The Coffin Dancer by Jeffrey Deaver

This is Deaver’s first book after The Bone Collector, which was made into a very good suspense movie with Denzel Washington, as Lincoln Rhyme, and Angelina Jolie, as Amelia Sachs. Rhyme is the quadriplegic criminalist and Sachs is his understudy, his feet and eyes for investigation. This story involves the same two characters and continues the development of their relationship. Despite Rhyme’s handicap, the sexual tension between him and Sachs is obvious. The name the “coffin dancer” comes from the tattoo on the arm of the highly successful assassin that Rhyme is tracking, which is the only information about him that anyone has. Throughout the book, Deaver makes fun of the book’s title and the name of this character as being overly melodramatic, which it is. This is the same assassin that Rhyme has encountered before failed to capture him. The character Dancer has apparently been hired by Phillip Hansen, a guy who is about to be indicted by the Feds for selling stolen military armaments, and Hansen needs three witnesses killed before they testify before the grand jury. The three people, Edward Carney, his wife Percey Clay, and pilot Brit Hale, who are starting a small private airline company, all witnessed what were apparently bags of evidence being thrown from a plane that carried Hansen. The action of this book all takes place in the 45 hours before the grand jury is scheduled to convene to consider the evidence against Hansen, so the action is fast. A line that Deaver repeats over and over about Dancer and his successful past assassinations and Rhyme’s inability to find him during the course of this book was, “His deadliest weapon is deception.” Deaver makes use of deception throughout the book. This was another good read, and Deaver is right in the middle of my power rotation.

The Dramatist: A Novel by Ken Bruen

This was another Jack Taylor novel by Ken Bruen. The detective story itself is good, but it is the writing that captivates me, as well as the literary references that he frequently makes. For example, the entire plot is built around the murderer's fascination with J.M. Synge, an Irish writer who lived from 1871 to 1909, and Bruen repeatedly refers to his books. Bruen quotes Scott Peck in People of the Lie: “For evil arises in the refusal to acknowledge our own sins.” He quoted James Lee Burke from Jolie Blon’s Bounce: “But this was no ordinary AA group. The failed, the aberrant, the doubly addicted and the totally brain fried whose neuroses didn’t even have a name found their way to the ‘work the steps or die motherfucker meeting.’” Mostly, this is a book about life in Ireland and Taylor’s fight with alcohol, coke and cigarettes. Bruen wrote about one man with cirrhosis, who Taylor went to visit shortly before his death. The Dublin guy said, “Jack, I’d rather be dead than teetotal.” Taylor mused, “Got his wish.” In reference to Taylor, he wrote, “I didn’t know much about humility but I was well versed in humiliation.” This was a very quick read, totally enjoyable even though the plot itself was not totally gripping. I’m a Bruen fan.

Liberation Movements by Olen Steinhauer

1968. Prague. Peter Husak is a student in music theory when the Russian tanks are rolling into town. He and 2 student friends make a dash for the border, but Peter is captured. In his interrogation, the Slovak security officer notices something very peculiar about Peter. He sees just how adept Peter is at lying. A trait that the secret police might find valuable.

1975. Detective Libarid Terzian is unhappy in his marriage and the upcoming conference on terrorism in Istanbul gives him a chance to maybe bolt from his current situation. In the waiting area of the airport, he notices a reasonably attractive woman accompanied by a brute of an escort. He also spots a couple really nervous looking guys, constantly at the pay phone, sweating and smoking cigarettes. He also spots, amongst the ministry watchers, an odd character watching everyone else (Libarid is a detective after all).

He is seated on the flight next to the woman who, in casual conversation, tells Libarid who the others are and what each will be doing in the next few minutes. And each does as she said they would do. She must be part of some plot.

At the Istanbul airport, Detective Brano Sev and the young officer he is mentoring are awaiting Libarid's arrival when word comes that the flight blew up over Bulgaria with 80-some people aboard. The hijackers were Armenian as was Libarid.

This sets the stage for an investigation of the disaster by Detective Sev and Gavra Noukas. What first appears to be a political statement gone wrong takes multiple unforeseen twists as Sev and Noukas uncover tiny bits of information that may or may not have some connection with some disruptive operations by Socialist operations.

Was this all about the hijackers and their political cause? Was this a hit on Libarid and if so, why on an airplane with so many innocents on board? And what about this odd women with the seeming ability to read people's thoughts and predict with such accuracy what people will do? Was she the target? If so, by whom? And just who the hell is/was Peter, whose capture and interrogation opens the book and what does his past have to do with the bombing of the flight? Just how do the bombing, a homosexual encounter, Libarid, Sev, Peter, psychological experiments, a years old murder all connect?

This is the 4th Steinhauer book and I can guarantee you it will not be my last. His more recent titles (The Tourist and The Nearest Exit) are current CIA thrillers full of complex plotting and intricate deceptions. He has a series of books, based as 1 per decade, about crime and espionage in Eastern Europe. The first, Bridge of Sighs, was set in the 1940s. I skipped a couple decades to the 70s with this book and in doing so, missed the introduction of Detective Sev (Emil Brod, the rookie cop in Bridge, is a minor character as a police chief).

I've offered high praise for Steinhauer's storytelling. His carefully layered plots are intricate, deftly paced, revealing tiny bits and pieces of the intertwining stories for the reader to assemble until the puzzle's final image becomes clear in one of those, "Aha" moments so eagerly awaited. I think I would be wise to jump back to the 1950s with The Confession and work forward in order. Don't let the Slavic names, locations, and geographic references to a fictional country stop you from venturing into these crime/espionage mystery-thrillers. It's worth the effort for readers who like complex plotting reminiscent of LeCarre, Deighton, Forsyth, et al. Lovers of spy/mystery novels in the 'old sense' (not the current wave of techno-thrillers ushered in by Tom Clancy), should be on the lookout for Steinhauer.

East Coast Don

When the Sacred Gin Mill Closes by Lawrence Block

East Coast Don reviewed “Eight Million Ways to Die,” the first of the Lawrence Block books reviewed in this blog. That was one was written in 1982, the fifth in the 18-book series, and originally, Block was going to end the series with that one. After a little research, I chose “When the Sacred Gin Mill Closes,” the 1986 book that revived the series and the hero. In this story, Scudder gets involved in some crime solving, but I was nearly halfway through when I realized I was just not interested in finding out how Scudder solved the mysteries and how the author resolved the various dissonances that he created with his characters. Simply put, it was not gripping enough to keep me interested.

Faithful Place: A Novel by Tana French

This is Tana French’s third novel, and she won the Edgar Award for her first novel, In the Woods. My wife suggested this, knowing I love detective/murder mysteries. While the plot is great, mostly this is a book about the relationships amongst the family members of a highly dysfunctional family from the poorest and most crime-ridden area of Dublin. The story is told in the first person from the point of view of the main character, Francis “Frank” Mackey, so the author, a woman, chooses to write from the perspective of a man. I thought that convention usually worked. At the age of 19, Francis is in love with Rosie Daly, and they both know they have to escape Faithful Place where they both have grown up, but the poverty, poor education, and hardships of the place act like quicksand to keep people from leading, force them to repeat the pathetic lives that their parents and grandparents led. The place is crowded, too many family members in every flat, everyone knowing everyone’s business, there are no secrets. But, Francis and the beautiful, vivacious Rosie have a plan to escape, a plan which they think they have kept secret from everyone. On the night they are to escape, Francis waits for Rosie, who never shows. Then, he discovers her note which he interprets to mean that she has decided to escape, but without him. Devastated by this turn of events, Francis chooses to leave anyway, without telling anyone. The Mackeys and Dalys, who have been enemies for years, are left to assume that the two lovers have eloped together. It is 22 years later that Francis is drawn back to Faithful Place, and in those years, he has become a detective in the Guards (about which we’ve learned so much from Ken Bruen’s novels), has married and divorced Olivia, and has a 9-year-old daughter, Holly. Upon his return home, he receives a very mixed welcome from his parents, two brothers, and two sisters. His ex-wife and daughter are drawn into the family drama, something Francis had worked for 22 years to prevent. Rosie’s body was discovered in a nearby derelict house, and there is clear evidence that she was on her way to meet Francis when she was intercepted and killed. Francis spends the rest of the book unraveling the mystery, which involves his family, only it is not clear how they were involved and who were the main characters. He has to unravel and understand the old rivalry between the Mackey and Daly families. There were good plot twists that I did not see coming, and the final mystery is not what I predicted it would be. The writing in this book was excellent, and there were passages that were gripping, such as the opening paragraph beginning with, “In all your life, only a few moments matter.” My only criticism was the length and depth of the extensive family interactions and dialogue, which I thought sometimes detracted from the plot, but that was the very feature that my wife loved. I think I’ll probably read French’s first book before I make a decision about where she ranks in my list of authors.

