From London to France

Maise Dobbs: Tenth Anniversary Edition by Jacqueline Winspear (Soho Crime, $14.95, 304 pages)

Maise felt a chill as the stillness of the cemetery seeped through her clothing and touched her skin. Yet the shiver was familiar to Maisie, who had felt the sensation even in warm weather when there was no cooling breeze. She had come to recognize this spark of energy passing across her skin as a warning.

The re-release of Maisie Dobbs proved a delightful introduction to Jacqueline Winspear’s British mystery series. Maisie is a top-notch spunky lady who has enjoyed the patronage of a wealthy benefactor, Lady Rowan Compton. Rather than a lucky happenstance, Maisie’s elevation from a lowly household servant to brilliant psychologist/detective is the result of her hard work and dedication to learning.

The time period is World War I, a favorite of many English mystery writers. What sets this one apart is the easy dialogue and charming characters. Maisie is going out on her own as an investigator after apprenticing with Maurice Blanche, a seasoned investigator. Her first case is a referral from Lady Compton’s attorney. A gentleman suspects his wife of being unfaithful and Maisie’s task is to determine whether the wife’s clandestine activities are a signal of marital trouble.

Maisie Dobbs is likeable without being too sweet or snarky. The book is a satisfying read. The trade paper book includes background on the author’s series and a list of reader study questions for book clubs.

Highly recommended.

Murder on the Ile Sordou: A Verlaque & Bonner Provencal Mystery by M. L. Longworth (Penguin, $15.00, 303 pages)

Verlaque said, “It’s a good idea, Clement. This is a beautiful place, from what I’ve seen so far. You’ll make back your investment.” Verlaque took another sip of wiskey; he knew all to well how risky the hotel and restaurant business was. And this one was on a remote island.

Now, there’s a change of scenery from London to France. The time is present day and the sleuths are two well-educated and highly placed legal professionals. Chief Magistrate Antoine Verlaque and his paramour law professor Marine Bonnet are embarking on their fourth adventure in Ms. Longworth’s series featuring the couple. Fans of Agatha Christie will notice her familiar style immediately. Longworth fashions her mystery using the gracious, unhurried approach and meticulous attention to detail that Christie readers expect.

Verlaque and Bonnet are on a summer vacation at a newly constructed/recreated 1960’s destination hotel situated on an island off the coast of Marseille. Their fellow vacationers include an old school chum of Verlaque and his wife, Ms. Bonnet’s best friend, a retired schoolteacher, a has-been French actor, his wife and stepson, and an American couple. Each of these characters, along with the hotel owners and staff are revealed with in-depth background information that the reader needs to use to solve the mystery.

The crime is committed well into the book, which highlights the nature of the tale – one that requires patience and careful attention to achieve a full enjoyment of the read. Ms. Longworth has a background that includes knowledge of French food and wine. She blends in her favorites in a way that feels charming rather than ostentatious. Although the Ile Sordou is fiction, the rest of the atmosphere is real.

Highly recommended.

Ruta Arellano

Review copies were received from the publishers.

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The Last Thing on My Mind

The Silent Wife: A Novel by A. S. A. Harrison (Penguin, $16.00, 326 pages)

Wow. This is likely to be the reaction of most readers after completing the novel, The Silent Wife, by the late author A. S. A. Harrison. The taut, prickly, engaging story centers on counselor Jodi and building contractor Todd, involved in a common law marriage for over twenty years. Jodi is finally content, living in a beautiful apartment overlooking Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive. Then she learns that Todd is about to leave her to marry his best friend’s daughter.

The ever-calm Jodi finds that her life is quickly unraveling, especially after Todd’s attorney serves her with an eviction notice. Eventually she realizes that she must do something, and elects to pursue a course of action that may leave some blood on her hands.

The fault with the telling is that some readers will — as this one did — figure out the logical conclusion before the final pages. Still, this is a very cleverly written story that would shine on the silver screen. (Hollywood loves this stuff.) Coming soon to a theater near you?

Harrison was a major new talent. Had she lived, she no doubt would have produced a series of highly successful novels.

Wow.

Highly recommended.

