2 More by Lee Child Killing Floor and 61 Hours

Trying to catch up yet again on blog books, but my  stack gets ahead of me as this dreary winter at home in the "tundra" and  too early darkness of MN Winters leaves time to read. 

 Both are excellent Jack Reacher novels, both rate 5 *****, both were in the stack I bought at the La Crescent Friends of Library bookstore on sale. Killing Floor, published in 1997,  has Jack Reacher traveling through Georgia, but then he stumbles into a hornets nest, is arrested for murder and decides to stick around and solve what will be his brother's killing.  It opens, "I was arrested in Eno's Diner at 12
o'clock.  I was eating eggs and drinking coffee.  A late breakfast, not lunch.  I was wet and tired after a long walk in heavy rain.  Alll the way from the highway to the edge of town."Page 16 gives good background on the character, Jack Reacher, " ..I was a military kid...show me a list of military bases around the world and that's a list of where I lived...I did high school in two different countries and I did four years up at West Point....I stayed in the army....Military Police......I'm a 38 year old unemployed ex-military policeman getting called a vagrant by smug civilian bastards who wouldn't last five minutes in the world I survived," 

 This book has fascinating information on the world of

counterfeiting and money, composition of paper and how electronic money counters work.    Page 310 , Military philosophy, staff college taught him to know the war can only be won when, .."seek out their main force and take it on, destroy it."   Page 367, "He had crashed through the barrier.  He had stopped worrying and started relaxing.  He was up on that plateau where you just did whatever needed doing.  I knew that place. I lived there."  419 pages in this  paperback edition.  Page 62 has advice that anyone can apply to problem solving, "Evaluate.  Long experience had taught me to evaluate and assess.  When the unexpected gets dumped on you don't waste time.  Don't figure out how or why it happened.  Don't  recriminate.  Don't figure out whose fault it is.  Don't work out how to avoid the same mistake next time.  All of that you do later.  If you survive.  First of all you evaluate.  Analyze the situation.  Identify the downside.  Assess the upside.  Plan accordingly.  Do all that and you give yourself a better chance of getting through to the other stuff later."

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.  61 Hours published in 2010 in the paperback edition is set in  frigid South Dakota in a winter storm where the bus Jack Reacher is riding on crashes. He had accepted a ride on a tour bus of senior citizens .   The novel opens, " Five minutes to three in the afternoon.  Exactly 61 hours before it happened.  The lawyer drove in and parked in the empty lot.....Prison was a binary world.  Either you were locked up or you weren't.  They weren't.  He wasn't." The prison provides the primary industry and employment for the town of Bolton and  becomes the center awaiting an assassin who will not come from within but from much farther away.  Stuck in a snowstorm Reacher is drawn into working with the local police who are manipulated as it turns from within by the same long distant assasin.   He volunteers with their shortage of manpower when the prison sirens sound to body guard the key witness in the state's case, Janet Salter a retired professor.     Page 41, " Nothing worthwhile was achieved without reflection and rumination.  With reflection and rumination, impulsive mistakes could be avoided and bold strokes could be formulated." .    

The /Shadows We Hide by Allen Eskens

Front cover flap

I take this book personally, the fifth by Allen Eskens, I have read each one, but this was released on my November birthday!  A great present to me from me, I had preordered it on Amazon.  I read it  in November almost right after it arrived, all 339 pages,  and will be passing along my hardcopy to our local library. I think that one would be better off to have read the first novel, "The Life We Bury" to know something about the main character Joe Talbert.  This murder novel/ mystery centers on Joe's curiosity about his father, his namesake whom he has never met.  .  Joe is a successful AP reporter in this novel and still taking care of his brother Jeremy, living in Minneapolis with Lila who is studying for her bar exam and still without contact with his  errant mother.  But circumstances build and  Joe faces a crossroads of life, to give another yet second chance to his mother who  surely wore out her second chances in the last novel.  

The book opens with the lyrical writing that draws the

Back cover flap

reader in to turn page after page, "  I'm lying on the hood of my car, my back reclined against m,y windshield, knees bent, fingers laced together on my stomach and breathing relaxed to ease the throb of pain.  I'd like to say that having the tar beat out of me was the low point of my day, but that would be a lie......I feel like I'm in exile, a nomad of sorts, sharing my night with the stars and the trees and the occasional thistle seed that floats by on  the summer breeze."  He stumbles across a story about the murder of a man Joseph Talbert in a small town in southern MN.  And that sets the  turns and twists.  

Another excellent book by Allen Eskens.  A full 5 stars *****.   Buy it, read it. 

The Midnight Line Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child

I read this novel in September, bought it at Sam's as a paperback.  It is a more recent Reacher novel, published 2017, 500 pages.  It begins on a blank intro page, "So far in our history, nearly two million Purple Hearts have been awarded.  This book is respectfully dedicated to each and every recipient."   This tale finds Reacher in my neck of the woods, traveling through WI and on his way to Rapid City, searching for the person whose West Point class ring he retrieved in a Pawn Shop. 

 As the novel begins Michelle Chang has left Reacher, Page 1, "He had seen such notes before.  They all said the same thing.  Either directly or indirectly.  Chang's note was indirect.  And more elegant than most.  Not in terms of presentation.  It was a ballpoint scrawl on motel notepaper gone wavy with a damp.  But elegant in terms of expression.  She had used a simile to explain and flatter and apologize all at once.  She had written, "You're like New York City.  I love to visit, but I could never live there."  He did what he always did.  He let her go.  He understood.  No apology required.  He couldn't live anywhere.  His whole life was a visit."  

This novel includes opiods, military injuries, inadequate VA care, PTSD, injured war veterans how the injuries introduce them to addictive pain killers and turn them into addicts, pharmaceuticals, corporations, the DEA,  South Dakota and Wyoming and the history of heroin use in the United States.  We had just been to South Dakota and Wyoming in August so this was apt reading for me.  A brief summary the West Point ring belongs to an ex Army Major who was severely wounded in Afghanistan.  Reacher encounter many along his search to return the ring because he know it took work to get through West Point especially for a female.  He meets the sister of the ex Major who is also searching for her and had hired a private detective.  Along the way Reacher goes into action to get information from links he uncovers like the mobster running a laundromat in Rapid City and the drug dealers and affiliates the guy employs. 

