“Merciless” a story of Mercy Gunderson acting as judge, jury and executioner of serial killer

 by Minnie Apolis

Mercy Gunderson goes over the edge in this third mystery in a series written by Lori Armstrong, featuring a female Army special services vet mustered out due to an eye injury.

The tale starts off promisingly enough with Mercy in training for a new job with the FBI, a job that at least on the surface uses much more of her skills than her previous jobs as a bartender or as candidate for sheriff.

The job has special stresses of its own, such as not being able to talk shop with Dawson at the end of the day due to the separation between local law enforcement and the feds.

Another layer of stress, although a happy one, is the addition of another member of the family. No, not that. Dawson's acknowledged son, Lex, comes to live with them, probably permanently, after being expelled from school while in his mother's custody.

Mercy gets assigned to research similar cases to a grisly new murder of a young woman on the rez. Turns out there is quite a string of them going back almost five years. Why have there been no investigations carried out? Most of them seem perfectly logical endings for what had gone before in each woman's life, whether it was drug addiction, spousal abuse, etc.

This entry in the series seems to be somewhat better constructed in terms of providing good red herrings. I cannot give away the red herrings because that would spoil things for some readers.

However, I am disturbed by the worsening tendency of Mercy to not only resort to threats or fighting when faced with some situations – but to go over the line and act as judge, jury and executioner in this one. She cannot plead self-defense in this case, as she shot the perp in the leg and had things well in hand when she left him to die. She creates a lawlessness that is the antithesis of law and order. Maybe that is a commentary on our times by Ms Armstrong, but I would prefer not to glorify such a character in a book series.

Sorry, folks, I am demoting Mercy to buck private and putting her in solitary. And taking away her entire arsenal. This woman has no business being around guns anymore.

[Also, I personally prefer, and recommend, the much more life-affirming-with-a-dose-of-humor novels by the master Tony Hillerman, who has won every award there is and has been honored by the Navajo people. I refer of course to the Jim Chee/Lt. Leaphorn mysteries set on the rez in the Four Corners area.]

MERCILESS, by Lori Armstrong, Touchstone books, a division of Simon & Schuster, New York, 2013, 328 pages not including discussion. ISBN 9781451625363.

“Mercy Kill” follows up edgy mystery with more of same

 by Minnie Apolis

Mercy Gunderson keeps seeing dead people. In the first installment of this western mystery series (No Mercy), she found dead bodies on the family ranch, and on the porch. In the second in the series, Mercy Kill, she finds a dead man in the parking lot of the bar where she has been working full time since leaving special forces in the military. And we aren't even a hundred pages into the book yet.

A mysterious Native American tells her “About your bad luck in finding dead bodies. Major Hawley won't be the last one. . . You died, and your spirit is still drawn to death. Especially the newly dead. It's the price you pay for your own life.”

Ooh, does that sound creepy or what? Maybe the word for it is karmic, instead.

Mercy Gunderson is a former special services specialist, mustered out after a career-ending eye injury. She returns to her family ranch in South Dakota in the previous novel, and began a difficult transition back to civilian life.

The body, the former Major Jason Hawley, nicknamed J Hawk when they had served together in the military, is now back in the area working for Titan Oil, an outfit that plans to put a pipeline through the state. The area's ranchers are not happy at the prospect of a pipeline cutting up their ranches.

Mercy is not happy really with being in a dead-end job as a bartender at Clementine's, the bar I mentioned above. She's not happy at being virtually a hobby rancher, leaving the actual running of the ranch to the foreman, Jake Red Leaf. And she's really unhappy at what she sees as nonfeasance in office by the current sheriff, Mason Dawson.

So she signs on as a last-minute replacement on the opposing ballot to run for the office of sheriff, right, against the aforementioned Sheriff Dawson.

In between electioneering stops, she sneaks in some investigation of her own into the life and death of her late Army buddy. She feels she owes J Hawk that much for saving her life when she had died in a nightclub bomb attack.

Along the way J Hawk's onetime paramour, and Mercy's good Army buddy, Anna Rodriguez stops in after attending their late comrade's funeral in North Dakota. They're just like teenaged girls, having beers, checking out the local antique shop, making investigational visits that are disguised as electioneering stops.

So you can imagine that Mercy is pretty shocked when she realizes that BFF Anna has not been merely having a bit of R & R between assignments. Can't give away any spoilers here, that isn't my game. But I guarantee a few surprises along the way to unraveling the plot.

I can tell you that Mercy does finally break down and visit a VA shrink, and she finally gets a job offer that might be more suited to her talents and temperament than bartender or sheriff. More than that, I cannot divulge. Besides, Mercy might have to shoot me, and that could hurt.

MERCY KILL, by Lori Armstrong, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2011, 293 pages not including discussion. ISBN 9781416590972.  

“No Mercy” portrays woman Iraq vet going home to hornet's nest of complications

 by Minnie Apolis

On page 22, one paragraph pretty well sums up the whole plot without giving it all away.

“With my assorted injuries, the loss of my career, the grief and stress of losing my father, and my having to make a decision on the ranch, I doubted my life could get more complicated or out of my control.

“Famous last words.”

(Note the foreshadowing there.)

Fictional stories with an Iraq vet are pretty scarce, and those with a female military veteran are almost non-existent. So for Lori Armstrong to start a series of novels in 2010 with such a female protagonist was pretty gutsy and risky.

Main character Mercy is on leave from the armed forces with an eye injury that precludes continuing in her specialty. She returns home to a family ranch in western South Dakota after the death of her father (her mother had died accidentally years earlier, another family tragedy seen in flashbacks).

Sibling friction with sister Hope, who is viewed as something of a flake or non-achiever, provides another layer of plot, but secretly I hoped that sister Hope would be offed pretty quickly so we'd be done with all that sister cr*p.

No such luck.

While out on target practice, Mercy is waylaid by some sweet-talking realtor who opines that he'd like to see the ranch preserved for its historical import to the community – while she sees right through that. Mercy can see that when he talks about dividing it up into 500-acre starter ranches for young couples, that it ain't gonna work. Five hundred acres in dry country will not support a herd that will support a family.

So what he is really proposing is developing “hobby ranches” where wealthy folks can play cowboy and pretend to be roughing it while sitting air-conditioned half-million-dollar housing.

That deal was a no-go as far as Mercy was concerned. Lucky she's the one in charge of what the future of the ranch will be, and she is nobody's fool.

Hers is a family marked by tragedy. Her mother died when Mercy was a child, killed by a panicked Thoroughbred. Ever since, the trauma of finding her mother dead has prevented her from ever riding again – until forced to do so to deliver a ransom package in the final scenes of the novel.

The younger sister accidentally killed a playmate in a gun accident. She is forever after labeled crazy.

A family friend begs Mercy to solve the murder of her son, a friend of Mercy's nephew, Levi. The friend's trust is mainly based in the fact that Mercy's father had been the local sheriff. Her father had hand-picked his successor, Dawson, who had yet to win over the locals as far as convincing them of his effectiveness.

Mercy seems to spend a lot more time in bars getting hammered than in hammering away at the suspects till they crack and spill the beans. In one such incident, she winds up spending the night with a stranger, and another night with the sheriff. Woo-ha, this girl is cruising for an emotional bruising.

In only one incident of her threatening another resident, is she taken into custody – not at all realistic, dear readers.

Another sour note in the plot involves her dear sister going into the hospital with a concussion, yet Mercy does not visit her even once while she is in the hospital. This lapse is not addressed in the novel.

So anyway, while Mercy's skills as a markswoman are admittedly impressive, her chops as a would-be shamus leave something to be desired. She questions two young people involved in a local young warriors group, who supposedly work on reviving tribal rituals and traditions – but the two interviews are widely spaced in the novel, with lots of drinking and sorting out family secrets and fighting off land developers in between.

