DWD's Reviews

A marked improvement in the series . This is part of a series of books about Jenny Cain and her police detective husband, Geoff. In most of the books, Cain runs a philanthropic organization. In this book, she has left the foundation and is casting about for the finances to start another foundation in order to help the people of the New England seaport city of Port Frederick. While this is happening her husband has a mysterious visit from a teenage boy who claims that Geoff is his biological father and he wants nothing to do with Geoff except that he use his position as a policeman to re-investigate the murder-suicide of his parents and come up with a different conclusion. This novel is mostly notable for the fact that its author makes a serious effort to raise the bar in this series of run-of-the-mill mysteries. What she's created here is an actual novel - full of themes and interesting trips into her character's psyches. This book has all of the necessary ingredients f

The Biographies Are A Bit Sparse. Published by Concordia Publishing House in 1996. Synopsis: Saints and Angels All Around is a series of short (2-3 pages each) biographies of 36 saints and 4 angels. The book is designed to be a daily devotional so preceding each biography there is a Bible verse and following each there is a short prayer and a suggestions for further prayer. My review: Since I did not read the book the way it was intended (one day at a time for each saint or angel) but instead plowed right through it, I found the book fairly tedious. I found a great number of the biographies to be too short and lacking some historical context (once again, the result of it being a daily devotional rather than a true written history of the saints). The exception was St. Laurence (Lawrence) who stood up to the Roman government with a great sense of humor. Laurence  (225-258 AD) was a deacon in the Church of Rome and was told to bring the Roman prefect the wealth of his chur

Non-stop action from start to finish. The Mullah's Storm is an action adventure set in Afghanistan. It features U.S. Air Force Major Michael Parson, a navigator of a C-130 Hercules transport plane and a female army interpreter named Sergeant Gold. The book starts on the run with the plane transporting a high value elderly mullah to the prison at Guantanamo Bay right before a once-in-a-lifetime snowstorm. But, on page 4 the plane gets hit by a handheld rocket and crashes. The survivors are attacked by Taliban forces who are trying to free the mullah. Gold, Parson and the reluctant Mullah flee the wreckage and the chase commences. Young has a great ability to describe action sequences so that the military layman can understand what is going on. A variety of weapons, tactics and pieces of technology are used throughout the book (including a nifty description of how airdrops are guided to the ground) and Young never made me feel lost.  The author, Thomas W. Young, who

A Fascinating Look at the Iraq War Don Teague was an NBC correspondent assigned to Iraq twice - once during the invasion and once during February 2004, the beginning of the insurgent bombing spree that was finally ended by the famous "surge." His translator during this one month hitch was a beautiful and rebellious young Iraqi woman named Rafraf Barrak. Teague is an 11 year veteran of the National Guard (helicopter pilot) and knows enough about fighting and war to be very respectful of the dangers of it all (unlike some of his more fearless, less experienced colleagues). Rafraf is one of 10 children - but a handful. Smart enough to know better, Rafraf often flouts the rules dares to do things like eat lunch with boys she meets at her university and express what should be carefully guarded opinions to foreign reporters. As the situation in Iraq grows worse and worse, Teague realizes that Rafraf will become a target of the insurgents or simply die as a victim of the may

A Review of the Audiobook Published in 2005 by Hachette Audio Duration: 11 hours, 37 minutes Read by Adam Grupper Unabridged Michael Connelly leaves Harry Bosch behind for a while to introduce a new character - defense attorney Mickey Haller. Haller plays all of the angles all of the time. He knows all of the ins and outs of the L.A. court system and knows all of the ways to create revenue for his practice - he needs every penny because he has two ex-wives and a child to support. Haller saves money by using his car, a roomy Lincoln, as his office. His driver is a client who is working off what he owes to Haller. Haller is asked to defend a very rich Beverly Hills playboy in an attempted rape/murder case and soon Haller's world starts to become even more complicated. Ethical considerations, murder, love of family and the desire for justice for a man unfairly imprisoned all get tangled together. Michael Connelly The audiobook is wonderfully read by veteran narrat

Excellent Series of Essays Victor Davis Hanson's The Father of Us All is an excellent series of essays about war - why we fight, how we fight, the compromises societies make with themselves as they fight, what causes some countries to keep fighting while others grow weary of it, what types of societies deal best with the stresses of war, the future of war and a look at the American way of waging war. Many of these essays have been previously published (or substantial parts of them) in magazines but Hanson has re-worked and amplified them. I only recognized one essay and the new version was longer and more substantive. Hanson is a brilliant essayist - he expands the reader's point of view without talking down to him. Instead, in plain language he discusses large ideas and, happily, he includes plenty of references to other authors and other books that he has found interesting and informative. Reading Hanson is liking talking to an old friend who not only informs, he als