The Widow by John Grisham

  I do not know the last time I read a John Grisham novel/mystery but see no others posted to this blog.  I know I've read them though, likely long before I started this.  And I do not know why I have waited so long to read a Grisham book.   This one caught my eye on Amazon, maybe the title. Once I stated reading it was one I really hated to put down, but since I read  in the evenings I couldn't stay up all night to read more.  No doubt I will get another Grisham novel very soon.  The Widow is 404 pages, published in 2025.

This one is about a small town lawyer, Simon Latch who is struggling, going through a divorce, barely keeping things going  in his solitary law office. He has one employee, long time legal assistant/secretary, Tillie. Then an elderly widow  walks in, Eleanor Barnett, who has had a will prepared by another local lawyer.    When Simon reviews it he knows the other lawyer. became greedy and has over done his control of assets.  Eleanor is an 85 year old  widow with no children, two stepsons with whom she has no contact, no family, no one close enough to be her executor., 

Pg 40, Chapter 7 begins,   "Eleanor refused to meet again at Starbucks, said she felt too old there, as if at the age og eighty-five, there was a place where she might feel young.  Simon didn't argue and suggested they meet in his office at 6:00PM....."

Simon takes an interest in her and begins to establish a reluctant friendship, taking her to lunch and paying the bill each time,. She is supposedly wealthy but sometimes he wonders.  Ultimately he has prepared a new ill for her.  And then one day, Eleanor is in an automobile accident, her fault, driving another widow friend  home after the  ladies gather for a card game; she had over indulged in alcohol.  While she is in the hospital,

  Simon has her sign a healthcare power of attorney and finds himself in charge of that.  She is recovering in the hospital but gets pneumonia and things go downhill from there.  At 84 she does not recover and dies.  Simon asks for cremation and things proceed.  Then things begin to twist.  Her story of wealth may have been a story, he cannot  confirm assets.  His divorce is going along and he misses his children.  

Then the bottom falls out of everything when he is accused and arrested of poisoning Eleanor while she was in the hospital. One of the stepsons shows up and hires an attorney.  His secretary ends up in an affair with that stepson.   He is convicted by the  jury despite proof and despite the efforts of his excellent defense attorney.

  Simon Latch is innocent, but what can he do.  Ultimately he pursues and begins his own investigation using a hacker and finally resolves this crime.  He is innocent but the ones I suspected while reading along were not the culprits, neither the secretary nor the stepson who appeared and claimed to have contact with Eleanor.  The crime is a real twister as Simon resolves to prove his innocence.  This is a 5 ***** read.

Takedown Twenty by Janet Evanovich

 

Read this in September, a quick entertaining read  published in 2013, 295 pages.  Another in the adventures of Stephanie Blum bounty hunter.   

 Set in Trenton, NJ, all the characters from previous novels of this series remain--Vinnie the Bail bondsman for whom Steph works; Lula, her sidekick assistant with the best mouth around; Joe. Morelli, detective and Steph's fiancé kind of, Bella Morelli's old world grandmother who despises Steph and specializes in giving Steph the evil eye;  Steph's grandma Mazur who has a prominent role in this one;  Steph's Mom who takes to the ironing board to wear off frustration from her unmarried daughter; and Ranger, Steph's protector, close friend and  sometimes heartthrob.  I do not know off hand how many of these I have read but I always enjoy them.  There is a combination of humor, mystery and intrigue presented in a light hearted way for fun reading. 

