The Exchange

 

The Firm was John Grisham’s second book and it was hugely successful, published in 1991, and after writing many bestselling novels since then, in 2023 Grisham chose to write the sequel, The Exchange. After the surprise decision to take the lucrative offer at a Memphis firm rather than to take an offer from one of the blue blood firms that had made offers to Mitch McDeere, who finished fourth in his Harvard Law School class, Mitch and his wife Abby settled into life in Memphis. It was then that he discovered the vast corruption in which his firm was engaged. Risking his life McDeere turned to the Feds for help. Such was the subject of The Firm. So what happened to Mitch and Abby since then? Meanwhile, the firm in Memphis ended up with all its members in jail for long prison terms.

 

The Exchange takes place 15 years later, in 2005. Mitch and Abby had fled the country until they decided it was time to return to the U.S. to start a family. Mitch chose to go back to the law, but this time he was hired by the largest law firm in the world and he began working in their Manhattan office. Ever the rebel, Mitch took advantage of the firm’s “no dress code” policy. He grew a beard and wore a ponytail, and he typically went to the office in jeans. But, Mitch was a star and quickly ascended to the position of partner, and he was close to the senior partner and founder of the firm, Luca Sandroni who was dying of cancer.

 

It was only Luca who could persuade Mitch to take on a case that led him back to Memphis, a place he said he would never go again. Luca was big into pro bono work, and the case was a longshot deal to try to save the life of a man who was due to be executed in 90 days. In fact, the man committed suicide before the efforts to save him could occur. But, that put Mitch even closer to Luca in his dying days. He asked Mitch for another favor. Mitch was being sent on an international adventure to Libya where he was to try to collect money from Muammar Gaddafi that was due to the firm. The favor was for Mitch to take Luca’s daughter along. Luca was worried that Giovanna was getting tired of the law and was about to leave the firm, and she was asking to be involved in this effort, despite the known dangers of Libya. Not only was Gaddafi a lawless psychopath, but there were armed and militant tribes Libya which even Gaddafi could not control. It was one of those tribes that abducted Giovanna for ransom for $100,000,000.

 

Unexpectedly, Abby was pulled into the scene as the person who had to deliver the money in order to collect Giovanna. During her time since living in Memphis, Abby had become a successful publisher of cookbooks, and she had absolutely no background for the task she was being asked to complete. How does one cobble together $100k when the insurance company refused to pay on the claim and when the other wealthy partners refused to risk their own wealth to save Luca’s daughter?

 

I’ve always thought Grisham’s best writing was about legal battles and courtroom drama. He did write about some interesting issues in international law in this book, but there was little courtroom action. However, Grisham has another winner on his hands. I thoroughly enjoyed this effort, and I devoured this book in audio format rather than the usual way. It gets my 5/5 rating.

The Killings at Kingfisher Hill (associated with the Agatha Christie series)

 Once again, I ran out of audiobooks for my early morning dog walks. I had a number of books on hold on Libby, but that was not going to work for right now, so I grabbed at what was immediately available. I came up with The Killings at Kingfisher Hill by Sophie Hanna which is part of the Agatha Christie collection. Ms. Hanna was reported to be a NY Times bestselling author, but I’m quite sure it was not for this book. It’s been a longtime since I’ve read anything from Agatha Christie, but I did recently watch the movie remake of Murder on the Orient Expression. In this plot, Hercule Poirot was engaged by Richard Devenport to solve the murder of his brother, Frank Devonport, even though the fiancee of Richard had confessed to committing the murder. Richard was sure she was innocent. As usual there were numerous plot manipulations to confuse the crime which only Poirot could figure his way through. I thought Ms. Hanna overdid it with the plot twists to a great extent and I simply did not find this experience of reading this novel to be worthwhile. I’d give it a 2/5 rating – best to avoid this one That must be why it was available and all the good books in the Libby library were already taken.

Broadcasting Politics in Japan

This book may not draw much interest from many of this blog’s regular readers, but I’m better informed for having read it. Ellis S. Krauss is an internationally renown scholar of Asian history and policies, and his specific specialty is Japan where he has lived and/or visited for the last 50 years. He has received prestigious awards for his work. I’ve seen a picture of him receiving a medal from the Emperor of Japan. He now has emeritus status at UCSD where he taught in the global studies area, and he has lectured at many other American and Japanese universities. It has been my serendipitous good fortune to have met him through a dear friend and colleague, and he and his wife Martha have lovingly provided a reading list of books for me and my wife as we prepare for a tour of Japan.

