Wednesday, December 18, 2024

TRUTH OR DIE by James Patterson & Howard Roughan

 Finished Mo 12/16/24

This was a hardback that Janny loaned to me.

Another book that feels like it's been created by an assembly line. It crackles with plot ideas, but lacks character development and elegant writing. It's bare-bones and feels like reading a screenplay.

A professional man's girlfriend is a investigative reporter and one night she is murdered. At first glance, it appears to be a New York city mugging, but it is only the tip of a very deep conspiracy. 

From the book's page at Amazon:

"D. C. attorney Trevor Mann is about to discover a shocking secret . . . and to uncover the truth, he must solve the most shocking mystery of his life.

After a serious professional stumble, attorney Trevor Mann may have finally hit his stride. He's found happiness with his girlfriend Claire Parker, a beautiful, ambitious journalist always on the hunt for a scoop. But when Claire's newest story leads to a violent confrontation, Trevor's newly peaceful life is shattered as he tries to find out why.

Chasing Claire's leads, Trevor unearths evidence of a shocking secret that-if it actually exists-every government and terrorist organization around the world would do anything to possess. Suddenly it's up to Trevor, along with a teenage genius who gives new meaning to the phrase "too smart for his own good," to make sure that secret doesn't fall into the wrong hands. But Trevor is about to discover that good and evil can look a lot alike, and nothing is ever black and white: not even the truth."

Saturday, December 14, 2024

GALACTIC POT-HEALTER by Philip K. Dick

 Refinished Fr 12/13/24

This was one of my ancient trade paperbacks that I first finished on Tu 3/14/95. I also finished the book at Midway airport in Chicago when I went to Las Vegas in December of 2003. 

Pot healer is a person who repairs and refurbishes cermanics. 

A pot healer is contacted by an entity (god?) who wants to raise an ancient city on a planet far away. He is gathering beings from all over the galaxy to help with this massive undertaking. 

It was odd & confusing and I'm not sure how to take the book. 

'ELMO PLASSKET SINKS GIANTS': One of the games that the protagonist plays was to locate crazy newspaper headlines and that was one of them. I checked and Elmo Plassket was a real major league baseball player and he played catcher, outfield, and third base for the Pittsburg Pirates.

From an internet post by Jason Koornick:

"Galactic Pot-Healer tells the story of Joe Fernwright, a low level bureaucrat who lives in an overcrowded dystopia and whose life has no real purpose. Trained in the art of pot healing, Fernwright is a restorer of old ceramics but in his time all the pots have been fixed and he spends his days in a cubicle waiting for any random assignment that might come his way. He passes the hours by playing a meaningless word game with his co-workers.

Joe’s life takes a turn when he receives intergalactic communication from an unknown entity through various channels. First, a message comes to him in his mail tube, next he finds a note floating in the bowl of his toilet. Not sure what to make of all it, Joe discovers that he is being contacted by a force called the Glimmung who is trying to enlist his pot healing services to restore an ancient cathedral on a distant planet.

We join Fernwright as he journeys across the universe on a perilous mission which confounds and astonishes him. We meet bizarre aliens and wise-cracking robots as Joe tries to discover the true nature of his mission and the intention of his flawed but omniscient host, the Glimmung. Appearing to the group of intergalactic workers in many various forms, the Glimmung is a being with a purpose and determination which goes back through the ages and needs the help of the otherwise useless workers in his efforts to restore what can be seen as balance and harmony on the alien planet of Plowman’s Planet.

Sprinkled among the quick moving plot and reckless abandon of this novel, one finds bits and pieces of the irony and humor for which Dick is known. Joe Fernwright is the perfect PKD character even if his story is vague and unclear.

Just like Joe, the reader is often confused and baffled by the events which transpire in Galactic Pot-Healer. This is not a book for the faint of heart or those looking for clear cut answers. The symbolism and message of this novel are buried under layers of false suggestion and distorted truths. Only by reading between the lines is a reader likely to walk away from Galactic Pot-Healer understanding Dick’s intentions with this book."


 

Tuesday, December 10, 2024

THE PARSIFAL MOSAIC by Robert Ludlum

 Finished Mo 12/9/24

This was one of my ancient paperbacks that I first read and finished on Sa 7/17/93.

I spent longer than necessary, but there were several more plotlines than in the average Baldacci novel. 

1) Two lovers in the intelligence system are pitted against each other by their bosses. A man witnesses his lover being killed and he's led to believe that she was working for the enemies of America. He leaves 'the business', but later sees his lover by accident. He sees her face and realizes that she hates him. Her handlers have her believing that he is working for 'the enemies'. 

2) A political figure, similar to Henry Kissinger, is praised by everyone for his expertise in international policy. However, this man has lost his mind and American intelligence has built a fake town so that they can keep him tethered to some sense of reality. 

3) There is a Russian mole who is the American Secretary of State. 

From an internet blog:

"The story starts with a defining moment in the life of "Consular Operations" agent Michael Havelock. Having learned that his lover, Jenna Karas, is working with the KGB he is forced to personally gun her down on a beach in Spain. Sickened by her betrayal of him, and by his betrayal of her (he did love her, after all, and he cold-bloodedly murdered her), he calls it quits and retires to an academic existence. But of course it is the case that like Michael Corleone in the third Godfather film, just when he thinks he is out when they pull him back in. The entreaties of various recruiters fail to bring him back to the Great Game, but something else does the trick in short order--Havelock, incredibly, spotting Karas in a train station in Rome. She’s alive! he realizes. And she knows he knows that she knows that he knows that . . . And off he goes after her as she desperately tries to evade the man who shot at her on that beach, Havelock determined to find out how he has been deceived, and why, while American intelligence determines to stop him.

During this phase of the book--which lasts more than half of its six hundred pages--there is an abundance of incident, but very little forward progress of the story. Rather the mechanics of pursuit, evasion, surveillance, combat are, a few hints of more apart (a Soviet mole in the upper reaches of government, the odd behavior of an American Secretary of State whose stature is basically the legend of Henry Kissinger times twenty, the fear that somehow this will lead to nuclear war), pretty much all the narrative has to offer. It is only after the midpoint of the book that Havelock succeeds in tracking Jenna down, and that they start investigating the conspiracy that brought them to this state. The biggest revelations come early, after which the remainder of the book consists mainly of Havelock trying to find a mole whose identity is unambiguously revealed to the reader well before the end (even if there are a few other surprises in store), and never packs quite the dramatic punch that it should because responsibility for Havelock's betrayal ultimately ends up being so diffused.

The result is that The Parsifal Mosaic feels like two, or two-and-a-half, smaller thrillers strung together, each of which runs longer than it ought as a result of the number of links in the chains being longer than would have been optimal, and a fair amount of overwriting, with many a lengthy scene or subplot amounting to less than the space allotted it ought to have warranted. (Havelock’s attempt to intercept Jenna at the Franco-Italian border was overlengthy, the description overly complicated. Meeting with a man in New York who has important information for Havelock about Karas’ whereabouts Havelock realizes that he is a Nazi criminal whose atrocities he personally witnessed as young Michal Havlicek back in Czechoslovakia during the war, now living here under a false identity--but in spite of adding yet another dramatic shock the fact is actually quite unimportant to the story. And so on.)"

Last night I ordered two more novels by Ludlum from Amazon.

Monday, November 18, 2024

FUNERAL IN BERLIN by Len Deighton

 Finihsed Su 11/17/24

This was one of my ancient paperbacks that I had never read. An enjoyable read and the writing was far superior than what I was expecting. Baldacci makes the plot more important than character development or tone, but Deighton's writing is just the opposite. I had a little trouble keeping track of the story, but the superior writing easily made up for the slight confusion.

My take on what happened: 

The 'hero' is tasked with getting a scientist out of East Berlin. He was to be smuggled out of the country in a casket, however another agent was in the coffin. He wanted to assume the identity of a dead Jew who was extremely wealthy, yet died in one of the camps. This man had phony ID and he was hoping to go to Switzerland, show the identification, and become a rich man.

From a blog on the internet:

"In this story, the nameless spy is sent to East Berlin to facilitate the defection of an East German scientist. He must work with the Russian security-chief Colonel Stok and Hallam of the British Home Office. An elaborate plan is set up to get the scientist out of East Berlin. This book was published only three years after the Berlin Wall was constructed; in the introduction, Deighton speaks of the time he spent in East Berlin shortly after the wall went up. The setting feels very authentic.

This book in the series had some interesting differences from the first two. There are over 50 chapters and  almost all of them start with a brief tidbit about a move or strategy in chess. For example: "Players who relish violence, aggression and movement often depend upon the Spanish Game." With no knowledge of chess, this meant nothing to me, but it was a nice touch anyway.

This story was not entirely told in first person. From what I remember, the first two books were told only from the nameless spy's point of view and in first person. In this book, there where chapters here and there that were in third person and focused on the story from various character's points of view. I liked that change, although the narration of the nameless spy is one of the best elements of the story.

There are lots of great characters in this story. The aforementioned Stok in East Berlin and Hallam in London are both memorable. Johnny Vulkan is a double agent that has helped the agency before. There is a discussion with the head of the agency regarding using Vulkan on this case:

'The point I'm making is, that the moment Vulkan feels we are putting him on ice he'll shop around for another job. Ross at the War Office or O'Brien at the P.O. will whip him into the Olympia Stadion and that's the last we will see of him...'

Dawlish touched his finger-tips together and looked at me sardonically. 

'You think I am too old for this job, don't you?'

I said nothing.

 'If we decide not to continue with Vulkan's contract there is no question of leaving him available for the highest bidder.' 

I didn't think old Dawlish could make me shiver.

Another element I like in these stories is the addition of footnotes. They are not extensive enough to break the flow of reading but do add bits of information which would not fit in the flow of conversation.

