Jimmy Bench Press by Charlie Stella

Jimmy Mangine is just out from his second stint in prison and figures he is due to move up the crime ladder and become a made man in the Vignieris family. Jimmy isn't just muscle for some bottom feeder loan sharks, he is all muscle with a rep for having bench pressed over 400 lbs, a handy ability for someone whose life is tied up in intimidation and violence. You don't want him for a friend or an enemy.

Gangster wannabe #1, Jimmy Bench Press, gets hooked up with Gangster wanna be #2, Larry Berra, who needs help in collecting for an ill-advised loan to a old Cuban barber. Our barber had a thing going with a young bar owner half his age and took the loan out to help her out, but she just takes the cash and pushes poor Vittorio out and left to Jimmy BP's not-so-good nature.

But Jimmy is not working in a vacuum. Two decent cops, Pavlik and DeNafria, on the Organized Crime task force are working hard to get all the details needed to put him away even while each are dealing with their own demons of marital separation and a violent history.

Jimmy BP keeps sticking his fingers where they probably don't belong, giving our 2 good cops more than enough to keep track of to get him put back in prison. With the help of some dogged police work and the help of a jilted girlfriend, Pavlik and DeNafria follow Jimmy BP to a luxury yacht where he is set to become a made man.

This is the 2002 followup to very entertaining Eddie's World, but this one takes a bit of a different turn. In a number of Stella's books we find some decent guy caught on the edge of the mob. In Jimmy BP, the decent guys are the cops and the guy on the mob's list of up and comers, Jimmy, is a violent sociopath. Down in the gutter realism (or at least as much as a guy like me can envision such realism having never experienced it) carries the soul of this story. Some later efforts by Stella have a bit of a snarky grin, but this one spits in your eye, clutches your throat forcing you to struggle against the obsession of a man with but one goal, becoming a made man. Stella paints a very bad guy in such a light that the reader patiently waits for Jimmy BP to get what's coming to him, and when he does, while it's not quite what Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci in Goodfellas) gets, I found it to be every bit as satisfying.

I've got two more Stella titles to go and I'll be up to date on his catalogue of novels (Mafiya, reviewed by West Coast Don, and Shakedown). Each one I've read so far has some seriously tough dialogue and characters that are interesting and both sympathetic and unsympathetic at the same time. If you can find it, be prepared for a few lost hours at the doorway to the alter according to Stella. And there are far worse places to wait for Tommy Burns.

East Coast Don

I,Sniper by Stephen Hunter

Four 60's era radicals (an actress and ex-wife of a media magnate, a pair of Chicago profs, and a comedian of sorts) are gunned down from a distance under difficult circumstances, victims of a professional sniper. The FBI jumps in quickly and all clues lead to the disgruntled top Vietnam era sniper who kills himself as the feds close in. The head of the investigative unit, Nick Memphis, thinks it's best if someone not too close looks over the evidence to make sure the case is clean so the book on this serial killer can be closed. The suspected killer is buried in the rain with few present.

Because the case involves a sniper, Memphis calls on another sniper he's worked with in the past. Marine Gunny Bob Lee Swagger is probably #3 in kills from Vietnam with as keen an eye for detail as he has for the kill. What bothers him is the perfection of each kill. This needed the new sighting technology that a 60-something retiree on the gun show-autograph and snapshot circuit probably wouldn't have. Through some sound reasoning and some tiny bits of evidence, Swagger and the techies at the Bureau decide the high-tech scope used in the murders is the revolutionary iSniper 911.

Swagger gets himself placed into one of the classes, trying to get a list of prior students who would have the skills and the scope. But this only helps direct Swagger's attention to think the Chicago victims were the real targets and the other 2 were distractions. Using his Marine connections, he hooks up with a Chicago cop and starts thinking he is right, especially after a Chi-town street shootout where a couple gang bangers learn the hard way that age and experience trumps youth and firepower. Swagger's attention turns toward the ex-husband of the actress.

Once Swagger zeros in on T.T. Constable, the story line changes from logic and reasoning to manhunting, deceit, manipulation, gunplay with downright surprising and gasp-out-loud plot twists. Over the last half of the book, Swagger has to convince his 60ish year old body he can rally his old sniper skills and treachery to defeat a younger, better equipped, and larger force to get at the damning evidence that will bring T.T. in and exonerate the memory of the buried sniper.

