The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma

Review by Bruce

J.R.R. Tolkien said, “Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory.” George Bernard Shaw wrote, “Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.”  Felix J. Palma dreams big and asks “Why not?” in his fantasy novel “The Map of Time”.  Palma’s prose is rich and inventive and his story of time travel and parallel universes is eccentric but fun. Set in late 1890s England, Palma vividly creates the Victorian England made familiar by Charles Dickens and injects a dose of illusion and fancy as he takes his readers on wild ride.

“The Map of Time” consists of three parts that could stand alone as novellas. Each part has a unique story that ultimately connects with the others, mostly through famed author H. G. Wells and a company called “Murray’s Time Travel”.  Palma leaves no stone unturned as he includes romance, murder, deceit, robots, time machines, ray guns, famous novelists, and mystery in this first installment of a planned trilogy.

The first chapter, which can be classified as romantic fantasy, begins with a young man born of wealth and privilege preparing to commit suicide over a lost love. Eight years earlier, Andrew Harrington fell in love with a Whitechapel prostitute. They secretly carry on a torrid love affair until he finally garners the courage to admit his love to his father. But as he is doing so to disastrous results, his young love has become the latest victim of Jack the Ripper. Just as Andrew is ready to exit this world full of constant sorrow, his cousin convinces Andrew to visit Murray’s Time Travel in an attempt to go eight years back in time to stop the Ripper before he can murder the girl. Palma has given us a unique love story that really resonates with the power of redemption and second chances.

The second chapter tells the story of a young lady bored with the rigid constraints of Victorian society who visits Murray’s Time Travel with the hopes of slipping away to a new life and a new future. The story requires the reader to believe people of this era were unbelievably gullible but once you suspend your disbelief the story can be very engaging. This is escapist literature after all.

The final chapter is the most whimsical of all. Three victims are found murdered by a weapon not yet invented and the murderer leaves behind quotes from three novels not yet published.  Famed authors H. G. Wells, Bram Stoker, and Henry James follow the clues provided by these quotes from their unfinished novels and face a time traveler who has come to protect their works from theft by another time traveler who intends to publish the novels under his name. In this segment Palma lets it all hang out. To this reader, the story gets bogged down in circular logic and convoluted threads of parallel universes and the consequences of time travel. It read like “Back to the Future” on steroids. Palma is obviously having a lot of fun with the what ifs of time travel but not everyone will appreciate the tedium and minutiae of the authors explanations.

Overall, not a bad outing and Palma sets the foundation for future novels.

The second installment of this planned trilogy, The Map of the Sky, is set to be released on Sept. 4, 2012.

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber

Review by Mirah W. (mwelday)

Ramblings from a Reader…Thoughts on ‘The Crimson Petal and the White’

I’ve had ‘The Crimson Petal and the White’ by Michel Faber on my to-be-read shelf for about 5 years.  Yes, I know, it’s a long time to have a book taking up valuable real estate on a to-be-read shelf.  But it’s a long book and I felt I needed to be in the right mood to read it.  I’m not even sure how one goes about being in the right mood for a book about dirty brothels, drunken blackguards, sickly prostitutes, and crazy wives.  But alas, it is what it is.  Over three weeks ago I delved into the dark, disturbing life of the prostitute Sugar and I have finally emerged. I have some frustration because of the book itself and the length of time it took me to read it. I’m starting to think these lines in my furrowed brow could take a while to smooth out.

Here’s the quick lowdown on the book: Sugar is a prostitute.  William is a man about to inherit the family’s perfume business.  They meet because William is out-about-town with his no-good (my opinion, they’re really supposed to be upstanding members of Society) friends and these friends mention the sexual expertise of Sugar.  William must have her.  Meanwhile, William’s wife Agnes is slipping further and further into her crazed mind and his brother Henry is fighting an internal struggle of religion and self-indulgence.  That’s it in a nutshell.  I don’t want to give away the details if you’re planning to read it.

