Mr. Mercedes

Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

Stephen King has written so many books in the last 40 years - many of them classics - that it can be easy to forget just how gifted the man is when telling a story.  Any time you read something by him that is merely “good”, it’s very easy to get a bit disgruntled since he’s put out so many great works, and comparisons are inevitable.  Mr. Mercedes is one of those “good” books that really  just isn’t that great.  It tells a very linear, realistic story - no ghosts, no goblins, nothing of the supernatural.  It’s just a very basic story with basic (although somewhat disturbing) people.  It’s not one that fans will be able to recall in detail, say 25 years after they’ve read it.

Bill Hodges is a retired police officer who isn’t adjusting well to the retired life.  A divorced man who lives alone, Hodges spends most of his day watching idiotic day time television programs because, well, what else is there to do?  He’s also in possession of a revolver that he finds himself flirting with the idea of putting the barrel in his mouth.  One of his biggest regrets is that, when he was active, he and his partner never found the “Mercedes” killer.  Some years back, some deranged lunatic stole a Mercedes and plowed it into a group of people in line at a job fair.  Several were killed and wounded.

We then meet “Mr. Mercedes”, real name Brady Hartsfield.  He’s, what appears to be, an average run of the mill guy working two menial jobs.  He lives with his alcoholic mother and the two share a bit of a bizarre incestuous relationship.  Yep, it’s really no surprise that this guy is somewhat off his rocker.  It seems as though Brady knows his crime is haunting the old, retired police guy, and he can’t resist tormenting him through letters and online chatrooms.  Plus, Brady isn’t done terrorizing the community, and already has his next attack planned.  Since he can’t resist taunting Bill, it seems as though clues are beginning to surface, and the cat and mouse game begins.

So there you have it.  This is a very predictable story.  95% of the book is told through the eyes of Bill or Brady, and King does his due diligence in ensuring the reader knows the thoughts, the struggles, and the motivations of his two main characters.  Again, this is a strength of Stephen King.

What doesn’t work so well, and this has been the Achilles Heel for Stephen King with many of his books, is when we read two characters having a simple conversation.  Bill Hodges interacts with a few different “good guys” during his mission, and the dialog presented here is somewhat silly and unbelievable.  Fortunately, King took the time to wash his literary mouth out with soap before he started writing this novel, so it isn’t chocked full with unnecessary crude language.  Even though there are definitely some stomach churning moments within these pages, it’s pretty low key for Stephen King, and readers like myself can rejoice in this small victory.

As Bill and his “team” work to uncover the identity of the Mercedes killer and try to put a stop to his next caper, it, again, gets a bit silly.  The characters seem to be highly unbelievable, and their interactions with each other seem very forced.  Again, tho story was just too predictable.

I refuse to judge this book against many of the King classics in the canon.  Even though it was ho-hum compared to most of his work, it was still an overall good story.  As I write this, however, I’m hearing that King is about to resurrect this team of do-gooders for yet another novel, and I have to confess that I’m not exactly waiting with baited breath.  One story with these characters is enough.  Who knows, though, maybe King will surprise me on the second go round.  It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

The Sixth Man

The Sixth Man - by David Baldacci

David Baldacci started off being one of my favorite authors.  Then, I read a few books by him that were sort of so-so, and a couple that I thought were flat out awful.  So this guy is definitely “hit or miss” for me these days.  Fortunately, this book was a hit.  A big hit.  Quite possibly my favorite Baldacci book I’ve read so far (I’m reading them all, more or less, in sequential order.)

This is a “King and Maxwell” book.  Sean King and Michelle Maxwell are a team of private investigators.  They’re both former Secret Service agents who “slipped”, so to speak, in the line of duty at different times years ago.  Their similar pasts allow them the bond to work well as a (mostly) platonic team.  This book finds them traveling to the state of Maine to meet an attorney who is currently defending an alleged murderer.  They find their attorney (a friend of King’s), but unfortunately, they find him dead, so it’s time to begin an investigation.  For reasons unknown at the time, they’re getting a lot of obstruction from the FBI.  Why?  Who exactly is this murderer, and why did the attorney friend want to meet with them?

