Geoffrey M. Gluckman's Blog, page 10

#MLK-Keeping the Dream Alive

Today, celebrates the birth of an inspirational leader–Dr Martin Luther King. Regardless of your view of the man, he did achieve much for humanity during his time and beyond, all without violence.

To this day, I am still moved in my heart to hear one of his speeches.

Inspired by Dr King’s dream–unity of humanity–it became mine, even at a young age. That message still cries out for adherence, perhaps more so than ever as more mongers of war and violence from politicians to extremists continue to...

Murder in Glacier National Park

Real world events related to my latest novel,

steamy romance suspense

Murder of Sex, have delayed my next book review (The Legend of Broken). This past week in Montana, Jordan Graham, 22, has pled guilty to second degree murder of her husband of eight days. Graham pushed Cody Johnson, her husband, off a cliff in Glacier National Park on the night of July 7th, 2013.

This, my friends, is eerily similar to part of the storyline in Murder of Sex, even down the the lack of witnesses on the cliff ed...

#Review of The Tourist

Absolutely brilliant. These words aptly describe Olen Steinhauer’s spy thriller, The Tourist. A wonderfully crafted tale of Milo Weaver, “a tourist” for the CIA, an operative doing off-the-books assignments. The disloyalties, manipulation, and deceit inherent to espionage are all intricately interlaced and, for Weaver, ultimately bittersweet. Well worth a read. Head and shoulders above LeCarre. Compares with Deighton, but modern. 5 stars!

#Review of The Ark

#Thriller #readers should rejoice with Boyd Morrison’s novel, The Ark, which presents an intriguing destroy-the-world storyline that is also well-researched. (Strikingly similar to Deadly Exchange in style and pacing, though The Ark was published a year after Deadly Exchange.) It features likeable characters, Tyler Locke and Dilara Kenner, who join forces in search of Noah’s Ark, prompted by a message from Kenner’s missing father.

While some of the story offers elements of the current writing...

#Review of The Risk Agent

Summer visitors and travel delayed my #reading of Ridley Pearson’s new #thriller. It is an interesting story and a genre departure from the author’s past novels. This new series features John Knox and Grace Chu, both operatives for Rutherford Risk–a private contractor for corporations with problems. In this case, the challenge is a kidnapped employee of an American firm doing business in China. While the story should have been quite exciting, it wasn’t for me, though the insights into Chinese...

#Review of The Bridge of Sighs

Despite a slow start that, for this #reader, continued until half of the novel, Olen Steinhauer has crafted a good story. He is an excellent writer, who entwines murder, espionage, and love into this post World War II tale. Located in a fictitious Soviet-bloc country, this first novel of five tells the story of Emil Brod, a newly minted Inspector for the People’s Militia. Each subsequent novel offers the story by different characters from the same People’s Militia station as Emil. Quite well-...

#Review of The Miernik Dossier

This #spy #story was written by Charles McCarry in 1973, his first book in the Paul Christopher series. Drawing from his experience with the CIA, McCarry weaves a very clever tale of espionage concerning a potential Polish spy. It is told through intelligence communications, mostly by various characters directly involved in the story. This gives the story a tremendous amount of authenticity, especially for Cold War tradecraft. Very enjoyable (despite an enormous amount of typos; many more tha...

#Sex #Secrets: Part 3: Million Dollar Point

For all #readers, this little #mystery comes from the Taoist traditions of the Far East and has been kept fairly well hidden…read article

#Review of The Hidden Life of #Wolves

First off, The Hidden Life of Wolves by Jim and Jamie Dutcher is a fantastic book. I’ve read numerous books about wolves and this offers the most balanced presentation of the past, present, and future of North Americas top predator-wolves. This is essential reading for those on both sides of the controversy about wolf re-introduction and the recent delisting for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Sadly, a good majority of the wolves in North America have been indiscriminantly slaugh...

#Sex #Secrets: Part 2

Another great #secret is often called Sexual Magic: (read article)