Category Archives: Reviews

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Law of Innocence,’ by Michael Connelly

Leave a comment

Michael Connelly’s Mickey Haller series is less celebrated than his Harry Bosch books, but it’s equally well-written and engaging. Mickey, a successful defense lawyer, is probably not as intriguing (and sympathetic) a character as Harry, but he has much to tell us about the other side of the law – the side where the accused stands facing the whole crushing power of the state, and needs a legal gunfighter like Mickey to tell his story for him.

But in The Law of Innocence, the challenge is closer to home. Mickey is driving home from a victory celebration one night when a policeman stops his for no reason he can understand. Turns out his rear license plate is missing, and when the cop opens the trunk, he finds a body there. The dead man is an old client of Mickey’s, one who defaulted on his bills. Micky finds himself in jail that very night. His bail is prohibitively high, but he insists on defending himself. So he has to coordinate his defense during designated visiting times with his legal staff.

The murder victim had been a con man, a specialist in bogus charities. But his wallet was missing from his body, making it impossible to know what false identity he’d been living under lately. Mickey insists on demanding a speedy trial, so the clock is ticking as his team (with his half-brother Harry Bosch assisting) try to figure out who wanted the dead man dead, and who built a frame around Mickey Haller.

Michael Connelly can’t write a bad novel, I think, and I enjoyed reading The Law of Innocence. I noted that he couldn’t resist throwing a couple barbs at President Trump, but I suppose I should be grateful he left it at only a couple. The beginnings of the Covid epidemic contribute an interesting shade of color to the story’s fabric. Certain developments in Mickey’s domestic story met with my coveted personal approval. With the usual cautions for language and mature content, I recommend The Law of Innocence.

Fiction, Reviews

‘You Only Live Once,’ by Haris Orkin

Leave a comment

His name is Flynn. James Flynn. He is handsome and always well-dressed. He speaks four languages. He is devastatingly attractive to women, physically fit, and a master of martial arts.

He is also a patient in a mental hospital. He believes the hospital to be the headquarters of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and calls the director “N,” believing him to be his official superior. When management changes and N disappears, along with a patient Flynn calls “Q,” he escapes in order to rescue them. Along the way he picks up an orderly named Sancho as his sidekick, and rescues a fellow patient, an attractive girl named Dulcie, from her abusive boyfriend. But the greater challenge remains – the world, he is convinced, is under threat from an evil criminal mastermind, and Flynn, along with his bemused (often terrified) comrades, must step in to stop disaster.

Oddly enough, he’s kind of right.

So what we’ve got in You Only Live Once is a send-up of James Bond, in fusion with an homage to Don Quixote.

The book was amusing. It wasn’t as funny as I hoped, because the author tells it pretty much straight. The humor comes strictly from the preposterous situations our heroes get into.

I didn’t love You Only Live Once, but it was entertaining. I suspect a lot of readers will like it very much.

Reviews

Netflix Film Review: ‘The 12th Man’

Leave a comment

More than a year ago, I reviewed the book, The 12TH Man. The book was a reissue, re-titled to coincide with the release of the Norwegian film, The 12th Man, which (I believe) was based on it, at least in part. I have at last viewed the movie on Netflix, and here is my reaction:

In 1943, a group of 12 Norwegian saboteurs sailed from Shetland to Norway, to deliver munitions and commit sabotage against the occupying Germans. Due to outdated intelligence and a betrayal, their boat was intercepted by the Germans. One of the saboteurs was killed on the spot; 10 were captured, to suffer torture and execution. One, Jan Baalsrud, escaped, one of his feet bare and a toe shot off.

What followed was months on the run, with furtive help from farmers and fishermen, and the slow advance of gangrene in his toes (he would eventually amputate them himself). When Baalsrud could go no further on his own strength, patriotic Norwegians (ethnic Norse and Sami both) assisted him, dragging him by sled and hiding him in caves and underhangs, until they got him across the Swedish border to safety, emaciated and only just alive.

