Book Review

  • The Alienist, Caleb Carr

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 1994, 599 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-57299-7

    These days, it seems that everyone loves a good serial killer thriller. A criminal type ideally suited to the needs of fiction (ie; “he has killed before… and will kill again until our heroes stop him!”), the rise in dramatic popularity of the serial killer can also find its roots in the rise of real-world cases of such criminals. While it would be foolish to maintain that the serial killer is a wholly modern creation, it does seems as if the late twentieth-century has been a breeding ground for them. You can most probably name half a dozen off the top of your head without breaking a sweat.

    You could blame many factors for this recrudescence (I’m arguing for easier transportation, media coverage, broken families and MTV myself) but the problem has become so relatively commonplace that modern police science now features a special area of expertise called “profiling”. You can read John Douglas’s Journey into Darkness for details, but profiling codifies all that’s been learned from past experience with criminal behavior and tries to fit this knowledge with known details from repeat offenders in the hope to learn about the criminal and predict his actions.

    Profiling as an accurate tool only took off in the 1970s, but criminals have been with us far longer. It only takes a little imagination to wonder when was the earliest time we could have conceived of profiling and applied it to a serial murderer. That’s essentially what Caleb Carr does in The Alienist, taking us to 1896 New York City.

    Our narrator is John Moore, a journalist dragged more or less willingly in the hunt for a child murderer. The main character, however, is someone else; Laszlo Kreizler, a gifted alienist (psychologist) who, well in advance of his time, is making headway on the science of profiling.

    The book is quick to hook us by an efficient introduction to the crimes and the team of investigators that will track down the perpetrator. (Including the requisite proto-feminist tough-girl character just so to acknowledge political correctness) New York City is a fascinating place, today or a hundred years ago, and Carr’s skill at representing the pre-skyscraper city without pedantry is one of his most laudable accomplishments.

    This is not a novel that will put you to sleep. Despite the historical setting, Carr is deliciously modern in his pacing, and compelling scenes flash by at a fast clip. One annoyance, though; Carr loves cliffhanger chapter endings, so don’t plan on reading “just another chapter”, because the changes are that you’ll just keep going. Which, depending on whether you have to wake up early the following morning, might not be a bad thing.

    I had the chance to curse my lack of knowledge of historical America once more while reading The Alienist, because even though the book is perfectly understandable without a history degree, there are a fair number of celebrity cameos (J.P. Morgan, Theodore Roosevelt, etc…) that hint at a superior level of enjoyment for gaslight period buffs.

    But don’t worry; the only requirement to relish The Alienist is a love of good thrillers. Avid readers of crime fiction will get an extra kick of reading about the protagonists’ effort at developing proto-profiling decades before the actual event. There is an undeniable intellectual appeal to witness the investigators pieces together clues and obscure reference to eventually come at a correct answer, even if the “poor abused killer” shtick isn’t new, even a hundred years ago. It’s also a bit of a letdown when the resolution is enacted in a violent Hollywoodish manner, but that, of course, is hardly the point of the book.

    It’s hard to oversell Caleb Carr’s The Alienist. Not only does it succeed on a conceptual level, giving us an original premise and an ambitious scope, but it also gets the more mundane elements correctly; the scenes, characters and the writing keeps our interest. Perhaps more successful as the sum of its parts than a die-hard crime thriller or social history, but still: Grrreat book; don’t miss it.

  • Plum Island, Nelson DeMille

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner, 1997, 574 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-60540-9

    Hey, guess what, constant reader? It’s summer. Uncovered sun, oppressive humidity, TV reruns… Like most winter-hardened Canadians, I suddenly feel the need to stop all activities, sit in the shade and work really hard at doing absolutely nothing. As there is a definite limit to the number of hours you can cat-nap -believe it or not- it’s always a good idea to keep a good seat-of-your-pants thriller to fill in the rest of the day.

    Chances are that you won’t be able to find much better than Nelson DeMille’s Plum Island in the summer-reading category. A big fat thriller mixing tension with smart-ass narration, this is one book that will keep you interested through it all without necessarily requiring excessive amounts of concentration. Just perfect for your summer-addled mind.

    Plum Island isn’t as much about a story as it’s about a character, our wisecracking narrator John Corey. Appropriately enough for a summer read, our novel begins with its hero in semi-vacation, actually on disability leave after a serious three-bullet incident in New York City. Temporarily relocated on the eastern edge of Long Island, Corey is, in theory, free to read as many fat thrillers as he’d want to.

    That is, if two people he knew didn’t have the misfortune to get killed in what initially seems to be a messy robbery. It’s not, of course, and as Corey digs deeper in the case, he discovers small-town scandals and suddenly has a lot to learn about pirate treasures and biological warfare. Limping and annoying his way to a solution, Corey even gets to sleep with two women and shoot a few people. All very satisfying. Or sign that you went from drowsy from dreaming in your lawn chair.

    At 550+ pages, Plum Island might have felt considerably longer if it wasn’t for Demille’s narration. John Corey is true-blue NYPD cop, with an extra dash of wittiness. His eye for detail and odd observation really help at giving life to the novel, and that’s not even mentioning the dialogue. Expect to laugh out loud a few times: Fortunately for us, Corey doesn’t like everyone he meets, and it’s invariably more fun to see the fireworks between our fearless protagonist and his least favorite characters.

    The thriller mechanics are as efficient as they can be from a writer with nearly a dozen other thrillers to his name. The slow accumulation of clues is steady, and even the red herring scenes are efficient, such as the memorable visit to a biological research center. A professional product from beginning to end.

    Still, there are lengths. They get worse as the sneering humor evaporates, more characters die and suddenly, we’re in straight no-joke thriller with man-against-man, man-against-nature and man-against-himself life-and-death conflicts. The last hundred pages stretch beyond reasonable length and even the most indulgent summer readers might feel a few faint touches of exasperation.

