THIRD DEGREE by Greg Iles

Finished Mo 9/8/25

This is a paperback that Janny loaned me and one of the most thrilling novels I've read in a long time. It's a true page-turner and I loved it.

Basically, it's the story of a 'domestic/hostage' situation. A well respected doctor has barricaded his wife and two children in his home. He is demanding that his wife reveal to him the name of her lover. She denies that she has cheated, but she has. The lover is part of the rescue operation and he flies a helicopter. The doctor has a program that he is running on his wife's computer to uncover her passwords, so the clock is ticking.

I expected more of a 'legal thriller' from Iles, but this was just a well crafted story that keeps you riveted to the page. 

 From the book's page at Goodreads: "In the span of twenty-four hours, every-thing Laurel Shields believes about her life and her marriage to a prominent doctor will be shattered -- if she survives a terrifying ordeal. The day begins with the jarring discovery that, soon after ending an affair, Laurel is pregnant. But when she returns home to find her husband ashen, unkempt, and on the brink of violence, a nightmare quickly unfolds. In the heart of an idyllic Mississippi town, behind the walls of her perfect house, Laurel finds herself locked in a volatile standoff with a husband she barely recognizes. Confronted with evidence of her betrayal, she must tread a deadly path between truth and deception while a ring of armed police prepares a dangerous rescue. But Laurel's greatest fear -- and her only hope -- lies with her former lover, a brave man whom fate has granted the power to save both Laurel and her children -- if she can protect his identity long enough...."

The book's page at Publishers Weekly: "While not as twisty as True Evil (2006), bestseller Iles’s new thriller injects both depth and novelty into a genre convention—the jealous husband who’s tipped off to his wife’s infidelity. When Laurel Shields, a 35-year-old mother of two, discovers she’s pregnant, she can’t be sure her physician husband, Warren, is the father. Meanwhile, Warren is in trouble with the IRS. Laurel believes his obsessive search for a document in their Athens Point, Miss., home is related to a federal Medicaid fraud investigation focusing on his medical partner, Kyle Auster. As the Feds prepare to swoop down on Warren and Kyle’s office to collect the evidence of false billings and bribes to patients without any actual illnesses, Warren takes Laurel and their two children hostage. Iles squeezes every drop of suspense out of the prolonged standoff between the doctor and the police. While the ending may be a little too pat to be plausible, Iles avoids turning Warren into a clichéd bad guy by making his descent into madness understandable."

WALDO by Paul Theroux

 I read almost half of the novel, but gave up on Th 9/4/25. The tone seemed to be way off and I couldn't get into the novel. 

A young man leaves a juvenile detention center and tries to become a writer. That's the basic storyline, and it just didn't have any 'reality'. 

It's Theroux's first novel and I don't think he had the hang of it yet. I loved 'PICTURE PALACE', but this was a real disappointment. 

From KIRKUS: "Paul Theroux is twenty-five years old with a savage eye and a sharp ear. Walde, his first novel, is the journey of an adolescent from a glass-door even in a detention school to a glass writer's cage suspended over a nightclub audience. It's short trip in miles but it takes him much too far. He leaves home (a grandmother he loves, stridently squabbling parents) and picks up Glovis, a wealthy, married woman who in return for certain attentions sends him to college, supports him and finally procures him a writer's job. This consists of an interview which turns into a soap-opera carnival act. Waldo's journey ends with the terrible truth that stories are ruthless, they devour and exploit and distort, and eventually Waldo sacrifices Clovis for a story.... Theroux records remarkably the choking platitudes mouthed by administrators, parents, wardens, teachers, plus all, young and old, who are trapped in their own small minds. He is imaginative, and just by bearing down hard on realistic situations creates a world reflecting all the macabre horror, humor and sadness of people trying to wring something out of experience. Not everybody's book -- but the talent is there."

ORDINARY PEOPLE by Judith Guest

 Finished Tu 9/2/25

This is one of my ancient hardbacks that I had never read. It's an engaging suburban melodrama that was published in 1976 and made into a film that won 'Best Picture' in 1980. I wanted to stream the film, but it's not available for free.

It's about a family that is dealing with the death of a teenage son. Set in the northestern suburbs of Chicago- Evanston, Lake Forest. 

From KIRKUS: "rdinary people on any street where you live, people you might know, people you'll know better at the end of this straight, unassuming, encroaching first novel. A family, or what's left of it--the Jarretts, after the circumstantial whim which took the life of their eldest boy in a boating accident and left Conrad, less ""perfect,"" but much nicer with a sense of guilt he couldn't shake and still can't, even after trying to commit suicide, hospitalization, and now his return home. Home being the place where you keep your distance--from an indifferent, inaccessible mother and perhaps a too protective father who have to come to terms with other difficulties. This finds Conrad attempting to deal with everyone's unease, particularly his own, but slowly connecting (at school, with a girl) until someone he knew in the hospital--one of those two who's going to try again--kills herself, shattering his precarious stability. This has none of the sentimental overindulgence of Rose Garden, the obligatory referral and potential market (young people will also like this). Where it does succeed, and succeed it does, is in communicating a sense of life both felt and experienced without ever trespassing beyond actuality. Ordinary People is an exceptionally real book."

