Calypso – Ed McBain, 1979 ★½

Who Feels Like Dancing?

Has this ever happened to you? You re-read a book you remember really disliking, only this time you can’t recall what it was that put you off. What you are reading flows really well and keeps you engaged. Was it you? A bad mood, say, or an uncomfortable chair?

This happened to me with Calypso, a novel I remember being a nadir of my previous jaunt through the 87^th Precinct. But blow me down; what a strong start! It has what you look for in a police procedural: a compelling murder victim, a sense of authentic urgency and sundry aspects of police process brought in with smooth clarity.

Then with no warning it takes a hard left into Silence Of The Lambs territory, with a crazy subplot that more or less renders all prior conventional police work meaningless. This isn’t the worst 87^th Precinct novel; it does pull one in. But it may just be the most disjointed.

Suspiria de Profundis – Thomas De Quincey, 1845 ★

A Second Helping of Opium

Over a century before Timothy Leary told a generation of young people to “turn on, tune in, drop out,” a conservative Anglican beat him to the punch, sparking a tide of self-idealization, impiety and riotous psychedelic expression that became known as “addiction literature.”

Would Thomas De Quincey have recognized himself as its instigator?

The book that made it happen was his 1821 Confessions Of An English Opium-Eater, which made De Quincey an overnight sensation. But as if sensing his title as literature’s reigning hophead might be in jeopardy, he later produced a sequel nearly as famous: Suspiria de Profundis.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – Douglas Adams, 1979 ★★★★

The Lighter Side of Global Annihilation

Never underestimate the creative resourcefulness of a human being utterly out of options.

Douglas Adams was a struggling writer low on cash. One evening far from home, drunk in a field after a day of hitchhiking, he found himself looking up at the twinkling sky, thinking deeply. What would it be like if there was a guidebook for people wandering across the stars?

Several years later, that idea became a BBC Radio series, and eventually a five-volume science-fiction “trilogy.” In it, we meet one Arthur Dent, adrift in an uncaring cosmos, bouncing from absurdity to absurdity after everything he knew and loved has been utterly destroyed.

Somehow Adams found the funny in that, and with this novel, launched an enduring comedy franchise that lives on after his death.

Troilus And Cressida – William Shakespeare, c. 1601-1602 ★½

Not Giving a Fig

This is a play which leaves many questions. Is it a comedy, a tragedy, or a mash-up? Is it pro-Trojan, pro-Greek, or anti-both? Are we supposed to hate or pity the main female character? What about her beau? And why does it end with everything still in the air?

For me, it may turn on a question bleaker still: Did Shakespeare not care enough to work this into something sharper?

Troilus And Cressida is magnificent in its language, its diversity of tones and contrasts, its philosophical arguments weave and wend with Hamlet-level depth. As a play, though, it falls way short. I find it a tedious read, lacking focus as it cribs from Homer and Chaucer.

The Devil’s Alternative – Frederick Forsyth, 1979 ★★★½

Doomsday on the North Atlantic

While the world keeps turning on the same axis, old problems persist. Back in 1979, subjects of popular dread included Russo-Ukrainian conflict, high seas piracy and a world on the brink of environmental catastrophe.

They even wrote best-selling thrillers about them.

After a five-year break, spy fiction master Frederick Forsyth was back with a twist. This time he was Tom Clancy, even though it was the 1970s and no one had heard of Clancy yet. The Devil’s Alternative is a Cold War cliffhanger set on a global scale with a variety of players conducting their own intrigues that feed into the overall plot.