Deadwood by Pete Dexter

Charley had never seen anybody throw like Bill. It was magic, the way things connected for him. Bill climbed into the wagon and came out with a bottle. He pulled the cork with his teeth and spit it onto the ground, signaling his intentions. It was a bottle without a future. He took a drink and handed it to Charley. Charley wiped off the lip and joined him. The whores were shrieking again.

-Deadwood 

Ah, Deadwood. I'd been wanting to read it since I watched the HBO series the summer before last. Haven broken my tibia that June, I had a lot of free time and very limited mobility--you can imagine how much I enjoyed being absorbed into the show's colorful world. The book, by Pete Dexter, offers a different take on the characters (many of whom are historical figures), but is still quite good in its own right.

Much like the show, Deadwood deals with the establishment of the eponymous town in the Black Hills in the 1870s.  We see how characters as different as lawman Seth Bullock and weary legend Wild Bill Hickock are drawn here, and how they survive (or don't). The stories run the gamut from preaching to poker to pestilence--everything you might expect from the Old West, I suppose, but at some point that became enormously compelling to me. Blame the show, I guess.

The one issue I would take with Pete Dexter's take is the way he handles the story of Solomon Star.  In the series--and in real life, as far as I can ascertain--Star was a smart, practical businessman who was unfailingly levelheaded and honest. Dexter's Star is as well...up to a certain point. And it's not that I can't imagine Star doing the things Dexter proposes, exactly, but I'm not happy to do so. It was just a bit too much for me.

Overall, though, I enjoyed it, and I thought Dexter's prose in particular was fantastic. I'd definitely be interested in checking out more of his work.

Up next: Jo Nesbo's The Snowman.

In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff

What Joe did not know was that I had come here this past May in search of a quieter existence with fewer reminders of Hannah, a victim of last year's General Slocum steamship tragedy. I was not alone in my grief; nearly every family in my Lower East Side neighborhood had lost someone that awful day--June 15, 1904. For almost a full year following Hannah's death, she haunted me, particularly in cases where other young women met tragic, violent ends. I had planned to marry Hannah and build a life with her--but I had no desire to live with a ghost.

-In the Shadow of Gotham 

With that passage, narrator Simon Ziele lays out a fair chunk of the premise of In The Shadow of Gotham. Ziele, a detective, had hoped to escape those tragic young women after leaving the city for the small town of Dobson, New York. But homicide is not confined to the island of Manhattan, of course, and Ziele is soon brought in on a case just as brutal as any he handled in the city. Sarah Wingate, a graduate student in mathematics, is killed at her aunt's home, and the police are left with a horrifying crime scene and very little in the way of leads. That is until a Columbia University criminologist named Alistair Sinclair shows up and insists that he knows exactly who the killer is: the subject of his own research, a man named Michael Fromley. Unable to ignore the evidence Sinclair puts before him, Ziele sets off to track down Fromley, using both psychological research and good old-fashioned detective know-how to aid him along the way.

I enjoyed the setting of the novel, and Ziele was a likeable enough detective. I wouldn't say the mystery itself was particularly compelling--though, again, setting it at the turn of century in New York City helps a lot. I was more put off by a certain clunkiness in the exposition. On the whole, Pinkoff did a nice job of pacing the story, which kept me absorbed despite not being particularly captivated by the plot. So it was all the more glaring when characters' dialogue was suddenly laden with exposition so forced as to take me out of the story entirely. It's very similar to the problem I had with The Night Villa--I'm not quite sure why an author would think so little of her readers to believe that they wouldn't look up a reference they didn't understand. At the worst, they'd just move past it and perhaps not get the full import of what a character was saying, but I'd prefer taking that risk than having my characters reduced to speaking in completely unbelievable ways. I guess it turns out that that might be a particular pet peeve of mine--it just seems so easy to avoid.* I have the sequel to In the Shadow of Gotham sitting on my shelf, but I can't say I'm terribly inclined to pick it up at the moment.

Up next: Still catching up! Need to write up Dark World  by Zak Bagans.
 
*What makes this all the more annoying is that the General Slocum disaster--to which most of Pintoff's exposition refers--is not particularly obscure. In fact, it's one of the worst disasters in New York history. I'd certainly heard of it before, although that could be because I felt it important to read up on potentially haunted places in the vicinity of New York City. While I would not categorize it as common knowledge, I would think that the General Slocum would be familiar to a fair amount of readers inclined to read historical fiction, and the rest can easily look it up.

