Jaws

Jaws by Peter Benchley

It is absolutely impossible to read and review this book without thinking about the movie and the differences.  What many people don’t know, is that this book was a number one best-seller when it was written a year before the movie came out, and many people fell in love with it before the film was ever released.  Still, though, books don’t quite stay in the minds of most people as much as blockbuster movies, and we must remember that unlike post-1975, it was still possible to go swimming in the ocean without the thought of a shark ever entering one’s mind.

Our story takes place in a small ocean front town in the Northeast called Amity.  This is one of those beachfront towns that survive for the whole year based on how good the business is for the summer months when the rich people come to live for a few weeks.  If the summer isn’t a good one, the town struggles for the entire year with businesses shutting their doors and many going on welfare.  So when a giant killer shark rears its ugly head and kills a young woman right before the summer season starts, the powers that be in the town want to keep things quiet.  Why scare everyone away when a seemingly random incident happens to kill one person?

The chief of police in this town, Martin Brody, has other ideas. In his mind, the beaches must close, and the shark must be found and killed.  He’s pretty much alone in his opinion, yet finds out that just because he’s chief of police, that doesn’t mean he can do what he thinks is necessary.  It seems like there are too many powerful people pulling strings in this town, some backed by shady investors, and they refuse to let the town die because of a couple of freak accidents.  It’s amazing what the threat of a dying town will do to people.  Even though Brody is successful in some of his efforts to curb swimming, he’s viewed as a villain by everyone in this town.  When he does temporarily close the beaches, he puts the town one step closer to extinction.  When he can’t permanently close the beaches, however, then the family members of those killed by the shark view him as an irresponsible murderer.

Fortunately, Brody’s wife Ellen seems to stand by him.  Most of the time.  Here’s where this book falters.  You see, when Brody and Ellen got married (years before the book begins), Ellen was one of those rich summer people that Brody wooed away into marrying him.  Ellen must now live her life without the extravagance of the wealthy that she once knew.  She seems ok, until Matt Hooper comes into town.  Matt is a young, spoiled, good looking Ichthyologist that shows up to help discover how to stop the shark, and it just so happens that Ellen dated his older brother years ago.  So Ellen is suddenly driven into mid-life crisis mode, and is unintentionally smitten with Matt Hooper.  She even manages to sneak away with him for a romantic diversion.  This whole episode is sad, disturbing, and completely unnecessary.  As Steven Spielberg said when he read the book, the characters were so nasty, that he actually rooted for the shark.  I’ll bet he had Ellen and Hooper in mind when he made that statement.

Well, adversaries Brody and Hooper, along with an expensive shark killer named Quint, finally have no other alternative than to charter Quint’s boat and go after the beast.  The scenes in the movie during this final act of the play were quite brilliant.  In the book, however, the action is only so-so.  The ending of this book was about as anti-climactic and rushed as I’ve ever read, and it manages to bring the whole book down several notches.

This was still a very good, quick read.  Don’t expect it to be anywhere near as good as the movie, and don’t expect many of your favorite scenes to be here, either.  On its own, it was still a pretty good book, and quite unique in its subject matter - at least at the time.

Extraordinary Powers

Extraordinary Powers by Joseph Finder

Found this book in a box in my garage.  I have a lot of books in my garage, and I’m not really sure where a lot of them came from.  Every now and then I pick one up out of curiosity and decide to try it, even if I’m unfamiliar with the book, or the author.  I wasn’t exactly blown away by this one, and am not necessarily in any rush to read more of this author’s work, but I still thought this was a good read overall.

It’s impossible for one to read this book and not be reminded of Robert Ludlum.  If anything, this book was a bit of a “Ludlum Lite”.  That’s not to say this book is inferior to Ludlum, it just seemed to move at a more manageable pace and allow the characters to breathe.  It was also an easier book, I felt, to follow.

