A Private Cathedral by James Lee Burke

 

Published by Simon & Schuster on August 11, 2020

Like many Robicheaux novels, A Private Cathedral is a meditation on the nature of evil. Crime writers have a tendency to conceptualize evil as a force, sometimes one that has supernatural origins. James Lee Burke did that in Light of the World. He returns to the theme of evil as a force beyond human understanding in A Private Cathedral.

Dave Robicheaux tells the story as something that happened many years in the past. In the present, Robicheaux and his friend Clete Purcell contemplate the evil of white supremacists who stand guard over statues of Confederate generals and the oppression of freedom that they represent. In the past, the story opens with Robicheaux watching Johnny Shondell, Louisiana’s answer to Elvis, performing on a bandstand. Isolda Balangie, who appears to be seventeen, approaches Robicheaux because he was once a cop. She tells him that the Balangie family has hated the Shondell family for generations. Johnny Shondell is nevertheless delivering her to his Uncle Mark for reasons Robicheaux would prefer not to understand.

Robicheaux visits Marcel LaForchette in prison at LaForchette’s request. Robicheaux agrees to see him because he “wanted to believe that evil has an explainable origin, one that has nothing to do with unseen forces or even a cancerous flaw in the midst of Creation, and that even the worst of men could reclaim the light they had banished from their souls.” LaForchette, a former mob enforcer who claims to have information about the Kennedy assassination, would like Robicheaux to give him a job so he can be paroled to Louisiana. His promises of reform make Robicheaux wonder whether he might have reclaimed the light.

LaForchette used to work for the Balangie family (he claims to have been the driver on the whack of a child molester ordered by the Balangies) but when Robicheaux next hears about him, he is on parole and working for the Shondells. Two private investigators approach Robicheaux for information about the disappearance of Isolde and its possible connection to LaForchette’s release.

The investigators end up dead and dismembered, as do a good many others. Robicheaux would like to stay out of it, but he can’t abide the Balangies and Shondells using a teenage girl as currency for a deal. His friend Clete Purcell would also prefer to avoid the drama until he finds himself strung upside down as a fire is being set below his head. Purcell isn’t sure how this fits into the Balangie/Shondell situation, but he means to find out.

This sets up what seems like a typical crime story — typical for Burke, who sets his stories in the deepest depths of southern corruption and depravity — but the novel takes a twist with the introduction of a reptilian character named Gideon Richetti, who is either a time traveler or has lived through evil events in the distant past. Richetti represents enduring evil, the kind that brought us Auschwitz and Huey Long and prisoners who die from dehydration after being locked for days in a steel coffin in the Louisiana heat.

Against his better judgment (or perhaps in the absence of judgment), Robicheaux becomes involved with Isolda’s mother, Penelope Balangie, who may or may not be married to Adonis Balangie. He also becomes involved (he thinks, given that he attributes his involvement on both occasions to blackouts) with Leslie Rosenberg, a woman Adonis is keeping on the side. Other key characters include a priest who may or may not have given into his temptations and a bent cop named Carroll LeBlane.

The plot is harrowing. As was true in Light of the World, its supernatural elements might (but probably don’t) have earthly explanations. Robicheaux would like to find a rational explanation for the slave ship he keeps seeing, the one that is also in Purcell’s dreams. He would like to think there is a reason for Richetti’s knowledge of events in Robicheaux’s past that he has never shared, or for Richetti himself, who starts the novel as more snake than human but evolves the story progresses. Those explanations will be just as hard for the reader to conjure as they are for Robicheaux. Everything that troubles Robicheaux could be in his imagination because, as he acknowledges, “superstition has its origin in fear.” Robicheaux has plenty to fear, but Burke makes clear that he isn’t alone. All our problems are grounded in fear.

Burke’s point seems to be that evil has had such an ineradicable presence throughout history that it can only be explained as a force that influences good people to do bad things. The alternative, as Robicheaux ponders, is that humans are not good at all, that they are fundamentally flawed and will trip over themselves in their hurry to harm others to satisfy their own sense of superiority. “I believe that most human activity is not rational and is often aimed at self-destruction,” Robicheaux says. “I also believe that ordinary human beings will participate in horrific deeds if they are provided a ritual that will allow them to put their conscience in abeyance.” Hence the ability of humans not just to turn their back on obvious evil, but to encourage it.

One reason to read any Burke novel is to luxuriate in his prose. “Here’s the strange thing about death,” Robicheaux explains. “At a certain age it’s always with you, lurking in the shade, pulling at your ankles, whispering in your ear when you pass a crypt. But it doesn’t get your real attention until you find yourself home alone and the wind swells inside the rooms and stresses the joists and lets you know what silence and solitude are all about.”

