Books: The Hook By Donald E. Westlake (2000)

“Wayne Prentice is a midlist author who must face the hard fact that the world no longer values his work. He has watched a pseudonym, two careers, and his sales disappear and feels like it may be time to quit writing for good. On the other hand, Bryce Proctorr fires out one bestseller after the next and has a multi-million dollar deal for his next book. Unfortunately, his divorce has given him writer's block and Bryce cannot solve his dilemma as his deadline rapidly approaches. So, Bryce proposes a partnership to Wayne: give Bryce his unpublished manuscript and the two of them can split the advance 50/50. There's just one small catch -- Wayne has to put Mrs. Proctorr six feet under.” 

The Westlake Reader points out, The Hook is essentially a stripped down version of Patricia Highsmith’s Stranger On A Train. While this book was released in 2000, they speculate that Westlake probably read –or reread- that tale (Highsmith had also died in 1995, so it’s fairly possible he did one or the other). Or they take another speculative stab and mention –though there is nothing to back this up- Westlake may have already been approached to write the screenplay for Ripley Under Ground, which was Highsmith’s second novel featuring the demonically complicated and murderous con artist. The thing with screenplays, though, they usually go through a longer gestation period, mostly through revisions and re-writes, so it possible between 1997 and 2000, he was also working on adapting that novel and reread Train (and eventually a movie was made, and while Westlake got a screen credit for that troubled production -it was made in 2003, but not released until 2005- most if not all, was re-written by William Blake Herron). 

As I read The Hook, I could not get over the feeling this book and The Ax are connected. Yeah, they have similar titles and (theoretically) take place near enough to each other that they could share a related universe, but more so that Burke Devore in The Ax and Bryce and Wayne here are all desperate people doing terrible things because the world around them regards them and their fortunes with complete, and very brutal, indifference. 

And while The Hook is not as a vicious take down on publishing industry that was the more humorous A Likely Story, it was decided that a follow-up book to The Ax (which was well received and well reviewed) could not go back to what he was more well-known for - a humorous capers. As the Westlake Reader adds, “his editors, publishers, agents, spouse, etc, all told him that whatever book came out after The Ax under his own name had to be special, couldn’t be humorous, couldn’t be Dortmunder, couldn’t be some sexy tropical romp. It had to be bloody, hard-edged, suspenseful, and thought-provoking.  In other words, they wanted him to prove The Ax wasn’t a fluke. The general sentiment was something along the lines of ‘This was your greatest commercial and critical successes ever; now go do it again.’” 

Now that was something typical with the publishing industry – just rework what worked before. 

What works here is not the murder itself –which becomes almost insignificant, with only brief mentions and police detectives investigating it here and there –but the relationship between Bryce and Wayne and psychological toll that it has on both men's lives. They are two men connected by a bond that neither wants to break (but probably should). The ending I sort of saw, but I’m not happy with it. But then again, that may be the point. The books themes of desperation, jealousy and the morality within the book industry abound here. You end up not really rooting for anyone here; even the secondary character will evoke little sympathy.

But it also just another example of the gifts that Westlake was – that despite the cruelness and darkness, the fact that a murderer with go unpunished- I had to see how it all played out.

Books: Children of Time By Adrian Tchaikovsky (2015)

"In the far future, Dr. Avrana Kern is the head of a science team orbiting a terraformed, previously uninhabitable, exoplanet that she hopes will be named "Kern's World." The team is preparing to release a genetically designed nanovirus onto the new world to accelerate the evolution of a group of monkeys –designed to become “a race of uplifted sentient aides and servants [who] would welcome their makers.” However, the troubles of Earth have followed Kern, and when the agent of an anti-technology group try to stop her, and she flees aboard an escape pod before anyone else can get to her. The payload of monkeys is jettisoned from the ship in a landing craft, yet it burns up in atmospheric entry. With no monkeys on Kern's World, and its ecosystems originally seeded with a minimum of possible competitor species for Kern's experiment, the nanovirus spends its time infecting and altering a multitude of living creatures, a notable example being jumping spiders (Portia labiata)—referred to in the book as Portiids. Dr. Kern is left stranded in orbit awaiting rescue, where an imprint of her mind is stored with the pod’s AI system, waking periodically from stasis of several millennia. But that opens the doorway to madness.” 

