Long Lost by Harlan Coben

Remember The Boys From Brazil? That 1970s-ish movie with Olivier and Peck about Nazi attempts at cloning to keep Der Furher’s lineage going? This book reminded me of that story . . . sort of.

An old flame of our hero, Myron Bolitar calls from out of the blue asking him to come to Paris because she is desperate for help. Of course, he hops a plane in time for the two of them to find her ex dead and his blood is mixed with blood of . . . a daughter of theirs. Now the problem is that their daughter died in a car wreck in the UK about 10 years earlier.

Thus begins the search to find out about: a) the night of the accident, b) a devious terrorist whose motto is “patience and the sword with kill the sinners”, c) a NYC fertility clinic, and d) a pro life society.

Our hero actually manages to kill said devious terrorist to which the FBI (or the CIA? Interpol? The implausible plot police?) snatches them both and takes claim for killing the nut to protect Myon and his old girlfriend, Therese from the surviving terrorists taking out a jihad on our boy.

Myron has a college chum, Win (that’s short for Windsor Horne Lockwood III) who always seems to have a connection when a clue is needed to push the plot along. Win is not only quick witted, he also is an expert shot and has connections E V E R Y W H E R E. So, needing a clue to move the plot along, Win comes across a clue for Myon and Therese and points them first toward a place in Manhattan, then what appears to be a B&B in rural NYC, and then too many more to mention.

What they find is almost beyond comprehension. Let’s see; Theresa and hubby couldn’t get pregnant and went to this in-vitro fertilization. One took, but dozens of ovum and embryos were kept and stored by our mystery terrorist (he was educated in Europe, med school in the states, fellowship in, guess where” Same city as the pro life group…this guy embezzled people’s embryos and implanted them in surrogate moms who were incubators for the future jihadis that all looked like an awful lot like Therese – thus the opening reference.

I finished the book, but I can’t say I was overwhelmed. This seemed almost formulaic: Myron was a basketball stud (basketball + stud named Myron?) who went to Duke (!!!!!) to play basketball, get drafted first round by the Celtics (naturally) only to blow his knee out in training and now is a wealthy (of course) sports agent . . . long time friend of his Dookie buddy Win, the New England preppie with more money than sense and his legion of foreign friends . . . and Terese of the Class B felony bikini and a world –class derriere… hard ass FBI-types always shows up whenever they feels like.

Now I like good escape, but this one just seemed to step outside the boundary of believability. Each clue seemed to show up at the best time. Myron is tall, extraordinarily handsome,

Enough already. This book was pure summer beach read escape and it is a very quick read. Also reminded me of the books of Stuart Woods. It just doesn’t really take one very far and really doesn’t explore any new ground. While I may try another Coben, I really doubt that the Max Bolitar series will catch my interest enough for any form of consideration for my power list. Coben has a few standalone novels and my next book of his will probably be one of those.

Each Coast Don

The Snowman by Jo Nesbo and Don Bartlett

This is a recent release by an author who has gotten some significant Scandinavian awards for his earlier books, including the Glass Key Award for best Nordic crime novel, an award that was won by both Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson. It had a great write up in the LA Times last Sunday and Michael Connelly gave it a very strong endorsement. Eager for a new author, I gave it a try. It had the usual elements that have attracted us to this genre: a strong male hero and police detective, Harry Hole, who has his faults (a struggle with alcoholism), but who has a strong ethical obsession to solve crimes regardless of who it might hurt; a curious and conflicted love interest; a serial murder; and lots of false leads and twists in the plot. Maybe it was because I was too busy with other work when I started the book and took a week to finish it, but it only rarely really grabbed my attention. I definitely was able to put it down until the last 100 pages. And, even for those of us that are very forgiving as to plot manipulations, Nesbo made a few maneuvers with his characters that were too much for me to swallow. This was not a bad book, just not a great one, and I’m not particularly motivated to pick up another one of Nesbo’s works.

