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Sock is, at its heart, a mys­tery novel; a woman is mur­dered and the pro­tag­o­nist, a police­man, sets out to find her killer. But, as one might expect from the self-described “larger, louder half” of Penn & Teller, this is far from your stan­dard detec­tive novel. The story is nar­rated by Dickie, the main character’s sock mon­key. Dickie’s owner, who we only know as ‘the Lit­tle Fool’ for most of the book, is a cop, but he’s not a detec­tive. He’s a police diver who spends most of his time pulling bod­ies out of New York’s East River; he doesn’t nor­mally solve cases. But, when one of the bod­ies he retrieves turns out to be that of Nell, one of his ex-girlfriends, the Lit­tle Fool decides to try his hand at detec­tive work.

He has to do so in a com­pletely unof­fi­cial capac­ity, of course, and he enlists the help of Tommy, Nell’s best friend and pedi­curist. The unlikely part­ners spend all their free time try­ing to recon­struct Nell’s last days and fig­ure out who might have mur­dered her. They get a break in the form of a note from the killer. But, as the Lit­tle Fool finds the note pinned to another body he pulls out of the river, it also means that they’re deal­ing with a dan­ger­ous psy­chopath who will almost cer­tainly kill again.

Penn’s sock mon­key nar­ra­tor cer­tainly pro­vides an inter­est­ing twist, but I found Dickie’s stream-of-consciousness nar­ra­tive style to be some­what dis­tract­ing. I could get used to it after awhile, but it made for a slow start every time I picked up the book. Also, although Penn has a fairly inter­est­ing story to tell, he does it in a very vul­gar man­ner. I’m not eas­ily offended, but I found the sheer quan­tity of curs­ing and descrip­tions of sex acts to be a bit much. I read some of this book while trav­el­ing, and at times I felt the need to cover chap­ter titles so that peo­ple around me wouldn’t see them. I can’t really rec­om­mend this book; I’d say that your time would be much bet­ter spent watch­ing some of Penn & Teller’s won­der­ful magic or their in-your-face skep­tic series “Bull­shit!” on Showtime.

In The Chase, Clive Cus­sler for the first time strays from his usual nau­ti­cal focus (although the book’s open­ing scene does take place on a sal­vage boat) and his inter­wo­ven casts of exist­ing char­ac­ters. His new pro­tag­o­nist, Isaac Bell, does take seom cues from the Dirk Pitt/Kurt Austin mold, but he also seems to take some inspi­ra­tion from James West (of The Wild Wild West as well. Bell is a young man from a wealthy fam­ily who, just after the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, is the best detec­tive at the pri­vate Van Dorn agency (mod­elled after the Pinker­ton National Detec­tive Agency.

Bell is called to Den­ver to help in the inves­ti­ga­tion of a par­tic­u­larly bru­tal bank rob­ber known only as the Butcher Ban­dit. The Ban­dit hits banks when they have large amounts of cash on hand, kills all wit­nesses, and always man­ages to dis­ap­pear com­pletely. Bell and his fel­low Van Dorn agents hunt the Butcher Ban­dit and his beau­ti­ful accom­plice through­out the west­ern U.S., involv­ing a train vs. car race through Cal­i­for­nia and cul­mi­nat­ing in a steam loco­mo­tive chase over the Sier­ras, through Nevada and Idaho, and into Montana.

I enjoyed this book more than Cussler’s last few nov­els. It’s fresh sub­ject mat­ter for him, and The Chase has no co-author. I hope that he’ll Write more Isaac Bell nov­els and that he’ll do them him­self, rather than farm­ing them out to his grow­ing sta­ble of collaborators.

Fool is Christo­pher Moore’s retelling of King Lear, told from the per­spec­tive of — who else — Lear’s court jester. The jester, who Moore names Pocket, may be a fool by trade, but he is cer­tainly no dunce. He has free run of the cas­tle, friends in both high and low places, and with Lear’s pro­tec­tion is free to make fun of who­ever he wants. He is also very close to Lear’s daugh­ters Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia. Pocket is most loyal to Lear and Cordelia, and through­out Moore’s take on the tale, it is his behind-the-scenes schem­ing that serves to pro­tect their inter­ests and lives.

