Mister Slaughter - Robert McCammon

   2010; 440 pages.  Book 3 (out of 8) in the “Matthew Corbett” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Historical Fiction; Intrigue; Thriller.  Laurels : Goodreads Choice Award for 2010 Mystery & Thrillers (nominated).  Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    New York, 1702.

    Everybody already knows Mister Slaughter is a dangerous killer.  The courts in England want him delivered so they can give him a fair trial, and hang him afterward.

 

    Mister Slaughter currently is in the care of a sanitarium in Philadelphia.  New York has been chosen as the seaport that will extradite him to London, and Matthew Corbett and his mentor, Hudson Greathouse, have been assigned the task of taking a wagon to Philly and picking up the prisoner.

 

    They are quite aware of how dangerous this mission is, but it pays well.  Slaughter will be handcuffed, leg-cuffed, and forced to carry a heavy metal ball around that is chained to his shackles.  Matthew and Hudson will work as a team; one will drive the wagon while the other keeps a pistol cocked and aimed at Slaughter.  They can switch positions as needed.  I don’t see any way things can go wrong.

 

    But Mr. Slaughter can.

 

What’s To Like...

    Mister Slaughter is the third book in Robert McCammon’s “Matthew Corbett” historical thriller series, and so far I’ve been reading it in order.  The first two books were very exciting, and this one continues that streak.

 

    Mister Slaughter admits he’s killed frequently in the past, but always for good reason.  He’s aware of the fate awaiting him in London, and offers an alternative “win-win” solution to our two protagonists.  The reader gets to sit in the wagon alongside Matthew and Hudson and weigh Slaughter’s proposal versus directly delivering him to New York for the standard fee.  I love it when the baddie is just as clever and resourceful (if not more so) as the heroes.

 

    There are lots of other plot threads to keep things interesting.  Can Greathouse find enough money to buy a black slave’s freedom?  Does Slaughter really have access to the riches he claims?  What makes “Sutch’s Sausages” taste so mouthwateringly good?  Is High Constable Lillehorne’s wife (and several other women) playing hanky-panky with Dr. Mallory?  Who the heck is Sirki?

 

    The thriller aspect is done well.  I enjoyed trying to figure out Mr. Slaughter's angles, and Robert McCammon wove plenty of excitement and intrigue into the tale to keep my interest.  The historical aspect also kept me turning the pages.  New York City’s population in 1702 included lots of both English and Dutch settlers, since it had been a Dutch possession until about 40 years earlier.  There were also several Native American villages beyond the city limits, which play a key role in the tale, and I loved the attention Robert McCammon pays to realistically presenting their way of life.

 

    The ending was a two-stage affair, the first being suitably exciting and the second being suitably filled with intrigue.  Plot twists were plentiful in both finales.  The book’s main storyline—the fate of Mister Slaughter—is tied up nicely, and the series' main storyline—an earlier death sentence that has been imposed upon Matthew—edges him closer to his demise.  Mister Slaughter is told in the third-person POV, and is a standalone novel as well as part of a series.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Higgler (n.) : a peddler; a person who travels around selling small items.

Others: Bustarole (n.); Ferrago (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.6*/5, based on 790 ratings and 188 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.32*/5, based on 3,993 ratings and 170 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Said suspect,” Greathouse continued reading, “also charged to stand in connection with the disappearances of Anne Yancey, Mary Clark, and Sarah Goldsmith and the concurrent robberies of their family estates, on or about August 1689 through March 1692, under the aliases of Count Edward Bowdewine, Lord John Finch and . . .”  He hesitated.  “Earl Anthony Lovejoy?”

    “I was so much younger then,” said Slaughter, with a slight shrug.  I had the imagination of youth.”

    “So you don’t deny any of this?”

    “I deny,” came the smooth answer, “that I am a common criminal.” (loc. 1399)

 

    He looked at Matthew and nodded.  “Someday you’ll see your world and not know it, and think it strange . . . monstrous, even.  And you and your Englishmen will yearn for what was lost, and never be able to find it again, for that is the demon’s trick.  To point the way forward, but to close the way back.”

    Matthew ventured, “I suppose that’s called progress.”

    “There is progress,” Walked agreed, “and there is rushing toward an illusion.  The first takes wisdom and a plan, the second can be done by any drunken fool.”  (loc. 3708)

 

Kindle Details…

    Mister Slaughter sells for $11.99 right now at Amazon.  The rest of the books in the series range in price from $11.99 to $15.99.  Robert McCammon has other series and standalone novels for the Kindle; they cost anywhere from $2.99 to $15.99.  He also offers several short stories for $1.99 apiece..

