Killshot

Killshot

By Elmore Leonard

Welcome!

I am in the middle of my own personal reading challenge. I didn't mention this in the previous blogpost because I was too busy getting pseudo-academic on the subject of Ernest Hemingway (I insist on using the "pseudo" prefix because A) I drink rather heavily while writing and B) even if I weren't, I rarely know what I'm talking about). It wasn't planned. It's not particularly organized and I didn't invite other bloggers to participate, though you are more than welcome to hop aboard if you wish.

From now until Christmas I plan on reading as many novels by notable authors that I have previously never read. The first in this challenge was Ernest Hemingway, an author I have somehow managed to avoid for 38 years prior to last week. Other authors officially queued up for a peek this season are Iris Murdoch, Truman Capote and Raymond Chandler. But this week I finally tackled an author I've been dying to read for a few decades: Elmore Leonard.

As I am sure I have mentioned on more than one occasion on this blog, one of my favorite sites on the web is The Onion's AV Club. For anyone who takes popular culture seriously, it is an invaluable resource for books, film, music and games, both old and new. One of my favorite columns on the AV Club is something called Gateway to Geekery, which provides step-by-step tutorials for Johnny-Come-Latelys who would like to get into the work of prolific artists. For example, perhaps you are interested in exploring Lou Reed's discography but you feel hopelessly intimidated by the sheer volume of material. Where do you start? Gateway to Geekery is there to help lest you make the mistake of picking up a copy of Metal Machine Music.

Anyway, I wish there was a Gateway to Geekery article available to anyone late to the Elmore Leonard Party because I'm pretty sure they would have advised me against reading Killshot.

Killshot is mid-career novel by Elmore Leonard. Written in 1989, it is the story of Wayne Colson and his wife, Carmen who inadvertently get caught in the middle of the shakedown of Carmen's boss. After a brief physical altercation, Wayne sends Armand Degas, an Ojibway hit man, and Richie Nix, a dim-witted loose cannon away, with their tails between their legs. Degas is a professional and knows that both Wayne and Carmen have seen their faces and could positively identify them in a police line-up. He is determined to do away with Wayne and Carmen as a measure of job security and maintained anonymity. As with any novel of this sort, the police are ineffectual. Wayne and Carmen are natually forced to take matters into their own hands.

I was expecting a fast-paced novel with lots of slick-talking characters and what I got was a slow plot that seemed unsure of where to go next. It felt as if Leonard was throwing in all sorts of half-concocted ideas and ill-formed plot lines only to abandon them before they fully materialized. While the characters are indeed strong, I found it impossible to believe that a professional such as Armand Degas would have partnered up with someone as dull-witted as Richie Nix. Degas must have known upon meeting this half-wit that doing any sort of business with him was going to end in disaster and it's not like they were forced to work together. Furthermore, Degas could have dissolved their partnership at any time. So why does he let such an unstable partner continue to live despite his erratic behavior? Degas's motivations remained concealed throughout and that weakened the novel considerably.

Furthermore, the legendary dialog that I expected from Leonard never really materialized. The dialog was by no means awful, but given what I had heard about his ability to write a conversation, I was decidedly underwhelmed. It is possible that it was built up too much prior to reading, but I found that the dialog in Killshot is a far cry from the brilliant work of Richard Price. Perhaps I picked the wrong book.

One area in which this book excels is Leonard's exploration of the theme of security. Leonard takes aim at the myth that we can insulate ourselves from crime and violence via various methods of self defense (in this case firearms and police protection but it could extend to more contemporary methods such as video surveillance, home security firms etc...). The fact of the matter is that security is a complete myth. The amount of time, money and effort we put into security does not directly translate into a more secured existence. In fact, it is impossible to protect ourselves from anything or anyone if that thing or person is determined to get you. Leonard did a fine job of expressing this from both the perspective of the terrorized Colson couple trying to protect themselves from would-be killers and Armand Degas, a professional killer trying to protect his anonymity.

Unfortunately the themes of the novel are not enough to carry the slow, meandering plot. Killshot had the makings of a decent novel but too many weird directions and loose ends makes it feel like an unfinished idea rather than a fully actualized novel. Given Elmore Leonard's reputation and his sheer volume of work, I will definitely give him another chance (though I am going to solicit recommendations before I jump into another title).

