Tiger Shrimp Tango - Tim Dorsey

    2014; 307 pages.  Book 17 (out of 25) in the Serge Storms series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Florida Crime Noir; Dark Comedy; Stoner Humor; Beach Read.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    Watch out, Floridians!  You’ve always had lots of scammers trying to steal your assets, but there’s a new bunch of them in town, and they’ve been organized into a gang by a very savvy leader.  You’ve never faced *teams* of scammers before.

 

    Watch out, scammers!  Serge Storms has become aware of your nefarious activities and has appointed himself your judge and executioner, with the blessing and aid of his ally, the Private Investigator Mahoney.  Serge has been meting out justice on you guys for seventeen books now.

 

    Watch out, Serge!  The leader of the scammers has resources you’ve never encountered before.  He is capable of figuring out who you are, and arranging to have you eliminated.  You’ve never faced such a clever opponent before.

 

    You and Coleman may have met your match this time.

What’s To Like...

   Tiger Shrimp Tango follows Tim Dorsey’s standard formula for a Serge Storms saga:  nasty swindlers ripping off gullible but upstanding Florida citizens, Serge thinking up karmic ways to get rid of the bad guys while each time technically leaving them a way out (which the baddies never end up choosing)., and Coleman supplying Cheech-&-Chong-ish sage advice as to the proper usage of drugs and booze. 

 

    On top of that, there’s also lots of witty dialogue by Serge, and all sorts of Florida-related cultural trivia, most of which sounds made-up but all of which is factual.  For example, the reader is introduced to a lady named Brownie Wise (c’mon now, who would name their daughter “Brownie”?), who Serge claims invented and developed the concept of “Tupperware Parties”.  I looked her up in Wikipedia, she was real, and she plied her trade in Florida.

 

    Those who read this series for Serge’s bizarre executions will be happy to know that no less than eight baddies fall victim to his contraptions, although out of concern for spoilers, we’ll refrain from giving any details.  There's some science in the story too: the “build your own volcano” brought back junior high school science project memories, while the “Mentos in an ice cube” trick was new to me.  Also, I can thoroughly relate to Serge’s “self-check-out woes at the grocery store” ordeal.

 

    I chuckled at the mention of the old TV program The Ghost and Mrs. Muir; I haven’t thought about that show in decades.  The use of a rotary phone and accessing the Yellow Pages were pleasant anachronisms, and I was impressed that Tim Dorsey knows all about a chemical engineering phenomenon called the “Venturi Effect”.

 

    The ending is good, with a nice little twist thrown in to save the day.  Serge gets fooled a couple of times leading up to it; I like stories where the protagonist is fallible.  All the plot threads get tied up neatly. Tiger Shrimp Tango is both a standalone novel and part of a series.  I’m not reading the series in order, and don’t think I’m missing much, although there was an exception to that here.  See below.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.6/5 based on 429 ratings and 253 reviews..

    Goodreads: 3.95/5 based on 1,966 ratings and 246 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    Down on the street, people’s lives bounce off one another like eight balls in Frankie’s billiard joint, until one of them lands in the corner pocket of my office.  They pay two hundred clams up front to spill their guts about frame jobs, missing identical twins and alimony.  Most of them stink up my oxygen with alibis that are as shaky as an analogy that doesn’t fit.

    But this next one was a broad.  She knocked on my door like knuckles hitting wood.  I told her to have a seat and gave her a hankie.  She blew her nose like a British ambulance, and her sob story had more twists than a dragon parade in Chinatown.  (loc. 70)

 

    “Alfonso, Serge here.  I need a favor … What do you mean you don’t want that kind of trouble? … When has anything ever gone wrong? … That was just that one time … Okay, twice … Okay, now that time I did not burn down your warehouse … No, it was an electrical short from shoddy contractors … I did not overload the circuits making a Tesla arc transmitter to create artificial bursts of indoor lightning.”  (loc. 2016)

 

 

Kindle Details…

    Tiger Shrimp Tango currently sells for $6.99 at Amazon.  The other books in the series range in price from $3.99 to $7.99, with the exception of the most recent book, Mermaid Confidential, which for now costs $14.99.

 

“You almost expect to see people start farting Legos.” (loc. 971)

    The quibbles are minor and mostly cited for the benefit of any new readers to the series.  There is lots of partaking of drugs and alcohol, mostly courtesy of Serge’s trusty sidekick Coleman.  There’s a fair amount of cussing (25 instances in the first 20%), one roll-in-the-hay, and several allusions to doing it.  And perhaps most importantly, if you don’t like the concept of vigilante justice, do NOT read any of the books in this series.

 

    As mentioned above, there was one plotline carried over, presumably from the previous book in the series, Riptide Ultra-Glide, which I haven’t read.  Serge apparently loses a love interest in that book, Felicia, and her killer gets away.  Serge settles up here, and it was just a very minor distraction for me.