Ben Ellison is a successful patent lawyer, who used to be pretty good at his job as an agent in the CIA.  His father in law, in fact, is the Director of the CIA.  Or was.  As the book opens, the director has been killed in an “accident”.  Whenever you’re reading a book about the CIA and someone in power dies in an “accident”, you know something is amiss.  At the funeral, there’s another high level CIA operative there, and he tries to recruit Ben back to do some high level work for the agency.  Ben says “no thanks”, but books have also taught us that once you’re in the CIA, you really never leave.  So Ben is put into action against is will, so to speak.

What kind of action?  Not really worth describing here in that much detail.  Yes, the father-in-law’s mysterious death must be secretly investigated, and there were also a lot of weird dealings with other powerful countries by the director shorty before he died.  So Ellison manages to venture to….let’s see if I can remember…..Rome, Paris, London, Washington, and somewhere in Switzerland.  He uncovers a lot of mystery at the same time as he’s being pursued by foes - some obvious, some not so obvious.  The action is pretty par for the course with nothing too rattling, yet a good story overall.

Strangely, the title of this book is derived from an ‘extraordinary power’ that Ellison inadvertently receives before he begins his adventure.  I won’t reveal what that power is, it’s interesting, but I didn’t really thing it was that necessary.  I felt the story could have been told pretty well without Ben’s mysterious power.  Still, though, it didn’t really ruin anything in the story.

If you like espionage thrillers such as Robert Ludlum penned books, I would recommend this book.  It’s a bit dated - having been written in the early nineties shortly after the collapse of the USSR, which is what a lot of the focus is on, but it was still satisfying overall.

The Vanished Man

The Vanished Man by Jeffery Deaver

Jeffery Deaver’s books, especially the Lincoln Rhyme stories, seem to progressively get better.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed each one of them, and they all tend to follow similar patterns, but he knows how to throw enough new elements to keep things fresh.

Our psychopathic killer that Lincoln is chasing this time is a professional ex-magician.  Now, when I say “magician”, I’m not talking about the guy that you hire for your third grader’s birthday party.  No, this guy is Las Vegas worthy.  This is what drives the main suspense through this book.  If a guy can stand on a stage at the MGM Grand and make himself disappear amidst burning flames with a wave of a magic wand, just imagine how creative he can escape from a crime scene after committing a murder.  So Lincoln really has his work cut out for him this time.  The author, as usual, does a very credible job of also educating his readers about a particular topic.  We learn a lot about magic, illusionists, the work one must put into to make such things convincing, etc.  

Hint: If you’re in law enforcement and you ever need to arrest a professional magician, you’ll probably need more than just a simple pair of handcuffs.

Of course, no Lincoln Rhyme book is complete without his partner Amelia Sachs.  They work well in this book as well, or as well as they can.  You see, Lincoln Rhyme is a quadriplegic.  So he’s mostly confined to working in his exquisite crime lab overlooking Central Park while Sachs does most of the legwork.  Yes, their romantically attached, yet this book seems to skip over a lot of that, which is nice for a change.  Let’s focus, boys and girls, on the actually plot, shall we?  Lincoln seems a tad less surly here than usual, which was also a bit of a refreshing change.

If you look closely within these pages, you find a lot of things that seem to happen incredibly coincidently, and there’s lot of disbelief that must be suspended.  If you try to focus on how believable that some of these events are, you’re likely to be disappointed with the book.  In other words, to use an analogy, when your watching a magician, it’s best not to always try to figure how the guy does a certain trick that just blew your mind.  Instead, just enjoy the show.  You’ll exit the theatre being much more satisfied.

Not the End of the World

Not the End of the World by Kate Atkinson

I’ve stated this in other reviews of this author’s work, but it bears repeating - Kate Atkinson is not for everyone.  This is true especially of this book.  This is a collection of short stories.  Stories that, in many cases, seem unfinished or without purpose.  Some are truly bizarre.  You will be scratching your head quite a bit as you finish these stories.  What was that all about?  You ask yourself.  Only at the end of the book do things start to slowly, finally, make sense.

