Born to Run by Christopher Mcdougall

This is a non-fiction work recommended by our blog ghost, my nephew, Boedeker. He is not often seen or heard from, but occasionally, his spectral presence is felt.

Mcdougall’s premise is that were are literally born to run, not sit on the couch all weekend and watch NFL games while guzzling beer. He successfully writes himself into this semi-autobiographical work, and he includes a cast of remarkable characters that do ultra marathons. He gives the history of the very secretive group of Mexican Indians of the Sierra Madres, the Tarahumara who are known as unbelievable distance runners but who typically have no interest in showing up to prove it to anyone. They reluctantly allow the presence of El Caballo Blanco (the white horse) whose identity is eventually revealed to the reader. Mcdougall (and that is how he spells his name) brings in another cast of unique characters, but this is more than a book about running. He weaves in archeological information and eventually presents a new take on evolution based on skeletal and pulmonary ideas. He gives the history of ultra marathon running and builds the information on his various characters through that, starting with the Leadville 100. Also, he writes in detail about his opinion that Nike essentially used all of us runners as suckers, touting their shoes while causing an increased number of injuries. Here’s an observation I made after my last marathon. I have never gotten into a conversation with another runner without talking about injuries in the first several minutes. Mcdougall says that every runner gets injured multiple times every year, and it is only the rare one who does not get hurt. EC Don will agree with me since we are both mostly former runners who dealt with repeated injuries until we could not do it any more. The author was the same, but he gives us hope that a return to running, even ultra marathon running is possible. As a former runner, it is most exciting for me to identify with the writer and his struggles to overcome what seemed to be a permanent case of plantar fasciitis. The book ends with the race that El Caballo Blanco has dreamt of for many years, and Mcdougall plays out this true event out with great skill. The essence of the book is the love of running, not doing it for titles or money.

Nephew, I actually starting reading this with some concern since my inability to run for the last several years has been emotionally painful, and I thought it would dredge up some old frustrations and resentments. It did not do that, whatsoever. Thank you.

WC Don

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

Once again, Robert Langdon is the main character, and the plot for discovering the meaning of hidden symbols takes place in Washington, D.C., rather than Rome, like The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. The primary characters with whom Langdon interacts are a brother and sister, Peter and Katherine Solomon, who come from significant old money and political influence. The story revolves around the history of the Masonic Lodge and the fact that many of our founding fathers, including George Washington and Ben Franklin were Masons. According to Masonic beliefs, there are Ancient Mysteries that contain the knowledge of the ancients who knew all, but their knowledge was lost and forgotten by mankind or hidden by those who had kept the knowledge intact for the time when man was ready to know it. The good news about this book is that the first half was good in terms of holding my interest, and it will probably make a good movie. The bad news is that the second half of the book was uninteresting and too convoluted. Those who want to destroy the Ancient Mysteries in order to keep mankind from being enlightened do battle with Robert, Peter, Katherine, and others, including the CIA. Throughout, Brown lets it be known that some new information has been gleaned by the characters, but he holds out from delivering that information to the reader. My response was, once the information was revealed, was one of disappointment. The end of the book, for the taste of this atheist, had too much Bible and too much god. I would not have finished the book except for my OCD approach to most things. My advice – wait for the movie.

WC Don

The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins

Our REAL AUTHOR friend, Charlie Stella recommended this book that he thinks is not only one of the best of its genre ever, he also thinks it could be one of the best novels ever. Now I am not literate enough to make a statement like that, but I will say that this is one seriously good story. No kidding.

Eddie Coyle is due to go back to prison, but maybe he can cut a deal by exchanging information for some leniency. The story revolves around the various low life characters and crimes that frequent Eddie’s life. Really, that’s the story and Eddie isn’t even all that present as an upfront character. But you would be wrong if that doesn’t look interesting because Mr. Higgins seems to be the source of so much of what we see in today’s crime dialogue, plotting, and story telling.

Look at the authors we have posted here; books by Charlie Stella, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, Ken Bruen, Michael Connelly, T Jefferson Parker, and more. Look at the dialogue and economy of description and I dare you to say that you can’t see elements of the Higgins style. It’s a master class that has many students. I used to think one could point back to Dashell Hammitt’s Maltese Falcon, but that was different from this. Higgins’ pacing and dialogue kept me hammered to my seat. If all those people with their head stuffed in the latest Dan Brown book (including my son…WCDon expected because you do read other writers!) would read the Higgins’ novels recommended by our friend Stella, they might see how real dialogue is written (I did a little search on Dan Brown reviews and the common complaint is mind numbing dialogue). I found out first hand just why crime novels are continually compared to Higgins. Thanks to Mr. Stella for steering us in the right direction. Now to see the DVD to see how well/bad Hollywood treated it . . . and to read the other two Stella recommended Higgins books: Digger’s Game and Cogan’s Trade.

East Coast Don

The Renegades by T. Jefferson Parker

This was another book from Boedeker who seems to have a phobia about writing posts.

