Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby (2021)

Two fathers seek revenge for the murder of their estranged gay sons.

Mystery Review: Razorblade Tears is the third of S.A. Cosby's four crime novels (my first). The book, though a thriller as much as a mystery, is heavy on characterization without the typical quirky clichés and explores genuine issues of family, race, and sexuality. There's some graphic violence thrown in among more sensitive moments of loss and love (while being circumspect about the sex). This is an accomplished and successful novel. Cosby has mentioned influences such as Walter Mosley (Easy Rawlins comes in for a shout out), Dennis Lehane, Elmore Leonard, Ross Macdonald, and John D. MacDonald, not to mention Chandler, Hammett, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Pretty good company and some influences are more visible than others. I see a bit of Jim Thompson as well, but whether he's an influence I see Cosby as an heir to James Crumley (that's a compliment, see The Last Good Kiss) in his ability to balance thoughtful insights with graphic violence along with a certain level of alcoholism. Crumley was far heavier on the wish-fulfillment sex and (slapstick) humor, but Cosby's portrayal is a heckuva a lot more realistic. One caveat is a jarring note of piously woke preachiness, okay in its place but is at odds with rednecks and vigilante violence in Southern backwaters while breaking fingers, putting a corpse through a chipper, and some gay-panic-defense-level brutality. It's hard to see "a hell-raising, whiskey-drinking, hard-loving redneck son of a bitch" saying "Thank God for white privilege." These folks just aren't high on the wokeness quotient. But maybe that was required in 2021. Other than that Razorblade Tears contains a high level of writing and plotting throughout. No meandering and meaningless plot points to fill out the story. One character says, "Folks like to talk about revenge like it's a righteous thing but it's just hate in a nicer suit." Anger is also omnipresent, with some stemming from the two father's self-hatred for not reconciling with their sons before their deaths. The rattlesnake wariness of the bromance between the two fathers in the strong core of the novel: "Had he really called Buddy Lee his friend ... they'd killed a man together, so they were more than acquaintances, but ... ."  Razorblade Tears is just the first. I'll definitely be reading Cosby's other three books.  [4★]

The Hunter by Richard Stark (1962)

A robber seeks revenge on the accomplices who betrayed him.

Mystery Review: The Hunter was a new kind of novel, and whether that was a good thing is open to debate. This was the  introduction of the mononymic Parker: hard-boiled, ruthless, amoral, a professional thief who lives well on the proceeds of a few big capers a year. He's not a detective. He's a bad guy, a strong arm robber who doesn't necessarily enjoy killing but doesn't avoid it either. Typically his story is of one bad guy wronged by other bad guys. The Hunter was made into the movies Point Blank (1967) and Payback (1999), both of which are excellent (the first has a sterling reputation; I'm unsure why the second gets so much grief). The novel has almost no extraneous detail, virtually all the writing is either dialog or description of people interacting. Little is wasted on pondering and description and the book reads like a runaway freight. If a field is described it's because Parker has to crawl through it. Here we get the violent end of Spillane melded into the Jim Thompson school of rough trade with just a touch of Simenon. I don't know if Parker is an anti-hero but he's certainly the protagonist as bad guy while he seeks revenge on the accomplices who betrayed him. At the end of The Hunter Parker is traveling to Omaha to get plastic surgery to change his appearance. The author was Donald E. Westlake under the oddly appropriate pseudonym Richard Stark, as the writing is uniquely severe and bare. He wrote 23 more installments of the Parker saga. Maybe it's not okay for the reader to be rooting for the bad guy to get away with it, but it sure is transgressively enjoyable and engrossing.  [4★]

A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor (1947)

A seaside town recedes into the past as the residents try to find their way through the emotional debris to construct their lives.