Although you quite often feel disconnected, story wise, Atkinson’s main hook is her unique way with words.  So even though you’re not really sure where she’s going in many cases, she still manages to hook you in with her humorous, offbeat, yet somewhat depressing tales.  After reading five books by this author, I’m now convinced that she’ll never tell a happy story about happy people in any sort of happy situations.  This just isn’t her style.  Her main characters are quite often miserable in whatever existence they find themselves thrown in.  Most of the father figures and leading men are twits, and very few people in these pages believe in any sort of God, so they plod on day to day with sullen faces, hoping against hope that their fortunes will somehow miraculously turn.  Alas, they seldom ever do.

A major drawback to these short stories, ironically, is the fact that they all seem to end too quickly.  Every one of these stories seemed to suggest that, had the author wanted, she could have fleshed each of these tales out into a full novel.  One wishes she had.  See, even though the characters are quite downtrodden, Atkinson has such a humorous way of dealing with these characters that you tend to literally laugh out loud as you’re reading.

The short story bit was a nice idea, but I’m glad that she elected to go back to telling full length stories after this one was released.  If you’ve never read one of this author’s works, I implore you to start out with one of her full length books first (her first two were brilliant, I haven’t made may way around to reading most of the latter stuff).  If you truly enjoy her bizarre style, there’s a good chance you’ll like this quirky diversion she presents here.

True Blue

True Blue by David Baldacci

Mr. Baldacci owes his fans an apology.  I say that not because this book is awful (which it is), but because I simply refuse to believe that he actually wrote this book.  I always get a bit suspicious when an author seems to release two or three books per year.  O.K., I suppose it is possible, but one wonders if someone else actually penned this thing, with Baldacci simply looking over their shoulder for about five minutes per week to ensure that there’s some sort of coherence.

If you've read Baldacci, you know his schtick.  His books seem to always take place in Washington D.C., and there’s some sort of murder, kidnapping, assassination, and/or terrorist attack that has taken place or will take place.  We usually uncover that, tangled up in this web, are usually some high profile types (even the President himself) that are pulling the strings behind these catastrophes.  Such is the case here as well, and it’s not the actual story that is bad, it’s the idiotic, under developed characters that we’re forced to believe have any resemblance to actual people.

Our hero here is a female cop named Mace.  Mace is one of those cops who doesn’t “follow the rules”.  She’s actually an ex-cop because, as our story begins, she’s being released from prison after serving her time for a crime that she, apparently, didn’t commit.  Fortunately for Mace, her sister is the Chief of Police in Washington D.C.  So Mace, eager to regain her reputation, sets out to prove she’s innocent and was set up.  Now, normally I don’t post spoilers when I post reviews, but this book was so bad, that I really don’t care if I break protocol:  Mace never meets her objective.  The story simply takes an abrupt turn somewhere within these pages, and we get sidetracked into another story that really doesn’t have anything to do what Mace originally set out to do.

Instead, there’s a mysterious murder that happens at a law firm, Mace tags along with her sister to the crime scene, and starts an investigation on her own since she’s no longer a cop.  So Mace teams up with one of the lawyers at the firm who knew the victim, and manages to break a library full of rules since she’s violating her parole and isn’t supposed to be conducting any kind of investigation.  Of course, her sister reprimands her with the obvious threats of “sending her back to prison” over and over, but ol’ Mace simply doesn’t care.  It seems her life is now a “prison anyway” since she can’t be a cop anymore.  Yeah.  Right.  Whatever.

So we read about Mace racing through the badlands of Washington D.C. on her Ducati (an Italian motorcycle, I think) while wearing high heals and getting herself in trouble, yet managing to weasel her way out of situations in the most unbelievable ways possible.  In one instance, she encounters a thug in a rough part of town while she’s with her lawyer friend, and manages to avoid a violent death by having her friend challenge the thug to a basketball game.  If her friend wins the game, they get to have their lives spared.

I swear I didn’t make that up.

