Skip to main content

Open & Shut 100/250

I continue to enjoy this very much. Smart Alec lawyer main character, so sometimes he irritates the reader as well as the characters whom he meets, but not all that much.  Plot is intriguing.  His deceased father leaves him $22m.  It all comes from a single check written 30 years earlier for 2m. Dad never touched the money, never changed the investment. Two bigwigs in town (one is mall developer) are involved, and it sure likes like a shady deal.

Andy is also appealing the conviction of Willie, a convicted murderer whose defense is that he was drunk, didn't know how the girl was killed, but could never kill a woman.  Willie is attacked in prison--connected to the questions about the 22m.  Plots will somehow intertwine through the murder victim, a newspaper reporter who was on to something, no doubt about dead dad and his friends.

Spoiler coming Sub sub plot has to do with Cal, newspaper vendor, whom Andy Carpenter buys a paper from every day.  Cal tells Andy that his 16 year old daughter has been arrested for prostitution and asks Andy to take her case.  Big hearted Andy does.  In court, the 16 year old -- a tough cookie -- informs the judge that Andy is her pimp.  Uproar, investigation. Andy has been set up for humiliation by ????   Dad's former friends, presumably.

Sub sub sub plot. Andy's wife has moved back in, so he cuts off his affair with his investigator.  Reader is rooting for investigator, but she is suitably cool to Andy now that he has jilted her.  Andy's dog makes irregular appearances--I'm guessing the dog will help solve the case.

Very well written and plotted. Moves quickly, but not too quickly.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Puppy, Story by George Saunders

PUPPY  Dysfunctional family has puppy that they need to get rid of.  Mom places ad; family is coming over. Description of family.   Mom:  husband changed from long-haired attractive to stooped old man. Husband: talks constantly of living on a farm and doing what needs to be done, though he never lived on a farm.   Conversations together:   Sell and move to Arizona, get hooked on phonics for kids, buying a car wash. . . wonderful randomness. Straight-laced suburbanite comes to look at puppy.  Seems like she will buy it, even though she is repelled by house.  (Dog turds on carpet, filthy.) She is proud of how accepting she is until she looks out window and sees white trash's son tied by harness to a tree.  Reader knows he is a menace to himself, darting across I-90, for example.  Suburban mother beats hasty retreat, leaving dog to be (probably) drowned by dad who does what has to be done.   Suburbanite remembers her own pathetic ch...

Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler

Bryant & May--Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery, Book 1 Lots that I liked.  Crime novel that is also historical fiction.  Fowler gives insight into London during the blitz.  Danger from street cars, some looting during blackout, stiff upper lip British still going to theaters, etc.  Fowler also takes reader backstage into the workings of a theater.  I learned a lot about the physical complexity of a major theater--production is a tremendous production.  I liked both the main characters.  Bryant, the eccentric loner who thinks out of the box. May, the more traditional "bright" guy, who is able to appreciate Bryant and help by keeping him in the real world, a little. Plot revolves around murders committed while cast rehearses and then performs Offenbach's scandalous version of Orpheus and Eurydice.  The murders are on the gruesome-detail side given the general British coolness of the rest of the text.  Spoiler coming.  The denouement wa...

Napoleon, Ch 18 Blockades

"The first qualification of a soldier is fortitude. . . . Courage is only the second." Conquers cities of present day Germany. Spandau, Berlin, etc. Shortage of men in France . . . Russians next, but his mind is on Britain. He wants to use trade sanctions to force Britain to its knees, but this doesn't work either. French (and others in empire) need to trade with Brits. Smuggling results.  Also, unintended consequences crop up. Example is shoes:  Napoleon requires 200,000 pairs of shoes from Hamburg.  Hamburg can't supply these to Napoleon, so they buy what they can't produce from Brits. So much for the sanctions!  British are supplying uniforms and shoes for Napoleon, and making $$$. . . . Continues after the Russians in December 1806. . . has to withdraw, 40% of his army out of commission.  Horrible battle with Russians, thousands killed. Napoleon in tears . . . dire moment, Napoleon orders full out cavalry attack . . . Eylau a massacre without any result . ...