Fool opens with a tongue-in-cheek warn­ing from Moore that “This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gra­tu­itous shag­ging, mur­der, spank­ing, maim­ing, trea­son, and hereto­fore unex­plored heights of vul­gar­ity and pro­fan­ity…” In other words, Shake­speare prob­a­bly would’ve loved it. Moore acknowl­edges that tak­ing on one of the most famous plays by the best known Eng­lish writer of all time was a daunt­ing task. But, then again, this is from the same man who wrote a novel about the lost years in the life of Jesus (and his best friend Biff). He retains basi­cally all of Lear’s com­plex plot, although he of course makes Pocket and his machi­na­tions more inte­gral to that plot. The end­ing is dif­fer­ent, though — you can’t have a comic novel with a truly tragic fin­ish. Moore also brings in dia­log and char­ac­ters from other of the Bard’s plays, most notably the trio of witches from Mac­beth.

I’ve read all of Christo­pher Moore’s nov­els, and I think that Fool is one of his best. I read most of the book dur­ing a stint in a pit orches­tra (coin­ci­den­tally for a pro­duc­tion of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Yeomen of the Guard, which also fea­tures a jester), and I had to be very care­ful not to laugh out loud at inop­por­tune moments. A famil­iar­ity with King Lear is help­ful but by no means a require­ment for read­ing Fool; read­ing the syn­op­sis on Wikipedia is prob­a­bly suf­fi­cient prepa­ra­tion. I can’t rec­om­mend Moore’s writ­ing highly enough, for those read­ers who enjoy a twisted sense of humor. Start with Fool, Lamb, or Blood­suck­ing Fiends: A Love Story, then check out some of his other novels.

The Bro­ken Win­dow pits Lin­coln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs against a mys­te­ri­ous and devi­ous crim­i­nal whose M.O. is to care­fully frame inno­cent peo­ple for his thefts and mur­ders. His frame jobs are so per­fect that he has gone com­pletely unde­tected for years. His exis­tence only comes to light when Rhyme real­izes that the evi­dence in a mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion is too per­fect. Soon, the police find a num­ber of past cases that bear the same signs, in which inno­cent peo­ple may very well have been convicted.

With very lit­tle to go on, Rhyme et. al. set about learn­ing more about their quarry. But, he always seems to be a cou­ple of steps ahead of them; the closer they get, the more he seems to know about them and their plans. It quickly becomes appar­ent that this crim­i­nal can some­how find out any­thing about any­one — and in his hands, knowl­edge is cer­tainly power.

As is his wont, Deaver packs plenty of twists and red her­rings into his tale. In his last Rhyme/Sachs novel, The Cold Moon, the detec­tives were too good at antic­i­pat­ing the twists, which sucked some of the sus­pense out of the book. I think that Deaver han­dles his sur­prises bet­ter in The Bro­ken Win­dow; he keeps both the reader and the pro­tag­o­nists guess­ing. I also like that Deaver basi­cally sticks to a sin­gle plot in this book, rather than the inter­weav­ing of numer­ous sub­plots that he uses in some ear­lier books.

The only annoy­ance this novel holds for me has to do with Deaver’s dis­cus­sions of com­put­ers (which play a cen­tral role). His use of tech­no­log­i­cal terms and jar­gon feels slightly off in places, although he has improved a great deal sine The Blue Nowhere, his hacker mys­tery. This is a minor fault, though, and prob­a­bly wouldn’t bother any­one who isn’t some­what of a com­puter nerd.

Edward Wozny is a hot­shot New York invest­ment banker who is about to assume a pres­ti­gious posi­tion at his firm’s Lon­don branch. At the begin­ning of what is sup­posed to be two weeks off to pre­pare for his move, Edward is sum­moned to an apart­ment owned by impor­tant clients of his com­pany — a British duke and duchess. He is charged with cat­a­loging their library, which had been sent to the United States for safe keep­ing dur­ing World War II and then promptly for­got­ten about. Edward is told to keep a sharp eye out among the old tomes for a cer­tain book by Ger­vase of Langford.

