Library Limelights 286

 

Belinda Bauer. Exit. USA: Grove Press/Grove Atlantic, 2020.

Here’s a chaotic romp somewhat in the spirit of The 100 Year Old Man and A Man Called Ove, with protagonist Felix Pink being an elderly man mostly minding his own business. The only interesting thing about Felix’s dull and proper life is his volunteer work as an Exiteer. These gentle people agree to provide details and witness for (not assist) someone who no longer wishes to live—euthanasia is illegal in England. Felix is newly paired with young Amanda as they follow procedure at the request of frail Charles “Skipper” Cann, bedridden with cancer. Only to discover within moments that it was the wrong man: Albert Cann, Skipper’s ill son has died. Skipper himself is alive and furious in the next room; police sirens send the two Exiteers racing for the back door, abandoning a briefcase with evidence of third party interference.

Conscientious Felix debates turning himself in, needing to make things right. But Geoffrey Skeet, the disabled founder of Exiteers, is arrested for murder by detectives Kirsty King and Calvin Bridge and Skeet is not the slightest bit worried that he’ll be released. Felix will learn, to his confusion, that Amanda is the girlfriend of Reggie Cann, Skipper’s grandson. The cops think the naive Exiteers were set up by criminal interests. Pandemonium increases when Felix and Skipper have a punch-up and the pages fill with a merry-go-round of bookies, funerals, more arrests, race horses, dentists, dogs, and cats. Pulling you right in with emotional contrasts, the greatly entertaining farce element does not overshadow a controversial social issue. Old sailors never die; they just sail away.

One-liners

▪ It was a strange feeling ‒ that he would be outlived by his socks. (12)

▪ She was watching that show where a rude chef shouted at Americans. (100)

▪ Calvin watched Dennis Matthews hand the slip to Dead Mike with the numb horror he could only imagine feeling while watching his firstborn ride a tricycle off a cliff. (120)

▪ “I don’t care about your son,” said Skipper. “I care about my son.” (160)

▪ “My wife died a while back,” said Skipper carefully, “but her name was not Susanna.” (199)

▪ “He promised to keep her out of it because she’s young and he’s old, which is all very noble of course, but I tell you, I think she’s a bad apple!” (260)

Multi-liners

▪ The Exiteers existed to support people with terminal illnesses and for whom pain meant their lives were no longer bearable. Geoffrey had told him long ago that they were not in the business of enabling anyone who was ‘just a bit fed up’.” (15)

▪ But being a cop had turned out to be about more than just being good. There was also a lot of paperwork involved. (40)

▪ Feeding somebody’s cat was very different from feeding their dog. A cat had to be found before it could be fed, and yet was never where it should be when you needed it to be there. (82)

▪ “The gas was in the wrong place!” cried Felix. “It was a mistake!” (158)

▪ Old Greybeard suddenly turned her head and looked straight at him. “What that girl done to you was wrong.” (184)

▪ “Well, I can’t stay at my house with a baby! It’s mad there.” (268)

▪ “I feel sorry for you, Reggie,” said Matthews. “But take care of it by tomorrow, or you’re a dead man.” (275)

How was your day ...

Skipper just watched him. Toff jumped on to his lap and he stroked the dog’s ears. “Fella came to see me today.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“The one who done it.”

“Done what?”

Skipper jerked a thumb at the ceiling. “The Exiteer.”

Reggie stopped. “He came back?”

Skipper nodded. “Said he were sorry. Said it was a mistake. Then we had a fight.”

“You what?” Reggie was aghast. You had a fight? What kind of fight?”

“A fight fight. I were going to make a citizen’s arrest. I woulda had him too, ‘cept I’m out of shape from being stuck in bed for so long. But I got him a couple of good whops with my new stick.”

“What new stick?”

“He brung me a new stick.”

Reggie frowned. “Why?”

“Old one broke. He says it were deliberate.”

“Did you call the police?”

“About the stick?”

“About the fight! About the man who killed Dad!”

Skipper shook his head. “I took a pill after. Knocked me out till just now. You do it, Reg. My teeth are upstairs.” (166-7)

Megan Miranda. The Last to Vanish. USA: Marysue Rucci Books/Scribner, 2022.

