As you can tell from the previous book reviews posted on this site, I haven’t been reading anything really challenging lately. For the last year or so, I’ve been delving into the crime/mystery genre and consuming works by authors such as Agatha Christie and Michael Connelly. While those types of books have a fair amount of entertainment value, no one would claim to get an intellectual workout from reading them. Because of this, I’ve recently been forcing myself to read at least a couple of pages per day from books that would be found on high school or college lit class reading lists. So even though it took me a couple months, I can now say that I’ve read A Passage to India by E.M. Forster.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): A Passage to India is set in 1920s India at the time of British colonialism. As a result, Forster spends a great deal of time describing tensions between the native Indian population and British government officials, and several of the interactions between characters carry politically significant overtones. I’m not going to pretend that I understood any of Forster’s political statements at all, even with the help of the GradeSaver ClassicNotes study guide, so this review is going to deal only with the major plotline of the book.

There are essentially three central characters in this book: an Indian doctor named Aziz, a British university administrator named Cyril Fielding, and a British traveler named Adela Quested. After giving some background information about these characters, Forster has them all meet at a so-called “bridge party,” a social gathering designed to bridge the gap between the two cultures.

Dr. Aziz is portrayed as someone who allows himself to get carried away during conversations with the British. Before he knows it, he ends up inviting Adela, Fielding, and another woman named Mrs. Moore on an all-day expedition to the Marabar Caves. This was a rather unusual move at that time because the Indians and British usually didn’t mix together outside of the bridge parties, especially when an Indian was the one doing the hosting.

On the day of the expedition, Fielding is late meeting Aziz, Adela, and Mrs. Moore at the train station. The train takes off without him, leaving Adela and Mrs. Moore alone with Aziz and his servants. Again, this was a highly unusual situation at the time.

Rather than put off the outing, Aziz decides to go forward with it. He’ll be the consummate host and show Adela and Mrs. Moore part of the “real India” that they both desire to see. Unfortunately, the caves turn out to be a huge disappointment to both Adela and Mrs. Moore. It’s physically taxing to hike up to the caves, and once inside, the caves have a strange smell and echo. Mrs. Moore doesn’t like the expedition, so she decides to sit and rest while Aziz and Adela go on with a single guide.

On the hike up to the next cave, Adela starts asking Aziz questions about his deceased wife. This was an improper line of conversation and it shakes Aziz up a bit. He goes into a different cave by himself to think about what’s going on. When he comes out, he sees the guide sitting by some rocks, with Adela nowhere to be found. Aziz asks where Adela is, and the guide says she’s in one of the caves alone. Aziz begins a frantic search, but finds no sign of Adela except for her binoculars, which he scoops up. He then sees Adela down at ground level talking to another Englishwoman who has finally brought Fielding to join the party. Adela looks upset, and the two women soon speed off in the car.

Upon returning to the city of Chandrapore, Aziz is arrested. It seems that Adela was sexually assaulted in the last cave and she says Aziz did it. Fielding is outraged, believing from the start that Aziz is innocent, but Aziz has no rights in the situation. He’s hauled off to jail to await trial on the criminal charges.

The rest of the novel then deals with the trial and the fallout from the alleged crime of an Indian man assaulting a British woman.

My Reaction: I think that the political turmoil Forster described is just too far removed from today’s society to be relevant or even comprehensible to the average reader (especially one from the U.S. who might not know much about Britain’s history in India). So a lot of what Forster had to say was completely lost on me, and that made parts of the novel quite boring. Specifically, the beginning (where Forster was setting the stage for subsequent happenings) and the ending (which seemed to drag on far too long) were very difficult for me to get through.

The middle of the book, which dealt with Adela and Aziz, was interesting to a certain degree. Of course, since A Passage to India was written in 1924, the author spends a great deal of time hinting around at things instead of spelling them out. For example, when describing what happened to Adela in the pivotal cave scene, Forster simply uses the word “insulted.” Adela was insulted in the cave. These days, it’s quite a leap from “insult” to “sexual assault,” so even though you can infer Forster’s real meaning from the seriousness of the court proceedings against Aziz, it could be confusing to someone not reading carefully.