    But hey, guess what? Doesn’t matter. As you lie down, sweltering in thirty-degree heat, you’ll feel grateful for yet more time spent with John Corey in the cold, humid, windy shores of Long Island. There’s plenty in Plum Island to keep even the most demanding summer reader interested. Forget your bookmark and pick up your sun-tan lotion, because you’re going to be reading for a while.

  • Snapshots from Hell: The Making of an MBA, Peter Robinson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner, 1994, 286 pages, C$27.95 hc, ISBN 0-446-51786-0

    I must confess that I have often thought about writing a book about my first (and so far only) university degree. Mostly while undergoing said degree, usually whenever I was stuck in my room studying for yet another mind-crushing exam. By the end of the program, I even had a dramatic arc of sort with an happy ending; the story of a young man bouncing back from a humiliating first year, going from academic probation to a cum laude B.Sc. The idea shelved itself a few months after graduation, as I was struggling with the wonderful work of steady employment; I suspected that my story wasn’t at all very compelling. Tales of love triangles, demonic teachers, transient friendships, Jolt-fuelled all-nighters, razor-thin academic close calls, cryogenic winter mornings and the discovery of the Internet must be nearly universal amongst Computer Science students; what else could I bring to the common mind pool? By showing me what a truly gifted writer could do with such things, Peter Robinson’s Snapshots from Hell took me back -screaming and shouting- to my university days of not-so-long ago and made me think again about my own experience there.

    Few other academic acronyms mean more than MBA. In theory, these three letters are associated with analytical skills, business acumen and financial success. Get an MBA, says common wisdom, and you can start your business, become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and conquer the world. But the actually process of getting an MBA isn’t quite as well known. Granted, we assume it must include some studying and some class time, but what else, exactly?

    Peter Robinson was the right person at the right time to take us inside an MBA program. Having quit his job as a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, Robinson moved across the country to Stanford and began his business training. Unlike many of his classmates, Robinson was more familiar with words than numbers; as a “poet”, he’d have to mold his mind to the mathematical exactitude required of him after years of Washington double-answers.

    But that also put him in an ideal position to report on what he saw. Given his gift for clear writing, this is invaluable to us readers; Robinson can be wickedly funny, observant or analytical, and we can not only follow, but also understand his experience.

    Snapshots from Hell mostly covers Robinson’s first year at Stanford. Given my personal experience, I can agree with this choice; first year is tough on anyone and anyone not destroyed by the experience can only come out of it stronger. Robinson suffered -and his narrative describes his pain-, but he eventually won out. By the second year, he was used to it. Still, it’s a small stroke of genius to name the three sections of the book “Inferno,” “Pugatorio” and “Paradiso (sort of)”

    The writing style is simply wonderful, compulsively readable like a novel and yet filled with details that clearly bring out the lessons to learn from Robinson’s odyssey. Tales of friends dealing with the program are as illuminating as Robinson’s own efforts, allowing a glimpse of the program’s effect on various type of students.

    It’s hard to tell when Robinson’s skill ended and my own personal empathy kicked in, but in any case, I loved Snapshots from Hell. It accomplishes what it sets out to do -tell the world about the perils on an MBA degree- in such a wonderful way that it’s hard not to be enthusiastic about it. It definitely ranks as a must-read for anyone -like me, yes- who’s toying with the idea of getting an MBA some time in the future. Better warned than surprised, right?

  • Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog, Mark Leyner

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harmony, 1995, 216 pages, C$26.50 tpb, ISBN 0-517-59384-X

    When reading anything by Mark Leyner, the tagline from the HIGHLANDER film series come to mind: There can only be one. You might try to find similar authors, but even a carefully-blended mix of Thompson, Adams and Stephenson won’t even come close to the pure undiluted Leyner. His mixture of wide-ranging knowledge, go-for-broke recklessness and carefully-honed absurdity easily places him in a special position in modern humor writing.

    Though as of this writing I haven’t yet been able to manage acquiring a copy of Leyner’s breakthrough book My Cousin, my Gastroenterologist, I was first hooked on his follow-up novel, Et Tu, Babe? a hilarious portrait of the writer-as-megalomaniac. Reading this book after so many intensely boring genre novels was like discovering MTV after a decade of Masterpiece Theater. Mainlining with pure caffeine. Adding nitrous oxyde to your morning commute.

    Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog is Leyner’s third book (well, fourth if you include I Smell Esther Williams, about which later.) and while it is in a few ways a let-down after Et Tu, Babe, there’s nothing wrong with an extra dose of pure Leyner.

    Part of the letdown is inevitable, going from the unified (if disjoint) narrative of Et Tu, Babe? to the straight-ahead collection of plays, short stories and gonzo journalism in this follow-up. It’s not that Leyner is best at novels (his longer pieces are really excuses to go from one hilarious vignette to another), but shorter pieces can’t depend on sustained jokes and long build-ups. Blah, whatever; there are still more jokes per square page here than anywhere else.

    The second issue here is that Leyner seemed to have grown up a little. Either that or I’ve become used to his style. Nah. If you take a look at Leyner’s first book, a 1983 collection of pieces entitled I Smell Esther Williams, you’ll find an unrecognizable -and nearly unreadable- Leyner. While each sentence has a kernel of comic effect, they don’t seem to relate to each other in any fashion, and the result is a hyperspeed mish-mash of quasi-epigrams that’s just impossible to read in any fashion. Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog serves to show how much Leyner’s been working on his craft. There are very few incoherent passages (and those who are pass quickly) and Leyner shows that he’s more than able to sustain our interest for longer pieces (the play “Young Bergdorf Goodman Brown” is 80 pages long, and fun from start to finish)

    One amusing note; there appears to be some nonfiction content in Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog, if I believe a few interview made by Leyner after the publication of the book. The problem is that they’re not identified, and probably unidentifiable. What I took to be one of the zaniest pieces in the book (“The Good Seed”, about -no kidding- a sperm bank located in the Empire State Building) is in fact a nonfiction piece with some high-octane extrapolation thrown in. Good luck trying to find the rest of the nonfiction, if there’s any more.

    If I’ve succeeded in scaring some of you away from Leyner’s stuff, good; Not everyone can handle his books. It’s not enough to acknowledge that Leyner has no compunction about writing with his fantasy date with Princess Di, insert hard-core pornography in his pieces, recommend bringing your kids to practice extreme sports such as drag racing or committing crimes in order to become more attractive to the opposite sex. You’ve got to embrace his weirdness and make it your own. If the idea of loving, exemplary parents driving their kids to murder somehow strikes you as interesting in any way… well, welcome to the club. You’ll love the required reading material.

  • Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, Helen Fielding

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Penguin, 1999, 338 pages, C$19.00 tpb, ISBN 0-14-029847-9

    I really liked Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and it seems as if I wasn’t the only one; the book remained one of Britain’s best-seller for quite some time. With this success, and a successful film adaptation, it was inevitable to see a sequel popping up in bookstores.

    The good and the bad news about The Edge of Reason are that, overall, it’s more of the same thing. If you loved Bridget Jones in her first diary -and who didn’t?-, you’ll love her about as much in the second one. Our heroine is still adorably confused, the writing style still as brisk, and the overall effect quite sympathetic. If you loved the prequel, there’s no doubt that you’ll like The Edge of Reason.

    Bridget begins her second diary scant weeks after the events of the first one; we find her still happily shacking up with Mark Darcy, the rock-solid barrister romantic hero of the first volume. All is well in paradise… or is it? A few obvious misunderstandings, comic interludes and disloyal incidents from acquaintances later, Bridget finds herself sort-of-single once again and determined to chuck all of her self-help books in the trash again.

    Hey, don’t worry; Mr. Darcy isn’t all that far away, and neither is the happy ending. In the meantime, Bridget is free to make even more outrageous slip-ups, obsess some more about her body and suffer through the manias of her mother. You can’t do the same romantic shtick twice, and the second volume of the Bridget Jones series is slanted towards broader comedy.

    As usual, some specific bits are laugh-aloud funny; a Colin Firth interview published verbatim (because Bridget goofed up once more) reads like the most asinine fan interview ever conducted. Furthermore, several of the funniest bits are self-contained in wonderful epigrams. You might even recognize moments of truth in Fielding’s prose. Your reviewer found himself laughing silly at the suggestions that Bridget was dumped for insufficient geographic knowledge, an incident with troubling similarities having happened in his immediate vicinity a few weeks before.

    Alas, as comic bits go, Fielding also includes less-amusing moments. It’s not easy to milk humor from a suicide attempt (fortunately, not Bridget’s) nor a few days in prison, and indeed, the laughs feel far more forced during these moments. If you can’t stand situational comedy whose setup is required by stupid misunderstandings, chances are that you’ll have a few problems with this book, which depends heavily on Bridget and Mark Darcy not communicating effectively at several crucial moments.

    The other big problem of The Edge of Reason is its occasional lack of relevance to the average reader. Everyone reading Bridget Jones’s Diary could identify with the protagonist or relate her to an acquaintance, mostly because her problems were so universal. Not so in the sequel; how many of us get to fly to Italy to interview Colin Firth, or take vacations in Thailand and then by framed for drug smuggling? Granted, it’s funny to see how Bridget reacts to these problems (she ends up lip-synching Madonna in prison) but on the other hand, it’s not something we’re likely to relate with our day-to-day lives. But, alas, maybe that’s the price to pay to extend a one-novel character… But as long as Bridget doesn’t find herself battling aliens by the third volume of the series, this isn’t cause for serious concern.

    These caveats expressed, fans of the first volume can’t really go wrong by checking out The Edge of Reason. Sure, it’s more of the same, but when it’s as good as Bridget Jones’s Diary, why complain?

  • The Princess Bride, William Goldman

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Del Rey, 1973, 283 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-345-34803-6

    Ask around for opinions about THE PRINCESS BRIDE (the film), and you’ll get almost-unanimous agreement; everyone loved it to pieces. Many people will repeat snatches to the dialogue verbatim, from “Inconceivable!” to “My Name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!” While no one is too sure about who played who in the film (except for André the Giant, who everyone remembers), everyone who’s seen THE PRINCESS BRIDE loves it.

    I’m no exception, though I remember liking the first half of the film a lot more than the second half, where the protagonist became as useful as a bag of potatoes and the tale slogged on despite, rather than because, of him. Still; you can’t beat lines like “You made one of the great mistakes; not ‘you shall not wage a land war in Asia’, but the other one!”

    In any case, I was quite happy to be able to snap a mint copy of The Princess Bride at an used-book sale. Funny as the movie was, it was probably nothing compared to the mordant prose of William Goldman.

    It turns out that while the book does indeed have more punchlines than the film, it shares with it a noticeable slowdown in the end.

    One aspect of The Princess Bride that wasn’t possible to explore in the film is the whole metafictional conceit of the book. Goldman starts with a long (29 pages) introduction in which he details how his father read him S.G. Morgenstein’s “The Princess Bride” when he was young (that part is in the film), but when he tried giving it to his son, the result was unreadable (this part isn’t) so Goldman set out to re-edit the original so that it contained only the good parts. The following book is peppered with breaks from “Morgenstein”’s narrative in which Goldman explains his editing choices.

