A bonus entry, bookies. How absent-minded can your favorite bookseller be? Pretty danged absent-minded.
So, I get in my neat little new-to-me car to go get some medicine for one of our dogs, she's very sick and this might make her more comfortable. I was trying to think of all the stuff I had to do today, put the key in the ignition and...and...and nothing. It was the wrong key.
Yes, it was stuck. I tried everything, it wouldn't come out. After waiting for the locksmith, he got it out in about three seconds using pliers and a screw driver. Whew! I had visions of tow charges and hundreds of dollars in repairs. I got lucky.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Back to books
Good morning, bookies. School starts in a week but in the meantime I thought it would be a good idea to actually have a blog entry about a book. This one is a military book, but I proise to get around the stuff like mysteries and SF and the like soon.
Today's book is a good choice for anyone interested in aviation, whether it's you, a hubby, a dad or granddad. It concerns a little known German super-weapon from World War II. Not some exotic project that looks cool but was never built,this place actually flew and fought in decent numbers, it was simply too late to have much effect on things. And no, it's not the ME-262, the world's first jet fighter.
Instead, it's the TA-152, the revolutionary upgrade of the Focke-Wulf 190. I haven't read it but the review makes it seem like one that I would love, and I might yet find a moment to read it. Let's hope so.
The remarkable TA-152
Today's book is a good choice for anyone interested in aviation, whether it's you, a hubby, a dad or granddad. It concerns a little known German super-weapon from World War II. Not some exotic project that looks cool but was never built,this place actually flew and fought in decent numbers, it was simply too late to have much effect on things. And no, it's not the ME-262, the world's first jet fighter.
Instead, it's the TA-152, the revolutionary upgrade of the Focke-Wulf 190. I haven't read it but the review makes it seem like one that I would love, and I might yet find a moment to read it. Let's hope so.
The remarkable TA-152
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Automotive reincarnation
Hiya bookies! Tomorrow became Day-After-Tomorrow, I know. Lots of running round yesterday, meeting with teachers, renewing library books (I didn't tell you that story, either. Jeez, so much excitement I can't keep track of it all), trying to set up this nifty new computer (see, yet another great story untold!), and on and on. But let's focus on the Focus.
As we last left our intrepid hero, me, my car was totaled and dead, smelling moldy after a week in the hot summer sun as dirty rainwater dried out inside. My mechanic kept telling me it was hopeless, that you would never know when some rusted out circuit would fail and I finally, reluctantly, had to believe him. It was like saying goodbye to an old friend. Not only that, I was down to our family's emergency car. The insurance company paid, and then I discovered that the payment wouldn't come close to buying me a comparable car. Figures, right?
In 1990 we bought a new (well, a low-mileage demo car) Volvo 740, which every member of the household has driven at one time or another as their primary car. Both my kids learned to drive in that car. It's pretty beat up now, the seats are split out, the dashboard and door panels cracked, the trunk jammed shut...we have often been encouraged to get rid of it. The question is: why? It's the perfect emergency car, and after 20 years it qualifies as an antique. So that was my choice, drive the Volvo. Except the A/C didn't work. Fortunately, two shots of freon and the air was so cold I used it to hang meat.
No, not really, but I probably could have. Nice and frosty, the way I like it when the heat index in Memphis tops 120, which it did for like three weeks straight this year. That old Volvo remains one of the most stable cars ever built and if they really wanted to sell a lot of new ones, they would take that old car, duplicate it as much as possible and call it something brand new. Which, given its quality, it probably would be.
Anyway, I had wheels, but the Volvo doesn't have a CD player, just cassette. I don't listen to radio when driving, I listen to audiobooks, but mine are all on CD now and I was really depressed. Indeed, on that fateful day when my Focus was drowned I had begun listening to the Teaching Company production of History of Ancient Rome, a series of 48 college lectures by Professor Garrett Fagan. (By the way, if you aren't familiar with The Teaching Company, you may want to check them out. They have lecture courses on every conceivable subject. And if Ann in Nashville is still reading this blog, I am reliably informed that your library system carries many, if not most, of them).
Not having a CD player, however, I listened to ESPN sports radio and realized just how utterly dreadful those hosts really are. I'm a sports guy, too, but come on! I'm glad most of the people on ESPN radio work there, because I can't imagine what else they could do for a living. And for one brief afternoon I listened to local sports-talk radio. Amazingly bad. Intelligence-insultingly bad. Stunningly wretched, even. It wasn't fun.
Then, about two weeks ago on the Memphis Tigers message board, an ad popped up from one of the long-time posters. He was selling a car. What kind of car? I kid you not, a 2001 ZX3 Ford Focus. Blue, no less. I PMed him immediately and he agreed to meet me at my mechanic's place one afternoon. The car was virtually identical to my dead one. The hood was wrinkled from an accident, it didn't have power-door locks and had 88,000 miles vs. my old one's 27,000, but it was cheap and my mechanic gave it a thumbs up. I wrote the check. I did have to put some money into it, but I expected to. I may even have to put a little more, who knows? But the happy ending is that I am once again driving a nifty little 2001 Ford Focus hatchback, and at a fraction of the cost that I might have had to pay to get something I liked.
One small footnote that shows how foolish manufacturers can be. Ford no longer makes a Focus hatchback. If they did, I would have gone out and bought a brand-new one, even though car notes are anathema to me. I loved the car. But in their infinite wisdom, the big-wigs at Ford discontinued the Focus 2 door hatchback and replace it with the Fiesta hatchback.
Sorry, Ford, no sale on that one.
And so, your friendly neighborhood bookseller is once again wheeled up and ready to ferret out the best books for his bookies to buy. Thanks to you all for sticking with me!
As we last left our intrepid hero, me, my car was totaled and dead, smelling moldy after a week in the hot summer sun as dirty rainwater dried out inside. My mechanic kept telling me it was hopeless, that you would never know when some rusted out circuit would fail and I finally, reluctantly, had to believe him. It was like saying goodbye to an old friend. Not only that, I was down to our family's emergency car. The insurance company paid, and then I discovered that the payment wouldn't come close to buying me a comparable car. Figures, right?
In 1990 we bought a new (well, a low-mileage demo car) Volvo 740, which every member of the household has driven at one time or another as their primary car. Both my kids learned to drive in that car. It's pretty beat up now, the seats are split out, the dashboard and door panels cracked, the trunk jammed shut...we have often been encouraged to get rid of it. The question is: why? It's the perfect emergency car, and after 20 years it qualifies as an antique. So that was my choice, drive the Volvo. Except the A/C didn't work. Fortunately, two shots of freon and the air was so cold I used it to hang meat.
No, not really, but I probably could have. Nice and frosty, the way I like it when the heat index in Memphis tops 120, which it did for like three weeks straight this year. That old Volvo remains one of the most stable cars ever built and if they really wanted to sell a lot of new ones, they would take that old car, duplicate it as much as possible and call it something brand new. Which, given its quality, it probably would be.
Anyway, I had wheels, but the Volvo doesn't have a CD player, just cassette. I don't listen to radio when driving, I listen to audiobooks, but mine are all on CD now and I was really depressed. Indeed, on that fateful day when my Focus was drowned I had begun listening to the Teaching Company production of History of Ancient Rome, a series of 48 college lectures by Professor Garrett Fagan. (By the way, if you aren't familiar with The Teaching Company, you may want to check them out. They have lecture courses on every conceivable subject. And if Ann in Nashville is still reading this blog, I am reliably informed that your library system carries many, if not most, of them).
Not having a CD player, however, I listened to ESPN sports radio and realized just how utterly dreadful those hosts really are. I'm a sports guy, too, but come on! I'm glad most of the people on ESPN radio work there, because I can't imagine what else they could do for a living. And for one brief afternoon I listened to local sports-talk radio. Amazingly bad. Intelligence-insultingly bad. Stunningly wretched, even. It wasn't fun.
Then, about two weeks ago on the Memphis Tigers message board, an ad popped up from one of the long-time posters. He was selling a car. What kind of car? I kid you not, a 2001 ZX3 Ford Focus. Blue, no less. I PMed him immediately and he agreed to meet me at my mechanic's place one afternoon. The car was virtually identical to my dead one. The hood was wrinkled from an accident, it didn't have power-door locks and had 88,000 miles vs. my old one's 27,000, but it was cheap and my mechanic gave it a thumbs up. I wrote the check. I did have to put some money into it, but I expected to. I may even have to put a little more, who knows? But the happy ending is that I am once again driving a nifty little 2001 Ford Focus hatchback, and at a fraction of the cost that I might have had to pay to get something I liked.
One small footnote that shows how foolish manufacturers can be. Ford no longer makes a Focus hatchback. If they did, I would have gone out and bought a brand-new one, even though car notes are anathema to me. I loved the car. But in their infinite wisdom, the big-wigs at Ford discontinued the Focus 2 door hatchback and replace it with the Fiesta hatchback.
Sorry, Ford, no sale on that one.
And so, your friendly neighborhood bookseller is once again wheeled up and ready to ferret out the best books for his bookies to buy. Thanks to you all for sticking with me!
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
What I did this summer
Yes, bookies, I'm seriously going to try and keep this thing going at a regular pace, regardless of how many other distractions come down the pike. But I've gotta issue a whining warning, because, sadly, I'm gonna whine for a minute.
Finishing with the tale of summer school, neither teacher added the optional '+' to my grades. Not that it really matters from a GPA standpoint, it doesn't, but it looks better on a transcript and believe me, my transcript needs to look as much better as is possible. Not only that, a '-' after your letter grade does adversely affect your GPA. Which really stinks. And the whining involves just such a designation, that little minus sign after what should have been a plain old A.
In most courses an 'A' grade is 90-100 percentage. A 91, for instance, is an A. In my communications class I received a 93. By itself that really angered me, it should have been at least a 95 but he didn't like my last speech. Or, rather, he didn't like that I took a subject that he assigned me, and assumed I would take a negative stance on, turned it around with a positive stance and was applauded by the class. And I did not get the grade for that speech that I deserved. Having given more than 1000 presentations and speeches in my life, it was my job for five years!, I know when I'm on and when I'm not. And that day, I was on.
