More a chase than a puzzle
The Sign of the Four, originally published in 1890, is the second Sherlock Holmes novel written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Following his successful resolution of the case of A Study in Scarlet, London’s most ingenious detective is consulted by Mary Morstan, a young woman whose father had vanished years before. Since his disappearance, an unknown benefactor has been sending her a valuable pearl each year. Having received a note from the mysterious personage asking to meet her that evening, she invites Holmes and Watson to accompany her to the rendezvous. It soon becomes apparent that the disappearance of Ms. Morstan’s father is somehow related to his military service in the Andaman Islands, a penal colony located between India and Burma.
When compared to many of the Sherlock Holmes adventures, the actual crime that takes place in the book is not particularly mysterious. Many secrets are revealed early, and the guilty parties are determined midway through the book. All that remains is to track them down. The final chapter, in which the apprehended villain reveals a most engaging back story, does much to redeem the book as a whole. Although Sherlock Holmes is considered the quintessential literary detective, one must keep in mind that at the time this book was written the mystery genre was yet in its infancy, and Conan Doyle was still experimenting in style and form. This book represents an embryonic stage towards what we recognize today as the typical structure of a mystery novel, in which clues are doled out over the course of the narrative, in preparation for the big reveal at the end. As in A Study in Scarlet, the unconventional structure of The Sign of the Four is actually quite refreshing when compared to some of the later, more formulaic Holmes stories.
Though the mechanics of mystery may be a bit awkward in this early effort, Conan Doyle’s excellent writing still shines through. This book goes a long way in developing the Holmes mythos, the relationship between the two principal characters, and the personality quirks of each. In the opening scene Holmes’s cocaine habit is revealed, and over the course of the book Watson finds romance. The true value of the Holmes mysteries lies not in the unusual crimes depicted or the deductive reasoning employed in solving them, but rather in the inimitable characters of Holmes and Watson themselves. Though most of Holmes’s adventures were written in the form of short stories, it is in the longer form of the novel that Conan Doyle really excels, as it gives him the opportunity to explore these exceptional characters further. The Sign of the Four is a classic work of detective fiction and a must-read for any Holmes fan.
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An inferior sequel to Pronto
Originally published in 1995, Riding the Rap is the sequel to Elmore Leonard’s 1993 novel Pronto. Both books feature Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, the character who now stars in the television series Justified. This second installment picks up where Pronto left off, and Harry Arno is in trouble again. Looking to finally retire for good, Harry the bookie sets out to collect all the outstanding debts from his clients. When he goes missing, his ex-girlfriend Joyce worries that foul play might be involved, so she asks her new boyfriend Raylan to look into it.
Pronto was very much a character driven novel. Leonard introduced us to a crop of intriguing personalities, complete with complex pasts. In Riding the Rap, the characters are already established, and Leonard does little to develop them further. They are merely chess pieces arranged in an intricate cat and mouse game. Little is revealed about Raylan, Joyce, or Harry that we didn’t already learn from the first book. In fact, Raylan’s story tends to take a back seat to the interaction between the brutal yet bumbling criminals. The bad guys in this book are nowhere near as interesting as the mobsters in Pronto. Only one new character, Reverend Dawn the psychic, stands out as a compelling new addition to the cast. Despite all the twists and turns in the plot, there are few surprises, as Raylan spends the entire book working to find out things that Leonard has already revealed to the reader.
Despite my complaints, Leonard is an entertaining writer. His snappy prose is an effortless joy to read. Like a yummy bag of junk food, once you pick up the book it’s difficult to put it down. Upon completion, however, you may scratch your head and ask, “Is that it?” Riding the Rap is a better than average crime thriller, but should by no means be considered a must-read by fans of Justified or other Leonard enthusiasts.
