Book Reviews: Known to Evil

Known to Evil

by Walter Mosley

This is book two in Mosley's Leonid McGill series. You can read a review of book one here. Or if you don't care to read an entire other review there are some very basic points which you should understand before reading this book. Mosley thoughtfully weaves them in and out of the story although he doesn't do anything as obvious as an information dump. Leonid McGill is a middle aged New York private eye who's trying to turn over a new leaf morally speaking. He's spent a great deal of his life running in some very dangerous circles and doing business with or favors for evil and dangerous men in both the NYC underworld and upperworld. A few years back McGill underwent a moral epiphany. He decided to only do legitimate private eye work. No more setting up innocent people in insurance scams. No more tracking down witnesses for the Mob. No more fixing juries or paying people to perjure themselves in court. And McGill promised himself to try really hard not to kill anyone if he could avoid it. McGill decided to try to make amends where possible to some of the people he hurt. He also chose, as penance for his misdeeds, to stay with his beautiful wife Katrina, who has given him three children, only one of which is his. Katrina is as faithless as she is striking. She's always searching for something bigger and better. The only reason Katrina may be staying with Leonid is that the years are starting to catch up with her, though she remains stunning for her age. Most of the more successful men Katrina might prefer want younger women. That's what Leonid thinks anyway when he imagines Katrina's motivations, which isn't often. He may still be married to her but it's a loveless marriage as far as Leonid is concerned. Leonid's mind is often elsewhere. It's not as if he were 100% true either. In this book Leonid continues to attempt to make amends but learns that you can't just wash your hands once they've been dirty. He's hired by arguably the most powerful man in New York City, the political fixer Alphonse Rinaldo, to find a young woman named Tara. It's supposedly an easy job with no nasty work required. And even a man as stubborn and as independent as Leonid doesn't like to say no to a man like Alphonse Rinaldo. Even more so than Leonid, Alphonse literally knows where all the bodies are buried. Alphonse has access to power which could greatly help or harm Leonid.

It would be a good and healthy thing for Leonid to do this job for Alphonse and have a favor he can redeem at a later time. Alphonse Rinaldo doesn't like hearing the word "no". So Leonid agrees to find the woman. But what should be an easy job turns out to be more complex. Tracking down the young woman, Leonid stumbles into a double murder investigation. It looks like Tara's female friend and a low level hitman have killed each other. And the police are interested in knowing what business Leonid had with the murder victims and Tara. The police brass want to take Leonid down by any means necessary. The top cops view Leonid as the White Whale who got away. If that's not enough to keep Leonid busy for some strange reason his wife of all people is making goo-goo eyes at him again. Leonid finds this more distracting than erotic. This could be because Leonid's true love Aura is stepping out on him with an arrogant lawyer who's trying to get Leonid evicted from his office building. And Leonid's sons, Dmitri and Twill, are in over their heads with various Eastern European gangsters and femme fatale hookers. There's also a subplot about how Leonid tries and mostly fails to help the hapless victim of one of his earlier schemes, a sad pathetic man who's only become more so after his stint in prison. Leonid's deceased father's voice provides Leonid a moral North but even that is warped as Leonid hates his father for having abandoned the family when Leonid was a child. I liked this book a lot. One of the major themes within and one which presumably animates the entire series is change. Can someone who was by any reasonable moral standard, evil, change himself? And what if by doing so he puts his family at risk? Is that worth it? Does someone who was evil have the right to stop doing bad without paying the cost for his misdeeds? Is saying I'm not like that anymore enough for your victims or do you owe them more? 

Not only is McGill an everyman character, he is as the author has confirmed, something of a stand-in for America itself. What does evil mean? Leonid will protect his wife and children but he really only likes one child, ironically the son who isn't his. He provides for his family but can fairly be described as emotionally distant to them. It's something of a shock to Leonid when he realizes that Aura's infidelity can drive him to insensate murderous rage, a trait the cool-headed boxer Leonid has always viewed as a weakness.  Leonid is not exactly an arrogant man but he is someone who has little fear of anyone on God's green earth, with the exception of his "friend" Hush, a notorious killer-for-hire who may be just as much serial killer as hitman. Many very tough people consistently underestimate the short and seemingly pudgy Leonid. It's not usually a mistake they make twice. You should read this book.

Book Reviews: Birth of a Nation, The Sillymarillion, The Ceremonies

Birth of a Nation
by Aaron McGruder and Reginald Hudlin

This is an older satirical graphic novel that asks what if questions about the 2000 election. My cousin let me borrow it. I am grateful to her. As you may remember there were irregularities in that election which even before the Supreme Court decision came down, helped to make the election much closer than it otherwise would have been. A number of people who should have been able to vote were prevented from voting. Certain companies tasked with providing voting machines or records of votes turned out to have partisan connections to Republicans. US and world history would have been very different if George Bush had not been selected President in 2000. McGruder and Hudlin imagine a world in which the response to that election was very different indeed. Make no mistake though, although the election is the catalyst to the events in this book, McGruder and Hudlin turn their gleeful and irreverent viewpoints on a wide variety of topics including but not limited to black (dis)unity and identity, hip-hop, international capitalism, climate change, religion, race, racism, gender, the military and politics. The book is helped immensely by the fact that Hudlin grew up in East St. Louis, the setting for most of the story. As Hudlin explains in the introduction, some events depicted (city residents putting their garbage on roofs to prevent dogs and wildlife from getting at it during a sanitation strike) really did take place. The title obviously refers back to the racist D.W. Griffith film of the same name. Given the book's events it's another play on words/inside joke. The deeper question which this book examines in both a very humorous and not so humorous way is what does it mean to be a black citizen of the United States of America. What does integration mean and is it something that is truly desirable or even possible? Is it better to strive for inclusion or are Blacks better off building their own institutions--including nations. McGruder and Hudlin don't have the answers. I don't think anyone really does. Those are questions which have been asked in different manners for generations. But don't be afraid to read this book. It's hardly sober and didactic. Much the opposite. You will be laughing out loud more than you might think.

