Series Saturday: The Jimmy McSwain Files

This is a series about … well, series. I do so love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies. I’ve already got a list of series I’ve recently read, re-read, watched, or re-watched that I plan to blog about. I might even, down the line, open myself up to letting other people suggest titles I should read/watch and then comment on.

As Adam Carpenter has just launched a second round of novels featuring openly gay private detective Jimmy McSwain (beginning with “Fresh Kill”), now seems the right time to chat a bit about the first five-book run in the series.

Jimmy McSwain is a private investigator operating out of Hell’s Kitchen in New York City. In a perfect world, Jimmy would be a cop just like his father before him. But our world isn’t perfect, and at age fourteen, Jimmy watched his father be murdered by an unidentified man holding up a local deli. When the NYPD stopped investigating his father’s death, Jimmy decided he’d take it upon himself as a private eye. Most of the time, Jimmy works cases for actual clients. In the first book, “Hidden Identity,” he’s hired to find missing heir Harris Rothschild, who had a falling out with his father over his “alternate” lifestyle. In book two, “Crime Wave,” he works pro bono to prove his sister’s boyfriend is innocent of murdering a man he was just seen kissing. In “Stage Fright,” a playwright receives threatening messages and the theater (at which Jimmy’s mother is head usher) hires Jimmy to find the culprit. “Guardian Angel” sees the holidays coming to NYC and Jimmy hired to protect and escort a tabloid darling. And in the finale of the first series, “Forever Haunt,” Jimmy takes on the case of an endangered mother and child and their missing husband/father. 

Each case stands very much alone. Carpenter plays fair with the reader, planting all the clues necessary to solve each case along with various mcguffins, red herrings, and sub-plots for distraction from those clues. I love that each case is markedly different in tone and stakes from the others, even though they pretty all eventually hinge on a murder of some kind. Hey, it’s a crime/mystery series—most people come for the death and stick around for the reveal, I get that – but it’s nice to have each book not always start with the hero tripping across a murder scene. It’s also nice that even though Jimmy is an openly gay detective, he doesn’t take exclusively gay-oriented cases. Yes, it’s true of the first two books (the missing heir in book one is gay, as is the sister’s boyfriend in book two), but after that the cases don’t necessarily hinge on the victim being gay. That said, there are plenty of gay tertiary characters running around for Jimmy to interact with and to draw on for help in his cases – especially the hysterically flirtation drag queen Terry Cloth and her club full of lost souls finding themselves. (I think a book set exclusively in The Dress Up Club, crime-oriented or not, would be a fun side-project for Carpenter to pursue.)

If this were an old-style mystery series, with little in the way of character development or continuing sub-plots, you’d be able to just read these five books in any order you’d like. But this is the modern age of serialization, both on television and in books, and the Jimmy McSwain Files has an over-all arc that is best read in order. Because Jimmy has that drive to solve his father’s murder after all these years (fourteen, that is. He was fourteen when his father died, and he’s twenty-eight at the start of the first book), and each book progresses that sub-plot. Hints and clues, sometimes revealed as part of Jimmy’s main case and sometimes coming from unexpected places and not always at a good time, abound. There’s forward movement towards Jimmy finding his answers and there are set-backs and road-blocks. And yes, this first series ends with an answer for Jimmy. This is not one of those series where the author never quite gets around to given the haunted main character closure. (Needless to say, I’m intrigued to see how Jimmy handles life now that his driving issue has been resolved, in the next set of novels.)

Jimmy himself is flawed. He’s a damned good detective, but he has his blind spots. His singlemindedness regarding finding his father’s killer puts him, and his loved ones, in danger. In the middle book, the clues about what happened to his father distract him from the main case and vice-versa, to the point where Jimmy barely manages to solve the main case. He’s pretty near rock-bottom, and I still think it was a brave move for the author to make, allowing the reader to see the main character essentially falling apart. Of course, that gave the author room in the final two books in the series to bring Jimmy back to the capable detective he was earlier, and that arc is also satisfactorily handled.

There’s also a romance at the heart of these books: Jimmy’s on-again, off-again relationship with Captain Francis X. Frisano of the New York City Police Department. While the biggest problem initially seems to be that Frank is not “out” to his force because it might impede his upward movement in the department, it also turns out that Frank’s father worked with Jimmy’s – and perhaps knows things he’s not telling. This adds even more tension to whether this relationship will work out. There’s also, at various points, the return of the man who broke Jimmy’s heart before the series commences and a possible new love interest. But the sexual and romantic attraction between Jimmy and Captain Frisano is palpable and multi-faceted, and the reader can’t help but root for both men to get their heads out of their asses and just get together already.  Note to the wary: Carpenter made his name writing erotica; there are sex scenes in these books, and they are fairly explicit. I personally think the books would have been perfectly fine without the sex scenes, but Carpenter knows his audience and gives them what they want.

I mentioned the sort of tertiary-level recurring characters, but I really need to talk about Jimmy’s main supporting cast: his widowed mother (still working at the same theater she’s been at since before her husband died and at which she often convinces her children to help out as ushers); his sisters (one a lawyer, one at loose ends and pregnant in the later books); his Uncle Paddy (who owns the bar above which is Jimmy’s office); and Jimmy’s mentor (his late father’s now-retired partner). Even in the first book this is a well-drawn and complicated supporting cast, and they each have something of a sub-plot arc running throughout the series. But they really get moments of their own towards the end of the run that feel real and satisfying and give Jimmy a world outside of work to complicate his life. One of my favorite aspects of each book is the time Jimmy spends with his mother and siblings around the dining room table, followed by the times Jimmy gets encouragement from his otherwise sort of old-school uncle. And of course, there’s always the shadow of Jimmy’s father: if he’d lived, would he be proud of who Jimmy is? Would he have been accepting of Jimmy’s homosexuality? It’s a question Jimmy can’t ever get an answer to. He can only hope. And I think it’s great that this series makes the point that even when we get the answers we’re looking for (as each of Jimmy’s clients does by the end of each book, and as Jimmy ultimately does at the end of the series), we never get all the answers we need.

Read the Jimmy McSwain Files if you’re looking for: a series lead whose homosexuality is not his only character trait; fair-play mysteries; solid character arcs for the main and secondary characters; a variety of types of cases that don’t fall into formula; and oh yeah, some sex.

