Tag: private eye

Backstreet Justice

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★★½
“V.I. Boreshawski”

It’s difficult to put a finger on exactly what makes this so flat and uninteresting. The individual elements are fine – or, at least, don’t stand out as being particularly troublesome. However, the end product failed to hold my attention, particularly over the second half. It may be a case of the whole being considerably less than the sum of the parts, though if there was a single factor, I’d have to point at the story. This is probably too complicated for its own good, especially in a 90-minute movie: less would likely have been more.

Maybe it’s just the lead actress’s name, but as the tag-line above suggest, I was getting a distinct vibe of V.I. Warshawski from this. That film, starring Kathleen Turner, came out a few years previously, though wasn’t a big success. Still, there’s something similar here, with a female private eye who cracks wise, in a chilly Northern city (here, Pittsburgh; there, Chicago). The main difference is the heroine here, Keri Finnegan (Kozlowski), is burdened by the death of her father. He was a cop who died in the line of duty, but with a severely tarnished reputation, having apparently been on the take. This has hung over his daughter ever since.

As the film begins, she is on the hunt for a serial killer whom the local cops seem unable to catch – initially, it seems he may be a member of the force. However, it increasingly appears not to be some random psycho. Keri uncovers evidence suggesting it’s part of a plot to make the area undesirable; this will then drive down property prices, allowing a local speculator to come in and pick up a bargain. And this isn’t anything new. The evidence points to this kind of thing happening for a very long time – indeed, it appears increasingly like there may be a connection to her father’s death. Needless to say, there are a lot of people who have a very strong vested interest in keeping the past buried.

Kozlowski, best known for her role in Crocodile Dundee, does a decent job as Keri, and seems to embrace the physical aspects of the role, with a fair amount of running, jumping and mild to moderate fisticuffs. The rest of the cast aren’t bad either, though few of them escape the obvious characters typically present in such things. I just didn’t find myself caring enough (read: at all) about what was happening. There wasn’t much of a sense of threat, despite a heroine who has to engage in some Perils of Pauline-esque narrow escapes, e.g. lobbing an explosive device out of the window, just before the timer reached zero. I think it may be that the nature of the threat is kept nebulous and hidden for too long. But the time it became concrete, it provoked little more than a shrug of my shoulders, and I then went back to surfing idly on my phone. It’s all far too forgettable.

Dir: Chris McIntyre
Star: Linda Kozlowski, Paul Sorvino, Hector Elizondo, John Shea

Enola Holmes

  By

★★
“Puts the ‘no’ in Enola.”

Complete ranking of Enolas

  1. Enola Gay
  2. Enola Holmes
  3. That’s it.

I’m probably not the only one who spent much of the film humming OMD’s classic Enola Gay to themselves – released 40 years ago this month, coincidentally. And, sadly, it remains my favourite Enola, by quite some distance. This was more annoying than anything else, though I’ve never been on the Millie Bobby Brown hype-train. I didn’t think much of Stranger Things, and her performance in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, interfered with what I want to see i.e. monsters fighting. Here, I found her more irritating than engaging, though in her defense, she wasn’t helped by some poor directorial choices.

This get off on the wrong foot at the very start, Enola (Brown), Sherlock Holmes’ sixteen-year-old sister, breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience, something she does frequently. Director Bradbeer used this technique in TV series Fleabag, but I’m not a fan: it takes me out of proceedings, reminding me I’m watching a film. What follows is less a convincing evocation of 1900 England, than contemporary America playing girl power dress-up, with “nasty women” blowing things up as they seek to defeat the evil patriarchy. One of these is Enola’s mother (Bonham-Carter), whose vanishing without warning starts things off, causing Enola to begin searching for her, based on coded clues left behind. It escapes me quite why the missing parent couldn’t simply write, “Dear Enola, Gone off to be a suffragette. Love, Mum.”

Not that it matters, because Enola rapidly abandons this quest entirely, in favour of a case involving the young, attractive and entirely personality-free aristocrat, Viscount Tewkesbury (Partridge), whose vote is crucial to get a reform bull passed, expanding the ability to vote [in reality, no such change took place until almost twenty years later – but hey, why let facts stop you from twisting history for your political points?]. On his trail is a mysterious and ill-intentioned man (Gorman), with whom Enola crosses paths. She also has to fend off attempts by her other brother, Mycroft, to have her consigned to a very Handmaid’s Tale-looking boarding school. This is intended to have Enola brainwashed into being the quiet and submissive woman society expects.

The politics on view here are cringeworthy, particularly from Mrs. Holmes, who speaks almost entirely in feminist fortune-cookies, such as “Don’t be thrown off course by other people. Especially men.” It’s one of those cases where merely leading by example isn’t enough: you have to virtue-signal your morality by announcing it, explicitly and repeatedly, which I find immensely off-putting. Hence, we get gobbets of political sermonizing, such as Sherlock (Cavill) being told, by a black, female martial-arts teacher – something I’m fairly sure wasn’t common enough  in the Victorian era to pass without comment: “You don’t know what it is to be without power. Politics doesn’t interest you… because you have no interest in changing a world that suits you so well.” You go, sister!

Speaking of which, the portrayal of the great detective is no more accurate than the other element. “Sherlock Holmes always works alone!” proclaims Inspector Lestrade. Uh, I guess the creators never heard of Dr. Watson, an intrinsic character, from the very first Conan Doyle story? You just never get any sense of keen intellect from Cavill’s performance. Guess they didn’t want to overshadow Enola and her Big Brain. Yet, under all these flaws, is a decent movie, trying to get out. The look of things is lovely, and some of the action sequences are well-handled, even if a slip of a girl like Enola hardly seems equipped to trade blows with grown men.

Maybe they could have made more use of her archery skills (above), which are set-up, then entirely forgotten. Like so much else, that gets lost in the rush to cram an “uplifting” message into the movie, rather than letting one flow organically from it.

Dir: Harry Bradbeer
Star: Millie Bobby Brown, Louis Partridge, Henry Cavill, Burn Gorman

 

Gone (2012)

  By

★★½
“But not ENTIRELY forgotten…”

The life of Jill Conway (Seyfried) is slowly returning to somewhat normal, following her abduction by a serial killer in the Pacific Northwest.  She was held in a forest pit, and barely managed to escape with her life. However, the lack of physical evidence and a history of mental health problems, helped cause the authorities not to believe her story. When Jill’s sister Molly vanishes, she’s certain the same killer is responsible, and when the police again fail to take her seriously, begins investigating herself. But when the cops find out this former mental patient is packing heat, Jill becomes a fugitive herself.

This largely falls into the category of competently forgettable. There’s precious little here that will stick in the mind either way, for positive or negative reasons. Seyfried is admirably feisty, refusing to let anything interfere with her single-minded goal of rescuing sis. This persistence and raw guts displayed make her previous escape from the psycho’s clutches that necessary bit more plausible. Post-abduction, Jill comes over as a little unhinged, and you can see why the police might find it difficult to believe some of her claims. Yet this actually works to the benefit of her investigation, because when she starts waving her gun around, you can understand why whoever the business end is pointed at, would be concerned.

