Officer Elvis by Gary Gusick

Published by Alibi on April 21, 2015

When Tommy Reylander, better known as Officer Elvis, is blown up, Darla Cavannah of the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation takes a break from hate crimes to investigate his murder. Darla was Reylander's partner in the Hinds County Sheriff's Department before Darla went to the MBI. Reylander stayed behind, comforted by his part-time gig as an Elvis impersonator. Maybe a Cadillac bomb seems like overkill, but if you're gonna kill Elvis, you gotta go big.

The search for Tommy's killer sends Darla to Tommy's girlfriend (a Priscilla Presley lookalike), his lawyer (an online poker enthusiast), a strip club owner, and a whole bunch of Elvis tribute artists (they don't like to be called impersonators).

The identity and motivation of the killer is clever. A little silly, maybe, but this is a fun story, not a serious crime novel, so the silliness works. Some added plot complications at the end make an attempt to turn this into a legitimate mystery novel. The complications depend heavily on a coincidence but they nevertheless add value to the story.

Gary Gusick pokes fun at southern manners, southern beauties, southern rednecks, southern moralists, and, of course, Elvis "tribute artists," a good many of whom (if the novel is to be believed) hail from Mississippi. Gusick parses the language and hypocrisies of the Deep South in a way that everyone who has visited but doesn't live there will recognize (whether Mississippi residents will appreciate the humor is a different question). I particularly like the tradition of following every bit of trashy gossip with "bless his heart" or "bless her pretty little heart." If you don't live in Mississippi or one of its neighboring states, or if you do but have a sense of humor about your environment, I suspect you'll enjoy Officer Elvis.

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The Worst Class Trip Every by Dave Barry

Published by Disney-Hyperion on May 5, 2015

The Worst Class Trip Ever is narrated by Wyatt Palmer, an eighth grader. I suspect that eighth graders are the target audience (this is a Disney book, after all) but hey, it's Dave Barry, so it has to be funny, even for adults (particularly those who, like me, have not matured much beyond their eighth grade years). The novel relies on fart humor, always a winner for eighth graders, and "short geeky boy has no chance with cool tall girl" humor, which works at any age.

The class trip that gives the book its title involves a flight to Washington. On the plane, Wyatt and his friend Matt believe they are foiling terrorists who want to attack the city, but they may be mistaken, or so the Air Marshal believes who nearly arrests them. Once in the city, Wyatt and Matt spend much of their tour time worrying about the strange men from the plane -- with good reason, given that Matt has stolen a suspicious object from their backpack. The strange men spend about half of the brief novel chasing the kids around the city in an effort to get it back. Hijinks ensue.

The Worst Class Trip Ever is a quick read. The story is cute, funny in a silly but predictable way (although perhaps not so predictable to an eighth grade audience). It made me chuckle, as Dave Barry always does, although not as much as he does when he gears his writing to a slightly older audience. Barry's language is simple and clean (unless you think fart is a bad word). I have no trouble recommending this to an age appropriate audience, which might range from 12 to 90. Maybe even a year or two younger or older.

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The Fall by John Lescroart

Published by Atria Books on May 5, 2015

The Fall isn't my favorite Dismas Hardy novel, in part because it lacks the emotional heft of John Lescroart's best work, but it nevertheless tells a good story. While courtroom scenes are strong, they are not as dramatic as those in some earlier novels, perhaps because they focus on Dismas' daughter while Dismas paces around like a worried old dog. It is, however, interesting to see Dismas play the role of father-mentor-coach as he dissects the trial and gives his daughter pointers.

A 17-year-old girl falls to her death from a bridge. Did she jump or was she pushed? A murder investigation ensues and the police, under fire for their failure to solve homicides with African American victims, feel pressured to make an arrest. The District Attorney, criticized for failing to get convictions in homicides against black victims, is under the gun to convict someone. Too often, when the need to secure a conviction has political consequences, the government doesn't care much about whether the right person is being arrested or prosecuted. In this case, the suspect is a volunteer advocate for troubled kids who may or may not have been having an affair with the dead girl.

Having recently met Dismas Hardy's daughter, Rebecca ("the Beck"), the suspect knows where to go for legal help. The Beck is a bit unseasoned to be handling a murder case, but since Dismas is backing her up I didn't view that as a huge stretch. The trial begins only about a third of the way into the novel. Inexplicably, the Beck waits until the trial begins before she sends an investigator out to look for evidence of her client's innocence. Granted, that always worked for Perry Mason, but one might have expected the Beck to give the case more thought before the trial started.

The Fall deftly explores the ugly intersection between race and the criminal justice system. It is spot on in its condemnation of the "rush to justice" (which is too often a rush to injustice) that leads to inadequate investigations, sloppy police work, and questionable accusations, all based on the unstated understanding that quieting the public requires someone to be arrested, even if it might not be the guilty party. Of course, as is common in a Dismas Hardy novel, whether the client is or isn't guilty is ambiguous throughout much of the novel.

