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.

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“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.

Books: Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune (2024)

 “A magical house. A secret past. A summons that could change everything.

Arthur Parnassus lives a good life built on the ashes of a bad one.

He’s the master of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six dangerous and magical children who live there.

Arthur works hard and loves with his whole heart so none of the children ever feel the neglect and pain that he once felt as an orphan on that very same island so long ago. He is not alone: joining him is the love of his life, Linus Baker, a former caseworker in the Department In Charge of Magical Youth. And there’s the island’s sprite, Zoe Chapelwhite, and her girlfriend, Mayor Helen Webb. Together, they will do anything to protect the children.

But when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve.

And when a new magical child hopes to join them on their island home—one who finds power in calling himself monster, a name that Arthur worked so hard to protect his children from—Arthur knows they’re at a breaking point: their family will either grow stronger than ever or fall apart.”

While I did enjoy the book, it’s not a complete home run that The House in the Cerulean Sea was for me. 

Returning back to Marsyas Island was nice and fun, seeing the kids have grown a bit, despite what seems like only maybe four to six months have passed. This is Arthur’s story.

But some of biggest issues was when the dialogue became a little too monologue-ish and very preachy. TJ Klune did not have to convince me of any of his beliefs -I’m for most of them. And if he was hoping more conservative readers might read this sequel, it will certainly turn them off. I don’t know anyone who likes a sermon almost every chapter, but Somewhere Beyond the Sea has plenty. 

Still, there is a lot of whimsy here. David the Yeti is great addition to family and i adore how Lucy tried to be his friend. But it seemed we were going to get a deep dive into Arthur’s past and what we get is 375 pages of Arthur (and Linus) being the best dad’s ever. And then the multiple endings and epilogue that seemed to convenient. But that’s okay. 

Book: Martyr By Kaveh Akbar (2024)

“Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

This debut novel explores a lot of themes, mostly philosophical (which probably escapes me), and it’s basic take on theme most of us struggle with – why are we here and how can I be remembered. At times comical, but also serious, Akbar’s poetic prose is something to behold. Still, the tale boils up big ideas, but the writer seems fine with not knowing all the answers. The fact that there is little explanation to those ideas makes book work (though some may have difficulty with the books less than cohesive structure). We all contemplate the human experience and no one really knows how to explain them in any rational sort of way. Maybe Akbar is saying that is okay?

Despite some of the bleakness that Cyrus must endure, the book is filled with wry humor and observations; it’s densely layered and may require a few readings to understand it fully. But I think a reader should have a background in poetry to full grasp what the ideas here (it’s a genre I do not read). Perhaps an understanding of addiction and sobriety would also be helpful.

Martyr, in the end, is interested in the question of how to give life meaning through death - its central focus being martyrdom. Literary fiction such as this book is not for everyone, because most will not understand the central theme here –despite Cyrus’ very, everyday, personal issues. But its fine not to completely understand the book, because trying something new, with original and fresh ideas, is what most novelists strive for. I challenge people to look outside the box of everyday popular fiction and try something new – and not safe.

Books: Frances Hunt's Body Shop and Boneyard by Chad Darnell (2024)

"Three months after accidentally shutting down the Southeastern cell of a human body harvesting operation, Frances Hunt is living her best life. She’s opened a senior citizen recreational facility, quit smoking and drinking, and found a new reason to live. But that doesn’t last long. When disaster hits the small town of Liberty, Frances finds herself being hunted by old foes, betrayed by those she trusted and blackmailed by the people she loves. Her only way out is to assemble an unlikely team of misfits and shut down the international ‘body shop.’”

There is a lot more going on here in the continuation from Buying the Farm (and I agree, as someone points out late in the book “You couldn’t write this shit. You need, like, a chalkboard and flow charts just to keep up”), as things get more absurd as each page flies by. The characters are really fleshed out, which is the strong point of the tale. As wild and sometimes unbelievable the story gets, Frances and the rest still shine and you feel their pain. 

As noted, a lot of stuff happens in what amounts to just a few days, with the lighting and fire damage done to the Baptist Church being at the center of it all. On hindsight, even in such a small town as Liberty is described, the damage done by the rain storm would’ve gotten both local and national news interested almost instantly. Also, it seems surprising that the death count would’ve peaked some people’s interest long before the events of this book. Liberty is seemly a cousin to Stephen King’s Derry, a town that contains more cruelty than any other place –a town where a lot of horrible things happen and yet the people who are born there, who live and work there seem to exist in the ether of indifference. Liberty contains very religious people, but it’s also clearly a place where blinders are put on the eyes of the people, who only care about their petty and small problems and their secrets.

While Frances Hunt remains a black comedy, it’s not as laugh out loud as the first book, though the book is still pretty funny. As author Darnell noted in the previous book, he tried to sell this idea as a movie or a TV series. And this second book is seemly set up as continuing story over what might be a thirteen episode season. He also sets up more plots for a third tale, which appears to be due sometime in 2025.

In the end, a still enjoyable tale filled with almost real-life characters set against a plot that probably does happen in the real world as well. Which is very disturbing.