Try This Older Peter May Mystery

 

 

 

The Man With No Face (1981/2019)

By Peter May

Quercus, 406 pages

★★★

 

I quite enjoy the thrillers and mysteries from Scottish novelist Peter May. The Man With No Face was an early effort that was reprinted after May gained renown as a British television writer, took the dosh, and then returned to fulltime writing. His Lewis trilogy is a personal favorite. The Man With No Face isn’t up to that standard, but it’s still a good read.

 

The centerpiece of this murder mystery is Neil Bannerman, a journalist with the Edinburgh Post. Bannerman is a fine reporter, but he’s also jaded, tart of tongue, and all-round pain in the keister. Not surprisingly, he lives alone. He is especially cynical of Tait, an editor who is really a cost-cutting hatchet man. Tait would love to get rid of Bannerman, but he’s too good to dump without a really good reason.

 

Instead, Tait packs Bannerman off to Brussels to cover a big EEC (European Economic Community) conference which, for an investigative reporter like Bannerman, is akin being assigned to covering local school board meetings. He encounters a group of smug embedded reporters who turn in stories that differ little from press releases and are content to treat their gravy gig as if they are at Club Med on an expense account. It takes Bannerman less than a day to offend virtually every reporter in Brussels. That includes his contact Tim Slater in whose apartment he is staying.

 

Slater is in tight with British Cabinet minister Robert Gryffe. Bannerman doesn’t care for him much either, but things get much more interesting when both Slater and Gryffe are found dead in the latter’s townhouse. Local police investigate and conclude the two shot each other during a quarrel. You don’t have to be as dogged as Bannerman to doubt that conclusion. As it transpires, there was a hidden witness to the dual slayings, Gryffe’s severely autistic young daughter Tania. She doesn’t speak, but she’s a precocious artist who drew the incident. The problem with her sketch is that the man who isn’t one of the victims has no discernible face.

 

Bannerman’s investigations will take him down several unexpected paths, not the least of which is that Tania seems at ease with Neil, whereas she goes into a shell or screams when she is in the company of anyone of than her (now-dead) father and her nanny/caregiver Sally. About Sally, how is it that a confirmed misanthrope like Neil finds himself increasingly attracted to her or feeling protective of Tania? At least he can exercise his bile toward Platt, once a promising reporter but now a loser who holds his tongue to scrounge background assignments from other derisive reporters.

 

A lot happens, not the least of which is that an amoral assassin named Kale would like to plant both Neil and Tania. But for whom is he a contract killer? That involves following leads that might yield Bannerman a major scoop. Every crumb he follows yields another layer of complexity. He comes to expect that a reclusive but respected Swiss entrepreneur René Jansen is too good to be true. Eventually he will enter a world of deadly and dirty politics in which even the men in shadows have an overlord.

 

Okay, so maybe we too jaded these days to be shocked by the idea that power, politics, and crime might be linked, but by having a lot of threads in need of being tied together, May’s 1981 plot holds up well. I’ll leave it to you to decide how well the twists involving Kale and Tania ring true. Younger readers will just have to trust me when I say that once upon a time there really were crusading journalists who wrote for pulped products called newspapers. Oh wait, was that cynical?

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Macbeth: The Film (It will save you time)

 

 

 

 

Macbeth (2015)

Directed by Justin Kurzel

StudioCanal, 113 minutes, R (violence, brief sexuality)

★★★★

 

I’ve noted this before. Though it horrifies several of my friends and relatives, Shakespeare doesn’t make my heart sing. I love all things Scottish, but I recall a three-hour plus production of Macbeth that was so turgid it made me want to sneak out the back and grab a plate of haggis. I was thus recently surprised to enjoy the 2015 movie version of Macbeth. I’m sure a lot of that had to do with the fact that director Justin Kurzel pared it down to under two hours.

 

It also had plenty to do with Michael Fassbinder in the title role. He was so intense that he made me believe in what were arguably overly abrupt transitions in his moods and motives. (Hey, you’ve got cut somewhere!) I was also surprised that French actress Marion Cotillard pulled off Lady Macbeth. Her English was very good and she was excellent as a manipulative temptress and villainess.

