NO WITENSSES by Ridley Pearson

 Finished Fr 8/25/23

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I had never read.

It's a Police Thriller set in Seattle and deals with a 'product tampering case'.

The owner of a large food corporation is told that 'people will die' if his terms are not met. 

From the book's page at Publishers Weekly:

"A rare humanism and meticulous attention to procedural detail have marked Pearson's thrillers featuring Seattle cop Lou Boldt (Undercurrents; The Angel Maker). In the mournful detective's third match-up against a maniacal serial killer, Pearson outdoes himself by eschewing scenes from the murderer's point of view (and the pandering to bloodlust inherent in such scenes) in order to focus solely on the terrible toll wrought on victims and cops. Here the villain is tampering with products of Adler Foods, a giant company that he or she blames for a long-ago crime. The bodies of poisoned children and adults turn up everywhere as Boldt and his SPD/FBI task force, including series regular Daphne Matthews, a police psychologist, race to ID and trap the killer. Instead of forensic detail, Pearson this time highlights high-tech procedures: computer warfare against the killer's use of ATMs to collect a ransom; cutting-edge surveillance techniques. A tangled subplot about a possible culprit among the cops drags the suspense slightly but some extraordinarily tense cat-and-mousing between cops and killer more than makes up for it. This is a serial-killer novel that speaks to readers' hearts even as it jangles their nerves-and it's not to be missed." 

I would read more by Pearson, but I'd only rate this one about a 'C- plus'.

THE KILLER ANGELS by Michael Shaara

 Finished Fr 8/18/23

This is one of my 'newer' hard backs that I had never read. 

It's a detailed analysis of The Battle of Gettysburg around July 4th, 1863. 

It is told mostly from the eyes of the generals on both sides. 

Biggest Takeaway: The North was entrenched around the same Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. The South had invaded the North and if they had pushed to take the 'high ground' on the first day of fighting they might have routed the Northern army. And maybe they could have won the entire war. 

An insightful review from the book's page at 'eriehistory.org':

"Michael Shaara’s novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, first published in 1974, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the next year. The book has been republished many times and is on the reading list for many U.S. Army officer programs as well as other military academies. The book was also the basis of director Ronald Maxwell’s 1993 movie Gettysburg.

The novel follows four main characters, two Confederate and two Union. Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet on the Confederate side, John Buford and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain on the Union side. Other characters are also featured, and side stories help fill out the cast. Written in the present tense and covering only five days from June 29, 1863, to July 3, the novel has a sense of urgency that is lacking in the prequel Gods and Generals and the sequel The Last Full Measure by Shaara’s son Jeff Shaara.

The story begins with the mysterious spy Harrison who first tells Lee and Longstreet that the Union Army of the Potomac, now under its new commander George G. Meade, has moved quickly and is close behind the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. The Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania has suddenly a new threat to contend with.  As Lee’s army moves into Southern Pennsylvania the climax will take place at Gettysburg during the first three days of July 1863.

Shaara says in the preface “The interpretation of character is my own.” While none of his interpretations will disturb readers of Civil War history, they help add insight and a personal touch to these soldiers. The reader gets to know them through their thoughts and conversations, also fictionalized, with other characters. 

It is hard not to notice an almost apologetic tone when dealing with the Confederates. “The Cause” is not about slavery, its about “rights”.  Union cavalry Gen. John Buford’s war weariness and fatigue are very real, especially in an army that has suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of Lee’s victorious army. Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, commander of the 20th Maine regiment who will hold the extreme left of the Union line on Little Round Top, is a college professor turned soldier and looks for some deeper meaning to the war. Erie County’s own Strong Vincent is also a minor character in the novel. It is Vincent who paced his brigade on Little Round Top’s southern face, leading to Union victory there.

Confederate Gen. James Longstreet is portrayed, accurately, as a man who doubts Lee’s aggressiveness at Gettysburg. Longstreet did not want to fight there, but Lee was determined. Their disagreements are respectful, but Longstreet has his doubts.

