From May 2007 (5)

Mail Time 5/22
"Critique of Religion and Philosophy" Walter Kaufman
This is heavy reading. Comments will be delayed. There is a fascinating chapter titled "Dialogue between Satan and an Atheist".

"Nerve" Dick Francis
Rob Finn is an independent young guy who works for several horse owners as a steeple chase jockey. He has won a few and lost some but he is becoming known as a good rider. An owner takes a chance on Rob when his own jockey takes a bad fall and will be unable to race for several weeks. Finn wins his race and then another and another. He is rising to the top; other owners hire him and it looks life he will soon be the top jockey. He makes new friends and some enemies as well, jealous riders. All of the sudden, every horse he rides losses. Folks think that he has lost his nerve, something that sometimes happens in this dangerous occupation. The mystery begins and Rob must discover why he has been losing. Interesting, fast paced story; lots of action centered around the racing arena.

"Emma" Jane Austen
A rich, spoiled young girl with not enough to otherwise occupy herself believes that she is the consummate matchmaker and gets involved in other peoples lives with tragic consequences. Emma’s life is perfect as far as she is concerned but her ideas about people and relationships are badly flawed. She makes a mess of things when she tries to match a good friend with, clearly, the wrong person even though her friend is enamored with a somewhat dull but kind and caring person, a farmer. Emma, ever class conscious, does her best to convince her friend that the man is entirely wrong for her. It all gets sorted out in time and Emma is put in her place by a good friend who turns out to be more than a friend.
Jane Austen consistently draws great characters and places the reader right in the times that she lived in; a fun, lively and interesting read.


"god is not Great" Christopher Hitchens
"How Religion Poisons Everything"
Hitchens, an Atheist, discusses the malignant force of religion in the world and attempts to make a case against religion using a critique of major religious texts and logic. Some of the chapter headings in the table of contents are:
"Religion Kills’
"A Short Digression on the Pig" or "Why Heaven Hates Ham"
‘The Nightmare of the "Old" Testament "
"The "New" Testament exceeds the Evil of the "Old" one"
"The Koran is Borrowed from both Jewish and Christian Myths"
He raises some interesting questions about Joseph Smith and founding of the Mormon religion and he does the same with the enlightenment of Mohamad.
Agree with him or not, a lot of time and study and research went into this provocative essay.
The July 16th issue of the Wall Street Journal has a rather long column by Peter Berkowitz (Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution) which calls Hitchens, Harris, Dawson and others creators of "The New New Atheism" and spends a lot of words trying to say that there is not much substance behind these "latest atheist tracts". Unfortunately, his summary is very weak as are his sources..

"Letter to a Christian Nation" Sam Harris
Harris is another advocate of doing away with religion; his supporters are those who hold no religious doctrine and are probable some what depressed by our country’s increasing unification of church and state. Like Hitchkins and Dawson, he raises big questions about the sources and the authorship of the religious texts that are used to support the various dogmas. He should be read carefully and not totally disregarded.

"Prior Bad Acts" Tami Hoag
A family has been brutalized and murdered. A seasoned homicide detective, first to arrive on the scene, is so emotionally affected by what he sees he has to be hospitalized and is subsequently put on "medical leave". The prime suspect is in jail waiting trial. The suspect, has a long record of crime but his lawyer, a public defender. has gone before the Judge to get a ruling to make the prior criminal acts inadmissable. The judge, after hearing argument, so rules. Everyone, the prosecuting attorney, the entire police department, the relatives of the murdered family and the press are angry. That same night, the judge is assaulted in the parking lot; she is pretty well beat up. The detective assigned the case is not very sympathetic because of her ruling but he begins his investigation. The suspect escapes! He is a real bad character; he kills several people while he is evading the police. Ms Hoag brings in several other characters and soon there several suspects for the assault on the judge. The defense attorney’s house is invaded by the detective who was so traumatized by the killing that he wants the lawyer to "stand trial" for his actions; he thinks that without the inclusion of the suspects prior acts, the jury might let him go (the DA does not, really have a solid case backed by evidence).The judge is then kidnaped by the crazed murder suspect who views her as "the only friend he ever had" because of her legal decision. It is a twisted and suspenseful tale that will keep you guessing. Tami uses a lot of violence and gore in her novels.

"The Children of Hurin" J.R.R.Tolkien
Fascinating story about Tolkien’s middle earth in a time long before the Hobbits and the people of "The Lord of the Rings". The first dark lord was Morgoth who, with his tormentor, Glaurung, a huge wingless dragon made war on Hurin a man who defied and scorned Morgoth. Hurin’s children, Turin and his sister Nienor are cursed by Morgoth and are forced to flee their kingdom. They become separated for years, become wanderers and meet up with each other again under bizarre circumstances. The Elves and the Dwarfs play supporting roles and for those of us who are primarily familiar with the Ring Novels we learn a lot more about the Elves and their early kingdom. There are references to Elrond of Rivendale and of Treebeard in the notes which tell how long ago all this happened. Lots of travels and battles and a sad recounting of the death of Turin. This novel is one of many published after Tolkien’s death and was edited by his son, Christopher.
I did not know that the story of "Sir Gwain and the Green Knight" was by Tolkien it was a favorite . Vivid in my mind since early college years.
C.S. Lewis was a friend of Tolkien; I wonder if they shared stories about their imagined people and kingdoms.


On Saturday, July 21st that remarkable woman, J.K. Rowling will release her seventh and final (?) book in the "Harry Potter" series. She released the first on July 1st 1997 in England; "Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone". It came out in the U.S in September, 1998 under the name of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone"; do not know why the title was changed in the U.S. A lot of the words were changed because we say things differently over here - bathroom instead of Loo.
Six books later and she is still a wonderful story teller using history, mythology, fairy tales and folklore in magical prose and construction. I rank her with C.S. Lewis , Tolkein and even Austin T. Wright as a creator of lands, people and cultures.
As I read her stories, I can not help but think of that most talented writer of computer games, Roberta Williams who was not a bit bashful to borrow from literature, fairy tales and mythology to create her characters and adventures.
In preparation for the coming novel, I reread the last three, "Goblet of Fire", "Order of The Phoenix", and "The Half Blood Prince" all of which, I thoroughly enjoyed. Us kids of all ages are fortunate, indeed, to have such an extraordinary continuing story to savor over these last ten years. Can’t wait for the next one - in just a few more days!


A visit to the Tullahoma library turned up several old paperbacks for sale at 25 cents each. Found a couple of interesting science fiction novels and a Dirk Pitt adventure I had missed.

"Millennium" John Varley
Originally published back in the 80's, John Varley tells a time travel story about an advanced ( advanced in some ways but still with very human failings) people who live in another time ( perhaps a parallel time )who monitor and control happenings on Earth. As tragic accidents happen and it is clear that there will be no survivors, a team is sent to the site, perhaps an airplane crash, and all of the people on the plane are taken off and prefabricated, smoking bodies are substituted for the rescue team on the ground to find.
One of the team leaves a very specialized piece of equipment that clearly does not belong in that time behind and special action must be taken to retrieve it before the FAA people discover it. The story is told from the perspective of a woman, the head of the "Snatch "team and that of the chief FAA investigator. The woman must go back to the time of the crash of the airplane where she interacts with the FAA and explores the crash wreckage for the object.
This is a so so story; Isaac Asimov did it much better with his novel "The End of Eternity", I am sure that Varley borrowed from it.

"The Mediterranean Caper" Clive Cussler
Early Cussler (1973) with a much younger Dirk Pitt whose hormones are raging all over the place; his unseemly and puerile braggadocio about his conquests made me wonder what went wrong with Clive Cussler. Fortunately, Cussler toned Pitt down a bit in his later novels. The adventure, a billion dollar drug smuggling operation involving ships and submarines headed by German war criminal has Pitt heroics, scuba diving, an awesome under water cave and several life threatening, brutal situations. Improbable but kind of fun to read. Good always prevails.

"The Next Ten Thousand Years" Adrian Berry
Adrian Berry is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. This book is his vision of what lies ahead for mankind in the next 10,000 years. He is optimistic and provocative, as a contemporary of many serious scientists including Carl Sagen, Isiaac Asimov he espouses the theory that mankind will continue to evolve to meet our changing earth and will use the planets of the solar system for sources of energy and eventually will achieve star travel. This is not an easy read; very technical but within a layman’s grasp and quite fascinating.

"The Silmarillion" J.R.R. Tolkien
This classic tale begins with the genesis of middle earth. This is an enchanting fantasy that tells of the coming of the Elves the first to inhabit the earth who could live for thousands of years unless killed in battle, then, the coming of the Dwarfs and then of Men. There were long peaceful, harmonious times but the evil Melkor (later called Morgoth the "Black enemy) and those he duped, most easily,m en but also some of the Elves, eventually caused discontent and war among the peoples. There are tales of wonderful and horrible battles and heroism and included in the work is a summary of "the rings of power and the coming of the Third Age" which, really, whets one’s appetite for the three volume novel of "The Lord of The Rings.
This is an extraordinary piece of work that must be savored; the names of the places and the names of the characters are long and difficult to say but the story stays together.


"Up In Honey’s Room" Elmore Leonard
Rapid fire dialogue fills this funny story about a German American, Walter Schoen, living in Detroit during World War II who is convinced that he is Heinrich Himmler’s twin ("born in the same hospital, the same date, the same hour and looks exactly like him"). He is a butcher and a member of a spy organization that sends information about the war production of the automobile plants. He is married to a delightful, amoral girl named Honey Deal. Walter has no sense of humor and he shelters Germans who escape from U.S. POW camps so Honey divorces him.
Along comes Carl Webster, U.S. Marshal, better know to Elmore Readers as "The Hot Kid". Carl is hunting down an escaped POW and thinks that Walter may be hiding him so he looks up Honey who might lead him to Walter. The search for Walter and the interplay between Honey and Carl is funny and full of innuendos. Many other characters in this spoof of espionage are introduced and enjoyed. Good read!

"The Fifth Vial" Michael Palmer
Suspenseful and thought provoking novel about a cabal of evil men, physicians and business men who make decisions as to who will live and who will die "for the greater good of mankind" by finding "Guardians", people who might be brilliant scientists, researchers, doctors, politicians, world leaders or great artists or sometimes just very wealthy persons that can contribute to their cause who are very sick and in need of an organ or tissue transplant. Through a large worldwide drug company with local branches that do lab work for hospitals and clinics, they find a perfect match and kidnap the donor who they call "producers". The transplants are done in a secret , heavily guarded facility in the jungle of Brazil. Our protagonists, a private detective and a senior year medical student, are charged to find out who is behind the scheme and discover enough evidence to stop this area of illegal trafficking in organ transplants. The action takes place in the States, South Africa, England, India and Brazil with fascinating characters and a twisting plot. I Could not put it down until the end.
Michael Palmer handles these medical dramas very well.

"Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows" J.K. Rowling
The seventh and final in the series. Poor Harry; this is not a fun adventure. Voldemort and his "Death Eaters"are openly taking over the Ministry of Magic and will eventually take over Hogwarts. Harry and his friends, Ron and Hermione, are on a quest to find the magical items that will, hopefully, defeat Voldemort. This takes them to very dangerous places and almost every chapter has a "cliff hanger" where one of the team is almost killed; lots of danger, intrigue, magic and action and some new characters who give Harry background information on the important people in his life and help him move forward on his quest. There are bitter arguments between best friends and Harry’s mind is very dark. He does not understand why Dumbledorf did not completely confide in him, he begins to doubt and loose faith in his old mentor. He also feels tremendous guilt because he has endangered the lives of his friends; some have even died. All the while his mind is closely attached to that of the dark lord to the extent that Harry can actually see and experience Voldemort’s actions.
There is a final great battle at Hogwarts and many things are, finally, explained and questions are answered. The author did a splendid job with this final story; the evolution of all of the characters was very well done, our Hogwarts friends have grown up and matured. The survival and the death of various characters was both sad and sometimes surprising and for me, the series had a logical and satisfactory ending. Seven hundred and fifty-nine pages of enjoyment!

"Requiem for an Assassin" Barry Eisler
A powerful, tense drama with a very plausible secondary plot. The first is the story of two ruthless mercenary assassins who are trying to kill each other. The details of their backgrounds, their training and their abilities are done with "Clancy like" skill. There men are ruthless, cold killers who hate each other. The main character, John Rain is well known to Barry Eisler readers from five other novels that feature him.
The CIA, the Mossad, and Japanese intelligence are all involved in the other plot which is to place a dirty bomb in the middle of a gigantic oil refinery in Rotterdam and which when ignited would cause a significant shortage in the world oil supply. The action and the dialogue is fast, dirty and rough.

"Sherlock Holmes in Orbit" Various Authors
An imaginative collection of 26 stories based on some of Holmes’ adventures as told by Dr. Watson and others. Some retell the story of the crime from the prospective of the perpetrator and others from the prospective of the victim of the crime. Some are whimsical; a delightful tale inferring that Holmes was instrumental in solving a crime involving some stolen tarts belonging to a queen has enough clues and thinly veiled characters to cause the reader to smile knowingly and with great pleasure. Holmes, also, encounters vampires, extra terrestrial visitors and does a bit of time traveling. The last story has him solving a mystery at "The Pearly Gates".

"Homegrown Democrat" Garrison Keiller
Published in 2004, Garrison Keillerhas a lot to say about growing up in a small town in Minnesota, his family and friends and relatives and his days in the Public School system and about the common sense values that, in his mind, made him and his fellow Minnesotans Democrats. Nothing good to say about any Republican administration since Eisenhower (with a few good words for Nixon before he did his thing) and some pretty scathing comments and observations about the present administration. Words flow from Keiller like water; with humor, satire and with considerable passion for the American worker. A funny and provocative book.

"The Unquiet" John Connolly
A disturbing and haunting horror story about the abuse of children and the kind of people that do such things and some dark shadowy people who track them down seeking "justice" or revenge for the victims. John Connolly has a private detective named Charlie Parker who has been in the business too long , has seen too much and tells this twisted story as a first person narrative. Parker takes on a case when a woman with a small child comes to him in fear because she is being stalked. The stalker, it turns out, is a very dangerous man, an ex convict looking for information about the woman’s father who has been missing for the last six years and declared legally dead. The daughter has told the man that her father, a once prominent child psychologist, left home after a scandal of allegations that he betrayed confidences to men that use and abuse children and probably committed suicide. The stalker will not accept that he is dead and insists that the woman knows more. Very scary man. As Parker gets into the investigation and learns more and more about the horrifying world of child abuse, he tries to reconstruct the happenings that caused the Doctor to disappear. Other child abuse cases are studied and a pattern emerges that takes Charlie Parker on a twisting path where he meets some very strange characters. His investigation takes him to the prison that the stalker was in where he talks to an inmate that was protected and befriended by the stalker. This man was terribly abused as a youngster by a group of men who, very likely, are the same people that Parker is on the trail of. It turns out that the stalker had a daughter who was abused and disappeared. The stalker befriended the man so he could find out as much as he could about the evil people that did the deed so he could take revenge. The plot gets complicated and the author throws in a very bizarre, shadowy character that lurks in the background to keep you guessing.
This novel will keep your interest and attention.

"Where Have All The Leaders Gone?’ Lee Iacocca
Published in 2007, Iacocca’s book poses some important questions and addresses the important issues of our time. There is no question in my mind that we have the most stupid, arrogant, devious, heartbreakingly sad leadership our country has ever seen. Iacocca’s writing really tells it like it is; he pulls no punches but he has some common sense answers and places the responsibility for bringing our country back to it’s greatness on the American people who must pay attention to our spending, our trade, our attitude towards the people of the world and our politicians. He stresses real sacrifice and education and bringing back the "middle class". Lee Iacocca is uniquely qualified to write such a book; as the man who saved The Chrysler Corporation and masterminded the minivan and oversaw the renovation of Ellis Island, he knows many world leaders and has traveled extensively.

"The Secret Servant" Daniel Silva
This is Silva’s tenth novel and one of his best in the Gabriel Allon series. Gabriel, a master art restorer and member of the Jewish intelligence service is sent to Amsterdam ,a country that is growing more and more dangerous because of the huge population of radical Islamists, to look into the death of a secret operative and clean out his files. The agent was murdered and Gabriel learns of a plan that involves a terrorist bombing attack, the kidnaping of the daughter of the American ambassador in England and what will turn out to be a carefully planned assignation on his own life. The action moves to England where radical Muslims have, already, been causing British intelligence severe problems . The American CIA gets involved because of the American ambassador’s daughter and there is great tension between the various foreign services because of their different approach to interrogation methods and their different ways of approaching problems. This is Silva at his best; very contemporary in that it addresses the very things that are now going on in Europe, lots of action, tension and surprises with double and triple turns of plot. The concept of Takfir" is explained; Muslims , under their law, are able to kill anyone in order to achieve their goals of imposing sharia (the body of Islamic law as codified by the Quran) and restoring the Caliphate. Their targets are secular Muslims living in a Democracy (called apostates)which is heresy and heretics. The Palestinian Diaspora is clearly an abomination to the Arabs since there is now some 6 million refugees. It is very scary to think about the influx of Muslims and radicalism that has taken place in Europe since the 1980s ; Bernard Lewis was quoted the "On present demographic trends, by the end of the 21st century at the latest, Europe will be Muslim." There are others who see England as an epicenter of European Islamic extremism.
Immigration policies in Europe and in our own country have just gone haywire to the point that the countries are losing control; and are beginning to see the " giving away of the country".

"Every Body Kills Somebody Sometime" Robert J Randisi
A piece of fluff about Sinatra , Dean Martin and the rest of the "Rat Pack" running around in Las Vegas. Note the play on words in the title. Do not waste your time.

"The Prince" William Simpson
An interesting biography of Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Aziz Al-Saud who was the Arabian Ambassador to the U.S. from 1983 to 2005. Friend of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandella and both George Bushes. Illegitimate son of a Saudi prince, he rose to become a powerful negotiator for his country and consultant to U.S. presidents and others. Simpson was a very close friend of the prince; they were both pilots in the Royal Saudi Air Force and stayed friends for a long time; the biography seems a bit biased although there are rather glowing comments by Mandella and Thatcher(whose government was awarded a huge 60 billion dollar contract from the Saudis through the efforts of the prince.) Bandar was instrumental in getting the F15 Jets and the AWACs (from the U.S.)for the Saudis and helped Carter with the Panama Canal agreement.

"The Overlook" Michael Connelly
WoW! I read this in one day and late into the night. Detective Harry Bosh of LAPD is back and the novel is a real thriller. The plot twists and turns, there is vicious "turf" competition between the local cops and the FBI, a very clever plot involving murder and the theft of very dangerous radio active chemicals used to treat cancer which brings Home Land Security into the picture and Harry makes them all angry, as usual, because of his inability to be a "team player". There are a couple of vague clues for the reader but the final turn of the plot is a twist and a surprise somewhat like one might read in a Sherlock Holmes story.


"The Devine Comedy" Dante Alighieri
Translated by Allen Mandelbaum written in the 1300s.
"Inferno", " Purgatorio", "Paradiso".
A recent article in the "Wall Street Journal" prompted me to study this classic poem. This will take a while, I am sure, but the copy I have has some splendid notes for each "Canto" that will help a lot. The church and the religious dogmas of the period certainly influenced and dominated the paintings and poems and thoughts of those living in Dante,s time.
Imagine a "Limbo", the first circle of Hell where even those "considered worthy" must spend eternity because they died before Christianity was invented and the sacraments were not available to them.

"The Savage Garden" Mark Mills
A beautifully crafted novel that completely enchanted me. The story is entertaining and challenging to the reader.
A young undergraduate at Cambridge is asked by his professor to consider a study of a famous Italian garden that was built in Tuscany as a monument to a fifteenth century nobleman’s wife. The garden is full of statues, grottos, woods, a nine tiered, stone trimmed amphitheater and monuments with classical inscriptions. The student, Adam, becomes involved with the surviving relatives of the nobleman,( Lord Docci) the matriarch Signora Docci, her son and the servants at the estate; he meets the old woman’s grand daughter and there is a love interest. Adam is given free reign to the extensive library of the estate and as he wanders through and studies the garden and the precise placement of the statuary he suspects that something sinister happened in the garden. His study of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (a volume given to him by his professor)gives him insight as to the meaning of the different statues and which real person the statue was supposed to represent but as he tries to reconstruct the overall meaning of the garden, his scenario just won’t work. The puzzle of the garden was intriguing to me particularly because of the nature of the Greek gods and goddesses that have been placed in the garden; there was even a unicorn with a broken horn symbolically placed. (I had to stop and read Ovid where he talks about these particular Greek heros; interesting experience I even learned more about Deucalion, son of Prometheus, whose name the creature in Dean Koonz’s story about Frankenstein took) It was also helpful that I have a copy and I am studying Dante’s "Devine Comedy". It was not until Adam discovered an anagram relating to the nobleman’s wife’s name "Fiore"who was represented by Daphne as pursued by Phoebus and located near the top of the amphitheater did he take a different approach to the puzzle. The anagram referred to Dante’s Inferno which, in turn, led Adam to the second circle of hell where adulterators are found. Splendid and plausible logic leads Adam to the conclusion that the Nobleman actually murdered his wife.
As a secondary plot, the Docci family that Adam was staying with had it’s own, more recent, secret and mystery that was dark and evil and related, in it’s way to the old garden mystery. How the story of both of these mysteries is finally concluded and revealed to the Doccis proves to be difficult and dangerous to Adam. There are some very interesting and lively characters in the story including Adam’s brother who shows up. A book like this makes reading fun because there are so many different areas for further study and reading.

"At Risk" Steve Kline Mystery Kit Ehrman
This was Kit Ehrman’s first novel that introduced Steve Kline, a young manager of the horse barn at a premier equestrian facility in Maryland. Mr. Ehrman was, at one time, a groom, a vet, and a horse barn manager. He tells a very interesting and informative story about life on a horse farm and his mysteries are plausible. This time, the bad guys are stealing horses for slaughter. They get seven of Steve’s horses and Steve is kidnaped and almost killed in the process. Investigation indicates that there have been other thefts and one included a murder. Steve gets the police involved but he gets involved in the case, and places himself and others in considerable danger as the story winds to an exciting climax. A fun and easy read.


