book-blog.com

Goldberg, Lee: Mr. Monk on Patrol

NAL, 304
1st published: 2012

Mr. Monk on Patrol is the 13th book in Lee Goldberg's series of TV tie-ins featuring obsessive compulsive detective Adrian Monk. Unlike its predecessors, this installment is not laugh-out-loud funny, but it's heavy in character development. Monk and his assistant Natalie travel to Summit, New Jersey, to help out Randy Disher, former San Francisco homicide detective turned small-town chief of police. Monk is also reunited with his first assistant, Sharona, since she and Randy are now married (a plot development I still have trouble wrapping my mind around). Monk and Natalie help Randy deal with a crime spree in Summit and find themselves paired as partners on the beat, a dramatic change from their usual employer-employee relationship. Even bigger changes are in store for the pair, but I won't give anything away here. Sadly, Goldberg has decided to stop writing Monk novels. The next book in the series, Mr. Monk is a Mess (due out in July, 2012), will be the last (or perhaps penultimate? Goldberg mentions Mess as leading to a finale: http://leegoldberg.typepad.com/a_writers_life/2012/01/behind-the-music-mr-monk-on-patrol.html). Mr. Monk on Patrol does a good job of moving the series toward a conclusion that, judging from the look of things, promises to be fitting. (I'm hoping there aren't any 19-years-later-on-Platform-9-3/4-type scenes--not that there was anything wrong with that particular epilog, really, but big time leaps are, I think, inherently depressing.) I'll be eager to see how Goldberg ties everything off, but I'm not happy at all to see the series end.

Cumming, Charles: A Spy By Nature

St. Martin's Griffin, 368 pages
1st published: 2007

Twenty-something Alec Milius is smart and heart-broken and headed nowhere in particular when a chance encounter leads him to interview with MI6. He winds up becoming an industrial spy, a life to which he's particularly suited--see the book's title--because he is naturally deceitful: he tends to fall into lying even when there's no particular reason to do so. The trait is handy in the spy business, if deadly for personal relationships. Admirably, the author takes his time with the story. The first 25% of the book details Alec's interviews with MI6--not a lot going on and yet it manages to be gripping. The narrative slows in the middle, when Alec is playing a cat-and-mouse game with an American couple: lots of talk as he attempts to manipulate them, and vice versa, and it can be tedious. Still, the detailed accounts of conversations, related by Alec in the first person, contribute to the book feeling very realistic and intimate. My biggest complaint about the novel is that Cumming's Americans are forever dropping their G's: they're doin' things and goin' places. I assume this was an attempt to differentiate them as Americans, but it isn't accurate and it was like nails on a chalkboard every time I read it. I'm glad to see that Alec Milius returns in Cumming's 2008 novel The Spanish Game. I just hope there aren't too many Americans in it!

Berkun, Scott: Confessions of a Public Speaker

O'Reilly Media, 240 pages
1st published: 2011

I have no intention of doing any public speaking myself in the next, oh, decade or so, or if I can help it ever, but nonetheless, after picking up this book on a whim, I found it engrossing. The author is a professional speaker who has clearly thought a lot about what makes for a successful presentation and about how people learn. He offers the reader practical advice about how to do well in front of an audience, or at least better, and about how to respond when, inevitably, something goes wrong. A lot of the secret is simple hard work: if you're super prepared and knowledgeable about your subject matter and you've practiced your talk until you know your points cold, then you're less likely to be thrown by technical problems or hecklers or last minute changes in line-up. All of this is very good, but what interested me as a reader who's unlikely to be in front of an audience anytime soon were Berkun's more tangential discussions--about the history of the so-called lecture circuit and why we're biologically programmed to be afraid of public speaking, for example. Berkun is smart and funny and the book is a quick read that's worth your time even if you're not a speaker: a lot of what he says--about clarity of expression, for example--could be applied to writing as well. The book is recommended. And do be sure to read its colophon, which is...well, strange.

Eisler, Barry: The Detachment

Thomas & Mercer, 324 pages
1st published: 2011

The Detachment is the latest novel by Barry Eisler featuring John Rain, an assassin for hire who's been off the job for some four years when the book begins. He's lured out of retirement to take on a high-risk assignment, the assassination of a high-ranking U.S. government official. But the job soon morphs into a multi-hit deal and teams him with an old friend, Dox, and two new guys, linebacker-sized killers Rain can't trust not to turn on him when the time for teamwork is passed.

This is the first John Rain novel I've read, and it won't be my last. I love this type of protagonist, a smart bad guy who is extremely adept at his job. (He reminds me a bit of Richard Stark's Parker.) Eisler walks us through Rain's planning as he out-thinks various opponents: the book isn't so much action-packed as planning-for-action-packed, which I like a lot. The book is a bit preachy at times, which slows down the narrative, but apart from that I enjoyed it, and I'm excited to have discovered the series.

Maslakovic, Neve: Regarding Ducks and Universes

AmazonEncore, 344 pages
1st published: 2011

Thirty-five years after the universe replicated, there are tens of portals through which the residents of one world can cross over to visit the other. The universes were initially identical, but small changes across the decades have added up: a car accident here but not there, a missed bus here, a chance encounter there. One can see the allure of visiting a world in which, say, the Golden Gate Bridge was not destroyed in an earthquake or one's family wasn't killed in a car accident, as things fell out in your universe. There's also the attraction of seeing what the other universe's version of you is up to. In the world--worlds--imagined by author Neve Maslakovic, dropping in on one's "alter" unexpectedly is a no no--it's kind of like adopted kids tracking down their birth parents without permission--but that's Felix A's motive in making the crossing to Universe B. Specifically, as a would-be author of a cooking-related murder mystery, he wants to find out if the book he thinks he has in him has already been written by Felix B. While in Universe B, though, Felix A gets caught up in a fight between competing research teams that are both set on figuring out what caused the universe to bifurcate in the first place.

I very much like the idea of a pair of linked universes, with all the complications that could bring to the characters' lives. I can also see this turning into a series: Felix A as an amateur sleuth/mystery writer who occasionally recruits his alter and other buddies in Universe B for help. In fact, this strikes me as a very promising set-up for a series. But if this book leads to more, I'd want the plot of subsequent installments to be stronger. While I enjoyed Regarding Ducks and Universes because of the clever idea behind it, and I grew to like Felix A as a character, I never found myself caring about the plot or the secondary characters. And, actually, it's hard to imagine why the characters themselves cared about their quest to find the reason the universe divided: the answer just doesn't seem to matter very much even within the story. But beef up the plot and bring the secondary characters to life and a series could be great.