Fred Fredericks is the young dashing Mayor of East St. Louis. Despite living in what even residents describe as a segregated dump, Mayor Fredericks is an inveterate optimist. He's a can do type of guy who is full of energy. Mayor Fredericks is the sort of man who says "If it is to be it's up to me" ten times before he brushes his teeth. He picks up constituents' garbage in his own vehicle to take it to the waste dump. The mayor and the citizens of East St. Louis head to the polls to vote for the (presumably Democratic) vice-President only to find that they've all been mysteriously purged from the voting rolls. When they refuse to leave state police attack. By the time they're released from jail the election is over. Their guy lost. Their missing votes would have made the difference. The new President is a Texan of incurious nature with a talent for mangled syntax. Still believing in America, the telegenic Mayor files suit which ultimately reaches the Supreme Court. And he loses. It looks like things are over until Fredericks, who is nothing if not an idealist, decides that if the United States will not recognize the people of East St. Louis as citizens of equal standing, then East St. Louis will secede from the United States. The (Bush) Administration doesn't really take this seriously at first. The Administration, with the notable exception of a choleric Cheney caricature, decides that to respond immediately with violence would be a serious pr mistake. They decide instead to just pull all federal/state funding and services. The Administration looks forward to enjoying the spectacle of the new nation of "Blackland" coming crawling back to beg for readmission to the United States. This doesn't happen both because of Fredericks' stubbornness and the financial assistance of Fredericks'  occasionally reliable friend, the black billionaire John Roberts. Roberts has plans to make East St. Louis a hub of international banking. Of course Roberts is less motivated by outrage over the stolen election and more by the opportunity to make more money. He's not sharing all his plans with Fredericks or anyone. As the novel progresses the Administration starts to realize that it might have to take more drastic steps..

Did I mention this book was hilarious?  Hudlin and McGruder send up everyone and everything. The new nation has a picture of a white Jesus on its flag because older black churchgoers are the only people who bother to attend committee meetings on flag designs. The national anthem is sung to the Good Times theme. The local gangsters, led by a shady fellow named Roscoe, look for ways to enrich themselves. A group of young would be Afrocentric revolutionaries plot for ways to help save the new nation, that is when they aren't eating cookies supplied by their host's supportive white mother. Paranoid hackers, CIA spooks and loons of all kinds make their way to Blackland. Fredericks will have his hands full trying to maintain independence and his optimistic nature. The book slows down a little in the end as things really become serious. I think Hudlin and McGruder might have started to run out of ideas but this story is sanguine to the end.




The Sillymarillion
by D.R. Lloyd

As you might suss out from the title this book is a parody (a short one) of J.R.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, reviewed here. Whereas The Silmarillion is majestic and full of pain, joy, epic love and hate, The Sillymarillion is all about pure fun and mockery. It is VERY funny. Literally every single page is full of all sorts of jokes, puns, tricks, satire and wordplay. It is not necessary to have read the The Silmarillion to enjoy this parody. It helps but so much of the humor is so broad and over the top that even people who wouldn't read Tolkien on a dare will be able to enjoy this book. Reading this is like reading a combination of the works of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Mark Twain and Piers Anthony. Silliness abides. Tolkien's The Sillmarillion clocks in at just under 400 pages. Tolkien's work is light on dialogue and is ponderous reading if you're not in the mood for that sort of thing. This parody is about 160 pages. It is written in a much more inviting style with plenty of dialogue. Like most over the top parodies this will not appeal to people whose sense of humor is only vestigial or who feel that making fun of the source material is blasphemy worthy of death. An example of the prose found within is "Finger would have perished then had not his sons arrived with great numbers to chase off the enemy and rescue their father. As they bore him back to the camp at Minimum he bade them stop for a while to light a small campfire and rest by it, for his wounds grieved him. And his sons asked him if his insurance policy was paid up, and he said "Of course it is! Why do you ask?" When Finger's sons returned alone to the camp at Minimum, no one questioned the story that their father had succumbed to his wounds and that the evide--er ahem--his body had spontaneously combusted upon his death." 

If you like this sort of humor then you will enjoy this book. Elven kings insult dwarvish smiths before belatedly realizing that they forgot to bring along their bodyguards. When he's unable to convince his fellow elves to go after the big bad Mostgoth because of the theft of the Siliputi, Finger tells everyone that his enemy has weapons of mass destruction. That does the trick. Squabbling TV reporters inadvertently reveal the plans and positions of the elvish and human armies to the enemy. One elvish stronghold survives only because the orc Irk troops are overtaken by laughter watching the one handed elvish warlord trying to shoot a bow. And so on.




The Ceremonies
by T.E.D. Klein

Recently George R.R. Martin both caused some consternation and received some support when he announced that he would not have the next book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series finished before the sixth season of HBO's Game of Thrones commences in April. Martin won't say and claims he actually can't say when the next book will be done. He said he's never responded well to deadlines. Every writer is reacting to different stimuli in his or her life. Some writers (Stephen King) are able to produce high quality prose at a regular rate over long periods of time. Others like Martin, take their own sweet time getting things done. One writer who makes Martin look prolific and speedy is T.E.D. Klein, who if memory serves correctly, has written about two novels and a handful of short stories in a career spanning about forty years or so. Well ultimately I guess it doesn't matter though. I think quality is more important than quantity. And The Ceremonies, written way back in 1984 and built off an extension of the Klein short story "The Events at Poroth Farm", is a quality horror story. I read The Ceremonies much earlier and only recently read "The Events at Poroth Farm". That short story was in a collection of Lovecraft inspired short stories. I was then inspired to go back and reread The Ceremonies. Whereas a lot of modern horror is only an excuse for the author to immediately go for the grossout either in terms of violence or outre sexual desires, The Ceremonies is a slow burn of a Gothic novel which is hugely influenced by H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Machen (who himself influenced H.P Lovecraft), Bram Stoker and Clark Ashton Smith among others. This book is probably a little too languid at times but as I mentioned, Klein is not a man who likes to rush anything. The 500 page book is padded out significantly from the short story. The horror is very subtle throughout most of the book. Unfortunately I think the book suffered a bit by giving us the point of view of the bad guy but no one is perfect. Judging by the available scientific evidence it appears that modern humans emerged somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. But our planet is believed to be 4.5 billion years old. Civilizations thrive and die. Our institutional memory doesn't really last that long. Recorded history only goes back 5-6000 years or so. So there's a lot that happened in the past that today's humans just don't know about. What if thousands of years ago a meteor bearing some sort of alien life form inimical to humanity struck the place we call Delaware. This thing is dying. But it holds on to a half-life waiting for the right time and the right human it needs to complete the first part of its mission. When it finds this human, a European settler boy, it kills him, raises him from the dead, dies and is itself somehow partially resurrected within this no longer human child. This child, who will grow up to become known as The Old One (but you can call him Rosie), has plans for humanity. Not good plans.

