Are You Ready to Travel to... Medieval England?

 

 

How to Survive in Medieval England (2021)

By Toni Mount

Pen & Swords Books, 144 pages + end matter

★★★★

 

I first encountered Toni Mount via an Ashland Public Library online talk. I enjoyed it so much that I read her book How to Survive in Medieval England. Dr. Who fans know about his TARDIS phone booth/time machine. What if we had such a device and could travel back to medieval England? What would we need to know to survive? Where would we live? What would we wear? What would we eat? What other small things do we need to know lest we get in serious trouble? The TARDIS is a hokey hook, but it works because Mount has such fascinating tidbits to impart.

 

First of all, brush up on Middle English and local dialects. If you are learned or of noble blood (both of which are unlikely) you’ll need Latin and maybe some Old French. Learn the proper terms for things. Ask for the “bill  (of fayre) when you arrive and the “reckoning” to pay. Have the proper money—silver pence and marks mostly–because modern money is no good there and for sure your credit isn’t either. Make sure you are dressed properly for a person of your station. Do not wear blue or purple unless you can prove your elite status or are ready to relinquish liberty or life. Wear a proper cap and be prepared to doff it, lower your eyes, and bend you knees early and often. If you’re not sure if you must, do it anyhow; you can’t be too careful. Don’t expect friendly locals to help you; they are suspicious of all strangers and you will surely be considered as such. Do not say, “I swear...” as you are in danger of being blasphemous.

 

You will be expected to be a good Christian; there is no such thing as opting out of religion. Assuming you are accepted into a community you can rest assured you will be noticed if you skip services. You will probably be poor so be prepared to live in a one-room hovel with an open fire and a hole in the roof through which some of the smoke escapes. You will sleep on a sack stuffed with something soft if you’re lucky, but it will probably be husks. You will share your hovel with various insects and, in cold weather, livestock. That’s not too bad, as their dung will help fertilize your garden. Know your plants; some will help toothaches and cuts; some will poison you. 

 

Keep up with fashion, as it changes. Ladies will be surprised to find that, in addition to outward layers, you will also wear bras and panties. You need layers by the way, because the only garments you will wash with regularity are those worn closest to the skin. Lots of women wear aprons to protect clothing from pills, dirt, and splashes. You will wash your hands, face, and neck regularly but you will stink. You’ll get used to it because everyone else, including nobles, are rank as well.

 

Have you worked up an appetite? Bread and ale will be your staples. Your bread will certainly be burnt on the bottom, but you’ll eat it. Only the “upper crust” get unburnt bread. You will likely take your turn brewing ale for the village, as it only lasts for a fortnight. It will be weak. That’s a good thing as you’ll drink a lot of it; water is untreated and can make your sick. You will also consume a lot of pottage, basically a grain gruel with some salt and whatever vegetables and pulses you can throw in. You’d be surprised at how yummy properly done stinging nettles can be. You’ll probably keep a pig for some protein and perhaps get some rabbits, fowl, and fish. Be sure they’re not from some lord’s land or you won’t need to worry about your diet. Use everything, including the blood from your pig. And, no, there’s no place to plug in your microwave or digital devices.

 

Get the picture? Mount’s book is both informative and cheekily written, which makes it a joy to read. I could have done without her over-the-top faux interviews, but this is a rare book that will educate you without making you aware your mind is being filled. Plus, you can always jump into your TARDIS and come home.

 

Rob Weir

A Robert Parker Novel for Baseball Season

 

 

Mortal Stakes (1975)

By Robert B. Parker

Dell Books, 329 pp.

★★★

 

Robert B. Parker became one of the best-selling crime/mystery writers of his time (1932-2010) but until he published his first Spenser novel in 1973, he was just another writing professor with a few books under his belt hoping for a break. Two years later he still had to write a few more Spensers before he could hang up his tweed sports coat and write full time.

 

Parker was also a big baseball fan and the start of a new season is a good reason to revisit his third novel, Mortal Stakes. I caution that Parker had not yet reached his full stride and that his private detective Spenser was still more of a cocky urban cowboy than the urbane master of the bon mot he later became. Nor was he yet a one-woman man; he shared bedroom quality time with both Brenda Loring and Susan Silverman, and ogled other possibilities. 