When it comes to hard science fiction, I generally have found myself avoiding them if only because the real science used in these books sometimes slows down the books narrative (The Expanse series based is science in real terms, but it was also an action/adventure series with cartoonish villains). But I was challenged by a co-worker to read at least the first book. And Children of Time, which has three tomes released over the years, has a lot of real science and epic world building. Its premise is actually intriguing; though using spiders as characters fills out arachnophobia pretty well.  

There is some predictable stuff here as well, with humanities constant squabbles with those who see technology helping the world versus those that would see it destroyed (Genocide was genocide. He thought of the Old Empire, which had been so civilized that it had in the end poisoned its own homeworld. And here we are, about to start ripping pieces of the ecosystem out of this new one.”). The evolution of the jumping spiders is fun, and its clear Tchaikovsky wanted to make them three-dimensional and not just scary monsters. But it’s here where the world building begins to crumble for me –as well the timescale for this all to happen. How do they become scientists? How do they create the ability to see Kern’s orbiting ship and the stars beyond? There is uplifting a species then there is creating something for a plot point. 

We’re not given any direct references to when this series set. It has to be far in advanced centuries that the (apparent) multiple Arks sent from Earth (which brings up another problem I thought about –if the planet was so devastated because they had no tech or raw material, how did they launch the Arks to begin with?) with people can be put in cold storage, woken up, and then put back in cold storage. Our human bodies are rather fragile and it seems very odd that people can be put in suspended animation for something like 1,800 years and wake up like they’ve taken a nap and no ill effects on tissue, the brain, and our muscles.

I could find myself reading the further books, if only because Children of Time reads like 600 page prelude, and while I’m ambivalent about the ending, it still has a fascinating premise.

Books: Canary (Valentine and Lovelace #4) By Nathan Aldyne (1986)

“Slate, once the darling of Boston’s gay brigade, is losing money like crazy, largely because someone keeps insisting on leaving dead bodies around. Do that often enough, and people start to stay away. And even though Valentine and Lovelace solved the murders in the previous months, it has not helped the business. When more of the clientele are turning up dead -strangled with neckties- turn up at the disco, even Donna Summer's music may not be enough to bring patrons back. The cops, of course are somewhat indifferent, even though there a precinct across the street. So once again, Daniel and Clarisse plunge into an investigation, and once again, it’s only them that can find the killer.” 

“I’m a commercial writer and I’m proud of that,” Michael McDowell was once quoted as saying. “I think it is a mistake to try to write for the ages. I write so that people can read my books with pleasure.” McDowell graduated with a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in English from Harvard in 1972. In 1978 he was awarded his doctorate degree in English and American Literature from Brandeis. He wanted to be a teacher, but sort of stumbled into writing, finding the genre field of horror, male adventure, detective, and thrillers. He admitted that the numerous pseudonyms and collaborations permitted him an opportunity to embrace the challenge of writing in genres that he might not have tried on his own. 

Anyways, when it came to this series, as successful as they were, real life apparently was the factor that he and his writing partner Dennis Schuetz stopped after four books. Apparently, they didn’t feel right about writing about the characters carefree lifestyle as AIDS was ravaging the gay community. That may explain, as well, why the guilt-free promiscuity is less here, than in the first two books. 

Also, for a while, I wondered exactly when he and Schuetz wrote the books, so fortunately, all of his papers and other correspondents have been curated at Bowling Green State University. Notes there indicate that the books were written within a year of their publication, meaning Canary was penned in 1985 when the AIDS epidemic was in high gear. 