 Pages 11-12 have classic description about motorcycle riders, an abundant group through these parts and across the midwest especially in the spring, summer and fall months.  "Bikers were as split as Baptists.  All the same, but different. "

Page 282, "Reacher was not a superstitious man.  Not given to flights of fancy or sudden forebodings or existential dread of any kind.  But he woke with the dawn and he stayed in bed.  He felt unwilling to move.....Sometimes you woke up and you knew for sure from history and experience and weary intuition that the brand new day would bring nothing good at all."

Another 5 ***** read.   

The Jack Reacher Novels by Lee Child Running Blind

Read this book, Running Blind, my first one in July and have a new favorite to read through entire series.  Through a friend who sent me this first book, Running Blind and introduced me thereby to author, Lee Child,  and this series of action, thriller, mystery, etc genre featuring the Jack Reacher character.  I have not been this excited to read an entire collection since back long ago in the 1960's when I first discovered Ian Fleming's James Bond novels.   Running Blind is a paperback, but first published in 2000, by Jove Books of New York, 550 pages

Jack Reacher is an ex USArmy Major, Military Police and then some, who is now a civilian and who travels the country very lightly, with toothbrush only, some cash,  going wherever he takes a notion and dealing with bad guys.  In this novel women are being murdered across the country," victims of a disciplined and clevel killer who leaves no trace evidence, no fatal wounds, no signs of struggle and no clues to an apparent motive." 

Back Cover, Running Blind.  

  taken from the back cover, picture to the right.  

From the first page, the novel grabbed me and I could not put it down.  I do not know how I missed this autoor and this character, a tough guy who takes no guff and does things his way.  Page 1--" People say that knowledge is power.  The more knowledge, the more power.Suppose you knew the winning numbers for the lotterry?  All of them?  Not guessed them, not dreamed them but really knew them?  What would you do?" ....Page 2, "Life is full of decisions and judgments and guesses and it gets to the point where you're so accustomed to making them you keep right on making them even when you don't strictly need to.  You get into a what if thing, and you start speculating about what would you do if some problem was yours instead of somebody else's.  It gets to be a habit.  It was a habit Jack Reacher had in spades."  Page 9,  "The dynamics of the city.  The strong terrorize the weak.  They keep on at it, like they always have, until they come up against somebody stronger with some arbitrary humane reason for stopping them.  Somebody like Reacher."  And page 59, the description of Reacher, from hyperyensive,  Agent in charge, Nelson Blake, Quantico, Serial Crimes Unit, with Special Agent Julia  Lamar,  "No there are millions, you conceited son of a bitch, she said.  But then.we started narrowing it down some.  A smart guy, a loner, Army, knew both victims, movements unaccounted for, a brutal vigilante personality.  That narrowed it down from millions to thousandths to hundreds to tens maybe all the way down to you."  Page 69, some background on a house Reacher inherits from his late friend, commander, mentor Leon Garber, Jodie's (his current girlfriend) father.  Leon had been a prince among men, rough and ready and Reacher loved him like a father.  "  It was a half million dollar house, slice of prime real estate standing proudly on the Hudson opposite West Point, and it was a comfortable bldg. but it represented a big problem.  It anchored him in a way which made him profoundly uncomfortable.  .Page 70, ".And the idea of property worried him.  His whole life he had never owned more than would fit into his pockets. ......He had a wristwatch it was Army issue, so it started out theirs and became his when they didn't ask for it back.   And that was it.  Shoes for his feet, clothes on his back, small bills in his pants, big bills in his wallet, a toothbrush in his pocket, and a watch on his wrist."  

Page 79 has the source of the title of this novel, as Blake and Lamar ask Reacher for help catching the killer who preys on ex US Army gals.  "So help us catch her killer.   No.   Without somebody like you, we're just running blind.  No...I'm asking for you help here"  

I got a kick out of the reference to granite kitchen counter tops in a civilized world, Page 236, where Reacher is talking with Jodie. It demonstrates how this author plants interesting diversions in the midst of action.  I related it to our now year old upgrade, remodel of our kitchen with the new granite counter tops and new multi surface back splash that took far too long on back order but does look elegant."He sat on her kitchen stool and leaned his forearms on her counter top.Spread his finger wide and placed his palms down flat.  The counter top was cold.  It was some kind of granite, gray and shiny, milled to reveal tiny quartz speckles, throughout its surface.  The corners and angles were radiused into perfect quarter circles.  It was an inch thick and probably very expensive.  it was a civilized product.  It belonged right there in a world where people agree to labor forty hours or a hundred or two hundred and then exchange the remuneration they get for installations they hope will make their kitchens look nice inside their expensive remodeled buildings high above Broadway. "

And besides the action and intrigue, the author adds tidbits here and there of historical interest, like page 371 references about why Eisenhower built the US Interstates.  " "Why do you think interstates were built?  Not so the Harper family could drive from Aspen to Yellowstone Park on vacation.  So the Army could move troops and weapons around, fast and easy.>     They were?  Reacher nodded, "Sure they were.  Eisenhower built them in the fifties, height of the Cold War thing, and Eisenhower was a West Pointer, first and last."

I give this book  5 ***** and recommend Jack Reacher novels to anyone who relishes action, intrigue, suspence.  I have accumulated several others now and will be reading them all. 