The Blue Edge of Midnight by Jonathon King

I finished The Confession on Friday morning just before the trip home from Mexico City, started this King book waiting for the flight, and finished this morning before church. Yeah, it was that cool.

Max Freeman was a smart but unambitious cop in Philadelphia, average from the academy to the beat. A call comes about a robbery in progress just around the corner. He makes the turn in a 2-footed slide to face a kid with a gun. He hesitates, sees a second perp run from the store and fires, killing a 12 year old kid, but not before taking a slug in the neck - thus beginning the nightmares and doubts.

Max can't shake his doubts and flees to the depths of the Everglades to live in solitude with his guilt. After a year or so, the nightmares are slowly retreating, but canoeing back to his shack, he spots a bundle tangled in some tree roots. Looking back at him are the lifeless eyes of a dead child. Knowing a crime scene when he sees it, he heads for the ranger station. A squad of local detectives arrive and immediately see a suspect, a suspect with a history who might be the perp they've been looking for in the matter of 4 dead kids.

The western suburbs of south Florida are creeping into the edge of the Everglades and the cops think that any one of those hermits who inhabit the 'glades could be a suspect. His lawyer, a childhood friend with a stutter, tells him not to say a thing, but Max comes forward to answer the cops questions - bad idea. Max decides to at least see where the other victims were found and enlists a local hermit/pilot to fly him around in what turns out to be a sabotaged Cessena. The crash seriously injures the pilot and Max drags him through the swamp, bandages him up, and saves him, making him sort of a hero to the local lowlifes of the swamps.

The main lowlife is an elderly legend/WWII hero Nate Brown who asks Max to meeting to sort of mediate between the locals and the cops. Max meets with 4 strange guys, all of whom wear this strange knife in a scabbard. Looks like the cops had it right, sort of - an unknown man of the marsh really is trying to scare people from buying near the Everglade's border. Then another child goes missing.

Brown shows up at Max's shack telling Max the kid's alive, but he better come quick. Brown paddles them both about an hour-ish way deep in the 'glades to a shack more run down than Max's. The child is there, barely alive. Also there is one of the locals, dead by a stretched neck. The cops think they have their man, racked with guilt, dead by suicide.

Of course Max thinks otherwise. Why, there were 2 knives at the cabin and the perp was still wearing his, so Max grabs the knife, crime scene or not. During the investigation, Max's canoe was vandalized so he and his lawyer bud go shopping. While Max is checking out, his lawyer is having a 'Witness' moment (remember when the Amish kid recognizes the murderer in a newspaper clipping and the look on Harrison Ford's face?) by spotting the same knife in a display case. Turns out it's a rare German WWII weapon. Remember Nate Brown, the WWII hero? Brought back some war booty for his 'acquaintances' in the 'glades. And it flushes out the real culprit.

And the nightmares seem to be fading.

I've been trolling the Edgar awards website looking for new authors. King was the winner in 2003 for Best First Novel with this book and looked like a good bet for future efforts on my part. King has something like 6 Max Freeman novels and a couple standalone books, too all since 2o02. He's been busy. His best trait is his ability to set and describe the scene be it Philadelphia, the Everglades, or the never ending sprawl of south Florida, which he clearly despises - sort of a serious version of Carl Hiasson's tongue-in-cheek tales of Florida. It may not have the outstanding dialogue of Stella or Pelacanos, but after reading this, I think I know a whole lot more about the Everglades. I'll be back to learn more.

East Coast Don

The Confession by Olen Steinhauer

Remember that Steinhauer's The Tourist put him on my power rotation after a single book. That was actually his 6th book. He has a series of 5 post WWII mysteries, one per decade beginning in the 1940s (The Bridge of Sighs). This is my third from that series, but it's actually the 2nd and takes place in the 1950s in Steinhauer's unnamed eastern European country and its capital.

