Justice Gone - N. Lombardi Jr.

We seem to be living in a world in which few of us really trust anyone in authority anymore – we are all cynics. Elected officials, law enforcement officers, news media employees, and federal and state bureaucrats have all been accused of pushing personal agendas with little fear of being held accountable for their unethical actions. Those of who grew up in what we want to believe were simpler times are probably more upset by this noxious atmosphere than those born into it during the last couple of decades. They have, after all, known no other world. 

Nick Lombardi has been around long enough to see the world for what it is – and having spent half of his life living outside the United States, he has seen it at its worst and at its best. Lombardi’s Justice Gonetakes a questioning look at what we call justicethese days, a concept that is not nearly as black and white as we naively used to believe that it was. The novel tackles several front-page issues that trouble this country: homelessness, the huge number of broken men and women being produced by America’s endless wars, the perception of racially motivated police brutality, government cover-ups, and out-of-control and unethical government prosecutors and investigators. But don’t let that scare you away because Justice Gone manages to do all of that within the framework of an intriguing legal thriller.

Justice Gone is book one in what Lombardi plans as a series featuring Dr. Tessa Thorpe, a veteran’s counselor in charge of a clinic specializing in helping damaged veterans put their lives back together before it is too late. Tragedy strikes when cops decide to arrest one of Tessa’s patients on the streets for a crime he knows nothing about. Not recognizing the veteran’s confusion and panic for what it really is, the cops viciously beat him to death right in front of a bus station surveillance camera. And when that tape is leaked to YouTube all hell breaks loose. 

Another of Tessa’s patients, Iraqi war veteran Donald Darfield, was the dead man’s best friend and because of something that happened in Iraq, he feels responsible for his friend’s life. Donald, though, has plenty of war-related problems of his own, and after viewing the YouTube video he disappears. When three of the policemen responsible for beating his friend to death are themselves murdered, it is inevitable that Donald be charged with the crimes. And this is when Justice Gone becomes a legal thriller.

Nicholas Lombardi Jr.

Lombardi takes his readers through the whole legal process, all the way from jury selection, to evidence and witness gathering, to the legal strategies of both sides. In the process, he creates one of the most interesting defense teams that I’ve run across in a while: a colorful father-daughter team that manages to turn Nathanial Bodine’s physical handicap into a distinct advantage. Mr. Bodine is blind but that doesn’t mean the man can’t see. He has developed his other senses so acutely that he always knows exactly where he is in the courtroom – unless he wants to pretend otherwise for his own reasons. He and Emily have been working together long enough to have their routine so perfectly choreographed that it appears spontaneous to jurors. And it works every time. Any prosecutor underestimating the skills of Nathanial and Emily Bodine is making the mistake of his life.

Bottom Line: Justice Gone is a beautifully set-up legal thriller, and fans of the genre are certain to be entertained by the efforts of the Bodine legal team. While I am curious about what the second Tessa Thorpe novel will offer, I am just as caught up by a wish to see the Bodines in action again. My only quibble with this one is that the book’s “big reveal” seems a little sudden in appearance and resolution considering the length of its buildup. 

Review Copy provided by publisher

Book Number 3,439

The Beatles from A to Zed: An Alphabetical Mystery Tour - Peter Asher

No doubt about it. Peter Asher’s The Beatles from A to Zed: An Alphabetical Mystery Tour is a wonderfully comprehensive reminder of what made the Beatles such a unique and influential band, a book to be appreciated by younger and older fans alike. But this is a very special book for those fans who were there to buy the singles and albums as they were being delivered in what we then believed would be a string of never-ending hits. As it turned out, “never-ending” would only last from 1964 to 1970, but that doesn’t mean that the Beatles have ever been in any danger of being forgotten or surpassed by any of the bands that followed them. 

