Quirky thriller,
artful satire, unconventional cookbook?
John Lanchester has concocted
a marvelous little novel that defies classification by encompassing all
three genres.
The
Debt to Pleasure (Audio Literature, three hours abridged, $17.95)
ultimately becomes both a disturbing and delightful literary delicacy.
Though, like escargots, it may
be an acquired taste.
The story begins as Englishman
and self-confessed Francophile Tarquin Winot rants about the banality and
blandness of typical British food -- "meals which Dante would have
hesitated to invent."
Winot has nothing but disdain
for what he calls the "appropriately named iceberg lettuce" and
"chlorinated former effluent, also known as water." England consumes
what passes for food; France boasts true cuisine. Why else would the French
take off two hours for lunch?
He proceeds to fill the reader
in on his familial history: his favored brother, Barthalomew; the nanny
and maid, Mary Teresa; his parents; and the mysterious disappearance of
his mother's emerald and gold earrings.
Soon we learn that the young
Winot poisoned his brother's pet hamster, Hercule, and we sense ominously
that the violence will only escalate. He sprinkles the action with recipes,
cooking tips, the origin of champagne bubbles. Nothing escapes Winot's
critique: poetry, art, philosophy, the nature of genius. He ruminates about
whether April was actually a benign month before the publication of T.S.Eliot's
The Wasteland. He terms "performance art" an oxymoron.
Is this a deranged memoir, a
gourmet guide, or a twisted retelling of the Cain and Abel story? Think
Julia Child meets Stephen King. Or perhaps Ted Bundy meets Jon Lovitz'
Saturday Night Live character -- creating a serial killer-cum-serial
liar. (Yes, that's the ticket!) The demarcation between fact and fiction
blurs; the plot swirls; the mind whirls. The Debt to Pleasure, read
by British actor Nick Ullett with a perfect acidic flavor, serves up ample
food for thought.
One might even call it soul food.
A
Certain Justice is not your typical mystery, and author John
T. Lescroart's characters are not always what they seem. Lescroart is that
rarity among writers of legal thrillers: He is not a lawyer. Yet he writes
believable legal thrillers with amazing grace.
His first two novels, Hard
Evidence and The 13th Juror, featured Irish-American lawyer
and pub owner Dismas Hardy, and they were best sellers. (But we won't hold
that against him!) In A Certain Justice (Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio,
three hours abridged, $16.99), Lescroart introduces a new hero: Lt. Abe
Glitsky, son of a black mother and a white, Jewish father, who heads the
San Francisco police department's homicide division.
The book opens with the car-jacking
and murder of a white accountant by a black man. When the prosecutor drops
charges against the man for lack of evidence, the accountant's friends
become infuriated. During a get-together at the Cavern Tavern, where the
accountant kept the books, his alcohol-fueled friends become a mob, venting
their anger on an innocent black passer-by. They mistakenly believe the
man is trying to steal a car. In reality, he has locked himself out of
his car, and his car alarm goes off.
The anger escalates to a street
lynching as the mob throws a noose around the man's head and strings him
up from a telephone pole. One man tries to stop the killing: Kevin Shea,
a 28-year-old graduate student. He fights his way through the crowd and
tries to hold the man's legs up while handing him a pocketknife to cut
himself down.
His efforts are futile. A free-lance
photographer happens by and catches the scene on film. To all the world,
and all the newspaper front pages, Shea looks guilty. Glitsky, the officer
assigned to hunt him down, is the only person who questions his guilt.
Courtroom scenes are few and far between, and some plot twists can be seen
a mile away. But still the novel makes for compelling listening.
Why?
Lescroart creates a likable,
three-dimensional lead character, an unlikely hero who tries to do right
while wrestling with his all-too-human frailties. Glitsky (an unusual name
given that he is the antithesis of glitz) tries to go by the book as he
maneuvers around ambitious, self-serving, deal-making politicians. (Or
is that redundant?) All the while, Glitsky can't shake his grief over the
death of his wife from ovarian cancer. He worries about his three sons.
He worries about his job. He worries about prejudice in a society in which
people are often judged by the color of their skin. Most
novels with a moral fall flat on their pages.
Lescroart somehow pulls it off.
