Book Review - The Trust

It's not easy writing a review for a mystery novel and The Trust by Norb Vonnegut is no exception. I can't say too much without being a spoiler but I'll try.

Successful investment manager Grove O'Rourke receives a mysterious call from his wealthy mentor, Palmer Kincaid and suspects something is wrong. The next day Kincaid's body washes ashore an apparent accidental drowning victim. O'Rourke is contacted by Kincaid's daughter to get the family's financial affairs in order. He suddenly finds himself in charge of Palmer Kincaid's charitable organization, The Palmetto Foundation. One of the first issues involves The Catholic Fund and a mysterious priest, Father Frederick Ricardo. The Catholic Fund has given 65 million dollars to the Palmetto Foundation and Father Ricardo now wants to dictate where that money goes. O'Rourke is suspicious and that is only reinforced by attorney Biscuit Hughes who has discovered that The Catholic Fund is the owner of a Sex Superstore in Fayettville, North Carolina. At the same time O'Rourke's investment firm in New York is being taken over Morgan Stanley and the FBI is asking questions about him.  O'Rourke himself is contacted by the FBI but agent Torres has lots of questions but few answers.  Then Palmer Kincaid's widow is kidnapped and O'Rourke is forced to join forces with agent Torres to save her.

If you like mysteries this is a great read that includes murder, a kidnapping and financial shenanigans. It is often hard to separate the good guys from the bad ones.

Note:

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.

Book Review - The RX Factor

I read mostly non-fiction and when I read fiction is usually Science Fiction. But I also like a good suspense thriller once in awhile. The RX Factor by J. Thomas Shaw certainly qualifies. There is certainly enough suspense and enough murders and assassinations to qualify it as a thriller. In addition there is a lot of corporate and government malfeasance.

Dr Ryan Mathews discovered a cure for ovarian cancer. His company did not have the resources to do the human testing so he sold out to a large pharmaceutical company. Human testing commenced and the results were not good - it didn't work. Ryan's wife came down with ovarian cancer and she was part of the human testing. When the testing was canceled Ryan stole the last two doses his wife required. He was caught and fired from the large pharmaceutical. All of the tests indicated his wife was going to die within months so the decision was made to move to the Bahamas for the last few months of her life. His wife and children were killed in a plane crash on the way to the Bahamas and Ryan spent the next few years drinking in paradise. One day Ryan met another medical researcher there to spend some time with her aunt and uncle. When her relatives ship was blown up Ryan partnered with her to find out what was going on and the adventure began. Many murders and attempted murders in addition to many surprises. It came to Ryan's attention that his drug had worked and the results had been tampered with. But why - the big pharmaceuticals don't want to cure people. People who are well don't buy drugs. More adventures and murders along the way and an ending that unearths an even more sinister plot.

A really great read that I had trouble putting down and the ending was a shocker.

Cross Posted At The Moderate Voice

Note:

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.

The RX Factor
by J. Shaw Thomas

Book Review - The Arms Maker of Berlin

 This weeks book is a historical spy/mystery/ thriller but mostly it's a work of fiction and as such should be judged mostly on it's entertainment value. I received Dan Fesperman's The Arms Maker of Berlin (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) right before dinner on Thursday and started to read it after dinner. Before I turned out the lights that night I had read over a third of it and had a hard time putting it down.

I can't do much better than this description from the dust jacket.

When Nat Turnbull, a history professor who specializes in the German resistance, gets the news that his estranged mentor, Gordon Wolfe, has been arrested for possession of stolen World War II archives, he's hardly surprised that,even at the age of eighty-four, Gordon has gotten himself in trouble. But what's in the archives is staggering: a spymaster's trove missing since the end of the war, one that Gordon has always claimed is full of "secrets you can't find anywhere else . . . live ammunition."

Yet key documents are still missing, and Nat believes Gordon has hidden them. The FBI agrees, and when Gordon is found dead in jail, the Bureau dispatches Nat to track down the material, which has also piqued the interest of several dangerous competitors. As he follows a trail of cryptic clues left behind by Gordon, assisted by an attractive academic with questionable motives, Nat's quest takes him to Bern and Berlin, where his path soon crosses that of Kurt Bauer, an aging German arms merchant still hoarding his own wartime secrets. As their stories and Gordon's-intersect across half a century, long-buried exploits of deceit, devotion, and doomed resistance begin working their way to the surface. And as the stakes rise, so do the risks . . .

The characters are well developed and the novel takes place both in the present and in Berlin and Switzerland in the mid 40's. Some of the characters are real like John Foster Dulles, America's spy chief in Switzerland during the war and Reinhard Heydrich, one of the architects of the Holocaust.