We’re then introduced to so many ridiculous characters that have absolutely nothing to do with the story (neither the original tale, nor the one we’re detoured towards).  If they do have something to do with the story, the people are so one-dimensional, that you actually can feel your stomach turning as you’re trying to turn the pages.  We meet the prosecutor that sent Mace to prison, who doesn’t have one ounce of kindness in her.  She reminded me of Cruella De Ville from that Disney movie.  Such characters work in cartoon fantasies, but they sure as heck don’t work in any attempt at serious literature.  We could say the same about the encounter with her estranged mother.  We also read far too much about Mace’s new job as a social worker.  Nothing within these situations matters a lick in terms of where the book is supposed to be going.

Reading this book reminded me of those times when you’re fighting to stay awake late at night to finish a particularly dull movie.  You don’t really want to stay up, but you keep shaking your head because you’ve figured that you’ve made it far enough in the movie to where it becomes a challenge to just get through the stupid thing.  When you wake up exhausted the next day, you curse yourself for wasting your time on such an idiotic movie.  This was what reading the last 100 pages or so of this book felt like.  I think I managed to finish the last 100 pages in about 10 minutes, since I couldn’t make myself read every awful word on every awful page.

What’s really scary, is that Baldacci could bring back these unpleasant people in future books.  There is still too many unanswered questions about Mace and company, but it simply isn’t worth it to bring these characters back to life.  Let’s hope Baldacci retires these idiots and sticks to King and Maxwell and The Camel Club.   Please.

Never Dream of Dying

Never Dream of Dying by Raymond Benson

It is now official: Rayond Benson writes James Bond books better than Ian Fleming.  O.K., O.K., that’s just my opinion, but it’s one I hold steadfast.  This was the fifth of Benson’s six Bond novels, and the majority of them have been terrific page turners.  I use the term “page turner” quite literally.  The action moves quite fast in Benson’s novels, yet he packs them full of adventure.  

Not everyone enjoys Benson’s style, however.  If you read some reviews from readers on Amazon, you’ll note that there are, in fact, a handful of faithful that actually prefer Ian Fleming’s dedication to detail.  One fan complained something like this: 

“In a Benson book, the author simply tells you that Bond put on a sport jacket.  In Fleming’s books, he’ll also tell you the fabric and the tailor”.  

Well, I suppose that’s true, but I personally don’t give a rip what the fabric is, nor who the tailor was.  I really probably wouldn’t even retain the fact that Bond is even wearing a sport jacket once I’m a couple of paragraphs past such a revelation.  

What I do care about is the bad guys, the Bond girls, the gadgets, the obligatory meeting with M and with Q, the flirting with Moneypenny (known mostly as ‘Penny’ in the books) and of course, the action.  In all of these areas Benson consistently does a wonderful job.  I can usually finish these books in three or four sittings since the action moves so quickly and the plot so entertaining.

This book is the third (and final) installation of the “Union” trilogy.  The Union is an organization very similar to SPECTRE of the original Bond books.  Like SPECTRE, there’s a colorful villain that heads the organization, a mysteriously blind man known as Le Gerant who seems to literally have some sort of bizarre second sight.  Yes, there is sort of a plot here, but what this book really is, is James Bond tracking down the head of this agency and wanting to do away with him once and for all (it’s been three books now, after all).  We also meet some of the old support characters that only true fans will probably remember.  Rene Mathis from Casino Royale shows up (the character was also in the Daniel Craig movie that came out a few years later than this book) as well as Bond’s ex-father in law Marc-Ange Draco.  It’s instances like these that make Benson’s James Bond slightly more believable.  Bond is also much more human in these books, he never comes across as full of wit and infallibility as the cinematic Bond.

The only minor complaint that I had about this book, is that there are several characters (including Bond and the bad guy) that start having weird, mystical like dreams during the story that seem to reveal the destiny of the characters.  I was reminded of Stephen King’s The Stand when all the characters started having Mother Abigail dreams.  Such an idea works very well in a Stephen King book, but not so much in a James Bond book.  This is where we get the title of this particular book.  Still, it’s only a minor gripe.