What Came Before He Shot Her by Elizabeth George

Author

Certainly not my favorite George mystery novel, in fact if this is her  new adjusted genre/style, although it was published in 2006 and was on my shelf,  I will not be reading any more by this author.  I slogged all through the 548 pages, and actually read another book along with this as  I found this very tiresome reading.  What did I dislike, many things, beginning with the ghetto dialect of the characters, the plot, the drama.  It is not at all up to her writing which I usually enjoy.  It does tie back to Inspector Lynley but not until the end of the tale.  Meantime this drama about the other side, the seedy part of London, North Kensington, inhabited by immigrants,  other races, mixed races , infested with crime, drugs, etc.  It centers on the three mixed race orphaned Campbell children, Ness a troubled adolescent girl, as the story  nears completion we learn she has been abused sexually from a very young age by the step grandfather and his cronies.  Tess is troubled, promiscuous and falls easily into bad company until placed on probation and put to work for an immigrant Majidah who successfully delivers tough love.  The brothers, Joel, the 11 year old who is central character and ongoing  caretaker for Toby the youngest brother about 6,  who has mental disorders and challenges, autism or who knows what.  Their maternal  grandmother , Glory, who had been caring for them sort of ,as their mother is institutionalized, abandons them to their aunt Kendra,  to go to  Jamaica with her ne'er do well husband, not their grandfather. Abandons them on Kendra's door steps without warning nor notifying to Kendra who has her own struggles but is trying to pull a life together for herself while managing a thrift store for a non profit charity and attempting to establish herself as a personal masseuse. Lots of trials and life dramas consume the story and pages.   

The ghetto  type dialect, that pervades, "i'n't it',  meaning isn't it, and 'summick' meaning something takes  real getting used to and does not enhance the story.  

George can pull descriptives together and does so through out this novel although I was so annoyed with the  story itself that I did not appreciate the  writing.  As on pg 48, "  ..one of those moments in which things get glossed over, things get addressed or things get altogether ignored."     Or page 380 about anxiety and its effect, "..Anxiety prevents you from working, but the only way to relieve the anxiety is by doing what it prevents you from doing: working........Others avoid, seeking  an external relief for the anxiety, which tempers it only moderately....."

Back flap

Front flap

As the book ends, Joel has become affiliated with a drug dealer, seeking help he cannot  get elsewhere or so he perceives.  He  is accused of shooting a woman, and  taken into custody.  The woman is a cop's wife,  we learn that is Inspector Thomas  Lyneley's wife and that is the only link this tiresome novel has to the other  interesting works of the author. 

I give this a meager 2 stars, I should not have bothered to read the entire novel but I did.  

The Deep Dark Descending by Allen Eskens

Front Cover

Read this back in June,  the fourth novel by Eskens,  whom I met in April, see my previous reviews.  I reviewed this for Amazon and now will post here. It is another outstanding mystery, thriller novel.  The author has a knack for drawing the reader in and along and although I have enjoyed the 3 previous books, I agree that he keeps improving with each.  I have preordered his next one to be released in November, on my birthday and cannot wait.  This novel published in 2017 has 281 pages.  

Here is my review from Amazon, "  Another knock out thriller, mystery. I read this in June and just as with each one of Esken's novels, could not put it down. To me , it was helpful to have read his three previous novels for background in the formation of this story and how and why Max Rupert, the main character, does what he does. I was drawn along trying to second guess would Max or wouldn't he? I am not going to reveal what happens, do not want to be a spoiler. I enjoyed the reflection, page 8, of his" childhood notions of right and wrong, impressions as thin as tissue, but layered so thick in my memory that they have become walls of stone." This descriptive wording demonstrates what can stay with us through our lives despite our experiences and reflects the author's descriptive writing.style. Page 167 has another of my favorite passages, " we live in a world of gray. We are the ones in charge of the balancing. We are the reckoners." I think Eskens may have created that term, "reckoners", one unfamiliar to me before I read this mystery. And finally the consideration between justice and vengeance on pages 183-185. I am awaiting the release of Esken's 5th book soon. I became a fan of on Allen Eskens, after meeting him at our library event in La Crescent in April."  

Back cover

Not often do I eagerly await the next bpok, but Mr. Eskens told us he will not be writing quickly, a book a year might be all, this tells me he is not going to just crank out words. 

Others have commented that they are just as eager for the 5th book which will be different, as Mr Eskens revealed at his visit with us, "Max will be sitting and  contemplating.." Another reviewer addressed some negative comment about this book being written in first person, which did not bother me at all.  I agree with this review"There is one issue I want to address, however. An early review criticizes this book for being written in the first person. This book is all about Max Rupert and reveals details of his life growing up and the impact of losing his wife. It deals with his personal struggles and the questions he faces on a fateful night. This book needed to be written in the first person and is more impactful as a result."
 Another reviewer commented, "While the character of Max Rupert became increasingly important in Eskens's previous three works, the study of this police detective, clearly from this work ethical, moral, and dedicated, holds the reader grippingly throughout its relatively short span. The narrative is disturbing because quickly the reader comes to understand the deep-seated conflict Rupert faces - yes, there is a right way and a wrong way to do go about police business. And, yes, we've seen the experienced police operative driven to work off-the-books by the circumstances of the political bureaucracy that big-city police work has become. But Rupert's motivations lie deeper, more personal. And the best among us, I suspect, might quickly succumb to the dark sides of our souls given the stakes Rupert faces."

I believe it is the sign of a good read to generate so much discussion and thought.  Here is the last page, of what I consider  a 5 ***** novel   Read this novel if you like mysteries, but read the  previous first to better comprehend this character, Max. 

Then Came Heaven by LaVyrle Spencer

An old friend, high school classmate, recommended this book to me because of the Minnesota setting and the Catholic Polish church, characters, and era.  It happens to be the last book that this author wrote, published in 1997.  It is set in the fictitious MN town of Browerville, MN in the 1950's.. So I found it at our library book sale and will be redonating it back to them.  I read it end of May and early June and really struggled to continue reading it.  The story is ok, but trite, this is not a genre for me, but apparently this author is very popular among women here because the sale shelf had many of her books.  If this women's type story is appealing, the reader would enjoy it.  I found it too simple.  

