2023 Booker Prize Nominations (Part 2)

 

In one way or the other, I'm now done with three of the 2023 Book Prize nominations and have just gotten hold of two others: The Bee Sting by Paul Murray and If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery. At least two or three others should follow next week.

I rank the three I've worked through so far in this order:

Western Lane - Chetna Maroo - 5 stars (shortlist)

Old God's Time - Sebastian Barry - 4 stars (longlist)

A Spell of Good Things - Ayóbàmi Adébáyò - DNF (longlist)

The Bee Sting (shortlist) is over 640 pages long and not eligible for an extended check-out period, so I'm going to have to hustle on this one. But it's been tipped by many book people as the most likely winner of this year's prize and it has become the odds on favorite, so I'm really looking forward to it. The plot focuses on an Irish family that, despite all outward appearances, is on very shaky grounds now that the economy has taken a downturn and the car dealer patriarch starts to doubt that he should still be selling gasoline-driven cars.

If I Survive You also made the shortlist, but do keep in mind that I'm not limiting myself to only the shortlisted books, so half the books nominated have already been eliminated from the competition. If I Survive You is a series of connected stories about a Jamaican family that relocates to Miami in order to start new lives for everyone. Of course, it's not going to be that easy.

The fifty thousand pound winner will be announced in the U.K. on November 26. 

Shutter - Ramona Emerson

 

"All we're saying is that if you keep inviting dead things into your life, it could open the door. You never know what path a spirit has taken until they are in your head. Don't let them know there is a door. Don't let them know that you are the key." - medicine man's warning to Rita Todacheene about her ability to see and converse with the ghosts of murder victims

Rita Todacheene is a forensic photographer with the Albuquerque police department. She is especially good at her job because of the direction she often gets from the ghosts of people whose dead bodies she is photographing. Now, because police investigators have learned that Rita's photographs often provide exactly the evidence they need to get a murder conviction, she works extra-long hours that leave her mentally and physically in a constant state of near exhaustion. 

Seeing and talking with ghosts is not a recently acquired skill for Rita. It all began when she was a little girl, but Rita quickly learned never to tell her grandmother or school friends about the ghosts that visit her because it scared them. Both her grandmother and the tribe's medicine man fear that Rita's mind might be taken over one day by a ghost with evil intentions, and they beg her to stop allowing frustrated ghosts to use her for their own purposes.

As it turns out, Rita should have heeded their advice while she had the chance, because after a particularly relentless and vengeful ghost latches on to her, it is way too late. Now she has both crooked cops and a powerful Mexican drug cartel searching for her. And if they find her, Rita is likely to become a ghost herself. 

Shutter works exceptionally well during the part of the book that alternates chapter flashbacks to Rita's girlhood with chapters set in the present. It is fascinating to watch the little girl's interaction with the ghosts as she adapts herself to the realization that they are a secret she can share with no one. Unfortunately, after the flashback chapters and the present day chapters finally merge fully into real time, the novel becomes more a typical crime thriller with a predictable ending. Shutter is a solid three-star debut novel, however, and I look forward to seeing what Ramona Emerson publishes next.

Ramona Emerson author photo

What I'm Reading This Week (November 6, 2023)

I feel like I had rather a strange reading week last week. I did finish four of the books that I'd hope to finish: The Last Ranger, Take It Out in Trade, Death Writes, and Shutter. I even managed to finish another book not mentioned in last week's "look ahead" post, the 2023 Booker Prize shortlisted novel Western Lane. In addition, I decided to table for now the Tom Hanks novel The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece and to DNF one of the Booker Prize nominees I'm working my way through after reading about 50 pages of it, A Spell of Good Things.

That means that I will be starting this new week with only three books in progress: 

I'm about 80 pages into Danielle Trussoni's The Puzzle Master right now and I'm very intrigued by the book's premise and its two main characters. Mike Brink is a puzzle savant whose ability to solve "impossible" puzzles only showed up after he suffered a traumatic brain injury. Jess Price is a convicted murderer who has refused to speak to anyone during her five years of incarceration. As it turns out she is also a huge fan of Mike Brink's puzzles and is not at all bad at creating puzzles herself. Now she wants Brink's help from prison.

Tim Maleeny's Hanging the Devil is the latest in the author's "Cape Weathers Mystery" series. Thankfully, it is working just fine as a standalone thriller, and at the half-way point I'm really enjoying it. Cape Weathers is a San Francisco private detective with the wit and sarcasm of a stand-up comic. His partner is a young woman, formerly a member of a Chinese triad, whose physical skills are almost at superhero level. And in this one, their client is a little Hong Kong girl whose physical skills aren't bad either. This is fun.

