God’s County by William Kent Kreuger

 

 

My quick first thought about this book was that Kent Krueger now shares a useful symbol with Louise Penny. Both writers have prominently focused on wolves in their recent work. Krueger’s God’s Country draws directly from Indigenous people’s legends that tell of the lupine pressures present in all humans. There are good wolves, but they have a hard time dealing with the disorientation spread by the evil ones. And that is what Krueger’s central character, Cork O’Connor, faces in this book.  

Cork’s son and his grandson have visions of an evil wolf eating the heart of their father/grandfather at the opening of the story. In spite of these warnings, Krueger has O’Connor continue to schedule a trip with them into Minnesota’s beautiful, remote, and dangerous Boundary Waters. The party is not on the trail long before blood is found near a tree. Then the group’s satellite phone has an accidental and fatal tumble into the evening campfire. If there ever was a more obvious set-up for future disaster, I am pressed to come up with it.

The family members are sent back home the following morning to report on what appears to be dangerous goings-on just ahead of them. Whoever they are, they are leaving a trail of cigar wrappers, food waste, unquenched campfires, and potential death. Cork stays to pursue the possible evil and shortly finds himself marooned with two murderous brothers searching for a treasure concealed by their father some years before.     

Because the setup is so obvious and the violence so graphic, I can’t bring myself to call this a defining work of moral conflict, but it's still an awful good, suspense-filled yarn. Krueger’s descriptions of the Boundary Waters, along with his mastery of survival skills, have not deserted him. My only quibble is that he does seem to be repeating similar plots rather than moving off in newer directions. There is danger in “them their woods.”

I give it a 4 out of five.

Book Review of RANSOM by Daniel Silva

 

Ransom by Daniel Silva

I have long been a fan of Daniel Silva’s espionage books. Unlike the more fantastical plots spun by Dan Brown, his work usually mirrors real-life international intrigue closely enough to retain a sense of plausibility.  His main character, Gabriel Allon, is a retired Israeli spy chief and renowned art restoration guru.  Ransom begins with the kidnapping of Alice Winter, who is married to billionaire real estate mogul Edward Knight. Allon is drawn from his Cornwall retirement to help find her and negotiate a price for her release. Needless to say, the right price turns out to be very wrong and the attention shifts toward a complicated Russian-based plot to target multiple armed drones on NATO airports and the city of London itself. Given the increasing use of drones in the Russia/Ukraine war, this is no longer an improbable piece of futurism.  Allon must turn to some of his most trusted friends in the United States and European intelligence services to solve the challenge. The final pages will keep your heart rate elevated right up to the last syllable.  

Silva’s London and European locations are depicted in delicious detail. Financial and political intrigue abound at every turn. And there are enough close shaves to make a professional barber proud. Some might find Silva’s plots too melodramatic, but I think this one meets all the requirements of a first-class thriller.   

 I give it a 4.5 out of 5

 

THE SUNSHINE BOYS by Neil Simon

 

The Sunshine Boys by Neil Simon

We made a Grand Living group trip to see Neil Simon’s 1972 The Sunshine Boys last week at the TKM Theatre in the Amana Colonies.  The play is essentially a two-hander with some minor supporting roles. Willie and Ben are two one-time vaudeville headliners, who haven’t spoken to each other in ten years. They get recruited to do a reprise of their old act for a TV commemoration of the entertainment of the past and as a result the buried animosities that contributed to their breakup, are opened up. The middle parts of the show could use some cutting and the humor definitely shows its age occasionally. For instance, the duo’s signature doctor skit depends on sexual jokes based on a skimpily clad and well-endowed nurse. The women’s movement has made those leering wisecracks a bit politically incorrect now. Also problematic, perhaps just for me, was the dependence on memory-loss jokes throughout the script. I currently live in a senior community, and cognitive decline isn’t quite as funny to me now as it used to be. On the other hand, the audience, which almost all senior citizens, did react with gusto. enjoyment mode.  

Tom Milligan, the current TKM producer, played Willie Clark and kept the irascible pajama-clad old performer beautifully alive with his constant pent-up rage. Adam Burnham handled the impeccably dressed Ben Silverman with aplomb. Lisa Margolin, playing the registered nurse who tends to Willie after his health crisis, provided a funny contrast to the comic nurse from the boy’s old act. Deb Kennedy, Tom Milligan's wife, provided the capable direction. 

“Acting isn’t pretending: it’s finding truth in someone else’s story.” As I noted above, I thought the play makes a bit too much fun of the beginnings of Alzheimers, but as we neared the end, the actors did sell the idea that in spite of deep differences, positive connections can still occur.   

