Book Musing: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

 

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union

by Michael Chabon

I came across an article a little over a week ago that suggested 10 books that anyone who loves science fiction ought to read as they had won both the Nebula and the Hugo awards. I immediately added them to my Goodreads list.

I honestly can’t remember where I saw it, but here is one such list - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/the-novels-that-won-both-the-hugo-and-nebula-awards-ranked/

Connie Willis and Joe Haldeman are both familiar names from their short stories in Nebula award collections, but I’d never read a Michael Chabon before.

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union immediately appealed to me, perhaps because I spent so much time watching Seinfeld as a teen and perhaps because I have always had a fascination with Jewish culture as someone who was raised in upstate New York.

I’ve also enjoyed hard-boiled detective fiction since my late teens, which led me to take a course in Detective Fiction in college. This is right up there with them. Detective Landsman is both incorrigible and self-destructive, single-minded, and fumbling his way in the dark. It’s a characterization of fascinating contrasts.

This is an alternate history but not much of a “science” fiction otherwise. The setting is Sitka, Alaska, where a sixty year temporary haven for Jewish people was set up after World War II. It opens as the area is about to undergo “Reversion” when the government takes back the land. The residents have to either apply for permission to stay or find somewhere else to go.

Detective Meyer Landsman, the main character, is living in a long term stay hotel, drinking his life away. The manager comes and gets him when another tenant is found dead. Landsman quickly deduces that this was not an accidental death.

Landsman is a divorced police detective and the police department is about to be taken out of Jewish control as well. His ex-wife, Bina Gelbfish, is placed in charge of his department. He and his half Tlingit, half Jewish partner, Berko Shemets, are ordered to make a good faith attempt to clear up any outstanding cases, then a bad faith attempt, and finally to simply mark them as cold cases.

Landsman is not about to go gently into the good night though. The connections that get made along the way are great action-adventure writing, there’s a little schmaltz and plenty of heart, and the prose that caries you along is first rate.

The omniscient narrator is not all that common in a lot of what I read, but allows for a depth of description that you don’t find in much genre fiction. It gets into the perceptions and thoughts of a multitude of characters. The descriptions are lengthy and literary in their parallels, but also very often amusing, which is fairly common with noir detective fiction.

The prose is beautiful – so many times I was struck by the incongruity and yet correctness of the metaphors he used to describe things. Some might eschew it as too flowery but I loved it. I went and put several more of his books on my Goodreads list. It’s a book that takes a long time to get where it’s going but I loved every minute of the drive. (Yes, I also prefer to drive on secondary roads instead of highways.)

Are the characters sometimes a little too ridiculous? Yes, sure. The two main Tlingit characters we run into are both police officers with one being tall and extremely heavy set while the other is a mere four foot nothing. As the only characters we hear much of who are Tlingit, it’s a little too absurd.

I’ve seen a lot of positive reviews for this book, some lukewarm ones, and some downright negative, but that just recommends a book to me. When you get a good spread of opinions about a book, it generally means there’s going to be a lot to engage with, and this is no different. There’s a particular style here that people may or may not like. I loved it.

Chabon is one of those authors who both makes me feel small and insignificant as an author and also inspires me to want to write more and better. His first novel came out to some acclaim when he was twenty-four and it seems he has been writing hard and fast, but mostly steadily, ever since.  

It’s a first rate, rollicking, fascinating, gorgeously written book. I highly recommend.

Oh, and the reader who brings the audio to life is wonderful, allowing me to get the intonation in my head that I never would have gotten just by reading it.

Bury Your Dead: A Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery: Book 6 by Louise Penny

 

Bury Your Dead: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel – Book 6

by Louise Penny

This is a pivotal book in this series,. It begins with the fallout from a horrible situation.

To be honest, reading it on the Kindle, the formatting isn’t clear as to whether the first few pages are meant to be a scene then we fast forward to present time, or whether it’s a flashback to the event. There is no italics to indicate a flashback, but neither is there a chapter heading or clear page break, just an extra line, before the beginning of the present day narrative. I’d say Penny intended for us to be totally present in that first scene, which took place before the events of the book.

