A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames

Mulholland Books, 224 pages, $26

“A Man Named Doll” has a 50s B-movie feel to it, but the story comes equipped with cellphones. The graphic story has the protagonist, the unfortunately named Happy Doll (“Hank” for short), receive his fair share of injuries, as well as your share and my share. It’s set in Los Angeles. This Los Angeles is not yet threatened by wildfires, mud/rock slides, or drought. But there is a heavy smog layer sitting atop it. 

Hank was an MP and an LAPD officer before he got out of the biz. He is now a private investigator with low to middling success. He lives in Topanga Canyon with his canine good boy George. He was blasted apart by love, so it is hard for him to accept the approaches by Monica, a waitress in his favorite diner. He keeps regular appointments with an analyst to discuss his many deficiencies. 

Suddenly Hank’s life turns sour. Unfortunately, the events that occur are not ones he can reveal to his analyst. They are brought about by a big case of the stupids. Time after time, Hank makes the absolute wrong decision, and I can’t figure out why. On the face of it, Hank is befuddled by pain medication (and other drugs) and ceases to be able to make appropriate (e.g., sane) choices. At an underlying level, perhaps there's an issue with authority or a death wish. The result is a series of Three Stooges mayhem, only it isn’t funny. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

It begins when Hank saves one of the massage women at the “spa” where he works part-time from a violent customer and is injured in the process, thus necessitating the drugs. Also, one of Hank’s long-time acquaintances has asked him for a kidney. Lou was a cop with Hank at the LAPD and saved his life once a long time ago. Hank, who has a serious fondness for all his body parts, has to think hard about it. (It’s difficult to write a review without giving away some things I’m certain the author would rather you discovered for yourself, however …) Then one night Lou appears on Hank’s doorstep. He has been shot and dies in Hank’s living room. Who would kill a sick man, and why? Maybe it's because of the gargantuan diamond Lou was carrying.

The rest of the short book is about Hank blundering about and discovering or creating dead bodies. After awhile a person just gets tired of yelling stop at the young women going down the basement stairs in the dark to the waiting serial killer. Hank — who is by no means a nubile young woman — leaps down his own metaphorical dark stairs and I got tired of yelling stop.

But … there was a certain panache to Jonathan Ames’ writing that kept me going. That and the book was undemandingly short. And I wanted to see if Happy Doll survived at the end.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Ballantine Books, 496 pages, $28.99

Years ago I chose “The Martian” for the MBTB book group to read. It proved to be a controversial pick. First, it was argued, the book was not a mystery. I said space is a mystery, but in essence, I agreed with them. But I enjoyed the heck out of that book and, to this day, cannot look at a potato without thinking of “The Martian.” Some members of the book group enjoyed the book and others didn’t. One really, really, really didn’t!

Now we have “The Martian” on steroids: “Project Hail Mary.” Here is the last line of my review: I love this book. Now you only have to read the review if you want a few particulars.

Half the book is the adventure of Ryland Grace in space, racing to Tau Ceti to solve the problem of why the Earth’s sun is dimming, thus imperiling life on Earth. The other half of the book is about how scientists figured out what was causing the diminution and how Ryland Grace, failed Ph.D. candidate and popular middle school science teacher, became the last hope of earthkind.

The book begins with the awakening of Ryland Grace after he has been in a coma. He does not remember his name. He does not know where he is. He has no idea what is going on. There are two mummified bodies in his room. He has all his scientific and reasoning faculties intact, however. He does not find out his name for several chapters, but using logic, he does cotton on to the fact that he is on a spaceship and he has been in an induced coma because the flight must have been a long one. Obviously, he reasons, his crew mates did not survive. (We later find out the flight has been thirteen Earth years so far but only four years in Grace’s world, relativity being what it is. Thank you, Einstein.)

As memory slowly returns to Grace, he realizes he is on a mission to save Earth. Its sun has been slowly dimming. Grace has named the culprit “astrophage.” The little critter is like a souped-up firefly. It can gulp and hold an incredible amount of energy in its little form. All sorts of catastrophic climate events are occurring on Earth as a result. In a “hail Mary” attempt the world comes together to invest in a million-to-one shot at figuring out how to stop the sun’s destruction.

Tau Ceti, a star 11.9 light years from Earth, has something unusual going on. Tau Ceti is infected by the astrophage, too, but it is not dimming the way Earth’s sun is. Why not? The only way to find out is to launch the improbable ship and give it the impossible task. For the people on board the Hail Mary, it will be a one-way trip. The information they glean will be sent back to Earth in four separate beetle-shaped rockets, for the sake of redundancy. They are named George, Paul, Ringo, and John. (Get it? the beetles=The Beatles.)

Grace’s returning memories are revealed in chapters sprinkled throughout the book. His unexpected path from middle school teacher to astronaut is slowly explained. 

I’m going to put a “spoiler alert” here. I don’t know why I feel the need to do that, since every other review tells you what the “surprise” twist is, but let that be on their heads, I say. (Just kidding.) Sometimes a surprise needs to be as much of a surprise as possible. I read this book without having read any reviews, so I met each twist and turn with much joy and wonderment.

SPOILER ALERT

Earth is not the only planet suffering from the effects of a dimming sun. From a planet far, far away, another space traveler has journeyed to Tau Ceti to find out how to combat those pesky astrophage. To Grace, “Rocky” is an alien. To Rocky, “Grace” is an exotic creature. Remember “Enemy Mine,” the 1985 movie with Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr.? This is sort of like that, except for the enemies part. Their cooperative venture to solve their mutual problem involves a lot of science — and Weir does his best to put what happens in layman’s terms — and sweetness, brilliance, toleration, and a touch of bittersweet.

