Traveling Light: A Novel by Lynne Branard

Traveling Light: A Novel.  Lynne Branard. Penguin Publishing Group. January 2017. 320 pp. ISBN #: 9781101989043.

Alissa has entered a rather strange contest to win a storage unit that has been abandoned.  What she finds, ironically, doesn’t seem to surprise her.  Instead she discovers the ashes of a deceased man, Roger Hart, and quickly decides she will return his ashes to his family or hometown.  She also is in need of a change and this strikes her as presenting innumerable possibilities.  No, it’s not the path most would take but it’s certainly an intriguing premise.

Little does she know that her eyes and heart are about to be opened, beginning when a strange young waitress, Blossom, decides to join her on the trip to Texas, as well as Alissa’s three-legged dog.   They discuss families as they travel and Alissa gets to meet some unique characters, like Blossom’s Dad. 

They meet fascinating people, some stereotypical, some odd.  They learn to go with the flow of whatever happens, including when their car starts misbehaving and all of Alissa’s car education helps them figure out what it is but not be able to fix it without help from elsewhere.

Meanwhile the man who abandoned Alissa a few days before the wedding keeps calling her and trying to hook up again.  But Alissa’s stronger, feistier and she’s not giving in to his charm.  Add to that her own father is dating a woman thirty years younger than he is, with two small children. And Alissa makes it clear that she doesn’t want to take over the newspaper her father owns and for which she wrote for a long time. 

What does she want to do?  Repair a boat.  “I don’t want to follow a script anymore…Everybody needs to listen to their own hearts…we should all decide on our own scripts.”  It seems that Alissa has learned to allow life to happen to her instead of directing life along the patterns her family has always followed, even though she really didn’t mind those patterns until now.

This is a quite unusual novel that reminded me of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road story, even though it really isn’t like that for most of the story of Kerouac’s journeys.  One even wonders if this change is because people are different in the West and the South.  One thing for sure is that Alissa and Blossom’s story will have you nodding your head up and down and at times holding still while questioning what has always been accepted.  What would it take for you to totally embrace life in different ways?  Lynne Branard helps the reader to begin his or her own journey, if one dares!

The Echo of Twilight: A Novel by Judith Kinghorn

The Echo of Twilight: A Novel.  Judith Kinghorn. Penguin Publishing Group. January 2017. 400 pp. ISBN #: 9780451472106.

Pearl Gibson loves to travel, to move up, to make up names for herself and tales she tells strangers, lying to embellish and enchant mundane reality!  She’s good at it or perhaps one should say she was good at it until she was caught in one of her brilliant fabrications.  On the way to interview for a job as a lady’s maid, she gives her name as Ottoline, the name of her soon to be employer, to a fine looking man she meets at a railroad station.  Just a stranger, right? Ha!

In fact, the real Ottoline Campbell who hires Pearl is a unique woman who does exactly as she pleases during an era when women’s roles were quite circumscribed.  Ottoline’s attitude to Pearl from the very beginning is more of a friend than employer, although when displeased she lets Pearl know her place.  Very quickly, Pearl learns about the family secrets but it isn’t her place to comment.  Pearl then meets a family relative and they immediately bond.  Now Ottoline has a secret that binds her to Pearl even deeper, a truth that is unfortunately or fortunately, depending on one’s point of view, shunted to the side with the beginning of World War I in 1914.  Ottoline’s sons and so many other sons in the area join the military fight out of patriotic duty. Some will die; some will return as scarred, traumatized wrecks! Pearl soon has a secret that she entrusts to Ottoline, who now evolves into Pearl’s protector and more than friend.

Pearl’s tension from the war and its shocking effects builds up until one day she breaks and spews out what she perceives as the truth, an act that mandates she leave the Campbell home to become the independent woman she needs to be.  Years later, she will return under totally unexpected circumstances.

This story has been told many times before this novel was written.  The essence of this story, however, is quite unique.  What rules our lives – fate, destiny, choices, rebellion, conformity – what?  Judith Kinghorn is a very skilled author who crafts a mesmerizing account of how the vicissitudes of life dramatically shift during wartime.  Every character is dramatically changed forever and the reader is honored to have shared the dramatic lives within these pages.

The Echo of Twilight is an amazing work of historical fiction that this reviewer highly recommends!

An Unsettling Crime for Samuel Craddock: A Samuel Craddock Mystery Prequel by Terry Shames

An Unsettling Crime for Samuel Craddock: A Samuel Craddock Mystery Prequel.  Terry Shames. Prometheus Books. January 2017. 270 pp. ISBN #: 9781633882096.

Samuel Craddock has recently been appointed Chief of Police in small town Jarret Creek, Texas.  Some treat him with respect and others scorn his office as he’s in his 30s, a very young age compared to most law officers in the area.  Because there’s not much crime locally, for the most part, Sam decides to try his hand at raising a few head of cattle.  He and his wife are about to welcome the delivery of these bovine additions to their family when he receives a call about a fire and something that should be seen immediately.  What he finds is so far beyond his recent experience in the Air Force, a grisly fire that burns five people to death and one of them has clearly been shot at point-blank range!

