Book Review: Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason

Three Graves Full/Gallery Books/February 2013

A purported dark comedy proves that marketing is a very powerful thing.


Three Graves Full, the debut mystery novel by Jamie Mason, has some darned compelling jacket copy. Dig this:

For fans of the Coen brothers’ films or for those who just love their thrillers with a dash of sharp humor—an engaging and offbeat story about a man driven to murder, who then buries the body in his backyard only to discover that there are two other shallow graves on his property.

The Coen brothers? Sharp comedy and multiple graves? Add in some fawning praise from authors like Tana French and Peter Straub (“Special” says the former; “Astonishing” says the latter), and promo material peppered with adjectives like quirky and Hitchcockian, and I really couldn’t resist.

What I discovered after reading Three Graves Full is that all of those descriptions seem to be for the first chapter only. After that, well, things fall apart. The beginning is a doozy: a mild-mannered man has a body buried in his backyard -- the body of a man he murdered. When landscapers discover a different body buried in his yard, then another, things get complicated.

The Hitchcock comparison is deserved in the early parts of the book. Think The Trouble with Harry rather than Psycho. We find out at the beginning of the book that the nebbish-y Jason has killed a man. What we don’t know is why, and as Mason unspools the back story, Jason’s feelings of guilt build to what, in the earlier parts of the book, feels almost as claustrophobic as something by Patricia Highsmith.

Unfortunately, that back story ends up being told too fast. Once the details behind the killing come out, followed by the details of the murders of the other bodies, there’s not a lot to care about. Mason tries to keep the story moving by switching up character perspectives from chapter to chapter -- something that almost works, for a time.

Mason has a good sense of character details, and has fun with them. I was charmed by a  sheriff’s wife who won’t talk on the phone without putting clothes on, and a deputy whose diet has him so desperate for junk food that he eats sour cream with onion salt on it. The author is at her best when the plot isn’t moving, but when it moves again, it seems to be out of her control, especially when there's a lot of action.

As the story progresses, the multiple character points of view converge, and instead of choosing one character’s perspective for intense scenes, Mason head hops, a cardinal sin of writing, and for good reason. The character perspective changes from sentence to sentence, making it hard to understand who is doing what, and even more: why we should care. If there’s no perspective, there’s no way to empathize with anyone. Mason even tells us the thoughts of a dog, which some readers will no doubt find cute, but cuteness seems at odds with something calling itself a dark comedy.

I blame the editors.

In a rush to market a book with a unique angle, it seems as if the book was published with a second half that could have benefited from an extensive rewrite. To top it off, the marketing hype far exceeds what the book actually delivers. Sure, that will sell some books, but will readers come back for more? I’m left wondering if all the positive blurbs and reviews are from readers who read the marketing materials and were swept away on the wave of hype.

I do think we’ll see more of Jamie Mason. She’s extremely talented, and has turned out a decent, though quite flawed, first novel. I hope that she gets the chance to work with some editors who will ensure a less muddled final draft, and market her more directly to the cozy mystery audience. While the book does have a darkish streak, it’s more gray than black -- sort of a cozy for people with just a little bit of an edge.

The bottom line: Three Graves Full, though billed as a dark comedy, is neither very dark, nor very comic.

Have you read anything that didn’t seem to match up with the jacket copy? How closely do you read the publisher’s information versus reviews from actual readers?

Gone Girl Is Compared to a Roller Coaster 26,600 Times

The social book cataloging website Goodreads recently circulated an infographic on its end-of-the-year statistics. One of the most-reported items from the release was Goodreads’ most-reviewed book of 2012: Gone Girl, with a whopping 22,383. Keep in mind that they’re only counting reviews on the site itself (Amazon has more than 6,000), so the actual number of reviews for Gillian Flynn’s novel is probably somewhere in the high skrillions. 

All those reviews got me thinking. I’d read dozens of them, partly for the amusement of seeing the reviewers jump through hoops to describe the intricate plot without revealing spoilers. The default comparison seemed to be “roller coaster ride.” Just how many reviewers have compared Gone Girl to a roller coaster, I wondered?

The answer is 26,600. Thanks, Google. (Sure, there are some duplicates in those results, but even winnowing out the bogus hits reveals thousands and thousands of roller-coastery reviews.)


“Twisty,” “page turner,” and “unputdownable” also yield sky-high returns.* It raises the question: Just how useful is it to have tens of thousands of of reviews on a single book, when so many of them say the same thing?

What do you think?
 

*Sometimes all in the same review. I checked.

George W. Bush Spotted on a Pulp Fiction Cover

Nicolas Cage isn’t the only one to pop up unexpectedly on book covers (both a Serbian textbook and a children’s history book).