This Daniel De Visé book on the relationship between John Belushi and Dan Akroyd - and the making of The Blues Brothers movie - is not scheduled for publication until March 19, 2024 but I've already begun reading a few pages here and there because I'm so much of a fan of the movie and the two comedians. At the 50-page mark, it's still in the Belushi bio stage but I've already been surprised to learn that John was already doing some of his Saturday Night Live stuff while still in high school. Not sure how much more of it I'll read, if any, this week.

And I'll be adding one or two of these:

I could still kick myself for turning down a review copy of When Books Went to War back in 2014 because it seems like such a natural for me now. But, as I recall, I was so overwhelmed at that moment that I just couldn't take on another book. And then it slipped my mind for a long time until I started to see it mentioned somewhere or other every few months. The latest reminder came from Cathy over at her Kittling: Books blog, and this time I immediately put it on hold at my library - only to end up holding on to it until the very last moment. So here goes.

I've read two of Laurie Frankel's novels in the past and enjoyed both of them, so I'm happy to get hold of this latest of hers (to be published this January). It's the complicated story of a movie actress's experiences with the adoption process. She's an advocate of adoption and speaks openly about it, bringing some unexpected attention to her situation. I think I've already picked up on the initial spoiler in the story, but it's intriguing enough a premise to make me look past that unfortunate bit of pre-knowledge about the plot. 

The Lemon Man is a 2022 crime novel that recently won Australia's prestigious Ned Kelly Award for Best International Crime Novel. That's no small deal, so I want to read The Lemon Man before it's sequel is published in early 2024. Listen to this basic plot line: an Irish hitman who makes his hits from a bicycle somehow manages to get himself designated as the caretaker of a baby boy. Now he has to figure out a way to work hits into his busy domestic schedule. This one sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

The wild card this week is going to be my library. I already know of two books that need to be picked up either today or tomorrow or they'll go to the next person in line, and two new ones could be showing up there at any moment. The first two are both Booker Prize nominees with check-out time limited to two weeks...and one of those, The Bee Sting is over 640 pages long. Because The Bee Sting is the Booker nominee I most want to read, it will influence everything else that happens this week. I'm not at all surprised by any of this because it's the rule for me, not the exception. Y'all keep turning those pages...and tell me all about it.

Death Writes - Andrea Carter

Publication Date: 12/5/2023

Andrea Carter's Death Writes is book number six in the author's "Inishowen Mystery" series, but as someone who has just read his first Andrea Carter novel, I can tell you that it works remarkably well as a standalone novel. It works so well, in fact, that I now plan to read from the series again so that I can get to know the main characters even better by exploring some of their individual backstory.

Andrea Carter made good use of her personal background to create the Inishowen Mystery series, and she continues to use that background as she adds new mysteries to the mix. Carter, raised in the midlands of Ireland, is a Trinity College Dublin graduate who relocated to the Inishowen peninsula when she began to practice law. The author later returned to Dublin, where she worked for a while as a barrister before turning turning her hand to crime fiction. 

Death Writes begins with a strong side plot that never seems secondary. Solicitor Benedicta "Ben" O'Keefe and her boyfriend Tom Molloy, who is a police sergeant in the fictional Irish town they live in, are rushing back to Dublin so that Ben can check on the welfare of her parents after a concerned neighbor reports to her that they have suddenly taken more than half-a-dozen strangers into their home. Already feeling guilty enough about living so far from her parents, Ben immediately blames herself for their predicament and is desperate to find out exactly what is happening back home.  

That's mystery enough for many a novel, but back in tiny Glendara  things are about to take an even nastier turn. It's time for the village's annual book festival, which this year has managed to snag its most famous resident for what will be the man's first public reading in years. Former Booker Prize winner Gavin Featherstone may not have been seen in public for a while, but he somehow seems to have made a lifetime's worth of enemies long before he went into seclusion. So when Featherstone suddenly drops dead just before he begins to read aloud to his excited audience, more than a few in the audience are not particularly surprised.

Then, after discovering that she has custody of Featherstone's soon to be contested will, Ben O'Keefe begins conducting her own investigation into Featherstone's murder - all the while trying to figure out exactly what her parents have gotten themselves into.

Death Writes is fun for all the best reasons. Its main characters are interesting and they make it very easy to root for them; its coastal Ireland setting is dramatic and vividly created; and even the novel's side characters tend to be a bit on the quirky - and memorable - side. Readers searching for a new series within which to immerse themselves need to take a long look at the Inishowen Mystery series.