This is my first Hunter book, and no way will it be my last. Normally it takes 3-4 books to get into my power rotation, but Hunter is in . . . right now. Maybe it's because Swagger is 'my age', but I think he is a much more interesting character than Lee Child's Jack Reacher or Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp. I, Sniper is the latest Swagger book. The first was Point of Impact (1993), which was the source material for "Shooter" starring Mark Wahlberg (I remember it being cool, but will have to see it again-but after reading this, he's too young) and looks like there are 4-5 in between. Even has a short series of what appears to be Bob Lee's father, Earle. Hunter is the retired movie critic for The Washington Post and has a book of reviews of the 100 most violent movies (Violent Screen).

You should love Hunter's detail of the sniper's craft, the executed plans, and don't forget the rifles. Remember how everyone loved Clancy's detail of big-time military hardware? Hunter does the same with long range rifles. The other thing that will keep you glued to the story is just when you think Bob Lee has gotten himself into a corner, we find that he planned for just this eventuality (but didn't tell us) and we applaud his ingenuity.

[You'll grin at first mention of some characters: the murdered actress is Joan Flanders (J.F. get it?), T.T. Constable (T.T. get it?). OK, Jack Strong isn't William Ayers. But it's still fun. (the last line of the acknowledgements is 'I love Turner Classic Movies.") ]

When the accused Marine is exonerated and re-buried at Camp Lejeune, practically the entire sniper community turns out, except for Swagger. No one knows where he is. "After all, he is a sniper. You aren't supposed to know where he is."

East Coast Don

LaBrava by Leonard Elmore

Given that EC Don is such a fan of Elmore, I was surprised to find that he had reviewed four other Elmore books, but not this one. This is my first, but clearly not my last Elmore. The main character is Joe LaBrava, a former cop and now a photographer. The story is about a wealthy older guy Maurice Zola, who is a retired connected bookmaker and Jean Shaw, a former movie star. The main bad guys, at least the ones you recognize from the outset as being bad guys, are Richard Nobles, an obnoxious Florida backcountry thug, and his apparent associate, Cunno Ray, a Cuban “boat-lifter.” I won’t review the plot, but I liked the pace of the character development, the strong use of dialogue, and the way the plot unfolded. The book uses the plots of the movies from Shaw’s career as the basis of the current intrigue. I had no idea that Elmore was so prolific, so he will always be a good “go to” author in the future.

West Coast Don

Blood is the Sky by Steve Hamilton

This is my second novel by Hamilton, the first having been The Lock Artist. My enthusiasm for him continues, and after reading Blood in the Sky, I’ve immediately bought three more of his books. I have obviously moved him into the top echelon of my power authors, along with Daniel Silva, Robert Crais, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, and Vince Flynn. I’d include Stieg Larsson, but he’s dead after leaving us with only three novels. This is one of Hamilton’s Alex McKnight series, and he seems to be a damaged hero, a former cop along the likes of Elvis Cole. Since Hamilton grew up in Detroit, he uses Michigan and the surrounding area for his venue.

In this story, McKnight is living in a secluded cabin that someone has burned to the ground, and to grieve the loss of the cabin, originally built by his father, McKnight decides to rebuild it. He accepts the help of his neighbor, Vinnie, an Indian who has moved off his nearby reservation. Vinnie, a longtime friend, eventually confesses that his brother, Tom, is missing. Tom is an ex-con and he has taken Vinnie’s identity to go into Canada (a parole violation) as a guide for a hunting party. The hunting party turns out to be a group of guys that are “heavy hitters” from Detroit, their leader being Red Albright. In order to solve the mystery, McKnight pulls in help from his former partner, Leon Prudell (does it sound like Cole needing help from Joe Pike – yes, but the characters are very different from both Cole and Pike). To tell you more would give away too much of the plot. I liked the narrative that carried the book, and here is one line that I thought was pretty funny: “There is crime in Detroit. There is crime in Detroit like there are fountains in Paris, like there are canals in Venice. People all over the world know this about Detroit. It might not be fair to think that way. You can look at the art museum and the new ballpark and the casinos and restaurants and believe its all part of the Detroit Renaissance, and maybe you’d be right. You can even love the place like I do. But it’s still Detroit, and always will be.”

