We're offering something a little different this month. Rather than our usual fare of undiscovered authors who deserve to be read, we've selected an old hand who deserves to be remembered. To be honest, as Bill searched the Web for a newly published book calling out to be read, he just didn't find it.
Instead he came across Robert Daley's The Enemy of God, first published in 2006 and recently out as an ebook. If you don't know Daley, he's mainly written about the New York Police Department, most notably in Prince of the City, a non-fiction work about police corruption upon which a popular movie was based.
In reviewing The Enemy of God, we have exchanged the freshness of a new novelist for the highly developed craft of an older one. It's also $.95 more than our usual criteria, but we think it's worth it.
Scroll down to read this and other recent reviews, and see previous recommendations on the right side of this page. Click on the appropriate month in the Blog Archive to navigate to the review.
Please help us spread the word about these books by becoming a blog "follower" and linking our blog to yours. The more activity we have, the more readers will find and enjoy these outstanding books. And for the record, no books we work on as editors are listed on the blog.
Happy reading!
Friday, July 8, 2011
The Enemy of God
By Robert Daley
$5.95 at Amazon
Robert Daley is an old pro at writing gritty New York crime stories. He wrote the non-fiction book that was the source of the 1980s movie “Prince of the City,” and he’s written 17 novels.
The Enemy of God, recently made available as an ebook, runs on parallel tracks. It bounces between the investigation into the death of a Catholic priest who somehow went off the top of a building and the back story of four friends who became the priest, a journalist, a cop and a prosecutor.
The homicide detectives on the scene want to quickly clear the death of the Rev. Frank Redmond as a suicide. After all, he fell from a fourth-floor rooftop, and no one else was seen in the area. The medical examiners agree, as does Fr. Frank’s monsignor, who refuses to give him a Catholic burial and hints at sexual impropriety.
But Gabe Driscoll, a major mogul in the NYPD, cannot believe his high school friend has committed the unpardonable sin of suicide and enlists their aid swim-team buddy Adam Troy, now a big-time newspaper reporter, to help unearth the truth about his death.
In alternating chapters, the history of Redmond, Driscoll, Troy and the fourth member of their 200-yard freestyle relay team, Earl Finley, slowly plays out to establish the circumstances that led to Frank’s death.
Though close as boys and as teammates at Fordham University, each member of the quartet has had his own life and loves as an adult, leaving plenty of room for secrets. In a way, the wives of Finley and Driscoll knew more about the four men than they knew about one another.
Much of The Enemy of God, such as the friends’ dogged pursuit of an explanation for the death of a man they admired, is familiar. But by emphasizing the history of their personal lives – known and unknown to the self-appointed investigators – Daley gives us a densely woven book that makes the reader think “novel” more than “mystery.” His cold and gray New York envelops the narrative with a ’60s and ’70s city of walk-up apartments, stick ball and dirty subway cars rather than the Big Apple of Sinatra and the Whitney Museum.
The larger portion of the book deals with the personal stories, especially that of Frank Redmond, a man of almost saintly behavior who, nonetheless, faced demons intrinsic and incidental to his Catholic faith and clerical vows.
As might be expected, the facts that eventually emerge about Frank’s death don’t lead to the closure the friends sought. Real life is often like that.
Bill Furlow
$5.95 at Amazon
Robert Daley is an old pro at writing gritty New York crime stories. He wrote the non-fiction book that was the source of the 1980s movie “Prince of the City,” and he’s written 17 novels.
The Enemy of God, recently made available as an ebook, runs on parallel tracks. It bounces between the investigation into the death of a Catholic priest who somehow went off the top of a building and the back story of four friends who became the priest, a journalist, a cop and a prosecutor.
The homicide detectives on the scene want to quickly clear the death of the Rev. Frank Redmond as a suicide. After all, he fell from a fourth-floor rooftop, and no one else was seen in the area. The medical examiners agree, as does Fr. Frank’s monsignor, who refuses to give him a Catholic burial and hints at sexual impropriety.
But Gabe Driscoll, a major mogul in the NYPD, cannot believe his high school friend has committed the unpardonable sin of suicide and enlists their aid swim-team buddy Adam Troy, now a big-time newspaper reporter, to help unearth the truth about his death.
In alternating chapters, the history of Redmond, Driscoll, Troy and the fourth member of their 200-yard freestyle relay team, Earl Finley, slowly plays out to establish the circumstances that led to Frank’s death.
Though close as boys and as teammates at Fordham University, each member of the quartet has had his own life and loves as an adult, leaving plenty of room for secrets. In a way, the wives of Finley and Driscoll knew more about the four men than they knew about one another.
Much of The Enemy of God, such as the friends’ dogged pursuit of an explanation for the death of a man they admired, is familiar. But by emphasizing the history of their personal lives – known and unknown to the self-appointed investigators – Daley gives us a densely woven book that makes the reader think “novel” more than “mystery.” His cold and gray New York envelops the narrative with a ’60s and ’70s city of walk-up apartments, stick ball and dirty subway cars rather than the Big Apple of Sinatra and the Whitney Museum.
The larger portion of the book deals with the personal stories, especially that of Frank Redmond, a man of almost saintly behavior who, nonetheless, faced demons intrinsic and incidental to his Catholic faith and clerical vows.
As might be expected, the facts that eventually emerge about Frank’s death don’t lead to the closure the friends sought. Real life is often like that.
Bill Furlow
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Our Latest Recommendation
We're offering something a little different this month. Rather than our usual fare of undiscovered authors who deserve to be read, we've selected an old hand who deserves to be remembered. To be honest, as Bill searched the Web for a newly published book calling out to be read, he just didn't find it.
Instead he came across Robert Daley's The Enemy of God, first published in 2006 and recently out as an ebook. If you don't know Daley, he's mainly written about the New York Police Department, most notably in Prince of the City, a non-fiction work about police corruption upon which a popular movie was based.
In reviewing The Enemy of God, we have exchanged the freshness of a new novelist for the highly developed craft of an older one. It's also $.95 more than our usual criteria, but we think it's worth it.
Scroll down to read this and other recent reviews, and see previous recommendations on the right side of this page. Click on the appropriate month in the Blog Archive to navigate to the review.
Please help us spread the word about these books by becoming a blog "follower" and linking our blog to yours. The more activity we have, the more readers will find and enjoy these outstanding books. And for the record, no books we work on as editors are listed on the blog.
Happy reading!
Instead he came across Robert Daley's The Enemy of God, first published in 2006 and recently out as an ebook. If you don't know Daley, he's mainly written about the New York Police Department, most notably in Prince of the City, a non-fiction work about police corruption upon which a popular movie was based.
In reviewing The Enemy of God, we have exchanged the freshness of a new novelist for the highly developed craft of an older one. It's also $.95 more than our usual criteria, but we think it's worth it.
Scroll down to read this and other recent reviews, and see previous recommendations on the right side of this page. Click on the appropriate month in the Blog Archive to navigate to the review.
Please help us spread the word about these books by becoming a blog "follower" and linking our blog to yours. The more activity we have, the more readers will find and enjoy these outstanding books. And for the record, no books we work on as editors are listed on the blog.
Happy reading!
Monster Story
By McCarty Griffin
$4.99 on Smashwords.com
Monster Story is a modern-day werewolf story. Please don’t stop reading now if you are not a horror, supernatural or science fiction fan. I’m not either, but author McCarty Griffin sent an email to our blog, www.greatbooksunder5.blogspot.com and asked if we would review Monster Story.
Out of courtesy only, I started reading the sample at www.smashwords.com, and before I realized what had happened, I was intrigued by the story and impressed with the author’s character development. In fact, I was a number of pages into the book before I realized that I was actually reading what the title says it is—a monster story.
Even when unspeakable murders start occurring in their midst, the main characters are believably normal. Their thought processes are credible as they arrive at the unbelievable conclusion that only a werewolf could be responsible for the gruesomeness of the deaths.
The story takes place in Appalachia, and Griffin does a good job of describing the area. She also has a touch that enables her to give the reader a sense of the hillbilly personalities of some of the auxiliary characters without being offensive.
Unlike many books of this genre, Griffin doesn’t rely on hysteria or a mob frenzy to make the story work; she relies instead on her storytelling ability.
Christy McCauley moved to South Carolina 10 years earlier to get away from West Virginia, where she grew up. At the beginning of the story, she gets a call from her father that her grandmother has died, she and heads back to Appalachia for the funeral. In her will, Christy’s grandmother leaves her granddaughter her cabin on 30 acres of woodlands, a tidy sum of cash and a $100,000 life insurance policy.
The cabin and the land in the woods are the last thing Christy thinks she wants, even though she loved staying there with her grandmother when she was growing up. But after her first night in the cabin, she realizes the draw it has for her.
Meanwhile, horrific murders are taking place around her.
In the end, a collaboration of Christy, her best guy friend from South Carolina who’s come to visit, her best friend Tess and Tess’s deputy sheriff-husband David, and Will Drummond with the Department of Natural Resources figure out who/what’s doing the killing and put an end to it.
But reading how they get to that point is the best part—whether you think you like monster stories or not.
Click here to link to Monster Story.
Davilynn Furlow
$4.99 on Smashwords.com
Monster Story is a modern-day werewolf story. Please don’t stop reading now if you are not a horror, supernatural or science fiction fan. I’m not either, but author McCarty Griffin sent an email to our blog, www.greatbooksunder5.blogspot.com and asked if we would review Monster Story.
Out of courtesy only, I started reading the sample at www.smashwords.com, and before I realized what had happened, I was intrigued by the story and impressed with the author’s character development. In fact, I was a number of pages into the book before I realized that I was actually reading what the title says it is—a monster story.
Even when unspeakable murders start occurring in their midst, the main characters are believably normal. Their thought processes are credible as they arrive at the unbelievable conclusion that only a werewolf could be responsible for the gruesomeness of the deaths.
The story takes place in Appalachia, and Griffin does a good job of describing the area. She also has a touch that enables her to give the reader a sense of the hillbilly personalities of some of the auxiliary characters without being offensive.
Unlike many books of this genre, Griffin doesn’t rely on hysteria or a mob frenzy to make the story work; she relies instead on her storytelling ability.
Christy McCauley moved to South Carolina 10 years earlier to get away from West Virginia, where she grew up. At the beginning of the story, she gets a call from her father that her grandmother has died, she and heads back to Appalachia for the funeral. In her will, Christy’s grandmother leaves her granddaughter her cabin on 30 acres of woodlands, a tidy sum of cash and a $100,000 life insurance policy.
The cabin and the land in the woods are the last thing Christy thinks she wants, even though she loved staying there with her grandmother when she was growing up. But after her first night in the cabin, she realizes the draw it has for her.
Meanwhile, horrific murders are taking place around her.
In the end, a collaboration of Christy, her best guy friend from South Carolina who’s come to visit, her best friend Tess and Tess’s deputy sheriff-husband David, and Will Drummond with the Department of Natural Resources figure out who/what’s doing the killing and put an end to it.
