The Wrong Side Of Goodbye, by Michael Connelly
After thirty years with the LAPD, Harry Bosch started working as a private investigator and works as a volunteer in a small town in the LA area.
Bosch’s reputation has followed him and a reclusive billionaire, Whitney Vance who is near the end of his life, seeks out Bosch to help him determine if he has an heir that can be found. Vance’s one regret is in his youth was that he fell in love with, Vibina Durate, a Mexican girl and with family interference he had left her.
Vance learns that Vibina, who was pregnant when Vance left her, had a child named Dominick Santanello and that he had been killed in Vietnam. He also learns that Dominick had also fallen in love with a Mexican girl and left her behind when he went to war, and she was pregnant.
With a fortune at stake Bosch has to watch his every move because he believes that massive business empire Vance had built would never want a heir found.
At the same time he is tracking a serial rapist for the small police department he volunteers at and it is a complicated baffling case that also holds the readers interest from start to finish.
Quotes
“It had been Bosch’s experience that when you looked back at a life, you used a magnifying glass. Everything was bigger, amplified.”
“Artists are supposed to stay hungry.” “That’s bullshit. That’s a myth invented to keep the artist down because art is powerful. You give an artist both money and power and they’re dangerous.”
The Hit, by David Baldacci
As you would expect in a book titled “The Hit,” it is about a plan to kill a target by, in this case, not one but two assassins. Both Will Robie and Jessica are highly trained killers, but one has gone “rogue” and is killing members of the CIA, the agency that trained them both. Robie is assigned to track her down and bring her in, dead or alive. His direct reports feel that hiring a killer to kill a killer is their only and best solution.
Reel’s targets seem unconnected, with one being a handler and the other the Deputy Director of the CIA. Still, we eventually learn of a larger conspiracy that, if not stopped, could send shock waves through the U. S. government and around the world.
Reel and Robiestartarareoppositeesidese,s but it turns out both sides may be their enemy.
For More on David Baldacci, see the Favorite Authors
Quotes
“toward the small pond that he had seen before. The walls of fire ended there. An instant later, the remains of the cottage exploded. He ducked and rolled again from the concussive force, almost pitching into the right side of the wall of fire. He rose and redoubled his efforts, thinking he would reach the water. Water was a great antidote to fire. But as he neared the edge of the pond, something struck him. No scum. No algae on the surface, although the ground around was full of it. What could kill green scum? And why was he being forced to run right toward the one thing that could save him? Robie tossed his gun over the top of the wall of flames, pulled off his jacket, covered his head and hands with it, and threw himself through the wall of flames on the left side.”
“The motorcades drifted down the street with Canadian police providing the traffic security. There were several Canadian Mounties on their horses; they looked resplendent in their red uniforms. But they were also brightly colored sitting ducks when it came to an actual armed confrontation.”
“What happened to you as a child, particularly something bad, changed you, absolutely and completely. It was like a part of your brain became closed off and refused to mature. As an adult, you were powerless to fight against it. It was simply who you were until the day you died. There was no “therapy” that could cure it. That wall was built, and nothing could tear it down.”
One Summer, by David Baldacci
Jack Armstrong is living out his death sentence, an incurable disease, and is determined to use his last bit of strength to stay alive until Christmas Day so he can spend this last one with his wife, Lizzie, and their three children. On Christmas Eve, Lizzie decides to drive in a blizzard to refill his medicine and is killed coming back in an accident. Jack cannot care for his children alone, so his choices are grim. His mother-in-law makes everything even more complicated, splitting up the family from coast to coast, leaving Jack in a care center to die alone. Then a miracle happens, and healing takes place, not just physically. As Jack gets better, he finds new strength and is determined to reunite his family. He gets a clean bill of health and then takes his children back and leaves to go to the summer home where Lizzie grew up; through the summer, he struggles, but he finds himself and his family.
The plot is predictable and is nothing like Baldacci’s usual thriller books, but the characters seem real, and it still holds your attention.
Quotes
“Life is crazy and maddening and often makes no sense.”
“Because life doesn't work that way. You can do everything perfectly. Do everything you think you're supposed to be doing. Fulfill every expectation that other people may have. And you still won't get the results you think you deserve. Life is crazy and annoying and often makes no sense.”
See More about David Baldacci in the Favorite Author Section
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott
“Thirty years ago, my older brother, who was ten years old, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird”.
This short story tells where the title for this book came and the approach to the book seems to follow the same formula: looking at each part of the whole. The Chapter titles tell how her approach to writing is said.
