The Drop by Michael Connelly: A review

I decided to ring out my reading year of 2016 with an old friend, Detective Harry Bosch of the LAPD. I felt a bit of trepidation in doing so, because the last two Bosch mysteries that I had read had been rather disappointing, not up to Connelly's usual standard. I needn't have worried; the writer is back on form with The Drop.

This entry finds Detective Bosch back with the open-unsolved case unit of the LAPD, still with David Chu as his partner. Their relationship is abrasive at best, and Harry continues to be pretty much of a jerk in his attitude toward the younger detective, who seems to be trying really hard to please the old pro.

Harry has already retired once from LAPD and then returned, and now he is on the cusp of mandatory retirement. He has just received the news that his request for a deferment of that retirement has been granted. He has 39 months left before he has to turn in the badge and he is desperate for cases to solve within that time frame. On one day, he gets assigned two cases.

The first is a cold case of a young woman who was raped and murdered in 1989. New DNA evidence has linked the case to a convicted rapist, recently released after serving his sentence. The problem is that the suspect is now 29 years old and at the time of the murder would have been eight years old. It seems highly unlikely that an eight-year-old raped and murdered a nineteen-year-old woman, so what is the explanation? Is the DNA evidence wrong? If so, it may make suspect all of the evidence analyzed by the police lab, with enormous consequences for ongoing and past cases.

The second case is a hot one that is assigned to Bosch and Chu by special request from on high. The body of the son of former police commissioner, now city councilman, Irvin Irving, has been found on the pavement outside an LA hotel. The man had fallen from the balcony of his seventh floor room at the hotel, but did he jump, fall accidentally, or was he pushed? 

Irvin Irving is a long-time nemesis of Bosch's and yet, now, when it is a member of his family involved, he demands that Bosch be assigned to investigate because he knows that Harry will seek the truth, damn the consequences. 

Bosch hates what he terms "high jingo," meaning political influence in police investigations, but he has no choice but to accept the assignment to the Irving case, and so he and his partner set about working to solve two cases at once without short-changing either.

The dichotomy which Connelly shows between these two cases, the twenty-year-old cold case featuring a victim who has been forgotten and the current case of the death of a politically connected and influential businessman, creates a tension which the detectives must deal with as they pursue solutions to both mysteries. But we know Harry' philosophy: Everyone counts or nobody counts. There is never any doubt that he will throw himself heart and soul into finding the answers and bringing the bad guys to justice.

This was a tightly plotted tale, and Connelly moved the story along at a quick pace. It was everything that long-time fans of the series have come to expect in the best of the Harry Bosch police procedurals, which is something very good indeed.

Incidentally, the Irving death was one of the plots dramatized in season two of Amazon's Bosch TV series, but they changed the story almost beyond recognition for television. The TV episode was okay, but the book version was better and truer to the long-established relationship between Bosch and Irving.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Poetry Sunday: Burning the Old Year

Ring out the old, ring in the new. 2016 was a truly awful year in so many ways and, normally, one might look forward to better times in a new year, but, at this point, 2017 is not shaping up as an improvement over the old year. One doesn't want to give in to cynicism and pessimism, but...

So, we say good-bye to the old year. We mourn the absences of those we lost in that year, the spaces that they have left in our hearts. "So much of any year is flammable," temporary; "so little is a stone," permanent. 

Burn it down! Perhaps a brighter phoenix will rise from the ashes. Happy New Year!

Burning the Old Year

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn't,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn't do
crackle after the blazing dies.

This week in birds - #237

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

Red-tailed Hawk (Krider) photographed at Big Bend National Park.

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President Obama designated two more new national monument sites for protection this week: Bear Ears National Monument in Utah and the Gold Butte National Monument in Nevada. Here is a video of the Bear Ears site.

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The Union of Concerned Scientists have more than ever to be concerned about with the incoming administration in Washington. They are especially concerned about the selection of climate change denier Ryan Zinke as Secretary of the Interior. Meanwhile, as an anti-science, anti-environment administration takes control of the federal government, it will be up to local officials in states to take a more aggressive stance in protecting the environment and public health. 

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John Platt of Scientific American's "Extinction Countdown" has a review of the best wildlife conservation stories of 2016. Yes, in this awful year there have actually been some bright spots, most of which have been reported here.

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The clandestine nature of crimes against wildlife make such violations difficult to identify and to prosecute. The National Whistleblower Center, hoping to address the problem, has established a Global Wildlife Whistleblower Program. It is a secure website and attorney referral service that will help people provide tips on wildlife crime and obtain rewards from whistleblower provisions of relevant laws.

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The overall shapes of birds provide important clues for their identification, clues which experienced birders learn to decipher. But the forms and shapes of birds can change subtly as they go into and out of the breeding season or prepare for winter.

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As Earth's temperatures continue to rise, birds are migrating earlier and earlier. Summer breeding birds are reaching their nesting grounds about one day earlier for every degree rise in temperature.

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Roll call of the dead: Here is a list of animals that went extinct in 2016.