I love how human, awkward, sad, and smart Ryland Grace sounds. I love his ability to be funny, despite looming disaster.

I love this book.

MBTB star!

The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes by Leonard Goldberg

Griffin, 320 pages, $16.99 (c2018)

Most if not all the Holmes pastiches reference the standard operating characters and past cases. There’s probably an obscure reference or two or three that only the cognoscente will recognize. “The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes” isn't written for that "in crowd" as much as to be read and enjoyed by people with just basic knowledge of the "canon." 

Dr. James Watson is in attendance. He is still in mourning over the death of his friend, the famous beekeeper, Sherlock Holmes. In his old age, he is living in his old rooms at 221B Baker Street. His son, James, Jr., is also a doctor and, moreover, is conveniently a pathologist. Watson still is served by the housekeeper Hudson, but it is a younger version of the redoubtable Mrs. Hudson in the person of her daughter, Miss Hudson. The other daughter, the daughter of the title, is Mrs. Joanna Blalock, the daughter of Sherlock and Irene Adler, “the woman.” She was adopted as a baby by the Blalocks and has never been told her origin story. Joanna was a wife and nurse, but has since been widowed and left her job as a nurse at the hospital to take care of her son. The villain of the piece, too, has a connection to the cases of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Lestrade is still, for better or worse, Lestrade.

The players are in place. Because the tale is told through the narrative of James, Jr., it is an unraveling of the tale told by someone who only grasps the pertinent parts through revelations spoken by Joanna. Not that James is as hapless as his father was as Sherlock’s chronicler. 

The occasion for the meeting of the sleuthing minds is the death of a young man who has dropped from a building to the ground and died. Joanna was walking with her son past the building when her son witnessed the falling man. Watson and Junior are brought into the case by the family of the deceased. At first, only Watson knows Joanna’s true identity. He has been left as her secret trustee by Sherlock’s estate. Watson’s age and increasing infirmities lead him to reveal the secret to his son, who must in the future assume the trustee’s responsibilities.

It is Joanna who convinces everyone that the fallen man had been murdered. After that, she involves herself in the case at each step. Her impeccable conclusions convince Lestrade of her worth. Let us pass by any thought of how unlikely that might be. As a matter of fact, let us just accept the suppositions inherent in this storyline. Let us just mosey along with author Leonard Goldberg and enjoy a plot that indeed sounds as though it could have been crafted by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, even if the mushy parts and dialogue would not pass muster.

This is the first of five books issued so far in the series.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Viking, 304 pages, $26

“The Midnight Library” is not a mystery.

I have been reading more non-mysteries and magazine articles lately, mostly non-fiction stuff. That’s why this blog has been empty lately.

What is “The Midnight Library,” then? (More and more books defy categorization, and I say “Yay” to that.) What if you despaired of your life and decided to end it one night. What if instead of dying, time froze at midnight and you found yourself in an unusual library instead. What if the librarian were one from your grade school, a woman who had comforted you once when you desperately needed it. What if she gave you the chance to go back and live another life-that-could-have-been. What if you chose, for example, to marry the man you had run away from two days before your wedding. What if there were more "what-ifs." What would those lives have been like? What kind of book would that make “The Midnight Library”?

Science-fiction, fantasy, “literary,” just another one of the current crop of books that play with time and the meaning of life? It doesn’t pretend to be real. There’s no life-on-the-streets reality. Or family members messing each other up for generations. Or surviving an airplane crash. Or trying to stop a bomb from exploding.

It doesn’t really matter, does it, what label I give it.

It has a philosophical backbone and story-ribs jutting out from there. There is an abundance of emotions. So choose your own adventure, failed human Nora Seed, and author Matt Haig will take us along with you.

This book was pleasant, not too taxing on the brain, and slipped silently into the “feel good” category.

While Justice Sleeps by Stacey Abrams

Doubleday, 384 pages, $28

Stacey Abrams is a lawyer and a political force in Georgia. She is also the writer of romance novels. “While Justice Sleeps” is her first fiction venture out of that genre. (There is a touch of romance, although there is no hanky-panky.)

Avery Keene has the coveted position of clerk to a Supreme Court Justice. That justice, Howard Wynn, travels to his own drummer, has a high standard for himself and others, and is brilliant. Avery is proud to have such a mentor. Then one day she receives the news that Wynn has fallen into a coma and that she, Avery Keene, just out of law school and with an addict for a mother, has been appointed his legal guardian. What about his ex-wife? His son? No, it is Avery who holds his life in her hands.

Abrams has another storyline running through and it’s not immediately obvious what it has to do with Justice Wynn's or Avery's current dilemmas. Wynn’s vote on a case before the court will determine whether a corporate merger between an American biogenetics company and an Indian biotech company will be allowed. The case is in limbo because Wynn is comatose. 

Abrams has plotted a convoluted thriller. People are dying. There are several attempts on Avery’s life. The big question is why she has become a target. There is pressure on her to resign Wynn from the court, there is pressure for her to disconnect Wynn’s medical devices, there is pressure for her to take care of her wayward mother. And to repeat: Why does someone want to kill her?

Avery has an odd group of people she thinks she can trust: her roommate, a doctor; Judge Wynn’s estranged son; Wynn’s lawyer; and maybe an FBI agent. It’s crazy-making!

As with most thrillers, this plot relies on a premise that stretches the imagination. The politics of the book doesn’t resemble (too much) what is currently happening. The book is definitely make-believe.

I wish I could say this was a great book, because I admire Stacey Abrams to infinity and beyond. However, it was an unremarkable, albeit competently written, book. There were moments of interesting character development and tension, but nothing was sustained.