This Week's Book

The Global Pandemic and The Cure

2026-09-07T17:10:23.197-04:00

The Cure - Glen Cooper

I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for classic post-apocalyptic fiction. You know, like The Stand, The Dog Stars, or Lucifer’s Hammer; and some older goodies like the The Andromeda Strain and Alas, Babylon. Glen Cooper’s The Cure is right up my alley, then, except perhaps the “classic” part.

It’s postapocalyptic fiction of the “global pandemic” subgenre (like The Stand), and I’ll grant that the premise of The Cure is inventive. Unlike the standard flu global pandemic, victims don’t die. Instead, they develop complete amnesia: no speech, no memory, no comprehension; just pure creatures of instinct (albeit trainable). The cause is an unholy marriage of a manufactured virus (intended to help cure dementia) and a wild virus that should never have come into contact with it. All because of a cascade of… well, stupidity.

As luck would have it, the two scientists who helped manufacture that virus are both among the one in five who seem immune. Problem 1: the hero (Jamie) is in Boston and the heroine (Mandy) is in Indianapolis. Problem 2: the hero’s teenage daughter (Emma) is, to put it nicely, tabula rasa. Problem 3: civilization has collapsed, and we all know what that means… the meek sure as heck will not inherit the earth.

What follows is stock postapocalyptic fiction; with the stereotypical brutal, violent fiefdoms and a harrowing journey across the country. That Jamie runs afoul of not one but two colonies of violent religious nutters may say something about the author, or perhaps something about the state of this country. Cooper has an MD, which suggests that the science he uses to describe his weirdo virus is plausible; albeit at a level that will give some readers headaches. If that’s you, just go with the flow and willingly suspend your disbelief. It’s only a couple of chapters.

What gave me a few headaches of my own wasn’t the medical science, though. No, that was the episodic nature of the action. It’s as if the book was written for serial television, neatly chopped into bite-sized chunks instead of forming an end-to-end narrative.

In that, The Cure shares structure with many recent thrillers I’ve encountered, making this reader (at least) suspect that the author was torn between writing a scripted series or a novel. Each episode – or story arc, if more than a couple of chapters – ends with a thrilling escape or the death of yet another semi-major character; all compressed into what seems to be an improbably short period. Truth be told, though, it was hard to get a handle on the duration covered by the action.

Cooper deserves kudos for an inventive premise. On that count alone I’d be inclined to award five stars. However, his inventiveness failed when it came to the “balance of good and evil,” as so well depicted in The Stand. Add to that a milquetoast main character and the lack of consistent timing, and I have to knock off some stars, leaving The Cure with three and a half.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC of this novel in return for my honest review.

Dez Goes Underground for Storm Warning

2025-11-27T13:06:00.005-05:00

Storm Warning - James Byrne

Meet Desmond Aloysius Limerick, Dez to his friends (he insists on it). Dez could be charitably described as a tank: 5-foot-8 with a 50-inch chest… and all muscle. Brawn, but with a healthy helping of brain: he’s a Gatekeeper: he can open any door and keep it open as long as necessary, allowing in those who belong and keeping out those who don’t. Between gate jobs he’s a professional musician (bass guitar and piano) and a has recently spent time as a sous chef. Oh, and despite his unusual physique, he’s apparently irresistible to beautiful women.

It's for his skill with doors that the FBI reached out to Dez this time. Seems that a high-end research station deep (underground) in the Canadian Maritimes has gone radio silent, along with the staff of an underground mine and the village of Fuchstown ion the surface. The Feebs are mounting a hostage rescue team, and Dez asked to go along to open doors. He’s happy to join them, seeing that his occasional squeeze Petra Alexandris is one of the people with whom communication has ceased.

Just getting to Fuchstown proves to be difficult, partially because of violent winter storms and partially because of the mercenaries employed by the evil co-presidents of a mining equipment company; hell-bent on getting into the facility before anyone else… for some unknown reason.

The storms prevent the HRT from reaching the site, but Dez and a small group of non-FBI types make it to a deserted Fuchstown to find the sole elevator to the underground complex disabled. Well, disabled for anyone who’s not a Gatekeeper. As Dez repairs the machinery, a gaggle of mercs show up slinging lead with a .50-caliber machine gun. Dez’s party heads underground, where they find a standoff between the surviving townspeople and an unknown number of Russians; suspiciously militaristic for “mining engineers.” Oh, yeah, and there’s also an assassin roaming the tunnels and chambers. Well, at least Dez and Petra are reunited…

Given a surprising number of moles -- they ARE underground after all – and plenty of suspicion, misdirection, lies, and backstabbing (some literal), the action underground will prove to be non-stop. Expect plenty of action sprinkled liberally with surprises and not a little of Dez’s wry humor. Don’t worry about the psychopaths directing all the mayhem, though: they’ll get their just deserts.

Storm Warning is the fourth Dez Limerick book from the pen of James Byrne (The Gatekeeper, Deadlock, Chain Reaction). Limerick has the skills of your typical Jason Stratham hero while combining many of the skills of a Mission Impossible team; not to mention a wicked sense of humor – definitely a modern-day renaissance man. While the breadth of his skillsets isn’t particularly believable (and Byrne needs more help with technical stuff than he’s getting), a trip into the willing suspension of disbelief with Mr. Limerick is always highly enjoyable.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance review copy in exchange for my honest review.

In Which Orphan X Draws Closer to Humanity

2025-11-22T09:58:00.010-05:00

Antihero - Greg Hurwitz

If you’ve been reading the Orphan X series since the eponymous introductory book in 2016 (as have I), you have noticed by now that the famously stoic, OCD-riddled Evan Smoak has been doing quite a lot of “personal growth” through the first ten installments. Number eleven, Antihero, takes The Nowhere Man to places in his psyche he’s never visited before… and it’s pretty fascinating.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of mayhem — as you might expect — but his latest “mission” has placed some restrictions on him, among which is a version of the biblical fifth commandment: don’t kill anyone on my behalf. Trust me; if you were in X’s Original S.W.A.T.s and knew what had happened, you’d be hard-pressed to obey that command.

It all started when whack-job power broker Luke Devine called X asking for help… actually for help on behalf of his latest mini-skirted companion. It seems that on the way to her meeting with Devine, she saw a young woman abducted from a subway car, and she wants to know what happened to her. Truth? It’s something you never want to happen to anyone you know…

Given an unidentified, vaguely described, woman taken by person or persons unknown to an undisclosed location, you’d expect problems. Well, you and I would, but X has J on his side; and Joey, 17-year-old Orphan washout megahacker that she is, finds the woman. It’s up to X to find those abductors and exact his retribution. Unfortunately, a lot more than mere abduction went on… and thus the trail of non-lethal carnage will be long and twisty. Oh, yeah, and satisfying.

Through the ten Orphan X series thrillers to date; author Greg Hurwitz has, bit by bit, given back to Evan Smoak the humanity that had originally been peeled off by the Orphan program. In Antihero, Evan will meet someone with so much humanity of her own that she can afford to share it with him. And share it she does.

Previous reviews in the Orphan X series: The Last Orphan (episode 10); Dark Horse (episode 7); Prodigal Son (episode 6)

An ARC was supplied by the publisher and NetGalley in return for my honest review.

The Werewolves of Seattle...

2025-08-21T08:05:00.003-04:00

American Werewolves - Emily Jane

One of my household’s favorite television programs of this century has been the six seasons of NBC’s “Grimm.” I think we’re now on our fourth – or maybe it’s our fifth – cycle through the entire series. Not familiar with the show’s premise? Simple: there are people who look just like everyone else who can change into humanized versions of animals: sheep, wolves, foxes, pigs, beavers, rats, even bees. These people can be either benign or evil; although most of the predator types are evil.

Which brings us to American Werewolves, the latest from novelist Emily Jane (On Earth, as It Is on Television). Jane’s titular werewolf pack are all male partners at a Seattle venture capitalist firm (therefore rapacious and evil by definition?). Once their newest partner, insta-obsessed closeted gay Shane LaSalle, is turned at a full-moon partner’s retreat; he realizes that this isn’t what he wanted out of life. Enter Natasha and Nova Z’Rhae (a fictional version of Taylor Swift, complete with glitter-covered Nozees). The three, helped by a “good” werewolf, are determined to euthanize the pack. Hilarity (some) and gore (lots) ensue.

Jane’s version of werewolves says a lot about her: they’re so evil that they immediately kill any female child born with the werewolf gene/virus/whatever. This is in addition to manipulating the levers of power to their kind’s advantage at every level: CEOs like Zuckerberg and Bezos, as well as officials like Cheney and Rumsfeld are all members of their own packs (although Elon Musk is said to be a vampire). As a result, Jane’s entire novel is overlain by a coat of misandry: only the males are greedy, bloodthirsty murderers.

The book’s not a terribly easy read, being somewhat longer than the subject matter probably deserves. It would also benefit from the omission of included “reference material” and a lighter touch on the man-hating stuff. Still and all, it’s a fairly fun read – although this this the only werewolf literature I’ve read (admittedly a small sample) that suggests that lycanthropy can be transmitted by a bite like vampirism. Maybe the Twilight series says so, I wouldn’t know. All told, I’d give it a middling three stars.

Parker's Newest Protagonists: Keeping Secrets, Finding Killers

2025-07-20T07:57:00.002-04:00

Wild Instinct - T. Jefferson Parker

I’ve been reading T. Jefferson Parker since the days of Little Saigon and Laguna Heat, so yes – four decades now. And although I’ve never been in California’s Orange County, I sometimes feel as if I know its landscape and people from Jeff’s descriptions – the wild Pacific coast, the tumultuous border with Mexico, the deeply-ingrained Latinx culture. His latest, Wild Instinct, introduced me to a new aspect of the region; its Native heritage. For that, I thank him.

