Fresh Updated LA Noir from Daniel Weizmann, THE LAST SONGBIRD

 

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Weizmann’s updated LA noir storytelling is pitch perfect, so this quirky investigator stands in for each of us, committing in a fumbling fashion to doing what’s right even though we’re not equipped for the journey.”

 

Pull up that poignant song about driving a beautiful woman in your taxi cab and never forgetting her. Hold onto the emotion—now, pin the story to Los Angeles, to the brutal competitiveness of performance and production, and to the significance of small and persistent acts of kindness.

 

Too saccharine? Fear not. Daniel Weizmann roughs up the story of a Lyft-driving songwriter on the night streets as he hard-boils affection, friendship, loyalty. That means grit, lots of it, from drug-fueled disasters to twisted personal secrets.

 

Yet The Last Songbird, personified here by aging yet still famous folksinger Annie Linden, never quite loses the heartache and beauty of the old songs. By the time driver Adam Zantz trusts Annie Linden enough to share his own songs with her (he writes both the lyrics and the melodies) in the strange privacy of his hired car, she’s also won his faithfulness. When she and her bodyguard are brutally murdered (with Adam a suspect, of course), there’s only one mission possible: find the killer and bring them to justice. Even though that won’t bring Annie back, it will let Adam keep hearing and feeling the support of her voice.

 

“She was a songwriter’s songwriter, a taker of lyrical chances,” Adam clarifies. Annie’s become his antidote to despair, too: “Annie Linden, my Annie Linden, never had any place to hide. Because she believed in love, like a religious devotee. She said as much to me on the road when I asked her where her songs came from.”

 

Extra horseradish on the side for this dish of neo-noir, please, since Adam (Addy to his friends) presents a Jewish flavor to all his choices. His friends twist toking and Torah, like Ephraim Freiberger, aka Double Fry, who explains that his paparazzi work is bounded by not selling any photos that could embarrass someone. Addy checks this: “Embarrassing someone is strictly forbidden?” Double Fry responds, “By the Torah, it’s like murder.”  Tough boundary for a photo career in LA, though!

 

Adam’s songwriting future may be dead in the water with Annie’s murder—she was the first and only significant person who’d believed in his work—and the darkness of his nights, with its long ugly driving shifts through LA’s special brand of despair and denial, threatens his inner life as well. But under Double Fry’s pressure, he nails his urge to solve the crime: “I owe her—for giving me hope when I had zero. And I’m pissed. ‘Cause if I don’t find out who—If I don’t find out who [killed her], maybe nobody will.”

 

The clumsy but persistent efforts of this spur-of-the-heartache amateur sleuth pull him into danger, of course, as well as waves of anguish over his past and over his desperation to “make good” to Annie’s memory. Weizmann’s updated LA noir storytelling is pitch perfect, so this quirky investigator stands in for each of us, committing in a fumbling fashion to doing what’s right even though we’re not equipped for the journey.

 

Of course, classic noir would spit Adam back out in misery at the end. Case solved, or not? Annie still an inspiration to him, or lost in the clutter of her own revealed mistakes? Things change: An author who creates a Torah-hugging buddy for his protagonist can’t be consigning the case, or Adam’s songs, or hope itself to the dumpster. Best of all, in a new twist on noir (but a definite plug for those taxi-now-Lyft drivers), a playlist of the book’s songs wraps up this irresistible tale, putting all the half-spoken secrets back into active memory. Van Morrison, anyone? Mick Jagger? Dylan? Who is the “last songbird” that you’ll hear bringing you home?

 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Noir Crime Fiction from Tod Goldberg, GANGSTER NATION

I've always been tickled by those stories of really terrible criminals who set aside one part of their life in which to be nice -- even, to be generous, kind, loving. In some versions, I can hope the "good" part will gradually leach into the awful part and transform someone. Certainly that was one idea about Whitey Bulger during the long hunt for him and the discovery that he'd been living as someone's almost unnoticeable husband in a small ordinary-seeming retirement world. Real life, though, proved he hadn't changed underneath: still the brutal criminal who had no hesitation about killing, maiming, violating the social contract in the most violent ways.