 

In Broadcasting Politics in Japan, which was published in 2000, he reviewed his research into the development of political news coverage in Japan, beginning in the immediate post WWII era. The U.S. occupied Japan until 1952, and the U.S. agents wrote the laws and playbook for the development of the reporting of political news to the Japanese public with the intent of helping to legitimize the democratic society that was being taught to the populace. Particularly, he described the evolution of NHK, Nippon Hoso Kyokai, the Japan Broadcasting Company. NHK maintained its dominance of the political news delivery systems in Japan until the late 1980s when competition with commercial news networks finally caught up with it. The commercial news seemed to appeal more to the younger generation, but NHK has maintained an important part of the political news scene.

 

Dr. Krauss had access to all of the key players in this story, and his documented research efforts are impressive. I’ll leave you there with the topic, and I hope you’ll have a look at his impressive and most interesting research.

High Wire by Kam Majd

I think anyone would hate to be hired simply to check some box, but plenty of folks think that Kate Gallagher was hired by Jet East airlines because she was 1. Female; 2. youngest female pilot; 3. Single mom; and 4. It doesn’t hurt that she’s kinda hot.

Kate got hooked on flying as a teenager when, on a dare, she did a sky dive. After a few more jumps, she realized the thrill wasn’t in the going down but in the going up. Went through all the steps to become a pilot eventually qualifying as a commercial pilot. 

Now she can sit in both chairs, first officer or as the captain. She’s piloting a full winter evening flight from DC to JFK. New York weather sux but still passable for landing. The first approach is shaky because of wind and the controls feel wonky. The next approach, the plane starts to have a mind of its own. Not only is it non-responsive, but it is performing random actions. As she fights for control on final approach, it becomes obvious that the next step is a nose-down collision with the ground. Only way she can see to avoid it is to simply shut the plane off and glide in as best she can. The resulting crash claims six lives, but her actions saved the rest of the passengers and crew.

NTSB arrives promptly. Barely ahead of the media. No clue why the plane started acting on its own. The media comes to their own conclusion: pilot error. And of course, the plane crashed because of a young, marginally experienced female pilot — a token hire — was at the controls.

Kate is now caught up in a media storm at the airport, her home, anywhere she tries to go. She knows it wasn’t her fault, but without clues from the plane’s data recorders, it’s hard to prove she wasn’t at fault.

Kate is no shrinking violet. She’s a hard charger. If the NTSB is slow in its investigation, she’ll have to speed things up. She starts with instructors at the Jet East training school to see what electronic/mechanical steps would be needed for a plane to act on its own. One of the possibilities may be found in the backup navigation systems called STAR so she approaches them. Turns out a freight jet in the Jet East system also went down a few months earlier. Pilot suicide was ruled the cause, so Kate also checks in with the widow.

Kate stays a step or two ahead of the NTSB (burdened by established protocols) and eventually learns how the planes have been hacked and the who and why is behind it. The conclusion of the investigation is absolutely ‘can’t put it down’ territory.

The author is an earlier Edgar nominee, and the author notes suggest that this book will be the start of a Kate Gallagher series. I can guarantee I’ll be there for the next installment. Kate Gallagher kicks open doors like none other. One reviewer called her, “Erin Brockovich meets Jack Ryan.’ The author is an Iranian-born, US commercial pilot so the techno aspects of the book as stunning. Write about what you know is the saying. He's done just that.

Looking for a riveting, machine-gun rapid fire plotting thriller? Look no further.This'll take your breath away

ECD

Engame

 I enjoyed Endgame by Omid Scobie in audiobook format. The author was also the reader, and he was a delightful man to listen to. This was a good follow up to Prince Harry’s book, Spare. If you have no interest in England’s royalty, then read no farther. I got through both books as the result of not finding an audiobook in Libby, and I really like to have an audiobook for my morning dog walks.

 

Scobie’s book included details about the struggles in the current royal family, and in addressing his theme that the faux monarchy could be coming to an end with either current King Charles or Prince William. There is a strong movement afoot in England to stop paying for the costly royal family’s expenses. Scobie also provided a longer history of the real monarchy, the transition to it becoming more of a ceremonial station, and its fairly rapid deterioration in the absence of Queen Elizabeth II.

