The Fifth Witness (Mickey Haller #4) by Michael Connelly

Middle of the Road Addition to the Series

Published by Vision (Hatchette Book Group) in 2011

While I am a devoted and enthusiastic fan of Connelly's Harry Bosch series, I am merely a fan of the Mickey Haller Lincoln Lawyer series. On the whole, it just lacks the same brooding intensity of the Bosch series - that sense that the world is not right and Harry Bosch is on the case to sort out at least one little part of it.

In The Fifth Witness, hot shot defense lawyer Mickey Haller has fallen on rough times during a recession and he is forced to take foreclosure defense cases to keep his practice healthy. Fortunately for Haller, the Los Angeles area has plenty of foreclosures and not all of them were done "by the book" so there is a way for a talented lawyer to earn a living.

Michael Connelly

When one of Haller's foreclosure clients is accused of killing the bank officer who has been in charge of foreclosing on her home. She loudly insists that she is innocent and as Haller starts to mount a defense the evidence shows that there may well be larger issues at work here...

I was torn with this book. The book just did not have the oomph factor that the first Haller book did. It sort of cruised along, sometimes with a little jolt to perk things up. There are a couple of nice twists at the end were a surprise, but not enough to make it more than a 3 star out of 5 stars book.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Fifth Witness.

Reviewed on September 8, 2012.

A Blaze of Glory: A Novel of the Battle of Shiloh by Jeff Shaara

A Great Start to a New Civil War Trilogy

Published by Ballantine Books in May of 2012

Jeff Shaara returns to the familiar topic of the Civil War after writing two books about the Revolutionary War, one book about the Mexican War, one book about World War I and four books about World War II. Fans of Jeff Shaara and his father Michael know that they have a special feel for the Civil War and this book shows that Jeff's talents as a writer have only grown.

I don't know if Jeff Shaara could have written about just one battle (like his father did about Gettysburg in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Killer Angels) when he wrote the first and third books that completed the Civil War trilogy about the war in the Eastern Theater. However, he pulls it off magnificently in A Blaze of Glory.

Shaara notes in his introduction that his previous books focused on the generals and he has since learned the value of seeing the battle from multiple perspectives. He does it very well here, moving from character to character to keep the pace of the story moving briskly and thoroughly covering this confusing battle.

Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston 
(1803-1862)

I was particularly interested in seeing how Shaara characterized the Confederate commander Albert Sidney Johnston and his second-in-command, P.G.T. Beauregard. Although I have read dozens of Civil War histories and novels, Johnston is always skimmed over, seeing as how he dies in his first major battle of the war. Typically, most authors try to make it as though Johnston's death was a fatal blow to the Confederates in the Western Theater, almost as if he were another Robert E. Lee. Shaara does not succumb to that temptation. Instead, his interpretation of Johnston shows him to be a complex man, certainly the strongest general in the field that day, but hardly a towering figure. That being said, Shaara suggests that the battle would have ended differently if Johnston had not been killed.

Let me take a moment here to discuss the portrayal of the death of Johnston in the book. Shaara's work in depicting his death is so well done that it is nearly poetic. He does not sugarcoat the foolishness of a general personally leading his men into battle (they tend to get shot) but he also recognizes that sometimes a general needs to be exactly that sort of fool in order to win the battle.

Shaara's treatment of Beauregard is about the same as most Civil War histories. Beauregard's innate need for self-promotion overcomes his talents, although the man clearly had a knack for getting his men to the fight and doing well. He won at the first Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), the Shiloh campaign was mostly his design and he was bedridden during most of it, he saved his army from being surrounded at Corinth, he saved Petersburg (and Richmond) in 1864 while grossly outnumbered. But, there is something about him that doesn't quite work in a large army and Shaara passes that feeling on to the reader as well.

Great beginning to a new trilogy. I can't wait until next year to get my hands on the second book.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: A Blaze of Glory: A Novel of the Battle of Shiloh (the Civil War in the West)

Reviewed on September 2, 2012.

A World Out of Time (audiobook) by Larry Niven

To the center of the galaxy and back

Re-published by Blackstone Audio in 2012.
Read by Tom Weiner
Duration: 7 hours, 59 minutes
Unabridged

First published in 1976, A World Out of Time is a grand adventure that literally follows its hero, Corbell,  across the galaxy and across three million years of time as he reacts to one twist after another that eventually finds him carrying the fate of the entire world on his shoulders.