Enter Rabbi David Cohen in GANGSTER NATION, the eagerly awaited sequel to Gangsterland by Tod Goldberg. There's no secret for readers about Rabbi David Cohen's original identity: He's a Chicago hitman named Sal Cupertine, who made one of the great escapes from capture, through plastic surgery and into a new life. Tenderly, Goldberg reveals the rabbi's attachment to his new life of attending committee meetings, listening to marriage problems, escorting families through their teen's bnei mitzvah processes and ceremonies. As he reflects on how uncomfortable he feels about solemnizing a marriage -- knowing that if his identity ever comes to light again, the married couple will feel unmarried and even besmirched -- it's tempting to wonder whether Sal has actually transformed, changed into a new person inside as well as outside.

Stop right there. Consider how this rabbi figures out how to get "Temple Beth Israel" through a tight funding period:

If someone missed two [tuition] payments, the Temple would start getting liens right away, none of that Fair Debt Reporting crap, the Temple getting every family to sign contracts allowing property liens, never mind the public shame aspect. Worst case scenario, David figured if someone had to accidentally get electrocuted at home to get their life insurance to pay the debt, well, then he'd go and f*** with their pool light. It hadn't come to that, thankfully, because the nice thing was that everyone was rich as f*** these days.

Count on a dark ride through this lively page-turner, and expect more than the usual share of violence (although not especially gory and without kiddie porn, thank goodness). Obviously there are plenty of grim chuckles too (especially if you've been part of an organized religion scenario), and a few heart-jerking moments of family love, distorted of course by gangster ethics.

Just released by Counterpoint, tightly written, and a good one to add to your noir shelf -- as well as any collection that favors Chicago or Las Vegas or Jewish dark fiction.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Amateur Sleuth in the Deli: TO KILL A MATZO BALL, Delia Rosen

I get a kick out of the amateur sleuth mysteries that Kensington provides as paperback original. These are generally light-hearted, quickly paced, with likeable protagonists and no gruesome nightmares.

TO KILL A MATZO BALL, the new "Deadly Deli" series title from Delia Rosen, fits all those descriptors -- except, as amateur sleuth and relatively new delicatessen owner Gwen Katz notes several times, the threats here are directed at her personally. That's quite a change from what Gwen has experienced so far in her Nashville, Tennessee, restaurant and catering operation. In earlier titles (like A Brisket, A Casket and A Killer in the Rye), Gwen's helped out others around her whose lives tilted from some form of murderous attack. This time, she's in danger from the very first chapter.

Rosen (who is actually Jeff Rovin) keeps the action rapid and questions multiply: What's the Chinese underworld doing around Gwen's deli? Why is the deli a safer place for her to sleep than her own home? Is there a leak in the police force, where her former boyfriend Detective Grant Daniels (who is no longer "into her") works? And will business ever get back to normal, after all the gunshots fired around Gwen?

If you love Nashville, cozy mysteries, and heroines with pluck who also need a hug (sometimes a passionate one), grab a copy for summer fun. The Yiddish expressions are a bit over the top this time, I think, and the author's "real" gender seems to leak through in more places than I expected. But as always, for a Delia Rosen mystery, the clues are well scattered, the motive-means-opportunity makes sense eventually (if a bit eccentric!), and the twinned environments of Southern city and Jewish deli create a unique atmosphere. Available as both paperback and audio version, like the others Rosen/Rovin has written (author/publisher website here).

Best Book of the Season: THE HOLLOW GIRL, Reed Farrel Coleman

Thanks to an early review copy, I read THE HOLLOW GIRL a couple of months ago. It's my custom to review when a book becomes available, for the sake of readers -- just my way of doing it -- but a quick tally of the days of waiting since then would probably show that I've only had one or two days when I did not think of THE HOLLOW GIRL at some point.

Yep, that's how good it is.

First, if you're a Coleman fan already, you probably know this is the ninth and last in the Moe Praeger series; the private investigator has turned 65, and the author is taking him off the job at last. Moe's been ill, he's had major personal losses, he's ready for something gentler. (Check out Coleman's earlier ruminations on this, at the "Type M for Murder" blog, here.) And if you're new to this skillful storyteller's work, yes, you can definitely read THE HOLLOW GIRL without having consumed the preceding eight books. In fact, you won't be as distracted that way by the appearance of Nancy Lustig, a figure from Moe's past, from his first case as a PI. Still, it makes a fine circle of tension right off the bat, knowing Moe is only agreeing to step away from his blossoming alcoholic routine, in order to commit to a situation where he has amends to make and leftover doubts to resolve, as Moe recognizes:

Siobhan's scalpel cut her mother deep, yet Nancy's distress was a portal through which I eagerly swam. I had a lifetime full of my own disasters, great and small. A life full of small victories and guilty defeats. Wounds, desperation, and sex make a potent, explosive cocktail. I hoped this one wouldn't blow up in our faces.

