Robert Crais' The Watchman: A Book Review

Robert Crais and I met through his early novels in November of 2009. I was trying a five week case before two of the worst judges in the Circuit Court of Cook County (names withheld until they get indicted). I had about twenty minutes each morning over my cup of coffee to do some reading. Two Crais novels were my morning diet of crime fiction. The high quality of Crais' writing and his exotic imagination was a huge contrast with the mediocrity of justice that my clients and my trial partners were suffering through.

Instantly, I became a big fan of Crais and have now read five of his novels, the most recent being, The Watchman. After hitting four home runs with the first four, Crais' Watchman was a barely a double.

I was used to being led through a fine crime tale by Elvis Cole, a funny, yoga practicing, gourmet cooking sleuth. Cole heads a two person L.A. detective firm bearing his name. He has such a great sense of humor---even during some perilous times----that it is perhaps too fanciful to believe. I have chosen to believe it anyway, because I always pick hilarity over grief. Always have and always will.

Cole does some other endearing things. He falls in love, not often, but when the right woman shows up; enjoys mornings, is loyal to his friends, is very very tough and shoots well.

Elvis' partner in the firm is Joe Pike. Crais tells us early in this novel that a pike is a "long-bodied, predatory fish known for its speed and agression." (It also happens to be the nickname for my national fraternity, Pi Kappa Alpha, but there is no reason to go there).

Joe Pike is a taciturn ex-Marine known for his warning: "I am coming in." That usually means that Pike is leaving the management of his two gun stores to come to Cole's aid. And that one or more criminals are about to be gunned down with amazing precision.

So, I sat down with The Watchman expecting to be entertained by Elvin Cole and got Joe Pike instead. Crais gave plenty of warning. The cover of the novel describes it as "a Joe Pike novel." I chose to ignore the warning because Cole was such a charming character.

The plot of the story centers around a Paris Hilton type, Larkin Barkley, who happens to be on the hit list of some mobsters from Colombia, Ecquador and perhaps the Middle East. In the course of guarding Larkin from a sixth assassination attempt, Crais tells us why Pike is a man of few words and no longer a L.A. cop. Grim stories both.

The novel picks up some speed and importantly humor in the middle, when---you guessed it---Elvis Cole comes on to help his buddy Pike. More drama, another lying lawyer giving the profession a bad name, plenty of gunshots. Anymore, I cannot say without ruining the fine ending.

Four out of five novels by Crais have been so well done. That is an 800 batting average. That winning percentage can only be maintained if Cole leads the way.

Voltaire

Ending and Starting the Years With Loren Estleman

I like to end the year in style and start the next one with a statement about distance running and hope and ambition.

Starting the serene day after Christmas, when I am content knowing that I have loved my family well, I make every effort to have a hell of a lot of fun. I start by getting up as early as I can----usually in the four to four-thirty morning hour and heading downstairs to get lost in the world of crime fiction.

Jump starting my heart before my morning run with a cup of hot coffee, I nest in the stuffed chair next to the Christmas tree. Sitting next to this brightly lit ornamental history of the family, I greet a Loren Estleman novel to enter the world of crime.

Loren Estleman has taken me into a trance like few other writers have. In a few pages I find myself in Detroit two generations ago-- as mobsters are making their fortunes running rum and other spirits across frozen Lake Superior from Canada. What fun. What a different world from the strait-laced, buttoned down world of law that I live in year after year.

Estleman, writes with an affection for Detroit from its zenith to its decline and despair. He is also an expert at guns. His descriptions reveal one who has studied them through and through and used them for recreation(I hope).

I admire Estelman's writing for its humor and its subtle moral lessons. An important quality in Estleman's writing is his skill in telling an absorbing story in about two hundred seventy-five pages. Time and time again over the ten or more Estleman novels I have enjoyed, Loren can finish a fine tale in under three hundred pages. Good for him and the rest of us with limited time for novels.

For me Christmas has always been about a pool of brand new books to swim in. My Godfather, Burt Mitchell, a high school history teacher, used to bring me two or three new history books each Christmas---no doubt launching me further into the humanities. My own family had started me down this fascinating road years before. I am deeply grateful to my Greek parents for that.