West Coast Don

The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell

I have a weakness for historical fiction, and I heard an NPR podcast with the author that was pretty interesting. He is an English writer and specializes in English history. He is a prolific author of historical works and he is best known for the 11-book Sharpe’s series which take place at the end of the 18^th and beginning of the 19^th century. This particular book, The Last Kingdom, takes place in 9^th century England and is the first in a series of five books about that period. Basically, he describes the efforts of Alfred the Great (the only English monarch to be referred to as “the great”) who led the effort to consolidate England into one entity. Cornwell has obviously done a lot of research and he attempts to be reasonably accurate with his characters and events, but he obviously has to fill in his own dialogue. Furthermore, he is willing to take minor liberties with dates and events in order to serve his story. At times, his historical events and dialogue seem a bit too contrived. In this book, Uhtred is the protagonist. He is the son of Uhtred, who is the son of Uhtred, etc., and our Uhtred, not his ancestors, is 10 years old at the outset of the book in 866, 20 years old at the book’s conclusion. Uhtred was of noble birth, his father being the Ealdorman of Bebbanburg, which is the early word for Earl. Bebbanburg, if you care is in Northumberland. This is the era of the Danes constantly raiding England’s coast (think of Hagar the Horrible, but with real life battles and real human consequences). Uhtred is captured in one of the Danish raids, and he is then raised by Ragnar the Fearless, the very man who beheaded his brother. Cornwell clarifies the use of the word Viking: “Some readers may be disappointed that those Danes are called Northmen or pagans in the novel, but are rarely described as Vikings. In this I follow the early English writers who suffered from the Danes, and who rarely used the word Viking, which, anyway, describes an activity rather than a people or a tribe. To go Viking mean to go raiding, and the Danes who fought against England in the ninth century, though undoubedtly raiders, were preeminently invaders and occupiers.” In the course of the book, Uhtred is raised and trained by the Danes, but he eventually changes sides to be with Alfred. Despite Uhtred’s success as a warrior for Alfred, he is constantly tempted to trade sides once again. Probably the most important historical note of the book is that the Danes were incredibly close to capturing all of England. They literally controlled the entire country, except for Wessex, and it was Alfred, a clever, literate, sickly, and religiously devoted man who saved the realm from destruction. Otherwise, we would not be speaking English in the 21^st century. I may be the only one of our blog reviewers who reads this book, but the timing was right for me. Maybe, during my next long vacation, I’ll take on book #2 of the series, but it is not a high priority to do so.

West Coast Don

Beat the Reaper: A Novel by Josh Bazell

I’m in the midst of a 48-hour travel fog/jet lag/confusion/stupor (a state of mind with which EC Don is intimately familiar), so I hope I do this very good book justice. This is a first novel by a medical resident although one who I gather is a couple years older than your usual post-grad doc. The story begins as the intern is on his way to the hospital in the wee hours when a guy tries to mug him, not knowing this man in scrubs not only does not have any money and does not have any drugs (beyond his personal stash that he will need for the next couple days), but he is a former mafia hit man (wake up, Charlie Stella, you’ll like this one). The resident puts the guy down and then later encounters him in the ER -- funny stuff. Peter Brown/Pietra Brnwa is the protagonist who was raised by his grandparents who were apparently holocaust survivors, and he gets pulled into mob service when he avenges their murder, and when his best buddy’s father takes over as surrogate father. After some years as an active hitman, he enters the witness protection program and goes to med school, which he is paying for via the money he has earned from the hits. The bad guys figure out who and where he is, so the chase is on. Wait until you read the scene in the shark tank. What makes this book stand out is the excellent narrative – fast, well-written, and I hate to use the word gripping, but it is. I thought the medical writing was as clear and honest as anything I’ve ever seen, at least from a clinical and (psychiatry term) countertransference perspective. The book jacket indicated that Bazell is writing his second novel, and I look forward to that one. This one, for our genre, comes with my 5-star recommendation.

WC Don

Wake Up Dead by Roger Smith

Continuing on with West Coast Don's recent novels by foreign authors, this one comes from South Africa.

