Washington Post Book Reviews
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Friday February 25, 2011
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THE DEVOTION OF SUSPECT X
Keigo Higashino
Translated from the Japanese by Alexander O
ISBN 978-0312375065
298 pages
$24.99
Reviewed by Patrick Anderson, who regularly reviews mysteries for The Washington Post Book World
Early crime fiction often invited the reader to match wits with the writer. Edgar Allan Poe invented the detective genre with his 1841 story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," in which his hero deduces how two women were brutally slain in a fourth-floor room in which the windows and doors were locked from the inside. One of the first Sherlock Holmes stories, "The Sign of the Four," also features a locked-room mystery. Agatha Christie wrote dozens of ingenious puzzles, as did her many imitators. The genre ran into problems as plots evolved from ingenious to preposterous. By 1930, the "puzzle mystery" had begun to lose favor in America, thanks to the popularity of the pulp crime magazines and the novels of Dashiell Hammett, which in turn gave rise to the modern thriller, with its focus less on intellectual games than on violence and social realism.
The puzzle genre never disappeared, however, and Keigo Higashino's "The Devotion of Suspect X" -- a best-seller in Japan and the basis of a popular movie there -- is a modern example of the games a clever writer can play with his readers. At the outset, we meet Ishigami, a stout, reclusive high-school math teacher who, we are told, is a genius. He lives in an apartment building outside Tokyo and has a crush on Yasuko, an attractive woman who lives next door with her teenage daughter. Ishigami, too shy to speak to Yasuko otherwise, each day goes to the carry-out shop where she works to order his lunch from her.
One night, Yasuko's no-good ex-husband turns up at her apartment, forces his way in, taunts his ex-wife and makes suggestive comments to his ex-stepdaughter. The girl, furious, hits the man over the head with a vase. He hits her back and shouts that he'll kill her. A violent, three-way struggle ends with the man dead. At that point, the mother fears she's destined to go to prison for murder. This reader thought that, with a good lawyer, she'd claim self-defense and go free -- but that way there's no novel.
Instead, Ishigami, the brainy math teacher, appears from next door -- he's heard the melee -- and takes charge. He assures Yasuko that if she and her daughter will do as he says, he will dispose of the body, construct an airtight alibi for them and, in effect, direct the perfect crime. The women agree and promise to tell the police a story about spending the evening at a movie and a karaoke bar. "Trust me," the mathematical genius assures the terrified women. "Logical thinking will get us through this."
We meet Kusanagi, the detective in charge of the case, while he is playing chess with his friend Yukawa, a professor of physics at Imperial University and also a genius. This is, of course, significant, because we are soon to see a kind of chess game between Ishigami, the math teacher, and Yukawa, the physics professor, who were in fact once students together. In other words, we have here an intellectual battle between one genius who thinks he can carry off the perfect crime and another who thinks he can use logic to solve any crime.
At one point, the scientist warns the detective: "A common criminal wouldn't think to put ticket stubs procured for an alibi in such a credible place. If we assume that the tickets really were bought to establish an alibi, that she put them in the pamphlet expecting you to come and ask her for them, I'd say that makes her an adversary to be feared." He might as well have added, "Elementary, my dear Watson."
In the end, we learn which genius prevails. That cannot be revealed here, but I can say that I found the ending unsatisfactory. Back in 1928, when the puzzle novel was falling out of favor, S. S. Van Dine, author of the Philo Vance mysteries, wrote an article called "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories." He argued that since the detective story is "a kind of intellectual game," self-respecting writers must follow certain unwritten rules. One was that the reader should have the same opportunity as the detective to solve the crime. Higashino has ignored that basic rule with an ending that introduces facts the reader had no way of knowing. The ending might strike some readers as ingenious, but I found it simply unfair, a cheat. This puzzle mostly just made my head ache.
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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KNOWN AND UNKNOWN: A Memoir
Donald Rumsfeld
Sentinel
ISBN 978-1595230676
815 pages
$36
Reviewed by Gwen Ifill, moderator of "Washington Week" and senior correspondent for "PBS NewsHour"
By definition, memoirists get to tell their stories the way they remember them. The retellings can be gentle or scorching, illuminating or concealing.