Review of ALGORITHMIC SHAPESHIFTING

TITLE: Algorithmic Shapeshifting: Poems

AUTHOR: Bogi Takács

142 pages, Aquaduct Press, ISBN 9781619761650 (paperback/ebook)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): Algorithmic Shapeshifting is the first poetry collection of Bogi Takács, winner of the Lambda award for editing Transcendent 2: The Year's Best Transgender Speculative Fiction, and finalist for the Hugo and Locus awards. Algorithmic Shapeshifting includes poems from the past decade and previously unpublished work. The scope of the pieces extends from the present and past of Jewish life in Hungary and the United States to the far-future, outer-space reaches of the speculative—always with a sense of curiosity and wonder.

MY RATING: Four out of five stars

MY THOUGHTS: I should start out with an admission, for those who don’t already know: I am not a huge poetry reader in general, and don’t consider myself enough of such to provide deep critical analysis. I actually thought I was requesting a copy of Bogi’s upcoming debut short story collection when I asked for a review copy of this (I got the titles and release dates confused. Not anyone’s fault but my own.). This review will be more about the feelings Bogi’s work elicits than about any critical analysis of structure or style.

Obviously, if I gave the book four out of five stars, the writing affected me. There’s so much here to be moved by: so much pain and love and hope and history and speculation. As a white, gay, cisgender male born and raised in the northeast United States and in the Roman Catholic faith, most of Bogi’s poems don’t speak to my lived experience: I’m not agender trans, not an immigrant, not of the Jewish faith. I needed to approach this work at least partially from a place of understanding that I am not necessarily the intended audience, and with an eye towards listening, learning, absorbing and considering life outside my own bubble. I am so thankful to Bogi for this book, for these poems E has written and shared with us. E is not responsible for educating me, but does so with every poem, every paragraph.

Another admission: there was a time when I struggled mightily with any first-person narrative that didn’t include clear indications of the character’s gender. (Interestingly, I never had a problem with genderless or gender-fluid characters described in third-person narratives – just with stories in which I could not discern the gender of the narrator.)  I’ve long since gotten over that, and I have to thank writers like Bogi – by writing about emself, E and others expanded my horizons. (Again – not their responsibility!)

The book is divided into conceptual sections: “Trans Love Is,” “A Gentle Introduction to Talmudic Argument Structure,” “Daily Dispatches From the Land of the Free,” “The Up-and-Out.”  You can guess what you’re going to get in each section, and you’re mostly right.

“Trans Love Is” is mostly poems that describe, sometimes obliquely and sometimes straightforwardly, the experience of being trans, agender, neuroatypical.  Not that Takács’ experience is everyone’s experience, which the author acknowledges in “The Handcrafted Motions of Flight.” The narrator remembers pasts and presents: “some are me, some only similar to myself / and some carry more of me / than my self living and writing in the present.” The same poem, just a few lines later, addresses how some people just can’t accept the form of the messenger: “They are bothered by the pronouns.” (There are more subtle references to anti-trans and anti-gender-neutral sentiment throughout the book, and more obvious references as well. But this one, coming after a stanza in which the pronouns used are E and eir, is particularly powerful for its brevity, for what it leaves understood but unstated (that it’s more than just the pronouns, and the people in question are likely more than just “bothered,” which is a mild word for what anyone not cisgendered is likely to face). The poem from which this section of the book derives its title, “Trans Love Is” is a list type of poem that shows that Trans Love is, in the end, really not different from “straight love” or “gay love:” buying non-dairy items and blackberry sage tea for the ones you love, microwaving hot dogs and taking joy in the gigglecry of your child. It’s verbal shorthand between partners. It’s finding the commonality of the spaces between labels. It might be my favorite poem in the collection because it is everyday-sweet with a tinge of the wider world’s lack of acceptance (“Trans love elicits surveillance”) and a dollop of neuroatypicality (“the burning desire to do FIVE loads of laundry / and tell the interrogation officer / there are no terrorists in Hungary”). The poem that lends the collection’s title, “Seven Handy Ideas for Algorithmic Shapeshifting,” is also wonderful, subversion couched in fantasy terms. And I would love to see “The Iterative Nature of the Magical Discovery Process” performed live; it’s powerful in written form and I can only imagine how much more powerful it could be when spoken out loud and coupled with creative lighting.

Looking over the section titled “A Gentle Introduction to Talmudic Argument Structure,” I’m not sure it was quite accidental that I read this book just before Barbara Krasnoff’s mosaic novel The History of Soul 2065, as random as the choices seemed at the time. Both deal heavily in Jewish tradition and how it migrates from the Old World (in Krasnoff’s stories, Germany and Ukraine, in Takács’ poems, Hungary) to the New (for Krasnoff, mostly New York City, for Takács, mostly Kansas). Takács draws more directly from the Talmud and Rabbinic teachings than Krasnoff does. The poems touch on reconstructive surgery, reincarnation, interacting with harmful spirits, exploring other planets, and our responsibility to pass on the knowledge of our forebears to our descendants, all through that lens of Jewish faith and history. This section made me want to reread what the tradition I grew up in calls the Old Testament, but also to talk more deeply with my Jewish friends about these poems and about their faith in general.

The poems in the section titled “Daily Dispatches from the Land of the Free” are more political in nature. I am unsure if “Radiation Hormesis” is really about life in Eastern Europe right after the Chernobyl disaster, or if I’m making the connection because Chernobyl is back in the public consciousness thanks to the HBO mini-series: but either way, the poem’s description of outdoor desolation and indoor claustrophobia and the “how bad could it really be” mentally that so many of us exhibit when confronted with something that’s designated dangerous but isn’t visibly so is deeply moving. I had tears welling while reading and rereading this one. “Replicate Personal Experience” starts out as a description of being the lonely, different, new kid in town, but takes a SFnal twist that opens the poem up to even more meaning. “The Oracle of DARPA” put me in mind of Orwell, of the double-speak of 1984 and how it can be used for good or ill.

The poems in “The Up-and-Out” are perhaps more future-looking that the other sections, with focuses on bonding with colony worlds, the limited bounds of memory and physicality. “You Are Here / Was: Blue Line to Memorial Park” is an interactive poem meant to be viewed and read, blending computer science with the art of poetry.

I got a lot out of this collection and as I said, I’m not a big fan of reading poetry. I think people who love poetry will get a lot more out of it that I did, and I highly recommend it.

Sunday Shorts: Three from Analog

Sunday Shorts is a series where I blog about short fiction – from flash to novellas. For the time being, I’m sticking to prose, although it’s been suggested I could expand this feature to include single episodes of anthology television series like The Twilight Zone or individual stories/issues of anthology comics (like the 1970s DC horror or war anthology titles). So anything is possible. But for now, the focus is on short stories.