Oh well, it's really a minor thing but you hate getting cheated on something you think you've earned. Whining warning is now cancelled.
Did I tell you about my car? I don't think so, but if I did pretend that I didn't. So, back in May, the 24th to be exact, I'm at that very COMM class and on my way home. I had just cracked open a new Audiobook CD. A college lecture course, actually, The History of Ancient Rome on 24 CDs from The Teaching Company. As you know, I'm a real Roman history buff and was pretty pumped to listen to this on the way home.
Early afternoon, hot, the air wet with coming rain. Three miles from home the clouds started dumping water, harder and faster than I had ever seen in my life. Ever. Hail the size of golf balls. Waves building on the street. Surrounded by traffic with water a foot deep on the road I was trapped. Then, before I knew it, my car was floating and water was pouring in the doors. A warm sunny day had become like a Bible lesson with me as Noah and my car the ark. Except my car wasn't waterproof.
Long story short, my nifty little 2001 Ford Focus ZX-3 with 27,000 actual miles was dead. Totaled. I begged my trusted mechanic to lie to me, to tell me he could bring it back to life, but to no avail. The insurance paid a reasonable amount but I didn't care. My car was dead.
Tomorrow, the exciting conclusion!
Finishing with the tale of summer school, neither teacher added the optional '+' to my grades. Not that it really matters from a GPA standpoint, it doesn't, but it looks better on a transcript and believe me, my transcript needs to look as much better as is possible. Not only that, a '-' after your letter grade does adversely affect your GPA. Which really stinks. And the whining involves just such a designation, that little minus sign after what should have been a plain old A.
In most courses an 'A' grade is 90-100 percentage. A 91, for instance, is an A. In my communications class I received a 93. By itself that really angered me, it should have been at least a 95 but he didn't like my last speech. Or, rather, he didn't like that I took a subject that he assigned me, and assumed I would take a negative stance on, turned it around with a positive stance and was applauded by the class. And I did not get the grade for that speech that I deserved. Having given more than 1000 presentations and speeches in my life, it was my job for five years!, I know when I'm on and when I'm not. And that day, I was on.
Oh well, it's really a minor thing but you hate getting cheated on something you think you've earned. Whining warning is now cancelled.
Did I tell you about my car? I don't think so, but if I did pretend that I didn't. So, back in May, the 24th to be exact, I'm at that very COMM class and on my way home. I had just cracked open a new Audiobook CD. A college lecture course, actually, The History of Ancient Rome on 24 CDs from The Teaching Company. As you know, I'm a real Roman history buff and was pretty pumped to listen to this on the way home.
Early afternoon, hot, the air wet with coming rain. Three miles from home the clouds started dumping water, harder and faster than I had ever seen in my life. Ever. Hail the size of golf balls. Waves building on the street. Surrounded by traffic with water a foot deep on the road I was trapped. Then, before I knew it, my car was floating and water was pouring in the doors. A warm sunny day had become like a Bible lesson with me as Noah and my car the ark. Except my car wasn't waterproof.
Long story short, my nifty little 2001 Ford Focus ZX-3 with 27,000 actual miles was dead. Totaled. I begged my trusted mechanic to lie to me, to tell me he could bring it back to life, but to no avail. The insurance paid a reasonable amount but I didn't care. My car was dead.
Tomorrow, the exciting conclusion!
Sunday, August 15, 2010
It's been a while...
Hi bookies! Yes, I know, it's been quite a while since I posted here. And to those thousands who have written wondering if I'm okay...well, okay, to the one misguided woman who thought I was channeling her long-lost cat, the answer is that I'm fine, but this has been one hectic summer.
Aside from all sorts of non-bookie stuff, you know, like lawn maintenance and family and the like, I have been in school. Yes, back to college. One course required me to actually show up every morning, sit in a classroom and takes notes and stuff. With people half my age (or less). Fun times. It was during pre-summer, which meant 4 hours per day in a classroom for three weeks, then homework at night. Gross. I received an A- which royally peeved me. No way it should have been less than an A+, except the teacher was a dolt.
But that was must warmup for taking two, count 'em, two, online courses during summer session. The total number of pages read for both courses combined topped 3,700! In just over 2 months. That's 9 books, 7 of them textbooks, not counting videos we had to watch, three written essays or more per week, two mid-terms each with two essays questions, a book review and a comparative book review. Holy cow! I did it, I'm not sure how, but for people who have to physically get up and go to work each day and then try to work such classes into their schedule, I have no idea who they do it. I really don't.
Grades? Out of 2,000 possible points, 1,000 for each class, I received 2,002, and maybe a few more. Enough to pass, I guess. Hopefully the teachers will add the optional '+' to the letter grade.
And school starts again in two weeks. Two more courses, God knows how many more pages to read...but I'll try to do a better job updating this one. Thanks to you all, and go enjoy the rest of summer.
Aside from all sorts of non-bookie stuff, you know, like lawn maintenance and family and the like, I have been in school. Yes, back to college. One course required me to actually show up every morning, sit in a classroom and takes notes and stuff. With people half my age (or less). Fun times. It was during pre-summer, which meant 4 hours per day in a classroom for three weeks, then homework at night. Gross. I received an A- which royally peeved me. No way it should have been less than an A+, except the teacher was a dolt.
But that was must warmup for taking two, count 'em, two, online courses during summer session. The total number of pages read for both courses combined topped 3,700! In just over 2 months. That's 9 books, 7 of them textbooks, not counting videos we had to watch, three written essays or more per week, two mid-terms each with two essays questions, a book review and a comparative book review. Holy cow! I did it, I'm not sure how, but for people who have to physically get up and go to work each day and then try to work such classes into their schedule, I have no idea who they do it. I really don't.
Grades? Out of 2,000 possible points, 1,000 for each class, I received 2,002, and maybe a few more. Enough to pass, I guess. Hopefully the teachers will add the optional '+' to the letter grade.
And school starts again in two weeks. Two more courses, God knows how many more pages to read...but I'll try to do a better job updating this one. Thanks to you all, and go enjoy the rest of summer.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
It's about time
Hiya bookies! Sorry for the gaps in this blog, it's about time to get it going again. Lots of things happening while I'm living the Billthebookguy life and some of them take me away from stuff I'd rather be doing. Like this blog.
Today I'm including a link to a review of a new biography of Erich von Manstein, German Field Marshal, whom I consider perhaps the greatest of all German generals. I know a lot of you aren't World War Two buffs, but maybe you know someone who is. So that's below.
I also want to mention the World Book Market, however. That's one of the changes I spoke of. My website is actually up and running in a prototype way, complete with typo on the home page, and it's tied to the World Book Market. I'm taking down the ad for Biblio shortly and will be using the link directly to my website. Cool how that works, huh? Hopefully you'll be seeing your friendly neighborhood bookseller cropping up all over the place. Tell Chelsea Handler you want to see me as a guest on her show.
Now, the review.
New biography of Erich von Manstein
However at Kursk he disagreed with Hitler over the battle plan, preferring a “backhand” blow, drawing off the enemy in a feint and then smashing them in the flank, to the “forehand” stroke of an attack from existing positions.
Melvin grapples with the Manstein myth and gets the measure of the man.
“He was as bold tactically as Patton or Rommel but always kept the bigger operational picture foremost in his mind,” he says.
Manstein was put on trial for war crimes by a British military court in 1949. Assorted British generals and peers subscribed to pay for his defence with even Churchill donating £25 to the cause.
Out of 17 charges Manstein was convicted of nine. His 18-year sentence was reduced to 12 years but he was released early because Nato’s need for German rearmament during the Cold War required a veteran military figurehead.
Manstein helped plan the new German army and his ideas for battalion formation “became standardised within the German and British Armies by the Seventies”.
While keen to award Manstein recognition for his brilliance, however, Melvin does not let him off the hook.
The British court gave Manstein the benefit of the doubt over the gravest charges he faced but Melvin believes he was disingenuous in asserting that he had no knowledge of extermination operations by Himmler’s security police against suspected partisans, gypsies, commissars and Jews within the area of his command.
Manstein was a devout Christian who never joined the Nazi Party but he was too busy with his dazzling manoeuvres to let his conscience be troubled by the crimes of others in his backyard.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £30
Buy this and other titles at our bookshop, UK postage free: www.expressbookshop.co.uk
Today I'm including a link to a review of a new biography of Erich von Manstein, German Field Marshal, whom I consider perhaps the greatest of all German generals. I know a lot of you aren't World War Two buffs, but maybe you know someone who is. So that's below.
I also want to mention the World Book Market, however. That's one of the changes I spoke of. My website is actually up and running in a prototype way, complete with typo on the home page, and it's tied to the World Book Market. I'm taking down the ad for Biblio shortly and will be using the link directly to my website. Cool how that works, huh? Hopefully you'll be seeing your friendly neighborhood bookseller cropping up all over the place. Tell Chelsea Handler you want to see me as a guest on her show.
Now, the review.
New biography of Erich von Manstein
MANSTEIN: HITLER’S GREATEST GENERAL: MUNGO MELVIN
Manstein: Hitler’s Greatest General: Mungo Melvin
Friday May 14,2010
By Christopher Silvester
ERICH von Manstein is less famous to us than Rommel because no British troops ever faced an army under his command but his German contemporaries and Soviet rivals regarded him as the most brilliant of Hitler’s generals.
Promoted to the rank of field marshal at the age of 54 after his Eleventh Army won the little known and bitterly contested Crimea campaign in the summer of 1942, he was to play a crucial role in the war in the East until Hitler dismissed him as an army group commander 21 months later.
As Mungo Melvin, himself a former general, observes in this crisp, compelling book, the first full-scale biography of Manstein in English: “No other general served Hitler so well whilst disputing his military decisions so consistently.”
From a typical Prussian aristocratic military background Manstein was Gerd von Rundstedt’s chief of staff in the Polish campaign and was the architect of the Sichelschnitt (sickle-cut) plan for the defeat of Allied forces in Flanders and France, culminating in the encirclement of our troops at Dunkirk.