This book was made into a film, as was The Ipcress File. Michael Caine starred in both films. I had seen The Ipcress File film for the first time in May of this year. I enjoyed it; Caine was just wonderful in the role (called Harry Palmer in the films). However, it was only a bit less confusing than the book. I watched the film adaptation of Funeral in Berlin very shortly after finishing the book and I liked this film even better than the first one. Probably because I understood what was going on, plus my increased familiarity with the characters."


I borrowed the film from Hoopla and watched it on Tu 11/19/24 and the film was streamlined and I think it made more sense. The whole subplot about the 'science of enzymes' was dropped and how Broume was in the concentration camp and his rich family was barely mentioned. Harry Palmer is 'Edmund Dorf' and Johnny Vulcan was actually a Nazi prison guard who was trying to get Broume's paperwork so that he could claim Broume's two million dollars in a Swiss account. 

Thursday, November 14, 2024

THE BOYS FROM BILOXI by John Grisham

 Finished Tu 11/12/24

This was a trade paperback that Janny loaned to me. 

It's a great (and well written) fictional tale about the 'Dixie Mafia'.

Two close friends; Keith Rudy & Hugh Malco.Keith was the 'good' boy who became a lawyer (with political aspirations- his father was the DA) and Hugh was the 'bad' boy who became a mafia chief within his father's organized crime family. 

A description of the book at Goodreads:

"For most of the last hundred years, Biloxi was known for its beaches, resorts, and seafood industry. But it had a darker side. It was also notorious for corruption and vice, everything from gambling, prostitution, bootleg liquor, and drugs to contract killings. The vice was controlled by a small cabal of mobsters, many of them rumored to be members of the Dixie Mafia.

Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco grew up in Biloxi in the sixties and were childhood friends, as well as Little League all-stars. But as teenagers, their lives took them in different directions. Keith’s father became a legendary prosecutor, determined to “clean up the Coast.” Hugh’s father became the “Boss” of Biloxi’s criminal underground. Keith went to law school and followed in his father’s footsteps. Hugh preferred the nightlife and worked in his father’s clubs. The two families were headed for a showdown, one that would happen in a courtroom.

Life itself hangs in the balance in The Boys from Biloxi, a sweeping saga rich with history and with a large cast of unforgettable characters."

Although this is novel, it reads just like a True Crime. The reviews were surprisingly luke warm, but I really liked the book. It's somewhat more than the usual 'beach read'. 

A link to a review of the novel:

https://charles-harris.co.uk/2023/08/the-boys-from-biloxi-has-grisham-taken-on-too-big-a-case/ 

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

A MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT by David Baldacci

 Finished Mo 11/4/24

This was a trad paperback that Janny loaned me. It's typical Baldacci. I loved it while I was reading it, but it's just a compelling storyline. 

This is part of his 'Atlee Pine' series. She is an MMA fighter, weight lifter, and an FBI agent; part of BAU- 'The Behavioral Analysis Unit'. 

Set in Andersonville, Georgia at the infamous Confederate Civil War prison. 

Two Storylines:

1) Atlee was a twin and when they were six years old, Mercy (her twin) was kidnapped and Atlee was physically attacked. In this novel she is trying to locate her sister because she might still be alive and she also wants to find her mother. This storyline is not resolved. 

2) A serial killer is operating in the area. People are murdered (a man and a woman) and dressed in wedding clothes. This storyline is resolved. The killer was a woman who was friends with her parents. 

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

US AGAINST YOU by Fredrik Backman

 Finished Tu 10/29/24

This is a trad paperback that Janny loaned to me. It's by the same  Swedish author who wrote 'A MAN CALLED OVE'.

This is about an ice hockey rivalry between two teams, The Bears and The Bulls. Each team is represented by the towns of Beartown and Hed. 

A rape pits the towns against each other.

A star player is gay and this pits the towns against each other. 

Many characters and a wise & pithy observation is on almost every single page.

I want more by Backman. 'A MAN CALLED OVE' was his first book and he has many more. 

Link to an excellent review at 'Medium'.

https://zachary-houle.medium.com/a-review-of-fredrik-backmans-us-against-you-4d61efe0204c

'US AGAINST YOU' is part of a trilogy. The first is 'BEARSTOWN' and the final book (can be read as a stand-alone) is 'THE WINNERS'.


Friday, October 25, 2024

GONE TO SOLDIERS by Marge Piercy

 This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I had never read. However, it is probably one of the best historical novels that I've ever seen. It really made you feel that you were experiencing what it was like during WWII. 

It was a little confusing because it involves many characters over many years, but well worth the effort. 

From 'Kate Vane' blog:

"Gone to Soldiers presents a much more nuanced view. It follows a number of loosely linked characters from the start of the war. Their stories take in a range of locations, nationalities and situations, although American, female and Jewish characters all feature prominently. The action spans four continents and takes in battles, intelligence, resistance, factory work and the concentration camps.

What Piercy does so brilliantly is tell an epic story, covering the big political and moral issues, while giving you vivid, believable characters, and making them each the centre of their own narrative. There is heroism and brutality but there are also stories of love and ambition, of small acts of nobility and selfishness, of the ways which people find to survive. Some of the characters experience unspeakable horror, others bleakness and deprivation. For some, especially women, the war brings opportunities.

Piercy highlights the moral ambiguities of the conflict. The reluctance of western countries to welcome refugees is highlighted. Many on the Allied side believe leftists and Jews are more of a threat than Fascists – leading the US to initially side with the Vichy government rather than anti-colonial and resistance fighters. Women form an essential part of the wartime workforce but are still regarded as inferior by many, their status provisional.

At the start of the book many just don’t believe that war and barbarity could happen in their enlightened world. Nowhere is this more clearly shown than in the story of Jacqueline, a French-Jewish teenager. Her narrative begins with an endearing mix of cleverness and naivety. She is dismissive of her father’s Zionism, seeing herself as internationalist, secular, trying out lofty opinions and philosophical ideas. Even after the Nazi invasion, she initially feels that life has changed little, that people’s fears have been exaggerated. Of course, her innocence is short-lived.

This book is totally immersive in the way that only long novels can be (in the acknowledgements Piercy says it would have been even longer, but she couldn’t get the funding for a research trip to the Soviet Union). It forces you to consider what you could endure, if you had to, whether you would be brave or look the other way (of course none of us thinks we would be a collaborator or a profiteer). It makes you wonder if we, like Jacqueline, think this couldn’t happen to us, even as many of the events in the book resonate today."

From 'Kepler's Staff Review':

"There is no better novel about World War II than Gone to Soldiers. Marge Piercy’s painstakingly researched story follows the lives of ten deliciously complex characters through the war and its aftermath. There’s Daniel, the drifter who finds his calling in decoding Japanese naval messages; Bernice, who blossoms from a stay-at-home daughter into a proud, self-confident WASP; Jacqueline, the French teenager who becomes one of the leaders of the Jewish underground; and Naomi, her sister, who must adapt to a new life living in safety with cousins in Detroit, while her family faces the Nazis in France. These and the stories of the other six characters make World War II vivid and personal for any reader, regardless of age." 


 

FLEA: Acid For The Children (A Memoir)

I bought this book on Amazon on received on We 10/16/24 and I noticed that Flea's birthday is 10/16/62.

The book concerns his early years and ends before the success of the RHCP. 

From The Rolling Stone:

"Born Michael Peter Balzary, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist and spiritual adviser is the sort of rock star who begins his memoir, Acid for the Children, weeping at musical beauty in an Ethiopian church, blurting earnest declarations about his “endless search to merge with infinite spirit” and his surrendering “to the divine and cosmic rhythm,” and offering the summary observation that “bein’ famous don’t mean shit.” Call him disingenuous. Still, you’ll most probably want to hug him before you’re 10 pages in.

Flea’s got a compelling, vulnerable, self-interrogating writer’s voice; his editor on the project was David Ritz, who’s abetted some great music memoirs and biographies (see Aretha: From These Roots; Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye, etc.), generally focused on finding his subject’s beating heart. That must’ve been a breeze with Flea, whose outsize heart appears regularly here — on his sleeve and occasionally in his mouth. He waxes romantic about a beloved sweater made for him by his maternal nana (actual name: Muriel Cheesewright), digs for memories of his early years in Australia, the son of a government worker posted to the consulate in New York City in 1967. There, he comes into consciousness, as his parents split up and his mom takes up with a wild-man jazz bassist (yes, there was evidently some rub-off).

Young Flea, semi-neglected, gets his mind blown by be-bop, learns about substance abuse, and heads off wide-eyed into boho America, eventually landing on the West Coast, where he wets his bed, smokes angel dust, fails with girls, and eventually discovers the L.A. punk scene, where he cements his outcast status and finds his place in the world. After a stint with hardcore troublemakers Fear, he launches a band with high school pal/ bro-soulmate Anthony Kiedis — and that’s where the book ends."

I would read almost any rock biography and this one is well written. 

He's a soulful guy, whithout a doubt.  

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

COLD DAY IN HELL by Richard Hawke

 Refinished Mo 9/30/24

This was one of my hardbacks that I got on the internet and finished on Tu 1/6/09. 

The central plot is that a nationally famous talk show host is charged with two murders. When another murder happens similar to the other killings it seems to show that the real killer is still at large. He was and the true killer is the talk show host's manager. 

There's a lot of moving parts and many, many characters, but the book is well written and I liked it. 

