War Stories . . . recommended by Suzanne

Wrongful Death by Robert Dugoni
Although Dugoni writes legal thrillers, this is more of an action thriller than a courtroom drama. Attorney David Sloan is hired by the widow of a National Guard soldier killed in Iraq. She wants to sue the military for his death, but the law doesn't allow suits if a soldier died in the line of duty. When the surviving members of the guardsman's unit start to die, Sloan suspects his death was not a straightforward combat death. I don't think I'm giving too much away, because Dugoni introduces this possibility early on. Although Iraqi insurgents were the soldiers' enemy, the villains in this book are evil American corporations. The book could have been more tightly plotted. There's a backstory about Sloan's childhood that was totally irrelevant. The theme of parent-child relationships (Sloan was abandoned as a child and grew up in foster homes) is rather ham-handed - some of the "tug-at-your-heartstrings" scenes (for instance the dead soldier saying goodbye to his daughter before he leaves for Iraq) made the story sag. (Robert Dugoni's website.)
Verdict: This is an intelligent and suspenseful conspiracy thriller.



The Increment by David Ignatius
Harry Pappas, working in the Iranian division of the CIA, is in charge of communicating with an Iranian scientist who contacts the agency with a cryptic message about his country's nuclear weapons program. Harry's director and the U.S. president are pig-headedly insistent that "action must be taken" immediately. In other words, they want to go to war with Iran. Charlie knows they don't have enough evidence - is the scientist trying to tell them the program is making progress, or that it is a failure? Charlie, tormented by his Marine son's (needless, as he sees it) death in Iraq, doesn't want his country to start another war in the Middle East. When his advice is ignored, Charlie feels he must look for help outside the agency. Things get very complicated when he contacts his friend in the British spy service. The book takes its title from a shadowy team of British Special Forces agents who do black ops. I'm not sure why Ignatius titled the book after them. The book is really Harry's story.
Verdict: This is a terrific spy thriller. Harry is a memorable character.


Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 by Max Hastings
The last year of the WWII in Asia is vividly told in this long but never tedious account. Hastings keeps the story personal by alternating accounts of battles, strategy and statistics with first-hand accounts by leaders, soldiers and civilians. This is not an overview - the accounts of the horrors of Okinawa, Burma, Iwo Jima, the Japanese occupation of China are extensively and graphically described. Hastings is opinionated - he begins the book by saying that although the war in Europe has gotten more attention, the war in the Far East caused at least as much if not more suffering among combatants and civilians. American losses were 31/2 times what they were in the European theater. He writes about the mistrust between the British and the American commanders. Few of the generals and politicians, Allied or Japanese, gets a high score from Hastings. His judgments are balanced, however. While he gives MacArthur a scathing review as a military leader, he says he was an intelligent administrator of postwar occupied Japan. He disagrees with historians who conclude that the Japanese were on the verge of surrendering before the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Recommendations from Julie

Sanctuary by Ken Bruen
Jack Taylor is back, climbing on and falling off the wagon. Now he has to rescue a child and save himself from a murderous ex-nun. This book offers new developments in his life—I will definitely be reading the next Jack Taylor novel.
Ken Bruen's website.

Cracker Bling by Stephen Solomita
The main character is a kid who's just gotten out of prison & immediately falls in with some bad people. On the other side is an alcoholic cop who is physically falling apart. The two become accidental partners in the case & form a rather interesting team leading to a surprising ending. I enjoyed this one.

Firewall by Henning Mankell
Henning Mankell is a great writer! I love that he combines a great mystery, police procedural & social commentary all in one book. This one has to do with an international terrorist plot involving banks. The deaths are gruesome but Wallander & the secondary characters all evolve making for a great series. Mankells' series is the best to come out of Sweden since the great Martin Beck series by Per Wahloo & Maj Sjowall.
Henning Mankell's website.

Recommendation from Macaire

Financially Ever After:
The Couples’ Guide to Managing Money
by Jeff D. Opdyke

Whether tying the knot or deciding to cohabitate, hammering out financial issues is a major part of setting up housekeeping. Opdyke, the Wall Street Journal’s Love & Money columnist, covers a broad range of topics in a plain, no nonsense fashion that is accessible even to those who have never cracked the spine of a personal finance book.

Beginning with Section One “Money Matters Before Marriage,” Opdyke outlines the ten questions every couple must ask, and why. These cover everything from discussing each partner’s financial history and aspirations to who needs a prenup and who buys the engagement ring. Section Two covers "Money Matters After Marriage," including budgets, debts and savings. Opdyke gives a lot of space to the topic of money and emotions, the big sticking point in many relationships.

Overall, this is a good primer and starting point for conversations that are important to have whether you are merging households for the first time or the fifth.

Great Books for Summer . . . reviewed by Suzanne

Here are two excellent and satisfyingly chunky books. They are available in paperback editions you can take with you whether you read at the beach, in Paris, or in your backyard.

PART TWO: Nonfiction

Gandhi and Churchill
by Arthur Herman
This fascinating history made me painfully aware of my almost total ignorance about India’s history. Herman has written an excellent revisionist account of the lives of these two mythic individuals. Reading this, they became considerably less mythic. Gandhi was a racist (while in South Africa he tried to convince the British to give Indians the same status as whites, but he considered black Africans not their equals), and Churchill had a giant ego and refused to acknowledge his mistakes (including the disastrous Gallipolli campaign of WWI). Don’t let the length of the book dismay you. It’s well worth the investment in time it takes to read.
Read the Commentary Magazine review.