The Devil by Ken Bruen

Jack Taylor sees a new life in America as a possible answer to his demons. But immigration seems to have a problem with a little dustup a few years ago that landed him in jail for a brief stay and promptly sends him back to Galway. At the airport, he has a chance meeting with a guy in the bar. As he leaves, a flight attendant cautions him about his choice of drinking mates. Shortly afterwards, she is killed in a hit and run.

Once home, Jack returns to being that person people go to in order to get things fixed. A mother of a college kid is worried because her son hasn't been heard from in days and also missed her birthday. Jack learns from a friendly waitress at a student bar that the boy has come under the spell of a Mr. K. Soon, he learns that the son was murdered, gutted, and hung upside down on a cross in a cemetery. Then, the waitress is found gutted in her apartment in the company of a slaughtered and beheaded dog. Jack retreats into repeated pubs to hide in a shot of Jameson, a pint of Guinness, and Xanax . . . a lot of Xanax.

The mom of a Downs Syndrome girl hopes Jack could talk to the parents of 3 classmates who are bullying the girl. Problem is that the father is and importer . . . of drugs.

Taylor's old partner in the Guard, Ridge (now Sgt. Ridge), and her husband are having a party and where he again meets this charismatic stranger, Carl, who has a business proposition for Ridge as well as with Jack. As a favor, Jack asks Ridge to stop in on the parents of the bullying girls and ends up in the hospital for her efforts.

Jack tracks the dad's habits all the while he is starting to put 1 and 1 together about Carl/Mr. K. and coming up with Lucifer. We learn that most of the world's worst events could be traced to Mr. K.'s travels. Karl and Jack play a dangerous game of cat and mouse leading to the eventual confrontation that Jack thinks he and his 9mm have won, but later learns of some other mysterious deaths in London where the police want question someone who goes by simply K.

Bruen in one of the best selling of Irish authors and a number of his mysteries have been posted here. I like his style, almost poetic in it's presentation. I also like his mingling on current music, books, and authors (Taylor is a prolific reader. I've actually found a couple other authors to read based on mention in Bruen's series about Taylor). And there are a number of mentions of one of my favorite songs by the Stones - Sympathy for the Devil (one of the best bass lines in rock).

A number of Bruen fans posted on various review sites that they were disappointed that Bruen had ventured into the supernatural with this book, but I couldn't disagree more. I thought he perfectly united the mystery and supernatural aspects of the story. One other complaint of the fanboys was that the book just sort of ended. OK, if you like your books tied up in a nice neat bow, I'll give you that. But I suspect that we might see Mr. K. pop up in future twisted tales from one of my favorites of Ireland.

BTW, Jack does track down the drug running father of the bullying girls and in no uncertain terms, advises him to rein in his girls. A very satisfying chapter.

East Coast Don

Eight Million Ways to Die by Lawrence Block

Pay attention boys and girls. I’ve come to learn that Lawrence Block has the rep as one of the few modern day noir authors that has successfully edged out from under the shadow of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. The is one of 18 (!) Matthew Scudder novels. Not that I should know all the modern day noir authors, but how did Block fly under my radar? This title came out in 1982.

Scudder is a former NYC cop who left the job because an errant bullet killed a little girl and his downward spiral destroyed his marraige. He now lives in a residential hotel and makes ends meet as an unlicensed PI while working oh so hard to keep from seeing life from the blackout-induced haze of a bottle of bourbon.

A friend of a friend connects Scudder with Kim Dakkinen, a Wisconsin-bred lovely who wants to get out of ‘the life.’ She is afraid to tell her pimp, so she asks Scudder to approach Chance with the news. Chance is terribly private person, a lover of African art and nothing like the comedic image of a pimp, but once Scudder meets him, the news is certainly OK with Chance. He wishes her well and appreciated her service. Life moves on.

Within a couple days, Kim is dead, hacked into smithereens by a machete in a downtown hotel. She wasn’t assaulted or robbed, just hacked to bits. The killer even took a shower afterwards and took the bloody towels. Obviously, the cops think Chance is behind the slaughter, but Chance hires Scudder to find her killer and an unlikely tango between Chance, Scudder, and the cops ensues.

A couple days later, another of Chance’s girls is dead of an apparent suicide. Is someone targeting Chance’s girls? A few days later, what appears to be a random transsexual waiting for sex change surgery is hacked to death just like Kim. The press is having a field day.

Scudder is trying to find the connection between the victims. A mink stole was left in Kim’s apartment and the hotel room, but a green ring, an emerald, was not on Kim’s hand. Scudder trades interviews and other clues with daily trips to AA, a fall off the wagon, and countless cups of coffee. On a venture into Harlem, he is mugged, but disarms the perp, knocks the kid out and breaks both the kid’s legs. A day or two later, a passerby after another AA meeting hints to Scudder that he should back off else he experiences the same broken legs.

It seems like so many PI stories are tales of an awfully flawed former cop. Scudder lives his days in “the smells of spilled booze and stale beer and urine, that dank tavern smell that welcomes you home.” The book is essentially told in 3parts: the day-to-day grind of AA, a certain level of hatred for what NYC has become, and of being in ‘the life’.” If books like this are reflections of the life of the writer, Mr. Block has seen a very nasty side of the human drama that he expertly exposes to his readers by seductively drawing us into the underbelly of New York. Block has another series about a contract killer named Keller, which I will explore next. But Scudder will again sit on my nightstand in the not too distant future.

East Coast Don

Legacy of the Dead by Charles Todd

Amazon was pushing the newest in a line of 14 books by Todd about Inspector Ian Rutledge, A Lonely Death. Rutledge had been a promising inspector at Scotland Yard, and then he left in 1914 to fight in the Great War. Upon his return, he was badly injured and obviously suffering from the effects of PTSD, then known as shell shock. Still, he attempted to resume his job at Scotland Yard, much to the dismay of those around him, especially his boss, Chief Superintendent Bowles. I decided to try one of the early books in the series, so if I liked it, I could read them in order. I was hopeful about having a new series to love. Also, the books cover the time period from 1916 to 1920, and I found that to be of particular interest. It did not turn out the way I hoped. I read, Legacy of the Dead, but put it down about 1/3 of the way into it. It just did not hold my interest. In the war, a man under Rutledge, Corporal Hamish MacLeod went crazy and Rutledge then drew up a firing squad and executed Hamish for his refusal to move forward to take out an enemy machine gun nest, a task that would have cost many lives. Thereafter, Rutledge takes on Hamish as an internal voice, one with which he must always contend, and one that follows him through his assignments as an inspector. At times, with regard to a new case, Rutledge was thinking one thing while Hamish was debating two other possibilities. Also, I found the peripheral characters to be stiff and unreal – so I gave it up. Too bad. While the writing itself was quite good, the plot just did not carry the day.