Abby has been manager of The Passage Inn near the Appalachians for ten years; her widowed aunt Celeste owns it and lives next door. Cutter’s Pass is basically a tourist town for outdoorsy people, especially hiking and camping. Over a long period, seven people have disappeared here: twenty-five years ago, a group of four young men dubbed the Fraternity Four; Alice Kelly fifteen years ago; Farrah Jordan, a few winters since; Landon West, a journalist, was the most recent. Search parties never found bodies and it’s assumed they died in hiking accidents. Out of the blue, Landon’s brother Trey checks in to the Inn, unnerving Abby for reasons she can’t explain. There are times when she still feels like an outsider in the inbred town. Is there some big secret among the residents she’s not privy to? Abby’s assistant Georgia was hired not long ago; she too is not from Cutter’s Pass.

On a daily round of Abby’s tasks we meet her fairly new assistant Georgia, Celeste, the sheriff, owners of various town shops, Harris the plumber/electrician, and Cory, local lothario and tour guide. At first, no one knows what Landon was working on, but Trey seems to be searching for anything of Landon’s that may have been overlooked. And he finds something—a flash drive hidden in a bedpost where his brother slept―just when Abby interrupts him. On it are photos likely taken on Farrah’s camera the day she went missing. Abby’s obsessive imagination grips her by now—the Inn’s intermittent landline problems, things going missing, some chilly surprises, until she gets a substantial shock. Abby hunts for clues to accelerate the story.

Of all these people hiding secrets, will someone finally speak the truth about the missing people? Alas, I found little rapport with the cardboard characters, no curiosity about Abby’s and Georgia’s vague nervousness. Trey is stiff, his dialogue awkward. The author works hard to create a mystique about the disappearances, about the inn’s history, but the nebulous, unspecified feelings weren’t grabbing me. Turns out that while Abby fumbles to uncover secrets, she had the biggest secret of all—yet seemed to me it somehow came too late, too flat.

One-liners

▪ At times, everything about this place felt like we were circling things that had already happened. (30)

▪ The fact that he was a journalist, that he’d been working on a story about the string of disappearances here—it was hard to reconcile as coincidence. (45)

▪ Someone had recovered this camera, and kept it hidden. (79)

▪ “But,” Trey said, “in those places, where people get injured, or worse—they find the bodies.”

▪ How could I expect Cory to understand—the feeling that the answers could be found through Trey, somehow, danger or not. (123)

▪ Georgia seemed highly attuned to the potential for danger, but I believed she only saw it in the obvious places: an empty room; a dropped call; a search in the woods. (143)

Multi-liners

▪ The Shallow Falls Trail—that was the one behind our property. The one made famous for the disappearances. (53)

▪ “Answer me this then. Where is my brother’s phone? He always recorded his interviews on it.” (67)

▪ I held my breath, tried not to make a sound. Had he heard me when I closed the window? (92)

▪ “Tell me something real, Cory. Please. I think you owe me at least that.” (171)

▪ What the hell was I supposed to do with this? Lock it all up, pretend it didn’t exist? (195)

▪ Rochelle had said the ravine was full of bones, and sometimes it felt like the whole town was. That I would live here and die here and disappear with all the rest, indistinguishable. (200)

Sheriff Stamer

I watched him go, seeing him as an outsider might, as Trey might, for the first time in a long time. The man who couldn’t solve the mystery of what happened to Landon or Farrah or Alice Kelly. Who had let the investigations come to a quiet, unsatisfying conclusion. Who didn’t want to invite outside scrutiny and needed to keep me on the same page. I wasn’t sure he believed what he was saying. (145)

Circling

And suddenly, everything circled back to this place. I could see the ghosts of all of them: Landon, Farrah, and now—Alice.

The woods were not the tie, as much as Trey wanted to believe it. Both Landon West and Farrah Jordan had passed through this inn for a reason. Looking for something. Looking for someone. And now I had evidence that Alice Kelly might have passed through here too.

I felt like I had when I was standing at the base of the falls yesterday, like I was at the center of a funneling.

The Passage Inn—this was the center. (159)

John Grisham. Camino Winds. USA: Doubleday, 2020.

