Becky's Books –

This is a highly acclaimed literary novel based on a true story about Jews and Palestinians and their forever conflict.  The story here is mainly about two fathers who are grieving the killing their young daughters, both mind-numbingly tragic, during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict although at very different times and places.  And the girls and their families are quite different, too, with one being Jewish and the other  Palestinian. 

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Apierogon 
by Colum McCann 
2022 – 468 pages
Read by the author
Rating – 9 / literary historical fiction 
(Both read and listened)

Rami Elhanan is a Jewish graphic artist and the father of Smadar, age 13, killed by a suicide bomber in 1997.   Bassam Aramin is a Palestinian scholar and activist and the father of 10-year old Abir who was killed by a single and deliberate, random shooting in 2007. They are both Israeli.

Collum McCann puts the stories of these two men together because in the current time frame they travel around speaking of the importance of peace in Israel. How can two men who hated each other’s presence in “their” country and were victimized by them and wanted revenge most of all, realize they have to go on from their grief and forgive and remember and teach.

The lack of chronology and alternating the main characters in the 1001 chapters of varying length got me totally confused.  I started over twice, but I finally got that much (barely) and just kept going anyway, although I did check back sometimes and/or check with Google.  The reason I was confused was mostly due to the lack of chronology and the alternating characters. The situations are so much alike and that is McCann’s point.

These girls and their fathers also had unfamiliar names and I couldn’t tell which girl was Jewish and which was Palestinian. (Again, to emphasize, they are both Israeli – and to McCann’s point, does it matter?.)  

Then! After the half-way point, Chapter 500, comes Chapter 1001 and then back to 500 for the count back down. I think there’s a point there, too – something about a cycle.

Imo, this confusion was deliberate on the part of the author.  He wants us to see them both as human beings first and as Israeli second. They are both innocent little girls from largish, good families and are deeply loved. McCann shows us the similarities. 

Another theme is the oppressive nature of the Israeli government.  Citizens (both Israeli and Palestinian) have to stay where they’re assigned. Going elsewhere involves a lot of paperwork and strip searches even if you have business in the another sector. The armed guards are suspicious of everything. Bassam was a prisoner for many years.

The story keeps going back and forth in time describing bloody and angry situations as the men remember the past and think about their daily lives. This is interspersed with rather philosophical insights or historical information.  

 And the history – (if that’s what 30+ years is) so many names and places and incidents are true.  But this can’t be labeled as nonfiction because McCann imagined parts of a story line using real historical people. I usually dislike that but in this case he says he got their permission.  Okay fine.  And that leaves me on the fence of not knowing whether some person or incident is true.  That’s fine, too, because I look it up. If I find it to be truthful enough – kudos to the author for the research.  If it’s not true well that’s fine too and kudos to the author for inventing it.  (I just like knowing.)  

So we find all sorts of tidbits in this book ranging from Phillips Petit (the high wire walker who also appeared in “Let the Great World Spin”) to Mordechai Vanunu (an Israeli whistle-blower) to Jorge Borges (writer) and Einstein (Jewish physicist)  and from song birds to the Soviet’s bombing of Finland in WWII.  It’s almost like one of those “encyclopedic” novels popular in the 1980s and ‘90s.  

Enjoy! I would read it again but it can be pretty draining.

I’ve been following this series since it started and I love those early books.  The later ones got darker and grimmer and it seemed the characters lost some of their quirky flavor. But the plots continued to be excellent.  The writing is good.

The Shadow Murders
by Jussi Adler Olsen 
9/2022
Translated by William Frost 
Read by Graeme Malcolm 13h 11m 
Rating: A + / Scandi-noir  
#9 in the Department Q series 

Department Q is the “cold case” department of the Copenhagen Police Department. Carl Merck, an older and more experienced officer is in charge and he reports to Chief Marcus Jacobsen who very much appreciates Department Q, but can’t seem to get them much funding, Carl has three very quirky deputies, Assad, Rose and Gordon assigned to his unit. Despite their oddities, the four click and make a great team.  

This time the twist is Covid which really messes with schedules, interviews, and gathering evidence. It’s quite annoying to everyone. Also, the countdown goes date by date in month prior to Christmas (and had I known this I might have saved the book for my December Holiday readings – ah well …) 

The tale starts with an older woman’s suicide – or what looks like a suicide until Chief Marcus realizes that what it looks like is a case he had about 30 years prior. So it’s referred to the open minds and cramped spaces of the basement where Department Q lives There, after some thorough and intuitive investigating, the team comes up with the fact that there has been an unsolved murder every other year for the past 35 or so years. And these are a lot more than random murders there is a definite method to the horror.. It gets good – er – evil.

The characters in The Shadow Murders seem less quirky than they were in the prior Detective Q  books, but it has some very funny little parts. I think maybe the plot itself is better in hits book, and it’s still definitely noir in the old Scandi- fashion with religious allusions and a nut-case on the loose. It gets gritty and tension-packed, too. I enjoyed it tremendously. (*Note – Child abuse may be a trigger factor.)

