Oh, Marlowe!

Playback
Raymond Chandler

You guys know how much I've fallen for Philip Marlowe, right? Remember my post about The Long Goodbye? Oh goodness, the months after that I have scoured the shelves for Chandler's books, believe me. And it's only last week that I was successful, with this trade paperback copy costing only Php 10 from the bargain bins of Booksale. To give you a perspective on how cheap that is, the conversion rate is Php 46+ to US $1.

And I was really excited to read it. Here's another Marlowe story. What would he do this time? How many dames he'd fall for, kiss, save, or what-have-you. But wait, this is Chandler's last novel if I go by the back blurb. No. Oh please, no. My brain warned me not to read it, no, not this time. But the heart wants what the heart wants.

And the heart, at times, gets broken. This is the novel I shouldn't have read. Yet. But I didn't heed the warning signs and now I must suffer for it. Fair warning to all, this is the last Philip Marlowe novel. Raymond Chandler died the year after this book was published. And with that I start this post.

Marlowe's new assignment is to shadow a lady disembarking from a train. Simple enough really; just shadow and report to a lawyer named Umley whose client refused to be identified. Thing is, Marlowe isn't the only one shadowing the lady. So when he tried to find out on his own who really is this dame named Eleanor King, he gets suckered into another tale of murder and money and how dangerous women can sometimes be, and the men that want to control them. Or something to that effect.

Well, crime novels do have murders in them most of the time so no surprise there. I just didn't expect it to lack action or circumspection from Marlowe's character. He's still the same Marlowe though: utterly protective of women, ethical to a point, hard-hitting if need be, and detective-extraordinaire. But he's the Marlowe seemingly tired of the game, tired of the chase, and dare I say it, tired of the women (although he still kisses them and more, given the opportunity). This isn't Marlowe's fault but a mere progression of character. That's why I shouldn't have read this yet.

Back on Yucca Avenue I stuck the Olds in the garage and poked at the mailbox. Nothing, as usual. I climbed the long flight of redwood steps and unlocked the door. Everything was the same. The room was stuffy and dull and impersonal as it always was. I opened a couple of windows and mixed a drink in the kitchen. I sat down on the couch and stared at the wall. Wherever I went, whatever I did, this was what I would come back to. A blank wall in a meaningless room in a meaningless house.

I put the drink down on a side table without touching it. Alcohol was no cure for this. Nothing was any cure but the hard inner heart that asked for nothing from anyone.

You see, I met Marlowe when he had gone through a lot of things already. I take it he solved a lot of murders, a lot of crimes, been mauled close to death, probably incarcerated a handful of times, took on people far more powerful that him and all other stuff that occurred in the novels prior to The Long Goodbye. I met him black and blue from experience, and drinking lots of alcohol to deaden his senses further and closing the door on happiness offered by a woman willing to be by his side. And if I go by the natural character progression, he is in a far worse state in this book, personally of course, not professionally. Because hey, they hire Marlowe for a reason. He's a good PI and that's that.

I asked myself if this book is a fitting end to Marlowe and I still think so. While to me it seemd lacking in action (heck, he defended his life only once, hahaha), there's enough guessing game material for him to uncover. In the end, the heart of the matter is the matter of the heart. Gee, how cheesy. That's something I probably heard or read before. Marlowe admits to nursing a dream he shied away from in The Long Goodbye. That's why I think this is a fitting end to Marlowe's story. And no spoilers now, really. To those who have followed Marlowe's stories, better read this as the PI's last hurrah. But read The Long Goodbye first before this.

It's just too bad I read it without getting to know the earlier versions of Philip Marlowe. Maybe in the future I'd get to reread this again, after I find copies of Chandler's other novels.

There's this:

I picked a paperback off the table and made pretense of reading it. It was about some private eye whose idea of a hot scene was a dead naked woman hanging from the shower rail with the marks of torture on her. By that time Betty was in the bathroom. I threw the paperback into the wastebasket, not having a garbage can in handy at the moment.

