MISSING, PRESUMED BY SUSIE STEINER

Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

”Misanthrope, staring down the barrel of childlessness. Yawning ability to find fault. Can give off WoD (Whiff of Desperation). A vast, bottomless galaxy of loneliness. Educated: to an intimidating degree. Willing to hide this. Prone to tears. Can be needy. Often found googling ‘having a baby at 40.’

Age: 39

Looking for: book-reading philanthropist with psychotherapy training who can put up shelves. Can wear glasses (relaxed about this).

Dislikes: most of the fucktards I meet on the internet.”

Detective Manon Bradshaw did not post this rather honest dating assessment to her profile. After all, the purpose of a profile is to actually convince men to contact her. No, she cut and pasted another woman’s profile that she thought sounded enticing. She shaved a few years off her age, because she knows very well how desperate being single and 39 sounds to men because it sounds desperate to her, too.

When Cambridge student Edith Hind goes missing, you would think a case of this magnitude would allow Manon to set aside her own problems and throw herself into the task of finding this woman, but the insecurities, the loneliness, bleed into all aspects of her life.

She sometimes bursts into tears for no discernible reason.

The case is odd from the beginning. There is next to nothing to go on. There are no easy to grasp handles, no ready made suspects, and those few peripheral people of interest who can be loosely tied to Edith have iron clad alibis. Her father is a prominent surgeon named Ian Hind. Let me rephrase that her father is Sir Ian Hind and is a doctor for the ROYAL family.

Oh crap.

There is always pressure with a case like this. A beautiful, affluent, bright white girl goes missing, and the press is already up everyone’s nostrils for information, but then you add in a prominent family with ties to the Crown, and suddenly everyone has to think about more than just doing their job. They have to think about covering their arses. They have to think about the future of their careers. They have to consider that one misstep might have them brushing up their CVs for a career outside of government work.

A body washes up from the river, a young man, a young black man.

Somehow it seems tied into the disappearance of Edith Hind, but there are too many pieces missing from the puzzle. Drugs would be one angle, but according to everyone who knew her, drugs were not of interest. She did causes, not drugs. She was almost militant about saving the planet and participated in city lot gardens. She grew chard. She beat people over the head with chard. Look at me, I grow Chard! She was a self-serving narcissist.

Spoiled little rich girls have time to fuss around with growing chard in abandoned city lots, but most of the rest of the world has to spend their time worrying about making a living, or if you are a 39 year old police detective, finding yourself a man to make babies with. She finds a man, unexpectedly, the natural way but loses him over a few ill chosen words.

”One minute you are loved, and then you are not.”

We spend most of our time with Manon, but Susie Steiner also devotes chapters to the other characters, the members of the police team, the parents, Edith’s best friend Helena, and her handsome boyfriend Will. We meet Tony Wright, convicted rapist, who is a cool cucumber under interrogation. He knows something; everyone knows something, and slowly, methodically the pieces start to fall into place. This is such an authentic police procedural that I felt like a fledgling recruit for the Cambridgeshire Police Department.

The characters are all fully developed. Within a few chapters, I felt like I knew Manon, that I could pop down the street and take her out for a beer so she could cry on my shoulder about the latest bloke she met online. Edith’s mother Miriam is particularly well drawn.

”He has been crying in his study. She heard him on her way up the stairs an hour ago, had stopped, one hand on the banister, curious to hear his upset expressed. Man sobs are so uncommon, they were quite interesting. His were strangulated, as if his tears were out to choke him. Hers come unbidden, like a flood, dissolving her outline, and it’s as if she has failed to stand up to them. A weakness of tears.”

Miriam feels weak, but she will prove to be strong. ”Fear is physical.”

The depth of the characters is impressive. Steiner reveals their souls and clothes them in truths.

This book transcends genre. To call it a mystery or a detective novel or a thriller is too restrictive. This is a book that will appeal to readers who want more than just a clever plot or a likeable protagonist. This book has those qualities, but also has lyrical, insightful, honest writing that insures that you will be thinking about this book and these people for a long, long time. There is a twist that will knock you on your arse, and then just as you stumble to your feet, the second twist will knock you back down again. It’s ok though because you will probably need a few minutes of staring at the ceiling, letting these revelations unravel what you thought was true and start a new strand of understanding.

The buzz is going to grow as more and more readers discover this book, so put a kettle on, put out a plate of cookies, and let yourself become part of the buzz.

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HHhH by Laurent Binet

HHhH by Laurent Binet
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

”This is what I think: inventing a character in order to understand historical facts is like fabricating evidence. Or rather, in the words of my brother-in-law, with whom I’ve discussed all this: It’s like planting false proof at a crime scene where the floor is already strewn with incriminating evidence.


