The Midnight Library - Matt Haig

I waited a long time to get my hands on a library copy of Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library. By the time I got on the waiting list in late September 2020 the novel had received so much national publicity that a little over 200 people were ahead of me. I didn’t, in fact, make it to the top of the list until the second week of February 2021. So, of course, I expected big things from the novel, not wanting to believe, as so often happens, that it might turn out to be more hype than substance. But now, after having just turned the last page, I’m going to say that, for me at least, The Midnight Library turned out to be about 75% hype and 25% substance. It’s another one of those good-idea-poorly-delivered kind of books.

You’re probably already familiar with the novel’s basic premise because it’s been hard to avoid the novel ever since the Good Morning America Book Club turned it into an instant bestseller and national book club favorite. The plot goes like this: the suicidal Nora Seed (what a prophetic surname that turns out to be) is hovering somewhere between life and death when she wakes up in a huge library filled with books exclusively about her and her life -well, let’s make that lives. Each of the green-covered books on the shelves is an accounting of a life Nora would have lived if she had made a different choice at some pivotal point in her “root life.” Now, best of all, the kindly librarian is giving her the chance to test-drive any of the shelved lives she thinks she may be better suited to than the one she’s lived up to this point. So, the hard-to-please Nora is off to the races.

As soon as one of her chosen lives displeases her, she’s back in the library being offered another “book.” But there’s a catch: the number of books may be infinite in number, but she has to choose a life before time runs out for her. She has to decide which of the countless lives she wants to live for however long the rest of her life turns out to be.

The premise, even as often as similar ideas have been presented in the past, sounds like fun. And it should have been fun. The problem Haig has is that he is running Nora into and out of so many lives - lives in which she and all of her friends and family are very different people each time a shift is made - that he cannot take the time to develop any of the characters much past the “cardboard” stage. I found none of them much believable, and looked forward to meeting only one of them over and over for the length of the book, Mrs. Elm, the kindly librarian in charge of the Midnight Library. 

In the novel’s defense, I suppose that The Midnight Library could be characterized as a fable or even a fairy tale. Those genres don’t require a lot of character development in order to get their message across because, really, it’s all about the message with that kind of writing. And The Midnight Library does have a message. That’s not to say, however, that the message is very deep or that it rises above the pop-psychology level. 

All that said, I somehow finished the book - hoping for some kind of spectacular ending or change of course all the while - despite having considered its abandonment several times. 

Bottom Line: Not worth the wait. Not even close.

Matt Haig 

The Rock Hole - Reavis Z. Wortham

When I first picked up Reavis Wortham’s The Rock Hole, I expected it to be a cozy-type mystery with a nostalgic Texas setting. After all, the book’s central character is a small-town Texas constable who is really starting to feel his age, and the book’s sometime-narrator is the man’s ten-year-old grandson, Top. Turns out, I could not have been more wrong; this is a crime novel so gritty that some of what it describes is gruesome enough that some readers will likely find it difficult to read the crime scene descriptions. The escalation of the novel’s intensity sneaks up on the reader as effectively as the villain of the piece sneaks up on his victims, and that makes it even the more shocking.

“As he stared glumly at his coffee, sadness and the futility of a lawman in a changing society swamped over the man who only wanted to do the right thing.” - Description of Constable Ned Parker, The Rock Hole, page 213

It all happens in 1964 in a small Texas community just south of the Red River. Crossing the river, puts you in Oklahoma, but part-time constable Ned Parker doesn’t worry too much about such technicalities. He knows pretty much everybody both sides of the river and understands that anything that happens in Center Springs, Texas, is not going to stay in Texas - and vice versa. Center Springs may as well be one town with a river running through the middle of it. 

Ned really considers himself to be first a farmer, and he’s not wrong about that. His official jurisdiction, when it comes to the law, is a small one and nothing much ever really happens there. He’s mostly called upon to handle town drunks and the like, but now something strange is happening, and Ned is worried. Someone is torturing and killing animals, and there are signs that this is just the start of a crime spree that could escalate into something much, much worse than animal abuse. The tortured animals being discovered in the fields and countryside are getting larger and larger, and the person responsible for the atrocities has taken to leaving pictures of children alongside the dead animals. 

