A Grave Denied by Dana Stabenow

I picked up A Grave Denied at the library for my trip to India, but didn't get around to reading it until returning home. The back cover blurb said it was based in The Park up in Alaska, so after having just read The Final Frontiersman based up in Alaska, I thought it was worth a shot. This is one part of a long series of mysteries based around a sort of lady PI up there named Kate Shugak who used to work sex crimes for the Anchorage police.

It's spring, the weather has moderated and the middle/high school kids are on a field trip up to study a local glacier. While exploring, 2 of the kids wander into a cave in the glacier and find a body with a huge shotgun hole in his chest. This starts a chain of events involving numerous characters from the small town near The Park called Niniltna. The stiff is a local handyman, Len, and Kate is asked by a suitor-wanna-be state policeman, Jim Chopin to do a little digging into guy's last known sightings. So she slowly traces out the last jobs he had done for the locals. Along the way, Kate's house gets torched in an attempt to get her off the case. The son of a Tribal boss, called Dandy (who wants to get on the police force) also goes out asking questions. Following a lead to Anchorage, Kate stumbles onto a teenager with all the signs of prior abuse. A little more digging shows that the Len was living under an alias and did a prior prison term as a sex offender. Not long after, Dandy is found dead of the same shotgun blast. Kate is sure that the girl's dad was the killer.

A back story has Kate caring for the teenage son of a deceased policeman/lover (the kid found the body). Johnny has struck up a developing friendship with Vanessa whose parents were dead and now living with some cousins old enough to be her grandparents. On a hunch, Kate goes back out to their homestead because the stiff had done some work out there and Kate was wondering if Vanessa might also have been molested.

The 'mom', Telma, is really screwed up. A passive, cookie baking nutcase. The 'dad', Virgil, worships the ground she walks on and is very protective of her. When Kate arrives, Virgil takes her down with a shovel and tries to bury her in the garden. Turns out ol' Telma had/has a serious case of post partum depression and killed all 5 babies she bore out there in the boondocks. Loyal and loving Virgil buried them all in their garden. During a job for Virgil, Len discovered the backyard cemetery and thinks he can blackmail Virgil for some money. After a few months of payments, Virgil ends the agreement with extreme prejudice and deposits Len in the glacier. Jim Chopin follows Kate to Virgil's place, finds him in the process of burying Kate and manages to subdue Virgil, finally wrapping up the case. In the end, the community all comes together and, in an Alaskan version of Extreme Homemaker, build Kate and Johnny a new house.

I thought this was pretty good. Kate is a heroine anyone could get behind. The story was well plotted with enough twists to keep me interested. I was kind of hoping for sort of an Alaskan Tony Hillerman who became famous for his weaving of Navaho culture into traditional mysteries, but sad to say, she is no Hillerman. This tale could have taken place anywhere, but would have been way more interesting with local culture being as critical to the story as the crime. While I did enjoy the story, I'm not sure at this point when I might venture back into Kate Shugak's neighborhood, but I might.

East Coast Don

Pursuit of Honor by Vince flynn

Flynn is definitely on my power rotation. Every new title the library gets has my name on the (long) request list. As a reminder, I sort of know his sister from some work with US Soccer. I read this during the week I was sick after returning from India. Probably read over half of this in the can.

The books opens days after Muslim extremists have blown up a power lunch restaurant filled with members of Congress and staffers. As a further insult, a second squad attacks the National Counter Terrorist Center killing dozens more until our hero Mitch Rapp and partner Mike Nash send the bad guys off to paradise. With nearly 200 dead, the nation is in no mood to coddle Islamic extremists. The President has given Rapp a green light to be if not judge and jury, certainly the executioner. The sharp edge of the CIA's sword has been let loose with few strings attached. The story takes place over the following week.