Magdalen Martyrs by Ken Bruen

This is another one in the Jack Taylor series, after Guards and the Killing of the Tinkers. As always, Taylor is struggling with his multiple substance problems, at times giving into mighty indulgences, but sometimes fighting off the demons that keep calling him to self-destructive behaviors. Ken Bruen writes about this material better than any other contemporary author that I’ve seen. He drops in lines like, “Alcoholics are almost always charming. They have to be, because they have to keep making new friends. They use up the old ones.” Meanwhile, he tells a story. It really is not much of a story, but it centers around a group of young women in the 1950s who get pregnant out of wedlock and then are put into the Magdalen Convent in Galway, Ireland, where they are badly mistreated, sometimes killed. The girls are the Magdalen Martyrs, the Maggies. They work in the service of the convent, doing the laundry under brutal conditions, the brutality being led by the queen of sadists, a lay person hired by the nuns to help out who the girls refer to as Lucifer. Jumping forward to the present, Taylor is given a job to find an old woman. He is hired by Bill Cassell, a Mafioso type, to find Rita Monroe, who Cassell said helped his mother escape from Magdalen. Meanwhile, there are murders being committed of a couple young men for no apparent reason. Bruen successfully ties the story lines together, but one of the magics of Bruen’s writing is that the story line is not the only thing. He presents his ideas with multiple literary references across a wide spectrum of authors, and he even uses Taylor to lecture others about the importance of some forgotten authors. He even makes a reference to a current author, one of our favorites, George Pelecanos’ book Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go: “The thirst for knowledge is like a piece of ass you know you shouldn’t case; in the end, you chase it just the same.” (And now I know East Coast Don will read this one.) This was not Bruen’s finest work, but I was entertained, and I’ve already acquired a couple more of his books to read.

Havana by Stephen Hunter

Thought I'd get some deeper backstory on Bob Lee Swagger with a book about his daddy.

As you may recall, Bob Lee is an Arkansas native who became the #2 sniper in Vietnam. His dad was a state policeman and winner of the CMH plus a bunch of other medals for heroism on Iwo Jima and other hellholes in Pacific. Havana begins with Earl teaching a young Bob Lee the intricacies of deer hunting. In a bit of irony, young Bob Lee has a deer in his sights (shades of his sniper future) but decides not to pull the trigger.

It's 1953. And lots of people have noticed a young lawyer with a charismatic aura and is a fiery orator. The Cuban Secret Police is out to stamp out any anti-government voice. The Soviets see a potential pigeon to head a new communist satellite. The US government wants to keep the status quo going for big business like sugar, coffee, bananas, tourism, and more. And the mob wants to keep the money faucet open from gambling, prostitution, and drugs.

The Soviets pull an old operative out of a Siberian gulag and charge him with grooming the young Castro. The CIA is worried about Castro and decides to take off the gloves by hiring Earl Swagger to carry out the hit. The mob is also concerned and posts a nutcase NYC hitter to join a secret police enforcer known as Beautiful Eyes (for his creative interrogation techniques using a scalpel - use your imagination). What results is a complex interaction of the various players with inopportune alliances all conspiring against Earl.

Earl is tasked as part of a Congressman's delegation. Problem is the Arkansas representative has a taste for some nasty sex which Earl steps in and protects the victim hooker. What follows includes an ambush on the drive to Guantanamo, an opportunity for Earl to take out both Castro and his Soviet handler in the jungle, and a massive shootout on the streets of the Havana red light district before escaping, with the help of his Soviet counterpart, to Key West.

What was interesting is that when Earl has Castro and the Soviet in his sites for the kill, he doesn't pull the trigger. Killing face to face during war is one thing, but this hunting a man and killing him while he drinks water just ain't right (son Bob Lee won't have any problem with it when he grows up).

In the end, everyone's kind of happy. Castro ends up in prison so the secret police, the US, and the Cuban government are happy. The CIA has managed to get rid of a sadistic policeman and rearrange the local spy hierarchy. And the mob has survived a potentially thorny problem to keep the money flowing. Earl gets back home. Only the Soviets are disappointed.

Cool to read about Bob Lee's daddy. Earl isn't a remorseless killer. He has standards, ethics, and a conscious that balances a life of war and right or wrong. As mysteries go, this one has a wider scope than most others I've read. I have an even earlier Earl Swagger novel coming from the library so we'll be checking in with Earl again before too long.

East Coast Don

The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly

In this 2005 book, Michael “Mickey” Haller is the Lincoln Lawyer, so named because he mostly works out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, not an office. He’s in the car as he moves from one courthouse to another in the LA area, always defending the downtrodden and the underprivileged. But, Mickey is no fool. He’s also looking out for the big case, the “franchise” defendant that can pay his “A” fees and who will make his life so much more comfortable. He has been married and divorced twice, both times to lawyers, and both of them still love him. This is really a great plot as he takes on the defense of Louis Ross Roulet, a man accused of attempting to rape and murder a hooker, but who is then linked to other murders. In the midst of the investigation of the attempted murder, Haller’s investigator is murdered. The court room drama is as good as any that I have read. The story is complex as Connelly includes both of Haller’s former wives, his 8 yo daughter, a jailhouse snitch, Roulet’s mother and family attorney, and others. This was a great story and there are great plot twists near the end of the book. I had a hard time putting this one down.

Man In The Dark by Paul Auster

Be warned – this is far removed from the typical fare of Men Reading Books.

Call them the Family Funk. August Brill is a 72 yo retired book critic who is recuperating from a near fatal car wreck at his daughter Miriam’s house who has just had her daughter Katya move back in after dropping out of film school.

Why the Funk? August is still struggling with the recent death of his wife, Sonya. Miriam is a English prof whose husband dumped her and now has retreated into researching the life of a daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne. And Katya is still struggling with the death of her boyfriend Titus. This New England farmhouse has a really black cloud hanging over it. Miriam is mostly absent so August and Katya retreat from their respective worlds with daily viewings of classic film (not “movies” which are so prosaic. The great questions of life are addressed in “film”). In these films they try to find reasons for their weird world.

To make things worse, August has insomnia. To pass the time at night, he manufactures a story of an alternate reality. In his imagined world, 9/11 never happened. The 2000 election plunged the US into a civil war with millions being killed. His hero, a NY children’s magician Owen Brick, appears out of nowhere in a deep hole dressed as a soldier. He is pulled up by a sergeant and told to find a specific source for instructions to kill a man whose imagination has produced this particular reality – a man named August Brill. Kill him and the horror of this war disappears. Fail, and the old reality disappears. Brill takes Owen Brick through the past of August Brill that includes a number of people from Brill’s past.

One night, Katya hears August coughing and checks in on him. The rest of the night (half the book), August answers Katya’s questions about him and her grandmother. August tells of their first meeting, their courtship, the early years of marriage, of a few years living in Paris, his infidelity, divorce, 9yrs of whoring, his reconciliation with Sonya, and then her cancer. August tells Katya of a number of very dark scenes of horrific death (for example, a European neighbor tells of a favored school teacher who was in the resistance during WWII, was captured only to be drawn and quartered in a German POW camp as an example to the other prisoners). Katya and August relive the circumstances around the death of Titus and just how they came to actually see how Titus died.

Was I right? Not our usual fare. I wish I could remember why I reserved this from the library. The jacket liner wouldn’t have convinced me to check it out. But I found myself drawn into Brick’s world, then Brill’s past, and finally Katya’s tragic loss. Austen deftly depicts the guilt and shame of each without requiring pity from the reader.

I read some reviews of this book and author. I must be a bit on the old side. Apparently, Auster is a staple of literature courses in college today and his prior titles are well reviewed. This is a short book, easily read in a couple sessions; a whopping 180 pages in a 5x8” book. Guessing that Auster has quite a knack for dark, disturbing, and psychological tales. Worth another try.

. . . and the weird world rolls on.