 

Regarding the falling out between William and Harry, Scobie admitted that he was very much in the camp of Harry and Meghan, as to the camp of William and Kate. He gave lots of information about why that was the case. With this book, he has essentially permanently cut ties with Charles and Camilla who apparently feel that he has betrayed them. My take away is that the royal family has seriously mismanaged the attempted inclusion of Meghan into the family. Scobie gave examples of the Palace lying to the public as an attempt to make William and Kate more sympathetic characters. Clearly, Prince Andrews debacle with Jeffrey Epstein caused further damage with the public. At any rate, I found the book to be well-written and interesting.

Pacific Crucible, War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942

 As I continue my dive into information about Japan, I decided to read another nonfiction work about the naval war in the Pacific during WWII, Pacific Crucible by Ian W. Toll. This is the first of a trilogy and it has a subtitle War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942. Essentially, this covered the beginning of the Pacific war with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese fleet on 12/7/41, the Battle of the Coral Sea on 5/7-8/42, and the Battle of Midway from 6/3/42 to 6/6/42. I had already read about Pearl Harbor and had visited there twice, so I felt I was fairly well informed about that part of the Pacific war. I had seen the 1970 movie Tora, Tora, Tora shortly before my first visit there, and then Pearl Harbor which was released in 2001. I remember standing in the memorial of the U.S.S. Oklahoma and imaging the sudden attack that led to the ship being on the bottom of the harbor within minutes of the first bomb that was dropped. However, as much as the attack was a surprise, I was newly stunned at the degree of denial that was rampant among the people in Oahu who were witnessing the attack. So many thought that it was a superior and well planned drill that was being carried out by U.S. forces, even as they saw the Rising Sun insignias on the Japanese plans and even as they saw smoke pouring out of the ships docked in Pearl. 

The U.S. armed forces made countless mistakes that allowed the attack to occur, at least to the extent of the surprise. While battleships were terribly destroyed and damaged by the attack, it luckily turned out that U.S. aircraft carriers were not in port at the time of the attack as the Japanese expected, and the use of battleships unexpectedly turned out to be an ineffective weapon in the war.

 

I really had no idea of the timing of the war, especially that the U.S. was involved in the Battle of the Coral Sea so early in the response to the Pearl Harbor assault, only six months later in early 5/42. That was a battle that did not go so well for the U.S., and the vitally important aircraft carrier Lexington was lost in the battle. However, the Battle of Midway occurred only a month later. The U.S. intelligence operation was successful in that they were able to decode Japanese messaging to the fleet, and most importantly, they destroyed and/or sunk four Japanese carriers that had been employed in the attack. Toll wrote about all the luck that benefitted the U.S., in addition to their good intelligence. But Toll implied that without the lucky elements of the battle, the outcome could have been very different.

 

Although the war would not officially end for another three years, Toll opined that the Battle of Midway was the single most important naval battle of WWII and that Japan’s defeat was ensured at the result of that victory. The author brought the intensity of anxiety of the war to the pages of his book. As I continue to learn about Japan in prep for a trip there and a plan to visit old friends, I’m not sure I’ll get to books two and three of the trilogy. However, I must complement Mr. Toll on his scholarship and the quality of his writing. If this aspect of WWII interests you, this is a book for you.

The Edge

 

While looking at this blog before writing this review, I was surprised to see that this is the 20^th Baldacci novel that we’ve reviewed. I had no idea that we had read so much of his prolific output, and eight of those reviews came from me. I was very entertained by his 5-book Camel Club series but those books were read and reviewed by in me 2011. By 2024, I had come to think of Baldacci as being a B+ writer which means a dependable effort could be expected but that he had not captured the same excitement I felt from reading his earlier books. So, I took on The Edge when I had run out of autobooks and this one became available on Libby. And, my impression of this mystery novel was most favorable. It gets a strong recommendation from me for all of you murder mystery and espionage readers. This is the second book in the 6:20 Man series, although I liked the second book much more than the first one.

 

Jenny Silkwell, a CIA operative, was killed when she went to her family home in Maine, and Travis Devine was called to investigate. Initially, it looked like a simple case to solve, but Putnam Maine was a place that did not trust outsiders like Devine, and it had a long list of secrets that the town folks did not want revealed. There were two powerful families that dominated the scene, including a Senator who was slowly slipping away as the result of Alzheimer’s Disease. This was a town were everyone knew each others’ business. Devine discovered that the assault and rape of Jenny’s sister, Alex, had been hushed up, and Travis was sure there was a connection between that long ago event, and the current murder. So, it’s a good mystery and I did not see the plot’s final twist until I was upon it. Baldacci certainly showed his skill as a writer in this book.