 

“But, dear sir, never blame the wind for wishing to blow.”  (loc. 1455)

    It’s hard to find things to quibble about in Mister Slaughter.  The cussing is moderate (12 instances in the first 10% of the book, and at least one f-bomb later on) but not distracting.  Thrillers inherently contain violence, and that is true here.

 

    There were a couple of typos, including Edmond/Edmund, curtsey/curtsy, and everytime/every time, but overall, the proofreading was good.  Annoyingly, there were no page numbers and the “time remaining” estimates were based on the six sections of the book, not the 35 chapters.  And a dog dies.

 

    But I pick at nits.  Based on the first two books, I had high expectations for Mister Slaughter, and it fully delivered.  There's lots of action, lots of intrigue, lots of twists, plus great character development—even for the secondary ones.  The story is capped off by a thrilling finish and a warning to Matthew to never let down his guard.

 

    What more can you ask for?

 

    9 Stars.  One last thing.  At the back of the book is a short section titled “Matthew Corbett’s World” wherein Robert McCammon details what’s accurate, and what’s inaccurate, in the settings and events used in Mister Slaughter.  I found it utterly enlightening.

The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare - Lilian Jackson Braun

    1988; 249 pages.  Book 7 (out of 29) in “The Cat Who” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Small Town and Rural Fiction; Cozy Mystery; Cat Fiction.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    Welcome to Pickax City!  One hundred or so miles north of Minneapolis, and out in the middle of frozen nowhere.  Smack dab in wonderful Moose County.

 

    They have a saying up here and it’s certainly true: "Country folks is different and Moose County folks is more different.”

 

    Changes are coming to Moose County.  Senior Goodwinter, the owner and publisher of the local newspaper, The Pickax Picayune, still uses a printing press from the early 20^th century.  It’s inefficient but he likes it.  He’s getting old, though, and the locals are wondering if his son and publishing heir apparent, Junior Goodwinter, will modernize things.

 

    Some locals would love that, and some of them wouldn’t.  In any event, it would cost considerable money to upgrade the printing press.  And it’s a well-known secret (is that an oxymoron?) that The Pickax Picayune has been losing money for many years now.

 

    Hey, that newcomer Jim Qwilleran is rich.  Maybe we can talk him into funding the upgrade.  And he likes to talk to his cats, Koko and Yum Yum.  So perhaps we can convince them to suggest it to Qwill.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare is the fourth book I’ve read by this author.  My previous one was in 2019 and is reviewed here.  Amazon lists this as a “Small Town & Rural Fiction” novel, and I’m gradually coming around to seeing their logic in listing Lilian Jackson books in this genre.

 

    Amazon also puts this series in their “Amateur Sleuths” genre, but it’s not a spoiler to say our protagonist, Jim Qwilleran does absolutely no sleuthing here.  There are several deaths along the way, the circumstances of which Qwill occasionally muses upon, but he never does any investigating.

 

    That doesn’t mean the storyline is boring, though.  In addition to those fatalities and the uncertain future of The Pickax Picayune, the following plot threads arise: a.) who is the quiet out-of-towner masquerading as a historian?  b.) what is the purpose of Senior’s frequent trips to Minneapolis?  c.) who is Hixie covering up for?  d.) Will Qwill’s housekeeper, Mrs. Cobb, leave his employ for love?  e.) What’s in the metal box?, and perhaps most importantly,  f.) Why does Koko insist on repeatedly pushing books by Shakespeare off the shelves in Qwill’s library?

 

    The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare was published in 1988, and I chuckled a couple of times at the “signs of the times” that pop up.  Everybody carries a portable radio with them, to search for a book at the library, you make use of the card catalogue, cassettes are the most popular way to listen to music at home, and a portable tape recorder is essential when interviewing someone.  I enjoyed the usual smattering of French phrases, and both Qwill and I were leery of the pork liver cupcakes.

 

    The ending is so-so.  One of the fatalities is way too convenient, and the others are “solved” by someone simply explaining what happened, which means things don't build to an exciting conclusion.  Several plot threads remain dangling at the end.  Still, if you’re reading this book for its “coziness”, you’ll be content with how it wraps up.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.7/5 based on 1,735 ratings and 224 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.96/5 based on 9,355 ratings and 374 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Propinquity (n.) : the state of being close to someone or something; proximity.

