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books

The Green Ripper

This was the second reread of 2011 and I have a feeling that I’ll do a few more. I made a visit to the Brown Elephant in Oak Park and walked out with this paperback along with ones by Alistair Maclean (Athabasca) and Len Deighton (SS-GB). These are books that I only marginally enjoyed as a kid, but my tastes have changed considerably since then and I’m expecting to get a little more enjoyment out of them this time around now that I’m all growed up.

I’m off to a great start because the The Green Ripper was a heckuva lot better than I remember.

* PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW *

The most distinct memory I have of this book was this feeling: There’s a gun and dead body on the front cover, but the only action is a gunfight that takes place in the second-to-last chapter.

That encapsulates what a little idiot I was. What was I expecting? Did I just want a 300 page shootout? What I got was a short but intense shootout at the end that took place over about a chapter (of a total of 15 chapters). I vividly recall McGee referring to the day of carnage and revenge as his “John Wayne day.” As a kid, I loved John Wayne movies so that made the book worthwhile back then.

This time, I didn’t struggle through the buildup like I did as a kid. I relished MacDonald’s McGee, who is a classic, hardcore, private investigator living on a houseboat called The Busted Flush in South Florida. McGee’s cohort is his buddy and resident genius Meyer, who hangs around to talk sense into McGee and occasionally provide some comic relief. This is the kind of classic crime novel that I love and I’ll be reading all of the Travis McGee novels. However, I don’t know if I’ll be reading them order. I’ve read a few and I don’t seem to recall it being that important to read them in order. I’ll have to do a little research on that.

Finally, as I do with many of the crime novels, I like to pick out a thought or a rant by the main character that embodies their take on the world. Here are McGee’s thoughts on a middle-aged guy (Herm) whom McGee thought died from over exherting himself:

… In the meanwhile, poor Herm had succumbed to the age of the jock. The mystique of pushing yourself past your limits. The age of shin splints, sprung knees, and new hernias. An office-softened body in its middle years needs a long, long time to come around. Until a man can walk seven miles in two hours without blowing like a porpoise, without sweating gallons, without bumping his heart past 120, it is asinine to start jogging. Except for a few dreadful lapses which have not really gone on too long, I have stayed in shape all my life. Being in shape means knowing your body, how it feels, how it responds to this and to that, and when to stop. You develop a sixth sense about when to stop. It is not mysticism. It is brute labor, boring and demanding. Violent exercise is for children and knowledgeable jocks. Not for insurance adjustors and sales managers. They do not need to be in the shape they want to be, and could not sustain it if they could get there. Walking briskly no less than six hours a week will do it for them. The McGee System for earnest office people. I can push myself considerably further because I sense when I’m getting too close to the place where something is going to pop, rip, or split.

Ah, the soliloquy of the crime noire hero. It’s a thing of beauty. I’m glad to welcome back Travis McGee after about 30 years. I’m looking forward to more.

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books

Positioning

This marketing book was suggested by a childhood friend and businessman named David Worrell. You can read his take on the subject in his post about lame business names. Great rant David. For me, the book is a much needed treatise on some of the most important principles in marketing. I have my own business and as you can probably tell, it’s not in marketing. I certainly always need marketing help.

To give you a feel for the definition of positioning, I’ll use a few quotes from the authors, Al Ries and Jack Trout:

The basic approach of positioning is not to create something new and different, but to manipulate what’s already up there in the mind, to retie the connections that already exist.

Today’s marketplace is no longer responsive to the strategies that worked in the past. There are just too many products, too many companies, and too much marketing noise.

Keep in mind, this book was first written in 1980 and revised in 2001. Even considering the update, they were talking about “too much marketing noise” before Facebook and Twitter were even conceived and Google was mostly a search company. If you want discussions about information overload, we have discussions about information overload. I’ve talked about it in detail in a post over at my business site. Ries and Trout use this great visual of a “dripping sponge”:

The average mind is already a dripping sponge that can only soak up more information at the expense of what’s already there. Yet we continue to pour more information into that supersaturated sponge and are disappointed when our messages fail to get through.

I find this interesting because when I wrote my post I was under the impression that this was new and groundbreaking science. But Ries and Trout have been making the same point about information overload for decades. Quoting from the book:

Scientists have discovered that a person is capable of receiving only a limited amount of sensation. Beyond a certain point, the brain goes blank and refuses to function normally.