 

You Gotta Have Wa

In my rush to read Japanese literature, I would not have guessed I would end up with a book on Japanese baseball, like the 1990 title You Gotta Have Wa by Robert Whiting. As I’ve been trying to learn more about Japanese culture, it just so happens I could not have found a better source of information. The rules in baseball or besuboru are the same in the U.S. as the rules in Japan, but the cultural differences that influence how the game is conducted are fascinating. Two words are used to define baseball in Japan, wa, and doryoku. Wa means harmony and doryoku means effort.

 

This book is 34 years old and much has changed since then. It was accepted in America that the Japanese game was inferior, and the post WWII era supported that as the U.S.-Japan games were totally dominated by the Americans. However, in 2024, we have more Japanese players in the majors than ever before, and most notably we have Shohei Ohtani who is playing at a level that Americans have not seen since Babe Ruth. The administration of the game has evolved as have the salaries, but this is a book about cultural differences and cultural clashes.

 

Whiting paraphrased a line from Bob Horner, a former major leaguer who finished his career in Japan after a successful career in America’s major leagues. Horner said American’s played ball. Japanese worked at it. To further explain this difference, Whiting quotoed Chris Arnold, a former player for both San Francisco Giants and Kintetsu Buffalo: “I’ll tell you the big difference between Japan and the U.S. In the U.S., we believe that a player has a certain amount of natural ability and with practice he reaches a certain peak point, but after that no amount of practice will make him better – because after a certain point your ability reaches its limits. But the Japanese believe there is no peak point. They don’t recognize limits.” Whiting explained, “For Americans baseball is a job. For the Japanese it is a way of life.”

 

Harmony in the Japanese game infers the notion of just going along with team rules, whatever that may be. It’s a statement about cohesion of everyone involved with a team, and it’s a belief against individualism. Arguing with an umpire or the manager is definitely not part of the Japanese culture. It also impacted how one negotiated with a team about the players’ contracts. Whiting presented a brief history of Japan and the development of amateur and professional competitions, as well as the effect of WWII on the Japanese game. The Japanese have two leagues which each have six teams, and they play a 130-game schedule. He writes of the trouble American’s have adjusting to the small ball Japanese game and the expectations of their conduct, and he writes of the difficulties of the Japanese players as they try to adjust to the presence of people who play ball. One of the shocks for Americans was the amount of drilling expected of Japanese players. It was typical in the 1990s for Japanese players to have rigorous workouts for 2 ½ hours before every game, often leaving them exhausted by the time the games started. The Americans noticed that the Japanese were physically spent by the time the season was halfway through. Pitchers were expected to throw every day of the season and to pitch despite the pain that it was causing.

 

I thought the richest part of the book was the author’s descriptions of both Americans and Japanese players and managers talking about each other and their bafflement at those differences. He particularly followed stars from both sides of these clashes. When I combine the information about baseball differences between the U.S. and Japan with the fiction and nonfiction books I have been reading about Japan, the extent of misunderstanding by both sides of this equation in all facets of life is staggering. I’m planning to read another besuboru book, as well as some other material. Although my 16 days in Japan are tightly scheduled, I’m trying to figure out how to get to a game in Tokyo or Osaka so I can witness the frenzy of Japanese baseball fans that I have been learning about.

Lost Empire, A Fargo Adventure

 

I must have read at least 10 Clive Cussler books in the 70’s and 80’s, but I got a bit tired of his formula for Dirk Pitt, who was mostly a two-dimensional hero. What I loved about the books were the grand adventures that happen while Pitt solved incredible mysteries, travelled the world, and dove into relevant history, all at the same time. Currently, it was at a moment that I had run out of audiobooks that I found Lost Empire on the Libby app, a book that was published in 2010. Unfortunately, after a prolific career, Clive died in 2000, so the books that are now under his title, are written by someone else, this one Grant Blackwood.

 

Mr. Blackwood made a great effort to mimic Cussler’s style. This one had a grand adventure, and the story spanned the U.S. and Africa, while also touching down in some other locations. Rather than just one primary hero, Blackwood wrote about the married treasure hunters, Sam and Remy Fargo. They lived in a great home in La Jolla which is near my home in Southern California. And, Sam and Remy Fargo had a great team of women to assist them with research and logistics. There was more depth of character to Fargo’s crew than existed with the very early Cussler books. This was a story about the current corrupt president of Mexico, his attempt to hide the information about the true origin the Aztecs, and his use of the false information to heighten his own popularity. This one is a good airplane book, one that could entertain you during a cross country flight.