It’s hard for me to review a critically acclaimed book like A Passage to India when my opinion goes against that of the experts. But that’s just the way it is sometimes, I guess. I thought the book was mostly boring and the characters weren’t very memorable at all. I wouldn’t read this book again, nor do I recommend it to others. In fact, A Passage to India earns just 4 stars out of 10 on my enjoyment scale. It’s a snoozefest, folks!

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that a friend of mine dropped off his entire collection of Michael Connelly audiobooks for me. I wasn’t exactly planning on reading (listening to) the whole series, but since the CDs are right here, I figured why not. So I ripped the discs, loaded the MP3s onto my iPod and made my way through The Concrete Blonde, Connelly’s third novel in the Harry Bosch series.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): LAPD detective Harry Bosch is in trouble again. This time, he’s being sued by the widow of Norman Church, a man that Bosch shot four years ago in the line of duty. Bosch thought Church fit the description of a serial killer nicknamed The Dollmaker, and when Bosch busted into Church’s apartment to arrest him, Church reached for something under his pillow. That’s when Bosch, thinking Church was going for a gun, fired first. It turned out that Church was reaching for a toupée.

Fortunately for Bosch, the police department recovered enough evidence in Church’s apartment to link him to several of the murders, allowing them to close the book on the Dollmaker case for good. But Bosch still broke protocol by storming the apartment without backup. He was therefore sanctioned by the department and transferred to the Hollywood Homicide desk as a result.

That wasn’t the end of Bosch’s troubles stemming from the Norman Church case, because now his widow is bringing a wrongful death suit against Bosch. The widow is represented by Honey Chandler, a top L.A. lawyer who has a knack for winning civil cases and extracting hefty punitive damages verdicts from the jury. That’s why she’s referred to as “Money” Chandler more often than not.

Bosch, on the other hand, is being represented by an attorney named Beck, who is on the city’s payroll. Beck would be no match for Chandler, but Bosch wasn’t too worried about the verdict. After all, since he shot Church in the line of duty, the city was on the hook for the tab, not him.

While the court case is going on, Bosch receives an anonymous note from someone telling him that he shot the wrong guy four years ago. The Dollmaker is still at large, and to prove it, the note directs Harry to a spot where he can find another body. The police go there, and do indeed find a body encased in concrete.

The rest of the novel then deals with the ongoing trial as well as the investigation into the possibility that the Dollmaker is still out there. As you might expect from a Connelly novel, there are a few twists and turns along the way, plus a surprise ending.

My Reaction: I liked The Concrete Blonde a lot. This is more of the type of story I was expecting from the Connelly series: Bosch tracking down a serial killer rather than going after bank robbers and drug smugglers. The serial killer storyline was compelling and held my interest throughout — unlike the courtroom drama.

I realize that Connelly had to give a lot of time to the trial in order to set a complete scene for the reader, but I felt that those episodes dragged on far too long in some places. For example, did we really need to hear all the speeches from the lawyers? Boring. Sure, give us the testimony, the exciting stuff. But speeches? Blah. I started to dread the court stuff towards the end of the book, as it took time away from the real action.

I have to admit here that Connelly had me completely fooled on two counts: the killer and the final victim. I knew that the killer couldn’t have been Ray Mora because there was such a singular focus on him at the beginning that it just felt wrong. I was waiting for Connelly to mislead me, and that’s what happened. But then I thought it was the professor, which of course was wrong, and I thought, like Harry, that the final victim would be Sylvia.

However, I felt somewhat cheated when it was revealed that the killer was the reporter Bremmer. That seemed to just come out of left field, as though Connelly simply wanted to pin the blame on a character that the reader was familiar with, yet that was completely expendable. Bremmer had been mentioned in one of the previous novels, and Bosch liked the guy. To suddenly make him be this longtime serial killer seemed like a real stretch.

Nevertheless, I still liked The Concrete Blonde. It was definitely the best out of the three Connelly books I’ve read, and I’m giving it 7.0 stars out of 10.