David Schwinghammer's Blog, page 10

Golden Prey

Lucas Davenport has a new job as a federal marshal, with a twist. Thanks to his political connections, Lucas can pick and choose his cases, which causes some resentment among other marshals who have to such menial tasks as escort prisoners and provide security on board passenger jets. Lucas only wants to “hunt,” which means hunt the baddest of the bad.

He gets his wish when a “shooter” robs a drug cartel counting house, killing five people, including a six-year-old girl, whose grandfather was one of the counters. The shooter gets away with seven or eight million dollars.

Those readers who loved Lucas's crew back at the Minnesota BCA have a treat in store. Lucas can't handle this case on his own, as the people who pulled this robbery have machine guns. The federal marshal service sends him two deputy marshals, Bob and Rae. Lucas pictures the old comedy team by that name. He doesn't realize that Rae is a tall black woman who started two years for the Connecticut basketball team. There's a lot of ribbing going on among the three. During a lull in the case, they stop to look at magazines. Bob, a stocky little fellow who's smarter than he looks, buys a photography magazine; Rae is into South American art. The snazzily dressed Lucas picks a men's fashion mag. He says, “I guess I'm the dumb one.” But the biggest clue comes from a neighbor of the gunman whom they track mainly through technology, such as phone records. He knows there was a graduation party next door to the shooter's former digs and they'd hired a videographer. Sure enough the killer truck's tags show up on the video.

The other impressive thing about Sandford's new direction is Garvin Poole's legitimate affection for his girlfriend. One would think that Garvin Poole would be a sociopath, but he really loves her and risks getting caught to save her when she's apprehended, even tough she's capable of stabbing another woman in the frontal lob with an eight-inch screwdriver when they get into a tussle.

The cartel is also after the man who stole their money; they send two hit men after him, using the some of the same methods the marshals are using to find him. One of them is also a woman. Sandford likes to do that once in a while. He's wants to show that women are just as good at detection and malice as men. There just seem to be more of the maclious type in Davenport's world.

This is more of a thriller than we used to in the other Prey books. Weather and Lucas's family are barely mentioned, although his home office is still Minneapolis. Sandford indicates that Bob and Rae will be back, as Lucas tells them he'll ask for them if he finds another interesting case.

The Big Rich

THE BIG RICH is about how Texas wildcatters amassed huge fortunes during the Depression and went on to lose most of it in wild speculation.

Bryan Burrough concentrates on the big four: Clint Murchison, H.L. Hunt, Roy Cullen and Sid Richardson. They were able to acquire oil leases because the big oil companies, like Gulf, were short on money because of the Depression. H.L. Hunt got his start by “hijacking” another wildcatter, “Dad” Joiner who found the first great oil field in East Texas, a woodsy area other oil men disdained. Hunt needed to know the direction of the find, where future wells might be drilled. There was one being drilled at the same time as Joiner's well. When it gushed, Hunt was the first to know and was able to buy up leases in that direction. Of course Joiner sued, but the eventual settlement was comparative pocket change. Hunt went on to become the richest man in the world; he also started the conservative movement, buying up radio stations to promote his political views. Hunt hated government interference and regulation. Government tended to try to limit the amount of oil that could be pumped in one day so as to prevent the well from going dry. Hunt resented this. He was also a racist and eventually became a born-again Christian. Hunt was also a bigamist, eventually married to three women with corresponding families, which would present problems in the future with lots of litigation.

How conservative were the oil barons? They latched onto Joe McCarty's hyper anti-communist views, even thinking about financing a run for the presidency. And when Douglas MacArthur was fired, they supported him. Eventually they latched onto Dwight D. Eisenhower., going so far as to remodel his Gettysburg farm.

Clint Murchison was a math whiz and relied more on science to find his oil. He would go on to acquire a NFL franchise, the Dallas Cowboys, which he owned for many years before his son Clint Jr. lost most of his holdings.

Ray Cullen was the least known and least remembered of the big four. He had a fifth grade education but had a nose for finding oil. He was also politically conservative, forever jousting with politicians. He built a mansion in Houston during the Depression and justified it as a civil enterprise, bringing jobs to hundreds of men.

Sid Richardson was more politically astute. He gave money to both political parties and developed a special relationship with Lyndon Johnson, a young congressional candidate at the time who would rise to become senate majority leader and eventually president. His grand nephew, Sid Bass, was even more astute, diversifying when the Middle East began to drive prices down. Sid Bass and his investment partner, Richard Rainwater, would build a fifty million dollar stake into five billion through corporate raider techniques. They would acquire the largest share of stocks in Disney, before it became an entertainment conglomerate under Michael Eisner, whom Sid Bass hired.