This week, let’s take a look at three very different stories, by three very talented writers, from the May/June 2019 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact:

1.       “On Stony Ground,” by Cynthia Ward. Although the tone and narrator’s voice are completely different, Ward’s newest bit of alternate history somehow put me in mind of one of my favorite alternate history mosaic novels, Robert Silverberg’s Roma Eterna. In Ward’s tale, the civil engineer responsible for completing a major rail line has her day of glory overshadowed by a Nazoraian prophetai’s arrival. We as readers only hear a little of what the teacher speaks, but it’s enough to know who he is, what he has to say, and how his lessons are powerful to rich and poor alike, no matter the timeline in which they are taught. I found the story enhanced by the author’s use of as much Latin as possible, even for names and titles that we’re more accustomed to hearing in Romanticized or Anglo form; it would be easier to use the more familiar forms but that would take away from the sense that this is a world similar to but removed from our own. The narrator, Berenike, is a strong Aithiopian princess-turned-engineer with very clear opinions about how the world should be that the author plays against a real-world political-religious situation of the time. The author subtly shows that her alternate Roman empire is quite diverse not only in terms of who can rise to power but what’s socially acceptable (Berenike comments that her cousin Iakobos is chatting up one of her “better looking officers,” clearly a male … so it would see homosexuality is not taboo in this world, for instance.) I’m not sure if Ward has told other stories in this alternate history – but I’d enjoy seeing them.

2.       “Repairs at the Beijing West Space Elevator,” by Alex Shvartsman. This is a nice piece of science fiction that focuses on infrastructure, customer service, the blame-game and crowd control. Phrased like that, it doesn’t sound like compelling stuff, but Shvartsman pulls it all together through the eyes of an exploration fleet engineer tasked with finding the cause of a power-fluctuation problem at the busiest space elevator on Earth – during one of the busiest holidays of the year. The tale is briskly told, the problem and solution uncovered fairly quickly with no distracting complicating drama. This gives the author space to concentrate on the “fish out of water” aspect of the main character, who is so accustomed to fleet life that the teeming masses of humanity on the space elevator terminal gives him anxiety and a bit of claustrophobia. Combining a character who has a common (but not often written about in sf) anxiety with a set of behind-the-scenes problems that are not usually the focus of sf novels is a great way to get the reader to care about both, especially in a story that is not any longer than it needs to be.

3.       “Painting the Massive Planet, by Marissa Lingen. Lingen’s nameless narrator looks at various artistic movements’ attempts to truly capture the majesty and life of the planet Jupiter and how they all somehow fall short. Or do they? Is art meant to exist in a vacuum or interact with its surroundings?  At first blush, the story seems to be about the effect of science on the arts (and possibly by implication vice-versa), but I think it’s more about the effect of art, and artists, on each other: how we build off of each other, are inspired by each other, and how each of our chosen genres/styles/takes on a topic helps build a more complete picture of the whole. (Note: I am always impressed by anyone who can not only write flash- or drabble-length fiction, but even more so when they can pack so much to think about in such a small space and still tell a compelling character and plot driven story. Kudos, Marissa!)

Review of UPON A BURNING THRONE

TITLE: Upon A Burning Throne (The Burnt Empire Saga, Book One)

AUTHOR: Ashok K. Banker

669 pages, John Joseph Adams Books / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ISBN 9781328916280 (Hardcover and e-book)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): From international sensation Ashok K. Banker, pioneer of the fantasy genre in India, comes the first book in a ground-breaking, epic fantasy series inspired by the ancient Indian classic, The Mahabharata.

In a world where demigods and demons walk among mortals, the Emperor of the vast Burnt Empire has died, leaving a turbulent realm without an emperor. Two young princes, Adri and Shvate, are in line to rule, but birthright does not guarantee inheritance: For any successor must sit upon the legendary Burning Throne and pass The Test of Fire. Imbued with dark sorceries, the throne is a crucible—one that incinerates the unworthy.
 
Adri and Shvate pass The Test and are declared heirs to the empire… but there is another with a claim to power, another who also survives: a girl from an outlying kingdom. When this girl, whose father is the powerful demonlord Jarsun, is denied her claim by the interim leaders, Jarsun declares war, vowing to tear the Burnt Empire apart—leaving the young princes Adri and Shvate to rule a shattered realm embroiled in rebellion and chaos....

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: I mostly burned out on “epics” of all genres about a decade ago, give or take. Books topping out over 600 pages (many significantly over) just stopped appealing to me. The most “recent” book in George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series sits unread alongside a good number of Stephen King’s recent novels and countless others I bought with every good intention. Then in 2015 Ken Liu’s The Grace of Kings, the first novel in his Dandelion Dynasty series, came along, and I realized that maybe the issue was less the size of the books and more the content – the idea that no matter how good the writing or beloved the author (and believe me, I love Stephen King’s work), I got tired of reading the same types of epics. This idea was cemented by my great enjoyment of Dylan Struzan’s A Bloody Business (a Prohibition tale writ as sweeping, operatic epic if ever there was one) and now of Ashok K. Banker’s Upon A Burning Throne.

I was prepared to like Upon A Burning Throne because of how much I enjoyed Banker’s “Legends of the Burnt Empire” short stories (novelettes?) in recent issues of Lightspeed Magazine. While you can read this novel without reading those stories, they do provide a lot of the world-building backbone. Past events hinted at in the novel are given full detail in the stories, which build with a growing sense of inevitability to the event that directly precedes the opening scene of the novel: the birth of the princes Adri and Shvate.

If there’s one thing the Liu and Banker books have in common, it’s that their structural (if not narrative) basis is in epic poetry of the distant past as opposed to the epic fantasy tropes of more recent times. There’s little, if any, trace of Tolkien here, but plenty of moments that put me in mind of The Iliad (which I have read) and what I’ve heard of the Mahabharata (which I haven’t read). Gods and demi-gods abound in Liu and Banker’s books, directly and indirectly affecting key moments in human history, but there’s nary an orc or dragon to be found. Which to me is just damned refreshing.

The book is sweeping in time-span (covering more than 20 years of character time), in location (cities and sub-nations across the Krushan Empire and their warring neighbor Reygistan) and in cast (by my count 14 major/important characters, almost as many secondary characters who momentarily get the spotlight, and a score of gods and goddesses). Epic is not an overstatement or a cliché here.

