The Strivers' Row Spy by Jason Overstreet

The Strivers' Row Spy
by Jason Overstreet
Pages: 448
Date: August 30 2016
Publisher: Dafina
Series: None

Review
Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0
Read: July 24 to 25 2016

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley, Dafina, and Kensington Books exchange for an honest review.

This is both the author’s first book (as far as I can tell) and therefore my first book that I’ve read by him (that’s the both part – first book (written by him; read by me).

I’ll start off with something that I normally put at the end, or nearish the end, the rating. Under my long ago and not currently active rating scheme, used pre-web based book cataloging by me, I would have rated this book somewhere between 3.74 and 3.84. I am uncertain how that actually corresponds to my current rating scheme, but, somewhere around 4 stars.

Two things before I move into a more detailed review; women and ‘roaring twenties’/time in general. I put that discussion under spoiler tag, not because there is anything spoiler-y about it, but because I kind of lost whatever point I was attempting to make, and so that section is boring. Boiled down – for the most part the book is focused on the male actors in this ‘Roaring ‘20s Harlem Renaissance’, though there were a few ‘powerful’ women who make brief appearances; other than a few mentions of prohibition, and a few mentions of how people are flocking to the area, many of them arty, the Roaring Twenties/Harlem Renaissance part was kind of thin.

There are a few powerful women in this book, strong, independent, etc. They do in fact appear in this book. But that’s just it. They mostly appear. They have few lines and while they have ‘things’ to do, and the like, they are almost never seen doing them. No, for the most part, the book is focused on the men. Sure, the book is from the point of view of Sidney Temple, but by noting that the book is focused on the men, I do not mean just that point – that it is from Temple’s point of view. Because there are important men who do stuff in this book, and they do do them in the book, as opposed to off stage, or just assumed. So it isn’t that the book is from Temple’s point of view that limits everyone else’s actions and impact. While it is 1919-1925, and while that would/could limit certain things certain powerful women can/could do, that more redirects them than removes them from history.

I’m babbling needlessly. To a certain extent it is because of the nature of the book. I was promised certain things, while realizing certain things when I went into the book. Like the part where a young man is given opportunities during the Roaring Twenties to do things. And yet, while there is the occasional mention of the year, I didn’t really notice anything ‘Roaring Twenties’ about this book beyond the mention of prohibition. To a certain extent, I believe that is because of the type of man Sidney is – focused on his career and his wife (though her slim presentation/barely there character is one of the reasons I babbled about powerful women; she isn’t specifically one – important but not powerful, no it was her friend Ginger who I was thinking of as powerful – independently wealthy, and independent of a controlling man). On the other hand – young man, going undercover in the roaring twenties, needing to do ‘things’ . . . . kind of lends itself to an image of a guy bouncing around some seedy locations and speakeasies. This book isn’t that type of book.

Luckily, for my own enjoyment of this book, I had actually forgotten that description of the book – undercover agent operating in the Roaring Twenties in New York, specifically in Harlem during its renaissance. I mean, this is when Harlem had something like a golden age – yet, you would not specifically know it from the actions in the book (specifically worded that way, because you would know it from the words – it is in fact mentioned several times that ‘grand things’ were occurring, they just, for the most part, happened for Sidney’s wife while Sidney was off being serious and stuff. And the wife’s world, experience of that ‘Harlem Renaissance’ is only seen once or twice when Sidney happened to be present – I only specifically recall two occasions that might fall into this ‘Renaissance’ type situation (well three, but being kicked out of your seats at a theatre kind of ‘ruins’ the ‘good vibes’) – once when the wife had a huge grand birthday party; and once when Sidney was wandering around and ended up in a club).

I mean, Sidney did visit with various people while undercover around the city – places outside of work site I mean, and almost every single time the meeting was in some restaurant or the like.

So, book.

During a college graduation ceremony, while Sidney is actually in his graduation robes and climbing some stairs, some man approaches Sidney and thrusts a card at him (I’m wording this wrong) and indicates that the BOI, Bureau of Investigation might be interested in hiring Sidney – or at least in interviewing him. If interested, call the number on the card. And so begins Sidney’s slide into the undercover world.

