JimLoter
The Seattle Public Library
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Added Feb 24, 2021
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Added Oct 19, 2018
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Added Oct 17, 2018
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Added Oct 17, 2018
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The Escape Artist is a decently-plotted and paced thriller that is marred by sub-par writing and a ludicrous final twist. Air Force mortician Jim "Zig" Zigarowski stumbles on a criminal plot and shifts into investigator mode to solve it. I enjoyed the novelty of having a mortician serve as the protagonist, and I liked the descriptions of his work and how it affects him. For the character of hard-ass Nora Brown, it is pretty clear that the author was going for a Lisabeth Salinger vibe, but he fails to develop her sufficiently. The "escape artist" conceit and various connections to Houdini started out promising but never really paid off leading me to wonder why they ever there in the first place - the novel would have worked without them leaving more time for back story and character development.The Escape Artist is a decently-plotted and paced thriller that is marred by sub-par writing and a ludicrous final twist. Air Force mortician Jim "Zig" Zigarowski stumbles on a criminal plot and shifts into investigator mode to solve it. I enjoyed…
JimLoter's rating:
Added Oct 17, 2018
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Enjoyable enough but a bit eye-rollingly over-the-top at points with ominous foreshadowing giving way to sinister hokeyness. The Joyce Carol Oates blurb on the cover of the library copy I read compares this work to Highsmith and Hitchcock, which is ... aspirational but not accurate. The prose and dialog are uninspired, and the descriptions of Tangier in the 1950s are not particularly evocative or atmospheric. The whole thing is more "Single White Female" than "The Talented Mr. Ripley." The shifting focus on the two equally unreliable narrators is the book's best feature, especially when each woman tells her own version of the same events. But there is very little stylistic differentiation between them - if each alternate chapter hadn't been titled either "Alice" or "Lucy," it would have been tricky to tell them apart.Enjoyable enough but a bit eye-rollingly over-the-top at points with ominous foreshadowing giving way to sinister hokeyness. The Joyce Carol Oates blurb on the cover of the library copy I read compares this work to Highsmith and Hitchcock, which is…
JimLoter's rating:
Added Oct 17, 2018
Added Oct 17, 2018
Comment:
Engleby, like its namesake protagonist and (unreliable) narrator, is at (most) times an aimless, erudite, pedantic, wearisome novel that nevertheless surprises with unexpected twists and changes in tone (and voice) ending up a rather disturbing portrait of a narcissistic sociopathic alcoholic murderer.
Cambridge student Mike Engleby is an antisocial, egotistical ass who is unhealthily obsessed in a vague and seemingly non-sexual way with his classmate, Jennifer. When she disappears and is presumed murdered, Mike is briefly considered a suspect, but the case goes cold. Mike graduates and initially struggles to find his way in the world, but his education, intelligence, and luck leads him to a steady gig as a journalist and a girlfriend. He never forgets Jennifer - he even memorizes her diary, which he stole years ago. And yet his photographic memory has significant holes, and as those holes are suddenly and shockingly filled in the full picture of Mike's personality is revealed.
As narrator, Mike does not miss an opportunity to sneer at or otherwise deliver withering criticisms of everything from his tutor's grammar, to the later works of Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Matisse, to how his sister orders her steak. Yet, just as the reader is feeling he or she might want to hurl the book into the fire and silence this pompous ass, he reveals an unexpected tenderness, a clever observation, or a surprising insight ... just like a brilliant and manipulative narcissistic sociopath might do. The final third of the book is a radical departure from the previous two-thirds, and works well because now we, the readers, know exactly who we are dealing with.
"Engleby" is a frustrating but compelling read.Engleby, like its namesake protagonist and (unreliable) narrator, is at (most) times an aimless, erudite, pedantic, wearisome novel that nevertheless surprises with unexpected twists and changes in tone (and voice) ending up a rather disturbing…
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Added Oct 17, 2018
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Added Aug 20, 2018
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A young girl disappears in an English village and the mystery haunts the inhabitants for the decade or so after she goes missing. Written with short sentences and long flowing paragraphs, the book meanders through the lives of two dozen or so villagers - the lamb farmers, the potter, the newly-arrived yoga teacher, the school custodian, the newspaper editor and his BBC-producer wife, etc. - as their lives both follow and break routines over the years. Couples form and split up, babies are born, the reservoirs dry up and fill again, crops succeed and fail. Throughout it all, the memory of the missing girl hovers over everything.
