Archive for the ‘Book Reviews’ Category

Review of Adam Kinzinger’s Renegade…

Wednesday, January 24th, 2024

Renegade. Adam Kinzinger, author (2023). Between Liz Cheney’s book (reviewed last week) and this one, the reader will have most of the full story of what led up to January 6, 2021 and what has come after in the years that followed, laying the foundation for holding DJT accountable for the mayhem and murder that occurred as a consequence of his futile attempt to lead a coup against the duly elected new president Joe Biden and American government in general. You will only need to add the select committee’s full report to get the full story, one that most of the Marchin’ MAGA Morons don’t care about, of course. (Narcissus le Grand is their fuehrer, king, and lord who they believe walks on water. He will save them from all the non-white invaders and God deniers, don’t you know? But can he save them from themselves?)

Kinzinger’s is the most personal tale which nicely complements Cheney’s. He is more biographical and goes farther back in time. You peek inside his mind a lot more. His is a story about the makings of a true conservative, what fascist Trump and his fascist followers are not and never can be, because Kinzinger believes, as I do, that true conservatives are needed to balance that exuberant progressivism that so often fails to see the unplanned-for bad consequences of their policies. (“Sanctuary cities” are an obvious example because the federal government has so far refused to help them.) There are only a few such conservatives left in government, especially in Congress and SCOTUS. Many true conservatives in Congress have had to run for their lives literally because of fascist threats to them and their families. Even Kinzinger’s family members and friends who’d supported him in his political campaigns for the House in Illinois turned against him. He now lives near his wife’s family in Texas, of all places. (I’d never live in Texas; it’s a completely fascist state now, and it really belongs to Mexico.) And all his troubles maxed out when Cheney and he participated in that January 6th committee investigating Trump’s attempted coup. (Cheney had it worse in Wyoming. I imagine that both still have bodyguards as DJT’s “retribution campaign” for 2024 includes his spurring on followers to maim and kill anyone who defied him.) Remember the gallows erected on January 6 and the chants of “Hang Mike Pence!”? According to many fascist members of Congress, these were just ordinary Americans on a tour of the Capitol!

Kinzinger points out how Il Duce’s followers live in a fictional alternate reality created by their fuehrer and promoted by Fox News and other far-right media. That old Nazi spin-doctor Goebbels must be smiling. He had the original idea: Say lies often enough and stupid people will start believing them. Forget obvious idiots like QAnon’s conspiracy believers. American fascists keep saying that President Biden lost. He actually crushed DJT in both the popular vote and Electoral College, turning Narcissus le Grand into one of the biggest political losers in American history, which continued in the 2022 midterms. Trump has never won the popular vote, not even in 2016! Sadly, the Marchin’ MAGA Morons still believe these lies!

Kinzinger agonizes over and laments the nasty bifurcation and polarization in our country, this us-against-them attitude today’s Good Ole Piranhas continue to promote in their politics. He agonizes over how Trump has corrupted religious beliefs so much that they have become the evil tool of the fascists. And, like me but unlike Cheney, he’s not afraid to use the word “fascism” to describe what the current battle for America’s soul is all about. But Kinzinger, more than anything, laments the death throes of the Republican Party as it solidifies into the Fascist Party of America. He’s a voice crying in the wilderness, though, as the US sinks more into the fetid cesspool known as fascism.

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“Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. This nine-book series follows some of Esther’s history in working for MI6 and Scotland Yard while also helping her paramour and later hubby Bastiann van Coevorden solve mysteries and bring criminals to justice (or vice versa). The art motif harks to her association with recovering stolen artworks and running a gallery, but the case histories recorded by her one-time boss in the Art and Antiques Division of the Yard, starting with Rembrandt’s Angel and ending with Celtic Chronicles (there’s a free PDF download, Defanging the Red Dragon, that’s a crossover novel involving Chen and Castilblanco, and the duo also appears in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy), the reader will enjoy these 21st century versions of Miss Marple (Esther’s a lot more limber!) and Hercule Poirot (Bastiann is Dutch not Belgian). Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not always on Amazon).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

 

Review of Liz Cheney’s Oath and Honor…

Wednesday, January 17th, 2024

Oath and Honor. A Memoir and a Warning. Liz Cheney, author (2023). I have the official report from the January 6th Select Committee. While there are glimpses into the author’s political thoughts here in this book, I hasten to state that, like that committee’s report, her book is more a bipartisan indictment of the ex-president Donald J. Trump and proof that he’s a clear and present danger to democracy in America.