"The Well of Lost Plots" Jasper Fforde
A delightful romp through the world of books, words, letters and characters from fiction and non fiction. The heroine is Literary Detective of Special Ops, Jurisfiction, Thursday Next who is going to try to get a well deserved rest by entering the Book World as part of the Character Exchange Program. She has chosen a character from an unpublished book of dubious quality where she thinks that she will have little to do. This is her first entry into the Book World where she will be viewed as an "outlander" a real person, by the book characters. Thursday’s mentor is Miss Havisham from "Great Expectations".
To understand the concept of the Well of Lost Plots, the reader must learn about the "Great Library"; all published fiction is stored on 26 floors, one floor for each letter of the alphabet. Millions of books are stored on endless shelves and each book is alive. Beneath the Great Library are another 26 floors of dingy sub basements where books are constructed, edited and polished for a place in the library above if they make it that far. There is a "Text Sea" which is full of letters, verbs, nouns, phrases and everything that makes up a book. Grammasites run rampant and plot devices are bought and sold on a black market and bad (lousy) books are scrapped for salvage. There is a murderer threatening to throw Thursday’s novel, her temporary home, into the Text Sea and real or not, she could be destroyed. Very fast paced and original humor.
This book is one of a series of Thursday Next novels by this very creative author; so much fun to read! I have ordered his latest effort from Amazon

"The Navigator" Clive Cussler
Kurt Austin, Joe Zavala and the NUMA team are on another adventure but this one is rather complicated and convoluted. The Navigator is a Phoenician statue that is also a cleverly disguised map to King Solomon’s mine; the legendary "Ophir"where a "religious relic" (perhaps the ark of the covenant and one of the three originals of the ten commandments) was supposed to be hidden. The secrets of Thomas Jefferson and his close companion Lewis Meriwether are brought into the tale through documents and writings, there is an adventurer who is looking for detailed information on the Queen of Sheba who was at one time a liaison of King Solomon. Cussler tries to pull all of this together into a NUMA adventure but he fails. This is an over "talky" novel with some very interesting history fabricated or not that takes a long time for his characters to explain and try to tie together. He even tried to create a possible Israeli - Muslim conflict which brought the State Department into the picture. Sorry, Clive, too many ornaments on the tree.
*mail

8/30/07
"The Blue Zone" Andrew Gross
Andrew Gross is, perhaps, better known as a co-author of five novels with James Patterson. Together, they wrote a favorite of mine,"The Jester’ a novel about The Crusades of the 1100s.
The "Blue Zone" is a term used by the Witness Protection Program where it is suspected that the person being protected suddenly loses contact with their "handler" and it is feared that their new identity has been compromised. Gross has provided a very interesting and exciting mystery around this premise. A man accused of money laundering for a Columbian drug ring is offered protection in return for testifying against the crooks and telling the FBI and the DEA details about the operation. His family knows nothing about this man’s illegal operation or his past for that matter. Shortly after the family has been relocated ,the father disappears and attempts on the lives of the family members are made and several people close to the family are killed. There are twists and turns as the plot develops and suspicion as to who is doing the killing falls on the principle himself, the handlers of the Witness Protection Program, the FBI and the Columbians. This is an excellent thriller with a surprising climax.

"It Can’t Happen Here" Sinclair Lewis
While I enjoy contemporary writing, I, dearly, wish that everyone could read this master of literature from the 1930s. From "Arrowsmith" the idealistic Doctor who is introduced to fee splitting and the realities of the medical profession where "cure em if you can and be sure to bring in a consultant to share the responsibility ( and another fee) if things go wrong" and the ignorance and superstition of patients in rural areas when vaccinations were first used to stop epidemics to the scandalous, huckster vacuum salesman, turned preacher "Elmer Gantry" who went into "the God business" as a lustful, loud, sometimes drunk, charismatic tent preacher, Sinclair Lewis will keep you spell bound!

"It Can’t Happen Here" tells the story of the unsettled economic and political times after the depression in the United States. The Communists and the rise of Hitler and Mussolini and Fascism, were perceived threats. The gap between the poor and what was left of the middle class and the rich was widening; profitless corporations were laying off millions of people who drifted across the country looking for work. People distrusted the "rich Jew bankers", the big corporations and the "Bolshevik" unions. Masterful and influential radio preachers like Father Charles Coughlin of Detroit scared the people with stories of Communism and Fascism taking over the country and they preached "America First" and "Moral Values" The country was ripe for the demagogues and Sinclair created some dandies. He used interesting, Dickens like names;
Senator Berzelius Windrip the man who promised $5,000 for every person in the country and $2,000 a year when he becomes President. He also had a fifteen point plan that would go into effect which would include bonuses to all veterans of any war, "any person advocating Communism, Socialism, or advocating refusal to enlist in the service in case of war would be subject to trial for high treason and a minimum of 20 years of hard labor and a maximum of death on the gallows, all women now employed will be assisted to return to their incomparable sacred duties as home-maker and mothers of strong, honorable citizens (every woman shall have six children), all finance in the country will be nationalized and under absolute control of the Federal Central Bank, believing that we owe everything to God, absolute religious freedom will reign except that no Atheist, Agnostic believer in Black Magic nor any Jew who refuses to swear allegiance to the New Testament nor any person of any faith who refuses to take the Pledge to the flag will be able to hold public office or practice as a judge, teacher, lawyer or physician. Windrip’s last was an amendment to the Constitution giving the President , in essence, full power to do anything he wants to do.
Lee Sarason, Windrip’s speech writer, confidant, closest advisor and the man who came up the fifteen point plan.
Bishop Paul Peter Prang, Father Stephen Prefix, Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch, Dr. Hector Macgoblin and Francis Tasbrough were all helpers and supporters of Windrip.
The story is narrated by an independent, liberal newspaper editor named Doremus Jessup. Doremus trys throughout the novel to stand up to Windrip’s regime but he fights an uphill battle.
The campaign for the election the subsequent win of Windrip (who, immediately after he was sworn in, put into action a group of militant soldiers he called his "Minute Men" as enforcers of the new life under the Windrip administration. Few, if any, ever got that $5,000 plus $2,000 a year) is very detailed and the exploits of the political supporters, the radio and newspaper preachers and the few who opposed Windrip could all betaken out of time and placed in our time.
Funny, almost hilarious at times but also frightening because Sinclair made it happen in fiction and it actually, could happen here in our 21st century.

"Rogue Angel" Carol Damioli
The biography of a fifteenth century painter who was placed in a monastery at an early age as an incorrigible. Fra Lippo Lipi was famous for his deeply religious paintings but at the same time, he was also a patron of rough taverns and bordellos and even had business with the Barbary pirates. While painting a commission for a church, he gained admission to a convent and seduced an Augustinian nun who became the love of his life. Fra Lippo used her is a model and painted her in his famous paintings of the holy virgin. Interesting novel.

"The Backwash Squeeze & Other Improbable Feats"
Edward McPherson
This could be called a general history of the game of Bridge. The author, a rank beginner took several months worth of lessons and joined the world of Bridge, different Bridge clubs, tournaments, and the myriad folks that play for fun, for money or notoriety. He talks about celebrities including Warren Buffet and Bill Gates who play Bridge and hundreds who just love the game. Certainly, not a manual of "how to do it" but an easy book to pick up and read a while and then put down until you feel like picking it up again.

"Thursday Next - First Among Sequels" Jasper Fforde
Thursday Next is older now but still solving problems in the Book World. The government has reported a dangerously high stupidity surplus; they had been storing up the collective stupidity around the country and then blow it all on some unbelievably dopey project as opposed to having regular dumb debacles on a regular bases as pervious governments did. There are quarrels between "Racy Novels" and neighboring genres "Feminist" and "Ecclesiastical"; apparently, "Racy Novel" has been stealing metaphors and making panty raids on "Feminist" and "Ecclesiastical" who want the right to send long winded salvos of intellectual decent into "Racy Novel". Thursday has plenty of work to do and the word play and original plots make this, really rather silly and nonsensical novel lot of fun to read and savor.


"Dance of Death" Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Another winner in the "Pendergast" series. Pendergast and his ward, Constance travel to Tibet where Constance will take instruction from the Lamas and Pendergast will further his own knowledge. Constance is the first woman to be admitted to the Monastery in over a thousand years but the High Lama has recognized something special in her that relates to legend and history od the place so he grants her entrance. A special relic, thousands of years old, has been stolen from the monastery it is something that could cause cataclysmic damage to the world if used so Pendergast is charged to find and return it. The search takes place in Europe and finally on a luxury ocean liner making its maiden voyage from London to New York where all of the action and drama takes place. Lots of excitement, mystery and a panic on board that rivals that of the "Titanic".
Good mystery and we learn just a little bit more about Constance. I gave the book to Claudia; she will enjoy it.

"Penumbra" Carolyn Haines
A penumbra is a partial shadow seen relative to an eclipse.
A novel about the South; a small town dominated by a very wealthy and mean family. Strangely enough, one of the main female characters is the half black acknowledged bastard of the wife of richest white man in town whose wealth and influence is enough to allow the girl, Jade, to live a respectable life in the town. Jade’s mother, Lucille, had another daughter, Marlena, half sister to Jade who grew up with all the privileg of wealth but she cheated on her husband. The story centers around the kidnaping of Marlena and killing of her young daughter and the intensive search conducted by a white sherif who becomes very much involved with Jade. Marvelous characters and descriptions of the relationships between the wealthy family, their black servants, the town people and the relationship between Jade and her half sister. Once you get to know the people you will want to see where they go and you will want to find out what other secrets they are keeping.

"Dark Shadows" The Salem Branch Lara Parker
It has been about thirty five years since we last viewed the adventures of the Collins family. Back in the late 60s the kids would hurry home from school in order to watch the popular, to become cult, TV series about the vampire Barnabas Collins. The author actually played the character, Angelique; her real name is Lamar Rickey Hawkins.
We are back in 1971 and Barnabas Collins is still taking medication from Doctor Julia Hoffman in an attempt to cure him of his curse. Julia loves Barnabas and expects to marry him once he is cured of being a vampire; she looks haggard and tired. Barnabas is sickly, he has lost his prodigious strength and he can not get used to eating "human "food; it makes him sick but every day he must under go nauseating shots.
Roger and Elizabeth Collins, their son David, and Quintin Collins (still a werewolf; like Dorian Grey, his portrait ages in some hidden closet while Quintin stays the dapper, carefree, man about town) are living at Collinwood. The Old House, (Barnabas’ house) which was burnt to the ground was sold along with the grounds to Antoinette Harpignies, a 60s hippy type who bears a remarkable resemblance to Barnabas’ former lover, a witch and his nemesis, Angelique. Barnabas wonders if the woman is really Angelique even though he actually killed her. She is restoring the old house exactly the way it was down to the flaws in the wooden floors. Barnabas has the opportunity to explore the old house and he discovers a coffin in the basement where he used to spend his days. He, also finds the body of a workman who was clearly the victim of a vampire. The story brings all the characters into action and poses questions; is Antoinette really Angelique? Who is the vampire that kills several people? Is Barnabas having second thoughts about the cure?
There is a parallel story that takes place in Old Salem in the year 1692. The community is controlled by the strict bible quoting elders who seem to blame almost everything bad that happens on the Devil and his spawn of witches. The women live in terror; the elders are mean lustful men who threaten women and hold disgusting "witch hunts" and trials. Women are put in the Stocks, the elders use the water test to prove witchcraft; they tie the woman and throw her in the water; if she floats she is a witch if she sinks she is innocent. One of the women Miranda du Val is actually a witch but she is very careful not to be found out. She owns land that the deacons desire and eventually, false witnesses tell of her association with the devil and when the to the "dunking" test, she manages to free her hand enough to swim into a beaver hole and survive. She hides and sneaks around until she finds evidence that the sanctimonious elders are evil and lecherous. She goes to the village to confront them, one is a "Collins", but she is not believed and she is condemned to hang. Before she hangs, she places a curse on the elders:"if you take my life, God will give you blood to drink". ( Barnabas’ curse?)
Very interesting tale with a sensational ending.

