Noble Beginnings by L.T. Ryan

It's only months post 9/11 and the US is in full 'get the bad guys' mode. Someone with stars on their shoulders thought it'd be a good idea to pair Marines with CIA teams. If this dry run is successful, the Marines would be welcomed into the CIA and put on the fast track into the clandestine service. Someone forgot to tell the CIA that Marines aren't just bouncers at the door. They can make decisions and act on their own moral code that just may not be on the same level as these CIA spec-ops teams. 

Jack Noble and Bear, his partner since meeting in basic training, challenge Martinez, the asshole head of the 4-man CIA team they've been assigned when Martinez's interrogation of an Iraqi family turns south. Noble and Martinez go toe to toe on a back street in Baghdad. Upon returning to their base and getting some food, beer, and sleep, both Noble and Bear are arrested and sent back to the US. They are charged with murdering that family.

But Marines stick together and one up the command chain breaks them out of the CIA's grasp. Now it's a chase with those who want Noble and Bear gone and others who want to find out who is behind the accusations, what's to be gained, and who benefits. Noble and Bear run up and down the I-95 corridor between Camp Lejeune and DC and numerous stops along the route.

This is book #1 of the Jack Noble series by Ryan, which is up to 8 and counting so Ryan is selling some books to get that far. As presented, this has all the trappings of a series favored by the MRB boys:
alpha male?                                                           check
Big dude-quick to swing/shoot buddy?                check
smart-ass dialogue?                                              check
clues leading to a convoluted plot?                      check
Heroes caught in a plot not of their own doing?  check
femme fatale?                                                       check
double crossing bosses?                                       check
body count?                                                          check
Washington, DC flavor?                                       check (OK, that's just me)
really-could-happen plot?                                     jury's out - I'll let you know after reading more

I'll start moving through Ryan's catalogue and see how far I want to go. Noble is an interesting enough character to give him a shot. Not ready to give him my full recommendation just yet, but I will say that L.T. Ryan and Jack Noble are very promising.  Stay tuned.

East Coast Don

Think Like a Freak

Think Like a Freak is the third book in the Freakonomics series, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, so if you’ve already read the first two, jump into this one now. As with the other books, it provides an entertaining and alternate approach to making decisions about common day problems. Like the title suggests, the idea is not just to produce new situations that they’ve analyzed from an economics perspective, but they want to try to teach the reader how to approach issues like they do. I’m definitely a fan of these two guys and even listen to their weekly podcast.

As a teaser, just look at some of their chapter titles: “The Three Hardest Words in the English Language” which are “I don’t know”; “Like a Bad Dye Job, the Truth is in the Roots”; “Think Like a Child”; “What do King Solomon and David Lee Roth Have in Common,” and “The Upside of Quitting.” In a way, this is like reading Malcolm Gladwell who just approaches life and it’s problems a bit differently. The authors suggest that it’s critically important to define the problem clearly, and to think small, not large. Read the book, they explain it better than I do.

Standup Guy by Stuart Woods

Standup Guy is the latest in a long series of Stuart Woods novels featuring his Stone Barrington character.  Descriptions like hound dog, alley cat, slime ball, and lucky bastard all come to mind when attempting to characterize Stone Barrington.  Standup Guy is a continuation of the same.

John Fratelli is an ex-con who has just completed a 25 year jail sentence for armed robbery.  He visits Stone seeking legal advice on a sensitive financial issue.  Fratelli’s former now deceased cell mate gifted him the contents of a safe deposit box containing $2 million dollars.  The money was the unrecovered proceeds of a heist at JFK airport some 20 years earlier.  Stone advises that while the statute of limitations has expired on the crime, others involved in the crime may attempt to scalp a share of the ill-gotten gains.  He tells Fratelli to deposit the money in less than $10,000 increments (to avoid IRS interest) and disappear for a while.  Predictably, a secret service agent, a former FBI agent, and a couple of goons pay visits to Stone asking about the money.  The goons take shots at Stone and at Fratelli to try to intimidate their way into a share of the cache.

