OUT of RANGE (Joe Pickett #5) by C. J. Box

Originally published in 2005.

Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett has been re-assigned in Out of Range. Normally, he covers the area around the town of Saddlestring but he has been temporarily re-assigned to a plum location - Jackson, Wyoming - the home of the Grand Tetons and a well-known retreat for the rich and the famous.

While Joe is thrilled for the opportunity, he is not happy about the circumstances behind it. A fellow game warden that he knew and respected suffered some sort of mental breakdown and killed himself. Plus, his family has been receiving ominous "breather" phone messages at all times of day and night...

So, Joe Pickett goes off to Jackson only to find that this new assignment is extraordinarily complicated by politically-connected power players, trendy protesters and the investigation into the previous game warden's suicide and things are getting weirder and more complicated all of the time...

I am reading this series in what seems to be an insane random order. A lot of the events in this book are referred to in other books down the line so this is an important chapter in his story. But, this was not the best of the Joe Pickett series and certainly not a good one to start with if you are thinking of starting the series. But, for me at least, a book with Joe Pickett is like a visit with old friends.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazom.com here: OUT of RANGE (Joe Pickett #5) by C. J. Box.

Reviewed on May 15, 2017

WORLD WAR II: AIR WAR: AMERICAN HERITAGE SERIES (audiobook) by Stephen W. Sears

Published by Highbridge in February of 2017
Read by Paul Boehmer
Duration: 2 hours, 47 minutes
Unabridged

Stephen W. Sears used to write for the magazine American Heritage and in that capacity more than 50 years ago he wrote a short and simple history of the air war over Europe in World War II. It was designed to be an introductory read for high school students. I am not sure if this audio edition is the same book, but it is serves the same purpose.

If you are a casual student of World War II, the kind of person that watches an occasional documentary from the time to time, World War II: Air War is the perfect book. There are details, but not enough to drown the reader. Sears moves the story along at a brisk pace, but still slows down enough to tell a personal story to remind the reader that this was a real story full of real people. He is more likely to tell the story of the average airman than of the generals.

Four P-51 Mustangs in formation over Britain.

Sears discusses the air war over Britain before the United States was drawn into the war but once America is drawn into the war he mostly focuses on American pilots and strategies and how the Germans countered them. He also talks about what happened to airmen who were shot down over enemy territory.

The only problem that I have with this audiobook is the narrator, Paul Boehmer. His style took a lot of getting used to. His frequent odd pauses in sentences are distracting (I would call them Shatner-esque). I am not a fan.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: World War II: Air War.

THE BODY BUILDERS: INSIDE the SCIENCE of the ENGINEERED HUMAN (audiobook) by Adam Piore

Published in March of 2017 by HarperAudio
Read by Fred Sanders
Duration: 12 hours, 56 minutes
Unabridged

In The Body Builders, Adam Piore describes the advances in medicine in a number of areas, especially (but not limited to) recovering from injuries, illness or dealing with genetic disorders.

He starts out with a profile of a leader in the field of prosthetic limbs who has reverse-engineered the human leg and, for the first time, makes the idea of TV's "Six Million Dollar Man" seem like a real possibility. There is the amazing story of the engineer who created a device that allows a blind woman to "see" with her ears.

Piore describes advances in experimental genetic engineering and muscle therapies that promise not only to help with genetic disorders but also may ultimately end aging as we know it.

But, it's not just about the body, it is also about the mind. There are advances in figuring out what causes Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Parkinson's and those advances are leading to new discoveries - like the ability to give a person a photographic memory. 

The audiobook was read by Fred Sanders. His reading style is solid, but not exciting. Very much like listening to almost 13 hours of an NPR broadcast.

This book is very informative with only a few minutes scattered throughout that are really too detailed and too technical to keep up my interest. But, those are more than made up for with the amazing human interest stories and the news (at least it was for me) about the newest advances and where they might lead.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Body Builders.

1453: THE HOLY WAR for CONSTANTINOPLE and the CLASH of ISLAM and the WEST (audiobook) by Roger Crowley

EXCELLENT!

Unabridged Audio Edition 

Published in 2016 by Hachette Audio and Blackstone Audio
Read by Simon Prebble
Duration: 10 Hours, 56 Minutes

When Rome was at its height, it split itself in half and created a second capital for the eastern half in Constantinople (modern day Istanbul). The eastern half survived the official "Fall of Rome" in 476 AD and continued on for nearly 1,000 more years until it succumbed to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. It was the seat of the Orthodox Christian Church and oftentimes stood as the bulwark against Muslim military advances into Eastern Europe.

From the time of the first formal attack against Constantinople in 674 AD until it finally fell in 1453, the capture of this city was, at the least, on every Muslim leader in this region's "to do" list, if not an active goal.

Once the Ottoman Turks arrive on the scene the Byzantine Empire is clearly on its last legs. The city is still defended by one of the most elaborate set of walls ever built and its history and architecture are truly amazing. But, its glory days are long gone. The city has sold a lot of its treasures to defend itself. Its territorial holdings, at one point, included a majority of the territory of the Roman Empire. By 1453 it only held a part of modern Greece and the territory immediately around the walled city.

The Ottomans, in contrast, were an Empire on the rise and they understood that the capture of Constantinople offered great strategic, economic and symbolic value. 

1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West is a book that could have truly been horrible. We've all had that professor or teacher or book that takes the most exciting parts of history and drains all of the joy from the learning experience and leaves behind a dry, lifeless exercise in tedium. 