"The Women of Whitechapel and Jack The Ripper" Paul West
A dark story of the lives of London’s "women of the night" and the dangers they face. More particularly about one of the girls who meets, marries and has a child by the Crown Prince, Edward and the consequences when the Royal Family finds out. A much better story based on the exact theme right down to the names of the characters is a DVD movie "From Hell" staring Johnny Depp and Heather Graham. A frightening and graphic thriller.

"Body of Lies" David Ignatius
This Washington Post columnist who has covered the CIA and the Middle East for 25 years has written on of the best spy novels I have read.
A CIA operative who almost lost his leg in Iraq in a car bombing is given a secret mission to penetrate the network of a major terrorist who is responsible for many car bombings in Europe; more and more cities are involved and it is suspected that it is just a matter of time before the bombs go nuclear. The operative, Ferris ,works out of Amman because that is where their first and only lead to the master terrorist is found. Ferris has fascinating working relationship with the colorful and powerful head of security and intelligence of Amman. Farris and his Washington chief are, frequently at ends with the Amman chief as to who should run the operation and how much information should be shared. They are all after the same person. The Amman chief, Hani, insists that he be in charge; it is his country. The CIA people make sone very serious blunders by trying to act on their own and their prime candidate is killed. Hani throws Ferris out of the country.
Back to square one, in Washington, Ferris remembers a famous British Intelligence ploy from World War II called "The Man Who Never Was". The British created a personality, gave him a background complete with family, girlfriend, school ties, meticulous documentation and then found a dead body, dressed him in uniform with identification and "pocket trash" that would identify him to the person they created, attached a couriers bracelet to his wrist and filled a document case with deceptive material relating to the location point of the invasion of Europe and dumped the body off the coast of Spain for the Nazis to discover. The trick worked!
Ferris convinced his superiors that an Arab version of this "body of lies" could be used to discredit this master terrorist, Suleimen. All the intrigue and the complexity of the plan developes beautifully; Ferris’ personal life, his relationship with his estranged wife and a woman he meets in Amman play a significant part in the way the scheme develops. Great characters and suspenseful action. Find this one and read it!! The more I read about the CIA, fact and fiction, it seems that lies and deception and total disregard for the rules of Government and human life for that matter are the standard "modus operendi".

"Neffertiti" Nick Drake
The story takes place in ancient Egypt during the reign of Akhenaten and his wife Neffertiti, called "the perfect one" because of her poise and beauty. Akhenaten has convinced himself that he is the Sun God Aten and he has declared that Aten is the only god that the two lands of Egypt can have. Together with Neffertiti, he has moved the capital from Thebes to another city which was built at huge expense to reflect the glory of Aten. The old gods are in process of being removed, the wealthy priests who led the people to the old gods were no longer in power, people of the lands were forced to worship Akhenaten and Neffertiti. Out of fear, people obey but there is much discontent particularly among the wealth and the displaced priests as well as the common people who are not comfortable leaving the old gods. The lands are also experiencing economic problems.
Akhenaten has many secret enemies and they are posturing themselves for a power struggle. Even though Akhenatan know this, he has set a day for a great festival where all the powerful people from all over the land will meet in the new city to praise Aten. He is counting on the support of his wife, Neffertiti because the people have a great reverence for her.
Ten days before the festival, Neffertiti vanishes. There could be dire consequences if she does not appear at the festival; Akhenaten’s rivals would cause political and religious problems. A chief Detective from Thebes is summoned to investigate the disappearance of Neffertiti and to find her before the festival. The investigation, the rivalries the detective meets, the characters that are developed and the questions that must be answered: what happened to Neffertiti?, is she alive?, was she murdered? Who is responsible for her disappearance? Who are the power players? Why will the investigation reveal other killings -how are they related? There are attempts on the life of our detective - all of this unwinds in a well turned, complex mystery as well as an interesting history of the time. Great read!


"The Russian Concubine" Kate Furnivall
This Welsh author’s mother was, at one time a White Russian refugee in China.
The novel is a moving story about people living in China in the 1920s. The Russian Revolution has forced the aristocrats, the "White Russians" to flee their mother country. China is having it’s own changes. Sun-Yat-Sen has established his National Peoples Party "The Kuomintang", his military advisor was a General called Chian Kai-shek. Even though The Soviet Union was helpful, in an advisory capacity, in the creation of his party, Chian Kai-shek was determined to purge China of all communists. He wanted a more "reformed socialist party. His methods were brutal and he used his army with great force. Still, there were many secret followers of the communist leader Mao Tse Tung. As history will note, when the Japanese invaded China, Chiang’s army could not stand up against them alone had he had to join forces with Mao Tse Tung. After World War II, Chiang left China and went to Formosa.
While fleeing Russia, Valentina Friis, her husband and young child , Lydia, are accosted by Bolshevik soldiers and are going to be shot. Valentinina manages to bribe the soldiers to free her and her daughter but they will not give up her husband.
Eleven years later, Valentina and Lydia are living in Northern China. They live in the poorest section of the International Settlement. Although Valentina is a beautiful woman and a concert pianist, she can not earn enough money to keep her child in school so she consorts with some of the wealthy English men in the compound. Valentina does "what must be done" to survive and protect her daughter while keeping some dark secrets. Lydia is curious and precocious; she has learned to find her way outside the compound into the Old Chinese town. She has, also, learned to steal from wealthy men in the compound .She sells the goods in town to help pay the rent because her mother spends their limited funds on clothes and booze she is often drunk. Lydia meets and becomes very attracted to a young Chinese man, a communist and follower of Mao Tse Tung. This is a very dangerous liaison for Lydia, not only because of the racial issue but because the young man has enemies among an evil tong of criminals as well as being hunted by the Kuomintang.
Other characters in the story are an English embassy official who is corrupt and abusive to his family, a openly hostile and racist newspaper writer who wants to marry Valentina, and an English school teacher who is steeped in China history and customs and is concerned about China’s future. He has a Chinese mistress who is the daughter of the a most powerful criminal leader. This is a story of love, intrigue, violence, racial predigest, the political change of a nation and the survival of characters that have become real and important to the reader. There is danger and suspense; I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

^
"The Dying Crapshooter’s Blues" David Fulmer
Atlanta, Georgia in the 20s. The city is growing into a busy metropolis but our story takes place in the seedy side of town where corrupt cops, political leaders on the take and crime and protection prevail. Bars, pimps, whores and all kinds of unsavory but fascinating people flesh out this interesting story of sin, mucic and the underbelly of this Southern city.
A change in administration in an attempt to shake out police corruption resulted in the appointment of inexperienced and incompetent people. When a daring jewel robbery takes place at the home of a prominent business man, the new police chief and his people are under the gun to solve the crime but they don’t know how to go about it. There is one particularly corrupt police captain left and he sees a chance to gain stature.
Joe Rose, a black gamble, womanizer, professional thief and one time Pinkerton cop comes to town at the time of the Jewel theft and becomes a suspect along with a former girlfriend, Pearl, who was at the mansion at the time of the theft. Joe is innocent (at least of this crime); his efforts to find out who did the crime are intertwined with a sub plot: a friend of joe, a gambler and a pimp named Jesse was shot the night of the theft by a drunken cop and is dying. Jesse made Joe promise to get the cop that shot him. Another pal of Jesse, Blind Willie, a 12 string guitar player has promised to compose a musical tribute to Jesse.
The story takes you in and around the dark places of Atlanta and introduces you to some great, nasty people; the neat thing about it, the author places you right there where you can feel and touch what is going on.

"Agents of Innocence" David Ignatius
Another CIA novel by the excellent writer, David Ignatius. This time we are in the sad, confused country of Lebanon in the the early 1970s. Militant Christians and Muslims, and angry Palestinians are being manipulated by the Jewish Secret Service , the Mossad,who are encouraging the violence by actually selling arms to the Palestinians. The story is much like a "how to do book" about how the CIA goes about recruiting agents in the Middle East. Treachery, corruption, bribery, disloyalty , lies and deception on the part of the CIA and those they recruit are all part of the game as an idealistic CIA manager tries to recruit a high level operative of the PLO. The plot stays essentially in Beirut but there is action in Jordon, Syria and Israel. The growth of terrorism in the Middle East and the beginning of the "Black September " organization up through the Munich incident is outlined in vivid detail. Lebanon never had a chance and when the story ended, after all of the intrigue, and the death of 100,000 people ,Christians and Moslems ,in a ten year war promoted by the Christians (egged on by the Jews) because they felt they had to push the Palestinians out, Syria became a threat and the Christians allowed the Palestinian fighters back in.
Lebanon is currently a mess and until this Israeli-Palestinian problem is resolved it will continue to hurt.

"The Kingdom of The Bones" Stephen Gallager
Fiction but based loosely on actual historical figures, this swift moving supernatural thriller grabs your interest right away and will not let go until the last page is read.
The protagonist is Tom Sayers a former boxing champion who, after an injury, became manager of a traveling theater. The troupe is made up of fascinating characters, among them is a young woman whom Tom falls in love with. His love is unrequited but he is always there to help and protect her. The police have traced a pattern of gruesome murders of young boys in each of the town that the theater has performed in and Tom is falsely accused of the crimes. He narrowly escapes the gallows and sets out to find out who actually did the crimes and to redeem himself in the eyes of the lady he is enamored with. One of the few friends he can turn to for help is Bram Stoker (author of the novel Dracula); appropriate because the crimes have the flavor of the occult and Stoker has contacts in this area. The action moves fast and covers a long period of time and Tom has several harrowing experiences. The author cleverly moves suspicion from one of the members of the theater group to another and then to others. The climax is quite a surprise. This is a good one!

"Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages"
Harold Bloom
A wonderful anthology of the author’s favorite childhood readings. Harold Bloom wrote "If readers are to come to Shakespeare and Chekhov, to Henry James and to Jane Austen, then they are better prepared if the have read Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling". The volume contains beautiful (and sometimes ugly) poems and stories of mystery, romance, humor, horror, fantasy and adventures that stretch your memory and bring back with, clarity, almost forgotten characters and plots. I enjoyed the collection and was not at all surprised that there were many titles and authors that were new to me. Find it at your library and dip into the table of contents and enjoy several hours of browsing and reading.

"Cicero" Anthony Everitt
Markus Tullius Cicero was not only a statesman and great orator, but a great thinker who influenced, to some extent, the framers of the United States Constitution. Cicero wrote about how a state should be organized and he favored a mixed or balanced constitution and a combination of monarchy, oligarchy and democracy. A very interesting biography and a wonderful history of Rome and the colorful people who were contemporary with Cicero; Pompey, Marcus Brutus, Caesar, Mark Anthony and hundreds more who were involved as Rome went from a dynamic Republic to a dictatorship.

