Universal's "News of the World" to Be Released on December 25

 One of my all-time favorite books is 2016's News of the World by Paulette Jiles. I've mentioned it several times before here on Book Chase, but my enthusiasm (evangelism?) for the book has not lessened one little bit over the last four years. I was thrilled to hear that Universal had a movie version in the works starring Tom Hanks, and now it looks as if that movie will be Universal's Christmas gift to the world. 

I'm saddened, though, that it had to come along in the middle of this COVID-19 mess because that means I won't be experiencing its debut on the big screen. That said, here's a look at the trailer dropped by Universal ten days ago:

I understand that Westerns are not for everyone...but please don't cheat yourself out of enjoying the novel and the movie because of that. 

Book Chase: The November 2020 Reading Plan (First Half)

 It's hard to believe another month is already gone. Even under all of the COVID-19 restrictions, time seems to be flying by...another year almost gone. I've started to line up my reading for the next month, and if November turns out to be anything like the last two months, I'll need close to a dozen new titles for the month. This is what I'm planning on as the month begins, with more books to be added in the second half of November as needed:

A Rule Against Murder is the fourth Inspector Gamache novel in that series. I'm in the process of reading four of the books I've missed throughout the years, and I was able to get an audiobook version of this one from the library. Of course, I couldn't resist starting it a couple of days ago, so this will be the first one I finish in November. It's a little bit of an Agatha Christie scenario since the murder takes place at an isolated hotel in the Canadian woods and all the suspects are being kept from leaving until the crime is solved.

Truthtelling is a collection of short stories from Lynne Sharon Schwartz. I don't recall reading anything of Schwartz's before, but if the first couple of stories in the book are any indication, I think I'm going to enjoy the collection. The author has also written a book called Ruined by Reading, and that title fascinates me. It's definitely one I'm going to be getting my hands on sometime in the next few weeks. I see that this will be the sixth short story collection I've read in 2020. 

Good Eggs tells the story of a man who is having problems both with the behavior of his 83-year-old mother (chronic shoplifting for no apparent reason) and his rebellious teenaged daughter whom he is sending away to boarding school in desperation. The novel is set in Ireland, but the family is hoping that the American caretaker they've just hired to help out with the old lady will solve at least some of their problems. Of course, we all know that's not about to happen.

Bob: The Right Hand of God sounds like fun. It seems that Bob shows up on television one day (unfortunately for his message, that's on an April 1) to announce that God has decided to turn the planet into a theme park. People are disappearing everywhere, and on Easter Sunday those who are still around are given one last chance to "enter the light." Chet, who must be a little above average in the stubbornness department refuses to go...and now he's all alone. Maybe he should reconsider, if it's not already too late.

I'm going to read Dark Passage from this Library of America collection containing five "Noir Novels of the 1940s & 50s." Part of my reading goal coming into 2020 was to read some of the novels published during the middle third of the 20th century, and this one fits nicely into that goal. Movie fans may remember this as a movie starring Humphrey Bogart - one I think I must have watched at some point in my life but remember nothing about. David Goodis is described as someone whose style helped "transform American culture and writing," so I'm expecting a lot from it.

I was blown away by The Birdwatcher, the first book in this series, so I'm looking forward to reading Salt Lane in November and moving on to the other two books in the series. The series is set on the Kentish coast, and Shaw uses the setting to full advantage in framing his plot and, more importantly I think, his characters. This time around, though, DS Alexandria Cupidi is going to take centerstage as the main character, a spot she unexpectedly assumed at the conclusion of The Birdwatcher.

So there you have it, the first half-dozen for the month of November. I do have at least a couple of others partially read right now, but they are fast losing steam and may well end up being, at least for now, abandoned, so I won't mention them today. 

I made my first two bookstore visits this week, and I was not surprised that both were relatively empty. Both, too, have removed all the pre-pandemic chairs and benches so that customers don't get so comfortable that they hang around for hours. I do think that's a wise, but sad, move. I had been in neither location since early March, and I was surprised by the major changes I found in one of them. More on that in the next few days...because I don't believe the explanation I received from the store manager regarding what I found in her bookstore.

Valdez Is Coming - Elmore Leonard

Elmore Leonard may be best known for his crime novels, many of which were made into successful Hollywood films, but he actually began his literary career writing Western short stories for the pulp magazines of the 1950s. Hollywood movies based on Leonard’s westerns include Hombre, 3:10 to Yuma, and Valdez Is Coming. Anyone interested in reading an Elmore Leonard western or two should consider the Library of America volume entitled Elmore Leonard: Westerns published in 2018 because it includes four novels (Last Stand at Saber River, Hombre, Valdez Is Coming, and Forty Lashes Less One) plus eight of his most outstanding western short stories. For those more inclined to short stories, there is also The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard published by William Morrow in 2004.