With intelligent dialogue and fast-paced action, Lescroart transcends a
mere treatise on race relations in America. The novel does have two weaknesses,
however. First, readers will guess the killer of black district attorney
Chris Locke long before Lescroart reveals the mystery. Second, the idea
of a white mob lynching a black man on a busy, commercial street in progressive
San Francisco rings false.
But these are minor quibbles
in an otherwise first-rate legal thriller. A Certain Justice is
tense, taut and thought-provoking.
My gut instinct usually leads
me to the all-you-can-eat buffet line. Psychologist Marcia Emery's instincts
lead her to a greater appreciation of the intuitive power of the mind.
Call it insight, second sight,
a hunch, an educated guess, a sixth sense, playing it by ear, or flying
by the seat of your pants. We've all experienced serendipitous moments
when intuition overtakes logic with surprising and fruitful results. In
Intuition: How To Use Your Gut Instinct for Greater
Personal Power (Simon & Schuster Audio, two hours, $16),
Emery tells how to cultivate that little voice in your head, that flash
of inspiration, that feeling in your bones.
More than a decade ago, she used
these ideas to develop an intuitive management course at Aquinas College
in Grand Rapids, Mich. It may take more than Emery's guidance, however,
to allow you to shout 'Eureka!' Unfortunately, the author presents a hodgepodge
of advice, both sound and silly. "Intuition can clarify personal relationships,
forecast events, make creative breakthroughs, and generate new products
and processes," Emery promises.
Her argument that we need to
tune in to our inner voice to gain wisdom makes sense. But 'know thyself'
is nothing new. Her exercises for achieving this enlightened state sometimes
border on the ridiculous. For example, to strengthen your intuitive muscle,
Emery suggests that before running an errand you visualize the parking
spot you will find. Her students invariably end up parking where they thought
they would. Hmm. Amazing.
Another exercise asks the student to
think about the experience of buying a car. What word associations come
to mind? According to Emery, the intuitive mind might jump from circus
to animals to elephants to a large trunk. The wisdom to be gleaned from
this game? 'The minivan is the choice for me because of the extra storage
room, or 'big trunk,' she concludes.
Let's see. Elephants also have
a leathery gray hide. Perhaps you should buy a car with a gray leather
interior. Her advice on interpreting dreams left me scratching my head
as well. You are considering a new job, for example. You dream that you
are sitting in your new office when smoke begins to billow from a desk
drawer.
Call the fire marshal? No, your intuitive
mind may be telling you that your future with that company might be hazy
or even explosive. In one breath she says, "Anytime you find that
you're getting very wordy in explaining or thinking about something, you
are out of the intuitive mind." The next moment she uses such abstract
words as paradigm, expedite, accessing information, receptivity, amplification,
kinesthetic state, neuro-linguistic programming, sensory modalities, mind-mapping,
incubation and mind-shift method.
Frankly, this left brain-right brain,
logical vs. intuitive interplay has been well-plumbed and better enunciated
by more compelling thinkers. My gut feeling? Skip this book.
Edvard Radzinsky's latest
work has all the elements of the ultimate thriller:
--
a megalomaniac leader, nicknamed 'the Boss,' intent on world domination
--
a passel of minions who share the leader's apocalyptic view
--
a super weapon capable of bringing civilization to its knees
--
a world war that threatens the survival of the free world
No, wait. It's not a James Bond
intrigue. Unfortunately, Radzinsky's work is Stalin
(Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio, six hours abridged, $25), an in-depth
biography based on documents from Russia's secret archives. Radzinsky,
a popular Russian playwright, television personality and trained historian,
labored for 25 years on his previous best-selling book, The Last Tsar:
The Life and Death of Nicholas II.
In Stalin, Radzinsky
tackles one of history's most brutal and enigmatic men. To flesh out his
portrait, the author combed the leader's personal papers, examined his
daily appointment book, uncovered still-sealed archives of the KGB, and
conducted hundreds of interviews. The resulting procession of evil is at
best fascinating and at worst numbing.
Edmund Burke once said that all
that has to happen for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.
Perhaps he had Stalin's Russia in mind. Born in abject poverty, Stalin,
who was called Soso as a child, rose to rule singlehandedly from 1929 until
his death in 1953. The intervening years can be summed up in three words:
terror, conspiracy and war. Stalin not only executed or jailed most of
those who helped in his rise to power but he also was responsible for the
deaths or exile of millions of Soviet peasants -- more than all the country's
war dead combined -- who opposed his rule.
