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Fiction Reading, July 2017
Aug. 1st, 2017 09:41 pm25-Xiaolong, Qiu. When Red Is Black (inspector Chen series, #3) (2004) - After the murder of a politically problematic woman (once red--communist, now black--dishonored), one suspect is taken in and another confesses, but neither is the murderer. Meanwhile, Chen builds more connections and tries to use them for good. It does feel a little like the mafia, though--you really don't want to owe favors to certain people. The book is too slow and repetitive in the beginning, but everything gets tied up nicely in the end.
The shikumen style of architecture plays an important role in this story: one character is making a business plan to build a modern complex in this style; another couple of characters live in a shikumen building. Xiaolong describes the style as "grey brick walls, black doors, brown stone door frames, small courtyards, various wings, and winding wooden staircases ... arranged along lanes that criss-cross each other." There's a specific floorplan - living room in front, side rooms, courtyards, upstairs bedrooms. During overcrowding, several families would live in each house; they would each have their own stove in the courtyard. So I looked for more information on this. The book mentions a "Shanghai comedy called Seventy-two Families in a House; I found a Hong Kong re-make called "House of 72 Tenants."
At the end, one character overhears another saying negative things about him: "What a prig ... Impossible ... So self-important." (He handles it very well; they won't work together again, and she did help significantly, so he can still think positively on the whole experience.) I'd been struck by how often and well the characters compliment each other; but this overheard conversation punched me in the stomach, too. You just have no way of telling if someone is lying to you; at least someone of my (lack of) skills doesn't. I guess it's all part of the face-saving thing. As it says at the end of the book about another character, "Yu knew his boss too well. Chen usually had a reason for saying or not saying something, or for saying it in a roundabout way. ... Perhaps he should repeat Chen's comments [to his wife], word for word. Sometimes Peiqin was quicker than he in reading hidden messages." I am so lucky to live in a society where I don't need that skill. I do feel that at one of my jobs some people were giving me lying compliments, but I could afford to just accept them at face value and tell myself that any lies were their problem, not mine. I didn't want to move up into the kinds of supervisory positions that required not saying certain things to save face, so it was no loss to me if my lack of skills kept me from them.
26-Hamilton, Lyn. The Moche Warrior (An Archaeological Mystery) (1999) - Antique store owner works on an archeological dig in Peru looking for clues in the murder of someone on her property. Review here.
27-Konigsburg, E.L. The View from Saturday (1996) - The story of an Academic Bowl team. Four sixth-graders and their teacher come together for afternoon tea. Spoiler: Each student, when faced with the choice, chooses kindness. And that magically makes them a winning Academic Bowl team. A lot of the writing is read-aloud, but it doesn't quite fit together perfectly for me like the author wants it to.
28-Hamilton, Maria. Mr. Darcy and the Secret to Becoming a Gentleman (2011) - An alternate-ending/alternate universe book where a deliberate attempt at self-improvement, righting wrongs, and better communication leads to a lot fewer problems. The audience is lovers of Pride and Prejudice (knowledge of the book is assumed), yet the author tosses away some of the social conventions of the time and some of the well-loved scenes. Still, there were some amusing bits, such as when Mr. Bennett says "Ah, yes, we are very adept at acting on misinformation in this house. It is almost a skill." I did read the entire 446 pages. Part of me likes more information, part of me can see how sometimes less can be more. At the end of the book are reviews of several other fan-fic novels. I have no interest.
29-Gilman, Dorothy. Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha (1985) - Mrs. Pollifax is to meet someone she had previously helped escape (in order to ask him what's going on with the agent who is taking care of him but seems to be going rogue) since he refuses to talk to anybody else. The plot is exciting as usual, though this time Mrs. Pollifax is caught by really bad guys in such a way that they know she is not as innocent as she appears. I really need to read those two I had to skip sometime. Robin warned me that they start to get too samy and less fun, and this is the first one that felt like that to me.
Didn't learn much about Hong Kong. In this plot, some nationalists from Taiwan want nationalists to take over communist China when Hong Kong reverts to mainland China in 1997.
30-Keating, H.R.F. Inspector Ghote's First Case (An Inspector Ghote Mystery) (2008) (set in India, mostly Mahableshwar and Bombay (now Mumbai), 1960 [13 years after independence]) - Not the first in a series as I'd hoped, but a long-awaited prequel. The case is interesting. The inspector is known for having a very rough time making decisions. For example, when someone offered him a chair, he first thought that this person would not want him to take the chair once he heard the news, but then decided that since he had been told to take a seat, he would. This gets old. The Indian characters have a charming way of talking. "Wife, wife. The letter that is just only being pushed through the door. Come and hear what it is telling." (Favorite term: thunder box for toilet.) I wonder if this lets us learn a bit more about how one of the Indian languages works. But it also gets old. Another interesting thing is that the severe classism and sexism is shown, even by our awesome protagonist; this is tough to deal with. I don't plan to look for more in the series.
31-Hockensmith, Steve. The Black Dove (2008) - Sadly, this is #3 in the series (and I haven't read #2 yet). I liked the beginning (about the kinds of early death the author expected compared to what seemed imminent) and the end (where Old Red congratulates Big Red on getting published but tells him not to let that go to his head). This was set in Chinatown, San Francisco and had too much racism for my taste, plus it was scene after scene of hatchetmen trying to kill our heroes, so I found it not very fun, either. I still want to read #2, though (set on a train).
32-Xiaolong, Qiu. A Case of Two Cities (inspector Chen series, #4) (2006) - This one is about corruption, review here.
