THE HOUSE of DANIEL: A NOVEL of WILD MAGIC, the GREAT DEPRESSION, and SEMIPRO BALL by Harry Turtledove

Published in 2016 by Tom Doherty Associates (A Tor Book)

Harry Turtledove specializes in alternate histories. Usually, he has a big twist - what if the South won the Civil War? What if Atlantis were a real continent? What if the Colonies lost the Revolutionary War? What if MacArthur actually dropped atomic bombs during the Korean War?

The House of Daniel is a different kind of story, with a twist.

To be perfectly honest, I read the description of this book, with its references to The Great Depression, baseball, "hotshot wizards" and zombies and missed the fact that it was actually referring to actual wizards and zombies, not metaphorical wizards (the whiz kid experts that FDR hired) and zombies (the unemployed masses who are desperate for work). I really thought that Turtledove had just written a straight book about semipro baseball in the Great Depression.

And, basically he has. 85% of this story is about baseball.

Jack Spivey does odd jobs, plays semipro baseball for a few bucks a game and a little muscle work for a local mobster-type named Big Stu in Enid, Oklahoma. He is contracted to go to a neighboring town to give a beating to the sibling of a client that is behind on his payments. When the sibling turns out to be a beautiful young woman, Jack can't do it. Instead, he takes a position with a traveling semipro baseball team called "The House of Daniel" and hits the road.

If you don't like baseball, this book will bore you to tears. Jack tells about his life on the road and about dozens of baseball games - sometimes in great detail, with play by play and even pitch by pitch descriptions. 

But, the world that they live in is a little off from our world. Major League Baseball exists, but none of the names are recognizable. Magic exists - regular magic, dark magic and even religious magic. So do vampires. And zombies. And magic carpets. And mystery creatures like chupacabras. 

I really enjoyed this book, despite my original confusion. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE HOUSE of DANIEL: A NOVEL of WILD MAGIC, the GREAT DEPRESSION, and SEMIPRO BALL by Harry Turtledove.

THE LAW of INNOCENCE (audiobook)(Mickey Haller #6) by Michael Connelly

Published in November of 2020 by Little, Brown and Company.

Read by Peter Giles.
Duration: 12 hours, 27 minutes.
Unabridged.

I am an enthusiastic fan of Michael Connelly's books, but to me the Mickey Haller/Lincoln Lawyer series has always been a lesser series than the related Harry Bosch series. It is never bad - just not quite as good.

I am pleased to say that The Law of Innocence is much better than the typical offering in this series. In fact, this is one of the best fiction audiobooks I have listened to in quite a while.

Mickey Haller is known to many as The Lincoln Lawyer. He has that nickname because he works out of the back of his car (always a Lincoln) rather than have an actual office in traffic-plagued Los Angeles. He has wi-fi, a printer and access to his digital files. His office manager works from her home office and sort of acts as his "air traffic controller" by setting up his schedule and arranging places to meet his next appointment. His drivers are typically former clients, some of whom are driving to work off their attorney's fees. 

The book begins with Mickey Haller hosting a party at a downtown bar celebrating a not guilty verdict. Haller is not partaking because he has been clean and sober for the past several years. This is an important point as he drives home and gets pulled over. Certain that this is a bad stop for drunk driving, Haller is surprised to see that he has a missing license plate. He is even more surprised to see a liquid dripping from the back of his car. The officer is sure it is blood, cuffs Haller and opens the trunk to find the body of a former client.

Haller is, of course, innocent. Haller goes from being a defense attorney to being the defendant in a murder trial and the case against him is very strong...

Note: The Law of Innocence has a lot of ties to the fourth novel in the series, The Fifth Witness. 

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE LAW of INNOCENCE (audiobook)(Mickey Haller #6) by Michael Connelly.

THE SCARECROW (Jack McEvoy #2) by Michael Connelly

Published in 2009 by Hachette Audio.
Read by Peter Giles.
Duration: 11 hours, 15 minutes.
Unabridged.

