Category: Books

As good as 2004 was for me and films, so was it a bad year for me and books. Excluding textbooks and reference works, I clocked a mere 21 over the course of the year, and almost none of them have been of any significance. To be fair, I have gone through a larger than average number of computing/design/usability textbooks this year, but I haven’t chalked most of these up for a quick review because I don’t tend to read them linearly cover-to-cover, or even completely.

However, three of these textbooks stand out as particularly good examples:

• Paper Prototyping by Carolyn Snyder is an excellent book on the subject for beginners and experienced designers alike. Solid advice, intersperesed with amusing anecdotes makes this an interesting as well as a highly informative read.
• Building Accessible Websites by Joe Clark is simply the best reference available on making the web accessible to people with disabilities. If you’re serious about HTML, you need to read this book. Don’t let the cover put you off. (And if you’re wondering why the cover might be off-putting, cherish your ignorance.)
• Finally, Visual Explanations by Edward R. Tufte is just fabulous. Even if the content were less interesting, the visual presentation of the book, and the attention and craft lavished on its production would make it worth having.

Of the other books I’ve read, only two stick in my mind as being genuinely noteworthy:

• The Small Boat Of Great Sorrows by Dan Fesperman combines a detective story, a spy thriller, and an emotional novel about the ravages of war into a single book. Powerful, sensitive, and thrilling, it’s the only novel I read in 2004 that I can recommend without any hesitation.
• Down Under by Bill Bryson is a wonderfully funny piece of travel writing that will make you want to take your next summer holiday in Oz. Intelligent, witty, and refreshing, it’s a book that is guaranteed to leave you with a smile on your face.

(Okay, so the The Small Boat Of Great Sorrows is the only one of these that was actually published in 2004, but if I was going to restrict my reading choices to books that came out last year, the list would have been damn small. For a variety of practical reasons, I haven’t had much time this last year to devote to serious reading. Note to self for 2005: must do better.)

I’ve been doing my “Quick Reviews” for over a year now. This means that for the very first time, I can look back over the past year and see a complete record of all the books I’ve read and films I’ve seen. (Well, almost complete. I haven’t kept notes on reference books and textbooks, or on films I’ve watched but had seen previously.) This is great because I always get terribly anxious when I think about how few books one can actually read in a lifetime. With so much fabulous literature (I use the term loosely) out there, and more being published every week, how can I possibly get through all of the good stuff? At least now I can quantify my fears: I read 37 books in 2003.

37. Thirty-seven. Yikes. Maybe it would have been better not knowing, because in the grand scheme of things, 37 is virtually indistinguishable from zero. It also makes me even more pissed off with Neal Stephenson for hogging almost the whole of October with the concrete block that is Quicksilver. James Bamford’s Body Of Secrets took me almost a whole month to get through, too, but at least I finished it and had another notch on my reading list to show for it. If it hadn’t been for Quicksilver I would have broken 40. 40 would have been poor, but almost acceptable. But 37? Thirty-seven??

I don’t normally make New Year Resolutions, but I’m determined that 2004 is going to see me pass the 50 mark.

Looking back on those 37, though, what interesting stuff does my review list tell me? Well, breaking the books down by genre, we have:

• Crime: 21.5
• SF/Fantasy: 10.5
• Non-fiction: 4
• “Mainstream”: 1

I’m counting Eric Garcia’s Casual Rex as half crime, half SF, because it’s genuinely a mix of both, as opposed to David Brin’s Kil’n People, which has strong potential as a crime novel, but ends up with both feet squarely in the SF camp (to my disappointment). The only “mainstream” book was William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition.

Also, looking back on the whole list, I need to work on my rating of books in the 4-5 star range. I rated Robert Crais’s The Last Detective as only one of two 5 star books for the year. It was a very good book, but I’m not sure if it really was a top three pick. It made me cry, which is a good sign of the emotional impact a book has on me. On the other hand, it’s not as good as LA Requiem, which, if I had such a thing, would be on my list of all-time favourite books. Likewise, I don’t think it was as good as Harlan Coben’s Fade Away. So why didn’t I give that one five stars? I’m not sure. As I said, the ratings need work.

