Word: boyds
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BRAZZAVILLE BEACH by William Boyd; Morrow; 316 pages...
...reckless, boundingly readable fifth novel, British writer William Boyd picks up the story at the point where Mallabar, in glamorous, leonine middle age, has lost track of the scruples part of his success formula. His nemesis is Hope Clearwater, who is on the lam from a troubled marriage in England and working as one of several learned acolytes who patiently observe and record the diurnal activities of chimps. She is assigned a small number of animals who have separated from the main group, and almost at once she stumbles on big news. Peaceful primates? Strictly sloganeering. The chimps are capable...
...heroine, who is no crusader but merely following scientific principles, prevail against the murderous plots of an evil genius defending his golden poppycock eggs? In fact that statement can be made without condescension, because swift and artful pacing is the novel's strongest quality. With his five earlier books, Boyd, 39, has gained an enviable reputation as an intellectual who wears his learning lightly, when he does not toss it aside completely. Stars and Bars was a smart send-up of both British and American roads to corruption. The New Confessions turned a dubious premise, a reprise of Jean-Jacques...
...chimps and their keepers are not the only ones at war here. Various local factions are engaged in obscure hostilities that threaten the flow of money into Mallabar's coffers, and at one point Hope and a fellow researcher are kidnapped by an armed student volleyball team. Boyd also tries his hand at a fashionable fictional device -- passages of italicized commentary interspersed through the narrative. He doesn't need this kind of frill, but when he is not being pompous, he makes his point: the chapter in which Hope is kidnapped by the volleyballers is preceded by a deadpan account...
...city regularly witness random shootings and brutal deaths. One of the first things they learn is to hit the deck when gunfire erupts. Playing in the courtyard of the Henry Horner Homes -- a 21-building project made infamous by Alex Kotlowitz's book There Are No Children Here -- Meeka Boyd, 11, described the shooting of a young man on a basketball court that she saw last year. Her friend Netisha Stroger, also 11, saw a girl shot in the leg on the playground. "When it's real hot out, it's real bad," says Netisha. "That's when people start...