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[Patguy]

Which are:
A Drink Before the War: Dennis Lehane
Wolves Eat Dogs: Martin Cruz Smith
Stalin's Ghost: Martin Cruz Smith
California Fire and Life: Don Winslow
The Power of the Dog: Don Winslow
The Winter of Frankie Machine: Don Winslow
Skylar Gregory McDonald

A Drink Before the War is the first Dennis Lehane book I've read, and I'm disappointed, considering he's a writer for The Wire, and that the excellent movie Gone, Baby, Gone was adapted from one of his books. But this, his first novel, is pretty standard-issue detective fare, with a better-than-average milieu (working-class Boston) and some serious themes (mostly racial). I'll read more, though. Everyone has to start somewhere, even Dennis Lehane.

Much better, to my mind, were the Smith and Winslow books. Wolves Eat Dogs and Stalin's Ghost are the fifth and sixth in Smith's series about Moscow police inspector Arkady Renko, one of the great characters in detective fiction. There's a recurring theme, or maybe joke, in the Renko books: that Renko's investigations are forever pissing off the wrong people, so he keeps getting reassigned—exiled is more like it—to the ends of the earth. After the end of Gorky Park, the next book (Polar Star) had him working on some type of fishing vessel permanently stationed in the Arctic Circle. In Wolves Eat Dogs, Renko's investigation into the apparent self-defenestration of a wealthy Moscow businessman leads him to honest-to-god Chernobyl and the radiation-polluted towns surrounding the destroyed reactor. Stalin's Ghost keeps Renko in more or less benign urban areas, but he does suffer his worst physical and emotional abuse yet. It's hard to imagine where he'll wind up in the next book (Mir?), but I'm eager to find out.

"'… Know why I'm doing this? I couldn't go back to my place. I didn't have the strength, and I couldn't sleep, either, so I just sat here. In the middle of the night, I heard this rubbing. I thought it was mice and got a flashlight and walked around the apartment. No mice. But I still heard them. Finally I went down to the lobby to ask the receptionist. He wasn't at his desk, though. He was outside with the doorman, on their hands and knees with brushes and bleach, scrubbing blood off the sidewalk. They did it, there's not a spot left. That's what I'd been hearing from ten stories up, the scrubbing. I know it's impossible, but that's what I heard. And I thought to myself, Renko: there's a son of a bitch who'd hear the scrubbing. That's who I want.'"

I fell in love with the Don Winslow books too. I read his Neal Carey mysteries and The Death and Life of Bobby Z quite a few years ago, and had forgotten how much fun his books are. His style in California Fire and Life is sort of a James Ellroy pastiche, or maybe parody. Certainly it takes itself a lot less seriously than Ellroy does. The plot centers on an insurance claims adjuster, a profession that Winslow himself apparently worked in for many years. It pays off: much of the book is devoted to the tiny detail work of one particular fire insurance investigation, and it's fascinating stuff. Also, it's wonderful to see a mystery solved through forensic spadework and professional evidence analysis, instead of through the usual crime novel clichés of convenient witnesses and sloppy villainy. The ending is probably a little too apocalyptic and wraps everything up a little too nicely, but I'm not really complaining. This book is great fun, and I recommend it to anyone who likes mysteries or thrillers.

The Power of the Dog ditches all the humor and ratchets up the Ellroy factor by a power of ten. While it's a pretty grim piece of work (and long: 540 pages) it may be the best thing Winslow has published so far. But man, is it punishing. It's as brutal as L.A. Confidential or American Tabloid, and has the same sort of epic criminal sweep, covering 25 years of drug trafficking over much of North and South America. Inevitably, it reminded me of The Wire, since it covers a lot of the same ground, as it were.

If The Power of the Dog is The Wire, The Winter of Frankie Machine is The Sopranos[i]. That's a little too bad, since I think [i]The Sopranos took the mafia genre about as far as it's possible to go. So what was fresh and exhilarating in California Fire and Life and The Power of the Dog seems a little tired here, since we've seen variations on this sort of mob story pretty often. Even Frankie Machine himself seems a little familiar, since he's another in Winslow's line of damaged men-in-exile who have descended or will descend into solitude and routine. This is still a very good thriller, but definite B-minus work by the standards of his other books.

Finally, Skylar was good fun too, like the other dozen or so novels I've read of Gregory McDonald. Instead of Fletch or Flynn, we have Skylar, a charming and randy Southern teenager who's, naturally, a lot smarter than he lets on. His cousin comes to visit from New England, and we get some entertaining Yankee-out-of-water cornpone humor. Then the obligatory murder, and McDonald's signature mix of clever plotting and hilarious deadpan dialogue. This is a much lighter read than anything else in this review, but well worth the time anyway.

"Deliver my soul from the sword; my love from the power of the dog." (Psalms 22:20)

[edting]

I am wondering how many of you have this same problem. Every writer has certain quirks. The problem is, once I figure these out, it sometimes makes it hard for me to keep reading.

For example, I cannot read any Faye Kellerman book because her characters always "pause a beat" before speaking. In "Wolves Eat Dogs" it's the word "Mercedeses." Whenever Smith needs to refer to more than one Mercedes, it's "Mercedeses." Not only is the word annoying to look at, I am not even sure it is the correct usage. And it's on almost every page! (At least it seemed that way until I stopped reading, a few chapters in.)

[shaw]

[jeffp]

No. Singluar is Mercedes. Plural is Mercedi. Probably a Latin root in there.