There are a few nits to pick besides those I might have about the author’s political biases, though. Let’s consider them:

This book is not a memoir! You really need to read closely to find details about the author’s life. The book is truly a warning, one good people don’t need very much (except for my third point below). But isn’t any book about Narcissus le Grand a dire warning if it’s worth anything at all? The whole subtitle is therefore unnecessary.

An oath to the Constitution should not be taken as “originalist” fealty to a dated document! The very event that required VP Pence to stand pat and do his “constitutional duty,” much to his credit, would never have have been needed if the Founding Fathers had decided not to create the Electoral College that clearly violates the one man-one vote principle. This, among other mistakes, puts chinks in the armor of democracy America’s fascists have found; the Electoral College has guaranteed that GOP candidates have won the White House without winning the popular vote ever since Reagan. That’s not democracy; that’s fascism. The Constitution that Ms. Cheney so loves badly needs editing. And the Oath Keepers, after all, claimed to be keeping their oaths to the Constitution!

The author commits the same sin that many authors do when criticizing today’s GOP. Too many are afraid of not saying a person who talks like a fascist, walks like a fascist, and threatens people and institutions like a fascist, is indeed a fascist! Good political writers should make every effort to choose the correct words. Not calling Trump and his marching MAGA morons fascists only leads to some people conflating true conservatives, so necessary in our political system, people like Cheney, Kinzinger, and Romney, along with a few others, with those fascists. Even a progressive like me recognizes that we need true conservatives if only to balance the exuberance of progressives in a democratic society. We don’t need fascists!

All that being said, the best way to treat this tome is to consider it a guide to the full report. In fact, I’ll place both books side by side on my bookshelf…and recommend them as guides to anyone who considers themselves to be a responsible citizen of this once great country that Donald J. Trump has damaged so much.

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“Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series. These books are fiction, but they’re ample evidence for my continuing concern for America’s future. The fictional prose here can only help people like Cheney and many others on the right and left who are also concerned about America’s future continue to raise the alarms. None of that will help unless people heed them and take action, of course, using the democratically established tools of ballot boxes.

These two NYPD cops provide a great example, in fact, of how people can agree on the bigger dangers for free societies. Castilblanco, the progressive, is the type of guy far-right traitors and so many others love to hate, even though he’s more American than most. (FYI to them and DJT if they’re possibly reading this: Puerto Ricans are Americans!) Chen, the conservative who’d probably enjoy talking with Cheney about America’s future, is a Chinese-American who teams up with Castilblanco to thwart the bad guys.  The eight novels (one, Defanging the Red Dragon, is a crossover and a free downloadable PDF) will provide readers with hours of reading entertainment…and hopefully spur them onto voting for truth and the American way!

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Book reviews: Tapper’s All the Demons are Here…

Wednesday, November 8th, 2023

All the Demons are Here. Jake Tapper, author (2023). It seems that everyone wants to write a novel now. Actually not—most people don’t have the endurance to run that literary marathon—but Mr. Tapper has written three. I read a previous one, The Hellfire Club (I can’t remember if I wrote a review of it because I’m not that motivated to help out Big Five publishing conglomerates), and this one is a mixed bag in comparison.

The historical setting might interest a lot of people of my generation. (As an observer of society in general and a political observer in particular, necessary for my own writing, post-Nixon, pre-Reagan years represent the times many of us came of age like Ike, one of the protagonists—the other is his younger sister Lucy.

However, you might get the feeling that “Hey, I don’t remember that happening!” or “I never heard that song!” or whatever, and more often than not you’d be justified. Check the end notes. Tapper made up a lot of stuff and admits it, and that all became annoying to me. (This includes stuff about Evel Knieval and Elvis Presley.) Join me in feeling a bit swindled.