Like many ancient epic poems, Banker does not always reveal events in chronological order, sometimes breaking off mid-battle or mid-political-intrigue to introduce a new character and give their backstory only when they become important to the narrative. In lesser hands, this could make the story disjointed or make it feel disorganized. Banker handles it with a deft ease that belies how hard this kind of storytelling actually is, and the shifts in point-of-view actually heighten, rather than confuse or diminish, the reader’s interest. Every time the story took a seemingly disconnected jump to a new character or new place, I found myself eagerly asking how this was going to tie back to the main story. And it always did. It all does. There’s not a wasted scene. And while Banker may be laying the seeds of future volumes throughout this one, not a single seeming digression fails to loop back to the main narrative before the book’s final pages.

Okay, that’s not completely true. There is one character introduced in a major way in the prologue who I thought would be an important presence throughout this book but who disappears almost immediately. Even once I recognized the absence in scenes the character surely should have been present for, it didn’t bother me; something has to held back for Book Two (currently due in the spring of 2020) after all.

Although there are, as I mentioned, over a dozen main characters to contend with, the real focus is on the Princes Adri and Shvate – one blind, the other albino – and their struggles to prove they are capable of leading the vast Krushan Empire (note: not whether they are worthy – that issue is settled in the prologue – but whether they are capable; two very different concerns). If there is any similarity to the high/Euro-centric fantasy of Tolkien and Martin, it is in this. The Princes are viewed as “disabled” and thus, like Tolkien’s Hobbits, not seen as capable of accomplishing the task set before them. Other strive to convince them they should hand the task over to someone(s) more “normally-abled.” Like Frodo and Sam, Adri and Shvate have moments where their so-called disadvantages are what saves the day, moments where they fail, and moments where they are buoyed by loved ones or boon companions. Like Martin’s Stark siblings, the Princes are good men buffeted by the political machinations of less-good to downright-evil people. Also like Martin’s characters and like the protagonists of so many ancient epics, the Princes and their closest allies are good but not perfect. They make mistakes; are lustful and insecure and bold by turn; they are sometimes incisive and sometimes oblivious. In short, they are real people rather than archetypes. I can’t think of a single character, other than perhaps the “big bad” Jarsun, who fails to reveal complexity as the action progresses.

Up until now, I’ve only read some of Banker’s short stories (not all of them connected to this book) and enjoyed them all. Upon A Burning Throne has inspired me to seek out more of Banker’s novels. Yes, even if they’re more than 600 pages long!

Sunday Shorts: Three Holmes Tales

Sunday Shorts is a series where I blog about short fiction – from flash to novellas. For the time being, I’m sticking to prose, although it’s been suggested I could expand this feature to include single episodes of anthology television series like The Twilight Zone or individual stories/issues of anthology comics (like the 1970s DC horror or war anthology titles). So anything is possible. But for now, the focus is on short stories.

Since my most recent book review was about the first adventures of a Holmes pastiche/stand-in named Solar Pons, and since I’ve been trying to make my way through accumulated magazine back-issues to clear them out of my apartment, I thought I’d make three Holmes tales by authors other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the subject of today’s Sunday Shorts.

Even before most of the Holmes canon entered Public Domain, authors have published further adventures of the Great Detective and his friends. Some had authorization from the Conan Doyle Estate and some didn’t. For many years now, the revived Strand Magazine has published Holmes tales by other authors. As with novels and short story collections written about Holmes, the stories in the Strand come with various levels of quality, creativity, and respect for the canon. These are three I particularly liked; two of them are even connected to stories written by Conan Doyle himself, and all three are narrated by someone other than Doctor Watson (two by Holmes himself, a rarity in the original canon).

1.       NOTES UPON THE DIADEM CLUB AFFAIR by Lyndsay Faye, from the October 2015 issue of The Strand.  I don’t think I’ve failed to enjoy a Holmes tale penned by Lyndsay Faye (I also keep meaning to read her non-Holmes novels but just haven’t gotten there yet). This one was no exception. It’s a bit light on showing Holmes’ actual deductive abilities, being a more playful tale. Holmes narrates his own meeting with a society fop named Lord Chesley Templeton, who invites him to be a special guest at a meeting of a very special private club. Holmes declines, not wanting to be anyone’s pet monkey, until a letter from Brother Mycroft changes his mind. Holmes and Watson learn more about Templeton, stop a crime, and Watson encounters a Baroness with an interest in writing. Holmes’ disdain for Templeton’s easily-seen-through disguise at the first meeting is set against his own dramatic way of getting Watson to accompany him, just one of several character-driven moments that made me smile. (Fellow fans of Philip Jose Farmer’s Wold Newton Family may find humorous Watson’s implication that the Baroness who cameos ends up basing her most famous character on someone from this tale; I wrote it off as Watson purposefully misguiding readers.)

2.       AN ACTUAL TREASURE by David Marcum, from the October 2017 issue of The Strand. Marcum’s tale is also narrated by Holmes via his own journal entries, and also ties back to a very important case in the Holmes canon, the one in which Holmes and Watson first met Mary Morstan (later the First Mrs. Watson). Marcum brings Inspectors Jones and LeStrade into the story as well as the Baker Street Irregulars (and one in particular named Levi), and while the story is again sort of light on Holmes’ deductive abilities, it provides a very satisfactory follow-up to what happened to the jewels that went missing at the end of that earlier case. Marcum also showcases aspects of Holmes’ personality other chroniclers sometimes overlook or ignore: his patience and paternal feeling towards children, his respect for Mrs. Hudson, the fact that although Holmes always claims not to theorize before all the facts are in he actually does it quite often in the original canon (near the end of this tale, Holmes comments “I had formed seven theories about what might have occurred, and while this wasn’t the most probable of them, it was my favorite.”). There’s even a winking mention of Praed Street, although this is many years before Solar Pons and Doctor Parker will take up residence on that thoroughfare.

3.       LADY HILDA REVEALED by Bonnie MacBird, from the October 2018 issue of the Strand. This is a different king of Holmes pastiche, told in the form of a letter from a society lady to Doctor Watson. Also her husband has long since passed away, “Lady Hilda Trelawny Hope” maintains the fictitious identity Watson gave her when he published Holmes’ “Adventure of the Second Stain,” but strives to correct the good doctor on a number of points regarding how she was portrayed. This could easily have been a poke at officious society types, but instead MacBird gives us an intimate portrait of a woman who could, under other circumstances, have been just as strong a foil for Holmes as Irene Adler, Mary Morstan, or Violet Hunter. It’s a wonderful character piece that expands on the original story without ever making Holmes or Watson look bad.