There are lots of threads in the novel's fabric: sibling history, family tragedies, war flashbacks that plague Mercy's dreams, the pressure from developers who would mean displacing whole communities as the land got too valuable to hold onto, unraveling family secrets, and overcoming a personal phobia about horses. A bit too much bitten off by the author to chew properly, in my humble opinion. But an interesting stew from which further novels draw upon.

The main character, Mercy, is a bit too troubled, cynical, sarcastic, and raw of nerve to want for your very own BFF, but I suppose she will do as a multi-layered protagonist.

NO MERCY, by Lori Armstrong, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2010, 305 pages. ISBN 9781416590958.

Summaries of Tales from Mammoth Book of Merlin

 by Minnie Apolis

“The Horse Who Would Be King” a humorous take on Sword-in-the-Stone Tale

[stories from The Mammoth Book of Merlin (TMBOM)]

If you need a bit of a break from too-serious or too-doomed tales from the King Arthur oeuvre, may I recommend the above story from The Mammoth Book of Merlin (TMBOM)?

Horse-lovers will find it entirely fitting that Merlin's magical steed engineers a way to not only create a sword, but fix it so that our humble and hapless sap, I mean hero, is the one to pull out said sword from said stone.

The noble sword Excalibur is created from the broad blaze on Merlin's horse – which I find entirely fitting. Only a noble animal like a horse could possibly create a noble sword like Excalibur! A sword named after the horse, of course.

And needless to say, our Artie pulls out the sword and then hands it over Kay without letting anyone know a thing about it, and then Kay goes around claiming to be The Rightwise Born King of England, so that Merlin (and his horse) have to finagle a way to get the sword BACK in the dang stone and gather everyone around once more for another go at pulling it out. I mean, it must have been exasperating! Artie, listen up! You are the Rightwise Born King, so if you have any objections, you can just stuff it!

So by now you have gathered that this is a light-hearted take on the old fable of the Sword in the Stone thing. Arthuriana nuts of all ages can enjoy this one, but especially those of the female persuasion since many of us fall in love with horses as young girls, even if they've never ridden one.

“Dream Reader” introduces readers to a young Merlin just learning his craft

[stories from The Mammoth Book of Merlin (TMBOM)]

One of my favorite tales from The Mammoth Book of Merlin (aka TMBOM) is this one by Jane Yolen called Dream Reader, which portrays a very young boy who falls in with a troupe of magicians and other entertainers who help him develop the skills he later became famous for.

Primary among them are the gift of dreams that come true. Young Merlin needs help in learning not only how to interpret the dreams that come to him in the night, but how much of that interpretation to pass on to The Powers That Be (TPTB).

The dream is the one about the two dragons who are fighting beneath where a duke tries to build his new tower. The dragons cause each day's building efforts to fall down.

The elder mage who interprets the dream for young Merlin offers the ruling family a logical explanation: “Most likely the Romans built their conduits for their baths there. With the construction, there has been a leakage underground. The natural outflow has been damaged further by armies fighting. And so there has been a pooling under the foundation. Open up the work, drain the pool, remove or reconstruct the Roman pipes, and the building will stand.”

The portraits of the dreamy and starving youth formerly known as Merrillin, of the mage Ambrosius, the singer Viviane, of the town where the newly-married duke is building a tower, are all well-drawn. It seems like a very credible introduction to the young Merlin that ties in smoothly with later tales.

“The Temptations of Merlin” a fine tale of a young wizard trying to find himself and his destiny

[stories from The Mammoth Book of Merlin (TMBOM)]

One of the more satisfying tales from TMBOM is this one by Peter Tremayne, of a young Myrddin who departs from a ravaged abbey where he had taken shelter for the night. He is on a quest to discover the meaning of the curious knot woven into the scrap of cloth which is the only clue to his real parentage and clan.

While on this quest he meets several tests and temptations, most of which he flunks. Among other things, he fails to recognize a young Artio (bear) as the future king who will unite Britain.

I don't mean to make Merlin sound like a fumbler and bumbler. He does have several skills or talents. Among them are a high tolerance for pain and cold, fighting skills both with and without a sword, a working knowledge of the Druid arts including healing, horsemanship which includes fighting while on horseback, a mastery of riddles, gallantry, a kindness to the weak and injured.

However the poor befuddled wiz fails to listen to the sounds of nature when he gets lost in his own thoughts. You know what they say, Merlin, you mustn't let your mind wander, it's too little to be out on its own. And his adoration of women makes him too-easy prey for the duplicitous machinations of characters like Lowri, Centwine's sister.

This flawed character is entirely believable and sympathetic as he gropes his way through various encounters once he leaves the shelter of his Druidic brotherhood.

“Merlin Dreams in the Mondream Wood” brings Merlin as Green Man within sight

[stories from The Mammoth Book of Merlin (TMBOM)]

Childhood friends look back on a time when in one's innocence, one could sit by a tree and actually hear the Green Man – a trapped Merlin – talking to you. What did he say?, Julie asks. Sara replies, I can't remember.

Sara was orphaned at a young age by her parents' death, and went to live with an uncle in a large, rambling house on a wooded lot. Frequently awaking in the night with panic attacks, Sara would sneak out the next day to nap under the oaks. In her dreams while she napped, she saw a red-haired boy who lived in the tree. He said his name was Merlin.

Her uncle encouraged her interest in Merlin by giving her copies of Le Morte d'Arthur and The Sword in the Stone.

Eventually, after some months of “tree therapy” Sara's night terrors grew less frequent and disappeared completely.

Also eventually she forgets all about her tree friend – until one day, years later, he again appears in her thoughts.

What if we befriended a tree, a nice elder gentlemanly tree, and talked to him (or her) in our dreams? What would we learn from nature in this unconventional way, that reading books could never tell us?  

Book Review: The Swan Thieves a double story of Art and Lost Loves

by Minnie Apolis

Elizabeth Kostova has crafted a complicated double plot. The one set in the modern-day is about an artist, Robert Oliver, who tries to attack a painting in the National Gallery of Art and is confined for psychiatric observation under the care of Dr. Andrew Marlow who happens to paint as a hobby. A second plot involves the 1890s artists with whom Oliver becomes obsessed.

The story is relayed to us by chapters seen from the point of view of the various characters: Dr. Marlow, Oliver's divorced wife Kate, Oliver's estranged girlfriend Mary, and the translated letters of the woman artist that Oliver became obsessed with. That artist was Beatrice de Clerval, a very accomplished painter who unfortunately gave up her career after becoming a mother. Oliver's wife need not have worried about this “other woman” – she lived in 1890s France. 

 

But both women who get involved with Oliver feel kind of creepy about his obsession with Ms. Clerval. Oliver gets into these streaks when he stays up late painting sketches and oils of this woman, over and over. 

 

I said that on one level this is a double love story – but on another level this is a detective story, with the aptly named Dr. Marlow hunting down the nature of Oliver's problem, the personal history with Kate and Mary, the identity of his love, where he saw her, who else did he talk to about the characters in that long-ago drama. I am less interested in the first than in the second level. 

 

My primary complaint with the novel is that while it is good, it could have benefited from a great deal of tight editing. It dawdled for long stretches in which I had to force myself to keep going just to reach the payoff. It wallowed in emotional details on the part of Kate and Mary and indeed all of the female characters both past and present, in a way that the male characters did not. Oh, please, this one just cries out for the Reader's Digest version -- please forgive me.

The Swan Thieves, by Elizabeth Kostova, Back Bay Books (Little, Brown and Company), New York – Boston – London, 2010, 561 pages not including study guide. ISBN: 978-0316065788

Book Review: "Original Sins" by Peg Kingman; One Woman Redeems Another Out of Slavery

 by Minnie Apolis 

 

Peg Kingman's latest novel is a tale of one independent heroine's venture into the deep, muddy waters of the philosophy of slavery, as she attempts to redeem her long-lost rescuer's daughter out of slavery. The heroine is Grace MacDonald Pollocke, a Philadelphian portrait artist whose husband is a merchant marine. Grace is an educated and high-minded native Scot whose actions can determine the fortunes of many other characters in this novel.

