Brilliant Orange by David Winner

If West Coast Don's latest post was outside our genre, this one is from an entirely different galaxy.

The subtitle for Brilliant Orange is 'the neurotic genius of Dutch soccer.' (ok, it's actually 'football') and was heartily recommended to me by a college soccer coach as one of the best books he's read about soccer. Now, I may be a lifelong soccer person and the game pays my bills, but until recently, I hadn't read a lot of books or essays about The Beautiful Game (Pele's phrase). Nonetheless, I gave this a try cuz of my friend's recommendation. Couldn't find it anywhere and had to use interlibrary loan to get it. Amazon's next cuz I want to keep a copy of this one (littered with great quotes I could use in my talks).

On the surface, this little book is about Dutch soccer, which before the mid 1960's had the international reputation of Luxemborg or (gasp!) the US. Then in the late 1960's, a sort of perfect storm of players, personalities, and coaching philosophies all came together to create what many consider some of the most breathtaking soccer ever played and continue to be played; a style that many countries, even Brazil, can only dream about.

But the book is not about the artistry of the players or the creativity of their play. No, this book is more a discussion the Dutch culture and addresses religion, architecture, art, farming, language, WWII, their relationship with and against Germany - sort of a Cliff Notes of the what it means to be Dutch. By seeing how the Dutch view themselves, its almost not surprising that even with some of the most gifted players to ever play, they get within a sniff of any number of world titles only to come up short.

Absolutely fascinating . . . if you are into soccer.

East Coast Don

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

WARNING: THIS IS NOT OUR GENRE

I got motivated to read a book that I last read about 40 years ago, Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, and it was a joy to have done so, like going back to listen to a wise old friend. this was originally published in Germany in 1922, a few years after Hesse spent some time in India. Siddhartha is a man who is a seeker of truth, and the book takes him through his spiritual journey -- his various efforts to achieve inner peace. Hesse famously uses the analogy of a river for life, that the river is constantly changing, never stays the same, and all parts are always connected, life to death. And, Hesse uses a form of “What goes around comes around.” Siddhartha found that living with his family, especially his father, left him unsatisfied and unhappy. So, he left home to begin his lifelong journey, never to return home again. Then, as an old man, he learns that he has fathered a son who he encounters when the boy’s mother dies, so Siddhartha suddenly has to care for this boy who wants no more of him that Siddhartha did of his own father. He comes to understand the pain that he must have caused his father. Some quotes: “Knowledge has no worser enemy than the desire to know it, than learning.” “Be aware of too much wisdom.” “I can think. I can wait. I can fast.” “The river is everywhere at once, at the source, at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future.” “But I’m only interested in being able to love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it and me, to be able to look upon it and me and all beings with love and admiration and great respect.” Okay, that’s enough – time to get back to an action/mystery novel.

West Coast Don

Mafiya by Charlie Stella

Now I see why East Coast Don was high on Charlie Stella, this being one he has not read yet, and the only one which has come to Amazon’s kindle. The action takes place in NYNY and involves a retired detective, Jack Russo, a former prostitute, Agnes, a bad cop, Michael Lyons, and the Russian Mafiya. There are subplots that help with character development, like Jack’s son who suffers a severely fractured leg when he runs into a car while trying to catch a football. Stella does a great job delivering a staccato style dialogue which carries the action effectively. The plot is fast and aggressive. There is a racially mixed group of characters. As I sometimes do, I’m including a one-liner from bad cop Lyons to heroic Russo, both white guys, in reference to intimate encounters with African-Americans: “I’ve tested the dark side myself. It isn’t all that bad, they trim the Brillo pad.” With murders happening everywhere, some of them being quite grizzly, it is, my professional opinion is that Charlie Stella is a sick man and that we are all the richer for his writing efforts. Thanks Charlie.