So that’s where we stand folks, now more than ever. Getting someone to hear what you’re saying, listen to your pitch, or pay attention to what you’re selling, becomes more difficult every day.

Ries and Trout have the antidote with plenty of specific, albeit dated examples. They go through the details on advertising, communication, and public relations campaigns for companies ranging from Avis to Xerox, and many in between. Each is tied to a specific positioning principle.

It’s highly relevant stuff, but I need help thinking through if it’s more or less relevant now in the information age. Take this assertion for example:

Changing minds in our overcommunicated society is an extremely difficult task. It’s much easier to work with what’s already there.

Isn’t this even more relevant today? Not only are we bombarded with more information, but it’s easier than ever to find information that’s agreeable, that corroborates feelings and emotions already in place. So there’s a good case for it being even more difficult to change minds in this day and age. However, it’s not as easy to fool the educated consumer these days because information is a lot more accesible for those who know how to get at it. Can’t their mind be changed simply with facts and data? Can they even be swayed by positioning-speak like “we try harder” or “it’s the real thing”?

These are questions that a finance guy like myself needs help on. I would buy an update to the book. Heck, it could be valuable to look an line extensions alone. Ries and Trout are highly negative on line extensions, but they don’t seem to have lost favor yet. Gosh, the candy aisle is full of Dark Chocolate Kit-Kats, Pretzel M&Ms, and Snicker’s Peanut Butter. They seem to be doing alright, but I don’t have any hard data on that.

I have a feeling that certain assertions stand the test of time. Ries and Trout would still stand behind their idea that to be successful, a marketer has to deal with reality. What’s in the mind stays in the mind, it’s a monstrous task to change it. To do so you have to be skilful, analytical, creative, and subtle. Their six guiding questions are still relevant I think:

  1. What position do you own?
  2. What position do you want to own?
  3. Whom must you outgun?
  4. Do you have enough money?
  5. Can you stick it out?
  6. Do you match your position?

To answer these, the examples in the book help a lot. It’s a fast read. It would be a cliche to call this book timeless, but it very well could be.

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books

Harvest

You’ve heard me talk about my hometown before. Great town, although it’s been a rocky ride lately (you know, with the flood and such). But this small town has had some successes in the last few years – a National Championship basketball team and, heck, this book entitled Harvest. Harvest is a fine piece of work co-authored by a gentlemen who graduated with me from Findlay High School.

So in the interest of full disclosure, you should know that co-author Chris Younger grew up in my neighborhood and was a childhood friend of mine. Chris and his business partner/co-author David Tolson run an investment banking firm in suburban Denver called Capital Value Advisors.

This book spans the process of selling your business, which certainly encapsulates an important part of the services provided by Capital Value Advisors. It begins at the moment you simply contemplate what life would be like if you sold your business and ends at the moment you sign the closing documents. Tolson and Younger touch on everything you need to think about throughout this process. Everything. They go into detail on some things and mention others in summary, making it clear where they expect you, the business owner, to dig deeper. I think they nail the mix of detail and summary, concrete and abstract.

In fact, in terms of balancing weight/length with relevant knowledge, this book excels. It’s less than 200 pages and can be read over the course of a couple of days even by the most harried business owner. But I strongly suggest longer study and quiet contemplation of the content.

The payoff for reading it? I can imagine an immediate boost in confidence for small business owners as they walk into their first meeting to discuss selling their business. And confident they should be. By giving this book the appropriate attention, they’ve taken great measures to guard against any lawyer, accountant, banker, or consultant misleading them on any key aspect of the sale of their business. A confidence borne of knowing that they’re prepared intellectually and emotionally for what could be a long and taxing process.

In my work life, I’m associated with this industry. I’m a numbers guy with a consulting business focused on helping finance organizations in mid-sized enterprises do things faster and more accurately with fewer resources. This book is relevant for me because it clearly links the role of the finance organization to the rest of this process. Tolson and Younger go into a fair amount of detail on valuation, understanding financial statements, and capital structure. By the time any business owner is done reading it, they’re surely going to understand the value of rigorous and regular analysis of financial results.