It seems a bit of a gyp that these books were written at a time where most people didn’t really care about the Bond books anymore.  I would recommend Benson’s efforts - even to those who claim that they’re not a James Bond fan.  They might be pleasantly surprised by what he has to offer.

The Wrecker

The Wrecker by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott

At last!  A Clive Cussler book that doesn’t take place primarily on WATER!  This was my first (his second) “Isaac Bell” adventure.  So far, I’ve read three other “series” by Cussler, and all of them take place on some sort of sea worthy vessel with good guys chasing bad guys and vice versa.  

These Isaac Bell stories take place around the year 1907, and Isaac Bell is the swashbuckling hero of the Van Dorn Detective Agency.  Oh sure, he’s wealthy, smart, good looking, etc., but at least this guy has a steady girlfriend.  In fact, he’s engaged to be married and is quite the sweetheart.

This book revolves around railroads and trains.  Lots of trains.  And lots of railroads.  I’ve never read a book that featured so many different trains and different railroads.  Well, I guess these things were quite the novelty around the turn of the twentieth century, and societies quickly became dependent on this new found mode of transportation.  Those who owned railroads were very wealthy indeed.  Which is where the premise of this story is founded.

It seems as though there is a mysterious figure known only as “The Wrecker” who is running around sabotaging trains, train stations, bridges, train tunnels, etc.  He’s quite the master at what he does, and quite the evil man.  He won’t think twice about hiring goons to do his dirty work and then quickly killing them afterwards to protect his own identity.  When one railroad tycoon (who just happens to have young, beautiful daughter quite smitten with Bell) starts to slowly have his empire destroyed by this “Wrecker”, the Van Dorn detective agency is called in and Isaac Bell is thrown into action.

I really enjoyed this book on many levels.  The action was very fast paced, yet never seemed too implausible.  There’s even a James Bond-like poker game in the middle of the book that is filled with heart stopping tension.  Strangely, we actually do discover the real identity of the Wrecker about halfway through the book, yet Cussler and Scott know how to use this revelation to their advantage, and it actually adds to the story.  You don’t feel ripped off because you know whodunnit so early on.

Although this was Cussler’s second Isaac Bell novel, this was the first one where he used a co-author, which brings up the debate amongst fans as to whether or not Cussler is actually doing much, if any, of the writing at all for these adventures.  One tends to be a bit skeptical when Cussler, along with a different co-author, manages to put out three or four books per year.  It seems he’s writing them faster than his fans can read them.  I guess this really shouldn’t matter as long as the book is good, and this one is very good.  I almost wish I would have started at the “beginning” and read the first Isaac Bell book before this one, but like many, I can’t keep straight all of the different series and different books.  It will be my next one….

The Worst Team That Money Could Buy

The Worst Team Money Could Buy by Bob Klapisch and John Harper

I was a huge New York Met fan back in the 1980s.  This was the era when if you loved baseball, you either loved or hated this team.  Since I started cheering for them back in 1984, two years before most outside the tri-state area knew much about them, I feel I was justified as not being one that “jumped on the bandwagon” as many did when they won it all in 1986, when it seemed as though a dynasty had been born.

Well, unfortunately for the Metropolitans, history had other ideas.  Although the Mets had some strong years following the ’86 triumph, they never captured their original magic of that one season.  By the time the early 1990s arrived, the team was embarrassingly awful.  That’s not to suggest that the owners didn’t try to revamp the team.  The executives figured that since their coffers were larger than most, they could simply go out and “buy” a team of superstars to wear the blue and orange and bring back the magic, which is exactly what they did before the 1992 season began.  The Mets of 1992 may have been the best team in baseball on paper.  The problem was, on the baseball diamond, they stunk.