But reading how they get to that point is the best part—whether you think you like monster stories or not.
Click here to link to Monster Story.
Davilynn Furlow
The Friendship of Mortals
By Audrey Driscoll
$4.95 at Smashwords.com
Herbert West is as ambitious and narcissistic as any character you’re ever likely to meet in literature. His compulsion is not treasure or glory but a seemingly impossible intellectual challenge.
Herbert West wants to find the way to restore human life to those who have lost it.
As an ambitious narcissist, West cares not at all for the wellbeing of those he would restore to life. A suitable corpse is merely raw material for his experimentation. He’s not even interested in interviewing a revivified person about the experience of dying or whether there is an afterlife. The brilliant West leaves those questions to his Dr. Watson, librarian Charles Milburn.
West and Milburn meet near the start of World War I while West, the son of an undertaker-turned-business-magnate, is a medical student at Miskatonic University in Massachusetts, where Milburn works as a library cataloguer. From their first meeting, West claims a mesmerizing hold on Milburn, who quickly becomes his, sometimes reluctant, acolyte.
In The Friendship of Mortals, Audrey Driscoll quickly moves beyond the scientific problems of restoring life to the departed so she can focus on the ethical minefield she has seeded for poor Charles Milburn. If the notion of bringing the dead back to life for the purpose of experimentation weren’t enough to keep a fellow awake at night, Driscoll adds the complicating factor of Alma Halsey, a fellow librarian and daughter of the med school dean, who doesn’t trust West as far as she can throw a coffin.
Now a physician with a growing reputation as a surgeon, West surprisingly volunteers to serve with the Canadian army in Europe. By the end of his tour, he has essentially created the specialty of cosmetic surgery and returns to Miskatonic to set up shop.
Still untroubled by the ethical or legal ramifications of his ghoulish experiments, when West eventually finds himself under attack and boxed in by jealous and vindictive colleagues, he again turns to his trusted friend Charles to help execute a high-risk escape.
Although The Friendship of Mortals lives on the edge of important ethical questions, in reality only the enamored Charles could fail to see that what his amoral friend is doing is wrong. Then again, if literary protagonists had good sense, there would be very few novels.
The Friendship of Mortals is a rewarding read, not the least because of the bonds that exists among its three leading characters. According to Audrey Driscoll’s Website, this is the first in a trilogy of Herbert West novels. The other two are outlined on her site, but apparently they’re not yet written, or at least not published.
Driscoll is a skilled writer who, like Charles Milburn, was a library cataloguer. I don’t doubt she can pull of the series and develop a sizable following.
Click here to link to The Friendship of Mortals.
Bill Furlow
$4.95 at Smashwords.com
Herbert West is as ambitious and narcissistic as any character you’re ever likely to meet in literature. His compulsion is not treasure or glory but a seemingly impossible intellectual challenge.
Herbert West wants to find the way to restore human life to those who have lost it.
As an ambitious narcissist, West cares not at all for the wellbeing of those he would restore to life. A suitable corpse is merely raw material for his experimentation. He’s not even interested in interviewing a revivified person about the experience of dying or whether there is an afterlife. The brilliant West leaves those questions to his Dr. Watson, librarian Charles Milburn.
West and Milburn meet near the start of World War I while West, the son of an undertaker-turned-business-magnate, is a medical student at Miskatonic University in Massachusetts, where Milburn works as a library cataloguer. From their first meeting, West claims a mesmerizing hold on Milburn, who quickly becomes his, sometimes reluctant, acolyte.
In The Friendship of Mortals, Audrey Driscoll quickly moves beyond the scientific problems of restoring life to the departed so she can focus on the ethical minefield she has seeded for poor Charles Milburn. If the notion of bringing the dead back to life for the purpose of experimentation weren’t enough to keep a fellow awake at night, Driscoll adds the complicating factor of Alma Halsey, a fellow librarian and daughter of the med school dean, who doesn’t trust West as far as she can throw a coffin.
Now a physician with a growing reputation as a surgeon, West surprisingly volunteers to serve with the Canadian army in Europe. By the end of his tour, he has essentially created the specialty of cosmetic surgery and returns to Miskatonic to set up shop.
Still untroubled by the ethical or legal ramifications of his ghoulish experiments, when West eventually finds himself under attack and boxed in by jealous and vindictive colleagues, he again turns to his trusted friend Charles to help execute a high-risk escape.
Although The Friendship of Mortals lives on the edge of important ethical questions, in reality only the enamored Charles could fail to see that what his amoral friend is doing is wrong. Then again, if literary protagonists had good sense, there would be very few novels.
The Friendship of Mortals is a rewarding read, not the least because of the bonds that exists among its three leading characters. According to Audrey Driscoll’s Website, this is the first in a trilogy of Herbert West novels. The other two are outlined on her site, but apparently they’re not yet written, or at least not published.
Driscoll is a skilled writer who, like Charles Milburn, was a library cataloguer. I don’t doubt she can pull of the series and develop a sizable following.
Click here to link to The Friendship of Mortals.
Bill Furlow
Kings of Providence
By S.D. Livingston
$3.99 at Smashwords.com
With Kings of Providence, S.D. Livingston has written a successful modern-day thriller.
Protagonist Paul Hewitt isn’t a former Navy SEAL or Marine or CIA operative. He’s an ordinary family man. He’s young and successful and wants to stay on top at his Manhattan investment firm, which means working nights and weekends and staying in favor with the boss.
The downside is that he doesn’t spend as much time with his wife and five-year-old son as he might. But there will always be time later—or so he rationalizes.
One morning, as he’s on his way to an important client meeting at headquarters, a colleague tells him an aunt had just been killed in the collapse of a building in Hong Kong.
Later that day he gets an angry voice mail from a client he had steered toward investing in an office complex in Rio de Janeiro—one of the buildings collapsed.
The following week a building collapses in Manhattan. The cause, first believed to be a terrorist attack, remains unresolved over several weeks.
Then another of Paul’s clients calls about huge repair bills for one of his investment properties in Houston. The foundation of the building appears to be faulty.
When Paul’s wife and a colleague separately wonder if there’s a connection between the building collapses, Paul begins doing a little computer research. Turns out that for more than 20 years, with increasing frequency, buildings around the world of all kinds--high-rises, schools, apartments—have collapsed, and a number of sinkholes have swallowed others.
What the heck is going on here? Before Paul can begin to figure it out, a subway tunnel collapse affects him directly and tragically, and his life is turned upside down.
After a month away from work, Paul cannot focus on his job because he’s become obsessed with the building and subway collapses. Why did they fail, and are the failures linked?
When he calls the police and various city departments for information, all he gets is the runaround and the word that the federal government has taken over the investigation.
Paul approaches Julian Wolfe, the author of an article he found online. Wolfe, a geology graduate and teaching assistant at a local college, at first is skeptical of Paul’s theories. But as he looks into them deeper, he becomes a convert to Paul’s way of thinking.
Kings of Providence has been a good read to this point, but now the action really picks up, and the book becomes almost un-put-down-able.
Paul and Julian go to extraordinary lengths to prove their theory of what’s bringing down the buildings. And they learn that those they always thought were the good guys watching out for the well-being of citizens are in reality bad guys who will go to any lengths to keep them quiet.
Anyone who picks up this book has a good read in store.
Click here to link to Kings of Providence.
Davilynn Furlow
$3.99 at Smashwords.com
With Kings of Providence, S.D. Livingston has written a successful modern-day thriller.
Protagonist Paul Hewitt isn’t a former Navy SEAL or Marine or CIA operative. He’s an ordinary family man. He’s young and successful and wants to stay on top at his Manhattan investment firm, which means working nights and weekends and staying in favor with the boss.
The downside is that he doesn’t spend as much time with his wife and five-year-old son as he might. But there will always be time later—or so he rationalizes.
One morning, as he’s on his way to an important client meeting at headquarters, a colleague tells him an aunt had just been killed in the collapse of a building in Hong Kong.
Later that day he gets an angry voice mail from a client he had steered toward investing in an office complex in Rio de Janeiro—one of the buildings collapsed.
The following week a building collapses in Manhattan. The cause, first believed to be a terrorist attack, remains unresolved over several weeks.
Then another of Paul’s clients calls about huge repair bills for one of his investment properties in Houston. The foundation of the building appears to be faulty.
When Paul’s wife and a colleague separately wonder if there’s a connection between the building collapses, Paul begins doing a little computer research. Turns out that for more than 20 years, with increasing frequency, buildings around the world of all kinds--high-rises, schools, apartments—have collapsed, and a number of sinkholes have swallowed others.
What the heck is going on here? Before Paul can begin to figure it out, a subway tunnel collapse affects him directly and tragically, and his life is turned upside down.
After a month away from work, Paul cannot focus on his job because he’s become obsessed with the building and subway collapses. Why did they fail, and are the failures linked?
When he calls the police and various city departments for information, all he gets is the runaround and the word that the federal government has taken over the investigation.
Paul approaches Julian Wolfe, the author of an article he found online. Wolfe, a geology graduate and teaching assistant at a local college, at first is skeptical of Paul’s theories. But as he looks into them deeper, he becomes a convert to Paul’s way of thinking.
Kings of Providence has been a good read to this point, but now the action really picks up, and the book becomes almost un-put-down-able.
Paul and Julian go to extraordinary lengths to prove their theory of what’s bringing down the buildings. And they learn that those they always thought were the good guys watching out for the well-being of citizens are in reality bad guys who will go to any lengths to keep them quiet.
Anyone who picks up this book has a good read in store.
Click here to link to Kings of Providence.
Davilynn Furlow
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Mad Money
By Linda L. Richards
$0.99 at Smashwords.com
In Mad Money, author Linda L. Richards has done what I didn’t think was possible—interest me in a novel in which the stock market and day trading have a prominent role.
Mad Money is really two mysteries, very different and yet with eerie similarities, and somehow former Manhattan stockbroker turned Los Angeles day trader Madeline Carter ends up in the middle of both.
The novel is so cleverly plotted that the tragedy that unfolds in the first pages, a seemingly stand-alone event serving as the catalyst for Madeline’s change of careers and cross-country move, ends up being central to the solution of the primary mystery.
Madeline moves into a tiny Malibu guest house/apartment on the grounds of the home of movie director Tyler Beckett and his new actress wife.
On her first night in residence, the Becketts invite her to a party they are hosting and she meets Emily, a fledgling assistant movie director who becomes her best friend and to whom she turns for help in solving the mysteries.
The next week she’s at a nightspot having a drink with Emily when, to her chagrin, her Harvard beau of 12 years earlier shows up at her table. The relationship between Ernest Carmichael Billings and Madeline had not ended well, and Madeline has no tender feelings toward him.
However, he’s become a wunderkind in the business world bailing out public companies and turning them around in record time. He’s recently moved to Los Angeles to become CEO of a company called Langton Regional Group. His appointment is a secret, though, until the public announcement is made the following Monday.
