Where Jess Is In Over His Head

Hell's Half Acre by William W. Johnstone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have an occasional interest in Western novels, enough to try one from time to time, and I'd heard that this author was good. I'd say I agree. I liked this pretty well. 4 stars.

Jess Casey figures he's getting too old to keep working as a cowboy and kinda falls into the job of sheriff in Fort Worth, Texas. He finds out right away that everybody who has any money is doing something illegal and wants to keep doing it. They don't like him interfering, and they have plenty of unchecked power to do whatever they want. He almost gets killed a few times, and was frankly lucky to make it this far. He turns out to be better with a gun than he realized, faster and more accurate than lots of criminals if not real gunfighters, but he still has a lot to learn about how to deal with crime and criminals in a very dangerous city. It's a hard job to stay alive in, but he's game.

Lots to appreciate here. One of the things I like about Westerns is they tend to be pretty straight-forward in action and plot, and that is the case here. There are some mysteries and the like, but most of the action is very direct. Jess is an interesting character, a novice who knows he's in danger but wants to do the job right no matter what. Some of the bad guys are only half bad, with a soft spot for Jess and his style, which makes for a lot of gray in the characters in this novel, and I prefer that. And the plot is engaging, with lots of room for future novels.

It's pretty fun to read, which is good, because I already bought the two sequels. We'll see if they work as well. Recommended for Western readers.

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Where Judith Stops Hiding

Slightly Wicked by Mary Balogh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an entertaining book. I enjoyed it about 5 stars-worth.

[some general spoilers throughout]

As one can guess from the title, this book turns the norms of the Regency romance upside down. Some of them. Primarily, it allows the story to begin with the FMC and MMC meeting one another, having a brief fling (imagine Elizabeth Bennet having a fling! Wait, someone has probably written a P&P variation exactly that way), then separating, lost to one another (they both lied about their names) and finding each other later--when they finally fall in love. Usually, Regency heroines are either completely chaste until the wedding night--basically the last page--or they might break the rules about sleeping together late in the book after both are pretty deeply in love. Starting the book the way she did, with Judith shyly but happily jumping into bed with Rannulf Bedwyn, it seems like Mary Balogh was setting herself a challenge to see if she could still make the romance work, forging a proper novel out of it despite the irregular inciting incident.

I think she really did. It worked well, IMO.

Judith is sent to live with relatives where she has to cover her beautiful hair and wear shapeless, unflattering clothes, and work more like a servant than a family member. Rannulf shows up to court her cousin, but keeps finding himself interested in Judith. Of course, she's more like Fanny in Mansfield Park, a poor relative who shouldn't be considered in the same way as her highborn cousin, and while everyone wants to keep her covered up and hidden, she can't help but shine through sometimes, almost by accident. I suspect the author of imagining Judith as a version of Venus, the one found in Botticelli's "Birth of Venus," except, you know, not naked. This description near the end seemed to suggest it stronger than others:

There was a noticeable breeze on the hilltop. It sent her dress fluttering behind her and flattened it against her at the front. It lifted her hair in a red-gold cloud behind her back... she gazed back at him, her head tipped proudly back, a soft smile on her lips, her cheeks flushed. She was all beautiful, breathtaking goddess and woman...

Maybe I read into it. But I'm about half sure I'm right.

There's a villain, and Rannulf gets to intervene and protect her from him and see that he gets what's coming to him, and that's fun. And there's some excellent healing going on in Judith as she discovers she's internalized some unfair criticism that she can finally crawl out from under. She may be "slightly wicked"--by the norms of the time--and so is he, to be fair (though gender norms are not fair) but despite that, she's a very sympathetic heroine who the reader is sure deserves all the happiness.

The author wins her little challenge. Good book. I think the next one is about her sister-in-law Freyja, who is unruly and competitive and gives tomboy vibes. Should be good.

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Where Lacy Defies a King

The Shoemaker's Holiday by Thomas Dekker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My first play by Thomas Dekker. I found it interesting and sometimes amusing with a story I kinda enjoy, but it could have been better. So--about 3 stars.

