Review - Cross Country

Wow!

That's my initial reaction to the new Alex Cross detective novel, Cross Country (2008). James Patterson made his bones on the series featuring Washington detective/psychologist Cross in books like Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls. Those were riveting thrillers, Cross a fascinating character.

But Cross Country is dreck, amateurish and uninteresting dreck (what, you thought that was a good Wow? - no way). Here's the plot: someone close to Alex is killed; Alex gets mad, but can't stave off several more brutal killings; Alex decides to follow the killer to Africa; Alex is tortured; Alex gets out; Alex gets tortured; and repeat (if there's a reader alive who won't say, "Alex, don't go out for that run"...). There isn't a moment in this 406 pages that is believable or involving.

One hears about the James Patterson writing factory, how he churns out outlines at the beginning of the year, takes a couple for himself, parcels the rest out to other writers. While this may serve Patterson's goal of making big money, hitting the bestseller list several times a year, making appearances on television shows (ABC's Castle), it's done nothing for his writing.

To be fair, what I think happened here is that Patterson read about the horrific violence in Africa, particularly Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and the Sudan, and decided something needed to be done. And what better way of drawing attention to the violence, even genocide, than to involve his most popular character in it? But how do you get someone from Washington, DC, to sub-Saharan Africa?

A good writer would find a way that would be in the nature of the character and credible. Patterson didn't go that way, so Cross Country ends up being bad, so bad as to tarnish his main character. It will be hard to accept the Alex Cross we've come to know from the earlier books after witnessing his immense stupidity here.

I will say this, however. If you insist on reading this book (if only for completeness), it won't take long. The 406 pages feature so much white space and so many chapter breaks (there are 158 of them) that the book can easily be labored through in a couple of hours.

Review - Just After Sunset

Is there any point in my writing a review of Just After Sunset (2008), the new collection of short stories by Stephen King? He's written so much over such a long time that I would think that most readers would have their opinions of his work pretty well fixed by now.

These 13 stories are, with one exception, recent, and they fall into the same genre as most of King's work, that is, there are no westerns or love stories (though there are some where love is a key element) here. We read about fairly ordinary people who come under sinister influences of one type or another, and spooky things happen, and we see the result.

I tried to be neutral in the above paragraphs, but I have enjoyed King's writing for a long time. His work is solidly in the fantasy area, but grounded in such relatable reality that the works take on a vividness that, say, Lovecraft never does for me. I appreciate the sense of "what-if?" that King brings to his characters, but I can also see where he can be polarizing. My wife is one of those who has very little tolerance for the preposterous (I sometimes feel she struggles to get through episodes of Lost), while I am generally willing to allow a talented creator to take me in an intriguing direction.

Just After Sunset doesn't strike me as major King, there is little of the universal themes that inform his best long-form works (like the neglected The Stand). But these tales are involving, and, unless you're opposed to the whole idea of Stephen King, you'll be interested in where they're going. They may not haunt my dreams (my nightmares don't come out of fictional depictions, anyway), but they are a good read.

Review - No Blood, No Foul

Charley Rosen is a somewhat unclassifiable character who's been around basketball as a player, coach, writer, commentator (currently for FoxSports.com) for years, perhaps best known for his connection to Bulls/Lakers coach Phil Jackson. A lot of his writing, fiction and non-, concerns the early days of the National Basketball Assocation (originally called the BAA) and the point-shaving scandals of the early 1950s in college basketball. This is not so surprising; as far as I can tell, Rosen was born in 1941, so the birth of the NBA and the difficult times for the college game would have occurred around the time he was becoming aware of basketball.

No Blood, No Foul (2008) is a novel about Jason Lewis, a young basketball star who goes off to World War II and loses a couple of fingers. He returns from the battlefield, is unable to play at his previous level, and becomes, almost accidentally, a referee. At the same time, he is dealing with the trauma of being a returning veteran, as well as a new marriage.