 

Mortal Stakes is a readable 1975 novel with the Boston Red Sox at its center. Spenser is approached by team president Harold Erskine to make discrete queries into a whispered rumor that he picked up. Despite the fact that star hurler Mary Rabb almost never loses, Erskine wants to know if Rabb has occasionally thrown a game or shaved the vig(orish) so that bookies avoided payouts. With that task in hand, Spenser gains access to the team, management, and broadcast booth under the guise that he’s writing a book about the Red Sox. He takes an instant dislike to play by play man Bucky Maynard, a rotund Southerner who comes off as a cross between Dizzy Dean and Ned Martin. Nor is he very fond Lester Floyd, who passes as his driver but is rather obviously Maynard’s muscle. Nonetheless, Spenser is wise enough to know that a modicum of thuggery doesn’t mean much in the Back Bay of the 1970s.

 

The real puzzler is that everyone tells Spenser that Marty Rabb is “the nicest guy” you’ll ever meet. While still posing as a writer, Spenser meets Marty and he thinks so too. Rabb loves baseball and lives in a neat apartment with his wife Linda and a three-year-old. The only thing that seems a bit funny is that Linda claims to not pay much attention to baseball, but says she met Marty at a game in Chicago. Since he has no other clues and Erskine is paying him $100 a day plus expenses, Spenser decides to go to Chicago to see if he can dig up something that leads him elsewhere.

 

He does, but what he finds is not what he expected. Before the case is resolved, Spenser finds himself in New York City where he encounters a pimp named Violet and a woman who runs a high-class escort service and porn film distribution network. Back in Boston he is threatened by Frank Doerr, a mobster posing as a funeral director, and his gunsel Wally Hogg. It’s not the best idea to humiliate company such Doerr and Hoggg, but that seldom deters Spenser.

 

 As Spenser developed as a character he became a man willing to use violence, but also one with a very strict code about the circumstances under which he would resort to it. In Mortal Stakes we observe that he has definite ideas of who the good and bad guys are, but is less constrained about how to be on the side of justice. If you go on to read a lot more Spenser novels, you might come to see Mortal Stakes as a pivotal book in which Spenser’s methods and personality start to change. It ends with a warning to Spenser from homicide commander Martin Quirk about what he can’t do in his city. Parker wasn’t shy about bringing down the baddies in his next 37 Spenser books, but the plots became more intricate and subtle.

 

Was Marty Rabb one the take? I’m not a Sox fan so I’m tempted to be a wise guy like Spenser and say that anytime the Red Sox win someone is on the take. But what kind of a person would reveal the mystery of a mystery?

 

Play ball!

 

Rob Weir

It Ain't Over: Perfect for MLB Opening Day

 

 

It Ain't Over (2022)

Written and directed by Sean Mullin

Sony Pictures Classic, 98 minutes, PG.

★★★★★

 

 

If I were to ask you what Major League Baseball player has the most World Series rings, who would you guess? Babe Ruth? Lou Gehrig? Joe DiMaggio? Mickey Mantle? Go back to the locker room, you're 0-4. The answer is Yogi Berra. He had 10 of them; 13 if you count the three he collected as a coach.

 

Mention his name and most people will think of two things: a cartoon bear created by Hanna-Barbera and a funny guy prone to malapropisms and garbled phrases. Who thinks of Berra as one of the game's greatest players? At 5'7” and a body shaped like a pear, he wouldn't even be drafted today. That would be baseball’s loss. Are you sick of guys with big contracts that strike out a lot and hit an occasional home run? In five of Yogi’s 19 years in uniform, he slammed more homers than he struck out and never fanned more than 38 times in a season. In 1950, he came to the plate 597 times and whiffed on just a dozen occasions. That's even more remarkable given that Berra often swung at pitches out of the strike zone. He had a knack for hitting pitches wherever they were hurled. That meant you couldn't defense him; Yogi used all of the park.

