Book case : a John Marshall Tanner mystery by Stephen Greenleaf | LibraryThing

The first sentence of this book, describes me to a tee: “I’m not certain whether the affliction originates in genetic disinclination or environmentally induced aversion, but I’ve always been more a recluse than a celebrant.”  Exactly.

Marsh is hired by Bryce to help save Periwinkle Press. Bryce received a manuscript, one that he thinks is truly magnificent. He wants Marsh to read it and then find out who wrote it.  What makes it interesting and tricky is that the novel, about a man falsely convicted of sexual harassment and abuse, is unfinished and in the missing section promises to reveal who the false accuser was and what revenge he intends to extract.  Of course, the best way to track down the author is to assume the book is non-fiction, but that could raise issues of libel.  But then, if the book is a novel, libel could also be a problem for the publisher since all it takes is one person to come in and proclaim that s/he thought the protagonist was someone in particular for libel law to become an issue. Apparently if you disguise a person’s identity by having them do several nefarious things, and someone still recognizes the individual, then you could be guilty of defamation since the portrayal wasn’t accurate enough!

The trail leads Marsh into a corrupt world of influence, private schools, and hidden agendas. Again, the positive comparison to Ross MacDonald is warranted.  I remain astonished that Greenleaf never attained similar stature.  Greenleaf does exhibit a strong sense of moral outrage at the disparities of life in San Francisco during the late eighties (the book was published in 1991.) <i>“...the gap in both assets and attitudes between the rich and poor has become cavernous, the America that allows businessmen to coin money in the name of junk bonds and stock options yet requires the poor, illiterate woman to fill out a six-page form to qualify for food to feed her children, the America whose poor contribute a higher portion of their income to charity than the rich,  the America whose best and brightest are no longer rewarded for creating things of value but for selling off our resources to foreign companies, the America whose politicians want to force everyone to pledge allegiance to the flag while hundreds of thousands of men whose allegiance to that flag included bravery and bloodshed must find shelter in doorways and subway tunnels and abandoned sewer pipes.”</i>

The beginning of each chapter has a paragraph or two from this "great" novel, Homage to Hammurabi," as well as longer passages within the novel, a tricky conceit since it's supposed to be the next great American novel and, for my money, doesn't appear to be so.

Greenleaf’s books are filled with righteous anger;  this one especially so.  Great read.  On to the next one.



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Superbia (Book 1 of the Superbia Series) by Bernard Schaffer | LibraryThing

Superbia (Book 1 of the Superbia Series) by Bernard Schaffer | LibraryThing:

New York City has about 36,000 cops.  All report to the same chain of command. Philadelphia is surrounded by counties divided into multiple municipalities, each having its own police force with different standards and operations.

Schaffer uses that structure to examine two detectives in a small police force, Frank and Vic.  Frank is coming back from leave having been shot and is assigned to work with Vic, an old-fashioned detective. He’s still in pain but Vic won’t let him have any narcotic pain-killers for fear he’ll become a junkie.

The book is a series of vignettes all tied together by their pursuit of Paris, a vicious drug dealer.

Some of the repartee and scenes are LOL funny.  The one where they go dumpster diving and have to wade through diaper feces was hysterical.  Others are sad as we watch Vic succomb to alcohol.  He’s lost his kids in a divorce, most of his pay goes to child support and alimony, and he realizes the only time he really feels alive is when he’s tricking a pedophile into confessing.

<i>Vic spun around and glared at Frank, his eyes red and streaming with tears.  "I am sick of being used by everyone around me, Frank.  I give everything I have to Danni, and she only ever wants more.  It's never enough.  I give everything I have to the Chief, and he only shines me on with promises that will never come true.  The only time I feel alive is when I'm standing in blood and guts or talking to child molesters, Frank.  Don't you see how fucked up that is?  For one second, try and imagine how fucked up that is." "Maybe you need a different job." "Do you know why I became a cop?  I was curious," Vic said.  "I wanted to peek behind the curtain of evil, but what I saw can't be unseen, Frank.  No matter how hard I try.  All I had to hold onto was the kids, and without them, it's like the lights have all gone out."</i>

The book is quite good if a bit unusual and provides an intimate look at the strains and pressures of being a cop.



