Solitaire Book Club: Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. A small coffee shop has an unusual feature: if you sit in a certain chair, you can travel through time. But you can only stay in the coffee shop, anything you do in the past won't change anything in the future, and you had better finish your coffee before it gets cold or there will be dire consequences. Kawaguchi's novel is less about people using time travel to change fate and more about how people revisiting events can change their own emotional responses. If you have ever seen the Japanese series Midnight Diner, you will recognize the same understanding of human complexity and generosity toward human failings.

Special note: the first novel was originally a stage play - and the author has written three more books about the cafe.

Solitaire Book Club: The Man Who Was Thursday

The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. If you are familiar with the cult classic TV series The Prisoner, you know it was a smart, stylish, suspenseful spy saga for 16 episodes and then either a deeply symbolic story or an incoherent acid trip for its last installment.

The Man Who Was Thursday is a lot like that.

It starts out as a detective thriller, with threads of social commentary, as a police officer infiltrates a cabal of anarchists, and the story gets more and more outrageous until it seems to become farce, but then it takes a very dark turn, and finally is maddeningly opaque at the close of the narrative. No wonder Chesterton subtitled the book A Nightmare.

And yet, the story pulls the reader along without let-up -- I never considered not finishing it, as lost as I might be.

I am not sure why I added this to my list -- I heard someone say something about it somewhere, as I recall -- but I am glad I did.

Solitaire Book Club: Questland

Questland by Carrie Vaughn. With all due respect to Vaughn's sprightly prose, several times during reading Questland I felt like I was reading a Michael Crichton story - maybe because it takes place mostly on a billionaire's private island and maybe because its set pieces are so cinematic as to be part of a movie treatment rather than novel. None of that takes away from from the draw of Vaughn's protagonist - a damaged but resilient uber-nerd professor of popular culture - or the colorful team of mercenaries she is sent to assist with the retaking of a hijacked pleasure resort, a sort of Westworld for Dungeons and Dragons.

 

There's so much geeky fanservice that I wonder whether the book can reach beyond its nerdy niche, but here's also high-tech hijinks galore, just enough sex, and some surprising twists at the end to satisfy the more normcore reader.

I can't wait for the movie.

Solitaire Book Club: Viviana Valentine Gets Her Man

Viviana Valentine Gets Her Man by Emily J. Edwards. When a private investigator looking into the affairs of a diamond heiress disappears right after a badly beaten and comatose man is found in his office, it is up to his secretary to solve the crime, clear his name, and tie up all the loose ends the investigation has frayed. Not exactly a playfair mystery, but close enough, the novel has a multi-layered mystery and an interesting cast of characters. One quibble might be that the relationship between the P.I.s and the cops seems a little too pat; it seems unlikely for the police to accept the say-so of an untested detective and call together the suspects for a Nero-Wolfe-esque denouement in the office.

Edwards creates real sense of place in her depiction of 1950 New York, although the period vernacular can sometimes be laid on a bit to thick and verge on parody, to wit: "Just a small-potatoes gangster whose plans were messed up when a lady kicked him to the curb after he tried to give her a five-finger explanation during a minor dustup." Quite a mouthful, there.

Nonetheless, an enjoyable read, and I look forward to further adventures of Tommy Fortuna and Viviana Valentine - and it seems there's at least one more.