David Thayer

Wellington Leg: When I was in school I shared a locker with a kid who shall remain nameless. After gym he’d rotate his sweat socks from one foot to the other in homage to personal hygiene; two months into the school year Joey ( we’ll call him Joey) smelled like a boy rotating the same pair of socks well into the Holiday Season. Joey took criticism poorly but as his locker mate I had to break the news to him. I told him he smelled bad. He punched me. I punched him back. We were dispatched to the penal colony of detention where off duty Drivers Ed commandos read aloud from the New York Post.

Via Ed Peschel I came to Tess Gerritsen’s blog wherein Tess confesses a secret: she wants to throw in the blogging towel after admitting an honest dislike for negative reviews and the reviewers they rode in on.  Tess is a successful writer who has raised hackles before with her blunt talk about her frustrations with reviews, best seller lists, what some see as complaints from the penthouse.

Because of her blog I’m a Tess Gerritsen fan. I don’t review her books for the same reason I don’t review Lee Child, Barry Eisler, Harlan Coben or Michael Palmer. Those ships have sailed. And commercial success tends to drain risk taking, leaving the elements that guarantee sales dull and familiar.

I admire her quest for more than just sales and wish her luck with that. Many of the writers I find interesting and challenging are struggling to stay in print, get in print, or find some footing in publishing’s modern quagmire. They are the reason I review books even as common sense tells me not to.

Wellington Leg: Independent publisher Wellington Tuna is courting Donald Rumsfeld sources close to the bay report. While the publisher is loathe to depart from tuna based works, books about tuna, loving tuna, or the political thriller series Ike and Tuna , the opportunity, however  remote, to sign Rummie is a challenge local mogul Marty O. Coin cannot resist. “I want to sign this guy,” Marty said. “I just don’t want to pay him.”

Skeptics note that since Marty gained control of the Fighting Gastropod Metropolitan Baseball Club, he’s traded the Duchess to Baltimore, dumped the forty third earl from the active roster, and closed the famous reading bleachers where fans could quote Balzac while paying eleven dollars for a beer. Marty also employs Certified Literary Critics as bellhops at the Hotel Faz, a disreputable place for commercial travelers.

Still having Donald Rumsfeld in Wellington Leg would dispel the lingering notion that the towne is a literary backwater. Until now the greatest living author to visit is a cardboard likeness of Carmen Elektra. Having Rummie at Eddie’s Book Nook would  change all that.

A “Sign Don” campaign has been launched in nearby Goth by famed publicist Lars Kierkegaard. “We are pulling out some of the stops,” Lars said. “Don is eligible for the free loaners for life program,” he added. A 1987 Volvo 240d wagon is at his disposal.

Don will be feted at the Spring Training Opener when the Gastropods take on the New York Yankees in Tampa. The earl will come out of forced retirement to pitch from behind second base.

Mandy Rice-Davies reporting.

Wellington Leg: Tomorrow is Frank Wilson’s last day at the Philadelphia Inquirer. About a year ago Frank gave me a shot at reviewing Natsuo Kirino’s novel GROTESQUE for the paper. It was quite a break for your reporter who got another lucky break a few months later in my other job. Does luck beget luck?

There are voices more eloquent than mine saying farewell to Frank and his one man Age of Reason revival over at Books Inq. The blog belongs to the Inquirer so I imagine that someone will carry on because they don’t toss newspapers on your doorstep anymore. Even the Wellington Leg Intelligencer is a virtual reality a power failure away from oblivion.

Frank turned fights into discussions no mean feat these days. He turned bloggers into reviewers, shone a light on dark corners of the book world. I hope retirement includes blogging for Frank a blog to read every day just like the Philly blog.

Wellington Leg: On September 12th Pegasus Books US will release a novel by Alexandre Dumas called THE LAST CAVALIER. It’s a genuine Dumas manuscript, one that scholars had not expected to find. The novel is about Bonaparte, the First Consul of the early republic. Dumas died in 1870 near Dieppe, France shortly before the arrival of Prussian troops in the city.

Dumas was an early practitioner of the roman feuilleton, the serial novel, published weekly in newspapers of the era. In modern times residents of Wellington Leg thrill to each new installment of the earl’s potboilers thus drawing massive advertisements to the pages of the Druidical & Literary, the broadsheet scandal sheet.