Three things to note – BOI – the description for the book is slightly misleading, specifically the ‘And when he’s tapped by J. Edgar Hoover to be the FBI’s first African-American agent’: 1) the BOI did not become the FBI until 1935; 2) Sidney is not the first African-American agent hired by the BOI in the book (the first in real life and in the book is mentioned in the book, and plays a small role – James Wormley Jones – and Jones is described, on Wikipedia, with a task similar to the one he has in this book, and the one Sidney is given – to infiltrate the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) under the leadership of Marcus Garvey – and Jones actions lead to some similar results in RL and in the book); 3) Hoover did not become head of the BOI until 1924, 5 years after the start of this book here (the guy who preceded Hoover, William J. Burns, wasn’t even in office as the head of the BOI by the start of this book (he became the head in 1921; a guy named William J. Flynn was the head when Sidney was hired by the BOI, he was in office from 1919 to 1921 – it is possible the guy before him was actually in charge at the start of this book, since Flynn didn’t start until July of 1919, though the book did mention that the guy Sidney talked with was just getting appointed to be the director – heh, one of the driving forces in this book, and for Hoover, was the bombing of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s house – something that Flynn was brought in as director to investigate; Hoover, though, was with the BOI in 1919, and a new division head – he was head of the new General Intelligence Division).

Real life Hoover was tasked with monitoring and disrupting the work of domestic radicals. And his “Targets during this period included Marcus Garvey, Rose Pastor Stokes and Cyril Briggs, Emma Goldman, and Alexander Berman; and future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter who, Hoover maintained, was "the most dangerous man in the United States". I mention all this because Sidney, in this book, is tasked with monitoring three people – Marcus Garvey (UNIA), James Weldon Johnson (NAACP), and Max Eastman (and indirectly, W.E.B. Du Bois of the NAACP)).

I got distracted by history there, looking up the real life history of the time. Hmms. Dr. James Eason is also a real life figure, member of the UNIA – had a similar end story as to the one in the book.

*shakes self* Right sorry.

This was/is a quite interesting undercover story about a time and place that I knew relatively little about – specifically the time and place of African Americans during the 1920s. There were both times of great ‘sinking’ into the scene, of feeling it, while other times things seemed more surface, more remote/removed from the action. And a few cases where things were just way too rushed.

Only read the spoiler after reading the book read the book yet?Loretta is so annoyed with her husband that she goes to the extreme measure of leaving him, and, for that matter, her country. Going all the way to Paris France. So . . .when Sidney hunted her down? the next words after Sidney arrived at Loretta’s door in Paris were something along the lines of ‘months passed’. Um . . kind of overlooked Lorretta accepting Sidney back into her life, eh?

Overall I enjoyed the book and look forward to reading the next book by this author.

July 26 2016

Uptown Thief by Aya de León

Uptown Thief
by Aya de León
Pages: 352
Date: July 26 2016
Publisher: Dafina (Kensington Books)
Series: None

Review
Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0
Read: July 5 to 11 2016

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and Kensington Books for an honest review.

I read something somewhere, in a review?, in a book description? That said something like ‘Ocean’s 11 with women.’ Do not go into this book thinking that or you will be disappointed.

There’s another book that had that tagline attached to it. It was a Michael Crichton book from long ago, released under the John Lange name. That one is both a lot closer to being ‘Ocean’s 11 with women’ than this book while also being incorrect. There the storyline involved a group of people setting up to rob a hotel (I think it was a hotel). The book followed them as the planned, then as they robbed the place. It was actually quite neat. Just one thing – everyone in that gang in Lange’s book were men. So, why that tagline of ‘Ocean’s 11 with women’? Because there was in fact a group of women who robbed the place. They just did it under the noses of the male group – but it is something of a ‘disappointment’ in that the story didn’t follow them so much as it followed the male gang.

Right, so this book here. For one thing, the action that occurs does involve and follow women, so that’s one up on that unnamed Lange book. But the book is not a group of women who rob some location and go through thrills, suspense, and the like. No, the book is about a latina woman named Marisol Rivera who had a rotten childhood (mother died, father wasn’t around, then grandmother died; got left with an uncle, who sexually abused her; she, Marisol, did what she could to protect her sister; which included, once the uncle was gone, becoming a prostitute at the age of 17 to get enough money to pay the rent and bills. She, Marisol, is now in her 30s (or is it 40s? I got confused about her age) and is the executive director of a health clinic in Manhattan. Serving the poor, specifically (has this reputation though I’m not sure it is actually part of their official motto) sexual workers. Also, because the economy went into a downturn, and various grants and the like dried up or were pulled, Marisol again needs a way to pay her bills. So, she opens an escort service. Rich people can ‘donate’ to the clinic, get a tax write-off for that, and then get a ‘gift’ from the clinic (as in an escort).

