Tropical & Topical
I was faced with a choice recently: read another mystery/thriller, which I almost always find unsatisfying, or a novel that flew under the radar. Arin Greenwood’s first, Tropical Depression, published in 2010, is the story of a female lawyer fired from a tobacco company that has an office in NYC. Since she hated the job, it wasn’t much of a blow. On the other hand, finding out her beloved is having an affair is devastating, more so when he leaves her for the other woman. She takes a one-year job as a clerk for a judge on the tiny Pacific island of Miramar, which has been under American influence since WWII. I believe the place is fictional. A google search turned up only one in that area of the world that carries the name, and it’s in New Zealand. If there really is such a place, my apologies. Greenwood’s Miramar is in the middle of the ocean, far from other lands. The protagonist is surprised to find it dominated by establishments that offer strippers, gambling and prostitution. The infrastructure is way below par. Sewage is pumped untreated into the beautiful waters around it. There are few paved roads. The diet of the native born, most of whom live in poverty, leads to diabetes among many. The population of outsiders now exceeds that of those born there. And, surprise, government institutions suffer corruption and incompetence. There is no plot, just the meandering of the protagonist, which alternates between annoying and interesting and amusing. As one would expect, many of the characters are quirky. According to the blurb on the back cover, Greenwood spent five-plus years on Saipan, which verifies the authenticity of the work. What hurts it is the need of a little polish, another draft. There are numerous errors. Her editor let her down. There is a lot of profanity, gratuitous to my ear. Still, it’s a solid first novel, and has probably sold a lot more copies than any of my books, perhaps all of them combined. Its 265 pages read like considerably less. 16 readers at Amazon have rated it, forging to a consensus of four on a scale of ten. I’ll go with 2.5. My guess is women would like it a lot more than men. Greenwood returned to the USA and was animal welfare editor for The Huffington Post. She now writes about dogs, cats, and other critters for The Today Show, The Dodo, The Washington Post, Slate, Creative Loafing, the American Bar Association Journal, and other publications. She has written two other novels, the latest geared toward young adults. Here she is:
Many love Chick-fil-A, which has become one of America’s most successful restaurant franchises. The left hates it. The owner once stated his belief in traditional marriage, and he will not allow stores to open on Sunday, both black marks in liberal thinking. Recently, Kansas University moved it to a prime location on campus. This upset a group of naysayers, the Sexuality & Gender Diversity Faculty and Staff Council, who said in a two-page letter: “The culture of Chick-fil-A fosters hate and discrimination on multiple levels.” Cock-a-doodle-do. I wish there was one in Sheepshead Bay. (From foxnews.com)
It’s gets harder to comment on mass shootings, our national curse. Last night I watched a rerun of my favorite Euro crime show, Beck, produced in Sweden, in which a teacher framed for lewd behavior by the Principal, the actual guilty party, takes revenge against faculty members who betrayed him. When a detective is handed a list of Stockholm’s gun owners, he is shocked at its size and says: “… The United States of Sweden.” When the gunman is finally tracked down, the soft spoken Beck, wonderfully played by Peter Haber, pleads that he put the gun down. He does but pulls another and kills himself, which I believe was right but the detective squad apparently does not despite the fact that one of the victims was a female cop. Weary, contemplating retirement despite his great track record, Beck says: “It never ends.” Such is humanity. Here is Haber:
South Korea’s Jin Young Ko, 24, the world’s #1 ranked female pro golfer, set a record this weekend. She extended her run of bogey-free holes to 114, which ended at the ninth when she missed a three-foot putt for par. She has won four times this season, including two majors. The previous record was 110, set by Tiger Woods. Kudos, madam. Here she is:
The floating book shop was rained out today. Although I hadn’t missed a day since April. I hated not being out there.
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