Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Oh, spare me. Is there any damn thriller writer operating after 2000 who doesn’t feel compelled to take shots at Republicans and/or President Bush? Because Ed McBain did it, and Robert B. Parker does it, and with this book, Sandford gets his digs in. We’ve got the closeted gay rich former Senator and his circle of evil gay Republicans, we’ve got the clandestine meeting with an RNC official at the museum because nobody from his work goes there (maybe it would be better for the Republic if they did, haw haw!). Hey, did you know the RNC HQ was reinforced because a teacher tried to blow himself up at it to protest Republican educational policies (I don’t blame him, says the first person narrator). Don’t get me wrong, Sandford has his bad apples in the Democrat party, too, but they’re bad apples, gun nuts, and thugs in the party; it’s not the party itself nor its views that are a priori bad. Does Sandford think he can get away with it because he thinks that Republicans aren’t literate enough to read books not written by Ann Coulter? Or does he think we should be thick-skinned enough to take a joke, even though we take that damned joke every day in the media, from the government, and throughout the Internet? I don’t know, but jeez, I lost a lot of respect for Sandford.

That diatribe aside, this book distills most of the bad aspects of a Lucas Davenport number and transplants it to Washington, perhaps so Sandford can become a national thriller writer and not a regional author. There’s a crime, or series thereof, but the book spends an awful lot of time worrying not about right or wrong or serving justice, but serving political ends. How will this play? How will that play? How should the hero do this to minimize political fallout? And so on. I can take some of that in a Davenport novel because they weren’t always that way, and if I read them out of order, I can mix in the better novels with the lessers. But here, Sandford dangles it all out. A disabled Afghanistan vet now works as a fixer for the White House Chief of Staff and has to investigate the disappearance of the closeted gay rich Republican former Senator who might have a politically damaging “package”–evidence of corruption–that could hurt the reelection chances of the President. His first goal is to protect the Democrats in power, natch.

After a while and some more dead gay Republicans, the situation is resolved with the stock ambush-in-the-woods.

So, Sandford, how come all the veterans in the book are disabled Afghanistan vets except for, you know, the psychotic ones?

Ah, who knows. I’m glad this Sandford book is the last on my unread shelves for now. I think I’d be a better person, and at least in a better mood, if it were still up there.

Meanwhile, I think I’ll confine myself to old crime fiction again, back before they were compelled to attack the political beliefs of roughly half of the country.

Or Robert Crais, who hasn’t done this sort of thing so far. I hope I didn’t just out somebody.

I got this book at a garage sale last April, along with 10 others in the 20-something volume series. You know what? Ultimately, I made a mistake. The eleven I have are not contiguous in the series, and after this dose, I want to read the series in order. So instead of a cheap set of books, this one might prove to be pretty expensive if I have to fill in the books at full price.

This book details Private Sharpe’s participation at the seige of Seringapatam in 1799. Not just a grunt’s level view of life in her majesty’s army, but a good look at that nevertheless with detailed but readable. Sharpe gets under the skin of a sargeant and is drawn into striking the man, which warrants a flogging whose number is not only gratuitious, but also a death sentence in the tropics. He is reprieved and sent into the enemy stronghold as a deserter. His real mission: find a senior intelligence official held captive and get his information and, if possible, him out.

An excellent set of books, if this is any predictor.

Although I would read anything with Ed McBain’s name on it pretty eagerly (well, okay, the Matthew Hope novels are not as compelling as the 87th Precinct novels and such), I buy and hold Hunter novels with some trepidation. I didn’t like how Last Summer turned out, so I fear that each will come with some sort of sudden, unsettling twist at the end.

This book starts when the twin sister of the narrator disappears from his mother’s apartment; she’s run off apparently. As the family gathers at the mother’s apartment, flashbacks tell the story of the troubled young woman, prone to traveling and telling exotic stories that are unbelieveable. Recently, the narrator has had to travel to Sicily to get her out of a mental health ward. He starts connecting the dots and incidents from her past and wonders if she really is crazy.

I wondered if we were in for a twist such as the narrator didn’t exist, the sister didn’t exist, or some sort of incest or molestation thing. But I was pleasanly surprised. The book is really just the story of a family coming to terms with the number of times it has overlooked, willfully, examples of schizophrenic behavior and what they do when they cannot deny it any longer.

This book includes a 30 page vast summary history/travelogue about the Great Lakes region and a number of photos from the area. I thought the overview history was interesting enough as an idea source for historical pieces, but I really started taking it with a salt lick when they told me about Pierre Jacques Marquette in one place and identifying him as Father Jacques Marquette in two places. So maybe use it for ideas, but not as source material once you get the ideas.

The photos were beautiful. One of Chicago is taken from about where the Hyatt stands on the Chicago river, and the view is up Michigan Avenue. I can see the place where I posed for a picture beneath the Chicago Tribune building and can almost make out the place where the stairs take you down to the Billy Goat Tavern.

Two of Milwaukee feature the skyline, one looking up Wisconsin and Wells and another from over the breakwater pier. I showed Heather where my father took my brothers and me fishing, where Heather and I ate at a little cafe right as it opened, and where the art museum’s addition is (not pictured in these older photos). I’ll have to look back at them to see if I can pick out Downtown Books and the Safe House.

So, yeah, it made me homesick during a week where it’s been cold enough here but not snowy, unlike my home.

Last month, I read Back to the Future, so I was surprised and pleased to find I actually had this book in paperback hidden behind the trim in one of my book cases. As you know, gentle reader, the Sauder bookshelves have decorative trim that turns inward on the book cases; if you’re a double-stacker, like me, you know to put paperbacks behind the trim and then full size hardbacks when it ends. So if you want a paperback, look behind the trim. I was looking for a paperback, and I found this one.

Unlike its predecessor, this book follows the shooting script of the film pretty well. That is, I only found one particular deviation (“Mom! You’re so….big!”). I suppose that marks a good adaptation, ultimately, as it recreates the enjoyment I had of the film (since I saw the film first, and most recently about 4 years ago when my wife got me the trilogy for Christmas). I don’t know what it would do for you if you didn’t see the film, but it’s a good enough romp.

Assuming, of course, you had seen the first film or read the first book. The middle part of a trilogy is hard to enjoy on its own.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I have the third novelization of the movie (although I do have the trilogy of movies, which this book encourages me to watch). And I want it.

Oh, you want the plot? Marty goes to the future, saves his kid from a mistake, and then finds a mistake of his own in that future has altered the present, so he has to go back to the past again to save today and tomorrow. His, anyway. Ultimately, he ends up stuck in the past until he gets a message from further in the past and has to turn to Doc Brown of the past to help him into the past. Even spilling the plot makes me want to get the third book from Ebay or something.

So I’m a fan, and I have a pre-vote-for-your-paycheck-going-to-embryonic-stem-cell-research era poster of Michael J. Fox on my wall, okay?

I like Royko; I liked some of his other books (Dr. Kookie, You’re Right and Like I Was Sayin’, for instance). This book, however, isn’t the best of the lot, although it’s supposed to be The Best of Mike Royko.

The book contains columns from across the decades and papers for which Royko wrote, so it’s really got the historical summary course thing going on. Worse, the selection of the pieces probably reflects as much the decisions of the compilers and the times in which they lived rather than Royko; after all, these selections don’t tend to overlap the columns in the books he compiled. As a result, Royko comes across a little more straight ahead Democratic pundit than he probably was, although his views did skew that way. His columns, though, have more humanity and sticking up for the little guy against the big guys than the collection’s selection ultimately identifies.

Of course, I’m not a true Royko scholar; that’s just what I get from his books.