The plot turns on an improbable coincidence, but that's true of most modern crime novels. Since life is full of improbable coincidences, they only bother me when they are outlandish, and Lescroart sold me on the possibility that this one could have happened. A bit of drama at the end is too predictable but, on the whole, The Fall is a solid entry in the Dismas Hardy series.

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Schismatrix Plus by Bruce Sterling

Schismatrix first published in 1985; Schismatrix Plus first published in 1995; published digitally by Open Road Media on December 30, 2014

Remarkable in many ways, Schismatrix is a brilliantly imaginative future history. The multi-faceted story considers the political, cultural, and social impact of trans-human and post-human existence. It is a difficult novel -- Bruce Sterling gives no shortcuts to the lazy reader -- but that makes it all the more rewarding. I read and admired it years ago but reading it a second time, after its rerelease in digital form, I got more out of it. I suspect I would have an even better understanding of Sterling's insights if I were to read it a third and fourth time. The story is a bit disjointed and I can't say that I felt an emotional connection to it, but the novel provides ample food for the intellect even if it fails to nourish the soul.

The solar system has been colonized. Most colonists live on space stations or asteroids, each operating as an independent government, some consisting of a handful of people. The colonies collectively comprise the Schismatrix. Deeper space travel is possible only with the help of the Investors, a spacefaring alien race of a decidedly capitalist bent that has no intention of sharing the secret of interstellar travel (although they are happy to act as bus drivers for the right price). The Investors are the most accessible of the various alien races, most of which stay in the background during the course of the novel, apart from one that becomes significant near the novel's end.

The novel follows Abelard Lindsay through an eventful life, sometimes lived under other identities, often changing alliances as friends become enemies and (sometimes) friends again. Lindsay begins as a diplomat, having been trained and genetically modified by Shapers, giving him an exceptional talent for manipulating others. The counterpart to (and enemy of) the Shapers are the Mechanists, who rely on mechanical enhancements (rather than genetics) to transform the human body. Having been born to a Mechanist family but serving the Shapers, Abelard is in an ideal position to encourage détente, which would benefit the human race by presenting a united front against competing alien races.

Détente, like most everything in Abelard's life, falls by the wayside as events overtake ideals. It is all Abelard can do to keep up or, failing that, avoid death. He is at times a revolutionary, at times an entrepreneur, at times a leader, at times a criminal, but usually a combination of many different roles. He falls in and out of relationships with women. He experiences ups and downs on his way to his final stage of life. Abelard experiences and sees so many changes that this review would be as long as the book if I tried to mention them.

As I indicated, I love the story for its rich imagination and its insight into how genetic, mechanical, or digital changes in humans might affect both the human race and the political, social, and economic institutions they create. At the same time, the story is so episodic, cramming so much into a mid-length novel, that I felt little emotional connection to Abelard, even when he is forced to do some soul-searching about the kind of human, trans-human, or post-human he wants to be. Schizmatrix is more like a documentary than a novel that touches the inner core. Still, but I would not discourage any sf fan who relishes a challenge from reading the novel.

Schizmatrix Plus includes the short stories that Sterling wrote within the same universe. They are quite strong and, in some ways, compensate for the novel's weaknesses.

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The Jaguar's Children by John Vaillant

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on January 27, 2015

"It is harder to think good thoughts in the dark." Sealed inside a tanker with thirteen other Mexicans who are trying to cross the border without documents, Tito (the name by which most people address young Hector) has few reasons to think good thoughts. The truck has a broken axle, the coyotes driving the truck have apparently abandoned them, and the battery on Tito's phone is nearly dead. Soon the people welded inside the tank will be in the same condition as the truck and the battery: broken down and dying. Tito nevertheless narrates his plight (along with a variety of rants about corruption, poverty, crime, and the misery of life for an indio in Oaxaca), recording sound files on his friend's phone that he hopes will reach someone when he presses "send."

Also in the truck, although unconscious, is Tito's friend Cesar. Tito once borrowed a copy of The Savage Detectives from Cesar but they otherwise had little contact before a coincidental sets of circumstances caused Tito to join Cesar on his journey from Oaxaca to the border. Cesar is running to the border for reasons that have to do with corn (more than that I will not reveal).

The meandering stories that Tito narrates (the central story, told to him by the man he calls his grandfather, is a love story that tangentially relates to an ancient Jaguar Man carved from jade) are a mixture of reality and folklore. Tito talks about the power of icons, the power (or indifference) of saints, the history of Mexico, the desperation of Mexican life, the differences between the United States and Mexico, and the fundamental similarities of people everywhere. The story is a reminder of the things that are most important in life, the things we never think about until we are deprived of them.

The Jaguar's Children offers a heady mix of humor and sorrow. Death, Tito tells us, is the national drug of Mexico, "the god everyone worships but no one will name." Tito's ordeal would be a test of faith if he had any, but faith is more the province of his grandmother and his friend Cesar. But even as Tito faces the prospect of a horrifying death by dehydration inside a steel coffin, surrounded by others who share his misery, his story is life-affirming. It is the story of struggle, of the search for a purpose, of how different people find different purposes in different ways. It is moving, haunting, and illuminating.

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