This is the kind of book you read while wolfing down a pound of Oreos
followed by a pint of Haagen-Daz ice cream. It’s trash, pure and simple.

Cornwell writes a series of action thrillers based on Kay Scarpetta, a
forensic expert who at one time was the head of Virginia’s state coroners
office. She is highly gifted at her profession, incredibly intelligent and
personally attractive. Her sidekick, a detective named Marino, is also
highly gifted at his profession but is blue collar in his outlook, gross
personally and lacks the finesse that distinguishes Scarpetta. A perfect
foil. She also has an incredibly smart niece, Lucy, who at one time worked
for the CIA as a computer expert, flies helicopters and is now running a
private investigation agency. Kay had a lover, a profiler for the FBI named
Wesley Benton, but he was killed off in a gruesome scene some books back,
leaving Kay heartbroken and emotionally drained. She has left the coroner’s
office after a political fiasco and is now running her own private forensic
consulting agency while trying to put her life back together in the wake of
her lover’s death.

And one of the criminals she’s caught in the past, a psychopath with some
weird physical anomaly that makes him have body hair all over and has caused
facial deformities giving him the name Wolfman, is sitting on death row.
He’s the unloved son in a worldwide mafia type organization based in France
and he’s written Scarpetta offering to come clean on his family if she will
visit him in prison, and administer the drugs at his death sentence.

That’s the set up of the book. The action goes further, bringing (spoiler
here if you plan on reading it) Wesley back from the dead, having Lucy
commit a cold blooded murder described in technicolor detail and a whole
series of grisly murders that Kay has to solve fast to save the next victim,
who just might be herself.

As I said, trash pure and simple. And I am somewhat abashedly waiting for
the next one to come out in paperback.

These are the fourth and fifth books in the Mageworlds series, and I’m
reviewing them as a pair because in an odd way they go together.

The initial three books in the series tell the story of the Second
Magewar from the viewpoint of Beka Rosselin-Metadi, star-pilot and
Domina-in-waiting of the lost planet of Entibor.
The Gathering Flame takes place a generation earlier, in
the opening days of the First Magewar. As the book begins, the known
galaxy is divided into two regions: the Civilized Worlds, and the
Mageworlds. The Mages have begun to raid the planets of the Civilized
Worlds, which remain woefully disunited in the face of the threat.
And so Perada Rosselin, the Domina of Entibor, travels to the frontier
world of Innish-Kyl to seek a leader with a proven capability to unite
disparate forces to take the war to the Mages–privateer captain Jos
Metadi.

The book goes on to relate Perada’s and Jos’s efforts to unite the
Civilized Worlds, and ends with the destruction of Entibor by the Mages.
(That’s not a spoiler, by the way…this is a prequel, after all, and
you’ll notice that Beka is the Domina-in-waiting of Lost
Entibor.) On the way, we also see a number of scenes from their
respective childhoods.

The Long Hunt, by contrast, takes place a generation
after the Second Magewar, and concerns a number of adventures
had by Beka’s son Jens and his cousin Faral. The events of this book
seem oddly detached from those of the earlier book–but in fact they
are not. And what ties them together is the ghostly presence of one
Errec Ransome, star-pilot, adept, hero of the First Magewar, the
Breaker of Circles.

Ransome worked as a star-pilot as a young man, until his talent
manifested and he became an Adept on the planet Ilarna. So great
were his powers that he was sent to the master guildhouse on
Galcen for training. And shortly after his return to Ilarna, the
planet was attacked by the Mages. The other Adepts in his guildhouse
were slain; young Errec was taken captive.

Both Mages and Adepts can sense the currents of power and probability
that flow through the universe, but they have entirely different
philosophies and goals. Adepts do not manipulate the currents of
power, but try to ride them instead. Mages regard power as a garden
to be tended and brought into pleasing order. Not surprisingly,
they don’t get along.

Errec manages to escape, at great cost to himself, and makes his way
back to the Civilized Worlds, where he falls in with Jos Metadi.
Metadi wants to hunt Mages; Errec is happy to help Jos find them.
And therein hangs a tale. One can argue, in fact, that although
he’s rarely on stage all of the Mageworlds books to date are mostly
about Errec Ransome.

I can’t say more without spoiling things; suffice it to say that I
enjoyed both of these books immensely.

Last Friday was P.G. Wodehouse’s birthday. Brandywine Books has a tribute.

