David Baldacci.
Divine Justice. This is
the 4th and maybe the last act for the Camel Club. This novel opens where Stone Cold
ends, just after Oliver Stone has assassinated Carter Gray, head of the CIA,
and Roger Simpson, who had raised Stone's daughter after his wife was murdered.
Both men had conspired to ruin Stone's life and force him underground courtesy
of a fake grave at Arlington. Stone
starts off for New Orleans on Amtrak, hoping to elude the pursuit of the Feds,
but gets side tracked after doing a good deed and ends up in Divine Virginia, a
coal mining town that also supplies the labor for a maximum security federal
prison nearby. Stone gets involved in
the lives of some locals who are opposed to or involved in a major league drug
distribution and money laundering.
Fortunately for him but against his wishes, Annabelle and the other
Camel Club members track him down and help him right all of the local
wrongs. And he finds love at long
last. This has got more action per mile
than anything else on the road.
.
Jedediah Berry. The
Manual of Detection. This is
one of the stranger novels I have ever read.
It’s science fiction of a sort but set in a world about 80 or 90 years
ago. Charles Unwin is an experienced
clerk in a giant detective agency organized by someone who had read Kafka. His job is to write up the reports for ace
detective Travis Sivart. The action
begins when Sivart disappears and Unwin is promoted to detective, unprepared
and uninterested in anything but continuing as a clerk. Almost everything takes place in the minds of
the characters while they are dreaming.
It is a struggle between Hoffman and the detective agency for control of
the unnamed city. Caligari, the owner
and principal star of a carnival, had developed the technique of entering other
people’s dreams. After he taught the
technique to Hoffman, Hoffman murdered him and proceeded to try to use dreams
to gain control of the city. One of the
first crimes we hear about is his attempt to steal November 12. You have to read the book to know what this
means. September 2012
.
Sandra Brown. Ricochet. I confess that I tend to avoid novels written
by women. In a moment of weakness, I
decided to try a mystery by Sandra Brown Mgmt., Inc. It has a complicated plot and some
interesting characters: a judge who has sold his soul to a major league
narcotics trafficker, a woman who goes after them and a cop who goes after all
three. One of the problems of reading a
book by ear is that it’s hard to skip ahead without missing significant
developments in the plot, so I was a captive audience for the endless and
puerile sex scenes. There are only so
many ways to make love, and I haven’t seen anything new to me for a long
time. They ought to be numbered; then author
could just insert the appropriate numbers and move on. It would save a lot of trees and a lot of
time. September 2012
.
John Sandford. Phantom
Prey. This is the 18th
in the “Prey” series. Lucas Davenport is
on the job as usual. He is part of a
stake out watching the attractive and exhibitionist young wife of a
particularly nasty drug dealer in the hope that the dealer comes back to
collect her. There’s another whole plot
to go through we come back to the stake out and the bloody shootout that
ensues. An attractive rich business
woman’s daughter is presumably murdered in her kitchen but the body is missing. Then three of her friends are murdered. Is it the same person? What are the motives? It’s an interesting plot with a number of
surprises including multiple personality disorder. What’s interesting is watching Davenport burn
up shoe leather and miles on his Porsche figuring it all out. September 2012
.
Barbara Tuchman. A
Distant Mirror, Part Two. I had
read this many years ago and remembered it as an incredibly sophisticated and
detailed record of the carnage of the 14th C. I remembered correctly and I can recommend
the book to anyone who likes to read detailed history. Unfortunately I also have to say that it
doesn’t really work to get it by ear or at least not the amount of attention I tend
to give a recorded book as I’m working around the house or taking a long
walk. After a few chapters, I returned
it to the library and cancelled the hold I had put on Part I. If I can find my print copy, I may sit down
and read it again. September 2012
.
Gore Vidal. Point
to Point Navigation. Vidal
finished this final memoir on January 1, 2006 .
Apparently he knew everyone: novelists,
poets, screen writers, playwrights, actors, directors and producers, critics, politicians
and journalists and editors. The range
of his interests is incredible and although none of us will agree with
everything he had to say – he said so much – no one can deny the depth and
breadth of his intellectual contributions.
The work speaks for itself. Maybe the most interesting anecdote is his
account of working with Federico Fellini.
Fellini preferred to shoot without sound and add the sound later. He would go to great lengths to frustrate the
efforts of producers to get him to shoot sound and visuals together. I want to single out just one theme that runs
through this memoire. Vidal never
avoided the subject of his homosexuality and never allowed the reservations of
others to get in the way of his intellectual contributions. He says that he has always considered one’s
sexuality a private matter and that he refused to be identified with the gay
rights movement. September 2012
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