Istanbul Crossing

Istanbul Crossing is the seventh book by Timothy Jay Smith and the first reviewed in this blog. Smith is a most interesting character himself, and he has obviously incorporated himself and the cast of characters that he has met in his own peripatetic life into the story. The author is an award-winning author who has apparently achieved some fame for his writing skills. This is an important book about trafficking of humans who are seeking to get clear of the Syrian conflicts and other Middle Eastern conflicts of the current time. Desperately seeking safety in his life, the protagonist Ahdaf fled from Syria. But rather than continue to Europe, crossing from Istanbul to Greece, he found a niche, assisting other travelers who were trying to go farther.

 

The lives of the people involved in this migration were well-described by Smith, and death was a constant possibility for them. However, staying in the war areas meant that death was likely, so the people, nearly all men, kept coming. Ahdaf had a reputation for being honest and helpful, so he was able to get paid for his work. Of course the traffickers had to know the underbelly of this world so they too were doing their best to figure who among their colleagues were telling the truth and who were just running another scam on them.

 

Of course, governmental action was always a threat, and it occurred periodically. Suddenly armed and uncontrolled police would be at unexpected checkpoints and at key border locations. At the same time, fighters for ISIS were looking to move back and forth between Europe and Syria, but they also did damage to the societies along the way which they hated but never understood. It was the fighters who would bomb bars in Greece, just to make an unfathomable point.

 

While Ahdaf was safer in Istanbul than he had been in Syria, he was far from being free of potentially lethal danger. Yet, he could not get himself to flee even farther from his home. To complicate his predicament, he was a gay man who was moving through Middle Eastern cultures that often responded intolerantly to gay men with violence, sometimes murder. In the course of acting out his homosexuality, Smith described Ahdaf’s involvement in various homosexual acts. Ahdaf was looking for the safety of love, and the story hinged on the love he felt for a man he met early in the story, Selim. Throughout the story, Ahdaf was pulled in different directions regarding the issues of his safety and his affections.

 

In the end, I thought Smith has written an important book, but it was not a good book from my persepective. Perhaps I’ve already read too much about the desperation and cruelties that the migrants faced on a constant basis. It’s a subject that I’ve grown weary off. I mostly read for escape and I wanted to escape from that material rather than stay stuck in the morass of it, as Ahdaf found himself doing. Ironically, this book is not one for escape of the Middle Eastern horrors.

 

Although I have respect for the effort that it took to put this story together, and while I imagine that it will have a following from this successful author, I cannot recommend it for the readers of this blog.

The Grey Wolf

 

The Grey Wolf, A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel, is the 19^th in this series by Louise Penny. She is one of my favorite authors, who I think stands shoulder to shoulder with Michael Connelly, Daniel Silva, C.J. Box, and John Grisham. Ms. Penny is better than Lee Childs, David Baldacci and Jonathan Kellerman.

 

She produces one book a year. I always pre-order her novels, and since her original magnificent novel, Still Life which was written 19 years ago in 2005, I’ve counted on having an enjoyable day as I dive into her story. As usual, I love her characters, both the longstanding ones as well as her introduction of new people with her new plots. Her descriptive writing is always wonderful. Usually, the plots have been local ones rather than international espionage stories. However, this plot was a bigger and grander story which required more characters to carry the theme. I found that disappointing. With the plot being more complex and international in scope, I think it lost some of the intimacy for which Ms. Penny has been famous. So, this book was not my favorite. But all of my favorite authors have produced stories that seemed a bit off, so for the first time in 19 books, that is my opinion of The Grey Wolf. I will continue to pre-order her books and hope for another good day of Three Pines drama when she publishes her next book in 2005.

The Mailman

This book was scheduled for publication on 1/28/25. As you'll read below, I loved it.