My end of the year is a chance to stretch out, find stillness and serenity, say thanks and rest the body from the marathons I run weekly. Christmas vacation is about the "Pause" that Jack Shea has spoken about in his Advent reflections at Old St. Patrick's Church. It is a chance to reflect on my very happy life.

After six or seven mornings of this wonderful regimen, we come to New Year's eve. For years the most important part of the turning of the year is the New Year's day long morning run. One such run---perhaps 2007---took place right into a Norman Rockwell type showfall of six or seven inches. I start these New Year's Day runs about seven in the morning. Chicago belongs to me and me alone. My footprints are the first in the snow. The beauty of a fresh snowfall in the wooded Irving Park neighborhood is breathtaking. And the run is usually blessed with some brilliant sunshine-----plenty of hope for the year ahead.

One run went almost seventeen miles---probably in 1999, when I trained for two marathons. It started in a light snowfall and ended almost three hours later in four inches of snow.

Life is grand. Aways has been and always will be.

Voltaire

BASKET CASE by Carl Hiassen: A BOOK REVIEW

This is a funny pot-boiler that I recommend. Though it is not as good as some of this fine novelist's other books, you may enjoy it. I got the book as a gift and enjoyed it while I ran some morning miles.

Hiaasen's hero, Jack Tagger, is a charming investigative journalist with too big a mouth. I can relate to him. I was born with the same defect. Tagger was knocked off his hard-won perch as a newpaper's chief investigative reporter after his public denunciation of his boss, Race Maggot III, the Rupert Murdoch type owner of a Florida daily paper.

Tagger has been exiled to the obit column for the past two years. Most recently he has been bothered by his young editor, Emma, an attractive, smart woman twenty years his junior. This Generation Xer and Tagger have been fighting.

When Tagger's research into the untimely death of a famous singer leads him right into the middle of a murder investigation involving the dead singer's wife and many semi-illiterates poulating the rock music production world (some would say the underworld), Tagger and Emma find their relationship changing.

Blind ambition and greed ruined Macbeth, Nixon, untold others and surely inspired Hiassen's murderer in this tale.

Voltaire

College Football: A Civilizing Influence

It has been a distinct pleasure to meet so many Americans since I passed on some two hundred odd years now. This rather young country seems to have such an anti-intellectual and puritanical bent to it. Witness the election of such dolts as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush and his father.

It seems to me that America often jolts forward toward a more humane society and then is pulled backwards just as often by the reactionaries that fool many American voters into giving them the reins of power. Such a shame. America in my view has great unrealized potential.

Forgive my digression into politics and philosophy. It comes to me as easy as breathing. And I believe Mr. Ghandhi was telling me the other day that all our actions are political in some sense. He is quite right.

One very curious thing I have noticed about my American friends of the 20th century is their obsession with college football. Every Saturday I wander around my favorite haunts looking for my American friends--Mike Royko, Joseph Campbell and Brenda Ueland---only to find them obssessed with young men in helmets runnning in packs called the Buckeyes, Fighting Illini, Golden Bears, Thundering Herd and the Horned Frogs.

Try as I might to engage my dear American friends in just a few minutes of rich intellectual discourse on Saturdays, I always fail.

Despairing in my loneliness last Saturday I unloaded on Mike Royko, one of the funniest Americans, my disappointment in the Americans' obsession with college football. He told me it straight: "Voltaire, get over it. If we didn't have college football and pro football on weekends, we would be wreaking a lot more havoc on the world. Not a good thing for the world."

Mike always makes a lot of sense I have found. And even better he makes me laugh.

Voltaire

LOVING

I don't remember the name of the place, but what happened there was so loving that it will never be forgotten. My son, Matt, deserves all the credit.

I walked upstairs to the second floor of this popular Chicago bar, a place on Sheffield between Belmont and Addison. Matt and his gorgeous fiancee, Stacey, were experts at knowing all the trendy places in town. Still are.

I was headed for a party of friends to celebrate the upcoming marriage of Matt and Stacey. Arriving when the party began, as my wonderful Greek Mother had raised me to do, I soon realized that I was the only parent at the party. I wondered a bit whether I would be lonely in the hours ahead.