Rapp is on the trail of a liberal weenie lawyer inspector general of the CIA who has been giving out information that some consider to aid the enemy. Meanwhile, 3 of the cell that helped carry out the DC attack are hiding out in rural Iowa, waiting for the heat to die down. Hakim is the logical planner who knows about the US having lived here. Karim is the hotheaded soldier who wants a legacy as The Lion of al Qaeda. A dad and son walk up to their farmhouse asking for permission to hunt. Hakim says sure because he knows that's all they want, but Karim is convinced they are police and kills them both. Now they are on the run, trying to stay a step ahead of the police. Neither trusts the other and end up splitting. Hakim to Nassau to get money and hide somewhere, Karim and Ahmed to Washington to wreck more havoc.

Rapp is trying to piece together disparate clues from British and French intelligence, the FBI, local police, Caribbean banking, and more I can't recall. How he does it on probably 4-5 hrs sleep is beyond me. Meanwhile, Mike Nash is worried he is becoming just like Rapp and can't deal with it. By pure luck, Rapp runs into Hakim while following the money to Nassau. As Karim had beaten Hakim to within an inch of his life for insubordination, Hakim is easy to turn against Karim. They all go back to DC just as Karim kidnaps Nash's daughter and holds her as the central figure in one last final shot at Islamic glory. Of course, he fails with Rapp taking care of business with exxxxxxtreeeeeeme prejudice.

In this story, Flynn seems to be more focused on character and logical plot development rather than body count. It's all about trying to connect the dots . . . at a breakneck pace. If there was one thing I didn't like, it's Flynn's penchant for conservative sermonizing as when Rapp confronts the treasonous lawyer, and I'm on his side. But that doesn't get in the way of a terrific read. It all seems like a re-telling of something that really could happen. I certainly hope that the realism presented isn't a look into our near future. Flynn's books have yet to let me down, but I sure hope he isn't right.

East Coast Don

Rain Gods by James Lee Burke

Burke is the author that a woman in a bookstore at Heathrow suggested, so now I've gotten thru one of his books -- and it was a good one. East Coast Don already reported on a Burke novel – see June 2009, In the Electric Mist, which took place in Louisiana. This story, Rain Gods, takes place in South Texas where nine Thai women are being smuggled into the country to be prostitutes, but they are smugglers themselves who happen to have swallowed a bunch of balloons filled with heroin. A guy who owns an escort service and house of ill repute, Nick Dolan (married with children), decides to highjack the girls to be prostitutes, but he does not know about the heroin in their stomachs. In the process of getting the girls into the US, the ultimate bad ass psychopath, Preacher Jack Collins decides the women are complaining to much, so he kills them all with his Thompson machine gun, then buries then in shallow graves with the intent of coming back later to cut out the heroin-filled balloons. An Iraq war veteran, Pete Florez, overhears the shooting and sees what has happened. Pete is with a woman who has a nearly terminal case of rescue fantasy. Pete calls the cops, and this is where the protagonist enters, Sheriff Hackberry Holland. (How about that for an entertaining name?) So, now the girls and the heroin are gone, and lots of bad guys are upset about their losses. What is unique about this book is the long list of bad buys who have shifting alliances. The short list is Hugo Cistranos, Artie Rooney, and Joseph Sholokof, all of whom play important roles behind the scenes. After this book by Burke, I am clearly willing to try another one by him. His character development is good, and it kept me very interested.

West Coast Don

Up In Honey's Room by Elmore Leonard

Honey's Room is another recommendation by the chief Knuckmeister, Charlie Stella. His last suggestions have been winners so I had no doubt this would be fun, too.

Our tale takes place in the waning days of WWII in Detroit. Honey has married the most boring man on earth, Walter Schoen-a German ex-pat, but she walks out after a year. Dull, dull, dull. The most fun they have is when he needs to pass gas, he tells Honey "Pull my finger" and then she falls down like she's been shot. Hell, he doesn't even know she's not a natural blond cuz he only bumps uglis in the dark.

Honey goes to work in a downtown department store selling better dresses and Walter continues on as a butcher. Problem is he is a dead ringer from Himmler and thinks he is a long lost twin, so he harbors some sentiment to the German cause. So does Vera and her cross-dressing Ukrainian lover Bo. We also meet Jurgen (SS tank commander from the Afrika Korps) and Otto who are POWs recently escaped from a camp in Oklahoma who have found their way to Detroit, closely followed by Carl, a US Marshall of some notoriety.