Perhaps the best characteristic of the play is how the characters have distinctive voices and mannerisms. I think the intention is to play that for laughs, though it's a bit flat on the page; I expect Dekker knew who would play certain parts and knew they could make the delivery comedic. Our MC pretends to be Dutch, so he's speaking Dutch throughout, in a way I take to be amusing to an audience in this time. Eyre, the rich shoemaker boss, is full of playful bluster and pretend anger, forever calling his wife and workers goofy names. "Peace, you cracked groats, you mustard tokens," he says to the men, later referring to them as drabs and scoundrels and a lot of other things. "Work, you bombast-cotton-candle-quean," he says to the wife of one of his men. Then, to his wife and his servant, he says, "Come out, you powder-beef queans! ...What, Madge Mumblecrust!" But he's actually considerate and helpful to all of them, and is forever stopping his men in their work to give them drink and to be merry. (If this had been a musical, you'd see them dancing and singing in the shoe shop. Wait, the jolly shoemakers actually do have two songs... It feels like medieval Newsies.) His wife is always complaining or listing injustices (in what I took for an aggrieved voice) before adding "but let that pass," in a passive-aggressive way. Half her lines end with that, and it has a comedic sound that I bet worked with an audience.

I'm supposing. I dunno. It seems kinda funny to read, but the line delivery would probably make it or break it.

The plot and subplot are entertaining to a degree. One character, Rowland Lacy, is to be sent to France leading some troops for the king, but he wants to stay to try to woo Rose, the daughter of the Lord Mayor. She's not exactly lowborn, but he's the nephew of the earl who doesn't want him to end up with her. Lacy bails on the plan, putting on a disguise, speaking Dutch, calling himself Hans, and getting a job as a shoemaker, which he learned while living for a time in Holland. All this is so he can try to get close to Rose. The subplot is about Ralph and Jane, a pair of newlyweds who get separated when he's in France fighting. He returns lame but can't find her; she's been told he was dead and isn't looking for him. Another man is pressuring her to marry, and she agrees in the end, very reluctantly.

The problem with most of the plot is that nobody puts in too much effort to make things work out. They just do. Things happen; it turns out okay. Happy endings. Ralph and Jane find each other in time; Lacy is forgiven for not going to France, and he and Rose marry, with the king's blessing.

I love a happy ending. I could have used a little more of the characters working through their conflicts, achieving something by their efforts. That's where the play lost me.

Anyway, I was amused. I almost gave it a 4, but I'll hold out for a better play by him. We'll see.

People who like Elizabethan comedies might enjoy this.

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Where Lara Chooses Her Life

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very sweet, touching book, beautifully written. Not all of it is sweet, TBH; there are real touches, real life and real pain, even bits of darkness. But overall, it's got a kindness and gentleness that is endearing and pleasant and funny and then, I guess like real life, melancholy.

Any story that tells most of a life always feels that way to me.

I liked it, actually. I loved the narration, the story of young Lara in the past and the grown woman in the present. (I've seen Ann Patchett enough on social media that I heard the whole thing in her voice. She seems like a good person. So does Lara.) I appreciated the writing, which is seldom my main interest, but is very... smooth. And overall, I thought it was a successful book, one that wasn't quite aimed at me but I still liked, one that would probably be somebody's favorite. For me, it's a 4-star book--good, not always fun, but pleasant enough, and skillfully imagined. I didn't fly through it, though I took the last fifth of it at a gulp. Others would surely see it as a 5/5 book. (Some others might never open it. So--you know.)

Lara is retelling the story of her life to her three daughters over many days as they work on their Traverse City cherry farm, and the story goes back and forth between that present reality (in the time of COVID) and her youth, when she became a pretty successful actress but didn't keep it up. The center of the story was her relationship with Duke, a character who, in the novel's world, became a famous actor loved by everyone. We get a little Lara and Duke, a love story, then we get some Mom and daughters (with her husband making small appearances). Past and then present. The author does a great job of helping us keep straight what is happening when, which words are meant for the characters and which are only for the reader, and so on, and she does it seamlessly within the narration. Very nice.

A bigger star of the story, in a way, though he gets fewer pages, is Duke's more responsible brother, Sebastian, and the scene at the very end between Lara and Sebastian is the most emotional part of this book for me. They both loved Duke, but neither could save him from himself.

