Songs of Innocence, by Richard Aleas

I had not heard of this series until the day I bought this book. I was looking specifically for this one and could not find it under the author's name. Fortunately, a Borders employee recognized it as one of this series and he found it on another shelf.

"Hard Case Crime" publishes old and new pulp mysteries, in low-cost editions. Many current mystery writers have written for the series, taking on a type of mystery that they might not usually do, the kind of hard-boiled detective genre. The covers feature original art created for the story. When I saw the painting on the cover I realized first that it resembled the pulp fiction covers of old and second that most modern-day cover art comes from sources like Getty Images and is not created for the specific work.

Songs of Innocence features a detective who also featured in Aleas's first novel, Little Girl Lost. In that episode, detective John Blake was indirectly responsible for the death of one woman and the near-death of another. His guilt has now led him to leave detective work altogether and take up working as an assistant at Columbia University (one of the places I wanted to attend as a young'un, by the way) and to take some writing classes.

He meets the gorgeous but sad Dorothy Burke, called Dorrie, in a class, and one thing leads to another. In this case it isn't just sex that follows but a mutual support arrangement, given that both are prone to depression and thoughts of suicide. They even make a pact that one will not off herself without first calling the other.

So when Dorrie turns up dead in her bathtub, apparently a suicide, Blake is skeptical. But generally keeps his thoughts and his investigation to himself.

Of course his investigation does not stay secret. It invites inquiry by a wide range of bad guys and Blake is at times beaten up to prove it. His investigation also ferrets out ugly secrets from others Blake had not included on his list of possibles. In the end, it becomes too much, far too much.

I was a bit uncertain about the "notable book" status of this book as I was reading it, although it certainly does have an edge of reality and depth you would not normally find in a pulp novel. The end, though, explains it all.

Black Dahlia Avenger, by Steven Hodel

I confess to a perhaps unnatural fascination with "true crime" stories. I have read many, from the very good to the unbelievably bad. But that isn't the primary reason I wanted to read this book.

When I visited a special motel in Desert Hot Springs one year the owner told me that Steve Hodel had been there and had told him his story about the Black Dahlia (Elizabeth Short) murder. The motel owner (a friend of mine) was highly enthusiastic about Hodel and his book. I decided to get it some day, in large part because of that endorsement. That day came when I saw that it was available through paperbackswap.

Hodel is a retired detective from the same police force that investigated this murder years before he joined. His experience as a detective led me to believe that his research and analysis would be sober, thorough, and logical, even though it focused on his father.

It's a thick book, full of details and exhibits and what the author refers to as "thoughtprints" - his way of connecting dots. His use of these thoughtprints bothered me a bit because they are a way of relying on assumptions more than on cold hard evidence. I recognize that the type evidence he obtained was not direct (photographs, memories, notes with odd references, newspaper articles) and it was necessary to try to piece together the meaning from them, but I felt he went from finding this type evidence to drawing those conclusions and then referring to his conclusions as fact. It seemed odd that a detective would make such leaps.

From the beginning I wondered about his decision to do this investigation without aid of LAPD files on the subject. He made several assumptions about their availability but did not actually make the effort to obtain them until after the book was published (this version of the book is the expanded version and does include information from LAPD files). His explanations, that he no longer has the connections to the department that he once had, didn't convince me. In his place, if I had the other materials that he unearthed and so carefully labeled and reproduced, I would have been hungry for confirmation of my conclusions, hungry enough to see how far I could get in looking at those files.

Another block to my own ability to buy Hodel's story whole is the writing itself. I am sure the editors worked slavishly to make it readable and to organize it. Sometimes, though, you reach a point where you have to say "enough" and let it go out in the world. I suspect this is what happened. The book is repetitious, oddly organized, and difficult to wade through. It got to the point where I set it down after reading just a page or two, then picked it up later to continue slogging on. A better writer might have been able to put it together better and make a better case with the same facts.

Hodel may well be right in many of his assumptions, and the case he made for a "coverup" in the years surrounding the Black Dahlia murder and early investigation, is convincing. In fact, the case he makes against his own father as the murderer is worth serious consideration. I do quibble with some of his reasoning:

He draws a portrait of his father as a man who used women and then discarded them (except for his last wife, who hung in for 30 years). Yet when Steve Hodel creates a possible motive for the killing of Beth Short he assumes Short agreed to marry Hodel and when she later jilted him he became enraged and killed her. The two pictures of George Hodel don't match, in my opinion.

I also found Hodel's "evidence" that his father's longtime friend, Fred Sexton, also took part in some of the murders Hodel attributes to his father unconvincing. One part of the evidence is a photograph of Sexton compared to a police sketch of a perp seen by a witness. The drawing shows a man with a prominent widow's peak, while Sexton has none and has a high forehead. I can't buy that they are the same man.

All of which does not mean that I don't believe Hodel's basic conclusion that his father killed Elizabeth Short. It seems very possible and even likely. I am less convinced by what he trots out as the other murders also committed by his father.

I am frustrated that all his work did not lead to an official investigation, a circumstance that clearly befuddles Hodel as well. At one point he took his findings to a DA in Los Angeles county offices, a person who could in fact find reason to call for an investigation. The chapter is titled "Filing My Case with the District Attorney's Office". Yet he did not officially file the case there. Instead, he contacted a member of the office whom he knew, gave him the information, and requested an "as-if" memo. The DA knocked out a several-page memo stating that he would file it if it were real. Why didn't he file it for real? I didn't get a good answer to that either.

A near-exhausting hunt that, for me, turned up almost as many questions as answers.

What Came Before He Shot Her, by Elizabeth George

I categorized this book as a "mystery" but Elizabeth George is heading into new territory here. Another reviewer calls it a "whydunit", a good description.