The story begins with Corbell being revived from being frozen in a cryogenic chamber almost 200 years after he had been frozen in the 1970s because he had in incurable form of cancer. He is not in his own body, however. The patterns of his mind have been recovered and scanned into the "mindwiped" empty brain of a criminal by a totalitarian government called "The State." The State controls the entire world and is interested in interplanetary travel. The great distances and times involved have compelled The State to revive some of the "corpsicles" in order to train them to fly seeder ships that will introduce oxygen-creating simple life to likely planets in order to begin the prep work that will make them habitable. They are sending revived people because it will have to be a solo trip and these people have no friends or loved ones that they would miss (and are given no time to make new friends).

Larry Niven (Photo by David Corby)

So, Corbell passes all of the tests and is launched into space. But, his independent nature is not anticipated by The State and he steals the spaceship and heads to the center of the galaxy with nothing but a sarcastic and difficult computer named Peerssa for company. Their travels last for three million years on Earth, but are far less than that on the ship due to the effects of Relativity and a stasis bed.

When Corbell and Peerssa make it back to Earth, but almost nothing about the solar system is recognizable - the sun is too big, the Earth's climate is radically changed, Jupiter is acting like a small sun, planets and moons are missing and orbits are not the same. But, this is Earth and Corbell is determined to return home, even a home that is super-heated, dry and mostly de-populated.

The second part of the story is where the heart of the story lies. Corbell is now an old man exploring a world he barely recognizes. Plants, animals and people have evolved since he last was on earth three million years earlier. Corbell's eventually learns what happened to The State, the solar system and Earth. He also learns that man has found a way to be immortal (actually two ways) and that there was also a literal war between the sexes and the ramifications of that war threaten all of humanity in multiple ways. In fact, the title accurately describes the situation that Corbell finds - a world that is out of time to do anything but find a way to save itself from its own foolish actions.

This book was originally two separate short stories, which goes a long way towards explaining the two distinct parts of A World Out of Time. The overall flow of the book is herky-jerky at best. Sometimes it hums along, other times there are slow sections such as the long, detailed tale of how Corbell made a fire and hunting tools and then stalked, killed, plucked, gutted and cooked a turkey and then had more of it the next day.

The feel of the book reminded me of a lite version of Robert A. Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold. Part of that comes from the fact that both were read by Tom Weiner and he used the same gruff voice characterization for the lead characters in both books. But, they also both feature time travel, loosened sexual mores that would make Larry Flynt blush, a world order turned upside down, and hard men who strive for what they want above all else.

Tom Weiner's voice characterization was solid throughout. He created distinctive voices that matched the personalities of the characters. The story itself is up and down, but Weiner's reading helps it through the worst patches and makes the better parts work a little better.

This is the first of three books about The State.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found here: A World Out of Time.

Reviewed on September 1, 2012.

The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith, and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible (audiobook) by Matti Friedman

This story comes to life in the audiobook.

Published by Highbridge in 2012.
Performed by Simon Vance.
Duration: 7 hours, 27 minutes.

"The story of this book...should come as no surprise to any who have read it."

I'm going to be brutally honest here. I picked up The Aleppo Codex on a lark. I thought it sounded like it was going to be interesting but I have a little pile of audiobooks and this one was quickly heading to the bottom of the pile because I was having a serious case of buyer's remorse. It looked like a tedious bit of history and I was imagining a dry, boring lecture about an old book. I literally decided to listen to it just to get it out of the pile so I wouldn't have to dread listening to it any longer.

Happily, I was very wrong about this book.

In its roughest outline this is indeed a book about a very old book but it is much more than that. The story of the Aleppo Codex is told by Matti Friedman, an Israeli journalist through a variety of angles. Sometimes it is a mystery. Sometimes it is told as oral history. Sometimes the Codex itself is the prism used to look at Jewish history under colonial European rule or under Muslim rule in Medieval times or to look at the centrality of the Hebrew Bible, especially the Torah (the first five books) to the Jewish people throughout history.

A page from the Aleppo Codex

The Aleppo Codex is the most perfect copy of the Hebrew Bible that was written by hand. It is not fancy, but it is precise and neat and it was created a thousand years ago. Over the centuries it has traveled here and there, surviving  the sack of Jerusalem in one of the Crusades, re-surfacing in Egypt to be consulted by the famed Jewish scholar Maimonides and eventually working its way to the Jewish community in Aleppo, Syria.  The Aleppo Jews treasured it and locked it away until an anti-Israeli riot broke out in Aleppo in 1947 and the Codex was scattered around the ruins of the synagogue in which it was stored. By the late 1950s the Codex was working its way to Israel and eventually to the Shrine of the Book where it sits on display.