    This makes The Princess Bride‘s parody of fairy tales a bit more obvious, not to mention an extra opportunity to insert modern punchlines to a historical tale. It adds another level of content as Goldman wiggles out of some difficult scenes or casually mentions some ludicrous “original” content. (“Morgenstein opens this chapter with sixty-six pages of Florinese history” [P.59])

    In any case, the first half of The Princess Bride is pure fun to read and (on potential alone) would rank as one of the funniest books of any year. But unfortunately, Goldman takes the deconstruction a step too far and saps vital energy out of the tale.

    I had always felt, while watching the film, that to make the protagonist physically useless halfway through the tale was a mistake. It removed the story’s most interesting character out of the action and placed too much emphasis on the secondary players. Yes, it so provided more obstacles for our heroes to overcome… but the way it was handled, it always seemed like a boring cheat to me. This is alleviated, somewhat, in the book (it’s not as visually ridiculous), but is emblematic of the flagging interest of the second half.

    But then, alas, the ending… One of the most common errors in parodying a genre is to remove the qualities that make it so entertaining, by accident or design. One of the strengths of fairy tales, for instance, is the unwavering happy ending. (Pedantic note: We’re talking about modern Disneyesque fairy tales, not the grim Brother Grimm versions, in which social behaviour lessons were an integral part of the plot and body-counts rivalled today’s horror films.) While The Princess Bride isn’t exactly a downer by any means, it doesn’t end on a rightfully triumphant note, drowned as it is in Goldman’s heavy-handed “life isn’t fair” refrain.

    Still, I’d be a chump to keep you from rushing out and getting The Princess Bride. A wonderful book despite its flaws. And if you haven’t seen the film yet, well, what’s your excuse?

  • Riptide, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner, 1998, 465 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-60717-7

    Most Canadian schoolboys are familiar with the story of Oak Island, a small piece of land located in the Atlantic Ocean, a few miles away from Nova Scotia. It would be a completely unremarkable island if it wasn’t for one fabulous story; the rumor of a fantastically well-protected treasure hidden under the surface.

    It began with the discovery of a tree with a rope-burnt stump by two boys. It continued with various digs, constantly frustrated by the influx of water rushing into the pit through, possibly, cleverly engineered flooding tunnels. The Money Pit has killed a dozen men so far, and bankrupted at least twice as many. Is there a treasure down there? D’Arcy O’Connor’s excellent non-fiction book The Big Dig seems to indicate so. But unless we develop engineering techniques considerably more advanced than those of today, we’ll probably never know.

    So ends the “real” story of Oak Island, with all the wonderfully dramatic loose ends implied (I’ve left out rumors of gold bullion, mega-rich pirates, Bacon-being-Shakespeare and various hard evidence of something strange under the island). To get a reasonably satisfying story about Oak Island’s treasure, we must turn to fiction: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s Riptide.

    Given the well-known story of Oak Island and the author’s usually careful research, it’s somewhat frustrating to note that nowhere in Riptide is any acknowledgement of the source story. American chauvinism? Maybe.

    In any case, the initial setup is identical: An island on the eastern seaboard, a fantastic treasure, deadly engineering. For added dramatic effect, Preston & Child move the island to Maine and adds a tortured character who’s already lost a brother to the island.

    At the novel’s beginning, an all-out engineering effort is assembled to finally conquer the island and get the treasure out. This being a modern techno-thriller, however, you can be sure that they won’t. (The days of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, when protagonists could become millionaires on discovered treasures, are long past. The new techno-thrillers dictate that ambition and determination is to be squished flat for the sin of arrogance. They call that progress.) It becomes apparent as soon as a preacher warns everyone against the corruption of money that this won’t have a cheery ending. But don’t worry: Even though the treasure is indeed lost, there’s a pretty good reason for that. Chances are that readers, at least, won’t feel cheated at all.

    And while Preston & Child’s novels have elevated the scientist-punishment ending to new levels of clichés, it’s indeed quite rare to feel cheated by their books. They know what they’re doing. The pacing is snappy, the details are fascinating and there’s always something interesting going on. Sure, their characters are only adequate and their hypocritical anti-science shtick is wearisome (like Crichton, they revel in the possibilities while decrying them.), but overall, it’s decent entertainment.

    There are annoyances, for sure; Readers will guess part of the big secret well before the protagonist (who’s supposed to be a doctor but never makes the link between missing teeth, burns and failing immunological systems.) and guess another plot twist pages before the “team of experts” does (“What if there’s more than one flooding tunnel?”). The ending is overlong and needlessly drawn-out. The human villain is unnecessarily evil, illustrating once more the authors’ obsession with painting ambition as unmitigatingly bad.

    But never mind. Riptide, with all its flaws, stands as the duo’s best novel yet, a blockbuster thriller with flaws but also a lot of fun. It’ll be a special treat for everyone who has ever heard about Oak Island and wondered what might lie down there. Preston and Child have done their homework and delivered an imaginative thriller with a lot of bang for the buck. Don’t miss it if you like the treasure-hunting genre.

  • The Grid, Philip Kerr

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Seal, 1995, 446 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-7704-2740-5

    Michael Crichton has made quite a name for himself with a series of science-fiction novels masquerading as thrillers. Despite simplistic characters, a cookie-cutter approach to plotting, clunky expository passages and a constant lack of subtlety in cheap techno-alarmism, he regularly sits atop bestseller lists. The reasons for this success boil down to his professionalism. While straightforward, his books are cleverly written for maximum readability and a veneer of sophistication. Even jaded readers who see through his intellectual hypocrisy (decrying technology while embracing it to a pornographic degree, for instance) have to admire his technical skill at building a solid structure and his flair for telling details and sympathetic characters.

    Well, Philip Kerr is no Michael Crichton.