Militia detective Ferenc Koleyeszar's marriage is falling apart. A long vacation at the family dacha only seemed to make things worse so a return home is not a happy prospect. He is sure his wife has been cheating with one of his co-workers. He is also a one-time author who can't seem to find his muse despite the encouragement of his writer-poet-artist-anarchist contemporaries who sit around smoking and drinking complaining that "plot is a capitalist construct to give lives a false sense of totality." Sounds like my college days in the bars. While the group rattles on, Ferenc plays with the rings on each of his fingers and fantasizing about the wife of a group member. What the rings represent is one of those "are you shitting me?" moments.

Work should be a welcome break from his crumbling life. How is this for a break: a party dignitary's wife disappears. An artist of some notoriety is found with his arms and legs broken, bound and hog-tied, and burned to a crisp in an abandoned warehouse in the canal district. The artist's wife turns up dead. A French mentor to the writer's group becomes stranger by the day. Records from a cold case about the death of a militia co-worker indicate a possible connection to some of the current murders. Moscow has sent someone (that's code for KGB) to help the militia office and befriends Brano Sev, a cop no one trusts (but is the major character in Liberation Movements, book #3). A friend in the group, Georgi, gets the call from internal security for a 'document check' (that's code for a nasty train ride to an even nastier work camp). An eccentric painter, jailed for 10 years, is getting released and a student demonstration, which Ferenc would prefer to join, goes bad and puts him in the crosshairs of the KGB officer on loan. Ferenc thinks, "if this isn't the most wonderful of times, then please don't let me know."

At least his wife isn't cheating with that co-worker. That was a one-time thing years ago. She tells him that she is actually carrying on with his partner - the first of a number of confessions.

The missing wife ran away from an abusive husband who kept her locked up and drugged. When Ferenc learns the details and finds the wife, he exercises his own brand of justice by giving her money for a train ticket to Moscow and her family, then plays dumb with the husband. At least Georgi is not sent to a camp and is so happy he "could stall a Volga."

All the murders have a connection that is all about artistic envy, jealousy, infidelity, fame, and revenge, the sweetest of all motives. Stenhauer paints a grim picture of 1950s behind the developing Iron Curtain where checking into to the Metropol hotel will "end up on its daily report to internal security". But it's not all atmosphere. Ferenc is on one hand a deeply flawed detective and husband, making judgmental decisions about actions in the interrelated cases all the while passing judgement on his wife as he has a masochistic affair with another's wife and nails a hotel clerk on an overnight trip to a work camp, the "memory and knowledge of which kills his serenity."

A momentary lapse while policing that student demonstration has put a chip in the pocket of the KBG, but that officer tells Ferenc that all transgressions will be forgiven with a confession, a confession that Ferenc knows will put him in a work camp. But at least his wife will not be drawn in and will be well cared for by his partner, her lover.

Sounds like a downer and maybe it is, but I find Steinhauer's graceful, fluid writing style to be the real subject and hopefully, the chosen quotes might give a short preview of what awaits. He may have been nominated for numerous awards and been on a number of 'best of the year' lists, but he doesn't seem to have the following of other contemporaries.

Two more to go - 36 Yalta Blvd and Victory Square.

East Coast Don

An Absence of Light by David Lindsey

The book started out a bit slow with the author focusing more on character development than plot, but when the plot really kicked in, the speed of it just kept building into a very good story. Marcus Graver is a chief detective in the criminal intelligence division (CID) in Houston with a counterpart, Dean Burtell, who has been like a brother, who Graver trained. Graver is the protagonist in this story, a strong masculine character who lives by an ethical code that sometimes takes him to the edge of reason. So, he fits right into our genre of action/thriller books. When other members of the CID start dying, Graver suspects that it’s Burtell who has turned dirty, who has begun selling information and selling out to the bad guys. The plot involves some very big bad guys, Panos Kalatis and Brod Strasser, who have a vast international reach and who have just happened to find Houston as a convenient and temporary home for their ambitious crimes. Lindsay brings in a great cast of characters, some good guys, some not, but all are interesting, not stereotypic. Lindsay also uses his vocabulary more effectively than many authors, but not too much. By the way, the title of the book is explained in the last two sentences of the book: “It seemed to [Graver] that he was arriving too late in the sequence of events. Perhaps he should have been trying to understand, instead, the character of darkness itself, and what it was that happened when men’s desires were shaped and formed in an absence of light.” This one definitely gets my recommendation.

