Page 25: The Lion by Nelson DeMille

The Lion, the sequel to The Lion's Game, finds  John Corey and his wife Kate Mayfield once again threatened by Asad Khalil.  Khalil is a ruthless Libyan terrorist with the nickname "The Lion."  He wants to kill John and Kate after he failed in the previous novel.  However, they are not his only targets.  Besides killing targeted individuals he is also interested in mass murder for his backers in Al-Qaeda.

I have enjoyed all the previous John Corey novels by DeMille and this is no exception.  What I did find was that John Corey reminds me a lot of John Sutter in The Gold Coast and The Gate House which I have previously talked about in an earlier post.  They both are 'wise guys' and 'snarky' in their sense of humor.  Nothing is sacred to John Corey.  His comments include his wife, his bosses, his enemies, and many others.  These comments and unspoken thoughts provide some good laughs in spite of the seriousness of the plot.  All readers may not find this attractive, but I think DeMille is one of the best at creating this type of character.

The book moves fast from the very beginning and provides plenty of surprises.  This book is not for the squeamish, so be warned. Here is a comment from Booklist that should help you decide to read The Lion:
     

From Booklist

"In The Lion's Game (2000), terrorist Asad Khalil, also known as the Lion, came to the U.S. to kill the people responsible for bombing his village in Libya. John Corey, the NYPD cop turned antiterrorist agent, and his FBI trainer, Kate Mayfield, gave chase, but their quarry got away. Now it's a few years later, not too long after 9/11. John and Kate are married, and John's an experienced agent with his own trainee. Out of the blue sky, literally, in a very creative and exciting scene, Khalil swoops down, bent on continuing his revenge against the people behind the bombing. And now he's added Corey to his hit list. Can Corey outmaneuver and outwit a determined, ruthless assassin? This is a well-constructed and satisfying sequel, full of exciting (and occasionally gruesome) visual imagery. Corey is a more developed character this time around, and Khalil is every bit as intelligent, cold, and compelling as he was in The Lion's Game. If the book has a flaw, it's that it might be a little close in feel, plot, and even dramatic structure to the earlier book. On the other hand, Khalil is a single-minded guy, and it doesn't stretch credibility at all to imagine that he'd pick up right where he left off." --David Pitt

If you like Nelson DeMille, I guarantee you will like this book.  If you have never read any of his novels, read this one and then check his other novels on his web site.  You will not be disappointed.

Page 24: The Help

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is one of those rare first novels.  It has all the great ingredients you wish all novels to have: wonderful characters who face difficult and dangerous choices, a great plot, and tons of tension.  This book started slowly for me, but then took off like a rocket and kept going.

The novel is set in Jackson, Mississippi during the beginning of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s.  The main characters are three women, one white and the other two black.  Skeeter is a recent college graduate from Ole Miss.  The two maids collaborate with her on a book about the relationship between black maids and their white employers.  The maids, Aibileen and Minny, face many difficult and potentially life-threatening situations for helping with the book because of the time and place they are living.  Their bravery and courage is inspiring.  The book they  write includes stories from a dozen maids who risk a great deal to take part in the secret project.  This microcosm of the south in the early 1960s explores the tightrope that both whites and blacks had to walk as part of the racist culture that had existed there for so many years.  For those of us who lived during this tumultuous era it will bring back many memories of that time, and the terrible events that occurred.  For the younger generation, it will hopefully serve as an important history and morality lesson.

This is a very good book. I'll include a review for you to read before you go out and buy it.

"Southern whites' guilt for not expressing gratitude to the black maids who raised them threatens to become a familiar refrain. But don't tell Kathryn Stockett because her first novel is a nuanced variation on the theme that strikes every note with authenticity. In a page-turner that brings new resonance to the moral issues involved, she spins a story of social awakening as seen from both sides of the American racial divide.

Newly graduated from Ole Miss with a degree in English but neither an engagement ring nor a steady boyfriend, Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan returns to her parents' cotton farm in Jackson. Although it's 1962, during the early years of the civil rights movement, she is largely unaware of the tensions gathering around her town.

Skeeter is in some ways an outsider. Her friends, bridge partners and fellow members of the Junior League are married. Most subscribe to the racist attitudes of the era, mistreating and despising the black maids whom they count on to raise their children. Skeeter is not racist, but she is naive and unwittingly patronizing. When her best friend makes a political issue of not allowing the "help" to use the toilets in their employers' houses, she decides to write a book in which the community's maids -- their names disguised -- talk about their experiences. 