One remarkable thing about the writing is that none of the characters are described physically (except the missing girl - repeatedly) and yet I developed clear and distinct pictures of them as the glimpses into their lives washed over me. One could even read this book as if it is told from the girl's point-of-view - her spirit floating just adjacent to the living, unable to fix on any corporeal details (or uninterested in doing so) ... just observing the mundane, the surprising, and even the profane events play out.A young girl disappears in an English village and the mystery haunts the inhabitants for the decade or so after she goes missing. Written with short sentences and long flowing paragraphs, the book meanders through the lives of two dozen or so…
Added Aug 24, 2017
JimLoter's rating:
Added Dec 23, 2015
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This mostly-true story of how Constance Kopp became one of the first female sheriff's deputies in the US is an entertaining early-20th-century period piece that feels eerily and frustratingly relevant in its depiction of how women can be intimidated, threatened, and harassed in pursuit of simple justice.
Kopp's eminently reasonable attempt to seek $50 in damages from the man whose car collided with her buggy puts her and her two sisters' lives in danger as the man and his gang of thug friends begin a campaign of terror against the women in their isolated, rural home. I couldn't read this and not think about outrages such as "doxxing," "swatting," and other online harassment directed at female gamers (and others) who dare to challenge or question the dominant order.
The town's sheriff is sympathetic to the plight of the women and grows to respect and admire them and the strength and perseverance they demonstrate. I liked the fact that the sheriff was not the "rescuer" and that Constance took opportunities to pursue justice on her own. I'm also glad that the hints of romance or attraction between them never went anywhere, though it was disappointing that the sheriff's wife was somewhat of a two-dimensional harpy unhappy with her domestic situation and her husband's unpredictable work schedule.This mostly-true story of how Constance Kopp became one of the first female sheriff's deputies in the US is an entertaining early-20th-century period piece that feels eerily and frustratingly relevant in its depiction of how women can be…
JimLoter's rating:
Added Dec 13, 2015
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"First we only want to be seen, but once we're seen, that's not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered."
There are a number of themes in "Station Eleven" that are worth explication - armageddon tends to raise issues - but to me the primary concern of the novel is that of the function of art as both aesthetic expression (to be seen) and as cultural memory (to be remembered), and of the struggles to come to terms with both sides.
Twenty years after a pandemic wipes out over 99% of Earth's population, a nomadic group of actors and musicians perform Shakespeare's plays for the tiny populations of the few remaining towns around the Great Lakes. They represent the pure expression of art in an age where memory is painful and day-to-day survival is paramount. But, even still, the function of art-as-memory is strong. In trying to understand the survivors' preference for Shakespeare over "more modern plays" and "pre-collapse pop songs," one of the actors muses: "'People want what was best about the world.'"
On the day before the virus strikes, Arthur Leander, a famous film actor, drops dead of a heart attack while performing "King Lear" on stage in Toronto. In flashbacks and through transcripts that are interspersed with the story of the post-apocalyptic theater troupe, details of Arthur's life, and his struggles with leaving a legacy that endures beyond the span of a performance, are revealed.
Through the main character - Kirsten - both Shakespeare and Arthur Leander survive in her memory and via the artifacts they left behind. Art thus fulfills its dual function as expression and as legacy."First we only want to be seen, but once we're seen, that's not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered."
There are a number of themes in "Station Eleven" that are worth explication - armageddon tends to raise issues - but to me the…
JimLoter's rating:
Added Dec 13, 2015
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This is Patrick deWitt's follow up to his great and enjoyable pseudo-western The Sisters Brothers. This time around, he takes on the Gothic fairy tale genre with a tale of a young man, Lucy Minor, and his new position as assistant to the majordomo of the Castle Von Aux. The castle has fallen into disrepair following the death of the former undermajordomo, the departure of the Baroness, and the decline of the Baron into madness. Meanwhile, troops battle on the hillside for no discernible reason, Lucy befriends a pair of pickpockets, and he falls in love with a beautiful young woman from the village, Klara.
