Gideon

 

On Treason: A Citizen's Guide to the Law

 

Tie Die by Max Tomlinson

Late 70’s San Francisco. Two disconnected events from the late 60’s. 1. Colleen Hayes discovers that her husband has been abusing their daughter. In a fit a rage, Collen drives a shiv into his neck, and she gets 10y courtesy of the State of Colorado. Pamela, the daughter, hates mom and eventually finds her way to a commune in rural northern California. 2. Steve Cook was a Brit rock singer on the way up. The Lost Chords' first album just knocked The Stones off the top spot. The boys are up and coming rock gods. All the booze and birds they can handle. Cook wakes up one morning after a mega concert with a dead minor in his bed. He’s barely out of his teens and runs off leaving his band mates behind without a word. Ends up in Brazil. Bye Bye rock god. Meets Lynda. A wannabe music producer. Convinces him to come to SF so she can resurrect his career. They marry. Have a daughter, Melinda, now 11. Steve and Lynda are divorced. 

Colleen has been out on parole and lives in San Francisco. Being a convicted felon kind of limits one’s career options. She’s worked security and now is working as an unlicensed PI. Gets a call about a kidnapped girl. Told to meet the dad at a bar where the dad works with some band and discovers . . . son of a bitch . . . the lead singer, the dad, her client, is THE Steve Cook, whom she had a crush on when The Lost Chords were an item.

He’s renovating a row house. When she interviews him about Melanie, Lynda comes in unannounced and uninvited. Real piece of work is she. There’s a ransom demand and instructions for the delivery. Colleen will make the trade per the kidnapper’s instructions. The swap goes bad. The bag man ends up under a bus, the money gone in a handoff, and no Melanie. Almost as bad, Steve got the money from a loan shark with a short fuse.

As Colleen and Steve go back over what happened, Colleen starts to think that the kidnap was a sham. The main target is not money, but Steve’s catalogue of songs he wrote for The Lost Chords. Hollywood wants one in particular for a movie. The rights fees for that song and the catalogue could bring in millions. Colleen starts tracking Lynda and eventually finds Melanie safe down by the coast, placated with a new horse. She shows photos to Steve and, for the most part, the case is done.

Problem is, I’m only 50% through the book. Lots more to come.

Like a 2^nd kidnapping of Melanie . . . Lynda’s dad (a film and music producer) . . . a titled music promoter in London . . . his old band mates . . . more ransom demands (for real this time) . . . Cook being arrested . . . a shootout in the Mojave.

Tie Die is a welcome glimpse back to the shift from the mod to the disco culture of that era, an era I lived through. It’s the 2^nd in a planned Colleen Hayes series. Most ‘noir’ mysteries have a hard boiled (male) detective and a femme fatale. Those roles are reversed with Colleen and Cook. Tomlinson presents Colleen as a seriously flawed heroine who sees this case as a parallel to her own relationship (or lack thereof) with her own daughter. Maybe solving one will help repair the other? Guessing that’s that’ll be his next book. Tie Dye is a very good noir mystery whose pace really picks up in the 2^nd half of the book. I think I may just try to find the first (Vanishing in the Heights) so I have the full backstory prior to what I suspect will be the all out hunt for her daughter.

The book is published by Oceanview. The only publisher I’ve ever pointed out in the past is Emily Bestler Books. I’ve had very good luck with Oceanview so it’s time I gave them some props, too. 

Published June 2020.

ECD

Fatal Intent

Serpentine by Jonathan Kellerman

Detective Milo Sturgis is pressured into taking a thirty six year old cold case after the victim’s wealthy daughter pulls some strings with a L.A. politician.  Milo immediately includes psychologist Alex Delaware in their dive into the past.  The duo, Milo and Alex are best friends and enjoy a very high solve rate.  The victim, Dorothy Svoboda died with a bullet in her head and was burned to a crisp in a borrowed Cadillac along treacherously curvy Mulholland Drive.  Thirty six years and three homicide detectives later, her murder is still unsolved.  Intuition and investigative probing soon reveal that someone still alive today wants the murder to remain unsolved.  Many of Dorothy’s known associates both dead and alive led unscrupulous lives and several could easily have had motive to wish her dead.  This is a formidable challenge even for Milo and Alex.

 A thirty six year old crime in the thirty sixed Jonathan Kellerman novel featuring his two favorite protagonists… probably coincidental.  But after so many books these characters have taken on such a familiarity both with themselves and with the reader that only the tiniest bit of character development is necessary.  Makes for a fast paced linear plot…just the way I like it.

 Thanks to Netgalley for the early read.

West Coast Don: I found this one in the Libby App and downloaded the audiobook. Like Midwest Dave, I'm a fan of Jonathan Kellerman, and I enjoy the way he writes about the friendship and crime solving skills of Alex and Milo. My favorite part of this book was the short take given on Alex treating an 18-m0nth-old girl who had been in a car accident and was clearly emotionally traumatized. Otherwise, I thought this was not one of Kellerman's best novels. It was a bit too long and convoluted for my tastes. Still his character development, as always is excellent. I thought there was a lot of unnecessary filler in the writing.

