The Bughouse Affair - Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini

I’ve mentioned my library’s 7-Day Shelf before, usually to bemoan my inability to return books on time; library fines are an actual line-item in my (mental) monthly budget. (Who has time for a real budget? I’m too busy spending money I don’t have!)

I did a quick sweep of the 7-day shelf at one point and came home with this GEM, but I’ll admit to the following mental process:

1) Wow, that cover is really awful.
2) What a terrible title.
3) Pronzini? Ahhhahahah!
4) *reads the first paragraph of the inner flap * Set in Victorian-era San Francisco! Yes, I’m reading this.

I may have been a leeeeetle biased going in. But nothing prepared me for the accuracy of my first impressions.

Except vast experience in Being Right, of course.

Story! Let’s start with John Quincannon, Male Lead, and his views on his attractive-but-widowed business partner:

“She was not a beautiful woman, but at thirty-one she possessed a mature comeliness that melted his hard Scot’s heart.”

That, my friends, is what some assholes  call a “neg” – the ostensible compliment that hides a criticism. Also, the descriptor “Scot” shows up 3 more times in the first chapter, just in case you didn’t catch it the first time around.

Other things you might have missed because you are stone-blind and have the mental capacity of a thimble:

• A mental map of 1890-something San Francisco. Don’t worry, this book will provide you with one! “Quincannon walked to Terrific Street, as Pacific Avenue, the district’s main artery, was called, turned into an alley, and entered a large building mid-block.” Good job making me not care at all about your whorehouse scene, Authors, because I’m too busy trying to navigate your commas.
• A definition of American Victorian slang, such as “yegg.” 
• Murderous hatpin-using pickpockets 
• Sherlock Holmes in the flesh

Sadly not this flesh.

Let’s define the word “yegg.” OH WAIT, we can’t, because unlike other, more obvious words (::coughbughousecough::) that are used in context over and over again – and defined on page 245 just in case you missed it – this one word is never explained.

Moving on to the hatpin-wielding pickpocket. This girl’s MO is to find a likely-looking victim in a crowd, jab him viciously with a hatpin, then cut his purse. Okay, I’ll buy that.  But what I will not buy is that your victims wouldn’t know the difference between an attack of biliousness and a jab with a sharp, supremely unhygienic object, to the point where a guy would die in short order of what he thought was a stomach problem. How deep did can one poke a hatpin without someone noticing blood?

It turns out that Sherlock wouldn’t have been a surprise if I’d read more than the first paragraph of the bookflap. And to be honest, I’d probably have put it back; after my experience with Death Comes to Pemberley, I’ve given up on pastiche.

One final quote because I just. can’t. stand it:

“The open-air California Market, known far and wide as San Francisco’s ‘entrepot of foods,’ ran for an entire block from Pine to California streets between Montgomery and Kearney.”

Oh good. Next time I’m up there, I’ll be sure to think about how everyone in the Middle Ages used to know what an “entrepot” was.  [Spoiler: it’s a trading post.]

The worst part about this book is that the authors have not only 40+ years of writing experience and 35+ published novels between them, they also have a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. EACH.

You’d think they would know how to set up some tension, create interesting characters without having to borrow them from somewhere else, and maybe add a plot twist so that it wasn’t the wife who did it.

Are you kidding me?

THE WIFE?!?

3 of 11 Poorly Plotted Pastiches*



*Don't get all excited, Authors. That third star is only because I got to spend an hour downloading Sherlock gifs. 

The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac - Kris D'Agostino

I've never been a person to read the last few pages of a book before I read the first, but I think I'm going to start having to make an exception for reading the author's bio. A few key words that will immediately make me skeptical of the book's ability to rate on the (coveted, obvs.) Tika Scale of Success are:

Début novel
Lives in Brooklyn
Picture with fingers in hair and self-deprecating smile

I actually took the time to Post-it flag this novel, complete with comments on said flags. They read, in order:

"One of the banes - hah!"
Sentence frags errwherrrrr!
POOR WRITING ->
UGH
WTF is this?
Would it kill you to use a :?
Ok CE [copy editor], ":" =/= "is"
Homophone vs. synonym

Let's begin with the sentence fragments, shall we? Modern writers and readers understand that sentence fragments can be used to great effect. We've eschewed the idea that a sentence must have a subject and a verb to make sense because we understand context.

HOWEVER.

With great effect comes the great responsibility to not over-use the grammatical linguistic phenomenon to the point of reader exhaustion. (In the future, people will categorize the 2000's-2010's literary style as the Sentence Fragment Era.) Observe:

"We arrive at the warehouse just after nightfall. Part of an eerie industrial park. Abandoned and unused, seated behind the railroad tracks on the outskirts of Oscawana." (p.51)

I have a less emphatic "no no no" gif, but it wasn't getting the job done.

It turns out that first-person present is my least favorite of the tenses. I spend half my reading time thinking, "I do WHAT now? When did I did that?" When WHAM! Out of the blue come sentences like this:

"The scariest thing: that somehow I'm meant to be here, at this kitchen table, forever, for all time, watching these two women make chicken cacciatore." (p. 143)

As mentioned above, a colon does not function as the word "is." Punctuation is not to be thrown out (OR IN) all willy-nilly without-a-plan. It serves a purpose. It adds meaning. You are driving me to italics, Kris. And chicken cacciatore is awesome.

My dear copy editor of this wretched novel, do not think I've overlooked you! Let's have a little discussion about homophones, shall we? They're words that sound alike but are spelled differently, for those not keeping up (you).

One does not wave ones' rights. One waives them.
One does not steer from the yolk of a plane, but from the yoke.
Colons function not as verbs (see above) but as denoters of lists. Observe:

I make a list of everything in the attic: [correct!] 

Stacks of framed pictures. Grandma and Grandpa on the shores of Cape Cod. Chip, Elissa, and me in front of the Louvre. Our parents' wedding. Birthdays. Graduations. Proms. [NO!] (p. 123)

Allow me to refer you to the Tracy Morgan gif directly above, because Grandma and Grandpa on the shores of Cape Cod are not, in fact, things in the attic. Neither is your parents' wedding, etc. So, in closing, I'd like to take you out back for a little grammar/punctuation/learn-to-do-your-job lesson.

And the story is basically this guy who lives with his family and has to help them and he whines about it all the time because he's 24 and he wants to be freeeeeee! Which makes me want to punch him in the face. And then, you guys, something happens at the end that makes me feel guilty for hating this book. Which, perversely, makes me hate it even more.

In conclusion, this book is bullshit and I hated it.

2 out of 11 Ichabod Cranes.