Then, it gets very personal for Ned Parker and his family because someone out there seems to be after his two grandchildren, and he wonders if he will be able to protect them from the killer who wants so badly to snatch them from under his nose. Suddenly, Ned finds himself looking at everyone as a potential killer, and he is so frustrated that he feels like giving up. But that’s not who Ned Parker is - not even close.

Bottom Line: The Rock Hole is the first book in Reavis Wortham’s Red River Mystery series, and this 2011 novel has been followed by seven other Red River Mysteries, including 2021’s Laying Bones. The 1960s small-town atmosphere created by Wortham adds to the fun, but despite the references to Vietnam veterans, etc, the setting strikes me as being more akin to what one would expect in a similar location in the 1940s or 50s than in the mid-1960s. The Rock Hole is very good, and that’s the real “bottom line” here. Perhaps Reavis Wortham was shooting for “country noir” with this one; if so, he nailed it. 

Reavis Z. Wortham

The Less Dead - Denise Mina

Denise Mina is one of several Scottish crime novelists I keep coming back to after having first discovered her via her three Paddy Meehan novels (2005-2007). Mina is also author of the Garnet Hill trilogy (1998-2001), the five-book Alex Morrow series (2009-2014), four standalone novels, and three plays. She even had a run as writer of the Hellblazer comic books in which she brought the action to Scotland. The Less Dead is one of Mina’s standalones. 

“Fifteen years of our lives, important years but people just want the sad bits or the dirty bits or the Christ-saved-me-bits but not the whole of it, the whole messy truth of it. Just the bits that fit their agenda.”

As The Less Dead opens, Dr. Margo Dunlop is grieving the recent loss of her adoptive mother. Now, part of the grieving process in which Margo is so deeply immersed makes her want to learn more about her birth mother and the family she never knew. What she turns up instead of her mother, though, is Aunt Nikki, a woman whose manner and appearance initially scare Margo half to death about the can of worms she may have inadvertently just opened up. And as it turns out, for good reason.

Margo learns that her nineteen-year-old mother was murdered when she was just four months old, probably by a serial killer believed over a number of years to have claimed multiple victims from the city streets. Particularly vulnerable were women like her mother who sold themselves on the streets in order to support their out-of-control drug habits. Nikki even thinks she knows who the killer is - and she wants Margo to use her medical connections to help her finally prove it. Margo’s first inclination is to make it as difficult as possible for Nikki to ever find her again. But then, something strange starts to happen: the more she talks with Nikki and her friend, the more she admires the women and the strength it took for them to survive those years on the street. She likes them and starts to enjoy their company.

Someone else is watching, though, and they are not happy to see that Margo and Nikki are spending so much time together. When Margo starts to get the same threatening letters that Nikki has been getting for years, she fails to take the threats as seriously as she should, preferring to believe that whoever is writing them just wants to scare her away. Bad move, that.

Bottom Line: The Less Dead is exactly the kind of dark, mean-streets novel that I’ve come to expect from Denise Mina over the years. In this one, Mina builds the suspense level so slowly that when it finally reaches its boiling point, it’s a huge relief to finally get some answers. The reader knows things - important things - throughout the novel that Margo Dunlop doesn’t know, things she refuses to recognize even as the evidence continues to mount. That’s my one criticism of the Margo-character. For a doctor, a woman supposedly sophisticated in the ways of the world, Margo does not have a lot of common sense when it comes to repeatedly putting her life in jeopardy. If The Less Dead were a horror movie, Margo would be the girl everyone keeps yelling at not to open the door or go into the dark room to see what the noise she heard was. In the end it all works, of course, because Margo’s recklessness causes the villain of the piece to expose his identity by doing things he wouldn’t have otherwise done. Three stars for this one.

Denise Mina 

"The Crime Fiction Series That Defined The Last Decade"

Michael Connelly

Someone, probably his daughter, posted on James Lee Burke's Facebook page yesterday a link to a crimereads.com list from November 2019 listing what the writers of the piece consider to be the crime fiction series that define the decade of the 2010s .  Limiting the list to only ten guarantees that some really successful series are going to be left out, but I was just as surprised to learn that I haven't read a single word of some of the ones that did make the cut even though I probably already read way too much crime fiction. 