Author LaVyrle Spencer

Eddie Olczack is the church custodian and maintenance man and lives near with his wife, Krystyna,  and two daughters, Anne and Lucy. They are both from traditional Polish Catholic families.  As it opens, the wife is killed in an auto accident  and everyone mourns.  The daughters attend the church Catholic school and sister  Regina is their teacher.  Before the tragedy. the sister is questioning her suitability to continue life in the convent and ultimately leaves.  She has been groomed from her earliest days to become a nun by her grandmother, so the family is disappointed. Sister Regina has developed an attachment to the girls and also to Eddie, who is himself a devout Catholic and questions his own feelings. Meantime Krystyna's surviving sister, Irene, who has never married and lives at home has always had a crush on Eddie.  Besides mourning for her sister, she wants to help this widower and her nieces and sets out to help them daily. Ultimately Eddie will reject Irene.  

The writing is not bad, Pages 30-31 describe some of Eddie's horrid feelings  in grief,  "But it wasn't all right.  Krystyna was dead and it would never be all right again.  ......So much easier to think of common everyday responsibilities than of this huge and stultifying thing he was being forced to accept.  ...."

Page 46, Sister Regina realizes being a nun might not be right for her. " She'd thought Benedictine communal life would mean strength and support and constant peace within.  A strifeless valley of serenity whose sacrifice and prayer and hard work would bring an inner happiness leaving nothing more wanting.  Instead it meant silence when communication was called for, withdrawal when it was sympathy that was needed and a Litany for the Faithful Departed when it was tears that were needed."

Pages 49 and 50 describe the Polish antidote, bring food,"Where the cake came from so fast, Eddie couldn't guess but he wasn't surprised, these women thought food was the antidote to any crisis." 

 This tragic tale and love story continues over 331 pages.  . As I commented, not my genre and not an author whom I would read again, but for  very light romantic reading this might suit some.  I give this 2 ** because I do not enjoy this type. 

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Glass Houses by Louise Penny

Published in 2017, 388 pages, another tale set in the fictional village of Three Pines, featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache who has been promoted as chief of the entire Surete.  The author's notes, page 391, "Some might argue that Three Pines itself isn't real, and they'd be right but limited in their view.  The village does not exist, physically.  But I think of it as existing in ways that are far more important and powerful.  Three Pines is a state of mind.  When we choose tolerance over hate.  Kindness over cruelty.  Goodness over bullying.  When we choose to be hopeful, not cynical.  Then we live in Three Pines."  

 I will mention that I am not enjoying all the same sex partners and relationships that the author keeps introducing into the novels, I wonder if she has taken up this cause and wants to push readers tolerance.  Not so sure I will read many more of her novels if this is the pattern.  

Noble sentiments are woven through the characters who reappear in this novel, which Louise Penny finished after the death of her husband in 2016.  Glass Houses introduces and embellishes on  a Spanish custom/legend, the cobrador del frac.  The cobrador appears in the center of Three Pines causing the villagers to wonder and  become agitated by its presence after days.  The cobrador legend ranges to medieval times and today in Spain exists, dressing in top hat and tails , following debtors to shame  and embarrass them into paying their debts.  In this novel the cobrador is a conscience not a debt collector. I did enjoy this nostalgic history, embellished or not.    

Back cover

As in other novels there is a murder to be solved but this time the body is discovered in the church basement by Reine-Marie, Armand's wife.  They have moved to Three Pines as a refuge from the hustle and bustle of Montreal.  The Novel begins in late fall, Page 15, " It was the beginning of November and the weather wasn't letting them forget it.  ...November was the transition month.  A sort of purgatory.  It was the cold damp breath between dying and death.  Between fall and the dead of winter.  It was no one's favorite month."   I must disagree because November is my birthday month!

This is a  rather contemporary mystery about drugs, cartels, and the ongoing war on drugs between the law enforcement agencies and the criminals, the dealers,and  the kingpins. Armand has admitted and realized that law enforcement is losing the war on drugs but he has a careful, long term view to wind the final battle.  Page 39, "The war on drugs was lost a long time ago.  That was bad enough, but what's happened is the knock on effect.  If drugs are out of control, it isn't long before we lose our grip on all crime..  We aren't there yet."   

Page 204, "It had started as these things did, naturally enough.  As steps in the grieving process.  But where the final step should have been acceptance, the person had veered off.  Stepped away from the path and walked deeper and deeper into sorrow and rage.  Fueled by guilt.  Until they'd gotten themselves all turned around.  And when they were well and truly lost, they'd found refuge.  In revenge.,"

Page 303, "Corruption starts small, often justifiable.  A white lie.  A minor law violated for the greater good.  And then the corruption, like a virus, spreads."  This novel revolves around that corruption embedded into the depths of government of the law.    I was not fully surprised by the real story behind the guilty parties and felt that part of the novel dragged on along excessively.  

I give this book a 4 ****, worth reading but not a favorite for me.  

The Heavens May Fall by Allen Eskens

Just finished this, my 3rd Eskens book and absolutely enjoyed it.  I would recommend reading these from the beginning because of some of the characters who flow through.  Published in 2016, 298 pages, this is my favorite so far. This is a very good twister, in that just when I thought I had something figured out there was another turn.  I am enjoying Eskens because he writes in a way that draws me in, I find myself trying to solve the crime and sift the nuances, very engaging.  This story begins with the result and then  retreats to tell the story.  

Back cover

The opening paragraph, "The courtroom had fallen quiet, the judge's words lost behind a low hum that droned in Max Rupert's ears.  Max reached for his water glass, a waxy paper cup on the rail of the witness stand.  It lifted empty and light.  He didn't remember drinking the last of his water.  He paused, the empty cup halfway to his lips, unsure what to do next.  Pretend to take a drink?  Put the cup back down on the rail?"  Max Rupert, the detective,  is angry with his former friend Boady Sanders, who has returned as a defense attorney now for the defendant, Ben Pruitt on trial for the murder of his wife, Jennavieve.  Their friendship is now no more, the lines have been drawn and crossed.  Boady has not taken a client case since the death of an innocent client but comes out of his  retirement professor job to help an old colleague  Pg. 10, "He found an empty conference room, a space the size of a jail cell,  where attorneys fed false hopes to clients, a room where desperation clung to the walls as thick as grease in a fast food restaurant."  .  