The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer
Unless you are a fan of Dick Cheney, this book will raise your hackles. If you are a Cheney devotee, you might want to skip it, since he does not come off very well in this account of the methods used to pursue the “war on terror”. I learned that there was much more to the horrors and abuses of "enhanced interrogation" at Guantanamo and the "black sites" overseas than the news accounts covered. This is a tragic book; it made me very sad to learn the extent to which individuals in the government, military and CIA lied and covered up to subvert the constitution. There's so much evil in the story; however it was heartening to learn about the heroic efforts of some lawyers, military people, and FBI agents who protested the use of torture and tried to get it stopped. This is a superb choice for anyone interested in politics.
Read the New York Times review.

Recommendations from Macaire

The Smoke and
Spectres in the Smoke by Tony Broadbent
Having survived the war, Jethro the cat burglar is hard at work trying to survive the peace by relieving the wealthy of their remaining treasures when he attracts some unwanted attention. His Majesty’s Secret Service gives him the option of pulling a few jobs for MI5 or going to jail.

In The Smoke, Jethro is asked to break into the Soviet Embassy. Simple enough on the surface, but nothing is as it seems when you are playing spy games. With London’s crime bosses and MI5’s special operatives looking on, the talented Cockney creeper has his work cut out for him.

In Spectres in the Smoke, Jethro is once again called upon to help defuse political threats, this time by retrieving letters and photographs that could prove embarrassing to certain members of the Royal Family and other VIPs. When the caper requires that he impersonate a wealthy, upper crust businessman at a country estate, Jethro receives a little coaching from none other than Ian Fleming and David Niven. Putting real people in fiction is always tricky, but the cameo appearances are well done and add a nice dimension to the story.

Jethro’s adventures in espionage in post-War London are suspenseful and entertaining. The author creates a likeable character and wonderful atmosphere, effectively evoking the time period with details of everyday life. The city of London, or “the Smoke” in Cockney slang, is a brooding, seething backdrop to a society going through tremendous change, and traveling through it with Jethro as he dodges both good guys and bad guys in turn is tremendous fun.
Tony Broadbent's website.

Great Books for Summer . . . reviewed by Suzanne

For reading on lengthy and lazy summer days, I look for a book I can linger over. Here are two long novels. What held my interest--and I would have gone on reading if they had been twice as long--were the richly drawn characters and the detailed way the characters’ lives are described.

PART ONE: Fiction


Cutting for Stone
by Abraham Verghese
Verghese is a physician. I read his excellent nonfiction book My Own Country years ago. This, his first novel, is human in scale, humane in message, and a wonderfully told story.

Two brothers, born conjoined in a clinic in Ethiopia to a young pious nun from India. Their father, or so everyone thinks, is an American physician working at the clinic. I can’t tell you more plot details without giving too much away.

After their birth, the boys are separated in a difficult operation. They grow up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where they are raised by the loving clinic staff. One of the brothers leaves Africa to do his medical training in America. That’s not the only reason he leaves, but again, I won’t give the story away.

The characters are unforgettable, especially Dr. Ghosh, who will long remain one of my favorites. Love, politics, betrayal, revolution, family, illness and healing are all ingredients that Verghese weaves together into a beautiful, tender story. There’s nothing stylistically or thematically innovative about this novel; it’s plain good storytelling.
Abraham Verghese’s website.

The Help
by Kathryn Stockett
Abileen, one of three narrators, describes her daily and weekly tasks--polishing the silver, ironing the dress with dozens of pleats, cooking for the weekly bridge club--in detail. The two other narrators are Minny, Abileen’s irrepressible friend, who has trouble staying employed because she is “sassy”, and Miss Skeeter, a 22-year-old white woman who aspires to be a writer but still lives at home where she is bossed around by her mother. How and why the three women become friends is the core of the story.

“Help” is, of course, a euphemism for domestics, or as my mother called them “maids.” I grew up in Virginia around the time period in which Stockett’s novel is set. We had a “maid”, and, like the white characters in the book, she arrived on the bus, wore a uniform, worked all day at the duties my mother set out for her, and then returned home. That my mother had a “maid” is a huge irony. Raised on a tobacco farm in North Carolina, where she and her 10 siblings worked from and early age at chores around the house and on the farm, my mother did not belong to the Junior League, the women’s group at the church (she was an agnostic) or own a silver service that required polishing. I wonder in retrospect if she had a woman come in to do housework because it was the thing to do. And, since our house had only one bathroom, the “maid” used it as well as the family. One of the themes in the novel is the insistence by some of the white women that their houses have separate “facilities” for the “help.”

I cringed at the meanness of the hoity-toity, backbiting white socialites and thought their characters were stereotyped and exaggerated, but who am I to say? I’m sure there were white women like that in the South (and elsewhere) in the sixties.

I do know about the reality of Jim Crow laws. Like the white characters in the book who know nothing about the personal lives, joys and sorrows of their domestics, I doubt if my mother knew much about her “maid’s” life. She was one of the black women and men who traveled to the white neighborhoods to work, but who could not live there. There were no African-Americans in the public schools I attended.

Although Stockett describes the characters listening to news accounts of sit-ins at lunch counters and James Meredith integrating the university, this is not political commentary. It’s a book about loyalty, generosity and about smart, proud and determined women with grit. The women are the strength of the book, and I loved them.

I would characterize this as fiction that would be of interest almost exclusively to women. I can’t imagine many male readers picking this up. Read the New York Times review.
Kathryn Stockett’s website.

Recommendations from Julie

The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay
This was a fascinating detective story! The detective has narcolepsy which makes getting a case and solving it very hard. I can’t wait to read Tremblay’s next book!







The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale
It was very interesting to look at the beginnings of detective fiction by looking at a true crime that took place in Victorian times. It's rather amazing that one case could have the impact on a society to create in the imaginations of writers an entire genre of fiction.