ginpomelo's Reviews (678)

Atmospheric and affecting, this book rises above the general writing style of most thrillers. The story is anchored in a very specific time and place, exploring the different facets of Houston in the 1980s--from the oil boom, the racial inequality, and the uneasy relationship that oppressed people have with law enforcement. It sags a little in the middle as the conflict slowly builds up, but I was very well satisfied.

Fuck. Fuckkkk. It's amazing how Porter's unshowy writing has caused me to spiral down a lovely backroad of existential dread. "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" > Soderbergh's Contagion but "Old Mortality" is the standout for me.

Surprisingly great! The Regency society she presents is very textured, unlike the parody of Regency life often presented in the genre. I liked the 90s distressed font earnestness of it.

 Bodies pile up fast and easy in Andrea Camilleri's The Terra Cotta Dog but I understand why readers would consider the series to be on the lighter end of the mystery spectrum, straddling the genres of cozy and the grittier police procedural. For one thing, Inspector Salvo Montalbano thinks more deeply about about literature and anchovy dishes than the criminals he has to deal with in his hometown of Vigata, a fictional town situated in Sicily. The story is also bouyed by the humor, often derived from Montalbano's filthy wisecracks at the expense of his friends and co-workers.

This second installment begins with an uneasy rendezvous between the inspector and a notorious mafia operator. From there, a series of seemingly unconnected events occupy their little police station--from a baffling robbery at a supermarket, the suspicious accident of an ornery old man, to the discovery of a forgotten murder scene that dates back to Italy's Fascist period.

I don't really want to reveal too much because the freewheeling narrative turns are what makes the book thoroughly engaging. Camilleri builds upon the world he has set up in The Shape of the Water and leisurely provides it with depth, notably through the reminiscence of Italy's none-too-heroic World War II experience. The gag about Montalbano's phobia towards promotion also never fails to make me chuckle and I'm more than okay with them milking it. Minor characters and their quirks shine here--most notable are the buffoonish Catarella, the ambitious Mimi, and Montalbano's long-distance long-suffering lover, Livia.

The final mystery that Montalbano pursues may seem trivial for some given the amount of action present in the first half of the novel, but his obsession with the 50-year old death of two young lovers says so much about his character. He is a romantic who dons the coat of a cynic for work everyday. He is exceptional as a detective, a bloodhound through and through, yet sometimes the reader gets glimpses of a philosopher.

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Few detective novels have managed to elicit a profoundly emotional response from me the way The Collaborator of Bethlehem had. For his debut novel, Matt Beynon Rees plumbs the depths of his experience as Time Magazine's former Israel bureau chief to create a compelling mystery set within the context of an extremely polarizing Israel/Palestine conflict. This unflinching but compassionate portrait of life in the West Bank gives readers who are only familiar with the region through pithy CNN headlines a deeper understanding of the people who continue to live in it and the conflicting forces that affect their lives.

At the heart of the story is Omar Yussef, and aging, ornery teacher at a UN Refugee School. He takes pride in his role as an educator, promoting intellectual curiosity and integrity as a defense against a world quickly spinning out of control. When a beloved friend and student, a Palestinian Christian named George Saba, becomes a scapegoat in the murder of a resistance leader, Omar Yussef risks his life to clear his name. He is then forced to confront the ugly realities that plague Palestine of recent memory: It has become a place where upright men suffer and justice takes a backseat to warmongering. 

A quote from the novel:

While the society he paints can be unrelentingly bleak, Rees succeeds in infusing the narrative with glimpses of humor and wryly intelligent observations. He also mimics poetic turns of phrases in English to approximate conversations in the vernacular, something that I really liked. One of the most interesting assertions that Rees makes is his characterization of militias such as the Palestinian Martyrs Brigade as thugs who cloak themselves in nationalistic grandstanding and inflict suffering towards the very people for whom they claim to be fighting.

The novel also deftly touches upon issues such as the Palestinian diaspora, particularly of the Christians who have been systematically marginalized from the land of their ancestors. I haven't given much thought on the plight of the Christians in Israel, quite frankly, and this novel really brings home the way that they have suffered under the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

The mystery itself is not the novel's strongest suit--the murderer's identity is obvious early on and the heavy foreshadowing drives it to the ground. However, a mystery set in a war zone like Palestine still raises some interesting questions for me. Classic detective stories rely on the implicit notion that once the mystery is solved and the criminal unmasked, the Law takes control and Justice inevitably prevails. Sherlock Holmes never had to deal with a criminal that got off based on a technicality. But how does a detective story hold up in a society where criminals themselves are the judge and executioner? I'm also interested in how Rees decides to portray Omar Yussef's detective career in the subsequent three novels.