Wild Instinct, like about half Parker’s works, is a police procedural: when the tale opens, OCSD detective Lew Gale (né Luis Gallego) is on the hunt for a mountain lion presumed to have killed local real-estate developer Bennet Tarlow III. But when the ME finds a bullet in Tarlow’s brain, the hunt turns into a murder investigation. Paired with newly-minted homicide detective Daniela Mendez, Gale burrows into the workings of OC’s richest family, three generations of Tarlows, and Bennet III’s biggest project: a five square-mile city he would call Wildcoast. The usual suspects abound: local NIMBYs, the small but vocal indigenous communities, and all those politicians with their hands outstretched.

As is frequently the case in a Parker mystery, there is also a smidgen of the supernatural nibbling at the edges… and all the while, both Gale and Mendez have their own dark secrets to keep. None of that will prevent the two from the hunt.

All that being said, of Parker’s twenty-odd (I think this one makes thirty) novels, Wild Instinct isn’t quite the equal of the Charlie Hood series or, my favorites, the four books featuring Roland Ford. Perhaps it’s the Gale’s and Mendez’s dirty little secrets; perhaps it’s the highly unlikely details of the killer’s motivation (not the reason itself, the physical details). I suspect, however, that Gale and Melendez will be back; and I fully intend to give them a second read.

My thanks to the publisher for access to a galley proof of Wild Instinct in return for my honest review.

Second Verse, Same as the First: Adam Kinzinger, Renegade

2023-11-12T11:03:00.003-05:00

Renegade - Adam Kinzinger

Way back in 2005, Christine Todd Whitman (once the moderate Republican governor of New Jersey and Bush II’s first head of the EPA) wrote the book It’s My Party, Too. No, it wasn’t a shout-out to Lesley Gore; it was Whitman bemoaning the cooptation of the Republican party by its “social fundamentalist wing.” The more things change, the more they stay the same: in 2023, Whitman’s complaint is echoed by none other than Adam Kinzinger, retired Republican Representative from Illinois who is reviled by the modern version of that wing, MAGA Trumpists, for having the temerity to vote to impeach their… their… whatever he is: god, oracle, führer...

In case you’ve been asleep for the past two-plus years, Kinzinger (along with Wyoming's Liz Cheney) was one of two Republicans who served on the House committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021. He’s a small-town boy from Bloomington, Illinois; a decorated veteran who served in Iraq as an Air Force pilot; and a six-term congressman from his home state. His background is that of a life-long conservative with a fundamentalist Christian upbringing. And, like Whitman before him, Kinzinger is aghast at the cult of personality that has taken over the party to which he has devoted the past thirty years of his life.

In Renegade (subtitled Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country), Kinzinger and co-author Michael D’Antonio detail his upbringing, his military career, and his years in Congress. It’s never a secret that the former congressman is steadfastly conservative in the so-called “establishment” sense: pro-business, anti-tax, anti-regulation, pro-military. You can’t read this book and claim that Kinzinger particularly likes Nancy Pelosi or, for that matter, west-coast (or east-coast) liberals. He spends plenty of page space bemoaning how the coastal “elite” make fun of “flyover country” (as an aside, I grew up in a far smaller town than Kinzinger one state away, and I don’t feel like the coastal elite do that).

Kinzinger served in Congress under the speakerships of John Boehner (initially misidentified as a representative from Indiana) and Paul Ryan, representatives he lauded as both intelligent and pragmatic. He was less kind to Kevin McCarthy, who he considers the political equivalent of a weathervane; pointing in whatever direction is best for his career. Come to think of it, Kinzinger holds little but scorn for those politicians who value re-election over principle.

Most of all, however, Kinzinger has nothing but contempt for the man he considers the most dangerous person ever to hold office in the United States. No, not Jim Jordan or Matt Gaetz, not the woman in the white coat or the high-school dropout from Colorado. It's Donald John Trump, who with his sycophants and acolytes, nearly overthrew a government after more than 230 years of peace. The leader of a ragtag band of “marauders… ignorant of current events, American history, and the Constitution, yet full of righteousness” will receive no respect from Kinzinger.

Will what the former congressman has to say change anything? It’s doubtful; for those who swallow QAnon are and will remain unlikely to listen. They’re the cult members who, when they learn that Kinzinger has written this book, write one-star reviews at “the river” calling it fantasy or satire. As Kinzinger himself concludes, the tyranny of the minority is here for at least the next six years. One can only hope it will die with time. But I’m not holding my breath.

The Brothers K: The Best Novel You've Never Read

2023-08-20T07:35:00.002-04:00

The Brothers K - David James Duncan

Author's note: republished to celebrate the 2023 release of David James Duncan's first novel in more than two decades, Sun House.

It's a fairy tale. It has no sleeping princess, no handsome prince, no troll under a bridge, no voracious and avaricious giant.

Or perhaps it does.

It's a story of the Chance family - a father, a mother, four sons and two daughters - and how they all grew up (even the parents) during the turbulent 60s. It's a story of the strength of love; a fable about the force of faith; a parable of the power of one's dreams. But most of all, it's a saga of the strength of the ties that bind a family.

And, yes, it is a story about baseball.

The Lineup

Leading off and playing second base, Beatrice "Bet" Chance. Bet's a lifetime .275 hitter, a devout Seventh-Day Adventist and a former Famous Scientist.

Batting second and playing shortstop, Winifred "Freddy" Chance. Freddy, Bet's identical twin sister (and therefore tied for youngest in the family), is also a former Famous Scientist, although unlike her sister she's let her SDA membership lapse.

In the third slot, center-fielder Peter Chance. Just returned from a sabbatical season spent praying for the Katmandu Gurus, Peter – the Chance family's most gifted athlete – is on course to bat .412 this year.

Batting cleanup, the gentle giant, left-fielder Irwin "Winnie" Chance. Winnie not only leads the league in HRs, but he also has 169 career stolen hearts; a combination of strength and grace rarely seen in this game. He's also the most devout Christian (except, perhaps, his mother) in the family.

At the heart of the lineup, the diamond, and the Chance family; the pitcher: Hugh "Papa Toe" Chance. Hugh's held this team (and this family) together through sheer grit and determination; with just a little help from a surgically-modified pitching hand.

Batting sixth and playing first base, the narrator: Kincaid "Kade" Chance. Kade, the youngest son, is content to sit in the background and learn from the mistakes of his three older brothers.

In the seventh position, third baseman Laura "Mama" Chance: matriarch, fanatic Seventh-Day Adventist, logistics whiz, family gadfly; her stone fingers leave a gaping hole on the left side of the infield but never a hole in the hearts of her family.

Batting eighth and catching, Everett Chance. The number one son, Everett's spent the 1960s working on his college radical credentials, letting his BA to slip to .267.

Batting last and playing right field, Marion Becker "Grandawma" Chance. Mother to Hugh, grandmother to the Chance children, atheist, and ever a thorn in her daughter-in-law's faith. Grandawma is founder and chief advisor of the Famous Scientists.

The plot

David James Duncan, known to most as the metaphysical fly fishing guru of The River Why, created in the Chances a family that bears all the dysfunctional scars of reality: sibling squabbles, a mother's love, parental battles, a father's strength, jealousy, inseparable fraternity, fear and loathing, love and tenderness. Duncan created a family that is rooted in the bedrock of shared DNA and common history, a family so strongly grounded that even the most fearsome events could not reach all the way to the core of their peculiar clan. On the surface, this family should never have survived: the itinerant baseball-player father inherits his mother's atheism, while the mother blindly wraps herself in the trappings of her church. Such dire dichotomy of dogma should have doomed this family, and yet they survive.

The six Chance children grow up in a house full of both love and strife; where Mama's deep religious convictions more often serve to divide her family into opposing factions than to unite them. Papa's baseball career survives a seven-year hiatus caused by an injury that would have ended a lesser man's hopes of ever playing ball again. Papa's mother dies. The boys grow up and go off to college and then go their own ways: one to the east, one to the west, one to the north, one to the south. The twins stay home.

And then all hell breaks loose, and this scattered family must unite to face a crisis more dire than any they had ever imagined. And face it they do, but at a terrible cost.

The Cliche

It's not cliché, it's true: I did laugh, I did cry, I did reach for the hand of a loved one... as would you, whether you're a baseball fan or not.

I laughed because David James Duncan displays a bottomless well of humor and a talent for on-target (and at times withering) descriptive prose. Take for instance his word portrait of G. Q. "The Junkman" Durham, a Chance family friend:

The Bull's real name was Gale Q. Durham. What the Q. stood for was anybody's guess, but what the Bull stood for was definitely not the man's size, strength, or brand of tobacco, but his manner of "employing the King's & various lesser types of English." ...the mighty Bull was a bald-headed, tub-gutted hypoglycemic stroke victim who stood all of 5'9" ... weighed a doughy 199, grew winded when forced to rise from a chair or box seat, and needed bifocals if not binoculars to read the labels on his beer bottles, let alone to size up any sort of baseball prospect. The Bull sported one kidney, two small but patriotic eyes (red, white and blue), anywhere from two to five chins depending on whether he was watching gounders or pop-ups, and a pair of indelible mouth-corner tobacco stains that made him look like a puppet with its jaws hung on hinges.

Can you not just see The Bull peering myopically out of the page, his brown and snaggled teeth arrayed in ever so slight a grin?

Duncan's always slightly cockeyed view of the world is a consistent source of humor: I remember howling with laughter the first time I read of "centrifuging flickers" (A Famous Scientist experiment) – and every chapter has some little nugget of Duncan's wry humor imbedded, on subjects as far-ranging as child-rearing, flatulent goats, and the meaning of life as viewed by an Indian cricket fan.

I cried because of Duncan's sad (albeit hilarious) handling of the death of Grandawma, Hugh's mother; a death made no less noble by its circumstances:

First she looked up at the ceiling and said, "Oh!"

