In this latest collection of short reviews, I visit might-have-been worlds constructed by two contemporary masters, Francis Spufford and Michael Chabon; offer my comments on Bad Actors, the 8th (and for now last) spy novel in Mick Herron’s Slough House series; resume my journey through the Harry Bosch universe with City of Bones; wade through Holly, a newer Stephen King story; and revisit the Navaho Nation with Jim Chee in The Way of the Bear, a novel by the late Tony Hillerman’s daughter and successor, Anne Hillerman.
Cahokia Jazz
Francis Spufford
This is a detective novel set in Cahokia, capital of the American city-state of Cahokia, populated by a mix of takouma (indigenous), takata (white), and taklousa (black) Americans, governed by takouma rules and law. This is not to say the racism that stains us as Americans, present day and historical, is absent: underlying the action of this novel is a sinister plot to create a “race war” that will result in a white takeover and the elimination of takouma governance and laws; the KKK is alive and well in Cahokia. Also alive and well: many aspects of our own 1920s America: President Harding back east, the recently-concluded Great War, the railroad empire (this time majority-owned by the red man), sunny California and the movie industry, jazz.
I love serious world-building, and Spufford takes his very seriously indeed. The historical differences that create this version of the United States — Cahokia occupying what in our timeline is southern Illinois, the Dineh governing a vast area in what we know of as Arizona and New Mexico, the separate Mormon nation Deseret covering most of our Nevada and Utah, a British Oregon where our Washington State sits, a Russian Alaska called the New Siberian Territory — are explained with enough detail to be plausible, shown to us through the eyes and ears of Joe Barrow, the Cahokia detective at the center of the story, a transplanted orphan of mixed takouma and taklousa parentage. A jazz pianist in his off-hours, no less, and through this part of his life we learn of another major difference between his world and ours: the nearby existence of Mississippi, a state where post-Civil War reconstruction held, a refuge and home to the taklousa, with its own thriving culture.
It is the takouma we learn the most about, through Barrow’s sudden immersion (and near-adoption into) in Cahokia’s indigenous culture. The takouma are a people heavily influenced by Aztec, Spanish, and Catholic culture, a religious people who respect and practice both old ways and new, a people who own land in common, members of a matriarchal society where the women take over when shit gets serious … and boy, does it.
In an afterword, Francis Spufford explains the speculative historical fork in the road that allowed him to construct the world of Cahokia Jazz: a less lethal strain of smallpox introduced to the Americas by Spanish conquistadors; a century or two later, as European settlers move westward, the indigenous populations they encounter are thriving, robust, armed and resistant to genocide, resulting in a quite different country than the one we know today.
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
Michael Chabon
My original review, posted 13 years ago:
Great writing. And a great story too. I really love these “what might have been” stories, and interestingly enough, the relocation of European Jews to Sitka actually is one: it was a serious proposal considered by the U.S. government in 1940, with support from cabinet members and looked on favorably by Roosevelt himself, opposed and shot down by the non-voting delegate of the Territory of Alaska.
On re-reading, I’m more impressed than ever. The world-building is meticulous, rich, deep, and detailed. Paying attention to those details pays off in spades, making the tale believable and pulling you in. Meyer Landsman is a piece of work. I cared about him … that Chabon can do that to a jaded reader is testimony to his greatness.
I had to remind myself from time to time that the day-to-day speech of Sitka’s Jews is Yiddish, and than when they speak or curse in “American,” Chabon means English. So immersed am I now, I’m likely to start dropping words like schlemiel and shtarker into daily conversation, and asking for a Philippine donut next time I’m in the drive-thru at Dunkin’.
Next on my re-read list is an earlier Chabon novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
Bad Actors (Slough House #8)
Mick Herron
With Bad Actors, I’ve caught up with the Slough House series and shall have to wait for future novels, should there be any. Honestly, Mick Herron could decide to quit while he’s ahead … I don’t know how much farther he can push his formula before it grows stale. Not to say it’s becoming so, but apart from the contemporary backdrop of each novel, the social and political state of the UK at the time each story is set, they do tell much the same story.