33-Quartey, Kwei. Murder at Cape Three Points (inspecter Darko Dawson mystery #3) (2014) - The inspector is called to help another department (who doesn't want his help) to solve a four-month-old double-murder case. Review here.
The shikumen style of architecture plays an important role in this story: one character is making a business plan to build a modern complex in this style; another couple of characters live in a shikumen building. Xiaolong describes the style as "grey brick walls, black doors, brown stone door frames, small courtyards, various wings, and winding wooden staircases ... arranged along lanes that criss-cross each other." There's a specific floorplan - living room in front, side rooms, courtyards, upstairs bedrooms. During overcrowding, several families would live in each house; they would each have their own stove in the courtyard. So I looked for more information on this. The book mentions a "Shanghai comedy called Seventy-two Families in a House; I found a Hong Kong re-make called "House of 72 Tenants."
At the end, one character overhears another saying negative things about him: "What a prig ... Impossible ... So self-important." (He handles it very well; they won't work together again, and she did help significantly, so he can still think positively on the whole experience.) I'd been struck by how often and well the characters compliment each other; but this overheard conversation punched me in the stomach, too. You just have no way of telling if someone is lying to you; at least someone of my (lack of) skills doesn't. I guess it's all part of the face-saving thing. As it says at the end of the book about another character, "Yu knew his boss too well. Chen usually had a reason for saying or not saying something, or for saying it in a roundabout way. ... Perhaps he should repeat Chen's comments [to his wife], word for word. Sometimes Peiqin was quicker than he in reading hidden messages." I am so lucky to live in a society where I don't need that skill. I do feel that at one of my jobs some people were giving me lying compliments, but I could afford to just accept them at face value and tell myself that any lies were their problem, not mine. I didn't want to move up into the kinds of supervisory positions that required not saying certain things to save face, so it was no loss to me if my lack of skills kept me from them.
26-Hamilton, Lyn. The Moche Warrior (An Archaeological Mystery) (1999) - Antique store owner works on an archeological dig in Peru looking for clues in the murder of someone on her property. Review here.
27-Konigsburg, E.L. The View from Saturday (1996) - The story of an Academic Bowl team. Four sixth-graders and their teacher come together for afternoon tea. Spoiler: Each student, when faced with the choice, chooses kindness. And that magically makes them a winning Academic Bowl team. A lot of the writing is read-aloud, but it doesn't quite fit together perfectly for me like the author wants it to.
28-Hamilton, Maria. Mr. Darcy and the Secret to Becoming a Gentleman (2011) - An alternate-ending/alternate universe book where a deliberate attempt at self-improvement, righting wrongs, and better communication leads to a lot fewer problems. The audience is lovers of Pride and Prejudice (knowledge of the book is assumed), yet the author tosses away some of the social conventions of the time and some of the well-loved scenes. Still, there were some amusing bits, such as when Mr. Bennett says "Ah, yes, we are very adept at acting on misinformation in this house. It is almost a skill." I did read the entire 446 pages. Part of me likes more information, part of me can see how sometimes less can be more. At the end of the book are reviews of several other fan-fic novels. I have no interest.
29-Gilman, Dorothy. Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha (1985) - Mrs. Pollifax is to meet someone she had previously helped escape (in order to ask him what's going on with the agent who is taking care of him but seems to be going rogue) since he refuses to talk to anybody else. The plot is exciting as usual, though this time Mrs. Pollifax is caught by really bad guys in such a way that they know she is not as innocent as she appears. I really need to read those two I had to skip sometime. Robin warned me that they start to get too samy and less fun, and this is the first one that felt like that to me.
Didn't learn much about Hong Kong. In this plot, some nationalists from Taiwan want nationalists to take over communist China when Hong Kong reverts to mainland China in 1997.
30-Keating, H.R.F. Inspector Ghote's First Case (An Inspector Ghote Mystery) (2008) (set in India, mostly Mahableshwar and Bombay (now Mumbai), 1960 [13 years after independence]) - Not the first in a series as I'd hoped, but a long-awaited prequel. The case is interesting. The inspector is known for having a very rough time making decisions. For example, when someone offered him a chair, he first thought that this person would not want him to take the chair once he heard the news, but then decided that since he had been told to take a seat, he would. This gets old. The Indian characters have a charming way of talking. "Wife, wife. The letter that is just only being pushed through the door. Come and hear what it is telling." (Favorite term: thunder box for toilet.) I wonder if this lets us learn a bit more about how one of the Indian languages works. But it also gets old. Another interesting thing is that the severe classism and sexism is shown, even by our awesome protagonist; this is tough to deal with. I don't plan to look for more in the series.
31-Hockensmith, Steve. The Black Dove (2008) - Sadly, this is #3 in the series (and I haven't read #2 yet). I liked the beginning (about the kinds of early death the author expected compared to what seemed imminent) and the end (where Old Red congratulates Big Red on getting published but tells him not to let that go to his head). This was set in Chinatown, San Francisco and had too much racism for my taste, plus it was scene after scene of hatchetmen trying to kill our heroes, so I found it not very fun, either. I still want to read #2, though (set on a train).
32-Xiaolong, Qiu. A Case of Two Cities (inspector Chen series, #4) (2006) - This one is about corruption, review here.
33-Quartey, Kwei. Murder at Cape Three Points (inspecter Darko Dawson mystery #3) (2014) - The inspector is called to help another department (who doesn't want his help) to solve a four-month-old double-murder case. Review here.