Book Report: Pest Control

Pest Control by Bill Fitzhugh
Two words: LOVED IT.

Poor Bob Dillon can't catch a break. In the opening pages, he quits his job with a professional insect extermination company when the boss tells him to triple the amount of poisonous insecticide. This greatly clashes with Bob's position that humans are polluting the earth and making it unsafe, let alone creating more tolerant bugs. So after shoving the end of his sprayer up the boss's nose to make his point, Bob begins his trek home wondering how he will break the news to his wife.

At the same time, Klaus, a professional assassin for hire, shoots and kills one of Africa's evil tyrants during a celebration parade. But Klaus does not kill just anybody. He only kills those that deserve it. And forcing a population into extreme poverty definately fit the bill.

Bob makes it home, where he himself is in a state of poverty, and takes comfort in his bugs. He keeps them in aquariums and even has an entire room devoted to them. They were rare breeds, mostly killers (appropriately named Assassin bugs) and used in Bob's experiments: he wants to create the ultimate killing machine, an all-natural solution to the pesticide problem. His wife, while loving and wanting to be supportive, is realistic: they have a daughter and bills to pay and cannot spare to have Bob stay at home all day playing with his bugs. She wants him to find another job, still using chemicals, just until he's able to take his dream public.

Meanwhile, Marcel and Jean, two middle men for people who wanted someone dead but didn't want to do it themselves, have a problem. They need to find a killer, and quickly. They contact Klaus, who turns them down in a bout of reoccurring depression as well as the kill doesn't fit his moral code. Desperate, Marcel and Jean take to placing a discrete add in the newspaper. It reads: Professional Exterminator needed ASAP. $50K in a weekend! Major pest difficulty. Send resume to: 251 Kavkastrasse, Zurich 2VA-6P2. Pros only.

Bob, worried about his future and with only a few dollars to his name, lets a friend buy some beer at the local bar. Bob imagines how great his life will become as soon as he breeds the perfect Assassin bug. But he respects Mary's wishes and together with his friend, they scan the wanted ads.

Where, OF COURSE, they find the PERFECT job. Bob pulls on his 'Exterminator' hat and smiles as his friend snaps a picture, then off it goes with his application for the job.

And that, my friends, is just the first 55 pages.

This book is a wild ride. The action is vivid, the characters are real and memorable, the irony perfect and deftly played. I rooted for Bob the entire time, the poor bug-breeder caught in the nasty world of professional assassins and just not able to catch a break. I laughed out loud quite frequently and really LOVED getting lost in this story. The twists are outrageous, the dialogue audible, and the grubby city of New York springs off the pages. A handful of subplots are woven together so tightly I can't imagine this ending any other way. If I ever were to read a book a second time, this would certainly be one of them.

I give this 6 out of 5 stars. One of my favorites!!

Book Report: The Boy Who Couldn't Die

In a matter of hours, I read William Sleator's 'The Boy Who Couldn't Die'.
I think I'd sort of like my hours back.

The premise is grabbing: Ken is a 16 year old boy in New York who recently survived his best friend's death, a gruesome plane crash resulting in a closed-casket funeral. Ken, deeply disturbed, decides that death is ugly and he does not want to endure anything like what Rodger did. So he goes to see Cheri Buttercup, a sort of witch who claims she can make him invulnerable to pain and death for fifty dollars. She preforms a ritual which nearly kills Ken--a necessary part of the procedure, she explains. Cheri has taken Ken's soul from his body and hidden it, and now his physical body is immortal.
And it is. Ken experiments, eventually winding up on an island in the Caribbean hunting for sharks, hoping to further prove that he cannot die. While there, he meets a young local girl named Sabine, who steals his heart.
But of course, nothing is as it seems. Ken has horrible dreams. He confides in Sabine about his immortality, and she urges him to set things right. Cheri did not simply hide Ken's soul; she has turned him into an 'astral zombie' and is using his soul to do her bidding. When Ken confronts her, she demands fifty thousand dollars to replace his soul- which is hidden in a location known only to her.
With Sabine's help, Ken is able to decode his dreams and locate his soul himself--in an underwater cave near the Adirondack mountains. It is also winter, and a sheet of ice covers the lake. Oh, and Cheri has placed a guardian in front of the cave, which they will have to defeat first. And they are also on a time limit due to the small amount of air available in their scuba diving tanks. AND even if they make it, they will still have to find the hole in the ice that they dove through. *deep breath*

Great idea, poor delivery. Ken was unlikable, snotty and self-absorbed. Sabina was a flat character whose main purpose was to provide answers. Ken's parents were virtually non-existent. Too much thinking, not enough doing. Minimal attention to detail, other than the mechanics of scuba diving. No sub-plots, no other points of view. I was bored, tricked once more by the intriguing title and pretty cover.
But to Sleator's credit, the book is intended for teenagers.
Two stars out of five.

