The Absent One, Adler-Olson - C

                                         This is a disappointing follow-up to last month's debut novel.  It's flat, lacking in wit, and not much fun.  The plot is about a boarding school coven of vicious youths, who wreaked mayhem and murder around Copenhagen.  Twenty years later, Dept. Q unearths their deeds and brings them to justice.

Ghostman, Hobbs - B

This is a debut novel by a young writer, and one getting a lot of attention.   The novel is simultaneously being published in fourteen languages.  I guess the genre might be modern mayhem.  A Ghostman is someone who disappears, lives off the grid, can help others disappear, and, in this instance, is a tech wizard very good with his hands and a gun.  The Ghost owes a favor to a man who sets up crimes, a jugmarker.  He cleans up a bad heist in Atlantic City, frames the jugmarker's arch-antagonist, befriends a female FBI agent and motors away in a boat he bought with his pay for the deal.  I suspect we'll see him again.

Citizens of London, Olson - B

                                         Thanks to Wendell Erwin for recommending this fine book.  The sub-title is 'The Americans Who Stood With Britain In Its Darkest, Finest Hour'.   It's focus is the Alliance, with special attention to three men who stood by Britain in 1941: Averill Harriman, Edward R. Murrow and John Gilbert Winant.  These very different men were ardent Anglophiles who were in London in 1941 and did all they could to help the British carry on in the extremely trying times between Dunkirk and Pearl Harbor.   While the British suffered through the Blitz, they called for the US to come to the aid of the UK.
                                         Murrow is probably the most famous of the trio.  I believe the only phrase in broadcast journalism  more famous than "This is London" would be Cronkite's sign off a generation later in a much larger medium.   Murrow led the CBS team that "rounded up" the news on radio broadcasts back to the States.  He used BBC facilities in London to tell America about the Nazi slow-motion take over of Europe and to paint a picture of London and Londoners besieged by the Blitz. He was the most famous American in Britain, and as such, was romanced by Churchill, who invited him to Chequers regularly.  He agreed with the British who were appalled by America's failure to join them in the fight against the Nazis. He was back in the States on a speaking tour on behalf of the UK when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
                                        Harriman was in England for about half a year and was with Churchill the night they found out about the Japanese attack.  Churchill knew that once America was in,  victory was inevitable.   Harriman had been sent to London by FDR with an open-ended brief to initiate and supervise Lend-Lease.  He spent most of his time interfering with the activities of the US Embassy and starting his affair with Pamela Churchill, the PM's daughter-in-law.
                                       The hero of this book is Gil Winant, the man who succeeded the despised Joe Kennedy as Ambassador to the Court of St. James.  The former Republican governor of New Hampshire was so important to the British that he did not have to present his credentials to the King. George VI actually came to the train station to meet Winant.  The quiet hard-working Winant was completely beloved by the British.  In addition to handling all the duties of his office, he wandered the streets of London talking to the men and women surviving the Blitz.  They regarded him so highly that in 1943 when the coal miners started an illegal strike, he intervened on behalf of His Majesty's government and convinced the men to go back to work.  He and Eisenhower worked hand in hand keeping the peace among the Allies, whose endless personality conflicts threatened their efforts to win the war.  When FDR died, he was planning to appoint him as the UN's first Secretary General.  In 1946, with the war over and his five year affair with Churchill's oldest daughter Sarah falling apart, he returned to the US.  He was so esteemed that he was the only speaker at the Joint Session of Congress honoring FDR.  Nonetheless, he soon committed suicide and has been pretty much forgotten.
                                       Murrow too came back to the States and fame on CBS in the '50's.  He never was comfortable in all of New York's post-war splendor and excess. He had a falling out with Bill Paley and worked for the  U. S. Information Agency in the Kennedy administration.  Harriman, who had hoped to shed his playboy businessman reputation, was the most successful of the three.  Ambassador to the USSR and Great Britain, Governor of New York and one of the 'Wise Men' during a very long career and life, he married Pamela when he was 80.

