Who Killed Jerusalem?

Who Killed Jerusalem? by George Albert Brown  576 pages

 

How could I resist a novel whose main characters are Ickey Jerusalem and Ded Smith? Especially with this elevator pitch: “A rollicking murder mystery based on William Blake’s characters & ideas updated to 1970s San Francisco.” You’re right; I couldn’t. But what made me think that I would, all of a sudden, understand and adore Blake since I could do neither of those things when I was in college twenty-five years ago? What I was thinking! Unless it was the characters’ names, the setting is one of my favorite cities and I won the book from Bookishfirst.com.

 

Here's what synopsis from Amazon:

 

In 1977, Ickey Jerusalem, San Francisco's golden-boy poet laureate, is found dead in a locked, first-class toilet on an arriving red-eye flight.

Ded Smith, a desperately unhappy, intelligent philistine with a highly developed philosophy to match, is called in to investigate the poet's death. Thus begins a series of hilarious encounters with the members of Jerusalem's coterie.

Ded soon realizes that to find out what happened, he must not only collect his usual detective's clues but also, despite his own poetically challenged outlook, get into the dead poet's mind. Fighting his way through blasphemous funerals, drug-induced dreams, poetry-charged love-making, offbeat philosophical discussions, and much, much more, he begins to piece together Jerusalem's seductive, all-encompassing metaphysics.

But by then, the attempts to kill Ded and the others have begun.

Before Ded's death-dodging luck runs out, will he be able to solve the case, and perhaps in the process, develop a new way of looking at the world that might allow him to replace his unhappiness with joy?

 

I loved Chapter One, in which author Brown drops us right into the middle of the action. Ickey died a gruesome death there in the plane’s bathroom.  But by Page 5, I was so lost I found myself reading words and wondering WTH?

 

And I will admit to reading every blast word of this 576-page tome and only understanding about a fifth of it. Afterwards, I jumped on Amazon and perused the review section. This is what I wanted the book to be, from a review by Maddogish:

 

The book is loosely based on William Blake's poetry, characters and ideas... fortunately you do not have to be familiar with any of Blake's work to love this book. If anything it opens the world of poetry in an accessible manner so that maybe more people will learn to love epic poetry and romantic era classics. The book centers on the mysterious death of San Francisco Poet Ickey Jerusalem and his wild and crazy group of cohorts. An insurance adjuster, Ded Smith who is known as Dr. Death for his uncanny ability to determine cause of death and solve murders, is on board the flight when Jerusalem is found dead. He is initially asked to help the police with interviewing the suspects as a friendly courtesy, but when it is discovered that Ickey took out a life insurance policy a month before his death, Ded is called in to rule if the case a suicide or murder in an official capacity. While he investigates each of the suspects and the crime itself, he finds himself caught up in a web of philosophy, intrigue and murder. The poet not only collected delightfully weird friends the stand out on the page; he had seemed to develop strange ideas on life and existence in general. I can honestly say the author had me guessing until the end who the killer was, while at the same time weaving so much philosophical information and poetry that I found my self in awe of how he tied all of it together. This is a truly magical and unique book that will take readers on an epic journey.

 

But all I got was a series of headaches, a lot of re-rereading, so much that it took almost a month for me to get through this novel. I'm going to put it back on the shelf and tackle it again in a few years. Best of luck to anyone who tries to decipher this novel. Who Killed Jerusalem? receives 2 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

The Bohemians

 The Bohemians by Jasmin Darznik 352 pages

Dorothea Lange. I wonder how many young people recognize her name or recognize the most famous photograph, “Migrant Mother” taken in 1936 during the Great Depression. Probably not that many in the thirty and younger crowd. I have to admit, while I know the name and the photograph, I knew little about the woman behind the camera. Author Daznik has written a compelling biographical fiction novel that allows readers to get to know Dorothea during her coming-of age as an artist in the 1920s.

Dorothea left her native Hoboken, New Jersey, when she as twenty-three years old for San Francisco. She arrived in a town, only twelve years from the 1906 earthquake, that celebrated and misfits.

One of the first things I learned about Dorothea was that, when she was seven years old, she suffered from polio which left her with a stunted leg and a noticeable limp. She loved photography because she felt that she could hide behind a camera; that no one would notice her.

When she first arrived, she was pickpocketed of all the money, some two hundred dollars, she had in the world. In a city where she knew no one, she was terrified. She spent her first night there on the street. One of the first people she was met was, in the book, called Caroline Lee. In reality, Caroline is referred to as “Ah-yee” or the “Chinese Mission Girl” in the historical data.