Book Report: To Dance With the White Dog

To Dance With the White Dog by Terry Kay
This short, intense novel took me only two days to read, but I'll remember it forever.

When his beloved wife of fifty-seven years dies, no one knows what will become of elderly Sam Peek. How can he live all alone on his farm with no one to talk to, and no one to look after him? And when Sam begins talking about a pure white dog that only he can see, his children think that age and grief have finally taken their toll on their father's mind. But whether the dog is real or imagined, Sam Peek is about to show everyone how much life he still has in him....

Sprinkled with simple yet clear and artistic descriptions ("The day was bright, the sun had untangled from the trees and was in its stretch across the day, and on the highway nearby, cars rushed into town.") the scenery springs to life. Dialogue is real and imperfect, and great care is given to describe the mysterious white dog ("There was the dog, leaping gracefully in the field beside the road, a white blur, like a burning star falling and rising, falling and rising.") It is no wonder this story was brought to the big screen.

With heartfelt emotion and touching grace, Sam and White Dog will dance from the pages of this bittersweet novel and into your heart, as they share the mysteries of life in a warm and moving final rite of passage.

Very sweet and poignant, with a heartbreaking end that lingers.
Four stars out of five.

Book Report: Intent to Harm

Let me just start this report by saying, "Thank God I'm finished."

Intent to Harm is a monster of a book, weighing in at 32 chapters, 343 pages, and 1.5 pounds (hardcover). Likable and honorable, police officer Toby Parkman narrates this story about his time on a task force dedicated to capturing a notorious and much-feared rapist. An apparent master of concealment and escape, the rapist stalks the intended victims in their own homes for days before raping and beating them. The tension increases for Parkman, his family, and his closest friends as the weeks become months and the rapist moves closer to their homes. The depiction of the tedium and frustration of actual police duty (false leads and long hours on stakeout, punctuated only by moments of hope or real achievement) is interspersed with vignettes that underscore the horror of the rapist's actions and the urgency of the police work. This slice-of-life first novel by a police reservist rings true, up to the anticlimactic ending, which after the lengthy investigation leaves the reader feeling slightly let down but reluctant to leave.

The author, Stan Washburn, served as a police reserve officer in California--and it shows. The story flips between dry, fast-moving action scenes that make me feel like I'm reading a police report, to stunningly intense and frightening scenes as the soon-to-be victims prepare for bed and endure very violent acts of rape. The book starts with one such scene and I got goosebumps immediately. One of the most chilling details is how the rapist enters the home days before hand, scouting his prey without any detection. These women come home to find things slightly out of place--in one place it was described as if everything in the house had been shaken gently. This becomes the rapists signature, and it is handled with respect. I'll be checking my house carefully for a while.

A 'moral' of this book is to highlight our (people as a society) lack of action to possible trouble. At one point, a male college student looks out his window and sees a man looking in his neighbor's house, but goes back to his homework with the attitude that the woman deserved to be spied upon. She was raped that night. At another point, the victim manages to scream once as she was being raped, but the neighbor that heard it figured it was just a nightmare. How many times have I see something suspicious and shrugged it off? I'll certainly think twice before doing so now.

The protag himself comes across as rather robotic, despite an honorable effort to show a range of emotions. Maybe it's because Toby is a cop, or maybe it's because he's a man, but very little thought or feeling is mixed in with his job in times of action. There are plenty of 'down times' where he fears for his wife and family, and even all the victims (fifty four by the end of the book), but nearly all of his thinking is strategic and explanatory. I happened to appreciate most of this, as it's information I can use for my own writing, but when reading to simply enjoy the story, I was sometimes very bored. And a note about chase scenes--I could not have been more confused when Toby and the other officers are trying to tail the suspect in their cars. People are turning every which way, all trying to avoid each other, and all the while they communicate to each other by radio, using badge numbers instead of names. On the same note, the minor characters blended together very badly early in the story--at one point, I had no idea which family member was the daughter or the mother or the neighbor. They had very shallow personalities.