This book mainly chronicles the 1992 season, yet slowly sutures the teams fall from their championship season six short years ago.  The authors, Bob Klapisch and John Harper were actually beat writers from two of the major New York papers, so no one really had better access to the goings ons both on and off the field.  

Oh, the drama!  There are rape investigations, drugs, press boycotts, sex, drugs, team mates fighting during team pictures, assault charges, and more drugs.  Add a lot of injuries to some star players, along with a bunch of guys who simply don’t have the chemistry, and you have one miserable season.

Klapisch and Harper detail a lot of events from the prior years leading up to the downfall, and many players that were long gone from the team by 1992, such as Darryl Strawberry and Gregg Jeffries, get as much page space as the current lineup.  The authors state in the Forward that this book was a way to get revenge against a bunch of spoiled cry babies, but what this book really is, is a lesson in mismanagement.  Sure, everything gelled in 1986, but whenever you have high priced ball players with a knack for trouble and hyperactive libidos, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that it won’t take long before the kingdom comes crashing down, which is precisely what happens.  

Their “renegade” manager that takes them to the 86 championship, Davey Johnson, is hailed as a hero that year because he “treats his players like men” and doesn’t enforce many rules on the club.  Trouble is, treating your players like men won’t work when they act like spoiled brats.  A few years later, Johnson can’t handle this out-of-control bunch, and is eventually fired.  By the time 1992 arrives, the new skipper, Jeff Torborg arrives, and he has the opposite problem of being too controlling, so the team is basically in trouble.

There’s a lot of dirt within these pages, and it’s actually quite funny to see how the spoiled mighty fall.  It should be noted, however, that one really has to read this book with a large grain of salt.  The authors, remember, were beat writers, and in New York City, these guys could be brutal between the lines when reporting.  Unlike most cities, New York had seven major newspapers at the time, so in order to make your publication sell over your competitors, you had to seriously juice up your headlines and stories.  It’s no surprise that there is so much animosity between the authors and the players they cover.  Sure, the authors admit this, but they present themselves as a bit too innocent.  

Example: We read about the authors’ perception that the Mike Sciocia home run of Doc Gooden in the 1988 Championship series was the “turning point” against the Mets that caused their downfall during the playoffs, yet what really killed them was when Bob Klapisch co-authored a newspaper article with Mets pitcher David Cone after game one of the NLCS where Cone belittled the Dodgers and compared them to a “high school team”.  Once the Dodgers got wind of this newspaper story, their tempers were flared, and they turned the heat up about 1000 degrees and basically killed the Mets chances from that point forward.  Was Klapisch obliged not to print the story?  Absolutely not.  But David Cone comes across as one of the “heroes” of this book, when it actually was an act of pure stupidity for him to do such a thing.  You won’t read much about that incident here since one of the authors played such a large role in this boner.

What you will read (that is also incorrect) is how the Mets made the biggest mistake of the decade by not resigning Darryl Strawberry after the 1989 season.  The authors seem to think that, despite the troubled right-fielder’s problems (which you would need a mainframe computer to keep track of), his arrogance and dominance on the field were sadly missing during 1992.  Anyone that follows the game knows how wrong this was in hindsight, as Strawberry continued to spiral downwards even after he left the Mets.

Then we hear about all of those awful trades that the Mets made after the 1986 season that dismantled the championship caliber that made these guys clique so well.  I’m sorry, but I never bought into that.  Kevin McReynolds was just as good as Kevin Mitchell, Ray Knight wasn’t getting any younger, and even the “fiasco” of trading Len Dykstra and Roger McDowell for Juan Samuel deserves closer examination.   Fact: The 1989 Mets played better after this trade was made in midseason (check out their Won-Loss record for that season, before and after the trade).

So the authors are highly skilled in writing, as this book shows, yet a tad biased.  It’s also a remarkable study on what happens when you give a bunch of guys in their mid twenties more money, more women, and more “potentials” that most can handle.  It’s a true test of character to run a successful franchise with personalities such as this, and sadly, the New York Mets of the late eighties-early nineties blew it in a bad way.