"Mister Magic" Is A Interesting Fever Dream About The Past

Mixing nostalgia, horror and mystery, “Mister Magic” by Kristen White is a bit of a fever dream. The idea that you can block such a big part of your life from your memory is a scary but plausible thought, and even more scary is the part of your life that you blocked from your mind is shared by others. The story centers around a woman named Val, who lives on a ranch and teaches children horseback riding lessons. When her father passes, she goes to the funeral and meets a mysterious group of people around her own age. They seem to know her, but she doesn’t know them. They tell them that as a child, she was on a television show with them. Yet, she has no recollection of this. The name of the show was “Mister Magic” and it was a children’s program.

She joins them in a mysterious town in Utah, where they are doing a reunion interview with a podcast host, but even the podcast host is mysterious. The podcast host only talks with them through a microphone, and they never see her face to face. The show they were on is also very mysterious. The show is fondly remembered by the kids who watched it, but there is no footage available anywhere anymore. The show seems to exist in the memories of the kids who watched it, and that’s it. The novel has internet posts between chapters of the book, with adults and lost media hunters looking for footage of the show but coming to no avail.

The reason Val doesn’t remember the show is she somehow has something to do with what ended it. Yet, she doesn’t remember and her fellow former cast members, while nice to her, do not seem to want to tell her exactly what she did. There’s a lot of commentary in this novel about the problems with becoming consumed with the past, whether it’s wanting to go back or simply obsessing over a children’s show which comforted you as a kid watching it. As my generation gets older, there’s something to be said for that. However, that’s not just my generation. That’s something every generation goes through.

White’s writing is eerie and interesting, and one gets the sense this TV show isn’t a TV show, but something else entirely. A metaphor for parts of our childhood we look back on fondly but tend to look at through rose-colored glasses.

A couple years ago, I read Kristen White’s horror novel “Hide”, which dealt with similar themes as “Mister Magic”, which is mainly the disappointments of growing up and a system which takes advantage of that. However, while that novel dealt with young adults getting desperate to get their lives started, “Mister Magic” deals with young adults looking back on the more mysterious parts of their own childhoods.

The mystery of the novel deepens and deepens as the story goes on. White has a knack for tapping into the anxieties of young adults, while figuring out what outside forces are shaping them. She did this in both “Mister Magic” and “Hide”, but while “Hide” looks at the present, “Mister Magic” informs us on how our past shapes our future.

This book is an unusual book that took me to different places and is a somewhat hard book to review because of its unusual topic. However, I think it’s well worth reading especially for a generation that is looking back on what is now nostalgia. 

"Blink" Or You'll Miss It

 

Malcolm Gladwell’s 2005 book “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” left me a little perplexed. As in he made some good points, and some other points didn’t seem to add up. I call these kinds of books “think about it” kind of books. They are more commonly referred to as pop psychology, which makes sense. Gladwell himself is a figure who divides people in the writer, reader and psychology community. Some people praise Gladwell for his storytelling skills to prove a point someone might have not thought about before. Others say he cherry picks his research. Either way, Gladwell has sold millions of copies of his books, which include other popular titles like “The Tipping Point”.

I was a little divided reading this book myself. On one hand, Gladwell’s stories are interesting. He opens the book with a story about a museum buying an art piece, but quickly the museum’s hopes are dashed when experts who are invited to look at the piece find it might be a fake. Gladwell askes the question, how did the experts know the piece was a fake, but the people who ran the museum does not pick up on this. There are clues about the way the statue they bought, thinking it was from ancient Greek times, but not so. Little clues like the way the feet and hands of the statue is pointed.

This goes into the theory Gladwell has about how certain people know something, and some people don’t seem to know the same thing. He presents this as the main topic of the book, the ability to know something better even with limited information presented to the person. He calls this theory thin slicing.

Gladwell is a talented writer and uses telling a lot of different types of stories to sustain his theories about how people think and act based on limited information. He tells stories about science, medicine, war games, and even a story about an office chair which at first wasn’t a hit but became one later. He references everything from the cola wars between Pepsi and Coke to studies about people with autism.

I was surprised the book was called “Blink” because he doesn’t use the word blink a lot throughout the book. However, I suppose it’s a more marketable title than “Thin Slicing”, which is the theory this book is about.