Along the way, readers are regaled with the advent of the daguerrotype, adventures chemistry, how to identify works by the popular portraitist Gilbert Stuart, the usefulness of having a 'free paper' in one's possession if one is a negro, how to raise silk worms, and many other earmarks of the pre-Civil War era.

Mrs. Pollocke's old friend, Annibaddh Lyngdoh, turns up suddenly after a gap of 18 years, with her two sons and supplies for introducing a new improved silk worm and fodder. At least, her cover story is that she wants to introduce an improved variety of silk worm and mulberry in order to rescue a foundering American silk industry.

But Grace uncovers Annibaddh's real motive, and that is to recover 'something' she left behind 18 years ago when she seized an opportunity to declare her freedom. What else would any woman risk her life and liberty for, but a child? It turns out that Annibaddh had left behind a toddler when ordered to accompany a MacDonald on a trip to the British Isles; this MacDonald was planning to offer to make Grace the ward of the American branch of the family. Grace was virtually held hostage by this MacDonald, but Annibaddh whisked Grace back to her stepmother, and the three of them wound up sailing together to India.

It was Annibaddh's good fortune that her masters put her in within Scotland's borders. In 1778, the Scottish Court of Sessions had declared that slavery was not recognized, in the court decision on Knight vs Wedderburn. Therefore, Annibaddh declared her freedom and escaped her masters; however, her return to Virginia put her in peril of being declared an escaped slave, and re-enslaved.
 
A good deal of suspense is built up over whether Annibaddh would be able to redeem her daughter out of slavery, or whether she would instead join her in the slave state. Much depends on whether she would actually get a fair hearing in court, where she can present this obscure matter of international law.
 
A Booklist review states the parallels between the antebellum setting and present times: “This novel thrillingly evokes a nineteenth-century America not so different from the present: a time of stunning new technologies and financial collapse, when religious and racial views collided with avowed principles of morality and law.” 

In Grace's case, the advent of daguerrotypes threatened her with the distinct possibility of financial collapse, when a photo may be had in minutes for maybe five dollars, while her painstaking portraits cost the sitter thirty-five dollars with rather more of an investment in time by both artist and sitter. Another economic collapse has already occurred in the mulberry market, and also in many goods imported from Canton.

We are all too aware of the influence of the religious debate on current events; sitting through some fundamentalist arguments that slavery is part of God's plan may be asking a bit much of modern readers, however. There are not too many, I feel, who will sit through the pages where Grace is harangued by a prominent preacher. Grace cuts short the discussion, however; good for her.



Also good for her is the fact that she is nosy, and discovers some interesting data in old ledgers related to the MacDonald plantation. Not only was the Virginia branch of the family stained by the fact of holding slaves, it also stooped to embezzlement of the trust held for Grace by her uncle.



The novel is a pretty engrossing read, with just enough historical and legal education of the reader to make the plot intelligible and effective. The characters are all well-rounded and believable. Kingman does not stoop to making her villains over-the-top crooks, nor does she make her heroine an impossibly good saint. It is much more difficult to make more ordinary folks into compelling reading material. This is high praise in my book, and I hope in yours.



“Original Sins: A Novel of Slavery & Freedom,” by Peg Kingman, W.W. Norton and Company, New York and London, 2010, about 430 pages if one may judge correctly from an advance reading copy. www.pegkingman.com/original_sins.html

First Murder Mystery Buried Inside Le Morte D'Arthur

by Minnie Apolis

Discussions of the first English-language mystery novel usually center around authors in the era of the 1850s to 1880s, with names like Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, and several other mostly obscure names.

But it turns out that the oldest English-language novel (often called a proto-novel instead) also has an episode that is clearly a murder mystery. Sir Thomas Malory wrote the perennial best-seller about the days of King Arthur in Le Morte D'Arthur, published in 1485 by the printer William Caxton. More of the public knows it as a rather loose collection of tales of romance, battle, tragedy, pageantry, knighthood, and pure fable. Whether there is any actual history in any of its conglomeration of tales is still being debated.

Nevertheless this brings us to the main topic, the murder mystery. Buried way back in Book XVIII (18), Chapters Three through Eight, is this briefly told account of a death of a dinner guest.

Queen Guinevere holds a celebratory dinner for the knights of the Round Table who had come home after the Grail quest had been fulfilled. The guest list included Sir Gawain, Sir Sir Agravaine, Sir Gaheris, Sir Gareth, Sir Mordred, Sir Bors, Sir Galihodin, Sir Ector, Sir Lionel, Sir Palomides, his brother Safere, Sir La Cote Mal Taile, Sir Persant, Sir Ironside, Sir Brandiles, Sir Kay, Sir Mador, Sir Patrise, Aliduk of Ireland, Sir Astamore, and Sir Pinel le Savage. (Notable by his absence was the Queen's beloved Sir Lancelot, who was once again out of favor.) This feast is not held at the Round Table, but “in a privy place by themselves.”

The Queen spared no expense laying out a good table, with venison and assorted meats, and “all manner of dainties.”

The unfortunate Sir Patrise, a cousin of Sir Mador, ate a poisoned apple and fell down dead. When Sir Parise ate this apple, “he swelled so till be brast (burst), and there Sir Patrise fell down suddenly dead among them.” That of course threw a pall over the whole banquet.

The knights jumped up angrily. And who was accused of the murder but the Queen herself. Considering that the Queen had arranged for this dinner, invited all the guests, and provided all the edibles, it looked very black for her.

The apparent target of the poisoned apple was Sir Gawain, who was known to be fond of fruit at dinner.

The Queen could muster no excuse when accused by the knights, nor when questioned by her husband, King Arthur. Sir Mador made the formal accusation of treason and swore to be avenged of the death of his cousin, Patrise. (All capital offenses at this time were called treason. No distinctions were made by type or motive, this being before the age of lawyers.)

And the legal system being as primitive as it was, instead of a trial, Queen Guinevere's fate was determined by a joust. Some knight would have to take her part and fight in one-on-one combat if she was to escape being burned at the stake.

None of the knights who attended the banquet would take her part. A joust was set for fifteen days hence. Sir Bors was assigned the job of defending the Queen's honor by default, but King Arthur hoped that Sir Lancelot would yet appear. Bors preferred not to endure the wrath of the other knights.

Bors reached Sir Lancelot, who was resting in the company of a hermit named Brasias. Lancelot promises to come but not till the hour of the joust.

The day arrives, Lancelot defeats Sir Mador and successfully defends the Queen's honor, thereby preventing her death at the stake. The Queen stands legally excused. Lancelot's identity is revealed, “and there was made great joy and mirths in the court.”

Finally, the truth comes out about who the real murderer was, and his motive. It just so happened that one of the ladies of the lake sauntered into the court, the one called Nimue. Nimue was wife to Sir Pelleas, and had been the object of a romantic obsession on the part of Merlin. Nimue could only get rid of him by making him prisoner inside a tree or rock (accounts differ), where Merlin remained forever. Do we have to define her further as a sorceress, witch, or practitioner of the dark arts?

At any rate, Nimue saunters in to the court and when she hears of this false accusation of the Queen, declares right off that the Queen was never guilty of this crime. She then goes on to name the murderer: Sir Pinel. Motive: to avenge the death of his cousin, Sir Lamorak. One imagines her questioning the perp a la Perry Mason in a courtroom scene: Isn't it true that you harbored a grudge over the death of your cousin Lamorak? Isn't it true that you swore vengeance? Isn't it true that you purchased a poison from the local apothecary shop in Londinium the night before the banquet?

What means Nimue used to ascertain this information is not disclosed, but as a practitioner of various arts of sorcery she might have scryed a dark mirror, tossed rune stones, had a vision, or via some other unnamed craft.