 

The President's Dossier by James Scott

It’s no wonder that Max Geller is pissed off and swilling mid priced scotch in the mid afternoon in a mid level DC bar.

He was a career field agent for the CIA. Russia was his specialty. Fluent. Familiar with Russian business and politics. Transferred back to the mother ship in Langley. He had an almost live-in girlfriend Vanessa. People wanted his counsel. Life was pretty good.

Then Vanessa gets posted to Australia. But soon comes Claudia. DC lawyer sort of on loan to the CIA. She and Max hit it off. But in an exchange of emails on the Company server, Max says some derogatory things about President Walldrum. Max should know that no conversation on a CIA email server is private or protected. Max’s boss learns about the email and summarily fires Max. Goodbye CIA. Hello afternoon scotch.Yeah, Max is pissed off. And everyone around him has to endure his attitude.

Into the bar saunters Bowen. A fixer of sorts. People want things done, he finds the right talent to do the job. A client wants the file on the President. The file, dossier if you prefer, was prepared by an outgoing MI6 agent. When a new President is coming in, most countries prepare their own dossier for info on how to deal with a new administration. The Brit’s file is pretty salacious. Lots of Russia connections. Like, photos and hooker diaries of a younger version of the president way back when in a hotel while doing business in Russia. Statements from the Russian underground saying that Walldrum was told by Kremlin reps those pics will stay hidden if Walldrum permits the Russians to launder money through his hotel construction business. Bowen’s client doesn’t just want the file. He wants its contents verified at the source. And the client is willing to pay handsomely - $10 million.

Geller will have to go to London to track down the file (to which Bowen inserts Jill Rucker to work with Geller, who ain’t happy about a partner or minder or babysitter – you choose), then Russia to talk to the sources, then Panama to see how construction laundering works, to DC to set up an exchange of information for cash, to Geneva for the actual exchange. Having once had a career in Europe, Max has friends at most every stop. Along the way, he gets the help he needs and maybe a bad guy or three meet their maker. As the story develops, poor Max becomes a target of the CIA, MI6 and the Kremlin.

The question here isn’t so much whether Max find the dossier. He will. We all know that. The real question is who profits by having possession of the dossier. And that’s the slippery slope we have to navigate. And I’ll have to say, when all is revealed, I didn’t see it coming. The last 25+ pages of the book is almost as surprising as the last 2 minutes of The Usual Suspects.

Scott's other titles are historical thrillers and he has lived all over the world. Also a vet of the 101^st Airborne, was on the Army Staff, and is a graduate of the General Staff College and the National Defense University. Write about what you know? I think this guy knows it. An early 2020 release, this book was honored at the best thriller/adventure book of 2020 by AmericaBookFest.com. Fast paced, loaded with twists, double and triple crosses and other similar pastimes. Once you’ve started reading, don’t’ pick it up to read a few pages before nodding off to sleep. Not gonna happen. Those few pages will easily turn into 2+ hours of lost sleep. 

East Coast Don

The Kremlin Conspiracy by Joel C. Rosenberg

(opening note: Rosenberg is the author of 12 novels over 16 years about various worst-case scenarios in the Middle East. Now he turns his vivid imagination to Russia).

The Kremlin Conspiracy traces the paths of two families – American and Russian – across 30 years focusing on Marcus Ryker and Oleg Krashkin. Marcus grew up in Colorado. A typical outdoorsy adrenaline junkie. No risk to great. Lucky for him, he met Elana in the 6^th grade, dated throughout high school and college. Marcus’ goal is law enforcement in Colorado.

Oleg is the son of some privilege. Went to university and law school where he met Marina Luganov who was the daughter of a rising star in Russian politics. Oleg had become the youngest partner in Moscow’s more important law firm. By the time Oleg prepares to propose, her father Alexsandr, had risen through the FSB and has become the Prime Minister with eyes on the Presidency. Upon accepting Oleg’s request for Marina’ hand, Luganov suprises Oleg with a job offer to be on his personal staff. Being the first wedding of a Prime Minister or President since the days of the czars, the pomp and circumstance of the wedding rivaled Charles and Diana.

Then 9/11 happens.

Marcus joins the Marines and serves with distinction in Afghanistan. Returns home and marries Elana. His heroics in saving a sitting Senator gained him some unwanted notoriety and the eye of the US Secret Service. After the Marines, he joins the Colorado Springs police department, but it isn’t long before the Secret Service comes knocking. Leaving behind his home, he and a less than thrilled Elana begin their lives on the east coast. As a junior agent, he was involved in an assault on the White House and again, his willingness to run toward fire put him in front of the President. Again, more unwanted publicity. But the President elevates Marcus to his personal detail where Marcus is exposed to the tactics of the highest level of personal protection.

Oleg has stayed by Luganov’s side as a personal secretary and ultimately as chief counsel to the hugely popular President. He now sits directly beside the man determined to bring Russia back to its deserved place as the single world superpower.

(The story rushes to the current day). Luganov’s plan for Russia is atrocious. Stage military exercises along their border with Ukraine as well as Russia’s borders with Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Quietly move in massive amounts of armored and air support. NATO will pay closer attention to Ukraine assuming that Russia will not dare attack three NATO members because that would enact Article 5 – an attack on one is an attack on all.

