Category Archives: Reading . . .

*****Pictures at an Exhibition

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Sara Houghteling, Nazi art, Monuments Men, Pictures at an ExhibitionBy Sara Houghteling – “A thriller, a travelogue, and a mystery,” said the Minneapolis Star-Tribune about this 2009 novel, the story of Max Berenzon, son of a successful Parisian art dealer who, in the 1930s, falls in love with a woman, Rose Clément (the real-life Rose Valland), assisting in his father’s gallery. The three share an encyclopedic knowledge of the artists and artworks then in museums and galleries and private hands.

As Jews, the Berenzons must hide in the countryside during the war, returning to a ravaged city, their hidden artworks looted, the gallery burned, and little chance of recovery. Those familiar with The Monuments Men will appreciate this perspective on the story. (In the movie, Rose is played by Cate Blanchett and called Claire Simone). Houghteling weaves a good story that keeps the pages flying, and writes with vivid style: “That same winter, I was in Le Puy, where the stark, bare tree branches were like Chinese calligraphy against the sky.” Lovely.

Berenzon’s father advises him to give up searching for the family’s lost artworks, advising they will not be recovered for subsequent generations. And, indeed, regular news reports tell of the “discovery” and return of looted works, where that is possible, is the ongoing purpose of The Monuments Men Foundation. Says Houghteling in a postscript: “The locations of some 40,000 art objects remain unknown. They are in public and private collections and, many believe, in the former Soviet Union, plundered a second time by Stalin’s Trophy Brigades.”

*****His Excellency: George Washington

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George Washington

General George Washington at Trenton by John Trumbull

By Joseph J. Ellis–Historical figures go in and out of fashion like men’s wide lapels, and I must have had my little exposure to George Washington during one of his dreary periods, because, well, yawn. This book was a revelation. It presents Washington in a balanced light, including his flaws, though the author is obviously a fan. With two Pulitzers to his credit (for Founding Brothers and American Sphinx, a biography of Thomas Jefferson), Ellis knows his early American history. I had a timely trip to nearby Monmouth Battlefield—where “Molly Pitcher” pitched in—which made the Revolutionary War period of Washington’s career come further alive.

Because mammoth biographies of Washington already exist, and his papers and letters have been preserved and cataloged, “The great American patriarch sits squarely in front of us: vulnerable, exposed, even talkative at last.” Thus Ellis’s purposes were to create a biography of modest size (275 pages), not another in an “endless row of verbal coffins,” and to put Washington in clearer context with respect to revolutionary ideology, social and economic forces, the political and military strategic options of 1776, slavery, and the fate of the Indians. The result is an eminently readable story that I expect will provide every reader with new insights about the supremely human Father of our country.

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****Ordinary Heroes

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Scott Turow, Ordinary HeroesBy Scott Turow, this World War II tale (2005) started off slowly for me, but by the time the main protagonist (the narrator’s now-dead father) is in the European war zone, I was hooked. The narrator discovers that his father, a Captain in the U.S. Army’s Judge Advocate General’s office, was court-martialed near the end of the war and could have faced a firing squad for his actions in pursuit of an OSS rogue spy.

The framing story that introduces the narrator’s quest to excavate his father’s past wasn’t quite compelling enough and the big reveal not that much of a surprise, but the book’s middle was terrific. Characters were well developed, and various hellish aspects and moral conundrums of war convincingly frustrated the captain’s search for the spy at every turn. Coming to terms with the damage of war was a life-long project for the father, carried on silently throughout the narrator’s life. New York Times reviewer Joseph Kanon liked it, too.

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***Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

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Just finished the May, June, and July 2014 (how do they assign the date to this publication?) issues of EQMM. As always, a real mix of styles, eras, and plotting in the 28 stories therein, by both new and established mystery writers. Among the stories I liked best were those by:

homeless, dog

(photo: shiftfrequency.com)

  • Frankie Y. Bailey really got my curiosity going. She has a new book out, The Red Queen Dies
  • Alex Grecian – in whose story, a woman’s wireless pacemaker is threatened by a mysterious caller. Grecian, author of the NYT bestselling historical mystery The Yard, might have read the April 30 story on this website!
  • Brian Tobin’s “Teddy,” about a homeless man’s love for his dog, was powerful writing. Tobin’s two novels, The Ransom and A Victimless Crime, have been well-received.
  • I’ve grown to like the EQMM stories by Dave Zeltserman—two of whose mystery tales, A Killer’s Essence and Outsourced, are being optioned for film—which put a 21st century twist on the Archie-Nero Wolfe relationship. In Zeltserman’s version, “archie” is a “two-inch rectangular piece of advanced computer technology” that his owner, Julius, wears as a tie-pin. While Julius talks, Archie researches. Cute.
  • Liza Cody has created an engaging, not-so-sure of herself police constable Shareen Manasseh to good effect, and another story with Manasseh appears in the British Crime Writers’ Association’s new collection, Deadly Pleasures, and many novels, most recently, the Dickensian Lady Bag.
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**** The New York Nobody Knows