Review of IN RE SHERLOCK HOLMES

TITLE: In Re: Sherlock Holmes: The Adventures of Solar Pons (Solar Pons #1)

AUTHOR: August Derleth

288 pages, Belanger Books, ISBN 9781720599623 (paperback, ebook, audiobook)

DESCRIPTION: (from the Publisher’s description): Once again in old London, "the game is afoot." In these pastiches of the Sacred Writings, written when he was nineteen and twenty, August Derleth has recreated the London of Sherlock Holmes. It does not matter that the familiar name has become Solar Pons, or that the familiar Baker Street has become Praed Street — something of the nostalgic charm and fascination, of the remembered quickening of the pulse and the familiar settings of the original London of Sherlock Holmes, has been recaptured in these pages. And what intriguing titles there arc to these twelve pastiches, chosen from among a greater number! Here are "The Adventure of the Frightened Baronet" — about a spectral image of Siva seen at a country estate beyond London; "The Adventure of the Purloined Periapt" — which is the purest of pastiches and perhaps the closest of all the tales in this book to the original spirit; "The Adventure of the Norcross Riddle" —containing some of the neatest deduction in the book; "The Adventure of the Man with the Broken Face" — a tale of "dark waters"; and eight others. "No doubt," writes Vincent Starrett in his Introduction, "we — and by we, I mean those frantic and incurable Sherlockians who, with August Derleth, deplore the paucity of canonical entertainments — should rather have more of the great originals, but we accept the imitations, faute de mieux, to satisfy a normal appetite. And we accept them with enthusiasm. They are the work of affectionate minds and hands. There is no intention to deceive. These stories, and others in their field, are intended only to please. They are nostalgic reminders of vanished days and nights in Baker Street."

MY RATING: four out of five stars

MY THOUGHTS: I’m sure I knew of Solar Pons, as one of the many Sherlock Holmes pastiches I read in middle and high school. But I didn’t really become consciously aware of him, or just how many stories comprise the Pontine Canon, until I started regularly haunting used book stores and participating in various pulp magazine and “Wold Newton Universe” online groups about a decade and a half ago. Whether the Pontine Canon is composed only of the original stories by August Derleth or includes the later stories written by Basil Copper is for more knowledgeable minds than mine to debate; I bought all of the Pons 70s paperbacks I could find in those used bookstores with the intent of reading the whole series once I had them all. What inspired me to finally start (having finally read/listened to the entire Holmesian canon in order a few years ago) is the re-issue of the Derleth books by Belanger Books under the editorship of Pons expert David Marcum. And, more specifically, the offer from the publisher of a free audiobook of this first book in the series in exchange for an honest review.

For those not in the know (and who somehow missed the book description just above): August Derleth created Solar Pons to be the successor to Sherlock Holmes. Pons and his amanuensis, Doctor Lyndon Parker, are very much like their literary predecessors -- Derleth wasn't trying to create something new and daring, but was rather paying tribute to characters who had given him so much joy and for whom new adventures would not be forthcoming (I wonder, did Derleth ever suspect the overwhelming amount of new Holmes fiction that would be written, authorized or otherwise, after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s passing? Did Derleth suspect that there would be more Pons stories written and published beyond his originals?)

The stories in this first collection, therefore, feel very much like Derleth writing Doyle: the stories are short and punchy; Parker spends a few paragraphs in each story talking about Pons’ amazing skills of ratiocination; Pons constantly tries to get Parker to deduce what’s really going on but of course the Chronicler is, if not clueless, at least not as intuitive as his friend. There are detectives and beat cops from Scotland Yard who are impressed by the detective but also a bit off-put by him; there’s a criminal mastermind with hinted-at history that we never quite get enough information about; there are even street-urchin “Irregulars” to help Pons in situations where multiple suspects need to be under surveillance.

It sounds sort of derivative, doesn’t it? And yet … in the reading, it doesn’t feel derivative at all. Derleth’s narrative voice, through Lyndon Parker, is lighter than Doyle’s, less serious but not lacking in tension.  The Pons-Parker dynamic is a bit more playful than that of their predecessors, without sacrificing the mutual respect they have. Pons’ relationship with Scotland Yard is less condescending (although he still pokes at the fact that he can find clues they seem incapable of finding on their own), and so the various officers’ attitude to Pons is more openly respectful. And Derleth doesn’t wait until he’s ready to kill his lead character off to introduce an arch-nemesis: Baren Ennesfred Kroll is mentioned in one story in this collection and actually appears in another. I assume he recurs in later volumes as well.

Steve White’s narration of the audiobook is at its best in the voices of Parker and Pons, who feel distinct from each other (Pons is a little more nasal in delivery, Parker a bit broader-toned). I didn’t always feel like the supporting character voices worked; some felt like the accent was more South African, some felt at odds with the character descriptions (for instance, Parker describes in one story a beautiful young woman as their client, but White’s character voice is more middle-age matronly). But overall, White does a wonderful job keeping the stories tense and exciting, and finding the humor in both Parker and Pons’ lines where appropriate.

This first Solar Pons collection is full of fun mysteries, some more predictable than others, with an engaging lead detective and sidekick. If you’ve read all of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, you’re likely to enjoy this as a follow-up. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series, or listening if Belanger Books brings out more audiobook editions.

SUNDAY SHORTS: Abyss & Apex 70

Sunday Shorts is a series where I blog about short fiction – from flash to novellas. For the time being, I’m sticking to prose, although it’s been suggested I could expand this feature to include single episodes of anthology television series like The Twilight Zone or individual stories/issues of anthology comics (like the 1970s DC horror or war anthology titles). So anything is possible. But for now, the focus is on short stories.

I received a review copy of this spring’s issue of Abyss and Apex magazine and here, finally, are some brief thoughts on the stories contained therein:

1. EXHIBIT K by Nadia Afifi. A woman wakes up and finds that she’s not only famous for what she did during wartime but also that she’s become an interactive museum exhibit opposite her most hated enemy. I won’t give away the how of the situation (I really hate spoiling short story twists), but I can say it’s not your standard “person from the past adjusts to an unexpected future” story. The author stays firmly in the viewpoint of the main character, Selma Carmichael, allowing the reader to experience this strange new world alongside her – which means any answers Selma doesn’t get (about how the world got the way it is) the reader doesn’t get either. And while in other stories that might bother me, it doesn’t here because of how much else is going on: the reveals about Selma and her enemy’s pasts, the reveal of what the museum curators are really up to – it’s all very well done and very well paced, with tons of concrete physical and sensory details to help the reader feel connected to the world and to Selma.