What an incredible addition to Strout’s oeuvre! Her last 7 books are not really a true series, but some of the characters appear in several of the prior books going all the way back to Olive Kitteridge. This book is much better for those readers who have been following Strout’s work, but if you haven’t done that I think you will also enjoy it. 
https://www.elizabethstrout.com

Lucy by the Sea
by Elizabeth Strout – 2022
Narrated by: Kimberly Farr 8h 19m
Rating: 8.75 / contemporary fiction

And just as a little bonus, Olive Kitteridge shows up in Lucy by the Sea.  LOL!  (A number of the characters live in the same small town.) But Lucy’s sister and others also live not too far away.  

That’s okay. Each book is different and this is the book I’ve been looking forward to since April of 2020 when Covid was suddenly all over the place. I’ve read several other novels where the pandemic is used as a kind of theme or plot device. Here the pandemic is used to masterfully develop characters, plot, and Strout’s usual themes of family, especially mothers, marriage, are intertwined with those of connections, “lockdowns,” and home.  

But this is Lucy’s story.  Lucy is the protagonist in My Name is Lucy Barton as well as in Anything is Possible, and Oh William but she appears in other of Strout’s novels.  These books are each stand-alone and marvelous in their own rights. 

Lucy has been divorced from William, her first husband,  for a number of years (Oh, William),  and now her second husband has recently died. The pandemic arrives and William, who is still a friend,  insists she come with him to visit mutual friends in Maine. Meanwhile Lucy’s daughter Becka and her husband are having serious difficulties while Christie, their other daughter, seems to be doing fine. 

And Covid is up and running in the US, increasing daily. So quarantine becomes the order of the day with William being far more concerned than others. And then the couple starts worrying about other matters they see happening during that whole difficult year.    

But the tale deals gently with very difficult current issues and I’d love to have time to read it again. 

Good book if you’re interested in South Central California or love the writing of Mark Arax as I do. He writes about South Central California for the LA times and other books, I’ve read 3 of his 4 books now. It took me awhile to get to this one because to tell the truth, I though it looks boring. And even after I had it I waited several weeks to actually read it.

J.G. Boswell and the Making of A Secret American Empire
By Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman
2003 / 592 pages
Read by James Patrick Cronin 19h 29m
Rating: 10 / biography, big farming and the environment
(Both read and listened)

For over 50 years I lived only about 20 miles from the boundary of Boswell’s lands and 30 miles from Corcoran, his ranch headquarters. I’d heard about Boswell since I was about 18 or so? but I can’t say I knew much about him.

But the book is by one of my favorites authors.  I’ve not read anything else by Rick Wartzman but I’ve read two of Mark Arax’s books, West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders, And Killers In The Golden State and  The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California.  I might should go catch up by reading his first book,  In My Father’s Name: A Family, a Town, a MurderA Family, a Town, a Murder, but not yet.  

This book was published back in 2003 and I’m sure if I Googled around I’d find more that’s happened since. – like JW Boswell died in 2009 and finally handed the firm over to his own youngest son, James G. II.  

The book is way more than James Griffin’s’s biography though although it does start back in Georgia where he and his first wife came from. It’s also a history of the Central San Joaquin Valley of California.  It’s not presented in exactly chronological order.  It opens with the authors interviewing JW early on in the 21st century.  That family is notoriously private so it took the writers some time to even get an interview, much less what they wanted.  

But the book also travels back in time to the days of the Indians then the Missions then Gold Diggers and the genocides all through it. Then came the cotton growers from the defeated Southern US, and the wheat growers, see Frank Norris The Octopus, and finally the fruit, nut, and vegetable growers (like the Resnicks) Some ex-slaves came to work on the cotton farms, some Indians and Mexicans came for the work. I understand they tried Chinese labor but it didn’t work. And of course the John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath Okies (and Arkies and Kentuckians and Texas and so forth) came. This is how the area got its seriously Southern attitudes and twang and foods. (My parents moved us here during the early 1960s – I was 16 and coming from North Dakota had never had a taco -lol!)

This is the country of the Disney movie McFarland which was based on the real teacher in McFarland, only 34 miles away.

But if they came for work there was a LOT of work; a lot of dirt and water had to be moved to get it right for planting cotton and it’s never been right enough to satisfy the Boswells. The floods and the droughts came because that’s what California water is, unpredictable cycles of flood and drought – and now most often it’s drought. There was alway something more to buy or sell or make or build and Boswell ended up creating the biggest privately owned farm in California, if not the US.  And he has other businesses as well, like ginning and milling cotton,  real estate and more ranches in Arizona and other places.

His farm operation was one of the first businesses in Corcoran which eventually became a “company town” with JG as “The King” living in Pasadena. But when you’re that big then, inevitably, comes the politics and with farming there are going to be environmental concerns and then there are feuded and law suits that go with owning a lake bed turned into a huge farm operation. The book dives right into all of it. Every bit was fascinating to me.