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The American Ornithologists' Union and the Cooper Ornithological Society have merged to form the American Ornithological Society. The society maintains the official checklist of birds of North and South America and it promotes the study of ornithology.

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A Seattle woman, Jen McKeirnan, set out to do a special kind of Big Year in 2016. Her intention was to try to photograph in its natural habitat every species of bird known to inhabit Washington state. As of mid-December, she had found 285 of her 346 target species and she expected to fall a bit short of her goal. Still, that is an amazing achievement. 

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Adelie Penguins are specially adapted to survive and thrive in the harsh cold and windy environment of Antarctica.

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The deaths of four bears in Pennsylvania are being blamed on their ingesting the berries from a non-native invasive plant, the English yew. The berries of the plant are known to be highly poisonous if ingested by humans or animals. One more reason for using native plants in our gardens.

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The rare and mysterious Night Parrot of Australia is adapted to life in the harsh arid zone, but when it must drink it puts itself at risk to predators. Conservationists are studying how and when the parrots drink in order to try to provide better protection for them and they are working to eliminate populations of feral non-native predators that pose a threat to the endangered bird. 

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Northern breeding birds are threatened by a warming climate. The deteriorating climate creates a huge risk for disruption of their breeding cycle and could put survival of vulnerable species in doubt. 

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Meanwhile, there is a wildlife mystery on Seahorse Key in Florida. A thriving seabird breeding colony disappeared two years ago and scientists are not sure why. There are many theories but research on the mystery continues.

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Species of birds often get split as new information about their genetic makeup is obtained. It appears that the Willet may be a candidate for such splitting, with the East Coast and West Coast varieties being different enough to warrant such a separation.

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Project SNOWstorm tracks the migrations of Snowy Owls and their move south in winter. Some of the owls that are wearing tracking devices have returned to their winter ranges and are providing data from their year's travels. Meanwhile, a Snowy Owl has been found at Island Beach State Park on the Jersey shore and visitors are being warned to keep their distance to avoid disturbing the bird.

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James: A review

What an ordeal this book was to read! Many times while perusing its 700-plus pages, I asked myself why I was bothering. But, true to my code of finishing what I start, I persevered and, in the end, felt somewhat vindicated, although I can't pretend that the rewards were really commensurate with the effort required.  

Jamaican writer Marlon James' book was the 2015 winner of the prestigious Man Booker Prize. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. At the time that it came out, I read many glowing reviews of the work. Intrigued, I added it to my reading queue and, finally, here at the end of 2016, its turn came up. Even though I knew the broad outlines of the story and the author's method, I was clearly not prepared for what I was undertaking.

A Brief History of Seven Killings begins with the run-up to the attempted assassination of Bob Marley (referred to as the Singer throughout the book) in January, 1976. It continues through the political unrest of the '80s and '90s in Jamaica and the crack wars of that period in New York. It contains a mind-boggling number of characters (more than 75) and many of them get a turn to tell the story, as the narrator changes from one chapter to the next. 

Throughout, the story is full of violence (there are a lot more than seven killings here!) and profanity, and much of it is told in a Jamaican patois that was virtually impenetrable for me. I was reading the book on Kindle and the dictionaries and Wikipedia available to me there were just as confused as I was. 

Bombocloth? Duppy? Pussyhole? Fi? Bloodcloth? Ackee? Battyhole? R'asscloth? What do any of those words mean? I could only infer their meaning from context and mostly they seem to be swear words. That's just a small sampling of the patois words used on every page of this book. The judges for the Man Booker professed themselves very impressed with this language. I was somewhat less impressed.

I guess I can understand the writer's decision to use the unique patois of the region he was writing of in telling the story, but if one of the goals of a writer is to be understood by his/her readers, I'm afraid he failed miserably with me. I can appreciate the brilliance of his writing and what he has achieved here; I just wish it had been more accessible to me. 

One cannot deny that the book is very inventive and that the writer was incredibly ambitious in the way he constructed and presented the story. I can only think that the reader that he had in mind when he was writing is probably much more adventurous and much more masochistic than I.

At one point when I seriously despaired of ever being able to complete the book, I came across this quote:

The only way forward is through.

Yes, I thought, I can do this! And I did. And the last few chapters of the book, which covered events of the early '90s mostly in New York, actually began to make some sense for me. But it all seemed a very small return for such a tremendous effort. 

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

My favorite books of 2016

It is the solemn duty of every blogger who writes about books to compile a year-end list of the best books read that year. Since I am nothing if not a dutiful blogger, I have been agonizing for days over my list.

As of today, I have read 88 books this year and the majority of them were terrific reads. Those who follow the blog know that I rate my books on a scale of one to five stars, using the Goodreads definitions; one-star meaning "not good" and five-stars meaning "exceptional." I had a few one- and two-star reads this year, but most of them were three stars or higher.

In compiling my list, I narrowed the 88 books down to four- and five-star reads, because often there's very little daylight between four and five stars. But that list proved much too unwieldy. I couldn't give you a list with more than forty books on it! So, in the end I selected just the five-star reads. Even that list had nineteen books on it, but I simply couldn't choose among them, so here they all are - my favorite books read in 2016 with links to my reviews of the books.

