Obama's Wars

This was a nonfiction work by America’s foremost reporter, Bob Woodward. Through remarkable access to extensive records, much of which were classified, and extensive interviews with most of the characters involved, including President Obama, Woodward traced the time frame from Obama’s election in 11/08 through 7/10. In addition, he sometimes traveled with various U.S. delegations to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The reporting is remarkable, starting with a behind-the-scene look into the building of Obama’s team, the remarkable decision to keep Gates as the Secretary of Defense and the words he used to get Clinton to accept the position of Secretary of State. Woodward had direct access to the commanders in the field and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

This was not an easy read. The details were sometimes hour-by-hour and White House or Pentagon meeting-by-meeting, and Woodward’s writing frequently included lots of specific quotes of who said what to whom. He analyzed the impact of nearly every personality on the decision making process. So, it was sometimes a bit tedious for someone like me who is more used to reading fiction. But, this is an important work, and regardless of your opinion on the upcoming election, it will give you some insight into Obama and his decision making process that you might not get anywhere else.

The book supported my own opinion of just how stupid it was for George Bush to go into Afghanistan in the first place. Then, after Bush invaded Iraq, his neglect of the war effort in Afghanistan was staggering. Obama inherited a quagmire from which there can be no clean exit. Furthermore, the book solidified my understanding of the complications of international politics that involved not only the rivalry of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also the importance of Pakistan’s mistrust and hatred of India. If the U.S. was seen to do too much for India, then Pakistan got more restrictive of what it would allow the U.S. to do on their soil. The leaders of both Afghanistan and Pakistan were not favorably portrayed. I also came away from the book with admiration for our military and the tasks they have, but also a heightened wariness of the military’s sense of entitlement to unlimited resources and resentment towards anyone (i.e., Congress or the Executive Branch) who would curtail or deny them anything they want. We Americans are fortunate that the civilians have the ultimate control over the use of our military, because the military people are insatiable, and they see no need to limit their efforts to force decisions the way they want them to go, even if it means presenting evidence to the president that is intentionally slanted and misleading.

Woodward ended the book with details from a 75-minute discussion that he had with Obama in July 2010. The book definitely gets my recommendation, with the caveat that it’s not an easy read.

Stillwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945   by Barbara Tuchman

Published in 1970, awarded the Pulitzer prize for History,  this is a great book.  Just as relavent today as it was when published over 40 years ago, it is an insightfull look at why the United States totally botched it's relationship with what eventually became the People's Repulic of China.   The story is told through the biography of General Joseph Stillwell.

     "Vinegar Joe" was one of the most underrated soldiers of the Second World War, and he truly loved China and it's people. He first visited China in 1911, an observer to the revolution that ended the Emperor system in the country, and started a change towards democracy.  Stationed in China for the majority of his career, he saw the good and the bad from the ground up.  His constant battles with Chaing Kai-shek, and the unwillingness of the American State Department and U.S. press to see the absolute incompetance of Chaing, and his refusal to do anything that would be contrary of his staying in power, form the foundation of many of the problems we face even into the 21st Century.  George Marshall considered Stillwell his best general.  If not for the amount of time and knowlege of China and it's people, Stillwell might easily have been Marshall's choice to run Overlord and the invasion of Europe.  Given his caustic personality, that might not have gone well. On the other hand his soldiers always loved him and his successes in Burma and the building of the Ledo Road from Burma into southern China rank among the greater achievement of WWII.

     Tuchman also won  the Pulitzer for "The Guns of August", still the definitive history on the reasons for the outbreak of World War I.  She write clearly, concisely and with a great tempo.  While this is more like a textbook in it's depth and scholarship, it is worth the effort.


Vegas Bill

The Big Roads   by Earl Swift

The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionariesand Trailblazers who Created the American SuperHighways

American Road    by Pete Davies

The Story of an Epic Transcontinental Journey of the Dawn of the Motor Age

        These two books tell the opposite ends of the changing of the United States by the devopment of the highway systems. 