At point, Gladwell writes a chapter on speed dating and a professor studying couples who stay together and couples who get a divorce. None of this is that exciting, as the topics Gladwell picks aren’t exactly the most extreme topics. A lot of slices of life topics, but there are some topics in this book that are beyond that. At one point, he talks about a police shooting in the Bronx where an innocent immigrant was shot. I do agree with him that simple racism or police reacting too fast is hardly ever the cause of these types of situations. They are usually more complicated than that.

However, when Gladwell goes into the topic of autism, and declares everyone is temporarily has autism in certain situations, I wasn’t too sure about that. I’m not an expert on the topic, but that conclusion sounded odd. I’ve read other authors like Gladwell in the past who try to mix pop culture, stories and psychology. Usually, these books make arguments of which some are rational, and some are not. This book has the same problems as other books in this regard. However, it’s an interesting read, and I think it was worth reading Gladwell’s interesting ideas.

"Gone Tomorrow" Is A Solid Jack Reacher Adventure

I’ve been reading Jack Reacher novels for years. “Gone Tomorrow” is the 13^th novel in the series and is told from Jack Reacher’s point of view. Author Lee Child does write some novel from Jack’s point of view, but most of them aren’t. Most of his novels are told in the third person, not the first. Either way, this novel is a solid adventure for Jack Reacher. It’s also very much a post 9/11 novel, as it was published in 2009. This does date the novel somewhat. There are references to Bin Laden being alive and Ronald Reagan only being 20 something years ago. There’s even a reference to Donald Rumsfeld.

The novel opens with Jack Reacher sitting on a New York City subway and noticing something suspicious about a women on a bench across from him. Reacher can’t seem to leave anyone alone. So, he approaches her, and she looks at him. Then she pulls out a gun and kills herself in front of him. The NYPD questions Reacher as a witness to the suicide and are eager to close the file. However, Reacher wants to know why this woman killed herself.

As he digs more, he finds this woman was named Susan Marks, and she worked as a staffer at the Pentagon. This leads him to working with two police officers, and as he digs further, he finds a connection to a congressman and a women named Lila Holt, who may or may not be a member of Al Qaeda, who Reacher at first mistakes for being eastern European.

The novel moves at the brisk pace that most Reacher novels move at. The chapters are short and end on a cliffhanger, which are picked up on the next chapter. The novel being told from Reacher’s point of view keeps the novel’s pace going, but because it’s told from Reacher’s point of view, we are there alongside him as he himself is confused all the twists and turns. Reacher reminds me a bit of a Batman type figure, except without the secret identity or massive funds because Reacher is just himself. He is a great detective. Reacher, like Batman, is also not a superhero. He is just a pissed off guy taking things into his own hands.

The novel has some of the usual tropes of a Reacher novel, and it doesn’t always make sense. Reacher sleeps with the female cop in one chapter, and there’s your usual scenes of violence. Reacher sleeping with the female cop feels thrown in without any romantic build up. However, it’s very much a solid Reacher mystery. Despite being a bit dated, it’s always good to read Reacher solving a mystery. I do wonder if younger readers would get this novel, but than again, for my generation of readers, it’s worth reading.

"Never Flinch" is Mid Tier Stephen King

 

I never have read a truly bad Stephen King novel, but his novels tend to be good or mid teir. This one falls into the mid tear category. “Never Flinch” is the newest Stephen King novel about his private eye Holly Gibney, who we all met back in 2014, as a supporting character in his novel “Mr. Mercedes”. Holly has obviously become Stephen King’s favorite character, as she has appeared in six of his novels. Holly seems to face off against both supernatural and regular forces., She face a supernatural threat in the 2018 novel “The Outsider” , but in most of these novels she appears in, Holly faces off against evil that is more down to earth, like serial killers and kidnappers.

In this novel, Holly is facing down two cases. On one end, she is helping her police officer friend, Izzy, face off against a serial killer who has connected his killings to a trial case gone wrong, killing people and leaving the jurors name on top of their dead bodies. On the other end, she is hired to become a bodyguard for a feminist who is making a name for herself on the lecture circuit. These aren’t bad plots. I’ve read other mystery and thriller novelists who love to have two cases take up a novel. I would assume it makes it easier to fill up a novel if there are two mysteries to be solved.

