The Great Leader

Jim Harrison is a prolific author, probably best known for Legends of the Fall, a 1979 book that was made into a 1994 movie with Brad Pitt, Julia Ormond, and Anthony Hopkins. He was once reviewed in this blog, earlier this year – Returning to Earth is a philosophical story about life and death, not a mystery/thriller. The Great Leader is a far different tale.

Detective Sunderson has just retired from the Michigan State Police, and he was recently divorced. Meanwhile, his alcoholism has been accelerating, and he has to figure out what to do with his life. His first choice is to pursue the last unresolved/unsolved case in which he was involved, that of G.L, the Great Leader of variously named cults which were but thin disguises for stealing the money of his followers and having sex with their barely pubescent daughters. Meanwhile, Sunderson struggles with his own sexuality and his attraction to age-inappropriate girls, especially his provocative 16-year-old neighbor Mona. The case takes Sunderson from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, to Arizona and New Mexico, back to Michigan, and finally to Nebraska. The author’s descriptions of the countryside in all of those locations is wonderful. Harrison used rich and believable characters to support the story and his protagonist.

Mostly, this is a story of character development, and that’s what carries the book more than the plot. It is a high compliment when I suggest that Harrison’s writing is a combination of James Lee Burke, Ken Bruen and C.J. Box. He captures the struggle of alcoholism like only an alcoholic would know. I’m very impressed with this book and I’ve already added another one of his books to my long reading queue.

Mindfulness: an eight-week plan for finding peace in a frantic world

Okay, so this is way off genre.

Are you interested in learning about meditation, but don't know where to start? This is an excellent place to do exactly that. I've been practicing this for 10 years. Check it out.

Infidel

Infidel is the incredible autobiography of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali woman who burst on the scene of European politics in 2004 following the assassination of the Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh with whom she had just made a short movie, Submission, which was highly critical of the treatment of women in Islam. Ayaan spent the first 7 years of her life living in Somali. Meanwhile, her father, who was a political figure in the Somali opposition, was often away from home. When the country deteriorated and it was no longer safe to stay there, the family moved first to Ethiopia, then to Saudi Arabia, and finally to Kenya where she lived for 10 years until she had the chance to flee to Europe at the age of 22in 1992. She had been exposed to all forms of Islam. She was repeatedly physically abused and underwent genital mutilation, consistent with her Somali customs.

Originally a devote Muslim, as was her mother, Ayaan gradually found herself growing away from the faith, especially after she was fully exposed to Western thought. The transitions that she successfully made from one country to the next, the languages that she learned in the process, the relationships that she developed were remarkable. The courage that she showed at each step is nearly unbelievable to anyone raised in the Est. She made a journey which that is unlike any that I’ve ever read, from Islamic fundamentalism to disavowal of Islamic thought and finally atheism. She went from Somalia to Holland where she became a member of Parliament, only to have Dutch citizenship revoked as the result of her controversial views. In the forward, Christopher Hitchens wrote, “One reason why she herself is so hated, and why her life is considered forfeit, is that she is exactly what the title of this book proudly proclaims her to be: an apostate. She has exerted her right to abandon the religion in which she was brought up.”

In 1992, Ayaan was actually being sent to Canada for a marriage that had been arranged by her father, and when she landed in Germany on the way there, she chose to escape. That led her to Holland which had a particularly liberal immigration policy at the time. She saw the date that she got on a train to Holland as her real birthday: “the birth of me as a person, making decisions about my life on my own. I was not running away from Islam, or to democracy. I didn’t have any big ideas then. I was just a young girl and wanted some way to be me; so I bolted into the unknown.”

Infidel helped me understand why the West is so hated by Islam and why there are so few people that are capable of making the same transitions described by Ayaan. It helps understand the difficulty faced in Europe today of dealing with the massive migration of Muslims into their societies. She wrote, “The kind of thinking I saw in Saudi Arabia, and among the Muslim Brotherhood in Kenya and Somalia, is incompatible with human rights and liberal values. It preserves a feudal mind-set based on tribal concepts of honor and shame. It rests on self-deception, hypocrisy, and double standards…. The message of this book, if it must have a message, is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life.” This book is a dramatic story of courage.

Lassiter by Paul Levine

When we last looked in on Jake Lassiter, he was defending the male half of a two person male/female law practice because the guy may or may not have killed a Russian mobster.

We venture back a few years earlier. An Ohio-based insurance investigator is looking for her younger sister who, as a teenager, lit out of Toledo for Miami. Krista Larkin got hooked up with a porn producer and all around knockabout guy, disappeared and was never heard from again. Now, about 18 years later, her sister Amy is in town trying to run down an obscure clue that might bring some closure for the family.

Oh, yeah. Jake was one of the last people to see Krista. Helped her out of a jam and was rewarded that night for his efforts.

