Racing the Light by Robert Crais

 

Elvis Cole, P.I. extraordinaire, is hired by an eccentric woman, Adele Schumacher to find her nerdy twenty something son.  Adele is a middle aged, divorced and ex-CIA (or some other highly classified government agency) opertive.  She was so deep under cover that even in retirement bodyguards follow her around.  Her son, Josh Shoe is a self-employed podcaster who with information from an artist/ call girl, Skylar has uncovered a pay to play scheme by an L.A. councilman and his chief of staff to take bribes from Chinese nationalists to grease the skids for their real estate projects in California.  When the perps find out that Skylar has evidence enough to expose the scam, she is murdered and Josh disappears.  With Joe Pike’s and Jon Stone’s help, Cole finds the bad guys who are also looking for Josh.  Meanwhile, Cole’s former girl friend and almost wife, Lucy returns from Baton Rouge and they must decide if it’s time to continue their relationship.

Racing the Light is pretty much what you would expect from a Robert Crais novel.  Fast paced, smart, and entertaining with no question about who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.  Welcome back Robert Crais.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance look.

Immoral Origins & Prey No More both by Lee Matthew Goldberg

This review is for two books from “The Desire Card Book series” by Lee Matthew Goldberg. Book One Immoral Origins and Book Two Prey No More (no cover photo available). I didn’t get very far with either book. I am sure that not all readers will react the way I did, but I found the character development to be shallow, and as a result, the quality of the dialogue was also lacking. The Desire Card is an organization that hires operatives who agree to complete their missions “no matter what.” The organizations them is “Any desire fulfilled for the right price.” Often times, the operatives are given assassination tasks, and if they fail to carry through, then they are likely to become assassination targets themselves. I thought the stories just went downhill from there. I can’t recommend books that I can’t even finish due to lack of interest. Lots of 4 and 5 star reviews on Goodreads. Not me.

WCD

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (a debut novel) is a murder mystery, so it fits the usual genre of this blog, but it is so much more. This was a book recommended by my wife when it was published in 2018, but I stubbornly resisted until I saw it on the New York Times list of the 30 best audio books. Now on vacation, I listened to this while preparing for this trip, while riding on the airplane, and then while walking on the beautiful property of the resort I’m visiting. The quality of the writing is wonderful and the imagery of life in the swamps of North Carolina is elegant. The reading by Cassandra Campbell is perfect, and I agree with the New York Times rating of this audio book. 

 

Mostly this is a book about character development, both about the protagonist Kya Clark, and the largely hostile small town populace on the edge of the swamp, as well as those people who were brave enough to attempt contact with this mystery girl. Kya stayed away from school because her classmates all made fun of her clothes and her inability to spell the word dog. She was known as the swamp girl who only attended a single day of school in her life. One of those brave persons taught her to read. 

 

Kya’s family was a disaster. Her father was a raging and abusive drunk who eventually drove away his wife and all of her siblings. She was the one who was left with her father about the time she turned four, and then a few years later, he too disappeared from their swamp existence. Kya grew up knowing about severe abuse and impenetrable discrimination. There were a few minor exceptions which played a large role in her life. She loved the swamp land, studied it carefully, gathered books to read about it, and then began writing her own books about her observations. She taught herself to paint so she could illustrate her own books with incredible drawings of birds, flowers, fish, and grasses. 

 

Her first love abandoned her for college where he continued his learning until achieving a doctorate. He married another woman. Meanwhile, she started a new relationship with another local boy, but he then married another person without telling her about it. Like some of the insects she studied, she labeled Chase to be a “sneaky fucker” and she retreated to a solitary life until the first man came back into her life. When Chase was killed in a fall from an old fire watch tower, she was charged with first degree murder based on circumstantial evidence, but there was a very angry reaction from the locals when she was declared not guilty as the result of a very skillful lawyer. Kya then lived a long life in which she continued to study the swamp and publish her books. Throughout the beautiful dialogue, Kya often quoted a locally published poet from North Carolina, Amanda Hamilton. It was only in the last paragraphs of the book that the reader learns that Kya is really Amanda Hamilton. Following her death, husband finds much of her unfinished and unpublished poems. It was in the last couple sentences of the book that the reader learns about the cause of Chase’s death.

