Blue Moon by Lee Child

Appropriate that I post this finally as it has  been moons ago I read this,   in March,2020...but this has been an awful year, besides COVID the plague of US all,  Jerry's cancer diagnosis and being a caretaker since June redirects my efforts.  Diminishing my time from all else...But I do want to send this book on its way to friends so finally posting...Another Reacher thriller.   He is on his way to....on a bus.. when action is about to begin.  “This is a random universe,” Reacher says. “Once in a blue moon things turn out just right.”  This isn’t one of those times.

This excerpt from Good Reads, "Reacher is on a Greyhound bus, minding his own business, with no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. Then he steps off the bus to help an old man who is obviously just a victim waiting to happen..."  and this from another online review which was not as complimentary of this one as others, "Jack Reacher lends a hand to an elderly couple under threat from loan sharks and winds up in the midst of an underworld war in the 24th entry in this series (Past Tense, 2018, etc.).  

After Reacher saves an old man from a mugging, he finds out the man and his wife went into hock to get money for their daughter's lifesaving medical treatment. Meanwhile, in the unnamed city where the novel is set, the Albanian and Ukrainian crime bosses who have divvied up the territory are vying to see who can take over for good before the appointment of a new police commissioner. The sudden appearance of Reacher makes each suspect he's an agent for outside forces and accelerates the body count between them. That this is the best premise for a Reacher novel in some time, ..."  And so it begins.  Another Reacher read that I could not put down until the end. and another alliance with an unlikely person a random waitress in this town.    

 I found some of the dialogue amusing, such as the banter about  nuances of who is a better soldier, tougher, etc Marines or Army pages 164-165, including the ex Marine who tells Reacher, Army=aren't really Marines yet." and Reacher's reply, "Marines=muscles are requested intelligence no expected."  This continues along through the novel,  pages 302 where the Marines rescue Army guys and 313 where"If I wanted easy I'd have joined the Marines."    

Another 5***** 

Thief River Falls by Brian Freeman

I seldom post my Kindle reads here and do not know why.  This one was free to me with my Amazon Prime membership so I accepted and read it.  An understatement, I could not stop reading, something I seldom do on the Kindle, preferring a hard copy book.   But this was a great thriller by an author new to me.  I was skeptical because, well, the old saying, "get what you pay for or a little less" and this was free.  But really a great read, characters and writing.  I am sharing the review below from Good Reads, saving myself time as I could not say it any better.  Although I did hi-lite some phrases I do not have the Kindle handy here so will not include those.  I give this a 4 1/2 stars.  Never ever expected it to take the turns it did nor was I sure it would end that way.  All to me the proof of an excellent thriller, mystery.,  And I learned about yet another place, farther north here in MN.  ****.

 Courtesy of GoodReads site "Harrowing loss, psychological trauma, and a deadly mystery test the human will to survive in this electrifying novel from award-winning author Brian Freeman.

Lisa Power is a tortured ghost of her former self. The author of a bestselling thriller called Thief River Falls, named after her rural Minnesota hometown, Lisa is secluded in her remote house as she struggles with the loss of her entire family: a series of tragedies she calls the “Dark Star.”

Then a nameless runaway boy shows up at her door with a terrifying story: he’s just escaped death after witnessing a brutal murder—a crime the police want to cover up. Obsessed with the boy’s safety, Lisa resolves to expose this crime, but powerful men in Thief River Falls are desperate to get the boy back, and now they want her too.

Lisa and her young visitor have nowhere to go as the trap closes around them. Still under the strange, unforgiving threat of the Dark Star, Lisa must find a way to save them both, or they’ll become the victims of another shocking tragedy she can’t foresee

Thunderstruck by Erik Larson 2019 read

Front cover paperback

Back Cover

Another from 2019,   November/December.  Finally  posting so that I can  donate the copy to the local library book sale.  Erik Larson is one of my favorite historical fiction writers and although this was published in 2006 I had not read it.  As with everyone of his books, I learned a lot, this one about electromagnetic energy as Marconi develops the wireless system and the battle  begins between the transatlantic cable and wireless.  True to his form there is more than one character to follow as if Marconi would not have been enough, we learn about one of the nearly perfect murderers, Dr Crippen.  A very unexpected "convergence of the stories of a killer and an inventor.    