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Chinatown, New York

(photo: wikimedia.org)

By William B. Helmreich, a CUNY sociologist, who writes about his 6,000-mile walk along almost every block of New York’s five boroughs. He spends a lot of real estate talking about how that’s the only “real” way to see the city—no need to convince me! It’s a fascinating exploration of various themes, including gentrification, ethnicity, and community activity. The result is a kind of compendium of urban diversity, rather than the more usual portrait of individual neighborhoods. Absolutely fascinating.

The author is a genial-looking sort who is apparently game to talk to just about anyone about just about anything, especially their local community. He is perpetually impressed with the gumption of the people he meets, and his genuine curiosity prompts responses worthy of pondering.

Buying a bottle of water on a hot day from a young Hispanic street vendor, Helmreich asks, “How do you keep these bottles cold out here?” “Well, first I freeze them at home. That way they stay cold a long time.” “Where are you in school?” “I just graduated high school.” “What are you gonna do next?” “I’m going to Monroe College.” “For what?” “I’m going to be a rich businessman. It’s a great college.” New York spirit. Helmreich loves it, and so will you.

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***** An Officer and a Spy

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Emile Zola, DreyfusBy Robert Harris (read by David Rintoul) –This novelization of the infamous Dreyfus affair in turn-of-the-20th Century Paris starts slowly, then builds powerfully. French Army Officer Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, was sentenced to life imprisonment on aptly named Devil’s Island on flimsy and trumped-up evidence that he was a spy. As the book’s narrator, Lt. Col. Georges Picquart, gradually discovers, a spy remains in the French military command and, if so, he begins to suspect and then believe that Dreyfus is innocent.

As in the present day, it isn’t so much the original crime—in this case, convicting an innocent man—that creates all the problems, it’s the cover-up. The book is full of real-life characters of the time with whom I was passingly familiar—Georges Clemenceau, Émile Zola (J’Accuse!), Picquart, who rose to be Minister of War after Dreyfus’s release, and of course, Dreyfus. Learning how they out-maneuvered the army’s top generals is riveting, even though you know they ultimately succeed. Alphonse Bertillon, the originator of concepts of scientific policing reappears, with some dubious handwriting analyses; his contributions were explored more fully in The Crimes of Paris, which I read last year.

Louis Begley’s New York Times review would have had the book provide more context about French society at the time, though some of his examples are to me pretty clear: the high position of the army in society and “the extraordinary wave of virulent anti-Semitism that had washed over France since the 1880s.”

The Dreyfus case still resonates today, not least because of the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe from both the left and right wings and the growing Muslim communities. Coincidentally last weekend, I attended a reading and discussion of a new play by McCarter Theatre’s Emily Mann, Hoodwinked, about the shootings at Ft. Hood and the friction between tolerance and intolerance within radical Islam and outside it. Looking back on Dreyfus, it’s easy to see where the players went wrong out of prejudice, self-interest, and absolutism. We see events in our own time through these same distorting lenses and, therefore, unclearly.

**** The Reversal

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Michael Connelly, Mickey Haller, Lincoln Lawyer

If you’ve read the Lincoln Lawyer series, you know Mickey Haller does most of his legal work from the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car, which has the vanity plate NT GLTY

Got my Michael Connelly fix for the year—The Reversal—a 2010 crime thriller that alternates chapters between brash lawyer Mickey Haller and his half-brother (or did you miss that one?) cynical LAPD detective Harry Bosch. Both men have teen daughters so are especially anxiety-prone when a man convicted of abducting and murdering a young girl is released from San Quentin as a result of DNA evidence and must face trial again after 24 years.

It’s interesting how Haller—working for the prosecution this time—must introduce old evidence without revealing to the jury the prejudicial information that the accused has already been convicted once. Nor can he say why some witnesses are unable to appear (dead or demented) and interviews with them, actually their previous trial testimony, must be read aloud.