But I have to admit there are a couple problems I had with the book.  First it’s very long and complex and I got the Jameses mixed up.  There’s JG Boswell, the old man who came to California in 1915 and settled in Corcoran and Pasadena. He was married twice and had stepchildren but there’s also JW Boswell, his brother’s son who did take over. JW also has a son and that’s JGII.  The chronology doesn’t help this problem with names because it might go from interviewing JW to a longish Indian story and then back to JW’s story and it gets into a back story about JG. Arax and/or Warzman digress a lot. I suspect it’s Arax because of my experience with his other books. That’s okay – I digress right along with him.

But at about 2/3 or the way through I realized I was hopelessly confused between JG and JW and started over with the Kindle version to go along with it. I did much better the second time but the confusion about those two characters is there – I had to be careful. 

The authors digress a lot.  I’ve read 2 of Arax’s prior books and I tend to thin the digressions are from him because he just loves to go with his flow.  Wartzman is the business editor at the LA times (where Arax covers the Central Valley) and a lot of the business and legal narrative were most likely from Wartzman’s hand.  

This took me at least 4 days of heavy reading to get through but I was fascinated – the whole thing.  

This book is soooo good I couldn’t help myself I just kept typing… (sorry) —>.

For some reason I thought this book was about Antarctica and a spy mission down there. Ha and LOL!  I really should have taken a look at the subtitle. But it was on that very good sale !!!! 

Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath
by Bill Browder  
April 2022 – (336 pages K) 
Read by Adam Grupper 10h 29m
Rating: 9.75 / memoir-pol activist
 (thriller?) 

It has an excellent opening. In the spring of 2018, UK-American businessman Bill Browder was arrested for espionage just after he checked into his his hotel in Spain. He was there to give testimony against Russian criminals, but it was those same Russian criminals who ordered his arrest as he arrived. He was freed thanks to a covertly sent Twitter post getting the attention of many people who contacted many other people and agencies who put pressure on the Madrid police department and …”Oops.”  

That sounds like the opening to a lightly humorous spy novel, but this tale is real. Real scary and in some places, a real thriller. The beat goes on.  

The author – this is a memoir – is Bill Browder, an American businessman now from the UK with a very lucrative investment business in Russia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Browder

I went into this book cold – cold as Antarctica. I had no real background knowledge at all except for a few little mentions of various things on TV, but the book reads like a thriller novel.  I just had to remember that it’s actually a memoir and maybe get some background from Wiki or something.

At some point not too far in I actually read the subtitle. I’m listening to this book so unless I actually look for it, I might miss it.  Yes, it’s about “Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath.”   

*****

“Freezing Order: A legal procedure that prevents a defendant from moving their assets beyond the reach of a court.” –  That’s the Epigraph in the book.  

What’s it about? Well, it gets complicated so I had to look up some stuff as I went along.  

In the US: “The original Magnitsky Act of 2012 was expanded in 2016 into a more general law authorizing the US government to sanction those found to be human rights offenders or those involved in significant corruption, to freeze their assets, and to ban them from entering the US.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_legislation. The US passed this in 2012 and upgraded it in 2016. 

 Bill Browder was instrumental in getting this legislation passed and upgraded. (His first book,  Red Notice, was published in 2016.). Sergei Magnitsky was his business partner and good friend until he was arrested and murdered in his Russian jail cell. (He exposed corruption in Russian corporations.) That’s when Browder got involved and in trouble with Putin. 

Magnitsky was one of the “good guys” more than a decade ago, exposing corruption and working for human rights. He was no fan of Putin, but he lived in Russia/Ukraine. I think that’s the story of Red Notice (2015) but the original copyright date of this book is 2022 which tells me it’s going to be what’s happened since 2015 and there is a LOT more current stuff to tell.

By the time he was writing this book he’d been hunted by Putin for years (decades?) for tax fraud and finance activism and his involvement his Hermitage Investment Company which had (has) an office in Moscow.  Putin publicly declared Bowder a “national threat” in 2005 and their offices in Moscow were raided in 2007.  No financial institutions in Russia were safe from the corruption – outright theft and siphoning of funds to other enterprises.    

By about 2/3rds of the way into the book we’re up to Trump getting elected and yes (!) I absolutely do remember when Junior and Bro Eric were talking to some visitors and then the press about “Russian adoptions,” the code name for the Magnitsky Act (ha!)

The big deal is that the Russians were accusing Browder and Magnitsky of scamming Russia for $250 million tax dollars – that was the first of the legal charges.. What Magnitsky and Browder claimed (and proved) was that they, themselves, had been scammed of those dollars and the money had been laundered through a very complex series of re-investments both at home and abroad.  (9 volumes at 300+ pages each of legal records.)

******* 

This is a great book covering Browder as he avoids arrest by Russian operatives and manages to testify before Congress, speaks to various groups, and conducts activist business as well as his own. 

Enjoy.

Johannes Krause is the scientist here and Thomas Trappe is the journalist and together they’ve written this and other books in German which Caroline Waight has translated into English. 