The other reason to read Burke is that few crime writers manage to plumb the souls of their protagonists, the struggle between their flawed natures and their fundamental decency, with such depth while still telling a riveting story. A Private Cathedral is just the latest reminder of why Burke occupies a laminated position in my list of favorite crime novelists.

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The Last Emperox by John Scalzi

Published by Tor Books on April 14, 2020

The Last Emperox is the third book of the Interdependency trilogy that began with The Collapsing Empire and continued with The Consuming Fire. The first book sets up the detailed background that serves as a springboard for the next two. When I read it, I wondered whether all that background was really necessary. Perhaps the trilogy would produce a story that might better be told in a single volume without all the detail, however interesting it might be, that John Scalzi served up in The Collapsing Empire. With apologies to Scalzi, who knows more than I do about how to write John Scalzi books, I confess I was wrong. The final two volumes are each packed with storylines, way too much to cram into a single volume and all of it essential, or at least worthwhile. Anyway, trilogies give writers three advances and royalties on three books instead of one, and who am I to complain about Scalzi earning a living? Readers who invest in all three books will not find themselves cheated.

By the end of The Consuming Fire, we know that flow streams connecting various places that humans occupy in the Interdependency are collapsing. Marce Claremont has brought that news to the relatively new Emperox, whose formal name is Grayland II. Informally, she is still Cardenia of the House of Wu, a relatively young woman who is forced into the life of a ruler when she would rather have the freedom that comes with a less stressful existence. Like most of the female characters, Cardenia has a healthy sexual appetite, much to Marce’s benefit. Various political machinations have ensued, including attempted assassinations, but Cardenia is still holding power, although to what end is uncertain. When the flow streams finally collapse, the Interdependency will collapse with them, producing a period of anarchy and massive death brought about by insufficient and suddenly irreplaceable resources.

The Last Emperox continues the political plot that lies at the novel’s heart. The villainous Nadashe Nohamapetan, seemingly foiled in the second novel, is up to new tricks in this one. She is matched against Lady Kiva from the House of Lagos, a delightfully foul-mouthed woman whose sex drive might better be described as insatiable than healthy, and good for her. Kiva may be allied with Cardenia or working against her. Scalzi keeps the reader guessing.

The plot is lively. Scalzi uses it to make the always timely observation that power is short-sighted. People who hold it want to keep it. If their actions accelerate the destruction of whatever (the environment, the government, the Interdependency), they’ll let the next generation worry about it. Maintaining power and accumulating more of it trumps (pun intended) the harm they cause to everyone else. Naturally, rulers of the powerful houses hatch a plan to save themselves from the flow stream collapse because, if only a few people will be able to survive, they feel entitled to be the survivors.

I expected the protagonists to come up with a plan to save the human race (or that part of it that lives in the Interdependency, which or may not be all of it) and they do, sort of, but the plan surprised me. It’s both clever and a testament to the willingness of good people to set power aside and to sacrifice everything for the greater good. Maybe science fiction fans carry the idealism to believe that our better selves will ultimately triumph. Maybe the fond hope that there is something salvageable, something decent, in human nature is what makes me keep reading science fiction. That, and good storytelling that revitalizes the sense of wonder. Scalzi attains those objectives better than most science fiction writers. In The Last Emperox, he brings a well-conceived plot to a satisfying conclusion while leaving room for related stories to be told. I hope he gets around to telling them.

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Florida Man by Tom Cooper

Published by Random House on July 28, 2020

Florida Man, like Florida, is unpredictably weird in ways that provoke laughter. If a news headline begins with “Florida Man,” it will end with something like “arrested for teaching parrots to make death threats to IRS agents.” Florida is a land of sinkholes and decaying roadside attractions that overpromise bizarre wonders. It is also a haven for eccentrics. The fictional eccentric who carries the story in Florida Man, and the crew of collateral characters who weave in and out of the story, are sufficiently peculiar to mark themselves as true Floridians.

Florida Man’s protagonist is Reed Crowe, sometimes described as a hippie or a beach bum, definitely a stoner, something of a loner although not always by choice. Reed was once married to a woman named Heidi, with whom he maintains an on-and-(mostly)-off relationship. They lost their daughter, for which Crowe blames himself. Perhaps his lifestyle is a means of self-punishment or a futile attempt to forget by smoking himself into a daily oblivion.