The majority of the novel focuses on only three parts of the battle, one on each day of the struggle. On July 1st, the first day, the focus is on Buford’s cavalry division that meets Lee’s somewhat hesitant assaults and buys time for the Union army to concentrate. The second day’s action is told through the eyes of Col. Chamberlain’s 20th Maine on Little Round Top. Truly a brave and determined stand, little or nothing is said of the fighting that engulfed the entire union line that day. This is one of the book’s strongest parts.  The Little Round Top chapter is riveting, if focused on only one small part of the battle.

Day three brings Pickett’s Charge on the Union center. Flamboyant Confederate Gen. George Pickett leads his division (and others) in a doomed assault that ends the battle and results in a Union victory and Lee’s retreat back to Virginia.

There is no doubt about the long-term effect the novel and the subsequent movie Gettysburg have had on the American public’s perception of the and battle. Shaara made no attempt to tell the whole story of Gettysburg. He chose to focus on certain participants and leave the rest to the historians. The 1993 movie led to a surge in visitation to the battlefield, especially to Little Round Top. Ken Burn’s The Civil War on PBS and a veritable slew of books about the battle have followed. 

Michael Shaara saw little of this, dying in 1988 at age fifty-nine of a heart attack. When I met Shaara in 1987, he spoke at length about his own heart problems and felt this played a role in Lee’s actions at Gettysburg. Lee died of a stroke in 1870 and there is no lack of accounts about his health during the Gettysburg campaign.

In the end, The Killer Angels is a novel, but a great one. It ranks with Stephen Crain’s The Red Badge of Courage (1895) as one of the great novels of the Civil War. If you have never read it, give it a try. If you have read it, read it again." 

Fun Facts:

Robert E. Lee felt that novels and plays 'weakens the mind'.

George Pickett was a dandy with long hair and he wore a lot of cologne. 

General Chamberlain was a professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin College. Nathaniel Hawthorne also attended the school.  

THE ORACLE by Edwin O'Connor

 Finished Su 8/13/23

One of my ancient paperbacks that I had never read and purchased at the library book sale on Sa 6/15/96.

I loved the book and I can't believe that I never read it until now. The author is a Pulitzer Prize winner and this is his first novel published in 1951. O'Connor wrote 'THE LAST HURRAH' and won the Pulitzer for 'THE EDGE OF SADNESS'. The author is known for his books about Irish-Americans and 'THE LAST HURRAH' is about an Irish-American political boss who makes a final run for public office. This book is available from the library on Hoopla. This book was made into a blockbuster film starring Spencer Davis in 1958. 

Christopher Usher is a radio broadcaster who is an unreliable narrator of the highest order. Not once during the entire story does he admit that he might NOT be the center of the universe. He only talks and never listens. His ideas are off-the-wall and are never subject to change. He's in a bad marriage, has a silly mistress, and his big boss has him on tenterhooks over a salary increase. This character could be a precursor to Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, Rachel Maddow, or Ann Coulter. Today we have hundreds of these 'authoritative profession'.

..."It's perhaps that Christopher's greatest advantage (is) that he's disliked only by people that know him. He has five million listeners, almost none of whom know him, and with them he's wildly successful".   

It's an easy read and I finished in a couple of days. I loved it!

A link to the author's link to Wikipedia:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_O%27Connor

THE BARON and The Chinese Puzzle by John Creasey

 This is one of my ancient paperbacks and there is no note as to when or where I got the book.

It's a slim novel and I skimmed from page 134 to the end of the novel (last page 175) on Fr 8/11/23.

"...follows the powder trail of an explosive situation with international fallout..." (on the cover).

On the back of the book:

"When former jewel thief John Mannering decided to attend the priceless Oriental exhibition he did not realize that someone was willing to kill to keep THE BARON away. He could not anticipate the political maelstrom, the misguided patriot, and the sinister plot which would trap THE BARON IN THE CHINESE PUZZLE."

The novel was published in 1951 and was John Creasey's first book. 

From the author's page at Wikipedia:

"John Creasey MBE (17 September 1908 – 9 June 1973) was an English crime writer, also writing science fiction, romance and western novels, who wrote more than six hundred novels using twenty-eight different pseudonyms.