Donald Rumsfeld has chosen all of the above in "Known and Unknown," a hefty and heavily annotated accounting and defense of his life in public service.
"Never much of a handwringer, I don't spend a lot of time in recriminations, looking back or second-guessing decisions made in real time with imperfect information by myself or others," he writes.
But hand-wring he does, in repeated blasts of Rumsfeldian score-settling that come off as a cross between setting the record straight and doggedly knocking enemies off pedestals.
There is, indeed a lot about Rumsfeld himself that is known and unknown. Who recalls now that he was considered (and passed over) for vice president three times in three years? Who knew that he was inspired to public service by a liberal Democrat, Adlai Stevenson, and wrote a campaign check to New Jersey Democrat Bill Bradley when he ran for president in 2000? That he, Dick Cheney and Frank Carlucci -- all future secretaries of defense -- ran Richard Nixon's anti-poverty agency in 1969?
The book is full of little nuggets like that, but at its heart, it is a revenge memoir.
Most readers who came to know of Rumsfeld during the last stage of his remarkable career as secretary of defense for George W. Bush will not be surprised at the tone that runs through much of the book. Rumsfeld, according to Rumsfeld, was prescient, clearheaded, loyal and almost always right.
But he is also acerbic, dismissive and reluctant to admit that he occasionally missed the policy mark. As a member of Congress in 1964, for example, he concedes he should have thought twice before voting for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Later in the volume, he skates over one of the reasons he was essentially fired as defense secretary in 2006: He did not agree that more troops were needed in Iraq.
Mostly, Rumsfeld is certain -- never more so than when he is chronicling the deficiencies of others. His list of disdain runs long -- from former secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, to Coalition Provisional Authority chief Paul Bremer ("It remained difficult to get him to accept the idea that Iraq belonged to the Iraqis"), to former Army secretary Eric Shinseki, to former Joint Chiefs chairman Hugh Shelton, Powell aide Richard Armitage, Sen. John McCain and, of course, the news media.
The most consistent censure is reserved for Powell, Rice and anyone who operated in their diplomatic orbit. Powell and his supporters, he writes, were skeptical of the administration's initiatives to the point of disloyalty. Apparently, it did not help that Democrats like then-Delaware Sen. Joe Biden described Powell to a newspaper reporter as a "good guy," but Rumsfeld as a "unilateralist."
Rumsfeld is especially piqued about what he saw as Powell's behavior after the case he made to the United Nations about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq later proved untrue.
"Powell was not duped or misled by anybody," Rumsfeld asserts sternly. "Nor did he lie about Saddam's suspected WMD stockpiles. The President did not lie. The Vice President did not lie. Tenet did not lie. Rice did not lie. I did not lie. The Congress did not lie. The far less dramatic truth is that we were wrong."
Rice, by contrast, was exceedingly loyal in Rumsfeld's estimation; she just wasn't competent -- as either national security adviser or secretary of state. Meetings, he said, were disorganized, and she refused to force a decision from the president. "The core problems the NSC faced resulted from the effort to paper over differences of views," he writes.
Rumsfeld recounts more than one tense confrontation with Rice and traces much of his discontent to her. "I don't want four hands on the steering wheel," he advised Bremer, who he discovered was talking daily to Rice.
"Human rights trump security," he quotes her as saying during a separate disagreement about U.S. relations with Uzbekistan. Rumsfeld begged to differ, but lost the argument.
There are other digs along the way. Rumsfeld apparently does not think as highly of President George H.W. Bush as he does of his son. ("It has always amazed me that (George H.W.) Bush's version of what took place has consistently been contrary to the facts," he writes of one Ford administration-era dispute.)
Rumsfeld has careful and consistent praise for only a few -- chief among them George W. Bush, Gerald Ford and Richard B. Cheney.
The long friendship with Cheney -- which began when both were very young men -- has endured even though it was often the former vice president who delivered bad news. It was Cheney on the line when Rumsfeld learned he was being passed over for the 1976 vice presidential nomination, and it was Cheney calling again 20 years later, when Rumsfeld was forced out as secretary of defense.