Senator Robert Dayton of Iowa (the one Marcus saved in Afghanistan) is a vocal critic of the sitting US president as well as Russia’s actions. In an attempt to dissuade Russia’s actions, he undertakes a trip to the Baltic states. His security detail includes the experienced Agent Ryker. An unexpected opportunity for Senator Dayton to meet with Luganov puts the staffs of both in a planning meeting. During the meeting, Oleg abruptly stops the negotiations, walks over to a stunned security guard and asks, “You are Agent Ryker who saved your president.’ Gulp. Now what? “I want to shake the hand of a brave man. My name is Oleg Krashkin.” Oleg turns around and gets back to the discussions.

Luganov is the ultimate player in international politics. Playing sides against each other, lying to the world while doing the opposite behind their back. An invasion of the Baltics is planned. Luganov wants a lightening fast assault that will catch NATO unprepared. Hopes that NATO’s response will give him the opportunity to use his battlefield nukes. He relishes and looks forward to the opportunity.

Oleg sees not the reemergence of Russia. He sees a holocaust. The steps needed for the eventual meeting we readers all know must happen begin. Oleg reaches out to Marcus.

While the US and NATO seem paralyzed, Ryker, through the CIA’s chief of station in Moscow, war game out various scenarios seeing only one option. Oleg is doing the same thing on his own and comes to the same conclusion.

OK, Rosenberg’s forte has been the Middle East and a number of his books have been reviewed by the boys here at MRB. I haven’t read one in a while and I’m kicking myself for letting some fall under my radar. Many of his books were eerily prescient. Aspects of his books actually happened, usually within a year of two of publication. This is his first venture out of the Middle East, but that doesn’t mean he has lost his gift for presenting complex geopolitical interplay at a breakneck pace in a highly entertaining and readable story. I suspect this might be the beginning of a Marcus Ryder series. Coming in at just under 500 pages, Rosenberg keeps the story moving at an alarming pace while still building credible empathy for the motivations that drive both Ryker and Kraskin. How each come to their solutions may differ, but the eventual common outcome is undeniable. This one will get your heart pounding.

The Sentinel by Lee Child and Andrew Child

The 24^th edition about the wanderings of Jack Reacher has Jack getting off the bus in Nashville. Looking for some coffee to enjoy while listening to some music, he wanders into a bar. Band’s pretty good. Strikes up a conversation and learns that the bar owner has just stiffed them. In his typical low-key way, Jack convinces the owner to pay up, with a couple bonuses thrown in. The owner also agrees not to diss the band’s rep around town. Also gets a cut as the band’s new manager.

Having done some good, he manages to cop a ride with a young insurance adjuster headed west out of Nashville. Destination is a suburb called Pleasantville. Sounds OK, so Jack tags along. Upon arrival, Jack again goes looking for some coffee. Finds a coffee shop and settles in. The customers and staff all seem to be giving this one guy a serious collective cold shoulder. Being a buttinsky, Jack learns that Rusty Rutherford is the town’s IT director and under his watch, everything has gone entirely offline. And Rusty is blamed. And he gets fired. But Pleasantville in his home and he wants to stay and clear his name.

The town is being held up by a ransomware routine that has shut the town down until a ransom is paid. The town has insurance, and the adjuster has just arrived to pay up and get life back to normal. Of course, nothing works out right. Rusty gets jumped and Reacher steps in to convince the thugs to take their issues elsewhere. Another band of punks takes a run this time at Reacher. More bad planning.

In his attempts to protect the Pleasantville data, Rusty and on old friend, ex-FBI cybercrime agent, had developed a bit of software to protect the town against such an attack. Town bean counters weren't interested. It sort of worked, but it couldn’t fully stop the ransomware attack.

Has to be more to this than just this ransomware attack. Turns out Pleasantville is the home of a former Nazi. Add in that the folks muscling Reacher and Rutherford are Russian. Russians with a connection to some of those bots that presumably messed up the most recent election. And whenever the Russians are involved, the FSB can't be far behind. Pleasantville is mixed up with some pretty heavy hitters.

The annual fall release of another Jack Reacher book is an event. Breathless fanboys line up. This year is different. Lee Child is in retirement mode and is turning a multimillion-dollar franchise to his son, Andrew Grant/Andrew Child. Both are credited with writing the book. Grant has a few mysteries published in the UK, but the initial reviews by the obsessed fanboys were not very favorable. Matter of fact, some reviews were downright nasty. I’ll admit, in the beginning I thought the writing style seemed a bit forced. But once the story took off, I couldn’t tell what was written by Dad and what was written by the son. For me, it was a clean handoff. Maybe not as smooth as the Vince Flynn to Kyle Mills move, but certainly not so obvious that I’d stop reading. Reacher wouldn’t like that. 

(if I had to make a complaint, it's with the choice of Pleasantville, TN. Such a town does exist. And it's west of Nashville. But its population is listed as 666 (potentially ominous) and that's a bit small for some of the amenities noted in the book. Primarily, Rutherford's apartment is multistory with its own doorman and underground parking. Pretty uppity for a town of 666. But that's nit picking at its finest). 

