Thursday, July 17, 2025
39. The Tower by Richard Martin Stern
Sunday, July 13, 2025
38. There's a Hippie on the Highway by James Hadley Chase
The title, though, is more of a framing device. Harry Mitchell is a Vietnam vet hitching his way down Florida looking for summer work and some "sea and sun". He gets picked up by a trucker who warns him about the hippies on the road, stoned youth who will ruthlessly set upon anybody who stops. I guess Chase wanted to do something set in Florida (perhaps keying into John D. MacDonald's popularity?) but this feels more like Mad Max. Mitchell stops at an Italian roadside restaurant run by a really nice old Italian guy and his plump daughter and there confronts a gang of these hippies who chase another traveller inside. Mitchell busts them up and their pursuer, Randy, tells Mitchell he is heading to a restaurant/ beach resort where he could get him a job as a lifeguard.
See already, I'm trying to write a summary of the plot, but JHC always has so much going on right from the get-go that it's hard to know which details to exclude. Even before they get to the restaurant, they get picked up by a woman towing a "caravan" (another word that we don't say in North America; JHC is always good for a few of these) who then leaves them with a dead body (this is where the cover image comes from; his wig comes off when they bury him). I'm already giving away spoilers. I'll stop there and just say it gets even more interesting at the restaurant.
Among the cast of characters is an over-ambitious cop, the weirdly aggressive and ex-peterman (safe cracker) owner of the restaurant, his over-sexed daughter, the murdered man and his two associates both rough-edged women. As always with JHC there is a lot of story. The intricacies of the crime and its fallout are well thought out and coherent. The characters are colourful and just slightly unreal, but not in a way that lessens the entertainment.
There are two layers of racism in the book. On one level, the Black characters are portrayed stereotypically (although more for the 50s than the late 60s) and this is racist enough (like more than once, Joe the always friendly bartender goggles his eyes). There is a second, worse level where the racism feels off and I think it's again because Chase has no actual experience with actual American Black people. So you sense not only did he copy an ugly stereotype, he also sort of amped it up and made a point to emphasize it.
I am guessing this was perhaps also to reinforce the overall reactionary politics of the intro and outro (where the evil hippies return brutally). Chase thought that certain Americans would want to read about the hippie scourge and the triumph of a hardworking vet and a little background racism fits right in.
So not without flaws, this book is nevertheless overall entertaining and well put together.
Saturday, July 12, 2025
37. The Good Mothers: The True Story of the Women Who Took on the World's Most Powerful Mafia by Alex Perry
The thing with these journalistic books, though, is that ultimately I just want the facts. Because it's not an academic history, the writer has to make it into a "story." For myself, these two demands make an end result that is not entirely satisfactory either for the facts or the story. Perry's thesis is that women were ignored by the Mafia and the prosecutors going after them because of traditional Italian machismo and by finally paying attention to them, they were able to break the crime families. These powerful and brutal families, rooted in the gangster history of poverty-stricken southern Italy, were not able to get past their misogynist culture and this is what undid them. He does a good job arguing this thesis. It's the narrative that I found a bit forced, as he hopes between the three women's stories (which were all connected but not that closely). I was impatient to just find out what happened. This isn't really a critique of the book, just that as I was reading it, I remember why these kinds of popular non-fiction books are not really my jam.
What this book did really help me with was understanding better the political geography of Italy and the Mafia. I had heard of Calabria but didn't really get the deal with it. I'm no expert but this book had excellent maps and Perry does a good job of giving an overview sense of the geography and culture of the region. He glosses over it with a couple of sentences, but I also can understand how poor brigand families in remote mountain areas who met with revolutionaries could have evolved into a more sophisticated level of crime. What is missing is how they could all just become so brutal and murderous, even (especially) to their own families. Are they just this backward? I would be interested in a more nuanced treatment of the culture of the region. Still, humans. We can be as shitty as possible.
The other thing that I still don't understand is how these local thugs who dominate a region can also be controlling major finance and law firms with international scope. I guess this is the plot of the The Firm and it must be happening, but I'd like a clearer explanation with examples of where an archaic, country family can also be able to make decisions for billion-dollar firms. How does that work?