 

For those who don’t know, Macbeth is set in 11^th century Scotland. Kurzel doesn’t have to do much more than aim his camera at the rugged hills and moors of the Isle of Skye to convey the wildness and primitive conditions of the day. His characters brave the wet, the mud, the blood, the battle scars, and the close-to-the-margins living that marked Scotland at the tail end of what is sometimes labeled the Dark Ages. It’s not a particularly accurate term, though it suggests the semi-tribal nature of authority. In theory, Duncan (David Thewlis) is King of the Scots, but he serves by nature of having defeated a pretender and only so long as he can keep ambitious thanes (land-grant nobles) at bay.

 

Macbeth is known for the role of its three witches accompanied by a small girl akin to Greek oracles who utter vague prophecies. Courtesy of Macbeth’s valor in a battle in which he loses his son, Duncan has just defeated a recent challenger and executes the old Thane of Cawdor for his treasonous alliance with Norsemen. Duncan bestows the title of Cawdor upon Macbeth. The latter grows troubled, though, by the witches’ proclamation that Macbeth will be king and his friend Banquo (Paddy Considine) the father of kings plural. The implication is that Macbeth’s line will not inherit the throne.

 

That and some steamy seduction are all that Lady Macbeth needs to manipulate her husband into killing Duncan and assuming the throne. Pro tip: If you’re going to kill a king, don’t make Macduff (Sean Harris), the powerful Thane of Fife suspect you, or allow the king’s eldest son Malcolm (Jack Raynor) to slip off to England to raise an army. Before you know it, you have to kill a lot of people, including Macduff’s entire family and, eventually, send assassins competent enough to dispatch your old friend Banquo, the Thane of Lochaber, but not swift enough to keep his son Fleance from fleeing.

 

Things like that can drive you crazy and there’s nothing like a mad king to bring out the long swords. Lady Macbeth tries to keep her husband focused but when she too starts to lose her royal marbles, you can bet the pewter that things won’t go well. Plus, those bloody witches insist on uttering non-specific prophecies that provide no solace whatsoever. There three twists toward the end before none of Lady Macbeth’s damned spots will come out. There’s never a stain stick when you need one.

 

Okay, I’m being cheeky. I really did like this production. It had the right balance of skilled theatre actors­–­Considine, Elizabeth Debicki (Lady Macduff), David Hayman (Lord Lennox)–and film/TV stars such as Cotillard, Fassbinder, Sean Harris, and Reynor to mix both dignity and thrills into the production. To be sure, it doesn’t have the skillful theatrics of the Laurence Olivier/Vivien Leigh production, but even those who’ve never seen Macbeth know the famed soliloquys, hence Fassbinder and Cotillard don’t have to match anyone else to be perfectly competent at delivering them. Kurzel’s use of Northumberland’s Bamburgh Castle adds another dose of sparseness to a play that, at heart, is about ambition, murder, and lust for power for rather thin gain. Did I mention it’s only 113 minutes?

 

Rob Weir

Oppenheimer Lives Up to the Hype

 

 

Oppenheimer (2023)

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Universal Pictures, 180 minutes, R (nudity, adult situations, language)

★★★★★

 

Critic Richard Roeper called Oppenheimer “one of the best movies of the century.” The hype is justified. Director Christopher Nolan has made a film of epic proportions, social significance, and one so expertly paced that three hours race by.

 

J. Robert “Oppie” Oppenheimer (1904-67), has been called “the father of the atomic bomb,” which is accurate and ironic for his role in assembling the greatest scientific minds of his generation, though they were often like unruly children in need of cajolement and discipline. Not to mention Oppie’s own misgivings when his horrible weapon became a pawn in the arms race, not an instrument of world peace.

 

Herding massive egos wasn’t easy. Oppenheimer had id issues of his own and was probably on the high-functioning end of the autism scale. Irish actor Cillian Murphy is letter-perfect in depicting him as overly attuned to sound and light, literal, insensitive to others, and convinced of the rectitude of his every decision. It didn’t help that he had skeletons in his closet, or that many who worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the A-Bomb fell outside the category of well-adjusted. Brigadier General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon), the military director of the project, found it difficult to switch between his command duties and political pressure; Rear Admiral Lewis Straus (Robert Downey, Jr.) was a schemer; and each of the scientists were brilliant but temperamental: Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh), David Hill (Rami Malek), Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett), Giovanni Lomantz (Josh Zuckerman), Izzy Rabi (David Kumholtz), Edward Teller (Bernie Safdie)… Hans Bethe, Enrico Fermi, Kurt Gödel, Werner Heisenberg, Roger Robb, Leo Szilard, and snake-in-the-grass Klaus Fuchs.