The two became quite close. Carolina introduced her to the Monkey Block, where all the artists lived. It once occupied the site of the Transamerica Building. Its pyramid-shaped is one of the city’s most iconic buildings. Back then, Monkey Block was “a four-story artists’ colony that housed some eight hundred writers, performers, and artists…and it was the heart of San Francisco’s bohemian area.” According to the Author’s Notes, that only Chinatown still stands---and looks much like it did in the 1920s.

“’The Bohemians’ is about a lost time and hidden history.” It is a story that resonates in today’s world---anti-immigration sentiments, corrupt politics, war, a world pandemic and racism.

I almost put this novel on my DNF list, but I kept seeing it on all the book sites. Granted I didn’t really care for the first 80 pages, but if you decide to read this novel, hang in there until then. Something grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. “The Bohemians” receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

No Comfort for the Lost: A Mystery of Old San Francisco

No Comfort for the Lost: A Mystery of Old San Francisco by Nancy Herrimann  384 pages

This is the first novel in the “A Mystery of Old San Francisco.” Author Herrimann introduces readers to his two main protagonists. First is Crimea veteran Celia Davies. She came to the States with her husband, Patrick, who promptly signed onto to a sailing vessel and has disappeared.

Celia, a recent immigrant from Great Britain, feels for the Chinese immigrants who often live in squalor. She opens a free clinic for the prostitutes, funded by her late uncle. She lives in the uncle’s house with her half-Chinese niece and an opinionated housekeeper. I believe the housekeeper was designed as comedic relief, but it missed the point.

When one of her patients, and a women Celia considered a friend, is found dumped in the Bay, Celia vows to find justice for Li Sha. She works, often to his dismay and in opposition of, with Detective Nicholas Greaves. Celia is more often than not, getting in way and continues to find herself in dangerous situations that could prove fatal to both herself and Nick.

No Comfort the Lost takes place in 1867. Herrimann does an excellent job in providing atmospheric details without cluttering the book with unimportant information. For me, the book lacked tension. I never felt that Celia and her entourage were in any real danger. I also felt that many of the situations were the same, just located in a different part of the city.

I did like how Herriman tackled immigration---most of San Francisco hated the Chinese and were ready to revolt, burning Chinatown and sending the foreigners packing. Give readers a look at how foreigners were viewed a hundred and fifty plus years ago.

I give No Comfort the Lost 3 out of 5 stars.

The Edge of Lost

The Edge of Lost by Kristine McMorris  352 pages

I picked up this book based on the cover. In the background is Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, the island prison in San Francisco Bay. I had just returned from the Bay area and was eager to hold onto its sights and sounds as long as I could.

The story opens on Alcatraz in 1937. Inmate 257 tends his greenhouse at the warden’s home.  He strains to hear the sounds of a search for a prison guard’s missing ten-year-old daughter. Alcatraz inmates were only known by their number. On the outside, Inmate 257 was known as Tommy Capello. However, that was not his real name.

The story shifts to Dublin in 1919. Shanley Keagan (Shan) is a twelve-year-old orphan living with an abusive uncle. Shan can sing, do impressions, and tell jokes. He becomes a regular in his uncle’s pub and other pubs around the city. When he discovers a letter from his departed mother, he realizes that his father is not dead. He is an American; Shan is elated. He’s also eager to find him and a make a new home. With his uncle forced out of business and failing health, the two decide to go to America.

The ship-ride over is harrowing. When the boat finally docks in New York, Shan is alone. He meets an Italian-American family returning from a protracted visit to Italy. The family adopts you Shan and he grows up as any young Italian-American boy would. The story follows Shan-now-Tommy over the next twenty years. Tommy and his new family become close. In an effort to help his brother Nick , when they are both adults, Tommy ends up convicted of murder and is transferred to Alcatraz.

I was disappointed that two-thirds of the story took place in New York. I was really looking forward to reading about Alcatraz during its heyday and feeling the cold Bay breeze gently brush against my cheeks as I immersed myself in the tale.

I enjoyed the story a lot; it was a quick and easy read, not one that I found easy to put down once I started.  But my disappointment in the story’s locale forces me to give it 4 out of 5 stars.

The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster

The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster by Scott Wilbanks
392 Pages

"Annabelle Aster doesn't bow to convention-not even that of space and time-which makes the 1890s Kansas wheat field that has appeared in her modern-day San Francisco garden easy to accept. Even more peculiar is Elsbeth, the truculent schoolmarm who sends Annie letters through the mysterious brass mailbox perched on the picket fence that now divides their two worlds.
Annie and Elsbeth's search for an explanation to the hiccup in the universe linking their homes leads to an unsettling discovery-and potential disaster for both of them. Together they must solve the mystery of what connects them before one of them is convicted of a murder that has yet to happen...and yet somehow already did."

