Smaller and Smaller Circles

I first became acquainted with the fictional Jesuit priest Gus Saenz when I found an F.H. Batacan short story (“Comforter of the Afflicted”) featuring his exploits in a short story collection titled Manila Noir.   That was in mid 2013 and I had been rather listlessly searching for her 2002 novel, Smaller and Smaller Circles ever since, having noted that Father Gus was that novel’s main character.  I learned, too, that Smaller and Smaller Circles had been very controversial when published in the Philippines and that it had won major awards there, but I had pretty much given up on finding a copy. 

And then I saw that Soho Press, publisher of much of the best crime fiction being written these days, would be releasing an expanded version of the novel in August 2015.  According to Soho, the difference between the original version of the novel and this newly expanded one is that Batacan takes the time to tell “more of the priests’ story.”  For me, memorable, fully fleshed characters are just as important to a crime story as the plot, so I consider myself lucky that this is the version of the novel I finally got to read.

In Smaller and Smaller Circles, author Batacan, a former member of the Philippine intelligence community herself, exposes the rather absurd notion of Filipino law enforcement that it is impossible for a serial killer to exist in their country.  Numerous theories have been offered to explain this hypothesis, but Batacan is buying none of them.  Rather, she says, the fact that a serial killer has never been identified in the Philippines is entirely attributable to the failure of law enforcement to protect the country’s poorest citizens  - and the utter failure of the system to investigate, and otherwise take seriously, crimes against the poor.  Tellingly, record keeping and cross-referencing is not a high priority in the Philippines, it seems.

F.H. Batacan

In addition to being a Jesuit priest, Father Gus Saenz is also an eminently qualified forensic anthropologist.  He is so good at what he does, in fact, that his skills have been utilized by the National Bureau of Investigation in the investigation of some of the country’s highest profile cases.  But not everyone in the Bureau welcomes his help – Gus does have a way of stepping on toes that don’t move out of his way quickly enough – and even with support from the Bureau’s Director, Francisco Lastimosa, the relationship between the priest and the police is an unnecessarily complicated one.

But now, on a regular basis, someone is killing little boys, mutilating their bodies, and dumping what remains in one of Manila’s garbage dumps, and Gus knows that it is all the nasty work of one man – the very type of killer that authorities still consider an impossibility.  With the help of some good men, including that of his young protégé, Father Jerome Lucerno, Father Gus is determined to identify and stop the killer before he can kill again. 

Smaller and Smaller Circles is not a particularly difficult case for readers to solve even before it all clicks for Father Saenz, and its ending is rather predictable.  But the novel is long on character development, it offers a unique setting and atmosphere, and it leaves the reader wishing for more crime mysteries featuring Father Gus and Father Jerome.  Here’s hoping it happens.

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Brilliant Books Offers Refunds on All Copies of "Go Set a Watchman" Sold

One Traverse City (Michigan) bookstore is having an interesting reaction to the recently released "lost" novel by Harper Lee.  According to bookstore owner, Peter Makin, the marketing push surrounding the HarperCollins publication of Go Set a Watchman is deliberately misleading and he does not want to be a part of it.  For that reason alone, he is offering a full refund to the "dozens" of customers who purchased the book from Brilliant Books.  If customers feel that they were deceived by HarperCollins, all they have to do is return the book - no questions asked.

"We are not offering refunds based on the quality of the (Harper Lee) book or its content. We are offering refunds to those who bought the book based on marketing that led them to believe it was something other than what it actually was," Makin said. "If you find yourself complicit in misleading a customer, you should make amends. Again, this isn't about whether they liked the book. Its about being misled by the marketing."

[...]

"It is disappointing and frankly shameful to see our noble industry parade and celebrate this as 'Harper Lee's New Novel'. This is pure exploitation of both literary fans and a beloved American classic (which we hope has not been irrevocably tainted). We therefore encourage you to view 'Go Set A Watchman' with intellectual curiosity and careful consideration; a rough beginning for a classic, but only that," Brilliant Books said on its Web site. 

Honestly, I knew exactly what I was buying when I purchased my copy of Go Set a Watchman in the gift shop of Monroeville, Alabama's old court house.  I heard much of the hype alluded to hear by Brilliant Books, but I did enough reading and research to see through the ad campaign and judge the book for what it was likely to be - not what was being claimed about it.  In my opinion, anyone deceived by the publicity surrounding the book, has no one to blame but themselves.  The facts were out there for anyone to find.  It was simply a matter of getting off our butts and finding it. Come on, people.  Take some responsibility for yourselves...we are all adults here, aren't we?  

Click here for Detroit Free Press article.

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New Charlie Resnick Short Story, "Going Down Slow" in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

I have read all of John Harvey's Charlie Resnick novels, including this year's Darkness, Darkness in which Harvey retires Charlie for what he tells us is forever.  But until now, I have never read one of the Charlie Resnick short stories.  

I noticed Sunday that the August 2015 edition of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine leads off with a new Charlie Resnick story called "Going Down Slow."  Interestingly, as the story opens, the action in it seems to be taking place shortly before (or is it shortly after) the action of the final novel's main plot.  It is the rather sad story of the slide to moral destruction of the nephew of a man Charlie's known for decades.  If that's not bad enough, the same friend, a former coal miner, soon learns that he has terminal lung cancer - and that his remaining time will be measured in just a few short weeks.

I liked the story mainly because it was so good to visit Charlie again, a chance to see another major event or two from his life/career that are new to me even as a longtime fan of the series.  It does make me wonder, though, if new readers, those who come to the short story never having heard of Charlie Resnick or his creator, will enjoy the experience as much as I did.  Will the story, as a standalone, be enough of a kick start to motivate new readers to read the whole series of novels.  I hope so.