 

This is a beautiful book. Before I finished this review, I looked at the reviews in Amazon and I was surprised to discover that the opinions about this book were extreme, and I wonder if the negative reviewers were simply an extended version of the discrimination about which Ms. Owens writes. One reviewer from North Carolina thought the book was an insult to Carolinians which contained no truths whatsoever. I too have an extreme opinion, but my opinion is favorable to the author’s impressive work. The book is worth a 5-star rating.

 

WCD

Stone Cross by Marc Cameron

I’ve now reviewed all four of  Marc Cameron’s Arliss Cutter series, but I read this one out of sequence, Stone Cross being the second of the four books. I’ve raved about the other three, and this one gets the same reaction from me. It’s a great adventure in Alaska with Cutter and his US Marshall partner, Deputy Lola Teariki. In this case, they were both called to escort a judge to the interior of the state because his life had been threatened. Neither Marshall, Arliss and Lola, nor the judge, US District Judge J. Anthony Markham, are happy about the assignment. But, upon their arrival in Stone Cross, the Marshalls learn of a murder and some missing persons, and while their primary assignment is securing the safety of the judge, they also need to get to the bush in order to deal with the murder.

 

This is really the first book I’ve read that captures what life is like in the very rural parts of Alaska, “the bush.” As with all Alaska stories, the weather plays a predominant part in the proceedings. Birdie Pingayak is the principal of the Stone Cross K-12 school, a native Eskimo/Inuit, and she plays a significant role in the story. After all the characters struggle through horrible weather, the book concludes with a great dogsled chase through the worst blizzard that you can imagine. I was pulled into that event and was glued to every detail. 

 

This book lands in my “wow” category (I just made that up), and I give it my maximum recommendation. I advise you to read these novels in the intended order so you can appreciate the character development and necessary background on what brought these people to Alaska.

 

WCD

Landslide by Adam Sikes

On film, this might be a buddy flick, if the two buddies are separated until they aren’t. And a cynic might say this story is somewhat formulaic: Two Marine friends pledge that if one gets in a jam, the other will come to help. No questions. Just come help. You have a problem? I'm coming. End of story.

Let’s explore Landslide as it fits within that narrative.

The friendship of two men . . . Mason Hackett and Kevin Gomez . . . forged in battle (Afghanistan) . . . they make a pledge that when the SHTF for one, the other will come . . IED . . . both are injured . . . Gomez dies . . .Mason deals with his guilt but gets on with life (what choice does he have?) . . .takes a job in London . . . 15 years as a banker/deal maker for a prestigious investment firm . . . travels extensively . . . has dealt with some shady characters . . . at a meeting in a German boardroom . . . a flatscreen is tuned to an all-news channel . . . news crawl shows that Henry Delgado, an AP journalist, has been captured by Ukrainian separatists . . . the photo is unmistakably Gomez whom Mason watched die on a table in Afghanistan 15 years ago . . . mysterious email from Gomez arrives telling Mason to find ‘Doug’ in Paris . . . Doug tells him to forget it . . .fat chance . . . Mason is bound by their pledge . . . Mason heads for Ukraine . . . takes help where he can find it to fulfill his pledge.

Is the story formulaic or is the bond forged in battle a common theme in thrillers that deserves constant revisiting? You choose.

I favor the latter. Guessing you will, too. Great treatment of a common theme. Believable story filled with ups and downs as well as interesting characters that help Mason get into Ukraine heading for the separatist region bordering Russia. A book paced to zip you right through to a heart-stopping conclusion.

And I’m guessing we haven’t heard the last from Mason Hackett.

Thanks to Oceanview Publishing for placing an advance reader copy with NetGalley. 

I keep telling you all - Pay attention to a book’s publisher. Since I first discovered them, Oceanview has been consistently producing excellent mysteries and thrillers.

Due Sept 20, 2022.

ECD

p.s. what's 'Landslide' mean? In this book, it's the call for the cavalry to come now, danger close, bring everything you got, NOW.