    Stop me if you’ve heard this story before: In Los Angeles, a new high-tech skyscraper is days away from inauguration. But suddenly, a man dies-

    —what? Yes, this is indeed a killer building story. Gee, we have seen this story before. Many times. No points for originality. Indeed, we even seem to recall a Crichton story or two… is it Jurassic Park or Westworld…? Or maybe RUNAWAY…? Hmm…

    In any case, it’s obvious from the start that Kerr has a lot to learn in order to challenge Crichton. Believe it or not, his characters are actually less interesting and less sympathetic. In thriller terms, this means that you’ll even struggle to remember their names from one page to another. You may bitch and moan about the B-movie approach to characterisation that limits itself to clearly defined demographic groups, but in The Grid, everyone is pretty much a middle-aged white man. Who all speak alike. Worse; you’re given no reason to care for them. Aside from a policeman (I think) the three other protagonists include a tyrannical architect who callously fires people on a whim and an executive who cheats around with a Feng-Shui consultant.

    Oh yeah; Feng-Shui. As with the Crichton novels, there’s heaps of semi-fascinating trivia more or less dumped in this novel’s 446 pages. A lot of it sticks out, such as Kerr’s typically melodramatic notions about Artificial Intelligence. In The Grid, our typically all-powerful computer is corrupted by… wait for it… a teenager’s video game. Naturally, the computer comes to see itself as a player whose goal is to kill all human enemies. Or something like that, because for dramatic purposes, all the victims have to be picked off one by one, which doesn’t appear to be a particularly efficient strategy.

    The only semi-compelling reason to read The Grid is in this parade of gruesome death, handled about as imaginatively as in the fourth or fifth instalment of your typical slasher film series. We get elevator squishy, flickering lights causing a brain to burn itself out through epileptic seizures (that one was new to me, though no less ridiculous), drowning in water-filled bathrooms (!), boring electrocutions, pool-cleaning chemical warfare and a monotonous series of falls from great heights. Most of the time, you’ll end up cheering for the building given that it’s getting rid of one useless character after another. Still, it’s disturbing to see Kerr languorously describe naked dead women.

    In short, there aren’t very many reasons to read The Grid. Except if you’re stuck in a building who wants to kill you for bonus points; it may make your final demise seem sweeter. I mean, look at what it’s made me do: write nice things about Michael Crichton!

  • Los Alamos, Joseph Kanon

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Island, 1997, 517 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-440-22407-1

    You might think that after a few hundred year’s worth of experimentation with the novelistic form, everything worth doing has been done at least once. And, in large part, this is true. There’s a saying somewhere about it being only four (or eight, or fifty-three) basic plots, and indeed it’s hard to find truly original works any more. Human emotions are finite, but fortunately, variations and combinations are infinite.

    Often, the joys of a novel can be found in the unison of known elements from different fields. In Los Alamos, Joseph Kanon sets a murder mystery against the fascinating WW2 backdrop of the Manhattan Project, and mixes in a romance for good measure. It doesn’t mesh all that well, but at least it’s interesting to read.

    As with so many novels set in an exotic environment, our passport to Los Alamos, with its collection of scientists, engineers, soldiers and associated family members, is a journalist named Michael Connolly. Hazily drafted from journalism and assigned to criminal investigation, Connolly is a sleuth outside the law, indeed almost outside the normal security apparatus. What he discovers in Los Alamos is our way of understanding that particular micro-society.

    A tech writer such as Bruce Sterling would have tremendous fun showing us how Los Alamos’ unlikely mix of physics geniuses, security personnel and top-notch technicians might represent the archetype of late twentieth-century geek culture, but Kanon is no geek, and his view on Los Alamos is closer to noir than to techno. Connolly is quick to become entangled in the mess of extra-marital affairs, hush-hush homosexuality, invasive security and lovelorn wives that surround the pure-science Manhattan project.

    There is, in the middle of all, a crime. A project member killed for what may be a myriad of reasons—from an illicit affair to money matters. Connolly will have to learn his job as he goes along, digging deep in Los Alamos to uncover secrets that might or might not be relevant, but that no one wants to see brought to light.

    At the same time, he falls for one of the wives, who’s gradually revealed to be rather less than pure and, inevitably, entangled in the murder. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s also an espionage thriller buried in Los Alamos, as Connolly realizes that foreign spies are smuggling secrets out of the place. Is this linked to the murder? Well, what do you think?

    In theory, all the elements are there for a crackerjack book, mixing historical, crime, espionage and romantic fiction. How can it all go wrong?

    With unnecessary gravitas, it seems. Kanon isn’t happy to have this rich palette of elements, and mixes a bit too much, too deliberately to ensure a harmonious result. As a result, various elements compete with each other, morassed in a ponderous style that seems to underscore the seriousness of it all. In attempting too much, Kanon forgets the need for genre fiction to entertain above all, and if Los Alamos is still a good read, it seems too heavy to truly rise above its base elements and truly achieve its potential. Compare and contrast this novel with the Bletchley Park sequences of Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, for instance, for an edifying illustration of two very different approaches.

    It’s also somewhat of a shame that the stereotypical romance cannot be camouflaged by the dour prose to become anything else but a distraction. Of course, he’s going to fall for her. Of course, she’ll prove to be essential to the resolution. It is, by far, the most ordinary part of the narrative, and also the weakest.

    But for readers looking for something slightly different, this shouldn’t be enough to drive them away from the subtle pleasures of Los Alamos. It would take much more than these mere quibbles to screw up such a strong premise, and Kanon proves to be good enough. It won’t stop more technically aware readers to wonder aloud at how other writers might have approached the same elements, but don’t let that stop you from reading the book as it is.

  • Resumé with Monsters, William Browning Spencer

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    White Wolf/Borealis, 1995, 469 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 1-56504-913-6

    Dilbert meets Lovecraft.

    Dynamite concept. Too bad that’s not quite what Resumé with Monsters is really doing.

    Granted, there are satirical scenes of worker alienation in office environments. True, the book is filled with explicit references to Lovecraft and his menagerie of slithery, tentacular, unimaginable creatures.

