Animosity

This was my fifth David Lindsey book, his 11th book which was written in 2001. (Remember he also wrote Pacific Heights under the name Paul Harper.) Animosity was so interesting and so different than his other books. While the plot mattered a lot, this story was mostly driven by a fascinating study of characters. Ross Marteau is a sculpture who splits time between Paris and his home in San Rafael, Texas. He’s famous, and he’s made a small fortune by doing expensive nude sculptures of the beautiful wives of very wealthy men. His work is in demand and he is able to move directly from one commission to the next. The wealthy men seem to want to catch the beauty of their women before they change and age. Marteau has never been married and he’s had relationships with his models and his subjects, including the women he’s sculpting. If his art is criticized at all, it is because he has chosen to go for the money rather than attempt to be true to his art, as if he should sacrifice a comfortable life for the sake of his craft. The book starts in Paris as his relationship with the next lover, Marian, has fallen apart. They have been brutal with each other and their fights have been fodder for the French tableaus. But as Marteau leaves Marian, she does not take it well. She only exits his life after throwing a knife at him which imbeds in his shoulder and does him some damage. He moves back to San Rafael to begin work on his next commission. It is there that he is contacted by two French sisters with a new commission. He quickly becomes romantically involved with the older sister, Celeste Lacan, while delaying his other commission to take on the statue of the younger sister, Leda, a stunning beauty who has a most interesting deformity that will be a great challenge to his talents. But, all is not as it seems. The older sister is married and estranged from her wealthy and abusive husband. Leda is angry about her own appearance and the abuse her sister has put up with in order to get a stipend from her husband that supports them both. As the story evolves, Marteau learns that Celeste and Leda specifically chose him to do the statue because of their connection with one of his past lovers, his first model, who was a most destructive woman and the real love of his life. Leda turns out to be a most manipulative and scheming woman. The love scenes that Lindsey writes are very erotic, and the ending of the story was absolutely unexpected by me. Even knowing that, you won’t see it coming, I promise. This was a good book, a quick read, most enjoyable, and it gets a high recommendation from me.

The Affair by Lee Child

The Affair is the best Lee Child novel I’ve read. The setting is a flash back to 1997 when the Jack Reacher character is a Major in the Army’s military police. By flashing back, the author provides valuable character development for his famed Jack Reacher that I’ve felt lacking in his previous works.

Major Jack Reacher is ordered to Carter Crossing, MS, a small town near Fort Kelham. Fort Kelham is an Army base for training some elitist ranger squadrons. A young woman has been raped and murdered and Reacher is to be the Army undercover guy outside the base. He is to interact with the local authorities and subtly convince them that Army personnel are innocent of the crime, whether they are or not. Yet from Reacher’s record he has no history of subtlety. His approach has always been direct and his style ‘nothing but the truth.’ So, this assignment makes him think he is somehow a political scapegoat and his Army career may be in jeopardy.

Sheriff Elizabeth Deveraux immediately recognizes Reacher as the Army infiltrator when he arrives in Carter Crossing. She is a former USMC MP and had been expecting the tactic from the Army. She is also a beautiful single woman the same age as Reacher. Mutual professional respect and a strong physical attraction quickly advances to a sexual relationship yet they remain suspicious of each other’s motives. Reacher learns there were two other young women raped and murdered in Carter Crossing both Black and both ignored by the Army. Reacher also discovers a volunteer militia group attempting to protect the Army but unknown to Fort Kelham’s leadership. High level politics are at play.

Through further investigation Reacher learns the most likely suspect for the murders is Captain Reed Riley. He has the reputation for fraternizing with the prettiest young ladies, was stationed at Fort Kelham at the time of all three murders, and dated all three. He is also the son of U.S. Senator Carlton Riley, who is the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Yet Reacher’s Army superiors keep feeding him evidence that points to Sheriff Deveraux as the murderer. Her military history and conditions surrounding her discharge come into question. Reacher must make his own judgments and act in his vigilante style to save face for the Army and bring the true villains to justice.

