Review CONCLAVE by Robert Harris

 

Harris, Robert Conclave

Robert Harris writes potboilers. In 2016 he wrote CONCLAVE-- a book about the inner workings of the Catholic church when in the throes of election of a new Pope. The current hot movie of the same name starring Ralph Fiennes is adapted from the book.

There are plotters a plenty amongst the Cardinals who are vying for the throne of St. Peter and some of the activity seems a bit far-fetched. For instance, Harris manages to get the Cardinals all housed in a sort of Motel Six with paper-thin walls, but has it also contain the living quarters of the former Pope. It’s justified by the old guy's preference for poverty, but it just makes it convenient for one of the Cardinals to burgle the apartment in order to find the secret materials that have caused the current Conclave to be so compelling.

Otherwise, it is smoothly organized around the sequence of ballots that show who’s up and who’s down and the intrigue that goes on between all of the nominees. It’s a good ride in print and I am looking forward to seeing the film. 

I give it a 4  out of 5.

Review Kathy Reichs FIRE AND BONES

 

Kathy Reichs, Fire and Bones

Ms. Reichs has written twenty-three crime procedure novels featuring a forensic anthropologist named Temperance Brennan. The jacket sidebars are quite giddy in their claims of excellence.  She is top-notch, amazing, and an incredible plotter. Her science is on-target, her characters are fascinating, and every paragraph carries menace. I wish I could join in affirming this praise, but frankly I found Fire and Bones  rather disjointed and tedious. We do get plenty of gory details of what it is like to autopsy people killed by fire, but the villains don’t seem to draw out compelling interest while the victims get little emotional attention aside from their existence as statistics.

The story is fairly simple. Temperance Brennan puts off a great weekend with her current squeeze to help investigate two nasty fires that came complete with four fatalities so badly burned that they are hard to identify. One of the burned-out structures also contained a much older unidentified corpse that is discovered in a burlap sack in a sub-basement. The first four deaths turn out to be connected to old criminal gangs and bootlegging and the other goes back even further in time. As we cycle between the two different cases, the last one seems to get lost until the author decided she must tie that one up with a final twist. It came off as a forced afterthought.  

I found the supporting characters to be either unbelievable, like Ivy Doyle, the way too rich sidekick telejournalist. She just doesn’t make a very satisfying Dr. Watson and the various arson detectives come off as pretty traditional types rather than people.

In sum, I found this a pretty modest offering. I won’t be heading back to the library to search out any of the earlier books.  I give it a two out of five.  

Review Dona Leon The Jewels of Paradise

 

The Jewels of Paradise

 The authorial reputation of Donna Leon rests comfortably on her twenty-plus novels featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, who investigates crime in the atmospheric confines of one of the most enchanting cities in the world—Venice. 

This is a leisurely, contemplative stand-alone novel that will be too slow paced and too much dependent on an interest in 17th-century opera and court intrigue to attract a lot of readers.  The main character, Catarina Pellegrini, a Venetian musicologist, is working as a researcher in England when she gets a strange invitation to apply for a job that will require her to return to her hometown of Venice and research the contents of two ancient chests that may contain valuable items. Two venal relatives of the original owner of the chests are now vying for the riches that may or may not be inside. 

The ensuing search for the rightful heirs allows Leon to do what she does best and that is to immerse the reader once again in all of the pleasures, the food, the history, and the corruption of Venice as it is and was.  What is discovered at the end is an enduring truism that is operable in any century and any country. “If enough people choose to believe something is what other people say it is, then it becomes that to them.” The just completed election seems to prove that. 

I give it 3 out of 5 

Jim De Young, 10/25/24

  

Review: Jen Psaki SAY MORE

 

 Psaki’s 2024 book is subtitled “Lessons from Work, the White House, and the World.”  There is no ghost  writer listed and it reads as a group of suggestions about the nature of communication in general and political communication in particular. There is no muss, no fuss, no interminable length. Her focus is positive and reflects a quote from the early pages.  “People who are drawn to public service want to be part of a greater good—it isn’t about them as individuals, but how they can contribute.”      

 

Her practical advice is on the money.  I liked “Do the task you are dreading most first. Then everything that follows will feel easy.”  Another favorite was to admit to yourself that you can’t be good at everything. Locating your weaknesses can go a long way to make successful corrections as you move through life.

 

Often her suggestions focus on the particular problem of being a political spokesperson. She says it is difficult to reflect your bosses’ views accurately without letting your personal views creep in. She rues the ease with which disinformation and violence can be spread in today’s social media.  If an attack is personal to you as a spokesperson, then use it to remind yourself that if you got so much under the skin of your adversary they felt the need to attack you with lies, you may be on the right track. Also defending yourself strongly from these kinds of attacks can be counterproductive. I note here that Kamala Harris has been able to use a laugh and humor to sidetrack personal slanders thrown at her. 