While this murder mystery had its literary significance, it is rather unsatisfying as a mystery story. We are told that Sir Pinel's cousin was killed by Sir Gawain when the guest list is given. And furthermore, Malory writes “therefore for pure envy and hate Sir Pinel enpoisoned certain apples for to enpoison Sir Gawaine” even before the accusation and trial of Queen Guinevere. Obviously as an author Malory should have retained that information until Nimue unveiled the identity of the murderer. What seems so obvious to modern audiences was lost on Sir Thomas Malory back then. It isn't like we'd seriously believe that Guinevere was capable of murder.

Of the other candidates for authors of early mysteries, my personal favorite is Wilkie Collins, author of The Moonstone (1868) and The Woman in White (1859). I obtained both several years ago from Dover reprints, and feel that they could well be updated for modern audiences without too many changes.

Dickens of course wrote the unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood; his earlier Bleak House (1853) also features the murder of a blackmailer, with a police inspector who tries to track down the killer. Unfortunately the murder is buried about three-quarters of the way into the novel, and we fully understand the identity and motive of the killer.

Edgar Allen Poe wrote several mysteries including the first detective story, but usually as short stories, before his death in 1849. Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles has Tess murder the man who has ruined her life twice, but that is at the end of the lengthy novel about her travails.

But I feel that even with the deficiencies of Malory's style, that he is still the author of the first murder mystery story.

Books: July was Black History Month for Minnie

By Minnie Apolis 
 
I recently read a couple of history books this summer, both of which, curiously enough, had something to do with biographies of black Americans or the issue of slavery in America. If only the courage of the founding patriots of this country had extended to dealing with the issue of slavery, specifically outlawing slavery as all the other civilized nations of the world were doing, we would not have had to deal with it in the terribly costly Civil War a century later.

Friends of Liberty: A Tale of Three Patriots, Two Revolutions, and the Betrayal that Divided a Nation: Thomas Jefferson, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and Agrippa Hull

by Gary B. Nash, Graham Hodges, Graham Russell Gao Hodges
Hardcover, 328 pages, Published March 25th 2008 by Basic Books
ISBN: 0465048145 (ISBN13: 9780465048144)

I really enjoyed this historical account of the intertwined lives of Thomas Jefferson, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and Agrippa ("Grippy") Hull. Who Hull? you ask. Agrippa Hull was a Massachusetts freeman who joined the revolutionary army and became the personal orderly of Colonel Paterson and later to Thaddeus Kosciuszko.

Both were very fond of the young Hull, who brought an unfailing good cheer and humor to his job. The tale of Mr. Hull is remarkable as an example of what free blacks could have accomplished for themselves if slavery had been dealt with and outlawed early in the life of the colonies and the young United States.

But the virus of slavery was not outlawed, even though there were regular petitions to do so. The virus festered until it finally boiled over into the main issue behind the Civil War -- I mourn the at least 618,000 who died in the Civil War who would not have been killed if this matter had been wrestled with early.

Mr. Kosciuszko at one point in his life had some funds invested in the young nation, and expressed a wish that this part of his estate be used to buy the freedom of some slaves upon his demise. This was not done, and the story behind that is a long and twisting one involving multiple wills and multiple claimants to the estate, but the bottom line is that the American funds still could have been used for their intended purpose if the existing laws of Virginia had not gotten in the way.

And as for the otherwise well-documented life of Mr. Jefferson, I probably do not need to detail any of it except for the fact that he did not follow in the footsteps of Mr. Washington in freeing his slaves upon his demise. No, he did not. He was possibly too far in debt in have the luxury of letting any of his property (that includes slaves) go without being sold. Mr. Jefferson owed about $17,000 in about the year 1815, and at the time of his death it had ballooned to around $100,000 -- an unbelievable total when translated into modern dollars.

At the same time, Mr. Hull through a disciplined program of investing the profit of his farming operation back into buying more land, died as the wealthiest black villager in Stockbridge. His widow received the house and lot, plus 28 acres of land, and $167.50 in the bank account. This was accomplished after spending six years in the revolutionary army and being discharged with absolutely nothing to his name.

The Kosciuszko funds invested in the young nation eventually accrued to about $20,000 through his wise management of the funds. If only Mr. Jefferson had taken a leaf from Mr. Kosciuszko's book on investing, he would have been able to afford to free his slaves upon his death.

I am probably spending too much verbiage on the personal finances of these patriots here, but trust me, there is a good body of researched material in this book, well worth your time to read. We get to learn about the personalities and characters of these men, not just the usual sketches we were given in grade school of brave young idealists who put their life on the line for liberty.

The Devil's Own Work: The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct America,

by Barnet Schecter
Hardcover, 434 pages, Published 2005 by Walker and Company

The Devil's Own Work covers the period in the Civil War when violent protests

broke out in New York City and other places in response to the draft -- probably

directed by the Copperhead underground, who pit the poor Irish immigrants

against the black people, in hopes of weakening the Union war effort.

The New York City police of the era, the Metropolitans, were generally not

effective in breaking up the riots or in preventing the fires or lynchings that broke out.

It was left to a regiment of New York Union army to finally put down the rioting.

The book included interesting descriptions of the involvement of Horace Greeley, who

was a targetof the rioters for supporting the war, and who risked his life to go to work every day amid the violent protests outside the doors of the New Yorker, an influential

weekly newspaper that carried his impassioned editorials.

The riots lasted about a week but had far-reaching effects. Whereas before the riots, blacks had lived in scattered areas of the city, afterwards they tended to clump together in Harlem, seeking safety in sticking together in one neighborhood. If affected the political alignment of the Democratic and Republican constituencies, and was just about the death knell of the Tweed machine. 

Southern blacks -- in this era before the great Northern migration -- migrated to Oklahoma and Arkansas for agricultural jobs. It exposed the divide between the classes in America -- as it was possibly the first time that the class war was exploited for political purposes. 

And it inevitably affected the success or lack of it in the Reconstruction of the South economically and socially as an egalitarian society. It seemed like the war was fought for nothing when injustices were allowed to prevail and the black people were pushed back into a state of subjugation.

Books: Minnie recommends two good novels

by Minnie Apolis

Hello again – Monday I posted a review of two history books, and today I am posting here two more mini-book reviews but of novels. One is about an elaborate art-theft thriller, and the other is about a charming mystery set in Botswana. Enjoy.

False Impression by Jeffrey Archer
Paperback, 448 pages, Published Nov. 28^th, 2006 by St. Martin's Press

A very interesting thriller, somewhat slow to build but with great characters, both on the good-guys side and on the villain side.
About an art historian specializing in attribution, Victoria Petrescu, whose best friend works as a secretary to a repulsive crook banker named Bryce Fenston, who specializes in extending multi-million-dollar loans to people who have fallen on hard times but have a masterpiece of art in their possession. There's an odd coincidence that many of these owners have their throats slit before they can get out of hock to Mr. Fenston.
Tch, Tch, such bad luck they have, hunh?

The story starts the day before 9/11, and go thru roughly two weeks of the calendar. Not sure if choosing that date is just a gimmick, but it does explain that the paperwork and other artworks have been vaporized in the destruction of the Twin Towers.

The setting is New York and London and Tokyo and Bucharest with a brief visit to Russia. The Romanian connection is key, as is explained in more than one thread of the plot as more than one character has roots there. Possibly the best one is the hit man, or hit lady, I should say, a former Romanian gymnast names Olga Krantz, who IMHO is a worthy successor to the memorable Russian hit-woman in >i>From Russian With Love -- Rosa Klebb.

Many supporting characters, most of whom have full histories provided. Giving it four stars.



The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith

210 pages, Published May 10^th, 2002)
ISBN 0349117047 (ISBN13: 9780349117041)

A charming novel in the series by Alexander McCall Smith, set in Botswana and starring the redoubtable Mme. Precious Ramotswe as the proprietor of the Number 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. It is remarkable how one is drawn into the lives of these Botswanans (is that the word?) in the very simple and direct language used by the author.

