DEATH AT THE SIGN OF THE ROOK by Kate Atkinson

Jackson Brodie, private investigator, is back, along with the author’s usual clever dialog.  His conversation partner here is Reggie, a cop who views Brodie as sort of a know-it-all father figure.  However, the book gets off to a rather slow start, except for the chapter about Simon Cate, the vicar.  His calling to the ministry is somewhat in doubt, and now he makes an effort not to disclose his atheism to his meager congregation.  Anyway, back to the crime-solving duo, Reggie and Jackson, who are each investigating an art theft, and their two heists may be related, as the housekeeper is the prime suspect in both cases.  Several other characters wander into the plot, which culminates in a murder mystery weekend at the estate from which one of the paintings was stolen.  A series of madcap misadventures, some caused by a blizzard, lands most of the characters at the castle as the audience for the mystery performance.  Yes, this is somewhat Agatha Christie-like and somewhat entertaining but totally outside the realm of believability, what with the dead nanny’s body in the pantry, bricks being thrown, and fireplace pokers being wielded as weapons.  Jackson has a reputation, with Reggie at least, for differentiating between what is legal and what is just, and he demonstrates that distinction quite clearly here.

EVERY MAN A KING by Walter Mosley

Ex-cop Joe Oliver is now a private investigator.  His very wealthy friend, Roger Ferris, who also happens to be Joe’s grandmother’s boyfriend, has asked Joe to look into the detainment of Alfred Xavier Quiller.  This job has two unpleasant aspects that give Joe the willies. First and foremost, Quiller is a white nationalist.  Secondly, he is currently locked in a private cell at Riker’s Island where Joe did a stint of solitary confinement.  Then another onerous task comes along.  Joe’s ex-wife’s husband, Coleman Tesserat, has been arrested, and Joe has to bail him out for the sake of his daughter.  Joe enlists a variety of friends to assist in both of these cases, calling in favors as necessary.  A third mystery involves Ferris’s interest in the Quiller case and his motivation for hiring Joe.  Mosley’s writing style is always enjoyable, but I find that I can barely keep up with all the characters, and the plot gets a little overly convoluted, especially since there are two cases, which may or may not be intertwined.

THE LAST DAYS OF PTOLEMY GREY by Walter Mosley

I hate to be the dissident in thinking this book is not great, but it moved along as slowly as its 91-year-old protagonist.  Ptolemy Grey’s apartment has become a cesspool, and he is too feeble to clean it up.  Plus, Reggie, a nephew (several times removed) who checks on him every few days and takes him to buy groceries, has been killed in a drive-by shooting.  Seventeen-year-old Robyn, who is not a blood relative, steps in and takes over Ptolemy’s care with aplomb.  Ptolemy has some unfinished business that he wants to address before he dies, not the least of which is avenging Reggie’s murder. However, his dementia is interfering with his ability to express himself, and his memory is fading fast.  If only there were a miracle cure.  Well, guess what?  There’s a doctor who can restore Ptolemy’s faculties temporarily, but the drug will ultimately hasten his death.  (This reminds me of the book Flowers for Algernon, but this one is not nearly as poignant.)  Ptolemy likens the doctor to Satan, but he has sold only his body, which he must donate for scientific research, not his soul.  The remainder of the novel is about Ptolemy’s newfound clarity and his mission to right a number of wrongs.  Ptolemy and Robyn develop a bond that evolves into a sort of May-December romance—platonic, thankfully.  Frankly, I found this aspect of the novel to be a little creepy, particularly when they become jealous of each other’s age-appropriate relationships.

FEAR OF THE DARK by Walter Mosley

This third novel in the Fearless Jones series features a new character—Ulysses S. Grant IV.  “Useless,” as he is commonly known and with good reason, is the cousin of our first-person narrator and used book store owner, Paris Minton.  Where Useless goes, trouble follows, and Paris won’t even let him in the door when he comes knocking.  Still, Paris is soon up to his ears in Useless’s dangerous doings and comes across multiple dead bodies in the process.  Paris’s good friend Fearless once again provides muscle and moral compass, while the book is otherwise littered with a vast cast of thieves, murderers, con men (and women), blackmailers, embezzlers, and kidnappers.  The plot is complicated but entertaining, and Mosley has a way with words.  He also reminds us that in the 1950s cops were white and Blacks were suspicious characters, even if they were just sitting on a park bench reading a book.