Those examples are minor criticisms, though, compared to the feeling that it’s hard to know where Jake is going with the plot. It alternates between Ike and Lucy from chapter to chapter, their two stories written in the first person. Do they come together? Beyond certain limitations (mostly with point of view), there’s nothing much wrong with this ping-pong match between main characters. I used it myself a while ago in A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. (It’s a sci-fi rom-com, so the two protagonists are intimately involved from the start—Mr. Tapper’s never really are.) But Ike’s story revolves around the drunk, show-boating Evel; and Lucy’s around sleazy Max Lyons and his family, a fictional caricature of the Murdoch family. You wait and wait for the two stories to come together. It takes fourteen chapters to even get to where something interesting occurs that brings the siblings’ stories together and make the plot worthwhile. Maybe you should just read this novel for its chapters fifteen to eighteen? Of course, that all occurred on a dark and stormy night!

The reference to Agatha Christie is almost blasphemy, by the way. This is no mystery tale. Is it a historical thriller? Maybe. Is it a political thriller? Perhaps. Or maybe a manual on how to ride a motorcycle? Whatever it is, it’s not a mystery. It’s more an anthem celebrating how honest journalism always wins, as it should, considering it’s Jake Tapper writing!

I’m not sure it’s a thriller either. The book is advertised that way, and the endorsements (Connelly? Coben? Really?) express this, but its thrills are few and far between and mostly in those last three chapters.

I don’t know how to classify this novel, but I have little to recommend it, even if you think Mr. Tapper is the best political reporter on TV now. (He is.)

Note to Jake: I generally don’t purchase Big Five books. This one was a gift.

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A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. There are a lot of historical events, politics, and comments of human societies, past and present, in this sci-fi rom-com that unlike many time-travel stories does time travel right, by jumping through the multiverse among different possible states of the universe we inhabit. It gives a new meaning of “lost in space-time” to “lost in space,” and the protagonists, physicist Gail and her tech Jeff, have many adventures along the way as their relationship matures. You’ll either hate me or love me for my comments on our past, present, and future as you read about their travels. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Book Review: Joan Biskupic’s Nine Black Robes…

Wednesday, July 26th, 2023

Nine Black Robes. Joan Biskupic (2023). “No one should be confident that this majority is done with its work.”—Dissenting opinion, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Thus begins and ends this excellent expose of the fascist takeover of the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) written by CNN commentator and SCOTUS expert Biskupic.

Yes, fascist SCOTUS! Unlike the author, I’ll call a spade a spade, and the SCOTUS’s new majority are rabid fascists who conspire with the Good Ole Piranhas, which include fanatical evangelicals and Catholics, Putin lovers, racists, and bigots, along with many other far-right elements in government. And they are out to destroy democracy in America by whittling away at individual rights, enabling mad-dog gun enthusiasts, etc. by arguing that’s what the Founding Fathers wanted!

Too strong? If you believe that, read this excellent book, and then let’s talk. (Probably too much to ask of MAGA maniacs that they actually read something worthwhile of course. Their fuehrer doesn’t like to read.) It’s a toss-up which group in America represents the most existential problem for American democracy, the climate-change deniers (let them die in the three-digit heat waves and other extreme climate events that will continue to plague the country and the world!) or the idiots out to destroy America by other means. (Of course, these groups have a lot of members in common!)

Here the author knows the law, SCOTUS history, and the ins and outs of the legal issues. She presents the story of how Trump, McConnell, McCann, and other fascists over decades created today’s fascist majority in the court…and she does it well. Although the story is comparable to how Mein Kampf led to Hitler’s takeover, it’s been a much slower one in America compared to Germany, aided and abetted by every conservative president since Reagan. (Of course, “conservative” morphed into “fascist” during that process in American government and elsewhere!)

Today we have the following in that SCOTUS fascist majority: Thomas, who’d be welcome in the Ku Klux Klan; Alito, who’s more fascist than Scalia ever was (and that’s saying a lot); Chief Justice Roberts, who has turned hypocrisy into a fine art; and the two new lackeys of the far right, Comey Bryant and Kavanaugh—all of them rabid Catholic fundamentalists except for Thomas. (Beyond fascism, he just goes along with his colleagues fundamentalism, but you can bet he’d never receive the support of the BLM or #MeToo movement.) These fascist judges will be around a long time, and they’re out to ruin American democracy by legislating from the bench.