From Google Books:

"In the stew and dazzle of New York City, savvy, irreverent Fritz Malone-who Susan Isaacs called "the perfect balance of noir P.I. and decent guy"-is embroiled in a string of grisly murders that drags him behind the lurid headlines into the tangled affairs of some the city's most beautiful people and their ugly truths. When two women linked with charismatic late-night TV personality Marshall Fox are found brutally slain in Central Park, Fox becomes the prime suspect and is charged with the murders. At the tabloid trial, one of Fox's ex-lovers, Robin Burrell, is called to testify-and is instantly thrust into the media's harsh spotlight. Shaken by a subsequent onslaught of hate mail, Robin goes to Fritz Malone for help. Malone has barely begun to investigate when Robin is found sadistically murdered in her Upper West Side brownstone, hands and feet shackled and a shard of mirror protruding from her neck. But it's another gory detail that confounds both Malone and Megan Lamb, the troubled NYPD detective officially assigned to the case. Though Fox is in custody the third victim's right hand has been placed over her heart and pinned with a four-inch nail, just as in the killings he's accused of. Is this a copycat murder, or is the wrong man on trial? Teaming up with Detective Lamb, Malone delves deeper into Fox's past, unpeeling the layers of the media darling's secret life and developing an ever-increasing list of suspects for Robin's murder. When yet another body turns up in Central Park, the message is clear: Get too close to Fox and get ready to die. And Malone is getting too close. In Cold Day in Hell, Richard Hawke has again given readers a tale about the dark side of the big city, a thriller that moves with breakneck speed toward a conclusion that is as shocking as it is unforgettable."


Friday, September 20, 2024

THE DROP by Michael Connelly

 Finished Th 9/19/24

This is a trade paperback that either Janny loaned to me or it was a Christmas present. Not sure.

The title refers to a person who commits suicide by jumping from a very high place. 'Splatter' was an even better name used by the police. 

TWO CASES:

1) The son of a city official is found dead on the sidewalk in front of the Maramount Hotel in Los Angeles. Did he jump or was he dropped? It was a suicide. His wife was leaving him and the room was where the couple spent their honeymoon. The city official wanted it to be a murder because he couldn't deal with the shame of suicide. 

2) A development in a 20 year old 'Cold Case' was found. DNA from a blood splatter connects to a single individual, however this man was only eight years old at the time of the murder. He was there, however it was his foster father that committed the murder. The boy's blood was on a belt that dad used on the boy for punishment. 

 From the book's page at Kirkus Reviews: 

"Harry Bosch, the LAPD detective who insists, “I don’t want to be famous. I just want to work cases,” gets his wish times two.

Assigned to the Open-Unsolved Squad, Bosch catches a cold case with an impossible twist. Now that the lab can analyze DNA evidence from the 1989 rape and murder of Ohio student Lily Price, it’s linked conclusively to Clayton Pell, a known predator whose long history of sex crimes has already landed him in prison. Pell would be perfect as the killer if only he hadn’t been eight when the victim was slain. Before Bosch can start looking beyond the physical evidence for an explanation, he’s pulled out of past crimes and into the present by an old enemy. City Councilman Irvin Irving, the ex–deputy chief whom Bosch played a supporting role in bouncing from the LAPD years ago, demands that Bosch take charge of the investigation into his son George’s fatal plunge from his seventh-story room at the Chateau Marmont. It looks like suicide, but the Councilman claims it’s murder, and he doesn’t want it swept under the rug, even if it takes the hated Bosch to ferret out the truth. Hamstrung between two utterly unrelated cases, Bosch tries to work them both, with predictably unhappy results: scheduling conflicts, treacherous leaks to the media, trouble with his bosses and even his old partner, Lt. Kizmin Rider. Even so, it’s not long before he’s worked out pretty convincing explanations for both crimes and can begin the slow, patient process of winding them up before a pair of nasty surprises gives both of them a bitter edge.

Not by a long shot Bosch’s finest hour, but a welcome return to form after the helter-skelter 9 Dragons (2009)." 

I would read or reread anything by Connelly and it's always a pleasure.

Tuesday, September 17, 2024

THE UNDERGROUND MAN by Ross Macdonald

 Finished Su 9/15/24

This is one of my ancient trade paperbacks that I first finished July, 4 1997 before 'GROSSE POINT BLANK' at the Esqire. 

A link to a deep dive into the novel:

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-underground-man-at-age-50

From Library of America:

"A hot wind awakens Lew Archer in his Los Angeles apartment on the first page of The Underground Man (1971), presaging the conflagration ninety miles to the north which will race through this often breathtaking chronicle of unrestrained weather and people: “The edges of the sky had a yellowish tinge like cheap paper darkening in the sunlight.”

Sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, the narrative spurs interest, sympathy, and a mood of growing danger.

A youngster, Ronny, joins Archer in the courtyard of his building, to help him feed the morning’s jaybirds. “The boy looked about five or six. He had dark close-cropped hair and anxious blue eyes. . . . The jays were all around him like chunks of broken sky.” The gentle, vulnerable lad was a miniature portrait of Macdonald’s own grandson Jimmie, towards whom Millar had grown protective. Into Jimmie his grandfather invested his hopes and anxieties for the human future.

Archer becomes fearful for Ronny, whose estranged parents quarrel in front of him. Lew protects the boy from the father’s raised hand. “I want to stay here,” Ronny says. “I want to stay with the man”—with Archer. But the angry father drives away with the son. “I wanted to stop him and bring the boy back,” Archer admits. “But I didn’t.”

The lingering image of the vulnerable youngster stays with Lew as he returns to his apartment; it blends with his own reflection as he gazes at himself in the mirror, “as if I could somehow read his future there. But all I could read was my own past . . . A hot wind was blowing in my face.”

Archer swiftly responds to Ronny’s mother’s plea to retrieve her son from his unstable-seeming dad, who’s driving in the direction of that growing forest fire. “The tang of fear I felt for the boy had become a nagging ache.”

Thus was launched the novel which would prove one of Macdonald’s best: a work which combined thrills and lyricism, psychology and symbolism, in ways Macdonald had been perfecting for years. As the chairman of UCLA’s meteorology department wrote Macdonald regarding Underground, “It is fascinating to see the interplay of Santa Ana [wind] and sea breeze. The growing intensity of the fire . . . tends to accelerate the sea breeze; so the fire, like your other characters, is working towards its own destruction.”

On July 2, 1970, the author told agent Dorothy Olding of his new manuscript: “For me the book has the merit of not being an imitation of the last book . . . Underground Man has more movement, and the movement is in the present, for the most part, though of course everything started long ago when everybody was younger. . . . It has, I think a strong single narrative device and is as much a suspense novel as a detective novel.”


I thought it was a compelling story, but too many characters. You almost need a spreadsheet to keep everything straight. 


Wednesday, September 11, 2024

CAUGHT. by Harlan Coben

 Finished WE 9/11/24

This was a paperback that Jamny loaned to me and I finished on the day that we (Janny & Joe) went to the  local ball field [SCHLITT PARK] to watch Jamie's kids play ball. 

Monday, September 9, 2024

TWEAK (Growing Up On Methamphetamines) by Nic Sheff

 Refinished Sa 9/7/24. I last read the book and finished on We 8/18/21 and I first completed the book Fr 1/9/09.


TWEAK (Growing Up On Methamphetamines) by Nic Sheff 

This time through I felt less critical of the book. Intelligent and artistic people can be addicts and their experience would be much different from normal people. However, somebody in his position will always have more 'chances' if and when he fails at sobriety. 

And, as always with these books of recovery, nobody is allowed to drink or use drugs responsibly. Millions and millions of people can use drugs and do not have the dire negative effects, but the focus is always that substances are 'bad' and can never be used in a positive manner. Alcohol Annonymous is actually a religious organization regardless of their belief that "it's only a higher power, not god". The Oxford Group was an early 20th century Christian revivalist group and Wilson lifted most of their important tenents for Alcoholics Annonymous. 

Wednesday, August 28, 2024

THE ASSOCIATE by Johnn Grisham

 Finished Tu 8/27/24

This was a paperback that Janny recently loaned me. 

The story of what it's like to be a rookie lawyer when signed to one of the biggest law firms in NYC. All the partners care about is how many hours that can be billed. If a case involves reading millions (literally) of pages of documents, the novice lawyers (they haven't even passed the bar exam) are required to examine every sentence. The early years at a law firm are called 'boot camp'.  

The background story is one of the newbies is being blackmailed by a group that wants secrets about an upcoming defense contract involving billions of dollars. The ending was less than satisfying because it's never clear who were the individuals that wanted this information and who they were working for. This seemed like it was the first in a series of novels following these characters, but this is not the case. However, it looks like a movie is in the works. 

Link to the book's page at Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Associate_(novel)

Everything by Grisham is woth the time and this was a great 'beach or airport' read. 

Friday, August 23, 2024

DARK SACRED NIGHT by Michael Connelly

 Finished Th 8/22/24

This is a hardback that Janny recently lent to me. I was familiar with some of the plot and I think I have read it before or I saw one of the television shows that was based on this novel. 

From Kirkus Reviews:

"Harry Bosch, who just can’t stay retired, unwillingly teams up with a Hollywood detective who has reasons of her own for wanting in on his latest cold case.

It may be nine years since 15-year-old runaway Daisy Clayton was grabbed from the streets of Los Angeles and killed, but the daily presence of her mother, Elizabeth, in Harry’s life—she’s staying at his place while he helps her stay clean—makes it a foregone conclusion that he’ll reopen the case. On the night Bosch drops into Hollywood Division to sneak a look at some of the old files, he’s caught by Detective Renée Ballard, who was bounced from LAPD Robbery/Homicide to “the late show,” Hollywood’s third shift, after her complaint about aggressive harassment by a superior went nowhere. Bosch needs to find out who was responsible for what happened to Daisy; Ballard needs to work a case with teeth, even if she’s partnering with a reserve investigator in the San Fernando Police Department (Two Kinds of Truth, 2017, etc.) who’d rather work alone. Before they get what they need, they’ll have to wade through a double caseload as grueling and sometimes as maddeningly routine as you can imagine, from an apparent murder that turns out to be a slip-and-fall to an ancient gang killing whose repercussions flare to sudden life to the theft of some valuable Andy Warhol prints to a missing man who’s not just missing—not to mention Elizabeth’s sudden disappearance and Ballard’s continuing lack of support, and sometimes even backup, from her department. Not even the canniest readers are likely to see which of these byways will end up leading to the long-overdue solution to the riddle of Daisy Clayton’s death.

