The Cat Who Looks Like A Pirate

I have not written a book review in years. Below is my review on J.A. Jance's "Edge of Evil", submitted to Amazon today.

The review is titled: "The Cat Who Looks like a Pirate."
My nom de plume is: Gussie Fink-Nottle.

Click this link to see the review at Amazon:

The Cat Who Looks Like a Pirate
If you like, you may comment here on this blog or at the Amazon site.

"la vie ressemble plus souvent à un roman
qu'un roman ne ressemble à la vie"*
-- George Sand (1833)
A far cry from the societal and family norms once treasured and embodied in Wilder's Our Town, the stage atmosphere of the Edge of Evil is the social fabric of today's America. The life mobile once reverently held and symmetrically balanced with the three strands of daily living, love-marriage, and death-eternity, are slowly being severed. Our lopsided national character is now steeped in anxieties and breakups. The ties holding normalcy together are fraying and weakening. It is in this backdrop we find Ali Reynolds' life center teeters on the verge of collapsing.

Already feeling raw from a wrongful termination as a Los Angeles television news personality, Ali Reynolds receives nary a solaced embrace nor soothing lips from network executive and husband. Wilting under his accusing and narcissistic rants, emptiness drowns her. When hearing her long time friend is missing, it's the clarion call for Ali to return to the succor of her childhood home for a respite, and learn the where about of Reenee Bernard. So the forty-something Reynolds and her heart, accompanying by college senior son, jettisons the hubris of a cast television persona and leaves southern California behind.

Sedona, Arizona, named after the wife of settler and postmaster Carl Schnebly. The hub of the Red Rock Country, Sedona radiates majestic red buttes, lush greenery, and wilderness expanse. Fused in with purported healing cosmic vortices, the intrinsic enticement of this landscape is certified. The aura of these natural phenomena propagates along the rugged serpentine Schnebly Hill Road as well.

Liken to the horizontal stroke of the letter "H", Schnebly Hill Road had once been a vital road for ferrying goods between Sedona on the west, and Flagstaff east. This eleven-mile stretch of road hugs and slithers out the Mogollon Rim above Sedona; it is an old, rugged, and narrow cattle trail which accommodates all mortal motives with marked indifference. Whether it is he who wants to channel the healing energy vortex whirling at the Bear Wallow Canyon, or that she intends on doing a dead-on Thelma and Louise stunt six thousand feet above the town, the road asks no questions and gives no answers. It is what it is.

Upon the searchers finding Renee's mangled body down in a canyon below Schnebly Hill Road, on this deed of dreadful note, the tale begins. Ali Reynolds, the now ex-investigative reporter, sets about to learn the reasons to the "it is what it is" cause of death to her friend: suicide.

Although this novel is tagged as a Mystery-Thriller, the whodunit theme elicits a far more stronger and deeper antiphonal pathos than other works in the genre. We attribute this verisimilar characterization to the author's own life journey. In her formative years as a writer, Ms. Jance was subjected to much academic chastisements and life's vicissitudes. These rebukes later served to discipline and anchor her resolve to become the author she is today; in her works, we find the quality of mercy is not strained. We see, for example, the tender pity Jance ascribes to Sam and her humans.

Samantha the cat could never be considered as the feline partner to Qwilleran in a Lilian Jackson Braun's caper. A cat with a ragged torn ear and a missing eye, at best, might be thought of as a veteran of some territorial altercation. Or she could be the recipient of the affliction owing to someone's cruel pleasure. Whatever the history behind Sam's disfigurement, she now has a home. The deceased's surviving children love her, and she them. A mutual solace. A testimony to resiliency and hopes rekindled. This tabby would later become a new strand in Ali Reynold's yet to be reconstituted mobile, the healing vortices notwithstanding.

To find answers to her life's persistent questions à la devise de Guy Noir, Ali forays into the Internet. It is here in this vast digital-age nebula, we see the transforming of an aloof, coiffured hair, and manicured reporter, into a softer heart and more susceptible spirit. Yet paradoxically, she is holding on to what is becoming an anachronism. Handwritten letters. She doubts the veracity of Reenee's typewritten suicide note. To Ali, it counters the victim's penchant for pen and ink.

By cleverly juxtaposing the two art forms of the printed word, the former English teacher Ms. Jance conveys a subtext within the story. That is, writing, however rendered, is an intrinsic and indispensable portion of being human. We all subscribe to the philosopher-dustman Alfred P. Doolittle's uttering, 'I'm willing to tell you. I'm wanting to tell you. I'm waiting to tell you.' Except in writing, once the 'Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.'

One final thought. I have a question to which Guy Noir might not have an answer. Perhaps Ms. Jance would tell us. Why would anyone wants to drive a Lexus on Schnebly Hill Road, and on a blistery snowy day?

*"life resembles more often to a novel than a novel is to life"