Roxy Palmer, South Florida native and former high fashion model, is the unhappy trophy wife of Joe Palmer, a gangster in Cape Town who deals in weapons and mercenaries. They are having dinner with a tribal cannibal and his Ukrainian whore who has just handed over a bucketload of money to buy arms. On their way home, a couple of junkies follow them home to hijack their car and sell it off. The hijack goes bad, a little, and Joe gets shot in the leg. On an impulse, Roxy picks up the discarded gun and puts one through Joe's forehead. And, boy does her life change, mostly for the worse.

Billy Afrika is one of Joe's mercenaries back from Iraq and needing back salary that Joe owes him. With Joe gone and most of this assets frozen, Billy moves in with Roxy to protect his investment. Billy has a history. As a teenager, he lived in some of the harshest of slums run by various gang fractions. One up and comer, Piper, beats Billy, sets him on fire and tosses him in a shallow grave.

But Billy survives, saved by a cop who becomes his partner when Billy grows up and joins the police force. Unfortunately, his partner is gutted right there on his home sidewalk in full view of his family. Billy could've killed the perp right there, but doesn't and the guy goes to prison. The guy becomes a war lord in prison . . . Piper. And Billy promises to watch over the family of his partner. He needs what is owed to him, he needs the salary Joe owes him for his partner's family who is being extorted by another scum of the slum.

In prison, Piper takes a wife, a pretty boy who goes by Disco. Now Disco is not all that enthralled at being Piper's bitch. Once Disco is released, Piper makes him promise to get arrested again so they can be together, but Disco isn't in any rush to go back. But he needs drugs and money, so he and a bud decide to hijack the car of a rich man . . . a hijacking that goes bad, a little.

Piper is pissed. He arranges to escape and starts to track down Disco. This starts a trail of blood and death unlike anything I've ever read. Cops, gang members, innocent bystanders, homeless people, children, all suffer at the will of Piper's knife. Piper likes the up close and personal nature of killing with a knife, stabbing people in their groin and ripping flesh up to the victim's sternum, spilling viscera and blood everywhere allowing the victim to watch their life flow into the dirt.

I can't remember a grittier story full of unsympathetic characters. Relentlessly violent, Smith pits various factions of the Cape Town slums (even that is too gracious a term) against each other. The nightly gunfire, the drugs, the deceit, the crooked cops, beheadings, and plot twists in the suffocating heat of Cape Town far too numerous to describe are painted by Smith using a brush heavily tinged in blood red. People say Hannibal Lector was a most evil character, but Piper makes Hannibal look like a guest at high tea by comparison. Billy is a flawed hero, Disco is a loser whose decisions have put him right where he is, and Roxy has ridden her beauty to her own hilltop prison that in an instant, she tried to break free from and suffers unspeakable consequences.

Make no mistake, this is a brutal book, probably one of the most brutal I've ever read. Told largely in flashbacks, Smith keeps dozens of balls in the without losing the reader in the detail of the Cape Town gangs, ghettos, and a disgusting array of vicious creeps there by the bad luck of genetics.

If you pick this up, you best be prepared.

East Coast Don

SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

This is a sequel to one of my favorite books from 4 years ago, Freakonomics, and this one is at least as good as the first. The authors, both economists, have some unusual takes on common topics. Regarding drunk driving, they point out that there is just one arrest for every 27,000 miles driven while drunk. “That means, you could expect to drive all the way across the country, and then back, and then back and forth three more times, chugging beers all the while, before you got pulled over.” On a per-mile basis, a drunk walker is eight times more likely to get killed than a drunk driver, so “friends don’t let friends walk drunk.” On a different topic, one that makes me feel sorry for the men on the Indian subcontinent, “According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, some 60 percent of Indian men have penises too small for the condoms manufactured to fit World Heath Organization specs.” As the result, Indian men’s condoms malfunction more than 15 percent of the time, so Indian women run a higher risk of HIV/AIDS. How about this one about driving: “In 1900, horse accidents claimed the lives of 200 New Yorkers, or 1 of every 17,000 residents. In 2007, meanwhile, 274 New Yorkers died in auto accidents, or 1 of every 30,000 residents. This means that a New Yorker was nearly twice as likely to die from a horse accident in 1900 than from a car accident today.” Also, a street prostitute in Chicago is more likely to have sex with a cop than to be arrested by one. You might ask how is a street prostitute like a department store Santa. “Both take advantage of short-term job opportunities brought about by holiday spikes in demand.” There are lots of other points about kid restraints in cars, various aspects of global warming, and more. I’ll leave you with a final comment about global warming and things we could do about it. You know that the methane produced by cows has been identified as a significant factor in greenhouse gases, but did you know you could make a substantially positive impact from changing your diet. “You could also switch from eating beef to eating kangaroo – because kangaroo farts, as fate would have it, don’t contain methane.” This was fun and informative – read it.