Yesterday delegates of the Episcopal Diocese of Rio Grande met to elect their next bishop, and they did not elect our rector. And yea, verily, there was great rejoicing at St. Luke’s of the Mountains!

I read a fair number of books while off at my conference, so expect a number of fresh reviews over the next few days. In the meantime, here’s something silly you should go look at.

Jaquandor’s baby son Quinn is home from the hospital and doing better than they had feared after a difficult birth and a raft of early problems. He’s not completely out of the woods yet, but things are looking promising. Jaq’s not what you’d call a religious man, so I gather, but y’all can pray for little Quinn anyway; the kid can use all the help he can get. (Jaq, thanks for keeping us posted!)

Day 2 of the conference was much like Day 1, except that it rained outside. For the purposes of this blog it was of interest mostly because of an observation I made about elevators. You know how, in elevators, everybody all turns so they are facing the same way?

It ain’t so.

All this week, and on other recent occasions, I’ve noticed a distinct tendency for people not to line up facing the same way. Instead, folks tend to stand against the wall, facing into the center of the elevator. I conjecture that although people frequently do act like sheep they don’t like to be caught at it, and have become self-conscious about all turning to face the same way.

Pay attention next time you’re in an elevator, and let me know if you notice the same thing.

Anyway, today was the last day of the conference, which reminds me that I should say something about the food. This year’s conference was sparsely attended, due mostly (I think) to insufficient publicity–but the contract with the hotel mandated a fixed price for the food. That meant that we got more meals, and more kinds of food (and better food) at each meal. I Am Not A Foodie, but I have to say that we ate well. Two of the afternoons they gave us chocolate brownies to die for, and the dinner last night was steak and lobster, with an open bar. I didn’t drink much (I never do), but I have to say I like Abita Amber, one of the local beers.

Taken all-in-all, and disregarding the food, I’d have to call this year’s conference a success. A lot of good discussion went on between (and, in some cases during) the various talks, and a lot of folks who couldn’t make it were able to sit in via a cobbled-together webcast.

But all good things must come to an end, and the conference wound down a little after lunch today. Dave and I fly out at 7AM tomorrow morning, so we had an afternoon and evening to enjoy New Orleans–and we worked at it. We started by walking down to the French Market, which Dave hadn’t seen yet, and then up Barracks St. to Kaboom Books, where I found a copy of Allan Sherman’s autobiography, A Gift of Laughter (we used to have a copy, but it’s long gone) and a book by Nevil Shute (cheers to you, Ian!).

The bookstore owner suggested that we check out the neighborhood next door, Fauborg Marigny; the Quarter was getting too expensive, she said, and a lot of folks had moved down to the Marigny, which was now a lot more “real” than most of the quarter. We took a turn in that direction, and concluded that “real” == “bohemian” == “a little cruddy and smelly, if picturesque”. Eschewing the Marigny, then, we walked all the way back to the west end of the Quarter, where we caught the Canal Street ferry. The ferry takes you across the Mississippi river to a part of the city called Algiers.

There wasn’t much in Algiers except some pleasant if slightly seedy neighborhoods; however, we passed a comfortable hour sitting outside a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant drinking/eating “snowballs”. A snowball is basically a snowcone in a big cup; the ice is shaved finer than your typical snowcone, but not nearly as finely as Hawaiian shaved ice. Then we caught the ferry back across the river and walked back along the riverfront to the French Market for dinner.

On the way, Dave was accosted by a black fellow with dreadlocks who said, “I bet I can tell you where you got those boots at.”

“Huh?”

“I bet I can tell you where you got those boots at.”

“Oh, no you can’t,” says Dave.

“I can. Shake on it for honesty?”

So Dave shakes hands with him, and he turns to me. “And you’ll shake on it as a witness, won’t you?”

Having been warned about this by Clif Flynt yesterday, I just said, “Oh, I’ll be a witness all right.”

So our man turns back to Dave. “Now I will tell you where you got those boots at. You got those boots at the end of your feet, resting on the ground here in New Orleans.”

Dave ended up paying him $20 for a bootshine, and we continued on to dinner.

