Library Limelights 178

Linwood Barclay. A Noise Downstairs. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2018.

Continuing with Barclay's frequent theme of extraordinary things happening to ordinary people, Paul Davis is a small-town college professor living a quiet life. His wife Charlotte supplements their income as a real estate salesperson. We enter the story months after Paul was nearly killed by his colleague Kenneth Hoffman. By chance Paul had stumbled into him furtively transporting two murdered women; Kenneth is now in prison, a convicted felon by his own confession. But whoa, Paul is having trouble recovering from the trauma, mentally more than physically. Initially, psychologist Anna White is not concerned about his forgetfulness or blank memory spots. A certain typewriter has a featured role in Paul's decision to discover more, to write about the enigmatic Kenneth as a path to his own healing.

But Paul apparently loses his hold on reality when mysterious events and nightmares begin to torment him; Charlotte fears for his sanity. For her part, Anna is dealing with her father in the first throes of dementia, and a psychopathic patient with no signs of changing his malicious behaviour. At times we can't be sure who is stalking whom. Can inanimate objects retain traces of those who owned them? Part way through, the book takes an unexpected, bizarre twist — further comments (and some quotes) would be spoilers. Barclay never disappoints in the suspense genre.

One-liners:

▪ "If I can look into the eyes of evil in the real world, maybe I won't have to run from it in my sleep." (19)

▪ The very thought of going back into that closet-size space made him feel short of breath. (151)

▪ His plaid shirt was only half tucked into a pair of jeans that looked like they'd last seen a wash when the first Bush was president. (176)

▪ "But what Hoffman did, it makes me realize now, what a magnificent time saver murder is." (186)

▪ "I had the law of morality on my side." (345)

Two-liners:

▪ "I don't fix people, Gavin. I try to help them so they can fix themselves." (24)

▪ He was unable to shake the feeling that it was looking at him. Except, typewriters didn't have eyes. (154)

Determination:

He was going to tackle this Hoffman thing. He was going to write something. He was going to write something beyond the notes he'd already made. He was going to write something good. He didn't yet know what shape it would take. Maybe it would be a memoir. Maybe a novel. Maybe he'd turn his experience into a magazine piece.It had everything. 

Sex. Murder. Mystery. 

Coming back from the brink of death. 

The fucking thing would write itself, once he decided which direction to take it in. This was the key to putting his life and marriage back together. He wasn't doing this just for himself. He was doing it for Charlotte. He wanted her to see that he could be strong, that he could get his life back. 

Enough of this sad-sack bullshit. (84-5)

Relapse:

A frantic Anna White answered, "Yes, who is this? Paul, is this you?" 

"I'm so sorry," Charlotte said after identifying herself. "Paul's in a bad way. A really bad way." 

Calmly, Anna asked, "Tell me what's happening." 

"He's shaking, he can't stop crying. You need to come over. He needs to talk to you, he―" 

"Charlotte, if he's in a psychotic state, then―" 

"What the hell is that? How am I supposed―" 

"Let me speak to him." 

Charlotte said to Paul, "She wants to talk to you." 

He nodded weakly, steadied his hand as he took the phone, and pressed it to his ear. 

"Yes?" 

"Paul?" 

"Yes." 

"Talk to me." 

Paul didn't say anything. He seemed to be struggling to find the words. 

"Paul?" 

Finally, with great effort, he said two words before handing the phone back to Charlotte. 

"Help me." (247)

James Lee Burke. Robicheaux. NY: Simon & Schuster, 2018.

Trouble in New Iberia, a steamy summer ... sheriff's deputy Dave Robicheaux and private eye Clete Purcel are both depressed, and no wonder. Their beloved area of Louisiana is rife with corruption, hypocrisy, political ambition, and death. No one describes this corner of the world better than Burke, sweeping us into it on lyrical waves and holding us there with his magnetic characters. Local gentleman Jimmy Nightingale is on a popular election campaign that Dave sees only as morbidly dispiriting; neighbour Levon Broussard's wife accuses Nightingale of rape. One of the many looming troubles. Dave still mourns his wife Molly; when Dartez, the drunk driver who killed her winds up dead, Dave wonders if wishing made it so. Clete bounces recklessly from righting one wrong to another. They are lucky that Helen Soileau must be the best sheriff ever created.

