Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 6

Honor Bound 4 Death and Honor by W.E.B. Griffin

Honor Bound 4 Death and Honor by W.E.B. Griffin

Death and Honor was published nine years after Secret Honor and I wonder if Griffin did not initially plan to conclude the series with the earlier book which ended on the depressing note of German (but anti-Nazi) aviator, Peter, being told to commit suicide or have his father pulled down with him when his treason was exposed. At the start of this book, Peter has not only failed to kill himself, but the man who ordered him to do so has also decided to switch sides and secretly feed information to the Americans. Griffin goes to great lengths to justify this, but frankly, I never bought it. I think the books would have been better with Clete having to deal with his friend’s death and the role he himself had played in leading up to it.

 

The main plot of the current novel is FDR’s instructions (passed down to Clete through the OSS chain of command) to form an Argentine airline. It was interesting watching Clete put the airline together while everyone involved wondering why FDR wanted them to do it. There is also, of course, continuing concern over the Nazis as they finally get the submarine resupply operation functioning again after Clete destroyed the original resupply ship in the first novel.

 

I really enjoyed this book, but it didn’t have the gravitas of the first three novels. I’m hoping that Griffin can recapture his full stride in the next one.

 

The Destroyer 69 Blood Ties by Warren Murphy

The Destroyer 69 Blood Ties by Warren Murphy

An assassin named Remo Williams is trying to knock off the CEOs of major automobile manufacturers in Detroit and it’s not everyone’s favorite Master of Sinanju with the same name. Harold Smith, Head of CURE, and Chiun, Remo’s trainer, are both concerned that this man might actually be Remo’s missing father (Remo is an orphan) and so they try very hard to keep Remo away from the case while Chiun struggles to protect the CEOs by himself.

 

Naturally, the harder they try to keep Remo out of the Detroit trouble, the more interested in it he becomes with the totally predictable result that he meets the man who appears to be his father. Remo then tries to bond with the man who is an assassin like him, and the man tries to get Remo to help him with his hits. This brings them into conflict with Chiun and (again, totally predictably) Remo is forced to choose between the two men.

 

The ending does show Murphy’s chops as a mystery writer, however, when Smith finally pieces together who the assassin was and how he came to be using Remo’s name. In terms of the long-term storyline, the incident also reawakens Remo’s strong interest in learning about his biological family—much to Chiun’s distress.

 

The American Gun Mystery by Ellery Queen

The American Gun Mystery by Ellery Queen

This mystery has a wonderful beginning. While watching a Wild West show with 20,000 other people, Ellery Queen watches a man get murdered. There are many questions attached to the crime, not the least of which were: who done it and how did they do it? With twenty thousand witnesses—each the potential villain—Queen has his work cut out for him.

 

As is usually the case, watching Queen go to work and uncover the various facets of the crime was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the solution was so convoluted and without a solid motive for the crime that I don’t think any jury would have ever convicted. The authors take care of that problem, but honestly, it still detracts from the ultimate satisfaction of the tale.

 

If you’re an Ellery Queen fan, you will want to read this book. But it’s not a good one to get started on.

 

Looking Glass 3 Manxome Foe by John Ringo

Looking Glass 3 Manxome Foe by John Ringo

The U.S. has mastered a technology which opens gates to other planets. A scientific outpost is overrun on a far away world and the U.S. fears that the alien Dreen are to blame. Fearing to reopen the gate lest they trigger a second Dreen invasion of Earth, they send their one faster than light starship, The Vorpal Blade, on a rescue mission. All of that worked pretty well for me as the crew gets called back early interrupting Two Gun’s first date with a young woman he is obviously very enamored with. But it wasn’t until they figure out that the Dreen did wipe out the outpost (and by starship, not gate) that things really get hopping, The Vorpal Blade goes in search of the bad guys and finds a whole new alien race with advanced technology fleeing “Battlestar Galactica like” from the Dreen. They also learn that at their current rate of expansion, the Dreen starships will reach the Earth in about fifteen years. It quickly becomes apparent that saving the aliens from the Dreen to get access to their technology is the only chance our planet has to survive the coming war.

 

Manxome Foe is a fun novel with tons of action The aforementioned romance between Two Gun and Brooke was a little off the walls. Somehow it moves from first date to marry me with two under 12 word texts and that was plumb crazy (especially since everyone else thinks it’s absolutely normal), but heck, if one tiny subplot is my only complaint it must have been a great book.

 

Trace 2 And 47 Miles of Rope by Warren Murphy

Trace 2 And 47 Miles of Rope by Warren Murphy

This is the most complicated Trace/Digger story to date—so much so that I put together nothing that was important until the end of the story finding most of my entertainment in the subplot around Trace’s parents visiting him in Las Vegas and his mother driving his girlfriend crazy. The mystery involved a murder (which Trace is investigating to make certain that the victim wasn’t killed by the beneficiary of his insurance policy) and some missing jewels (which I assumed without evidence had actually been stolen by the owner in a separate insurance fraud). What actually happened is extremely complex and it wasn’t until Trace explained everything at the end of the story that I understood anything that had happened. I’m not sure that that makes for a good story, but I did find the book entertaining.

 

The Hardy Boys 2 The House on the Cliff by Franklin W. Dixon

The Hardy Boys 2 The House on the Cliff by Franklin W. Dixon

In my memories of reading this book as a child, this was one of the most exciting of all of the Hardy Boys adventures. While investigating a smuggling operation occurring near their town of Bayport, Frank and Joe’s father, famous detective Fenton Hardy, disappears. A day later, a typed letter, apparently signed by Fenton, comes to the home telling the family he will be out of town for a few days, but the letter does not include a secret sign that their father always includes in his personal correspondence to protect against criminals forging his name. Since the letter does not have this sign, the boys believe their father has been kidnapped and begin to search for him.