When it came to Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Manstein saw the strategic priority as the defeat of the Red Army, whereas Hitler thought in terms of political and economic objectives such as Leningrad, the Donets Basin industrial region of the Ukraine and the oilfields of the Caucasus.
Unlike Hitler, Manstein favoured, in his own words, “the conception of a subtle fencer who knows how to make an occasional step backwards in order to lunge for the decisive thrust”.
Following the disaster of Stalingrad Manstein conducted a masterly counter-offensive based on this principle, comprising two sequential battles.
However at Kursk he disagreed with Hitler over the battle plan, preferring a “backhand” blow, drawing off the enemy in a feint and then smashing them in the flank, to the “forehand” stroke of an attack from existing positions.
Melvin grapples with the Manstein myth and gets the measure of the man.
“He was as bold tactically as Patton or Rommel but always kept the bigger operational picture foremost in his mind,” he says.
Manstein was put on trial for war crimes by a British military court in 1949. Assorted British generals and peers subscribed to pay for his defence with even Churchill donating £25 to the cause.
Out of 17 charges Manstein was convicted of nine. His 18-year sentence was reduced to 12 years but he was released early because Nato’s need for German rearmament during the Cold War required a veteran military figurehead.
Manstein helped plan the new German army and his ideas for battalion formation “became standardised within the German and British Armies by the Seventies”.
While keen to award Manstein recognition for his brilliance, however, Melvin does not let him off the hook.
The British court gave Manstein the benefit of the doubt over the gravest charges he faced but Melvin believes he was disingenuous in asserting that he had no knowledge of extermination operations by Himmler’s security police against suspected partisans, gypsies, commissars and Jews within the area of his command.
Manstein was a devout Christian who never joined the Nazi Party but he was too busy with his dazzling manoeuvres to let his conscience be troubled by the crimes of others in his backyard.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £30
Buy this and other titles at our bookshop, UK postage free: www.expressbookshop.co.uk
Friday, April 30, 2010
How can I take this seriously?
Good morning bookies. Sorry for the absence once again, life gets a bit wacky sometimes. West Tennessee is supposed to get something like 10" of rain this weekend. Oh boy, where are my floaties?
Today is April 30th, 65 years to the day since Adolf Hitler committed suicide in Berlin. I mention this because today's BBC article focuses on this event with reviews of two books written by Germans who fought for the English in WW2. The article would probably be quite interesting, except it is so riddled with factual errors that it's hard to take it seriously. I had heard that the BBC's journalistic integrity was shot, this seems to confirm this.
Two errors off the top that even cursory students of the war would know: first this sentence, "He had written them on 29 April earlier that year, then committed suicide, probably on 30 April - the exact date remains uncertain."
It does? Where and who, exactly, are debating that he killed himself on April 30th? Every known and credible historian or witness verifies this, there is and never had been debate about this, unless you think aliens whisked him off to Argentina. I have no idea what this guy is talking about. Then, second, there is the well known photo from a brief newsreel of Hitler decorating some Hitler Youth on April 20th, his birthday, in the garden of the New Reichs Chancellery. What's more, we even have the names of some of the boys. This was ten days before he killed himself. Yet the photo bears the caption: "Hitler made his wills and died some two months after this image was taken." Not two months, ten days. Any student of World War II would know that. And if you didn't know that, it's worse, because you would believe this nonsense.
The tipoff should have come at the beginning of the article with the very poorly colorized photo at top. It looks like a 5 year old took crayons to somebody's photo of Hitler on a street.
Well, anyway, for those interested in the books, and they sound fascinating, don't be put off by the remarkably bad article.
Two new books on Hitler by German anti-Nazis
Today is April 30th, 65 years to the day since Adolf Hitler committed suicide in Berlin. I mention this because today's BBC article focuses on this event with reviews of two books written by Germans who fought for the English in WW2. The article would probably be quite interesting, except it is so riddled with factual errors that it's hard to take it seriously. I had heard that the BBC's journalistic integrity was shot, this seems to confirm this.
Two errors off the top that even cursory students of the war would know: first this sentence, "He had written them on 29 April earlier that year, then committed suicide, probably on 30 April - the exact date remains uncertain."
It does? Where and who, exactly, are debating that he killed himself on April 30th? Every known and credible historian or witness verifies this, there is and never had been debate about this, unless you think aliens whisked him off to Argentina. I have no idea what this guy is talking about. Then, second, there is the well known photo from a brief newsreel of Hitler decorating some Hitler Youth on April 20th, his birthday, in the garden of the New Reichs Chancellery. What's more, we even have the names of some of the boys. This was ten days before he killed himself. Yet the photo bears the caption: "Hitler made his wills and died some two months after this image was taken." Not two months, ten days. Any student of World War II would know that. And if you didn't know that, it's worse, because you would believe this nonsense.
The tipoff should have come at the beginning of the article with the very poorly colorized photo at top. It looks like a 5 year old took crayons to somebody's photo of Hitler on a street.
Well, anyway, for those interested in the books, and they sound fascinating, don't be put off by the remarkably bad article.
Two new books on Hitler by German anti-Nazis
Saturday, March 27, 2010
FREE AGENT by Jeremy Duns
It's the weekend, bookies, what are you doing reading this blog when you should be outside enjoying the spring weather? Anyway, here's another review for those of you who can't get enough of my scintillating prose. If you like spy novels, this one should get your attention.
FREE AGENT by Jeremy Duns
Spy novels are supposed to be paranoid, claustrophobic affairs. Who do you trust? Who is lying, who isn’t? When is the author misleading you? Half the fun is trying to figure out what’s really going on. At least, that’s how spy novels unfold when they are done right. And so, it’s quite the compliment to say that with Jeremy Duns’ first novel, Free Agent, it’s quite a while before the reader has a clue to what is really happening.
Paul Dark is a young and eager officer in MI6 when World War II comes to a close; his father is also an officer, and while no longer young he is certainly eager to keep killing. When he recruits his son to help it seems like a straight forward proposition: assassinate Nazis before they can escape, a top secret assignment no one must ever know about. Then the father is killed, murdered, and Paul finds himself being recruited by the Russians.
Twenty-five years later a Russian KGB officer wants to defect, offering details of a British officer recruited by his forerunners right after the end of World War II. Is Paul the double agent? It certainly seems so, and in short order he is running from both the KGB and MI6.
Paul Dark is no knight in shining armor, however. He can kill without compunction, even those he has known and liked for years. And he does. Like the best of his predecessors, the author knows that in the shadow world of spies and counter-spies, no one is ever wholly good and no one wholly evil. So it is with Paul Dark. He’s the protagonist, but calling him a hero might be stretching things.
The author’s style is fast, dialogue clipped. The characters’ internal realities are all strictly maintained, meaning that the reader who pays attention will pick up small details that reinforce the reality and move the story. It’s a fast, well thought out debut. And fortunately there are more on the way.
FREE AGENT by Jeremy Duns
Spy novels are supposed to be paranoid, claustrophobic affairs. Who do you trust? Who is lying, who isn’t? When is the author misleading you? Half the fun is trying to figure out what’s really going on. At least, that’s how spy novels unfold when they are done right. And so, it’s quite the compliment to say that with Jeremy Duns’ first novel, Free Agent, it’s quite a while before the reader has a clue to what is really happening.
Paul Dark is a young and eager officer in MI6 when World War II comes to a close; his father is also an officer, and while no longer young he is certainly eager to keep killing. When he recruits his son to help it seems like a straight forward proposition: assassinate Nazis before they can escape, a top secret assignment no one must ever know about. Then the father is killed, murdered, and Paul finds himself being recruited by the Russians.
Twenty-five years later a Russian KGB officer wants to defect, offering details of a British officer recruited by his forerunners right after the end of World War II. Is Paul the double agent? It certainly seems so, and in short order he is running from both the KGB and MI6.
Paul Dark is no knight in shining armor, however. He can kill without compunction, even those he has known and liked for years. And he does. Like the best of his predecessors, the author knows that in the shadow world of spies and counter-spies, no one is ever wholly good and no one wholly evil. So it is with Paul Dark. He’s the protagonist, but calling him a hero might be stretching things.
The author’s style is fast, dialogue clipped. The characters’ internal realities are all strictly maintained, meaning that the reader who pays attention will pick up small details that reinforce the reality and move the story. It’s a fast, well thought out debut. And fortunately there are more on the way.
Monday, March 22, 2010
WICKED BREAK by Jeff Shelby
Hiya bookies! Some books stick with you long after you read them, and so it is with today's review. It wasn't great literature or anything, but it was fast and well written. The author wasn't trying to be Raymond Chandler, he was just trying to tell a story.
WICKED BREAK by Jeff Shelby
Noah Braddock is minding his own business in the surf off of Mission Beach, California, riding the swells and forgetting the stresses of life as a P.I. He sees the man on the beach watching him, feeling in his gut it’s about a case and not wanting any part of whatever the man wants. But money is money and bills don’t pay themselves.
Peter Pluto’s brother is missing. Linc Pluto is a college student who took their mother’s recent death from cancer quite hard and has dropped out of sight. Worried, Peter wants to make sure all is well. A mutual friend sent him to Noah. A missing person’s case doesn’t seem too threatening so Noah takes the money and the case. Bad choice.
Linc isn’t what he seems to be and Peter doesn’t survive long enough for Noah to question him further. Indeed, it’s when he tries to do find out what Peter isn’t telling him that he almost winds up dead himself, right next to what is left of Peter Pluto. Beaten to a pulp by the same skinheads who killed Pluto, Noah enlists the help his giant friend Carter, (think defensive end with more propensity for violence), and vows to find Linc and get even with those who attacked him.
The author is mining familiar territory in Wicked Break. The young, brash but reluctant P.I. who lives by his own rules; Carter, the tough, deux-ex-machina sidekick who does the dirty work and enjoys it; gangsters, gangsters’ tough-but-loveable women-folk, Nazis, shootouts, ex-girlfriends. All of the classic elements of the P.I. novel are here. And yet, as unoriginal as this all may seem, Wicked Break works beautifully because the author knows exactly what he’s doing. The prose is sharp and fast, the dialogue tough but real, the characters defined. In short, what has always made P.I. novels work well is on display in this book.