Fans who don’t think the supporting cases run away with the story will marvel at Connelly’s remarkable ability to keep them all not only suitably mystifying, but deeply humane, as if he were the Ross Macdonald of the police procedural."

The actual killer/ kidnapper of Daisy worked as a 'cleaner'. His job was to remove decomposing bodies and generally to 'clean a scene' after violent and messy crimes. Daisy's body was placed in a plastic container filled with bleach and company's logo on the tub left an impression on her skin. This clue led to the apprehension of the killer. 

I would read (and reread) anything by Connelly.   

Saturday, August 17, 2024

DEMON COPPERHEAD by Barbara Kingsolver

 Refinished Fr 8/16/24

This is the second time that I've read this book and I finished the first time on Mo 12/4/23.

For some reason it didn't occur to me that I'd read the book until I got to Demon's name- Damon Fields. And then I remembered his life in foster care with 'The Coach'.

I also didn't realize that the entire book is an homage to Charles Dicken's novel, 'David Copperfield'. Unfortunately, there are sections of America that experience poverty and economic indifference at the level that was common in the mid 19th century. 

While reading the novel I saw Brian Simpson on a podcast and he was talking about his experiences in foster care. Simpson attended 13 different 'homes' before he left the system. Then he went to the Marines where he did two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

This time I followed through and ordered another book by Barbara Kingsolver. 'THE LACUNA' is scheduled to arrive on Monday, 8/19. 

Link to a review of the book:

https://youthcomm.org/story/book-review-spilling-the-greasy-beans-on-demon-copperhead/

Monday, August 5, 2024

THE MONEY HARVEST by Ross Thomas

 Finished Su 8/4/24

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I finished Fr 8/20/93.

The book was published in 1975 and concerns an attempt to corner the commodities market.

Bad guys have gotten a minor player in the Department of Agriculture to hand over inside trader information.

Lots of quirky and well defined characters and I really liked the book and will order more by Ross Thomas. 

From 'Judy' at GoodReads:

Something big is going to go down in Washington, DC on July 11. Crawdad Gilmore overheard a hot tip in the men's room of the private Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C., but he doesn't survive long enough to provide details. His friends and former associates, Jake Pope and Ancel Easter, know the old-time Washington hand had something important to tell them. To find out what it is, they step into a whirlwind powered by greed and graft.

The plot afoot is to rig the commodities market by stealing the Agriculture Department's elaborately guarded, secret crop report before its public release. So although the plot involves the arcane workings of the commodities market, the devilment is in the details.

Thomas loves to play with names and this one delivers a rich harvest of deliciously named scoundrels. In addition to "Crawdad" and Easter, there's Fred C. Clapperton who always used his middle initial "as though he was afraid he'd be mixed up with some other Fred. Clapperton," and a commodity brokerage firm with the melodious name of Anderson, Maytubby & Jones. Hired gun Ralph Hayes' real name is Elefteris Spiliocoupoulos. That's an authentic surname, and Thomas liked it so well he used it for a Greek with the first name of Toss in another of his books, Chinaman's Chance.

The commodities scam here is just the brown paper in which many well-developed character portraits are wrapped:

* Crawdad, "an agnostic until he finally turned to atheism at 93," served in the administrations of six presidents and guarded their secret political machinations well until he needed them, as in the case of how the Jack Kennedy assassination report was constructed.

* Ancel Easter, "the brightest man in Washington," heads Crawdad's law firm, Gilmore, Easter, Timothy and Sterns (GETS), and is powerful enough that homicide detectives come to his nine-story house in Washington's tony Kalorama Circle to give him progress reports.

* Jake Pope, whose mother Simmi Lee was a bootlegger, is a Senate investigator who vets candidates for office by asking the hard questions about their sexual proclivities or their Ponzi schemes. With Crawdad's help, he became rich after an 18 day marriage after his wife died in a car crash. He likes "looking into things."

* An officious GS-14 employee, Dallas Hucks, aspires to the good life and status of Cosmos Club membership, but he's in hock so deep that he's thrown out of his carpool group when the check for his ride share fee bounces. So he eagerly agrees to steal the crop report for a promise of $100,000 on July 11.

* Fulvio Varesi's fulsome biography includes his family's work for Al Capone. At age 22 he started collecting politicians, buying "early and selling cheap," and has no compulsion about having people twepped, a phrase he borrowed from the CIA, meaning Terminated With Extreme Prejudice. Varesi hires Chinese grad students to visit greedy brokers and "go long on wheat." As word circulates that "the Chinese" are buying wheat, the price goes up. On July 11, Varesi will dump it and make a tidy profit, the "Money Harvest" of the title.

* Kyle Tarr of Omaha was part of Fulvio's collection when he was a Congressman from Omaha; now out of office, he looks to sell his influence and get rich quick. He connects with Noah deGraffereid, an antiques dealer who is a high class fence, who finds Hucks to set the scam in motion.

* Hugo Worthy, who lights his cigarettes with an old Zippo lighter, is a homicide detective trying to figure out how to leave his wife and move in with a 22-year old ballet dancer. He discusses gun laws with Ancel Easter over a 25 cent cup of coffee at the morgue.

* Commodity Jack Scurlong, who can "look at a chap and tell if he's been in commodities or had gonorrhea," explains the commodities market to Jake.

If these characters aren't rich enough for you, there is always the sparkling writing. Who else but Ross Thomas can create a word picture of a hallway full of French furniture, of the "spindly-legged design Americans call French Provincial and the French don't call anything at all."

The story may be filled with the relics of the time - a Morris chair, a 1938 bridge lamp, an Impeach Nixon sticker, a corn cob pipe and Prince Albert tobacco - but its Washington politics, though overwrought, are right up to date.



Thursday, August 1, 2024

A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR by John Irving

 Finished Th 7/31/24

This is one of the three books that I bought at the Library Book Sale on Sa 5/18/24.

It's been a long while since I've liked a novel this much. I must read more by John Irving.

Later this afternoon (Fr 8/1/24) I am to meet with The Brandenburgs and I want to loan this novel to Janny. {I forgot to bring the books}

Link to the review at The New York Time:

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/04/26/daily/irving-book-review.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

From KIRKUS REVIEWS:

"Irving’s latest LBM (Loose Baggy Monster, that is), which portrays with seriocomic gusto the literary life and its impact on both writers and their families, is simultaneously one of his most intriguing books and one of his most self-indulgent and flaccid. Though it’s primarily the story of successful novelist Ruth Cole, the lengthy foreground, set in Sagaponack, Long Island, in 1958, is dominated by Ruth’s parents, Ted and Marion, both minor novelists (though Ted later becomes rich and famous as a writer and illustrator of children’s stories), both mourning the deaths of their two teenaged sons in an automobile accident. Ted copes by seducing younger (often married) women; Marion, by bearing a daughter (Ruth) whom she’ll later abandon following her affair with 16-year-old Eddie O’Hare, a prep-school student hired by Ted as a “writer’s assistant.” Later sections, set in 1990 and 1995, dwell melodramatically on Ruth’s painstaking progress toward romantic happiness (including a European book tour that involves her with a prostitutes’-rights organization) and the lingering effects of their adolescent affair on Eddie, who’s now a middle-aged novelist and “perpetual visiting writer-in-residence” with a lifelong passion for older women. A grieving widow, offended by one of Ruth’s novels, pronounces a curse on her. Eddie accidentally learns that the fugitive Marion is living in Canada, writing detective novels (by now the bemused reader may have anticipated the question later put to Ruth: “Is everyone you know a writer?”). The story moves sluggishly, and overindulges both Irving’s (Trying to Save Piggy Sneed, 1996, etc.) love of intricate Victorian plots and his literary likes and dislikes. On the other hand, his characters are vividly imagined, insistent presences who get under your skin and stay with you. A thoughtful, if diffuse, examination of how writers make art of their lives and loves without otherwise benefitting from the process. The borderline-tearful ending is a bit much, but at least there aren’t any bears.

Wednesday, July 24, 2024

COP HATER by Ed McBain

 Finished Sa 7/20/24

It's one of my ancient paperbacks and this is the first novel in the '87th Precinct' series (1956).

Detectives were being murdered in the '87th'. The connection is not connected to police work, but it's one 'evil' woman who was dissatisfied with her love life. 

From 'shigekuni' wordpress.com:

"...Now, this woman is odd from the beginning. She is first shown us as a sexpot who does not offer her husband the sex he craves. In fact she teases him and turns him away. Strike One. Then she dresses slightly provocative at a funeral, enough to get a detective to have dirty thoughts. Strike Two. Finally, she transformed an apartment into some feminine nightmare that a manly police officer cannot possibly want to live in. It’s enough to terrify the lead detective on the case. His encounter with the woman ends thusly: “He was beginning to feel a little more comfortable with Alice. Maybe she wasn’t so female, after all.” – But of course she is very female. Strike Three. All these indications are not of course, real indications of crimes being committed, they are simple misogyny in action. However, the book uses the reader’s bigoted disapproval of nonstandard (submissive) female behavior in order to build a case against Alice that runs parallel to the police precinct’s borderline competent work. And when we finally see who did it, the book allows to quietly let these elements fall into place. In fact, Cop Hater even offers us a “good woman” in contrast: a woman who is literally unable to speak, who has no will of her own, who exists to love her boyfriend and be self conscious about her own shortcomings."

The section where the author describes Alice is some of the most anit-feminine piece of writing that I've ever seen. That was worth the price of admission. 

Ed McBain is a pen name for Evan Hunter. 


 

Thursday, July 18, 2024

LAZARUS by Morris West

Finished  We 7/17/24

One of my ancient paperbacks that I finished Tu 5/31/94. Well worth a second look.

