Dig Two Graves by Kim Powers

Ethan “Hercules” Holt is a 39-year-old classics professor at a sub-Ivy college in Vermont, and he has a most impressive past. He was the gold medal winner in the decathlon at the Sydney Olympics, the best athlete in the world. He had his picture on a box of Wheaties. It was the end of his Olympics event that made him even more famous when a fellow competitor from the U.S., who had been disqualified in a doping scandal, attacked Holt at the end of the 8^th event. Holt was assaulted quite badly, but he still had enough determination left to do the last two events well enough to win the medal, brining him even greater worldwide adulation. He had been a true athlete-scholar, having attended his small college on an academic scholarship, the same college where he was now a professor. Since his victory in Sydney, he had chose mostly to stay out of the limelight, but life had not gone well, and in the course of this book, Holt’s life turned into a nightmare.

A few years before the start of the book, Holt’s wife was killed in a winter car accident, leaving Ethan as the solo parent for his daughter, Skip. She was a precocious kid and a loving daughter who had become everything to her father. Then his parents were killed when their house was burned to the ground with them in it. Powers did a good job developing the story about Ethan’s dysfunctional family which had helped give him the drive that ended in his Olympic victory. After necessary background, the intensity of the story increased when, at the age of 13, Skip was kidnapped. The kidnapper did not want money, but he decided to put Ethan through a series of challenges based on the trials of his namesake, Hercules, as written in classic literature.

This book grabbed me from the beginning. Powers’ character development was excellent and believable. The plot kept me invested in the story and I did not put it down until it was finished. There was one convention used by the author that I didn’t like because I thought it has been overused throughout fiction literature, but I cannot write more about that without giving away a critical element in the plot. You’ll know what I’m talking about when you get there. Despite my initial negative reaction to that single aspect of the story, once I realized what it was, Powers managed to pull it off and keep me engaged – I’m guessing you’ll have the same reaction. I loved the classical references and the use of the legend of Hercules to weave the plot. If you love who-done-its, then this is a book for you.

The Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin

Saints of the Shadow Bible is Ian Rankin’s nineteenth novel featuring John Rebus, an aging and cantankerous police detective in Scotland.  Rebus retired at the mandatory age of sixty then went back to work in a cold case unit.  Now he is back in the Criminal Investigation Unit, CID at the rank of sergeant, where he began thirty odd years earlier.  He is constantly reminded that he is lucky any commander will have him due to his total disregard for authority and his old school methods. But his keen investigation skills and his love of the hunt continues to make him relevant in a modern crime solving unit.

Rebus is assigned to investigate an auto accident involving Jessica, the daughter of a wealthy businessman.  Evidence found at the scene suggests the girl was not the car’s driver.  He learns her boyfriend is son of a prominent politician and her flat mate, Alice is the niece of a common criminal… his imagination kicks in.  A couple days later the politician is found bludgeoned to death in his home which is near the accident site.  Rebus is not assigned to the murder but as he digs into the accident, he becomes convinced the two cases are tied together.  Jessica’s father arrives and limits Rebus’s access to Jessica but he keeps digging into the activities of Alice and her uncle until other crimes are discovered and are connected to the car crash.

Meanwhile, Scotland is considering retracting the double jeopardy law which will allow a defendant to be tried a second time for a crime even if found not guilty in the first trial.  This causes the Solicitor General of Scotland to begin reinvestigating a murder from thirty years earlier.  Billy Saunders was acquitted of killing a man and the police were suspected of withholding evidence.  The rogue police were part of a close knit group calling themselves Saints of the Shadow Bible.  They were notorious for manipulating and creating evidence to convict and spare criminals of their choosing.  Rebus had just begun his career and was starting to be accepted by the Saints when they disband.  Rebus managed to distance himself from the group and enjoyed a long career in the CID.  Now the Solicitor General has sent Malcolm Fox to investigate.  Rebus is assigned to his team but isn’t sure if he is a suspect or is deemed helpful to rousting his old pals.  But Rebus is all about finding the truth, no matter what and his methods often offend those in authority.  Fox learns from Rebus… both what to do and what not to do… and a mutual respect is founded.

Saints of the Shadow Bible is classic John Rebus.  His obsession to find the truth regardless of the consequences to himself, his friends or his superiors borders on personally disorder.  This has cost him his family, many friendships, and any chance at advancement but at the end of his career, all he wants to do is more of the same… if they’ll have him.   A great read!  