The film The 12th Man, starring Thomas Gullestad as Baalsrud, follows the basic story pretty faithfully, but – in the way of movies – ups the visual drama. A fictitious German officer (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is invented to personalize the manhunt from the German side. Moments of action are inserted to raise the cinematic punch, but proper tribute is also paid to the quiet courage and endurance of Baalsrud himself, as well as to the people he considered the true heroes of the story – the ordinary folk who risked what little they had to help a stranger, one almost dead already, to escape the occupiers of their country.

The 12th Man is a superior survival movie, which will certainly compel viewer fascination. The performances are excellent. As is the case with most Norwegian movies, it includes breathtaking scenery. You should be warned that the story includes brutal violence and a harrowing scene of amputation. The dialogue (subtitled) includes profanity. Recommended, if you can handle this kind of thing.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Garden of the Damned,’ by Blake Banner

Leave a comment

Conor Hagan was hard to miss. He was six four and looked like Michaelangelo’s less talented cousin had made him out of concrete.

I bought the collection of the first four Dead Cold Mystery books by Blake Banner, so I coasted right on into the third book, Garden of the Damned.

New York City cold case detective John Stone is intrigued by a 12-year-old file on another old unsolved murder. He notices something in the crime scene photos that eluded investigators at the time – who don’t seem to have worked the case too hard. The victim appears to have been a homeless man, shot and abandoned in a dumpster. But Stone notices that the man had an expensive haircut and manicured nails. This was no street person. This was a prosperous man who was murdered and then re-dressed, to mislead the police.

Along with his partner, Carmen Dehan, Stone starts asking questions, learning that the victim was a missing person – a wealthy young man who had been a devout Catholic, working tirelessly to help the poor. He and his fiancée had disappeared at precisely the same time, and no one had known their fate until now.

But why was he killed? The detectives learn that he was looking too closely into dark secrets being guarded by very powerful men, including men of the Church.

As always with Blake Banner’s books, Garden of the Damned was easy to read and fun. Some of the writing was very good, though plausibility wasn’t always high. Some very dark matters are touched on, and the Roman Catholic Church does not come out looking well at all.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Two Bare Arms,’ by Blake Banner

Leave a comment

The gray drizzle had turned to heavy rain, with huge, broken clouds dragging in off the Atlantic like ripped sails from some cosmic Trafalgar.

The second volume in Blake Banner’s likeable Dead Cold Mystery series is Two Bare Arms. It is autumn, and our heroes, John Stone and Carmen Dehan, New York cops who don’t play well with others but find they make a good team, have selected another old case from the files. This one concerns a pair of human arms (female) found twelve years ago in an East Bronx “lock up” and never connected to any case, body, or missing person. The suspects include a reclusive, somewhat creepy computer geek, a thuggish motorcycle gang member, and a Satanist. The case will not lack for false trails, lies, or danger.

I like a lot of things about this series. Stone and Dehan make an interesting team – lonely people silently reaching out to each other, though in denial about it. A man and a woman who have no friends, and so care all the more fiercely about the one friend they each possess – the other.

Also, whenever they have a chance to eat, they tend to eat steak, with relish. This raises them immensely in my estimation.

And the prose is sometimes superior.

I’m not so keen on the plotting. There are a fair amount of improbabilities, and genuine police procedure is a distant glimmer.

But it was fun. Cautions for language and adult themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘An Ace and a Pair,’ by Blake Banner

Leave a comment

He blinked, but it was probably just his time for blinking that month.

Having discovered the pleasures of reading Blake Banner, and having exhausted the available books in his Cobra series, I moved on to his Dead Cold Mystery books, about a pair of police detective partners in New York City. An Ace and a Pair was not as much fun as the Cobra books, in my estimation, but entertaining, and with some superior moments.