West Coast Don

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

This was the sequel to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, with the main character being Lisbeth Salander, and Larsson includes some of the other same characters from his first book. Once again, the background topic has to do with the abuse of women and sexual trafficking, and the extent to which it gets covered up. Mikael Blomkvist, who was the guy that came to the aid of Salander in the first book, is now about to publish a new book written by Mia Johansson who is using the material for her Ph.D. thesis. And, simultaneously, Johansson’s fiancé, Dag Svensson, is about to write a series of articles exposing numerous people in the sex trade in Sweden, to be published by Blomkvist in his magazine Millennium. But, Mia and Dag are murdered when Dag’s research takes him too near a most dangerous character. As Salander does her research into these matters, she finds out that her own extremely abusive past is tied to these same really bad guys. Larsson also writes some other characters into the story, so there are intrigues with the cops and with the publishing business. It’s all good, and Larsson is a must read. The good news is that before he died in 2004 from a heart attack at the age of 50, Larsson turned in three manuscripts, so the third, which is the last of a trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. His website indicates he has been the second biggest selling author worldwide. I know that his third book has already been published, is available in book stores, but it is still in the pre-order phase on Kindle, so I’ll order it and read it as soon as it is released.

West Coast Don

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The good news is that Larsson is a great new author, at least to us. The bad news is that he died in 2004 and only left this book and one more, a sequel, “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” which I plan to read next. Deservedly, Larsson has been on the best seller lists. Like “The Man From Beijing” by Mankell, Larsson writes in Swedish and is translated. In this story, Mickael Blomkvist is a journalist who investigates businesses, and he has written a highly critical article about a Swedish business giant, Wennerstrom. Wennerstrom then filed a libel lawsuit against Blomkvist and the magazine he writes for and has ownership in, Millennium. Although he is certain that he reported the facts accurately, Blomkvist lost the lawsuit and lands in prison for a short stay. Mysteriously, in the trial, Blomkvist never put up any sort of defense and the reasons are not revealed until the end of the story. Meanwhile, as a result of the publicity from the trial, the head of the Vanger family, a wealthy industrialist who has unfriendly ties to Wennerstrom, hires Blomkvist to both write the history of his family and solve the disappearance/murder of one of its members. Blomkvist reluctantly takes on the assignment since he has been officially sacked by his own magazine. To follow up Vanger’s request, he hires a bizarre looking but brilliant young researcher, Lisbeth Salander, the woman with the dragon tattoo. The characters from all of the subplots are skillfully intertwined. This story is a good combo of narrative and dialogue, and the plot flows quickly and reasonably. There are lots of characters, but they seem to unfold clearly and in a format this is not too complicated. I’m only disappointed that I have just one more Larsson to read.

West Coast Don

Sight Unseen by Robert Goddard

This is my first book by this English author. It is an interesting plot about a murder/kidnapping that happened 23 years before the current time of the book, one that was witnessed by David Umber who was doing research at the time for his Ph.D. in history. It was a 3-yo girl that was kidnapped and presumably killed, and her 7-yo sister that was killed when she stepped in front of the kidnap getaway van. A 10-yo brother survived the tragedies. Umber then became involved with the children’s nanny, Sally, and they eventually married. But, there is happiness everywhere as the result of this incident. The parents of the children divorce, and Umber’s marriage also falls apart. Then these grizzly scenes are revisited when Sally is found dead in her bathtub, presumably due to a suicide. The story of Umber’s historical research into an 18^th century English writer Junius, which he has abandoned to lead the life of an uninspired and quasi-teacher, is woven into the story, so we have 21^st and 18^th century mysteries working simultaneously. In the current day story, Umber is involved with all of the people who were originally involved in the murder/kidnap case, the parents and stepparents, the Detective Chief Inspector George Sharp, etc. To say more would give away too much of the plot. At times, the story became much too complex, but then Goddard saved the story through the artful use of his characters and their relationships with each other. It was a good book, not a great one, and I have another Goddard Book on my Kindle, so I’ll give him another chance.