Lee Child has a true talent for building and maintaining suspense; holds your attention and compels you to read on. His Jack Reacher character is perilous not just for his infallible combat skills but for his confidence in his own judgments and eagerness to act on them, legal or not. He acts as judge, jury and executioner and we applaud him for it. Great fiction!

From East Coast Don:

Thought I'd add my $0.02 here rather than as a comment. I agree with Midwest Dave that this is one of the best Reacher books to date. I've read the entire series and like any series there are some hits and some misses. I'd be hard pressed to say which Reacher books weren't first rate, but Child's venturing back (like Vince Flynn did in his last Mitch Rapp book) was a welcome diversion from the Reacher as vagabond savior to the latest in a long line of locally oppressed. Actually wish Child would venture into Reacher's military past more often. This one is not to be missed. I still have the question I've posed in other posts - with all the Reacher books having been optioned to Hollywood, just who in the hell would play Reacher? Know any 6'5" 225-250# actors looking for a lead role as one serious alpha dog?

Louise's War by Sarah Shaber

Spring, 1942 in Washington, D.C. Louise Pearlie is a supervisory file clerk in the newly created OSS, the predecessor to the CIA. She's a late 20's widow from Wilmington, NC. Her best friend from junior college, Rachael Bloch, lives in Vichy, France with her husband, an expert on ocean currents and geography, especially north Africa - ground zero for an allied invasion. And they want out in advance of the Nazi's arrival in Vichy.

Louise learns of Rachel's plight and tries to find a way to get the OSS special projects folks to sneak the family out. She quietly asks her boss about moving them up the visa list. But fat guy that he is, he dies suddenly of a heart attack and the file disappears. Louise sets out trying to find the file. Failing that, she'll try to reconstruct the file. And just maybe she'll find out who took the file and why.

So our heroine tries to get her hands on info through the DC party circuit, Director Donovan's inner circle, friends in her boarding house, a mysterious boarder from Prague she has the hots for, all the while thinking the FBI is on to her little investigation.

Sarah Shaber is a local Raleigh writer who wrote the 5 book Simon Shaw series, all reviewed here. The cover blurb says this is the first of a new series by Shaber. The same blurb used adjectives like cozy, comfortable, and charming - all very accurate. This short book could easily read over a lazy weekend. Nice story, but I think I liked the Simon Shaw series better.

East Coast Don

The Day Before Midnight

Maybe this was a good thriller when it was written in 1989, but 22 years later, it’s an old story line. It had been a while since I read Hunter, one of my favorite authors (think Bob Lee Swagger), but I’ve reached too far into the past. It’s a story about terrorists taking over a U.S. based nuclear missile silo with the intent on starting WWIII, and coming out victorious so they can rule the world. In 2011, it may still be a possible thing, but we’ve heard variations on the theme too many times. Hunter does his usual great job in presenting interesting and believable characters, and the plot evolves in a plausible and rapid manner. Alas, it’s just too dated and trite.

Swan Peak

This is another Detective Dave Robicheaux story, but this time, he’s moved out of venue. Instead of the usual Louisiana scene, Dave and his wife Molly have taken time off for the summer. They’ve gone to Montana to hunt and fish on the ranch of a friend, and they’ve taken along Clete Purcell, one of Dave’s oldest and best friends. What Burke does so well is write about seriously emotionally damaged people. Both Dave and Clete have PTSD from their Vietnam days, and Clete’s is even worse than Dave’s. Clete has not gone the way of AA, cannot keep a relationship, and his violent tendencies keep him from staying in a job. He had one been Dave’s beat partner on the New Orleans Police Department, but after losing that job due to his unrestrained violence, Clete became a PI. Dave and Molly have taken Clete to Montana, hopefully to give him a chance to clear his head, to sober up. But, it does not work out that way. Burke writes so clearly about what it’s like to have PTSD, I wonder if he is not a sufferer of that condition. He writes with equal insight into alcoholism. The other important characters in this book are psychopaths, and Burke knows them well, too. This is a story about multiple murders that take place. First the college couple is found mutilated, then the older Hollywood twosome are killed in a truck stop. There’s more, and the cast of characters is good. As the book evolves, there are really so many bad people involved, that the serial murderer could be any of them, and the identity of that person is not revealed until near the end of the book. Burke uses the book to spin some of his own philosophy. So, in an attempt to get away from trouble, of course Dave and Pete walk right into it. There is a collision of truly deranged characters with those who are only partially bent. Burke has Robicheaux think, “I’m not sure I believe in Karma, but as one looks back over the aggregate of his experience, it seems hard to deny the patterns of intersection that seem to be at work in our lives, in the same way it would be foolish to say that the attraction of metal filings to a magnet’s surface is a result of coincidence.” In describing one of the psychopaths, at the character’s funeral, Burke writes, “Quince Whitley had probably been a misogynist, if not a misanthrope, and his mourners represented elements in our cultures whose existence we either deny or whose origins we have difficulty explaining.” Finally, regarding Dave’s struggle with sobriety, this main character says, “The desire is always there – in my sleep, in the middle of a fine day, in the middle of a rainstorm. It doesn’t matter. It’s always there.” I will keep James Lee Burke in my power rotation of authors.