FEAR ITSELF by Walter Mosley

Paris Minton and Fearless Jones are back for the second installment in this series, which is named for Fearless, even though Paris is the main character and narrator.  Paris, small of stature, is a used bookstore owner in Watts, and Fearless is his best friend and occasional protector, who is not book-smart but can read people like a book.  Fearless gets Paris involved in a search for Fearless’s missing employer that mushrooms into a whole lot more, of course.  This novel has a lot of moving parts, both in terms of characters and venues.  The lightning pace is a plus, but I had trouble keeping up with who did what when to whom and why.  Everything comes together in the end, but by then I just wanted to make sure that Paris was still in one piece; Fearless is a cinch to come out OK.

FEARLESS JONES by Walter Mosley

I love mysteries, but this one just did not grab me.  It’s a bit convoluted, and the suspense level is running on empty.  Paris Minton is a Black man who owns and operates a used book store in the 1950s.  A beautiful woman comes rushing in, and she then steals his money, his car, and his dignity.  A big angry man comes looking for her, and the next thing you know Paris is trying to solve murders.  Oh, and someone burns down his bookstore.  All this chaos leads Paris to ante up the bond to spring his buddy, Fearless Jones, from jail. Fearless may be the brawn of this pair, but Paris is the brains.  Actually, Fearless’s primary advantage seems to be his good looks rather than his violent tendencies.  This book is the first in a series of three, but I am hoping to be more inspired by the other two, as the pace here is not as “blazing” as the dust jacket suggests.

THE GUEST by Emma Cline

Not all protagonists have to be likable, but wow, this one—a woman in her early twenties named Alex—is pretty far out there.  She’s the title character, although more a parasite than a guest, as she’s homeless, carrying a bag full of all her earthly belongings and managing to insert herself into someone else’s life long enough to grab a few meals and a shower.  She’s lucky to have spent a decent amount of time in the luxurious home of Simon, an older man, who appreciates her as arm candy.  Her lifestyle would not seem so bad if it were not for the fact that she has sticky fingers with regards to other people’s cash, drugs, and trinkets.  She is also being hunted by Dom, whom she owes a sizeable amount of money.  Besides the fact that I found it impossible to root for this woman, the author does not give us enough backstory.  Who is Dom?  Was he her pimp?  Why is Alex so messed up?  She claims not to have been a victim of any sort of abuse or trauma, but does she have any family?  She is surprising resilient, upbeat and resourceful, and those are admirable qualities, but her optimism swells into delusion.  For example, she decides not to tell Simon about the fender bender she had in his car.  What?  Does she think he’s not going to notice?  My non-professional diagnosis is that she’s sociopathic, and I just did not enjoy following her journey from one very temporary relationship to another.  She is a not particularly effective con-artist who seems to sabotage every break that she catches.  And the ending?  Well, that’s a whole nother issue.

THE WOLF HUNT by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

Adam Shuster is a Jewish teenager in Silicon Valley who is accused of killing a Black student named Jamal Jones.  Adam’s mother, Lilach, the first-person narrator, claims, “But that’s not true.”  It actually takes quite a few pages for the murder allegation to take hold, but all signs point to Adam, who was being bullied by Jamal, unbeknownst to Adam’s parents.  The adult who does know about Adam and Jamal’s relationship is Uri, a self-defense instructor whom Adam has come to idolize.  Hence the overarching theme in this book is that parents don’t necessarily know their children very well.  To further that point, we find that Jamal’s bereaved mother was equally in the dark about her own son’s behavior.  In a side issue, Lilach draws damning conclusions about her husband’s conduct when he is out of town, proving that she is not totally in touch with either of her male family members.  Another theme that caught my attention is how the roles of sheep and wolf can so quickly be reversed when the victim decides to fight back and self-defense escalates into retaliation.  Lilach eventually becomes semi-unhinged, at first because of the treatment her son has endured and refused to share, and then later when she realizes that her son could be capable of murder.  Her husband’s denial that there is cause for concern doesn’t help matters.  Lilach undertakes an investigation of her own, but her findings do nothing to ease her mind.  I love psychological dramas like this, and Gundar-Goshen is very good at keeping us guessing.