The author doesn’t dwell on the obvious solutions required to weaken these fascists’ powers: age and term limits plus increasing the number of judges. The Dems had better control both houses of Congress and the presidency in 2024 so these solutions can be implemented. Of course, the way things are going (SCOTUS doesn’t protect the integrity of elections!), maybe the Dems will never win another election in America if they can prevent it!

So, in brief, this book is a good portrayal of the current SCOTUS, doesn’t use the appropriate word “fascist” to describe the six judges who form the junta basically in charge of the country now, and doesn’t consider the obvious solutions. Perhaps it needs a second volume to do that? Or the author simply accepts that American democracy is dying and doomed, and we can do nothing about it? In this sense, this book is a depressing yet very informative read.

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The Klimt Connection. I don’t write legal thrillers. The nearest I’ve come is this eighth novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series where Esther backs an old Austrian Jewish man who is conned into selling his Klimt painting, complete with trial. There are a lot of other things going on, including the introduction of readers to Inspector Steve Morgan who has a secondment with MI5 to bring down a far-right terrorist group. (He soon has his own series!) This is a complex mystery/thriller that has Esther in a case that harks back to her days in Scotland Yard’s “Art and Antiques” Division. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not on Amazon). Enjoy.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Review of Elie Honig’s Hatchet Man…

Wednesday, February 8th, 2023

Hatchet Man. Elie Honig, author (2021, 2022). While one could argue that this is more a book for addicts of legal thrillers, it’s unfortunately non-fiction. It paints a disturbing picture of the man who never tried a case in his life yet became US Attorney General twice, William Barr. The focus here is on the second time, his two years as Jeff Sessions’s replacement in the Trump administration. In those two years, he preached the gospel of Trump’s “absolute immunity”; selectively released only aspects of the Mueller report to confuse people, and waved it off as a waste of time and money; damaged DoJ’s reputation (it’s still recovering); and promoted Trump’s “big lie.” And then he became the rat leaving the sinking ship by resigning!

I’d like to highlight four new things I learned in this expose of Barr’s incompetence and malfeasance in office. (Biopic? Chronicle? Call it what you want, but it’s an unflattering picture of an old fool who went out of his way to end his career by damaging so completely his reputation!)

First, by comparing Barr’s actions with the author’s time spent in the SDNY as a prosecutor  where he even prosecuted John Gotti a fourth time (the jury was incurably deadlocked, as in the previous three times), we not only see how unprepared Barr was to be AG but how much Trump and his family resemble a mafia family. More of an embellishment on what I already knew but with some surprises, and entertaining nonetheless.

Second, the book shows how complicit Barr was in destroying the DoJ’s reputation by turning his and his department’s focus on acting as the ex-president’s personal lawyers who would defend him at all cost. Added to the distrust we now have of SCOTUS and the court system as a whole caused by loading the courts with far-right judges, America’s justice system has been left in sad shape. It will take a long time for it to recover, if it ever does. Judges serve life terms, and Barr set the bar very low (pun intended) for any future AG who could very well think he can get away with the same crap.

Third, Barr’s actions were more driven by self-interest and furthering his own agenda. He viewed Trump only as a tool, a battle axe he could use to attack secularism in American society and promote the agenda of far-right Catholicism. I had no idea he was such an ultra-conservative Catholic. No one, absolutely no one, filled with such religious fanaticism should ever be AG! This unqualified and unscrupulous AG wrote papers about how secularism is corrupting America. Of course, evangelicals also saw Trump as their tool as well. This is also true of several current members of SCOTUS. The US barely escaped becoming an evil theocracy like Iran…and that still could happen!

Fourth, considering the damage Barr did to the DoJ, the reader of this review might ask what we can do to fix it. To Honig’s credit, he makes some sound proposals for reform in the chapter titled “The Road Back” that Garland and his minions should try to make DoJ policy. (Unfortunately, none of this chapter offers a solution for the problems with SCOTUS, which could do more lasting damage for a long time!)

This isn’t a long book, but it’s a pithy one. It will add a great deal to anyone’s understanding of how Trump and his MAGA maniacs almost succeeded in destroying democracy in America. It also provides a road map for what to avoid and what to fix in the future. Highly recommended!