A Trace of Smoke by Rebecca Cantrell

My eyes darted to the words under the photograph that had called to me. Fished from the water by a sightseeing boat the morning of Saturday, May 30, 1931--the day before yesterday. Apparent cause of death: stab wound to the heart. Under distinguishing characteristics they listed a heart-shaped tattoo on his lower back that said "Father." No identification present.

I needed none. I knew the face as well as my own, or my sister Ursula's, with our square jaws and cleft chins. I wore my dark blond hair cut short into a bob, but he wore his long, like our mother, like any woman of a certain age, although he was neither a woman nor of a certain age. He was my baby brother, Ernst.

-A Trace of Smoke 

Hannah Vogel is a reporter operating out of 1931 Berlin. She's seen some terrible things while writing stories about the city's criminal element, but nothing could prepare her for the nasty shock of seeing her brother's face among those cataloged in the police department's Hall of the Unnamed Dead. In some ways, it was unsurprising: Ernst had lived an unconventional, uncompromising life that had put him in contact with some unsavory men. Even so, Hannah is naturally aghast.

Worse still, Hannah can't report her brother's death to anyone. She lent her and Ernst's identity papers to Jewish friends fleeing the country in light of the growing influence of the Nazi party. If Hannah identifies Ernst, she could put her friends in jeopardy. The truth of the matter is simple and frightening: if Hannah wants Ernst's killer to be punished, she's going to have to find him herself.

It's more difficult, and more dangerous, than she possibly could have imagined. Matters are further complicated when a little boy shows up on her doorstep. He claims that Ernst was his father--and Hannah his mother. Hannah takes the boy under her wing and does her best to take care of him in the face of an increasingly menacing threat from persons unknown. 

I had some mixed feelings about this one. Hannah I liked well enough, although she didn't strike me as a terribly distinctive heroine. She was so forward-thinking as to be boring, if that makes sense. When I read historical fiction, it's not because I want to read about people who would react just as modern people would. While I was reading, I couldn't help but think that the story might have been more interesting from the point of view of Hannah's friend Bettina, a policeman's wife, who seemed a more traditional German woman of that era.

The mystery itself held my interest, and I found the milieu interesting. I confess I don't know much about the pre-WWII era in Germany, so I learned a few things. I did find the inclusion of a prominent real-life Nazi as a character to be a bit odd. It's certainly fairly popular to include real people in historical fiction, but it's not the easiest thing to pull off. Again, I can't pretend to have a comprehensive knowledge of the figures of that era, but for some reason it took me out of the story. Sometimes including a real figure only reminds the reader that the rest of the story is made up, making it hard to suspend one's disbelief. I would have preferred that Cantrell had made up a fictional Nazi with a similar background and position of influence. I don't think it would have lessened the impact of this character's role in the story.

All in all, I can't see myself continuing with this series at this point, though I definitely think that this story could appeal to a wide audience--mystery fans, history fans, &c. Not one I feel compelled to spend more time on myself. There are just so many books out there, you know?

Up next: I've already begun  Steve Martin's An Object of Beauty, which is off to a strong start.

Moonshine by Alaya Johnson

So I'd been on my bicycle all day and my tailbone felt like someone had been smashing it with a mallet and I had a dead boy—the kind you're never supposed to let turn, if you're an ignorant Other-phobe like Troy—who could double as a vampire pincushion draped across my neck, and damn if I wasn't getting some odd looks as I huffed my way through the busy Canal Street intersection. Why did things like this always happen to me?

I had to laugh, and saw my breath float away in the glare of the electric lamps. Because I'm certifiable.

-Moonshine

Meet Zephyr Hollis, resident of Prohibition-era New York City. She's an all-around do-gooder: night school teacher, blood bank volunteer, champion of women's and Others' rights. Others, of course, being vampires and other such fantastic beasties. They call her the Vampire Suffragette.

Zephyr hails from Montana, the daughter of a renowned vampire hunter (known as a Defender). She was a promising Defender herself, until she decided that Others deserved tolerance, not death. She's a progressive girl, our Zephyr; she's also a vegetarian.