Today Texas no longer relies so much on oil; the state has more Fortune 500 companies than any other, but Burroughs makes a curious statement, saying Texas is just another state. Perhaps he said that because he published the book in 2009 before it became such a conservative bastion. But even then George W. Bush's presidency was over and Rick Perry had elected a Board of Education that wanted to rewrite history. Burrough also mentions T. Boone Pickens, who along with other oil and gas magnates, sponsored the Swift Boaters who helped Bush win his second term against John Kerry.

Laughter, Tears & Wonders

Niall Kavanagh describes the years 1942-66 in Dublin, Ireland as “Childhood and Coming of Age.” The book consists of mostly anecdotes Kavanagh describes as “yarns”.

He loses his father, Gerry, when he was 49, and Niall is forced to quit school and go to work at the press where his father worked.

Some of the yarns are rather pedestrian, but there's one where Niall and a friend decide to climb to the roof of what looks like a local cathedral (Kavanagh includes pictures throughout the memoir). He and his friend get stuck up there, and they have to scream for help. Firemen come to get them down. This only adds to his street cred, and soon, he's doing initiation tasks to join a local gang (They're just a bunch of kids who hang together). One of his tasks is to let a train pass over him.

The occasional yarn can be somewhat scatological. There's a bathroom monitor at the printing press who takes his job a little too seriously. Niall and a friend leave him a little message atop the stools in the commodes. They use their own body waste to do it. Of course, the manager doesn't think this is very funny and they end up doing three-hour Sunday night duty cleaning the John for three months.

If you read this memoir you will learn something about Ireland. Did you know for instance that the three Catholic provinces of Ireland don't allow condoms? Niall and a friend go on a road trip to buy some in Ulster. We also learn how the fracas between the Protestants and the Catholics came about. It all started with Henry VIII breaking away from the Catholic church and trying to colonize Ireland with Protestants. The Catholic element put up a fight, and Henry and later kings, plus Oliver Cromwell, took away most of the privately owned land in Ireland, giving it to landlords. When the potato famine came along, the English exported wheat rather than feed their starving populace. Kavanagh goes on to explain how an eventual treaty came to be, but he doesn't mention the woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize for facilitating such.

Another entertaining yarn occurs when Niall and his friends decide to climb a cliff to get to a famous pub. An old codger had given them deceptive directions. Niall is a good climber but he gets stuck twenty feet short of the top. The others make it back down, but Niall slips and falls, saved by a giant rock that impedes the slide. In the process Niall loses control of his bladder. His friends go to find a rope, but ants are attracted to the urine. When they finally pull him up, he must disrobe and shake his clothes free of the pesky ants in his birthday suit.

Apparently this is only the first of Niall's planned memoirs. In a forward, he tells us he emigrated to the United States (illegally) to find work. This is not discussed in the memoir. This is a quick read as most of the yarns are only a few pages long. Very few are continued in a following yarn.

My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's sorry

MY GRANDMOTHER ASKED ME TO TELL YOU SHE'S SORRY is a combination fantasy and reality novel, loosely mixed. Other than the grouchy grandmother, it is a total departure from A MAN CALLED OVE, except for the being misunderstood part.

Seven-year old Elsa is the main character. Her mother is a hospital administrator who has little time for her daughter. This job falls to Granny, who fills her head with fairy tales about the Land-of-Almost-Awake. Their are parallels between the two worlds. Elsa lives in an apartment building with a collection of weird characters. On the ground floor there's a dog-like character Granny calls “Our Friend.” Then there's “The Monster” who lives across the hall.“Our Friend” is a wurse, a soldier-like character from the Land-of-Almost-Awake. The Monster is a Beowulf-like hero who saves the day when the Shadows try to destroy the Land-of-Almost-Awake. In reality he really was a soldier and returned from the war with a bad case of OCD. In the Land-of-Almost-Awake he's Wolfheart.

Then there's Britt-Marie who's married to Kent, who's never home. There's also a taxi driver, named Alf, we later find out is Kent's brother. In the Land-of -Almost-Awake they're both in love with the princess, Britt-Marie. Britt Marie is a royal pain.
She call herself the president of the non-existent lease holders association. She's a rule enforcer: She who must be obeyed. Granny is always messing with her. She shoots her with a paint gun. She smokes. Get this, Granny is a surgeon who serves all over the world, wherever she's needed, and she smokes, even in the hospital, and she parks her beat-up Renault in Britt-Marie's spot. Granny also can't seem to spell.