I really liked the book and would read definitely read more novels by Judith Guest.

PICTURE PALACE by Paul Theroux

 Finished Sa 8/30/25. This is an ancient paperback that I bought at 'John's Place' (I've completely forgotten this store) on We 11/25/92 and finished on We 2/3/93.

I really loved the book and I'll read more by Theroux. In fact, I noticed three of his novels on the shelf in the living room and I'll be back to them soon. 

From KIRKUS: "Paul Theroux is such a masterful entertainer, such a smoothly arresting stylist, that it seems ungrateful to complain when he uses his blinding dazzle to keep us from looking beneath the surface. But let's say it up front: this new Theroux charmer--the slowly unpeeling autobiography of pioneer photographer Maude Coffin Pratt--is foolish almost as often as it is delicious or insinuating. Maude at 72 is famous--for her uncompromising portraits of blacks, louts, and celebrities; for her eccentric, tough-old-broad Yankee grit. So opportunistic ""archivist"" Frank Fusco has moved in with Maude on Cape Cod, determined to assemble a Pratt Retrospective from the crates of photos in Maude's abandoned windmill. The unearthing of old prints, of course, triggers brooding memories (""the picture palace of my mind""), memories that come in two entwined varieties. The public triumph: talking back to imperious Stieglitz, ""doing"" the top literati, finding that a camera can be a weapon. And more important, the private torment: ""I was a photographer for love. Orlando was the reason for my camera."" Orlando? Homely Maude's beautiful brother Ollie, object of a fierce incestuous passion that is the source of all her artistry: ""It's the wounded who take to art."" If that seems a trifle simplistic, wait till young Maude comes home and sees Orlando and lovely sister Phoebe doing what Maude has only fantasized; she goes blind (temporary) and later nods knowingly about blissful suicide pacts when Ollie and Phoebe die in a boating ""accident."" Only when a fiagrante delicto photo of O. and P. turns up in the windmill (Maude took it but forgot) does she realize the real reason for the boat suicide: ""I had killed them with a picture""--they died because they knew that she knew. If this melodrama schema were the most blatant flaw here, one might swallow it, just to enjoy the rich camera talk, the expert narrative timemaneuvers, the buoyant atmospheres. But Theroux's blueprint also calls for some contrived set-ups right out of TV sit-com, a final irony (no one recognizes Maude at her own retrospective) right out of Hollywood shlock, and a cutesy celebrity parade (""Those are my loins,"" pants D. H. Lawrence, making a heavy pass) right out of your garden-variety historical romance. Tongue-in-cheek? Perhaps. But Theroux writes far too well (even the most objectionable sequences offer line-byline pleasure) to settle glibly for breezy pastiche when a bit more concentration could probably have truly pinned down Maude Pratt, her art, and her heart."

I really loved this novel {released in 1978} and it was beautifully written. However, some of it was pretty confusing. I was lost during the 'blindness' sections of the book. Was Maud really blind or was it psychological? The sexual attraction to her younger brother would be a sticking point for a lot of readers, but it did not bother me.  

THE CRUSADES by Henry Treece

 Finished Fr 8/22/25

This was one of my ancient hardbacks that I've never read. The flyleaf informs me that I bought the book at Barnes & Noble. 

I really am glad that I read the book and although it's non-fiction, it read like a novel.

First Crusade began in 1095 by Pope Urban II and lasted for two centuries.

From the dust jacker: "The Crusades can be accounted a military failure, but they were a cultural phenomenon that introduced a new age of 3xploration and nation states, shattering the feudal establishments of medieval Europe." 

The Pope was worried about the rise of the secular state by Charlamagne in France. The Church leaned into the gospel of Revelation. 'The End Is Near' and who will be there to defend the Holy Land when Jesus returns"? 

Odd Fact: The West learned about paper from the Saracens and this led to the publication of Bibles so that the commoners could own 'the good book' themselves. 

From the book's page at Goodreads: "In November of 1095 Pope Urban II launched a holy war against the infidel. In 1464 a demented pontiff led an imaginary band of crusaders as far as an Adriatic port. Between these dates Europe was infected by a strangely persistent fever of mass idealism. Though outward zeal often cloaked the most cynical of motives, this universal spirit seized upon thousands - noblemen and peasants, warriors and scholars, ascetics and lechers, vagabonds and kings. Written by a prolific author of numerous histories, novels, drama, criticisms and verse, The Crusades provides a lively and authentic account of two hundred years of war, sacred journeys and the quest for riches. Henry Treece reanimates many renowned figures of the period---Charlemagne, Haroun-al-Raschid, Peter the Hermit, Richard the Lion-Heart, Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond, Saladin, Mourschid, Henry Dandolo, Frederick II, Louis the Oious and Genghis Khan---as well as providing an illuminating narrative of one of Christianity's darkest periods."

Because the story begins with the reign of Charlamagne, here's a link to 'the founder of Feudalism'. 

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