BLUE SKIES by T.C. Boyle

The title of this book is ironic, as climate change is rearing its ugly head on both coasts.  Cat is a twenty-something in Florida where the rain never stops.  Her parents and brother, Cooper, are in California where wildfires rule.  These family members are on opposite coasts with opposite attitudes.  Cat buys a python as a fashion accessory, while her mother is experimenting with recipes using crickets that she is raising.  Cooper is an entomologist who loses his arm due to a tick infection and becomes sullen after his “abridgement.”  Will an environmental catastrophe in which all the insects die wake him up?  Cat, however, is the real focus here, and she just does not get any smarter as the book progresses.  I knew what calamity was coming and didn’t have to tear through too many pages to get there.  Afterward, Cat becomes marginally less vapid and more responsible but not enough to anticipate or head off the next disaster.  She and Cooper both attack their problems with lots of drinking, adding to Cooper’s depression and Cat’s tendency to screw up.  The sanest person in this novel is their mother, whose attempts at being a good steward of the planet, repeatedly get thwarted, but she keeps on striving to keep her family afloat—literally.  

TALK TO ME by T.C. Boyle

This novel bears some similarity to Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, in that it focuses on a chimpanzee who lives among humans and has learned sign language.  In both books, the chimp’s effect on human lives is significant.  Aimee is a college student who responds to a help-wanted ad posted by Guy, a professor at her university who is training Sam, the chimp.  Sam and Aimee bond instantly, and Aimee becomes a necessity to Sam’s world, just as Sam becomes the focal point of Aimee’s life.  Sam eats cheeseburgers, drinks beer, and smokes weed along with his caretakers, but his time among humans is limited.  Once he becomes fully grown, he will be in a position to overpower them, and the consequences could be catastrophic.  Sam may live among humans, but he is not exactly domesticated, and one of his tantrums has resulted in a serious facial wound to a woman who previously worked with him.  What happens to Sam at the end of his term with Guy is not something that Aimee has really contemplated, as there really are no good options, especially since she and Guy do not “own” Sam.  His fate is in the hands of a scientist who couldn’t care less about Sam’s and Aimee’s attachment to one another and sees Sam’s value in financial terms only.  Sam is not only ill-equipped to be returned to the wild, but he has never been around members of his own species.  The humans will survive without Sam, but his survival is totally dependent on humans. In other words, proving that a chimp can develop language skills may have scientific value, but his unfortunate endgame is cruel.  Boyle reminds us that animals are not on this planet to serve the needs of humans, but somehow we humans see them as property that exists to serve our own purposes.

OUTSIDE LOOKING IN by T.C. Boyle

Imagine a group of Harvard psychology professors and grad students in a big house regularly tripping on LSD in the 1960s when it was legal.  I have nothing against Timothy Leary or psychedelic drugs, for that matter, but my immersion in this novel was not always pleasant.  It focuses on a married couple, Fitz and Joanie, and their teenage son, Corey, who join Leary’s commune-like inner circle.  A grad student himself, Fitz, along with the others, is ostensibly engaging in an experiment to evaluate how LSD might cure mental illness, although none of the participants are technically mentally ill.  However, one might suggest that imprinting on Leary as their beloved leader and tripping in front of their children are not exactly ringing endorsements of their sanity.  These people are the epitome of bad role models, and just when you think they can’t get any more reckless, they give their kids LSD, too.  I am a huge T.C. Boyle fan, but this is not one of my favorites.  My problem is that he does not make LSD seem like all that much fun, while at the same time the characters’ lives all revolve around the drug—and around Leary, whose charisma does not leap off the page.  Part of the attraction that Fitz and Joanie have for this group habitation is financial, as Leary and his rich girlfriend mostly foot the bills.  Leary’s other hangers-on come across as smarmy and insincere.

