The Keeper of Lost Causes, by Jussi Adler-Olsen

This very highly regarded novel is just not my cup of tea.  Well written, sure, but just too dark for me.   Perhaps that's just the nature of Scandinavian writing.

The hero, barely, is a police detective, Carl Mørck.   Mørck has problems:  he just survived an attack that killed two of his police colleagues and paralyzed another.   He is lazy, cranky, and all around difficult to deal with.  His superiors can't just fire or demote him, given the recent attack, so they promote him to a one-man mission, "Department Q," to look at cold cases.

A better hero is Mørck's assistant, Assad, who takes the work seriously and thus pushes Mørck into action.

Meanwhile, we're taken back in time every chapter or so, to follow the sad story of Merete Lynggaard, victim of a childhood auto crash that killed her family and injured her brother.  She ends up abducted in this parallel story, and Mørck ends up investigating her disappearance.

So what didn't I like about this well written, interesting novel?  I don't have much patience for Mørck, as much as I'm amused by Assad.  And, the tragedy that befalls Lynggaard is just too horrible to enjoy reading in any sense.

The Keeper of Lost Causes: The First Department Q Novel

Presidential Shift, by C. G. Cooper

Having just read a novel that was relatively credible, let's shift to the extremely incredible with this one.

The concept is that recently discharged Marine Cal Stokes runs a private security firm which also contracts to the US Government.  Stokes though tends to run off on his own private missions of assassinating those that he deems to be bad guys.  His relationship with the US President is such that he can be rude to him.  Now with this setup, you'd expect to find a genius hacker in his employ who can break into any system, invent any required gadget, and eavesdrop on and decrypt any communication: check.  And a whole group of martial arts and weapons specialists: check.  The ability to wander the halls of theWhite House armed, and shoot people there: check.  Oh, and the hero has to have implacable judgement and the trust of many in spite of being an impulsive hot head: check.

No, I don't recommend this series.

Presidential Shift: A Political Thriller (Corps Justice Book 4)

Personal, by Lee Child

Mr. Child has recovered the Jack Reacher franchise in this terrific novel.  The past few books in the series were getting tired.  All is well now though.

Our hero, Jack Reacher, is called upon by the US Government to help out in an investigation with global political implications that seems to involve a recently released prisoner that Reacher had originally caught and brought to justice.  The story is interesting and there are very few of those far fetched contrivances one comes across that allow a lead character to be superhuman.

I was amused to read negative reviews of the book on Amazon, with comments such as:

"Jack Reacher likes to hitchhike. He didn’t in this book.
Jack Reacher always gets the girl. He didn’t in this book.
Jack Reacher is witty. He isn’t in this book.
Is this a Jack Reacher imposter?"

For me, it isn't important that the hero curiously "gets" the girl, and hitchhiking is just another means of transport.  What I enjoyed is an interesting and well told story.

If you've stepped away from this series this is the book to return to.

Personal: A Jack Reacher Novel

Narco Land, by Anabel Hernández

This is an outstanding, albeit rather depressing look at the state of criminal narcotic trafficking in Mexico and the extraordinary degree of government complicity and corruption that allows it to flourish.

To give a sense of the book, let me just quote from Publishers' Weekly:

"First published in Mexico as Los señores del narco in 2010, this dry translation brings Mexican investigative journalist Hernández's exposé about drug trafficking in Mexico to an English-speaking audience. Five years in the making, it's an in-depth, unforgiving look at the deep-rooted corruption that has allowed the cartels to flourish; they now influence and control vast swaths of the country. Numerous anecdotes and interviews flesh out a decades-long narrative, touching on everything from CIA and DEA involvement, to how the drug lords run their empires from prison, to the way these powerful men live and die. 

It's a scathing, sobering report, as Hernández lays the blame not just on the drug cartels, but on all those who exercise everyday power from behind a false halo of legality to make their law of 'silver or lead'  a reality. While appendices containing glossaries of acronyms and short bios do much to reduce reader confusion, there's still an immense and exhausting amount of information to absorb. Those willing to slog through the dense bits will find a thought-provoking portrait of the crime and corruption that dominates our southerly neighbor." [1]

This is not an easy book to follow. At times I felt as though I should draw a mind map to show the relationships between both the criminals profiled and their government cronies. So it does take some dedication to work through.
 
A few key takeaways:

1. Former Mexican President Felipe Calderón (who left office in December 2012) was clearly on the take and helped the drug gangs.  
2. The heads of the major Mexican federal police agencies were also benefitting from their corrupt alliances with the drug gangs even as they went through the motions of taking action against them.  
3. There is no question that the US government and particularly the DEA were aware of this; there is some potential that political concerns via the CIA and State Department hampered DEA activity against some of the more powerful political figures in Mexico's government.  
4. Even today, Calderón lectures at Harvard, presumably not about how to be a corrupt leader.  

Does any of this change under Mexico's current president, Enrique Peña Nieto?  That remains to be seen.

In any case, a must-read. And one which leads to a number of questions, such as:

1. Why would anyone (unless they really needed to, e.g., to visit a terribly ill relative) travel to Mexico given not only the state of lawlessness but also the complicity of authorities, from local mayors and policemen all the way up to the highest levels of government?  
2. Why has the US domestic effort to reduce drug use failed so badly, in spite of imprisoning over 500,000 [2] Americans (as of 2011)? 
3. And, what should we do about this?

