Gray Mountain by John Grisham

My buddy West Coast Don reviewed Gray Mountain here 2 months ago, giving it high praise. Can't debate that. Terrific read. Grisham has taken on various industries in other books like Legal-organized crime (The Firm), Big Tobacco (Runaway Jury), and now Big Coal. Only disappointment, if you want to call it that, is the lack of a big courtroom war . . . a truly small potatoes issue. It's been a long time since I've read Grisham. Glad I read it. You will be, too. Wonder if Grisham will take on Big Pharma, if he hasn't already done so.

WCD

The Directive by Matthew Quirk

The Directive is a sequel to Matthew Quirk’s first novel, The 500 which was previously reviewed on MRB.  Protagonist Mike Ford returns for another thrilling adventure where as an ex-con man he is sucked back into his former life of deception and double cross for one last score that will save his family.

Ford has done an exemplary job of turning his life around.  Raised and trained by shifty con artists, his father and his older brother, Mike breaks away as a teenager and works his way through college and Harvard Law School.  He becomes a high powered Washington lobbyist and meets his fiancée, Annie Clarke.  Annie encourages Mike to reconnect with his brother, Jack.  Mike finds Jack in a conspiracy to steal the Federal Reserve Board’s directive before it is announced to the public.  This information is worth billions to the savvy trader.  But Jack is in over his head and Mike feels compelled to rescue him.  Mike too is pulled into the con and is forced to use his skills from his criminal past.  Mike’s only hope is to go along with the heist and look to con the powerful conspirators.  But these people are professional con artists themselves and anticipate Mike’s attempt to sabotage the con.  Now Mike is in over his head placing the lives of Annie and Jack as well as his own in danger.

Quirk tells a reasonably good story in The Directive.  The Mike Ford character is well developed and the plot plausible.  He inserts enough twists and turns to keep you interested and curious about the next development.  But I just couldn’t connect with the characters.  Mike and Annie’s relationship seems mechanical and lacks passion.  As for Mike and Jack, I feel like they will always be con artists and never find the straight and narrow... that’s probably the only way to continue the series.  So for me The Directive is a good airplane book but not a blockbuster.

As The Crow Flies by Craig Johnson

Longmire #8.

Walt’s daughter, Cady, is getting married in a couple weeks. He and Henry Standing Bear are checking out other options for the ceremony. The outdoor venue they’d reserved has been yanked in favor of a Cheyenne Immersion Weekend by the local college. Painted Warrior has spectacular cliffs and tall pines. A good 2^nd choice.

Until they witness a woman falling from one of the cliffs. Rushing in, they find not only the dead woman, but Walt’s dog, Dog, finds a 6-month old baby boy in the tall buffalo grass, still alive.

They seal off the scene and rush the baby to the local hospital where Dog takes up a bedside residence that no one is willing to question. Normally, Walt would initiate an investigation. But he can’t. Painted Warrior is on the Cheyenne rez, and it’s across the border in Montana.

The rez police chief is Lolo Long. New to the job and not far removed from a tour in Afghanistan. Lolo and Walt are a bit like oil and water. But before long, Long asks for Walt’s guidance because she doesn’t think she’s cut out for the job. Walt thinks otherwise.

What about Cady’s wedding? He and Henry have assignments, none of which include ‘homicide investigation.’ And Cady is arriving within hours. Hell, just enough time to squeeze in a peyote ceremony, at the request of the local Cheyenne elders.

Johnson places Walt out of his jurisdiction, but not out of his range of influence and notoriety. As his reputation is well known, the locals and the FBI cut him some slack. And Cady is sort of sympathetic to his devotion to duty and Lolo’s need for a mentor.

So Walt and Lolo pick their way through local dirt bags, meth addicts, drunks, and family members, occasionally aided by Henry popping up in the dark.