As a night school teacher, Zephyr meets a lot of interesting characters. One of them, the smoldering, mysterious Amir, offers her a proposition: 200 dollars to locate the notorious vampire Rinaldo, overseer of much of New York's fang-friendly underworld. Zephyr's intrigued by Amir, and, generous as she is, she's always hard up for cash. She accepts.

Life, unsurprisingly, gets a lot more dangerous quite quickly for Zephyr. With some trepidation, she works on infiltrating the Turn Boys gang, a group of young vampires who, under Rinaldo's supervision, is responsible for turning children (such as the boy mentioned in the passage above). It's her best bet at getting to Rinaldo, but it's a risky move, particularly once a new vampire intoxicant known as Faust floods the market. Young, volatile vampires? Bad. Young, volatile, drunk vampires? Well, it's certainly not better. And time is running short, as it tends to do in these situations.

Alaya Johnson has created a wonderful world for her characters to inhabit. There's the period itself, which allows for flapper dresses, speakeasies, and some delightful slang. The fact that it's New York makes it doubly fun to me, and I enjoyed envisioning where Zephyr went. (Johnson helpfully includes a map of lower Manhattan if you're less familiar with the area.) What I really liked, though, was the conceit that vampires are just there: no secrecy, no mention of coming out. They're a persecuted, feared minority to be sure, but no one doubts their existence. Considering how commonplace vampire/human stories have been in recent fantasy, this is a nice way of shaking things up.

I thoroughly enjoyed this and would have undoubtedly finished it a lot sooner had I not been in the midst of moving. (I also stretched it out knowing I had no other new books at my disposal). I love Zephyr and I feel that the ending is open-ended enough that a sequel would be welcome. Here's hoping!

Up next: Almost finished with my reread of Word Freak, one of my favorite pieces of non-fiction. And I just received the new Tana French from Amazon today, hooray!

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

Catherine groped blindly. The reins whipped in the wind, but she found them, took them in her hands. The carriage rocked in the pitted field, but she held on. Her foolish cloak was streaming in the wind, choking her, and she ripped it from her neck and it flew out behind, a momentary ghost in the swirling snow.

She knew enough to let the horses run. She knew enough to hope in their natural instincts. Her strength was no match for the terror she felt pulsing from the horses' black rumps. She held on. She did the only thing she could.

The horses raced on in a frenzy. They galloped down a small bank, skimmed onto the frozen river, the carriage arcing dangerously, so that the horses were spun in a circle, leaving crazy black trails on the powdered ice, really frightened now, aware, suddenly, of how far they were from safety. One of the horses slipped, lost its footing and collapsed onto the ice, which cracked and shimmered but held. Catherine sat mute with fear, with the idea of death in the frigid water, drowning, tangled in dying horses.

The river held.

-A Reliable Wife

In the interview with author Robert Goolrick included in my edition of A Reliable Wife, he states, "These characters are not good people. They have lived mistaken and cruel lives, done despicable things."

He's speaking of Ralph Truitt, for one, a wealthy man of industry living in rural Wisconsin just after the turn of the century. As a young man, Ralph reveled in luxury, first in the city and later abroad, spending his father's money on the finest of everything: wines, wares, and women. His first marriage ended tragically, and he's spent twenty years in sober, gut-wrenching loneliness. He places a discreet ad in the newspaper, in search of the titular reliable wife.

The ad brings Catherine Land to him. Catherine has known her fair share of debauchery as well, but she's left that life behind her. She tells Ralph that she is a missionary's daughter. It's not remotely the truth, but it's the part she's chosen to play. Catherine has a plan, you see, a plan that hinges on an absolute semblance of propriety. That, and a tiny blue bottle of arsenic.

Goolrick slowly reveals what drives these characters: the man haunted by his past and terrified by the prospect of his eternal damnation; the woman who has gotten more that she could have ever imagined, and yet is not quite done. They do things that it's incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to sympathize with. Yet they remain vulnerable and, despite their behavior, Goolrick keeps the reader from turning on his flawed, struggling characters. I've certainly read stories with characters to whom I could relate far better, but I never ended up disliking Ralph or Catherine, even when I stopped understanding them.

In the same interview I mentioned above, Goolrick mentions his interest in following the characters' chances of redemption. I certainly can understand his interest, but I find it somewhat hard to reconcile with the melodramatic denouement. Still, the book was interesting enough that I couldn't help but mentally cast a potential movie while I was reading. I never came up with a definitive cast, but the complicated characters and the cinematic nature of the book seem to ensure a film adaptation (indeed, Sony already has the rights). I'll be very intrigued to see how it comes out.

