The Gentlemen’s Hour

Back in 2008 southern California crime writer Don Winslow published The Dawn Patrol and along with a bang up story, gave readers the ultimate in San Diego surfing culture and history. As much as James Lee Burke has made south Louisiana a vibrant, living and breathing character in his novels, Winslow has done the same for southern California and that stretch of ocean and beach around San Diego where American surfing was born. The Dawn Patrol also introduced a cast of characters that probably had most readers begging for a sequel. Chief among them was Boone Daniels, surf bum-ex-cop-private investigator, and the most laid back ultra California cool guy on the planet. The sequel wish came true for British readers in 2009 with publication of The Gentlemen’s Hour, but for mysterious reasons we here in the US had to wait until July 2011 to get the book. It was well worth the wait.

Winslow is possessed of a special idiom and style that embraces a story not a whit less than such well-known California crime writers as Raymond Chandler and Michael Connelly. In an earlier review of Winslow’s 2010 novel Savages, I described his economic prose as ‘short haiku-like paragraphs…a lesson in spare, lean prose rich enough to eat with a spoon.’—The impression is no different in The Gentlemen’s Hour. This is a writer who knows how to say everything needed in a stretch of three words, and leave nothing out. It is an impression that holds together even when Winslow is off his beat and aping the style of another writer, as he did earlier this year with a Trevanian remake called Satori, an effort that might have been better left unwritten. But looking at a cross-section of Winslow books, from California Fire and Life to this latest work proves that he is a master of different styles, able to switch them like the baseball caps he likes to wear.

Boone Daniels spends most of his time surfing and when the waves aren’t cooperating he does a little private investigating. This time he has two cases on his hands, neither one to his liking. A longtime buddy is looking to get the goods on a wife he thinks is cheating on him, and the possible results are not something Boone wants to discuss with a friend. Unrelated to that, he has been dragged into a murder investigation that crosses lines of friendship and threatens to isolate him, leaving him without all his lifelong friends. It has all the trademarks of an open-and-shut case. A local rich kid admits to killing a well-loved San Diego hero, a man much respected and admired by Boone and his Dawn Patrol surf buddies. One case threatens his life, the other a loss of all his oldest friends. Everything points to a partying wife in the first case, and everyone, including witnesses believe that a spoiled rich kid killed the local hero, but something about it all doesn’t smell right to Boone Daniels. Winslow has hung his hugely likeable protagonist up on a cross and every turn in the story winches his bonds tighter.

One of the most colorful characters in the book is another returning from The Dawn Patrol, a real bad dawg who goes by the name of Red Eddie (real name Julius) but a man with unbreakable loyalty to Boone for saving his son from drowning years back. Eddie has dyed red hair, a dozen or more tattoos, a degree from the Wharton School and a drug empire. He also entertains guests with crazed and unrestrained biting fights with his pit bull. But Red Eddie is not the only standout, The Gentlemen’s Hour has at least half a dozen other supporting characters, each with his or her distinctive style of cool.

All the ingredients are there: style, characterization, story, setting, tension, romance, action and suspense. Don Winslow at the very top of his game—The Gentlemen’s Hour.

Book Bag

Books are piling up again and the problem of where to put them doesn’t get any easier. Maybe getting rid of some plates and bowls and stacking books in their place would work. One solution would be to change my habits and buy the desired books in either Kindle or iPad format, but that’s not going to happen. Too much pleasure in the feel and smell of a new book in the hand. Suppose I’ll just have to find ways to create new stacks that don’t impede movement around the house. The best idea yet is from my friend R who wants a company called Piney Woods put up a prefab ‘book’ cottage across the driveway and solve both our problems.

Over the past two weeks three or four bundles of books have arrived at the door, each bundle providing a few gratifying hours of reading. Three of the books I read front to back right away, and others I placed around the house to be picked up at random times to browse a page or chapter. Likely one or another book will eventually get a review of sorts later on, but for now the intention is only to introduce a few titles and relevant points. Seven books on the list and here they are…

Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller (2011)

Last month I read the earlier work, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and was bowled over by the author’s style and her fascinating stories of growing up in Africa. Fuller’s latest book tells a story that is much about her mother—a riveting character—and how she came to live in Africa. Again, the author captures the reader with a wealth of stories impossible anywhere else. This one I have read only a few chapters of, and at this point can’t say much about. The strength of this book is Fuller’s ability to make characters so real you feel them sitting next to you.

Scribbling the Cat by Alexandra Fuller (2004)

Perhaps some translation is necessary here: ‘Scribbling’ is African slang for ‘killing.’ The book’s extended title includes …Travels with an African Soldier and that is an accurate description of what this book is about. Fuller returns to Zambia to spend some time with her parents, and during that time meets an African man living on a banana farm nearby. K is a former soldier who fought in several of Africa’s wars of independence, but is finally living the life of a farmer in Zambia. This one too is still in the reading stage, leaving me unable to say more. The unfamiliar stories of life in Africa amaze from the first paragraph of page one. Crocodiles, mud, rain, snakes, drought, insects, stultifying heat…welcome to the African bush.