Fear of discovery and retribution at first keep the maids from complying, but a stalwart woman named Aibileen, who has raised and nurtured 17 white children, and her friend Minny, who keeps losing jobs because she talks back when insulted and abused, sign on with Skeeter's risky project, and eventually 10 others follow.

Aibileen and Minny share the narration with Skeeter, and one of Stockett's accomplishments is reproducing African American vernacular and racy humor without resorting to stilted dialogue. She unsparingly delineates the conditions of black servitude a century after the Civil War.

The murders of Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr. are seen through African American eyes, but go largely unobserved by the white community. Meanwhile, a room "full of cake-eating, Tab-drinking, cigarette-smoking women" pretentiously plan a fundraiser for the "Poor Starving Children of Africa." In general, Stockett doesn't sledgehammer her ironies, though she skirts caricature with a "white trash" woman who has married into an old Jackson family. Yet even this character is portrayed with the compassion and humor that keep the novel levitating above its serious theme." 

Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.


The next Book Page should be Nelson DeMille's The Lion, but I may find something else before that.  Keep on reading.

Page 23: Innocent by Scott Turow

I am currently reading Innocent by Scott Turow which I blogged about briefly in a post about new books a few weeks ago.  So far so good.  More to come when the book is finished.

I just finished the book today.  Scott Turow is still amazing, and has taken some of the same characters from Presumed Innocent and put them into another legal cliff-hanger.  Rusty Sabich is back, but is now a chief appellelate court judge. Tommy Molto is still working as a prosecutor, but now is the acting head of the Kindle County Prosecuting Attorney's Office.  The animosity between Rusty and Tommy has been put into a restless sleep for twenty-one years, but not forgotten by either.

 Rusty is once again charged with murder.  This time it is his wife Barbara.  When Rusty found her non-responsive one morning, he stayed with her for nearly twenty-four hours before calling his son Nat.  Nat convinced him to call the authorities and report her death.  This seems like strange behavior for a judge, and Tommy Molto's assistant, Jim Brand, thinks so as well.  Jim convinces Tommy to let him start a quiet investigation into the circumstances of Barbara Sabitch's death.

Scott Turow takes a different approach to this novel than the one he used in Presumed Innocent.  The story is told from several viewpoints and jumps around in time.  At first I thought this distracted from the story, but soon came to realize it was a good technique.  We hear from Rusty, Tommy, Rusty's son Nat, and Rusty's former clerk Anna.  Tommy Molto has mellowed over the twenty-some years since he prosecuted Rusty for the murder of Rusty's mistress in Presumed Innocent.  Jim Brand finds enough circumstantial evidence to get Tommy all fired up again, and they decide to press charges and prosecute.

This is a great legal thriller with plenty of plot twists and surprises.  The trial scenes are vintage Turow and will not disappoint.  Sandy Stern is back as Rusty's defense attorney.  Sandy's daughter Marta is his partner.  Together they mount a defense to counter the attacks of Tommy Molto and Jim Brand.  Rusty, Tommy, and Sandy are all older, but pretty much the same people they have always been.  However, the trial judge is one of the best characters in the book.

I always like to include some reviews from the publishing world, and here are two of them.

Here is a review from Publishers Weekly:

"Mesmerizing prose and intricate plotting lift Turow's superlative legal thriller, his best novel since his bestselling debut,Presumed Innocent, to which this is a sequel. In 2008, 22 years after the events of the earlier book, former lawyer Rusty Sabich, now a Kindle County, Ill., chief appellate judge, is again suspected of murdering a woman close to him. His wife, Barbara, has died in her bed of what appear to be natural causes, yet Rusty comes under scrutiny from his old nemesis, acting prosecuting attorney Tommy Molto, who unsuccessfully prosecuted him for killing his mistress decades earlier. Tommy's chief deputy, Jim Brand, is suspicious because Rusty chose to keep Barbara's death a secret, even from their son, Nat, for almost an entire day, which could have allowed traces of poison to disappear. Rusty's candidacy for a higher court in an imminent election; his recent clandestine affair with his attractive law clerk, Anna Vostic; and a breach of judicial ethics complicate matters further. Once again, Turow displays an uncanny ability for making the passions and contradictions of his main characters accessible and understandable." (May) 

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Here is another review, this one from Booklist, with a different take on the book.