A very conservative Pope has an emergency bipass operation and realizes that he's been far too hard on himself and fellow Christians. He decides to ease up on his strictly 'by the book' point of view on God's plan for humanity. And during the pope's health emergency there is an assassination plot brewing involving the Japanese and Mossad. Also, members of the church hierarchy are very much against his new attitude towards the gospel and seek to sideline his progressive agenda. 

However, I did not like the ending. Why did the pope have to be assassinated? The message seems to be that we've had good popes and bad, but it's all part of the divine plan and humans should not ask the reason why. 

I noticed that this novel is the third part of a trilogy. I would like to read the other two books or anything else by Morris West. I really liked the book and his writing style. 

From Kirkus Reveiws:

"Concluding volume in a papal trilogy begun with The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963) and The Clowns of God (1981). Here, West's storytelling is in stronger form (after a fumble with The Clowns of God)--though what begins as character study hairpins half-way through into a thriller that adds a lesser suspense. His Holiness Leo XIV--the aged, iron-willed, unsmiling Pope from a peasant background--is about to be opened up for bypass surgery. His superb Jewish heart surgeon warns him that being so near death will bring on a profound psychological change, perhaps long-lasting depression, and a general weakening of mental powers for at least three months. He should avoid stress, not expect to do major works for quite some time--and should lose a lot of weight. Tove Lundberg, director of counseling, also wants the Pope to share with her any grief he feels. Leo awaits the knife and foresees his return from the dead as if he were Lazarus. On the eve of his operation, a defrocked priest who has married and fathered two children becomes a widower when his wife dies in Leo's hospital. The Pope tells his close Irish secretary, Malachy O'Rahilly, to look into the case and give aid--but the ex-priest murders his children and then commits suicide. Meanwhile, the Jewish surgeon and Malachy both are alerted that a terrorist group--The Sword of Islam--has put a $100,000 contract out on the Pope's life. Can Mossad help? And if Leo survives the knife, will he even have time for a change of character that will allow him the heart's warmth for bringing back into the fold the Catholics who have been shut out by his icy encyclicals? Well written, nicely paced, and absorbing for general asides on the papacy--its lapses, handling of money, and the crinkles in a Pope's purple. The gunfire does shrivel the novel's high aims, and Leo as Lazarus is not profoundly moving. But any book by West should draw the crowds."

Link to the book's review at Los Angeles Times:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-04-15-bk-1638-story.html

Saturday, July 6, 2024

THE QUIET GAME by Greg Iles

 Finished Fr 7/5/24

This is a paperback that I bought at the library book sale on Fr 5/20/23.

This is the first Penn Cage novel.

Premise: In 1968 a black man was murdered at a Mississippi factory. He took a promotion to a white man's job and he was killed to set an example. J. Edgar Hoover covered up the crime to try to insure that Nixon won the presidential election. 

Secondary Premise: Penn's high school girlfriend (and the love of his life) was raped not by her father, but by the greasy cop/ bodyguard. 

I loved the book and I noticed that I had a copy of the novel and I finished it in 2018. 

From Kirkus Reviews:

"Preposterous, but eminently suspenseful, legal procedural about a Mississippi river town’s buried secrets, by the author of Mortal Fear (1996), etc. Penn Cage, once a Texas prosecutor, now an infinitely wealthy bestselling lawyer-novelist, can—t get over the recent cancer death of his wife, and is just a bit troubled about death threats from the brother of a demented white supremacist he put on death row. After a vacation in Disney World with his daughter Annie, Cage embarks on an extended visit with his parents in Natchez, Tennessee, where he finds that Ray Presley, a white-trash former cop is blackmailing Penn’s saintly physician father. It seems that Presley filched a gun from the good doctor, then used it in an unsolved murder. Now, Penn buys back the gun from Presley with a mountain of cash, and later sits down for a famous author interview with the young, rich, beautiful, and brainy Caitlin Masters, the Pulitzer-crazed publisher of the local newspaper, during which he mentions, in passing, a 1968 racially motivated murder of Del Peyton, a young, black factory worker that both the police and the FBI failed to solve. Masters prints her interview, stirring up old animosities all over, including a rancorous legal dispute between Cage’s father and Judge Leo Marston, a local powerbroker who was a district attorney at the time. Peyton’s widow suddenly appears and asks the famous writer to find who killed her husband. Penn reluctantly agrees, then runs into his old girlfriend, Livy Marston, Leo’s flawless, southern-belle daughter. Livy mysteriously ditched Cage 20 years ago, but now can’t wait to stoke the old fire. Meanwhile, FBI Director John Portman, Cage’s old nemesis, weighs in with nasty threats as Cage braves bullies, dodges bullets, rides down icy rapids, and prepares for a courtroom battle. Breezy, Grisham-style read that tweaks the conventions of southern gothic."

Friday, June 28, 2024

THE LITIGATORS by John Grisham

 Finished Th 6/27/24

This was a trade paperback that Janny loaned to me. 

The Basics: An unhappy lawyer leaves a 'white shoe' firm and teams up with two struggling lawyers. They think that they can take down one of the biggest drug manufacturers on the planet. They do not and they lose.

The 'new' lawyer snags a lead poisoning case involving a small child who died from lead poisoning. He received toy 'vampire teeth' that were made with deadly lead paint. The money that they make on that lawsuit saves the firm.   

The story is set in the Chicago area and the tone is light and reminded me of Donald Westlake. 

An easy and enjoyable read.

The link to the book's page at Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Litigators


Monday, June 24, 2024

FINGERSMITH by Sarah Waters

Finished Su 6/23/24

This is a trade paperback that I bought on Amazon and it arrived Sa 4/20/24 {Four Twenty Day}. I bought the book because I saw 'HANDMAIDEN' by the Korean director, Park Chan-wook and the film is set in Korea during the Japanese occupation of the 1930's. 

This is the best novel that I've read in months. Well written and a convoluted plot that's well worth the effort. 

BASIC PLOT: A con-man and a family of criminals try to steal a young woman's inheritance. 

Summary from Goodreads:

"Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a “baby farmer,” who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.

One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of—passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum.

With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways, but no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals."


Link to the novel's page at Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingersmith_(novel)


Thursday, June 20, 2024

"Why Politics Sucks: With Just a Few Modest Proposals that Might Make it All Suck a Little Less" by Steven Womack

 Finished in one afternoon, We 6/19/24. I borrowed the book from the library and it's the first time that I've gotten a book on Hoopla. Very simple to use, but I like to save my Hoopla picks for movies.

The book is just under 100 pages and here's some notes on the book.

1. Politicians aren't making things better. No hope on the agenda.

2. Income inequality has got to go

3. Healthcare is for profit and not for health

4. US is 5% of global population but 25% of prison population and also 'for profit. 

5. The One Percenters cannot continue and will be reigned in by taxes, wars or revolution. 

6. Corporations are not people and should not be granted rights of citizenship. 

7. If religion has a political message they should pay taxes.

8. Higher education is now 'for profit'.

Amendment 28
Rights are accorded to citizens and not groups (corporations, lobbying groups, unions)

Amendment 29
No private money in elections 

Amendment 30
Representatives banned from gifts, money or jobs after serving in the legislature. 

'WHY POLITICS SUCKS WITH JUST A FEW MODEST PROPOSALS THAT MIGHT MAKE IT AL SUCK A LITTLE LESS' by Steven Womack (2016)



IN BLOOD WRITTEN by Steven Womack

 Finished We 6/19/24

This is a book that I bought from Amazon for fifty cents. I loaned a book by Womack to Janny and she said she'd like to read more by this Crime author from Tennessee. 

Storyline: A Crime author catches fire and is he a serial killer writing about his murders or is there a copycat killer using his novels as blueprints? That's a great premise, but there was no surprise and the book ended on a whimper rather than a bang. 

The overview at Barnes and Noble:

"At first, it was only research . . .

Author Michael Schiftmann has received resounding critical acclaim for his novels that few people buy or read. The sad truth is that readers aren't interested in great literature—they only want glitz and violence. So that's what Michael intends to give them—shocking stories of a blood-chillingly efficient serial killer that are filled with gore and horror. And to ensure that his books are impeccably realistic in every aspect, he plans to try his own hand . . . at murder.

Soon his fictional killer is a sensation, and Michael is a rich, sought-after celebrity—and his beautiful, rising-star literary agent, Taylor Robinson, is falling in love with him. But there is one serious problem: Michael Schiftmann has discovered that bloodletting feels good . . . and he can't seem to stop."


Tuesday, June 11, 2024

LONDON BRIDGES by James Patterson

 Finished Tu 6/4/24

This is a hardback that Janny gave to me because she had duplicate copies.

Another book that brings a novel and compelling situation, but a worthy climax is missing. 

From The Spokesman Review:

"James Patterson's 'London Bridges' suffers from thin plot"

“London Bridges” begins when a Midwestern town is bombed off the map. The mastermind is a ruthless killer known as the Wolf. Cross, a forensic psychologist who is now an FBI agent, is dragged into the case and must battle his nemesis, the Weasel, who has teamed up with the more maniacal Wolf.

The Wolf plans mass murder and destruction in major cities around the globe, including New York, Paris and Tel Aviv, unless he is given several billion dollars and imprisoned terrorists are released. It is unclear how he has the funding and manpower to do such a thing, and Patterson never fully unravels this. The Wolf is part of the Russian mafia, but his reasons for an alignment with Mideast terrorists are also unclear.

Patterson fails to fully develop any of his characters, thus making them seem more like video game villains than fleshy, three-dimensional threats. The reader knows the Wolf is evil only because he kills his friends and blows up people, not because of any sleek writing by Patterson. Cross has family troubles, but they are never really developed. Instead, Patterson introduces myriad secondary characters that do not contribute to the thrust of the story.

As Cross hops from state to state and country to country, Patterson’s descriptions of the fellow investigators are staggeringly stereotypical. In Paris, for example, the French officers assigned to help him are rude and lazy: “The process was slow and the Frenchman needed frequent breaks for cigarettes and coffee.”