John Stone is a successful detective with a high case clearance rate. But his superior doesn’t like him. Aside from personal animus, she considers him a dinosaur who ought to retire and make way for younger people. So she assigns him to the Cold Case squad, and partners him with Det. Carmen Dehan, a very attractive (of course) Jewish/Mexican officer with an attitude problem. They mesh immediately, united by their mutual dislike for their superior and a visceral commitment to going to any length to solve cases. There’s some sexual chemistry too, but they both avoid that issue.

The first case John selects is a bizarre one. Ten years ago, a gangster named Nelson Hernandez was found dead at a poker table, along with his chief lieutenants. Each had been shotgunned to death (though Hernandez himself was also grotesquely mutilated), and apparently not one of them moved to defend himself. The chief suspects have solid alibis. Also, the crime made no sense. It didn’t seem to profit anybody.

Stone and Dehan delve into the evidence, which involves a fair amount of travel (even a trip on a gangster’s private plane). Only Stone’s intuitive detective work will enable them to cut through a lot of lies and subterfuges and put some old wrongs right.

Although author Banner employs his trademark technique of jumping quickly into the action, without a lot of preliminary stage setting, the story didn’t take off for me until a little way in. But it grew on me, and I started to care. I had a vague idea what the outcome would be, but a number of impossible problems needed solving first.

I thought I found a couple weak spots. At one point, Stone locates a vital clue through driving around in Texas – which seemed to me an improbable needle-in-the-haystack thing, considering the size of Texas. Also, the author used “begs the question” wrong, which disappointed me. This guy’s better than that.

But it was an enjoyable novel with a satisfying conclusion. Recommended, with the usual cautions.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Einstaat Brief,’ by Blake Banner

Leave a comment

Book three of Blake Banner’s interesting – and modestly impressive – Cobra series is The Einstaat Brief. Once again we follow our hero, “ethical” assassin Harry Bauer, as he fights international evil.

This time out, Harry is facing a situation he never looked for. He’s in love, with a beautiful, red-haired Texas girl. He knows he can’t bring her into the life he’s living, but he figures he’s done enough killing, even in good causes. He’s going to retire, and move with her to a ranch in Wyoming.

Then a team comes to kill him, and they seem to be government agents. Harry’s superiors at Cobra make him an offer he can’t refuse – one last emergency job, and he can retire and they’ll guarantee his and the girl’s safety.

The job is a rush assignment, without adequate preparation time. Harry will have to improvise. He is to infiltrate a luxury resort hotel in Andorra, and assassinate three of the world’s most powerful internet moguls. These three are plotting to inject an algorithm into the world wide web which will give them control of all the world’s markets. But money isn’t their goal. They want to manipulate international economies in order to incite wars in the Third World – to control overpopulation.

Harry manages to get in, but he interprets his instructions freely – he steals the men’s laptops, and kidnaps one of them. But when he gets home, he finds a more dangerous, personal challenge in store.

I am enjoying this series, but this is the last installment available to date. Another is coming in December. Fun reading, with cautions for a high body count and mature language.

Fiction, Reviews

Don’t Bob for Apples in Hallowe’en Party

Leave a comment

I picked up Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party recently, because it’s the season for it, and I found the most interesting part of it on the dedication page.

To P. G. Wodehouse

whose books and stories have brightened my life for many years. Also, to show my pleasure in his having been kind enough to tell me he enjoyed my books.

It’s too bad this story isn’t a real zinger. Even a bold or ambitious effort that doesn’t quite pay off would have been good. But Hallowe’en Party is a somewhat fluffy tale that needs content editing.

A thirteen-year-old girl is drowned in a large bucket of water for apple bobbing during a Halloween party. Who would do such a thing? Perhaps it was a disturbed boy–they’re everywhere nowadays. But the girl did boast of seeing a murder a few years ago. Is it possible someone felt threatened and silenced her?

Many pages are spent rehashing mundane details that don’t advance the plot or open cans of red herring. How many characters need to complain about disturbed individuals who should be cared for in psychiatric wards or the dreadful mental health of modern children? “I don’t need to tell you,” they say repeatedly just before telling you the same thing you heard a few pages back.

