read: Drive (4 stars)

Drive by James Sallis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A dark, compelling noir novella (158 pages) that vividly portrays a gritty underworld of crime and criminals, but shortchanges the reader on plot. The prose comes across like an Impressionistic painting, holding back on detail in ways that make your brain fill in what is missing. This works for characters and setting, but not so much on plot, which is a muddle.

We never learn the name of Driver, but we learn more about him in the book than in the film that was based on it. Here, he has a former life and a former family. We learn why he has the survival skills that he does. We still don't learn about his motivations and dreams, other than the need to survive. But the screenplay has the benefit of creating a richer now that includes a compelling through line of plot, cause and effect, in contrast to the book, which consists only of moments.

Like a pointillist painting, those moments eventually add up to a fuller, if still incomplete picture. And like the film, the book is a work of art.

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read: The Alpine Advocate (4 stars)

The Alpine Advocate by Mary Daheim

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the mood for some small town shenanigans and murder? This book is for you. You won't find pulse pounding thrills or crackling prose. This is a straight-ahead, pleasantly written, cozy mystery set in a little town that once existed, but was never like this.

There's a lot of setting up happening in the first half of this book. We're learning about Emma Lord, her son, her town, her former lovers, the eccentric staff of her newspaper, the equally eccentric population of the rest of the town, and a murder. At first I feared that it would all turn out to be too cloying and contrived to be tolerable. But the plot finally settled down into some reasonably intelligent sleuthing and the hints and allegations started mounting up.

This is a good example of this sort of fiction. I couldn't settle for only 3 stars, so it gets 4.

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read: The Jefferson Key (3 stars)

The Jefferson Key by Steve Berry

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not an unpleasant read and there were parts that were thrilling, in a television thriller sort of way. I am new to Steve Berry's Cotton Malone and I would not recommend this as a way to get into it. It would have been easier to follow and I would have cared more about what was happening to the characters if I had already been through more adventures with them.

This is a lot of talking, posturing, plotting, threatening, and double-crossing, with just a touch of evil doing. There was a little jet-setting up and down the East Coast, but with little sense of adventure. The pirate lore was interesting, including the ties to the founding fathers. But I never quite bought into the modern pirates Commonwealth scheme.

I was glad to see from other reviewers, and even the cover blurb, that this is not a typical Cotton Malone adventure. I'll give him another try one of these days.

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"The Blind Side" [B+]

Finally caught up to this after all of the Oscar hoopla. Amazingly enough, it's just about that good. I say just about, because there are obvious over-dramatizations of situations and timelines, and not all of the acting is really Oscar-caliber. I think all of that should be expected for a film 'based on a true story'.

Even so, it's a darn good film, with above average writing, acting, and directing. Recommended.

read: Hellbent (3 stars)

Hellbent by Cherie Priest

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was expecting another romp through the world of vampires in this follow-up to Bloodshot. I didn't quite get it. Sure, there was thievery, there was snarkiness, there was even magic this time around.

One thing I found to be missing was a compelling through-line of a story. This felt like three parallel stories that sometimes crossed paths. None of them really carried the book. Therefore, they each just sort ended. So did the the book.

Also missing: suspense. There were very few times I really felt like the characters had everything on the line. Perhaps this is due to the lighthearted tone of Raylene's narration. But I did experience a more suspense in the previous adventure.

Action and adventure were also missing here. There was a bit, here and there, like when Ray was trying to recover the magical bones. But mostly there was a lot of talking.

Even so, I'm caught up with these characters. I have learned to like Raylene's voice. It did keep me going for the length of this book and I will be back for the next adventure. I just hope it's more adventurous.

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read: Stories I Only Tell My Friends (4 stars)

Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography by Rob Lowe

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very engaging and easy to read autobiography. Rob portrays himself as naive and geeky in the early days. His good looks got him beat up in junior high, but helped him get acting jobs and girls later. He drops a lot of names and tells some great stories about movies, television, acting, and his many Hollywood friends. The seamier details of his addictions and breakups and controversies get politely swept under the rug (Mid-westerners don't talk about such things in public, I guess). It's nice to know he's now older, wiser, and happily married.

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read: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom (2 stars)

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom by A.C. Crispin

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was very excited when I heard this book was coming out. I loved the Pirates of the Caribbean films almost as much as the ride itself. To get some background on Captain Jack Sparrow would be a great treat. I even recommended it to a fellow fan, sight unseen. In other words, I was predisposed to like this book.

But I did not. I gave it a try. I slogged through it to the very end, after a fashion. I fully read the first third, speed read the middle third and skimmed the last. If it weren't for the fan boy in me, yearning to learn what I could about Jack, I wouldn't have bothered.

It's overly long. The first part of the book is filled with flashbacks that bring the story to almost a complete stop. They are interesting bits, but it would have been wise to find another way to tell that even earlier tale of Jack's history. Perhaps that is the main flaw of this volume. It is trying to tell two tales.

There are other flaws. I noticed quite a few annoying word repetitions - multiple sentences on the same page that started with or contained the same phrase two, three, or more times. This offended my inner ear. And I'm not pointing out Jack's constant use of the word 'savvy', which I expected, but also found it annoying after a while.

This is not to say the book is not without its highlights. There is the kernel of a good adventure, or two, here. There are flashes of good characterization, both familiar - Jack, Barbarossa, Cutler Beckett - and new. There is obviously good research into these and into seamanship. The result, however, is overblown, badly structured, poorly written, and over long.

I was disappointed. Your mileage may vary.

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