Except, of course, for the fact that is not really there - at least not all of it.  Somehow, about 40% of this ancient manuscript is missing. Friedman starts investigating and finds a lot more questions than answers. People refuse to answer his questions and even threaten him with legal action. Some who have also investigated the mystery have quit in frustration. One may have been murdered to keep the secret.

Friedman peppers his story with interesting people including an old spy, a cantankerous collector, smugglers and refugees. We see the peaceful little world of the Aleppo Jews, the difficult opening days of the state of Israel and ride along with anthropologists fast on the heels of Israeli troops in desperate house to house fighting who are looking for Jewish historical treasures in order to rescue them - even in the middle of a battlefield!

The book was brilliantly read by Simon Vance. His voice lends the whole story an air of gravitas and when combined with Friedman's descriptions created the perfect combination to make a book about a very old book come to life and become a book about betrayal, danger, intrigue, greed, justice, cover-ups and the survival of a nation.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Aleppo Codex.

Reviewed on August 24, 2012.

Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay

Great Escapist Fiction.

Published in 2012 by NAL (New American Library)

Linwood Barclay. I came across him almost by accident about 3 years ago and he is one of my favorite authors to go looking for. He doesn't write series (at least not anymore) so you can just jump in and go for a ride. His books feature regular guys who get stuck in an extraordinary circumstance not of their making.

In Trust Your Eyes two grown brothers are reunited due to the death of their father. One of the brothers (Ray) is a political cartoonist. The other, Thomas, has some sort of schizophrenia that keeps him housebound. To be honest, he seemed more autistic to me (as a teacher I have ran across enough students on the autistic spectrum to readily identify the behaviors) but that is neither here nor there. Thomas has an obsession - maps. He hangs them on the wall, he studies them, he memorizes them and he cruises the internet everyday looking at Whirl360, a website that is a lot like Google Maps Street View. He cruises up and down street after street, memorizing them. He has hardly traveled anywhere but he can describe in detail how to get to the nearest bakery from just about any hotel in America. Here's the kicker - Thomas cruises the internet to look at Whirl360 because he believes that former President Bill Clinton has asked him to do it on behalf of the CIA just in case the internet crashes and their agents need to use him as a map resource.

Linwood Barclay

One day, while Thomas is using Whirl360 to look at New York City he happens to look up and see something odd. Whirl360 is fictional but is based on Google Maps Street View which creates a virtual street view of the address you are looking for. That virtual view is created by putting together a series of pictures taken by cars that have an odd contraption on their roof that take a lot of high quality photos as they drive up and down the street. Google has a lot of fans that peruse the sight looking for strange things such as kids ramping dirt bikes or police officers writing tickets. In this case, the camera caught something very odd in a third story window. Thomas thinks it looks a face inside a plastic bag being choked to death. The only problem is that Thomas' behavior is so strange and he is so socially inept that no one believes him or even begins to understand what he is talking about.

That is until, one day, he shows the picture to Ray and then convinces Ray to go to the building to investigate when he is New York City on business. Then, everything falls apart very quickly...

What Linwood Barclay has done here is what he does best - put a regular guy in the midst of a criminal conspiracy that threatens to undo everything he knows and may even kill him. It is entertaining, a breeze to read and offers some great escapism.

I rate Trust Your Eyes 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Trust Your Eyes.

Reviewed on August 19, 2012.

Black List (audiobook) (Scot Harvath #11) by Brad Thor

A question of who will find whom first. 

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2012.
Read by Armand Schultz
Duration: 12 hours, 3 minutes.

Brad Thor changes things up a bit for his long-running character Scot Harvath in this installment. Usually, Harvath is out in the world at large fighting international terrorists. Harvath's unique talents and dogged determination make him a very powerful weapon in the world of counter-terrorism.

In Black List, Harvath and a member of the Athena team (the all female Delta Force-type unit) are attacked when entering a safe house in Paris, France. She dies and Harvath barely escapes. He uses his extensive contacts to work his way to safety and try to figure out how the safe house was compromised. As he tries to re-connect to his employer it dawns on him that his entire network of operatives is under attack - and this time the enemy is not a terrorist network. This time, the enemy is an American enemy and Harvath is coming home to find this enemy and get his revenge.

At the same time, Harvath's boss, Reed Carlton, whose operation was attacked, has survived and is using an even older network of contacts (think old-fashioned blind drops and chalk marks) to hide and begin to do some hunting of his own.

Of course, Carlton and Harvath are being actively pursued by someone with a lot of technical resources and as they find more and more clues and  the breadth of the threat becomes more apparent it becomes a question of who will find whom first.

