The Drop

This is the 15th and most recent Harry Bosch novel, and it was written in 2011. Harry and his partner David Chu are working in the Open-Unsolved Unit which goes after convictions on cold cases based on new DNA hits. Their new case is about the death of Lily Price who was 19 years old when she was snatched off the street in Venice, California, raped, tortured, and murdered in 1989. But the blood from the scene, which had always been thought to be that of the killer is newly linked to a man who was only 8 years old at the time of the killing. Did the detectives at the time screw up the evidence? Did the lab contaminate something? No. The blood did belong to young Clayton Pell who was in the government’s data base because, as an adult man, he had become a convicted child molester, a predator himself. At the time of the murder 22 years before, Pell was being physically and sexually abused by a man known only as Chill. The same belt that Chill used to strangle Lily was the same one that he had used to whip Pell. Of course it took a while for Bosch and Chu to figure it out. Bosch does not trust or approve of Chu, so these partners are on the rocks with each other throughout the book. Chill turns out to be a serial-killing monster. The whole matter is complicated by the involvement of Irvin Irving and his son George. Irvin, on the city counsel, has long been an enemy of the LAPD and has been influential in forcing through budget cuts. His son, a former cop and lawyer, was an influence peddler, mostly selling his dad’s influence. Connelly expertly intertwines those story lines. “The Drop” is a double entendre. On the one hand, it refers to the LAPD’s Deferred Retirement Option Plan which might allow Harry to continue in his role as LAPD’s best detective for an extra five years. On the other hand, it refers to George Irvin’s “drop” from the 7th story of the Chateau Marmont. The senior Irving, despite his negative past with Bosch, insists that Bosch be the lead detective on the case in order to prove that his son had not committed suicide, but Harry learns a lot more than what the old man wanted him to find. There are some good minor subplots with excellent characters, including Harry’s smart 15-year-old daughter and Pell’s therapist, a possible but damaged love interest for Harry. This was a very good book, a very fast read. It gets my strong recommendation.

Blood Trail by C.J. Box

Now I don't know the details of the Joe Pickett's backstory like how he got to be so buddy-buddy with the Governor, what he did to get his duty station yanked and assigned to the Governor's office, and importantly how he developed a friendship with Nate Romanowski and what did Nate do end up in jail. I just jumped in and held on tight.

The game warden's office is funded primarily through hunting and fishing licenses. And that could be a problem because the Governor has shut down hunting in Wyoming.

Three hunters have been killed. While the first 2 could be considered as accidents, the third rules out accidental death. The third guy was shot, strung up like an elk, gutted, and his head removed. A red poker chip was under the carcass in the grass. And upon further review, a poker chip was found with the other two.

The fish and game boss is so spooked he abandons his office to head up the investigation and brings a friend, 'someone I can trust' (he couldn't trust his own officers?). While tracking the shooter, the friend and another officer are shot; 5 dead. No wonder the Governor shut down hunting until the shooter is found.

Enter Klamath Moore, an animal rights activist bound to spread the gospel of Moore to the gathering media. His wife is a native American who grew up on the local reservation and was a basketball player of some note before a sick grandmother and living on the edge dragged her down into the dumps until she met up with Klamath.

The Governor inserts Joe into the investigation that includes Fish and Game, local cops, and the FBI. While all eyes are on Moore's entourage, Joe's instincts say otherwise and manages to finagle the Governor agreeing to let Nate Romanowski out of jail to help Joe get to where the law can't be expected to operate. And no sooner does Joe get Nate into the search area, Nate disappears and Joe is in everyone's doghouse for not having solved the case and for losing Nate. The boss is nervous, the Governor is under pressure, Moore is crowing about the hunters getting what they deserved and the best bet for a solution is Pickett's former boss who happens to be biding his time in prison (more missing backstory) and wants his sentence commuted in exchange for his testimony. Be careful what you wish for former Mr. Warden . . . Nate is still out of jail.

This is only my 2nd Joe Pickett book, but this was one of the better mystery stories I've read recently. The locale, the detail, the plotting, and twists all remind us why Box is an Edgar winner and NYT bestseller. How in the world did we miss him?

What else is there to say? Can you say power rotation? Thanks to Midwest Dave for the introduction to Box.