The Mailman by Andrew Welsh-Huggins is his first book reviewed in this blog, but it looks like he’s written at least 13 other crime novels. Given how impressed I was by his newest novel, I have a new author whose works I want to explore. The book is subtitled “A Mercury Carter Adventure.”

This is a plot-driven story and Welsh-Huggins drops us right into the middle of the action in Chapter 1. Rachel Stanfield is an attorney in Indianapolis. She and her husband are in the midst of an argument about Rachel’s stepdaughter, 15-year-old Abby, who is not taking care of business with regard to her schoolwork which has been plummeting. It was into that setting that four armed and masked men entered Rachel’s house. One man, Finn, pulled off his mask and demanded that Rachel provide him with material from one of her cases, something she had been refusing to do, and initially, she told Finn he had no right to the information. When Finn put a gun to Glenn’s head, she backed off and provided the data to him. But, Finn wanted to know more about one person, Stella Wolford and Finn did not accept that Rachel didn’t know her current whereabouts. As threats were made by Finn, there was an unexpected knock on the door. It was Mercury or Merc Carter, an unimpressive and slightly built man of average height. He said that he had a package for Rachel which only she could sign for. And so, the adventure began.

 

Through the locked front door, Merc described that he was running on a tight schedule and he was insistent that only Rachel could sign for the package. At the moment, Finn had Rachel and Glenn tied up in the basement.

 

I loved the plot, but I don’t want to give away any more of the story. Especially at the beginning, this story had the feel of a Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novel. The protagonist, Merc Carter, is just going about his business when crazy trouble finds him. In reality, I found this book more compelling and spell-binding than any of the late Reacher novels. The author deserves that compliment. The plot was not overly complex and the characters, especially Merc, were most compelling.

 

This book gets a 5/5 in the murder mystery-thriller genre. When I get a little time and get caught up on my reading queue I’m planning on jumping back into another Welsh-Huggins novel.

Where the Bones Lie

 

Where The Bones Lie is the most recent of several crime novels authored by Nick Kolakowski, but it’s the first one I’ve read and the first reviewed in this blog. This novel will be released early in 2025. It’s really a classic detective thriller that was a page-turner, for sure.

 

Dash Fuller was the protagonist, and he had a history of working in Hollywood’s underbelly, working for the studios and protecting stars when they got in trouble. Basically, he was a fixer. At the moment the story begins in Los Angeles, Dash is at loose ends, being tired of the dirty work that he was expected to do, work that he apparently excelled at. Mostly, he would babysit stars while they finished movie projects, making sure they did not get too much into alcohol and drugs so they could finish their projects. His efforts at being a stand-up comic were total failures because he just wasn’t funny. Then his mentor in the dirty business of Hollywood, Manny, asked him to find a couple stars who had gone missing, Karl Quaid and Amber Rodney. Fuller quickly found them in their drug infested hideaway and was there when the stars were gunned down. In his last brief effort on a comedy stage, the day before their murders, he had announced that he was looking for Karl and Amber and he offered to pay for information about their whereabouts.

 

It was in response to his request for information about the stars and their next day murder that led to Madeline Ironwood appearing at Fuller’s door. Madeline was a beautiful young redhead who dressed in a most bizarre manner. She had decided he must be a resourceful man to have found the now deceased stars and she wanted to hire him to find out about her estranged father whose body had been found in a dried up lakebed in San Douglas, California. He had been stuffed into a barrel which was only discovered when the lake dried up due to the changing climate. Ken Ironwood’s remain consisted only of his skeleton and an old wallet.

 

This was a story about Fuller’s work to solve the mystery of his client’s father, the relationship between himself and Madeline, and the surprise involvement of Manny in this case which Fuller had not seen coming. I’ll leave the rest of the details to you to read about.

 

Kolakowski has presented us with some great characters about whom I’d like to read more. The plot is well-developed and nicely revealed. Certainly, there were good and unexpected twists. I love this genre and I love Kokakowski’s latest contribution to it. The novel gets my very strong recommendation.