The Sinister by David Putnam

 Meet Bruno Johnson and his wife Marie. Bruno is a ex-cop and ex-con (having killed the man who killed Bruno's daughter). He is also wanted in LA County for a cadre of kidnappings that are actually children he and Marie rescued from abusive neglectful homes. Bruno and Marie spirited the children to safety in Costa Rica, ably assisted by his father. 

As the book opens, Bruno is recuperating from being shot twice (by his ex-wife) while breaking up a motorcycle gang's meth operation. Been in a too expensive hotel for a couple months running up five-digit bill. He has to stay low because of he has about a dozen warrants for his arrest on kidnapping (those kids) and murder (of a child trafficker). Mostly recovered, the Johnson's are packing up to go back to Costa Rica. The FBI knocks on his door. It's longtime friend and  now a Deputy Director Dan Chulack.

Chulack's granddaughter was kidnapped two weeks ago. Two million ransom raised, paid, and lost at the drop/exchange. The FBI's investigation has stalled and Dan knows that no one on his radar knows the LA streets like Bruno. And no one hands out justice like Bruno. When Bruno gets on the scent, blood and bones are going to spill. 

A street thug involved in the failed exchange is in county lockup. Bruno's first stop is to question him. But how will a wanted felon get into the jail, see the punk, and get out. An overgrowth of beard and hair while recuperating, some big sunglasses, still walking stooped over from his injuries . . . and a set of counterfeit FBI credentials (friends in high places helps) get him in the door but only under the watchful gaze of the LA detective investigating the kidnapping - Helen Hellinger, an intense and uber tough cop. Bruno sure hopes she doesn't put 2 and 2 together and figures out his real identity.

They meet at the jail to find out that two thugs drop the perp, head first, off the third floor landing in the jail's common area. To make things worse, the two thugs had just made bail. Best Bruno can do is corner one of the thug's cellmates in hope that inmates still love to brag. The cellmate is Whitey, a sleaze ball who could be a cousin to Lethal Weapon 2's Leo Getz (the Joe Pesci character). 

Yeah, Whitey knows stuff and he's willing to trade. He'll talk, but he wants out first. The next two days Whitey takes Bruno and Helen into some of the worst areas in LA where beatings are as common as doorbells. Bruno isn't shy about getting what he wants. And there are a couple exit ramps from the main investigation to keep Bruno honest all the while gaining the begrudging respect of Helen. 

One of the exit ramps is all Helen. Her sister is a biker bitch with a meth habit and a 4yo daughter. Once she unloads this on Bruno, the hunt branches from looking for Agent Chulack's granddaughter to include getting little Stephanie out. In the best of all worlds, He and Marie will take Stephanie into their home in Costa Rica. And find Chulack's granddaughter, too. But that's getting less and less likely as time drags on.

Turns out this is book #9 in the Bruno Johnson series. And while the publisher (Oceanview - one of my favs) says that each can be read as a standalone novel, it wouldn't hurt to start at the beginning. That could mean two things. Start with book #1 or start with book #6 because Putnam did a  recent 3-book backstory run (books 6, 7, and 8). Knowing this, I might start with #6-8 and then do books #1-5. That way the books would be read chronologically. Time to hit that BooksInOrder.com website.

Bruno Johnson is one bad dude. And he's especially bad when the victims are children. You don't want to be in his way when he gets on a roll. Marie is a trained Physician Assistant and those skills come in handy at times. She has the same temperament as Bruno when it comes to abducted/abused children, having recorded a kill of her own in a previous book. She is also a saint for putting up with Bruno's aggression and single-minded pursuit and execution of justice. While the book is a good look at the gutter of LA, it's not quite as good as George Pelecanos' grasp of life on the streets (of DC). Just don't let your guard down when Bruno's around. 

ECD

The Premonition by Michael Lewis

 By the time you finish with this book, you may come to the conclusion that the US is just too dang big for its own good. And it's not just government. There are just so many tentacles. No way that the right hand can know what the left hand is doing.

It's the early 2000s. Consider:

Laura Glass - she is the middle school aged daughter of Dr. Bob Glass. He is a scientist at the Sandia National Labs in New Mexico. He models how issues spread. Like how the failure of a bank in NY might spread across the country. His computer screen is a mix of red and green dots in motion. When a red dot touches a green dot, it turns red. When your dad models obscure events, a middle school girl might not understand it all, but it's interesting. Especially when her history class is studying the Black Death. She asks if his modeling thingy might explain the spread of a disease. Sounds like a unique topic for the upcoming school science fair. 

