Thursday Next - First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
Category: Fiction Grade: A
In keeping with the new series review policy, this review will be a short one.
As with all the Thursday Next books, this was terrific. The premise is that Next is a detective working for the Literary Crimes division of the police. She is able to cross between the real world and the fictional world. In other words, don't bother to pick up any book in the series unless you're a fantasy fan who can suspend belief. If you do, you're reward with a fun romp filled with literary references and characters along with extremely clever (and often silly) word play. My favorite in this book -- two detectives have jumped in to a story and have been warned that somebody is actually, at that time reading the book. Of course, it'll just confuse the reader if he notices two unexpected, anachronistic characters hanging around so the pair has to hide since, as anybody knows, detectives are better off "Dead than Read".
I hope that Fforde has as much fun writing these books as I do reading them.
A small warning -- this is a series that you definitely want to read in order so, if it sounds appealing, go back and pick up The Eyre Affair.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Tales from Q School
Tales from Q School by John Feinstein
Category: Sports Grade: C+
Like a lot of non-golfers, Tiger has made me an avid golf spectator. Between that and my often reported belief that Feinstein is the best sports writer out there, I decided to pick up his latest, Tales from Q School. Q School is the shorthand name that golfers use to describe the three round qualifying tournament that gets golfers on to the PGA tour. You don't hear much about it unless you watch the Golf Channel in the late fall. This is because most of the golfers whose names are familiar are exempted out of the qualifying tournament for things like being one of the top money winners in the previous year. Tiger, for example, has never had to go to Q School.
That makes Q School one of the tensest events that a golf pro can enter. For most events on tour, whether the "big league" PGA tour or other circuits for less known players, if you don't do well, you typically just have to wait for the following weekend when another tournament will start fresh with everybody at even par. In Q School, though, if you have a bad weekend (or even a particularly bad day), you won't get another shot at the big time for a full year until the next Q School. I.e. this tournament (a series of three tournaments) determines whether a golfer can actually make a living playing golf for the upcoming year. Because of all the exemptions, Q School is populated mostly by either young players trying to break in to the sport or older players trying to hang on for one more year. All of this keeps the tension level high.
Feinstein uses his standard technique of embedding himself in the sport for the duration -- in this case three consecutive weekends -- and really getting to know the players involved. The book is all anecdotes and interviews. Most of the stories revolve around drives that find the rough or four foot putts that go an inch wide. These, in this book, typically cause the golfer to miss the cut by a stroke - missing the ability to make a living by the tiniest of margins.
Unfortunately, this is also what makes the book less than Feinstein's best work. While he gives a view to dozens of golfers (almost all of which you've never heard of), the stories get to the point where they all look alike. The book is highly repetitive and, ultimately, pretty boring. It's only worth picking up if you're a hardcore golf fan.
Category: Sports Grade: C+
Like a lot of non-golfers, Tiger has made me an avid golf spectator. Between that and my often reported belief that Feinstein is the best sports writer out there, I decided to pick up his latest, Tales from Q School. Q School is the shorthand name that golfers use to describe the three round qualifying tournament that gets golfers on to the PGA tour. You don't hear much about it unless you watch the Golf Channel in the late fall. This is because most of the golfers whose names are familiar are exempted out of the qualifying tournament for things like being one of the top money winners in the previous year. Tiger, for example, has never had to go to Q School.
That makes Q School one of the tensest events that a golf pro can enter. For most events on tour, whether the "big league" PGA tour or other circuits for less known players, if you don't do well, you typically just have to wait for the following weekend when another tournament will start fresh with everybody at even par. In Q School, though, if you have a bad weekend (or even a particularly bad day), you won't get another shot at the big time for a full year until the next Q School. I.e. this tournament (a series of three tournaments) determines whether a golfer can actually make a living playing golf for the upcoming year. Because of all the exemptions, Q School is populated mostly by either young players trying to break in to the sport or older players trying to hang on for one more year. All of this keeps the tension level high.
Feinstein uses his standard technique of embedding himself in the sport for the duration -- in this case three consecutive weekends -- and really getting to know the players involved. The book is all anecdotes and interviews. Most of the stories revolve around drives that find the rough or four foot putts that go an inch wide. These, in this book, typically cause the golfer to miss the cut by a stroke - missing the ability to make a living by the tiniest of margins.