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The Heritage: A Daughter's Memories Of Louis Bromfield by Ellen Bromfield Geld | LibraryThing

The Heritage: A Daughter's Memories Of Louis Bromfield by Ellen Bromfield Geld | LibraryThing:

I always loved working on my uncle’s dairy farm during the summers. As a teen, I discovered the Louis Bromfield “Malabar Farm” series of books. I fell in love with his theories of agriculture and organic farming. I devoured all the books when I was in college; they presented such an idyllic view of life on the farm. They were a major force in my decision to go into dairy farming after college. That phase lasted about five years.

Bromfield bought the farm that he named “Malabar” (after the Malabar Coast)with earnings from the books he had written about India (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/396988.The_Rains_Came] which was made into a movie that won some Academy Awards, The Rains of Ranchipur.) To give you a flavor of his books one need only read this short paragraph about the ending of the movie: Lady Edwina tries to explain to the Maharani that her love for Safti has become true, so much so that she will make the sacrifice of leaving him for his own good. She drives away from Ranchipur with her husband. You get the idea. His books were extremely popular and even earned him a Pulitzer.

The farm was run down with pastures being taken over by thistles and other “noxious” weeds (I suppose one might argue that was nature reclaiming what it had lost.) Gullies were causing erosion and the buildings were in a state of disrepair.

Bromfield had studied agriculture at Cornell for several years before transferring to Columbia to study journalism. His agricultural ideas, considered fresh and innovative in the forties and fifties had their roots in what he had learned in school. (Fresh with naivete, when I was working on my uncle’s dairy farm in Wisconsin, I described many of Bromfield’s ideas to my uncle, who, in his inimitably kind manner, replied, “well, I guess he studied at the same places we did.”)

Using his considerable fortune, Bromfield implemented conservation techniques and experimented with “new” practices such as roto-tilling instead of moldboard plowing (a practice still used some places but not as much any more because of its high energy requirements,) chisel plowing (very common now) and multiflora rose plantings to replace fences as they attracted large numbers of birds and other wildlife while keeping cattle safely penned in a field. Multiflora rose is now considered an invasive (it is native to Korea and Japan) noxious species as it spreads wildly, taking over everything. It’s certainly quite pretty and good fodder for goats, but very discouraged presently.

The plan for the farm was roughly that of a cooperative with the member families earning a salary with rent-free housing and food from the farm. It was to be a general farm mixing dairy with beef, hogs, chickens a variety of fruits and a common vegetable garden Bromfield was to cover all the expenses until the farm made a profit and then would draw 5% of any net, the rest to be divided among the families. The farm manager Max, a very competent sort, remained skeptical, arguing the cost of machinery was more than the farm would be able to bear and noting presciently that much of the food could be purchased cheaper than it could be raised.

Ellen published these memoirs first in 1962, just a few years after her father’s death and then they were republished some thirty-five years later. The writing is often quite lyrical:

We came to Malabar Farm in early spring, which is an important condition in the fixing a farm in the heart. We saw the winter whiteness that covered the hills and burdened the limbs of trees dissolve under the cold misery of March rains, into thick sucking mud, which dragged off our boots a hundred times between the house and the barn. The mud and rain, chill and sorry, converged upon Switzer’s Creek, swelling it to the proportions of a roaring river. It lapped at the groaning iron frame of the bridge, grating its underside with bits of driftwood and trunks of fallen trees which, once the rains had ceased, would lodge to form deep pools where trout streaked temptingly silver in the summer twilight.

After Bromfield published  Pleasant Valley, the first of the Malabar books, the others being Malabar Farm  and Out of the Earth, he became something of a cult figure and the farm was beset by hoards of visitors, Bromfield holding court in a rather heroic manner.