"Simple Genius" David Baldacci
This is the 11th novel by David Baldacci that I have read. I enjoyed all of them immensely. Two former Secret Service Agents, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell ("Split Second") now private investigators, are brought back as leading characters. They are hired to investigate the death of a brilliant scientist who was found dead just outside the razor fence of the grounds of the CIA camp in Williamsburg, VA. His specialty was mathematics and cryptology and he worked at a secret installation that bordered the CIA camp. Sean and Michelle go to the secret installation but they are stymied at every step by the secrecy of what they are trying to do. Baldacci kind of feeds us a red herring or two to confuse the reader; after a while you really do not know who are the good guys and who are not and what this investigation and story is all about. He spends a lot of pages, many, many, in fact exploring the psyche of his two main characters and that of a seemingly autistic young girl, a genius in math, the daughter of the murdered scientist. Sean and Michelle suspect that the scientist was murdered because he, somehow, gained access to the heavily guarded CIA camp and saw something he shouldn’t have. Other scientists are killed and the lives of the investigators are threatened. The plot twists and the CIA is very suspect; this is an action packed story, very suspenseful with some scary ideas of the power and ruthlessness the CIA can exercise to protect their secrets. You will learn a lot about the history of codes and cryptology and some very esoteric theories about quantum computers. Over all, another good one from David. Check out his website.

"Fieldwork" Mischa Berlinski
The author gives the leading character his own name; Mischa, a young man who tags along to Thailand with his girl friend who has accepted a teaching job. Mischa enjoys the country and works, part time as a Arabic. Through a friend, he learns about an American Anthropologist who was found dead in a Thai prison; a suicide, where the woman was serving a life term for murder. The friend tells Mischa what he knows about the woman, Martiya, and how , at one time, he visited the prison at the request of a relative in England and discovered an educated person who was spending her time in prison writing about her ethnographical studies. Mischa becomes intrigued with the story and the person and sets out to unravel Martiya’s story and life. Why did she do murder and why was she killed? The novel is kind of off beat and rather slow at times but one learns about Thai culture and the dedication of those anthropologists who spend years doing field work almost obsessively.

"The Mummy Case" Elizabeth Peters
This is an early chapter in the "Peabody series"; the book first came out in 1985. I read it then and it was published again in hard cover about a month ago; I am not sure why but I do not have a copy in our collection so I bought it and read it again.
It was lots of fun to remember the early antics of Amelia, affectionately called Peabody and Emerson ("The Father of Curses") and their very young and very precocious son "Ramses" (Radcliffe Emerson Jr.). While Ms Peters who is a PHD graduate in Egyptology can tell an interesting story about Egypt, tombs and characters who were excavating in the Valley of the Kings a few years before Carter found Tutankhamen (1922), it is her Emerson family that she lovingly created and made the center piece of her mysteries and adventures. I am afraid that if someone unfamiliar with her works reads this "new Book"they might be turned off by a lisping child, who can translate demonic papyri and can speak Arabic and their doting parents. You have to start at the beginning with this series. You will either like her or not.

"The Fourth Order" Stephen Frey
A frightening story about aa ultra secret government agency that was activated after 9/11 as an anti terrorist tool. This is the fourth time that "The Order of Immunity" formed after the assignation of president Lincoln has been made operational for the first time. The group, funded through a maze of corporations so no one can know where the money originates, headed by very high level government officials and soldiered by people with no moral scruples, are charged to route out terrorists without regard to due process. They can grab anyone they think might have information, they can detain, imprison, torture and kill anyone with complete immunity. They their powers vigorously even though more than two thirds of the people they grab are innocent.
A Chief Financial officer of a multi billion dollar corporation is embarking on a hostile take over of a very technical computer service company. Hidden in this company is the operational apparatus of the Fourth Order and it’s sophisticated, world wide, computer spy system that can monitor all electronic and verbal communications giving the order nationwide and national surveillance ability. The powers in the Fourth Order do everything they can to try to stop this take over. The CFO and his family are placed in great jeopardy. The plot twists and turns; ruthless and evil people move in and out of the action. This is fiction but who really knows what kind of monsters we might really have doing hateful things in the guise of "protecting the people"? In this story they went much too far and it deteriorated to personal vendettas.

"The Club Dumas" Arturo Perez-Reverte
An amazing, intelligently written, mystery and occult puzzle novel written by a favorite Spanish author. Books, writers, collectors and dealers in old and rare books are introduced into this story about a certain book dealer who makes his living researching and finding and buying and selling books for a selected clientele. Lucas Corso is hired to authenticate part of an original manuscript, part of "The Three Musketeers", written by Alexander Dumas ;Dumas was known to collaborate with others when he wrote his novels, hence the need for verification. As he goes about this task, he is engaged by a very wealthy collector, Varo Borja, to research a demonic book called "The Book of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows" supposedly authored by Lucifer himself. The book is supposed to enable the owner, if he can figure out the puzzles, to meet the Devil and become all powerful. There are only three such volumes in existence and Corso is charged to examine each one in order to assure Borja that the one he has is genuine; he suspects it might be a forgery. (Perhaps, Borja tried to meet the Devil and the ritual did not work) Corso finds himself involved in a complicated plot where he meets people that seem, to him, to resemble the main characters of the "Three Musketeers", a sensuous woman the wife of the previous owner of the manuscript that he identifies as Milady De Winter and a man who is closely identified with the woman he thinks of as Rocheforte.
At the same time ,as he begins to compare the second of the Book of the Nine Gates, he discovers that while the binding, the paper and the print are identical, there are slight differences in the nine prints. He also discovers that some of the prints were originated by the publisher and others were originated by another person "LCF" (Lucifer?). Corso is followed and threatened by the person he thinks of as Rocheforte but each time he is in danger, he is rescued by a strange young girl who follows him. As the story progresses, death and destruction of their libraries come to the two other owners of the Book of Nine Gates; the books are destroyed but the prints were removed prior to burning the books. Corso finds himself in the middle of a twisting plot that involves devil worship, occult practices and a secret organization relating to Alexander Dumas.
This was a fascinating novel; the plot was complex and the climax was interesting and throughout the book there were lively discussions between Corso and book dealers and book collectors where literally hundreds of novels and author’s works were discussed or quoted from and great care was taken in the story to show the sources that Corso and others used as they researched both the manuscript and the occult book.
This novel was adapted into a film by Roman Polanski. Johnny Depp played Corso in this dark and exciting movie called "The Ninth Gate". Get the DVD.

More December 06 (4)

Christmas will be here soon and as we think about others, here are a couple of thoughts on friends and friendship:
Like any other kind of love, friendship can be lost within our lives due to misunderstandings, neglect, anger or sometimes simply circumstances. However it is lost, we often lose a part of ourselves that can never be quite recovered.


December ‘06

"Frankenstein" Book One; Prodigal Son Dean Koontz
Over two hundred years old, the "monster" created by Frankenstein lives in monastery in the high mountains of Tibet. He calls himself Deucalion after the brother of Prometheus; he has studied extensively and has learned to control his rage. He attributes his long life to "something" in the lightning that brought him to life; he traveled the world as a carnival freak and made one good friend who he told his story to. The man sends him a newspaper article showing the face of Victor Frankenstein, still alive in New Orleans and a letter explaining that strange things are happening in New Orleans and they might be connected to Frankenstein who now, uses another name. Deucalion leaves the monastery.
In New Orleans, two homicide detectives, Carson O’Connor and Michael Maddison are investigating a serial killer who is removing limbs and internal organs from men and women. So far they are perplexed. Various creepy humans and non humans are introduced as they commit heinous crimes and we find Frankenstein, now Victor Helios, still relatively young, extremely wealthy and doing advanced research. He is growing specially structured "non Human" people who come out of a tube wherein their intelligence and knowledge is directly downloaded to their brain. They are fully developed, much stronger and faster than humans and specifically programed for different tasks. Some of "non humans" have been placed city jobs including the Police Department. They are really pitiful creatures, totally controlled and with enate faults (much to the chagrin of Helios) that surface and cause them to question their existence. Helios has also made a few clones that he has inserted into the Clergy. Victor has some kind of a "Huxley" "Brave New World" idea where he intends to do away with the "imperfect" human race and people the world with his own creations. He will create a class system with "Alphas" at the top; with social graces and keen intellect, "Betas" to keep things running and "Omegas" to do the menial and dirty chores.
The story tells the adventures of several of Victors creations including his fourth wife (the previous ones had faults and were destroyed), how Carson and Michael work to solve the crimes and the mystery continuing how they meet Deucalion and and learn his history and how Deucalion decides to help them find and attempt to destroy Victor Helios.
This was an interesting and suspenseful novel: a little gore but not too bad, good interplay between the main characters and it wets your appetite for the next volume.


"thirteen moons" Charles Frazier
This was a bit of a disappointment; Frazier’s first novel, "Cold Mountain" was such a wonderful story that I expected more of an odyssey, more of a heartbreaking and beautiful story. "thirteen moons" tells the story of a boy who started as an indentured servant and made his way as a tradesman. As a trader, he was introduced into the life and culture of some Cherokee Indians.
The story is narrated by an old man in his nineties ,Will Cooper, who recalls his life as that young boy as he grew and educated himself, was adopted by an Indian Clan he remembers and tells of his efforts to help the Indians when the U.S. Government decided to move the Cherokees out of Virginia and Tennessee to the land further West This was called "The Removal". He tries to buy as much land as he can to create a "Nation" for his Indian brethren. The Civil War and Reconstruction foil those plans and his lobbying efforts on behalf if the Indians with all manner of politicians up to the President fail to protect his adopted clan. Frazier portrayed the climate in the Capital as uncaring with a "what’s in it for me" attitude coupled with greed. Frazier paints marvelous characters and his descriptions of the people and interaction between Will Cooper and those he meets are beautifully crafted and detailed and there is a strange but intriguing and continuing love story with a part Cherokee girl called Clair. The stories of the various characters in the novel were too numerous and sometimes too lengthy; I wanted the novel to move on with the thread of the tale. Frazier uses language and descriptive phrases like the master he is and while "thirteen moons" is no "Cold Mountain", it is a very interesting and complete story of a youth who grows to a man who cares very much for his people and the land.


"Dragon Fire" William S. Cohen
The former Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton, William Cohen has written a taut, exciting thriller. A new Secretary of Defense has been appointed; he is a war hero and former Senator known for independent thinking. His world view is pragmatic and differs considerably from that of the Chairman of Homeland Security who has the ear of the President and also has higher political ambitions. The U.S. posture towards China with it’s growing economy and trade dealings and of course the "one compromise" position the U.S. talks about while, at the same time, we give Taiwan military support is one issue. The middle East, Russia, and Germany with powerful and devious political figures who use and are being used by the United States spin their plots to gain or contain power in the world. Cohen uses his Washington experience to open the mysteries and intrigues of political infighting between the Congress, The CIA, the FBI, the White House and the Pentagon. The situations and the characters seem so real that you forget that this is fiction although I suspect the novel reflects much of Cohen’s thinking. The action moves back and forth from Washington, Berlin, Beijing, Munich, Moscow, New Mexico and the North Pacific. There is suspenseful climax when the New Secretary of Defense defies Presidential orders and flies to China in a SR-71 Blackbird to meet with their President to avoid an invasion by the U.S. of North Korea bases on misinformation developed by the Homeland security chairman. The SR-71 Blackbird was a stealth aircraft capable of Mach3+ with a ceiling of 85,000 feet (16 miles) and capable of taking a photo of a golf ball from 80,000 feet. It was the fastest air breathing aircraft ever developed cost $34,000,000. This was a great yarn!