This then is the story of how Sam bypasses and gingerly maneuvers around the flagrant racial prejudice of another law officer and several people in the town, the rambunctious journalist who will do anything for an exciting story like this, corruption in the town, a major drug problem in the local high school, and those who do everything possible to impede Sam’s independent investigation of the fire and murders.  Add to that Sam’s dysfunctional family with a nephew who desperately needs some tender loving care beyond his own parents. 

It's not just racial prejudice that’s rampant in Jarret Creek.  Certain “important” families think that their high status means they are untouchable when it comes to breaking the law.  It’s not until a crisis happens that Sam’s determined nature begins to transform from insecurity to maturity. 

Crimes in these types of legal thrillers or mysteries are almost always solved and the surprise involves unusual investigative techniques and the unpredictability of the perpetrator or perpetrators.  However, there’s another element here, the abandoning of stereotyping everyone with the same brush.  So Sam gives the reader hope that lack of prejudice clears one’s mind to see things objectively and thus connect links toward a solution that not only solves the crime but also serves as a teaching moment for many who may have spurned such previous moments.  

Nicely crafted Terry Shames!  This is a prequel to six other Sam Craddock mysteries – happy reading all!

Law and Disorder: A Legal Thriller by Mike Papantonio

Law and Disorder: A Legal Thriller.  Mike Papantonio. Select Books. September 2016. 352 pp. ISBN #: 9781590793671.

Like the author, Nicholas “Deke” Deketomis is a skilled trial lawyer and talk radio show host.  The novel opens with a dramatic scene in which a young woman, suing a large pharmaceutical company for allowing the sale of a drug, dies right in front of the court after the Judge’s decision to not allow her story as evidence in a class action lawsuit against the drug company.  Deke’s law firm had six good witnesses to take to trial on this matter but now he’s got five and he’s looking for evidence that will unequivocally burn through the defendant’s “lawyered-up” and powerful strategies to defeat Deke’s lawsuit.

The plot then moves to a seeming sub-plot in which a coach of a woman’s team at a Southern Pentecostal Church receives a letter threatening exposure for sleeping with a minor fifteen-year-old teen.  The alleged perpetrator fakes a suicide hoping to con his wife into forgiveness and prayer, but the Pastor in charge of this church has different plans.  For one thing, this is one of those popular mega-churches making enough money from televised sermons and their in-person weekly services to make them a wealthy business.  The Pastor is also supporting a former Senator who is planning a comeback and who is stupid enough to ignore the fact that he is a tool in the Pastor’s grand strategy for even more success in the political world.

The remainder of the novel is about the machinations of the court, lawyers, Judges with a partisan preference, pharmaceutical companies whose only vision is making money minus caring about patients who die because of their poisoning drugs, and what it takes to achieve success in modifying the choices made by these drug companies.  Illegal methods are deemed perfectly appropriate to obtain pivotal evidence to use against the defendant drug company.  Religious leaders are not above destroying anyone who opposes their glorified status.

Most of what is in this novel reflects the way the law and businesses operate, but some of it goes over the edge with authorial license.  Still we are left with a ripping tale that has enough twists and turns to keep the reader flipping the pages and left with somewhat an education that is both informative and shocking!

Nicely plotted, with spunky, intelligent characters, Law and Disorder… is a terrific read sure to please those who love the legal thriller genre!

Max's Diamonds: A Novel by Jay Greenfield

Max’s Diamonds: A Novel.  Jay Greenfield. Chickadee Prince Books. May 2016. 344 pp. ISBN #: 9780991327423.

Paul Hartman, his parents and many in their family are refugees from the hell created by Adolf Hitler.  In short, they are Holocaust survivors!  Think you’ve heard it all before!  Stop in your tracks – you haven’t!  Jay Greenfield’s first novel is reality.  The appearance of Paul’s Uncle Max is a life-changing event for Paul.  Two aspects of Uncle Max’s life remain with Paul forever, the numbers etched into Uncle Max’s arm and the diamonds Uncle Max owns and spreads throughout the family.  These items are evidence of the worst kind of evil one can imagine!  They permeate the family with guilt as survivors and victims who deserve more of life’s wealth because of what they have endured.  In between these searing scenes are moments of intense beauty which Paul and his girlfriend, and later wife, find in playing music.  Should one play Wagner, the enemy of the Jews, to show all that Jews survived and are now their own masters? Yes, Wagner, the music that was played when selections were daily made of who was to go to the gas chambers.  The novel is replete with decisions of a like-minded nature!

For Paul, it seems for every few steps he moves ahead in his career and family life he must take multiple steps backwards laced with shared guilt and moral obligations.  As the story progresses, we learn how Max acquired those diamonds in the concentration camp and what he did with them.  Harrowing story, indeed!

Paul becomes a lawyer whose State Supreme Court clerkship becomes compromised because of his family background.  On and on the same stop-and-go scenes follow, eventually causing the failure of two marriages, barriers with relatives because of a deed Paul committed after meeting Max and before Max’s death.  All his relationships become tainted and the reader can empathize with his frustration and desire to get it all healed and behind, if that is possible at all!