Holly is still a good character, yet her becoming a bodyguard doesn’t make a ton of sense. Kate McKay wants a woman to be her bodyguard, instead of a man. Being an activist for women’s rights, she doesn’t want to be seen as needing a man’s protection. She is being stalked by a mysterious man who hates her pro-choice activism, and at one point, even pepper sprays her personal assistant.

The problem is Holly is often described as a small woman, and though she might be a great private eye, I’m not sure she would be a great bodyguard. She even at point downloads an e-book on how to be a bodyguard.

Then there’s the other plot about the case involving the serial killer, who is killing people because of a case involving child pornography. The evidence was planted on the defendant’s computer, but an overly eager D.A. railroaded him, and he ends up being killed in prison. The killer, who we are introduced to at the beginning of the novel, calls himself Trig, though that isn’t his real name. For most the novel, we really don’t know why he is killing people because of this case.

This isn’t a bad Stephen King novel, but it tends to have too much going on. I kept waiting for the two cases to connect, but they only slightly do. There’s also another subplot about a pop star, that doesn’t add much to the main plot.

There’s a lot going on in this book, and it’s not a bad read, but it’s not one of Stephen King’s best novels. Readers online have been divided on what King sees in this Holly character, and while she’s not a bad character, it seems kind of weird he keeps going back to her. I get the sense King always wanted to write crime novels, as his proses do often have a pulpy flavour to them. Even at one point in the novel, he names drops a book by John Sandford, who is famous for this kind of mystery and thriller books the Holly series are trying to be like. Not to say I don’t like when King drops his supernatural bag of tricks and decides to try to write more to down earth horrors. He has done that well in the past, and he doesn’t do it so bad either here. Either way, this review is kind of mixed.

A lot of people also point out how political Stephen King’s novels have become. A lot of novelists I read have gotten political lately, some on the right, some on the left, but that doesn’t bother me too much. Writing can be largely a personal thing, and even fiction writing is going to warrant some of your viewpoints going into the story. I know that annoys a lot of people, but I find it happens when someone is writing a longer piece like a novel. This is solid mid teir King.

"The Prince of Tides" is a Gem

 

Southern fiction is a genre which never lets me down. It’s produced such great storytellers as Harper Lee, Cormac McCarthy and the legendary Mark Twain. Another legendary writer in the southern tradition is Pat Conroy. Conroy’s 1986 novel “The Prince of Tides” is another classic of the southern tradition.

The novel is told from the point of view of Tom Wingo, a local high school coach with a wife and three young daughters. He loves his daughters, but he is also having marriage problems with his wife who reveals to him she is having an affair. This isn’t the main story of the novel, though. Tom’s history and how it affects his sister, Savannah who is in a mental hospital, and hallucinating is the main story. She is a poet in New York City and is a classic case of someone who comes to the big city wanting to escape small town life. Tom meets with her psychiatrist, Susan Lowestein. Lowenstein is a New Yorker through and through, while Tom is a southern boy. This could set up what seemed like a culture clash, but they are united in their desire to help Tom’s sister. Even more that that it seems. There is an instant attraction Tom has to Susan.

The history Tom tells Susan of the Wingo family is wide reaching and unusual. The Wingo family is a family who can’t seem to do anything normally. There’s the story of Tom’s grandmother who travelled the world, his Bible thumbing salesman of a grandfather, his mom who wants everything to appear good on the outside while everything is breaking apart and his father who is constantly trying to hit the big time instead of being a simple shrimp boatsman. These are classic American archetypes.

The Wingo siblings, Tom, Luke and Savannah, lived a rather unusual and in some ways, perfectly typical childhood. There is a rather shocking scene in their later teens of a brutal assault. The book goes back and forth between the adulthood and childhood of the Wingo family, and while there are lighter moments sprinkled throughout the book, there’s also a lot of traumas in there as well. Dysfunctional families are an area Conroy obviously knew well, and it shows in this book, and other books by him like his later novel “South of Broad”.

However, dysfunction and trauma aren’t the only things in Conroy’s books. There’s also a lot of charm. Conroy’s writing was known for being lush and that doesn’t change here. Conroy could really write. Stories of Tom being a football player, a road trip the kids took to Florida, and his sister trying on a dress when she became a older teenager are all charming.  Conroy writes lovingly of both the American south and New York City from an outsider’s point of view. Even though this is a long book, Conroy keeps the story going with multiple stories of the Wingo family and their various adventures. Later in the book, Luke becomes the focus and his defense of his hometown from developers trying to pay off the residents. While this could in the hands of a lesser writer feels tacked on, with Conroy, it doesn’t.

