The Efficiency Expert by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Written in 1919 and first published in All-Story Weekly magazine in 1921, The Efficiency Expert is a rare non-science fiction book for Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. I read it on my kindle but if it were a paper book it is estimated to have been about 130 pages.

The Efficiency Expert features Jimmy Torrance, a talented young college student who is a great athlete and natural leader and all around great guy to have at a party but  does not take his studies seriously. When he is almost tossed out of college during his senior year for having no apparent hope of completing the curriculum in four years, Torrance buckles down and somehow passes.

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950)

Having turned over a new leaf, he turns down the opportunity to manage the family factory and decides that he will move to Chicago and make it on his own.

Jimmy's expectation that the world will come knocking at his door because he has a college degree is humorous and a reminder that times have always been tough for those trying to break into business. Jimmy's money quickly dries up and he is forced to accept a series of entry-level jobs that require no education at all. While at the bottom he meets a pick-pocket/safe-cracker and befriends a young prostitute (they have a platonic relationship) who help him climb his way into a factory management position, foil a white collar criminal, and meet the love of his life.

While this is certainly not great literature, it was a very enjoyable read. Burroughs has the ability to take his reader into the darkest jungles, distant planets and into post-World War I Chicago with a clear, vivid style. Memorable, likable characters more than make up for a highly unlikely set of coincidences.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Efficiency Expert

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on November 23, 2012.

Adam by Ted Dekker

Published in 2008 by Thomas Nelson

Ted Dekker is a stalwart member of the Christian publishing world. He usually offers up a large helping of action, mystery and suspense with a Christian flavor. Dekker's strengths are maintaining a quick pace and the creation and development of interesting characters.

In Adam an FBI psychology expert named Daniel Clark is on the trail of a serial killer nicknamed "Eve" (he writes "Eve" on the walls above each of his victims) who kills twenty-something women every dark of the moon. He leaves no clues behind except that he drives a stolen white van, eats candy bars, drinks cherry Cokes, kidnaps his victims with an ether-like medicine that knocks them out. he kills with a form of meningitis and his rituals have strong religious overtones. He always leaves those clues and no others.

Clark is obsessed by this case and it has wrecked his marriage and threatens his career.

One night his team almost catches "Eve" but instead gets shot at point-blank range. The bullet grazes his skull, knocking him out and throwing him into shock, causing his heart to stop. After 20 long minutes of CPR and application of defibrillator paddles , Daniel Clark is revived, much to the shock of his doctors.

But, Daniel sees things differently now. He feels a connection to "Eve" that he just doesn't understand and he is driven more than ever to explore that connection and stop him from killing again.

There is a large paranormal flair to this book, especially with the last 100 pages or so.  Be prepared for that because it does change the feel of the book but goes a long way to explaining other things that happened in the beginning.

The book is interrupted about every 20 pages or so with an installment from a nine-part retelling of the case taken from a true crime magazine. The installments provide a lot of the background of the story as it moves along, cleverly taking the place of an omniscient narrator.

Relentless pacing combined with strong characters overcome some of the unbelievable aspects of the story making this a solid 4 star out of 5 book.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Adam

Reviewed on November 22, 2012.

Empire (Book 1 of 2 in the Empire series) by Orson Scott Card

Published in 2006 by Tor.

Danger: Spoilers follow.

I am torn when it comes to this book. It starts out with a clever premise: What if the super-heated political debate of the last few years was actually being created by a third party that was trying to get red-staters and blue-staters to start fighting. Once the bullets start flying a seemingly disinterested third party might be able to step in and assume the powers of government in the form of a dictatorship that promises to stop the insanity.

So, when the President, Vice-President and most of the cabinet are killed by commando terrorists of unknown origin the country gets very unstable very fast as the finger pointing and the political spin machines start to crank up.

Great premise. Strong start.

But, when the mechanized walking tanks and the hoverbikes, led by a George Soros-type character (who has unlimited funds, apparently) start to attack New York City the action is first-rate and gripping but the believability factor drops through the floor. Plus, everything slows down at about the two-thirds point and gets more and more unbelievable as vastly outnumbered commandos take on the plotters on their home turf in a secret base (yes, just like in an episode of the old G.I. Joe cartoon).

Great idea, poor execution.

This book has a sequel. I will not be reading it.

3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon at this location: Empire

Reviewed on November 20, 2012.

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (abridged) by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Published by Simon and Schuster in 2005
Read by Richard Thomas
Duration: 9 hours, 29 minutes
Abridged

This is technically a re-read of Team of Rivals for me. I read the original 944 page hardcover book (see my review by clicking here) and I have marveled when I have seen the 41+ hour unabridged version at the library. I love audiobooks but that is a commitment that I am not prepared to make.

But, this abridgment is a very reasonable length and gives the listener a solid grasp of the political talents of Lincoln and some of what he faced. While the book does not cover all of his difficulties, it does a solid job of  presenting the relationship between William Seward and Lincoln, George McClellan and Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Lincoln and Salmon P. Chase and Lincoln. Those were his most important relationships in the cabinet and they were all very different. Two became great allies (one after a bit of a struggle, one not) and two became political enemies (one was sidelined, one was moved into a different position where he could do less harm). His family life is covered as well.

William Seward (1801-1872),
Abraham Lincoln's
Secretary of State

About one-fifth of the book deals with Lincoln's life before he was president and the way his team worked the 1860 Republican convention to get him the nomination At first I thought this seemed excessive but it also served to introduce his cabinet members since he invited his main rivals for the convention in his cabinet. This book does demonstrate, even in its abridged form, that Abraham Lincoln was a gifted politician with an uncanny ability to read people and convince them to work with him, adopt his plans and somehow come away thinking that they had bested the president.

