Reader's Notebook, 9/23/26
For some reason last night I tossed and turned nearly the entire night. Even with a little extra jolt of caffeine this morning - or maybe because of it - my re-reads of this post found so many small errors. I hope I’ve cleaned them all up, but if some slip through, now you know why.
A Violent Masterpiece - Jordan Harper This is the third Harper book I’ve read. Like the first two, this one was dark and disturbing. In the past, that has not always worked for me. His first book might have been too dark. His second I liked a lot, but was a bit put off by a 10-year-old girl being taught how to kill people by her father. This one, though, not only lined up with my likes/dislikes much better, it also served as a counter to a prominent book I read a couple years ago and hated.
The novel is set in modern day LA. We view the city through the eyes of three people. A streamer who drives around the city, giving old school, late night radio DJ-style monologues about its depravity while showing live video of crimes and their aftermaths. A women who serves as a fixer for a service that provides the rich with literally anything they ask for. And an attorney who normally defends people who see his ads at bus stops but gets sucked into the underworld by a man on the inside who wants to expose what the power brokers of LA are doing behind the scenes.
The connecting point for these characters is a serial killer that is snatching women who have a very specific look and murdering them in the most brutal ways possible.
Fun stuff!
Harper weaves a tight, engrossing story around these three and the world they live in. There are elements of the Epstein case woven into it. He shows us a world where people with so much money that society will not hold them accountable throw themselves into the most debauched activities simply because they can. We also see the breadth and corrosive effects of social media and online culture.
In some ways this struck me as a counter to Bret Easton Ellis’ The Shards. While that book took place in the Eighties, to me Harper’s three main characters were standing up against the same, if more modern, world Ellis’ characters lived in. Maybe that’s a stretch but the thought kept popping into my head as I read it.
In classic underdog story fashion, Harper’s protagonists accomplish what the police, judges, and media couldn’t, exposing to the public that it the people we are taught to look up to are actually the ones living the most depraved lives.
A Violent Masterpiece fits the times we live in. And it really isn’t that violent. Sure, there are some violent moments. However, the title refers to a speech a secondary character gives, in which he notes how guns have been developed to the highest level of current technology at each point in their history in the US, making our country a violent masterpiece. This person mentions this in a presentation in which he is teaching police how to kill and get away with it.
Like I said, fits our times.
Cool Machine - Colson Whitehead The final (I assume?) book in Whitehead’s trilogy following Harlem furniture salesman and fence Ray Carney. Here Whitehead jumps to the Eighties and splits the three sections across 1981, 1983, and 1987. Carney is mostly out of the criminal world, but it pulled back to assist with a big heist that has long-lasting consequences. The book is as much about his associate Pepper, who served as Carney’s muscle over the years, and him coming to terms with age stripping him of his effectiveness but his sense of honor not letting him retire.
It is also a tying up of loose ends, a settling of accounts, etc etc etc.
As with the earlier books in the series, I struggled with this. At least for the first two-thirds. Whitehead writes wonderfully, and I liked his characters, but there was some juice missing from this set of stories that prevented me from sitting down with it for more than 15-20 minutes at a time.
That noted, I really enjoyed how it ramped up to its ending. The final two chapters nearly made up for the slogging to get there. While I enjoyed this series despite my struggles to get through two of the books, I definitely prefer Whitehead’s other books I’ve read.
Speaking of past books, this morning I added a Reading List page to the new setup. Once again you can see (nearly) everything I’ve read for the past 20 years. If my math is right, I’m on the verge of adding my 1000th entry to that list!