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Familiarity breeds contempt
“Adventure was considered the most prestigious pulp magazine in America. . . . And the very best author in Adventure was Harold Lamb.” So proclaims the introduction by Robert Weinberg. This volume collects 17 of Lamb’s historical adventure tales, originally published from 1921 to 1953 in Adventure and other pulp fiction periodicals. Most of these stories feature a crusader as protagonist, yet for the most part they’re not typical tales of the Crusades. Often they feature a former crusader, or descendant of crusaders, now a resident of the Holy Land, who wanders farther afield and gets mixed up in a fracas with some eastern empire, such as the Persians, Tatars, or the Mongols of Genghis Khan. Other conflicts are also represented, including the Roman Empire vs. Attila and the Huns in “Secret of Victory,” England vs. France in “Lionheart,” Teutonic Knights vs. Poles in “Knights with Wings,” and the German Empire vs. the Swiss in “The Bells of the Mountains.” There’s even a mystery story set in India (“The Village of the Ghost”) in which a British officer goes up against a local gang of thugs. No matter the time or place, Lamb unfailingly gives careful attention to historic detail and loads his stories with generous helpings of local color.
While I love classic adventure fiction and had previously enjoyed the Swords from the Desert volume in this series, after now having read almost 1,000 pages of Lamb’s work I’m beginning to think I like the idea of a writer like Harold Lamb more than I like his actual writing. Although there’s nothing wrong with these stories, there’s nothing particularly exceptional about them either. Rarely do they inspire any profoundly memorable moments, genuine surprise, or edge-of-your-seat excitement. After reading several of Lamb’s stories, one begins to discern the same patterns repeated over and over. This redundancy, coupled with the mammoth size of this volume, makes the whole of the book inferior to the sum of its parts. Though the centuries, empires, and races may vary, the hero always resembles Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name in chain mail. No matter how far east this voyager may venture, the damsel in distress almost invariably possesses fair skin and “red-gold” hair. The wandering swordsman will sign on as bodyguard to some merchant or diplomat traveling to the exotic East. After trudging across endless deserts they come to a spooky mountain pass that represents the point of no return. The hero soon discovers the master he serves has set him up for a fall, and he ultimately ends up a third party participant in a battle between two powerful empires. Victory is followed by rich rewards of booty (in both senses of the word). Half of the book is taken up by two long novellas, “The Grand Cham,” and “The Making of the Morning Star,” which more or less follow this format, although the former is unique in that it thankfully dispenses with the obligatory maiden. Lamb is exceptionally skilled at depicting sword fights or battle scenes, but his characters often resemble cardboard cutouts and he never, ever, finishes a story with a surprise ending.
Swords from the West does have its entertainment value, but after having devoted an inordinate amount of time to this collection of stories, I can’t help thinking that effort would have been more rewardingly spent on the works of Alexandre Dumas, Sir Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, or Henryk Sienkiewicz, the very writers Lamb strove to emulate.
Stories in this collection
The Red Cock Crows
The Golden Horde
The Long Sword
Lionheart
Protection
Keeper of the Gate
The Tower of Ravens
The Grand Cham
The Black Road
Knights with Wings
The Making of the Morning Star
The Bells of the Mountains
The Faring Forth
Secret of Victory
The Village of the Ghost
The Iron Man Rides
Doom Rides In
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Long overdue and exceedingly well done
This excellent book provides the first comprehensive study of Jack London’s work as a photographer. London, of course, is most famous as one of America’s greatest authors, the writer of such celebrated works as The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea-Wolf. Despite being an incredibly prolific author and a world wide celebrity, London also managed to take over 12,000 photographs during his all-too-brief lifetime. While that number may not seem outrageous by today’s standards, a century ago when cameras were bulky and complex and photography was a difficult and labor intensive craft, that’s quite an achievement. For all intents and purposes, London was a professional photojournalist, and this is the first book to treat him as such.