West Coast Don

Soccernomics by Kuper and Szymanski

An economist looks at soccer. Go ahead, roll your eyes. If you do, it's your loss. This is a fascinating and refreshingly different and entertaining look at (mostly) European soccer.

The authors have sort of borrowed from Freakonomics and Moneyball in order to put the business of soccer under their microscope. I haven't read Freakonomics but I have read Moneyball (about how the Oakland A's compete in baseball at a fraction of the payroll of most other teams). Their basic philosophy is find obscure talent, buy low, sell high and don't buy a mid career player coming off a good year. One club in the UK went one step further by telling each new player that the day the club finds a cheaper player who is as good is the day he is gone. And yes, that team was quite successful (the manager was Brian Clough, the subject of the excellent, if somewhat fictionalized movie, 'That Damn United'.

As dry as it sounds, these guys know how to enlighten the reader about factors of success for national teams (population, wealth, experience) and the accuracy of their statistical model. They basically say (and report the supporting statistics) that the people who run professional soccer clubs and national teams are, in a word, buffoons. So rather than bore you, here are 11 (get it?) 'bottom line' statements:

1. The country most crazy about soccer? Norway

2. The country that has the most success with the poorest resources? Honduras (but they make the argument for Croatia, Serbia, Czech Republic)

3. The country that turns out the most to see live matches? Scotland

4. The club most like the Oakland A's? Lyon, France

5. What's more important, the coach or the front office? By their statistics, the front office. No contest.

6. Don't buy a player after a 'breakout' performance in a major tournament. It's never worked out. Save your money.

7. You many hate the penalty kick shootout, but you better keep records of every penalty kick by every player who takes them because it will help when facing the shootout.

8. The country nuttiest about playing soccer? Costa Rica. 27% of the population play regularly.

9. The English media bemoans the England national team's under achievement. But the stats presented suggest that England actually overachieves. Same for Spain.

10. Based on their statistical model, the next newcomer to 'the usual suspects' at the top of the heap will likely come from Japan, US, Australia, Turkey and believe it or not, Iraq. Remember, population, wealth, experience explain outcome.

11. In today's game, if you want to win now, hire Guus Hiddink.

Strange as it may sound, this was riveting and should be required reading by soccer club front offices, whether they agree with it or not. A library book that I will now purchase.

East Coast Don

Voodoo River by Robert Crais

Amazing what a cruise will do to West Coast Don's reading output. I better quit stalling and get one up there.

Actress Jodi Taylor has never denied being adopted and now would like to know something about her birth parents, mostly about possible medical issues, so her manager hires Elvis Cole to go to Louisiana, meet up with the local lawyer on the job, and try to find her birth parents. Which he does. Problem is, he's been lied to. It's got nothing to do with health....she's being blackmailed.

A local slug of a PI has turned up something in Jodi's history that could net him a chunk of change from The Enquirer and gets Jodi to fork over some real money to protect the secret. You see, Jodi Taylor is a genuine TV star of America's highest rated family show and the secrets surrounding her family and birth would not be well received by the show's sponsors or the studio brass.

Elvis is really pissed that he was lied to and Jodi decides to go back to Louisiana with Cole and see just who her birth mother is. When she see her birth mother, she decides on the spot to meet her and learns all about the family secret. Her birth mother is married to the local sheriff who is under the thumb of the resident gangster because that slug PI took the info to this jerk for more money. As Jodi learns the details behind her birth and adoption, she takes pity on her mother and asks Elvis if he would do something to get these 2 decent people out from under this local criminal. Elvis, ever the sucker for a movie star, agrees to help.

Elvis needs to find out just what this bum is involved in and needs some help, bringing his partner, Joe Pike. With a little help of the local lawyer, an underground newspaper reporter, and a very well protected hispanic activist, Cole learns that an underling to the big cheese in human trafficking into Louisiana is trying to break out on his own, bringing people in through the that local scumbag and his old boss ain't happy about the competition.