West Coast Don

I, Alex Cross by James Patterson

The Alex Cross series is one of my favorites, and I’m sure you’ll read it without too much of a review from me. I thought the plot was a bit outrageous when a “high level white house” person is implicated in a series of murders of high-prices prostitutes (would the story have been as compelling if they were two-bit, acned, deformed and specially-challenged has been hookers who were coming out of retirement?) who have been working in an exclusive club that caters to the power mongers in D.C. Cross is drawn into the case when his estranged niece turns up as one of the murdered women, and it is through his investigation of that murder that the connection to the ritzy brothel and the white house gets uncovered. Still, Patterson does a good job disguising the identity of the culprit until the very end. Patterson mixes in a good subplot about the near death experiences due to old age of Nana, the woman who raised Cross and now lives in his house and is helping to raise his children. So, Cross is torn between pursuing the case, being at the hospital for his Nana, taking care of his kids, and developing his relationship with his new woman, Bree. It may be an airplane book, but it is a good one.

West Coast Don

Out of Sight by Elmore Leonard

I promise the next post will NOT be a book by Elmore Leonard.

I was reading Road Dogs when I was traveling to Philadelphia. At the RDU airport, I stopped in (as I always do) at the used book store for titles or authors I can't find in the library or stores. The main character in Road Dogs is Jack Foley who the jacket blurb said was last seen in Out of Sight, which I found at the used book store and started reading it in Philly once I finished Road Dogs.

Smart guy that I am, it took me maybe 10 pages to realize that this is the basis of the George Clooney-Jennifer Lopez movie of the same name. Having seen the movie, I still plugged away.

A group of hispanic inmates are breaking out of the Florida prison where Jack now finds himself. He is invited to go, but declines, then hatches his own plan with the help of a friend, through his ex-wife, to meet him outside the prison fence. Problem is US Marshall Karen Sisco is serving some legal papers to the prison at just the wrong (or right, depending on your viewpoint) time and ends up being stuffed in the car trunk with Foley during the escape. When they get to some rendezvous point they are separated, but not before having 'a moment' in the trunk.

So Jack and Karen go their ways, but both continue to think about that 'moment' in the trunk. The tale wanders around a bit as Karen and Jack sort of circle each other like a couple jr. high kids at a dance until both end up in Detroit. Jack and cohorts get connected with another ex-con now a low life fight promotor and robber. When Jack finds out Karen is also in Detroit, he conspires to meet up with her in her swank hotel bar and one thing leads to another...you get the picture.

Now, this group of low lifes plan to rob a stock broker ex-con of his running around money stored in his mansion. The plan goes bad and Jack takes out a couple of the idiots only to have Karen shoot him in the leg. He ends up back in prison and she back on the job in Florida, bujt both wonder about what might have been.

Now I saw the movie and pictured Clooney and Lopez delivering all the lines in the book. But I really can't say I remember the 1998 movie all that well. I remember the scene in the trunk, at the hotel bar, and faintly remember the ending where she shoots him, but I will need to watch it again for a fuller appreciation of the film version of this terrific, and a bit lighthearted, tale. It's supposed to be the movie that set the course for a number of Clooney's characters since.

While not wanting to sound redundant, this book has all the trapping of Leonard's work...terrific dialogue, a sparse, bare-bones narrative mostly devoid of long 'scene setting' descriptions. We know the characters, not necessarily the scene. Honestly thought I'd be sort of bored reading the book after having seen the movie, but had I believed that, I'd have missed out on one of my favorite Leonard stories so far.

East Coast Don

The First Rule by Robert Crais

The First Rule by Robert Crais

Given that we are true fans of Crais, I don’t need to write a lot about this book other than to say it is great. This book primarily features Joe Pike, who actually asks Elvis Cole for help, instead of it being the other way around. One of the men that Pike formerly led as a mercenary gets killed, along with all of his family members, so the plot revolves around solving the mystery of those deaths and trying to bring the killers to justice. Crais shows a side of Pike that we’ve not seen before as he gets involved with a 10-month old baby boy, although we have seen some of that side in the past when he deals with animals, just not humans. This book was a very fast read, and the plot is excellent. Crais is good at leading the reader in one direction, only to head off in another plausible direction. You do not need to suspend reality-orientation to get into this one. Once again, the venue is Los Angeles. Cole and Pike, Pike and Cole are among my most favorite fictional characters at the moment.