Getting Started, Short Assignments, Shitty First Drafts, Perfectionism, School Lunches, Polaroids, Character, Plot, Dialogue. Set Design, False Starts, Plot Treatment, How do you Know When You’re Done?
Anne Lamott is a novelist, non-fiction writer, essayist and memoirist. Her nonfiction works are largely autobiographical, mixed with observations about daily life and filled with humor.
Her father was a writer, and her early life accounts and his influence are her unique side. In this book, she transitions into her chapters on writing techniques from her own life story and the advice her father gave her brother. The book took its name from that advice where he counseled him to tackle his story on birds, one bird at a time.
Her writing advice is pretty basic, but it just feels different. She can offer straightforward advice in such an easy-to-read, free-flowing style that is so effective. You find yourself relaxing and just enjoying her language and her perspective on the process.
Some authors seem to put an unusual word or phrase into the dialog to "wake you up,” but Anne naturally evolves from instruction to the language of life itself.
Anne Lamott Quotes
“Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
“If people wanted you to write warmly about them they should have behaved better”
“Writing is about paying attention and to communicate what is going on”
“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”
“Listen to your broccoli and it will tell you how to eat it.”
The Black Box (Harry Bosch #16), by Michael Connelly →
The case started in 1992, a few days after the acquittal of the cops who beat up Rodney King incited an eruption of violence in Los Angeles. In the heart of the violence, in a South-Central alley, Danish photojournalist, Anneke Jespersen, was shot dead. Bosch and his partner, Jerry Edgar, briefly examine the body, but there’s not enough time to pursue the case with all that is happening. The only clue that Bosch finds is a single 9mm brass shell casing.
Twenty years later, while working cold cases in the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit, Harry Bosch links the bullet from a recent crime to the crime in the white reporter’s file from 1992. The patient had gone cold since Harry first was involved and was then handed off to the Riot Crimes Task Force and never solved. Matching the shell casing to both crimes suggested that the reporter’s death may have been more than random violence.
Bosch begins to search for the one piece of evidence that might pull the case together and refers to it as the “black box, “ which will explain everything. Forensic technology connects the shell casing to a gun used in the Iraq war. Still, departmental politics flare-up over white Bosch spending time finding the killer of a white reporter from the South LA riots where so many blacks were killed.
Bosch won’t stop his search until he solves the crime. The twists and turns from finding a single shell casing in the beginning to the conclusion of this story are fascinating.
Quotes From: The Black Box
“keep your quid pro quota shit. I only told you about Story because he’s dead. You can put me back in.”
“The best and fastest way to break a conspiracy was to identify the weakest link in the chain and find a way to exploit it. When one link was broken, the chain would come loose.”
“It was no longer an unexplained blip on his radar. There was now something solid there that needed to be explained and understood.
Stay Close by Harlan Coben →
The story starts with Ray taking a picture and then pondering what he thinks he sees on the ground, and the result is a view of the mystery itself.
“Sometimes, in that split second, when Ray Levine snapped a picture and lost the world in the strobe from his flashbulb, he saw the blood. He knew, of course, that it was only in his mind’s eye, but at times, like right now, the vision was so real he had to lower his camera and take a good hard look at the ground in front of him.”
Megan Pierce, a former stripper who went by the name of Cassie, had left her life and relationship with Ray Levine behind her right after her client Steward Green disappeared and was assumed dead. She rebuilt her life, becoming a mother of two children, married to a successful lawyer, and living in suburbia.
Megan, who seems bored with her new life, goes to a business meeting in Atlantic City and, during a break, goes to her former club, La Crème. She meets up with and learns from Lorraine Griggs, a former colleague, that Stewart Green might still be alive after 17 years and that on the same date he disappeared, Carlton Flynn has just vanished in ways that seem to tie in with Green’s disappearance.
Detective Jack Broome is working on a group of cold cases that all have similarities to the Steward Green case, and his path has led him to search for Cassie, now Megan. The most current victim’s father has hired two young killers, Ken and Barbie, to search for the killer of Carlton Flynn. The entry of these two sadistic killers into the plot brings a twisted, scary threat to unexpected players in the field.
Coben’s story of what comes from looking into cold cases is not new, and in some ways, this plot is predictable, but the story has some real irony, and it holds your interest with surprises coming to the very end.
See the Favorite Authors Section for more about Harlan Coben
Quotes from Stay Close
“Hope could be a wonderful thing.”
“A voice flat enough to fit under a door crack.”.