Realizing he obviously didn't do enough for Krista that fateful night, Jake offers his help to Amy. No charge. Charlie Zigler, the former porn king, is now a respected philanthropist in Miami and very well connected uptown, the state's attorney's office to be specific, but he still keeps his fingers in the international side of his porn distribution network. Zigler's mentor, Max Perlow, was once an underling to gangster Meyer Lansky.

Lassiter and the state's attorney, Alex Castiel, are friendly, mostly due to noon hour basketball in a lawyer's league. But their friendship gets seriously tested with each tidbit of new information. The loose noose that joins Castiel, Perlow, and Zigler tightens with every not-so-legal search or B&E done by Jake on behalf of Krista and Amy.

Pretty straight forward, yes? At least until Levine pops out a quick series of plot twists that take us in entirely different directions and eventual solutions.

Levine is quite talented at presenting crime fiction for the lawyer's perspective. Why? He was a lawyer practicing some pretty boring aspects of corporate law. He was influenced by Carl Hiassen (Miami-based columnist and a South Florida humor writer without peer) to give writing a try. Turns out the writing gig was way more fun than the law. He has something like 19 novels to his credit plus he penned a couple dozen episodes of the TV show JAG and another dozen episodes of First Monday. I first read Bum Rap earlier in the summer and checked this book out of the library expecting the Lassiter series to be a brief escapade by Levine.  Wrong. There are 10 Lassiter books.

Looks like I may have a new series  to work my way through now that I am up to date on Jack Reacher, Walt Longmire, Joe Pickett, Harry Bosch, and Elvis Cole/Joe Pike. Two down, eight more to find.

And no, this isn't the same character played by Tom Selleck in the mid 1980's. But Yes, it is the same character played by Gerald McRainey in the mid 1990s.

East Coast Don

April Fool

I raved about William Deverell’s novel, Trial of Passion, and I have been disappointed that it took me too many months to get back to him, but my reading queue is long. I found him while I was traveling in Canada and was doing a search for Canadian authors. It’s intended as high praise when I find that his work compares favorably with that of Louis Penny. Penny writes about eastern Canada, her venue typically being Three Pines, an idyllic rural village near Montreal. Deverell writes about western Canada, Garibaldi Island, a beautiful place which is only a short hop from Vancouver.

This is the second book in the series of books about Arthur Beauchamp, a now retired famous trial attorney. Beauchamp is a compelling character who has not set foot in a courtroom for six years when he is faced with two challenges. One of his former clients, Nick the Owl Faloon has been accused of murder. Faloon is a crook, but his specialty is stealing jewels and Arthur immediately doubts the possibility that this man could have committed murder. Interesting, while Arthur won multiple cases on behalf of Faloon, Faloon also represents one of his rare failures. Beauchamp was unable to convince a jury otherwise, and Faloon ended up serving 10 years for a rape he did not commit.

Deverell winds in a second and equally important story line of Beauchamp’s new wife, Margaret Blake, a farmer on Garibaldi Island and a rabid environmental activist, is working hard to save her island from an ugly development plan. About the same time Beauchamp finds himself back in Vancouver to help Faloon, his wife takes refuge in a tree to thwart the developers. Both Arthur and Margaret are making headline news day after day, but they are also apart. Arthur must come out of retirement to deal with both matters. Deverell weaves in a number of subplots which add to his main stories. His character development is excellent. Also, he weaves in humor by the use of odd characters who at the same time are quite believable.

I’m impressed with Deverell and look forward to reading more.

Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion

I’ve followed Sam Harris since his 2004 book End of Faith. This book, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion was written in 2014. Harris has an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Stanford and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA. The man is a remarkable thinker. Essentially, this book explains the scientifically proven benefits of meditation, and it provides encouragement to learn to use one’s brain in a healthier manner.

This is a five-chapter book: Spirituality, The Mystery of Consciousness, The Riddle of the Self, Meditation, and Gurus, Death, Drugs, and Other Puzzles. Given that I’m a psychoanalyst who has spent much of my career thinking about the unconscious mind, it’s a challenge when Harris essentially demeans the importance of that. It’s his opinion that Freud “erected an impressively unscientific mythology.” And, for the most part, I agree with Harris who acknowledges that there is much that goes on beneath consciousness and in fact argues that most of our functioning is at an unconscious level. In support of his idea that consciousness is more important, he writes, “As a matter of your experience, you are not a body of atoms, molecules, and cells; you are consciousness and its ever-changing contents, passing through various stages of wakefulness and sleep, from cradle to grave.” He offers this clarification: “Consciousness is simply the light by which the contours of mind and body are known.” Regarding the self, a term that is central to psychoanalytic thought, Harris opines that “the conventional sense of self is an illusion – that spirituality largely consists in realizing this, moment to moment.” You should know that expert and lifelong meditators have a resistance against the thinning of the prefrontal cortex which is seen in Alzheimer’s disease and other causes of cognitive decline. Harris’ information on the conmen involved in the spirituality game is particularly enjoyable. He wrote, “Of course, charlatans haunt every walk of life. But on spiritual matters, foolishness and fraudulence can be especially difficult to detect. Unfortunately, this is a natural consequence of the subject matter…. For our purpose, the only differences between a cult and a religion are the numbers of adherents and the degree to which they are marginalized by the rest of society.”