This is number 4 in the series. Mme Ramotswe has moved her office into the premises of her intended, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, mechanic and proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors -- along with Mr. Maketoni's two apprentices and her own assistant, Mma Grace Makutsi -- who is so very proud of having achieved a final score of 97 on her typing exam.

Mr. Maketoni and Mme Ramotswe look for ways to supplement their meager earnings at the Speedy Motors site. One of the ideas they hit on is to start a driving school, to be called the Learn to Drive with Jesus school -- which I think would be a good name for a driving school anywhere, hey?

Mma Makutsi meanwhile, hits on the idea of teaching men how to type -- poor, hapless men who are pecking away at the keys by the venerable hunt-and-peck system, too timid to enroll in a regular typing class where they may be outshone by the women.

In some ways the classes are a roaring success and yet in another way it brings Mma Makutsi to the brink of the greatest heartbreak in her harsh life.

But that is averted by a little gumshoe-ing on the part of Mme Ramotswe. So never fear, and pick up what is possibly the best entry in the series of novels.

Books: Vampire Hunting Becomes a Family Affair in Children of the Vampire

The middle volume in the trilogy of the vampire diaries is supposed to be the weakest of the three. If that is the case, then I am determined to find the rest of Jeanne Kalogridis' trilogy.

“Children of the Vampire: The Diaries of the Family Dracul” is a well-written, well-researched novel of a clan's descendents who feel cursed by the family history. The reader is treated to diary entries of various lengths from two brothers – Stefan and Abraham Van Helsing – their mother Mary Windham Tsepesh Van Helsing (who is not a descendant of the clan but married into it), and of an aunt and uncle to the brothers – Zsuzsanna Tsepesh and Arkady Tsepesh. (Tsepesh means impaler in Romanian.)

The story, set in the mid-1800s, follows Arkady as he tries to protect his son from being enslaved by Vlad, who is still flitting around in remarkably well-preserved form, considering he is 400 years old. The brothers are swept up in the clan curse and away from their medical practice when Stefan is abducted by his nasty yet glamorous aunt Zsuzsanna.
Family secrets leak out all over the place, such as the truth of the boys' identity.

It is Abraham who shoulders the responsibility of trying to weaken Vlad by releasing victims of vampirism. By killing them in the ritualistic way (that is, with a stake through the heart PLUS beheading) their souls are released and can at last rest in peace. He is trained and aided in this mission by a mysterious hermit-like monk who lives in the middle of a forest. The hermit has a knowledge of both herbs and spiritual warfare.

“Jeanne Kalogridis” is a pen name for J. M. Dillard, who is probably better-known as a writer of several sci-fi novels in the Star Trek genre. She also wrote the novelization of the cultish hit movie Bulletproof Monk (2003). The other titles of the Dracula trilogy are Covenant of the Vampire (the first volume) and Lord of the Vampire (the final volume).

This middle volume has been criticized for repeating some of the material in the first one and setting the stage for the last one – but I feel that important new characters appear, such as the hermit who aids Abraham in his mission.

I like this novel! I would have been sorely disappointed if had resembled most of the other vampire-themed media for the teen crowd. And I am not interested in the Anne Rice vampire stories set in the modern day, sorry about that. But I have seen most of the movies about Dracula, and I like this novel because it is well-grounded in the traditional story and background of the characters and legend.



Children of the Vampire: The Diaries of the Family Dracul, Jeanne Kalogridis (aka J. M. Dillard), Delacorte Press (of Bantam Doubleday Dell), New York, 1995, 301 pages.

Visit the real “Downton Abbey” with account of life of Lady Almina Carnarvon

The current PBS series Downton Abbey is loosely based on the real history of Highclere Castle, the ancestral home of the Carnarvon clan in Hampshire. The book, “Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey” is a treatment of the life of Lady Almina and her husband the fifth Lord Carnarvon, who is most known for financing the dig that in 1922 unearthed the dazzling treasure of King Tut's tomb in Egypt. I would like to call the book a history, but it is plainly not written by a historian. The beginning is almost like a long society column, with details of the wedding dress and dinner, and of life in a castle. Almina was the illegitimate daughter of Alfred de Rothschild, and fact of her irregular birth, shall we say, made it a sticky business to find a suitable place to hold events such as the wedding breakfast. Even though Almina's parentage was an open secret, for form's sake Rothschild was referred to as Almina's godfather. She went to all the right balls but was barred from the most fashionable salons. That she managed to snag one of the most eligible bachelors in Debrett's Peerage was a testament not only to her money, but her beauty and charm. George Herbert, the fifth Lord Carnarvon, married this “pocket Venus” as she was called, on June 26, 1895. His interests at the time included racing cars at breakneck speed, a habit that led to a terrible accident in 1901 that nearly claimed his life. Forced to give that up, he took up raising thoroughbred racehorses, photography, and in 1907 begin the annual digs in Egypt that eventually secured his main claim to fame. The early years of their marriage were a social whirl of parties, dinners, hunts, and seances. Frequent visitors to the estate included the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, the Prince of Wales, assorted aristocrats and government figures, and Howard Carter. Almina first got interested in nursing when helping her husband recover from the above-mentioned auto accident. This interest eventually flowered during World War I when she decided to convert Highclere into a hospital and rehabilitation facility for the duration of the war. Recuperating officers were waited on by footmen at the dinner table, and enjoyed sitting or walking outside in the manicured grounds. Almina hired nursing staff, and paid for their uniforms from her own pocket. The resumption of the search for an Egyptian tomb after the war eventually resulted in the fabled treasure trove of the boy king, but not before nearly bankrupting Lord Carnarvon. In 1936, the Egyptian government reimbursed Almina 36,000 pounds in exchange for transfer of ownership of the discovery into Egyptian hands. This volume is a pleasant glimpse into the end of the Victorian era and the Edwardian era, and a harrowing account of the home front during WWI. It succeeds less in the more historically interesting phase of the Egyptian excavations, lacking details and perspective. To remedy that, I suggest reading the detailed account in the book, The Search for the Gold of Tutankhamen by Arnold C. Brackman (Mason Charter, 1976). For an excellent treatment of the treaty negotiations after WWI, I recommend Paris, 1919, by Margaret MacMillan (Random House, 2001). (MacMillan is a historian and professor at the University of Oxford.)

Reviewer Much “Taken” With Robert Crais' Latest Elvis Cole Novel

by Minnie Apolis Elvis Cole and his sometimes partner, Joe Pike, take turns starring in novels by Robert Crais. This time around, it is Elvis who does the talking, which is just as well; Pike is not the talkative type. In the newest novel, Taken, Elvis is prevailed upon by a widow to search for her daughter. Elvis is not alarmed by the fact that the college-coed daughter is off for the weekend with her boyfriend. After all, lots of young women extend their weekends with their significant others. But the mom plays back recorded calls asking for money. The voice on the machine has a heavy Latino accent when the daughter actually has none. There are other discrepancies that turn up as Elvis probes the case. (Yes, he does take the case. Bribed, in part, by custom-printed tees proclaiming him the “World's Greatest Detective.”) Nita, the mother, fears that they have eloped. But as the chapters unfold, it turns out that the daughter, Krista, and her boyfriend have both been caught up in the uglier side of smuggling humans across the border. Krista has been investigating the coyotes, as the guides who bring in illegals are called. But there are even worse entities who prey on the illegals and the coyotes, stealing the truckload of illegals and holding them hostage for ransoms. Things look very dark for our hero, Krista, and her boyfriend, Jack. Krista hoped to survive by playing ignorant and uneducated, hence the accent on the phone calls. But it is only by claiming that Jack is very rich that they can actually survive long enough to be rescued. The tension steadily mounts as we learn what kind of ruthless killers he is up against. The unusual use of multiple points of view allows us to follow the progress of Cole, the hostages, the assorted coyotes and gangs, and the friends of the young couple. Elvis needs the assistance of his partner, Pike, and others to rescue himself and the hostages – and to play one group of coyotes against the others and against the party of Koreans that paid for a group of illegals to be delivered. Elvis assumes a false identity in order to offer to buy the hostages as illegal workers for his own purposes. Everybody that is supposed to survive to another day, and another novel, does – but it is a mighty close squeaker. This is the fifteenth novel featuring the Cole-Pike team. Crais has won the Anthony, Barry, Shamus, Macavity, and Gumshoe awards, plus the Ross Macdonald Literary Award in 2006. He previously wrote for several popular TV shows such as Hill Street Blues, Quincy, Baretta, Miami Vice, Cagney and Lacey, and L.A. Law. Taken, Robert Crais, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 2012, 341 pages. ISBN 9780399158278 See also RobertCrais.com and penguin.com, or facebook.com/TheRealRobertCrais

