Cool, Calm and Contentious, by Merrill Markoe (Villard)
“Funny women sell these days,” trumpets the PR copy for Merrill Markoe’s collection of humorous essays, “Cool, Calm & Contentious.” It’s true. Tina Fey has helped usher in a new appreciation for comediennes who, amazingly, just like boys, can Write! Act! Produce!
As an Emmy Award-winning former head writer for the David Letterman show, Markoe has long ago been there, done all that. But despite three previous collections of essays and four extremely funny novels, Markoe is not exactly a household name.
That would be a shame because Markoe is easily as funny as David Sedaris. She’s capable of manic riffs and acerbic skewering. Still, her good nature shines through. The best essays in “Cool, Calm & Contentious” recount Markoe’s childhood with a mother so hyper-critical she makes Mommie Dearest look like Glinda the Good Witch. In “The Place, the Food, Everything Awful,” Markoe quotes from her mother’s travel diaries, which hysterically dismiss everything from Turkey (“cheap little stores full of items from the everyday world”) to St. Mark’s Square in Venice (“in terrible taste”). Discovering this, Markoe says, “My lifelong problems of feeling judged by her and coming up short in all areas became both tolerable and funny.”
Indeed, Markoe theorizes in “In Praise of Crazy Mommies” that such a mother is a common ancestor of comedians — and thus a kind of gift. “For the creatively inclined, growing up under the thumb of a good old-fashioned insensitive, dismissive, difficult, or in some cases wholly unbalanced mommy can be a lot like growing up permanently enrolled in a graduate seminar in comedy.”
Markoe was born in 1948, Fey in 1970. The culture has improved some for women between those years. “I was an artist but I was still a girl,” Markoe says about herself as a young, power-tool-wielding art student. Still, it took Markoe a while to learn that “all the messages you’d been receiving from the world at large about the best way to be a female in a relationship, which to you has meant placing love on a pedestal that rises above all else, (are) just a terrible, terrible piece of advice.”
Lisa Zeidner, The Washington Post
“Vigilante: a Shane Scully Novel,” by Stephen J. Cannell: (St. Martin’s Press)
Author and TV series creator Stephen J. Cannell’s last novel sends Los Angeles police Detective Shane Scully and his natty partner, Sumner Hitchens, out with a nice mystery that should please fans of the 19-book series.
The prolific writer (he also created or co-created more than 40 TV series including “The Rockford Files” and “The A-Team”) gives his ace detective several juicy mysteries to solve.
Scully and Hitch have to find out who killed Lita Mendez, known for her hatred of the police and advocacy for Los Angeles gangs.
As if picking their way through an investigation of other police officers, including the woman who heads up internal investigations, isn’t hard enough, they must also deal with “Vigilante TV,” a hit reality show that’s trying to solve the Mendez murder before they do.
Nixon Nash is the host of “Vigilante TV.” He’s hot off a season in Atlanta where he beat police in solving crimes and made the officers investigating those crimes look very bad on national television.
Nash always seems to be a step ahead of Scully and Hitch. He also feeds them false leads while staying within the law so he cannot be arrested for interfering with their investigation.
Nash wants Scully to feed him information on the case. Scully refuses, and Nash warns him that he’ll be sorry — a warning that seems about to come true.
“Vigilante” is filled with colorful characters. The story moves along speedily, with Scully and Hitchens facing dangerous situations and nerve-racking confrontations.
If the solution hinges on an unlikely clue, it’s interesting enough to be forgiven.
Good job, Scully.
Mary Foster, The Associated Press
Assumption, by Percival Everett (Graywolf)
Percival Everett’s new work of fiction, “Assumption,” is a departure in tone and content from his recent uproariously funny and cerebral satires of issues surrounding race in the United States, “Erasure” (2001, and just republished ) and “I Am Not Sidney Poitier” (2009 ).
“Assumption” is a novel-length trilogy of stories about Deputy Sheriff Ogden Walker of Plata County, N.M. , and three intricate and unusual crimes that occur in his jurisdiction. In the first two stories (“A Difficult Likeness” and “My American Cousin”), Walker solves bizarre murder mysteries that have quirky twists. The third story (“The Shift”), significantly more disconcerting than the first two, is uncanny in the way it captures the texture of a nightmare, as it presents an astonishing portrait of grim rural poverty along with the devastating effects of small-town ennui.
Walker’s father was African American and his mother is white, but issues of race are not at the forefront of these stories, even if the first one involves the uncovering of a vast white supremacist organization that includes prominent citizens and even FBI agents. In Everett’s hands, a plot like this could easily become diamond-drill-sharp comedy, but he chooses a more subdued strategy, while permitting Walker a few wry quips. The mechanics of the baroque conspiracy almost have the flavor of “The Crying of Lot 49,” while the narration seems to recall Raymond Carver. The effect is gripping.
Walker is an Army veteran and former military police officer who has returned to his hometown, where he lives alone. His mother still lives in town, occasionally cooks for him and hopes he’ll get married. His father has died. Everett creates an enjoyable supporting cast for Walker’s investigations, including the overeating sheriff, Bucky Paz , and Warren Fragua, Walker’s occasional partner. The town where most of the action takes place, somewhere near Santa Fe, is believable and complex, ho-hum and bizarre.
Walker is not a professional detective. He sometimes admits to being in over his head. It’s a setup that provides room for investigative missteps that create unforeseen narrative possibilities. Walker’s only flaw, as a literary character, is that while he is smart and sympathetic, he is ordinary almost to the point of being dull, and not interested in anything besides fly-fishing.
“Assumption,” rather obviously, is about making assumptions in criminal investigations where things are not as they seem. But the title also can refer to Everett’s diverse talents and what assumptions have been made about his literary output. In a sense, it could be about being pigeonholed.
Paul Devlin, San Francisco Chronicle