We then meet the alleged killer who is currently serving time in a maximum security federal facility.  He’s a bit of an odd man who refuses to even communicate or acknowledge King and Maxwell when they meet.  Well, we then discover some secrets about this guy, named Edgar Roy.  It seems Roy used to work for the Federal Government.  He’s one of individuals who has an abnormal gift of a photographic memory.  It’s such an intense gift that the government employs him to stare at a huge wall of television monitors all day long that are broadcasting clandestine satellite broadcasts of terrorist organizations (what seems) non stop.  Edgar is so proficient, that he’s able to assimilate, digest, and decipher all of this information as soon as it’s pouring through his brain.  You would think the government would want to protect such an individual.  Even if he did commit the horrendous crime that he’s being accused, you wouldn’t be surprised if the government looked the other way, so to speak.

So there are a lot of unanswered questions, and King and Maxwell really have their work cut out for them.  Fortunately, Baldacci paces this book very well.  We meet just the right amount of characters, have just the right amount of sub plots going on, and have just the right amount of suspense throughout the story.  Baldacci usually breaks down his books into very short chapters.  They rarely last no more than five or six pages.  This is good since you never feel overwhelmed and always have a nice stopping place right around the corner.  He also somehow manages to make most of these endings to the chapters a bit of a cliffhanger.  So even though you CAN stop, you rarely want to put the book down.

One minor drawback to some of the other King and Maxwell books is that the author dives a bit too much into their psyche and backgrounds.  Baldacci has been known to stray from his main story so we can learn about some weird skeletons that these two have lurking in their closets.  There’s none of that here.  In fact, there’s rarely anything that happens that doesn’t pertain to the actual story (without giving away any spoilers, the LAST King and Maxwell book had quite a rememberable ending, and it could have really taken this story on a detour.  Fortunately, it doesn’t).  I highly recommend this one.

The Johnstown Flood

The Johnstown Flood - by David McCullough

I’ve read two biographies by David McCullough that I enjoyed immensely.  I’ve read one book by David McCullough about an “event” (the building of the Panama Canal) that was o.k., but was weighted down by too much fact and detail.  Fortunately, this book succeeds in areas where the Panama Canal book was a bit lacking.  The main asset that this book has is that it’s fairly short.  It’s only 304 pages long - very short by David McCullough standards.  He could have easily extended this book to twice its size, but he restrains himself.  Or so it seems.  That’s a good thing in this instance.

The Johnstown Flood is one of those true stories of history where it takes a tragedy to occur before the masses truly respect nature and mankind’s limits.  In short, a man made lake is built on a highly elevated area - mainly as a recreational spot for the very rich.  Down in the valley, there are several small communities, including Johnstown, that are home to a few thousand people.  Everyone believes these communities are safe, of course.  After all, the mammoth lake does have a man made dam that will hold together.  In the 50 years or so during the lake’s existence, there are those who warn of impending doom, and that the darn thing simply isn’t strong enough, but nobody seems to want to listen.

This book is very nicely divided into sections that manage to tell a very good story about an event that happens, basically, in a matter of minutes.  First, we read about the town before the tragedy, the surrounding communities, and many of the people that inhabit this quiet community.  We then shift gears and read about the wealthy patrons that develop a recreational private resort - the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club.  A dam is constructed around the nearby Lake Conemaugh, and paradise is recreated for the privileged few.

Then one night it rains. And rains.  And pours.  The questionable structured dam gives way, and the communities down in the valley are flooded in a matter of minutes.  The book actually does a very good job recreating this brief, yet horrific incident.  You have to wonder how reliable many of the accounts are, but regardless, the author tells a good recap.

Then, for me, the best part of the book is the aftermath.  Being that this is the nineteenth century, word of the disaster travels slower than what modern man is used to, but at the time, this was the tragedy of all time, and the good Samaritans come from all corners, donating money, supplies, adoption, and anything else possible.  It really warms the heart to read of such philanthropy.  Of course, there’s also many factions of the yellow press that arrive, and in eagerness to sell papers, there are many exaggerated, preposterous stories that circulate after the event. Much of these stories describe the incident as much worse than what actually happened (even though the tragedy was devastating in and of itself).

So a very well balanced book.  Heartbreaking?  Sure.  As I’ve said, though, it’s a sad aspect of human nature that people don’t learn harsh lessons until after such events happen.  It’s always incredibly encouraging, however, to read about people rising to the occasion and helping their fellow neighbor, and a book like this really does give one faith in humanity.