East Coast Don

Pike by Benjamin Whitmer

I’m not sure why I even finished this book, but it seems that my compulsive nature once again defeated the wisdom of just giving up on it. Pike had the feel of Cormac McCarthy’s book, The Road. Although that book made Oprah’s monthly book recommendation, it did not make mine. Like that book, this one told a story of a troubled and deteriorating time with nothing but bad people leading sad and violent lives, without apparent reason for doing so. In this book, a dirty and bad cop, Derrick, is eventually challenged by an old and rough character, Pike. Both men cause havoc around them and death and/or injury to nearly everyone who comes near, until they meet up with each other for the final confrontation. Pike, an older man, is there to save his granddaughter who has been abandoned by his now deceased mother, Pike’s daughter, to whom Pike did not speak after she turned 6 years old when he abandoned them. His daughter led the life of addiction and whoring, and was pimped by Derrick. This was Whitmer’s first novel, but he’s going to have to do a lot better to ever win me back. He had some peripheral characters, but none of them were all that interesting. There were no unexpected twists in the plot, just a slow progression to the inevitable conclusion when Pike kills Derrick and then takes off with his granddaughter towards a safer life. Okay, that’s enough, and you already know more than you need to about this one.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett

WARNING: THIS IS A NONFICTION BOOK. This story should be appealing to any bibliophile, as the two Dons certainly are, but the twist here is that it is a true story about a man that embodies both a love of books and sociopathy. Because his desire to collect is far beyond his means, he turns to stealing. The author follows the serial book thief (a brief change of topics from our more usual topic of serial murderers) John Gilkey as he builds up his inventory of rare books. She travels to his family’s home in Modesto, California, where she sees his old room and talks with his mother and sister as she tries to understand his warped superego. She gets into Gilkey’s apartment and describes his incredible cache of books – he is more interesting in having them than selling them. She follows and interviews him in and out of prison since he is sometimes not so slick in his thievery and too driven by his compulsion. She also tells the parallel story of Ken Sanders, the man who works as the security chair for the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (an organization that really exists). As security chair, he is the chief detective that becomes aware of Gilkey’s prolific stealing and who spends several years pursuing him. Bartlett also weaves in information about rare book sellers, especially John Crichton, and a police detective, Kenneth Munson. Bartlett wrote about her own love of books and the strange world of rare book collectors and dealers. She once quoted Winston Churchill on the subject: “’What shall I do with all my books?’ was the question; and the answer, ‘Read them,’ sobered the questioner. But if you cannot read them, at any rate, handle them, and as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open where they will. Read on from the first sentence that arrests the eye. Then turn to another. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of unchartered seas. Set them back on their shelves with your own hands. Arrange them on your own plan, so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.” As she addressed the topic of ebooks and the effect it might have on her topic, she thought people who have made the switch to ebooks (like me) would end up having a strengthened attachment to the physical books they keep (and that is insightful, clearly true for me). The author tells her story in novel-like form, so it is a good read. There is nothing dry about this nonfiction work. It was a quick read – it took me just a few hours, and the time was well spent.

The Confession by John Grisham

With his last several novels, I thought Grisham had gotten away from what he does best, and I see there is only one other Grisham book reviewed in the blog. So, I think we have both soured on his recent stuff. In this book, he’s back to the lawyer/crime novel with strong racial issues, the stuff he does best, the stuff that made him the household name that he is. This story mostly takes place in Texas because of the Texas laws that allow for the death penalty and the State’s frequent use of that punishment. This is a story about them misusing that penalty and killing the wrong man. That much of the plot is apparent from the start, so knowing that won’t ruin the story for you. Travis Boyette is the serial rapist and murderer who was never charged with this murder of Nicole Yarber, a 17-year-old high school cheerleader from Slone, Texas. Rather, it was Donte Drumm, a back high school athlete who was charged and sent to prison with the death sentence. Boyette confesses his crime to a Lutheran minister, Keith Schroeder, but the confession comes with only days to go before the execution when getting a reversal is unlikely. Then, Boyette does not fully cooperate with effort to save Drumm. Meanwhile, the town of Slone is set to explode with race riots if Drumm is killed. Grisham uses the charismatic and determined lawyer, Robbie Flak, as the man who rabidly pursues this matter, from one appellate level to another, only to have his appeals turned down time and again, despite glaring errors by the court, because of the good-old-boy and corrupt Texan court system. This one will grab you. There are unexpected twists in the plot. I’m glad to have Grisham back in my power rotation.

The Twelfth Iman by Joel Rosenberg

Iran is on the verge of their own nuclear bomb. Make that 9 nuclear bombs and more in the pipeline. Muslim writings state that a new world order ruled under Islamic Law will be established when Iran produces the might to defeat the great Satans (USA and Israel) and led by a mythic cleric known as the Twelfth Iman. Iran has waited centuries for this Iman to surface and lead them into a new era of peace and brotherhood - achieved by force.

And it looks like Islamic prophecy is coming true. The US intelligence services are caught flatfooted about a Muslim country's military power, again. Israel is mobilizing for war. Iran conducts an underground nuclear test and the CIA can't seem to connect the dots of nuclear power, the Islamic government, Koran prophesies, and the sporadic sightings of the Twelfth Iman. How can western governments be so blind to a country that denies the holocaust occurred is on the brink of causing their own?

All this is the reason for Rosenberg to begin a new three-part series on Iran and the Islamic view of the end of days. The bulk of this book is backstory to the main characters of the new series. Charlie Harper (not that one) is an embedded CIA agent in Tehran in the late 70's when the Shah's regime collapsed. He and his wife grab their neighbors and best friends, the Shirazi's, make a mad dash for the border to escape and get back to the US.

Once in the US, the Harpers settle in NJ while the Shirazi's go to Syracuse, NY. The father's take the oldest sons on a September fishing week in rural Canada. When the youngest Shirazi, David, is finally old enough for the vacation, Harper brings his daughter, Marseille. David resents this feminine intrusion, but ends up liking her - a lot. On the 11th, when they are supposed to leave the lake, they are stranded for a few days, coming home to an unspeakable reality.

David is Persian, not an Arab, but others in his school just see the enemy and David goes postal on some kids, eventually getting stuck in a residential high school in Alabama. I gonna skip about 20 steps and say that David eventually gets recruited into the CIA for a number of reasons and is now part of a team inserted into Iran to sniff out clues to their nuclear capability. Some careful snooping and some good luck land David far deeper into the Iranian hierarchy, of course, placing himself, his team, his local contacts in serious jeopardy.

I can't go much more of the plot cuz my blogging partner has it on his Kindle and I don't want him to get mad at me for revealing too much of the plot. I'll just reiterate what I said in an earlier post regarding Rosenberg's writing. The author is a Christian, born of a Jewish father and Gentile mother and his plots are heavily steeped in biblical pedagogy. While the biblical connections are necessary for the plot Rosenberg presents, some readers might find it a little overbearing, ending up sounding a bit like the Left Behind series. I'll venture a guess and say that fans of Rosenberg's books (like me) won't care one bit. Yes, he uses some of the same tricks used by authors like Brown, Grisham, et al. (e.g. ending most every chapter in a bit of a cliffhanger and some all too convenient bits of luck), but his style, love it or hate it, keeps the story moving along at a "damn, now what?" pace.

Dang good yarn, folks. Just don't be put off by the sermonizing that is concentrated in the latter third of the book. Follow it for what it is, - a terrific political thriller. Rosenberg seems to have a knack for being a couple years ahead of what actually ends of happening.

East Coast Don

Star Island by Carl Hiassen

This one might need a list of characters:

The Family

Cheery Pie (the former Cheryl Bunterman) - marginally talented pop singer, failed drug rehab patient, and notorious party girl trying to keep the fame going. She is not aware of . . .

Ann DeLuisa - actress and body double for Ms. Pie, standing in for Cherry when Cherry can't stand.

Ned and Janet Bunterman - Cherry's parents. Ned manages the books and favors 3-ways with Danish twins in Palm Springs. Janet enables Cherry, tries to guide her train wreck of a daughter, and boinks her tennis instructor.

The entourage

Maury Lykes - sleazeball promoter of Cherry's new CD and tour. Stands to lose a ton of money if the tour fails.

The Lark twins - botoxed image consultants who specialize in stars 1 step away from joining Kurt Cobain.

Chemo (aka Blondell Wayne Tatum) - 7ft monster of a body guard, ex-con, and former mortgage broker who wears a weed wacker as a prosthesis on his left arm after losing it to a barracuda (in an earlier Hiassen novel).

Important not-so-peripheral characters

Tanner Dane Keefe - actor, occasional bed mate for Cherry, and waiting for his latest project, a murder-thriller where he plays a surfer/necrophilic for a Quentin Tarrantino, to hit the theaters. Tenant in the Star Island house where the photo shoot will occur.