Book Review: A View of the Harbour is a book of which the reader may say: nothing happens, there's no plot, there's simply description. I've dismissed such books as over my head, too elusive, just not for me. But I sat back and read A View of the Harbour as if viewing an impressionist painting, just to appreciate the descriptions and absorb the emotions. The story is bits and pieces put together, in a way that's not quite clear, not sharply delineated, but consists of a few events, the feelings of the characters, the shaded emotions, small moments created, so the reader can let the scenes accumulate, accrete, gather together to form a blurred whole. It's quiet, subtle, thoughtful. There is little plot. The movement, the action, occurs in the thoughts, worries, emotions of the characters. Their feelings carry and propel the story, always musing, reflecting, considering. There's a whole lot of fretting going on. In the discussion of "likable" and "unlikable" characters, Taylor's are always both. Each character contains something appealing and something disagreeable or objectionable, just like most people. My favorite character was a precocious and incisive small girl, Stevie, who was also an enormous brat. In A View of the Harbour the Second World War is over and life is worse than before. Now there are all the lonely women, with the men distant, apparently okay, more easily satisfied. But the women are yearning, seeking, desperate. The story reminded me of Patrick Hamilton's The Slaves of Solitude published the same year, also in the aftermath of the War. I took awhile getting into the novel, to get a fix on the many characters, get a sense of all that was going on, but when I did suddenly everything became richer and rewarding. Elizabeth Taylor (1912-75) sees the sharp edges of human observation and interaction, how we all skirt around the edges of other people, and how we pass judgment on each other. She can write gorgeous sentences forever, as when she writes of "the pigeon-coloured evening." Aging characters are "not in any safe harbour, but thrust out to sea with none of the brave equipment of youth to buoy them up." Taylor jumps deep inside people's heads to capture the tragedy and comedy of life, while content to let the plot run behind trying to catch up.  [4★]

Trent's Last Case by E.C. Bentley (1913)

A financial mogul is murdered and artist-reporter Trent is on his first case.

Mystery Review: Trent's Last Case is actually the first case for Philip Trent, famous artist, journalist, and amateur solver of crime problems. For those who felt Sherlock Holmes was too affected, arrogant, or simply annoying, Trent was an antidote. More human and fallible, someone who enjoys a good meal and a glass of wine even as he brilliantly proposes the wrong solution and falls madly in love with the chief suspect -- he's certainly no Holmes. Trent relies on fingerprints, footprints, and examines crime scenes with a painter's gimlet eye. The story and tone veer wildly, however, as if Bentley was trying to figure out what kind of story he wanted to write even as he was writing it. Trent's Last Case has a healthy dose of romance, interesting comparisons of Britons and Americans, and piles twist on twist in a messy ending. The original title was The Woman in Black (suggesting an entirely different focus) for the first edition, but has been Trent's Last Case ever since. Even though titled the "last case" it was followed by two more outings for Trent decades later in another novel and a short story collection. Intended by its author as "not so much a detective story as an exposure of detective stories." Perhaps it was a mild satire, but has been accepted as a classic in the genre, and a precursor of the Golden Age of mystery novels, offering an alternative to the more Holmesian (and more or less obnoxious) detectives that sprang up later like Poirot (1920), Wimsey (1923), Vance (1926), and Queen (1929). In intending to gently mock the genre in Trent's Last Case, Bentley in fact modernized and liberated the style with his more human detective. The novel is a little of its time in terminology, unfortunately.  [3½★]

The Wintringham Mystery by Anthony Berkeley (1927)

A guest disappears at a weekend country house party; what the ... ?

Mystery Review: The Wintringham Mystery centers on the disappearance of a guest at a country house party. Our amateur sleuth moves careers quickly from former soldier of independent means to footman to weekend guest of rich but exceedingly kind old lady (acting as fairy godmother) who happens to have known said sleuth's mother -- whenever obstacles arise the deus ex machina quickly descends. Handy coincidences abound in addition to priest holes and secret passages in this English country house, closed-circle mystery reminiscent of Agatha Christie (including some thinly veiled anti-Semitism, also à la Agatha). The story isn't stunning but The Wintringham Mystery is determinedly entertaining with some interesting "time machine" moments from 1927: a beautiful young woman proposes to the sleuth, shocking given the time -- those Roaring Twenties! In most novels of earlier times the servants aren't even granted a name, but here the reader gets a front row seat to the burdens and working conditions of the servant class when our penniless hero needs a job and becomes a footman (had no idea what that was till I read this). The Wintringham Mystery is a delightful mix of mystery and romance, almost a cozy. The one death occurs off stage. A compelling page turner until the end, which is somewhat anti-climactic and probably unguessable. I did get bits and pieces and the sleuth (wrongly) proposed my theory at one point, so it was obviously a red herring. Entertaining nonetheless and I look forward to tracking down more of the underappreciated Berkeley's mysteries. Originally titled Cicely Disappears under the pseudonym A. Monmouth Platts.  [4★]

"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin (1973)

A parable of society today, asking whether we're content to let many people suffer so we can enjoy our modern lives. 