 The book has all the elements it needs to be  a thrilling read but falls short.  Shallow characterization is probably the main reason that the book doesn't resonate with me.  I never get invested in the characters.  

Secondhand Souls

Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore
335 Pages

"It seems like only yesterday that Charlie Asher took on a very dirty job--collecting souls and keeping the Forces of Darkness at bay. The new gig came with the Big Book of the Dead and a host of other oddities: creatures under the streets, an evil trinity of ravenlike Celtic death goddesses, and one very bad Underworld dude attempting to conquer humanity. Along with a cohort of other oddballs, Charlie faced off against these denizens of darkness--and met his own end. But thanks to Audrey, his Buddhist-nun boo, his soul is still alive . . . inside a fourteen-inch-high body made from lunchmeat and spare animal parts. Waiting for Audrey to find him a suitable new body to play host, Charlie has squirreled himself away from everyone, including his adorable seven-year-old daughter, Sophie, who enjoys dressing up like a princess, playing with her glitter ponies, and--being the Luminatus--spouting off about her power over the Underworld and her dominion over Death. Just when Charlie and company thought the world was safe, some really freaky stuff hits San Francisco. People are dying, but their souls are not being collected. Someone--or something--is stealing them and no one knows where they are going, or why, but it has something to do with that big orange bridge. Then there's the Taser-wielding banshee keening about doom who's suddenly appeared while Sophie's guardian hellhounds, Alvin and Mohammed, have mysteriously vanished. Charlie is just as flummoxed as everyone else. To get to the bottom of this abomination, he and a motley crew of heroes will band together: the seven-foot-tall, two-hundred-and-seventy-five-pounds-of-lean-heartache Death Merchant Minty Fresh; the retired policeman-turned-bookseller Alphonse Rivera; the lunatic Emperor of San Francisco and his dogs, Bummer and Lazarus; Mike Sullivan, a bridge painter in love with a ghost; a gentle French-speaking janitor named Jean-Pierre Baptiste; and former Goth girl Lily Darquewillow Elventhing Severo, now a part-time suicide hotline counselor. With little Sophie babbling about the coming battle for the very soul of humankind, time is definitely not on their side. . . . Irresistibly zany, rich in humor, heart, and spirit, Secondhand Souls is vintage Christopher Moore. "

It was Moore's first book  of the Grim Reaper series "A Dirty Job" that made me read other books by him.  This entry continue the irrelevancy he embraced in the first book, with a little girl who is the Ultimate Death.  I enjoyed this novel much more than Moore's previous 2 books.  

Not on Fire but Burning

Not on Fire but Burning by Greg Hrbek
275 Pages

"Twenty-year-old Skyler saw the incident out her window: Some sort of metallic object hovering over the Golden Gate Bridge just before it collapsed and a mushroom cloud lifted above the city. Like everyone, she ran, but she couldn't outrun the radiation, with her last thoughts being of her beloved baby brother, Dorian, safe in her distant family home.

Flash forward to a post-incident America, where the country has been broken up into territories and Muslims have been herded onto the old Indian reservations in the west, even though no one has determined who set off the explosion that destroyed San Francisco. Twelve-year old Dorian dreams about killing Muslims and about his sister—even though Dorian's parents insist Skyler never existed. Are they still shell-shocked, trying to put the past behind them . . . or is something more sinister going on?

Meanwhile, across the street, Dorian's neighbor adopts a Muslim orphan from the territories. It will set off a series of increasingly terrifying incidents that will lead to either tragedy or redemption for Dorian, as he struggles to prove that his sister existed—and was killed by a terrorist attack."

This is a difficult book to classify and it will leave the reader thinking about the fabric of reality and life. Parts of the book are confusing and weak but overall the language is beautiful and the plot evolves into a climatic ending.

Hang Wire

Hang Wire by Adam Christopher, 373 pages


This is one of those books that has four or five story lines that slowly converge in a finale. That makes for a slow and somewhat confusing start. To make it worse there is also a time element to give us more historical events. I honestly almost put this book aside as I had made it through 80 pages or so and still had no idea what the plot was, just that it involved a serial killer or two.

For those that might be interested in the book that basic plot is as follows. A retired immortal is trying to live peacefully on Earth but an ancient evil presence keeps trying to destroy the world.
The book is set up to be a thriller/suspense but only somewhat delivers. There are too many "and this will destroy the world" events going on make it believable and honestly how many books end with "and then the world was destroyed"? So we know good will prevail which takes some of the excitement out of it.