Corsair

Corsair by Clive Cussler and Jack DuBrul

I really, really wanted to like this book.  So far, Clive Cussler has only managed to disappoint me with his “Oregon Files” series, which this one falls under.  He “co-authored” one of these that I’ve read with DuBrul, and the other with a guy named Craig Dirgo.  I put “co-authored” in parenthesis because a large part of me believes that Cussler had very little to do with any of these books.  I think the Cussler name is stuck on to generate more book sales.  Probably an accountant’s move.  Well, it works in terms of sales, but not in terms of quality.  At least not for this reviewer.

The actual setting for this story isn’t too bad.  We start off with a prologue to the story, in true Cussler fashion, of a time centuries ago.  I believe the late 1700s.  I won’t go into details, but if you’ve read anything by Cussler, you know the drill.  Then, we flash forward to present day Libya. Archeologists are searching for some artifacts described in the prologue, while at the same time, the U.S. Secretary of State is traveling to Libya for some sort of peace conference.  Sadly, her plane crashes killing her and everyone on board.  Or so it seems.

Enter Juan Cabrillo, captain of the Oregon ship.  His team of mercenaries get involved in both of these situations, that somehow get tied together between the pages of the story.  There’s a lot of clandestine modern day terrorists that the Oregon crew must unveil and expose. Of course, all of this must be done under the radar because of who they are.

All of this has the makings of a great story.  The main problem here is that the author (who I really think is DuBrul, not Cussler) really can’t seem  to make it very interesting.  There’s a lot of action in this book, but very little adventure.  It’s very easy to simply skim through the multitude of chapters that describe a particular battle between the good guys and the bad guys and not feel that you’re missing anything.  It takes the author about three chapters to describe one, drawn out action sequence.  Although the descriptions are good and well written, there really isn’t anything at all that would make one remember the heroics or imagination of a Dirk Pitt, a Kurt Austin, or an Isaac Bell.  Sometimes you wish the author would take the 50 pages that he devotes to each action scene in the book and replace it with two or three sentences.  He could simply say: “The good guys and the bad guys got into a fight at the prison camp.  The good guys won”.  This would hold my interest a lot better then the endless descriptions of guns, jeeps, bizarre combat vehicles, and boxcars that tend to fly off cliffs into the sea.  I just never cared.

Juan Cabrillo and his crew (there’s about 10 or 12 “regulars” on the Oregon) really don’t add anything to the story either.  Yes, they all have unique jobs and personalities, but they’re all really too mundane to provide you with any real interest.  This book reads like a low budget action film that has lots of explosions etc., but very little story.  One wishes that Cussler would get a bit more involved in the Oregon Files books, and tweak these stories a bit.  They really do have some potential.

One Good Turn

One Good Turn - by Kate Atkinson

Here’s essentially how it happens: It’s a busy traffic day somewhere in Scotland due to some sort of festival.  In the bumper to bumper traffic, one car hits another.  The two drivers get out, and they’re angry.  One has a baseball bat and he’s about to attack.  A “Good Samaritan” happens to walk by on the street and sees what is about to go down.  Instinctively, he throws a satchel containing his laptop computer and the would be assailant.  He doesn't really hurt the guy, but he delays the attack just long enough for the police to arrive and arrest the bat wielding thug.  

That’s really about it.

For the few people that are involved in this incident, including a couple of bystanders, author Kate Atkinson dives into these people’s lives before, during, and after this event.  Why are we reading about all of this?  After all, these people just happen to be at a certain place at an exact time, yet Kate Atkinson starts telling us their life stories.  A bit strange, you might say, but this really isn’t that much out of the ordinary for Atkinson.  She has the ability to go on and on about not much of anything, but still keep the reader entertained.  As our story (which only takes place over about two days) unwinds, we find that in some bizarre way, all of these characters are somehow connected with each other, and we see many paths cross amongst these random individuals.  One of them being Jackson Brodie, who’s one of Kate Atkinson’s regulars.  Jackson is a private detective (retired, actually in this book), yet don’t ever think for one minute that these books resemble any sort of crime solving mysteries and whatnot.  Yes, there are bizarre events that bear scrutiny in this story, but Jackson is really just another character within the pages with life happening all around him.