 

Oppenheimer was not a safe choice for the project. In addition to his personal quirks, he had red flag friends in several senses of the word. It was legal to join the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) in the 1930s and the Soviet Union (USSR) was allied with the U.S. during World War II, but those in high places distrusted Josef Stalin, the USSR, and American communists. Oppenheimer probably never joined the CPUSA, but his brother Frank did (Dylan Arnold), as did Oppie's friend Hakan Chevalier (Jefferson Hill), and Oppie’s longtime lover Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh). Oppie wasn’t good with people, but he did like sex. He continued dalliances with Tatlock and another scientist’s wife after he married Kitty (Emily Blunt), who was married three previous times, once to a CPUSA member.  

 

In other words, Oppenheimer’s life was as messy as the physics theories that tortured his mind. Complicated individuals plus an enormously complicated project equals a large cast. If your grasp of the history of physics is weak, you could get lost in trying to keep track of who’s who in Oppenheimer. My advice is don’t try. The film eventually boils down to the competing objectives of three people: Oppenheimer, Groves, and the oily Straus. All you need know is that everyone else in the film–including humorless intelligence officers–align themselves according to their own agendas, loyalties, and grudges. Know also that what was tolerated during the war changed dramatically when the threat of Nazism gave way to a postwar Red Scare. Oppenheimer was among those who went from hero to victim. 

 

Director Christopher Nolan signals the shift by subtly dividing Oppenheimer into two chapters: Fission and Fusion. The atomic bomb was a fission weapon that split atoms into two pieces. Metaphorically the race for an A-bomb meant winning or losing the war. Fusion bombs such as the more powerful hydrogen bomb “fuse” two atoms to create a third. Think Oppie (science), Groves (military), and Straus (political ambition).

 

Murphy and Downey Jr. have been nominated for Best Actor and Supporting Actor Oscars respectively. They are deserving choices. I’m less enthusiastic about Emily Blunt for Best Supporting Actress, but not because of her acting. Oppenheimer violates the Bechdel Rule with its aggressively male story line. Only Florence Pugh is less than an appendage to the men and would be a better choice to be honored.

 

Don’t cavalierly dismiss Oppenheimer as sexist. Blunt’s performance was in accordance with gender roles of the time period. Nolan’s film is masterful for capturing the social milieu and for its innovative use of 65 mm IMAX and large-format cameras. Oppie left a contestable legacy that Nolan incisively captures.

 

Rob Weir

 

P.S.  See if you recognize who plays President Truman!

A Man Escaped a Masterpiece

 

 

A Man Escaped or The Wind Blows Where It Listeth (1956)

Directed by Robert Bresson

Gaumont Film Company, 99 minutes, not-rated

★★★★★

 

If you’ve ever wondered why I watch a lot of classic movies, A Man Escaped is your answer. The late Roger Ebert declared it “like a lesson in the cinema” and the British magazine Sight and Sound listed in among the top 100 films of all time. That’s extraordinary praise for a film whose “action” occurs in a very short period of time.

 

Part of reputation of A Man Escaped rests upon the amazing use of light by director Robert Bresson. He has been called a “religious” director, though he labeled himself a “Christian atheist.” For what it’s worth, the film’s alternative title comes from the New Testament Gospel of John and one of the minor characters is a pastor. Bresson, who was once a photographer–not to be confused with Henri-Cartier Bresson–masterfully mixed darkness with slanted beams of light that illuminate in numerus meanings of that term. He is considered a pre-New Wave director, but A Man Escaped could be a film noir offering were it not a World War II thriller. Bresson’s camerawork dazzles. There are lots of verticals, horizontals, and acute angles, but Bresson seldom used wide angle lenses and preferred close shots. Moreover, Bresson often worked with non-trained actors. That allowed him to draw viewers into the cinematic experience rather than merely stargazing. All of these things come into play in A Man Escaped, which in many ways is a psychological drama enhanced by omniscient voiceovers. It is based on French Resistance fighter André Devigny and is in French with subtitles, but you need not worry: Dialogue is sparse as it takes place inside a Nazi-run prison where talking is verboten.

 

In the opening scene we do not yet know why Lt. Fontaine (François Leterrier) has been arrested by the Gestapo or why he isn’t handcuffed, but he makes his first escape attempt by trying to bolt the vehicle as it drives along a street in occupied Lyons. All that comes of that is a blood-covered entrance to prison on a stretcher. What unfolds next is a portrait of life on the inside: coded tapping on walls, furtive passing of notes, the sounds of machinegun executions, stolen conversation while washing or walking in circles for “exercise,” and the daily grind of carrying two buckets each morning: one to dump human waste and one for water. Unless an approved package comes, prisoners wear the same clothing every day–a blood-stained shirt in Fontaine’s case.