If you like other contemporary authors such as Steve Hamilton, Harlan Coben or Robert Crais, it’s almost a sure bet you’ll find Noah Braddock and Carter as welcome as old friends you’ve just never met before.
WICKED BREAK by Jeff Shelby
Noah Braddock is minding his own business in the surf off of Mission Beach, California, riding the swells and forgetting the stresses of life as a P.I. He sees the man on the beach watching him, feeling in his gut it’s about a case and not wanting any part of whatever the man wants. But money is money and bills don’t pay themselves.
Peter Pluto’s brother is missing. Linc Pluto is a college student who took their mother’s recent death from cancer quite hard and has dropped out of sight. Worried, Peter wants to make sure all is well. A mutual friend sent him to Noah. A missing person’s case doesn’t seem too threatening so Noah takes the money and the case. Bad choice.
Linc isn’t what he seems to be and Peter doesn’t survive long enough for Noah to question him further. Indeed, it’s when he tries to do find out what Peter isn’t telling him that he almost winds up dead himself, right next to what is left of Peter Pluto. Beaten to a pulp by the same skinheads who killed Pluto, Noah enlists the help his giant friend Carter, (think defensive end with more propensity for violence), and vows to find Linc and get even with those who attacked him.
The author is mining familiar territory in Wicked Break. The young, brash but reluctant P.I. who lives by his own rules; Carter, the tough, deux-ex-machina sidekick who does the dirty work and enjoys it; gangsters, gangsters’ tough-but-loveable women-folk, Nazis, shootouts, ex-girlfriends. All of the classic elements of the P.I. novel are here. And yet, as unoriginal as this all may seem, Wicked Break works beautifully because the author knows exactly what he’s doing. The prose is sharp and fast, the dialogue tough but real, the characters defined. In short, what has always made P.I. novels work well is on display in this book.
If you like other contemporary authors such as Steve Hamilton, Harlan Coben or Robert Crais, it’s almost a sure bet you’ll find Noah Braddock and Carter as welcome as old friends you’ve just never met before.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
THE INVISIBLE by Andrew Britton
Good morning bookies! Your friendly neighborhood bookseller is pretty tired today. He spent most of yesterday and into the wee hours this morning helping someone move, waking up to rain and cold weather. Yesterday's high was 71, tonight we may have snow, Wednesday back into the low 70's. West Tennessee weather is rarely dull.
Before posting today's review, I should explain the format for most of these. Right now the reviews I'm putting up were mostly done for iloveamysterynewsletter.com. They all need to be of a certain length, I generally shoot for 300-400 words. Given that, there isn't time to do major in-depth examination, and I don't want to give away major plot points, so instead I shoot for an overall feel of the author and his/her work. Sometimes I get there, sometimes not, that's for you to judge.
THE INVISIBLE by Andrew Britton
Ryan Kealey has had enough. After almost being killed thwarting a terrorist attack in New York City, an attack that wounded his girlfriend and estranged the pair, he disappeared into the wildernesses of the world, seeking solitude and maybe even peace. The shadow world of the CIA was no longer his and he was glad.
Except that’s not how things work when you are a highly trained operative. In the Kashmir region of Pakistan a busload of western adventurers has gone missing, kidnapped, followed quickly by a violent attack on the motorcade of the US Secretary of State who had come to discuss measures to retrieve the hostages. The US ambassador is killed and the Secretary is also in the hands of the terrorists. But the Pakistanis are not happy with the US over an arms deal with India and their cooperation is lukewarm, at best. What is needed is a small team of experts to covertly infiltrate Pakistan and find the Secretary. What is needed is Ryan Kealey.
Given the chance to re-unite with his girlfriend, Naomi, on the mission, Kealey signs on and gets to work. But there are things he doesn’t know and other things he wasn’t told, things that might get him and his team killed, and he’s not happy about it. A fact-finding mission to Spain leads to a much higher price than anyone had anticipated.
The action is realistic, the characters well though out and the locales quite believable. For those who love the genre of action thrillers, Britton is certainly a new voice that commands attention. One might wish for some judicious editing, the descriptions do occasionally bog down in unnecessary detail, but that’s a quibble. The Invisible is an entertaining read with thought-provoking overtones, which is exactly what you would hope for.
Before posting today's review, I should explain the format for most of these. Right now the reviews I'm putting up were mostly done for iloveamysterynewsletter.com. They all need to be of a certain length, I generally shoot for 300-400 words. Given that, there isn't time to do major in-depth examination, and I don't want to give away major plot points, so instead I shoot for an overall feel of the author and his/her work. Sometimes I get there, sometimes not, that's for you to judge.
THE INVISIBLE by Andrew Britton
Ryan Kealey has had enough. After almost being killed thwarting a terrorist attack in New York City, an attack that wounded his girlfriend and estranged the pair, he disappeared into the wildernesses of the world, seeking solitude and maybe even peace. The shadow world of the CIA was no longer his and he was glad.
Except that’s not how things work when you are a highly trained operative. In the Kashmir region of Pakistan a busload of western adventurers has gone missing, kidnapped, followed quickly by a violent attack on the motorcade of the US Secretary of State who had come to discuss measures to retrieve the hostages. The US ambassador is killed and the Secretary is also in the hands of the terrorists. But the Pakistanis are not happy with the US over an arms deal with India and their cooperation is lukewarm, at best. What is needed is a small team of experts to covertly infiltrate Pakistan and find the Secretary. What is needed is Ryan Kealey.
Given the chance to re-unite with his girlfriend, Naomi, on the mission, Kealey signs on and gets to work. But there are things he doesn’t know and other things he wasn’t told, things that might get him and his team killed, and he’s not happy about it. A fact-finding mission to Spain leads to a much higher price than anyone had anticipated.
The action is realistic, the characters well though out and the locales quite believable. For those who love the genre of action thrillers, Britton is certainly a new voice that commands attention. One might wish for some judicious editing, the descriptions do occasionally bog down in unnecessary detail, but that’s a quibble. The Invisible is an entertaining read with thought-provoking overtones, which is exactly what you would hope for.
Friday, March 19, 2010
It's Friday already? How about another review? OUT OF RANGE by C.J. Box
Good morning bookies! The sun is shining in West Tennessee today, a high of 72 expected, with the high Sunday going to hit all of 45. In between? Storms. Don't be surprised if your friendly neighborhood bookseller's house does a Wizard of Oz thing and goes spinning off into the stratosphere. Anyway, none of the news from the book world seemed exciting, so here's another review to keep you occupied.
OUT OF RANGE by C.J. Box
“Before going outside to his pickup for his gun, the Wyoming game warden cooked and ate four and a half pounds of meat.” This first line from ‘Out of Range’ by C.J. Box pretty much sums up the writer’s outlook on telling a story: get to the meat of the story (pun intended) and forget the fancy trimmings. And so he does in this fifth installment in the increasingly popular series about game warden and detective Joe Pickett.
Pickett is happy enough in his hometown of Saddlestring. His mother-in-law is getting married, and to a rich local rancher no less, he and his wife are making plans and generally enjoying life. Then comes word that his friend and fellow warden Will Jensen has committed suicide and Pickett is needed to fill in at Jensen’s post in Jackson until a permanent replacement can be found. But Jackson isn’t like Saddlestring and suicide just might be murder.
Before he knows it, Pickett is in the middle of some powerful people with layered agendas, both open and secret, environmentalists at all levels of commitment, the obscenely rich who are used to being obeyed and, not least, a beautiful (but married) lady who catches Pickett’s eye. But if a murdered is afoot, as seems likely, who is it and has done an out-of-his-element Pickett find the culprit?
C.J. Box never fails to entertain the reader and his straight forward style is ideal for a series based in the open west, where long descriptions are just as useless as short ones for describing the wonders of the area, where the people don’t talk much and make sure they say something when they do. Out of Range continues a series the reader has come to rely on for originality and style, and it no way does it disappoint.
OUT OF RANGE by C.J. Box
“Before going outside to his pickup for his gun, the Wyoming game warden cooked and ate four and a half pounds of meat.” This first line from ‘Out of Range’ by C.J. Box pretty much sums up the writer’s outlook on telling a story: get to the meat of the story (pun intended) and forget the fancy trimmings. And so he does in this fifth installment in the increasingly popular series about game warden and detective Joe Pickett.
Pickett is happy enough in his hometown of Saddlestring. His mother-in-law is getting married, and to a rich local rancher no less, he and his wife are making plans and generally enjoying life. Then comes word that his friend and fellow warden Will Jensen has committed suicide and Pickett is needed to fill in at Jensen’s post in Jackson until a permanent replacement can be found. But Jackson isn’t like Saddlestring and suicide just might be murder.
Before he knows it, Pickett is in the middle of some powerful people with layered agendas, both open and secret, environmentalists at all levels of commitment, the obscenely rich who are used to being obeyed and, not least, a beautiful (but married) lady who catches Pickett’s eye. But if a murdered is afoot, as seems likely, who is it and has done an out-of-his-element Pickett find the culprit?
C.J. Box never fails to entertain the reader and his straight forward style is ideal for a series based in the open west, where long descriptions are just as useless as short ones for describing the wonders of the area, where the people don’t talk much and make sure they say something when they do. Out of Range continues a series the reader has come to rely on for originality and style, and it no way does it disappoint.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
CHILD 44 by Tom Rob Smith
Hiya bookies. Today's review is for one of the seminal books of the last 10 years. If you haven't read Child 44, it's your loss. I hope you enjoy my review.
CHILD 44 by Tom Rob Smith.
There is no crime. Not in Stalin’s USSR of 1953. The Soviet society is so perfect, so ideal, that there is no reason for crime and therefore it follows that crime does not exist. Which makes it very hard to catch criminals.