Of all of Kate Atkinson’s books that I’ve read, this one was the least depressing.  She has a subconscious trait of telling stories that center around hard luck characters that seem to be dealt many of life’s unfair blows.  It seems like every character in all of her books is either in a rotten marriage, a rotten relationship or has a rotten family.  Sometimes all three.  That’s not really to say this book is all sunshine and roses. It’s just that the overall doom and gloom isn’t quite as prevalent here as in her other books.  It’s also nice that, since this story only takes place over a few days, there aren’t that many different people within the pages for the reader to have to keep track.  Sometimes you need a mainframe computer to keep up with all the people in an Atkinson book, yet there’s only a dozen or so main players to keep score of throughout this particular story.

Still, Atkinson’s books are an acquired taste.  Not a lot ever really happens in the “action” department. Her strength is mainly character revelation and development, and she always  dives deep into the soul of many of the main players.  She has a way of hooking you into these individuals’ lives, making you want to cry for their pitiful circumstances, yet howl in laughter at the author’s off the wall observations.

Most of what this author writes is well appreciated by me, and I felt that this was probably one of her strongest overall.  

It was nice to see a “good turn” set the stage for a story in Atkinson’s repertoire.

The Twelfth Card

The Twelfth Card - by Jeffery Deaver

Another Lincoln Rhyme book.  A good one.  Very good.  Great?  Mmmmmmm….don’t know if I would say that.  Maybe it depends on how many of these books you’ve read before.  Jeffery Deaver’s favorite recurring character, Lincoln Rhyme, is a quadriplegic criminalist. A former detective who was darn good at what he did, managed to suffer a major injury on the job several years ago, and he’s now basically restricted to solving crimes in his lab in New York City overlooking Central Park.  Fortunately, his brain his so good at solving unsolvable crimes, that he really doesn’t need the rest of his body.

Geneva Settle is a poor, yet very smart, high school student living in West Harlem.  On a personal level, this poor young girl has almost nothing going for her.  When she’s spending a Saturday in an African-American museum researching one of her ancestors - a hero of the American Civl War, she barely escapes being murdered as she’s sitting at a microfiche machine.  So the questions arrive at Lincoln and his team of regulars.  Who?  Why?  What clues are available?  And so the hunt is on.

Here’s where things do get a bit monotonous for one who has read these Lincoln Rhyme stories before.  It must be said that Deaver does do a good enough job mixing things up a bit - his villain is very well developed character wise, and is a bit of fresh air from some of the usual psychopaths that Deaver uses that seem to be obsessed with insects, bones or some other weird fetish.  Many other aspects of this book, however, seem somewhat repetitive, or not quite believable.  We know for example, that when the good guys are closing in on the perpetrator’s hideout fairly early in the story, that the villain has some sort of devious mechanism in place that will allow him some sort of miraculous escape.  We’ve simply seen such things happen many times before to be fooled again.

Then, for once, the obligatory Jeffery Deaver plot twists don’t really seem to work as well here.  There are a couple of abrupt 90 degree turns in the story that fans now expect, yet the author was obviously very dry with good ideas this time for most of the story.  You know nothing is as it seems when things seem to be nicely wrapped up yet you still have about 100 pages of story left to read.  Deaver seems as though he’s trying a bit too hard to make things work and, for once, probably shouldn’t have tried so hard to fool his readers and just focus on a linear plot.

Then, the character of Geneva is a bit of a stereotypical stretch.  You would think a young high school girl who is being chased by a murderer would be scared out of her wits, yet nothing seems to faze her.  “I can’t stay hidden - I have to go to school to take a test!”  We hear this quite often.  Talk about dedication.  The dialect between her and her Harlem friends seems awfully forced in the Ebonics area as well.  The author is trying very hard to be hip and/or accurate, but it just comes across as embarrassing.

Still, though, to compare this book to the rest of his works almost seems a bit unfair.  I still enjoyed the story overall, and although there seemed to be a lot of unnecessary diversions, I felt that the story was overall positive.  It seems as though Deaver devotes about half of his literary library to Lincoln Rhyme, and when he writes about something else, he always does a great job as well.  Reading this book almost makes me wish that he’d retire from Lincoln Rhyme for a bit, but it could be just a minor setback.

Even though I really did like the book, I’d recommend any of the other prior Lincoln Rhyme stories before this one. It’s not really necessary that you read them in order, but there a few instances in the books where certain things are revealed that move the overall saga along.

