The Art of Detection
By Laurie King
Bantam
San Francisco police detective Kate Martinelli calls it the case of the dead Sherlockian, the apparent murder of a rich man so obsessed with Sherlock Holmes that he had two floors of his house made into a replica of Holmes' Baker Street digs. The first 100 pages of King's novel proceed as a police investigation would, slowly, with Martinelli sorting through the superfluous details, but the case becomes more tantalizing when she stumbles on a possible motive for Philip Gilbert's death: He had just purchased, secretly and for a song, a previously undiscovered story that might have been written by Arthur Conan Doyle during a visit to San Francisco in the 1920s. If the manuscript is genuine, an expert tells Martinelli, it will "change the face of the Holmesian scholarship" and be worth a fortune. We get to read the mysterious tale along with Martinelli (it's narrated by Holmes himself), and while King does take liberties with the detective and his fanatical
followers, it's all in the name of a good story.
A Student of Living Things
By Susan Richards Shreve
Viking
Shreve's new novel is set in a vaguely described, post-Sept. 11 time period marked by acts of domestic terrorism. It begins when we learn that a law student and political activist named Steven Frayn was assassinated two years earlier on the steps of a university library in Washington DC, while his younger sister, Claire, stood nearby. No sooner does Claire, Shreve's narrator, tell us this than she shifts gears and spends 60 pages describing her odd and disconnected family, a section so full of digression that many readers will be tempted to jump ship. They shouldn't, because the story becomes suspenseful with the turn of a page when Claire finally describes the day of Steven's death and its aftermath. On her first trip back to the library where he died, she's approached by a mysterious man who says he was Steven's friend and might know who killed him. He asks the grieving Claire to help lure the murderer into a trap and she, happy to have "a flesh-and-blood enemy," agrees. It's a story of menace and vulnerability that starts badly but in the end is hard to put down.
I Had the Right to Remain Silent ... But I Didn't Have the Ability
By Ron White
Dutton
We have a teenage boy in the house who has all but memorized, and recites without provocation, the script of Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie. We also know people who are erudite and impeccably mannered, yet after a few drinks have been known to adopt competing drawls and swap good ol' boy jokes as if to the trailer park born. This is why we have more than a passing familiarity with Ron White, and why we are adding his book to this column so soon after it arrived at our door. It's easy to read. The type is big, there are lots of illustrations by
cartoonist Matthew Shultz and some pages contain very few lines. But we all know that blue-collar humor is not rocket science. It's unabashedly crass, smells like beer and Cheetos (which White likes to ingest while he sits naked in his bean-bag chair) and caters to our interest in liquor, sex and bodily
functions (human or canine, either will do). Is this book funny? Not as funny as when White delivers his material in person, but have a beer first and you might not know the difference.
The Boy Who Loved Words
By Roni Schotter
Schwartz & Wade
Lickety-split. Is that really a word? It must be, if it's in the collection of Selig, the boy at the heart of this book for kids. He has acquired other words that seem just as unlikely. Chockablock. Djinn. Jibber-jabber (we had to look in three dictionaries before we found that one). Others are familiar but a bit eccentric (tintinnabulating,
amphora), and still others seem ordinary enough until you think about them and it dawns on you how beguiling they are. Dusk. Rhapsody. Scrumptious. There's a story in these pages, something about Selig running away from home in search of life's meaning and finding it when he inadvertently helps a poet finish his latest verse. But the book's plot is not nearly as important as its suggestion that children should think about words, about how they were invented, how their sounds reflect their meanings, and how well they conjure up the feelings or images that they represent, how well they do their job. There's a glossary of Selig's words at the end. Illustrations are by Giselle Potter. Recommended for ages four to eight.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not