Valdez Is Coming is the story of a man who was known for most of his life as Roberto Valdez. Roberto was an army scout and an Apache-killing machine who was known to have taken a few scalps of his own (among other atrocities) in battle. But now he prefers to be known as Bob Valdez, a stagecoach security guard who also serves as town constable for a small community when he’s actually in town. Bob is still deadly with a shotgun or a Winchester, but the white men who employ him in town do so only to have someone stand between them and any Mexicans who come to town to cause trouble. They have no respect for Bob Valdez; he is just a tool they use for a job they are afraid to do for themselves. Valdez knows that, but to him it’s all just part of the job.

Then one day, during his role as town constable, Bob Valdez turns back into Roberto Valdez. 

It happens when Valdez arrives back in town just in time to find that a group of townspeople, led by a prominent cattleman, have trapped a black man and his Indian wife inside a sod cabin not far out of town. The cattleman claims that the man inside is wanted for a murder that occurred six months earlier, and the men are taking turns shooting into the cabin to see if the supposed killer will surrender. Valdez tries to defuse the situation, but Tanner, the cattleman, puts Valdez into a situation where he ends up killing the innocent man in self-defense. Now, Bob Valdez wants to do right by the man’s pregnant woman. It seems only right to him that the men involved collect $500 for the woman before she returns to her people to have the child. Unfortunately for Bob (and ultimately for the men), no one agrees with him.

Bottom Line: At roughly 240 pages, Valdez Is Coming is a relatively short novel, but it still manages to pack a punch. Roberto/Bob Valdez is a memorable character who has come to know right from wrong, and he will not take no for an answer when it comes to helping the wronged woman. Tanner is an evil man who surrounds himself with dozens of men willing to do most anything to impress him. The clash between the two men is memorable, but this is more than a revenge novel; this is a story about all the shades of grey between good and evil, and how one man deals with them. It is action-filled from the beginning, but it ends with a rather unexpected twist that lends depth to several of the characters. This is a good, old-fashioned western, for sure.

Miami Noir: The Classics

The series of crime story collections from Akashic Books is not new to me. Miami Noir: The Classics is, in fact, the fifteenth book in the series I’ve read and reviewed. It all started back in 2010 with my discovery of Mexico Noir, and I’ve looked forward to reading one or two of the collections every year since then. As their titles indicate, each of the books is a collection of darkish crime stories focused on one city or geographical area (Prison Noir being the one exception I’ve encountered so far). Some of the city-collections have been augmented by “classics” editions, and I’ve found those to be particularly helpful for readers interested in learning about some of the classic authors of the genre.

So, having already read and enjoyed Chicago: The Classics and New Orleans: The Classics, I was pleased to get my hands on Miami: The Classics. I was even happier to learn that this one is every bit as good as I hoped it would be. The collection features Miami-related crime stories written between 1925 and 2006, and it includes the work of some legendary authors. The Akashic collections are always divided into four sections of four or five stories each, and this time around those sections are titled: “Original Gangsters,” “Perilous Streets, Lethal Causeways,” “Miami’s Vices,” and “Gators & Ghouls.” 

The “Original Gangsters” section is aptly titled because it is home to the five oldest stories in the book, all produced from the mid-1920s to the mid-1940s. I was a bit surprised to find stories here by the likes of conservationist Marjory Stoneman Douglas, novelist Zora Neal Hurston, and the prolific Damon Runyon, but their stories served as perfect mood-setters for what follows - and I really enjoyed the Douglas story, “Pineland.” I especially, though, enjoyed Brett Halliday’s (pen name of Davis Dresser) “A Taste of Cognac” as it serves as a perfect introduction to Mike Shayne, the character for whom Halliday is probably still best known. That story should be read by anyone wondering what the definition of a “noir” crime story really means. 

“Perilous Streets” includes stories by two old favorites of mine, Elmore Leonard and T.J. MacGregor, but I really hit my stride when I began reading the book’s third section, “Miami’s Vices.” The five stories in this third section were all written between 1996 and 1999, and they combine to capture that era perfectly. It includes two stories that pack quite a punch despite being two of the shortest in the book: Lynne Barrett’s “To Go” and John Dufresne’s “Lemonade and Paris Burn.” The Barrett story tells a tale about a woman who is on the road with her boss when he suddenly dies, and the Dufresne story is about four foster kids who flit through the life of a Miami man one day. This section also includes my two favorite stories in the collection: Edna Buchanan’s “The Red Shoes,” about a man with a foot fetish who breaks into the wrong apartment one night, and David Beatty’s “Ghosts,” a suspenseful story about a man marked for a revengeful death and the innocent family he carelessly places in peril.

The “Gators & Ghouls” section only has four stories in it, but they include another of my favorites, “Washington Avenue,” by Carolina Garcia-Aguilera. This 2001 story is a long, relatively complicated story about the gay bar scene in Miami’s South Beach area where six men have died, it seems, because they mixed alcohol with a specific drug known to be lethal in that combination. Private detective Lupe Solano finds it difficult to believe that six men could have been that stupid on one street in the same weekend. Garcia-Aguilera, herself a private investigator for thirty years, is best known for her Lupe Solano series - one that I want to know more about after reading this story.