 

It Ain't Over is a documentary of a decent man, a veteran of D-Day, and a beloved family man. We often hear the voice of Lindsay Berra, who was royally peeved by how the media made her grandfather into a clown and ignored his accomplishments: three MVPs, 358 home runs, and 1,430 RBIs, a Hall of Famer, catching Don Larsen's World Series perfect game, and a .285 career average, which is rare for catchers, baseball's most physically demanding position. Like most biographical documentaries it contains a lot talking head testimonials. Family members weigh in—Lindsay; Yogi's children, Barbara, Dale, Larry, Tim, and video from his beloved wife Carmen. Ditto a veritable who's who of baseball: Hank Aaron, Roger Angel, Marty Appel, Allen Barra, Bobby Brown, Bob Costas, Larry Doby, Al Downing, Joe Girardi, Ron Guidry, Tony Kubeck, Don Mattingly, Willie Randolph, Bobby Richardson, Mariano Rivera, Ralph Terry, Joe Torre, Vin Scully... Derek Jeter first met Yogi when he was beginning his career and tells of swinging at a bad pitch. Yogi asked him why he swung at such a lousy pitch. When Jeter said, “But Yogi, you swung at that pitch all the time.” Yogi's retort, “Yeah, but I hit it!” 

 

It Ain't Over takes us back to The Hill in St. Louis where Berra was born Lorenzo Pietro Berra and lived across the street from his lifelong friend Joe Garagiola. It was a classic blue-collar immigrant neighborhood–not a ghetto, but not anybody's idea of posh either. It would be no exaggeration to say that Berra's parents were not crazy about his desire to play ball. He got his colorful nickname from a photo in which he and several other players in the front row were sitting cross-legged on the ground. One teammate remarked that the squat Berra looked like a yogi and it stuck. Years later the family tried to sue for Hanna-Barber for copyright infringement but lost; “Yogi” wasn't Berra's legal name.

 

Yogi was generally a portrait of calm, though he had moments of pique and stubbornness. He always insisted that Jackie Robinson should have been called “out” when he famously stole home in the 1955 World Series. When owner George Steinbrenner fired Yogi as manger after he took an aging Yankees team to the Series but lost to the Cardinals, Yogi refused to return to Yankee Stadium for 14 years until publicist Suzy Waldman convinced Steinbrenner to tell Yogi he made a mistake. That was a miracle on the line of Donald Trump admitting he was wrong! Yogi returned to his first post-apology Old Timers Game to deafening cheers.

 

This is an uplifting documentary about a man for whom no one had a disparaging word. It perhaps tries too hard to replace the clown image with one of a misunderstood “genius” and I could have done without the bombastic Nick Swisher, but Yogi Berra gets a long overdue tribute in It Ain't Over. It's such a touching film that Emily, who has zero interest in sports, declared it “excellent” and “moving.” Yep, we all love Yogi here.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

 

Sea of Grass Worth Reviving?

 

 

 

Sea of Grass (1947)

Directed by Elia Kazan

Lowe’s Inc. 127 minutes, Not-rated

★★★★

 

Sometimes it’s a good idea to “sit” with a film after you’ve seen it. I was fairly blasé after viewing Sea of Grass but the more I thought of it, the more I liked it. My reaction was apparently par for the course. Critics were lukewarm when it was released in 1947, yet audiences flocked to it and made it the most successful Hepburn-Tracy (H-T) film of all time.

 

I think I was initially hesitant because it was an H-T movie. It was hard to imagine Katharine Hepburn as a gal from St. Louis or Spencer Tracy as a New Mexico cattle rancher who loves waving fields of grass. Hepburn had the ultimate Connecticut Yankee blue-blood accent and Tracy–though born in Wisconsin–was a New York/Los Angeles sort of guy. In the film, Lutie Cameron (Hepburn) comes from a proper St. Louis family and is set to marry Col. Jim Brewton (Tracy) when she gets a telegram telling her to hop on a train to get hitched on Brewton’s Salt Fork ranch instead. To say that she’s less than impressed by Salt Fork is putting things mildly. She’s even more alarmed by Brewton’s brusque and imperious manner, and is shocked when she meets local Brice Chamberlain (Melvyn Douglas) who warns her that Brewton is a hard man. To prove his point he takes her to the local court house where Brewton is trying to run off a settler on government land he wants for grazing.

 

Lutie gains more insight into Brewton’s thinking when he takes her to gaze out upon the empty prairie and waxes rhapsodic about the power of the land and the need to conserve it. But make no mistake; Brewton is a cattle man, not Teddy Roosevelt reincarnated. He wants no part of homesteaders moving onto the grasslands and is unaffected by Lutie’s pleas that it will make Salt Fork more lively. Call it visions of St. Louis versus those of Petticoat Junction! Lutie errs badly when she convinces Brewton to allow a family to build a sod home on land he sees as his. Despite Lutie giving birth to a daughter, Sara Beth, the question arises: Can this marriage be saved?