Unfortunately, this is also what makes the book less than Feinstein's best work. While he gives a view to dozens of golfers (almost all of which you've never heard of), the stories get to the point where they all look alike. The book is highly repetitive and, ultimately, pretty boring. It's only worth picking up if you're a hardcore golf fan.
Monday, August 20, 2007
The Last Chinese Chef
The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones
Category: Novel Grade: A
As most of you know, Carolyn and I don't have the same taste in books at all. We tend to like different subject matter and different writing styles. Because of that, of course, even as much as we both read, we seldom recommend books to each other. Most of the time, when I recommend something to her, it's either about 19th century New York or 14th century England. Most of the time, when she recommends something to me, it's got something to do with food. Of the few books I recommend to her, she likes some of them. Of the few books she recommends to me, I almost always like them. As you've probably figured out by now, The Last Chinese Chef is Carolyn's latest crossover recommendation and her record is intact -- it's about food and I really enjoyed it.
OK, it's not really about food. The novel is the story of woman who learns of a paternity suit filed against her dead husband's estate by a Chinese woman. When she learns that the paternity claim is at least possible, she heads to China to try to clear things up. She happens to be a food columnist for a "Gourmet"-like magazine and the magazine gives her the assignment to interview a American/Chinese/Jewish chef who comes from a long line of Imperial chefs in China, including the mid-twentieth century author of a book called The Last Chinese Chef.
Mones, who spent several decades in business in China, has used true Chinese cooking (not American-Chinese which is completely different) as the framework to enclose her story. The chef is competing in a contest that involves the top chefs of China. He is a traditionalist who has studied the cuisine of China. He has come to understand that cooking is about not only about the chef and the food, but also about the gourmet, the ambiance of the meal and, most importantly, about the community that forms around the sharing of food. The concept of eating a meal alone is completely foreign to the Chinese culture.
There's a lot in the book about the various dishes that the chef prepares -- trying to combine the flavors, the textures, the visual qualities, the misdirection - that makes a Chinese banquet something extraordinary. Anybody who knows us well knows that food and shared meals are an important of our lives. This book plays in to that feeling. It makes you want to eat; it makes you want to share a quality meal; it even makes you want to cook!
Chinese cooking is actually the perfect metaphor for this book. The parts are OK - the story is decent; the writing is pretty good; the characterizations are interesting. It's a lot like the ingredients of a good meal - garlic is OK; ginger is pretty good; pork and fish can be interesting. But put everything together in just the right way and, like this book, you end up with something memorable.
Does anybody know an Austin restaurant that cooks authentic Chinese food?
Category: Novel Grade: A
As most of you know, Carolyn and I don't have the same taste in books at all. We tend to like different subject matter and different writing styles. Because of that, of course, even as much as we both read, we seldom recommend books to each other. Most of the time, when I recommend something to her, it's either about 19th century New York or 14th century England. Most of the time, when she recommends something to me, it's got something to do with food. Of the few books I recommend to her, she likes some of them. Of the few books she recommends to me, I almost always like them. As you've probably figured out by now, The Last Chinese Chef is Carolyn's latest crossover recommendation and her record is intact -- it's about food and I really enjoyed it.
OK, it's not really about food. The novel is the story of woman who learns of a paternity suit filed against her dead husband's estate by a Chinese woman. When she learns that the paternity claim is at least possible, she heads to China to try to clear things up. She happens to be a food columnist for a "Gourmet"-like magazine and the magazine gives her the assignment to interview a American/Chinese/Jewish chef who comes from a long line of Imperial chefs in China, including the mid-twentieth century author of a book called The Last Chinese Chef.
Mones, who spent several decades in business in China, has used true Chinese cooking (not American-Chinese which is completely different) as the framework to enclose her story. The chef is competing in a contest that involves the top chefs of China. He is a traditionalist who has studied the cuisine of China. He has come to understand that cooking is about not only about the chef and the food, but also about the gourmet, the ambiance of the meal and, most importantly, about the community that forms around the sharing of food. The concept of eating a meal alone is completely foreign to the Chinese culture.
There's a lot in the book about the various dishes that the chef prepares -- trying to combine the flavors, the textures, the visual qualities, the misdirection - that makes a Chinese banquet something extraordinary. Anybody who knows us well knows that food and shared meals are an important of our lives. This book plays in to that feeling. It makes you want to eat; it makes you want to share a quality meal; it even makes you want to cook!
Chinese cooking is actually the perfect metaphor for this book. The parts are OK - the story is decent; the writing is pretty good; the characterizations are interesting. It's a lot like the ingredients of a good meal - garlic is OK; ginger is pretty good; pork and fish can be interesting. But put everything together in just the right way and, like this book, you end up with something memorable.