On the plus side, the book is quite evocative of its time. Rosen has a good memory for detail, and he expresses it here in fully-realized descriptions of what New York was like in the 1940s. Also, the character of Jason Lewis is affecting; you'll care about what happens to him, watch his struggles as he tries to refind his place in a world that has not turned out to be what he expected.

On the neutral side, there is not a lot about basketball. There are occasional descriptions of the action, but less than you would expect from an author of Rosen's background. Whether that's a plus or minus for you depends on whether you're reading this as a sports book or a coming-into-adulthood story (personally, I would have liked a bit more detailing of how the game was played 60 years ago).

On the negative side, the other characters are more types than people (granted, that may be how Jason sees them), and the ending is so foreshadowed and truncated that you might wonder if Rosen hit his page limit and had to send in the manuscript. It's not a deep novel in any sense, so the reader looking for deep psychological insights will end up disappointed.

Overall, this is a fairly minor work. It has its emotional moments, but not enough of them to be truly engaging. There are no real fresh insights into the nature of sports, or the role it has played in our society, but, taken as a look back to a time and a place that exist no longer, No Blood, No Foul is a pleasant way to spend a few hours.

Review - The Whole Truth and Nothing To Lose

David Baldacci is a reliable thriller writer, mainly in the area of politics (at least in those books of his I've read). His strengths are in dense plotting, as the action tends to move quickly from scene to scene, not getting hung up on lengthy exposition or scene description or character development. He writes "popcorn" novels, ones that can be read quickly and provide visceral enjoyment. From what I've read, his quality seem to sustain itself in a way that David Morrell and Jonathan Kellerman have had trouble doing lately.

These virtues are in evidence in what is billed as "his first international thriller," The Whole Truth (2008). The main character, Shaw (no first name, something that is supposed to be taken as significant), is the typical physical and mental superman, with unique skills that make him invaluable to a secret crime-fighting organization. TWT is designed around the idea that Shaw's falling in love transforms him in ways that will presumably be interesting to the reader, so we're not just following a complex series of international machinations, but the flowering of a man's closed-off soul.

And none of the "soul" stuff is all that fascinating. You may be affected, a little, by his personal travails, but there is not enough depth there to make you care about this cipher of a man. Shaw is just not a character who grabbed me, though I reserve the right to modify that judgment if he becomes the focus of a series, as seems likely.

The rest of the book is fine, however, if not particularly memorable. You'll be buoyed along on the usual fast-moving plot, and the geopolitical nature of it is realistic, if somewhat underdeveloped for my taste (though events can conspire to make dramatic effects banal, even risible; see if you can work up horror over $130 per barrel oil, which you're supposed to see as a representation of world chaos). You'll move from page to page, you'll want to see how it turns out, and there are enough surprises to make it interesting, though the denouement is pretty much a foregone conclusion.

If the character of Shaw seems familiar other than expressing some clear lineage to James Bond, it is that he resembles Lee Child's Jack Reacher. A strong, powerful man who rights wrongs where he finds them, Reacher is one of the more compelling figures in modern pop fiction. He owns nothing but the clothes on his back, and travels where he wants to, showing no particular ties to anything. For Reacher, situations are morally clear and generally yield to some kind of violence.

That doesn't sound promising to many readers, I'm sure, but Child usually does a good job of justifying Reacher's actions, well enough so that you tend to see him as an outsider who can cut through red tape to do good, not as a vigilante who works outside the law to get what he wants. What is ingenious here is that Reacher never profits from his activities, but just moves on down the road to the next situation that he will (reluctantly) handle.

And that's why book 12 in this series, Nothing To Lose (2008), is a bit disappointing. Reacher comes across a town that treats him badly, and he decides to investigate no matter the cost. Child does find some plot contrivances that justify Reacher's actions, and he works with a policewoman from a neighboring town to provide further verification that these actions are "right," but it just didn't seem sufficient to explain why Reacher doesn't just keep moving down the road.