Pg 15, "No, Kenwood was a neighborhood that prided itself on living well and peacefully, a neighborhood that liked to be left alone."  This is the neighborhood where the Pruitts lived.  

Pages 140-141, The title of the book comes from the Latin, "Fiat justitia ruat caelum" meaning let justice be done thought the heavens may fall.  It is a phrase Boady uses in an Ethics lecture.   " If a person is ever presented with that choice, that person must always do what is right even though it may bring on great personal loss."

Page 153, Chapter 30 begins, "There is a fog that can infect a person's brain, a thick, feverish sludge that engulfs sound and thought with an effect similar to being submerged in a tub of water. Max  had experienced this fog after his wife died.  He visited it once again the week his brother died,..."  I read and felt perhaps Max was not as rational as astute  right now, still suffering pangs of losing his wife.  

Page 177, "Boady would have returned the gesture in kind.  Winning had everything to do with knowing the case better than your opponent and nothing to do with feathers ruffling."  , 

I honestly had no idea how this novel would end, I felt that Ben Pruitt, the defendant was innocent that he  could not have killed his wife, that the cops got it wrong, Max was wrong.  Boady also believed Pruitt who had been a very successful defense attorney.  Boady agrees to represent him because he believes in Pruitt.  Because Max arrested Pruitt and is convinced he killed his wife although the alibi seems solid, Boady and Max are opposite each other.  By page 277, when the events twist and turn and turn again I never saw it coming.  Nor did I expect the ending that  happened.  This to me is a perfect mystery, written by someone very familiar with investigations.  

Pages 216-217 return back to the start of the book with Max on the witness stand.  

An excellent intrigue,  another 5 *****..  

2 novels, The Life We Bury and The Guise of Another both by Allen Eskens

Author Allen Eskens at La Crescent library

This is unusual to combine 2 novels in one post, but in April, Allen Eskens, local MN author, and new to me,  visited La Crescent and  spoke at the library.  It was by far the best talk by an author that  we have enjoyed locally, although I always enjoy meeting authors and learning about them and their writings. This was in the mid afternoon and the crowd was there, packing our small space inside the library, mostly all retired women who mostly had  had read his books previously.  I wondered why retired men do not read, but in our house Jerry prefers to do other activities and has never been the book reader like me.  The week before I was in Sam's Club and noticed "The Life We Bury" which I purchased  because I knew I would be hearing the author soon.  I did not have time to read the book before meeting him, but just out of curiosity I did read the first few pages, and I could not wait to get to it.  I was finishing another book.     Allen talked about his tendencies to daydream finally proving worthwhile as an author, how he was a below average student until he was introduced to drama and acting by an astute teacher.  A Catholic school boy from Nebraska who now lives in MN and had a previous career as a successful criminal defense attorney, he attributes his success to daydreaming, a habit he still has which keeps him taking copious notes about characters as  thoughts run through his mind.  Very interesting and then his success and sense of awe being in the same room with authors like David Baldacci,  etc.  

First novel published 2014

Well I sat there listening to him and thinking, "great just what I need another author whose books I will be buying" and thinking about my over full shelf of books I already have to read, but oh well, as he explained one novel a year is about his limit and how he tries to write about what he knows, how some of his life experiences make their way into the novels, and how he never set out to be an author nor to write a detective crime series but that the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th novels just flowed that way featuring the detective Max Rupert, who actually appears at the end of The Life We Bury, his first novel.  What a great novel, and certainly not one I would have ever been  exposed to were it not for this appearance.  We learned that it is currently under consideration for film, aka movie production.  It was amusing when Allen said that once a book rights are sold to a film production company it becomes like selling your used car, you relinquish all rights and decisions to the film company.  His analogy of seeing your former car come down the street with painted fins and teeth was humorous as were several of his revelations about going to New York as a recognized author and meeting authors of renown, James Patterson, etc or merely being in the same room.  

Back cover, 300 pages paperback

Well, I knew I would want to read more than one of his novels and so was glad I brought cash along as he had a few books for sale and would autograph them, as well as any that we had previously purchased, like mine which I had also taken along for my walk up town.   I like to support authors who take the time to go out and talk with people.  So here I am with Allen Eskens and if you notice cash in my hand, ready to buy a few more books from him, sheesh I never realize how short I am until I see me in photos, although he is about 6 foot tall!  I am a midget!  Enough of my introduction.  The Life We Bury is a great mystery novel, a different perspective and I can appreciate how he has been awarded the Best Debut Mystery by the Left Coast Crime Rosebud Award, the 2015 Edgar Award Finalist for Best First Novel which got him to New York to meet the who's who of mystery writers, ITW Thriller Award Finalist for Best First Novel and the MN Book Award Finalist for Best Genre Novel.   Of course I had him autograph my books, and I really thought I would add them to my collection but I am determined to downsize.  I will be sending them along to a  longtime friend from CA, who reads vociferously too and now lives in NC, he will enjoy these..  