Jeremy Freirs is a wimpy English lecturer who needs to get away from NYC for the summer and work on his thesis and his studies. He's going to be reading and reviewing a number of fantastic gothic tales. In a strange coincidence he finds that the Poroth couple, Deborah and Sarr, who work and live on a New Jersey farm, are looking for a summer lodger. The thing is though that the Poroths are highly religious people (members of the Brethren of the Redemeer-think Amish/Mennonites) who eschew electricity and telephones and glory in hard physical labor. It's not a given that the slightly pudgy Jeremy will be a good fit into the Poroth's home or the community of the Brethren. It doesn't help matters that the massively muscled Sarr is also a college graduate who is ALWAYS on the look out for any hint of condescension from Jeremy or that Jeremy finds himself attracted to Deborah. The first time Jeremy sees curvy Deborah he thinks about what she'd look like with her hair down and in the right clothes. Of course Sarr notices this and doesn't like it. Like any couple, Deborah and Sarr have their own marital issues, which become more apparent to Jeremy over time. Sarr is the more religiously devoted of the couple but Deborah wonders if Sarr is overcompensating because of his hidden doubts. With Deborah obviously unavailable Jeremy takes up with a young shy inexperienced grad student named Carol Conklin who is vacationing in the area. What almost no one realizes is that none of these meetings are coincidences. That is, almost no one except Sarr's mother, who is in the same line of descent as the being known as The Old One and has the sight. And she doesn't like what the omens are telling her about The Old One and his plans. This book very slowly builds a sense of dread and unease. You know that The Old One is up to something but you don't know what. Things gradually go wrong as the summer progresses. And you feel for all of the characters within. There are rituals which must be followed before The Old One's master plan can be completed. Ironically, most of these rituals are found within the books Jeremy is studying. I liked that not everything is explained in this book. It is interesting that humans have many of the same myths and ceremonies that crop up in different cultures and religions across time. You may look at those things a little differently after this book. I liked how the author captured both the beauty and the creepiness of the outdoors. And cats. Creepy cats.

Book Reviews: Brothers in Arms

Brothers in Arms
by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anthony Walton

It's not as widely known as it should be but former NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (KAJ) is something of a Renaissance Man. He's not just a former player and coach but also an author, actor, film producer, essayist and historian. It's this last which is important for this review. KAJ's father was one of the first black NYC transit cops. The elder Alcindor's good friend was Leonard Smith, also one of the first black NYC transit cops. Smitty, as he was called, was a godfather/uncle figure to KAJ, watching out for him in the NYC concrete jungle and making sure that KAJ did not get in any trouble, legal or otherwise. One night in the Lincoln Center, KAJ was in the audience to watch a documentary about the 761st Tank Battalion, a predominantly black unit, which after being attached to General Patton's Third Army, was the first black armored unit in WW2 to see combat. KAJ was modestly involved with the film, rounding up veterans to speak of their combat experiences. KAJ's father was a veteran though he saw no combat. So KAJ was shocked to accidentally run into Smitty at the event and completely flabbergasted to learn that the oft humorous, optimistic and self-effacing Smitty was a decorated combat vet of the 761st. He had served as a tank gunner and loader, won a Bronze Star and seen action in numerous battles in five countries, including the Battle of the Bulge. However Smitty had never mentioned this to Al Alcindor or to his son KAJ. KAJ learned a lot watching the documentary but was disappointed by some quality and factual errors. KAJ decided that he would tell the tale about the 761st Tank Battalion and by extension, all black combat veterans of WW2 ,before it was too late. This 2004 book was the result. Most of those veterans have long since departed this vale of tears but Brothers in Arms remains a fitting testament to their struggles, failures and ultimate triumphs. I have often written that I don't know how people of my parents' generations managed to live through all of the racism, segregation and violence which they did, let alone people of my grandparents' generation, such as Leonard Smith. My maternal grandfather was a WW2 veteran though I don't know if he saw combat or not while a paternal great grandfather was a WW1 veteran who did see plenty of combat while attached to the French Army. As the story goes he was was a true terror to deal with upon his return to the US. Some people say he was scarred by his experiences whiles others claim he was already a very hard man before his combat days. So I wanted to read this book to better understand the challenges faced by black people from that generation.

Brothers in Arms is a meticulously footnoted and extremely detailed book which focuses primarily on three members of the 761st, obviously including KAJ's "uncle", Leonard Smith. It starts out explaining some of the member's hopes and dreams and why they wound up in the 761st. Smitty, for example wanted to be a pilot. But as the Army Air Corps did not accept blacks as pilots, Smitty's recruiter told him the next best thing was to be a tanker. So that's where Smitty went. Many other soldiers had similar stories.

The Army of the mid forties had an officer corps which was disproportionately white and southern and completely uninterested in having black troops in any role other than non-combat and/or janitorial. Black officers were rare and enjoyed little protection against intense disrespect and violence from white soldiers, enlisted or otherwise. And black officer and enlisted man alike had to tread very carefully in the 1940s era South, which is where most of their initial training took place. Insults, beatings and even murders for any reason or no reason at all were not at all uncommon. White citizens were often particularly incensed by the sight of black men in uniform and went far out of their way to belittle and harass. After one murder the 761st was barely prevented from loading up in their half tracks and tanks to invade the local Louisiana town. Initially the officer corps for the 761st was predominantly white. Most of these men viewed being assigned to the the 761st as a demotion and negative comment on their leadership potential. Many of them took this out on the battalion via unending racist talk or deliberate indifference to the well being of their men. This would not have been tolerated in a white unit. I knew that future baseball great Jackie Robsinson had made a reputation for standing up for himself but I didn't know that the incident which saw an almost successful court-martial of the young lieutenant occurred when he was a member of the 761st. Other black officers memorized the rules books backwards and forwards in order to refuse the extra-legal MP enforced rule that black officers could not carry their weapons off base. Things started to change for the 761st as more black officers arrived and the new white commander, Lt. Col Bates, proved to be someone who wasn't interested in race as much as he was interested in his men's performance and safety. As the war dragged on and casualties mounted the Army was sorely pressed to put every available man into combat. 

What finally gave the 761st its chance was when maverick General George Patton, starved of fighting power, temporarily put aside his doubts about black competence to request that the 761st be attached to his Third Army. This proved to be the chance that the 761st needed to make its mark, though by all available evidence General Patton didn't really change his opinion about black soldiers, apparently viewing the 761st as an anomaly. In any event the 761st, aka The Black Panther battalion, primarily made its mark under Patton's command but also served with distinction under other commanders. The book is as mentioned very dense. This is sometimes a drawback. It gives you a "you were there" feeling about the experience of combat. I probably could have done without knowing that soldiers used their helmets both to boil water and to relieve themselves or that people wore clothes until in some cases they literally rotted off.  One minute you're grabbing a bite to eat and in the next minute you're trying to crawl out of your tank because a German artillery observer has called in an all too accurate shelling. One 761st soldier, having learned that his best friend was killed, goes on a near suicidal war long rampage to try to kill every German he sees. Smitty took a very long time to lose his sense of adventure. For the longest time he seemingly didn't process that people were trying to kill him. War is hell, it is said. This book certainly brings that across. It also brings across the stupidity of racism. Some wounded white soldiers objected to black medics rescuing or treating them. With a few notable exceptions most white units were not exactly happy to see the 761st at first. For most people this changed after the experience of fighting together. But for some it did not. As I mentioned in the review of the film Fury, the M-4 Sherman, the most common US combat tank, was severely outgunned by and less protected than the German Panther and Tiger tanks. But outgunned or not, the men of the 761st lived up to their battalion motto and "came out fighting!". If you are a history or war buff you should read this book. I'm sorry it took me so long to get to it but I'm glad I did.