     AMERICAN ROAD tells the story of the first automobile transcontinental caravan.  Leaving from the White House to the finish in San Francisco, it follows 3,251 miles of single lane basic tarmac, dirt tracts, and washed out stretches. The journey was sponsored and managed by the U.S. Army. It's purpose was  "To demonstrate the practicability of long distance motor commercial transportation and the consequent necessary expenditure of government appropriations to provide necessary highways". The convoy consisted of eighty one vehicles, carrying 37 officers and 258 enlisted men. Among the officers was a 28 year old captain named Dwight Eisenhower, traveling as an observer. The journey took over two months.
     The book is entertaining, informative and a fairly easy read.  Consisting of 231 pages, plus notes, it does not go off on too many tangents mainly telling the actual story of the adventure. It does, however, lay the groundwork for Eisenhower's insistance on finding the funding of the Interstate system 35 years later.

     THE BIG ROADS tells the story of the design, building, problems solved and the problems caused by the Interstate Highway System.  The actual design of the routes for the system had been completed by 1938.  By the Truman Administration, tests an surfaces and signage had begun.  Eisenhower gets the credit ( the official name is "The Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways") because he rammed most of the funding through congress.  This book does a nice job of telling the problems of building such a vast web of highways from layout to construction to funding. While the engineers that came up with the design are lauded, the side effects created are not ignored.  Many small towns withered away because of being bypassed.  A good portion of the book is related to the destruction of neighborhoods in cities ravaged by the cement ribbons tearing through them.  This is a well balanced telling of the way America was totally changed by the Auto and roads to support them.  A little harder to go through, this book is worth the effort.

Vegas Bill

    

The Gentleman's Hour by Don Winslow

Winslow had come up in some back and forth amongst the M @ MRB. Having read only 1 of his books (Savages - sort of ending its big screen run through the theaters), I picked out this 2009 title.

Boone Daniels, High Tide, Johnny Banzai, Hang Twelve, Cheerful, Dave the Love God.

Pacific Beach surfers in San Diego. The first out each day.

The Dawn Patrol.

Once The Dawn Patrol heads in, the late arrivals wander in. More middle age, richer, own their own businesses. They can sleep in. This next shift populates The Gentleman's Hour.

Boone is a legendary surfer. Crews up and down the San Dog know Boone. Drives a beat up cargo van because "any vehicle that can't carry a surfboard is a sculpture." But EVERYONE knows Kelly Kuhio, aka K2. Hawaiian, one of the first and certainly one of the greats. K2 wasn't just "a freaking legend, he was a freaking legend." Unpretentious surf guru to anyone who rides the long boards. K2 and The Dawn Patrol hang together, especially at the Sundowner where they have standing orders for anything from breakfast to beer. They used to be waited on by Sunny, but she's moved on to the pro circuit. Now they are served by Not Sunny.

A patron of The Gentleman's Hour approaches Boone about tailing his wife. Thinks she cheating on him. Boone, a former cop, earns his keep as a PI (after each daily session with The Dawn Patrol . . . priorities, you know). Boone needs the money (what PI doesn't?) and agrees.

The Rockpile Crew is a group of surf wannabes from just north of La Jolla (which is either Spanish for 'the jewel' or Native American for 'the hole'. You decide). The Rockpile is the cove they slither in and out of. They've been bar hopping around PB looking for trouble and get into a scuffle at the Sundowner, which happens to have a volunteer group of bouncers . . . The Dawn Patrol. After getting unceremoniously ushered out, the Rockpile scum wait. The first one out is K2 who gets jumped and one Corey Blasingame lands a 'superman punch' to K2 knocking him down and his head cracks the edge of a concrete step.

The freaking legend is dead. Not just the surfing community is screaming for justice. The entire beach community and everyone who lives west of the 5 is ready to explode. Blasingame deserves the needle is the cry.

Corey comes from money. His dad is a big time SD real estate developer and hires big time legal defense, the team of which includes Boone's latest hopeful, Petra. They want Boone to look into Corey's history, friends, school, job, anything that might help with his defense. This irks Johnny Banzai to no end - Johnny's a SDPD detective who caught the K2 case and got Corey's confession. Boone's involvement with the defense team seriously tests their friendship.

The 2 cases intersect with Mexican drug cartels, a shadowy gym of MMA/white supremacists, JB's partner, a sinkhole, and a web of real estate deals, payoffs, and buyouts involving a huge chunk of San Dog's licensing departments and city council.