Leo Demidov is an officer of the MGB, the State Security Police, a prestigious job that requires him to hunt down and arrest traitors and spies. And while there might not be crime in the Soviet Union, there are lots and lots of traitors to the Revolution. They can be anyone, anywhere, and treason may be nothing more than a momentary lapse in revolutionary zeal, a thought, a doubt, that betrays independent thought that works against the common good. Protecting the state from such deadly internal enemies is Leo’s job, and Leo is very, very good at his job. Too good, as it turns out.
Two vignettes, seemingly unrelated to the following plot, should not be ignored. A boy disappears in the forest while chasing a cat during the years of collectivization, when millions of Russian citizens were intentionally starved to death. The cat isn’t his pet, it’s to be his dinner. Later, in Moscow, two brothers have a snowball fight that turns ugly.
Like all truly great thrillers, the place and time are as much a character as Leo, or his wife Raisa, or his commander. The paranoia of the times pervades all. A mis-spoken word isn’t necessary to condemn a person; a glance at the wrong moment at the wrong person is plenty to bring a death sentence. Life is lived knowing that no one has rights and at any moment a sinister knock may bring twenty years in the gulag. There is no color here, only gray, bleak and cheerless.
And the criminal that does not exist, the one Leo becomes obsessed with catching, is a serial killer of children. Unless this man is a spy, or perhaps unbalanced or homosexual and therefore outside the norms of Soviet society, unless there is a reason for his actions, then having a criminal in their midst contravenes the rules of the state. In turn, that means the state can be wrong, which is not possible. So it must be subversion.
Child 44 is a riveting story in itself, but it is also a story that teaches while keeping the reader glued to their seat. There is very little dialogue here, and at first it can be annoying. But as the pages turn the reader realizes that in Soviet Russian the spoken word was precious, people never spoke their mind and so speech was innocuous, meaningless. What dialogue there is becomes special, cherished. A neat trick by a new author, from whom one can only expect great things.
CHILD 44 by Tom Rob Smith.
There is no crime. Not in Stalin’s USSR of 1953. The Soviet society is so perfect, so ideal, that there is no reason for crime and therefore it follows that crime does not exist. Which makes it very hard to catch criminals.
Leo Demidov is an officer of the MGB, the State Security Police, a prestigious job that requires him to hunt down and arrest traitors and spies. And while there might not be crime in the Soviet Union, there are lots and lots of traitors to the Revolution. They can be anyone, anywhere, and treason may be nothing more than a momentary lapse in revolutionary zeal, a thought, a doubt, that betrays independent thought that works against the common good. Protecting the state from such deadly internal enemies is Leo’s job, and Leo is very, very good at his job. Too good, as it turns out.
Two vignettes, seemingly unrelated to the following plot, should not be ignored. A boy disappears in the forest while chasing a cat during the years of collectivization, when millions of Russian citizens were intentionally starved to death. The cat isn’t his pet, it’s to be his dinner. Later, in Moscow, two brothers have a snowball fight that turns ugly.
Like all truly great thrillers, the place and time are as much a character as Leo, or his wife Raisa, or his commander. The paranoia of the times pervades all. A mis-spoken word isn’t necessary to condemn a person; a glance at the wrong moment at the wrong person is plenty to bring a death sentence. Life is lived knowing that no one has rights and at any moment a sinister knock may bring twenty years in the gulag. There is no color here, only gray, bleak and cheerless.
And the criminal that does not exist, the one Leo becomes obsessed with catching, is a serial killer of children. Unless this man is a spy, or perhaps unbalanced or homosexual and therefore outside the norms of Soviet society, unless there is a reason for his actions, then having a criminal in their midst contravenes the rules of the state. In turn, that means the state can be wrong, which is not possible. So it must be subversion.
Child 44 is a riveting story in itself, but it is also a story that teaches while keeping the reader glued to their seat. There is very little dialogue here, and at first it can be annoying. But as the pages turn the reader realizes that in Soviet Russian the spoken word was precious, people never spoke their mind and so speech was innocuous, meaningless. What dialogue there is becomes special, cherished. A neat trick by a new author, from whom one can only expect great things.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
NO SLEEP FOR THE DEAD by Adrian Magson
Good morning bookies! Time comes on apace and today's blog is another beautifully crafted, well reasoned crime review from one of the best reviewers in the world. Me, of course. I go to great lengths to make sure that you only get the best.
NO SLEEP FOR THE DEAD by Adrian Magson. In 1989 an Eastern
German is killed by border guards while fleeing through no-man’s land into the West. No big deal, really; it’s happened enough times before. Except this time the defector was set-up by those he was fleeing to join, a double-cross that comes back to haunt the junior Military Policeman assigned to the case, Frank Palmer.
Many years later Palmer is a PI in London, working with long-time friend Riley Gavin, an investigative reporter looking for reports to investigate. The world of freelance journalism isn’t all that lucrative at the moment, or particularly busy, so when Palmer asks her to join him in serving some papers to a local scam artist she’s happy to oblige. It’s easy enough, the papers are served without a hitch, but as they are riding the elevator back downstairs Frank encounters the ghost of a man who should have died long before, a man who was, and is, very dangerous.
Following up this weird encounter, Frank discovers that the man who should have been dead, who should have died in a car wreck with Frank’s partner investigating the border shooting, has become a smuggler of art and possibly things much, much more dangerous. Things become sticky as Frank and Riley investigate, trailed by an old nemesis come back for revenge.
The tale is well told, the pacing good, the characters well though out...and yet it sometimes feels as if the author is going through the paces. The danger level is high yet the reader never quite feels as through the Frank and Riley are really in danger, that something bad might actually happen to them. Imagine the classic movie ‘Casablanca’ without Bogart and Bergman in the roles of Rick and Ilsa. It still would have been a great movie, but it would not have been the same movie. So it is here. ‘No Sleep For the Dead’ is highly entertaining and well told, but the reader might be left thinking it could have been something more.
NO SLEEP FOR THE DEAD by Adrian Magson. In 1989 an Eastern
German is killed by border guards while fleeing through no-man’s land into the West. No big deal, really; it’s happened enough times before. Except this time the defector was set-up by those he was fleeing to join, a double-cross that comes back to haunt the junior Military Policeman assigned to the case, Frank Palmer.
Many years later Palmer is a PI in London, working with long-time friend Riley Gavin, an investigative reporter looking for reports to investigate. The world of freelance journalism isn’t all that lucrative at the moment, or particularly busy, so when Palmer asks her to join him in serving some papers to a local scam artist she’s happy to oblige. It’s easy enough, the papers are served without a hitch, but as they are riding the elevator back downstairs Frank encounters the ghost of a man who should have died long before, a man who was, and is, very dangerous.
Following up this weird encounter, Frank discovers that the man who should have been dead, who should have died in a car wreck with Frank’s partner investigating the border shooting, has become a smuggler of art and possibly things much, much more dangerous. Things become sticky as Frank and Riley investigate, trailed by an old nemesis come back for revenge.
The tale is well told, the pacing good, the characters well though out...and yet it sometimes feels as if the author is going through the paces. The danger level is high yet the reader never quite feels as through the Frank and Riley are really in danger, that something bad might actually happen to them. Imagine the classic movie ‘Casablanca’ without Bogart and Bergman in the roles of Rick and Ilsa. It still would have been a great movie, but it would not have been the same movie. So it is here. ‘No Sleep For the Dead’ is highly entertaining and well told, but the reader might be left thinking it could have been something more.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
HADES by Russell Andrews
Heya bookies! An old online friend wrote me today, Dan Schrager, author of The Code, it was damned good to hear from him. We knew each other on the old AOL boards, back before AOL decided too many people were using their service and they needed to run most of them off. If you make it here Dan, say hello to the nice people who are bored enough to read this.
So here's another review, from 2007, a book that still works very well. Find a copy and you'll love it.
HADES by Russell Andrews. You have a choice. You can take one empty55 gallon drum, fill it with liquid rocket fuel, seal it, install a fuse, wrap a saddle around it, sit on said saddle and light said fuse, then hold on for dear life. Or you can read Russell Andrews’ newest Justin Westwood thriller. Take your pick, the experience will be about the same either way.
Westwood has left the cozy confines of his hometown, Providence, Rhode Island, to become police chief in East End Harbor, Long Island, a quiet enclave filled with rich people looking for quiet lives. He has a new girlfriend, Abby Harmon, who comes complete with rich husband Evan Harmon. She’s fun, hubby doesn’t much seem to care what she does. Convenient and stimulating. Until Evan Harmon turns up dead and ambitious DA Larry Silverbush sees headlines and the governor’s mansion rising over the conviction of a chief of police with a motive to kill. Before he knows it Justin is suspended and suspected.
He is not without friends, however. Going home to Providence, Justin hooks on to the Providence Police Department and a consult and begins digging into the tangles of deceit surrounding the dead man. Or two dead men, as the bodies begin to pile up. The stew is mixed with a third victim, an FBI agent, no less, an old girl-friend, high stakes finance, international trade, missing platinum, mafia dons and hit-men, rogue FBI agents and, of all things, ninjas. It’s enough to make a lesser man look for a different line of work.
But not Justin Westwood. Andrews has a terrific ear for dialogue and uses it precisely, knowing when to let it flow and when to cut it short. There is little wasted language here; unlike some books, the reader is never tempted to skip paragraphs of narrative that interrupt the flow. Like the newly ignited 55 gallon drum, Hades takes off and never stops until the truth splatters across the page like a missile that has run out of fuel and plunged back to Earth.
So here's another review, from 2007, a book that still works very well. Find a copy and you'll love it.
HADES by Russell Andrews. You have a choice. You can take one empty55 gallon drum, fill it with liquid rocket fuel, seal it, install a fuse, wrap a saddle around it, sit on said saddle and light said fuse, then hold on for dear life. Or you can read Russell Andrews’ newest Justin Westwood thriller. Take your pick, the experience will be about the same either way.
Westwood has left the cozy confines of his hometown, Providence, Rhode Island, to become police chief in East End Harbor, Long Island, a quiet enclave filled with rich people looking for quiet lives. He has a new girlfriend, Abby Harmon, who comes complete with rich husband Evan Harmon. She’s fun, hubby doesn’t much seem to care what she does. Convenient and stimulating. Until Evan Harmon turns up dead and ambitious DA Larry Silverbush sees headlines and the governor’s mansion rising over the conviction of a chief of police with a motive to kill. Before he knows it Justin is suspended and suspected.
