Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Archive for July, 2014

After each book I read by Laura Lippman, I’m reminded why she’s one of my favorite authors.  After I’m Gone has only reinforced my feeling.

Some people have incredible charisma, and Felix Brewer was one of those.  Not especially good-looking, not college-educated, he nevertheless charmed everyone he met and was able to parlay this into life with a beautiful wife, three lovely daughters, a large house in Baltimore, and a significant presence in the city’s Jewish and philanthropic communities.  However, he always wanted more.

But somehow, in After I’m Gone, things have gone awry.  Felix is hiding in a horse van, hoping not to be stopped by the police, because he’s on his way out of the country to avoid a fifteen year prison sentence.  He’s with his mistress, Julie Saxony, but he has no intention of taking her with him, nor is he taking his wife and children.  It’s July 4, 1976.

Bambi, Felix’s wife, has known almost from the beginning of their life together that not everything Felix did was legal.  It wasn’t exactly illegal, or at least not all of it, but it was slippery.  “People will gossip.  But we’ll be so respectable–so rich–that no one will be able to afford to look down on us,”  he tells her.  Bambi deals with that, just as she deals with knowing that Felix is unfaithful, consoling herself with the thought that he loves her best. 

Sandy Sanchez is the instrument that will open up this thirty-five-year-old history.  He’s a former police detective in Baltimore, working as a consultant on cold cases for the force.  Going through some old files, he comes across a photo of Julie, Felix’s girlfriend at the time he disappeared.  Julie vanished ten years after Felix did, but her body was not discovered for another fifteen years.  Her murder has never been solved, so Sandy decides it’s worth a closer look.

In addition to following Sandy’s pursuit of Julie’s killer, over the years we are introduced to the oldest Brewer daughter, Linda, on the night of the 1980 presidential election; Rachel, the middle daughter, caught in an unhappy marriage with a cheating husband; and Michelle, the spoiled youngest child, who never knew her father and perhaps misses him the most.

And there’s the beautiful Bambi, still turning heads at forty, fifty, sixty.  Too proud to ever let friends know how dire her financial situation really is, she manages from month to month, holding her breath as the bills pile up. 

The lives of everyone in the book have been touched both by the presence of Felix Brewer and by his absence.  It’s fascinating to watch the dynamics so many years after he leaves.  It’s as if his energy and personality are still vibrating nearly four decades later.  It’s not simply that his family and friends are still missing him, although they are.  It’s also that their lives are so different than they would have been if he had not left. 

After I’m Gone joins all the other novels by Laura Lippman as a wonderful read.  The characters are real, as are their reactions to what is happening to them.  The plot is outstanding; more than simply a mystery, it is a narrative about how each person’s life impacts so many other lives.

You can read more about Laura Lippman at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

There aren’t many books that have sparked an entire genre, but Little Caesar has that distinction.  Written at the end of the 1920s by a previously unpublished author, Little Caesar became an overnight success for W. R. Burnett.  Reading this novel is a terrific way to go back to the beginnings of the original gangster story.

Little Caesar is the nickname of Rico, which in turn is the nickname of Caesar Enrico Bandello, a small-time mobster who climbs nearly to the top in the gangland of late twenties Chicago.  Physically unimposing, small and slightly built, Rico is single-minded about becoming the head of Sam Vettori’s mobsters and moving up the ladder from there. 

Rico doesn’t have the usual vices that many of his colleagues have.  He likes women but not enough to get sidetracked into a serious relationship with any one of them.  He doesn’t touch alcohol or drugs and doesn’t gamble, at least not seriously.  And because of his lack of these vices and his ruthless desire to get to the top, he almost manages to claw his way there.  Almost.

Rico’s biggest concern is that one of his men might “turn yellow.”  Squealing to the cops would be, of course, the worst thing a gang member could do, whether he did it voluntarily or was coerced or tricked into it by the police.  Regardless, there is no excuse for this in Rico’s mind, and he seems to have an uncanny knowledge of which man would turn cowardly and thus be a danger to the group.  He is without pity to those he deems to be any sort of risk.

Little Caesar was made into a film two years after the book was published and made Edward G. Robinson, in the title role, a major star.  Although the movie sticks closely to the plot of the book, there are some differences.  Rico’s best friend in the film is Joe Massara rather than Otero, his best friend in the novel, although in the book Rico never trusts Joe and has no use for him.  In the book Rico has two heterosexual relationships, but in the movie there are subtle homosexual overtones between Rico and Joe and Rico and Otero.

Also, for some Hollywood reason, Rico’s last words in the novel, “Mother of God, is this the end of Rico?,” have been changed in the film to “Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?” 

Burnett went on to write High Sierra, later made into a Humphrey Bogart film, and The Asphalt Jungle, featuring a very young Marilyn Monroe.  Burnett’s interest in and knowledge of the underworld gave his novels and screenplays a tough, gritty verisimilitude that resonated with readers.  There’s very little description and no deep thought by the characters in Little Caesar, just the chilling talk of a group of killers, led by the coldest one of all. 

You can read more about William Riley Burnett at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

Third rail, a symbol of danger.  According to Wikipedia, “the electric rail threatens electrocution of anyone wandering or falling onto the tracks.”  As a metaphor, it’s perfect for the life of Eddy Harkness–dangers surround him at every turn.

