3… 2… 1… Micro Reviews

Because three sentences worked so well last time…

The Twelfth Card (Jeffrey Deaver, 2005) – Another Lincoln Rhyme thriller, just like the other ones, except with some possibly hilarious white-middle-aged-man-writing-2005-African-American-teenage slang. Also, one of the most out-of-left-field plot twists I’ve seen so far in this series, but whatever. I still enjoyed it.

The Likeness (Tana French, 2008) – A lyrical suspense novel about an undercover detective sent to take the place of a murder victim in the hopes of catching her killer, but also about friendships and relationships and how you can’t get something for nothing. You don’t have to have read In the Woods, the first novel about the Murder squad, to understand it all, but it helps. This is the kind of book whose cadences and rhythms get in your head and change the way you think for a little while, but be warned: it is not a murder mystery, whatever the jacket copy might say.

The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York (Deborah Blum, 2010) – A fascinating history of Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler, two New York City medical examiners who, between them, rebuilt the system from a cesspool of corruption to a respected scientific institution.  The history is maybe not as detailed or unbiased as an academic might like, nor the science as rigorous and explicit, but the book more than makes up for it in readability. The chapter-by-chapter list of poisons and the anecdotes of their use are truly unsettling.

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (DS, 2010) – It’s Professor Layton, so you can expect puzzles and an outlandish but awesome story in which you’ll somehow find out by the end that everything anyone’s told you is wrong . Also, sadly, a more moving romance than the ones I’ve encountered lately in “mature” media like books and TV series.

Dexter Is Delicious (Jeff Lindsay, 2010) — I had to choose whether I wanted to read this 5th installment of the Dexter series or watch the first episode of Dexter season 5 first, and I chose this. The TV show is such SRS BSNS that I forgot how farce-like and hilarious the books are — Dexter’s voice is so deadpan-funny that it’s worth reading the book for the zingers alone. The plot isn’t as unsettling as other installments in this series, but it’s still engrossing, as characters from the past return and each of the mains deals with life-changing events.

Mario Kart (Wii, 2008) — Arg, you guys, I got a Wii, and now I’m never going to get any work done ever again. Actually, Mario Kart DS is the better installment of this series, since the Wii version loses a lot of the nuances and requires less skill and practice, but I like how you can play online with people around the world, instantly. Also, the option to have your character drive a motorcycle is a nice touch, with the possibility of performing neat tricks with a waggle of the Wiimote.

Déjà Dead (Kathy Reichs, 1998) — This first novel in the Temperance Brennan series (the inspiration for the TV series Bones) gave me mixed feelings. On one hand, I like all the forensic details, which are presumably accurate considering the author has the same occupation as her protagonist; on the other, I found the actual writing style itself to be slow and a little clunky, and parts of the plot were either frustratingly reach-through-the-book-and-point-out-the-obvious-to-the-characters or felt unmotivated in terms of action. In any case, it was gripping enough that I wanted to abandon my work on Monday morning to finish the last hundred pages and find out what happened.

Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright, 2007) – I liked this comedy about a big-time London cop sent to a sleepy rural village because he’s “making the rest of us look bad”, but I was surprised not to find it as funny as I’d been expecting from the artists’ other work, Shaun of the Dead. I found myself playing “identify the actor and what else I’ve seen him in” more often than laughing. Although there were plenty of funny bits, I guess I found the actual plot too fragmented to hook me.

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey (Trenton Lee Stewart, 2008) — I keep picking up these books about a bunch of genius kids solving trails of puzzles, and I’m not sure why, because the tone is a little too gentle  for my taste. In this one, Reynie, Sticky, Kate, and Constance must find the missing Mr. Benedict and, as they quickly discover, save the world. The characters just don’t speak to me, which isn’t the fault of the author but of my own preferences.

Deliver Us From Evil (Amy Berg, 2006) — This documentary about the chilling way in which the crimes of a pedophilic California priest were covered up and minimized by clerical officials is tough to watch but very well made and very well put together. I noticed some reviewers commenting that it was unfairly rough on the Church, but I think it seems that way only because they declined to comment, damning themselves. And in the end, it is damning: the impression the viewer is left with is that the bishops and other clergy are really the culpable ones here, if only because the criminal himself, who is interviewed extensively in this film, comes across as so damaged that he doesn’t even understand that the evil and wrong things he did were, in fact, evil and wrong.

Murder By Death (Robert Moore, 1976) – Neil Simon’s spoof of five famous detectives and of murder mysteries in general would be easy-to-watch comedy if not for product-of-its-time, cringe-worthy racism. Like, Peter Sellers is in the equivalent of blackface, pretending to be Sidney Wang, a spoof of Charlie Chan — tasteless at the least in 2010. There are some good lines and set-ups (David Niven and Maggie Smith as “Dick and Dora Charleston”  stand out, and a young James Cromwell mugs up an oot-rageous accent as spoof!Poirot’s valet, Marcel*), but… um, yeah… not that good.

*Because you likely won’t see the movie anyhow, here’s one of the best exchanges. Both parties are speaking in Monty-Python-esque fake French accents.
MARCEL: Somezing isn’t right in all of zis, I feel it in my boons.
SPOOF POIROT: *stares* Your what?
MARCEL: My boons!
SPOOF POIROT: Buns? Your buns? You bought buns and you didn’t tell me? Where are zey? Where are ze buns?
MARCEL: Oh, non, Monsieur, ze bones in my body.
SPOOF POIROT: You should not speak wiz an accent when you know I am so hungry!