The ten crime series chosen are presented alphabetical order rather than being ranked:

• Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch Series 
• Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad Series
• Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt Serie
• Greg Iles's Natchez Burning Trilogy
• Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther Series
• Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire Series
• Attica Locke's Highway 59 Series
• Adrian McKinty's Sean Duffy Series
• Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache Series
• Don Winslow's Border Trilogy

The most interesting thing to me is that despite three of my favorite crime series of all time being included on the list, there are also four that I've barely ever heard mentioned anywhere despite all the book blogs and review magazines that I regularly read. And then come the three I consider to be either mediocre or which have been forever spoiled for me by learning more than I needed to know about the authors via their Twitter rants. (I confess to finding it difficult to completely separate an author's personality from their work, and I wish I were not that way.)

I'll start with the three series on the list that I look forward to reading  something new from every year - and have for a long time in each case: Michael Connelly's Bosch, Craig Johnson's Longmire, and Louise Penny's Gamache.  If I'm still around to see it happen, I will take the termination of any of these three as a personal loss and will grieve accordingly. Seriously.

Next up, are the four I'm unfamiliar with: the series by French, Gran, Kerr, and McKinty. I'm sure that each of these deserve inclusion on a list like this one, and I'll be looking closer at them very soon, so there goes my reading plan for February and March.

Finally, there are the series by Winslow, Isles, and Locke. Locke's is still one that I read, albeit much less enthusiastically as time goes by. I really love her main characters, but the later books have become so saturated with concerns about racism that I've almost lost interest in them. Locke is a fellow Houstonian and the Highway 59 corridor she uses as a setting for the series is one with which I am well-familiar, but because of their strong focus on racism, they have become a little bit predictable now. I hope she fixes that soon, and I'll keep seeking out the new books, but I feel myself coming closer and closer to my first abandonment of one of her books.

As for Winslow and Isles, I can't go there anymore. Both, especially Winslow, have revealed aspects of their souls that would have better  remained hidden from the reading public. Winslow's Border series is very good...if a little long and overwritten at times...but I really don't care now if he adds to it. I confess even to having given away the entire series a while back just because seeing the man's name on my shelves irritated me. (You don't have to say it, I know that's a little extreme...but it worked for me.) Isles is a little more moderate on Twitter than Winslow (and so is 99.999% of the rest of the world), but I was not fond enough of the first volume of his trilogy to seek out the others even beforehand. They are very long - and too socially heavy-handed - to suit my reading tastes. I prefer at least a little subtlety with my sermon, thank you, Mr. Isles. 

The best part about the Crime Reads posting is that it includes a much longer list of "honorable mention" series. That's where I found some of the ones like James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux series that I would have sworn would have been in the top ten, along with lots of other popular series and a whole bunch more I'm not familiar with at all. 

Now, I can't wait to do some exploring amongst that group of also-rans because I suspect there are some real gems to be found there. 

James Lee Burke

Shadow of a Star - Elmer Kelton

Elmer Kelton was really something. Born on one ranch in 1926, and growing up on a different  one, Kelton had plenty of time to observe the cowboy life through his own eyes. He earned a journalism degree from the University of Texas, and served as editor for various agricultural and ranching publications for most of his life. But what makes Kelton so special is his success with writing western novels. Eight of his novels won the Spur Award given annually by the Western Writers of America in recognition for best western novel of the year. So, the group finally just decided to proclaim Kelton “the greatest Western writer of all time.” Heck, back in 1997 the Texas state legislature even proclaimed a special “Elmer Kelton Day” in his honor. In other words, Elmer Kelton may just be the Babe Ruth of westerns - underrated as I feel he still is even today. 

Shadow of a Star is Kelton’s 1959 western novel about Jim-Bob McClain, a young man still on the cusp of manhood who finally realizes the dream of his life: the sheriff he has admired for most of his young life hires him as his only deputy. In the truest sense of the term, Shadow of a Star is a coming-of-age novel, one in which this young man needs to get things figured out quickly so that he doesn’t die in the process. 

Sheriff Mont Taylor is showing his age now, and he’s recently had to fire his deputy because the man enjoyed the power that comes with wearing a badge a little too much. The ex-deputy doesn’t have that power anymore, but he has a new enemy: Jim-Bob McClain, the kid who replaced him. And he thoroughly enjoys watching Jim-Bob botch the first couple of incidents he’s called upon to handle - especially the one during which the young deputy’s gun is snatched from him as he attempts to handcuff a would-be prisoner. 