Book Reviews: Flat Broke In The Free Market

Flat Broke In The Free Market
by Jon Jeter

This book's subtitle is "How Globalization Fleeced Working People" so it's not as if the reader should be too surprised that the author, a former Washington Post bureau chief for southern Africa and South America, and Pulitzer Prize finalist, very clearly takes a stand against globalization, or to be more precise, globalization as it's been implemented. Broadly speaking globalization has meant that there have been ever greater capital flows in search of cheap labor and low regulation, less protection of native industry, deindustrialization and destruction of unions, massive privatization of key public sectors and monetary policy that is far more concerned with fighting inflation and protecting the value of investments than with fighting unemployment and ensuring that those people outside of the investor class at the very least have a job. However this book was written in 2009 so some of the specific economic information cited about certain countries is now out of date. Some of the countries Jeter cited as basket cases have slowly turned things around but on the other hand some of the countries which he didn't mention because they didn't support his arguments have since had experiences which fit well with Jeter's theme. However, specific data points aside, the larger trends remain more or less the same across the United States and especially what is called the Third World. Corporate profits are up. Banking, investment, finance, and real estate sectors are larger parts of the world economy. Wages are down. Inequality has risen. Worldwide, people struggle to pay or obtain basic services and goods such as food, clean water, electricity and housing. Theories that seem to make sense and have a certain elegance in academia or corporate board rooms somehow have devastating impact on the real lives of people across the world, especially the half of the world's population who struggles to live on less than $2.50 a day. Jeter struggles to make sense of all of this. He describes the genesis of this book as coming to him after interviews with right-wing libertarian Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman and former Rhodesian white separatist leader Ian Smith. Although he had no truck with either man's point of view, Jeter found that each man was surprisingly hard to dislike even though they apparently lived in an alternate reality to that which most of the world's population inhabited. Friedman thought that everything was going well for the world's investor class and that everyone else would be helped further on down the line by what he called reduction in interference in trade. The polite and genteel Ian Smith thought that the blacks in "Rhodesia" were much better off under white rule and were the "happiest in the world". I guess that Smith didn't really think too much about why such "happy blacks" launched a war to end white rule.
Anyway.

It's after these conversations when the basic thesis of this book came to Jeter. His argument is that colonialism and globalization are basic riffs on the same theme, service to imperialism and the ownership class. This is not a dry book full of charts or mathematical models. But there are oodles (and I do mean oodles) of footnotes. Jeter explains over and over again that he's not an economist. Jeter was born in 1965 and grew up in the Midwest. He describes the difference it made in his lifestyle that his father was able to find a job at Chrysler plant. In later years when because in part of globalization and capital transfer, inner city (i.e. black) male residents suffered through wage drops and high unemployment, Jeter appreciated even more the value of a good paying job. Jeter doesn't believe that people are inherently damaged or less than because of their race or ethnic class. Nor, would I venture to say does he think that individual failings are the sole cause of poverty. This book is a strong corrective to the widely accepted view that poverty is always and only a personal moral problem. Many of the issues which are used to criticize the underclass are quite often a response to economic stresses.For example, in Argentina, probably South America's whitest nation, Jeter talks to lower and middle class women who've turned to prostitution to feed their families. He also gives a history of the country's economic policies to see what's worked and what hasn't. In this book Jeter examines communities and countries across the world and points out how they have been ill-served by so-called "free trade" and globalization. His points of exploration include Zambia, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, Brazil, Malawi, Mozambique, Mexico, Venezuela, and of course places closer to home such as Washington D.C., Chicago and the post-industrial Midwest. Jeter mixes economic history and personal stories together to put everything into context. For example, if we didn't have subsidies for corn and sugar, would we have our food supply overflowing with added sugar and high fructose corn syrup? And if that weren't the case would we have skyrocketing obesity and diabetes rates? If you take nothing away from this excellent book you should understand that globalization is neither inevitable nor is it a force of nature. It is a result of human decisions designed to benefit a very particular set of people. It could be changed to benefit a wider group of individuals. For example in South Africa, the whites took steps away from the free market to benefit themselves at the expense of the Africans. It was only after their economic dominance was complete that they were interested in a "free market". This book was just about 200 pages in hardcover. It's quick but rewarding and even dense reading. Jeter ties a LOT of disparate events and problems together. I found it generally convincing but then again I share some of his assumptions. Jeter is scorching in his dismissal of the black political class, a group he views as being largely unable or uninterested in helping the black masses they claim to represent. He does give some positive attention to street level activists across the world who are challenging the narrative, albeit with decidedly mixed success.

Book Reviews: The Turner House

The Turner House
by Angela Flournoy

Every now and then you run across a first time novelist that writes something so true to life that you are surprised that this is their first novel. Angela Flournoy is such a writer. The Turner House flows very easily and doesn't take a long time to read. It has a huge cast but some people are more closely or lovingly detailed than others. But even the people who just pop in and out without saying or doing much are still well crafted. There are people like that in life of course. An aunt's nephew whom you only see at weddings and funerals turns out to be a rising film producer. A peripatetic cousin who married someone overseas comes back with three kids and no place to stay. Say you're not doing anything with your finished basement are you? Or maybe a younger sibling moves halfway across the country. Although they're always polite they make it crystal clear that they would just as not be caught up in any family business and refuse to discuss their own. Don't call them and they certainly won't call you. The other interesting thing about family is that as much as our gender and sexuality and whatever specific combination of genes we got from Mom and Dad influence us, so does our birth order, early responsibilities and old jealousies and resentments. People can reach adulthood and remain, by choice or not, trapped in these roles. The older siblings may feel greater levels of responsibility for everyone, whether or not they're truly capable of bearing those burdens. The younger siblings may have come along at a time when the parents had mellowed out in terms of discipline and so have had an easier time of it. Or the younger siblings may be seething with resentment at having been constantly compared to their older brothers or sisters. The younger ones may reject being told what to do. They could become embittered at people automatically assuming that they need help or oversight. People enter these roles and often embrace them as part of their identity, even if they are harmful. The family rebel, often younger, may spend decades needlessly struggling against restrictions or expectations simply because that's what she does. The older brother might worry himself into life threatening problems with hypertension or cardiac disease because he's always trying to ensure that everyone else has their stuff together. Or maybe the older siblings are not actually more reliable people but rather instead are serious control freaks who really get off on exercising authority. It all depends on your perspective. Of course families also provide a sense of love and protection. A healthy family is the first place that we learn to love and get along with people, even when they may work our last nerve from time to time. That sense of affection and contentment is critical. Who else but an older sister might safely call her precociously developed younger sister "Jug-a-lug" and affectionately tease her about not being able to run high school track for fear of putting her eyes out? Years later when the nickname is shortened to "J", curious nieces and nephews might innocently ask why everyone calls their aunt "Aunt J" when her given name doesn't even have a "J" in it.