Bang Abbott: short, fat paparazzo who has a thing for Cherry, but not for personal hygiene.

Clinton Tyree (aka Skink) - former Vietnam war hero and former governor of Florida from 20 yrs ago who, once he realized how corrupt Florida government was, just walked away and now lives in the Everglades, mostly off road kill meat. Skink is a recurring Hiassen character.

So, Cherry wants to be like Brittney, Lindsey, Madge, yadda, yadda, yadda. Problem is she isn't all that talented. She is a hard party-er and stoned most of her waking hours. The former Cheryl Bunterman has done OK, but the public is finding out that Cherry really isn't all that talented. Bang is kinda obsessed with Cherry and wants to get Cherry for a 1-day photoshoot for a coffee table book. After a couple mishaps, Bang carries out a kidnapping of Cherry, only he gets Ann instead. Skink (who Ann met in the bush when she ran her car off the road) learns of Ann's problem and mounts his white horse - make that he steals a boat - and begins to watch over Ann.

Bang tries to exchange Ann for Cherry for a 1-day photoshoot. Chemo is playing Bang against Maury, Cherry's parents and the Lark twins are trying to compose the spin to hype the new album/tour. The various tentacles of the octopus masquerading as the Bunterman family fall over each other at Pubes, the hot Miami hotspot.

Does any of that make sense?

Probably not, and that is one trait that keeps drawing Hiassen's fans back for more of his stilted view of Florida. Really bizarre characters and ridiculously convoluted plots can be found in all of Hiassen's books. The Governor is my fav. The main foils for Hiassen's poison pen are Florida real estate developers (there's a small, but important secondary plot involving a crooked developer and an unfortunate encounter between his junk and a sea urchin) and anything to do with the celebrity cult, which gets seriously skewered here.

I've read most all his novels and I think each was excellent in their own unique way. Fans of humor novelists will keep coming back to Hiassen. Bang is oily sleazy. Chemo is cunning, frightening, and very large. Ann is spunky and ready to ditch this gig. And poor Cherry (which she wants to change to 'Cherish') is just looking to get high and get laid.

A lot to love here.

East Coast Don

American Assassin by Vince Flynn

Irene Kennedy, future DCI of the CIA, is a bit down the decision chain in this prequel. She finds a young Syracuse grad that just might be what they are looking for to join the most clandestine arm of the clandestine unit at Langley. Orion is so black that no one in any level of government will acknowledge its existence. Kennedy delivers Rapp to a rural farm in Virginia into the care of the most vile, angry, detestable, pissed off human on the planet, Stan Hurley.

Hurley was a field officer for the predecessor of the CIA working mostly in Europe during the height of the cold war while telling anyone who would listen that the real powder keg was the Middle East. During his time in the field, he rightfully earned a reputation as a ruthless and remorseless killer. Now, new recruits were being entrusted to him so that he could harden them into the next generation of killers. Now Kennedy delivers (a couple days late) this snot-nosed college kid to Hurley instead of the special ops guys from the military that he craves.

As you might imagine, Hurley objects to Rapp’s presence, his late arrival, and everything he represents. Hurley is too dense to realize Rapp is just like he was at 23. The two form a deserved hate-hate relationship that festers until a boiling point where Kennedy’s boss, Thomas Stansfield, has to mediate. Stansfield politely tells Hurley to wake up and smell the sewage and realize that Rapp is the real deal. He can either be the conductor on the train or get the hell out of dodge.

Rapp’s first assignment is in Istanbul, where under Hurley’s direction, he is to log his first kill – a noted arms dealer. Rapp goes a bit off the reservation and kills the dealer on his own time, not Hurley’s, which pisses Hurley off to no end. Hurley is reminded that the kid sized up the situation, made his play, and got out safely, all without Hurley’s help. Get over it – this kid is a natural and Hurley grudgingly accepts a star is in the making.

Now Hurley is not only ruthless, he is also devious. He hates Middle East nutjobs and devises a plan to get the jihadist and Russians at each others throat by killing a banker who is laundering Arab-Russian money. He then wires the money all over, setting off a near war between the two. Along the way, Hurley gets snatched in Beirut and it’s up to Rapp to get him back.

The resulting rescue is creative, effective, and explosive . . . and a legend is born.

I think most authors with a continuing character have a novel in them that lets us all in on the main guy’s background. Tom Clancy did it with Clark (Without Remorse) and Lee Child told Jack Reacher’s early years (The Enemy). Now Vince Flynn tells us about Mitch Rapp’s initial training and his first missions for the CIA.

While I am a fan of Flynn and Rapp, I actually thought this story started a little late in Rapp’s recruitment. The book essentially opens with Kennedy dropping Rapp off at Hurley’s farm for training. What I would like to have seen is how Kennedy found Rapp and what was it about Rapp that made her think he’d be, not merely a player, but was capable of being the sharp end of the CIA’s sword. Having said that, this story provides welcome background into what makes Rapp, well . . . Rapp. Another testosterone-driven story from Vince Flynn that 'men reading books' should snap up.

East Coast Don

Naked In Death by J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts)

This is the first of 31 novels about Lt. Eve Dallas in which Nora Roberts writes under the pseudonym of J.D. Robb. I thought I had read a Nora Roberts book before, so it must have been pre-blog. I had seen an Amazon ad for the latest in the series, Indulgence in Death, released only this month, so I thought I would just start at the beginning in case I loved it and then could go through them in order. So, I went into this with some anticipation, hoping that I would find another series of books to go through, another character that I could get excited about, but it may not work out that way. In Naked in Death, written in 7/95, a serial killer must be brought to justice. I won’t spend more time on the plot because it was too predictable. The character development was average, at best. Really, I thought the main characters, Lt. Dallas and Roarke, the one-named, super wealthy, remarkably everything man with whom she falls in love, despite the fact that he is a suspect, and who treats her to the best sex ever – were just not believable figures. The setting is somewhere in the future, so there were some gimmicky communication devices, computer database options, and transportation methods – but even those could not disguise a thin plot. I nearly quit the book after 50 pages, and then considered quitting every 10 pages thereafter. The fact that I finished the book is only a tribute to my dysfunctional compulsive behaviors. DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. Now, I’m undecided if I’m going to check out the latest, to see if Nora Roberts got better. She is one amazingly prolific writer. Now I ask, “What am I missing?”

Soccer Against the Enemy by Simon Kuper

Kuper is also the author of the highly regarded Soccernomics reviewed earlier. While that book is an economist's view of the game, this earlier book (1994) is about the intertwining of soccer and politics. Kuper traveled across Europe to Eastern Europe, Russia, and a number of former Soviet republics. Then back to the UK, Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy where a former club director eventually became the Prime Minister. Some of the longest and most details chapters are devoted to Africa. Kuper then jumps to Argentina, where the military dictatorship used the 1978 World Cup to their advantage, to Brazil, where soccer is played to music, to the US for the 1994 World Cup. Overall, this is a fascinating look at how a game can have such impact on the psyche and soul of nations and why the game has failed to capture the imagination of the US.

For the most part, up until this book, most titles on the game were either coaching books or books about personalities, clubs, or the World Cup. This seems to be one of the very first academic, if you will, treatments of a game that has spawned other books like Soccernomics, Inverting the Pyramid, Brilliant Orange, How Soccer Explains the World, et al.

Fascinating . . . simply fascinating, for more than soccer enthusiasts, but also for people interested in the interworkings of culture, politics, and the soul of nations.