Next up: I'm thinking Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane.

Drood by Dan Simmons

In this manuscript (which, I have explained - for legal reasons as well as for reasons of honour - I intend to seal away from all eyes after his death and my own), I shall answer the question which perhaps no one else alive in our time knew to ask - "Did the famous and loveable and honourable Charles Dickens plot to murder an innocent person and dissolve away his flesh in a pit of caustic lime and secretly inter what was left of him, mere bones and skull, in the crypt of an ancient cathedral that was an important part of Dickens's own childhood? And did Dickens then scheme to scatter the poor victim's spectacles, rings, stickpins, shirt studs, and pocket watch in the River Thames? And if so, or even if Dickens only dreamed he did these things, what part did a very real phantom named Drood have in the onset of such madness?"

-Drood

When I read the excerpt above, which is in the first few pages of Drood, I was left gaping - then smiling. A novel in which Charles Dickens is a potential murderer? Certainly a promising premise for a Dickens fan such as myself. The manuscript that is mentioned, which forms the substance of the novel Drood, is framed as the work of real-life author Wilkie Collins, a contemporary of Dickens. In his day, magazines containing serialized versions of Collins's books, such as The Moonstone*, actually outsold issues that featured Dickens, although it is my impression that Dickens was both more critically acclaimed and more popularly beloved. Collins, though, could tell a ripping good tale.

In Drood, Collins is not doing so well. In terms of his stories, yes, he's on the top of his game. But he's consuming more and more laudanum to deal with bouts of rheumatic gout, and his domestic situation is growing ever more fraught with tension. Plus, there's the pesky side-effect of all that laudanum: paranoid delusions (or are they?), such as his doppelgänger (whom he calls the Other Wilkie), which make him a decidedly unreliable narrator.

Collins is also increasingly unhappy with his relationship with the man who is publicly considered to be his mentor, Dickens. I'm surprised that I was almost all the way through the novel before I thought to compare their relationship to that of Salieri and Mozart in Amadeus, a film I love. Like Mozart, Dickens basks in praise while his fellow artist (Salieri/Collins) stews, becoming increasingly agitated by his perceived lack of respect. It does make me a bit uncomfortable to see a real person portrayed in this way - in Amadeus, Salieri is painted as a would-be murderer, which is unsubstantiated by history; similarly, Collins...well, I won't give that away, but needless to say, if this is how Wilkie Collins ends up being remembered, it's far from flattering (to put it mildly). All the same, I was actually quite sympathetic to Collins, despite some of his more egregious behavior (and it is pretty egregious) and his attacks on Bleak House (the nerve!).

One probably could have written a novel about Collins and Dickens that didn't involve the supernatural, but Dan Simmons invented the monster called Drood. I hesitate to say too much about the devilish Drood, because a novel of suspense is naturally weakened by an early revelation of too many details. I will say that Drood involves mesmerism, a creepy section of London known as Undertown, an enormous detective named Hibbert Hatchery**, and scarab beetles. My God, the scarab beetles. There was a certain point when I realized that my internal monologue while reading some scenes was along the lines of Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. One of the opening scenes in particular, which describes the aftermath of a train disaster Dickens survived at Staplehurst, is incredibly vivid and intense. Simmons certainly does know how to ratchet up the tension - if I hadn't been simultaneously working on NaNoWriMo, I certainly would have been flipping Drood's pages far more quickly.

There is the matter of length, by the way: Drood is nearly 800 pages long. I must say, I can't imagine keeping a novel of such length and complexity together, not to mention actually pulling off a satisfactory ending, as I think Simmons did. I also admire the way that things were resolved with sufficient ambiguity, which leaves one with a fair amount to mull over after finishing the story (although there's at least one bit I wish were a little tidier). There was a certain point, though, about 200 pages from the end of the book, when I rather wished I was done with it. Not that I wanted to put it down, just that I would have been satisfied had the novel reached a conclusion by that point. That having been said, this feeling may have been influenced by the dream team of books that I have acquired recently***, which are just calling out to be read.

Speaking of...Up next: It was difficult to decide, but I went with the 4th Sookie Stackhouse, which has quite the juicy premise - Eric has amnesia! You've gotta love it - or, actually, I suppose you don't have to, but I for one appreciate a good amnesiac vampire yarn.