And there are times when an uncle or aunt, not limited by the parental role, can provide some good advice to a niece or nephew, advice a parent might never give. An aunt or uncle can be a good sounding board when you have some things you'd rather not share with your parents. On the other hand there are some aunts and uncles you're better off not knowing.

The Turner House brings all of this and more into the story. Ultimately it's a slice of life story about a large extended family which is based in Detroit. It jumps back and forth in time between the 1930s/1940s when Francis Turner moves to Detroit from Arkansas before bringing his wife Viola with him and 2008 when Francis has long since died. By this point Viola is sickly. She's had strokes. Her mental and physical capacity is declining noticeably. Being finally unable to care for herself she has moved in with her oldest son Charles (everyone calls him Cha-Cha) and Charles' wife Tina. Viola is not really happy about this situation. Born in 1944, Charles has entered senior citizen status. He's always been the most responsible one in the family, who helped look after his twelve younger brothers and sisters, sometimes whether they wanted his guidance or not. Now Cha-Cha and the rest of his siblings, many of whom are spread out across the country, must decide what to do with the family home. It's still in their mother's name though Cha-Cha has power of attorney. Thanks to bad advice from another daughter Viola refinanced the east side home and now owes $40,000 on a house that's worth $4,000 at most. Meanwhile the youngest child, the daughter Lelah, born in 1967, is struggling with a gambling addiction and has lost her job and home. Unwilling to ask her daughter, her ex, or her siblings, nieces or nephews for help and with no place else to go, Lelah moves into the abandoned family home. Lelah really doesn't want to impose on her daughter and thus lose her relationship with her grandson. Reading the description of the decline of some neighborhoods interspersed with the occasional optimism of those people still living there was very true to life.  

The book focuses primarily on Lelah and Cha-Cha and their different perspectives and problems. There's a hint of the supernatural as Cha-Cha is convinced he's seeing ghosts or "haints" as he would put it. He saw a haint or claimed to have done so as a young boy in the family home. But anyone he mentions it to now thinks Cha-Cha just needs to man up and/or get some rest. "Encouraged" by his employer to go see a psychiatrist he finds that that choice might open up a different can of problems. Another prominent sibling is Troy, an ambitious police officer and youngest son. Troy has big plans for the family home and is frustrated that no one, especially Cha-Cha, seems to take him seriously. From what I've seen in some families this is a common complaint of the youngest siblings but as oldest I have little sympathy for that sort of pointless whining.

This story book is matter of fact about whether we like it or not, everything must change. One day you will find yourself needing help or looking back over the years and wondering where all the time went. This book is also a love letter to the city of Detroit and to family. It examines how for good and bad the past continues to influence how we perceive ourselves and how we relate to others. You will probably recognize some of your own family or friends in this story, no matter where you were raised or how you grew up. That said it is very rooted in the Black Detroit experience. It shows that experience as universal. I am very happy to have read this book.

Book Reviews: Killing Johnny Fry

Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel
by Walter Mosley

Killing Johnny Fry is an older novel by Mosley that I never got around to reading. I had heard both good and bad things about it. But mostly I heard that it was very different from his usual style. So nothing if not curious I finally felt compelled to sit down and read this book during my all too rare and rapidly shrinking lunch breaks.
Well.
Different doesn't begin to describe what's going on here, though the change is still more in subject matter and tone than it is in style. Although the subject matter and language may be something new to Mosley's work, the everyman hero is certainly someone who would have fit quite easily in Mosley's other novels. Although Killing Johnny Fry is not technically pornographic if only because the primary purpose of the text is presumably not physical self-pleasure, Killing Johnny Fry is sexually explicit to the point where it could just as easily be pornography. You say toe-may-toe. I say toe-mah-toe. One might say that Killing Johnny Fry is an erotic novel of adventure. I have often noticed that people, including yours truly, and for that matter animals, often take things for granted. When I was a child my family had two dogs. The older dog would often ignore the toys we gave her until the younger dog tried to play with the toy. The older dog would bare her teeth or grab the toy and walk out of the room. Humans are similar. When someone tries to use or take something of yours without asking, you'll probably protest even if you weren't using the item. I can't steal a classic car from your garage and successfully defend myself by saying that you had not been properly maintaining the vehicle. People often feel that same possessiveness towards providers of their nookie. It doesn't matter if said nookie wasn't very good or the provider was unskilled or indifferent. 

Cordell Carnel is a pudgy phlegmatic middle aged African-American New York City translator who works for various art agents and publishing houses. He's coasting through life. Cordell's girlfriend is also Black. Her name is Joelle. The couple lives apart. Joelle frequently makes it clear that she doesn't want to see Cordell every day. Cordell accepts this. One day he goes to visit Joelle and finds that she's left her apartment door open. Worried he enters the apartment but discovers Joelle (insert euphemism for having sweaty nasty enthusiastic sex) with the very Caucasian Johnny Fry (someone whom Cordell and Joelle met at a party). Johnny and Joelle are doing things that Joelle has never even mentioned to, let alone done with Cordell. The lovers are far too enthralled with each other to notice Cordell. Cordell quickly leaves and doesn't tell Joelle that he saw her.

However the revelation has touched something deep in Cordell. Obviously he immediately starts thinking of ways to murder Johnny Fry (thus the title of the book) but he also re-examines his life and sexual desires, failings and kinks. His hurt, anger, and confusion coalesce into a spinning mandala of lust and re-invention. Cordell also starts to have a LOT more sex with Joelle and other women. His increased desire for Joelle is balanced by his disgust for her. Cordell believes that he's been living life too meekly and too safely. Cordell drops some weight and embarks on an odyssey during which he engages in some truly bizarre activities. Women are usually impressed, excited, and occasionally a little frightened by Cordell's newly revealed capacities. I thought some portions of the story became ridiculous near the end. It is fascinating how the process by which we were all created can be described and experienced so completely differently by men and women. This book is not written like romance novels or 50 Shades of Grey or Twilight. The descriptions are blunt and male. There is humor and philosophy within this story. Cordell is looking for purpose in life, in part by enjoying or enduring sex with many different women. But he's also trying to ascertain what it means to be a healthy individual. Is anyone really healthy? What does love mean? Does it always require possessiveness? What is psychologically pleasing sex? How do men deal with emotional pain? Why do we have sex even if we have no desire or capacity to reproduce? Why do we so often want one person to the exclusion of all others when the world is packed with suitable partners? 

This was an okay albeit graphic story but going forward I think I'll stick with the adventures of Easy Rawlins or Leonid McGill. That might be unfair to Mosley but Killing Johnny Fry was a serious shock to my expectations. If you're looking for something different from Mosley this story is for you. This is a very honest raw book.