Monday, June 3, 2024

THE GEMINI CONTENDERS by Robert Ludlum

 Finished Tu 5/4/24

This is one of the three paperbacks that I bought at the library book sale on Sa 5/18/24. I got two novels by Robert Ludlum and one by John Irving. These days I'm looking for a little more quality than what is available at the library book sale. I'm sure that there were some books that I would have liked, but it was very crowded. They blended the city art fair, the farmer's market and the book sale to occur all on one day. 

The novel is about a discovery that would shake the world to its very foundations. A vault carrying writings from 2,000 years ago cast doubt on the divinity of Jesus. In the opening weeks of WWII a train carrying these documents disappears somewhere in the Italian Alps. It was so important that these papers were kept in secret that the world war was forgotten. 

What is exactly in these documents is not revealed until the very end of the book, and the reveal lands with a thud. However, the novel is worth a look because the quest for the vault is compelling enough to keep reading. 

The title refers to Victor's twins {Gemini}, Andrew and Adrian. Both brothers race to find the vault. Andrew, is a hard-nosed military guy, and Adrian is a big-time lawyer. Andrew kills because he feels that the mission requires whatever it takes. 

From a review at 'Raritania':

"Robert Ludlum has more than once incorporated an element of family epic into his books, particularly his World War II-themed work, as with The Scarlatti Inheritance, and later did so again in The Holcroft Covenant. Yet in 1976's The Gemini Contenders he wrote out an actual multi-generational saga about the Fontini-Cristi family, the first half of which tracks the Fontini-Cristi's first two generations all the way through that conflict.

As it happens, that is not Ludlum's only divergence from the usual. This time, bound up with the world war, is another secret war, being waged in the pursuit of a religio-historical mystery that we are told could be of world-historic significance--the contents of the vault delivered by the Greek Orthodox Order of Xenope to the Fontini-Cristis for safekeeping.

Today I suppose that Dan Brown would be the obvious point of comparison--as this novel similarly presents a conflict of religious orders intriguing and killing over the possession of a secret they believe would shake the world if ever it got out. But of course Ludlum did it a generation earlier here, quite differently--and, I thought, considerably better. The family epic approach--which intertwines an intrigue running through three generations with two of the century's major wars and comes down to a struggle between twin brothers with utterly opposed political ideals and ambitions in highly charged conflict--gives his narrative a far greater dramatic interest than Brown's book had. Additionally the revelation at the end of the novel regarding "What it was all about" seemed to rather more interesting, and handled in a rather more sophisticated fashion. (This being the '70s Ludlum could afford to be less smarmily conciliatory toward "faith" after raising the clash of "faith and reason," and more lucid about just what such a secret's getting out would mean in actual life. As one character says, the secret of the vault both changes everything, and changes nothing.)

I even preferred Ludlum on the level of prose. This being an early Ludlum novel the narration is comparatively efficient and the manifestation of his well-known tics (the italics, exclamation points, etc.) was less frequent, while even when his writing was not all one might have hoped for Ludlum at least sounded like an adult writing for other adults-..."

 

Link to 'Filioque'- This was more interesting than the book and it actually happened. How The Bible came to be is a far more interesting story than Ludlum's novel. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque#:~:text=Filioque%20(/%CB%8Cf%C9%AAl,addition%20%22and%20the%20Son%22

Friday, May 24, 2024

FALCONER by John Cheever

Finished Th 5/23/24

This is one of my ancient hardbacks and I know that I have read it before, but there was nothing on the flyleaf. 

I thought the title was 'The Falconer', but it's just 'Falconer'. That is the name of the prison where the action occurs. 

An unusual take on homosexuality...."I haven't had sex with a man since the Boy Scouts". Ezekiel Farragut is the central character and he is in jail for killing his brother. Although he admits to hitting his brother with a golf club, he feels that he died because he fell and hit his head after being hit with the club. He seems to feel that there is a difference. 

A link to a review at 'Slate':

https://slate.com/culture/2013/09/john-cheevers-falconer-the-writers-prison-novel-was-his-masterpiece.html

The review at 'Kirkus':

"It is many years since we left the Steuben glasshouse world that was, so unmistakably, Cheerer country. Via Bullet Park, a gentler, more vulnerable book than this, he introduced his broader and deeper ranging metaphysics of life and death, always in mysterious tandem. They're constants here in Falconer prison where Farragut, 734-508-32, a fratricide and a drug addict, is serving a zip to ten sentence. The drug he really hopes to find is a "distillate of earth, air, water, and fire." While Farragut reflects on his mortality and courts "death's dark simples," filth and degeneracy—redolent of Genet—are all around him. The Valley, for instance, is a urinal trough where you really go to relieve other needs unless you've turned homosexual. Farragut is briefly drawn to Jody, indicted on 53 counts, Jody who talks and listens in his abandoned water tower—his own private treehouse. But in spite of the physical solace Jody provides, Farragut is alone with his thoughts or dreams or memories. Cheever's prose is an amazingly flexible instrument, moving from the scatological within these cold, granite wails to the high of the true "croyant"—the believer detached from life and racked by the prospect of Judgment Day. He's equally in sync with bitter-sentimental satire—the annual Christmas tree and color photograph with inmates, the bequest of a "fucking do-gooder. . . they cause all the trouble." As another cellmate, Chicken Two, lies dying, he says quietly "I'm intensely interested in what's going to happen next." So evidently is Cheever. It is part of the upsweep, the shackled vision of the book. Though the fate of Farragut and Falconer may be open-ended, Cheever's novel is a strong fix—a statement of the human condition, a parable of salvation."

From the book's page at Wikipedia:

"Kirkus Reviews called Cheever's prose "an amazingly flexible instrument" and summarized the novel as "a strong fix—a statement of the human condition, a parable of salvation." Reviewing the book in 1977 for The New York Times, Joan Didion wrote, "On its surface 'Falconer' seems at first to be a conventional novel of crime and punishment and redemption—a story about a man who kills his brother, goes to prison for it and escapes, changed for the better—and yet the 'crime' in this novel bears no more relation to the 'punishment' than the punishment bears to the redemption. The surface here glitters and deceives. Causes and effects run deeper."

Time magazine included the novel in its list of the 100 best novels from 1923 to 2005.

I liked the book and want to read more by Cheever, but this is his 'Prison Novel' and not at all like his other writing.

Wednesday, May 22, 2024

TOTAL CONTROL by David Baldacci

 Finished Su 5/19/24

This was a paperback that Janny loaned me.

A terrorist downs a commercial airliner. He places a packet of acid that causes the plane to lose a wing.

The entire book is a search for who did it and why. However, I knew that after 500 pages the 'reveal' would be hardly worth the effort. Baldacci is more about the chase and maintaining the literary tension.

From the internet:

"Jason Archer is a young executive at a world-leading technology conglomerate. Determined to give his wife and daughter the best of everything, he has entered into a deadly game of cat and mouse. Left behind. The grieving Sidney soon learns the job interview Jason was flying to never existed."

From the book's page at Kirkus Reviews:

"In a hugger-mugger attempt to follow up his bestselling Absolute Power (1996), Baldacci pits a young widow against corporate villains who want her silenced at all costs. When her husband Jason apparently dies in the crash of a jetliner bound from Washington to L.A., Sidney Archer's near- perfect world implodes. A high-powered attorney working on the latest merger planned by Triton Global (a high-tech multinational that employed Jason on hush-hush computer projects), she can't accept that the beloved father of her precocious little daughter Amy is dead. Sidney's subliminal faith is not misplaced. Jason, who had shopped his company's darkest secrets in an effort to make a quick financial killing, switched planes before takeoff and is alive but not well in Seattle. On the day of his funeral, Sidney hears from him via phone. She keeps her own counsel, but Lee Sawyer (an FBI agent assigned to the case) is suspicious because available evidence suggests that Jason not only sabotaged the downed aircraft but also engineered a megabuck embezzlement. Presciently, however, the missing man had encrypted his proof of Triton's misdeeds on a duplicate disk that he mailed to himself before disappearing. Eager to get a printout that could clear Jason, Sidney sets out on a roundabout odyssey that takes her from suburban Virgina to Manhattan and points north. Although Triton's corrupt CEO and his murderous, stop-at-nothing minions are on her trail, clever Sidney foils them at almost every turn. With help from a besotted Sawyer, the pistol-packin' mama also begins unraveling the mystery of her mate's vanishing act. In a violent climactic confrontation on the stormy coast of Maine, the two learn the truth about an immense conspiracy in which Jason's fate is but a sideshow. A talky, tedious tale of an unlikely heroine's desperate life on the run, longer on confusion than suspense or narrative coherence."

Wednesday, May 15, 2024

THE LAST GENTLEMAN by Walker Percy


Mo 5/13/24 Went on to something else {'TOTAL CONTROL' by David Baldacci}

I got this book from the library as an E-book via Hoopla. I read almost 200 pags and then decided to drop it. 

It wasn't bad, just not good. I really want to read 'THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy.

***As I was typing this entry I noticed that 'THE MOVIEGOER' is on sale at Amazon for under six bucks. I ordered it immediately. 

' The Last Gentleman' concerns a young 'good' man who is befriended by a strange family. Some interesting incidents and some nice writing, but I just ran out of steam. 

