Death Benefits (Rachel Gold Mystery) by Michael A. Kahn | LibraryThing

Death Benefits (Rachel Gold Mystery) by Michael A. Kahn | LibraryThing:

Excellent story. I am becoming a big fan of Michael Kahn and Rachel Gold. In this second of the series, Rachel is again hired by her old firm to represent one of their clients since they have a potential conflict of interest. The firm's St. Louis managing partner, Stoddard Anderson,  committed suicide, his body having been found in a hotel near the airport following a four day period when he was completely missing.

There is a quirk in Missouri law that prevents an insurance company from not paying out a life insurance claim in case of suicide, but the insurance company need not pay an accidental death rider if the deceased was sane at the time of his death.  If he was ruled insane, or not in his right mind,  then the death could be ruled accidental so Rachel has the difficult task of deciding for the widow, her client, if Anderson was insane at the time when he slit his wrists.  His firm certainly does not want the possibility that their managing partner was insane raised in the press.  That might not go well with clients.  The insurance policy had a triple indemnity rider in case of accidental death. “If he was insane at the time he committed suicide, then his death would be deemed an accident under Missouri law, and the carrier would have to pay an additional one-point-four million dollars in death benefits.”   The case gets even more bizarre when Rachel discovers that Stoddard might have been instrumental in smuggling  an ancient Mexican artifact worth millions.

I love Kahn’s cynical view of the law.  Here’s his take on insurance law: “There are trial lawyers out there—thousands—who make their living litigating the meaning of terms in insurance policies. One of the mysteries of the law is the way that basic words—words as hard and precise as cut diamonds—become warm saltwater taffy when inserted at critical points in insurance policies. Because millions of dollars can hinge on a court's explication of one of the Four Horsemen of the Insuring Clause—“sudden,” “unexpected,” “occurrence,” and “loss”—entire law firms have been built on the legal fees paid by insurance companies, to say nothing of the cottage industry of legal publishers and law school professors that have been feasting at the insurance trough for years.”

Benny is a great character who adds a nice scatological and humorous touch, and Rachel has a wonderful no-nonsense view of things.  The way she handles  two guys in a Porsche who hit on her is priceless.

Interestingly, in each of the Rachel Gold books I have read so far, there is a code that Rachel must solve to get to the bottom of the mystery.  My only complaint, and it’s a small one, is that there is more mystery than legal drama, but I quibble.  Good series.



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Morning Frost by James Henry | LibraryThing

Morning Frost by James Henry | LibraryThing:

James Henry is doing a marvelous job recreating Wingfield’s Frost character.  This is Henry’s third so far, I believe, and is excellent. All are prequels and in this one Frost has just lost his wife Mary to cancer.  Frost is still a sergeant, but Mullett is under pressure from the ACC to promote Frost to Inspector.  Waters and Frost become friends and we see the origins of the Clark/Frost relationship. Frost is humanized - a bit.  Read very well by Stephen Thorne.

The title is, of course, a pun.



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The Long Drunk by Eric Coyote | LibraryThing

The Long Drunk by Eric Coyote | LibraryThing:

I decided to review this at the request of the author who sent me a free copy. My first impression was that the cover is awful. [Checking recently, I noticed it had been changed.] The book’s description seems to pander to a particular audience segment, “Set in the gutters, bars, and alleys of Venice, California, this darkly comic crime/detective saga is filled with sex, violence, booze, and plenty of foul street talk,” a segment  that wouldn't necessarily exclude me, but it’s not a description that would make the book leap on to my TBR list either.

