Haftmann's Rules a dark, bumpy PI novel

Haftmann’s Rules

by Robert White

ISBN: 9780982945971

a 2011 release from Grand

Mal Press, TP 236 pages

Thomas Haftmann is an ex homicide cop living in Ohio. Now he’s a private investigator pretty near the end of his profession. Clients are few and he’s struggling with some major physical and mental problems. Haftmann is not your typical upstanding white knight of a PI. He confronts his drinking problem by hanging out in sleazy bars, has sex with women he finds on the Internet, and abuses the good will of the few friends he still retains.

He’s bright and the novel is littered with his political and philosophical ruminations. His intimacy quotient is low, as his ex-wife would quickly testify. Somewhere in his core, however, is a moral kernel that leads him to put his sanity and his life on the line to try to tease out an unusual serial killer operating in the sleaziest sections of Boston. His entry into this dark and dangerous segment of society, in a town where he has no resources at all, is a search for his client’s missing daughter who may be stripping in one of Boston’s unsavory clubs.

The novel is well-written, coherent and fast-paced. Make no mistake it is very dark, violent and pretty explicit in several instances. It is a very modern story in that much of the motivations on the dark side are rooted in some of the nastier beliefs of today. The novel takes some effort to get into but somehow, for this reader at least, Thomas Haftmann, in spite of his bizarre rules, grabbed me by the collar and held my interest until the ride was finished.

AMAZING MUSICAL EXPERIENCE

The Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, in its eleventh year, once again provided a marvelous forum for an unusual music experience. Six young composers presented recent works.  Three received their world premieres, the others first performances by a major orchestra.

It was an amazing evening at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. Michael Holloway’s “Theta Beta Theta” evoked heart and brain rhythms, with oriental underpinings, particularly in the center section.

Andreia Pinto-Correia’s “Xantara” certainly evoked misty shores and images of mysterious Moorish castles floating above swirling fog banks. There was no evidence of her jazz background in the piece, but there was a sense of directional loss at times.

Hannah Lash offered up a piece in two parts, “God Music Bug Music,” a polyrhythmic brass-heavy clash of subtle tonal changes and an incessant driving pulse.

Shen Yiwen, from Shanghai provided the most American-sounding piece. His “First Orchestral Essay” provided immediate connections to Aaron Copeland and was the most melodic work of the evening.

Adrian Knight’s “Manchester,”  brought to mind a series of musical interludes from the West Coast, called  Music of the Spheres. Composer Brian Eno had a persistent presence in that series. This was a quiet, peaceful, contemplative work.

The evening ended with Brian Ciach’s strange and sometimes wonderful offering called “Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities.” He had a very specific point in this piece.  It was written for the Mutter Museum of Medical Oddities, located in Philadelphia. A number of non-traditional sound producers were utilized, including sundering heads of lettuce, and talking dolls.

Fred Child of NPR handled the host duties, introducing and interviewing each of the composers, Osmo Vanska led the brilliant orchestra. The Institute and this program of “Future Classics,” was under the able direction of Aaron Jay Kernis. The composers were warmly received. I think the audience recognized the enormous efforts these compositions represented, as well as considerable effort from the orchestra. Altogether, this was an enthralling, sometimes difficult but really interesting evening.

Interesting protagonist, exotic setting enhance fine crime novel

Assignment:Nepal      

By J.S. Squires

ASIN: B005VFMK6Q

2011 E-book release from

Echelon Press

Readers of this review should be aware that this press has published some of my crime fiction and I am acquainted with the publisher, though not with the two authors writing under a single pseudonym.

The protagonist is named Irene Adler. Not the woman who beat Sherlock Holmes at his own game, her modern namesake, a Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology at Boston University. Adler has a demi-cynical outlook on life and it turns out she supplements her income by playing poker; specifically Texas Holdem in the gambling parlors around the New England area. Irene Adler is a bright, smart, single woman, an endearing protagonist.

