Cloak & Dagger #10

I read this for the 2015 Cloak and Dagger Mystery Reading Challenge

Champagne for One – Rex Stout, 1958

The plot is rather sillier than usual. PI Archie Goodwin is asked by a sick acquaintance to substitute for him at a dinner party held by a foundation for the aid of unwed mothers. Goodwin  lives with the gourmet PI Nero Wolfe but even Goodwin is impressed the rich food. He also appreciates that the girls are pretty and friendly. But one of the girls, Faith Usher, falls dead, perhaps at her own hand, because everybody has heard her suicidal ideation. Though put out that a crime has been committed right under his nose, Archie insists that the death is in fact murder one. 

 

Inspector Cramer of the Homicide Bureau is unable to close the case because of Goodwin’s assertion. Thus, the pressure is on Goodwin and his boss Wolfe to investigate the crime. Luckily, a male rich guest at the banquet is concerned that his past indiscretions may be brought to light in the glare of a police investigation. So he hires Wolfe to get to the bottom of things.

Gathering all the suspects in Wolfe’s office takes some clumsy doing. Wolfe gets up on his high horse too often and seems detached, though the banter with Goodwin is pretty funny.

“Archie.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Do I ever intrude in your private affairs?'
'Yes, sir. Frequently. But you think you don't, so go right ahead.”

I give this one a qualified recommendation – fans will enjoy no matter what, novices may scratch their heads, wondering what the fuss is about Nero Wolfe.
 

European RC #5

I read this book for the European Reading Challenge 2015.

The Donkeys – Alan Clark, 1961

World War I started in late 1914. So in the centennial of 2015 I decided to read this book about 1915, the year that saw the destruction of the old regular British army. In the introduction to this book, Clark observes with amazement the fact that the British Empire alone lost more men killed in the first two hours of Loos in 1915 than all three armed services on both sides on D-day in 1944.

Clark examines the reasons why British generals in 1915 failed to win their battles at Arras and Loos with the intelligence, improvisation and talent of Moore of Corunna or the Dukes of Wellington and Marlborough. His thesis blames pigheaded incompetence, self-seeking ambition, and back-stabbing rivalries among the senior British staff.

Though a Tory (he worked for Thatcher and Major in the 1980s), Clark writes with much anger toward the officer caste whose strategic and tactical mistakes lead to the death and injury and maiming of thousands of men. He’s as savage in his criticism of hopeless offensives as writers in the 1920s and 1930s like Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon and Vera Brittain.

The book is about not only battles. Clark also describes the political intrigues behind the scenes as commanders and cabinet ministers jockeyed for influential positions in London, with all of them against the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener.  Clark also briefly but clearly goes over Field Marshal Sir John French's ambivalence dealing with the French allies.

This book is short and not scholarly.  But back in the early Sixties, it contributed a great deal to the debunking of generals and anti-war sentiments for the generation born after WWII. To my mind, Clark makes a strong but narrow case. He suggests explore how strategy and tactics could have made the war any less of a mess. But I still figure war is always a mess. Haig and his staff didn’t even have radio communication and phone lines were easily disrupted by bombardments.

Still, it is passing strange – veterans who returned from France were in fact angry about brass hat incompetence – don’t soldiers, sailors, marines, and air troops always complain about officers? -  but they were angrier about a lack of jobs and respect from clueless civilians and jingoes. Haig, French, Rawlinson, etc. all received respect and homage, honors and titles. They attended countless memorials in the 1920s, apparently without being spit on by angry people. About a million people turned out for Haig’s funeral in 1928. It was in the late 1920s and 1930s when the writers and war poets depicted the agony of the PBI (poor bloody infantry) in contrast to the perceived callousness of the generals. Clark’s whole thesis may be an artifact of his time.

Classic #15

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2015.

Aboard the Aquitaine – Georges Simenon (French: 45° à l'ombre)

Dr. Donadieu treats fractures to dysentery among passengers on the grim ship Aquitaine. It transports people and cargo between Matadi (at the mouth of the Congo) and Bordeaux. Ostensibly a loner, Donadieu endures this dull and predictable plying back and forth with regular habits and a pipe or two of opium in the evenings. Sometimes, however, passengers arouse his curiosity and his natural compassion. Though he tries to stay detached, passengers lure him out of the cocoon he’s wrapped around himself.

On this trip three couples in first-class attract his attention. Mr. and Mrs. Huret have had to leave the colony because the sweltering climate is preventing their baby from thriving. Mr. and Mrs. Bassot have had to leave because he has lost his mind, like the protagonist in Tropic Moon. Mr. and Mrs. Dassonville are returning to France because he has an important meeting. So, Mrs. Huret is cloistered in the cabin taking care of her sick child; Mr.  Bassot is forced into a padded cell; and Mr. Dassonville occupies himself with endless paperwork.