2. THE BIRDS THAT FLEW IN WARTIME by Tamoha Sengupta. The second story in the issue is far more ephemeral that the first; alternating points of view and style. Some sections are very middle-Eastern fable-like in tone, while others are more modern in voice. The full story comes together in bits and pieces, and there’s a lot for the reader to speculate about. There are some poetic, beautiful turns-of-phrase throughout.

3. A MISSED DIVERSION by R.S. Alexander.  The third story in the issue veers away from hard SF and ephemeral fantasy into the realm of sf-crime. The setting is clearly the near future, but the story is centered on a man in hiding trying to solve the mystery of a friend’s death – by blackmailing the person he thinks committed the crime. It’s a bit of a crime thriller, a bit of a corporate espionage thriller – and a very, very insular story told mostly through transmitted dialogue between our main character and his target. It felt like it would be equally at home in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine or Asimov’s.

4. ARS POETICA by David F. Shultz.  This was my favorite story in the issue. Sort-of near-future, not-quite post-apocalyptic setting in which the people with the best chance of saving the human race from falling to robot infiltrators are … writers. Well, poets, specifically. It seems the one aspect of humanity the robots (called bugs for the way they attach to and take over humans) can’t quite imitate is the writing of poetry. So communities survive or fall based on their ability to sniff out who is really writing poetry and who is plagiarizing. Scenes discussing the nature of creativity (nature vs. nurture) alternate with serious dissections of the taking in of refugees who may or may not be what they seem, all mixed with several high-energy, high-body-count, very bloody human vs. robot encounters that felt original in the way they were executed. All the stories in the issue are enjoyable, but this one especially kept me thinking long after I was done reading it.

5. SIBLING SQUABBLES by Gregg Chamberlain. This is a very funny bit of flash fiction about a father trying to explain to a daughter why using magic on her magic-less sibling is not acceptable. It’s classic parent-sibling head-butting, enhanced by sharp dialogue and winking references to a variety of television and literary wizards and witches (I think I got all of them, but I’m not sure), and even a kind of nod (I think) to a Disney live-action classic film from the 60s. I smiled all the way through this one.

6. THE GIFTED SOMMELLIER by Grayson Bray Morris.  The fiction portion of the issue ends with a heart-breaking bit of flash fiction about a wine sommelier with a very specific job to do. I hate to say too much, but the lush detail in such a short piece really sets the mood excellently, and the end brought a tear to my eye.

Issue #70 of Abyss & Apex also has a poetry section – but as I’m not an avid poetry reader, I don’t feel qualified to review or discuss the seven poems or the artwork that accompanies them.

Reading Round-Up: April 2019

Continuing the monthly summaries of what I’ve been reading.

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues and stand-alone short stories in e-book format as “books.” I read or listened to 7 books in April: 2 in print, 2 in e-book format, and 3 in audio. They were:

1.      Lightspeed Magazine #107 (April 2019 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual fine assortment of sf and fantasy short stories and novellas. This month’s favorites for me were Caroline M. Yoachim’s “The Archronology of Love,” Mathew Corradi’s “Gundark Island or, Tars Tarkas Needs Your Help,” Shweta Adhyam’s “A Conch-Shell’s Notes,” Carrie Vaughn’s “The Lady of Shallot,” and Ashok K. Banker’s “The Seeds of War.”

2.       Drama Queen (Nicky & Noah Mystery #1), by Joe Cosentino.  The first in a mystery series starring a pair of gay college professors as amateur sleuths has the body count of a crime novel but the tone of a cattier version of cozy mysteries. It’s a light, fun read, and I’m planning to read or listen to the rest of the series at some point.

3.       Sakina’s Restaurant, by Aasif Mandvi. The story of a half-dozen different Indian characters who own or work at the titular restaurant, performed as a one-man show by the author. Not every character portrait works, and the sound design sometimes allows the background to overwhelm the actual dialogue. I think I’d have enjoyed it better if I saw it performed onstage.

4.       A Bloody Business, by Dylan Struzan, with chapter art by Drew Struzan.  Dylan Struzan conducted 50 hours of recorded interviews with crime family member Jimmy Alo, with the understanding that she wouldn’t publish her work until after he was dead. This is an epic piece of creative non-fiction, weaving in Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegal, Al Capone and more. Fascinating. FULL REVIEW HERE.

5.       The Poor Clare by Elizabeth Gaskell. A gothic horror novella that’s light on the actual horror but strong on the suspense. It was just the right length for the story being told (man learns of the tragic history of a woman, her daughter, and her granddaughter).

6.       Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne, narrated by Jim Dale.  I’m positive I read this in elementary school, but I had absolutely no memory of the events of the story. I kept waiting for a hot air balloon ride that never happened (thanks, movie versions!) and didn’t remember the subplot with Inspector Fix at all. It’s a fun travelogue with quite a few adventure scenes, but of course is also replete with the stererotypes and racism of the era. Jim Dale’s warm, friendly narration makes it almost too easy to ignore the less palatable parts.

7.       F is For Fairy edited by Rhonda Parrish. The sixth in Parrish’s “alphabet anthology” series has 26 stories centered around all kinds of fairies, with tones ranging from comedic to dark, at lengths from flash to almost-novella. Not every story was a total winner to me, but I liked the majority of them. FULL REVIEW HERE.

So only 7 books in April. Not my most prolific reading month of late.

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 365 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) each year. Here’s what I did read and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too (with some short notes for stories that really stood out to me). If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it:

1.       “The Archronology of Love” by Caroline M. Yoachim, from Lightspeed Magazine #107 (April 2019 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams.

2.       “To Market, To Market: The Branding of Billy Bailey” by Cory Doctorow

3.       “Gundark Island or, Tars Tarkas Needs Your Help” by Matthew Corradi

4.       “The She-Wolf’s Hidden Grin” by Michael Swanwick

5.       “Blur” by Carmen Maria Machado

6.       “The Seeds of War” by Ashok K. Banker

7.       “The Lady of Shallot” by Carrie Vaughn

8.       “A Conch-Shell’s Notes” by Shweta Adhyam

9.       “The Speed of Belief” by Robert Reed

10.   “Of Strange Oaths” by Seanan McGuire, on the author’s Patreon page.