Tropical Depression by Laurence Shames

So why is Murray Zemelman so depressed he is considering suicide? He's the Bra King - the leading producer of, you guessed it, bras. He's married to one of his models, spends his days looking at, designing, and marketing certain female assets. And he's taking enough Prozac to perk up a Clydesdale. So, instead of sucking down the carbon monoxide in his garage, he tears off for . . .

Key West where he pays 6 months advance for a penthouse and decides to take up fishing . . . no deals, no pressure, just he and the fish. Problem is, he has no clue how. Watching this Indian, Tommy Tarpon, gives him some clues. And he plays cards with a bunch of old farts and a Florida state senator. He also wants to see if Franny, his first wife now living in Sarasota, will consider dropping in.

But Murray is getting bored. He needs a deal. While chatting it up with the Indian fisherman, he learns that Tommy Tarpon is the last living member of a small Florida tribe, the Matalatchee. But he's not the only guy looking at a deal. Our senator accepted campaign money from a connected guy who wants to open a casino in Key West, but so far hasn't been able to deliver the goods and Charlie Ponte ain't happy. No he isn't.

Tommy is bitter toward the Whites, so Murray sees the deal he needs and starts the process to get the Matalatchee recognized by the US of A in order to partner up to open their own casino and stick it to the Man. Once that process starts, the Senator tells Ponte who tries to lean hard on Tommy Tarpon to accept him as his partner, but Tommy politely passes.

Franny comes down for the recognition ceremony, Tommy turns Ponte down getting Franny kidnapped, but Murray orchestrates a distraction at the exchange (a boat load of models in lingerie, of course) and they they retreat to a small island to hash out a plan to draw out the Senator and Ponte so that Tommy can protect his Sovereign Island nation.

My brother-in-law lives in Tampa and has read a number of Shames's books, recommending him to me and glad he did. Call Shames "Carl Hiaasen lite". Surely everyone knows humorist Hiaasen who writes about the rape of Florida by developers and crooked politicians. If the other books by Shames follow this trend, the sleezebags are transplants from the north and (surprise, surprise) politicians trying to get a piece of Key West.

And funny. Having just returned from a week at the NC Outer Banks, I would have to say that any of the Key West series by Shames are excellent examples of a beach read. Funny mystery? Mysterious humor? Who cares. If you like Hiaasen, you will like Shames.