The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly

I’ve read every single book written by Michael Connelly and continue to pluck them off the shelf immediately when a new one comes out. Previously, I have always preferred the Harry Bosch character but in The Fifth Witness, Connelly develops the Mickey Haller character in a way that demands a new respect for him.

Mickey Haller’s LA based legal practice has fallen on hard times so he ventures from criminal law into mortgage foreclosure law where the demand currently lies. He helps those being foreclosed upon by finding legal loopholes and even fraud in the bank’s and their agent’s practices. At the very least Haller has been successful in extending the stay of his clients in their homes. This type of law agrees with Haller’s style of defending the underdog and allows him to continue to practice law from the back seat of his Lincoln Continental and avoid the expense of keeping a law office. It’s kind of a ‘law mobile’ and reminds me of the ice cream trucks that troll suburbia with the jingle broadcast over loud speakers to attract children.

Nonetheless, Haller is a brilliant legal strategist especially when it comes to criminal law and particularly in the court room. So, when one of his foreclosure clients is arrested for murder, Haller is in perfect position to defend her. Lisa Trammel has been charged with murdering her banker, Mitchell Bondurant. Lisa is the favored suspect because after being served a foreclosure notice she had started an online foreclosure support and protest group and organized pickets and protest marches against the bank which led to a court ordered injunction against her. Lisa, a former school teacher whose husband has abandoned her, has no money to pay Haller or post a bond for bail, so Haller accepts literary rights as collateral for his services and expects her to remain in jail until trial. Herb Dahl shows up with bail money and a plan to capture Lisa’s story on film plus he shows a personal interest in Lisa. This immediately puts client and attorney at odds since the advice from counsel seems to take second position to her confidant’s. As the evidence against Lisa builds, Haller must develop an alternative plausible theory as a defense. This leads him to entanglements with the mob and puts his own life in jeopardy. His brilliance as a court room lawyer shines through as he weaves and bobs his way through surprises presented him by both prosecution and by his client.

Meanwhile, his personal life is in shambles. Twice divorced he finds himself still in love with Maggie, his first wife and mother of his teenage daughter. Maggie is also a friend and coworker of the lead prosecutor in this case but can’t ignore Haller’s affection for her. Tortured by self doubts about previous life choices, Haller keeps it all in perspective and gives his best for his client, deserved or not.

I find myself really liking the main character, Mickey Haller in The Fifth Witness. Are his actions to defend his client righteous and what is expected of any good attorney or is he crossing the line and manipulating the system thus doing a disservice to society? Is he always the good guy or is he sometimes the bad guy? Connelly delivers his story so that Mickey Haller is constantly asking himself these same questions, not only as an attorney but as a husband, father, and person. Don’t we all similarly examine ourselves this same way at times? I think that’s what makes this book a good read and why I look forward to the next Michael Connelly book. Now I’ll take either Harry Bosch or Mickey Haller, equally intriguing characters.

Demolition Angel by Robert Crais

Bombers must have some serious OCD. Take "Mr. Red." He uses the same size and type of pipes, pipe caps, explosive, batteries, ignitors. Hell, he even uses plumber's tape wound clockwise over the pipe's threads. But he's upset because he's not on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List (they need his real name). And he really wants to be on that list.

Three years ago, Carol Starkey and her partner-lover Shug were disarming a bomb when a minor earthquake jiggled the mechanism setting off the device and killing both, but the EMTs were successful at saving Starkey. While she has physically recovered and working in the Criminal Conspiracy Unit, she is seriously messed up and has gone through a fistful of therapists. Now she eats Tagament like candy, smokes like a chimney, practically mainlines gin, and relives the explosion nightly in her dreams.