 

    Lastly but leastly, the dog dies.

 

    If none of these quibbles bother you, and if you’re looking for a “beach novel” type of story, featuring a psychopathic anti-hero with a loyal-but-always-stoned sidekick, then Tiger Shrimp Tango, or any other book from this series will be perfectly suited for you.  Tim Dorsey appears to churn a new book in the series, like clockwork, once a year, every year, and usually in January.  He's been doing so since 1999 (the only exception being 2011, when he published a second one, but it was a Christmas special), and I don’t think he has any intention of breaking that streak.

 

    8 Stars.  Speaking of Tupperware Parties (were we?), many, many years ago, quite by accident, I found myself attending one.  While tripping on acid.  Coleman would have been proud of me.  The ladies there were very tolerant of my situation, and did their best to make me feel at home.  Still, if you ever find yourself under a the influence of hallucinogens, I recommend avoiding Tupperware parties like the plague.

Time Travel: A History - James Gleick

   2016; 313 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Literary Criticism; Time Travel; Non-Fiction; Philosophy; Science Fiction; Physics.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

 

    Hey, let’s write a comprehensive book all about Time Travel.

 

    No problem.  We’ll just throw a bunch of complicated Quantum Physics equations on a page, demonstrating Time to be the Fourth Dimension, and that it’s theoretically possible to move both forward and backwards through it.

 

    We already move forward through it, of course.  We even know how to slow that rate down: just travel at the speed of light.  Speeding the rate up is a bit trickier, and moving backward through Time is incredibly difficult, but Einstein says it’s possible and he’s never wrong.

 

    Great!  So, do you think we can present all this in 300 pages or so?

 

    Actually we can wrap it all up in about five pages.  Ten pages if we double-space everything.

 

    Yikes! That’s not enough for a book.  What else can we write about Time Travel besides the science-y stuff?

 

   Well, there’s a lot of Sci-Fi stories out there that involve moving back and forth through Time.  We can show how various authors imagined the subject.  And since there’s no evidence that any time travelers have ever visited us, no one can say that any of them are wrong about how to time-travel.

 

    That’s a great idea.  Any other fields of study that we can tap into for Time Travel enlightenment?

 

    There’s always Philosophy and Logic.  Philosophers and logicians can give you an inscrutable and savvy-sounding opinion about almost anything, including things like Eternity, Infinity, and why Time “flows like a river”.

 

What’s To Like...

    James Gleick’s book, Time Travel: A History, is divided into 14 chapters, each dealing with a different aspect of either Time Itself or Traveling Through Time.  My favorites were:

    Ch. 02 : Fin de Siècle.  How people in 1900 foresaw the future world.

    Ch. 09 : Buried Time.  Time Capsules and Time Crypts.

    Ch. 10 : Backward.  What sci-fi says about going back into the Past.

    Ch. 11 : Paradoxes.  What if you went back and killed your grandfather.  Or Hitler.

    Your faves will be different, and each chapter had parts that resonated with me.

 

    The book is a blend of the three areas cited in the introduction: Science (mostly Quantum Physics), Science-Fiction, and Philosophy/Logic.  That sounds like an awkward fit, but kudos to James Gleick for making it work.  There’s a smattering of photographs, diagrams, and footnotes scattered throughout the text, a useful “Index” in the back, along with a fabulous, 6-page “Sources and Further Reading” section that lists all sorts of Time Travel novels, most of which I’d never heard of before.  And the cover image for the hardcover version that I read, pictured above, is quite clever.

 

    The book is a trivia trove of time-travel literature.  I was surprised that the term “Time Travel” didn’t occur until 1914 and that the author “Ellery Queen” doesn’t exist (although Ellery Queen the protagonist does).   Kurt Vonnegut’s “Tralfamadorians” made me smile, as did the dynamic duo of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern”.  Mr. Peabody and Sherman’s “Wayback Machine”, more correctly rendered as “WABAC”, brought back great childhood memories.

 

    The history references were entertaining as well. I was already familiar with the development of Time Zones (the invention of railroads necessitated them), as well as the rather lame rationale for Daylight Saving Time (here in Arizona we don’t use it).  I also knew that “Time Dilation” has already been scientifically proven: astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year in space in a high-speed orbit actually aged 8.6 milliseconds less than the rest of us Earthlings over that time.  I was not aware, however, that something called “chronesthesia”, aka “mental time travel”, is already being investigated by neuroscientists.

 

    There were lots of eye-openers for me.  H.G. Wells, author of the derivative novel The Time Machine, didn’t personally believe in Time Travel, and became quite cynical about it later in life.  Pulp Fiction magazines were responsible for giving the Science Fiction genre its start.  And the sentence “Time flows like a river, fruit flies like a banana” made my head hurt.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.2/5 based on 293 ratings and 149 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.58/5 based on 4,013 ratings and 674 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Retronym (n.) : a new term created from an existing word in order to distinguish it from the meaning that has emerged through progress or technological development.  Example: “cloth diaper” – a retronym necessitated by the fact that “diaper” now more commonly refers to a disposable diaper.

