(Philip Yaffe, Science for the Concerned Citizen, eBook, ASIN B005G0JH2G)

This pleasant and educational little book is a potpourri of tidbits about science and scientists.  Mr. Yaffe’s motivation for writing it is commendable:  there are many popular misconceptions about and outright hostility to science among many laypersons.  None of this is healthy.  His reason is the same as mine, but I’ll state it more strongly:  If society’s average knowledge level is only that of a technological savage (a person that uses gizmos without understanding anything about how they work), society can only through pure damn luck find smart and ethical solutions to global warming, cloning, alternative energy, water usage, and so forth.  In other words, we have a moral imperative to learn enough science to vote wisely.  In a representative democracy, this also goes for the representatives of the people (their ignorance sometimes is frightening).

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(Carla Neggers, MIRA, Saint’s Gate, ISBN 978-0-7783-1235-2)

A convent on the rugged coast of Maine is the scene of a vicious murder in Carla Neggers’ new novel Saint’s Gate.  With this book, Ms. Neggers also introduces a new series and two new protagonists, FBI agents Emma Sharpe and Colin Donovan.  It is a dark mystery, full of intrigue and suspense.  The characters are interesting, the locales spectacular, and the plot well constructed.  Relax in your recliner, pour yourself a taoscan of fine Irish whiskey (see later why this is appropriate), and enjoy.  It is fun to read.  I read it in two evenings—it displaced all my other writing and reading activities.

I had the uncanny feeling that the author has a psychic hold over me—to use modern vernacular, she knew how to jerk my chains.  First, the locales:  the California and Maine coasts are my two favorite spots in the U.S.  Except for climate, they are similar—waves pounding against steep, craggy cliffs topped with pines and other magnificent trees.  Big Sur and Mt. Desert Island hold a special place in my travel memories.  I grew up in California; my father painted its coastline.  My first trips to Ogunquit and Bar Harbor left me yearning for more.

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(Carolyn J. Rose, An Uncertain Refuge, ISBN 9780983735908)

Don’t miss this book!  It’s a thriller, full of action and suspense.  Moreover, the underlying theme, spouse abuse and exploitation of women, points out inconvenient social ills in our society—indeed, in the world.  Ms. Rose’s prose is riveting and her characters sparkle with authenticity.  None of the story seems contrived.  I couldn’t put it down.

First, the story:  Kate Dalton manages an Arkansan domestic violence shelter, a place where abused women go as a last recourse when the prehistoric system of restraining orders fails, as it usually does.  Amanda Blake’s double ex—one ex for angry ex-husband and the other for violent ex-con—shows up at the shelter and tries to kill her.  Kate steps in with a few martial arts skills and ex-hubby dies by his own knife.  The governing board of the shelter, led by a sleazy misogynist lawyer, decides it wants to take advantage of the publicity, but Kate doesn’t, so the board fires Kate.  She heads out of town but is detoured by the recovering Amanda who cons Kate into being her son’s guardian while, like a mother bird leading the cat away from the nestlings, takes the ex-husband’s equally violent brother on a wild goose chase.

Kate seeks and finds comfort in menial labor while running a motel located on the Oregon shore.  She and Amanda’s son (the kid is a hoot) are befriended by two of the motel workers, the chamber maid and the handyman; an older woman running an animal shelter; and a sheriff who prefers fishing in solitude but is ready to help.  She begins a process of bonding with Amanda’s son.  But all along the brother is hot on Kate’s trail.  After killing Amanda in Ohio, he makes it to Oregon.  The confrontation with Kate turns into a confrontation with the handyman, but I won’t spoil the ending for you.

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(William Brown, The Undertaker, ISBN 9781617505119, Kindle eBook)

Do you believe “bargain eBook” means “poor quality”?  Think again.  One of my own readers offered a counter example: in one download session, she bought ten bargain eBooks and enjoyed seven of them.  Not even Derek Jeter has that kind of batting average.  (You can argue that the other three were badly written, but readers’ likes are very subjective—so maybe not.)  The digital revolution is a wonderful boon to readers (maybe not so much for authors), but good books like William Brown’s The Undertaker will make just as much for the author via quantity of sales as any high-priced eBook for an author published by one of the Big Six publishers (I just use this label to group some publishing conglomerates together, not in a pejorative sense).  It’s why some authors (for example, Barry Eisler of thriller fame) are foregoing those Big Six contracts and publishing eBooks on their own.