West Coast Don

Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard

I seem to be on an Elmore Leonard kick, this being my third post after Up in Honey's Room and Mr. Paradise. As usual, it is filled with spot on dialogue and colorful characters wrapped up in a fun tale.

Jake Foley is a career bank robber who gets p.o'ed when he is compared to Willie Sutton cuz Jake robbed way more banks. Cundo Rey is a Cuban ex-pat and general all-around criminal. Both are in prison in Florida and watch each other's back - Road Dogs being the phrase for such guys. Cundo pays a lawyer who successfully gets Jack's sentence reduced to essentially time served. Upon release, Jack takes Cundo on his offer and goes to live in Venice Beach where Cundo owns 2 homes (actually the homes are in the name of Cundo's front man). Jack figures, sure, but is worried that he might be beholden to Cundo when he gets released in a couple weeks. But he goes anyway.

In one of the Venice Beach homes, Cundo's girlfriend Dawn has been virtuously waiting 8yrs for Cundo's release (we are led to believe). But she's been planning...planning to kill Cundo, sell the homes, and take off with the profit of the sales-in the $6mill ballpark. She thinks she deserves it because she has waited for Cundo. She needs Jack to spring her plot. But Dawn really shouldn't be trusted. She has a backup plan and enlists a local gangbanger to knock off Jack while enticing this young Costa Rican to think she really cares for him.

Now Cundo isn't the nicest of characters. When he gets out, his first action in Venice Beach is to bed dawn (of course), then on mulitiple occasions punches her lights out and bitches about Dawn not preparing dinner. So, one evening, Dawn fixes dinner, shoots Cundo dead and puts his remains in a freezer. Meanwhile, our Costa Rican gang banger lures Jack on the roof of Dawns house in order to push Jack over the edge, but Jack is smarter than most ordinary gang bangers, tossing his amigo off the roof to his death and interment in said freezer.

As Dawn sees her plan unwinding, she decides to kill Jack her own self, but can't do it when the opportunity presents itself. Jack has figured out Cundo is dead and what Dawn is up to eventually talking her out of murder and most likely into the big house.

Another first rate, talky, crime novel by Leonard. I stumbled across the book that precedes this one at a used bookstore at the airport, but it will probable sit on my nightstand while i catch up on some others. In Road Dogs, are a couple other smaller parts (Jack as a sort of ghostbuster working as Dawn's #2 in her fortune teller swindle and an FBI agent shadowing Jack to catch him in another bank robbery) that added a humorous side plots to the story, but I thought little else. In Leonard's previous book, another Leonard character is introduced that Jack beds-Karen Cisco...remember that TV show? I find Leonard to be enormously entertaining. I'll never get through is entire catalogue, but I can see reading a few more.

East Coast Don

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan

I was planning to get back to our genre, but I had stumbled on this narrow biography of Teddy, and decided to read it first. I found this on one of the end-of-the-year Amazon lists, this one for best histories in 2009. The most readable part was the Prologue in which the author described the people trying to escape from Wallace, Idaho and the forest fire of 1910. Under great duress and opposition coming from J.P. Morgan and the other robber barons of the era, TR established the National Forest Service. But, Congress underfunded the agency, so it did not have the manpower to do what it needed to do. TR’s inspirations in this were Gifford Pinchot and John Muir. The fire descriptions were amazing, but like many historians, Egan got into many petty details about who fought which part of the fire, where, etc. After the fire, he did a good job broadening his focus to put it all in perspective with the events since, and what the fire service is like today. Probably, this is a book you could skip, but I did learn a lot about the history of the fire service, and that was good. You could pick it up in a bookstore and read the Prologue.

West Coast Don

Mr. Paradise by Elmore Leonard

Back to another Leonard book having posted thoughts on Up in Honey's Room a short while ago. Tony Paradiso is a 80something retired Detroit lawyer with a peculiar taste - he likes sports, University of Michigan football in particular and he has the tapes of old games (wins only) to prove it. He also likes UMichigan cheerleaders so he has Chloe, a hooker, on a $5000/week retainer, dress up to help keep his weeny wagging. One day, Mr. Paradiso, aka Mr. Paradise, wants 2 cheerleaders so Chloe brings her Victoria Secret model roommate and almost look-alike, Kelly along. So much for the setup.