Dave and I had gone to a fancy place called Sbisas on Monday night, Dave’s choice, so we’d agreed that Tuesday night we’d go somewhere where I could get a good cheeseburger. Instead, a group of us went to ZydeQue for cajun barbecue; and then the hotel provided fancy dinners both Wednesday and Thursday nights. So tonight we headed to Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville Cafe, right by the French Market, where I had reasonable expectations of getting a Cheeseburger in Paradise. And when we got there, things took an abrupt right turn. Instead of the cheeseburger, I ordered a local dish, red beans and rice with sausage and corn sticks, and Dave got the cheeseburger. I don’t know what came over me, unless it was the margarita, except that I ordered dinner before our waitress brought me the margarita. I dunno. But it was all quite good.

And then we lumbered back to the hotel, both weary and footsore and ready for some serious alone-time before getting up at some absurdly early hour tomorrow to get on the plane. And here we are, and tomorrow I fly home.

I came to New Orleans for the 11th Tcl/Tk Conference, of course, and yesterday morning it was time to buckle down to some serious conferencing–and it was some serious conferencing. The hotel gave us breakfast at 8 AM; they gave us lunch at noon; they gave us dinner at 6 PM; and with the exception of a few half-hour breaks we were busy at it from after breakfast until 10 PM. At least, I went back to my room at 10.

Consequently, I don’t have a whole lot to report. The most surprising thing, from my point of view, is the reception that Snit is getting this year. Snit first saw the light of day as a short “Work In Progress” talk at the 9th Tcl/Tk Conference two years ago in Vancouver, B.C. At last year’s conference Snit got a couple of public mentions, and I talked about it with a couple of people. This year Snit has been right up front, and several people have asked me what they could do to make Tcl faster so that Snit can be faster. More than that–one such optimization was discussed at the Snit Birds-of-a-Feather session last night, and Donal Fellows (on whom be praise) implemented, tested, and committed the optimization first thing this morning. (A Birds-of-a-Feather session, or “BOF”, is a block of time set aside for a bull session on some topic of interest to some subset of the attendees. The conference schedule usually has time scheduled for some number of BOFs; the subjects are determined as the conference goes on.) I requested and got a Snit BOF because there were several people who were disappointed that the Snit tutorial was cancelled, and quite a few people showed up for it.

It’s all very gratifying, of course. I told Dave that if all the attention goes to my head he has permission to clout me.

So at lunchtime yesterday I set out in search of an undistinguished
lunch, and Bookstar. I’m not a foodie, and I’m terribly afraid that
culinarily New Orleans is wasted on me. Besides, I didn’t see any point
in having a long, leisurely fancy meal when I could be out exploring.
Bookstar, according to my Google search, was just west of the Jax Brewery
Mall on Decatur, just where it joins with N. Peters. Thus, I hied myself
to the Jax Brewery, had a suitably undistinguished lunch, and then went
on the additional block where the counter guy at Tower Records assured me
that I was not going blind, that Bookstar was not hiding from me but had
been replaced by something else a year earlier.

‘Net 0, New Orleans 1.

I’d already done a lot of wandering up and down the western half of the
French Quarter; plus, there were two more book stores worth checking out
in the eastern half–one close to my hotel, and one in the northeast
corner. I didn’t think I’d make it that far; I sort of planned on going
just far enough east to hit the first one, and then back to the hotel.
But somehow I just kept walking, and I’m glad I did.

My first stop was at the French Market, which is just off Decatur in the
southeast corner of the Quarter. It’s a combined farmer’s
market and flea market, with many more alligator heads than I’m used to
seeing at your typical flea markets. I picked up a couple of
Preservation Hall Jazz Band CDs.

At the end of the French Market I turned left and headed up Barracks
Avenue to Kaboom books. And I have to say, that was the best part of the
walk, that and the walk back along Bourbon Street to my hotel. Both
stretches of road are mostly residential, with a very different flavor
than the commercial streets. I was fascinated to see that although most
of the houses looked pretty dingy with old battered doors, peeling paint,
crumbling brick, and so forth, the cars parked outside them were all
in good condition, and not inexpensive. I’d love to see inside some of
the houses, because I suspect that the seediness is a bit of an act.

The other thing I noticed on the way down Bourbon Street is that a lot of
the houses had what I can only call stoops…except that they were tiny.
When I hear the word “stoop” I think of the wide, tall steps in front of
New York brownstones. These stoops were about a yard wide, a yard deep,
and a yard tall, like little cubes with stairs in the middle.

I did swing by the final bookstore, Librarie Books on Chartres Street,
but by the time I got there I had a headache and a footache and I walked
right on by. All told, morning and afternoon I’d been walking for
four hours, and it was time for a nap.