Like Hitler, Stalin made mass
murder a governmental policy. And like other dictators, Stalin (who adopted
his name from a Russian word meaning man of steel) was adept at rewriting
history. He had Soviet papers doctored to make his role in events seem
far greater than it really was. Stalin, for example, had not played a vital
role in the October Revolution, which brought communism to Russia; but
in later documents Stalin portrayed himself as Lenin's right-hand man.
The son of a drunkard cobbler
and a washerwoman, Stalin had smallpox as a child and the disease scarred
his face for life. As a teen-ager, Stalin, nicknamed Koba, entered the
seminary and studied for the priesthood, but he later joined a secret Marxist
revolutionary group. Radzinsky penetrates the barriers of Soviet bureaucracy
to elicit a reasoned and detailed examination of a man who tried to create
his own mythology. Actor David McCallum (best remembered for TV's Man
From U.N.C.L.E.) brings the story to life in a conversational and engaging
voice.
Playwright Radzinsky has a flair for
the dramatic. The story cuts like an ice pick, leaving a residue of dread
and disdain. And, thus, the thriller becomes a horror story. "At different
times he was called a paranoiac, a monster, or just a common gangster,"
Radzinsky writes. "But his character and the motives for his actions
remain just as mysterious now as they were on the day of his death."
Great men's lives teach great lessons, and ruthless tyrants, perhaps, teach
us even more.
Radzinsky lifts the shroud of mystery.
If only history's lessons -- so eloquently recalled in this biography --
would be more frequently remembered.
If you've ever wanted to be
the boss -- or kill the boss -- Dogbert's Top
Secret Management Handbook is for you. The 90-minute audio book
(Harper Audio, $12) reveals the secrets of what it takes to transform yourself
into a clueless corporate cypher.
Cartoonist Scott Adams, the creator
of the comic strip Dilbert (carried daily in The Dispatch), reads
his work with deadpan good humor and dead-on accuracy. His first book,
The Dilbert Principle, sold more than 1 million copies and this
latest offering is on The New York Times best-seller list.
Dilbert is the perpetually frazzled
engineer with the expressive necktie. His canine companion, Dogbert, is
a management consultant. Fortunately, the right-on theater of absurd that
plays itself out in the cartoon strip translates well to audio. The audio
box blurb sets the tone: "This valuable management handbook teaches
new managers how to transform themselves from bitter and bewildered 'little
people' into fully functioning, paradigm-spewing management zombies."
Ah, yes, you know it well: corporate America -- land of endless meetings,
constricting cubicles and demoralizing downsizing.
The small white, bespectacled
Dogbert counsels fledgling managers on the essentials of progressive management.
You will learn how to sound like a boss while taking no responsibility
for your actions; lead without making any decisions; pretend to care; hear
without listening; make empty promises of promotion; communicate without
the risk of conveying information; and inspire employees by giving them
worthless knickknacks. Here's a sampling of Dogbert's wisdom on such matters
as:
-- Goals and reality. "In
an ideal world, your job as manager would include setting goals and acquiring
the resources to achieve them. But you don't live in an ideal world, largely
because there are people like you in it."
-- The management zombie stare.
"Learn to hide every trace of comprehension and compassion. Your face
should send this message: Logic is futile. Some rookie managers make the
mistake of inviting input. As far as unwarranted optimism goes, this is
roughly equivalent to panning for gold in your own shower. If your employees
were capable of generating any nuggets of wisdom, they wouldn't be working
for you."
-- The dangers of employee training.
"In the short term, it causes missed work. In the long term, it causes
employees to leave for jobs that pay a living wage. Nobody wins when that
happens."
-- The importance of being late
for meetings. "Your employees will entertain themselves by making
small talk, so named because of the size of their paychecks."
Sound cynical? Yes. Sound advice?
Most certainly -- if you aspire to the ranks of the completely clueless
corporate cyphers. If you're looking for that perfect gift for your boss
for Christmas, well, maybe you'd better consider flowers or chocolates.
Unless, of course, you fancy unemployment.
Photographer and writer Steve
Wall undertakes a laudable goal in his latest book. Shadowcatchers:
A Journey in Search of the Teachings of Native American Elders (Audio
Literature, three hours, $17.95) sets out to rescue the lost heritage of
American Indian wisdom.