Others: Cynosure (n.).

 

Excerpts...

    Nowadays we voyage through time so easily and so well, in our dreams and in our art.  Time travel feels like an ancient tradition, rooted in old mythologies, old as gods and dragons.  It isn’t.  Though the ancients imagined immortality and rebirth and lands of the dead, time machines were beyond their ken.  Time travel is a fantasy of the modern era.  When (H.G.) Wells in his lamp-lit room imagined a time machine, he also invented a new mode of thought.  (pg. 4)

 

    The (TV) screen starts up again.  The Doctor appears to be answering the big question.  “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,” he explains, “but actually from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly … timey wimey … stuff.”

    “Started well, that sentence,” Sally snarks (for who among us has never talked back to the TV?).

    The on-screen Doctor answers, “It got away from me, yeah.”  (pg. 299)

 

Why do we need time travel?  All the answers come down to one.  To elude death.  (pg. 309)

    The quibbles are small.  There were a few times that the text got tedious for me, mostly when a philosopher decided to go on at length about some dull topic.  Chapter 12 in particular, provocatively titled What Is Time, bored me, mostly because it was a dry, philosophical treatise.

 

    Some reviewers thought the science-y parts were dull, while others thought everything BUT the science-y parts were dull.  And there were moments when James Gleick’s own comments hinted that he was having to deal with something or someone that he found tedious.

 

    There were three instances of cussing, which would be incredibly clean for a novel, but not for a science-oriented, non-fiction work.  To be fair, they were all caused by direct quotations, the most egregious of which was from an Ursula K. Le Guin book, The Lathe of Heaven: “the riots, and the f*ck-ins, and the Doomsday Band, and the Vigilantes.”

 

    My last quibble is a personal one and the least important.  For all the great Time Travel novels that are listed in the back, I was disappointed that Danger: Dinosaurs! by Evan Hunter was not included.  It was written in 1953, I probably acquired it in grade school via the “Weekly Reader” program, it was my introduction to Time Travel, and I've never forgotten the book.

 

    I enjoyed Time Travel: A History.  I think that, due to the diversity of influences (science, sci-fi, philosophy), it was inevitable that a few dry spots would crop up, but overall it was both enlightening and entertaining, which is what I want from any non-fiction work.  Kudos to James Gleick for tackling this subject.

 

    7½ Stars.  We’ll close with a teaser:  A "Time Crypt" built in 1936 at Oglethorpe University (a Presbyterian college in Atlanta, Georgia) will remain sealed until the year 8113 AD.  Why'd they pick that particular year?  (Answer in the comments.)

Homeland - R.A. Salvatore

 

    1990; 315 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Book 1 (out of 37, soon to be 38) in the Legend of Drizzt series.  Book 1 (out of 3) in the Dark Elf Trilogy series.  Genres: Epic Fantasy; Dungeons & Dragons; Sword & Sorcery.  Overall Rating: 8*/10.

    Some drow elves are born great.  Some achieve greatness.  Some have greatness thrust upon them.

 

    For the drow elf Drizzt Do’urden, the first isn’t true – he's the third son (“thirdboy”) of a minor House of Elves in the city of Menzoberranzan, and they normally are sacrificed immediately to the Spider Queen deity Lolth.

 

    It’s also doubtful that anyone will thrust greatness upon him.  More likely a dagger will be thrust between his ribs by one of his elder brothers as a preventative measure against Drizzt doing the same to them to climb up the House’s succession ladder.  Such things are natural occurrences in familial politics in Menzoberranzan.

 

   That leaves achieving greatness as the only option.  But only under a strictly-monitored upbringing: starting with being a house servant until age 15, then 5 years under the tutelage of a weapons master, followed by 10 more years at the Tier Breche Academy learning all about fighting, wizardry, and properly serving the merciless goddess Lolth.  Drizzt quickly becomes a stellar student there.

 

    Except for obeying the “properly serving” aspect.

 

What’s To Like...

    Homeland is the first book in R.A. Salvatore’s epic fantasy series “The Legend of Drizzt”.  There are now 38 books in this series, which are further divided into subsets consisting of 2-5 books apiece.  The setting ties in closely with Dungeons-&-Dragons’ (“D&D”) Forgotten Realms role-playing games.  This is epic fantasy at its finest, with lots of fantasy races (at least 20 of them here), artifacts, magic, Houses of Nobility, and schools of learning to keep the reader’s attention.

