The Stud Book by Monica Drake

Published by Hogarth on April 9, 2013

It's difficult to know what to make of The Stud Book. Most of the story is breezy, light comedy, good for a few chuckles, perhaps with the not-fully-realized intent to make some serious points along the way. The novel's ironic ending takes a dark turn. I understand (I think) the point the story is trying to make, but the plot twist is contrived and incongruous. What is supposed to provide a cathartic moment for certain characters results in a "what was that?" moment for the reader. The novel's message -- "everybody matters" -- is expressly stated for readers who might not otherwise get it, but the message is too obvious to be meaningful.

The middle-aged women in The Stud Book are preoccupied, if not obsessed, with babies. They spend much of the novel thinking and talking about babies, although their thoughts and words tend to be the well-worn output of new mommies, non-mommies, and wannabe-mommies. Fortunately, the characters are more interesting than their conversations about babies. As you'd expect in a novel like this, each woman is struggling (although not always believably) with the drama of life.

Georgie and her husband Humble have a new baby, but given that Georgie uses a bottle of Oxycodone as a rattle, she might not be cut out for parenting, her PhD notwithstanding. Her best friend Sarah has no baby but, despite a history of miscarriages, has been working hard to make one (usually with her husband Ben). Dulcet, who teaches high school kids how to avoid pregnancy and generally believes that humanity is a disease, doesn't want a baby. Nyla is a widow; her daughter, Arena, is already in high school.

With the exception of Sarah (who is a bit over-the-top), the female characters -- particularly Arena -- are reasonably convincing. Monica Drake weaves humor into their lives and careers. Sarah works in a zoo, where she can make jokes about animal husbandry while envying the ease with which animals procreate. Arena's expulsion for something she may or may not have done gives Drake a chance to lampoon public school bureaucrats. Nyla's eco-friendly store reflects Portland's acceptance of an amusing counter-culture, while Dulcet gets high and photographs nude women when she isn't teaching students about their bodies.

The male characters are little more than window-dressing, unrealistic stereotypes who exist only to give the women a chance to complain about masculine behavior. Ben fantasizes about his former girlfriend (realistic enough) but what he does in a men's room in his office building is something real guys just don't do in that setting. Humble plays drinking games in a bar instead of hanging out at home with his new baby. Ben joins Humble in the bar instead of staying home with Sarah when she's experiencing a serious health problem. Is there something about Portland that turns men into shameful, insensitive louts?

At times, The Stud Book comes across as a book that follows a recipe: one new mommy, one veteran mommy, one woman striving to be a mommy, one woman who doesn't want to be a mommy, stir together and wait for fun to emerge. The contrivance of four friends representing four contrasting views of motherhood is more forgivable in a comedy than it would be in a book that poses as serious drama, which is one reason why the dramatic moments in the final pages just didn't work for me. To the extent that the novel tries to be Sex and the City (of Portland), it follows a reliable comedic formula. Sometimes the laughs seem forced, but more often they come from genuinely funny situations -- as, for instance, when Nyla uses her kickboxing routine against an unskilled robber, much to her daughter's dismay. It is when the novel becomes ironic and dark that it also becomes unsatisfying.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Frozen Solid by James Tabor

Published by Ballantine on March 26, 2013

During the first quarter of Frozen Solid, I thought James Tabor was telling an unoriginal story but telling it well. After about a third of the novel, when the plot began to move in new directions, I was hooked on a clever, intelligent story that continued to be well told. Although a bit light in its character development, Frozen Solid is a fun, fast-moving novel that's more imaginative than the stories so commonly told in thrillerworld.

Hallie Leland, a microbiologist with the CDC, travels to a research station at the South Pole to replace a dead scientist who had found something unusual in deep ice-core samples. The scientist's apparent death from a drug overdose becomes suspicious when Hallie stumbles upon evidence of foul play. Eventually there are more deaths, apparently from natural (albeit unlikely) causes, but always involving women. Since Hallie must puzzle out both the cause of the deaths and the identity of the killer, Frozen Solid combines a whodunit with the fast action that characterizes a thriller.

Early in the novel we meet a group of scientists who are trumpeting something called Triage. It soon becomes clear that they are involved in a conspiracy of Ludlumesque proportions. A secondary (but, for the most part, undeveloped) plotline concerns Hallie's lover, Wil, who tells her, just before she leaves for the South Pole, "There are things you don't know about me." The attempt to humanize Hallie by giving her a life is a small (and ineffective) part of the story.

Once it winds up (and it doesn't take long for that to happen), Frozen Solid tells an exciting story. Tension is palpable during the novel's action scenes, particularly when Hallie is diving in frigid waters where hypothermia is just one of the dangers she faces. Some aspects of the novel strain credulity -- Hallie's ability to cheat death on multiple occasions and to fire flares so that they land atop her target with unerring accuracy -- but that's common in modern thrillers.