One of her former partners on the bomb squad, Charles Riggio, has just been blown to bits by a bomb with all the earmarks of Mr. Red. But after a long and drawn out investigation, Carol and Jack Pell of the ATF come to think that just maybe Riggio was killed by a copycat because one tiny little detail of Mr. Red's signature that Carol found was wrong on the Riggio bomb. That means the copycat must be inside the LAPD.

An imprisoned explosive nut tells Carol and Pell about a web chat room for explosive weirdos called Claudius and there have been rumors that Mr. Red has prowled the site. Carol sets up an screen name and tries to bait Mr. Red, but he ends up turning the tables on her jerking her chain over and over again until the final confrontation (that had me holding my breath) involving - you guessed it - a bomb.

A quick check of the author list shows that Crais is one of MRB's favorite authors. Crais writes PI stories with smart aleck Elvis Cole and Joe Pike who is, well, Joe Pike. While Cole and Pike have a bucketload of titles to their credit, this Starkey book appears to be a one and done. Make no mistake, this is one hardcore, gritty tale of a damaged woman trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to keep from becoming more damaged. Being entirely different from the Cole/Pike books is not a reason to shun the tale. You really feel for the pain Starkey has been carrying for three years, her frustration with the investigation, and silently cheer for her as things get tense. I thought this 2000 copyright was well worth it.

East Coast Don

The 47th Samurai by Stephen Hunter

A fan of Stephen Hunter before, even more now that I’ve read The 47th Samurai. This starts with Bob Lee Swaggart’s father, Earl, becoming a Medal of Honor winner on Iwo Jima, as Hunter gives more details about that story. Earl was the cloth from which Bob Lee was made. At Iwo, Earl came in possession of a sword that he got from a dead Japanese soldier, Captain Hideki Yano, and it is decades later that Philip Yano, the son of the man he killed, in search of the sword, contacted Bob Lee. It would give away too much of the story to say too much more, but the adventure takes Bob Lee on two trips to Japan, both of which are filled with death. Even though our hero seems out of place in a country where he does not speak the language, Hunter creates a believable scenario in which Bob Lee operates with his usual soldier’s mentality and unflinching ethical standards. He also digs into some aspects of Japanese history and culture. I’m a bit of a Nipponophile, and I’ve remained in touch with the Yano family from Osaka since the late 60s. In their household, swordplay was an important skill to learn, at least for the boys. I literally could not put this book down, stayed up late, got up early –finished it in under 24 hours. This one is far more than just another airplane book.

Blood Test by Jonathan Kellerman

As much as I enjoyed my first Kellerman book (When the Bough Breaks), and while I thoroughly enjoy both the main character (Alex Delaware) and Kellerman’s writing style, this book was even too farfetched for me. It’s about a boy dying of cancer who desperately needs treatment, but who is taken away from the hospital by parents who are apparently cultists that do not think Western medicine has the answer for their son’s illness. Meanwhile, the plot deepens with the leader of the cult being a reformed Beverly Hills divorce lawyer, some botanists who are into growing some very weird plants, and a really looney treating oncologist. I’m going to read another Kellerman and another Delaware, but this one does not get my recommendation.

Live Wire by Harlan Coben

I’ve read a lot of Harlan Coben. He’s the author I pick when I can’t find one of my favorites to read. Reading Live Wire reminded me again why he is not on my favorites list. Coben has been writing about his lead character, Myron Bolitar since 1995. Myron grew up in a blue collar New Jersey town, won a basketball scholarship to Duke, became an all American, was drafted by the Celtics, then blew out his knee before he could play his first professional game. He then opens a sports agency in New York representing basketball and tennis players primarily but somewhere along the line accepts musical clients as well. Myron’s best friend and owner of the building where Myron’s agency resides is Windsor Horne Lockwood III (aka Win). Win inherited a fortune but is proficient at financially advising Myron’s clients as well as beating the crap out of anyone who crosses Myron. Myron is known for protecting and nurturing his clients with a passion so Win is called to the rescue quite frequently.