Does anybody know an Austin restaurant that cooks authentic Chinese food?
The Tenderness of Wolves
The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney
Category: Novel Grade: B
This debut novel by Penney isn't bad. It's a murder mystery of sorts that takes place in the Canadian wilderness of the 19th century. That's part of the problem for me - I don't usually enjoy wilderness fiction. My guess is that, if you normally enjoy reading this kind of book, you'll probably like this one.
It's a fairly complex story that gets kicked off by the murder of a trapper in a small Canadian town in 1867. A seventeen year old boy disappears at the same time as the murder and the assumption is made that he's the culprit, although a half-breed is accused in the meantime. The representatives of the Hudson Bay Company come to town to try to arrest the murderer. There are so many angles at this point that the book gets fairly confusing. The boy's mother takes off with the escaped half breed to try to find the boy. There's a storyline about a couple of village girls who disappeared decades before; a Utopian village of Norwegians; a viscious ex company man and a stash of missing furs.
All in all, it did hold my interest to the end, but barely.
Category: Novel Grade: B
This debut novel by Penney isn't bad. It's a murder mystery of sorts that takes place in the Canadian wilderness of the 19th century. That's part of the problem for me - I don't usually enjoy wilderness fiction. My guess is that, if you normally enjoy reading this kind of book, you'll probably like this one.
It's a fairly complex story that gets kicked off by the murder of a trapper in a small Canadian town in 1867. A seventeen year old boy disappears at the same time as the murder and the assumption is made that he's the culprit, although a half-breed is accused in the meantime. The representatives of the Hudson Bay Company come to town to try to arrest the murderer. There are so many angles at this point that the book gets fairly confusing. The boy's mother takes off with the escaped half breed to try to find the boy. There's a storyline about a couple of village girls who disappeared decades before; a Utopian village of Norwegians; a viscious ex company man and a stash of missing furs.
All in all, it did hold my interest to the end, but barely.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Satan's Circus
Satan's Circus by Mike Dash
Category: History Grade: B
No, it's not what you think. There are no demons, pitchforks or hellfire in the book. It's not the latest from Steven King. It turns out that the "vice" area of Manhattan in the late 19th and early 20th century was called, that's right, Satan's Circus. In some parts of this area there were as many as twenty brothels to a city block. In an area about 25 blocks by 5 blocks you could service just about any bad happen you had - drinking, gambling or just about any kind of sex.
I've really gotten to like reading about this era in New York history. Of course, there's a lot about Tammany Hall. Boss Tweed is long gone by the 1880s - the Tammany leader through most of the book is Big Tim Sullivan. This is the heyday of some legendary New York gangsters - especially, the Jewish gangs led by Arnold Rothstein. There are almost no honest cops in Manhattan although there are a lot of cops (and politicians and judges) who take great care to distinguish between "clean graft" and "dirty graft" which, of course, makes the lines hard to draw.
The focal point of Dash's (non-fiction) book is a very famous murder trial that took place right at the dawn of the 20th century. A local gambler who has tried and failed to start his own club several times, is now heavily in debt to Big Tim. The gambler, Herman Rosenthal, decides to raise some money by selling his story to the press - a story that features a corrupt cop named Charley Becker. Rosenthal provides some basic information that results in sensationalized stories. Rosenthal is supposed to meet with a reporter to lay out the details and the proof and, surprise, surprise, ends up dead instead. The book details the murder and Becker's trials.
The book got a slightly lower grade than it actually deserves because Dash spends a lot of time talking about what's going on in New York during the 19th century, a period that I've already read a lot about. So, if you don't know much about Tammany Hall and the ethnic gangs of New York, you'll probably enjoy the book even more.
Category: History Grade: B
No, it's not what you think. There are no demons, pitchforks or hellfire in the book. It's not the latest from Steven King. It turns out that the "vice" area of Manhattan in the late 19th and early 20th century was called, that's right, Satan's Circus. In some parts of this area there were as many as twenty brothels to a city block. In an area about 25 blocks by 5 blocks you could service just about any bad happen you had - drinking, gambling or just about any kind of sex.