Elsa's favorite reading material is the Harry Potter books and she loves STAR WARS. She doesn't understand people who don't like either. Her father is a bit like Britt-Marie. He's always correcting her language and he doesn't seem to have a sense of humor, but he loves Elsa.

Backman does not worry one iota about suspension of disbelief. I think he could've written a novel where a goofy Granny tells her granddaughter all sorts of fairy tales that apply to real life, but Granny should make it clear that they're just fairy tales, despite all the real-life connections. Elsa is too smart to believe there really is a Land-of-Almost-Awake.

The Night and the Music

I first read Lawrence Block when I picked up an anthology of mystery short stories, NEW MYSTERY, Jerome Charyn's International Association of Crime Writers anthology.

It included one of the stories in this anthology, “The Merciful Angel of Death.” This is one of my favorite stories from this collection of Block's work. Matt Scudder is investigating the possibility of a serial killer who's murdering AIDS patients at Caritas. But it's not that simple. He watches as she helps a patient die without touching him, not that she didn't occasionally give one of them a shove. This story is not the traditional mystery story, usually a rehashed version of an “Ironside” episode from the 20th century. It was topical and philosophical, and it made you think.

My other favorite from this collection is “Let's Get Lost”. Matt is still a cop, married to his first wife, living on Long Island, still drinking, but he's having an affair with a high-priced hooker named Elaine. A man had a heart attack and died while in her bed, and Matt handled the situation for her. Now he had the reputation of a fixer, someone who takes care of problematic situations. In this case it's a weekly poker game, and one of the players winds up dead. The other four players say he answered the door in the middle of a hand and someone stabbed him. Matt smells a rat right away. He tells them the police will never believe that, and he sets up an alternative scenario. What he's really done is sniff out evidence that the players' version isn't what really happened, and the reader sees what a great detective Scudder really is.

If you're looking for a new detective series that makes you think a bit, you might try THE SINS OF THE FATHERS or WHEN THE SACRED GIN MILL CLOSES. There are about ten full-length novels and they're all better than the usual tripe, that is unless you're bothered by a detective without a license who walks all around New York City, attending AA meetings while showing you the city and working a case.

The Underground Railroad

Why should you read another book about the Underground Railroad? Well, this is a book of fiction, based on actual slave histories, and it also has a few fictional flourishes, such as magical realism. One of the critics compares author Colson Whitehead to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Oh, yes, the novel also won the National Book Award.

The magic realism isn't as wild as Marquez's work, but there is a progressive community in South Carolina that appears to treat escaped slaves fairly, and there's an entire farm in Indiana that welcomes runaways before the Civil War.

Cora, the main character, is afraid to run away, as her mother apparently did. Mabel is a hero in the black community because the slave catcher, Ridgeway, was unable to find her. Another slave, Caesar, convinces Cora that she should go, especially after she suffers a horrible beating at the hands of her master, trying to save a young boy.

As we know the Underground Railroad wasn't an actual railroad. Anti-slavers and heroic escapees like Harriet Tubman found sympathetic whites and free blacks who provided hiding places for the slaves on their way north, usually Canada.

Ridgeway is the villain of the story. He shoots a captured slave in the forehead for singing too much. But his reputation is ruined when Cora seems to avoid his grasp as well as Mabel.

Ridgeway is a mere shell of his former self when he finally runs Cora to ground. There's some foreshadowing in the book, so we know Cora isn't returned to her master; the suspense is how she gets away again, which is just a tad unrealistic.

Another original aspect of the book is how it portrays the slaves on the Randall plantation, Cora's original plantation. There's a sort of hierarchy where some of the slaves are outcasts: the lame, the aged, the mentally ill. Some of the slaves actually help keep the others under control. Cora winds up at the Hob, the outcast quarters. But her grandmother and her mother left her a plot of land where she grows her own vegetables, defending it fiercely.

You will find yourself talking to Cora as the story progresses. Go North young lady, you'll say. The smart runaways head for Canada; there is no real sanctuary for escaped slaves in the states, especially south of the Mason-Dixon line, no matter how attractive it looks.

Some Luck

SOME LUCK starts in 1920 and ends in 1953 when one of the major characters dies.

We go through the Depression, WWII, the Korean War and the beginning of the Cold War, which freaks one of the wives out. She thinks Stalin is definitely capable of dropping the bomb at any time.