I do regret that the theatre itself echoed some of the sadness buried in the script. The seats sag, a water fountain in the lobby was out of order, and there were cobwebs on the front of house lighting bridge. I had to ask the house manager to clear walkers from in front of an emergency exit. I know the show is set in a rundown New York city hotel room, but that should be depicted in the stage setting and not the theatre building. I hope and pray that the company’s tenure is not on the ropes since live theatre is still my first love and seeing it at the Amana Theatre has been one of the highlights of our Cedar Rapids life.

Production is 4 out of 5 and well worth while.

Review of London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe

 

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe 

From the title reference to that historical bridge that keeps falling down to its tale of a Jewish immigrant family fighting for closure around the death of their son, London Falling earns a place on any bookshelf devoted to London, its history, or its varied inhabitants. Although it reads like fiction, it is a true and deeply researched story that captures both the time and place beautifully. Patrick Keefe’s retelling is based on several years of acquaintance with Rachelle and Mathew Brettler--the young victim’s parents--and his own interviews with the police and others who may or may not have been involved in possible cover-ups.  

Central to the plot is the Scotland Yard investigation into whether the victim had experienced a fatal accident, committed suicide, or been murdered. Zac Brettler was only nineteen years old when, in 2019, he fell into the Thames from the fourth-floor balcony of a high-end Docklands waterfront apartment building. One of the first things discovered is that young Zac had assumed a startling alter ego and was posing outside of his home as the hugely wealthy son of a recently arrived Russian oligarch. That surprise blends into his parents’ years-long attempt to understand how and why things went horribly wrong for their son.

It is here that history becomes important. When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, its economy collapsed. Huge amounts of capital, held by escaping oligarchs, ended up being recycled into the British economy. These wealthy expatriates, many with checkered pasts, began to buy up expensive real estate, retail businesses like Harrods, manufacturing companies, and financial organizations. Hundreds of get-rich opportunities were set before them by young British entrepreneurs who were more than willing to feather their own nests while they were helping the immigrants spend some of their fortunes. Professional criminals in the country were also quick to join in the rush to get a piece of the action.

Zac Brettler’s grieving parents soon discover that their son’s impersonation put him in close contact with an assortment of less than savory characters, few of whom were keen to share what they knew about his violent death. Even more disconcerting, his parents feel that the famed Scotland Yard was slow-walking the investigation. Not willing to give up, they began their own private inquiries. That search leads them into an underground London of posh mansions, fancy cars, expensive private clubs, sexual and drug excesses, blackmail, and violence that is running like a sewer just below the Changing of the Guard and other famed London tourist attractions.  In that world, everything had a price and fantasies, supported by mountains of money, were running rampant.

If that sounds familiar, a recent article in The Atlantic by Noah Hawley, titled “What I learned About Billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s Private Estate,” echoes the present day. Hawley says that if there are no cost boundaries, nothing matters. The world and other people exist only to be acted upon by the rich, if they are acknowledged at all. He describes the USA’s current financial and political systems as built on a “take as much as you can as fast as you can” foundation that ignores ethics and fairness while siphoning capital into the pockets of the ultra-rich. If that is true today, it means the only salvation may be people like Zac Brettler’s parents who stand up and fight.  

I found London Falling to be totally engrossing for its character development, historical setting, and present-day parallels. The complex shading of both good and evil jumps off the pages as alternate theories on what might have happened to Zac and how various genetic and accidental historical influences may have contributed to his demise. Even though I have lived for extended periods in London and written a book about its theatre history, the Brettler’s saga covered material about the city, its history, and its residents that I didn’t know before.

It is one of the best books I’ve read this year.  

P.S. My opening comment referred to the title of the book and my association of it with the medieval plague that is referenced in the London Bridge is Falling Down song. My son tells me that for him "the title is a pun on the famous 1979 song by the Clash, "London Calling," which includes the line "London is drowning, and I live by the river!."  Most interesting and certainly more current, 

I give it a five out of five.

 

Harvey, Samantha  ORBITAL

Six multi-national astronauts, some men, some women, are aboard the International Space Station. They swoop around the Earth at 17,000 miles an hour and experience 16 sunrises and sunsets in one 24-hour Earth day. We hear bits and pieces of their lives, meet their families, share their ambitions and dreams, hear about their food, and learn about some of their scientific experiments. The astronauts spend a lot of time taking photos out of the windows and Ms. Harvey describes what they are seeing at length, right down to the lights of various cities.  