Kingpin criminal Fat Tony Nemo is making a feature film locally, on which Dave's daughter Alafair is working, against his advice. More dead bodies keep the cops of three different parishes busy; a mystery hit man with a target list is hiding in plain sight. Totally tuned into his landscape and those who trod it before him, Dave strives to maintain his AA status and contain his anger against injustice. From solitary musings to the exquisite descriptions of Bayou Teche, Robicheaux is full of contrasts, true to life, rich in imagery, every page with memorable lines. It's a rare crime writer who transcends the genre. I was half expecting this to be the swan song in a long series. But only Burke knows.

Phrases:

A shaft of sunlight pierced the canopy, turning the fog into white silk ... (2)

... the leering face of an unshaved man with greasy black hair and nails rimmed with dirt, his eyes lit by the fire of stupidity and ignorance and rage. (150-1)

... the raindrops clicking on the lily pads, the fish rising as though in celebration. (185)

... afraid of girls because he'd grown up in a fundamentalist church Ayatollah Khomeini could have invented. (230)

... a snow-covered mountain slope cracking loose from its fastenings, grinding up trees and rocks in its path, boulders as big as cars bouncing over his head ... (345)

One-liners:

▪ These truths have less to do with the dead than the awareness that we are no different from them, that they are still with us and we are still with them, and there is no afterlife but only one life, a continuum in which all time occurs at once, like a dream inside the mind of God. (2)

▪ With each day that passed, I felt as though the world I had known was being airbrushed out of existence. (18)

▪ For many years our state legislature has been known as a mental asylum run by Exxon Mobil. (17)

▪ He was one of those men who could eat any kind of food without gaining weight, as though a flame in his stomach burned off the intake the second it came down the pipe. (230)

▪ I guess that's just the way it was, growing up in a place like Louisiana, where pagan deities sometimes hide among us and we secretly champion rogues who get even for the rest of us. (245)

▪ The days were superheated, the nights flickering with heat lightning that promised relief but gave none, the sunrise as swampy as an egg yolk. (341)

Two-liners:

▪ "She deserves an Academy Award. I can't believe this." (90)

▪ "There's nothing like moralizing at the expense of another, is there? I must learn the art of it." (141)

▪ I didn't mind being alone. Solitude and peace with oneself are probably the only preparation one has for death. (203)

▪ "Don't go into a bad neighborhood by yourself."

"It's the only neighborhood I have," he replied. (299)

Intercepting a furniture removal:

"Clete never did anything to you, Whitey, but you're making money off an unrighteous situation that's not Clete's fault." 

"I'll make you a counteroffer. Wipe your ass with your sixty dollars. I'll buy the round for the boys, and you and Purcel can haul everything back in the building. Then pour a shitload of Vaseline on it and cram it up your ass. I hope both of you get rich twice and go broke three times. I hope both of you inherit a house with fifty rooms in it and drop dead in every one of them." 

I had to hand it to him: Whitey was stand-up. (12-13)

BFFs:

Clete ordered a shot and poured it into his mug. I watched the whiskey bounce on the bottom and rise in a brown cloud. 

"Why not just put your brain in a jar and give it to a medical school?" I said. 

"I did that five years ago. They gave it back." (39)

Nostalgia?

Sometimes A.A. is a hard sell in South Louisiana. Booze is a big part of the culture. When I was a teenager, nobody was ever carded. Uniformed cops worked as bartenders and in gambling houses in St. Martinville, Lafayette, and Opelousas. The law in Louisiana was never intended to be enforced. Its purpose was to provide a vague guideline that made people feel respectable. New Iberia had the most notorious red-light district in the state. There was a semi-cathouse and bar right around the corner from the Lafayette Daily Advertiser in the middle of downtown. Friday was family night, no prostitutes allowed; the boiled crawfish and shrimp were free. What better way to give unto Caesar what is Caesar's? (200)

Whence Fat Tony:

Long ago, I came to regard the Mob in New Orleans as I would an infected gland. Most of them had the technical skill of hod carriers. They were brutal, stupid to the core, and had the visceral instincts of medieval peasants armed with pitchforks. Their sexual appetites were a hooker's nightmare. The portrayal of them as family men was a joke. They preyed on the weak, corrupted unions, appropriated mom-and-pop stores, and created object lessons with chain saws and meat hooks. The reinvention of this bunch as Elizabethan men of honor would have made Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe sick. (208)

Amor Towles. A Gentleman in Moscow. NY: Viking/Penguin Random House LLC, 2016.