 

    Homeland serves as an introduction to the series.  The story commences with the Matron Malice, ruler of House Do’urden, pregnant, and eventually giving birth to Drizzt, whom we then follow through his three decades of training and first couple of combat operations on behalf of the goddess Lolth.  That might sound like a significant portion  of someone's existence, but the typical lifespan of an elf is a millennium or so.

 

    The world-building is superb.  The realm of the drow elves is entirely underground (“the Underdark”) and spending any time aboveground where the hated “surface elves” dwell (you and I would call them “faeries”) is a grueling experience, due to a big orange ball of fire in the sky.  The drow elf realms are matriarchal, which is a pleasant change of pace.  The ruling matron usually takes a (male) patron, mostly for offspring purposes, and can dump him for another at any time if he becomes boring.

 

    Daughters comprise the ruling succession line, with the non-eldest ones becoming prime candidates for the roles of high priestesses.  Females are generally much better at magic than males, and are also usually (but not always) more powerfully built as well.  High priestesses are clairvoyant, which means a male drow elf with a rebellious streak has to be careful of both what he says and what he thinks.  Drow elves are almost always paranoid – all other races are enemies to be slain, and all activity must be guided by the dictates of the Spider Goddess Lolth.

 

    The major characters here - the drow elves (including Drizzt’s family) and their scheming and competing Houses – are essentially “black hats”.  The main plotline is Drizzt coming to grips with that, the problems this realization causes him, and the difficult decisions he then has to make.  He crosses paths with a couple characters in the same quandary, which helps him try to resolve these difficulties.

 

    The ending is epic, exciting, D&D-ish, but without any plot twists to throw things askew.  That may sound like a criticism, but if you’ve ever participated in a D&D roleplaying game (I have), you’ll appreciate devising a well-thought-out plan of action that results in a well-deserved conclusion.  The book’s primary goal is attained – Drizzt is born, trained, introduced to the combat and intrigue of the Underdark, and is now ready for (at least) 37 more adventures.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.7/5 based on 3,964 ratings and 1,076 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.25/5 based on 81,356 ratings and 2,777 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Weal (n.) : well-being, prosperity, happiness.

 

Excerpts...

    He put his head down and charged the mirror.

    Perhaps it was a teleportation door to another section of the city, perhaps a simple door to a room beyond.  Or perhaps, Alton dared to imagine in those few desperate seconds, this was some interplanar gate that would bring him to a strange and unknown plane of existence!

    He felt the tingling excitement of adventure pulling him on as he neared the wondrous thing—then he felt only the impact, the shattering glass, and the unyielding stone wall behind it.

    Perhaps it was just a mirror.  (loc. 623)

 

    Only twenty-two of the original twenty-five in Drizzt’s class remained.  One had been dismissed—and subsequently executed—for a foiled assassination attempt on a high-ranking student, a second had been killed in the practice arena, and a third had died in his bunk of natural causes—for a dagger in the heart quite naturally ends one’s life.  (loc. 2370)

 

Kindle Details…

    Right now, Homeland sells for $7.99 at Amazon.  The other 37 books in The Legend of Drizzt series run anywhere from $7.99 to $14.99, with the newer books being the more expensive.  $14.99 is the pre-order price for Book 38, which is scheduled to be released this coming August.

 

“I do not wish to waste my time conversing with a magical mouth.”  (loc. 808)

    There’s not much to gripe about in Homeland.  The book was surprisingly clean: I counted only nine cusswords in the first 33% of the book, all of them eschatological (“hell” and “damn”).  There is some violence, naturally.  I don't recall any “adult situations”.

 

    Most of the “made-up words” (piwafwi, thoqqua, svirfnebli, illithid, yochlol, et al.) are clearly explained when they first appear, but it took me a while to figure out what a “dweomer” was.  It’s a magic spell or ward.  I suspect I neglected to highlight its meaning when it first cropped up.

 

    Thanks to the book's cover image, the fate of Guenhwyvar was pretty obvious to me.  I was surprised though that it is not a made-up name, being a variant of the girl’s name “Guinevere”.  Now I just need to figure out how to pronounce it.

 

    That’s about it for the nit-picking, and those are all pretty miniscule.  I’ve been meaning to read something by R.A. Salvatore for quite a while now, and this introduction to his signature work lived up to my expectations.  I have a feeling that the Drizzt books get even better now that the worldbuilding is done and the (initial) main characters have been introduced.

 

    8 Stars.  Homeland is a standalone novel in addition to being the start of a 38-book series, full of magical beings, dodging life-threatening monsters and nasty spells.  There's even a subtle strand of humor woven into the story, as the first excerpt above demonstrates.  I think I'm gonna like The Legend of Drizzt.

The Complete Maus - Art Spiegelman

   1997; 296 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Graphic Novel; Biography; Holocaust History; Non-Fiction.  Laurels: 1992 Pulitzer Prize: “Special Award in Letters” (winner), 10 other awards won plus 2 other award nominations (listed at Wikipedia).  Overall Rating: 10*/10.

