Based On A True Story: "Basic Brown"

I started reading “Basic Brown: My Life and Our Times,” Willie Brown’s autobiography, a couple of nights ago. Although I’m not that far into it, I can already tell that it’s going to be an entertaining and vivid read.

And after reading those first few chapters, I also suspect that a lot of the book is outright, blatant fiction.

The tip-off comes early, in a chapter titled “Willie Brown Is NOT Kidding.” In it, Brown tells the story of the infamous “Gang of Five,” the group of five moderate Democratic legislators – Rusty Areias, Charles Calderon, Gary Condit, Jerry Eaves, and Steve Peace – who had the temerity to challenge Brown’s leadership in 1988, and sought to oust him as Assembly Speaker. To hear Brown tell the story, the crisis was dealt with with one swift, aggressive counter-attack. All it took was for Brown to fool the five into thinking that he was indeed interested in stepping down as Speaker, invite them into his office, and then step outside to make a quick phone call to Lou Papan, Chairman of the Rules Committee, and instruct Papan to strip the five of their chairmanships, fire their staffs, and throw them out of their offices. As Brown tells it, he then ushered the five into an ambush, where they were shocked by dozens of press waiting for them in the hallway and, embarrassed, they bowed their heads, paid their penance over time, and the crisis was averted. Brown comes across as the brilliant strategist, the Machiavellian Prince determined to keep his power, and brutally dispose of those who dare to cross him.

All well and good. Except it didn’t happen that way, and Brown knows it.

Sure, there was a Gang of Five, they did challenge Brown’s leadership, and Brown did eventually triumph over them, in the process doling out some severe punishment and embarrassment. But in real life, the saga dragged out over a period of several months, and on several occasions Brown came perilously close to losing everything. In the end, what really saved him was the fact that the five were about half as smart as they thought they were, and put together not nearly as smart in the ways of politics and leadership as Brown himself. Twenty years later, it’s almost comical to think that the likes of Rusty Areias and Gary Condit thought they could outsmart Willie Brown by making a deal with the Republican members of the Assembly, when Brown himself had written that particular book eight years earlier when he outmaneuvered Howard Berman (himself a pretty smart guy) to become Speaker by cutting a deal with the devil (the Republicans).

The tale that Brown tells is a fascinating one, the only drawback being that it’s only a fraction of the truth. It’s like one of those “based on a true story” movies, where you never quite know whether what you’re seeing is the “true” part or the “based on” part, all the while suspecting that the most dramatic parts fall into the latter category.

I’m sure that I’m going to like this book a lot. I just hope that there aren’t a lot of high school and college kids using it for research papers.

The Killing Moon

The remainder bins at the big chain bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble are always worth scouring. After all, how loudly can you complain when you've only paid $3.99 for a book?

I'd never heard of Chuck Hogan, but based on the cover of "The Killing Moon" alone, figured that it was worth shelling out the $3.99. And it was well worth it, because "The Killing Moon" is an excellent thriller/mystery in the classic "nothing is quite as it seems" mode. In no time at all, Hogan establishes more than a half dozen key characters, and then moves the story forward by devoting each chapter to the point of view of one of those characters. Hogan also sets the tone right away - the small town of Black Falls, Massachusetts could just as well be Twin Peaks; everyone is just a bit south of the mainstream, and strange things are happening in the woods at night.

The town's prodigal son, Don Maddox, has returned for his mother's funeral, and stayed on to become a part-time member of the town's police force. That makes no sense to anyone, including the corrupt head of the force, and as the story of the novel unfolds, the secrets of Maddox' past, and the reasons for his return, are revealed. He is clearly on a quest, but also must deal with the dead bodies that keep popping up around town. And it doesn't help that no one seems to want him to stay.

If the book has any weakness, it's that the climax isn't quite up to the set-up, but even with that it remains exciting and well executed. All in all, it feels like a book of promise, and I hope that Hogan achieves enough success to be able to build on the best parts of "The Killing Moon."

Robert Crais: "Chasing Darkness"

When considering Robert Crais, it’s easy to find the turning point where a reader can classify his books as “before and after.” That turning point is “L.A. Requiem,” which stands along with James Ellroy’s “L.A. Confidential” as the modern masterpiece of detective fiction. Crais wrote seven novels before “L.A. Requiem” and he’s written seven novels since, and even though he’s never written a bad one, it’s not likely that he’ll ever top “Requiem.” It’s that good.