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante: This was the second in Ferrante's highly (and justifiably) praised Neapolitan Quartet series. In my opinion, it was even better than the first book.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald: Macdonald wrote this memoir of her lifelong obsession with birds, particularly with raptors, and with her work in attempting to train a Goshawk, supposedly one of the most difficult raptors to tame and train. 

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante: This was the fourth and final book in Ferrante's Neapolitan series. I was sorry to see it end.

The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin: This was the first in Le Guin's fantasy Earthsea Cycle books. It was a wonderful beginning. 

The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes: I am a big fan of Julian Barnes and I always look forward to his books. In this one, he takes the bare facts of Dimitri Shostakovich's life and gives us Shostakovich's interior dialogues, his explanation and justification of his life.

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley: A blockbuster summer read that was much more than just a thrilling page-turner. Hawley ruminates on the role of the media in modern life and presciently touches on the issue of fake news.

LaRose by Louise Erdrich: Nobody does it better than Louise Erdrich, in my opinion, and this story of a conflicted man who tries to make amends for accidentally killing a child by offering the grieving family his own child as a replacement is one of her best.

Emma: A Modern Retelling by Alexander McCall Smith: Smith caught the personality of Jane Austen's delightful Emma and translated her smoothly into a modern setting. This was one of several retellings of Austen or Shakespeare classics that I enjoyed this year.  

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler: Another retelling, this one of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, and it's by the wonderful Anne Tyler, another personal favorite. How could I not love it?

Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope: And, yes, still another reinterpretation of an Austen classic makes my list. This was actually the first book published in The Austen Project and it set a high standard for all those retellings that followed. 

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow: Chernow's book, published twelve years ago, has had a revival of interest because of the hit Broadway musical which is based on it. It had languished on my bookshelf for twelve long years and I finally got around to reading it this year. Wonderful book! It reads almost like a Dickens novel.

Nutshell by Ian McEwan: Ian McEwan is a writer of perfect little gems of books in which not a single word can be extracted or changed without altering the meaning. This was another one, an imaginative retelling of Hamlet with Hamlet being represented as a fetus!

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman: This was an under-the-radar Swedish novel that unexpectedly became an international bestseller. It featured an irascible curmudgeon as its main character, Ove, and the reader would have to have a heart of stone to end the book without loving him.

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood: This was another one in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, a retelling of The Tempest, that I had been impatiently waiting for all year. It was worth the wait!

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett: Many of my favorite writers had new books out this year, which is one of the reasons it was such a terrific year of reading for me. One of those favorites is Ann Patchett and her story of the Keating and Cousins families and their intermingling lives was wonderful and gave the reader a lot to think about.

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout: Strout's ability to delineate and explore the motivations in the lives of conflicted women is well known. Like her wonderful Olive Kitteridge, this one drew me in and I didn't want to leave Lucy Barton.

Moonglow by Michael Chabon: If you held my feet to the fire and forced me to name my favorite of all the wonderful books that I've read this year, this would be it. Chabon's fictionalized memoir of his own family's experiences has everything that one could wish for in a book, and like Ian McEwan's books, one would not want to extract or change a single word of it.

Here I am by Jonathan Safran Foer: Foer's tale of the unlovable and unraveling Bloch family of Washington, D.C., juxtaposed with upheaval and catastrophe in the Middle East and the possible destruction of Israel is a tour de force of imaginative storytelling.

Swing Time by Zadie Smith: And of my favorites, this one would be a very close second. Smith's portrayal of the lives of two young girls raised in poverty but in very different personal circumstances rang true for me in every aspect. Smith just gets better and better as a writer.

And there you have it, my creme de la creme of 2016. I can unreservedly recommend any one of them to lovers of good writing, and there were so many others that just barely missed making the list. One can only hope for another such fascinating year of words in 2017.  

Poetry Sunday: Christmas Bells

1863 was a troubled year in our country's history. It was a time when it was not at all certain that the country would continue as constituted. Civil war raged, splitting families and friends as well as the nation.

In the midst of all this, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow suffered his own family tragedies. His wife was tragically burned and in November of that year, his oldest son who had joined the Union Army to fight for the country, was seriously wounded. Longfellow was near despair.

On Christmas Day of that year, he wrote this poem which gives voice to his despair and yet ends on a positive and hopeful note. 

2016 has been a time for despair for many of us and at this point it does not appear that 2017 will be any brighter. Indeed, it seems our darkest days may be ahead.

But let us remember that there have been dark times before but that hope still lives; hope that "the Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail." Let us work to make it so.

Christmas Bells 

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
     And wild and sweet
     The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
     Had rolled along
     The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till, ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
     A voice, a chime
     A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
     And with the sound
     The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent, 
     And made forlorn
     The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said:
     "For hate is strong,
     And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
     The Wrong shall fail,
     The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Pause

"This week in birds" is taking a day off while I prepare to receive holiday visitors. It will return next week.

Happy holidays to all!