 

Excerpts...

    “Where are the cats?” Polly asked.

     “Shut up in the kitchen.  Koko has been pulling books off the shelf.  He thinks he’s a librarian.  Yum Yum, on the other hand, is just a cat who chases her tail and steals paper clips and hides things under the rug.  Every time my foot comes down on a bump in the rug, I wince.  Is it my wristwatch?  Or a mouse?  Or my reading glasses?  Or a crumpled envelope from the wastebasket?”

    “What titles has Koko recommended?”

    “He’s on a Shakespeare kick.”  (pg. 43)

 

    “I understand you’re president of the Old Timers Club,” he said.

    “Yes, I’m eighty-two.  The youngest member is automatically appointed president.”

    “I suspect you lied about your age.”

    Her pleased expression acknowledged the compliment.  “I intend to live to be a hundred and three.  I think a hundred and four would be excessive, don’t you?  Exercise is the secret, and breathing the most important factor.  Do you know how to breathe, Mr. Qwilleran?”

    “I’ve been doing my best for fifty years.”  (pg. 112)

 

“Do you still have the cat that’s smarter than you are?”  (pg. 16)

    The quibbles are minor.  I counted eight cusswords in the entire book, seven hells and one damn.  Most of those came courtesy of one of the secondary characters, so I presume Lilian Jackson Braun used them to simply as part of his character development.  There were a couple of typos: of/or and rest room/restroom, but that’s actually pretty clean.

 

    The rest of my ticky-tacky issues have already been mentioned.  The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare is not a cozy mystery tale, let alone a murder-mystery.  OTOH, if you heed Amazon’s advice and read this as a “Small Town Fiction” novel, it is rather entertaining.

 

    6 Stars.  I have at least one more book from this series on my TBR shelf, namely, The Cat Who Sniffed Glue.  I’m willing to bet a very small amount of money that, despite its title, it in no way involves drug use.

The God Particle - Leon Lederman

   1993; 410 pages.  Full Title: The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Particle Physics, Science, Molecular Physics, Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

 

    The Higgs boson.

 

    Thirty years ago, its theoretical existence was the hottest topic among (subatomic) particle physicists.  It was of great importance to discover the basic building block(s) for all of Creation, and every physicist who was searching for it hoped to win a Nobel Prize if/when they were successful.  But alas, thus far, no one had yet seen the Higgs boson.

 

    There were reasons for the Higgs boson’s elusiveness.  It’s incredibly small, has no electric charge, no spin, emits no color, and only exists for about 1 x 10^-22 seconds.  How can you “see” a particle with those properties?

 

    Leon Lederman was a top-of-the-line particle physicist nerd.  He'd won the 1988 Nobel Prize in physics (along with two other scientists) for his work in examining another subatomic particle called a neutrino.  In 1993 he wrote a book detailing the history of mankind’s search for the universe’s fundamental building block, an endeavor which has been going on far longer than you’d think.  Lederman had his own witty name for that oh-so-elusive speck.

 

    He called it The God Particle.

 

What’s To Like...

    The God Particle is divided into a preface, nine chapters, and three (shorter) interludes.  The first five chapters discuss the history of the hunt for the basic building block, which goes all the way back to ancient Greece, most notably a guy named Democritus (460-370 BCE) and even Thales, a century-and-a-half earlier.  Democritus labeled the object of his quest the “a-tom”, but he mostly relied of philosophical reasoning to formulate his conclusions.  Amazingly, his suppositions have held up remarkably well down through the centuries.

 

    Chapters 6-9 focus on the modern-day "atom" (different from the a-tom) and its component parts: initially just the electrons, protons, and neutrons, then a plethora of even tinier particles such as leptons, positrons, gluons, muons, and last but not least, the bosons.  These latter chapters also chronicle Leon Lederman’s direct contributions to particle physics, mostly while he was employed at, and director of, Fermilab, located just outside Chicago.

 

    There were times, especially in the last half of the book, when my comprehension of what I was reading approached zero.  Yet it was still enlightening, as I gained insight to how things like the measuring instruments and the particle colliders were designed, and how you measure something that you can never directly see, that might appear anywhere, headed in any direction, and only around for billionths of seconds.  Happily, Lederman doesn't let the text get bogged down by doing complex calculations.  He presents them and references them, but doesn’t bore you with how they were developed.

