The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly

LA crime stories and Michael Connelly must be synonymous. A history of first rate stuff with high expectations by the reader and I haven't been let down yet.

His main character is Harry Bosch of the LAPD, but he has another player, too. A senior crime reporter for the LA Times newspaper. In this story, 'senior' means high salaried and expendable in an era of cost conscious newspaper owners. Jack McEvoy is on the 30 list, to be pink slipped, RIF'ed, but not until he trains his young (and cheaper) replacement and he has 2 weeks to do it, so this story flies right along.

Jack receives a call from a woman in Watts who says her 16yo boy did not commit a murder up in Santa Monica. After the most cursory glance at the case, Jack decides this might just be the big bang for his departure: saving a minor from a false charge.

Carver is the computer whiz kid who is in charge of data safety at a Mesa, AZ data farm and it's his job to stop intruders from getting inside. Get the name of the book now? He and a co-worker have quite the hobby. Chasing down innocent women, torturing, raping, then suffocating and stuffing them in a car trunk. Our 16yo kid Winslow ran off with a car not knowing a body was in the trunk.

Jack and his newbie cub reporter Angela sniff out little clues to Winslow's innocence, but Angela stumbles onto what appears to be a dead end website called TrunkMurder.com. This site alerts Carver that someone has picked up the trail. Jack goes to Vegas to interview a guy in prison for a very similar murder where Carver's partner makes an attempt on Jack, but Carver goes to LA and does way more than make an attempt on Angela.

Jack and Rachel, his former girlfriend and FBI agent (how convenient) are now on the trail trying to piece together bits of information to the killer's identity. They eventually get to Mesa and the eventual showdown with the resident evil genius, Carver. The Times keeps Jack on the story, smelling a Pulitzer when it all breaks.

Honestly, Connelly has never failed to deliver for me. His stories are rich in detail and character development. We feel McEvoy's pain at being fired and his possibilities for the future, Angela's excitement at her first big story, other people at the Times coming to grips with the changes in print journalism, Carver's genius and planning plus why he seems to be the way he is, the fear of those facing Carver at his worst. Great stuff. Not to be missed. No wonder it's still on some best seller lists. A+ in my book.

East Coast Don

p.s. the reference above to '30' is from old newspaper copy where '30' was placed at the end of the text to indicate the story was complete. To be on the 30 list meant a reporter was due to be fired.

Critical Mass by Whitley Strieber

My wife found this book on the discount rack at Barnes and Noble. A book with a 2009 copyright already in the discount bin made me think it's the print version of a direct to DVD release. He wrote the book that the movie The Day After Tomorrow was based on so I think he has some end of the world thing going.

The story sort of centers around Jimmy Deutsch who is one of those unseen contractors that follows up leads on radioactive materials that might be made into a bomb. A group of children smuggled in from Mexico were left on the streetside in a small town in Texas with signs of radiation sickness. Our hero goes down there and tries to trace the material to its destination. He manages to follow the stuff through Texas to Colorado to a tiny airfield in Nevada and then needs to get to a military base. While in the air in a little prop plane over southern Nevada, a nuclear bomb is set off over Las Vegas. He was too late.

Inshalla is a tres secret, shadowy organization of radical Muslims headed by a man who is said to have the spirit of the prophet Mohammed within him. Apparently this spirit moves from person to person throughout time. For years, the faithful have been planning to cut off the head of the great Satan, plunging the world into chaos and anarchy. Islam will then come in and save the world with a new world order based on fundamental Islam. They have infiltrated the highest levels of US security so that Deutsch is thwarted at every turn by our own intelligence network.

After Las Vegas meets its end, the clues suggest that Washington is next, but circumstances delay the DC strike and the next city to get nuked is Rome in an attempt to silence the Catholic Church. DC is then next, but the bad guys have to get through Deutsch first.

This book runs through Texas, Colorado, Nevada, Northern Mexico, Washington, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, Italy, London...quite the tour. I can't say I really enjoyed this book. Strieber seems to use some of the same trite plotting techniques that Dan Brown uses to keep the story moving at a breakneck pace. While the world's political and economic systems are on the verge of collapse, our hero saves the day on the streets of Alexandria, VA. (yawn). The plot just seems too grandiose and elaborate to ever happen.

I looked at his website (www.UnknownCountry.com) and there seemed to be stuff about aliens. Hmmm. this guy may be out there a bit. Won't be bookmarking this guy any time soon.