Your reporter has made minor inroads while reading the latest Zoe Sharp. Dumas introduces his cavalier after the battle of the 100 fought between the Royalists and Republicans in 1801. The novel is great fun and completes a version of French history Dumas brings to vibrant life.

Wellington Leg: As many of you realize by now this blog is now sponsored by the One Hundred Years War a mini-series that has the Leg by the proverbial throat and won’t let go.  Due to a dreadful supply chain blunder Wellington Leg has no television sets, so the mini-series must be acted live. Thus the constant references to alternate side of the street parking: Wellington Leg is a stage, its long suffering residents mere bit players.

Not only do I review books for this blog, I play the role of the High Constable, the Dauphin’s military adviser. Imagine my exhaustion with these real time duties, although the new Spellchecker is certainly a boon, even if it does not recognize itself as a word. Without further ado here is the crime fiction roundup for this Mondayesque Tuesday:

WHO IS CONRAD HIRST? I submitted my review of Kevin Wignall’s latest novel to January Magazine, so I won’t spoil things by talking about it here. Wicked big twist makes for tough sledding when reviewing without spoiler.

POWER PLAY by Joseph Finder.  Well-paced thriller and he talks about the K&R business, something your reporter actually knows a bit about. He does it well but it felt like research here and there.

BLOODSHOT by Stuart MacBride: Like Wignall before him, MacBride is on his way to the Wellington Leg Hall of Fame. We’d invite these guys to the Leg but cannot find a card table. They’re probably with the TVs.

THE CHICAGO WAY by Michael Harvey: this is good, really good, PI genre stuff of the first order. You’d think Chicago has been covered by Sean Chercover, Marcus Sakey, Barbara D’Amato, and Sarah Paretsky, but this is fresh, well written, and the story works.

Knopf should publish more crime fiction. They’ve got Peter Spiegelman and now Michael Harvey, but who else? I don’t know: do you?

Wellington Leg: Keeping my voice at a whisper as I escape the Tower. Yes, the earl here, crawling down the mighty edifice by sheer strength of will, reckless of wind and howling beasts…hand over hand when, without warning, my cellular telephone commences its ‘ring tone’ of “Love is a Battlefield” not my first choice but rather institutionalized by the sales clerk. One suspects a different or customized ring tone is available somewhere for the cognoscenti but “Love is a Battlefield” certainly suffices in terms of alerting the garrison that something is amiss….fortunately my neoprene wet suit renders me invisible although tangled in the ivy. These are less than optimal reviewing conditions but do bear with me.

CITY OF FIRE by Robert Ellis SMP-Minotaur: something of a page turner with a front cover blurb from Michael Connelly. Strong story, some odd moments, well written.

A SPY BY NATURE, by Charles Cumming. A debut by this UK author a Scot recruited by the SIS. I had to set Mrs. Frothingmunster’s prized rattan Starbuck’s holder on fire to spirit this one from the TBR file.

A DANGEROUS MAN by Charlie Huston Ballantine paper: A Henry Thompson joint with murder and baseball, Russian Geezers and scenes from Brooklyn. These are a few of my favorite things.

THE CAIRO DIARY by Maxim Chattam. Another debut, this one from a Frenchman about a young woman hidden by the DST at a remote monastery where she discovers the diary of an English policeman in colonial Cairo. His investigation is more interesting than hers and the familiar elements of the plots weigh the story down.

The fellow in the neighboring cell is playing the spoons, a haunting melody…Love is a Battlefield. Last week it was From a Buick Six: they’ve brought out the vertical dogs…musn’t blog now. YHS, the Earl.

Wellington Leg: It has been ages since last I blogged! Prudentia here. I do wish to apologize for the dreadful content of previous posts. As owner and chair I have been greatly distracted by the condo conversion of HRH J. Mansfield Prison and the dismantling of those unsightly RSS feeds. We’ve put the feed in the garden where the odd meadowlark is drawn to the dreadful thing; really this technology business is appalling.

Well, down to the business of cozy mysteries. As you know Wellington Leg is quite proud of our own Dame Theresa penner of quilting mysteries. And there was that story in the Druidical & Literary, a dreadful rag though part of my late husband’s media empire, wherein Miss Dash, a private sleuth here in the Leg, had the misfortune of encountering a Celtic princess whilst shopping on the High Street. Only the intervention of the earl on horseback averted tragedy if one is to believe the fevered account of cub reporter Emil Balzac. Though the front page carnage lifted circulation ( including mine) one does wonder where this fascination with mayhem might lead.