I've really gotten to like reading about this era in New York history. Of course, there's a lot about Tammany Hall. Boss Tweed is long gone by the 1880s - the Tammany leader through most of the book is Big Tim Sullivan. This is the heyday of some legendary New York gangsters - especially, the Jewish gangs led by Arnold Rothstein. There are almost no honest cops in Manhattan although there are a lot of cops (and politicians and judges) who take great care to distinguish between "clean graft" and "dirty graft" which, of course, makes the lines hard to draw.
The focal point of Dash's (non-fiction) book is a very famous murder trial that took place right at the dawn of the 20th century. A local gambler who has tried and failed to start his own club several times, is now heavily in debt to Big Tim. The gambler, Herman Rosenthal, decides to raise some money by selling his story to the press - a story that features a corrupt cop named Charley Becker. Rosenthal provides some basic information that results in sensationalized stories. Rosenthal is supposed to meet with a reporter to lay out the details and the proof and, surprise, surprise, ends up dead instead. The book details the murder and Becker's trials.
The book got a slightly lower grade than it actually deserves because Dash spends a lot of time talking about what's going on in New York during the 19th century, a period that I've already read a lot about. So, if you don't know much about Tammany Hall and the ethnic gangs of New York, you'll probably enjoy the book even more.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
The Book of Lost Things
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
Category: Fantasy Grade: B-
This is pretty standard post-Potter, coming-of-age fantasy novel. It's well written and it got of to a terrific start with a wrenching, emotional portrait of a young boy who believes that his obsessive-compulsive routines might keep his dying mother alive. The closing of the book is also a beautiful contrast to the usual "happily ever after". While I picked this one up thinking this was a book aimed at the Potter crowd, it's definitely a far more adult story that it seemed from the book jacket.
The rest of the book isn't bad. If you'd never read any other fantasy novels or seen other fantasy movies, it would have been perfectly enjoyable. The problem with it is that Connolly has borrowed plot devices from so many other sources that, after a while, it just gets both distracting and annoying. Maybe he was going for homage, but it comes across as just derivative. The basic crossing to another world comes from the Narnia series. The first character the boy comes across in the new world is the Woodsman -- an over sized man with an isolated cabin who is more comfortable in the world of trees and animals than people - can everybody say Hagrid? There are talking animals a la the Pullman series (if you don't know Pullman's work you will when the first of the movies "The Golden Compass" comes out in the fall). Most blatantly, Connolly takes major chunks from the Wizard of Oz -- the Woodsman is much like the Tin Man, there's a "white stone road" that will take the hero to the "king" who will know how to get him home - there's even a gang of harpies who behave exactly like the flying monkeys!
Very unoriginal.
Category: Fantasy Grade: B-
This is pretty standard post-Potter, coming-of-age fantasy novel. It's well written and it got of to a terrific start with a wrenching, emotional portrait of a young boy who believes that his obsessive-compulsive routines might keep his dying mother alive. The closing of the book is also a beautiful contrast to the usual "happily ever after". While I picked this one up thinking this was a book aimed at the Potter crowd, it's definitely a far more adult story that it seemed from the book jacket.
The rest of the book isn't bad. If you'd never read any other fantasy novels or seen other fantasy movies, it would have been perfectly enjoyable. The problem with it is that Connolly has borrowed plot devices from so many other sources that, after a while, it just gets both distracting and annoying. Maybe he was going for homage, but it comes across as just derivative. The basic crossing to another world comes from the Narnia series. The first character the boy comes across in the new world is the Woodsman -- an over sized man with an isolated cabin who is more comfortable in the world of trees and animals than people - can everybody say Hagrid? There are talking animals a la the Pullman series (if you don't know Pullman's work you will when the first of the movies "The Golden Compass" comes out in the fall). Most blatantly, Connolly takes major chunks from the Wizard of Oz -- the Woodsman is much like the Tin Man, there's a "white stone road" that will take the hero to the "king" who will know how to get him home - there's even a gang of harpies who behave exactly like the flying monkeys!
Very unoriginal.
Boomsday
Boomsday by Christopher Buckley
Category: Novel Grade: A
Buckley is definitely the best political satirist writing today. In the past, however, he's tackled fairly safe topics. His most well known book that was made in to a movie a few years ago was Thank You for Smoking. In that book, Buckley made hilarious fun of the so-called death lobbyists - the folks who work the Washington power structure looking out for the best interests of the tobacco, alcohol and gun industries. In Boomsday, with equally funny results, he tackles a much touchier topic - the cost of government benefits for the Boomer generation. He illustrates the big fallacy of Social Security - that its an insurance program. I.e. that the money that a worker contributes during his life somehow pays for the benefits that worker will draw after retirement. The reality is a lot scarier and, in some ways, more sinister. It's today's workers that actually pay for the benefits of today's retirees. With the retirement of the Boomer generation, the largest in history, a rapidly increasing chunk of today's wages will have to be used to pay retirement and health care benefits.