According to the ratings at the time, though, here are my top-rated books for the year:

• 5 stars:
  • Robert Crais – The Last Detective
  • Dennis Lehane – Darkness, Take My Hand
• 4.5 stars:
  • Neil Gaiman – Coraline
  • James Bamford – Body Of Secrets
  • Harlan Coben – Deal Breaker
  • Harlan Coben – Drop Shot
  • Harlan Coben – Fade Away
  • Iain Banks – Raw Spirit
  • Dennis Lehane – A Drink Before The War

I don’t think there can be much question that I’m in a heavily crime-oriented reading phase right now. When I was younger, I read almost exclusively science fiction. Nowadays I find that there are far fewer science fiction books on the shelves that really interest me. I’d much rather discover a crime writer with a solid series of private eye novels behind them than an SF writer with an interesting back catalogue. Hmm. What does that say about me?

The writer I most enjoyed reading in 2003 is Harlan Coben, no question. I just finished reading the last two hundred pages of Tell No One in a single sitting this evening, and Coben is da man as far as I’m concerned.

Worst books of 2003:

• Neal Stephenson – Quicksilver (unrated, because I couldn’t finish it)
• 2 stars:
  • Greg Bear – Vitals
  • J.K. Rowling – Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix
  • Bill Bryson – A Short History Of Nearly Everything
  • Emma Lathen – Something In The Air
• 2.5 stars:
  • George P. Pelecanos – Hell To Pay
  • Henning Mankell – Faceless Killers

I came across fewer real turkeys than outstandingly good books, mainly because I tend not to dip into a novel unless I think I’ve got a good chance of liking it. I’m happy enough to take a chance on a film, because films only last a few hours. I have to live with a book for about a week, so I like to know that I’m going to get a good amount of enjoyment from it. That’s why I like Amazon’s recommendations.

What about that “average enjoyment”, then? Here are the average ratings over those categories:

• Crime: 3.7
• SF/Fantasy: 3.1
• Non-fiction: 3.8
• “Mainstream”: 4

According to these figures, I should probably be reading more mainstream and non-fiction, but the sample sizes are really too small to draw many conclusions from them. The gap between the crime and SF genres is very noticeable, though. We’ll see what 2004 brings, but so far there’s only one SF/fantasy book that’s firmly on my reading list, and that’s Lois McMaster Bujold’s Paladin Of Souls. Abi gave it the seal of approval, and Bujold is ever reliable, so I’m approaching that one without any apprehension. On the crime front, I’ve got the rest of Harlan Coben to get through (three more Myron Bolitar novels, which I’m going to have to get on import, or on Ebay, and another two stand-alones), and a bunch more Dennis Lehane. After being a bit disappointed by Faceless Killers I’ll probably give Henning Mankell another try. I also need to get back into Michael Connelly.

If there’s anyone else you’d recommend, I’d love to hear about them in the comments! I’ve got a quota to meet this year now, after all.

While snuffling through our local Borders bookshop yesterday evening, I found a copy of Casual Rex by Eric Garcia. Casual Rex is a prequel to Garcia’s debut novel Anonymous Rex, which was an excellent hard-boiled detective story set in modern times, but with a slight difference: dinosaurs still exist. But humans don’t know about this. Dinos go about their business completely undetected, because they dress up in latex human suits. It’s weird, but it works.

The hero of the Anonymous Rex, Vincent Rubio, is a private detective who has fallen on hard times since his partner, Ernie Watson, was murdered. He is also a velociraptor. In the course of the story we learn a lot about the dinosaur society, about the tensions that exist because of the dinosaurs’ continual secrecy, and of course we also dig deeper into the mystery of Ernie’s death. It’s a delightful blend of whimsical science fiction and noir detective story. It works so well partly because it follows the conventions of both genres: the science-fictional side of the book explores this off-beat world in enough detail to be satisfying, while the detective side tells an exciting story about a wise-cracking gumshoe solving an intriguing crime. Garcia ties the two sides together by making sure that the crime is specific to the human/dinosaur world, and that the pay-off couldn’t exist in any other context.

I’m looking forward to reading Casual Rex. I remember finding Anonymous Rex in a bookshop in London a few years ago (probably around 1999?), on the day that Abi and I took a mad day-trip down there by train. The train from Edinburgh to London used to only take just over 4 hours (it’s longer now–thank you, privatisation!), so as long as you left early enough, and were happy to come back late, it was quite possible for Edinburghers to visit London to have lunch and do some shopping. Which is what we did. We met up with James for moules frites at Belgo (a chain of Belgian-themed restaurants where the waiters dress up in monks’ habits), and then wandered around Covent Garden for a while. It wasn’t until last year that I actually got around to reading it, though. Which makes it a little bit odd that I only found Casual Rex yesterday, because it was published in 2001. Normally if I find a book I like, I go out looking for other books by the same author. I must just not have looked terribly hard in this case.

