Bad Bird by Chris Knopf

Sam Acquillo’s lawyer is Jackie Swaitkowski, who is the main character in her own novel, Bad Birdby Chris Knopf. Jackie was having dinner with Sam one night when a car exploded in front of the restaurant they were in and five people were killed while Jackie received serious wounds and required plastic surgery. Now a plane falls out of the sky and nearly hits her.

Jackie is the kind of girl who just can’t help herself. She is nosy and a busy body. She immerses herself into the situation by becoming the lawyer to the husband, Ed Conklin, of the lady who dies in the plane crash. Why? Because the woman looked at her from the plane and Jackie doesn’t sense this was an accident. Of course the husband, the plane mechanic will be suspected.

Of course it gets more complicated and involves a long lost brother, a crime committed in the past, the wrong person convicted, a sex change, and the mix of usual suspects in a Chris Knopf caper. This is a good quick rainy day read filled with fun surprises, twists, and turns.

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San Miguel by TC Boyle

Some familiar themes and locales merge in TC Boyle’s San Miguel. A sickly woman, Marantha, retreats to an isolated island, San Miguel, off California coast with her husband, Will; her daughter, Edith, and help, Ida, the daughter of poor Irish immigrants newly arrived in SF for the gold rush for her health. It is 1888. They now own an abandoned sheep farm, which includes a house and sheep. It is a new start for her until she sees the shape of the house and wonders if she made the right decision to spend her last ten thousand dollars on this. So much of this is so familiar in a Boyle novel. When he invents a word, he parenthetically defines it. He is a master storyteller with dry wit and a master’s sense of dramatic timing.

Little adventures fill the first couple of weeks. Adventures all city dwellers experience as they transition to rural rustic farm life especially when isolated on an island, your island. Repairs to buildings, fixing up the house, and exploring the island are the activities. Hearing the barking seals, the bleating sheep (4000 of them), and listening to the night creatures in and around the house complete the acceptance of their new life. Edith is beginning a dance with Jimmie, the little 15-year-old farm hand.

As is usual in a Boyle novel we slowly descend into a place of despair and this happens after the shearers leave. The big build up and wait, the rain, the leaks all give way to the sun and excitement when the shearers finally arrive. Then they leave and it all spirals downward like the water in a toilet. Edith’s mother dies, Ida, pregnant, goes back to her mom. Edith and her stepfather return to the island after she thought she had a life that began at a boarding school in SF. But that all changed and she found herself back o the island with her waiting Caliban.  No escape, no choice, no control. She persists and gets away with Bob the sealer. She becomes Inez Deane an actress.

Turn the page and we find ourselves in 1930 with Elise and her new husband Herbie moving into the new house on San Miguel as Jimmie greets them. Will and Jimmie built the new house. Jimmie is the link between the past and the present, the constant, the heartbeat of San Miguel, the last man standing.

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Hard Stop by Chris Knopf

A messenger from his old employer, George Donovan, CEO of Consolidated Global Energies, visits Sam in the middle of the night at his home in Hard Stop by Chris Knopf. The reason for the visit is to get something on Sam so Sam would do something for Donovan, find his missing girlfriend, Iku Kinjo. Donovan is married and not to Iku. Donovan has a slight problem and needs Sam to extricate him quietly. Sam left Con Global under certain conditions and a cloud so the nighttime visit was necessary for leverage against Sam. Sam upset that applecart.

It is quite the rollercoaster ride for Sam as he is in chase and search mode while constantly looking over his shoulder and collecting firearms along the way. His search for Iku ends when he finds her dead at her boyfriend’s house. He is becoming a regular at Southampton Police HQ; in fact a new wing may be named in his honor.

He spends more quality time with his daughter. He reflects on some of the good memories of his dad. Sam is lightening up and is even getting in fewer fights. He always stayed away from the past, but the past reached out and yanked hi back in. He had one way the extricate himself from its grasp and that was to solve the murder of Iku.

Sam spends more time in this story self examining than in his previous here adventures.

