Books: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle By Stuart Turton (2018)

 

"Our narrator wakes up in a dripping forest, wearing someone else’s dinner jacket and, he soon realizes, someone else’s body. He has no memory of who he is or how he came to be trapped inside this stranger. Twigs crack behind him. A heavy object is dropped into his pocket and a voice rasps in his ear: “East.” Once alone, he pulls out the object; it’s a silver compass. Eventually our man learns that his name is Aiden Bishop, and he is here for a reason. A masked figure informs him tersely that today, a murder will be committed – a murder that won’t seem like a murder. Bishop has eight chances to solve it. He will relive the same day eight times, but each morning he’ll wake up in a different body, or “host”. He’ll remember his experiences in the previous hosts, but if he doesn’t give the masked figure the name of the killer by day eight, he’ll be returned to day one, memory wiped, and have to start all over again. As indeed he already has done, hundreds, perhaps thousands of times.”

I read a few reviews of this book and seemly, a lot of people are divided on it –either you’re going to accept the premise and get lost in the narrative, or you’re going to find everything a little bit hard to swallow. I was intrigued by the premise, that I’ll admit, the whole Groundhogs Day meets Downton Abby meets Agatha Christie meets Quantum Leap meets Doctor Who was a great hook, but I also found the a lot of things wrong with it as well. Part of the problem lay in writer Stuart Turton’s attempt to be clever, to create a locked room mystery, a whodunit that would make the reader want to turn the pages. I mean, it did, but mostly I was hoping for some explanation on how all of this happening. So the whodunit part gets buried under some weird stuff that renders it, oddly, sometimes secondary. Aiden Bishop is also an ineffective “detective,” sometimes coming across as a pathetic hero. But a lot of the characters at Blackheath Manor are paper thin caricatures, especially the footman who is so one dimensional it annoyed me.

The books’ setting seems weird. I know Turton was trying to emulate a lot Christie’s novel surroundings, the late 1920s or 30s, but since everyone in Blackheath Manor is either being blackmailed or doing the blackmail, you think this should’ve been set at some other time. Then there’s the fat shaming. Turton, in the Conversation with the Author at the end of book, claims he liked writing for Lord Cecil Ravencourt, but the during the part when Aiden has “replaced” goes on and on about how hugely overweight (I pictured the fat man from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life) the man is. Both Aiden and Ravencourt sees himself as a disgusting creature, a shameful man, that really borders on awfulness. Sometimes, it became unbearable to read. So because of this, Ravencourt is a lonely man, but rich one and who will enter into a marriage of convenience to help Peter Hardcastle, who is close to losing everything and seems more concerned with this, than the fate of his daughter. Then there is the part where Hardcastle implies Ravencourt to be a homosexual: “In return, he’ll get…Well, you know the rumors about his valets. Good-looking chaps coming and going at all hours.”

Not very pleasant. And completely pointless, as this does not figure anywhere else in the book.

Finally, Turton’s use of florid and theatrical prose gets maddening quickly. There seems to be no purpose to it (again, another aspect of the setting). All in all, an interesting idea that gets confusing fast and with a ton of twists and turns, a reader might want to have a handy pad of paper and pencil to try and untie the this complex plot. 

This book was originally released in the UK with the title The 7 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle in 2018. For it's US release it got The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, due to, it seems, to the popular Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which was released in 2017. 

Books: Nature Girl By Carl Hiaasen (2006)

 

"Honey Santana—impassioned, willful, possibly bipolar, self-proclaimed ‘queen of lost causes’—has a scheme to help rid the world of irresponsibility, indifference, and dinnertime sales calls. She’s taking rude, gullible Relentless, Inc., telemarketer Boyd Shreave and his less-than-enthusiastic mistress, Eugenie—the fifteen-minute-famous girlfriend of a tabloid murderer—into the wilderness of Florida’s Ten Thousand Islands for a gentle lesson in civility. What she doesn’t know is that she’s being followed by her Honey-obsessed former employer, Piejack (whose mismatched fingers are proof that sexual harassment in the workplace is a bad idea). And he doesn’t know he’s being followed by Honey’s still-smitten former drug-running ex-husband, Perry, and their wise-and-protective-way-beyond-his-years twelve-year-old-son, Fry. And when they all pull up on Dismal Key, they don’t know they’re intruding on Sammy Tigertail, a half white–half Seminole failed alligator wrestler, trying like hell to be a hermit despite the Florida State coed who’s dying to be his hostage"

