books #32 & #33

Once I'd come out from under the anaesthetics, I was able to get a couple of books read during my stay in the Big House despite constant interruptions for the insertion of sharp and shiny things into various portions of my anatomy. Indeed, I regarded the return of the ability to do some coherent reading as an important stage of recuperation, so made an effort.

That said, I wasn't exactly ready to take on Finnegans Wake . . .

I have a sort of on-again, off-again relationship with Sue Grafton's alphabetical Kinsey Millhone mysteries: mostly I enjoy reading them, but sometimes I get fed up to the back teeth with what I'd describe as their soap-opera aspects -- the peripheral stuff involving landlord Henry et al. -- and give the series a rest for a while. I'm not sure if it's one or two I've missed, but the one I had in hospital, T is for Trespass (2007), proved mercifully light on the soap. Or maybe there was as much soap as ever, but this time I didn't mind because it was all strictly relevant to the plot.

Whatever, a nasty grasping woman with a lunatic son has discovered the ease with which elderly people, living alone, can be exploited by live-in nurses. The fact that she's not a fully qualified nurse doesn't matter, because she's an adept at identity theft. The elderly sufferer she's got her hooks into this time is Gus Vronsky, a curmudegeonly neighbour of Kinsey Millhone. Of course, Millhone's alarm signals all go off almost immediately, but she and her pals find there's virtually nothing they can do in the face of bureaucracy and the like to save Gus from what seems an inevitable fate. (That this should be so is the clear subtext of the book.)

Everything rattles along merrily enough, and I kept turning the pages. I must get around to checking R is for Ricochet and S is for Silence to see if I've missed just one or both of them. Come to that, I ought to loop back to the beginning of the series -- when the volumes were A Whole Lot Shorter -- because I know I've skipped a few over the years.

The book I read after T is for Trespass was the Greg Iles thriller Dead Sleep (2001). Iles is one of the relatively few thriller writers I currently will always try to find time for. When he's at his best, there's a bright intelligence at work that you don't often expect to find in this genre: his books are thrillers of the mind as much as they're action items. And when he's not at his best he's still better than most of his rivals. That said, it seems the last two or three of his novels that I've read -- Dead Sleep included -- have seen him a little off-peak, so he may be in for a rest soon.

The central character of this piece is war photographer Jordan Glass who, in a Hong Kong art gallery, encounters a display of a number of the paintings in the series called The Sleeping Women. Each painting depicts a woman who could well be asleep, as the series title suggests, but the observer knows all too well that really these women are dead. What startles Jordan is that one of the paintings is of herself -- or, rather, as she soon realizes, of her identical-twin sister, abducted a few years ago and never seen since. Soon Jordan is assisting the FBI, because it emerges that all of the paintings in the series are portraits of real women who've disappeared. A mountain of evidence pulls the investigators towards New Orleans, where the bulk of the novel is set.

It's a fine premise and, after a rocky beginning to the novel, one that drew me swiftly onward, my disbelief willingly suspended -- a process assisted by Iles's as ever silky smooth writing. And then, towards the end, it all seemed to start falling apart. I suppose it was inevitable, with a setup like this, that the book should have a Grand Guignol denouement; but, when it came, I found it a bit of a letdown -- I was reminded of that old Stephen King quote about reverting to a grossout if he couldn't think of anything better to keep the plot moving. Maybe Iles had half his mind on Hollywood while he was writing Dead Sleep -- who knows? (I've no idea if Dead Sleep has been filmed, but his earlier novel, 24 Hours, was made into the fine 2002 movie Trapped, which has a sterling performance by Charlize Theron.) Whatever, for me the last fifty pages or more of the novel were a distinct disappointment.

When I got home from the Jug I decided to read one more novel before plunging back into all the nonfiction I have to consume for Bogus Science, the book of my own I'm currently researching. I chose Helen Slavin's The Extra Large Medium (2007), a novel I'd been ettling to try ever since I bought it a few months ago. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a disappointment, too, and I got only as far as page 92. It may just be me, but the book seemed monumentally complacent, as if the author had severely underestimated the intelligence and/or sophistication of her readers: there'd been nothing by page 92 to raise an eyebrow, let alone much interest me -- all of which makes the glowing cover quote by Beryl Bainbridge the more remarkable. I'll maybe give the book another try in a few years' time, precisely because of that Bainbridge recommendation.

The real excitement "read" during my hospital stay wasn't a book but a movie. More on that anon.