Gone to Sea in a Bucket by David Black

Harry Gilmour is a university student up on the Scotland-Britain border at the time of Britain’s entry into WWII. He volunteers (as opposed to enlisting) to the navy because he had some pretty extensive experience as crew on some ocean-going yachts. As a volunteer, his RNVR rank is a sub-lieutenant, his uniform also has a wavy ring around its sleeve. According to the RN (Royal Navy, the real sailors), he is ‘wrong class, wrong country, and wrong bloody ring on his sleeve.” His first assignment is on HMS Redoubtable, a WWI battleship that is still serviceable, where he oversees a damage control party. The first action has Redoubtable lobbing shells over a mountain between two Norwegian fjords. In an after-action gathering, the RN boys are hassling the sub-lieutenants and Harry stands his ground firm. This catches the eye of Peter Dumaresq, a Flag Lieutenant to a Rear Admiral. He is looking for a few good men.

The submarine corps in the late 1930s was looked upon by some snoots in the RN as being downright un-British. No self-respecting RN would sneak up on the enemy. But Peter offers Harry entry into a special navigation course, which Harry soon learns is a quick path to submarines.

Harry is a quick study, and he knows his way around docking procedures-ropes and knots, etc. He is assigned to the HMS Pelorus where he is in charge of processing a bunch of range, heading, depth, currents, and more necessary to help the captain determine when and where to fire his torpedoes. Their first patrol offers a juicy target and Harry handles his role well. Well enough for a couple RNs to accept him in as though he were a true RN. On the return voyage, a transport ship accidentally rams the Pelorus. One of his new best friends, one of the RNs, is critically wounded, but Harry manages to free him from the doomed sub and drag his to the surface and eventual recovery. The word gets out. Harry is one of ‘them’ now.

After a couple weeks of R&R from his own minor wounds, he is reassigned to another sub, which the crew (and only the crew) call ‘The Bucket’ instead of its formal French-themed name. Their new patrol is to work their way around Norway and gather information about a German presence at a Russian port. The thought is that Germany might launch an invasion of Iceland in order to control shipping lanes in the North Atlantic. Proof they find, but the captain makes the decision to engage the enemy and make the port unusable.

Author Black is a UK journalist by trade and his presentation is tight with a gritty reality of the horrors of war within the confinement of a claustrophobic tube (if you liked the movie Das Boot, you'll love this). Over half the book is inside the various subs of this dawn of the submarine warfare era. His research uncovered the minutiae of 50-60 men crammed into a tight space forcing comraderies that might not have occurred on the surface.

As with most new authors (to me), I had to work through Black’s style, which was a bit stiff and formal that was probably the way of the Brits 70+ years ago (we may both speak English, but we all know that UK-English is considerably different from US-English). This was one of the times where I appreciated using a Kindle because I had to use its dictionary on numerous occasions for British and Navy slang with which I was unfamiliar. There was an ebb and flow to the story where the tension on the subs was palatable, but when on R&R, the pace relaxed so we could get a glimpse of how Harry’s family life led him to his current responsibility. This isn’t Red October. The equipment was archaic by Clancy’s standards, but the story, especially during combat, was riveting. If you like WWII books and submarine-based stories, this one is a winner.

ECD

Cross Justice

This is the 23^rd novel in the Alex Cross series by the indefatigable James Patterson. In Cross Justice, Alex goes home to Starksville, North Carolina for the first time in 35 years. His hometown has so many unpleasant memories that he’s avoided going there, but he’s called back to help out with his cousin’s troubles. Stefan Tate, a physical education teacher, was accused of raping one of his high school female students, and then sodomizing and murdering one of his male students. The evidence against him is overwhelming. The book begins with a murder in Florida by a cross-dresser – so how could that tie into the events in North Carolina?

This was one of Patterson’s action-packed, can’t-put-it-down novels. Sorry for the clichés, but they work for this book. Patterson involves Alex’s entire extended family including his wife, three kids, grandmother, aunt, and multiple cousins. There are great bad guys. I thought the plot worked very well until about the 95% mark of the book, right until the final family mystery was revealed. Those of us who love this genre must be willing to suspend our attachment to reality, but sometimes the stretch that takes goes a bit too far. So, while loving the courtroom drama that brings this book to a climax, I found myself saying, “Oh, come on! Really?” If you read this one, I promise you’ll be entertained.

Falklands Revenge

The Falkland Islands are nearly 800 small islands located about 300 miles from the southern end of Argentina. The islands were uninhabited when discovered by British explorers in 1690. Various countries claimed ownership over the years, but the Brits took control again as of 1833 although the Argentinians continued to make their claim of the islands which they call the Malvinas. Today, the population is around 3,000 people. Located in the South Atlantic, the islands lie on the boundary of the subantarctic oceanic and tundra climate zones. In other words, the weather is nearly always brutal.