As much as I struggled with this book, I also enjoyed it. The climax drew me in and there was no way I could put it down without finding out if the rapist would be caught. If you've got a LOT of time to kill, and possibly some pain reliever for a headache, this is a great book that will give you the creeps.
Two and a half stars out of five.

Book Report: Younger

I never planned on reading this book. In fact, I read the first few pages and decided I would not continue, as it is exactly the kind of book I thought I hated: Chick lit in all its glory.

But 'Younger' by Pamela Redmond Satran turned out to be a very enjoyable read, one I finished in a record three days. Alice, a 44-year-old divorcee with a daughter, passes for a 20-something and searches for the fountain of youth when she meets a handsome man also in his 20s. The white lie Alice tells Josh gets her thinking that if no one asks her age, she doesn't have to tell. So she applies for a job she had briefly before becoming a full-time mom-and gets it. Meanwhile, Josh is falling head over heels for Alice, who's just way cooler than girls his age. He figures she's about twenty-nine-and for the first time since she was twenty-nine, or possibly ever, Alice feels that life is ripe with possibility. Unfortunately one possibility is that she's gonna get caught.

This handsome man, quickly introduced in the second or third chapter, had me cooing out loud. Josh is perhaps too perfect: always saying the right thing, his image loosely described as having long dark hair and a great body. But he is only a fraction of Alice's journey, and I always yearned to read more about him.

Practically everything—from fashions in pubic hair to telephone technology—has changed since Alice was a single career girl, but a lot remains the same: the office bitch still steals underlings' ideas, and people still desire the contradictory poles of truth and illusion. Satran weaves a sparkly thread of fantasy through her solid social realism, writing precisely what Alice tells her boss readers want: "a book that's going to keep them awake beyond half a page at the end of a long involved day."

Each character is vibrant and strong, bringing something of their own to the table which usually made life harder for Alice. Scenes are tense and colorful, motives are clear and fresh. The first person narrative ran smoothly and quickly and kept me turning the pages. It provided an insight so deep, I found myself reacting to the story's events right along with Alice, and those events stuck with me after I'd put the book down. Like a truly good story should, it made me think and apply Alice's lessons to myself. Days later, I'm still seeing scenes in my head. Although I wished it had a slightly happier ending, the one it has fits it nicely, and I am honestly glad I read this book.

Challenging the adage that the truth will set you free, 'Younger' is a hilarious and insightful story that proves that you're only as young as you feel.

Book Report: Flinch

I picked up this book and two others by Robert Ferrigno because they passed all three of my tests: all had a snappy title, an intriguing plot, and great first sentences. See Flinch, page 1: "Yeah, and I'm the fucking walrus." Great, I thought as I tossed it in my basket, a male author with a sense of humor. Can't wait.

Jimmy Gage is the protag, a journalist for a raunchy tabloid magazine, whose heart is less than gold. He's got a violent streak in him which he uses to keep justice and fairness where he thinks it is due (and where it usually IS due). Told through backstory (probably in an earlier installment to the series), Jimmy has taken revenge on a physically huge evil-doer named Macklen, leaving the man unable to use his legs due to an ill-fired bullet to the spine. While Jimmy did not actually pull the trigger, he was responsible for the damage but escaped the incident without being seen.

Now, a year or so later, parallel story lines run side by side as Jimmy hunts for the Eggman, a serial killer who, after Jimmy's attention in the magazine, has started writing him boastful letters. When pictures of the Eggman's victims turn up at Jimmy's brother's house, the game is on and boy is it cruel. They live a real-life version of 'flinch', a childhood game they would play where one brother would swing a meat cleaver at the other's head, then they would switch. Whoever flinched first lost the game, and the rule is still the same today. This smart who-dunnit is edgy and feral and I'm still not certain the innocent are truly innocent.

All this is backed by a rollicking subplot in which Rollo, Jimmy's young filmmaker friend, is being hunted for selling a memory chip-which Jimmy stole from Macklen pre-story. Rollo is a good guy and seems to be Jimmy's only true friend, and in turn the storylines merge when Jimmy is forced to protect Rollo. I don't think Rollo lived up to the character he could have been, but when the story is cast so largely, I can see where a sidekick might get overlooked.