 

Good communication doesn’t have to be loud or long. One descriptive and emotional human interest story is often worth more than a string of statistics. For all communicators, but especially spokespeople, you must know your audience. You can’t craft a good  message or response if you don’t know who you are speaking to. Do your prep. Anticipate objections and have answers ready. Own up quickly to mistakes. It helps to be a better listener because then you can read the content and body language as it comes at you.

 

She claims the successful political communicator has to build bridges where none exist. I grant you there are adversaries who want no bridges and are concentrating on filling the river with crocodiles, but one way to build a bridge is to speak humbly about hardships you might have had that they also may have faced.  Just present yourself as human and flawed just as they are.

 

Her best advice was “Don’t take the bait!” When you get questions like “Many are saying”, “Some say”, or “Critics are saying”, your best option is to respond with a question rather than launching into a refutation. i.e.  “Can you tell me more about who they are?  Can you attach a number to apply to your question? In other words “How many is some?” or “Who are they?” There is a difference between your golf foursome and a clutch of twenty foreign heads of state.  

 

She closes by emphasizing that good communicators are optimists at heart and they keep on thinking that connection is possible and something positive is attainable. She also successfully steers clear of the contemporary political scene. That means you can pick up some good ideas regardless of your party. The book is a long way from being a candidate for a Pulitzer Prize, but does give you a bit of a look at the development of a political junkie. It is not exciting, but the advice is pretty solid.

 

I give it a 3.5 out of 5

Review: Daniel Silva A DEATH IN CORNWALL

 

Daniel Silva’s latest spy thriller, A Death in Cornwall, is every bit as good as his last ones. In this outing, Gabriel Allon, Israel’s semi-retired spy chief and part-time art restorer, is asked to help solve the murder of a well-known art authenticator. The trail leads out of the art world and into the world of billionaire oligarchs who hide their wealth in layer after layer of foreign shell companies and often use the acquisition and trading of valuable paintings as a part of their tax evasion schemes.

 

I am still in awe of how expertly Silva knits his plots and brilliant humor together as Allon and Ingrid, his kleptomaniacal computer guru associate, weave their way through all of Europe including London, Cornwall, Paris, Marseille, Corsica, and Venice at breakneck speed. Silva seems to know in acute detail every local wine and food preference as well as every road turn and railway and flight schedule to get you to the next destination. I give you one example. As the violent climax nears, one of the attacking duo asks the other what is in the rucksack he is carrying. The answer is “night-vision field glasses, two Glock pistols, ammunition, a couple of secure phones, and a box of McVities.” The sidekick asks, “Dark chocolate?” And the answer is “Of course!”  To which the reply is “I’d kill for one.” Only immaculate research, an eye for word play, and vast experience can come up with that exchange.

 

Interspersed with the action is the main theme, which is as up-to-the present as today’s evening news. It is stated baldly by the cashiered former MI5 villain Robertson when he tells Allon, “Your implacable sense of right and wrong is admirable, but I’m afraid it’s rather out of fashion at the moment. The truth is there is no right and wrong any longer. There is only power and money.” 

 

I give it a full-throated 5 out of 5 for its genre.

 

 

Book Review: Smolder by Stuart Woods sort of.

 

Mr. Woods is another of those hyper-prolific authors that turn out books like a plastic extrusion machine.  They are quick reads and even more quickly forgotten. There are about thirty of them in the Stone Barrington series alone. 

In this one Barrington, an obscenely rich lawyer, spy, serial lover, and son of a famous artist finds that an old enemy wants to humiliate him by purchasing or stealing his mother’s valuable paintings and then burning them.  At the bottom of the rotten art world, the fancy cars, the right wines, the casual affair minded women, and the equally casual killing is just another tired formula thriller.  Oh, did I mention! Mr. Woods is dead and some other hack is carrying on the torch.  “Old writers never die: the heirs just want more money." 

.5 out of 5  

Stacy Abrams Rules of Engagement

 

Abrams has written other novels under the name Selina Montgomery. It would appear this re-publishing under her now more recognizable name as a Georgia prosecutor is intended to squeeze more money out of a losing proposition. This story of super spies tracking down a doomsday weapon goes nowhere fast.  Every other page is full of hyper-sexual panting with no return on your investment. I finally quit around p. 100 with the jousting still underway and no real interest developed in the characters or the apparent plot.

Into the trash pile and give it a rating of

 Zilch out of 5