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The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards by Kristopher Jansma

“A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.” Kafka.

The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards by Kristopher Jansma is a magical journey about writers. Our narrator is the son of a flight attendant who is left at Terminal B each day as his mom flies the skies and walks around the country serving nuts. His social skills get him to debutantes, college, and so much more. He becomes a writer cause he tells such good stories and better lies.

This is an interesting tale of two men, one gay, Julian, and a woman, Evelyn, involved with the narrator off and on while she is wooed by more moneyed and titled men. The two men are intellectual heavyweights and always devour Evelyn’s wooers.

Stories within stories are a feature of this novel as it meanders in and around the creative juices of our two writers, the narrator and Julian. We have the truth, then we have lies, then we have fiction, which is made up of both truth and lies. Truth is more elusive than the lie. The lie is easier to recognize than the truth. We know lies, but we don’t know truths. Or do we? Our lives are made up of lies and truths and the dividing lines are always blurry. The Great Imposter, Walter Mitty, and others of similar ilk are our gods. We are even told when young to aspire to greatness. It’s the lies that help us continue when those aspirations aren’t achieved or are altered. The truth is in the lies we tell and believe. It starts out this way everyday, “Good Morning, How are you?” “Fine,” is usually the lying response. We lie for convenience cause the truth is boring or not quite known.

Our narrator is filled with literary allusions. Throughout, he takes on different personas from lit and then moves on.  The quotes preceding each chapter are a heads up to the persona. Tis a jolly rollercoaster ride. The fiction of a very old man is the best since it is based on so much memory and history and examples. Don’t forget about our doppelgänger. The race to find his writerly self, our narrator circumnavigates the world through Asia, Africa, Iceland, and so on and so forth. There is even a great discussion about the “Tower of Peace.” Bravo. The narrator gets lost in Iceland, like everyone does, and in his search discovers that the isle has 300,000 inhabitants that produce 1000 new novels each year. Very prolific.  

Novels within novels.

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Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel West

Odds Against Tomorrowby Nathaniel West is all about what happened to Mitchell Zukor after college. After living through a disaster in Seattle, Mitchell is predicting what the future will cost the corporation housed in the Empire State Building if a disaster strikes that building. Disasters cripple corporations and a new mind think has to be developed that saves corporations from liability.

Mitchell is working in and living in a world of fear, FutureWorld, a new industry in nightmare analysis. That is he represents a company that thrives on the fear of others to make money. He is back in contact with a young woman, Elsa, from his college days and whom he saved from dying from a rare disease, Brugada. She is now on a farm in Maine while he is in NYC. They are exchanging mail, since she has no other means of communicating from remote Maine. “Elsa was like an alien who beamed into his office once or twice a week with bulletins from a planet in some distant solar system where laws of gravity didn’t exist. Down was up, dark was light, and no one was afraid of anything. She lived suspended in a permanent condition of hopeful, childlike, brainless bliss.”  His job reminds me of a Bosch painting, anyone of them.

A new hire Jane. She has Mitchell’s skills and is a great candidate to be the company’s Cassandra. “FutureWorld,” said Mitchell. “It’s a matter of death and death.” “FutureWorld,” said Jane. “Every silver lining has a cloud.” Just on schedule a “terrorist” storm hits NYC and Mitchell and company hit it big or do they? Tammy was a deluge and when it was over, he as sternman and she as bowwoman paddled the Psycho canoe artwork up Third Avenue to Bennett Park. I’ve always dreamt of something bizarre like this when I lived in NYC. I always had my survival stuff, camping gear, and provisions ready for the worst.

Reading this book during a few very hot and humid days in an air-conditioned house made me a believer in what Mitchell sold. Then it rained, it pored.I loved this book because I've always lived my life with this catastrophe around the corner on my mind and as part of my life. I'm prepared.

Now it’s time to reread Cormac’s The Road.