At first the book reads like a phone book. Rosanna and Walter Langdon start farming in Iowa. Walter had had about enough being treated like a servant on his father's farm. He has a tough time, especially with the weather. In the thirties the crops dried up, and Rosanna had to slaughter half her chickens. She had had a steady income selling eggs and butter at the local grocery store. Walter is down to two cows at one time, but it finally starts to rain and they make it. Meanwhile they have a bunch of kids, one whom Roseanna delivers herself when he shows up early.

The book finally comes alive when Frankie is born, their oldest son. He is a live wire and could care less what anybody else expects of him. He's also good looking and smart. Rosanna and Walter invest in Frankie by sending him to high school in Chicago, with Eloise, Roseanna's Communist sister. Eventually he attends Iowa State where he meets a spoiled rich kid Lawrence. They're ying to the other's yang. Without Lawrence Frankie would not have met Hildy, who would eventually become his wife. But Frankie joins the army two quarters shy of earning his degree. Turns out Frankie is a dead shot and passes all the tests required of a sniper. He fights in Africa against Rommel, Sicily, at Anzio, and Monte Cassino, before being transferred to Southern France. He's especially nonplussed when Eisenhower stops the American advance at the Rhine, allowing Stalin to take Berlin. Frankie also meets Rubin, who will be an important acquaintance later in life. Rubin is the Milo Minderbender (Catch-22) of SOME LUCK. He's constantly collecting valuables to sell when the war is over.

Frankie never finishes college, for some reason, but he is hired by OSS operative Arthur, his little sister's husband to go over Nazi papers, especially those about advanced German weaponry. Arthur can also read people, and Frankie is the kind of person who can sell ice cream to an Eskimo. Arthur uses him as an unpaid spy, ferreting out Communists. Arthur now works for the FBI and the despised Herbert Hoover. Frankie bumps into Hildie again, only now she calls herself Andie, which sounds more like the fashion designer she's now become. They get married. Andie's uncle dies, leaving her some money. And along comes Rubin, real name Rubino, who is now a real estate investor. Frankie makes a killing.

Walter and Rosanna pop in and out of the story as do Joey, Frankie's farmer brother who has a special knack for the job, especially hybrid corn. There are also children of children, and they grow up in a hurry, with stories of their own. Then the story comes to a screeching halt, mainly because this is the first in a series. The book is no A THOUSAND ACRES. If you'll remember that was about a modern version of KING LEAR set in Iowa farm country. It won the Pulitzer. If you care about Frankie and the gang, you might want to get synopses of the other books in the series.

The Blood of Emmett Till

Timothy B. Tyson is a visiting professor of American Christianity and Souther Culture at Duke and an adjunct professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina, among other impressive positions.

Tyson studied the Emmett Till murder and did the last interview with Caroline Bryant, the Mississippi woman whom Emmett supposedly assaulted in some manner.

During Roy Bryant and J.W. Millan's trial, she testified that he had physically touched her and asked her for a date, then “wolf whistled” at her after he left the store, and she went to her car to get a gun. During Tyson's interview she said some of her testimony wasn't true and that the boy didn't deserve what happened to him. The affront may have been as innocuous as putting the money in the palm of her hand, rather than laying the money for his purchase on the counter as most Mississippi blacks knew to do in the presence of a white clerk.

About three-quarters of the way through the book we get Tyson's interpretation of what really happened. Emmett was never castrated, as some rumors claimed, but he was beaten with a .45 for hours by several men, including Roy Bryant's brother-in-law, then shot behind the ear by one of the other men. Again rumors claimed that the boy didn't go down easily. He talked back and goaded his tormentors, but that's rather hard to believe after he'd been repeatedly hit in the head with a heavy hand gun. Then the men tied a cotton gin vent to his neck with barbed wire and threw his body in the river.

The Mississippi Underground, consisting of several NAACP members and several ministers scoured the immediate area for possible witnesses and several agreed to testify, which was a death sentence in the Old South. One had heard Emmett howling from the beating and identified J.W. Millan when he came out of the barn to get a drink of water. Reverend Moses Wright, Emmett's uncle, and Emmett's mother also testified. According to Tyson, the prosecutor did everything he could to convict the two men, and the judge was fair beyond the call of duty, considering where the trial was held. Ten farmers and two businessmen found Bryant and Millan not guilty.

We also learn that, following WWII, businessmen and professionals throughout the South formed a coalition to deal with returning black soldiers who may have been expecting better treatment, considering they were willing to give up their lives fighting for their country. They expected “peckerwoods” like Bryant and Millan to do their dirty work for them. This explains a lot as I've recently read Harper Lee's early draft of TO KILL A MOCKINGWORD, which was released as a separate novel. Atticus Finch is portrayed as one of these professional men.