Crowe owns a motel on Emerald Island and the Florida Man Mystery House, one of the roadside attractions that once littered Florida but have been largely undone by Disney World. He is assisted by Wayne Wade, Crowe’s childhood friend who, in adulthood, has become something of a degenerate, even by Florida standards. A likable kid named Eddie, perhaps the character who comes closest to a conventional definition of normal, also helps out.

Crowe got lucky at some point and rescued some bundles of weed from a smuggler’s airplane that crashed. He thought one of the sinking smugglers might have survived but talked himself out of believing that the man might still be alive. The smuggler, Hector “Catface” Morales, carries a grudge and eventually comes after Crowe.

Another character who seems interested in coming after Crowe is Henry Yahchilane, who suspects that Crowe might have stumbled onto evidence of a potential crime that Yahchilane would prefer to keep buried. The men have some tense moments until they find themselves sharing a predicament that neither of them might survive. After that, they sustain a lifelong friendship. Crowe and Yahchilane don’t necessarily go out of their way to spend time together, but they manage to be there for each other at critical moments.

The plot takes Crowe through a significant block of his life. While a secondary character through much of the novel, Yahchilane becomes a primary character at the end. The two men share a hurricane and other experiences as their lives intertwine, including a determination to do something about Wayne Wade before he causes more harm. Crowe is largely on his own, however, when Catface goes on a rampage in his quest for revenge.

Tom Cooper’s prose is snappy and his humor is dark. When I wasn’t cringing, I was laughing. As Florida Man meandered along its detour-laden plot, I occasionally wondered what the story is about. A novel doesn’t necessarily have to be about anything, but Florida Man turns out to be about life. Friendship, loss, aging, laughter and tears, change and endurance, the surprises that give life its flavor, and finally death. A key character realizes that life is the series of stories we accumulate before life ends. If enough of the stories are good, life was good. Cooper recounts a series of good stories, ranging from meaningful to silly, that add up to strange but, in the end, good lives for Crowe and Yahchilane.

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Talking Animals by Joni Murphy

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux/FSG Originals on August 4, 2020

Fables about animals who behave as humans are often intended to provide insight into human nature. In part, Talking Animals can be seen as revealing the prejudices that people of different cultures or skin colors must overcome when they try to live together. Substitute herbivores for vegetarians and fur color for skin color to get a flavor of the story. The story burdens animals with other human problems, including global warming, political corruption, inequitable wealth distribution, immigration woes, and the poisoning of the food supply. There is even a version of the animal rights movement that seeks better treatment of fish and other inhabitants of the sea. The characters are just as frustrated as powerless humans by their inability to make fundamental changes to policies that are killing them.

Joni Murphy has some amusing takes on New York City, a city taken over by invasive species that immediately began to mythologize themselves. They laid out Manhattan in a grid because grids create the illusion that everything is under control, but the story of every city is one of brutality that has been “retold as one of heroism.” Wealthy animals get their wool “shorn by skillful barbers who specialize in fades” while less fortunate animals haul away the trash.

The protagonist, Alfonso, is an alpaca from Queens whose parents are Peruvian immigrants. Alfonso regards himself as a “waste of wool” after his 1,500-page dissertation is rejected as unfocused. Alfonso dreamed of transcending the “dumb cartoon version of who we are as a species” but Mitchell, a llama who is Alfonso's beset friend, reminds him that alpacas and llamas have a proud heritage as consensus builders. Mitchell believes camelids, meek by reputation, have the power to rise up against politicians who are trying to turn the city into a “mall prison.”

Alfonso works in a meaningless clerical job in City Hall. He regrets his failed relationship with a vicuna named Vivi and wonders whether his life can have any meaning as a failed academic. Mitchell is caught in the bureaucracy of the city’s Office of Affordable Housing. The mayor is a horse who, like many human politicians, is dedicated to the principle that resources should be channeled to the wealthy and that less fortunate animals should feed off the waste products that trickle down from the top. Global warming will soon leave mammals living underwater with sea dwellers, but the rich will be the last to get wet.

Another of Alfonso’s friends, a lemur named Pamella, is a supporter of the sea dwellers’ rights movement. Pamella laments that voting for the mayor’s opponent will install “pig problems as a solution to horse problems.” Change won’t come by continuing to run in the hamster wheel, even for hamsters. She looks to the sea “not for politics, but for its hard-stinging spray. What we do isn’t good enough, but the alternative is ceasing to exist.”