Mr. Paradise has 2 guys working for him. Lloyd is his butler/cook/etc and Montez, his driver/get-things-done guy. Both are ex-cons Paradise had dealings with. Mr. Paradise either has not long to live or just doesn't want to go on, I could never quite tell. He can't put Chloe, the hooker, in his will cuz his son would have a fit so he puts her name on some stock certificates supposedly worth $1.6mil. Montez was to get the house, but his daughter wants it (to sell and help finance her hubby's dream of owning a winery) meaning Montez is locked out and damn unhappy about getting nothing for 15 years of being a nothing for Mr. Paradise.

Montez knows of a sleezy lawyer with a side business - he's an agent for 2 hitmen (who we find out are good at what they do, but not really all that bright). Montez contracts for a hit on Mr. Paradise, but both Chloe and Kelly are cheering there that night. The guys come in, blow away Mr. Paradise and Chloe. Montez pressures Kelly to become Chloe so he can get his hands on the stocks.

Homicide detective Frank Delsa draws the case and likes Montez right from the start. But Delsa not only wants Montez and the shooters, he wants the shooter's agent. Kelly admits the identity switch to Delsa right early and becomes a willing witness in trying to track the dimwit shooters and Montez who, by some strange logic, have kidnapped Kelly and hidden out in Mr. Paradise's mansion.

A most interesting character is Lloyd - a servant who says he hears nothing, but is a reliable character in the final confrontation, if you call it that. All he wants to do is move to Puerto Rico to get out of the Detroit winters. This Leonard book has all the features he is known for, dispensing with long scenic buildup and tedious set-ups for crackling dialogue with a minimum of fluff. Easy to read and hard to put down. That's Leonard.

And the stocks ain't worth squat now and Delsa gets the Victoria Secret model . . . poetic justice.

East Coast Don

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

WARNING! THIS BOOK IS NOT OF OUR GENRE! (That is intended to be like the black box FDA warning that is required on every antidepressant medication, that the medication might cause suicidal thoughts. Wait a second. Isn’t it depressed people that sometimes think that life is not worth living and then sometimes kill themselves? Okay, it is a bullshit warning, just as is my warning about this book.) Really, The Help is not our usual man-action book. It is the first novel by the author whose action takes place in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963 and 1964. This is a story about the black maids, mostly Aibileen and Minny, who work for the white women in town and the degree of mistreatment that was accepted as normal. The schools are separate but not equal, and there are even separate bathrooms in private homes. Meanwhile, the civil rights movement is underway and it is bringing changes to this pre-civil war town. On a tangent for a second, I remember traveling through Alabama, Georgia, and Florida in about 1960, age 10, and seeing the separate public bathrooms, marked as “colored only” and “whites only” and asking my parents about it. And, my wife was raised by a black nanny in L.A. The nanny is the one who carried her home from the hospital, and she was in the house until my wife left for college. The nanny, Neva, was a member of their family. You might guess this book came to me from Jean. Unfortunately, despite remarkable dialogue, it took me about half the book to really get excited about the content. But, with the gradual character development, it finally hooked me. The last half makes up for what the first half did not have. The book has a plot about writing a book, this same book. A cast off woman from the Junior League decides to follow her journalistic bent and finds a NYNY publisher who is willing to print her work, if it is good enough. She interviews a dozen maids about the discrimination and harsh treatment they’ve been put through by their employers. But, these were also dangerous times for blacks to speak out. When the book does get published, it quickly sells out and a second printing is required. Although it was intended to be an anonymous work, people quickly figure out that it had to have taken place in Jackson. All hell breaks loose among the white women as their tight little white quasi-aristocratic society begins to disintegrate. This one will take a little time, but by the end, it was a very good read. Now, I’m ready for another adventure book.

West Coast Don