Flying Finish - Dick Francis

Bored-with-life protagonists are nothing new in Dick Francis books. But there is a different element to them every time which does preserve the uniqueness of every character.

Henry Grey, a Lord who has no fascination about his own title, works in a bloodstock agency, pushing around papers. A loner, cleanliness zealot, an amateur jockey, and a bloody good pilot: Henry is bored with his job and takes up a position as labour in a transport agency, responsible for transporting horses from one country to another. His job requires docking horses in planes, taking care of them in the journey, unloading them at their destination, and clearing customs in the destination country; all of which, as it turns, out, is a very methodical procedure.

The story progresses as Henry takes a job transfer from his desk job to the more menial horse handler job, gives a cold shoulder to his families demands of marrying into a respectful family and settling down as a “Earl” ought to, deals with his father’s death, flies planes, does favours for friends, and eventually falls in love. Nothing major seems to be happening in the story for a very, very large portion of the book. The Sin City type monologue tone of the book keeps you hooked. And considering Dick Francis books are no voluminous epics or anything, reading them, when there does not seem to be much action, is not as painful as it is with a lot of other books. Yes, there are a couple of people who have disappeared in these trips on which horses are transported, but Dick Francis underplays it so much that even though you know the story is precisely about that, you don’t expect much from it. And you do begin to want something to happen to break the boring monotony of Henry’s life.

And the book plunges headlong into the climax, with very little warning. And all of a sudden it’s all happening. A reader feels as dazed as Henry Grey as he tries to battle it out with the bad guys. And there is a gripping bit of writing in the end as Henry Grey finds himself flying a plane without any communication gear, in the thick of the night, lost in the European skies. And Dick Francis does some fantastic piece of narration about Henry Grey flying an airplane, something that I might not have been interested considering the technicalities involved. But Dick Francis keeps it sufficiently simple for the non-pilot readers, as I expect most are, and gets the complexity of Henry Grey’s predicament through to the reader.

And then, the book ends. The climax draws to as sudden an end as it began. There are five lines which explain away everything and the book ends. It was bizarre. The characters were great. The story was quite good. But the build up to the climax and the smoothing to the conclusion was just not there. I just turned over the last page and there was nothing more. That’s that!

Carry On, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse

Carry On, Jeeves is a set of ten short stories surrounding, well, Wooster and Jeeves. This is the book where Wodehouse gives the history of Jeeves entering Wooster’s employment. And a pretty expected explanation of Wooster’s never ending income. For a bit of a spoiler, it’s the hangover-buster drink of Jeeves that Wooster is swept of his feet with. While in the TV series of Wooster and Jeeves, Jeeves keeps the recipe a secret, in the book he spills it out without any hesitation.

The stories themselves are not as top grade as a full blown Jeeves novel. Some of the stories are pretty tame actually. And Jeeves, as Wooster points out time and again, is not at the top of his usual form. He does come to the aid of the crisis in most of the cases, but he takes an unusual amount of time, is frequently displeased with his master, and in a couple of cases actually just lets things go on! Now that’s not like good old Jeeves at all! And in one of the stories, one of Wooster’s friend really bites the dust, so to speak. Now what is a Wodehouse story without an overall happy ending? Well, it is still a happy ending, but not as happy as I’d want it to be.

The writing is funny as usual; which is the biggest selling point of any Wodehouse book for me. I just have to pick up a book, start reading, and all my worries melt away as those brilliantly phrased dialogues keep coming one after another. I once started out on a project of jotting down memorable quotes from Wodehouse books, and discovered that I was jotting down every alternate sentence. So I chucked it and started collecting his books.

So maybe story-wise this book is not up to the really high Wodehouse standards. But entertainment wise, it still is.

Desperation - Stephen King

I read a horror book after quite some time now. And if you don’t count Strangers and Cujo as horror books then I am hard pressed to remember the last horror book I have read.

And it was quite fun to read good old SK again. He really gets to you the way he writes… builds characters… and plays out their internal thoughts. Of all the fiction that I have read, SK does it the best.

About Desperation now. The book is about how a bunch of strangers are dragged and imprisoned in a town called Desperation by a lunatic, dangerous and a physically huge cop. The strangers include the Carver family: Kristie and David being the kids and Ellie and Ralph the parents. Then there is Peter and Mary. America’s greatest writer Johnny Marinville is amongst those present. And the Desperation local vet, Billingsley is one of the few in the town who seems to be alive. And Steve Ames lands in Desperation as well, looking for his boss, Johnny. And he brings along a hitch hiker, Cynthia, along with him.

The prisoners have no clue why they are being held. They have no clue if the cop is going to kill them the way he seems to have been doing with other town folk. And they have no clue as to why such relentless killing is going unchecked in this little town. And they have no clue how to escape.

The story for most part is over-the-top gross and violent. And while reckless death is the premise of the book, as a reader, even a Saw series appreciator like could not really digest all the blood. And just as I was getting sick of the book being all about the cop killing people with the only explanation of the prisoners being alive seeming to be that their escape would be the story, there is a twist. It comes sort of late, after a lengthy ramble about David discovering religion and Steve wanting to have sex with Cynthia. But the book doesn’t really get too boring till that point. So you will probably remain interested to reach plot point one.

That’s where the story gets interesting. And it builds to a nice climax. SK treads the path well. While the evil in the book is evil for the heck of it really, and the hero is well, quite random and not very smart in delivering the Desperation survivors, it is not outright dumb really. So I wouldn’t complain much about it. And the climax was thought out properly, so it does have a satisfying conclusion to the story with some negligible loose ends in between.

Desperation is no “The Shining”. But if are a horror fan who reads horror really few and far in between because there is so much else to read, you won’t have a lot of problems with this book. I certainly don’t have any regrets about reading this book.