Wall, co-author of the best-selling
Wisdomkeepers, travels to the Cherokee, Mohawk, Seneca and Lakota nations.
There, he records the ancient myths and stories of tribal leaders and healers.
His journey takes him into the homes of Indian chiefs and into his own
heart as he searches for the meaning of life and death, God and the afterlife.
The weakness of the book, however, rests in Wall's constant explanation
of why he tackled this task. Rather than opening a window onto the Indian
world, Wall is often content to merely stare into the mirror.
National Geographic rejects
several of his stories, he plunges into a deep depression, he loses his
house and car, he questions his choice of a career in journalism. Unfortunately,
Wall never really links these problems to Indian solutions. The strength
of Wall's previous book, Wisdomkeepers, was that he let the 17 American
Indians interviewed speak for themselves. In Shadowcatchers, the Indian
readers, actors Saginaw and Apesanahkwat, talk a lot, but nothing much
new is said.
In brief, Wall learns that:
-- Indians
share a true relationship with God.
-- White man has
lost touch with nature and himself.
-- We live in a
society that has forgotten its values and traditions.
-- Too many
people favor materialistic possessions over true spiritual meaning in their
lives. ¥
-- We must
learn to live and work together in harmony.
Haven't we heard all this before? Sure,
the white man broke every treaty, massacred the Indians and trampled their
culture. Wall's work adds nothing to our understanding nor our shame. To
make matters worse, Saginaw (of TV's Picket Fences and Dr. Quinn,
Medicine Woman) and Apesanahkwat (of Northern Exposure and Walker,
Texas Ranger) read with monotonous, singsong voices that lull the listener
into a sleepy stupor.
Shadowcatchers tries hard
to be profound and ends up being simply prosaic. Daring in vision, it remains
disappointing in execution.
Call me old-fashioned. The
best mysteries offer a taut plot, intriguing intrigue and a masterful crime
solver. Witness Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Lord Peter
Wimsey et. al. Today's thrillers, on the other hand, tend to glorify gore
over story.
Phillip Margolin's Heartstone
(Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio, three hours abridged, $16.99)
is no exception. Heartstone tells a shocking story of corruption
and lies surrounding the brutal murders of Richie Walters, an all-American
teen-ager, and his girlfriend, Elaine Murray, an equally all-American cheerleader.
Heartstone was first published
as a paperback in 1978 and was nominated for the prestigious Edgar Award.
The legal thriller is back thanks to the popularity of Margolin's best-selling
After Dark. While entertaining, Heartstone exhibits three weaknesses
of the popular thriller: We never really get to know the two murdered characters
and, thus, their deaths, while horrific, never really touch us.
We never really have a hero to
root for. Prosecutors, detectives and family members are either corrupt,
morally absent or painted so thinly that we can't relate to them. And the
resolution, while surprising, celebrates mayhem and irrationality -- not
closure. Mystery writer P.D. James put it best: "Detective stories
help reassure us in the belief that the universe, underneath it all, is
rational. They're small celebrations of order and reason in an increasingly
disordered world."
My quarrel is not with Heartstone's
realism. Margolin, a criminal defense lawyer, knows his way around a police
precinct room and a courtroom. My quarrel is with a realism that forgets
the human touch. The author only reflects our world, without reflection
on the meaning of that world.
Elizabeth George's latest
mystery fits as comfortably as an old deer stalker cap. In
the Presence of the Enemy (Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio, six
hours abridged, $23.95) brings back all the characters that George's myriad
fans have come to know and love, including the stalwart Detective Inspector
Thomas Lynley and his partner, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers.
The plot, however, becomes anything
but comfortable. Ten-year-old Charlotte Bowen has been abducted, and if
tabloid editor Dennis Luxford does not admit on Page One to having fathered
her, she will die.
To complicate matters, Charlotte
is also the daughter of Eve Bowen, a prominent government minister who
refuses to let Luxford publicly acknowledge the child or call the police.
Both Luxford and Bowen are married, and neither spouse knows of the earlier
affair. To reveal the truth would throw their lives, loves and careers
into chaos. To hide the truth, however, will launch heart-wrenching loss
and lead to ultimate despair.
While the plot twists and turns
like the London Underground, the finely drawn characters amaze and astonish.