What Buckley postulates in this book is effectively a potential tax payer rebellion. He's a satirist so he comes up with lots of new benefits that are being approved by the federal government mostly because of the power of the Boomer lobbyists (a theme?) - e.g. a new Social Security benefit to support the latest Boomer trend -- designer mausoleums! A blog written by the book's heroine (?) stirs up the young to, among other things, attack Florida golf courses as a form of protest.
What makes the book hysterical and more than a little uncomfortable, is the blogger's proposed solution to the problem - tax incentives for "voluntary transition" at age 70. I.e. government funded suicide. A taxpayer would get benefits like elimination of all estate taxes just by agreeing to "transit" to a better place. The blogger proposes the solution as merely a way to bring attention to the issues, never expecting or really wanting the solution to become law. What makes the book scary and, at the same time, funny, is that (a) of course, the financial analysis proves beyond a doubt that the scheme would make Social Security solvent forever and (b) not surprisingly, an opportunistic politician decides that he can ride the issue to the White House. Again, the numbers work -- if you can get all the "U30s" (the under 30 crowd) to get mad and vote, you can safely ignore everybody else.
Buckley then pulls out the whole bag of tricks for a Washington satirist -- a spin doctor who gets caught organizing a golf tournament in North Korea to encourage good will, an LBJ-like cynical President, a hypocritical tele-evangelist (whose downfall is the funniest part of the book) and even a Larry Ellison like ego-entrepreneur.
The book is an easy entertaining read - a good beach book, even if its a little late in the season. If you don't mind being a little ashamed of the fact that you think this stuff is funny, give it a shot.
Category: Novel Grade: A
Buckley is definitely the best political satirist writing today. In the past, however, he's tackled fairly safe topics. His most well known book that was made in to a movie a few years ago was Thank You for Smoking. In that book, Buckley made hilarious fun of the so-called death lobbyists - the folks who work the Washington power structure looking out for the best interests of the tobacco, alcohol and gun industries. In Boomsday, with equally funny results, he tackles a much touchier topic - the cost of government benefits for the Boomer generation. He illustrates the big fallacy of Social Security - that its an insurance program. I.e. that the money that a worker contributes during his life somehow pays for the benefits that worker will draw after retirement. The reality is a lot scarier and, in some ways, more sinister. It's today's workers that actually pay for the benefits of today's retirees. With the retirement of the Boomer generation, the largest in history, a rapidly increasing chunk of today's wages will have to be used to pay retirement and health care benefits.
What Buckley postulates in this book is effectively a potential tax payer rebellion. He's a satirist so he comes up with lots of new benefits that are being approved by the federal government mostly because of the power of the Boomer lobbyists (a theme?) - e.g. a new Social Security benefit to support the latest Boomer trend -- designer mausoleums! A blog written by the book's heroine (?) stirs up the young to, among other things, attack Florida golf courses as a form of protest.
What makes the book hysterical and more than a little uncomfortable, is the blogger's proposed solution to the problem - tax incentives for "voluntary transition" at age 70. I.e. government funded suicide. A taxpayer would get benefits like elimination of all estate taxes just by agreeing to "transit" to a better place. The blogger proposes the solution as merely a way to bring attention to the issues, never expecting or really wanting the solution to become law. What makes the book scary and, at the same time, funny, is that (a) of course, the financial analysis proves beyond a doubt that the scheme would make Social Security solvent forever and (b) not surprisingly, an opportunistic politician decides that he can ride the issue to the White House. Again, the numbers work -- if you can get all the "U30s" (the under 30 crowd) to get mad and vote, you can safely ignore everybody else.
Buckley then pulls out the whole bag of tricks for a Washington satirist -- a spin doctor who gets caught organizing a golf tournament in North Korea to encourage good will, an LBJ-like cynical President, a hypocritical tele-evangelist (whose downfall is the funniest part of the book) and even a Larry Ellison like ego-entrepreneur.