Matt's Mother, a truly outstanding woman, had died almost eight years before. She launched Matt on his successful journey through life with the greatest energy and dedication.

The room I entered was big, clean and well-lit with a bar in the back half of the room. Matt and Stacey, the couple with "movie star looks" as my dear friend Pam has said, greeted me with warm hugs.

Soon the room filled with 75 friends, who I knew immediately to be among the most talented and attractive youth of Chicago. I knew quite a few of these people through Matt's days at St. Ignatius, hockey career and fraternity life at Illinois. They were fun. They worked hard, played hard and were very dedicated to each other as friends. I always admired this group---they had a great balance in their lives---and they took very good care of one another in honoring each other at important times in each others' lives.

For the entire time that I was at the party my son treated me with the greatest kindness and hospitality you could imagine. He spent all that time with me visiting with the people I knew and helping me meet all the others. I was an honored guest. I was deeply touched and think of that evening often as a great expression of love and kindness.

As if the evening was not thrilling enough, toward the end of my stay, I was visiting with Matt's friend, Joe Walsh (now a successful young physician). Joe was always a young man with a fine affection for family--both his own and those of his friends. As we were telling stories about Matt, he told me that my son "was universally loved." I went directly into orbiting the moon upon hearing that.

Matt is loved because he knows how to love me and others so well. He is a gift to all of us.

Voltaire

DICK KELLY, A DEAR FRIEND

I had a spectacular day yesterday, that started with my eight mile meditation. That means I ran eight miles along Chicago's lakefront up from Monroe harbor into Lincoln Park and back again. I ran with a dear friend who has trained for many marathons with me since 2004.

The weather for the run was mild and sunny. The views of Lake Michigan were captivating and delicious.

The eight miler was over in a flash, in part due to conditioning and in large part due to fine conversation.

We finished the run with a trip to the marathoner's coffee shop, the Corner Bakery at Monroe and Wabash. I had a vision of the post-run treat: a tangy lemon bar (hopefully a fresh one) and some fresh steaming coffee. It was heavenly. I can still taste the tart lemon a day later.

Then home to clean up and chores.

Then off to Oak Park to visit one of my dearest friends, Dick Kelly, who is very very ill. Dick is bed-ridden with more ailments than I can count.

We visited for a couple of hours as if nothing was different. I didn't want them to be different. I never want any of my friends to leave my company or their loved ones.

Dick and I had met in Democratic politics in 1973 in that amazing eighteen month period in which I met my wife to be and many of my dearest friends for the next thirty-five years.

Dick has lived a life of great energy and a passion for social justice. He and my wife Beth were cut from the same mold, Catholics who cared all about love and forgiveness, the building of community and alleviating suffering and nothing about the reactionary leadership of their Church.

As I told my running buddy the story of Dick's life as a civil rights' activist in the South and in Chicago in the 60's and 70's, an activist in anti-war, union and other progressive causes, an athlete with a sweet fade away jumper and a good husband and family man, I was telling the story of someone I admired. I admire generous people who live authentic lives. Dick is one of those people. Living generously for others came as naturally as breathing for him.

I also admire Dick because he always had a boyish side to him---a fun-loving openness, a wonderful sense of humor and a zest for the richness of life.

Dick has hundreds of friends. I am happy to have been one of them.


Voltaire

ROYKO AND LIEBLING AT THE NEWSEUM

Joe Liebling and I have been hanging around since I met him last week at the coffee house. I have been having a lovely time of it as he has told me about his career in journalism in America. He had a thrilling forty year career. Many writers do.



Joe spent a fair amount of time in my beloved France during the dark days of World War II. He was a war correspondent who wrote his dispatches for The New Yorker. In more peaceful days after the War ended, Joe wrote columns about the joy of French cooking. Gargantuan French meals were the mainstay for Joe at that time, undoubtedly leading to the gout and hastening his death at a mere 62 years of age.



I was walking by the Greek coffee house last Friday with Joe when we came upon a tall grumpy man swearing as he was reading some Chicago newspapers. Joe knew him and introduced me to Mike Royko.



