LaBrava by Elmore Leonard

On a cold Saturday at the Raleigh flea market, I scored this 1983 book for all of a buck. Leonard is a very reliable author who has penned some very notable books that have ended up on the big screen (e.g. Get Shorty, 3:10 to Yuma, Out of Sight) and TV (my personal current favorite: Justified about the life and times of one Raylan Givens, US Deputy Marshall, and Boyd Crowder, Raylan’s local antagonist).  If you like the kind of books reviewed here at MRB and aren’t watching Justified on the FX network, well, then shame on you, but I digress.

Joe LaBrava is a former IRS auditor and secret service agent who left the service to become a photographer in Miami, and is doing quite nicely, thank you very much. His friend is Maurice Zola, a retired horse bookie who did quite well for himself. He now owns a small residential hotel and Joe likes to take pic of the residents. Maurice wants Joe to go with him down to the county agency that takes in drunks, addicts, and other deranged folks that don’t necessarily need to get inserted in the Miami criminal court system.  

The lady is one a recent widow who looks like she’s been dragged through the wringer and once she sleeps it off, Joe realizes it’s a retired actress he used to lust after when he was about 12 years old. He wants to get to know her, take her picture, and talk about movies all day long.

Richard Nobles and his running bud Cundo Rey (a Cuba boat person) are a couple of grifters who work out a scheme to extort money from ‘that rich actress’. Joe leans on his old secret service surveillance skills and tracks down the source of the extortion. But the arrival of an uncle of Nobles from back in the swamps upsets the (sort of) carefully laid plans and extortion turns to murder putting Joe in the crosshairs of Nobles/Rey while he keeps them in his telephoto lens.

For about half the book, Leonard delicately develops the Joe, Maurice, and Jean (the actress) relationship. One particular entertaining conversation has Joe and Jean talking movies while Maurice is carrying on his own conversation with no one about cooking - very clever and engrossing. We watch Joe realize just whom this femme fatale is and struggle with his developing attraction to Jean while he wonders when she is being herself and when she is acting. Leonard is solid, light-hearted, and can always be counted on to deliver an entertaining diversion  --- and this is no exception. If you are looking for a sure fired diversion and can't decide who to read, most anything from Leonard's long list of titles is a terrific place to start.

East Coast Don

The Ranger by Ace Atkins

The set up:

Quinn Colson is on leave from the Army Rangers. His Uncle Hemp, the local sheriff in nowhere northern Alabama has committed suicide. His mom and sister are nothing to shout about; his mom is looking after her grandson while the mom dances at a cheezy strip joint outside of Memphis. On the road home, he picks up this pregnant teenager looking for her baby daddy who has taken up with some people way down the food chain preparing for the coming war. The group is led by Gowrie, an Ohio transplant who also cooks meth at about 5-6 places in the county while being the local strong arm for Johnny Stagg, the Boss Hog of the county.

Deputy Lillie (lady of course) thinks the suicide scene was read improperly and that Uncle Hemp had been murdered. A high school friend of Quinn’s, Boom, who didn’t come out of ‘Stan as well as did Quinn (missing an arm, but gaining a decent case of PTSE), does snooping around the farm house Uncle Hemp left him only to find out he was in debt to Stagg who was positioning himself to take over Uncle Hemp’s land to pay off the debt.  Apparently Stagg envisioned himself as some sort of developer with plans to build a business park and hospital, but he needs more and more land and more and more money from meth sales and the Memphis mob.

The story revolves around the dance between Quinn, Stagg, and Gowrie, with a side order of the pregnant teen, a defrocked preacher, and untrustworthy law enforcement. Over the week of this story, Quinn manages to root out the Memphis-Gowrie-Stagg-crooked cop connections and with his friend Boom, disrupt the local meth operation, draw Gowrie and Stagg out into the open and expose the suicide for the murder it truly was. But Quinn still has problems with the truth behind the murder.

WC Don and I share a common Kindle archive (make that, WC Don has allowed me access to his archive) and this was in there. I thought Atkins has sculpted a very believable hero in Colson who becomes a reluctant liberator of the counties denizens. Based on this first of the Colson series, I’d put this in a second tier of characters and stories and for me, that’s in pretty good company. Sort of on the same shelf as Jonathon King, whom I liked. I just saw that Amazon has two Colson books (after he becomes the newly elected sheriff) on sale for $0.99 so I should be posting again pretty soon.

East Coast Don

Vienna Twilight

This is my fourth Frank Tallis novel in the series which takes place during the first decade of the 20^th century in Vienna, about Max Liebermann, the psychoanalyst, and Oskar Rheinhardt, the detective inspector with the Security Office. Tallis further develops the contrast between his two protagonists, as well as their friendship, while he makes use of the newly introduced technique of psychoanalysis to solve crimes and understand the psychopathology that drives such behaviors.