The Scarecrow is a sequel to one of Michael Connelly's earliest books - 1996's The Poet. In The Poet, newspaper reporter and FBI agent Rachel Walling solve a murder mystery and defeat a serial killer.

Since that time, McEvoy wrote a book about his experiences, moved from Colorado and took a job with the LA Times. Now, 12 years later, he is being let go as the Times is going through a round of lay-offs. He has been given two weeks notice and told to train his younger replacement on the crime beat.

Meanwhile, a parent calls to complain to McEvoy about an article he wrote saying that her teenaged child had killed a woman and stuffed her body in the trunk of a car. McEvoy decides to look into the case and he and his reporter-in-training uncover some interesting facts that make it clear that the boy didn't do it. Instead, McEvoy is on the trail of another serial killer...

Generally speaking, I am not a fan of serial killer books or movies, especially if the serial killer is a main character in the book. I don't enjoy exploring the psyche of a serial killer. Connelly does a bit of this, but doesn't revel in it like some authors do.

That being said, I am going to rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It's a good story.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here:  THE SCARECROW (Jack McEvoy #2) by Michael Connelly.

Event: A Novel by David L. Golemon

Borrows heavily from movies and TV, has decent action.

Published in 2006 by Thomas Dunne Books 

Event is not a bad book, per se, but I kept on thinking, "I've seen this before."

The book introduces a secret government agency called the Event Group which investigates historical legends, paranormal activity, UFO sightings, etc. They are sort of an X-Files, Men in Black and Delta Force rolled into one. The Event Group collects items of historical significance and studies them to plan for future disasters. They also keep these items secret.

 Why?

I was never quite clear as to why Noah's Ark, the existence of King Arthur, or the arrival of the Vikings in the Americas in the 800s were state secrets. Plus, comments such as the Event Group not wanting to give King Arthur's body to the Brits because it belongs to "the world" seem silly when the Event Group is just storing Arthur in a vast underground base in Nevada. They are not sharing any of this information with anyone - they are just hording it. The Event Group reminded me of Spielberg's Nazis in "Indiana Jones" that were always searching for relics of power.

There are aliens and their story seems to be a combination of Independence Day, Aliens and Tremors.

The characters were okay and the action was mostly good, but, for me, the story never quite gelled. I kept wondering why Noah's Ark was a state secret and the rest of the story broke down from there. To use a Bible analogy (in honor of Noah and his hidden-away Ark) - that was the story's "feet of clay."

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Event: A Novel.

Reviewed on November 9, 2007.

The Narrows (Harry Bosch #10) (audiobook) by Michael Connelly

Thoroughly enjoyable audiobook

Published by Hachette Audio in 2004.
Read by Len  Cariou
Duration: 11 hours, 1 minute.

Unabridged.

Fans of Harry Bosch know that he is named for the Renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch. Bosch the painter specialized in sweeping panoramic paintings of hell, with details of how individual sinners were being gouged, burned and otherwise tormented by gleeful demons. Connelly has commented many times that Harry Bosch is meant to be our tour guide through the hellish side of Los Angeles - the world of serial killers, hidden sins and chaos. Interestingly, Bosch the detective sits in his house high in the hills of Los Angeles looking down on the panorama of it all, just as the viewer of a Bosch painting sees hell from high above.

In The Narrows, Bosch spends a great deal of time in Las Vegas. It would not be inappropriate to say that Vegas is "Sodom" to LA's "Gomorrah" - twins in sin. Bosch is worried that his daughter is growing up in Las Vegas and he is living there part-time trying to be the best father he can be. But, mostly he's in and out of Vegas on business in this story. Bosch investigates the death of a friend, confronts the FBI, encounters hookers, bikers and just some plain old lost souls all while hunting a killer and trying to be a dad. Besides being a Bosch book, it's also the sequel to two other books in the Connelly family of books: The Poet

Michael Connelly

and Blood Work.

I listened to this as a book on tape and found it thoroughly enjoyable and a welcome diversion during my daily commute. Len Cariou narrates and he does a fantastic job of finding Bosch's "voice". 5 stars for Cariou. 