East Coast Don

The Apostle by Brad Thor

Like Pelecanos, Brad Thor (visit www.BradThor.com. it's about the coolest website for an author I've ever seen) is part of my power rotation and I would be hard pressed to find his latest lacking. Every one has been a winner (no joke, e v e r y one). Thor introduced his key character, Scot Harvath in Lions of Lucern where he rescues a kidnapped president. His subsequent thrillers have been no less exciting and I eagerly await each new arrival. His summer release is The Apostle - operatives who, in the name of country, have gone beyond being a true believer in their love and commitment to country and should be called an Apostle.

America has a new president whose goal is to make the US a member of the world community and not the bully policeman of the post cold war (sound familiar? guessing Thor is a card carrying Republican). As part of the revamping, the president's personal anti-terrorist army headed by Harvath is dismantled. The president is in office largely due to the financial and moral support of Stephanie Gallo, a filthy rich newspaper mogul. Stephanie's daughter is a physician doing humanitarian work in Afghanistan and gets kidnapped by the Taliban because they realize the connection to Washington. The ransom is a high ranking Al Qaeda operative being held by the Afghan government. Momma Gallo wants the president to go against US policy and negotiate her daughter's release. If not, she will use her position in the media to reveal the president's role in a cover up of a car accident during the campaign that killed 4 locals up on Long Island. Problem is that a secret service agent overhears the threat. Forced into a corner, the president asks Harvath to do that voodoo that he do so well.

Of course, the US government will have nothing to do with the mission and Ms. Gallo pays for the whole thing. Using old colleagues in the anti-terrorist underground working 'security' in Kabal, Harvath hatches a plan not to exchange Dr. Gallo for the Al Qaeda boss, but to grab the terrorist from government prison and keep him on ice then follow the trail to Dr. Gallo and rescue her while handing the bad guy off to the CIA for a little debriefing.

As with all good thrillers, plans never go as anticipated. Harvath and crowd repeatedly have to improvise with the help of the Canadian version of the Airborne Rangers and the massive firepower that comes with the territory . . . and they are really good.

There actually are two parallel stories going on. Harvath's rescue of Dr. Gallo and the secret service agent tracking digging into the car wreck that happened during the campaign. In some ways, I actually liked the agent's investigation over Harvath's mission. When the facts come to light and the president is confronted, the outcome could go any number of ways.

I am a fan of Thor's work. The stories are believable and realistic, rich in detail, atmosphere, and body count. He reserves high praise for the honor, integrity, and courage of the ordinary Afghan, most of whom hate both the Taliban and Al Qaeda. His description of Afghan life and society brings insights into the tribal loyalties that NBC Nightly News never gets close to. The book starts off in the fast lane and explodes into high gear in Afghanistan. The reader is tempted to speed read and turn the pages faster just to see what is next. No kidding, it's that good. In the world of political thrillers, Thor may not be in a class by himself, but it sure doesn't take long to call the roll.

East Coast Don

p.s. for all the latest in the Thriller writing biz, visit www.ThrillerWriters.org

The Bridge of Sighs by Olen Steinhauer

The is my 2nd Steinhauer book, having recently posted an enthusiastic statement on his most recent book The Tourist. As stated then, Steinhauer has a series of post WWII books, set as 1/decade. I decided to go in order and this is the first. I thought the Cold War series would be espionage, but this was a murder mystery set in an un-named slavic Iron Curtain country. It took me maybe 50-75 pages to get going with this book, but once I got all the characters in place in my mind, this was a real page turner; even for his first novel, this showed a talent in the making.

Eastern Europe is struggling with its new identity after WWII. Three years after the war, cities are still bombed out shells, families are starving, gypsies wander the streets, with prostitutes, snitches, and crimes against property rampant. Emil Brod is a 22yo new graduate of the Police Academy wanting to be assigned to homicide and gets assigned to the capital. He lives with his grandparents. His parents were war casualties and his grandparents harbor significant resentment toward the Russians. An informant looking for some favorable treatment tells the police that the government is placing a spy in the ranks of the militia right before Emil is assigned, so when you-know-who joins the homicide squad, he is shunned, harassed, and hazed during his first weeks almost to the point of quitting.

Desperate for his first case, his chief gives has him investigate the murder of a composer of patriotic music who was beaten beyond recognition and his apartment torn apart. Shortly after, the apartment superintendent is found in the same condition, floating in the river. After talking with everyone in the building, Inspector Brod heads for the country to see the wife. Turns out they were separated, soon to be divorced. She is reasonably well off and mostly supported her husbands lifestyle and whoring in the capital. Needless to say Emil takes a shine to the damsel in distress. She has been visited by persons unknown for an item her husband had, but she has no clue. The item is a photograph of a rising party member, soon to be elevated to the politburo.