 

    Lederman’s writing style is witty, folksy, and anecdotal, which kept the book from becoming boring.  At times, it’s even gets a bit snarky, such as when he  dubs the looked-for item the titular “God Particle”, a moniker which he says somehow managed to thoroughly ruffle the feathers of both theists and atheists alike.

 

    Be assured that you will learn about all sorts of things by reading The God Particle.  Examples include: Galileo’s stopwatch, the derivation of the word “boson”, how to make anti-matter, and why that famous CERN particle accelerator over in Switzerland, known as the “Large Hadron Collider”, has to be  circular in shape, and huge, in this case more than 16 miles in circumference.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 452 ratings and 157 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.15/5 based on 3,898 ratings and 186 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    The difference between chemists and physicists is not really insurmountable.  I started out as a chemist but switched to physics partly because it was easier.  Since then I have frequently noted that some of my best friends talk to chemists.

    The chemists did something that the physicists before them hadn’t done.  They did experiments relevant to atoms.  Galileo, Newton, et al., despite their considerable experimental accomplishments, dealt with atoms on a purely theoretical basis.  They weren’t lazy; they just didn’t have the equipment.   (loc. 2114)

 

    Like many physicists, Fermi loved making up math games.  Alan Wattenberg tells of the time he was eating lunch with a group of physicists when Fermi noted dirt on the windows and challenged everyone to figure out how thick the dirt could get before it would fall off the window from its own weight.  Fermi helped them all get through the exercise, which required starting from fundamental constants of nature, applying the electromagnetic interaction, and proceeding to calculate the dielectric attractions that keep insulators stuck to each other.  At Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, a physicist ran over a coyote one day in his car.  Fermi said it was possible to calculate the total number of coyotes in the desert by keeping track of the vehicle-coyote interactions.  These were just like particle collisions, he said.  A few rare events yielded clues about the entire population of such particles.  (loc. 5334)

 

Kindle Details…

    The God Particle costs $12.99 at Amazon right now.  Leon Lederman has two more physics-related e-books for you at Amazon: Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe for $14.49, and Quantum Physics for Poets for $12.99.

 

I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s seventh husband, I know what to do, but how do you make it interesting?  (loc. 1448)

    The quibbles are minor.  There were only 14 cusswords in the whole book (and no f-bombs), which admittedly is pretty clean.  But somehow that seems like a lot for a non-fiction, scientific tome.

 

    And I'm not going to sugarcoat it, despite the author’s frequent quips, The God Particle is a slow, difficult read.  On a complexity scale of 1-to-10, or should we say “Neil deGrasse Tyson-to-Stephen Hawking”, the book is a lot close to the latter than the former.

 

    Finally, there are way too many typos, among which include linker/Tinker, sim/sun, rime/time, subde/subtle, and gaundet/gauntlet.  I suspect most of these arose during the conversion-to-digital phase.  It looks like that happened in 2012, so I'll not blame Leon Lederman for the errors.  But jeez, didn’t the publishing company have its proofreaders check for these things?

 

    But I pick at nits.  I greatly enjoyed The God Particle.  It was both enlightening and entertaining, no small accomplishment when the topic is Physics.  Keep in mind though, that my degree is in chemistry, and I am therefore inherently a science geek.  If, unlike Democritus, Newton, Einstein, Hawking, et al., you don’t care at all whether there’s a universal building block out there somewhere, you should probably give this book a pass.

 

    8½ Stars.  Full disclosure: Leon Lederman’s primary reason for writing The God Particle was to drum up public support for the continued funding of Fermilab’s Superconducting Super Collider which in 1993 was being built in Waxahachie, Texas and plagued by financial issues and lots of structural snags.

 

    This book was his last-ditch effort, and it failed.  Construction had started in 1988, Lederman’s book was published in 1993, and the project was scrubbed by the US Congress later that year.

No Time Like The Past - Jodi Taylor

   2015; 376 pages.  Book 5 (out of 14) in the series “The Chronicles of St. Mary’s”.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Time Travel; Humorous Fantasy; Historical Fiction, Romance.  Overall Rating: 10*/10.

 

    The good news: The Institute of Historical Research Department at St. Mary’s Priory is alive and well.  That’s a miracle since in the previous book chronicled a vicious attack by the Time Police on St. Mary’s.