Being an east coast (and midwest) type who spent a year in El Lay, books about the west coast are fascinating (partly why I like Connelly and Crais so much). And while I won't put Winslow up in the rarified air those two live, I will say that Winslow is a tres entertaining story teller. His looping back and forth between the surf, MMA, and cop cultures is seamless has the ring of authenticity of one who has not just observed it, but probably lived it (the liner bio says Winslow was once a private investigator and "consultant" - whatever that means).  I can't surf - never really tried - but you can bet I'll look back on on Boone and his Dawn Patrol crew in the not too distant future.

But first, Jack Reacher is A Wanted Man and he needs my help.

East Coast Don

Area 51

An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base

 

Annie Jacobsen

      Having lived in Las Vegas all my life Area 51 is an interesting subject, and I looked forward to this book. I can remember my parents getting my sisters and I up in the middle of the night to "watch the bombs go off".  In the middle 1950's, above ground nuclear was a semi regular occurance and the shots would go off at 0400.  From our front yard, we could see the flash, and a few seconds later see the mushroom cloud appear on the horizon. Pretty neat for a 5 or 6 year old.  The Nevada Test Site was a major part of the Las Vegas economy, and the was little that we were not aware off.  My father was an Optometrist, and as the "test site guys" commuted by bus daily the 50 miles to the main gate and however much more to the actual work sites, their day was often 12-14 hours long. Therefore, the only day they could come into office was Saturday.  And Saturday was BUSY.  We had a liquor store across the street from the office and by 10:00 AM there was usually a party going on in the waiting room.  I worked as an apprentice Optician for my dad from about 13 years old, and those test site guys really were not fanatical about security when telling their work stories.
     We were not privy to many of the details, but we realized from the beginning that "Special " stuff was going on in that corner of the Nevada Test Site. From the mid 70's, there were 3 or 4 Boeing 737s painted white with a red stripe down the side, taking off and landing from the Las Vegas Blvd side of the Airport.  Their round trip going to and from wherever took about 1 1/2 hours.   Around town they were known as the "51 planes". Thats how the "51 guys" commuted, not by bus.
     When this book came out, it created only a minor stir here because of the familiarity in the community.  We didn't KNOW what was going on in Area 51, but we had a very good idea.  I had a good friend who worked the in mainenance in the early 80's tell me about the MIG squadron stationed there.

     Annie Jacobobsen is an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times, and has done a very nice job of telling the histoy of the early years of the Area 51 story.  The area, because of it's remoteness, even from the rest of the test site, was a great place to do testing of aircraft that the Air Force and the CIA wanted to protect.  The U-2, the SR71 Blackbird, the F-117 Stealth fighter, and even the B-2 were all worked up at the site.( It was common in the 1960s to have sonic booms rattle our windows all the time). She finishes her story in the late 80's-early 90's because of the security issues still in place. A lot of the unmanned drone development is being done at Creech Air Force Base at Indian Springs, Nevada, just south of the area.
She also talks about the myths of alien body storage and possible explanations of that.  The only gripe I have about this book is the lack of recent history, but it is understandable.  It is a fascinating and enjoyable read.

Castro's Daughter by David Hagberg

It seems like it's been a while since we saw Kirk McGarvey. In The Cabal, his wife, daughter and son-in-law were killed. The Abyss occurred shortly afterward. Now, McGarvey is still licking his wounds on some Greek Island. Only his bud Otto Renke, CIA computer jock extraordinaire, knows his whereabouts. But a  Deputy Director is waiting for McGarvey at his island villa (why are all sort of retired spys rich as sin?). Could only be bad news.

Otto's wife, Louise, has been kidnapped. To gain her release, Otto has boarded a State Department jet headed for Cuba with the official US delegation that'll attend Castro's funeral. Seems the last person to see Castro before he died was the head of the Directorate of Intelligence . . . his illegitimate daughter. Castro has a deathbed request, and Castro told her that trusted help is one Kirk McGarvey. She figures the way to get to McGarvey is through Otto and to get to Otto, she snatches Louise . . . and it works.

Castro's secret? Something about 16th and 17th century gold that passed through Cuba headed for the Vatican thought to be buried somewhere in southern New Mexico. From here, it's a case of massive amounts of manipulation and deception from McGarvey, the CIA, the President, the Cuban DI, Castro's daughter, Raul Castrol, and dozens of minor functionaries. Almost hard to keep it all straight.