East Coast Don

The Winter of Frankie Machine by Don Winslow

Frank Machianno, Frank the Bait Guy who everyone loves, and Frankie the Machine who everyone fears. This is my fourth Winslow book, and for reading pleasure, it sure comes close to his last, the 13th novel, Savages (the one that Oliver Stone is currently making into a movie). The venue is Southern California, especially San Diego County. Winslow takes his time with the development of Frank’s character as a hardworking guy who is managing four businesses, but takes time out to surf every day during The Gentlemen’s Hour, which happens well after daybreak, when the other surfers have to get out of the water and head for work. He’s 62-years-old, a lover of opera, a great chef, and a man who appreciates women. Frank is just trying to provide for his daughter, Jill, who is headed for UCLA med school, and his ex-wife, Patty, and who is enjoying his time with Donna, a former Vegas show girl who has preserved her figure into her 50s. But, while Winslow took his time with the evolution of Frank, the transition to trouble was sudden. Frank is inexplicably the target of an assassination attempt, and it is then that his history as an assassin with the mob unfolds. But, Frank has been out of the game for years, and he can’t understand why someone would suddenly want him silenced. The book is about the unfolding of the mafia ties from Detroit to Vegas to Los Angeles to San Diego, and the connection of those ties to politicians and federal law enforcement. Once again, Winslow provides a great story, unexpected twists, compelling action. There are some classic lines. With the dialogue, I found myself thinking about DiNiro. At times he can deliver a poorly written line and sell it like bad actors can't. Winslow can do the same with his prose. After Billy Jacks, who loved to sit in strip bars and watch the action, is shot in the face, survives, but is blinded, he changes his stripper habit, as Winslow notes, "Watching strippers couldn't have been that much fun for a blind guy." Or, as the chase is on and Frank is running from the mob: "Daylight finds Frank in San Diego. Counting on the fog and the hour to shield him from view. And the gun at his hip to protect him from harm." And finally quoting a rant by our title character, "So the government wants to beat down organized crime. That's hysterical. The government is organized crime. The only difference between them and us is they're more organized." Taken out of context, the lines might seem contrite, but they work in context. I’m now moving him into my own power rotation of authors, along with Silva, Connelly, Bruen, Child, Flynn, and Thor.

Soccer In A Football World by David Wangerin

We usually review fiction, but occasionally have posted some non-fiction titles. Regular readers (both of you) probably know I have a recessive gene that clouds my sensibilities when it comes to soccer. Today's post is further evidence of the concept of variable selective gene expression.

This book is the product of a "soccer fan born in the wrong country at nearly the wrong time" who presents a detailed (and the emphasis really is on 'detailed') history of soccer in the US. He traces back to evidence of how soccer and rugby and our own version of football (gridiron) are intertwined going all the way back to the colonial period. Wangerin then brings out the how and why gridiron became the game of choice in the US and how soccer, once a big deal, became relegated to the back seat to more recent decades as soccer started to claw its way back into the American consciousness.

Despite the incredible depth of research and the presentation of detail of arcane matches, leagues, and people, this book failed to draw me in. It just seem a bit dry; a presentation of facts that failed to impart any feel for the personality and passion known to reside in the game. The only chapter that really grabbed me a bit was the one entitled Momentary Insanity, which was about the US women's national team program. Otherwise, this book is probably more of interest to sports historians.

Now my next soccer book (Soccer against the Enemy) has more personality and passion in the first 2 chapters than this entire book.

East Coast Don

The Reversal by Michael Connelly

Melissa and Sarah Landy were playing hide and seek on an LA Sunday morning back in 1986, waiting for their mom and stepdad so they all could go to church. Sarah was hiding when she heard a truck pull up. The driver got out, said something to Melissa, and then took her into the truck. This began a mad dash by the police to find the abducted girl that turns south when her body is found in a dumpster a few hours later.

Jason Jessup was a tow truck driver prowling neighborhood streets for illegally parked cars that surrounded one of those mega-churches. He is definitively identified by Sarah in an impromptu lineup in the Landy’s front yard, tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in San Quentin. Now, 24 years later, DNA analysis of a semen stain on Melissa’s dress, assumed to be from Jessup, reveals a different source. A new trial is ordered.

To avoid any appearance of bias, the LA district attorney asks noted defense attorney Mickey Haller to prosecute the case. Mickey agrees only if he gets Maggie McPherson (aka Maggie McFierce) who is his ex-wife and currently an ADA languishing in Van Nuys as his second and Harry Bosch, longtime LAPD homicide cop, as his investigator.

Any retrial hinges on Haller’s team finding Sarah who appears to have dropped off the grid after years of drugs, arrests, and clinics. But, hey, this is Harry Bosch on the hunt and the search is over quickly. Maggie and Harry convince Sarah to return to LA to testify.

Meanwhile, Jessup is out and reacquainting himself with freedom by day and prowling strange destinations by night. Harry asks an old girlfriend-FBI profiler for her opinion and she thinks Jessup is not a onetime abductor. She thinks he has serial tendencies and is close to exploding. The trial proceeds with the defense failing to successfully plant the seed of doubt in the jury forcing an unexpected end to the trial. One reason is a strategy devised by Bosch based on a scene he recalled from Godfather 2.

Connelly is a rare crime novelist. A mass market success who doesn’t treat the reader like a dud. He presents a complex story, cleverly plotted and paced with numerous unexpected slights of hand that kept me up way past my bedtime on numerous nights. The story is creatively presented from Haller’s point of view (odd #ed chapters, in the first person) and from inside Bosch’s head (even #ed chapters, third person). There is no wasted space or unnecessary side stories. This is an excellent tale of both legal procedure and the dogged investigation by a seasoned cop. Connelly has been reviewed here in a number of occasions and every one has been a winner. And this could well be his best yet. If you’ve never read Connelly, this one should hook you on his main characters – Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch.

available on Kindle

East Coast Don

p.s. just read that an earlier title, The Lincoln Lawyer, is being made into a movie. Matthew McConaughey is set to play Haller and Marisa Tomei plays Maggie McFierce. Had them in my head while reading the last half of the book. IMHO, that is pretty good casting.

Murder in the Air by Bill Crider

For Sheriff Dan Rhodes, things are a mess in Clearview, Texas. There is a pig on the loose in people’s gardens. An elected county official wants Rhodes to buy an M-16 to be ready for the eventual flood of terrorists that surely will be streaming across the nearby border. Rhodes has 2 deputies that yank his chain by never giving him a straight answer. Then there is the constant threat of a few people illegally noodling for catfish in ponds and streams (that’s ‘fishing’ barehanded using your hand as bait). And Lester Hamilton’s industrial chicken farm has fowled (sorry) the air lowering the quality of life for the locals. Oh, don’t forget that a ‘Robin Hood’ is flinging arrows in protest to various local issues.

Old man Griffis is out fishing one morning and discovers a body floating near the shore. Lester Hamilton, the most hated man in the county and noted noodler, looks like he drowned when a catfish he’d grabbed bit back and pulled him under. Problem is who wouldn’t have wanted Lester dead considering what hundreds of thousands of chickens can do to the air.

Crider then takes us on a gentle ride in and around Blacklin County and its kookie and colorful denizens dropping in on the little general store, a roadside fresh food stand, scattered lakes and rivers, a couple profs at the local community college, and, of course, a pallet-filled storeroom in the local WalMart.

Robin Hood confesses, sort of, and the last of a dying breed, a local reporter, confronts who she thinks is behind the murders. Sheriff Rhodes tracks down our intrepid reporter to the final confrontation in, of course, one of the barns of Hamilton's industrial chicken factory (where the Sheriff wishes the county really had bought that M-16).

Despite all the desperate issues on the dashboard of his Charger squad car, Rhodes is still lucky enough to always know where he can find an ice cold Dr. Pepper and a frozen Zero bar. That’s some fine eating for a very good lunch.

I learned of Bill Crider from a strong recommendation by a friend of Men Reading Books, Charlie Stella’s blog. Your brief tour of Blacklin County will take only a couple sittings as this gentle tale is short, interesting, unpretentious, and entirely entertaining. All are requirements for an enjoyable travel diversion or when you are looking for a fun story while waiting for new titles in your power rotation. Crider deserves a hardy recommendation – you won’t regret quietly wandering about Clearview, TX.

