Tin Badges

Lorenzo Carcaterra has written a dozen books, but Tin Badges, a novel written in 2016, is the first that has been reviewed in this blog. If his other books are as awesome as this one, then we’ve been missing out on a very talented writer. The story starts with two story lines. First there is Tank Rizzo who stopped being a New York City cop when he was involved in a particularly ugly take down in which there were several deaths, including that of his beloved partner, Frank “Pearl” Monroe. Tank couldn’t continue in that line of work anymore. We also learn that Tank had grown up with a brother, Jack. They had been exceedingly close as kids, but something happened that neither would talk about. Tank was not invited to Jack’s wedding, and he had almost no interaction with Jack, his wife, or their 15-year-old son, Chris. Then, Jack and his wife were killed in a winter driving accident.

Jack, although retired from the force, accepted cold case assignments from the force, and that’s how he occupied his time. Tank attended the funeral of his brother, and with the death of Jack and his wife, Chris was given the news that his parents had left him the option of going to live with Uncle Tank, a man he did not know. 

Those are the main story lines, and Carcaterra was masterful in developing rich and believable characters. His plot creation was clever, and the writing was excellent. I’m not giving you too good a selling job, but it’s my plan to read more of this authors works. I think he has the potential of being one of my favorites. Give it a try – you won’t be sorry.

The Bitterroots by C.J. Box

In the author’s fourth Cassie Dewell novel, the protagonist has left her career as a police officer in North Dakota to open her own private investigation firm in Bozeman, Montana.  She has tired of the bureaucracy of law enforcement and the misogyny of her co-workers, and needs to work through the PTSD of killing the “Lizard King”, a long-haul trucker and mass murderer.  But starting a new business in a new location brings challenges of its own.  So when a local female attorney wants to hire her to investigate a rape by a wealthy, over barring man from the adjacent county, Cassie has little choice but to agree.

The accused, Blake Keinsasser is the oldest son of a prominent ranching family in Lochsa County.  After three generations, the family business has prospered but has developed a hold over people and politics in the county to preserve their interests.  The first day Cassie begins to ask questions about her client, she is stopped by a deputy and jailed on bogus charges.  Not intimidated by the tactics, Cassie pushes her way into the family only to have her life threatened again.  Still not giving up she finds a former employee of the ranch who fills her in on the family’s history.  Now she knows why she’s in danger but how can she persevere?

C.J. Box does it again with The Bitterroots.  He writes an intriguing story about a fearless, code bound protagonist that you can’t put down, all the while weaving in modern day issues… misogyny, climate change, law enforcement behavior.  An excellent read.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance look.

Black Wolf by G.D.Abson

According to Russian legend, a Black Wolf is a result of a wolf mating with a domestic dog. “Outcasts, destined by be neither one thing or the other. The wolves in their pack attack them for being different and they are shot when seeking human company.” No one trusts a Black Wolf.

That’s a good description of Captain Natalya Ivanova. A ranking officer in the Criminal Investigations Directorate in St. Petersburg who seeks only the truth. A truth that may be in line with Party dictates. The people she investigates don’t trust her because she doesn’t toe the Party line. The victims don’t trust her because she is part of the Party establishment. An honest menti. A Black Wolf.

An educated building surveyor with a 2yo son, Elizaveta Kalinina, has started to be accepted by the Decembrists. A radical fringe group in Russia with a history of civil disobedience and bent on exposing political corruption. She, Max (a university faculty) and Gregor (former party member since marginalized and now a videographer for hire) have been digging into gov’t honchos who live far above their means. Out of town dachas are being filmed in prep for a Youtube documentary.

January, 2018. Dang cold and snowy in St. Petersburg, up near the Finland border. A local traffic cop on duty near a string of those dachas stops at a snow bank to relieve himself and finds Kalinina’s body. The case falls to Ivanov. But given the location, the Russian version of the FBI, Sledstvennyi Komitet (Sledkom) takes over. Their job it to clear the case, truth be damned. They claim Kalinina was a prostitutka who died of an overdose. That doesn’t jive with what the medical examiner says or what her own criminologist found. Not to mention that Max’s twin sister gets to Ivanova to tell here that Max is now missing.

Ivanova’s boss, the entirely disagreeable former FSB Colonel Dostoynov tells her she’s done with the case and done with the Service if she continues to dig. But when the Black Wolf bears her teeth, she's on the stalk. Into the Decembrists, into the traffic cop who found the body, into Gregor, into Max's brother, into that string of dachas and the paper trail of ownership, why the intense security at those dachas, and some videos of the dachas from a wrecked drone, one scene in particular. What she finds just might get her killed.

All this while a couple other side-stories evolve in the knee-deep snow and frigid cold. Like her step son making the moves on Max’s sister. Like her husband, Misha and also a cop in the Directorate, being driven out of his job and into prison by Dostoynov. Like her partner, the plodding but reliable (most of the time) Rogov, also being a target of Dosotynov.