In this book, there were three criminal events that had to be solved, all linked through an understanding of the Oedipus complex, which Tallis adequately explains. In the story, the author gives Freud a quote: “The sexual instinct is, I believe, infinitely pliable with respect to its aims. Indeed, I am of the belief that all human beings are born with what might be described as a polymorphously perverse disposition – that is to say, a disposition that can be diverted into all possible kinds of sexual irregularly. If one defines healthy sexual behavior as that which is necessary for human reproduction – namely heterosexual congress – it follows that all other forms of arousal-seeking behavior are surplus, and therefore in a literal sense, perverse.” In the book’s primary crimes, Liebermann kept referring to “thanatophila,” the fascination with death, which he distinguishes from necrophilia, the love of the dead. You get the idea that this book is dark, and in penetrating the understanding of this darkness and Rheinhardt’s own difficulty grasping the concepts in this ugly realm of human functioning, Liebermann says, “It is always better to understand than not.” Crucial to solving one of the crimes is the psychoanalytic interpretation of Jack and the Beanstalk.  Near the end of the book, Tallis has Liebermann wondering, “What was wrong with the German soul? Why were love and death so intermingled in the German imagination.”

I will continue to pursue this fascinating series of books – Tallis gets my strongest recommendation.

Political Suicide by Michael Palmer

Michael Palmer is prolific in the medical thriller genre but in Political Suicide he ventures into the political/military thriller arena.  His lead character, Dr. Lou Welcome is a naïve do-gooder type who has personally lost everything due to alcoholism only to rebound from the bottom to begin again.  He is now divorced with a preteen daughter, lives over a pizza shop in a sketchy D.C. neighborhood, works as an ER doc, and moonlights as associate director of Physician Wellness (a program for physicians who struggle with addiction.)

Dr. Gary McHugh is a “society doc” in D.C. and a personal friend of Lou Welcome.  He is also a client of Lou’s due to his alcoholism.  He calls Lou and tells him he is about to be arrested for murdering Congressman Elias Colston.  Apparently McHugh was having an affair with the congressman’s wife and police evidence places him at Colston’s home in a drunken stupor at the time of the murder.  The police anxious to declare, “Case solved,” make no effort to investigate further.  McHugh’s lawyer, Sarah Cooper sees the only defense is to create reasonable doubt through some alternative suspect.  Lou takes this as a challenge to launch his own investigation.  Sarah, however, views all doctors as arrogant and ego centric. Seems her husband died as a result of a doctor’s error in judgment which she has yet to forgive.  She warns Lou to route all his findings, if any, through her and not to go directly to authorities.

Lou uses his friendship with McHugh to approach Colston’s widow.  He gets permission to search the congressman’s home office and finds a hidden CD.  The CD is record of a phone conversation between Colston and a member of an elite marine unit called Mantis.  Seems the commander of Mantis, Colonel Wyatt Brody was angry with Colston for wanting to cut funding to the Mantis unit.  The recording is proof that someone other than McHugh could have a motive for murdering Colston.

Thinking he has saved the day, Lou gives the original CD to Detective Bryzinski, the lead investigator in Colston's case and leaves a copy in his apartment to give to Sarah. A day later, the CD disappears from Bryzinski's desk and the copy is stolen from Lou's home.  Sarah is furious with him for ignoring her direct warning.

 

Now Lou feels obligated to follow his lead.  He heads to the West Virginia compound that houses the Mantis unit and stirs up Colonel Brody hoping to prove his theory and save his friend.  Brody’s Mantis unit ends up being only the tip of the ice berg of a political conspiracy encompassing high placed U.S. government officials, Mexican drug cartels, and Middle Eastern terrorists.  Can our naïve and good intended Dr. Welcome stand up against such foes?

I’ve read several of Michael Palmer’s medical thrillers over the years and while he is very good, I just grew tired of the genre.  Political Suicide is a delightful diversion for him.  While the plausibility of the plot is a bit questionable, his characters are likable, believable, and endearing.  He shows strong creativity and delivers the story with an appropriate pace to build the suspense and keep you wanting more.  I’ll read more from Palmer in this genre.

Dead Politician Society by Robin Spano

The mayor of Toronto collapses during a speech and dies. Taking credit for it is the Society for Political Utopia, an ultra-secret, invitation only club at the University. Seeking to cover all investigative angles, the police place Clare Vengel, a rookie cop, undercover as a poli-sci student in the class of the prof thought to have started the society.

Over the next week, 4 more political figures die of poisoning. Clare has to juggle being a student with a new flame and gathering info on the prof and the students in his Poli Real World class for her handler. The alleged killer sends obits to the newspaper and obit writer Annabelle, looking for some fame in her own drab world, strikes up a txt/email relationship in hopes of writing a book on the sop-called Utopia killings.