There’s just precious little in the way of surprises here. For instance, we never doubt she was telling the truth about her previous experience, or that the killer is indeed real, despite her willingness to lie to anyone and everyone in pursuit of Molly. More ambivalence about this – heck, make Jill the killer in the end! – would at least have separated this from the slew of other “Is her brain making it all up or not?” thrillers. Might also have saved the director from having to resort to one of the oldest cliches in the book, the Cat Attack Scare. The lack of any meaningful background on the killer is also a problem, leaving him a vague threat of no particular intent: why does he dig a pit in the woods for his victims? Any film like this is always going to be compared, probably unfavourably, to Silence of the Lambs. But Jim a.k.a. “Digger” here, is definitely no Buffalo Bill.

This motivation matters, because some of his actions – which, unfortunately, I can’t detail in a non-spoilerish way – are hard to make sense of. I get he’s annoyed that Jill escaped him. But his plan to lure her back into the woods at the dead of night… It offers little a well-chloroformed rag would not have been able to accomplish, with considerably less fuss. The movie did just about succeed in holding my interest, and the lack of any romantic element for the heroine was pleasant. However, you won’t have to have delved very deep into the genre, to find example of this kind of thing, done considerably better.

Dir: Heitor Dhalia
Star: Amanda Seyfried, Daniel Sunjata, Jennifer Carpenter, Sebastian Stan

Women’s Justice, by Chrissy Wissler

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆

In the 1880’s, the town of Butte, Montana is a mining boom-town – instead of gold, it’s mostly copper which fuels its economy. The wealth comes at a cost, as the huge amounts of acrid smoke belched from the smelters and plants turns day into night, along with creating perpetually “noxious, disgusting air.” Off the train and into this smog steps Cat, a woman with no shortage of a past. A former prostitute, but also a ranch-hand, her preferred outfit of blue jeans and six-shooter is most atypical for a woman of the times. Almost immediately, she is drawn into the mysterious and suspicious death on the street of another “fallen woman,” Norma. The apparent cover-up goes right up to “Copper Kings” such as Marcus Daly (a real tycoon from that time and place), and it quickly becomes clear that whoever was behind Norma’s demise, is none to happy to find Cat looking into the matter. To find the truth, she’s going to have to navigate her way through both ends of Butte society.

What stands out for me is Wissler’s incredibly verbose style, in which a whack on the shoulder with a plank merits several pages of descriptive prose. There’s one sequence, where Cat returns to the boarding-house where she’s staying, and discovers an unexpected dinner party in progress, when it feels like chapters elapse between the front-door and dining-room. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it’s not like she’s Alexandre Dumas, getting paid by the word. Indeed, it’s often interesting to get a deep dive into Cat’s thoughts and motivations, since she has a past that influences much of her behaviour; not least, a hinted-at violent incident involving her sister, Alice and her abusive husband. But there were times when I would have been happier for the plot to move forward at less of a glacial pace.

There’s no denying the author’s talents at generating the nightmarish world, with its poisonous air, and yawning gulf between the haves and the have-nots. Those like Norma can be pitched from the former category into the latter in a moment – and return is almost impossible. Instead, you can end up in the tunnels below the city streets, a virtual living hell for the lowest of the low. Cat’s history gives her an ability to empathize with the lower classes, while still capable of interacting with their “betters”, though there are times when her abilities seem to come close to telepathy, in terms of reading people. She could probably make a great living as a poker player. And despite the pistol on her hip, the action is limited – she never gets to draw it at all. Even the final face-off with Norma’s killer in those tunnels, entered from one of Butte’s grandest brothels, sees her largely defer to others in the name of justice.

There are some typos and missing words in the text, and I wonder if the word “bum” – as in rear – would genuinely have been used repeatedly by an 1880’s cowgirl. It seems rather too British: surely “ass” or “butt” (not to be confused with Butte!) would have been more likely? But despite flaws, this does remains an evocative depiction of a time and place which feels different from the usual Western fare. And it’s all the better for that.

Author: Chrissy Wissler
Publisher: Blue Cedar Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 2 in the Cowboy Cat series.

Fatal Destiny, by David DeLee

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Literary rating: ★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

Grace deHaviland is a former cop, fired from the force in Columbus, Ohio under circumstances which remain murky. To continue in the justice field, she turns to bail enforcement, bringing in perps who have gone on the lam in exchange for a percentage of their bond. They don’t necessarily want to come in, as we find out right at the start; her first target causes Grace almost to become a victim herself, save for the grace of her stun-gun. Following this, she gets to take on what should, in theory, be a nice, simple case: locating white-collar criminal Barry Keegan. He was the accountant for a pharmaceutical firm engaged in shady financial practices, and has skipped bail shortly before the trial involving him and the company’s head honchos.

Except, of course, it’s never as easy as that. Almost before deHaviland can begin, one of Keegan’s co-defendants turns up with a bullet in his head, and her target has also very badly beaten up Grace’s best friend, who is still on the local force. It has now become personal as a result, and making matters worse, she isn’t the only one with a deep interest in locating Keegan. He, meanwhile, wants to spirit his wife and child out of town, because there are secrets in his past beyond some dodgy book-keeping for a drug company, potentially a threat to him, his family and even our heroine, if she gets too close to the truth. And her former colleagues in law enforcement are none too happy with what they perceive as her interference in their case.

deHavilland has so much baggage, she would probably need a moving van to go get coffee in the morning. As well as her time with the police, her mother was raped and killed by her boyfriend, and she has massive trust issues as a result. The cop in charge of the case is also a former lover of Grace’s. And yet, she’s so incredibly rich she has multiple tricked-out cars, and operates out of a massive, sprawling factory which would put Wayne Industries to shame. It even has an “Olympic-sized swimming pool”. On the second floor. I was distracted for quite a bit by figuring out how that worked, considering such a pool contains over 2,750 tons of water. It’s all just too much. And that’s not even mentioning her mixed Hispanic-Irish heritage, or her gratuitous pet monkey called Trouble.

The action is fairly sparse, especially in the first half. After you get past the initial introduction, she’s mostly going from place to place talking to people, to the extent this feels more like a novelization of a Lifetime original movie than anything adequately kick-ass. Things do perk up a bit on the second half, with a gun-battle at Keegan’s house, and a well-written climax at an abandoned shopping mall, which was very easy to visualize. It’s still the very definition of “too little, too late,” and this is not a heroine with whom I’m very interested in spending any more time.

Author: David DeLee
Publisher: Dark Road Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 6 in the Grace deHaviland Bounty Hunter series.

