His Majesty’s Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine #1582

 

His Majesty’s Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine, by S. C. Gwynne is a nonfiction book, but it’s also a fabulous story that deserves a spot in this blog of murder mysteries, espionage tales, and thrillers. Gwynne has produced a wonderful story even if you’re not used to such nonfiction works. The brief life of His Majesty’s Airship R101, an English creation, took place in 1930 during the height of the frenzy among the nations who wanted to create air power. While the use of “heavier than air” airplanes were increasing in use, there were groups of engineers and politicians who thought the limited distance that such planes could fly and the small payloads that they could carry would forever limit their commercial and military use. In the recent past, Lindbergh had flown from New York to Paris in 1927. In “lighter than air” airships, the designers thought these airships would be able to stay aloft much longer and carry incredibly heavy payloads.

 

But there were significant limitations for such machines that the frenzy to build one seemed to obscure. For example, helium was a good choice to use, but the U.S. had all sources of helium

under control, so Germany and England, as well as France chose to use hydrogen. Both helium and hydrogen were highly flammable gases and despite some clear failures when various airships went up in flames, the engineers and politicians were sure those limitations could be managed.

 

The airships were massive, and the R101 was larger in volume than the Titanic. The English vision was to have a more dependable way to rule their massive and sprawling empire, and their dream was to be able to fly 5,000 miles single-stop from London to Karachi, which was then a part of India. Because of Germany’s engineering domination, the English fear was that Germany would develop this technology first and use it for warfare against England. Gwynne wrote, “She is bigger, for one thing, in both length and breadth, than anything that has flown before.” Although R101 was said to be “virtually flameproof,” Gwynne noted that in reality, the machine was not safe.

 

Not only was the machine not safe and not only were the engineers ignoring multiple real problems with the flight of the vessel, they felt they were in a time crunch to prove they could consolidate the empire with the use of such airships But their leader, the Right Honorable Christopher Birdwood Thomson who was a charismatic promoter of this project, was also a drunk. Although the men on the project knew not to ask him questions after the noon hour because of his drunkenness, they deferred to him even when a decision was rightfully the responsibility of the pilot. Lord Thomson was aboard as R101 left on October 4,1930 from London for a flight that was intended for Karachi.

 

The airship was fully loaded and carryied 54 passengers and crew, including various dignitaries, departed at 4:30 pm on a flight that would only last until a few minutes after 2:00 am the next morning. In bad winds and rain, for which this airship was very poorly suited and virtually untested, they were able to cross the English Channel and then turn south towards the Mediterranean Sea. But they never got that far. Rather they crashed in the French countryside, a crash that was not fully understood for another 50 years. When they hit the ground, there was an explosion, and only eight people survived the crash, but two of those died in the next couple days.

 

Subsequently, it came to be understood that the crash was in part the fault of resolute but impatient men and the zealousness of Lord Thomson and his “amateurish enthusiasms.” The crash killed the British airship program, although the hopefulness for such aircraft did not yet end. The last US airship, the USS Akron, crashed on April 4, 1933, when it exploded during a lightning storm. Her sister ship the USS Macon crashed on February 12, 1935, after which President Roosevelt said he would not spend another penny on the airships. Meanwhile, the German Graf Zeppelin was still flying successfully although with a customer capacity of only 24, a size that was not commercially viable. It was in 1936 that the German’s launched a mammoth craft, originally named the Adolf Hitler, but the name was changed to the recently deceased former German president, the Hindenburg. It successfully carried 1,200 passengers across the Atlantic and was featured in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. But it was in the early evening of May 6, 1937 that it was completing another transAtlantic trip when it caught fire that almost instantly consumed the ship. The films of the Hinderburg’s fire and crash are famous. It was thought that the most likely cause of the crash was a gas leak that was ignited by an electrostatic charge. So ended the era of the lighter-than-air airships.

 

I thought the book was fantastic, and if you have any interest in the history of flight, this book is a must read.

1581. Dead Fall by Brad Thor

The war in Ukraine rages on. A young idealist lawyer from Chicago resigns from her firm, buys a 1-way ticket to Poland so she can get into Ukraine and do some good. Anna Royko is of Ukrainian descent and learned about an orphanage run by some nuns too close to the front lines. That’s her destination.

Then there is the Russian paramilitary organization called the Wagner Group. They take care of things that cannot be traced back to the Kremlin. It’s not populated by stellar examples of the Russian military. They even managed to ‘recruit’ men from high security prisons and asylums. Call them Ravens and that's spelled S-C-U-M. This one group loaded with some of the worst examples of humanity was tasked with finding Ukrainian art works for transport back to Moscow. It's run by a hardass that goes by simple Colonel. Their assignment is pretty tame stuff until they come across a list of irreplaceable art and the various places where it is all stored. A little simple arithmetic reveals a cache valued well above what this mob can imagine. They kill the Russian soldiers carrying the list and set out to start their own collection. One particularly valuable assemblage is under a church . . . that serves a convent . . . that manages an orphanage. That’s their destination.