Andrea Carter author photo

Take It Out in Trade - Walter Whitney

 

When Ace Books published Take It Out in Trade in 1957, the novel was met with public scorn and ridicule from publishing people like Random House's Bennett Cerf and others. Even the Roman Catholic Church took notice of the novel and labeled it as "Objectionable" on its monthly "Office of Decent Literature" list. 

(As an aside, I remember as a young teenaged reader scouring that very list every month to see if I could find any of the books I wasn't supposed to be reading - taking it as kind of a personal challenge to locate one or two of them. I like to think it was also an indication of my already budding belief that no one should be in the business of banning books. There is just no telling how many books the church list was responsible for selling, so I always wondered, too, if publishers ever actually got upset when one of their books appeared on it.) 

This new edition from Cutting Edge marks the first time that Take It Out in Trade has been in print in more than sixty years. According to Cutting Edge, Walter Whitney was a pen name for an author who "was never heard from again...at least not under his real name." 

The book itself is a surprisingly well written representation of the American pulp fiction genre that was so popular during the 1940s and 1950s. Its main characters may be borderline stereotypical ones, but they generally have enough depth and nuance to make them separately memorable. The plot itself could be taken as an early warning to American consumers that using revolving credit to finance what would otherwise be an unaffordable lifestyle is never a good idea. But best of all, the mysterious "Walter Whitney" is a pretty good storyteller.

The villain of the piece is Fran, a young woman with a scheme she hopes will make her rich enough to flee her hometown long before her physically abusive husband is released from prison. All of the "Arkies" and "hillbillies" coming north for factory jobs are easy pickings for a woman like Fran, and she is determined to milk her victims for every dime they have before she tosses them aside for her next target. 

But Fran doesn't have a plan for a man like Leroy, someone who has become so infatuated by her that he's willing to ruin himself and his family even after he figures out exactly what she's up to. Knowing that her husband's release from prison can come any day, Fran is desperate for the one big score that will put her nest egg over the top. But the clock is ticking...and she has two men to worry about now, not just one.

Take It Out in Trade is a novel for fans of noir crime fiction and those who have fond memories of the pulp fiction of that era. It may be tame by today's standards, but Take It Out in Trade must have been a real shocker to 1950s readers.

Walter Whitney author photo

The Last Ranger - Peter Heller

 

The Last Ranger is my first experience with Peter Heller's work but I was immediately taken by the author's storytelling ability and the conflicted characters that populate this tale of what everyday life inside a large national park such as Yellowstone might be like for the rangers and staff who live and work in them. Having spent some time in several national parks in recent years, I've often admired the patience that park rangers display even while witnessing the utter stupidity of an unfortunately high percentage of the tourists they have to deal with every day - but there were things I was still curious about. Well, The Last Ranger, I'm happy to report, not only kept me thoroughly entertained, it left me with a much better understanding of what daily life inside a park like Yellowstone must be like for the animals and humans who live there.

Ren Hopper, a Yellowstone National Park enforcement officer, is still dealing with the personal grief created by the sudden death of his wife. Ren is getting better, but he's still not ready to be around a lot of people, so the isolation and remoteness of his job are exactly what he both craves and needs. The ranger has two or three close friends for support and he's friendly enough with a small circle of locals and park employees, but it is the company of the park's beautiful wolf expert that he enjoys more than most - a positive sign. 

Ren knows the routine well. He realizes that his days are largely going to be spent rescuing clueless tourists from themselves, breaking up campground fights, and dealing with locals who sometimes resent the behavior of tourists passing through their world - but he can always look forward to days off when he can lose himself inside the park's more remote areas. Everything changes on the day Ren spots a poacher, rifle in hand, allowing his dog to chase a young black bear inside the park. As it turns out, the poacher is not only a threat to Yellowstone's bear population, he is also a threat to the wolves who call the park home. And because the park's wolf expert is just as aggressive in defending her wolves as the poacher is in trying to take them, the poacher is now a direct threat to the woman Ren wants so much to protect.

Peter Heller's main characters are complex and flawed, even the ones who make doing the right thing their first priority. Too often, doing the right thing is not easy, and Heller's characters must decide how far they are willing to bend in order to get the job done. It's the age old question of judging when the ends justify the means. The Last Ranger is a literary novel; it is a painless lesson in the behavior of the animals found inside Yellowstone National Park; and it is a crime novel - with the real question being who will turn out to be the criminal, and who the victim.

Peter Heller author photo