    But don’t think that the result is a laugh riot. Or that the expected goodies are delivered in satisfying portions.

    Our protagonist is Philip Kenan, a budding writer struggling with a series of low-end job while trying to fulfil his true goal in life; finishing a massive horror novel in the pure Lovecraftian tradition. Except that the monsters are real. They’re following him around. He perceives them where others don’t see anything. But he’s not fooled. A previous encounter with them has cost him his job and his girlfriend. Now he slaves at a print shop, but the creatures are coming back…

    Let’s admit up-front that Resumé with Monsters is a very enjoyable book. Breezily written, original in scope and execution, it’s a delightfully weird romp through a modern re-telling of the Lovecraft mythos. The link between modern corporations and soul-sucking monsters that drive you insane is so obvious after the fact that it’s a wonder that no one has thought about writing something of the sort before.

    This being said, readers should be cautioned that William Browning Spencer has no aspirations at being the next Scott Adams, and while Resumé with Monsters is a comedy/horror hybrid, the emphasis here should be placed on hybrid. The funniest moments are often simultaneously the most horrific and it’s not as much a guilt-free laugh riot as you may initially think. Chills and chuckles are on the menu. Funny strange rather than funny ha-ha most of the time.

    There are a few lulls here and there, especially when our hero gets unstuck in time and bounces around for a few chapters. A few unexpected twists and turns are good for momentary disorientation. Spencer regrettably sustains the “if he crazy or is he not?” ambiguity for far too long after the reader’s indulgence is established. It still ends up gelling quite well by the end, with a curiously sentimental note that does a lot to establish the warm fuzzy impression left by the book.

    Don’t be fooled by the novel’s thickness; due to an unusually airy typography, the novel takes maybe a third more space than stories of this length. It makes the reading even easier. Not that you’ll have trouble reading “only a few more pages” of the novel; it would rank as a one-sitting book if it wasn’t for the fact that you’ll want to read it as slowly as possible in order to savour the full effect of the writing. The passages about the protagonists’ past relationship alone are worth careful reading, regardless of Lovecraftian monsters or corporate satire.

    In the end, while Resumé with Monsters reasonably exceeds most of the basic requirements for a solid, memorable read, it’s also a victim of its own cleverness. Readers with some imagination will ceize upon the office/horror connection and see possibilities that Spencer might have missed. Certainly worth a look (obviously ranking as a must-read for Lovecraft enthusiasts); but beware the inevitable let-down. After all, even the best books can’t contain everything.

  • The Jericho Files, Alan Gold

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper, 1993, 578 pages, C$6.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-06-100894-X

    Stay away from this book. I mean it.

    You most probably read thrillers for fun. To pass time on the bus. To relax on the beach. To escape reality to a more interesting world where government are either steadfastly protecting our freedom or working hard at enslaving us.

    So you naturally want a well-paced story, protagonists you can root for, an original premise and a kicking conclusion that leaves everyone happy and the bad guys punished.

    I’m telling you: avoid Alan Gold’s The Jericho Files.

    It does start promisingly. At a peace conference where an agreement is about to be signed between Israelis and Arabs, the Prime Minister of Israel gets up, insults the whole crowd, does everything short of a snappy Nazi salute and plunges the entire proceedings in chaos. There’s no such thing as a good mystery to get the ball rolling on a novel, and this is a fascinating one.

    Then we’re inevitably introduced to our two protagonists. Miriam Davis is a tough but adorable Jewish Australian lawyer. She’s dating Paul Sinclair, a journalist. They’re a cute couple, even though they have a few problems due to religious differences. To patch things up, they visit her grandfather, who tells them a story about the Israeli Prime Minister’s past. Photographic proof in hand, he maintains that this particular Prime Minster -back in Pre-WW2 Poland- was a die-hard communist who helped to eradicate entire Jewish villages. Egawd! Could he be right?

    Well, of course he is. We’re privy to the conspiracies of an old man, who masterminds a plot for complete Russian world domination! Miriam’s grandfather is killed, Paul’s apartment is ransacked, and before long, our two intrepid investigators are on a plane away from Australia, looking for answers in the old countries.

    (Gold doesn’t miss an occasion to pump up Israel’s profile and generally make a fanfare out of Jewishness. That’s cool -I’m generally sympathetic to Israel-, but when constantly repeated over hundreds of pages, it can become annoying.)

    Meanwhile, Israel is torn apart by martial law and agents provocateurs. Our protagonists escape from the country with death teams hot on their heels and continue on to Poland, where they confirm the grandfather’s story. But everywhere they go, their witnesses and informants are ruthlessly killed shortly after having talked.

    Understand that I’m summarizing a lot, but not condensing much. Even though The Jericho Files nearly hits 600 pages, not a lot happens there. The narrative is padded with useless chatter, scenes which sap the suspense of the novel and a considerable amount of red herrings, cardboard characters, gratuitous subplots and dull moments.

    Eventually, Paul and Miriam link up with powerful Russian men who might be in a position to stop the Jericho plan. They gather their forces, prepare their counterstrike…

    …and are all killed. Paul and Miriam are taken deep inside a Russian forest and killed one after another by a bullet in the head. They’re then disfigured by sulphuric acid and buried in an unmarked grave.

    The End.

    I’m not making this up. 550+ pages for a complete failure and an unremarkable death.

    Couple this awful ending with the tepid pacing, and you’ve got a recipe for the anti-thesis of everything fun, good and sacred about thrillers. It doesn’t do to kick the reader in the head after s/he’s been patient enough to slog through 550+ pages of mostly indifferent prose to see the novel resolve itself in a big fat nothing. Stay away from this book. Now that I’ve spoiled it from beginning to end, you don’t even have a reason to go through it.

    Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go and deface my copy with sulphuric acid and bury it in an unmarked grave somewhere in my backyard.

  • Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Picador, 1996, 310 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-330-37525-3

    01/05/2001: 13st8 (Eek! What am I, a bowling ball?), cigarettes 0 (as if), alcohol units 0 (yeah, right), 6/49 tickets 0 (not feeling one-in-fourteen-million special enough), nasty calls from Rogers Video 0 (v.g.), siblings visiting 2, calories stratospheric (shouldn’t have had third slice of pizza. Nor fourth, fifth or sixth one).

    L. came in my office again today, complaining about latest dating prospect and wondering whenever she’ll meet Mister Right and if new clothes make her too fat. Did my best impression of a gay best friend, sympathizing with everything she said while personal designs on her neither gay nor simply friendly. Have to wonder how I ended up in this bizarre situation someday, but not today as answer likely to be too depressing.

    Thought about L. a lot while finishing Bridget Jones’s Diary, but also about my own situation; young professional still single more by circumstance than choice. Whole book told as year-in-the-life diary of said Bridget Jones, single Londoner with more neuroses than entire Woody Allen oeuvre.

    Great book, fun reading, many laugh-out-loud moments. Even though Bridget not brightest bulb, it’s impossible not to really like her, problems and all. Constant metaphorical yearning to hug her and say everything would come out all right. Author Helen Fielding does great job at funny writing with huge drops of honesty. Loved passage about how single friends would rather keep everyone else single than lose their time with them because they’re in relationship.

    Had a few problems with the book, though; bunch of coincidences, mostly. Eventually learned that Mr. Darcy character based on similar Mr. Darcy in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which might explain a lot if ever I end up seeing Pride and Prejudice.

    At least book much superior to movie, which stumbled worst when straying away from novel. Major distractions include whole mother subplot, which is nastier in book than film. Unfortunately, this cause movie ending to be far more Hollywoodish than book, which is far more satisfying (“Why did you do it?” “I think it’s obvious.” Perfect!) Whole book generally less formula romance than film, which now feels more contrived than ever. (While book never sends Darcy to New York, there is unfortunately no fist-fight. Oh well.) Interestingly enough, movie/book changes will keep up interest in the book for movie fans.

    Writing sharp, fast, hilarious & hypnotically easy to imitate. Fielding has comic genius; some embarrassed glances from other people in the bus after hearing me laughing aloud.

    Social significance of Bridget Jones probably worth noting, but too little space here to do so. Ironically enough, Bridget Jones’s Diary could be compared to a female Fight Club, both being about modern social dilemma stemming from doing first thirty years more or less right and then discovering things that parents never told you about. Modern teenhood being pushed back ten-fifteen years? Lack of established social models to deal with modern zeitgeist? Judging from bestseller lists in England and now States, chances are that many many ladies are identifying with Jones. Personal query; where are they all? Like to think of self as being much closer to Darcy than Daniel.

    Realize enjoyed Bridget Jones’s Diary a lot despite not being target audience, which leads self to question validity of initial premise. Maybe not as far away from Jones as would like to believe. Eek.

  • Tom Clancy’s Net Force, Tom Clancy [ghostwritten]

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Berkley, 1998, 372 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-425-16172-2

    Reviewing “Tom Clancy’s” novels is the critical equivalent of shooting fish with big barrels. These ghost-written cookie-cutter novels sustain a basic level of readability, sure, but you’d be hard-pressed to remember anything about them only a few days after an initial read. Heck, you’d be lucky to remember the difference between the various series, whether they’re “Op-Center”, “Politika” or “Net Force”. As far as any serious reader is concerned, they’re three names for the same thing: Clancy’s willingness to whore out his diminishing reputation through dozens of mediocre novels he should be ashamed to be associated with.

    This venom now being out of my system, allow be to concede that as far as the “Tom Clancy’s” novels go, Net Force is better than the other ones. The premise is slightly more SFish than the other series, being concerned about a federal agency dedicated to fighting computer crime. The series is set in a ten-year-away future, which is depressingly similar to our own except when it suits the purposes of the plot.

    In other words, don’t go in Net Force expecting a fully-developed social anticipation in the tradition of the best Science Fiction. While Steve Perry has previously proven himself to be an adequate SF writer, he’s obviously writing Net Force to pay the bills, and this strictly alimentary approach to the novel shows through a distinct laziness.

    Take, for instance, Net Force‘s representation of cyberspace, which makes all the mistakes you might see in a slush-pile SF novel magically teleported from the mid-eighties. Metaphorized into a representation of the highway system, it forces characters to drive cars and search highways for bad guys. Not only does this represent a singularly useless and inefficient mapping of cumbersome real-world equivalent over something that doesn’t require it, but it also drags down the level of the rest of the book to this quasi-adolescent car fetishism where driving a Dodge Viper is good enough to catch the enemies.

    And, yes, there is a “good” level of the book to drag down. One character and one subplot is enough to keep our interest, the “Selkie” assassin and her contract against new Net Force director Alex Michaels. It’s the least ridiculous part of the book, the most focused and the most interesting. There’s also an interesting love triangle / martial arts exposé between Michaels, an agent named Toni Fiorella and some other agent whose name isn’t ultimately important. Oh, and a few funny scenes featuring a nerdy teenager.

    But that’s it. Zero other set-pieces, zero compelling characters, awful technology and scarcely any good writing besides a very few fascinating technical/procedural details. The rest of Net Force is of such forgettable averageness that it blurs up almost instantly, sinking is the cesspool of “Tom Clancy’s” novels. The only question left for me to ask remains “If I’m buying those awful novels used, who the heck keeps buying them new?”

  • High Crimes, Joseph Finder

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon, 1998, 388 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-380-72880-X

    Fiction does not operate according to the usual laws of reality. Life seldom makes up interesting stories and that’s why, from stone-age shaman onward, making up compelling fiction has always required creative interpretations of how things usually happen.

