Chandler A Zoo

Review of THE WAY HOME, an unusual family portrait, written by George Pelecanos and read by Dion Graham.

Some nice, hard-working middle-class parents don’t end up with the stereotypical kids who take the stereotypical road to adulthood. I didn’t, for instance. So I can identify with George Pelecanos’ latest. Although it’s set in the Washington, DC area, a Pelecanos trademark, the protag, Chris Flynn, son of the owner of a successful carpet installation company, is not African-American, a departure of sorts for this author, who has also written for THE WIRE on HBO.

The story opens on Chris in juvie—having tested and broken his parents’ hearts several times with stupid adolescent decisions. Now he’s inside the system and they are outside, confused, angry, and hurt. Chris drops his verbs, adopts some street intonations and casually informs his dad at one point that he “knows how to jail.” His Dad corrects him each time. Personally, I hate the expression “where it’s at” and correct it every time!

As their paths diverge, parents and son, they also braid back together when Chris gets out. The young man even goes to work with Dad’s company and his Dad hires some of Chris’s pals from juvie. But don’t bring out the pleasing pastels for the family portrait just yet.

One day, after installing a carpet in an empty house, Chris and a friend from jail, Ben, discover a compartment under the floor with $50,000 in it. Uh-oh.

Chris remembers some movies (“A Simple Plan” comes to mind, but was not mentioned) in which keeping found money like this comes to no good. He talks Ben into putting it back.

But fate has spun the Big Wheel. Click, click, where will it stop?

I leave it to you to read or better yet, listen to his story, one of Pelecanos’ most involving, at least for me.

Dion Graham reads it and does not overdo the street gab. His voice is quite hypnotic in fact, and like someone who speaks in low tones, draws you in and makes you listen carefully.

You are not going to want to miss a word.

Review of Audiobook
Sandman Slim written by Richard Kadrey, read by Macleod Andrews

Okay, here is the setup: A negative thinker named James Butler Stark is a naturally gifted magician in an LA group called the Sub Rosa. He ticks them off with his smart-alecky approach to magic and gets dragged into Hell, known as “Downtown,” for 11 years. Of course, being forced to fight supernatural beings in an arena in Hell for over a decade, he builds up some resentment and steals the key to everything, including Earth, and comes back for revenge.

With me so far?

Oh—and this is funny!

Stark lops off heads, makes the heads watch infomercials in a dark closet, and says when you have nothing left and are starting over on Earth, you really only care whether you own socks or not.

As he rages around looking for his old buddies, he runs afoul of Homeland Security, which is of course hooked up with angels (on the side of, get it?) and starts Stark raving about “angel hoo-doo”—he is not a fan.

None of his buds from Hell are here (only the boss Lucifer can get out), but there are angels…and some other in-between unsavories called “kissi.” Turns out these unworthies are the real bad guys—and the hellions are really just sports-minded scum. Who cares—they can’t get out anyhow.

So now Stark is after the kissi—the ones who really dragged him Downtown and killed his one-true-love Alice.

You can grab your weapon of choice and hear the rest. As Stark puts it—“This is a booty call to a massacre.” The narrator, Macleod Andrews, reads Stark as an ironic sort of hell cat, and I have to say, this audiobook is full-on groovy.

Review of Audiobook:
The Watchman by Robert Crais, read by James Daniels

Does the concept of an ex-Marine, ex-cop dashing around LA trying to keep a hot heiress safe from South American hit men grab you? What if that Marine/ex-cop was your beloved Joe Pike of Elvis Cole./Joe Pike fame? Are you in?

Instead of his growly guest appearances in private detective Elvis Cole books, Pike takes this one over, bodyguarding the brash young Larkin Connor Barkley, who has happened into some weird action when blasting her Aston-Martin through empty LA streets at 4 am.

No matter what safe house Pike puts her in—or even finds for her himself—the scuzzies show up an hour later to blast Larkin into giblets. Someone is selling her out. Time is short to find out who the heck these people are and why they want her dead. All the people involved in the early dawn accident are already dead, except for Larkin.