Brod follows some clues from the capital to Berlin where it turns out the composer led a double life with a lover who runs a transvestite club. This raging queen gives Emil some clues that take Emil to the American sector and an underground bunker of old Nazi records the Allies are cataloguing. Turns out the politburo-to-be member has a dark past, working both sides of the war depending on who was winning. He was an informant for the Gestapo, a hero of Mother Russia killing Germans by the dozens (including an entire squad of teenage German volunteers) and the photo shows him receiving the Iron Cross from a Gestapo Colonel; a photo that the composer was using for extortion. The photo is not good publicity for a rising influential member of the party whom most think is a hero of mother Russia so this murdering war opportunist is trying to cover up tracks and destroy evidence.

Any experienced reader of mysteries can guess the end - the politburo guy ends up on trial and sentenced to death, Brod gets the girl and is accepted by his squad coworkers, grandfather opens up about an atrocity committed on his wife, and the Gestapo Colonel dies the death of a pauper.

In some ways, this was sort of a variation on the same theme of A Few Good Men - a viscous crime, the request by the government for a rookie to investigate and the green recruit solving the crime even though higher-ups now want him off the case. Steinhauer paints a picture of Eastern Europe in the midst of the post-war struggle with Russia emerging as their not-so-benevolent policeman. The desperation of the proles (proletariat) attempting to find their way in the new collectivism is a background that most readers of commercial US mystery should find both fascinating and heartbreaking. What men will do to hide their past and gain political power wells up from items hidden behind a refrigerator to the parlors of future power brokers. If this was life as it really was in the late 1940's, it's a miracle that some semblance of a society emerged.

East Coast Don

In The Electric Mist by James Lee Burke

In this weeks foray into modern fiction, I actually started off with something called Brighton Rock by Graham Greene, a mid 20th century British mystery writer. Can't recall how I found out about this book, but it delved into the mind of a 17yo Brighton gang member as the world was coming out of WWII. Pinky was pure evil according to some post I read, what one reader thought Hitler might have been as a teenager. Now this wasn't 'fiction' as much as it was 'literature' and I must not have the right mindset for literature (I fought and struggled to get through Madame Bovary a few years ago), so after about 100 pages, I put it down and returned to comfort food - modern US crime fiction.

The full title is actually In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead. Burke takes us to New Iberia parish in rural Louisiana and his main character, police Lt. David Robicheaux. Now Robicheaux has a typical character history . . . high school baseball player of some note, college, a tour in Vietnam, 15yr on the New Orleans PD, a long deep tour with the bottle, then downsizing to New Iberia Parish with his 3rd wife and adopted daughter. Coming home one evening, he pulls over a careening Caddy driven by a Hollywood star and his girlfriend. Seems a civil war movie is being filmed nearby and everyone in town is sucking up to the Hollywood money trough. But Dave arrests the guy and now has to deal with city hall, the chamber of commerce and everyone else with a vested interest in Hollywood's millions. But the movie star takes a shine to Dave as Dave tries to drag our star, kicking and screaming, into sobriety.

Years ago, at dusk one evening, a 17yo Dave witnessed 2 white guys lynch a black man and it has stayed with him; a mid 1960's lynching was a low priority in rural Louisiana. Today, Dave's case involves the mutilation of 2 young prostitutes that just could have a connection to that old lynching.

Seems that anyone with a fat checkbook willing to finance a movie can move up the mogul ladder. A high school baseball teammate of Dave's is doing just that. Julie "Baby Feet" Balboni is a local thug who has managed to stay clean with the law because he gets other low life types to do his bidding. 'Feet' is helping finance the movie and everywhere he seems to go, people end up assaulted, shot at, or dead. Dave is sure that the mutilations are connected to 'Feet' but can't prove it. The FBI (Fart, Barf and Itch) is brought in and a feisty Latino lady partners up with Dave.

Our star is an odd duck. Says he's been seeing in the mists around the bayous, a company of what appears to be confederate soldiers. Everyone thinks, yeah, just another drunk's delusions. But after Dave's Dr. Pepper gets doctored with LSD at a picnic thrown by the movie's producer, Dave sees them, too and the apparitions of General John Bell Hood and company, both haunt and direct him closer to the real culprits behind the lynching and the mutilations.

This is my first Burke novel (http://www.jamesleeburke.com/) and I had read commentary about his work, thinking it might be fun. And it was, but not just on the novel level. Burke fully describes the rural Louisiana life, some of which hasn't changed a lot in the last 100 years. You can dang near feel the heat and humidity suck the moisture right out of the trees. This is straightforward story telling, brash, crass, politically incorrect, and riveting. For the reader of the down and dirty rural, semi-redneck noir, Burke is a worthy exit off the freeway of current big city crime fiction.