 

Maybe not. Lutie decides to flee to Denver for a time. There she “bumps into” Brice. Nod, nod, wink, wink. Lutie will come back to Salt Fork where she gives birth to a son, Brock. Chamberlain returns as well, is elected a federal judge to settle land disputes, and in his own way is as intractable as Brewton. Acrimony sends Lutie back to St. Louis, where she consults a lawyer. Can she get out of her ill-advised match? Maybe, but there are attached strings. (Aren’t there always?)

 

Director Elia Kazan shows a deft hand by taking a proverbial tuck in the script. Instead of following Brewton and Lutie though their respective trials, triumphs, and tribulations, Kazan subtly shows us that years have passed. When we pick up the story, Sara Beth (Phyllis Thaxter) is a young woman and Brock (Robert Walker) is an angry reckless hellion. This lapse in a family saga was actually quite bold given the Hollywood Code of the day that had definite rules in place about the sanctity of the family. You’ll have to watch to see how Kazan extracts himself from the corner into which he has painted himself.

 

It's undoubtedly a personal matter whether you buy into the idea of a H-T Western. There are, though, several things to recommend giving it a try. First of all, not many actors have ever done stubborn as well as Tracy, so that part rings true even if you don’t think he belongs in cowboy boots or wearing a long string tie. Second, cinematographer Harry Stradling imbues the prairie with great majesty. Wide shots of winds rippling across vast expanses of grass indeed invoke the “sea,” and are enhanced by shooting in black and white. Note what Kazan and Stradling do with shadows, sky enhancements, and underlighting.

 

Finally, there is relevance in this 77-year-old film. Once we move away from the war of wills between Lutie and Brewton and ponder the core of their clashing worldviews–civilization versus the fragility of ecosystems–who is right, kind-hearted Lutie or hard-as-nails Brewton?

 

Rob Weir

All the Sinners Bleed: Grity Southern Noir

 

 

All the Sinners (2023)

By S. A. Crosby

Flatiron Books, 352 pages

★★★★

 

You could label the new novel from Shawn Andre Crosby “rednecks and black folks.” Titus Crowne is the black sheriff of the strangely named town of Charon, Virginia. Who on earth would honor a town for the ancient Greek ferrymen who took souls to Hades for judgment? Titus was once an FBI agent in Indiana traumatized by an unfortunate event during a raid. He decided to quit the Agency and return to his hometown. Much to the chagrin of town councilor Scott Cunningham and other white elites, Titus got elected sheriff.

 

Titus lives with his widowed father, has a girlfriend named Darlene, and a brother Marquise who is semi-estranged from the family. Crowne’s baptism of fire takes place when popular teacher Jeff Spearman is gunned down in the local school. Titus almost convinced gunman Latrelle Macdonald to surrender, but a sudden move leads two deputies to fatally shoot him.

 

This is the proverbial tip of the iceberg of Titus’s challenges. He finds shocking pictures on Latrelle's phone, not the least of which is that both he and Spearman were photographed wearing raised wolf masks, but a third person kept his lowered and could not be identified. Who is the so-called “Lone Wolf” who is key to both the shooting and other dark mysteries? Sheriff Crowe also stumbles upon patterns of grizzly deaths to young black kids who are buried under a willow tree on Tank Phillips’ land. Each has been tortured and clues such as “Cursed by Cain” are found. Soon, the Lone Wolf will be in frequent contact to taunt Titus.

 

Charon is a religious town­–even Titus's father Albert is a believer–but Titus sees veneer, not faith. He observes a Virginia county in which crack, fentanyl, crystal meth, and racism are like so many items in the Dollar General Store. Titus remarks to Charlene, one of his deputies, “Flannery O'Connor said the South is Christ-haunted. It's haunted all right. By the hypocrisy of Christianity.” Charon has so many demons that it’s, “where the poor are ostracized. Where girls are called whores if they report rape. Where I can't go into the [local bar] without wondering if the bartender done spit in my drink.”

 

As you can tell, Crosby's All the Sinners Bleed is one gritty murder mystery. The very title comes from a snake-handling local preacher's sign outside his remote church. His idea of Christianity is “praise the lord and pass the copperheads.”* He's a whack job made worse by being an avowed white nationalist. But is he also a mass murderer? As if Titus doesn't have enough problems, one of his deputies might be on the take, Cunningham thinks he runs the Sheriff's Office, and a reporter from Indiana who happens to be an old flame shows up in his office and wants access to the investigation. And people wonder why Titus is close lipped, no-nonsense, and cynical.