Flap of cover

The story opens as Lula and Steph are on a night stake out  after Salvatore Sunucchi aka Uncle Sunny, local mobster protected by his grandma and adored through the community for his generosity.  Lula is as ever attracted to some knock off handbags from a local source, Jimmy.  They have seen a giraffe, whom Lula will name Kevin, seriously a giraffe running the back streets of Trenton.  As the action moves along Stephanie is becoming frustrated with her life, broke  or always living on the edge always she decides to give up bounty hunting.  She even tries a stint at learning to Butcher at her ever suffering Mom's suggestion with the local butcher.  That is not a good experience.  But she needs the final amount that she can be paid from Vinnie for bringing Uncle Sunny in.  By the end of the novel she has given up and returns to bounty hunter.,  Steph partners with Ranger to go to the senior center and bingo games to catch a killer.  Three elderly widows have been killed, strangled with venetian blind cord, and dumped into dumpsters.  Grandma Mazur at the end will be with Uncle Sunny who turns out to the be creepy killer.  Steph saves her grandma from the fate of the other 3 women.  

. 5 ***** rating for an enjoyable tale as always.   I am never disappointed when I find these at book sales and want a quick read.

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Ending pages

   

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

 I might be one of the last to read Where the Crawdads Sing,     a best seller published in 2018,, 368 pages and then more notes from the author.  I have so many books to read off my shelf from sales that I seldom buy new fiction but this is one I recently purchased. 

 Being a widow alone so much of the time I really related to this story about Kya, a young girl., abandoned who survives all alone in a North Carolina coastal marsh.  In the prologue the author explains that a marsh is not a swamp.  I  appreciated that because I do know the difference but many wouldn't.  After I read about the author's background I understood why she has introduced the story this way. I  copied the prologue first page below. 

in her letter to readers at the end of the book, author, Delia Owens shares "..we may long to be in a group, but we can find  unbelievable strength deep inside to survive, even thrive, when we are alone." While I do not long to be in a group, and find most big groups tedious, I have a group through my church, but I would like to have companionship, a widow's lament.  So I related to Kya although her circumstances as a young girl are very different. 

Reviews and excerpts abound online about this book, so I will not repost those here. 

Back cover

I struggled along keeping interested through the middle of the book, but staying with the tale paid off.  It picks up and the story turns and twists.  It is part mystery, part love story, part nature, human nature, part courtroom drama, and above all affirmation that in spite of all, amidst human indifference and sometimes human cruelty, life goes on.   In the author's conversation with the readers at the end of the book she explains that "isolation affects human behavior."  "Instinctual behaviors born from isolation allow Kya to survive and protect herself.  But more....confidence she gains from self reliance permits her to soar with personal achievements beyond what she could imagine...."  Although fiction, but based on nature, a10 year old abandoned girl survives showing us  "what can we be when we have to be."  

They live in the marsh, poor family, the father is abusive and the mother leaves, abandoning the children, escaping...the siblings leave one by one and this leaves Kya with the father who stays until she is 10 and then leaves as well.  The only ones who truly show her kindness and care are old  Jumpin' and his wife Mabel, who are  blacks that  run an old bait shop and live rough lives as well. Mabel provides clothes for her but Kya determines to

Author

trade them smoked fish.   Tate is a local boy who teaches her to read but he ultimately leaves for college and Kya is alone again.  Ultimately she takes up with Chase Andrews, the young man about town and there the twist begins.  When Chase is found murdered and the sheriff is stumped but determined to find the killer  "the Marsh Girl" becomes the suspect and finally they arrest Kya.  The murder trial is suspenseful.  Meantime one brother, Jodie has returned for periodic visits, he has been in the Army and is now stationed at Ft Benning, GA.  The mystery continues and not to spoil it but Kya triumphs , found not guilty and returns to her marsh.  But this time Tate soon follows, he is a biologist and employed by the University lab.  Kya becomes a published author about the marsh and is able to finally have electricity and running water  and renovate her shack.  She keeps the old woodstove though, just in case Ma returns.  Meantime, Ma, has passed away and Jodie  has  to share that news with her.  Ultimately Tate stays with Kya until the end.  

I give this 4 1/2 stars ****   the half because I did struggle to stay with the story as I mentioned. 

Prologue

  UPDATE JUNE 2025 THE MOVIE IS EXCE;LLENT. Ii WATCHED IT ON NETFLIX.

