The White Darkness

 The White Darkness by David Grann is a nonfiction work about Henry Worsley, an explorer of Antarctica. Worsely had a lifelong fascination with the exploration of Antarctica, especially the efforts of Ernest Shakleton in the first decade of the 20^th century. When an opportunity arose for Worsley to join one such expedition, he jumped at the opportunity. Remarkably, his wife always supported those wishes. The book details the hardships that were faced by the explorers. Then, Worsley led a second expedition of three men who were able to cross the continent. Finally, in 2015, he chose to attempt a solo crossing. 

I recall the news about Worsley’s solo journey. It lasted for 77 days, and like Shakleton whose team had gotten within 97 miles of the South Pole before they turned back due to a shortage of supplies, Worsley abandoned the effort not long before it would have been completed. He knew he was done and used his satellite phone to call for his evacuation. However, in the process of the rescue, it was determined that he had contracted peritonitis. He was flown to Puerto Arenas and was hospitalized, but his body was so badly deteriorated, he did not survive.

 

This was a great story. It was a rather short audiobook, only about three hours. If real life adventures catch your interest, the work of David Grann is for you.

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

 The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder was written by David Grann. The book should be labeled as historical fiction, but given the research done by Grann and the wealth of information he had to read, it should essentially be considered nonfiction, except of course for the dialogue that was created to help the story along. In 1740, a large flotilla of ships left England and headed for the Caribbean to do battle with Spanish ships, but five of those ships were on a secret mission. Five of them peeled off from the flotilla and headed south. Their assignment was to steal whatever they could from Spanish ships, especially one that was loaded with gold and silver as it returned from robbing the Incas and Aztecs. They were to find their way through the Straits of Magellan, enter the Pacific, and perhaps eventually complete a circumnavigation. The Wager was the main warship in this secret group. Things went well until they got to the Straits of Magellan and were in the neighborhood of Cape Horn. They encountered hurricane force conditions and simply could not pierce through the horrible weather. They were lost and initially did not know they had actually entered the Pacific. Given the fierce weather, they had been unable to take bearings for weeks. Many lives were lost in the process, especially as the sailors began to suffer from scurvy and typhus. 

It turns out they got gotten through the Straits and were beached on a Chilean island which they named after their ship. As indicated by the subtitle, as the result of their debilitation and starvation, some of the crew mutinied against the officers, and those officers were abandoned on shore. A portion of the crew did eventually make it back to England, but the survivors told different stories about the cruelty of the officers. It was less than 80 men who survived from a crew that started with about 500 men. The officers were generally forgiven for their actions, and some of the sailors were hung as a penalty for mutiny.

 

I’ve always been fascinated by stories of sailing during the Age of Exploration, and this one meets that criteria. It’s hard today to imagine the suffering that the sailors incurred. Added to the issue of exploration was the colonization that was occurring especially by Spain, England, and Portugal. This was a very good story and I immediately downloaded another book by Grann which will be reviewed next.

Demolition Angel

 Robert Crais published Demolition Angel in 2000, but it’s one of his books that I missed until now. This is the novel in which he introduced Carol Starkey, a bomb technician for the LAPD. It was before the current story that Starkey was blown up while she was defusing a bomb when LA was hit by a relatively small earthquake. The earthquake produced enough of a jolt to set off the bomb. Carol’s heart actually stopped beating in response to the explosion, but EMT’s were able to get her heart started again and it saved her life. However, she was still badly damaged both physically and emotionally. Her partner had been killed in the explosion and she had a bad case of survivor’s guilt. She immediately began drinking to great excess. She was also addicted to cigarettes, consuming more than three packs per day. She sought therapy but was already on her fourth therapist after about two years of trying.

 

Meanwhile Carol was back on the job, usually successfully hiding the depression and anxiety with which she struggled. She had become a loner, and she was too damaged physically to consider dating again. She could not tolerate the idea of someone seeing her naked and actually touching her many ugly scars.