Over the weekend, Madeline does something she shouldn’t have: Decides to buy a lot of LRG stock with her nest egg. Presumably, because of Billings’ previous success, the stock price will go up with the announcement of his hiring. What she’s doing is called insider trading since she got a tip from the “inside” and buys her stock before the average investor learns that Billings has come on board at LRG—and that’s not legal.
Madeline makes her initial buy. LRG announces that Billings is the new CEO. The stock starts to go up as expected. Madeline buys more. She starts calculating her profit and thinking about at what price she’ll sell.
Just a few hours later, however, trading of LRG stock is “halted pending announcement.”
It turns out that Billings, the new CEO, never showed at Langton’s headquarters Monday morning. Madeline senses some funny stock business has taken place and wants to find Billings. He’s been kidnapped, but that is no deterrent to her.
What follows is her amateur, yet clever, investigation into Billings’ disappearance. Meanwhile, her landlord’s 17-year-old daughter goes missing and is also believed kidnapped. Madeline adds this disappearance to her investigative load and works leads on both at the same time.
The development of the story, the characters, the dialogue and the twists along the way put this e-book in the same category with mysteries from the big publishing houses that are sold in bookstores across the country. Richards has written a good book.
And, by the way, she has in the works two more Madeline Carter novels. I’m ready.
Click here to link to Mad Money.
--Davilynn Furlow
$0.99 at Smashwords.com
In Mad Money, author Linda L. Richards has done what I didn’t think was possible—interest me in a novel in which the stock market and day trading have a prominent role.
Mad Money is really two mysteries, very different and yet with eerie similarities, and somehow former Manhattan stockbroker turned Los Angeles day trader Madeline Carter ends up in the middle of both.
The novel is so cleverly plotted that the tragedy that unfolds in the first pages, a seemingly stand-alone event serving as the catalyst for Madeline’s change of careers and cross-country move, ends up being central to the solution of the primary mystery.
Madeline moves into a tiny Malibu guest house/apartment on the grounds of the home of movie director Tyler Beckett and his new actress wife.
On her first night in residence, the Becketts invite her to a party they are hosting and she meets Emily, a fledgling assistant movie director who becomes her best friend and to whom she turns for help in solving the mysteries.
The next week she’s at a nightspot having a drink with Emily when, to her chagrin, her Harvard beau of 12 years earlier shows up at her table. The relationship between Ernest Carmichael Billings and Madeline had not ended well, and Madeline has no tender feelings toward him.
However, he’s become a wunderkind in the business world bailing out public companies and turning them around in record time. He’s recently moved to Los Angeles to become CEO of a company called Langton Regional Group. His appointment is a secret, though, until the public announcement is made the following Monday.
Over the weekend, Madeline does something she shouldn’t have: Decides to buy a lot of LRG stock with her nest egg. Presumably, because of Billings’ previous success, the stock price will go up with the announcement of his hiring. What she’s doing is called insider trading since she got a tip from the “inside” and buys her stock before the average investor learns that Billings has come on board at LRG—and that’s not legal.
Madeline makes her initial buy. LRG announces that Billings is the new CEO. The stock starts to go up as expected. Madeline buys more. She starts calculating her profit and thinking about at what price she’ll sell.
Just a few hours later, however, trading of LRG stock is “halted pending announcement.”
It turns out that Billings, the new CEO, never showed at Langton’s headquarters Monday morning. Madeline senses some funny stock business has taken place and wants to find Billings. He’s been kidnapped, but that is no deterrent to her.
What follows is her amateur, yet clever, investigation into Billings’ disappearance. Meanwhile, her landlord’s 17-year-old daughter goes missing and is also believed kidnapped. Madeline adds this disappearance to her investigative load and works leads on both at the same time.
The development of the story, the characters, the dialogue and the twists along the way put this e-book in the same category with mysteries from the big publishing houses that are sold in bookstores across the country. Richards has written a good book.
And, by the way, she has in the works two more Madeline Carter novels. I’m ready.
Click here to link to Mad Money.
--Davilynn Furlow
Death at Pullman
By Frances McNamara
$4.99 at Smashwords and Amazon
One of America’s first great labor struggles provides the setting for Death at Pullman, Frances McNamara’s historical novel about a murder in Pullman, Illinois, during the 1894 strike against the railway car company of that name.
The murder occurs during a strike/lockout in which the nascent labor movement is taking on the powerful manufacturer of luxury passenger cars. A young Pullman worker is found hanging in a shed with a sign around his neck proclaiming “Spy.” The discovery sets off the kind of finger-pointing and conspiracy theorizing that often follows anonymous violence occurring in the midst of bitter conflicts. Did the young man’s striking colleagues really discover that he was spying on them for the Pullman Company? Did George Pullman’s goons stage the murder to create suspicion and threaten the workers’ solidarity? Could the cause have been another, more personal reason?
Emily Cabot, a protégé of the great reformer Jane Addams, whose Hull House sits in a Chicago slum, is the book’s protagonist and voice. Robber baron George Pullman, who owns the town and controls the local police and the dreaded Pinkertons, is the villain of the tale. His counterpart is labor founding father Eugene V. Debs, leader of the American Railway Union. Pullman workers technically were not railway men, but the union sought to organize them and supported their strike.
George Pullman had built what appeared to be an idyllic town for his workers, and he was full of righteous indignation that mere working men, even women, would challenge his absolute right to set both the wages paid his employees and the rents charged for their housing.
Though McNamara – and probably any other right-thinking person – is sympathetic to the striking workers who were less interested in building a labor movement than in trying to survive and feed their families, she gives a balanced account of the economic realities Pullman faced. Orders for his cars had fallen sharply, dragging down his revenues with them.
Emily Cabot and Dr. Stephen Chapman have been sent to Pullman by Jane Addams to help feed and attend to the striking workers and their families. Emily has an on-again-off-again love interest in Chapman, and the book includes enough light romance to offset the brawny action.
As a murder mystery, Death at Pullman is serviceable. But it is its well-researched descriptions of people and places and its depiction of the ground-breaking struggle between management and labor that set it apart. A reader who would never pick up a history book on the subject will enjoy the story and consider the educational factor an added, even subliminal bonus.
I have not read the other books in McNamara’s Emily Cabot series, Death at Hull House and Death at the Fair, which also are set in the Chicago area of the late 19th century. But if they are on par with this one, their value proposition more than justifies inclusion on our Great Books Under $5 blog.
Click here to link to Death at Pullman.
Bill Furlow
$4.99 at Smashwords and Amazon
One of America’s first great labor struggles provides the setting for Death at Pullman, Frances McNamara’s historical novel about a murder in Pullman, Illinois, during the 1894 strike against the railway car company of that name.
The murder occurs during a strike/lockout in which the nascent labor movement is taking on the powerful manufacturer of luxury passenger cars. A young Pullman worker is found hanging in a shed with a sign around his neck proclaiming “Spy.” The discovery sets off the kind of finger-pointing and conspiracy theorizing that often follows anonymous violence occurring in the midst of bitter conflicts. Did the young man’s striking colleagues really discover that he was spying on them for the Pullman Company? Did George Pullman’s goons stage the murder to create suspicion and threaten the workers’ solidarity? Could the cause have been another, more personal reason?
Emily Cabot, a protégé of the great reformer Jane Addams, whose Hull House sits in a Chicago slum, is the book’s protagonist and voice. Robber baron George Pullman, who owns the town and controls the local police and the dreaded Pinkertons, is the villain of the tale. His counterpart is labor founding father Eugene V. Debs, leader of the American Railway Union. Pullman workers technically were not railway men, but the union sought to organize them and supported their strike.
George Pullman had built what appeared to be an idyllic town for his workers, and he was full of righteous indignation that mere working men, even women, would challenge his absolute right to set both the wages paid his employees and the rents charged for their housing.
Though McNamara – and probably any other right-thinking person – is sympathetic to the striking workers who were less interested in building a labor movement than in trying to survive and feed their families, she gives a balanced account of the economic realities Pullman faced. Orders for his cars had fallen sharply, dragging down his revenues with them.
Emily Cabot and Dr. Stephen Chapman have been sent to Pullman by Jane Addams to help feed and attend to the striking workers and their families. Emily has an on-again-off-again love interest in Chapman, and the book includes enough light romance to offset the brawny action.
As a murder mystery, Death at Pullman is serviceable. But it is its well-researched descriptions of people and places and its depiction of the ground-breaking struggle between management and labor that set it apart. A reader who would never pick up a history book on the subject will enjoy the story and consider the educational factor an added, even subliminal bonus.
I have not read the other books in McNamara’s Emily Cabot series, Death at Hull House and Death at the Fair, which also are set in the Chicago area of the late 19th century. But if they are on par with this one, their value proposition more than justifies inclusion on our Great Books Under $5 blog.
Click here to link to Death at Pullman.
Bill Furlow
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Gabby...All About Me
By Lee Carey
$3.99 at Smashwords.com
Okay, I admit it. I’m a sucker for dogs, for books about dogs, for magazines that sell dog stuff, for just about anything doggie.
Lee Carey’s novel, Gabby . . . All About Me, fits the dog-lover profile perfectly. Scooter, an aspiring novelist, lives on the beach in Virginia Beach, Florida. He’s single and decides he wants a dog. Like a good citizen, he goes to the local SPCA to adopt his new pet.
Only we’re not sure that Scooter does the adopting. An eight-month-old Lab-Chow mix starts talking to Scooter from his cage to make sure that Scooter knows she’s the one. Yes, that’s right, the puppy starts talking. She understands Scooter, too--his words as well as his thoughts.
Scooter’s a bit freaked out, but what choice does he have. He tells the SPCA lady that he wants this cute black puppy with white fur on her chest. Her name is Gabriella, but Scooter, in his macho beach guy best, tells the pup (yes, the pup herself) that he can’t have a dog named Gabriella and dubs her Gabby. Get it? Short for Gabriella but descriptive as well.
That first day you would think it was “all about Gabby.” She gets a romp on the beach, she gets grilled burgers for dinner as requested, and she gets to nap to her heart’s content.
Scooter is working on a novel, but it’s no better than the many others he’s written and received rejection letters for. Gabby offers to help. Scooter is skeptical, but he listens patiently. Before you know it, Gabby has given him some plot points and he’s on a writing roll.
They develop a routine of going to the beach (Scooter surfs and Gabby visits all the beachgoers), eating, writing and napping.
Gabby’s true calling, however, soon asserts itself. I won’t go into detail because it would spoil the story. Suffice it to say that amazing things happen with Gabby around. And her presence is life-changing for Scooter.
This is an uplifting novel that can bring a tear to your eye, a laugh from your belly and memories of our own dogs when they were puppies. This is an excellent book for 11- or 12-year-olds through the teen years and for anyone who loves a dog story—including this grandmother.