I don’t know how to describe him any other way except that he has a punchable face.

This is a book with a plot ensnared in the arduous process of conceiving a historical novel. Laurent Binet is writing about the assassination of the Nazi Reinhard Heydrich and the men who killed him in Prague. Binet shares with us the concerns he has with taking too many liberties with what is known truth and what are his reasonable speculations. Was Heydrich riding in a forest green car or was it black? Does it matter?

His girlfriend Natacha reads the chapters as he writes them. She is involved in the process to call him to task whenever he breaks one of his own rules about writing historical fiction. ”When she reaches the second sentence, she exclaims: ‘What do you mean, “the blood rises to his cheeks and he feels his brain swell inside his skull”? You’re making it up!’”

He sheepishly deletes the line, but then later in the day he puts it back in because every other line he tries to replace it with lacks... precision. Oscar Wilde has that famous quote regarding this exact predicament: “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”

Of course, Binet doesn’t know exactly how Heydrich may have reacted to a piece of bad news, but he does know that, given what he has read about him, more than likely anger, dark consuming anger, is the only way that someone, especially as disturbed and self-absorbed as Heydrich, could react. He was picked on as a child. He was called ‘the goat’ due to his appearance and his awkward sounding voice. The anger against humanity could have begun there. The question is, did his childish tormentors create him or did they sense on some feral level that he was going to be the architect of something evil? No one could have guessed the magnitude of the holocaust that he was going to unleash. He acquired many more nicknames once he found his home in the Nazi party: ”the Hangman, the butcher, the Blond Beast, and---this one given by Adolf Hitler himself---the Man with the Iron heart.”

The Nazi party attracted the outcasts, the angry, the perverted, and the brilliantly demented. They were men who wanted to have power over people and dreamed up creative ways to hurt them, but even among them, Hitler had to look for a man cold and calloused enough to exterminate legions.

Reinhard Heydrich was the perfect man for the job.

I want to return for a moment to Binet’s struggles with speculating about Heydrich’s physical reaction to a particular piece of bad news. Nonfiction in many ways fails to tell the truth by the very process of stripping away all the elements that are not known. We know that things are discussed, but usually those dialogues are not recorded for posterity. A good writer will read everything he can find on a historical person he plans to use in a novel. She will read everything she can find about the period. He will read letters and diaries to glean bits and pieces of information that will lend more authenticity to his novel. She will know the type of pen that was in the hand of a letter writer or the shapes of stains on the walls of a prison cell or the color of frilly underwear a mistress wore for her German lover.

When a writer has done this much research, he knows instinctively (although still subjectively) how a historical figure will react to a situation. Reasonably accurate dialogue can be written, most assuredly better written than the original discussion. The point of historical fiction is to make people come alive more than what can be accomplished by staying strictly within the facts of what is known.

I do appreciate it when a fiction writer does not alter events known to be true. Though even that I can forgive if they notate those deviations in the forward.


Was the car dark green or was it black?

Reinhard Heydrich is a man ripe for assassination. He is careless and frequently seen riding around Prague in a convertible car without bodyguards. The people who know him despise him, and the rest of the world would, too, if they knew what he was doing. ”Heydrich is well aware that everyone considers him the most dangerous man in the Reich, and it’s a source of vanity for him, but he also knows that if all the Nazi dignitaries court him so insistently, it is above all to try to weaken Himmler, his boss. Heydrich is an instrument for these men, not yet a rival. It’s true that in the devilish duo he forms with Himmler, he is thought to be the brains. (‘HHhH,’ they say in the SS: Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich---Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich.’), but he is still only the right-hand man, the subordinate, the number two.”

He is dangerous because he is ambition twined with ruthlessness.

Binet will introduce us to the assassins. They are men from Czechoslovakia and Slovakia, who are willing to risk their lives parachuting back into enemy territory to kill a man responsible for so much misery. As he gets to know them, he becomes attached to them. He wants to save them. He wants to write their life after their acts of heroism. He could create a hidden door that will allow them to escape. He could change the circumstances and give them a chance to fight their way clear...but then that would be breaking the rules.


Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, young men who proved too much for Heydrich.

I remember years ago H. W. Brands, who frequently shows up on the History Channel, was discussing the death of Lincoln. He must have been researching him for his Ulysses S. Grant biography, but one of the things that he talked about that really stuck with me was that he found himself tearing up as he wrote about the assassination of Lincoln. That event that he knew so well still inspired an emotional reaction in him that caught him by surprise. As writers, we would love to write a new ending, but of course, in the case of Lincoln, he couldn’t have died at a better time to insure his legacy.

