The Syndrome by John Case

Not his best by far.

Published in 2001 by Ballantine Books.

Synopsis:

Adrienne Cope and Jeffrey Duran are drawn into a web of intrigue and recovered memories as they both look into the death of Adrienne's sister and Jeffrey's psychiatric patient, Nico. They discover an international conspiracy and the drama ensues.

My review:

This book was pretty boring for the first 168 pages - that's when stuff finally started to get moving - 1/3 of the way through the book. I'd have dropped it long before that except that I'd already read 'The Genesis Code' by this author and enjoyed it and was waiting for this one to improve. I really was disappointed.

I give this book 2 stars out of 5. I would have given it a slightly better score but I know the author can do much better than this.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Syndrome by John Case.

Reviewed on August 10, 2004.

Murder at the National Gallery (Capital Crime Mysteries) by Margaret Truman

Published in 1997.

Synopsis:

Part of the series that features a murder in many prominent Washington, D.C. buildings, Murder at the National Gallery is all about the intrigues surrounding the opening of an art show featuring Renaissance artist Caravaggio and a "lost" piece of art that was found just in time for the show. Will the murderer be satisfied with just the murder of a member of the Italian diplomatic corps who had a reputation for stealing Italian masterpieces and selling them to foreign buyers? Are the rumors of forged paintings true? Did someone steal a priceless piece of art?

My Review:

Mrs. Truman knows her stuff when it comes to the Washington, D.C. social scene because yes, she is the daughter of Harry Truman.

This is really a decent book. I've read others in this series and found them of varying quality. However, I found the topic interesting and I was introduced to the concept of 'Art Police.' Washington, D.C. has its very own squad to investigate art fraud and robbery.

There are characters that were introduced in other books.

The end of the book was a little...strange. But, overall I give this book '4 stars' out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Murder at the National Gallery.

Reviewed on August 10, 2004.

Train of Life

Entertaining, Thought-Provoking, Funny, and Sad

Released in 2012.

Train of Life is a World War II Jewish Holocaust comedy, if you can believe it. It is in French w/subtitles and it concerns a little Jewish village that knows the Nazis are coming to deport their village. Everyone is panic-stricken until the village idiot has a brilliant idea - the village should get a train and "deport" themselves all of the way to Palestine. The movie is all about their purchase of a dilapidated old train, its refurbishment into a Nazi-style train and their escape across Europe and the chase by the Nazis.

Along the way, there are all kinds of humorous encounters with Nazis, the French Resistance, Gypsies and Communists. Parts of it are "Keystone cops" and parts of it are "Monty Python-esque".

I will not tell you how it ends, because the ending packs a powerful emotional punch. However, I do wholeheartedly recommend the movie.

I rate this movie 5 stars out of 5.

Reviewed August 7, 2004.

Slow Burn (Leo Waterman Mysteries) by G.M. Ford

Good but had such potential to be better

Published in 1998 by William Morrow.

I was told that Slow Burn was a disappointment. I have to agree and disagree. It is a good book - it really does approach the level of being a great farce of a detective novel. The client is outrageous and the people he investigates are larger than life throughout the story. At times, Waterman is the only sane man in the room. It makes it a fun ride - but I finished the book pleased but quite sure that it could have been even more if Ford had pushed a bit more. I would have liked for him to have met other bizarre personages that were attending the food show, but the climactic scene at the steakhouse with the helicopter and the barbecue was certainly odd and funny enough in its own right.

Like all of the Waterman novels, it may behoove the reader to jot down some notes as you go along because the author does little to remind the reader who the characters are as the story progresses. The murder victim is introduced and not mentioned again until he is killed about 100 pages later. I had to think hard about who this guy was and why it was important to the story that he was dead.

I would recommend reading the other Waterman books (Who In Hell is Wanda Fuca?, Cast in Stone, The Bum's Rush) before reading this one.

I give this book a "4 stars" out of 5 - fun but I'm struck by the unrealized potential.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Slow Burn.

Reviewed on August 4, 2004.

U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton

Originally published in 2009. 

By my count, this is the 21st book in the Kinsey Millhone series. I have read most of them over the years - some are good, some are great and one or two have been duds. U is for Undertow is a strong one. A very solid story, although not a very difficult mystery.

Sue Grafton has kept Kinsey Millhone in the year about twenty years ago in the past. An author has to make several choices as he continues to write about a character over the years. James Bond never ages> Robert B. Parker's Spenser moved forward in time but never seemed to age. He was a Korean War vet (making him at least around 75 years old in his last book) and he still got into fistfights and chased bad guys all over the place. Tony Hillerman aged Joe Leaphorn and just moved on to the younger generation when it was time for action.

The storyline of U is for Undertow most resembled an extended episode of the CBS police drama Cold Case and is different than the rest of her books. Kinsey is asked to investigate a 20 year old kidnapping and the reader flashes back and forth from the 1960s to 1988 until it becomes painfully obvious who the bad guys are and why they did what they did. At that point, we have a little drama while Kinsey cleans up the loose ends and the book ends.

I make it sound simple, but it was a good read - one of the best of the series. The flashbacks worked. The characters were very interesting and it was well done.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: U Is for Undertow.

Reviewed on July 31, 2010.

Muslims in America: A Short History by Edward E. Curtis IV

A Short, Solid History

Published in 2009 by Oxford University Press.

Muslims in America is the "first single-author history of Muslims in America from colonial times to the present", which is what the back cover proclaims. I have no reason to doubt that this sad statement is true and for that reason this book is a welcome addition to the shelf of any serious student of American history.