ECD

A Time for Mercy by John Grisham

Set in Clayton, Mississippi in 1990, Jake Brigance makes his third appearance in Grisham’s plethora of legal thrillers.  Jake first appeared in Grisham’s first (and I believe the best) novel, A Time to Kill.  Now five years after getting Carl Lee Hayley, a Black man, acquitted of a murder charge for killing the white supremacists who raped and murdered Hayley’s young daughter, Jake is cajoled into taking another controversial case.  He is appointed to defend Drew Gamble, a sixteen year old boy who shot and killed his mother’s boyfriend, deputy sheriff Stu Kofer.  Turns out Stu was a good deputy but a bad boyfriend.  His dark side led him to heavy drinking, physical violence against Drew’s mother, and sexual abuse of Drew’s fourteen year old sister.  During one of Stu’s drunken episodes, he nearly killed Drew’s mother before passing out on his bed.  Drew, thinking his mother was dead put the deputy’s service revolver to Stu’s head and pulled the trigger.  Clayton’s law enforcement, Stu’s family, and most of the community lined up against Drew and of course against Jake, his attorney.  So Jake is cast against the community and must fear for his reputation, his career, and the lives of his family just to do the right thing… again.

I thoroughly enjoyed A Time for Mercy just as I have most John Grisham legal thrillers from the beginning.  I’m mixed however on the movies made from Grisham’s work.  Once you see Matthew McConaughey as Jake Brigance, you can’t get that character out of your mind for the next book with the same character.  Too frustrate further, I’m currently reading Michael Connelly’s latest Lincoln Lawyer novel whose previous movies starred, that’s right Matthew McConaughey.  You see my confusion.  Is that face in my head Jake or Mickey or just some actor trying to sell me a car?

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance look.

Feet of Clay: The Power and Charisma of Gurus

Okay, I've wondered off our genre once again, so if you're looking for a thriller, this is not a book for you. Written in 1996, Feet of Clay: The Power and Charisma of Gurus is the final book by a New York psychoanalyst Anthony Storr. He reported his thoughts about a number of self-proclaimed gurus or guru-like figures, some famous, some infamous. Guru is a Sanskrit word which means "heavy." Storr notes, "When applied to people, it means someone who commands respect. He covered the period of time beginning with Jesus in the beginning of the last millenium, through the 16th century and into the very recent path with stories about Jim Jones of the People's Temple and David Karesh of the Branch Davidians. 

Some of the people he wrote about were ones I had not heard of such as Gurdijieff and Rajneesh. I had heard of Rudolf Steiner, but I knew little about him. Storr also took on studies of Ignatius of Loyola, Carl Jung, and Sigmund Freud.

Narcissism was one feature that was common to all of these gurus although the narcissism was much more pathologic in some than in others. This book provided a very interesting comparison of these figures. In order to bring a sense of order to their self-perceived chaotic lives, people have been willing to submit themselves to such gurus as a means of abandoning responsibilities for their own lives. This is a well written review of such leaders.

Next To Last Stand by Craig Johnson

The 16^th Walt Longmire Mystery. Got to be doing something right to get this far. I’ve read them all and will continue . . . Yeah, I’m biased.

Charlie Lee Stillwater was a old friend of Walt’s. Lived at the nearby Wyoming’s Soldiers and Sailors Home. The administrator calls Walt with the bad news that Charlie passed away. Heart attack most likely. With no nearby kin, Walt is called in to go through Charlie’s effects. Within all the junk that clutters our lives are two items of note. One is a scrap of an old painting. The other is an old shoe box, make that a big boot box, stuffed to overflowing with non-sequential, hand-wrapped $100 bills. The bank counts it up - $1 million. Word is that Charlie’s only surviving relative is an LA-based grandson (a mostly part-time studio guitarist) who is entitled to all of Charlie’s remaining belongings – minus what Uncle Sam will want in taxes.

Being the skeptic that he is, Walt wonders if the painting scrap and the money are related. And if so, maybe Charlie didn’t die of natural causes. Off he goes on a convoluted trail learning about art, how it’s prepared, displayed, valued, and sold through legal and less than legal means.

A museum conservator is queried about the scrap and, after some challenging investigation, says that the scrap is indeed old and that it bears a remarkable resemblance to a long lost painting called Custer’s Last Fight.

 

The late-1880s Cassily Adams painting is somewhat notorious. A huge canvas that was acquired by Adolphus Busch (the beer magnate) who duplicated hundreds of thousands of prints that were given to bars throughout the country as a promotional gimmick. The original was lost in a 1946 fire, but the best copy still hangs at Anheuser Busch corporate offices. The scrap that Charlie had was part of a practice canvas the artist used in prep for the actual painting. The scrap was essentially worthless, but the conservator causally mentions that the original, were it still intact, might be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 million.

What was once a curiosity now becomes the focus on Walt’s investigation. Could Charlie actually have the original painting, who might be a potential buyer, and who could broker such a deal?