Meanwhile, Stone meets a new lady friend, Henrietta Cromwell a/k/a Hank that he manages to bed on the second date.  She is kidnapped while leaving his highly secured home apparently by the goons looking for Fratelli’s money.  Enter Stone’s best friend Dino (now chief of detectives for NYPD) to get her back.  In the midst of the havoc, Stone schedules a quick trip to London to visit his main squeeze the highly successful fashion designer, Emma Tweed and while in New York receives a visit from his longtime friend with benefits, Holly Barker, now a CIA operative.  Oh, and the President and First Lady involve him in a campaign to nominate the First Lady as the next Presidential candidate… all in a day’s work, I guess.

I don’t know what else to say about Stuart Woods’ Stone Barrington series that hasn’t already been said.  The challenge when reading is to keep your place while rolling your eyes and thinking ‘Oh, Brother.’  Yet sarcasm aside, Woods cranks out one ridiculous book after another to a fan base that loves him.  So when looking for a light fluffy read with not much intellectual stimulation, Stuart Woods’ Stone Barrington novels can fill that niche.  It doesn’t matter which one, they are all pretty much the same.

Request for Used Books

A true story:

A San Diego mom and dad asked their 7th grade son what he wanted for Christmas. His wish list included an iPhone, iPad, Xbox games and an authentic NFL team jersey (at about $125). Mom and Dad decided that it was time that Alec got a little "perspective", since he had spent his entire life growing up in a comfortable suburb. They told him that the three of them were going to make about 25 breakfast burritos in their kitchen that Sunday morning and then take them downtown to feed the homeless and that he could invite a friend if he wanted to. Alec thought he was being punished but the homeless people he and his buddy met were so grateful and so happy to see them that he asked his parents if they could do it again next week, and if he could invite some more of the friends on his soccer team.  

That was two and half years ago and now the Burrito Boyz (and several girls) make about 625 breakfast burritos at a friend's Pizza restaurant every Sunday morning and then carry them to the streets of downtown San Diego where the homeless begin lining up every Sunday an hour before the Boyz get there. The Boyz haven't missed a single Sunday since they started. They have been featured in People magazine, have appeared on the Queen Latifah show and recently received a letter from President Obama thanking them for their good work. 

I'm writing this to you, my fellow bibliophiles, because the Boyz not only give out burritos, water and toilet paper but they also give out used books- about 75 a week. And like us, homeless men and women seem to prefer the thriller/crime novel genre The Burrito Boyz are in desperate need of more of these kinds of books. So I'm asking you to help share our love of these books with our less fortunate friends. If you have any thrillers or mysteries laying around your house and just gathering dust, please send them to my office at the address below. I'll get them to the Boyz. Burrito Boyz is a licensed nonprofit so the value of the books and the shipping is tax deductible. If you want any more information (or just want to make a donation to help them purchase more used books), their web site is burritoboyz.org

I hope you can help me out with this.

Send books to:

Don Houts MD

415 South Cedros Avenue, Suite 210

Solana Beach, CA 92075

Line of Fire by Stephen White

I’m an avid reader of crime novels and international thrillers, which is a significant difference from being a writer of such books, so I approach this review with some caution and a mountain of respect. The 20-volume Stephen White series about protagonist Alan Gregory has been a good volume of work, sometimes allowing White to slip into my power rotation of authors and other times remaining on the cusp of being there. We at Men Reading Books have read all of his stories, and have reviewed about half of them. As noted in my last review, his characters have been fully fleshed out, and White apparently agrees since he’s announced this is the penultimate novel in the series.