Formerly a high-profile narcotics detective on the Boston police force, Eddy became the butt of a thousand jokes when he failed in his attempt to save a man from being thrown off a bridge.  The tragedy was captured digitally by onlookers and put on YouTube where, as they say, it went viral. 

After that, there was no way that the Harvard Cop, as Eddy was known, could remain in the city; he was placed on a year’s unpaid administrative leave.  The police captain of his hometown, Nagog, offered him a patrolman’s job for the year, and Eddy was glad to accept. 

Much of Third Rail revolves around Eddy’s search for his missing gun.  The morning following a drunken, drug-riddled party, Eddy wakes up at his girlfriend’s apartment to discover that his Glock is missing.  Retracing their steps from the party to the apartment yields nothing, and Eddy knows that a lost or stolen gun could be the end of his career in Nagog.  So he goes into the town’s small variety store, owned by an old friend, and gets a plastic gun similar in style to his Glock.  And he hopes no one will notice the toy gun and hopes that he won’t need to use it.

In this novel, Third Rail is the name of a new designer drug that is about to hit the streets.  Unlike other drugs that make the users forget things, Third Rail “rewrites history and unmakes the mistakes,” according to an expert Eddy interviews.  Although that sounds positive, when the drug wears off the users experience anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure.  That means they must search for bigger thrills, bigger risks, in order to feel something, anything.  And that can lead to some dangerous pursuits.

There are a lot of threads in Third Rail.  In addition to Eddy’s search for his missing gun (losing one’s weapon may lead to dismissal from the police force) and the possibility of the new drug becoming readily available in Nagog, he is also contending with a corrupt politician’s run for mayor of Boston, his own suspicions about his drinking-and-drug-taking girlfriend, his hair-tempered brother, his dementia-suffering mother, and the memory of his larcenous father who committed suicide rather than face an investigation and prison.  Oh, and a Laotian gangster who deals in drugs and underage Thai girls.

The characters in the novel are fascinating, and the plot is fast-paced and believable.  There doesn’t seem to be anyone in the book without flaws; certainly Eddy Harkness has more than his share.  But he also has virtues and strengths in his ability to know right from wrong and his desire to make both Nagog and Boston better places than they currently are.

Third Rail is the first in a proposed series, and I am certainly looking forward to seeing Eddy Harkness back in action.

You can read more about Rory Flynn at this web site.  You can also view a trailer for the book on YouTube.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

The young woman’s body was found in a suite at the Waldorf Astoria, the luxury Manhattan hotel that was home, over the years, to such celebrities as Marilyn Monroe and Cole Porter.  The suite was supposed to be unoccupied, but someone had entered with the victim, killed her, and left unseen. The New York City police are under a tight deadline to solve this crime–in less than a week, the president of the United States will be checking into the Waldorf while visiting the city to address the United Nations.

The corpse has no identification, and in addition to her slashed throat she has marks on her back and legs.  The marks look like “ladders” that were carved into her skin deliberately.  What could they mean?

Then a second body is found in an alley near the hotel.  This time the victim is a man, probably homeless, so initially there seems no connection to the first crime.  But a closer inspection shows that his body has the same “ladder” marks as the first one.  When the neighborhood patrolman sees the body, he immediately knows who it is.  The victim’s name is Carl, and he lived in the train tunnels under Grand Central Terminal. 

Grand Central was the brainchild of “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt.  First there was Grand Central Depot, then Grand Central Station, but they weren’t large enough for all the trains entering and leaving the city.  Vanderbilt recognized that to maintain the city’s superiority it needed to be a major railroad hub, so the immense terminal was built and completed in 1913.  Sparing no expense, it has floors of Tennessee marble, wall trim of Italian marble, and ceiling tiles in the Oyster Bar that were copied from those in the cathedral of St. John the Divine in uptown Manhattan.  Stone statues adorn the building’s fasçade.

Now assistant district attorney Alex Cooper and her team, including police detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, are trying to find the connection between the first corpse and the second.  The people who live in the tunnels, like Carl, are called “moles.”  So Alex, Mike, and Mercer go underground in hopes of finding out something about Carl that will help them solve both murders.

Terminal City is a fascinating read because of its characters, its plot, and its sense of history.  Alex is a tough woman, a formidable prosecutor of sex crimes, but her history has made her vulnerable in her private life.  Her relationship with Mike Chapman is currently at its strongest point, or it was until Mike was out of touch for several weeks and then returned to the city without telling Alex.  Now she’s not sure where she stands with him, and he evades all her questions.

Linda Fairstein’s knowledge of New York City is encyclopedic, as she has proven in Terminal City and her other novels.  Here she takes the reader into every part of Grand Central, into places so removed from its elegant bar and historic Tiffany clock that it’s like traveling to another world.  Her characters are strong and believable, and the plot moves at a rapid pace.  And then, of course, there’s the delight in learning about the building itself, a National Historic Landmark since 1976.  No matter where you’re reading Terminal City, you’ll feel as if you’re in the Big Apple.

You can read more about Linda Fairstein at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.