A long time ago I gave up reading Grisham, irritated by his polemics on social issues that overpowered the crime or mystery. Here is a between-waiting-lists grab, apparently a sequel to Camino Island. The Island, off the coast of Florida, is besieged by Hurricane Leo. Bookstore owner Bruce Cable is the doyen and promoter of the many writers and authors who live there. Friends Bob and Nick have hunkered in with him for the storm duration when all sensible people have evacuated. Record-breaking winds and sea surges create huge damage. Upon checking afterwards for their friend Nelson, a lawyer turned author, they carefully pick their way through the town, only to find Nelson dead—his head wounds do not look like storm injuries. Amateur dick Nick confidently outlines how someone could have killed him. Sure enough, they convince state police Capt. Butler to open a murder investigation.

Over the months that follow, the police are not convinced enough to exert themselves. Bruce is not giving up. His plans to celebrate a favourite author, Mercer Mann, and all regular book events are quashed. And here it comes, Grisham’s cause du jour: Poorly supervised for-profit nursing homes—subject of Nelson’s new book manuscript. Along with Polly ‒ Nelson’s sister – Bruce believes Nelson’s story is not all fiction about company fraud and medical issues, and that he was killed to prevent publication. Nelson must have had an insider informing him. Next thing you know, Bruce and Polly hire a crackerjack security firm to research such companies and obtain criminal evidence.

The cause is of current concern to us in real life and provides action in between the dull spots. Otherwise, the story meanders around the island among wreckage, rebuilding, and a hope that the care-home informant will contact Bruce, now Nelson’s literary executor. Once he’s ensured the book will be published, even Bruce himself gets bored. It’s helpful for Grisham to tell us often that Bruce is a well-known ladies’ man, “a lovable but roguish character,” because you’d never know from his dialogue or actions. In this case, the cause du jour brings welcome relief to a story with all the warmth of a dry newspaper report.

One-liners

▪ “He [Nelson] found out one of his clients was selling military software to Iran and North Korea and he blew the whistle.” (51)

▪ “My last image was her disappearing down the street, leaning sideways into the wind, struggling to keep her feet.” (68)

▪ “Well, there was this woman, said her name was Ingrid.” (86)

▪ “Dying young is usually a good career move.” (137)

▪ “He was secretive and didn’t trust the internet, hated the cloud, refused to shop online, said nothing important in emails, ignored all social media, paid cash for most of his purchases.” (165)

▪ But the real truth was that the mysterious drug they were looking for would not be in any patient’s records. (200)

▪ “It’s far cheaper to pay bribes than to provide quality care.” (236)

Multi-liners

▪ “I seriously doubt the manuscript will lead to the killer, but it’s the only possible clue we have right now. That, and a pretty good description of dear Ingrid.” (122-3)

▪ There were no secrets between the two. A wide-open marriage makes secrets unnecessary. (125)

▪ “I’ll stick with the girls. And don’t call it chick lit.” (136)

▪ “He cut a deal with Nelson and now Nelson got whacked. He’ll probably come sniffing around looking for his money.” (139)

Elderly nightmares

“I can’t promise anything, Brittany. But if you’re careful we’ll be okay. I’m assuming security is not that tight.”

“ Are you kidding? Patients are getting raped by the staff. I could walk into the pharmacy tomorrow and walk out with anything I want, not that the good stuff is there. The manager forgets to lock her door half the time. The only guard is an old fart who should be a dementia patient down the hall. No, Raymond, security is not a priority at dear old Serenity. Security costs money and that company cares about nothing but profits.” (194)

Don’t mess with Bruce

“You know, Bruce, I’m a bit perplexed by your tone and attitude. We are in a gray area here and that’s often where we are forced to go. Need I remind you of where you were three years ago when our company first met you? The stolen manuscripts? You were so far out of bounds you weren’t even near a gray area.”

“What happened three years ago?” Nick asked.

“None of your business,” Bruce snapped.

“Just thought I’d ask.”

Bruce suddenly turned around and took a few steps toward Lindsey. He glared at her, pointed a finger, said, “Your company is fired as of now. Close the file and keep the change. Don’t lift another finger on behalf of me or the estate of Nelson Kerr. Send me a termination letter.” (214)