"When Gods Die" C. S. Harris
This is Her second novel (her first was "What Angels Fear") and it is a great one. We are back in England in 1811 just a couple of months since Sebastian St. Cyr proved his innocence in the murder of the woman in the church. Another murder has occurred; this time it is in the sitting room of His Royal Highness George of Wales, now Regent of Great Britain. A prominent woman has been stabbed in the back and found with the Regent in a compromising situation. George is greedy and self indulgent but, perhaps, not capable of doing murder. Those close to the Regent need to cover up what happened and find out who actually did the deed. Sebastian is asked to find the killer; he is persuaded to do this because the dead woman was wearing a neckless the belonged to Sebastian’s. mother who supposedly died in a boating accident years ago. Ms Harris bring back many of the characters of her previous novel and weaves them into a wonderful political/historical tale of Great Britain, in the 1800s touching on the Torys, the Whigs, Britain’s enemies in France,the Stuart reign and the people’s need for a change in government. C.S. Harris is one smart woman; she got her Doctorate in European history. We will read more of her novels, I am sure.


"Cross" James Patterson
Alex Cross, former N.Y. City detective and now working for the F.B.I is back’ he and his pal John Sampson are tracking a serial rapist working the Washington D.C. area. He shows his victims of mutilated women as a threat to keep them silent. It works every time.
Alex’s wife Maria was shot some years ago and the "Cross stories" always emphasize how important his children and his grandmother, who takes care of them, are in his life. If Alex Cross has any vulnerability, it is his family. The antagonist is a mob hit man who calls himself "The Butcher"; one Michael Sullivan. He is a sadistic killer who mutilates his victims ( he is also the serial rapist). Alex learns that "The Butcher" was responsible for the death of his wife so the hunt is on with the good guys following sparse clues and Michael Sullivan getting rich doing hits for pay. The action is fast and suspenseful; a few rough scenes but over all, not a bad read. The best Patterson/Cross novels were "Along Came a Spider" and "Kiss The Girls".


"Unnatural Exposure" Patricia Cornwell
I was prowling through the books for sale at the library and found this earlier "Kay Scarpetta" novel that I some how missed. This is a real thriller!
Scarpetta, as Chief Coroner , examines the body of a murder victim whose limbs and head had been severed by someone who has knowledge of anatomy and expertise with surgical instruments. The body also has a rash that Scarpetta, later, discovers to be a mutation of the small pox virus. The mutilation is the signature of a serial killer that she and the police have been investigating but there are inconsistences between the woman with the rash and the other killings. Police Chief Marino, long time friend of Scarpetta, plays his usual confronting role, Her niece, Lucy, is brilliant as usual as the computer savvy FBI agent and Kay’s love interest, FBI profiler Wesley Benton is there to lead and advise the various agencies that must track down a killer who is also infecting his victims with the small pox virus. This is vintage Cornwell with strong characters in a fast moving tale of terror, danger and suspense.


"Rebecca" Daphne duMourier
This novel was published in 1938; the price on the jacket was $2.75. This was a classic of the time from a very popular author. "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again" is the opening sentence of the moving and mysterious story of a young and unsophisticated girl who marries an older man, Maxim de Winter and becomes the uncertain mistress of a great house in Cornwell," Manderley". Maxim’s first wife, the glamorous and socially adept, Rebecca, died in a boating accident but her presence and memory is reflected through out the house; the furnishings, her stationery, her clothes and even the ridged and sinister Mrs. Danvers the housekeeper who was Rebecca’s personal maid are all reminders of Rebecca and her life at Manderlay.. All of this surely intimidates the frightened girl. There is an eerie mystery connected to the death of Rebecca whose body was never found; as the story unfolds, Caroline, encouraged by Mrs. Danvers, has a gown especially designed for the most important social event held at Manderley but when she makes her entrance, Max is wrathful and orders ger out of the room. It seems that the gown was an exact copy of the gown that Rebecca wore. This causes a rift between the two and Caroline soon feels that Max can only think of Rebecca. There is a mystery in connection with Rebecca’s death and suspicion had been cast on Max; the eerie happenings towards the climax of the novel will keep the reader guessing.


"Hannible Rising" Thomas Harris
Harris takes us into a study of Hannible Lecter. Hannible is a young boy, son of a Count, living in "Lecter Castle". He has a younger sister who is very close to him; Mischa. The time is early world war II; Germany is invading Russia and tanks and troops will inevitably reach Lecter Castle along with the cruel and barbaric looters that roam the land. Hannible witnesses the death of his parents, servants and he and his sister are traumatized and held capture through the harsh winter. There is little or no food for the looters or the children; Hannibal, finally escapes but not before seeing his sister killed and eaten by his captors. He is unable to speak after the experience and by chance, an Uncle finds him in an orphanage and takes him to France. During Hannibals "better life" he was extremely bright and his father brought tutors to guide him. In France, his Uncle, a famous painter, and his wife an Oriental help him and Hannibal goes to Medical School. The adventure of Hannible Lecter facing what happened to him, how he finally got his revenge (yes, he traced down his former captors)and found himself, finally, in America makes an interesting prequel to Harris’ other novels.


"Takedown" Brad Thor
al-Qaeda has put together an insidious plot of terrorism in response to the capture of a very high ranking member of their group. He a WMD expert that the government will, secretly, hide someplace in New York to try to find out everything he knows .The plot includes, not only destruction and terror at various locations in New York, city but a bold and complex plan to collect sensitive intelligence data and to rescue the al-Qaeda agent. Since the 9/11 attack, the various presidential cabinet agencies and the new ones have come up with their own ways and ideas of fighting terrorism but communication between the agencies is lacking and in some cases, everything they do is totally secret. The manner in which captured "terrorists" are interrogated, the degree of torture allowed and wether or not it takes place in this country or in another country is a matter of considerable discussion and argument. It goes on none the less. The FBI, the Navy and Homeland Security put together a team of specialists to make sense of the happenings and finally figure out what the terrorists’ final goal is and stop it. Good action thriller, a lot of blood and gore and some disgusting torture scenes that makes one wonder how anyone could think that torture is ever justified and how anyone could actually administer it. The ending is interesting and not totally surprising.


"Sam’s Letters to Jennifer" James Patterson
This is an audio book read by Jane Alexander and Anne Heche.
Patterson has written a lovely, heartwarming, sad but hopeful story about the loves of a girl, Jennifer and those of her Grandmother, Samantha. The setting is the Lake Geneva area which is outside the Great Lakes of Chicago. Jennifer is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune called to Lake Geneva because her Grandmother is in a coma . Jennifer stays in her Grandmother’s lake house and discovers several packets of letters addressed to her that tell a poignant storyof her Grandmother’s life. Jennifer’s own life needs repair; she has suffered loss and heartache and has always had her Grandmother’s support. She meets a childhood friend, a doctor who is staying on the lake; they are very much attracted to each other but he finally confesses that he is terminally ill. Patterson, to his credit did not turn this into a weepy "Love Story", it will bring a few tears, to be sure, but there is a message of hope, acceptance and unconditional love. The story can be read but I thought the reading was particularly moving. Good job James Patterson; us squishy romantics enjoyed your effort!


"The Dream of Scipio" ` Iain Pears
Laboring over this love story of three complex men and three complex women; the story moves back and forth in time through the Roman Empire, the Plague and into World War I and in the final analysis what happens to these people does not seem not very important in the light of all the happenings. The characters are interesting; I liked the women; they were strong and kept things going. It was just a hard story for me. The plot is not clearand the constant moving back and forth doesn't give the reader enough time to really understand what is going on. Is it OK to sacrifice the innocent few for the greater good?? I may pick it up again.


"The Audacity of Hope" Barack Obama
Interesting view of Obama, his history and his ideas. He has a future but I hope he goes slowly.


"The Brotherhood of The Holy Shroud’ Julia Navaro
Julia Navaro is a Spanish writer, Andrew Hurley did the translation.
Mysterious fires at the Cathedral of Turin where the authentic (according to many believers) burial shroud of Jesus Christ is supposed to be located. A team of "art history" cops tries to uncover a plot to steal the holy shroud. Flash backs to the time of the early church, secret societies, the Knights Templar, the Crusades and the Council of Nicea all play a role in this kind of mixed up story.


"The Machiavelli Covenant" Allan Folsom
An exceptionally well done thriller. Nicholas Marten a former L.A. cop and expatriate living in England gets a call from woman he was very close to who is dying and wants him to come to California because she thinks that she was given a deadly virus. Her husband, a California Congressman and her son were recent victims of an airplane crash; the woman, Caroline, thinks it was no accident, but murder. As the tale evolves, Marten finds himself involved in an international conspiracy where the President of the United States’, entire cabinet, influential business men and politicians around the world have a plan to solve the "Middle East problem" by wiping out the lot of them with a biological weapon. The plan is also to assassinate the Presidents of Germany and France in order to consolidate power among "those that think alike". The President is not willing to go along and is forced to escape from the group who pursue him with all of the forces of the Secret Service, the military and the FBI. The group who belong to a very old and powerful order founded by Machiavelli call themselves "The Covenent" explain the disappearance of the President as a foiled terrorist attack that caused the President to be taken away for his safety. The action takes place in England, Germany, and Spain. Thrilling and exciting action, indeed; while the President and Marten try to evade capture and find a way to stop the assassinations and inform the world of the conspiracy. Interesting and evil bad guys and at the end, there just may be some major ones left.
Author Allan Folsom has written two other novels that I must read:
"The Exile" and "The Day After Tomorrow"


"A Man Called Trent" Louis L’Amour
A reformed "gunman" does good!


"Riders of The Dawn" Louis L’Amour
Protecting a cattle ranch and family against a ruthless group that dominates a town.


"Rumpole and the Reign of Terror" John Mortimer
Rumpole is back at the "Old Baily" but this time he is defending a suspected terrorist. A Pakistani doctor has been imprisoned, without charge or trial under suspicion of aiding Al Qaeda in it’s plans for a terrorist attack. Rumple is appalled by the turn of events in the court system since the attacks in London; he feels that the new laws are hindering justice. Try as he may, he can not get the anti terrorist organizationl to reveal the "evidence" against his client and they refuse to take the case to a juty. It is only by blackmailing a very high ranking minister that Rumpole gets his trial. Satire and irony is used to describe the posture and bumbling of the government as they try to defend the people against terrorism by limiting the people’s rights.
Rumpole has, also, had a falling out with the Timpson family, the friendly group of thieves that he has relied upon for so long to keep him in Pomeroy’s fine wine and Hilda (She Who Must Be Obeyed) in cleaning supplies. Further, Hilda is writing her memoirs in secret and is stepping out a bit; she is even considering divorce. Rumpole is always a lot of fun to read and he can be counted on to keep the situation well in hand.