One of the things I liked about this was how real it seemed, filled with regular (to me) people, not being set in all the usual places. Yes, there's a bit of New York and a bit of LA, but it's mostly New Hampshire and Northern Michigan. It felt to me, as a native of Michigan, that this story could have actually happened (I guess at Interlochen Center for the Arts instead of Tom Lake, though Traverse City is a real place). And it could have happened to the kind of people I grew up with, I suppose, people from the midwest or small towns. That added a layer of reality to the novel that set it apart for me.

Lots to like. Recommended. I actually only picked it up because Ann Patchett is so likable on TikTok. Now I'm required to try another book. Not a new book, necessarily, but if I've never read it, it's new to me.

(IYKYK.)

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Where Jane Solves a Christmas Murder

Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas by Stephanie Barron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book, like the entire series, is such a pleasure to read. It isn't just that Stephanie Barron gets the language of Jane Austen and the time right, which she really does, or that she gets the details so right, with the appropriate and measured inclusion of all of her meticulous research into Jane Austen's personal story. That's part of it, but not all. As a mystery writer, she has such a deft touch with clues and characters that readers like myself can master the details without growing confused, and can enjoy the story set during the twelve days of Christmas without constantly searching for missed connections or buried clues.

As an observer of human nature, Stephanie Barron always impresses, creating a wide range of characters and behavior while always making them feel familiar and real, their concerns genuine and their motivations human. And as a historian, she grounds the novel in the very real history of England after the loss of the colonies, during Napoleon's rise and fall and subsequent rise.

Sometimes, I appreciate Jane Austen novels (the original novels) for being set almost outside of time, in a bubble made up of the well-dressed and well-mannered, where members of that polite society mingle in balls and drawing rooms, engaging in witty and bright conversation, safe from the darkness of the outside world--our world. But I appreciate this novel, and whole series, for the opposite reason. The author vividly creates the time and place, establishing the characters in that timeline, so that it is real as our own world, so that it IS our world--no bubble--a place where war and invasion is the frequent topic of conversation and constant concern, where the poor and the unfortunate also have their roles and their lives, and where well-mannered ladies might sew tiny dresses for a niece's new doll or drink tea with the neighbors, but might also investigate a murder or regret the passage of time or feel the pain of grief and lost love. The author has done well to create such a real place, and people it with such engaging characters, and craft so satisfying a story.

I enjoyed this book, and I recommend it.

Edit [and spoiler] on rereading: Still love it. Still 5 stars. Still sad that Raphael West, a man similar in many ways to the "Gentleman Rogue" love-interest of the early books, a man who can appreciate our Jane for who she is and who she appreciates for who he is, does not end up with her in an HEA kind of way. I know it's impossible, because we know what really did and didn't happen to Jane Austen. She never married. But you still hope, kinda. And I forgot how the same man appealed to her sister Cassandra, and how she had a hope for a short period of time. It's a bummer. We only know through Cassandra through Jane, but in real life (and in the novels, in our imaginations) she was someone who mattered, someone with her own wishes and dreams, and they don't matter less than those who we know better. Like her sister, Cassandra almost certainly had to leave many of those dreams behind. Poignant reminder about the inner lives of the quiet people in our midst...

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Where Chaloner Is the Worst Possible Investigator. Ever.

A Conspiracy of Violence by Susanna Gregory
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I did not enjoy this book. I should have DNF'ed when I first considered it. But for ~waves hands~ reasons I'll give this a passable three.

My problem with this novel? The plot is buried under boring details, random clues adding up to nothing, names of characters that matter but never enter into the story, and just too many distractions that aren't even entertaining let alone informative. Probably half of the novel is just the main character, alone or in dialogue, trying to fit cryptic clues into some kind of meaning, wondering if it proves this or shows that, trying to decide which of a dozen people might have done a thing, who among those dozen knew about the little factoid at the time, who knows now, who is on the wrong track about it... It's exhausting. A spreadsheet wouldn't help.