East Coast Don

The Coldest Winter

I’m still in Korea and I’ve continued to read a bit more about the history of his country. This was Halberstam’s last book, the 21st of 21, a 10-year work that was finished in 2007. This is a nonfiction work. He had just turned in his final manuscript, when five days later, he was killed in a car crash in California where he was on his way to an interview for his next book. He was a journalist and author, one of our best contemporary historians (and I don’t think that’s an oxymoronic phrase). Much of this book was a bit too tedious for me, a tight and well-written history of “The Forgotten War,” the Korean War. It would serve as a great textbook on the subject. The best part was the end, the last two chapters, the epilogue, the author’s note, and an afterword by Russell Baker. Chapter 10 was entitled “The General and The President.” It beautifully reviewed the conflict between very unpopular Truman and nearly deified McArthur, the conflict leading to McArthur’s dismissal, and then McArthur’s famous farewell speech to a joint session of Congress. Chapter 11 was entitled, “The Consequences.” Halberstam’s analysis of Korea and the effect it had on the politics of Vietnam is insightful. His review of politics and policies of the Democrats and Republicans through the 50s and 60s was excellent. He wrote, “In a stunningly short time, South Korea had morphed itself into a dynamic, highly productive, extremely successful democracy. ‘I cannot think of another country, at least in recent history, that went so swiftly from an authoritarian system to a democracy on its own,’ a member of the party of Roh Tae Woo, a truly democratically elected president of Korea, once told Frank Gibney. In the South the great success had come because the top of the political hierarchy had been forced, no matter how reluctantly, to pay attention to the needs and aspirations of the bottom and middle of the society.” At a time that the middle class of America is feeling that it’s been sold out to corporate greed, and at a time of people occupying Wall Street as a demonstration against such, maybe Halbertson’s words will bring hope to their demands to be noticed and more fairly represented.

The Tehran Initiative

Simply put, this was a contest between the allegedly good forces of Christianity and the evil forces of Islam. The author repeatedly quotes the Bible and states that giving one’s life over to Jesus will allow you to be saved. During the story, so called good Muslims are saved when they accept Jesus into their hearts. Characters who are skeptical of Christianity are suddenly converted under skeptical circumstances. If you’re a militant Christian, and our history is abundant with them, or if you’re a Christian bigot, or if you just find yourself, for no reason at all, wanting to kick some Muslim butt, then this book is for you. Rosenberg does create good characters, and this book builds on the ones he wrote about in his prior six books in this series. He sets up a reasonable story line, but the Christianity theme is too thick. I was tempted to quit before I got halfway through this one, but I obsessively plowed through to the end. After reading several Rosenberg books, I’m ready not to read the next one.

To Try Men's Souls

I decided to throw a bone to the right coast, right wing, wrong-headed writer, East Coast Don, with whom I share this blog. Midwest Dave will get a pass on these current comments. The bone – a choice to read a novel by ultimate right wing guy, Newt Gingrich. The choice is born from the philosophy of learning from the enemy, i.e., Patton read Rommel’s book. I mean, I even searched out the works of Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz in an attempt to understand why they thought we should invade Iraq. That effort only further convinced me that they were either delusional or just liars. But, I digress.

This novel was not much of a political work. Mostly, it was just some good propaganda about our first president and Thomas Paine, who was the best American propagandist ever and our first great battle correspondent. This story does a good job reliving the first six months of the revolution, from the Declaration of Independence on 7/4/1776 through the battle at Trenton which took place on 12/26/76. After an early victory in Boston, the Continental Army had one defeat after another until their unlikely victory at Trenton when they routed the Hessians. Newt (we’re on a first-name basis) presents the idea that if Washington had lost at Trenton, that the revolution would have been lost right then. I doubt that is true, but it would have taken a long while to recover from a defeat, if it had occurred. I clearly remember the stories about Washington crossing the Delaware to get to Trenton, but I did not remember the horrific conditions in which he did so or the battle-weary, sorry state of his troops who made the crossing with him. The battle showed remarkable heroism by Washington and his troops, no doubt. It was worthwhile to review the early details of the revolution and the difficulties that the colonists were facing. I thought Newt got pretty schmaltzy at times, especially with regard to the speeches that Washington gave to encourage the troops, but his leadership skills must have been impressive. It is also an understatement to say those were dire times. Overall, while it was far from being a great book, it was a good historical fiction and a good read.

Adrenaline by Jeff Abbott

Sam and Lucy Capra have a great life. Both work in the CIAs London office and are expecting a baby boy. Sure, he does some undercover work as a smuggler trying to track down a money launderer who works with some rogue governments, but his job is all about manipulating bad guys for information. Hasn’t been dangerous so far.