February 2007
"Chiefs" Stuart Woods
An excellent piece of work; one of his earlier novels which traces the history and the lives of three generations of Police Chiefs in a small town called Delano, Georgia. Colorful and strong characters, small town politics and state politics and some gruesome murders.
"The Alexander Link" Steve Berry
I always look forward to this creative and prolific author. His novels are well researched and dripping with intrigue. For centuries, guardians have held and passed on the secret location of the "Library of Alexandria". Each generation, one of the guardians tries to find a person who seeks knowledge and who will use any knowledge he gains from the library to do good for humanity. A cartel of wealthy individuals are looking for the knowledge that will give them control of the middle East and also challenge the three major religions. The information and the documentation is located in the library; there is a race between the good guys and the bad ones to find the library. Good characters some nice puzzles and a great adventure. Also, an interesting idea of the actual location of the Israel of the old testament and some major tinkering of the gospels by the early church leaders.


"Pilate’s Wife" Antoinette May
A splendid, well researched story combined with imagination about Claudia. The wife of Pontius Pilate. Her younger years as the independent and somewhat rebellious daughter of a prominent Roman who is close to the Emperor Tiberious, her ability to "see things" before they happen, and her marriage to the ambitious Pilate.
The politics, the family rivalries, the assassinations and the religions of the time are explored and we learn that Claudia was a follower of the Egyptian Goddess "Isis" rather than one of the regular Roman Gods. Her friendship with Meriam of Magdala (Mary?) Who is enamored with a radical religious man called Jesus is explored; Claudia goes to the wedding of Meriam and Jesus and it is at this wedding that water is turned into wine. Claudia has a vision where she sees Jesus arrested by priests who fear his power. She "sees" the crucifixion and hears the words "suffered under Pontius Pilate". She tries to save the martyr. This is an interesting tale; so many authors have brought forth the marriage of Jesus but this is the first that I have read that discusses the good possibility that Jesus was saved from death and hidden away.


"The Prestiege" Christopher Priest
An intriguing novel about two competing magicians who once were partners but become bitter enemies. The novel is a bit difficult to follow because it tells the story from the point of view of both people and the chronology moves back and forth. The story is both interesting and eerie. The ending is scary. They made a splendid movie from this book; staring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale.
******
March 2007

"Murder In Montmarte" Cara Black
One of six "Aime LeDue" mysteries recommended by my friend Jim Bradshaw. Aime is a lady investigator who, with her partner Rene a dwarf run a computer fraud investigation agency. The problem is; she gets involved in messy murders that are life threatening to both herself and her partner. The setting is Paris, France and we get grand descriptions of the city and the major and the tiny streets and the people and places of Paris. I was in Paris after WWII and I can remember some of the places she describes. Easy reading, thanks, Jim.
"The Grave Tattoo" Val McDermid
In a peat bog in the Lake District of England the body of a man was found; the body carried black tattoos such as the kind that sailors got in the South Sea islands a couple of hundred years ago. Legend in the country suggested that Fletcher Christian after escaping from Pitcairn Island managed to seek out William Wadsworth, a poet and native of the Lake District, and ask him to tell what really happened aboard the "Bounty" in an epic poem. A London Wadsworth scholar, after learning about the discovery, travels to the area in order to prove her theory that Fletcher Christian did, indeed, meet with Wadsworth and that the manuscript actually exists. Other people are also interested and greed, deceit and murder are all a part of a very interesting story.

"The Book of Names" Jill Gregory & Karen Tintori
A fantasy that the end of the world as we know it will happen if 35 specifically named people either die or are killed within a specified time. In this story, Adam (the guy who lived with Eve) wrote a list of names in a huge volume . This volume was hidden for a long time but was discovered by Gnostics and an offshoot cult of the Gnostics who see all of the corruption and evil in the world today as an indication that it is time to end everything so they begin to kill the people on the list. The premise and the story is so far fetched and bizarre that the novel made no sense to me..


"Blow The House Down" Robert Baer
The author spent 20 years with the CIA running agents against Al-Qaeda and Hizballah and, clearly, knows the middle East. He wrote another book; "See No Evil" , a book of memoirs which I must read and another "Sleeping With The Devil" which tells how Washington sold our soul for Saudi crude. I must get this one!!
In"Blow The House Down", Robt Baer tells the story of a Veteran CIA officer who is obsessed with the murder of his agency mentor, John O’Neil. John O’Neil was Deputy Director of the FBI who two weeks before 9/11 quit his job because he believed that the Bush administration had stymied the intelligence agency’s efforts on terrorism. He took a job as head of security at the World Trade Center and was killed in the north tower. Baer writes a taught thriller as his protagonist tries to hunt down the facts. Baer pulls no punches in his condemnation of the various intelligence agencies and goes so far as to state in his notes to the book that 9/11 was avoidable because we had the intelligence but did not act upon it and, just maybe, there were some that profited by it.


"The Covenant" James Michener
This is a wonderful history and story of South Africa. It starts some 15,000 years ago with a clan of small people called "Bushmen" who must move to another location across a hostile desert. It tells the story of the Huguenots, the "Treckboers",the "Missionarys",the occupation of South Africa by the Dutch, the French, the English, the various African tribes including Shaka Zulu and finally the concept of apartheid and modern day South Africa (to the 1960s). A long book; 875 pages but it is hard to put down once you get into it. This was a "reread" for me; I was going to lend it to some one but I opened it up and spent the next three days reading.

"The Rising Tide"
The battles in the Pacific between the American Admirals and The Admirals of Japan. A very detailed and interesting account of the war in the Pacific from the viewpoint of the two opposing sides. Lots of history; We had a very tough time out there and almost lost the war. What struck me most was the intelligence and experience of those in charge. These were older men steeped in history. I saw the same thing in the commanders of the European battles – seasoned old pros. I do not recognize the same breed in out current conflicts.


"Kiowa Trail" Louis L’Amour
After a long, hard cattle drive, the men of the "Tumbling B" finally reach town where the herd will be sold and the men can celebrate but the rule is that no "cowboy" is allowed on the North side of the town because they were thought to be too coarse to be near the homes and families of the town folk. Kate Lundy, owner of the herd and her foreman Conn Dury try to discourage Tom Lundy, Kate’s brother, from meeting with a town girl he becomes infatuated with but Tom is young and stubborn. He is shot by the girls father the leading citizen and Kate takes revenge by trying to "kill the town". A great L’Amour novel with his usual strong good guys and bad guys where honor and decency tries to out do mean spirited people.


"The Book of Renfield" Tim Lucas
I just can not seem able to get away from those vampire people; Claudia will want to read this one. The story begins shortly after the long chase through Transalvania and the death of Dracula and Quincy.
Dr. Seward, Jonathon Harker, Mina and Arthur are suffering from shock after their terrifying experience and finally get together to decide that they must face their terror by compiling all their notes and diaries and talk the thing out. This helped; then they decided that the world must know about the horror so they found a novelist by the name of Brahm Stoker to cobble together all the notes and diaries and create a novel they would call "Dracula". Stoker was to pretend that the novel was fiction because they knew that the story would not be believed.
After publication of "Dracula", Dr. Seward took his professional and private note and those of his patient Renfield and created a history of his own life and that of Renfield. The author, Tim Lucas, tried to create parallels between the two; Seward was depressed most of the time he took drugs and he never, really, got over his rejection by Lucy and, generally, was not a very fine character. The novel got rather involved in religious and moral actions to the point that it became rather muddled. I believe that whatever mystery surrounds Renfield is good for the "Dracula" plot and we do not need this story.


"Havoc" Jack DuBrul
A page turner; the Hindenburg disaster, Nicloa Tesler, Albert Einstein, Alexander The Great, a hunt for a strange and powerful weapon that can cause mass destruction and battle after bloody battle are all part of this novel. This story takes two strong characters around the world following clues left by a strange character who actually found Plutonium in a natural state in Africa and tried to get the evidence to America to ward off WWII or worse. Some interesting Lewis Carroll doublets; changing one word into another in so many steps in order to determine which word to read in a coded message and a dash of Homers "Odyssey" paraphrases the different locations and characters - if you work on it. I thought the battles over long and too frequent but overall a good read!!

"The Fifth Profession" David Morrell
The Fifth Profession is something called "Executive Protection" wherein the "protector", a person highly skilled in weapons, martial arts and trained in the "Samurai philosophy takes total responsibility for his "principal" and is willing to protect him to the death of himself. The novel is somewhat interesting and a lot of early Japanese history and the ways of the Samurai are included and explained as well as the author’s thoughts about the considerable pain that the Japanese still feel as the result of the A- bomb and the occupation of Japan and the strong negative feelings they still have because the US forced the emperor to denounce the long tradition that he was a god. The author thinks that their way of retaliating is by trying to win the "economic war" with the US. The book is way too long and it gets bogged down in melodrama and trite philosophy. I kept skipping on to see how it would end.


"Deep Storm" Lincoln Child
An exciting and tense novel about the discovery of "something" discovered deep in the earth’s crust thousands of feet below the surface of the water. Using a monster drilling rig as a cover, the government has built an undersea complex, a virtual city to house the scientists and engineers who will dig and study the discovery. Everything is top secret; security is enforced by the military. The cover story to those in the city is that the lost city of Atlantis has been discovered but only a few know the real secret and as it turns out they were, also, wrong. A terrible, world wide, disaster is eminent unless the drilling is stopped and and the folks find out what the "something" actually is.
Lincoln Child, also, co authors with Douglas Preston and, together, they write some of my favorite novels; Claudia and I have read every one of them from "Relic" to "The Book of The Dead". This is a splendid thriller; it flows so well and keeps your attention to the end. Well done Lincoln Child!!!


April 5th 2007
"Jesus For The Non Religious" John Shelby Spong
(Also wrote:"The Sins of Scripture", "A new Christianity For a New World")
You gotta read this guy; his views are very like mine although I might be even more critical. His views towards the origins and writings of the old testament and the various gospels of the new testament have been well researched and can stand up to argument radical as they may seem to some folks.

"Gideon’s Badge" J. J. Marric
Marric wrote a very popular series of the adventures of George Gideon, Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard back in the 1960s. He did about ten of them; I thought I had read them all but I found this one at a library sale. Gideon was a smooth, articulate copper who rose from the ranks as a London Bobby to the top office of the CID. He has two difficult cases in London; one of a serial killer who poisons women and the other involves a large robbery. While George should leave the details to his long time assistant "Lemaitre"he can not keep his hand out of the cases. In this novel, George has been invited to a conference in New York City where he will study New York Police Department procedures and work with them on a case that has international consequences. His wife Kate will go with him. One has to read several of the "Gideon" novels to understand the relationship of Gideon and Lemaitre. Marric always gave his reader a tour of the back streets and the main streets of London as well as the outlying areas and over time, we got to know George Gideon as a husband and a father.


"Those Three Remain" Pamela Aidan
Ms Aidan is a librarian and long time fan of Jane Austin. So much so that she wrote a trilogy giving more color and depth and history to the characters of "Pride and Prejudice" and even made up a few more people. As it usually happens, I found and read the last in her series subtitled "Fitzwilliam Darcy - Gentleman".
This novel picks up the story when Mr. Darcy makes his horribly stupid proposal to Elizabeth Bennet and he is, of course rejected. Darcy decides that he must change his attitude and ways and become a person that Ms Bennet could admire and, perhaps, love. The novel is fair and faithful to Jane Austin’s work and includes many of the original, poignant passages but it also creates some reasonable scenarios and details relating to what Darcy actually did to help the Bennet family (all for the love of Elizabeth) and gives plausible answers to questions one might have about what went through Darcy’s mind. I enjoyed it a lot probably because I liked the original novel so much. I will not, however, go back to the earlier novels of the trilogy.