George possesses an ear for striking dialogue and an eye for realistic
description. Her characters are not mere types; rather they evolve as flesh-and-blood
individuals. To label this work a mere mystery is to underestimate its
narrative power and textured prose.
In an Elizabeth George novel,
the reader has the sense that the characters have dictated the plot --
not the author. She has mastered the advice of author E.B. White, who once
told aspiring writers, "Don't write about Man; write about a man."
George writes about ordinary men and women confronting the worst evils
of life, -- at times succumbing, at times conquering -- but eventually
going on with their tattered lives. The horrific conclusion comes slowly,
surely and irrevocably -- the suspense made all the more palpable with
the haunting reading of British actor Derek Jacobi, best known for his
starring role in Masterpiece Theatre's I, Claudius.
This, the eighth in the series
of George's Lynley mysteries, stands as a cautionary tale: The evil of
hypocrisy lurks within all of us, with sometimes disastrous consequences.
If you've ever had a dog,
have a dog or longed to own one, you'll find The
Dog Who Loved Too Much a special treat. In fact, Dr. Nicholas
Dodman's latest book (Audio Literature, three hours abridged, $17.95) is
quite fetching -- and healing.
An animal behaviorist, Dodman
recounts an array of dog behavior problems with a warm, engaging and often
humorous style. His message: Dogs are people, too. "Animals have a
psyche," he says, "and are prone to mental disturbances similar
to the ones that affect people." In other words, dogs can be jealous,
aggressive, dominant, fearful and territorial.
Thus, Dodman treats the mental
and physical health of a dog in much the way a family doctor might solve
a human's ills. He relies on a mixture of dietary changes; more exercise;
obedience training and behavior modification; and, in some cases, medication.
Take the dog who attacked ringing
telephones. Twenty years ago in Glasgow, Scotland, where Dodman had a veterinary
practice, a man came in with Alice, a Jack Russell terrier, who had attacked
and chewed up three phones. Nothing had worked, and the owner felt it was
time to put the dog to sleep. Dodman prescribed Valium three times a day.
Three weeks later, the owner returned with a broad smile on his face.
"Has Alice stopped attacking the
phone?" Dodman asked.
"No," the owner replied,
"but she's so slow that I can get to the phone first."
Happily, Alice eventually lost
interest in ringing phones and no longer needed medication. In the ensuing
two decades, Dodman, now a professor at Tufts University School of Veterinary
Medicine, has witnessed dramatic developments in the treatment and understanding
of problem dogs.
Consider the case of Sybil, a
7-year-old German shepherd who was terrified of thunderstorms. Sybil would
growl, whine, bite and pace uncontrollably. Dodman prescribed a gradual
exposure to the sounds of thunder through tape recordings and a system
of rewards for staying calm. Dodman has observed that many dogs seek out
sinks and bathrooms during a storm. Dodman theorizes that dogs may receive
small shocks of static electricity during storms, and thus they seek out
metal pipes as a grounding device.
Or take the case of Brendan,
a 3 1/2-year-old Old English sheep dog who chased imaginary rabbits around
the house. When he was a puppy, his previous owners had played with him
by encouraging him to chase the beam of a flashlight around the floor.
Soon, it became an obsession, and he started chasing sunbeams, shadows
and imaginary objects. Or consider the case of Elsa, a 5-year-old black
Labrador mix who could not stand to be separated from her owners -- in
other words, a dog who loves too much. An estimated 4 percent of the 54
million dogs in the United States exhibit symptoms of separation anxiety.
The owners learned to bolster Elsa's self-confidence by teaching her to
be more independent.
Most of these dogs showed marked
improvement under Dodman's care. The author spices his anecdotes with practical
advice. For example:
-- Exercise:
"A tired dog is a good dog."
-- Petting:
"Contrary to popular opinion, most dogs do not like to be patted on
the top of the head. The best place to pet a dog is on the chest, under
the chin, or behind the ears."
-- Choosing a dog:
"It is always a great surprise to people who buy a Jack Russell terrier
because they fell in love with Eddie, a Jack Russell terrier on the television
show Frasier, that the dog is after all a terrier with tendencies to be
yappy, hyperactive and even nippy."
-- A dog's life:
"It's important to integrate the dog into the daily life of the family.
Do not park it in a kennel or anchor it to a tree."
Under Dodman's loving care, every
dog does indeed have its day. His tales will leave you, uh, begging for
more.