East Coast Don

Full Black by Brad Thor

Full Black picks up where Foreign Influence left off. The shadowy Charlton Group, a group that operates way, way under the radar of governmental oversight, has hired Scot Harvath.

Harvath’s team has caught a very high placed Islamic terrorist in Yemen, tucking him into Harvath's trunk. As they clean up, the car is destroyed by an RPG.

The second in command runs his cell out of Uppsala, Sweden. Harvath’s team intercepts a new member of the cell and plant one of their own inside. After learning of the cell’s safe house, the team prepares for the takedown only to hit a snag (I’m minimizing a lot of things here) sending Harvath home to wallow in his own self doubt.

Meanwhile . . .

Larry Solomon, a big time Hollywood producer, and a couple young documentarians are putting together a film that traces the activities of James Standing, the mega billionaire head of a hedge fund that has been handing the investments of the most politically extreme lobbying groups. After a typical Hollywood schmooze-fest, the drunk producer and his friend-bodyguard find the 2 filmmakers dead in Solomon's home with Russian Spetznatz agents looking to finish the job. They hadn’t counted on the friend/bodyguard being ex-SEAL . . .

. . . A senior MI5 agent who arranged the hit is trying to find out what happened in Uppsala because he answers to the Sheik of Qatar who seems to be pulling all the string and the Sheik ain't happy.

The hedge fund boss, Standing, is a committed globalist, bent on bringing down the US in order to remake the world according to his vision. To do so, he uses a Chinese directive he stole called ‘unrestrictive warfare’. The Chinese feel they will have to face down the US, but can’t match US firepower head to head and devise a plan to attack the US across multiple fronts by taking out the power grid, the internet, transportation, the stock market, and more to paralyze the US economy and will at home. Standing decides to start with multiple massed attacks on American safe havens starting with a coordinated attack on dozens and dozens of movie theaters.

Harvath, now aided by The Troll from Foreign Influence whom Harvath got the Charlton Group to hire, track a cell to LA where they are leading a massive attack on US airports. With the aid of Solomon’s SEAL bodyguard, Harvath learns of who hired the Russian killer team who gives up the MI5 agent who in turn gives up the Sheik.

380 pages . . . 24 hours. Think I liked it? Full Black start fast and picks up speed with each chapter. Some readers might not like some of Thor’s pontificating and what might be considered judgmental preaching. For example, justifying Harvath as judge, jury, and executioner (chapter 24), a Cliff’s Notes version of the concept of globalization (actually thought this was informative as I’ve never really thought much about it) vs capitalism (Chapter 32), the US right or wrong (Chapter 35). But even those rip right along without missing a beat.

Make no mistake, this is a right wing, testosterone-laced, political action thriller and one’s personal politics shouldn’t be the reason for picking this up or passing. Action thrillers are about action, politics be damned. Authors stays on my power rotation based on ‘what had you done for me recently.’ Thor has been an appointment read ever since The Lions of Lucerne, and except for one hiccup (Athena Project), remains entrenched in my power rotation.

East Coast Don

Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock

This is a real town, or rather a collection of decrepit shacks and trailers, in southern Ohio, just SW of Chilichothe, maybe 70 miles straight south of Columbus (home of THE Ohio State University) and probably a half hour north of Portsmouth, which sits on the Ohio River. Yes, it really does exist even though this is entirely fiction.

Pollock has assembled a series of interconnected short stories about the people who live in and around Knockemstiff, a place where “the hillbillies wouldn’t watch a TV show that had blacks on it.” Best I can tell, it begins in the 50s or 60s and runs up to about the 1990s, but the presentation is not chronological, nor does it need to be.

We open up a recount of Vern, a loud, uncouth papermill worker, his wife and 7 yo son Bobby at a drive-in theater. This is where Bobby sees his dad pick a fight in the canteen can with some bigger guy and damn near kill him right there in the toilet. The vic’s son, older than Bobby, tries to intervene and Bobby does his level best to keep the other kid out of the melee. On the way back to the car, Vern says to Bobby “You did good.” Bobby would remember this as “the only goddamn thing my old man said to me that I didn’t try to forget.”

Pollock then takes us through random acts of the locals. Like the 15yo kid who wanders along a creek, witnesses incest between neighbors slightly younger than he, decides he wants in, whacks the kid, takes the girl, drowns her, stuffs them in a small cave, and continues on with his life.