The great thing about Johnson is how he wields Walt’s narration, which is equal parts, observant, self-deprecating, bemused, and full of commitment to duty. Unlike the previous 7 books, Henry has a substantially bigger role while the rest of the usual suspects are largely absent. That’s OK, because the locals on the rez are fascinating, frightening, and entirely entertaining.

But help me out here. Lee Child has a legion of fanboys of his Jack Reacher character. The fanboys went into a hissy fit when Tom Cruise was cast in the lead. Reacher is 6’5” and Cruise isn’t. Walt played OLine at USC and Henry was a running back at Berkeley. On the TV show, Robert Taylor plays Walt and Lou Diamond Phillips plays Henry; neither of which would ever be confused with NCAA D1 football players. And do you hear the Longmire Posse pissing and moaning about the casting?

Nope. 

Next up: A Serpent’s Tooth. And it’s already on my nightstand.

East Coast Don

The Crystal and the Way of Light: Sutra, Tantra and Dzogchen

This is a non-fiction work about a Buddhist master, Namkhai Norbu, a Rinpoche, which is an honorific term used in the Tibetan language. Rinpoche literally means "precious one." Since the age of two years, he was recognized as being a reincarnated one, and he has followed a path of learning and teaching Buddhism, especially Dzogchen Buddhism. This book, which was compiled and edited by John Shane, may not be for beginners of the study of this religion. It combines Norbu’s biography with his teachings, definitions and explanations of the different forms of Buddhism, and some instructions in the practice of it.

I read this in conjunction with a 5-day workshop with Norbu, but I found the teaching to be difficult, and it was certainly not directed at someone who was just looking for a bit of exposure to the culture and religion. I was surrounded by people who had been following Norbu around the world for many years, some for 20 years, one for 35 years. The man with 35-years of experience of being with Norbu said he was finally beginning to understand what the man was saying. No wonder I was feeling a bit lost. I was reminded of attending a lecture during my first week of medical school which was directed to interns and residents, not first year med students. I heard 1,000 words in an hour that I did not know, but it was only a few months later that I had an understanding of what I was hearing and could ask reasonable questions.

I had a brief one-on-one with the Rinpoche who is now 76 years old, and after thanking him for his teaching and honoring the path that he had been pursuing, I asked a question. I noted that in our Western culture, no one is recognized as a reincarnated sole at the age of two and then sent on a life path accordingly. I wondered if such reincarnation pronouncements were ever made in error, if at the age of 10 or 20 someone had veered far from the intended path, and that the Tibetans who had made the declarations said “oops, guess we were wrong.” He said, “No,” turned away and did not respond to a follow-up question. I was subsequently reassured that it was not a faux pas to ask the question, but the question certainly comes from a Western mind.

Much of the book was equally difficult, but I suspect if one was intensively pursuing Buddhism, that the content would be very meaningful. I thought the conclusion of this short book was quite beautiful:

This concludes the presentation here of the Base, the Path, and the Fruit of the Dzogchen teachings. While words and intellectual concepts can only ever be signposts pointing to the true nature of reality, which is quite beyond them, nevertheless the complex interlinked conceptual structure of the teachings is in itself brilliant and beautiful, like a many-faceted crystal whose every facet flawlessly reflects and refers to every other. But please remember that the only way to look into the heart of that crystal is to look into oneself. Dzogchen is not just something to be studied; the Way of Light is there to be travelled.

            As a bee seeks nectar

            From all kinds of flowers,

                        Seek teachings everywhere.

                        Like a deer that finds a quiet place to graze,

                        Seek seclusion to digest all you have gathered.

                        Like a lion, live completely free of all fear.

                        And, finally, like a madman, beyond all limits,

                        Go wherever you please.

