Review: Second Street Station & Brooklyn on Fire

 

Second Street Station
by
Lawrence H. Levy

Brooklyn on Fire
by
Lawrence H. Levy
Title: Second Street Station
Author: Lawrence H. Levy
Published: 2015
ISBN-13: 9780553418927
Publisher: Broadway Books
Publisher’s Blurb
What’s Auntie Reading Now? picture
Title: Brooklyn on Fire
Author: Lawrence H. Levy
Published: 2016
ISBN-13: 9780553418941
Publisher: Broadway Books
Publisher’s Blurb
What’s Auntie Reading Now? picture

“She had a magnetic aura about her, fueled by her strong spirit and her unquenchable thirst for knowledge, that only those purely interested in the superficial could possibly miss. (p. 12)

 

I enjoyed the trilogy of Mary Handley books (Last Stop in Brooklyn being the third) as light afternoon reads, and recommend them to those looking for something slight to read.

Mary is meant to be a novelty, the tough and independent, outspoken women who dreams only of being a detective.  And she isnovel, but the constant bickering with her mother over getting married wears quickly.  Hopping into bed with men she’s romantically involved with may not be shocking to contemporary readers, but it doesn’t fit well with the character we are meant to admire.  The way Levy handles makes it seem forced.  As though this is how he proves to his readers Mary truly is a novelty in this era.

She can often be coarse, without needing to be.  And she almost always rubs men the wrong way, even those she winds up engaged to.  I often wonder what sort of research writers do to prepare themselves for writing protagonists of the opposite sex.  Mary Handley is Levy’s conception of what a smart, independent woman should be.  But he gives her traits which feel forced.

In Brooklyn on Fire, it’s her romance with George Vanderbilt which feels forced.  To me, all the romances in these books feel forced.  It’s like Levy wants her to be non-traditional, but not too non-traditional.  The text clunks a bit from one plot point to the next, often telegraphing what’s coming.

And yet, Mary is fun to follow.  As are the power mongers just waiting to get their comeuppance by the brains of this extraordinary woman.  The history is fun too.  Best not to take these books too seriously and just go along for the ride.

Review: Last Stop in Brooklyn

Last Stop in Brooklyn
by
Lawrence H. Levy

Title: Last Stop in Brooklyn
Author: Lawrence H. Levy
Published: 2017
ISBN-13: 9780451498441
Publisher: Broadway Books
Publisher’s Blurb
What’s Auntie Reading Now? picture

“Coney Island,” Lazlo remarked.  “It’s where intelligence and human decency go to die.”  (p30)

The third in the Mary Handley series.  By chapter 3 I knew I needed to get the first two, it’s that entertaining.  Fortunately, one doesn’t need to have read the first books to keep up with the plot of Last Stop in Brooklyn.

Mary Handley, Victorian era detective in Brooklyn, breaks all the stereotypical rules about how women should behave.  As her mother frequently reminds her, nice women get married and have a family.  They don’t traipse around Brooklyn as private detectives, solving crimes and speaking her mind to the Manhattan rich.

It starts simply as a case of possible adultery.  A friend of her mother’s son is concerned that his wife is cheating on him.  Using familial pressure, Elizabeth convinces Mary to take the case.  Which leads her to Coney Island, the last stop on the train in Brooklyn.

In her ten days of following Colleen Murphy, Mary notices that she too is being followed and confronts her tail.  Who, it turns out, is the brother of a man wrongly convicted of killing a prostitute in a similar fashion to Jack the Ripper.

Mary agrees to take on the case which leads her through New York police department corruption fed by money from the rich and powerful who run the stock market like Jay Gould, Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller.

Mary’s quest to prove Colleen’s infidelity (or not), and Ameer Ben Ali’s innocence takes her to the seedier part of Coney Island where racism, sexism, and violence live cheek by jowl, rarely noticed but ever-present.

