Last night I finished Isolation Ward by Joshua Spanogle. (The first half of this Rolling Review was posted on August 7^th.)

The pace picks up in the second half of the book, as our hero Nathaniel McCormick works out his romantic interests and starts to unravel the twisty plot, which is fun and unpredictable. But the pace never reached that racing out-of-control feeling you get with the best big beach books.

There are three main reasons for this, and one of them has nothing to do with the writing itself. The paperback jacket copy says, “A deadly epidemic. A terrifying race against time. A young doctor on the edge…” But there is no epidemic, and consequently no race against time, which may explain a little of the letdown I felt. After the first three illnesses which we learn about in Chapter One, no one else gets sick. The title , of course, also is misleading.

The second problem continues from the first half. The character of McCormick never settles down to become someone we can root for. He analyzes and over-analyzes the things that he says and that others say to him, which helps to develop his character, but at times he’s callow, at others wise, and often just stunningly foolish, as when he receives a videotape containing criminal evidence and he leaves it in his car instead of taking it to the police, or at least putting it back in the unimpeachably safe spot he got it from. Then when it’s stolen he it takes him an inordinate amount of time to realize that the thieves didn’t want the clothes they stole, they wanted the incriminating evidence.

The other problem that diffuses excitement in the second half is that no clear-cut villain comes to the fore. There are no less than seven major characters in the book who are involved in creating or covering up the crimes, five of which are focused on in the second half, and none of them becomes McCormick’s main opponent. So it’s our hero against… several other people. Even the climactic final scene has our hero against… three other people. The conflict is murky when it should be clearest.

I finished this and the suspense at the end was well-done. It’s good - it’s just one of those books that is not as good as the blurbs have made out.

Yesterday I surveyed the Great Pile, and I picked up Flawless, by Joshua Spanogle, probably because it has a striking cover, and because it was on top. I read the back cover, which had several great blurbs, as follows:

“A Smart, Fast-Paced Medical Thriller… Spanogle is a First-Rate Writer.” The Washington Post

“Spanogle delivers a real jolt of excitement” Publishers Weekly

“A plot that moves as rapidly as a lethal virus.” Entertainment Weekly.

I immediately put the book down, because all the blurbs were for his first book, Isolation Ward. So I found a copy of that and I read the first half last night and this morning.

It starts off with a punchy, documentary style description of the progression of the the illnesses of three women admitted to the hospital in Baltimore. It’s fast, it’s authoritative, and it’s just a bit scary. Two quick pages so you know something bad is going to happen, then we find out more about the sick people, and something about our narrator, Dr. Nathaniel McCormick, who works for the Centers for Disease Control and has come to Maryland because of the three scary illnesses.

It’s a really good start. But then I hit two problems.

First, it turns out McCormick is a smart-ass. At least that’s what he keeps telling us, and that’s what all the other characters keep telling him. It’s his bane in life to tell it the way he sees it, and then to get in trouble for it.

But I don’t see it. Case in point: he’s brought to a grave containing a murder victim. The cops are there, forensiccing all over the place. McCormick realizes they’re not protected against the invisible tiny deadly mystery killing thing, so he yells at them and tells them to all get the hell out of the grave and get covered up.

And the cops get mad at him. And he gets in trouble with his boss because of it. Because he may have saved their lives? Hmmm.

Now there are a few scenes where McCormick is actually being a jerk, but they are few and far between compared with the ones where all the characters just decide that he is. And honestly, I have never understood why I need to spend my entertainment minutes with a jerk, anyway.

Second problem. The book has slowed way down. There were the three people who got sick right away, and there was the guy in the grave on page 135, but in between it was just a bunch of interviews and everybody telling our guy he’s not nice. Now the plot has been manipulated so that because he’s a jerk, he’s conveniently being kicked out of the local investigation and being sent off to San Francisco to work on the only important lead they have. And where, incidentally, his two ex-girlfriends live, too.

So I have my doubts here, just short of the half-way mark. But… the writing is good. The sentences are interesting. The scenes are fast. And Spanogle really does have a great authoritative tone. So I’m going to finish it, and I’m looking forward to the second half, because I reckon that’s when the plot will start moving “as rapidly as a lethal virus.”

This is the third and final Rolling Review of Vinnie’s Head. I’ve now finished this book. (The previous portions of this review were posted on July 31^st and 29^th.)

Sometimes with this kind of book the writer has a hard time with the end. So many questions have been raised, and poor Johnnie has answers to almost none of them through the first 200 pages: in fact the book just got more complicated as it went along. It’s difficult to have multiple plot strands wrap up in the same place and time without messing up the pacing of some of them.

