WITCH ELM a Tale of Twisted Fate and Murder

The Witch Elm by Irish Author Tana French is a crime novel in which fate and coincidence play twisted roles in the course of fatal events. The story deals with the question of what motivates a person to murder as much as the details of the actual murder itself.

Toby Hennessey is a young man living a normal, content life when two random events suddenly wrench that life into crisis. First, he is the victim of a home break-in and brutal beating that leaves him coping with a serious head injury. Then, while visiting his old family country home, The Ivy House, a human skeleton is found inside a huge elm tree on the property. A police investigation finds the skeleton belongs to a murder victim from years earlier. When the victim is identified, he was a friend who hung around with Toby and his family members at one time.

As the police press continued questions, Toby's damaged memory struggles to recall the past. Is it possible he could have been involved in the murder? Or perhaps his cousins or his uncle? The more Toby tries to answer these awful questions, the worse his mental condition becomes.

The Witch Elm is an engrossing  psychological crime novel that builds slowly to a disturbing revelation. The one quibble with the book is it's overwritten length at five hundred pages. Dialogue scenes go on in talky circles far too long. At a hundred pages shorter, the novel could have been even more unsettling.

Stephen King's BAZAAR OF BAD DREAMS a Dark Ride

Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King is a short fiction collection that ranges across genres from Horror and Fantasy to dark mainstream fiction. Running through the stories are the two common themes of fatalism and fear of the dark things that are always waiting somewhere in human lives.

The best tale in the collection is the outright horror novella, "Mile 81," about a monster in the form of a derelict car that sits waiting for victims at a deserted highway rest stop. The story has echoes of the straight horror shudders that King produced early in his career. Other entertaining tales are "The Dune," "Obits," "Ur," and "The Little Green God of Agony."

Less successful are a few of the mainstream fiction pieces like "Morality," "Under the Weather," and "That Bus is Another World." These are dark meditations that feel like they're reaching too hard for something and are ultimately unsatisfying.

That said, Bazaar of Bad Dreams is on the whole Stephen King's best story collection since Everything's Eventual. The stories are all told in the author's trademark earthy, colloquial, "Big Mac and Fries" style. Faithful King fans should be pleased with this new volume of his work.

FARGO Best Crime Series on Television in Second Season

Fargo (FX Cable) opened its new season this week as the best crime series on TV. The series is a spin-off from the cult classic neo-noir movie by Joel and Ethan Coen. The TV version has faithfully lived up to the standards of its acclaimed movie predecessor.

The familiar plot elements are still present. The snowy, blank whiteness of the Minnesota landscape. Slow thinking, earnest small town cops. An act of stupidly impulsive violence that triggers a chain of out-of-control consequences. The pervasive undertone of quirky, deadpan black humor.

Add to that a brewing gang war between a local family crime business and invading organized crime mobsters. Caught in the middle is a hapless, none-too-bright married couple who accidently kill one of the criminals, then clumsily try to cover it up.

The great theme of the Coen brothers has always been a bleak, fatalistic view of humanity and the misguided acts that people undertake which lead inexorably to their own destruction. The empty white landscape serves as a metaphor for the amoral blankness in which the characters flail futilely about.

The Fargo TV series is faithful to that theme, offering a pitch black, quirky crime drama and a cast of dumbly motivated, morally vacant people who can't get out of the disastrous situations they have blundered into.

FARGO TV Series a Dark, Quirky Crime Drama

The movie Fargo, from Joel and Ethan Coen, is a Neo-Noir masterpiece with a stupid criminal plan gone wrong, deadpan black humor, and dumbly out-of-control violence.

That's a lot for the new TV series based on the movie to live up to. But based on the first season so far, the new series is off to a promising start.

Familiar plot elements from the movie are present: The snowy, white blank landscape of rural Minnesota; earnest, slow thinking small town cops; a hapless local businessman, Lester Nygard, who gets himself ensnared in a web of lies and criminal acts.

At the center of it all is a sinister figure -- a cold blooded contract killer named Loren Malvo, whose presence is like an amoral catalyst that triggers a chain of violent events wherever he travels.

The great theme of the Coen Brothers has always been their bleak, fatalistic view of humanity, and the misguided acts people undertake which lead inexorably to their own downfalls.

The Fargo TV series is faithful to that theme, offering a pitch black, quirky crime drama, and moments of wild, spontaneous violence that change all that follows.

Beach Rating: 4 Palm Trees

Coen Brothers Movie Asks Big Questions

Two recurring themes run through the movies of Joel and Ethan Coen. Fatalism and Absurdity. Their latest movie, "A Serious Man," embodies both themes.

The main character, Larry Gopnick, is a college professor in a mid-life crisis, beset by a scourge of adversity: divorce, tenure threat, no money. Larry is trying to figure out why all this is happening to him and what his own life means.

Science and Religion provide no answers. Larry teaches quantum physics, but his whole blackboard full of equations only proves that nothing in reality is known for certain.

The three Rabbis he consults offer only absurd advice. One babbles about the sheer wondrous reality of a parking lot. The next rabbi sees life as an unknowable, perverse mystery. The oldest rabbi sage quotes lyrics from a Jefferson Airplane song.

Larry is left to find his own meaning for his life. The movie ending is ominous. Larry's doctor calls with bad news about an x-ray. A dangerous tornado funnel is approaching the area. The precariousness of human life remains always.

Larry's struggles may remind some of the Book of Job. But the movie more closely reflects the bleak fatalism of the Book of Ecclesiastes.

"A Serious Man" doesn't give us any answers, only serious questions to think about long afterward.

BEACH RATING: 4 Palm Trees