Wednesday, July 09, 2025
36. System Collapse (Murderbot Diaries #7) by Martha Wells
Network Effect is about rescuing ART's crew and figuring out the mystery of the Lost Colony. Now that we know what is going on. And there is a lot going on with factions of colonists, two layers of semi-failed terraforming/colonization, the evil corporation coming and trying to turn the colonists into indentured servants while the good people of ART's university crew (actually more of an advocacy group that secretly rescues and supports lost colonies) and Murderbot's Preservation friends try to save them.
The final act gets a bit confusing and drawn out and was somewhat of an anti-climax. There were so many moving parts and while it was emotionally satisfying and there was some decent action, I was hoping for something on a grander scale. An epic battle between secunits riding those crazy alien-contaminated ag-bots for instance would have worked. I'm nitpicking and as this is an episodic type series, going against my own values. Still very entertaining. I'm excited to learn that there is a new novella at work for 2026 and two short stories online that I will read next.
Some thoughts on the Murderbot TV series
I've watched the first 6 episodes and it's not quite doing it for me. It looks great and most of the actors are excellent (and look correct as well). I have two issues. First, while Skarsgard is fine, I hate to be super work but I really have to question the casting. One of the genius touches of the books is that Wells never identifies Murderbot's gender nor really their appearance. I realized at some point in that I was vaguely imposing my own masculine default image in my mind, but Murderbot could be any skin colour, gender or body type even. Like why not a thick, short butch lesbian look? Skarsgard is about as generic white male as you can get. It just anchors the show back to the 20th century. He is an executive producer so maybe a lot of the money came from his work, so I can accept him wanting to star if so, just not an ideal choice.
I can live with the boring safe choice but what really irks me is the obviousness of the writing. The books are far from subtle but Wells always delivers her various themes with a light touch. Murderbot is always sardonically commenting on the naivete of humans outside the Corporation Rim, but they are all quite competent (again, for humans) and don't ever flip out unecessarily and screw shit up. In the TV series, Dr. Mensah has to keep having panic attacks and they even wrote in an entirely new character who would betray them just so Murderbot could blow her head off in front of them all so we could get an entirely new level of freak-out and mistrust by the wimpy liberals. Yes, they are humanists and soft-hearted, but they are all experienced researchers who come from a refugee colony and have seen some shit. I can just see some producer going "we need to punch this up!" It's just so stupid and obvious and manipulative rather than good characters reacting with complexity to interesting situations (which is what the book delivers so well on).
This concept that progressives are soft and don't understand reality is a long-used propaganda narrative by the right and given that the entire thesis of the Murderbot Diaries is against corporatism and the need for authoritarian control (in the symbol of Murderbot's rejected governor module), it is depressing to see Hollywood once again internalizing it making it a fundamental aspect of the show. That's your coastal elites for you, always bending the knee to money and the power behind it.
Sunday, July 06, 2025
35. Network Effect (Murderbot Diaries #6) by Martha Wells
I am happy to say that Network Effect continues all the great elements of the previous Murderbot books: awesome sci-fi physical and computer action, hilarious techno-neurodivergent yet overly-emotional and sensitive Murderbot commentary on stupid humans (I love the "privacy blah blah blah" line), super cool space setting with evil corporations and mellow hippy planets thwarting them. And all this goodness in full novel length!
This time, Murderbot is out with a scientific team from Preservation (including Amena, Dr. Mensah's adolescent daughter) when they get raided by a tougher yet weirdly more primitive transport ship that turns out to be ART, Murderbot's old transport bot/secretly super powerful research AI friend that has somehow been deleted and taken over by these weirdly grey humanoids. Murderbot gets most of the crew off and seemingly saved except for Amena and the two of them get sucked into a wormhole that leads to an abandoned colony planet and a fun mystery. This narrative has two main themes that keep you turning the pages: Murderbot needing to save both him and ART's crew while dealing with a corporate that wants to claim the colony and figuring out the mystery of who these gray people are and how could they have taken over ART with some weird mold.