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Menace from Moscow. Coming soon! In this third novel of this post-apocalyptic sci-fi trilogy, the critical and difficult management of geopolitics in a post-apocalyptic world caused by a worldwide bioengineered virus continues: Survivor Penny Castro and her friends’ new task is to recover nuclear-armed missiles aboard a US submarine that sunk off Cuba’s coast at the beginning of the pandemic. As if the train trip from Colorado to Florida across a dangerous, desolate, and devasted US isn’t enough, what awaits them in the Caribbean and beyond will put any fan of sci-fi thrillers on the edge of their seats. From SoCal to Cheyenne Mountain and on to Florida, Cuba, and what remains of the Russian Federation, Penny’s adventures are full of mystery, thrills, and suspense. This novel will be available at most online retailers (but not Amazon!) and at most library and lending services. For your consideration and enjoyment: The end of Penny’s post-apocalyptic adventures.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

 

 

Book review: The Hobbit…

Wednesday, January 25th, 2023

The Hobbit. J. R. R. Tolkien, author (1957). “What?” you say. “I come here to read reviews about new books, not old ones. I can just see the damn movie!” A fair complaint, I suppose, but any reader of this blog who might say such a thing doesn’t write the articles for this blog! And while I greatly enjoyed the three Lord of the Rings movies, I read the corresponding books as a kid. (Much better reads than that Harry Potter crap, of course.) But I didn’t read The Hobbit, which is like Asimov’s Prelude to Foundation relative to his Foundation trilogy, i.e., this book is the prelude to the Rings trilogy. (By the way, that trilogy was just one epic novel that Tolkien divided into three for publication.) So, if I ever see The Hobbit movie (a big “if”), I’m better prepared to critique what Hollywood does with it.

As many of you know, this is the story of not Frodo but Bilbo Baggins, the little hobbit whom Gandalf the wizard forces upon the dwarf Thorin Oakenshield and his dwarf buddies to serve as their aide and moral rock on their quest to reclaim their riches guarded by the evil and murderous dragon Smaug. The reader will meet many more creatures from Middle-earth in addition to the dwarves and hobbits: goblins (where Bilbo steals the infamous ring from Gollum); elves (not always good guys and quite self-centered and smug at times); talking birds and wolves; and ordinary humans.

I couldn’t help making a comparison between Tolkien’s book and H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines. Of course, there are many stories about searches for lost treasure, old and new, and The Hobbit is both a weird and entertaining one. It has all the trappings of an adventure story, though—or a modern thriller!—but it’s fantasy, of course, one of the pioneering originals, better known than most, and better in quality than most everything else I’ve read.

Tolkien’s work, in fact, can provide lessons for any aspiring author. (See next week’s article for an unusual one.) None of his main characters are simple ones. Each one is as complicated as any real person might be. The settings are strange but well-described. The plot moves inexorably forward (although possibly a bit rushed toward the end?), and it’s mostly in the POV of the hobbit, alternating between action and introspective reflection for him and among its characters. This is classic storytelling that should be studied in any MFA writing program worth its salt.

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Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape. I don’t write a lot of fluff (and could never compete with Tolkien writing fantasy, or many other authors either, for that matter), so I don’t have any fantasy novels. But this collection of short fiction contains some stories that could be called fantasy—ghosts in a Massachusetts town, a zombie chasing a time traveler, a dog take over by an ET, and so forth—so you might want to have some reading fun with it. In contrast to other books, it’s only available on Amazon (it’s the other way around with my recently published books!). Note: The other volumes in this series of short fiction collections are even less expensive—they’re free. (See the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page for a list of all my free downloadable PDFs.)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Book Review: Maggie Haberman’s Confidence Man…

Wednesday, November 9th, 2022

Confidence Man. Maggie Haberman, author (2022). Unlike other books about Donald J. Trump and his MAGA fascism, this one is more of a standard biography. We see the making of a sociopathic leader who led an unsuccessful coup against the US government on January 6, 2021. Unfortunately, he’s not unique because there are many others now on America’s far right and they could accomplish what he set out to do: Turn the USA into the FSA, the Fascist States of America. In fact, he might return in 2024 to lead MAGA maggots on.

Like many pundits and analysts studying the extreme right-wing of the Good Ole Piranhas, Ms. Haberman is afraid to use the words fascist and fascism. I’m not, and I challenge any intelligent person to read this book and not see the parallels with 1930s Germany and the rise of the Nazi party. Germany’s fascism wasn’t the creation of Hitler; America’s is not the creation of Trump. They’re both just examples of two charismatic and narcissistic leaders’ abilities to brainwash millions of citizens and turn them into lemmings who follow them over the cliffs into the abyss of fascism.