Thanks in large part to the Beatles Channel on SiriusXM radio, Beatlemania is still alive and well. Some Beatle fans (and perhaps especially non-fans) may have wondered how long a 24-7 radio station devoted to nothing but the music of one group could possibly remain fresh – even if it was the music of the Beatles. If so, they underestimated both the Beatles and those, like Peter Asher, who contribute their own knowledge and memories of that era to the channel’s programming. It is Asher’s Beatle’s Channel program “From Me to You” that in fact serves as the basis for The Beatles from A to Zed (this is more obvious in some of the book’s 26 chapters than in others). 

Asher’s approach is to devote a separate chapter to each letter of the alphabet in which he discusses whatever aspect of the Beatles work the letter suggests to him (he did struggle a bit with the “X” and “Z” chapters but managed somewhat creatively to tie in both letters). Asher goes wherever each letter leads him, be it a discussion of Beatles-related songs beginning with that particular letter or instruments, friends, locations, cowriters, producers, studios, etc. beginning with that letter. It is almost like sitting across the table from Asher and hearing him reminisce about his old friends and the decades of friendship that he shared with them. The man has stories to tell and he tells them well.

Peter Asher

Peter Asher was there from the relatively early days of the Beatles. He was particularly close to Paul McCartney who lived for a time in the Asher family home and composed some of his most famous songs there, meaning that Asher and his family were often the first to hear the songs that would later become classic Beatles recordings (Lennon and McCartney sometimes worked on songs together in the Asher home). Asher, of course, would find his own fame both as a member of the popular recording duo Peter and Gordon and as producer for some of the most famous recording artists of his day. 

The best way to read The Beatles from A to Zed is to read it while listening to the songs being discussed. Asher has a way of dissecting a song that only a world-class musician is capable of, and better yet, he explains it all in a way that it makes sense even to less musically inclined readers. Listening to a song while having an expert like Asher explain in some detail how (and why) it was all put together the way it was is a unique experience. I didn’t think there was anything that could make me love and appreciate the songs of the Beatles any more than I already did. I was wrong; The Beatles from A to Zed did exactly that.

Review Copy provided by Henry Holt and Co. 

(Book number 3,438)

There Must Be Something in the Water

There must be something in the water.

I keep stumbling upon books featuring the World War II experiences of women: books about Jewish women trying to escape occupied Europe, books about female resistance fighters, books about female spies who worked behind enemy lines, etc. There is even one slightly different book about the inspiration a female Afghanistan War veteran finds by reading about a woman who disguised herself as a man in order to fight for the Union during the American Civil War. The plots are so similar that it's becoming harder and harder to keep track of which title goes with which plot.

But publishers aren't satisfied just to flood the market with plots I can barely keep straight. Take a look at the covers of these same books. Does anyone really believe that it's a coincidence that even the covers are hard to keep straight? My theory is that publishers realize there is probably a good market for two or three of these books at the same time at most so they are counting on the confusion to sell a few thousand copies of the also-rans at the same time.

And these are only the ones I've seen in the past couple of weeks; I spotted four of them at Target just this afternoon, in fact - and Target has a very limited number of books on their store shelves. The problem is that I find the plot lines generally appealing but  only have time to work one or two of them into my reading schedule. How do I choose? Any recommendations? 

(The only one of these I've already read and reviewed is The Lost Girls of Paris and I found that one somewhat disappointing.)

Smoky the Cow Horse (Scribner's Illustrated Classics Edition) - Will James

Smoky the Cow Horse (1929)

Will James intended Smokey the Cow Horse to be a book for adults, so imagine the man's pleasant surprise when the book won the 1927 Newbery Medal as the year's best addition to American literature for children.

James, whose real name was Joseph Ernest Nephtali Dufault, was born in Quebec in 1892 to French-speaking parents but he left home as a fourteen-year-old to move west and turn himself into a cowboy. By all accounts, he became a top hand who was particularly adept at turning wild horses into dependable cow horses. James, however, also had a couple of hidden talents not so common in the cowboy population: he was good at drawing animals and he could write. Those talents would not be enough to keep him from spending time in the Nevada State Prison in 1916 for cattle rustling, but the prison sentence seems to have been a wake-up call for James because it was while incarcerated that he vowed to turn his artistic talents into a profession. 