The opening to the Life We Bury draws a reader immediately, " I remember being pestered by a sense of dread as I walked to my car that day, pressed down by a wave of foreboding that swirled around my head and broke against the evening in small ripples.  There are people in this world who would call that kind of feeling a premonition, a warning from some internal third eye that can see around the curve of time.  I've never been one to buy into such things.  But I will confess that there have been times when I think back to that day and wonder: if the fates had truly whispered in my ear--if I had known how that drive would change so many things--would I have taken a safer path?  Would I turn left where before I turned right.  Or would I still travel the path that led me to Carl Iverson?"  These are the thoughts of Joe Talbert, the main character and this novel is written in the first person, Joe is on his way to University of MN, to complete college despite everything against him all his life.  His mother is a no account alcoholic who tends to blame her sons for her difficult life, he leaves behind his 18 year old autistic brother Jeremy, but events will change that. Interesting that Allen Eskens does not go into depth to physically describe his characters.  I wondered about that when he mentioned it, but I found while reading that  but actually prefer to go with my thoughts.  He mentioned in his discussion that he only describes what may become pertinent at some point, such as that Jeremy is better looking that Joe.  Carl Iverson will become  the center of the novel as Joe struggles to complete an English  assignment writing about an older person's life.  Joe will choose to go to a skilled nursing facility and after a struggle be given the chance to talk with Carl, who is a convicted murderer serving the final days of his sentience as a terminal cancer patient, Joe will learn more about Carl's life as a decorated Vietnam combat veteran and in the discussions  talk to Carl about his own late grandfather and his death, something Joe has never spoken about with anyone. The other characters  major to the novel are Lila Nash,Joes' apartment neighbor;  Crystal Hagen the teenage girl purportedly murdered by Carl,;Carl's only friend Virgil; Andy Fisher, Crystal's boyfriend;  Doug Lockwood, Crystal's stepfather; Danny Lockwood, Crystal's stepbrother, Berthel Collins a public defender law clerk when Carl's case was tried; Boady Sander a law professor of the Innocence Project, and Max Rupert, the Minneapolis police detective.    There are other incidental characters but I did not note them.  As it turns out I will be developing a matrix because this author uses some of these characters in subsequent novels, such as Max Rupert, the detective.  

A few quotes from The Life We Bury, Page 7, "maybe she knew who my mother was and figured that no one can change the sound of an echo.."    Page 31, "The archive room had the feel of a tabernacle with millions of souls packed away on microfilm like the incense in tiny jars, waiting for someone to free their essence..."  Page 61, "but as a sinner needs the devil, I needed a scapegoat, some one I could point at and say, 'You're  responsible.".  

Page 89 struck me, as about the 3rd time in the novel that the message, "I wasn't there, I had no say in what was or wasn't ok"  There is a theme of not to judge unless you were there and maybe not even then, Carl teaches Joe this lesson again on their first meeting.

Page 193, " But in the end there's no hole deep enough.  No matter how hard you try there are some things you just can't run away from"  

Page 195 indicates that this life is our heaven, " if I didn't live my life as if I was already in heaven, and I died and found only nothingness, well...I would have wasted my life.  " 

This is a great book, 5 *****,  my only disappointment, just like life, Joe and Jeremy's alcoholic mother seems to get by with  short changing her sons. When Joe has to bail her out at the beginning I kept hoping he would not and would just walk away, but he is a better person than her. 

The Guise of Another published in 2015 , 265 pages paperback, is the debut novel featuring Max Rupert, the Minneapolis detective but introduces Max' brother Alexander Rupert. This is when I realized I would  develop a matrix  of characters to track their appearances in the novels.    This novel opens with a tryst between to people married to others and their foolish sexual activities that ruin their lives and kill James Erkel Putnam, driver of the Porsche who turns out to not be James, thus giving the title meaning.  

The opening of this novel, "That night, there were a few things that the man knew to a religious certainty.  He knew that he's soon be having sex with the woman sitting in the passenger seat of his Lexus.  He knew that neither his wife nor the woman's husband yet suspected their infidelities.  And he knew that any whisper of guilt he may have felt would soon be silenced by the tumult of their act."  

Back Cover Guise of Another

Alexander Rupert  is a Minneapolis detective banished to fraud units investigations.  His life is spiraling downward.  He was a Medal of Valor winner ( a police honor) but now under subpoena by grand jury on suspicion of corruption, shunned by other detectives, suspects his status conscious wife is having an affair but seizes an opportunity to resolve a complex case of identity theft.  Alexander encounters a trained assassin, Drago Basta, veteran of Balkan wars with many aliases, who has been searching for James Putnam for years,  The firm Patrio International  is a focus of contacts,corruption, murder and more .  As Alexander pursues his hunches against the wishes of his superiors but helped out by his brother Max, the identity theft and international implications explode from Minneapolis to New York. Alexander become too late smart as the novel winds down and he realizes that running off with Ianna Markova is not wise,  it will cost him his life.   

Page 25, "  Alexander's fall from grace.  Their recent conversations skipped like stones across the surface of their lives, never finding depth, never touching the trouble that had been visited upon Alexander."

This novel is another  5*****.  I could not wait to begin reading the 3rd.  

Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly

An outstanding novel, based on a true story and history of World War II.  As much as I have read about WWII, I did not know or had long forgotten the business of the Nazi medical experiments, particularly in concentration camps and of the Polish women, known as rabbits who became the subject of these atrocities  at Ravensbruck, Hitler's only major concentration camp for women.  This is the author's first novel and a very worth while read. This story of the Ravensbruck prisoners in Nazi Germany "is a story that begged to be told but only with the insight that a novel can provide"  so goes the commentary at the end of the book, a dialogue between the author and Lynn Cullen, another best selling author. 

The novel is 476 pages, published in 2017.  There is a supplemental section after the novel of Author's notes and then the reading guide as well as many photographs of the research, trips to Germany, actual photos of the Rabbits, Caroline Ferriday, her remarkable lilacs, Lublin Poland, etc.   It is written as the stories of three women, whose lives intersect, beginning in 1939 with Caroline Ferriday, a former Broadway actress and liaison to the French consulate.  Kasia Kuzmerick

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is a Polish teenager who becomes involved in the Polish  underground Nazi resistance movement in Poland.  Herta Oberheuser is a young doctor seeking full time employment  who will become instrumental in the experiments.   There are plenty of other characters, Caroline's mother, her boss Roger at the consulate, Paul who becomes her French lover, his wife Rena,  in Poland Zuzanna Kasia's sister, her mother, her father, Pietrik and camp workers, and more.

Author';s notes first page.