Along the way we cross paths with the Count (an art broker), the wavers (4 wheelchair-bound residents of the Home who sit by the highway and wave to travelers), a former KGB thug, the aforementioned grandson, the head of Wyoming’s SBI, Cheyenne tribal elder Lonnie Littlefeather, a tribal police officer Lola Long and her little brother Barrett (whom she lobbies Walt to hire), plus the usual cast: Vic, Henry Standing Bear, Ruby, and Cady from a distance.

This chapter in Walt’s life is less like his other cases in that the intensity of investigation is well down the list. It certainly is more light-hearted with a number of side stories that do not detract from the main issue, like Vic’s plans to replace her beaten down truck, or Walt having to attend a cowboy formal event (tux shirt/jacket/tie/cuff links/studs) over jeans, boots, and the requisite hat, or the level of performance that one with some mechanical know-how can raise a motorized wheelchair.

So, enjoy this leisurely stroll through Absaroka County while learning more details about Custer’s demise than you ever knew. My fav is the name of the battle. Each side has their own name (like the North called it the Battle of Antietam and the South called it the Battle of Sharpsburg). The ‘whites’ refer to it as Custer’s Last Stand. The natives call it The Battle of the Greasy Grass.

ECD

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

I don't think the third Harry Potter book needs much of a review. Thousands of people have already done this. As I continue to read this series in order to catch up with my 7-yr-old grandson who is already into book 5, I'm enjoying the fantasy. My only surprise was how many twists and turns occurred in Rowling's plot given that this is generally considered a fantasy work for younger readers. Meanwhile, the ultimate good guys are really good and the ultimate bad guys are really bad - which is not a surprise. 
 

Salvation Station

Salvation Station is Kathryn Schleich's first novel, a clever story about a female psychopath who targets pastors who have recently lost their wives due to accident or illness. She then swoops into the scene. As a bright and beautiful woman who is apparently only interested in the welfare of the church, she is able to essentially take over the finances of Christian churches, suggesting that she can help them improve their fame and their collections, only for the goal of doing Christ's work. However, it then becomes her task to embezzle those church funds and then disappear with the loot before she gets caught. The author hit hard the naivete of the church members and their willingness to give money for Christ for their church. If the circumstances suggest to her that she would be better off to murder someone to protect her identity, she is willing to do that. Under an earlier identity, when her minister husband decided that it was his calling to do missionary work in Africa, they seemed to have left Lincoln, Nebraska together, along with their two children. It was when the new minister moved into the parsonage, that his dog dug up a human bone in the flower garden. This woman's husband was buried there along with their two children, but she was nowhere to be found. Captain Linda Turner could not let go of this case and she spent the next several years trying to solve that heinous crime.

The evil one was an expert in changing her identity, changing her appearance, and using homemade poisons to kill her pursuers. I don't think the writing in this novel was particularly good, but the plot is a good one. Female psychopaths are rare.  The author created a good and sympathetic new husband-pastor. 

The Last Thing that Burns by Will Dean

[In 2010, one of THE books to be read was Room by Emma Donoghue. That richly acclaimed novel was made into a 2015 movie that won Brie Larsen the Academy Award for Best Actress. If you were blown away by that book . . . buckle up.]

It’s a tale we’ve heard all too often. Far East immigrants pay exorbitant amounts of money for transit to the west on the promise of jobs. Their hazardous transport in a shipping container drops this group in England where brokers sell the survivors to the highest bidder. Work is promised that is used to pay the buyer back (years of work) and once the debt is paid, the immigrants are then on their own. Those are the lucky ones.

Thanh Dao and her younger sister, Kim-Ly, arrive from Vietnam. Each gets sold to different men. Thanh is bought by Lenn who lives in the Fensland, a low-lying region on the east coast in the south-central England. The Fens used to be a boggy region that was drained by man to support farming. Today, it is crisscrossed by a series of dikes containment pools.

Lenn is a brutal, controlling, abusive farmer who lives alone on a farm that his parents built. We learn little about the father, but it’s obvious that Lenn holds his late mother, Jane, in high regard. Most everything in this tiny farmhouse has a connection to his mom – fry pans, the Rayburn wood stove, towels, aprons, clothing, underwear, recipes, daily menus. Practially everything Thanh does touches another reminder of his Mum.Lenn requires that Thanh (who he renamed as Jane as an homage to his late mother) do everything exactly as his Mum did. Any departure is punishable.

 

Seven years Thanh/Jane has been crushed under Lenn’s thumb. Doors, TV, outbuildings, and gates are locked. He has the entire house wired for video that he reviews each night. When he sees that she does something wrong, he burns one of her few possessions. Punishment that pushes her deeper into the hole he has dug for her.

 

Her existence, outside of being Lenn’s slave, is a paperback book, Of Mice and Men, letters from Kim-Ly, and dreams of either killing Lenn or escaping. Two years ago, she made an attempted escape. Lenn’s punishment was to take bolt cutters to an ankle and crushed the bones. Now her foot is a useless and painful appendage to her leg. She is forced to hobble and has to sit to scoot down steps. Pain is controlled by pieces of a horse tranquilizer easily obtained by farmers. Once all of her possessions have been burned, Lenn then threatens Kim-Ly’s existence.

 

A new neighbor drives up. Cynthia wants to rent a corner of the property for her horse. Jane says to come back later to ask her husband.

