What a fun book 9tail Fox is! The premise is that world-weary San Francisco police sergeant Bobby Zha finds himself murdered, possibly by his own partner. As he lays dying on a warehouse floor, an old Chinese ghost, the nine tail fox, visits him. Next thing he knows he’s waking up in New York City. Still world-weary, he now has a purpose: find out who killed him and why. The premise isn’t new (Altered Carbon, and the next book I’m about to read Homicide My Own), but Grimwood makes it pretty interesting. 9tail Fox contains a great combination of eastern mysticism, San Francisco noir, and post-Soviet spy intrigue.

Certainly there’s a few parts of the plot that don’t hold up to close scrutiny. The entire plot is connected together with dozens of coincidences. Normally, too much coincidence bothers me. The audacity of the story makes up for the random connections though. I’d almost say that Grimwood wrote them purposefully, using them to build an even grander story.

A lot of the story’s success rides on Bobby Zha’s character. It’s 98% first person. The couple of points where the narrative switched to someone else (sometimes without transition) jarred me even. Putting him in someone else’s body unbeknown to any of the other characters gives the story somewhat of a Dickensian A Christmas Carol aspect. The sometimes grimy San Francisco streets would certainly fit with a Dickens tale had he set one of his tales in northern California. He does get to see his relatives and colleagues do cry and gnash their teeth, but he also witnesses their opinions about his character too. The reader watches as Bobby Zha realizes what a shit he’d become, his downtrod outlook having served as an excuse for him to more or less not give a rip about anyone else.

It’s a shame one of the bigger publishers didn’t pick this book up to give it more widespread prominence. I need to pay more attention to what Night Shade Books puts out and grab some of them.

A few other blogged reviews:

• Stephen Wu
• Richard Marcus
• SFSite
• Bookgasm
• Adventures in Reading
• The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.
• Grumpy Old Bookman

Title: 9tail Fox
Author: Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Cover creator: Jon Foster (artist) / Claudia Noble (designer)
Imprint / publisher: Night Shade Books
Format: Paperback
Length: 259 p.
Publication date: May 2007
ISBN-13: 978-1-59780-078-5

Aha! I really liked this book. Been a bit since I’ve read something I can unreservedly say I liked. There were a few parts in the middle where I started to get nervous, but Lutz resolved my fears quickly. Best short description of the novel that I can come up with is to say it’s a harder edged version of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum stories, with a point behind them to boot. There’s zany feuding characters like the Plum novels, but they actually come much closer to seeming real. The Plum novels feel like they exist only to tell an entertaining story (which is not a bad end in itself). The Spellman Files got me thinking about the nature and extent of freedom, particularly with respect to the lives of some of my relatives.

The Spellmans are a family of private investigators. The parents Albert and Olivia (the father being an ex-cop) included the kids in investigations from a young age, so snooping on other people (and each other) is second nature to them. The oldest sibling is son David, the goody two shoes perfect child. He kinda sorta got out of the business by becoming a lawyer, though he hires his own family for work his law office needs. In other words, he never truly got away from it. Second sibling is Isabel, two years younger than David. She’s the bad girl of the family. Drugs. Boys. Bad grades. Etc. Though she’s straightened up somewhat after reaching adulthood, she never manages to become normal. The last kid is Rae, trailing Isabel by 14 years. Neither great nor bad, she is mostly a co-dependent type, alternately feuding with then trying to fix the character defects of her family. Uncle Ray also lives with the family, but he is mostly a foil for the other characters.

The book really consists of two parts. After a brief introduction that intimates that trouble lies ahead, Isabel (our narrator) gives a history of the family. This part felt a lot like a series of disconnected sketches, making it bit more choppy and not quite as even as the second part. The second half details a burned-out Isabel’s attempt to become more normal and get away from the family. Mom and Dad worry about not being able to keep an eye on 28 year old Isabel, so they refuse to provide a job reference to Isabel unless she works one last case for the family firm. The idea being that by the time she’s done, Isabel will change her mind about quitting and making some space for herself away from the family. Albert and Olivia think Isabel will go back to her self destructive teenage ways unless they are around to guide her.

Rae feuds with her alcoholic namesake Uncle Ray, and habitually spies on Isabel. For reasons different than their parents, she doesn’t want Isabel to leave either. She wants her sibling to be around for her, as well as a happy well-adjust family to boot. So she’s constantly manipulating and conniving to keep Isabel at home.

The moral of the book is that people should be free to make their own choices. The entire Spellman clan is always trying to manipulate each other and monitor each other to guide each other to make better decisions. The surveillance does nothing more than make everyone paranoid, however. Each hoards their secrets that much more. And when dealing with outsiders, particularly Isabel’s various boyfriends, the secrets and tracking frightens them away.