I both read and listened but the Kindle copy was very helpful in that it had maps and photos as well as Informational Notes and Source Notes

*****
A Short History of Humanity: A New History of Old Europe
by Johannes Krause,  Thomas Trappe, Caroline Waight (Translator)
2021 / 253 pages 
Read by  Stephen Graybill 6h 9m
Rating –  9 / world history – genetics 
(Both read and listened)
*****

Genetics has come a long way in the last decade and there are companies who will, for a fee, tell you where on the globe your ancestors originated. But there are other people called archeo-geneticists – or the genetics of ancient peoples.  They can find out using DNA samples from bones and other remains where these people really came from, what they ate, how they lived, how they died and probably more, what diseases they had.  These scientists are generally not at all impressed with the work of the commercial products.

If you’ve been keeping abreast of the field from a layman’s point of view, or if you’re catching up now that these companies seem to be having such success, this is an excellent book – imo anyway,  The narrator is a bit monotoned but it’s a science book, not a thriller, even if Neanderthals are involved.   

The last time migration affected European DNA in a major way occurred about 5,000 years ago.   A Short History of Humanity traces the journeys of the large migrations out of Africa and then into western Europe.  Migration is something humans do and have done since way before the first hominid left Africa.

After being in Europe awhile some of the migrating groups found each other and we had Neanderthals mixing with Homo sapiens and Denisovans and probably a few others. DNA also shows the advent of agriculture and the impacts of war, trade, plagues and pandemics from the Black Plague to Covid-19 (although not much is known yet about the long term effects of Covid yet).    

DNA shows a lot of things – immunity for instance. But it doesn’t show other things – race or even skin tone directly because, although they are inherited, other things affect them.  Intelligence is not defined well enough for scientists to know and there is more variation “within” so-called races than between them.   

And now we have DNA splicing or CRISPR which actually changes DNA structure. Is that good or bad?  

All of this is explored and explained by the very knowledgeable authors in nicely readable language. It was a very good read.  

https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/short-history-humanity

https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-erectus

https://australian.museum/learn/science/human-evolution/the-first-migrations-out-of-africa/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo#Phylogeny
(A chart on the lower right show timeline of the evolution of “Homo.”)  

I read this for a challenge to read the alphabet and this is X for Xiaolong because that’s what he is in Wikipedia. He’s lived in the US since 1989 and by his Wiki article is a pretty interesting guy. Also, the book is better and more than I expected. 

Death of a Red Heroine 
by Qui Xiaolong 
2000Read by 
(Debut novel and #1 in the Inspector Chen series) 

Qui Xiaolong, the author, has lived in the US since 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square protests. He was in the US anyway, studying literature, so he simply didn’t go back until it was safe and then it was as a visitor.  Instead he had his wife and child move here.  It took ten years but when he published his first book, this one, Death of a Red Heroine, it was well received and won some awards.  

In 1990, the year after the uprising in Tiananmen Square per the book, the body of a young woman is found in a canal near Shanghai. She’s been there almost a full day. The victim turns out to be Guan Hongying,“the National Model Worker” for her adherence to Communist principles. The case is assigned to the Special Cases Squad, specifically to police detective Chief Inspector Chen Cao and his partner, Yu Guangming.  Yu is a poet at heart with a degree in literature.  

Chen thought he might become a diplomat, but his grandfather got in trouble with the Party so he found employment in police work. (These backgrounds almost mirror his protagonists.) 

Although it’s not going to be on my best of year list, unless I create a special category, the book is notable for its depiction of life in China from the Cultural Revolution on, especially 21st century.  Xiaolong found that a crime novel worked nicely with what he wanted to do in a novel. With his background in literature there are some literary-style connections, allusions or outright references to other works both Chinese and English, some literary theory thrown around, etc.  But it works very nicely as a detective novel and it’s fun. 

It seems that the son of a highly placed government official is involved in the death of the young woman and as the investigation goes on there are many women who are victims of this man and others in some way. 

https://www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/QiuXiaolong.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qiu_Xiaolong

There’s a natural and surprisingly strong story arc here and Halberman works with it perfectly. The narrative thrust starts with Trump’s indecision, but he does grab the ball to run, wins, plays gossip and musical chairs in the White House, creates a circus in the media, and then along comes Covid-19, the killing of George Floyd with threats of police/military presence from Trump followed by the campaign leading up to Election Day, 2020, a painful loss, and finally a planned bloody insurrection where the police/military should have been more present.

*******
Confidence Man:
The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America
By: Maggie Haberman
Narrated by: Maggie Haberman
Length: 17 h 22 m
(Both read and listened) 
*******

All that (and more) is hard to see when you’re living in it. Reading this book was an unflinching look back at what the last 5 or 6 years were all about. Halberman unearthed way more than I was able to glean in the flashes I got from the media during the years – and I watched a lot of CNN.  After one news event was reported it was quickly silenced by the next outrageous stunt or disclosure or whatever. 

I thought I’d be able to listen only, but as several other listeners noted Haberman’s voice isn’t easy to listen to. She reads in a flat and sometimes monotone voice, maybe both plus about midway I got confused by all the names and activities coming one after the other, so I downloaded the Kindle version. and after that I got very accustomed to the narration – go figure.

I think perhaps the low-key reading is deliberate because there’s no hype or horrible bashing or even sensationalist reporting here. For the most part, the facts speak for themselves without embellishment or outrage. That said, Halberman can’t quite help but subtly imply some judgement.  

