Families are the nuclei of nations, which explains why nations frequently deal with their disputes by going to war. The concept of the happy family is all too often more imaginative than real. Parents bicker, as do siblings. Fathers and mothers stray. Children have bad friends.
The Patchwork Marriage by Jane Green, 400 pages 2012 Michael Joseph paperback. Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops, 595 baht
To be sure there are some ideal, happy families. I meet one or two a decade and I do look. A game I play with myself is to rearrange the matches _ this dad with that mum, this sister or brother with that one. After all, can my matches be worse than the actual ones?
The family Andi moves into in The Patchwork Marriage by American author Jane Green is typical. Mum, Janice, is lush. Teenage daughter Emily is foul-mouthed, into alcohol and drugs. Teenage daughter Sophia has her head on right, yet feels jealous that dad dotes on Emily, hoping to straighten her out.
Poor dad: Is he to know no happiness? Enter Andi, an interior designer to his landscaper, both on the wrong side of 40. Love flares, divorce from Janice, he is awarded custody of the girls, marriage, a stepmother. Sophia accepts her with reservations. Emily doesn't accept her at all.
Emily is determined to drive the rival of dad's affections away. Andi, told by the gynaecologist that she's barren, hangs on by displaying motherly love. Hubby's sister recognises it and supports her.
The family is turned upside-down when Emily's waywardness brings about her pregnancy, which she refuses to terminate or give up. Andi helps her through it ("That's what mothers are for"). No sooner is Cal, her son, born than Emily abandons them all and takes off. Andi bonds with the boy.
Emily returns after having sown her wild oats for 31/2 years, with a boyfriend in tow. Both demand Cal before leaving again. The latter chapters of The Patchwork Marriage is about the emotional battle between mother and stepmother to have the child. Keep a box of Kleenex handy.
Call the story drama or melodrama, pathos or bathos, soap opera or schmaltz, tugging at the heart-strings or a weeper, if you like the genre as millions do, this is for you. If you don't, there are lots of other types of types of stories out there.
Victims by Jonathan Kellerman, 310 pp, 2012 Headline paperback. Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops, 695 baht
Revenge isn't civilised
The chief goal of the civilising process for millennia has been to move revenge from the person or persons victimised to the authorities designated to deal with it according to the laws of the land. But what if the criminal justice system turns a blind eye to the malefactors?
Then more than a few victims (relatives, loved ones, friends when the victims perished or lost their faculties from the ill-treatment) take matters into their own hands _ acting as judge, jury and executioner. And, of course, lawmen regard it a crime for any but themselves to avenge a crime.
US psychologist-author Jonathan Kellerman focuses on this in Victims. His literary creation, criminal psychologist Alex Delaware, presumably based on himself, is the protagonist yet again. He's nicknamed the Crime Reader because nobody can read (comprehend) a crime scene better.
Also back is LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis, an astute homicide detective who likes, respects and gets Alex assigned to his toughest cases as a consultant.
The running joke in each successive thriller is how much Milo ingests. He doesn't eat, he shovels food into his mouth. The dick is gay. The shrink has a live-in girlfriend.
For the first hundred pages, there is seemingly no connection between the bodies found in and around Los Angeles except the M.O. Male and female, they've been disembowelled, bringing to mind Jack the Ripper. But in time the investigation conducted by Alex and Milo reveals that years past they were all employed, in one capacity or another, in a facility for the criminally insane.
Closed down for years _ now a retreat for the well-to-do _ former staffers are interviewed and it's revealed that one incorrigible, though still a youth, had surgery performed on him. It was marginally less awful than a lobotomy. Ultimately released, he's been taking his revenge on those who had anything to do with his operation.
A trap is laid to catch him, very nearly costing Milo his life. The author cuts the serial killer no slack. The wrong done him doesn't condone his revenge spree. Any number of readers will be persuaded, but not convinced by this assertion. Perhaps further millennia of being civilised are necessary for that.
Delaware isn't a medical examiner, the flavour of the year of so many writers with and without medical degrees. He specialises in getting into the minds of perps, leaving autopsies to others, for which this reviewer has no objections.
