The Whites, Richard Price

I guess I've been avoiding writing about The Whites. It was well-written and the plot was super engaging and it all felt very real, but it also left kind of a bad taste in my mouth and I've been struggling to articulate why. This book was good, but it wasn't for me.

Maybe it hit too close to home: crime fiction that reads very true set where I live featuring extremely fallible NYPD cops is just a little too real for me. (Though I will say New York in the book felt a little more like the New York of my teenage years than current New York.) Maybe it was just a touch too dark and gritty for my taste. But my biggest complaint about The Whites was something very particular. The titular Whites are people whom the police know to be guilty of a horrific crime but who -- for one reason or another -- were not successfully prosecuted for that crime. Each of the officers at the center of the book has a personal white: the one who got away with it on their watch. What irked me was that there was no doubt. I kept waiting for the plot twist where the person whom the cop has long assumed killed a teen basketball player actually didn't, or regretted it, or wasn't just plain evil. And, well, that twist never came. Most of the characters in this book were really complex, conflicted people, but the whites were just straight-up bad guys with no real back story. It's true that (title aside) the book isn't really about the whites, but this just kept bugging me.

Funiculars I have funiculated

I haven't even been on that many funiculars.

I was well into my 30s before I totally registered what a funicular even was.

Then I had a crazy year (2012) where there seemed to be funiculars everywhere I went.

I think there are more, but these are the funiculars I have taken pictures of between Clare's Year of the Funicular and the present:

• Funiculee Funicular, Park City, Utah
• Bom Jesus do Monte Funicular, Braga, Portugal
• Funicular dos Guindais, Porto, Portugal
• Old Quebec Funicular, Quebec City, Canada
• Cremallera de Montserrat, Montserrat, Spain
• Funicular de Sant Joan, Montserrat, Spain
• Budapest Castle Hill Funicular, Budapest, Hungary

I love funiculars.