Breach

Breach (An Analog Novel Book 3) is my ninth Eliot Peper book. Can you tell that I love his writing? This might be his best novel yet which means he has already passed a very high standard of near-future science fiction writing. This is the third novel in the Analog series. His protagonist is Emily Kim who we met in the first Analog novel, Bandwidth. This novel opens 13 years since the end of the second book in the series, Borderless. Emily has totally disappeared from Commonwealth, the company which controls the feed - the source of all knowledge and so much more. She is about to reappear in this new story. I strongly you to read the novels in order so that you’ll benefit from the character development. 

Normally, I’m not a sci-fi guy, but this story forces the reader to consider the pros and cons of our developing technology. I think this series is an appeal to industry leaders like Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos to consider possible outcomes of unregulated technical advances. Emily Kim is one of the most compelling fiction characters that I’ve ever encountered. The plot is gripping, and the good guys and bad guys are all real and believable. It’s a quick and exciting read, but start with Bandwidth.

Budapest Noir by Vilmos Kondor

1936. The Hungarian prime minister, Gyula Gombos, has just died. Almost the entire newspaper industry, police, and military are gearing up for the funeral and all the organizational details that will go in to honoring a beloved leader.

That includes Zsigmond Gordon. Crime reporter for The Evening, a leading newspaper in Budapest. He’s no fan of politics. Particularly now, considering what’s brewing the neighboring Italy and Germany. While he, too, has been assigned to cover various aspects of the funeral, the death of a young prostitute is more concerning on a number of levels. 

For one, in all likelihood, her death could be lost amongst all the goings on surrounding the funeral. Second, the girl is a teenager. Third, she died without a mark on her. Fourth, when asking around at the police department, he snuck a peak into a police captain’s drawer and found a professionally made naked photo of the girl. Fifth, she was Jewish. And finally, his contact at the coroner’s office tells Gordon that the girl was pregnant.

Juggling his funeral assignments with sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, Gordon personal private investigation goes from the cop who found the body, to the police higher-ups whose lack of interest goes beyond the simple bad timing what with the funeral and all, to the photographer, to the girl’s pimp, to the brothel with which she was connected, to getting severely beaten by this strange man tracking him, to the brothel’s madam - the legendary Red Margo. All of which was just to find an identity.

Doing a little digging on my own, I learned that the book was originally published in Hungarian in 2008 and translated in this 2012 edition. Also learned that author’s name is a pseudonym and that this book was made into a 2017 movie by a Hungarian film company (to mostly mediocre reviews). But the one common feature of reviews of both the book and the movie is that hard boiled noir fans will probably find things to like about either the book or the movie. My best comparison is to maybe Raymond Chandler as it seems to pay homage to that golden era of noir. Not a bad think to be linked to.

ECD

Off the Grid

Off the Grid is the first Robert McCaw novel reviewed in the blog, and its the author's second thriller with the protagonist, Chief Detective Koa Kane whose beat is Hawaii, the big island. Kane has risen from poverty on the island where his father had labored in the sugar cane fields, only to be killed when he was pushed into a giant grinding machine. Kane escaped by joining the military, and then he retired to the local police force where he worked his way up to chief detective. But, all was not well in paradise. Kane discovered a body that had been tortured before being cast into the active lava field where the expectation was that his body would be burned to a cinder and never discovered. It was the second homicide on the same day, the first of a woman, a reclusive and unsuccessful artist. It turns out the two murdered people were linked. They were mysterious fugitives, but suddenly, Koa’s investigation was hampered by the CIA, the DIA, the Chinese, and his own police chief. As Koa went about his business as a detective, he reveled in his love for Nalani, a beautiful and gracious native Hawaiian who was working as a ranger and naturalist at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, and Koa revealed his own dark secrets.

This book checks all the boxes – a great venue in Hawaii’s back country which is artistically described, a strong protagonist in Koa Kane, a troubling crime that begs to be uncovered, obstacles to solving the case, bad police supervisors, and a love story. The plot is well told and the character development is excellent. This one gets my strong recommendation.

The Public Good by Crista McHugh

About 10 yrs ago: An unlikely trio form a lifelong bond while students at George Washington University in DC. Catherine: the white gentile southern lass. Alondra: a brassy Latina from Brooklyn. Derrick: African-American special forces veteran. The Three Musketeers they call themselves. 