My discomfort with the book began just a few pages into my reading. I’m rather conservative so I had some difficulty wanting to read through the explicit descriptions of some of the sexual exploits of the characters.  I’ll just say if you think there are some crazy things happening in the world today, you would be gobsmacked by the goings-on in 1870s London.  Well, in brothels and back alleys, anyway.  The backstabbing and cruelty in the ballrooms and theatres during the Season still happen almost every day in modern society and, unfortunately, it seems ordinary. Thus my furrowed brow develops.  Do I really want to read this?  At this point, not really, but I hate to give up on a book so I’ll stick with it.

After reading for quite a while I thought to myself, ‘Ok, I see what Faber might be trying to do here.  There’s going to be more to this than romps in some dirty sheets.  There’s going to be a deeper social and moral message’ but I was on page 338 when this happened…that’s a long time to wait for that kind of realization.  William is whining about his need to participate in the Season’s events and he exclaims, ‘I blame Society!’  This is just one of many occasions when William fails to see his true ineptness as a husband, father, brother, and businessman.  There are always others to blame and he refuses to look inward.  This annoys me.  I don’t like reading books about characters I don’t care about and I really don’t care about William. I mean, I really don’t care about him. And even though I don’t like William, the reality is there: society and its ‘regulations’ put people in situations they might wish to avoid.  It’s a situation of play the game or else.  And, when I think about it, do I need to like William? Will the message be insightful enough that I can get past William’s annoyances?  Should I care so much whether or not he understands the error of his ways?  Perhaps not.  Ok, the furrowed brow is starting to smooth.

Sugar, the prostitute turned mistress to William, is a much more complete character.  Thankfully I notice some growth in her as a person and that rescues the book for me.  I would hate to have read over 800 pages to end up feeling the same way about Sugar as I did about William (hoping he would get trampled by an oncoming carriage).  One of the more powerful scenes for me has Sugar visiting with fellow prostitute Caroline.  Caroline is content to believe her relationship with Sugar is just as it was before Sugar became William’s mistress; but during her time with William, Sugar begins to change.  I think she finally sees her true self underneath all the layers of protection she created during her life as a prostitute.  She is uncomfortable for being unable to connect with Caroline and I believe she feels disgusted with herself and her past.  But at the same time, she’s at a loss of how to proceed to become a new, better person.

And don’t we all, at some point in our lives, feel a similar type of discomfort?  We reconnect with a childhood friend only to discover we have nothing in common anymore and can’t wait for the reunion to be done.  We gather with family only to awaken to the reality that we’re the black sheep they can’t or won’t understand.  We meet up with old friends only to come face-to-face with the knowledge we don’t like the person we were in the past and hurry to convince ourselves we aren’t like that anymore.  We long for a change in our lives only to realize after the change happens it doesn’t offer us the joy or fulfillment we thought it would.

I think if we’re honest with ourselves we can recognize we are not always treading the path that will lead us to happiness and contentment.  We get sidetracked.  We get lured in by the promise that this person, this job, this location will be the key.  Like Sugar, we direct our frustration, anger, and desire to be accepted into people and activities that aren’t always worth our time or effort.  When, all the time, the key to our happiness is within us, we just have to recognize it and do something about it.

I think my furrowed brow is easing.  I think I’m willing to accept the things I didn’t like about the book and recognize what I perceive as its moral: no matter where we come from or our experiences, we can help ourselves and do better.  Our version of better might not be how someone else would define it (indeed, I don’t know if other readers will agree with Sugar’s actions at the end of the novel) but we need to put it into practice anyway.  It’s not exactly what I expected take away from the book and I’m not sure it’s the message Faber thought he was sending, but I’m going to accept it anyway.

No Tears For Hilda by Andrew Garve

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

The year 1950 finds Max Easterbrook working in Germany for an organization that re-settles people displaced by the War. He takes a well-deserved vacation in his native London. To his shock, he finds his war buddy, George Lambert, a kind and likeable man, facing trial for the murder of his wife Hilda. Max knows his friend doesn’t have it in him to commit murder most foul. Max puts his skills as an ex-Intelligence officer to work in order to find the actual killer. His interviews with people from Hilda’s past and present reveal that Hilda was poison.