Max’s Diamonds… is a startling, riveting work of historical fiction that each reader may never forget.  It’s a thriller spawned by an evil reality of one man but passing on to all the victims tied into that evil man’s existence!

Amazing read that this reviewer highly recommends!

Blind Ambition: The White House Years by John W. Dean

Blind Ambition: The White House Years. John Dean. Open Road Media. December 2016. 480 pp. ISBN#: 9781504041011.  

John Dean felt privileged on being invited to be Richard Nixon and the White House’s legal counsel.  Highly intelligent and skilled, Dean recognized that his main task was building a business in the White House and wrongly assumed he would have all the connections and advice necessary for the job.  He also realized he had spent so much of his life working, he had no meaningful relationships outside of that professional career, so he again wooed and married his old girlfriend, Mo.  It wasn’t long before his surrealistic, high-flying dreams began a slow, odious descent from legal counsel to firefighter, to fellow conspirator, to defender, to criminal and finally to prosecutor.  This then is Dean’s story of Watergate, the ultimate demise of Richard Nixon and many of his staff members who never learned the lesson that power has limits!

It all began with a break-in of a psychiatrist’s office to get the psychiatric records of Daniel Ellsberg to smear him and progressed to a larger break-in of the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate building in Washington, D.C. in June 1972.  Five men were arrested for the latter break-in and Dean clearly describes the White House interference trying to get these men freed and paid hush money.  It didn’t help that the men were carrying a large amount of cash ultimately found to be connected to the Committee for the Re-election of the President (Nixon).   The remainder of the story concerns the cover-up attempted by Nixon’s henchmen: Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Colson, Strachan, Mardian and others.  What made it ten times worse is that everyone was caught in lying about the event, about the money used to hush testimony, about the use of pivotal figures quickly followed by their being discarded, and numerous hours and money spent in trying to deny the truth and basically save butts.

At first Dean’s job seemed to be what he calls being a “firefighter,” putting out the truth before it burst into the public scene via media.  As one reads these pages, it’s hard to deal with the mix of feelings of feeling sorry for these misguided men and then getting angry at the relentless justice that pursues them for their clear, untrammeled guilt.  Dean portrays Richard Nixon as the wily, devious manipulator who plays dumb but is playing each of the characters toward his own end of being acknowledged as innocence.  But he failed to realize that his Presidential staff would slowly unravel in fear of being indicted and eventually jailed; after each implodes, devastating testimony is given that is both convicting and self-serving, including for certain time spans Dean’s own reporting.  While these men were prosecuted and served time in jail, except for Nixon who was forced to resign the Presidency, the truth has been spoken despite attempts at distorting, denying and placing blaming elsewhere.  

Blind Ambition: The White House Years is vital reading for a nation concerned with the abuse of power and the checks and balances systems of government that are intended to stop events like Watergate from happening and/or being kept hidden.  Power has boundaries! Highly recommended reading!

The Con Man of Lagos: A Novel of Espionage by Francesca Salerno

The Con Man of Lagos: A Novel of Espionage.  Francesca Salerno. Amazon Digital Services. October 2016. 577 KB.  ASIN#: B01MAYEND9. 

Francesca Salerno’s second espionage novel takes the reader through the realities of terrorism in the world of Boko Haram, a small but dangerous group affiliated with Al Qaeda.  Boko Haram is located in Africa, and the plot in Lagos involves a Soviet submarine loaded with nuclear tipped missiles that explodes in the waters around Lagos and the surrounding area.  It also concerns their plan to take barrels of sludge-like chemicals siphoned off barrels of gasoline and explode them in an area guaranteed to kill many Nigerians.  Although Nigeria financially prospers from the sale of gas and oil to nations around the world, the terrorists believe Nigeria is a superior country that should gain most the benefits of the gold mine to the world. 

There is very little action in this novel.  However, the essence of its appeal lies in the knowledge of its characters and the expanded knowledge accumulated through the political, military, business and ambassadorial connections.  This is a very different style for an espionage novel but one that works well herein.  You will meet upper officials of Nigeria’s petroleum business, an ambassador from America who is really a CIA operative, an Imam whose connections make him able to make huge amounts of money and use that money for terrorist purposes, a shady employee who carries out the plans of the Imam but who fails to realize the plot involving a far greater risk until it is too late, a Pakistani ambassador who works for the glory of his country although his job in Lagos is a demotion for getting too cozy with the Americans, and more men and women who are astute chess pieces in a game that’s headed for a showdown between the King and Queen.

Another notable feature of this novel is the characters whose idealism and dedication to the betterment of Nigerian interests supersedes the financial greed or fundamentalist spiritual fanaticism threatening the permanent demise of Nigeria and other global powers.  It’s also fascinating to follow the motivations and changing plans of these characters as they coalesce and vie with each other.  Sometimes in the real world, volatile terrorism is thwarted, actually more times than is obvious from the news we view or read every day.  Francesca Salerno has obviously researched her topic well and been to the setting she so aptly describes.  The Con Man of Lagos… is a good read that is recommended for those who like to learn more about this imaginary but all too realistic terror plot!