Lack­ing any train­ing in librar­i­an­ship or par­tic­u­lar inter­est in old books, Edward is ini­tially annoyed, but finds him­self strangely drawn in fol­low­ing an after­noon with the dusty vol­umes. He vis­its the Chenoweth Rare Book and Man­u­script Repos­i­tory, where he serendip­i­tously encoun­ters Mar­garet Napier, a Ger­vase of Lang­ford scholar. Although she (and most every­one else) con­sid­ers the book Edward is look­ing for to be a myth, she agrees to help with the cataloging.

Mean­while, a pro­gram­mer friend gives Edward a copy of a com­puter game called MOMUS. The game is hyper-real and some­what enig­matic; no one knows exactly who cre­ated it. Edward quickly becomes immersed in MOMUS, spend­ing more and more of his free time in the vir­tual world.

While exam­in­ing the con­tents of the library, Mar­garet becomes increas­ingly con­vinced that the mys­te­ri­ous book does exist, and was once a part of the col­lec­tion. She and Edward embark on a hunt to find the book. They dig up infor­ma­tion about the library’s his­tory, sneak into the Chenoweth’s mas­sive archival facil­ity, and unwit­tingly become embroiled in the schemes of British nobles. As they pro­ceed, Edward begins to notice eerie sim­i­lar­i­ties between MOMUS and their real-life quest.

The premise of Codex, with its for­got­ten library, myth­i­cal man­u­script, and eerily rel­e­vant com­puter game has poten­tial. But, the book itself turns out to be some­what lack­lus­ter and dis­ap­point­ing. MOMUS is set up to have impor­tant par­al­lels to the search for the Ger­vase book, but there are only ever a few of these. The whole com­puter game suplot seems under­de­vel­oped and out of place. Also, the book’s end­ing isn’t very sat­is­fy­ing. The plot gets increas­ingly com­plex, then just seems to peter out.

A cou­ple of errors (that should have been caught by an edi­tor) early in the book soured my opin­ion some­what, as well. One is a ref­er­ence to tree sap turn­ing into amber over a few thou­sand years (amber is formed from tree resin over mil­lions of years). The other is a men­tion of illus­tra­tions of “vivi­sected corpses” (“vivi-” mean­ing “liv­ing”; a corpse can be dis­sected, but not vivisected).

Codex is okay, not great. If you find it (as I did) at a used book sale for a buck and want a quick, largely mind­less read, go for it. Oth­er­wise, don’t bother.

Dirk Pitt, Spe­cial Projects Direc­tor for the National Under­wa­ter and Marine Agency (NUMA) is sum­moned by the Navy to aid in the search for a top-secret sub­ma­rine. The sub, Star­buck, has gone miss­ing in an area called the Pacific Vor­tex, a coun­ter­part to the Bermuda Tri­an­gle. The searchers not only fail to find the sub, they are unable to find any trace of any of the almost forty ships known to have dis­ap­peared in the Vor­tex dur­ing the pre­ced­ing thirty years. Pitt’s inves­ti­ga­tion of the Star­buck — and the Pacific Vor­tex in gen­eral — leads him to van­ished sci­en­tists, leg­ends of a sunken Pacific civ­i­liza­tion, and a mys­te­ri­ous crim­i­nal mas­ter­mind known only as Del­phi.
Pacific Vor­tex! was the sixth Dirk Pitt novel to be pub­lished, but it was actu­ally the first one Cus­sler wrote. Indeed, its events take place before those of The Mediter­ranean Caper, Cussler’s first pub­lished novel. In a brief pref­ace, Cus­sler states that he was reluc­tant to pub­lish Pacific Vor­tex! because, among other rea­sons, “it does not weave the intri­cate plots of his [Pitt’s] later exploits.” Maybe I’m just get­ting sick of the for­mu­laic nature of the more recent books Cus­sler has “co-written” (what­ever that really means), but I liked this book because the plot wasn’t ridicu­lously intricate.