“The more things change, the more they remain the same” seems to be the burden of Turow’s ninth novel, which is a clever reprise of his first, Presumed Innocent (1987). In Turow’s breakthrough book, prosecuting attorney Rusty Sabitch is put on trial for the murder of a woman colleague with whom he’d been having an affair. Tommy Molto, another attorney, launches an unsuccessful prosecution against Sabitch in a nail-biter of a courtroom drama (with added zest provided by Turow’s own background as a lawyer). Twenty-one years later, as this story begins, Sabitch has ascended to an appellate court judgeship, Molto is still a prosecutor, and they retake their roles as defendant and prosecutor (and persecutor, since Molto investigates Sabitch before the trial). Rusty’s wife of 36 years, Barbara, is bipolar and extremely difficult. His senior clerk, Anna, is jolly and extremely willing. Sabitch embarks on an affair that has disastrous consequences and winds up with the judge once again fighting a murder charge. The first part of the book shuttles between Sabitch and Molto, each narrating his take on events—suspense is often spoiled, though, because readers know what Sabitch has done before Molto figures it out. Part 2, inevitably, is the criminal trial, in which the two antagonists meet again. Turow is as agile as ever at plotting and characterization, and his fans will be thrilled at the prospect of a reprise between two of his most memorable characters. But this time the courtroom drama has a mechanical feel to it, as if Turow accepted a dare to put Sabitch and Molto back in the courtroom, older, but in the same position and pickle as in Presumed Innocent. --Connie Fletcher

I liked this book and urge you to read it as well.  Judge for yourself.

Next Book Page: The Help by Kathryn Stockett 

Page 22: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

The conclusion to Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy is bittersweet.  The first two books, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire, were so well written and plotted it did not seem possible the third book could outdo them.  Now that it has, you realize there will be no more books from this great writer who died in 2004 at the age of 50.  Larsson created one of the most amazing characters in the thriller genre.  Lisbeth Salander is small and thin in stature, but a giant in intellect and courage.  She and investigative reporter Michael Blomkvist, the other main character, take on a secret organization within the Swedish secret police that has been responsible for unlawful and heinous treatment involving Lisbeth since she was a child.  More of this history is revealed in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

Instead of telling you more about this book and revealing what happens ( this would be a real spoiler), here are some reviews that will give you a good preview.  Let me be clear here, please don't read this book until you have read the first two, and in order!  There are many reviews of the Millennium Trilogy, especially now that the last book has been published.  I will give you only a few here.  Please check out the others starting with your favorite search engine.

Review 1: "A thoroughly gripping read . . . Lisbeth Salander, Stieg Larsson's fierce pixie of a heroine, is one of the most original characters in a thriller to come along in a while--a gamin, Audrey Hepburn look-alike but with tattoos and piercings, the take-no-prisoners attitude of Lara Croft and the cool, unsentimental intellect of Mr. Spock . . . Owes less to the Silence of the Lambs horror genre than to something by John le Carre."
---Michael Kakutani, New York Times


Reiew 2: "The literary equivalent of a caffeine rush . . . Larsson was one of those rare writers who could keep you up until 3 a.m. and then make you want to rush home the next night and do it again . . . Larsson is something like John Grisham [but] Larsson held an extra ace: the creation of Salander."
---Newsweek


Review 3: "Larsson has produced a coup de foudre, a novel that is complex, satisfying, clever, moral . . . This is a grown-up novel for grown-up readers, who want something more than a quick fix and a car chase.  And it's why the Millennium trilogy is rightly a publishing phenomenon all over the world."
---Guardian


Just so we all don't get too maudlin about the end of this trilogy, I have some good news that you may not have heard.  The Swedish film industry has already made the first two books into movies and is coming out with the third.  Also, not to be outdone, Hollywood is making its own versions.  For what it's worth, I don't think any movie will be able to capture what Larsson created in print.  But that is only my opinion, and I do plan to see all three movies.  After all, Peter Jackson made The Lord of the Rings into great films.  Let's hope this trilogy will be worth seeing on the silver screen.

Page 21: Rashi's Daughters

Maggie Anton has written a wonderful trilogy about the life of the famous Talmud scholar Salomon ben Isaac (Rashi).  Rashi was born in 1040 and lived most of his life in Troyes, France.  Each book in the trilogy features one of his three daughters.  The Rashi's Daughters trilogy is as follows: Book I: Joheved, Book II: Miriam, and Book III: Rachel.

The Talmud is the second most important Jewish religious text after the Bible.  Rashi is famous for his commentaries which were written to explain and illuminate the text.  His was a lifelong work and Rashi's commentaries are still found in the Talmud as it is studied today.  Rashi studied in Germany for several years and then returned to Troyes.  He established a yeshiva (school) for Talmud study, and it became very famous.  Of course, traditional Jewish study at the time was for men and not women.  The unique theme of this trilogy is that the author postulates, based on historic evidence, that Rashi also taught Talmud to his three daughters.