Her former advisor, a fellow faculty member, prevails on Ms. Adler to travel to Nepal to inquire into the life and times of a former fellow undergraduate student of Irene’s, a Margot Smith, who’s in Nepal doing research on one of that country’s goddesses, one Chwwaassa Dyo. The problem is that there appears to something awry with Margot and her physician husband and Adler is supposed to sort things out. What needs sorting turns out to be only part of the story. Irene agrees to go half-way around the world to see a woman she barely knows. From this most unlikely beginning, the plot drives poor Adler into one complexity after another.

Her assignment clearly has unstated dimensions about which neither we readers nor Irene Adler herself are clear. Now, Nepal is an exotic nation from which assaults on Mount Everest are mounted and the ubiquitous Sherpa play an important part, as do digital cameras, former Cold War adversaries, political unrest in the country, and a whole series of meddlesome individuals who seem to still show up on the fringes of the former English Empire.

The novel winds its way through a variety of conflicts among wanderers, a boorish American tourist couple, and murder and bomb blasts. At times the narrative suffers from a pedestrian pace and some lapses of editing discipline over the point of view. Still, the story is interesting, Irene is definitely a character to build a series around,  the exotic setting in and around Katmandu is, well, exotic, and a satisfactory conclusion is fashioned.

Author Dennis Palumbo has fashioned a dark, twisted tale of political chicanery of the finest order.  Dan Rinaldi, a Pittsburgh-based psychologist, is on call to the city police department. He helps interact with citizens who have experienced severe trauma, but may have vital information that will help the police solve the latest affront to society.  When the story opens, a bank robbery has gone terribly wrong.  Death has occurred and one of the robbers has apparently escaped.  The only eyewitness insight into the  sequence of events and then the current situation when Rinaldi arrives at the bank, seems to be the witness of a traumatized woman named Treva Williams.

At the request of detective Eleanor Lowery, Rinaldi does a curb-side interview with Williams, sitting on the curb in Pittsburgh’s blazing summer heat. He then then joins the SWAT team inside the bank.  By the time readers join the major characters in the bank, we are already tangled in a cleverly constructed plot with more than the usual twists and surprises. Each of the characters is nicely identified and each is maintained in a consistent manner, which adds immeasurably to the enjoyment of the novel.

 There are more than a few twists and cliff hangers in this  novel, as well as a couple  of subplots that have little to do with the main thrust of the story, other than to fill out the characters of some of the characters.  All in all, a nicely packaged story with enough bumps and twists to satisfy the most demanding reader. I expect to see more strong crime fiction from this author.

FINE, EMOTIONALLY CHALLENGING NOVEL

The Lost Women of Lost Lake 

by Ellen Hart

ISBN: 978-0-312-61477-5

2011 hardcover release from

Minotaur Books, 320 pgs.

It is interesting how these things come in multiples. Libby Hellmann recently released a novel with its genesis in the riotous summer and fall of 1968. The Minnesota History Center has just opened an elaborate exhibit focused on 1968, and the History Theater in Saint Paul has mounted an original play, “1968, The year That Rocked The World.” And now here we have a powerful, emotionally intense novel by that excellent Minneapolis writer, Ellen Hart. It is a story of two women who are unable to divorce themselves from that same year, 1968 and the decisions and actions they took then.

The story is another event in the evolving saga of Minneapolis restaurateur, Jane Lawless. This time she and bosom chum Cordelia take what they intend to be a short vacation trip into Minnesota’s benign northern wilderness to the Lawless family lodge on a lake north of the Twin Cities. It’s a common enough activity, and bucolic time on placid water amid peaceful forests is expected to provide calm and rejuvenation. Jane is trying to decide whether she can commit to working with a close friend toward becoming a professional private investigator.

The peaceful appearing forest, like so many lives, conceals dark doings and Jane is drawn into a maelstrom of murder, revenge, drugs and double dealing. The multiple threads of this complex story intersect, divide, and then reweave. At times the action is high with tension, the pace frantic. At other times, the story becomes thoughtful, calm, like the smooth waters of the lake itself, allowing readers moments to reflect, perhaps, on their own lives and paths not taken. The women of lost lake, must, in the end, decide for themselves, and take for themselves the heart-rending consequences of their lives.