The climax is really cool as we get not only another SecUnit involved, but also a copy of Murderbot in software form only and the three of them work together with ART. It's complex and fun and also allows Murderbot to get all in huff constantly because he can't deal with his emotions. I'm turning into one of those fans who will be demanding more when I finish the last book.
Friday, July 04, 2025
34. The Odyssey by Homer (translation and forward by Daniel Mendelsohn)
Thursday, June 26, 2025
33. Fugitive Telemetry (Murderbot Diaries #5) by Martha Wells
Though fairly straightforward plot-wise and quick reads, there are a lot of layers to this series. For instance, the portrayal in the media of SecUnits is mostly as out of control killers or every now and then self-sacrificing heroes. They are basically slaves. Starting to see the connection? She doesn't shove it down your throat but the issues are there and explored and exposed subtly to add depth to the reading and make you think about our own world. Despite that, Wells never fails to deliver the cool sci-fi stuff and action the reader also wants. The resolution to the mystery in this one works perfectly to do this (won't give away anymore). I stayed up past my bedtime finishing it. Enough said.
Now annoyingly, I have to go find the novel, Network Effect, because it takes place between Fugitive Telemetry and System Collapse which are both together in a single volume, argh!
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
32. Exit Strategy (#4 in the Murderbot Diaries) by Martha Wells
Anyhow, Exit Strategy was another fun chapter in Murderbot's attempt to figure himself out and get back at these shitty corporations. This time, as he heads out to his original boss Mensah's home world to give her the damning evidence of GreyCris illegaly foraging ancient alien artifacts, he learns that she has been kidnapped by GreyCis. So he has to go back to their corporate hub and kick some ass. There is some cool surveillance tech fun in this one, as he is now in a very populated place with fancy hotels and cafes and stuff, all already staked out by the enemy. There is some pretty good space combat as well. Wells gives a nice mix of the humour and human stuff but she never neglects a good robot or space battle, which made doubly entertaining as they are fought on the physical and the network/cyber levels simultaneously.
31. Rogue Protocol (Murderbot Diaries book 3) by Martha Wells
Murderbot sneaks onto a contracted shuttle that is going to the now shuttered terraform unit to reclaim it and ostensibly use it for some other purpose. Murderbot makes acquaintances with a humanoid helper bot called Miki that is treated as a colleague and equal by the rest of the crew and uses Mike as its sensors and interface while murderbot remains hidden. This state of affairs last until the crew arrives at the terraforming station and is attacked. Much exciting bot on bot action (including three increasingly creative combat bot kills) and several layers of double-crossing, Murderbot once again helps a gang of outmatched and too sentimental human hippies against corporate malfeasance and then makes her getaway. Still fun.
Monday, June 23, 2025
30. Artificial Condition (Murderbot Diaries book 2) by Martha Wells
Artificial Condition is truly a novella. I read it in an afternoon (a deliciously hot day in Montreal). In the first half, Murderbot learns more about itself against its own will as it is grilled by a very smart data processing transport bot (who runs a ship owned by some university for research purposes but is contracted out for transport in between projects). In the second half, assisted by this new robot "ally" (murderbot is extremely annoyed by it and reluctant to allow it to get close), he investigates the site of his own early massacre and helps out a family of miners who got screwed out of their data. It's quick and satisfying.
What I am enjoying about the series so far is that it is episodic. There is a loose over-arching metaplot of murderbot figuring out what it wants to do, which seems to be evolving with each novella. In this one, he wants to go back to the site of his massacre (he has the memory of having killed 57 that was covered up as an industrial accident) to find out what really happened. It's part of the plot in this book but is secondary to the narrative of the episode. It makes for me at least for more enjoyable reading.
29. The Floating Dutchman by Nicolas Bentley
Thursday, June 12, 2025
28. Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
This Hunger games is the second Quarter Quell, so the 50th one and 40 years after The Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds. It's very similar to the first Hunger Games book in that you see it all from the perspective of a District citizen, how the games and the oppression of The Capitol impacts his world. It's dark stuff. Collins does not pull her punches and I have to always respect her for that. This is Haymitch's origin story, the second District 12 Tribute to win and it fills a narrative gap between Snow's romance with Lucy Gray and the main saga with Katniss Everdeen. From that perspective and for those kinds of fans, this book does a serviceable job of showing how all the strands connect, especially in the District 12 community (Haymitch's love is Lucy Gray's daughter and his friend Burdock is Katniss' dad).