Click here to link to Gabby...All About Me.
Davilynn Furlow
$3.99 at Smashwords.com
Okay, I admit it. I’m a sucker for dogs, for books about dogs, for magazines that sell dog stuff, for just about anything doggie.
Lee Carey’s novel, Gabby . . . All About Me, fits the dog-lover profile perfectly. Scooter, an aspiring novelist, lives on the beach in Virginia Beach, Florida. He’s single and decides he wants a dog. Like a good citizen, he goes to the local SPCA to adopt his new pet.
Only we’re not sure that Scooter does the adopting. An eight-month-old Lab-Chow mix starts talking to Scooter from his cage to make sure that Scooter knows she’s the one. Yes, that’s right, the puppy starts talking. She understands Scooter, too--his words as well as his thoughts.
Scooter’s a bit freaked out, but what choice does he have. He tells the SPCA lady that he wants this cute black puppy with white fur on her chest. Her name is Gabriella, but Scooter, in his macho beach guy best, tells the pup (yes, the pup herself) that he can’t have a dog named Gabriella and dubs her Gabby. Get it? Short for Gabriella but descriptive as well.
That first day you would think it was “all about Gabby.” She gets a romp on the beach, she gets grilled burgers for dinner as requested, and she gets to nap to her heart’s content.
Scooter is working on a novel, but it’s no better than the many others he’s written and received rejection letters for. Gabby offers to help. Scooter is skeptical, but he listens patiently. Before you know it, Gabby has given him some plot points and he’s on a writing roll.
They develop a routine of going to the beach (Scooter surfs and Gabby visits all the beachgoers), eating, writing and napping.
Gabby’s true calling, however, soon asserts itself. I won’t go into detail because it would spoil the story. Suffice it to say that amazing things happen with Gabby around. And her presence is life-changing for Scooter.
This is an uplifting novel that can bring a tear to your eye, a laugh from your belly and memories of our own dogs when they were puppies. This is an excellent book for 11- or 12-year-olds through the teen years and for anyone who loves a dog story—including this grandmother.
Click here to link to Gabby...All About Me.
Davilynn Furlow
Friday, April 15, 2011
The Magpie's Secret
By G.J. Lau
$0.99 at Smashwords.com
G.J. Lau has written a thriller with romance, politics, family complications, and, of course, secrets.
Frank Martinelli is an ordinary guy, if you take into account the effects a tour in Vietnam in his 20s and the disappearance of his daughter on her way back to college 20 years ago will have on a man. He lives in a pleasant town not far from Washington, D.C., where he worked for the Office of Management and Budget until he retired. His inability to get past the disappearance of their daughter resulted in divorce, although he and his ex-wife are still friendly.
Frank lives above a bar, and the bar’s owner and one of the bartenders are like family to him. He makes extra spending money by helping out at a funeral home when they need an extra usher, parking attendant, or pallbearer, and at a car dealer shuttling vehicles from one dealership to another.
All in all, his life is pretty mundane, and his schedule is predictable. Until one afternoon when a man asks to join him as he’s eating lunch outside at a neighborhood restaurant. That conversation turns Frank’s well-ordered life upside down.
The “stranger” turns out to be Thomas Clayton, who served briefly with Frank in Vietnam. When Thomas left the Army, he took what he had learned and became an assassin for hire. Thomas is essentially retired now and only takes special assignments. He tells Frank that someone tried to hire him to kill him. Thomas declined (seeing as how they had been Army buddies and Frank had done him a good turn), but the contract is still being shopped, and someone without Thomas’s scruples could easily take it up.
Although at first Frank can’t imagine why someone would to have him killed, paranoia becomes a constant companion, particularly after his ex-wife Emily’s condo is broken into.
Not long after Frank’s daughter disappeared, he had volunteered at a teen hotline and talked frequently with one particular young woman. He sensed that she was being sexually molested, but he had no proof. When he reads in the paper that a teen-ager named Rachel Meadows has been killed in an auto accident on the eve of her 16th birthday, he puts it together with his hotline client. Because he feels guilty, he goes to the funeral, even though he doesn’t know the family. Rachel’s mother, Catherine, thinks it odd that a stranger is at her daughter’s funeral and seeks him out. They talk briefly, and she senses Frank knows something about Rachel he’s not saying.
Twenty years pass; Frank finds out he’s the target of an assassin; Rachel Meadows’ father dies; and Frank is asked to work the parking lot at his funeral. Catherine sees him, remembers him from her daughter’s funeral, and seeks him out. They talk again.
Catherine’s son Adam is running for political office, and Frank volunteers to work on the campaign. He likes politics, but he also wonders if Adam knows about Rachel’s abuse and the contract on him.
Just to make matters complicated, Frank is falling romantically for Catherine; he actually likes Adam, and he’s getting warnings from different sources about the contract on him.
Lau has created believable characters, including our protagonist, who finds himself in an unfathomable position as the target of an assassin. I was engaged from the moment I began reading until the end, which is unexpected and satisfying.
Click here to link to The Magpie's Secret.
Davilynn Furlow
$0.99 at Smashwords.com
G.J. Lau has written a thriller with romance, politics, family complications, and, of course, secrets.
Frank Martinelli is an ordinary guy, if you take into account the effects a tour in Vietnam in his 20s and the disappearance of his daughter on her way back to college 20 years ago will have on a man. He lives in a pleasant town not far from Washington, D.C., where he worked for the Office of Management and Budget until he retired. His inability to get past the disappearance of their daughter resulted in divorce, although he and his ex-wife are still friendly.
Frank lives above a bar, and the bar’s owner and one of the bartenders are like family to him. He makes extra spending money by helping out at a funeral home when they need an extra usher, parking attendant, or pallbearer, and at a car dealer shuttling vehicles from one dealership to another.
All in all, his life is pretty mundane, and his schedule is predictable. Until one afternoon when a man asks to join him as he’s eating lunch outside at a neighborhood restaurant. That conversation turns Frank’s well-ordered life upside down.
The “stranger” turns out to be Thomas Clayton, who served briefly with Frank in Vietnam. When Thomas left the Army, he took what he had learned and became an assassin for hire. Thomas is essentially retired now and only takes special assignments. He tells Frank that someone tried to hire him to kill him. Thomas declined (seeing as how they had been Army buddies and Frank had done him a good turn), but the contract is still being shopped, and someone without Thomas’s scruples could easily take it up.
Although at first Frank can’t imagine why someone would to have him killed, paranoia becomes a constant companion, particularly after his ex-wife Emily’s condo is broken into.
Not long after Frank’s daughter disappeared, he had volunteered at a teen hotline and talked frequently with one particular young woman. He sensed that she was being sexually molested, but he had no proof. When he reads in the paper that a teen-ager named Rachel Meadows has been killed in an auto accident on the eve of her 16th birthday, he puts it together with his hotline client. Because he feels guilty, he goes to the funeral, even though he doesn’t know the family. Rachel’s mother, Catherine, thinks it odd that a stranger is at her daughter’s funeral and seeks him out. They talk briefly, and she senses Frank knows something about Rachel he’s not saying.
Twenty years pass; Frank finds out he’s the target of an assassin; Rachel Meadows’ father dies; and Frank is asked to work the parking lot at his funeral. Catherine sees him, remembers him from her daughter’s funeral, and seeks him out. They talk again.
Catherine’s son Adam is running for political office, and Frank volunteers to work on the campaign. He likes politics, but he also wonders if Adam knows about Rachel’s abuse and the contract on him.
Just to make matters complicated, Frank is falling romantically for Catherine; he actually likes Adam, and he’s getting warnings from different sources about the contract on him.
Lau has created believable characters, including our protagonist, who finds himself in an unfathomable position as the target of an assassin. I was engaged from the moment I began reading until the end, which is unexpected and satisfying.
Click here to link to The Magpie's Secret.
Davilynn Furlow
Friday, April 8, 2011
My Two Years in the Priest Corps
By Joe Novara
$1.99 at www.smashwords.com
Former Roman Catholic priest Joe Novara has written the least angry memoir about leaving the priesthood you’re ever likely to read. If Novara is outraged by the church’s child-abuse scandal, he keeps it to himself. If he felt somehow betrayed by those who educated him in the holy mysteries for a dozen years, he doesn’t let on.
And yet Novara has written a most pleasant account of being sent to seminary in high school, remaining there through college and then going off among a select few for further theological training in Rome. Over the course of the narrative, he goes from being “totally engaged” with the church to having an “arm-length indifference” to it.
The tale doesn’t spool out in chronological sequence but is told via a collection of stories – sort of a “Then-there-was-the-time” approach, which works fine. He doesn’t say it straight out, but if I had to guess, I’d bet Novara at least occasionally wishes it had worked out differently. He wouldn’t give up his wife and child from his post-priesthood life, of course, but I think he wishes he were still in love with the church.
Married now and with a grown daughter, he takes a nostalgic tour of the churches in his former precincts. He runs into an old friend, an admirable, aging priest who still puts effort into his homilies for weekday evening liturgies for a congregation too small to justify use of the sanctuary. A nun who had been the principal of Joe’s high school still serves with the priest as “missionaries to Detroit’s East Side, urban-renewed wasteland.” She was now trying to establish and run an experimental high school.
As he leaves the church and his former mentors, Novara wonders whether he had “skipped out too soon – had left right after the bloom went off the romance of priestly work. Theirs has been a lifelong commitment. Mine was a kind of ‘living together’ arrangement – fine as long as it worked.”
Novara doesn’t ignore the priest child-abuse scandal. He writes of a seminary classmate who was great with kids. “Is my memory of Dave naïve? Would he have been the kind of priest to commit these awful crimes? All my instincts shout no. But I’ve learned I never can know for sure.” It’s one more thing that’s changed from the church he thought he once had committed himself to.
One reason Novara’s edges aren’t sharper may simply be the passage of time. He became a priest in the ‘60s, a tumultuous time in the world and an exciting time for the post-Vatican II Catholic Church. He served two years in a Detroit parish before making his exit.
After ordination and his Michigan homecoming, he began to learn the realities of being a priest, that it’s the ultimate 24/7 job, and you never get to leave the burdens at home. He also saw the relationship between priest and parishioner in a different light. “I thought I was going to be a personal trainer for a leaner, enlightened Catholicism,” he writes. “The majority of my congregation simply wanted a massage therapist.”
Despite any yearning for or curiosity about the road not taken, Novara ultimately is content with his choice to leave the church. “I so wanted to serve God and humanity on the macrocosmic, supernatural level. I came to find that atmosphere too rarefied. The scale of one on one friendship; the microcosm of my family has proved a more gratifying and seemingly successful strategy.”
Click here to link to My Two Years in the Priest Corps.
$1.99 at www.smashwords.com
Former Roman Catholic priest Joe Novara has written the least angry memoir about leaving the priesthood you’re ever likely to read. If Novara is outraged by the church’s child-abuse scandal, he keeps it to himself. If he felt somehow betrayed by those who educated him in the holy mysteries for a dozen years, he doesn’t let on.