It was her last word. She said it softly, but with such hushed enthusiasm, perhaps even delight, that the twins immediately looked up at the ceiling too. But there was nothing there but plaster.

Next Grandawma closed her eyes, opened her mouth, and slowly began to bow her head -- another thing they'd never seen her so. Bet said later, with a somewhat wooden air of piousness, that it looked as though she'd been bowing her head to pray. But Freddy said not. Freddy said she bowed so slowly that it was more like an OSMI exhibit they'd once seen on the laws of kinetics. To me this seems the likelier explanation, since when the center of gravity passed the meridian the bowing head became a falling head that didn't slow or alter course till Grandawma's brow smacked the front rim of her cereal bowl, the milk and oatmeal splashed onto her neat gray bun, and the bowl stayed balanced, like a little cap, right there on top of her head. The twins gaped at her, saying nothing. Grandawma gaped down at the floor, also saying nothing. Her arms were folded neatly in her lap; her rambunctious old mouth was closed; except for the food on the floor and the bowl on her head, her comportment was perfect...

And last, I reached for the hand of a loved one. A few weeks ago, I blew a chance to share this passage with the Epinions community when I misread the purpose of a "famous one-liners" write-off. Had I been more aware (and more ready), this would have been my entry; and the last sentence of this passage would have been my one line:

[When Everett] said nothing, she gave him back his own rhetorical "I'll tell you where" and added: "Back to your imaginary revolution. And to your next . . . girlfriend or groupie or whatever you call your rotation of female admirers. Which just ain't my style. So I'll see you around, OK?"

That pretty well did it. Nothing left on the sidewalk beside her but a mute, half-blind, Everett-shaped pile of dry rot awaiting a dustpan. Which is why he didn't even see the lips coming as they reached right in through the brownness and bequeathed him a kiss which, for all its fleetingness and all his experience, he swears was his very first.

Been there, done that. You?

The trolls under the bridge

No coming-of-age novel about the 1960s can escape the awful reality of Vietnam and what that distant war did to our country and – on a more personal scale – our families. The Chance family suffered mightily; four draft-age sons produced a Canada-bound draft dodger, a 4-F failed inductee, and a long-term student deferment. The fourth son – devout Christian and ideal candidate for conscientious objector status – was blindsided by hatred: ogre number one was a self-serving "man of God" who was more interested in revenge than that peace that passeth understanding. The Chance son (as always) took his lot in stride and went off to serve in that "dirty little war," only to find that he would rather live his faith than follow orders. Ogre number two came along at that very moment to recapitulate the quintessence of Catch-22: Chance was crazy because he was religious, and he was religious because he was crazy; and so the US Government (in the person of an Army psychiatrist) deemed it necessary to excise the young man's demons with sedatives and electroshock "therapy."

Nothing less than these events could reunite the scattered brothers; their sisters, and their parents.

The end

Through 600-plus pages we live with the Chance family. From Kade's narrative and the journals, letters, and other writings of his siblings, we learn how the vastly different personalities of mother and father served to shape the characters of their children. We see the scars of the fanaticism of the parents: Mama's religion, Papa's undying dream to play baseball; all visited on their children. We watch the family spread to the four winds in disarray, only to reunite in time of crisis. We see the horror of war, both on the battlefield and in the thousand little ways it effects those left behind. We see their love, anger, fear, sorrow, weakness, strength, joy...

And through it all runs a single thread; the thread of family.

The Bottom Line

Pros: Brilliant and funny depiction of a classic American family

Cons: sometimes a little over-metaphysical

Summary: Duncan weaves baseball, fraternity, religion, love, and the excesses of the 1960s into one of the finest family histories in American literature.

Would You Turn Your Back on this Librarian?

2023-04-03T16:24:00.008-04:00

How Can I Help You - Laura Sims

Call me old-fashioned if you like, but the style of entertainment that includes television shows like “Dexter” and “Breaking Bad,” content built around deeply flawed protagonists, just leaves me cold. In the same vein, I’m perfectly happy to say that if I don’t like the characters in a book, it’s a pretty safe bet I won’t like the book. That’s the reason Laura Sims’ How Can I Help You just didn’t click with me at first: I wouldn’t turn my back on either of the protagonists.

There’s Margo, who used to be Jane, a librarian who used to be a nurse, living in a small midwestern town instead of the Northeast (where authorities are still looking for her). Jane was a wonderful nurse who helped a lot of people… into eternity, we gather. And then there’s Patricia, the bored research librarian who’d rather be writing the great American novel than cooling her heels in some downstate farm town. To that end, she has a half-written novel stashed in a drawer.

Margo’s well-ordered life hits the skids, however, when Patricia shows up in her library to fill the long-vacant research librarian slot; skids greased by the unexpected death of a patron in Margo’s arms. Watching the life leave the woman’s body awakens a longing in the one-time angel of mercy; an awakening to which the new hire is an unwitting witness. After that event, Patricia finds herself fascinated by her coworker, so much so that she discards her unfinished novel in favor of a character study of the unnamed “M.”

Thus begins a cat-and-mouse game as the two women maneuver cautiously around each other. Patricia spends her days plotting a new novel featuring “M” even as Margo sheds her librarian persona and reverts to Jane under her watchful eye. It’s only a matter of time…

In her first novel, Looker, Sims developed a reputation for writing female characters with outsized egos and questionable character. Margo, especially, fits that bill (Charles Cullen, anyone?); but Patricia, too, has her moments. Though slow-paced, as perhaps befits a novel about librarians, How Can I Help You still manages a thrill or two and even a surprising twist.

I guess I liked it after all. But I still wouldn't want to meet either Margo or Patricia in a dark alley...

I received an advance reader copy of How Can I Help You in exchange for my honest review.

Please Tell Me This Isn't the Last Orphan!

2022-12-25T14:27:00.006-05:00

The Last Orphan - Greg Hurwitz

It’s not normal for Evan Smoak, otherwise known as Orphan X, to find himself shackled to a bench in a prisoner transport. Truth be told, it took a large, well-coordinated, and very well-trained team of America’s finest to land him in this predicament. In fact, the only way that even worked is that X’s only chance to slip the trap would have been to gun down an innocent FBI agent… and he doesn’t do that to innocent people. That’s how he ended up talking to the person who put the whole capture operation in motion, Victoria Donahue-Carr. You’d think the POTUS would be more grateful, given that X is essentially the only reason she’s sitting in the oval office.

But no, the Prez wants to make a deal: she’ll let X go IF he works his particular magic on Luke Devine, a kingmaker who’s apparently built an empire through coercion and blackmail, the guy who apparently stands in the way of Donahue-Carr’s reelection plans. Hint: she wants Devine “rubbed out.”

Needless to say, X has other plans. Once free (you knew that would happen, right?), X is about to go on his merry way when he gets the call. Answering with his signature phrase – “Do you need my help?” – X, aka the Nowhere Man, suddenly has a new quest: a pair of dead bodies that, as luck would have it, trace back to Tartarus. That’s the mansion and party palace where Devine casts his net for new victims. And just like that, X is back on the President’s job.

His problem? Regardless of what Donahue-Carr wants him to do, Devine doesn’t appear to qualify for the ultimate exercise of X’s talents. He's weird, yes. But is he evil? Evan just can’t tell. On the other hand, Devine's six-man security team, all dishonorably discharged Marines, are a walking nightmare. Now that is something he can work with…

…and work with it he does.

Eight novels into the Orphan X series (including Prodigal Son and Dark Horse), Gregg Hurwitz’s hero is moving ever closer to a semblance of a normal life. Oh, sure, he’s still wrapped up in a big ol' OCD cocoon, but hey: over the last seven installments he’s collected a couple of human entanglements: a teenaged protégé-slash-”niece” hacker with a big dog, a potential love interest (and her adolescent son) and even a friend. Maybe even two, if you include a certain ex-Orphan. Just where Devine is going to slot into the milieu, however, remains a mystery…

Sprinkled with humor and generously larded with bad guys getting their just deserts at the hands of The Nowhere Man, The Last Orphan is just the latest in one of the best thriller series out there. Unlike so many of the genre’s writers who bog down their plots with details of weapons and tactics embedded in reams of turgid prose, Hurwitz can actually write. With X he’s created a character who, at first seemed simplistic and stereotypical but who is growing into a fully-fleshed character as the series progresses. Who knows: he might even get a cat some day!

I received an advance reader copy of The Last Orphan in exchange for my honest review.

So Much Can Happen in Just Two Nights in Lisbon.

2022-06-09T16:12:00.002-04:00

Two Nights in Lisbon - Chris Pavone

After reading the first pages of Chris Pavone’s latest, Two Nights in Lisbon, a more skeptical reader might feel that buzz somewhere deep of their brain that suggests, “There’s something off about this.” I know I did… but once I found myself immersed in the urgency of Ariel Pryce’s desperate search for the husband who walked out of their Portuguese hotel and disappeared into the morning sunlight, I forgot about it. Mostly.

A frantic Ariel reaches out to the Lisbon police and the American embassy, certain that her husband has been kidnapped. Despite police assurances that her (much younger) husband has probably just gone on for drugs or hooked up with one of the many beauties Lisbon boasts, Ariel is sure that he’s been taken. A demand for three million euros’ ransom makes her point.

Where does an ordinary person find three million euros in forty-eight hours? Ariel comes to a decision: fifteen years ago, before she stopped being actress-slash trophy wife Laurel Turner, she signed a non-disclosure agreement with a powerful man, a man with access to that kind of cash. We’re talking really, really, really rich… and potentially even more powerful. A desperate phone call to get the ransom from this man piques the interest of not just the Lisbon cops but also the CIA and an enterprising reporter. After that frantic call, everything goes wrong.

Or does it?