As with the previous books, Canary has the rapid-fire dialogue of the Nick and Nora variety, a sort of 1930’s Thin Man series set in the 1980s, in a world populated by drag queens and the women to whom they give make-up tips. They mystery, at times, takes a back seat to issues Daniel and Clarisse’s (who is more predominate here) they have with their friends, but it’s still a fun book and wonderful time capsule to a time when life was still a struggle, but because you had friends –those chosen family members- all was forgotten for a weekend of dancing, drugs, sex, and alcohol

A time before a disease designed to wipe out the homos changed everything.   

Books: Slate (Valentine and Lovelace #3) by Nathan Aldyne (1984)

“Daniel Valentine and Clarissa Lovelace are back in Boston after the summer in P’Town. When Clarissa is gifted a run-down building by her gay uncle Noah, she and Daniel decide to make a dream come true: opening their own gay bar. While Clarissa heads off to law school, Daniel gets busy turning their new bar into Boston's grooviest bar. Everything is seemly going their way, with the remodel of the bar and Valentine dating a new man who just happens to be in construction. Then there is the new (and free apartment) to renovate as well. But when a particular writer of local gay rags, who knows a lot about everyone and is going to spill the tea in the next edition, ends up dead in Clarissa bed, the clock begins to tick to finish the bar plus try and solve another murder.” 

Odd, there is some continuity from the last book to this book but not from the first book to this book. Like the two previous titles, this is set in an exuberantly pre-AIDS world (though the Gay Men’s Choir gets a shout-out about doing a function that is related to AIDS, and then the book opens with Valentine in the hospital suffering from double-pneumonia, which where he meets Linc, who is suffering from some vague infection. It made me think that McDowell was trying to say something, but those sub-plots are dropped). And unlike the first two, there is only one murder here and which makes this third novel suffer the most from listlessness. 

There is a lot of convenience and coincidence here, especially with the set up of the bar, which takes up a lot of the first half of the book. Maybe forty plus years ago it was easy to open a business, but even though Slate was given to Clarissa (and Uncle Noah seems fine with the costs), everything thing goes their way (including Loverlace’s classes to become a lawyer). 

What works here, and really the oil that makes this book series run smoothly, is the refreshingly relaxed friendship between Daniel Valentine and Clarisse Lovelace. They would be fun people to be around and I wouldn’t mind being friends with them. 

Slate maybe the weakest entry so far, but even if the usual zaniness has been reduced here, there is a fun time to be had here.  

Books: Q Clearance by Peter Benchley (1986)

"Timothy Burnham works as a speechwriter to the President. He has been in the same room as the great man, but only with a lot of other people, and he likes it that way – he is that rarity in Washington, a man with no appetite for power. By a quirk of bureaucracy Burnham is given Q Clearance, which means that every day he receives documents crammed with the highest atomic secrets of which he understands not a word, and which he has to shred every night. Big joke, thinks Burnham – but he does not laugh when for unfathomable reasons he suddenly becomes the President's blue-eyed boy. That, he knows, is more than he can cope with – except that, exhilaratingly, the terrifying old man seems to bring out in Burnham more than Burnham knew was there. While this nerve-racking relationship is developing, Burnham meets a lovely blonde. It does not occur to him that a lovely blonde might show obvious interest in a man with Q Clearance, who enjoys the confidence of his President, for some reason other than their enjoyable compatibility.” 

Before Peter Benchley became the mega-successful writer of Jaws, The Deep, and The Island, he was writer for The Washington Post and Newsweek before becoming President Lyndon B. Johnson’s speechwriter and it be interesting to know how much that goes down in the West Wing while he was there made it into this book. Of course, names had be changed, as well as certain situations, but still. Benchley, of course, came from powerful dynasty of writers in the 20th Century (both his grandfather and father were founders of the Algonquin Round Table), and while he’ll always be remembered for Jaws and other popular fiction titles, Q Clearance comes close to being a tale to fall under the same umbrella as John Le Carre (which he is safe from). It’s a bit dated novel if only because I think Benchley used 1960s early 70s politics instead of mid-1980s when Ronald Reagan began to destroy the American way. Also, the (Russian) spies seem a bit old-fashioned, as well. I think it works more as a merciless send-up of government bureaucrats than anything else. While this book was released in 1986, I’m guessing not much has changed when it comes to the power structure of DC. 