The Enemy by Lee Child

 

Read between October and November,  could not wait to finish it, but things kept interfering.. First published in hardback in 2004, I read the paperback, 464 pages.  A very outstanding Jack Reacher novel, maybe one of the best, difficult to tell because I like them all.  I thought a lot of late friend Nevin who introduced me to this series  with  Running Blind in 2018.  It was the first one I read and also is published  as The Visitor.  But The Enemy has extensive narrative and descriptions about the Army, political in fighting between divisions particularly Armored and Infantry, much description about Army protocols and traditions.  It begins as Reacher in on duty in his new post at Ft. Bird, North Carolina where he was suddenly, reassigned from Panama to his  surprise.  At the same time several other similar ranking MP's are simultaneously reassigned. and his  commanding officer, Colonel Leon  Garber, ,as well.  A reduction in the military force that will of course affect the Army sets the political infighting ablaze.  As it begins Reacher is called about a dead two star  General Kramer  found dead in a motel   It will turn out Reacher is being set up, but by who and why.  The replacement commander is a longtime bureaucrat and Joe warns Jack about him.  A striving young lieutenant Summer is assigned to work with him and becomes his right hand helper and cohort.  

Page 3,  " The army is a big institution, a little bigger than Detroit, a little smaller than Dallas and just as unsentimental as either place.  Current active strength is 930,000 men and women and they are as representative of the general American population as you can get."  . 

Back Cover  The Enemy

Reacher is contacted by his brother Joe and learns their mother, a widow, who lives in Paris is dying so they make plans to visit.  She does die in this novel and they learn something about her past and activity in WWII in the resistance as a very young girl that they never knew.  It is another interesting tale within a tale, woven  into the main story with expertise by the author..  Page 97,  conversation between their mother the the Reacher brothers,  "Won't you miss us , Mom?"  "Wrong question, she said, I'll be dead.  I won't be missing anything.  It's you that will be missing me.  Like I miss your father.  Like I miss him.  Like I miss my father and mother and grandparents.  It is a part of life, missing the dead."   

Maybe because of where I am in my personal grieving of the passing of Jerry last year but the writing in this novel struck me with the philosophy about  accepting death.  It is something we do as survivors.  Page 363, " Life was unfolding the same way it always had for everyone.  Sooner or later you ended up an orphan.  There was no escaping it.  It had happened that way for a thousand generations.  No point in getting all upset about it."  

Pages 311- 315 about future wars/conflicts and theory, history.  "You know who has done the most for the country?  Who?  Not Armored,  Not the infantry..  The theater is all about the Army Corps of Engineers.  Sherman tanks way back weighed 38 tons and were 9 feet wide.  Now we're all the way down to the MIAI Abrams, which weighs 70 tons and is 11 feet wide.  Every step of the way for 40 years the Corps of Engineers has had work to do.  They've widened roads, hundreds of miles of them, all over ?West Germany.  They've strengthened bridges.  Hell they've built roads and bridges.  Dozens of them.  You want a stream of 70 ton tanks rolling east to battle, you better make damn sure the roads and bridges can take it." 

It takes Reacher going AWOL with Summers, defying orders, forging travel voucher to fly to Germany and back and to CA and back to solve the  crime of who plotted and who killed the General, his wife, his lovers...There is a strange twist with the sexual relationships as  Reacher learns the General was gay.  They must find proof and solve the mystery to clear themselves.  Reacher ends up being demoted from Major to Captain at his own choice, when investigated by JAG over all another surprise for me at the ending of the novel.  This is easily a 5*****.

Back cover

    

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Paradise Valley by C J Box

 

I read this in July 2021, when I was introduced to this author at a book sale.  Paradise Valley was published July 2017 and introduces another character to the author's repertoire, Investigator Cassie Dewell formerly with the  Bakken County, North Dakota sheriff's department.   Cassie has been pursuing a serial killer known as the Lizard King who kills along highways and truck stops where runaways are most likely to vanish.  But for years all has been quiet and then a new murder.  Cassie loses her job but will not give up looking for the Lizard King.  She has befriended a troubled youth, Kyle Westergaard, who disappears.  His grandmother begs Cassie to find him and being now unemployed Cassie agrees to search for Kyle.  She is alone and in pursuit. 