Not only that, but sometimes a writer has to bear down to get all this done, and it’s difficult to maintain a light touch with dialog and incident.I was hoping that Lecard could at least keep the wit in place, and sustain disbelief long enough to get through to the end. But I underestimated him again.

Lecard finishes the book off with a bang. All the plot strands he opened up are closed off in a Rowlingesque manner, it just gets funnier, and there is a killer of a plot reverse that is wholly unexpected and extremely satisfying

I still have a small reservation about one character whose interactions with the rest of the crew seem a little unbelievable, but at the same time this character brings in so many laughs and is so integral to the book’s finish that it’s hardly worth mentioning.

Do what you need to do to read this book. Buy it now, or put it on your list for the BookBringer in December, or remember to buy the paperback next year. But don’t miss it!

Vinnie’s Head, by Marc Lecard. St. Martin’s Minotaur, 2007

I’ve now read about 225 pages and have 100 to go. Vinnie’s Head by Marc Lecard continues to delight me with its humor and fun. (The first part of this Rolling Review was posted on July 29th.)

Now that I’ve read most of it I realize the book is well-named. Vinnie’s Head is not just a cheap grotesque image thrown away for a laugh: it’s the driving MacGuffin for the whole book. (Of course the original idea of the MacGuffin, courtesy of Hitchcock was that the MacGuffin itself wasn’t important, and I don’t yet know whether that’s true about Vinnie’s poor head or not.)

Lecard has done two difficult and impressive things here.

1) He’s sustaining interest in a loser character for a long time. There are only 100 pages left, and Johnnie still hasn’t had one sensible idea, nor has he done one thing that you or I would do in his position. He doesn’t even stand up for himself.

Early on, Johnnie’s lawyer introduces him as LoDouchebag (instead of LoDuco) One of the people he’s meeting can’t believe it. “That’s what he calls you? … And you let him?” I’m dying to find out whether he still lets people call him that at the end or not.

2) He’s suspending my disbelief in (what seems to be at this time) an unlikely plot. I don’t just mean the unlikely events and fortuitous escapes Johnnie has had already, and there have been a few of those. The whole plot is actually ridiculous, like something from Wodehouse or Westlake. Yet I’m carried along, as if floating on a cloud, giddily refusing to look down at what’s supporting me. And even knowing that and analyzing it, I don’t care. I’m having too much damn fun to worry about it.

How is Lecard doing it? With fresh, rings-true dialogue, lots of action, and many reverses in the plot. That plot, by the way, is extremely complex, without being oppressive. I’m happily confused without being frustrated.

My only quibble so far is with one recently-introduced character who has his own private reasons for wanting the head. This guy, his motives, and Johnnie’s reaction to him, I’m not believing in so much. But it’s a small point, and I may be proven wrong yet.

I can’t wait to see if the final unravelling lives up to the rest of the book.

Vinnie’s Head, by Marc Lecard. St. Martin’s Minotaur, 2007

I’ve read the first four chapter’s of Vinnie’s Head, and I could not be more impressed. This is Lecard’s first novel, and if the rest of the book is as good as this, the man is going to be a STAR.

I almost didn’t crack the book open. They got the cover exactly right. Bright aquamarine cover – a closer looks shows that it’s an underwater scene, with bubbles, dancing fishing lures, and a head, presumably Vinnie’s.

I assumed it was another New Jersey-based story of a lovable screwup making bad decisions on the fringes of the Mafia, just getting by and getting into trouble over his head, with a dash of humor and pinch of the grotesque, and I thought, “I don’t want to read this.”

Then I scanned the blurbs, and it looked like more bad news: on the front a single blurb from a writer, and on the back four more blurbs by other writers at the top of the page. Now you never know with blurbs from other writers: they could be legitimate praise, or they could be from writers afraid to say no. I was on the verge of tossing the book back on the This Will Never Be Read pile, when I read the last two blurbs: strong praise from Library Journal, and a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Of course reviewers aren’t always right, but LJ and PW are pretty darn good, and when they agree it almost always means something.

So I picked it up and started reading, and after what seemed like about three minutes I’d read 75 pages. I had to force myself to stop reading so I could make this a Rolling Review.

I was right about everything, except two things: it’s in Long Island, not New Jersey, and I really do want to read it.

So far it’s funny as hell, and our hero Johnnie LoDuco really is a lovable loser. What makes it beautiful is he knows he’s a loser, and every time he makes a decision it’s with a sort of helpless acquiescence, as if he knows he’s doing the wrong thing but still can’t imagine doing anything else.

I wonder why they waited till the bottom of the back cover to put the LJ and PW quotes. I was going to say that it was a bad decision, but I picked it up and started reading it, didn’t I? On the strength of what I’ve read so far, so should you. More to come.