The books preceding “L.A. Requiem” all featured Elvis Cole, a wise-cracking, Hawaiian shirt-wearing Vietnam Veteran, and his mysterious partner Joe Pike, a man of visceral force but one of few words. Pike played the perfect counterpart to the smart-aleck Cole – his wardrobe rarely deviating from his preferred t-shirt with the arms cut off and jeans, rarely talking, his eyes always hidden behind the reflector sunglasses that never leave his face. Cole, on the other hand, took the sarcastic and sardonic tendencies of Spade, Marlowe and Archer to their logical extreme, never missing an opportunity to make light of the situation, however dire, but leaving the reader always aware of a vulnerable side buried deep within.

“L.A. Requiem” stood above the books which came before it through the depth and gravitas that Crais added to both characters, particularly Pike. Through a series of flashbacks, the story of how a scared, young boy became Joe Pike is told, and that story drives the narrative of the novel, where much more is at stake than in the past - for the first time both Cole and Pike seem to be in over their heads, grappling with a case that threatens to take away everything they care about – up to and including their own lives.

After "L.A. Requiem," it’s almost as if Crais knew that he needed to take a breather from Cole and Pike. The next two books were stand-alone stories, one (“Demolition Angel”) featuring Carol Starkey, a chain-smoking member of the bomb squad who never quite came to terms with the fact that she was killed (and brought back to life, needless to say) by the bomb which killed her partner. Starkey has returned to play a supporting role in several Crais novels. The second stand-alone, “Hostage,” was turned into a movie with Bruce Willis, and it reads as if it was written to become the basis for an action movie (I don’t mean that as an insult).

Cole and Pike returned in three of Crais’ next four novels – “The Last Detective,” “The Forgotten Man,” and “The Watchman” (the latter which turned the tables by featuring Pike in the lead, with Cole playing second banana). All three were outstanding, and all dealt in one way or another with the ramifications of the events of “L.A. Requiem.” Perhaps sensing that it would be folly to try, none surpassed “Requiem” in terms of quality, but all carried within them a sense that things were now different. There is less joking from Cole, each case seems to have more is at stake, particularly on a personal level, and each man better understands than before his own mortality.

All of which brings us to Crais’ latest novel, “Chasing Darkness.” The book's premise is not original – in fact, it is strikingly similar to Michael Connelly’s 2006 novel, “Echo Park.” In that book, Harry Bosch must deal with a presumed mistake that he made years before that resulted in a serial killer remaining free to kill for years to come. In “Chasing Darkness,” Elvis Cole is confronted early on with the accusation that he made a mistake in a case three years ago, and because of that mistake a killer was set free and went on to claim two more victims. Cole knows that what he learned about the accused three years ago proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the man could not have been the killer, but now he must prove it all over again, not only to himself but to the family of the most recent victim.

As with the two most recent Cole books, the story no longer is about brave Elvis coming to the rescue of someone in distress. Now, his own character is at stake, and unlike the pre-“Requiem” books, there now is always a sense of doubt that things are going to turn out alright in the end. Pike is there to help, as is Carol Starkey, but until the very end the reader remains uncertain whether this will be a triumph that Elvis can truly celebrate. While I’d hesitate to classify it in the same category as Crais’ masterpiece, I do think - despite the lack of originality - that it is his best book since then. And for fans of the genre, that should be more than enough.

Books of 2008: "Love Is A Mix Tape"

You either make mix tapes, or you don’t. And if you do, in all likelihood you obsess about music. You don’t just try to figure out which songs are good, and which songs aren’t. You take it a step further – you try to figure out which songs sound best together. When a series of great songs strung together ends up sounding like less than the sum of its parts, you wonder why. And when a series of fair-to-middling songs strung together ends up sounding like the best album ever made, you get a few goose bumps, smile to yourself, and wonder at the miracle which is music.

Rob Sheffield makes mix tapes. In Love Is A Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song At A Time, Sheffield – a rock critic and columnist for Rolling Stone magazine – tells the story of a “shy, skinny, Irish Catholic geek from Boston” (Sheffield) who met “a real cool hell-raising Appalachian punk-rock girl (Renee),” fell in love, wooed the girl with a mix tape, and got married to her without any real idea of what life would hold in store.