Contempt by Michael Cordell

Contempt by Michael Cordell is a legal thriller, written in 2020. I’m not sure how this book came to my Kindle, but it is a wonderful murder mystery and legal thriller. Thane Banning worked as a real estate lawyer, reportedly the best. However, in a bizarre twist, he was convicted of murdering a woman, a murder he did not commit. The murdered woman was Lauren McCoy, a 33 year old Assistant District Attorney. Banning was sent to Forsman Penitentiary which was the oldest and dirtiest of prisons, and it was the place that the worst felons were sent. He was finally released from prison five years later on a technicality rather than a declaration of his innocence. His wife had remained true to him during his time in jail, but suffered greatly at having been married to a reputed murderer. Upon his release, he was met with hostility from nearly everyone since they did not accept that he was really innocent, especially the father who lost his only daughter. Although Banning had an offer from the prior law firm where he had worked successfully, he had a bleeding heart for a fellow inmate who he believed had been falsely accused of murder. Although he tried to talk Gideon Spence into hiring a lawyer who handled capital offenses, Spence didn’t trust anyone else, and Banning accepted the job, much to the dismay of his wife.

 

Besides Banning’s total lack of experience doing anything but real estate law, the big problem was that the District Attorney, Bradford Stone, was the very person who had convicted Banning in the first place. These two men absolutely detest one another, and Stone could not be more condescending to Banning. The plot and character development were well-written, and Cordell drew the story to an excellent conclusion.

 

This book gets my strongest recommendation. It's the sort of book that Men Reading Books is always looking for.

Wayward Son by Steve Goble

We last left Ed Runyon in quasi-rural Ohio about an hour north of Columbus. He'd bailed on being an NYC detective because of some child abduction case that sent him into a drunken tailspin and headed back to his home state of Ohio. Became a detective in the fictitious Mifflin County and the equally fictitious Ambletown. 

His first real case is that of a raped/murdered girl by the local football star destined to enroll in The Ohio State University (points to Goble for capitalizing 'The.' Hey, it's part of the formal name . . . sez me, the OSU alum). Anyway, the town (and plenty of the cops) really haven't forgiven Ed for derailing the kid's career. Tough shit, pal. He killed a girl. This story begins shortly after, right as the pandemic is sneaking out of China.

So Ed quits the sheriff's office and decides to start his own PI agency specializing in runaways. Not getting as much business as he'd get in Columbus or Cleveland, but ditching the big city to live in a lakeside trailer is his preference. 

Gets a hit from his website. 15yo Jimmy Zachman is missing. His parents are desperate to find him and are sure the local cops are yanking their chain - just another teenage runaway.  Dad is a religious zealot with special hatred for the LGBTQ+ community (that's a clue to the story for you armchair detectives). Dad's even got a blog that says so in no uncertain terms. Mom is deeply religious but not to the same extent. 

Jimmy's main interest is chess. In a local chess club at his school. One member of the club tells Runyon Jimmy also plays online. A lot. At this one site mostly. So Runyon opens an account, plays terribly with a bunch of other players to establish himself until he scores with this other kid who, by looking at chats, is about as good a friend to Jimmy as one can get online. Luckily the kid lives in Columbus, So Runyon heads to town, enlists a Columbus detective he knows and manages to track down the kid's address. 

When he gets there, he hears music but no answer to his knocking. Tries the doorknob. Open. So Runyon slyly enters . . . to find a very recently killed adult still holding a pistol. As he checks out the murder scene, the perp comes tearing down the stairs. Both are caught unaware. Runyon, who's not carrying, dives for the corpse's gun. Shots are exchanged. Runyon gets a pretty healthy graze across his shoulder but the perp is shot dead.

Runyon gives chase after the boys, but doesn't get far due to blood loss. Ends up in the hospital. When he awakens, his Columbus detective friend is there. Says he came upon a drug deal gone horribly bad.  Runyon still needs to find the kid, but given the outcome of the shooting, you can bet the remaining druggies are after Runyon. 

So there are two chases underway: Runyon chasing down these 2 teenage chess players and the druggies chasing down Runyon. This goes on around Columbus and back towards Ambletown. 

Goble has stirred up a fun story full of colorful characters, a lot of wise cracking (courtesy of Runyon),  lots of chess details, car chases, gun fights, and an MMA-inspired encounter with a panel van all crammed into one story with two extended chases. Great literature? Nah. Address deep themes of the human condition? Please. A fun read that'll keep the pages turning? Absolutely.

Thanks to the good folks at Oceanview (haven't gone wrong yet with Oceanview mysteries) for making an advance reader copy available on Net Galley. Due for release on Aug 2, 2022.

