Every two, four, six years, posters fill the streets of men or women with the same message: "Vote for me for a better government." They also appear on TV saying the same thing, with the additional assertion that the others saying it are lying scoundrels, not to be trusted.
The Governor’s Wife by Mark Gimenez, 545 pp, 2012 Sphere paperback. Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops, 350 baht.
Only mentioned, if at all, by the media at other times, they now appear in your neighbourhood, in the shops, in your face with broad smiles. "Hello. Glad to meet you. What can I do for you? Just give me your vote and when I win it's yours. And more besides." Those within office want to stay in. Those without want to get in.
As people the world over know, politics is about winning and losing, not about improving the lives of the public. Being in power is the time-honoured way of getting money over and above salaries. Contributions in exchange for favours. Not to the advantage of the poorer classes.
The Governor's Wife is one of the best novels this reviewer has read about how politics works in the US. Texas born lawyer-turned-author Mark Gimenez focuses on his home state. Mixing actual people with imaginative characters, his protagonist is Bode Bonner, governor of Texas during the Obama administration.
Parlaying his Texas University gridiron victories, 6'4" (1.9m _ the height American writers have standardised for their heroes) good looks, great charisma into the governor's mansion, he's 47, and a Democrat turned Republican. His wife Lindsay, 44, has remained a Democrat at heart. Both are bored. He's ambitious and wants to be president. She wants to return to nursing.
In office two terms and sure to win a third, we are left in no doubt that lying and kowtowing to the moneybags ensure that he'll be governor for life. Learning that he has a mistress, Lindsay becomes the nursing assistant to a Mexican-American doctor in a slum bordering the Rio Grande.
Many statistics are given both about the dire poverty of the Mexicans there and the narcotics flooding the States. The story becomes contrived when Bode kills a youth who's raping a girl, the victim the son of a Mexican drug lord who vows revenge. He kidnaps Lindsay, knowing the governor will come for her.
The penultimate chapter climax is the sanguinary gun, machete, knife battle between the governor and a few supporters (including his rival for the damsel's affections, the good doctor) and the drug lord (plus murderous bodyguards).
The Governor's Wife is 550 pages of dirty politics.
The Cutting Room by Jilliane Hoffman, 481 pp, 2013 Harper paperback. Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops, 325 baht.
Sick sexual quirks
That people have quirks has been known for ages, it taking Freud, Jung, Adler and the shrinks following to analyse them. Sexually based _ dreams, fantasies, wish fulfilment _ women have them as well as men. Women the victims of women, women the victims of men, men the victims of men, men the victims of women.
The Marquis de Sade wrote stories about sadism and masochism in the 18th century. The genre has since become an industry, vastly expanding when film and porn on the internet took it up. Not least, art. So wide is the interest, and so much the profit, that censors are unable to stop it.
Those producing it feel that there's no limit to human sexual quirks, so go to the extreme. Not merely sex with animals, but torture, rape, death during orgasms, snuff films. And there are people who want to be on hand while they are being made, witness the murders. Sick, yet sexual quirks go that far.
Former assistant Florida state attorney Jilliane Hoffman delves into this in The Cutting Room _ a fictitious based-on-fact novel. Set in Miami-Dade County and its environs, the protagonist is thrice-divorced Miami homicide detective Manny Alvarez, 6'5" (I gather shorter men don't qualify as criminalists). Attractive women in their 20s, single and wed, are the favourite victims of a Florida snuff club. The form is for one of its handsome men to pick up and seduce them. The members do the rest _ burning, whipping, branding, pouring acid, raping all their orifices, strangling. Left in dumpsters.
Taking a leaf from Silence Of The Lambs, a Hannibal the Cannibal-type serial killer behind bars makes a deal to tell what he knows about them in return for special privileges. In the event, he escapes during a hurricane. Manny teams up with a female assistant DA, until she's kidnapped.
In the penultimate chapter, the serial killer tracks down the woman prosecutor on his case. Is her taser enough to defend herself?
The author obviously knows about this crime from experience. But horrific though it is, if people didn't have such sexual quirks, there wouldn't be a constant supply to meet their demand. If you like courtroom dramas, as this reviewer does, there is an interest-holding one in The Cutting Room of a member of the cult.
This is Jilliane Hoffman's fifth crime thriller. She certainly holds our attention.