Front End Papers (not sure of the term)

James wrote and illustrated Smoky the Cow Horse, his most famous and most successful book, in 1926, and it was immediately so popular that it was reprinted ten more times between its September release and Christmas. The cowboy-author had twenty-seven of his self-illustrated books published during the Great Depression and almost all of them became bestsellers. Will James died in 1942. (1)

Smoky the Cow Horse is the only one of his books that I've read, and I still remember how intrigued I was that the story is told largely from the horse's point of view. The copy I purchased last Sunday for ten dollars is the Illustrated Classics Edition published by Scribner's in October, 1929, and all the photos attached here are from that book (explaining why they are so poorly cropped). I find it interesting that Smoky was published in the very month of the greatest Stock Market crash in American history, the crash said to have signaled the twelve-year-long Great Depression. Despite the economic hardships of the times, James enjoyed his greatest sales during the 1930s. 

Will James illustration between pages 100 and 101

Will James illustration between pages 16 and 17

Will James illustration between pages 72 and 73

(1) source: onlinenevada.org 

Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style - Benjamin Dreyer

As copy chief of Random House, Benjamin Dreyer has pretty much seen it all – over and over again. A substantial portion of Dreyer’s new writing guide, Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, even reads like a “Greatest Hits” list of the writing errors he has seen repeated most often during his two decades with the publisher. Anyone who writes, and with today’s technology all of us write all day long whether or not we realize it, will learn something from Dreyer’s English. That’s the good news; the bad news is that I can’t imagine a book more difficult to review than “An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style.” If that chore doesn’t bring all your grammatical insecurities to the forefront, nothing will.

I knew I still had a lot to learn when the book’s first chapter, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Your Prose),” began with a challenge not to use for a week what turned out to be five of my favorite words: “very,” “rather,” “really,” “quite,” and “in fact.” And my apprehension only increased when Dreyer went on to add “just,” “pretty,” “surely,” “of course,” “so,” “that said,” and “actually” to the list. Dreyer is not saying never to use these words, only that they should be used sparingly if they are to have much of an impact on the reader.

Dreyer, though, is not as strict as this may make him sound because the second chapter of Dreyer’s English is an explanation of why we should ignore some of the written (and unwritten) writing rules we grew up with. (God bless him). Among other things, Dreyer gives us his blessing to:

·     Begin a sentence with “And” or “But,”

·     Split an Infinitive,

·     End a Sentence with a Preposition (see the first sentence of this paragraph),

·     Use Contractions in Formal Writing,

·     Actively Use the Passive Voice, and

·     Use Sentence Fragments (for effect).

Benjamin Dreyer

Dreyer’s English is broken into two distinct parts, “The Stuff in the Front” and “The Stuff at the Back,” with the second part being largely a series of lists (with explanations and tips) of things such as easily misspelled words, the author’s pet peeves, words easily confused by the writer (or spell check) with other words, notes on confusing proper names, and words that should never be used in connection with other words. Part One focuses as much on grammar as it does on style but proves to be as much fun to read as it is instructive because Dreyer so often uses his keen sense of humor to make his points. This section includes my favorite part of the book, a chapter entitled “67 Assorted Things to Do (and Not to Do) with Punctuation.” Somehow, the chapter managed to clarify some of my longtime uncertainties about punctuation at the same time it was making me feel that my grammar might not be as hopeless as I had feared. (So, of course, it is my favorite part of the book.)

Bottom Line: Dreyer’s English is an excellent style and grammar guide, and it is written in such humorous fashion that it is fun to read – what may be a first in the history of books on English grammar. My one quibble with the book, and it is a big one, is the author’s insistence on so often using President Trump in disparaging or negative terms to illustrate poor grammar or his simple dislike of the man and his policies. It was kind of funny the first two or three times, but the first third of Dreyer’s English is so heavily littered with the remarks and examples that they soon become little more than an irritating distraction. Why turn a book on grammar and style into a personal political statement? Thankfully, there are far fewer of these little throwaways in the final two-thirds of the book.