Chris Pavone has built his career writing novels about the adventures of American expatriates in various world capitals, novels such as The Expats and The Paris Diversion. Like his other books, Two Nights in Lisbon falls into the “thriller” classification, but this is a thriller without the bloody shoot-‘em-ups and wild sex that so often figures in the genre. If you’re expecting a thriller in the vein of James Patterson or Robert Ludlum, you might want to look elsewhere. In truth, this isn’t your everyday pulse-pounding page-turner. Quite the contrary, the plot reminds me of a tractor-trailer: slow to start, but picking up speed as you go until the momentum is impossible to ignore.

Pavone’s work is more subtle, a thriller of the mind instead of the adrenal glands. For Two Nights in Lisbon, he introduces an unreliable narrator; except the reader never realizes that unreliability until the final reel in a final twist that would make O. Henry envious. Just don’t forget those few first pages.

Pavone’s delicious international thriller displays the mastery of character development and plotting for which he is already well-known, combining smoothly with an attention to the details of the foreign capital in which he has set his tale. Besides a gift for realistic dialog and setting, the author has also cultivated a talent for misdirection; all the better to engage the reader.

Personally, I dislike throwaway blurb fodder like “unputdownable” and “propulsive,” but thankfully Two Nights in Lisbon was neither of these. Oh, it was close to “unputdownable” but more to the point, it was thoughtful. Props to Chris for shining a light on a dirty little secret of people who have a fixer on permanent retainer.

Overall, I prefer Driving a Tacoma to Reading About One

2022-05-12T14:47:00.003-04:00

The Russian - Ben Coes

Some days the willing suspension of disbelief goes only so far... and today was one of them. Well, actually, the last few days – even I couldn't read The Russian - Rob Tacoma Series, Book 1 in a single day. One of the main reasons I couldn't is that I had to keep stopping to puzzle through author Ben Coes' bizarre word choices and strange notions about science and everything else.

Coes is the author of a slew of Dewey Andreas novels, none of which I've ever heard of, much less read. FWIW, Andreas makes a cameo appearance in the final chapter as a, to be quite frank, half-assed deus ex machina. More on that later. Coes' bio says he served under two presidents (an intern under Reagan and a speechwriter for a Bush I cabinet secretary). But we're here to talk about the book...

When the Russian mob assassinated a couple of highly-placed officials, the powers that be brought in a two-man CIA wet work team to retaliate. Half that team was dead before the ink was dry on the contract, thanks to a mole in the mix. Fortunately, the other half - super-operative Rob Tacoma – was up to the task. In keeping with the usual tropes, Tacoma proved to be the kind of guy that Delta Force and Seal Team members are afraid of. Think of an alpha male on steroids! Thank heavens he's on our side...

Tacoma works his way up the mafiyah chain of command to the top-level guy in the USA, splattering blood and brains whenever and wherever necessary. In the final showdown, he encounters The Russian himself, who – although up in years – proves nearly as indestructible as the twenty-something Tacoma. Unfortunately for Rob, however, Dewey Andreas shows up as backup and while the two are swapping jokes, the bad guy gets away – spoiler alert – after putting one of them in the hospital. Unfortunately, he lives...

Reading The Russian was a bit of a struggle, but not because the trope of super-human operative is rather overdone. I'm fine with Reacher, Orphan X, and a host of other alpha males. Alpha females too, for that matter. No, what made this one hard to read was some of Coes' bizarre word choices, among other factual failings. No, unlike that one guy who reviews every thriller at the River and bitches about inaccuracies with weapons, I'm more... cerebral.

For instance, Tacoma has been out of the country on an "exfoliation [sic]" team. I guess that means they were "rubbing someone off." Or maybe I was taken aback by his description of a restaurant with a "wide, lightly creaking [sic] mahogany entrance." Or perhaps it was Tacoma's home in which the "apartment was vast, the walls a shock [sic] of glass."

I had to laugh uproariously at the cleanup process – of an entire house – that concluded with "a methodical washing of every surface, followed by a radiological burst, in which every room in the house was exposed for a brief time." Ben, Ben, Ben: you can irradiate something small to kill living tissue on its surface, but you can't irradiate an entire house (room by room)... not without exposing all the neighbors to radiation, too.

Other bizarre constructs include, "a mess of broken white ceramic plastic" (one or the other but not both) and "nothing more than some molecular-level DNA" (DNA is a molecule). I was also a little surprised to find that Tacoma had been an all-American college lacrosse player for UVa who matriculated at, apparently, sixteen; but only managed to garner a 2.77 GPA upon graduating at twenty.

Combine the tired trope of the well-nigh indestructible alpha male with some decidedly strange writing and sloppy science, and you have an author in serious need of a better editor.

Oh, yeah, and a better plotline: two stars.

The New Neighbor - It's a Cozy Spy Thriller?

2022-04-06T10:07:00.004-04:00

The New Neighbor - Karen Cleveland

If, like me, you read a lot of mystery and thriller novels; you’re well aware of the subgenre of “cozy” mysteries: a protagonist, usually female, stumbles over dead bodies (always free of gore) in the everyday course of business. Cooking is a favorite profession, so are crafting and bookselling. It’s a classic case of willing suspension of disbelief – after all, Crabapple Cove, Maine, is unlikely to have a higher murder rate than Chicago, Bogotá, or Mogadishu. Even with that in mind, though, today’s book is a new subgenre for me; something I call the "cozy spy thriller."

Meet Beth Bradford, heroine of Karen Cleveland‘s fourth novel, The New Neighbor.

Beth’s nest is suddenly empty: the last of her three kids is off to college, the Bradfords have closed the sale on their suburban cul-de-sac home, and – wouldn't you know it – hubby Mike has split to live with the stereotypical hot young secretary. Cliché much, Mikey? Worst of all, when Beth returns to the CIA office from which she’d spent the last couple of decades chasing an Iranian spymaster and his wily U S asset, “The Neighbor,” she learns that she’s been locked out and sent offsite to teach analysis to newbie agents. What a let-down…

Unable to drop the search that had consumed her for so many years, Beth worms her way back into the data and learns that the spy recruiter apparently lives on her old cul-de-sac in MacLean. Desperate to solve the case, she goes rogue; uncovering former neighbors she considered friends who’ve been “turned.” Neighbor by neighbor, she uncovers a dastardly plot that would cripple the agency… all the while getting ever closer to the real Neighbor. Will she find the culprit in time to save the day? Will she be shocked by the revelation? Yes, and yes. Of course.

Cleveland, herself a retired CIA analyst, concocted an incursion into the CIA’s inner workings worthy of a scriptwriter for “Mission Impossible,” a fragile network of remotely-controlled activities that would require some sort of clairvoyance to construct. With one's disbelief suspended, however, it’s an ingenious plot. Bradford’s methodology of uncovering that plot, unfortunately, is more hit-or-miss.

It’s almost painful to watch the woman work house by house up her old street, finding every one of her former neighbors (all of whom work at the CIA in some capacity or other) has been turned by The Neighbor. Some have been blackmailed, most have been given stacks of cash over lo, these many years.

Cleveland’s plot ultimately disintegrates in a couple of details. First, The Neighbor was originally turned by the bad guys for lying to the CIA on a routine background check. The lie, frankly, was about a fact that The Company should have known about before even asking a question. Second, the CIA knew The Neighbor was on Beth’s cul-de-sac because of an attempt to turn yet another neighbor with a video of him stumbling around drunk. In the video, the subject says, “Well hi, neighbor!” but can’t remember who was filming him. Yeah, sure.

Last, in order to construct what has to be described as an elegant plan to crawl inside the CIA’s computer network, someone needed to know not just the departments where Beth’s neighbors worked but also their physical locations and small details of the building’s infrastructure. It seems to me that the operation had to be controlled by someone well up the food chain at Langley; something Bradford (and Cleveland) never seemed to consider.

Overall, I thought the Mission Impossible plot was well-thought out, but the plot holes I mentioned above really dragged down my score. As a result, Cleveland’s latest just gets an average score from me, three stars out of five.

[NOTE: I received an ARC of The New Neighbor in exchange for my honest review.]

This Time, Death Rode a Dark Horse

2021-11-22T20:10:00.002-05:00

Dark Horse - Gregg Hurwitz

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare… Aragon Urrea came home from an errand and found his 18-year-old daughter Angelina gone. Kidnapped by a business rival, sort of; but when that rival is the head of the most brutal narcotics cartel in northern Mexico, you cannot call the Feds. What’s a father to do? Urrea picked up the phone and dialed 1-800-NOWHERE… and Evan Smoak answered with that signature phrase, “Do you need my help?”

Smoak, once known as Orphan X, has a lot of atoning to do for years as a black ops government assassin; and the persona of The Nowhere Man is his method. X is the last resort for innocent people who are in a hell of someone else’s making. But this time, the Nowhere Man isn’t certain that Urrea qualifies as worthy of his help. It takes some persuading, but a few days later he finds himself inside a stereotypical lavish cartel compound with the missing Angelina, a man-eating lion, and a big surprise.

No ordinary man could rescue Angelina from the clutches of two-score cartel soldiers under the leadership of a bona fide psychopath by fighting his way out of a palace-slash-fortress, but Orphan X isn’t your ordinary man.

The seventh Orphan X novel from the pen of Gregg Hurwitz, Dark Horse marks another step on Evan Smoak’s journey to being a normal human: learning to care for another person. Evan never lets that get in the way, however, as he lays waste to his enemies through a masterful combination of subterfuge and martial skill. Few authors are as adept as Hurwitz at plotting an operation like the one X must mount to extract Angelina; and the action will keep you on the edge of your seat with a pulse rate approaching target heart rate.

If you haven’t read Orphan X before, you’d be wise to catch up. You’re only six cliff-hangers behind!