Sam has to present some updates at a company meeting when his wife calls in a panic telling him to get out of the building immediately. He does on the pretense of a bad cell connection and when he hits the street, the building blows up taking out the entire office at this location. And Sam sees his wife being whisked away in a car. The ensuing investigation focuses on Sam and his wife because they survived. But Sam is taken into custody to a number of different safe houses where he is questioned, beaten, and tortured. Only one conclusion makes sense. Sam may be clean, but clearly Lucy isn’t, meaning Sam was both blinded by love and used by whatever enemy she works for. It’s a cabal calling itself Novem Soles (9 Suns) bent in creating anarchy.

Essentially under house arrest in NYC, Sam works as a bartender and is watched round the clock. Combine months of that with being sure that Lucy hadn’t been turned, Sam works up a plan to shed his watchers, stowaway on a freighter to Rotterdam and start looking for Lucy and her captors.

In Rotterdam and then Amsterdam, Sam meets up with Mila, a member of the mysterious Round Table, who says she can help Sam but he has to help her first to save the daughter of some hot shot industrialist whose daughter has been kidnapped and turned a la Patty Hurst. Begrudgingly, he agrees and sets out on a roller coaster ride of bad guys, terrorists, murderers, blackmailers, and double crossers who get in his way, all the while being aided, guided, and mentored by Mila.

The grieving father makes weapons and he has a doozy. A process where a person’s DNA can be coded into a bullet making it a hand fired guided missile – the perfect weapon for an assassin or sniper. Sam finds computer files with 50 sets of DNA for the weapon.

My biggest issue was Mila. She turns up everywhere with the ability to get Sam out of any jam using anything from her telescoping club to a Glock to poison to the skills to hack into any network and connections virtually everwhere. I read her as a vehicle that allows Sam to make leaps of faith for the reader. The whole contorted plot just kept getting a bit hard to handle or believe. I know thriller fiction is supposed to be escapism, but a little bit can go a long way. Abbott is a 3-time Edgar nominee, but even with that pedigree, I’m guessing it’ll be a while before I look up another Abbott offering. Can’t please everyone.

East Coast Don

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

This is a non-fiction work about North Koreans. The author, Barbara Demick, was living in Seoul as the correspondent for the LA Times, and she interviewed six people who had successfully escaped from North Korea and made their way to South Korea. These people did not just sneak through the DMZ and cross directly into South Korea. Rather, they fled from Chongjin, a city in the far north, across the border with China. Demick reviewed the history of the peninsula and its partition at the end of WWII as a political solution to the conflicts with China and Russia. No one in the U.S. really knew what to do with this country which had been a colony of Japan since Korea was invaded in 1910. Japan lost their colony as a part of their defeat. Then, after only five years of peace, North Korea invaded the South, starting the 3-year Korean War. Demick described how, in the beginning, even into the early 60s, it looked like the North Korean economy would do much better than the South. But, their leader, Kim Il-Sung, and his son who took control in 1994, Kim Jong-Il, were focused on things other than what would best comfort their people, for example, developing their own nuclear arsenal. She described the propaganda machine that Kim Il-Sung created and the harsh methods he used to lock up his country, so no one could get in or out. This is a riveting tale of famine and loss, survival and success. The book belongs in our blog because of the incredible stories of hardship that have been overcome, all well-told by the author. By reading this book, I have a much better understanding of the problems of dealing with this truly rogue state. It helps that I’m in South Korea at the moment, but it would be a good read anywhere. I was able to ask our guide on a day in Seoul, a 50-year-old woman who is a native of South Korea, if she perceived a threat from the North. She nearly shook as she nodded her assent that she thought Kim Jong-Il was a dangerous leader who represented an unpredictable threat with nuclear potential. After reading the book, I understand why she feels that way. This one gets my highest recommendation.