I found the book just as enjoyable to read as "The Sisters Brothers" but it is missing that book's clever mix of both gravity and whimsy. While "The Sisters Brothers" introduced serious reflections and commentary on the nature of violence peppered in with snappy dialog and comedic interludes, "Undermajordomo Minor" attempts the same with the nature (and many manifestations) of love. But the book keeps its characters largely at arm's length so the actual feelings they experience are more reported on than felt. Only at the very end, after Lucy is nearly broken down, do we start to get a true glimpse into his psyche.This is Patrick deWitt's follow up to his great and enjoyable pseudo-western The Sisters Brothers. This time around, he takes on the Gothic fairy tale genre with a tale of a young man, Lucy Minor, and his new position as assistant to the majordomo…
JimLoter's rating:
Added Jul 15, 2015
Comment:
I was a bit excited when I first started in on "The Painter" and found it was set in Paonia, Colorado (pop. 1,500). Members of my partner's family live in Paonia; I have actually been there, we probably hiked the same Black Canyon of the Gunnison trails as the book's protagonist, and I may have even fished in the same river where he kills a man, Dell, with a rock. Hell, I'm even named "Jim," just like the main character!
Unfortunately, that excitement didn't last too long. The first thing that killed my enthusiasm for this book was the introduction of Jim's female model who casually becomes his lover and, eventually, his dedicated partner. What is telling about this character is that I have poured over several reviews of "The Painter" to be reminded of her name (I returned my copy of the book to the library) only to find various references to "his lovely model" or "his flirty model" or the like. She appears, they apparently have a Platonic artist/model relationship for a while, then she seduces him, effectively moves in, dumps her boyfriend, lies to the sheriff to protect him, is forced into hiding to avoid Dell's vengeful family, and finally resurfaces when she travels to New Mexico to be with him after he kills someone else. All that, and no one remembers her name.
And then there's the painting and the fishing. "'That we can do the same things again and again and again and find them interesting, even fascinating, and seek the repetition with a hunger as avid,' Jim says. 'How fishing was like that, and painting.'" I'm sure that painting and fishing are fascinating and meditative to the practitioners, but not so much to those of us reading endless pages that describe the activities.
And despite the volumes of prose devoted to it, the painting comes across as inauthentic. We are told (and told and told) about what a successful artist Jim is. There is no threat or struggle there - whatever he paints is a masterpiece that his agent in Santa Fe can sell immediately. And it is noted repeatedly that he can paint fast, churning out enormous canvases in a matter of hours. That characteristic comes across more as a plot convenience than anything else - how do you tell a story that takes place over a few days yet have your protagonist finish several major works of art during that time? You make him able to paint super fast (and you invent with oil paints that miraculously dry within minutes).
--- SPOILERS AHEAD ---
Finally, and most importantly, overall there's just no arc to any of this. Jim doesn't actually develop as a person. We initially learn he is prone to explosive fits of violence and rage - but only in justifiable circumstances (against a pedophile, a poacher, etc.) - and that he is grieving the loss of his daughter, which has sobered him up and driven him to pursue a quiet life in the mountains where he can continue to be a successful artist in virtual anonymity. He kills someone who arguably deserves it then kills that man's brother in self-defense, and ineptly covers up both crimes. At the end... he's still a successful painter, he keeps his loyal model girlfriend, he stays sober, he avoids murder charges. He basically stays the same as he was at the start of the book.