Alex Cross Must Die

 Alex Cross Must Die is the 32^nd novel in the Alex Cross series by James Patterson, although it has been some years since I’ve read one of these. In this one, Alex must deal with a madman who just shot down an American Airlines plane while it was on its final approach to Reagan Airport in D.C., killing more than 100 people. Cross is also working to solve serial murder case. Meanwhile, he continues with his current love interest, recovers from a shooting injury in the prior book, and contends with his bright high school student son who is very interested in finding a way to help his dad solve the serial murder case, even though dad has just grounded him for unexpectedly showing up at a crime scene.

 

The book is a thriller. Although I didn’t gain any valuable information from the book, and although I missed the reason for the title, I was entertained for some hours. I would classify this book as an airplane book – a novel that will distract me for the length of a LAX to JFK flight, but it would not distract me from taking a nap if that’s what I wanted to do.

A Lethal Question by Mark Rubinstein

Meet Dr. Bil Madrian . . . Manhattan-based psychiatrist . . . two years past the sudden death of his fiancé from a brain aneurysm . . . lives alone and retains everything that belonged to her . . .has a married sister (hubby is a criminal defense attorney) with 2 daughters and a nosy, widowed mother . . . a peaceful, if empty, and unpretentious life . . . has a new patient who he has seen just a few times . . . Alex Bronzi.

Alex is early 20s, still lives with his parents and thinks he should be allowed a bigger role in the family business (drugs, money laundering, trafficking). Dad thinks otherwise. Alex sought counseling to help with his relationship with his father. Alex is Albanian-American, immature, and a bit of a braggart in his attempts to boost his standing with others. During his most recent session. Alex blurts out a question: “Hey Doc. You wanna know who clipped Boris Levenko?”

Levenko was a Ukrainian mob boss in the Brighton Beach area. He and two associates were gunned down in a restaurant earlier in the week. Madrian is bound by doctor-patient confidentiality, of course but the Levenko hit was a broad daylight execution. If the killers aren’t found, this could be the start of another mob war. Should Madrian tell the cops or FBI? More importantly, is Alex going to blab that he’s been seeing a shrink, that he posed that loaded question to the doc?

Figuring that Alex won’t keep his mouth shut, Madrian’s imagination starts to run wild. Is he next to be silenced? How does an amateur keep from being tracked down in Manhattan? What about his family and nieces? His patients? Does he stay in his apartment? He knows enough to know that a digital footprint follows everyone. He does have a racquetball friend whom he has never contacted by email, text, or cell phone. Luck is on his side as this friend and wife are vacationing in the Caribbean and generously offers his brownstone. Get the key from a tenant who lives in the basement apartment, a late 20s librarian named Elena.

Given that he’s now been dumped into a criminal case, he quietly asks his brother-in-law for advice - he’s dealt with the underworld. Surely he’ll have some suggestion. His firm has used what might be called a fixer, guy who goes by the name of Rami. Madrian is told that once he contacts Rami, his immediate future is in Rami’s hands and must do everything Rami says exactly as Rami describes. Get multiple burner phones, absolutely stay off the internet, cancel patient appointments, no contact with family. Stay in that brownstone. Let Rami do what he does and he'll get his life back.

Madrian gets the key from Elena. Big mistake: he eventually tells her why he’s upstairs. They venture out to lay in some food and Bill thinks he notices someone might be following him. Over the next couple days, they stick close in her flat and (as you might guess) start to get close. Meanwhile, the Albanians are getting closer, and he still hasn’t heard from Rami.

Think of this book as a cross between The Sopranos (a mobster seeing a shrink) and Three Days of the Condor (the Robert Redford movie where he’s on run from a hired hitman and takes up with a photographer to hide at her place). The story is told almost entirely from Bill Madrian’s perspective where Rubinstein delivers generous doses of suspicion, paranoia, fear, lunacy, madness, depression, and impending insanity descending on Bill. Rubinstein presents  a fast based cat-and-mouse chase in and around NYC. Kept me riveted to my couch and I’m sure you will be too.

Rubinstein, a psychiatrist to boot, is a much-published author of fiction and non-fiction. He has 8 fiction books, mostly featuring physicians/lawyers (but I’d not call any a ‘legal thriller’), all published by Oceanview. You’ll find quite several Oceanview books (Rubinstein included) reviewed by the boys here at MRB and I’d be hard pressed to say any weren’t solid winners. Oceanview knows how to pick its authors.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance reviewer copy. Anticipated publication date is 7 May 2024.

 

East Coast Don

 

 

Sopranos + 6 Days of the Condor