UNTIL THE REAL THING COMES ALONG by Elizabeth Berg

Finished We 5/27/20

This is a hardback that Janny loaned to me. 

Although still an engaging read, this was my least favorite of Berg's novels. 

PREMISE:

Patty has been in love with Ethan since they were children. The problem is that Ethan is gay. 

Patty is getting older and is fixated on marriage and having children. 

Patty convinces Ethan that they should have a child together and try to live as husband and wife.

They move from where they live in Massachusetts to Minneapolis. Ethan believes that he requires a new place to 'try out' his heterosexuality.  

Robert and Marilyn are her parents and the baby is named Marilyn, in honor of Patty's mother who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's 

Elaine- Patty's closest friend.

Mark is a man that Elaine tried to hook up with Patty. Patty isn't attracted to him, and later Mark marries Elaine. 

Sophia- Patty's foreign neighbor who has a 'convoluted sense of the English language'. 

In the end of the novel Patty is with her baby and living in a cottage by the sea (Massachusetts?). Ethan has a lover, Louis, and although Patty is alone she is hopeful for the future and grateful for all that she has. 

From the book's page at Google Books:

"Patty Murphy is facing that pivotal point in a woman's life when her biological clock ticks as insistently as a beating heart. Will she find Mr Right and start a family? But Patty is in love - with a man who is not only attractive and financially sound, but sensitive and warmhearted. There's just one small problem: He is also gay. Against her better judgment, and pleas from family and friends, Patty refuses to give up on Ethan. Every man she dates ultimately leaves her aching for the gentle comfort and intimacy she shares with him. But even as she throws eligible bachelors to the wayside to spend yet another platonic night with Ethan, Patty longs more and more for the consolation of loving and being loved. In the meantime she must content herself with waiting - until the real thing comes along." 

I wondered if there was a backlash from the gay community. Wouldn't gays be offended if a novel presented a homosexual character forcing himself to 'act straight'?

THE POET by Michael Connelly

Refinished Tu 5/26/20

This is one of my ancient (and most loved!) paperbacks. I first read this and finished on Mo 2/24/03 and then re-read and finished again on Tu 11/14/17.

It is not part of the 'Harry Bosch' series, but concerns his character, Jack McEvoy who is a writer for a mid-sized paper, Rocky Mountain News. Connelly says that this character is closest to him and shares many similarities to the author. 

PREMISE:

Jack's twin is a detective and he committed suicide, yet later it's judged a murder. Jack was able to show how it was murder and he also was able to link several other police suicides to this same serial killer. 

Also there is a child killer operating. This man was abused as a child and he also becomes a molester. However, he kills his victims on the theory that he cannot allow them to become like him.

CONCLUSION:

Jack is convinced that one of the FBI agents is the serial killer. Rachel Walling was the female agent that was assigned to watch Jack during the investigation. They have an affair and seem to be in love, but then Jack feels that all the clues point to her as the killer. However, the real killer is Rachel's boss, Robert Backus, Jr. This man's father was also with the FBI and his career was legendary.

In the final showdown, Backus has Jack cornered and hypnotized. Rachel breaks into the house and confronts Backus. She shoots him and he falls out of the window on the house located high in the Hollywood Hills. The body is found much later, deep in a canyon, but there is some doubt as to whether this is really Bob Backus. 

From the book's page at Amazon:

"Death is reporter Jack McEvoy's beat: his calling, his obsession. But this time, death brings McEvoy the story he never wanted to write--and the mystery he desperately needs to solve. A serial killer of unprecedented savagery and cunning is at large. His targets: homicide cops, each haunted by a murder case he couldn't crack. The killer's calling card: a quotation from the works of Edgar Allan Poe. His latest victim is McEvoy's own brother. And his last...may be McEvoy himself."

THE HOT KID by Elmore Leonard

Finished Su 5/17/2020- While dealing with the biggest 'water incident' downstairs.

A hardback novel that I bought at West Branch for two bucks on Sa 8/23/07 and finished the first time on Labor Day Mo 9/3/07.

The 'Hot Kid' is Federal Agent Carl (Carlos) Webster. He's trying to make a rather lurid name for himself as a famous officer of the law.

