modern spy’s who are dealing with the Putin-era, but this is probably what made the first two books work so well, and why the audience of readers may be a bit diverse in age. So we get a bunch of satire, with human condition commentary on politics, on dealing with both the espionage of the Cold War and on the politics and espionage of the modern era.

While Lamb is written somewhat as a genius, he does not come off as totally brilliant spy. His superiors hate him, but I think mostly because he is the typical trope character of an “unconventional” spook, one who uses instinct and memory versus computers and algorithms. The plot moves swiftly, and it’s hard to guess where it’ll go, with more human characters than most spy writers are willing to create. In ways, Herron’s characters remind of what Stephen King does –he fleshes out, gives life, to all the characters –even the incidental ones. They’re all flawed and speak like regular people. And then there is the fart jokes…

Books: A Calling For Charlie Barnes by Joshua Ferris (2021)

March 12 will mark the one month since I slipped, with wet shoes (it does rain in California) on smooth concrete docking floor at work and broke my left hip. March 13 marks the day that said hip was replaced and now nearly a month on, I finally finished A Calling for Charlie Barnes.

While convalescing, it occurred to me that while I have a ton of books to read, these last four weeks have shown that once I retire (if I can retire, and don’t die of cancer), I will need something to occupy my time. I love reading, but I now fully admit that reading can be boring after a while. Sure I was on pain pills early on, and sometimes that could cause a sort of brain fog that made be either sleepy or blurred the pages, but like TV and doom-scrolling on my phone, reading cannot be the end all of retirement, that I need a hobby outside of these four walls. 

So this book really made me wonder if having the actual time to read (I’m still off for at least another month) was really something to look forward to.

                                                        ______________________

“Someone is telling the story of the life of Charlie Barnes, and it doesn't appear to be going well. Too often divorced, discontent with life's compromises and in a house he hates, this lifelong schemer and eternal romantic would like out of his present circumstances and into the American dream. But when the twin calamities of the Great Recession and a cancer scare come along to compound his troubles, his dreams dwindle further, and an infinite past full of forking paths quickly tapers to a black dot. Then, against all odds, something goes right for a change: Charlie is granted a second act. With help from his storyteller son, he surveys the facts of his life and finds his true calling where he least expects it—in a sacrifice that redounds with selflessness and love—at last becoming the man his son always knew he could be.”

This book is complex, often very funny, absurd, and spot on with its family dysfunction (a genre I appear to enjoy). Charlie is a sad-sack, but it never seems to get him truly down and is always on the lookout for the latest scheme to make him (rich and) respectable. So despite the multiple marriages, bankruptcies, he does come close –the patenting of The Doolander, a Frisbee designed to look identical to a toupee: “The World’s First Flying Haircut” that worked.

The book does fall into the category of an unreliable writer, as Ferris does appear to make the reader work on guessing just what is fact or fiction (in a fictional biographical novel, I guess) about Charlie’s life and his relationships with his children and ex-wives or who is writing it. I did appreciate the location the book is set in, which is Schaumburg, Illinois, the next village over from where I grew up. It was fun to have characters drive on roads I know and visit Woodfield Mall (an icon of a place I went often and worked in as well).

I’ve read only one previous book by Ferris, Then We Came To The End, itself a cleverly written tale about the dot.com bubble bursting, so I knew the storyline was going to be a bit out there, and as I said, I did find myself chuckling, but I was left scratching my head here, pondering what did I just read?

It’s a slow-burning tale, with a rather surprising twist ending. I’m not sure if it’s ambitious, but it does make for an interesting ending that one might never had guessed at.