Unfortunately, the overall plot and portrayal of the Capitol and the Games are not that innovative. Snow, in particular, is the full-fledged omnipotent evil he is in the main series. It would have been nice to see a bit more of his evolution to this insane levels of control and cruelty. Likewise, the plot is not really that interesting. Haymitch stumbles his way to victory, being confused and bummed most of the time. There is no real moment of victory or even any kind of catharsis for him or the reader. And then he just gots screwed and screwed and screwed at the very end. Again, Collins does not hesitate to portray evil, but I just wish there had been some more development in his personality or some way that he irked Snow and forced a change in the system or something. If he wasn't from District 12, this story would have just been a basic Hunger Games underdog victory story where the upstart gets punished and we learn that if you try to confront the Capitol you and everyone you love will be destroyed.
Another annoyance for me was that the ending basically reprints almost the entirety of Poe's The Raven. There is some clever plotting of Snow's evil manipulations but it felt lost in a very long denouement interspersed with way too many stanzas that didn't seem all that relevant. Kind of felt like Collins was either trying to pad it out or just loves the poem so much she wanted to force it down her readers' throats.
I hate to say it, but it felt like fan service drove the need for this latest book rather than a true inspiration to to tell Haymitch's story and open up the history of the Games.
Saturday, June 07, 2025
27. The Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds by Suzanne Collins
The setting is 10 years after the war against the Districts that put Panem back in power and instilled an even more ferocious regime as well as The Hunger Games, as punishment and reminder to the Districts for their "rebellion". Coriolanus Snow is a top student from a famous high-born family, now struggling with poverty and trying to hide it among his wealthy classmates. As an experiment, the Hunger Games planners have come up with the idea of each tribute getting a mentor from the Academy. Right from the beginning, Snow forges a special bond with his tribute, Lucy Gray, who is a "Covey" which are sort of like the Romani people of the districts, but now forced to stay in District 12. She is a performer and her charm and his initiative put them at the top of the popularity. Snow and his classmates also come up with the idea of gambling on the games and for fans to be able to sponsor the tributes with gifts of food and water.
It's cool to see the early version of the Games, which are super bootleg, in a crumbling arena and bad communications and visuals. Nobody really wants to watch them in the Capitol as they are so depressing and the Districts don't really have enough access to TV to make them ubiquitous. We see the seeds of the sophisticated entertainment machine it becomes by the time of the original trilogy (40 years later). It's all quite well thought out and darkly realistic. I note that this book was published 2 years after sports betting became legal in North America. And now that we are in the early stages of an authoritarian takeover of the US government, which is as clownishly unrealistic as the goofiest 1980s graphic novel, the Hunger Games does not seem like that much of a stretch.
Ultimately, this is both a bildungsroman and a star-crossed romance and both narratives are woven effectively to satisfying (though not happy) conclusions. I found the ending a bit rushed, but still believable. It is always tricky to take a major antagonist, who is almost cartoonish in their evil and then go back in time and show them as a decent person to begin with. Here, you sympathize with Snow because his situation is so shitty, but he displays a coldness and ambition from the beginning that coalesces into a scary worldview and the ultimate betrayal of his love and youthful ideals. By the end, you can see how he becomes President Snow and how Panem gets to the time of Katniss high-production value Hunger Games. Note, another advantage to reading books your kids recommend is you can lean on their excellent memories. Saves so much time to just ask them about some side character or past event than having to flip back through the book. They remember every scene!
Tuesday, June 03, 2025
26. The Dervish House by Ian McDonald
The story takes place in near future Istanbul. Turkey has joined the EU and nanotech is the big technology shift. We follow several different characters on various quests, the two mentioned above, as well as a young gas commodities trader plotting a secret deal, an art dealer looking for the Mellified Man (this is a really cool concept), a young woman marketing graduate trying to find deals for her cousins' new bionanotech and a broken young man caught in a suicide bomber nano attack. It's a lot to take in at the beginning. The organizing motif is the Dervish House, which is a centuries old building they all live in. It took me a while to figure that out, as well as what was going on. The writing is really dense at times, almost too much so to my taste, so that it is slow going for the first half.