Catherine's passion is medicine and headed off to UNC School of Medicine. Alondra wants to be a journalist, if she can keep her opinions in check and just report the news. Derrick goes to law school with ambitions of public service. Alondra and Derrick had become quite an item, but she broke it off because she knew that her penchant for muckraking and her reactionary temper wouldn't be the proper companion for a man who just might end up in Congress.

Life goes as expected except for Alondra. Gets her newspaper job. Her looks and heritage get her noticed by network TV. She gets a gig as the morning anchor on a DC-based network with no interest in her opinions and forces her to just be a newsreader. When reading a story that the network has blatantly slanted away from the truth, she erupts on air. Bye bye TV job. She now works for an upcoming online news group, still in DC.

Today: Alondra is trying to get some confirmations of details of a new health care bill that will provide free meds for a variety of chronic conditions. She tries to get something, anything, from Senator Howell of Alabama who sits on the committee writing the bill. His pompous, arrogant attitude toward Alondra doesn't sit well, but it comes with the territory of Capitol Hill. After being brushed off, Alondra turns and runs into the newly elected congressman from NY.

Derrick Battle. Her ex.


Catherine is doing an OB/GYN residency in Chapel Hill where the residents have to do some work in a rural free clinic. She comes across an unusually large number of women with premature ovarian failure. Women in the 20's effectively becoming postmenopausal; sterile. She asks some of her former classmates in other residencies to send her details of their cases, accumulating a substantial case series. She notices two commonalities. First, all the women had taken a new contraceptive, Ovucontra from Rock Pharmaceuticals. Single shot. Once a year. 100% effective. Second, those afflicted were all women of color. She looks into the drug and the company and starts asking more questions. Questions that reach Rock Pharmaceuticals. She's spooked by what she has learned, contacts Alondra and they agree to meet over the upcoming weekend. Friday afternoon, Catherine's mother calls. Catherine was killed on Thursday night in a bungled robbery.

After Catherine's funeral, Alondra receives a thumb drive in the mail. From Catherine. Contains all her notes about what she'd found. Names of people involved in the drug's development, doctors overseeing the clinical trials. And her own developing case series of patients. Alondra wants to follow-up and not let Catherine's fears die with her. Alondra calls Rock's Director of R/D. Dead 2 months ago. Traffic accident. She calls the doctor who ran the Miami clinical trial. Drowned a few weeks ago. She sets up a Skype call with the Kenyan doctor who ran the African clinical trial site. He's also spooked. Too many women with premature ovarian failure. He won't use it. Starts to send her his notes when he's killed right in front of her eyes.

From here, it's a race to a truth that Alondra will not let go. She needs an insider. She needs internal Rock communications. She needs to get a sample of the drug. Rock Pharma stands to make billions because it's the only name-brand drug included in the new healthcare bill. But it goes farther and deeper than just money. She needs to connect the dots before she, too, ends up dead.

Got this via Netgalley. The short description sounded interesting. A dogged journalist, a medical mystery, a political thriller. Checks most of my boxes. After reading, I looked up Crista McHugh, a NYT bestselling author. Her genres are romance (contemporary, historical, paranormal), young adult, and fantasy. Not the kind of author generally reviewed the MRB boys.

But let me tell you, boys and girls. This book crackled with a level of authenticity that is usually associated with insider knowledge. You know, a book that might've been written by a former Big Pharma employee, an MD, or a former congressional staffer. Those sorts. You'd never know McHugh is a romance novelist. I was welded to my seat reading this. And when my Kindle wasn't in my hands, I was looking for reasons to stop what I was doing in order to get back to it. I was left stunned. Obviously, McHugh knows how to write. But a medical/political/journalist thriller? Who knew. Could've easily read this in one sitting.

Pick this one up. Anyone who likes thrillers based on investigative reporting, medicine, or politics will find this one right up their alley.

Available  May 29, 2019

ECD

p.s. Only one thing that didn't fully ring true to me. From what I've seen, Big Pharma is, for the most part, out of the R/D business. They let independent startups do the basic research on new molecules - the expensive part of the process. When they find a new molecule or product that looks promising, they just buy out the company. Cheaper in the long run.  But that's an incredibly minor quibble that doesn't detract from this terrific story.