If people are true to their natures, so are the mammals in Talking Animals. When Alfonso tags along as Mitchell investigates a complaint about housing conditions, Alfonso ponders the nature of cats: “they liked mixing signals without acknowledging the tension between warmth and aggression. A cat might spend ten minutes glaring from across the bar, then buy you a drink.” Alfonso recognizes the “need to accept others as they are, in all their weirdness” and believes he should not judge animals for acting in conformity with their nature, but when a seemingly friendly cat suddenly bites his ear and scampers away, Alfonso has difficulty avoiding judgment. Mitchell is more sanguine: “Everybody bites sometimes,” he reminds Alfonso. So it is with humans.

Notwithstanding their natures, the mammals in Talking Animals seem to coexist more peacefully than humans. Rambunctious raccoons tell jokes to complacent goats; cows and llamas bond over their multiple stomachs and endless chewing. Except for a large heist of maple syrup by a gang of bears, there doesn’t seem to be much street crime. The ravages of unregulated capitalism, on the other hand, are just as harmful in the fable as they are in the human world.

The first half of the novel, setting up Alfonso’s failures as a doctoral candidate and as a file clerk are engaging. While I agree with its message of hope and empowerment, the second half becomes a bit preachy as Alfonso, Mitchell, and Pamella embark on an ambiguous quest to fight the good fight for social, environmental, and economic justice. Despite the plot’s unfortunate loss of focus, Talking Animals succeeds both as an illustration of human foibles and as an entertaining romp through the animal kingdom.

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The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo

First published in Japan in 1946; published in translation by Pushkin Vertigo on August 4, 2020

The Honjin Murders is a classic Japanese locked room mystery, first serialized in a Japanese magazine in 1946. When the mystery baffles the local police, a brilliant young detective is called to the scene and promptly solves the puzzle. The novel marks the detective's first of more than seventy appearances in Seishi Yokomizo's work. The detective is also a character in five Japanese films.

The story is set in 1937. Kenzo is the current master of the house of Ichiyanagi. Before the shogun was overthrown and the imperial government restored, the house was an inn for travelers who belonged to the nobility (a honjin). Nothing is more important to the Ichiyanagi family than being descendants of the owners of a honjin.

Kenzo and Katsuko were married in Kenzo’s home. Kenzo was about 40. His bride was about 25 and (to her shame) not a virgin, a confession she made just before the wedding. A scarred man with three fingers on his right hand inquired about Kenzo while passing through the village on Kenzo’s wedding day.

The post-wedding sake ceremony lasted all night. It was after midnight before Kenzo could take his new bride to their bedroom. Two hours later, a blood-curdling scream is heard. Kenzo’s family broke into the locked room and discovered that both had been hacked to death, apparently with a sword. The murder weapon disappeared with the killer, but how did the killer enter or leave a room that was locked from the inside?

Bloody three finger handprints point three fingers of guilt at a possible culprit, but that doesn’t solve the mystery of the locked room. Other characters who might be murder suspects are primarily Kenzo’s family members, including his mother and four siblings. His youngest brother is the family’s black sheep while his youngest sister is a bit simple. The sister has just buried a dead cat, which is apparently an ominous circumstance in Japanese mythology.

The stringed instrument known in Japan as the koto figures into the plot, in part because “the eerie strains of a koto being plucked with wild abandon” are heard just after the scream. A letter and a photo album that contain the words “My Mortal Enemy” provide another potential clue. Deciding which clues are real and which are red herrings adds to the fun, but to Seishi Yokomizo’s credit, none of the potential clues are completely extraneous to the story. Everything fits together and contributes to the mystery’s solution.

The police inspector, unable to make headway, summons Kosuke Kindaichi from Tokyo. Kosuke is unkempt and speaks with a stammer, but in the tradition of eccentric detectives, he pieces together obscure clues with ease. When Kosuke notices that the home’s library is filled with detective novels, he offers some literary criticism, expressing a preference for locked room mysteries that do not rely on a mechanical trick over those that do. Kosuke is a particular fan of Leroux’s Mystery of the Yellow Room and the locked room murder mysteries of John Dickson Carr.

The story is clever and complex, as good locked room mysteries tend to be. I probably miss the nuances of Japanese mysteries, having not grown up in the culture, but the unfamiliarity of the setting is part of the appeal of Japanese fiction. I doubt anyone will guess how the murder was committed. It may be possible for astute readers (and I’m not one of those) to puzzle out why it occurred. Whether the novel surprises the reader or not, following Kosuke’s deductive chain as he assembles the clues is fun. The Honjin Murders would be a perfect addition to the shelf of any devoted fan of locked room murder mysteries.

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