Come to Dust by Emma Lathen

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

The title of the seventh mystery starring banker John Putnam Thatcher is a quotation from Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline: “Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney sweepers, come to dust.”

Despite this somber tagline, Lathen’s comic procedure continues in the usual manner. That methodology involves the send-up of an industry or institution. In this case, the ducks in the barrel are the hapless upper-level college administrators, party animal alumni, knuckle-dragging students, and blockhead parents, all connected to the Ivy League halls of august if fictitious Brunswick College.

A recruiter for the college disappears, perhaps with a $50,000 bond representing a gift to the college. At the half-way point of the book, a pesky prospective student is stabbed to death. The mystery end of things is secondary to the attention on characters and their milieu. The college administrators focus first on fund-raising and second on recruiting new students instead educating current students. The alums focus on football, the annual excuse to party like they were 30 years younger. As for the students, one janitor says the young person he gave directions to could not have been a student because he was “too polite.” Chowderhead parents and muttonhead benefactors are alternately getting hysterical and threatening litigation. Readers who work at a university will snicker in recognition that things haven’t changed much since 1968.

The series hero remains Wall Street banker John Putnam Thatcher. He is in rather a supporting role in this outing. This is balanced by Lathen’s sly observations about being female in male-dominated big business. Lathen was the pen-name of Mary Latsis and Martha Henissart, two Boston business executives with doctoral degrees. Anybody who’s worked in an office will recognize the authentic feel of how people who’ve worked together a long time get along. Also interesting are their takes on Sixties phenomena such as friction between the generations and the urge among the middle-aged to do like Siddhartha, which Lathen considers an irresponsible shirking.

The French Key by Frank Gruber

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Frank Gruber was a professional writer that wrote for the pulps, radio, and movies. In two novels of his I’ve read, the mood is noir without violence, starring believable characters, and having an air of verisimilitude that will please those of us into 1930s and 1940s Americana.

In The French Key (1939), Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg’s ostensible job is selling a book on physical fitness. Johnny, the brains of the outfit, acts as the spieler and Sam, the brawn, exemplifies the benefits of fitness by breaking a chain wrapped around his chest. They experience financial ups and downs so they are not as scrupulous as they should be about saving and making money. Having decided to stiff the hotel for the tariff, they must get their luggage out of their room.

However, they discover the body of a man on the bed, clutching a gold coin in his cold hand. Fletcher, seizing the opportunity, grabs the coin and later is informed by a coin dealer that it is the most valuable US coin ever minted. Johnny, over Sam’s protests, decides to play private detective in order to clear them of suspicion of murder. Doing so, they are caught up in a gold hoarding scheme.

Like many pulp writers, Gruber held many jobs before he turned to writing: farm boy, soldier, bell-hop, ticket-taker at a theater, and writing hack. His descriptions of fifth-rate hotel rooms and sleazy rooming houses are totally convincing. The background touches give us a confident feeling that the author is writing about people, places, and things that he knows all too well. The antique slang and turns of phrase (“When are we going to put on the nose bag?” grouses a hungry Sam), the hustler’s grave chivalry toward the ladies, and careful naming of streets in New York City feel authentic. The characters are very old-school American – plain, warm, outgoing, confident, resourceful — to me.

Two anachronisms startled me. One character had a “Beatle haircut” – in February of 1964, TIME magazine referred to the hair of the Fab Four as “mushroom haircuts.” Two characters fought it out like “Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay” – February, 1964. Coincidence? I think not. But I have no explanation since the Capital pocket PB edition I read is from October, 1972 – the cover picture indeed looks very Seventies. Maybe Gruber himself updated it – he passed away in 1969, acknowledged as one of the “Kings of Pulp Fiction.”

The Girl on the Train: A Novel by Paula Hawkins

Review by Mirah Welday (mwelday)

It seems everyone lately has been talking about The Girl on the Train.  I have Facebook friends who have been reading and posting about it.  I have friends who have been sending me messages telling me they think I need to read it. Then it was last month’s pick for my book club.  So I finally took the hint and read The Girl on the Train.  Pardon the pun but what a ride!

In some ways The Girl on the Train reminds me of the recent British hit TV show Broadchurch, so if you watch that show this book might peak your interest.  I don’t know whom to believe or what is really going on!  There are so many perspectives but each one seems to have a slightly different opinion of what is happening or slightly different recounting of past events but, at the same time, each account seems like it could be plausible.

The characters in The Girl on the Train are frustrating but hypnotic. Their tragic histories (and present lives) converge in a way that seems destined. I felt invested in figuring out the characters ulterior motives and what really happened on the night in question.  Hawkins has created a mystery that discloses its secrets in the perfect order while maintaining the reader’s interest in the bigger story.  And the creepy ‘guess who’s watching you when you think you’re just living your own life’ factor is definitely in the background the entire time.

Want a book that will keep you reading until late in the night because you need to know what happens next?  Pick up The Girl on the Train.

The Polish Officer by Alan Furst

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This 1995 story was Furst’s third venture into the WWII historical novel with elements of spy and adventure tales. Furst emphasizes that his stories are fictional. But a reader can tell he’s done his research, reading deeply in the period’s newspapers, memoirs, and other novelists such as Gregor von Rezzori and Victor Serge (whose phrase “midnight in the century” is allusively used herein).

Furst contrasts effectively the beauty of the natural world with terrible things people do to each other. He is also brilliant at conveying the feeling of being trapped, by nosy neighbors, by hostile acquaintances and by aggressive militaries and secret police. In a sense, for all the attention to period detail and feelings, I don’t think there is much point to caviling about actual historical facts. Despite some slow spots that may drive a reader to contemplate bailing out, it’s easy enough to read and filled with enough changes of scene and incident to be worth persevering to the end. Furst, like Ross Macdonald, is a master at quickly sketching out characters.