Those are just 2 of the 18 stories in this book. Characters go in and out of the tales, but each chapter is an end unto itself. Considering the behavior and actions of the locals, one would think that the inbreeding comes from the same tree that doesn’t branch. These people are some of the lowest, most degenerate, disgusting, dirty, mean, criminal people on the planet. They eat the 4 primary food groups: processed cheese, toast, baloney, fish sticks followed with a dessert of Oxy washed down with anything liquid that is handy. And if it isn’t Oxy, they might be sniffing Bactine from a plastic bag.

“Forgetting our lives might be the best we can do” sort of sums up what each of the characters do with their time. They all seem to “crave junk food the way a baby craves a tit.” And it’s not just the characters that seem to have risen out of the brine of the earth’s belly because “the damp gray sky covered southern Ohio like the skin on a corpse.”

As the decades pass, the locals fall prey to their own misdeeds like the guy with the metal plate in his head, the kid who sniffed too much junk and now does little more than scratch at his scalp, the 2 teenagers who keep trying to get a third laid (so he would be constantly berated by his dad for being a virgin), Vern has had 3 heart attacks and sits stuck to his fake leather easy chair, some grandfather who is still reliving Korea but refuses to wear adult diapers. One slowly decaying slug has an epiphany of sorts when he realizes, “that anything I do to extend my life is just going to be outweighed by the agony of living it.”

Pollock apparently grew up in the region and worked the paper mill and other hard labor jobs, but has worked his way into an MFA program in creative writing at Ohio University in nearby Athens (full disclosure: I have degrees from both Ohio U and THE Ohio State University). One would have to consider that if the author gets high praise from Chuck Palahniuk that it would have to be pretty strange . . . and addicting . . . but still very strange.

So, should one willingly choose to pick up a book about desperate souls whose only glimpse of hope is tied up in movie mags who shiver in a nothing town of tilted trailers and abandoned cars hard by the dump, who get so sick from eating real food that they have the squirts in an alley only to get humiliated by local cops, all for some Oxy stolen from a nursing home? Only if you are afraid of being drawn into this sometimes violent and downright shitty world where Robert Earle Keen’s ‘Merry Christmas From The Family’ could be the God’s honest truth. If so, you might be missing one of the more literate presentations of (yes, I’ll say it) literature based in “a place people had grown up in, but never felt like home.”

East Coast Don

Feast Day of Fools

This is the third of three novels with Sheriff Hackberry Holland as the protagonist. Hackberry, or Hack, is a very interesting but fault-laden hero. A veteran, not of Vietnam, but of Korea, he’s got a bad case of PTSD. At least he’s gained some measure of control over his alcoholism and lust for prostitutes. But he continues to struggle with nightmares and flashbacks to the war. His past intermittently haunts him, and having treated hundreds of cases of PTSD, Burke does a pretty good job of representing that condition. This book is a direct follow-up to Rain Gods, which was previously and favorably posted in the blog. Hack is now nearly 80 years old, but still serving as the elected sheriff of his county. The most evil guy you’ve ever heard of, Preacher Jack Collins, reappears. He was presumed dead at the end of Rain Gods, but now he’s back. Like Burke has done before, he throws a myriad of psychopaths at the reader, each with a different take on the current drama, whose story lines eventually crash into each other in unexpected ways. Hack’s deceased wife is a constant presence for him and serves as a nice source of tension in his interactions with Deputy Pam Tibbs, who previously was nearly killed by Collins, and with Anton Ling, one of the main players in the story. Ling provides Burke with the mechanism to write about Mexicans who sneak into the U.S. and the hardships they face in doing so. The action unfolds in the stretch of flat barren lands that spans Texas and Mexico. Burke does a good job with surprising changes in alliances among the characters, none of whom strike me as being “normal” folks. You don’t need to know more – it’s a good read.

Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

'Faceless Killers' was Henning Mankell’s first Kurt Wallander mystery but achieved international best seller status and was later the motivation for a BBC TV series and played on PBS Masterpiece Theater. While the storyline was very interesting and compelling, the writing was poor. I later learned it was translated from Swedish to English so perhaps it’s the translation that is lacking.