 

Prisoners are “interrogated” on a regular basis, though the files over which Nazi officials pore predetermines what their sentences will be, death in Fontaine’s case. What the Nazis have not discovered is that Fontaine is carefully planning his escape. In snippets of conversation and nighttime observations through peep holes, his fellow prisoners first think he’s deluded but come to think he might pull it off, especially after he fashions a stolen spoon that he sharpens to allow him to prise a few boards from his cell door. You’ll have to watch to see how he hides this from the guards. Ditto how he makes enough rope for the walls he would have to scale.

 

A complication arises. It’s 1943 and enough new prisoners arrive that it is necessary to double up in the small cells. His new roommate is 18-year-old François Jost. Rumors abound that some of the new arrivals, including Jost, are actually Nazi spies. Fontaine, though, has just two choices: convince Jost to escape with him or stay put and face a firing squad. Talk about your Hobbesian choices.

 

Do either of them survive? I’m not telling! I will say that seldom has such an interiorized and slow-paced film been so fraught with tension. Everything about A Man Escape exudes Bresson’s genius, from its emotion-delivering camera work to its stripped-to-the-bones script. Numerous critics noted the ways in which Bresson discarded everything he did not need. It reminded me of times in which I have an amazing meal with few ingredients. How are such things possible? Observe and learn.

 

Rob Weir

Biutiful, a Powerful Early Iñárritu Film

 

 

Biutiful (2010)

Directed by Alejandro Iñárritu

Universal Pictures, 147 minutes, R (nudity, drug use, language)

In Spanish, Chinese, and Wolof with English subtitles

★★★★★

 

If you’d like to see Javier Bardem as you seldom have, revisit the 2010 film Biutiful. It was directed by the now-famous Alejandro Iñárritu. It didn’t do well at the box office, though Bardem garnered the first-ever Best Actor nomination for a performance entirely in Spanish.

 

Bardem’s star power aside, Biutiful faltered because its surfaces were anything but beautiful. It is set in the squalid side of Barcelona and follows the travails of Uxbal (Bardem). Capsule reviews call Uxbal a criminal, which is technically true, but he’s mainly crushed by circumstance and bad luck. He is the caregiver for two children as he is separated from his bipolar wife Maramba (Marciel Álvarez), who is also an alcoholic, prostitute, and pathological liar. To retain his shabby apartment and keep his kids barely fed, Uxbal works numerous schemes and hustles. He does some drug deliveries, recruits cheap labor for the semi-legal construction firm of his brother Tito, organizes unlicensed street sales in tourist areas staffed by illegal Senegalese immigrants, and secures work for equally illegal Chinese workers. He pays bribes in order to operate, but if he falls behind, protection is lifted. Nothing ever seems to go right for him.

 

Uxbal’s children are often tended by Ige (Diaryatou Daff) when he is on the street. When he’s late with a payment, the police round up as many Senegalese as they can catch, including Ige’s husband, who is slated for deportation. Uxbal tries to assuage his guilt by allowing Ige and her baby to stay in his apartment, but he is wracked by remorse for failing to take care of those collaborating in his schemes. An episode with Chinese workers goes even more tragically awry, and his sorrow further saps his sense of self-worth. The volcanic and unstable Marambra hovers about with a passel of promises she cannot keep, which touches off potential trauma for the kids. To top it off, Uxbal has terminal prostate cancer. How can he extend his life to make sure the children are taken care of? He's so desperate that he is persuaded by his friend Bea to try alternative healing methods that fall into the category of nostrums.   

 

In other words, Biutiful is (mostly) an ironic title. Bardem is bedraggled, not a sexy hunk; Barcelona is a social underbelly, not a Mediterranean jewel; and the storyline is downbeat drama, not  fairy tale redemption. Yet there is a reason why Bardem garnered an Oscar nomination and won several acting prizes, including a BAFTA trophy.* He plays Uxbal as a man deeply haunted by his mistakes. The film’s namesake beauty is actually Uxbal’s inner desire and character. Yes he lives on the wrong side of the law, but each time we see him fall we understand that he is sucked into a greater pool of societal corruption. In essence, it defines his world to such a degree that Uxbal’s better angels desert him one by one.