What life held in store was a few years of bliss, followed by tragedy:

We met on September 19, 1989. We got married on July 13, 1991. We were married for five years and ten months. Renee died on May 11, 1997, very suddenly and unexpectedly, at home with me, of a pulmonary embolism. She was thirty-one. She’s buried in Pulaski County, Virginia, on the side of a hill, next to the Wal-Mart.

Reading Love Is A Mix Tape, it soon becomes clear that, even though Rob and Renee didn’t have a lot in common, their mutual love of music was more than enough to make their time together one of enduring happiness. It wasn’t perfect; as Sheffield writes, there were songs for fighting and songs for leaving the house just as there were songs for the kind of things that married couples do when they’re feeling really good about each other. And as with anyone for whom music plays such a large role in their lives, the songs they listened to became the soundtrack of their life together. Which is as it should be – everyone should have songs that remind them of the great times in their life, as well as the bad times. For me, one such song would be “Round Here” by Counting Crows. For whatever reason, that happened to be the song that was cued up on my car’s tape player when I was driving home from the hospital after the birth of my second son, and on the 30-minute drive home, I simply hit rewind and re-listened to it, rather than allowing the tape to advance to the next song on the tape. So, even though the song itself has absolutely nothing to do with childbirth, it’s the song that will always make me think of that night.

Love Is A Mix Tape is a very good book up until the point when Renee dies, at which time it becomes a great, albeit heartbreaking, one. It’s hard for me to imagine the pain of going through the death of a loved one like Sheffield did. And for someone like Sheffield – who makes a living from listening to and writing about music – having the meaning of so many songs changed overnight must have been a shock almost as enduring as the one he bore from the initial shock of losing his wife. Fortunately, music also plays a role in his recovery. But even though life may be just as good, just as enriching as it was before, it will never be quite the same. One of my favorite passages is one near the end of the book:

After Renee died, I assumed the rest of my life would be just a consolation prize. I would keep living, and keep having new experiences, but none of them would compare to the old days. I would have to settle for a lonely life I didn’t want, which would always remind me of the life I couldn’t have anymore. But it didn’t turn out that way, and there’s something strange and upsetting about that. I would have stayed in 1996 if I could have, but it wasn’t my choice, so now I have to either move forward or back – it’s up to me. Not changing isn’t an option. And even though I’ve changed in so many ways – I’m a different person with a different life – the past is still with me every minute.

Books of 2008: "Bridge of Sighs"

At long last, I have finished a book in 2008! As it so happens, it’s so good that it will now be the book against which all others I read this year is judged. And though there’s a long way to go, it’s going to be difficult to dislodge this one from the top spot.

Bridge of Sighs is Richard Russo’s first novel since Empire Falls, which won a richly deserved Pulitzer Prize in 2002. The two books are similar in tone, and in setting – both take place in northeastern towns which, to put it charitably, have seen better days. Bridge of Sighs is set in Thomaston, New York, about which the book’s protagonist states,

Otherwise, as I say, you’re unlikely to have heard of Thomaston, unless you work in medical research, in which case you may remember the now-famous study done years ago to explain why our cancer statistics were off any actuarial chart. The principal culprit was, as we all suspected, the old tannery, boarded up these last forty years, which dumped its dyes and chemicals into the Cayoga Stream, which meanders through most of Thomaston before finally emptying into the Barge Canal five miles to the south.

Within that setting the story is told, mostly by Lou C. (Lucy) Lynch, now 60, who has lived in Thomaston his entire life and has rarely ventured beyond the city limits. Lucy and his wife Sarah are preparing for their first trip to Venice. There, they hope to meet up with Robert Noonan, a famous painter who left Thomaston as a high school senior, in a car driven by Lucy, and never returned. At that time Noonan was known as Bobby Marconi, and he, Lucy and Sarah were among the key figures in each other’s lives. The story of how Marconi became Noonan is one of the most important told in the novel.

Most of those stories are told in the context of a history of Thomaston that Lucy is writing. It is a history that tells less about the city than it does about Lucy and his friends, their families, and how their interactions set them upon the course of their lives. Along the way we meet Lucy’s parents, “Big Lou” and Tessa Lynch, his uncle Dec, Sarah Berg and her parents, Bobby Marconi and his family, as well as characters that are minor, in the sense of the amount of time they appear in the novel, but not for the importance that they play – people like “Three-Mock,” Nan Beverly, and Perry Kozlowski.