Charlie’s Angels (2019)

  By

★★
“Go woke, go broke”

Back in 2000, Charlie’s Angels came out of more or less nowhere to become an unexpected popular hit. Sure, the TV series was well-known, but by that point it had been off the air for close to two decades. Its stars, Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu, were to that point known, if at all, for playing the love interest in romantic comedies like The Wedding Singer or There’s Something About Mary. But driven by a heady mix of self-awareness and top-quality kung-fu (choreographed by Yuen Wo-Ping, who has had a hand in many of the best genre films, from The Matrix to Crouching Tiger), it became the year’s 12th biggest hit at the US box-office.

But even then, it gave the sense of having caught lightning in a bottle: I wrote “It works beautifully, despite its flaws, but it wouldn’t bear frequent repetition.” And so it proved in 2003. The lacklustre sequel, Full Throttle, came out, and we concluded, “There’s little point bothering with the new movie.” Few did. It lost 63% of its box-office in its second weekend, compared to 39% for its predecessor, and grossed less than Daddy Day Care, barely squeaking into the top thirty for the year. An attempt to return the franchise to its roots fared worse still in 2011. A televisual reboot was canceled after only four episodes had aired. 

But still, the lure of recapturing the popular and critical success of the 2000 movie remained. Sony began working on a new version as long ago as September 2015, with Elizabeth Banks coming on board as writer-director. To her credit, she didn’t seem to be attempting to recapture the vibe of its successful predecessor, opting to go in a different direction. Unfortunately, the main difference is that the original film is one of the few action heroine films which I, my wife, plus our (then-teenage) son and daughter all unironically like. The path Banks instead chose managed to appeal to very few. Turns out, almost nobody wanted to sit through an action film which she proudly announced, was “loaded with sneaky feminist ideas.” This is my unsurprised face.

If you were paying attention, there were multiple other examples of the screwed-up priorities to be found in this production. “One of the statements this movie makes is that you should probably believe women,” said Banks in a pre-release interview. “We’re taking on the patriarchy”, proclaimed star Kristen Stewart at the premiere. And she demanded her character be gay, because “It was important for Kristen to present herself as queer in the movie and I was all for it,” according to Banks. It apparently comes as a shock to the makers, that most people don’t go to the movies for this kind of thing. I know I certainly don’t. This is especially true in today’s fractured society, where social media has become a battleground between extremes, leaving the rest of us tired and seeking to escape from all-pervasive dogmatic yelling. If a film has a message, that’s one thing. If a film is a message, it’s quite another. 

And the very first line here is “I think women can do anything,” making it painfully obvious into which camp this version falls (and hardly counts as “sneaky”). Can you imagine Ellen Ripley, Imperator Furiosa or Alice coming out with that kind of fortune cookie/teen Disney nonsense? No. Because they are too busy being freakin’ awesome. They are action heroines after all, leading by example, not banal sloganeering. This is how effective messaging works in movies. Brave characters don’t win over the audience by just going around saying, “Anyone can be courageous.” Instead, they put their words into deeds, by doing brave things.

This concept is something which Banks’s Angels fail to understand. Instead, they set out their ‘woke’ stall inside five minutes with lines like, “Did you know that it takes men an additional seven seconds to perceive a woman as a threat compared to a man?” No, I did not. And nor do I care about this highly-dubious statement. Demonstrate you are a threat, then I’ll start paying attention. Otherwise, please make use of those seven seconds to go back in the kitchen and make me a damn sammich, babe. Not that Stewart, who delivers these lines, qualifies for the B-word, bearing a closer resemblance here to Justin Bieber after a three-day bender. The original film proved it was entirely possible for women to kick serious ass, while looking good doing it. Stewart manages to do neither, at one point apparently needing wire-work assistance to hop over a low fence. Very popular in the lesbian community though, I believe.

After an opening sequence featuring girls doing random stuff while grinning like they were on meth, because… [checks notes] Ah, yes: “sneaky feminist ideas,” it seemed there was no way back for this mess. Yet, I will say, that was likely the low-point. The rest recovered somewhat, albeit only to reach the low bar of mediocre Hollywood pap, applying a sheen of competent gloss to its poorly-conceived ideas. I guess that counts as a win, of sorts. If Stewart was thoroughly unimpressive, I did quite like Ella Balinska as co-Angel Jane Kano. She fares considerably better in the action area, particularly in her final fight against enemy assassin, Hodak. But that’s probably the only sequence which sticks at all in my mind, and even there, I’m writing this just 12 hours after finishing the film. I’m not sure I’ll be able to tell you much about it by this time next week. There’s nothing to match, say, the four-way brawl between the Angels and Crispin Glover, while Smack My Bitch Up blasted on the soundtrack. Heck, even the music here firmly puts the rap in crap.

As the pic above shows, Jane does at least get to wield guns here, something Drew Barrymore almost entirely excised from her version (though I’d be hard pushed to say I missed them). It’s another small victory, in a film of generally staggering blandness. The plot, for instance, concerns some technological Macguffin, which can be used as a biological EMP weapon, and must be stopped – I’m dozing off as I type this – from falling into the hands of the bad guys. Emphasis on “guys” since, almost without exception, you can identify the villains by whether they stand up when they pee. I guess “men = treacherous perverts” is another one of those ‘sneaky feminist ideas’ on which the director was so woefully keen.

There’s no sense of escalation either, with pacing that’s poor. The film effectively ends a good thirty minutes before the credits roll, with a battle between the Angels and the villains in a rock quarry. It then limps on into a plot about a mole inside the organization, which feels entirely tacked on, because it doesn’t seem to have been any kind of real issue for the first hour and a half of the movie. It finishes with a lengthy training montage of Elena Houghlin (Scott), the computer wiz responsible for the Macguffin. We know she’s a wiz, because she says things like “All I need is root access.” She ends up getting recruited as an Angel, a good ninety minutes too late to provide any meaningful point for the character. The training sequence clearly just lets Banks get some of her pals into the film, to make cameo appearances.

It’s not often I want a film to flop, sight unseen. Even more rarely for an action heroine film. Still, I must confess, I was thoroughly gratified to hear the box-office speak, with a vengeance. In its entire nine week domestic run, Angels took just $17.8 million. That’s almost $10 million less than Full Throttle did… on its opening Friday and Saturday… at a time when the average ticket cost a third less than now. Ouch. So much for Banks’ statement: “If this movie doesn’t make money it reinforces a stereotype in Hollywood that men don’t go see women do action movies.” No, Lizzie. Men don’t go see women do bad action movies. And nor do women. For simply to shriek “Male chauvinism!” as a defense of the film doesn’t work, when it was named “Sequel or Remake That Shouldn’t Have Been Made” by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, in their awards for 2019.

Coming on the heels of similarly “woke” flops like Terminator: Dark Fate, you wonder whether Hollywood might learn from their mistakes, and realize that they are employed by us for entertainment purposes, and not moral guidance. Unfortunately, I suspect that might require rather more self-awareness and humility than is usually to be found in Tinseltown.