Besides finance, the book covers other detailed, procedural items like:

  • Finding and hiring an advisor
  • Preparing the “book” that describes your business
  • The process of marketing your business to potential buyers
  • The legal document estate
  • Due diligence

And finally, Tolson and Younger throw in a wealth of “soft” information, real stories on the strategic and managerial side of things. They have chapters addressing these issues:

  • Are you (the owner) ready for this?
  • When is the best time to harvest?
  • Value outside of the financial statements
  • Dealing with deal fatigue
  • Communicating to employees and customers

In fact, I just purchased a handful of Harvest to have in hand the next time a client mentions something like, “I will probably want to sell this business someday.” It’s worthy of breaking out just for the glossary and appendices alone. The appendix includes a sample RFP for hiring an investment banker, a sample due diligence list, and an explanation of financial ratios. It’s rich stuff and written to appeal to a generalist.

Besides specific deal issues, I can envision it also being useful as a general reference for a variety of situations where strategy and finance intersect (valuation, performance metrics, and capital structure). Eventually, I’ll be writing more about this over at my business site. That is, when I actually start consistently posting over there.

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books

The Name is Archer

I consume a fair amount of crime novels, but I’ve never read any Ross Macdonald. I happened in to this book because I was at a friend’s house and he just handed it to me. I started it within a few days, which I rarely do, but I was between works of fiction and didn’t feel like working down my backlog, so I launched into it.

This book is gritty, hardboiled detective fiction in short story format, published in 1955. It’s a great introduction to Ross Macdonald and his main character Lew Archer, a California private detective.

To give you an idea, in the story Gone Girl, Archer walks into a bar to inquire about the whereabouts of a woman. He’s greeted by a piano-playing barman who talks in rhymes. Unsurprisingly, Archer replies with a rhyme of his own:

Where did she lam, Sam, or don’t you give a damn?

That’s what I’m talking about, quirky, strange, with pretty spare prose, but great stories. So great in fact, that I’m going to read all of the Lew Archer novels in order starting with The Moving Target, which MacDonald wrote in 1949. It was also made into a movie with Paul Newman, entitled Harper. I just purchased the book on the Kindle (pleasantly surprised that Vintage has these in digital format).

I’ve rooted around a little and it appears that Sue Grafton was highly influenced by Ross Macdonald. That, my friends, is some serious validation for Macdonald because Grafton is one of my favorite writers (not that Macdonald needs any validation, but from my perspective…). I’ll have more about this link to Grafton after I’ve read The Moving Target.

I liked all the stories in The Name is Archer. They are dark and violent and mostly have surprise endings. There is also plenty of dry humor, like this passage from the story entitled The Suicide:

On the way to the diner, she caught the eye of every man on the train who wasn’t asleep. Even some of the sleeping ones stirred, as if her passing had induced a dream. I censored my personal dream. She was too young for me, too innocent. I told myself that my interest was strictly paternal.

I’m going to like this stuff a lot. I can tell.

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books

Assassination Vacation

This is yet another book I discovered via Nick Hornby and his fine book-about-books entitled Housekeeping vs. The Dirt. At the end of that post, back in March of 2006, I mentioned that I wanted to read Assassination Vacation. It’s amazing that a book I read five years ago is still influencing my reading life. It was brought to mind recently because I saw Sarah Vowell on Letterman and I thought she was hilarious. I finally complied with my proclamation from five years ago and bought Assassination Vacation for the Kindle.

This is part history book, part political commentary, and part travel book. Additionally, it’s all funny. Her writing is just as hilarious as the Letterman interview. Her humor is not for everyone, it’s often dark, negative, and sarcastic. She’s kind of like a mean Bill Bryson. I love it though, in fact, I think it’s brilliant.

Vowell, for some reason, is obsessed with presidential assassinations. She likes to visit assassination sites and view memorabilia from the horrific events. She’s especially excited if there’s a plaque commemorating something related to the assassination. Here is a passage illustrating the giddiness she often feels when she encounters an assassination-related site, in this case it’s a visit to the site of Mary Surratt’s boarding house:

Mary Surratt’s D.C. boardinghouse, where John Wilkes Booth gathered his co-conspirators to plot Lincoln’s death, is now a Chinese restaurant called Wok & Roll. I place an order for broccoli and bubble tea, then squint at an historic marker in front of the restaurant quoting Andrew Johnson that this was “the nest in which the egg was hatched.”