Mike had a firm handshake, which I was soon to learn had developed from a lifetime of playing Chicago softball and thousands of rounds of golf.



I, the curious one, asked Mike what was troubling him so. He said, "The goddamn Chicago newspapers are in the toilet. I knew this was going to happen. It started with Murdoch, continued with Conrad Black. Awful. I am sick. I need a drink."

Joe said, "Mike, what you don't need is another drink. It is your drinking and my reckless eating that got us here ahead of our contemporaries."

I thought for a while about having met two American writers in the past week, both of whom were so upset over the state of journalism in America. I ventured forth boldly (I know no other way) with an idea.

"I have an idea. Let's take a trip to America and get a closer view of what's going on in journalism. Where should we go ?"

Mike said, "Chicago. It desperately needs us. Chicagoans are so distressed with the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times that they are regularly diving off the Michigan Avenue bridge to their death in the Chicago River."

Joe responded,"Mike, that is tragic but New York is the place. Home to my beloved The New Yorker and The New York Times."

"The New York Times that missed the absurdity of Bush's Iraq War. That New York Times ?"

A storm was brewing. Royko appeared volatile and likely to throw a punch at the portly Liebling. Joe had never seen a punch up close and personal, only from ringside as a reporter on the boxing scene. I, promoting tolerance and good will, said," Let's go to Washington, D.C. and check out the scene from the center of power."

Joe and Mike went along with it, though Mike mumbled something unprintable about New York. I had never been to Washington but looked forward to the adventure. Nothing is more fun than traveling with writers, particularly brilliant American writers.

We sat three abreast in the latest model jet run by The Angelic Express. The trip to DC took about ninety minutes. Royko had four cocktails and a beer and was promptly entertaining all of us with stories about bumbling Chicago politicians and judges. We touched down at National Airport and within twenty minutes found ourselves outside this massive building called The Newseum.

The building was about five stories tall---all glass windows on the front of the building. A feeling of openness and light was the effect of the architecture. Joe was the first to comment on the design, "Clever design, very appropriate to the news business. We are opening the public's eyes to the truth in America and shedding light on it."

Mike ambled ahead of us a bit. At the entrance to the museum we came upon a glass enclosed display of two dozen front pages of newpapers for the day from Maine to California. Then, all hell broke loose.

Mike yelled, "Goddamn it. What the hell did I tell you. Look at this for chrissake. This paper is a comic book, it's not a newspaper."

Joe and I caught up with him and looked down at the front page of The Chicago Sun-Times. The paper had a front page photo of a golf star standing at a podium looking grim. At the bottom of the page were three little graphics, one on baking, one on sports and the third on car repair. There was no writing on the front page except the headline and a sentence or two under the photo.

Joe was aghast and consoling to Mike. I took it all in and started to process it. I found so much in my lifetime absurd. This bit of nonsense was just another chapter.

We entered the building and spent a solid five hours captivated by the history of journalism in America from penny papers to something called Internet blogging that I am trying to understand.

Mike was beaming when we came upon the display of Pulitzer Prize winners. His photo was prominent for 1972, the year he won the award for Commentary. Joe had his turn at the display of press critics, where he took his place as the unrivaled champion.

The more time we spent in the museum the more glum both Joe and Mike got. Joe spoke for both of them. "The news business has been captured by huge corporations. God help America in the 21st Century."

I was not as despairing as my new friends. Hope always defeats despair, always has and always will.

I lived in an earlier age and fled my native France in my middle age. At the time I fled, the country had no independent press of any kind and no constitution with a First Amendment like that in America guaranteeing freedom of speech and the press. My writings were smuggled into France in the early morning hours and burned if discovered by the Catholic Church or the French government.

I just felt that the need for truth and an independent press was so ingrained in the American way of government and law, that no concentration of capital would doom the news business to mediocrity and extinction.

We finished our visit to the museum and DC and were home by dinner. Royko was melancholy and very drunk by now. Joe and I got him home safely and cheered ourselves up with a great French meal and two bottles of port.

And that is the way it is.


Voltaire