Now, Child doesn't seem capable of writing a truly awful book, so there is plenty of compelling description and action, and it's still a pretty good read. But it's a relatively minor entry in the series, not one I'd recommend starting with, and, obviously, I hope that the next Reacher novel gets this character back on track.

In summary, neither one of these books is a waste of time, but each has flaws that might provide fatal to any particular reader, depending on taste. Baldacci and Child have done better, and one can only hope that they will do so again.

Review - Scavenger

David Morrell, the creator of Rambo, has offered us his newest book, Scavenger. He's written more than 20 thrillers, and my past experience with them has been mostly favorable. Morrell is a plot kind of guy, generally propelling the action along at high speed - at such speed that it's easy to forget that there is very little else to many of the books. However, his earlier efforts have tended to show considerable research into things like survival in the wild. For me, a wealth of detail and dense plotting have made Morrell's books worthwhile.

Scavenger, unfortunately, is one of the weaker Morrell books I have read (I probably haven't read more than five or six, and it's been a while, but I remember them as good solid reads). It's no surprise that the characters are made of cardboard, but the plot really isn't up to standard. Morrell takes two topics of some interest, time capsules and video games, and does very little with them. There are a few interesting anecdotes, mostly about missing time capsules, but we don't end up as fascinated by them as Morrell apparently is.

I don't want to be entirely negative here; there is also a lot to recommend here. The plot is typical Morrell, fast-moving and exciting. A lot happens here, and it's fun to watch. This 349-page book unfolds in a hurry, so much so that I'd recommend taking an additional book on your cross-country flight - you'll be done with this one quickly. There is a visceral pleasure in a book that tells pretty much its whole story in a 40-hour span.

Scavenger picks up its main characters from an earlier book, Creepers, that I have not read, so I will leave it to others to judge whether Frank and Amanda have been well served by this sequel. But this book is pretty insubstantial. Read it if you're in the mood for pure action, don't expect to come away with any memory of it.

[By the way, I normally barely look at jacket blurbs, they're usually almost completely unrelated to the actual book. However, did the AP really review this as "the Psycho of the Computer Age"? There is not a moment of this book that compares in creepy atmospherics.]

Review - Compulsion

Clinical psychologist Jonathan Kellerman has become famous (and, presumably, wealthy) from his series of crime novels, most featuring (as the flyleaf says) "the modern Sherlock Holmes of the psyche," psychologist Alex Delaware. I have read this series (now up to 22 books) ever since the first, When the Bough Breaks (1985), so I have followed the exploits of Dr. Delaware even before these books became guaranteed Number 1 best sellers.

And that's why I have found recent entries in the series, including the most recent, Compulsion (2008), so disappointing. The original books crackled with excitement as we saw Alex, whose independent wealth gives him the time to go traipsing around crime scenes, wrestle with psychologically complex killers as he worked out his own life. We never delved into the doctor's mind the way that James Lee Burke has done with his Dave Robicheaux character, but there was some sense of progress and, in a series, the main character's development is a critical part of why we keep coming back.

Obviously, that can be overdone. As I talked about in my review of the last Kay Scarpetta novel by Patricia Cornwell, a writer can get so carried away with the development of the main character that it can swamp the actual book, leading to preposterousness or, worse yet, boredom. And Kellerman has avoided that trap in Compulsion by failing to show us any of the internal workings of Delaware, even though the story is told in first person.

What used to be a nice juxtaposition of the mental insights of the doctor with the straight-ahead police work of his longtime foil, Milo Sturgis, has been reduced to a few admiring comments from Sturgis on Alex's incisive questions in an interview. There is virtually no reason for this police procedural even to include a psychologist, as his talents are not needed (most of Alex's effort involves the kind of legwork that any young cop could do).

