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

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)

"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."

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.”

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