Orvis Belmont is a rich banker, oil man, and land owner. His son, Jack is an up and coming criminal. Jack's mother vows to shoot him on sight and his father tries to cover up his mistakes.

The novel is set in and around Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Louly Brown likes to think that she was a lover of Pretty Boy Floyd (Charles Floyd), and she becomes Carl's partner.

Tong Antonelli is a reporter for True Detective and he is covering Carl's career in the most sensational manner. 

This is the era of John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, and Pretty Boy Floyd.

I thought that the characters were beautifully presented and each scene was finely etched. The conversations and dialog were absolutely life-like and true to the era.

From the book's page at Amazon:

"Carlos Webster was fifteen in the fall of 1921, the first time he came face-to-face with a nationally known criminal. A few weeks later, he killed his first man—a cattle thief who was rustling his dad's stock. Now Carlos, called Carl, is the hot kid of the U.S. Marshals Service, one of the elite manhunters currently chasing the likes of Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Pretty Boy Floyd across America's Depression-ravaged heartland.

Carl wants to be the country's most famous lawman. Jack Belmont, the bent son of an oil millionaire, wants to be public enemy number one. Tony Antonelli of True Detective magazine wants to write about this world of cops and robbers, molls and speakeasies from perilously close up. Then there are the hot dames—Louly and Elodie—hooking their schemes and dreams onto dangerous men. And before the gunsmoke clears, everybody just might end up getting exactly what he or she wished for."

A quote from the author, Elmore Leonard:

"The literary set also admires Leonard's style -- or antistyle, rather. "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it".

From the review in the New York Times:

"Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson -- all the outlaws who captured both the headlines and the American imagination in the early 30's make brief appearances in the novel, which is also at pains, in Leonard's minimalist fashion, to evoke the look and feel and even the music of the period. We get glimpses of the Light Crust Doughboys (A Western Swing Band), the great hillbilly swing band, for example, and hear about the wild music played by colored fellows named Count Basie and Louis Armstrong. There are scenes in tourist courts and roadhouses and in Kansas City speakeasies where the waitresses work in their underwear or in nothing at all. Where so much of Leonard's recent fiction has a sharp, almost hyperrealistic quality, "The Hot Kid" is noirish and even a little pulpy at times, in the fashion of 30's movies and detective magazines."

PROOF POSITIVE by Phillip Margolin

Finished We 5/13/2020

This is one of my paperbacks that I bought at the library book sale on Sa 1/11/20.

Essentially the book is about a sociopath, Bernie Cashman, who happens to be a respected criminologist who works for the District Attorney's office in Portland, Oregon. He changes the results of a couple of cases because he believes that unless he acts, guilty people will go free. In a strange turn of events he is forced to commit murders to cover-up his meddling.  The novel is about how this plays out.

The book is part of the author's 'Amanda Jaffe Series'. Amanda Jaffe is a defense lawyer who works with her father, Frank Jaffe. The books are set in and around Portland, Oregon.

An interesting premise and the novel is very engaging.

 From the book's page at Amazon:

"Defense attorney Doug Weaver believes his client, Jacob Cohen, is innocent—but the forensic evidence proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that the meek, mentally ill homeless man killed and dismembered a woman . . .

Hired to defend gangster Art Prochaska against charges that he murdered an informer, lawyer Amanda Jaffe and her father, Frank, have their work cut out for them—because, as improbable as it seems, the forensic clues scream that Prochaska is guilty . . .

And now people are dying inexplicably—as Amanda and Doug join forces to find answers hidden somewhere in the darkest corners of crime scene investigation, where a god-playing madman holds the lethal power to alter the truth."

From Kirkus reviews:

"n her third appearance, Oregon defense attorney Amanda Jaffe (Ties That Bind, 2003, etc.) takes on a CSI tech who thinks he’s God.