*Unlike many people, I suspect, I actually have read The Moonstone. Sadly, I really don't remember any of it. (Sorry, Wilkie!)

**One does imagine that Dickens would be proud of that one - it actually is a spin on his own Dick Datchery from The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

***The 4th Sookie Stackhouse, a Wallander mystery, and the latest Jackson Brodie novel from Kate Atkinson. Terrifically exciting lineup for me.

Burr by Gore Vidal

As a youth, Hamilton was physically most attractive with red-gold hair, bright if somewhat watery blue eyes and a small but strong body. It was our peculiar tragedy - or glory - to be of an age and quality and at a time and place certain to make rivals of us. Yet from the beginning we had a personal liking for one another. We were like brothers (yes, Cain and Abel come to mind with the difference that each was part-Cain, part-Abel). At first meeting I knew Hamilton straight through. I suspect he knew me as well, and could not endure the knowledge that of the two of us I alone had the means and talent to be what he most wanted to be, the president. He came to hate not only my capacity but my opportunity. Yet I wonder if he knew all along that I would fail, saw the flaw in me as I saw the one in him? [...] Curious to think that we would almost certainly have been friends had we not been two young "heroes" at the beginning of a new nation, each aware that at the summit there is a place for only one. As it turned out, neither of us was to reach the highest place. I hurled Hamilton from the mountain-side, and myself fell.

-Burr

How much does the average person know about Aaron Burr? I honestly feel that the first thing that might come to mind is that (still funny) milk commercial. Consequently, I imagine many people might recall the Burr/Hamilton duel, even if that's all they know of either of those men. His vice-presidential term? His treason charge? I love American history, and I think these ideas would have only been vaguely familiar to me prior to Burr, which made it an illuminating read.

Burr centers on the life not only of the eponymous man, but also his fictional biographer, Charlie Schuyler. Burr has taken a shine to young Schuyler, a clerk in his law office who dreams of escaping abroad to become a writer. Soon Schuyler is taking down Burr's recollections, starting with his time as an absurdly young officer in the Revolution and continuing through his various political offices, the fateful duel, and his ill-starred venture out West. At the same time, Schuyler is sorely tempted to use his relationship with Burr to gather information that could damage the upcoming presidential campaign of Martin Van Buren, who is rumored to be Burr's illegitimate child - proof (or even reasonable conjecture) of which could win the penniless Schuyler a fortune.

Although Schuyler is ostensibly our protagonist, it's Burr's story through and through. The Schuyler scenes were fine, but Burr - that was a different level. I felt as though I were reading an amazingly candid autobiography. Seeing all of these famous men (Washington and Jefferson most notably) as humans, not demigods - well, it's almost like time travel, really. I felt as though I were just one tiny step from being in the room with them all.

Gore Vidal makes what must have been a herculean task of scholarship look effortless. His prose is easy and unforced. The characters were revelations, particularly Jefferson, for whom Burr has many an unkind word, to put it mildly. Vidal notes in the afterword that he likes Jefferson rather more than Burr did (and Jackson less); all the same, Jefferson remains a troublesome figure. I've mentioned it before, but I prefer to imagine Jefferson as he is in the John Adams miniseries (although about 6 inches taller) - the dreamy, brilliant Jefferson. Quiet to the point of being standoffish, sure, but that's something I've always understood about him. Now the slavery, and the calculating behind-the-scenes political machinations (such as paying papers to slander his rivals) - well, those are the things I still struggle to reconcile. Burr shows him in all his infinite contradictions. It would be an actor's dream role; Burr, too, of course.

All in all, this was a great read: engrossing and informative without being overly dense, easy to get lost in on my subway ride in the morning. I reckon I'll miss Burr a bit. He has inspired me to see the city in a new way - most of the novel is set here, and occasionally a familiar street was mentioned. His country estate, Richmond Hill, was actually in what is the city proper today (Although there is no sign of it; it was broken up during Burr's lifetime and I couldn't even find a historical marker). I'm making an effort to notice what could have been around in the era of the novel and I find it marvelous - buildings over 100 years old all around me. I even went to Trinity Church, where Alexander Hamilton is entombed. It's an amazing place, and there's even, eerily enough, a conversation between Burr and Hamilton set there in the book.

Up next: I'm all set for a reread of Bleak House, which I read for the first time about a year ago and enjoyed immensely.