Around 5:30 I wandered down to the conference area; the afternoon
tutorials had just let out and I chatted with a number of folks I knew.
And then at 6 a group of us headed off down Bourbon Street to a cajun
barbecue place called ZydeQue that I’d seen that morning.

I’d not been on this half of Bourbon Street before, and the contrast
with the pleasant residential area I’d walked through during the
afternoon was striking. But as this is a family blog, I think I won’t
go into details. But we had a good dinner at ZydeQue (I had a pulled
pork plate with spicy french fries and baked beans), and returned to the
hotel by way of Decatur Street. After that I hobnobbed with a few folks
and went to bed.

Wonder of wonders, I slept pretty well last night. The bed was comfy, the room was quiet, and the air was cool–good sleeping weather. I woke up a little before 8AM–which is to say, around 6AM Duquette Daylight Time, but as that’s when I usually wake up, and as I went to bed around 9PM Duquette Daylight Time I was feeling pretty good.

One quick shower later, I went down to breakfast. I had a biscuit and some bacon and such-like from the buffet, and a nice waitress named Olivia brought me a Diet Coke for my morning caffeine, and when I was done she brought me a nice little bill for $12.95. I am grateful that the conference is providing breakfast over the next three days.

After breakfast I goofed around on the ‘Net until 10AM, and then I went out to explore the French Quarter and look for bookstores. It was a hot, sunny, morning, and (pleasantly) the piled garbage was all gone; apparently I was correct about Columbus Day. I walked around the block to find Preservation Hall, which is a remarkably dingy place. I’d been warned about that and was expecting it, especially since so much of the French Quarter is remarkably dingy, but Preservation Hall takes the cake. Whatever they are preserving, it isn’t the Hall itself; from the outside it looks like an abandoned building from some ancient and long-forgotten industrial district. The French Quarter has dingy facades, bad sidewalks, old bent wrought-iron, peeling paint, doors that don’t close properly, but it seems alive. Preservation Hall looks dead.

The music starts at eight; if I get a chance (and if I can get in) I might go back this evening for a listen.

I walked down Toulouse Street to Decatur and then west to the Jax Brewery and the riverboat dock. I thought about taking a river cruise–about two hours, with jazz–sounded like fun, but it also sounded like $20. As I hadn’t yet seen a bookstore, I continued on my way.

My sources (which I shall never divulge) led me to believe that their might be a Bookstar located in the Jax Brewery Building, now a shopping mall. I poked around a little–high priced boutiques, mostly. No bookstore. I concluded that my sources must be out-of-date and continued on to Canal street, the western boundary of the Quarter, where my sources indicated that I might find a large B. Dalton. Eight blocks uptown, I gave up on the B. Dalton, (I did, however, find a statue of Ignatius Reilly, complete with earflaps, and I passed several hotdog carts shaped like giant hotdogs) and decided to just wander…and just wandering led me to Crescent City Books on Chartres Street. Typical used bookstore, a bit light on the genre fiction–but I did manage to find a couple of Peter Lovesey’s Inspector Cribb mysteries. I like Lovesey, but Cribb was out-of-print long before I discovered him. The owner gave me a map of other local bookstores. Notably, it didn’t include Bookstar or B. Dalton, and who can blaim them?

From there I went around the block to Beckham’s Book Store, a somewhat larger establishment, where I found another Inspector Cribb and a Robert Barnard I’d not seen before.

It was getting on toward noon by this time, so I decided to go back to my hotel and take a break before heading out for lunch. On the way, I stopped at Arcadian Books, directly across the street from the Bourbon Orleans. I didn’t stay long–it was too hot, too stuffy, and so crowded with books (many of them in French) that I had to turn sideways to get between the stacks (something which doesn’t help as much as it used to). Plus, it smelled rather like my grandfather’s house, which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself–homey, you know–only about five times stronger, which was a bit much.

After my long walk I really wanted a drink, so I stopped at the Coke machine by the pool. $2. Or it would have been $2, except the machine was broken. I went upstairs and got a can of Coke out of the mini-bar for $1.50.

It’s now 12:30, which means the morning tutorial should be just about over; I’m going to go downstairs and see if I can register. After that, I’m going to walk back over to the Jax Brewery for lunch; a web search indicated that there is indeed a Bookstar there, right where I was looking. How I missed it, I dunno.