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Narrows (Harry Bosch)

Reviewed on April 3, 2008.

A Time for Patriots (Patrick McLanahan #13) (audiobook) by Dale Brown

Up and Down

Published by HarperAudio
Read by William Dufris
Duration: 12 hours, 27 minutes
Unabridged

Dale Brown knows how to write action very well. He certainly knows all about airplanes (sometimes he talks about them so much that it's quite easy to drift off for a while and then come back), he has created enough new technological gizmos to outfit an entire fleet and he does a solid job of creating dialogue that sounds good to the ear - from old men to teenage boys. But, the promised confrontation with militias in A Time for Patriots just sort of fizzles rather than pops.

Lt.-General Patrick McLanahan is retired and living in Battle Mountain, Nevada on a remote air base safeguarding the last of America's space planes in the hopes that the program will be re-developed in earnest when the economy picks up and the budget can allow for it. In the meantime, he and his son are flying missions for the Civil Air Patrol (CAP). Brown, who is also a member of CAP, spends a great deal of time describing its mission and even runs the reader (or in my case, listener) through an actual search and rescue operation which was interesting but not really germane to the storyline as described on the back of the book.

******Spoilers*******

Meanwhile, a militia group uses a dirty bomb on an airplane to attack the federal building in Reno. Brown uses all sorts of red herring leads to confuse multiple story lines and try to make it a surprise as to where the attacks were coming from. Although my original suspicions turned out to correct, I was fooled for a while.

But, in the end, Brown's fundamental misunderstanding of the militia movement as a whole - a misunderstanding he could have cleaned up in just a few seconds if he had did as little as researched on Wikipedia (I have linked the article here) hurt the book. I am not a militia member nor do I particularly sympathize with them, but I do follow politics and pay attention. He claims that the militias have formed due to a lack of federal government involvement in support of poor relief or job training. Instead, they are almost always a reaction to the perception of too much federal involvement in local issues. This is especially an issue in Nevada since 84.5% of Nevada is owned by the federal government.

When the big reveal happens and the bad guys are discovered and thwarted I was very disappointed to find out the real reasons that drove the entire movement. I thought to myself, "Really? Would anyone actually nuke downtown Reno for that reason?" I just didn't buy it.

So, to sum up - nice action scenes, I like the stuff on CAP, the technological toys are pretty cool but the main reason the book was written - the militia part, just landed flat on its face.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. The education about CAP and the performance by William Dufris make up for the militia misfires.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here:  A Time for Patriots by Dale Brown.

Reviewed on July 15, 2011.

Acts of Malice (abridged audiobook) by Perri O'Shaughnessy

A lot of soap opera, a little legal thriller

Published by Brilliance Audio in 2003.
Duration: Approximately 3 hours.
Read by Laurel Merlington
Abridged

I listened to Acts of Malice as an abridged audiobook and I'm hoping some of the problems I have with the book were really due to the abridgment.

Problems:

1. her son Bob - he never speaks. He never does anything but be the perfect son who never, ever does anything wrong while mom sometimes spends outrageous hours out of the home. Watch out for this kid - he's going to be trouble!

2. Her son Bob says nothing, nothing at all about mom getting married to a man she just started re-dating while he's off on a trip to Germany (apparently unplanned since the tapes bring it up as he's packing the day before).

3. I don't know about you, but I think it would be pretty unethical to start dating the prosecutor during your defendant's murder trial.

4. The book spent much more time on the character's conflicted feelings (not conflicted about how this affair would affect her client's case, mind you, just hot and bothered about dating this man again) and not much on the case. If the story had focused, a 3 hour audiobook would have lasted about an hour. That means I was listening to 2 hours of romance novel on tape! Aaaargh!!

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on September 21, 2004. 

NOTE: Despite the fact that I like the cleverness of the name (2 sisters combined their names to make a new name) and the fact that their books always sound interesting, I do believe that this is the last Perri O'Shaughnessy book I've read or listened to.  Always great looking covers on the books, but you know the old saying about books and covers...

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Acts of Malice by Perri O'Shaughnessy.