The Affair by Lee Child (2011)

Such a hardcore fan of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, I have read each of the fifteen books the week of their release. Number sixteen is The Affair and this one too came to me only days after its release, pre-ordered months in advance. There is an element of mystery to all the Reacher stories, but more important is Child’s character of a moral man with the muscles and the smarts to right most wrongs. A Jack Reacher novel fits immediately into the ‘page-turner’ genre and is all about finesse, brawn and doing the right thing. Always and forever an exciting read.

Feast Day of Fools by James Lee Burke (2011)

Burke is the master of south Louisiana settings, but is more often these days turning his attention to south Texas. About Burke and any one of his thirty books, for the sake of brevity I will say only this: If you enjoy reading and you’ve never read a book by James Lee Burke, go to the bookstore today.

Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks (2011)

An on and off fan of Russell Banks, I found the title of this new book captivating, and buying it was far, far from a mistake. Two characters tell a story set on the west coast of Florida and each is fascinating. Sex offenses as they relate to underage victims is an extremely volatile subject but Banks carries this one off leaving the reader unquestionably in sympathy with the protagonist. How does he do that?

Gilgamesh, a new English translation by Stephen Mitchell (2004)

This is a story set in man’s earliest civilization, the 2750 BC Sumerian city of Urak, situated in present day Iraq at the convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The translation is what makes this version outstanding. The poetry is elegant and the tale wholly relevant to creation literature. In a story that precedes biblical literature, Gilgamesh is filled with Christian corollaries. It is the oldest story in the world, and in that sense alone is engaging.

The Gentlemen’s Hour by Don Winslow (2011)

Included here only because it arrived in the post late Wednesday afternoon and is one I've been eagerly awaiting. Winslow is an up and down kind of writer who can dazzle with one book and disappoint the next. Anyone familiar with his earlier book, The Dawn Patrol will jump for this new one which has the same characters and setting. Never read Winslow? Try California Fire and Life or The Power of the Dog.

Winslow Tries Trevanian

Don Winslow is a writer I have long enjoyed, starting with his 1997 Death and Life of Bobby Z and continuing on with six of his later books. Savages, which came out last year was especially impressive and one that I reviewed here last August. The impression was that Mr Winslow had reached a new plateau, creating a prose style very unlike his earlier novels, sparkling, razor-edged and economic. But now comes Satori, his latest release and I have to wonder what happened.

In fact, it isn’t too hard to figure out what happened to make this newest book from Don Winslow more disappointment than anything else. The shortest way to explain it is to say that it isn’t really Winslow, but an attempt to use another writer’s characters and style to create a prequel to the 1979 Trevanian classic, Shibumi. It doesn’t work. Not being the writer’s strength, style or type of story it’s an uphill battle all the way. At one point about halfway through the book’s 500 pages a thought occurred that writing Satori was for Winslow either very easy or very difficult—Easy to rattle off an acceptable copy of standard CIA assassin storytelling, difficult to quell his own far from standard style and build a story rife with Asian settings and culture.

Nicholai Hel is a multi-lingual deadly assassin who kills only bad guys. Son of a Russian mother and German father, raised in Shanghai and trained by a Japanese general in the art of killing and survival, Hel is more than anything Japanese at heart and in spirit. In 1951 he is freed after three years in Tokyo’s Sugamo prison where he was sent for killing the man he called teacher and father, General Kishikawa. The general’s death by Hel was more honorable than hanging after his conviction of war crimes by the victorious Americans. Released from prison, Hel is offered a chance to remain free and earn a large sum of money if he will assassinate a high level Russian official in Beijing. To create a strong cover, surgeons give Hel a new face while a French beauty remakes his manner, habits, dress and French into that of a perfect French arms dealer. Shadowy bad guys start in early trying to kill him, but they are no match for Hel’s technique of ‘naked kill’ and he dispatches one after another without even increasing his heart rate. Much of the same in Beijing until complications send Hel and his tormentors south to Saigon. He is by this point mixed up with the CIA, Chinese Nationalists and communists, Russians, French, Vietnamese guerillas, and the French mafia. The number of people with Hel in their sights is beyond counting. Of course it all works out in the end, but we knew that from page one.

Apart from a style not natural to the writer, the book is weakened by either poor or little research, settings that lack definition apart from tour book descriptions, a minimum of suspense, and characters who are for the most part blatant caricatures. Were no native Japanese contracted or asked to read and correct the author’s glaring Japanese language mistakes, to set him straight on Japanese custom? Where did he get the notion that Japanese men wear kimonos, or that strangers are called by first name? There is much in Winslow’s Tokyo that is odd and inaccurate. In Beijing the opportunities for rich background are practically limitless, but you would hardly know it was China. A pivotal scene is set at the Chinese opera, but we learn nothing about what that place looks, feels or sounds like. In Saigon the only telling description is of netting around café and restaurant terraces to prevent bombs or grenades being tossed into the crowd. A casino in the almost fabled city is described…‘The large room was filled with excited chatter, shouts of victory and curses of loss, the clatter of dice, the clack of chips, and the spinning of roulette wheels. A cloud of cigarette smoke hovered like protective coverage over the triumphs and disappointments.’ Could just as well be Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.