 

Their investigation quickly begins to focus on the old house on the cliff of the title due to a series of events that occurred their earlier in the novel and some clues to their father’s interest in it. They make some mistakes that should be expected of teenaged boys. And they mobilize their friends to help them with the search. There’s the old house. There’s a secret tunnel leading into the bay. And there is an armed villain and his thugs who clearly don’t want the boys poking their noses into the area. All told, this book formed an exciting adventure, many details of which are still with me fifty years after first reading.

 

As an adult, the investigation looked a lot weaker to me than it did when I was a child, but this is a book geared at the young and I think it works very well as an adventure story with a bit of mystery. As a child, when the boys rescued their father only to become caught up in an even more dangerous problem, I was at the edge of my seat with excitement. As an adult, it still kept my interest.

 

One Foot in the Grave by Wm. Mark Simmons

One Foot in the Grave by Wm. Mark Simmons

This novel starts out strong with Simmons’ hero, Chris Csejthe, trying to deal with having lost his wife and daughter a year before while also working with his doctor to try and understand why he is increasingly sensitive to sunlight. For the reader who has picked up an urban fantasy, this is an easy question to answer. Chris is becoming a vampire. Part of what makes the first portion of this novel so interesting is the effort to find out why Chris is changing. Thrown into the mix is Chris’ overly slow introduction to the supernatural world. Things don’t really begin to jump until two critical things happen—Chris gets reason to suspect that his wife is not dead after all (or maybe she is undead) and Chris starts having nightmares about what really happened the day he lost his family (which it turns out he doesn’t remember clearly at all).

 

This storyline is very well done and quite exciting. Unfortunately, the book slows down again as it turns into a quest for a rogue vampire killing people near where Chris used to live. This is one of those things that I think the vampire community should have been alert to earlier. Weird deaths and disappearances are often a sign that vampires are active and the region Chris used to live in seemed to have a lot of those.

 

As the novel develops, Egyptian mythology and Count Dracula begin to factor into the story and Chris continues to grow in power without actually finishing his transformation and becoming a vampire. He also continues to be—well, not suicidal, but not interested in continuing his life if he becomes a vampire. This adds a lot of tension as he struggles to bring about a permanent ending to the problem of the rogue.

 

This is a slow moving but very interesting novel.

 

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe by Steven Novella

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe by Steven Novella

The first three-fifths or so of this book is a very interesting glossary of the various ways in which memory recalls things incorrectly and literally dozens of strategies that are commonly used to argue in favor of a position without supporting evidence. The point here is to empower the sceptic to understand ways in which misinformation can be promulgated and defended and of course, disproved. It’s quite simply great!

 

The rest of the book explores examples of how misinformation is promulgated and can be disproved. It also gives strategies both for getting along with people who believe things you know to be wrong and how to give them the tools over time to let them decide to change their opinions. (People do not like to be proved wrong and often resist direct evidence that their positions are false.) It is a fascinating book.

 

Making Rumours by Ken Caillat and Steve Steifle

Making Rumours by Ken Caillat and Steve Steifle

Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is one of my favorite albums of all time. It is wonderful music that I can listen to again and again. When I saw this book about making the album, I was really excited. Unfortunately, while there is a ton of information about the album, the book didn’t leap out to me in the same way the album did. The problem might be that I don’t have any musical talent and an awful lot of this book seemed technical to me—focusing on how they made the sounds. That actually makes a lot of sense in a book about making a record, but it didn’t grab my imagination. The other problem was that the gossip wasn’t new to me. I’ve read Mick Fleetwood’s autobiography and a biography of Stevie Nicks so I had heard the gossip and it didn’t seem fresh this time around. That being said, if you like the album, you should still read this book. There’s good stuff in here, it just didn’t feel at the same level as one of the greatest albums of all time.

 

The Destroyer 68 An Old-Fashioned War by Warren Murphy

The Destroyer 68 An Old-Fashioned War by Warren Murphy

This is an interesting problem for Remo and Chiun. Some Native Americans release the God of War and he “inspires” them to start a successful rebellion against the United States. Very quickly, the new “Indian Uprising” is growing into a major threat for the country and President Reagan wants it stopped without bloodshed so Remo and Chiun are sent in. Everything is going well until Chiun suddenly deserts Remo to return to Sinanju and Remo is forced to face down the bad guy (Mr. Arieson) by himself. He finds that Arieson can’t be killed, although he does force him to retreat, turning into a wisp of smoke and disappearing.

 

Remo realizes that Chiun must have recognized Arieson in the histories of Sinanju so he returns to the fishing village which is Chiun’s home to read the old scrolls, but Chiun won’t let him read them until he agrees to marry a Korean girl initiating a mildly funny storyline about marriage. Meanwhile, Remo can’t find what he needs in the scrolls and Chiun begins to tell him that the secret to defeating Arieson lies in the stolen treasure of Sinanju. Something Remo disbelieves, but that the reader suspects is true.

 

Most of the novel involves Remo leaving to get rid of Arieson and then returning to Sinanju to seek answers again and again. It frankly gets a bit old until Arieson tries to start a war in Russia and Anna Chutesov from the last novel gets involved. Anna has brains and together she and Remo begin learning Arieson’s secrets.

 

There’s a lot to like in this novel—especially the solution to the whereabouts of Sinaju’s stolen treasure. It’s not the best of Destroyer books, but it is certainly enjoyable.