Library Limelights 200

What a great way to start my 200th post! Atkinson! And then Herron! Next posts will be delayed by travel, to resume in September.

Kate Atkinson. Big Sky. Canada: Bond Street Books/Penguin Random House Canada, 2019.

How many years waiting for Jackson Brodie to reappear?! Of course, Atkinson had much to say in the meantime ☺. Jackson is not necessarily an effective private detective, but he always runs into beguiling characters. Teenage son Nathan lives with him while his ex Julia is filming a TV series. Dido the Lab lives with him too; almost everyone in this book has a dog (remember previous book? ... Started Early, Took My Dog). And almost everyone has a parenthetical nag or conscience speaking in their head. Life is streaming along in towns and villages on the Yorkshire coast of the North Sea; we meet the cast before all hell breaks loose. Atkinson expertly reveals them a bit at a time — the reconstructed Crystal, her child Candace and her stepson Harry, dependants of Tommy the haulage king; Andy, the amoral henchman; Steve, the crafty lawyer; Vince, the hapless dupe. Then Reggie and Ronnie, detectives investigating an almost-cold-case crime but stumbling into a current case of human trafficking.

There's something for everyone in this story as coincidences bounce and collide. The two cops are hilarious ‒ as is Jackson's laissez-faire attitude to most events ‒ when one throws literary references at the other. The dark side creeps peripherally into several lives, to Jackson's eternal challenge: it's not pretty. Internet imposters, migrant girls, abused girls; he wants to protect or rescue them all. Murder, kidnapping, shabby seaside entertainment centres, so many threads. Eventually it's agreed by most parties that meting out civilian justice is better than the letter of the law. One thing, Ms A: It was Vickie in The Red Shoes, not Karen. Please, please, bring Jackson back again.

Words: (after all, this is Atkinson)

diaeresis ‒ that double-dot thingy over a vowel in a foreign language

tombola ‒ a game or raffle where tickets are drawn from a spinning machine (drum)

lacunae ‒ (plural) gaps or absences in context, particularly in writing

One-liners:

▪ Teenage boys were like living sandwich boards, covered in free advertising for corporate evil. (108)

▪ An increasing number of people, Jackson had noticed lately, were not listening to him. (110)

▪ The thing about the past was that, no matter how far you ran or how fast you ran, it was always right behind you, snapping at your heels. (220)

▪ Whole fleets of world literature would sail unread over his head as he lay bleeding out in that ditch, staring at the sky. (246)

▪ Harry realized, rather shamefacedly, that he'd already forgotten that Barclay was dead. (277)

Multi-liners:

▪ "Didn't you hear, Jackson?" Julia said. "The class war's over. Everyone lost." (10)

▪ Reggie did Taekwondo, Ronnie boxed. You had to do something when you were small and you were female and you were police. (72)

▪ He'd been out of the real business of detecting for too long. Entrapping unfaithful boyfriends and husbands wasn't dealing with criminals, just high-functioning morons. (143)

▪ Botox? Jackson wondered. Not that he knew the first thing about it except that you paid someone who wasn't medically qualified to stick needles in your face. (179)

▪ He wished that he could just once hear his brother play a solo again. Or help his sister pin up the hem of a dress she'd made. (226)

▪ They were brave, he thought. Men fell down. Women stood up. (301)

Jackson Parenting:

"You wait," Jackson said. "One day you'll have kids of your own and you'll find that you make them do all the things that you currently despise ‒ museums, stately homes, walks in the countryside ‒ and they in turn will hate you for it. That, my son, is how cosmic justice works." 

"I won't be doing this," Nathan said. 

"And that sound you can hear will be me laughing." 

"No, it won't. You'll be dead by then." 

"Thanks. Thanks, Nathan." Jackson sighed. Had he been so callous at his son's age? And he hardly needed reminding of his mortality, he saw it in his own boy growing older every day. (10-11)

Tommy Parenting:

He went to a posh school ‒ that was how his father referred to it. "Is that posh school teaching you anything?" or "I'm paying that posh school to teach you ethics, for fuck's sake? I can teach you ethics: Don't kick a man when he's down. Don't let your right hand know what your left hand's doing. Women and children first." As moral codes went it was a mixed bag and Harry wasn't sure that Socrates would have entirely concurred with it, or even that his father adhered to it. (57)

Harry parenting:

Harry had found a very nice illustrated edition of the Grimm Brothers (inscribed From Mummy with Love) in one of the boxes in the Batcave and he was employing it to introduce Candace to the more evil side of fairies ‒ tales where people were cursed or abandoned or had their toes chopped off and their eyes pecked out. Ones where there was a noticeable absence of sugar and spice. Not because he wanted to scare Candace ‒ and to her credit she didn't scare easily ‒ but because he felt that someone ought to counter the fluffy pink marshmallow world she was being swallowed up by, and in the absence of anyone else he supposed it would have to be him. Plus, they had been his own introduction to literature and he thought it would be nice if she turned out to be a reader too. (62)

Fallible white knight:

It gave Jackson the chills and started him thinking about all the lost girls over the years. The ones lost in woods, on railway lines, in back alleys, in cellars, in parks, in ditches by the side of the road, in their own homes. So many places you could lose a girl. All the ones he hadn't saved. There was a Patty Griffin song that he played sometimes, 'Be Careful' it was called. All the girls who've gone astray. It had the power to make him irreducibly melancholic. 