When the texting killer threatens Annabelle's niece, she finally goes to the cops who easily trace the source at the other end. This sort of nerd, hot to trot for a classmate, confesses, but Clare thinks he's covering for someone, but it could be anyone in the class. In a reveal along the lines of an old Agatha Christie, the real killer fesses up, Clare gets some grudging kudos from her handler, and word of a possible new assignment.

Wasn't really taken by this effort. Having spent some time on the other side of the desk at a university, I found the portrayal of the professor as entirely off the mark. Also thought that while Clare is the focal point of the story, I didn't really see her doing much other than stumbling over and over, but maybe that was Spano's intent. Not sure I'll be going out of my way to check out subsequent Clare Vengel novels.

East Coast Don

Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market

Warning: Nonfiction content

I’ve wandered into nonfiction territory, another of the several books on economics that I’ve occasionally reviewed. Eric Schlosser is better known for his title Fast Food Nation. This one was written in 2003, but it is as relevant in 2013 as it was 10 years ago. In Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market, Schlosser examines America’s black market, the underground economy, and in so doing, he focuses mostly on the economies of cheap migrant labor, the marijuana trade, and the sex trade and porn industry. It’s fascinating, whether or not you agree with his conclusions that it makes sense to legalize marijuana, to drastically improve the living conditions of migrant workers, and that the widespread black market in the sex industry can only undermine the law and that it’s indicative of the discrepancy between the true nature of American culture and what is deemed as socially acceptable.

Thanks to Adam Montgomery for this recommendation.

Lawyers, Guns and Money by JD Rhoades

No matter what the population, information is power.

Small town and county politics are being played out in rural North Carolina. Andy Cole has taken over his father's law practice, playing the 'to get along, you go along' game with the local sheriff, cops, judges, DA. His conscious, aka office manager Max(ine), keeps him mostly on the straight and narrow, despite his two failed marriages (he's the definition of the old joke about men having 2 heads and only enough blood for one at a time).

Danny Fairgreen is in lockup for a particularly gruesome murder of Chloe, a local low rent party girl. Doesn't help that he was found passed out in a chair in her house with her gutted corpse at his feet. But no knife was found. Danny is kin to a particularly questionable clan in Blaine County with a history of drugs, other crimes against the local humanity, and maybe even murder. Danny's older brother Voit heads the family, including a set of intimidating twins, Liberty and Justice. Voit plops a big bag of money on Cole's desk to retain Andy for Danny's defense.

Cole's investigation starts out badly. A judge has sealed the murder scene. Cole get's p.o.'ed in arraignment court and ends in lockup for up to 30 days. He and Voit (backed up by Liberty and Justice) go back and forth trying to establish who swings the biggest dick in this relationship. And it seems the only person on his side, besides the people in his firm, is the lady who owns the local newspaper (see comment above about 2 heads and insufficient blood).

Danny can't remember anything, but is sure he didn't kill Chloe; too stoned that night. A random comment steers Andy toward Chloe's sealed juvenile records. Of course, he can't get them, but lo and behold, one day the records (not a copy, the original records) shows up at Cole's office. And the details start Andy down a path that he may wish he'd never ventured. With this ill-gotten information, now Andy has some power.

But that power, important to the case, is but one aspect of an iceberg that has been lurking in Blaine county for decades. It turns out Andy's father, whom he always thought of as a pillar of integrity, may have a chink or two, and those chinks date back to an affront to Voit's daddy. The power structure of Blaine County is about to come tumbling down like a house of cards, lopping off more heads than one can count.

I think this brings me up to date on all the titles by JD Rhoades (insert frown here), and if I'm wrong, I'm sure he will tell me as he's replied to recent reviews here at MRB. I've often wondered when an author writes a story resembles his day job or history (Rhoades in a practicing lawyer in Carthage, NC not far from Raleigh) just how much of the story is quasi-autobiographical. If any of this is, Rhoades has led an interesting life.

This rather grand tale of secrets, lies, and deception told on the local county level is not just a terrific legal procedural, it is also just one dang fine read. Rhoades expertly had me pulling for Cole to uncover the secrets, hope that Voit and clan really aren't as bad as everyone believes, believe that Cole and his newspaper owner/hottie/girlfriend really are made for each other, and that just maybe, the sun will shine a little brighter on Blaine County after the dust clears. The plot twists and the delicate dance of allegiances are unexpected and delicious. This really does have a lot to offer to readers of legal mysteries where the little guy really does squash the bad guys with extreme prejudice.

East Coast Don

p.s. to those with some rock 'n roll history, the story does not appear to be related to Warren Zevon's 1978 song of the same name.