Dr. Charity Dean recently finished her residency in internal medicine and got appointed to be Santa Barbara County Health Officer mostly because of her interest in communicable diseases. One of the early cases dropped on her desk was a woman admitted to the ICU with TB in her brain. Got to track this beast down. The County has a history of TB cases and this one is bizarre. Where did the patient contract the disease and what will she have to do to shut it down. Now. And damn be anyone who tries to get in her way.

2005. In his parent's basement in Xenia, OH, Dr. Rajeev Venkayya wrote the first draft of just how the US should respond to a viral pandemic. President Bush has just finished reading a book about the 1918 flu and didn't want to have a repeat on his watch. Rajeev had scored a White House Fellowship. Bush called for a meeting. Being an MD in the White House got him invited. After the meeting, Rajeev went home to Ohio to put fingers to keyboard. He was hoping it wouldn't just be stuffed in a folder somewhere.

Dr. Richard Hatchett, an oncologist by training, was one of the thousands of physicians who answered the call on Sept 11, 2001. The chaotic process of getting MDs on the ground to help led Hatchett to pen a letter the the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation asking the Foundation suits to corner everyone with political clout to push for a national medical reserve corp. The letter worked it's way up the proverbial chain and Hatchett gets a call from the VPs office. Yeah, right. VP of what? Oh, THAT VP. He gets connected with Rajeev. They put out the call across the cabinet posts (cuz that's what the White House does) for people who 'think outside the box.' Pretty soon, that's what they had. All career government insiders . . . except for one. The guy from the Dept of Veteran's Affairs . . .

Carter Mechar was an MD in the Atlanta VAMC. Intensive care specialist. Looked more like a latter day hippie. Unconcerned with recognition and couldn't give a damn about what others thought of him. He just likes to solve problems. Look at data and saw what others failed to see. Like, why did the Charleston VAMC have way too many colon cancer patients? Carter is part of the team looking into the problem. The team looked high and low. Nothing. Carter said let's go back to the beginning. Upon reaching a certain age, the Charleston computers would spit out a mailing of stool sampling kits. You know how they work. Get a sample, stick it in the pre-paid envelope, mail it back. But, the numbers didn't add up. If 100 were sent out, why were only a small fraction returned? Carter went to where incoming mail is processed. A bag of mail is dumped on the counter. In it are a ton of 'insufficient postage' items returned to the VAMC. For the want of a stamp, veteran's with positive tests were being missed. Once the postage issue was fixed, the rates of colon cancer settled back to the expected. Before long, Hatchett and Mechar would revise Rajeev's first draft into a document that, had it been acted upon, might've save thousands of lives.

Dr. Joe DeRisi runs a unique lab at UCSF. During his postdoc at Stanford, he put the finishing touches on an analyzer that can map out the genome of cells, specifically for viruses, in hours and not the weeks that commercial labs required. He acquired a sample of this new virus leaking out of China that had found its way into the US and had its full genome as promised, in hours. Sensing the start of something big, he gathered every capable science-type at the university and set up a lab for mass screenings due to come. Told all the county health officers in California. Sent out millions of the test tubes. But the samples weren't flooding in.  Turns out the test kits supplied to him were lacking the swab sticks. A venture capitalists heard of the problem, found a supplier, and sent them DeRisi. What he got was Q-tips. Not long enough. Scratch that. DeRisi went to the manufacturers. Problem was the biggest was in China and most all trade with China had been cut off.  

Over time, this divergent group of interested scientist crossed paths. Glass's model, Dean's success with the TB outbreak, Hatchett and Mechar cross paths. Based on modeling, history of the 1918 flu, knowing how the virus spreads, they realize the same conclusion to how to stop the virus in its tracks: social distance should be the #1 point of attack followed by the development of a vaccine. In 1918, that's why St. Louis had a fraction of the deaths that Philadelphia had. That's why Japan was being more successful at slowing the spread of covid. Other countries, too.  