Flap of Book

 Cassie doesn't have an over fondness for attorneys,  pages 217-218,  "...most attorneys were under the general impression that they were the smartest people in the room and therefore they were always in control of it.  They liked processes to be complicated and stacked in their favor and they didn't enjoy uncertainty or chaos.  Nothing made a prosecutor or defense attorney more uncomfortable than the unknown."  

The writing is good, clear and clean.  The plot was intriguing and kept my interest, there were 340 pages in this hardback edition.  This is an author I will read more of at times.  I give this book 4 ****

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The Fallen by David Baldacci

I read this back in July but as with other books have not been posting lately.  However time to get these books moved along to local sale, so here goes.  Anothe winner from Baldacci.  This one is in the Memory Man series which I have not read in order but no matter.  Published 2018, 417 pages. 

Amos Decker is Baldacci's fictional  character, FBI agent with extra ordinary memory due to a football injury.  This occurs in a rust belt small western PA fictitious town, but one that is typical of the rust belt of the area.  From Book Good reads:    ."Amos Decker and his journalist friend Alex Jamison are visiting the home of Alex's sister in Barronville, a small town in western Pennsylvania that has been hit hard economically. When Decker is out on the rear deck of the house talking with Alex's niece, a precocious eight-year-old, he notices flickering lights and then a spark of flame in the window of the house across the way. When he goes to investigate he finds two dead bodies inside and it's not clear how either man died. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. There's something going on in Barronville that might be the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the country.     Faced with a stonewalling local police force, and roadblocks put up by unseen forces, Decker and Jamison must pull out all the stops to solve the case. And even Decker's infallible memory may not be enough to save them. "

Besides being an excellent thriller/mystery/ read there is a great amount of description of the nationwide drug/opiod crisis.  One example,  page 268-269..."Right, back in the 80's we had the crack crisis.  The government's position was just say no and if you didn't you went to prison.  Sop we locked u[p million, mostly men from inner cities.  Then came the 90's and Big Pharma decided that Americans weren't taking enough painkillers.  They sort of made paid the fifth vital sign.  Spent billions on ads, payoffs to the doctors, used legist looking organizations and think tanks to make it all seem aboveboard.  No possibility of addiction, no long term negatives was the mantra everyone was spouting.  Turns out all of that was based on faulty research or no research at all.  It's ironic but a l;ot of opioids were initially given out to combat lower back pain.     What's ironic.. Because opioid's actually are pretty ineffectual with chronic lower back pain........"  

5 stars no doubt*****

Fron flap cover

Back flap cover

            

An Innocent Client by Scott Pratt

 Neither the best nor the worst I have read, but a new author to me and one available in hard print so I bought it.  I like the decent size of this paperback book and the print is not tiny.  But I found it not so thrilling nor mysterious.  Plenty of characters and the author does weave the stories together well over 385 pages.  The synopsis on the back cover is below along with the last page of the book.  . I give it a 3 almost out of 5 rating.  Joe Dillard, the lawyer and main character is not one I will follow in future reads.  

A Traitor to Memory by Elizabeth George

Paperback front cover

Read this one in August although published in 2001 it had been languishing on my stack of to be read books.  A good mystery but 662 pages, a tome as George often produces.  In this one a 28 year old violinist protege, extraordinaire, Gideon Davies, suddenly loses his memory of music and  all ability to play the violin which he had mastered at 5 years of age.  He suffers from a traumatic form of amnesia  shich can only be cured by investigating what he can remember.  With the guidance of a doctor Gideon journals what he can remember and flashes back  to the name of a woman, Sonia.  His father has poured his life into promoting Gideon.  The dysfunctional family goes over 3 generation and includes the death of Gideon's baby sister long ago.   Meantime there are other characters weaving in and out and  the mysterious killings of seemingly unrelated people,  run over by autos.