Joseph Arellano

A review copy was provided by the publisher. “I gobbled it down in one sitting.” Anne Lamott

Coming Up Next…

A review of The Silent Wife: A Novel by A. S. A. Harrison.

Publishers, Weakly

What the Penguin/Random House Merger Really Means by Michael Levin

When I saw the word “synergies” applied to the proposed merger of publishing giants Penguin and Random House, I laughed out loud.   “Synergies” is Wall Street-speak for “Let’s merge two failing companies, fire half the employees, run the resulting business more cheaply, suck out all the money we can as quickly as we can, and then leave the wounded, gasping beast that is the resulting company to die a miserable, public death.”

Which is exactly why “synergies” best describes the merger of two of the biggest names in the publishing industry, which is wringing its hands over the immediate consequences of this deal, which really represents one more death rattle of the once thriving book publishing trade.

Here’s what happens now:  lots of editorial, marketing, and other jobs will vanish.   Agents will have fewer places to sell books.   Fewer books will be published.   Authors will get even less money (if that’s possible, since some publishers are paying zero advances whenever they can get away with it).   And the pontificators will pontificate on what it all means to society (not much, since most of society has already given up on reading books).

Here’s what happens next:  the remaining major publishers will find it harder to compete, because the resulting publisher (Penguin House?) will be able to produce books more cheaply.   So they’ll fire people, merge, fire more people, and eventually roll over and die.

All because publishers never figured out how to deal with the Internet and how to sell books in a wired world.   All because publishers considered themselves “special” and thought they could get away with selling products they didn’t market.   All because publishers are English majors wearing Daddy’s work clothes and pretending to be business people, running their businesses on whim and gut feeling instead of figuring out what people want and giving it to them, the way smart businesses work.

I have no pity for the fallen publishers.   In Wall Street terms, there isn’t enough lipstick in the world to make these pigs kissable.   They had the responsibility to shape society by providing it with books worth reading, to create a cultural legacy for our generation and generations to come.   And instead, what did they give us?

Ann Coulter, Navy SEALs, and Fifty Shades of Gray.

The publishers will blame everyone in sight for their predicament, but this is a self-inflicted wound; what the Brits would call an “own goal.”

You can’t run a successful business passively waiting for people (in this case, literary agents) to tell you what you should produce.   You can’t run a successful business by throwing 10,000 strands of spaghetti (or 10,000 books a year, in Random House’s case) against the wall of public opinion and seeing what sticks.   You can’t run a successful business selling information in the form of printed books by putting them on trucks to distant cities, hoping that booksellers (anyone who can fog a mirror, run a cash register and repeat the phrase, “We don’t have it but we could order it for you.”) will actively sell your stuff to people.

Bottom line:  You can’t run a successful business when you are essentially competing with yourself.   If Barnes & Noble doesn’t sell a Simon & Schuster book within three weeks, it sends the book back to Simon & Schuster, at Simon & Schuster’s expense, only to have that same space on the shelf filled with…  wait for it…  a different Simon & Schuster book.   That’s not marketing.   That’s masochism.

A New York editor who worked at Penguin once told me that his boss called all the employees into a meeting and said, “If there’s any merger talk, you’ll hear about it from me and not from The New York Times.”   A few days later, he was reading The New York Times on the subway on the way to work, and read that Penguin was merging with another publisher.   Here we go again.

If it weren’t for Fifty Shades of Gray, Random House (and Barnes & Noble, for that matter) would have been on life support.   There would have been nothing left to merge.   Penguin’s owner, Pearson LLC, is the smartest guy in the room, dumping off Penguin’s trade publishing on Bertelsmann, a German conglomerate which somehow still thinks it can make money selling books.   And now a few thousand more publishing employees are going to leave the world of books and hit the bricks.

So let the hand wringing begin.   The collapse of a once proud industry has taken a giant step backward.   And there ain’t no synergies in that.

Michael Levin is a New York Times bestselling author and Shark Tank survivor.   He runs the Business Ghost website, and is a nationally acknowledged expert on the future of book publishing.

Note:  This opinion piece represents the views of its author.   It does not represent the opinions or views of Joseph’s Reviews, and is presented in the spirit of fostering public discussion on key, important issues.