The Blue Zone by Andrew Gross

The author has co-authored six books with James Patterson (Judge and Jury, Jester, etc), and he has some of his own novels. He’s probably best known for “Eyes Wide Open.” Benjamin Raab was a gold trader who had a most lucrative business that allowed him and his family to live elite lives. He seemed to be a dedicated family man, until his life fell apart. Suddenly, the FBI confiscated the contents of his office and charged him with money laundering for a Columbian drug cartel. His family which included a devoted wife, two daughters, and a son, were dumbfounded. They knew the head of their household as nothing other than an upstanding, honest, and dedicated man. But, all was not as it seemed. At first, Raab was going to fight the charges, but then he caved in and made a plea bargain. In exchange for admitting his own wrong doing and testifying against the cartel’s leaders, he and his family were put in the federal witness protection program. They even got to keep enough of the family assets to continue to live a lifestyle not much different than what they had before. But, uprooting a family is not easy for teenagers. The oldest daughter, an academic star who was living with her med school boyfriend in NY City, refused to go along. That meant she and the family, whose identify was being changed, could no longer see each other. But, outside the witness protection program, she was easily found and targeted by the cartel which was not about to let Raab go unpunished, even if they could not find and kill him. Besides, the witness protection program had been penetrated, and the agent who was in charge of Raab was brutally murdered, obviously to extract information. There were lots of twists and turns in this plot, which is normally a good thing, but in this book, perhaps there were a bit too many serpentine plot changes. It was a fast read and the characters were believable, even if the dialogue got a bit trite and ridiculous at times. I’ll probably give Gross another chance.

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

Why did I choose to read this book? For one thing, I’m in Asia (Korea) and I’ve been reading about Buddhism, two books not reviewed in the blog (The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D., and Awakening the Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das). Yesterday, I visited a Buddhist temple, actually the headquarters for Korean Buddhism. The book was already in my Kindle library and the title seemed relevant. And, it has consistently gotten high marks by Amazon as one of the better historical fictions written this year. The book is about the hardships the Japanese suffered in the process of immigrating to the U.S., and of course, it also focused a bit on the hardships at home that drove them to seek a better life. This story focused on the women who were lured to America to find husbands, men who were terribly misrepresented to them by people who were paid by the number of women they could seduce into going. The time period covered was from the early 1900s through WWII and the internment camps. For most, it was a brutal journey at every step. The author was clever in presenting the information, and it was very readable. But, as an American history student, I knew about this period and the hardships of the Japanese – I didn’t learn anything new. If you’re ignorant to this aspect of American immigration, then it’s worth reading. I think the title reference to Buddha in the Attic had to do with leaving their culture and religion behind, hiding it away as a part of the effort to fit into a society that was so hard to comprehend and which treated them so badly. On the whole, it does not get my recommendation because it is too nakedly brutal. This was realism well done, not escapist literature.

The Dummy Line by Bobby Cole

This is a first novel for Bobby Cole, and he deserves to be rated highly in our blog. His venue is Alabama-Mississippi, the deep woods. Jake Crosby is a good guy who may have grown a bit distant from his wife, but he’s crazy about his 9-year-old daughter Katy. She’s a tomboy who gets to go with her dad on a turkey hunting trip, great for father-daughter bonding, except when they encounter the sociopath, Johnny Lee Grover and his rough pals. This wasn’t supposed to be a solo trip, but Jake’s hunting buddy decided spending time with his new wife was a better option for the weekend than getting up early and hanging out in a shooting house in the wilderness with another guy and his little girl. Thrown into the mix of characters are high school lovers, Tanner Tillman and Elizabeth Beasley, who need to find a remote site to spend some romantic time together. You can see the collision of story lines. Cole also blends in a mix of great cop characters, some good guys and one you love to hate. Deputy R. C. Smithson is a comic side-kick to Sheriff Ollie Landrum, the way Barnie Fife was to Andy Griffith. There was as much action in the first third of this book as in most of the books that we read. It was a good and entertaining vacation book. It gets my recommendation.

Out of Range by C.J. Box

The badge number of a Wyoming Game Warden is a ranking of their seniority in the system. Will Jensen is #4 and oversees the district that includes Jackson Hole. Paranoia and depression have destroyed his marriage before he finally ate a .44 magnum bullet. The state asks Joe Pickett to fill in until a permanent replacement can be found and he reluctantly agrees to the assignment.

When Joe arrives in Jackson, he quickly learns that he has stepped into a world of political hurt that seems to swirl around a planned development that needs one last signature, Jensen, to break ground. And Jensen wasn't going to sign as the plans blocked elk migration routes.