Towards the end of the book, Tyson makes a connection between the fifties when Emmett was murdered and the 21st Century when white supremacists are “still killing Emmett Till.” He mentions Black Lives Matter and the murder of nine church-going blacks in Charleston, South Carolina, by an avowed white supremacists. He does mention Michael Brown, but, curiously, he doesn't say at thing about the young boy with the toy gun that looked like the real thing who was summarily shot by a police officer, whom, I believe, got off Scott free. I also expected to hear something about the Freedom Riders and the murder of three of them in the same general area. I guess Tyson didn't want to wander too far astray from the Emmett Till murder.

The Cydonian Pyramid

I was first exposed to Pete Hautman when a critique partner recommended THE MORTAL NUTS, a Joe Crow mystery that involved the Minnesota State Fair and Texas Hold 'em. Needless to say I was rather surprised to see Peter win the National Book Award for his young adult novel, GODLESS.

And now he's switched genres again, with science fiction. The CYDONIAN PYRAMID starts half a millennium in the future, Lah Lia, a Pure Girl has experienced her Blood Moon and is about to be sacrificed and thrown into a portal leading to another time and place. If she returns, she will be a Yar, or holy woman (nun?). Just as a priest is about to stab her, Tucker Feye (supposedly the boy Abraham sacrificed to the Old Testament God) saves her and they both jump into the portal.

But they go in different directions. Tucker ends up at the North Pole just as a nuclear submarine breaks through the ice; Lah Lia falls from such a height she needs hospitalization. A Medicant wants payment after she's treated. She's sold to a Boggsian, a kind of cross between an Amish adherent and a Quantum mechanics technician. There's a bit of satire in Hautman's books. The Lah Sept, Lah Lia's people, blame a plague on the Boggsian's and their obsession with technology and numbers. The Lah Sept don't mention numbers.

Hautman has Lah Lia and Tucker jumping in and out of these portals or disks, perhaps too many times, throughout the book. Lah Lia likes Tucker but she can't find the right disk to take her where Tucker is.

Oh, yes, there's also a war going on between the priests and the Yars, eventually anyway. There's a big battle scene atop the Pyramid.

It's a bit disconcerting and ironic to think that a five hundred years into the future, Quantum theory will have joined with the Amish to fall further into the past, while advancing in years. In both THE MORTAL NUTS and GODLESS Hautman displays a wicked sense of humor. That's missing here, perhaps necessarily.

Let Him Go

Winner of the 2013 Montana Book Award, Larry Watson sets his novel, LET HIM GO, in 1951 North Dakota, Montana.

Margaret Blackledge has just seen her daughter-in-law's new husband smear chocolate ice cream in her grandson's face to teach him a lesson for dropping his ice cream cone. She lost her son, James, Jimmy's real father, when he was thrown from a horse. Margaret decides she's going to get her grandson back, and she packs practically everything she owns, ready to go to Montana whether her husband, George, former sheriff, likes it or not. He'll follow Margaret to the end of the Earth, so he loads his old Hudson ,and they're on their way.

When they get to Bentrock, Montana, they meet the deceptively charming Bill Weboy, who they ultimately find has some sort of romantic relationship with Blanche Weboy, authoritarian head of the Weboy clan. He invites them to dinner. While they're out there, Blanche lets Margaret know in no uncertain terms that she's not about give up her grandson.

As the Blackledges explore Bentrock, they find out more about the Weboys. They're definitely on the wrong side of the law, but they never quite go overboard. Lorna, Margaret's daugher-in-law, works at the Montgomery Ward store in Bentrock. Margaret asks if she'd like to leave the Weboys and come live with George and her in Dalton, North Dakota. She seems to agree, but that same night there's a confrontation between Bill Weboy and the rest of the Weboy clan, three grown boys, during which George is humiliated.

George spends time in the hospital and he's running a fever, but he decides to return home to Dalton, or seemingly so. They've been invited to pitch their tent at Alton Dragsdorf's cabin; they made friends with this Indian boy during their first few days in Bentrock. In the middle of the night, George leaves in the Hudson. We know where he's going, but we have no reason to suspect he'll do what he does. He's badly outnumbered, after all.

He just wants Margaret to have what she wants, which is her grandson Jimmy. There's a weird scene where Jimmy looks into a dark closet and sees something there. He's only four years old. Will what he sees in that dark closet haunt him for the rest of his life?