As the coda (which I won’t spoil) reveals though, giving someone freedom doesn’t cause them to make better choices necessarily. Constant meddling or lack of it doesn’t seem to guarantee or prevent right decisions. It just reduces the stress and fighting when making them.

As I’ve written on Rat’s Reading before, my mom’s struggle with A.L.S. ended last fall. Over the 18 month period she declined with the illness, she made many decisions with which I disagreed. She didn’t want to learn to use an A.A.C. device. She didn’t want to use painkillers. She delayed having in-home caregivers long after they could have made things easier. I argued with her, but ultimately they were her choices to make right or wrong. She had to live and die with the consequences. So did I, of course. It’s hard to watch someone have things harder than one thinks they need to be. I can sympathize with the Spellman parents, and perhaps I might even have tried their kind of manipulation had I the power. But I can guarantee that exercising that kind of control over another’s choices will result in unhappiness, even if the first-order goals are achieved. My mom might have lived a more pain-free end of her life, but she would have been unhappy at being forced into it. The Spellman parents might force Isabel to avoid drugs and marry a lawyer, but their efforts certainly will result in a morose daughter if they succeed. Nominally better decisions but practically a bad result.

The ending really hit home for me. Wish I could tell you why, but you’ll need to go read it instead.

Wasn’t that all deep and discussion like? The book itself is nowhere near so heavy. In fact, it compares well with Hiaasen for humor value, though in a different vein. I laughed out loud (something I rarely do when reading) all the way through the book. Unfortunately, the setup for most of the humor is long , or spoiling it will make it not so funny. So I can’t think of a good example to give anyone a taste. But it’s good enough that I think this would make a great action-comedy movie, particularly compared with the normal flat buddy-cop formula that seems to pervade the action-comedy film genre.

A few other blogged reviews:

• Ya Know What?
• The 999 Challenge
• What Cheesy Reads
• Mugshots
• Mysteries in Paradise

Title: The Spellman Files
Author: Lisa Lutz
Series: The Spellmans; 1
Imprint / publisher: Simon & Schuster
Format: Advance readers copy
Length: 337 p.
Publication date: March 2007
ISBN-10: 1-4165-3239-0
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-3239-2
Subject: Private investigators — Fiction
LC classification: PS3612.U897 S67 2007

This book reminds me a lot of the movie Pump Up The Volume. The only real common plot element is a teen working underground inspires a rebellion among fellow youth against unjust authority. But the main similarity I think is more the feel of the work: wishful thinking. I agree with the politics. I think kids need to rebel, not for their sake, but for society’s. But I still think the book is wishful thinking.

Marcus Yallow is a teen geek. He ditches school one day with three friends to play an alternate reality game (A.R.G.) which involves running around the streets of San Francisco looking for clues. As they do so, terrorists blow up the Bay Bridge. In the panic and confusion, the band of youth are picked up by the Department of Homeland Security (D.H.S.) and held for six or so days incommunicado, subject to minor torture. One doesn’t make it back.

Although scared and afraid, Marcus fights back against the fascist D.H.S. takeover of San Francisco through underground computer networks, flash mobs, and culture jamming. But fear of D.H.S. keeps him underground and keeps him from revealing his incarceration and the one friend left behind.

I really liked the book, despite the tendency for Doctorow to info dump lots of background on various geeky topics. I think the information is cool. Though it does sometimes come across as lecturing by the author/protagonist. But I bet a lot of people purposely fry their R.F.I.D. chips after reading the book as a result of the info dump.

One question in my mind though is whether the book will break out of the geek set. I just can’t see non-geek kids really getting in to this with all the technology-geekism. Civil liberties aren’t really sexy enough for high school kids to get interested in droves. It should be. And Little Brother has as good a chance of any book at doing it. But… wishful thinking.

For those already of the techno-civil liberties mindset, this is a great book.

Plus, Little Brother is available free from the author’s web site. The Creative Commons licensed version also has a dedication to a bookstore before each chapter. What I love about the dedications, other than them being totally cool, is that he includes chain book stores as well as little independents. Too many times the chains are vilified as if they don’t provide hundreds of thousands of titles at low price to people who want to read. Doctorow sings their praises just as much as he does the small guys.

Title: Little brother
Author: Cory Doctorow
Imprint / publisher: Tor
Format: E-book (published version is hardcover)
Length: 155 p. (hardcover is 384 p.)
Publication date: April 2008
ISBN-10: 0-76531985-3
ISBN-13: 978-00765319852
Subject: United States. Dept. of Homeland Security — Fiction
Subject: Terrorism — Fiction
Subject: Computer hackers — Fiction
Subject: Civil rights — Fiction
Subject: Counterculture — Fiction
Subject: San Francisco (Calif.) — Fiction
LC classification: PZ7.D66237 Lit 2008