The development is the brainchild of Don Ennis who wants to not only put up million dollar homes but to also make the community part of the good meat movement, which raises their own stock, slaughters, and sells their 'pure' meat to the residents. With Jensen dead, Joe must sign off on a project that has the approval of the governor on down. The biggest mouthpiece against the project is the legendary outfitter Smoke van Horn who has his own issues with the wildlife folks, Jensen in particular.

Pickett tries to get up to speed on his new assignment by reading Jensen's log books, but the last one is missing. Now Joe has to make the rounds of the camps run by outfitters to check on licenses, permits, etc. so he packs up a couple horses and starts out for about a week. Once he gets to the state house in the wilderness kept for wardens, he finds Jensen's last log book and all the details about his slowly deteriorating mind.

He makes a wrong turn that takes him up a high ridge that, when he looked down on a meadow, spots Smoke placing salt blocks meant to lure elk for a easy shot by their mountain man wannabes. Joe takes some photos and continues on to the state house. That evening Smoke shows up and starts into it with Joe and knows that Joe will have to arrest him and he will then lose his license and livelihood. The next morning, Smoke shows up drunk, armed, and ready to take Joe out. As they face each other down, Smoke raised his gun, fires and Joe returns fire with his shotgun killing Smoke, killing the one man he's met whom he really understood.

Ennis thinks it easy sailing now until Joe says he won't sign off either so Ennis reaches out to the governor to add more pressure. After reading Jensen's log, he realizes that Ennis is behind Jensen's death and cooks up a scheme to get Ennis to admit to his crimes.

CJ Box was introduce to MRB by Midwest Dave with added support by WCDon. Add me to the list. I've read a bunch of man against the wilderness books and Box is added to my list with a single read. Michael Connelly wrote a cover blurb saying Box was in the mold of Tony Hillerman. High praise, but Hillerman took us deep into a foreign culture - Navaho nation. And the lack of that 'new world' link will, for the time being, keep Box a rung below Hillerman.

I did find one common thread. The bad guy is this book is a developer, just like Carl Hiaasen's books set in Florida. But I doubt that developers will show up book after book like Hiaasen. Also, I read an author's acknowledgements and have found a couple other titles used by Box in his research that I'll pursue.

Nonetheless, count me in. Box is a welcome addition to all of us here at MRB. Won't be long before the 3 of use will have run through them all.

East Coast Don

Abyss by David Hagberg

Kirk McGarvey is 18 months post assassination of his wife, daughter, and son-in-law and now trains newbies for the nuclear emergency response team. On a routine day of training in Miami, a nuclear power plant in Florida is hit by a highly trained operative, with inside help, who is attempting to start a meltdown. McGarvey and the local security manage to minimize the damage, but lives are lost nonetheless.

Eve Larson, a Princeton climatologist, has an idea. Sort of turn a windmill upside down, sink it in the Gulf Stream and let the currents spin the turbine and generate electricity. Can't miss - free energy with zero emissions that might even stabilize ocean temps thereby minimizing violent storms. She was there the day the terrorist tried to destroy the power station. If the damn thing works, oil, and all the people who speculate on future prices, are in for a big surprise. So the Saudis and the Venezuelans quietly back, through a number of back doors, a contract to make sure Dr. Larson's project never works out.

The US gov't can't overtly support her lest OPEC screw 'em, but they lean on an oil company who just happens to have an oil platform, due to be mothballed, to donate it to Dr. Larsen, tow it from the Gulf of Mexico around to the NE coast of Florida, rig it up to accept her impellers so that she can replace the power lost when the nuke plant went down. The terrorist prepares his team with plans to send the rig to the bottom of the gulf.

All the while a evangelical nutcase, who fancies himself running for President, takes on Big Nuclear Power as his calling, getting his flock to demonstrate against Dr. Larson and her project. Claims she is messing with God's plan. Multiple attempts are made on Dr. Larson, she has a mole on her staff, and McGarvey is there each time to keep the bad guys at bay.

I am wondering if I'm cooling on Hagberg and McGarvey. This was a long book, nearly 500 pages and there just seemed to be one too many implausible leaps of logic, at least to me. I think I'll have to really rethink whether I return.

This may be a first . . . an author dropping off my power rotation. Guess it was bound to happen sometime.