And yet Novara has written a most pleasant account of being sent to seminary in high school, remaining there through college and then going off among a select few for further theological training in Rome. Over the course of the narrative, he goes from being “totally engaged” with the church to having an “arm-length indifference” to it.
The tale doesn’t spool out in chronological sequence but is told via a collection of stories – sort of a “Then-there-was-the-time” approach, which works fine. He doesn’t say it straight out, but if I had to guess, I’d bet Novara at least occasionally wishes it had worked out differently. He wouldn’t give up his wife and child from his post-priesthood life, of course, but I think he wishes he were still in love with the church.
Married now and with a grown daughter, he takes a nostalgic tour of the churches in his former precincts. He runs into an old friend, an admirable, aging priest who still puts effort into his homilies for weekday evening liturgies for a congregation too small to justify use of the sanctuary. A nun who had been the principal of Joe’s high school still serves with the priest as “missionaries to Detroit’s East Side, urban-renewed wasteland.” She was now trying to establish and run an experimental high school.
As he leaves the church and his former mentors, Novara wonders whether he had “skipped out too soon – had left right after the bloom went off the romance of priestly work. Theirs has been a lifelong commitment. Mine was a kind of ‘living together’ arrangement – fine as long as it worked.”
Novara doesn’t ignore the priest child-abuse scandal. He writes of a seminary classmate who was great with kids. “Is my memory of Dave naïve? Would he have been the kind of priest to commit these awful crimes? All my instincts shout no. But I’ve learned I never can know for sure.” It’s one more thing that’s changed from the church he thought he once had committed himself to.
One reason Novara’s edges aren’t sharper may simply be the passage of time. He became a priest in the ‘60s, a tumultuous time in the world and an exciting time for the post-Vatican II Catholic Church. He served two years in a Detroit parish before making his exit.
After ordination and his Michigan homecoming, he began to learn the realities of being a priest, that it’s the ultimate 24/7 job, and you never get to leave the burdens at home. He also saw the relationship between priest and parishioner in a different light. “I thought I was going to be a personal trainer for a leaner, enlightened Catholicism,” he writes. “The majority of my congregation simply wanted a massage therapist.”
Despite any yearning for or curiosity about the road not taken, Novara ultimately is content with his choice to leave the church. “I so wanted to serve God and humanity on the macrocosmic, supernatural level. I came to find that atmosphere too rarefied. The scale of one on one friendship; the microcosm of my family has proved a more gratifying and seemingly successful strategy.”
Click here to link to My Two Years in the Priest Corps.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Game 7: Dead Ball
By Allen Schatz
$2.99 at www.smashwords.com
There may be other novels featuring baseball umpires as lead characters, but I haven’t read one. It sounds almost like an exercise in a creative writing class: Set the person who is supposed to remain invisible at the center of a story involving love and hate, success and failure, excitement and tragedy. Author Allen Schatz has done that and done it well.
For a good portion of Game 7: Dead Ball, protagonist Marshall Connors knows he’s in the middle of a life-or-death situation. He just doesn’t know whose or what to do about it.
Chosen to umpire the World Series as a surprise replacement for the crew chief who apparently suffered a heart attack, Connors must call balls and strikes on his boyhood friend Terry O’Hara, the ace of the Philadelphia Phillies pitching staff, and Terry’s former USC teammate Nik Sanchez, catcher for the Tampa Bay Rays.
Terry and Nik’s relationship was ruined long ago and now is defined only by animus. A third Trojan teammate, AJ Singer, had an affair with Terry’s mother, and when her husband discovered it, things got very ugly for all involved.
As the Series bounces between Florida and Pennsylvania, millions of fans watch the games on television unaware of the real drama swirling around Marshall Connors. Notes are surreptitiously delivered to him at home plate; meaningful looks are thrown by league security men, and an old-fashioned baseball “message” is delivered by catcher Sanchez – a fastball allowed to blast Marshall in the facemask.
Between games, though, Marshall manages to work in a little romance and tries to help his friend Thomas Hillsborough, an ex-CIA spook who is sort of a law-enforcement-stud-without-portfolio, figure out what’s going on.
You might expect a mystery involving a baseball umpire in the World Series to center on fixing games. Schatz happily has chosen to go in a less obvious direction.
Without giving away the plot, the crimes here include serial murder, kidnapping, extortion, and felony battery. Throw in the inter-generational adultery and some unpaid gambling debts, and you’ve got lots of reasons for people not to like each other.
Game 7 has a huge cast of characters – FBI agents, Major League Baseball officials, ball players, bad guys, innocent victims, and umpires among them. It is to Schatz’s credit as a writer that they’re reasonably easy to keep straight.
If you like baseball and thrillers, Game 7: Dead Ball is a must read. Even those who are only so-so on the national pastime but enjoy complicated plots with well-drawn characters will find Game 7 most satisfying.
Click here to link to Game 7: Dead Ball.
Bill Furlow
$2.99 at www.smashwords.com
There may be other novels featuring baseball umpires as lead characters, but I haven’t read one. It sounds almost like an exercise in a creative writing class: Set the person who is supposed to remain invisible at the center of a story involving love and hate, success and failure, excitement and tragedy. Author Allen Schatz has done that and done it well.
For a good portion of Game 7: Dead Ball, protagonist Marshall Connors knows he’s in the middle of a life-or-death situation. He just doesn’t know whose or what to do about it.
Chosen to umpire the World Series as a surprise replacement for the crew chief who apparently suffered a heart attack, Connors must call balls and strikes on his boyhood friend Terry O’Hara, the ace of the Philadelphia Phillies pitching staff, and Terry’s former USC teammate Nik Sanchez, catcher for the Tampa Bay Rays.
Terry and Nik’s relationship was ruined long ago and now is defined only by animus. A third Trojan teammate, AJ Singer, had an affair with Terry’s mother, and when her husband discovered it, things got very ugly for all involved.
As the Series bounces between Florida and Pennsylvania, millions of fans watch the games on television unaware of the real drama swirling around Marshall Connors. Notes are surreptitiously delivered to him at home plate; meaningful looks are thrown by league security men, and an old-fashioned baseball “message” is delivered by catcher Sanchez – a fastball allowed to blast Marshall in the facemask.
Between games, though, Marshall manages to work in a little romance and tries to help his friend Thomas Hillsborough, an ex-CIA spook who is sort of a law-enforcement-stud-without-portfolio, figure out what’s going on.
You might expect a mystery involving a baseball umpire in the World Series to center on fixing games. Schatz happily has chosen to go in a less obvious direction.
Without giving away the plot, the crimes here include serial murder, kidnapping, extortion, and felony battery. Throw in the inter-generational adultery and some unpaid gambling debts, and you’ve got lots of reasons for people not to like each other.
Game 7 has a huge cast of characters – FBI agents, Major League Baseball officials, ball players, bad guys, innocent victims, and umpires among them. It is to Schatz’s credit as a writer that they’re reasonably easy to keep straight.
If you like baseball and thrillers, Game 7: Dead Ball is a must read. Even those who are only so-so on the national pastime but enjoy complicated plots with well-drawn characters will find Game 7 most satisfying.
Click here to link to Game 7: Dead Ball.
Bill Furlow
Dragon Lady
By Gary Alexander
Available in early April at www.istoriabooks.com
In Gary Alexander’s vision of The Great Beyond, the big questions about life never get fully answered.
Joseph Josiah Joe IV doesn’t know whether he’s in Heaven or Hell, and he doesn’t waste time trying to figure it out, simply referring to it as The Great Beyond. “Thanks to the psychological games They play with me,” he tells us in the satirical Vietnam War book Dragon Lady, “one day it’s one, the next day the other.” Wherever he is, it’s got San Diego weather and non-stop elevator music.
Important to the reader is the perspective that living in The Great Beyond gives our storyteller, who long ago was Private Joe of the U.S. Army, serving in the relative safety of Saigon. The year is 1965, a time when big-wig Americans (at least fictional ones) were naïve enough to think they could pinpoint the very day the North Vietnamese would be forced to capitulate, sending home the relative handful of GIs in-country before too many were killed.
Private Joe’s youth had not been dominated by worship of baseball players, rock stars or astronauts. Rather he was fascinated by the comic strip Terry and the Pirates, and his lingering boyhood crush had been on its mysterious femme fatale, the Dragon Lady. In Saigon, Joe comes across a beautiful woman who, in his still-boyish mind, becomes his real-life Dragon Lady.
Positioning the narrator in the afterlife gives Dragon Lady a third dimension that lifts it above a simple boy-meets-girl story. Mai is a prostitute and possible Viet Cong spy who consorts with Joe’s superior officers. Whatever she is, Joe is smitten with her and, all logic aside, wants to take her home. We know from the biography he’s given us from The Great Beyond, that’s not going to happen. But his love-sick pursuit of his impossible dream is entertaining.
Along the way, Joe and his sidekick Pvt. Zbitgysz lead a life of high-jinks, performing “alternative materiel” requisitions for their incompetent bosses. In that way and others, Dragon Lady aspires to be the Catch-22 of Vietnam. But it’s less ironic, and it’s no put-down to say its humor is more like that of the movie Good Morning, Vietnam or the TV version of M*A*S*H.
As a mortal, it takes Joe a long time and considerable growing up to learn the apparent truth about Mai. In The Great Beyond, new questions about her arise, enlivening Joe’s hum-drum existence and giving him something to live (?) for.
Until recently, I had not read a Vietnam book in decades. Now I’ve read two this year, the gripping Matterhorn, which takes us into the brutal world of a Marine combat unit, and the wistfully humorous Dragon Lady. Other than sharing a complete disdain for the mid-level officers whose egos and ambitions cost many American lives, the two couldn’t be more different. But both have something to say about the folly of war and, particularly, our Vietnam misadventure.
Click here to link to Dragon Lady.
Bill Furlow
Available in early April at www.istoriabooks.com
In Gary Alexander’s vision of The Great Beyond, the big questions about life never get fully answered.
Joseph Josiah Joe IV doesn’t know whether he’s in Heaven or Hell, and he doesn’t waste time trying to figure it out, simply referring to it as The Great Beyond. “Thanks to the psychological games They play with me,” he tells us in the satirical Vietnam War book Dragon Lady, “one day it’s one, the next day the other.” Wherever he is, it’s got San Diego weather and non-stop elevator music.
Important to the reader is the perspective that living in The Great Beyond gives our storyteller, who long ago was Private Joe of the U.S. Army, serving in the relative safety of Saigon. The year is 1965, a time when big-wig Americans (at least fictional ones) were naïve enough to think they could pinpoint the very day the North Vietnamese would be forced to capitulate, sending home the relative handful of GIs in-country before too many were killed.