 

    What was it like to live under the iron fist of Nazi Germany before and during World War 2, aka “The Holocaust”?

 

    Unfortunately, six million Jews, plus millions of Poles, Russians, gypsies, and Communists are unable to give an answer, since they perished in the concentration camps and ghettos, being beaten, shot, starved, and gassed to death.  To find out what it was like, it’s necessary to find those few who beat the odds and somehow survived.

 

    Art Spiegelman is an Jewish-American cartoonist, artist, and editor.  He had an “in” when it comes to researching the Holocaust: his father, Vladek Spiegelman, was a survivor, not only of the pre-war Jewish ghettos in Poland, but also the death camps of Auschwitz, Dachau, and several more.

 

    In 1978, Art began interviewing his dad, with the result being Maus, both the history of the Holocaust and Vladek’s biography, rendered in graphic novel format, and serialized from 1980 to 1991.

 

    Oh, and banned by a Tennessee school district earlier this year because it contains “profanity, violence, and nudity”.  Of course that caused it to become an instant bestseller, in such high demand that it took Amazon three months to be able to ship me a copy.

 

What’s To Like...

    There are two main storylines in The Complete Maus.  The first, biographical, is the recounting of Vladek’s hellish Holocaust years, where the tasks of staying alive and keeping one’s family alive, were almost impossible to achieve.  The second, autobiographical involves the present-day strained father/son relationship between Vladek and Art, as the latter tries to coax out his dad’s painful WW2 memories while trying to live up to papa’s expectations, an almost impossible combination to achieve.

 

    The Complete Maus combines two volumes published earlier by Art Spiegelman: Maus I – My Father Bleeds History, and Maus II – And Here My Troubles Began.  It’s done in graphic novel format, which is very unusual for a work of non-fiction.  Timeline-wise, Art’s arrival at the Auschwitz death camp is the dividing line between Maus I (1986) and Maus II (1992).

 

    The artwork is in black-and-white, with little shading, and in a “minimalist” style: eyes, for instance, are nothing more than dots.  The characters are rendered as heads of animals atop humanoid bodies.  The choice of animal identifies its type: Jews are mice, Germans are cats, Poles are pigs, Americans are dogs, French are frogs, Swedes are reindeer, Roms are gypsy moths, and Red Cross workers are birds.  The book cover shows Hitler as a cat, but I don’t recall his image appearing in the text itself.

 

    I got a nice “feel” for Jewish home life, and learned some interesting Yiddish vocabulary that was sprinkled throughout.  A couple examples are given below, plus there’s the ever-so-popular “Oy gevalt!”

 

    I was impressed by the story’s evenhanded approach to characters.  Vladek may be the protagonist, but a strain of racism runs through him.  He is not so much heroic as pragmatic, he’ll do whatever needs to be done to stay alive, including bribery, black-marketing, and occasionally cozying up to Germans.  Art renders himself with equal objectivity – the tenseness in the father/son relationship is just as much his fault as Vladek's.

 

    The main reason for reading The Complete Maus, obviously, is to experience the Holocaust.  In this respect, the book succeeds superbly.  The reader experiences the hopelessness and helplessness that millions of Jews felt when they were trapped in Nazi-held lands.  Vladek and other Jews don’t just instantly go from living normal lives to dreading a trip to the gas chamber.  It was a gradual process, carried out one outrage at a time by the Nazis.

 

    The ending is an oxymoron: a happy tearjerker.  To say more would entail giving spoilers.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.8/5 based on 8,029 ratings and 1,489 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.55/5 based on 177,310 ratings and 10,687 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Nu (n., Yiddish) : an interjection that can mean a number of things, including “Well/”, “So?”, “Come on.”, and “Go on.”

Others: Gefilte Fish (n., culinary); Meshugah (adj., Yiddish).

 

Excerpts...

    One time a day they gave a soup from turnips.  To stand near the first of the line was no good.  You got only water.  Near the end was better – solid things to the bottom floated.

    But too far to the end it was also no good.  Because many times it could be no soup anymore.

    And one time each day they gave to us a small bread, crunchy like glass.  The flour mixed with sawdust together – we got one little brick of this what had to last the full day.

    And in the evening we got a spoiled cheese or jam.  If we were lucky a couple times a week we got a sausage big like two of my fingers.  Only this much we got.

    If you ate how they gave you, it was just enough to die more slowly.  (pg. 209)

 

    In the morning they chased us to march again out, who knows where.  It was such a train for horses, for cows.  They pushed until it was no room left.  We lay one on top of the other, like matches, like herrings.

    I pushed to a corner not to get crushed.  High up I saw a few hooks to chain up maybe the animals.