It’s a bittersweet novel, because none of these characters is perfect – in some cases, far from it. And because it’s clear throughout the narrative that their town is dying around them, the book has a sense of dread inevitability – you know that things aren’t going to turn out well for everyone (after all, Noonan/Marconi wasn't trying to escape just for the fun of it), and you know that – much like life itself – there won’t be a traditional “happy ending.” The closing chapters of the book take it in some completely unexpected directions - ones which are somewhat jarring, but ultimately push the story closer to a logical, if still somewhat bittersweet, resolution.

In a lesser book, there might have been a clear moral to the story - something simple like "only by leaving home can you really find your true self," or if you prefer, "only by staying true to your roots can you be true to your self." Nothing is quite that simple in Bridge of Sighs. Some people leave, and some people stay, for motives pure and otherwise. For no one is it a simple choice, and for no one does it feel as if it were, without question, the right thing to do.

As with Empire Falls, Russo’s writing is brilliant. He has a rare gift of being able to craft a narrative that leaps off of the page, using language that approaches perfection in its composition and style. This passage, which tells the story of when Lucy met Sarah for the first time, is probably my favorite in the entire book. They have both entered drawings into the school’s art contest: Lucy of Ikey’s, the store owned by his parents; and Sarah of her late brother.

Sarah’s entry was a pen-and-ink drawing of a boy who looked to be six or seven years old, and you could see why it got three bold checks in the upper-right-hand corner. True, it looked like there might be something wrong with the proportion of the boy’s features. One eye seemed slightly larger than the other, and they appeared not equidistant from his nose. But they were alive, those eyes. She wasn’t drawing how the boy’s eyes looked. It was like they were real, that he was using them to see with. They made you wonder what he was looking at. You could tell right away that it was located just off the edge of the drawing and also that it worried him. And you could tell where the light was coming from. Sarah’s name appeared in the lower-right-hand corner, printed impossibly small, as if whatever confidence she’d had went into the drawing itself, with none left over for a signature.

“My little brother,” she said. “He died of leukemia. I draw him all the time. We’ve got lots of photos, so I draw those. When I try to draw him from memory, it never looks like him.”

“I’m an only child,” I told her, feeling inadequate for having nothing to say about the dead boy.

“Me too,” she said. “Now, I mean. It’s just my dad and me.”

“What about your-”

“They’re separated. After Rudy died, she didn’t want to live here anymore. I live with her summers. My dad teaches at the high school.”

“Mr. Berg,” I said, making the connection. Even in junior high, we’d heard all about Mr. Berg. Everybody tried to stay out of his English classes. “I hear he’s strict,” I said, hoping to imply that this was why kids didn’t like him, not that he had bad breath or body odor. I waited, expecting Sarah Berg to confirm or deny her father’s strictness, since she was in a position to know. When she didn’t, I noticed that her drawing of her little brother had taken second prize, not first. Nan Beverly’s watercolor of a spaniel puppy had won first, but I noted an odd thing about the three checks in her margin. Two were identical, in black ink, whereas the third looked different, in blue ink, as if someone had added it after the fact. Had Sarah noticed this? Though I decided not to ask, that third check mark reminded me of Karen Cirillo’s unshakable conviction that our teachers had everything worked out in advance, the Borough kids catching all the breaks. Looking Sarah Berg over more closely, I was surprised to discover she was pretty, something I hadn’t noticed before. Also, that she had eyes like the boy in the drawing, one slightly larger and lower than the other. After leading me across the room, she’d dropped my hand, but I could still feel the warmth of hers and wished there was someplace else for her to lead me.

“You should’ve gotten first,” I told her. “Yours is a lot better.” I said this last quietly, even though we were alone in the room. It was the sort of statement that, if overheard, could lead to a fight in the school yard.

“Nan’s is good, too,” she said, and I could tell she liked having a reason to say her name, as if that might make them friends. Which made me like Sarah Berg even more.

I was still holding my drawing of Ikey’s, and this gave me an idea. “Maybe you could draw Ikey’s someday,” I suggested, immediately feeling foolish. Why would she want to draw that? “You could show me which parts should be white.” Dumber and dumber.

But she smiled, as if the only thing holding her back was just such an invitation, and when our eyes met I half expected Sarah’s to shift to some point off in the middle distance, like Karen Cirillo’s always did. But they didn’t. They stayed right on mine.

Which must mean, I concluded, that I was still there.