From the book's page at Kirkus Reveiws:

"Walker Percy's The Moviegoer was the rather unexpected National Book Award winner in 1961. His last gentleman suffers from the same contemporary malaise — a kind of dislocation. He is Bill Barrett, an amiable, anomalous young man from an old Southern family. He had gone North to find himself equally homeless and aimless. Some of this is externalized by the fact that he has "fugue states," amnestic spells, as well as moments of deja vu. They are all just symptomatic of his ambiguity and detachment. Whereas his moviegoer prowled, Bill is a "watcher, a listener and a wanderer." In moments of greater clarity or resolution he thinks about marrying Kitty and settling for the happy, useful life. Meantime he becomes involved, insofar as he can, with Kitty's family, the Vaughts: her predatory sister-in-law Rita; her younger brother, Jaimie, who is dying of leukemia; and Sutter Vaught, Rita's husband, a doctor whose casebook provides some savage soundings on civilization— religion, race, concupiscence, sin, etc. These give a harder satiric edge to the book than was achieved in the earlier one; so does the final scene, the death watch over Jaimie, which is certainly powerful. But there are times when following Walker Percy is a little like trying to catch your shadow. On the other hand he writes about his elusive young man and his elliptical world in such matter of fact prose and with seemingly random details which are actually, intentionally, a commentary on modern life and all its flimsy props. This gives the book much of its contrast and interest.... Attention seems assured if agreement over some of the implications less likely."

Thursday, May 9, 2024

THANATOS SYNDROME by Walker Percy

Finished We 5/8/24

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I'd never read. It was a little difficult to follow, but great ideas and concepts. 

From GoodReads:

"The 1990s. Euthanasia and quarantines for AIDS have become the norm. But can even this world sanction a substance that "improves" people's behavior and so reduces crime, unemployment and teen pregnancy? A riveting bestseller by the author of The Moviegoer."

 From the book's page at Kirkus Reviews:

"Dr. Thomas More, Feliciana Parish psychiatrist, bad Catholic, boozy and allergic, makes a return in Percy's quasi-sequel to Love in the Ruins (1971)—and though the apocalypse seems just as certain now as it did then, things in this near-future seem somewhat calmer than were the earlier book's race wars. Euthanasia (both of helpless children and helpless oldsters) is general, AIDS and Alzheimer's patients are quarantined, and Dr. More himself has spent some time in Federal prison in Alabama for selling amphetamines to long-haul truckers (Percy's not one to put too glamorous a sheen on his heroes). But out on parole now, More notices odd findings in some of the few patients he has left, as well as in other people (including wife Ellen). They seem increasingly affectless, mindlessly well-balanced, given to specific information but not abstraction—and, weirdest of all, they are exhibiting primate-like behavior: public grooming, rear sexual presentation by females, etc. What's going on, it turns out, is a little bit of rogue socio-medical engineering by a bunch of local research doctors who are feeding heavy sodium ions into the drinking water of selected Feliciana Parish populations, and achieving spectacular results: no crime, no rape, no unemployment, no existential terrors, no alcoholism—at the price, however, of turning these people into monkeyish robots. And More—of the old school, someone who appreciates the up as well as down side of a good spiritual malaise—tracks down this Nazi-like experiment and endeavors to do something about stopping it. Percy has it all at his fingertips—the lovely character details, the ambiguous heroism of More, the fond eroticism—but maybe a little too much so: the thriller-like core of the book, tracking down and closing up the heavy-sodium project, has twice the this-and-then-that procedure it needs, half the novelistic shading; you get a sense of Percy bespelled by his own facility at writing low-brow in a high-brow framework. And like later Waugh, the comedy relies on types rather than on individual rascals (the exception is the wonderfully venal chief of the heavy-sodium doctors, Bob Comeaux). Love in the Ruins held together better, but a continuation of that book's specifically moral and at the same time antic lope is no bad thing at all; Percy fans will find it very agreeable, despite the thinness." 

I want to read more by Percy and I borrowed 'THE LAST GENTLEMAN' from the library through Hoopla @ Kindle. 

Wednesday, May 1, 2024

THE DARK HOURS by Michael Connelly

 Finished Tu 4/30/24

This is a paperback that Janny loaned to me. It's very late in the Bosch series and features Renee Ballard.

The title refers to 'the night shift'. Renee Ballard likes to work without a lot of people and 'late nights' are just fine.

TWO CASES:

1) A man is shot during a New Years celebration. Because so many people fire guns into the air, at first it was thought to be an accident. It was really one of his partners who wanted to take over the business. It seemed that this was an 'inner-city' business and a group of white dentists wanted the enterprise.

2) Midnight Men rapists- A team of rapists are preying on women. The tip-off is that they disable the street lights in front of the victims' homes. Renee learns that these men are contacted on 'the dark web'.

From the book's page at Kirkus Reviews:

"Meet today’s LAPD, with both good and bad apples reduced to reacting to crimes defensively instead of trying to prevent them, unless of course they’re willing to break the rules.

New Year’s Eve 2020 finds Detective Renée Ballard, survivor of rape and Covid-19, partnered with Detective Lisa Moore, of Hollywood’s Sexual Assault Unit, in search of leads on the Midnight Men, a tag team of rapists who assaulted women on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve without leaving any forensic evidence behind. The pair are called to the scene of a shooting that would have gone to West Bureau Homicide if the unit weren’t already stretched to the limit, a case that should be handed over to West Bureau ASAP. But Ballard gets her teeth into the murder of body shop owner Javier Raffa, who reportedly bought his way out of the gang Las Palmas. The news that Raffa’s been shot by the same weapon that killed rapper Albert Lee 10 years ago sends Ballard once more to Harry Bosch, the poster boy for retirements that drive the LAPD crazy. Both victims had taken on silent partners in order to liquidate their debts, and there’s every indication that the partners were linked. That’s enough for Ballard and Bosch to launch a shadow investigation even as Ballard, abandoned by Moore, who’s flown the coop for the weekend, works feverishly to identify the Midnight Men on her own. As usual in this stellar series, the path to the last act is paved with false leads, interdepartmental squabbles, and personal betrayals, and the structure sometimes sways in the breeze. But no one who follows Ballard and Bosch to the end will be disappointed.


A bracing test of the maxim that “the department always comes first. The department always wins.”

Monday, April 29, 2024

RIPLEY UNDER GROUND by Patricia Highsmith

 Finished the Kindle edition on Sa 4/27/24. For some reason they were 'on sale'. I got three of Highsmith's books for seven dollars. This novel is the second in the Ripley series. 

From the book's page at Goodreads:

"It's been six years since Ripley murdered Dickie Greenleaf and inherited his money. Now, in Ripley Under Ground (1970), he lives in a beautiful French villa, surrounded by a world-class art collection and married to a pharmaceutical heiress. All seems serene in Ripley's world until a phone call from London shatters his peace. An art forgery scheme he set up a few years ago is threatening to unravel: a nosy American is asking questions and Ripley must go to London to put a stop to it. In this second Ripley novel, Patricia Highsmith offers a mesmerizing and disturbing tale in which Ripley will stop at nothing to preserve his tangle of lies."

An interesting link for the book at wordpress.com:

https://kevinfromcanada.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/ripley-under-ground-by-patricia-highsmith/


Tuesday, April 16, 2024

THE ACCIDENT by Linwood Barclay

Refinished su 4/14/24

This is one of my paperbacks and it was a selection for The Contemporary Book Club- May, 2014.

It's a melodramatic thriller and is basically a story about how a group of middle class suburbanites coped with the recession of 2008. To make some extra money some women decided to sell 'off market' handbags and drugs at each other's homes like a 'Tupperware Party'. However, the people they were dealing with with very bad criminals.

***Grandpa was a murderer & Sally, the boss's 'right-hand gal' was also a killer***

Alcohol can be injected to produce a high and it has been used in this manner for three hundred years, however it's not recommended. 

From the book's page at Kirkus Reviews:

"Barclay’s latest novel follows his staple formula of taking an ordinary guy and catching him up in something that turns out to be much bigger than it first appears.

In this case the ordinary guy is Glen Garber, whose wife, Sheila, is involved in a terrible car accident that kick-starts a series of bizarre events. The accident happened on a night when Sheila was supposed to be taking notes in a college class in a nearby town; instead she ended up dead, along with two others. The police tell Glen that Sheila was drunk and parked on a freeway access ramp when the other car hit her vehicle. Glen and his 8-year-old daughter, Kelly, take the news of her death predictably hard, but even harder for Glen is the idea that his wife, who was a social drinker at best, could have been so drunk. He also has other problems to compound his grief: His contracting business, already struggling in the economic downturn, is barely making its payroll, and Glen’s worried about a house fire in a place he had under construction. As he puzzles through his emotions and confusion, a frantic Kelly calls him, asking him to pick her up from a sleepover at her best friend’s house. While playing a game with her friend, Kelly has taped the girl’s mom having a private conversation on her cell phone. Although the conversation means nothing to Glen at the time, the call becomes more significant when the woman turns up dead. Soon, bodies and crimes begin piling up like recently harvested timber, and Glen realizes not all is right in his world. The Canadian-based journalist twists and turns the plot with believability and spices it with plenty of suspects and suspense. In some places, his homework does seem a bit lacking, but the book remains consistently interesting and ready to please thriller fans with both its action and pacing.  Barclay has turned in a home run with plenty of edge-of-the-seat moments."  


    

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

IN THE CUT by Susanna Moore

Refinished Mo 4/8/24

I saw the film on Amazon Prime last week and I happened upon the book in the stacks downstairs. I bought the book at the library book sale on Sa 1/13/01 {finished Sa 1/20/01}and then read it again on Su 5/22/16.  

The film is great and the book might even be slightly better. The ending of the book was very chilling. 

Basically, it's about a woman who falls in love (lust?) with a 'bad' man. The 'hook' is that the man she is attracted to is NOT the bad guy. It's his partner.

Lots of anti-women dialog in the police station that's probably right on the money.

Lots of descriptions of sex, but it's almost 'cold' and a very detached feel. 