During a recent browse through the huge cover archives at the blog Those Sexy Vintage Sleaze Books, I spotted a disturbingly familiar face on the cover of Charles Willeford’s Honey Gal: George W. Bush.

Honey Gal and Dubya. The sheep's in the meadow and the cow's in the corn, no doubt.

I don’t normally recoil when I see W’s visage, but when he (or his doppelganger) is sprawled under a haystack grasping confusedly at a busty barefoot vixen, I get caught off guard.

There’s no record of young Bush doing any modeling for pulp mystery paperback cover artists in his pre-prez days, but I can definitely hear him uttering the expression “honey gal.”

"Mr. Willeford, I'm ready for my close-up." (Photo via mywesttexas.com)

For those who don’t know Charles Willeford’s work, don’t be too put off by the sensational packaging. He’s actually quite readable (though I haven’t read Honey Gal.)

Both The Pick-Up and The Woman Chaser are fine examples of pulp mystery. The latter was made into an odd (though worth watching) little film of the same name with the also-odd-but-worth-watching Patrick Warburton, whom you might remember as TV’s real-life version of The Tick.

Spotted any famous doubles on book jackets? Let me know. Book Dirt is poised to become the repository for celebrity book cover sightings.

8 Famous People You Never Knew Wrote Mysteries

From strippers to TV stars to U.S. presidents, a collection of unlikely mystery authors that just might surprise you.

Mystery novels sometimes take place in star-studded settings: the murder happens in a Hollywood movie studio or backstage in a Shakespearean theatre. Sometimes the victims themselves are rising starlets, news anchormen or notable politicians. But, in several cases, the famous folks have actually written mysteries themselves, trading the limelight for a backbreaking desk chair (or, at least in quite a few cases, their ghostwriters did).

Abraham Lincoln, not long after his lawyer days.

Abraham Lincoln: "The Trailor Murder Mystery"

Much is made of the fact that Franklin Roosevelt once suggested a mystery novel plot (The President's Mystery, which later became a movie), but less well known is the fact that Abraham Lincoln actually penned a mystery short story himself.

Technically a true crime piece, Lincoln's story is a retelling of a murder case which involved the Trailor brothers, whom he defended at trial in 1841. The piece was originally titled "A Remarkable Case of Arrest for Murder," but is known under its present title since Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine reprinted it in 1952.

Lincoln was a fan of Edgar Allan Poe, and that could well have been his motivation for writing out the Trailor brothers' case, which has a real-life twist ending worthy of a master. The story ran on the front page of The Quincy Whig on April 15, 1846, five years after the trial. (Full text here.)

Lee or Rice: Who did the writing?

Gypsy Rose Lee: The G-String Murders

The first striptease artist to become a household name, Gypsy Rose Lee turned her reknowned burlesque gig into an acting career, then added another slash in 1941 when she became a stripper/actress/writer. The G-String Murders is a wise-cracking (what's now know known as snarky) murder story set in the burlesque milieu, where characters have names like Lolita LaVerne and Biff Brannigan, and strippers are found strangled to death by their own skimpy G-Strings.

Lee casts herself as the novel's detective (a trope used to great effect today by mystery writer Kinky Friedman), though some claim the book was actually penned by Craig Rice. Biographers say that written evidence proves Lee wrote at least a large amount of the book, if not all, with Rice only offering advice. The Feminist Press reprinted the book in 2005.

Maybe in Margaritaville?

Jimmy Buffett: Where Is Joe Merchant?

In between the cheeseburgers and the lost salt shaker searches, the son of a son of a sailor has done more than just pen songs. In fact, Jimmy Buffett has written seven books, including children's stories autobiographical meanderings and a couple of novels.

Where is Joe Merchant? is a mystery novel with a missing rock star, who may or may not be dead, at its center. It's also crammed full of Buffett-style good-natured goofiness, including a one-armed soldier of fortune, a psychic named Desdemona and a villain with eyeballs tattooed on his eyelids.

A spy in the House.

Hugh Laurie: The Gun Seller

Several years before American households knew him as House (though British TV fans already knew him as Bertie Wooster and Blackadder's King George), Hugh Laurie wrote a corker of a mystery novel. The Gun Seller is further proof (along with playing the piano) that Laurie can do just about anything and do it quite well.

Laurie cites Kyril Bonfilglioli as one of his favorite writers, and the influence shows. The Gun Seller is a witty send-up of the spy genre, with sort of a Wodehouse-meets-James-Bond vibe. Though the book first appeared in 1998, a planned sequel, The Paper Soldier, has yet to appear. Release dates of 2007 and 2009 have come and gone, with Laurie himself admitting that the book is "very, very late." Astute fans believe that The Paper Soldier won't be written until House runs its course.