If you can’t tell, she’s especially excited by Abraham Lincoln, her favorite president. She’s a staunch defender of persecuted peoples and critical of our country’s treatment of Native Americans and African Americans, which could have something to do with why she reveres Lincoln so. She pulls no punches and you can feel her anger when she talks about those who have wronged others in the name of race, including family members. For example, she discusses the grandfather paradox while relating the story of the grandson of Dr. Mudd as he tries to clear his grandfather’s name, and then contrasts this to her feelings towards her great-great-grandfather:

What I like about the grandfather paradox is that it treats time travel not as some lofty exercise in cultural tourism – looking over Melville’s shoulder as he wrote Moby-Dick – but as a petty excuse to bicker with and gun down one’s own relatives. I just so happen to have a grandfather who deserved it, my great-great-grandfather, John Vowell. The reason why I would set the wayback machine for the sole purpose of rubbing him out is this: In the 1860s, the teenage John Vowell joined up with pro-slavery guerrilla warrior William Clarke Quantrill, who has been called the “most hated man in the Civil War,” which is saying something.

Sarah, you had me at “rubbing him out,” you wacky woman.

Mostly, this book is a hodgepodge of facts, figures, and commentary related to the first three presidential assassinations:

  1. Lincoln (April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth)
  2. Garfield (July 2, 1881, Charles J. Guiteau)
  3. McKinley (September 6, 1901, Leon Czolgosz)

She’s focused on these three, I think, because they’re linked by Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln, who “was in close proximity” to all three assassinations. Robert Todd Lincoln gets a fair amount of space in this book as do a whole host of other characters. Vowell creatively brings in a bunch of tangential characters and weaves them into this milieu of political commentary and travelogue. Well done.

Yes, she has a political take that not all are going to agree with, especially Republicans and who think we’ve always been on the right track with our foreign policy. If you’re of this ilk, you may find Vowell full of hard edges. She wrote this book during the Iraq war and says:

When I told a friend I was writing about the McKinley administration, he turned up his nose and asked, “Why the hell would anyone want to read about that?” “Oh, I don’t know,” I answered. “Maybe because we seem to be reliving it?”

Even so, she shows her sentimental side often, like this passage about Garfield’s pessimism and his love for books:

As for me, coming across that downbeat commencement speech was the first time I really liked Garfield. It’s hard to have strong feelings about him. Before, I didn’t mind him, and of course I sympathized with his bum luck of a death. But I find his book addiction endearing, even a little titillating considering that he would sneak away from the house and the House to carry on a love affair with Jane Austen. In his diary he raves about an afternoon spent rearranging his library in a way that reminds me of the druggy glow you can hear in Lou Reed’s voice on “Heroin.”

Or she’ll speak lovingly of her nephew Owen, who accompanies her on many legs of the assassination vacation:

I have not been particularly shocked by how much I love Owen, but I am continually pleasantly surprised by how much I like him. He’s truly morbid. When he broke his collarbone by falling down some stairs he was playing on, an emergency room nurse tried to comfort him by giving him a cuddly stuffed lamb to play with. My sister, hoping to prompt a “thank you,” asked him, “What do you say, Owen?” He handed back the lamb, informing the nurse, “I like spooky stuff.”

I also liked the Chicago tie-ins; inevitable, you would think, because of Lincoln, but they’re a little more subtle than you would expect. For instance, she manages to throw in Daniel Burnham and Frank Lloyd Wright:

Secondly, with a building as iconic as the Lincoln Memorial, it’s such a given, seems so inevitable, I cannot imagine the Mall without it. Moreover, it’s so universally revered it’s hard to believe there were ever protests against the way it looked. But when Daniel Burnham, Cass Gilbert, Daniel Chester French, and their fellow commissioners chose Henry Bacon’s Greek temple design for the Lincoln Memorial in 1913, the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects, led by an associate of Frank Lloyd Wright’s, threw a fit.

I’ll mention it again, this was a nice combo of humor and history and a great book. It will enlighten and entertain, and run you through a series of differing emotions. What more could you ask of a good book?

