REVIEW: THE NINTH CONFIGURATION by William Peter Blatty

SYNOPSIS: Twenty-seven Marines, housed in a Gothic mansion, are either mentally disturbed or they're faking it. When standard treatment fails to provide either progress or evidence, a new psychiatrist is brought in, Col. Hudson Kane. Kane's methods are unorthodox but at least he is gaining the inmates' trust. But Kane has his own issues, heavy baggage from his past. Can he resolve his problems without betraying the men who need his help?

REVIEW: I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Michael over at Lazy Thoughts From a Boomer for sending this book to me. Published in 1978, it's a slender volume compared to today's novels, clocking in at a svelte 135 pages. That's good because I had to re-read it right away, that's how much I enjoyed this story.

Because the story is relatively brief, no words are wasted in an attempt to be lyrical or poetic. Yet somehow there are moments of utter poetry in the exchanges between doctor and patients, and in Kane's own introspective reasonings.

The hospital is populated with men who are well-educated, bright, witty, and pitifully disturbed, and they come at Kane over and over again with questions and challenges right out of left field. Most prominent is the unofficial leader of the men, astronaut Captain Billy Cutshaw -- imagine Hawkeye Pierce with a religious fixation -- but there's also Lt. David Reno, formerly a B-52 navigator, now busy adapting Shakespeare's plays for dogs; and there's also the hospital's medical officer for physical ailments, the presumably sane Dr. Fell, who claims he was misassigned, that he is a pediatrician. But the rapid fire banter between the patients and their minders is less like the sparring in M*A*S*H, and closer to, oh, say the verbal tennis match in Tom Stoppard's classic play, Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. It's okay for the reader to laugh, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't carefully weigh what is being said.

Amid the constant chaos of his characters, Blatty addresses issues of mistaken identity, faith and spirituality, and the nature of love and sacrifice. The story is tightly woven, deeply moving, and wonderfully thought-provoking. The ending is both reassuring and yet will tear the heart out of the reader.

In this excerpt, Dr. Kane has just arrived at the hospital and been shown to his office by the medical officer, Fell, when Billy Cutshaw interrupts them and begins testing the newcomer now in charge.

Kane heard heavy breathing. Cutshaw was standing inches away, his eyes staring madly, shining and wide. "Okay, now I'm ready for my ink-blot test," he said. He swooped to the chair, dragged it over to the desk, sat down, and looked expectant. "Come on, let's go."

"You want an ink-blot test?" asked Kane.

"What the hell, am I talking to myself? I want it now while you're fresh with all those roses in your cheeks."

Kane wiped his face with a handkerchief. "We have no Rorschach cards."

"Like hell. Take a look in the drawer," Cutshaw told him.

Kane pulled the desk drawer open and removed a stack of Rorschach cards. "Very well," he said, sliding into the chair behind the desk.

Fell ambled toward the desk to observe.

Kane held a Rorschach card up and the astronaut leaned his head in close, his eyes scrunched up in concentration as he studied the ink blot.

"What do you see?" asked Kane.

"My whole life rushing past me in an instant."

"Please."

"Okay, okay, okay: I see a very old lady in funny clothes blowing poisoned darts at an elephant."

Kane replaced the card with another. "And this one?"

"Kafka talking to a bedbug."

"Correct."

"You're full of shit, do you know that?"

"I thought it was Kafka," Fell interjected, studying the card with interest.

"You wouldn't know Kafka from Bette Davis," Cutshaw accused him. "And you, you're a mental case," he told Kane.

"Yes, maybe I am."

Cutshaw rose and said, "Ingratiating bastard. Do you always play kiss-ass with the loonies?"

"No."

"I like you, Kane. You're regular."

Cutshaw tore the medal and chain from his neck and tossed them on the desk. "Here, take the medal. I'll take a book." He snatched How I Believe by Teilhard de Chardin.

"And now you'll be good for a week?" asked Kane.