So we're left with a few interesting character sketches (Kellerman has always had a talent for including a few witnesses/suspects who are drawn in brief but fascinating ways) and a plot, well, two and a half plots (the half is a minute subplot concerning Delaware's long-time love, the beautiful luthier Robin). The main plot concerns a series of killings that initially seem to be unrelated, but we never doubt will be, and this is a by-the-numbers, Law & Order: Criminal Intent-style story with very little engagement and even less menace. None of it really comes together, the surprise twist is ho-hum, and the resolution unexciting.

Far more affecting are the other two plots, which do carry some real emotional kick, but are quite brief. That the resolution of a 16-year-old case carries more weight than the main plotline is a serious problem for this book; that the virtual throwaway of the half-plot concerning the construction of a mandolin does too is even more of a fatal flaw.

After writing three Alex Delaware novels, Kellerman wrote a crime thriller set in Israel called The Butcher's Theater; that was surprisingly good even without the crutch of the hero we had come to know. Maybe it's time for him to put Delaware on the shelf for a year or two, do something else, and come back to the tried and true with fresh eyes.

Review - T is for Trespass

There is a two-edged sword when an author creates a series: there is the built-in advantage of crafting stories around a known quantity versus the possibility that the character will get stale. That's especially a risk when much of the storytelling comes from the perspective of the main character. It's easy for the reader to get tired of the persona. There are techniques that can be used to minimize character fatigue: Doyle did it by having John Watson "write" the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, so we never heard the inner voice of Holmes.

Sue Grafton has been writing the stories of California private investigator Kinsey Millhone for 25 years, and, as one can tell from the title, is up to the 20th book with T is for Trespass (2007). I haven't read every single one along the way, something closer to half of them, but I generally have enjoyed them. But there is a creeping sameness, as Kinsey does not change much from book to book (Grafton chose to have the books lag real time; the series began in 1982 as did the story, but the current book is only inching into 1988).

So you have two threads at work in series like this. You have the continuing saga of tough, but not quite hard-boiled, Kinsey, as she deals with relationship issues and her cast of recurring characters, and you have the book as mystery. Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta series has managed to fail on both counts, with the last entry, Book of the Dead, a particularly unappetizing mix of unpleasant characters and paper-thin plot (see my full review here).

But Grafton has, for the most part, avoided the negatives. Kinsey Millhone is not someone you look to for a big character arc, and her neighbors and friends have comforting familiarity. The plots weave around one another in realistic fashion; Kinsey doesn't have the luxury of focusing solely on one case. The main plot, the abuse of an elderly neighbor, is handed well.

To me, there were two main flaws in the book, irritating without being disqualifying. The ending seems hurried, as if Grafton had to wrap things up. The building sense of menace is dissipated too quickly. And the main villain isn't quite as frightening as we might hope, more along the lines of "the banality of evil."

Nevertheless, this book is a fine read, nothing that will provide a reader with a new perspective on the human condition, but entertaining - you'll enjoy spending a few hours with Kinsey Millhone.

Review - Red Mandarin Dress

The night advanced, I awake,
no way to renew my walk
along the old garden:
a tired traveler stranded at the end of the world,
gazing homeward, heartbroken.

The Swallow Pavilion is deserted.
Where is the beauty?
Swallows alone are locked inside, for no purpose.
It is nothing but a dream,
in the past, or at present.

Whoever wakes out of the dream?
There is only a never-ending cycle
of old joy, and new grief.
Someday, someone else,
in view of the yellow tower at night,
may sigh deeply for me.
- "Swallow Pavilion," Su Shi

Very few mysteries feature such a poem, but there is little conventional about the remarkable series of Inspector Chen mysteries written by Qiu Xiaolong, the most recent of which is Red Mandarin Dress (2007). This is the fifth in the series set in Shanghai, and brings us to the mid-1990s.

Let's get to the major negative first. As a mystery, this book comes up short. You don't need to have a degree in criminology, just some experience watching the TV show Criminal Minds, to figure out the basics of the plot very early on. Added to a preposterous coincidence, the facts of the crime and the criminal just don't add up to much. The earlier books in the series were better as crime procedurals.