For some reason that reminded me of a cover of a Mickey Spillane book. You know, the one where the secretary was tortured, near death and left hanging (not from the shower rail as far as I can remember) to be discovered later on by the PI and afterwards professed undying love and devotion to, or something to that effect. The cover was just that: a voluptous, bruised, scantily-clad, tortured woman hanging tied on a rail. You know how uh, garish crime novel covers were decades ago? Oh forget it, this is just an afterthought of my memory chugging out bits that correspond to certain scenes I read.

Goodness.

The lesson I learned from reading this book is to read stories according to the order they have been written. Or if that isn't possible (given my track record, hahaha) at least try not to read the last book in the series before the earlier releases. And I'm laughing as I type that.

Other interesting point of view:

Lies! Damned Lies!

Serial Killer Out There

Origin
Diana Abu-Jaber

Police procedurals, detective and spy shows were a staple to my childhood (so yes, I was part of those millions of children partly-reared by television while growing up). Who doesn't love whodunits? Who doesn't enjoy traveling with the protagonist, enjoying his or her's train of thoughts, unmasking the bad guy or the evil plot even before the scene unfolds?

With the onset of CSI however, police procedurals became geekified and I loved it! TV shows now focus on the people who make things happen for the detectives out there! DNA, the bane of my highschool biology class, became the buzzword and it was exciting to watch investigators uncovering the crime from the perspective of a blood spatter, the trajectory of bullets, the planted fingerprint left meticulously on a crime scene! Such a world of possibilities opening up when it comes to solving a crime!

This book is just like that, in part. The lead character is a fingerprint expert Lena Dawson. Unlike Grissom of the CSI show, Dawson is quiet, unobtrusive. But capable. And she's hiding a secret about her childhood, a secret that later on she learns, is connected to the string of crib deaths the forensics lab is trying to solve. But I'm getting ahead of the story.

This isn't exactly your usual whodunit; I mean, those paperback reads you go through in a handful of hours and about halfway through you know exactly who did it and you stay on still hoping to be surprised at the end. If I sound jaded about mysteries and crime books it's because I am. I've read far too much and watched far too many to be reeled in heart, mind and soul to a story. Of course I still read them, if only to see if I still have the mind to solve one or simply to pass the time.

And this book is a pleasant surprise.

There's a string of infant deaths, that much is there from the start, but Lena Dawson gets the story going. Her thoughts guide us through the entire book and like her, we see the pattern in the crime, we believe her. Much as we feel her anxiousness about blending in with staff of the lab or of speaking to journalists. Because, unlike her lab office mates, we know Lena's secret, of why she appears lost and yet somehow content, of why she's sure of a serial killer and why she's apprehensive about journalists. Well, it's not everyday you start with the premise that your protagonist used to be raised by apes before being rescued and placed in foster care!

Ok, that's as far as I'd go with the plot and hope that that gets you thinking about picking this up. Haha. But like I said, this doesn't read like a mystery, like a crime story, even if it's a mystery and a crime story. If I liken it to a show, it's not a simple episode in a long-running police procedural but a thoughtful film you'd be surprised with and later on relish rewatching. The prose has a certain beauty in them that makes you forget the world outside and be transported to chilly Syracuse and the conviction that out there, there's a serial killer on the loose, and the only way to catch that person is to face one's past.

I rarely say this about crime stories, but this one is beautiful. Not the crime, obviously. But everything here: Lena's characterization, the supporting characters, the (un)expected love interest in Keller Duseky, the twists in the story, they're just beautiful and feels so real and compelling. There's a certain ring of truth to the procedures here as well that makes me want to get myself that fingerprinting kit the author tried while writing this one.

I haven't heard of Abu-Jaber prior to this book. What caught my eye was the cover: the play of colors of shiny burgundy (it is shiny on the actual cover) against the wallpaper, plus the black birds and branches. Couldn't keep myself from it. So who says you can't judge a book by its cover? Kidding. This isn't the first time I bought a book based on the cover and certainly wouldn't be my last. Now I want to get my hands on Abu-Jaber's other books.