Dir: Elizabeth Banks
Star: Kristen Stewart, Ella Balinska, Naomi Scott, Kristen Banks

Sheba, Baby

  By

★★★
“Neither claim on the top left of the poster are accurate.”

After the success of Coffy and Foxy Brown, Pam Grier continued her career with this not dissimilar blaxploitation flick, albeit one of a more restrained approach. Indeed, this received a ‘PG’ rating at the time of its release in April 1975, something modern ears would likely find shocking, considering the copious use of certain racial epithets deployed here. She plays private detective Sheba Shayne, who returns to her home town of Louisville from Chicago, after getting a telegram from her father’s business partner, Brick Williams (Stoker). He warns that her father (Challenger) is taking on some rough customers who are trying to force him into selling his company. Sheba, naturally, is having none of it, and when the police refuse to do much, starts working her way up the food-chain of scumbags, to the apex predator of The Man, who in this incarnation is Shark (Merrifield).

There’s not much here which could be described as particularly new or exciting. Indeed, I almost passed on the movie entirely, thinking I’d already seen it, but it appears I was confusing this with Friday Foster. That’s the thing about Grier’s career: she received only limited opportunities to break out from the ghetto of blaxploitation, and to some degree, her output is much of a muchness. Though at this point, there were precious few other areas of English-speaking media which allowed women to kick butt in the way she did. We were still in the era before Charlie’s Angels and Wonder Woman, albeit just – WW started the November after Sheba came out, and CA the following year.

For now, Grier was ploughing her own furrow in the vanguard of action heroines, and despite the generic nature of this offering (it was the final movie of Pam’s contract with American International Pictures), still represents okay value for money. It does gloss over the fact that Sheba’s Dad is little more than a kinder, gentler loan-shark, operating what appears to be a payday finance company, of the kind often described as “predatory” these days. It’s not even clear quite why Shark is so keen to take over the business. Fortunately, before becoming a Chicago PI, seems Sheba was a local cop. She still has some of the connections from that time – as a bonus, without having to worry about niceties like ‘due process’ or ‘police brutality’.

Even with the relatively low-key sex ‘n’ violence allowed by the PG rating [which would be “almost none” and “light”, compared to Grier’s previous offerings], it’s still fun to watch her in action. The highlight is likely her encounter with a “street entrepreneur” wearing a suit which looks more like an optical illusion. After he runs off, rather than answer her questions, she simply gets into the back of his pimpmobile and waits for him to return. It builds toward her sneaking onto Shark’s boat, jumping off it, sneaking back on, getting caught, escaping, and eventually chasing him through the Southern bayou on a jetski. It seems to have strayed in from Live and Let Die, and the cops seem remarkably unfazed by Sheba behaving in a manner more befitting Moby Dick, shall we say.

As noted at the top, this falls short of Grier’s best work, though is still better than Foster. It’s workmanlike, rather than impressive, and the restraint necessary for the certificate probably works against it. The words “family-friendly” and “blaxploitation” are clearly better off kept apart from each other, I suspect.

Dir: William Girdler
Star: Pam Grier, Austin Stoker, Rudy Challenger, Dick Merrifield

The Girl in the Spider’s Web

  By

★★★
“The name is Bond. Lisbeth Bond!”

It’s always difficult writing about a new entry in the so-called Millennium series: the whole franchise always comes with so much baggage and you never know how much a reader is aware of it or not. But I will try to spare you as much superfluous information about the books and the legal right battles between Larsson’s relatives as possible. A lot of it was in the press already in 2009 when the first Swedish film of the now almost classic Millennium-trilogy, based on the famous novels of late journalist-turned-author Stieg Larsson, came out and then with the aftermath of David Fincher’s ill-fated remake of the first movie in 2011.

After seeing the enormous worldwide success of the original movies, Sony bought the remake rights to Larsson’s books with the intent to launch a new successful movie franchise. It’s difficult to calculate what Sony exactly expected but my feeling is they thought they would have their next Hunger Games or Twilight in their hands, including similar great financial turnovers. Unfortunately, their plans didn’t work out as Fincher’s remake, while well-reviewed, didn’t make as much money as hoped. Even their aspirations for awards failed, compared to the original movies, which won many prizes, with Noomi Rapace’s performance making her a break-out star all over Europe in 2009.

In 2012 MGM (who had co-financed the movie) stated that the movie would have at least to have made 10% more to meet their expectations. Looking at the numbers, Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon tattoo-remake cost around $90 million and made $103m in the US and a little bit over $230m world-wide. If you compare that with the original, which cost $13m (but according to Rapace, closer to $10m), with a world-wide gross of $100m. That may give you an idea what kind of disappointment the remake must have been for Sony and MGM. Why do I mention all this here? Well, I want to show how economic considerations can change an entire franchise and maybe even a main character. Because the results of the conclusions from these numbers, lead directly to this new movie, The Girl in the Spider’s web.

The big problem for Sony: They had paid good money for the film rights of the saga and already had David Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian under contract for the planned two sequels. In the past it usually had been no big problem of taking a successful European movie, re-making it for an American audience and having an even larger financial success at the box-office. I think this kind of film-making model started somewhere in the 80s with French film hits like Three men and a Baby, albeit with some strange results e. g. My Father the Hero, both times with Gerard Depardieu being. [Sony did ask Rapace to repeat her role for the remake; she declined]

But times have changed and foreign films are much easier available, even to American audiences. What Sony perhaps did not consider was that the Millennium movies had already been seen by most of those people interested in them (even though in the US they played in the usual far-away arthouse cinemas. The films were even available in an acceptably English-dubbed version, if you were one of those people who couldn’t read or stand subtitles. So, for a large part of the audience this story was nothing new and – going from what I have heard about high American cinema ticket prices (I live in Germany) – were probably thinking twice about paying well-earned bucks to see the same story again, only spoken by American and British actors in a higher-budgeted, glossier version.

One of the reasons, Fincher’s movie didn’t do so well, may have been its release date. A movie advertised as “the feel-bad movie of the year”… is not very well placed at Christmas! Sony definitely has learned from this, starting their The Girl in the Spider’s Web in all countries either this October or November, a more appropriate time for darker movies. This year, it was a period which saw the release of Venom, Halloween and the Suspiria remake in cinemas. Sony also realized before the 2011 movie came out, that while people were aware of the upcoming movie, a lot of them didn’t plan on seeing it. This resulted in the studio releasing the first 8 minutes online, a desperate emergency measure.

While a large part of the female readership in the US loved to read the suspenseful novels, following the adventures of their heroine, they were perhaps less keen on seeing the character they identified with being raped on the big screen. The graphic content that is part of the Larsson-parcel is one thing between the covers, but a totally different matter to watch in a movie. I myself felt very awkward (and a bit ashamed) when watching the respective scene/s in the original movie in cinema in 2009. The simple fact is: The Millennium books are not “feel-good novels”. They are dark “Scandi noir“, strongly inspired by a lot of other dark crime novels of Scandinavian authors going back to the early 70s.