This is my first Carl Hiaasen book and his fifteen solo novel (after writing three mysteries with fellow journalist William Montalbano) overall. I knew Hiaasen did mostly humorous crime thrillers and mysteries, I knew he made fun of Florida and the weird people that populate the state, I know he’s an environmentalist and a unabashed liberal, but Nature Girl appears to be something different. It’s funny; it does contain elements of native history (a character that apparently appeared in his first solo novel, Tourist Season), but it's not what I expected. I think it’s more a parody, than laugh out loud funny thriller, but it does have a grotesque villain and good, but sometimes bad hero. So it is more light comedic fiction, I guess, versus what I’ve always read about his books dark themes (apparently, what I’ve read, his books follow a very basic structure, much like Richard Stark’s Parker series). So there is some violence -though, some of it surprising, if I may be honest. It’s not a bad book and probably won’t prevent me from reading his other books (I’ll find some of earlier titles and see where we go from there), but ultimately Nature Girl is bit too long and a bit uninteresting.

Books: Slayground By Richard Stark (1971)

“The Wheel of Fortune turned and Parker figured his number had finally come up. An armored car heist had gone sour. His partners were dead or dying. He had escaped with the loot, but holing up in a deserted amusement park with only one exit had turned into a fatal mistake. Now the local mob and a couple of crooked cops were on their way in after the money...and the odds were against Parker getting out with his life. But Parker always did like to play the long shots. Besides, he knew all the ways there were to kill: with his gun...with his knife...with his own bare hands. So the hunter becomes prey. Outnumbered and outgunned, Parker realizes one miscalculation will end his career. So he’s low on bullets—but, as anyone who’s crossed his path knows, that definitely doesn’t mean he’s defenseless.”

Certainly not a great Parker novel, or one with an even probable plot, but as I read, its clear Stark/Westlake was doing his version of the Most Dangerous Game –TV shows and movies have been doing this variation of the tale, so why not Parker? There are a few things that bothered me, though, like whole idea of getting him trapped in an amusement park to begin with (with the local hoods commenting that this was a “locked-room mystery”), but if you are doing a variation on Richard Connell's short story, this can make sense? part of it seems dubious, that like no one around the park would miss all the action going on there –it is winter, the park is closed up, so when lights and music get turned on, won’t some investigate it? Then again, this town is corrupt, with dirty cops and a mob boss who gets around on a golf cart. Then there is Parker going all Home Alone, as he sets bobby traps for the hoods, which is doing something we’ve never had him do before. Also, did amusement parks in the late 60s or early 70s actually sell real hunting knives as a souvenir?

Interesting, the book ends with no resolution and I guess this tale with be revisited in the next book, or the one after it.

Slayground does show Parker is more human, insomuch as he gets injured and has deal with that; a nice touch. But Westlake also paints him as the cleverest man alive and those hoods, the mob boss, and the dirty cops are dumb as a box of hair. This was something he did in the Dortmunder novels as well. Surprisingly, there is little in the way of continuity references (the last book was full of them), but for longtime readers, we get a brief cameo appearance of Alan Grofield, who appeared in The Score and The Handle (and who by the time this book was published, had appeared in his own spin-off series). So in the end, this 14^th volume in the series is definitely a stand-alone-tale.

There was a very loose British adaptation of Slayground done in 1983, which was directed by Terry Bedford. It starred Peter Coyote, Mel Smith, and Billie Whitelaw. 

Books: Deadly Edge By Richard Stark (1971)

 

“The concert box office heist had been perfectly planned and executed; Parker had handled it neat and clean. He had money for a while now; he could take some time off, join Claire in the country, plan another job at his leisure. But then the phone calls came. One by one, Parker’s associates on the heist were being brutally murdered. Parker was clearly next on the list, but he had no intention of waiting on his executioners. If they thought so, they were in for a rude surprise.”