    I still had the thin blanket they gave me.  I climbed to somebody’s shoulder and hooked it strong.  In this way I can rest and breathe a little.

    This saved me.  Maybe 25 people came out from this car of 200.  (pg. 245)

 

“It was nothing to eat, and nothing to do, only to wait and to die.”  (pg. 253)

    The Complete Maus was a fantastic read for me, so coming up with quibbles is difficult.  The art style is admittedly “spartan”, but I think that adds to the only stark tone of the message.  There was nothing pretty about living through the Holocaust, and if you were shipped off to Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen, Dachau, or Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Vladek spent time in all these death camps), it was pretty much assured that you were going to die in the near future.

 

    Some critics disliked the using of animals to denote ethnic identity.  I suppose if I were a Pole, I wouldn’t appreciate them being typecast as pigs.  Ditto for the French being rendered as frogs.  But I don’t think Art Spiegelman was intending racial slurs by this.  In his minimalist style, he’s making it easy for the reader to figure out what nationality any given character is.

 

    I'll give The Complete Maus a rare 10-star rating.  Its portrayal of the horrors of the Holocaust is bone-chilling.  Maus won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, the only graphic novel ever to do so.  This should be required reading in every high school or college class teaching  20^th Century History.

 

    10 Stars.  One final exercise: let's evaluate the McMinn Country Schools decision to remove The Complete Maus from its shelves.

    Profanity.  I counted 16 instances in the entire book, mostly scatological or eschatological terms.  That’s remarkably clean.

    Violence.  There are corpses.  There was a war going on.  At one point, prisoners are burned alive.  The Holocaust was by nature inhumanely violent.  To depict it otherwise would be a lie.

    Nudity.  I only recall two times (pgs. 185/86 and 218).  Both involve only adult male prisoners, and both were drawn in the author’s minimalist style.  If these offend you, or worse yet, arouse you, seek professional help.

Atlantis Lost - J. Robert Kennedy

   2018; 250 pages.  Book 21 (out of 34) in the “James Acton Thrillers” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres: Technothriller; Pulp Thriller.  Overall Rating: 5½*/10.

 

    It's a good-luck/bad-luck situation.

 

    While diving in the ocean off the shores of Pico Island in the Azores, Sergeants Carl “Niner” Sung and Jerry “Jimmy Olsen” Hudson find themselves dangerously close to an underwater landslide just as they're running low on oxygen.  Bad luck, guys!

 

    Ah, but the shifting of the seabed has uncovered what looks like some ancient Roman columns.  That might mean there’s a whole sunken city here, previously undiscovered, and who knows, it could even be the legendary lost city of Atlantis!  What a stroke of good luck!

 

    Too bad neither Sung nor Hudson know anything about how to excavate a site, especially one under a couple hundred feet of ocean.  Bad luck, guys.  If indeed this is the remains of Atlantis, you might’ve become famous.

 

    Luckily, you’re pals with a husband/wife team of archaeology professors, James Acton and Laura Palmer.  You can give them a call once you get back to shore, and they can fly over and check out those columns.  There’s nothing wrong with sharing half the fame with them.

 

    As long as no one else snorkels into the area in the meantime.

 

What’s To Like...

    The title of the book notwithstanding, the book’s main storyline involves a group of anti-technology, anti-social-media protesters that just happen to also be carrying out their plans in these same waters.  They don’t appreciate the archaeological intruders, and intend to take steps to oust our heroes no matter what.  And although their ideology is ultimately flawed, it appears that J. Robert Kennedy sympathizes with their aims, which I thought was kind of neat.

 

    The action starts right away, and continues slam-bam throughout the entire book.  Most of the excitement is over-the-top, but if you like Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt tales, you’ll love this series.  There are a pair of secondary plotlines: one set in ancient times as Atlantis faces its impending doom (which is not a spoiler; the reader is told this on the first page of the first chapter); the other set in present-day Shanghai.  More about these later.

 

    As the author notes, although Atlantis is generally considered a myth, Plato makes reference to it in his writings, implying that it had sunk into the ocean centuries before his time.  The truth is, to date no reliable evidence has ever been found of Atlantis’s existence, but that just means J. Robert Kennedy can let his imagination run wild in creating his version of it here.  I thought the Atlantean rapid transit system he dreamed up was quite intriguing.

 

    I chuckled at the interjection “damn skippy”.  Until reading this book I had always assumed it was just a made-up phrase coined by Janet Evanovich.  I was also happy to see the Luddites get mentioned, and loved the cited copyediting conundrum: “is it ‘Briticism’ or ‘Britishism'?  

 

    Speaking of which, it should be noted that someone did a great job at editing Atlantis Lost.  I didn’t catch any typos, although the history buff in me needs to mention that an ancient Atlantean seen wearing “undergarments” at one point is historically unlikely.