                                    -- A Tantra of Dzogchen

John the Pupil by David Flusfeder

John the Pupil is a novel by David Flusfeder, his seventh novel. It’s a clever work of historical fiction which takes place in the 13^th century. Brother John is the student of Roger Bacon, and Bacon sends John to Rome to deliver his Opus Majus to Pope Clement IV. Bacon was a very controversial figure in his era, and the Pope was his protector. John is sent along with two of his contemporaries, Brother Bernard and Brother Andrew. Not one of them has been outside his own village before, so they are seeing the world for the first time. The interplay among and the relationship of the three travelers was the essence of this story. The chapters, and the course of time through their travels is marked by one Saint’s holiday after another, which helps capture part of the feeling of living in that era. It took me a few pages to get into the swing of the vocabulary and style of writing, but that too contributed to the experience of being taken back to the era. If you have any interest in life in the Middle Ages, this book is for you. Thanks to Harper Collins for sending this book pre-publication. It should be available in March 2015.

Sentinel by Matthew Dunn

In Spycatcher, we were introduced to Will Cochrane – Spartan – the most lethal instrument in the arsenal of MI6. To become Spartan, and there is only one, Will had to pass a torturous year long training program of which all before him had failed.

All except one. The first Spartan was in deep cover in Russia for years and had established a complex network of contacts from lowly peasants to some in the highest levels of the military and the various renditions of the KGB. He also managed to survive 6 years of imprisonment and torture, never revealing his true identity or what he was doing.

But MI6 couldn’t be sure that their initial Spartan was still reliable after what he endured in prison so they cut back his authority and the freedom he had as Spartan, giving him a new assignment and code name – Sentinel.

One of Sentinel’s network is killed in remote Norway, leaving a cryptic message about a traitor and a plan to draw the US and Russia into a war. Cochrane is sent to find Sentinel, learn the details of the incomplete message, and stop this insane plot.

The head of the most elite unit of the Russian’s version of the SEALs (code name Razin) is picking off Sentinel’s top contacts one at a time. Spartan and Sentinel join forces to protect Sentinel’s network and kill Razin. But Razin stays one step ahead in his hunt and in a hand-to-hand confrontation, turns out to be Spartan’s equal – something Spartan’s never experienced before.

Razin’s plan, if successful, will probably work. The idea is to make a routine military maneuver look like an attack on Russian soil, thereby prompting a Russian response.

This is #2 in the Spycatcher series (the third Dunn book I’ve read) and Dunn tells us more and more about Cochrane’s history and how he came to be recruited and to become Spartan. Dunn delivers the goods in a way that only one who has been there can. If I had to nitpick, it would be in his overly long description of a stakeout and pursuit by his team of spooks. In Spycatcher, it was riveting. In Sentinel, it’s bordering on repetitious. Hope the same scenario doesn’t turn up in the next book, Sling Shot.  But that won’t stop me from reading Sling Shot or Counterspy, the next 2 books in this series. 

East Coast Don

The Organ Takers

The Organ Takers is the second novel by Richard Van Anderson, a former heart surgeon who refers to his genre as “surgical suspense.” This is a plausible crime novel which takes place in a medical setting. The story is about a talented chief surgical resident, David McBride, who gets trapped by a psychopathic attending physician, Andrew Turnbull, into helping him manipulate the order of patients on a liver transplant list. Turnbull was making $1,000,000 per patient, until they got caught. Rather than admit that David had been an unwitting accomplice, he declared that he was a co-conspirator. Both men lost their license, so David was thrown into a non-medical world to find his future, and for the incredible wealth it was bound to create for him, Turnbull created his own company to pursue the art of organ transplant.

Except, Turnbull needed funding, and what better way to do that than sell some kidneys on the black market. Of course, they needed donors, and who better than homeless people who could be dumped back on the streets minus one of their vital organs. But, Turnbull needed a skilled surgeon for what was a complicated procedure, and without identifying himself to David, Turnbull blackmailed David into doing the job.

The plot was good, and it was mostly a plot driven story. I was surprised at the chaos and death at the end, but the author also set up a continuing series in a most clever way. The character development was a bit weak, but the science was well-explained. I may not be in a hurry to get to Van Anderson’s first novel, but the quality of this work is not amateurish.