Republic: A Novel of America's Future

In Republic: A Novel of America’s Future, Charles Sheehan-Miles offers a look at where America might be headed if the politicians in Washington continue to ignore the will of the people of this country. The book is largely an indictment against the Department of Homeland Security as that department was developed under the previous administration and it would have been scary enough if I had read it before the last national election. But, because things have only gotten worse under the present leadership, the book’s premise does not seem to be all that farfetched today, making it even more disturbing now than when it was first published.

The United States has suffered a terrorist attack and, as usual, innocent people have been slaughtered by the crazies amongst us. The Department of Homeland Security is determined to stop future attacks, be they from homegrown or from foreign sources, and will do whatever it deems necessary to achieve that goal. To make matters worse, the economy is suffering and the country is bleeding jobs to countries that can provide cheaper labor costs.

In one little West Virginia town, the manufacturing facility on which the town depends for its very existence has closed its doors forever, opting for some of that cheap foreign labor. When the locals decide to protest the losing of their jobs by occupying the facility, the military (along with a few hotheads from Homeland Security) is called in to remove them. Tempers flare, mistakes are made, and people are killed, ultimately leading to a statewide vote on West Virginia’s secession from the Union. The seemingly impossible happens, and West Virginia finds herself at war with the United States of America.

Sheehan-Miles tells his story from the viewpoints of those on both sides of the situation leading to war, including one unfortunate couple who find themselves fighting on different sides. Unlike the American Civil War of 1861-1865, this will be a short fight because the West Virginia National Guard has only enough ammunition and manpower to hold out for approximately 48 hours – if the state is very lucky. It will be up to politicians to negotiate a settlement before shots are fired. But these are typical politicians, after all, so what are the chances that cooler heads will prevail?

Republic is a thought provoking alternate history that is not as unlikely as one might believe at first glance. It is a solidly written story in which the dangers to this country from within are vividly illustrated – no happy endings to be had here.

Rated at: 4.0

The Secret Speech

The Secret Speech is the second book in Tom Rob Smith’s proposed Russian thriller trilogy featuring Leo Demidov. I suspect there will be many readers like me, however, that will be getting their introduction to Leo Demidov from The Secret Speech rather than from the trilogy’s first book, Child 44. The good news is twofold: The Secret Speech functions well as a standalone novel and you still have the supposedly even better Child 44 in your reading future.

Set in the Cold War Russia of 1956, with flashbacks to 1949 when Leo Demidov, a young member of Russia’s secret police (predecessor to the infamous KGB), is busy denouncing and arresting those who dare to waver from the official party line, The Secret Speech is a study in individual responsibility, guilt and redemption. And that is what makes this one stand head and shoulders above the more common political thriller being written these days.

Leo Demidov is a man filled with remorse; he arrested so many innocent people that he has destroyed hundreds of families and thousands of innocent lives. Many of the people he arrested were quickly executed; others spent years in a frozen gulag where they died painful and brutal deaths, never seeing their loved ones again. Now, Demidov is doing everything he can to atone for his own crimes against humanity. He refuses to work for the new KGB and, instead, has created a controversial unit to investigate Moscow’s many homicides. In a symbolic gesture, he and his wife have become the official guardians of two sisters whose parents lost their lives because of Demidov’s work with the secret police. Nothing is more important to Demidov today than his makeshift family.

But someone is successfully taking revenge on people like Demidov. One by one, his old secret police colleagues are being assassinated or shamed into taking their own lives. When Demidov becomes the target of the same assassins he his trying to catch in his role as a homicide investigator, he is concerned more with the safety of his wife and “daughters” than with his own. As he sadly learns, when his 14-year-old daughter is kidnapped, his concerns were well placed, if not well defended.

Demidov’s efforts to recover his daughter will see him end up a prisoner in one of the gulag camps in which so many of his own victims suffered and died, and then scrambling for his life during the first days of the Hungarian revolution of 1956. He will match wits with a woman whose sole purpose in life is to revenge the deaths of those whose lives were destroyed, a hardhearted woman who will show him no mercy.

This is a wonderfully atmospheric novel, placing the reader deeply inside the brutality of a prison camp in dead-of winter Siberia one moment and in the chaos of the 1956 revolution in Hungary the next. The third book of the trilogy is to be published in 2011; in the meantime, I am going to find a copy of Child 44 so that I can learn how Leo Demidov became the man he is.

Rated at: 5.0

(Review Copy provided by Publisher)

Best of 2010, Update 19

I think this would be a good time to update my "Best of the Year" list since we are closing out the month of May on a hot three-day weekend, meaning the year is almost half over already. I have been so busy helping to pack my daughter and move her to another house that I've done very little reading for the last three or four days - but there are a few changes to the list.