He hadn't thought about his latest lost girl for at least twenty-four hours. The girl with the unicorn backpack. Where was she now? Home safe? Being berated by loving parents for having come back late and for losing her backpack? He hoped so, but his gut told him differently. In his (long) experience, your brain might mislead you, but your gut always told you the truth.(260-1)

Sara Blaedel. The Midnight Witness. USA: Hachette Book Group, 2018.

Very disappointing! Having enjoyed the freshness of Blaedel's ongoing series* about a Wisconsin funeral home, I was surprised to find this police/journalist tale boring. One of my quick fillers. To be fair, mineself was on heavy-duty antibiotics and anti-inflammatories among other dregs of dental torture at the time, so possibly any subtleties flew right past the old grey cells. Louise Rick is an admired cop in Copenhagen homicide; her best friend Camilla is a hotshot newspaper reporter. Often the friendship works to the professional advantage of both. When two of Camilla's colleagues are murdered in a mysterious connection to an ongoing narcotics case, she's happy to be used as a go-between among suspects. Meanwhile Louise has to deal with the unrelated murder of a young woman. All 'ordinary' as crime stories go.

Specifics are lacking about why the drug case affects everything; sequence and timing of events is bewildering sometimes. A police informant's (The Finn) motive to help nail a drug lord is plausible, but the police spend a lot of time in daily trivia and largely aimless discussions. Characters are essentially two-dimensional. Camilla features more strongly than Louise; she's given an opportunity when police learn that the chance stranger she socialized with in a bar ‒ Louise was with her ‒ happened to be the kingpin suspect ... Really? A wanted man socializing in a bar? Would cops really press a naive civilian for dangerous assistance? And so on, questions. The morals of journalism get more play than Louise's quandary over how much career sacrifice her romantic relationship requires. Although a tad more complication arrives late in the day, no surprises here. Any crime fiction fan worth her salt will figure it out long before.

* The Undertaker's Daughter (LL 177); Her Father's Secret (LL194).

One-liners:

▪ Many times she'd made Louise's toes curl in such situations, but it was fun to watch people reassessing Camilla. (106)

▪ "There are two thousand cops in Copenhagen; I seriously doubt he'd know I'm one of them." (141)

▪ Louise wanted to cram all the macho opinions of broad-shouldered, athletic Michael Stig right up his ass, but she fought back her rage. (236)

Multi-liners:

▪ In her experience, though, it was smartest to keep a cool head, otherwise people might call you hysterical. Your words carried less weight when you screamed them out. She'd tried to explain that to Camilla many times. (74)

▪ "Why don't they just call it heroin or cocaine or whatever the hell it is?"

"Because it has a light green color that makes it recognizable when it's sold." (106)

▪ "Cynicism isn't a bad word in these circles. I'm not blaming you for your female intuition not working, but this is how the world is." (236)

Boss conflict:

She walked over and slammed the door on Holck, who barely managed to step back and not get hit. "You're not doing this. I'm pulling my interview if you don't believe it's good enough without that photo." 

"Camilla, don't make a scene about this. It doesn't reflect well on you." He sounded cold. 

"You can't treat Helle this way. We have to keep our word." 

"I didn't promise her anything, and my word goes here at this paper. Whatever deals you've made, that's your problem. You know how things work here. If we can get that photo, we will. We don't give up until we've tried everything. That's how you usually do it." 

Camilla had to swallow that. She'd hunted down lots of school photos of kids when the parents or family wouldn't give her one. ... 

"I promised. She trusted me, and that's why the interview is so good. She'd never have talked to me if I hadn't promised not to push her on that photo." (64-5)

Reality needs saying?

"Be careful. You don't just elbow your way in with these people. You don't belong there." 

Louise realized too late that she'd waved another red flag in front of Camilla. "Listen," she implored. "It takes years to develop the right sources. You can't simply stroll into some hole and expect to be accepted as one of the gang. That's not how it works. If anyone suspects you're snooping around, they'll tie rocks around your feet and dump you in the harbor." (109)

Mick Herron. Joe Country. USA: Soho Crime, 2019.