What this all comes down to is a work of philosophical meditation on what it means to be a human being within the great unknown of the cosmos. One topic considered at length is would we have been better off sitting tight with the medieval belief that God had dropped us at the center with all things revolving around us i.e., scuttle Copernicus. Or should we charge forward to the moon and beyond with the hope of unlocking more of the universe’s secrets?  A dose of cynicism was added to the mix by noting that we sent Voyager out and desperately hoped, but heard nothing and probably never will.  We didn’t ask to be born or to inherit an earth to look after.  We are after all, alone “a piddling speck at the center of nothing.” 

To give a better idea of her prose style a longer quote might be helpful. “Without the earth we are all finished. We couldn’t survive a second without its grace, we are sailors on a ship on a deep, dark, unswimmable sea.” This was followed by the admonition that we had better start thinking about taking better care of it.

I know this novel won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2024, but I must admit I found its lush prose getting too repetitive. After the fifth recounting of a sunrise, beautiful as it was, I began to skip ahead and search for something that would produce more dramatic juice. That search was fruitless, and we ended up with an award-winning novel that doesn’t really have much of a plot in the classic sense. We have a series of events, or should we say revolutions, but no complications to create tension, thus producing no real climax or final conclusion.

I get it that her goal seems to be a lyrical meditation on both the position of humanity and the fragility of our planet, but it also defeats some of her own purpose by creating a kind of numbing word salad without the tension needed to move me at the finish.

I give it a mild 3.5

Steve Barry THE OMEGA FACTOR

 

Steve Barry is touted as having millions of readers in multiple countries. I confess I have not been among them. His The Omega Factor is a long, rather uneven, and occasionally pedantic slog into the dark secrets perpetrated by the Catholic church over the years. If you have read any Dan Brown, you know what I am referring to. The church is fraught with venal, corrupt clergy and many secret underground cults--some of which have been functioning for a thousand years or more. The hero, Nick Lee, is some kind of United Nations employee in an area devoted to lost or purloined artwork. He has a past that includes a prison stretch for accidentally shooting a boyhood friend. Not much is made of this other than he now has a hatred of guns. He is also absent from the book for long sections on church history and some 14^th century scenes that feature the painter Jan Van Eyck’s spy career before he created his famous Ghent Altarpiece—an art work that has had a checkered history over time.

In the current day, there is an art restorer named Kelsey. Conveniently, nine years ago, she was about to marry Nick just before she changed her mind and became a nun in a highly secretive order called the Maidens of St. Michael. Kelsey discovers some overpainting on one of Van Eyck’s altarpiece panels and Nick is traveling to see her when her art restoration studio is fire bombed. The panel is destroyed, and another young member of the order is killed by the Belgian police. Little is made of why a competent and sophisticated police force would fill a young woman with bullets other than it was needed to further the main plot, which now turns to the possession of a computer that has a digital copy of the lost panel on it.     

Enter now the Vatican’s group of scheming, venal Friars, Bishops, and Cardinals to unravel the secret protected by the Maidens of St. Michael. I trust you might be beginning to believe that I was on the verge of quitting this hodgepodge a number of times. I wish I had.

Perhaps I got up on the wrong side of the bed, but I can only give this one a bare two out of five stars.  

 

 CAMINO GHOSTS BY JOHN GRISHAM

Camino Ghosts is the third of a trio of books centered around a Florida barrier island named Camino. In looking at some of the reviews, the three seem to be kind of cruise ship light, but are flagged positively for retaining enough legal fireworks to remind you that master storyteller Grisham is still at the helm.

A newly successful novelist and writing professor, Mercer Mann, comes to Camino Island to marry and find inspiration for her second book. That inspiration appears when she intersects with local bookstore owner, Bruce Cable, who tells her the story of Dark Isle that is just a stone’s throw from Camino. This tiny island has a scary and violent history that begins when a slave ship coming to the United States breaks up in a storm and deposits some of its survivors on the shore. Their 200-year history of survival was told in a self-published book authored by the last surviving inhabitant of the island, who is now living in retirement on Camino. Her name is Lovely Jackson, and she is a peach of a character who dresses to kill in flamboyant African outfits. You will fall in love with her and her style. Mercer reads Lovely’s book and sees the story as grist for her next writing project. She meets her and arranges to get even more information on the island and its long, tragic history.  

This relationship barely begins to bear fruit before a greedy commercial real estate company announces plans to develop the island as a resort, casino, and golf destination. Enter a semi-retired environmental lawyer who agrees to represent Lovely as she fights an ownership battle in the courts. No surprise now, it's suddenly the old Grisham again.

The courtroom battle is compelling, and all the right people win. There are some echoes of The Boys from Biloxi as the crusading underdogs battle the evil forces of corrupt big business, but overall this is an enjoyable if predictable read.

I give it a four out of five and will look for the first two in the series.