And the scene is fairly simple – Chief Inspector Gamache, his second in command, Beauvoir, and a team are geared up, armed, and trying to retrieve a hostage. That much is clear, but who the hostage is, remains a mystery for a bit. As the details dripped in, I worried for Beauvoir. Then Gamache is sitting with his mentor and former chief, Emile Comeau, over breakfast in a Quebec City café.

This book is a masterful work of men recovering from an operation gone wrong, both mentally and physically. We get the information about what happened sprinkled throughout the book in flashbacks, until the full picture has been developed. At the same time, Gamache is caught up in a murder that has taken place in the library of the historical society where he has been spending time.

An historian, Renaud, who was obsessed with finding the body of Samuel de Champlain, has been murdered and buried in the cellar of the library. Was he on to something in finding Champlain? Why was he killed, and by whom?

Penny gives us a portrait of the city, with fascinating details and beauty, and a picture of political tension between French and English descendants that is equally fascinating. She brings in just the right amount of history to explain things without bogging down the narrative.

There are tiny little mysteries too, like why one character never speaks above a nearly inaudible whisper.

But there is another mystery running concurrently, one we might have thought was finished in the last book. Did Olivier really kill the hermit in Three Pines? Gamache had come to believe so, had provided enough evidence to have him convicted. Had he made a mistake? He asks Beauvoir to go to Three Pines and try to prove the opposite, that Olivier did not kill the hermit. Beauvoir thinks it’s a waste of time but he cannot refuse his Chief so he goes and throws his heart into it. At the same time, he is working on his own healing because he was shot in the raid, and the people of Three Pines help him in strange ways with both.

The characters in this book are wonderfully unique. It’s like the Island of Misfit Toys. One of my favorites is Ruth Zardo, an elderly poet who is more rude to you, the more she likes you.  

There is so much going on in this book, but all the elements – the raid gone wrong, the re-investigation of the Hermit’s murder, the historian’s murder in Quebec, the historical and present day tensions between the descendants of English and French, the mental and emotional healing of the two detectives - are braided together masterfully. It is truly an impressive book.

If you like mysteries at all, I highly recommend this series, and this book in particular.

Book Review: Still Life by Louise Penny

 

Still Life

by Louise Penny

I was recently recommended this series by one of our Friends of the Library. I’ve heard of Louise Penny books. I’ve had readers call the library for them on many occasions. I was not disappointed.

This is book one in a long running series featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec, a family man, in his mid-fifties, and the head of homicide. He is called to the village of Three Pines when a woman is found dead in the woods, possibly due to an arrow, though the arrow is gone.

“People don’t see it coming, because the murderer is a master at image, at the false front, at presenting a reasonable, even placid exterior. But it masked a horror underneath. And that’s why the expression he saw most on the faces of victims wasn’t fear, wasn’t anger. It was surprise.”

This is a police procedural and the reader is taken along for every step of the way, from Gamache sitting in the village square watching life go on around them, to meetings with his staff.

“Three Pines wasn’t on any tourist map, being too far off any main or even secondary road. Like Narnia, it was generally found unexpectedly and with a degree of surprise that such an elderly village should have been hiding in this valley all along. Anyone fortunate enough to find it once usually found their way back.” It’s a fanciful description, but I can picture it. I’ve been through some villages like that in the Catskills of Upstate New York. The details really put me there.

The authors characterization and detail is excellent. “One of the boys laughed… not a funny laugh… It’s the sound boys make when they’re hurting something and enjoying it. Jane shivered at the recollection…”

The characters may be, to some extent, types but they seem very unique and well differentiated to me. I had no trouble keeping track of who was who and how they fit into the story.

I enjoyed the subtle humor. Gamache is called away and his wife goes to a baptism on her own. “She was almost certain she was at the right baptism, though she didn’t recognize all that many people.”

And there are wonderful bits, like when Peter is comforting his wife Clara after her friend Jane has died. “And he realized that, had he died in the woods, Clara would have had Jane to comfort her.  And Jane would have known what to do. In that instant a door opened for Peter. For the first time in his life, he asked what someone else would do. What would Jane do if she was here and he was dead? And he had his answer. Silently he lay down beside Clara and wrapped himself around her. And for the first time since getting the news, her heart and mind calmed.” I found that just beautiful. It is the author’s insight and observations that make this book so lovely to read.