This book had all of the hallmarks of that experience. 

1. Medieval battle? Check.

2. The Byzantine Empire, whose very name is literally synonymous in English with being unnecessarily complicated? Check.

3. Multiple religious traditions that most American readers know little about? Check (Islam) and check (Orthodox Christianity).

Constantine XI (1405-1453)

However, Roger Crowley's history is almost always highly entertaining and informative. He paints vivid word pictures of the battles and they come off much more like the epic struggles depicted in a Tolkien novel than the a dry recitation of facts. He introduces new historical figures and makes them feel like real people.

Constantine XI, the Byzantine Emperor comes to life as an honorable and brave warrior who refused to escape and leave his city even when there was no hope. He was an experienced soldier who actively led his men throughout the siege. Legend has it that he dressed as a regular soldier in his last moments and led his men in a hopeless last-ditch defense of the city. His body was never definitively identified.

Mehmed II was the hard-headed and often difficult young Ottoman emperor. He spoke multiple languages, survived the brutal family dynamics of the Ottoman leadership and embraced new technologies, like cannon. He was rewarded for this flexibility when he took the city that many considered impossible to take.

Simon Prebble's reading of this book was excellent. It was like listening to an amazing English history professor give one of the most interesting history lectures you have ever heard. Perfect combination of voice and text.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5,

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: 1453: THE HOLY WAR for CONSTANTINOPLE and the CLASH of ISLAM and the WEST by Roger Crowley.

BEFORE SHE DIES (Bill Gastner #4) (Posadas County Mysteries) (audiobook) by Steven F. Havill

Originally Published in 1996.

Audio edition published by Books in Motion in 2002.
Read by Rusty Nelson
Duration: 9 hours, 17 minutes
Unabridged

Posadas County New Mexico Undersheriff Bill Gastner is having a bad night. He almost gets shot substituting as the policeman on duty at the local high school basketball game, the suspect dies in custody and then someone shoots and kills a deputy sheriff and nearly kills a reporter on the side of the road with a shotgun.

The investigation begins in earnest following the slimmest of leads with Gastner and company looking for a killer before the only known witnesses dies and looking for another missing witness before the killer strikes again...

The audiobook of Before She Dies starts out like a rocket but the second act gets bogged down in the minutiae of a police procedural. The third act picks up though and the book ends on a strong note.

The reading by Rusty Nelson was solid except when he tries to read in Spanish. The author's Spanish was passable - if I were the sheriff of Posadas County and my anglo detectives were this fluent I would be pleased. It was good enough.

But - these were supposed to be conversations between native speakers of Spanish, one of whom grew up in Mexico. There's no way that these conversations would be confused for authentic Spanish speaker conversations and Rusty Nelson's brave attempt to speak Spanish was...well, it was interesting. But, most people won't know the difference either way, so don't let this dissuade you from listening.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Before She Dies by Steven F. Havill.

WHERE IT HURTS (Gus Murphy #1) (audiobook) by Reed Farrel Coleman

Published in 2016 by Blackstone Audio
Read by Chris Andrew Ciulla
Duration: 10 hours, 31 minutes
Unabridged

In Where It Hurts, Gus Murphy is a retired cop whose life has completely fallen apart after the sudden death of his son due to an undiagnosed heart problem. His marriage fell apart, he quit the force and now works in a hotel as security and a shuttle van driver in exchange for a room.

A low-level mobster-type seeks him out to hire him as a private detective to look into the brutal death of his son by torture. Murphy is not particularly thrilled to look into it and emphasizes that he is not a private detective. But, his emotions get the best of him because this mobster is also a dad who has lost his son so he agrees to look into it, figuring that he would uncover nothing.

But, it starts to look like the police just gave a cursory investigation and missed some serious clues. When his "client" shows up dead, Gus Murphy knows that he has stumbled into something that he has to see through to the bitter end...

While this book is full of all sorts of cliche set pieces from detective stories over the years, this is an extraordinarily well-written novel and it works. It was engrossing and the narration by Chris Andrew Ciulla only made it better. He nails the accents, the pacing - he nails the whole thing.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Where It Hurts by Reed Farrel Coleman. 

WINTERKILL(Joe Pickett #3) by C.J. Box

When Joe Met Nate...   

Originally Published in 2003

Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett is making his rounds in Winterkill when he sees a hunter open fire on a herd of Elk, killing many more than a hunting license would allow. It turns out he is the local administrator of federal lands, the man who approves permits, makes rental agreements for grazing or logging and the like. He escapes Joe's custody for a few minutes, only to be found pinned to a tree - the victim of an attack with a hunting bow.

The local sheriff has a suspect in mind - a local anti-government type that Joe has heard of but has not met - Nate Romanowski (for those who have not read the series, Joe and Nate become de facto partners in many of the books in this series). Joe suspects that Nate is not the real killer and goes off on his own to do a little detective work on the side. He has his eyes on a wandering group of anti-government activists who have set up camp in a federal forest. And, they include the biological mother of the foster child Joe's family has been trying to adopt for the last several months. Throw in a nutty federal bureaucrat and a wild winter storm and you can see how things will get tough for Joe Pickett this winter...

I read the Joe Pickett books as I naturally find them. I could order them all and read them in order but, what's the fun in that?  This book is the beginning of four different multi-book plot lines and it would actually be a good place to start the series if you can't find book #1 or #2 in the series. The action is great, the tension over the proper use of federal lands is real, even if it is overdone by some of the characters in this book. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Winterkill by C.J. Box.