In Live Wire Myron’s clients are Suzze Trevantino, a former tennis star and Lex Ryder, an aging rock star who are married to one another. Suzze is pregnant with their first child and an anonymous post on her Face book page, “Not His” brings her to Myron. With her sorted ‘party with the rock stars’ past, Suzze is afraid Lex will leave her and calls upon Myron to intervene. While looking for Lex in a NYC nightclub, Myron spots his sister-in-law, Kitty who is also a former tennis star, client, and drug addict. Myron has not seen her or his brother, Brad in 15 years since his attempts to break up Brad’s relationship with Kitty resulted in his estrangement from the couple. Myron finds that Brad is missing, Kitty is back on heroin, and Myron has a 15 year old nephew he’s never met. Myron’s attempt to help his clients and find his brother uncovers secrets from the past that involve the mob, deceit, extortion and murder. Win’s flair for violence and disrespect for legalities place him square in the middle of helping Myron uncover secrets and right old wrongs.

I like a good mystery with multiple twists and turns that leads you astray and surprises you in the end. Live Wire does that. I guess I just don’t find Coben’s characters real somehow. For example, what independently wealthy thirty something guy do you know that enjoys stirring up the mob for the sport of it? Several of Coben’s characters have this ‘who does that?’ quality. But I’ll probably pick Coben again when none of my favorites are on the shelf.

Three Cups of Deceit by Jon Krakauer

Did you read Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson? I did. Were you inspired by his work in Afghanistan and Pakistan? I was. Mortenson wrote that he was inspired by Mother Teresa and inferred that he should be thought of in such saintly terms. Jon Krakauer, no stranger to controversy (Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, Under the Banner of Heaven, etc.), presents impressive, exhaustive, and compelling evidence that Mortenson is far less of a saint than he would have us believe. While Mortenson has done some good things in terms of building schools and especially providing education to girls and young women in places where that had never occurred, he was also an out-of-control megalomaniac who lied about enriching himself in the process. Mortenson sounds like an impressive and charismatic speaker, but unfortunately, someone who is too good to be true. How disappointing! Perhaps this book, a short and quick read, is best summed up in the last two sentences: “With one hand, Greg has created something potentially beautiful and caring (regardless of his motives). With the other he has murdered his creation by his duplicity.”

Lost Light by Michael Connelly

This is the third novel in a Harry Bosch trilogy, the first two being A Darkness More Than Night, and the second being City of Bones, books that I’ve already reviewed. These were three books that Connelly wrote in order, one each in 2001, 2002, and 2003. In this book, there was a $2,000,000 heist of cash from a movie set. A director, impressed with his own very hot credentials, decided that he had to shoot some scenes with real money, not fake money, allegedly because anyone could tell it wasn’t real money in all the close-ups they were planning to shoot with the cash. Right? Anyhow, despite heavy security and despite a real gun battle that breaks out on the set, the heist is successful and goes unsolved. Another unsolved part of the case was the death of Angella Benton, an employee of the movie company, who was killed three days prior to the heist. Four years later, Harry is a now a retired detective, a private detective, and he decides to pursue the case which has gone cold. He was upset when the case was taken away from him only a few days after the robbery. And, Harry had been on the scene of the movie with the heist occurred, trying to get clues about Angella’s death, and it was Harry who fired the shots that wounded one of the thieves. Suddenly the FBI and the LAPD are leaning on him to drop his investigation, and of course, that only makes Harry more determined to solve the matter. To complicate the plot, there are a couple more characters. Marty Gessler, an FBI agent, was pursuing the money theft, and she simply disappeared. The two detectives from the LAPD who were assigned the case met an unfortunate end. They were in a bar when a robbery took place. One of the cops was killed and the other was left as a quadriplegic. How are these matters all connected? Connelly will lead you threw it all, only bringing the plots successfully together at the end. This was good entertainment, not a great book – a solid airplane novel, and I’ll keep Connelly in my power rotation.