The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien

Rating: 4/5

Lost References:

Desmond packs it up as he’s leaving the DHARMA Swan hatch.

There are a bunch of similarities, but these are the big ones…

• AFTERLIFE/TIME/ETERNITY: Apparently, eternity can be reached through a church in either universe, and it takes people a while to realize that they’re dead.
• BLACK AIR: The book frequently references a (fictional) physicist/philosopher named de Selby who has a lot of crazy theories. One is about “black air” produced by volcanic activity, which creates night. The Island, of course, has its own black smoke problem.
• THE BLACK BOX: (No, not the black box from an airplane.) The main character in the book is questing after this black box throughout the book, while the Losties all have other things that they’re obsessed with. The black box contains omnium, or energy, which can make anything. . It’s a bit like a metaphor Ben gave Locke.
  • Ben: What if I told you that, somewhere on this island, there is a very large box and whatever you imagined, whatever you wanted to be in it when you opened that box, there it would be?
• THE BUNKER: As in the Swan hatch, the novel has a bunker where two men must keep strange equipment closely monitored. As it turns out, they don’t have to; it’s just another guy messing with them, which is one thing that Desmond thinks as he’s pushing the button in the hatch in Lost.
• CRIME: The main character is a robber/murderer, and the majority of the book takes place in a police station or around police, while Lost is packed with cops and criminals.
• NAMES: The main character doesn’t know his name, though he puts some effort into coming up with one. On the Island, there are plenty of aliases going around, and there’s the Man in Black who’s never given a name.

Thoughts:

For a heavily metaphysical book about a murder in hell, this was a surprisingly comfortable read. It’s hard to say more than that, except that I laughed a bit and that I’ll never look at bicycles the same way again.

Hotel – Arthur Hailey

Rating: 4/5

Lost References:

Hotel is on Ben’s bookshelf. Also, it deals with a group of strangers with suspect pasts whose lives and stories collide.

Thoughts:

The book was well-plotted, with a collection of plotlines all straightened out by the end of the book. Some were a little too neat. Yes, Hailey did let one of his villains get away, but I think it was supposed to be a likeable villain, so even though I didn’t like him myself, I don’t think it counts.

Speaking of characters, they were plentiful and varied, as people are in a hotel, and the main man is easy to root for as he’s handed a plateful of problems and is limited in the ways he can resolve them. All in all, it’s not a very thought-provoking read, but it has some merit. At the very least, it’s entertaining.

Dark Horse – Tami Hoag

Rating: 2/5

Lost References:

This book is on Jack’s office shelf.

Thoughts:

The former cop is full of trauma and depression then ends up solving crimes anyway because of some lingering sense of duty. Is there a setup more cliché than this? Didn’t think so. Also, I found the “mature child” who finds her pretty uninspired, too. And there were way too many people to keep track of.

After All These Years – Susan Isaacs

Rating: 2/5

Lost References:

This book is by Sawyer’s bed in the Swan hatch as he’s recovering from his injuries. The book pertains more to Kate than Sawyer. Like Rosie in the book, Kate is on the lam after a murder charge… though unlike Rosie, Kate is actually guilty. Both of them get help from a (now-married) childhood friend/love interest named Tom. I don’t know how this new book got into the old DHARMA station, but fans speculate about it being periodically restocked. Or maybe the Losties brought the book in with them.

Thoughts:

Trashy romance/mystery novel. The only thing I can say is that Isaacs knows how to turn a phrase.

Eleventh Hour – Catherine Coulter

Rating: 2/5

Lost References:

This is one of the books on Jack’s shelf. So far I’m not too impressed with his choice in literature.

Thoughts:

Promising at first, Eleventh Hour opened with some genial (if unoriginal and stereotyped) characters in a tricky situation. Even when Coulter continually flashed back (without warning or transition) to one character’s side-story plotline, I was willing to go along with it. But she never developed the characters further (with the exception of one suspect – Weldon DeLoach – who hardly gets any page time). Worse, she forced the two main characters into a predictable but super-awkward romance. Actually, she was pretty bad writing romance at all. Even two FBI agents in a solidly established marriage just walked around being perfect and thinking about how perfect the other one was. The plot just grew more and more unlikely and coincidental. In the end, I was reading outside, and I found more entertainment in a chipmunk and blackbird fighting for food than I did in this novel. Though advertised as a thriller, it failed to thrill. It just left me thoroughly underwhelmed.

Bad Twin – Gary Troup/Laurence Shames

Rating: 2/5

Lost References:

Hurley finds the manuscript for this fictional book. Sawyer is seen reading it before Jack throws it into the fire. An actual Bad Twin book was then created as a Lost tie-in, supposedly by a man named Gary Troup who was on the Oceanic flight and sucked into the plane’s jet engine in the pilot episode, the first person seen to die on the show. (The real life ghostwriter is a man named Laurence Shames.) The book is absolutely stuffed with Lost references. You can find a full list on this Lostpedia page of the various shared characters, places, and other concepts. The name Gary Troup itself is an anagram for “purgatory,” an important Lost theme. He dedicates the book to Oceanic flight attendant Cindy Chandler, and his publishing company is Walkabout Publishing. And so on.

Thoughts:

The book was horribly and predictably written. The only people who need to read it are Lost fans.

Evil under the Sun – Agatha Christie

Rating: 5/5

Lost References:

Sawyer is reading this book when Nikki interrupts him in Exposé. Ironically, the book is about the murder of a beautiful, flirtatious actress. The episode is about the same thing – the death of Nikki. (Of course, Paolo dies at the same time, in what I believe is Lost’s third funniest death scene. Frogurt… I mean Neil… comes in at #2 while Ilana and Arzt tie for #1.)

Thoughts:

Agatha Christie is the Queen of Mystery for a reason. She has her duds, like everyone else, but even her duds are better than most writers’ masterpieces. She writes spectacular stories. This particular novel (which I first heard as an audiobook with my family as we made the long drive to visit my grandparents) is no exception.

If you are familiar with Agatha Chrisite, you’ll know she has a few detectives that she favors. This one is a Poirot novel. (She also writes a lot about Miss Marple, although I’m rather fond of two detectives who don’t star in so many works – Tommy and Tuppence.) Poirot is brilliant and he knows it, and he solves the murder in Evil under the Sun with his usual aplomb.