These stories very often feature acts of gross violence; realistic descriptions of destroyed corpses, long before American crime novels featuring crime-solving female forensics started doing the same; and social criticism that started somewhere in the early 70s. It also reminds me of the German crime-TV-series Tatort, where very often the social backgrounds of murderers were the focus, rather than the classical “Whodunnit”. Gone were larger-than-life investigators like Sherlock Holmes or the “big bad” who is evil incarnate.

Granted, Larsson’s novels still feature some of these classic elements. His books often read like a summary of every crime novel he ever read: according to sources he was very proficient in the crime novel genre, both the classics as well as modern. There’s some Silence of the Lambs creepiness in the first book; the strange mysterious heroine with incredible hacker skills and asocial behavior (a kind of modern female Sherlock Holmes-version for the new… millennium); a bit of rape-revenge-fantasy going on; some Agatha Christie-like puzzles; followed by Swedish secret service intrigues (inspired by real-life events of the early 70s), followed by a courtroom drama in the last book. And overall a big round-house kick against the so-called peaceful social state of Sweden.

Larsson probably felt like a rebel, though he hadn’t really done anything others hadn’t done before him. But the strength and intensity of his attitude and convictions always did shine through his novels and were very well translated into the Swedish movies. The Fincher remake (probably because a lot of American audiences wouldn’t understand or be interested in it) left the social criticism out. Which is ironic, as this was probably the main reason why Larsson wrote his books in the first place.

The big problem was how to make a sequel for less money, that would make Sony’s investment finally profitable. Key, of course, were the overly large payments made when doing The girl with the dragon tattoo. If we subtract the money paid for “star-director” David Fincher, screenwriter Steve Zaillian and star Daniel Craig from the original film’s budget of $90m or more, the movie would have only cost half as much!

Just let that sink in. I’ll wait.

But then everyone has his price tag, and these kind of sums make sense when you expect your movie to make big bank, right? Sony simply overestimated the appeal of the product they were offering. Also, there was an expensive, ill-fated marketing campaign (for which Fincher himself was originally responsible

So, what to do? Well, negotiations with David Fincher are always problematic; he’s seen as “difficult”. He had a “play or pay” contract, and would be paid anyway, even if they didn’t make the next film with him in order to produce a less costly sequel. I don’t know how the arrangement with Fincher ended but he did another movie for Sony and is an “executive producer” of the new movie, an absolutely meaningless title – director Fede Alvarez admitted he never met Fincher during the production). But Fincher proved he can make a very successful thriller for less money, two years later, with the very successful and lower-priced (around $60m) adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s bestseller Gone Girl, with Ben Affleck and Rosamond Pike.

Second problem: Daniel Craig. While the studio probably thought for a long time that it could hold him and continue with him and Rooney Mara, it turned out that Craig expected a pay rise after Skyfall became the first Bond movie to make more than one billion dollars worldwide. That let to heavy re-writes of the script on which Zaillian had already worked. The executives of Sony came up with a lot of dumb ideas, such as making books 2 and 3 into one movie (rather than the usual Hollywood tack of splitting the last book into two movies!), or taking Mikael Blomkvist completely out, to focus solely on the Lisbeth Salander character.

To understand what kind of… stupidity that is (I’m not using more vulgar language here, though it definitely would be appropriate!), one either has to have read the books or at least seen the original movies. The second and third books cover Lisbeth Salander’s backstory, revealed like a puzzle that’s slowly put together over a story-arc that encompasses both. It makes her appearance in Dragon Tattoo similar to what Red Dragon was for the Hannibal Lecter-character, but Mikael Blomkvist is essential for that story.

While he was arguably the main character in the first book, his and Salander’s storylines cross in the second and third, running parallel as they carry out independent research on two different cases, connected with each other (this is the way Raymond Chandler structured his Philip Marlowe novels). He saves her at the end of the second book, giving us an open ending. The beginning of the third finds Salander unconscious after dangerous brain surgery in hospital, with Blomquist doing the research and police their own investigation, resulting in a big court room trial. I would say over all of these books and films Blomkvist’s and Salander’s “screentime” is approximately 50:50: both are equally essential for and contribute to the stories.

Of course, you always can invent a new character, or give that poor computer nerd Plague, briefly shown in the movies, a much, much more prominent role. But this would be as nonsensical as telling a Sherlock Holmes story without Dr. Watson (or Holmes, depending on how you see Salander and Blomkvist). Simply put, Sony found themselves in a corner with no good solution at hands. They had paid for expensive film rights, produced a costly movie that didn’t make much money, and the right-holders blocked a proposed American TV series. This could well have been the end of Blomkvist’s and Salander’s cinematic exploits.

Enter Daniel Lagercrantz, who had been hired by the publishers to take over the series in 2013. They were in dire need of a hit, so Lagercrantz was hired to write new books based on Larsson’s characters. [We may never see the next entry in the series that Larsson had already started to write before his untimely death. It is reportedly saved on a laptop owned by his partner Eva Gabrielson] I haven’t read Lagercrantz’ book so can’t judge how close the new movie is to his novel. But according to those who have, the film follows the book very loosely. It seems the director and screenwriters have more or less built their own story, in particular ending differently from the novel. It’s up to you whether that makes the story better or worse.

His first, The Girl in the Spider’s Web came out in 2015, followed by The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye in 2017, and became immediate bestsellers. It may not have been due to his writing qualities – many critics and fans of the original books have really torn it apart – so much as that for many this was a chance to read new material with their beloved characters after almost 10 years. This isn’t new. Arthur Conan Doyle’s son released new “official” Sherlock Holmes stories in the 1950s and Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels have also been getting additional entries after her death. And let’s not forget the myriad of Bond novels written since Ian Fleming passed away in 1964.

So why not do the same for the Millennium series? It’s just as legit as all the others. Just be aware, this is not the original. Not the original author, not the original novels and… yeah… maybe…these aren’t really the same characters anymore, either? Your enjoyment may depend greatly on being able to ignore this or not care about it. For comic book fans that may be easier as they are more used to this kind of thing: I mean, how many people have written Superman or Batman over the years?

At least for Sony, it was the solution for all of their problems. The danger of a direct comparison isn’t there anymore, as this has never been filmed before. Also the question of faithfulness is less important, as this is not based on anything Larsson wrote. They could restart, reboot or whatever term you prefer, just jump over all the complicated stuff in the second or third book, and have this series be whatever they want it to be. A fresh start, so to speak. As far as I can see this is exactly what they did with it: I just have no idea to what degree this was Lagercrantz’ doing and to what degree Sony’s.