But this is a book review, so let’s get some technical details out of the way first. This book is badly edited—you can tell it was hastily put together. The publisher, Penguin Press, did Ms. Haberman no favors. This applies to content-editing as well as copy-editing. And I understand the intention of the front and back images on the flyleaf cover: They wanted to state in images that the biopic considers all of DJT’s life from his time as a spoiled yet tortured brat in the household of a sociopathic father (a mental illness DJT also suffers from, according to many mental health professionals, including his own niece) to the incompetent businessman and fanatical, narcissistic, and paranoid fascist. But the back pic and its sentence (see below) would have been better on the front.

With the chaos DJT has created and is still creating, it’s of course difficult to content-edit and maintain a more rational feel in a book about him. A man who can go from one topic to another in minutes and rarely seems focused was always a real challenge for anyone trying to “manage him,” as the huge turnover in his administration indicated. That chaos is also any challenge for any biographer too, so the majority of pages in this tome are roller-coaster rides, a whacka-mole reading experience.

More disconcerting for me, though, were the copy-editing errors that often interrupted my reading when I would need to stop and say “Huh?” until I figured out what was meant. I shan’t blame the author for all of these errors—she’s an accomplished journalist and probably a better writer than anyone in Penguin’s editorial staff—so I blame the latter. At the retail price of $32 as indicated on that flyleaf cover, Penguin will make a killing with this book everyone’s been waiting for, so they should have delivered a more polished product. (Unfortunately, this critique is all too applicable to traditionally published works today, especially from the Big Five publishing conglomerates that are anxious to make their money as fast as possible.)

Still, the reader has here a well documented portrayal of the man who is out to destroy American democracy. You see here no positives about Trump or his rabid MAGA maggot followers, or inept and chaotic administration, or his wild and incoherent policies—only negatives. It is indeed “…the book that Trump fears most” because it portrays the most dangerous person American government has ever known while being at the same time the most moronic one.

(more…)

Book reviews: the “Ravenscroft” series…

Wednesday, May 4th, 2022

“Inspector Ravenscroft” Series. Kerry Tombs, author (10 novels from Joffe Books). Many of my readers know that my “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” novels (see below)  have progressively become more in the British style as the series progresses. Maybe not so well known are my short fiction collections of tales written in the British style. (There are four: The first three are titled Sleuthing, British-Style and the fourth is simply titled The Detectives. See the “Books & Short Stories” web page.) I’ve binge-read entire series of British-style mystery novels as well and have become quite the fan.

Consider all that an homage to Agatha Christie whose seminal novels in the genre entertained me for many hours as a young reader, which led me to wonder why she never put her two famous sleuths, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, together in a novel. (I rectified that. Esther Brookstone is a twenty-first century and more agile version of Miss Marple while paramour and later husband, Bastiann van Coevorden, looks like David Suchet in his role of Poirot.)

One thing that makes this Ravenscroft series unique is that the novels are set in nineteenth century England, in contrast to my twenty-first century Brookstone novels; to be specific, this is the Victorian era. Let me warn you: If you’re expecting romantic nostalgia, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Instead, you’ll see the British Empire and the world for what it truly was back then—gritty, often deadly, and with crime occurring at all levels of society. Most of the series takes place in England, but one novel has Ravenscroft traveling to New York City, so the reader can see the international aspects of the squalor hiding below the surface of genteel societies of the time.

The main character, Detective Inspector Ravenscroft, comes from Whitechapel in London, an area of poverty and crime, leaving his post at Scotland Yard just before the series of murders committed by Jack the Ripper, to become a gifted and respected crime-solver in Worcestershire.

In his very first case, he partners with Constable Crabb, who accompanies and aids him throughout many cases. He also meets his future wife, Lucy; she even participates in a few cases later in the series.

I hesitantly approached this series initially—I’m not nostalgic for nineteenth-century life. But the series grew on me. I sailed through the novels, the epitome of entertaining and clever mystery “page-turners.” I felt a great sense of loss whin I finished the tenth and last novel, appropriately titled Ravenscroft’s Last Case. I hope that one day I might be able to thank the author for the many hours of reading entertainment provided.