A Barricade in Hell

A Barricade in Hell by Jaime Lee Moyer
331 Pages

Part paranormal, part mystery this series fall flat with its second entry.   Delia Martin is able to see ghosts and with the mentoring of Dora is learning how to control her ability and use it to assist her husband, Gabe Ryan, in his investigations with the San Francisco Police Department.  It is now 1917 and the spirit of a little girl is haunting Delia and Gabe.  At the same time Gabe is investigating a series of murders that have some occult clues at the scene. 

With a diluted focus on the characters, you don't really engage with the book or care what happens, which is a shame because the premise and setting have tremendous potential.

China Dolls

China Dolls by Lisa See  400 pages

 The story’s locale is 1938 San Francisco. Three young Chinese-American (or American-Chinese as I prefer since they were born in the USA) young women meet when they try out as dancers (or ponies) for the opening of the city’s glitzy new nightclub, Forbidden City.

Grace Lee is 17 years old. She arrive is the Bay Area with a few precious dollars, a whole lot of talent and a pair of dancing shoes She still bears the bruises from the savage beating her father gave her. She rather starve to death in an unknown town rather than go back home.

Helen Fong lives in Chinatown in her family’s compound. Her entire family, a traditional Chinese family, lives there. She works in her father’s laundry and any money she gets is given to her father for her brother’s education. Her traditional parents

Ruby Tom is a defiant young woman, ready to take on the world, with a secret she isn’t willing to share.

The girls become fast friends. They have two things in common: they want to break the stereotypical roles that their faces force then into and they want to be stars.  This is their story; the story of hard work, discrimination, love, and betrayal over the years of 1938 to 1948. They work the nightclub circuit, fall in love, and learn more about themselves, and the country they call home, than they ever dreamed possible.

The novel is broken into three section based on a quote from Buddha: the sun, the moon, and the truth.  Inside each section, Grace, Helen, and Ruby take turns telling their story. The problem was sometimes, most of the time the voices were indistinguishable. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great read, but since each girl’s story is told in first person, I had to keep looking back to remind myself who was talking. The best part of the novel was the backstory surrounding the nightclub-life.

I give China Dolls four out of five stars.

The Days of Anna Madrigal

The Days of Anna Madrigal, Armistad Maupin, 270 pages


         The Days of Anna Madrigal is the ninth and final installment of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City Series, which began in 1978.  Even if you have not read the aforementioned series before, this is still a lively book with a lot to offer the reader.  Maupin initially published Tales of the City in serialized form in The San Fransico Chronicle, one of the first examples of gay characters viewed as equals to their straight counterparts of its kind.
       This is a fast read that is humorous and endearing for the reader.  I would have to say that its target audience is probably for readers over the age of thirty, but still entertaining to say the least.

In The Shadow Of Blackbirds

In The Shadow Of Blackbirds by Cat Winters        387 pages

Set in San Diego during World War II, Mary Shelley has gone to stay with her aunt Eva in the midst of the Spanish Influenza outbreak.  People are dying all around them from the disease and they are worried about getting sick also.  Mary Shelley is also worried for her father, who has been arrested and for her friend, Stephen, who has gone overseas to fight.  She and Stephen weren’t officially courting, but they definitely loved each other and Mary Shelley is devastated when she finds out that Stephen has died.  Stephen’s brother, Julius, is a spiritual photographer.  He photographs people and loved ones who have died often appear in the background.  Stephen always claimed that Julius was a fraud but when Aunt Eva asks Mary Shelley to sit for Julius, Stephen appears in the background and soon after, Mary Shelley starts hearing Stephen’s voice.  She has never believed in ghosts but now she’s not so sure.  This is a good historical, supernatural story for teens.

Days of Anna Madigral

The Days of Anna Madrigal by Armistead Maupin  270 pages

 What it is about:  Is is supposedly the last book of a series that was originally published by The San Francisco Chronicle.  Extremely popular, Maupin created 8 novels prior to this one and spawned a mini-series on Showtime starring Laura Linney.  In this novel, the beloved characters are back as 92 year old Anna Madrigal remembers her early life at the Blue Moon brothel and various characters converge at the Burning Man.

Should you read it?  If you'd read the others you'll probably want to read this one as well.  I'll admit I read it just for this reason and was disappointed.  While some parts are good, there is never a big reunion of the main characters, something I was expecting, and many of the stories outside of Anna's are uninteresting.  This is one case where I felt the TV show was actually better than the book. I would definitely recommend seeing Showtime's Tales of the City.