I read a whole lot of short stories...in magazines and book collections, both...and I've met some characters that I later found out were the subjects of novels, even series, all their own.  If I enjoyed the short story, I jumped all over the novels.  I wonder if that's why authors so often write shorter pieces about their favorite characters...and why more writers don't take this approach.

Does it work that way for you, too?

There are about another dozen Resnick short stories out there, and I'm going on a search for copies of the rest of them.  I suspect this may take a while.

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A Nail Through the Heart

I have had an interesting (well, interesting to me, at least) experience reading Timothy Hallinan’s Poke Rafferty series.  The series, which began with 2007’s A Nail Through the Heart, is soon to be seven books long, but I only started reading it at book number five, The Fear Artist.  Since then, I have read book six, book four, and now finally book one.  As I always try to read a series in the order the books are published, this jumping around has, I think, given me a different perspective on the evolution of main characters than the one I usually get.

I do not mean to imply that Tim Hallinan’s plots are not first class crime thriller plots when I say that the main reason I keep reading the Poke Rafferty books is that I have fallen in love with several of the main characters.  Poke Rafferty, travel writer, has come to Thailand to continue his rather cynical series of travel books but he finds things in Bangkok that he very much needed: a good woman and a purpose for his life.  Rose, a Thai bar girl, would seem to be an unlikely choice for a wife, but Poke senses that there is more to Rose than meets the eye (and she certainly attracts the eye).  And then there’s Miaow, the little girl that Poke cannot bear to leave on Bangkok’s dangerous streets.  Miaow is a streetwise, precocious little kid who is wise beyond her years.  She has a mouth on her and a deadly sense of humor, and it easy to understand why Poke cares for her so deeply.

And there’s Arthit, one of the very few honest policeman in Bangkok - and Poke’s best friend.  These two have the kind of friendship that every man needs but seldom finds. Theirs is a relationship built on trust, honesty, respect, and a genuine fondness for each other.  And then, of course, there is Poke himself, a man whose very nature makes it impossible for him to ignore the evilness he sees on the streets of Bangkok.  As Rose said to Poke when they were discussing marriage, “You see a problem and your response is to fix it, like a broken air conditioner…” That’s Poke: Mr. Fix It.

The thing that surprised me about A Nail Through the Heart is that each of the main characters is already so fully fleshed out as introduced in this series opener.  More times than not, in my experience, an author will continue to add layers to the continuing characters for several books rather than to have them this refined in an opener.  They more often focus on plot as a way to ensure that readers will want to read the next book in the series.  Hallinan, instead, manages first time out to combine a top-notch thriller plot with unique, memorable characters.

A Nail Through the Heart takes a long, hard look at what is still one of the main industries of Asian cities like Bangkok: prostitution.  If the Bangkok bar girl lifestyle were not already bad enough, the sexual exploitation of the city’s street children puts Bangkok in a league all its own.  Poke Rafferty refuses to watch the exploitation of those too weak to defend themselves – and if he has to play dirty to rescue a child or a young woman, he is ready to do whatever it takes.

Bottom Line: The Poke Rafferty books may not be for the faint of heart or the easily offended, but readers willing to open their eyes to the real world are guaranteed to learn something in every book – even if it is only about themselves.

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Posters to Promote Reading - and Put a Smile on Your Face

I saw these images several months ago, but I can't remember where.  I got such a kick out of them that I saved copies that I just stumbled over today - and thought they might be a fitting thing to share here on a Sunday afternoon.

(Click on the images for a much larger view of them.)

The "death" of imagination (first image) is a bit sad, but the others should do the smile trick for you.

Post #2,522

The Benefits of Adding Cross Stitching to My Daily Calendar

Woody and Buzz

As I have somewhat re-focused the use of my free time in the last ten days, I'm finding that two things have resulted.  My stress level seems to be going down and the number of pages I'm reading each day seems to have gone down by about 20 percent.  I'm still finding time for about 80 pages a day, and I attribute the positive result not to reading less but to my simultaneous return to cross stitching on a daily basis (and,yes, you read that correctly).  

Some of you know that I worked in Algeria for a number of years during a period of some of the worst terrorist activity in that Muslim country's history.  Needless to say, it was a stressful work location that kept me and my co-workers on full alert for danger twenty-four hours a day.  Sleep was difficult at times and all of us searched for something that would take our minds off the turmoil surrounding us.  For me that turned out to be cross stitching, a skill I was coerced into learning in the early eighties when my wife (a homeroom mother for one of our daughters) desperately needed some help preparing Christmas ornaments for the classroom (can you even remember a time when Christmas was observed in the classroom as a normal part of the school year this way?).

I found that I could totally lose myself in concentrating on the complicated stitchery patterns that required the stitcher's full attention at all times.  I also quickly learned that if I worked on a project for an hour or two an evening that I went to sleep much more quickly - and, at the same time, slept more soundly.

And, wow...it still works.

The cartoon photo is a project I'm finishing up right now for my youngest grandson's bedroom wall.  (I am embarrassed to think how long ago he asked for the picture to be done - think I started it at least five years ago.)  I just need to finish up Woody's shirt, put the spurs on his boots, and (probably) add their names in script to the empty spot in the upper lefthand corner.  

Then I'm thinking about working on this picture of the Lincoln family in the White House that I've also attached here - but it is huge and will take so long that I will probably be picking up smaller projects on the side.  Who knows?  I'm just grateful that I've rediscovered the benefits of this kind of thing.

Post #2,521