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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.