He is not without friends, however. Going home to Providence, Justin hooks on to the Providence Police Department and a consult and begins digging into the tangles of deceit surrounding the dead man. Or two dead men, as the bodies begin to pile up. The stew is mixed with a third victim, an FBI agent, no less, an old girl-friend, high stakes finance, international trade, missing platinum, mafia dons and hit-men, rogue FBI agents and, of all things, ninjas. It’s enough to make a lesser man look for a different line of work.
But not Justin Westwood. Andrews has a terrific ear for dialogue and uses it precisely, knowing when to let it flow and when to cut it short. There is little wasted language here; unlike some books, the reader is never tempted to skip paragraphs of narrative that interrupt the flow. Like the newly ignited 55 gallon drum, Hades takes off and never stops until the truth splatters across the page like a missile that has run out of fuel and plunged back to Earth.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Killer View by Ridley Pearson
KILLER VIEW by Ridley Pearson.
Walt Fleming likes being the Sheriff of Sun Valley, Idaho, playground and sometime residence of the rich and famous; he likes it despite all of the rich and famous people. Being a native, Walt prefers the back-country way of life to the glitz of people whom the paparazzi chase down as prey for their cameras. He prefers living slow, raising his twin daughters and spending time with his loving wife.
Except Walt no longer has a loving wife, he has an estranged wife, who happens to be living with his best deputy. And while Walt does have his kids, he just doesn’t have time to take care of them properly because he’s the sheriff, not the deputy. And that’s all before one of his best friends gets killed during a night-rescue operation in the mountains.
It takes a while to figure out exactly what happened to Randy Aker and, when Walt goes in search of Randy’s brother Mark, it takes a while to figure out that Mark is missing and quite possibly kidnapped. Things begin getting very complicated very quickly, and the girls need their supper.
Mining a well-known but still rich vein of the mystery sub-genre, the modern western sheriff, Pearson joins the ranks of such writers as C.J. Box or Michael McGarrity as the best of the lot. Killer View noses on any number of occasions into some pretty familiar territory, yet it stays well above the average by the deft touch of veteran Pearson, never feeling stale, never taking the easy way out, with some truly well-written dialogue. This second entry in the Walt Fleming series may finally earn Pearson the thriller audience he has long deserved.
Walt Fleming likes being the Sheriff of Sun Valley, Idaho, playground and sometime residence of the rich and famous; he likes it despite all of the rich and famous people. Being a native, Walt prefers the back-country way of life to the glitz of people whom the paparazzi chase down as prey for their cameras. He prefers living slow, raising his twin daughters and spending time with his loving wife.
Except Walt no longer has a loving wife, he has an estranged wife, who happens to be living with his best deputy. And while Walt does have his kids, he just doesn’t have time to take care of them properly because he’s the sheriff, not the deputy. And that’s all before one of his best friends gets killed during a night-rescue operation in the mountains.
It takes a while to figure out exactly what happened to Randy Aker and, when Walt goes in search of Randy’s brother Mark, it takes a while to figure out that Mark is missing and quite possibly kidnapped. Things begin getting very complicated very quickly, and the girls need their supper.
Mining a well-known but still rich vein of the mystery sub-genre, the modern western sheriff, Pearson joins the ranks of such writers as C.J. Box or Michael McGarrity as the best of the lot. Killer View noses on any number of occasions into some pretty familiar territory, yet it stays well above the average by the deft touch of veteran Pearson, never feeling stale, never taking the easy way out, with some truly well-written dialogue. This second entry in the Walt Fleming series may finally earn Pearson the thriller audience he has long deserved.
Carpe Carp!
Good morning bookies! I didn't have a title for today's blog, I thought Seize the Carp! made as much sense as anything else. With West Tennessee again grey and overcast this short blog entry is just to let everyone know that I'll be working through my rather extensive backlist of reviews and posting them here over the next few weeks and months, and encouraging anyone with reviews they might like published to send them to me.
School is taking a LOT of time. The paper I'm writing now has to be at least 15 pages, I'm on page 13 and am probably less than half done. Gack! That means some serious editing ahead. The one after that I'll be padding out, I can tell, which is much harder than hacking off. Double gack and Carpe Carp!
Oh, one final thing. My website is just about done, now just getting the domain name back in place, then it's live. Cool stuff, at least for me.
School is taking a LOT of time. The paper I'm writing now has to be at least 15 pages, I'm on page 13 and am probably less than half done. Gack! That means some serious editing ahead. The one after that I'll be padding out, I can tell, which is much harder than hacking off. Double gack and Carpe Carp!
Oh, one final thing. My website is just about done, now just getting the domain name back in place, then it's live. Cool stuff, at least for me.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Lying is good business
Good morning bookies! Spring is still begrudging the mid-south her shining face, even as temps rise very slowly into the realm of normal and slightly above. Yet, whether winter comes back or not, it does seem a corner has been turned. Thank God!
You've known it for a long time, I'm sure, but accuracy does not matter if the subject matter is good enough. That's the lesson-re-learned from Charles Pellgrino's Last Train From Hiroshima. Essentially, the entire book has been compromised by the lies that have already come to light and inferences that more are in there. So what? After Henry Holt announced they were shutting down production sales sky-rocketed and James Cameron avowed that just because it wasn't accurate didn't mean he wouldn't make the movie.
So what's the lesson? I don't know, I really don't. I'm a historian, I sweat every little detail, no matter how inconsequential it may seem. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. Maybe all I need to do is write something wildly inaccurate but popular with a certain group, sell the film rights and cash the royalty checks. It would seem that if the politics are popular, nothing else matters.
Last Train catches fire after lies exposed
You've known it for a long time, I'm sure, but accuracy does not matter if the subject matter is good enough. That's the lesson-re-learned from Charles Pellgrino's Last Train From Hiroshima. Essentially, the entire book has been compromised by the lies that have already come to light and inferences that more are in there. So what? After Henry Holt announced they were shutting down production sales sky-rocketed and James Cameron avowed that just because it wasn't accurate didn't mean he wouldn't make the movie.
So what's the lesson? I don't know, I really don't. I'm a historian, I sweat every little detail, no matter how inconsequential it may seem. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. Maybe all I need to do is write something wildly inaccurate but popular with a certain group, sell the film rights and cash the royalty checks. It would seem that if the politics are popular, nothing else matters.
Last Train catches fire after lies exposed
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Ghost Train From Hiroshima
Good morning bookies! It cloudy and grey and 35 degrees in West Tennessee. Nothing like weatherman's spring, eh?
Charles Pellegrino's Last Train From Hiroshima was widely acclaimed, won awards, was optioned for a movie by no less a personage than James Cameron and generally was accepted as great historical writing. Books implying that America was wrong for using the A-bomb are nothing new, of course, or telling pitiful stories of Japanese civilians who were there when hell came to Earth, or any one of about a thousand other agendas that seem to get wrapped around any controversial subject. And few subjects are as controversial as the sole use of atomic weapons.
The big problem with Pellegrino's book is that, well, some of it didn't happen. Indeed, it would appear that a lot of it was made up out of whole cloth. For political reasons? I don't know. Did Pellegrino get duped? Maybe. Or was this nothing more than greed from an author who has known controversy before? I don't know. Whatever the reasons, Pellegrino's publisher has pulled the book, which means they can no longer stand by it.
To be clear, however: I am damned glad we dropped those bombs. Not that I enjoy the thought of civilians being incinerated, but that was already happening. The Tokyo fire raids killed at least as many civilians as the Hiroshima attack, but you never hear about those. Because the Japanese were willing to accept such losses to keep the war going. If the two atom bombs had not worked the only alternative was to invade Japan.
I had 4 uncles serving in the military at the time, 3 in the Army, 1 in the Seabees. All 4 were scheduled to have been included in the invasion of Japan, an invasion that would have cost more than 1 million US casualties, based on what happened at Okinawa. Chances are good I would have lost at least one of my uncles, and one was too many.
Oops.
Charles Pellegrino's Last Train From Hiroshima was widely acclaimed, won awards, was optioned for a movie by no less a personage than James Cameron and generally was accepted as great historical writing. Books implying that America was wrong for using the A-bomb are nothing new, of course, or telling pitiful stories of Japanese civilians who were there when hell came to Earth, or any one of about a thousand other agendas that seem to get wrapped around any controversial subject. And few subjects are as controversial as the sole use of atomic weapons.
The big problem with Pellegrino's book is that, well, some of it didn't happen. Indeed, it would appear that a lot of it was made up out of whole cloth. For political reasons? I don't know. Did Pellegrino get duped? Maybe. Or was this nothing more than greed from an author who has known controversy before? I don't know. Whatever the reasons, Pellegrino's publisher has pulled the book, which means they can no longer stand by it.
To be clear, however: I am damned glad we dropped those bombs. Not that I enjoy the thought of civilians being incinerated, but that was already happening. The Tokyo fire raids killed at least as many civilians as the Hiroshima attack, but you never hear about those. Because the Japanese were willing to accept such losses to keep the war going. If the two atom bombs had not worked the only alternative was to invade Japan.
I had 4 uncles serving in the military at the time, 3 in the Army, 1 in the Seabees. All 4 were scheduled to have been included in the invasion of Japan, an invasion that would have cost more than 1 million US casualties, based on what happened at Okinawa. Chances are good I would have lost at least one of my uncles, and one was too many.
Oops.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Weatherman's Spring
Good morning bookies! Weatherman's Spring begins today, the unofficial meteorological beginning of the season of newness and rebirth. Thank God. The paper today said our average high temperature for February was 37.5 degrees, about 8 degrees below normal. I didn't know it had been that warm.