Scot Harvath and his team have just taken out the Iranian director of drone operations in a well choreographed ambush of a convoy in Belarus. All good. Bad guy is history. Time for some R&R in Poland with his Norwegian fiancé, assuming she can get some time off from her job in Norway’s security apparatus. His partner in crime, and collector of hacked information, Nicholas (aka The Troll) arrives in Poland about the same time with an assignment. An American aid worker has been taken captive by this rogue element of the rogue Wagner Group. The President can’t send in any military or ‘Agency’ spooks because the US can’t be seen as having boots on the ground. The job falls to Harvath’s employer, The Carlton Group, to give the President some deniability. Harvath is to get into Ukraine, with no weapons, no team, and the barest minimum of intelligence. Can't wait for a night with Solvi. Got to leave now. He leaves with just the promise of four western mercenaries to find/rescue Anna Royko and dispense with all the Ravens by whatever means he fells is necessary.

Harvath must secret himself across the border, grab any number of different means of transport (most such acquisitions involve the requisite gun play), try to convince locals that he is on their side to improve his limited intelligence, and develop a map of eastern Ukraine to work out the pattern behind how the Ravens have been looting and killing on top of their already growing list of war crimes. Once Harvath identifies (he hopes) their base of operations, he must set a plan in motion against an enemy that outnumbers his little group of five by upwards of 10 to 1.

Thor is a terrific writer who pens books to be topical to current geopolitical tensions. He also has a good plot pattern that his legion of fans have come to appreciate: finish off an operation, plan some R&R, get yanked back in, head in against terrible odds, find a way to finish off the bad guys, head home to his Norwegian fiance. Not sure that all his books follow that exact plan and what would it matter it all his books followed that model. His stories are believable, topical, and filled with political machinations of the best and worst on both sides to keep us all entertained.

What can I say? Another winner in a long line of winners (this is his 22^rd novel) and Thor’s far from being done. Plenty of breathless moments under crushing pressure that’ll keep you turning pages well into the darkness.

Oh, looks like I forgot to tell y'all - Thor is one of the tent poles of the Emily Bestler Books empire of thrillers. Pay attention to those publishers. 

 

ECD

Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville #1580

Billy Budd, written by Herman Melville (best known for Moby Dick) in 1891, the year of Melville’s death, and finally published posthumously in 1924 in England and 1962 in the US. This is a book that has continued to draw critical acclaim 132 years after it was written. I found it on a list of “must read” books, and I was intrigued by the reviewer’s favorable comments about Melville’s description of sociopathy. I wondered how an antisocial personality disorder might have looked to Melville so long ago, 70 years before the first diagnostic manual was published in the US by the American Psychiatric Association 1952, a diagnostic classification that has been repeatedly revised since then.

 

The first thing that struck me about Billy Budd was the elegant descriptive language used by Melville. His vocabulary was challenging to me at times, and I was thankful for Kindle’s built-in dictionary, something I referred to many times in the course of reading this short book, only about 100 pages. Reading Melville’s prose provided me with a sense of joy that I don’t often experience while reading. I slowed down my reading pace so I wouldn’t miss this experience.

 

Budd was known as the “Handsome Sailor.” Not only was he attractive, but his presentation was pleasant and unassuming. He was not a worldly man and he was not educated. Melville called Budd a “child-man.” Yet, Budd seemed to easily excel at all the tasks he performed. Given his humility, he was well-liked by everyone in the story except for Master-at-arms John Claggert. Claggert, rather than warming up to Budd, had an instant and intense hatred for him. Claggert himself was much the opposite of Budd. Educated, articulate, but clumsy in movement and in his human interactions. Claggert was obviously jealous of the ease with which Budd moved through life and the ease with which he interacted with others. Claggert was determined to find a way to undo Budd’s successes, and he was able to just that both skillfully and cleverly.

 

In describing Claggert who had a such a different opinion of Budd than anyone else, Melville wrote, “Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blindingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. In pronounced cases there is no question about them. But in some supposed cases, in various degrees supposedly less pronounced to draw the exact line of demarcation few will undertake tho’ for a fee some professional experts will. There is nothing namable but that some men will undertake to do it for pay.” (Isn’t it interesting that Melville comments about the motive and reliability of legal experts on such topics?)

