The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Poet by Michael Connelly

Book #295 of 2020:

The Poet by Michael Connelly (Jack McEvoy #1)

Author Michael Connelly’s fifth crime thriller, the first not to feature detective Harry Bosch, has been written to stand on its own, although it introduces concepts and characters that will later cross over with the main series. Our protagonist this time is investigative reporter Jack McEvoy, who digs into the apparent suicide of his brother the cop only to uncover evidence that it’s actually a well-disguised murder — and that the same killer is behind a half-dozen similar cases around the nation, always leaving a note in the victim’s handwriting that quotes Edgar Allan Poe. The journalist soon joins up with an FBI team promising him exclusive access in return for not publishing just yet, and they embark on a cross-country manhunt to intervene before their target can strike again.

It’s a creepy read due to the extent of the crimes — CW for gore, rape, and child molestation and murder — and for how Connelly takes the Thomas Harris approach of regularly breaking from Jack’s perspective to situate us in the mind of the suspect, in contrast to how the Bosch novels that I’ve read so far have tended to stick to only what Harry knows. Despite this, the plot offers a few twists I haven’t seen coming, and the new lead is a refreshing change of pace, more cautious and thoughtful than the writer’s usual dour hero.

The book is admittedly a little bit dated now, yet the 1996 computer and phone technology has aged less egregiously than the absolute trust both the police and the criminals place in hypnosis as a foolproof method of subduing a person and recalling their memory. But if you can contain your eye-rolling on that front, the narrative is overall a taut cat-and-mouse game, well worthy of the detour away from the typical focus of these novels.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Anya and the Nightingale by Sofiya Pasternack

Book #294 of 2020:

Anya and the Nightingale by Sofiya Pasternack (Anya #2)

Another fun middle-grade fantasy adventure, albeit somewhat messier in plot than the first novel with this Russian Jewish heroine. Still, the representation in this series remains charming and relatable, from the opening scene with Anya building a sukkah to her pride about her bat mitzvah — which I wish we could have gotten to see, instead of it taking place between volumes — right down to the anxiety that she’s not devout enough when speaking with a rabbi. On top of that is some fairly generic and meandering quest stuff with elves and magic that doesn’t especially engage me but will probably be just fine for younger readers. Mostly, though, I love that they will get to see themselves in this book and/or learn more about other groups of people (including a new deaf and signing character and a returning companion now revealed to like both girls and boys). On a story level this is probably more good than great, but as before, I’m ever so pleased that it’s out there in the world at all.

[Content warning for antisemitism.]

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: The Office, season 8

TV #54 of 2020:

The Office, season 8

The first stretch of this show without original star Steve Carell is a real mess, immediately confirming that the producers had no idea who would be taking over for his character as branch manager when they ended the previous season on that cliffhanger of interviews. And that’s not inherently a bad creative decision, but the solution they’ve come up with is for one candidate to get the actual job and another to become CEO yet still work out of the Scranton office, a convoluted arrangement that is delivered as pure exposition and doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. That’s a repeated problem this year, actually — someone will point out a logistical issue like, “Why is the temp who was covering for Pam during her maternity leave still here now that she’s back?” and not get any answer, as though the plot hole itself is an intentional joke. But even for a comedy, the reality of a series typically needs more grounding than that, as The Office has regularly provided in the past.

There are some frustrating pieces of characterization here too, for instance, two different love triangles with a clear indication of who we should be rooting for: Jim/Pam and not the would-be homewrecker Cathy, and Andy/Erin and not his girlfriend Jessica. But those conflicts are totally inert, as neither of the new figures has literally any development whatsoever. Long gone are the days when this program could engage audiences on the question of Pam or Karen, each of whom seemed like a real person with whom Jim could plausibly be happy.

That’s disappointing but not too surprising in a series which has seemingly lost touch with its own backstory. The writers this season contradict earlier details like the name of Andy’s dad, and they also drop the ball again and again in moments that could allow for resonant and fun callbacks, like when Kevin gets pushed out of a band and no one mentions Scrantonicity, or when the staff has a meeting to discuss the infinity of uses for paper and no one brings up Dunder Mifflin Infinity. Even simply having Ryan glance over at the camera in that scene would have gone a long way towards rewarding longtime viewers with a feeling that our investment of time and attention had been worth it.