These aren't the only one scratching and clawing at the virus. Mechar is invited to speak to the 'Jasons'. An 'anonymous' collection of men in uniform whose name badges all said 'Jason.'  Charity Dean is invited to sit in on a zoom call with a bunch of nameless faces that called themselves the Wolverines (from the movie Red Dawn). The Wolverines grow in number. Not able to keep her comments to herself, she blurts out a condemnation of the actions, or lack thereof. One of the nameless faces on the call speaks up. Asks Charity if she's speak to his boss (who turns out to be a Cabinet secretary).

Around the world, you know who wasn't doing so well. The US. And the CDC seemed to be more obstructionist than helpful; 'You can't do that. There's no published data.' No shit Sherlock. It's happening right now. People are needlessly dying and the CDC is only interested in what's published. Charity Dean says that the CDC is mis-named. if the name reflected with they did best, it would be named the Centers for Disease Reporting and Monitoring because when it came to 'Control', Atlanta had no clue.

You don't have to be in the sciences, a policy wonk, or a big data modeler. You only need to be a concerned citizen. The Premonition presents the evolution of the US response to Covid-19, or lack of response. If you think that this is a condemnation of the Trump administration, you'd be wrong because every adminstration dating back 20ish years can shoulder blame. 

You may not have heard of Michael Lewis, but I'll bet you know his work. He wrote the source material for Moneyball, The Blind Side, and The Big Short movies (and half dozen other non-fiction books). His work is apolitical and his research digs far deeper than any talking head on TV who recounts US successes and failures in this pandemic.  As one who has done some writing, I am impressed with how Lewis can put arcane details into a narrative that is as riveting as anything written by an accomplished novelist. While reading this 2021 copyright book now is a bit behind the curve, The Premonition should be required reading in every MPH program in the country. It should be on the bookshelf of every public health officer in the US. And for God's sake, the issues it raises should be required for everyone associated with the country's public health initiative. 

We continue to hear about Heroes of the Pandemic, but have you ever heard the names Glass, Dean, Hatchett, Mechar, DeRisi?  Probably not. They are real heroes. Certainly not the CDC. And certainly not the medical-industrial complex that did what they do best in all this - they put profits before people.

ECD

Hideout by Louisa Luna

Louisa Luna is the author of three books with Alice Vega as the protagonist, an investigator who specializes in finding missing persons. The complimentary character is Max Caplan. The first book in the series was reviewed by ECD in 2017, and his comments were favorable. I was presented with this prepublication novel. I thought the opening of this third book, Hideout, was fun. Zeb Williams was the place kicker for the football team at Berkeley in the early 1980’s. At The Big Game against Stanford in his senior year, he made a bizarre choice. The game was tied and rather than kick the ball for the game winning field goal in the last seconds, he grabbed the ball from his older, ran the length of the field scoring a touchdown for Stanford, and then he kept running through the stadium, to the parking lot, and he was never heard from again. The event was famous, and lots of effort failed to find him.

 

30 years later, Vega was hired to find him. There were some interesting characters in the small town where most of the action took place, but that’s really the last positive comment I have to make. I could not identify with any of the characters who mostly I did not find believable. I thought the concluding section of the book was bizarre, out of the blue, and disappointing. This book does not get my recommendation. 

Reap3r by Eliot Peper

Reap3r is the 10^th novel by Eliot Peper, and I’ve read them all, reviewed all of them in this blog. His early novels were excellent stories, but somehow, he keeps getting better. This is a very fast paced story with a great cast of characters. The book starts with a murder in La Jolla, California, on the edge of the UCSanDiego campus, and it’s a techie murder at that. It seems that someone is knocking off all the key people who are behind an attempt to develop quantum computing, a company Peper called Q. On the one hand, the ultrawealthy Sansome Haverford had recruited some highly ethical people to form his company Human Capital, but on the other hand he and Paul Valery “wanted to create a rolling permanent record of everything on every computer system on the planet – a private irror of the entire history of the entire internet and every device that had ever connected to it so that he could reach back through time to dredge up whatever secrets the past might offer to tighten his grip on the future.” Paul had secret government connections which also provided unlimited funding for such work.

 

Sansome had a great sales pitch for his Human Capital as he continued to draw investors. He said, “At Human Capital, we don’t bet on technology…. We don’t even bet on companies. We bet on people…. We find the best people in the world, figure out what makes them tick, write them checks, and give them free rein to do what only they can do.”