My favorite kind of books are the kind which entwine history with fictive, but believable, history.  Levy does not disappoint in this regard.  However, I did find the plot wandered as though Levy were trying to get his bearings, or to fit too much in before then end.  And there were a few times when I was shocked out of the story by Mary’s profane language, and actions which didn’t seem to fit her character or the times.

Despite that, I’d gladly spend another day reading the further adventures of Mary Handley.

I received a free copy of Last Stop in Brooklyn as part of the Blogging for Books program.

New to the Stacks: Beloved and The Museum of Innocence

The Museum of Innocence
by
Orhan Pamuk
Beloved
by
Toni Morrison

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk ~ DNF – read why

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scott was absolutely shocked when I said I hadn’t read Beloved. He’s one of the few people I take seriously when they say I need to read something.

Review

Review: The Imagineers of War

Imagineers of War
by
Sharon Weinberger

Title: The Imagineers of War
Author: Sharon Weinberger
Published: 2017
ISBN-13: 9780385351799
Publisher: Knopf
Publisher’s Blurb
What’s Auntie Reading Now? picture
Signature page

[The space race] was always a race, but one in which the United States assumed it had a natural advantage.  The Soviet Union could not produce a decent automobile; how could it possibly hope to best the United States in rocket science?  (p. 31)

Since finishing Sharon Weinberger’s superbly researched book, The Imagineers of War, I find myself coming up short in how to describe it, much less review it.  When talking to friends about it, all I can say is, “Those people are crazy!”

ARPA was founded in 1958 with a mission of creating “the unimagined weapons of the future.”  Originally meant to beat the Soviets into space, ARPA had an unlimited budget, prestige in the Pentagon, and became a magnet for every wacky idea to come along.

The space race went to NASA, formed a year later, and weaponry became DARPA’s focus.  Nearly anyone with an idea could get through the doors to make a pitch.

One of my favorites is Ronald Reagan’s version of Star Wars, a network of missiles in space meant to stop incoming bombs.  Only, Reagan was never supposed to hear about it or take it seriously.  To say Star Wars was flawed in concept would be an understatement of massive proportions.  A lot of DARPA’s ideas made me wince and wonder how anyone thought that was a good idea.

Another interesting one was making a sort of mechanical elephant tall enough to carry supplies and personnel through the Vietnamese jungles.  It never got off the drawing boards.  That it got on the drawing boards leaves me in awe.

And then there are the little details that give me an unfair advantage on trivia nights.  That is, if trivia nights focused on weird historic stories.  In this case, it’s the story of how Agent Orange, the defoliant used to burn the jungles – and everything else – in Vietnam down.  The dangerous effects of this herbicide reverberate even now, over 50 years since its use was implemented.

The men at DARPA were so bent on stopping Communism in its tracks and making it easier for US troops to fight, they lost sight of the costs in terms of civilians in surrounding villages, and their food supplies.  A variety of chemical experiments were made all code-named Agent [some color].  They worked their way through the alphabet until Agent Orange proved to be the one that worked.

There were the experiments with psychic abilities and ways to weaponize them.  I couldn’t help thinking of the 2009 George Clooney movie, Men Who Stare at Goats

Outlandish ideas aside, this is the agency that gave us drones and the Internet.  But Imagineers of War is more than a recitation of outlandish ideas, it delves into the politics of various administrations, the Pentagon, NASA, the armed forces and this not so little mysterious agency doing things no one, not even DARPA, completely understood.

The men and, much later, women of DARPA have a vague mission.  To think up and develop weapons of the future to find the enemy and kill it.  It’s easy to understand the inter-agency contests that have arisen since the very beginning.

Weinberger puts this all into context.  The outlandish ideas, the political infighting, the successes and failures, set against the backdrop of impending disaster, imagined and otherwise.  She sets the context of the times with care.  From the Space Race to the Cold War to Vietnam and beyond, Sharon Weinberger tells us why DARPA was created and why even the most outlandish ideas were taken seriously.

Yes, these people were crazy.  But they’re the ones charged with visualizing how to keep us safe from a world that’s crazy.  They may be crackpots, but they’re our crackpots doing their best to imagine a crazy future.