The first chapters were mostly new material for me. I’m not a New Yorker and I only started following, if that’s what you’d call it, “The Donald” when he bought the Atlantic City casinos. And there was his book, The Art of the Deal, which got him some name recognition beyond the East Coast.  But it was for Marla Maples, a big money divorce or two, rumors of Merv Griffin and other big deals, his best selling book, The Art of the Deal, and the Miss Universe parents plus his racist opinions and so on – and on.. The man didn’t seem exactly what you’d call presidential material and that was before the bad press – lol.  It’s reviewed here complete with a lot of details I’d either forgotten or never knew.  

But that’s just the first half of the book or so, Trump building Trump. The reader getting to know the man behind the promotions. The pace and tension are good. The structure is primarily chronological with a bit of backstory or forward looking material as is necessary. It’s well organized, the chapter titles are amusing and almost without barb, the writing is clear and concise with a nice flow. 

Everything happened so fast back in the heady days of the run-ups to the Republican Convention and from then on it was a new scandal almost every day.  Or maybe three in one day. There were leaks and investigations and firings and gossip and intrigue –  

There are hundreds of books about Trump and his presidency on the market in the last five or so years, as well as books about threats to truth and democracy and so on and I’ve read about 20 or so, (ranging from Madeline Albright’s Fascism: A Warning (2018) to  Russian Roulette: by Michael Isikoff and David Corn not to forget the Mary Trumps memoir.  I tried to get the best ones-  Comey, Clapper, Woodward, Michael Lewis plus a lot of others but I got tired of it after awhile back in 2019. This book intrigued me so I gave it a try.  I was curious and well rewarded. 

All told it’s a brilliant biography of (ta-da) Donald J. Trump – our demented and disgraced former resident of the White House. And it’s a darned good bio which focuses on Trump’s business and political life up to and following January 6, 2021.  Maggie Haberman is a Pulitzer-winning and very popular journalist for the New York Times where she is listed as a “White House Correspondent” and at as CNN where she is a “political analyst.”   

 Haberman is not a fan of Mr Trump, but she doesn’t do anything particular to bash him (why bother – he bashes himself enough).  I noted a few places where she gave him credit where it was due.  She presents a  very readable review of the highlights (and lowlights – divorces, bankruptcies, etc) of his life. I knew quite a lot of it after he bought the casinos in Atlantic City but I had virtually no fleshing out which is exactly what Haberman does beautifully.  

Things happened so fast in those days that the stories came one after the other while Trump was campaigning at packed rallies where he would say anything and then in the White House where his administration seemed to have no organization at all and got completely derailed by Covid-19.  But Trump had a way of doing and saying things which seized the media’s attention and then he’d do something else the next day – I think very few could really keep up with it all. Confidence Man: untangles a lot of that, adding background and outcomes as appropriate.  

There’s. even a natural story arc to the whole thing from slow build-up in New York real estate deals through the scandals and financial juggling all the way to the election chase-scenes and life in the White House as a kind of 3-ring climax. It just works out that way maybe.

Even considering those prior books Halberman’s contribution is not at all redundant. Rather it reminds me or what all went on in those years and fills in some blanks while amazing me with a few really fresh details.  It’s kind of like I lived through the roller-coaster 2016-2020 and am only now getting a bigger, maybe deeper picture of what all happened.  

This book is comprised of three novellas.  I enjoy novellas.  Individually they are called  “Homecoming,”   “Strawberry Moon,” and the longest, “Sparring Partners.”  

Sparring Partners
by John Grisham
2022 /  9h 57m
Read by Jeff Daniels , Ethan Hawke , January LaVoy 
Rating: 9.5 / crime, but no mysteries or procedurals etc. 

“John Grisham is about as good a storyteller as we’ve got in the United States these days.” —The New York Times Book Review

Homecoming About 3 years ago “Marco” pulled a fast one and left his law practice, along with his wife and children in the fictional Clanton, Mississippi. He headed south and lived well for those years, but now he wants to come home – without getting caught.   

Strawberry Moon –  Cody Wallace is on death row awaiting execution.  He was put in jail at age 14 and he wasn’t even the one who pulled the trigger.  He’s been there for about 10 years and now all avenues of appeal and/or clemency have failed. These are his very last days. He has no family or friends. He has 2 visitors one of whom is a minister. He gets his last meal, a frozen pizza and a milkshake.  

I’m very curious about the inception of this particular story.  Grisham is very much opposed to the death penalty and he’s pretty vocal. I have a feeling he’s had personal experience with death row inmates. 

Sparring Partners – An aging lawyer, Bolton Malloy, is in prison for killing his wife – he pleaded guilty to manslaughter. His sons, who dislike him and each other, are now running the firm but Bolton made them sign a contract so they can’t get out without enormous cost to themselves.  Rusty Malloy loves the courtroom and pushes things resulting in huge losses. Kirt enjoys office work – taxes and so on but his marriage has fallen apart and his divorce looks like it’s going to be quite expensive.  They’ve always been very different as well as competitive. Diantha, another attorney, has actually run the firm for years, it’s simply by default since the brothers can barely speak civilly to each other. She’s pivotal.   