Book Reviews: The Devil's Hatband, The World of Ice and Fire, Gotti's Rules

The Devil's Hatband
by Robert Greer

This was Greer's first novel and the beginning of his C.J. Floyd series which we earlier discussed here. The title refers to the barbed wire that ranchers use. There were lengthy and magnificent descriptions of the great western outdoors in all of its glory. I guess that if you are a person who enjoys being outside all the time then these vivid portrayals might be right up your alley. I found a few of them slightly overdone, like a sweet potato pie left in the oven too long. Speaking of food though I did appreciate the culinary accounts, as they reminded me of many family dishes or other kitchen creations found in traditional African-American restaurants. So there was that. Floyd can't always or at least openly enjoy much of this food as he is on a diet. Or at least he is supposed to be. When you cheat on a diet you're only cheating yourself but Floyd is okay with that.
Although C.J. Floyd is a lowly Denver bail bondsman and occasional bounty hunter he's really effectively a private eye in this story. He's a Vietnam Vet who's done his share and then some of killing. Back in the US, he's inherited his uncle's business. It's not much of a business but it is his. He always makes payroll but rarely has enough left over for profit. One of Floyd's fellow bondsmen is a bigoted white man who works Floyd's nerves but always stops just short of anything that would require fisticuffs. Still given Floyd's internal nationalist critiques I was surprised that there were not more verbal confrontations between Floyd and this man. After all it's not like Floyd works for him. The bond business is color coded. It's rare that Floyd gets the opportunity to work with wealthier or white criminals. Many of the black criminals either try to play on his nascent nationalistic feelings to avoid paying him back or literally just don't have the money. So when two shady black corporate executives enter his office and promise Floyd big money plus expenses and cash up front to find a young woman named Brenda Mathison and the documents she stole from their company, Floyd isn't exactly in a place where he can say no. He hems and haws to make it look like he isn't desperate but we all know, the bills must be paid no matter what.

Brenda is the daughter of a black federal judge. The judge sits on the board of directors of the company from which Brenda stole. The judge wants his daughter and the documents back ASAP and the whole affair kept quiet. The last thing the judge wants is the attention of the media or the police. Brenda has joined with a militant environmentalist movement named PlanetFirst. These are people who want to go way beyond things like spiking trees or suing polluters. Along with two men Brenda leads the group's most extreme faction. Brenda is involved romantically with at least one of the men. Her group's plans have encouraged possibly violent opposition from local ranchers, many of whom are hard men who don't like people messing with their business. But when Floyd finds Brenda strangled to death he has to figure out who killed Brenda and why. There's also someone who's literally gunning for Floyd. There are many suspects, including a particularly nasty gang member with a long memory and a serious grudge against Floyd. Someone might have been trying to set him up for Brenda's murder. There are also subplots about good love gone bad, racist cops, pathological science and the aforementioned beauty of the great outdoors. I was curious about the fact that Floyd chooses to eat in a diner where an ex works. They even have a relatively cordial relationship. I might reach that emotional state many years after the breakup I guess but initially I think I'd absolutely have to find someplace else to eat!!! Otherwise looking at her would bring up too many bad memories. Floyd occasionally has reason to regret his dining location. His former flame reminds him (usually obliquely but occasionally directly) of the reasons why they couldn't make it work. That would just get on my nerves. This was an okay read but I didn't like it as much as Greer's later work. Some plot twists came out of left field to surprise me. Others were very predictable. I don't mean that in a bad way. Maybe a better phrase might be comfortably familiar. The book reminded me of why it's never a good idea to let strangers into your home or place of work.



The World of Ice and Fire
By George R.R. Martin, Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson

Ok. This is not, repeat not, an entry in the series, A Song of Ice and Fire. So if you're expecting that don't get this book. It's not a prequel either. It's not even a mostly definitive "this is what happened" Silmarillion style backstory for the world that Martin has created. However that last description is likely the closest. This is a hardcover lavishly bound coffee table book with high quality paper, great illustrations and plenty of sly comedy within. A Ser Kermit has a son named Ser Elmo. 
This book purports to be the history of Westeros and much of the known world. It's allegedly told by different people who likely have reasons for putting their own spin on past events. So the narrators are quite unreliable. Some people argue that history is not about what happened so much as it is trying to convince or make people in the present day accept a particular interpretation about what happened and why. For example if the Lannisters remain on top and win then certainly their history books will detail Ned's failed northern conspiracy to take the Iron Throne, the Tully treason and the desperate Stannis' ugly lies about his sister-in-law, nephews and nieces. If the North should restart the war and successfully defeat the Boltons and their Lannister overlords then Northern history texts written afterwards will gush about the Stark Restoration led by Queen Sansa or King Rickon. And so on. Anyhow this book details the beliefs and practices of the First Men, the invasions of the Andals and Rhoynish, and ultimately the Valyrian Targaryens. This tome (in some cases exhaustively) lists the various kings(Targaryen and otherwise) who ruled over Westeros or its constituent sub-kingdoms. The book is organized by region so if you just want background on say the Tyrells you can read the section concerned with The Reach and learn all about their rise to power. Different cultural practices are examined and exalted or derided. We learn the story of Robert's Rebellion, the creation of the Wall, why and how Tywin Lannister dealt so sharply with his father's enemies, Targaryen incest, the great deeds of Barristan Selmy, how dragons can be killed and many other historical events that have mostly been only briefly alluded to in the HBO show and only somewhat more so in the previously published books. The World of Ice and Fire also gives some information about Essos and the Free Cities and the Summer Isles. It gives short shrift to eastern continents and an alleged continent to the far south of Essos. The book also points out that there may be unknown lands over the western sea.

This book is obviously going to appeal primarily to Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire hardcore fans. Everyone else might be better off flipping thru this at the library, borrowing it from a hardcore fan you know or just browsing it at your local bookstore. Everyone should enjoy the wonderful elaborate artwork detailing the characters, banners and houses. However to be honest the text drags and becomes repetitive in a few places. There's only so many times that you can read that King so-n-so was a lech or King what's-his-face murdered his mother or King who-shot-John was a transvestite before it all starts to run together. This came out in October for $50 but you can currently pick up a new copy for $25 or less if you're so inclined. Again, this is not a novel. It's a compendium. There aren't "spoilers" for the TV show or the published books. It's very long but then again I suppose it should be. It is very obviously not Martin's writing style throughout--thus the co-authors.