I received an advance reader's copy of Dark Horse in exchange for my honest review

Rosenstiel's Latest is More Thoughtful than Thrilling

2021-11-13T16:09:00.003-05:00

The Days to Come - Tom Rosenstiel

Everyone knows Washington, D.C., is gridlocked. At least it was until David Traynor was elected POTUS. Like a recent real-world president, Traynor had campaigned as a disrupter; but unlike that president he intended to disrupt for people instead of party; so much so that he chose his running mate from the opposition. One of the reasons their campaign succeeded is the team of Rena and Brooks, the investigation/image firm that saved the career of Traynor’s VP. But even as the new president set out to change the way government works (for the better…), Peter Rena’s world began crumbling around him.

Some denizen of the Dark Web had Rena in the crosshairs; and the phony cyberattacks were both relentless and vicious, so much so that Rena became persona non grata with anyone who cared about a public image. Washington is, after all, less interested in truth than in optics. It didn’t help Rena’s wounded pride that his love life seemed to be circling the drain at the same time.

Nonetheless, Peter and his partner Randi Brooks had an important job to do; keeping a top-secret Traynor program on track, a program that just might help solve the climate crisis. No matter what the cyberattacks were saying, Rena was on the case; ferreting out industrial espionage in the halls of Silicon Valley… where knowing too much might get you dead.

Tom Rosenstiel’s fourth Rena thriller, The Days to Come, picks up where Oppo left off; with the election of the Traynor-Wendy Upton ticket. Unlike that previous installment, however, Rena is the target this time… he just doesn’t know why (or who). Rosenstiel delivers a concise analysis of how such attacks begin, flourish, and ultimately play out in “meatspace”: think Comet Ping Pong, right down to the gun-toting true believer looking for secret basement pedophilia chambers.

Rosenstiel also devotes considerable page space to his character’s project to make the USA a leader in energy storage; arguing that present-day battery technology is hampering any move to renewable energy. The solution, according to the book, is flow-battery technology. Little of the science is discussed, however, as there are mainly references to the technology.

Apparently not content with those two threads to his narrative, Rosenstiel also introduces some ideas for how to get Congress of its rear and back to work for the people (all of them). First is a Scandinavian model of legislation: lean bills with short timelines instead of bloated, encyclopedic lists of pork. More interesting, however, is doing away with the so-called “Hastert Rule,” also known as “the majority of the majority” – a means by which any hope of compromise in Congress is summarily executed by party leaders.

While Rosenstiel’s tale is most definitely topical, the four threads – corporate espionage, cyberattacks, Rena’s gloomy demeanor, the battery technology – still add up to a slow journey through Rena’s personal misery. That measured pace is probably why none of the usual suspects has labeled the plot “propulsive,” for good reason: It isn’t. It barely reaches the threshold of political thriller. Instead, it’s more brains than brawn, just like its protagonist.

And that's not a bad thing: we need more thought and less action these days.

I received an advance reader’s copy of The Days to Come in exchange for my honest review.

Psychopaths on the Warpath

2021-10-16T17:07:00.011-04:00

Never Saw Me Coming - Vera Kurian

If Vera Kurian is to be believed – and apparently, she has the proper training to make this statement – there’s about a 2 or 3 percent chance that whoever’s reading this right now is a psychopath. That’s not to say that you are, as popular fiction might have it, a serial killer. No, you’re merely antisocial and/or empathy-impaired and/or egotistical. Based on that description, 2 or 3 percent of the population seems rather low…

…but the main characters of Kurian’s debut novel, Never Saw Me Coming, are pretty close to 100% psychopathic. That’s because they’re members of the seven college students enrolled in a study run by renowned psychologist Leonard Wyman; youngsters who’ve received full-boat rides to a DC-area college so he could study them in the wild. Well, actually, one’s faking it – a rather strange twist given that psychopaths usually fake being “normal.” Anyway, protagonist Chloe Sevre – 18, gorgeous, smart, psychopathic coed – is really there so she can murder Will Bachman. Truth be told, he kind of deserves it…

Before Chloe can enact her grand plan however, two members of the psychopath cohort turn up dead (gruesomely, in one case). Since no one, including the participants, is supposed to know who the seven are; it’s somewhat surprising that three of the surviving members suss each other out in the first few days. Convinced that one of their group is killing off the rest, the three embark on a hunt for the hunter.

Of course, Chloe still plans to murder Will.

It being the 21st Century and the characters being college students, the expected hijinks ensue. You can count on binge-drinking at frat parties, roofies, meaningless hook-ups, hacked Instagram accounts, malware, hacked webcams, stolen records, slut-shaming, revenge porn, fake IDs, suicide, bullying, and all the other tropes of college life for Gen Z. They even go to class and take notes occasionally. Even though all the characters are too young to drink (legally, anyway), the book is for some reason not classified as young adult. Huh.

Kurian’s narrative shifts back and forth between Chloe (told in first person) and a third-person narrator following her two companions (Andre and Charles). The three voices, though, are oddly similar even though they come from different backgrounds. Andre is Black, from a blue-collar DC family while Charles is the son of a fracking billionaire (why a fracking company owner lives in DC is beside the point); yet a reader would be hard-pressed to determine which is which from a random sample of dialog – and that’s even though one is a real psychopath and the other’s faking it.

As mysteries go, the story is weak: there are few clues, not even the occasional red herring. All the “triumvirate” can do is try to identify the remaining two… but, sadly, there’s an “out-of-left-field” candidate who turns up at the eleventh hour; sort of a Lucifer ex machina, so to speak. Feh.

These people are all weird. We read books to lose ourselves in the story and find characters with whom we can identify, even envision befriending. Face facts: there’s no character in Never Saw Me Coming that I’d want to hang out with, even if I were their age. Then again, they’re probably all going to grow up to run for President some day.

Without a likeable character and without a decent mystery, I can’t recommend this: 2½ stars.

Summary:

Plus: Let me think about it.
Minus: Unlikeable characters, clunky writing, weak plot.
What they’re saying: Maybe this is a mystery only a psychopath could like.

Paretsky's Warshawski Mystery has a "Breakdown" Along the Way

2021-09-17T10:47:00.002-04:00

Breakdown - Sara Paretsky

Some people have a knack for being in the right place at the right time: I’m thinking PowerBall winners, venture capitalists, or the guy who Youtubed the video of a kid biting his brother’s finger. At the other extreme, there’s V. I. Warshawski, whose knack is clearly for being in the wrong place at the right time. Case in point is the night her cousin Petra called her looking for one of the teens in her book club. The girl and her friends had sneaked into a cemetery to dance in the moonlight, hoping to summon the heroine’s alter ego from a runaway bestseller series of teen VampRoms. Vic found the girls, of course – she’s a good detective – but she also found a body... and not one of the cemetery’s clients.

Two of the dancers turned out to be Chicago “royalty,” one the daughter of a Senatorial candidate and another the granddaughter of said candidate’s money man. Politics being politics, the fecal matter hit the proverbial ventilation device as Chicago’s most powerful TV talking head distorted the event, along the way calling the candidate a “monkey,” claiming that the money man had betrayed his family in a WW2 concentration camp, and avowing that Warshawski’s mother was a wetback. Apparently, the truth set too high a bar for Wade Lawlor, so he ducked under it.

Warshawski’s interest in the case ramped up when the case veered into her ex-husband’s law office and her best friend from law school turned up near death after having had words with the dead man. It’s complicated…

The case led Vic to a hospital for the criminally insane, a bewildered Chevy dealer, and the studios of a Chicago-based media conglomerate that bears a suspicious resemblance to the Murdoch empire. V.I. Warshawski always gets her man, though, and Breakdown seemed unlikely to be any different. But then, there were still the questions of who? and why?

Cristened Victoria Iphegenia Warshawski, Vic to her friends and V. I. to everyone else, Chicago’s toughest broad has bulled and battered her way through the Second City’s gritty streets for almost thirty years. She’s got the spider veins, the scars, and the gray streaks to prove it, too. From day one, Warshawski – once a public defender – has been in the little guy’s corner. Breakdown is no exception, though in this case it’s hard to figure out who the “little guy” is, at least until the final reel.

Sara Paretsky’s fifteenth Warshawski novel follows much the same format as all the rest: her bullheaded protagonist refuses to give up on her case in the face of unrelenting pressure from powerful people who’d be hurt by a solution. Over the years Vic’s been imprisoned, shot, blown up, received more stitches than her cousin Boom-Boom the Black Hawks forward, and been on the dark end of more concussions than a pro quarterback. Nothing interrupts Warshawski when she’s on the trail (rather reminds me of a Labrador Retriever after a rawhide chew…). For those who champion the underdog, V. I. Warshawski is a true hero.

For those whose bumper stickers allege media bias, however, Breakdown is anathema: the broadly-drawn Wade Lawlor too closely resembles certain sacrosanct talking heads on their favorite cable network. Clearly, Paretsky is a threat to truth, justice, and the American way (a terrorist, maybe?). You have to wonder if someone could really get away with the purple prose and yellow journalism she describes – and there are some who suspect that she didn’t miss the mark by much.

Though her caricature of… ummm…. Let’s say “Hurry StinkyCheese” was more amusing than infuriating to this reader, I nonetheless found myself somewhat disappointed by Paretsky’s take. Not, as those who thump the tub of political partisanship claim because of lack of objectivity; but because of structure. I’m as fond as the next guy of building tension as the heroine closes in on the villain; and Paretsky does her usual top-notch job of building tension. I’m also willing to let occasional coincidences pass in the name of moving the plot forward; but on the other hand, I’m not terribly fond of ridiculously unlikely coincidences – and there are most unlikely coincidences in Breakdown.

Like Robert K. Tanenbaum’s Karp family series, Breakdown stretches credulity beyond the breaking point for the complexity of the plot and necessity of frequent visits by the Coincidence Fairy. Worse, the identity of the villain and the nature of his/her crime are patently obvious at about a quarter of the way through the book.

