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