"No. I'm an incorrigible liar." Cutshaw walked over to the door and threw it open with such force that again the crash loosened plaster from above. "May I go?" His voice had a childlike earnestness.

"Yes," said Kane.

"You're a very wise man, Van Helsing," said Cutshaw in an imitation of Dracula, "for one who has only lived one life." Then he loped out the door and disappeared from view.

REVIEW: SLAMMER by Allan Guthrie

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
November 18, 2009 (US)

SYNOPSIS: Prison guard Nick Glass is new to the job, and he's completely unsuited to it. He's an obvious mark for both the hardened cons and the veteran guards alike. When his wife and child are threatened, Nick agrees to do one favor for the cons. Of course, one favor turns into many and soon the pressure of trying to hold together and protect his family, as well as do his job, pushes Nick closer to his breaking point and a chain of events that no one, least of all Nick Glass, could have predicted.

REVIEW: After reading the synopsis, you may think you know what this book is about and you may even think you have some idea of how it will progress. You'd be dead wrong. In fact, this isn't even a prison story in the usual sense of that term. 'Slammer' isn't just about a physical prison; it's about all the prisons, external and internal, that confine a young man who suffers bullying and abuse and extortion. While some events occur within the prison where Nick works, Nick himself becomes the figurative prisoner of more forceful characters, and he's also a prisoner to those he loves. This is a dark jigsaw-puzzle of a book where mirrors and memories are not to be trusted anymore than Nick can trust the prisoners out to take advantage of his weaknesses.

Author Allan Guthrie does a staggering job of creating a Nick Glass who is irritating in his weakness but is also pitiable and likeable, a man as fragile as his name. Nick has murky depths beyond his primary character flaw, and Guthrie irrevocably adjusts, sometimes violently and sometimes indirectly, the lights and mirrors to reveal what's swimming in those depths. To say more would be to give away important elements of the story, and this book is too good to mistreat.

Adding to the vise-like pressure of Nick's situation are the claustrophobic scenes occurring either within the confines of the prison or the small house Nick shares with his wife and child. Nick becomes a black hole of pressure, where tension goes in but cannot be released. The author doesn't so much raise the level of tension as he compresses it around and into Nick personally, and the scenes begin to feel more and more confined until it's as if everything that is happening is entirely internal to Nick.

Readers should be prepared to give Nick's story full time and attention because events move quickly and there are time shifts. Casual references made early assume greater significance as the book progresses. Even so, expect moments of 'oh, I see!' mingled with sharp sadness. Nick Glass is an unforgettable protagonist and Guthrie has placed him in a darkly tragic, poignant, and ultimately satisfying psychological thriller.

REVIEW: THE BIG EMPTY by Declan Burke

SYNOPSIS: Ex-con Harry Rigby drives a cab, mules a small amount of grass, and now and again he acts as father figure to his young nephew, Ben. An odd kind of a father figure, because Harry killed his brother, Ben's father. That's how Harry got to be a con in the first place. When Harry delivers some grass to an acquaintance named Finn Hamilton, he's just in time to witness Finn's nine-floor swan dive. Suddenly everyone wants something from Harry: the cops, Finn's shyster lawyer and accompanying goon, Finn's sexually combustible mama and his more-than-a-smidgen dysfunctional sister with the long claws. For Harry, keeping himself alive while trying to get his hands on Finn's much sought after laptop and gun is one thing. Protecting the one person he loves most, that's a whole different problem.

REVIEW: I miss having a photo of a book jacket to post at the top left of my review. That's because there is no book jacket for The Big Empty. I'm sure the publishers put it down to the recession that they haven't found a place for this sharply funny, jaggedly violent tale of a man walking a tightrope above a twisty canyon of family deceit and dirty money. Whatever the reason, recession or otherwise, it's a shame. Declan Burke writes with a razor wit so fine that the reader feels the sting of a thousand cuts by the end of Harry's journey. (Burke is so incisive that if the man were writing political commentary instead of crime fiction, I would expect to see his column on the Op Ed pages of every major English language newspaper in existence.)