Page 33, gives us the origin of the word" bedlam" , from the Hospital of St Mary's of Bethlehem, an asylum for the insane whose name shrunk through popular usage to the word bedlam which is a word to describe chaos and confusion.   With all the hoopla today about climate change, global warming, etc  and the denigration of naysayers, I read with interest about the European heatwave of August 1894  pages 39- 43.  Page 377 near the end of the 392 pages mentions that the Dr Crippen story influenced Hitchcock who  adapted elements in Rear Window and  episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  Also that Raymond Chandler  was fascinated by the case and inconsistencies and sympathized with Crippen.    Chandler analyzed that Crippen's mistakes were ones that panicked men tend to make but that Crippen did not seem to panic at all, but that he did many things that required a cool head.  Chandler saysa, " You can't help liking this guy somehow.  He was one murderer who died like a gentleman."  .  

From the author's own blog pages, "The saga of how the lives of the inventor of wireless and of Britain’s second most famous murderer (after Jack the Ripper) intersected during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time. The inventor was Guglielmo Marconi, the young Italian genius; the killer was Hawley Harvey Crippen, who murdered his overbearing wife and fled Britain with his mistress, unaware that Scotland Yard was hot on his heels. The book—an instant New York Times bestseller—brings to life a host of forgotten characters, including spirit mediums, ghost-hunting physicists, Scotland Yard inspectors, and one of the great pioneers of forensic science. The climax occurs during a trans-Atlantic chase which, thanks to the miracle of Marconi’s invention, was followed by millions of people around the world—with Crippen and his mistress completely unaware."  

Another review  by  James L. Swanson " ..Scientists had dreamed for centuries of capturing the power of lightning and sending electrical currents through the ether. Yes, the great cable strung across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean could send messages thousands of miles, but the holy grail was a device that could send wireless messages anywhere in the world. Late in the 19th century, Europe's most brilliant theoretical scientists raced to unlock the secret of wireless communication.
Guglielmo Marconi, impatient, brash, relentless and in his early 20s, achieved the astonishing breakthrough in September 1895. His English detractors were incredulous. He was a foreigner and, even worse, an Italian! Marconi himself admitted that he was not a great scientist or theorist. Instead, he exemplified the Edisonian model of tedious, endless trial and error.
Despite Marconi's achievements, it took a sensational murder to bring unprecedented worldwide attention to his invention. Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, a proper, unattractive little man with bulging, bespectacled eyes, possessed an impassioned, love-starved heart. An alchemist and peddler of preposterous patent medicines, he killed his wife, a woman Larson portrays lavishly as a gold-digging, selfish, stage-struck, flirtatious, inattentive, unfaithful clotheshorse. The hapless Crippen endured it all until he found the sympathetic Other Woman and true love. The "North London Cellar Murder" so captured the popular imagination in 1910 that people wrote plays and composed sheet music about it. It wasn't just what Crippen did, but how. How did he obtain the poison crystals, skin her and dispose of all those bones so neatly?
The manhunt climaxed with a fantastic sea chase from Europe to Canada, not just by a pursuing vessel but also by invisible waves racing lightning-fast above the ocean. It seemed that all the world knew—except for the doctor and his lover, the prey of dozens of frenetic Marconi wireless transmissions.
In addition to writing stylish portraits of all of his main characters, Larson populates his narrative with an irresistible supporting cast. He remains a master of the fact-filled vignette and humorous aside that propel the story forward. Thunderstruck triumphantly resurrects the spirit of another age, when one man's public genius linked the world, while another's private turmoil made him a symbol of the end of "the great hush" and the first victim of a new era when instant communication, now inescapable, conquered the world..".