“The Prince of Tides” is well deserving of the critical acclaim it received back at it’s time of publication, and I was engrossed by the Wingo family and their various traumas and adventures. It’s a beautifully written novel and an adult one, as well. I understand why so many people love this book. It’s not only solid southern fiction, but also an honest reflection on childhood, adulthood, mental illness and the complications that come with family. No one seemed to explore this better than Pat Conroy did.

 

"Texas Ranger" Doesn't Crack The Case

 

I figured a book with the title “Texas Ranger” on the cover would be a fun read, and it wasn’t a bad read. It was a fun enough read, but the problem with this book is the central character, Texas Ranger Rory Yates isn’t that good a detective. After his ex-wife is murdered, Rory becomes obsessed with the idea that her boyfriend, Cal is the killer, and that’s it. He doesn’t really dig further than that. While the book did keep me turning pages, with its short chapters and somewhat compelling narrative, I still can’t recommend this book due to me not having any faith in the main character solving the murder.

Rory just sounds like a whiney high school kid, yet he’s in his mid-30s. The actual writing of the book isn’t bad, but the main character in insufferable and breaks a ton of laws taking this murder case into his own hands. Rory goes to the crime scene without permission, even at one point, driving from Texas to New Jersey to accuse Cal of the murder, as Cal is a truck driver.

The problem is Rory is a hothead. There’s also a subplot about Rory trying to decide between two women, Sara Beth who is his high school sweetheart and attractive local longue signer named Willow. There’s also another sub plot about Rory’s dad having cancer, but he only tells Rory and hides it from the rest of his family. The subplot about Rory’s various relationships becomes relevant with a twist at the end of the book. However, if I’m going to read a book about a guy solving an case, I want him to solve and not the events of the book. I want the guy I’m reading about to solve the case, and that’s the problem with “Texas Ranger”.

On a side note, this book did get me interested in why Texas has rangers while the rest of the country doesn’t. According to what I read, Texas Rangers have been around since 1835, and they still uphold this tradition. However, the idea was for these Rangers to defend then new republic of Texas from Native American and Mexican attacks. So, the actual root of Texas Rangers was racist sounding. I’m not trying to go all woke here in my review, but when you have a modern police force, why does Texas still need Rangers and why keep something with a racist history so alive in the first place? But I’m getting off subject.

“Cross” Is an Alright Alex Cross Novel

 

“Cross” is the 12^th book in the Alex Cross series, a series I’ve been reading on and off for years. You don’t have to read them in order, but you must know a bit about Alex Cross’s history. Alex Cross is a widower and it’s important to his character, and he’s a committed family man. Sometimes Cross comes off like such a saint, a bit too wholesome for a detective.  In this novel, Alex Cross is after the man he thinks might have killed his wife, a serial killer and rapist simply known as the Butcher by local police enforcement. The man is named Michael Sullivan, and is by the look of it from outsiders, a family man.

This isn’t a bad set up, and in the first half of the novel, you get an extended prologue recounting Cross’s life with his wife and her eventual murder. This isn’t poorly done. The book gets a little ridiculous when the killer/rapist goes to other parts of the world to carry out hired killings. It seems a bit over the top. He even takes photographs of his rape victims after he is done with them. One of the things Patterson tends to do is make his villains a so over the top, that it leads to you to question how this person can even be real. However, he also gives some reasoning in this novel to why Michael Sullivan is so evil, flashing back to his abusive father.

Alex Cross tends to have his usual drama, with his grandmother, Mama Nana, telling Cross he needs to quite the force to better look after his children. The book has its usual narration style, going back and forth from the third person point of view following the villain around, and Cross’s narration of things going on in his life. Cross quits the force for a while and starts to be a private practice therapist. Though, Cross being Cross, he does bend some ethical boundaries to help his patients.

One of the problems I did have with this book is for a book titled Cross, we do spend a lot more time following around the killer. It’s like Patterson isn’t sure Alex Cross is an interesting enough character to follow for the whole book. I eventually wanted to get back to Alex Cross and his search for his wife’s killer, with his partner, Sampson. All in all, not a bad page turner. It’s your typical Patterson novel with the short chapters and action-packed scenes. As with all Patterson’s, you’ll read it, enjoy it and forget it when you turn the last page.