You are curious about my own literary endeavors as well you should be given the remote nature and global reach of this blog. One must remain level headed about these matters unlike some people we know ( the earl, for instance. Hardly a day goes by without his dreadful prose being read aloud by the louts and layabouts lurking near the Hotel Faz. The place is an eye sore)

Well, that’s the cozy beat for today. One is in receipt of Mr. Ken Bruen’s latest AMMUNITION. I do expect this will be a cozy treat. TTFN, Prudentia.

Wellington Leg: Lots of interesting reportage from Thriller Fest held this past weekend in the Big Apple’s Grand Marriott Marquis where color coded arrows guide guests to their myriad destinations. Wellington Leg would be a perfect venue for Thriller Fest with the new convention center straddling Gastropod Alley. Alas, imaginary townes fare badly in these contests although we were able to lure the Mongol horde for a reunion. Thank goodness we banned big box stores to maintain the architectural integrity and vibrant high street atmosphere pushing COSTCO into the arms of arch-rival Goth, truly a towne without pity with overflow parking.

Once again much soul searching in the matter of dispatching a representative of the Leg to Thriller Fest. Our own Concetta Comedia della Arta volunteered to attend far too late in the day for the coveted yellow zone room high above the atrium. Concetta travels poorly and her knowledge of thrillers is sadly out of date. That said, she is a bona fide literary critic and a Rick Moody devotee. Perhaps we’ll save our pennies and send her to the National Book Awards soiree unless of course it conflicts with the World Series.

Wellington Leg would like to host an important literary conference. Hizzoner stands ready to suspend alternate side of the street parking regulations and the renovation of the Hotel Faz revealed a dusty collection of poets lurking in the basement. Thus fortified I invite suggestions as to which important conference should be held here.

The Mongols should be leaving towne soon. Rest assured.

No category on this blog is more severe than Literary Critic. You’ll notice that most of the categories have a slightly nonsensical overtone whereas LC has the gravitas associated with severe tire damage or the double pump V for victory two fingers in the air gesture that signals imminent doom. That’s because, despite a lack of graphics, this blog is picturesque if you know how to lift your computer screen at a funny angle for optimal viewing. Try it now. Better, no?

Even I freak out when working in the Literary Critic category because it demands more of me when I’m already being demanded in other arenas sort of like a club boxer who dances at Radio City Music Hall and then dares anybody to say a thing about it.  Lately literary criticism has taken on a little Filmore East atmospheric with all the pushing and shoving and name calling. Yeah, the Filmore was cool in its day with Hells Angels dealing crank from Perez’ garage until you stop to consider that the place was named after Millard Filmore not exactly the crank dealing muscle head nodding between procelain stalls old enough to have signed the Declaration of Independence one might have hoped for under the circumstances.

Perhaps in times like these or times like those when Zombie Vendetta accoutrements were in short supply and if you had a safety pin you probably had a diaper to go with it since you cannot recycle the plastic dude. That is the plastic, dude. If you push away decades of resident dust you find etched in the marble a marvelous likeness of Millard himself, a historical footnote, and you can enjoy the Carlos Fuentes feeling of a trip through time.

If you live long enough, you see the problem with satire is its basic need for order, from which it derives contrast. Kurt Vonnegut is being written up as a counter-culture icon, a humanist, a gentle madman who tweaked genre fiction into political commentary while dodging and weaving through critical traffic. His absurdist constructs were funny, especially in the sum of all parts conclusion that human endeavor is choreographed to assure a stranded Trafalmadorian spacecraft that replacement parts are coming. In some ways Vonnegut failed to provoke an institutional response to his work since carrying a tattered copy of SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE was deemed less harmful than throwing animal blood around the bosses’ office or bombing them back to the Stone Age for those who thought DOCTOR STRANGELOVE was a drama, not a comedy. If humor is dangerous its absence is more so. Richard Nixon was too preoccupied in 1969 to throw Vonnegut into jail. He was redesigning the uniforms of the White House security detail to resemble the Papal Swiss Guards, an idea that I think was drop dead brilliant.

Kurt’s great failure was to be overtaken by events, by a reality as dark as any fantasy. His best work occurred in the 50s and early 60s when absurdity was a batty uncle living over the garage smoking Luckies and yelling obscenities at the mail man. My favorite, THE SIRENS OF TITAN, helped prepare me for the vicissitudes of later life. Thanks, Kurt, and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.