 

One of the people that Sansome and Paul brought to the Q project was Luki Zubiri, a young Basque man who was a computer programing genius. On the one hand Luki knew he had a deal with the devil, but the devil was the only one willing to pay for the progress he knew he could make, “the scientific achievement of the century – an accomplishment to rival electricity, antibiotics, and the steam engine.” It was Luki’s plan to complete the project for Paul, but then decline to renew his contract with Q and give make the technology open source material, which he thought would only spur the revolution of computer technology. However, he did not understand that goal was something Paul would never allow.

 

Meanwhile, Peper introduces us to Devon Chaiket, a financially struggling podcaster of Rabbit Hole, who had the ear of the tech world. She had also created a following throughout the world, but unfortunately, her sponsorships were not keeping her afloat. Offers from Haverford of funding for her work were too good to be true, but she too was pulled into the matrix of the story.

 

Another key figure was Geoff Rossi, a biotech guy who had lost control of an artificial virus which got out of his lab. The virus, Bakunawa, had killed millions of humans before Geoff was able to create the very vaccine that rescued the planet from total disaster. He was funded by Haverford, and the vaccine was the source of Human Capital’s incredible wealth. It was Haverford that was able to suppress any information that would have revealed that the virus was a human creation and not a natural genetic event. But Geoff was killing himself with the knowledge by consuming massive amounts of daily alcohol. He simply could not live with the guilt of his mistake.

 

Luki was also struggling with the harm his invention could cause. As a Basque man, “He should have known to never trust an authority figure like Paul in the first place, that an alliance with state power ultimately brough the power of the state to bear on you.” Luki new that “Neuroscience showed that your conscious mind didn’t make decisions, but rationalized decisions your brain had already made.”

It's hard for me to classify this book. There’s a sci-fi aspect to it, and there’s certainly a murder mystery involved. There are big and evil forces with a team of calculating David’s that are determined not to let the bad forces win. There’s a historical aspect that takes the reader back to Darwin’s discoveries in the Galapagos Islands, spanning forward through newer scientific discoveries. In order to give this span some perspective, Peper included an ancient tortoise, Bernadette, who was alive at the time of Darwin’s writing and remained alive at the present time.

 

So, Peper has provided us with a new modern adventure, a group of great characters, and a fast paced compelling novel. This one is a 5-star read. It’s available on 5/18/22 and can be preordered now.

The Murderer in Ruins by Cay Rademacher.

“The Murderer in Ruins” by Cay Rademacher. It was originally written in German with a publishing date of 2011, and it was then translated in 2015. The story takes place in the winter of 1946-47 in Hamburg, Germany, a port city and an industrial center which was repeatedly the target of Allied bombing runs throughout WWII. The city was nearly totally destroyed and the surviving citizens were without fuel to warm themselves during the brutal winter, without adequate food, without adequate housing, and without other needed supplies. Meanwhile, the entire country was struggling to survive. The population had been disrupted, millions of people had been killed, and DP’s (displaced persons – and there were millions of those) were either trying to get home or get to some place where they could survive. However, no one could get out of Hamburg because the port was ice-bound, and passenger trains were not available.

 

This story provides an accurate portrayal of the miserable life in Hamburg. At the same time, four murders occurred, all in a similar manner – obviously victims of the same murderer. The protagonist, Frank Stave, was the Chief Inspector of the Hamburg police. Just like the rest of the country, the police force was a mess. Anyone who was identified as a Nazi was fired, and the police force was left as a mostly inefficient and inadequate group. Also, they were expected to collaborate with the English who had occupied the city. Stave had already lost his wife in one of the bombings when he was working on a matter across the city from the target of the air raid. His 17-year-old son, against Stave’s wishes, had volunteered for the Russian front in response to his dislike of his father. Stave had been able to find any record that suggested his son had survived. By the way, there really were such murders in Hamburg during the winter of 46-47, and this is the authors well-researched fictional account of those events. 

 

I’ve read about the deprivation of the surviving Germans after WWII, but this story brings that suffering to a clearer picture than I’ve had before. The mystery of the murders was well played out with very compelling characters and events. This book gets a 5/5. According to a review in The Independent, “Undoubtedly the most powerful work of crime fiction I have read this year.” Fortunately, I’ve read a number of good books this year, but this is certainly one of the best.