Book Review: Lake Michigan claimed yet another victim in Force 12 winds

Lake Michigan can be a treacherous lake for mariners, especially in the month of November. Over half the shipwrecks in the twentieth century occurred during that month. On Nov. 18, 1958, the lake claimed another victim in the Carl D. Bradley. Fire and Ice: Shipwreck on Lake Michigan

, by Don Davenport, is actually half of an unusually bound volume. The other half is the excellent Fire and Ice: Fire at Peshtigo, by Robert Wells, a gripping account of the great Peshtigo fire of 1871. The Bradley, a 638-foot-long ore carrier, plied the waters between ore ports on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes to unload at ports all around the Great Lakes. This particular load was delivered to Buffington, a town a few miles from the steel mills of Gary, Indiana. Limestone was used as a flux to carry away impurities from molten steel. November presents an ideal set of circumstances for major storms to develop on Lake Michigan. It is a transitional time, when cold air from Canada hits warmer air hanging over the Great Lakes. The temperature difference spawns severe storms. On November 14, a front moved in, arcing from Nevada to Nebraska to western Lake Superior. This mix of bitterly cold air from Alaska hitting warm Mexican air currents over Lake Michigan spawned 25-foot-plus waves and gale force winds. A nice recipe for a rousing storm, or for disaster So the ship sailed north from Buffington with an empty cargo hold, but with her ballast tanks filled with water for stability. She planned to pick up another load of ore. At this point, the Chicago Forecast Center issued a special lake warning for Lake Michigan. It said: “Change to whole gale warnings at 8:00 pm. EST Monday. Southerly winds increasing to 50 to 65 mph tonight and shifting to southwest to west late tonight and Tuesday. Showers and thunderstorms tonight. Showers Tuesday.” Note the part where it gives gale force winds of 50-65 mph. This warning was marked for immediate broadcast, and was repeated at regular intervals on Coast Guard radio stations over the next five hours. It would have been prudent if more ships had acted like the Robert C. Stanley and the Sylvania, who decided to park themselves in the nearest safe harbor. The reason that storms can be more lethal on a Great Lake than in the open ocean is that salt water and fresh water behave differently. Salt water produces long rolling waves that allow a ship to recover between buffets. But fresh water waves are choppy, inducing seasickness even in salt-water veterans. And when the Lakes kick up a major storm, it is a bit like a boxer pummeling the living daylights out of a hapless chump. The ocean also allows you room enough to run from a storm, while the Lakes give you few options on routes to your destination. The Great Lakes, big as they are, are basically teacups that multiply the effect of waves. The author, Davenport, clearly understands the hazards of working on the Great Lakes, and lives of those who make their living on her waters. Kudos on a job well done. And a tip of the hat to all who have gone down to a watery grave in the line of duty. Fire and Ice: Shipwreck on Lake Michigan, Don Davenport, Northword, 1983, 177 pages. ISBN 0942802047

Book: “Fire at Peshtigo” a gripping account of devastation of 1871

Everyone knows about the Great Chicago fire, yet most of us have never heard of the Peshtigo fire. They occurred in the same month. The same drought that afflicted the City of Big Shoulders was felt throughout the upper Midwest.

The difference was the news coverage: Chicago was full of reporters to record the fire, while the telegraph lines had been burned out to the the tiny Wisconsin towns early on – ergo, no news. Imagine, if you will, a forest fire. Now imagine tornadoes of fire sweeping through the forest, obliterating small towns and farms. Now imagine those tornadoes of fire sweeping through three times, destroying not only the tree tops, but returning to clear out the underbrush, and yet again to burn out the roots of once-mighty pines. “Fire at Peshtigo” is an excellent account of an under-reported historical event by Robert Wells, a long-time reporter at the old Milwaukee Journal Oconto County, a sprawling area of over five thousand square miles, was populated by only 415 hardy souls in 1852. The post-Civil War era brought such a boom that the 1870 census found a throng of 14,000 residents. They came for land. Many of them came to cut the forest so that the land could be farmed, but there were also farmers, dry-goods merchants, saloon-keepers. They found out too late that the northern lands were best suited to growing trees. As the forest was cut, the water table dropped, and erosion increased. As we mentioned, the telegraph had been burned out before October, meaning that the towns of Oconto, Peshtigo, Marinette and the region north of Green Bay was cut off until it could be repaired next spring. Meanwhile the fire continued to claim plank roads, bridges, a few homes, and the woods themselves. A winter with less snowfall than normal had been followed by a summer so dry that crews had to dig ten feet down where there had been swamp to find water. Still people plodded along with their lives the best that they could, perhaps piling up a few valuables in the middle of their cleared fields. One resident, Fred Scheller of Green Bay, wrote in early October that “big pines were crashing all around, and if he hadn't known he was in Wisconsin and the war was over he would have thought the Confederate artillery was firing again as it had at Chancellorsville.” A newspaperman named Tilton wrote in the Green Bay paper in early October that, “By day, flakes of white ashes were continually falling in the streets like snow. Now and then, if the wind blew high, partially burned leaves would fall. A settled gloom fell upon the whole community. Scarce a man or woman but who, retiring at night, would go out and gaze ruefully upon the red glare in the heavens to the east, west and south of us, estimate the distance of the flames and take note of the direction and force of the wind. Thus sped the days – fearful days – but they brought no relief. The sky was brass. The earth was ashes.” The Peshtigo fire is a gripping account not only because of the historical facts, but also because of the personal narratives by survivors. Take for example the narrative given by Carrie Heidenworth, who was five years old at the time of the disaster. She recalls her family dashing to the Peshtigo River to stand in the water while flames licked the shore, as she hung on to the horn of a cow in water too deep for her. You see? A cow can save your life. Strange and arbitrary phenomena accompanied the fire. Men would be found in the street or in a field with no mark on them, but a watch or pennies in the pants pocket were melted. And 720 brand-new axes in the Peshtigo Company store were melted into a single lump, while a feather bed stuffed into a well survived unscorched. The Peshtigo Fire burned on and off for most of the autumn of 1871, but the climax came on October 8. It burned the west side of the bay (Oconto County) an area about sixty miles long and ten-fifteen miles wide, or up to 900 square miles. It burned the east side of the bay (Kewaunee and Door Counties) about fifty miles long and maybe five miles wide, adding another 250 square miles. A mapmaker, Filibert Roth, found that 26 years after the disaster, over 80 percent of the burned-over land was still waste land, where nothing but weeds, grasses, fern, and scattered bushes of aspen, scrub oak and white birch. The death toll has been estimated at over 1500 persons, though single hikers could have vanished without anyone to miss them. The Great Chicago Fire burned from October 8 to October 10, 1871. Loss of life ran into the hundreds, tho no exact figure is given.