Other subplots involve a White House cleaning lady from Bermuda who is desperate to procure for her son a certificate of graduation from high school; an enigmatic caterer whose past is known to nobody (or at least, to nobody in the United States); and several members of the President's Cabinet (one who has unfortunate name of Epstein and I couldn’t help be be a distracted by that. There is a tacky plot device about Burnham’s marriage falling apart over a microphone bug found in their car. She wants him to quit because she hates the idea that her own government is spying on her and their two kids (who are more ciphers than characters), but that seems a bit overkill, and seemly just designed to get Tim to live at the Y and thus get involved with Eva, a Russian vitamin salesperson with questionable issues with her job.

I liked it, and Benchely can be a funny. And Q Clearance is entertaining, but light and breezy like a few of his other novels. It’s a spy novel for folks who might find Le Carre, John Forsythe, Ken Follett, or Len Deighton a bit too deep.

Books: Lemons Never Lie (Alan Grofield #4) by Richard Stark (1972)

“When he’s not carrying out heists with his friend Parker, Alan Grofield runs a small theater in Indiana. But putting on shows costs money and jobs have been thin lately—which is why Grofield agreed to fly to Las Vegas to hear Andrew Myers’ plan to knock over a brewery in upstate New York. Unfortunately, Myers’ plan is insane—so Grofield walks out on him. But Myers isn’t a man you walk out on, and his retribution culminates in an act of unforgivable brutality. That’s when Grofield decides to show him what a disciple of Parker is capable of.” 

Lemons Never Lie would be the last Alan Grofield spin-off novel, but the character would make another appearance in the 1974 (sort of) final Parker novel, Butcher’s Moon. The more reliable Westlake Review can’t come to any conclusion as to why Stark stopped writing about him, but like Parker, there’s an assumption the 1970s was causing problems for thieves who are stealing large amounts of cash from banks, entertainment venues, local stores and other places –those places were drying up, mostly due to the credit card boom, and money being transferred electronically, so there no need to have large amounts of loose cash on hand. They also noted: “It does, like the others, refer to Parker, remind us of Grofield’s connection to him (there’s even a brief cameo by Handy McKay).  Westlake was well aware of the fact that Grofield had not developed much of an independent fanbase, and that Grofield’s readership was, in the main, a subset of Parker’s.”

 

So after Butcher’s Moon, Grofield never appeared in another Parker novel (though Westlake would revive that character in 1997). Though, on a side note, Westlake did create a sort of alternate universe version of Grofield (who had sold out and become a prosperous star of film and TV) who periodically would popup in the Dortmunder books. 

 

Finally, perhaps by the time Westlake restarted the Parker novels after a twenty-three year absence, the rise of the information age would’ve stretched the concept of an actor who also committed robberies using the same name a bit hard to cover up. For many, those latter Parker tales were already stretching the believability factor.

 

Out of the four books, Lemons Never Lie comes the closest to what Westlake created in the Parker character. Seems ironic that a lot of Stark/Westlake fans did not really enjoy this off ramp into the mind of Grofield, but here, in this last book, Grofield is closest to being part of the darkness that surrounds Parker.

 

The most interesting thing about the book is that it actually shows Grofield working at his small theater – an out the way place in rural Indiana. It recounts the mundane aspect he and his wife Mary go through to put on highly unprofitable plays (and one where we see Westlake/Stark take a jab at the current medium of popular TV, movies, and even tedious plays. He only puts on “legit” plays). This also sort of really shows why Grofield has his side business as a thief – it raises the capital to put on his shows.

 

As well, though, Lemons Never Lies doesn’t read like a last book in the series, it yet somehow kind of works as such. I liked Grofield and despite being a less ruthless thief and killer that is Parker (and he’s less humorous here), he remains just as complex and interesting as Parker.