"Death of A Cad" M. C. Beaton
Hamish Macbeth has another problem to solve; this time, there are two murders and they take place on the estate of Priscilla Hallburton-Smyth’s parents. Priscilla has become engaged to a London playwright and she has brought him home to Lochdubh to meet the people and have a grand party. Numerous and interesting guests including Hamish (who was invited by Priscilla but was uninvited by her father who sent him a note that he was not welcome - which was not delivered in time). One of the guests, an obnoxious but handsome and dashing Army Captain is found shot the morning after the party; every one thinks it is an accident except Hamish. To prove Hamish wrong, Priscilla’s father calls in the detectives from London and Hamish’s nemesis Inspector Blair (bumbling Blair) portrays on the scene to take charge. Hamish is taken off the case and Blair populace that the shooting is an accident. Hamish, of course quietly acts on his suspicion and we have a fine mystery with many suspects and in the background we see the tension between Hamish and Priscilla who really care for each other very much. Good detective work by Hamish and while he solves the crimes, Blair, as usual, finds a way to take credit for everything. Always fun to read about the people of Lachdubh.


"Love and Friendship" Jane Austen
Ms Austin has filled a small volume with delightful letters going back and forth between ladies of the time. If you enjoy Jane Austin’s irony and humor and the different letter writer’s obsession with men, love, money and marriage you will get a lot of laughs.


"Black Monday" R. Scott Reiss
This is a scary and prophetic novel. Someone, not the "Terrorists" we immediately think of, has created a microbe that when introduced into the oil fields will "eat" the oil and cause the oil to break down and become unusable. The microbe is immune to the great heat that is used in the refining process. The microbe was discovered in the deep ocean where there are heat thermals of unbelievable intensities. The microbe has also contaminated any delivery pipeline it encountered.
Imagine the United States, the world, for that matter, without energy or oil to lubricate machinery. Chaos exists, people run out of food, and heating oil, they begin to loot and kill people. Gangs of scared people and gangs of thugs threaten the populace but the Government can do very little except declare marshal law.
Jealous bureaucrats show their ineptitude while a few dedicated scientists try to find an answer to the problem; who was responsible, how was it done and why was it done and how can it be fixed. The novel is a fast moving "microbe hunt" with some very likeable and unlikable characters. Read this one for it’s realistic portrayal of how people will act if such a crises actually happens. It wouldn’t have to be a microbe, some fools could nuke the oil fields with a dirty bomb!! That could, very well, happen in the tense times that we live in now!


"Triple Cross" Kit Ehrman
This reading was a very pleasant surprise. A story about a young man, Steve Cline who is a barn manager at Churchill Downs in Louisville at the time of the Kentucky Derby. The author knows horses and racing and at one time was a groom himself; he imparts fascinating information about what goes on in the barns and the exercise areas at the race track. The horse he and another groom are watching is a "Derby" contender; twenty million dollars worth of horse! There are other owners and horses, of course, and a great story and mystery including a murder is developed. The writing is very clean, fast paced and with just the right tension. I enjoyed every page of it! Ehrman has, also, written "At Risk" and Dead Man’s Touch" which are Steve Cline mysteries. I want to read more.


"Hunter’s Moon" Randy Wayne White
A thriller; improbable situation and characters but a good read with lots of action. Randy White has created a character he calls "Doc Ford" a former something or other for the government, highly skilled and so forth who hangs around a bar on Sanibel Island, Florida when he is not working as a marine biologist. White has written thirteen previous "Doc Ford" novels; one is enough for me. Ford is a "formula" writer, kind of like Stewart Wood.


"The Gospel According to Judas" Benjamin Iscariot
A collaboration; Jeffrey Archer and Professor Francis J. Moloney with guidance from Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini. An interesting but disappointing attempt to put the fragments of the actual text into a form that for the most part tries to support much of the text in the new testament. From my reading of other texts relating to the Judas Gospel this effort was a poor and biased job. Cute way they named the author; supposed to be the son of Judas. Considerable effort to redeem Judas and make him a good guy but they made it a point to keep the whole thing in line with the Jewish texts.


"The Sun Over Breda" Arturo Perez-Reverte
After "The Fencing Master" and the first two "Captain Alatriste" novels, I expected much more; this was a disappointment. The story, as usual, is narrated by Igno Balboa, Alatriste’s young servant but it is more a tale of the war that Phillip IV of Spain is making against the Dutch Calvinists ("heretics all and may they burn in hell or wherever they finally end ") and the battle for Flanders. Alatriste plays a very minor role and there is no real adventure; just war and battles, interesting and detailed but Igno hogged the limelight; we just did not see very much of our famous Captain in this story. I think that "The Fencing Master" and "Purity of Blood" were much superior.

"The World is Flat" Thomas L. Friedman
This is the "second writing" of Tom’s novel. Technology and communication are the key words to Tom Friedman’s idea of the world flattening out; globalization and "outsourcing" are explored in detail. More detail than many would want. When Tom takes you into computers you almost get a didactic course in the use of some of the more popular software products. The manner in which India and China and other countries have prepared for outsourcing and are preparing for more and how businesses and individuals benefit from the practice are explored. Friedman feels that governments, businesses and societies must adapt to the "lightning swift" changes we are experiencing. We are rapidly approaching a time where everyone will have the tools and knowledge available to create a better world if imagination and the desire are present. He is a little pollyannaish but we sure need a "better world".It is not the easiest book to read but Friedman’s anecdotal way of writing keeps it very interesting. It is an important book although a lot of people think just the opposite regarding world trade. If you like statistics you will love this book.


"Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid" Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter bought himself a lot of criticism with this book but it is a story that has to be told. While peace between Israel and Palestine is critical, Carter emphasizes that it must bring justice and dignity to the Palestinians and it must be a lawful and fair peace. Carter has great empathy for the plight of the Palestinians and he is very critical of Israel’s violation of U.N. resolutions, U.S. Policy and the international "roadmap". Israel’s continued occupation and settlement of land and the oppression of the Palestinians and the "wall" are very troubling. Apparently, our present administration does not feel as strongly. It took a lot of courage for Carter to write this; I applaud him for it.


"God’s Spy Juan Gomez-Jurado
The Pope has died, the camerlengo is in charge and the College of Cardinals have been called to conclave. A high ranking Cardinal has been found brutally murdered; his body terrible mutilated. An Italian police profiler, Poala Dicanti, has been invited to the Vatican to assist in the case where she learns that there has been another grisly murder. Because of the conclave and all of the people attending the event, the Vatican did not want either of the murders known. They actually tried keep the other murder, the first, a secret from the profiler. There are more deaths and the nub discovers that a former priest who was, at one time, sent to rehabilitation for abusing children is the killer. The police have a very extensive file on him.This man is very disturbed and his meanness and tactics are vile; he has a long history of violence but the profiler has questions as to motive. As the story develops, we learn of a conspiracy relating to the succession of the next pope. They begin to wonder if the killer might be an assassin. The efforts of Poala and her team are hindered by the Vatican secret police who are trying to keep every thing under wraps and, also, seem to have a political agenda of their own. Strong and interesting characters and wonderful descriptions of Vatican City carry this well written novel to an exciting and surprising climax. A good thriller; Dan Brown introduced us to opus dea and Juan Jurado tells of another secret society established several hundred years ago; Santa Alianza, whose motto was "The cross and sword" and whose mission was to enforce by any means, including torture and killing, the edicts of the church. Back in the 1500s Anglicans and heretics were challenging the Church as a spiritual entity and they had to be dealt with.


"All That Remains" Patricia Cornwell
This is a reread of the first Patricia Cornwell novel I read. Actually, it is her fourth and a terrific story. Her protagonist, County Coroner Kay Scarpetta, is right in the middle of what appears to be a serial killer’s mayhem (four mutilation deaths of young couples) when the bodies of the daughter and boyfriend of a prominent Washington figure are discovered. The crime scene is similar to the other but there are slight differences and the FBI and the police are withholding information from every one, including Scarpetta. National politics are involved because the woman whose daughter was killed is close to the President and recently appointed "Drug Czar. Marino, Scarpeta’s detective friend, Benton Wesley, profiler for the FBI, Abby Turnbull, columnist and,of course a couple of wise ass cops all interact in a fast moving thriller. Cornwell develops and uses her characters and plots in a masterful and suspenseful way. This is vintage Cornwell; I don’t know how or why she "lost it" in her later novels.


"When the Light Goes" Larry McMurtry
The author of "Lonesome Dove" and some 29 other novels has written an interesting and funny story about one of his characters from an earlier novel "The Last Picture Show". Duane Moore, now a retired oilman, financially secure, widowed and around 62 years old rides his bike around Thalia, a little Texas town and contemplates his life. He meets and becomes attracted to a young geologist named Annie and life becomes a new sexually charged adventure for him. A totally new experience for him. McMurtry tells a charming story; some what racy but with humor. Enjoyed it a lot ( Oh to be 60 again!!)


"The Far Blue Mountains -The Sackets Louis L’Amour
We have read a lot about "The Sackets" in L’Amours novels but this one goes back to the time of one of the original Sackets. Barnabas Sackett, was an Englishman who spent some time in the "new world" at the Raleigh colony and he felt very strongly about the opportunities the great land offered further West. He decided to return to England to get Abigail, his bride to be, and take her back to the "new world". Barnaby had been a sailor, a smuggler, a craftsman and a farmer as well as a woodsman. He ran afoul of the Queen while he was settling his affairs and became a wanted man in England. Barnabas managed to elude his pursuers and with the aid of some good friends who decided to accompany him, he and Abigail made it back to America by a very circuitous and adventurous route. Once there, he settled on the East coast for a while, built a stockade and formed a small colony which prospered for a while but they were attacked by Indians and pirates . L’Amour can not resist the telling of mighty battles by courageous men. Barnaby’s stockade was destroyed by the pirate raid but the timbers and minerals they had collected were salvaged and their ship was repaired so they took off for Europe again to do some trading - more tense adventure - Back to the New World again and this time Barnaby and Abigail went further West, always seeking the "far blue mountains" . Over time, he begins the genesis of the Sacket family that L’Amour wrote about so often. This was an interesting history.


"Straight Into Darkness" Faye Kellerman
The story takes place in Munich shortly after World War I; Germany is suffering under the severe sanctions of the treaty of Versailles and the German people are very bitter. Their economy is very poor and the British, the Americans and the Jews are blamed and hated. Adolph Hitler and his Brown Shirts are coming into their own, the Communist party is making an attempt at power and the people are in conflict and confusion.
Axel Berg is a detective living in these times investigating the bizarre murder of a beautiful socialite. The killing is unique and horrifying and then another murder occurs. The people of Munich begin to panic, a fear that is made worse by the tactics of Hitler in his rise to power. This is a "page turner" made extremely interesting by Kellerman’s on going commentary of the times and circumstances leading into the "darkness" of World War II.


I came across an interesting tid bit about words: benign, cagey, decay, enemy, envy, excellency, excesses, expediency and foreign – – all are pronounced with letters or digits (B9, KG, DK, XS, 4N) I guess the folks that do text messages on their cell phones are good at this.