THE TERRANAUTS by T.C. Boyle

Anything can happen, and does, when you put four men and four women in a giant terrarium, called an Ecosphere, with the media and the public keeping apprised of their activities.  This human experiment, as a dry run for populating Mars, did actually take place in the 1990s but fizzled.  In Boyle’s reimagining, the eight terranauts face overheating, under-oxygenating, and intense personal disagreements as they share an enclosed world, complete with livestock, agriculture, wild animals, and a small ocean.  Three first-person narrators carry the story.  Ramsay and Dawn are among the eight selected to spend two years in the Ecosphere, and Linda, who is best friends with Dawn, remains on the outside, working toward making the cut for the next group.  Having a narrator like Linda who is not a part of the experiment might seem like a bad idea, but her role entails gathering dirt on Ramsay’s and Dawn’s ex-lovers, along with other assorted gossip, which she may or may not pass along.  At first she is Dawn’s champion, or least tries to be, but Dawn makes some decisions that cause Linda’s attitude to deteriorate and devolve into bitterness and jealousy.  Even as she contemplates how to get even, Linda quotes her Korean grandfather as saying, “Before you set out for revenge, be sure to dig two graves.”  I love that!  Linda definitely does not exhibit the qualities that would make her a good fit for this experiment, but Dawn, who is perhaps more adamant than anyone other than Ramsay that they not “break closure,” is the one whose actions continually require spin control.  This book is full of surprises, and at each juncture I couldn’t wait to find out what the impact would be.

WHEN THE KILLING'S DONE by T.C. Boyle

This novel has an edge-of-your-seat opening.  It’s 1946, and a boat with three people on it sinks near the Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara, CA.  Beverly is the only one who survives, and her granddaughter, Alma, is the main character.  Alma Takesue works for the National Park Service and is involved in the eradication of invasive animal species on the Channel Islands.  Her nemesis is Dave LaJoy, a successful businessman and fanatical animal rights activist who does not want to see the rats on Anacopa Island poisoned.  These two warring factions both have a legitimate argument, but Dave takes his battles to an extreme and dangerous level, thus diminishing his influence.  In one scene, he and Alma are actually at a restaurant together, and he proves himself to be rude to the point of total irrationality.  That behavior is just the tip of the iceberg, compared to what else he does.  His most deranged acts don’t even have anything to do with preserving animal life.  This book recounts a multitude of adventures of several generations of channel island dwellers, divers, and pleasure seekers but never strays far from the central ecological issue.  Prior to her job in California, Alma was in Guam for three years, where the brown tree snake, accidentally introduced there, has almost completely annihilated all of the native animals.  This experience has fostered her passion for protecting the Channel Islands from a similar fate.  The novel keeps coming back to Alma’s personal and professional journey, but the myriad misadventures on land and sea of other characters, some of whom make a very brief appearance, provide the thrill ride that jumps off the page.

A FRIEND OF THE EARTH by T.C. Boyle

“To be a friend of the earth, you have to be an enemy of the people.”  This is the mantra of Ty Tierwater, an eco-terrorist in the 1980s who vandalizes logging equipment and who, along with others, blocks a logging road by standing in cement.  These stunts, including a three-year tree-sitting protest by Ty’s daughter, seem crazy, but we also see Ty in his mid 70s in the year 2025, when the climate change apocalypse has arrived; almost all animals are extinct and the weather is either a monsoon or 130 degrees F.  The younger Ty may be a vandal with a cause, but his righteous indignation frequently gets the better of him, particularly when he starts to feel useless, landing him in jail and his daughter in foster care.  The purpose of these stunts is to gain media attention, but the bottom line is that they are totally ineffective at turning the tide of global warming trends.  The author’s gorgeous, evocative prose feels very prophetic.  For a book written 20+ years ago, it seems very current, especially when everyone starts wearing a mask during what appears to be a pandemic.  It also introduces themes that contemporary novels, such as Richard Powers’s The Overstory and Michael Christie’s Greenwood, have addressed, decades after this novel was written.  Ty is our flawed hero here who just doesn’t seem to be able to rein in his destructive impulses.  He constantly overestimates his own skill at avoiding detection and underestimates the inevitable consequences of his being caught.