Private Joe’s youth had not been dominated by worship of baseball players, rock stars or astronauts. Rather he was fascinated by the comic strip Terry and the Pirates, and his lingering boyhood crush had been on its mysterious femme fatale, the Dragon Lady. In Saigon, Joe comes across a beautiful woman who, in his still-boyish mind, becomes his real-life Dragon Lady.
Positioning the narrator in the afterlife gives Dragon Lady a third dimension that lifts it above a simple boy-meets-girl story. Mai is a prostitute and possible Viet Cong spy who consorts with Joe’s superior officers. Whatever she is, Joe is smitten with her and, all logic aside, wants to take her home. We know from the biography he’s given us from The Great Beyond, that’s not going to happen. But his love-sick pursuit of his impossible dream is entertaining.
Along the way, Joe and his sidekick Pvt. Zbitgysz lead a life of high-jinks, performing “alternative materiel” requisitions for their incompetent bosses. In that way and others, Dragon Lady aspires to be the Catch-22 of Vietnam. But it’s less ironic, and it’s no put-down to say its humor is more like that of the movie Good Morning, Vietnam or the TV version of M*A*S*H.
As a mortal, it takes Joe a long time and considerable growing up to learn the apparent truth about Mai. In The Great Beyond, new questions about her arise, enlivening Joe’s hum-drum existence and giving him something to live (?) for.
Until recently, I had not read a Vietnam book in decades. Now I’ve read two this year, the gripping Matterhorn, which takes us into the brutal world of a Marine combat unit, and the wistfully humorous Dragon Lady. Other than sharing a complete disdain for the mid-level officers whose egos and ambitions cost many American lives, the two couldn’t be more different. But both have something to say about the folly of war and, particularly, our Vietnam misadventure.
Click here to link to Dragon Lady.
Bill Furlow
The Meteoric Rise of Simon Burchwood
By Scott Semegran
$2.99 at Smashwords.com
Why anyone would care about Simon Burchwood’s meteoric rise I’m not sure, but I certainly did. I couldn’t stop turning the pages to find out what amazing, stupid, or appalling thing Simon might do next. It’s true, as Simon, our narrator, says time after time in his memoir, The Meteoric Rise of Simon Burchwood.
Simon has always wanted to be a famous writer – not just a writer, but a famous one – yet fate has him working a dull job at TechForce, in Austin, Texas. Actually, he does as little for his employer as possible, preferring to use his company computer to work on his great novel, It’s true.
Simon is not an appealing man—not in appearance as he describes himself, not in his personality, and not in his behavior. Yet we are hooked on his adventures and what comes out of his mouth.
He is supposed to be flying to New York to read a passage from his soon-to-be-published novel, The Rise and Fall of a Titan, at Barnes & Noble’s flagship store, but he stops off in his hometown of Montgomery, Alabama, to visit his best friend, Jason, whom he hasn’t seen since he was 16. They have stayed in touch through, amazingly enough, letters.
Some of the best scenes in the book come when Simon interacts with strangers. He inevitably starts out thinking a person is nice, clever, a genius even, then ends up hating them—all in one short encounter.
As an example, here’s part of his encounter with an airport bartender:
Bartender: “That drink’s on the house," he said, pointing to my cocktail.
Simon: “Thank you for your generosity." Can you fucking believe it? Wow, he was a professional, a real topnotch bartender. I have known many bartenders in my time but he was one of the slickest.”
And later in the conversation:
Bartender: “Being that I work in an airport, I meet lots of famous types. Singers, actors, politicians, reporters, disc jockeys, athletes, porn stars, you name it. But I ain't never met no writer before. Come to think of it, I don't even know what writers look like.”
Simon: "That's a shame. Writers should be like rock stars in our society. They should be revered," I said. And I meant it too.
Bartender: "That's funny. That's like saying everyone should recognize chess masters or cyclists or physicists or inventors. Nobody cares about writers just like nobody cares about those other types. No offense."
Simon: "None taken." Actually, that really pissed me off. I mean, who the fuck did he think he was anyway? I was the one with a publishing deal. He was stuck in an airport bar serving swill to his high-class clientele, the nose-picking barflies.”
And his encounters continue with his about-faces: the ticket agent, the flight attendant, a friend from high school, Jason’s wife, the girl he had a crush on in high school; not even Jason escapes his excoriation. It’s true.
And did I mention that he was cheap and a shameless self-promoter? For example, he passes out his business card to just about everyone he runs into and tells them: " . . . you can leave me a tip by going to my web site at www.simonburchwood.com and clicking the Submit button on the gratuity web page." He takes all major credit cards. It’s true.
Simon is such a character that I couldn’t wait to find what he did next.
But I wasn’t at all prepared for the surprising conclusion.
It’s true.
Click here to link to The Meteoric Rise of Simon Burchwood.
Davilynn Furlow
$2.99 at Smashwords.com
Why anyone would care about Simon Burchwood’s meteoric rise I’m not sure, but I certainly did. I couldn’t stop turning the pages to find out what amazing, stupid, or appalling thing Simon might do next. It’s true, as Simon, our narrator, says time after time in his memoir, The Meteoric Rise of Simon Burchwood.
Simon has always wanted to be a famous writer – not just a writer, but a famous one – yet fate has him working a dull job at TechForce, in Austin, Texas. Actually, he does as little for his employer as possible, preferring to use his company computer to work on his great novel, It’s true.
Simon is not an appealing man—not in appearance as he describes himself, not in his personality, and not in his behavior. Yet we are hooked on his adventures and what comes out of his mouth.
He is supposed to be flying to New York to read a passage from his soon-to-be-published novel, The Rise and Fall of a Titan, at Barnes & Noble’s flagship store, but he stops off in his hometown of Montgomery, Alabama, to visit his best friend, Jason, whom he hasn’t seen since he was 16. They have stayed in touch through, amazingly enough, letters.
Some of the best scenes in the book come when Simon interacts with strangers. He inevitably starts out thinking a person is nice, clever, a genius even, then ends up hating them—all in one short encounter.
As an example, here’s part of his encounter with an airport bartender:
Bartender: “That drink’s on the house," he said, pointing to my cocktail.
Simon: “Thank you for your generosity." Can you fucking believe it? Wow, he was a professional, a real topnotch bartender. I have known many bartenders in my time but he was one of the slickest.”
And later in the conversation:
Bartender: “Being that I work in an airport, I meet lots of famous types. Singers, actors, politicians, reporters, disc jockeys, athletes, porn stars, you name it. But I ain't never met no writer before. Come to think of it, I don't even know what writers look like.”
Simon: "That's a shame. Writers should be like rock stars in our society. They should be revered," I said. And I meant it too.
Bartender: "That's funny. That's like saying everyone should recognize chess masters or cyclists or physicists or inventors. Nobody cares about writers just like nobody cares about those other types. No offense."
Simon: "None taken." Actually, that really pissed me off. I mean, who the fuck did he think he was anyway? I was the one with a publishing deal. He was stuck in an airport bar serving swill to his high-class clientele, the nose-picking barflies.”
And his encounters continue with his about-faces: the ticket agent, the flight attendant, a friend from high school, Jason’s wife, the girl he had a crush on in high school; not even Jason escapes his excoriation. It’s true.
And did I mention that he was cheap and a shameless self-promoter? For example, he passes out his business card to just about everyone he runs into and tells them: " . . . you can leave me a tip by going to my web site at www.simonburchwood.com and clicking the Submit button on the gratuity web page." He takes all major credit cards. It’s true.
Simon is such a character that I couldn’t wait to find what he did next.
But I wasn’t at all prepared for the surprising conclusion.
It’s true.
Click here to link to The Meteoric Rise of Simon Burchwood.
Davilynn Furlow
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Lethal Play
By Loretta Giacoletto
$2.99 at www.smashwords.com
Francesca Canelli never was the stereotypical soccer mom, even though the center of family life was son Matt’s aspiration to play for the top club team in St. Louis. She had zero feel for the game and, if possible, even less interest in schmoozing with the other parents.
But when Matt’s soccer-nut father Ben is fatally struck by a van on an early morning jog, Francesca tries to pick up the slack, doing everything she can – and that turns out to be an outrageously big “everything” – to support her son.
The team, Pegasi, is coached by Rex Meredith, and no more loathsome individual ever walked a sideline. He uses his team’s success to extort everything from medical services to appliances to sex from the soccer parents, and even players.
When Rex’s body is found hanging from the soccer goal crossbar, naked but for socks, not even his widow is heartbroken. Was it suicide? It’s possible but unlikely. Francesca Canelli, who may have had ample reason to murder Rex, certainly couldn’t have put him in that position by herself. But with an accomplice…? Disaffected players cannot be overlooked. And what about the Canelli family friend who took over the team after Meredith’s death?
Det. Guy Winchester and Lt. Sam Reardan, assisted by Juvenile Officer Quinella Armstrong, are on the case but seem to find no one who has a credible story. (I don’t know whether Giacoletto thought through the fact that Armstrong is typically referred to by her first name, while the male detectives are identified by their last.)
Eventually the case appears to be nicely wrapped up, ending a little more cleanly than one might desire. Thankfully, though, that conclusion is no more satisfying to Reardan and Winchester, so they continue to probe.
Lethal Play has plenty of complexity to keep readers off-guard. Giacoletto has created characters the reader can pull for or against and also recognize. It’s a good read, and we look forward to seeing other books from her.
Click here to link to Lethal Play.
$2.99 at www.smashwords.com
Francesca Canelli never was the stereotypical soccer mom, even though the center of family life was son Matt’s aspiration to play for the top club team in St. Louis. She had zero feel for the game and, if possible, even less interest in schmoozing with the other parents.
But when Matt’s soccer-nut father Ben is fatally struck by a van on an early morning jog, Francesca tries to pick up the slack, doing everything she can – and that turns out to be an outrageously big “everything” – to support her son.
The team, Pegasi, is coached by Rex Meredith, and no more loathsome individual ever walked a sideline. He uses his team’s success to extort everything from medical services to appliances to sex from the soccer parents, and even players.
When Rex’s body is found hanging from the soccer goal crossbar, naked but for socks, not even his widow is heartbroken. Was it suicide? It’s possible but unlikely. Francesca Canelli, who may have had ample reason to murder Rex, certainly couldn’t have put him in that position by herself. But with an accomplice…? Disaffected players cannot be overlooked. And what about the Canelli family friend who took over the team after Meredith’s death?
Det. Guy Winchester and Lt. Sam Reardan, assisted by Juvenile Officer Quinella Armstrong, are on the case but seem to find no one who has a credible story. (I don’t know whether Giacoletto thought through the fact that Armstrong is typically referred to by her first name, while the male detectives are identified by their last.)
Eventually the case appears to be nicely wrapped up, ending a little more cleanly than one might desire. Thankfully, though, that conclusion is no more satisfying to Reardan and Winchester, so they continue to probe.
Lethal Play has plenty of complexity to keep readers off-guard. Giacoletto has created characters the reader can pull for or against and also recognize. It’s a good read, and we look forward to seeing other books from her.