Rusty currently has a trial going. There’s been an offer made to settle what could be a seriously high pay-off.  Rusty thinks his client deserves and can get more than what has been offered so Rusty won’t settle.  But – it gets complicated.

A freebie crime novel and I got it although I had doubts. I don’t enjoy run-of-the-mill domestic suspense novels.  This isn’t much different.  

The Last Flight
 by Julie Clark
2020 
Read by Khristine Hvam & Lauren Fortgang 9h 23m
Rating  C-/ crime-thriller 

Claire and Eva first meet at an airport as they are each attempting to leave their horrifically disastrous personal situations.  Claire is leaving her rich but overly dominating husband (that’s minimizing it), And we don’t know much about Eva because she lies, but it’s obvious she’s getting away from something very bad – ugly  Both women have to leave very stealthily so as to successfully disappear.  

They switch purses and papers and get on each other’s flight with the goal of swapping lives. But then Claire finds out that her plane to Puerto Rico crashed into the ocean so that’s apparently where Eve is (with Claire’s ID papers. But she goes on with her plans although she’s nervous about authorities finding Eva with Claire’s paperwork. Meanwhile, Eve, complete with Claire’s papers, has managed to avoid boarding and goes her own way. Then we find out what Eva was running from as well as what Claire’s is really afraid of.  It gets intense and towards the end it’s confusing in addition to being rather contrived.

Claire and Eva first meet at an airport as they are attempting to leave horrifically disastrous personal situation.  Claire is leaving her rich but overly dominating husband, We don’t know much about Eva because she lies but it’s obvious she’s getting away from something bad.   Both women have to leave very stealthily so as to successfully disappear.  

They switch purses and papers and get on each other’s flight with the goal of swapping lives. But then Claire finds out that her plane to Puerto Rico has crashed into the ocean so that’s where Eve is.  But she goes on with her plans although she’s nervous about authorities finding Eva with Claire’s identification and credit cards, etc. Meanwhile, Eve, with Claire’s papers, manages to avoid boarding and goes her own way.  Then we find out what Eva was running from as well as what Claire’s is really afraid of.  

What a.waste of time – (but no money lost).  I was quite curious to see how it turned out so I finished. 

Geraldine Brooks seems to be getting better with every book and she certainly is versatile I first read Year of Wonder which I received as a gift from my sister. For a long time I thought that was far and away Brooks’ best work.  Horse challenges that idea.

Horse
By Geraldine Brooks
2022 / 
Read by a cast 14h 6m
Rating – 8.5 / Historical fiction  

This one reminds me quite a lot of Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead  (my review here).   which was on the Booker Short List for last year (and I rated an 8.5).  Horse includes many stories of historical people intermingled with fiction.  (I applaud research and imagination, both; if I don’t know I go look it up if I find nothing it’s most likely fiction.)  

Brooks is Australian by birth but moved to the US where she married Tony Horwitz and has had dual citizenship for many years – Horwitz died suddenly last year. Brooks is one of only a handful of authors who were not yet US citizens when they won the Pulitzer Prize.  (Another one is Shirley Hazzard – also from Australia but lived in New York for man-years.  She also wrote historical fiction primarily about WWII.). 

I’ve read all of Brooks’ novels (in order as they were released over the years) as well as her two books of nonfiction.  Great Circle was my first by Shipstead. There are several comparisons between the historical fictions. For one they both use a present day plot strand alternating with another strand from long ago both leading up to today.   There’s something about a book with two plot threads which alternate between a distant past and today’s world slowly coming together. Several of Brooks’ novels do this.  
 

Brooks’ novels include the subjects of the potato famine in Ireland, the Louisa May Alcott’s  fictional March family during the US Civil War, how an ancient illustrated Jewish text survived since Medieval  times,  Native Americans attending Harvard College in Colonial times, the Old Testament story of King David and horse racing in the US antebellum South.  

There is nothing formulaic about these novels (for comparison, James Michener’s historical fiction is formulaic), but there are a few common themes in Brooks’ novels. Biblical stories and religion are used for three books; racism comes up strongly in at least 2.  Art is a major factor in several of the books. https://malwarwickonbooks.com/outstanding-historical-fiction/?doing_wp_cron=1666029542.9941339492797851562500

The story takes place in Kentucky and New Orleans in the 1850s, and in New York a century later and again in 2019.  The Southern strand is about a boy named Jarret who is an enslaved black teenaged skilled horse trainer and groom. The horse of the title is Jarret’s (except for the fact that slaves can’t own anything of value) is an exceptional animal called Lexington.  The New York threads concern several different characters all interested in horses, racing, the art world, and more.  

Good book – go read it.

It was time for a good old history book, US history for a change of pace.  I have some other history books stashed, but this one appealed to me at the moment.   

The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783
By Joseph Ellis
2021 / 
Read by Graham Winton 11h 37m
Rating – 9 / US history 

Joseph Ellis has been studying and writing Early American history for decades – since some time before his first book was published in 1973. I’ve read two or three and there are several others which sound quite interesting.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Ellis  

The Cause concerns the actual breaking away of the American Colonies, “united colonies” at this point in their cause.  According to Ellis a complete break was obvious and it was inevitable the newly declared United States would win.  England was exhausting herself with wars and money problems while the Colonies had found a new source of strength in grievance about the various act  George III was imposing since the 7 Years War.  