Hallie is a resourceful heroine with a take-charge attitude. If someone needs to climb down an icy crevasse to save a trapped scientist, she's there to do it. Yet unlike so many action heroes, she isn't a martial arts expert and she doesn't carry a gun. She relies on wits and determination, making her a more interesting protagonist than the big guys who are always fighting their way out of trouble in standard action novels.

Tabor seems to have done his homework before writing Frozen Solid. The description of the polar environment and its effect on the people who work in the research station is convincing. Whether Tabor is explaining carbon dioxide concentrations in the ocean, the mechanics of climbing sheets of ice, or the perils of diving in the Antarctic, his writing reflects solid research.

Apart from a slightly cheesy ending (the kind where all demons are excised and people who hated each other throughout the novel are now joining hands and singing Kumbaya), Frozen Solid is a well-told tale. I haven't read the first Hallie Leland novel but Frozen Solid encourages me to give it a try. 

RECOMMENDED

Constance by Patrick McGrath

Published by Bloomsbury USA on April 2, 2013 

Constance Schuyler wants a better father than the one she has so, with predictable consequences, she marries Sidney Klein, an older, stuffy Englishman with a son from a previous marriage. Constance is "shackled to the conviction that her father had wrecked her life." As Sidney sees it, Constance has serious self-esteem issues resulting from her failure to gain her father's approval. Sidney believes he can give her the approval she's been missing, but he also understands and sympathizes with her father, attitudes that Constance comes to view as a betrayal. Over time resentments form and their marriage becomes tumultuous, although (at least in Sidney's mind) the make-up sex makes it worthwhile -- until it stops.

The novel begins with Constance's first person point of view, then shifts to Sidney's as he dissects Constance. Point of view alternates as the story progresses. Constance and Sidney are very different people, at different stages of life, and as you might expect, they have very different views of their relationship. Standing alone, neither Sidney nor Constance is a reliable narrator. Sidney's dispassionate tale of "reeling in" Constance and his psychoanalytic descriptions of her are evidence of his manipulative personality, a trait that Sidney refuses to recognize in himself. Constance, on the other hand, has a warped view of her father and uses it to justify her self-centered bitterness. Sidney sees Constance as a lightweight while Constance regards Sidney as controlling, just as her father was. The differing viewpoints of Sidney and Constance allow the reader to piece together a more honest portrait of each character than they are capable of providing independently.

We eventually encounter a blockbuster revelation about Constance's family that makes her feel like "a drawer torn violently from a desk and turned upside down so its contents spilled out." It's the sort of thing that could be melodramatic but Patrick McGrath plays it straight, revealing the secret and then backing up, allowing Constance to explore it, to absorb it and react to it. More family drama follows and additional blockbuster events occur toward the novel's end. While there might be one too many scenes that come close to being the stuff of a cheesy soap opera -- and in the hands of a lesser author, they would be -- I give McGrath credit for combining restraint with unflinching realism. Some aspects of the final chapters aren't entirely convincing but nothing is outrageously unbelievable.

In the end, Constance is a stark portrayal of two partners in a marriage who, notwithstanding their sentimental moments, don't understand (or care) how much pain they are inflicting on each other. McGrath reveals Constance and Sidney in such detail that, on the one hand, it's easy to understand and even sympathize with them, and on the other, impossible to like them. Sidney is a condescending academic whose conservative notions of morality and personal responsibility inform his judgments, not just of the society that is collapsing around him but of Constance. Constance compares falling in love to the clinical symptoms of depression and seems quite incapable of abandoning her grievances long enough to feel love for anyone. The novel's most likable character is probably Constance's sister Iris. She has a tendency to drink too much and to fall in love with married men, but she has a big heart, a trait Constance recognizes but is unable to emulate. Constance notes that it takes courage to be warm and understanding and generous. "It's so much easier to be sour." Self-pitying sourness is a state that Constance and Sidney both know too well.

Is it possible to like a novel without liking the primary characters? I think so, but many readers want to see themselves in the books they read, or at least want to admire the characters. Constance is probably not a good choice for those readers. But for readers who want to know how two difficult characters see themselves and each other, Constance offers fascinating psychological profiles of complex individuals.

RECOMMENDED

The Lords of Salem by Rob Zombie

Published by Grand Central Publishing on March 12, 2013 

Rob Zombie recorded a song called "The Lords of Salem" in 2006. His movie of the same name is scheduled for release in April 2013. This book is a novelization of the movie, which I haven't seen. Is it a great novel? No, but I wasn't expecting much, and I was pleased that the novel exceeded my limited expectations. The Lords of Salem isn't The Crucible, but it's a surprisingly well written tale of witchcraft in modern Salem (for which I assume co-author B.K. Evenson deserves a fair amount of credit). There is nothing of Arthur Miller's subtlety in this version of Salem's witching -- it is a story for fans of gruesome, and in that regard it suffers from a lack of originality. If you're looking for a book that will scare you out of your socks, this isn't it. Still, I've read many horror novels that are less interesting than this one.