Somewhere along the line that ‘Ocean’s 11’ has to come in, right? Well, that has to do with two facts. The escort service is not able to cover all the bills, and Marisol spots a few people she wants to ‘punish’. Rich CEO’s who were involved in a Mexican sex traffic ring – got put on trial, and got off (I think the judge dismissed the case or something). So, she robs them. Right off the bat that’s different from Ocean’s 11 – where a gang robs a casino. Here the ‘gang’ (a small group of Marisol’s most trusted people) robs several locations. As quietly as possible. And there’s a ton of other stuff happening in this book. So, if it had been a series of robberies, I might stretch things to include this under some altered tagline of ‘Ocean’s 11 with women’, but no, it isn’t that. It’s more of a slice of life book that just happens to have, as the main character, someone who robs rich assholes.

So, Marisol – because of the abuse from the uncle, and because of the fucking for money, she is not one who has the ability to have a natural relationship from men. She does have an ‘itch’ though. A huge number of times, she’ll head uptown to an immigrant area, pick up a man, and fuck him. With her in control.

Both of her criminal and relationship life is put in jeopardy, though, when a man from Marisol’s past turns up in the form of Raul. A man who grow up in the same neighborhood (which reminds me – for the shit life Marisol had growing up, she sure has a lot of nostalgic feeling for her ‘old community’).

When a pimp wandered near waving a gun and calling for his whore to come out, things got complicated at the clinic. At a benefit for the clinic, Marisol mentions needing some extra security. Raul steps up and offers his services. He becomes a temporary security guard. He has a certain background, being that he had been a NYPD officer. He’s an ex-cop now, though. One that still consults with the city. Which is part of the complication on the criminal side – Marisol robs people, an old friend begins working at the clinic and is an ex-cop. Then there’s the romantic side – for the first time in maybe ever, Marisol might be willing to try a relationship, she has lustful feelings toward Raul. Though there are complications – he’s an ex-cop, she’s a criminal, and she also has that past sex worker history (and current, for that matter).

One of the neat things about this book is how LGBT friendly the book is. Two of Marisol’s top friends/thieves/escorts are lesbians (they are each other’s girlfriends). And another character in the book, much less important character-wise, is transgender.

Marisol, though, is very much heterosexual and spends a lot of time, and I mean a lot, humping men. Well, I do not mean to make that seem like it goes to porno levels. She humps men. Every once in a while. And, at times, graphically.

To a certain extent this book took me somewhat longer than normal not because of anything to do with the book itself, I mean quality wise, but because it involves MF relations. I had to ease my way in, and then through at times. Taking breaks here and there.

There is one very big flaw/problem with the book that could have had something like a negative impact on the star rating, if the book was not an arc. Because it is, I do not push up or push down the rating in any way because of it. ‘It’ being the part wherein the formatting in the copy I read is kind of messed up. As in, it isn’t really formatted. Sentences/paragraphs/etc. are smashed together or have double spaces within the same sentence as in:

Not an exact quote:

‘That taco is very

hot don’t you think?’

While at other times I was not always certain who was saying what because of things being mushed together, as in:

Again, not an exact quote:

“How are you doing?” She looked at the floor. “Are you doing that thing later?” She asked.
“The tacos are hot.” She moaned.

Most of the time I could tell, in context, that ‘Are you doing that’ was actually someone else speaking; though occasionally I wasn’t certain.

Again, though, I do not – because it is an arc – remove anything from the rating because of that issue (though I would if this wasn’t an arc). I assume that I got a digitalized version of the paperback, as opposed to an ebook file.

One last thought – language. I began reading this one at the same time I was reading Clare Ashton’s Poppy Jenkins. Which I mention for one reason – while I was reading ‘Poppy Jenkins’, people I know who were reading it at the same time were making comments about all the Welsh words popping up. And I? I was reading that and this book here. No, there are no Welsh words popping up in this book, no there were instead a bunch of Spanish words. I probably should have mentioned that any way – the part where a bunch of Spanish gets used. But I specifically am mentioning it here for a reason I once mentioned in another book with mixed languages (not the Poppy book, but a Heyer book).