Fans of Warshawski, and I freely admit I’m one, won’t want to pass this one up. Even though Vic hasn’t lost a step as she pushes fifty, Paretsky seems to have gotten distracted this time. The villain is suitably despicable and the victim blameless, and the action comes fast and furious with the occasional amusing aside. In short, a nice read if you remain mindless about it – but for those who like to play along with the protagonist at the detecting game, Breakdown comes up short. Not a lot short, but short nonetheless.

Summary:

Plus: characters, sense of place, and Warshawski as champion of the little guy

Minus: over-reliance on coincidence, transparent villain

The Bottom Line: This Warshawski novel finds V. I. chasing the killer of a fellow P. I.

Brennan's New Series Starts with a Dud

2021-07-11T16:37:00.009-04:00

The Third to Die - Allison Brennan

When you read at least fifty mystery or thriller novels a year, you can’t always depend on a half-dozen or so favorite authors to have a new release ready for you when you finish your latest. As a consequence, I read a lot of novels written by authors whose work, to be kind, I will probably not seek out again in the future. The latest in my string of one-and-dones is Allison Brennan, who released The Third to Die – Quinn & Costa Thriller Book 1 last year. Given the pace of Brennan’s work, she’s probably already finished number four. Here’s the plot in about 115 words:

LAPD cop Kara Quinn, on vacation in Washington, stumbles upon a murder victim. FBI agent Matt Costa shows up almost immediately, ‘cause this body’s number one in a triennial series of three victims of “the Triple Killer.” The perp is, naturally, a mastermind who leaves no forensic evidence and appears to kill randomly except that there’s always a nurse, teacher, and cop.

Quinn and Costa do not, of course, immediately get along (although they do later). Given Quinn’s undercover chops and the top-notch feebie team Costa’s assembled, it’s a sure thing that they’ll catch their guy, but not before someone close to the investigation dies and the heroes are both almost dead themselves.

Serial killer novels are themselves a trope, but this one feels like Brennan stopped by the Tropes ᴙ Us store and loaded up her cart. It sure would be nice to run across a serial killer who is just lucky instead of a genius, not to mention a couple of cops who aren’t “edgy” and “brilliant.” Then again, such a novel probably wouldn’t sell…

I found the writing style of Brennan, who’s published almost two dozen novels since 2010, to be sloppy and hackneyed. Costa, who’s written as Cuban-American, is often seen muttering to himself in Spanish with, of course, an English translation immediately following. That’s an irritant, especially when at least one of the translations is wrong (note to AB: Cuban idioms are not the same as Mexican). Brennan also needs an editor with a heavier hand to get rid of nonsense like the sentence, “If Hamilton returns, no one is going to be caught in his crossfire.” Uhhh, it takes two shooters to create a crossfire! I also defy anyone to climb down a 45-foot chain ladder while carrying three mason jars…

I dislike authors who constantly refer to events in previous book, but this one’s even worse: one minor character is distraught over a previous case in which a relative was murdered; but this is the first book of the series. Unless Catherine Jones is a character in one of Brennan’s other two series, this plot thread is nothing but distraction.

Oh, about that previously-mentioned 45-foot chain ladder: the perp had to sneak it, a dozen canning jars and three gallons of gasoline through the lobby of a hotel. Yeah, right…

Nope, with clumsy, stilted writing; a plethora of plot holes; and a whoppin’ big pile of tropes, The Third to Die does not mark an auspicious beginning to the Quinn and Costa series. Two stars.

The Title Sounds like Ludlum, and So Does the Science

2021-05-22T07:29:00.008-04:00

The Twin Paradox - Charles Wachter

I received a free copy of Charles Wachter’s The Twin Paradox in return for my honest review. Well, they asked for it. Here's the book:

Begin by constructing a skeleton of “the hero’s journey” overlain by a skin of LOTR, stir in heaping helpings of Robert Ludlum’s The Holcroft Coventant, Nancy Freedman’s Joshua Son of None, and Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. Coat the entire recipe with pseudo-science too weak to fool a “Star Trek: The Next Generation” fan and sprinkle the result with word-usage errors and desultory research. You got yourself The Twin Paradox.

The Holcroft Covenant reference is to Ludlum’s sonnenkinder; children of the Third Reich born in secret to take over the world forty years after Hitler’s demise. Joshua Son of None gave Wachter the idea for cloning a dead world leader decades before Dolly. The reference to Jurassic Park will become clear, and the rest? I’ll explain.

A billionaire scientist collected the DNA of a slew of historical geniuses and grew a high-school class that included ersatz versions of Isaac Newton, MLK, Leonardo da Vinci, Catherine the Great, and Albert Einstein. Which is weird to begin with, ‘cause five is a pretty small graduating class…

Said billionaire, Teegen Ralls, (Warren Buffet meets Elon Musk?) also built himself a huge super-collider in Texas near Corpus Christi, constructed – for unknown reasons – partially on land and partially in the Gulf of Mexico, yet dry land ‘cause of a gigantic seawall. Seems rather stupid to go through that effort when he could have moved inland a few miles and been entirely on land…

Whatever, the compound is a time machine of sorts: when the collider is running, every three minutes outside the loop under the seawall equals ten years inside. It must be magic, though, because no one actually explains this effect.

The kids, of course, get coerced into being inside – a hellhole that bears a striking resemblance to Crichton’s dinosaur theme park – when the machine fires up. They're caught along with a bunch of the most heinous criminals ever to stride the planet (a Russian version of the same cloning program). The rush to escape is, of course, the expected endless string of disasters and near disasters. Naturally, the little geniuses do get out… otherwise there couldn’t be sequels, one of which is already in the works.

My thoughts? Predictable plotting, unlikeable characters, lousy science (guess Wachter’s film degrees didn’t include much STEM), and some irritating goofs. As for the goofs, will someone tell the author that you don’t hit the “breaks” on your vehicle and you don’t “peak out from under” something. Oh, yeah, and Corpus Christi gets an average of 30-plus inches of precipitation a year, far too much to be considered a desert. The deserts in Texas are several hundred miles west. While we’re at it, there is no liquid helium in the Panhandle (it's a gas), not to mention that it would be a pretty difficult feat to build a secret pipeline across six hundred miles of private property (there isn’t any public land to speak of in Texas).

While we're at it, will someone explain the difference between an oil rig and an offshore platform? Oh, and when the kids cut the helium pipeline cooling the collider's magnets, why didn't that shut the loop down, hmmm? Which raises another question, does Wachter know how cold liquid helium is? Four degrees above absolute zero, which pretty much makes it impossible to pump through a pipe.

I still might have bought this plot via MAJOR willing suspension of disbelief had the compound not been partially in the water. The giant seawall holding back the waters of the Gulf is a McGuffin of its own, necessary only because said water provides the ultimate danger to the hero and his fellowship on their journey.

Two stars.

Carey Baldwin's Stolen a day of My Life

2021-03-09T11:11:00.007-05:00

Stolen - Carey Baldwin

“For a moment, he just held her, his hand coasting up and down her back in time with the rhythm of her heart as it beat against his.”

I don’t normally begin a book review with a quotation from the book… but this time I wanted you to know what kind of torture I put myself through to finish Stolen, an installment in the Carey Baldwin romance-mystery Cassidy and Spenser series. Let’s dissect that… stuff: first, “coasting” is a ridiculous verb in this setting. Second, is he really rubbing her back at something like 70 stokes per minute? And third, if her heart is beating against his, the two had better be conjoined twins!

I won’t go so far as to say that all of Stolen is this poorly written, but way too much of it is. First, though, here’s the story:

Laura Chaucer has disappeared for the second time in thirteen years. The first time, the eight-year-old was found near a remote cabin in a Colorado wilderness, the body of her nanny nearby. This time, twenty-one-year-old Laura has awakened in that same cabin, naked, the room awash in blood. She will soon discover that there’s another, eerily similar, dead woman lying nearby…

FBI agent Atticus Spenser and his main squeeze, shrink Caitlin “Caity” Cassidy, are on the case… because Laura’s daddy is a U. S. Senator. Naturally, Caity’s mentor-turned-stalker, Grady Webber, is the Senator’s best bud and Laura’s former psychiatrist. When a tip suggests that Laura is at the cabin again, the team head into the mountains… but Laura isn’t planning on getting caught by her “monster,” so she avoids the search party.

Meanwhile, back in Boulder, Webber shows himself to be a cad and Laura’s mother proves to be a semi-functional alcoholic. It turns out that the dead woman is a friend of Laura’s, but the good guys are convinced that the same person who abducted Laura and killed her nanny is back.

The only suspects are, of course, that smarmy shrink and the guy that Daddy Chaucer hired to be Laura’s bodyguard.

We, of course, know better: in keeping with the mystery writer’s code, the “obvious” suspect won’t be the one, and the real villain will be sitting there in plain sight the whole time. Unlike more competent writers, however, Baldwin forgets to drop even the slightest hint. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that, except that there are so few characters that it’s pretty obvious who the real killer is when you think about it. Why, however is a bizarre twist. Unfathomable, in fact…

That being said, Baldwin’s work suffers from many small problems, among them the whole “timeline” thing. While Chaucer’s father is constitutionally qualified to be a senator, at about 42 he’s remarkably young to hold the office. We’ll let that slide, though.

What we won’t let slide are such factual problems as 1) Mountain lions rarely eat carrion they didn’t kill themselves, and when they do, don’t attack humans to protect it – especially in autumn when food is plentiful. 2) There are no ATV trails in wilderness areas. 3) Anyone who has actually completed a wilderness survival course will not head uphill when lost in the mountains. 4) High-country cabins don't have basements and trunks full of discarded hiking gear and food. Sheesh! 5) Only sadistic parents would name a daughter “Truella Underland.” 6) Is it just me, or is Laura too "fragile" to be out in public in the first place?

Finally, we have Baldwin’s weird relationship with time: Caity screams when a mountain lion charges her, and “The wind carried a faint cry to Spenser.” Even running at “full tilt,” no way could someone cover enough distance for a cry to have been “faint,” yet come upon a woman (even one with 36-D breasts¹) wrestling with a mountain lion only to see her survive with a few cuts. Yeah, right.