11.   “Exhibit K” by Nadia Afifi, from Abyss & Apex 2nd Quarter 2019 issue, edited by Wendy S. Dalmater

12.   “The Birds That Flew in Wartime” by Tamoah Sengupta

13.   “A Missed Diversion” by R.S. Alexander

14.    “Ars Poetica” by David F. Shultz

15.   “Sibling Squabbles” by Gregg Chamberlain

16.   “The Gifted Sommellier” by Grayson Bray Morris

17.   “A is for Apple, Who is Love” by L.S. Johnson, from F is for Fairy (Alphabet Anthologies #6), edited by Rhonda Parrish

18.   “B is for Burned” by C.S. MacCath

19.   “C is for Contract” by Jonathan C. Parrish

20.   “D is for Diplomacy” by Jeanne Kramer-Smyth

21.   “E is for Elfshot” by Pete Aldin

22.   “F is for Family” by Steve Bornstein

23.   “G is for Gentry” by Stephanie A. Cain

24.   “H is for Heartkeeper” by Suzanne J. Willis

25.   “I is for Imputation” by Joseph Halden

26.   “J is for Jabberwocky” by Alexandria Seidel

27.   “K is for Kin” by Cory Cone

28.   “L is for Leaving” by Lynn Hardaker

29.   “M is for Maturity” by Rachel M. Thompson

30.   “N is for Neverland” by Brittany Warman

31.   “O is for Oasis” by Lilah Ward

32.   “P is for Promised One” by Michael B. Tager

33.   “Q is for Quiet” by Danielle Davis

34.   “R is for Rusalka” by Megan Englehardt

35.   “S is for Savior” by Samantha Kymmell-Harvey

36.   “T is for Titania” by Sara Cleto

37.   “U is for Unseelie Court” by Andrew Bourelle

38.   “V is for Verisimilitude” by BD Wilson

39.   “W is for Wear Wigs” by Laura VanArendonk Baugh

40.   “X is for Xanadu” by Michael M. Jones

41.   “Y is for Your Song” by Michael Fosburg

42.   “Z is for Zamboni” by Beth Cato

So that’s 42 short stories in April, putting me now slightly ahead for the year so far. (April 30th was the 120th day of 2019.)

Summary of Reading Challenges:

“To Be Read” Challenge: This month: 0 read; YTD: 2 of 14 read.

365 Short Stories Challenge: This month:  42 read; YTD: 130 of 365 read.

Graphic Novels Challenge:  This month: 0 read; YTD: 14 of 52 read.

Goodreads Challenge: This month: 7 read; YTD: 50 of 125 read.

Non-Fiction Challenge: This month: 1; YTD: 4 of 24 read.

Read the Book / Watch the Movie Challenge: This month: 0; YTD: 0 of 10 read/watched.

Complete the Series Challenge: This month: 0 books read; YTD: 0 of 16 read.

                                                                Series fully completed: 0 of 3 planned

Monthly Special Challenge: I may not do something like this every month, but I set an April goal to try to read primarily books from small press publishers, and I didn’t do good job of it at all (partially due to the smaller number of books read and to commitments to be kept). a pretty decent job of it. Of the 7 books I read, only 3 qualify as from small presses (Drama Queen from Lethe Press; The Poor Clare reissued by Melville House; F is for Fairy from Poise and Pen Publishing). Of the 42 stories, the majority came from small presses (Poise and Pen Publishing: 26; author Patreon: 1; Abyss & Apex magazine: 6; if Lightspeed Magazine counts as a small press among spec-fic magazine publishers, then all of April’s short stories came from small presses of some kind.)

May’s challenge: May is short story month, so the goal is to read mostly anthologies, collections, and novellas. May is also Asian/Pacific Islander Heritage Month and Jewish-American Heritage Month. I’m going to try to read some non-fiction in those areas this month as well.

Review of F IS FOR FAIRY

TITLE: F Is For Fairy (Alphabet Anthologies #6)

EDITOR: Rhonda Parrish

440 pages, Poise and Pen Publishing, ISBN 9781988233543 (softcover and e-book)

Description: “Anyone who believes that faeries are wee, golden-haired creatures with dragon-fly wings and sweet intentions has never met a real faerie.” –Suzanne Willis, “A Silver Thread Between Worlds”

Retellings of familiar favorites from new perspectives, and brand-new stories share the pages of this fairy-themed collection. Within these offerings you’ll find fairy music and food, contracts (making and breaking them), changelings, circles and curses–these stories deliver all the things you already love about fairies and a few new tricks as well. A dusting of dragons, shapeshifters and ogres accompany these tales which include feminist fairies overcoming trauma, Norse fairies breaking the rules to interfere in human affairs, intergalactic fairies hitching a ride to a new home, political satire featuring an idiot king and talking animals, a new Robin Archer story, fairy run nightclubs and so, so much more.

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Thoughts: Disclaimer: I received a free Advanced Review Copy of this title via Booksprout in return for an honest review on multiple platforms. This is a more detailed version of the review left on Goodreads, Amazon, etc.

F Is for Fairy continues Rhonda Parrish's greatly enjoyable "alphabet anthology" series with 26 stories ranging from flash fiction to almost novella length. Of course, not every story will work for every reader. But the majority of these worked for me.

The authors give us a wide variety of types of faeries, from the high fantasy/Tolkeinesque to tiny troublemakers of the Disney variety. L.S. Johnson’s “A” story treats us to a tweak of the Sleeping Beauty myth that makes the narrative even more timely and topical, touching on gaslighting, victims keeping secrets and women finding power in each other, while Brittany Warman’s “N” is a very dark take on Peter Pan. Sara Cleto’s “T” is not a tweak on a Disney-fication of darker tales but is a really cool tweak on certain events in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Pete Aldin’s “E” brings Irish pixies to colonial Australia, touching on inherited and learned prejudices and how easy it is to lose your family history, while Samantha Kymmell-Harvey’s “S” brings World War One to a small French fairy enclave. C.S.  MacCath’s “B” gives us warrior elves of the Nordic variety encountering Church-guided bigotry in the not-so-distant-as-it-seems past. Steve Bornstein’s “F” is perhaps the most High Fantasy concept (a lost fairy is led by a friendly dragon to the only person who can send him home: the Scourge of Dragons) but contains some creative world-building that moves it beyond the glut of formulaic High Fantasy on the market.

One of the few comedic contributions is Jonathan C. Parrish’s “C,” centered around the idea of elves loving to make deals, and all the ways in which greed and rash decisions can make those contracts go wrong. Equally humorous is Michael B. Tager’s “P,” a twist on portal and prophecy tales.

