Books: Enola Holmes and the Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer (2006)

"When their mother disappears, Enola's brothers, Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, decide to send her to a finishing school against her will. Instead, with the aid of her mother who had provided hidden funds and an elaborate cipher for her daughter to communicate with her, Enola runs away to London where she establishes a clandestine private detective career specializing in missing persons investigations. Furthermore, Enola must keep ahead of her brothers who are determined to capture and force her to conform to their expectations."

Despite my love of mysteries, I never was enthused with the Sherlock Holmes character, the novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or the numerous iterations that have come about over the century of the characters publication. I’ve seen only a few films and TV versions (though none of the more recent ones starring Robert Downey, Jr.) but I’ve mostly avoided them. I recently, however, watched the Enola Holmes, the Netflix film based on Nancy Springer’s YA title Enola Holmes and the Case of the Missing Marquess. I enjoyed the film immensely, mostly because Stranger Thing’s star Millie Bobby Brown is so great in it. Actually the cast is pretty fabulous, with Sam Claflin, Henry Cavill, Helena Bonhman Carter, and newcomer Louis Partridge. The film, like the many books released long after the passing of Conan Doyle, is a pastiche to what came before, borrowing characters and settings from the established canon of Sherlock Holmes, but the Enola character is Springer's creation.

As typical with adaptations, the film’s plot is nearly the same, but liberties were taken. In the book, Enola’s search for her Mother, Eudoria Vernet Holmes, is the main thrust of the book, as is Enola’s journey to London. The social commentary on mores and morals of the era are in film and the book –though it’s more prominent in the film version- and Enola’s encounter with Vicount Tweksbury, Marquess of Basilwether takes up little of the subplot. Both Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes have mere cameos in the book, so anyone who saw the film and then read the book will be disappointed at how small there roles are here.

Then again, there are five other volumes in this series, and the first book leaves the disappearance of their mother unresolved (the film version does have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and I’m guessing they adapted other elements from the other books to make this film this way). So I will speculate that this arc will continue for at least one or two more books and it’s possible both Holmes brothers will have larger footprints in those later volumes. Still Enola is intelligent, very rational girl in the book and film and it would seem Millie Bobby Brown was born to play her. Springer also gives her character the resourceful skills and rational thought needed to navigate the era where women were like property, were seen in only one way, and never given the chance to be an individual.

A nice start.

 

Books: The Black Ice Score by Richard Stark (1968)

 

A corrupt African colonel has converted half his country's wealth into diamonds and smuggled them to a Manhattan safe house. Four upstanding citizens plan to rescue their new nation by stealing the diamonds back—with the help of a “specialist”—Parker, that is. He has the best references in town. Will Parker break his rule against working with amateurs and help them because his woman would be disappointed if he doesn’t? Or because three hired morons have threatened to kill him and his woman if he does? They thought they were buying an advantage, but what they get is a predated death certificate.

The opening chapters are actually (and unintentionally) funny, as Parker gets the information about the heist in random order with random bad guys. However, this reminded me of The Hot Rock, the first John Dortmunder book that was published two years after The Black Ice Score. According to Donald E. Westlake, The Hot Rock came about because he was starting a new Parker novel and it kept turning into a comedy –and while there is some gallows humor in the Parker books, they are not considered humorous. There are other aspects as well: both of the novels, of course, are set in Westlake’s beloved New York, and center around factions from small African nations who compete for ownership of valuable jewels—an emerald in The Hot Rock, and diamonds here. In both novels, and African faction hires professional American criminals to wrest the jewel(s) from the competing faction. Things get messy. However, this is where the two novels narratives diverge. Most writers recycle ideas –especially ones that are workable. The thing here is that the plot to both books is rather silly and unbelievable; however, it works for Dortmunber, but does not for Parker. I think the issue is that Parker seems more realistic, more grounded universe, where Dortmunder seems to live in a parallel New York filled with sight gags and no violence.

I’ve mentioned before –especially in the last Parker novel- how some of Parker’s issues with his plans going screwy is that he has little to no empathy and only vaguely understands that people are unpredictable. Parker has a code which he lives by, but does not understand that no one else shares this secret language. His relationship with Clair seems to be a deliberate attempt to somewhat humanize Parker a bit, but the trope of putting her in danger is another bad move on Westlake’s part. Clair is painted as non-violent woman who wants nothing to do with Parker’s dark half, but she is –and will- either have to change, leave him, or die, because once his enemies know he can be manipulated (which he is here), then he has a terrible weakness which will be exploited. It’s almost easier for him not to have a steady woman in his life.    

Certainly better than most, but The Black Ice Score lacks the grit and darkness of other Parker tales.