What you do to bring such a long body of stories to a fitting conclusion? What would you do to try to be fair to your beloved characters and tie together so many story lines that have been evolving in progressively more complex directions? That certainly seemed to be the intent of the author with this book. As usual, White’s writing was strongest and most compelling as he wrote about doctor-patient relationships between psychotherapist and client, transference and countertransference issues in ethically-challenging circumstances. Gregory was weakest in trying to pull together so many plot lines in too neat a package.

This is far from being a stand-alone novel. One would not pick this book up as the first in the series. Rather, you should only dive into this book if you are intimately familiar with the gradual character development over the last 15 years. I was still pretty hooked on the story until about the 75% part, and then the believability factor simply went away at the same time the complexity of the plot expanded. Furthermore, the resolution was not a surprise.

I’m so disappointed that I’m not motivated to quickly pick up the final book in the series, and I know that those of us who have been steady fans is exactly who White is writing for. Maybe I’ll get there, but my queue of waiting books will have to get pretty thin to make me pick up that last Alan Gregory novel.

Sniper's Honor by Stephen Hunter

Consider this a two-fer from a power rotation author.

Story 1: It’s summer, 1944. The Russians are pushing the Nazis back and both sides know Germany’s days in Russia are numbered. Mili Petrova is one of Russia’s most accomplished snipers and is given a special assignment. She is to travel to Ukraine, join up with partisan forces who will get her close to the German Obergruppenfuher of the region by the name of Groedl, a former economics professor who overseas the extermination of Jews in Poland and Ukraine.  She has an assignment and nothing will stop her from her duty.

As she joins the partisans, they come under attack by an elite Nazi mountain division. The only way they could’ve been ambushed is if the Nazis had inside information and that could only have come from the Russians. Makes no sense that the Reds would try to kill one of their most decorated heros.

That also means Groedl knows she’s coming for him and he devises an elaborate plan to make himself visible while also tightening a noose around her. All this going on right when Russia is organizing a major offensive to push the Nazis out once and for all.

Story 2: Bob Lee Swagger is 68, sitting on his Idaho porch; bored but happy with life. He’s seen more combat than most soldiers and is content with how life is winding down. But he is bored. An old friend, Kathy Reilly, a Moscow correspondent for The Washington Post emails him with a question about an obscure WWII rifle . . . a sniper’s weapon. She’s working on a feature piece about a part of the war most Americans have little understanding including some Nazi-Russian battles that were on a scale that was degrees larger the Normandy and unfathomable armored battles that make Kasserine Pass look like a day in a sandbox (Hunter's description of an armored battle that took place in an obscure area called Kursk, and Petrova's role, is riveting). Reilly's research uncovers some clues to a mission to assassinate a German regional head. Problem is that while the mission is ordered, she can find no mention of the outcome. 

Swagger also needs a mission and offers to come to Russia to help her figure the outcome. To do so, he needs to see the land to see what her options were and how she might’ve plotted out her strategy.  But someone has latched on to their inquiries and wants to convince them to abandon their quest. And they are none to subtle about their persuasions.

Make that 3 stories: Hunter also takes us into Israeli intelligence where a bulldog of a researcher notices unusual purchases of platinum by a shadowy company based in southern Russia. Of course, it’s related to Petrova and Swagger and Hunter skillfully, and slowly, brings us to just how.

Swagger is about my favorite continuing character who, unfortunately, will likely age out and give way to a new Hunter character, but Bob Lee will be hard to top. These two parallel stories, while quite different, will eventually merge as Swagger sort of gets into Petrova’s mind and comes to develop a healthy respect for Petrova whose only goal is her mission. Finding out what happened to her is his way of honoring what, on the surface, looks like a just hiccup in the war on the Eastern Front, but really should be a fascinating story for Americans about a decorated Russian sniper who for a week or two, was the most hunter person by both the Russians and the Germans.

If the format (Swagger in the current day investigating an historical event) sounds familiar to Hunter’s previous effort, The Third Bullet, it is. But while I thought The Third Bullet wasn’t one of Hunter’s best Swagger novels (hey, they can’t all be winners . . . but that doesn’t change his place in my power rotation), Sniper’s Honor is far superior to The Third Bullet. Swagger fans will not be disappointed.