I always appreciate it when characters perceptions of someone else, or a situation, change over the course of the story. They find out they were wrong about something. That plays a big part in this story.

My one criticism involves a slightly odd and one-dimensional depiction of a young female officer who seemingly can’t get over herself. Nothing is her fault and people just can’t see how brilliant she is. I suppose there are people like that out there, but I’ve seen far more people with a lack of confidence at that age than this attitude. It just didn’t ring true for me. It seemed to be an artifice, a simplistic foil for the magnificence of the great Armand Gamache, to show us how saintly he is. I really don’t think it was necessary.

For example, “Nichol pledged to keep her opinions to herself if that was the thanks she got for having the courage to say what everyone was thinking. When asked directly she’d answer in monosyllables. So there.”

The “So there” is a shade too far. It turns the character into a childish caricature instead of someone simply a little bit too egotistical. Thankfully, it only intrudes on an otherwise nearly perfect murder mystery at a few points in the story.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I’ll definitely be reading more in this series.

Book Review: Death in Avignon by Serena Kent

 

Death in Avignon

by Serena Kent

This is a murder mystery, people die, but somehow it is once of the most relaxing genres I know and this is a prime example. 

I listen to a podcast called Shedunnit, created by Caroline Crampton, and I remember her talking about how mysteries were so popular post WWI because they were predictable. You knew the resolution would arrive and the detective would win through. It was just a matter of how. Perhaps that’s why I enjoy them so much. I really enjoy a good puzzle too, like Soduku, it’s very satisfying to finish something like that.

I admit I’m not one of those people who are able to follow all the clues and arrive at the solution to the puzzle before the author reveals it. I’m just along for the ride. So I can’t evaluate it on that criteria. I can only say, I didn’t really see the resolution coming.

This is the second book in this series and I so enjoyed the first, that I bought this one as soon as it was available. The main character is Penelope Keet – a retired ex-pat from Great Britain living in France. She worked for the Home Office and assisted the Coroner.

The mystery begins when Penny goes to an art show and the painter, Don Doncaster, who Penny doesn’t really like right off, collapses. He is taken to hospital and seems to be improving. They find he was poisoned. Then he takes a nose dive and dies. He isn’t the only one to die in this book, and all the deaths seem centered around the art world that Penny has just been introduced to.

She isn’t alone in her investigation – she has her new friends, like the handsome mayor Laurent, who she never seems to manage to have a dinner alone with, and the real estate agent, Clémence, who is a truly chic French woman.

When Clémence had left, Penelope went back to her Rachmaninov. But it failed to catch fire or to calm her conflicting emotions. Much as she had come to like her, seeing Clémence still made her feel inadequate.

They are intimately involved with the mystery as one of their friends, who is an art expert, disappears. Is he under suspicion? Laurent and Clémence take significant umbrage at the suggestion.

There are new friends here too, as Penny meets people in the art world and the music world of the nearby communities. Plus, her brash old friend from Britain, Frankie, returns.

The conversations flow naturally, and the descriptions are often lovely.

As the road climbed, the curves and wind-sculpted stacks of red soil emerged from the pines like a fifties actress letting a fur slip from her bare shoulders.

There are little bits of reality that one can relate to, as well.

After all the years of marriage and motherhood, it still felt self-indulgent simply to eat what she wanted, when she wanted, with no one else to please, or cajole, or disappoint.

I think my favorite parts of this book aren’t even necessarily the puzzle, but the relationships between characters we meet, and the descriptions of the countryside and setting.

There is a large cast in this book, but they are introduced at a reasonable pace and differentiated so that one can keep track. Plus, some are familiar from the first book and some are new.

For a relaxing puzzle mystery, I highly recommend this series. It began with Death in Provence and you can read my review of that one here http://storymusing.blogspot.com/2021/04/book-review-death-in-provence-by-serena.html

Book Review: Max Hamm Fairy Tale Detective by Frank Cammuso

 

Max Hamm Fairy Tale Detective

by Frank Cammuso

This month my book club chose graphic novels for our theme. The first one I picked up was a tongue in cheek noir detective fairy tale re-write.

It reminded me a bit of the old Bugs Bunny cartoons, “Oh, you’re a smart guy, are ya?”

It was mostly funny, though there were a couple jokes that fell a bit flat for me.