These books include many fascinating discussions between Rashi and his daughters as they study Talmud together, but that is not the whole story.  All three daughters eventually married and had children of their own. Their lives are closely followed including helping their father in the family vineyards, having children, and establishing their own careers.  Daily life in medieval France is woven into the narrative and is quite fascinating.  One daughter was a midwife and another a textile merchant.  We think of the medical knowledge of the time as primitive compared to modern medicine, but the discussion of the medicinal uses and effects of various herbs is enlightening.

They were fortunate to live in a period of history in France when Jews were treated better than in other periods such as the Inquisition.  However, the participants of the First Crusade changed all that in 1096, and managed to massacre nearly the entire Jewish population of Germany during the third book of the trilogy.

Find out more about this trilogy by going to  rashisdaughters.com which will provide you with a great deal of information about the books as well as other links to pursue if you are so inclined.  I found this trilogy to be an inspired and well researched window into the past as it existed in eleventh century France.  The story of each daughter is unique, but the entire trilogy is a continuous narrative of Rashi, his daughters, their families, and other individuals that are an important part of the narrative. I think you will find this trilogy to be a great read as well as a definite learning experience.

Page 20: South of Broad

South of Broad by Pat Conroy is a book within a book.  It is the story of Leo King and his coming of age in the summer of 1969.  It is also a story about Leo's love affair with his city of Charleston, South Carolina.  If you have ever been to Charleston, you will understand.  I am prejudiced, since I have been to Charleston and think it is one of he most beautiful cities in our country.  If you haven't, this book will convince you to pay Charleston a visit.

The story begins in May 1969 with Leo describing the events that will shape his adult life, and the lives of his new friends.  He meets them all in the course of one week.  His new neighbors are Sheba and Trevor Poe, twins who live with their alcoholic mother.  Three orphans, Starla, Niles, and Betty are added to the group.  Then there are three Charleston aristocrats: Molly, Chad and his sister Frasier.  To round out the group there is the son of the new black football coach at their high school, Ike Jefferson.

Leo is just about finished with his probation after being caught at a party with a bag of cocaine in his jacket.  The cocaine wasn't his, but Leo refused to rat out the high school football star that asked him to hold it.  The football star was a stand up guy and never said a thing.  He ended up playing quarterback for Clemson the next year, and Leo went through the legal system.  He disappointed the hell out of his parents, but that is not the only reason.  His older brother, Steve, committed suicide when he was thirteen.  Steve was their golden boy and Leo could never replace him.  In fact, Leo's nickname, the Toad, pretty much confirms this.  Oh yes, his mother is the principal of the high school Leo and all his new friends attend as seniors that fall.

Leo is the glue that holds all these disparate people together, and the one who forges their lifelong friendship.  Starla and Niles are from the mountains of North Carolina and have been in orphanages since they were very young.  They are wounded in spirit and wary of everyone.  Sheba and Trevor have been abused by their psychopathic father, and have become consummate actors in order to deal with reality.  Chad, Molly, and Frasier live 'south of Broad' which means they are a geographic, genetic, and cultural part of old Charleston families that consider most other people beneath them.

The other story is about Charleston and its location on a peninsula between two rivers that empty into Charleston harbor and the Atlantic Ocean.  Charleston is a beautiful city that has a European flavor with its narrow streets and hidden gardens.  According to Leo's father it is "The Mansion on the River."  The descriptions of the city reveal a love that is palpable.  The entire ambiance of the city as portrayed by Leo--the people, homes, gardens, smells, the water--make Charleston unique.  This beauty provides a vivid contrast to some of the terrible events that occur in the book.

Please check out Pat Conroy's web page at www.patconroy.com for a summary of the plot and more reviews.  I can't say enough about Pat Conroy.  If you have read any of his other books you know what I am talking about.  Read South of Broad, you are in for a great experience.

Page 19: Daemon Finished

I finished reading Daemon and stand by what I said in my previous post.  This is a great technothriller, with all the blood and gore of the video games it uses for part of the premise--maybe too much, and is receiving praise from most of the readers who have commented on Amazon.  In case you don't know, Daemon is the first in a two-part series.  The second book is Freedom and continues where Daemon left off.  I have not started Freedom yet, but will write a post about it when I finish.

Daemon continued to be a good read all the way through with plenty of surprises and twists.  It begins to get somewhat political in the second half, but, hey, this is nothing new for this genre.  The ending left me wondering what will happen until I discovered Suarez will bring the story to a conclusion in his second book.  Again, Daemon appeals to geeks and gamers, but anyone who likes thrillers and sci fi will enjoy this book as well.