New Book Alert: Rite Judgement: Heads Roll-Corpses Dance (The DaDa Detective Agency Book 2) by Pete Adams; Bizarre Farcical Absurd Mystery That Is Short on Plot But Long On Tone and Theme

 

New Book Alert: Rite Judgement: Heads Roll-Corpses Dance (The DaDa Detective Agency Book 2) by Pete Adams; Bizarre Farcical Absurd Mystery That Is Short on Plot But Long On Tone and Theme

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Pete Adams' Rite Judgement Heads Roll-Corpses Dance is the second book that I am reading this month that prefers to ignore the heart, slightly focus on the head, but heads straight for the funny bone. However, this and Lakshmi and The River of Truth take different approaches in their pursuit of laughter.

Lakshmi and The River of Truth was a savage biting political satire disguised as a fantasy. The satire is obvious as various characters and situations in this dream world are intentional parodies of people and events surrounding the real world.

Rite Judgement's humor is less abrupt and more fanciful and whimsical. While there are some satirical moments and hidden important themes, the characters and situations are absurd and farcical. There isn't as much of a recognizable plot as there are excuses to throw a bunch of odd silly things together to create a whole book that focuses on the silliness and bury important messages inside of it.. Let's put it this way, if Lakshmi and The River of Truth is Saturday Night Live, then Rite Judgement Heads Roll-Corpses Dance is Monty Python's Flying Circus. No one is better than the other. Both are hilarious, they just have different ways of making people laugh.

The main characters in Rite Judgement are former Police Detective Jack "Jane" Austen and his wife former Detective Superintendent Amanda "Mandy" Austen. Even though they are retired, they still thirst for adventure. That's why they formed the DaDa Detective Agency named for their other nicknames "Dick" for Jack (which Mandy jokes is perfect for him) and "Duck" for Mandy (which she objects to because she is not a bird and even if she were "why a f$#@_&g duck?"). 

The duo's latest case involves the appearance of St. Winifred, a martyred saint who has reappeared in modern day sans head. (Her head is on a conductor's stand.) As if it wasn't weird enough, the saint plays the violin and dances even though she's headless.

 Then there's a religious group called Umble Pie who is less than umble because they seem to be overly involved with the British government. There is also an actor posing as the Pope when the real deal ends up missing, a parrot that speaks Italian, and a goofy politician with the name of Pimple (yes you read that right) and his wife Crumpet. If you squint, you might be able to put these weird situations together and find a coherent plot.

The focus of the book is less on plot and more on tone.Situations happen that are too broad to be believable and the stabs at mystery solving are more resolved through contrived coincidence than any form of detection.

 In fact the main couple, Jack and Mandy Austen's disagreements and personal digs towards each other make them seem more like a sitcom couple than a pair of detectives. Jack is a pompous twit and Mandy's sarcasm brings him down to Earth. Think less Temperance Brennan and Seeley Booth from Bones and more Ray and Debra Barone from Everybody Loves Raymond uh with deductive reasoning and a license to investigate criminal activity of course.

Besides the humor of the bickering pair of crime solvers, the whole point of the book is not to have a straightforward mystery. Things don't have a linear structure. Conversations and incidents take place that have no real bearing in the overall narrative. 

The clue of the overall tone of the book is in the name, The DaDa Detective Agency. The name is a reference to the Dada Art Movement that began after WWI. Those involved with the movement rejected logic, aesthetics, and reason and embraced nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois views in their works. Even the name itself was coined by using a baby's words evoking childishness and absurdity. 

The works included collages, sound poetry, cut up writing, and sculpture.

Artists in the movement included Hugo Ball, Max Ernst, Hannah Hoch, and Beatrice Wood among others.

 Dadaism was an influence on later movements like Surrealism, Abstract Art, Avant Garde, Pop Art, Nouveau Realism, and others. Chances are if it's a weird way of looking at the world, the Dadaists made it.

Rite Judgement is right in the Dadaist style. A headless dancing corpse is treated not as a miracle but more like a money making opportunity and a booking on reality television. It's a ridiculous moment made even more ridiculous because of the behavior of the people around it.

There are groups of Holy Hairdressers and another group called Fishers of Men (which the narrative tells us "does exactly what it says on the can.") Of course it's hard to take seriously an organization that controls everything called Umble Pie. 

If there is a point, Rite Judgement is mocking religious institutions and society's dependence on them. It also mocks how those institutions exploit their symbols with the intentions of gaining money, followers, and governmental power. The book just does it in a way that plays the laughs before the message.

There is another theme that is more subtle than religious exploitation: that of class conflict. There is a constant allusion to spring throughout the book, which heralds new beginnings, rebirth, and awakening from what is considered cold and dead.

 The Arab Spring anti-government uprisings in the Arab World, a grassroots campaign that was spread throughout social media, in the early 2010's is referred to.

Igor Stravinsky's composition Rite of Spring keeps coming in and out of the book like a motif. The composition was a ballet depicting primitive people engaging a ritual sacrifice on a young maiden.  (Fans of Disney's Fantasia may remember the composition in the animated segment depicting the evolution of Earth from the formation of the land to the death of the dinosaurs.) 

Reportedly, the Rite of Spring ballet was so controversial that riots broke out in protest and defense of it. Stravinsky's music was favored by many revolutionaries and considered the music of the Russian Revolution. 

The motif of Rite of Spring adds to the subtle theme of earlier conventions passing away and dying out to make way for newer ideals. That older constraints like class distinction, religious schisms, and oligarchy politics are not working. If they aren't working, then the book suggests that the way must be made for something new. A return to spring if you will.

All of this is hidden inside a book with a headless dancing saint. 