The new Millenium movie is therefore quite a different beast. The question is if audiences will accept or reject it, and also of course if these characters still resonate with general audiences 13 years after the first book became a bestseller. With Fede Alvarez, Sony chose a competent director who has already proven that he can make very successful “darker” movies with a smaller budget as evidenced by his Evil Dead remake and his own Don’t Breathe, a recent surprise success. As a matter of fact, I think Alvarez is a very good technical director. And if you would have asked me before the movie if Alvarez is a more stylish director than Fincher, I probably would have said no. But indeed TGitSW is even more style-oriented than Fincher’s movie. Alvarez simply does know how to make things look “cool”. Pity that he has to work with such average material.

Interestingly, the movie was filmed to a large degree in the Berlin-Babelsberg-studios in Potsdam, as well as elsewhere in Berlin, Hamburg, the airport Halle/Leipzig and other parts of Germany. The reason for this is that makers can participate in German film funds that co-finance movies with money if you film in the respective “Bundesländern”. Alright, now I know what is being done with my taxes! But it’s definitely nice to see the well-known Berlin “Teufelsberg” (Devil’s Mountain – named that because a considerable number of children have broken their necks there while sledging it down over the centuries!) doubling for a place in Sweden.

It’s also worth noting, no “big” names are to be found in the cast this time. No Craigs, Plummers, Skarsgards, Robin Wrights or Steven Berkoffs, with neither Claire Foy nor Sylvia Hoeks highly paid stars (as of yet!). Foy, an acclaimed actress thanks to the series The Crown, is the third actress to play Salander and may have an advantage that Rooney Mara did not have: She doesn’t come immediately after Noomi Rapace! While everyone might have had one’s own idea of Lisbeth Salander before the first movie, it really was Rapace who put her stamp on the character and – as evidenced by many interviews – her influence on how the character should be portrayed was much larger than one would imagine. She had a very specific idea of how to bring this character to life on screen and even told director Niels Arden Oplev to worry about other things, because she would know the character better than him.

And it has to be said, Rapace set the blueprint, the parameters for the character on film. This can be compared to Sean Connery becoming the first James Bond: it is difficult for any other actor to come after someone has defined a role so strongly. When Roger Moore became James Bond – though he later admitted he then wondered if he had just committed career suicide – he was not in the same position as George Lazenby trying to imitate Connery’s 007 in 1969. People get used to different actors playing the same character eventually (think of Holmes or Tarzan) but it takes time, and any immediate successor will always be seen as a cheat!

As far as I can see it, Claire Foy carefully positions “her” Lisbeth Salander between Rapace and Mara. She is much better – in my personal opinion – than pale Mara, who always felt like a bland fake to me. But at the same time Foy comes across more human and vulnerable than Rapace. Noomi Rapace’s Lisbeth was an enigmatic poker-face with suggestions of great emotional depths underneath, not giving away anything of what happened inside of her. I liked that you had to interpret her behavior and I miss that quite a bit. She was a mystery in a mystery, and very ambivalent.

Foy is tougher than Mara ever could hope to be (though I have the feeling it was Fincher’s conscious decision to “soften” the character, to make her more typically “feminine” and appealing to American audiences) but more accessible and vulnerable than Rapace ever would have Lisbeth be. In certain key moments it also is made quite clear that Lisbeth – how steely and tough she may appear – actually cares for the people around her. But it’s very strange hearing Foy in interviews declaring that they took away sex scenes and nudity in the script “because we didn’t want her to be exploited”. For Noomi Rapace crossed borders as an actress to stress that Lisbeth was indeed sexually exploited and also had her own sexual life.

Something else has been changed. While “original-Lisbeth” got close to readers and audiences due to the fact that so many terrible things did happen to her, this movie at best hints at things. In the original stories we witnessed Lisbeth being taken advantage of, attacked, shot in the head and so on, this Lisbeth here never seems to be in that kind of serious danger. She seems very often at least a step ahead, and can hack anything; it’s virtually a superpower here, because there’s nothing she can’t hack, from airbags to airport doorknobs. She even survives an explosion at her home (that can be seen from miles away and looks as if somebody tried to nuke the place), by jumping in her bath. As does her pet lizard. Who is not in the bath. Fortunate for her that she still can use her laptop after everything has been burned…

Yeah, Lisbeth has unofficially entered James Bond-fantasy-land! Not that I really mind so much. It definitely is entertaining and when The Girl who Played with Fire (both book and film) came out there was already criticism of the direction in which Larsson was moving his heroine. But then you always had the feeling these incredible things happened to a very real person – one who, after being shot in the head, had to spend months in a hospital to recover. This kind of carefully balanced dance between over-the-top elements and realism can’t be found here, because Lisbeth has become less human and more a superhero character. But with that, she also becomes a bit boring, I fear.

This is definitely a more sanitized version of Lisbeth Salander – this had already been done with the Fincher movie – intended to be more acceptable for a larger mainstream audience than the original ever was. The team behind this movie definitely took away from the controversial aspects and ambivalence of the character, and are also careful not to step on anyone’s toes with Foy declaring in interviews that Lisbeth Salander is not meant to be a poster girl for the #metoo movement. I really got the impression that Sony is pulling all the strings to make this Lisbeth a big mainstream hit so they can finally get that big money-making franchise they wanted it to be in 2011.

Only they make different mistakes this time. Somehow the original Salander is just too difficult a character to sell to large audiences, so they keep changing her. Fincher made her a bland feminized character that could appear softer at Daniel Craig’s side. Now, Alvarez makes her some kind of cross between a superheroine, Bond and Sherlock Holmes. I really get the feeling that there’s some kind of cultural communication problem when portraying this character in an American movie.

What I personally find a bit regrettable is that the complex backstory of Salander doesn’t play a role in this movie here anymore, beyond some references. As a matter of fact this movie – again, I don’t know if it was already like that in the book – almost retcons her backstory. What I get from the original books and movies, she lived with her mother in a single flat, not with her father in a big building far from civilization. While her father was a terrible criminal and double-agent, physically abusing her mother, there was no indication he was a pedophile and abusing his young daughters sexually. Maybe Lagercrantz added that, thinking, “Why not? Every other evil man in these books is a rapist, so he might be one, too?” While Lisbeth hears from her sister, Camilla in the second book for the first time, here the movie makes you believe that they grew up together.

The attempt to cut the Blomkvist role, or at least make it as small as possible, may stem from the time when screenwriters tried to minimize Craig’s involvement in the next film. It shows here. While Sverrir Gudnason is not a bad actor, he, as well as the now also much younger appearing Erika Berger (played by Vickie Krieps), hardly play anything more than a supporting role in this movie. And forget about calling this a Millennium-movie as the magazine Blomkvist was writing for has been sold and he is not writing anymore. It’s suggested he had only two great stories, both due to Lisbeth – which is just wrong when you’ve read the books! For me, this feels like a grave faux-pas, as if Sherlock Holmes moved out of 221B Baker Street. The feeling I got was that Blomkvist and Berger were in the movie because the filmmakers knew they belonged to these stories but didn’t know anything of relevance to do with them.