 

Crais described how unique were the people who became bombers and that despite the danger, the bomb techs also became addicted to their jobs. A new master bomber appeared on the scene, and he referred to himself as Mr. Red. He was exceedingly clever and impossible to trace, and then he was responsible for blowing up another one of Carol’s technical mates.

 

This was an eerie story about eerie people. Starkey was one of Crais’ best protagonists as he described her emotional attempts to deal with her injuries and her longing for a relationship she was too afraid to pursue. The ending to this plot was particularly gripping. This is another great work by Crais and it gets my strongest recommendation.

L.A. Requiem

 My blog notes indicate I read L.A. Requiem by Robert Crais in about 2009 when we first put this blog together, and ECD provided a great review of the novel in 8/2010. So 15 years later, I had no recall of the book until I picked it up, and was once again knocked out by Crais’ story. I refer you to ECD’s review, just search for it. The cast of characters, especially Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, was fantastic and the plot was riveting. This just might be Crais at his very best.

The Middleman

 The Middleman is the fourth novel by Mike Papantonio that I’ve reviewed in this blog, and I’ve given the author high praise for his earlier works, all of which had lawyer Nick “Deke” Deketomis as his protagonist. This novel is another great story with Deke, his Florida law firm, and a successful sociopath, Connor Devlin. Out of the blue, Deke was requested that he look into the family business by one of his law school classmates, Matt Redmond, who was concerned about the business being taken over by a character, Devlin, who he no longer trusted. The family business was a pharmaceutical company. Having been started by Matt’s grandfather as a successful chain of pharmacies, the company had evolved into a pharmacy benefit manager, PBM. Essentially, they were a middleman, the go-between that connected drug manufacturers, medical insurance companies, retail pharmacies, and consumers. Essentially, the PBM had a role in controlling the price of drugs, and in this case, it was insulin that was at issue. Devlin was driving up the cost of insulin and was using illegal means to do so. He was a charismatic man who successfully charmed everyone until they were in too deep to extricate themselves from his scheme. From a consumer point of view, the cost of insulin was being pushed beyond the means of many. Deaths were occurring within the companies that offered any resistance to Devlin’s plans.

 As he explained the reality of PBMs, the author presented a great cast of characters. The reader should know that PBMs are a reality which controls what medications insurance companies will authorize for reimbursement. There were family dynamics that were believably presented. Devlin was both a narcissist and a sociopath. As a psychoanalyst, I found myself reviewing the many people with character pathology that I interviewed and treated over the course of my career. I’ve known narcissists who were not sociopaths, but I’ve not known a sociopath who was not a narcissist.

 

The author brings this story about the trauma caused by this narcissistic sociopath to a satisfactory conclusion. The plot was well presented, so once again, Mr. Papantonio has created a story that gets my strongest recommendation.

Rapino/Amato by Charlie Stella

Charlie Stella has 10 crime novels, mostly based in various locales of the general NY city area, but elsewhere on occasion. For #11, he takes us eventually to the Rockies, mostly in and around Bozeman, MT. He’s taking bit of a risk by trading in the canyons of NYC for the mountains, but don’t let that bother you. Charlie is still Charlie - a superb storyteller, no matter where the story is based.

Charlie brings back this stone killer from Italy who featured prominently in his previous outing, Joey Piss Pot. In Joey, Charlie told his story with a bit of a wink given the frick and frack back and forth of the two main characters. Not this time. Stella's all business, keeping the yucks at a minimum. Giovanni Rapino, on the other hand, knows his place. He’s a hitman. Do the job, get out. If caught, clam up, do the time. At the end of Joey, Rapino was sent to Big Sandy, a KY prison of some note, to serve a seven-year sentence.

He's two years into his sentence when he is surprisingly transferred to a federal prison camp in SD. Compared to Big Sandy, this camp is a vacation. But only for a couple days when he is scheduled to meet with a Fed. No clue why until the Fed delivers the pitch: your history is perfect for our needs . . . work for us, go undercover, infiltrate a developing cartel operation in MT, gather intel, report back (frequently). Once the cartel finds out that MT isn’t good for business, the feds will set Rapino free and tear up his record. And if Rapino refuses? He gets a 1-way ticket back to Big Sandy. Rapino may not be totally sold, but it beats prison.

