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. 

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.   

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/

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.

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.