James Patterson’s recent outing for profiler Alex Cross was, to be blunt, a disappointment. The premise is that Alex Cross has left the DC police and joined the FBI in order to have more time with his family. We’ll leave the obvious point that this is unrealistic and scarcely credible alone, chalking it up to the required “suspension of disbelief” that reading every novel involves.
But after passing over that point, there are just too many stale plot cliches. The mother of his (Alex Cross’s) child reappears with a nasty lawyer and you can deduce every detail of the progression of that subplot just from that statement. Another subplot revolves around how the supervisor of Cross’s mandatory FBI orientation and training classes feels towards this new guy the the bigwigs recruited and brought in by promises. Yep, you guessed it. Most of the other devices in this novel have beards fully as long or even longer.
Still, I’ve always said that I don’t mind a trip down a familiar road so long as the tour guide makes it enjoyable. The major plot involves a white slavery ring operated by a Russian mafia, ex-secret police, gangster. It involves the kidnapping and delivery into slavery of white suburban soccer moms to order (with the token gay request thrown in for diversity) from a catalog assembled by the organization. Fortunately, Patterson manages to avoid descending into the obvious titillation offered by this premise, and the pacing of developments and plot twists in it occasionally show flashes of his mastery of the genre. But generally speaking, instead of a tight plot and good characterization we get a lot of running around with accompanying shouting and waving of hands, with no real satisfying conclusion at the end of it all.
It’s a rather pedestrian effort from a writer I’ve come to expect more of. Diehard fans of Alex Cross will want to pick it up, if for no other reason than it marks a sea change in his life. If you’re new to Alex Cross, pass on it; you’ll find material at least as good in almost any book selected at random from this genre.
Elegy
“I bid good-by to a friend last night,” she said through her tears in the morning. “I loved him well, and he loved me, but he is gone today and will not return.”
Why? We sought for an answer to the question, “Why?”
“The question is vexed,” said the first. “There is no ‘why.’ There is only what is. Like life, death does not need a reason. You cannot expect meaning from an impersonal universe.”
“It is the way of things,” said the second. “Death is natural, as is life. It is the doorway through which we leave life. Less than that, it is but the name we give to that doorway. It is not the end, it is but a passageway.”
“You did not deserve him,” said the third. “He was taken from you because of that.”
“This is but another test,” said the fourth. “You will be judged by how you respond to it.”
Less than satisfied by the answers proffered (though the third had a point; we certainly didn’t deserve him) I turned, as always, to the Throne.
“Why?” I shouted through my tears. “Why have you done this to us?”
The echoes of my whisper were still reverberating, when the question returned. “Why?”
I looked up, “Yes, that is my question.”
“And that is my answer. Why do you ask me only now? When I first sent him to you, you didn’t ask me why. When, for over a decade, I let you keep him, you did not ask me why. Every day he was there he was doing my bidding, listening to you, caring for you. Every day he soothed your mind.
“And only now, after he’s faithfully toiled ten years and more at the task I gave him. Only now, after I have finally chosen to release him from that task. Only now, my child, you think to bring me the question you should have been asking every day. Only now, ‘Why?'”
He’s right, of course. Just over a decade ago, by a circuitous route that could only be ascribed to divine intervention, Patches entered our household. He was a delight, and an anchor. His graceful acrobatics entertained us. Whenever we spent too long with our heads bent over a book or a keyboard, he would swoop down upon us, enforcing a break time. He taught us that nothing was so important that it should interrupt play time. When our problems became overwhelming, he would be there to take us out of ourselves, to remind us we were not alone. Friend, confidant, taskmaster; a stern critic with a bent for sarcasm. He kept us laughing, smiling, and loving. He kept us sane. He was indeed just what we needed, Father. Thank you.
Patches, a 17-pound British Shorthair cat, dead at the age of 15, after a month-long illness that left him weighing only 6 pounds at the end. Gone, but not forgotten. No, never forgotten.
Apology
Sorry I haven’t felt like writing much. Apart from the occasional thought that the only ones reading this blog are poker spammers, we’ve had something a little more pressing to deal with around here.
Interesting Times
OK, a flood of comment spam is one thing. But my email server (not located on this server) coughed up a hairball and I’ve lost about 3 months worth of email.
No evidence yet of Foul Play involved, but it does make me a tad irritable.
Rutland Place / Farrier’s Lane
My latest batch of mystery books, by Anne Perry, leave me a little puzzled. I’ve written before about her books (liked the Pitt — Cater Street Hangman — but not the Monk) but I may be changing my mind. To the extent that I may not be able to finish the latter one.
The Pitts (Charlotte and Thomas) are a husband and wife team in the Victorian era. He is a police inspector, she “merely” his wife. Perry does a fairly good job of evoking the sense of the period, I suppose. But I’m starting to wonder about a couple of things.
For one thing, her books don’t “feel” like the books and stories I’ve read that actually were written during the Victorian era. There’s a lot more societal detail, and she lays on the atmosphere with a trowel, something the real Victorian authors never did. I suppose a partial explanation for this is that she’s “overcompensating,” she’s trying to emphasize the time period when the story takes place, and cannot (or does not) expect her readership to be aware of what the Victorian detective story actually reads like. So she overemphasizes the feel of the epoch, to be sure we “get it.”
This in itself isn’t disturbing, but there’s an undercurrent I’ve started to notice that is. I’m not at all sure of this, but I’m beginning to feel Ms Perry herself doesn’t really like this period. It started gnawing at the back of my mind during the Monk novel, and now that I’ve done three of her novels (and am working on a fourth) the idea is growing more steady on its legs.
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