Animosity

This was my fifth David Lindsey book, his 11th book which was written in 2001. (Remember he also wrote Pacific Heights under the name Paul Harper.) Animosity was so interesting and so different than his other books. While the plot mattered a lot, this story was mostly driven by a fascinating study of characters. Ross Marteau is a sculpture who splits time between Paris and his home in San Rafael, Texas. He’s famous, and he’s made a small fortune by doing expensive nude sculptures of the beautiful wives of very wealthy men. His work is in demand and he is able to move directly from one commission to the next. The wealthy men seem to want to catch the beauty of their women before they change and age. Marteau has never been married and he’s had relationships with his models and his subjects, including the women he’s sculpting. If his art is criticized at all, it is because he has chosen to go for the money rather than attempt to be true to his art, as if he should sacrifice a comfortable life for the sake of his craft. The book starts in Paris as his relationship with the next lover, Marian, has fallen apart. They have been brutal with each other and their fights have been fodder for the French tableaus. But as Marteau leaves Marian, she does not take it well. She only exits his life after throwing a knife at him which imbeds in his shoulder and does him some damage. He moves back to San Rafael to begin work on his next commission. It is there that he is contacted by two French sisters with a new commission. He quickly becomes romantically involved with the older sister, Celeste Lacan, while delaying his other commission to take on the statue of the younger sister, Leda, a stunning beauty who has a most interesting deformity that will be a great challenge to his talents. But, all is not as it seems. The older sister is married and estranged from her wealthy and abusive husband. Leda is angry about her own appearance and the abuse her sister has put up with in order to get a stipend from her husband that supports them both. As the story evolves, Marteau learns that Celeste and Leda specifically chose him to do the statue because of their connection with one of his past lovers, his first model, who was a most destructive woman and the real love of his life. Leda turns out to be a most manipulative and scheming woman. The love scenes that Lindsey writes are very erotic, and the ending of the story was absolutely unexpected by me. Even knowing that, you won’t see it coming, I promise. This was a good book, a quick read, most enjoyable, and it gets a high recommendation from me.

The Rules of Silence by David Lindsey

Think about the kidnappers in Latin America who have been practicing and improving their trade for years, developing new and more efficient ways of extracting the wealth of their victims. What if they decided to operate in the U.S. Riskier? Yes, but the rewards would be so much greater since there is so much potential wealth to steal. That’s the theme of this book as Tano Luquin, with international terrorist ties, brings his Mexican chief of operations, Jorge Macias along as they begin devastating the life of Titus Cain, a self-made Texan business tycoon, a good guy who is beloved by his employees and friends. Luquin only wants $64 mil, which is ¼ of Cain’s wealth. To make his threat real to Cain, Luquin kills his best life-long buddy and his personal secretary. More deaths are threatened if Cain contacts the cops or FBI, but Cain quickly finds his way to Garcia Burden, a shadowy figure who has been looking for Luquin for years, who can’t believe he’s finally found a connection to him. This is one very fast-paced, can’t-put-it-down read. This was my fourth Lindsey book, and while I was disappointed in the story line in the last one, The Face of the Assassin, there was no disappointment here.

The Face of the Assassin by David Lindsey

This is my third Lindsey book, and this is the first one that left me somewhat disappointed. It had a complicated plot about a clandestine operation by CIA contractors and their attempts to assassinate Ghazi Baida. Baida is a Lebanese terrorist who is operating out of the triple border region in South America, the area where the borders of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay come together. It’s a rugged jungle near the lawless towns of Ciudad Del Este in Paraguay and Foz de Iguacu in Brazil, near the spectacular Iguacu Falls that I visited last year. After starting in Ciudad Del Este, a city that Daniel Sylva wrote about in his last book, the action moved to Mexico City, and that’s where most of this book took place – and I thought that was probably the best part. On the one hand, the plot was incredibly complex and interesting, but on the other hand, it relied on a cheap old ploy of identical twin brothers who could be mistaken for each other, even by people who knew them well. Bern and Jude who grew up in different cities and who did not know of one another until after one of them was already dead. Still, if one could suspend reality for a bit, Lindsey was at least somewhat captivating with the twin device, and the last 100 pages felt like one fast and bumpy ride, as if I was in an out-of-control raft on a treacherous river, tumbling down a long cascade, violently bumping off one rock to the next. So, it was good and bad, not a total loss, by any means, but I find the identical-twin-thing to be a barely tolerable story line.

An Absence of Light by David Lindsey

The book started out a bit slow with the author focusing more on character development than plot, but when the plot really kicked in, the speed of it just kept building into a very good story. Marcus Graver is a chief detective in the criminal intelligence division (CID) in Houston with a counterpart, Dean Burtell, who has been like a brother, who Graver trained. Graver is the protagonist in this story, a strong masculine character who lives by an ethical code that sometimes takes him to the edge of reason. So, he fits right into our genre of action/thriller books. When other members of the CID start dying, Graver suspects that it’s Burtell who has turned dirty, who has begun selling information and selling out to the bad guys. The plot involves some very big bad guys, Panos Kalatis and Brod Strasser, who have a vast international reach and who have just happened to find Houston as a convenient and temporary home for their ambitious crimes. Lindsay brings in a great cast of characters, some good guys, some not, but all are interesting, not stereotypic. Lindsay also uses his vocabulary more effectively than many authors, but not too much. By the way, the title of the book is explained in the last two sentences of the book: “It seemed to [Graver] that he was arriving too late in the sequence of events. Perhaps he should have been trying to understand, instead, the character of darkness itself, and what it was that happened when men’s desires were shaped and formed in an absence of light.” This one definitely gets my recommendation.

Requiem for a Glass Heart by David Lindsey

A new author for the blog, recommended by our new fan, a lifelong friend, Cousin Dave who said David Lindsey is his favorite author, so I thought I’d give it a go. That was a good decision. This was a book that I could not put down, even chose to keep reading rather than watch the UConn-AZ BB game. That is saying something. And, I stayed up well past bedtime to finish it. Great plot, great characters, great writing. I am excited that Lindsey has 10 more novels. I am in Cousin Dave’s debt. Hereby violating an unwritten rule of the blog, I have stolen the following review from Lindsey’s website: “Irina Ismaylov kills men and women. But she doesn't kill for pleasure, or for money. She kills at the behest of Sergei Krupatin, a Russian crime lord who exerts a strange and monstrous hold over her. Desperate to escape Krupatin, Irina must first carry out one last mission for him. But her odds of surviving seem impossible. FBI Special Agent Cate Cuevas has just learned of a devastating personal betrayal by her slain husband. Wounded and shaken, she is suddenly plunged into the most challenging and dangerous assignment of her career. The leaders of the three great international crime organizations are planning a secret meeting in Houston. The implications are stunning. The FBI's only chance to stop this ominous alliance depends upon Cate being able to infiltrate the Russian contingent--and get out alive. When Cate and Irina meet, each playing her clandestine role, they discover a mutual and powerful attraction. As the two women fight to survive amidst the intricate and cunning stratagems of violent men, their relationship becomes an ever-more-intimate dance of seduction and murderous intent.”