A lot of people liked Heller's The Dog Stars, and I might check it out. But I was not impressed by this effort.I was a bit excited when I first started in on "The Painter" and found it was set in Paonia, Colorado (pop. 1,500). Members of my partner's family live in Paonia; I have actually been there, we probably hiked the same Black Canyon of the Gunnison…
JimLoter's rating:
Added Jul 15, 2015
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Since this book's been out a while I don't think the world needs another recap of the plot. I liked the book a lot. I am rather fascinated, though, by reading other reviews on this site and seeing how many of them contain a variation of "I know I don't need to 'identify' with or 'like' the characters in a book, but still..." and then go on to trash the book because of the unlikable characters.
I love unlikable characters - or, I should say I love "broken" characters, which this book is full of. These people are not evil; they are struggling - struggling to understand themselves, to cope with loneliness, to learn what love really means as an adult, and to find peace in a world that has an extremely thin definition of "acceptable."
Each main "unlikable" character in the book operates under a crumbling concept of what happiness is, or what the conditions for happiness are: marriage, motherhood, financial success, addiction recovery, predictable routine.... And yet they are still miserable and feel cheated. Each character takes a long and often damaging trip to get through to the other side, which is often not a place they thought it would be.
I wonder if people who "don't like" the characters in this book (and fault the novel for giving them a space) are reacting that way because they recognize too much of themselves in these troubled people.... I know I did.Since this book's been out a while I don't think the world needs another recap of the plot. I liked the book a lot. I am rather fascinated, though, by reading other reviews on this site and seeing how many of them contain a variation of "I know I…
JimLoter's rating:
Added Jul 15, 2015
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I read this book amidst a high-rise building boom in Seattle. The landscape is saturated with cranes and the downtown streets are becoming more and more cavernous as the complexes grow higher and higher around us. I didn't really know anything about this novel before I started it, and I was astonished to learn after I finished that it was written 40 years ago. The themes of social and human deterioration through stratification, structure, and artificiality are perhaps even more urgent today.
I have no issues with the fact that the "war" that erupts inside the building is unrealistic. The book is absurdist (and deeply dark) satire and realism is not a yardstick with which to measure it. I also don't have an issue with the fact that no "reason" - no triggering event - is given for the breakdown in the high-rise society. In fact, the impact of the book would be significantly lessened if there were an external catalyst or worldwide cataclysm at the center of it. The perverse beauty of the book's conceit is that the capacity for the collapse is within the participants all along - Ballard demonstrates that all that is needed to tip humanity into savagery is a gentle push in our living environment away from nature.
The world of the high-rise is meant to be self-contained - it is designed to take care of its residents' needs completely. This seemingly benign, even desirable, characteristic is enough to paradoxically kill the last shreds of civilization. In this way, High-Rise is the opposite of Lord of the Flies - the book it is most often compared to - in that it is a hyper-civilization that results in de-evolution and not a return to the jungle.
The issue I do have with the book is that is stretches its point out far too long. There is no "plot," so to speak - no central mystery or puzzle to solve (as in Ballard's [title: Kingdom Come], for example), no goal for the characters to attain. The rapid breakdown of civility and the establishment of (and subsequent failure) of a clan system forms the entire story. The breakdown begins almost immediately and the subsequent disintegrations are all just variations on each other, so the book quickly becomes repetitive. Each successive step toward the end is just a more slightly more terrible iteration of the step before it. It could be that the strong central premise just isn't rich enough to fill a novel.I read this book amidst a high-rise building boom in Seattle. The landscape is saturated with cranes and the downtown streets are becoming more and more cavernous as the complexes grow higher and higher around us. I didn't really know anything about…
JimLoter's rating:
Added Jul 15, 2015
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It seems that no review of this book can avoid comparisons to Gone Girl so let's see if I can buck that trend.
This psychological thriller plays with issues of emotional and physical abuse, deception, addiction, co-dependency, and memory blackouts. What's not to love!?
The book is narrated by three women who are all unreliable in their own way: Rachel is an unemployed divorcee who is wrecked by alcohol; Anna is a seemingly happy suburban mother who lives a life of quiet desperation; and Megan is a young, pretty newlywed who needs to feel wanted and cannot shake a significant trauma. Each narrator, in her own way, has been made to feel broken, flawed, and unwanted. Their lives intertwine in unexpected ways during a murder investigation, and it is revealed that they all may not have been as "crazy" as they have been made to believe.