*** For you mystery lovers out there, the new issue of iloveamysterynewsletter has been posted, better known as ILAM. Quite simply, this is the best mystery review site on the web, because yours truly reviews there. I will tell you in advance that I had quibbles with two reviews in this issue, the new Robert Crais and James Hall books. Neither reviewer seems to have read these authors before, whereas I've written every scrap they've published and, in the case of Hall, a lot of stuff he hasn't published. They appear to be clueless about the backlists and that flaws their reviews. Sorry to those authors for my negative review of their reviews, but the reviewer has to review as he or she sees fit.
***Today, we look at a couple of new books about World War II as it affected women. In the first, Why Did I Have to be a Girl?, Gabriele Kopp becomes the very first woman ever to write under how own name about being raped when the Red Army poured into Germany during World War II. No one knows exactly how many women were raped and/or murdered by the Red Army, but the low side estimates are in the 2 million range. The Western Allies, aka England and America, took the view that Germany more or less had it coming, since it attacked the USSR without provocation. Of course, that ignores the fact that the USSR attacked Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Rumania without provocation, but who's keeping track, right? And as for what a 15 year old girl could have done to 'deserve' such treatment...well, that's not a question the Allies were worried about at the time. Anyway, Kopp survived and went on to have a fine career and has bravely told her story.
*** Our second book about women in World War II is a novel based on history, the history of British women working on farms to feed the country during the war. Known as the British Land Girls a number of their survivors aren't happy with this book, as it makes them out to be nymphomaniacs, or so they say. Not having read it I can't comment, and not being overly familiar with the British Land Girls. However, not much has been written about the contribution of women to the war efforts only all sides, so this book fills in a gap, regardless of any flaws. And let's face it, it's a novel intended to sell and titillate. Sounds like it did that.
Once a Land Girl by Angela Huth
*** For you mystery lovers out there, the new issue of iloveamysterynewsletter has been posted, better known as ILAM. Quite simply, this is the best mystery review site on the web, because yours truly reviews there. I will tell you in advance that I had quibbles with two reviews in this issue, the new Robert Crais and James Hall books. Neither reviewer seems to have read these authors before, whereas I've written every scrap they've published and, in the case of Hall, a lot of stuff he hasn't published. They appear to be clueless about the backlists and that flaws their reviews. Sorry to those authors for my negative review of their reviews, but the reviewer has to review as he or she sees fit.
***Today, we look at a couple of new books about World War II as it affected women. In the first, Why Did I Have to be a Girl?, Gabriele Kopp becomes the very first woman ever to write under how own name about being raped when the Red Army poured into Germany during World War II. No one knows exactly how many women were raped and/or murdered by the Red Army, but the low side estimates are in the 2 million range. The Western Allies, aka England and America, took the view that Germany more or less had it coming, since it attacked the USSR without provocation. Of course, that ignores the fact that the USSR attacked Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Rumania without provocation, but who's keeping track, right? And as for what a 15 year old girl could have done to 'deserve' such treatment...well, that's not a question the Allies were worried about at the time. Anyway, Kopp survived and went on to have a fine career and has bravely told her story.
*** Our second book about women in World War II is a novel based on history, the history of British women working on farms to feed the country during the war. Known as the British Land Girls a number of their survivors aren't happy with this book, as it makes them out to be nymphomaniacs, or so they say. Not having read it I can't comment, and not being overly familiar with the British Land Girls. However, not much has been written about the contribution of women to the war efforts only all sides, so this book fills in a gap, regardless of any flaws. And let's face it, it's a novel intended to sell and titillate. Sounds like it did that.
Once a Land Girl by Angela Huth
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Shooting Il Duce
Good morning bookies! It's cold again in West Tennessee, way below normal as it has been since November, maybe not so cold as it has been. No sign of Spring yet, but harsh winter's grip might be slipping.
Today's blog entry is a review of a book about the woman who shot Benito Mussolini in 1926. Let's remember that he had only been in power a few years at that point and Fascism was well thought of by the western democracies, especially England. Italy had been an ally of the British and French in World War One, not an enemy as she would be in 1940, and the press looked benignly on Italy and Mussolini. So when Violet Gibson shot him (in the nose!) it was considered a terrible thing.
The Woman Who Shot Mussolini by Frances Stonor Saunders sounds like one really interesting book. If the woman can capture the period as a backdrop it could even be captivating.
Today's blog entry is a review of a book about the woman who shot Benito Mussolini in 1926. Let's remember that he had only been in power a few years at that point and Fascism was well thought of by the western democracies, especially England. Italy had been an ally of the British and French in World War One, not an enemy as she would be in 1940, and the press looked benignly on Italy and Mussolini. So when Violet Gibson shot him (in the nose!) it was considered a terrible thing.
The Woman Who Shot Mussolini by Frances Stonor Saunders sounds like one really interesting book. If the woman can capture the period as a backdrop it could even be captivating.
Friday, February 26, 2010
CROSSFIRE BY Miyuki Myabe
Another ILAM review that was published in 2006. I hope you enjoy it.
CROSSFIRE by Miyuki Myabe
One of the great pleasures in crime fiction is learning of worlds and people we don't know and probably never will. Whether it's Sweden or Australia, ancient Rome or a monastery in the Dark Ages, first-rate crime writers can whisk us away on adventures we would never otherwise have. And if such an alien environment is defined by one or two particular authors, then surely crime fiction in modern Japan wears the face of Miyuki Miyabe.
Defining foreign crime novels in American terms is always difficult, especially a world as different as Japan, so let's think of Crossfire combining the dark brutality of Blade Runner with the twisted honor of The Godfather. And in a world traditionally reserved solely for men, Miyabe gives us two female detectives as driven to rage against the evils of their machine as they are different. Chikako Ishizu is a typical by-the-book cop who is as archetypal in her way as a Marine drill sergeant. Junko Aoki is a gorgeous younger cop who could succeed at any she chooses, and she has chosen to fight the evil she sees invading the canyons and neon of Tokyo. It helps that she has the power to start fires.
And yet the themes are universal. Gangs, the interests of the moneyed class, chases, all the usual ingredients of urban crime novels are here in abundance as the two detectives track down the bad guys in a surreal world of burning embers prophetic dreams. Unlike many foreign novels where the different names and places can be hard to visualize or understand, Miyabe has the ability to make Japan seem easily real. Spare prose and uncluttered dialogue move the pace quickly. Writers unfamiliar with their landscape sometimes overwhelm the reader with the minutia of their research, but not so here. The author writes of home and it shows.
One paragraph encapsulates the universality of this novel, despite its exotic setting.
“She'd seen a lot of bad things. She'd seen a lot of evil people. Kiechi Asaba's brand of evil could be found anywhere. It was unbelievably common. Guys like that were the dregs of society, and as long as society was a living, functioning organism,
they could never be eradicated. They had to be exterminated when encountered. That was all.”
Crossfire is a fast-paced journey into a desperate world where good and evil fight head on, without trappings and without mercy, where all that matters is who wins and who loses. Readers who enjoy stripped down, raw-knuckled rocket-rides down the Quixotic path of fighting the tidal wave of evil will find Crossfire a book to remember.
TOMB OF THE GOLDEN BIRD by Elizabeth Peters
Okay bookies, I admit it. I'm a big fan of Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody series of mysteries, so much so that I've also listened to the unabridged audiobook of A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, the book that inspired the series. Someone asked me if this series wasn't a bit romancy for me. Well, yeah, maybe. I do get tired of Amelia lusting after Emerson's body, but that seems a small price to pay for the great books that follow.
This review originally ran in iloveamysterynewsletter.com.
TOMB OF THE GOLDEN BIRD by Elizabeth Peters.
The 1922 archaeological season in Egypt promises to be disappointing for the Sitt Hakim and the Father of Curses, known to millions of in-the-know readers as Egyptologists Amelia Peabody and her husband, the renowned professor Radcliff Emerson. They are stuck working in the West Valley in the Valley of the Kings on tombs already found, when Emerson knows there is glory to be found in the East Valley. But the East has been given to a rival of the Emersons, one Howard Carter and his patron Lord Carnarvon. And it isn't long before they meet their destiny with the mostly unknown pharaoh named Tutankhamon.
And so the series that centers around Egyptology and began in the late Victorian era, that has seen both the Boer War and the First World War come and go, has finally caught up with the most famous Egyptological discovery of the last 200 years, perhaps ever. After spending decades digging in dusty, looted tombs or crumbling pyramids, at last there is bright gold and precious objects left undisturbed for millennia, a veritable pot-of-gold at the end of the archaeological rainbow. And in typical fashion the good professor has allowed his temper easy access to his tongue and so the Emersons may have no part of the glory.
As the entries in this long-running series have mounted in number the mysteries themselves have grown uneven in quality; some are intriguing, some are thin. Fortunately, this series long ago quit revolving around solving puzzles and wondering who dunnit. Like any beloved literary works, this series is about the characters and the places and this entry has just about every living character left in the series making an appearance.
When Sethos shows up shivering with malaria and possessing a secret coded document, with pursuers close behind and an unlikely tale of intrigue, the Emerson family sighs a collective 'not again.' A half-hearted attack on Emerson and his son Ramses puts the family in danger, they are being watched, there is at least one languid kidnapping...the author seems to be dredging up things to happen, almost from a checklist. 'Hmmm...haven't had a bomb explode for a while. Now's a good time.'
Fortunately, none that matters! Forget the plot and enjoy the ride. The author's roots in Egyptology shine here; the reader can almost envision her drooling at the chance to finally use Tut in a book, to immerse herself in the research of opening and excavating the tomb, of having Emerson and Amelia and Nefret and Ramses and just about their entire clan watch as Carter's 'marvelous things' are carried from Tut's tomb to the nearby tomb of Seti II for cataloging and storage. There is almost a climactic feeling here, a sense that at long last Amelia and her brood have opened a door the author has long wanted opened.
The Tomb of the Golden Bird is a fine entry in a fine series that one day will rank as a true classic of modern crime fiction. Not necessarily the best entry; however, there are few low spots at all in this series and this one is far closer to the top than the bottom. Great fun, of course, but more to the point, once you've begun reading Golden Bird you get the feeling that Amelia has been standing there all along, arms crossed and foot tapping, wondering what's taken you so long to get there.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
I've been lax
Hi bookies!