The portrayal of Istanbul (though I've read it may be somewhat inaccurate in many details that might almost make it laughable to actual people who live there) was what kept it going for me. Even in the current times, it is a city that has always interested me. I'd love to go visit there someday. You really get a sense of the density and chaos and smells and feelings of this complex, layered historical bridge between Europe and Asia.
Once you finally figure out what is going on, the narrative definitely picks up and the book becomes quite fun. The last quarter is a real page-turner, though I could have gone with a bit more of a bang at the end.
I realize that McDonald's thing is to sci-fi up different countries and cultures. I guess that's a cool endeavour and I have had fun reading two of them, but it also feels a bit cultural appropriational. I would prefer to read a sci-fi book about Istanbul by a Turkish sci-fi author, which I bet there are out there. That being said, McDonald has a lot of intriguing other books out there, including his Luna series, which is supposed to be like a sci-fi Game of Thrones on the moon. I'm not going to hunt these down because my on-deck shelf is almost spilling off the edge, but if they come to me in the future, I will read them.
Sunday, May 25, 2025
25. Striding Folly by Dorothy L. Sayers
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this image references all 3 stories |
The first story is about a retired man who is resenting the potential development of the estate land up which his small cottage looks. When a stranger comes to visit and play chess with him (he is a known chess expert), it is actually an elaborate ruse to frame him for murder of said developer. The chess match was cool, but they story and mystery were a bit pat and short to be satisfying, involving galosh prints in mud.
The second story has Wimsey, on the day of the birth of his first son, chatting with a perplexed police constable who thought he saw a murder through a mail slot and then returned to find nothing that he thought he saw to be anywhere near the truth. I guessed this one but the answer seemed so silly that I dismissed it. It was fun, though, to read the thoughts and dialogue of the aristocratic Wimsey thinking about being a new father.
The third story was the best, because of the funny way it captures the positive side of British upper class mores. Wimsy is no on his third child, the first of which is accused of stealing prize peaches from a nearby neighbour. The Wimseys also have a guest, the annoying Mrs. Quint, who keeps lecturing to them about child-rearing. Wimsey and his son conspire her comeuppance as the former also solves the mystery, to the satisfaction and appreciation of the neighbour. It's a lot of fun.
The essay by Janet Hitchman is okay. It's an excellent reference if you want a summary of Wimsey's character and career as well as some biographical info on Sayers herself. It doesn't have all that much interesting to say, though she tries, other than that. The book itself is a nice NEL paperback and I hope that some Wimsey completist finds it when I give it away.
Saturday, May 24, 2025
24. The Goodbye Look by Ross Macdonald
I was a bit wary about reading this one, as I understand there is a peak period with the Lew Archer novels. The Goodbye Look was published in 1969, on the later side and I suspected that this one might not be so great. When an author works a certain specific style and themes their entire career, it can grow old and repetitive at the end of their work. I didn’t want to expose myself to a lesser Lew Archer and then find that influencing my perception of his great books. Nevertheless, it was thin and has a cool cover. I was on a work trip and knew i could only read in snatches and thought a detective book would be an easily digestible follow. I was correct on my first worry and incorrect on the second prediction. The Goodbye Look is a decent read, but it does feel tired, dwelling overly and too heavily on the sins of the past and the lies of couples and parents. It also had a complex mystery with too many characters so that I got quite confused at times. This book should be read in one sitting or at least several chunks. The plot is actually really well-constructed and clever (and messed up) but it takes some focus to keep it all together.