 

    The bad news: That attack was repulsed, but not without massive damage and several deaths.  Repairs and replacements cost a lot of money, and Thirsk University, St. Mary’s employers and purse-holders, rightfully expect a return on their investment.  The time-traveling historians at St. Mary’s desperately need to perform a spectacular, and financially lucrative, jaunt into the past.

 

    Madeleine “Max” Maxwell has come up with a promising plan.  Hop back a couple centuries, acquire some items that would/will make great “artifacts” after a couple hundred years, and bury them in a secure place.  Zip back to the present, show Thirsk University where to dig, and let them be showered in glory for finding a trove of valuable relics.

 

    What could go wrong?  Well, there’s a reason why this plucky team of chrono-hopping historians is called “the disaster-magnets of St. Mary’s”.

 

What’s To Like...

    No Time Like The Past is the fifth book in Jodi Taylor’s time-travel-with-historical-fiction-with-romance  "Chronicles of St. Mary’s" series.  I’ve been reading the books in order, and so far they’ve all been wonderful reads.  There are five time-jumps in this book, which is about average, and all to awesome time-space sites in the past.  The main one here is a visit to Thermopylae in 480 BCE to watch the 300 Spartans hold off the massive Persian army for several critical days.

 

     I was impressed by the attention to detail the author pays to each of the historical sites.  The descriptions of the settings really added to their “realness”, and I learned interesting history facts such as the name of the guy who betrayed Leonidas and the Spartans (Ephialtes of Trachis).  The details concerning another time-trip, this time to Florence in 1497 CE for an event called The Bonfire of the Vanities, were just as fascinating, and timely as well, since I just recently read Tom Wolfe’s novel by that name.

 

    In addition to all that chrono-hopping, there's a fair amount events going on at St. Mary’s here.  Max (Chief Operations Officer) and Tim Peterson (Chief Training Officer) swap jobs, meaning both have new duties to learn.  A “friendly” boat-building contest with Thirsk personnel is proposed, accepted, and taken very seriously by both entities.  And on the Romantic front, Leon and Max prepare to take the next step in their relationship.

 

    The book, and the series, are written in English, as opposed to American, which I always find to be a treat.  Besides the usual variances in spelling, I needed to look up the “translations” of the following phrases: pulling your plonker, jacket potatoes, pissed as a newt, toad in the hole, priest hole, and spotted dick.  Have fun researching these, and get your mind out of the gutter on those last two.

 

    There's lots of trivia sprinkled throughout the text.  I learned what the acronym “ASBO” stands for, the etymology of the word “bankrupt”, and the definition of “swive”.  A few puns are also woven into the tale, to which I can only say, “that’s offal”.

 

    The ending was not what I expected, which is always a plus.  But it’s both logical and a bit humorous.  The final chapter addresses the romance storyline, and closes with an amusing epilogue.  No Time Like The Past is told in the first person POV (Max’s), and is both a standalone book and part of a series.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.6*/5, based on 7,326 ratings and 606 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.36*/5, based on 11,143 ratings and 662 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “For God’s sake, Max, look at this place.  “Look out there.”  I rolled over and looked at the screen.  “It’s total devastation.  We’re going to be paying for this lot for the rest of our lives.  I’m going to have to have at least forty kids to inherit the debt.”

    Fortunately, at that moment, Mr. Lindstrom’s voice came over the com.  “Max? Markham?  Can you hear me?”

    “Tell them I’m dead,” said Markham, making no move to get up off the floor.

    “I’m fine, but Markham says he’s dead.”  (pg. 150)

 

    “Hold on,” I said.  “Were you studying tactics and things at—what do they call it—officer school?”

    “Not for very long.”

    “You surely didn’t set fire to that as well?”

    “No, of course not,” he said, wounded to the core.  “Not the whole thing.  It’s a big place, you know.”

    “So just a small corner of it?”

    “Barely even that.  Just a few rooms.  Maybe a bit of corridor.  There was plenty of building left so I don’t know why they made such a fuss.”  (pg. 308)

 

“Just think about it—being killed by your own wedding present.  How bizarre would that be?”  (pg. 305)

    No Time Like The Past rates a rare 10-Star rating, so unsurprisingly, the quibbles are microscopic.  I counted ten instances of cussing in the first 20% of the book (75 pages) equally split between an excretory function and the Underworld.  Later, there’s a roll-in-the-hay, and a reference to boobs.  All of this was tastefully done.

 

    A couple of typos also showed up along the way: Pa Lace/Palace, top/stop, Lies’/Lies, hear/head, and ally/allay.  These were all in the paperback version, so they can’t be blamed on the printed-to-digital conversion.  They caused my editor’s mind to stumble a bit, but weren’t numerous enough to where it became a distraction.

 

    But I pick at nits.  I’m now 5/14 through this series, and the storyline in No Time Like The Past felt just as “fresh” as those for each of the earlier books.  I don’t know how Jodi Taylor selects the chrono-hopping destinations for the plucky historians at St. Mary’s, but they're always fascinating, and I’m eager to see where they get sent in the next book, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

 

    10 Stars.  One last helpful hint about the oft-pondered time-travel enigma of “can I go back in time and shoot myself?”  St. Mary’s has an ironclad rule that bans any of their historians from chrono-hopping back to place where there is a possibility of “meeting yourself”.  If such a situation should arise, one's fellow St. Mary’s operative has orders to shoot to kill the “modern you”.

Simple Simon - Ryne Douglas Pearson

   1996; 250 pages.  Book 4 (out of 5) in the “Art Jefferson Thriller” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Technothriller; Movie Tie-In.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    How do you test a new encryption system?  Well, you could give a coded message to all your geeky IT guys who weren’t part of its development team and challenge them to try to bust it.

 

    But the head of Comsec-Z, the folks that spent the last five years and ten billion dollars of Uncle Sam’s money creating the new system (called KIWI), wants a more robust round of testing.  After all, KIWI is slated to be used throughout the United States federal government for all sensitive communications.

 

    Hey, why not try it out in a puzzle magazine?  Insert an encrypted message into one of the editions, with a secret message.  Have it say something like: “You’ve solved Puzzle 99!  Call this number (insert a private Comsec-Z telephone number here) to claim your prize!”  Then just have someone monitor that phone in case it rings.  It won’t, of course.  But still.

 

    That phone number has been routed to the desk of Leo Pedanski, a cryptographer for Comsec-Z.  As expected, it’s never rang.  So far.

 

    Leo Pedanski is about to have the worst day ever in his long career at Comsec-Z.

 

What’s To Like...

    Simple Simon was my introduction to Ryne Douglas Pearson’s 5-book thriller series featuring a black FBI agent, Art Jefferson, and a 16-year-old autistic boy, Simon Lynch.  It’s not a spoiler to reveal that Simon solves the encrypted message in the puzzle magazine and that Art becomes his de facto bodyguard when Comsec-Z reacts unkindly when Simon calls to claim his prize.

 

    I liked the focus on autism.  We get to hear what Simon hears, see the world as it appears to him, and struggle with his jumbled up thought processes.  Simon’s personal quirks were fascinating.  When writing, he meticulously avoids using the letter “e”, but can’t give you a reason why he does that.  He likes jigsaw puzzles, but only if they have exactly 500 pieces.  Any more or any less, and he ignores them., and he builds those 500-piece ones with all the pieces face down.

 

    To be honest, I know very little about autism, so I can’t say how accurately it is portrayed, but it gives the storyline a unique tone.  The baddies have formidable resources at their disposal when they come looking for whoever “solved Puzzle 99”, including a psycho assassin from overseas, and Art Jefferson’s task of protecting Simon is made even harder because of the boy’s disorder.

 

    The ending is okay.  It’s suitably exciting and has a nice twist that allows Simon to finally shake off his pursuers, but the actual showdown between Jefferson and the baddies seemed a bit predictable to me.  The epilogue felt a bit too convenient, although it does reinforce the maxim that karma is a b*tch.

 

    Simple Simon is a fast, easy read.  Things unfold at a brisk pace, and never bogged down.  The chapters are short, with 26 of them covering 250 pages.  ANAICT, Simon doesn’t appear in the first three books in this series, but Book 5, Simon Sees, is a continuation of Simon's and Art’s relationship.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.2*/5, based on 187 ratings and 106 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.67*/5, based on 352 ratings and 44 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    He set the cup back on the coaster on the lamp table and cast his eyes to The Tinkery.  They danced over the cover, unwilling to remain still.  There were too many colors, and they bled together so that one color was not itself anymore, and then it was another color.  In his mind’s eye, Simon saw pictures as unbalanced, imprecise, and unsettling.  A picture of a chair was not like looking at a real chair.  The world reduced to two dimensions disturbed him.  (loc. 389)

 

    It was difficult to think of the man that way with his tongue torn out and one knee bent forward at an impossible angle.  That this…woman had done that frightened Heiji more than a bit.  If only she were tame his thoughts might be of pleasure.