The first half of the book was terrific, but once the scene shifts to New Mexico, the plot sort of ground to a crawl and when the last page arrived and the hook for the next book was set, I said to myself, "Seriously?' We shall see. Hagberg can really write. I'm just thinking his plotting struggled a bit in the last third-ish of this tale.

East Coast Don

ESPN

Those Guys Have All the Fun

 

James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales

Published in 2011, this is a nice readable history of an entity that permeates most every American guy's life.  Starting as infant and struggling cable station in 1979, The "Enterainment and Sports Programming Network" has grown into a monolith that permeates all of sports. It's founders were a father and son pair that did not realise that what they were trying to do was impossible,  but they did it anyway.  Eventually shoved aside, they started a revolution in how sports are percieved in the world. Today, ESPN, is the most profitable part of the Disney Company, and in a lot of ways, the most important.  Kind of ironic when it was percieved as  kind of a "throw in"  in the Disney/ABC/Cap Cities  merger.

     This 745 page book is written in an almost stream of conciousness interview style.  While at times difficult to keep all the characters straight, it is a fascinating story told by the people who were there at the time.  From the money people to the people behind the camera to the on air personalities, you meet and learn to like and dislike all that were involved.  Lots of inside stories, and fascinating insights to people we watch almost every night on TV.

     While kind of intimidating in size, because of the format of short bits of interviews being intertwined, and because most everyone reading are familiar with the basic subject, its a book you can read a little at a time without losing the story the authors are trying to tell.   

Aftershock: The Next Economy & American's Future

Robert Reich, former Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton, is a great teacher of economic theory. I do not read economics, but I took this on in an attempt to understand more about the widely different views that we’re hearing about the current American and world economies. I was surprised at what a great read this was. I think I actually understand a lot more about macroeconomics than I did before. It especially helps me understand what’s wrong with the apparent Republican plan to protect “the job creators” and why support of the middle class is crucial to the economic engine of our country. 

The Tombs, a Fargo Adventure

I’m the only one in the blog who has been reviewing Clive Cussler’s books, so here’s the latest, one that he has again written with a co-author, this time Thomas Perry. I read all the early Cussler works with Dirk Pitt, who is now long-gone from these stories. Dirk got old and needed to retire. The heroes in this book are Sam and Remi Fargo, a married couple that got rich when they sold Sam’s inventions, and now they just go on treasure hunts, of course not for their own wealth, but only for the sake of helping others solve old mysteries. The book starts out in the usual Cussler tradition of a grand adventure, this one being the discovery of the tomb of Attila the Hun. The legend of his burial suggests that incredible riches are buried with Attila, far beyond what turned up with King Tut, but no one has ever found it. The Fargos are called in to help Albrecht Fischer, their academic friend figure out the mysterious clues and complete the discovery. Of course, there are bad guys who want the loot for themselves. The word “tedious” is not a word that I associate with Cussler’s books, but it fits here with regard to two parts of the story. The bad guys kidnapped Remi and Sam came to the rescue, but it took forever. It was the same with the final battle scene in the Fargo’s La Jolla, California mansion. It was a floor-by-floor account that, like Remi’s rescue, was more of a space filler than anything that really kept my interest. It’s not a good sign when I just want a book to be over. This is a fluff novel, not just the light and fun read that I was expecting, and it does not get my recommendation. Disappointing.

The Expats by Chris Pavone

The Expats by Chris Pavone is a spy mystery/ thriller featuring Kate Moore, former CIA operative and current wife and mother.  What happens to a CIA operative who decides to leave the business to lead an ordinary live?  Can someone accustom to secrets and deception in a clandestine occupation suddenly become a wife and mother totally open to her family with no ghosts lurking in the shadows?

Katherine Moore is recruited by the CIA directly out of college and works her way up in the organization.  She is assigned to Latin America where she runs assets for the company and supports U.S. friendly candidates in elections.  More than once she has had to assassinate enemies of state.  Kate has no close living family and carefully chooses her husband, Dexter.  Dexter works in banking security and Kate tells him she writes position papers for the State Department.  Mutually in high security jobs neither is suspicious when work issues are never discussed.   They have two boys together and Kate juggles her two lives with ever increasing stress.  Dexter is not a mover and shaker in his job so financially, they never seem to get ahead.  Then one day, Dexter announces he has a lucrative job offer in Luxembourg that would allow Kate to stay at home and raise their family.  Kate jumps at this chance of normality and immediately quits her job.