He was seldom accurate in his descriptions. If anything he was expansive and grossly optimistic and I think any good farmer with sharp ears and a practical eye could have tripped him up on a hundred disparities. But, somehow, his audience didn't seem to care about these enthusiastic exaggerations. What seemed to be important was the picture they evoked, the whole vast scene of farm life which suddenly became complete, important and, using one of his favorite expressions, "limitless in possibilities" 'the common everyday practice that most of those people carried out became suddenly alive and meaningful as he described them in a way that every farmer understood but could never quite describe to himself.

Ellen continued her father’s dream recreating Malabar in Brazil where they foster sustainable agriculture. Malabar Farm itself could never sustain itself after Bromfield’s death. The children had no ability to keep it going so it was sold to a trust which eventually donated it to become a state park in Ohio (which I MUST visit one of these years.)

The book is hagiographic, but so what? Bromfield was her father. In the end, I realize now that Malabar Farm was a rich man’s plaything, but in a good way. Some of his ideas were worth adopting and the fact that people like Humphrey Bogart could marry Lauren Bacall there helped to publicize his thinking. It never would have succeeded without his considerable income from writing, however. Bromfield had the best of all worlds: the farm, a great place to hang out and play with, and a vibrant intellectual community. His wife, Mary, wasn’t quite so fortunate. Bromfield “rescued” her from a Massachusett’s Brahmin environment, and she did fine as they traveled around Europe and the world, but the farm made her very lonely.

I still retain very fond memories of lying around my dorm room transported to the idyllic lands of Malabar Farm.

References: http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/fact/romu1.htm





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Peccadillo - A Katla Novel (Amsterdam Assassin Series) by Martyn V. Halm | LibraryThing

Peccadillo - A Katla Novel (Amsterdam Assassin Series) by Martyn V. Halm | LibraryThing:

Wow. This second in the series is really a page-turner. Halm takes us in a slightly different direction. A gang of Chinese underworld are anxious to take over Sphinx Shipping of which Katla is a majority stockholder (in reality probably the brains behind the operation) and that want it for free.  Katla is not about to give away her investment.  A rapid chess game results as each side seeks advantage.

Katla’s circle of friends expands (I recommend reading the books in order) adding Anouk, a talented artist and sculptor, ex-girlfriend of Bram.  Zeph, Bram’s Rastafarian friend who is raising organic ganja, also becomes more involved which permits Halm to create several layers of moral tension as Zeph is as non-violent as possible and Bram wants to protect that innocence.  Katla even takes on a fellow professional as backup.

It will be interesting to see how Katla manages to maintain her anonymity in the third volume after as the number of people who know that she is Loki continues to increase. Given the number of dead bodies after the attack on the triad, surely the police will take a more pronounced interest in Loki.

Very fun read.  This one will be hard to top.



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Dublin Noir: The Celtic Tiger Vs. the Ugly American (Akashic Noir Series) by Ken Bruen | LibraryThing

Dublin Noir: The Celtic Tiger Vs. the Ugly American (Akashic Noir Series) by Ken Bruen | LibraryThing: " Akashic Books has been issuing a series of books that thematically collect "noir" stories related to specific cities, e.g., Richmond Noir, Philadelphia Noir, etc., although I see there is a recent one entitled "Grand Central Noir;" perhaps they ran out of cities. The books are an excellent way to discover authors writing in the noir genre -- if there is such a thing -- and I've already order some books based on stories in "Dublin Noir: The Celtic Tiger Vs. the Ugly American" edited by Ken Bruen.

Obviously, maintaining a consistent level of excellence is difficult with so many authors, and I doubt if I will seek out Jason Starr (very silly story). On the other hand, "Rope-A-Dope" by Craig MacDonald had a nifty twisted ending. One critique of mine is that I wish the editors had limited themselves to authentic Irish writers rather than include stories set in Dublin by non-native writers, e.g., Laura Lippman Personal prejudice. The real Dublin is, of course, much less noir."



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