 

Lenn and Thanh/Jane sleep together, except for that time of the month. On the occasional weekend, she has to lie passively while he penetrates her. After seven years, she becomes pregnant. Lenn won’t take her to a doctor, even for the delivery. His Mum bore him in that house. Jane can do it, too. His Mum’s towels become diapers. Buying formula and baby food would alert the folks in the store. When the baby gets sick as newborns will do, he refuses to seek medical care. Baby feel cool? Stand by the Rayburn. Feel feverish? Run a cool bath. That's what his Mum would've done.

 

It is this claustrophobic existence of life and abuse in a forgotten corner of England that Will Dean tells from Thanh’s point of view. Go into this book forewarned. This is extremely hard to stomach. The surveillance, the despair, the monotony, the threat of further abuse and pain. The effect of human trafficking on one individual is a story that is hard to tell, hard to read, and even harder to put down. Tension, threats, physical and emotional pain, the unsettling drudgery of Thanh’s existence will leave you enraged and breathless. This brutal, personal tale was one of the hardest hardest books that I may have ever read (I didn’t read Room). A story of pain and survival that I almost guarantee will stay with you long after you close the book. Dean has constructed a narrative that is so tense, your own personal peace will be penetrated.

 

And another word: regular readers of my reviews may recall that, in my opinion, books published by Emily Bestler Books (an imprint of Atria Books and Simon and Schuster) are consistently brilliant. How she finds authors with this kind of talent is beyond me. Many thanks for the advance review copy was sent to me by Atria’s publicist.

 

Due to be published April 2021. Mark your calendar.

What Do We Need Men For? A modest proposal

 

E. Jean Carroll is the long-term advice columnist for Elle Magazine, and she's the woman who is suing Donald Trump for rape when they had  an encounter at Bergdorf's Department Store in New York City. Previously, I had read a few of her advice columns. Now, I was curious to see what she had to say about herself and the current president. Admittedly, part of my interest came from having known Ms. Carroll and her family of origin. Her parents were great friends of my parents, and as a result, she occasionally came to my house for family parties, and I was in her parents' house for more parties. Our parents had very active social lives. On one occasion, my father actually saved her life when she was about four years old, but that's another story. Personally, I have not had any contact with her for at least 50 years, although I have a renewed relationship with her brother. Fittingly. the author has qualified her dear brother as an honorary woman, which is very high praise. That causes me some jealousy. I remember Jeanie Carroll as a stunningly beautiful woman who was always outspoken. 

This book reviews Ms. Carroll's long history of bad outcomes in her romantic relationships with men. She gives what appears to me to be an honest accounting of her encounter with Trump, a man she had known from earlier New York social events. The book was a quick read, and much of it was tongue-in-cheek with regard to her complaints about men. It must have been after filing the lawsuit against Trump that she took off on a nearly 5,000 mile journey as she asked many women in different circumstances what they needed men for. She told those stories in the body of her book.

If you're curious about her story, have a look at her book.

Deep State

 

Primal Calling

 

Deadline Vegas by Douglas Stewart

We have siblings Dax and Beth. Children of an abusive father who was more about money than family. While Dad is starting to show signs of dementia, the family is exceedingly well off from Dad’s business successes. But the money doesn’t erase what the kids and their mom endured.

 

Beth is (as I recall) an investigative reporter while Dax is a recovering alcoholic whose wife and child died a year or so ago. Dax now prefers fishing above all else. Beth has been looking into a connection to a member-only casino in London and a huge new casino opening soon in Vegas. She uncovers evidence that the London casino is laundering money for Vegas and doing so by cheating its customers who are too drunk or stupid to care that their winnings are being shorted and that the some of the games are fixed.

 

The heads of both casinos obviously don’t want all this to come out. Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake as is the tentative opening date of the Vegas casino. Upon returning home to London from Panama after acquiring some crucial background details about the London operator, Beth is killed in a suspicious car accident. Then their dad is in another car accident and now almost fully incapacitated. Dax has to lay down the fishing pole, find care for his father and take up where Beth left off. A rich boy taking on the London and Vegas criminal heads of gambling.

 

His main tool for investigating is his very deep pockets and he spends freely on first class travel and even sets up his home office for roulette so he can study the game. A friend of a friend knows a guy who understands the inner workings of a casino (and if you’ve ever wondered yourself, Deadline Vegas if quite a good primer). This guy, himself a recovering addict, knows how casinos win, how they cheat, and how they can be beaten. Dax takes his no limit credit card and freely spends on tools to take down London and stop the Vegas opening.

 

This was a reasonable diversion for a week in the mountains. While the story was decent, it didn’t really grab me in and hold my attention for hours. Think my biggest issue was believing that a rich boy, despite his considerable bank account, would have the wherewithal to not only devise and pull off his plan but also to avoid getting himself destroyed by people who kill without blinking. But is certainly was a good way to see behind the curtains of just how a casino operates, legally and illegally.

 

ECD

 

Total Power by Kyle Mills

Governments are supposed to watch over the people. Make sure that bad things don’t happen. So they try to envision what could go wrong and plan how to keep such things from actually happening. Probably all the main offices of government are dreaming up how to bring down the country so it can be stopped before it happens. Or if it does happen, what can be done to protect the people.

