Grave Passage by William Doonan | LibraryThing

I love ships, but I remember being horribly seasick way back when I was a child and we took transatlantic liners to Europe so naturally I have always been reluctant to do what I’d really like to do and which my father did -- sail on a freighter sometime.  I love the looks of the classic liner, even the modern cruise ship’s lines have appeal.  But after watching YouTube videos of cruises and seeing the number of passengers they cram on board with golf courses and rock climbing and shopping and all that bullshit, I am thoroughly deterred.  When (and if) I ever go to sea, I want to be at sea, not on some floating resort with people my age. Ugh.

That doesn’t mean I dislike reading about ships.  That’s why I bought several books in the Henry Grave series.  He’s an investigator for the Cruise Line Association.  He’s also old (eighties) but he’s a cunning fellow, so when an FBI profiler, who was a lecturer on a cruise ship and famous for his capture of the Crossing Guard Killer, is found dead at the top of the rock climbing wall.   Grave has a bizarre background and he’s funny talking about it: “We Googled you,” Hugh Arlen said, interrupting my train of thought. “That’s a computer term. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the internet.” “I once had a number calculating machine.” “We learned some interesting things about you. You were a POW.” “I was. It was the most intensive weight reduction program money can buy. I was quite thin by the end. Also, I lost four teeth, but that’s a story for another day. I had them replaced. You can see just back here.” I leaned forward and opened my mouth wide. 

Needless to say he appears totally innocuous. But very clever.  Having known a talented forger in the POW camps, he has an entire collection of fake ID cards.  And who would question and old man’s veracity?   Interviewing one couple he hands them a card.  Wrong card. Turns out it says he’s from Penthouse.

I frowned. I looked at the card. I think it wasn’t the one I was looking for. “Just freelance. An article here and there.” “It says here you’re the senior editor.” Opal pointed to the title under my name. I found my glasses and had a closer look. So it did.  “It’s a thankless job,” I told them. Opal backed off a little. “I had grand ideas when I took the job. We were going to move into whole new areas; more focus on the environment, alternative energies, orphans and koala bears, that sort of thing. I felt the magazine had gotten off track with all the nudity.” “But it’s a pornography magazine,” Doug insisted. “Nudity is its track.” I nodded. “Which is why they fired me as senior editor, but I still get to write hard-hitting articles. Last month I wrote about teenage runaways in Egypt. They leave their families and then go to the pyramids to try to make it there but they can’t find work so they just sniff glue at the pyramids. It’s very sad. You have no idea how young these kids are.”

Delightful read.  A whole series awaits.

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The Mezzo Wore Mink by Mark Schweizer | LibraryThing

Another charming mystery with Chief of Police Hayden and the St. Barnabas congregation.  Everything is tongue-in-cheek as Schweitzer gently savages religious rigidity.   The shtick in the series is that Hayden is also a frustrated writer, much maligned by Meg, his girlfriend.  He’s writing a series of potboilers using Raymond Chandler’s typewriter and while wearing Chandler's hat.  The writing of these stories within the novel are singularly bad, and he reads them to the choir before practice.   

For example: “It’s on now,” she said, with a sly smile. “Anything come to mind?” She sat reclining on the sofa, her heaving bosom rising and falling like twin boiling Christmas puddings on Boxing Day, and even as her mouth whimpered no, no, no, the rest of her body ached yes, yes, yes, except for her appendix which had been removed the year before and so didn’t care very much either way.”

Hayden’s take on Worship Committee meetings:   Worship Committee meetings at church are to be avoided if at all possible. This is Rule No. 1 in the Hayden Konig Church Musician’s Handbook. Rule No. 2 is never, ever agree to do anything that Meg asks in her sultry, Lauren Bacall voice while whispering in my ear. Closely following is Rule No. 3: If anyone complains about how loud the organ is, the best possible response is to pull out all the stops. There are a myriad of other rules. For example: Never sing any anthem in which the composer or poet tries to rhyme any word with Jesus. This includes squeeze us, frees us, please us, etcetera.  There are exceptions, of course, and one of them was a brilliant Christmas madrigal, penned by myself, in which I managed to rhyme Holy Jesus with Mouldy Cheeses.

The St. Barnabas priests are usually borderline lunatics and often killers.  The latest temporary church leader wants to institute "The Singing Christmas Tree", (it should pay for itself in ten years or so) but that’s already being done by a church down the road, so Hayden humorously suggests "The Living Gobbler" for Thanksgiving. ( “How hard can it be? A couple of songs…the choir dressed up like tap-dancing broccoli.” “O, Lord,” said Georgia. “Tap-dancing broccoli?” “Sure,” I said. “Throw in some Thanksgiving tunes…” “How about Just As I Yam?” said Pete. “That’s a good one,” I said. “I was thinking of Up From The Gravy.”) The priest loves the idea.