Archer gets hired by a lawyer, Trutwell to help his wealthy clients, the Chalmers, to recover a jewelry box filled with letters that was stolen from them. The lawyer lives next door to the Chalmers and they have a long history together. However, the Chalmers don’t seem keen on Archer’s involvement. Right away, you can tell that there are secrets everywhere and everyone involved doesn’t want to say anything. Archer, of course, plods along, continuing to probe until he finds out quite quickly that their son Nick is quite likely the culprit. He has a history of psychological instability and there is a risk of suicide. He has been hanging out with an older woman and a rougher young man, despite supposedly in love with Trutwell’s nice daughter. Tracking them down, Archer finds the rougher young man shot to death in his car. This is where things get complex and we get a bunch of storylines from the past including an embezzled bank (and the disappearance of the money), affairs while boyfriends are away at the war and just a whole lot of lying.
Now that we all know the sad history of the Millar’s, it is hard to extricate their personal struggles from the books. The themes in The Goodbye Look seem to hit particularly hard in this area and it is troubling to think of the two writers working on this book together which discusses the crimes of wayward children and how their parents dealt with them. I think part of what makes this book lacking is that there is so much focus on the family and very little on the time and place. There is also more explicit pscyhological talk, both in the dialogue and Archer’s thoughts. His metaphors as well were getting a bit forced at this point.
I know I’m sounding really critical. On its own, it’s an impressively intricate mystery with a pretty good portrayal of the morally bankrupt bourgeoisie. It just can’t compare to his earlier works and one risks perhaps enjoying them less if you read them after this one. So I recommend it for Archer completists only.
Saturday, May 17, 2025
23. Diplomatic Immunity by Lois McMaster Bujold (#12 in the Vorkosigan saga)
Here Miles is now newly-married, settling into his role as Imperial Auditor and seemingly a slight more staid life than before. He and Ekaterina are returning from their honeymoom to prepare to settle down and welcome the birth of their son and daughter, in uterine containers back on Barrayar. Of course, everything goes to shit when he gets a call to deal with a conflict between a Barrayar military escort with the local authorities of the remote Graf station, in Quaddiespace. The Quaddies were genetically developed with four arms instead of two arms and two legs, specifically for construction and living in zero-gravity and due to persecution and exploitation set off centuries before to make their own colony.
It's a complicated situation involving initially a disappeared, either deserted or kidnapped or murdered, security officer, plus an "overzealous" (or brutal) attack by Barrayan officers when they went to return to the ship a late-returning pilot. Things get more and more complicated and risky as the situation continues to escalate to a galactic level. I'm not going to say more than that. This was another fun one, involving a great look at the Quaddie world and how they live, lots of gross bio-weapons and some cool, exciting last-minute space action. I can't wait to see where they go next.
Thursday, May 15, 2025
22. Closed Circuit by William Haggard
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boring as hell for a photo cover but still looks cool |
It doesn't hurt how beautiful these Penguins are. I'm not a massive Haggard fan, but I keep all of his that I find because the editions are so lovely and look great on my shelf. I know it is pure snobbery, but I love the back tagline of this book "the 'adults' Ian Fleming". It is so true. These are smart espionage books. Sometimes perhaps a bit too smart, as Haggard loves oblique conversations (and even sometimes narrative passages) where nothing specific is mentioned and the read has to infer what is actually going on. I think this is often how intelligent spymasters do actually talk, but there are also elements that refer to subtle class distinctions in England that can be tough for a 21st century North American to parse.
The story here contains Haggard's usual elements: skullduggery involving a fictional foreign nation that somewhat implicates Britain as well. However, it is off to the side from his usual sandbox, only indirectly involving the Security Executive branch. The protagonist is Francis Mason, the heir of a multi-generational farming family of English descent from the South American country of Candoro (an analogue of paraguay perhaps). His grandfather and the patriarch of the estancia (named "Seven" because it was the seventh plot of land granted to colonialists in the 19th century) drove off a local official in a humiliating way (knocking him down with bolas just after he had left the property) and that local has recently become the president of the country. He is making serious trouble for Seven so Mason heads off to England in the hope of getting some support from the British Foreign Office and sympathetic people in the Candoran embassy. His first "ally" is Kenneth Gibb, an ambitious and less than ethical middle ranking diplomat who also had an affair with Mason's wife. Mason is portrayed initially as a bit soft and passive, but as the narrative unfolds, we of course see that he is made of sterner stuff, as he threads the needle of all the various enemies working around him.