The book is an easy entertaining read - a good beach book, even if its a little late in the season. If you don't mind being a little ashamed of the fact that you think this stuff is funny, give it a shot.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
The Wind-up Bird Chronicles
The Wind-up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami
Category: Novel Grade: B+
That's two by Murakami this summer and I think I'm becoming a fan. His books are definitely not for everybody - he's sort of a magical-realist. The two books I've read so far, this one and the much shorter After Dark, both blur the lines between reality and fantasy. Chronicles is probably the author's best known and definitely his longest book. It winds together a bunch of different plots lines - something I'm not usually in to. Here, the focus of the book is the narrator's disintegrating marriage, but there's also strange story lines about a teenage girl up the street, a very weird "psychic treatment", a charismatic Japanese politician and an involved story about violence during both of Japan's mid-centuries wars - with China and then with the Soviet Union. In spite of the book's 600 page length, Murakami, at least in this book, is amazingly efficient with his prose. The tiniest details come back to be wound in to the story later in the book. Ultimately, all of the story lines tie together in what, finally, is a beautiful, but disturbing book.
The writing is lyrical, even in translation. Most of the book is told in first person - it's the kind of book where you can hear the narrator telling you the story in a quiet voice. The translator, Jay Rubin, has apparently done most of Murakami's books and it's hard to imagine the talent required to take prose like this and make it poetic in another language. Reading Chronicles really made me wish I could read Japanese to see what this writing is like in the original.
This book isn't nearly as dense as the masterpiece of magical realism - One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez. If you liked Solitude, or if you always wanted to read something like it, but weren't willing to invest the effort to get through, you might like Chronicles. It's definitely enough to keep me moving through the Murakami library.
Category: Novel Grade: B+
That's two by Murakami this summer and I think I'm becoming a fan. His books are definitely not for everybody - he's sort of a magical-realist. The two books I've read so far, this one and the much shorter After Dark, both blur the lines between reality and fantasy. Chronicles is probably the author's best known and definitely his longest book. It winds together a bunch of different plots lines - something I'm not usually in to. Here, the focus of the book is the narrator's disintegrating marriage, but there's also strange story lines about a teenage girl up the street, a very weird "psychic treatment", a charismatic Japanese politician and an involved story about violence during both of Japan's mid-centuries wars - with China and then with the Soviet Union. In spite of the book's 600 page length, Murakami, at least in this book, is amazingly efficient with his prose. The tiniest details come back to be wound in to the story later in the book. Ultimately, all of the story lines tie together in what, finally, is a beautiful, but disturbing book.
The writing is lyrical, even in translation. Most of the book is told in first person - it's the kind of book where you can hear the narrator telling you the story in a quiet voice. The translator, Jay Rubin, has apparently done most of Murakami's books and it's hard to imagine the talent required to take prose like this and make it poetic in another language. Reading Chronicles really made me wish I could read Japanese to see what this writing is like in the original.
This book isn't nearly as dense as the masterpiece of magical realism - One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez. If you liked Solitude, or if you always wanted to read something like it, but weren't willing to invest the effort to get through, you might like Chronicles. It's definitely enough to keep me moving through the Murakami library.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
The Double Agents
The Double Agents by W.E.B. Griffin and William E. Butterworth IV
Category: Military Fiction Grade: A
OK - new rule. I read a fair amount of serial fiction. Griffin is probably the best example. As I've said in the past, I've probably read more books by him than any other author (39 and counting). In general, a series is either good or bad without a lot of variation from book to book. So from now on, series fiction will get really short reviews - it's just getting hard to think of something clever to say about what's essentially one long book.
This one is the sixth book in the Men at War series about the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA. It takes place during World War II. Griffin always throws in some element of soap opera - there's always at least a few heaving breasts - but is books are uniformly entertaining and action packed. This one is too. Enough said.
(Actually, there is one thing out of the ordinary about this one -- David Niven, Peter Ustinov and Ian Fleming are all a major part of one of the story lines.)
Category: Military Fiction Grade: A
OK - new rule. I read a fair amount of serial fiction. Griffin is probably the best example. As I've said in the past, I've probably read more books by him than any other author (39 and counting). In general, a series is either good or bad without a lot of variation from book to book. So from now on, series fiction will get really short reviews - it's just getting hard to think of something clever to say about what's essentially one long book.
This one is the sixth book in the Men at War series about the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA. It takes place during World War II. Griffin always throws in some element of soap opera - there's always at least a few heaving breasts - but is books are uniformly entertaining and action packed. This one is too. Enough said.
(Actually, there is one thing out of the ordinary about this one -- David Niven, Peter Ustinov and Ian Fleming are all a major part of one of the story lines.)
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