 

Nearly 100 years before Melville was writing this book, he explained that the year 1797 was a unique time in the history of the British Naval forces. There had been a famous mutiny earlier in the year, known as “The Great Mutiny.” The mutiny desperately frightened all of the ships officers in the Navy, and apparently the mutiny resulted in a loss of able seaman for the fleet. Budd was actually conscripted or impressed, which meant he was taken into custody and ordered to serve on the ship, a common custom at that moment in time. Officers were short-handed and wary of the men who were working under their direction. There was no room for tolerance of anyone who defied orders. Claggert privately told Captain Edward Fairfax Vere of the warship Indomitable that after a skirmish with another ship, he suspected Budd’s movements in the action had been less than effective, to him, purposely so. Although Captain Vere had actually admired Budd, and although he suspected Claggert might have ulterior motives for reporting him, Captain Vere chose to have a private meeting with both Claggert and Budd. Claggert was instructed by the Captain to tell Budd what he had told him. Clever with his words, Claggert did just that. But Budd was not clever with his words, and in fact was totally tongue tied in his attempt to respond to the allegations. Unable to speak, Budd struck down Claggert with a single punch, and unexpectedly, as even a surprise to Budd, Claggert instantly died from the blow.

 

I’ll leave the details at the end of the book to you to read, but justice had to be served, and Budd had just struck and killed his senior officer. Especially in this post mutiny era, British Naval Justice had to be quickly served. The Captain agonized over the decision he would make, and Melville wrote “In the jugglery of circumstances preceding and attending the event on board the Indomitable, and in the light of that martial code whereby it was formally to be judged, innocence and guilt personified in Claggert and Budd in effect changed places.”

 

I think the reviewer that I read prior to diving into this book probably got Claggert’s psychiatric diagnosis wrong. Claggert certain had a personality disorder, but there is too little evidence presented to know that he was a sociopath. Confronted with Claggert today, I would probably opine that he was a borderline personality disorder with significant sociopathic traits. Again, the best part of this book was Melville’s descriptions of how his characters viewed their individual perceptions so differently. It is a story of murder, but one with surprisingly pithy descriptions of conscious and unconscious internal processes of the primary characters.

 

Do yourself a favor and read this novelette. If you’ve been a follower of this blog, you will probably love as much as I did.

 

Gideon Resurrection by Grant Rosenberg #1579

Gideon Resurrection by Grant Rosenberg is the second book in a trilogy, and I reviewed the first novel, Gideon, in 12/20. My review of Mr. Rosenberg’s debut novel was as glowing as any review that I’ve ever written, so I hope you’ve taken my advice and have read that one. You can see my review by searching for the title in this blog.

 

Two and one-half years later, I received the second novel, and it did not remain on my nightstand for very long – it jumped my reading queue, and I was not disappointed. We learn that the protagonist David Harper, a physician who runs a medical clinic in San Francisco’s Mission District, has been murdered. He had taken on the role of Gideon, an assassin of the worst of the worst characters, typically people who had been deeply involved in crime including rape and murder. What a contrast! On the one hand, he was a great physician who was willing to treat all persons that came to his clinic, but he also became a murderer. The fees he collected for such work helped keep his financially troubled clinic afloat. Harper’s daughter, Kelly, had followed him into the world of medicine, having graduated from medical school and having become a physician at the clinic which her father had founded. But, at least for the murderer of her father who was known to her, she had also followed her father into the role of Gideon. After killing her father’s notorious murderer, she swore to herself that she would not murder again.

 

However, upon reading her father’s diary, which he had left for her to find, Kelly began to have second thoughts. When the building of the clinic was sold, and the new owner increased the clinic’s rent, Kelly had the option of allowing the clinic to close or accepting another assignment for Gideon. After doing her own dangerous research about the proposed victim, Kelly agreed that another person deserved to die, but there were people on her trail who were about to discover her identity. Meanwhile, her homicide detective boyfriend also seemed to be about to discover this mysterious killer.

 

Rosenberg has created captivating characters who are put in ethically-challenged situations. Once again, Kelly is operating in the dangerous world of the Mission District in San Francisco. He has set up a fascinating story for the conclusion of this trilogy. Gideon Resurrection gets my strong recommendation (but read Gideon first).

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin #1578

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin was published in 2005, and a year later the authors were presented with the Pulitzer Prize for this biography. Certainly, it’s a story of murder and intrigue, so a review deserves to be written in this blog, but it is really a biography of one of the most brilliant scientists to ever influence national and international relations. It’s a long book, listed at 710 pages, and I chose to listen to it in audiobook format. I like to have a good listen when I’m out on my frequent long dog walks, and this one took 27 hours. The details that are possible in this book are very important to understanding who Oppenheimer was, just how brilliant he truly was, the wide breath of his interests, his stunning linguistic talents, and of course his drive as a theoretical physicist. It was only after finishing the book and actually relistening to a couple sections that I went to see the movie. While the book added tons of details to the story, the movie did a pretty good job of being true to the biography. What a story! Without question, Oppenheimer left his mark on the world in a way that influences everyone who is alive today.