 The author weaves a readable saga,  with multitudes of characters and stories related to each.  Seemingly separate but all will be interlinked. For example,  on pg. 485, the reappearance of a character Katie leads Gideon to a conversation about Katja.  Katie  had not been mentioned nor  featured since the first chapter at the beginning of the book.   In the midst of the book pages 369-370 I noted that I disliked the switching back and forth between characters and stories.  Malcolm Webberly has just been run down walking his dog Alf and then the tale switches back to Gideon.  Still it is well written and there are many passages worth noting.  

Pg 132, about failure, "  "Sometimes you fail.  You don't intend to.  You don't even contemplate failure.  But it happens.  It comes out of nowhere and it takes you by surprise and before you have a chance to stop even to react in some useless way, it's on you.  Failure."    

Pg 161,  "life wasn't a continuum of events, although it wore the guise of exactly that.  Instead, it was actually a carousel.  In infancy one mounted a galloping pony and started out on a journey during which one assumed that circumstances would change as the expedition continued.  But the  truth of life was that it was an endless repetition of what one had already experienced...round and round and up and down on that pony.  And unless one dealt with whatever challenges one was meant to deal with along the route, those challenges appeared again and again in one form or another till the end of one's days."   

Page 571, "left with her thoughts, those mischievous companions of one's solitude."  

Overall I enjoyed the tome, but at times I felt it could have speeded along.  Masterful writing none the less.  I give this 4 ****

The President is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson

I have been curious about this for awhile but was not willing to rush out and purchase it when it was first published in 2018.  Finally it was put into large paperback edition in 2019 and when I saw it at Sam's and ready to read something else, I bought it.  I am glad I waited and had I not been so curious I could have easily passed this by.  It is at best a mediocre read, disappointing to me as I expected better with collaboration between James Patterson and Pres. Clinton.  I do not believe Bill Clinton should plan on a career writing crime/mystery/action novels if this is any indication of his ability to create in that genre.  

The 513 pages have some interesting moments but nothing especially compelling. The philosophic statements pages 500- 504 about how democracy needs  working together, across party lines, beyond political ideologies, to survive are applicable today.  

The presidency in this novel, has multiple  females including a female vice president, female chief of staff, and Speaker of the House, there is no first lady as the spouse is deceased. There is a first daughter however.  President Duncan suffers from a debilitating blood disorder wh ich has been kept from the public.  Page 15, "Sooner or later every president faces decisions in which the right choice is bad politics, at least in the short term.  If the stakes are high you have to do what you think is right and hope the political tide will turn.  It's the job you promised to do." President Duncan ponders as he  discusses with the chair of the House Judiciary committee whether or not impeachment will proceed. The President has information about a major terrorist and yet agrees to meet incognito with others without Secret Service protection at a ball park because his daughter has been contacted by the people.  There is a dangerous computer virus, Dark Ages that threatens the power grids and  all internet for the entire country.  President Duncan will  work to stop that and then it is determined that within his tightest circle in the White House  someone is a traitor and has been leaking information.    So it goes along. 

I rate this barely 3 ***, more like two & half but cannot display that.  Buy a used copy if you are curious as I was.    

2 more Jack Reacher Novels by Lee Child Die Trying and One Shot

Two more Jack Reacher's by Lee Child as I work thru the stack I  scooped at the book sale last fall.  I am fascinated by these featuring that bad ass, Jack Reacher and cannot read them fast enough.  I read Die Trying December thru January, published in 1998, paperback edition has 422 pages.  In this Reacher, ex Army Major, MP is an innocent bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time as seems to happen to this character.   A mysterious  woman is kidnapped and the ransom amount is exorbitant. Reacher happened along and was  taken along for the ride.  Although she urges him to escape and leave her, and doesn't ask for his help,  Reacher will help her. 