This book was a constant struggle to write. Binet tries to adhere to his own self-imposed rules. He questions everything he has written. He wants to do it right. His perspective outside of the novel shifts. I can relate to that. I question my life all the time. Why do I do this? Why don’t I do that? Is what I write really worthwhile? Will someone see through the facade and ridicule me? Am I worthy of the subject?

”When I watch the news, when I read the paper, when I meet people, when I hang out with friends and acquaintances, when I see how each of us struggles, as best we can, through life’s absurd meanderings, I think that the world is ridiculous, moving, and cruel. The same is true of this book: the story is cruel, the protagonists are moving, and I am ridiculous. But I am in Prague.”

I am frequently ridiculous.

I want to close with one last quote from Binet about the responsibility that writers feel for those they leave in the shadows.

”Worn-out by my muddled efforts to salute these people, I tremble with guilt at the thought of all those hundreds, those thousands, whom I have allowed to die in anonymity. But I want to believe that people exist even if we don’t speak of them.”

Sometimes though, a writer can pluck a person, let’s say one who is buried in an unmarked grave with 33,771 other Jews in Kiev, and sheath him in flesh, pump blood into his veins, and free his tongue so he can tell a story left untold.

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Avengers vol 1 : Avengers World by Jonathan Hickman, Jerome Opeña (Illustrator), Adam Kubert (Illustrator)

Avengers, Vol. 1: Avengers World by Jonathan Hickman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is how you do big ideas and play "long ball" story telling in mainstream comics, I love the form, and as a lifelong fan (at least 35 years) I understand the constant rebooting of comic lines, sales are key.

But you remember when story and art were key? Mr. Hickman's Avengers is my second favorite Avengers story, It nails characters, it spans worlds, great dialogue, great action and all around worth reading.


Read the whole story, start with one read it till the end, pick up New Avengers and Ultimate Avengers too, I shall not steer you wrong.

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The United States of Japan by Peter Tieryas

United States of Japan by Peter Tieryas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Brilliantly powerful alt history tale that is pure brutal energy from start to finish. I loved alternate histories as a kid, but unfortunately my library carried little beyond Harry Turtledove, (no slight to the man, but as a massive young consumer of books, it got old fast.)


Fast paced, great characters, broken messed up people that even with flaws you care for. It is amazing at the total change of the world with just minor changes in history.

If you want to peer behind the curtain, this a buy for you, see what could of have been. Small warning, there are several extreme cases of violence and horrible acts in this story, so if that's a sticking point with you, consider yourself warned.


great story, will check out more from Mr. Tieyras

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Whimsy and Soda

Whimsy & Soda by Matthew David Brozik
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Whimsy & Soda is a collection of bizarre Jeeves and Wooster pastiches.

By and By, Bertie: Bertie wakes up from a bender at the Drones club to find he's a parrot. Can Jeeves return him to normal?

The opening tale sets the tone for the collection. Brozik does a great job of capturing Wooster's voice and Jeeves' mannerisms.

G.E.V.E.: Jeeves goes on vacation, leaving Bertie in the care of a robot butler. Will Bertie survive without Jeeves to get him out of the soup?

G.E.V.E. is a funny little tale. I loved that Rossum was his creator.

A Scandal in Bohemia: The King of Bohemia is being blackmailed by Irene Adler and comes to Bertie for assistance. Good thing Jeeves has been eating more fish than usual...

Jeeves cracks this case a lot quicker than Sherlock Holmes.

Bertie Wooster and the Offer of Admission: On his 11th birthday, Bertie Wooster gets invited to attend Frogparts academy.

Heh. Wooster could have been Harry Potter.

A Bertie of Very Little Brain: Fresh from a jaunt in Narnia, Wooster and Jeeves get saddled watching a familiar boy and his familiar teddy bear.

I knew where this was going when the author's name was A.A. Moon but it was still a fun little tale.

Bertie and Earnest: Bertie shares an apartment at 123 Sesame Street.

I never would have imagined a Wooster-Sesame Street crossover but it works.

Jeeves Your Own Adventure: A choose your own adventure starring you as Jeeves.

This one ended with me driving off without Wooster so I'm counting it as a win.

Back to the Wooster: Doctor Emmett Brown shows up at Wooster's door. Hilarity and time paradoxes ensue.

Great stuff. I love that Wodehouse himself is thrown into the mix.

Jeeves and the Immovable Object: Aunt Dahlia hires a scrivener to transcribe a manuscript and finds he won't leave the office once his job is done. Can Jeeves get rid of him?

Jeeves and Wooster go up against Bartleby, the Scrivener. Good stuff.