Though London is most famous for his stories of the Klondike Gold Rush, unfortunately he did not carry a camera when he ventured up to Alaska and the Yukon. The photos in this book are divided into six chapters, each a photojournalistic journey. The first chapter contains pictures he took in the slums of the East End of London in 1903, while researching and writing The People of the Abyss. The second set of photos covers his period as a war correspondent in Korea in 1904, covering the Russo-Japanese War. Next there is a chapter on London’s photos of the destruction caused by the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. This is followed by a long chapter devoted to photos taken while London and his wife Charmian attempted to sail around the world in their yacht, a journey immortalized in the book The Cruise of the Snark. This group of photos, taken in 1907 and 1908, depicts their travels in Hawaii, Tahiti, the Marquesas, and the Solomon Islands. In 1912, Mr. and Mrs. London sailed from Baltimore to Seattle, around Cape Horn, on a four-masted sailing ship, a voyage which provided the inspiration for his novel The Mutiny of the Elsinore. The photos from this trip are presented in chapter five. The book finishes off with a chapter of photos from 1914, when London worked as a war correspondent covering the Mexican Revolution in Veracruz and Tampico.
Readers of London’s works may have seen a few of these photos before, but usually in small and murky reproductions. Never before has his photographic work been reproduced so big and so beautifully. To a contemporary audience, London’s photos, though black and white, are reminiscent of the sort of photojournalism one finds today in National Geographic magazine, yet for their time they were quite ground breaking. London depicts people of other cultures, such as the islanders of the South Pacific or the revolutionaries of Mexico, with a candor and dignity that was unusual for his day. He treats his subjects not as representatives of their race or objects for some scientific study, but as individual human beings living their lives. The text is a worthy accompaniment to these remarkable photos. The pictures are ably supported by explanatory captions and excerpts from London’s writings. For those well-versed in London’s life and work, there’s still plenty new to learn here. Much of the text concentrates on London’s place in the history of photography and photojournalism, a subject which has never before been examined to such a thorough extent.
Jack London, Photographer is a beautiful coffee table book and an enlightening scholarly examination of this artist’s life and work. More than just a supplement to his writings, it is a work of art in and of itself and well deserves a spot on the shelf alongside the hallowed works of the classic London canon.
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Standing on the shoulders of giants
Flood! is a wordless novel composed of scratchboard illustrations by artist Eric Drooker. It continues the rich but little-known tradition of pictorial literature best exemplified by the works of expressionistic woodcut artists Frans Masereel and Lynd Ward. That Drooker has thoroughly studied the work of these great masters of the past is quite obvious. At times the homage is a little too faithful, as there are scenes here that seem as if they were lifted directly out of Ward’s Wild Pilgrimage or Madman’s Drum. Drooker makes the art form his own, however, by filtering these historic influences through the visual language of the underground comics movement that originated in the 1960s. The resulting concoction is a truly beautiful and profound work of graphic storytelling.
Though subtitled “A Novel in Pictures,” it’s unclear whether the three parts of Flood! are intended to be chapters in a novel or rather three self-contained short stories. Each features a lone male protagonist who wanders through a labyrinthine metropolis. As in the works of Ward and Masereel, this representative man struggles to survive in his oppressive urban environment, along the way encountering the hazards of poverty, unemployment, violence, incarceration, love, and lots and lots of rain. Despite the hardships, the city is not without its moments of sublime beauty. The book starts out rather gritty and realistic, then becomes more and more fanciful and whimsical—incorporating dream sequences and hallucinations—all along ambitiously broadening its scope until its subject matter encompasses no less than the end of the world itself. Both the artwork and the narrative are loaded with hidden treasures, revealing new discoveries with each rereading. Drooker is to be commended for resurrecting this lost art form and shaping it with his own unique vision. Those who appreciate skillfully crafted graphic art, either vintage or contemporary, will find much to enjoy in this latter-day classic.