Here--literally a random page, the first one I turned to:

Who had sent the Lord Chancellor a missive containing that particular phrase, and what did it mean? Or had it been intended for someone else, and the Earl had intercepted it? And why had Clarke converted the same words to cipher and hidden them in his secret pocket? Were the Earl and Clarke associated with John Hewson, who had ordered Chaloner to praise God's one son as he lay dying, or was that coincidence?

Half the book is like that. And almost everything he does know comes directly from other characters who either volunteer the information or discuss it while he's accidentally almost right beside them. Everyone knows more than him, including knowing everything he's doing. His skills are nonexistent.

Oh, yeah, he can decipher messages. That's it.

But most annoying is the fact that Chaloner is the worst hero I've ever seen. He's supposed to be a veteran spy and investigator, and yet he's mistaken and on the wrong track almost the whole book so much that it feels like he's brand new at all of this. Besides that, he almost screws up every. single. time. that someone is trying to stop him or chase him off or pump him for information or kill him. It's horrible. He's inept, incompetent, foolish, and lucky to survive this book, let alone a whole series of them. In the last big scene, he bumbles unprepared into danger, where he is captured. Given a lucky chance, he shoots a gun, and misses. He gets shot at, and should have died, but she misses. He tries to escape during the chaos of a fire, but a woman grabs him and is choking him out, and he needs help to escape her. Then he gets trapped under a man's body with fire creeping toward the gunpowder and would have died except someone pulls him out. He achieves nothing. A bungler.

Not to mention the fact that he's wrong about everybody in that room, who should be trusted and who should not, who is on which side, who is behind everything--meaning he's discovered almost nothing in 480/500 pages. In fact, we get to the epilogue and find out he's still wrong about what supposedly happened and who did it.

He's this incompetent all the time. FFS. How is he the hero?

There is some good research behind the setting and setup of the book. 17th Century London is well described. I like a few things. Just enough interest to push myself to finish--which means (by my own personal policy) I give it a 3. I kept hoping it would pick up and he would become an impressive spy, because it feels like the kind of book I love. But I never want to read another book with him as the main character.

Unless it's a comedy. In the movie, he'd be played by a young Don Knotts. Or maybe Jim Carrey.

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Where Gotzkowsky Gets Disappointed

The Merchant of Berlin by Luise Mühlbach
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel by the 19th century German author Louise Mühlbach tells part of the life story of a real merchant from the 1700s in Berlin. It is a novel--this is fiction--but the factual heart of this is based on his own autobiography. I liked it and thought it worked pretty well as a novel.

[The antisemitism is open, though, and unrepentant. Many readers will find it disqualifying, even when taking into account the time and social conditions it was written under. I am sympathetic to that perspective, but I'll proceed as if it's possible to forgive long-dead writers for their bigotry, or at least temporarily ignore it.]

The story follows the contours of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens. Here we have a rich merchant who treats his workers well, supports his city, is generous with his money, and is beloved--at the beginning. Timon started the same. Gotzkowsky uses his money and influence to protect Berlin when it is invaded by the Russians, personally cosigning a huge ransom for the city if they would not destroy the place. He intercedes for journalists, other merchants, and the residents of the Jewish quarter, all of whom were going to be beaten or impoverished, and after the Russians leave the whole city celebrates their hero. But near the end of the novel--as in Timon of Athens--reversals beyond his control make him unable to pay his debts, including the ransom owed to the Russians. All those he had helped refused to help him, just as Athens refused to help Timon. He ends bankrupt. (Timon goes off into the wilderness and curses humanity from that point on. Gotzkowsky doesn't go that far, though he's pretty mad.)

There is more to the book, including his daughter's love story and some other subplots, and it's entertaining in that old historical novel way. The business and financing stuff reminded me of similar events in The Count of Monte Cristo, which I must confess to not completely understanding... But it reads pretty fast and actually has a pretty happy ending. I thought.

Half the point in reading a novel like this (for me) is learning about the time and place, in this case how people lived in Berlin in the 1700s, what their world was like. I found that interesting. And the theme of a principled, generous man being forgotten by all those he had benefitted is as timely now as ever. Timon regretted all his generosity and hated all men for the rest of his life; Gotzkowsky celebrated keeping his honor even in poverty. That's probably a better way to react.

Some readers will enjoy this. Cautiously recommended.

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