In many ways the three woman are quite similar - they are all telling themselves and their loved ones lies just to get through the day. The women's lies, however, are not intended to be malicious or to inflict harm - in most cases, they are intended to prevent causing emotional pain (which backfires more often than not). In a way, this novel can be read as a study of how and why people lie (and how differently women lie from how men lie).
The narrative jumps among the women's points-of-view but also back-and-forth in time, so pay attention to the date captions. The plot gets going pretty quickly but the middle part of the book starts to drag a bit as Rachel attempts to "help" the investigation and also recover her memory of crucial events. The instances and descriptions of her drinking, leaving drunk voicemails, apologizing for the voicemails, getting in trouble, and making (SOOOmany) bad decisions gets a bit repetitive after a while. And things fall a little too nicely into place in the lead up to the climax.
Nevertheless, The Girl on the Train is a compelling read with a thrilling twist-filled ending and some interesting things to say about lies and lying liars who tell them.It seems that no review of this book can avoid comparisons to Gone Girl so let's see if I can buck that trend.
This psychological thriller plays with issues of emotional and physical abuse, deception, addiction, co-dependency, and memory…
JimLoter's rating:
Added Jun 05, 2015
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This is my favorite Ward Just novel so far and I am so glad that I still have a few more to go. The story describes the life of Harry Sanders, a young American foreign service officer in Vietnam who becomes involved in an ill-fated mission of parley with an enemy officer that nearly destroys him. Harry picks up the pieces and settles into a fairly comfortable diplomatic life from which he eventually retires. The key to the tale, however, is in what is missing, and what cannot be said.
Near the end of the book, Harry converses with a French admiral and reminisces about his early life in Connecticut spent surrounded by politicians and generals. "As they were talking there would come a moment when their voices trailed off and any attentive listener would know they were deep in their memories, pondering what they were unable - not unwilling but unable - to say aloud."
The attentive reader of American Romantic will also find that there is much that is left unwritten in this tale. Harry is introspective, yet there are missing pieces in his narrative - thoughts in the margins or between the lines that remain hidden even to him ... memories he stuffs into the "burn bag" rather than filing away in the archive.
Early on he is asked if he is "good at keeping secrets."
Need-to-know, Harry said.
Need-to-know, the ambassador replied. And no one does.
The real pleasure in reading this book comes from the exploration of this negative space - the experiences that Harry (and Just) feel we don't "need to know" and yet are there anyway, lurking under the surface, indiscernible like a black cat in a dark room.This is my favorite Ward Just novel so far and I am so glad that I still have a few more to go. The story describes the life of Harry Sanders, a young American foreign service officer in Vietnam who becomes involved in an ill-fated mission of parley…
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Added Feb 02, 2015
Comment:
Guy Roland suffers from amnesia, and after 10 years of living in Paris under an assumed identity, he embarks on a quest to discover his past. Modiano's take on memory and remembrance should be compared (and, importantly, contrasted) to Proust's - Roland spends the length of the novella looking for his memory-triggering madeleine - a photograph, a name in a phone directory, a dressmaker's mannequin, a voice on the telephone, a brass handrail. But every potential cookie either leads to dead ends, unreliable sources, or memories of questionable veracity.
A particularly nice recurring motif involves Roland being given collections of keepsakes and artifacts that belonged to others as if his past can only be reconstructed out of the detritus of those who he may (or may not) have known (or been). "It certainly seemed everything ended with old chocolate or biscuit or cigar boxes." In a way, Roland relies on the memories of others to help him reconstruct his own and becomes a construct rather than a blank slate - which, perhaps, we all are anyway.