The title Satori is a Japanese word meaning ‘sudden awakening or enlightenment’ and is perhaps a play on Trevanian’s title Shibumi, which means something like ‘elegant simplicity.’ But a bigger question is why the writer undertook this project. An author’s note at the end of Satori answers the question. His agent emailed him one day, asked if he were familiar with the Trevanian classic, and if he would like to be the next Trevanian. Winslow admitted that he could never be another Trevanian, but began thinking about the idea and possibilities of writing a prequel to Shibumi. The result of it all likely earned Winslow a lot of money, but I doubt it will do much for what was already an excellent reputation for writing a different and much better kind of book.

Drizzling on Bike Week

The Daytona International Speedway main entrance is directly across the street from the Daytona Barnes & Noble and today it looked like maybe Justin Bieber was making his debut in car racing. The entrance to B&N was clogged three deep with cars and motorcycles, but once through the entrance drive the traffic melted away revealing a half-empty parking lot. There was something quieter about the bookstore and after a minute it came to me that the people shopping for books had for a change forgotten their cell phones and were browsing quietly or sitting phoneless in cushiony easy chairs with book or magazine. My friend Yû found himself an edition of Catcher in the Rye (a Japanese favorite) while I stumbled upon a new book by one of my favorites, Don Winslow—a reworking of Trevanian’s 1979 bestseller, Shibumi. Winslow has taken a radical shift in choice of title, calling his new version Satori. The two Japanese word-titles are not even close in meaning, but… More about this book at a later time. Also picked up a paperback of the 1965 Truman Capote classic In Cold Blood. Probably too young to appreciate it fully the first time I read it, and seeing the Philip Seymour Hoffman movie Capote recently gave me the idea of reading it again through somewhat older eyes.

From the bookstore we ambled over to Panera Bread for some lunch, and a good idea that turned out to be. Thai chopped chicken salad made with romaine, cashews, Japanese edamame, red peppers, carrots, cilantro and wonton strips with peanut sauce and Thai chili vinaigrette, served with a bowl of all-natural steak chili and cornbread. Across the table from me Yû chomped on a huge smoked turkey sandwich served with a bowl of cream of tomato soup. Panera Bread puts on an impressive spread. We have many franchises in Florida but I’m sure it’s also in other states. If there’s one in your area and you’ve never been, then go. You will like it.

A walk through the library, up and down a couple of supermarket aisles and then back to cleared skies over the beach. Good timing to get a walk in, watch pelicans soaring like feathered ballerinas over the Atlantic blue and still find a late afternoon hour to play around with a vintage Pelikan 400NN and some Montblanc Racing Green ink.

2G2BT

Don Winslow has written thirteen novels, is the winner of one Shamus Award, nominee for an Edgar Award, and still remains unrecognized by too many readers. His absence from that superstar circle of writers like Lee Child, Michael Connelly and Robert Crais is something of a mystery. Possible that his refusal to ease up on the visceral reality of life in and around the drug cartels has prevented his rise to the top. Let us hope that Janet Maslin was right in her New York Times review of Winslow’s last book, Savages when she called the book, ‘…one that will jolt Mr Winslow into a different league.’

To my way of thinking, Don Winslow has always been in a different league, and one not an inch removed from perennial bestsellers like Connelly and Crais, both like Winslow, chroniclers of the southern California crime scene.

Published only three weeks ago, Winslow’s new book, Savages, is a hip-hop cool story of bad boys in southern California and hard to put down. The writer has a strong grip on the political and cultural history of the drug trade along the California-Mexico border, and you never for a moment doubt he knows of what he writes. The amazing thing about a new Winslow book is that you never know what style is going to color his story, frame his characters. From book to book his style changes. The Dawn Patrol (2009) is not like the earlier 2006 novel, The Power of the Dog, and neither is like the new book, Savages. His style, if nothing else is mercurial. At the same time you can be certain that some things won’t change: storytelling, diamond sharp characterizations, and the use of plot twists to keep the reader on edge.

But the style, language and dialogue of Savages deserves most of the praise. This time he has given us a southern California idiom that crackles with character and the stamp of now, today. While it is ultra-cool, it is also remarkable for its economy. Why use a sentence full of words when three capital letters and a number tell it all—2G2BT. And this is but a convenient example of the writer’s economy of expression. His short haiku-like paragraphs are a lesson in spare, lean prose rich enough to eat with a spoon.

Anti-heroes Ben and Chon are young so-cal dudes, developer-suppliers of high quality hydroponic weed, running their business out of Laguna Beach, CA. Their customer base is rock solid, and along with their girlfriend O (Ophelia) they live a good life. Ben, a Berkeley grad spends most of his time funding philanthropic projects in Africa and Southeast Asia. Chon is a school dropout, Navy Seal, ex-mercenary with two tours in Afghanistan. Ben handles the business, Chon handles the bad guys who put their fingers where they shouldn’t. But the bad guys—a Mexican drug cartel— want in, and to make sure Ben and Chon understand the options, they kidnap the girlfriend, O. Heads roll, bullets fly and blood spatters on the way to a solution, and you don’t want to miss a word of it.