The seamy underside of Hollywood is reprised in the The Big Sheep as Storybook Land to good effect.

Max Hamm runs a detective agency with Humpty Dumpty called Hamm and Eggs Detective Agency. Well, you can guess what happens to Humpty, though perhaps not exactly how or why.

Little Bo Peep makes an appearance right off, with a sob story about coming to the big city and falling on hard times.

“It was after midnight when the cops called me to come down to King Cole’s Supper Club. My not so hard-boiled partner had an accident.”

It seems Bo Peep has drawn them into quite a sordid little story, but eventually Max gets the upper ham, I mean hand.

Events become even more sordid in The Long Ever After. “Rose Red did the bump and grind at the Puss-n-Boots.”

This is definitely not a comic book for little kids, but the parade of familiar characters in noir setting continues. Snow White is a very prominent character, an old friend, perhaps even an old flame, Max Hamm. Apparently Snow White married badly.

The artwork is monochromatic with gray washes used to good effect. The pictures alternate between full page and a traditional comic panel layout on the page, making it easy to follow the progression of events and speakers.

Yeah, it’s pretty, well, hammy, but fun.

Book Review: Cajun Fried Felony by Jana DeLeon

 

Cajun Fried Felony

by Jana DeLeon

 

Fortune Redding is a former CIA agent. After a leak at the agency, she was hidden in Sinful, Louisiana for her own safety. Something happened while she was there hiding out though. She made friends, for the first time in a long time, and found people who cared about her. Once the sticky situation that had put Fortune in hiding was taken care of, she found she didn’t want to leave. So she came clean with the people she had become friends with and started a whole new life, as a PI.

This one is Janet Evanovich meets Steel Magnolias. Fortune’s friends, Ida Belle and Gertie, former military spies during Vietnam, remind me very much of the strong personalities in that classic movie. Fortune hires them to comprise a team for her new private investigation business. This is a few books into the series and Fortune is well settled into Sinful. She’s now dating Deputy Carter.

The story starts with the annual Turkey Run. Fortune assumes that’s a race for charity, but it’s a little more literal than that. When things get out of control, the body of Venus Thibodeaux, a young woman who had supposedly left town, is unearthed. Everything points toward Whiskey, the owner of the local bar, and he hires Fortune to find the truth.

Filled with colorful characters and zany happenings, this book is a hoot, and a perfect antidote to reality right now, with just enough seriousness to keep it from being utter fluff.

Fortune sums up the feel of the book, “Murder is always a big deal. But in the big scheme of things, we’re still as close to a slice of Mayberry as we’re getting. I mean, if you wave a magic wand and make Mayberry the strangest place on earth.”

 

Book Review: Mycroft and Holmes - The Empty Birdcage

 

Mycroft and Sherlock: The Empty Birdcage

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse

This is the third book in the series and I have thoroughly enjoyed each and every one. There is something intensely relaxing for me in a detective fiction book where you follow the detectives step-by-step. And yet, these books combine that sleuthing with the best elements of characterization, setting, and pacing of the plot. I really wish there were more of them to read. Alas, this is the last in the series, for the moment.

In this book, we find Mycroft about to undergo a simple operation to help his heart function better. It is not as invasive a surgery as what they do nowadays but there is strong risk in it considering the time period. He insists the surgeons wash thoroughly before the undertaking because of what he had read from Pasteur, and because he has the clout and money to insist upon it. Thankfully, he comes through the surgery just fine.

After a gap of some six weeks for him to recover, the story picks up again with the thorn in Mycroft’s side, his younger brother Sherlock.

A series of murders has taken over the attention of England, The Fire Four Eleven Murders. But what does it mean? Sherlock is supposed to be at Cambridge but he has every intention of chasing down the murderer, using his brother’s money, of course.

Young Sherlock seems a bit reckless and even vain, but he doubts his abilities to bring the case to justice at times. Luckily, he has the pragmatic, thoughtful, and intelligent help of Huan, Mycroft’s driver who hails from Trinidad.

Both the brothers are accused of some form of witchcraft in their turn but it is only their tremendous intelligence and deductive reasoning.

The older and more worldly intelligence of Mycroft requires the tempering of conscience that his friend Douglas brings. Mycroft knows what he is capable of, and it’s not always good.