Sunday Rambling: Rather Be the Devil to Smoky The Cow Horse

As I do almost every Sunday, I stopped off at Barnes & Noble this morning before spending the rest of the day with my rather elderly (97) father. I have been blowing right through my book budget in the last few weeks so I limited myself to one hardcover from the remainders table, Ian Rankin's 2016 John Rebus novel Rather Be the Devil. I'm trying to add as many Rankin hardbacks to my library as possible, so picking this one up while it's still available on the remainders tables was kind of a no-brainer. But that doesn't mean that I didn't add a bunch of new books to the list I keep of books to be requested from the library. Some interesting stuff:

• The Grammarians (Cathleen Schine) -"The Grammarians are Laurel and Daphne Wolfe, identical, inseparable redheaded twins who share an obsession with words. They speak a secret “twin” tongue of their own as toddlers; as adults making their way in 1980s Manhattan, their verbal infatuation continues, but this love, which has always bound them together, begins instead to push them apart. Daphne, copy editor and grammar columnist, devotes herself to preserving the dignity and elegance of Standard English. Laurel, who gives up teaching kindergarten to write poetry, is drawn, instead, to the polymorphous, chameleon nature of the written and spoken word."

• The Reckless Oath We Made (Bryn Greenwood) -"Zee is nobody's fairy tale princess. Almost six-foot, with a redhead's temper and a shattered hip, she has a long list of worries: never-ending bills, her beautiful, gullible sister, her five-year-old nephew, her housebound mother, and her drug-dealing boss.
  
  Zee may not be a princess, but Gentry is an actual knight, complete with sword, armor, and code of honor. Two years ago the voices he hears called him to be Zee's champion. He's barely spoken to her since, but he has kept watch, ready to come to her aid."

• After the Flood (Kassandra Montag) - "A little more than a century from now, our world has been utterly transformed. After years of slowly overtaking the continent, rising floodwaters have obliterated America’s great coastal cities and then its heartland, leaving nothing but an archipelago of mountaintop colonies surrounded by a deep expanse of open water."

• The Ventriliquists (E.R. Ramzipoor) - "Brussels, 1943. Twelve-year-old street orphan Helene survives by living as a boy and selling copies of the country’s most popular newspaper, Le Soir, now turned into Nazi propaganda. Helene’s world changes when she befriends a rogue journalist, Marc Aubrion, who draws her into a secret network that publishes dissident underground newspapers."

• The Winemaker's Wife (Kristin Harmel) - "Champagne, 1940: Inès has just married Michel, the owner of storied champagne house Maison Chauveau, when the Germans invade. As the danger mounts, Michel turns his back on his marriage to begin hiding munitions for the Résistance. Inès fears they’ll be exposed, but for Céline, half-Jewish wife of Chauveau’s chef de cave, the risk is even greater—rumors abound of Jews being shipped east to an unspeakable fate."

• The Long Call (Ann Cleeves) - "In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his estranged father’s funeral takes place. On the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community he grew up in, he lost his family too." (First book in a brand new detective series)

• The Ungrateful Refugee (Dina Nayeri) - “With inventive, powerful prose, Nayeri demonstrates what should be obvious: that refugees give up everything in their native lands only when absolutely necessary . . . A unique, deeply thought-out refugee saga perfect for our moment.” ––Kirkus Reviews (I read the first few pages of this one and found it fascinating...first one I'm going to put on my library hold list.)

But the best part of my day was still ahead of me. I found a used book in a local used-book bookstore that I remember from my childhood. Smoky The Cow Horse by Will James was already over thirty years old when I first read it, and now it is pushing ninety. It's still in beautiful shape with the exception of a little foxing and some yellowing of the book's pages. The book's Canadian author also beautifully illustrated this Illustrated Classic Edition from Charles Scribner's Sons and I can't wait to re-read it. 

Look for a separate post in the next few days that will include pictures of the actual book I bought today and not just that stock photo I used up above. Smoky The Cow Horse deserves a blog post all of its own.