The cartels aren’t dumb. If he gets a foot in the door, the cartels will check him out. The Feds set him up with a new identity and a backstory dating back to Italy. Bye bye, Giovanni Rapino. Hello, Ruggiero (Reggie) Amato.

Amato heads off for Bozeman. At a Yankton, SD truck stop, he and a waitress, Brenda Lee of LA, find something in each other that clicks. She’s got no tie to Yankton and joins Amato on his way to Bozeman. They find a place to stay, she finds a waitressing job and Amato steps out to get the cartel’s attention. Which he does when he kills on the cartel’s advance men.

Stella takes us in and out of the lives of Brenda Lee and Reggie, the overbearing Feds, the various cartel scum, not to mention some rumblings back in NYC about the whereabouts of Gio/Reggie and the remnants of Joey Piss Pot that needed resolution, not to mention the fish out of water behavior of cartel, Feds, and mob personnel vs. the locals native to the outback of mostly rural Montana. Be prepared for a steady diet of coffee and cigarettes to go with the back-and-forth negotiations and threats that accompany this mix of cultures.

Strangers in a strange land, right? Plus, what’s a CI to do? Once he’s done the job for the Feds, that included elimination of any number of cartel members, he’s got to look out for himself and Brenda Lee. Always the chance the Feds may turn on him as a loose end that needs to go away.

Have no fear, children. Charlie won’t let you down. Count on him to take you on a complex and convoluted journey of promises, betrayals, and setups, of how a good guy (no matter what his history) and his girl juggle multiple players against each other as they claw their way out of all the messes presented. If Charlie wasn't an author extraordinaire, he'd be a master juggler able to keep all manner of weapons and chainsaws aloft.  In the meantime, this mismatched twosome manages to find copius opportunities to crawl all over each other in the sack, horndogs that they are. 

But look at it this way. Rapino/Amato can also be viewed as a criminal take on a romance novel (without the long haired buff blond guy riding a horse on the cover). Two broken people of disparate backgrounds, meet, fall in love, and overcome some unconscionable obstacles. 

Charlie, are you going soft on us?

Anyway, boys and girls, that is how you get and stay at the top of my power rotation of authors. Find any of his books. You'll learn quickly why I'm hooked.

 

ECD

Battle Mountain by C.J. Box

 

Nate Romanowski has lost everything… his wife, his business, his self-respect, his belief in government.  While Joe and Mary Beth Pickett agree to foster Nate’s young daughter and Sheridan Pickett takes over his falconry business, Nate goes off the grid to recharge and plan revenge against his nemesis Axel Soledad.  Soledad and his anarchist buddies are planning an attack on a group of power brokers and high ranking politicians who meet each year at a lodge in Wyoming called Battle Mountain. (Apparently something similar to this really happens.)  Nate tracks Soledad to this meeting point.  Meanwhile, much to Joe’s apprehension, Wyoming Governor Rulon has a special assignment for Joe.  Seems the governor’s son in law, an up and coming IT wizard and therefore, a soft, desk jokey has taken the governor’s challenge to shadow a well-known elk hunting guide in an effort to toughen up.  The governor panics when his son in law and the hunting guide disappear in the wilderness.  Joe is assigned to quietly find them.  Coincidently (a little too so) and unknowingly, Joe and Nate are separately headed to the same destination, Battle Mountain where things are sure to ‘get western.’

Great book. Great story telling. Great suspense.

I was fortunate to attend C.J.’s book tour session at the St. Louis County Library where Box visits annually to promote his latest completed work.  I think he said this was the sixteen time.  I’m always amazed how loyal and intense his fans are.  They call him out on every minute detail and encourage him to include more Nate Romanowski involvement.  Decked out in his black cowboy hat and shiny boots, he takes it all in stride with his calm cowboy demeanor.