A Must to Avoid

The Weekend That Changed Wall Street: An Eyewitness Account by Maria Bartiromo with Catherine Whitney (Portfolio; $26.95; 232 pages)

There are a number of very good books dealing with the financial crisis that struck Wall Street and this country beginning in September of 2008.   This is not one of them.   In fact, like the title of the song by Herman’s Hermits, this one’s A Must to Avoid.

Firstly, it’s not really an eyewitness account.   Unlike the accounts in which the writer was an earlier participant in the events, Bartiromo does not claim to have been present in the financial firm board rooms as things melted down.   Instead, she appears to rely on the other accounts previously written adding only a few quotes from on-air interviews she conducted between 2008 and 2010.

Secondly, there are only 208 actual pages of content here, which is awfully skimpy for a $27.00 hardbound release.   Although Bartiromo was not present at the center of the financial action, she was apparently present at a number of grand parties involving Wall Street wizards who could spend money like there was no tomorrow (but tomorrow wound up coming early).   Which brings us to the key problem with this flimsy account…  When it comes to choosing between the folks on Main Street – good, hardworking Americans and small businessmen and women – and the princes on Wall Street, Bartiromo makes clear that she’s on the side of the multi-millionaires and billionaires.

Early on, Bartiromo explains to the reader that she married into a very wealthy New York City family, with an apartment on Park Avenue, and this sets the stage for her very biased view in this tale.   She claims that the U. S. media developed a “simplistic narrative of working class heroes versus fat-cat villains.”   Only this wasn’t a simplistic narrative, it was reality.   She herself describes men like Stan O’Neal at Merrill Lynch who got paid $150 million for leaving the firm “even though he ruined the company.”   (It turns out that O’Neal was underpaid compared to other Wall Street executives who received far more hundreds of millions once they were sacked.)

Surprisingly and rather shockingly, Bartiromo goes further with this craziness asking us to feel sorry for one Lehman Brothers executive who made $14 million in one year, then was reduced to a measly $1 million in take home pay the next year.   This, Miss Maria finds to be horrible and virtually incomprehensible.   No  matter that the gentleman in question was hardly forced to go on food stamps or eat in food kitchens.   No, the rich must live in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed, according to this account.

Just to show that I’m not taking things out of context, here are the actual words she uses to draw our tearful sympathy:

“Many (Wall Street executives) were experiencing tremendous anger and grief.   In some cases, it was the wives who were most deeply affected.   They went from being at the top of the social register, with galas and benefits filling their calendars, to being on the outside, embarrassed to show their faces.   One insider observed to me, ‘When the wealthy falter, there is deep shame on a level that the average person cannot grasp.   In that world, you’re either in or you’re not.   It’s not the same as losing a job in a middle class neighborhood, where your friends and neighbors are likely to rally around you.   When you lose your job at the top, they cut you dead.’ “

Excuse me, but what nonsense.   This is offensive to “average” hardworking American citizens, like those that buy and read most of the books in this nation.   Who is Maria Bartiromo writing for – Mrs. and Mrs. Donald Trump?

Although Bartiromo’s writing assistant, Catherine Whitney, has her name listed on the book’s cover, this does not mean the book is well-edited.   Instead, the book is littered with odd grammar.   For example, “Merrill seemed more like a winner than a loser.   We had to look at the entities that may still fall in the coming weeks and months…”   Perhaps they meant to write that they had to look at the entities that might fall in the coming weeks and months.

Clearly, this one is not recommended but there are other alternatives to consider.   For an exciting “fly on the wall” telling, try Street Fighters: The Last 72 Hours of Bear Stearns, the Toughest Firm on Wall Street by Kate Kelly.   Then there’s the recommended A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers by Lawrence G. McDonald with Patrick Robinson.   And if you don’t mind an overly long, rambling and maddeningly detailed version of these events there’s On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System by Henry W. (Hank) Paulson, Jr.   Any one of these accounts is one hundred times better – and far less patronizing – than Bartiromo’s slight “eyewitness account”.

Joseph Arellano

A review copy was received from the publisher.