    The protagonist is a good person who struggles in search of his goal. After difficulties, lovers end up together. Bad persons are punished. While not ironclad, these “rules” drive most of modern fiction. You’re familiar with them from years and years of novels, films and other stories.

    Sub-genres acquire their own dramatic conventions, which occasionally make them impenetrable to newcomers. Thrillers are no exception. After reading a few dozen of them, patterns start to emerge and readers may demand bigger surprises in order to be satisfied.

    Ironically, there are such things are expected surprises. A novel with twists and turns can start to be repetitive; any character whose body isn’t certifiably autopsied is liable to come back “from the dead”, any friend is a possible traitor and every government agency has squads of murderous operatives. It becomes possible to guess the next big twist simply by asking ourselves “What’s the worst that could happen at this point?” A lawyer asking himself if his client committed the crime isn’t much of a story if the client isn’t actually guilty as hell. (See, oh, films from JAGGED EDGE to PRIMAL FEAR, whose “twist” is given in the first line of dialogue.)

    Joseph Finder’s High Crimes is an enjoyable, but generally predictable thriller whose final twist is self-obvious whenever you ask yourself “What would be most interesting?” It then proceeds straight into ludicrous absurdity, but by this time, you’re only two pages away from the end, so you might as well finish the whole thing. Even if you’ll still end up with a few unanswered questions.

    This being said, the setup is interesting; a renowned attorney is stunned when her husband, theoretically an economist, is hunted down by the military for a war atrocity trial. He insists that he’s innocent and she agrees to defend him at a court-martial. Powerful forces from the Pentagon do everything they can to distance the trial from a few high-ranking officers. Who’s lying, the husband or the brass?

    What the novel lacks in overall surprise, it gains in sharp writing and solid details. Our heroine has to learn the intricacies of martial law at the same time as we do, and the result is a fascinating trip through an area few readers know about. Characters are presented efficiently, sometime too quickly, and developed with an adequate amount of care. The dialogue is witty and natural. The pacing drags a bit, especially in the beginning (just get the suspect in custody and go on with the story!), but it gets better and for all its little problems, High Crimes doesn’t become boring.

    It might even be unintentionally comical in its frantic effort to keep our interest. Aside from the inherent fascination of court-martial procedures and special-operation details, Findley piles up increasingly extreme events regardless of if the story calls for it. The setups are sometime so laborious as to be offensive, such as with the whole chapters leading up to the apprehension. A few latter sequences, like the car sabotage, scream “cheap thrill!” more than they suggest an organic plot development. But given that they’re eventually inconsequential to the overall dramatic arc, most of these cheap thrills remain meaningless.

    But that’s all part of dramatic logic, where the bad guys are notoriously inconsistent in their desire to kill off the protagonists. Dramatic logic -where the best friends are in fact the best enemies and the most unexpected twists become mandatory- is the real main character in High Crimes. It’s a good testimony of Finder’s professionalism that his novel can sustain interest despite holding few genuine surprises.

  • Skeptic, Holden Scott

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    St. Martin’s, 1999, 376 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-312-96928-7

    Looking at the world through tabloid newspaper glasses, it seems that the strange, the unusual, the supernatural and the just plain weird is constantly threatening to invade our so-called-reality. The universe described by the New York Times, or any other “mainstream” media, seems hopelessly constrained, boring in its lack of excitement, pathetic in its self-explanatory fashion. But wait! The Loch Ness monster will be captured! Aliens will land on the White House lawn! Even the humble vampires want nothing worse than to be our friends!

    It’s difficult to gauge how many people gobble up fantastic stories as honest truth, or even how many people might be tempted to believe in some of it. Polls routinely indicate that a significant proportion of Americans believe that telepathy exists, that aliens are among us, that angels routinely intervene in their lives and there’s got to be something in all these JFK conspiracy theories.

    There’s definitely a potential for a few hundred novels on the subject of skepticism and so-called reality. When a thriller called Skeptic comes across our desks for perusal, it’s hard not to expect some kind of definitive statement on the subject. But while an intriguing novel, Holden Scott’s first book isn’t quite up to the task.

    Oh, it’s not as if there isn’t a lot of stuff in these 376 pages. From a medical research center in Boston to a raid deep inside Chinese lines, this is the type of thriller that sacrifices plausibility for maximum bang; avid readers of the genre will love it if only because it shows them something new.

    The plot revolves around a scientific discovery that more or less validates the concept of ghosts. Through a complex and not-quite-credible mechanism involving viruses, it seems that deceased people’s “spirits” can communicate with the living. Now mix in a dangerous Chinese super-spy, a political assassination, a CIA agent as beautiful as she’s deadly and you’ve got an interesting story.

    There are a few serviceable characters, including the requisite competent/rebellious/tortured doctor hero, the sexy CIA agent and the eeevil antagonist. There are a few good gadgets, including a (fictional?) type of weaponry not seen anywhere else yet. There are gruesome autopsy scenes that will make your stomach churn. There are chases, escapes, gunfights and explosions. There’s even a massive plot to take over the world, if you still wanted something of the sort.

    But there’s only one little tiny instance of supernatural doing, and it’s almost an afterthought thrown in at the last minute by the author. But as for the main plot, there’s nothing that warrant belief of skepticism; Scott does his suspension-of-disbelief techno-babble so well that there’s no need to be skeptic.

    Leaving that aside, Skeptic remains a better-than-average thriller, thanks to effective writing, memorable incidents and a strong dose of originality. Yes, Scott does get carried away from time to time and his grandiose conspiracy is simultaneously too over-the-top and seemingly useless that it’s likely to inspire more giggles than chills. But when considering the novel’s overall freshness, that doesn’t seem too bad. Much like tabloid newspaper readers, thriller fans would rather read blatantly ridiculous material than to be stuck in the same old reality.