(5) = Best; (4) = Better; (3) = Good; (2) = Fair; (1) = OK
These abstracts serve as reminders to myself; they serve to "jog" my memory on what a book was all about. That's all. This is not a literary critique, not a social commentary, and certainly nothing profound to warrant further discussion.
(5) = means that I really enjoyed this book; (1) = means I finished reading it but wonder if my time could have been better spent elsewhere.
Harry Bosch’s life is a mess. He was suspended indefintely pending satisfactory psychiatric exam for attacking his commanding officer. Challenged by his psychiatrist he decides to seek out of his mother’s killers more than 30 years ago. She had been a prostitute. The Dept. of Social Services declared her to be an “unfit” mother and placed him in foster homes and orphanages. His early childhood was a mess and was affecting his attitude towards law enforcement. The killers had never been found. The investigating officers were removed from the case and it was never solved. The image of the task at hand was in a dream he had as a coyote – the last coyote in search of his mother’s killers.
Arno Conklin, a candidate for District Attorney, had been seen with his mother the night before she died. He became a prime suspect. His Chief of Staff, Gordon Mittel, was known as a “nazi” by the police and may have been the killer. Harry discovers that his mother’s pimp, Johnny Fox, had been on the payroll of the campaign to the election of Arno Conklin. What did he have to do with his mother’s death? Johnny was the one who introduced his mother to Arno. Harry discovers that Arno had fallen in love with his mother much to the consternation of Johnny who had introduced her to him expecting that someday he can use that information to blackmail Arno. Johnny is mysteriously killed in a Hit & Run accident. After much research Harry concludes that Arno had nothing to do with his mother’s death. So –who did it?
The complicated story has a surprise ending. Harry finds a new love during his search. At the end he is at peace with himself and decides to quit the police force.
Fascinating and a little frightening for men thinking of having an extramarital affair. Charlie Shine is a married Long Island commuter who meets Lucinda, a beautiful woman on the train. Their relationship develops slowly. First, with short lunches in Mid-Manhattan, then cocktails before commuting back to Long Island, and then, dinner and excuses and lies to their respective spouses about working overtime. When they consumate their extra-marital affair at the Fairfax Hotel they are accousted by two hoodlums. Charlie is robbed and beaten up and Lucinda is raped. His wallet, money, ID and credit cards are taken from him. Charlie and Luciinda decide they could not go to the police and have their marriages destroyed in public. They decide to keep the robbery and rape quiet.
A few days later Charlie’s wife receives a cryptic phone call from a Mr. Vasquez who said he had lunch with him a few days ago at the Fairfax Hotel. Vaquez wants money to keep quiet. Charlie asks Winston. a friend at the office, to find someone to scare off Vasquez, but was not aware that Winston was on probation and would tell the police. Winston disappears mysteriously, and the first person the police interviews about Winston’s disappearance is Charlie.
Charlie is shocked when he reconstructs his predicament and realizes that Lucinda was a part of a scam. She had been avoiding him. He returns to the Fairfax Hotel in order to reconstruct events. Who really decided to go to the Fairfax? He deduces it was Lucinda. One day he finds Lucinda with another mark entering the hotel. He confronts Lucinda and Vasquez in the presence of the new mark. Lucinda tells the mark that Charlie is crazy and jealous, but she fails to convince the mark and he decides to leave. A fight ensues and Lucinda kills the mark; she runs to an elevator and attempts to escape. Suddenly, there is a bomb explosion caused by an extremist “right-to-lifer” who had been demonstrating against an abortion clinic that was next to the hotel. He was staying at the hotel, had armed himself with explosives and was on his way in the elevator when the accident occured. More than 140 people died in the holocaust. Vasquez is critically wounded. Lucinda is killed in the accident. Charlie was rescued by a fireman but he wasn’t hurt much, and because he had no identification on him he decides to surreptitiously disappear. Later, he is listed as “missing” and presumed dead.
Lots of action. You have to read the rest of the book to find out what happens to Charlie and his family. (4)
This is Lee Child’s Seventh latest book. I read it in one sitting!
Jack Reacher spotted Francis Xavier Quinn coming out of a theater. Quinn is a brutal murderer whom he had chased 10 years ago. Jack thought he was dead. Quinn had killed his partner, so Jack renews the chase and discovers that Quinn had moved in on Zachary Beck who was a gun runner. But this is going way ahead of the story. Jack had to win the confidence of Beck and clarify their relationship before he can disclose his true motives. You need to read the book to discover how he does that. (4)
The FBI mistakenly thought that Zachary Beck was involved in peddling drugs and a DEA team was put together to investigate him. However, Beck operates an export/import carpeting company as a cover and no one could find anything illegal. The investigation was called off, but members of the team continue to operate unofficially; they sent an undercover agent (Teresa Daniel), into Beck’s home as a housekeeper and have not heard from her for several weeks. They recruit Jack Reacher to enter Beck’s home to find her. They believe she is still alive.