Short Story Review: "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" has become a celebrated short story and ethics 101 exercise, even appearing in The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story (2021). At once both one of the most misunderstood and least subtle stories ever written, as we learn that no one walks away from Omelas despite our best intentions. The story echoes sentiments from Dostoyevsky and Henry James and is similar in theme to the Friedrich Dürrenmatt play, Der Besuch der alten Dame (1956). Very much and deliberately an allegory, seemingly a repositioning of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" (1948). But where that piece drew the reader into depths of literary and intellectual ambiguity, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" aims aslant, satisfied to be as obvious and pointed as a high school newspaper. Most simply, the piece is an inquiry into whether it's acceptable for the many to benefit from the suffering of the few, or even the one. In our time that question has been definitively resolved with a resounding: "Yes, it is." The story is easily extrapolated to address income and social inequality, that the wealth of the few depends on the exploitation of the masses. More broadly, that the greed of many is paid for by many more -- here presented as the population of Omelas benefiting from the suffering of one. The secret is we're all living in Omelas and we're not the one. "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is a product of its time. Le Guin wrote the story amidst the counterculture and hippies, Woodstock and communes, when some people tried to drop out and live outside the prevailing norms. We still see pale reflections of that today, perhaps the Occupy movement, or when people live within the dominant culture, but attempt to mitigate their footprint through fair trade, recycling, carbon free, electric vehicles, solar panels, products that benefit former prisoners. But Le Guin was thinking of something more extreme. Those walking away would not have a cell phone or wear fast fashion. They would make their own clothes and live outside the dominant paradigm. Musician Richard Thompson recently wrote of his friends in the late Sixties who were "more about escaping society than confronting it head-on ... dropped out ... sought alternative lifestyles, lived in hippie communes ... carved out a life selling food or leather goods ... and broadly rejected the path of normality." In this story Le Guin wouldn't have us accept the compromises that we make to live with our consciences. Obviously this is a political story, but can we balance the message and the medium. Does the quality of a work of literature addressing an important issue rest more on the art or the issue. With Fahrenheit 451, which I think clunkily written, I leaned more toward the importance of the message. With "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," which I also consider clunkily written, I lean more toward the lack of art presented here, especially as the author is capable of creating whole civilizations with numerous layers of social nuance. Here she leaves much unexamined with "I don't know" and "I can't explain." Just an observation of the times. On the other hand, the story has the power to raise valuable questions and create meaningful discussion. But Le Guin didn't intend readers to get a cheap and easy "feel good" moment accompanied by dramatic virtue signaling when they brag: "I would walk away." Because we're all continuing to live here in Omelas, consuming the products of slave and exploited labor, and none of us are walking away. She knew we all make that child suffer.  [4★]

The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley (1929)

Six amateur detectives attempt to solve a notorious recent murder case that has Scotland Yard at a dead end.

Mystery Review: The Poisoned Chocolates Case once again demonstrates that Anthony Berkeley (1893-1971) is a too little known and appreciated member of the Golden Age of mystery writing. Each of his books is  uniquely interesting and determinedly different, and all are written with a light touch of humor. The Poisoned Chocolates Case is the epitome of a "puzzle" mystery story, intricately and persuasively worked out and presented. Here Berkeley introduces the six members of the "Crimes Circle" group, each of whom try to solve a notorious contemporary murder involving the poisoning of a wealthy women that has stumped Scotland Yard. The Crimes Circle was paralleled in real life by "The Detection Club" with Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers as well as Berkeley. Adding to the puzzle are the six "detectives" testing their theories, each with a different focus, solved in a different way, each identifying a different suspect. The Poisoned Chocolates Case features two of Berkeley's series detectives, polar opposites Ambrose Chitterwick and Roger Sheringham. The novel is reminiscent of The Benson Murder Case (1923), a tour de force in which Philo Vance solves a murder six different ways, once for each of the six suspects. There might also be a hint of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot short story "The Chocolate Box," first published in 1923. For puzzle mystery fans this is a must-read.  [4 ★]