Gotti's Rules: The story of John Alite, Junior Gotti and the Demise of the American Mafia
by George Anastasia

If you're not into mob stories then this is not a book for you. George Anastasia is a notable crime reporter and author who usually writes about organized crime in Philadelphia and the South Jersey area. For this book he heads north to New York City to tell us the life story of one John Alite, a vicious Albanian-American mobster who started out in Queens, befriended Junior Gotti, John Gotti's son, and rose to brief prominence in certain organized crime circles. Obviously things didn't quite work out like Alite planned. Alite ignored cryptic and not so cryptic warnings from Willie Boy Johnson, an Italian-Native American hoodlum who soured on the life and on John Gotti's racist insults. Johnson allegedly said that although it was too late for him Alite had non-criminal talents which he ought to pursue. Of course maybe Alite made this up. We can't ask Johnson because John Gotti had him murdered shortly after he was revealed to be an informant. You might say that as Alite can't physically get to Junior Gotti, whom he hates worse than cancer, and saw the government fail in its numerous attempts to incarcerate Junior Gotti, this book is his attempt to murder Junior Gotti's reputation as well as that of the entire extended Gotti clan. Although organized crime is an equal opportunity employer, the Mafia is most definitely not. Although he and his Italian-American partners, friends, rivals and bosses bond with each other over serious contempt for non-whites, primarily Blacks, as an non-Italian Alite is ineligible to be admitted to the Mafia's inner circle to become "made". That's reserved for Italians only. Alite doesn't mind this at first because he is a better earner and more physically dangerous than some made men. However the Mafia bylaws are clear that in any dispute between a made guy and a non-made guy the made guy is always right. So the enthusiastically violent Alite suffered a humiliating public pistol whipping from a made guy named Carmine Agnello. For Alite to even raise his hands in defense or attempt to seek revenge would have theoretically meant his own death. But all things considered he got off light because we later learn that Alite claimed to have had physical relations with Agnello's wife (and Junior's sister) Victoria Gotti. 

There is a death penalty for seducing or even flirting with any made man's wife or female relative. However people being people this rule is often ignored. Victoria Gotti has steadfastly denied that any such relationship ever took place. A proven affair would have greatly embarrassed Victoria Gotti and forced the hands of the Gotti-Agnello clan. Alite was earning a lot of money for Junior and his father. Alite initially had a healthy respect for the elder Gotti but had increasing disdain for Junior Gotti. Alite thought that Junior was an example of both low intelligence and nepotism. As Alite learned exactly how disposable all the Gottis considered him to be his disillusionment increased exponentially. And so did his dislike for and disrespect of Junior, often called "Urkel" behind his back because of his glasses and poor fashion sense. Alite was quick to take offense to slights. Alite describes ignoring Junior's order to get him an ashtray precisely because Junior "ordered" instead of "asked".

Alite's primary business was drug dealing, under the secret aegis of the Gotti crew. He later branched out into bookmaking, extortion, armed robbery and loan sharking among other things. Although Alite was relatively slight at 5-8 and well under 200 pounds, he was an athlete and boxer with a widely known and well deserved reputation for being extremely quick and equally dangerous with his hands, gun, baseball bat or knife. There were a number of murders and countless beatings or other assaults which Alite committed for Junior, the elder Gotti or for his own reasons. Alite even shot his cousin over a business dispute.
This is yet another book which gives the lie to the whole "Men of Honor" myth. So many of Alite's stories are EXACTLY the same as those you might read from a Hispanic or Black criminal. A thug is a thug regardless of race even though that word has become racialized. People are often shot or otherwise badly hurt not just because of "business" but because someone was drunk or was allegedly seen talking to someone's girlfriend/sister/wife/mother or lost a card game or just because it was the weekend and someone felt like flexing their muscles or bullying someone. There's no gallantry or respect for women. Alite was briefly a pimp; one of Junior Gotti's uncles allegedly raped and murdered a woman. Although Alite glories in pointing out Gotti hypocrisy (he provides proof of a Gotti initiated proffer to the feds) like most of us he overlooks his own nonsense. He claims to have never hurt anyone who wasn't "in the life" but seemingly forgets about the Florida bouncers he shot, beat and terrorized for an extortion racket he ran. The story is told almost entirely from Alite's POV with Anastasia interjecting undisputed facts only rarely. The book was interesting but as more and more mobsters testify against each other there is a nagging "been there, done that" feel to much of this story.

Book Reviews: The Devil's Red Nickel, The Sinatra Club, The Savage Sword of Conan

The Devil's Red Nickel 
by Robert Greer

In some very minor respects this mystery novel walks the same side of the street as similar works by Walter Mosley and Gar Anthony Haywood in that it imagines a black hero in a genre which still has very few such characters. But aside from the fact that the three authors share chromosomes and similar melanin levels and take black humanity for granted there's not too much else in common. The writing styles are utterly different. C.J. Floyd is a middle aged bail bondsman/private detective who lives in Denver, Colorado. He's definitely and defiantly old school. He drives around town in his 1957 Bel Air convertible. He's a man who loves listening to doo-wop and classic R&B. Think Esther Phillips and not Beyonce. Floyd is not exactly a wealthy man. In fact he's under some financial constraints because he's having some issues with people skipping their bond. But Floyd's not a man to let anything get in his way of doing what he sees as the right thing. He's good people. An older man named Leroy Polk dies of what appears to be a heart attack. The doctors/medical examiners find one of Floyd's business cards among the dead man's effects. Now Floyd did not know Leroy Polk personally but like millions of other people he knew the man intimately in Polk's persona of "Daddy Doo-Wop", a Chicago area DJ, music promoter, A&R man, producer and would be record company owner. Daddy Doo-Wop helped break tons of black music acts throughout the Midwest and West. Record companies and their acts would do their best to get their music played on his show. If Daddy Doo-Wop played your record that could make you famous and make you a lot of money. On the other hand if he didn't like your music it could be very difficult to get people to come to your shows. In some instances you might as well have quit the music industry and taken up needlepoint.

As a teen and young man, Floyd listened to Polk's show and was enthralled. Daddy Doo-Wop not only influenced Floyd's music tastes but also gave him the idea to go into business for himself. Floyd is shocked and saddened to learn of Polk's death. However the local police are interested in how and why Floyd's card wound up in Polk's possession. And so is Polk's attractive daughter, Clothilde. She's convinced that her father did not die of a heart attack, no matter what the coroner's report says. And she wants Floyd to look into it. Clothilde is not the kind of woman who listens to the word no. When you look like she does, you don't hear the word no very often. Floyd's investigation will lead him into some pretty deep and dark waters. The music business is not a place for shy people. There are some pretty nasty sharks out there who would just love to take a chomp out of a bail bondsman who they think is out of his league. Even if Daddy Doo-Wop did not die of natural causes there is a depressingly large number of people who might have had motives to kill him. Not too many folks are losing sleep over the fact that Daddy Doo-Wop is no longer on the planet. And that's all I want to say about that as I do not wish to give away spoilers to readers who might be interested in this book. Anyway I also want to write shorter reviews because of time constraints. So this is as good a place as any to stop. In paperback format this book is just over 300 pages but it's a quick read. 

