The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford, 1915 ★★★★★

A Different Kind of Mystery Novel

Reading The Good Soldier is like being trapped in a room with one of the windiest, endlessly digressive bores you can imagine. And then the penny drops and you realize you are in the middle of a rather fun mystery.

Who is this odd narrator, John Dowell, and why is he so in the thrall of a strange English couple, the Ashburnhams? What is the deal with Dowell’s wife? And why did Ford Madox Ford give this novel the title The Good Soldier, given there is nothing in it relating to the Great War then raging across Europe?

Another mystery less difficult to explain is the hold this elliptical book has had over generations of readers, only gaining stature in later critical surveys. The Good Soldier is a probing, devastating, subtly but persistently comedic examination of duty, religion, and so much else that falls under the heading of what one is brought up to believe.

The Cutie – Donald E. Westlake, 1960 ★★½

Even Bad Guys Get the Blues

Straightforward mystery or crime fiction? I go back and forth with this one. The plot centers on a murder, a series of them as it unfolds, with mysterious phone calls and lengthy interrogations that double as exposition. Your standard mystery, basically.

But what it really is about is the life of a criminal, a hoodlum who thinks he’s in the driver’s seat until things start going wrong. As a character study, The Cutie is involving, full-on crime fiction. Yet most of the way through, it is tied to this formulaic mystery that leaves too many holes.

Our protagonist, Clay, works as a top operative for Manhattan gang boss Ed Ganolese. One night, at home with his latest girlfriend, the doorbell rings. It’s Billy-Billy Cantell, a junkie who claims the police are after him for murdering a woman he swears he doesn’t know.

Lincoln’s Lieutenants – Stephen W. Sears, 2017 ★★★★

Epic Battles Led by Petty Minds

They were eventual victors in the highest-stakes battles their country ever fought, enduring gut-wrenching reversals and hellish casualties all the way. They also included enough whiny, bratty, narcissistic headcases to fill the cast of an ‘80s teen comedy.

With such leaders was the Union saved.

The main takeaway from this book, the first by Civil War historian Stephen Sears to cover the entire war rather than a specific campaign, is just how brutal a spectacle it was not just during specific battles but all the way through. Yet the prima donna aspect hits home, too.

The Burning Mountain – Alfred Coppel, 1982 ★★

The Longest Day that Never Was

For those who balk at the morality of using A-bombs on Japan at the end of World War II, The Burning Mountain presents a hellish alternative: mass waves of suicide boats and planes, gas warfare, hordes of crying children wearing explosives, and much more.

Between 150,000 to 250,000 people died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Alfred Coppel imagined a death toll at least as high in the hypothetical event the atom bomb failed to work. The invasion of the Japanese Home Islands becomes a series of endless battles fought with bamboo sticks and flamethrowers; one side full of people eager to die, the other side worn out both by their own casualties and those they must inflict.

As a worst-case scenario, The Burning Mountain convinces. As a story, it mostly misses the mark with a handful of distinctive yet dull characters and an uninvolving, shapeless narrative.

All’s Well That Ends Well – William Shakespeare, 1598-1608? ★★★

Stand by Your Man

The verdict on this play over the years can be summed up in a single word: Meh.

Its existence went unnoticed from available evidence until 1623’s publication of the First Folio. Its origins are murky, at least as far as Shakespeare’s composition is concerned. Its performance history is rather slight for a comedy by the Bard; not even a movie adaptation.

Beyond that, it is a comedy that is not that funny and a romance which leaves a bad taste in many mouths. There are many fine things about it, particularly an engaging heroine and a villain who doubles as comic relief. It has an experimental quality about it one can either go with or not, trusting in the title not to be led astray.

Whether it delivers on that title isn’t clearly answered. Since that is the one thing people know about the play going in, let’s look into it.

The Dead Zone – Stephen King, 1979 ★★★★½

Wake Me When It's 1975

This was the novel that started it all for Stephen King. It wasn’t his first book, nor his first great book, but it was the first King book to top The New York Times bestseller list, a feat he has repeated over 30 times since. It’s the book where his reign of terror really began.

People say King is a sloppy writer, an indifferent craftsman, that he goes for big scares and brand-name placement in place of things like tone and character. Yes, sometimes I am one of those people. But The Dead Zone forces a reappraisal. It has a powerful human intimacy, a sense of what makes people tick, that makes for a very credible horror tale.

John Smith has a problem other people would kill for: An ability to see the future. Precognitive insight has been part of his life as long as he can remember; after a five-year coma it metastasizes to a point where he can discern the fates of other people by touching their hands.

Scoop – Evelyn Waugh, 1938 ★★

Fleet Street Follies

When it came to media bashing, Evelyn Waugh got his licks in early and often. Scoop is his acid take on the artful folly of foreign correspondents competing for the big story, not really caring if they have to invent it.

Based on his recent experience as a war correspondent covering the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia (then known as Abyssinia), Waugh presents Ishmaelia, an East African land of no cultural or material importance. Here is sent, completely by accident, one William Boot, nature correspondent for the Beast.

Can this gormless rustic bumpkin accustomed to writing about great-crested grebes possibly land the big story? To quote Mr. Salter, a toady to the Beast’s overbearing publisher Lord Copper, “Up to a point.”