East Coast Don

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne

The scholarship of this nonfiction work is remarkable, and it offers many new insights into life on the frontier during the 19th century. As the title suggests, it chronicles the rise and fall of the Comanches, and it particularly tells the stories of Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah. Cynthia was with her family who were so far out on the frontier that there was almost no one behind them, between their location in West Texas and civilization. The Parkers underestimated the danger they faced, and then most of them were murdered and Cynthia Ann was captured at the age of 9 in 1936. She was held captive for many years and bore her husband, the great Comanche war chief Peta Nocona, three children, including Quanah who became a greater warrior than Geronimo. Gwynne does a good job putting all these events in the historical chronology of events that we know about, like the Alamo and Custer, but he adds so much more that I had never heard about. All of this is well documented from personal reports of the people involved and from contemporary documents. The story of Cynthia Ann was a particular famous one at the time and one that I had read about before. Gwynne did a great job telling the stories of the conflict of cultures, not only the advancing white Americans and various Indian tribes, but also the many Indian-Indian cultural problems. He clearly explained the lack of central organization of the Comanches. The history of the Texas Rangers was particularly telling and offered a good background to the McMurtry trilogy. There were times when I thought Gwynne was too detailed so that the action unnecessarily slowed down. This book could be seen as a reference work, one which should be consulted anytime someone was writing about this era in U.S. history.

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

This is not one of our usual adventure/crime novels. Rather, it’s a true-life historical novel about the life of a woman who was born and came of age in the southwestern U.S. at the start of the 20th century. The author, Jeannette Walls, wrote about her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who was born in 1901 in a home dug out of the earth in Salt Draw, West Texas, which is not far from High Lonesome. What was captivating about this book was the graphic detail that Walls brought to this story, the real life story of the hard lives that Lily, her parents, and her siblings lived. Walls brought a believable mix of narrative and dialogue to the reader to tell a very believable story. It went on to capture Lily’s interactions with and thoughts about her fight to have a high school and then college education, becoming a teacher who wanted to be in control of her curriculum, her students and her fights with their parents and communities, the solid man she married, and the children she raised. Having read this book, I feel like I have a better grasp on this era and this region of the U.S. than I’ve had before. The book flowed easily and I read it in a day. Despite this novel being out of our usual genre, it gets my strong recommendation.

Step on a Crack by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

Michael Bennett is NYC’s chief hostage negotiator who happens to be the foster parent for 10 children, thanks to his wife’s generous heart. But, his wife is now dying of cancer, and is hospitalized in the final stages of that disease. Meanwhile, the former president’s wife, Caroline Hopkins, dies unexpectedly from what is a cleverly disguised murder. Then, at her all-stars-only funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, there is a terrorist takeover with many hostages taken, all of whom are wealthy celebrities or famous politicians. Bennett is in charge of negotiating with Jack, the lead terrorist, but he does not know about the inside guy, “The Neat Man,” who has predicted every move that the police and Bennett would make. The bad guys get their money, all $73 million, and all but one gets away – at least at first. The story line is a simple one, and there are not that many characters involved. There were some very interesting minor characters like Bennett’s grandfather, a priest, and his nanny, Mary Catherine. At the same time, the story is compelling and surprising. Patterson does a good job making Michael human, as well as portraying the agony of having a dying wife and the joy of raising his remarkable children. This was a quick and enjoyable read, one of the better “airplane” books that I’ve read in a while.

Voltaire's Calligrapher by Pablo De Santis

The lyrical quality of the prose is what struck me first about this book, from the opening paragraph as De Santis captures the flavor of living in the 18th century, the Enlightenment period in which this book is set. The quality of the writing reminds me of Zafron in Shadows of the Wind. Voltaire himself is a peripheral figure in this book and is only used as a source of action for the main character, the calligrapher, Dalessius. The author beautifully captures the history of, as well as the artistry and philosophy behind the dying art of calligraphy, which is appealing to this bibliophile. He bridges the gap between the mysticism of the Dark Ages and the beginnings of modern thought, while at the same time, providing a compelling historical mystery.

The Killing of the Tinkers by Ken Bruen

I love Ken Bruen books, but this one was not my fav. It was his second one of this crime series, obviously about the serial killing of Tinkers, or gypsies. His main character, Jack Taylor, is in the midst of a major alcohol/coke addiction, and he is often barely able to walk and breathe, repeatedly screws up his relationships with people around him -- a totally unsympathetic character. But, Bruen also makes Taylor out to be a remarkably literate guy who makes references to various authors like Pellicanos, Harry Crews, Tom Kennedy, Paul Smith, Paul Theroux, Robert Irwin (Satan Wants Me, An Exquisite Corpse), Samuel Beckett, and Lawerence Block. I know Pellicanos' and Theroux's works, so I'll have to check out the others.

Savages by Don Winslow

This was (just to use a couple action novel clichés) an action-packed, page-turner. It was a recommendation from the formerly-literate scribophobe nephew Chris. I’ve read and reported on Winslow before (The Dawn Patrol and The Power of the Dog), and this is a much better book. Like his other books, this has to do with the drug trade that spans Mexico and the U.S., and all of the characters who are involved. There is a cartel war in Baja and a struggle for control of the U.S. trade in Southern California. This one was very close to home for me, or at least my children, because one of the main protagonists is Ben, the son of two psychotherapists, who has grown up in a very liberal tradition. Ben graduated from Berkeley with a double major in agriculture and marketing. He follows his dream of making the best marijuana on the planet and selling it to a very high-end clientele. But, the real drug boys don’t like the competition. Ben is paired up with a volleyball buddy from Laguna, a former SEAL, who is now using his talents to keep their operation safe. But, the whole matter escalates out of control. They are both doing the same girl, Ophelia, otherwise known as O, which surely stands for orgasm, something she is very talented at achieving. The boys are satisfied with this arrangement and don’t need to fight for that territory. O’s mother is Paqu, passive-aggressive queen of the universe, really, a queen ditz. One of the lines from O as she prepares to go off on a shopping spree in Newport, “I don’t adore myself, so I adorn myself.” As Ben gets up to speed with the deaths that are happening around him and shakes off his previously nonviolent stance, the author writes, “Now Ben. Find your inner Taliban.” The writing is staccato-like, creative, fun. The ending is not what I expected, but it made sense. I read it in two sittings, and will now spend some time looking at Winslow’s website to choose my next book.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

This is my third Mary Roach book, after Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, and Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. She writes about some interesting perspectives on science, especially about the personalities of the researchers, now choosing the topic of space travel. She gives her version of the history of the space program and the personalities involved, and her anecdotes are worth reading. Did you know about Rusty Schweickart who flew in Apollo 9 to specifically test the life-support backpack that the Apollo 11 crew would make in August 1969 when Armstrong landed on the moon, was so nauseated and vomited so much that the astronauts thought about just faking the experiments and tell Mission Control that it worked? They didn’t fake it, and after his return, Schweickart then embarked on extensive earthborn studies on nausea that benefited all subsequent space travelers, but he was never allowed back in space. She gave a most interesting account of the decision of what to do with a body if someone died during a spacewalk. The decision, just “cut him loose.” She writes, “All agreed: An attempt to recover the body could endanger other crew members’ lives. On a person who has experienced firsthand the not insignificant struggle of entering a space capsule in a pressured suit could so unequivocally utter those words.” The discussion of how they got to that decision was great. “In orbit, everything gets turned on its head. Shooting stars streak past below you, and the sun rises in the middle of the night.” She talked about the publicity that the monkeys, Ham and Enos, got before Shephard and Glenn went into space, and the fact that the humans were jealous of them. Ham got more publicity than “Enos the Penis” became Ham was a ham, and Enos was a dick. Glen “told a congressional audience about the humbling experience of having been asked by President Kennedy’s young daughter Caroline, while her father stood by, ‘Where’s the monkey?’” She wrote about the studies on human elimination, as in pooping and peeing – problems that I had not considered before. There are a number of stories about sex in space, but that material was minimal and not graphic enough. Mary Roach is clever, but despite the fact that the book is short, I found myself skimming, a lot. Although what she chronicles was important to the development of space flight, and while there were some great tidbits, I fairly quickly got to the point that enough was enough.

Sunset Express by Robert Crais

LA detective Angela Rossi might be on the fast track to become the first female chief of detectives for the LAPD, but a couple skeletons in her professional closet have slowed her climb. She and he partners are checking out a corpse found in a garbage bag in a steep ravine. Her partners can't (or won't) climb down, but Rossi does. After a quick check, the victim turns out to be the wife of the mega restauranteur Teddy Martin. When they go to his home, Angela starts sniffing around and finds a bloody hammer in the bushes.