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Just Kids

I was traveling in January, flipping through the channels in a Courtyard by Marriott, and came across Charlie Rose interviewing some woman. I didn’t know who it was but she was talking about rock ’n roll and something grabbed me about her. I eventually found out that the woman was artist/rocker/poet Patti Smith and she was talking mostly about her very special relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe and how it affected her life and music.

Mind you, I was not very familiar with these people. Heck, I get Patti (Patty) Smiths (Smyths) mixed up. I did a little research and it led me to this book. Just so you know, at the risk of insulting your pop-culture knowledge, this book is not about John McEnroe’s wife.

The meat of the book takes place between 1967 and 1975. In 1967 Smith moved to New York City to explore her artistic self. Through a series of chance meetings, she ended up building a relationship with Mapplethorpe and moved in with him before the end of the year. They had a romantic relationship, but weren’t completely compatible in the romance department because Mapplethorpe was gay. Their relationship was on a deeper level, they were much more than friends. They found in each other a perfect counterpart to support the others art. How lucky they were to find each other.

They struggled as starving artists but they gained some momentum in 1969 when they moved to the Chelsea Hotel. That’s when the excitement starts. The Chelsea Hotel was the center of the pop-culture universe in 1969. Here is how Smith describes a typical night in the El Quixote, a bar-restaurant attached to the Chelsea Hotel.

I was wearing a long rayon navy dress with white polka dots and a straw hat, my East of Eden outfit. At the table to my left, Janis Joplin was holding court with her band. To my far right were Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane, along with members of Country Joe and the Fish. At the last table facing the door was Jimi Hendrix, his head lowered, eating with his hat on, across from a blonde. There were musicians everywhere, sitting before tables laid with mounds of shrimp with green sauce, paella, pitchers of sangria, and bottles of tequila.

This only scratched the surface. Besides the musicians, it was a hub for writers, poets, actors, painters, and sculptors. Smith and Mapplethorpe thrived in this atmosphere. They bounded along for a few years, supporting each other at every turn; Mapplethorpe exploring photography and partaking in the drug culture, Smith drawing, writing poetry, and dabbling in music, but staying out of the drug culture. In fact, in 1970 Smith was confronted with the opportunity to shoot up:

I almost fainted. I couldn’t even look at the syringe, let alone put it in my arm. “I’m not doing that,” I said.

They were shocked. “You never shot up?”

Everyone took it for granted that I did drugs because of the way I looked. I refused to shoot up.

She bought her first guitar in mid-July 1970 and got her first taste of fame after a successful poetry reading in 1971. However, she repelled this fame, despite questioning herself.

I thought of something I learned from reading Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas by Mari Sandoz. Crazy Horse believes that he will be victorious in battle, but if he stops to take spoils from the battlefield, he will be defeated.

By late 1972, neither had hit it big, but things were changing. Mapplethorpe met Sam Wagstaff, who became his lifetime partner and patron. Smith met Allen Lanier (Blue Öyster Cult), who inspired her music career and remained her companion throughout most of the 70s. With these new relationships, they left the Chelsea Hotel and sort of parted ways, but they still “lived within walking distance of each other.”

This little exchange in 1973 between Smith and Mapplethorpe should give a feel for the relationship; despite living apart and having others in their lives, they were still close:

I had seen The Harder They Come, and was stirred by the music. When I began listening to the soundtrack, following its trail to Big Youth and the Roys, U and I, it led me back to Ethiopia. I found irresistible the Rastafarian connection to Solomon and Sheba, and the Abyssinia of Rimbaud, and somewhere along the line I decided to try their sacred herb.

That was my secret pleasure until Robert caught me sitting alone, trying to stuff some pot in an empty Kool cigarette wrapper. I had no idea how to roll a joint. I was a little embarrassed, but he sat down on the floor, picked the seeds out of my small stash of Mexican pot, and rolled me a couple of skinny joints. He just grinned at me and we had a smoke, our first together.

After that, as fun as it was, I kept my pot smoking to myself, listening to Screaming Target, writing impossible prose. I never thought of pot as a social drug. I liked to use it to work, to think, and eventually for improvising with Lenny Kaye and Richard Sohl as the three of us would gather under a frankincense tree dreaming of Haile Selassie.

In 1975 she cut her first album, Horses, and Mapplethorpe took the picture for the cover. Smith says about the cover, “When I look at it now, I never see me. I see us.”