The first page of the book "If I'd known I was about to meet the man who'd shatter me like bone china on terra cotta, I would have slept in."  Sometimes books with the interwoven stories of distinct characters do not tie it all together, or become tiresome flipping among the characters,  but not so in Lilac Girls where the author writes masterfully keeping connections and not  diminishing the story line. The author comments on page 492, "writing in first person, it's so easy to get immersed in the characters, good and bad.  So, yes it was a wonderful relief, after living with some of the terrible things that happened in the camp to switch back to write about Caroline's life in New York City." 

Being of Polish ancestry I was especially drawn into the nightmare of the stories.  I learned on page 207 that  "kroliki" in Polish means medical guinea pigs.  This caught my eye because my maternal grandfather's  half brother's last name was Krolicki.  The writing is excellent and originally  descriptive throughout the novel, as on page 460, " She and her strong-willed sister Kasia were as different as chalk and cheese"  Never heard that comparison before. 

Page 163, in Ravensbruck,  "As the days grew shorter, Zuzanna warned us to keep our spirits up, for sadness was often a more potent killer than disease.  Some just gave up, stopped eating and died."   


I give this book a hearty 5 stars *****.  I understand the author is working on a prequel now.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

Read this back in August-September 2017, finally posting here.  It was another Best seller back when and an Oprah Book Club selection, published in 2008.  Another I thought I might read someday so when I found it so cheap at the book sale, scooped it.  Not all that interesting to me, but anyone who has interest in dog training and or mutes will find it more enhancing.   Writing is very good, almost lyrical at times, always descriptive and not overly wordy, 562 pages, and the author indicates it was a long time work in progress. A unique feature of this novel is that each chapter has a distinct title.  

The prologue opens in 1952 in Pusan, South Korea, a world away from northern Wisconsin, the setting of the novel. 

Inside flap

 "After dark the rain began to fall again but he had already made up his mind to go and anyway it had been raining for weeks.  He waved off the rickshaw coolies clustered near the dock and walked all the way from the naval base, following the scant directions he'd been given, through the crowds in the Kweng Li market square, past the vendors selling roosters in crude rattan crates and pigs" heads and  poisonous looking fish lying blue and gutted and gaping on racks, past gray octopi, in glass jars, past old women harking kimchee and bulkogi, until he crossed the Tong Gang on the Bridge of Woes, the last landmark he knew."   Such an opening is intriguing and gives a flavor of the descriptive alluring writing.  

Some other writing for a better flavor of this text:  Page 23  "Though her foster childhood had sensitized her to familial loss, the need to keep her family whole was in her nature from the start.  To explain what happened later by any single event would deny either predisposition or the power of the world to shape.  "

Or how about this describing the sighting of an otter, lyrical, "  Page 25, "They saw an otter once, floating belly up in the floodwater, feet pointed downstream, grooming the fur on its chest--a little self contained canoe of an animal."  

For my taste there was too much about dog trainoing and I was getting bored until his father's accident happened about pages 122-123 when I knew things would change significantly but not how.  

The description of grief is memorable, Page 161, "There followed for each of them good days and bad.  And often Edgar's best moments coincided with his mother's worst.  She could be cheerful and determinedly energetic for days on end and then one morning he would walk downstairs and find her hunched at the kitchen table, haggard and red-eyed.  Once lapsed, nothing could deliver her.  It worked the same with him.  Just when normal life felt almost possible--when the world held some kind of order, meaning, even loveliness the prismatic spray of light through an icicle, the stillness of a sunrise, some small thing would go awry and the veil of optimism was torn away, the barren world revealed.  They learned somehow, to wait those times out.  There was no cure, no answer, no reparation."  

Page 257 continues about grief and what's real:  "Edgar, do you actually think that how long a person grieves is a measure of how much they loved someone?  There's no rule book that says how to do this.  She laughed bitterly.  Wouldn't that be great?  No decisions to make.  Everything laid right out for us.  But there's no such thing.  You want facts, don't you?  Rules.  Proof.  Your're like your father that way.  Just because a thing can't be logged, charted, and summarized doesn't mean it isn't real.  Half the time we walk around in love with the idea of a thing instead of the reality of it.  But sometimes things don't turn our that way.  You have to pay attention to what's real, what's in the world.  Not some imaginary alternative, as if it's a choice we could make."  

Page 457-8 abppput chance and coincidence. "So much of the world was governed by chance.  If they had left Henry's house a day earlier they might have been in Canada that very moment, maybe even at Starchild Colony.  Life was a swarm of accidents waiting in the treetops, descending upon any living thing that passed, ready to eat them alive.  You swam in a river of chance and coincidence.  You clung to the happiest accidents--the rest you float by."  

And near the end of the novel, " "The after image of the fire-flash twisted in the air before him like a violent snake."

I give this a 4**** althought he subject was not to my liking the writing kept my interest.  

Songs in Ordinary Time by Mary McGarry Morris

What a slog along forever saga this novel was, all 740 pages, took me over a month to read it sporadically.  It was an Oprah Book Club pick back when, published in 1995.  A friend recalled it was one I wanted to read long ago and so she sent it to me for my birthday in November.I am always grateful to be remembered by people on my birthday and I really do appreciate a book as a gift.  My goodness, I do not think I will read anymore by this author.  At first I thought it would be more of a spurt, almost interwoven short stories about the multitude of characters, but no, it went along  a very long tale about several main characters, all interwoven around the fictional town of Atkinson, Vermont and the newcomer to this small town, Omar Duval.  I was compelled to read it though to the end to find out if Marie Fermoyle the divorced single hard working mother of 3 would ever wise up to the con of Duval.  

The writing is good but beyond me how this author found so much to say and say and say about the town and people. My first impression is that it would be somewhat like tales in a poverty area of Appalachia probably because it begins by  describing Duval's arrival when he "came down off the mountain into Atkinson."  There are a multitude of stories all converging in this small town USA,some pathetic, some annoying, some tiresome and some intriguing, so the novel offers a range of reading.  Just about the time I thought I had identified the  primary themes, another emerged.  