This one, set somewhere around 2022, with Boris Johnson as PM and the nation coming out of Covid lockdown, is a rip-roaring tale, with Shirley Dander playing a starring role and, for a change, making a positive impression on a figure associated with Regent’s Park — associated in a peripheral manner, though I sense he may become more central in a future novel. There’s a new horse in the House, briefly seen prior to her demotion at the end of the previous novel, Slough House. As Herron has done before, the reader is kept guessing whether former slow horses, perhaps deceased, perhaps not, will trot again. Jackson Lamb reveals deeper layers of repugnance. Diana Taverner does the same, though hers take less odorous forms.
Great fun, as always.
City Of Bones (Harry Bosch #8)
Michael Connelly
City of Bones provides one of the subplots to Season #1 of Amazon’s streaming TV series Bosch. I’ve watched every season aired to date, including the newer series, Bosch Legacy, and as I work my way through the written novels I note with interest how producers and screenwriters borrow elements from different books, not always in order, and weave them together for TV. The televised stories that result are often richer and more rewarding than the written ones, and I never thought I’d say that about a TV adaptation of a book. Well, maybe the Harry Potter movies, which IMO were much more entertaining than the crudely-written books, but now I’m rambling.
This novel, which tells the story of the 20-year-old murder of an unknown boy whose bones are found by a dog wandering in woods above Laurel Canyon — minus the elements from other Bosch novels added to the TV season incorporating this book — stands alone as a great Bosch novel, one that will appeal to any fan, and certainly did me.
Holly (Holly Gibney #3)
Stephen King
Holly Gibney is the private eye protagonist of previous stories and novels. I didn’t know that when I picked it off the New Reads shelf at my library, but it became instantly apparent via frequent and repeated references to cases and villains Holly had investigated before. This novel can stand alone, but King makes it clear he wants you to go read the earlier installments, and to my mind this intrudes on the story.
Which is okay, the story that is, but as with some of the lesser King novels I’ve read, it’s windy, winding, and frustratingly slow. And then there’s Holly, a fussy and prudish person with irritating habits. There are points in the novel where she makes intuitive jumps about the missing persons cases she’s investigating that I simply did not buy. The hand of the author, helping her make deductions, was a bit too visible.
But it’s Stephen King, and though far from his best work, it’s a page-turner.
The Goodreads entry for Holly is flooded with one-star reviews from the I-do-my-own-research™ anti-vaxx crowd. Yes, Covid forms part of the backdrop to this story, lurking in the background but always present, bringing back a flood of pandemic lockdown memories — and on that subject, what the hell is this book doing on the New Reads shelf anyway? It’s gotta be two or three years old! Oh wait, I see it was first published a year ago, in September 2023. Well, okay then, but just.
The Way of the Bear (Leaphorn & Chee #26)
Anne Hillerman
A friend gave me a copy of Anne Hillerman’s book, explaining that Ms. Hillerman has been carrying on with her late father Tony’s Leaphorn/Chee novels. My friend and I are fans of the Dark Winds streaming TV series, based on the elder Hillerman’s novels, as well as the novels.
Anne Hillerman has so far published 9 follow-on Leaphorn/Chee novels, with a 10th due out in 2025. This one, The Way of the Bear, is the 8th.
Since I’ve read just this one, I can’t yet say I have a feel for Anne’s writing, but will note that in this novel she inserts a lot of background and exposition into dialog between characters, much of it not only clumsy but unrealistic … unrealistic as in “I seriously doubt Manuelito and Jessica are having this conversation, which doesn’t come across at all as something these two would be talking about while navigating a treacherous snow- and ice-packed road on bald tires with a wounded man bleeding and moaning in the back seat.” This being her 8th stab at a novel, I’ll stick my neck out and wager this sort of thing is characteristic of her earlier work.
Still, though, Chee and other characters familiar to us from her father’s earlier novels are the same folks. Anne Hillerman’s doing a great job keeping them alive for us, and the story she tells in The Way of the Bear is interesting, suspenseful, and even educational. It’s a good read.