And readers of this blog, please note the name of the publishing house that I also profusely thank: I’d wager that half the British-style mystery novels I’ve binge-read are from that publisher. They’ve been consistently good. (You will find a list of British-style mystery novels, many in a series, that I’ve updated with successive publications of Sleuthing, British-Style. If I offer another collection, I will surely add the Ravenscroft series to that list!)

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More binge-reading? You have the opportunity to do just that with the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. Follow Esther’s many dangerous adventures in these eight novels (three are pictured), often driven by her desire to find justice for innocent victims and the exploited, obsessions often putting herself and her Dutchman, Bastiann van Coevorden, in peril. The two are twenty-first century versions of Christie’s Marple and Poirot, with Esther a bit more active and agile than the former and Bastiann just as cerebral but less pretentious than the latter. In Rembrandt’s Angel, Esther pursues a painting stolen by the Nazis in World War II; in Son of Thunder, she’s in a race to find the tomb of St. John the Divine; in Death on the Danube, she helps Bastiann run a murder investigation on their honeymoon cruise; in Palettes, Patriots, and Pillocks, she defends an American artist; in Leonardo and the Quantum Code, she struggles to protect an old friend whose code for quantum computers is pursued by three major powers; Defanging the Red Dragon is about China’s desire to steal software and hardware upgrades for nuclear subs; Intolerance begins a fight against right-wing terrorists whose mission is to purge migrants and refugees from Britain; and The Klimt Connection continues that battle against extremists after the couple’s flat is bombed. To binge-read this exciting series, you’ll have to do a bit of sleuthing of your own: The ebook versions are available wherever quality ebooks are solid (the link above takes you to them on B&N), but Dragon and Intolerance are only available in PDF format as free downloads on this website. The first three novels (pictured) have print versions brought to you by Penmore Press and Carrick Publishing. Numbers four, five, and eight are published by Draft2Digital and not available on Amazon. Enjoy!

At PubProgressive.com tomorrow: “Hey, Russians, who’s gonna pay for Putin’s War?”

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Book review of Garry Trudeau’s Yuge!

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2022

Yuge! 30 Years of Doonesbury on Trump. G. B. Trudeau, author (Universal Uclick). Relatives and friends know that I’m an avid reader and that my reading tastes range far and wide. This little gem was a recent gift. Like Adam Schiff’s Midnight in Washington, my review of this book is appropriate for both my writer’s blog and my political blog. So here goes!

Mr. Schiff’s book probed more serious matters (emphasis on Trump’s first impeachment) associated with the psychotic sociopath’ (a spot-on diagnosis from twenty+ mental health professionals, including his niece) and wannabe dictator and admirer of Vladimir Putin, Donald J. Trump, aka “The Donald,” Il Duce, and “f&%$ing moron.” The last quote is from ex-SecState Tillerson and provides a nice segue to Trudeau’s lampooning of the idiot who tortured sane people in the US and around the world for four years as POTUS until Mr. Biden pommeled him in the 2020 election. (Yes, it was a pommeling!)

One can learn a lot from reading (or should—Trump never does; he didn’t even read his national security briefings). And Trudeau’s cartoons are often such bold and profound lessons that many right-wing leaning newspapers place them on the editorial page, if they publish them at all. The cartoons speak truth to power and the Goebbels-like schlock the Good Ole Piranhas bombard us with almost every day.

I’ve always been fond of cartoons and comics. I learned to read and write somewhere around three-years-old by trying to design my own comic books. I needed to know what to put in those balloons! (Instead, I go after Trump, Putin, Xi, and all their ilk in words.) I never learned to draw very well—my father was the artist—but I’ve always admired those who can do everything, both draw the characters and fill in the balloons! Garry Trudeau is a genius for doing just that.

In this cartoon collection covering thirty years of the narcissistic conman’s life, I learned that I’d missed some great political satire during my sojourn in Colombia. I could argue that reading Gabo in Spanish might be more edifying—his composite of several Latin American dictators in Autumn of the Patriarch (Otoño del Patriarca) nicely covers Trump and his ilk as well, except that Trump didn’t invade a country like Putin and hasn’t poached an enemy’s head and served it to guests like Gabo’s composite dictator…yet. (He has threatened to walk down NYC’s Fifth Avenue, though, and shoot someone.)