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Driver’s Education by Grant Ginder

Driver’s Educationby Grant Ginder is about a car, a yellow ’56 Chevy Bel Air named Lucy for Alistair’s dead wife much to the chagrin of his son, Colin, and to the delight of his grandson, Finn. Lucy replaced a better car, was warehoused in NYC when Ali became infirmed and moved from Sleepy Hollow on the east coast to SF to live with his son, Colin, a screenwriter, is a one hit wonder and struggles the rest of his life in the writing career. Finn is asked by grandpa to drive Lucy cross-country so Ali can have one last drive before he forgets. A simple story of three men and a car or is it?

Finn is making the trek with a friend, Randal and a cat named Mrs Dalloway, which belongs to Ali now. Finn recounts tales of Pittsburgh to Randal as they approach Pittsburgh. Colin, writes stories about how the car, Lucy, is his enemy and provides ways for his dad to disappear for days and weeks after his mom died. Colin tries to sabotage the car when a young boy. The car comes to mean different things to all three men.

Ali uses the car to escape. Colin uses matinees to escape. Finn tries to bring it all together. He has a video camera with him and he is filming for his grandpa. Pittsburgh is first on the highlight film. Colin keeps writing about his past. Ali is just waiting for Lucy. Lucy is the bond for all three generations.

Perhaps it is about loss. Ali loses Lucy his wife. Colin loses out on a career. Colin loses time going to matinees. Colin loses his dad. Colin loses his son. Finn loses the signal to his cell. Finn loses his job. They all lose themselves in one way or another from themselves and each other as well as from others. Are they losers?

Ali tells stories that Finn relates to people he meets. Colin writes stories. Finn does reality TV. Stay away from Buford, the one person town in Wyoming.

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Head Wounds by Chris Knopf

Sam Acquillo finds himself o the other side of the law. He has been arrested for the murder of Robbie Milhouser, a local contractor in Head Wounds by Chris Knopf. Sam and Amanda bumped into him and one of his men at a local restaurant. Robbie was chatting up Amanda about construction and ignoring Sam. Things got heated in the restaurant and even more so outside. Cops were called to quell the altercation. Early the next morning, Joe Sullivan, a local cop, wakes Sam to tell him one of Amanda’s houses is on fire. They collect Amanda and hurry down to the scene. It’s all gone and the fire guys determine it is arson. The fact is that the arson isn’t disguised but the identity of the arsonists is. The next thing Sam knows he is being arrested for Robbie’s death with his nail gun and Sam’s footprints all around the murder seen. Jackie and Burton will handle the legal stuff, while Sam is doing his own investigating.

During his down time, Sam revisits his former marriage and fondly reviews those last days. Who would have thought Sam could drive a bulldozer. What a man. During this time of his own arrest we are regaled with past events like his dissolving marriage, his first trip to a boxing gym, and some flashes into his former life. It looks like Sam is going to have to investigate his own case that looks like an easy walk for the DA. Even though Sam knows he is innocent, the evidence says otherwise. Sam has also learned more about Amanda and her first love, Robbie. She has disappeared. Patrick, Robbie’s boisterous buddy is popping up everywhere Sam goes, requiring a police escort home for Sam each night. Sam is wondering about that first evening they all came together while he and Amanda were having dinner when Robbie and his crew approached Amanda about joining forces in the construction game. She said no, get lost, Sam got involved, and then Amanda lost a house to a suspicious fire. It was determined to be arson. And now Sam is accused of murder.

How can’t you like a fellow who thinks and even speaks like this when in a crisis: “There had to be some weighty metaphorical significance in all that, I just couldn’t figure out what it was. Maybe if I kept reading Kant it would come to me. That might be all my memory-impaired, acuity-disrupted, faculty-degraded brain needed. A little philosophy to postpone the inevitable. The preordained moment when the center of the consciousness either shatters or implodes, and like a dying star shrinks down to a dimensionless point, a singularity where time and space, awareness and love, cease to exist.”

Sam is worried about his concussions and after a recent fainting spell gets his head checked out. Boxing has not been god for him as the MRI’s tell it, but he is fine as long as he doesn’t box. That is his plan. It’s the cosmos he needs to stay clear of.

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