The Girl

September 25, 2018 Earnest Painter

I'm finally reading Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. (Listening to the audio book, more precisely.) I've always known I'd like it, but I thought I wasn't ready. Now I am.

The mystery is intriguing, but what I'm really enjoying so far is the prose about the weather. Northern Sweden in January. I'm listening to it in Central Texas in September, a time when it's barely under 100°, and I feel like I need to get under a blanket.

That's some good writing.

Weycombe

December 24, 2017 Earnest Painter

Let me take a moment to review a book that I loved.

Weycombe by G.M. Malliet
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nothing is as perfect as it seems.

It never is. Jillian White finds this out when the facade of her fantasy life is shattered by the murder of a woman named Anna, the local estate agent. Little by little the reader is pulled into Jill's world and her thoughts. (view spoiler)[It is written in first person, so we have the advantage of knowing what the narrator is thinking. However, she has the advantage of only telling us what she wants us to know.

Weycombe is like a cousin to Girl on the Train. Though Girl is more intense, Weycombe is more sinister. If Girl on a Train is on one side of Weycombe's family, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is on the other, and here is where I let the bomb drop. I don't plan on having a review without spoilers.

The thing is, being so deep inside the mind of Jill is a little unnerving. There is a transformation throughout the book, and it doesn't get any more comfortable. At first Jill is in a rut, a huge rut that she can't get out of and that threatens to get tiresome. While Rachel from Girl is lost in alcoholism, Jillian is simply lost. She has lost her job; she has given up on trying to find another one. She spends her days wondering around the wealthy village of Weycombe, wasting away her life while her marriage falls apart. Not unlike with Rachel, I tended to want to throttle Jillian for her decisions.

But, she becomes energized with the idea of the murder of Anna, a woman who used to be her friend. She takes copious notes and eventually she states what we have been suspecting for a while – that she is planning to write a novel based on the murder. (The job she lost was with the BBC, so she's right in her niche.) That the murder of someone she knew could inspire her paints Jill in a less favorable light, even as it is she telling the story. As she becomes more interested in the investigation she becomes obsessed. She uses her feminine guile and American-ness to get information from the detective, and she talks with people around town, making small talk and then rushing to write everything down.

This invigorated Jillian is more pleasant, though. She is sure of herself and her talents. She has a purpose. She wastes no time on the illusion that she can save her marriage; in fact she hides her industry from her husband – willing him to stay out all night so she can get work done. All the while, small clues keep popping up, things that would have been more natural had they been told in a more chronological way. Some things seem to be important, and yet mean nothing... until later. She talks with a former colleague and the energy of her profession continues to return. She even talks to her Member of Parliament (MP) and is not intimidated when he calls her local police to ~~put her in her place~~ complain about her.

In the quaint village of Weycombe with its scenic backdrop, we see this woman, Jillian, slowly raise her head to look at us, then she keeps turning her head to look toward the sky, and she continues turning. Then we are looking at the back of her head, but there is another face there, and it is only beginning to lift itself to look at us. It is another Jillian with another version of the story we just heard. And we learn that this more well-adjusted woman is more sinister than we had been led to believe. (hide spoiler)]

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Fingerprints on the East Side

April 27, 2017 Earnest Painter

Austin Police Department - Austin, TX from Google Maps

It's worth noting that the Austin Police Department has an interesting sculpture built into their landscape architecture. The home of the department's Forensic Science Division has a fingerprint outside the building, in the grass.

Pretty cool, huh?

The image above is a satellite image from Google Maps. Here are a couple of Google Map street views. It might be kind of fun to drop in (via Google Maps or in person) and check it out for yourself. In case you're interested, the coordinates are 30.259154, -97.699830.