Mystery Book # 47 Bank Shot by Donald E. Westlake

One of the very last projects I had in grad school was basically a book report and author profile of the book The Hunter and its author Donald Westlake (writing under the name Richard Stark). Yes, that seems like a random assignment, especially since it was for the one film class I took. Since then I've always wanted to read another book by Westlake and was excited to see that the mystery book list has three of them. I started with Bank Shot but now I realize that this is the second book in his Dortmunder series and the first book is on the list too... so maybe I should have started with that one. Oh well.

The set up of the novel is pretty simple. The story follows John Dortmunder and his band of thieves in their attempt to steal a bank. Not rob a bank... steal the entire bank. They think they can do this because the bank is temporarily housed in a mobile trailer while the original building is being remodeled. So basically their plan is to attach the trailer to a truck and just drive off with it. Of course there are complications and the whole thing is just one big comic misadventure after another.

The whole time I was reading it I kept thinking that it would be a funny movie... and apparently it was made into a movie in 1974, so now I've gotta try and track down a copy. I enjoyed the book and it was a funny quick read. I don't think I'd call it a classic though. The characters aren't that fully drawn out (maybe I'm just missing something since I didn't start with the first book in the series) and the whole plot is pretty simple. Good but not great. I'll go with a B+.

Book # 36 The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

While Lucinda was reading The Count of Monte Cristo she kept telling me that she thought that I would really enjoy it. And I did enjoy it, but in the same way that I'd enjoy something overly melodramatic and cheesy with a bunch of ridiculous plot twists. After a while (and it is well over 1000 pages) all of the plot details and how all of the characters related to each other just gets to be too much. Frequently I had to refer to this chart to keep it all straight :

The story starts out with a young sailor, Edmond Dantes, who is just returning home from a voyage and is set to get married to the beautiful Mercedes and become the captain of a ship. However, through both malice and bad luck Edmond finds himself thrown into jail without any hope of ever getting out. While he is a prisoner he meets a fellow prisoner that tells him about a hidden treasure. After fourteen years in his cell he finally escapes and is able to find the treasure and become
extremely wealthy. He takes on several different personas, most notably as the Count of Monte Cristo, and spends years and years plotting out his super intricate revenge plot against the three men that got him thrown into jail. And his plan is super crazy detailed and really complicated. It is almost silly how he is always at the right place at the right time, and how no one can recognize him when he puts on a different disguise, and I still don't really understand how he was able to dig up all the dirt on his rivals that he uses against them. And he even starts to go after the families of his rivals until he realizes that most of them are totally innocent and don't even know who he is.

Overall I did enjoy it... but maybe something is also lost in the translation. The style seemed a bit plain and wasn't what I'd expect from a 19th century French novel. Plus I don't know why he went through such a complicated plan if he never tried or planned at winning back Mercedes who had gone on to marry one of the men he was after. The whole book is really about revenge, and after he escapes from his prison, Edmond becomes consumed with revenge and really has no other characteristics about him. He rarely seems to have any feelings or thoughts that aren't about his plan. I'll give it an A-.

Oh yeah... the book also mentions Don Quixote.

Updated rankings:

1. Les Misérables

2. Invisible Man

3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

4. The Hobbit

5. A Farewell to Arms

6. Great Expectations

7. The Stand

8. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

9. Pale Fire

10. The Handmaid's Tale

11. The Chronicles of Narnia

12. The Name of the Rose

13. The Great Gatsby

14. The Sound and the Fury

15. Frankenstein

16. Things Fall Apart

17. Wind in the Willows

18. Anne of Green Gables

19. Rebecca

20. Anna Karenina

21. Sons and Lovers

22. War and Peace

23. The Count of Monte Cristo

24. Winnie-the-Pooh

25. Emma

26. Charlotte's Web

27. Possession

28. Mrs. Dalloway

29. Gone with the Wind

30. Atlas Shrugged

Sci-Fi Book # 25 - The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

After looking at that list of top sci-fi book I was pretty excited to read one that I hadn't read before and picked one that I knew nothing about, The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The set up is pretty simple, it is a thousand years in the future and mankind has spread out through space and there are hundreds of populated planets. Then we finally make first contact with an alien species which everyone refers to as the Moties. The Moties are pretty weird looking beings with three arms and asymmetrical bodies. Then the expedition that has met them has to decide what to do about them... should they be peaceful and try and trade? or should they just try and eliminate them now before they endanger human civilization.

I thought this book was just okay. The set up is pretty intriguing but the characters are all pretty bland and hard to differentiate, really I'd prefer to have read a Star Trek book instead. The topics of the debates are interesting but it seems like none of the characters make very in-depth arguments for their side... it is just "they'll wipe us out" or "no, they are peaceful beings". At one point they hint at the interesting theological debates that would occur if we met space aliens, but nothing comes of it.  And the ending is all a bit anti-climatic too. Overall a bit of a disappointment for a book that appears on so many lists. I'll give it a B-.

Mystery Book # 1 The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - A Study in Scarlet (Book 1 of 9)

So after telling Lucinda that I was also going to also read from a Science Fiction book list she mentioned that I should look to see if there is a similar list for Mysteries. Surprisingly there weren't that many, but a very good one was compiled by the Mystery Writers of America in 1995. Of course, after reading this list I feel like I want to read a bunch of books from this list too... So I'll probably read some from their list also. It can be found at http://www.librarything.com/bookaward/The+Top+100+Mystery+Novels+of+All+Time+Mystery+Writers+of+America.
I'd already read about a dozen of them before and enjoyed each of them, so it figures that I should enjoy the rest too. Luckily since the list is a bit dated it doesn't have any Dan Brown or Steig Larsson.

After deciding that, I figured the best place to start is with a book that I a) already own, b) haven't read yet, c) is near the top of the list, and d) is something that I've always wanted to read and haven't yet. So with that in mind it was pretty easy to choose the first Sherlock Holmes book which has literally been staring at me from my bookcase for months and is at the top of the list. Overall there are nine Sherlock Holmes "books". Four are novels and five are books of short stories. The first is A Study in Scarlet. The book quickly introduces us to John Watson and tells us how he first met Sherlock. Right after becoming roommates Watson follows Holmes to a murder scene out of curiosity. At the scene is a dead body without any marks and the word "Rache" written in blood on the walls. Sherlock follows the clues that he finds and allows the official detectives to go off and investigate the case separately. Of course the detectives get everything wrong and Sherlock actually manages to have the killer arrive right to his apartment not knowing that he's about to be arrested. That's all in the first half of the book. Then a good chunk of the second half is the back story of who the murderer was and why he committed the crime. That story was totally unexpected and really compelling, maybe because it has nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes or even London. Then at the very end the narrative returns to Watson's narration and an explanation of how Holmes was able to figure out the mystery.

Overall it is a fun short read that lays the groundwork for the series and makes me want to read the next book very soon. I can see why it is regarded as a classic. The characters are unique, they mystery is compelling and the writing is terrific. I'll have to give it an A+.