Elvis hatches a plot to get all 3 bad guys together to basically kill each other off cuz they all hate each other, getting Jodi's birth mother and husband out of their problem. But this isn't The A Team and the plan doesn't come together leaving Joe Pike and a black op sharpshooter for that hispanic activist clean up the mess.

I'm a big fan of Crais. After reading The First Rule, I thought I venture back into the early novels and my local library had this 1995 book on the shelf. His books are easy to get into, well plotted, satisfying in the eventual demise of the bad guys. Cole and Pike are a couple of my favorite continuing characters. Cole is the cynical wise cracking LA PI (who usually manages to get some girl in the process) and Pike is just downright creepy, but productive when the shit hits the fan. Notice I don't give away Jodi's secret. You'll have to find out that for yourself. It's a doozy.

East Coast Don

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

This is a definite NO! Do not read this book. I got about 75 pages into it and quit. The quality of the writing was quite good, but the content was both very depressing and very slow. It might not have been quite as depressing as Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," but that was probably because I did not read this one to the bitter end like I did that one. You don't need a review of the content. So, I am not motivated to read any more of this guy's stuff.

West Coast Don

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

I heard an NPR interview with Mark Halperin and was enticed enough to read the book. I thought I did not want to revisit the election, but Halperin and Heilemann, who covered the election every day, said their post-election interviews recovered a lot much info they had not known. The worked their way through the primaries for both parties and the gradual sorting out of the candidates. The authors wrote about all of the key players behind the scenes and the details of the conventions. As we now know, John Edwards was seen as an “empty suit” by nearly everyone who knew him, and they talked about how much he had changed over the last 10 years, having been seduced by the limelight and by Reille Hudson, the woman with whom he had an affair and a baby. They wrote that Elizabeth Edwards was the woman who had the greatest discrepancy between her public image (a gracious, calm, good woman) and the reality of who she was (a vitriolic, screaming bitch). There was lots of info about the Clintons and Bill’s ongoing infidelities. Hillary openly admitted that she had no ability to control anything about Bill, either what he said or what he did. She said to her staff, “I can’ talk to him.” It was widely thought that Cindy McCain was having an affair, and John was thought to have had an affair with Vicki Iseman, and the leakage of all of that info to the NY Times is what led to Cindy actually staying with John through much of the campaign, something she did not want to do. The two of them argued openly and profanely in front of their staff. Guiliani and his third wife, Judi, were “The operatic piece of psychotropic theater that was the Rudy and Judi Show.” Then, there was a review of all of the Sarah Palin crap. In the end, McCain’s thinking was that if he was to have any chance in the election, that he had to take a risk on a game-changer, and there was no one else who filled that bill. Serious thought was given to using Lieberman, but he had too many positions that were against the right wing of the party (pro-choice, anti-NRA, etc.). McCain could have made conservative and good choices of people who were capable, but who would have just been predictable, ho-hum candidates. He really did not know Palin. No one did, but he felt pressured to make a decision because of the timing of the Republican convention and his wish to take the air out of Obama’s sails after the end of the Democratic convention. I thought I was tired of it, but the authors had some new info and the replay of the day-to-day Palin disaster was quite good. At one point, as Palin was imploding, he-was-still-a-Democrat Lieberman, was brought into boost Palin’s spirit by talking with her about religion, and she said to him, “Joe, I can’t figure any other reason I’m here except that I was meant to be here.” OMG, and a fun read.

WC Don

John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs by Jack London

I have read a little Jack London in the past and now came upon this autobiography. At the start of the 20th century, London was a force in the world of literature, earning the equivalent of $1,000,000 per year after taxes for his fiction. As implied by the title, London was a man of the bottle. John Barleycorn is a euphemism for liquor, and London writes about his own alcoholic exploits. The author, and the man who wrote the forward, John Sutherland, argue that London was not an alcoholic, but that may have been by the standards of 1913 when he wrote this book, three years before his death in 1916 at the age of 40. This was 20 years before the founding of AA and general better knowledge about the difference between alcoholics and those who are not. London does talk about the melancholy that is induced by his prodigious drinking bouts, and it is probable that his death was either directly or indirectly a suicide: “It is a meditation on alcohol induced pessimism that John Barleycorn is most unequivocally successful.” London wrote, “I drank every day, and whenever opportunity offered I drank to excess; for I still labored under the misconception that the secret of John Barleycorn lay in drinking to bestiality and unconsciousness. I became pretty thoroughly alcohol-soaked during this period. I practically lived in saloons; became a barroom loafer, and worse.” Finally, London rationalized, “Whisky was dangerous, in my opinion, but not wrong. Whisky was dangerous, like other dangerous things in the natural world. Men died of whisky; but then, too, fishermen were capsized and drowned, hoboes fell under trains and were cut to pieces.” So, that’s enough, and after skimming some more pages, I closed this book. You have the essence of it, and now it is time for this blogger to return to fiction.