I enjoyed the action but I really enjoyed the use of technology in the book. Thor tells the readers in the first line of the book: "All of the technology contained in this novel is based upon systems currently being deployed, or i n the final stages of development, by the United States government and its partners." As computer memory becomes cheaper and smaller groups intelligence gathering becomes very thorough. If the government records and saves almost everything, well, than it will be harder to miss something (so long as you can sift through it all).

Most interesting to me was one leg of Horvath's search was done completely with online tools that we all have access to - a search engine, Facebook and an online map. Very clever and pretty scary to think that we leave all of these digital clues to our own lives all over the internet.

Armand Schultz read the book. I enjoyed his voice characterization with the exception of the Scot Harvath character (the main one, unfortunately). He did so much else well. For example, his Spanish was correctly pronounced, he recognized the differences between the Mexican and the Spanish accents and his characters were easy to distinguish.

However, I am only giving this book 4 stars rather than 5. There are some tiresome cliches, such as finding one of the bad guys in a sexually compromised position with a dominatrix. This is the second time I have ran across that one in a bestseller in the last month. Also, there are two graphic torture scenes administered by the good guys. If that sort of thing turns your stomach, you are hereby warned.

The audiobook includes a half hour conversation between Brad Thor and the reader, Armand Schulz. They discuss how they do their different jobs, motivations, difficulties and how to balance work with family time.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Black List.

Reviewed on August 15, 2012.

The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas by Jonah Goldberg

A Worthy (and Very Different) Follow-Up to Goldberg's Liberal Fascism

Published by Sentinel HC in 2012.

Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism is one of the most profound political books that I have read in my entire life. It changed my view of politics and made me focus a lot of thinking that I had been doing about the actions of government in our daily lives.

So, four years later, I was pleased to hear that Goldberg had written another book. The Tyranny of Clichés is not as serious as Liberal Fascism, but it does a worthy job of going after lazy thinking in our political discourse.

The book goes after shorthand, cliched arguments that people use to try to win (or not lose) political arguments. Take the phrase "Violence never solved anything." This is said by any number of people to protest a war or people having guns or things of that nature. I have a personal history of that story. I used to teach in a small high school with a very liberal English teacher who used her class time to pontificate her views on a regular basis. In this case, it was the run-up to the War in Iraq and she put a handmade poster on her door with the question, "What problem has violence ever solved?" So, I made up a series of post-it-note answers and stuck them all over the poster with notes like "Violence by the British Navy stopped the slave trade" and "Violence ended the Holocaust" and the like. The poster came down after one day, but not before the students had seen that there were responses to glib philosophy like hers (she is now retired, thank goodness.)

Jonah Goldberg

The lesson here is not that violence is the answer to all things, but that sometimes violent action is the answer - life is too complicated to let bumper sticker reasoning rule (and the debate over the Iraq War should not have been framed in the idea that Violence is never the answer but, rather, is it the answer in this case?)

Another lesson is not to just let someone spout out some well-worn piece of pseudo-wisdom as though it were real wisdom. Sometimes there is "strength in diversity," sometimes there is not - woe to the NBA team that goes with the strategy of fielding a team with radically diverse heights and skill levels.

But, it is clear that just as one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and it equally clear that as we all slide down the Slippery Slope into Social Darwinism, Understanding, Dissent (the highest form of patriotism according to some), Social Justice and the Living Constitution will help us grow into a world with No Labels, Understanding and experience Unity and an end to Dogma.

If the above paragraph was a bunch of gibberish feel-good phrases to you, read this book.  If the above paragraph made sense to you, please don't, you are hopeless.

Goldberg goes after these snippets of wisdom and points out that they often sound profound but need to be exposed as shorthand for lazy thinking. It is a interesting and entertaining reading with a lot of humor (how many references to The Princess Bride can you squeeze into a book, Mr. Goldberg?) that made me laugh and think, often at the same time.

My favorite cliché was the cliché of "understanding." It usually goes something like this: "If we only made the effort to understand each other a little more we would have less violence, wars, racism, sexism, etc." Goldberg points out that the worst wars are civil wars precisely because they know each other so well. In the United States the North and the South understood each other quite well and went about killing one another by the thousands for four years. How about Rwanda? The Hutu killed more than half-a-million of their Tutsi neighbors in the course of 100 days. Or, in the case of ideology, the Libertarians have a special dislike of Conservatives (because they are so close to being Libertarian but do not cross over). I was reminded of this special moment from Cheers in which Woody discovers his new bride is a different kind of Lutheran than he is (and the antipathy is that real, even though they are very close. I would suggest that it is precisely because they are so close) :

A great read even though it is just slanted at one side. The Right and the Left both engage in clichés - shorthand thought that isn't really thought at all.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Tyranny of Clichés.

Reviewed on August 12, 2012.