You also get some insight into the anti-Hitler resistance in Germany as much of the plot centers around the White Rose student movement.

I recommend this book for both it's entertainment and it's history but beware, once you start it's hard to put down. I had not heard of Dan Fesperman before but I am going to check out some of his earlier works.

The Arms Maker of Berlin (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
by Dan Fesperman

World Made By Hand

Tainter makes this observation; substantial increased costs occurred late, shortly before collapse and were incurred by a population already weakened by a pattern of declining marginal returns. It was not a challenge that caused the collapse but a system that had been unproductively complex was unable to respond.


Tainter says that the only solution for over complexity is simplification but complex systems are unable to voluntarily simplify. Collapse is nothing more than involuntary simplification.

The above is from my review of The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph A. Tainter. At the forefront of those predicting the collapse of our civilization is James Howard Kunstler. In a 2004 article Kunstler had this to say:

When the tipping point comes, Americans will be compelled to live very differently than they do today. One leading American social critic, James Howard Kunstler, sees serious political and cultural turmoil up ahead as the way of life Americans have built over the last 60 years begins to break down. With decreasing access to cheap oil, Kunstler sees the fundamentals of industrial agriculture, manufacturing and retail trade changing significantly.


"The whole Archer Daniels Midland model of turning oil into corn into Taco Bell that whole complex, that system, is really going to be over," says Kuntsler. "We're going to be forced to grow more of our food locally and return to a kind of agriculture that really hasn't been practiced here in a long time. A lot of the land that has only had value as suburban development in the past 30 or 40 years is going to have to be reassigned."


Likewise, Kunstler foresees "the demise of Wal-Mart style, big box, national chains." Companies whose profit margins depend on "merchandise made by factories 12,000 miles away" simply won't function in a world of $100-plus barrels of oil. "We're going to have to seriously reorganize our whole system of retail trade and economy."

Kunstler expanded on this in his book The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. But what might the collapse look like? To answer this question Kunstler turns to fiction, World Made by Hand

It is the summer of 2025 and the location is Washington County in upstate New York. There has been a major war in the middle east. Washington DC has been destroyed taking out the US Government and Los Angeles has been destroyed dealing a death blow to the US economy. There is no government, no electricity, no oil, no automobiles, no newspapers or any other communication. Millions have died and the ones that remain spend most of their time producing food. The main character is Robert Earle, a former software salesman turned carpenter/handyman. We also meet a minster and his wife, a group of thugs that work as scavengers, a large landowner who has a fiefdom complete with serfs and a charismatic religious cult leader.
This is all about a group of people trying to create a new civilization on top of the ruins of the old one with very little to work with. Robert Earle is forced into a position of leadership he really doesn't want but he knows that someone has to do it. The subjects are humans so there a good people and bad, many with a lot of ambition and many with just enough to survive. There is love and murder, lawlessness and frontier style justice. As depressing as it sounds there is always a thread of hope.
This novel may have a political message but even those who don't but the message were forced to admit it is a well written story and a good read. It is not what you would expect from an author known primarily for non fiction. Kunstler manages to take us into the hearts and souls of the characters.

Even if you don't agree with the premise I would still recommend the book because it is simply a very good read.  You can find out more about the book here. I can hardly wait for the sequel, The Witch of Hebron: A World Made by Hand Novel, which is coming in September.



Cross posted at The Moderate Voice



 

The Octagonal Raven

Some fiction again this week but not just fiction - science fiction.  Now I like a good mystery and good science fiction.  There are two authors that do a great job of combining the two - the late Charles Sheffield and L.E. Modesitt.  It's Octagonal Raven by Modesitt we will be looking at this week.

The Octagonal Raven takes place on earth in the distant future.  It is full of technological innovations most of which are not really hard to imagine with what we know now.  As we have seen technology is not without moral dilemmas, pitfalls and unintended consequences.  That's really what this science fiction thriller is all about.

Genetic engineering has reached the point where anyone with enough money can pre-select the characteristics of their offspring.  These "pre-selects" make up about 10 percent of the population but hold about 95 percent of the wealth and most positions of authority.  As one might expect this has created an atmosphere of resentment among the 90 percent of the population who are "norms".  For some of the "pre-selects"  the status quo is not enough and they lust for even more power.  The result is a plot to overthrow the existing order by the already powerful along with social unrest among those who who are not.  The main character, a enlightened "pre-select" from a very wealthy family, becomes involved after a number of attempts on his life.

A really exciting read with lessons that we can identify with today.

Octagonal Raven
by L E Jr Modesitt