John Quincy Adams - American Visionary

John Quincy Adams - American Visionary by Fred Kaplan

John Quincy Adams is one of those earlier presidents that most people know very little about.  In fact, had it not been for the fact that his father was also president (something not repeated until the George Bushes), I seriously doubt that most would even recognize the name.  Fortunately, the Steven Spielberg movie Amistad gave many a good look at what was probably the man’s most memorable achievement - serving as defense attorney for the mutineers of the infamous slave ship (Adams was played wonderfully by Sir Anthony Hopkins, I might add).

That event happened after Adams was president, and I probably should immediately point out that this book really isn’t a book about the sixth President, but rather about the man himself.    In fact, this man had a rather unmemorable term as president.  I’m not sure I could even tell you exactly what he accomplished during the four years he was in office.  Strangely, I didn’t really care that much.  I’ve read presidential biographies where the author gets so bogged down with the intricacies of the presidential goings on, that it becomes a chore to get through all the every day events affecting the country that never really seem that interesting.   This man, probably because of his upbringing, actually served his young country throughout his whole life, and we read about it all.

Of course, we must always remember when reading a biography, or any book for that matter, that takes place over 150 years ago, that we really don’t have much information to rely on - at least compared to modern times, and much of this information can almost be dismissed as somewhat speculative.  Fortunately, since these individuals didn’t have telephones, internet, nor cable t.v., there really wasn’t that much to do, so learned men like Adams spent much of their time writing - recording events in diaries and penning long letters, so we do, at least, have reliable sources to some extent.

We first read that Adams was a world traveller.  Even as a young man, he accompanied his father to England and France on diplomatic assignments.  Now, we must remember that traveling to another continent was never an easy task.  It would often take six weeks to make the journey across the Atlantic, and there were only certain times of the year when such a journey was considered safe.  In fact, as an adult, Adams and his wife actually take such a journey later in life, and they leave their two oldest sons (who were still fairly young boys) back home with relatives.  I can only imagine the horror of only being able to communicate via pen and paper with your children.  Because of the various assignments of Adams during this time abroad, he and his wife are separated from his children for over eight years.  Unbelievable.

But Adams is devout citizen.  He does whatever his country asks him, considering it his patriotic duty.  Even when he runs for President, you get the feeling that he really doesn’t want the job, but if the people want him in office, who is he to argue?  Without going into details, he actually isn’t the people’s first choice, but the way the electoral college works, he gets the job anyway.  For his entire four years in office, the political pundits that oppose him expose this fact anyway they can.  Adams really doesn’t care.  He simply isn’t a political creature.  It seems quite refreshing to read about such a character when all we hear about today is the constant political bickering and backstabbing between the parties.  It should be pointed out that even though Adams isn’t necessarily a political player, we find out that he’s definitely an anomaly.  That fact is somewhat scary.  Anyone who things our present two party system is some sort of recent cancer, really should study history.

So we actually read very little of the political events during Adams tenure leading up to, and during, his presidency.  Things such as the XYZ affair are barely mentioned, and the Monroe Doctrine (which really was Adams’ baby when he was Secretary of State) doesn’t seem to take up as many pages as I would have thought.  The one area that does, rightly, get plenty of attention, is Adams’ view on slavery.  He truly was the first abolitionist president that the country ever had.  Slavery was a very hot issue throughout his whole lifetime, and he rightly predicted that only war would solve the problem one day (he died many years before the American Civil War).  It’s quite refreshing to read about such an educated, somewhat wealthy early figurehead be so passionate and argue so eloquently about the evils of such an institution.  Especially since the issue of slavery seems to be the major factor that tilts the country politically during this time.  In fact, this book heavily demonizes the extremely popular Andrew Jackson, who seems to be the biggest nemesis of Adams (he would succeed him as the seventh U.S. President).

Another fascinating thing about Adams is that after his presidency is inadequately over, he is then elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (I’m not sure if that has ever happened again to any President after he left the office).  He essentially serves in this capacity until his death, doing everything he can to serve his country with everything he has.  It’s during this stage of his life where he defends the would-be slaves of the Amistad after they revolt and kill the ship’s crew.  Again, this was another area that I wish could have been covered in more detail.