Book Reviews

If I read any book to about page 30 and then stop and ask myself if I care what happens next, especially to the main character, and the answer is 'No', I don't bother to read the rest. Lately I have read several westerns, slender books by Nelson Nye. I liked the first one and requested several more. But subsequent books didn't pass my test. They all had hard-bitten main characters that had been bad men but were trying to go straight. The stories are not convincing. I'm crossing Nye off my list. He has fairly good ideas for plots, but in some of his stories he puts in so many obscure colloquialisms it becomes hard to understand. So it's 'Goodbye Nye'!

However, on the other hand, I have found two authors that are new to me. I'm sure they will not disappoint me. Maybe I should say three authors because one book is written in collaboration by two authors that have been successful individually as well as together. They are Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. I found their latest book, "The Book of the Dead" in the large print section of our small local library, and I liked it. I discovered that it is one of a series about FBI Agent Pendergast and his diabolical twin brother, Diogenes Pendergast. I can't remember the good Pendergast's first name. Except for one time only, the authors refer to him only as Pendergast throughout the book.

For me the book suffers from being the latest, and last, in a series, and there are gaps in information necessary to the current story. For instance, Pendergast is in a maximum-security prison, and is about to be broken out by friends under the direction of a disabled psychologist who has calculated the exact results to expect from every action taken. I never knew clearly why Pendergast had been unfairly thrown into prison. Also I would have liked to know more about the mysterious person directing the escape.

The plot is wildly imaginative involving an Egyptian tomb brought to the New York Museum of Natural History before 1900, installed in a remote basement and, after a magnificent opening, was abruptly closed. To bring in more funds for the museum the tomb is to be re-opened to the public with as close as possible a grand opening as the first time. The latest in digital technology is to be used with pleasantly terrifying special effects. But the terrible twin brother gets involved and things get way out of hand.

I liked the book and found it hard to put down until my eyes were so tired they crossed. I will have to find out if the other books in the series have been published in large print, and if so, read them in sequential order.

Next I read a book that I think someone else on Gather has recommended before. I found I had written about it in my notes from a year or more ago. It is "The Colonel's Daughter" by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. It is a love story that takes place between 1954 and 1964. A soldier doing his National Service meets the 17-year-old daughter of a retired colonel. She is a fresh, free-spirited person who loves the outdoors and its entire flora and fauna. The solder is about ten years older than she is, but he falls deeply in love with her anyhow. He comes to realize she has serious psychological problems that both the Colonel and later the Colonel's son describe to him, but he decides to wait it out until she realizes she loves him as much as he loves her. This love story is unusual, and the ending surprised me. I enjoyed it very much.

A third book is one I have been reviewing for a person I have known slightly for over ten years, Bryant Harrington. He is a building contractor but belongs to a reenactment group that does the "Shootout in Campo" on special occasions throughout the county. The shootout, the topic for his book, occurred in December, 1875 between a gang of Mexican bandits, the two Gaskill brothers, and a sheepherder who happened to be at the Gaskill's Store when the bandits showed up to raid it.

This is the author's first attempt at writing. He is about half my age, in his early forties I would guess, and he is also from New England. That gives me an idea about his level of education. Neither he nor I went to college, but I think I have been much fonder of reading than he will ever be. Anything I might tell him is based on what seems right or wrong to me in comparison to other books I have read. And that is all I have going for me as a critique of his book. I have no formal education in judging his ability to write, and I'm shakey on some parts of grammar and punctuation.

But since the story he tells is pretty much the same one I told tourists at the Gaskill Brother's Stone Store Museum as a docent for seven years, I can make comparisons in the history of it. But even there, he seems to have done a great deal more researching than I did in the archives of the museum. His bibliography includes books, newspaper articles, magazine stories, and self-published stories and interviews. I think he may have more authentic historical facts than I do, even though he presents his story as fiction. He uses a great deal of dialogue, and that is where I find that the main fault with Bryant's creation lies.

Colloquial use of the American version of the English language changes rapidly. In my lifetime certain words meaning widely different things have come and gone. And slang changes faster than old folks like me can keep track of. My author has used slang that I doubt was current in 1875. Other words don't seem right, either. He uses the word 'servers' instead of 'waiters'in one place, and in his dialogue he has a Mexican character say, "You're pulling my leg". And while all of the bandits are Mexican, the words and expressions he has them say are contemporary American. He throws in some Spanish words, but it is not easy to keep in mind the bandits are more Mexican than American.

But the hardest for me to accept is the sweet and loving conversation between the Gaskill brothers and their wives. Even back in my youth in the 1930s average men were not apt to be publicly verbal in the affection they felt for their wives. Simon and Lumen Gaskill were hard men who had earned a living killing grizzly bears, mining, and blacksmithing for years in Northern California before they married and settled in Campo. They were both rumored to have killed other men in Visalia, California.  In later life Lumen, as a Justice of the Peace, was known to act as sheriff, judge, jury and executioner all in a single afternoon. The skeleton of one such unlucky victim was found years later in a dry well still wearing the iron shackles Lumen or Silas had put on him.

So when Lumen and Silas speak with soft sweetness to their wives in presence of other people, it is hard for me to believe it. In fact stories about Silas' nagging wife of his later years are legend. She is said to have screeched at him out the door. His first wife left him and went back east long before Simon met his second wife. The museum has a pencil-written transcript of the divorce proceedings that Simon had to obtain before he could remarry. Lumen, as a teenager, was a witness for him, and testified that he had seen the first wife sitting on the lap of Silas' partner in the partner's bedroom that he rented from the Gaskills. When confronted, the wife said they had been discussing new wallpaper. Silas told her that next time she should discuss it at a greater distance. Bryant included the incident in his book.

Next week Bryant and I will get together to discuss the points I question in his book. But I will not tell him, that although I think he did well for a first attempt to write a book, I don't think that it will be published commercially. Someone more knowledgeable than I will have to give him a better and more honest critique.