Rumsfeld's major regret appears to be the handling of the Abu Ghraib scandal, when photographs surfaced showing U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqis held at the notorious Baghdad prison. Twice, he offered to resign. Twice, Bush said no. Rumsfeld writes that not leaving then was his biggest "misjudgment."
Throughout the book, which is organized a bit like a hopscotch game, Rumsfeld is intent on proving the Bush administration's pure intent. In his worldview, the news media and authors who recounted Bush's term in office have distorted almost everything -- including the timing of the decision to go to war in Iraq after the 9/11 attacks; the responsibility for holding, interrogating and prosecuting detainees in Guantanamo Bay; and even the handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
History is determined by who gets to define it. So Rumsfeld patiently explains that the Bush administration did not practice "pre-emption," only "anticipatory self-defense." He provides hundreds of his own memos -- archived on the web -- to back up his case. They may be exhaustive, but they are still Rumsfeld's interpretation of the world as he saw it. By the time every Bush administration veteran finishes defining and redefining history, surely someone is going to have to come up with a brand new dictionary.
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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MONEYMAKERS: The Wicked Lives and Surprising Adventures of Three Notorious Counterfeiters
Ben Tarnoff
Penguin
ISBN 978-1594202872
351 pages
$27.95
Reviewed by Carolyn See, who reviews books regularly for The Washington Post
Books, as we know, make perfect presents, but sometimes our friends and family aren't as perfect as the books are. Relatives tend to be unnervingly idiosyncratic, and they often like our carefully chosen titles about as much as they like broccoli.
But "Moneymakers" has to be the exception that proves the rule. This tale of counterfeiting is a treat for everyone. If you want to be prepared for any occasion, start by ordering up half a dozen copies to hand out to your inarticulate brother-in-law, that uncle who spends too much time in the garage, any hardworking office slave or an adolescent who daydreams about making a living without having to do any work.
"Moneymakers" is about American counterfeiters from pre-Revolutionary times up through the troubled days of the Civil War. Although that particular line of criminal enterprise is difficult for the average person to take up in these complicated contemporary times, in olden days it was comparatively easy.
The author, Ben Tarnoff, gives us a delightful history lesson in American financial customs, and he follows the lives of three highly successful counterfeiters. But unexpectedly, the book also conjures up fantasies of the past, of glamorous bandits who were feared by the rich and admired by the poor.
Counterfeiters in the old days (and this digression in the review mirrors a digression in the book) were like the outlaws in Tom Sawyer's boyish daydreams. The first two-thirds of "Moneymakers" is filled with descriptions of lairs, dens and hideouts.
David Lewis, a successful counterfeiter who worked in the Northeast during the early 1800s, hiked to "a camp in the wilderness, guiding a wagon weighed down by two locked trunks, each about three feet long. ... They reached the clearing where they had built their makeshift home. Around them lay all the necessities of frontier life: an ax, a butcher knife, a skillet, a canteen, a coffeepot, and various flasks of liquor. A nearby stream supplied the site with fresh water. Their hut consisted of a frame of saplings covered with a mat of branches." Indeed, a scene straight out of "Tom Sawyer."
Lewis and his cronies knew that it was easiest and safest to make money somewhere out of the city, away from neighbors' eyes. They cranked out currency from simple engraved plates, hung the money out to dry in the fresh air and took great pleasure in passing bills to people who may or may not have known the currency was fake.
Certainly, other counterfeiters must have toiled in obscurity and been plagued by boredom, but Lewis knew how to live. He was the subject of crazy poems written in contemporary newspapers: "I laugh in my sleeve, whilst I bid you adieu --/Farewell to your prison and Chambersburg too." And other outlaws remembered him fondly: "We had a number of little parties at the tavern," a barkeeper said, "and had great times. A number of the mountain ladies would come, and some of the men, and we would every now and then have a dance." Their life of crime, in retrospect, seems pure and wholesome, an innocent lark. Still, these men were robbing the government.