Urban fantasy is well represented. In Stephanie A. Cain’s “G,” we meet Lucy Ruiz and see how she learns about the world of werewolves and fairies that interacts with our own. If this isn’t an origin story for an on-going character, I’ll be greatly surprised. The story has charm and Lucy has real spark with the werewolf character. Laura VanArendonk Baugh’s “W” is touted as “the latest Robin Archer” story. I’m not familiar with the series but based on this story I need to check it out. It’s urban fantasy with a crime noir twist that’s a bit darker than the faux-noir of the Harry Dresden series. (Actually, I can easily see Robin Archer and October Daye teaming up.) But not all of the urban fantasy tales feel like parts of series: Michael M. Jones’ “X” and Lilah Ward’s “O” tales both take place in nightclubs where human girls encounter Ladies of the Fae – but that’s about all they have in common, and both are excellent.

Then there are those genre-blending stories that every anthology needs to have. In Jeanne Kramer-Smyth’s “D,” aliens encounter fairies; Beth Cato’s “Z” brings us to the end of human civilization and how the elves might have both caused it and try to preserve it, and BD Wilson’s “V” posits a post-apocalyptic society guided by fairies.

Notice I'm not sharing story titles: part of the fun of Parrish's anthologies is figuring out what word the author is centering the story on with the letter they were assigned. Some of them might be easy to guess just from the short descriptions I’ve given, but I think most will be a pleasant surprise.

Review of A BLOODY BUSINESS

TITLE: A Bloody Business: The Rise of Organized Crime in America

AUTHOR: Dylan Struzan

640 pages, Hard Case Crime, ISBN 9781785657702 (hardcover)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): On the 100th anniversary of Prohibition, learn what really happened. In 1919, the National Prohibition Act was passed, making it illegal across America to produce, distribute, or sell liquor. With this act, the U.S. Congress also created organized crime as we know it. Italian, Jewish, and Irish mobs sprang up to supply the suddenly illegal commodity to the millions of people still eager to drink it. Men like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, Dutch Schultz and Bugsy Siegel, Al Capone in Chicago and Nucky Johnson in Atlantic City, waged a brutal war for power in the streets and on the waterfronts. But if you think you already know this story… think again, since you’ve never seen it through the eyes of one of the mobsters who lived it.

Called “one of the most significant organized crime figures in the United States” by the U.S. District Attorney, Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo was just fifteen years old when Prohibition became law. Over the next decade, Alo would work side by side with Lansky and Luciano as they navigated the brutal underworld of bootlegging, thievery and murder. Alo’s later career included jail time and the ultimate Mob tribute: being immortalized as “Johnny Ola” in The Godfather, Part II.

Introduced to the 91-year-old Alo living in retirement in Florida, Dylan Struzan based this book on more than 50 hours of recorded testimony – stories Alo had never shared, and that he forbid her to publish until “after I’m gone.” Alo died, peacefully, two months short of his 97th birthday. And now his stories – bracing and violent, full of intrigue and betrayal, hunger and hubris – can finally be told.

MY RATING: four out of five stars

MY THOUGHTS: The only appropriate word to describe Dylan Struzan’s A Bloody Business is “epic.” Dozens of major characters, court intrigue, romance, god-like manipulations, massive bloodshed, a decade-plus time-span in which characters are born, age, and die … change the names and the time period and you’ve got Homer, add mythological creatures and you’ve got Tolkien or Martin. The story of Prohibition, as told here, is every bit the compelling story The Iliad and The Lord of the Rings are.

Struzan’s style, from first page to last, is clipped, staccato, like the tommy-guns the protagonists wield (although not as frequently as gangster movies would have us believe). She keeps the pace fast even in the quieter moments, squeezing 13 years of machinations and scheming into 640 pages in a combination of history text and novel. It’s “creative non-fiction” and Struzan makes it work; the dialogue (mostly, I’m sure, invented from Jimmy Alo’s memories and hearsay) mingled with non-mob-related historical data (mostly confirmable pop culture and government changes) keep the story from feeling stale. The sensory details of city life are used sparingly, but when they pop up they add verisimilitude. There were a few moments when I really felt the cold of NYC winters, the salt tang of Coney Island and Atlantic City boardwalks, thanks to a few well-placed phrases. Interestingly, I don’t recall now the same level of sensory detail used in the Chicago, Cleveland, or Florida scenes.

Struzan resists the twin temptations of setting Lansky, Luciano and company on a pedestal or demonizing them. Meyer Lansky, Benny Siegel and Charlie Luciano are the protagonists of the story, but Struzan doesn’t pretend they were heroes or perfect. All of their flaws and foibles are well on display, alongside the character traits that made them men other men wanted to follow. Al Capone doesn’t come off quite as well-rounded: Struzan concentrates on his unpredictability both before and after the Valentine’s Day Massacre took such a toll on his mental well-being. The antagonists of the story are the Sicilian-Italian “old guard” (Joe the Boss, Salvatore Maranzano, and others) who are waging all-out gang war. Struzan tries to get into their heads as well, but it doesn’t feel as successful. Of the men named in the back-cover copy, I had to feel a little bad for Nucky Johnson. Even the scenes set in Atlantic City barely featured him. Irish mobsters like Legs Diamond and Eddie McGrath get more screen-time, being in New York City and northeast New Jersey, than the more southerly-located Johnson does. The implication is that while Johnson’s control of AC was integral to the movement of booze during Prohibition, he wasn’t as important to the actual growth of organized crime as his peers were.

The author also doesn’t shy away from the violence that was part and parcel of these men’s lives. The gun-play, the beatings, the bombings, are all spelled out – as are the details of who made the decisions and how they felt about it. The Valentine’s Day Massacre isn’t the only big event spelled out in bloody detail. Some scenes are definitely not an easy read.

If there’s any disappointment I felt with the book, it’s that Jimmy Alo – whose fifty hours of recorded stories the book is based on – gets short shrift in his own story. Granted, he came into the picture later than Lansky, Luciano and Siegel. But I expected, once he did join the story, to see more of what he was doing even when it was tangential to the story of the “big three.” Maybe Struzan has another book in the works specifically about Jimmy Blue Eyes. I’d like to read it.

The cover and copious interior illustrations by Drew Struzan enhance the story. They’re almost photo-realistic, a bit Norman Rockwell, a bit art deco, often with an interesting balance between innocence and violence.