Although perhaps not my favoirte Larsaon book, I enjoyed it.   Certainly 4.5 stars..One complaint is the size of the type in this edition, Broadway Books, it is too small and meant that I had to use my reading glasses, magnifiers the entire time.  

The United States of Trump by Bill O'Reilly

Front cover

I subscribed to Bill O'Reilly.com because I miss the O'Reilly commentary and to get an advance copy of this book which was being written earlier this year.  So when it arrived I immediately worked it into my reading time.  It is a good book, typical of O'Reilly, only 295 pages..  I did not  so much learn a lot of new things about Donald Trump as I confirmed my own impressions and gained better insight into the man I voted for President and the man I will vote for again.  Overall, what you see is what you get, Donald Trump is not pretentious and does not have a filter between his thoughts to the words he speaks,  thus so  many controversies with his Twitter storms many which he starts in his early morning times alone.  With Trump it is what it is,  uninhibited presentation.   O'Reilly mentions that Trump uses negativity like a fly swatter, he does not apologize nor admit mistakes readily if at all.  . He readily returns an insult with an invective, unlike President Andrew Jackson who might have shot the person, btw  Trump admires Jackson. 

 Trump is the consummate outsider , no political pedigree and for that the beltway insiders detest him.  I knew that.  He tends to exaggerate, not using precise language and goes along to the next item.   

Back cover

Trump has a short attention span for detail yet quickly absorbs what he needs to know, bureaucratic briefings  drive him up the wall and the stage is set for a tumultuous 4 years which it has been so far.  He sleeps very little, rises by 5:30AM,  drinks no alcohol nor coffee, has no hobbies other than golf and  is a consummate workaholic, he is always on and when immersed in something he is a bull dog.  Now that is what we need as a President to  realign this country, .  His father was all work as well so this trait  is in Trump's DNA. 


 He does drink a lot of Diet Cokes though  sometimes 15 or more a day, always from a bottle poured into a glass with ice, just he way I prefer mine too.  Yet surely all those  diet cokes cannot be good for him.  He relishes disruption and mayhem and can work thru the midst of it especially when he creates it.  Hyperbole and bombastic presentation is Trump, he considers  it insignificant.  His traits are more typical "in your face" New Yorker style than beltway. 

 O'Reilly discusses how the death of his brother affected Donald.  And the thriftiness, not wasting that  comes from his Germanic roots on his father's side (pg 43.)s

nside front flap

I did learn that the youngest son, his and Melania's , Baron is named for the Hotel magnate Baron Hilton, never knew that.  . Page 271  sums Trumps 4 pillars of his presidency, ", improving the economy,  stopping illegal immigration,  defeating Islamic terrorism, and preventing foreign nations from exploiting America financially."  .  Who but a liberal lunatic  can argue with those?  If I have any criticism of the book it is that the photos are mediocre, like reprints of newspaper photos, perhaps they are, apparently pictures were not important to O'Reilly for this book.  After all right now we are living in the midst of this Trump  Presidency, we can see pictures all over TV, 24/7; hang on Mr Toady,  the wild ride will continue!.  I give this 5 *****

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

Front cover paperback

In May the local library hosted this MN author who is extremely popular locally  as throughout the state. The author is well known, acclaimed, and lives in the Twin Cities.    I had never read any of his books so I purchased this one at the others in  talk because it is a stand alone novel compared to his Cork O'Conner mystery series.  The bookseller suggested  this would be a good start for me.    It was first published in 2013, 307 pages and a reading guide with discussion questions in the back.  The writing is easy to follow and the story is well developed.  However for me there was not enough action/intrigue.  Possibly because this is the story of a family and primarily that of a 13 year old boy, Frank Dunn, preacher's son.  

The novel begins in summer 1961,  in New Bremen, MN and mentions that it was a summer" in which death in visitation, assumed many forms."  The prologue  2nd paragraph references the Greek ancient playwright Aeschylus, "He who learns must suffer.  And even in our sleep pain, which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."  So we are beginning to know this will be about  death, mourning and twists.  