The mystery is set in Ystad, Sweden where the main character, Kurt Wallander is lead detective and interim Police Chief while his boss is away on a long holiday. Wallander is in his mid forties and disappointed where life has taken him. He struggles with loneliness because his wife unexpectedly left him and his close ties with his daughter have been severed. He has to deal with an aging, possibly senile, father and his attraction to the new female district attorney who happens to be married. Plus, he's drinking too much and putting on weight due to a steady diet of pizza and fast food.

The story begins with an elderly farmer’s discovery that his neighbors, also elderly, have been murdered. The husband has been gruesomely tortured and killed and his wife left for dead. Before she dies in the hospital, her last word is "foreign." With anti-immigrant sentiment running high already, the last thing the police need is for this to slip out to the media, but someone in the department leaks the information and suddenly refugee camps in the area are being firebombed. When a Somali refugee is killed, seemingly at random, Wallander and his staff have two highly charged cases to solve.

Yet Wallander has difficulty focusing on his work with all his personal problems. He spends much of his time brooding about the state of the world and the state of his society and he is sympathetic to the anti-immigrant mentality. He's concerned that just about anyone, even undesirable characters, can come to the country and request asylum. And, the system is ill equipped and underfunded to monitor and locate all the refugees. But tracking down the murderer of the Somali refugee is his job and he does it, even with all his personal distractions.

This book was given to me by my daughter’s friend who picked it up on the recommendation of a West Village boutique bookstore owner in NYC. As I read it I struggled with the writing and that overshadowed the message. (You know the feeling you get when two pages stick together and you are on the third or fourth line of the new page and you think, ‘I must have missed something’? Well, that kept happening…..but in the middle of the page.) But the longer it’s been since I finished this book, the more I find myself thinking about the substance of the story. From the few Europeans I know, I understand the immigration issue is a growing concern and is burdening their economies. I know holidays are very important in the European culture but are often resented by those left behind to cover. Mankell seems to point out several growing social issues but offers no solutions other than we are all in this together and must carry on. Perhaps that’s why the popularity. Now I’m sufficiently interested to try another Henning Mankell novel, hopefully a better translation next time.

Just One Look by Harlen Coben

Ordinary day. Grace Lawson drops his kids at school, picks up some art supplies and some pics from a roll of film she dropped off last week. While sitting at a stoplight, she notices a photo of 5 college students from a recent era. She shows the pic to her husband; he sure looks like one of the people in the photo. He looks, makes a call a bit later, walks out the door and disappears.

An assistant US attorney is told the death of his sister in a fire wasn't an accident. The police aren't much help, and a guy skilled at killing with his hands just got out of the joint. A lady whose kids attend the same school has a hobby - flashing her accountant neighbor - but one day sees a stranger ducking out of the accountant's house. And there must be 3 or 4 more strange coincidences that all happen when Grace gets this picture.

About 15 years ago, Grace attended the concert of rocker Johnny X. Gunshots were fired and the resulting stampeded, the so-called Boston Massacre, killed 15 people and left Grace with a huge concussion and a limp. About 2 weeks of Grace's life were summarily erased that night.

Grace doggedly pursues minor clues that eventually seem to tie the disconnected deaths together. But, to rob a line from Lee Corso from GameDay on ESPN, "Not so fast.' Coben does one of the more jaw dropping reveals in the very last couple pages, none of which were expected. Holy cow did most of the reveal come from out of nowhere even if he had been dropping hints for over 300 pages.

And that's what will keep me coming back to more Coben. Can you say Power Rotation? I sure can.

East Coast Don

Eye of Vengeance by Jonathon King

I started reading King's Max Freeman series, all (so far) of which have been favorably reviewed here. This is King's first standalone novel.

There's a skilled sniper working in South Florida. Veteran crime reporter Nick Mullins sees the results first hand when he witnesses the murder of a convicted pedophile during a routine prisoner transfer.

Now Nick has some serious demons. Three years ago, after a quarrel, his wife died in a traffic accident, killed by a drunk who is now being paroled. Nick went off the deep end for a while, but rehabbed by working, leaving his Cuban housekeeper to raise his daughter. Another parolee gets cut down in from of the parole office. Then two more.