I don’t want to belabor these faults too much, because at the end of the day, I realize this is a sitcom that can still deliver laughs fairly reliably. It was certainly not intended to be binged, a style of viewing that makes it easier to spot discrepancies across multiple years. And even though most of the new manager’s plots feel like repurposed Michael Scott pitches — even though we’re now spending so much time offsite that the very name The Office seems outgrown — there are elements of serialized storytelling here that speak to a degree of ambition with potential for excellence.

But the show is well past its prime at this point, and that potential has unfortunately been squandered almost entirely in execution.

[Content warning for rape jokes, transphobia, and fatphobia.]

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: The Ever Cruel Kingdom by Rin Chupeco

Book #293 of 2020:

The Ever Cruel Kingdom by Rin Chupeco (The Never Tilting World #2)

In the first volume of this YA fantasy duology, twin sisters raised on opposite sides of a stationary world each fall in love and get caught up in a propulsive plot that brings them and their partners hurtling together in its final pages. This sequel is fun for finally showing those four characters interacting — and it remains a nice piece of representation that one of the romantic relationships is F/F and the other involves a young man with only one arm — but there’s a little less conflict all around now that everyone’s feelings are settled and their epic travels across a Mad Max-style desert are largely behind them. The quartet of viewpoint protagonists all sharing a common space also underscores how similarly author Rin Chupeco has written their voices, which was less evident before.

Ultimately I’m satisfied by how the story resolves here, and the central metaphor of a new generation tackling the climate crisis brought on by their elders is certainly apt, but the narrative hasn’t quite grabbed me the way the previous book does.

[Content warning for self-harm, panic attacks, and cannibalism.]

This book: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Individual titles ranked: 1 > 2

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Book Review: American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century by Maureen Callahan

Book #292 of 2020:

American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century by Maureen Callahan

I like how this true-crime book tells its story mostly as the authorities learned it, building gradually from a 2012 missing persons report to presumption of foul play and the arrest of a suspect to the further crimes he confessed to or hinted at without prompting once in custody. Israel Keyes was a very creepy operator, abducting and murdering strangers across the country in no discernible pattern, and it’s chilling to hear about his established attacks — and the many others that are suspected but not proven.

Unfortunately, however, there’s a lot to this case that’s still either unknown or under FBI wraps, and the narrative stumbles after the villain’s jail-cell suicide, unable to present a good conclusion beyond a few tantalizing hints. In some works from this genre like I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, that sort of unresolved tension can linger hauntingly, but here the ending is so abrupt that it feels more as though author Maureen Callahan simply ran out of material and didn’t have anything else to say. (Her title also turns out to be pretty misleading, as Keyes was only ever ‘hunted’ as an unnamed kidnapper and not a serial killer, although that was likely a publisher’s choice.) It’s an interesting and unsettling string of violence, but this text doesn’t really seem like it will go down as the definitive account.

[Content warning for rape, necrophilia, and cruelty to animals.]

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 5

TV #53 of 2020:

Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 5

Although still somewhat bifurcated in tone, this animated prequel show has been getting gradually stronger year over year, both in the quality of its better parts and the ratio of them to the worse. Here, for instance, it’s really only the 4-episode “D-Squad” arc that feels interminably silly, and the other storylines are finally up to the level of the film franchise at large. Ahsoka’s framing plot at the end of the season is a particular highlight, while the business with Maul, Savage, and Bo-Katan on Mandalore is both excellent in its own right and the first time that this series has seemed like a necessary prelude to The Mandalorian.

If I graded each individual episode and averaged them, I suspect I might get near three stars, as there’s a decent amount of midrange filler alongside the extremes mentioned above. But since the program continues to improve and the season goes out on a definite burst of excitement for its future, I’m happy to give this run my first four-star rating instead.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back edited by Elizabeth Schaefer

Book #291 of 2020:

Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back edited by Elizabeth Schaefer

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the second Star Wars movie, this collection presents 40 new stories revisiting its timeline, in the form of either familiar scenes from the perspective of minor film characters or additional plots that could have plausibly been playing out nearby. It’s a fun concept, but a little bit less inspired than the similar volume published in 2017 for A New Hope, with more duds that fail to launch than pieces that meaningfully or cleverly engage with the source material.