Bernie Cashman, forensic expert at the Oregon state crime lab, loves his job, and he’s terrific at it. The trouble is that he’s nuts. He thinks it’s perfectly fine to fake whatever evidence is necessary to send the folks he’s decided are guilty to the slammer. Anything less would be a shirking of his professional responsibility. He’s been acting like God for years as the occasion warrants, pleased as punch with the results, until his colleague Mary Clark semi-accidentally catches him at it. It’s a discomfiting development that leaves Cashman with a moment of clarity: The woman has to be murdered. All his splendid work in support of Oregon law enforcement hangs in the balance. It turns out that murdering Mary entails framing another kind of nutcase—poor, unbalanced, homeless Jacob Cohen, custom-made for a role as scapegoat. But once Amanda puts in an appearance on Jacob’s behalf, Cashman’s brought to book by means of a little bit of luck wrapped around a modicum of human folly.

Margolin is never going to be a poster boy for stylish prose, but this is a briskly paced, cleverly plotted, long-overdue switch on all those heroic forensics guys."

TRUE EVIL by Greg Iles

Re-Finished Tu 5/5/20

I bought this hardback at the library book sale on Sa 6/10/17 and finished the first time on Tu 12/19/17.

Quotation at the beginning of the book:

"True evil has a face you know and a voice you trust"- Anonymous

PREMISE:

Dr. Eldon Tarver- the pathological medical researcher.

Andrew Rusk is the corrupt lawyer

A corrupt divorce lawyer and a truly evil science researcher collaborate to offer a service to very rich people who stand to lose everything in a divorce. They can kill a spouse and disguise the death to appear to be cancer. The virus is slow acting and can take up to eighteen months from exposure to death.

It's a fact that researchers are noticing that many cancers really are caused by viruses, so there is a degree of truth in the story line.

A section of the novel demonstrates how this virus model can be weaponized and used for the military. Armies could invade an area and spread the virus and destroy completely a country's infrastructure without damaging a single building. And, in this scenario the 'exposure to death' can be as long as five years.

Alex Morse is an FBI agent who has lost credibility. She was shot in the face with a shotgun during a hostage situation and her face is deeply scarred. She suspects that her dead sister was killed by this virus.

Chris Sheppard is a doctor who is being set up for the virus by his wife. 

From the book's page at Amazon:

"A Southern doctor is pulled into a terrifying ring of murderous secrets in this powerhouse thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of the Penn Cage series.

Dr. Chris Shepard has never seen his new patient before. But the attractive young woman with the scarred face knows him all too well. An FBI agent working undercover, Alex Morse has come to Dr. Shepard's office in Natchez, Mississippi, to unmask a killer. A local divorce attorney has a cluster of clients whose spouses have all died under mysterious circumstances. Agent Morse's own brother-in-law was one of those clients, and now her beloved sister is dead. Then comes Morse's bombshell: Dr. Shepard's own beautiful wife consulted this lawyer one week ago, a visit Shepard knew nothing about. Will he help Alex Morse catch a killer? Or is he the next one to fall victim to a deadly trap of sex, lies, and murder?"

About the author at Amazon:

"Greg Iles was born in 1960 in Germany, where his father ran the US Embassy medical clinic during the height of the Cold War. After graduating from the University of Mississippi in 1983, he performed for several years with the rock band Frankly Scarlet and is a member of the lit-rock group The Rock Bottom Remainders. His first novel, Spandau Phoenix, a thriller about Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess, was published in 1993 and became a New York Times bestseller. Iles went on to write numerous bestselling novels including Third Degree, True Evil, Turning Angel, Blood Memory, The Footprints of God, the Natchez Burning trilogy, and 24 Hours (released by Sony Pictures as Trapped, with full screenwriting credit for Iles). He lives in Natchez, Mississippi."

From a reader's post at Amazon:

"...committing the perfect murder. It also explores a proposition that has long interested me as a biochemist and cell biologist. A trained molecular biologist who is also a psychopath could become a formidable murderer and terrorist, particularly if he had access to abundant resources. Iles pushes this theme further by having the individual serve with the Army Biological Warfare Program, then cooperate with a divorce lawyer who plots solutions to unhappy marriages (unsolvable murders). I like the fact that Iles has done considerable homework and sticks to the real concepts of molecular biology and virology in describing the basic science of his central proposition for his killer, rather than creating “science facts” to advance his plot, as some other novelists have." 

I've read several novels by Greg Iles and I'd read anything that he wrote.