Esoteric musical references are sprinkled throughout. He also has a pet owl, Archimedes, who occasionally flits in through the electric window to retrieve a dead mouse Hayden sets out for him.

Pete, the mayor, is in a tough reelection campaign.  He’s accused by Cynthia, his opponent, of letting in people of suspect moral character, namely, DANGL,  “The Daystar Naturists of God and Love. … I don’t think they’ll come into town naked. That’s why they have a camp. They’re not militant nudists. They’re Christian nudists.”

These are fun books.  Often LOL funny, although I downgraded this one a little because it seemed to drag a bit toward the end and  we really didn’t care who committed the crime. I’ve read about six novels in the series and we read all the rest for sure.

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Goodreads | The Watch That Went to War by Ira Weinstein — Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists

One of the really great things about the ease of self-publishing today is the plethora of personal memoirs of WW II and Vietnam veterans (not so many from the Korean War, oddly) that have appeared recently.  Some of these approach the status of literature, others are more like the stories told by your grandfather to his children and grandchildren.  Either way, they are extraordinarily valuable, providing insight into the experiences and feelings of young people (for most were barely out of their teens) facing truly difficult circumstances.

Weinstein’s brief book fits the second category and often the snippets feel a bit disorganized and rambling.  But would you criticize your grandfather for that in the midst of an enthralling story?  I didn’t think so.

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Nine Dragons (A Harry Bosch Novel) by Michael Connelly | LibraryThing

When authors with a successful series and a well-defined character take that character out of his/her normal environment, to a foreign country, say, where he performs spectacularly, you know  the book is about to go off the rails.  The only explanation I can come up with is that the author wanted a trip to whatever country where the new mystery takes place and wanted a tax write-off for the trip.

I like Michael Connelly and the Harry Bosch series.  This one, while a fast-paced read, as are the others, left me very unsatisfied.  Harry is not a very nice character, self-centered and hypercritical of others. For sure, he’s a good detective, but to ream out his partners for not telling him about everything, and then withhold crucial information from them doesn’t seem right or ethical, and it’s just stupid.

My eyes also begin to roll out of their sockets when the investigations become personal. My friends in law enforcement tell me that just never happens, and in this case, where Harry’s daughter is kidnapped in Hong Kong where she lives with his ex-wife, to prevent Harry’s investigation into a Triad extortion ring in LA, just totally strained my credibility.   Coincidences abound.  The gun found on a couple of bad guys in a hotel where they suspect his daughter might have been held, just happens to be inscribed with the initials of a “tunnel rat” in Vietnam, which Harry had been.  I mean, really.

Harry flies to Hong Kong to find and release his daughter, whom, he assumes, has been kidnapped by the Triad because of his personal actions in the LA investigation. He is confident he can accomplish all this in a *weekend* before he has to return to LA.  (Is there any doubt in the readers mind he’ll pull this off?  Is there anyone who actually believes this might ever be possible?) He leaves a trail of bodies following an “investigation” that was less believable than the Wizard of Oz.

Connelly is a competent writer and a good story-teller.  But this one just had me shaking my head in wonder.

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Floaters by Joseph Wambaugh | LibraryThing

Fortney and Leeds are two harbor patrol cops in San Diego.  Blaze is a hooker enlisted by Ambrose, the Keeper of the Cup, to engage in a scheme to thwart the New Zealanders likely win of the America Cup. It’s a complicated plan involving making one crane operator sick so another can arrange for the boat with it’s slick design to fall as it’s being lifted into the water.  Dawn is another hooker who happens to know Blaze and arranges to leave town before she can be murdered by her pimp.  Then there are a couple of really smart cops, “Letch” (you can guess how he got his nickname) Boggs, and Annie Zorn formerly Bartlett and Sullivan, a homicide detective.

All of these characters come together.

Lots of humorous and cynical dialogue and scenes.  I love the one where Fortney and Leeds see what is apparently a man walking on water (it *was* Easter Sunday so it might be allowed) only to discover it was a man walking on the top of his motor home at the boat ramp, screaming, “You fucking bitch.  I told you to put it in gear.”

Leeds is a practical joker. “Two years earlier he’d gone to the trouble of capturing a ground squirrel and putting it in the bottom drawer of the sergeant’s desk. Recapturing it after it scared the crap out of the guy had nearly destroyed the entire office...These days Leeds was preoccupied with politics rather than practical jokes. A hobnailed Republican, he’d dedicated himself to purging the nation of President Clinton, whom he called the dude with the world’s worst taste in babes. Anything could bring on a political diatribe. When they cruised past the Youth Camp area on Fiesta Island and a boozy bunch of teenagers playing volleyball on the beach flipped them off, Leeds said, “I wanna retire to a place where everyone waves at cops with all their fingers.”

Humorous scenes abound with lots of biting social commentary and ridicule of the America’s Cup culture.  Lots of fun.  I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Wambaugh and will now work (hardly work) my way through more of his books.

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