Elbow Room – James Alan McPherson, 1979 ★★★★

A Masterclass in Miniature

When short stories work, it’s not in the way of compressed novels. They follow a different logic, setting in motion more open-ended explorations of the mind. Often, what results is not a concrete conclusion so much as a broader reconsideration of a specific feeling or idea.

At least that is the case in this collection of short stories by James Alan McPherson. A man is embarrassed by the rough life of his cousin. A barber struggles to adjust to a changing marketplace. A naïve woman displays unexpected cunning to beat a drunken-driving charge.

McPherson’s stories center around problems of social isolation. Sometimes they are told in ways that suggest an unreliable narrator at work. Often, there is an aspect in dealings with others that smacks of outright rudeness. A woman in a doctor’s office is accosted by a stranger: “As a concerned person, and as your brother, I ask you, without meaning to offend, how did you get that scar on the side of your face?”

Blue Blood – Edward Conlon, 2004 ★★★★

To Serve and Protect

A life in the New York Police Department is a kaleidoscope of the crazy, the deadly, and the profound. That’s even more true when you take on a generational view of the experience. Edward Conlon details his own time as well as those he has known among New York’s Finest.

Conlon came to police work seeing it as a unique type of employment, a vocation more than a job. People he grew up knowing, on both sides of his large Irish family, inspired him to think big:

I didn’t want to hear the story as much as I wanted to tell it, and I didn’t want to tell the story as much as I wanted to live it.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – Ian Fleming, 1963 ★★★★

The Quality of Being Human

Is James Bond a good spy? Is he at best competent, and often quite inept? Does a dumber 007 make for a better reading experience?

These questions kept popping into my head as I read again this brilliant, poignant but somewhat perplexing novel, the one in which Bond goes head-to-head with the greatest villain of the series and becomes the willing prisoner of a woman he loves.

For action and suspense, it is hard to beat On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, though it works very well as an emotionally driven character piece, too. Ian Fleming sets up one of his most brilliant plots, executed with violence and cunning. Yet when it is over, the resolution of Ernst Blofeld’s latest fiendish scheme is not what you are left thinking about.