 

Thanks to my friend and Russian History professor for the copy of this novel.

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Murray Belle

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Murray Belle is a historical fiction novel about J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian. This is actually a true story which stays fairly close to the known facts. The authors have invented dialogue. The book was not my choice. My wife and I were on a long-drive vacation and my first choice was a murder mystery by David Baldacci, who I normally love, but found his last book in the Atlee Pine series to be particularly ridiculous – so it was Jean’s turn to choose what to listen too next, and she proved herself to be right again (a comment that she loves to hear). 

 

This was a great book about Belle da Costa Green who was a very light skinned black woman who successfully passed herself off as white. Her father was the first black man who graduated from Harvard, and his relationship with his daughter always emphasized her knowledge of the fine arts, a subject that she developed much farther than what father knew. While her father spent his life trying to promote Negro rights, her mother was more concerned about the quality of the immediate lives of her children. It was apparent to the protagonist’s mother that if the kids could pass themselves off as white, they would have much better lives. That disagreement led to a divorce and da Costa Green grew up with her mother. Given the era, the late 19^th century and first decades of the 20^th century, Ms. Da Costa Green pursued life as a white woman, knowing that if her secret was discovered, her meaningful life in the arts community would promptly end and she would be shunned by white society.

 

She graduated from Princeton in the library sciences, and then worked there for a couple years until she was offered a job by Morgan. She went on to develop Morgan’s most remarkable library. The book describes the excitement of acquiring rare and ancient manuscripts as well as pieces of fine art. The risk of discovery of da Costa Green’s origin was a constant risk. She had a long love affair with a married art dealer, and when she died she became the director of the library until two years before her death, at which time she retired. 

 

This book did a better job of capturing the essence of racism in this era than anything I’ve read before. Although you’ve never heard of da Costa Green, she was a famous and celebrated person in her time. In my opinion, this book gets a 5/5 rating.

Dry Heat by Len Joy

Dry Heat by Len Joy is an excellent thriller, and this is the first one of the several novels by Joy which has been reviewed in this blog. Essentially, this is a tragic love story which takes place in Phoenix, hence the title. Joey Blade is an 18-year-old star football quarterback who just signed a letter of intent to play for the University of Arizona. He’s handsome and rather humble given his local fame. Joey, who comes from a disadvantaged family (poor), goes out to celebrate, hoping to score with a new pretty girl, Wendy Chang, who comes from the good side of the tracks. There’s a big party that’s happening to celebrate, and it got out of control. 

 

Joey is on the fringe of gang activity – never a part of a gang and not associated with one in any way. But, the gangs are everywhere and are something, at least in his neighborhood, that must be taken into consideration on a daily basis. Meanwhile, Joey had recently ended a relationship with Mallory, a girl with a loose reputation. Too late, Joey realizes that Mallory is really the girl for him, a down-to-earth woman who understands the poor side of town. As Joey is headed for the party, Mallory told him that she was pregnant and that he’s the father. 

 

Then the wild, out of control graduation party happened. The cops raided the party and as people were fleeing, Wendy climbed into the cab of a truck, and her ex-boyfriend Darville rapidly drove away. Joey and TJ Grimes jumped in the bed of the same truck. TJ, a drug dealer and gang member was carrying a handgun. Another vehicle that was escaping the party had some guys that stupidly challenged the truck Joey was riding in, and then TJ starting shooting at them. When the truck came to a stop, the Phoenix police appeared on the scene. TJ was able to escape and Wendy slipped away as well. Joey was charged with attempted murder, and the next day, the University of Arizona rescinded his scholarship offer.

 

TJ hid out and Wendy flew to Switzerland three days later, there was no one to vouch for Joey have been innocent of such charges, and soon he was convicted and sentenced to nine years in jail. He did his time and was finally released, and he resumed a working man’s life in Phoenix. It was much too late to attempt a return to his football life.

 

Joey found it was much too painful to think about Mallory who he had come to love. She had agreed with her dysfunctional father that she needed to have an abortion, a decision that Joey found to be very painful. After prison, the author did a great job describing Joey’s compromised life, and then there was a surprising reawakening of Joey’s feelings for Mallory. 

 

There was a thorough and comfortable resolution to all of the subplots. The story was well-developed and the characters were three-dimensional and believable. Now I’m interested in reading another of Len Joy’s books.