 It begins, first paragraph, "Nathan Rubin died because he got brave.  Not the sustained kind of thing that wins you a medal in a war but the split second kind of blurting outrage that gets you killed on the street." and page 2, " Jack Reacher stayed alive because he got cautious.  He got cautious because he heard an echo from his past.  He had a lot of past and the echo was from the worst part of it. He had 13 years in the Army and the only time he was wounded it wasn't with a bullet"   page 3, "He was standing next to a woman.  He was holding her arm.  He had never seen her before.  .....They were in Chicago, Center of the city, a busy sidewalk., a Monday last day of June.  Broad daylight, bright summer sunshine.  ..." 

 Page 50, " He had no problem with how he had gotten grabbed up in the first place, just a freak of chance had put him alongside Holly Johnson at the exact time the snatch was going down.  He was comfortable with that.  He understood freak chances.  Life was built out of freak chances, however much people would like to pretend otherwise."  Their abduction  in the van will take time across the Midwest.  Holly will have military connections too. 

As in all the Reacher novels, there is a lot to learn about topography and observation and usually  details about something I would never have known.  Pages 258-259  detail firing a sniper rifle, from the mechanical engineering of the rifle, optics and geophysics. The novel twists with  unsuspected characters, someone in the FBI is crooked, or is it higher in the military.   Another 5 *****.novel.  

Original copy of One Shot

The second is One Shot, the only Reacher novel to have been made into a movie, and now that I have read several of these and am familiar with the physical description of Jack Reacher, I cannot understand why Tom Cruise would have been cast as the character, he simply does not fit the description, too short, etc.  That is another  discussion.  I recall enjoying the movie but really did not remember much of it and read the book totally unaware of the outcome.  Copyright in 2005, but mass market published in 2012 by Dell, the paperback edition has 466 pages and a prologue into another Reacher novel. 

 It is set in the heartland too, Indiana,  page 1 begins, "Friday, Five o'clock in the afternoon.  Maybe the hardest time to move unobserved through a city.  Or maybe the easiest.  Because at five o'clock on a Friday nobody pays attention to anything except the road ahead."   In this novel Reacher's military background  proves  that all is not as it seems, the shooter is not the one who confesses to the massacre, Jack knows but no one else does.  

Reacher is drawn back into the  back story of James Barr. a former Army sniper who got away with murder in the Army and yet asks for Reacher.  More characters of intrigue, the cop, detective, DA, Helen Rodin who is the defense attorney and also the DA's daughter,  and a reporter, Ann Yanni,  who will become  Reacher's alibi.   

Of interest in this book was the information about boat shoes on page 288, .."boat shoes had been invented by a yachtsman looking for better grip on slippery decks.  The guy had taken a regular smooth soled  athletic shoe and cut tiny stripes into the rubber with a straight razor.  He had experimented and ended up with the cuts lateral and wavy and close together.  The had done the trick, like a miniature tire tread.  A whole new industry had grown up."   Reacher will also have a brief reunification with a former Army fling, Eileen Hutton sent up  from the Pentagon to cover the story  about Barr.  Another 5 *****

New copy of One Shot

UPDATE 2025 JUNE;  Foolishly I did not kept all my copies as I read the novels.  Once Amazon Prime started producing the series  with Jack Richison, a great actor with  dynamic portrayal and physical resemblance to Reacher, I began to wish I had all the novels.  So I began to search book sales but there was a massive interest now in the books, popularity surged.   So I  would pick up any I could find and began to even order new copies from Amazon.  Here is a copy of the newer copy of One Shot that now is on my shelf and will stay.  

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 information about and references to opioids, 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 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 U.S. Army 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 clever killer who leaves no trace evidence, no fatal wounds, no signs of struggle and no clues to an apparent motive."    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 author 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 lowery?  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 hyper sensitive,  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"  

Back cover

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, suspense.  I have accumulated several others now and will be reading them all. 

UPATE JUNE 2025 This was another I didi not keep and have yet to fin a copy to replace and add to my collection.  It was a dumb thing to do, should have kept all the copioes,  

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.  

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.