In addition, Coleman creates an entirely up-to-date "missing persons" situation -- one that includes web videos, a blog, a sense of Internet life for Nancy's missing daughter Siobhan that could be fraudulent as heck ... or could mean the rebellious young woman is still alive. But alive and free, or alive and captive? Torturing her mother, or being tortured by the videographer?

As Coleman becomes enmeshed in the Internet publicity on the case, and shackled by the crime's increasing horrors, there's as much suspense over whether he can survive this case as a healthy adult or a personal wreck, as there is suspense over whether he'll force a break in the case in time for the probable victims.

And about those other Coleman books in the Moe Praeger series? No sweat. After you've read this one, odds are, you'll be stocking up on the others. Moe Praeger's investigations were always worth reading; now, with the finale, they're all the way to classic. Move 'em onto the re-read shelf. I like Dennis Lehane's comment on the series: "These are soulful, beautifully written investigations into an American Dream that slipped through our fingers when no one was looking."

Jodi Picoult Book THE STORYTELLER Stirs Controversy

Controversy is not new for the novels of Jodi Picoult, a northern New England author whose medical/legal thrillers often target current moral quandaries. Her 2013 book, THE STORYTELLER, takes her onto Nazi/Holocaust territory, where history is in constant flux and opinions flare hot.

Today The Tablet provides an intriguing view of the issues for this book: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/130344/jodi-picoult-holocaust-vampires -- well worth reading.

Espionage, but Better: ISTANBUL PASSAGE by Joseph Kanon

Early last week I read an espionage novel that left me discouraged and confused, after slogging through more than 300 pages where the action never quite lit up, and the protagonist got dumber in each chapter.

So I was especially glad to slip into the pages of ISTANBUL PASSAGE by Joseph Kanon, a master storyteller who grasps the human issues of espionage: loyalty, courage, betrayal, lust, an insistence on power or control, and always, always, planning in as much detail as possible. Because such planning comes readily to Leon Bauer, he's found it easy to do small courier tasks that he realizes are related to war and politics -- small ways to help, during World War II, but now, in 1945, less and less important. He's not much bothered by that. A U.S. tobacco employee in Turkey, negotiating for R. J. Reynolds in Turkish tobacco purchases, he and his German Jewish wife Anna embraced Istanbul as their true home, after marrying and dodging the fate of so many Jews in Europe.

But Anna is in the moral equivalent of a coma -- listening to him perhaps, but not necessarily knowing who he is. She's probably not coming out of her clinic/hospital room ever again, although she doesn't show the signs of aging that already plague Leon. What loyalty does he owe to her? How long can he thrive as a friend to the other men in his life, when he's without love or tenderness from a woman? More urgently, what is he supposed to do with the apparent escaping Nazi he's just collected as part of his clandestine chores -- especially when he is suddenly the prime suspect in an embassy murder?

Leon's tender and passionate efforts toward the women around him and his dogged loyalty toward his friends -- complicated by both the crime police and the secret police fastening on him and his life -- turn this rich and layered novel into a memorable exploration of risk, choice, and ultimate costs. The portrayal of Turkey and of the secret and above-board efforts to bring some goodness out of the close of Europe's devastating war are impeccably detailed by Kanon.

I haven't read Kanon's earlier work (although I'm sure I saw the film based on one of his books, The Good German). Now, though, I think I need to. This kind of depth is scarce and worth appreciating. When it's braided this way with insight into an ancient nation, and with suspenseful plotting and deft twists, it's three times as good.

Note: There's an except from the book (released in May 2012; Atria) here: http://josephkanon.com/excerpt

And for those who long to "see" Kanon's Istanbul, there's a video here, as well as some earlier ones that probe this author's spycraft: http://josephkanon.com/media