COP HATER by Ed McBain

 Finished Sa 7/20/24

It's one of my ancient paperbacks and this is the first novel in the '87th Precinct' series (1956).

Detectives were being murdered in the '87th'. The connection is not connected to police work, but it's one 'evil' woman who was dissatisfied with her love life. 

From 'shigekuni' wordpress.com:

"...Now, this woman is odd from the beginning. She is first shown us as a sexpot who does not offer her husband the sex he craves. In fact she teases him and turns him away. Strike One. Then she dresses slightly provocative at a funeral, enough to get a detective to have dirty thoughts. Strike Two. Finally, she transformed an apartment into some feminine nightmare that a manly police officer cannot possibly want to live in. It’s enough to terrify the lead detective on the case. His encounter with the woman ends thusly: “He was beginning to feel a little more comfortable with Alice. Maybe she wasn’t so female, after all.” – But of course she is very female. Strike Three. All these indications are not of course, real indications of crimes being committed, they are simple misogyny in action. However, the book uses the reader’s bigoted disapproval of nonstandard (submissive) female behavior in order to build a case against Alice that runs parallel to the police precinct’s borderline competent work. And when we finally see who did it, the book allows to quietly let these elements fall into place. In fact, Cop Hater even offers us a “good woman” in contrast: a woman who is literally unable to speak, who has no will of her own, who exists to love her boyfriend and be self conscious about her own shortcomings."

The section where the author describes Alice is some of the most anit-feminine piece of writing that I've ever seen. That was worth the price of admission. 

Ed McBain is a pen name for Evan Hunter. 

 

LAZARUS by Morris West

Finished  We 7/17/24

One of my ancient paperbacks that I finished Tu 5/31/94. Well worth a second look.

A very conservative Pope has an emergency bipass operation and realizes that he's been far too hard on himself and fellow Christians. He decides to ease up on his strictly 'by the book' point of view on God's plan for humanity. And during the pope's health emergency there is an assassination plot brewing involving the Japanese and Mossad. Also, members of the church hierarchy are very much against his new attitude towards the gospel and seek to sideline his progressive agenda. 

However, I did not like the ending. Why did the pope have to be assassinated? The message seems to be that we've had good popes and bad, but it's all part of the divine plan and humans should not ask the reason why. 

I noticed that this novel is the third part of a trilogy. I would like to read the other two books or anything else by Morris West. I really liked the book and his writing style. 

From Kirkus Reveiws:

"Concluding volume in a papal trilogy begun with The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963) and The Clowns of God (1981). Here, West's storytelling is in stronger form (after a fumble with The Clowns of God)--though what begins as character study hairpins half-way through into a thriller that adds a lesser suspense. His Holiness Leo XIV--the aged, iron-willed, unsmiling Pope from a peasant background--is about to be opened up for bypass surgery. His superb Jewish heart surgeon warns him that being so near death will bring on a profound psychological change, perhaps long-lasting depression, and a general weakening of mental powers for at least three months. He should avoid stress, not expect to do major works for quite some time--and should lose a lot of weight. Tove Lundberg, director of counseling, also wants the Pope to share with her any grief he feels. Leo awaits the knife and foresees his return from the dead as if he were Lazarus. On the eve of his operation, a defrocked priest who has married and fathered two children becomes a widower when his wife dies in Leo's hospital. The Pope tells his close Irish secretary, Malachy O'Rahilly, to look into the case and give aid--but the ex-priest murders his children and then commits suicide. Meanwhile, the Jewish surgeon and Malachy both are alerted that a terrorist group--The Sword of Islam--has put a $100,000 contract out on the Pope's life. Can Mossad help? And if Leo survives the knife, will he even have time for a change of character that will allow him the heart's warmth for bringing back into the fold the Catholics who have been shut out by his icy encyclicals? Well written, nicely paced, and absorbing for general asides on the papacy--its lapses, handling of money, and the crinkles in a Pope's purple. The gunfire does shrivel the novel's high aims, and Leo as Lazarus is not profoundly moving. But any book by West should draw the crowds."

Link to the book's review at Los Angeles Times:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-04-15-bk-1638-story.html

THE QUIET GAME by Greg Iles

 Finished Fr 7/5/24

This is a paperback that I bought at the library book sale on Fr 5/20/23.

This is the first Penn Cage novel.

Premise: In 1968 a black man was murdered at a Mississippi factory. He took a promotion to a white man's job and he was killed to set an example. J. Edgar Hoover covered up the crime to try to insure that Nixon won the presidential election. 

Secondary Premise: Penn's high school girlfriend (and the love of his life) was raped not by her father, but by the greasy cop/ bodyguard. 

I loved the book and I noticed that I had a copy of the novel and I finished it in 2018. 

From Kirkus Reviews:

"Preposterous, but eminently suspenseful, legal procedural about a Mississippi river town’s buried secrets, by the author of Mortal Fear (1996), etc. Penn Cage, once a Texas prosecutor, now an infinitely wealthy bestselling lawyer-novelist, can—t get over the recent cancer death of his wife, and is just a bit troubled about death threats from the brother of a demented white supremacist he put on death row. After a vacation in Disney World with his daughter Annie, Cage embarks on an extended visit with his parents in Natchez, Tennessee, where he finds that Ray Presley, a white-trash former cop is blackmailing Penn’s saintly physician father. It seems that Presley filched a gun from the good doctor, then used it in an unsolved murder. Now, Penn buys back the gun from Presley with a mountain of cash, and later sits down for a famous author interview with the young, rich, beautiful, and brainy Caitlin Masters, the Pulitzer-crazed publisher of the local newspaper, during which he mentions, in passing, a 1968 racially motivated murder of Del Peyton, a young, black factory worker that both the police and the FBI failed to solve. Masters prints her interview, stirring up old animosities all over, including a rancorous legal dispute between Cage’s father and Judge Leo Marston, a local powerbroker who was a district attorney at the time. Peyton’s widow suddenly appears and asks the famous writer to find who killed her husband. Penn reluctantly agrees, then runs into his old girlfriend, Livy Marston, Leo’s flawless, southern-belle daughter. Livy mysteriously ditched Cage 20 years ago, but now can’t wait to stoke the old fire. Meanwhile, FBI Director John Portman, Cage’s old nemesis, weighs in with nasty threats as Cage braves bullies, dodges bullets, rides down icy rapids, and prepares for a courtroom battle. Breezy, Grisham-style read that tweaks the conventions of southern gothic."