Books: The Green Eagle Score By Richard Stark (1967)

 

Here’s Parker—planning to steal the entire payroll of an Air Force base in upstate New York, with help from Marty Fusco, fresh out of the pen, and a smart aleck finance clerk named Stan Devers. Holed up with family in a scrappy little town, the hoisters prepare for the risky job by trying to shorten the odds. But the ice is thinner than Parker likes to think—and Marty’s ex-wife (who is now dating Devers) is turning out to be much more complicated than anyone thought.

The Green Eagle Score (why it's called this, I'm unsure) is a less action oriented Parker book (the tenth in the series) and thus more a physiological study of people who interact with each other over a strained and long period of time. There are some tense situations here, though, and it was nice to get in the heads of the other players. Parker remains the blunt and relentless engine and despite the lack of action, Stark’s writing did suck me in, unlike the last book which took me forever to get into. Parker remains the no-nonsense, unemotional and amoral thief he is –even his relationship with Claire does not soften him one bit. So more hardcore straight men will like that!

I found Ellen Fusco to be an interesting character, flawed and damaged and who is not really being helped by her physiologist (and for good reasons, as we'll see). It did surprise me that no one caught on that she was the loose link in their chain, though. I mean I saw it almost right away. But this is Parker –his lack of empathy is causing some of his own troubles, me thinks. 

Books: The Risk Pool By Richard Russo (1988)

 

Ned, watchful and introspective, is a child when he begins his narration, living with his mother, while his unreliable father Sam is more or less out of the picture –and when is in the picture, it’s rather an ugly one. But Ned, as any boy would, is still curious about his father. Of course, Sam Hall is known to everyone in Mohawk and everyone would agree that Sam is not the best man to be a parent. Yet, when his mother becomes ill, Ned is forced to move in with his hard drinking, rule breaking, addicted to gambling parent. While Sam can be loveable at times, Ned is forced to become part of his father's seedy nocturnal world, which entails touring the town's bars and pool halls, all while struggling to win Sam's affections while avoiding his sins.

Much like John Irving (and many other writers of this type of fiction), Russo adds many autobiographical elements to his tale of Ned Hall, who we follow through four periods of his life, focusing specifically on Hall's relationship with his loutish and, in his best friend's words, "rockheaded" father. Wikipedia: “Many elements of The Risk Pool were based on the author's own experience growing up in Gloversville, NY, a town similar to Russo's fictional Mohawk. Like Mohawk, Gloversville's economy revolves around the leather industry, and both towns suffered economic decline in the second half of the twentieth century.” So yes, Russo breaks no new ground here, as there are a million of these books on the market.

While it’s funny that Ned tries to escape his small town of Mohawk, only to be drawn back by circumstances, homesickness, and his failure at maintaining his own existence –which really can be laid at both his parents’ doorstep, you also feel a bit sad for him. I mean, yes, we all have known people who somehow have been successful despite the roadblocks that have been thrown their way, but there is also many who fall into the endless cycle of repeating the past. I believe this happens more than the latter. And Ned, whose mother went from a failed marriage to (implied) relationship with a priest (which ended in a nervous breakdown), to a father who seemly refused to grow up and accept reasonability (but forced this onto Drew Littler, the son of women Sam Hall was seeing on and off over the decades) has not grown up himself.  

Russo’s own relationship with his father was mirrored here in The Risk Pool (while sounding like a 1950’s noir title, is used here a metaphor; borrowed from a form of risk management mostly practiced by insurance companies). As he noted in a 1993 San Francisco Chronicle interview, his father "lived a life of studied bad habits," leaving his wife and ignoring his son until he was "old enough to follow him into the OTB and then into the bar and then into the pool hall.”

What makes these novels work is that while towns like Mohawk, quickly falling into abyss but only marginally trying to save it, and thus will always remain conservative in its values, they still have pockets of surrealism existing in its nooks and crannies, bits of weirdness and bizarreness (something Stephen King is able to tap into) to them that I’ve always been attracted to.

The Risk Pool was Russo’s second novel, and the story (eventually you realize there really is no real story here) sometimes paces slower that a limping 89-year-old man crossing a busy street. But, while he does go overboard describing things in such great detail (which is the antithesis of recent writers I’ve been reading -see Richard Stark and Gregory MacDonald), there is still a charm to the book. I will admit there was some thought to just tossing it aside, if only because I have so much other stuff to read, but then there are not a lot of writers of Russo’s caliber around anymore, so I carried on. Besides, I still have two more of his books on my shelf, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel Empire Falls and That Old Cape Magic, and I don’t want one book to stop me in my tracks.