I am definitely looking out for the next Omar Yussef title and I heartily recommend The Collaborator of Bethlehem to anyone looking for a gripping story that rises above the typical notions of crime fiction. Definitely a memorable read.

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2008 can be considered a high watermark for the Philippine novel as Jose Dalisay, already an established name in Philippine letters (as well as columnist, academic, and untiring blogger), came close to bagging Asia’s most coveted literary award.

His quirky hybrid of a novel, Soledad’s Sister has been a literary triumph even before seeing print. It is included among the five shortlisted novels for the first ever Man Asian Literary Prize. Beating other English-language works from much more robust literary scenes like India and China, the Jury calls Soledad’s Sister, “a work of warmth, humanity and confidence."

The story begins with a casket arriving at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. Charmed by Dalisay’s dry wit and tongue-in-cheek imagery, we follow a series of mishaps that causes the body labeled “Aurora Cabahug” to take the place of another Filipino OFW, one Filemon Catabay, in the tarmac, much to the annoyance of his family. To add to the confusion “Aurora” isn’t even the corpse’s name, having borrowed it from a younger sister, very much alive and singing her heart out at a karaoke in the far-flung town of Paez.

Snagged into this confusing web is the unlikely hero, a has-been cop whose faint affections towards Paez’s songbird compels him to take on the duty to drive the grief-stricken Rory (the live one) to fetch Soledad (the dead one) and bring back to their hometown.

What happens after is a sort of morbid road trip, two people going through a long and lonely journey through the countryside. For the younger sister Rory, fetching her sister’s body is a filial duty, compounded by guilt for taking all her sister’s sacrifice and hard work for granted.

The exiled cop, SPO2 Walter Zamora, however, it is his time to go back to the city he once called his home, the bustling and often dangerous Manila. His return brings back memories of infidelity and betrayal, a botched kidnapping rescue, and a young girl who disappeared from his life at a 7-11.

Oh, and the body is stolen on their way back.

Dalisay himself has dubbed this tale his, “glorious mess of a novel,” and in many ways, it is. The story itself touches upon many narrative tropes and conventions, turning them over their heads in ways that are often surprising.

Take Walter Zamora, the cop, one of the stock characters in every Filipino action movie. Fernando Poe Jr. or Erap Estrada has never played a policeman quite like this, however, he who prefers the company of an undemanding cat rather than human contact and who considers answering crossword puzzles the highlight of his week.

Throughout the story we catch glimpses of his young, more reckless self, probably with the trademark swagger of an action hero. But the man facing Rory is already a tired gunslinger, resigned to oblivion in Paez.

Rory Cabahug, the karaoke singer is a character described with much warmth and compassion,–a certain zest for life. She prefers Karen Carpenter to Edith Piaf and is unapologetic about it, but at heart, she is a vulnerable girl who suddenly finds herself acutely alone in the world. She will need to find her own strength to live a life that is not chained by duty, the way her Ate Soledad’s existence had been.

If there is an aspect to the story that comes short, it has to be the ending–it loses some of its steam and finally putters off to uncertainty. In the beginning, there has been teasing suggestions of a crime novel, but there is no dramatic final revelation about the culprit or the repercussions of the crime. Soledad’s gruesome fate in Jeddah is only disclosed to the reader as an omniscient aside, bearing no significance for the living. Even a Johny-come-lately carnapper’s entry to the story seems to simply make a point about the randomness of life rather than anything more substantial.

Ridiculous side trips and all, however, does not deter from the fact that the accolades have been deserved. The story never runs out of twist and turns, examining pertinent and often sensitive issues like the Philippine Diaspora, crime and corruption without sinking into sermons or invectives.

Cynical yet still hopeful, audacious as it is fumbling, it is a sincere ode to our own glorious mess of a city, of a culture, of a country. Everything is left to the imagination, with only a quiet but steely optimism. Ironic for a novel that starts with a dead body in an airport.

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The endless sequences where detectives pore over bicycle-related alibis and train schedules like some Abrahamic text is so far from my understanding of train-related promptness as a Filipino. I like the setting though?