Settling into their new life in Luxembourg, the couple befriends another expat couple, Bill and Julia.  As time goes on, Dexter remains very private about his work, not even willing to reveal the name of his employer to Kate but the money rolls in as promised.  She becomes increasingly suspicious of Bill and Julia when they show up in unexpected places and ask probing questions about their personal lives.  Kate becomes convinced either she or Dexter is being investigated…but why and by whom?  Because she can’t reveal the sins from her former life to Dexter, she feels she can’t ask him to do the same.  Instead she decides to use her training to investigate Dexter as well as Bill and Julia.  She learns that no one is who they appear to be.  Evidence suggests that Dexter is a clever cyber thief and is at risk of being caught by a dangerous arms dealer as well as multiple law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Europe.  Now Kate must use her professional skill set to save her family.

The author uses a series of flashbacks from three different settings to create intrigue and build suspense, gradually revealing the truth to the reader.  This can be confusing at times but serves to clue in the reader on the secrets and deceptions within each of the character’s careers, their marriage and their private lives at the most opportune time.  This is Pavone’s first effort and I thought a reasonably good one.  He’s not yet in my power rotation but worth a second look.

The Path Between the Seas

The creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914

By David Mc Cullough

I've been asked to contribute to to Blog as the resident History Nerd.  I've been reading history ( along with a ton of other genres) all my life.  I have read pretty much all of the Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy, W.E.B. Griffin, Nelson DeMille, and Brad Thor out there, but I keep coming back to Biographies and history. I'll take my first shot with a book from 1977.  A Pulitzer prize winner by one of the best historians of the late 20th Century.

     This a a very readable history of the building of the Panama Canal.  Common misperception is that it was the brainchild of Theodore Roosevelt. This cannot be further from the truth. Explorers, business tycoons, hustlers and con men talked about a canal across Cental America as far back as the 17th Century.  In the 1840's the American Navy even sent a surveying team to look at the possibility of a canal across Nicaragua or the Columbian owned Ithmus of Panama. 

     The first attempt at acual construction of a canal was started in 1880 by a French consortium led by Ferdinand  de Lesseps, financed by stock sold to the French public.  de Lesseps was at the time looked at in Europe as the greatest builder of the time, having been the driving force behind the sucessful building of the Suez canal. By 1889 the French company and de Lesseps were bankrupt and broken by the enormity of the task of trying to build a sea level canal through one of the most inhospitable enviornments in the world.

     After the assasination of William McKinley, the new President, Theodore Roosevelt,  reopened the process.  Through a fully immoral if not illegal, set of mechinations, a revolt (financed by Wall Street and aided by the presense of an American Navy cruiser)  occured in the Columbian province of Panama. Quickly the leaders of the new "country" sold the rights to a strip of land across Panama to the US for 99 years.
    
     The building of the actual canal was as much a triumph of effective railroad management  and public health management as anythig else. Names such as Dr William Gorgas, engineer John Stevens, and Colonel George Goethals had as much to do with the sucess as Roosevelt.

    Any time I have a friend plan a Pamama Canal cruise, I try to have them read this book first.  It really helps make the canal experience more understandable.   This book is very well researched and very much up to McCullough's standard.

A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stebenow

I'd read one other book by this Alaskan author that while good, didn't quite grab me. I was hoping for an Inuit version of Tony Hillerman who would weave Alaskan legend into her books like Hillerman tapped the heritage of the Navajo. It just didn't do it for me. Maybe I should learn and not start in the middle of an author's long series of stories about the same character (there are about 20 Kate Shugak books). So, courtesy of West Coast Don's Kindle archive, I grabbed this, the first Kate Shugak book.

A little backstory. Kate (of the Shugak tribe, if I read it right) lives way the hell out in a national park on 160 acres with her half wolf, Mutt. No neighbors (of the two legged variety) are within miles. Drives a souped up snowmobile. Used to be an investigator for the Anchorage D.A. mostly doing cases on domestic or child abuse. One case got her throat partially slit and damaged her vocal cords. That was the case that send her off to the wilderness. Grizzlies were safer than deranged parents.

