THE PERFECT NANNY by Leila Slimani

Myriam, has returned to work as a lawyer for the usual reason: her two small children have totally usurped her life.  Now she has gone to the opposite extreme, in which she works late hours, as does her husband Paul, who is a music producer.  The title character is Louise, whose job as their nanny is her life.  She lives alone in a small Paris apartment where the shower no longer works.  She spends so little time there, though, that it doesn’t really matter, as she has established herself as vital to her employers. She is more than a nanny; she cooks and cleans and organizes way beyond the point of mere fastidiousness.  Eventually Paul and Myriam come to the conclusion that Louise may be wired a little too tightly, but they have become so dependent on her that they procrastinate taking any action.  I kept expecting some sort of twist that never materialized.  After finishing the novel, I had to reread the beginning, in which the children have been murdered in rather grisly fashion, and the nanny is hanging on by a thread after having slashed her own wrists.  The rest of the novel is an absorbing backstory, primarily Louise’s, and I do have one question.  I don’t know how much it costs to hire a full time nanny in the U.S., but we learn at the beginning that all of Myriam’s salary will be used to pay Louise, but Paul considers the tradeoff to be worthwhile if it will make Myriam happy.  My question is why, if Louise is making as much money as an attorney, has she not been able to pay off some of her late husband’s debts?  I wasn’t sure if the debts were contributing to Louise’s mental deterioration or if her mental state rendered her too immobile to make strides toward resolving her financial problems.  In any case, I would not recommend this book for working mothers.

UNCIVIL SEASONS by Michael Malone

Justin Savile is a police detective in the town of Hillston, NC.  He also has a law degree, is a descendant of the family who owns the local textile mill, and has done two tours of duty in rehab for alcoholism.  The fact that he still drinks is a red flag, but his partner, Cuddy Mangum, has enough common sense for both of them and a very witty gift of gab.  In fact, all of my favorite passages in the book are Cuddy’s remarks and nicknames for other people, including Justin’s married girlfriend, who Cuddy refers to, somewhat accurately, as Lunchbreak.  The plot’s focus is on the death of Cloris Cadmean, who was murdered in her home, possibly as collateral damage to a robbery, but Justin doesn’t think so.  He also begins investigating the accidental death of her former husband as a possible homicide and enlists the help of a renowned psychic.  Honestly, I’ve read better whodunits as far as the plot is concerned, but this book’s strong suit is the two main characters.  Cuddy and Justin are so much fun that I found it hard to take their detective work very seriously.  There are no super nail-biting moments, but Southern charm and kidding around more than make up for the plot deficiencies.  This is my first Michael Malone detective novel, but I am sure that I will seek him out again when I’m in the market for some suspense, peppered with a bit of good-natured ribbing.  Malone even throws in some old-fashioned romance for good measure.

HANDLING SIN by Michael Malone

Books that are supposed to be funny often strike me as not that funny, or, at the other extreme, just plain silly.  This book falls into the latter category and came across to me as almost a more sober version of On the Road.  At his dying father’s behest, Raleigh Hayes, life insurance salesman, embarks on an odyssey that involves stealing a bust from the library, reuniting with his wild and crazy brother, and finding a stranger named Jubal Rogers.  Much to his frustration, he picks up a mixed bag of fellow travelers, including his obese neighbor Mingo, a pregnant woman, an escaped convict, and a saxophone player.  Raleigh’s quest takes him to Charleston, Atlanta, and eventually New Orleans, where his father has promised to meet him and endow him with a passel of money.  I can’t begin to name all of the ridiculous circumstances that this motley crew encounters along the way, but each one seems more preposterous than the last.  Despite the fact that this book was really not my thing at all and there were 650+ pages of this nonsense, it has a decent message.  On this road trip Raleigh has no choice but to leave his ordered life behind and embrace a more freewheeling existence, at least for the two-week duration of the trip.  I am sure I would have gone berserk in that length of time, but this is more of a buddy story anyway, since all of the characters of any consequence are men.  Raleigh’s delightful wife Aura is mostly on the sidelines, back home in North Carolina, but magnanimously encourages Raleigh, knowing more than he does about how desperately he needs to break out of his routine.

RIDING THE RAP by Elmore Leonard

This is my favorite of Elmore Leonard’s books featuring Raylan Givens, and it is basically a sequel to Pronto.  Harry Arno, retired bookie, is back in this one, as is Harry’s old girlfriend Joyce, who is now with Raylan.  Harry’s debt collector, Bobby Deo, decides to join forces with Chip Ganz, who owes Harry money, and Chip’s friend, Louis Lewis, to turn the tables on Harry.  They enlist Dawn, a young psychic and my favorite character, to help them corral Harry so that they can hold him hostage until he gives them 3 million dollars.  This is basically a kidnapping where the person being kidnapped has to pay the ransom.  Harry finds himself blindfolded and locked in a room of Chip’s house, but Joyce, concerned about Harry’s whereabouts, encourages Raylan to find him.  Raylan proves that his intuition is almost equal to Dawn’s psychic skills, as he tracks down Harry and the no-goods who have absconded with him.  Elmore Leonard’s books are always entertaining, but they are not as dark and sinister as most crime novels.  The criminals are violent but inept and not keen on playing nice with each other.  In other words, their trust in each other wears thin eventually, and it’s every man for himself when the going gets tough.  Raylan, on the other hand, is almost too loyal, standing by Joyce even though she is obviously more concerned about Harry’s welfare than Raylan’s.

