Four Substantially Less Controversial Book Reviews

My last book review was of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. This post is going to be substantially less controversial. For Christmas, my Aunt Mary gave me a gift certificate to Amazon.com (thank you, thank you!) and I was able to purchase a nice little stack of books to keep me occupied for a while. Four of the books I purchased were mysteries from two different series which I enjoy.

The first two books are The Game and Locked Rooms by Laurie King. These books are the final two (at this point anyway) in King’s series featuring Mary Russell, the young wife of Sherlock Holmes. I’ve been a fan of everything Sherlock Holmes for as long as I can remember, and I absolutely adore successful adaptations of the tale. King’s Holmes is as similar to Doyle’s original creation as if he were penned by Doyle himself… and if Doyle’s Holmes were to marry a Jewish feminist less than half his age, he would surely have married none less than Mary Russell. The books are intelligent, well written, captivating, and quite addictive. I thoroughly enjoyed the final two as much as I enjoyed the previous six, and I very much hope that King will continue to produce this series. I highly recommend this series to anyone who loves a good mystery. I would also recommend starting at the beginning with the first book in the series, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (which I actually read on my second trip to Korea back in 2004), and reading the series in order. While each book stands alone and does not require knowledge of the previous books to be enjoyed, I recommend reading them in order, if simply to witness the evolution of the relationship between Holmes and Russell.

Sometimes I stumble across literary characters whom I feel would become great friends, if only they could leave the confines of their books to mingle with one another. Two such characters, whom I feel would become the best of friends are Mary Russell and Fremont Jones from Dianne Day’s Fremont Jones series. The latter two books which I just finished, Emperor Norton’s Ghost and Death Train to Boston both feature the ever-awesome Fremont Jones. I first discovered Fremont last winter when I was home for the winter holidays and found a copy of The Strange Files of Fremont Jones, the first book in this series, in my mom’s house. I have now read five of the six books in this series. Fremont Jones resides in early twentieth century San Francisco (the great quake of 1906 occurs in the second book of the series). The final Mary Russell book brings Russell and Holmes to San Francisco, albeit approximately twenty years later than the setting of the Fremont Jones stories. However, having Russell in the domain of Fremont (so to speak), vastly increased my feeling that if only they were to meet, a great friendship would transpire. But alas, that’s not what happened. Instead, I was somewhat disappointed. While King’s books were solid, both of Day’s were quite the opposite.

Emperor Norton’s Ghost was actually well written and quite entertaining… all the way up to the final chapter, which wrapped everything up quite rapidly and rather weakly, and with what appeared to be a giant leap of intuition on the part of Fremont. To me, a good mystery story is littered with clues which can help a savvy reader to solve said mystery. The skill of a mystery writer lies in the peppering of the story with these clues without allowing the reader to determine whodunit before the denouement. (As a totally unrelated aside, my spell-check just automatically replaced whodunnit with whodunit. Hmmm. Spell-check now replaces nonexistent words with other nonexistent words.) The one clue discovered by Fremont which connects the victims to the killer is tenuous at best, and the denouement is, well, rather vague and hasty, quite a disappointment, given how great the rest of the book was.

Death Train to Boston was a disappointment for a variety of reasons. Let’s start with the name. Death Train to Boston? That’s just a horrible title. But in the interest of not judging a book by its cover (or its name) let’s delve a little deeper. The previous four Fremont Jones stories were mysteries, Death Train to Boston is also marketed as a mystery, but the thing is, it’s not. Granted, there is a mystery involved, but the mystery takes a minor second-stage to the main tale, which is more of an action/drama than anything else. The thing is, I quite enjoyed the little misadventure that Fremont got herself into, as well as the adventures that her partner (the Watson to her Holmes) Michael Kossoff and her friend Meiling Li have while searching for her… but those things would have made an awesome backdrop to a mystery. Instead, they all but supplant the weak little mystery which somewhat lurks in the background of the tale until the very end… when it rears its weak little head in order to be rapidly squashed by Fremont, Michael and Meiling. And to make matters worse, the villain turns out to be one of the bad guys from The Bohemian Murders, not even someone original. (This also meant that I had to dig out my copy of The Bohemian Murders in order to remind myself who this guy was...) I definitely felt let down. There’s still one more book in this series which I have not yet read, and I will read it at some point. I’ve grown quite attached to Fremont and Michael, and am quite interested in what happens next in their lives, although after reading these two, I’m not as excited about reading the final installment as I once was. I highly recommend the first two books in this series, The Strange Files of Fremont Jones and Fire and Fog. As to the rest, they’re enjoyable, but after the quality of the initial books in the series, you’re bound to be disappointed.

PS - Thank you again to my Aunt Mary, who made all of this possible. I still have one more book from my Christmas purchases to go - Buddhism for Beginners by Thubten Chodron. I'll let you guys know what I think once I've finished it. For now let's just say that reading a text on Buddhism hard on the heels of Atlas Shrugged is tough on the brain cells.