When they finally got to fighting, the Colonies lost a few battles and then started winning. The actual war went from April, 1774 to October of 1781.  It didn’t have to go on that long or cost that many lives. King but George III was broke due to many wars and he wasn’t going to be embarrassed by the pitiful little colonies over there in America.  They would fight on, and what could have ended in 1777 after Burgoyne lost at Saratoga dragged with battle after battle until October, 1781 and Cornwallis was defeated at Yorktown. 

 And the book keeps going too. Long after Yorktown with the various players and the forces pressing on the Indians and the slaves and the leaders of the various states (now). The debt is huge but the land west of the Alleghenies is huge, too, Washington is a true hero. the issues are how to treat Vets because they’re not getting paid, how to deal with reparations, and much more.

There are lots and lots of little things revealed in this book which I didn’t have a clue about. And a really nice part of each chapter is that Ellis includes a section called  “Profile” at the end.  It focuses on one person about whom it is unlikely many readers have heard.  This isn’t a book for folks who don’t know anything about the American War of Independence but you don’t need to be a history major for it. Just a kind of middling history buff maybe.  

This is an older book, published in 2015 (I usually buy newer releases), but I did very much enjoy The Misbegotten Son by Olsen which I read back in February of this year.  In fact, I found out that several of Olsen’s books are now considered classics in the genre (true crime?) So, that’s when it went on ye olde Wish List. 

Son: A Psychopath and His Victims 
by Jack Olsen 
19
Read by Kevin Pierce 21 h 6m
Rating: A / true crime – psychological 

Olsen is thorough I’ll say that, one reason the story moves rather slowly is because it’s complex and Olsen has a LOT of relevant material. He writes very nicely, smoothly building tension as the 600+ page tale unfolds. There’s a bit of repetition due to Olsen building the case and zeroing in on Coe’s psychological difficulties. 

In the Introduction, Gregg Olsen writes that the author’s (Jack Oleson) focus is on the victims giving them all the attention they deserve. That shows in the subtitle, “A Psychopath and His Victims.” So although there are some “thriller,” procedural, and courtroom drama scenes and situations, it’s certainly not typical of the numerous “true crime” books I’ve read. This is a psychological portrait of a serial rapist. The thrust is the observations of victims, family, law enforcement, acquaintances, co-workers, even jurors.  Olsen went to great lengths to get all these people interviewed. These are vitally important to creating a complete, but non-professional, psychological portrait of a very dangerous man, a psychopath. The FBI profile is fascinating. 

The story of Kevin (Frederick) Coe of Spokane, Washington was thoroughly researched and written in more detail than Wikipedia and was an incredibly sad case. The title is “Son” because that’s what his parents, the well-to-do Ruth and Fred Coe, called him even when talking to others, until he was in his thirties. Jack did have a girlfriend – Ginni Perham,  who met him as he and his prior wife were divorcing.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Coe (Link includes info unavailable at the time of publication if you want the updates – they’re very interesting.)

Although it’s bulky at around 600 pages, after a slow but steady increase in tension, a high point comes at just about 1/2 way.  Olsen (d. 2002) was a master, it’s beautifully done.  (Olsen died in 2002.) 

Oh, oh!  I started a new book before I wrote up my “review” (?) of the last one.  This is a no-no because I’ll get all ahead of myself, or behind, one or the other.   Anyway, 

Lost Christianities:
The Battles of Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
by Bart Ehrman 
Read by  Matthew Kugler 13h 25m
Rating – 9.5

Lost Christianities is the story of how before the of Council of Nicea as well as for a long time later there were many groups of Christians believing and doing a wide variety of things.  Nicea was where it was decided what “the church” believed and make a statement of that belief (they got it about half done). Then they started work on compiling the Bible as we know it with both Old and New Testaments. Finally they worked on some kind of organizational law.  There was a LOT to do and it took much more than just this first Council.   

So we can see what they put together for Christians to do and believe after that but the question now is what did we lose?  What other ways did the early Christians see things?  What other things did they do?  

Ehrman’s book is not the story of the Council at Nicea but rather it’s an outline of the various beliefs and ideas which had to come together to do this. The representatives started with the question of “Who was Jesus? Was he divine or human?  And they went from there. 
I’ve read quite a number of Ehrman’s books and I was a bit wary of reading a repetition. This book was written in 2013 and more of what I’ve read has been since that time. As it turned out, I was pretty familiar with much of it due to prior reading but knew only a little about the main topic – the ways people believed before “orthodox Christianity” was set up.  

As usual, Ehrman is well organized, he writes very nicely keeping the reader’s interest, and the book flow at a good pace.  In this work he covers the “finds” of archeologists and others, he also discusses the many forgeries. He explores several belief systems including those of the Mancionites and Ebionites. All this as well as how St Paul fits in and what about Jews?  One book obviously cannot cover it all but the Notes are excellent in themselves as well as staring points for further research. 