This is the 2^nd in a series by Abson. The first, Motherland, was well received by the boys here at MRB and Abson hasn’t lost his touch. We are carefully shown the black (multi-layered political corruption) and white (Ivanona, Decembrists) of Russia in all their glory. Ivanova has two reasons for digging so deeply: find and punish those actually responsible and to make sure that Kalinina’s son grows up knowing his mother wasn’t an addict/prostitute.  

This first-class police procedural is fraught with unforeseen twists that leading us through a culture we only know from biased media outlets and western political agendas. Probably more truth here than what we’ve seen. Much like the trilogy from Zoe Ferraris about a female cop in Saudi Arabia, Abson puts the local dirty laundry out there for us to absorb.

As a reminder to the Russian elite: better remember to toe the line. Step over it, and Captain Black Wolf will find you. 

ECD

Red Metal by Mark Greaney and H. Ripley Rawling

About 3 years ago – A platoon is overrun in Afghanistan. Heavy losses, but. Lt Col Dan Connolly’s charges are bailed out by a Warthog. He is realizing that being on patrol is a young man’s game.

About 3 years ago – The Russians are on the verge of taking control of a rare earth metals mine in Kenya. At the last minute, Moscow says withdraw. The commander, Colonel Yuri Borbikov, doesn’t agree, but complies. He perceives this as more of a personal failure and less a political decision. For the next three years, he devises a plan to retake what he feels rightfully belongs to Russia. He just needs the right circumstances.

Current day. The China-Taiwan thing continues to rankle Beijing. Elections are coming up in Taiwan and a hard-line candidate who is pro reconciliation is assassinated by Chinese commandoes in a raid set up to look like opposition extremists within Taiwan pulled the trigger. They want war so they can take the island by force. The Western Pacific goes on alert and the President sends an enormous naval presence to the area in an attempt to deter China who has said that an invasion is imminent depending on the outcome of the upcoming elections.

This may be just what Borbikov needs. Distraction. He has managed to get the ear of a couple higher ups who in turn sell the plan to the Russian President. The plan calls for a rapid strike on two fronts while the US is distracted in the Pacific. One strike is directed at NATO, specifically its AFRICOM headquarters in Stuttgart while the other is a Russian force headed for the Mrima Hill mine in Kenya. If the Russians can take out AFRICOM and focus the remaining US forces on Europe, the Kenyan strike should be met with minimal  resistance.

What follows is a HUGE story beginning with Russia’s plans, miscalculations by NATO and the Pentagon, and the integration of multiple information sources by two Pentagon analysts. The battles that are largely mechanized armor battles (tanks and other such vehicless) and mostly told from the viewpoints of  Lt Col Connolly (who, normally at his cushy Pentagon job, gets pulled out and plopped in Africa to help oversee that front. Cuz he put it all together), a US commander of a tank company in Europe, an A-10 Warthog pilot, a Polish partisan in the regional civilian guard (whose main goal was to become the manager of the coffee shop she works at), the two Russian generals in charge of each front (the  experienced Boris Lazar in Africa and the arrogant Eduard Sabaneyev in Europe), Colonel Castor, the Marine commander in Africa (charged with getting to the mine first and holding the ground until a re-tasked carrier group can arrive with help), and one bad-ass driver of a Virginia class sub off the eastern coast of Africa. Europe explodes on Christmas morning and this whole mess moves along at light speed for the next week.

Greaney is an established political/spy thriller writer who has joined up with Rawlings, a retired Marine Colonel. I’ve read my share of combat-based novels and the only ones that really ring true have been written by those who’ve been there. It’s obvious that Rawlings is that man. The battle plans. The execution. The counters. The hardware. The casualties and destruction. Other books without the intimate knowledge that goes far beyond literary research just don’t match up. The book is filled with that alphabet soup of acronyms and initialism of weaponry and combat. Greaney did some work with Clancy and it shows as this is on a par with other really big stories by Clancy. Did you like Red Storm Rising? You’ll like this (>600 page) beast.

Together they have put together what could potentially be WWIII. And over what? A strip mine. Make that the world’s largest mine of rare elements that just happen to be critical for hi-tech development. Whoever controls the mine will control that most important sector of the world’s economy as well as future military R&D. Whoever controls that hole in the ground will dictate the future.

Expected publication date is July 16, 2019. Place your orders. This one could be big.

ECD

She's so Cold

She’s so Cold by Donald E. McInnis is nonfiction work about one of the more famous murder cases in San Diego County. The murder of 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe occurred in January 1998, in Escondido, California. Initially, the police focused on the murder having been committed by Michael, Stephanie’s 14-year-old brother, along with two of Michael’s friends, Joshua Treadway and Aaron Houser. Mr. McInnis was the defense lawyer for Aaron.