Vera is a low rent German spy and Bo has a violent past, slicing his way through a POW camp earlier in the war and with Walter has a little spy ring set up. An ObGyn and a Klansman also figure in this little circle of spies who really seem to learn very little of substance to send back to the Fatherland. This motley group circles each other as Honey weighs taking off her clothes (something she does rather frequently) for Jurgen or Carl. Meanwhile, Carl is going through Honey to find Jurgen who wants to be a professional bull rider.

But Walter has bigger ideas. He wants to assassinate FDR as a gift for der Furher's birthday. Problem is, FDR has his stroke the day before the intended strike, so Walter tries to let everybody assume he somehow did it by shrugging "you believe what you want to believe."

Anyway, Vera and Bo are worried that the FBI are closing in and hatch a plan to kill them all. First Bo takes out the bigot and the doc (the doc's wife is collateral damage). Then the rest are all "Up in Honey's Room" when Bo enters in his finest dress carrying a submachine gun in an umbrella. He taunts them a bit, makes them all strip and sit on the couch. In an earlier scene, Honey and Jurgen fiddled with a Luger that she stuffed in between the couch cushions. She moves Carl's hand to the pistol and . . .

What happened next actually surprised me a bit. It may surprise you too, or you may see it coming. It doesn't matter cuz it's all fun getting to this potential massacre scene. Needless to say, Vera is a survivor, Jurgen is suspected to be in Cleveland or with Otto (who married a nice Jewish girl-go figure), Carl goes back to Oklahoma and his Marine machine gun instructor wife . . . and Honey? When Carl tells this tale to his wife, will he leave in the part about Honey traipsing around naked in high heels?

This was too cool. Stella says that Higgins and Leonard are masters of dialogue and the 1940s rat-a-tat-tat dialogue shows us just who these characters are. The Germans are trying to learn and use American slang, sometimes not too successfully, Honey is working out who to spend her future with, Carl is trying like hell to stay faithful and Jugen just wants to be a cowboy. I was unaware of Leonard's body of work and was surprised to see he had written the books that became the movies Get Shorty (IMHO, Travolta's Chili Palmer is one of the coolest dudes on film), Hombre (Newman), Mr. Majestyk (Bronson), Valdez is Coming (Bert Lancaster), 52 Pickup (Roy Scheider), 3:10 to Yuma, etc. etc. etc. So, for a good time, I've got the feeling you can't go wrong with most any Leonard story.

East Coast Don

Mutiny by Boris Gindin and David Hagberg

The Mutiny by Boris Gindin and David Hagberg

This was a novelized non-fiction work, the story that inspired Tom Clancy to write his first novel, The Hunt for Red October. I thought EC Don had written about this, but when I searched the blog, the book did not come up. I think I got this one because it was associated with Hagberg. As much as Dan Quail was not John Kennedy, this is no Hunt for Red October. The real story involved a surface ship, not a submarine, and the intent of the guy who led the mutiny, the ship’s political officer, was not to defect. Rather, he had the harebrained idea that he could use the ship to broadcast to the Russian people. He believed that his message against the current leadership, Brezhnef, would lead to a new revolution and a return to the true values of Karl Marx. When he seized the vessel, he actually did get to deliver his message, but it was in the middle of the night. Also, the radioman was clever enough to send it as an encrypted message, so only the military people could understand what he was saying. There were some interesting interchanges in the chain of command, from the mutineers to Brezhnef. But, there was a lot of extraneous stuff, like too much info and comparisons to the events with Bligh and the H.S.S. Bounty, and too much info on the history of the Russian Navy and what was going on in the gulags. Since you won’t be reading this, I’ll tell you the ending was fast. The ship did get out of port and into the open Baltic Sea. They almost made it to Swedish waters, which was not where they wanted to go. They were attacked by the Russian air force about the same time the real captain escaped from his temporary prison, seized a gun, shot the political prisoner in the leg, and took back control of the ship. All participants, those that went along with the mutiny and those that were not were either run out of the Navy (a cushy job for officers) or demoted. The political officer was apparently killed, as in he got his 9 ounces (of lead). Clancy was pretty clever to have gone from this minor incident to the great story he wrote. This book is not worth your energy.