As Charles Evans, the author of Falklands Revenge, notes the land is good for sheep and penguins, and not much else. When I visited there a few years ago, making a one-day stop on a cruise ship, the weather was relatively mild, and I thought at the time that this particular destination should not be on anyone’s bucket list of places they should visit. The islands had some geographic importance as a naval and commercial resupply station until the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 after which its importance faded and the islands were left to its few inhabitants, sheep, and of course, the penguins. Oil exploration is going on all over the South American archipelago and with that, the islands may have more value. A territorial dispute between England and Britain continued, and it erupted in 1982 when Argentina invaded and attempted to reassert its control. The war lasted from April to June when Britain kicked the Argentina invaders back to Rio.

The author was a 17-year-old member of the British Navy at the time of the Argentine invasion. Although Falklands Revenge reads like a nonfiction account of the war, it is actually Evans debut novel. It is written from the perspective of Royal Marine Sergeant Harry Glass, who was the only soldier to have survived what was essentially an assassination of four soldiers who had surrendered to the Argentine forces while on a covert mission. Glass only survived because he was trapped under the dead body of one of his colleagues. As the title suggests, this was a story of his revenge. That’s really about all I can tell you about the book. There was a basic “Dragnet” like quality to the dialogue. Although it was a war novel, the account of the action was overly detailed and I thought the story was advancing painfully slowly until I abandoned the effort at the 20% mark of the book. By then, it had simply not grabbed my interest enough to keep me involved.

Hostage by Kristina Ohlsson

October 10, 2011.

Four phone calls are received at Sabo, the Swedish state security service: a library, a government building, a department store, and the central train station are to be bombed. Sabo's counterterrorism unit is headed by the very intense Eden Lundell, recently hired away from the UK. Alex Recht is a Stockholm detective in the National Bureau of Investigation. Fredrika Bergman used to work for Alex in the police department but has since moved over to the Justice Department form the core of the investigative team; Swedish intelligence agencies know how to cooperate.

Zakaria Khelifi, an Algerian with Swedish residency, has appeared on Sabo's radar for a peripheral association with a known terrorist. The evidence is less than circumstantial, but enough for him to be detained and possibly deported. Bad timing because Parliment is set to debate the immigration issue that afternoon.

Four calls, four bombs to detonate on the quarter hour, disguised female voices, different cell phones, but all from roughly the same area near the airport. Just another gray autumn day in Stockholm . . . four false alarms. Tomorrow shouldn't be so bad.

October 11, 2011
Alex's son Erik is late, rushing to the airport. He is scheduled to be the co-pilot on SAS 573 non-stop Stockholm to New York for 400 Swedes and Americans. The flight captain is Karim Sassi, is a fav of the flight attendants and a highly respected captain, too. Lots of bad weather over New York so Karim asks for an additional five hours of fuel loaded in case they have to circle somewhere over the Atlantic.

Right after takeoff, the purser brings a note found in the 1st class lavatory to the captain. A bomb has been planted. The US government must close the Tennyson Cottage (one of those detention centers in Afghanistan) and the Swedes must release Zakaria Khelifi before the plane lands. Any deviation and the bomb will be detonated. Give the length of the flight plus the five hours of extra fuel, the authorities stil have limited time to figure out what to do.

What neither side will do is negotiate with the terrorists. Both sides must work together, but are hesitant to reveal too much to the other. The best option is for an emergency landing somewhere along the flight path, but Karim has flat out refused to vary from the terrorist's directions.

The investigation jumps from Zakaria's neighbors and acquaintances to Karim to the US security apparatus to the bomb threats to Germany to the note and other minor tidbits that may or may not be important that lead to an ending twist that I dare say no reader will have anticipated.

This is Ohlsson's 4th novel and I am absolutely positive that I will find a way to get #s 1-3. Ohlsson is one talented writer with expert experience in European intelligence units. Hostage is a relentless and breathless sprint over the duration of the flight to find out the who and the why of this horrific act. Start this when you have no pending interruptions. You'll be grabbed by Ohlsson's firm hand, dragged back and forth across the landscape of Stockholm, the escalating tension inside flight 573, and the unyielding pressure of the Americans desparate to avoid a 2nd 9/11. Expect bruises.

In brief . . . this novel kicks serious butt.

ECD