It's a fun read, though I found the ending a bit too dependent on chance. I didn't mind as there is an excellent scene here of the kind of subtle badassery that is why I read these books. Just so fucking cool. The whole thing about Mason is that he is descended from good British stock and his grandfather was a famous badass landowner. So he inherited that toughness and also was raised on the estancia, learning to ride, work cattle, but he also grew up with the peons and learned all their sweet knife-fighting skills, which gets revealed to the reader at the best possible moment. He is shown as deferring and polite, just trying to minimize trouble and save his Estancia, while all these nastier and seemingly more sophisticated players are maneuvering around him to screw him out of his money. When things get nasty for real as an assassin is sent to take out one of those players (with whom he had become allied and started to respect) in a London park, suddenly Mason is whipping out a 14" facón that nobody knew he had on him and completely besting the assassin to the point where he discusses whether or not he should kill him and decides not to because the body would cause problems for them.
The Kenneth Gibb character is interesting as well as in some ways the book is more about him. Haggard really has it in for him. He starts out as seeming that he will be quite a problem for our protagonist but ends up just getting utterly screwed left and right, to the point where though he initiated much of it with bad selfish decisions, you start to feel bad for him. By the end he goes out in the worst possible way. One feels that he may have been a type that Haggard dealt with in his own life, so severe is his retribution.
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
21. Russell's Despatches from the Crimea edited and introduced by Nicolas Bentley
William Howard Russel was a very successful military journalist whose honest reporting from the Crimean front and specifically the siege of Sebastopol, though polite and respectful, exposed the incompetence and disconnection of the government at home. The logistical planning for the war was a total disaster and the British lost thousands of men to cholera and exposure before the fighting even started. I know we all hate the British and colonialism now, but there is an element in their politics that always allowed for critique and you see that in the writing here. He writes with sympathy of the brutal situation of the men in the field, who had to spend a winter on sodden ground without tents and insufficient food and clothing and in the gentlest way makes your understand the incompetence of Lord Raglan, the general who was given the post out of respect for his seniority rather than competence. He also goes after the excessive paperwork and bureaucracy that stymied the army and navy actually making decisions and getting things done.
At the same time, he speaks in the voice of a patriot and his writing is so good that he makes the battles seem quite thrilling. You could see how young men could read his passages in The Times and feel the allure of the false glories of war. These passages, however, are strongly tempered by his descriptions of the aftermath. Wow, these battles were just gruesome. Russell describes the various mutilations (from shot balls, bayonets and other shrapnel) as well as the fields of the dead, dying and wounded. It's crazy how expendable life was considered back then in the pursuit of strategic goals on the other side of the continent.
Ultimately, this battle was about western Europe using the Ottoman empire as a buffer to prevent Russian expansion (and allow Britain a free and open market in the Ottoman empire). The specific flashpoint or excuse to trigger a war was ostensibly a conflict over who was allowed to protect the Orthodox Christians in the Palestine. It is a conflict that we are still fighting today, in both regions.
Monday, April 21, 2025
20. Wild Talent by Wilson Tucker
The story takes place in the early '50s. The protagonist is Paul Breen and he is living in a gilded cage, spending his last few moments with a woman he loves before somebody is coming to kill him. Just as he is about to be shot, he turns the gun around. We don't know what happens, because the book then flashes back to Paul's early life. We learn of him as a precocious and independent 13 year old boy who saves up enough money to take a trip to Chicago and the World's Fair and from there we start to see inklings of his ability to read other humans. As the book progresses, we follow him in the army, where his power is discovered. He is then made part of a super secret government operation, run by a guy he dislikes named Slater. He is used to scan other operatives who are sent out around the world to spy, not knowing that he is reading their minds from afar. As the operation progresses, anybody close to Paul is slowly removed. He plots his revenge and escape.
Wild Talent is cleanly written and a page-turner. I finished it easily and wanted to find out what happens. But it's not a super exciting book; it's actually kind of down and melancholy. The theme is that because of his powers, Paul is not human, he is superior and that superiority makes him an enemy to humans. There isn't a lot of action, mainly Paul interacting with the people in his limited world. There are some cool details and his powers are thought through in an interesting way. I would like a sequel with more telepathic ass-kicking.