Mycroft is bent on revenging himself upon an old adversary. Then he is begged to take up the cause of Deshi Hai Lin, or rather the fiancé of Ai Lin, his daughter. Her fiancé has disappeared. Deshi Hai Lin begs Mycroft to find the young man. A difficult proposition because Mycroft himself is smitten with Ai Lin. However, he agrees to help in the end.

The stories intertwine and then move apart to be pursued in alternating chapters by the brothers. There is a solid, brisk pace to the story. Not a break neck speed but brisk enough to keep one entertained. The details of the time period are perfectly situated to entertain and enrich the story. The characters are beautifully brought to life through description, word, and deed.

I can’t recommend these stories enough if you enjoy the diversion of a good period detective fiction. This is among the best of the genre, in my opinion.

Book Review: Peace Talks by Jim Butcher

Peace Talks

by Jim Butcher

I’ve seen mixed reactions to this book. It’s been five or more years since Butcher released a book in the Dresden Files series. I follow a couple forums and a number of people did a re-read of the previous books before Peace Talks came out. This makes some of the criticism more understandable. I only went to Wikipedia and read through the book summaries to refresh my memory.

I’ve seen some people say that this book is way too much of a re-hash of things we’ve seen before. I’m wondering if it wasn’t planned that way – to bring people up to speed and set up the next book, which is coming out in the fall, more than anything. If that’s the case, then I think it served its purpose well. Which also means that if you are new to the series, you don’t really HAVE to go back and read the others. You may want to eventually, but you can start here.

I thoroughly enjoyed getting caught up with Butcher’s characters. Harry Dresden is still the wise-cracking wizard detective, very aware of his own inadequacies, but he has grown in some ways.

“Then I ran my tongue thoughtfully over my teeth and closed it. Honestly, it’s really kind of startling how many problems that avoids. I should think about doing it more often.”

He still has some growing to do too.

“I felt awkward. I was never much good at parties.”

There are peace talks about to be joined that will take place in Chicago and require Harry’s presence as a member of the security team, complicated by the fact that his brother is under a kind of arrest, for murder, and Harry’s own status as a member of the White Council is in question.

So many characters from the former books come into play.

Butters, oh Butters, our polka-loving, Jedi blade-wielding, medical examiner.

Michael, former Knight of the Cross, whose stalwart presence always tries to lead Harry back to the most righteous path. (I hear a deep, resonant, measured and careful voice, in my head when Michael is speaking.)

I like Butcher’s unique way of describing things that’s culturally relevant and, as it is from Harry’s perspective, provides real insight into Harry’s mentality.

“When it got fully dark, Marcone’s castle looked like it was holding a flashlight under its chin.”

From horrible monsters and magic to more mundane, but no less important, concerns of family and home, it is lovely reading about Harry’s life again.

A thoroughly enjoyable interlude and adventure.

But for those who haven’t read it yet, if the cliff hanger is going to bother you, you might want to wait until closer to the next book to read it.

Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie

Hercule Poirot’s Christmas

by Agatha Christie

It seems odd to say it, but it was very comforting to read this murder mystery. I read quite a lot of Agatha Christie novels when I was in my middle school years. I never forgot the highly dramatic production of The Witness for the Prosecution our high school put on or the production of The Mousetrap that I was in. (Of course, I played the old lady, Mrs. Boyle.)

Christie’s standalone novels The Secret of Chimneys and They Came to Baghdad were a couple of my favorites but I also greatly enjoyed her little old knitting granny detective, Miss Jane Marple, and Hercule Poirot mysteries.

Hercule Poirot is Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective with the big mustache who uses his “little grey cells” to solve mysteries. They are usually murders, as in The Murder on the Orient Express. (I highly enjoyed and recommend the current movie from Kennth Branagh, by the way.)

Hercule Poirot, and behind him, the author Agatha Christie, were students of human nature and what people were likely to do or could not help doing.

In this case, Hercule is visiting his friend in the country, Colonel Johnson, Chief Constable of Middleshire, when Simeon Lee is murdered in his house.