Garve had a genius for writing extremely tight mysteries, thrillers, and adventure stories. His prose, a model of plain English, falls on the right side of the line that marks matter-of-fact from perfunctory. The action moves along at a brisk pace, with little violence.  Usually not one to spend an extra word on characterization, Garve really outdoes himself with portrait of the impossible, exasperating Hilda. She definitely, as they say in Texas, “needed killing.” Near the end crops up a dilemma that brings to mind the scratchy question “Should the killer get away with it,” calling to mind Josephine Tey’s Miss Pym Disposes.

Writing fiction on his own time, Garve worked as a journalist for serious publications like The Economist.  Garve did not have a series hero but Inspector Haines pops up in this one as he does in A Press of Suspects. The usual Garvian protagonist, however, is a talented amateur or an off-duty pro such as a journalist or, in this one, an ex-intelligence officer. Readers looking for a classic mystery ought to read this one.

Whistling in the Dark by Lesley Kagen

Review by Gail P. (TinkerPirate)

It’s funny how things work out sometimes. Whistling in the Dark is a book I picked up on one of my semi-annual trips to Half Price Books (yes, I do sometimes “cheat” on PBS and actually buy books….but, if none of us ever “cheated”, we would all just be swapping the same old books around and around and around….right?). I’m not really sure why I bought it – other than it was in the clearance section for $2 – because when I got it home, I didn’t end up reading it. It languished on Mt. TBR until I decided I was probably never going to read it and put it on My Bookshelf where it languished for a number of months more. When it was requested this week, I took it down, dusted it off, read the back cover, and decided I’d give it a try before I sent it off to a new home.

Boy, am I ever glad I did! This book really resonated with me. It’s the kind of book that when I finished it (not more than 5 minutes ago), I just sat in the chair and smiled.

Whistling in the Dark is a book about a family going through “a hard patch”. The father died, the mother got remarried to a good-for-very-little-loser, the mother gets sick and spends the majority of the book in the hospital with the children living with stepfather who would much rather look into the bottom of a bottle than the eyes of his step-children, all the while there is a pedophile/murderer on the loose…..and, if the story hadn’t been told through the eyes of 10-year old Sally O’Malley, it could have been a very sad story.

At this point in the Blog, I should tease you with an artfully written description of the book. But, I’m not going to do that. There are already plenty of reviews in the system that tell you what the book is about. What I’d rather do is tell you why the book made me smile.

You see, like Sally, I am the product of the 1950s MidWest. It was a place and time where you knew your neighbors and what they had for dinner because you could smell it cooking through the open windows. It was a place and time where you didn’t lock your doors, you left the keys in the ignition of the car, and, during the summer, children roamed free from after breakfast until after the street lights came on. It was a time and place where the heat and humidity would make you think you couldn’t take another breath or another step until a neighbor kid called you over to play Red Light-Green Light. It was a time without air conditioning, but a place with a pond that was just the right temperature to cool you off.

The time and place Lesley Kagen created reminded me so much of when and where and how I grew up….carefree….surrounded by a neighborhood full of kids – some friends, some not friends, and some just plain evil – and full of parents that considered you just an extended part of the family so, when you showed up at dinner time or at bedtime because little Susie asked to you to come to dinner or spend the night, there was no question and another plate was added to the table or an extra pillow thrown on the bed. Like Sally’s neighborhood, we had a park with a summer activities program where we made lanyards, played games, and traded secrets. My little town had a store that sold real penny candy, a drug store with a soda counter, and a little movie theater. Heck, we even had the kid that would ramble about nekkid.

And, while Sally’s definitions of “grown-up” concepts seem silly to me now, they are completely relatable to the younger me who once asked my mother in front of a whole living room of Pinochle payers what a “social disease” was.

