One A Week Reviews #32: Pay Phone

PAY PHONE is Brandon Ford's third novel and an impressive achievement. Set in New York City in January 1998, it's somewhat "timeless," as the imagery and events may easily conjure up for you the grimy, dangerous concrete streets of Times Square at it's 1970s and early 80s sleaziest.

The novel features two isolated characters at it's core. Jake, a monster hiding in plain sight who uses a pay phone to entice his victims, and Chelsea, a vulnerable and optimistic young woman who gets ensnared by him without even realizing the door she's opened by answering a random ringing phone. Tight and tidy, this is spare storytelling. A 2 day timeline is pared to the essentials and the pacing is compulsive. Like evesdropping on an interesting stranger who's "in extremis" in real life, you simply HAVE to follow and find out what happens, even when you dread to look.

Ford draws each character in the small assortment of players as humanely recognizable. Their idiosyncrasies and oddly unifying loneliness make the surprises of backstory and the explosions of cleanly, smoothly-detailed violence as shocking as the nasty surprises of real life. His descriptions of violent acts define "chilling." They're images that stay vivid in the mind's eye. I can't remember the last novel that actually made me gasp out loud -- and more than once, at that -- much less one that actually had me feeling powerless to intercede on a fictitious someone's behalf.

Ford's previous novels CRYSTAL BAY and SPLATTERED BEAUTY demonstrated his eye for detail, which continues to engage here. Those novels and this one also brim with his vivid and memorable supporting characters who add layers of dimension and terrific red herrings. Ford generously engages us with all his characters, good and evil. His skill grows with every outing and you want to start following him now, as PAY PHONE is a surprisingly moving novel staking out his way forward. It's horrors lie in our mundane reality and that's more than good writing. The inevitability of events in PAY PHONE make it almost downright dangerous.

There's nothing fantastical here, but this novel harbors a monster, the one who may be next door. You won't be able to stop reading. I can't recommend it highly enough.
In the end, using a phone connection between villain and victim is even more timely and ominous now in our cell-phone and internet age of virtual interactions... I look forward to the next novel.

Books.

At the beginning of the year I resolved I would read some of the backlog of titles I'd collected over the last decade and dragged to and fro over the years. So far, I've been fairly good about that... okay, 50/50. I started the year with a library book; but, hey, grandfathered in, right? Then 3 out of my own collection, the last being "A People's History of the United States." This one I've interrupted twice. The first time was when a book that I'd been on the library's waiting list for a year for, "My Horizontal Life" came in. The second just last week, when I'd found out Max Allan Collins had written a novelization of one of my favorite characters from my teens, Ms. Tree.

So I'm wondering if it's bending the rules if I stop by the Friends of the Library sale going on in my local branch's basement today and walk about with a few books? I didn't spend much, but finally picked up:

- Robert Graves' "I, Claudius" and "Claudius the God" - two books I've
been meaning to read since high school when I'd first heard of them. I've always
had an interest in (Greek and) Roman History. After college I also finally watched the excellent "I, Claudius" mini-series from the 70's. A program that holds up so
well I'll probably reward myself with it again once I read the book.

-J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" - yes, I'm the last
person in America to not have read these books, although this one I did listen
to as a book on tape about 6 years ago. (Jim Dale does the most excellent
narration) I have been meaning to read this series, especially after I re-read
the Chronicles of Narnia a few years ago... if I'm going to start a series, I
want to be a completest.

-"The Collected Stories of Vladimir Nabokov" -I've only ever read "Pale
Fire" and "Lolita" (a book I read as being more about falling in love with a
newly-learned language as I was told it was his first novel written in English),
and I have "Ada" on the shelf. I plan to re-read "Lolita" too, but here's a
short story collection I can get behind.

-On a lark (I swear) I also picked up something called "Sex Tips for Gay
Guys," thinking it might be good for a lark. Less than an hour later, I'm
telling a friend about my purchases to find out he used to date someone who'd
written something titled "Sex Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man." My friend
also felt this author wasn't very good in the sack.
This, of course, has turned out to be the same author. So now, my lark is
queasy-making, as I have the foreknowledge that "Those Who Can't, Teach"
(according to my friend) and if I venture to read between the lines, I may read
someone I know.

I don't think it's bending the rules. If a book is IN my collection I can read it this year. (No more library cheats, unless something TRULY spectacular comes along... or catches my fancy. Whatever.) I'll try to give more weight to older titles... though "I, Claudius" is already calling me with it's siren song.

I have about 160 pages left in the phenomenal - but, admittedly, slow going "People's History." I just got up to Attica and the social uprisings of prison riots in the 70s. The first part of the chapter covered the rise of feminism. This book has been an amazing education and a real refresher course on American history, even as it shows me angles I was only vaguely aware of.

I'd be reading faster but I of late have mostly been tackling books only on my lunch break. I went out Wednesday night for a burrito and finished "Deadly Beloved" (The Ms. Tree book). When I go to bed I've been curling up with graphic novel collections - light reading before bed. I haven't been putting them in my "What I'm Reading" column, but I did just get through all four volumes of "Diana Prince - Wonder Woman," which is a pretty fascinating collection of a two-year span during the 70's where the de-powered Wonder Woman, stuck her in white jumpsuits, and had a shallow, kinda racist characature called "I-Ching" teach her judo. A pretty fascinating curio with fab Mike Sekowsky art and painful fashions. I also worked through the first one and a half "Library Volumes" of Mike Mignola's "Hellboy." Fabulous art in a very large-scale format, and a MUST for anyone with an eye for striking design.