But it also seems as if the entire genre has changed which is a bit perplexing. Someone put it better into words than I ever could: “It’s as if Goldfinger is the sequel to Psycho.” I find this a very fitting remark. While the original novels as well as films (Fincher’s included) had a decidedly eerie psycho-thriller feel, this comes across more like a James Bond or Jason Bourne movie. Sure, the originals also had a conspiracy of old secret service members (which reminded me a bit of The X-Files), the double-agent Zalatschenko, and with Niedermann an almost Bondian henchman. Still, the feeling was these were down-to-earth thrillers, fed by real-life scandals of Sweden’s past, and also dealing with an inhumane social system oppressing helpless individuals and a terrible treatment of women in society in general that Larsson depicted.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’ve never been a fan of Larsson’s (in my opinion) relatively one-sided left-wing agenda, his strange ideas of what he thought feminism was, his outspoken black-and-white portrayal of different parts of society (left-wing journalists and women vs. evil capitalists and social authorities responsible for any imaginable crime). But heck, that was what his fictional universe was about. I think if one continues the series of an author one should honor his work and themes. And if you’re not able to, stay away and leave it to someone else. It feels somehow like a cheat to discard all of that, create something VERY different and still call it Salander and Blomqvist. There’s a German word for this: “Etikettenschwindel”. This is when the writing on a can in the supermarket says “chocolate cake” and when you open it at home you find it contains noodles.

Sure, I don’t mind noodles! But heck, the backstory and the complicated character of Salander being hardly more than a side-note or even partly replaced by a new one; the world-view of the original creator more or less disregarded; social criticism not existent here anymore (okay, the last was a complaint one could have had with Fincher’s movie, too). This feels kind of not okay, if you are a fan of the original books! As mentioned, I’ve not read Lagercrantz’ book – and according to friends who did, I shouldn’t bother – so I don’t know how close this is to what he has written. But many online pointed out that the plot with the CIA and an autistic little boy reminded them of the old action-thriller Mercury Rising with Bruce Willis and Alec Baldwin. So, maybe Lagercrantz is just stealing from other sources than Larsson?

Personally, I felt reminded of Bond movies, or at least aspects from Bond movies. Lisbeth with a connection to her sister, is similar to Bond with his (now) stepbrother Blofeld in Spectre and another plot element reminded me quite a bit of Roger Moore’s Bond movie, Moonraker. As a movie, the story flows quickly from scene to scene. While all previous efforts were slow-burning Scandi noirs, very often building suspense and tension, also sometimes with scenes without any or much dialogue, even no music, this moves much faster, just like Lisbeth on her motorbike.

It also brings in a number of action scenes, an element that was there in the originals but at no time as prominent as here. And while the other movies were long movies, up to 2½ hours (which may also have cinemas one or two showings a day) this one has the very digestible length of 117 minutes. My feeling is that this is the streamlined, newly-wrapped and more digestible version of Lisbeth Salander. Everything has undergone a vital change, but the core of Stieg Larsson’s phantasmagorias has largely been discarded – or put so much to the side that it is almost irrelevant.

I very much understand Sony’s decisions, though will still judge them for it. They want their investment back, and want to get out of their property what they still can. After last year’s disappointing Hollywood Scandi noir The Snowman, with Michael Fassbender, it doesn’t seem such a very bad idea to reposition the potential franchise, to get away from personal, overcomplicated drama and recreate Ms Salander as the female James Bond media has been talking so much about in the last years. The thing is: They are cheating their – potential – audience of the original content of the series. The question is, if the audience is willing to eat up this deception or just ignore it? Because, you know: glossy photography, cool-looking action and strong female hero?

Side-note: Though Larsson himself said shortly before his death, that with the first three books he had done the heavy lifting to lay the groundwork, I personally felt all he had to say of importance has been said. Sure, he could have spun out his story, the way these new stories by Lagercrantz obviously do. But what could realistically still have come? My feeling is, though Larsson had planned a series of 10 books, these three books feel self-contained. I can’t imagine anything he still could have written would have been able to impress me more. If Salander and Blomkvist would just have investigated new cases on a regular basis, with us already knowing Lisbeth’s backstory, it wouldn’t have held the same kind of interest anymore.

In a way it made sense Larsson died after these three books. His work was done. And therefore it doesn’t make really any sense from a logical standpoint, that the series is continued – neither with new books nor a new movie.

How should we value such a movie? As already mentioned, it has to do with expectations. I can understand that American audiences (who maybe first saw the Fincher movie) and European audiences (who loved the Rapace trilogy) won’t be comfortable with that new movie. Neither will die-hard fans of the Larsson books. At the same time I could easily imagine that younger audiences, not accustomed to the books and the films, beyond having heard of the series, may actually be fine with this action-filled wanna-be James Bond-film and like it. Heck, new audiences also embraced Daniel Craig as Bond, and had no big problems with Sherlock Holmes becoming an action-hero as Robert Downey Jr!

Revisiting the old movies before this film again, I realized why I liked them so tremendously in 2009. They were simply good detective stories, telling their stories in a calm and unexcited, but nevertheless suspenseful and effective way. The film I felt could best serve for comparison was the old Connery mystery The Name of the Rose. Now compare how overdone they became in Hollywood. It feels proof of the old saying: “Sometimes less is more.” These, now almost “classic”, movies felt honest and truthful maybe just because they were so naturalistic, without any hocus-pocus, or as overdone as your usual Hollywood movie, that comes with a much higher budget, glossy camera work, elaborate directing styles, artistic gadgetry and what have you.

There is the charm of a simpler style that Hollywood is somehow never really able to replicate because it requires a different mindset than a blockbuster factory can achieve. The only movie that really touched me emotionally was the original Dragon Tattoo: those characters seemed to be grounded in reality. When Henrik Vanger wept at the beginning or Lisbeth finally finds the courage to visit her mother and speak with her, it was touching because these are the reactions of normal people and we can identify with those. When I see the American films and especially this one with “Super-Salander” and these shallow new versions of the supporting characters… it leaves me totally cold, never mind how good Claire Foy is an actress or how cool the action-scenes are. It’s kind of strange; James Bond has been forced in the last few films to become a “normal” human being again, yet Lisbeth Salander seems to become less and less human with every new movie!

As an action-thriller, I think it’s nicely done and enjoyable, though unfortunately quite average; that’s reflected in the rating above. But as a continuation of that what Stieg Larsson and the original movies once started, I think I would have to deduct a star. Maybe give a half-star back, because the action scenes were nice to look at and I do like Claire Foy’s engagement. You really need to have quite some confidence to take on a role which two other actresses have already done. I like her as an action heroine, and would love to see her in another genre entry. As the third actress in the role she does quite well, positioning herself somewhere above Mara and below Rapace, due to never reaching the incredible intensity and ambivalence Rapace’s performance exuded.