Click here to link to Lethal Play.
Off Track
By Michael J. Hultquist
$3.99 at www.smashwords.com
Off Track is a classic story of a guy getting out of the joint and trying to go straight in the face of circumstances and people who conspire against him.
In this case, though, the ex-con is only 16 years old. Gary Sanderson had been in an Illinois juvenile facility called Radcliffe for four years after having killed his father in a morally justifiable, if illegal, shooting.
Now he wants nothing more than to make a decent life with the nice young foster parents whose decision to take him in shaved two years off his sentence. Oh, and he also wants a relationship with the neighbor girl whose father has forbidden him from coming anywhere near her.
Gary’s legal status leaves him vulnerable to those who enjoy preying on the weak, from an over-familiar male guidance counselor, to schoolyard bullies and an arrogant, tone-deaf cop.
Inevitably, Gary must make a decision that – again, even if morally defensible – could land him back in juvenile detention or worse. Readers may think they understand the alternative ways the situation could be resolved, but author Michael J. Hultquist has thought of a few more.
Hultquist lets the book unfold in its own time. He said he was seeking “a slow boil that bubbled to the surface in one final crescendo.” And that’s pretty much what it does. It’s a good story for readers who don’t require instant gratification and can find satisfaction in considering Gary’s various ethical and practical dilemmas along the way.
Click here to link to Off Track.
$3.99 at www.smashwords.com
Off Track is a classic story of a guy getting out of the joint and trying to go straight in the face of circumstances and people who conspire against him.
In this case, though, the ex-con is only 16 years old. Gary Sanderson had been in an Illinois juvenile facility called Radcliffe for four years after having killed his father in a morally justifiable, if illegal, shooting.
Now he wants nothing more than to make a decent life with the nice young foster parents whose decision to take him in shaved two years off his sentence. Oh, and he also wants a relationship with the neighbor girl whose father has forbidden him from coming anywhere near her.
Gary’s legal status leaves him vulnerable to those who enjoy preying on the weak, from an over-familiar male guidance counselor, to schoolyard bullies and an arrogant, tone-deaf cop.
Inevitably, Gary must make a decision that – again, even if morally defensible – could land him back in juvenile detention or worse. Readers may think they understand the alternative ways the situation could be resolved, but author Michael J. Hultquist has thought of a few more.
Hultquist lets the book unfold in its own time. He said he was seeking “a slow boil that bubbled to the surface in one final crescendo.” And that’s pretty much what it does. It’s a good story for readers who don’t require instant gratification and can find satisfaction in considering Gary’s various ethical and practical dilemmas along the way.
Click here to link to Off Track.
Make a Move
By Stephen Gaskin
$2.99 at www.smashwords.com
Freddy Mossman is too young to be washed up as a British SIS agent, but that’s essentially the situation he’s in because of a major screw-up on an assignment in Mexico. As a way to stay in the agency, he’s agreed to manage a safe house lodged in a small-time Parisian porn theater.
While Freddy ponders whether he’s got the right moral code for his chosen career, across town his former girlfriend Holly Henderson tries to fit in with the French company that acquired her former employer and moved her to the home office.
Stirring the pot is Freddy’s friend Jay McFarlane, a talented but not over-ambitious photographer who already has found his niche in life – causing as much trouble as possible for those he thinks deserve it. Invited to Paris to lighten his friend’s mood, Jay has attracted his own set of government operatives.
Jay’s idea of fun is to steal the neighborhood pimp’s classic car or to put Freddy in a position in which he must fight a celebrity’s two bodyguards. He’s not even above insulting the wife of Holly’s boss at the party she hopes to use to salvage her career. In a way, this is a high-jinks book. There is lots of violence, but most of it takes place off-stage.
As expected in a well-written thriller, it’s usually unclear who’s doing what to whom and why. When Freddy’s former mentor Thomas Veil shows up to offer him a way out of his dead-beat job, all the loose ends – Mexico, the spy shot dead in the theater by a gunman wearing a clown mask, and the head and hands of another spook left in Freddy’s fridge – all come together in a very satisfying denouement.
Make a Move is breezy, well-crafted and doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Click here to link to Make a Move.
$2.99 at www.smashwords.com
Freddy Mossman is too young to be washed up as a British SIS agent, but that’s essentially the situation he’s in because of a major screw-up on an assignment in Mexico. As a way to stay in the agency, he’s agreed to manage a safe house lodged in a small-time Parisian porn theater.
While Freddy ponders whether he’s got the right moral code for his chosen career, across town his former girlfriend Holly Henderson tries to fit in with the French company that acquired her former employer and moved her to the home office.
Stirring the pot is Freddy’s friend Jay McFarlane, a talented but not over-ambitious photographer who already has found his niche in life – causing as much trouble as possible for those he thinks deserve it. Invited to Paris to lighten his friend’s mood, Jay has attracted his own set of government operatives.
Jay’s idea of fun is to steal the neighborhood pimp’s classic car or to put Freddy in a position in which he must fight a celebrity’s two bodyguards. He’s not even above insulting the wife of Holly’s boss at the party she hopes to use to salvage her career. In a way, this is a high-jinks book. There is lots of violence, but most of it takes place off-stage.
As expected in a well-written thriller, it’s usually unclear who’s doing what to whom and why. When Freddy’s former mentor Thomas Veil shows up to offer him a way out of his dead-beat job, all the loose ends – Mexico, the spy shot dead in the theater by a gunman wearing a clown mask, and the head and hands of another spook left in Freddy’s fridge – all come together in a very satisfying denouement.
Make a Move is breezy, well-crafted and doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Click here to link to Make a Move.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Polly!
By Stephen Goldin
$4.99 at Smashwords.com
Stephen Goldin describes himself as a professional fantasy and science fiction writer and an atheist.
The first of those descriptors is readily apparent in Polly!, but a surprise turn makes the last relevant as well.
I know I risk turning off some readers if I let on that the book’s protagonist, Herodotus, has the greatest sex of his life with a beautiful woman who may actually be God. But reviews are supposed to warn readers away from books they won’t like, so perhaps that’s not a bad thing. Most readers, though, would lose out if they let a little thing like that deter them from reading this unusual little novel.
As the book opens, Herodotus has just awakened in terror to find his bookstore on fire and smoke billowing upward into his second-floor apartment. His wife has left him, and the IRS claims he owes $8,000, which he doesn’t have. Now this.
Short on good options, he sets out in his decrepit Corolla to pay an unannounced call on his brother, who lives on a ranch in Nevada. On the way, the car breaks down in the grueling desert heat right in front of a mansion. Polly is its owner.
It must be said that Goldin is an atheist with a great sense of humor who doesn’t take himself too seriously. He is well grounded in the Bible and theology – and the Marx Brothers. The verbal sparring that takes place between Herodotus and Polly, whoever she may actually be, is brilliant from beginning to end.
In brief, Polly is a lion-owning, acrobatic, Japanese-speaking, gourmet-cooking nuclear physicist who hosts a houseful of friendly people whose lives she has touched with her kindness and generosity. Not that she always seems so kind to Herodotus, who is understandably confused by such oddities as an elevator in a two-story mansion that ascends for 13 floors.
The book is an allegory of self-discovery – or perhaps, universe discovery – by Herodotus, who can’t possibly match wits with the wise-cracking, teasing Polly. Without giving away more, let’s just say the conversation, which is laced with hundreds of puns and one-liners, eventually works its way around to the Supreme Being.
Whether she is or isn’t literally divine, Polly’s organizing principle is that entropy – the constant tendency of the universe to run down – is unstoppable, even by her, but nevertheless must be resisted.
Overwhelmed with Polly’s seeming omniscience, Herodotus presses for answers to the big questions about life and thereafter. Eventually he asks, “So fighting entropy is the point?” “No,” Polly replies, “Fighting entropy is what I choose to do.”
She wages the battle on an incalculable number of fronts, including helping a group of protesters save a polluted river, teaching illiterate adults to read and befriending a child with leukemia.
Polly! is the kind of book aspiring writers should read just to study the craft. Goldin’s writing is fastidious. And he seemingly has the gift (Would that be a theological term?) of calling on everything he knows from the silly to the profound to create a story that starts out being entertaining and winds up being interesting, even thought-provoking.
Click here to link to Polly.
Bill Furlow
$4.99 at Smashwords.com
Stephen Goldin describes himself as a professional fantasy and science fiction writer and an atheist.
The first of those descriptors is readily apparent in Polly!, but a surprise turn makes the last relevant as well.
I know I risk turning off some readers if I let on that the book’s protagonist, Herodotus, has the greatest sex of his life with a beautiful woman who may actually be God. But reviews are supposed to warn readers away from books they won’t like, so perhaps that’s not a bad thing. Most readers, though, would lose out if they let a little thing like that deter them from reading this unusual little novel.
As the book opens, Herodotus has just awakened in terror to find his bookstore on fire and smoke billowing upward into his second-floor apartment. His wife has left him, and the IRS claims he owes $8,000, which he doesn’t have. Now this.
Short on good options, he sets out in his decrepit Corolla to pay an unannounced call on his brother, who lives on a ranch in Nevada. On the way, the car breaks down in the grueling desert heat right in front of a mansion. Polly is its owner.
It must be said that Goldin is an atheist with a great sense of humor who doesn’t take himself too seriously. He is well grounded in the Bible and theology – and the Marx Brothers. The verbal sparring that takes place between Herodotus and Polly, whoever she may actually be, is brilliant from beginning to end.
In brief, Polly is a lion-owning, acrobatic, Japanese-speaking, gourmet-cooking nuclear physicist who hosts a houseful of friendly people whose lives she has touched with her kindness and generosity. Not that she always seems so kind to Herodotus, who is understandably confused by such oddities as an elevator in a two-story mansion that ascends for 13 floors.
The book is an allegory of self-discovery – or perhaps, universe discovery – by Herodotus, who can’t possibly match wits with the wise-cracking, teasing Polly. Without giving away more, let’s just say the conversation, which is laced with hundreds of puns and one-liners, eventually works its way around to the Supreme Being.
Whether she is or isn’t literally divine, Polly’s organizing principle is that entropy – the constant tendency of the universe to run down – is unstoppable, even by her, but nevertheless must be resisted.
Overwhelmed with Polly’s seeming omniscience, Herodotus presses for answers to the big questions about life and thereafter. Eventually he asks, “So fighting entropy is the point?” “No,” Polly replies, “Fighting entropy is what I choose to do.”
She wages the battle on an incalculable number of fronts, including helping a group of protesters save a polluted river, teaching illiterate adults to read and befriending a child with leukemia.
Polly! is the kind of book aspiring writers should read just to study the craft. Goldin’s writing is fastidious. And he seemingly has the gift (Would that be a theological term?) of calling on everything he knows from the silly to the profound to create a story that starts out being entertaining and winds up being interesting, even thought-provoking.
Click here to link to Polly.