I have no inherent problem with a book filled with mixed languages; characters speaking two or more languages at the same time in the same sentence. The specific problem I had was, like in a book by Heyer about the British fighting in Spain, this book here included several occasions when a character would start talking and the author included helpful notes like ‘in Spanish’. As in, the character was speaking in Spanish, but the words were printed on the page in English. I liked the fact they were there in English so I could read along. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the part where, remember the reader has already been told that the characters are speaking in Spanish, Spanish words would begin to appear in the sentences.

How exactly am I supposed to ‘take’ that? Spanish words popping up in a Spanish conversation that has already been specified to be translated into English. Are those words extra Spanish-y? So that’s why they appeared in Spanish? And to clarify, I’m not talking about the Spanish words that pop up before and after this specific event I’m talking about. I’m specifically talking about when the main character went to Cuba, and several occasions conversations occurred during which the author noted that the conversation had been translated from Spanish into English . . . yet still contained, here and there, Spanish words (Note: until I went to look for examples, I had forgotten that ‘in Spanish’ actually popped up in previous sections to the trip to Cuba; there are 17 occasions when ‘in Spanish’ is used in the book).

Quote from book:

“Quieres otra?” he asked
“No thanks,” she said in Spanish. “But I’ll buy you one.”
He raised his eyebrows, but then leaned back and smiled “Como no?”
She told the bartender in Spanish. “A rum and Coke.”

1) Why are his words in Spanish? Well, no. Both of their conversation are in Spanish. Why are his words only in Spanish, while hers, which, remember that ‘in Spanish’ part, are also in Spanish, but get translated?
2) Why does ‘in Spanish’ keep getting repeated?

By the way ‘Quieres otra’ apparently means ‘do you want another’. And ‘Como no?’ means . . . I don’t know what it means. Google translate is telling me it means ‘as?’. Hmm. Okay.

“I need to be on top,” she said in Spanish. “Bueno,” he said. me talking now – this is an example where the formatting got messed up – both of their lines are right after each other without a break

Here it makes sense to mix things up. I would not have known what ‘necesidad de estar en la cima’ (I have a large feeling that isn’t what ‘I need to be on top’ is in Spanish, but that’s what I get from Google), but do know Bueno = good.

Though here is what I meant specifically about mixing:

“Welcome to Cuba!” he said in Spanish, kissing her check. “Sorry we couldn’t . . .”
“our house is no Hotel Palacio, pero mi casa es tu casa.”

Gah. Okay, the mixing took place several paragraphs later. Still, same talker, I assume he is still speaking in Spanish after that ‘in Spanish’ mention, especially as they are in Cuba and everyone there speaks Spanish. So, why is pero mi casa es tu casa in Spanish in a part that is already supposed to be translated into English from Spanish? I know, from here or there, that ‘casa es tu casa’ is ‘my house is your house’ (or something like that), though I didn’t realize it needed the mi to make it ‘my’, and had no clue what pero was until I looked it up (means but – as in ‘but my house is your house’).

*shrugs* I never learned Spanish, so 99.9% of the stuff in Spanish just flies over my head unless there is some mention of what it means (several occasions someone will say something in Spanish, then within a paragraph or two, what they meant is said in English – somewhat rare, though).

I liked the book. I recommend this book. Do not expect constant action and thrills and suspense. Or, for that matter non-stop sex (there’s plenty of graphic sex, just not non-stop – oh, and, other than kissing, I believe all the sex is between a man and woman; no lesbian sex here; bah, I just recalled that there was one incident when the two girlfriends got busy while their ‘dates’ were asleep. I forget how graphic that scene was, though. Looking for ‘in Spanish’ is easy; searching for ‘lesbian sex scene’ to see if it is graphic or not does not actually work, heh).

Overall – An enjoyable book. I liked it. Just be aware that there’s graphic depictions of male-female sex, and that it isn’t a ‘thrill-a-minute’ type of book, but more of a ‘slice-of-life that occasionally includes robberies; and those robberies can occasionally be suspenseful’.

July 11 2016