The novel begins in 1692, as Salem's judicial authorities put to death a number of witches, including Margaret Morgan. As she comes to a bloody end, Morgan vows to return and avenge her death, and those responsible for it -- particularly Mather and Hawthorne.

The story quickly turns to contemporary Salem, where Morgan tries to make good on her promise. One of her targets is Maisie Mather, whose unfortunate boyfriend is enjoying the afterglow of intimacy when Maisie is possessed. Another is the novel's central figure: Heidi Hawthorne, a recovering drug addict who works as a Salem DJ. A heavy metal song (or maybe it's not a song) by The Lords is delivered to Heidi anonymously, and when she plays it on the air, women love it. The song empowers women to do some ghastly things. An historian is the only character bright enough to figure out the connection between the song and a couple of very bloody killings.

When people aren't being ripped to shreds or having their eyes gouged out, the story maintains interest with humor, likable characters, and a coherent if unsurprising plot. The characters and the humor kept me reading. The elements of horror have been done in the same way many times before, although I give the writing team credit for describing them in vivid language. The best horror novels convince the reader that the shocking events in the novel are actually happening. That isn't true here; events are too predictable and sometimes a little too silly. This isn't the sort of book you'll stay awake reading because you're too frightened to turn the lights off. I liked it because it's entertaining, not because it's great horror.

As you might expect from Rob Zombie, the story revolves around music; as you might not expect, the DJs at the radio station are fond of bands like Earth Wind & Fire. Maybe that's Rob Zombie being ironic, or maybe he's a fan of old pop music. In any event, the use of music as a plot thread adds an extra dimension to the story.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Another Sun by Timothy Williams

First published in French in 2011; published in translation by Soho Crime on April 2, 2013 

Gendarmes pull the dead body of Monsieur Raymond Calais from a pond on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. The immediate murder suspect is an old man named Hégésippe Bray who threatened to kill Calais after Calais stole land that Bray had purchased from Calais' father. Anne Marie Laveaud, the investigating judge, has her doubts. Despite (or because of) his political aspirations, Calais had few friends. None of the people Laveaud interviews are unhappy about Calais' death, except for his widow, who suggests he was killed by terrorists who support the nation's independence from France. One mystery leads to another (and to a second death) as Laveaud probes the past to find long-buried secrets.

Bray's sad history makes him a sympathetic character despite his surly personality. Laveaud is a standard, rather dull "no agenda but the truth" investigator and but her days are enlivened by a chronically unemployed West Indian husband, the lecherous men who want to bed her, and an assistant who quietly mocks her ignorance of local customs and rivalries.

Timothy Williams does what good mystery writers do, peppering the plot with misdirection and false leads. Are the murders personal or political? Is there a conspiracy afoot, and if so, who are the conspirators? Why is Laveaud's investigation being obstructed -- or, more charitably, meeting with little cooperation from her boss? Another Sun delivers a heady mix of family, political, and cultural drama as the reader labors to unravel the mystery.

Yet there is more to Another Sun than a conventional murder mystery. The intricacies of race, heritage, and politics in Guadeloupe form the novel's background. While many Guadeloupians believe in witchcraft and voodoo, the nation is haunted by problems that are not of supernatural origin. Skin color and native language divide Guadeloupians, even when they work together. Blacks and whites and Indians and those of mixed race each occupy their own niche in the social structure. Békés -- the descendents of early European settlers in the French Antilles -- are viewed as racial purists by those of African or Indian descent, while the Békés look down upon those who have dark skin. Whether one speaks French or Creole as a first language determines one's acceptance in different parts of the nation's social milieu. The French colonial nation seethes with the political unrest that is an inevitable result of control by a distant government. Yet none of this is explained in an expository information dump. Insights into life in Guadeloupe are woven into the story and become an integral part of it.

Domestic drama fleshes out Laveaud's character. Her husband is useless, her mother-in-law is antagonistic, her son is pouty. She seems rather cold during the first half of the novel, but as Williams opens her up, revealing more of her thoughts and anxieties, I came to understand what makes her tick. Laveaud isn't the kind of character about whom a reader will develop warm and fuzzy feelings, but she is the kind of dedicated professional a reader can admire.

Ultimately, a murder mystery is only satisfactory if the mystery is a good one. Williams plants clues to the killer's identity but the solution isn't obvious. Readers who are better at solving mysteries might puzzle out the answer before Williams reveals it, but I didn't. The intelligent plot and compelling background make Another Sun an enjoyable read. I particularly liked the ambiguous ending and the possibility it creates for a sequel.

RECOMMENDED