Act of War by Brad Thor

The latest from one of my power rotation authors, so I was sure it'd be good . . .

China believes deep down that war with the US is inevitable. They also believe that, despite an overwhelming manpower superiority, they could not win a conventional war. So they have fashioned the 'unrestricted warfare' philosophy. Everything is a target. Burn the prairies, destroy the electrical grid, poison the water supply, infect livestock. Destroy everything that makes Americans soft and they'll turn on each other and descend into anarchy. Worst estimate is half the population would be killed as the strong eliminate the weak. Best estimate? 90% casualties with only the hard core preppers surviving up in nowhere Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. And the pretentious Americans would never see it coming as the Chinese would use religious extremists to do the dirty work from the inside. China would just waltz in and take over.

Operation code name: Xue Long . . . Snow Dragon.

A CIA operative in Hong Kong is killed. Langley figures that an asset he was cultivating turned on him. The asset is found and reveals some sketchy details about 'Snow Dragon.' But without verification, the CIA is hesitant because it sounds too unreal. The Chinese have hired a Pakistani recruiter to find Muslim engineering students for a NASA exchange program for Muslims? Seriously?

Rather than overwhelm Hong Kong with operatives, the President authorizes The Charlton Group to start at square one, the Pakistani recruiter, and see if the story holds water. Scot Harvath is flown to Karachi with the intent of capturing and interrogating the recruiter while a small band of SEALs infiltrates North Korea to see what China is doing under some massive camouflage canopies in some rural forests of that renegade nation.

What he learns sends Harvath to Dubai where 6 such engineering students had indeed been coerced to accept the NASA internship, which the previous administration had set up to help foster Islamic appreciation for the role that their ancestor scholars had in the academic understanding of principles that would one day help advance spaceflight.

They get set up in various US cities stretching from Seattle to Baltimore. Each charged with building a device with materials sent to them What it is, they don't know, they just know that if they build it, their families will be well take care or. But one goes a little off the rails so China has to send in their own enforcer to clean up a mess.

A Dubai go-between is whisked off to the US for some serious debriefings and intel sends Harvath to Nashville. But not before China's hit man wreaks some havoc.

The big question is, assuming that the students have built whatever it is they are building, when will the attack occur? The FBI has had eyes on some Chinese college students who are either children or grandchildren of the Politburo members. If something big is going to happen, you can bet they'll be called home quickly . . . and they've all disappeared.

The entire story takes place, for the most part, over the course of about a week, so I guess Harvath only sleeps on an airplane. Thor takes us, step by step, through Karachi to Dubai to DC to Nashville to Idaho and finally the Florida Keys as he and a small team of trusted, and similarly inclined colleagues, march from clue to clue and source to source to uncover the who, the what, the where, and the when. The why doesn't matter. Harvath and company are in save-the-country mode so 'why' doesn't matter. Just stop it from happening and kill whoever is behind it.

This is Thor's 14th Harvath novel and his plotting, technical detail, and storytelling skills just keep getting better. Thor is not about trying to uncover what makes Harvath tick or what his motivations or misgivings might be. This is a pure thriller and since the untimely passing of Vince Flynn, Thor really has to be considered if not one of the best thriller writers now, he certainly is in the top 5.

Word of warning: Thor's politics lean decidedly to the right. And while no names are stated regarding the 'previous administration,' Chapter 22 is a diatribe against the policies of that 'previous administration,' which would never be confused with Reagan, if you catch my drift. Some readers may cheer, others may slam the book closed. For me, the story is too good to let some political posturing get in the way. Read it for what it is . . . a great thrill ride and perfect summer reading.

Thanks again to the good folks at Simon and Schuster for the advance copy. Act of War will be available for purchase July 8, 2014.

East Coast Don