 This book seemed to have such promise but after I started I could barely understand the reader – that was work just figuring out what they all said. (There’s really too much of that in today’s audio books – those characters don’t sound like that in my mind when I read text.)  Then the story itself is kind of twisty and the point of view goes back and forth between the the cops and some of the voices of a few of the victims. 

The Quaker
By Liam McIverney
Read by Angus King 11h 2m
Rating – B?/ serial murder/ procedural 

It takes place in Glasgow between 1968-1970 and although this is a “based on the real story” novel,  McIverney’s Glasgow feels more like something of the mid-19th century. There’s a Jack-the-Ripper feel to parts of it. 

It’s dark, for sure. And it’s loaded with suspense. But sad to say, the accent of the narrator was very difficult for me to adjust to and I missed a lot.  Sigh …   I might try again some day but at this point I’m tired of working so hard with that accent.  I got the gist of it. 

This is the historical source of the base story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_John

And this is from Amazon – 

It is 1969 and Glasgow is in the grip of the worst winter in decades yet it is something else that has Glaswegians on edge: a serial killer is at large. The brutality of The Quaker‘s latest murder― a young woman snatched from a nightclub, her body dumped like trash in the back of a cold-water tenement ― has left the city trembling with fear. The assassin leaves no clues and the police investigation seems to be going nowhere. 

Duncan McCormick, a talented young detective from the Highlands, is brought into the investigation to identify where, exactly, it’s gone wrong. An outsider with troubling secrets of his own, DI McCormack has few friends in his adopted city and a lot to prove. His arrival is met with anger and distrust by cops who are desperate to nail a suspect. When they identify a petty thief as the man seen leaving the building where the Quaker’s last victim was found, they decide they’ve found their serial killer. But McCormack isn’t convinced.

From ruined backstreets, to deserted public parks, and down into the dark heart of Glasgow, McCormack follows a trail of secrets that will change the city―and his life―forever.

 ****

I’ve read a number of Hamid’s books, only missing the first one,  Moth Smoke. Hamid is originally from Pakistan, lived briefly in the US as a youth, returned to Pakistan and then back to the US for advanced education.  He lives in both places now writing terrific and award-winning novels. 

The Last White Man 
by Mohsin Hamid 
2022 /  
Read by author 3h 5m 
Rating: 9 / experimental fiction

The Last White Man is not quite up to what I’ve come to expect from Hamid, but I suppose it’s an interesting idea and certainly well enough written. At only188 pages, it’s a really low-key novella.  But maybe I really didn’t understand it. It’s an allegory, right? but in spite of the opening lines, Hamid isn’t Kafka.  Maybe it’s an allegory of what is important to people. Skin color is right now, judging by attitudes,  but if all white people turned brown the importance would eventually fade, although remembered by some older people. The way we honor our parents and family would travel well, right along with many other changes.  Fear would be there – fear and isolation due to change (think Covid-19).  Aging and death would be with us.  

So feeling like I was missing something I just now read the review in the New York Times. My goodness – I guess I did “get it,” kind of, but there’s a lot more and I don’t really want to read it again. What if literature were written without the sex, violence, chase scenes, etc? David Gates, the author of The NY Times piece,  certainly thinks it can be done, but he’s not terribly enthusiastic about the “nothing really happens” goal of fiction.  I’ve increased my rating slightly.  🙂

The Draining Lake was first released in 2004 and translated into English in 2008 so it’s a pretty old book. That’s okey; I got it on sale and I’ve read and enjoyed Indriðason’s books prior.  This is the 4th in the Detective Erlendur Sveinsson (aka Reykjavik Murder Mysteries series) which went until 2014.  (I’ve read 5 overt the years but missed this one for some reason.) 

The Draining Lake 
by Arnaldur Indridason
2004 / 
Read by George Guidall 9h 15m
Rating: B- / crime procedural  
( Reykjavik Murder Mysteries, Book 4 – Iceland)

Following an earthquake an hydrologist finds a human skeleton on the bottom of a local lake which has  drained out as a result. The investigation is begun and Erlendur is involved because he looks for missing persons. Although he’s divorced,  Erlendur has his own family which consists of a son and a daughter as well as an ex-wife. His partner, 

Erlendur’s investigating and analyzing seem to show the missing man as probably being of the Cold War era when many Icelandic students studied in the USSR and spies were abundant. They find a very cold case which involved a missing man from that era – she still grieves.  

My rating?  I got very tired of the questions which take up most of the dialogue in the Detective Erlendur series. Erlanger asks a question and is answered with a question – “Why do you want to know?” “What’s it to you?” “Where are you going with this?”  This happens with his partners, the suspects, witnesses, family members everyone . It gets old and once I noticed that, um … yes,  I couldn’t stop noticing.  I still enjoy the mysteries – I may get another one or two, but they’ll be on sale or from the library.   

Another reason for reading anyway is that I really enjoy the plots in these books and the background story is okay. Detective Erlendur is pretty enjoyable as are the rest of the continuing characters.  But this is a good time to emphasize reading series in order. Sometimes reading ahead in a series results in a major spoiler in the overarching plot.