Tarnoff elegantly profiles two counterfeiters besides Lewis: Owen Sullivan, an obnoxious Irish drunk who got busy with some engraved plates around 1749 and made a fortune before he got caught; and Samuel Upham, a mild-mannered shopkeeper who may have thought of himself as a patriot by selling counterfeit Confederate bills (bearing his name and address!) that were used by Union soldiers to buy goods. The treasury of the Confederate States of America was deluged under a flood of such funny money.
There are two parts to this admirable and altogether charming book: a short, understandable history of American banking and finance over a period of a couple of hundred years and the profiles of those darling lawbreakers. All seemed to have had a wonderful time. I'd read "Moneymakers" again and again before handing it to my brother and uncle for their information and amusement.
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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THE ANATOMY OF GHOSTS
Andrew Taylor
Hyperion
ISBN 978-1401302870
412 pages
$24.99
Reviewed by Wendy Smith, a contributing editor of the American Scholar, reviews books frequently for The Washington Post
Andrew Taylor's brooding thriller opens with two tantalizing vignettes. First, a distraught, unnamed woman flees through the dark streets of Cambridge, England, fumbling for the key to a garden refuge. Then the scene shifts to a blasphemous "Last Supper" on the evening of Feb. 16, 1786, at which drunken members of the Holy Ghost Club welcome a fledgling "Apostle," who eagerly awaits his initiation rite: the deflowering of a virgin. But unfortunately, the virgin chokes to death on a nut before they can begin. "I suppose he would not take the girl like that?" wonders Mrs. Phear, hostess to the Apostles' revels. He's not that drunk, replies Philip Whichcote, the club's president. As they ponder their options in a secluded room with the corpse, the new recruit, Frank Oldershaw, stumbles in, demanding, "Where have you hidden my sweet little virgin?"
With the deftness of a veteran storyteller (he's the author of dozens of crime novels), Taylor swiftly establishes a setting of corrupt privilege. Oldershaw, like most of the Apostles, is a wealthy student in Jerusalem College at Cambridge University. Whichcote, his university days behind him but too gentlemanly to actually work, makes a precarious living fleecing the Apostles at cards and providing the louche entertainments they consider their due as English aristocrats.
Whichcote is under considerable pressure in the wake of the club's fatal supper. The virgin's dead body is spirited away without incident, but his wife, Sylvia, is discovered drowned in Jerusalem's Long Pond the next morning. (She was, we realize, the woman fleeing in the opening pages.)
Into this fraught situation arrives John Holdsworth, a widower more mournful and guilt-ridden than the ice-cold Whichcote. Oldershaw suffered a nervous breakdown after the aborted initiation ceremony, and his mother, Lady Anne, has hired Holdsworth to find out why. Lady Anne knows nothing about the Apostles and attributes her son's collapse to his belief that he has seen the ghost of Sylvia Whichcote. It turns out she's read "The Anatomy of Ghosts," a tract Holdsworth wrote to debunk the claims of spiritualism, and she hopes he can convince her anxious son that the apparition was a delusion.
The plot gears clank loudly in this setup, and it occasionally seems that Taylor must justify his title by having practically everyone in the novel haunted by otherworldly presences. The story's not-terribly-compelling metaphysical undercurrents are far less interesting than the large cast of vigorously imagined period characters.
Holdsworth delves into the questions of what happened to the virgin's corpse, how Sylvia Whichcote ended up in Long Pond, and what drove Frank Oldershaw crazy -- if he really is crazy. These questions prove to be related, of course, but once we're past the contrived setup, Taylor makes plausible the intricate interconnections that unravel to expose a diseased society and some very nasty people.
Although the Holy Ghost Club is fictional, in calling its members "Apostles," Taylor surely intends readers to recall the real-life Cambridge society of that name, whose 20th-century members included several Soviet spies who escaped detection for years due to the British establishment's inclination to protect its own. The elite was more entrenched in the oppressive 18th-century world that Taylor evokes so atmospherically; all Holdsworth can do with the killer is to promise spectral visitations from the victim -- not much retribution from someone who has declared he doesn't believe in ghosts. And not much consolation for readers who like their endings tidy and comforting. Those made of sterner stuff will relish Taylor's dark and gripping tale.
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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