OK, now putting aside all that crap.  I  liked this book.  The premise is that Murphy, a homeless drunk (“I’m not stupid, just a drunk,”) former NFL player with a Super Bowl ring suffering from multiple concussions and numerous injuries, is swept up in a police raid to discover if any of the homeless in Venice, CA, might have seen something of use to them in their investigation of a car shooting. Murphy is forced to leave his companion Rottweiler, Betty Bonaparte (because she can take bones apart,) while he’s in jail. After his release  he searches frantically for Betty  Just as he sees her across a highway, the dog runs to him and is hit by a lady in an SUV (talking on a cell phone, of course) who runs the light.  Gathering up Betty into a shopping cart, Murphy runs four miles to the nearest vet hospital he knows of where he learns that Betty might survive but will need hip surgery. She also has lymphoma that will require chemotherapy, all to the tune of $15,000.  (The scene with the compassionate vet and Murphy is very well done.)  Learning that a $25,000 reward has been posted for the killer in the drive-by, Murphy figures he has to solve the crime to earn the reward so he can pay for his dog’s surgery.

Coyote uses Murphy's homelessness to poke not so gentle fun at the foibles of the rich that surround him. Using Raymond Chandler's books as a guide, he detects by asking questions. It was interesting to read some of the negative reviews on Amazon, which focused on the rather sad aspects of Skid Row  and “the depths to which people can sink.”  Ironically, it’s the “bums” and unfortunates that have more character than those in the book who haven’t had to resort to living off society’s detritus. How realistic the portrayal might be I don’t know.

The second volume of a proposed trilogy has yet to appear. Not for the squeamish.

“Interview” with the author at http://www.ericcoyote.com./interview.pdf

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Superbia 2 (Book 2 of the Superbia Series) by Bernard Schaffer | LibraryThing

Superbia 2 (Book 2 of the Superbia Series) by Bernard Schaffer | LibraryThing:

This very short sequel to Superbia 1 feels almost like a transition to the longer Superbia 3.  Frank continues his battle with the chief in a rather one-sided, self-righteous view of law enforcement.  The street cops are always right;  the chiefs nothing but “fat-fucks.”  Well, not all of them.  Clayton Cole, who lives in the middle of nowhere is the chief of police in a tiny village who’s saddled with “dumb-shit” cops, so perhaps it all evens out.  (He is a character in the joint effort with Joe Konrath, Cheese Wrestling.)

Frank is very different from the retiring, rather shy new cop he was in the first, yet Vic’s death seems to have been very recent. What caused the change?  How did Frank grow?  I thought the visions of the baton-twirling apparition were ridiculous.

The three books would have been stronger had they been merged together and rewritten to build some transition. Some story lines pop up and disappear with little resolution.  I would not recommend reading these as standalones. I’m moving on to #3.

On the other hand, if you want a  fun, driving, read, however, this series is a good choice.



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Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate by Rose George | LibraryThing

Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate by Rose George | LibraryThing:

I love ships.  I remember looking at a silhouette picture of an old man in my ChildCraft set, his hand on the shoulders of a young boy, looking out over the sea at a three-masted schooner. The image still creates a frisson of nostalgia for something I never really experienced but always wanted.  Some of that interest stemmed from four voyages on transatlantic liners to and from Europe in the fifties and sixties when I was younger, and I’m sure that my view was unrealistic and nonrepresentational as I watched movies and enjoyed the sumptuous meals.  (We will NOT discuss the bouts of seasickness that preceded succeeding pleasurable days.)

I have zero interest in taking a cruise since they seem to be simply resorts with no destination and gambling dens. And the idea of dressing for dinner?  And too many people!  Geesh.  I want to GO someplace and watch the business of shipping, to see how things work.. I’ve read accounts of traveling on freighters (a list is below of some related books) and would still like to try it some day (the mal-de-mer does give me pause, however.)  This book is the next best thing.

This book does tend to take the shine off the freighter business.  One thing I did not know was that while shipping is a relatively green form of transportation (well, except for the particulates), it generates considerable *noise* pollution. Supertankers can be heard coming through the sea a day before they arrive at any given location which drives away most sea life.  Oil spills have been greatly reduced, however. Between 1972 and 1981, there were 223 spills. Over the last decade there were 63. An industry publicist reported,  “More oil is poured down the drain by mechanics changing their engine oil than is spilled by the world’s fleet of oil tankers.”