Ix-nay on the Roadway: Jeeves and Bertie pick up an odd pedestrian who was almost hit by a car.

Ford Prefect!

Jeeves and W--: Jeeves goes to Gotham City to attend to a certain millionaire playboy.

Yup. Jeeves and Batman.

The Painting of Bertram Wooster: The Jeeves and Wooster version of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

This review's gripping conclusion: I dug this collection as a hole. The stories captured the flavor of Jeeves and Wooster shorts while stirring in an extra dollop of weirdness. I'd like to see Brozik write another collection.



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Lost Interest in The Lost Spy

The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin's Secret Service by Andrew Meier
Review by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin's Secret Service is a far more titillating title that what's between the covers.

This is the story of Isaiah Oggins, American/Russian Jew with Communist ideals and sympathies for the plight of oppressed workers. Very little is known about him, especially after he went underground overseas to work as a Communist spy. Oggins' wife is just as interesting and much of the book revolves around her story. It also spends a large number of pages on their sickly and crippled son Robin, a stamp collector and scholar who spent 40 years of his life studying medieval falconry...40 years of his life studying medieval falconry.

Everything about Oggins is/was/is hush-hush. He was a spy prior to WWII, he was a captive during the Cold War, and when the Americans showed interest in re-Patriating him, he was seen as too valuable and possibly damaging to the Soviet cause to be released. Like any spy, his operations were kept under wraps. When the USSR fell and their vast secret files were left open to the eyes of the world, some information was garnered. Then Russia went back to its old ways, closed the doors again and much spy-craft information from the period was once again hidden from view. No doubt certain governments obtained all the necessary info, but they're certainly not going to tip their hand for the likes of some random journalist looking to write a biography.

Perhaps the material is so lacking that nobody should've bothered attempting a book on the subject. Even as scant as the available material is, it still could've been handled better in more deft hands. For instance, there's a whole lotta flash backs and flash forwards goin' on here. Some heighten the tension and suspense, while some give away the ending and spoil what little thrill this story possesses.
[ This from Oggins' Wiki page gives you all you essentially get out of this book:

Isaiah Oggins (also known as Ysai or Cy) (July 22, 1898 - 1947) was an American-born communist and spy for the Soviet secret police. After working in Europe and the Far East, Oggins was arrested, served eight years in the GULAG detention system, and was summarily executed on the orders of Joseph Stalin.

The reader is left to assume all the possible or even probable nefarious dealings Oggins undertook. However, at least at the start of his career, all he seemed to do was house-sit. Him and his wife would go undercover as Americans living aboard and act as cover by renting out an apartment that could be used by the real agents doing the dirty work, none of which of course is detailed in the book. So yeah...not exactly riveting, 007 kind of reading here. (hide spoiler)]

The Lost Spy will be of interest almost solely to those who delve deeper than than average joe into the world of underground intelligence, and even they'll be hard-pressed to find this ho-hum book more than mildly satisfying.

Alhazred

Alhazred: Author of the Necronomicon by Donald Tyson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When Abdul Alhazred gets his lover, the daughter of the king, pregnant, he's forced to eat the roasted fetus, along with his own genitals. Mutilated and near death, he is left to die in the Empty Space, the great desert. But that is only the beginning of his journey to becoming the greatest necromancer in existence...

After reading Tales of Alhazred, I jumped at the chance to read this. Much like the time I drank a twelve pack of Angry Orchard, it was too much of a good thing.

Since I read Tales of Alhazred first, this book had a lot to live up to. Sure enough, it chronicled his meetings with Martala and Altrus, as well as his mutilation. Things hinted at in the collection of short stories were given life, like Alhazred's time with the ghouls.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. How could I not with its mixture of swords & sorcery and the Cthulhu mythos? Alhazred learns from a wide variety of teachers and gets into a wide variety of adventures. So why did I only give it a three?

It was too damn long! This could have easily been two or even three books. I feel like Cthulhu rose from his eternal slumber and went back to sleep in the time I was reading it. There were a lot of times I yearned for something major to happen. It probably would have worked best as a collection or two of short stories rather than the never-ending tale of wandering around the Middle East.

Three stars. I didn't like it as much as Tales of Alhazred but I'll read more of Alhazred's adventures at some point.

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Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again

Donald J. Trump
Threshold Editions
Reviewed by Nancy
3 out of 5 stars

Summary

Look at the state of the world right now. It’s a terrible mess, and that’s putting it mildly. There has never been a more dangerous time. The politicians and special interests in Washington, DC, are directly responsible for the mess we are in. So why should we continue listening to them?

It’s time to bring America back to its rightful owners—the American people.

