Books

There was a time when the stacks of books on my nightstand crowded out the reading lamp, the box of tissues, the glass of water, and the spare change dish. Like geological strata the columns held books I started to read but got bored with, books I intended to read, books I'd read but was too lazy to re-shelve. Digging through the pile, I could chart the curve of my interests over time. I'm a random reader, mostly, choosing books like a magpie picks shiny things.

These days the stack is virtual, contained in a handy e-reader. While I reluctantly made the switch from physical to electronic tomes some years ago, I've grown to appreciate the advantages. For one, an e-reader greatly reduces the luggage load when I'm traveling. Back in the paper-only days, I'd pack books I was reading, books I might start reading, and books I might possibly finish on the trip. The extra baggage charges were staggering. Now I carry my entire library in a device that neatly fits into a seat-back pocket (NB: heed the flight attendant's instruction to check the seat-back pocket before deplaning or you'll lose your library).

Books I've actually finished in the past two weeks

 

Gathering Prey - John Sandford 

  A roving band of killers is targeting "travelers" (not quite homeless, not quite hobos) in the Midwest, from South Dakota to Minnesota to Wisconsin to Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

This is Sandford's twenty-fifth Prey book and it's as intriguing and fast-paced as the first. Many years ago, I read Rules of Prey, the first in the series, and got hooked. The series is centered in the Twin Cities, and that's part of the reason for my addiction. My wife was born and raised there, and we lived in Minneapolis together for about six years. That adds intimacy for me ... I've traveled the streets, visited the neighborhoods, eaten at the restaurants he describes.

After twenty-four books with the same characters in the same locations, how does an author keep his work fresh? Sandford lets his characters evolve and grow from one book to the next. That's one thing. The Lucas Davenport of the later books is a wiser, more mature man than the early Davenport. He's also happily married, a state unimaginable to the character back in the day. The main thing for me is the dialog. Granted, I don't know, really, how cops talk to each other when they're in tight spots or relaxing and kidding around. Most of what I know comes from TV. But what Sandford puts on the page rings true. It sounds like how friends talk to each other ... some gentle teasing, some hard information. Here's a back-and-forth between Davenport, a higher-up in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and Virgil Flowers, a field agent:

"As he went through Hayward, he got on the phone to Virgil Flowers: 'Are you still in Fergus Falls?'
A moment of silence: 'Where the hell else would I be?'
'Hey, you don't have to be rude about it.'
'Fuck you, I'm hanging up.'
But he didn't, not quite quickly enough. Lucas asked, 'How fast can you get to Baudette?'
'Are you kidding me? I can leave in one minute,' Flowers said. 'If I have to stay here for more than another ten minutes, I'm going to start shooting at a state senator's cousins.'
'Use your pistol. At least that way, you won't actually hit anyone.' Lucas and Flowers had once been in a shoot-out in which Flowers attempted to shoot a woman in the chest. He hit her in the foot.
'I'm laughing inside,' Flowers said. 'Of all the miserable, rotten, corrupt, useless, political-payoff assignments in the universe...I'm out spying on sheep in the middle of the night, I'm talking to a guy who says he was taken up in a flying saucer and had sexual experiments done on him-which, I got to say, is probably the only sexual experiments he's ever had done on him, that didn't involve a heifer, because he's the single least likable motherfucker in the state of Minnesota.'"

For more fun, pick up a book in the Virgil Flowers series. A spin-off  of the Prey series, these novels feature "that fuckin' Flowers." He's ready to go fishing any time, anywhere, writes an occasional article for Field and Stream, and wears old rock band tour T shirts to dress up.

The Lady from Zagreb - Philip Kerr

Bernie Gunther, Berlin detective, cynic in a time when cynicism could help you survive or get you strung up with piano wire. This time around, Bernie's coerced into working for Josef Goebbels, Hitler's PR gnome. The Minister of Truth has the hots for a beautiful actress who's not as compliant as he'd like. In fact, she's gone, living in Switzerland with her husband. Bernie's job is to find her and bring her back to Berlin. No problem, except of course there are problems. As in many of the Gunther novels, Bernie really has no choice. Either bow-and-scrape or pack your bags for a trip to the labor camp.

Philip Kerr came into my sights about twelve years ago with a book called A Philosophical Investigation. I read it. Forgot about it. Moved on. It wasn't a terrible work, just not where I wanted to be at the time. Sometimes that's how I choose books to read: Where do I want to be for the next few days? In what time? In what place?

On my many trips back to the bookstore (this was back before Amazon) I'd check for a new or different Kerr book on the shelves. A few years later, I was reading a lot of WWI history and, more closely, the history of the Weimar Republic, that frantic fourteen year period between the Kaiser's abdication and Hitler's ascension.  I was looking for, besides historical accounts, fiction dealing with the daily lives of Berliners during that time. Hans Fallada, for sure, Alfred Doblin as well. And Philip Kerr. I bought a trilogy of novels called Berlin Noir comprising March Violets, The Pale Criminal, and A German Requiem. Busy with other matters, I shelved the book but my thoughts always drifted back to it. What has Philip Kerr got to say about Berlin at the tail end of Weimar? I wondered. So I dove in. And kept swimming, book after book, until I came up for air a couple of days ago, having read this latest installment.

The Gunther series paints a haunting canvas of Berlin on the cusp of the abyss, in the abyss, and after the abyss collapses. He mingles historical figures with his fictional characters seamlessly. The atmosphere he conjures is gray, depressing, foreboding. It's exactly where I wanted to find myself for a few days ... by way of books, that is.