Burke creates a pallet of characters to root for or against, or even just to marvel at. The late Finn's femme fatale mother is a devious creature whose literary ancestry hearkens back to female characters produced by Raymond Chandler and Tennessee Williams. Solicitor Gillick, Finn's shyster, conjures up images of Orson Welles in 'Touch of Evil.' Ben is no cardboard child; he's a breath of fresh air, being both as smart and aware as only a 10-year-old can be, and at the same time as naive as one would expect (or at least hope for) from a child his age; slightly rebellious but still more obedient than he will be at fifteen. He's a kid you can love because he's genuine, being neither a plaster saint nor the demon seed. And that's true of Harry as well. The reader can believe in Harry as much for his failings as for his strengths. And when Harry has been pushed to his limits, when he finally is bent on payback, prefixing 'Dirty' to his name would not be a misnomer. He does some things I've myself wanted to do to a lawyer or two. And it doesn't hurt that Harry cracks wiser than Philip Marlowe.

The pace and tension ratchet up with every complication or obstacle Harry encounters. And the author wisely opted to give Harry enough native wit to parry and sort out the tightly knitted problems and mysteries rather than relying on chance or the one lone missing miracle clue that suddenly ties it all together. Life is not so neat as Jessica Fletcher would have her viewers believe. Some of the mysteries and puzzles may be solved by this story's end, but no one's life is ever going to be as it was, and some mysteries may never be solved. Beyond the wisecracking and the hot tempo, this book has a heart easily wounded. Harry Rigby is that heart. The reader, and Harry, are left in no doubt that where there are wounds, there will be scars.

Just a couple of my favorite lines from this book:

You know you've arrived when a lawyer-type says you lack even a shred of human decency, by the shred being how lawyer-types measure decency.

Kids should love their mothers and hate their fathers. It's in all the best Feng Shui books.

And I forgot to point out that Burke's imagery creates vivid mental scenes:

O'Neill Crescent lay on the outer fringe of the estate, a quiet left-hooking curve of semi-detached cardboard boxes which petered out just before the crumbing road tipped over into a shallow ditch, through which ran a muddy stream choked with shopping trolleys, tin cans, condoms and bicycle wheels. In the bare field beyond, three emaciated ponies snuffled for grazing among the blackened circles of dead bonfires and the rusting hulks of burnt-out cars.

Can it really be recession that's keeping a fast, witty work of crime fic like this off the bookstore shelves? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe Harry Rigby, or someone like him, should have a little talk with the publishers.

REVIEW: MONEY SHOT by Christa Faust

SYNOPSIS: Former video porn star and now the owner of an upscale adult modeling agency, Angel Dare gets bound, shot, dumped in a car trunk, and left for dead. And with no idea why. But she's going to find out why. And who. Oh, especially who.

REVIEW: Noir comes in all styles these days: Bleak, sleek, bold, gritty, detached, focussed, traditional, neo- and post- and so on. But you don't get much raunchy noir these days. Raunch fell out of fashion a while back, about same the time Mickey Spillane did. But books like Money Shot, by Christa Faust, make one remember when raunch was available on a metal rack down at the local drugstore (pre-CVS and Walgreen's world-conquering explosions); when a book like this one would have sat comfortably right next to William Goldman's Boys and Girls Together and just above some of those books for sale at Pop Sensation.

A bit raunchy (but not repellent), fast-paced, violent, occasionally funny, and a whiplash smart heroine - what lover of noir could ask for more? Angel Dare isn't the old 'whore with a heart of gold' stereotype. She's a woman who worked long and hard to acquire simple things like a home and business of her own. She's got determination and guts. She's also got a gun and she will use it. But that's nothing compared to what she can do with a roll of duct tape. Except that Angel has a touch of sentiment in her makeup, she would be a fitting mate to Westlake's Parker character. They both do 'getting even' really, really well.

Money Shot is a fast, fun read with terrific cover art. Tip o' the hat and many thanks to Michael for sending this book along to me.