That being said, this book is not perfect. Since it tries to cover the entire spread of American history the first pages are about isolated Muslim individuals that were brought over as slaves, continued to follow their faith and were noted for doing so. It turns out that only a few people fit all those criteria so we end up with extended biographies of these people. This is not bad, per se, but it does make the last half of the book seemed rushed in comparison. The slow, extended style is put aside for a quicker, less detailed style.

That less detailed style in the latter half of the book was frustrating for me. I am not a Muslim but I am fairly well read on the religion. I can speak intelligently on the main teachings of mainstream Islam, but I will not claim to be an expert on the topic. Groups like the Nation of Islam fascinate me precisely because some of their teachings have differed radically from any other teachings in the "mainstream" , especially with the Nation of Islam's heavy emphasis on race and different stories about how each racial group was formed. I would have appreciated more discussion of how Muslims outside of the Nation of Islam view the Nation of Islam and their teachings, and vice-versa. I would have also enjoyed a more robust discussion of the origins of these "non-traditional" Muslim groups - which Muslim traditions did they draw from, which did they modify, etc.?

Edward E. Curtis IV

What the book does well is detail how Muslim slaves came into America (although actual numbers will have to remain guesswork) and tell how some completely maintained their faith while others saved just parts of it. Curtis also examines the multiple waves of Muslim immigration that have come into the United States. It is tempting to think that this is a relatively new phenomenon, but it is not. I was especially fascinated by the Muslim settlers in rural North Dakota. Can you imagine a place you would be less likely to find a mosque than in rural North Dakota in the 1880s?

Of course 9/11 and the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq need to be addressed and Curtis covers them well. He includes a fatwa against terrorism on pages 117-8. He also chronicles the challenges of being Muslim in America in a post-9/11 world and some data on Muslim Americans opinions.

I give this book a four star rating, ignoring the preface, which I will comment on below:

For me the entire book was marred by an unfortunate Preface that was intended to show the level of misunderstanding that the greater American public has about Islam. The controversy cited was the installation of footbaths at the new billion dollar Indianapolis International Airport. These baths cost about $2,000 and Curtis comments on those that protested against it. He notes one pastor was against it because it would forward "Islam's desired goal, which is to thrust the entire world under one single Islamic caliphate under sharia law." (p. x) I do not know about this pastor, but I did pay particular attention to these protests because I live near the airport and I live near the Halal markets and coffee houses these taxi drivers frequent on West Washington Street - their cabs are a constant part of the landscape of my neighborhood.

It seemed to me that most of the protesters were upset that the government was paying to install foot baths to facilitate one religion's practices (although it was noted that anyone can use them, will they? What other group engages in ritual foot bathing?). Indiana has gone through a whole round of lawsuits to prevent prayers at graduations and to remove 10 Commandment displays on public grounds that were installed at no public expense. To many, it seemed mighty two-faced to have a government entity (the Airport Authority) play favorites by accommodating the wishes of one religion while other branches of government frustrate the wishes of others.

Curtis goes on to make comments about the pastor and how his deep prejudices would impair his ability to see his Muslim friends as people or even really knowing them - an ironic comment. Curtis shows his own prejudices in this snarky comment that is so unlike the rest of the book.

This whole preface left a bad taste in my mouth. It really is a pretty good book, but I had to force myself to look past this unfortunate part of the introduction.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Muslims in America: A Short History (Religion in American Life)

Reviewed on March 12, 2010.

Daytona: From the Birth of Speed to the Death of the Man In Black by Ed Hinton

Great book but there are a few errors

Originally published in 2001.

The title basically says it all. This fascinating book uses Daytona International Speedway and the old racing surface of Daytona Beach itself as its lens to focus on the world of NASCAR. Hinton has been a beat reporter covering NASCAR since the mid-1970s and knows all of the old stories and Hinton is able to package them so that the reader is reading one little vignette after another until the history of Daytona is told.

I was reading another book when I picked up this one (a Christmas gift that I hadn't really paid a lot of attention to) and began thumbing through it. I couldn't put it down! It is well-written and at times it is laugh out loud funny, especially if you are a NASCAR fan and are familiar with the older, retired drivers.

However, a couple of disturbing, trivial factual errors throw a negative light on the book as a whole. Two that I noted were Hinton's assertion that no rookie has won the Indy 500 since the 1926 race (in case you're wondering, Daytona Beach used to be used as a high-speed test site, much like Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah is used today and the 1926 winner died making such a high-speed run). I knew that his assertion was wrong since I witnessed rookies win the 2000 race (Juan Montoya) and the 2001 race (Helio Castroneves) - both were well-before publishing time for his book. Besides that, 2 minutes on Google told me there were two others - the 1927 and 1966 winners.

The Dukes of Hazzard  
in a car chase

Willy T. Ribbs

Secondly, he makes the assertion that California driver Willy T. Ribbs was encouraged by the example set by the TV show The Dukes of Hazzard to get drunk and play chasing games with the police in downtown Charlotte, NC in May of 1978. Since I spent a great deal of my own childhood watching the Dukes, I thought that that seemed a bit early. Sure enough, two more minutes on Google told me that the show premiered in January of 1979, so it really had no part in Ribbs' ill-conceived misadventures. Oddly enough, Ribbs' trip to the drunk tank gave Dale Earnhardt the chance to take his car - his first chance to drive a good car in the Winston Cup Series and this opportunity eventually led him to the career that made him a household name.

Despite these errors the book was a hoot to read and I'm sure I'll be lending it to every NASCAR fan I know.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Daytona: From the Birth of Speed to the Death of the Man in Black.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on July 26, 2004.