Total Zone = Totally ghostwritten?

Martina Navratilova: Jordan Myles series

Billie Jean King once said of tennis star Martina Navratolova, "She's the greatest singles, doubles and mixed doubles player who's ever lived." Does that kind of talent translate to mystery writing --or even co-writing, as the case may be? Not necessarily. Navratilova's three books, The Total Zone, Breaking Point, and Killer Instinct, have mixed reviews, but the athlete may have had little to do with the actual writing of them.

The three-book series is co-written by Liz Nickles (also author of some lackluster women's fiction). The main character, Jordan Myles, is a tennis champ-turned-sports therapist who becomes embroiled in murder cases, always in a tennis milieu. Some critics have speculated that Navratilova's contribution may be in name only, especially as some glaring tennis-related errors have slipped through. One reader has questioned whether Navratilova even read the final draft of The Total Zone at all.

Smaller than a breadbox.

Steve Allen: The Talk Show Murders (and more)

When Steve Allen died in 2000, a lot of people were surprised to find that the multi-talented actor, composer, and possible inventor of the expression "Is it bigger than a breadbox?" had more than forty books to his credit. In addition to poetry, short stories, grumblings about the ignorance of the masses, and other books, Allen wrote a whopping ten mysteries.

Allen couldn't have picked a more charismatic main character: himself. Like Gypsy Rose Lee, Allen solves fictitious mysteries --along with wife Jayne Meadows-- while otherwise doing things the real-life Steve Allen would do. Murder in Vegas, for example, finds Allen and Meadows doing some sleuthing in between Allen's nightclub shows.

Not brought to you by Smucker's.

Willard Scott: Murder Under Blue Skies (and sequel)

The Today Show's former weatherman, one of the original Ronald McDonalds, and voice of Smuckers Willard Scott is also the co-author of a pair of meteorological mysteries. It's uncertain how much actual writing Scott may have done, but considering that his co-author is writer  Bill Crider, he of the five pages-worth of titles on Amazon (and blogging phenomenon), it's a good bet that Scott's contributions were largely related to checking the weather.

Just as he replaced Scott on The Today Show, Al Roker has also picked up the mantle of weatherman-who-also-writes-mysteries. Roker is on his third of the Billy Blessing books, featuring a chef who does talk show cooking segments. Roker's partner in crime is New Orleans mystery writer Dick Lochte.

Is there anything Asimov didn't write?

Isaac Asimov: Murder at the ABA, Black Widowers mysteries, many more

Nothing produced by Asimov should be shocking, really. We're talking about the man the OED credits with inventing the term robotics, after all. Even though he wrote some of the best-known science fiction works in the genre plus a whole slew of non-fiction works on topics from Shakespeare to quasars, (and is even a doll), Asimov still seems to surprise people with his mystery novels.

Asimov wrote a staggering 120 mystery stories, some of which had a sci-fi bent, but more than half featuring the Black Widowers club. The Black Widowers mysteries are masterpieces of puzzle-type mysteries, involving real deduction, brain teasers, and often word play. He also wrote full-length mystery novels, including Murder at the ABA, which includes Asimov himself as a character, and a detective based on none other than Harlan Ellison.

Famous names appear on book jackets outside the mystery genre, too. What are some that you've encountered?

Forget the Edgars: Which mystery author will win a morgue?

There’s a veritable slew of awards for crime writers of excellence, from the Edgars and the Agathas to the Neros and the Hammetts.

But the latest prize to be offered to a notable mystery writer will require a little more space than a bookshelf or trophy case will allow: It’s a new morgue. (Note: You have to imagine this in Bob Barkers’s voice, i.e. “It’s a newwwwww morgue!”)

Dundee University has come up with a revolutionary way to raise funds for the new addition to its Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification. Ten crime writers are competing in the Million for a Morgue competition for the chance to have the morgue named for them, with fans contributing a pound (or more) to vote.

The mystery mavens competing for the eponym are: Tess Gerritsen, Kathy Reichs, Lee Child, Harlan Coben, Mark Billingham, Jeffrey Deaver, Jeff Lindsay, Stuart MacBride, Peter James and Val McDermid.

Tess Gerritsen is in the lead as of this writing, so fans of Val McDermid’s likeable weirdo Tony Hill or Jeffrey Deaver’s quadriplegic Lincoln Rhyme should think about coughing up some coin.

The method of fundraising isn’t the only revolutionary thing about the project. The BBC reports that the newly built morgue “will adopt a "revolutionary" way of embalming - called the Thiel method - which keeps bodies flexible for longer.”

Which mystery writer are you pulling for? Or what would you like to see named for your favorite writer? (My answers are a. McDermid, and b. Martin Amis BBQ sauce, for no reason other than a larf.)