Reading "Missing Person" is also a little like experiencing "L'année dernière à Marienbad." Like that film, the structure is non-linear, the interactions between characters are rather dreamlike, and the depictions of past events are always bathed in a fog of ambiguity.Guy Roland suffers from amnesia, and after 10 years of living in Paris under an assumed identity, he embarks on a quest to discover his past. Modiano's take on memory and remembrance should be compared (and, importantly, contrasted) to Proust's -…
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The Land of Steady HabitsThe Land of Steady Habits, BookA Novel
by Thompson, TedBook - 2014Book, 2014
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Added Dec 10, 2014
Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, BookA Novel
by Prose, FrancineBook - 2014Book, 2014
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Added Dec 09, 2014
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Added Sep 23, 2014
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Added Jul 06, 2014
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Pablo Neruda is brilliantly realized in this unusual mystery set during the volatility of the last months of the Allende revolution in Chile. The fictional detective, Cayetano Brulé, is hired by the elderly but still charismatic poet to locate a doctor that Neruda once knew and who he believes might have a treatment for his terminal condition. As Brulé follows the thin leads that Neruda supplies, he realizes that there is more to the assignment than Neruda originally let on. Originally reluctant and eager to complete his job, Brulé (and the reader) gets swept up by the still-powerful charisma and magnetism of Neruda as he travels to dangerous locales such as Cuba and East Berlin. He must piece together clues from the eccentric Neruda's romantic reminiscences and philosophical musings to even uncover what the actual mystery is in the first place. In the end, he becomes as obsessed with Neruda's legacy and Neruda himself seems to be.
As a character, Brulé is often threatened to be overshadowed by the larger-than-life (yet on the brink of death) Neruda, but he ends up holding his own and serves as an excellent foil to the famous poet. I look forward to reading more of the series.Pablo Neruda is brilliantly realized in this unusual mystery set during the volatility of the last months of the Allende revolution in Chile. The fictional detective, Cayetano Brulé, is hired by the elderly but still charismatic poet to locate a…
JimLoter's rating:
Added Jul 05, 2014
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Less an espionage thriller and more of a procurement procedural, Furst's latest in the "Night Soldiers" series is downhill even from "Mission to Paris," which I felt was already a marked decline from his earlier novels.
In "Midnight in Europe" we focus on Cristián Ferrar, a Spanish lawyer living in Paris, who becomes involved in an effort to smuggle arms and ammunition to the republicans in his home country. There is very little tension as Ferrar rather openly pursues his aims, announcing his mission to virtually everyone he come into contact with. The only real tension occurs near the end in a marine encounter that feels tacked on.
The novel gets off to a good start with a sort of "cold open" involving a courier named Castillo who is questioned and ultimately executed by sinister Spanish Nationalists. It's only a few pages long, but it's a well-crafted set-piece that nicely introduces the conditions in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. We never experience those (or any) terrifying conditions again.
Furst's novels focus on the Everyman spy - the reluctant do-gooder who is persuaded to take extraordinary risks on matters of principle, justice, and patriotism. This really only works when the protagonist actually has to make sacrifices. Ferrar is barely inconvenienced by his covert work and never directly faces any real danger. He operates from Paris in comparative safety and comfort. He has meetings at night clubs, openly travels throughout Europe, visits his family, has an affair with a Marquesa, conducts business while horseback riding, flies to New York and buys an apartment for his relatives to escape to, and dines at the Brasserie Heininger, the location of Furst's favorite leitmotif - a bullet-hole-ridden mirror above Table #14. All in all, Ferrar seems to be having a pretty swell time while conducting an illegal arms deal more-or-less in his spare time.
With nothing really at stake, it's hard to care whether the arms-running plot succeeds - and even if it does, we all know how the Spanish Civil War plays out. What we really need in these kinds of novels is for the protagonist to undergo some kind of personal transformation or overcome some kind of inner war for which the events unfolding in Europe are merely the backdrop and/or a metaphor. Sadly, Ferrar has no personal arc, struggles with no inner conflict, and experiences no growth. What appears to be a story about a man trying to get a big gun from Russia to Spain turns out to be just a story about getting a big gun from Russia to Spain.Less an espionage thriller and more of a procurement procedural, Furst's latest in the "Night Soldiers" series is downhill even from "Mission to Paris," which I felt was already a marked decline from his earlier novels.
In "Midnight in Europe" we…
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Added Feb 28, 2014
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