But the plot isn't the main point of this series. I sense that Qiu chose a policeman as his protagonist more because of his mobility, his freedom to talk to people from different ways of life, than because of any burning desire to write crime dramas. Inspector Chen is an unusual figure, a man torn between the desire for justice and his other life as a poet and translator (no accident that Qiu is a poet and a translator, I should think).

The real fascination here is watching a society in radical transition, as China moves from communism to capitalism, as it attempts to throw off Maoism without accepting collective guilt for the abuses and atrocities under that system. The orderly lines of Confucianism are giving away to the chaotic randomness of free-market economics, even as the bureaucratic forces of authoritarianism attempt to maintain their hold on society. The descriptions of life in Shanghai, as modern high-rise developments coexist with single-family shikumen that have been subdivided into multi-family dwellings, are vivid.

The late film critic Gene Siskel used to say that his favorite movies were those that transported the viewer into a different world. My favorite fictional works work in the same way for me. The difference can come from style (as in the books of James Ellroy) or plot. Red Mandarin Dress takes the reader into a different kind of thought, a world that, while recognizable as similar to ours, is actually quite altered. I don't know that there is an innate Chinese-ness that is so separated from ours, but the turmoil through which that society has gone over the last 50 years has created a mindset that only a skilled author can convey to us. Qiu does that well, and I highly recommend this book.

Review - The Sanctuary

The Sanctuary by Raymond Khoury is a book in the tradition of The Da Vinci Code: plucky heroine, uncertain loyalties, and wisdom of the ancients that would rock the world if it came out - some will do anything to possess it, others would do anything to protect it.

Khoury is a screenwriter, and this book demonstrates that sensibility. If you can read its 432 pages in 90 minutes or so, it may seem fast-paced and exciting, and you could see that, in the hands of a good director, especially one who could cut out some of the numbing repetition and driving around, it might be worthwhile.

But it is a book, and does not take full advantage of that. I'm not averse to long asides in a book like this about history, or geography, or religion (though many readers are). Perhaps as a concession to those readers, The Sanctuary does very little to draw us into the sweeping multi-era period that it covers. If we're not going to reap the fruits of Michener-like research, we're left with plot, characterization, and setting.

And what can you expect of characterization here? Thrillers tend to set the bar pretty low in that arena, but Khoury doesn't clear it. The central idea of the book could lead to some insightful thinking about how the radical discovery would change anyone who was a part of it; we blow by that idea in favor of stereotypes (which, again, are acceptable in a movie, where we have to peg our characters quickly).

As for place, there is some mild interest in the settings, but they are not quite vivid enough to overcome the cardboard people.

Then there's plot. Many people hate the novels of Ludlum, but, at his best, his books are propulsive, leaping from place to place with an exciting recklessness. Often, there's nothing more to his plots than that someone is being chased, but he does engage the reader. Khoury doesn't display that talent. The action scenes are routine, and the central motivator of the book is completely predictable. What little suspense there is often dissipates far too early.

There are also some major language errors. Maybe those bother you, maybe they don't, but it takes me right out of the plot when I read, in a book by a major publisher that employs editors, that someone "poured over the book." I have to stop and think what liquid they've just applied to the ancient text, and that's mighty distracting.

I didn't particularly care for The Da Vinci Code, so it's easy to see how I might be uninterested in a pale copy of it. I continue my quest for a historical thriller that has some meat on the bones; sadly, The Sanctuary isn't it.

Review - Book of the Dead

I have not read all of the Patricia Cornwell books featuring medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, but I found the early ones in the series to be reasonably interesting, and you wanted to follow the lead character, flinty as she was, through her adventures.

The problem with writing a series is, first of all, inspiration. An author has to be able to come up with story after story while weaving in the popular characters each time. Often, the writer mixes the story in with ongoing character development, so we see the familiar people age and change. But it is death to the series if the author starts to believe that the attraction is the soap opera, not the action.

