Cluster Critiques 8-13-22

 

Last Dance on the Starlight Pier: A Novel by Sarah Bird

Texas Author Sarah Bird is not just an exceptional writer, she’s also a keen chronicler of unnoticed or forgotten histories. For example, in Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen, she gave us the beautifully fictionalized, yet true story of an African American slave woman, Cathy Williams, who, disguised as a man served as a Union soldier in the Civil War.

 

In Bird’s new book Last Dance on the Starlight Pier, she takes us into the outwardly glamourous, inwardly gritty world of depression-era dance marathons and vaudeville, the wildly popular entertainment mediums during that period. Bird also primarily sets the story in Galveston, which during Prohibition was the center of illegal gambling and boozing, replete with Mafia rule. An important backdrop to the story is the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as President of the US, a watershed moment in American history. 

 

Main character Evie Grace Devlin, raised in the seedy business of vaudeville and in the red light district of “Vinegar Hill” in Houston, is exploited by her self-absorbed mother, but is a survivor fighting to escape her heritage. Despite training to become a nurse, through a twist of fate she joins a troupe of marathon dancers scraping out a living dancing almost nonstop to distract depressed and desperate families from the harsh realities of the Great Depression. The marathon dancers and the Galveston mob team up for a grand dance marathon event at the aging Starlight Pier Ballroom jutting out over Galveston Bay, but things go terribly wrong. 

Bird lures us in with this ripe setting and vivid characters, then stuns us with an unexpected and courageous twist involving Evie and her charming, handsome love-interest Zave, the heart-throb of the dance marathon scene. Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a time-machine that will transport you to a unique and intriguing era. It will also make you a partner to the story. You'll swoon over Zave, pull for Evie Grace, see the lighted pier against the Galveston sunset, and feel the desperation and faith of the families living through the depression. And as you read the last few pages you’ll be a little sad knowing both the era and the story are coming to an end. Read Last Dance on the Starlight Pier. (Photo is of a depression-era Galveston dance marathon)

 

Moonflower Murders: A Novel by Anthony Horowitz

Make sure you’re wearing your patience if you plan on reading this clever murder mystery within a murder mystery. But don’t try to solve it as that will only distract from a fun story and good writing. Just let it flow over you and wait for the big, albeit extended, reveal. 

 

The story starts in Crete where retired book publisher Susan Ryland is approached by the owners of a Suffolk hotel, Pauline and Lawrence Trehernes. The Trehernes daughter, Cecily, disappeared shortly after disclosing she discovered, through a book Susan had published, that the wrong man was convicted of a murder committed years ago at the hotel. The Trehernes hire Susan to return to Suffolk to try to find out what happened to their daughter, and who the real murderer is. And thus begins a circuitous, and sometime challenging plot. But the story is good and the characters are colorful, so we hang on for the ride, and a payoff that is finally well delivered. Moonflower Murders is very “Agatha Christie,” which  is a good thing.

 

Freezing Order: A True Story of Russian Money Laundering, State-Sponsored Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath by Bill Browder

Bill Browder hates Vladimir Putin like American democrats hate Donald Trump. Browder’s first book, Red Notice,which I loved, was about his significant investment ventures into the perestroika-driven privatization of Russian businesses in the 1990’s. The Russian oligarchs who own controlling interest in most Russian businesses didn’t like British or American investors poking their noses into the way they did business, which according to Browder was criminal. They began legally challenging and illegally threatening Browder and his family. Browder’s attorney Sergei Magnitsky, defending the challenges to Browder’s Russian investments, and investigating Russian tax fraud, ended up in a Russian Gulag, and, according to Browder, was beaten to death to cover up the fraud. One result was the 2012 Magnitsky Act, American legislation that allows for travel bans, asset seizures and visa freezes on human rights violators, and has sense been adopted by 30 countries. 

 

Freezing Order continues the story of how Russian oligarchs’ (and other politically-powerful individuals) ill-gotten assets are still sheltered in America, and which, Browder explains is why Putin has spent so much effort to control American politics. Both Red Notice, and now Freezing Order are true-life espionage stories with a contemporary relevance, and I recommend you read both. Oh yes, and both are well-written, which always matters.

 

This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Young Doctor, by Adam Kay

This extremely popular book by a Junior Doctor working in the British National Health Service (socialized medicine), was hilarious and fast-moving, but harshly at the expense of all the patients, nurses and pretty much everyone the author came in contact with during his internship. If you despise the medical establishment, socialized or privatized, you’ll love this book, which picks apart the knowledge and role of doctors, nurses and hospitals, and basically equates it all to a science held together with super glue and bailing wire. 

 

Kay is often quoted saying, “The hours are terrible, the pay is terrible, the conditions are terrible; you’re underappreciated, unsupported, disrespected and frequently physically endangered, “But there’s no better job in the world.” This book certainly provides story after story supporting the first part of that quote. Unfortunately it gives zero stories to support the last part, and sure enough, after a particularly traumatic medical experience (no spoiler here) Kay resigns to become a writer/comedian.

 

This Is Going to Hurt was entertaining, in the sense that we must laugh at horror to keep from crying, but I couldn’t help but (1) feel bad for the people whose misfortune fueled Dr. Kay’s humor, (2) wonder why we should rely on the judgement of doctors living on too little sleep, (3) believe a medical diagnosis gleaned from 30-seconds of googling, and (4) wonder why anyone would want to work in the medical horror-show portrayed by Dr. Kay.  I need to believe more in medical science, not less. Reading This Is Going to Hurt didn’t help. Meh.