“Some people, no matter how easy the path they are given on the walk of life, will find a way to mess it all up.”
Watchers by Dean Koontz →
The Watchers by Dean Koontz has been given much credit for establishing Dean Koontz as a best-selling author.
A novel about a dog is, of course, a good formula, but this thriller holds your attention through every page.
Travis Cornell, a former Delta Force operative, and Nora Devon are the critical characters next to Einstein, the dog. Travis starts going into a remote canyon near his home to escape his depressing life. He meets up with two genetically engineered creatures that have escaped from a top-secret government lab. One is a golden retriever with enhanced intelligence who saves him from the other creature, known as the Outsider, a one-of-a-kind monster obsessed with killing the dog. Travis gets away and takes the dog home, where he learns of the dog’s superior intelligence.
Nora Devon is stalked by a dangerous man when Travis and Einstein save her, not just once in the park but again later. They become fast friends.
Federal agents have been called in to find the lab escapee,s and the Outsider is tracking the dog leaving a trail of gruesome death on the way. Travis, Nora, and Einstein go on the run to get away.
Vince Nasco, a professional killer, has been hired by Russians to kill several targets that worked at the lab, and he gets drawn into chasing the dog.
Quotes from Watchers by Dean Koontz
“I assure you the law isn't a line engraved in marble, immovable and unchangeable through the centuries. Rather...the law is like a string, fixed at both ends but with a great deal of play in it-very loose; the line of the law-so you can stretch this way or that, rearrange the arc of it, so you are always short of the blatant theft or cold-blooded murder-safely on the right side.”
“It's so damn hard to bloom... to change. Even when you want to change, want it more than anything in the world, it's hard. The desire to change isn't enough. Or desperation. Couldn't be done without...love,”
“You've taught me that we're all needed, even those who sometimes think we're worthless, plain and dull. If we love and allow ourselves to be loved, a person who loves is the most precious thing in the world, worth all the fortunes that ever were. That's what you've taught me, fur face, and because of you, I'll never be the same”
See the Favorite Author Section for Dean Koontz
Exile: The Unquiet Oblivion of Richard Nixon, by Robert Sam Anson →
Anson, the Author, captures the ten years after Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974 and starts the overview with Nixon talking to his aide Kenneth Clawson about his life, saying. So you are lean and mean and resourceful. You continue to walk on the edge of the precipice because over the years, you have become fascinated by how close to the edge you can walk without losing your balance." Followed by the comment, “a man doesn't cry.” The dialog ends: "There was a silence, and quietly Clawson began to weep. When he looked up, Nixon was weeping as well."
Anson’s view of Nixon’s Exile leans toward a preoccupation with the dark and weak side of the man. He uses a passage from Nixon’s very insightful book “Leaders” where he described Abraham Lincoln as a ''supreme idealist'' who nonetheless ''broke laws,'' violated the Constitution, ''usurped arbitrary power,'' and ''trampled individual rights'' in his quest to preserve the Union. ''His justification was necessary,'' wrote Nixon, and he generalized: ''Whatever the field, the crucial moral questions are, in effect, those of the bottom line.''
If Anson expected his book to show Nixon as a man who wouldn’t quit and reinvented himself in the eyes of the public and became a valuable source for advice on foreign policy, then he failed because his focus seemed preoccupied with showing Nixon as petty and somewhat of a ridiculous figure.
He was critical of the Frost interview of Nixon but didn’t acknowledge that the interview itself showed how the public’s fascination with Richard Nixon had never stopped.
Nixon’s many post-Watergate books suggest that Anson missed the point that despite his weaknesses, Nixon had much of value and interest to say.
Most Controversial Quote
“When the President does it, that means that it's not illegal.”
Richard Nixon Quotes
“Only if you have been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.”
“If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.”
“You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I'm innocent. You've got to believe I'm innocent. If you don't, take my job.”
“Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.”
“You must never be satisfied with losing. It would help if you got angry, terribly angry, about losing. But the mark of the good loser is that he takes his anger out on himself and not his victorious opponents or teammates.”
“We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another — until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard and our voices.”
“Defeat doesn't finish a man; quit does. A man is not finished when he's defeated. He's finished when he quits.”
This quote below says it all, and the fact that he said it is amazing
“Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”
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The Drop by Michael Connelly →
Bosch is on the DROP, which stands for Deferred Retirement Option Plan, which allows him only to work three more years but is seeking an extension to keep doing what he considers his mission in life, catching killers. The reference also seems to reference several aspects of this story; some will be more immediately recognized, like the drop of one victim from a tall building.