George has written several books (all of which I have read) about Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers of New Scotland Yard and Lynley's close friends and oft-used consultants. The books are written sequentially, and significant events take place in the primary characters' lives. In other words, they do not stand still.

In the book previous to this one, With No One As Witness, Lynley's pregnant wife is shot. She lingers on life support while Lynley decides what to do about the baby inside her. The shooting is apparently random and was done by two young black men, one very young.

What Came Before He Shot Her is the tale of the 12-year-old who found himself facing Helen Lynley with a gun. The story starts, as the title suggests, well before the act and explains what circumstances led him there.

The story follows his family, a struggling group that consists of Joel, the 12-year-old, Toby, his eight-year-old brother, who is "not right", Vanessa, Joel's older sister, and their Aunt Kendra. The children have survived horrific experiences on the streets of London and in their homes. They have learned the ways of the street and the wisdom of keeping their own counsel. It isn't safe to "grass" on another, no matter how much trouble that other causes.

And so it is that Joel, in a desperate effort to protect his little brother from another boy who has threatened him, heads down a path that gets darker and darker. And so it is that he cannot tell anyone what he is doing.

The bones of the story are clear enough. What really places George in a different category is that she rounds everything out, adds the details and experiences that make the characters truly lifelike and sympathetic.

She devotes much of all of her novels to details that have no bearing on the final outcome, the discovery of the criminal. But over time, over several books, the details add up. So it is with this story. All of the family members have a life and a story to live. We follow each one as he or she tries to make a way in the world. We also follow the efforts of some governmental and private individuals who can see past the obvious and find real people, worth helping, in this family unit. In the end we see what looks like failure, but I'm sure it doesn't end there.

I can't wait to get my hands on the next chapter.

BTK: Unholy Messenger, by Stephen Singular

The story of "BTK", a serial killer who operated without detection for many years, comes alive in a peculiar way in this book.

Dennis Rader, who named himself BTK - Bind, Torture, Kill - wrote and recorded his thoughts and plans and goals voluminously. Thus it was possible for Singular to get as much into Rader's mind as possible, a rare opportunity when dealing with a serial killer.

What emerges is a rather ordinary, average man, a man with a wife and children, active in his church and respected by many. What he hides is his essential lack of conscience.

Strangely, he wasn't really good at what he did. He was clumsy and often careless. It appears that it was his very ordinariness, his attachment to his community, that shielded him from discovery for so long. In many ways he does not fit the classic serial killer profile. He is driven as much by a compulsion to copy other killers he admires as by his own deep-seated fantasies. In the end, a boring, dull man who unfortunately ends the lives of many.

I felt the story was left unfinished. Singular frequently suggests that many of his crimes were never discovered. The author believes there were many other murders. I am not sure.

A far more interesting character who deserves another look is Rader's pastor, Michael Clark. Clark came to the priesthood by an unusual path and indulged his sense of humor and a delight in donning clown outfits, which may have seemed a little unseemly to some of the congregation. But it is his commitment to Rader that tells the story. His congregation believes in redemption and even though they felt betrayed by Rader they did not desert him. Clark in particular stayed by him, continuing to visit him in his cell to help him in his spiritual journey toward forgiveness. Certainly this is not what we see so often today in religious institutions, although we might wish it were so.

Not a typical true-crime book, which is in its favor.

4 out of 5 stars

Nicole Brown Simpson, by Faye Resnick

Truth: I am writing about this book as comic relief. Not because I think murder is funny and certainly not because I think it's funny to get away with murder. But because this is essentially the story of the rich and brainless.

The one thing Faye Resnick (written with Mike Walker) does in this book is convince us that she was a friend of Nicole Simpson's. She further provides the build-up to Nicole's murder somewhat convincingly, although I have to admit that I wonder if some of her histrionics are really after-the-fact. Did she really plead with Nicole to get away from Los Angeles because O.J. might murder her? Did she take O.J.'s proclamations, that he would kill Nicole, seriously right out of the gate? I will probably never know and I won't lose any sleep over it.

Much of the book details the friendship between Nicole Simpson and Faye Resnick. The two of them had married men who made a lot of money so they generally were not hurting financially, even after divorces. It appears that they spent their time going dancing, shopping, and to Cabo San Lucas. And occasionally hooking up.

When Faye goes to a friend's house she describes it as a nice house, "20,000 square feet". When she talks of Nicole, she amost always mentions how beautiful she was, how fit. Most of the adjectives describing places and events and people emphasize how expensive, how big, how beautiful. Quintessential Beverly Hills women. Which is to say, really, the newly rich, anxious to prove they have friends with money.

Although she frequently mentions what a great mom Nicole is, she usually means that she takes them to dance classes or recitals or holds big parties. We don't get to know the children at all in this book. We only get their names. And an odd, somewhat sensual photo of Nicole's two children which is described as her favorite.

Resnick says she wrote the book to quell the rumors about Nicole. I'm not at all sure she did her any favors. I came away seeing Nicole as a party girl, a woman lacking the ability for deep reflection, a woman lacking any sense of wrong when she has affairs with married men ("I deserve happiness"). She comes across, worse, as a woman who has "had black and can't go back". Such a cliche yet it's spelled out in here.

I have absolutely no idea about what kind of mother she was. Her long relationship with O.J. seems to have existed on a bizarre sense of what's important in a marriage - is it the diamond earrings, Nicole? The sex? Really?

Resnick drags out her dimestore psychology books and makes some attempts to explain Nicole's personality and she gets some of it right but doesn't go nearly far enough. The theories are hackneyed and in some cases just plain wrong. The result is a cardboard cutout suitable for teen boy adoration.

No reason to look for this book unless you are obsessed with Nicole. It's badly written and has nothing to illuminate Nicole's murder.