It was a place that offered the soothing uneventfulness of conformity, but Harry longed to stand out. He was born in 1959, and grew up in Santa Fe Springs, a town in the paddle-flat valley less than an hour southeast of Los Angeles, hemmed in by the dun-colored Santa Rosa Hills and a looming sense of monotony.
Having a presence mattered a great deal to Harry Omer Peak. An arson investigator I met described Peak entering a courtroom with all that hair, as if his hair existed independently.
Another lawyer, who questioned Peak in a deposition, remembered his hair very well. Very, very blond, his lawyer said to me, and then he fluttered his hand across his forehead, performing a pantomime of Peak’s heavy swoop of bangs. Read moreĮven in Los Angeles, where there is no shortage of remarkable hairdos, Harry Peak attracted attention. The segments on the fire and its aftermath are compelling, but the portions about the suspect are primarily the author’s conjectures, using words like “maybe” and “perhaps.” I have fond memories associated with libraries, and there are many high ratings for this book, so my expectations were high, but I was ultimately disappointed. The timbre of her voice is not pleasing, and she does not modulate enough to avoid a monotonous tone. She does not properly pronounce the non-English words and phrases. She is not a professional reader, and it shows. I listened to the audio version read by the author. It reads as a hodgepodge of stories from library staff, random facts, mini-biographies, and the results of the author’s research.
It is disorganized, with lots of superfluous details, repetition, and topics only tangentially related to libraries.
It is billed as an investigation of the 1986 fire, and possible arson, as if it is the primary focus, but the part about the fire is a magazine article padded to the length of a book. This book is a history of the Los Angeles Central Public Library, a personal memoir, and a tribute to the services provided by public libraries.
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