In one sense, this was a terrible book. For the sake of accuracy, the author relied on court transcripts and other recorded materials to present his facts. Personally, I find the reading of court transcripts and depositions to be incredibly tedious. I’ve provided expert opinions in nearly 2,000 cases (nearly all of it having been outside the criminal arena) and I’ve been deposed approximately 500 times. Proofreading my own depositions has got to be the worst and most boring part of this. But, that’s beside the point. It was just hard to read through all of the transcripts.

This Crowe murder case was a mess from the outset. The author clearly proves that the Escondido Police Department mistreated the boys in the course of extracting two probably false confessions from them. “Mistreatment” is probably an understatement regarding the way the boys were treated. I don’t disagree with the author that the police interrogation techniques were the equivalent of “psychological torture.” The boys were kept from their parents, not Mirandized until much later, and they were denied food, water, and sleep until their initial interrogations were completed. It is outrageous that such behavior still occurs in our legal system. Not only were the boys eventually exonerated, but also the City of Escondido had to pay out $11,250,000 for the violation of the boys’ civil rights. McInnis makes their mistreatment very clear. It was 14 years after Stephanie’s death in 2012 that the San Diego Superior Court ruled that the three boys were factually innocent of the charges against them.

Subsequently to the boys’ trials, 28-year-old Richard Tuite, a transient who may have been schizophrenic, was arrested and convicted of voluntary manslaughter. McInnis presented the evidence against Tuite. That three-month Tuite trial took place in 2004, so the Crowe case once again dominated the local news. However, in 2011, the 9^th Circuit Court opined that Tuite was entitled to a new trial, and on 12/6/13, Mr. Tuite was found not guilty of the murder of Stephanie Crowe. Then 44 years old, after spending about 15 years in custody, Mr. Tuite was allowed to freely walk away from prison. So the Crowe case was never solved.

As a further connection to the ongoing importance of this case, when the current County DA Bonnie Dumanis resigned from her post in 2017, the appointed interim DA was Summer Stephan who had lost the Crowe trial against the boys. Ms. Summer was then elected to a four-year term as the San Diego County DA. So, in real life, all court matters are not as neat and tidy as what we see in the mystery books we often read.

Six Minutes Late by Patrick Parker

On the surface, the NASA weather facility in Panama looks harmless enough, if you discount the heavier than probably necessary force of locals on guard. A couple of the locals have been turned by Bart Madison, a former spec ops soldier who has gone rogue and now hires himself out to the highest bidder. Right now, ISIS has the deepest pockets.

What is really housed down there are four man-portable nukes. Madison recruits elements of various cartels to enter the facility, steal the four nukes, and transport them out. Two take a circuitous route to the coast for transit to the Middle East. The other two are destined for the US. If they can get across the border.

The presence of the nukes in Panama is a sore topic for the current appeaser-in-chief in the White House. When he learns of the theft, he makes every attempt to keep it quiet. Any attempt at getting the nukes has to be entirely off the books. If they get returned, no one must know anything. Nothing. No press, no awards, no commendations. Nothing.

The SoCom command overseas Panama. To lead the hunt for the stolen nukes, the recently retired Max Kenworth is put on point along with Gail Summers (FBI) and Danya Mayer (Mossad). Their job is to find out what happened at the NASA facility, where the nukes have gone, get them back and avoid any detonation, and find out who is responsible. SoCom has pledged every possible resource (fully off the books) to accomplish their task.

The chase begins in the Panamanian jungle to Colombia, to an Atlantic freighter transported two nukes to ISIS. The chase also heads up Central America where a number of false flags show up at border crossings allowing the other two nukes to cross, headed for unknown destinations. Homeland Security is convinced the bombs are headed for NYC and has convinced the President. Max, Gail, and Danya think otherwise and track a possibility in the western US where a detonation might not lead to a massive loss of life, but surely would devastate all aspects fo the SW US economy.

Parker lays out every American’s worst nightmare. A turncoat who knows the inner workings of the US security forces, works for ISIS, captures a nuclear weapon, and plans on a homeland detonation. Elements of the theft, the chase, and the confrontations have an air of authenticity that should send shivers down the spine of most readers. This could easily be a 1-sitting read or, if you read at night, keep you up far later than planned.

If I had to quibble, there are a couple character development points with some holes. For one, there's only a taste of what caused Bart to go over to the dark side; would've liked more. Apparently, Max and Bart have a history, but the details are not fleshed out that much. Looks like Max and Danya also have a history, but I guess I missed it. Not to mention that the team shuttles between DC, Panama, various military installations, US-MEX border crossings, Las Vegas, and LA area at NCC-1701 transporter speeds. But, as Johnny Carson used to say (when a comedy piece was dying), “Buy the premise, buy the bit.” For most, I suspect that those details won’t detract from this high-stakes cat and mouse game played by Bart and Max. As Samuel L. Jackson said in Jurassic Park: ‘Hold on to your butts.”

Parker is retired Army with 15 more years in the Defense industry. Helps keep the plot authentic. He has two earlier thrillers and all three are self published, so your hard earned $$ go to him and him alone.

ECD