    For those averse to excessive cussing, Atlantis Lost is quite clean; I counted only 8 instances in the first 25% of the book.  There were a couple rolls-in-the-hay, however, which makes me wonder who the target audience is.

 

    The ending, at least for the main storyline, is decent, if predictable.  The bad guys get their comeuppance and most are disposed of; the good guys all survive, ready to save the world yet again in the next book in the series.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 233 ratings and 46 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.33/5 based on 220 ratings and 11 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Damn skippy (n., phrase) : a term of approval or excitement.

 

Excerpts...

    The fringe elements were, of course, out in full force, claiming pending doom, but they had always existed, long before the earthquakes began.  Killer waves, angry gods, invasion fleets from beyond the Pillars of Hercules, even massive rocks from the skies, were always dominating the conversations of those with too much time on their hands.  (loc. 557)

 

    “Do you want to get real answers, or continue the name-calling?”

    There was silence for a moment before Nelson took back the meeting.  “We’ll move forward with your suggestion, Leif.  In the meantime, we have to assume that this individual is serious, and decide what to do about it.”

    The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs shook his head.  “We can’t pay the money.  We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

    Morrison grunted.  “We all know that’s bullshit.  We’re always negotiating with terrorists, we just do it through third parties.”  (loc. 1592)

 

Kindle Details…

    Atlantis Lost costs $7.99 at Amazon right now, with the other books in the series running anywhere from free and $7.99.  The prices generally increase as the e-books get newer.  J. Robert Kennedy has several other action-adventure series to offer, with similar pricing strategies.

 

“Somebody remind me to insult him when we go topside.”  (loc. 509)

    There are nits to pick.  Atlantis Lost was my introduction to this series, and I gather that there is a recurring multinational, multi-agency team of agents who help our husband-wife pair of archaeologists save the day on a recurring basis.  I don’t think this hampered my ability to grasp what was going on, but it did introduce some head-scratching tangents.

 

    Most notably, the subplot featuring CIA special agent Dylan Kane in China has absolutely no tie-in to the main storyline.  For that matter, about the only purpose the Atlantis-based subplot served was to give the book a catchy title.  I kept waiting for it to tie in somewhere; but it never did.  Indeed, after flip-flopping chapters with the main storyline, it disappears around 50% Kindle, surfacing only briefly at the very end as a disappointing and predictable epilogue.

 

    The characters are either all black or white, none are gray.  The Russian and Chinese officials are corrupt, cold-blooded, and cruel, and will only cooperate with the Western agents if they’re sweet-talked into it.  They also like to hire simpletons to serve as guards for very critical missions.

 

    The Atlantean worldbuilding was unconvincing to me.  The “copies of portraits” didn’t make any sense (did they have copying machines?), and “message stream” strained my suspension-of-disbelief ability.  The “protests for free speech” felt 20^th-century, not ancient, and the whole idea of a "Senior Enforcer" being a young female is historically doubtful.

 

    But maybe my expectations for this series are askew.  First and foremost, Atlantis Lost is a pulp thriller, not a work of historical fiction.  Perhaps I should just put my analytical brain into deep-freeze at the first page, and sit back and enjoy the thrills, kills, and heart-pounding thrills, without musing about how Atlantis, if it ever existed, might have really been.  Indiana Jones would approve.

 

    5½ Stars.  I have a couple more books from this series on my Kindle, which means I have a couple more opportunities to get the hang of J. Robert Kennedy's literary approach.  For the record, the only Clive Cussler book I've read did not impress me at all, but I have many (adult) friends and acquaintances who are totally addicted to Cussler's Dirk Pitt tales.  I may be in the minority on this.

Last Shot - Mike Faricy

   2013; 307 pages.  Book 6 (out of 31) in the “Dev Haskell – Private Investigator” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Beach Read; Murder-Mystery; Private Investigator Mystery.  Overall Rating: 8*/10.

 

    It was the best of decisions; it was the worst of decisions.

 

    Private Investigator Dev Haskell isn’t overworked right now – in fact he’s working on zero cases – yet when Desi, a gorgeous ex-con comes to him with an offer of work (and with money to pay him!), he turns her down.  Bad decision, Dev.

 

    Desi served time for a bank robbery, but she claims she took the fall for a powerful big-shot named Gaston Driscoll.  Now she’s served her time, but thinks she’s being followed, and the Gaston’s out to silence her.  Permanently.  She wants Dev to investigate Driscoll, but he's turned her down reasoning that if push came to shove between him and Gaston, he’d be on the receiving end of all the pushing and shoving.  Good decision, Dev.

 

    Desi was of course disappointed but understood Dev’s reluctance.  Her parting words to Dev as she left his office were, “There’s really no one else I can ask.  You were sort of my last shot.”

 

    And when she's found dead a short time later, Dev finds himself involved up to his ears in the case, whether he likes it or not.