Assisted by his wisecracking buddy Elvis Cole, Pike tries to second-guess everyone who knows him or Larkin—to no avail. In the front door of a safe house—and the bad guys are sneaking in the back door and are in need of some decimating.

James Daniels is the perfect reader for this, doing Pike in a slow, flat, reluctant voice—darn, I hate to use my vocal cords, how many times have I told you that? Elvis Cole comes off as the motor mouth, funny younger brother type. Larkin is no Paris Hilton, either—she is by turns scared, irritated, and a little enamored of her capable protector.

Apparently, when she is not on the run, her usual male companions don’t clean their guns every night, buy her vegan meals, or understand when she sneaks out to dance on a bar amidst shouting Armenians.

By the way—the title, The Watchman, makes no sense. Where do they get these titles sometimes?

A review of the audio version of RAIN GODS by James Lee Burke, read by Will Patton, and reviewed by Star Lawrence.

Hackberry Holland is an old man, sheriff in a small South Texas town, but a former politician and womanizer. He lives on a little ranch with two frisky horses, overhung with sky, weather, and nature of every description. And you will get the descriptions, as any James Lee Burke fan knows. No tinted sunrise or bruised thunderhead leaping with lightning goes unnoticed.

But trouble has come to town and in the form of “Preacher” Jack Collins, a mercurial killer on a mission, and his mission at one point has involved machine-gunning nine Thai women brought to town for the purposes of prostitution. Hackberry dredges them up from their shallow rest behind an abandoned church and takes it personally.

The theme is “unlikely heroes,” which as the book unwinds, include a young Iraq vet, his singer girlfriend, a pudgy strip club owner, his wife, and of course, Holland himself. The irony is that even “Preacher” Collins does not behave as a depraved killer should.

Will Patton is the perfect reader for Burke books, with his sleepy, Southern voice and reassuring tone even in the midst of the most depraved scenes.

No country for old men? This is the perfect country for old men who have learned a thing or two and grown some principles. Young men, too. And the two women? They can take care of thesmelves, too.

Review of Relentless, by Dean Koontz, read by Dan John Miller.

Dean Koontz is not a poor man’s Stephen King. He is his own kind of sweet, kind of overwritten, and kind of totally spellbinding self. Some people can get into that like a hot bath, others can’t stand it. I am a bather.

Relentless is one of his best yarns to date, in my humble. Yet, it is festooned with characteristic Koontz touches, which include a protag who is so grounded and loving he makes your eyelids slowly descend, only to snap open on such lines as, “We did not know then that by day’s end, one of us would be shot dead.”

Cubby is a novelist, a loving husband, the jokey father of a seriously smart kid (referred to by a bad guy as a “weird little Einstein”), and oh, yes, Cubby has a big secret in his past, the kind of horror you would never associate with anyone you would ever meet. You never would. Koontz would, though.

Don’t laugh, but a famous book critic wants to wipe out Cubby, his wife, their weird little Einstein, and their little dog Lassie, too!

This may sound funny, but I assure you it’s suspenseful and warped as hell.

Of course, I won’t tell you what happens, but it involves a deus ex machina shaped like a crystal salt shaker. But you knew that, didn’t you?

Anyhow, even hard-core thriller lovers will get into this one. John Dan Miller has a pleasing tenor, rendering even the most banal inter-familial banter interesting and believable.

You’re just never ready for the odd line that jumps in. “I don’t think you’re ready for this, Dad, it’s not a salt shaker anymore.”

Review of the audio version of The Echelon Vendetta by Michael Stone (not his real name) and read by Firdous Bamji.

Micah Dalton is a “cleaner,” one of those useful CIA guys who drops into a situation and tidies up the mess. Messes are usually caused by trigger or knife-happy enemies, though, not ticked-off shamans. And usually, the cleaner liases with living people, you know, walking-around, everyone-can-see-them, living people.

So in pretty short order, we realize this title may sound like Jason Bourne will be hopping into a fast car or swinging on a rope, but this is a spy book with a difference. Supposedly “David Stone,” the author, knows his way around the alphabet agencies. But he also seems to know his hallucinogens and other interesting things.