Snowdrops

Snowdrops

By A.D. Miller

When I first moved to Taiwan in 2003, I read Alex Garland's novel, The Beach, almost fresh off the plane. Although The Beach focused primarily on the backpacker's mythological search for that one last undiscovered corner of the whorl in which to call their own, it did touch upon the notion of expats living overseas for extended periods. At the time, I expected my experiences in Taiwan to, if not parallel Garland's novel, provide for a working model. How completely wrong I was. Expat life is far more mundane than Garland's vision (obviously).

It is with this in mind that we meet Nick Platt, a Briton who has recently returned from nearly a decade living and working in Russia. Snowdrops proceeds as a tell-all from Platt to his unnamed fiancé as a way of airing out all his dirty laundry before settling down. A clearing of his conscience. And there is plenty here that needs clearing. It is a stark and honesty confession of a man who spent a decade living in a post-Soviet Russia replete with corruption, crime and hedonism and the way in which Russia altered the Platt's moral fiber.His story begins in his eighth year and concerns snowdrops.

It is telling that Muscovites have a slang term for the dead bodies that appear throughout the city following the spring thaw. These bodies, which have been buried under the deep freeze throughout the winter reveal themselves in the spring run-off like early blooming spring flowers of the same name. The metaphor is apt not only for the severity of Moscow winters but also for the moral ambiguity and crippling social problems that define post-communist, post-globalized Russia.

Platt is a lawyer and lives alone, his work is less than diligent and his social life is sleazier than he would like to believe. Like so many expatriates, time away from home has guided his moral compass in the direction of his adopted home. He is more likely to believe the shifty business practices of rich Cossack investors and cannot resist the allure of two beautiful Russian women (Masha and Katya) he meets on the Metro.

The women slowly creep into his life, first as a distraction from the monotony of life then as an obsession bordering on psychosis. While the depressing truth of the women's intentions becomes clear to the reader and their web of lies unfurls like, Platt continues to delude himself that everything is on the level and his relationship with Masha when, deep down, we know he knows exactly how it will all play out. I mean, it's right there in the title of the book isn't it? The tragedy of this novel is its complete lack of suspense as Platt continues to fall for the women's scam. One might assume that the allure of a leggy Russian woman in a short skirt and tall boots has a lot to do with it (and of course, it does) but A.D. Miller is insistent that the real culprit in this dupe was not the women so much as Moscow itself.

Like the work of Jeffery Eugenides, A.D. Miller has the ability to write his setting as a character of its own. In Snowdrops the Moscow of 2005 breathes with vodka-soaked life. Miller's Moscow is populated with Dagestani taxi drivers, Turkmeni road workers, Scandinavian shysters and sweaty Hungarian businessmen cursing in a dozen languages. The Moscow of Snowdrops reeks of cigar smoke and cheap perfume. What's not to love? Miller depicts the multi-cultural cash-grab, the winner-takes-all-and-damn-the-loser mentality that has come to personify modern Russia. The Moscow in Snowdrops pulses with perfect balance of kitsch, sleaze and bling. It is no wonder that Platt is ever bit as seduced by the city as he is by Masha and Katya.

It is often said that the longer you stay away from the country of your birth, the more difficult it becomes to go back. Platt's morally suspect friend Steve calls it long-term expat syndrome and I can vouch for the existence of such a disorder. As a long term resident of Taiwan (and one is in the planning stages of a return to Canada), I can relate to Platt's ordeal and his plight. It is easy to lose sight of oneself whilst living within another culture and I have met dozens of foreigners who have lived and worked in Taiwan for twenty, sometimes thirty years and it is difficult to imagine them living anywhere else. The ideas and morals you came with flake off like skin cells as you begin the slow transformation into something other. In Platt's case, he is not Russian, but he is no longer British either. He effectively belongs nowhere. So where do one's morals come from when one comes from nowhere?

Snowdrops was shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize and it is not terribly difficult to see why. I've often thought that a well-written novel that cuts to the heart of expat life would receive the right kind of attention. I figured the eventual novel would be about living and working in China, but Russia seems to work all the same. By focusing on a long-term expat, it cuts the culture shock factor in half and presents the cultural and moral differences in a more apologetic, less judgmental fashion. In this repeat, Snowdrops is everything that Alex Garland's The Beach was not. Gritty, sordid and pathetic but ultimately believable. Nick Platt could be anyone living and working overseas.

Hell, Nick Platt could be me.

Faceless Killers

Faceless Killers

By Hennig Mankell

I have no idea where this book came from. It was on my shelf and looked short enough and interesting enough to wash my head clear of all the non-fiction I have been reading over the past couple of weeks. There's nothing like settling into a novel after a non-fiction binge. It's like coming home.