After that ridiculous passage, I almost gave up on Stolen, but I stuck it out so I could warn other people. Although the book has a five-star rating at the river, most of the high ratings are from reviewers who gush about the relationship. Sorry, folks, as a romance this is merely average. As a mystery, it’s distinctly lousy. Two stars – and that’s me being generous.

¹ Baldwin put that in there, not me.

Agent Zero - Disengage Disbelief Before Reading

2021-01-19T10:18:00.005-05:00

Agent Zero - Jack Mars

I don’t review a lot of books these days, although I still power through about three books a week. Every once in a while, though, I get the urge to spit out a few hundred words to share my opinion of some thing I’ve just finished. Sometimes it’s because the book is so good – Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars or Alexandra Oliva’s The Last One come to mind. On the other hand. Some books are just plain lousy, and I get a kick out of lambasting them. There’s the third option, too: the book’s neither great not execrable, but… something about it tells me to sit down and write. That’s what happened with Agent Zero, the first book in a series by some guy who uses the pseudonym Jack Mars.

If you’ve seen the first entry in the Jason Bourne canon, you already know the plot: dude gets in a tight spot and blasts his way out of it via muscle memory, slowly coming to the realization that he’s some sort of superspy. You know the type: master of every known martial art and weapon, a killing machine with a 50-BPM resting heart rate who never seems to practice anything related to his skillset.

In the case of Reid Lawson, however, things are a little different: somebody had stuck a “memory-suppression ship” in his skull and wiped out his entire memory of being the super-agent Kent Steele. And here the guy had thought he was merely a widowed Classics prof with two teenaged daughters…

Lawson/Steele, of course, quickly learns that he’s up against a shadowy cabal that intends to take over the world, a sort of “international deep state” if you will. Naturally, he has to fight every one of them to a standstill more or less with his bare hands. It’s a darned good thing he’s Agent Zero…

The fact that the whole super-agent thing has been pretty much done to death over the past few decades notwithstanding, Agent Zero chapped this particular reviewer’s hiney for a number of other reasons. In the first place, it’s supposed to be an espionage thriller, not a scifi novel; so that whole “memory-suppression chip” plot had clearly been shoehorned in like that stupid Experian Boost Cow into a dog show. I’m more or less OK with willing suspension of disbelief when Jack Reacher or James Bond is tearing the villain a new one, but asking me to believe that the CIA has that kind of technology floating around is a little much.

As for the rest of the novel, it’s pretty much standard fare; including the requisite betrayal, the gorgeous femme fatale, the highly-placed turncoat in the agency, and the assassin who is almost – but not quite – the equal of the hero. Either Mars was on autopilot writing it or I was on autopilot while reading it.

And speaking of Mars and writing, I think the main reason why I wanted to write this review was that the guy REALLY could have used an editor with basic knowledge of something besides house style. Take, for instance, Jack’s insistence of writing that blood “eked from” a nose or wound. “Eked?” Don’t you mean “leaked”? and then there’s Mars’ misconception about what the sternum is, at one point writing that Kent Steele had sliced the assassin’s “sternum” open. Ummm, Jack? The sternum is a bone…

While we’re at it, shouldn’t someone writing about Iranian terrorists know that they don’t speak Arabic, they speak Farsi? And that the two aren’t the same thing at all? I’m sure that if you read through the reviews at the river, you’ll also find someone who’s called out Mars on how he wrote about firearms, too.

The upshot? Agent Zero is just a somewhat derivative thriller with a brief sideways dash into scifi and recurring errors in word usage. Without the extra irritants, I’d have only called it “average;” with them it doesn’t quite make it to three stars.

Hey There, Nowhere Man: Yo Mama!

2020-10-29T15:45:00.002-04:00

Prodigal Son - Gregg Hurwitz

Evan Smoak thought he’d retired from the hero business; or at least that was the deal he’d made to stay out of a federal prison. But when you get a phone call from someone claiming to be the mother you’d never met, you’re at least curious… maybe a little obsessed. The woman in question had a job for The Nowhere Man (Evan’s last “career” before retiring): find and protect Andrew Duran, a down-on-his-luck impound lot attendant who’d had the misfortune of witnessing the murder of a client. Perhaps out of boredom, Evan took up the hunt.

It’s a hunt that would lead him to a secret military base and the lair of a psychopathic inventor, a hunt in which the former Orphan X would himself become the hunted. The brother-sister team of contract killers on Duran’s trail was nothing compared to the high-tech assassins waiting in the wings. Lucky for Evan that he could assemble a team of his own: a fellow ex-orphan, his nine-fingered armorer, and a teenaged hacker who’d washed out of the Orphan program.

If that isn’t enough, check out that cliff-hanger…

The sixth in Gregg Hurwitz’s Orphan X series, Prodigal Son, rolls out big chunks of Evan’s backstory. That includes both the tale of his entry to the Orphan program as well as some reasons for the animosity of Charles van Sciver, the late Orphan Z. As in previous installments, Evan cuts a swath through phalanxes of bad guys, thrives on subterfuge, and not only outfights but outthinks his opposition. Is he slowing down at thirty-eight? You sure can’t tell…

All five previous installments in the series have been fun romps featuring a hero who is only a radiation accident short of being a Marvel superhero. Prodigal Son is no exception, and it has the added bonus of imbuing Evan Smoak with just a little more humanity.

Highly recommended.

An advanced reader's copy of Prodigal Son was provided by NetGalley in return for my honest review.

Mary, Mary, Never Quite Contrary: DiNunzio gets a New BFF

2020-10-07T14:03:00.002-04:00

Lady Killer - Lisa Scottoline

In case you hadn't noticed, Lisa Scottoline hasn't written a Rosato & Associates novel in years. The last time, she tells readers who make it to her afterword, was more than four years ago. Four years... could it have been that long? Well, when you consider that in those four years she gave us Cate Fante (Dirty Blonde), Vicki Allegretti (Devil's Corner), and Natalie "Nat" Greco (Daddy's Girl) in lieu of the amazonian women of Rosato-land, it's pretty easy to forget that the last time Mary DiNunzio dithered her way across the page was in 2004's Killer Smile. Problem one being, nothing much's changed: DiNunzio is still a ditz, and Bennie Rosato still only makes cameo appearances. That's too bad: Bennie is the Philadelphia equivalent of V. I. Warshawski, and Mary... Mary... well, suffice it to say that the world does not need another Stephanie Plum...

For certain people, Hell is going to be a replay of high school. Apparently, that's the way Mary DiNunzio sees it: pimples, braces, frizzy hair, and torment at the hands of the Mean Girls. So when the Meanest of the Mean Girls shows up in Mary's office in search of help in fending off her abusive boyfriend; it feels like payback time. Whether bosom buddies or not, though, when Trish Gambone storms out of DiNunzio's office an hour later, Mary can't help but feel as if she's failed - failed the old neighborhood, if nothing else.

Things get worse: Trish disappears. And then things get even worse... and a body's involved.

Now at this point, it can either get worse or better: will Mary find Trish? Will Trish be charged with murder, and if so, can Mary put a Perry Mason finger on the real killer? And will the Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra fan clubs ever be on speaking terms again? Read Lady Killer and see...

Though it ought to feel like home to have ditzy Mary DiNunzio in my lap once more, it really doesn't. The woman remains as irritatingly irresolute as ever; agonizing over the tiniest decision and making mental notes (just like all of the Rosato associates, for some reason). For a thirty-something widow with a JD and a relatively successful law career, she's surprisingly childlike. Perhaps it's from having remained tied to her mother's apron strings too long... Would that Mama "Veet" DiNunzio had given her daughter a healthy dollop of common sense along with her tomato sauce, eh?

This time out, to tell the truth, readers are treated to a side of Mary they've not seen before, a sort of Catholic school girl walk on the wild side (with subtitles in Latin). Though it doesn't make her any less a ditz - she basically remains a Stephanie Plum clone that's passed the bar exam - the revelations do humanize her a bit., though the constant vacillation over "What to do! What to do!" remains wearing. As with any Scottoline novel, there's a definite pattern: Mary's one of those heroines who will muddle through even if she can't get cell phone reception or the heel breaks on her Blahniks - and trust me, one (or more likely both) of those will happen wherever Mary goes.

Also like most Scottoline novels, there's little suspense in Lady Killer, not that that's necessarily a bad thing: at least she's not Alex Cooper flitting into every unlit space on Manhattan Island. DiNunzio's danger is more the intellectual kind than the mortal kind. All of which rather makes me wonder: though the series is ostensibly about the women of Rosato and Associates, most of the books are about DiNunzio, with one about Anne Murphy. For my money, however, the best in the series are about the boss, Bennedeta Rosato, who sat first chair in a couple of novels (Legal Tender and Dead Ringer). So, Lisa, here's my request: can we have some more Bennie, please? I for one am getting tired of DiNunzio. I keep expecting to see her reunited with the twin sister from whom she was separated at birth - that Plum gal from Joisey.

Rogue DEA Agents, Sicarios, and Zetas... Oh, My

2020-08-08T18:37:00.002-04:00

Make Them Cry - Smith Henderson and Jon Marc Smith

If you like your protagonists flawed, then Make Them Cry is gonna be right up your alley. With the possible exception of a couple of innocent bystanders (who might not be all that innocent after all), not one character in this novel has more redeeming qualities than flaws.

That negative balance definitely includes Diane Harbaugh, grifter’s daughter turned ASUA turned DEA agent; a woman with a penchant for playing fast and loose with whatever rules get in her way. It’s that penchant that already has her in hot water with her agency when she goes rogue in an attempt to bring in a cartel lieutenant in the Mexican coastal town of Tampico. Ultimately, she finds herself pitted against a sicario whose hobby is reading sword-and-sorcery fantasy and somehow in debt to Carver, a sexy ex-CIA agent who’s also gone rogue in his own way.