It’s still worth checking out for the bright spots, though, which include Seth Dickinson’s “The Final Order” and Django Wexler’s “Amara Kel’s Rules for TIE Pilot Survival (Probably),” each offering keen insights into how the Galactic Empire is understood and experienced by its lower-level loyalists. The latter story is also one of several in this book to feature a diversity of sexuality — which should absolutely be celebrated, but does rather underscore how Disney isn’t yet delivering that sort of representation to this franchise on the big screen.

Other highlights take us into truly alien viewpoints like wampas, tauntauns, and space slugs, as well as a charming conversation between Luke and the droid that fixes up his artificial hand. I don’t love how uneven the project is overall, but I’ve enjoyed parts here and there and I’ll definitely be picking up the inevitable Return of the Jedi version in another three years.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

Book #290 of 2020:

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

There’s a decent pandemic-appropriate hook to this 2020 suburban thriller — in which the family renting a rural vacation house are surprised by the late-night arrival of a couple identifying themselves as the owners, who have driven in from the city due to a mysterious calamity that has knocked out the power, phone, and satellite grids — but the narrative is short on answers and I haven’t found the questions or the characters interesting enough on their own. The text also floats among all the different perspectives and a further omniscient narrator, so that it’s not always clear whose thoughts we’re seeing from moment to moment. And unfortunately, this is one of those pieces of literary fiction full of florid yet clinical descriptions of sex acts, which I’ve never particularly enjoyed.

The best and most timely aspect of the story is how author Rumaan Alam captures the white woman’s racism in doubting whether black people could really own such a property, yet even this thread isn’t developed into much of anything substantial by the end. Although it seems like there are elements to this plot with real potential, I’m pretty lukewarm on what we’ve gotten as a final result instead.

[Content warning for gore.]

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Book #289 of 2020:

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

This 1962 novel is a short but striking depiction of a Soviet-era labor camp, drawn from author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s own Gulag experiences. It lives up to its title, presenting more of a snapshot than any particular plot, but the details are heartbreaking enough to make up for the lack of story. There’s a darkly comic, almost Catch-22, tone to how the prisoners are forced to break the strict rules of the camp just to survive, and how that’s used as prima-facie justification for further restrictions, like extended sentences or keeping the men on starvation rations and minimal clothing in subzero conditions. What we learn of their initial reasons for imprisonment also seems like the dystopian brutality of a vindictive government against its political opponents, which I understand is not necessarily far from the truth.

It’s a nonconventional read that declines to offer any hope for its characters, unsettling even before considering the matter of authenticity. Well worth taking an afternoon to check out, if like me you never had before.

[Content warning for racism including slurs.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie

Book #288 of 2020:

Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #9)

Also published under the title Thirteen at Dinner, this is another solid mystery from author Agatha Christie, satisfying but not especially revelatory in its ultimate solution. The early chapters drag a bit until Poirot and Hastings reach the fairly obvious conclusion that the stage actress they’ve seen do a convincing imitation of their newly-widowed client may have been involved in framing her, but luckily that’s only one more clue and not the key to the whole affair. Then the ending is a classic Christie case of parlor-room denouement, somewhat bloodlessly laying out the final answer to the preceding logic puzzle.

Reading this book almost a century after the fact is interesting; at one point our narrator provides a helpful note about contemporary fashion under the correct reasoning that styles may have changed before we hear his account. Elsewhere in the text, however, the detective chides his friend for using several expressions he claims are outdated — yet one, describing something unfair or improper as “not cricket,” is still in circulation today! It’s a nice reminder that neither the characters nor their writer are perfect, which makes it easier to see the smug genius as a fallible human and not the crime-solving automaton he can sometimes appear.

[Content warning for racial slurs and implied domestic abuse.]

★★★☆☆

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