Book: "Goodnight Nobody" for desperate Connecticut housewives

"Goodnight Nobody" is a very good novel that is several cuts above the average mystery which is forgotten as soon as you finish it. An unusual mix of the literary with satire and mystery, it is hard to peg but easy to recommend. Kate is a fish out of water in her new Connecticut suburb, where everyone else is a Supermom and is careful to feed their kids only organic foods. She tries to befriend Kitty, but unfortunately she turns up dead when Kate and her kids show up for a play date. Oops, sorry to bother you, Kitty. Oops, the discovery turns on her latent reporter instincts and she is off nosing around for leads and interviews. There is much humor and hilarity in the novel, aside from the satire. Her own feelings of inadequacy, fed by her children's excellent timing in upchucking, her inventive lies which backfire on her, her best friend Janie who calls her back to herself as a reporter -- I only wish she had referred to her new hometown as Upchuck more often. Underneath are themes of self-erasure and identity. Women marry and move to "Upchuck" and we hardly have any idea what they did or what they were before they moved. None of the housewives have a paying position outside the home, and they are rather shocked when it is discovered that Kitty was helping write or research a famous columnist's material. On top of that, Kate's own husband seems to be less than supportive of her efforts to uncover the truth behind Kitty's murder. At the end, Kate and hubby Ben are separated while they sort out their marriage.  Goodnight Nobody, by Jennifer Weiner , Washington Square Press, 2005, 371 pages plus a helpful discussion guide for your local book club.  ISBN 978-0-7434-7011-7

BOOKS: “Calling Invisible Women” to assert themselves

by Minnie Apolis Stepping out of the shower to find that the bathroom mirror no longer registers your reflection does tend to give one pause. In “Calling Invisible Women”, the author addresses issues of self-erasure and feminism in a sweetly humorous way. The heroine, Clover Hobart, is a doctor's wife and mom of two young adults. She's at the age when a lot of women feel like they're invisible, anyway, but in her case it is literally true. It takes a couple of weeks before she is shocked to discover that she is not the only invisible woman, and in fact that several invisible women have been secretly meeting at a hotel conference room. The premise would be the stuff of farce or satire or both, but in the author's hands it seems to be merely a premise that allows her main character to go anywhere and be the fly-on-the-wall on the school bus and in her husband's offices. Along the way she busts up an attempted bank robbery, and orders her grown son to go home when he and a pal enter a tattoo parlor. Once she accepts that there is an upside to being invisible, she becomes fearless! The invisible women's support group informs her that a certain combination of prescriptions commonly written for menopausal women is the likely precipitating factor in their condition. And how many millions of women will identify with these victims who take meds for osteoporosis, hot flashes, and depression? Lots, I bet. Only very late in the novel does Clover finally meet a future son-in-law's mother, who is also invisible. She is more radical and insists on storming the gates of the pharmaceutical giant to get justice. Clover's reporter instincts kick in first in writing a first-person account of the bank robbery – while keeping her secret. Only later does she come out of the closet in a clarion call for all invisible women to unite against the corporate monster who did this to them. The takedown of the pharmaceutical company is much too hurried and pat. I would have liked to see a much different novel, with the emphasis on telling the story of invisible women coming out in the open and organizing a grass-roots campaign and/or boycott against the company. Kind of like Norma Rae, Part Two. Still, it is a likable novel with sympathetic characters who do not waste much time on self-pity. Clover gains support first from her best friend and neighbor, Gilda, her mother-in-law, and other invisible women. Predictably, the men are all hopeless and do not even realize she has become invisible. That list includes her husband, son, and physician. Clover aggravates matters by passively waiting for them to realize what is wrong, though – but once they become aware of her condition, they rally to her side. The themes bear some resemblance to another book I recently reviewed, titled "Goodnight Nobody" -- though they are not really in the same class with each other. But feminists will find pleasure in both. I'll give it just two and a half stars out of five. Promising draft, but needs more work. Might make a fun comic book or cartoon show, with little outlines for the invisible characters... The author is notable for taking up writing novels at the age of sixty, after a career as a nurse. Calling Invisible Women, Jeanne Ray, Crown Publishers, NY NY, May 2012, 246 pages. (review of uncorrected proof copy)

BOOK: “The Postmistress” about three women on cusp of war, 1941

by Minnie Apolis There are many novels and films whose plots will fit easily on the back of an envelope. Most of them fill in the spaces with lots of action or car crashes. This one does not; instead we we are smothered in more detail than is necessary to explain the plot. Believe you me, it was about enough to make me scream – or at least take a stern red pencil to the pages of the novel. A small-town doctor suffers guilt after a patient dies in childbirth. Said patient should have known enough to get to a doctor or hospital when her water broke, but that is an issue not addressed. This part of the story was much too drawn out, in my opinion. So anyway, the good and decent Dr. Fitch leaves his young wife to volunteer his services in London at the height of the Blitz. I was going to say that the story follows two women in the days before the United States got involved in World War Two. But on second thought, there are actually three. The young wife of the above doctor, named Emma. The postmistress in the same small town that Dr and Mrs Fitch live in; her name is Iris James. Then Frankie Bard, the radio reporter who gets a minute or two on Edward R. Murrow's broadcasts to relate her stories. The basic plot is that Dr. Fitch leaves a letter in the care of Postmaster James in case of his demise to give to Emma. But since the doc is overseas on his own, no one is responsible to report whether he is missing or not. The postmaster does receive a letter from Fitch's landlady in London, saying that he seems to be missing, but that letter is not delivered. Well, needless to say the doc buys the farm fairly early in the novel. By chance, Frankie scoops up his last unmailed letter to his wife, intending to mail it to Mrs. Fitch. But Frankie is about to spend three weeks in France and Germany, riding the rails and recording people's stories. She never mails it, but after a rest, travels to the Fitch's hometown to hand deliver it. Well! Is she ever stunned to realize that no one has told Mrs. Fitch that she is a widow. She never delivers the letter, but the postmaster finally delivers the doctor's letter that he had entrusted to her safekeeping. So that is the basic synopsis. If it sounds like something you might want to read, by all means follow up on that. It did not do much for me, sorry about that. It reads like it might have been a memoir written by the fictional Frankie Bard. The author did a fair amount of research on the era, on postal equipment and regulation, on Mr. Murrow, and on the war in Europe 1938-1941. Yet the resulting story seems awfully wispy, with few plot turns and rather sketchy character delineations. The one theme that could have been hammered home a bit more, but is not even mentioned in the study guide in back, is the rationale for telling the news. WHY do reporters insist on telling the news, and to whom are they speaking anyway? And WHY for gosh sakes do they insist on telling us BAD news? How much of that do they think we can take, as if we don't have enough to struggle with in our own lives. So as the sage reporter, Martha Gellhorn, once told Frankie, “I belonged to a Federation of Cassandras, my colleagues the foreign correspondents, whom I met at every disaster.” And all the Cassandra reporters gasp out their reports of news so bad that we cannot believe it is really so, we cannot see it for ourselves, and then when the press does show us, we cannot bear any more of it and look away. The fictional Frankie keeps trying to tell the story of the millions of refugees in Europe desperately trying to get out, but no one wants to hear about those horrors. While it was a novel and a theme worth addressing, I remain disappointed in the result. Oh, BTW, one cool tidbit is that the first notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony are the same as the Morse code for the letter V (dit dit dit dash), which the resistance hums as a message of defiance at their Nazi oppressors. (Morse code video on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0HrbCbfwlg) THE POSTMISTRESS, by Sarah Blake, Berkeley, 2010, 352 pages of novel plus brief notes and study guide. ISBN 9780425238691