I’m not going to play the same game politicians have been playing for decades—all talk, no action, while special interests and lobbyists dictate our laws. I am shaking up the establishment on both sides of the political aisle because I can’t be bought. I want to bring America back, to make it great and prosperous again, and to be sure we are respected by our allies and feared by our adversaries.

It’s time for action. Americans are fed up with politics as usual. And they should be! In this book, I outline my vision to make America great again, including: how to fix our failing economy; how to reform health care so it is more efficient, cost-effective, and doesn’t alienate both doctors and patients; how to rebuild our military and start winning wars—instead of watching our enemies take over—while keeping our promises to our great veterans; how to ensure that our education system offers the resources that allow our students to compete internationally, so tomorrow’s jobseekers have the tools they need to succeed; and how to immediately bring jobs back to America by closing our doors to illegal immigrants, and pressuring businesses to produce their goods at home.

This book is my blueprint for how to Make America Great Again. It’s not hard. We just need someone with the courage to say what needs to be said. We won’t find that in Washington, DC.

My Review

I believe all politicians are liars and more concerned about their own careers than they are about their supporters, so I find reading these types of books a waste of time. I also generally lean to the left politically, although my views on certain issues may be considered centrist, or even right.

So I walked out of the library quietly, not making any eye contact with anyone, with this book surreptitiously tucked away in my jacket. When I got to my car, I tucked it under a plastic grocery bag, lest someone see it and vandalize my car.

While I’m mostly feeling the Bern, there are some things I actually like about Trump.

- He’s a successful businessman. Even though he has no political experience, he knows about running companies, managing people, and focusing on the big picture. He is also influential enough that he can get people to help him in those areas where he lacks knowledge.

- OK, I agree he’s crass, arrogant, and narcissistic, but I like that he’s challenging the stifling political correctness that hinders intelligent debates and instills fear in those who have opinions counter to prevailing wisdom.

- He has enough money not to have to rely on special interest groups.

- I believe he sincerely loves America and wants the best for it.

So read this book, or not. Aside from pontificating on his greatness, he actually says things that make sense and I can stand behind.

And there’s a cute picture of him as a little boy with blond hair and plump, kissable lips.

Eagle in Exile

Eagle in Exile: The Clash of Eagles Trilogy Book II by Alan Smale
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In the aftermath of the attack on Cahokia by the Iroqua, Gaius Marcellinus finds himself once again grieving over lives lost because of his decisions. While he grieves he realizes every Hesperian life lost weakens their chances of survival when Roman armies return. Gaius is committed to do whatever he physically can to protect Cahokia from all threats, especially Roma.

Eagle in Exile is in many ways the typical middle book in a series. There is a lot of setup, the pacing is slow, and many of the events don't feel all that meaningful. In many ways this book has made Gaius the Wanageeska into a Paul Revere of sorts going from place to place exclaiming, The Romans are coming, The Romans are coming. That's to be expected because that's undoubtedly one of the major points of the book, but that took the forefront for far too much of the book.

While I enjoy the concept of the book and some of the execution, there were some things that just bothered me. The primary point that bugged me is how Gaius could learn to love the people who slaughtered his friends and soldiers. I just don't understand how he could so deeply appreciate them after what they did to his legion.

The other point that bothered me is Sintikala and Gaius's budding relationship. I didn't think Gaius's interest was established well in the prior book and no additional time was spent in explaining why they clearly have feelings for one another.

The last quarter or so of Eagle in Exile was spilling over with excitement for me. The events at the ending really kept me engaged and interested. Despite significant tension and uncertainty, the events played out in a believable and enjoyable way. I really appreciated that because the author could have easily chosen quick unbelievable ways for the story to continue, but he faced the events of the book head on rather than slinking away.

Eagle in Exile was a solid sequel and I imagine fans of Clash of Eagles will enjoy it.

2.5 out of 5 stars

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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A Crown for Cold Silver

A Crown for Cold Silver by Alex Marshall
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Famed General Cobalt Zosia led her army into battle and overthrew an empire twenty years ago. Once there was nothing else to accomplish or conquer, she retired and faded into legend.

Now Zosia's husband and village were destroyed for no reason. She heads out to avenge her loved ones.

A Crown for Cold Silver quickly proved it was not a book for me. The writing style felt dull and uninspired. The characters were hardly believable and I didn't have any clue of what was happening in the world. I enjoy books where I can connect and relate with the characters, but such characters were absent for me.

I unfortunately didn't find any aspect of the book that caught my interest. The name choices were strange as well and I found myself guessing at how the majority of them were pronounced.

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

1 out of 5 stars

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