Ultimately, for me, this is a difficult book to summarize and review. It is currently on the New York Times bestseller list, and in my opinion, deservedly so. The reading is a bit thick and my vocabulary has grown in the process of taking my time with the book. At minimum, it is worth reading Harris’ concluding paragraph: “We are always and everywhere in the presence of reality. Indeed, the human mind is the most complex and subtle expression of reality we have thus far encountered. This should grant profundity to the humble project of noticing what it is like to be you in the present. However numerous your faults, something in you at this moment is pristine – and only you can recognize it. Open you eyes and see.”

Make Me by Lee Child

Reacher's not on a bus this time. He's on a train. Headed north for Chicago before it gets cold. Why is he headed for Chicago? No idea. He just is.

A stop in the middle of nowhere on the prairie gets his attention. Mother's Rest. How'd a town get such a name? Being a nosy sort, and with time on his hands, he decides to get off and find out. He's the only one getting off. Lots of grain elevators, stores that support farmers, North-south streets perpendicular to the east-west streets. And a woman coming from behind one of the grain elevators trying to get his attention.

Wrong person. She's looking for Keever, a fellow PI in a loose-knit nationwide firm made up of ex-cops and FBI types. Keever's big. So is Reacher. Honest mistake. Her name is Michelle Chang and her home base is Seattle.

Mistaken identity. Happens. Reacher gets a room and starts to wander around asking how the town got its name, but folks aren't happy. It's a bit odd that Reacher and Chang show up so close in time to Keever being dumped deep into a hog pen. The motel manager, the FedEx guy, an irrigation parts store clerk, the Maloney brothers and others are instructed to keep an eye on Reacher and Chang. They might be working together.

Which Reacher and Chang eventually do. Work together. And through a long series of 'maybe' and 'suppose' and 'could be' and 'what if' scenarios, they work their way to Oklahoma City, LA, San Francisco, and Phoenix before retuning to Mother's Rest to settle up with the locals.

#20 in the Jack Reacher series. All best sellers; 10 reached #1. All optioned to Hollywood. Child is obviously doing something right.

And what's right is that he continues to come up with a storyline better than the previous outing and that makes this one the best ever, at least until #21 comes out next fall. Child reveals just enough to get the reader thinking the plot will take this direction before slamming on the brakes and heading off to something entirely different. And each turn turns darker and darker until Reacher and Chang are facing a band of psychopaths that provide the cruelest and sickest service possible for a very discreet and well-heeled clientele.

It's no wonder that Child is on the top of most guy's power rotation. Me included.

East Coast Don

Gumshoe by Rob Leininger

Mortimer Angel ("Mort, please") is early-mid 40s and is "looking at a long empty stretch of road ahead." Divorced from the gorgeous - and rich - Dallas. He quit his job as an IRS field agent. Sixteen years of scaring the liver out of people to squeeze a few quarters out of them. Drives a POS Tercel. And next week he starts his new life as a PI, working for his nephew. Reno, NV. No training. Sounded like fun. Greg, the nephew, says being a PI is not Mickey Spillane or Magnum. It's more hurry up and wait than it is, "Hey, babe."

Dallas has been seeing Jonnie Sjorgen, the current mayor of Reno. Marriage is in the not-too-distant future. Problem is that Jonnie and the Reno DA, Dave Milliken, have gone missing. Been gone for over a week. No clues. No ideas. Just gone like they were beamed up to the Enterprise.

Until Jonnie's head is delivered to Dallas. A day later, Milliken's head is delivered to the DA's office. And they weren't just decapitated. Their brains were scooped out and replaced with their . . . um . . . use your imagination. Mort is there each time and becomes a person of interest to the Reno PD. Now he's the subject of jokes on late-night monologs as the crimes go national.

And then there's that blond sleeping in his bed who left a note for him, signed it simply K. While Greg starts looking closely at Jonnie's business dealings, they sort of subcontract another PI, Jerry DiFrazzia. Make that Jeri.

After Jeri sets herself as the alpha male of the partnership, she and Mort start tracking down clues that  seem to have eluded the police. And what started out as a simple disappearance works its way into a sort of 'I am my own grandfather,' like that song.

Leininger's style is to tell the story through Mort, with Mort as the smart aleck, wisecracking, self-effacing PI (think of him as a cousin to Nelson DeMille's John Corey) who, after a dry spell of a few years now has babes practically throwing themselves at him. Maybe being a PI has some advantages.At least until the perps are revealed for the final countdown. It's all business then.

Not sure if Mort Angel is, or will be, a continuing character, but Leininger has an enjoyable and addictive style. Nowhere near power rotation quality, but certainly a reasonable diversion and worthy of another adventure.

East Coast Don

available November 2015