Review-THE TERRORIST NEXT DOOR

 

The Terrorist Next Door         

By Sheldon Siegel

ISBN: 978-1-4642-0164-6

A 2013 hardcover release

From Poisoned Pen Press

 

A fascinating and important idea that could have benefited from better writing and better editing. Factual errors might call into question some of the more important elements of the story. Make no mistake, this is an exciting, sophisticated plot idea.. It is in the execution, the writing, that the book reveals unfortunate flaws that could easily have been corrected.

 

There is a lot of history here. One of the more interesting elements devolves from the meticulous and careful plotting that sends our hero, Chicago detective David Gold and his partner, detective A.C. Battles, from one end of Chicago to the other, in a frantic and sometimes predictable effort. They are chasing a clever, almost ephemeral perpetrator, clashing with their administration and trying to avoid the media. Readers will get that early on and don’t need too be reminded of it in  almost every chapter. The book does demonstrate how a careful, intelligent evil individual, might shut down a major city.

The author betrays an antipathy to politicians and law enforcement leadership which gets a little wearing. Thus the detectives have to battle both the diabolical mind of the evil near-genius and the perceived incompetence of their administration.

The pace is rapid which is a saving element and the question of satisfactory conclusion is in question until the very end. I just wish the author and his editors had fixed a few of the more obvious shortcomings, corrected factual errors and produced a better book..

Review--EMBASSY KID

 

Embassy Kid

By J.K. Amerson Lopez

ISBN: 9781637235973

2025 release from

Westphalia Press

 

It’s the 1950’s. Robert Amerson, who grew up in the Hidewood section of Eastern South Dakota, is married, living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with his wife and their two girl children. He has a good job, but opportunity comes calling. It’s the United States government, specifically the U.S. Information Agency with a two year gig. Thus begins a decades long career and life abroad for the author of this excellent memoir.

The girls were better at speaking Spanish than English in their earliest years. The memoir chronicles the highlights and trials of this family of four from the beginning in 1955 Caracas, with several pauses in assorted embassies, to a last homecoming from Madrid in 1973.

If you can recall your recent American history, you’ll remember that we lived in fraught times and while the author writes beautifully of her family and personal life, her story connects nicely to world events. This is a readable memoir that will illuminate world events in a different and personal way for any reader, and provides thoughtful understanding of our role and influence in global affairs.

Review--WHOSE NAMES ARE UNKNOWN

Whose Names Are Unknown

By Sanora Babb

ISBN:0-8061-3712-6

A 2004 trade paper release from

University of Oklahoma Press

It’s 1938 and a young talented, adventurous woman from the Oklahoma panhandle lands a job with the Farm Security Administration in California, working with the refugee farmers from her home state. These were the people of the high plains who saw their farms and their lives blown away in the horrendous dust storms of the nineteen thirties. The camps in California were one legacy of the Dust Bowl.

Out of that experience, those associations, Sanora Babb fashioned this novel, a first-hand up-close story with intense empathy and understanding for the people. The novel has an interesting and unfortunate history. In 1939 the author submitted her manuscript to New York publisher, Random House. The publisher’s editor, Bennett Cerf called the novel an exceptionally fine piece of work and planned to publish it. A few months later, publication was halted in the face of the huge success of John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath.”

Sanora Babb went on to a strong literary career, authoring five books and numerous shorter pieces published in the top literary magazines of the Twentieth Century. Now finally, sixty-five years late, this moving, intimate novel is seeing daylight. Is it as good or better than Steinbeck’s? Read it for yourself and judge. This is no grand pronouncement to illuminate the scope of what we know as the Dust Bowl Years, “Whose Names are Unknown” looks poverty and deprivation in the face and deals with the lives and deaths of those most materially affected.

Babb’s writing is clean, she wastes no words and the narrative voice brings her fascinating characters to the pages in a way that will remain with the reader for some time. This is truly a novel to savor.

Review—THE RIVER WE REMEMBER

 By William Kent Krueger

 Published by Atria Books, 2023

978-1-9821-7921-2

Mr. Krueger is well known and celebrated in the reading communities for his Cork O’Connor mystery series, and for   THIS TENDER LAND and ORDINARY GRACE. This long novel is another penetrating look into the lives of a group of small Minnesota town residents. The town of Jewel, apparently a county seat, is home to a fascinating and varied group of residents, including war veterans, foreign-born and other citizens, as well as firmly implanted Americans. The novel explores how events, history and memory influence our every-day lives.

When a prominent if not beloved wealthy farmer and land-owner is found dead on the river bank that flows near town, the circumstance of his death roil the waters of the river and the many rivers of memory and life that are found in the minds and souls of a range of characters.

The cast of this novels is large and wide-ranging from a Dakota veteran marine married to a Japanese woman, to fourteen-year old boys to a town drunk, an unmarried mother with a fraught past, to ordinary passersby. All are burdened in some way, large and small, with rivers of memory that have the constant ability to affect our actions. While the unraveling of the questions regarding the citizen’s death and discovery in the Alabaster River and the many associated events of that summer propel the narrative, it is the gentle speculation regarding the personal rivers we readers will remember that generate the adhesive of this fine novel that helps carry us to the final surprising and satisfying conclusions.

As always, the author’s attention to detail, to character and setting, to careful weaving of the net of plot, to rational thoughtful connections, will draw in readers and secure our interest to the very end.

Review--EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS KILLED SOMEONE

 

Everyone in My Family has Killed Someone

By Benjamin Stevenson

U.S. Edition by Mariner books, 2023

 

Most of us have probably experienced a medium-level stand-up comedian’s act. Here’s one in print. It is a crime novel containing several asides from the author. The author’s asides to readers are amusing, distracting and help him maintain his adherence to the 1929 “Rules of Detective Fiction,” as articulated by British author Ronald Knox.

The narrative tells the story of his family’s gathering after the release from prison of one of the younger members of the family. The family, in several generations has gathered in a remote Australian mountain resort, in part to celebrate that release. In a blinding snowstorm, a murder occurs with a host of ripples that affect each of the family members, as well as the host owner of the resort.

Good descriptions of the snow storm and effects of the murder an search for the culprit do engage the narrative, as do some of the characters. But while the author adheres rigidly to Knox’s rule, he has not enhanced the attraction of the novel, nor do the several factual and typographical errors.