Yup, this book really made me smile…………………………………

The Case of the Solid Key by Anthony Boucher

Review by Matt (BuffaloSavage)

Fans of vintage mysteries express regret that Anthony Boucher (same sound as “voucher”) wrote only three mysteries starring his private eye hero, Fergus O’Breen. Like Nero Wolfe, O’Breen is less a character than a collection of quirks. He drives a canary yellow roadster and his gaudy wardrobe makes people think the circus is in town. To think he needs to pace, so when he twists his ankle in this one, he feels hemmed in and bummed out.  He has a super-human capacity for adult beverages.  A well-read scholar, he calls himself an “introspective extrovert with manic-depressive tendencies.” With his eccentricities, red hair and larger than life personality then, we may safely conclude he’s indeed a son of the Emerald Isle.

The second of Boucher’s trio of mysteries, The Case of the Solid Key, was released in 1941. The setting is Hollywood. Not the glamorous City of Dreams showcasing big stars and major studios, but the Tinsel Town of No Pity. The characters are mainly young actors and actresses scrambling to get noticed by agents and talent spotters. They toil at menial jobs to pay the rent and put on plays in a little theater which is mainly a racket run by a very unethical sharper. O’Breen’s sister Maureen (really – Maureen O’Breen) is the Head of Publicity for Metropolis Pictures so we get fascinating descriptions of a film studio as work environment during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Boucher must have been writing about milieu – young actors vs. big studios –  that he understood intimately because setting and characters ring true.

The mystery unfolds gradually, with the murder occurring about half-way into the book. Usually this would be a problem for me, a guy that likes the corpse discovered by the end of chapter one. But, as I hinted, the authentic setting and skilled characterization more than make up for the lack of detecting.

Period touches and heavy themes add interest. Boucher tosses into the mix a spoiled rich actress grousing about the socialistic ways of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and theater managers that connive to make the little theater into a worker-owned cooperative. But Boucher was by no means an heathenish New Dealer because at the end of the story the perp discusses sin in terms of reason, free will, personal responsibility, and the voluntariness of ignorance.  While the Catholic theology takes only a couple of pages of the book, it will surely perk up readers who return to Chesterton’s Father Brown tales

This vintage mystery is well-worth reading. I can see why discerning readers wish Boucher had written more mysteries and not turned his attention to science fiction and criticism.  He is remembered so fondly, in fact, that the Anthony Awards are given at each annual Bouchercon World Mystery Convention.

Still Missing by Chevy Stevens

Review by Heather K. (VivaLaVole)

“Still Missing” is a harrowing novel of abduction and reclamation that will leave you breathless as you race through its pages.

This is the first line: “You know, Doc, you’re not the first shrink I’ve seen since I got back.”  From that fistful of defiant words I was hooked.  Of course, I’d read the book jacket, so I had a clue about what was to come … but Stevens (and this is her debut!) is a masterful and inventive writer, and her Annie O’Sullivan is a brilliantly rendered character, a complex, raging maelstrom of emotions.

And Annie has a lot to say to the right person, in this case a silent, grandmotherly therapist.  As the novel unfolds via sessions with her therapist; Annie is trying (and mostly failing) to come to terms with her abduction and subsequent year-long imprisonment. Yet she still has enough moxie to realize she doesn’t want to live her life as she has been since she “got back.”  Her actions are still dictated by her captor despite her return to civilization, and her fears and paranoia threaten to leave her emotionally crippled forever if she cannot find out why she was abducted in the first place.

It’s difficult to write a review of a suspense novel because one doesn’t want to give too much away.  Obviously Annie’s normal life (bickering with her mother, spending time with her good-natured boyfriend, Sean) will never be the same after her ordeal.   But it’s a testament to Stevens’ deft handling of her characters, and well-plotted story, that make this novel such a thrill-ride.

I’ve never been abducted (oh, thank goodness!) and hope never to be, but I could still relate to Annie completely. The author immerses you into Annie’s life with The Freak, her dependence upon him, her helplessness and rage, her crushing fear and encroaching hopelessness. But what shines through everything she endures — during her imprisonment and the aftermath — is Annie’s intelligence, courage, and determination.  And lest you think this is some dreary, depressing read let me assure you it is not.

This is an intense, brutal, gasp-out-loud kind of novel; I enjoyed it immensely and absolutely recommend it.  The author, Chevy Stevens, is a shrewd and canny writer, and I can’t wait to read her next book (yep, already have it wish-listed!).