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

This is the fifth in the Jonathan Quinn series which I have more or less read in order. Not to put anyone off, but I grabbed this for a distraction while getting ready for a colonscopy. It did the trick. It was well-written and an enjoyable read with only a few plot holes or jaw-drops so common in many so-called thrillers (a misnomer, surely, I mean, we all know the narrator/good guy wins in the end, right? )

Mila Voss, good friend and erstwhile lover of Julien, to whom Quinn owes a large debt for saving his life, has decided (just why now after all these years is a bit unclear) to get to the bottom of why she was targeted for assassination and had to go into hiding. Quinn, who has been hiding in Thailand for his own reasons, is contacted by Peter, a former client, when the facial scan of a stranger at an apparent suicide reveals an uncanny resemblance to Mila whose lifeless body Quinn had supposedly identified and “cleaned” up after her presumed assassination.

While I thought the “Cancer Project” was a bit thin as a plot device to explain the actions of several characters, the story flowed nicely and Quinn is an interesting character.  I still wonder, though how Peter could have afforded all those fancy hideaways and cubby-holes in Washington for all those years, not to mention keeping track of all the keys and alarm codes. And did you ever notice how no one ever seems to have money issues but no ostensible paycheck?

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Jerry Coyne's 'Faith Versus Fact' - The Atlantic

Jerry Coyne's 'Faith Versus Fact' - The Atlantic:

Quote:   "This tragic story backs up the chief argument Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, makes in Faith Versus Fact, namely that “it is time for us to stop seeing faith as a virtue, and to stop using the term ‘person of faith’ as a compliment.” In the book’s 262 pages, Coyne tackles arguments stating that belief in God is a laudable quality, and reasons instead that faith is detrimental, even dangerous, and fundamentally incompatible with science, even while peacemakers try to find common ground between the two. Coyne, it should be noted, has spent much of his career objecting to religious rejection of Darwinism—he published a bestseller, Why Evolution Is True, that was based on his blog of the same name. In Faith Versus Fact, his overarching argument is that religion and science both make claims about the universe, but only one of the two institutions is sufficiently open to the fact that it might be wrong."

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Question of the Week

When Paul wrote to the Ephesians did they write back?  Or did they just consider his letters as junk mail?

Lullaby Town by Robert Crais

Audiobook:

Cole is hired by an arrogant and self-absorbed Hollywood director to find his estranged wife and son, now gone for more than 10 years.  He just wants to connect with his son.  Finding the woman is easy enough, but Cole learns she is now the VP of a small-town bank who is being used by some Boston mob bosses to launder money.

Now, I think Cole screwed up by trying to fix things in his macho way. A quick call to the FBI (despite her reluctance to enter witness protection) might have solved things since she had evidence of all sorts of wrong-doing.  Cole risked messing up her life and that of her kid.  She wanted nothing to do with Peter, the Hollywood bigshot, and to my way of thinking should have had nothing to do with Cole either.

All that aside, at least Cole uses his brain to figure a way out for her by pitting one member of the “family” against another. The spate of violence at the end is really not their doing. It was also refreshing that neither Cole nor Pike found it necessary to jump in Karen's bed.

Satisfactory, although Pike starts to grate after a while.

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Tripwire by Lee Child

I have read or listened to several of the Reacher series, but it struck me while listening to this, the third in the series, that Jack Reacher is an extremely boring person who lives a prosaic, boring life.  He seems to have no interests, no love of music or books, or hobbies.  He suffers from terminal pseudo-guilt that inevitably gets him sticking his nose into situations fraught with potential violence.  One character in this book described him as looking like a “condom overstuffed with walnuts.”  He seems to consider that as being “in shape.”  He has no family, no ties, no job, no intellectual interests. Geez, the last guy I would want to have a conversation with.  Yet girls fawn over him (the author must think women are insipid little creatures.)

Some of the scenes were unnecessarily graphic.  We know Hobie is a bad guy; it’s not necessary to beat us over the head with his sadism.  The books would be far more satisfying if Reacher used a little more subtlety, more brain,and less brawn.  OK, if you like fantasy;  I doubt if I’ll read any more.

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