Page 102: "The three of them used to visit here every Sunday after Mass.  But that had

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ended when Aunt Helen accused Norm of stealing her mission box.  She said there were five dollars' worth of dimes in it, enough to feed two Chinese babies for one year.  His mother went crazy.  She told Helen she had a hell of a nerve accusing her son of thievery when she, Helen, was the biggest thief in the whole world.  And, Benjy knew, a liar too; there had been only thirty one dimes in the box."    Marie Fermoyle is the struggling woman raising her children meagerly while her exhusband Sam wanders in and out of alcohol rehabilitation facilities.  Sam Fermoyle though comes from a wealthy family and will inherit abundance if his mother ever passes away, the mother is an elderly lady incapacitated  by  severe  dementia, kept at home in a crib.  The long suffering local Monsignor thought he finally got some help from the new priest Father Gannon, who soon adds to the problems the church has by being to free with the people and ultimately engaging himself with Alice, Maries's  daughter.  There is not one single character who does not fight some sort of demon, or go along with it.  

I would give this a 3 ***It is not really a bad  read if someone wants to read drama after personal drama, perhaps this novel fits the bill.  Described  as a good summer read, perhaps so.    

Still Life by Louise Penny

Finished this book, 312 pages  in a few nights as I battle off a coughing hacking cold that descended upon me.  An excellent read, published in 2005, proving yet again that there are many wonderful books, mysteries , not necessarily just current best sellers.  I am grateful to my friend who found it and sent it to me.  I will be passing it along now to another friend.  So many of the  great characters continue with Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Detective Beauvoir of the Surete du Quebec solving a murder back in the fictional village of Three Pines, outside of Montreal. The suspense and writing are every bit as intriguing as the first Louise Penny I read, in 2017,"The Brutal Feeling" and posted my review here finally January, 2018.  Louise Penny knows how to keep the mystery a secret up until the end as with the other book, I never correctly guessed  "who done it?" until she reveals it  near the end of the book, page 291 and with an almost dire outcome avoided by the detectives.  

It was a return to the familiar with many of the same characters in Three Pines, Gabri, Olivier, Ruth the eccentric,  Myrna, Clara and Peter and with new additions, Ben, Yolande, Timmer and  Nicole, a detective trainee whom Armande sends packing. This book I learned that Myrna is a black woman, something I had not gotten reading the other.  Fortunately the book stands on its own and one need not read any of these in sequence or from the beginning.   

Back cover

This tale focuses on the death of Jane Neal, an elderly village lady, at first it is assumed to be accidental but quickly turns to murder by bow and arrow, yet.  Page 1 begins"  Miss Jane Neal met her maker in the early morning mist of Thanksgiving Sunday.  It was pretty much a surprise all round.  Miss Neal's was not a natural death, unless you're of the belief everything happens as its supposed to.  If so, for her seventy six years Jane Neal had been walking toward this final moment when death met her in the brilliant maple woods on the verge of the village of Three Pines.  She'd fallen spread-eagled, as though making angels in the bright and brittle leaves."    Descriptive writing, and the scene is set.  

Pg 20, Clara and Ben are talking,  "Oscar Wilde said that conscience and cowardice are the same thing.  What stops us from doing horrible things isn't our conscience but the fear of getting caught."  

Pg 24, "Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table," Jane said almost under her breath.  

Looking back now after finishing this I can see just how the author  draws the reader in, with clues that do not seem more than part of the conversation.  I did not get this until I began writing this.review, yet they wqere quotes I had identified as ones I would include here.  

Pg. 47 Gamache is reflecting, , "And the pall of grief that settled on this little community was worn with dignity and sadness and a certain familiarity.  This village was old and you don't get to be old without knowing grief.  And loss.."  

Pg. 140, Myrna is discussing choices, faults, quoting Shakespeare , "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.....  "The vast majority of troubled people don't get it, the fault is here but so is the solution.  That's the grace." 

Pg. 279, Gamache is marveling "at the people who chose to live in this area.  Was Margaret Atwood a garbage collector perhaps?.......No one was who they seemed.  Everyone was more And one person in this room was very much more."  

Pg 303, "This is what comes of trust and friendship, loyalty and love, thought Peter.  You get screwed.  Betrayed.  You get wounded so deeply you can barely breathe and sometimes it kills you.  ......."

A 5 ***** read thoroughly enjoyed and savored it.   

The Painter's Daughter by Julie Klassen

Al;though I was unfamiliar with her and do not usually read this genre of romantic novels, I read this book and a few others by Julie Klassen, a MN author after she came to town to speak at the Library. That was back in 2016 and recently I noticed I had not included it here.  It is a tale of love, betrayal, trust,  family, forgiveness just as the complimentary bookmark that came with it describes.  I found it easy reading and not as trite as I had expected.  In fact, it was a good diversion for me.  

I learned from Julie's talk that she is almost exclusively drawn to the era of the 1800's in England for her novels and has traveled there multiple times, meeting characters who may resemble some in her books.  It was fascinating to learn how the covers are chosen and how much work goes into that almost as much as the novel.  From the others who attended the talk, she is a very favorite author for many women who read all her books and anticipate the next one. 
There is usually a moral to the story and always a distinct choice between right and wrong, etc.  One small excerpt from pg 58, "Would she and Captain Overtree have children together?  Sophie wondered.  It seemed difficult to imagine when he would barely look at her, let alone touch her.  But he was a man of faith, apparently.  So might he help her raise the child she already carried to love and fear the Lord?  She hoped so--if he lived.  Even though faith had not played a role in her upbringing, she wanted it for her own child."  That gives a hint of the story line.  As I recall I did enjoy reading this book and have since read a few on my Kindle app.  

The back cover is a good preview and shows the countryside.  The author, Julie Klassen claims to love all things Jane from Jane Eyre to Jane Austen..I give this book 3 ***, entertaining, and well written.