While this isn’t Connelly’s best, he never disappoints and received four Amazon stars from readers. If you like every plot angle tied up with a bow, in this one, that doesn’t happen, and the author leaves Harry still pursuing leads as to the convict’s possible involvement in other crimes. It’s as if Connelly was leaving the door open for a never-written sequel.

Matthew McConaughey, Lincoln Lawyer

Matthew McConaughey stars in the movie version – note vanity plate!

For a fun Netflix pick, Matthew McConaghey in The Lincoln Lawyer. Rotten Tomatoes Critics rating: 83%. I thought it was better than that, and I’d read the book! Also notice how the movie poster changed the license plate to “NT GUILTY,” thinking viewers were too dim to figure it out, I suppose.

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***** The Civil War of 1812

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War of 1812

Naval Engagement off Kingston: H.M.S. “Royal George” pursued by Commodore Chauncey in U.S.S. “Oneida,” November 9, 1812.

It’s probably hard for any reasonably well-informed American to know less about the War of 1812 than I did when starting an audio-read of Alan Taylor’s 2010 The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies.(Taylor just won his second Pulitzer Prize for history for a new book.) The extent of my knowledge was irritation that the British burned the National Archives, making my genealogical researches more speculative and numerous trips to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, where I’d visited Fort George (British) and Fort Niagara (American), on the shore of Lake Ontario, and barely separated by the Niagara River. There, I’d heard a bit about Canadian heroes Sir Isaac Brock and Laura Secord. Despite growing up near Detroit, I escaped unscathed by information about the role of that city and the Michigan territory in the war or the legendary naval battles on the Great Lakes.

This book was remarkable in making this conflict so interesting and relevant. Taylor describes it as a “civil war” for several reasons. For one, Irish immigrants fought on both sides and the British claimed these former nationals as their own; for another, the uncertain allegiances of the northern New Englanders and Canadians alike, with allegiances to the new nation not as firmly fixed as we might think and much trade and movement across the weak border. Within the United States, Federalists (leaning toward Britain) and Republicans (anti-British) were at odds throughout, maneuvering against each other, thwarting efforts to recruit and equip an adequate army. Militarily, both sides made disastrous tactical mistakes and miscalculations. For example, the Americans thought the Canadians would welcome being “freed” from the oppressor Britain, but for the ordinary citizen of Upper Canada, the side to choose was the one most likely to end the war soonest.

Especially intriguing was Britain’s calculated use of Indians to terrify ill-trained American soldiers, who had such fear of the natives they would flee an impending battle rather than engage. And, while the conflict is often described as “a draw,” in Taylor’s analysis, the losers were the Indians, because the peace did not secure their lands, and the British no longer supported them against American expansion and territorial expropriation. A fascinating read.

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**** Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

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Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt, Savannah, Georgia

Savannah (photo: wikimedia.org)

As it seems I’m one of the last people in America to read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt’s 20-year-old best-seller, I’d heard enough sly references and snippets—especially when the movie (trailer) came out–to have a pretty good idea of what I’d encounter in its Historic District (free map!). I was not disappointed. While many people gravitated to the over-the-top drag queen, The Lady Chablis, my favorite character was Minerva, the purple-glasses wearing juju expert. Berendt allows that, although his book is nonfiction, he did mess with the time sequence a bit and disguise a few characters who needed a veil of privacy. Savannahians surely know when and who.

I hadn’t realized Savannah was so geographically and topographically isolated and that its residents used that isolation to their advantage, wanting “nothing so much as to be left alone,” Berendt says. “Every nuance and quirk of personality achieved greater brilliance in that lush enclosure than would have been possible anywhere else in the world.” It’s sadly ironic, then, that his book has inspired so many tourists and Midnight-themed tours.

And the perfect, related cocktail?

**** The Cold, Cold Ground

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By Adrian McKinty (narrated by Gerard Doyle) – In the bleak Belfast spring of 1981, hunger strikers in HM Prison Maze are starting to die. Paramilitaries are setting off bombs and gunfire rakes the streets at night. Police detective Sean Duffy–a rare Catholic in the Royal Ulster Constabulary–is presented with what looks like a “normal” murder case that soon blossoms into the possibility of a serial killer at work, targeting homosexuals. At that time, homosexuality was still illegal in Northern Ireland and not tolerated. In the mix is the apparent suicide of the beautiful ex-wife of one of the hunger strikers. Mysterious mail begins to arrive. The backdrop of violence is persuasively portrayed and hearkens back to real events and people. First of a trilogy (actually, now probably a quartet).

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