So, yeah, I cheat a little on my New Year's reading vow - undocumented graphic novels and a committment to the personal library that's been... loose... but that's where I stand.

Now, what to read next? "I, Claudius" is in the running with a book called "An Arrow's Flight," a gay comedy of manners set in greek history (a toga theme?) or tackling another big learnin; tome, namely "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. After the naughty Chelsea Handler and delicious Ms. Tree, I don't feel I need a trashy, splashy palate-cleanser post "People's History."

Agatha Raisin and the Guy Who Feels A Little Sheepish Admitting Publicly He's Read All Her Books...

One of my little list of resolutions for the New Year is to eschew always checking out the latest thing at the library that catches my fancy in order to pursue the amazing backlog of titles I've bought over the years that clutter up my shelves and add to the mover's bill, yet I haven't actually read them yet.

Since I'd checked it out before the list of resolutions were made and it was in the house, I decided to let the book I was about to start - and have since finished - squeak in under the radar. I'm going to try and keep the list through the year, more for my own edification and sense of progress than anything else, and will try and share my progress.

About 4 1/2 years ago or so, BJ suggested I read a mystery series she'd just started and was enjoying. I borrowed the first book from her, M.C. Beaton's "Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death" and enjoyed it so much I pretty much barrelled through the entire series. Since catching up with the backlog, I've scooped up each new one the moment I've seen them on the library shelves. The one I just finished "A Spoonful of Poison" was the 19th (yikes) in the series. The first fourteen all followed the conceit of titles starting with "Agatha Raisin and..." and I'm attached enough to miss that scheme.

This volume features the Agatha Raisin Detective Agency trying to solve a mystery starting with "Who spiked the pots of homemade Plum jam with LSD, leading to the deaths of two little old British ladies" through to "Who killed the Dreamy-yet-Stuffy Architect's first wife" and "Who stole the 30-grand to fix the Church's roof?" There's lots of visiting and countryside and fine cottages. Different oh-so-British characters travel by train and drink tea. Beaton finds a way to work in visits to and from all the series' usual characters and -as in most mysteries - people travel a lot to get things done that really could be resolved with a phone call in the real world. (While good for dramatic purposes, this is not unlike how it always amuses me in television shows like "Smallville," when people will drive to Lex's mansion (established as being twenty miles or so out of town) or all the way to Metropolis (three hours away) for a two minute confrontation... seriously, people, think about your carbon footprint!)

It's a cozy mystery series set in the English Cotswolds, and it's all very twee and comforting with pots of jam and painted china on the covers. Full of thatched cottages and Vicars' wives, as much stays the same as changes and evolves - and what are "Cozies," if not comforting?

I think I enjoy the series because the lead character is composed of the qualities most of us like to play down in ourselves (she's prideful, dyspeptic, cantankerous), making her very human. I think the wish fulfillment qualities of telling people off help immensely. The way she's described, small, with "Bearish" beady eyes, and her general demeanor - I always picture in my head Judi Densch (in fact the whole conceit of her and her pursuit of the equally grouchy James Lacey always makes me think of the old BBC TV show "As Time Goes By" with her and Geoffrey Palmer courting after 38 years apart).

The series also has followed an honest timeline. I like that the characters age and evolve, and in a pop-culture world where most characters keep status quo and try not to break any of the "David & Maddie" rules, it's nice to see a lead who sets her hat for someone, eventually gets him, marries him, then eventually divorces, and moves on. They could have easily stayed together, but had the same 50/50 chances as the rest of us. In the meantime, she does have some thru-lines like subsisting almost exclusively on freezer burned curries and being a character who, refreshingly on the grounds of PC-ing up popular entertainments, still smokes.

Beaton publishes probably 2-3 volumes a year in both her "Agatha Raisin" and "Hamish MacBeth" series (of which I've only read two), so she's little like a cozy-mystery version of the James Patterson industry. If one or two Agatha Raisin titles come out over the next year -- well, I'll probably have dropped my resolution by then and snatch them off the "New Release" shelf...

"I thought hell is bound to be a livlier place."

Gore Vidal just had a new collection of his essays come out. I've always been a fan of his as he usually winds up being proved right on issues of social mores and honest, if not a bit paranoid, on observing that America is truly an "Empire." He comes out against war, hypocrisy, and illiteracy with a stylish turn of phrase and I've always been a sucker for it. Yes, he can be a complete gasbag at times, too, but still more magnetic and informative to listen to than 99% of the talking heads you'll see on television offering opinions on the same subjects.

Check out this feisty interview (he's really rude to the reporter, frankly) where he mocks reviewers of his novels ("That's because they don't know how to read"), John McCain ("Who started this rumor that he was a war hero?"), and William F. Buckley ("I thought hell is bound to be a livelier place."). Okay, the novel observations I'll give them. I've only read 4 or 5 of them, including the under-appreciated "Myron," with the wonderful (albeit childish) conceit of replacing all the swear words with the names of Supreme Court justices to protest a ruling on obscenity that had come down around the time he was writing it. I'm not sure he's ever turned out a classic novel besides "Myra Breckenridge," but I plan to read more of them before I come to a decision. The essays, however, are classics. Pick up the new collection or go ahead and dive into the giant "United States" collection (which collected about 1/3rd of all essays he'd published between '42 to '92 in about 1300 pages). I've read probably 6 or 7 collections of his essays and still slowly chip my way through "United States." Always entertaining and informative. He's worth a read.