M.C. Beaton. Death
of a Gossip. This is a first
novel which introduces Scottish detective Hamish MacBeth. Actually he is just the local constable in a
one man police station in Lochdubn. Eight
people of varying backgrounds are attending a one week salmon fishing school at
Lochdubn’s only resort hotel. One of
them, Lady Jane Withers, is a gossip columnist who digs up dirt on people with
whom she is planning vacations so that she can collect more dirt and put it in her
column. She ends up in the lake, which
she richly deserves and MacBeth has to go around the back of the detective who
supervises him in order to find out who put her there. It’s an intriguing and charming mystery with
a bit of pathos thrown in as we learn about the lives of each of the eight
hotel guests. February 2013
Stephen L. Carter. Jericho’s
Fall. Beck DeForde, ex- wife of
Jericho Ainsley, is called to his bedside as he lies dying of cancer in the
Colorado mountain retreat that he had built for Beck during their short
marriage some years earlier. Jericho had
worked at the White House, served as Secretary of Defense and finally as Director
of the CIA until he was eased out into an academic career at the Princeton
Institute of Advanced Studies. It was at
Princeton that he met Beck, 30 years his junior. Soon after Beck arrives in Colorado, she
realizes that various forces are maneuvering to recover and bottle up the
secrets that Ainsley carried away from the CIA or a later incarnation with a
hedge found that went broke or maybe both.
Beck survives the onslaught by wit and daring. It’s a good read but it doesn’t have the
depth of The Emperor of Ocean Park or
Palace Council. March 2013
Stephen L. Carter. The
Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln.
Not reviewed. I quit as soon as I
realized this was going to be alternate history after Lincoln survives Booth’s
assassination attempt. No doubt Carter
brings some interesting law into the story, but the premise is too
farfetched. February 2013
Mark
Haddon. The Curious Incident of the Dog
in the Night-time. The author
takes the reader inside the head of a 15 year old boy who is seriously
autistic. Not a whole lot happens, but
the boy’s thought processes about what does happen are fascinating. Red is good, yellow and brown are bad, and
the presence or absence of these colors determines what kind of day it’s going
to be. If different foods touch each
other on the plate, they can‘t be eaten.
Life is an endless list of self-made rules that can’t be violated. March 2013
Paul
Johnson. Churchill. This is a relatively short biography. I didn’t find anything new or startling, but
it was a good review. Among the things
that stood out for me was his career as a journalist. He seemed to take every opportunity to make
money and promote himself, often by writing about his assignments as a military
officer or government official in ways that would today be considered conflicts
of interest. His many disagreements with
Roosevelt were another area of special interest. March 2013
Henning
Mankell. Before the Frost. I have enjoyed the Wallander series on TV,
but I had no idea how rich the novels are.
Mankell lets us in on the thought processes of his principal characters
in ways that are not possible in film, even in a series, where time is not as
much of a factor as it is in a standalone film.
This novel features Wallander’s daughter, Linda, in the days just before
she becomes a police officer and her difficult relations with her father as
they work on a case involving religious fanatics. March 2013
Rory
Stewart. The Places in Between. Stewart reads his own book about his
adventures walking in winter from Herat to Kabul. He is following the route of a 16th
Muslim prince, who made the trip to solidify his control over Afghanistan. For Stewart it is part of a walk he took
across the Middle East and South Asia in connection with his historical studies
of Medieval Muslim society. It is hard
to imagine how different life is in the isolated mountain valleys through which
he trekked. First, you need letters of
introduction both for safe conduct and to insure a place to eat and sleep each
night. Nothing happens without a bribe. Most people marry their first cousins. There’s not much to eat except dry bread,
because the Taliban killed or stole most of the livestock. One of the chiefs
with whom he stayed could recite his family genealogy back 15 generations. One woman he met had never been more than a
four hour walk from her village.
People’s attitudes and motivations are so different from ours that
Afghanistan might be another planet. And
can you imagine walking alone in winter through 14,000 foot mountain passes in
a country where everyone carries an AK-47?
March 2013
Ira
Stoll. Samuel Adams, a Life. This book is must for anyone interested in
the history of the Revolutionary War. I
was thinking to myself that I had read piles of books and had heard Samuel
Adams’ name many times, but I didn’t really understand his role in the
war. The author opines that the reason
Adams has not figured more prominently in standard accounts of the revolution
is that he never held national office afterwards. During the run up to the war, the two heads
that the British wanted most were those of Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Adams was a principal player in the
Continental Congress, and it is the Massachusetts State Constitution, which
Adams shepherded through the state assembly, that was the model for the
national constitution and the Bill of Rights.
As a Congregationalist and descendant of Puritans, Adams consistently
attempted to introduce his religious views into government and politics, and
much of the rhetoric that we hear today about America being a Christian nation sounds
like it comes directly from Adams, and yet it was Adams who promoted religious
tolerance as the Bill of Rights was being considered. Lest we forget, Congregationalist views of
Quakers and Catholics were no less hostile than Christian attitudes towards
Muslims today. I came away from this
book in awe of Adams the practical politician and political theorist, grateful
to him for his legacy and not liking him very much at all. March 2013
Ross Thomas. Out
on the Rim. O’Henry would have
loved this book. Five con artists come
together to try to steal $5 million that they are to supposed to deliver to a
Philippine communist rebel. It takes
them a long time to figure out that the money comes from Marcos to finance an
insurgency that would destabilize the government and create an opportunity for
Marcos to return to power. Then of
course there’s the question of which cons will con which cons. This one was
fun. February 2013
Scott Turow. Pleading
Guilty. I’ve read and enjoyed a
number of Scott Turow’s novels, but I didn’t like this one much. The plot is as ingenious as usual, but
neither Mac Malone, the narrator, nor any of the other characters are
attractive as good guys or villains or whatever. Maybe I would make an exception for Toots, an
83 year old lawyer, who can fix anything for a price. He has
organized crime connections and is up for disbarment, but soldiers on. One does learn a bit about bank secrecy in
piss pot countries and what one can do with transfers among numbered
accounts. Oh, and there are lots of
lessons here about “legal ethics,” the ultimate oxymoron. March 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment