Review of The Dark Horse

Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of The Dark Horse:

Sheriff Walt Longmire has a money-making arrangement with neighboring counties: he provides lodging in his jail for the overflow from their jails. When Mary Barstad is brought in and he reads her file, his interest is peaked. She had confessed to shooting her husband, Wade, with .22 rifle, understandable enough given what a mean SOB he was thought to be, but to then burn down her barn with her horses in it? That didn't make sense, so with the other sheriff's blessing, Walt decide to do a little poking around.

The book's scenes converge, alternating between the present and events that took place ten days before. As the interval shortens we begin to see the outline of the puzzle begin to take shape. Normally, I don't care for this kind of structure, but Johnson pulls it off very nicely.

This is a really good book, a real page-turner and I don't use the word lightly.   I struggled a little with The Cold Dish, which I listened to as an audiobook. Normally, I like George Guidall as a reader so I don't think it was his reading that made it a slog. I read The Dark Horse in print (well, on my Kindle apps which is the only way I read anything now.)  Perhaps that made a difference? I have a couple others in audio so we shall see down the road.   Certainly, Johnson is one of the more literate writers of the genre and the relationship between Henry Standing Bear and Walt is marvelous.  It's refreshing to read about someone who can't leap tall buildings or catch bullets with one hand not to mention beat the crap out of fourteen bad guys at once all while sipping on a Dewar's.

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A Look at the 777 Crash in San Francisco (Update)

A Look at the 777 Crash in San Francisco (Update):

Patrick Smith's calm and reasoned analysis.

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Review of Blind Fury by LaPlante

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/661312160 Linda LaPlante writes excellent police procedurals in several series. This one features DI Anna Travis whom we saw earlier involved in a ridiculous affair with her boss, Superintendent Langton who continues to have a presence and influence on the investigations. He's also a very bright detective as we see in one scene.

The scenes with Cameron Walsh were a bit too reminiscent of "Silence of the Lambs." Walsh is a killer Travis had jailed years earlier but he's obsessed with her and claims to be able to help with their investigation into the deaths of young foreign workers.

You get a real sense for the plodding tediousness of a difficult investigation with few clues. It's definitely not a thriller but seems to me to be a more accurate depiction of how frustrating and repetitive an investigation can be. I rather liked the repeated interviews, tracking down and interviewing witnesses, the interplay among the characters, and the tedious seeming lack of progress that many other reviewers decried. I'm not so wild about the romantic relationships that Travis finds herself in constantly but which often lend little to the overall plot. An attempt at building up the character, I suppose.

A thriller it's not, but as a realistic portrayal of the frustrations of police investigations, it's top-notch.

Review of Snapshot

Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of Snapshot:

A woman who took some snapshots at a swingers club orgy and then mailed them to several of the men there, with no note or demand of any kind, is murdered and Inspector Challis, in this third of the series, investigates.  The dead woman just happens to be the daughter-in-law of the Chief Superintendent who insists on meddling in the investigation.  The question that begins to bother the DI and Ellen, his sergeant, is whether Janine was the intended victim.  Federal officers show up when they inquire after the god-daughter of one of the neighbors.  It seems she was in witness protection and is now on the run from a gangster she had informed on.  As is typical in any investigation red herrings abound.

Talk about an incestuous department:  Challis has the hots for Ellen, his sergeant, who is married to a senior traffic constable, Alan. Alan and Ellen are constantly at each other's throats, with Alan accusing Ellen of sleeping with Challis.  Alan, in turn, is using his position to pick on Pam, a constable on Ellen's team and charge her with reckless endangerment in the death of bystander.  Pam's partner is the  misogynistic  John Tankard who can't take a hint.  They are charged with driving around and awarding citations to good drivers.  Challis, in the meantime, had had an affair with a local newspaper celebrity, so the superintendent has reason to suspect him of leaking information about the shooting.  And by the way, his wife had tried to have him killed because she was fooling around with another cop. And all of this interpersonal rigmarole clearly influences the way they perform their jobs. If I were the supervisor of all these folks there would be a serious re-organization.

Nevertheless, in spite of the rather abrupt ending, it's a good series, but I'm a sucker for anything Australian.

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Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of The Shipping Man

Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of The Shipping Man:

This book is probably only for die-hard nautical fans like myself who love Max Hardberger's books.  You have to be really weird like me to enjoy the arcane twists and turns of the shipping industry.  If you do, and you enjoy sardonic writing, you'll love this book.

Robert Fairchild is a New York hedge fund owner/manager who becomes intrigued by the possibility of making money in the shipping industry.  He's a total neophyte, completely unaware of the hazards and complications of an industry ostensibly stateless but subject to a myriad of regulations, all of which cost money and time.

Succumbing to the desire to be a ship owner and against his better instincts, he decides to buy an old freighter from a Greek broker and that's where his troubles begin. ("The truth was stark; Robert had willingly gotten  drunk and made a very costly mistake for which he could blame no one  but himself. This was one of the few downsides of having a one man  investment committee.")

The market for charters, thanks to fires in Russia, seems to be moving his way so, greed taking over, he uses his personal funds, well maybe a few dollars, too, from the fund, to creatively finance the purchase of the ship.  Then things get really hairy.  "“Yeah, that figures,” he laughed condescendingly  and shook his head back and forth. “Look, Mr. Fairchild, I hate to  spoil your quaint little illusion, but in the shipping business  everything is negotiable all the time. A word is only a man’s bond if  the market is moving in his direction. And just so you know, you haven’t  earned the freight until you’ve been paid the freight – and the  demurrage. . . Now it appeared as if he were the ATM machine,  spitting cash at the ship. In fact, the only difference between him and  the lanky Indian guys in the orange jumpsuits smoking cigarettes  directly beneath the massive NO SMOKING sign painted on the  rust-streaked accommodation building was that they were making money. He  was spending money."

Robert's travails will lighten your day. Guaranteed.  And convince you NEVER to buy a ship.

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