 

Alejandro Iñárritu won a Best Director Oscar in 2014 for the quirky Birdman, a film I really liked. In many ways, though, its offbeat comedic touches were something of a departure. Much of his work has been like Biutiful, psychological slices of the darker side of the human condition. Think of films such as Amore perros, 21 Grams, Babel, and The Revenant. The first three made up his “Trilogy of Death,” and the last, which also won a directorial Oscar, was a fairly brutal 19^th century retelling of frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) set in the American West. If you know that film, you might recall that the ending features a revenant (ghost). Iñárritu paved the way for this in Biutiful. Pay attention to its prelude and final shots, which feature Uxbal’s father, an anti-Franco refugee.

 

Biutiful will leave you shaken, but there’s no escaping its raw power. What could be more tragic than a film about a man who would be good, but can’t be.

 

Rob Weir

 

*British Academy Film and Television Awards 

Jamie MacGillivray Thrilling (but overly long)

 

 

 

Jamie MacGillivray: The Renegades’ Journey (2022)

By John Sayles

Melville House, 696 pages.

★★★

 

If you have seen a John Sayles film, you know that he's a riveting storyteller. He's not as strong as a novelist, but he certainly brings raconteur sensibilities to the page. His

latest literary protagonist is Scottish. Jamie MacGillivray is a sprawling novel that begins in 1754, during Scotland’s disastrous Battle of Culloden.

 

The buildup to Culloden is complicated. In brief, England had become a Protestant nation under King VIII. In 1603, King James Stuart VI of Scotland became King James I of England and merged the two countries. Alas, future Stuart monarchs were inept, one was executed, and the openly Catholic James II was deposed in 1688. Many Catholic Highland Scots found a champion in “Bonnie Prince” Charles Stuart. His return from France in 1745 rallied them, but the dreams of a Stuart restoration died at Culloden where his forces were routed by English and pro-English Scottish troops led by the Duke of Cumberland.

 

Many history books move on at that point, but for Jamie MacGillivray, the combatants that survived, and those who got in the way, the page turned to new tragedies. English subjugation of Scotland was brutal. Untold numbers of Scots were thrown into filthy prisons to await “trials,” though guilt was often predetermined and the only question was: execution or deportation? Even that was sometimes settled by lottery.

 

Jamie was educated in the law in France, spoke several languages, and didn't actually bear arms but he was an unrepentant patriot, which was enough to warrant hanging. I won't say how he avoided it, but he is exiled. That was also the fate of Jenny Ferguson, a lovely lass seized after Culloden for the crime of being poor and suspicious. She was clamped in chains and thrown into a creaky ship whose voyage was marked by sickness and deprivation. Before Sayles’ long novel concludes, readers will visit numerous overseas colonies. Sayles has long been a champion of the underdog, thus Jamie and Jenny are strong personalities. Both, however, undergo adapt-or-perish challenges, which isn’t the same thing as triumphing.

 

The story of North American colonies is just as complicated as deciphering the Battle of Culloden. Scotland's “Auld Alliance” with France was played out in North America among the French, the English, exiles like Jamie, Indians, German immigrants, and African slaves. The novel bounces from Scotland and the Caribbean to Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, the contested Ohio Valley, and Lower Canada (now Quebec). Jamie’s deepening anti-English zealotry will eventually carry him to Quebec City’s Plains of Abraham. There, in 1759, General Wolfe’s troops subdued those of General Montcalm, thereby placing French Canada fell under English control. (It was an episode in what got labeled the French and Indian War.)

 

Believe me when I say this is a mere skeletal outline of Jamie MacGillivray. In many ways Jenny’s tale is even more remarkable, a series of unexpected rises and setbacks depending on the fate of her paramours of the moment. “Moment” is the right word at a time in which fortune and life were contingent upon forces beyond the control of those caught up in them.

 

There was much to like about Jamie MacGillivray. Sayles did his homework and makes history come alive in small details that seldom appear elsewhere. If his were a nonfiction book, we’d call it history from the bottom up. As a novel, though, Sayles populates it with all manner of colorful characters. The Scots run the gamut from pious to ribald, and from from plebeian poets to savage warriors. Even the warriors pale in comparison to Lenape leader Shingas the Terrible, a real person.

 

This is not the literary equivalent of an action movie. Sayles’ characters often speak in dialect and slip into and out of English, Gaelic, French, and native languages. Sayles  gives enough clues to get the gist of the dialog, but he seldom translates. I don't think he's showing off, but I do believe he got so immersed that he often demands too much from readers. Overall, Jamie MacGillivray could have benefitted from a stern developmental editor to impose clarity and concision.