First, trembling with anticipation: a new fix of Slough House. Second, hating to open the book because it will be over all too soon. To have the waiting begin again. Herron fans know what I mean and hopefully I've done my part here and there to highlight the creative genius who produces this intricate, chaotic, addictive series. The appearance in London of River Cartwright's father Frank Harkness, now a hired mercenary, is the catalyst for action; Jackson Lamb lets loose the slow horses ‒ his joes ‒ leading to a showdown in a Wales snowstorm. We meet Lech, the latest victimized colleague, and we are reminded why these individuals ended up in MI5's backwater of disgrace. Louisa mounts her own mission, River wants to rescue her and kill his father; Roddy Ho wants his car back; former security chief Emma volunteers for the cause; Shirley curses viciously. Catherine and Lamb possibly reach an understanding.

As the motley crew attempts to coordinate and transform from deskbound minions into joes, Diana Taverner ("Lady Di") still sits on MI5's First Desk, spinning her spiderwebs. Herron's delicious use of language in character types and ambient settings is unequalled; the tale is never simple, corralling the impulses of so many rogues. There is nothing anywhere as biting, as lunatic, as slyly relevant, as satisfyingly encompassing, as this series and I can't get enough! But hints of Lamb's mortality are not appreciated!

For the uninitiated, herewith the usual cast on their own terms or as noted by crafty colleagues:

Jackson Lamb

▪ "So when you cop it," he said, "how'd you want to go? Buried, cremated or eaten by cats?" (54)

▪ "Did I misfart? That's your signal to leave." (84)

▪ "You can break a man's ribs with a telephone directory," he'd once observed. "Try doing that with a rolled up copy of the internet." (106)

Catherine Standish

▪ "You owe me more than one," said Catherine softly as Louisa disappeared downstairs. (86)

▪ Lamb was right: two bottles in, there'd be no bottom to the depths she might fall. (129)

River Cartwright

▪ He was going to have to do something constructive about his life soon, but at the moment was too busy negotiating his way through it. (179)

▪ River Cartwright, though, was seven blends of vanilla. (271)

Louisa Guy

▪ This chick was spook-trained. Damaged goods, but you always had to factor in dumb luck.(160)

▪ But she hadn't been afraid last night, she reminded herself. She'd taken on a carful of bad actors, armed with only a wrench. (229)

Roddy Ho

▪ Asking Ho for a favour was like chewing someone else's gum. (103)

▪ So he forgot about his Rules of Cool, laid aside his trademark Treat-'em-Mean protocol, and instead flashed on the maximum wattage Roddy Ho bedroom smile, way before she'd done much to deserve it.(136)

Shirley Dander

▪ Shirley could be volatile on days ending with -y, and Louisa had made it clear she didn't want to share. (55)

▪ "And he'd better have jam in that fucking cabin. Because if he speaks again, he's toast." (227)

JK Coe

▪ "Being a psycho doesn't make him a bad person," she said. (181)

▪ A ripple ran through Coe, as if River had wandered across his grave en route to Frank's. (218)

Emma Flyte

▪ "If it's generally thought I'm no longer on the job, then I have greater ... flexibility." (136)

▪ When Emma looked up, everyone around her was dead. (220)

Diana Taverner

▪ You had to hand it to Lady Di; when it came to breaking news, she could leave the jagged part sticking in your back. (21)

One-liner:

▪ It turned out that in the governance of a nation's security, many absurd situations had to be worked around: a toxic clown in the Foreign Office, a state visit by a narcissistic bed-wetter, the tendency of the electorate to jump off the occasional cliff. (27)

Welcome, newbie:

"So let's make everything simple, yeah? You spend the rest of your career pushing whatever paper I see fit to send your way, or you trot off now and jump in front of a bus. I'd use the pedestrian bridge, I was you. But wait until after six, there's a sport, because it does fuck up the traffic." 

"The issue's being investigated. I'll be cleared. Because I didn't do anything." 

Jackson Lamb farted again. "Me neither. And yet here we both are." 

"Are you always this unpleasant?" 

Lamb shrugged. "It's not an exact science." He dropped his cigarette into a half-empty teacup. "And you can drop the wide-eyed innocence. Here in Slough House, you're always guilty of something. Of being in Slough House, if nothing else." (41-2)

Emma's no dummy:

"Oh, I think we both know you have a list. And Slough House has been a thorn in your side for years, right? So here you are at last, top of the monkey puzzle tree, I'd have thought your first move would be to raze that place to the ground." 

And sow salt where it had stood. You couldn't be too careful, where Jackson Lamb was concerned. ... 

Backroom politics was Diana Taverner's natural habitat, and as for Lamb, he'd deal with the devil if circumstances required. Whether the devil would shake hands with Lamb was a different question. Even Satan has standards. (28)

On the job:

Lamb answered on the first ring. 

"Let me guess. You're lost." 

"We know where we are," said River. "We just can't see any of it." 

"Every time I think I've plumbed the depths of your cackhandedness, you go ahead and surprise me." River heard a striking match. "Still got your going-away present?" 

"Yes." 

"Good. Shoot yourself in the head. Then Shirley. Then the mad monk." 

"Definitely the order I'd choose," River said. (207)