[1] http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-78168-073-5 
[2] http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=128


Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords And Their Godfathers

Days of Rage, by Brad Taylor

Mr. Taylor has a series going that features the hero of this book, Pike Logan.  It is the first of the series that I've read, and probably will be the only one.

This is a pretty generic military special forces operator novel.   The plot was interesting enough:  Russian bad guys gunning for the USA with collateral damage to and involvement of the Israelis.  The hero, pained by past losses. The girlfriend who fixes him.  The bad guy hidden in government.

For some reason it is in vogue for the hero to be slightly undisciplined when it comes to following orders.   That's not overly annoying in itself, but I found myself in this novel being jolted out of the story line a few times, thinking, "gosh that was pretty unprofessional."

So this is probably a good series to pick up on Kindle or in paperback at an airport book store before a long flight, but not worth otherwise seeking out.

Days of Rage: A Pike Logan Thriller

Seven Kinds of Hell, by Dana Cameron

Wow: an airplane book that I enjoyed -- enough to want to read the sequel.  You'd not think it so at first glance:  our hero, Zoe, is an archaeologist who moves, with her mother, from town to town so as to avoid being found by her estranged father's family.   It turns out that Zoe has some strange habits, like attacking bad guys at random intervals, and not entirely of her free will.   She thinks herself nuts and keeps this a secret.

Have you figured it out yet?  How's the word, "werewolf" work for you?  In this novel, they call themselves "fangborn," by which they mean all manor of vampire, oracle, etc., who pop up in amazing numbers once Zoe gets clued in on things.

Oh, and her mission.  There must be a mission.  Her's is to save the world from the unknown outcome of the collection of four old statuettes and their placement on -- wait for it -- Pandora's Box. And I mustn't leave out this timely gem (after all, election day in the USA was yesterday) -- there's a nefarious US Senator involved in the action.

And in spite of all this, I really liked the novel and plan to read the next in the series .   Go figure.


Seven Kinds of Hell (The Fangborn Series Book 1)

Pentecost, by JF Penn

As an airplane book, this was great.  Who cares about plot gaps or minor typos when you're shuttling through the air trying to avoid noticing the strange behavior of the person across the aisle from you?  In crisp light and a comfortable chair, this wouldn't necessarily have made my list, even for free on Kindle.

Twelve special stones, with mystical powers, were long ago disbursed across the earth.  Now someone is collecting them with nefarious aims. Our hero is Oxford professor Morgan Sierra who gets involved in a complex way.  Conveniently, she's an Israeli with military experience and thus quicker to violent action than say the prototypical Oxford professor type.

She's helped by Jake Timber who works for a British government agency that deals with paranormal situations.  But, (spoiler alert), it isn't clear to me at the end if Jake or his agency are good or bad guys.

In any case, action ensues, lots of travel, plot holes the size of the Bay of Bengal, but hey, if you're on an airplane, who cares?

There are more episodes to this story (at least four books), but I think I'll pass -- at least until my next trip.


Pentecost. An ARKANE Thriller (Book 1)

Top Secret, by W.E.B. Griffin

My excuse is that I'm an optimist at heart.  Yes, the last book I read by this author was not very good.  And yes, I've leafed through other of his books at the library and unimpressed didn't bother with them.  But for some reason when I saw this on the library shelf I thought, this will be worth reading.

I was of course quite wrong.

The novel is set immediately after the end of World War II.  Admittedly I dislike historical fiction so that was a negative.  The positive was that the main character, Cronley, was young, inexperienced, less bright than he imagined, and naive.  So I thought we might see interesting character development as the boy grows to become a man, or some such.  Not so much.

The highlights:  don't think of these as spoilers (though they might be; if that is a concern just stop here), think of them as completely predictable.  Just run through your list of trite spy book scenarios:   Love interest dies tragically?  Check.   Brash young hero says inappropriate things to superiors yet doesn't learn?  Check.  Brash young hero makes terrible and repeated error in judgement, even as the reader says aloud, "oh no, don't do it!"  Check.  Brash young hero turns out to be wealthy?  Check.  Has ridiculously well connected and wealthy friends?  Check.  The US President has so little on his plate that he can spend time on this stuff?  Check.

Sigh.   On the plus side, I did finish the novel, so it held my interest -- at some level -- to the end.

I hope to do better than the main character of Mr. Giffin's novel and learn from my mistake: I won't read another of these novels.

Top Secret (A Clandestine Operations Novel)

The Heist, by Daniel Silva

In most respects, this the 14th novel in Mr. Silva's series featuring spy Gabriel Allon, was better  than the last.  But there was a negotiation at the end of this book that was so clumsily done as to really annoy me.  To avoid spoilers, I'll just say that it doesn't make sense to pay $6 for something you could easily get down to 50 cents.   That was not in line with the characters behavior at least as I've interpreted them over the prior 13 novels.  And the emotional call to do so, absent thoughtful discussion, also seemed out of kilter with my expectations for Mr. Silva's characters.

So would I recommend this novel?  Nah, not so much.  The hero is getting a bit long in the tooth, and I can confidently predict what will happen in his personal life and to the folks around him in the next novel in this series.  It is time for Mr. Silva to invent a new character to take the lead in his spy stories; until then there are other authors to read.

The Heist: A Novel (Gabriel Allon Book 14)

The Magician's Land, by Lev Grossman

This is the third volume in Mr. Grossman's trilogy, and it is the best by far.

The Magician's Land: A Novel (The Magicians Book 3)