And this is what has happened to the Scarpetta series. Reading the current release, Book of the Dead, I found way too much of the inner life of Scarpetta and her extended family, way too little of the forensic thriller I was expecting. The character traits, which previously served to flesh out the personalities, make them seem more real, have become irritants; anyone reading one of these books for the first time couldn't comprehend why you'd want to spend a minute with Kay's niece, Lucy, or her investigator, Marino. They are not fine people with quirks, they are profoundly unpleasant people.

As for the book itself, there's very little here. I won't recount the plot, it's fairly standard serial killer fare, but what will amaze and appall is the dialogue. There is almost no line of quoted text that any reader would buy as anyone actually saying. At times, you will believe that the two characters' lines were written separately, as there is no possible exchange that would lead to that sequence. This book was very disappointing, and it makes you wonder if Cornwell has spread herself too thin to maintain the series that put her on the map. It may be time for Dr. Scarpetta to hang up the scalpel.

Review - The Sleeping Doll

I read rather more thrillers and detective stories than I should. I certainly have other things I should read, technical books for my work, newspapers and periodicals to keep informed, nonfiction books to lend perspective of a larger nature, and "serious" fiction, including classics to expand my understanding of humanity.

But reading a ripping good yarn has its place too. It's been harder to find such a book lately, it seems all the good serial killer plotlines have been taken. So, if I'm going to enjoy such a book, it better bring something else to the table, an interesting locale, fascinating characters, something. Either that, or the plot should be propulsive, not giving me a chance to think about how much it resembles the last episode of the TV series Criminal Minds.

So I was happy to read, and am happy to recommend, The Sleeping Doll by longtime thriller writer Jeffery Deaver. It's been a while since I read one of his books, so this was a welcome surprise.

I won't summarize the plot here, you can get that at the Amazon link above. The important things in this book are the vivid description of the beautiful Monterey area of California, the depth of the pathology of the villain, and the interplay among the characters, most of whom definitely do not want to be involved. The main character, Kathryn Dance, I did not find as interesting, but the good guys seldom are. And there are plenty of plot twists to keep you interested. A good read.

Note: after writing this, I looked at some of the Amazon reviews. There was a fair amount of criticism concerning the plot twists, that they were too frequent and too preposterous. This is probably a matter of taste. I also like the TV series 24, no matter how ridiculous it gets. Chacun a son gout.

Review - Hunter's Moon

I read a fair number of books, weighted more toward non-fiction these days, particularly politics and history (with some sports books tossed in). What fiction I read tends toward escapism, primarily thrillers or mysteries. I keep my expectations relatively low in this category; I tend to think well of a compelling plot, and yield a bit (more than a bit) on characterization or mood.

For example, I enjoy the books of Lee Child or Robert Ludlum, even though Child tends to have one compelling character (Jack Reacher) in his books, and Ludlum is hard-pressed to get to one. But plot is a legitimate component of a writer's craft, and the ability to craft an ingenious, hard-driving, compelling plot is not to be derogated (despite the many literature-trained reviewers who gleefully do so).

Nevertheless, I can, despite my pedestrian tastes, enjoy it when an author stretches and gives a little more. James Ellroy is a prime example of a writer who creates absolutely riveting work, both in style and content. It took me quite a few pages to adapt to the style of White Jazz, but I enjoyed the workout.

So it's a pleasure to come across another such craftsman, Chuck Logan. His first book, Hunter's Moon (1996), is full of telling details about his characters and the locale (the North Woods of Minnesota). I won't bother with a lengthy plot synopsis, you can get that from Amazon, but the story involves a man with a troubled past becoming ensnared in the death of his best friend's stepson, and in the small dying town with secrets and horrors. This is not the tale of a dispassionate detective seeking something close to truth, but of a man whose demons and bad choices twist together with the people of Stanley, complicating his quest for answers.