By 1978, they had pretty much arrived.

In 1978 Robert was immersed in photography. His elaborate framing mirrored his relationship with geometric forms. He had produced classical portraits, uniquely sexual flowers, and had pushed pornography into the realm of art. His present task was mastering light and achieving the densest blacks.

Also in 1978, “Because the Night,” Smith’s collaboration with Bruce Springsteen rose to number 13 on the top 40 chart. Smith describes Robert’s reaction as “admiration without envy, our brother-sister language.”

“Patti,” he drawled, “you got famous before me.”

In 1979 Smith married Fred Sonic Smith and moved out of New York. The book fast forwards at this point, because, I’m assuming, they became less dependent on each other. They were no longer “just kids,” but adults with families, spouses, partners, and careers.

ROBERT WAS DIAGNOSED WITH AIDS AT THE SAME time I found I was carrying my second child. It was 1986, late September, and the trees were heavy with pears. I felt ill with flulike symptoms, but my intuitive Armenian doctor told me that I wasn’t sick but in the early stages of pregnancy. “What you have dreamed for has come true,” he told me. Later, I sat amazed in my kitchen and thought that it was an auspicious time to call Robert.

Mapplethorpe died in 1989. It hit Smith hard. She went with her family to the beach to make sense of things.

Finally, by the sea, where God is everywhere, I gradually calmed. I stood looking at the sky. The clouds were the colors of a Raphael. A wounded rose. I had the sensation he had painted it himself. You will see him. You will know him. You will know his hand. These words came to me and I knew I would one day see a sky drawn by Robert’s hand.

Not sure I get all of that, but it’s beautiful writing. I didn’t really get the sense that she was religious so the God reference took me off-guard a little. The book ends here. I really enjoyed it. The story of their relationship was interesting and so was the discussion of this highly charged time of artistic rebellion.

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Up Periscope

This book is a throwback to my younger days. I read it maybe as a 6th grader, I think. I seem to remember living on Windsor place and talking about it with a childhood friend. I read it then, and this time, specifically because I loved Deathwatch by the same author.

It’s a war story about a Navy diver who must steal some Japanese secret codes from an island in the Pacific during WWII. A submarine named the Shark is responsible for getting him to the island and back to Pearl Harbor. Most of the action takes place on the submarine except for a few chapters on the island. This book actually held it’s own after 30 plus years better than Deathwatch did. It’s a good story that was also made into a movie.

There is one scene that has stuck in my head for those 30 years I’ve been away from this book. It occurs near the end after the Shark successfully sinks a Japanese aircraft carrier and then has to try and outsmart a bunch of Japanese destroyers seeking revenge. The Shark is forced to stay under water at an unhealthy depth for an extended period of time while being attacked from above. White’s description of how difficult it is to be without fresh air for such a long time has always stayed with me. Here are some samples:

On the deck itself was an inch-deep slime of oil and sweat and vomit and water, a filthy, greasy, nasty-smelling gunk through which he had to wade.

A little later:

By midnight the air in the boat was so foul that each light seemed to be shining in a grayish fog. Breathing was hard, each man gasping rapidly. Faces were becoming faintly blue. No one smoked for there wasn’t enough oxygen in the air to sustain a flame.

I was really struck by this as a kid, for some reason. I’ve always wanted to see the movie to see how they portrayed this part of the story. It’s on iTunes so maybe I’ll grab it someday.

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The 48 Laws of Power

I grabbed this book to discuss with a fellow reader who was reading it at the same time. I read The 50th Law (Greene’s collaboration with 50 Cent) last year and liked it. This is a completely different monster compared to that book. And a beast it is. It’s long and arduous at times.

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A Stained White Radiance

I’ve read one James Lee Burke novel per year for the last four years. I’m planning on reading a few more this year because I have the next three stacked up in a pile in paperback form (his early stuff was not on the Kindle the last time I checked). They’re going to be easy to grab and blast through. I love Burke’s writing and his main character is great fun.

** PLOT KILLERS ARE INEVITABLE **

At a certain point, I thought that the main character, Dave Robicheaux, had achieved a little bit of stability. But in the last few pages, he announces that he’s taking an indefinite leave from the New Iberia (Louisiana) sheriff’s office. We were so close to getting through a whole book without him leaving some law enforcement agency (reference my comments on his last book).