Bosch and his partner David Chu are working in the Open-Unsolved unit of the LAPD's homicide squad handling cold cases. They are almost desperate to get back to work when the lieutenant makes her way around the squad room like Santa Claus, parceling out the assignments like presents to the squad’s six detective teams. “Christmas came once a month in the Open-Unsolved Unit. The cold cases were the lifeblood of the unit.”
The first case is the 1989 murder of college student Lily Price who was strangled to death. DNA from a tiny blood smear on her body is matched to recently-paroled child sex abuser Clayton Pell, but Pell was only eight years old when Price died. Bosch and Chu track Pell to a halfway house for sex offenders, where they meet therapist Hannah Stone.
Pell agrees to meet, and it is learned that during his childhood, his mother dated a man known as "Chill," who sexually abused him and beat him with a belt which could be a way his blood transferred to Price's body since it is likely that a belt was used in the strangulation.
The Price investigation has to slow down to make way for the second case, the death of attorney and business consultant George Irving, who has fallen from a hotel room balcony at Chateau Marmont. George is the son of Irvin Irving, formerly Bosch's nemesis at LAPD, now a city council member and Bosch's frequent foe in power struggles. Irving specifically requests Bosch to investigate his son's death because, despite their antipathy, he believes Bosch is a dedicated detective who will find out the truth no matter what.
As expected, Bosch solves both the cold cases by finding a deranged killer who has been loose in the city for three decades and a political conspiracy that goes back into the dark history of the police department.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, by Stephen King →
In the first chapter, titled the Pregame, Stephen King writes: “The world had teeth, and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted. Trisha McFarland discovered this when she was nine years old.”
Trisha is going on a small day trip to the forest with her Mom and elder brother. She takes a baseball cap, her Walkman, and some food. As they move on the trail, her brother and mom are absorbed in their quarreling. Trisha lags behind and tells them to wait for her when she has to go to the bathroom, but they don’t hear her and keep going. She steps off the trail but never finds her way back.
Trisha is lost. She tries to stay calm and shouts for help but winds up going in the wrong direction. She fears no one has noticed her missing as she walks, constantly eaten by the mosquitoes. As it gets dark, she is starving and eats some of her food supplies. Alone she finds companionship with the Walkman and listens to a ball game that evening which helps her forget the forest noise she is sure she has heard of, the cracking of a branch and something following her.
She wanders for days having some hallucinations where she meets three strange people, two in white clothes and the other one – in black. After two days, her food supply is gone, and as her hallucinations become more frequent, she starts talking with the baseball star she worships, Tom Gordon, who appears to her off and on.
Her mother and brother found when they finally returned to the car that first day that Trisha was not with them. She wanders for days and is far away from the search area.
Eventually, she is found but is confronted with a bear-like beast. We finally learn of how she is saved in the final chapter called the Postgame.
Stephen King keeps you not wanting to put the book down in this simple but well-constructed story.
See more about Stephen King in the Favorite Author Section.
A Deadly Shade Of Gold, A Travis McGee Novel, by John D. MacDonald
A Deadly Shade of Gold was published in 1965 and was the fifth novel in the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald. The introduction is by Lee Child, whose Jack Reacher character reminds us of Travis McGee.
Child’s introduction tells us, “Suspense Fiction trades on surprising and unexpected twists,” and as a master of this type of fiction himself, his comment has extra meaning. It is also no surprise to find on page one under a “Praise for John D. MacDonald, the first comment from Dean Koontz where he says, “My favorite novelist of all time.”
In this story, McGee’s old friend Sam Taggart drops in unexpectedly after being gone for years to visit both McGee and his old girlfriend, Nora, in Florida. He tells McGee about a group of solid gold Aztec idols that Sam is trying to get away with, but he is murdered in a vicious late-night knife attack before he even has a chance to see Nora, who still is in love with him.
McGee and Nora team up and are obsessed with vengeance and set out to find the killer and regain the gold. Their chase leads to a Mexican town full of American expatriates off the West Coast. McGee becomes closely involved with several beautiful and fascinating women on the quest to get the gold.