The industry, itself,  is dangerous, poorly paid (by our standards - not theirs) , and virtually unregulated, with ships being flagged under whatever country has the lowest taxes and the fewest inspectors.  Double bookkeeping and non-payment of wages is common and criminal actions are impossible to prosecute. Where does a Croatian sailor attacked by a Filipino mate file a complaint?  Cell phones are useless and there is no private internet so reporting incidents or getting assistance is impossible. The captain is God and Supreme Magistrate all rolled into one.  “Buy your fair-trade coffee beans by all means, but don’t assume fair-trade principles govern the conditions of the men who fetch it to you. You would be mistaken.”

Piracy is not the glorified practice of movies and childhood.  (Harvard Business School chose Somali piracy as the “business model of the year” in 2010.)  The author spent a week on an EU counter-piracy patrol vessel which reduced the number of incidents from 200 in 2009 to only thirteen in 2013, but ships passing through the Gulf of Aden (and more than half do to get to the Suez canal) still must hide out in safe rooms on board if fighting them off with firehoses fails, while awaiting naval rescue. Crews are like prisoners even while not under attack, live basically on two decks.  (Samuel Johnson famously wrote that “being on a ship is like being in jail, with the chance of being drowned.” Yet “When the academic Erol Kahveci surveyed British prison literature while researching conditions at sea, he found that “the provision of leisure, recreation, religious service and communication facilities are better in U.K. prisons than … on many ships our respondents worked aboard.” )  Mostly we ignore, or chose to remain ignorant, of seafarers. “; in 2011, 544 seafarers [were] being held hostage by Somali pirates. I try to translate that into other transport industries; 544 bus drivers, or 544 cabdrivers, or nearly two jumbo jets of passengers, mutilated and tortured for years. When thirty-three Chilean miners were trapped underground for sixty-nine days in 2010, there was a media frenzy. Fifteen hundred journalists went to Chile and, even now, the BBC news website maintains a special page on their drama, long after its conclusion. The twenty-four men on MV Iceberg held captive for a thousand days were given no special page and nothing much more than silence and disregard.”

The company she sails with is Maersk, a company just slightly smaller than Microsoft yet one that hardly appears on anyones radar even though it accounts for 20% of Denmark’s GDP.  The ship is the Kendall.  She uses that voyage as a springboard to discuss the impact of shipping on the ecology, piracy, anti-piracy and the business of shipping.  Chapters focus on different issues: poor working conditions, a trip on one of the patrol boats, a pirate’s trial leading to a discussion of the different perspectives on Somalian piracy (she is not at all sympathetic,) and the huge amount of tonnage lost at sea and what the effect might be of floating Nikes and sunken computers (not good.)

The economics of shipping are rather mind-boggling. Would you have guessed that it’s cheaper to ship fish to China from Scotland to be filleted and processed than to pay Scottish workers to do it? Shipping  blouse from China to the U.S. coast less than one cent, even while the large container ships burn thousand of dollars of bunker fuel (like tar and about as dirty) per hour.  Containers have made loading and unloading so fast that sailors and officers have no time in port to relax.

Security is a huge issue in her mind. Only a minute portion of containers are ever inspected and they are used to smuggle all sorts of goods and probably weapons. “; One of the crew tells me he can overcome the blankness of the boxes, although that’s not how he phrases it. He can break a container seal and reseal it convincingly, although I suspect his intent would be for monetary, not intellectual, gain. This skill is more common than it should be. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported on a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol study that “existing container seals provided inadequate security against physical intrusion.” Criminals who don’t know how to reseal a seal could do an adequate workaround by taking the door off. Much of modern security rests on theater and assumption. That applies to airport lines, questionable laws about liquids, and the supposed safety of twenty million containers containing who knows what. Who does know? Only 1 to 3 percent of containers in Europe are physically inspected."

Really interesting book. BUT, I still want to take a voyage on a freighter.

Recommended reading:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/154066642 (anything by Max Hardberger)

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/53948010

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/235415969

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/37679449

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