 

Oppenheimer was “The Father of the Atomic Bomb,” a project that could not have been completed without his intelligence and drive. But, he was so much more. This is a story of the U.S. emerging from the Great Depression when millions of American’s could not find jobs. In the academic world and the labor world, people turned to the idea of communism as a possible solution to the toxic properties of capitalism that led to the depression. It was only as so many people in that leftist movement began to appreciate the difference between the philosophy of communism and its actual practice that the enthusiasm for this alternate form of government lost much of its appeal to the U.S. intelligencia. However, the Red Scare was a factor throughout the time of the bomb’s development. Despite his known pre WWII left wing sympathies, the government needed Oppenheimer to create the bomb, and the U.S. was in a race to get that done before Germany did so. When the war ended against Germany before either of those countries had finished the bomb, the war was still going on against Japan. Although Japan was nearly defeated, the political, scientific, and militaristic forces in the U.S. chose to use two atomic explosions against Japan, one a Uranium bomb, the other a Plutonium bomb. The U.S. worried what would be the human cost to American troops to actually capture the Japanese islands, and after the second bomb was dropped, Japan gave up its demand that they be able to keep their Emperor and to surrender unconditionally. The controversy of Truman’s decision is explored in this story.

 

After the war, there was an ongoing fight between American hawks and doves, and Oppenheimer was worried about an arms race, nuclear proliferation. He argued strongly against the development of the even more powerful hydrogen bomb, and he was then pushed out of government office by the hawks after which he no longer had a real platform for his ideas. In the book, Truman was not portrayed favorably. While it was clear that the U.S. Air Force was pushing to be in control of the atomic program, I was surprised that General Curtis LeMay was never mentioned as being the one who was the driving force behind that.

 

A review of this length cannot do justice to the details and complexity of this story. Perhaps there has never been an individual about whom the FBI gathered so much data, so the authors had an incredible amount of research to sort through. The movie did capture much about Oppenheimer’s social life, his marriage and his affairs, but those were not part of the main plot. I was pleased that the Hollywood depiction of Oppenheimer did not exaggerate the importance of such sexual issues to the extent that the theme of Oppenheimer’s work was lost. The role of antisemitism was also explored throughout Oppenheimer’s life. The struggle between Oppenheimer and Lewis Strauss who became the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission was integral to Oppenheimer’s ascendency during the war, his fall from grace after the war, and his eventual resurrection were all connected to that struggle. In the movie, that struggle was wonderfully played by Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer and Robert Downey, Jr., as Strauss. The cast included such talents as Emily Blunt, Rami Malek, Matt Damon, and others. (We should all expect a load of Oscar nominations for the cast.)

 

This is an important book about an incredibly important man. I can only encourage you to pick it up and spend some time with the details. Although there was some scientific info to learn about (which I frankly loved), it’s still a 5/5 rating.

An addendum to my original review: I forgot to write about one important aspect of the book. The authors wrote about the tension between the hawks in American politics versus the doves, and they clearly portrayed Oppenheimer in the post WWII era as being against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Truman was definitely in the hawk camp, and he believed the US needed to dramatically expand its nuclear arsenal with the naive belief that this would so intimidate other nations that this was the way to ensure lasting peace. Eisenhower also saw the early development of the nuclear arsenal, but as Bohr and Oppenheimer expected, rather than being a deterrent to an arms race, it was a challenge that Stalin and Russia's subsequent rulers could not let go unmet. It was Eisenhower in his last address as the President who famously warned future generations "to be wary of the military industrial complex." It seems to me that this warning has gone unheeded, and Oppenheimer has proven to be correct in his fears for our planet's and societies' survivability. 

Foundry by Eliot Peper #1577

 

Foundry is Eliot Peper’s 11^th novel and I’ve read them all for a good reason. I’ve enjoyed his characters and the plots. While that’s true about this book too, this one is remarkably different. Eliot reports that he awoke from a dream with the beginning of a story, and he decided he would use those lines to write his next book.

 

The author wrote, “It wasn’t that she was holding a gun to my head. It was that I could see the safety was still on. She thought I was completely at her mercy, which was what put her at mine.” This is a spy story, two spies, Adrian and Caroline. The two of them are locked in a room together but there’s only one gun. It’s a story about how semiconductors are changing 21^st century geopolitics.

 

Rather than have an outline prepared for where he would start the book and where he would take the story, in a Stephen King sort of writing system (and I’m not really a fan of Stephen King), Eliot started at the beginning of a dream and let the story develop from there. It was as if this incredibly creative man allowed himself to unleash that creativity in a way he had never done before, which led him to this fantastic story. It’s obvious from his writing that the author fully enjoyed the writing process in a way he had not with his prior 10 books. This novel gets my highest recommendation. If you’ve not read Eliot Peper, it’s time to get to it.