Everything quickly goes blood-soaked, as cartel dealings tend to do; and Harbaugh finds that her career as a DEA agent is in jeopardy… but there’s a light in the tunnel, so to speak. Stay tuned for more thrills from Harbaugh and her new comrades.

The first novel from Smith Henderson and Jon Marc Smith, Make Them Cry is most assuredly a 21st-century thriller. Just like so-called reality TV, everyone’s a villain at heart and trust is in short supply. There are other modern touches as well: like many modern novels (and movies) back-story is also in short supply. For most of the book I thought I’d been dropped into the middle of a series; the references to past shenanigans and characters were so liberally sprinkled through the plot. Your mileage may differ.
If you don’t mind some intense action – a chase scene with Harbaugh fleeing a pack of Zetas in a Kia compact will keep you on the edge of your seat – and if you don’t mind characters whose moral code is a little slippery, this one belongs on your shelf. Keep your Spanish translation app on hand and make certain the slang is up to date, and you’ll be fine.

Oh, and while you’re in there? watch for the shout out to Pancho and Lefty…

This book was provided as a galley proof by NetGalley in return for my honest review.

Everybody Do the Bonk!

2020-07-04T06:45:00.001-04:00

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex - Mary Roach

Mary Roach is the kind of science writer who really gets into her research, although for Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex one might more accurately state that her research gets into her. Literally (and I mean that in the true sense of the word) "into" her: in her latest book, an improbable glimpse into the laboratories and lives of sex researchers, Ms Roach volunteered herself as a test subject in not one but two studies. All of which takes participation to new heights (or lows, I suppose, depending on one's viewpoint).

Bonk follows on the heels of Stiff, Roach's investigation into the post-mortem "careers" of cadavers willed to science; and Spook, in which Roach pokes into scientific studies of the afterlife. As in her earlier books, Roach brings to the subject insatiable curiosity, in-depth research, and a willingness to do anything - and I do mean anything - to get the story.

Though most adults have by now heard of Alfred Kinsey and Masters & Johnson; perhaps the twentieth century's most (in)famous researchers on human sexuality, far fewer realize that study of the subject continues to this day in laboratories worldwide. Besides her research into sexual psychology's history, Roach also interviewed current experts in the field, such as University of Texas researcher Cindy Meston, and (where allowed) viewed their experiments. When she couldn't interview participants in the subject, Roach made do: inserting "Cinderella's tampon" (a photoplethysmograph) for a study of vaginal lubrication in response to visual stimuli (XXX movies, ya know); and more famously talking her husband into participating in a study that created an ultrasound "blue movie" of the couple... errr... ummm... "coitally linked."
Any allegedly titillating behavior of its author aside, however, Bonk is for the most part a first-rate example of what popular science writing is supposed to be: a balanced combination of education and entertainment. The education component hasn't been dumbed down, but neither is it inaccessible to a lay reader from overuse of jargon and the turgid phrasing used by so many scientists. The entertainment component arises from a generous sprinkling of Roach's dry wit; although she occasionally seems almost sophomoric, as though aiming at a teenaged male demographic. A quick glance through the table of contents should give one an idea of Roach's flair for the double entendre:

The Testicle Pushers: If Two are Good, Would Three be Better?
Re-Member Me: Transplants, Implants, and Other Penises of Last Resort
Mind over Vagina: Women are Complicated
What's Going on in There? The Diverting World of Coital Imaging

While there are few places Roach won't go, there are some where a few readers may wish she hadn't. A chapter on Danish hog farming (hog inseminators are trained to stimulate sows to orgasm after insemination) is a bit on the strange side. Her visit to a Taiwanese surgeon who specializes in penile implants is very hard to read... at least for men... none of us will ever be able to see or hear the word "gloving" again without cringing.

Where Roach goes most of the time, however, is straight into that curious coupling of learning and laughter. Most of the giggles will come from her literary asides in the footnotes, in which she demonstrates not only the results of her far-ranging research but also a gift for groaners:

"I always assumed that Priapus was a god of something manly - war or shouting or chariot customizing - but in fact he was a god of fertility and gardens, One mythology website calls him 'the protector of all garden produce.' Clearly troubled by the girly job title, he took to wearing robes slit high enough to display his enormous cucumber... Encyclopedia Mythica reports that outside of Rome, Priapus was 'never very popular.'"

Still more humor resides in the text itself: of that photoplethysmograph experiment, she writes,

"...I take the probe out of the bag. An LED and some wiring are encased in a round-tipped, bullet-shaped piece of clear acrylic. 'Cinderella's tampon,' I write in my notebook, a notation that I will, weeks later, stare at dumbly for several moments, having no clue what it means. Where the string would be, there is a stiff, plastic-coated cable that leads to a computer. I follow the instructions I was given, and now the cable is curling down the front of my chair. I feel like a bike lock."

All that funny stuff aside, Bonk is also a cogent review of the current state of the study of sexual psychology. In its pages, Roach skillfully shares the current thinking and understanding of a knotty subject, one about which few people on earth know half as much as they think they do. As Roach often observes, "women are complicated." As she also hints, so are men - at least in their interactions with those women. Perhaps this bit of reading could help you understand your partner better - it couldn't hurt!

Summary

Plus: educational and entertaining
Minus: the humor's at times a tad sophomoric
What They're Saying: We rarely see the curious coupling of learning and laughter, but Bonk is one of those cases. Mary Roach's witty work succeeds as both education and entertainment.

Ewwwww, Gross!

2020-04-11T14:24:00.001-04:00

Flush - Carl Hiaasen

There's no question whatsoever of "nature vs. nurture" in the Underwood family.

Given that papa Underwood - the name "Paine" is on his mug shot the local sheriff's department - named his daughter Abbey "...after one of his favorite writers, some weird old bird who's buried out west in the middle of a desert," it should come as no surprise that he's been known to perform a wee tad of monkey-wrenching¹. And getting caught - which is his most recent problem. With Dad in jail and Mom walking around mumbling the dreaded D-word², young Noah Underwood is having himself a heckuva bad summer.

Dad's locked up in the local clink for scuttling the casino ship Coral Queen. Seems Underwood learned that the owner, Jasper "Dusty" Muleman, has been dumping the holding tanks of his floating crap game (lots of crap games, actually) in the harbor every night after the casino closes, and the effluent keeps polluting the only swimming beach on the Key - not to mention the only place loggerhead turtles have to lay their eggs thereabouts. Paine is not amused - but, then, neither is local law enforcement when he takes matters in his own hands, since they require that there be an arrest and trial before a polluter can be punished.

With his Dad locked up, Noah decides to take up the family cause - a tough job for a twelve-year-old, especially one who has to contend with both an anal-retentive little sister and a couple of bullies who've already had their growth spurts. Of course, one bully is none other than Jasper Muleman, Jr., which does complicate matters a bit. But take up the cause Noah does, ably assisted by his ramrod-straight little sister and a barb-wire-tattooed, multiple-ear-pierced, fishnet-stockinged bartender on that same Coral Queen, name of Shelly. Given a couple of deus ex machina visits from ol' Scarface the Pirate and the surprisingly sneaky plan the kids have concocted, the three conspirators have a darned good chance of putting paid to Muleman's stinky habits.
Except that Noah's about to learn that you really shouldn't count your loggerhead turtles before they're hatched...

After a couple of decades of writing for adults, Carl Hiaasen has apparently decided that it's better to catch 'em while they're young. Beginning with 2003's Hoot - winner of a prestigious Newberry Medal - Hiaasen dove headfirst into juvenile fiction. In his second foray into the field, Flush, Hiaasen spins out another tale of an adolescent boy's love and respect for nature and a battle to protect one of the few remaining wild places. Long-time fans of the Miami Herald columnist and best-selling author (Strip Tease, Native Tongue) will recognize the themes from his adult fiction - although his quirky characters and sometimes excessive violence have been toned down. Maybe I take that back: the character of Shelly, with her tangerine perfume and her five-inch stilettos is pretty quirky for juvenile fiction.

Given that Flush is a book for adolescents, you probably assume that the bad guys will end up getting their just deserts and that the last scene in the book to be of the wonders of nature - and you'd be right: your young reader will learn that grime, err, crime does not pay. You'd also be right if you bet that the youthful protagonist will do a little bit of growing up, the cavalry will arrive in time to save the day (more than one day, in fact) and that blood will always be thicker than water - it's a kid's book, after all. It's not all beer and skittles for young Noah, though - he learns the golden rule: them that has the gold makes the rules (but still get it in the end, at least in kid's books, if not in real life). And also note - given that it's a kid's book - you might be a bit taken aback by the fairly adult way that young Noah notices Shelly's... ummm... assets, and perhaps you might be a bit taken aback by Shelly's entire lifestyle. That's between you and your kids, I suppose.

Unlike Hoot, which had just a couple of un-nice words, the text of Flush is free of anything scatological, quite unlike the beach where the Coral Queen's waste keeps ending up - but your teen (or tween) may get grossed out a time or two and also might get a bit worried when Noah and his sister sneak around in the dark to go up against some pretty mean specimens. Of course, if your idea of good juvenile fiction is the recent Help Mom, There are Liberals Under My Bed, then you might as well forget anything Hiaasen ever wrote and head on over to Zondervan's. Your call.
Though not quite as much fun as Hoot (admittedly, not much is), Flush is certainly a winner in its own right and gets across the message that Hiaasen wants to impart. I may say it's not quite as good as Hoot, but if this is a sophomore slump, then I'm looking forward to the next one 'cause it ought to be a hum-dinger. Highly recommended - ages 12-15.

¹ He's talking about the late Edward Abbey, who wrote The Monkey Wrench Gang.
² She's talking about Tammy Wynette's big hit, "D-I-V-O-R-C-E"