Books: The Dame By Richard Stark (1969)

“Alan Grofield, still in the arms of Elly, but preparing to return to the United States to see his wife, when receives a message asking him to go to Puerto Rico as a favor to a friend to help out a woman in distress. Curious, Grofield flies to Puerto Rico and meets the woman and her several houseguests at an isolated mansion out in the countryside. Grofield and the lady immediately annoy each other and he decides not to take the job. However, before he can leave someone in the house is murdered. It's clear that the killer must have either been a guest or a member of the staff, and Grofield is everyone's number one suspect. Grofield becomes suspect number one, but to clear his name, he relunctantly assumes the role of detective. But can he amuse the husband of the murdered woman –a crime boss himself- until he can discover who killed her?”

The Dame is the second of Westlake’s four pseudonymous Parker spin-off novels starring actor-turned-thief Alan Grofield, and follows on almost directly from the first book, The Damsel. The premise is a bit wobbly and vague here. While Grofield is more wittier and less violent than Parker, he still is a smart man and I began to wonder why he would take this job –he still has his take of the money from his recent adventure with Parker (see The Handle)- mostly because that gig set him up with enough cash for a year or more. So why go to Puerto Rico to begin with? Thus it becomes a straight whodunit with plot contrivances and some action thrown in to remind readers that Donald E. Westlake is writing under his hard-broiled noir nom de plume of Richard Stark.

And sort of like The Damsel, Grofield no longer has some of the quirks Westlake created for him in his appearances in the Parker books, which adds to the boring murder mystery. Another word, some of his wittiness has been diluted, making The Dame sit awkwardly between two writing genre styles, neither tough, smart or violent enough to be a good Parker novel nor funny enough to be a good Westlake caper.

Still, it is Westlake and book does have some redeeming values –the murder mystery is thin, but him playing detective and asking questions does sparkle. Maybe it’s only for those who consider themselves a Parker completists –which I’m not, but these books are still better written than most other crime novels of the modern age.

Books: Doctor Who: Blood Cell By James Goss (2014)

"The Governor is responsible for the worst fraudsters and the cruelest murderers. So he's certainly not impressed by Prisoner 428, the man they're calling the most dangerous criminal in the quadrant. Or, as he prefers to be known, the Doctor. What does impress the Governor is the way the new prisoner immediately sets about trying to escape. And keeps trying. Finally, he sends for the Doctor and asks him why? But the answer surprises even the Governor. And then there's the threat -unless the Governor listens to the Doctor, a lot of people will die. Who is the Doctor and what's he really doing here? Why does he want to help the Governor? And who is the young woman who comes every day to visit him, only to be turned away by the guards? When the killing finally starts, the Governor begins to get his answers."

James Goss is one of Doctor Who’s better writers and this tale set in the –what else- the Expanded Universe of the franchise is a fast moving, dark, yet interesting and sometime humorous. Depending on how you view which Doctor you like or watched, Goss captures The Twelfth Doctor pretty well here (but if you’re a Tenth Doctor fan, I can see where might get a bit confused, still Goss does capture Capaldi’s voice), with Clara only really contributing towards the end. While not a huge fan of first person narratives, especially with a media tie-in like this, it worked for me here. The Governor is a bit of an unreliable narrator, but he’s also clearly out of his depth here.

It’s a dark book, fast paced, and a reminder that this series can sometimes out grown its children’s style origins and give us a creepy story that also has some humor (the Doctor’s continual escape from his cell and his ability to be several steps ahead of everyone else, a hallmark of the TOS later years). It takes a bit to fully understand why the Doctor has come to The Prison asteroid, and everything gets neatly tied up rather quickly, but over all, if a lot of these tie-ins were this good, I would read them all, instead of jumping around from site to site reading other peoples reviews. I’m cheating, of course, finding the titles that most liked and ignoring the ones with bad reviews, but if there was one thing I learned trying to read Star Trek and Star Wars books over the decades, only a few are really worth the time and effort.

Books: The Big Door Prize by M.O. Walsh (2020)

 

“What would you do if you knew your life's potential? That's the question facing the residents of Deerfield, Louisiana, when the DNAMIX machine appears in their local grocery store. It's nothing to look at, really—it resembles a plain photo booth. But its promise is With just a quick swab of your cheek and two dollars, the device claims to use the science of DNA to tell you your life's potential. With enough credibility to make the townspeople curious, soon the former teachers, nurses, and shopkeepers of Deerfield are abruptly changing course to pursue their destinies as magicians, cowboys, and athletes—including the novel's main characters, Douglas Hubbard and his wife, Cherilyn, who both believed they were perfectly happy until they realized they could dream for more.”