And I'd like to put up a quote or two I picked up from the book but it's not here with me. I read this a couple of months ago and since then left it at home. Tsk tsk tsk. Which would probably happen with the other eight or so books I've yet to post about. So advaced apologies for those future posts as well.

Have a great week, book blogging people of the world!

Other interesting points of view:

A Series of (Un)Fortunate Reviews
Birds' Books
Fizzy Thoughts
Reviewing the Evidence
The Griffin Reviews

Murder Most Foul

American Taboo: A Murder in the Peace Corps
Philip Weiss

Ever since I was a kid I was quite familiar with the Peace Corps. My mom used to work for the local office here, as part of the local staff, decades ago and I have met a handful of volunteers who gave chocolates to me and my siblings. Of course I don't remember any of them but there are probably a handful of pictures somewhere of those years past.

Then I grew up and eventually joined a local volunteer organization myself. Maybe a part of that was due to the Peace Corps of my toddler up to early grade school years. When I grew up and eventually came to understand the nature of their work and be awed by the selflessness is indeed admirable. Plus, the chocolates. Kidding.

So it wasn't difficult for me to pick this book up and eventually be horrified at the events that took place in the mid-70s.

This really isn't about the life of a volunteer although one gets a glimpse of what it's like out there in a world outside one's comfort zone. Those are the things that I find a certain familiarity, even kinship with, as a former volunteer myself. The way I see it, all volunteers in any organization whatsover, go through a similar personal experience: the difficulty in adjusting, the language barrier, understanding the local situation, the sometimes-Messiahnic complex of the volunteer out to change the world and yet finding one's self lacking in the process, and in the end, if one is open enough, the realization that one gets more than what one gives in the process of the service year. It's a year or two of rollercoaster emotions hopefully coupled with enough insights into life in general. And it's quite tragic that Deborah Gardner didn't get that. Appalling still is the way her case was handled by those who should have been there to ensure that her family be given the justice they so desperately deserve.

A story that is buried deep in the heart of bureaucracy is probably difficult to unearth and I commend the author, Phillip Weiss, for telling the whole world the story of Debbie's murder. It started simply as a tale told to a then young Weiss, traveling in Samoa for the first time in 1978. A tale that stuck and by the time he became a journalist, he ended up looking for her - the unnamed dead girl of the tale - and started piecing together a story that is a tribute to her life and as an echoing cry for justice for her brutal death.

To say that this is hard to read is an understatement. The pages tug at your heartstrings. Threading together pieces of Deb's life from those who knew her, Weiss recreated those fateful months in Tonga, and by the time you reach that part of the murder, well, you just have to put the book down and get some fresh air. And that's not the worst part.

The worst part is actually the fact that the killer is out there in New York, right now, free as a bird. A psychopath without a criminal record. Oh, I don't know if he's still alive. I mean, the book's been published in 2004 and it's only now that I get to read it. But he's probably alive and doing well out there. And a part of me is creeped out by that fact.

The other worst part is that the organization that should have protected Deb is the one that covered it up to protect the American who committed the murder. Unbelievable. And it's right to get angry. Because right now, to get justice for Gardner's death is seemingly impossible. And the only way to at least get a semblance of justice is for others to read the story and hopefully ask that something be done somehow which again, is seemingly impossible.

Sigh.

Everytime I go on a long post slump, I think always end up posting about a tragic book. Maybe because I know that tragic stories are there to be shared so we hear the voices and somehow share the burden of those still clamoring for justice, and in the end we join that chorus.

It's a difficult read but a powerful testament to the neverending cry for justice for those who aren't among us anymore. Read this.

Other interesting points of view:

Peace Corps Writers
The Bigger Boat

Post Slump

I haven't been posting, obviously. So I changed my template today in hopes of better book blogging days ahead. If not, well, poor me.

I still can't figure out how to put all my reviews in a static page. I tried a handful of times already but it wasn't as easy as my previous template where I get to change the link directly through the html code itself. Ah well, the pretend-techie in me gave up and simply put the link at the sidebar. At least I know it's just there.

I've been reading though. At least that much I can count on.

Have a good week ahead, book blogging people of the world.