The climax of Shadow of a Star finds Jim-Bob McClain fighting to get a bank-robbing murderer to authorities before the locals catch up with him and lynch the man. Also on his trail, is a gang-of-three - including the prisoner’s elder brother - that intends to relieve Jim-Bob of his prisoner. Finally, within two miles of the town he’s so desperate to reach, both groups are closing in on him. And now, he realizes that he doesn’t have much of a chance of making those last two miles in one piece. His head tells him to give up; his heart tells him hell, no. 

Bottom Line: I don’t think that Elmer Kelton necessarily thought of Shadow of a Star as a YA novel, but that’s what I consider it to be today. Because it was written in 1959, it seems tame by today’s standards, especially when it comes to language, violence, and sexual relationships. Things happen, of course, but the details are largely left up to the reader’s imagination, making the novel, perhaps, more appropriate for today’s YA readers than for adults looking for a more gritty representation of the Old West. That aside, Elmer Kelton tells a good western story, and he gives a good feel for what that isolated lifestyle must have been like. Watching Jim-Bob McClain figure out who he is and what his badge represents to him and to the townspeople he protects makes for a satisfying experience for readers of any age.

Elmer Kelton: Texas Book Festival 2007

Who Is Maud Dixon? - Alexandra Andrews

The soon-to-be-published Who Is Maud Dixon? is Alexandra Andrews’s debut novel. Andrews sets her novel inside the publishing worlds of New York and Paris, a setting she is familiar with from having herself worked in publishing in both cities in the past. The setting is, in fact, what first caught my attention about Who Is Maud Dixon?.

The novel’s two main characters are Florence Darrow, an entry-level editorial assistant, and Helen Wilcox, an author who’s recent pseudonymous (as Maud Dixon) novel has been a bestseller all over the world. Florence is too ambitious to put in the time required to rise through the ranks of publishing, so when she is offered a job as Helen Wilcox’s personal assistant, she jumps at it. Florence is always looking for an angle that will jump her to the front of the line, and now she is hoping that Helen will do just that by becoming both her friend and her mentor. However, that bit of naiveté is snatched from Florence as soon as she learns what a conniving and egocentric woman the real Maud Dixon really is. And that’s where it begins to get very complicated for both Helen and Florence. 

While on a sudden trip to Morocco with Helen to help research the second Maud Dixon novel, Florence wakes up in a hospital bed after an automobile accident she cannot remember. She is told by the policeman investigating the accident that she drove her car off the clifftop highway and into the sea below. She is only alive, he tells her, because a lone fisherman witnessed the accident and plucked her from the car before it sank to the bottom. But Florence is still confused. Where is Helen, and why is everyone in the hospital calling her Ms. Wilcox instead of by her own name?

So, is this Florence’s chance to jump not only to the front of the line but all the way into the life she has dreamed of living since she was a child? After all, Helen, despite the fact that her body has not been found inside the recovered car, is certainly dead. The only purse recovered from the vehicle belonged to Helen, and now authorities are assuming that it, along with Helen’s passport and driver’s license, are hers. If she doesn’t tell them that Helen was in the car with her that night, how will they ever know? Florence’s uncanny physical resemblance to the dead author makes it all the more likely that passing for Helen Wilcox/Maude Dixon will not be a problem. Hardly believing her good fortune, Florence steps into Helen’s shoes immediately - and she doesn’t intend to give them up despite the suspicious Moroccan copy who won’t go away. What could possibly go wrong?

Bottom Line: Who Is Maud Dixon? has so many twists and turns that at least border on the farfetched that the reader is required to have a significant willingness to suspend disbelief in order to make this one work. If the plot is good enough, or I enjoy the characters and setting enough, that is not necessarily a problem for me. But, frankly, both the main characters in this one are such high-level sociopaths that I was left with no one to root for. Think Patricia Highsmith’s Mr. Ripley character, and you will have some idea of what Florence and Helen are like. Highsmith, though, kept it real - and that makes all the difference in the world.

Review Copy provided by Publisher