The sniper turns out to be a SWAT team member, recently back from a tour as an Army sniper in Iraq. After some digging, soul searching, and the sharp eye of the newspaper research maven, Nick figures out that the sniper is using Nick's stories of mayhem as his observer choosing targets. But the police and the Secret Service don't buy it. They think the sniper is planning to off the Sec'y of State when she comes to Florida to make a speech. Of course they are wrong.

I really like the Max Freeman series and thought I was getting another to read on a recent trip. Nick Mullins was an intriguing character, but not as good as Max Freeman. Thank goodness that King has more Freeman stories still on the shelf, waiting for me to read.

East Coast Don

Bitterroot by James Lee Burke

I always thought Burke's main character was Dave Robicheaux, a cop in rural Louisiana. Now I've met up with Billy Bob Holland in this 2001 book.

Billy Bob is a former Texas Ranger and now a lawyer is some backwater Texas town who talks to the ghost of his former partner whom Billy Bob accidentally killed while chasing some drug mules out of their jurisdiction in Mexicon. His longtime friend and former Seal, "Doc" Voss ran away from life with his daughter when his wife died, settling outside of Bozeman, Montana. The doc invites Billy Bob up for the summer. Everybody in town hates the doc cuz he is more of an environmentalist in a town that favors progress. Not only is some company doing nasty things in some mines, but the Bitterroots are home to a white supremacist group, a 'retired' mob chief, and a sociopath that Billy Bob put in prison only to see him paroled, Wade Dixon.

To intimidate the doc, some whack jobs rape his daughter but all that does is freak him out to the point of being accused of murdering one of the perps. Billy Bob tries to help out but mostly succeeds in pissing off everyone be they perp or police or Wade Dixon.

In the end, the bad guys and strange women meet their maker, the doc and daughter reconcile, Billy Bob stops screwing locals and his investigator long enough to do some camping and fishing with his sone.

I've come to like the Robicheaux thread of stories, but I actually thought Billy Bob was a bit like Robicheaux only way more annoying, to me and to the other characters. Maybe if I'd read a Billy Bob Holland book first, I'd think differently. Next time I pick up Burke, I'll make sure it is about Deputy Dave.

East Coast Don

The Litigators by John Grisham

‘The Litigators’ is a good effort by John Grisham. He entertains with the drama of human desperation and hypocrisy and with the thrill of young idealism fighting for the underdog against foreboding big business.

David Zinc is a Harvard educated lawyer who burns out at a large downtown Chicago law firm and finds himself working in the poor suburbs at a crummy, ambulance chasing two lawyer ‘boutique’ firm. The partners at Finley & Figg are grouchy Oscar Finley and slick, unethical Wally Figg, both just scrapping by in their careers and in their lives. David tries to add some organization and direction to the firm but the partners are preoccupied; Oscar with an unhappy marriage and Wally with get rich quick schemes and the bottle. Wally’s latest scheme involves suing a mega pharmaceutical company for wrongful death caused by one of their cholesterol lowering wonder drugs. With no trial experience by any of the Finley & Figg lawyers, Wally signs with a large Florida based tort law firm and makes plans to ride their coat tails to fame and fortune. The large pharmaceutical company, hires David’s former employer and prepares for battle. With little or no proof the drug in question actually caused people to die, the Florida tort firm withdraws and leaves the underfunded, under experienced boutique firm to prove their claims in federal court against an army of seasoned litigators. Threatened with malpractice and sanctions for filing a frivolous law suit, Oscar has a heart attack as the trial opens and Wally goes on a bender leaving young David as the sole plaintiff’s attorney. With limited funding for expert witnesses, the plaintiff claims of wrong doing are skillfully unraveled by the crisp, professional performance of the defendant’s lead attorney. David does manage to save face and sanctions for his firm by discrediting the pharmaceutical company on some minor points.

Meanwhile and on his own time, David meets a Burmese family whose six year old son is deathly ill from lead poisoning believed ingested from Chinese made toys. David and his wife become emotionally attached and invest in tracking down the villainous toy company. He also helps a group of illegal immigrant workers get justly compensated by an unscrupulous constructional company. David discovers real satisfaction in defending the helpless whether his clients or his coworkers.

I’ve read most everything John Grisham has written and own most of his works in hard cover. Upon completion of each novel my thoughts are always the same; his very best work was his very first novel, ‘A Time to Kill.’ I obviously enjoy all his work but I wish he would again write something as classical as his first that I equate to ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’