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Wouldn’t you know it?  I was gifted a copy of Jeffery Deaver’s Carte Blanche, his new 007 thriller.  Put a book in my hands and I start turning pages.  In this case, they were real pages, although I understand that the book is also doing well as an eBook.  I was curious, I’ll admit.  What could Mr. Deaver do with Bond that hasn’t been done before?

Pre-existing biases and genre prejudices shouldn’t count in the reviewer’s world even though, in my case, I’m also a writer with my own way of doing things (which continuously evolves, but that’s another story)—the title of Jane Friedman’s well known blog, There Are No Rules, is really a corollary to the writer’s commandment “Know what the rules are.”  Yet a writer’s style goes beyond rules and is as personal as his fingerprints.  I generally like Deaver’s, but, as I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, I didn’t want to have anything to do with James Bond.

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By now I suspect that many Jeffery Deaver fans know he has gone over to “the dark side.”  Either he’s an Ian Fleming wannabe, is tired of Lincoln Rhyme, has run out of ideas to write about, or was enticed by a multi-million dollar contract, but his new 007 adventure Carte Blanche has been released.  Too bad.  Even Jeffery Deaver can’t haul me kicking and screaming back to 007.

Now, don’t get me wrong—writers pick up famous series and do marvelous things with the settings and characters that are already established.  The continuation of Ludlum’s Bourne series comes to mind and even some of the Star Trek books aren’t bad as space operas, although they’re more fantasy than sci-fi, of course.  The difference is that the writers of those series’ continuations aren’t as well known as Jeffery Deaver.  C’mon, Jeff, what gives?

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(Jose Rodrigues dos Santos, El Enigma de Einstein, tr. Mario Merlino, Roca Editorial de Libros, 2008, ISBN 978-0-06-171925-7)

The following review appears below in English.

Este libro no se resulto como esperaba cuando lo inciciera.  Lastima.  En efecto, parece demasiado como la vieja propaganda de Certs, o sea dos libros en uno.

En primer lugar, tenemos lo que promete ser aventura de suspenso—un “thriller.”  Esta promesa no se cumple.  Las situaciones entre los espias de la C.I.A. estadounidense, el profesor portugues de historia Tomas Noronha, y los iranis de caricatura—estas no parecen autenticas y muestran poca investigacion o lectura sobre el tema por parte del autor.  Aunque la historia sea interesante a primer vistazo y la senorita irani e interes romantico de Tomas sea bonita y misteriosa, el cuento corre a la velocidad del vidrio viejo en una iglesia de Lisboa.  Es demasiado lento.

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(David R. Fett and Stephen Langford, White Sleeper, Synergy Books, ISBN 978-0-9845040-2-2)

We fiction writers have an interesting trade.  Like actors on a stage, our primary job is to entertain, even though we often are introverted people rather than extroverted.  Counter to the pundits’ expectations, people are reading more than ever.  Devices like the Kindle and the Nook allow readers to download everything from the latest N.Y. Times bestseller to newspapers and magazines—or should I say e-papers and e-zines?  Today’s digital publishing revolution provides writers many ways to reach our reading audience and, hopefully, to entertain them.

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Those readers familiar with this website probably have visited the webpage “Steve’s Bookshelf” at least once.  A new addition to the subsection “Non-Fiction Recommendations” is Matt Taibbi’s Griftopia. I also have introduced the new subsection “Stealth Reads—Books by New And Promising Authors” where you will find Donna Carrick’s The First Excellence and Carolyn J. Rose’s Hemlock Lake.  Each of these books receives my recommendation, as does every book that appears on this page of my website.  I should hasten to add that neither Donna’s nor Carolyn’s novels is related to Matt’s book—they are associated only in that they appear in the same update to this webpage.  Matt’s blog can be found at the Rolling Stone website.  Donna and Carolyn also have their own websites.  All can be found on Facebook.

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(Review of Steven Manly’s Visions of the Multiverse, New Page Books, 2011, ISBN 978-1-60163-129-9)

Visions of the Multiverse is a very readable introduction to some very strange concepts in physics.  Its advantage is that it’s short and requires no math expertise from the lay reader, even though much of it is really about mathematics.  However, it does require you to think about things.  Its disadvantage is that it’s short and requires no math expertise—in other words, you may arrive at the end somewhat dissatisfied by your lack of understanding of these topics.  If that’s the case, bless your soul, there are more meaty tomes (also with little or no mathematics) that expand on the ideas contained in this book.  (I’ll mention some of them below.)

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