Back cover

Pg 175, "Loss once it s become a certainty is like a rock you hold in your hand.  It has weight and dimension and texture.  It's solid and can be assessed and dealt with.  You can use it to beat yourself or you can throw it away."  

Pg 196, "I think we just keep going on.  We keep doing what we always do and someday it'll feel right again."  

Pg 302, "It seems to me that when you look back at a life, yours or another's, what you see is a path that weaves into and out of deep shadow.  So much is lost.  What we use to construct the past is what has remained in the open, a hodgepodge of fleeting glimpses.  Our histories like my father's current body are structures built of toothpicks."  

Author Krueger at the La Crescent Library.

The quotes show the depth and breadth of the writing.  Solid, contemplative perhaps and well matched to impart the story. This book about the death, finding the body and how there is a wrong accused.  the father is a Methodist pastor of 3 small rural churches.  The reference to Lutherans in MN being as "ubiquitous as ragweed," page 45.  There would be other deaths that summer including the sister, which will test the family beyond faith.  It is a Midwestern MN tale over all.  

I did enjoy hearing the author talk about his books and his writing journey.  So many there had read nearly everyone of his books, I was likely the only new reader of this author.  He is very personable.  There is nothing negative I can say about the book but it  just did not grab m.  I read it yet,  I am  not enticed to read others nor to begin the O'connor series.  I give it 3 & 1/2 stars, perhaps 4 ****

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 ****

Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny

Read in October, another well written, suspenseful mystery set in and around fictional Three Pines, and Montreal featuring Chief Superintendent Armand Gamache,  The author is consistenly good at keeping the suspense and yet planting seeds of wondering.  The great characters of the Three Pines Village are at it again and this time, Gamache is awaiting news of his suspension.  That in itself adds another twist to the mystery.  Paperback,513 pages, this edition published 2018.   On page 236 we get the origin of the title, "in the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king."  but there are plenty of references to blind through out the book.  A memorable quote in this mystery, page 440, Myrna replies to Jean-Guy, who has proposed that reality may not matter what matters is what people believe, "People were capable of believing almost anything.  And hope was even more sweeping and powerful."

Back cover

I learned about poison gardens, pages 90-91 and that certain plants including hydrangeas and lily of the valley are toxic.  Some I knew but not those and I was unfamiliar with a poison garden.  The mystery involves the death of a woman, a stranger, the Baroness,appoints  Gamache, Myrna and another young man, Benedict Pouiliot, as tri executors of her will, despite leaving behind  3 adult children. 

Acknowledgements by author

The book begins, " Armand Gamache slowed his car to a crawl, then stopped on the snow covered secondary road.  This was it, he supposed.  Pulling in he drove between the tall pines until he reached the clearing.  ......Putting on his reading glasses, he rubbed his face.  And read it again.  It was an invitation of sorts to this desolate place...."  It is an old desolate farmhouse, the former residence of the woman, Bertha Baumgartner.  It is  a building in need of demolition but where the attorney Maitre Merciere  chooses to reveal their task to them.  

So the adventure of the three begins.  There is comedy amidst the pathos and mystery, reference to Charles Dickens characters to the attorney Merciere.  Particularly comical is the description of Benedict's arrival as Dr Seuss meets Charles Dickens, or the Cat in the Hat enters.   No mistake this mystery will intrigue until the end.  And there will be another story within the tale, about Armand's suspension and his  attempt to retrieve opiods from the streets.  The opiods were lost in an arrest and will devastate many unless stopped.  We meet Amerlia, a candidate at the academy of the Surete who is a rising star but is  kicked out and who now is amidst the junkies.  She will turn out to be a secret weapon of Gamache. 

A ll in all another 5 ***** mystery.   It has been awhile since I read a Penny mystery and delighted in the suspense and characters.