Their spouses naturally have no qualms about having fun drinking, dancing, playing cards and games, and canoodling. The rich timber-man Lachaux watches all these goings-on with cynical interest, nasty and chewed at by dozens of tropical diseases. About 300 Chinese railway laborers are also on board, sleeping during the day and gambling all night, while something – maybe dysentery, maybe yellow fever – breaks out among them. Just incidentally, the ship doesn’t have enough water so it’s being rationed and a propeller is out of true.

With a calamitous backdrop like this, the boat is a microcosm of the colonial experience for the local blacks, the Chinese toilers, and the colonizers themselves. Simenon's message is clear: colonialism abuses and degrades the locals, exploits third-country nationals, and wrecks the colonizers themselves.

With the large cast of characters, there is a Grand Hotel, soap-opera-like feeling to this novel. The atmosphere is the star. It is remarkably crude and coarse. Simenon doesn’t spare the asinine pettiness of people forced to live together in a confined space for a month.

A good seedy novel, if you’re tough enough.

Cloak & Dagger #9

I read this for the 2015 Cloak and Dagger Mystery Reading Challenge

Black Orchids – Rex Stout

This was a pleasant surprise. I was expecting a novel, but in fact it is two novelettes, “Black Orchids” and “Cordially Invited to Meet Death.” I think the novelettes are just as enjoyable about the post-WWII novels, which are better than first ones published in the Thirties.

Archie Goodwin, investigator for PI Nero Wolfe, says the only point that connect the stories is that black orchids play a part in both. In fact, in both cases Wolfe is uninterested in the murders. But In the first story he gets involved only to squeeze three legendary orchids out of the originator. In the other case, the murderer overplays a hand, thus making for a less satisfying story.

First class summer reading.

Classic #14

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2015.

Tropic Moon – Georges Simenon (French: Le Coup de lune)

In the summer of 1932 Simenon took an African tour.  Starting in Egypt, he went to Khartoum, Juba, the Belgian Congo, and descended by river over 1700 km to Kinshasa, Port-Gentil, Libreville and Conakry. He returned to Europe with a dark vision of colonialism as evidenced by three novels: Tropic Moon (Le Coup de lune, 1933), Talatala (Le Blanc à lunettes, 1937) and Aboard the Aquitaine (45° à l'ombre, 1936).

The novel Tropic Moon is a descent into hell from which no one escapes unscathed. The protagonist exemplifies a young man who protects his dignity behind a madness that we hope will clear up once he gets back to France. His temporary – we hope - madness may serve as his alibi for his guilty complicity and protect him from self-destruction as a response to the world he has just discovered.

To backtrack. Though full of naive enthusiasm for his new job cutting timer in Gabon, Joseph Timar is told that his predecessor does not want to leave the upsriver post – even threatening to shoot his replacement -  and that the company that employs him is in financial trouble. “Nothing to do” is a bad situation for an expatriate since boredom causes stress. Timar also falls victim to an ineffable malaise brought on by the equatorial humidity. He settles in the only European hotel in Libreville's port, which is run by a couple, the Renauds, with a sketchy history that includes trafficking in human beings.

Remember this is a Simenon novel so on the first day, busty boss Adele Renaud, whose husband Eugene is dying slowly of a tropical fever, offers herself to Timar. The sexual encounter, however, puts Timar in state of both sensuality and remorse. He feels unbalanced and unconnected in his new unknown environment. If this book is read for nothing else, it is worth reading for its rendering of the worst case scenario of culture shock and its symptoms.

The next day a murder is committed. Timar has an alibi since he went out with a group of Europeans for an evening of drinking and exploiting the local population. Following the proverb, “A stranger can throw his shame away,” the whites boast about abuse they inflict on blacks and depend on each other to keep silent if ever questioned by the authorities. This section was so critical of colonists’s behavior and so exposing of the racket of colonialism that I wonder if it was a reason the French government refused Simenon a visa to return later in the 1930s.

Meanwhile, the Adele’s husband dies, freeing her up to pursue business adventures upriver. She persuades Timar to get an influential uncle to pony up funds for a forest concession. Adele and Timar sign contracts and deeds. They will be able to settle together, after a long journey through a jungle that Timar finds more and more oppressive and hostile. Getting no solace from sleeping with Adele (who may in fact really love him), Timar feels increasingly alarmed by a terrible void and feeling of a inescapable absurdity.

One morning Timar wakes up to find that Adele has left him to go testify at the trial of the young black accused of murdering the local man.  Joseph gets a dozen village men to canoe him down the river. This section is amazing, but Simenon is always amazing when he is doing a pursuit. He excels putting his characters between two points and in a nightmare.

Highly recommended to readers into literature about colonialism, culture shock, and existentialism.