The park has a new ranger on staff, kid named Miller (whose daddy happens to be in Congress) full of ideas about the park belonging to the people and should be opened up more for the public. The locals don't agree. After a public hearing and then a fight in the local bar, Miller disappears. An investigator from Anchorage goes looking and he disappears, too. Not hearing from his son, Miller the elder has the FBI check it out, the FBI talks to the Anchorage DA who calls on Kate, who reluctantly agrees (for $400 a day plus expenses).

Not being too many people in the booming town of Niniltna, Kate talks to her grandmother, surrogate father, a former beau, the park staff, the barkeeper, her cousin; just about everybody. And someone was taking a few pot shots at her, mostly as target practice because everyone up there can dang well shoot a rifle - sort of required when the noise outside could just as well be a bear as a neighbor.

This was the first in the Kate Shugak series. According to her website (and a very entertaining blog), this book was misplaced in her father's garage for two years before getting it to a publisher. And guess what . . . turned out to be an Edgar award winner. So maybe I had been too harsh. Had I started with this one, I might have plowed along with other of her Shugak titles. Standard detective fare, yes, but  told in the harsh light (or darkness) of an Alaskan winter while giving us a taste of the quirks and peculiarities of the Alaskan mindset and behaviors. The TV show Northern Exposure was about a fish out of water living amongst a bunch of unique characters. Stebenow gives us more of a gut check about what is like way back in the wilderness of Alaska; the good and the not so good.

East Coast Don

Fool Me Twice

By my count, this is the 11^th of the Jesse Stone series, and the 12^th is due out next month. Parker is such a prolific author. There are another 40 books in the Spencer series. There are two other series and he’s written nearly 70 books since 1973. You may remember Robert Urich who starred in the Spenser series on TV, and Tom Selleck has portrayed Jesse Stone. Surprisingly, only one of his books has been reviewed in the blog, by Midwest Dave – an oversight by the rest of us. I’ve read him before, but that was in the pre-blog days.

Parker provides a reliable crime novel. In this story, there were three story lines although their only intersection was through our hero, Jesse Stone, Chief of Police of podunk Paradise, Massachusetts where Stone went when he left the police force in LA. Stone has all the characteristics that are typical of the protagonists in this blog: honest, inflexible ethics, resistant to anyone in authority who takes a politically correct stance, hard drinking, sexual, all the good stuff, impossible not to like – just picture Tom Selleck.

Paradise became the site of a movie, A Taste of Arsenic, which is an ironic title given the poisonous personalities of the actors that Parker invents. The lead, Marisol Hinton, was having marital problems, having married an actor who was failing in the shadow of her rising star, and he responded by becoming a meth addict. Of course, Marisol herself was an obnoxious wench who was entranced by herself and didn’t get along with anyone. When her husband, Ryan Rooney, abused and raped her one time to many, she changed the locks on their Beverly Hill mansion, filed for divorce, and fled to the movie location in Paradise. Her estranged and violent husband, did not want to lose his meal ticket. He had a solution – the million dollar insurance policy on Marisol’s life, of which he was the sole beneficiary. He was going to have an encounter with Chief Stone.

Courtney Cassidy was the 17-year-old daughter of the town’s wealthiest parents and biggest political contributors. The Cassidy family was even more dysfunctional than the relationships on the movie set. Courtney flaunted her family’s wealth and power, so it was no surprise that she came to Stone’s attention when she kept texting and talking on her cell phone while she was behind the wheel. Despite her incorrigible and unrepentant behavior, Stone thought that she was the victim of her parents’ inattention, so against everyone’s advice, he took her on as a project.

The third story line was bizarre. The head of the local water authority was a physically tiny man, 4’7” tall, and he was passionate the resource that he provided to his customers. He was upset about the quality of the infrastructure that delivered the product, and he was frustrated that despite his best efforts, the State powers would not invest a penny. Plus, everyone made fun of his stature which interfered with his career path. He decided to embezzle the money that he needed to do the repairs by slightly cheating on the water meter readings, and he got away with it for a couple decades. After the repairs were paid for, he continued his deceit, not for his own good. Rather, he’d donate the money to water-related charities around the world. But, things were not that simple, and Stone had to investigate the matter when complaints started coming his way.

This was an enjoyable, quick read. It is the epitome of what I call “airplane books,” which are novels that can be read in a couple hours on a cross country trip, ones that will keep your interest, but not interfere with a nap or a night’s sleep. I will read more of Robert B. Parker. Millions of readers can’t all be wrong.