Bottom Line: The stories in Miami Noir: The Classics vary in length from three pages to thirty-eight pages, and they cover almost a century of Miami crime story writing. Some of the stories are lighthearted, one is more fantasy than crime, and others are dark and ominous. As always, there is something here for everyone. If you haven’t discovered the Akashic Books noir collections yet, you are in for a treat.

Review Copy provided by Publisher

Happy Birthday, Pat Conroy. We Miss You.

October 26, 2020, marks what would have been Pat Conroy's 75th birthday if Pat had not died in March 2016 at age 70. Pat wasn't the most prolific author in the world, but he left behind some of my favorite books, and I will be forever grateful to him for that.

The man, in fact, only published eleven books during his forty-year career, sometimes going six or seven years between books, and in the process, driving his fans to the point of nerd-hysteria when a new title was finally announced. There was even a fourteen-year stretch between his last two novels, Beach Music and South of Broad. Five of the eleven books are novels (unless The Boo is counted as a novel, and honestly, I'm still not entirely certain how to classify that one), one is a memoir of his college basketball team days, one is a cookbook, one a memoir about his early days as a school teacher, another is a book about his own favorite books and how he became a reader and writer, and the last one published before his death tells of his long overdue reconciliation with his father. 

A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writer's Life, a 12th book, was published a few months after Pat's death. This one is a collection of the author's interviews, speeches, letters, and the like, and collectors of Conroy's work should definitely have it on their shelves. It includes a touching introduction by Casandra King, the author's wife, and it includes tributes from some of the people whose lives Pat impacted with his own. 

This is what Pat Conroy left behind:

• The Boo - 1970
• The Water Is Wide - 1972
• The Great Santini - 1976
• The Lords of Discipline - 1980
• The Prince of Tides - 1986
• Beach Music - 1995
• My Losing Season - 2002
• The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes of My Life - 2004
• South of Broad - 2009
• My Reading Life - 2010
• The Death of Santini - 2013
• A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life - 2016

(I've highlighted the ones previously reviewed on Book Chase; but do a Book Chase search on "Pat Conroy" and you will find numerous posts I made about the man over the years. I'm surprised, myself, at how many there are.)

We Begin at the End - Chris Whitaker

Only after turning the last page of Chris Whitaker’s We Begin at the End, did I learn that Mr. Whitaker is a British author and that the novel has done quite well in the U.K this year (it will be published in the U.S. in March 2021). I mention this only because We Begin at the End is so much an “American” novel in tone and point-of-view that I never even thought to check into the author’s background. 

This is one of those novels for which a reviewer needs to take special care not to inadvertently release any spoilers, so I’ll do my best not to mention anything that is not already revealed on the novel’s book flap. Just know going in, that this is a novel filled with the kind of surprises and revelations that you will dying to talk about with your friends after they’ve enjoyed We Begin at the End for themselves. 

Thirty years earlier, Walk, now chief of police in his small California beach town, gave the testimony that sent his best friend to prison. Now, that friend is being released back into the community, and Walk desperately wants to help him to make the most of the rest of his life. Vincent King, though, is both mentally and physically scarred by his years in prison, and all he wants from the people of Cape Haven, California, is to be left alone as he works at restoring his old family home. But it won’t be that easy for any of them. People are going to die…several of them. 

We Begin at the End has a terrific plot, one filled with so many twists and turns that it’s hard not to feel as if you’re on a runaway train as you approach the book’s final few chapters. But that brings me back to how easy it would be to spoil this novel for those yet to read it. Just about every time you feel as if all has finally been revealed, something else just as surprising comes along, and then you think surely that’s it - right up until the next twist in the plot jolts you. That’s a big part of the fun of We Begin at the End, but it can only truly be experienced at its best by those who pick it up knowing next to nothing about the plot details. 

Chris Whitaker

The complicated plot is all made possible by a cast of memorable characters, beginning with the self-categorized thirteen-year-old “Outlaw Duchess Day Radley,” a little girl who is proud of the outlaw blood in her family tree and only wishes there was more of it. Duchess has grown up quickly because she knows it is entirely up to her to take care of her drug-addicted mother and Robin, her six-year-old brother. She is fearless, and after she learns to shoot a pistol, she is dangerous. Robin is an emotionally traumatized little boy who clings to his sister for the emotional support that allows him to get through another day. Walk and Vincent King are complicated, memorable characters, too, but it is some of the secondary characters that will stay with me the longest, particularly those who appear in the second half of the book to play large roles in the lives of the children. 

Bottom Line: This is a book about half-truths, shades of grey, and secrets. Every character in the book seems to have secrets that they refuse to give up or try to justify even to themselves. It is a story about the loyalty of family and friends, and how that loyalty can so easily be misplaced or misunderstood. It is a story about good intentions going very badly, and it is a story of redemption. Don’t miss it.

Review Copy provided by Publisher