Thursday, April 17, 2025
19. The Cuckoo Line Affair by Andrew Garve
After reading Boomerang, I assumed that Garve's work was in the 20th century British men's adventure sub-genre, Ã la the great Desmond Bagley (and his wife Joan Margaret Brown). The Cuckoo Line Affair begins with a static description of an eccentric old man Andrew Latimer, briefly a member of parliament who lives in a cottage out in the country, putters around in his garden, plays with the local neighbour child, has a bunch of civic responsibilities and makes a small amount of money writing political gossip columns for various newspapers. He has two sons who are making their way in the world and an old maid daughter who lives with him and takes care of him. We are well into the second chapter, describing one of his rare trips by train to London and I am trying to figure out how any of this, as pleasant as it was to read about, was going to evolve into a challenging conflict with elements and/or man in some interesting foreign location.
Well at the end of the second chapter things do get weird! He is alone in a carriage with a young woman on the old and rickety Cuckoo Line. She gets some coal in her eye and asks him to help her get it out. The next thing he knows, they are kissing! So we do get a real plot, but it isn't an adventure story as much as an investigation. Latimer is accused of assaulting the woman and finds himself in real trouble. His two sons, one who is a lawyer and the other a crime fiction writer, have to figure out how to defend him and also figure out what actually happened. There is a lot of neat stuff around these muddy inlets in Essex (I think?!) and puzzling out the complexities of the crime kept me engaged and interested. The ending, however, had an early climax and then somewhat of an anti-climax, where everything depended on getting a certain piece of evidence and convincing the prosecuting attorney of something. It was all very pleasant and I wish I had a nice english cottage with a garden and marshy lands to poke around in. I also was happy for the Latimer family and appreciated that Hugh, the investigating son, brought his fiancée Cynthia into it and she was actually responsible for several of the crucial clues.
Thursday, April 03, 2025
18. American Falls the collected short stories by Barry Gifford
Interestingly, there is really only one story here, the final novella, that I would have recognized as coming from Barry Gifford. I had expected lots of American neo-noir and interesting lowlifes, but actually many of the stories were more "high culture", including ones imagining a trip to North Africa by some famous artists (whose names I have forgotten). Apologies for lack of a more thorough review, but I am writing this weeks after having read it and have already put the book into free library circulation. None of the stories blew my mind and some were too slight, but I did enjoy reading it and learning that Gifford's fiction covers a wide range of styles and subjects.
Sunday, March 30, 2025
17. Blue Moon by Lee Child
I am pleased to say that as of 2019 the quality of Reacher is strong as ever. Blue Moon did not disappoint. The entry into the situation was classic Reacher, totally compelling. He follows the old guy off the bus, foils the mugger, but then quite quickly figures out the man is being extorted. In trying to help him and his wife out, he gets involved in (well actually creates) a gang war between the Albanians and the Ukrainians, each of whom control one half of a medium-size midwestern city.
What the TV series only hints at is what makes the books so great. In Reacher's America, the collapse has already come. America is no longer civilized, the social and economic structures have collapsed. Civilians are fodder for criminals (organized and unorganized) and the forces of law are weakened or absent. He's always walking around the fringe areas, the post-industrial wasteland of mini-malls and car dealerships. There are good people here and there who aren't victims but they aren't strong enough to resist the evil around them. Until Reacher shows up.
In Blue Moon, other than the two gangs, the major baddies are a techbro and the US health industry (which is portrayed as more efficient and ruthless extorter than even the Ukrainians and Albanians). I mean talk about relevant. Reacher and his new allies must get through these gangs first and it is a hoot. This book had some funny moments, because Child juxtaposes Reacher investigating with the two gangs trying to figure out what is going on and constantly getting it wrong. It has two shootouts that are almost like a slapstick comedy. The ending gets quite preposterous and perhaps a bit too easy and long, but it's all so much fun getting there that I accepted it all. And there are just several great fight scenes. Lee Child is really good at his job.
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
16.The Jupiter Legacy by Harry Harrison
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