But the joys of this book are not easily captured by the plotting or pace (which is solid, if a bit uneven). It's the use of language to describe the space that Harry Griffin inhabits - the physical space of the woods and the lodge, and his inner space of pain and mistakes. There is reality here, not self-conscious "grittiness."

One quibble: every character speaks quite vividly, so I found myself appreciating the dialogue even as I doubted the ability of even the most minor player to spin the words. It's clever, but, at the same time, unlikely.

Nevertheless, Hunter's Moon is recommended highly.

Review - The Lucifer Gospel

The Lucifer Gospel by Paul Christopher (2006) is a follow-up to Michelangelo's Notebook (which I reviewed a few days ago - here). I'll make my review a quick read, matching the book itself.

Once again we follow the exploits of the intrepid Finn Ryan, who has changed academic fields and is manipulated into the midst of a globetrotting adventure (why it's her is sketchy; she has some family connection to some of the principals - so?). This one concerns a heretofore hidden gospel, and, if you think from the title that it's the Devil's, you will be disappointed.

As I wrote in the earlier review, the characters are drawn in broad terms, and the book seems to want to capitalize on Da Vinci Code fever (Dan Brown is mentioned at least three times; even if you want to forgive him for his own novels, it's hard to let him off the hook for spawning the inspired-by imitators that have followed in his wake). Christopher does show progress in his description of places, especially in the early Cairo scenes, but shows no greater insight into the people than before. (He does appear to have spent his proceeds from the first book on extensive travel.)

I'll mention two major problems, and then move along. First, the need of novels and television shows to tie into World War II has created some preposterous situations. The war was a monumental event with many facets, but it's more than 60 years in the past. For example, a recent episode of Cold Case was framed around the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. The drama was fine, typically well-written, but it required us to believe that there were numerous people close to 100 years old, hale and hearty, with exact recall of the events of 1942. [That they had all moved to Philadelphia was another problem entirely.] In the Lucifer Gospel, certain events took place in 1939, and many of the principals were still around, sneaking into hotel rooms and shooting people. It's about time to retire the World War II plotlines, if an author insists on providing living characters.

The second problem with the book (I've never really been fond of the "Spoiler Alert" idea; a review should be free to talk about the whole book, but it's hard to reconcile that with the fact that reviews are read before the books on which they're based, so consider this note a spoiler alert) is the ending, in which the Gospel for which rich men were willing to kill is thrown off a cruise ship. Christopher does a poor job of establishing its importance (some readers have problems with exposition scenes, so Christopher writes them so briefly that there is no explanation at all). Why this gospel is so powerful is never stated, and undercuts the purpose of the book. That we never get to read the Lucifer Gospel is, in the end, the fatal flaw of the book that bears its name.

Review - Michelangelo's Notebook

Paul Christopher's book, Michelangelo's Notebook, written in 2005, is a purported thriller created in the Da Vinci Code style: a religious secret that some people will do anything to protect, a plucky couple thrown into the midst of something unimaginable, and a series of fast-paced, dangerous situations in colorful locales.

I was not a huge fan of the Da Vinci Code. The cardboard characters, the leaden writing, the incoherent plot, all added up to a story with no particular fascination. The one part that I found mildly interesting was the set of puzzles (I'm quite a fan of all kinds of puzzles), but even that was undercut by the relative simplicity of them. [I did see a review which opined that the puzzles were designed to be so simple that the average, non-puzzling reader could handle them, making the book that much more "likable."]

Now imagine, if you can, the Da Vinci Code without puzzles. What's left? Oh, right, Michelangelo's Notebook. The two central interconnected mysteries are painfully transparent right from the beginning, the plucky young grad student offers no surprises, and, of course, her mentor (and, predictably, lover) throughout the journey is found by dialing a secret phone number that her archaeologist mother gave her before she moved to the big bad city.

This was a first effort by Christopher; since I also took his next book out from the library, I'll give it a go.