Micah starts out in Europe, investigating his best friend in the agency’s murder, suicide, whaever—the man has clawed his own face off. Don’t you hate it when someone talks you into that?

Then he sees a pattern among some other deaths and starts hacking around in the mountains of the far West, trying to fit the puzzle pieces, while more gruesome deaths occur.

All the while, his friend from Venice, Porter, pops in every do often to lend advice, even though his face is clawed off.

When I last heard Firdous Bamji, he had an Indian accent. Now he is handily voicing a number of American dialects. He is quite the talker.

Will there be more Micah Dalton stories? When last seen, he had dropped off the grid at the end of this book. But you know grids—people, living or the opposite, can pop back on them. Apparently, there are three of these already.

Star Lawrence owns a recession-coping site called Do the Hopey Copey at http://hopeycopey.blogspot.com. She can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com.

Review of the audiobook Loser’s Town by Daniel Depp, read by Don Leslie, reviewed by Star Lawrence.

New stuff in town. That town would be Hollywood, of course, where Robert Mitchum once said losers come to succeed. Daniel Depp is the author. Depp, Depp—yes, he’s Johnny Depp’s half-brother and a darn fun writer. His new series character is David Spandau, a stuntman turned mavericky employee of a staid bodyguard and security firm in Tinsel Town.

I absolutely fell in love with Don Leslie, this reader. He has a slowish, distinct, bass voice and sounds very wry and precise, perfect for describing this Pulp Fiction-like cast of characters, who ruminate or blab on as juicily as Royale with DOUBLE cheese. Elmore Leonard—do you feel Depp’s hot breath on your neck?

The plot is a little sketchy. Spandau is hired by an up-and-coming young actor named Bobby Dye, who is in the clutches of a mob punk named Richie Stella. Everyone smooches Dye’s butt except Spandau, who prefers to protect it instead. Something about a personal code of honor or something.

I particularly liked Spandau’s friend Terry, an Irishman short of stature but gifted in talk, lovemaking, and the martial arts. What more could a woman ask, really? Of course, he is a little bit of a loose Howitzer.

We want more Spandau! And be quick! Terry? Well…Terry. You’ll find out..

Star Lawrence owns a recession coping and humor site called Do the Hopey Copey, at http://hopeycopey.blogspot.com. She can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com.

Review of Valley of Bones by Michael Gruber, where we revisit Santeria-afflicted detective Jimmy Paz, read by Nick Sullivan and reviewed by Star Lawrence

You are talking with a rawboned Florida woman found in a Miami hotel room where an Arab has just been thrown out of a window and her face changes for a split second, her blue eyes turning black, then back to normal. Did you see that—or not?

If you’re Jimmy Paz, a devil-make-care (my stars, what an expression) detective, whose restaurateur mother is regularly “ridden” by Santeria “saints” and who tangled with a hideous witch doctor in Tropic of Night, you know this might not be good.

Turns out Emmylou has a checkered background, starting with child abuse and murder and ending running a backwater war over Sudanese oil in her capacity as a nun. The woman had such a boring life, it’s a wonder it made it to a book. But it does—in the form of four confessional notebooks she writes out for Paz to keep the devil from making her blurt out wrong information. Yes, he will do that.

Taking the notebooks from Emmylou one by one is her therapist, Lorna, a focused woman who is a hypchondriac and can’t bear to wear a bathing suit because she is convinced she is fat. But Paz likes what he sees anyway and flirtation leads to more flirtation. Will Paz give up his University of Girls, the institution that seems to flourish between sheets, but which he credits for teaching him all the beguiling poetry he seems to know?

Lorna is not big on the University of Girls, but she is also busy trying to stay alive as “The G,” various mercenaries, a rich order of nuns, a former police partner of Paz’s who has found the Lord, a schizzy homeless person, and various other folks scamper around at the devil’s behest. Or is it God’s idea, all this? Emmylou thinks so.

How does it end? You know how to find out. But you may not look people in the eye for a while. You wouldn’t want to see anything weird, would you? And then not see it?