Once again, I’m joking. Burke sticks to the formula and I like it. Robicheaux gets embroiled in another sordid affair with some thugs who come dangerously close to hurting his family. His adopted daughter is growing up and he’s remarried to a childhood sweetheart, who has some sort of disease. The bait shop is thriving and he has a few emotional moments with Batist, the guy who runs the shop. I kind of wish Batist figured into things a little more, I have a feeling he will in the future.

In my take on the last book, I quoted an awesome description of some of the demons inside Robicheaux. I’ll continue that trend. Early on Robicheaux has this thought about a potential victim:

I wanted to write it all off and leave Weldon to his false pride and private army of demons, whatever they were, and not spend time trying to help somebody who didn’t want any interference in his life. But if other people had had the same attitude toward me, I had to remind myself, I would be dead, in a mental institution, or putting together enough change and crumpled one-dollar bills in a sunrise bar to buy a double shot of Beam, with a frosted schooner of Jax on the side, in the vain hope that somehow that  shuddering rush of heat and amber light through my body would finally cook into ashes every snake and centipede writhing inside me. (Page 17, paperback version)

The guy has demons for sure but did not drink at all this book. He attended a couple of AA meetings and seems to have things under control. Great stuff once again. The next one is queued up. I’ll do better than one Burke this year for sure.

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Our Kind of Traitor

I mentioned last year how I was inspired by The Company of Strangers to read more spy novels. Well, here I am, reading some John le Carre, the rock star spy novel writer. It was about thirty years ago when I picked up either Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or Little Drummer Girl (can’t recall exactly), and tossed it after a couple of days because it was too slow. Those were the Ludlum years for me and I needed more killing and car chases than le Carre usually provided. Oh, how old age changes us. Now I’m becoming a big fan of the spy novel.

This book is the story of two innocent Brits, a Russian mobster, and a few roguishly likable members of British Intelligence. The innocents are tossed into the spy game when the Russian mobster requests their assistance for defecting after a chance meeting while vacationing in Antigua. The innocents turn to British Intelligence for help and get hooked up with handlers who work for a “special projects” division.

A fairly sized portion of the story is recalled in a light interrogation of the two innocent Brits by British Intel. It dominates maybe the first third of the book and takes place in the basement of a nondescript house which doubles as the office for this special projects division. It’s mostly told through the perspective of the female innocent Gail, the deepest character in the book. I think that may be a hallmark of le Carre, strong and thoughtful female characters, judging from a few of the movies I’ve seen. Now that I think of it, this is the only le Carre book I’ve ever finished. Anyway, this retrospective format is at times confusing to follow, but it’s a great format for getting to know Gail.

** PLOT KILLERS **

After this, there is a big chunk of back story on the crew from British Intelligence, mostly told through the eyes of the number two guy, Luke. It dominates big chunks of the second third of the book (this could be a three act play). Luke is flawed with hints of a dark side, but in the end was the consummate professional. This section was deliberate and mysterious. That’s a spy novel and that’s le Carre. I can see how I got frustrated as a youngster. There is a lot of personal back story type of stuff that thriller writers leave out. Spy novelists seem a little more spare on the crackling dialogue and action sequences. I knew this going in and liked it.

Things get intense in the last third when the civilians get to Paris (with British Intelligence nearby) for the meet-up with the Russian mobster and potential defection of his entire extended family. The reader needs the first two thirds of the book to understand what is going on in the minds of the characters. That’s why the last third, the real time action sequence, so to speak, is so good. There aren’t gunfights, chases, and brawls, but there is a very detailed caper and suspenseful aftermath. And you get to feel it through the minds of a large number of the characters. Great ride.

The ending really rocked me. Not necessarily in a good way, but not in a bad way either. It was abrupt. Probably as abrupt as any I’ve experienced in my history of reading fiction. It effectively resolved nothing, nada, zero. I’m not saying it was bad, I’m saying it didn’t put everything in a nice package with a bow and hand it to you – in fact, it didn’t even get to the point of buying wrapping paper and some ribbon. But I accept the ending. I’m comfortable ruminating on what could have happened rather than knowing exactly what did happen.

Bring on some more le Carre.