A. Ross' profile

Another Fine Entry in a Great Series, 20 Nov 2009

The simplest thing to say about this book is that if you liked the first four entries in this 1970s-set series about elderly Laotian National Coroner Dr. Siri Paiboun, then you'll like this fifth one. And if you haven't read those (Coroner's Lunch, Thirty-Three Teeth, Disco for the Departed, Anarchy and Old Dogs), go back and read them first, as this book assumes reader knowledge of events from those ones.

The story here involves Dr. Siri's road trip to a useless conference, which leads to his spending some time in a Hmong village. It seems they've got some spiritual troubles and only the legendary shaman that uses Dr. Siri's body as a vessel can lift the titular curse. This… Read more

A Nice Trip Back to 1960s Bond, 20 Nov 2009

A few years ago I read about half of the original Ian Fleming 007 series and generally found them quite enjoyable and different than I had expected based on the film franchise. Don't get me wrong, they're not great literature, but they are ripping yarns that reflect their era and are much darker than one might expect. Since Fleming's death, there have been several writers authorized to continue the franchise (including Kingsley Amis!), but I'd never been that interested in trying any of them. However, the involvement of a non-thriller writer like Sebastian Faulks -- whom I've never read, but have heard many good things about -- intrigued me enough to pick this up and give it a whirl… Read more

Pre-Depression Black D.C., 19 Nov 2009

The first thing to know about this book is that it basically has no plot -- it's more a series of loosely connected vignettes that, when taken as whole, combine to give the reader an impression of African-American life in the 1920s in a particular neighborhood in Washington, D.C. So, while the book does open with a beautifully rendered chapter in which the 12-year-old protagonist's sister drowns in the Potomac river, that tragedy doesn't lead to the kind of linear story with clear resolution many readers might expect.

In that respect, the book is a bit of a failure -- but to my mind, it more than makes up for it by presenting a compelling roster of leading and supporting… Read more