ECD

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

This classic was written in 1978 and has since been adapted to stage shows, comic books, a 1981 TV series, a computer game and a 2005 theatrical movie. I must have read it the first time shortly after its publication, and I remember watching it on television. However, it’s been decades since I took another look at it. Driven away from political podcasts by the sad state of the world, I was inspired by the New York Times list of the 30 best audio books ever produced, as well as a wish to do something irrelevant.  The writing is incredibly clever. This was one of the suggested novels in the top 30 list. With this novel, I got just what I was looking for.  

 

Reading Hitchhiker was a wonderful distraction. At times, I felt like was indulging in a Vonnegut novel such as Breakfast of Champions. Adams suggested that life on earth was a 10,000,000 year scientific study of earth by mice, who after all are the source of intelligent life in the universe. 

 

Arthur Dent is the protagonist, and he was accompanied by a number of different bumbling alien characters, including a manically depressed robot. When the robot told his sad story to the computer on board an enemy spaceship, the computer then committed suicide, thereby saving Arthur from death (just one of the ordeals that Arthur encountered as he jutted about the improbability of the galaxy).

 

Given that the book has been well loved in the more than 40 years since its publication, I don’t think a more detailed review is necessary. If your in the right mood, then you’ll find yourself laughing out loud, just as I did.

 

WCD

The American Crusade by Mark Spivak

I couldn't finish this book. At about the 44% mark I chose to abandon it. However, if another reader might have been enamored with the Bush Jr. presidency, then have a go at this novel.

 

This is the story of a not so bright man who becomes the president, and then is dependent on being told what to do by his controlling and arch conservative Vice-President. Because of the interaction between President George Cane (Bush) and Vice President Robert Hornsby (Cheney), I felt as if I was reliving the entire Bush presidency which I detested. During Bush’s eight years in office, I had numerous international travels, and Bush was negatively perceived by nearly everyone I encountered. I got very tired of saying that I had not voted for him and did not approve of his decisions. 

 

The parallels between this story and Bush’s story is just too close, so I let the rest of the book go.

WCD

Bottled Lightning by LM Weeks

Bottled Lightning is the debut novel by L. M. Weeks. It’s an international legal/murder thriller which starts off with one hell of a motorcycle chase scene through a tight roadway loop in central Tokyo. Torn Sagara is the protagonist who is a successful lawyer who has worked in the international technology market, and he’s giving a spontaneous unplanned ride to Saya Brooks, the inventor of a new lightning generation and energy storage technology. The invention of “bottled lightning” threatens to make the fossil fuel business obsolete, and that’s the issue that drives most of the story line. What starts out as a fun motorcycle ride suddenly becomes one in which Torn and Saya’s life are in danger. Torn assumes that the expert drivers, motorcyclists, and shooters are aiming to kill him, not understanding the desperation that some companies had for cancelling the new technology.

The story line presents multiple complications for Torn starting with a very well-written erotic sex scene between Torn and Mayumi Ino, who is not his wife. Torn and his wife, Yukie Sagara,had been separated for two years. He knew the marriage was over but she refused to grant him a divorce. Their two children, Sean and Sophia, are caught between the very different needs of their parents. Torn manages to the make his impossible private life even more complicated when he finds himself falling in love with his client, Saya. 

As the story unfolds, there are various companies involved in old and new technologies, and the controlling people in those companies have large stakes involved in the future of those enterprises. The story starts in Tokyo, but skirts off to Alaska and Russia. There are big cultural issues involved among Japanese, Japanese-Americans, and Americans.

In short, this story is a fast ride of international intrigue, one that will keep you spellbound. The book is due for a release in the second week of June 2022. This novel gets my strongest recommendation.

 

West Coast Don

 

The Hawk Enigma by JL Hancock

We have Voodoo, an Iraq vet carrying the baggage of a kill during a mission . . . a 12yo kid. Years ago. And he still has nightmares. He’s also a widower. His wife died a couple years ago from cancer. More nightmares. Voodoo (his handle, his entire team has such handles) may be a skilled shooter, but he’s also a hunter be it human or virtual. His team has the requisite digital geniuses and muscle.

The team has been activated to find an American artificial intelligence scientist working in Japan. Looks like the next big front in warfare is the use of AI and this tiny group of brains in Japan has a step on everyone. First one scientist is beheaded, another looks to have died in ritual suicide. The third (the American) has been kidnapped. The fourth (Naomi) is on the loose coming back from a meeting in the US. Someone is after them primarily for one particular subroutine of their system called The God Algorithm (a way to use a person’s subconscious to predict and manipulate the future; heavy stuff). Naomi finagles a place on Voodoo’s team.  