 

The very darkness of All of Sinners Bleed places it within a fiction genre called “Southern noir.” Noir is also characterized by damaged protagonists. By the time Cunningham tells Crowne he is working to make sure he won't be reelected, Titus hardly cares; he just wants to catch the Lone Wolf and avenge the murder of black children. He's so obsessed that even Darlene thinks she’s had enough.

 

Don't think the novel winds down as Titus gets close to the truth. Titus astutely remarks that, “no place was more confused by its past or terrified of the future than the South.” Before All the Sinners Bleed resolves completely, some dirty family secrets come to light, a few families begin the reconciliation process, white nationalists gather, a public showdown occurs, people die, a statue tumbles, and Titus is forced to do some needed self-analysis.

 

All the Sinners Bleed is both a taut mystery and a searing indictment of American racism. It confirms that the South is indeed terrified of the future. History has a lot to do with that nervousness, though it’s not the kind rednecks want to hear.  

 

Rob Weir

 

* If you don’t know, snake-handling churches are a thing. Adherents take a literal read of a passage from the Gospel of Mark that true believers can take up poisonous serpents– like rattlers and copperheads–and shall not be harmed. Let the record show that not all adherents have been true believers.

Little Monsters: You Think Your Family is Dysfunctional?

 

 

Little Monsters (2023)

By Adrienne Brodeur

Simon & Schuster, 312 pp.

★★★★

 

There's nothing quite like a good dysfunctional-family tale. Particularly one lurking behind a thin gauze of reputation and respectability. How many things can go wrong if the fabric tears? Adrienne Brodeur enumerates them in her arch novel Little Monsters.

 

The problems begin with paterfamilias Adam Gardner. He's a whale expert and a brilliant marine biologist, as he would be the first to tell you. He's charming, but also a braggart, an egoist, and is bipolar. He's not at all dealing well with his impending 70^th  birthday, but he's willing to accept a grandiose party and testimonial. He plans to prove he's still relevant by announcing a breakthrough discovery on whale speech. He's almost there, he thinks.

 

Adam’s son Ken disappoints in his own way. He's a developer with little romance for the ecology of Cape Cod. He's also a Republican political hopeful and egotistical in different ways from his father. He loves to name drop, is a materialist, and loves all things ostentatious.  Ken lives in a big house in Chatham with his wife Jenny who is an actual Lowell, as in the Lowells speak only to Cabots and the Cabots speak only to God. Jenny, though, has always had an indifferent view of money and, had she her druthers, would have been an artist. They do have adorable twin girls Jesse and Franny–their “little monsters.”  

 

Adam's daughter Abby is an artist when, she's not busy being a high school art teacher. When she was at Rhode Island School of Design, Jenny was her best friend, but that has faded a bit since her marriage to Ken. Abby and Ken are, as the Brits say, as different as chalk and cheese. Abby adores the twins and vice versa, but she's a bohemian living in a family dune cottage that Ken wants to tear down to build McMansions. She's also working on an abstract piece for her father's birthday titled, of course, “Little Monsters.”

 

All of this is a backdrop to the 2016 election. Bizarrely, Ken actually hopes Hillary Clinton will win. That’s because he believes Hillary would be such a disaster that Massachusetts voters will demand bold change. Then he can position himself to become a US representative on the GOP ticket. Ken has it all planned, and he’s already begun cultivating important contacts.

 

Boston police officer Steph Murray and her wife Toni are also on the Cape the summer of 2016. They have a son Noah, but they are not there for fun, surf, and sun. Steph was adopted and thinks that Adam Gardner is her biological father. Toni is a bit flaky in that she's heavily into astrology but she's the calm to Steph's tempest and is along for the ride of what she thinks is a dumb idea.

 

Let's see, what else could be a problem in the Gardner family? Ken has a therapist–though he doesn't believe in that stuff and wants to fire him–but the therapist is miles smarter than Ken. Abby is in love with David, reputed to be Ken's best friend and has had a long time relationship with him. If only he weren't married! Abby might be having second thoughts though, despite a big impending complication. Adam hates Abby's art and thinks she's wasting her life. Abby has had it with her father and her brother. Adam still thinks he can charm young women half his age. Just about everyone has buried secrets that need to come out. Bet on Adam's 70^th birthday party not going according to plan.