Newsviner Benno Writes of History of Wars over Resources

by Minnie Apolis One of our own, Benno Hansen, has written “Ecowar: Natural Resources and Conflict”, an interesting book on the topic of the relationship between climate and wars over resources. Benno maintains that wars are more often waged over resources – whether because the resources are scarce, or because they are valuable – than over religion. Climate change comes into play because a slightly colder climate will tend to make food scarcer, forcing tribes or nations to compete for farmland, storehouses, etc. Even a difference of one degree, as he mentions in a section on China, will start to be reflected in population records. “A 1 degree cooling,” he writes, “coincided with the fall of the Ming dynasty. Population growth is seen to rise during the 1741-1805 warm phase and drop during the 1806-1850 cold phase. The war periods generally lag the onset of cold phases by 10 to 30 years which makes sense since it would take some time for the reduced agricultural productivity to manifest as resource limitations and overpopulation (p. 16).” Research like this is only possible in countries that keep detailed records for long periods of time. Another culture that keep useful records for this kind of research was Bavaria. The records showed “significant correlation between the amount of rain, the price of rye and the rate of property crime: They rose and fell together (p. 20).” Another fascinating tho bloody episode was the war in Angola, with one side funded by the oil trade and the opposition funded by the diamond trade. Now there's a twist on the term “resource war”! While most of the conflicts discussed in the book are historical, some conflicts are sure to hit the headlines as global warming and melting ice caps increase competition for everything from oil to fishing stocks. What will the fish in the Bering Sea do when the waters get too warm for them? Will they swim north or die off? And will it be economically feasible for fishermen to follow the schools north, if that is indeed what the fish will do? While most of the time the only instance when water rights hit the news is when an agreement is signed, in 2009 water became a serious issue in Kenya. The BBC reported that a crime syndicate was diverting half the water that was supposed to go to farm irrigation. The United Nations estimated almost 4 million Kenyans were in need of emergency food aid, and both water and electricity had to be rationed. (The hydro-electric dams were running dry!) Even in discussion of modern conflicts where we think we know pretty well what is going on, there are surprises. For example, in Darfur, Benno states that “a strong correlation between annual temperature variations and civil war in the 1980-2002 period for the area has been shown statistically.” Sudan is also in danger of losing its rubber business, as the long-term drought reduces the yield of the biggest rubber producer in the world. In spite of the wealth of material and research behind this work, I could make a laundry list of weaknesses. One is the near-total lack of graphic material. Talking about the correlation between temperatures, population and war is just not as strong as seeing a chart. And I am sure there are works of art – paintings, sketches, even mosaics and maps – that would help flesh out the verbiage. One of the few illustrations is an old ad, apparently from the time of the Berlin airlift, with the headline: “Milk . . . new weapon of Democracy!” What's there is good, but Benno just needs to write more of it. A book on such an important topic could run to several volumes, if you really wanted. But at any rate, I find 144 pages is just not enough to flesh out the theory or the history. One of the happy surprises in the book was an introductory section where that author talks in the voice of Neanderthal hunter living with his family on the edge of the glaciers. There, the competition was with sapiens, and obviously the Neanderthals lost. I would have enjoyed reading a bit more of his tales of life as seen through the filter of his theory, and as seen through the eyes of people who lived through eras of desperate competition for food, water, land and access to any and all resources. Benno wrote six such “Interludes” as he calls them. I enjoyed them and hope that he would consider adding more of them to illustrate struggles over resources, or perhaps develop them into longer “interludes”. Some of the Interludes are sure to be controversial. One deals with the shooting down of a United Nations plane bearing Dag Hammarskjold in 1961 by British forces over Rhodesia. It is far too brief, with no explanation of the African crisis that Hammarskjold was flying towards in hope of calming the situation. I suspect that Benno assumes that all of his readers know the details, but the fact is many of his readers were born after that tragedy occurred. Other types of violence can spring from resource scarcity besides wars. One of the more interesting segments was on the correlation between food prices to riots. “When marked on a graph of the UN food price index, riots clearly cluster around price spikes.” At the same time, Benno does acknowledge that the relationship between food prices and riots is a complex one. “The researchers do not conclude 'high food prices cause riots'. What they say, is that expensive food could be one factor among others setting the stage for riots. When populations are hungry, it takes lesser trigger incidents to kick-start a riot (p. 81).”

Books: Deaver handles celeb stalker plot with realism and panache

by Minnie Apolis “X O” is the oddly titled Jeffery Deaver novel of a stalker who trails after a country-pop engenue named Kayleigh Towne. It is a topic was played for laughs in one of the Stephanie Plum novels (Fearless Fourteen), but that's OK. Deaver is good at realism and thrillers, and of course with his recurring character Kathryn Dance, he can't miss. The stalker, Edwin Sharp, is spooky the way he hacks her newest email address within hours – never mind bombarding her with 50 or so emails. He shows up at a lunch at her fave roadside diner early in the book; how did he know when she would be there? Kayleigh is an enormously gifted singer-slash-songwriter in the country genre, the daughter of another country legend. Her squeaky clean image is the result of burying a deep secret from her teen years. Her mother, incidentally, died about the same time as that other ahem, incident. Strangely enough, her stalker has also gone through a tough period of rejection from a girlfriend and the death of his mother. Geez, they have so much in common, y'know? It's like, in another world, they'd be soul mates. The bodies start to pile up, with the victims having in common a motive clear to the mind of a stalker. They all stood in the way of the stalker and the object of his desire, or they threatened the well-being of the performer in some fashion. We know very early on that there is a stalker out there, and we meet him very early in the novel. But Deaver keeps the spinning the needle between Guilty or Innocent so many times that we, the reader, get dizzy from it. Sure he's weird, but he's just a harmless loser. Or no, he's not harmless, he's just a good faker and a really dangerous psychopath. We don't learn the answer till several red herrings have been played out. There are, as usual in a Deaver novel, several twists and turns in the plot, which turns out to have two guilty parties in this instance. The final, small twist on the last page is the one I am not buying, tho it hardly makes any difference in the larger picture. I'll give it three and a half stars out of five. I am a very tough grader, so you may rate it higher. X O, Jeffery Deaver, Simon & Schuster, 2012. 371 pages not including the lyrics to the songs mentioned in the story, which appear at the back of the book. ISBN 9781439156377

Books: Vampire Hunting Becomes a Family Affair in Children of the Vampire

The middle volume in the trilogy of the vampire diaries is supposed to be the weakest of the three. If that is the case, then I am determined to find the rest of Jeanne Kalogridis' trilogy. “Children of the Vampire: The Diaries of the Family Dracul” is a well-written, well-researched novel of a clan's descendents who feel cursed by the family history. The reader is treated to diary entries of various lengths from two brothers – Stefan and Abraham Van Helsing – their mother Mary Windham Tsepesh Van Helsing (who is not a descendant of the clan but married into it), and of an aunt and uncle to the brothers – Zsuzsanna Tsepesh and Arkady Tsepesh. (Tsepesh means impaler in Romanian.)

The story, set in the mid-1800s, follows Arkady as he tries to protect his son from being enslaved by Vlad, who is still flitting around in remarkably well-preserved form, considering he is 400 years old. The brothers are swept up in the clan curse and away from their medical practice when Stefan is abducted by his nasty yet glamorous aunt Zsuzsanna. Family secrets leak out all over the place, such as the truth of the boys' identity. It is Abraham who shoulders the responsibility of trying to weaken Vlad by releasing victims of vampirism. By killing them in the ritualistic way (that is, with a stake through the heart PLUS beheading) their souls are released and can at last rest in peace. He is trained and aided in this mission by a mysterious hermit-like monk who lives in the middle of a forest. The hermit has a knowledge of both herbs and spiritual warfare. “Jeanne Kalogridis” is a pen name for J. M. Dillard, who is probably better-known as a writer of several sci-fi novels in the Star Trek genre. She also wrote the novelization of the cultish hit movie Bulletproof Monk (2003). The other titles of the Dracula trilogy are Covenant of the Vampire (the first volume) and Lord of the Vampire (the final volume). This middle volume has been criticized for repeating some of the material in the first one and setting the stage for the last one – but I feel that important new characters appear, such as the hermit who aids Abraham in his mission. I like this novel! I would have been sorely disappointed if had resembled most of the other vampire-themed media for the teen crowd. And I am not interested in the Anne Rice vampire stories set in the modern day, sorry about that. But I have seen most of the movies about Dracula, and I like this novel because it is well-grounded in the traditional story and background of the characters and legend. Children of the Vampire: The Diaries of the Family Dracul, Jeanne Kalogridis (aka J. M. Dillard), Delacorte Press (of Bantam Doubleday Dell), New York, 1995, 301 pages.