Parker’s cop/sleuth is Charlie Hood. (This guy chooses great names as in Hood for a cop and Laws for one of the bad guys.) Hood had a recent encounter that led him turning a rogue cop over to Internal Affairs, and as a result, he has chosen to leave the desired detective unit at the L.A. Sheriff’s Department (as opposed to LAPD), and take a transfer to the Antelope Valley, a place where he can be out of sight and out of mind by the main body of the department. Instead of being a detective, he’s back on patrol with a partner. The Renegades is a reference to a prior group of cops that had been good cops that were eventually turned by a couple bad guys, so the group was banned from further existence by the department. There are two primary bad guys in this one, an officer, Terry Laws, and a reserve officer, Coleman Draper. Draper is the one who wants to reestablish the Renegades, and he draws Laws into a deal in which they take over the delivery of substantial amounts of cash to a drug lord in Baja. To do that, they have to take the cash south of the border every Friday, but it nets each one of them about $7k for each trip. So, there is the tension between good cops trying to do bad things and bad cops trying to look okay and keep their side job going. There are tensions within each group as Hood is not always sure who he can trust and is not always ready to divulge what he knows to his superiors. You’ll have to read about the conflicts within the drug cartel and their doubts about their delivery boys. Of course, there is a beautiful DA with whom Hood interacts, and there are some other very interesting peripheral characters, some of whom float back and forth between the good and bad sides of the story. The ending was very well written – I did not see the final twists coming. This one is a good distraction – not great literature, but worth the read.

WC Don

The Hunted by Brian Haig

Brian Haig has a running series of legal mysteries set in the Army that follow Army smart aleck lawyer Sean Drummond, but this is not the latest in the Drummond series.

It’s the early 1990’s. The Soviet Union is teetering on the verge of collapse. Alex Kornevitch is a college student with an entrepreneurial spirit and a really sharp eye for making money . . . a whole shit load of money. He gets run out of college by the government because his capitalistic tendencies run counter to the old ways. Problem is that this golden boy is now the face of the new Russia and a target of the Russian Mafiya. To protect himself, he hires a former honcho from the KGB to be head of his security team. Probably his one bad decision.

Some communist holdovers work out a plan to discredit Alex and his wife, steal all his money and companies, kidnap and torture them before finally killing them as an example to others of his ilk; and just guess who is behind the plan . . . his head of security. But Alex is not only smart; he is a very quick thinker and manages to bluff his way to a position where he and his wife can escape, but where to? The old KGB network reach extends all over Europe and Asia. There’s always the USA.

Once in the US, Alex picks up where he left off, scoring big and leaving a bit of a trail that the KGB bad guys eventually find, but Alex manages to hide behind US legalities. In the meantime, the FBI director meets with Kremlin higher ups about placing a few more agents in Moscow to track the Mafiya in the US at its source in Russia. He is surprised to learn that the Russians are more than eager to allow this intrusion on their soil and suggests the FBI put an even larger force than the Director asks for with one catch – give us Alex Kornevitch.

The Director, through the immigration service, manages to put (notice I didn’t say ‘arrest’) Alex in prison on a technicality. But Alex is quite bright, managing to survive and even thrive no matter how deep a prison hellhole he is placed. In the end, we can’t wait to see Alex’s day in court and the eventual comeuppance to the FBI Director and the folks who attempted to bring Alex down.

Just because this isn’t a Sean Drummond novel doesn’t mean it’s to be skipped. I guess this could be called a political mystery-thriller. In the end, this is first-rate legal fiction easily on a par with John Grisham or Scott Turow, at least in my mind. The story is fast paced and the plotting is both ingenious and believable, partly because this is a fictionalized account of a real circumstance.

East Coast Don

Moscow Rules by Daniel Silva

This book officially starts my five months of a planned focus on Russian reading, in one form or another, both fiction and nonfiction, all aiming toward a visit there in July. Can’t wait.

For me, this is a re-read. The first time was 3 ½ years ago, in the early months of the blog, and then, I wrote little about the actual plot. At the start of this story, Gabriel Allon, the Israeli assassin has finally married his long-time lover and fellow agent, Chiara. They are on their honeymoon in Umbria, Italy, sequestered in a private estate where he is restoring another painting. When old time spymaster Ari Shamron learns about a plot involving the newly rich and powerful from Russia, the source of his information is a Russian reporter who will only tell all of what he knows to Allon. All it requires from Allon is a quick trip to the Vatican where a meeting has been arranged – just a momentary diversion from his honeymoon and the painting, but of course it does not turn out that way. Instead, in the middle of the Basilica of St. Peter, the reporter dies in Allon’s hands before he can reveal any information. Allon is enraged and, despite causing significant distress to Chiara, he abandons the honeymoon to pursue this matter. The Israeli’s learn through another back channel that the Russian tycoon and arms dealer, Ivan Kharkov, is planning to sell missiles to Al Qaeda. Maybe the sale has already gone through. The back channel is Kharkov’s wife who accidentally discovered her husband’s evil intent and found herself unable to live with the notion that she allowed it to occur. Of course, by betraying her brutal husband who has no real interest than profit and expanding his own empire, she puts her own life at risk. Silva paints a most horrible portrait of President Putin and the FSB, the security force that replaced the old KGB. The plot unfolds from there, and that’s all you need to know.

As usual, Silva’s character development is superb, and the plot is entirely believable – it does not require any suspension of belief to think this story could actually take place. It’s not impossible to put this book down and get a good night’s sleep, but it isn’t easy to do so. In this international spy thriller genre, Silva stands alone as the best contemporary author at his craft.

Re-read and re-posted on 2/9/13

the Kill Artist by Daniel Silva

You know that I think Daniel Silva is the best, so I’ll make this short since you know I think it is worth reading. Gabriel Allon, the art restorer, has been out of the intelligence operative game for a while, but he gets pulled back in to deal with a Palestinian zealot. It just so happens the guy played an important, very dark part part in Allon’s early life in the trade. There is great and believable international intrigue. Enough said, don’t pass it up.

WC Don