He created several characters who are now famous, such as The Toff (The Honourable Richard Rollison), Commander George Gideon of Scotland Yard, Inspector Roger West, The Baron (John Mannering), Doctor Emmanuel Cellini and Doctor Stanislaus Alexander Palfrey. The most popular of these was Gideon of Scotland Yard, who was the basis for the television series Gideon's Way and for the John Ford movie Gideon's Day (1958). The Baron character was also made into a 1960s TV series starring Steve Forrest as The Baron." 

This was not a bad novel, but I just ran out of gas on it. John Creasey seems to be the poster child for 'hack writer' in that he had dozens of pen names and he would write in any genre imaginable. And obviously the reason for this is money. Nothing wrong with a guy trying to make a living, but this book just seemed to be 'connecting the dots'. Not bad, but not in the least bit inspiring. 

DARK MATTER by Garfield Reeves-Stevens

Finished Mo 8/7/23

This is one of my ancient trade paperbacks that I bought at The Book House, Rock Hill, MO on Th 10/19/95.  I never read the book although it is very much like a Dean Koontz novel.

You learn a little about Quantum Physics.

It begins with a 'kitchen table' brain surgery with the patient fully conscious and ends with global annihilation. 

TOE: Theory of Everything

Singularity: the instant before 'The Big Bang'

Xeno's Paradox: If crossing a street you take a half step and then half of the next step...you will never reach the other side of the street. If you divide matter in the same way, you would reach a point where you couldn't divide it because there would be nothing left. 

'E' equals MC Squared: Matter and Energy are points along the same continuum. 

Newtonian Physics says that when things are in motion, they begin to slow (regress), but at the sub-atomic level this is no longer true. 

A young genius has the backing of the US government to find The Singularity. The government wants to use whatever he finds for weapons of war and he wants to become god. 

The book that I read was an advanced uncorrected copy (I didn't notice any mistakes) and I checked the author on the internet and he has written several highly acclaimed books since then. 

BUTTERFIELD 8 by John O'Hara

 Finished We 8/2/23

One of my ancient paperbacks that I first read during the week of Su 11/8/92.

I'm glad that I revisited this one because the second time around I really loved. 

Set in NYC during the early 1930's and it's kind of like Jay McInerney 'BRIGHT LIGHTS BIG CITY. It's fairly shocking the way that Ohara deals with female sexuality. Gloria Wandrous's attitude is more like that of a licentious male character.  

Synopsis from the book's page at Wikipedia:

"The novel explores the life of Gloria Wandrous, a young woman having an affair with Weston Liggett, an older, married businessman. Set in New York circa 1931, it fills in her family background and sexual history, and it locates her within a circle of friends, their relationships, and economic struggles, providing a closely observed tour of "the sordid and sensational lives of people on the fringe of café society and the underworld". The minor character of Jimmy Malloy, a junior newspaper reporter, serves as O'Hara’s alter ego; he has the style of a Yale University graduate but not the means.

The title of the novel derives from the pattern of telephone exchange names in the United States and Canada. Until the early 1970s, telephone exchanges were indicated by two letters and commonly referred to by names instead of by numbers, with the BU represented on the telephone dial as "28," followed by four digits. In December 1930, an additional digit was appended to the exchange name. BUtterfield was an exchange that provided service to Manhattan's well-to-do Upper East Side, and BUtterfield 8 was still new when the novel was published."

Link at Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BUtterfield_8_(novel)

From the book's page at Amazon:

"A bestseller upon its publication in 1935, BUtterfield 8 was inspired by a news account of the discovery of the body of a beautiful young woman washed up on a Long Island beach. Was it an accident, a murder, a suicide? The circumstances of her death were never resolved, but O’Hara seized upon the tragedy to imagine the woman’s down-and-out life in New York City in the early 1930s.

“O’Hara understood better than any other American writer how class can both reveal and shape character,” Fran Lebowitz writes in her Introduction. With brash honesty and a flair for the unconventional, BUtterfield 8 lays bare the unspoken and often shocking truths that lurked beneath the surface of a society still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. The result is a masterpiece of American fiction."