There was never any spot that I felt that the story died. With one or two exceptions the characters are mostly engaging. Everything and everyone feels real. Most of the story lines are neatly wrapped up. It's written in third person, which I like. If you are into well constructed mystery stories that neither insult your intelligence nor get too complex this could be a good read for you. The author is also a doctor and medical professor as well as being a Denver native.  So because the book's events mostly take place in Denver certain book locations, real or fictionalized might be familiar to those of you who are native to that city or have passed through.




The Sinatra Club
by Sal Polisi

Salvatore Polisi, aka Crazy Sal or Sally Ubatz, was a mobster associated with the Colombo faction of the New York Mafia. For the obvious reasons he eventually decided to get out. He testified against former associates and entered the Witness Protection Program. The Sinatra Club is his memoir. However it's not as good as it could have been because of three decisions. First, recognizing that Sal Polisi is less well known than John Gotti, the book plays up any and all associations that Polisi had with Gotti, stories and rumors he heard about Gotti, Gotti's bad temper about his gambling losses, Gotti's distaste for hookers, the time Polisi was in the restroom with Gotti and Gotti made a racial insult against Sarah Vaughn and so on. Second, Polisi was a horrible husband who was never faithful to his wife. He constantly informs the reader that he needed at least five certain sex acts daily. While this adulterous behavior is not so uncommon among married mobsters, Polisi shares way too many details. Evidently Polisi's true love and soulmate was his primary girlfriend Jane, a fallen angel madam, dominatrix and prostitute. Polisi was already married when he met Jane. To hear Polisi tell it he was uniquely able to convince the otherwise asexual/lesbian Jane to try some salsiccia. Polisi spends a lot of time discussing all the ways that he and Jane made whoopie, by themselves and with other women. Some details were similar to Penthouse letters. Maybe there are a few people who needed to know how Jane could convince Polisi (in his words) to do things that Italian guys normally didn't do. I wasn't one of those people. Neither Jane nor Polisi's wife wanted to share him though each was content for a while to be lied to by him. That particular storyline ended the way you might expect. Lastly the book jumps around in time too much. As individuals there are things which are important to us all that happened decades ago. Polisi had a turbulent and occasionally abusive childhood. But as a reader it was frustrating to skip back and forth between the story of Polisi's sister's death and the time that a higher ranking mobster made Polisi do something really savage to someone. Although Polisi is frank about his evil ways, he's ashamed of having committed a particular act, which even by Mafia standards, was depraved, albeit possibly deserved. FWIW Polisi claims he never killed anyone.

It is interesting to compare Polisi's street level account of events with stories or documented testimony given by other informers or undercover agents. He repeats as fact things which others contradict. I wouldn't necessarily say he got a lot of things wrong. I would say that similar to people in the real world, his perspective differs from those who were higher up and/or made more money. The guy putting the engine in a vehicle on the assembly line has a different perspective than a fellow at the same company trying to create a worldwide business plan for the upcoming fiscal year. It's important for mobsters not to be curious or ask too many questions. Either characteristic can be extremely hazardous to a gangster's future health. He is after all working with very violent suspicious people who don't believe in coincidences or in taking chances that someone who knows too much won't talk. As legendary mob boss Lepke Buchalter said way back in the thirties, "no witnesses, no case". So it's unsurprising that on some things I really was curious about Polisi didn't know the answers and/or went out of his way not to ask questions of people who did know the answers. 

Polisi was never "made" or formally inducted into the Colombo crime family. Although this is a huge distinction within the world of organized crime it's more or less meaningless to people who only interact with the Mafia as victims, curious outsiders or customers. Basically all this additional status would have meant is that an organization recognized Polisi's outstanding entrepreneurial and/or murderous potential and went on record extending its protection to him. No one could have murdered him without prior permission from his bosses. Polisi would have had much more authority within the Italian-American underworld but also would have had much greater expectations and workload. His bosses would have tolerated fewer mistakes. Polisi would not have been able to decline certain requests. Polisi was a jack of all criminal trades. He was involved in muscle work, loan sharking, gambling, bookmaking, auto theft, armed robbery and bank robbery. He beat up pimps who were rivals to Jane. But his primary business became narcotics importation and wholesale distribution. Polisi ran a club which gave this book its title. Although the club was initially profitable via hoodlum gambling games, Polisi's primary interest was in using the club to launder his drug profits. It's not that he wanted to hide them from the IRS. No, he wanted to hide them from mob superiors who would have killed him for dealing or more precisely for dealing without making sure they got their cut. If you liked the movie Goodfellas I suppose you might enjoy this story. Polisi knew or ran with many of the people portrayed. But I found the book's organization and style a little offsetting. There was a film made from this book which I have not seen.







The Savage Sword of Conan Volume One
based on tales by Robert E. Howard

This was a gift from my brother, who knows that I am a fan of most things Robert E. Howard and to a lesser extent classic comic books. The Savage Sword of Conan is a collection of seventies era Conan comic book stories, generally published by Marvel Comics. It's important to get a few things out of the way immediately. Some of Howard's work could be very grim and violent. There was a streak of racism and what would be today called sexism which ran through it. The men, especially Conan, are drawn as well muscled fighters. As you can no doubt tell from the cover these stories are primarily designed to appeal to people with an inborn frank appreciation for the feminine form, i.e. men or people who will one day be men. The women are generally drawn in shapely feminine styles featuring lush hourglass figures with plenty of visible cleavage and ample backsides. Conan's default response to an attractive woman is "You know we're gonna f*** so you might as well give me some now and get it out of the way". This usually works. There's only a few women on whom it doesn't work but even there Conan is still trying his best. In the very first story "The Frost Giant's Daughter" there is some controversy about whether Conan was going to commit a crime and if so was it from his own desire or was he under more malign influence. Rereading it I think it's unclear. The reader will have to decide for himself. On the other hand in other stories lack of consent is considered to be one of the most evil things imaginable, whether it be a woman ravished or a man enslaved. Conan speaks against both in the harshest of terms. Howard had plenty of contradictory ideas, some of which could be found in the same story. Because it was the seventies I don't think too many people cared or noticed but today comics like these would probably attract a lot more opprobrium from both feminists and traditionalists. Problematic depictions of women or non-whites not withstanding these stories are exciting. Howard wrote a LOT of Conan stories. Many of them turn up here in abridged black and white comic book format. However the authors do not limit themselves to Howard's published Conan work but remix some of his other stories and/or make up their own Conan tales. Some of these work better than others. Much of the prose can fairly be described as purplish but to be fair that is part of the appeal for stories such as these. A typical example might be "When a man looks at you, woman, he forgets his will until you show it to him". Lines like this might make you laugh out loud but in these stories they make perfect sense. Conan has been in just about every line of violent work there is, soldier, mercenary, thief, brigand, pirate and has the scars and stories to prove it. The artwork quality varies a bit from story to story but is generally good.