West Coast Don

The Man From Beijing by Henning Mankell

Mankell is a Swedish author, and this has been translated to English. He’s a fairly prolific writer who I had not heard about before. I think I stumbled onto this murder mystery through an Amazon or New York Times recommendation. The author starts with a lone wolf wandering across the northern tundra from Norway to Sweden, always in the search of food, and the wolf comes across the body of a man that has recently been killed, one of the 19. The use of the wolf was an effective means of describing the austere desolation of the countryside of the tiny hamlet in northern Sweden where the murders have occurred. A woman detective, Vivi Sundland, becomes the primary investigator. As the murders are publicized, a woman judge, Birgitta Roslin, discovers that her mother’s foster parents, then in their 90s, are among those who were killed. She then begins her own investigation that is hardly parallel to Sundland’s efforts. Roslin finds a link to some mass murders that had just happened in Nevada, and that eventually takes her to China where laborers had been kidnapped to work on the formation of railroads across the U.S. in the 19^th century. The plot occurs across Europe, China, the U.S., Zambia, and Mozambique. The man from Beijing, Ya Ru, is not introduced until well into the book, and he is a classic psychopath, although a brilliant one. He is set on the revenge of his ancestors who were humiliated at the hands of the Swede who had been chosen to run railroad construction crews. One of Ya Ru’s main foils, his sister, Hong Qiu (every time I read her name, I could not help saying “honkie”) is an important figure. Unlike so many murder mysteries, most of the man characters in this book were women. Mankell used this format to write a treatise on the workings of the inner politics of China and its expected future colonization of Africa. I had a little trouble getting into this at the beginning, probably because the books is largely a narrative and not one that is carried by dialogue, as is the case with so many of the books we read. You should know that Mankell has a series of mysteries with the main character of Kurt Wallander, and he has written a number of other books as well. I’m going to read him again, and I recommend him.

West Coast Don

The Physician by Noah Jordon

Here’s a new author for us. This one was written in 1986 and was given to me by another bibliophile (Owen Hahn, retired college football coach, golfer, story teller, painter). This was a Michener-like opus, 700+ pages, which was perfect to read on a long vacation. Rob J. Cole is the main character, starting in 10^th century England. The author gives a remarkable description of day-to-day life for this boy from a poor family. His mother dies and he is left to care for his four younger siblings, but then his carpenter father is killed in a work accident. According to the rules of the carpenter guild, the family’s children and assets are distributed among the guild members, but Rob is taken by a traveling barber-surgeon, literally a snake oil salesman who travels about entertaining, healing, and accepting money for his potions, which are mostly alcohol, sometimes mixed with his own urine. However, Rob has the healing touch and decides to pursue medical training. But, the only medical schools in England are worthless, so he travels to Persia where the world’s most famous physician is a teacher. Remember that this is the time of the crusades, and Christians are not welcome there, but Jews are allowed to become students. So, Rob learns enough about Judaism to fake being a Jew. However, one of his fellow Arab students learns that Rob is not a Jew, and he risks his own life by keeping the secret. However, he demands that Rob pay for his sin of lying about his own god by learning the details of Islam. Basically, this is a story that explores the details of and the prejudices of the world’s three great religions versus the others. Jordon does a great job with that. He also does a great job of describing the hardships of life in the 10^th century, the travel to Persia, the life there, and Rob’s eventual return to England where he finds the re-adaptation to life in London to be impossible. A side plot was his love of a Scottish woman and his final move to Scotland to be with his wife and sons. I’m not sure if this summary will catch your attention, but I thought the book was worth my time, and it covers parts of history with which I’m not all that familiar. Jordon has written a number of books, and I’ll probably read more of his work in the future.

West Coast Don