    “Mitsuo, don’t imagine yourself with me,” Keiko said without looking at him.  “Imagination is the second most dangerous thing a man has.”

    Heiji snickered a bit, nervously.  He had been too obvious in his musings.  “The second, is it?”

    “Yes.”

    “What is the first?”

    “A heartbeat.”  (loc. 932)

 

Kindle Details…

    Currently, Simple Simon sells for $4.99 at Amazon, as do the other four books in the series.  Ryne Douglas Pearson offers more than a dozen other e-books, ranging in price from $1.99 to $4.99, plus two short stories, each costing $0.99.

 

“Under a tree by a house, by a field washed with rain, lies a boy all alone with his thoughts and his dreams.”  (loc. 132)

    There are a couple of things to quibble about, but nothing major.  I counted only 16 cusswords in the first 20% of the book, which is commendably sparse for a Thriller novel, Four of those were f-bombs.  There’s a racial epithet later on, plus a mention of an erection, and a couple of bouts of torture, but, as shown in the second excerpt above, at least these weren’t lurid.  Still, Wikipedia’s labeling of this as a “Young Adult Novel” seems a bit misguided.

 

    There were a fair amount of typos.  Hyphen issues, such as “thirty year old”, “mid bite”, “well armed”, and “two handed” were distracting, but maybe this occurs during the document-to-digital conversion.  Others, such as breech/breach, shirt tails/shirttails, and/an, and Arm/arm (twice!), just mean another round of editing ought to be done.

 

    Overall, Simple Simon was an enjoyable read, although for me, it wasn’t a page-turner.  The plotline seemed predictable, at least up until the aforementioned twist in the ending.  I still recommend it though, particularly for the insight into the challenges of coping with autism.

 

    7 Stars.  Simple Simon was the basis for a 1998 movie, Mercury Rising, which featured Bruce Willis as the protagonist FBI agent.  Several changes were made in converting from book to movie.  The most obvious was the racial switch of Art from black white, but his last name also went from Jefferson to Jeffries (why??), and Simon’s age dropped from 16 years old to 9 years.  More alterations are listed in its Wikipedia article.

 

    Mercury Rising grossed $93 million at the box office, but garnered mostly bad reviews, and Bruce Willis “won” the 1999 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor for his performance that year in this and two other films.  I rarely watch movies, but I did watch this one many years ago, and I thought it was quite good, no matter what the critics say.

The Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe

   1987; 690 pages.  New Author? : No, but it’s been decades since I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.  Genres: Contemporary American Fiction; Lawyers and Criminals; Racism.  Overall Rating: 8½*/10.

 

    By any objective assessment, Sherman McCoy has made it bigtime.

 

    He lives in a posh $3-million apartment on Park Avenue in New York City, and by “apartment” we mean a multi-room affair with 12-foot-high ceilings and a separate wing for the servants.

 

    He’s got a 6-year-old daughter who adores him, and a 40-year-old wife, Judy, who fancies herself an interior decorator and is still fairly good-looking for her age, in Sherman's opinion.  He’s the top-performing bond trader for the prestigious firm of Pierce-&-Pierce, drives a big, black, fancy Mercedes-Benz, and thinks of himself as the “Master of the Universe”.

 

    Oh, and he has one more status symbol that many upper crust males of society acquire sooner or later: a mistress.  Maria Ruskin sports a Southern accent, and is sleek, sexy, and dark.  And married.

 

    Sherman’s got it made.  At least, as long as Judy doesn’t find out about Maria.

 

What’s To Like...

    There are three major protagonists in The Bonfire of the Vanities, all of them white, and all of them flawed.  Besides Sherman McCoy and his severe case of white privilege, we follow Larry Kramer, a lowly Assistant District Attorney, Jewish, and scared that he will never amount to anything in his law career.  Rounding out the trio is Peter Fallow, a journalist and alcoholic who works for a NYC-based tabloid newspaper called The City Light.

 

    Tom Wolfe uses these three men to present a view of New York City in the 1980s, when it's suffering from a de facto case of segregation: the minority white “haves”, and the numerically superior “have nots” consisting mostly of blacks and Puerto Ricans. This disparity manifests itself in various ways, and here the author uses racism, anti-Semitism, the almighty dollar, social status, and hatred towards gays to cast a spotlight on the division.

