the corner office

Some more books while I'm at it:

Lost City, by Clive Cussler with Paul Kemprecos

So there's handsome hero Kurt Austin, and there's pretty French heroine, and there's a dude who died in a plane crash before World War I, and there's a rich French family of arms dealers, and Kurt Austin is on some or other escapade to do something or the other while dodging bullets and doing underwater stuff and charming the lady. Oh, and there's a whole bunch of weird mutants and killer seaweed clogging the oceans. Yawn.

I gather that Clive Cussler novels are quite popular. I gather he's cashed in on the franchise because his name is in big lights on the cover and his shadow writer's name is obscured by the cover art. Regardless of who actually wrote the book, this was my first and last Clive Cussler novel. I just couldn't wait to get to end - not because I was dying to find out what happened in the story, but because I just couldn't wait to get through the book and find something else to read (*). By the end I was rooting for the bad guys.

A good rule of thumb, I learned from this book, is to avoid novels where every major character is described in some way as 'looking like X', where X is a movie or rock star or celebrity. Dreadful.

Black Notice, by Patricia Cornwell

My first Kay Scarpetta novel. I wasn't expecting to enjoy it, feeling somewhat ambivalent about a Kathy Reichs novel earlier in the year, and me being the world's greatest squeam (ie. one who is very squeamish). I was pleasantly surprised.

Story starts off with Kay Scarpetta getting a letter from beyond the grave - her dead boyfriend having arranged before his demise for Kay to get a letter saying, basically, 'get over it!' Scarpetta's grieving has left her blind to developments in her life - someone in her department trying to ruin her career, a new police chief who's out to get her, etc. Of course, there must be Dead People. In this novel, a corpse in a crate from a ship arriving from Europe. Cue werewolves, more dead people in Scarpetta's hometown, showdown with the police chief (hot sexually deviant brunette career woman police chief as counterfoil to hot blonde coroner, yerrrsss), some interaction with Interpol, some love-makin', some intrigue and revenge.

Scarpetta may be a bit of an emotional basket case, but she's believable and I ended up liking her. Chauvanist pig sidekick copper Marino was good fun, too. Niece Lucy, the hot blonde lesbian genius with a black belt and a death wish, umm... not so convincing. Also, as each chapter progresses, and Scarpetta ponces about with a killer on the loose, you find yourself wanting to shout 'he's coming to get you, you moron!'. Of course, he does come to get her and of course she gets away. All in all, good stuff though.

The Last Precinct, by Patricia Cornwell

As soon as I finished Black Notice, I moved onto the next Cornwell novel on our bookshelf. Somewhat serendipitously, it turned out to be the follow-on from Black Notice.

So, the baddie from the last book is a French psychopath afflicted with a disorder which leaves him deformed and covered in hair, like a werewolf. He's been nicked, but instead of going quietly to jail, he says that Scarpetta was trying to kill him, and for some obscure reason, a DA in Virginia wants to prosecute Scarpetta for the murder of the hot sexually deviant brunette police chief Dianne Bray, who was out to ruin Scarpetta in Black Notice. Scarpetta allegedly offed Bray and just made it look like it was done by the crazy-assed werewolf. Hmm, not so plausible, but hey. Is Kay Scarpetta Going To Jail? You know the answer but of course you read on through murder and intrigue and betrayal and deep psychological shit to find out what happens.

Oh yes, and the Last Precinct of the title is a super-executive private detective agency that Lucy the hot lesbian genius niece with a death wish has created because she's insanely wealthy from some software she wrote and sold. Since Lucy got a bit trigger-happy on a drug bust she's lost her job in law enforcement and now the Last Precinct will allow her to go all Robin Hood to right the wrongs of the world. Yet again, some suspension of disbelief required, but hey. Still enjoyed it.

Blow Fly, by Patricia Cornwell

While I was finishing off The Last Precinct, Ronwen tootled off and bought another Cornwell novel at a local book sale. In an uber-serendipitous twist of fate, it turned out to be Blow Fly, which follows the Last Precinct.

* Spoilers ahead *

The narrative style changes in this book, shifting away from Scarpetta's first person narrative to a third person narrative, meaning that for the first time you also get to see into the heads of some of the nutters and killers. So, what nutters are there? First, there's werewolf boy, now on death row, sending out letters and still fscking with Scarpetta's mind. There's Jay Talley, the Interpol dude whom Scarpetta boinked in Black Notice who turned out to be a homocidal maniac in The Last Precinct, and, by the way, werewolf boy's twin brother. Hey, you can't make this stuff up. Jay Talley is in hiding, holed up in the Lousiana swamps with his ugly hag sidekick Bev (from the Last Precinct), and torturing and bumping off blonde women because he hates Scarpetta so. No, really.

In the meantime, we have plot developments. Scarpetta's given up her job in Virginia, moved to Florida and eking out a living doing private consulting. Lucy's off doing Last Precinct stuff, which turns into a bit of an obscure and morally disturbing sub-plot. Oh yes, and Benton Wesley, who supposedly died a few novels back, was actually just in witness protection, and he's been orchestrating revenge against the evil French underworld Chandonne family ever since. Lucy and Marino both knew about it, so the emotional trauma and loss that Scarpetta's been seeing over the past few novels is actually just them angry and confused because Kay Mustn't Know that Benton is alive. No, really.

You may gather that I found Blow Fly a little less enjoyable than the previous two books. A little too busy, a little too disjointed. The book feels like Cornwell is just trying too hard. The Benton Wesley thing really didn't do it for me - it devalues a lot of what you see Marino and Lucy go through in the earlier novels, and I wasn't convinced that they knew all along. I can't help but suspect that Cornwell decided after disappointing reviews of her previous books, that she needed to resurrect Benton in order to jazz things up a little. On top of that, the ending was flat, and left a few too many loose ends.

I'll get my hands on more Scarpetta novels and keep reading, but I'm in no rush.

(*) I'm not sure why, but I have a really hard time giving up on a book or movie, once I start reading/watching it, no matter how bad or boring it is. Probably a psychological crossed wire after a childhood of being taught to finish everything on my plate at dinner time.