Now that I have found it, I have also found Eric Garcia’s web site, which is where I saw that he has another book out as well: Matchstick Men. That’s right, the book that the film Matchstick Men, starring Nicolas Cage and Sam Rockwell, is based on. That’s cool. The trailer looked interesting, and it was on my list of films to watch. Unfortunately it’s also on my list of films that I never had time to go and see, and will have to catch on DVD when it comes out. No dinosaurs in this one, though, just a couple of con-men.

Garcia’s web site also has the news that Hot And Sweaty Rex, the next novel in the series is due out in March of 2004, and that an Anonymous Rex TV show is in the making. The Sci-Fi Channel have greenlighted a pilot based on Casual Rex. Very interesting. Thank goodness that TV special effects have come a long way since V did lizards in human suits back in the eighties!

About halfway through October news broke that award-winning crime author Robert Crais had filed suit against Activision, publishers of the forthcoming game True Crime: Streets of LA. Reports of the lawsuit seemed to be based on a press release from Activision, and a variety of newswire Chinese whisperings. Not exactly a set of concrete facts, but the common thread was that the suit centred on the character of Nick Kang, hero of the True Crime game. Robert Crais alleged that Nick Kang was a carbon-copy of Elvis Cole, the detective hero of most of his novels.

The case caught my attention for three reasons. First of all, I’m an enthusiastic videogamer. Secondly, I’m interested in matters concerning copyright and intellectual property. But most of all, I am a huge Robert Crais fan. LA Requiem is one of my all-time favourite books. The ending made me cry. Books don’t usually affect me that strongly.

My feelings about the case are mixed. At first, my heart sank. Looking at the USA from the outside, it appears increasingly (and depressingly) easy to bring a lawsuit for copyright violation, or trademark or patent infringement. The Recording Industry Association of America has recently been instrumental in giving such lawsuits a bad name by using them to extort money from copyright infringers who can’t afford the legal fees to defend the matter in court. Even when it’s not a matter of individuals trying to stand up to corporate juggernauts, such as in the case of SCO versus IBM, outsiders generally look at the case, see the enormous sums of money being claimed, and dismiss the plaintiffs as greedy opportunists.

When I thought of Robert Crais bringing suit against Activision for copying Elvis Cole, I thought of the hundreds of fictional detectives that crime writers have created in the twentieth century. How many tough guy detectives did Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler spawn? How many amateur sleuths followed in the footsteps of Miss Marple, or Lord Peter Wimsey? Perhaps more so than any other genre, modern detective fiction relies on a common pool of characters, conventions, and expectations. The twentieth century detective has been shaped by the great authors in the field, and it would be almost impossible to construct (let alone market) a mystery that didn’t draw on this shared history. If authors started suing each other for creating characters that were too similar to their own, the crime genre would be dead within a year.

When I first started reading Robert Crais’s novels, I was struck by the similarity between Evis Cole and Joe Pike, and Robert B. Parker’s heroes, Spenser and Hawk. Spenser and Elvis Cole are both tough, wisecracking ex-cops with a crusader mentality. Hawk and Joe Pike are both strong, swift, deadly, don’t say much, and have a habit of showing up and providing life-saving assistance when Spenser and Cole need it most. Wow. They’re cut from exactly the same cloth. So did Crais rip off these characters from Parker? And if he did, is this a matter of paying homage to a master, or a matter for the courts?

There’s a blurry line here. On one side of it you have writers building on common archetypes to create original works, and to enrich the genre. On the other side you have situations where a derivative character is genuinely reducing the market value of the original. But as soon as you start talking about “market value,” you’re back in a grey area where the opportunity for overstatement is rife, and accusations of money-grubbing pop up like hyperactive meerkats. So even if there is a case to answer, the very action of pursuing it may be damaging to the plaintiff’s cause.

This seems to be what happened with Robert Crais. Shortly after the lawsuit was announced, the discussion forum on his web site had to be closed because of outraged videogame fans flooding the board with obscene messages and insults. If you have a look around the web for news of the lawsuit, you will run across large numbers of inflammatory postings and hateful comments attacking Crais for taking this action.