West Coast Don

The Defector by Daniel Silva

Daniel Silva: The Defector 11-8-09

Although each of the series of Gabriel Allon books builds on the one before it, all of the books have been stand-alones, as well. However, this one is more closely tied to the last book, Moscow Rules, and that one should be read first, as a prelude to this one. Silva gives us all the usual characters. The protagonist is Gabriel Allon, and his spy master is still Ari Shamron. Gabriel is newly married to the beautiful Chiara. Once again, the book starts in Italy where Allon is restoring a painting, and the effort must be interrupted as he is pulled back into another international problem. One of the main characters from Moscow Rules, Grigori Bulganov, is living in London. He has done from being a quiet and isolated defector to a public and outspoken critic of the Kremlin. That leads to trouble for both England and Russia. There are other bad characters, like Anton Petrov and Ivan Kharkov. When Bulganov defected to England, Kharkov’s wife and two children escaped him and Russia to live in protective custody in the U.S. But, Kharkov wants his kids back. The plot line is great, and I don’t think anyone in this genre writes better than Silva. This may be the bloodiest of the Allon series, which is saying a lot. I enjoyed it – it was one I could not put down.

WC Don

The Final Frontiersman by James Campbell

I don't know where I first came across this title, but I do have a bit of a history of reading about people living in the elements with the barest of essentials. Hey, my favorite 'western' movie is Jeremiah Johnson.

The book's subtitle is "Heimo Korth and his family, alone in Alaska's Wilderness." Our man Heimo, his Inuit-descendent wife Edna, and their 2 children, Rachel and Krin live way the hell up north in Alaska in a cabin maybe 15 x 15ft in temps that rarely get above zero except during the Alaskan summer. Their life is semi-nomadic to keep up with food and shelter. Heimo is from northern Wisconsin and grew up the eldest son of a distant and abusive father. Shortly after high school, he makes his first attempt to live in the wilderness, fails, and returns home. Soon he makes another more successful attempt and has been there since, now approaching 30 years.

The book describes the life and trials of living alone in the wilderness. The struggles of living without the barest of essentials may seem unforgiving, but for Heimo and his family, it all makes perfect sense. There are plenty of inconsistencies with their lifestyle, like his daughters out there in the middle of nothing with posters of Brittney Spears or listening to audio books and music while sawing caribou steaks off an animal's frozen limb. They are teenagers after all. Heimo doesn't totally reject modern tools to support his life in the wild as he has quite an array of weaponry, snowmobiles, and a satellite phone.

I find reading about modern day survivalists rather fascinating and liked reading about people who are able to do what people like me would never attempt, no matter how attractive living off the land sounds. What I found missing was the 'why' behind Heimo's decision to leave society and head for the far reaches of northern Alaska. The book is filled with plenty of vignettes about the daily challenges, but less about his individual character and motivations. I've read many of the books by and about Tom Brown, Jr., another naturalist who makes his home in New Jersey. Most of his books are almost entirely about personal history and motivation for his beliefs without neglecting specific events and experiences. I will admit that some of Brown's books are a little heavy on Apache mysticism, but I digress.

I think I was drawn to the book after having read The Last Season by Eric Blehm that was suggested by WC Don. But in comparing the two, I think the reader learns far more about who Randy Morgenson was than just who Heimo Korth is. Still, The Final Frontiersman is a fascinating tale of a man beating the odds carving out a meaningful life in the wilderness.

East Coast Don

p.s. Recently, I suggested the Charlie Stella check out Robert McCammon's Boy's Life, the 1991 best seller. He has posted comments on his blog, the Temporary Knucksline dated November 1, 2009.