Add to this Poirot pulling local history out of the air at a few points and his occasional observation on how remarkable this common something is. And why is he wearing apparently sensible shoes when he climbs into the quarry garden on page 85 and not again for the rest of the book, even though he continues to walk all around the place? He says he wears tight, patent leather shoes that hurt his feet because he thinks they present him properly. How did he ever put on the sensible shoes if he can’t do it again later?

My initial guess of the murderer at a third of the way into it proved true. That was unsurprising but good; any other explanation would have ruined the book.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dying Breath,’ by Blake Banner

1 Comment

Here we slowed, but not much, and moved, hooting and honking, among cars and motorized rickshaws, in a city that looked like it was built in the twenty-fifth century to be inhabited by people from the fifth century.

Book 2 in Blake Banner’s Cobra series, about elite assassin Harry Bauer, is Dying Breath. It’s as much fun as the first one.

As I read the Cobra books, I’m reminded, in a way, of Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Except that I like Bauer better than Bond (though I’ll admit I’ve only read a couple Bond books). I find James Bond kind of flat as a character. Harry Bauer is an interesting person, and he occasionally hints at opinions I can get behind. On the heroic indestructibility scale, he’s certainly Bond’s equal.

As I mentioned in my last review, Harry Bauer is a former commando, now employed by a super-secret, non-governmental security organization to take out the worst people in the world. His latest assignment seems relatively straightforward – to infiltrate a New York hotel and execute two Chinese scientists who are working on a plague that could become pandemic.

But, as any reader will expect, things don’t go according to plan. The set-up isn’t what Harry expected, and he ends up on a quest that takes him from New York to Casablanca to Bangkok, and which will introduce him to an intriguing femme fatale with lots of deadly secrets.

What any reader of this book will note is that it’s relevant in a very particular way. A moment of recognition comes packed inside at no additional charge. You’ll know what I mean.

I noted one plot problem: Harry makes use of an EMP (Electro-magnetic pulse) machine to knock out electronic systems, but they don’t seem to affect his or his partner’s cars. This is not explained.

Highly recommended as entertainment. Morally problematic in diverse ways.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dead of Night,’ by Blake Banner

1 Comment

The maître d’ sat me next to a table of noisy, overdressed beautiful people; the kind who leave their plastic surgeon’s designer label hanging out of the tucks behind their ears.

Harry Bauer, hero of Blake Banner’s Dead of Night, is an American and an orphan. Somehow his wanderings led him to Britain, where he joined the Special Services. He’s a valued and effective commando, until the night in Afghanistan when he nearly kills a prisoner – an Al Qaida leader who raped, tortured, and murdered an entire village. He gets kicked out of the service, and is soon back home in New York without job prospects.

There is one party willing to hire a guy like him for security work, however, in spite of his hazy military record – a Russian gangster. Harry goes to work for him, but he goes in with a plan – one that will leave a lot of bad guys dead, and Harry considerably richer.

But then he’s detained by some mysterious agents, who escort him to an interview with the head of a secret, international security operation called Cobra. Cobra is not directly sponsored by any government. Its sole purpose is killing – eliminating the worst of the worst, whom the law cannot touch. Harry agrees to join them with little hesitation. Especially because his first target is the same terrorist he had to let go in Afghanistan.

Trouble is, the CIA is holding that monster as an information source, and Harry will have to get through them to get to his target.

Piece of cake.

I occasionally read military action thrillers, but they aren’t my favorite reading fare. But Dead of Night went down real easy with me. I finished it quickly, and had a good time with it. The action never lags, the prose is good (it even made me chuckle occasionally), and Harry comes through as a complex, fully developed character. I hastened to buy the second volume in the series.

I hesitate to recommend this book wholeheartedly, because it’s very bloody, and the body count is high. There’s also the moral question of revenge and whether it’s right to kill just because the victim “needs killing,” so to speak. So the moral ambivalence here is greater than in your average mystery. And, of course there’s always the language and adult themes.

But it sure was a fun read.