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Fractured fairy tale
Within Zola’s body of work, this odd little book sticks out like a sore thumb. A stylistic departure from Zola’s characteristic Naturalism, it reads almost like a fairy tale. Angelique, the illegitimate daughter of Sidonie Rougon, is adopted by a married couple in the town of Beaumont. Angelique learns the family trade, embroidering tapestries and vestments for the town’s cathedral. She grows up in the shadow of this thirteenth-century cathedral, leading the cloistered life of an artisan. Reading becomes her favorite recreation, and romantic tales of saints and ancient royalty fascinate her. Within the centuries-old walls of the family home and the adjacent garden, Angelique leads a peaceful, content existence which imbues her with innocence and naiveté. Her passage from childhood to womanhood is irrelevant to her and goes largely unnoticed, until a young man enters her life and inspires in her dreams of a future life beyond the garden walls.
Angelique is such a likeable character that the reader really roots for her to succeed in achieving those dreams. One almost forgets how totally unbelievable the plot is. The book is a pleasant enough read, but utterly inconsequential. Upon finishing the book, one asks what’s the point? It adds little to the Rougon-Macquart series as a whole. Zola’s knack for descriptive thoroughness hits and misses in this book. His vivid depictions of the artisans’ home, their lifestyle, their trade and craft captivate the reader. His long lists of saints and kings, on the other hand, inspire fatigue. Anyone who is reading the entire Rougon-Macquart series obviously should and will read this book. Casual fans of Zola’s writing would probably do better to skip it.
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An epic saga of Man and Earth
In spite of the fact that I did not grow up on a farm, or perhaps because of it, I’ve always been a sucker for a good peasant epic. As soon as I heard of Growth of the Soil I wanted to read it. Once I dove into chapter one it quickly earned a spot among my all-time favorites.
Growth of the Soil was written in 1917 by Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920, due largely to the magnificence of this great work. The novel opens with a solitary figure, heavily laden with supplies, trudging across the wilds of Norway. A day’s walk from the nearest village, he selects a spot to call his home, and begins cutting timber and turning the soil. He erects a sod house which is visited once every few months by the occasional nomadic herder, and he makes it known to those who come by that he is looking for a woman to help him with the chores around the place. One day that woman comes. The very night of her arrival they begin living together as man and wife. They are simple folk, not particularly smart and far from beautiful, but they work hard, relentlessly, like two beasts of burden, to carve a living from the earth. Together Isak and Inger build a home, a farm, and a family in this deserted wasteland.
Eventually a community forms around them, and their isolation diminishes. Their estate, dubbed Sellanraa, increases in size, wealth, and conveniences. Yet this is no rural Utopia. Evil influences invade their bucolic idyll. When residents of this rural outpost venture into the villages and cities, they return with unhealthy ideas that foster a disillusionment with their agrarian life and lead them toward sin. An undercurrent of stoic and pantheistic morality pervades the book. The more the characters surrender themselves to the will of nature, the greater their contentment and reward. The more they stray from the natural order of life on the land, the greater their disappointment and ruin.
Growth of the Soil bears some resemblance to another well-known work of literature, The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. Both novels chronicle the lives of farming families. Hamsun’s work, however, is darker in tone, more psychologically complex, and, despite being written 15 years earlier, a touch more modernistic in style. Hamsun presents a naturalistic slice of rural life in Norway, just as Buck tells a realistic story of farmers in China, yet both books transcend the spatial and temporal limits of their settings to make universal statements on the themes of family, work, and the relationship of man to his environment. Both books use deceptively simple language to tell their tales, exhibiting an elegant economy of words evocative of the stark and simple lives of the characters being depicted. In Hamsun’s case, I’m not sure if I have him to thank for this beautiful prose, or the English translator W. W. Worster, but every sentence of this work is as pithily poetic as a carefully crafted haiku.
Reading Growth of the Soil is a powerful and moving experience. From the opening lines of the first page one immediately becomes intimately engaged in the lives of these vividly drawn characters. When the book comes to an end it’s difficult to say goodbye. Unlike The Good Earth, unfortunately, Growth of the Soil has no sequel, so enjoy every page while you can.
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