I learned that Trump has been a butthead for a long time, mostly exploiting workers and evicting renters in the tristate area (for his followers, the “marching morons,” as described by C. M. Kornbluth in his famous sci-f novella, the tristate area is Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York, those awful “blue states” he and you hate so much). In the process, he blew through $30 million his psycho daddy gave him, had several bankruptcies, and wrote the Art of the Deal (or his ghostwriter did?), as if those obvious failures qualified him as a business genius. (At least Putin, whom Trump greatly admires, earned his money the old-fashioned, autocratic way—by putting in the work to steal a country.)

As a historical document, Trudeau’s collection belongs in every serious university’s political science and business departments’ reference list. My only critique? Garry should branch out and cover Kim, Putin, and Xi. After all, Trump wants to be like them, a president-for-life so he can suppress and oppress all opposition to him and make Trudeau disappear. Let’s not give Il Duce that chance in 2024. (I wonder if Trump is such a moron—or is it just approaching senility?—that he confuses Garry with Justin. No matter. He hates them both.)

Even though we often laugh at the chaos of American democracy (that’s healthier than crying), it’s worth saving it from the destruction that Trump and his cronies want to happen as their march toward fascism continues on.

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Leonardo and the Quantum Code. Who gets the new code for quantum computers based on ideas in a recently discovered Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook? Surprise, surprise! Autocrats are up to their dirty tricks here—and maybe even the US?—and they send spies and assassins to steal the technology. One of Esther’s brilliant old friends from her Oxford days has created the code. In the background, another bad player, who’s always interested in new technology, lurks as well. Can Esther and Bastiann protect her old friend? Find out here. This novel is available wherever quality ebooks are sold by reliable ebook dealers (that excludes Amazon).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Book Review of Schiff’s Midnight in Washington…

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2022

Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could. Adam Schiff, author. (Random House, 2021). This important book (and a few others like it) does a great service. Here we learn the details about how some people—not just Mr. Schiff and his colleagues who ran the first impeachment trial prosecuting a psychotic sociopath who still poses a great danger to American democracy (he’ll forever be impeached—the only US president to have the stain of being impeached twice!)—but also others who have the courage to speak truth to power. We all should be so brave; otherwise, we’ll lose our precious republic to the dark forces of fascism. (I do my small part by blasting my representatives in Congress with emails, telling them to act, as well as by writing my political blog at http://pubprogressive.com. We should all do what we can. Democracy is worth saving!)

While this is mostly the story of the first impeachment trial and briefly the second, it’s a book that shows how Trump aka Il Duce has completely destroyed American conservatism, turning the GOP into his acolytes and morphing them into the fascist Good Ole Piranhas. This orange-skinned devil in four short years (which seemed like an eternity!) also decreased our stature in the world, much to the delight of autocrats like Putin and Xi and other two-bit fascist leaders who would tell you that representative democracies can’t get anything done and that a strong man, a president-for-life like those two servants of evil, are necessary. Perhaps many in the world are sad to see that America, that shining beacon for democracy and freedom, is all but extinguished as the US now looks more and more like 1930s Germany, but what’s sadder is that many Americans don’t see that and are hastening our slide down into the cesspool of fascism.

This book validates all my fears I’ve had since Trump walked down those stairs in Trump-the-Chump’s Tower to launch his presidential campaign by calling immigrants murders and rapists, a standard tactic used by the worst dictators, including Hitler: Create a minority all the disgruntled morons can blame for their problems! (Those problems often caused by fascists and the plutocrats who control them.) Many readers will find the details in this story as scary as I did. What I find even scarier, though, is that we’re still letting the fascist Good Ole Piranhas spew this vitriol and hatred.

Mr. Schiff takes us through all the events that too many of us paid no attention to; others purposely tried to forget; and still others, most of the Good Ole Piranhas, celebrated. It’s required reading for every respectable US citizen who might be wondering what can be done to save our democracy in the sense that it’s a list of things we shouldn’t allow to happen. The most obvious now: Never trust a Republican! Mr. Schiff’s subtitle is a reminder of the danger that’s still with us.

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