With her history and no witnesses to Rossi at the body or where the hammer was found, superstar defense attorney Jonathan Green is all set to say that Rossi found the hammer with the body and planted it at Teddy's home. A quick solution to a major case should get Rossi back on the main line to being the head of detectives, so Green thinks Rossi has sufficient reason to plant evidence and of course, tells the media.

Green hires Elvis Cole to check out Rossi to see if there really is anything in her closet, which Cole finds is clean and tells Green as much. To justify his fee, Cole volunteers to run down leads that have come pouring into the Martin hot line, and one looks promising. Unfortunately, the lead turns out to be a ex-con with ties to one of Green's associates and before long, the ex-con ends up dead. So do the 2 guys that were implicated.

Thing start to fall apart, Cole gets fired by Green, and Elvis starts to wonder more about the Big Green Defense Machine than about Rossi. Witnesses change their story or disappear, the media is manipulated by Green's charisma, leaving Elvis, Joe Pike, and Angela to fight their way out of a maintenance shack where Green's henchmen were getting set to off another witness, but not before one of Green's associates gets shot and gives a deathbed confession to Green's role in the case. The result is that Teddy Martin flees the country to Brazil (no extradition to the US) and Green gets arrested, but all but one charge are dismissed as Green is so well insulated within his firm. They got away with it.

Typical Crais. Smart ass Cole, deadly Joe Pike, female cop in a jam, sleazy lawyers, and a briskly plotted story that easily moves along at a considerable pace. Is this great literature that tells us something about the plight of mankind? Hardly. A fun PI read? Absolutely. But I've read a bunch of Elvis Cole books recently and need a break. But, to steal an overused line: I'll be back.

East Coast Don

Body Work by Sara Paretsky

This is my third Sara Paretsky novel about her female private investigator, V. (as in Victoria, Vic) I. Warshawski. Despite having a well-paying corporate customer, Vic gets pulled into pro bono service to solve the murders of two sisters. The intrigue involves veterans of the Iraqi conflict, as well as the corporations that provide security and are making tons of money for their efforts. The Guamans, the Latino family of the two murdered girls don’t seem to want Vic’s involvement since the defense contractor is paying them money to stay quiet about the details of the girls’ deaths. There is a great figure in this book, the Body Artist, and it is through her that all the plots are eventually tied together. The Body Artist, i.e., Karen Buckely and Fannie Pindero, performs at a hip club in Chicago. She appears nude on stage with some paintings on her body, and then she allows audience members to paint whatever they want on her as their artistic expressions. The whole act is weirdly disturbing to the audience who keep selling out the performances. But, in performance after performance, one guy keeps writing long numbers on her ass which is clearly a code to someone, but the codes are indecipherable. One woman, one of the sisters who gets murdered, keeps painting her dead sister’s picture with a mysterious logo which repeatedly agitates a veteran for no obvious reason. Paretsky does a good job keeping the connections between the plots a secret until the end. Overall, this was an average read. It is great to have a woman writing in this genre, and she has a different take on the detective’s life, but ultimately, there are better writers out there. I think I’m done with Paretsky.

Time to Hunt by Stephen Hunter

Back to Bob the Nailer after a week’s hiatus for Brian Haig’s latest.

If you saw Shooter, the Mark Walberg movie based on Hunter’s first Bob Lee Swagger book, Point of Impact, you would believe that Swagger’s spotter (Donny Fenn) was killed in an ambush somewhere in Africa. Wrong. That was Hollywood taking some artistic license for sake of that story.

Donny Fenn was a Marine stationed near DC during the Vietnam War running a platoon doing ceremonial burial duty. He was maybe a year from being discharged and looking forward to marrying Julie, his high school girlfriend from Arizona. Antiwar protests are looming in DC. Some Navy spooks think one of Donny’s platoon has been leaking info to antiwar protesters and squeezes Donny to do some spying to improve their case. Donny balks, but is told to sneak around or get sent back for a 2^nd tour of Vietnam. So he sneaks around and finds little to implicate the suspect, meeting only some high placed organizers, but the Navy spooks are going to go ahead and prosecute. Donny had better toe the Navy’s line or else. But Donny has a fit of conscious and tells the judge advocate the truth, that he saw nothing to suggest transfer of information and starts packing his bags for Vietnam, but not before secreting off to get married to Julie.

In Vietnam, Donny is paired with a sniper of note, known by the NVA as ‘The Nailer’ for his killing proficiency. While on patrol in treacherous rain, Donny and Swagger hear a wisp of a radio plea for help from stranded marines pinned down by a battalion of NVA. So Bob Lee and Donny ditch their planned patrol to see if they can help and with a lot of guile, luck, and savagery manage to hold off an entire battalion until the skies clear enough for air cover to eliminate the threat.

The NVA are pretty sure that ‘The Nailer’ was the cause of the failed attack and hash out a plot to get Bob Lee by using a legendary Russian sniper, but of course Bob Lee figures out what they are trying to do (it’s what he would do). On the eventful day, Bob Lee gets hit in the hip, Donny is killed (just days before his discharge) and the fire zone gets napalmed leaving only the Russian’s rifle.

Flash forward. It is now decades since Vietnam. Bob Lee has fought with the demon bottle and ends up marrying Donny’s widow and has a young daughter, Nikki. On a morning horseback ride in the Idaho mountains, shots ring out. Julie is wounded, a neighbor is killed, and Bob Lee just knows someone is after him for his sins in Vietnam. Time to Hunt.

From Idaho to New Orleans to DC to Baltimore, and back to snowy Idaho, Bob Lee tracks clues to the identity of the sniper and why he (Bob Lee) is being targeted. Hunter carefully leads the reader around an ingeniously plotted myriad of clues (and too many side plots to reveal here; some are too cool for a blog, so you’ll have to read this yourself, especially the last twist) that first suggests Vietnam, but eventually comes back to Donny, Julie, and those shady operatives Donny met back within the peace movement that are trying to clean up a mess meaning that Bob Lee really isn’t, and never was, the target. As Julie says, “it’s not always about you.’ The mother of a dead activist calls Swagger the ‘sacred killer’ needed by civilization. And in Time to Hunt, we learn just how sacred a killer Bob Lee (the Nailer) Swagger can be.

East Coast Don

The First Assassin by John J. Miller

This is a work of historical fiction which takes place in Washington, D.C., and is about an early attempt to assassinate the newly elected Abraham Lincoln. The author uses some real figures, like Lincoln, Winfield Scott (hero of the Mexican War, just riding out his time until retirement), and John Hay, Lincoln’s chief of staff. The book is loosely based on some facts, but the assassination attempt is entirely fiction. Miller gives a pretty good view of the hatred of Lincoln by the Southerners and the hope of the slaves for Lincoln to bring them freedom. Lincoln is a lovable, gregarious, and charismatic figure who is saddled with the suddenly divided nation, as well as the mundane aspects of running a government. Miller creates one plantation owner, Langston Bennett, who funds the effort to kill Lincoln, as well as the beautiful seductress, Violet Grenier, a woman with southern sympathies who uses sex to get secrets from the Union soldiers and White House confidants to pass onto Bennett and other Southern leaders. The assassin is a one-named mystery man from Latin America, Mazorca. Miller depicts the lives of the slaves on Bennett’s plantation, who are treated better than most slaves. One of them is Portia, who escapes the plantation in an attempt to inform Lincoln of the plot on his life. I think East Coast Don will appreciate the descriptions of 1861 Washington. While this book was endorsed by our favorites Brad Thor and Vince Flynn, I found it disappointing. Flynn likened it to “Day of the Jackel,” just written in an earlier period, but First Assassin did not move nearly so fast as that. Actually, it took me almost a week to work my way through this one and I really only finished out of my usual compulsion to do so. There were no real surprises at the end – all of it was very predictable (but then, I knew Lincoln did not die at the very start of his presidency).