The most exciting part of the book is the fight that occurs between Paulie and Jack. Jack weighs 254 pounds and is six feet four inches tall, but Paulie is “monstrous” compared to Jack. Paulie’s biceps are larger than Jack’s thighs; he is over seven feet tall and weighs more than 300 pounds. On an earlier fight Jack side kicks Paulie in the kidneys which would have killed most people, but Paulie just smiled. Nothing that Jack does in his fight is effective against Paulie. Needless to say Jack wins at the end, but you will have to read the book to see how he does it. It wasn’t easy.
The story is well told. Lee Child is a favorite of mine! The dialog and action is great. (5)
Cassie Black is on probation having served time for her life as a criminal in one disastrous night that left the man closest to her dead and her life in shambles. She is selling Porsches now. She has been able to keep going by holding on to a dream – retrieving her six year old daughter whom she had given up for adoption and escaping to Tahiti. The only way she can finance her dream and start a new life is to go back to her old work: robbing casino gamblers. She was the very best. She decides to make a final robbery and contacts Leo, her superstitious friend, who lines up a job for Cassie. She is given brief notice about this gambler through an underground network who do not know one another.
She goes through an elaborate preparation process. She needs to know the casino and room where the mark is staying. She needs to eliminate all the security precautions (alarms, locks and cameras); she needs to break into the room, set up hidden electronic cameras, find out what the combination of the in-room safe is and not disturb anything that would suggest a break-in has occurred. She needs to break into the safe while the mark is sleeping, escape with the mark’s winnings and not leave a trail of any kind. He should have accumulated about $150,000 in the safe. She notices a briefcase handcuffed to the mark’s arm while studying his habits and assumes it is used to transport his daily winnings.
The job goes smoothely until she opens his briefcase. There is a subplot which is far more dangerous than anything Cassie expected. The mark was not really a gambler; he was a courier. The briefcase was not used to transport his daily winnings. It contained two and a half million dollars. The money belonged to a criminal group in Miami and represented half of a five million dollar deal to pay a syndicate in Chicago to engineer the approval of the sale of the casino to them. The syndicate’s man is Vincent Grimaldi, the casino’s Director; he was supposed to receive the funds and turn them over to the syndicate. What is Cassie going to do with all that money? This was far more than anything anticipated. She wants to run away with it; her partner, Leo, thinks it should be returned.
Vincent hires Karch, a killer psychopathic private detective, to find the people who did this. Karch deduces what happened and begins a search for Cassie. He kills everyone in his path as he chases Cassie. What he doesn’t know is that Vincent is setting him up as fall guy as well. The story is well told and will hold you to your seat until you finish. (5)
Four years ago, LAPD detective Harry Bosch was on a movie set investigating the murder of a production assistant when an armored car arrived with two million dollars for use in a heist scene. Suddenly a gang of masked men surrounded and robbed the armored cxar. Bosch shot one of the robbers as they sped away, but the money was never recovered. And the young woman’s murder was still unsolved when Bosch retired.
He discovers that the bank had randomly copied the serial numbers of the two million dollars. An FBI agent had found that one of the serial numbers was already in storage at one of its facility. How can an identical bill occur in the two million dollar package that was loaned to the movie studio? Bosch wanted to interview that agent and discovered she had disappeared. All the resources of the FBI have been dedicated to Homeland Security, so Bosch was unable to get any cooperation or assistance from them. Ultimately, Bosch concludes that the murder of the production assistant was closely tied to the two million dollar robbery. (4)
Here’s what the book jacket says: “The messages waiting for Henry Pierce when he plugs in his new telephone clearly aren’t intended for him: ‘Where’s Lily? This is her number. It’s on the site.’
Pierce had just been thrown out by his girlfriend and has moved into a new apartment, and the company he founded is headed into the most critical phase of fundraising. He’s doing all he could to win a technological battle whose victor will make millions. But he can’t get the phone messages out of his mind.
Something is wrong. Pierce probes and investigates, trying to track down and help a woman he has never met. The world he enters is a nighttime street of escorts, websites, sex, and secret passions. The beautiful Lily is an object of desire to thousands. To Pierce, she becomes the key to fix a broken life. But in pursuing Lilly, Pierce has stepped into a landscape where his success means nothing. He is an outsider, and soon he is the victim of astonishing violence, the chief suspect in a murder case, and a man fighting for his life against forces he cannot discern.”
There is a surprise ending as Pierce is forced to look at the facts and concludes that he had been set-up. The story is well told. I enjoyed it. (4).
On the surface the killing of an interracial couple in northern Minnesota seems to be a simple “lynching” but the governor is dreadfully afraid his office will be charged for not doing enough to ease race relations in the state. He sends a special trouble shooter to find out what happened under the aegis of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), a response to help local law enforcment authorities when they’re not able to solve the crime - cases that are politicaly charged.
As it turns out the murder was more than a lynching. The case involves drugs, auto theft, the kidnapping of a couple of girls which were never solved and the killing of several people as the investigator closes in on the perpetrator(s) and discovers common elements in all these crimes. The best character in the story is Letty, a precocious 12 year old girl who manages to tease her way into the life of the detectives, the television media and the press. She discovered the original bodies and becomes a crucial witness in the book. Not a bad story. (3).
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