 

What’s To Like...

    Last Shot is the sixth book in Mike Faricy’s Dev Haskell series, which I’m reading in order although you don’t really have to.  As usual, Dev quickly finds himself in over his head, with the St. Paul, Minnesota police department wavering between treating him as a suspect or treating him as a nuisance.

 

    As usual, the storyline is filled with lots of sexy girls, some of which may be the death of Dev.  A couple are dancers at a local strip club where Desi was a bartender, one owns a carwash, another works in the Police Records Department (and is a handy resource for Dev), still another used to be employed by an architectural firm financed by Gaston Driscoll.  Dev dutifully makes his PI rounds, turning up all sorts of questions but not very many answers.

 

    The tale is told from the first-person POV, Dev’s, which is the norm for this series.  I hesitate to call this a whodunit, as the perpetrator is pretty evident from the start.  Instead, the challenge for Dev is to figure out a way to bring down the evildoer, which is no small feat, as Mr. Bad Guy's reputation as a benevolent philanthropist is spotless.  Most of the story takes place in St. Paul, but we do make one quick trip overseas, which is a rarity for this series.

 

    The action is fast-paced, the dialogue is witty (a Mike Faricy forte), and there are no slow spots.  I liked the name of the architecture company: “Touchier and Touchier”, and chuckled at the mention of a Yellow Pages phone book.  I laughed when Dev got engulfed by a huge pile of toxic chemical fertilizer; my career was with a chemical fertilizer company.  My favorite character is once again here: Louie Laufen, who serves as both attorney and office roommate for Dev, and although he doesn’t figure much into the main plotline, he can always be counted on for snarky-yet-sage advice.

 

    The ending is over-the-top, and includes a huge WTF: a chance meeting of two important characters, that strained my suspension-of-disbelief.  However, since it tidily ties up the main plotline, I’ll let it slide.  Last Shot is a standalone novel as well as part of a 31-book series.  You can also get it as part of a 7-book bundle (books 1-7) that Mike Faricy at times offers at a significantly discounted price.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.2/5 based on 420 ratings and 338 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.88/5 based on 745 ratings and 61 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “What are you supposed to be meeting about?”

    “I just said I was considering making a career change and a friend mentioned him as a top man in his field, someone I should talk to.”

    “And that got you an appointment with him the next day?”

    “He said he could only give me ten minutes.”

    “Ten minutes?  You’ll have to wear a raincoat with nothing on underneath.”

    “That’s what I was planning to wear for the second meeting.”  (loc. 19100)

 

    I nodded at “Your next, asshole” message spray painted in large red letters across the wall.

    Oscar sighed again, then said, “You notice they spelled that wrong?  Should be you’re, you know, with an apostrophe and then the letters r and e.  Might just be a clue.”

    “I don’t think these were the kind of people who worry a lot about grammar and punctuation.”  (loc. 20430)

 

Kindle Details…

    Last Shot is presently priced at $3.99 at Amazon, as are most of the other books in this series.  A couple are priced at $3.94 and $3.96 right now, and Book One, Russian Roulette, has an introductory price of just $0.99.  You can also get good deals on 3-, 4-, and 7-book bundles of various books in the series.  Mike Faricy has several other series (Hotshot, Corridor Man, and Jack Dillon Dublin Tales) to supplement Dev Haskell’s misadventures.

 

Sometimes my best ideas are beverage fueled.  (loc. 20506)

    The usual quibbles apply to Last Shot, the main one, as always, being the horrendous amount of typos.  Things like: accept/except, Driscoll’s/Driscolls, clip board/clipboard, bitties/biddies, ex’s/exes, wheel chair/wheelchair, and one of my personal peeves, lightening/lightning.  There were many more.

 

    There’s only a moderate amount a cussing in the text, 17 instances in the first 20% of the story.  That’s about par for a Dev Haskell tale, at least starting with Book 4.  The black-hats and white-hats are easy to tell apart, but that allows Mike Faricy to focus on penning an action-packed story instead of slowing things down to attend to things like character-development.

 

    Overall, Last Shot gave me exactly what I was looking for – a light, easy, thoroughly entertaining read.  I've added the genre “Beach Read” to the opening details, as this series would be perfect for such an occasion, or when you're stuck in an airport.

 

    8 Stars.  Some reviewers have griped about a perceived “excessive amount” of sex and booze that Dev partakes of in these books.  I respectfully disagree, but hey, let’s track a couple metrics for Dev starting with Last Shot.  Drinking Establishments visited: 5 (Nasty’s, The Spot, St. Paul’s Grill, Fabulous Ferns, Glass Slipper).  Rolls-in-the-Hay: 2 (we won’t name names).  Cars Wrecked: 1 (with a nod to Stephanie Plum).  Hopefully I'll remember to track these when I read the next book, Ting-a-Ling.