Jen Banbury

(I found this book while pulling non-circulating volumes from the shelves at my library. It seemed like something I might enjoy (I did), and in checking it out, I also extended its shelf life a bit.)

Jill is a hard-drinking used-bookstore employee who doesn’t seem to give a cuss. When a well-dressed dwarf with a weird verbal tick unwittingly offers to sell her an autographed first edition of Jack London’s The Cruise of the Snark, she jumps on the opportunity to buy low and sell high to another book dealer. Of course, as soon as it’s out of her hands, it turns out the book is stolen, and may be considerably more valuable than Jill anticipated: it certainly is to the threatening henchmen sent to recover the volume. Now Jill’s under pressure to find the book again, facing double-crosses, Mickey Finns, kidnappings, car chases, psychos, and a cameo in a Hollywood blockbuster. As she pursues the book, Jill’s physical and emotional limits are tested, and she reveals to the reader the circumstances that shaped her character at the start of the novel.

Really, the cover design for Like a Hole in the Head is what drew my attention and saved the book from being weeded into (further) obscurity. I don’t even find it that aesthetically pleasing, with its bright orange and yellow blocks, but those colors do convey the modernity and “L.A.”-ness of the book. In the “O” of “Hole” there’s an actual hole, revealing (if this weren’t a library copy with a dust-jacket protector) a bullet-sized circle of black from the hardcover beneath. But what made me do a double-take was the composition–the title field and spine label are placed over a reproduction of a weathered copy of The Cruise of the Snark (the novel’s MacGuffin). That got me reexamining the book in my hand, and ultimately checking it out.

Like The Manual of Detection, this book offers another take on the detective formula, but it’s closer in tone to Expiration Date crossed with The Big Lebowski. In this case, the plot structure remains traditional (first-person detached narrator, criminal elements abounding with a valuable object at the center, a complex morass of motivations and sticky situations) while the update comes in the form of the setting (modern L.A., complete with almost everyone turning out to be an actor) and the young, rough-edged, slacker protagonist.

I didn’t like Jill at first: she came off as too detached and too attitudinal. Secondary characters have their own eccentricities but run to type. Over the course of the novel Jill hints at and finally reveals the issues she’s been dealing with, and while I appreciated that her attitude had an explanation, I still never really felt like I knew her. What I found, though, was that once the search got underway, the plot kept me thoroughly hooked. Action-oriented with several twists and a series of episodic situations, the story-line kept me glued to the back of Jill’s motorcycle, never expecting the genuine surprises to come. The tone is gritty and hard-edged, with some armchair psychology awkwardly breaking up what quickly moves from a leisurely- to a fast-paced novel.

Of note was the level of violence and the number of deaths Banbury racks up, belying the nondescript neon title design and traditionally harmless used-bookstore scenario. Another surprise was the ubiquity of actors in the book–successful, washed-up, and wannabe–unexplained until after the last page, where the jacket bio reveals that the author herself was involved in theater and the star of an AT&T commercial. This was an unexpected element of the book but not an unwelcome one: Banbury’s noir maze benefits from the added Hollywood strangeness.

The book Jill is desperately trying to recover has a code hidden in it. I’d love to say I found a similar cipher in Like a Hole in the Head (granted, I didn’t look too hard), but even not it provided an adrenaline-fueled, hard-edged, well-plotted mystery thrill that felt, like Jill herself, a little emptier than it should have less substantial than it could have.

Recommended for fans of action-driven mysteries or independent women detectives, but this is not a cozy for the faint of heart.

http://librarianorama.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/like-a-hole-in-the-head/… (más)

Playwright Jen Banbury's first novel, Like a Hole in the Head (1998) has been widely described as falling into the "neo-noir" genre, if there is such a thing. Part-time bookseller and full-time cynic Jill finds herself in a major pickle after she unwittingly fences a rare doctored first edition of Jack London's The Cruise of the Snark. Banbury leads Jill through a series of increasingly-improbable events involving former child actors, all-night veterinarians, a fair number of drunken louts ... and some ducks, a bookstore cat, and a wounded dog.

The barely-believable plot of this novel is only made more ridiculous by the even less-believable ending, and yet I enjoyed reading it - it's a bizarre, but amusing, romp through the LA underworld. Unfortunately the book's role tends to get lost in the shuffle; Banbury could certainly have done more to work that into the narrative.

Recommended for a bit of light reading.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2007/12/book-review-like-hole-in-head.html… (más)