This story is wild. The cast is outrageous and glittery: some are 400 pound wrestlers; a woman detective who's addicted to work, alcohol and Jimmy; Jimmy's cosmo-surgeon brother with a heart of ice; even two movie addicts whose appearance in the story last less than five pages. The story is visual if head-spinning and while there is no one thing really wrong with it, I felt that I could put it down at anytime and would not be bothered if I never finished. The climax picked up speed and was cleverly designed and was perhaps my favorite part of the whole book. It seems Robert is a master of shiny packages-designing settings and bodies to fill his pages, but could have spared more time *inside* their heads. See page 301, after a bloody fight with his brother and the killer is revealed: 'Jimmy stood up. He was aware of Holt and Desmond nearby, but didn't need their help anymore. "Game's over, Jonathan."

An epilogue fogs the clean-cut revelation, I guess to leave the door open for the next installment. There were some great lines of dialogue in this story, but overall I was a little let down. Lots of flashbacks, marked by italic font. Good book, not great, but worth the read for it's uniqueness and ability to braid so many ideas together. 3 stars.

Book Report: Lost Echoes

I just finished reading ‘Lost Echoes’ by Joe Lansdale and I couldn’t wait to tell someone how pleased I was with it. The story is about Harry Wilkes, a man who, possibly due to a childhood illness, can now experience visions of brutal deaths upon hearing an auditory trigger. This story explores two fascinating conditions: Synesthesia, the ability to perceive one sense as another (i.e., hear the color blue), and audiochronology, the (now debunked) theory that sound can be trapped in objects such as pottery, or in Harry's case, 'The ability to hear terror and horror in sounds'. For Harry, the entire world becomes a minefield. Slamming doors or the jiggle of a toilet seat lid or even driving over potholes all have the potential to trigger incapacitating, gruesome, and haunting visions. As an adult, he turns to alcohol as a means of coping. He becomes a recluse, keeping only one childhood friend, Joey, who is the type of friend anyone would be better off without. Harry even covers his apartment in egg carton and cardboard, a make-shift insulation against the horrors of his own home.

But Harry’s world begins to change the night he meets Tad, a fellow alcoholic with some impossibly smooth self-defense moves. The two find a likeness in each other; a pained past and a lonely, downward-spiraling path of self-depreciation. They forge a friendship based on honesty that blooms into so much more: Tad becomes Harry’s mentor and in turn, Harry becomes the son Tad lost years ago.

Meanwhile, Harry’s life gets complicated when the town beauty shows an interest in him. They date, and despite Talia’s tendency to treat Harry as a lap dog, he enjoys the sex and the feeling of a pretty girl on his arm. Between lust and Tad’s teachings, Harry begins to lose his state of constant fear. He no longer worries about unfamiliar places and the horrible things that could have happened there. He begins to relax, and even de-insulates his apartment.

But true peace never stays long, and at the midpoint of this book, Harry’s visions return at a most inopportune time. When he thinks he sees (via vision) Talia’s father kill another man, a trip to jail is just the start.

Enter: Kayla, Harry’s childhood sweetheart-cum-policewoman. She believes in his visions (partially due to motives of her own) and when no charges are pressed, she continues to support Harry by investigating the town’s past. Then, when Joey turns up dead in Harry’s apartment, he, Kayla and Tad ban together in an interesting, original pursuit of justice that kept me captivated till the end.

This book was never boring, but the climax had me engrossed and loving every minute. Tad turned out to be a very memorable character who had my sympathy and support the entire time. In true sidekick, underdog fashion, he stole the show and I adored it. The ending of this book truly does pay off for everything preceding it and while I fear giving away too much (because everyone should read this book), I just have to comment that I’ll never forget the image of Winston, a cat shit-eating Great Dane, standing on the roof of Harry’s car, thereby locking poor Tad in the trunk and ruining Operation: Rescue Harry.

This book is amazing, with an eye-catching appearance and plot. It is half literary journey as Harry discovers himself, then it morphs into one of the best action/suspense stories I’ve ever read. Intense, poetic prose (page 244: 'Darkness flapped through his skull, dragging damp wings.') in two to three page chapters makes this a page turner anyone would be challenged to put down. I give Lost Echoes five stars and a standing ovation for its collection of unforgettable, real characters and the hardships they overcome.