Ya know, I haven't been doing a good job of blogging since the turn of the year. Yeah, I'm working on a book, but I've been doing that for 3 years now and the research will be years more, so that's no excuse. And, yes, I have another massive personal project going, and the usual family type stuff that everybody has. That's all true.
But still.
What I can do is start working through my rather massive backlog of Crime Fiction and SFF reviews. No need for links that may eventually go dead, just ramblings from yours truly. Oh boy, you're thinking, lucky me. Well, I'm really not so bad at the reviewing thing. My editor at ILAM seems to like some of my stuff. So we'll see.
A shout-out to my newest follower, Kim Smith, whom I'll bet I've met in my doings about town in Memphis. Hey Kim, you're a member of Sisters In Crime, aren't you?
Ya know, I haven't been doing a good job of blogging since the turn of the year. Yeah, I'm working on a book, but I've been doing that for 3 years now and the research will be years more, so that's no excuse. And, yes, I have another massive personal project going, and the usual family type stuff that everybody has. That's all true.
But still.
What I can do is start working through my rather massive backlog of Crime Fiction and SFF reviews. No need for links that may eventually go dead, just ramblings from yours truly. Oh boy, you're thinking, lucky me. Well, I'm really not so bad at the reviewing thing. My editor at ILAM seems to like some of my stuff. So we'll see.
A shout-out to my newest follower, Kim Smith, whom I'll bet I've met in my doings about town in Memphis. Hey Kim, you're a member of Sisters In Crime, aren't you?
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Winnie...yet again
Good morning bookies!
West Tennessee is bathed in this eerie yellow light, something at once familiar and alien. Simultaneously, the sky is an odd color: blue. The temperature is still way below normal, of course. Global warming, don't you know?
There is a new biography of Churchill, as if you needed one. And I know what you're thinking, 'great, another 1200 pages I've gotta read.' But this one is different. This biography doesn't go along with the recent trend of bashing Churchill as some sort of clownish dolt that somehow didn't keep England from winning World War Two, no, this one actually gives the man credit for leading the winning side and perhaps having something to do with victory in 1945. Plus, it's only 192 pages long!
I'm not sure how you could write a Churchill biography that's only 192 pages, but apparently you can and I, for one, am glad of it. Anything that might get younger folks to read up on one of the 20th centuries greatest men..
New Churchill biography for less than 5 pounds (that's weight, not money)
West Tennessee is bathed in this eerie yellow light, something at once familiar and alien. Simultaneously, the sky is an odd color: blue. The temperature is still way below normal, of course. Global warming, don't you know?
There is a new biography of Churchill, as if you needed one. And I know what you're thinking, 'great, another 1200 pages I've gotta read.' But this one is different. This biography doesn't go along with the recent trend of bashing Churchill as some sort of clownish dolt that somehow didn't keep England from winning World War Two, no, this one actually gives the man credit for leading the winning side and perhaps having something to do with victory in 1945. Plus, it's only 192 pages long!
I'm not sure how you could write a Churchill biography that's only 192 pages, but apparently you can and I, for one, am glad of it. Anything that might get younger folks to read up on one of the 20th centuries greatest men..
New Churchill biography for less than 5 pounds (that's weight, not money)
Sunday, February 14, 2010
So long Dick Francis & William Tenn
Hi bookies, it's a cold, gray day again in West Tennessee and that seems fitting.
***We say goodbye to Dick Francis, aged 89. Master of the horse-thriller, so to speak, with a risque sense to him. I remember when his wife died he didn't think he could go on writing, but he did. As a writer, to go right on writing right up until the last words are written, well, that's about as good as it gets.
RIP Dick Francis
***Not satisfied with just taking Francis, the Grim Reaper also came for William Tenn, noted SFF writer, also aged 89. Tenn's real name was Phillip Klass. He stopped writing SFF nearly 40 years ago but his short work was so iconic that in 2004 he was named a Grandmaster of the genre.
Farewell William Tenn
***We say goodbye to Dick Francis, aged 89. Master of the horse-thriller, so to speak, with a risque sense to him. I remember when his wife died he didn't think he could go on writing, but he did. As a writer, to go right on writing right up until the last words are written, well, that's about as good as it gets.
RIP Dick Francis
***Not satisfied with just taking Francis, the Grim Reaper also came for William Tenn, noted SFF writer, also aged 89. Tenn's real name was Phillip Klass. He stopped writing SFF nearly 40 years ago but his short work was so iconic that in 2004 he was named a Grandmaster of the genre.
Farewell William Tenn
Thursday, February 4, 2010
A new FDR conspiracy
Good morning bookies.
The morning dawned gray, cold and misty here in West Tennessee. The next week promises to be gray, cold and misty here in West Tennessee. My solution so this doesn't happen in the future? Eradicate ground hogs before next year.
How did FDR die? That question has been around for a while now, the official explanation that he suffered a massive (and unforeseen) stroke was lame even when the disinformation police came out with it in 1945. Anybody who saw the man at Yalta or after could clearly see he was dying, and the effects of his debilitation cost the free world greatly. Stalin was going to grab whatever he could, Churchill wanted to stand up to him but by 1945 Britain was enfeebled and toothless, but FDR was too far gone mentally to be a threat to Russia. The result? So long Poland, bye-bye Czechs! Enjoy life behind the Iron Curtain.
A new book claims that FDR did not, in fact, die of a stroke, but instead died of metastasized melanoma that settled in his brain. I haven't read the book in question but the diagnosis seems to fit the facts and is at least as likely as the official explanation.
Did FDR really die of cancer?
The morning dawned gray, cold and misty here in West Tennessee. The next week promises to be gray, cold and misty here in West Tennessee. My solution so this doesn't happen in the future? Eradicate ground hogs before next year.
How did FDR die? That question has been around for a while now, the official explanation that he suffered a massive (and unforeseen) stroke was lame even when the disinformation police came out with it in 1945. Anybody who saw the man at Yalta or after could clearly see he was dying, and the effects of his debilitation cost the free world greatly. Stalin was going to grab whatever he could, Churchill wanted to stand up to him but by 1945 Britain was enfeebled and toothless, but FDR was too far gone mentally to be a threat to Russia. The result? So long Poland, bye-bye Czechs! Enjoy life behind the Iron Curtain.
A new book claims that FDR did not, in fact, die of a stroke, but instead died of metastasized melanoma that settled in his brain. I haven't read the book in question but the diagnosis seems to fit the facts and is at least as likely as the official explanation.
Did FDR really die of cancer?
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Ice Bound
Hiya bookies!
Rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated. As I've told you before, sometimes Life insists of intruding into my ventures in bookdom. So it has been. Did I tell you I'm back in school? Online courses are incredibly amazing. I submitted my first book report 10 days ago and have yet to get a grade. With my luck it'll probably be a C-.
*** Stephen Hunter was in at Davis Kidd Books in Memphis on January 5th, supporting his new book, I, Sniper. It's a Bob Lee Swagger book, maybe the best one to date. I have a full review currently up on ILA
M. www.iloveamysterynewsletter.com. He answered a lot of questions during a 25 minute chat. I asked whether we could expect a Nick Memphis novel and he said no, that Nick is a great supporting character but he doesn't think he could carry an entire novel. Makes sense. He also said that the next book will feature a new, young sniper, sort of a protege for Bob Lee, who is getting a little long in the tooth. He signed books quickly and with dispatch and, all in all, it was quite the good time. The crowd was much larger than I had expected, maybe 50 people in all.
*** A week later Davis Kidd hosted the great grand-nephew of Bram Stoker, Dacre (pronounced Day-ker) Stoker, who along with Ian Holm used outtakes and unused plot bits, as well as the surviving notes from Bram, to produce a sequel to Dracula, namely Dracula-The Undead. I had expected an accent, maybe British, maybe Irish, but the one we heard was South Carolina. Go figure. Anyway, Stoker went into great detail about who Bram Stoker was, what might have influenced him to write Dracula, with Jack the Ripper being a surprise I had never considered, and where he and Holm found their research materials. He also laid out the family tree. The book has sold extremely well world-wide, yet Stoker remained approachable and quite humble. Nice guy. I wanted a photo with him but Davis Kidd
doesn't have people to help with that sort of thing anymore, I guess, because nobody is ever around when I want one. So here's one I took after he signed my book and he was doing others.
Rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated. As I've told you before, sometimes Life insists of intruding into my ventures in bookdom. So it has been. Did I tell you I'm back in school? Online courses are incredibly amazing. I submitted my first book report 10 days ago and have yet to get a grade. With my luck it'll probably be a C-.
*** Stephen Hunter was in at Davis Kidd Books in Memphis on January 5th, supporting his new book, I, Sniper. It's a Bob Lee Swagger book, maybe the best one to date. I have a full review currently up on ILA
M. www.iloveamysterynewsletter.com. He answered a lot of questions during a 25 minute chat. I asked whether we could expect a Nick Memphis novel and he said no, that Nick is a great supporting character but he doesn't think he could carry an entire novel. Makes sense. He also said that the next book will feature a new, young sniper, sort of a protege for Bob Lee, who is getting a little long in the tooth. He signed books quickly and with dispatch and, all in all, it was quite the good time. The crowd was much larger than I had expected, maybe 50 people in all.*** A week later Davis Kidd hosted the great grand-nephew of Bram Stoker, Dacre (pronounced Day-ker) Stoker, who along with Ian Holm used outtakes and unused plot bits, as well as the surviving notes from Bram, to produce a sequel to Dracula, namely Dracula-The Undead. I had expected an accent, maybe British, maybe Irish, but the one we heard was South Carolina. Go figure. Anyway, Stoker went into great detail about who Bram Stoker was, what might have influenced him to write Dracula, with Jack the Ripper being a surprise I had never considered, and where he and Holm found their research materials. He also laid out the family tree. The book has sold extremely well world-wide, yet Stoker remained approachable and quite humble. Nice guy. I wanted a photo with him but Davis Kidd
doesn't have people to help with that sort of thing anymore, I guess, because nobody is ever around when I want one. So here's one I took after he signed my book and he was doing others.
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