Potboiler by Jesse Kellerman

This is another of the nominees for the Edgar for best novel.  I had a hard time with this one.  Here is a description of the main character that is dead on:

"We have a profile on you running back to the seventies.  You were emotionally needy, financially strapped, alternatively self-congratulatory and self-loathing, led to believe that your more successful friend held you to be the superior writer.  It was the perfect storm of ego and greed."   Potboiler
p 154.

My own notes said "Protagonist Pfefferkorn = prig.  Unappealing, self-absorbed.  Talentless literary snob."   It was torture to follow this character through 130 pages before the book suddenly took a turn from whine-fest to:  

Potboiler: A potboiler or pot-boiler is a low-quality novel, play, opera, film or other creative work whose main purpose was to pay for the creator's daily expenses—thus the imagery of "boil the pot" which means "to provide one's livelihood".

Pfefferkorn is caught up in a plot to destroy the politics of fictional (but real in the story) East and West Zlabia, home of a miserable people who exist on root vegetables.  From page 131 on, he IS the Hero of a Potboiler. At times I wondered if the shadowy government agencies that were fooling with him were just putting him through the paces so he could more effectively crank out the bestselling dross he hated. It all made no sense.

It also reminded me somehow of The Mouse that Roared and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.

The ending was just the kind of end priggish Pfefferkorn would have written for one of his own ideally existentially broken characters. 

All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley

The second Edgar Award Nominee in my pile is from Walter Mosely.  This is the fourth in a series starring Private Eye Leonid McGill.

Why would I ever plant false evidence on a poor woman already going to jail?  A woman distraught over her faithless lover and the child in her womb? I tried to remember the state of mind that allowed me to take those actions.  I knew the man that did these things intimately, had all his memories.  I could enumerate each and every sin he ever committed.  But try as I might I could not bring up the feeling inside that allowed me to do the things I'd done.

Of course men were after me.  Of course they wanted to destroy me.  Of course they did.
         All I did was Shoot My Man pp166-167



Leonid not only solves crimes, he sometimes has had a hand in facilitating them.  He has a long dark history and a deeply philosophical mind and tortured conscience.

One crime on his conscience is his tampering with evidence to help indict a woman named Zella Grisham of a crime she didn't commit.  All she was guilty of was shooting her boyfriend three times when she found him in bed with her best friend. 

Thanks to Leonid, she is sent to prison for being part of a fifty eight million dollar heist.  After eight years in prison, a lawyer helps get her released and Leonid is hired to meet her at the train station and make sure she is settled into a new life.

Zella's release unleashes a series of brutal killings and an attempt to murder Leonid in his home.  He can't figure out how the woman he knows to be innocent can be such a trigger.  He works as quickly as he can to untangle the mystery of the original heist and to find who is killing people now because of it.

Leonid has a life as complex as the crime he tries to solve.  He has been married for years to Katrina and they have no relationship at all except for the tenuous tie of their children. 

He has a mistress who he had a falling out with but now he is falling back in with her. 

Only one of his children is his own, the others are products of his wife's many affairs.  He has a hard relationship with his own son Dmitri, but has a deep and loving relationship with the others.

Twill stands out as a remarkable son and character.  He is slick and smart and streetwise.  He loves and respects Leonid more than anyone.  He is the one who works with Leonid on cases and who will eventually be his partner.  Unless he is killed in the dangerous world they live in.


Beautifully written, immediate prose.  Wonderful characters.  The reader is given much to think about as the story races along.  I'm going to go back and read the others in the series because I'd like to know how these folks got here from there.

Visit Walter Mosely's web site here.

The Long Fall 2009

Known to evil 2010

When the thrill is gone  2011

All I did was shoot my man 2012

The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye

One of the Edgar Nominees this year for best novel is Lyndsay Faye's The Gods of Gotham.

It is a story of the very first policemen in New York City, circa 1845.  Timothy Wilde is a newly appointed "copper star" thanks to connections his brother has in the Democratic Party.   He isn't sure he wants the job but he has just lost his savings and part of his face in a devastating fire.  The police are not welcome in the city and are seen as a threatening "standing army" by citizens who feel their freedoms are threatened.

Timothy patrols the sixth ward and on one of his first patrols a young girl runs into him in a blind panic.  She's covered with blood and tells a tale of a man in a black hood who kills young child prostitutes in some kind of horrific agreement with the house madam.

Nineteen bodies are found thanks to the frightened girl, all Irish in a time when thousands of new Irish immigrants are coming to New York.  The Irish are reviled by "natives" and it is a difficult task for Timothy to solve the murders without creating riots between the Irish and the established New Yorkers.

The city is fascinating as always, and the historical snapshot is seething with vice and hard living and hope.  I found the description of Harlem as a lovely country retreat from the evils of the city to charming.

Timothy is a great hero, principled, hard working, protective of children and anyone who is downtrodden.  His unrequited love certainly has a twist.

You will be pleased to find after reading The Gods of Gotham that a sequel is due out in August 2013 titled Seven for a Secret.   (Yes! it is an old Victoria Holt title!)

Visit Lindsay Faye's site for more on the background of the  early New York Police Department and the incredible patter of the New York Streets called "flash".

Reading the Edgar Nominees for Best Novel

I had a Cone of Shame Moment or two when I went to see how many Edgar Award Winners I've read.  I will be drummed out of the Mystery Reader's Corps if word gets out, I'm sure of it.

I decided I could begin to remedy that by reading the nominees for Best Novel.  The awards will be given out in April so no problems, right?

I requested all of the selections my library owned and got a small pile.  I liked the Gods of Gotham by Lindsey Faye and All I did was shoot my man by Walter Mosley almost equally (though they are very different) and so started reading those in tandem. 

I have in hand The Lost Ones by Ace Atkins and Potboiler by Jesse Kellerman.  I'm waiting for Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, Live by Night by Dennis Lehane and Sunset by Al Lamanda.

I need to read much faster.  They all sound really good though and I'm pleased to have such fine reading in store.   I will also get to keep my spot in the ranks of Mystery Readers, having these excellent nominees under my proverbial belt.