Bill Furlow
Say Goodbye
By Robert Capko
$2.99 at Smashwords.com
Robert Capko has written a military novel reminiscent of Tom Clancy but more accessible—both in length and in laying out the story in a timely manner.
Just as some books are characterized as “chick lit,” I would characterize Say Goodbye as a “guy book,” even though I’m not a guy and enjoyed it very much.
Capko has done his research, and the novel is heavy on descriptions and explanations of military equipment and weaponry. He may have overdone it a touch, but every detail adds to the believability of the story.
John Paxton is a decorated U.S. Air Force Pararescue Jumper (PJs parachute into dangerous situations to rescue military personnel.) who now instructs PJs at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Although he still travels, his work as an instructor is much more conducive to family life with his wife Jill and their two children, four-year-old John, Jr. and two-year-old Megan.
This happy situation changes one afternoon when a two-star general shows up in Paxton’s office and orders him on a secret rescue mission to Serbia–so secret he has to leave immediately without even telling his family. No one in John’s chain of command except this General Reed knows what’s going on.
The story takes place in 1999. The Cold War is over; the Balkan states are in upheaval and fighting among themselves. Even though 9/11 hasn’t happened yet and al Qaeda isn’t a household word, Capko foreshadows later events by making the radical Islamist organization and Saddam Hussein part of the story.
A U.S. Stealth Fighter has been shot down by Serbians, and ostensibly Paxton and his team of PJs have been dispatched to rescue the pilot. But then things get hinky. Why Paxton? He’s no longer an active PJ. Who’s the mysterious McMurphy who is assigned to the mission but is unknown to everyone but General Reed? What’s McMurphy’s role, and what’s in the green backpack he won’t let out of his sight? He’s sure not talking.
General Reed forces Paxton to change out of his Air Force uniform into one that lacks any indication of rank, unit or nationality, and he takes from him anything that would identify him as a member of the U.S. military. If Paxton fails in his mission and is captured, he will look like a mercenary.
Eventually the mission does go badly. The rescuers wind up on the ground but not in the way or the location they had intended. Bad blood develops between McMurphy and Paxton, who is convinced the mystery man is committing treason on Reed’s orders. Not only are the two men’s lives endangered, but the danger extends all the way to Paxton’s family in Texas.
Ultimately, of course, Paxton survives and his true mission is explained, if not resolved. As with a good Clancy novel, there is plenty of suspense, politics and misdirection. Say Goodbye ends with a cliffhanger that sets up the next John Paxton novel, The Long Road Home. Readers can expect another good yarn chockablock with military detail and political intrigue.
Click here to link to Say Goodbye.
Davilynn Furlow
$2.99 at Smashwords.com
Robert Capko has written a military novel reminiscent of Tom Clancy but more accessible—both in length and in laying out the story in a timely manner.
Just as some books are characterized as “chick lit,” I would characterize Say Goodbye as a “guy book,” even though I’m not a guy and enjoyed it very much.
Capko has done his research, and the novel is heavy on descriptions and explanations of military equipment and weaponry. He may have overdone it a touch, but every detail adds to the believability of the story.
John Paxton is a decorated U.S. Air Force Pararescue Jumper (PJs parachute into dangerous situations to rescue military personnel.) who now instructs PJs at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Although he still travels, his work as an instructor is much more conducive to family life with his wife Jill and their two children, four-year-old John, Jr. and two-year-old Megan.
This happy situation changes one afternoon when a two-star general shows up in Paxton’s office and orders him on a secret rescue mission to Serbia–so secret he has to leave immediately without even telling his family. No one in John’s chain of command except this General Reed knows what’s going on.
The story takes place in 1999. The Cold War is over; the Balkan states are in upheaval and fighting among themselves. Even though 9/11 hasn’t happened yet and al Qaeda isn’t a household word, Capko foreshadows later events by making the radical Islamist organization and Saddam Hussein part of the story.
A U.S. Stealth Fighter has been shot down by Serbians, and ostensibly Paxton and his team of PJs have been dispatched to rescue the pilot. But then things get hinky. Why Paxton? He’s no longer an active PJ. Who’s the mysterious McMurphy who is assigned to the mission but is unknown to everyone but General Reed? What’s McMurphy’s role, and what’s in the green backpack he won’t let out of his sight? He’s sure not talking.
General Reed forces Paxton to change out of his Air Force uniform into one that lacks any indication of rank, unit or nationality, and he takes from him anything that would identify him as a member of the U.S. military. If Paxton fails in his mission and is captured, he will look like a mercenary.
Eventually the mission does go badly. The rescuers wind up on the ground but not in the way or the location they had intended. Bad blood develops between McMurphy and Paxton, who is convinced the mystery man is committing treason on Reed’s orders. Not only are the two men’s lives endangered, but the danger extends all the way to Paxton’s family in Texas.
Ultimately, of course, Paxton survives and his true mission is explained, if not resolved. As with a good Clancy novel, there is plenty of suspense, politics and misdirection. Say Goodbye ends with a cliffhanger that sets up the next John Paxton novel, The Long Road Home. Readers can expect another good yarn chockablock with military detail and political intrigue.
Click here to link to Say Goodbye.
Davilynn Furlow
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Fools Club
By Craig Mallery
Free at www.smashwords.com
What an intelligent, taut thriller this is.
Set in Northern California’s Silicon Valley, the “club” of the title is made up of four geeks who failed when they had the chance to profit from their high-flying (for awhile) software startup, Defiance.
Jacob Miller, the engineering genius behind Defiance, never sold a single share of stock, so when the bubble burst and Defiance’s market cap fell from $15 billion to zero, he earned the title King of Fools.
Not part of the club, living large and planning a run for the U.S. Senate, is Jacob’s stepbrother and former Defiance front man Colin Schaeffer. Why is Colin rich and Jacob broke? The feds have been asking the same question but have failed to come up with evidence to indict Colin for any kind of wrongdoing.
The night the U.S. Attorney announces an end to the investigation, clearing the way for Colin’s entry into politics, the Fools gather to literally cry in their beer and bemoan the unfairness of life. After sufficient pitchers are consumed, they come up with the un-Mensa-like idea of egging Colin’s beautiful gated mansion. This childish prank sets in motion events that will reveal the source of Colin’s wealth, threaten his family and career and lock the stepbrothers into a violent dance with a Melissa Etheridge-obsessed lesbian assassin.
Though Jacob is bitter about Colin’s good fortune in the face of his own failure – not the least of that good fortune being his marriage to Jacob’s classy former girlfriend – when he has the opportunity to wreck Colin’s life, he cannot do it. The bonds of childhood and the gratitude for the golden boy who protected him from bullies and tried to teach him about sports are too strong.
Colin suffers no such pangs of loyalty, to Jacob or anyone else. When his campaign manager offers to put him in touch with the one person who can make any lingering concerns about law enforcement go away, he scarcely hesitates before reaching out to the anonymous pimpmyride8@hushmail.com.
A soulless phony who somehow imagines himself as a cross between Bobby Kennedy and Teddy Roosevelt, Colin is quickly out of his depth in dealing with the woman who calls herself “Mel” and whose only ambitions are to work as a bodyguard for Etheridge and to become a single mother.
In the end, of course, at least one of the three must go down, and it becomes a question of whose bad judgment will turn out to be the most catastrophic.
We don’t find any bio information on Craig Mallery and don’t know why the book is available for free. Based on his easy descriptions of the Silicon Valley, he apparently is or was part of that world of dot.coms, venture capitalists, fast fortunes and equally fast collapses.
The writing in Fools Club is crisp and clean. The plot moves quickly but not at the expense of the players’ depth. Each character is believable and recognizable except perhaps Patrini, the beautiful female Fool who secretly has the hots for Jacob. The techie/geeky stuff serves the story well and doesn’t compete with it.
Like the other books we recommend on this blog, if Fools Club were published under the name of a well-known writer and you paid $25 for it, you would not be disappointed. If you compared it to a David Baldacci novel – a fair comparison for the genre – you’d find the writing much better, the plot more interesting and the characters more believable.
Click here to link to Fools Club.
Free at www.smashwords.com
What an intelligent, taut thriller this is.
Set in Northern California’s Silicon Valley, the “club” of the title is made up of four geeks who failed when they had the chance to profit from their high-flying (for awhile) software startup, Defiance.
Jacob Miller, the engineering genius behind Defiance, never sold a single share of stock, so when the bubble burst and Defiance’s market cap fell from $15 billion to zero, he earned the title King of Fools.
Not part of the club, living large and planning a run for the U.S. Senate, is Jacob’s stepbrother and former Defiance front man Colin Schaeffer. Why is Colin rich and Jacob broke? The feds have been asking the same question but have failed to come up with evidence to indict Colin for any kind of wrongdoing.
The night the U.S. Attorney announces an end to the investigation, clearing the way for Colin’s entry into politics, the Fools gather to literally cry in their beer and bemoan the unfairness of life. After sufficient pitchers are consumed, they come up with the un-Mensa-like idea of egging Colin’s beautiful gated mansion. This childish prank sets in motion events that will reveal the source of Colin’s wealth, threaten his family and career and lock the stepbrothers into a violent dance with a Melissa Etheridge-obsessed lesbian assassin.
Though Jacob is bitter about Colin’s good fortune in the face of his own failure – not the least of that good fortune being his marriage to Jacob’s classy former girlfriend – when he has the opportunity to wreck Colin’s life, he cannot do it. The bonds of childhood and the gratitude for the golden boy who protected him from bullies and tried to teach him about sports are too strong.
Colin suffers no such pangs of loyalty, to Jacob or anyone else. When his campaign manager offers to put him in touch with the one person who can make any lingering concerns about law enforcement go away, he scarcely hesitates before reaching out to the anonymous pimpmyride8@hushmail.com.
A soulless phony who somehow imagines himself as a cross between Bobby Kennedy and Teddy Roosevelt, Colin is quickly out of his depth in dealing with the woman who calls herself “Mel” and whose only ambitions are to work as a bodyguard for Etheridge and to become a single mother.
In the end, of course, at least one of the three must go down, and it becomes a question of whose bad judgment will turn out to be the most catastrophic.
We don’t find any bio information on Craig Mallery and don’t know why the book is available for free. Based on his easy descriptions of the Silicon Valley, he apparently is or was part of that world of dot.coms, venture capitalists, fast fortunes and equally fast collapses.
The writing in Fools Club is crisp and clean. The plot moves quickly but not at the expense of the players’ depth. Each character is believable and recognizable except perhaps Patrini, the beautiful female Fool who secretly has the hots for Jacob. The techie/geeky stuff serves the story well and doesn’t compete with it.
Like the other books we recommend on this blog, if Fools Club were published under the name of a well-known writer and you paid $25 for it, you would not be disappointed. If you compared it to a David Baldacci novel – a fair comparison for the genre – you’d find the writing much better, the plot more interesting and the characters more believable.
Click here to link to Fools Club.
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