Deadly Edge is the thirteenth Parker novel and first one of Stark’s books I’ve read in nearly seven months. Historically, this is also the first Parker book released as a hardcover (as Westlake moved to Simon & Schuster) and the first one released in 1970s. While one the longest books yet, the tale grabs you and never lets up until the end. But it’s a bit of slog to the first half due to some choices Westlake does here.

He sort of restructures the formula, even though the layout of Four Parts is maintained. Part One, which is usually the most detailed part of any heist, is jettisoned for one that is already set up and playing out. It’s basically one long prologue, sitting at almost fifty pages (another change to the modus operandi, when typically there are short, multiple chapters). I’ve also wrote about how Westlake is seemly taking the edge off Parker, in particular with some of his mistakes he’s made with fellow crooks and his relationship with Claire over the last four books. As with Westlake’s Dortmunder tales, you got a sense that Parker is an anachronistic character seemly living in a bubble universe where the 1930s never came to end (1970s for John Dortmunder). It would seem for the next four books, Westlake would begin acknowledging the rapid changes the 70s would unleash. Part of that starts here with Parker realizing that electronic transfer of money is becoming more ubiquitous and finding large scores of cash as described here is becoming more and more difficult. There is also a dig at modern music, as Westlake uses some of the dudes involved in the heist (not Parker, of course, as he could careless) to make some social commentary on how rock and roll was dominating musical force now and where Jazz (music beloved by Westlake) was fading away into obscurity.

All of this is interesting, but somewhat pointless to the heist. The rest of the of the book, while following the Four Part pattern, focuses on Claire and her attempt at bring a little real-life to Parker’s world. She buys a house on a lake generally used as summer homes from people who live in New York and New Jersey; it’s isolated and cut-off from a lot of world. But Parker realizes he’s being hunted by two men (who seem to have Of Mice and Men relationship –except Manny is an LSD addicted psychopath (another new and modern wrinkle) and sets out to find them before they find him -and Claire.

I like Claire, but Parker’s relationship with her is weird for such a series which relies on stealth and hiding out. I’m not sure a domesticated Parker is such a great idea. That being said, Parker may be a man out of time, but the rest of the outside world moves on.

Most of Part Two we learn the gist of what happened at the end of Part One: Parker rubbed up against a local mob outfit that did not like him having fun in their territory -but in the end, nothing really comes this. Part Three is where Claire tries to give Parker a more stable base of operation, and while there is a great tense set piece around a kitchen table involving Claire and some bad guys, a lot of this part seems like padding. It’s been well established that one of the conditions of Parker (and Dortmunder) coming out in hardcover, is Westlake having to write longer books. This padding bleeds over into Part Four, where an overly cautious Parker does not do away with these two mob guys in his usual expeditious ways.

It’s not a total misfire, but it lacks something that ranks it amongst the best.

Books: The Album of Dr. Moreau By Daryl Gregory (2021)

It’s 2001, and the WyldBoyZ are the world’s hottest boy band, and definitely the world’s only genetically engineered human-animal hybrid vocal group. When their producer, Dr. M, is found murdered in his hotel room, the “boyz” become the prime suspects. Was it Bobby the ocelot (“the cute one”), Matt the megabat (“the funny one”), Tim the Pangolin (“the shy one”), Devin the bonobo (“the romantic one”), or Tusk the elephant (“the smart one”)? Las Vegas Detective Luce Delgado has only twenty-four hours to solve a case that goes all the way back to the secret science barge where the WyldBoyZ’ journey first began—a place they used to call home. 

So Daryl Gregory is combining the science fiction premise of the famous novel by H. G. Wells with the panache of a classic locked-room murder mystery and the spectacle of a beloved boy band in, The Album of Dr. Moreau.  As a recent fan of his weird and original ideas, this novella works mostly towards the end. While he’s poking fun at boy bands, some twenty years after their zenith I might add, and used (as mentioned in the “Apologies” section at the end) his own grown children to help him out, the first half does go on a bit longer than it should. The books humor was, surprisingly, tempered here (the puns were sometimes funny, though) and even the social commentary on the original novel and the questions of what makes someone human when they are genetically spliced together is hinted at, but never fully realized.

It’s fun though, a bit bizarre and premise cannot be taken too seriously. But even a small style book like this is worth the trip into the mind of Daryl Gregory.