From the book's page at Kirkus Reveiws:

"Moore's latest ought to come with a warning label for unwary fans of Sleeping Beauties (1993) and her earlier works. There's nothing beautiful about this one, and you won't be doing much sleeping once you've sampled its nasty fare of mutilation, decapitation, and coldhearted sex. The narrator is a woman who lives in New York City, near Washington Square, and teaches creative writing to college freshmen. Her name may be Frannyone character calls her that twicebut it's never quite acknowledged or made clear. One night, in a bar, this teacher opens the wrong door, searching for a bathroom, and witnesses a red-haired woman's technique: the way she moves her head ``with a dipping motion,'' the noise her mouth makes; the man's black socks, his unshined shoes, the tattoo of a playing card on his wrist. The only thing she manages not to see is the man's face, which turns out to be a fateful omission when the red-haired woman is found murdered (well, not just murderednobody in this book is simply murderedshe's ``disarticulated,'' or pulled apart, joint by joint). The teacher is unwillingly caught up now in a drama that involves a serial killer, more gruesome death and dismemberment, and plenty of sex along the way, in every position, clinically detailed, with handcuffs or without. Where all this leads to is a horrific ending involving razors, torture, and the lingering smell of blood. In Moore's previous work, a good, dark undercurrent of sex and violence played well against the lush Hawaiian settings and family stories. Here, there's nothing to offset the darknessnot one real and likable character, never one moment of redemption. In the end, repugnant. That's what a warning label might tell you." 

Saturday, April 6, 2024

FRANNY & ZOOEY by J.D. Salinger

 Refinished Fr 4/5/24

I probably read this novel 40 years ago and have read it a few times since then. I always preferred this book to Salinger's opus, 'THE CATCHER IN THE RYE'. 

Features The Glass Family; 7 kids- 5 boys and 2 girls. 

Franny has lost it. She is trying to 'Pray Incessantly' and she is hung up. Is she doing it for vanity or really accepting the Christ?

For much of the novel Zooey (Zachary) is in the bathtub talking with his mother, Bessie. They are both concerned about Franny's meltdown. 

From the book's page at 'Collegium institute. org':

"I recently finished Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. This provocative novella occurs in Salinger's universe of the brilliant and precocious Glass children. Franny and Zooey are the two youngest, with Franny being the youngest and Zooey the brightest. Like some of his other work, F&Z is an attempt by Salinger to respond to superficiality and phoniness in society. 

From a young age, both Franny and Zooey are instructed by their older siblings in spiritual knowledge (a conglomeration of Zen Buddhism, Hindu Advaita Vedanta, and Eastern Orthodox mysticism), as they believe that secular knowledge should be grounded by spiritual wisdom. Equipped with their keen intellects and high moral standards, both Franny and Zooey perceive  superficiality, selfishness, and stupidity as the mode de faire among humans. People are acquisitive for money, pleasure and status, and seem to fit predictable cookie-cutter patterns of lifestyle. But from their upbringing of being treated as brilliant know-it-alls (albeit correctly), F&Z inherited arrogant attitudes. While they are correct in their critiques of society, they themselves are arrogant, judgmental and self-righteous. 

Franny, in particular, is disgusted by society, and feels the need to detach herself from the world. She begins repeating the Jesus Prayer to connect with God. But then she hyper-analyzes her motivations for attaining spiritual enlightenment and wonders if she is just as acquisitive as everyone else. She wonders how wanting to store up for herself treasures in heaven is in principle different from wanting to store up for herself treasures on earth. How is chasing enlightenment and peace less egotistical and self-seeking than chasing money and prestige, she asks. The possibility that she is just as acquisitive and greedy as the society she condemns and alienates herself from sparks existential despair. She has a nervous breakdown during a weekend date with her shallow boyfriend, and then curls up on the Glass’s family couch repeating the Jesus Prayer, not wanting to eat or interact with anyone.

Then Zooey, worried about Franny’s health, walks in and begins lecturing her. Zooey doesn’t tell her not to say the Jesus Prayer, but he addresses her potential motives for saying it. 

First, Zooey argues that Franny’s hatred of society is actually hatred of individual people. It’s okay to hate the stupid things humans do, but Franny hates the people themselves, as evidenced, for example, by her disdain for a personal quirk one of her professors exemplifies.

Second, Zooey argues that Franny’s attempt to connect with Jesus is disingenuous because she ignores the parts of Him she doesn’t like. She makes Jesus to be more of a stereotyped St. Francis of Assisi hippie than the all-powerful Son of God; she ignores those parts when Jesus overthrew tables in the synagogue and said humans are more valuable than sparrows.

Third, Zooey argues that Franny’s standards for egoism are hypocritical. Under her standards, no artist could publish work because it could always be related back to ego. Zooey points out Franny’s inability to apply her own standards to her favorite artists, such as Emily Dickinson.

Fourth, Zooey argues that citing the Jesus Prayer should not replace exercising her respective duties. She should perform to the best of her ability -- whatever it is she’s doing.  If it’s connection to God that she wants, she should do her due diligence in trying to the best of her ability to understand the God she prays to. Pray to the real Jesus, not to the one she imagines.

To summarize: Zooey says that if the point of the Jesus prayer is Christ-consciousness, not to simply "pray away" people you hate, then Franny should act like it.

Zooey ends with a series of advice:

You cannot claim to be spiritual in lofty matters when you, first and foremost, ignore the religious action in the more mundane parts of living. This hints at the idea that all aspects of living is sacred. It responds to the notion that the spiritual response to a corrupt world is complete detachment.

However, the most important thing is to maintain detachment through desireleness. How this comports with the previous advice is not clear.

But act, for God if you want.

Shoot for perfection on your own terms.

But here’s the most revealing part. Franny’s later conversation with Zooey shows that nothing he said truly registered with her. He failed.

The book ends like this. The siblings’ older brother Seymour told them to shine their shoes for the “Fat Lady” even when no one sees them. Neither understood what this cryptic metaphor meant. At least, until recently. Because Zooey realized that “There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady.” In fact, the Fat Lady is Christ Himself. What I interpret Zooey/Salinger to be saying here is the application of the transitive property of equality. If we are to perform before the Fat Lady, but everyone is the Fat Lady, but the Fat Lady is really Christ, well, then to love (perform for) Christ is to love (perform for)  every individual person. This raises the sacredness of every encounter, every conversation, every play and scene Franny acts in, how they treat their mother, and so on. It’s all shoe-shining for Christ. It’s this insight, revealed mystery that appears to resolve Franny’s angst and give her peace. And so the book ends.

There are many possible interpretations to this novella, but here's what spoke to me.

Salinger is spot on in his identification of certain flaws of society, but more so in the Glass children. Specifically, the effect their brilliant thinking abilities have on their demeanor, attitude and behavior towards themselves and others. It raises interesting thoughts on the nature of Reason, which I’ve capitalized to indicate an idealized form of being gifted with or relying on logic, thinking, intelligence, rationalism, etc to navigate life.

In Franny and Zooey, both characters are among the most intelligent and bright characters in the world they inhabit. And they are recognized as such. They are rarely proven wrong. But this fame and success causes them to be arrogant, haught and judgemental. That’s the first effect Reason has on the human condition: elevation of pride.

One benefit of Reason is it enables great self-reflection and introspection in its user. Its user is more cognizant of other people’s actions, and hyper-analyzes their own. The downside is indecisiveness. The person imbued with excessive Reason is unable to make a decision or determine what is right because they overthink their actions and motivations. Are they making an action for a selfish reason or for a virtuous one? Franny faced despair when she could not determine whether her desire for peace wasn’t just as selfish as society. So Reason can be a crippling force.

Yet at the same time, Reason enables its user to create and justify elaborate moral standards that condemn other people’s behavior and gloss over their own similar behavior. Its user can convince themself that what they are doing is qualitatively different from other people, and that this difference creates substantial moral discrepancies.

Finally, and most paradoxically, Reason exposes its own limits. Reason cannot work on its own -- its existence relies on something other than itself -- but it is through itself that this is made known. We see this through the uber-introspection Franny puts herself through.

In “The Suicide of Thought” in Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton explains how exclusive reliance on reason alone is self-contradictory and debilitating. He uses reason to show how reason must rely on something other than itself to even exist and be useful.

That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself...Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?"...There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped... In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved…

We know that Reason cannot conclusively prove nor disprove the existence of God -- and it is through Reason that we know this. We know that Reason does not give us happiness -- and it is through Reason that we know this. We know that Reason, if unreined, enslaves us and drives us mad -- and it is through Reason that we know this.

Reason points to its own limitations. Ironically, this statement is itself irrational. It is circular. 

Insert a few Pensées de Blaise Pascal:

“We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them. We know that we are not dreaming, but, however unable we may be to prove it rationally, our inability proves nothing but the weakness of our reason, and not the uncertainty of all our knowledge as they maintain.”

When I first read this it blew me away.

Whether one thinks that the fact that we cannot prove we are not dreaming means that our reason is weak or that knowledge of first principles is uncertain is itself a matter of faith. 

There is no way of proving it either way. 

Here’s a fact: we cannot prove that our lives are not a dream or a simulation. I would contend we know “deep down” that this is not the case. But this is where the epistemology diverges.

Some would take this inability to prove such a foundational truth about reality as evidence that reason is limited in its ability.

Others would take this inability as evidence that we cannot trust any form of knowledge, that all truth claims are unverifiable, and therefore unknowable from an absolute or objective point of view.

But this latter view rests on the assumption that for a truth-claim to be held as true it must be proven logically, and that if it is not proven logically it cannot be considered true. Yet this statement itself is unprovable. 

In the words of G.K. Chesterton, this time some Philosophy from the Classroom: 

Every argument begins with an infallible dogma, and that infallible dogma can only be disputed by falling back on some other infallible dogma; you can never prove your first statement or it would not be your first. 

Fundamentally, skepticism – including its underlying "reason-based" notions of epistemic proof – is a form of faith.

Thanks to the relentless eye of reason, we uncover the hidden assumptions behind every framework. After all that introspection and mental struggle, we landed back on square one. We realize that everyone – from the most devout religious disciple to the most devout agnostic – all have faith in something."