The Department of Energy is doing just that. One of their doomsday scenarios is having the electrical grid go down. Not just a city or a region. The whole dang country. A Senate select committee has paraded dozens of electric company CEOs to testify. They all say it’s impossible. The DOE head of cybersecurity brings in a consultant (that’s what governments do . . . they hire consultants). John Alton, an MIT-educated genius in electrical engineering and computer networking, runs a utility security company and has gotten stinking rich in the process. In his thousand-page report, he tells Congress how easy it would be. Take out nine specific substations and the lower 48 is suddenly back in 18^th century. Projections of the carnage are in the 10s of millions. The economy? Gone. Not simply stunted. Gone. And with a little extra help, the American electrical grid could be down for as long as a year before those industry would even figure out what’s wrong. Those fat-cat senators dismiss Alton’s conclusions as unnecessarily hysterical.

Mitch Rapp is in Spain on the trail of the top cybermind in ISIS. Guy says he is going on holiday to tour NYC and DC. But computer nerds, be they Arab or American, aren’t trained to resist interrogation much less torture. With a little nudge, the guy divulges that he’s on the way to meet a contact known only as PowerStation.

Apparently, PowerStation also knows what Alton has predicted. But he needs some help to pull off the scheme. A sleeper Russian agent is sent to meet PowerStation to gauge his capabilities. She reports back that he seems credible, but she also thinks that he is unstable and untrustworthy. Russia isn’t interested out of concern for the eventual American retaliation. That doesn’t concern ISIS.

The sleeper agent becomes borderline obsessed with the American power grid, reading all she can about it. A few weeks later, she sees an internet article about substation security and with it, a photo with PowerStation in the background. Now she’s got a name, then soon an address. She plans to approach him about his intents and maybe even stop him, but instead ends up breaking in his home and cloning some of a laptop’s hard drive.

On a cold Christmas morning, PowerStation throws the electronic switch plunging the US into an electrical black hole. Within days, anarchy ensues. Food, medical care, dwindling water supplies, transportation, communication ceases to exist. Without electricity, nothing works. The government is hiding in a West Virginia bunker with no clue about what to do. During the shutdown, our Russian tries to get to the FBI but rioting mobs in DC prevent her getting in.

Rapp, his boss (Irene Kennedy) and Rapp’s crew of operatives work to piece together seemingly disconnected clues about what they can do about the power loss and the only real conclusion is that the person with the best information is PowerStation. Clues have them hopping from Idaho to western VA, the mountains of West Virginia, backwoods KY.

They come up with a risky plan with minimal chance of success to get PowerStation to come to them rather than try to keep chasing their own tails looking for him. 

And it’s a helluva plan.

This is #19 in Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp series. As you might know, Flynn died in 2013. His publishers, Emily Bestler Books (a Simon & Schuster imprint – and I’ve said it here before and will again. Pay attention to who publishes a book. I’ve never read anything from Emily Bester Books that wasn’t first rate) enlisted Kyle Mills, already an accomplished thriller writer, to pick up Flynn’s mantle and continue the Mitch Rapp saga. This is the 6^th Mitch Rapp book by Kyle Mills.

And it’s a whopper. Not Rapp crawling around some shithole for a dirtbag terrorist bent on bringing down the Great Satan. Rapp is fully engaged on American soil to prevent the US from plunging into a bottomless hole from which it could well not recover. If you weren't already a prepper, the thought of this scenario actually happening just might convince you to start looking at mountain property for your own bunker against anarchy.

Savage Road

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women

 

Camino Winds

Hi Five by Joe Ide

Unlicensed PI and South-Central LA’s respected get it done expert, Isaiah Quintabe (aka IQ), is having a tough time getting it done . . . at least in his personal life. His long-time girlfriend, artist Grace, left him and LA to get away from the streets and drama that surrounded Isaiah. Two years ago, she took off for the artist mecca of Santa Fe. Since then, Isaiah had been with Stella, an up and coming violinist with the Long Beach Symphony recently promoted to first chair and preparing to be the featured soloist in the next concert. Great woman, but she’s not Grace. And there is still the streets and drama of his life.

His rep around Compton, Carson, etc. is stellar. Solves your problems and he won’t let go until said problem is fixed. But Angus calls him, and Isaiah isn’t pleased. Angus is the biggest arms supplier to LA gangs. Christiana, his daughter, is soon to be (wrongfully) charged with murder and Angus wants Isaiah to stop that from happening. Stop it or Angus will have Stella’s hands destroyed by his crew.

Isaiah goes to meet Christiana. She runs a custom suit shop and lives with her mother. Turns out Christiana is one of those rare multiple personality disorders. Five of ‘em live in her head and continually battle each other for dominance. Angus’ right-hand man was in for a suit, but was ambushed in the shop and murdered in front of her. Isaiah has to interview each of the ‘alters’ to get all the details.