Not a crime novel, but a deeply satisfying adventure into the adaptability of the human spirit. As a young aristocrat, Count Alexander Rostov had no more expectation nor ambition than enjoying the comfortable life of a minor noble family on his country estate. Then of course, came the revolution, and for complicated reasons, in 1922 the Bolshevik administration ordered him into house arrest at Moscow's luxe Hotel Metropol, rather than face a firing squad. House arrest, forever. The Count is already known to hotel staff as a considerate guest; they help him move from his large suite to the allocated small room. Despite the virtual disappearance of his class countrywide, and proletarian party officials taking up residence, he makes do without complaint. Over the years he becomes an indispensable cog in the wheels, especially in the restaurants along with Andrey the maître d' and chef Emile.

Contemplating the chain of events from various life choices, as well as relationships new and old, keep Alexander busy: his reactionary friend Mishka; his long affair with Anna the actress; the compulsory regular dinners with Osip, Red Army colonel and gregarious Georgian; various Americans who frequent the hotel bar. They can all come and go whereas he can't. Most of all he finds great fun and contentment with the precocious child Nina. Only once does he almost lose faith. By the 1950s he has gained a daughter who means everything to him, a daughter of such musical talent that the entire world needs to hear her. What a gratifying accomplishment for the author, a journey of thirty years including delicious steps back in time, anecdotes both pre- and post-revolution. Moscow's Hotel Metropol was and is a real place. Bravo, Count Rostov!

One-liners:

▪ "A king fortifies himself with a castle," observed the Count, "a gentleman with a desk." (12)

▪ Due to a combination of efficiency, disinterest, and the lack of a feminine touch, all of the food in an army kitchen is boiled until the tops rattle off the pots. (148)

▪ History is the business of identifying momentous events from the comfort of a high-back chair. (173)

▪ "Who would have imagined," he said, "when you were sentenced to life in the Metropol all those years ago, that you had just become the luckiest man in all of Russia."

▪ "One must make ends meet," confirmed Audrius matter-of-factly, "or meet one's end." (333)

Two-liner:

Yes, exile was as old as mankind. But the Russians were the first people to master the notion of sending a man into exile at home. (164)

Attitude:

But the Count hadn't the temperament for revenge; he hadn't the imagination for epics; and he certainly hadn't the fanciful ego to dream of empires restored. No. His model for mastering his circumstances would be a different sort of captive altogether: an Anglican washed ashore. Like Robinson Crusoe stranded on the Isle of Despair, the Count would maintain his resolve by committing to the business of practicalities. Having dispensed with dreams of quick recovery, the world's Crusoes seek shelter and a source of fresh water; they teach themselves to make fire from flint; they study their island's topography, its climate, its flora and fauna, all the while keeping their eyes trained for sails on the horizon and footprints in the sand. (29)

The Bolshoi across the street:

But just as the last of the attendees was disappearing through the doors, a taxi pulled to the curb, the door flung open, and a woman in red dashed up the stairs with the hem of her dress in her hands.Leaning forward, Nina cupped her palms against the glass and squinted. 

"If only I were there and she were here," she sighed. 

And there, thought the count, was a suitable plaint for all mankind. (61)

The letter of the law:

When the abbot rushed from the monastery to confront the captain—demanding in the name of the Lord that they cease this desecration at once—the captain leaned against a post and lit a cigarette. 

"One should render unto Caesar what is Caesar's," he said, "and unto God what is God's." With that, he instructed his men to drag the abbot up the belfry steps and hurl him from the steeple into the arms of his Maker. 

Presumably, the bells of the Church of the Ascension had been reclaimed by the Bolsheviks for the manufacture of artillery, thus returning them to the realm from whence they came. Though for all the Count knew, the cannons that had been salvaged from Napoleon's retreat to make the Ascension's bells had been forged by the French from the bells at La Rochelle, which in turn had been forged from British blunderbusses seized in the Thirty Years' War. From bells to cannons and back again, from now until the end of time. (90)

Semantics:

As if on cue, the telephone on his desk began to ring, the bellhop's bell triple-chimed, and someone called out "Comrade! Comrade!"Ah, comrade, thought the Count. Now, there was a word for the ages. ... 

When the Count was a boy in St. Petersburg, one rarely bumped into it. It was always prowling at the back of a mill or under the table in a tavern, occasionally leaving its paw marks on the freshly printed pamphlets that were drying on a basement floor. Now, thirty years later, it was the most commonly heard word in the Russian language.A wonder of semantic efficiency, comrade could be used as a greeting, or a word of parting. As a congratulations, or a caution. As a call to action, or a remonstrance. Or it could simply be the means of securing someone's attention in the crowded lobby of a grand hotel. (181)