Weekly Reader: The Black Rose (Larkin's Barkin' Book One) by Pete Adams; Engaging Crime Thriller About East End London Crime Families Undone By Nonsensical Ending

 Weekly Reader: The Black Rose (Larkin's Barkin' Book One by Pete Adams; Engaging Crime Thriller About East End London Crime Families Undone By Nonsensical Ending

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: One thing that I will say about Pete Adams's The Black Rose is that it had a very strong premise and a great engaging and suspenseful beginning and middle. However, somewhere towards the end, it really lost itself. While the book provided plot twists that were genuinely surprising, they were so far out in left field that Adams really should have let go of surprise and instead let the compelling narrative lead to a better, even if it had to be more conventional, ending.

The Black Rose is great at exploring the British criminal underworld and the families that run it. Adams was clearly inspired by such noted real-life firms like the Clerkenwell Crime Syndicate (AKA The Adams Family), The Arif Family, The Richardson  Gang, and The Kray Twins. The inner lives, rules,  standards, and family honor and sometimes disloyalty come into play within the fictional Saint and Larkin Families. The two families have been at war for generations. They have had blood for blood. Every time one member gets killed, another is struck down in retaliation.  They vie for ownership of the streets and the various illegal operations around town. Occasionally, they stop the fighting out of respect if important key members die or they join forces to fight a common enemy like the law or a rival firm. 

This time the Saints and Larkins have found a corker of an enemy: The O'Neill Crime Syndicate, a new group that originated from Ireland.

 Their main representative isn't a seasoned gangster. In fact, she is a fifteen year old girl, Roisin (pronounced Ro-sheen) O'Neil AKA Rose and The Black Rose. Rose befriends Chas Larkin, the sickly and mentally ill outcast of the Larkin family. When Rose and Chas begin their own crime spree, the Saints and Larkins realize that they have to put their differences aside to take on this new, psychopathic, and highly dangerous enemy.

The contrast between the Larkin-Saints and Chas and Rose are what makes the book. While no one in the book is particularly likeable, there are differences. The Larkins and Saints have been doing the criminal rivalry for decades so they are an integral part of the neighborhood. As much as these families hate each other, they realize that they are dependant upon one another.  

The Saints control the docks and the Larkins control the gambling houses, brothels, and other businesses around the docks. Both families are headed by tough as nails women in Bessie Saint and Alice "Nan" Larkin. They have their separate pubs in which they congregate-Dad's for Saints and Arrie's for Larkins. Two younger women in the families develop a friendship that turns into a romance, possibly a suggestion of a union at least by marriage. (Hey even the Hatfields and McCoys put down their guns temporarily when two of them married each other. Only to pick them up again after they got divorced.)

Both families know and respect the East End and the people that inhabit it, considering the London area their protectorate. They commit violence towards each other such as threatening rival family members (whoah to the Saint schoolchild who bullies a Larkin and vice versa. Rest assured, they will live to regret it.) and destroying their property. But they have rules and standards.

For example if an important family member is killed, they call off the fight long enough for a grieving process to continue and even have representatives attend the funeral. They both grieve when a mass death arrives (and in this book, it happens a lot.)

Their sometimes peace is symbolized by a crumpet that resides under a glass case in Dad's. The rules are that no one would but a Saint may touch it and the Larkins honor it until it gets mysteriously stolen in the beginning and the Larkins don't own up to it. This incident leads to a long chain of violence between the Saints, Larkins, the police, and the newcomer O'Neils which fractures the strained peace between the Saints and Larkins, especially when Chas and Rose become involved.

Chas meets Rose when she defends him from bully, Mickey Saint at school. Chas is often considered an outcast even within his own family, so in Rose he finds someone intoxicating and bewitching, a kindred spirit, and an understanding friend. However, there is a darker side to Rose's behavior as  she beats Mickey Saint practically to death. The two continue to go on a crime spree of wanton violent destruction, not caring whether it's Saint or Larkin property or neither. Rose and Chas act without conscience or scruples and they don't care who they hurt. In fact, Rose seems to delight in playing the two crime families against each other.

She also is able to carry Chas along. Playing on his loneliness, isolation, and his subconscious thoughts against the rest of his family and the Saints, Rose is able to put into action what he has wanted to do for some time. The more she acts, the more Chas follows her into that world and the more dangerous he becomes.

That's why she frightens the two families so much. Rose is less of a real person than an entity who feeds off of hatred and destruction. Unlike the two families who have a code and rules, Rose has none. She has no loyalty or allegiances. We hear about the O'Neills but don't see them except for Rose and there is even doubt whether they really exist or only exist because of this one girl. She is willing to do what the Saints and Larkins are not and that makes her more villainous and far more dangerous.

 It's as though Hannibal Lector was put into the middle of the Godfather. His psychopathic chaotic nature contradicts that of the Corleones and he would be considered a greater evil than them. That's how Rose is seen to the Saints and Larkins. She shakes up their world because she is not a part of it. She is beyond their control and almost unstoppable, unless the two families work together to end this two-person crime spree.

In fact the only thing that stops Rose is an ending that puts things to a screeching halt. I won't spoil it, but let's say it's one of those endings that seems to pull a twist out of thin air and a ridiculous one at that. It relies on an absolute suspension of disbelief that is beyond incredulous and requires a lot of questions to ask how it was possible to be pulled, how this twist could have been maintained when logistics would have prevented it, and the subsequent ramifications for what had occurred before the reveal. 

I don't want to say that Rose O'Neill is a good character who deserves a good ending, but she was built up to be so mesmerizing, so destructive, and so chaotic that this ending does her an injustice. A good antagonistic character deserves a better ending than that.