Richard Thomas (the actor best known as John Boy on the TV show The Waltons ) read this audiobook. His performance was neither good nor bad. This was not entirely his fault. Goodwin's text is informative but is more academically oriented and was not intended for an oral presentation.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This abridged audiobook can be found here at Amazon.com: Team of Rivals (abridged audiobook)

Reviewed on November 15, 2012.

Thirst: A Novel by Mary Donnarumma Sharnick

Published by Fireship Press in 2012

Set in 1613 Venice, Thirst: A Novel is a story of family secrets, racial purity, religion and raw power. This is the first novel for the author, Mary Donnarumma Sharnick. As a first novel goes, this one has potential, but also has issues, which is not uncommon. 

The scenes throughout the book are very vivid and easy to imagine with fully fleshed out characters (which is usually the hard part for first-time novelists) but there just needs to be more detail to tie the scenes together to make the story flow, more explanation of Venetian society and the way it worked so that the story moves more smoothly and the reader can fully appreciate what everyone is doing, why it matters and the risks that certain characters take when challenging the powers-that-be.

This is a very female oriented work with lots of details about menstruation, fears of first-time sex, rape, child rape and a very detailed childbirth scene with lots of details about blood and excrement flowing out along with the baby and the placenta being fed to a dog. I think every male character was a rapist, got raped or was cheating on his spouse with a prostitute with the exception of a priest who was asexual and acted as a surrogate mom for an orphan was was born because of a rape. As such, I felt that the book was talking past me more often than it was speaking to me.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5.

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

Reviewed on November 11, 2012

The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen L. Carter

I Expected So Much...

Published by Alfred A. Knopf in July of 2012

I love Stephen L. Carter - the essayist. He writes brilliant essays. He makes me think and I learn a lot. I have now determined that I just don't care much for Stephen L. Carter the novelist and I will stick to the essays.

When I saw the topic of this book I was thrilled. Carter is a law professor so he knows all of the legal angles. I am an enthusiastic student of the Civil War so I was already very familiar with all of the politics, legal issues and personalities that would have been involved with an impeachment of Lincoln.

The premise of the story is that Lincoln was not killed by John Wilkes Booth, although he was gravely injured. Vice President Andrew Johnson was killed and Secretary of State William Seward was injured so badly that he has not been seen publicly since the attempt on his life.

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (1814-1869)
plays a key role in this alternate history novel.

In real life, Vice President Andrew Johnson was the first president to be impeached because he was unable to successfully navigate the rough political waters of post-Civil War America. Lincoln is caught in these same currents and is impeached on a host of different charges. Lincoln's lawyers include a young black woman who has recently graduated from Oberlin College named Abigail Canner. She is learning how to be a lawyer, like an intern. The book is mostly told from her point of view.

As the case against Lincoln moves from the House to the Senate the situation is clouded by multiple murders,  mysterious messages that come and go and witnesses disappearing. Canner and another young "intern" named Jonathan Hilliman team up to follow leads that no one else seems interested in. All the while the impeachment case moves forward.

The book is filled with great characters, the topic is interesting and his portrayal of Lincoln and other historical personages is dead on when compared to everything else I have read. But, this book is slow. The plot is byzantine in nature - so intricate, so many plotters out to get Lincoln and so many anti-plotters out to protect him that I just lost interest and the book just dragged. I found that I was forcing myself to finish a book that I should have been enjoying.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln

Reviewed on November 11, 2012.

Frozen Heat (Nikki Heat #4) (audiobook) by Richard Castle

Performed by Johnny Heller
Duration: 11 hours, 6 minutes
Published 2012 by Hyperion Audio

Last winter I listened to audiobook #3 in this series, Heat Rises, and I was initially struck by the absurdity of a book written by a fictional author in a television show. I thought it would be a joke. We have a book written by a writer who was created by a television show writer. You would think that this would be a recipe for disaster - a mere cheap marketing ploy to generate some publicity for a television show.

However, if you thought that, you would be wrong.

Whoever is in charge of the "Richard Castle" franchise at Hyperion books has taken this quite seriously. Frozen Heat is a great police thriller. The story is about a murder case that homicide detective Nikki Heat's squad is investigating. Evidence points to a connection with the murder of Heat's mother 10 years earlier. As they investigate this connection, Heat and her writer boyfriend Jameson Rook travel to Boston and Paris in a search for answers and find that everything that Nikki Heat knew about her mother may have been wrong.

If you watch the television show Castle  then you will recognize several of the characters from the show have moved on to the books. In my first listen I was mostly unaware of this since I had only seen the show once or twice. Since then, I have watched the show semi-regularly and appreciate the fact that these two fictional worlds overlap so much. Also, it was a bit weird watching the television show and seeing Castle autograph the hardcover copy of this audiobook when I had just got my copy in the mail that day!

Actor Nathan Fillion as fictional author Richard Castle

Frozen Heat was performed magnificently by Johnny Heller. He covers male and female voices and a wide variety of accents flawlessly as well as getting the comic timing of Rook's smart comments down perfectly.

I always know when an audiobook is a great one - I start dragging it out of the car and into the house and to work so I can look for chances to listen. This was one of those experiences.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on November10, 2012

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Frozen Heat


FTC Full Disclosure - this work was sent to me by the publisher so that I could review it. The review, however, is my honest opinion and was not influenced by being sent a free copy.