The team arrives in Japan with little preparation and start hunting for something they’ve little understanding. About all they know is that the Japanese yakuza (mafia) is gunning for this algorithm. And it’s hard for Voodoo to trace the bad guys because the yakuza have co-opted most every civil network in Tokyo, particularly the CCTVs.

But seriously, are we to believe that a crime network has the digital chops to do any of this? Probably not. Mostly likely there is/are governments all trying to take a light year jump ahead of everyone else by getting this God Algorithm.

This is a technothriller on the digital front and could easily come from Tom Clancy, Brad Thor, Jack Carr or any other of a dozen modern thriller writers. Good characters. Believable storyline. Briskly plotted. What more could you ask for? Kept me glued to my seat.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance review copy. Due to be released June 4, 2022.

ECD

Alias Emma by Ava Glass

Emma Makepeace isn’t her birth name. That’s Alexandra, born in London of a Russian widow. Her father was a fairly high-up Russian government employee whose love of country and hatred of the Russian leaders led him to work for the British to help save his country. The KGB were coming after him, so he got his wife out to the UK before he was arrested, tortured, and killed. Alex was born in the UK, went to University, joined the military (intelligence), and plucked by Charles Ripley into ‘The Vernon Institute,’ a secretive counter intelligence unit of MI6. She had wanted to be a spy since childhood.

Michael Primalov is a pediatric oncologist. Elana, his mother was considered a traitor to mother Russia. She was Russia’s top nuclear physicist, but managed to get out of Russia when Mikhail was but a baby and MI6 settled the family in their version of witness protection. He too grew up English, but rejected living in secrecy, went to med school and became an oncologist.

The KGB/GRU is not known for being very forgiving. They will hunt down traitors until the traitor has paid the dues. Four former colleagues of Elena, also living in the UK, have been murdered recently. Elana is the sole surviving member of this research group but her whereabouts are unknown. But Michal/Mikhail is living and practicing medicine in London. The Russians want to get him to draw out his mother from hiding.

Ripley assigns Emma to contact Michael to convince him to come with her and return to protective custody. Previous attempts have failed so Ripley thinks someone closer to Michael’s age might fare better, especially now that the Russians are getting terribly close.

A couple of attempts at talking with Michael have failed, but Emma sort of ambushes him on a morning jog. That didn’t go well, but she did identify a couple Russian agents on the same jogging path. She goes a bit undercover as a hospital nurse to talk further and now sees one of the thugs dressed as an orderly. Too close. Michael begrudgingly must go with her.

Off they go, on foot, trying to get to the MI6 offices on the Thames River. The cross-town route degenerates into a deadly cat and mouse game pushing Emma and Michael though sewers, the Thames, dumpsters, drunk night owls, multiple Land Rovers tracking their movements and a ton more.

You can probably guess that Emma eventually gets Michael to MI6, but the real story is the ‘why’ behind the Russians dogged hunt for Michael. That you’ll have to find out for yourself. I didn’t see it coming.

Looks like Alias Emma is Ava Glass’ first novel and it’s a barn burner. Just in her late 20s, Emma is a boss. She takes on each attempt on Michael’s life head on. Sometimes she wins, other times she has to slither out to fight later. Each contact with the Russians is worse than the previous. I’d guess that 80% or more of the book is the 24hr pursuit by the Russians.

I liked this and I hope that it’s just the beginning of an Emma Makepeace series. It’s that good. But it did remind me of a movie. In the late 1970s, a cult movie of sorts was in wide release. The Warriors. About a NYC street gang leader who tried to organize all the street gangs and control the city streets. But he gets assassinated, and The Warriors are blamed. The movie was a string of street fights between the Warriors and the gangs chasing them down the streets and subways as they fight their way home to Coney Island. My roommate at the time was a Bronx native and he just blasted the movie as being entirely unrealistic. He said if anything like this story every did happen, the Warriors would’ve just stolen a car and driven home. Case closed. On one level, that’s this book. Emma and Michael fighting their way across London instead of just stealing a car and driving to MI6.

But that wouldn’t have been any fun. Ava Glass’ version is fun.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance review copy. Due to be released Aug 22, 2022.

 

ECD