 

That said, Jamie McGillivrary is worth wading through. Who wants a just-the-facts past? Without its detail and “story,” history is just a list. Like Jamie, I'd rather howl than yawn.

 

Rob Weir

 

Note: I bought this book when Sayles did a reading in South Hadley. Ask your local library to order it.

 

Bret Easton Ellis Needs to Move On

 

 

The Shards (2023)

By Bret Easton Ellis

Alfred A. Knopf, 594 pages.

★★

 

Once upon a time, Bret Easton Ellis was a zeitgeist writer and the hottest thing going. That was then; this is now. The problem with zeitgeist writers is that they seem self-indulgent when the zeitgeist changes and they don't.

 

The Shards is another semi-autobiographical work with Ellis at the center of things that sort of happened. It takes us back to 1981 when Ellis was a senior at Buckley, a private prep school for bright, privileged kids capable of doing stupid things. It also revolves around a serial killer that’s a mash up of Los Angeles monsters such as the Hillside Strangler (1979), William Bonin, the Freeway Killer (1980), and possibly West Side rapist/murderer Brandon Thalmer (1981-83) and/or the Manson Family.

 

The sanguinary aspects of the novel notwithstanding, The Shards is instantly unlikable because of a cast defined by obscene materialism and cluelessness. Kids at Buckley drive to school in their BMWs, Mercedes, Jaguars, and Porches. They think nothing of dressing in Gucci and Armand, lunching at eateries frequented by celebrities, and living in homes with butlers and cooks. Although all are underage, they drink at posh bars and hone their decadence by smoking clove cigarettes, popping Quaaludes, snorting cocaine, or tripping on LSD. Their pool parties are orgiastic affairs that cost more than a public school's monthly budget and feature hook-ups, vomiting (that the help will clean up) and Pablo Escobar quantities of coke. As for parents, many are separated, divorced, or out of the country, and the ones who are present are as bad as their offspring. Buckley is a real place, by the way, and I doubt it is flattered by a portrait of students as feral elites in training.

 

Bret is in a relationship with Debbie Schaeffer, though he's secretly having sex with Matt Kellner and other young men, and will eventually also fall prey to Debbie's hotshot Hollywood bigwig father Terry. Hey, it's a small price to pay for the possibility of a script. Bret’s friend Thom Wright is the main squeeze of the drop-dead gorgeous Susan Reynolds. Senior year takes place against a backdrop of disappearances and murders that involve bizarre preludes and mutilation of animals and humans. Sounds charming, doesn't it? Buckley life is further disrupted by a late transfer, Robert Mallory, who is hunky, though Bret finds him disturbing and untruthful. Bret is pretty sure he saw him with one of the women who was murdered, though Robert denies it.

 

Matt's murder sends Bret into paranoia territory. A beige van is seen in the area and rumor holds that it's associated with The Trawler, who may or may not be in tight with the cult-like Riders of the Afterlife. Bret comes to suspect that Robert might be or know The Trawler, and he knows that Robert is a liar. His Buckley clique simply don't believe him and defends Robert, especially when they learn something of his life before coming to Los Angeles. Susan even seems to be falling for him, which launches Thom into a jealous rage. That, by the way, might be the only actual teen-like reaction in the book.

 

All of this sets up a violent showdown of sorts. That “sort” would be of the histrionic, clichéd, and improbable variety. We read to find the solution to the mystery, but Ellis disappoints. Who is The Trawler? Robert? Bret? The Riders of the Afterlife? An unknown? Is Bret a hero, a pariah, or a monster? Is there any point to a mystery that doesn't tell us? I'm a fan of ambiguity, but if I read 594 pages I want more than Ellis offers.

 

The Shards is really about how Ellis embraced being gay. This is 2024, so it's not as if justification is necessary. The novel is quite graphic in describing both hetero and homosexual trysts, and even more so in detailing acts of violence. One is left with the sense that Ellis has written a hybrid pornographic/horror novel. Mostly, though, it seems that Ellis wants us to look at him. Sorry dude, your ship has sailed. Find other subjects. His insistence of putting himself front and center reminds me of how Woody Allen did the same in movies long after his neurotic sex-driven self was past its expiration date. The last thing we need is a recycled gay Woody Allen.

 

Rob Weir