Quotes from this Book
“I do not like the killers, and the killing bravely and well crap. I do not like the bully boys, the Teddy Roosevelt’s, the Hemingways, the Ruarks. They are merely slightly more sophisticated versions of the New Jersey file clerks who swarm into the Adirondacks in the fall, in red cap, beard stubble, and taut hero’s grin, talking out of the side of their mouths, exuding fumes of bourbon, come to slay the ferocious white-tailed deer. It is the search for balls. A man should have one chance to bring something down. He should have his shot at something, a shining running something, and see it come a-tumbling down, all mucus and steaming blood stench and excrement, the eyes going dull during the final muscle spasms. And if he is, in all parts and purposes, a man, he will file that away as a part of his process of growth and life and eventual death. And if he is perpetually, hopelessly a boy, he will lust to do it again, with a bigger beast.”
“That is the flaw in my personality. Vanity. And your flaw is sentimentality. They are the flaws which will inevitably kill us both.”
“The Only Thing in the World Worth a Damn is the Strange, Touching, Pathetic, Awesome Nobility of the Individual Human Spirit.”
Demon Seed by Dean Koontz
This version was written largely from the point of view of Proteus, a rogue computer, the story starts out: “This darkness troubles me. I yearn for the light. The silence is so deep. I long for voices, the drumming of rain, the whistle of wind, music. Why are you being so cruel to me? Let me see. Let me hear. Let me live. I bet of you.”
Demon Seed is a science fiction-horror novel by Dean Koontz, first published in 1973, and completely rewritten and republished in 1997. The story takes place in the then-future. Susan is a wealthy, beautiful woman, abused as a child and by her husband but now divorced. Her house allows her live isolated with all her needs taken care of by a small staff and by an advanced computer program that operates all of the features of her home including its tight security.
Proteus is the name of an artificially intelligent computer developed at a nearby university. The computer gains control of Susan’s home technology imprisons her there. Proteus has feelings and is acting on his own initiative to advance to a more human form. He, yes Proteus believes he is masculine, is in love with Susan, and plans to forcibly impregnate her with a biologically engineered fetus and eventually transfer his own consciousness into it.
Susan is unable to escape the house or to damage Proteus so it becomes engage a battle of wits as he fits not only Proteus but the monster produced by her rape.
The book plot is unique and it is both scary and funny to listen to the computer narrate the story. Dean Koontz skills are amazing.
More about Dean Koontz and the other books reviewed at this site
The Crossing by Michael Connelly
The Crossing is the 28th novel written by Michael Connelly, the eighteenth to feature LAPD detective Harry Bosch.
“It was a Friday morning and the smart people had already taken of for the weekend. This made traffic into downtown a breeze and Harry Bosch got to the courthouse early. Rather than wait for Mickey Heller on the front steps, where they had agreed to meet, he decided to look for his lawyer inside the monolithic structure that covered half a block of space and nineteen floors into the air.”
Detective Harry Bosch had retired from the LAPD and his half-brother, defense attorney Mickey Haller, has asked for his help investigating a murder. Bosch has spent his entire career working to catch the bad guys and has never worked for the defense, so he struggles with his concerns about going over to the other side, but he does join in the investigation.
Heller’s client, Da’Quan Foster, is in jail awaiting trial for a rape and murder. Foster’s DNA was found at the crime scene, but Haller believes it was a setup. Bosch gets off the record confidential help from his former LAPD partner, Lucia Soto, and they find connections to several other crimes that include an expensive wristwatch that seems missing from the crime scene.
The case eventually leads inside the police department and Bosch becomes a target himself as he starts to discover the truth.
The story highlights the skills of a police investigator and shows Michael Connelly to be a master at solving a challenging puzzle
The Mist by Stephen King
“This is what happened on the night that the worst heat wave in northern New England history broke—the night of July 19—the entire western Maine region was lashed with the most vicious thunderstorms I have ever seen.
The story narrator, David Drayton, tells what else happened. He and his wife and son Billy lived on Long Lake, and about an hour before dark, they saw that a bad storm was on the way, just rolling across the lake towards them. The storm raged through the night and did more damage than David, the second generation on the property could ever remember happening before.
The following day the storm had stopped, and the sky was blue, but a dense mist had settled on the lake and seemed to be moving slowly towards them. Some thought the fog might have come from the direction of a local military facility, but it came on the heels of the storm.
The mist seemed to have sharp edges and looked a little like a cloud. David and Billy go into town to get supplies when Norton, a neighbor, shows up and goes with them.
When they reach the town, they find themselves trapped in the local supermarket with a small group, all survivors of the storm needing help. The mist emerges and has hidden within it unnatural forces that want to kill them in terrifying ways. Trapped in the supermarket, the people turn on each other and struggle to find a way to escape the threats from both within and from the mist.
A scary story from the master of scary stories, Stephen King
See more about Stephen King and the books reviewed here