Where were the mystery fans standing up for their favourite writer? I couldn’t find any. They were probably silenced when the Robert Crais message board closed. It shouldn’t come as news to anyone that videogame fans vastly outnumber mystery fans on the internet.

But what is the opposite side of the issue? I said I had mixed feelings about the lawsuit. In fact, Crais himself summed it up in a posting he made to his fan mailing list:

‘A video game titled TRUE CRIME: STREETS OF LA was recently brought
to my attention. The creators of this game have admitted it was
patterned after my Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novels. Those of you long
familiar with my work know that I guard Elvis and Joe closely. You
know that I have turned down well over thirty offers to sell the
film and television rights to these characters and books. They are
not for sale. They may not be used without my permission.

‘To quote a character from THE MONKEY’S RAINCOAT, where it all began:
“He accepts the duty of protecting what is his.”‘

These characters are his. Crais has been very public about the fact that they are very close to his heart, and that he doesn’t want them abused or diluted by film or television. If he was in this for the money, he could have made heaps by selling the movie and TV rights. He hasn’t.

He is not precious about selling rights in general, though. In fact, one of his other novels, Hostage is apparently in pre-production right now with Bruce Willis in the lead role, and Crais himself writing the script. He is protective of Elvis Cole and Joe Pike specifically.

In proceeding with legal action against Activision, Crais could be perceived as trying to block them from bringing the game to market just so that he could make more money from selling the Elvis Cole game rights at a later date. But I really don’t think this is the case. I believe he is genuinely trying to protect his own characters, rather than trying to make a fast buck.

As a content creator myself, I understand this position and I am sympathetic to it. If I had a set of characters I had carefully nurtured for over ten years, I’d be protective too. If the developers of True Crime have admitted that they based the characters on Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, and never told Robert Crais about this or asked for his permission, then he has every right to be upset, and to try to stop the game from being published until he gets the situation sorted out.

I’m glad to say, though, that there appears to be a happy ending to the whole story. At the weekend, Robert Crais sent another message to his fan mailing list:

‘As reported in the last newsletter, I filed a lawsuit against
Activision, Luxoflux, and game designer Peter Morawiec based
upon Activision’s upcoming release of a videogame titled TRUE
CRIME: STREETS OF LA. This lawsuit was brought because of
several articles⁽¹⁾ and interviews published on gaming websites,
and what appeared to me to be similarities between the game and
my Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novels.

‘Activision’s and Luxoflux’s open and honorable response both
surprised and impressed me. They allowed me and my lawyers full
access to a special ‘unlocked’ pre-release version of the game,
provided a complete game ‘script,’ flowcharts of game action,
and provided all-important clarifications to statements that had
been attributed to Mr. Morawiec (turns out the guy was a fan of
my work, and was simply expressing his admiration). In short,
they did a damned fine job of defusing what could have been an
ugly situation.

‘Based upon our review of those materials, we have concluded that
Activision has not infringed upon my copyrights. Accordingly, I
have dismissed the lawsuit against all parties. I want to thank
Activision, Luxoflux, and Mr. Morawiec for the cooperative
nature in which they brought the case to a quick conclusion. Cynics please note: No money exchanged hands.

‘And, lastly, be advised that I spent several hours reviewing
this amazing game. It rocks.’

I’m glad that this was resolved without going to court. I’m glad that Crais was satisfied that his characters weren’t stolen. I’m glad that videogame fans who have been looking forward to playing True Crime won’t have to wait to get hold of it. I’m glad that the game’s developers won’t have to watch their hard work taken apart in court.

And yet…it bothers me that a matter like this came to lawyers at twelve paces. Why did Crais have to bring a lawsuit in the first place? Did he make informal inquiries at Activision, or did he go straight for the big guns? If he made informal inquiries, did Activision refuse to answer them satisfactorily, so that he had to force disclosure through legal action? If Activision was so “open and honorable” after the lawsuit was filed, why were they unable to resolve the whole issue before it got to that point? Is Crais’s message a true reflection of an amicable settlement, or is it pure spin to try and hide a potentially embarrassing retreat after a too-hasty legal attack? Even though no money changed hands, I’m sure that the terms of the settlement will prevent both parties from discussing the matter any further.

Like I said: mixed feelings. I can see both sides of the issue. I’m glad that both parties appear to have walked away happy. But the very use of lawsuit tactics is going to gnaw at me for some time.

Related Links

• Robert Crais
• Activision (doesn’t work in the Firebird browser)
• One of the “articles” talking about the inspiration for True Crime