PRONTO by Elmore Leonard

Harry Arno, a Miami Beach bookie, has given Raylan Givens, U.S. Marshall, the slip twice.  Raylan makes a deal with Harry’s bail bondsman and follows Harry to Italy with the intention of bringing him back to the States to face a grand jury for murder.  However, some other gangsters want Harry dead, and Raylan becomes more Harry’s protector than his pursuer.  Elmore Leonard always entertains with snappy dialog and the occasional bad guy, like Harry, who is not completely bad, and good guys, like Raylan, who are occasionally and frustratingly outwitted by the bad guys.  Leonard tends to err on the side of being a little theatrical, but he still tells a good yarn.  There’s even a fair maiden in this novel—Harry’s girlfriend Joyce, a former stripper who catches Raylan’s eye and vice versa.  Raylan, of course, is the main character in the now-defunct FX series Justified.  His physical description here does not quite match that of actor Timothy Olyphant, who plays Raylan, but it’s close enough—just as laidback as Olyphant but not quite as handsome.  His boots and ever-present Stetson, even in Italy, definitely match the TV show. 

MAXIMUM BOB by Elmore Leonard

This is not my favorite Elmore Leonard novel, but it was a fast read, fast-paced, and not intellectually demanding.  The title character is Bob Gibbs, a smarmy Circuit Court judge in Palm Beach County, Florida, who is politically incorrect in every category.  The main character is a female heroine this time—Kathy Baker, an attractive probation office who catches the judge’s wandering eye.  Among the dozens of guys in her caseload are Dale Crowe, Jr., and his uncle Elvin Crowe.  Dale is a small-time offender who can’t keep his mouth shut in court, but Elvin is way crazier and more dangerous than he seems.  Judge Gibbs sentenced both men.  When a large alligator busts into the judge’s home, the general consensus is that someone is trying to kill Maximum Bob.  This incident gives Elvin the idea of cutting a deal with a doctor in an ankle monitor to bump off the judge.  Things go haywire from there, and Kathy, accustomed to tracking down parole violators, becomes more of an investigator, alongside handsome, preppie cop Gary Hammond.  As always with Leonard’s novels, the dialog is terrific, and the bad guys are really bad and often inept.  Leonard does not pull any punches in the violence department, but he balances it out with humor and oddball characters.  The ending left me feeling a little deflated, but there are lots more of his novels to offer a pick-me-up.

GLITZ by Elmore Leonard

An Elmore Leonard novel never fails to entertain, and this is no exception.  You can savor the clever dialog or just race through to the finish like I did.  Vincent Mora is a Miami cop on medical leave in San Juan, Puerto Rico, recovering from a bullet wound.  While he is being watched by an ex-con that he sent to prison, Vincent has taken up with Iris, a beautiful call girl who has been promised a job as a hostess in Atlantic City.  The ex-con, Teddy Magyk, wants to kill Vincent but in just the right way.  He has no qualms about murder, but Teddy squanders opportunities throughout the novel to take Vincent out, and somehow Vincent manages not to become aware of Teddy’s intentions.  The action soon moves to Atlantic City, where Vincent uncovers a whole host of illegal activities and mobster-like characters, with equally mobster-like names, such as Jackie Garbo, Moose Johnson, and Tommy Donovan.  Some thrillers are full of twists and turns, but this novel is surprisingly free of all that, and the plot is very easy to follow, as Vincent eliminates suspects one by one, and I don’t mean that he kills them off.  Many novels these days leave a lot of loose ends, but everything here is nice and tidy at the end, leaving you ready for the next Elmore Leonard adventure but not puzzled about how this one ended.  One of my favorite images in this novel is where Vincent, carrying a gun and wearing nothing but his tighty-whities, chases his would-be assailant outside his hotel.  The only person who seems to notice is a drunk, who makes a hilarious remark about Vincent’s lack of apparel.  Only in Atlantic City, I guess.

GREENWOOD by Michael Christie

If you draw a line through the center of a tree stump, your trajectory will basically match the timeline of this book, from the present, then back by decades into the past, then coming back through those same time periods to the present again.  In this book, the “present” is actually our future—year 2038.  Deforestation and blight have left the world dustier than the Midwest was in the 1930s and almost uninhabitable.  Jacinda “Jake” Greenwood is a tour guide on an island off Canada’s western coast where an old-growth forest still stands.  A man she knew in college comes to tell her that she may not be as destitute as she thinks she is, nor may she actually be who she thinks she is.  Now we drop back several decades at a time to become acquainted with Jake’s grandmother, Willow, who also cherishes trees, despite the fact that her blind father, Harris Greenwood, runs a multi-million-dollar logging company.  My two favorite characters in this saga are Harris’s brother Everett, who spends half his life in prison, and Liam Feeney, Harris’s lover and “describer” of surroundings that Harris cannot see.  Both men sacrifice everything for their principles.  The subject matter is similar to that of Richard Powers’s The Overstory, but this novel is easier to follow, despite the V-shaped timeline.  The writing here has a calm and soothing quality, just as a quiet moment in an old-growth forest would.  This novel could have been suspenseful, but it really isn’t, despite a manhunt, a shootout, a frozen corpse, and a tragic fall.