jdcorley's Reviews (191)

Whenever a cop sets out to write a book about crime, it's always hilarious to see what they think crime and criminals are Actually Like. The police and civilian characters are methodically considered and expressed - the criminals are deranged weirdos. They don't quite get that this makes the cops seem faintly ridiculous too. Ultimately that's why the book doesn't hang together.

Although the worldbuilding is smooth, it's a litlte bit by-the-book and the characters are a little bit flat to really make the story pop. The promise of some kind of hypercognitive superbrain is not really fulfilled.  In the end everything turns on what looked like two throwaway side adventures which aren't detailed at all - a real shame because when I read them I thought "wait, why isn't the book about these, these sound rad!" Turns out they were rad, the author just more or less skipped them.  And then once the actual hypercognition stuff starts kicking in it's just not that much to write home about. I did appreciate that the climbing and survival skills of the main character came into play in many different ways throughout the plot. But it's essentially skippable.

Although the characters are a bit less repulsive than the usual Hitt cast, the explosive return to normalcy at the end for no reason at all is among his most hilarious. We are all ready to watch a sexual obsession and self annihilation and literally with no transition he just starts in on happily ever after. Never change, Orrie Hitt.

If you read Hammett's other Continental Op books and stories you become rather befuddled by how he became such a titanic figure in noir. He's officious, just as judgmental and snotty as any more classical detective, and lacks any kind of style at all. Then you read Red Harvest and you get it. It isn't just that the character is ruthless, its that the whole world is soaked in viciousness, ugliness, madness, hatred, hatred, hatred. It's a delicious book and it tastes like a slug of cheap liquor. It isn't the Continental Op who is judgmental, who sees the world as a sluice of corruption and stupidity - it's Hammett, and it's perfect.

Of the three novellas in this volume, two are absolute home runs, just complete triumphs. Wolfe has nothing, absolutely nothing to go on and he twists and turns circumstances until he's got something and runs it right out to the end of his genius. In the third he does the "send Saul to get something you don't tell the audience" trick but if you were paying attention you can figure it out yourself, which is everything we want in a mystery. What a delight!

Although the core of the story is rather simplistic and even predictable, there is enough specificity and charm here to keep interest - the depiction of many types of Mexican families, life in the 1980s there, and even the feelings of teenaged life. You aren't supposed to love everyone, you're supposed to understand them, and I do. I am not so fast to call this magical realism. Instead it seems a less mystic, more personal, fantasy. The pop music alone makes me feel that way. 

Just an awful disappointment. If you write a Holmes story and he never deduces or accomplishes anything but tag along while someone else does the deeds, you've made a pretty serious mistake.

While I did enjoy our protagonist and her journey I got very bored with the constant stops and starts. This is a book that should be one point of view, or at most two, but instead bounces through so many characters and quasi characters that whatever propulsion the story has never really gets anywhere. A shame because our hero is so great!

Another triumph of the "3 novelette stories" format for Nero Wolfe. All three are loaded with charm in different ways; from Archie in trouble (he never seems to be fully in trouble) to a classical mystery puzzler at the end in which you know what's important but you don't catch why until Nero points it out. If only Stout would give up the habit of having Saul Panzer discover something off stage. Cmon man, we love Archie! Have Archie discover it!

Two absolutely crackling Wolfe stories are followed up by one that has great promise but drizzles out in a splat of hidden information and outright guesses. Its so close to one of the greatest; they all have our favorite supporting cast, some midcentury cuties for Archie to banter with and a really inexplicable crime to crack. But the end of that third story...