 

The little monster theme occurs throughout the novel in lots of clever ways. Look for clues sprinkled throughout. They, and a Lady’s Night rebellion add enough humor to call Little Monsters a black comedy of manners. The Gardners are complicated, but do they deserve each other?

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

The Narrows: Why Did I Wait So Long?

 

 

 

 

 

The Narrows (2004)

By Michael Connelly

Little, Brown and Company, 405 pages

★★★★★

 

Back in 1996, Michael Connelly hit his stride with his fifth novel, the award-winning thriller The Poet. It brought together two characters from other books, LA homicide detective Harry Bosch and FBI agent Rachel Walling to investigate a cluster of homicide detective suicides. Why? Because cops aren’t generally susceptible to the sort of copycat patterns of hormonal teens. Crime reporter Jack McEnvoy suspects murder and one-line “suicide” notes  from Edgar Allan Poe confirm that a serial killer nicknamed The Poet is at large. As things unfurled, a finger pointed back to FBI  superstar Robert Backus, who went over to the dark side. The book ended with Rachel pushing Robert out a window and down a steep embankment. Later a body was discovered that was said to be Backus.

 

There are other plotlines in The Poet that make it worth reading, but its ending practically screams out for a sequel. The Narrows is that book. I’ve no idea why I waited so long to read it but now that I have, I’d rank it above The Poet. In intervening novel time, Harry has retired from the LAPD after a procedural squabble. Now he does some occasional PI work. Graciela, the wife of his friend Terry McCaleb, an ex-FBI agent, asks Harry to look into his recent death. Terry was heart transplant recipient whose death appears to be a routine medication mix-up. Graciela isn’t convinced, and neither is Harry when he searches Terry’s boat. Terry has been looking into “cold cases,” including files suggestive of Backus’ MO.  

 

The FBI knows that Backus is back. Cherie Dei, from FBI HQ at Quantico recalls Rachel from a post in South Dakota, where she has been exiled for various reasons: having been Backus’ mentee, a crime involving her ex-husband, an FBI agent killed during his arrest, having an affair with McEnvoy while investigating The  Poet, and insubordination. Dei makes clear, though, that Rachel’s role is strictly advisory. Rachel finds this maddening. She truly does have authority issues, but she knows Backus better than anyone and suspects he will have altered his appearance. (Hey, it’s not just actors who get new faces!)

 

As crime novels go, The Narrows is considerably more gruesome than most. Backus has left calling cards and enjoys toying with the FBI. He literally wrote the investigative procedures the FBI uses and trained several of its top agents. He is thus several steps ahead of everyone else and, though he is a psychopath, he’s as brilliant as he is bold. His murders are so perversely cruel that it would be safe to say that the only difference between him and Hannibal Lecter is that Backus doesn’t eat his victims’ livers with fava beans. You can also bet that he takes pleasure in pulling Rachel’s strings, though Connelly wisely leaves open questions of whether he admires her or has a predetermined grisly fate in mind for her.

 

Harry and Rachel work along parallel lines until their paths cross and converge–in more ways than one. Backus will lead them on a follow-the-crumbs trail that takes Bosch to a California island and then he and Rachel to a spot in the Mojave called Zzyzx, Los Vegas, low-rent brothels in Nevada, dots in the desert on their way to becoming ghost towns, and back to Los Angeles.

 

The title refers to a canyon wash that empties into the Los Angeles River, either . Contrary to what most Easterners think, though 95% of the LA River lies in concrete, during heavy rains and spring run-off it is a raging stream that can be 25-35 feet deep. The Narrows is either the Alios or Brown Canyon Wash. It is there that the novel’s heart-pounding denouement takes place.

 

It’s a terrific thriller, even when it strays into expected places. Connelly’s law enforcement characters have attitude and stubbornness, but he prefers suspense and tension to wisecracking PIs. He leavens The Narrows with occasional humor, but of the variety that induces a wan smile rather than ripostes you’re tempted to add to your own repertoire. Instead of a notebook, you might wish to keep a blood pressure cuff nearby. I’d call The Narrows a good vacation read, except you’ll be afraid to turn off the lights.

 

Rob Weir