Out on the Cutting Edge

It's been a long time since I read one of Robert Block's Matt Scudder novels, and I decided to revisit the series, since Block is one of the better hard-boiled novelists.  Out on the Cutting Edge is a fine novel, appropriately moody, yet with an underlying sense of optimism.

In an earlier novel (I think the previous one, but I could be misremembering), Scudder admits he's an alcoholic and joins AA.  Here, he's constantly tempted to fall off the wagon, and his internal struggle is just as suspenseful as the external events.  Although the novel has the hard, cyncical edge that all good noir books have, Matt is also moving along a path of finding redemption for himself.


I have to mention the length of the book; Block writes very sparely, and fits a very solid novel into about a third of the word-count that more wordy novelists use.  It was very refreshing to read such taut prose after the slackness of, say, The Way of Shadows.
 
My one complaint about the novel would be the character of Micky Ballou, who plays a small part here.  We're told that he's a very dangerous guy, but he comes across as too approachable.

Ice Run

Ice Run is the sixth Alex McKnight book by Steve Hamilton.  I've really enjoyed all the others, but this one was very weak on a lot of levels.  The romance between Alex and his new girlfriend never rings true, the characters feel like they've become more fluffy and blurred around the edges, and the plot is byzantine for no real good reason -- there are at least half a dozen points where the whole thing would've been short-circuited if characters just talked to each other.

I've like all the other books, so I'll probably give the next one a shot, especially since it seems to be the last one.

Vicious Circle, The Warden

Mike Carey's Vicious Circle is the second Felix Castor novel.  I really enjoyed the first one; I felt like it was probably the most successful blend of hard-boiled detective story and fantasy novel that I've run across.  Vicious Circle is the same, only more so.  Carey intertwines the two genres so thoroughly that it's impossible to even say which one is primary.  It's also a surprisingly down-beat novel, with Felix forced into betraying a friend, losing another friend, and ending up in a worse place than where he started.

I wish I had more to say about this novel, because it was such a fine book (if not particularly deep).  Carey has a great ear for similes and metaphors, his plotting is deft, and his fantasy universe hangs together really well.  It's always easier to complain than to think of nice things to say, I suppose.


I've decided to give Trollope's Barset Chronicles a shot, and I've been told that you really need to read them in order, so I started with The Warden, the story of the warden of a hospital who begins to doubt whether the money he's earning is properly his, or whether it belongs to inmates of the hospital.  I enjoyed it, but it's a pretty slight story (by Dickensian standards it's almost a short story).  I'm looking forward to the next book, which is considered one of Trollope's greater works.

Point of Impact, The Way of Shadows

Point of Impact is an action book which starts very slowly (100 pages in, the major plot is just getting started), and each climactic moment also has a very slow buildup, with a sudden resolution.  Stephen Hunter might take 30 pages to set up a confrontation, only to have it resolve in four paragraphs.  I found it a very effective pace; the build-up to each set piece is so deliberate that you can see how all of the players are laid out, and so Hunter can have his hero beat incredible odds while maintaining a completely realistic feel.

Brent Weeks, on the other hand, tries for a different sort of realism in The Way of Shadows.  His assassins seem unconstrained by the laws of physics, pretty much like the craziest ninja fantasies you can find on TV.  Weeks, though, is part of a trend to move fantasy away from heroic archetypes, like those in Tolkein, and more toward realistic psychological types.  Unfortunately, I don't think he really succeeds; his characters end up feeling more like riffs on characters from other fantasy books than like actual people.  Here we find the madam with a heart of gold, there we find the assassin with a secret in his past, yonder is the sadistic bad guy.

It's kind of strange, actually -- there's no question that the characters in Point of Impact are much simpler than those in Way of Shadows.  But they Hunter's characters feel much more alive than Weeks's.

Nail Through the Heart, Death's Jest Book

Nail Through the Heart was another Kindle freebie, a crime novel set in Thailand.  I enjoyed it, but not enough to try others in the series.

Death's Jest Book is the umpteenth entry in the Dalziel and Pascoe series.  It's one of those examples of an author's craft improving even as his invention flags.  Hill's craft has never been better -- his similes are crisp and witty, his dialog is strong, Frannie Root's letters have a distinctive voice, and so on.  At the same time, the story isn't that compelling.  It's mostly a cleanup operation from Dialogues of the Dead, resolving the hanging plotline of an uncaught murderer, wrapping up Pascoe's pas de deux with Frannie Root, and that's about it.

I've felt for a long time that crime novels can give a writer a leg up by giving him a natural impetus forward -- there's always something to move the plot forward, because he ultimately has to resolve the situation created by the crime.  In Death's Jest Book, Hill shows the reverse; with only a minimal crime to focus on, the plot completely languishes, and, however fun the writing, it's not enough to save the book.

One other big shortcoming is series-itis.  Hill has crafted a few long-running characters by this point (Wield, Dalziel, Pascoe, Ellie) as well as some shorter-running ones who he wants to make long-term (mainly Novello, but also "Hat" Bowler), and he wants to give them all a role in the book -- if he'd taken out some of those sub-plots, the book would've been shorter and stronger.  I don't know if he's worried that we'll forget who they are if they don't show up or what.  (Compare this with Jim Butcher, who's got the confidence to drop characters out of sight for 3-4 books at a time)

The Hunger Games, John Dies at the End

John Dies at the End is one of those books that started life as an internet phenom, then was re-bound and sold as a book.  I'm usually leery of these things, but I decided to give it a shot (I've since found out that it was substantially fixed up before becoming a book).

Whatever its other literary merits, John Dies at the End pulls off the trick of being very funny and very scary at the same time, sometimes within the same paragraph.  The closest thing I can think of is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but even there the humor usually alternates with the horror; they don't come simultaneously.  (And I'm not talking about "humor";  the jokes are actually funny).

I enjoyed Susan Collins's The Hunger Games more than I thought I would.  It's one of those YA books that crosses the line to have adult appeal, even though it's clearly written with the teen market in mind.  I think part of its success is that Collins has been pretty ambitious, throwing in a lot of classical references (Theseus, Spartacus, Romeo & Juliet) that I can't help but think go over the heads of most kids.  Like the way that the major antagonist in the Games is called Cato, even though all the other Tributes have non-Roman names.  But for kids who can't tell a Roman name from a non-Roman one, does this have any resonance?

The Thing from the Nightside

Simon Green's Thing from the Nightside was entertaining fluff.  For what it's trying to be, it's perfect, and I guess you can't ask for more than that.