If this movie was an exam in school the teacher would have written under it: “You have failed the subject!” But there are indeed reasons to watch this in cinemas: Because Claire Foy is really good in the role. Because you feel nostalgic for these kind of thrillers, which Hollywood used to make some 20 years ago and would like to see again. Because there are still not enough movies with female heroes out there. Maybe you just feel in the mood for a thriller. Or the best one of them all: Because it may actually be the last time that you will see Lisbeth on the big screen. Or at all.

Only time will tell if Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist will actually become classic evergreen characters like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Philip Marlowe and James Bond, or if they will one day just being regarded as a passing short-lived trend-du-jour of the early 21st century’s crime literature. The new movie has not become the big blockbuster Sony probably hoped for, though the low budget costs should be covered – if not in cinemas, then through home distribution (I stopped counting of how often the Fincher movie has been shown on German TV over the last seven years!).

For the question is: where does she go from here? If the audience is not really that interested in a more streamlined Lisbeth Salander, there is hardly any reason to film the next few books written by Lagercrantz, right? If this movie is another underwhelming investment for Sony, and they still would like to continue, it seems to me the only other option they have is another reboot in a couple of years – with a new director and yet again another new cast, and maybe an even smaller budget – and finally adapt the second and third books in the series written by Larsson.

As a parallel, right now, a good 20 or so years after the dismal big-budget flop of The Saint with Val Kilmer, there are rumors that Chris Pratt may try on the role that once made Roger Moore famous. Hollywood would rather reboot well-known characters for the 20st time than invest in new, untested material or characters. But maybe Sony still can persuade the copyright-holders to allow an attempt as a serialized TV-show?

Dir: Fede Álvarez
Star: Claire Foy, Sverrir Gudnason, LaKeith Stanfield, Sylvia Hoeks

Abducted by T.R. Ragan

  By

Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

A largely uninteresting and occasionally tedious read, this begins when the 17-year-old Lizzy Gardner is abducted by a serial killer known as “Spiderman”, for his habit of using insects to terrorize his victims. Lizzy manages to escape, but Spiderman isn’t captured, until almost a decade and a half later, when someone confesses to the crimes. By then, Lizzy has become a private eye, and also giving lectures to young girls, on how to avoid falling victim as she did. She’s not convinced the right person has been caught, and she’s right: the real Spiderman is by no means happy that someone else has taken “credit” for his crimes. So he starts up again, with the eventual aim of recapturing Lizzy, the one who got away…

It’s really extremely contrived, with Lizzy fortuitously unable to recall any significant elements of her ordeal – even the place where she was held – which could have allowed the police to capture the perpetrator. Then there’s the convenient coincidence that her boyfriend of the time has grown up to become (what are the odds?) an FBI agent. Of course, when they reconnect, the old sparks still fly, and he’s also the only one who thinks she’s not a demented PTSD victim. Somewhat more engaging, to be honest, are the supporting female characters, including Jessica, Lizzie’s intern, who has her own reasons for interest in the case. Leading them is likely Hayley, an abused teenager and attendee at Lizzy’s lecture, who takes it upon herself to become bait for Spiderman, so that she can deal with him. If the whole story had been told from her point of view, it could have been a fresh perspective.

Instead, you could make the case Spiderman is given better motivation and characterization than the heroine. Although even here, it’s the usual mix of childhood trauma and hatred of women; the only unusual aspect is he seems himself as what could be described as a “social justice warrior,” punishing those he perceives as “bad girls.” Yet the prose devoted to him is one of the problems here: Ragan’s desire to show both sides of the story, almost inevitably, leaves both of them under-cooked. Despite its clear desire to be Silence of the Lambs, this most certainly falls short, on both sides of the scales of justice.

Part of the problem is that it feels like the characters are universally weighed down with the burden of a tragic past, from which they can’t escape. While I know tragedy is one of the driving forces of drama, this appears to be Ragan’s literary version of “If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” The plot offers virtually nothing in the way of surprises or twists, meandering on to the confrontation between Lizzie and Spiderman, which you’ve been expecting since about chapter three. There’s precious little here to explain the series’s apparent success, and even less that would get me interested in reading any further entries.

Author: T.R. Ragan
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer, available through Amazon in both printed and e-book versions.

Devil Dance, by Suzanne Arruda

  By

Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆

This final installment (the author confirms that fact in her Acknowledgments) of the series is set in May 1921, a few months after the previous one. The book’s opening finds Jade in Zanzibar, a new setting for her, which takes her out of the Nairobi area and away from her friends there. One reviewer complained about their absence, but as a compensation, we get to not only spend some more time with Jade’s formidable Spanish-born mother, Inez, but to meet Jade’s dad as well. Her parents have come to Africa for her impending nuptials, and she and Inez plan to enjoy a relaxing sight-seeing trip while Richard del Cameron gets acquainted with his new son-in-law on a planned safari.

Since she didn’t expect to need it, Jade didn’t bring along her trusty Winchester. But Simba Jike’s reputation has preceded her, and her propensity to land in the middle of dangerous skullduggery is as much in evidence here as ever. (Luckily, she did bring her knife….) She and Inez soon encounter a sudden mysterious death, an appeal for help, and a wealthy Arab household rife with secrets. And meanwhile, back in Mombasa, their menfolk stumble across an apparent slave-trading operation –and they’re not the sort of guys who’d let that sort of thing go on without getting involved.

This is the only novel in the series to be self-published; Arruda evidently wrote it without the aid of her usual proofreading and editorial services. There was also a five-year gap between it and the preceding novel, during which she apparently had the distraction of a pregnancy, childbirth, and care for a newborn daughter, to whom the book is dedicated. (From internal evidences, I’m guessing that the early chapters may have been written before the pregnancy, and the middle and later ones after the baby had become a toddler.) These factors show in a number of typos (though none of them are bad enough to keep the reader from understanding the author’s intention), and in some discontinuity between plot elements near the beginning and the developing story, which cost the book a star.

Otherwise, the quality is very similar to the other series installments. The mystery was more deeply concealed, with several developments that genuinely surprised me. As always, the author thoroughly researched her setting(s). An element of the possibly supernatural has typically been a feature of these novels, and that’s particularly strong here, with the background of the witchcraft guild of Zanzibar’s neighboring island, Pemba, and their rites of human sacrifice. Jade’s (and Arruda’s) concern for human rights in the face of injustice is also a strong note in the book, in the face of the persistent practice of slavery, which was nominally outlawed on Zanzibar in 1897, but still went on in practice even on into the 1920s. (And it continues to flourish today in the countries of the Arabian peninsula that are still governed by Sharia law, which regulates slavery but doesn’t forbid it.)

Barb and I read this book together, as we have the whole series, and we’re both sorry to see the series end! Jade has been one of our favorite heroines, and its been a privilege to get to know her.

Author: Suzanne Arruda
Publisher: Self-published, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.