James Lee Burke. Light
of the World. ©2013 Dave Robicheaux, his wife Molly and his
daughter Alafair are vacationing in Montana with Clete Purcell and his newfound
daughter, Gretchen Horowitz, formerly known as “Caruso” when she was doing hits
for the mob. Alafair is being stalked by
an escaped serial killer whom she had interviewed in prison for a possible
book. Wyatt Dixon, the nemesis of Billy
Bob Thornton in Bitteroot has a more positive
role in this book and even finds a girlfriend.
Electroshock therapy apparently can work wonders on deranged rodeo
clowns. As usual the cast includes an
evil billionaire and his dysfunctional family and the ex-cons who work for
them. One critic wrote that this is “Burke’s
ultimate examination of the theme of good versus evil, with his deepest
exploration of both states.” It’s more
than a thriller and “an experience that is by turns beautiful and frightening.”
September 2013
.
Charles Cumming. The
Trinity Six. ©2011 Burgess, McClean, Philby, Blunt and
Cairncross were recruited by the Soviets in the 1930s at Trinity College,
Cambridge. Was there a sixth man in this
group of traitors? In this novel, there
was, and his name was Eddie Crane, but was he a traitor or a double agent? Eddie is 91 and living in a nursing home
under an assumed name. He wants to tell
his story and Sam Gaddis, a professor of Russian history at UCL in London,
takes over the contact with him after Sam’s journalist friend, Charlotte Berg,
dies of a heart attack at age 48.
There’s a very big secret here that Russian President Platov doesn’t
want revealed. MI-6 seems to be
collaborating with the Russians in a cover-up.
Sam finds that several people who might have known something about the secret
have been killed and that his life is in danger. This was a really good read. It could have happened and Platov could have
been Putin. September 2013
.
Jan Karon. In
the Company of Others. ©2010
I tried this for a couple of disks but couldn’t stay with it. Father Tim Kavanaugh, an Episcopalian priest
in Mitford NC, has been the subject of several novels. In this one he is vacationing at a fishing
lodge in Ireland. Not a whole lot
happens and the Irishness of it soon gets tiresome.
From reviews I understand there’s a big secret waiting to be revealed in
the last chapter, but it wasn’t big enough to make me stick around. September 2013
.
Daniel Silva. The
Rembrandt Affair. ©2010 This may be Gabriel Allon’s last operation --
or maybe not. Isherwood, a gallery owner asks Gabriel to
track down an unknown Rembrandt, which had been stolen from the restorer’s
studio after he had sent it there for cleaning.
As Gabriel starts his search, he meets the daughter of an earlier
owner. As a child, she had to watch
while an SS officer named Voss forced her father to “sell” him the painting for
almost nothing. Then her father and the
rest of the family were shipped off to Ravensbruck and never seen again. As Gabriel follows the trail he eventually
traces it to the son of a Swiss banker who had appropriated the accounts of his
Jewish depositors. Along the way, he is
able to persuade “the office” that this case is more than just a stolen
painting, and he gets the full support of Mossad, MI5 and MI6 and the CIA. It’s
a thriller like all of the previous ones, but the principals are getting older. October 2013
.
Herman Wouk. The
Lawgiver. ©2012 At 96, Herman Wouk is writing a novel about
Moses. He is asked to do a screenplay on
the same subject, declines but then reluctantly agrees to sort of oversee the
writing by an up and coming young writer.
The book is written in the form of emails, faxes, memos, records of
meeting and transcripts of telephone conversations. It’s a fascinating account of how a movie
gets made, but the format begins to wear rather quickly. October 2013
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