When I started the book I had absolutely no idea that it was yet another Swedish crime novel (these things are like bed bugs lately... just what you think you've seen the last one, out pops another from the seams of your coverlet). All I read on the back of the book were the words: "It was a senselessly violent crime," and I said: "SOLD!" I'm not a discerning customer. Anyway, I should have guessed it was Swedish.

As it turns out, Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell pre-dates the current fetish (um.. that's two blog posts in a row that I've used that term) with Scandinavian crime drama, but it does not pre-date the conventions. It is also the first in a series (dammit!). I don't know enough about Scandinavian crime dramas but based on the fact that this novel was an international best seller in 1991 and that it seems to have all the requisite insanity of The Millennium Trilogy (and others), I'm curious as to whether or not this is the grandfather of a genre (much like The New York Dolls were the grandfather of punk rock). Of course, it is set in a quiet provincial town. There is the unnecessarily gruesome murder, the overworked and under-appreciated cops, the over-arching distrust of foreigners, the ubiquitous dislike for women and the ever-impending snowstorms. It's all there. In 1991. I'm beginning to think that, much like Canadian fiction, there should be a checklist that should be created to decide exactly how Swedish a particular book is.

Faceless Killers starts with the (what else?) gruesome murder of an elderly couple on a farm outside a quiet, provincial town. Naturally, the wife suffers a fair amount more than her husband. The rest of the novel follows Kurt Wallander, an over-worked and under-appreciated cop leads the investigation of the killings. The first two thirds of the novel follow Wallander's life in a minute by minute account of the first two weeks of the investigation when it becomes apparent that the killers just might be refugees from Eastern Europe (which naturally sparks all sorts of reactionary hate crimes... this is Sweden after all, the land of Church burnings and Neo-Nazis). He attempts to move the investigation along while his personal life seems to be unravelling all around him. Only his calm and cool Ystad demeanor and the lack of snow seems to carry him through what to virtually everyone else living on the Skane would be a stress level of coronary proportions. Given that he is recently divorced (what cop isn't?) and eating nothing but hamburgers and pizza, I'm surprised that he lives through this episode, but what do I know about the Swedish constitution?

The last third of the novel seems to send the story into overdrive. Months pass in the span of a few pages as the case seems to go as cold as March in Hällesjö, before Wallander resolves the mystery in the final few pages. Given the detailed narrative of the first third, I found this shift in the momentum jarring. I had become accustom the minute by minute narrative style. When it started to spin out of control, Mankell lost me a bit. I started to care a lot less about the resolution due to the pace transition. It felt a little like Mankell was trying to wrap up his novel in time to catch the last train to Sävsjö or something. It all just seemed to lose traction.

But I could live with that. It was a minor nuisance in an otherwise enjoyable crime novel. What really irked me was the translation. I kept checking back to see whether Ernest Hemingway had returned from the grave to abbreviate an entirely new generation. Turns out it's a guy named Steven T. Murray. I'm assuming he really likes Hemingway, or Dick and Jane novels, either/or. It got to a point where I began talking to my wife in short, rapid-fire sentences over lunch. She asked whether or not I had suffered a stroke.

This is a typical (though written by me, not Henning Mankell) paragraph from the book:

Wallander wondered whether he should call Kalle in Väderstad. He felt sick. Ryberg still hadn't arrived. The winter wind blew outside his window. He remembered he hadn't eaten since yesterday. He walked out of the station. He entered the restaurant across the street. He ordered a pizza. He would call Kalle as soon as he got back to the office. The pizza had pineapple. It was 11:46pm.

See what I mean? It's as unnerving as a staring contest.

The other uncomfortable thing about Faceless Killers was its focus on Sweden's (apparent) liberal policy toward immigrants and refugees. While I wouldn't class this novel as being racist or anti-immigration, it did seem to imply a lot of negativity toward non-Swedish residents. While it could be that Mankell's intention was to raise the issue, I'm not sure he was overly clear about it. I got the impression that most of the characters in the book would have been perfectly happy with mass expulsion, but they were all too Nordically polite to say so. I might be wrong, but that was the impression this book left me.

But I'm not going to slag on Faceless Killers too much. As a whole it had me from page one through the pace change and while I lost some of the interest Mankell generated in his build-up I didn't lose so much as to throw the book down in disgust or anything. It's not the world's greatest crime novel  but it certainly isn't the worst book on the market and who am I to get all huffy about Swedish immigration policy? Besides, I could think of worse things to read if you happen to be caught on the overnight train from Stockholm to Rättviks.

If you dig sado-masochistic novels from Scandinavia, check it out. If you were ambivalent about the Millennium Trilogy, give this one a pass.

Thinner

Thinner

By Stephen King (aka Richard Bachman)

After a critical reading of Thinner, the last book ever written by Richard Bachman (Stephen King) I only have two questions:

1. Why does a thirty-something year-old man who is a partner at his law firm, has a wife and daughter and is a pillar of the community, allow people in his town to continue to refer to him as "Billy?"

The only adult males who are allowed to get away with the name "Billy" play professional sports.

And...

2. What is it with Stephen King and hand jobs?

Seriously. The hand job doled out by Heidi, the wife of Billy Halek plays a more central part in this Kafka-esque metamorphosis tale than most of the other human characters. King, erm... Bachman, spends more time examining, dissecting and re-evaluating said hand job than he does developing characters such as Taduz Lemke, the mysterious Gypsy who curses Halek after Halek hits and kills his daughter in an automobile accident while the aforementioned hand job was taking place.

Got that? Good.

We learn that this was the first time Halek had ever received a hand job from his wife while operating a motor vehicle ("Why, Heidi? why did you pick that day to give me my first hand job!" whined Billy). We learn that when his car grill made impact with Taduz Lemke's daughter he climaxed, but his wife's kung fu grip retained his ejaculation, thereby causing Billy a moment of both extreme pleasure and extreme pain (this is actually mentioned twice in the novel!). We learn that Billy Halek is capable of harboring a hell of a lot of hate based on a single act of manual stimulation but we never learn a damned thing about who Taduz Lemke is or what he's been up to the past 105 of his 106 years on this planet. Priorities, Mr. King. We have a story to tell and there's a hell of a lot more going on than simply a hand job.

If this were the first instance of Stephen King glorifying the pitiful sex lives of Vanilla America I would excuse it, but King has made a career out of writing badly about sex. Gratuitous breaking-and-entering-turned-masturbation sessions in Cujo, group orgies in It and don't even get me started with Gerald's Game. I know that sex and violence are two of the pillars of the horror genre but I find that sex fits into a Stephen King story the way a Slayer song fits into a romantic mixed tape.

Billy Halek could have been doing literally anything else when he hit that woman. Anything would have made more sense. He could have been eating a Super-Sized McDonald's Valu-Pack or a bucket of KFC chicken when he hit her. Certainly that would have fit the narrative a little more. After all, The old Gypsy curse causes him to get thinner, not receive continuous hand jobs until his penis falls off, which would have made a lot more sense considering Taduz Lemke knew exactly what Billy's wife was doing at the time the car struck his daughter.

Too ironic, you say? OK. He could have been arguing with his wife about their daughter or discussing shady business with Richard Ginelli or pretending he was in the lead at the Indianapolis 500 like I do. Hell, he could have been checking out Taduz Lemke's great-granddaughter's ass in a pair of Jordache Jeans for all the sense the hand job made.

I like Stephen King, but it's high time someone called him out on this. For all his wonderfully freaky storylines he concocts he throws in uncomfortable fornication in virtually everything he writes. He must think that everyone in White Middle America is a potential sexual deviant. It's possible he does this as a way to upset his readers further, but I don't think King's readers go back to the fount again and again thinking: "Geez... he had a bunch of 12 year-olds gang rape their best friend at the end of his last book, let's see what kind of kink he's thrown into Tommyknockers." It's the very definition of the word gratuitous.

Wait a minute.

I'm no right-wing Christian prude nor am I a left-wing cop for political correctness. I'm not implying that these scenes shock me or bother me or, god forbid, offend me. They don't. I've read far raunchier material from better (and worse) writers and enjoyed the hell out of it for what it was worth. Most probably because the debauched acts in those stories furthered the storyline rather than sat alongside it like a red-headed step-child. As a reader I question their existence in the story because I like my stories to be closed circuits where everything happens for a reason and furthers the storyline created. If there's no need for a hand job, why include it? If the narrative begs for a hand job, well sir, write it in, proudly.

Perhaps Stephen King should stick to writing horror and leave the sex in abler hands. I know he has mentioned in interviews that he has trouble writing about sex, which begs the question: Why bother? King is good at so much else, why continue to beat the proverbial dead horse? Perhaps Stephen King is a masochist.

Of course, you didn't need to read this blog to know that.