The Granite Moth - Erica Wright (2015)

Full disclosure: Erica Wright is my friend.  I decided to read this book because, of course I want to read books my friends have written--particularly those that get national attention.  I had always known Erica to be a poet, not a crime fiction writer.  I was unaware of The Red Chameleon when it came out, and perhaps I only became aware of The Granite Moth due to a visit from our mutual friend Kristen Linton, and what seemed to be greater publicity on Facebook.  I checked it out from the Chicago Public Library, so it seems to have been made readily available.  I am not sure what criteria goes into stocking the nation's public libraries, but Erica has made it, at least here.

Normally I don't read these types of books, but Triple Homicide and Identical come to mind.  So they seem like ideal comparison points.  Of these three, The Granite Moth has the most intriguing subject matter and is my overall favorite.  However, it does suffer from various convolutions and editorial weaknesses, though it is generally well-written.

Kathleen Stone is a private investigator, formerly employed by the NYPD.  As the novel opens, she is at the Halloween parade along 6th Ave., observing the festivities and waiting to meet her contact, Ellis Decker, who is still on the force and may have some information about an illegal operation run out of an exclusive members-only restaurant, the Skyview Lounge, by Salvatore Magrelli, or someone else in his family.  Magrelli is a crime boss that no one can seem to find any evidence against, and it seems to me like he is the antagonist from The Red Chameleon, but I can't be sure.  Basically, it feels like this book would have been enhanced by more knowledge of the previous one.

Kathleen (Kat) also has a friend named Dolly, who is a female impersonator at The Pink Parrot, a club in the West Village.  The club has a float in the parade, and at a certain moment, a juggler with flaming batons gets shoved, and the float erupts into a fire.  There are a couple deaths and Dolly is badly burnt and believes that it was not an accident.

Soon after, Kat dons a disguise and goes to the Skyview Lounge, where she gets into the poker game.  This was actually one of my favorite scenes in the novel.  One of the themes is how broke Kat is, and it's pretty ridiculous to see her throw away pretty much all of her life savings on a buy-in.  However, before she can leave, the dealer, Ernesto, is poisoned and dies on the scene.

Thus there are two competing mysteries--was the fire on the Pink Parrot float intentional, and who poisoned Ernesto?  Ultimately the resolution is not as surprising as it might be, but along the way there are many coincidences.  Actually, I don't think I understand the resolution.  When Ernesto's murderer is revealed at the end, I have a somewhat difficult time accepting it.

There are many characters in this novel, and like the other two "true crime" books previously reviewed, it becomes difficult to follow.  Perhaps the most compelling lead that Kat uncovers is the Zeus Society, which is a kind of gay conversion hate group.  They protest outside the funeral of the two young men killed on the parade float.

I don't want to try to name all of the characters and how they are involved in love "squares" (rather than triangles), but suffice to say, it is not easy to keep track of who they are and what they have done.  Nor would I want to get into Meeza (Kat's assistant) and her boyfriend V.P. and how he becomes another suspect towards the end (again I still don't understand what he actually did, apart from appearing menacing).

This story is really about Kathleen Stone, and how her disguises allow her to become different "characters."  It is almost as if Erica is writing her to have multiple personalities, and it is a nice motif how all of her alter-egos start with the letter K (Kennedy, Katya, Kate).  Here, she is discussing which disguise to use at the "other" club in the West Village, Tongue:

"'I was thinking I might go as Keith,' I said after a pause, and Dolly laughed.  The sound was spontaneous rather than mean, and I found myself laughing, too, even though I hadn't been joking.  Maybe I hadn't thought this one completely through, but I sometimes passed myself off as a teenager named Keith by slipping into some skater clothes and slicking down my boy-short hair.  It was one of my favorite disguises, a sure-fire way to be left alone.
'Not if you want to get into the place.  It's gayboy bunny or nothing.'" (109)

Which leads to my question: what is gayboy bunny? (Sorry, but that is my favorite phrase used in the novel.)

I am not normally in the habit of pointing out typos, but I found at least five (on pp. 147, 155, 203, along with a couple others earlier in the book).  Perhaps this focus on the trivial and mundane (but incorrect) comes from my brief stint as a proofreader.  Most of the chapters are relatively short--there are 29--and the book itself is pretty short at 233 pages.  It's a good read overall, but my primary complaint is the editing.  I think the novel would have been strengthened if there were fewer characters and if their stories could have been developed a bit more deeply.  As it stands the book is a bit of a mess, but it's held together by Kat, and her fast-paced narration.  In a way, the novel works because Kat is so confused by what she sees and hears and how it all fits together, such that the reader does not necessarily feel as lost as they might normally be.

In sum, I was surprised to read this book.  I did not expect it out of Erica, and while this type of genre is not what I normally gravitate towards, it was a nice diversion, and I enjoyed some of the scenes and situations presented.  It would appear that Erica has created a character, and an anthology series, that could become quite popular.  Her story does not seem to be over at the end of this book, and perhaps she will go on towards a more straightforward adventure next.  However, true crime mystery thrillers rarely are.

Identical - Scott Turow (2013)

One day I was coming back from a run, or a return trip to the library, or something, and I passed the "take a book, leave a book" box at Kedzie Ave. and Logan Blvd.  I looked inside and saw this book and thought, "that would be a good thing to review now."  I took it home with me and later brought a book from my shelf, Riders on the Storm, about the Doors, and left it at the box for good karma.  Now perhaps, I will need to go out of my way to find Riders on the Storm to read it, to assess whether or not this was truly a worthwhile trade.

Oeuvre rule: One L is the only other book I've read by Scott Turow, and it's immediately easy for me to say that One L is a much stronger book.  However, I wish I never read it.  I might have gone anyways, but it lent credence to the idea that I was doing the right thing, as a person who was inclined to view creative writing as his life's calling, going on to take a day job as a lawyer.  

In the event that this improbable eventuality occurs, I do not want to write the same types of books at Scott Turow.  Maybe this was just one of the weaker ones, I don't know, but this is basically a mass-market paperback to the T.  It's a bit similar to Triple Homicide, but my teacher was the author, so I was generally charitable.  But I would expect better from Turow.

So maybe I'll give him another shot, but I can't really recommend Identical.  There are some people that might like it, because it does feature a number of twists, but I really only kept turning the pages because I don't like to leave books uncompleted for the purpose of this blog.  I put this book down once to read Zero K and I had about fifty pages left so I decided to finish it before taking up Morrissey's autobiography.

I never really got into this book, but pages 200-300 probably went the quickest for me.  I didn't know who was going to be the protagonist for a long time, but I guess it ends up being Tim Brodie, who is about 81 years old and is a widowed, retired police officer turned private investigator.  Also, Evon, a lesbian former FBI agent turned head of security for a private corporation.  I read one Amazon review that compared this book to a soap opera, and I burst out laughing because that is kind of a perfect description of how ridiculous this plot is--less plausible than a soap opera.

But it is fairly interesting in its courtroom scenes, and it reminded me of reasons why I should just cut my losses and quit practicing law right now, like mean judges.

"'You know what I think?  I think he's a great judge, better than I ever believed he'd be, and I always thought he'd be pretty good.'  The problem in assessing who'd make a good judge was that the job called on a set of skills less important for practicing lawyers.  Smarts served you well in both lives.  But patience, civility, a sense of boundaries and balance were more dispensable for courtroom advocates." (209)

This passage really stung me when I read it because I had just gotten yelled at by a judge for reasons that I thought were totally unfair--there had been no patience or civility in the encounter.  Really, this whole section of the book with the courtroom scenes probably move the most swiftly.  I saw a review that said this was not one of Turow's more "courtroom-based" thrillers, and maybe that is why it felt a bit weak.

After the last pages, Turow adds "A Note About Sources," and it perhaps explains why so much of the book feels awkward and over the top and soap opera-like:

"A far more self-conscious inspiration for the novel came from what I had always taken as one of the most touching of the Greek myths, the story of the Gemini, Castor and Pollux.  The identical twins were said to have been born after their mother, Leda, Queen of Sparta, was raped by Zeus, who had taken the form of a swan to catch her unaware.  The myth has many variations, but one of the most common is that the sole difference between the twins was that Pollux was immortal, like his father, while Castor, like his mother, was not.  When Castor was fatally wounded, Pollux could not bear the loss and asked Zeus to let him share his immortality with his twin.  The brothers therefore alternated time in Hades and on Mount Olympus.  For those familiar with the myth, the parallels between it and my story should be plain, as is the fact that I did not allow the old tale to be any more than a fabric on which I did my own embroidery." (370)

What is the plot?  Paul and Cass (twins) are at a party in 1982 at the Kronons home.  Cass is going out with Dita, Zeus Kronon's daughter.  Paul kind of hates her.  That night she is killed.  Cass pleads guilty, goes to jail for 25 years, and gets released in 2008, when Paul is running for Mayor of Center City in Kindle County.  Hal Kronon, Dita's estranged brother, levels an accusation at Paul that he had something to do with Dita's murder, and Paul's advisers tell him to file a lawsuit for libel.

It just feels like a mass-market paperback rather than a piece of literary fiction.  It's not my preferred type of book, but I have faith that Turow has other stronger work in his oeuvre.

I don't really know if there's much more for me to say about it.  Overall, I didn't like it.  Certain parts were okay, and I didn't despise it, and I finished it.  And yes, by the end, I wanted to find out what really happened.  I cared about what really happened, but it was sort of predictable once a certain detail is revealed about Dita.  I must admit that Turow does a great job of keeping this "truth" elusive throughout the novel.  And it does make a bit more sense when one realizes he was using a Greek myth as a framework.

There were some nice details about Evon's crumbing relationship with Heather (though she feels incredibly underdeveloped in terms of details of her former partner that died--in great contrast to Tim, who feels overdeveloped) and these probably comprise the most compelling sections of the novel, along with the courtroom scenes:

"When Heather left to shower, Evon, who'd had far more to drink than usual, felt a stark mood shadow her heart.  Heather's talk of marriage, her regal demands, left Evon feeling how remote the chances were.  Her doubts had little to do with her skepticism about whether same-sex marriage would ever be legal in this state, or even whether she had shed enough of a closeted person's anxieties to be able to refer out loud to anyone as her 'wife.'  Something else concerned her, even if all the champagne made it impossible for her to be more precise.  It was a shock to find herself dubious, because the story of the relationship had been that she pursued Heather, put up with her, forgave her.  And it was true that she still craved Heather, loved her zany side and terrific sarcasm, and had touched something strong and good in herself by doting on her.  In the past several months she'd realized she was basically Heather's mother, which was not as bad a deal for Evon as putting it that way made it sound, because she enjoyed--no, relished--being a kinder, more patient and understanding person toward Heather than Evon's mother had been to her.  She wasn't prepared yet to give any of that up." (58-59)

Heather is about 12 years younger than Evon, and anyone that has been in relationship with such an age gap will understand that feeling expressed in the latter half of the paragraph (as I'm sure most people in same-sex relationships will understand the former half of the paragraph).  In moments like this, Turow can be great.  This is why I will definitely give him another shot.  Identical was just kind of a miss for me.  I don't regret reading it, but I wouldn't willingly subject myself to it a second time.