Since the last update, I've read A Week in December (Sebastian Faulks), Johnny Porno (Charlie Stella) and Not So Perfect (Nik Perring). I'm also well into Jeremy Butterfield's Damp Squid (an exploration of the English language) and Republic, by Charles Sheehan-Miles (an alternate history look at what might happen if the Homeland Security agency got "over ambitious"). Two of the books crack the list at numbers 8 and 10.

So this is what the fiction list looks like after 38 fiction books read:

1. Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese (novel)
2. Matterhorn - Karl Marlantes (Vietnam War novel)
3. The Calligrapher's Daughter - Eugenia Kim (novel)
4. Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier (historical fiction)
5. Drood - Dan Simmons (historical fiction)
6. Far Cry - John Harvey (police procedural)
7. A Fair Maiden - Joyce Carol Oates (novel)
8. Johnny Porno - Charlie Stella (noir crime fiction)
9. The Samaritan's Secret - Matt Beynon Rees (detective fiction)
10.Not So Perfect - Nik Perring (short story collection)

And the nonfiction list from a total of 13 read so far this year is unchanged:

1. Lies My Mother Never Told Me - Kaylie Jones (memoir)
2. Man of Constant Sorrow - Ralph Stanley & Eddie Dean (biography)
3. Losing My Cool - Thomas Chatterton Williams (memoir)
4. Jane's Fame - Claire Harman (on the evolution of Jane Austen's reputation)
5. The Opposite Field - Jesse Katz - (memoir)
6. The Tennis Partner - Abraham Verghese (1998 memoir)
7. Game Change - John Heilemann & Mark Halperin (political nonfiction)
8. Top of the Order - Sean Manning, Ed. (baseball essays)
9. A Time to Betray - Reza Kahlili (memoir of Iranian CIA agent)
10. Goosetown: Reconstructing an Akron Neighborhood - Joyce Dyer (memoir)

Let Us Never Forget Them

As you share food and fun with family and friends this weekend, please take a moment to remember those who helped make the world a safer place for all of us.

Here They Come

Janet Evanovich
It's getting hot out there in more ways than one because the big summer books are about to hit the shelves of your local bookstores. Based on their huge initial printing numbers, you won't have any trouble finding a copy of this bunch:

Sizzling Sixteen - Janet Evanovich - (a Stephanie Plum novel) - 2,500,000 copies

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner - Stephanie Meyers - (a "Twilight" novella) - 1,500,000 copies

The Lion - Nelson DeMille - (a terrorism thriller) - 1,000,000 copies

The Search - Nora Roberts - (a serial killer thriller) - 650,000 copies

Star Island - Carl Hiassen - (another South Florida novel) - 500,000 copies

2010 will be a good year for authors named "Stephanie" or "Janet "but this looks a whole lot like the same old stuff to me...and I'm bored already.

Not So Perfect

When it comes to reputation and popularity, modern day short story writers seem to get the short end of the stick. Novels are more popular than shorter works; there is no doubt about that. Readers seem to prefer immersing themselves in complicated, detailed plots housed in 500 pages novels over experiencing spare short stories of a dozen pages or so. I tend to be that way myself, despite the fact that I have come to believe that it might be more difficult to write a quality short story than it is to write a longer work. Nik Perring's Not So Perfect has pretty much convinced me that I am correct about that opinion. It must really be hard to make it look this easy.

Not So Perfect is Perring's collection of 22 short stories, several of which have been previously published in British (I think) literary magazines. The collection gives new definition to short story because these little tales are best characterized as short short stories. These are stories of a few hundred words and just three or four pages, on average, but do not let their brevity fool you because each of the stories packs a little kick of its own. Perring has such an uncanny ability to create believable characters and unusual situations in very few words that I found myself always looking forward to the next story to see if he could pull it off again. He did.

None of Perring's characters are perfect, and what we see of their lives is not even close to being perfect, but they are interesting and fun to get to know. Among my favorite stories is one about a library patron that comes to the disapproving notice of the librarian who suspects he is up to no good. There is one about a young woman's obsessive use of Post-It notes, another about two birdwatchers that come out only at night, and one about a woman who literally vomits small animals. There may be no perfect characters and no perfect lives in Perring's stories but I defy the reader to forget them.

Not So Perfect is fun and I will long remember it because of a unique experience I had while reading it. I always keep a book in my car, just for those little unexpected delays that so often happen during my daily commute or when I have to queue up someplace for a few minutes of what would, otherwise, be wasted time. Not So Perfect rode along in my passenger seat for several days and, while waiting for an exceptionally long traffic light to turn green in my direction (a wait of almost three minutes), I was able to read an entire short (short) story on the way to work. How cool is that?

Rated at: 4.0

(Review Copy provided by Publisher)