And old Angus is still doing business. Wants one last sale to send him off into retirement. And it’s a big one. He’s managed to acquire a Gatling gun. One of those 4000 rounds per minute monsters. A Mexican cartel wants it and is willing to pay the $1 million price tag. Not to mention that some other local gangs want to intercept the sale and get the gun for themselves.

Seeing the errors of Angus’ ways, Isaiah wants to stop the sale of the gun while not pissing off Angus who’d then ruin Stella’s life and hands whether Isaiah got Christiana off or not.

Can you say rock and a hard place? Add to the mix Cambodian gangs, neo-nazi skinheads, a couple dozen Latino gang members. And an old junkyard (make that 'wrecking yard') owner looking for love in his church (which is actually a very compelling subplot).

This is Joe Ide’s fourth IQ book and I think at least two earlier books have been reviewed here on MRB. Ide has been a screenwriter and has the chops for telling a story, presenting the street life around Long Beach, keeping a number of balls in the air so that all the secondary stories come off smoothly. Highly recommended for those of us who like mysteries and suspense novels. Noir? Maybe. It’s got the gumshoe, femme fatales, multiple bad guys circling each other in scattered stories and the resulting violence that pulls all the stories together.

ECD

 

All the Devils are Here

The Forgers

Game of Snipers by Stephen Hunter

73 years old. Bob Lee Swagger has earned a retirement that allows him to spend a couple hours a day on his front porch rocker looking over the serenity of the Idaho pasture and mountains. Sure he still tinkers in his gun shop cuz it’s what he likes to do. It's who he is. Rides horses when his titanium hips allow. Buys little, talks less, doesn’t vote. That he lives like this is testament to his skills honed over a life viewed through a sniper’s scope. His is a good life considering all he’s been through.

But as any skilled hunter of men knows, it can’t last.

Mrs. McDowell comes up his drive in a rental car. She’s one of those Gold Star moms. Her son came back from Baghdad in a box 14 years ago, killed by a sniper. She didn’t just accept the flag and go home to spend a life in grief. She went on the offensive. She wants the guy who pulled the trigger. She is on the fast track to going broke as she became an amateur spy, political and military lobbyist, a prisoner, a rape victim, converts to Islam and learns Arabic to move amongst the Muslims all in an attempt to find the shooter.

She does. Sort of. She has a name, or his nom de guerre, Juba the Sniper. An Islamic sniper for hire. Even knows his preferred method: set off an IED. Targets scramble into cover that actually is Juba’s kill zone. The Islamic ying to Bob the Nailer’s yang. She even has some clues to his whereabouts – some barely on the map village in southern Syria.Where he is training. For a mission. A big one.

Bob Lee feels for her but isn’t interested in any more hunts. But he is willing to pass along what she knows to a friend in the Mossad who goes by ‘Gold’. They meet in Israel. Juba is perhaps Israel’s highest value target after he slaughtered a school busload of children some years ago. A mission is quickly cooked up and the Mossad goes in hot, but Juba had just left the village. Last second escapes is an important skill for Juba.

Juba is prepping for a mission. By Swagger and Gold’s read of the evidence, Juba has been hired by sources unknown to do what no one has done . . . hit a target from long range on American soil. Swagger and Gold hit up Swagger’s old FBI friend, Nick Memphis, to sell him on the need not just for a hunt, but a highly compartmentalized hunt.

The hunt begins. Dearborn, MI. Greenville, OH. Wichita, KS, Rock Spring, WY. Anacostia, DC. At each stop, the FBI closes in an inch at a time only to have Juba slip away (Be forewarned: that summarizes probably 75% of the book). Along the way, Mrs. McDowell is called back a few times for insights the FBI minds might’ve overlooked. Remember, she knows more about Juba than any intelligence service.

Throughout the hunt, the FBI team thinks they’ve learned the date, the time of day, the distance (>a mile) and a few other tidbits. They feed all the information critical to prepping for a long shot into geographic databases to narrow down where he'd train. Tough job given the size of the US. They’ve purposefully avoided thinking about the target as that might cloud their judgement. Having all that info about the geography and roughly when the shot will be taken, they start narrowing down potential targets.

They are ready to take Juba down . . . they think. 

They hope.

The first Stephen Hunter book I read was iSniper and was immediately hooked. The boys here at MRB has since reviewed every Swagger book (about both Earl, the daddy, and Bob Lee, the son). And while we have some favorite mystery/thriller writers (like Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, CJ Box, Craig Johnson, Louise Penny, et al.), from where I sit, no one tells a story with so many moving parts in ridiculous detail about the religion of the gun, those who sit in that cathedral, and the nuances of the hunt as well as Stephen Hunter. Clancy may have invented the techno-thriller with all its detail about military might, but Hunter takes his technical knowledge about shooting (the rifle and its design, parts, assembly, the scope, the machining of the pieces of a bullet, the chemistry of the gunpowder, the process of hand loading, sighting, weather, angles, environmental  and geographical issues, etc.) to a level we readers may not fully understand but can still grasp. Wonderful story. Magnificent plot. Expertly told. Doesn't get any better. Had it not been for being an online virtual kindergarten teacher’s aide for a grandson, this would’ve been a single sitting read. Go ahead, let Bob the Nailer nail you to your favorite location for reading.You can thank me later.

ECD