Re-visiting Poker Face, and fast takes on some books

trying to watch and read "good stuff" when I take breaks from writing

The photo is of Charlie Cale, the human lie detector who is the protagonist of Poker Face. She’s talking to Good Buddy, her otherwise nameless and faceless new CB radio pal, who serves as a confidante, and it seems, spiritual guide.

( I was very happy to see the old trucker’s radio that got installed in Charlie’s car two episodes back now serves such an important purpose.)

Contract killers have stopped chasing Charlie, after she did a favour for the head of one of the mob families who wanted her dead.

She is no longer “running from” death. Now she has to sort out what kind of life to move towards. She’s literally on a quest, which is loads of fun.

Along the way, it seems, she will continue to stumble into situations in which a murder has happened. She’ll use her unique skills, inquisitive nature, and compassion (which I see as her best quality) to solve crimes and help people. All the while, she’s puzzling away on the bigger Mystery, which has to do with the purpose, meaning and trajectory of her own existence.

I’m enjoying this series. The actual crimes are over-the-top silly, the guest stars all play quirky characters, and the back drop somehow manages to be quintessentially American, without being the current American (Trumpian) dystopia.

It seems good for my writerly soul to take breaks, and watch or read something skillfully, even playfully done.

The last two books I read, and the one I’m currently into, all qualify.

Walter Mosely knows how to create lead characters, and build a great supporting cast around them. I have now dipped into all of his main series. This past week I read the third in the King Oliver books.

King Oliver is a private investigator. He is tasked by his grandmother to track down his estranged father, who is on the run from the law. Along the way he is helped by a friend who gives every indication of being a serial killer, and a former employee, a mercenary who is now dating the serial killer.

Mosley is such a skilled story weaver that these disturbing details about the supporting cast seem not only acceptable, but expedient, when situations arise in which there unique skill sets can serve a righteous cause.

I picked up enough bread crumbs along the way to deduce who the wrong-doers were, but as often happens when an interesting protagonist moves about in an evocative setting, it didn’t matter as much as going along for the journey.

In the novel Big Breath In John Straley also takes the reader for a ride.

It’s a standalone story about a marine biologist who used to do criminal investigations alongside her now-dead husband. Delphine Stockard is at the end of a long road of failed cancer treatments, and is within a week or two of death when she happens upon a case involving stolen babies, and a hardcore neo-nazi bikers gang.

The book is filled with reflections based on scientific observation of large sea-going mammals. I learned quite a bit about baleen, mink, and killer whales along the way.

Delphine the scientist is interested in the migratory patterns of these animals, their mating and child-rearing, their food-gathering and predatory behaviours, as well as their individual and group responses to external threats.

Delphine the criminal investigator travels across the Pacific Northwest on an ancient Harley Sportster, bequeathed to her by another cancer patient. She is tracking the movement of a human predator. She encounters human equivalents of all the behaviours she has studied in aquatic mammals.

Straley, who was once the poet laureate of Alaska shows us all the parallels, but does not belabor them.

Those last two books are both recent publications by American authors. This week I started in on The Red Power Murders, one of Thomas King’s DreadfulWater series. It’s been on my actual TBR (to be read) shelf for years.

Thomas King is perhaps my favourite living Canadian author. He is professor emeritus of the University of Guelph, where he taught English literature.

Thumps DreadfulWater is a former cop turned photographer who gets roped into an investigation by his friend, a small town sheriff. I’m not far enough into it to write about the story. I mention the book only because King is just so good at internal and external dialogue, I don’t actually care if Thumps ever solves anything. I just like hanging out with him.

Reading well-crafted crime fiction is aspirational behaviour for me. It reminds me of what I like about the genre, and what is possible when it’s done well.