 

    The book’s title refers to a historical event that took place in 1497 Italy, where religious zealots burned objects that they felt contributed to the sin of vanity such as cosmetics, art, and books.  There’s no direct tie-in of that event to the book’s storyline, although I suspect it refers to Sherman being stripped of his  white privilege “vanities”, as he tries in vain to avoid the consequences of an unfortunate event that suddenly threatens his well-to-do lifestyle.

 

    I was impressed that none of the characters here—black or white, Jew or Italian, rich or poor—are entirely good or evil.  Sherman initially wants to do the right thing, but gets talked out if it.  Reverend Bacon commendably wants seeks equal justice for all races, but is not above manipulating events to further that cause.  Bronx District Attorney Abe Weiss might desire to give Sherman preferential treatment, but there’s an election coming up and he needs all the black votes he can get.

 

    The ending is exciting, surprising, and logical.  The epilogue raises more questions than it answers, but that’s not a criticism.  I think Tom Wolfe intended it as a “the fight goes on” message.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Logorrhea (n.) : excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness.

Others: Empyrean (n.); Orotund (adj.), Paradiddle (n.); Malapert (adj.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 4,288 ratings and 531 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.89*/5, based on 77,877 ratings and 3,335 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Hey, Sherm! Howya doin’?”

    That was what Sherman really detested.  It was bad enough that this man insisted on calling him by his first name.  But to shorten it to Sherm, which no one had ever called him—that was escalating presumptuousness into obnoxiousness.  Sherman could think of nothing he had ever said, no gesture he had ever made, that had given him the invitation or even the opening to become familiar.  Gratuitous familiarity was not the sort of thing you were supposed to mind these days, but Sherman minded it.  It was a form of aggression.  You think that I am your inferior, you Wall Street Wasp with the Yale chin, but I will show you.  (pg. 100)

 

    “Welcome to the legion of the damned . . . now that you’ve been properly devoured by the fruit flies.”

    “The fruit flies?”

    “The press.  I’m amused by all the soul-searching . . . insects do.  ‘Are we too aggressive, too cold-blooded, too heartless?’—as if the press were a rapacious beast, a tiger.  I think they’d like to be thought of as bloodthirsty.  That’s what I call praise by faint damnation.  They’ve got the wrong animal.  In fact, they’re fruit flies.  Once they get the scent, they hover, they swarm.  If you swing your hand at them, they don’t bite it, they dart for cover, and as soon as your head is turned, they’re back again.”  (pg. 578)

 

There was no turning back! Once you had lived in a $2.6 million apartment on Park Avenue—it was impossible to live in a $1 million apartment!  (pg. 143)

    The Bonfire of the Vanities was an instant major bestseller when it came out, but I found a couple of nits to pick.

 

    There’s a lot of cussing, with a definite bias for the f-bomb.  There were 41 instances in the first 50 pages, which extrapolates out to 565 over the entire book.  In fairness, however, Harlem was a gritty neighborhood in the 1980s, and probably still is.  So we can tolerate the swearing for the sake of realism.

 

    The pacing is slow.  The key incident that leads to all of Sherman’s woes doesn’t happen until page 90, so the reader is forced to endure quite a bit of scene-setting at the start.  Several reviewers have pointed out the wordiness of the book, and that it could’ve been shortened substantially.  Sadly, I have to agree.

 

    But I quibble.  The book’s message of white privilege and lip service to civil rights is just as important today as it was 30+ years ago when The Bonfire of the Vanities came out.  The story may be long-winded, but so is the saga of the struggle for equal rights.  Tom Wolfe’s writing skills were sufficient to keep me interested in how it all was going to turn out for Sherman and I’m sure those present-day book-burners (via the banning of select books in schools and public libraries) will seek to have this opus removed from the shelves.

 

    8½ Stars.  The Bonfire of the Vanities was made into a 1990 movie of the same title, starring, among others, Tom Hanks, Morgan Freeman, and Bruce Willis.  The film was a commercial flop, Wikipedia notes it cost $47 million to make, and grossed just over $15 million.  Curiously, I’m presently reading another book that was later made into a film also featuring Bruce Willis, and which garnered him a Golden Raspberry Award for “Worst Actor”.  Stay tuned.