I read a post that this book was optioned to Hollywood with Tommy Lee Jones to play Robicheaux (type casting if you ask me), so in my mind, the dialogue and visions of each scene contained TL Jones which brought the book even more to life. When I went to IMBD, I found out the movie had been released in April 2009. Now I follow the movies but can't recall this hitting the local theaters. I couldn't believe a TL Jones movie was a straight to video release. It's on the shelf on the back wall at Blockbuster. Strange. IMBD comments were that this movie (the 2nd Robicheaux film, the first was done in the early 90s with a miscast Alec Baldwin in the lead) was the most faithful to the book, so I'll probably rent it soon. Good cast, too. John Goodman as Baby Feet, Mary Steenbergen as Dave's wife, Levon Helms (former drummer for The Band) as General Hood, Ned Beatty as the old die hard of the community, and Buddy Guy as a blues musician. How did I miss this one?

If you decide to check out Robicheaux, read it with Tommy Lee Jones pictured in your head.

East Coast Don

update 27 June

Rented the movie tonight. Not great, not bad. The best part was always reliable Tommy Lee Jones, but as usual with any movie, some things from the book were dropped or left on the proverbial cutting room floor. Too bad that most of the parts with Robicheaux and General Hood didn't make it to the screen. Those were some of the best scenes in the book. It was OK, but having seen it, I'm not surprised it was a straight to DVD release. The 2 bucks at Blockbuster seemed about right.

The Dawn Patrol by Don Winslow

This was my second Don Winslow book, another donation by Boedeker who continues to read voluminously, but report meagerly (much like he handles his paycheck, except when he is in a brewery). This was a very fun and easy read. It is a murder mystery (and more), but it all happens locally for me – in San Diego, but especially in the area of Pacific Beach. It takes place within the surfing culture, so there are some stereotypic dudes, but is a fun look at the culture, the language, etc. But, you never take it too seriously until near the end when you realize there are some very sick crimes that are going on. The protagonist is Boone Daniels (how would that read on a library card?), a good guy dedicated to his own surfing, and doing as little private detective work as possible. Enough said – you’ll enjoy the brief time it takes to read this one, and I’m up for more Winslow.

West Coast Don

The Increment by David Ignatius

I read Enterainment Weekly's review of the book and thought it sounded reasonable. In the end, that was all it was...reasonable, nothing to shout about and glad when I was finally finished.

An ashamed young Iranian nuclear scientist decides to tell the west that yes, Iran is indeed working on details designed to develop a nuclear device. He goes to an anonymous computer, visits cia.gov and sends a cryptic note off to Langley.

The note lands in the Iran Operations Division on the lap of it's chief, Harry Pappas. Harry is a career covert ops type who soured on the policy makers when they ignored his advice during the Iraq war; ignored advice that ultimately led to the death of his son. Now he is a desk jockey with, if not the smoking gun, at least, the some smoke from the gun proving that Iran is developing a trigger for a bomb. While the info is good, Harry still wants to know more about his source and whether the data is accurate, a tease, or a plant by Iranian intelligence. Trouble is, policy makers in the Pentagon and White House think they have all they need to start the process that will eventually lead to war with Iran.

After Iraq, Harry doesn't trust his own agency and certainly not the suits across the Potomac, so he enlists the help of an old British friend high up in the UK intel biz. Together they hash out a plan to get their mysterious contact out of Iran so they can fully interrogate him to see if this is the real deal. To do so will require the use of a shadow unit called The Increment; a unit of modern day James Bond types, authorized to kill, but not to stand out in a tux, sipping martini saying "So sorry, old man." These are former special forces types, immigrants - arabs, pakis, eastern europeans, hispanics, you name it - with total commitment to Queen and country. They hide, become invisible, and live for the rush of covert operations.

The information passed to the CIA shows attempts, not successes, in making the trigger. Seems the Brits have a man selling the equipment to the Iranians that is doctored to fail, but in such a way that the Iranians can quite figure it out. Once the process starts to extract the reluctant scientist, the story jumps into a higher gear as The Increment carries out its extraction, then reinsertion and another extraction.

But, somehow, Iranian intelligence gets wind of the plot and intervenes in a most unfortunate way. In the subsequent after-action hand wringing, Harry figures out how the plan failed, but that the end result, a crippling of the Iranian nuclear program, was successful. Of course, Harry spills the details and quits as a bitter retiree who lost not only his son to policy wonks, but this young nuclear scientist to business vs. intelligence bickering.

As I started this book, I thought it had promise; trying to figure out who this random contact was and how to verify what he was saying. When The Increment came in, the story move right along, but it ended the way so many do, with a world-weary burnout suffering further losses and eventually quitting. In addition, I thought the author, a Washington Post columnist and author of 4-5 other spy novels, tried too hard to have poignant, flowery insights at the end of each chapter and ended up sounding trite. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B. I'd say C+ tops.

EC Don