Much like The Portable Door book I read after seeing the trailer of the film version and discovering the book and the film share only bare minimum of connection (like the phrase “based on a true story”, which are always tangible and take “dramatic license” to tell the tale), The Big Door Prize book my M. O. Walsh seems completely disconnected from the TV series version currently airing on Apple+. The book itself is rather odd, and its coda comes directly from every Hallmark movie ever made, but it does have some appeal, some humor that some will enjoy. But what it tells me about the book business these days is that publishers are looking more for easily dull, and average tomes designed to entice the studios to either turn them into films, or like this book, a TV series that spreads its thin concept over a 10 episode season (and which has been picked up for a second season).   

It’s set in the South, which I supposed is designed to give color and charm. But there is never any realness to it –its high concept aspect, the DNAMIX, becomes the books MacGuffin and Walsh decided no one needed to know where it came from and why it’s there. Even the mystery of the popular boys tragic car accident and his the surviving twin brother (the moody one), along with and a priest’s troubled niece turns out to be nothing that spectacular. The married couple and the boy were the most interesting of the characters, they were only ones that seemly were relatable, but by half way through this book, I began to skim pages.

Books: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (2020)

“Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better? Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.”

The Midnight Library is a book that seemed everywhere at one time. What I saw, everyone seemed to love it and recommend reading. The book is sort-of self help novel about a woman who seems to be at her wits end in life and decides to not see the next day. But between the moment of passing in the real world and whatever exists beyond, she wakes up in some mysterious elsewhere –a library of her life, apparently, where a helpful librarian (who resembles the erudite and wise librarian when Nora was a child) gives her options on how to live her current life or go into the undiscovered country. So Nora, for lack of better word, quantum leaps not into different people, but into various versions of herself that exist within the multiverse. And while it takes a few moments for her to sync up in whatever new universe there is –always awkward- she then gets to decide if this road –yes, the road less traveled- is one she really wants to spend her life in.

The gist of the book is life is messy and we all should try to make the most of it, because even if given a choice to visit the universe where you went left instead of right, there are always unintended changes (such as universe where her dad or brother is dead, but mom is alive, or where she is a successful athlete and motivational speaker, but has a shitty personal life). 

And Nora was just an uninteresting character, which affected my reading, because I knew how the book was going to end – it’s predictable, really, from the start. So while The Midnight Library is a quick read, with short chapters and all, eventually I could care less where she settled –in some parallel universe or whatever exists beyond this mortal coil. 

The problem for me, I guess, is I’m just too cynical of person to get anything out of it.

Books: Doctor Who: The Doctor Trap By Simon Messingham (2008)

 

“Sebastiene was human... once. He might look like a nineteenth-century nobleman, but in truth he is a ruthless hunter. He likes nothing more than luring difficult opposition to a planet, then hunting them down for sport. And now he's caught them all - from Zargregs to Moogs, and even the odd Eternal. In fact, Sebastiene is after only one more prize. For this trophy, he knows he is going to need help. He's brought together the finest hunters in the universe to play the most dangerous game for the deadliest quarry of them all. They are hunting for the last of the Time Lords - the Doctor!”

The Doctor Trap is fairly standard original novel, but has a series twists and counter twists which makes it a tad special. I was often reminded how much Sabastiene reminded me of STAR TREK episode The Squire of Gothos, which had an omnipotent being with unlimited powers who basically wants to have some fun. What makes it work is the Doctor having to really struggle, as the odds are really stacked against him. Thus it felt like odds were real and not just clever plot tropes. There is also some deliberate misdirects by Messingham which at times made it difficult to ascertain exactly where the Doctor was. It’s clever, but it can be convoluted. Also, the relationship between Donna and the Doctor is at its weakest here. I’m not sure when Messingham actually started writing this book, but he did not really capture their voices, which is hard one hand, as Catherine Tate and David Tenant have great on screen chemistry and that’s sometimes hard to translate onto page. So I get that, but on the other, Jacqueline Rayner’s Legends of Camelot does a better job. Of course, there are 14 years between these two books, but if there is one thing to be said about these novels that sit outside the TV narrative is some authors are great at capturing the voices of the current or past TARDIS crew while others seemly miss the target.