Simeon Lee has called his children home for Christmas. Alfred Lee and wife Lydia live in the house with Simeon Lee already. David Lee and his wife Hilda arrive along with George Lee, M.P. for Westeringham, and his wife Magdalene. The black sheep of the family, Harry Lee, arrives as well. Pilar Estravados has also been invited to take up residence at the house, possibly long term. She is Simeon’s granddaughter, daughter of the deceased Jennifer and her father, who died in prison. Of course there are the usual house staff, Tressilian, and valet, Horbury. We also have an unexpected visitor in Stephen Farr, who is the son of Simeon’s partner in South Africa. He just happened to be passing through and called on Simeon then was asked to stay for Christmas.

Yes, Simeon Lee has called his family home for Christmas, but it isn’t a family reunion. He’s a manipulator who loves to make trouble. He has pushed someone over the line this time, but who?

There are some very nice little twists and turns with this case and I’m not sure it can be figured out until Poirot gives his reveal of the facts we are missing at the end of the book, but I enjoy being along for the ride. It is a different time and place but the character of people is not all that different. Christie, and Poirot, make it fun to examine the motivations.

Belle Ruin (Emma Graham series) by Martha Grimes

Belle Ruin
By Martha Grimes

This series really started for me back in 1992 with The End of the Pier. Emma Graham does not appear in that mystery but the location is the same and the style of the stories is very similar.  The main detective in that novel is Sam DeGuyn, the sheriff, who returns in the Emma Graham mysteries. 
 
The End of the Pier is a little more gruesome in descriptions of murders and murder scenes, something the author stays away from in subsequent books of the Emma Graham mysteries.  In fact, it is not at all necessary to read that novel in order to enjoy the Emma Graham series. 

The sheriff returns in Hotel Paradise, which was released in 1996 and features Emma Graham. Emma is intrigued by the story of Mary-Evelyn Devereau, a 12 year old who died on a pond 40 years ago, after her Aunt Rose ran away with Ben Queen. Was it murder or negligence? Rose herself was murdered some years ago now, supposedly by Ben Queen. Now Ben Queen is released from prison and their daughter, Fern, is found murdered. In between waiting tables at her family's once popular resort hotel, Emma asks questions and pokes around.

The mystery continues just a week later in Cold Flat Junction, (though the book wasn't released until 2001.) Then comes the story of Belle Ruin, released in 2005, with the added mystery of the kidnapped baby. 

The Belle Rouen was once a sumptuous resort hotel near Spirit Lake but since the fire it is now truly the "ruin" that most locals pronounce it to be.

Emma Graham has had more than her fair share of excitement in her life.  At just 12 years old she is made the youngest member of the local newspaper, The Conservative, so she will write up her account of what happened when she was shot at by a madwoman.  Now that she has discovered the ruin of the Belle Rouen, she seems to be on to a new mystery.  

Emma is deeply intrigued by the story of a kidnapped baby in the heyday of the Belle Rouen.  It is the night of a dance party and the parents hire a local woman to watch the baby in their hotel room while they go to the dance.  The father tells the babysitter to let the baby sleep, as she has been sick. When the father returns to check on the baby a couple hours later, the baby is gone.  A ladder next to the window of the bedroom suggests that someone used it to climb up and snatch the child.  However, as Emma questions the events, more and more, things don't add up.  She sets about interviewing all the people who might have been around during that time.  With each discussion, some small piece of the puzzle emerges.

The character of Emma Graham seems real to me, at times an independent young lady who is mature beyond her years and at other times reacts childishly to something that upsets her. 

Perhaps it's a mistake to look at this as a mystery rather than a literary novel.  The actions and observations are enjoyable in themselves even though there has been little resolution in the mysteries.  There are elements of magical realism as well, as elements of the time setting are totally distorted to make us wonder when it is taking place. 

Will the questions finally be answered in Fadeaway Girl, released in 2011, or will it remain a mystery, as things sometimes do in life?  Reviews by readers suggest that while many answers are given, just as many are left unanswered.  Perhaps this is deliberate.  The pace of the books is slow and deliberate, thought provoking, with shades of darkness relieved by lighter moments.

The only thing that really bothers me at this point about the series is the rehashing of material from the older books.  I can understand trying to keep the books readable as a stand alone but if we're going to defy mystery conventions, why not go the whole nine yards and just let people read the others if they want to know the back story?  For my part, I'm looking forward to reading Fadeaway Girl, whatever it brings.