The Wizard of Lies, Henriques - B

                                          Thanks to Marcella for recommending this fascinating book.   It tells the story of Bernie Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme, how he pulled it off, the devastating consequences for him, his family and investors and tries to come to some conclusions about it.
                                          Madoff was very bright and, almost to the end, ran a concurrent successful brokerage business from the same set of offices he ran the Ponzi scheme.  He was a pioneer of consolidating and computerizing the NASDAQ. He was respected on Wall Street and should have been able to be content with his success. He got sloppy with the money he "ran" and lapsed into deceit and fraud  to cover the losses.  The attractiveness of his fabricated returns appealed to  investors, large and small, American and foreign, sophisticated and un.  No one ever checked very hard or due-diligenced anything.  They simply trusted Bernie.  The SEC failed  when it followed up on a number of tips and didn't uncover the scheme when they clearly could have by asking a few simple questions.  Then again, this was the era when the markets were suppose to be self-regulating, when the SEC's budget was being cut, it's staff run off, and it's Commissioner who didn't believe in government.  Things finally fell apart for Madoff in the 2008 market turmoil.
                                        The one hero of this story is Irving Picard, the lawyer and bankruptcy trustee, who tried to unearth what had been done and collect back as much money as he could.  He took the position (a logical one upheld by the Courts) that in a Ponzi scheme, where no stocks or investments were actually purchased, that the measure is cash in/cash out, not the fabricated profits on phony account statements. It's amazing how many argued the other way, litigated it, and begged for relief from the government.  Although the matters are in litigation and will be for years, it appears as if Picard will get people a lot more of their money back than anyone expected.
                                        I do not agree with the author's conclusion that the government should protect people from their inability to make investment decisions. She says people are too gullible and put their money in places based on trust.  Even if you regulate hedge funds, crack down on derivatives and properly fund the regulatory bodies, you can't eliminate greed, naivete or change human nature.

The Twelve, Cronin - C

As I struggled through this book, I kept wondering if it was just another middle book of a trilogy that didn't advance the story, or if I had been badly mistaken last month.  As the book came to what I hoped was a long- delayed but hopefully gangbuster finale, I checked the Times review of last fall. The well-respected Janet Maslin referred to it as "strictly a gap filler" before she said that the author "loves, blurry indecisive states of confusion".  "The Twelve is pure Soggy Middle, the Book that never Gets Anywhere with the Story of the Girl From Nowhere,  a Half-Dead Tale of the Undead".  Wow.  Thus, the finale, which apparently turned Amy into a full blown viral, yet apparently killed off all the "bad" virals and left me wondering who was going to be fighting whom in the third book, shouldn't have surprised me at all. The story clearly wasn't advanced. Indeed, I have no idea where we are. I'm just happy it will likely be a year or two before I feel compelled to tackle the finale.

1356, Cornwell - B

                                          I have probably read thirty of Bernard Cornwell's historical adventure novels.  I believe much can be learned (while having a light, enjoyable time) about Wellington's campaign in Spain by reading the  Richard Sharpe books.  This novel is the fourth in the Grail Quest series featuring Sir Thomas Hookton.    
                                          The book is centered around the Battle of Poiters in 1356, where an outnumbered English army, led by Edward, the Black Prince, prevailed over a larger French army.  The English captured the French King, Jean, and the Dauphin. ( Compelling your enemy to pay ransom was a key strategy in the 100 Years War.)  Cornwell has already treated Crecy, an English victory that preceded this one, and Agincourt, which came later.
                                         The English success in all three is credited by Cornwell to the ability of the English archers to consistently stop the French. The English longbow was as tall as a man, made of yew and other woods that only the English could build into a bow, and was shot by very strong men.  The countryside supported their men by making arrows with different types of tips and exclusively using goose feathers to insure an accurate flight.  Deadly up to 200 paces ( I assume about 150 yards), they were the breakthrough technology of their day.

The Iron Curtain, Applebaum - B

                                         For as long as I can remember, I've been appalled by the sheer illogic and utter stupidity of communism.  And, the Soviet's barbaric treatment of their own and foreign peoples rivals the worst in the world's history. Thus, a few years ago, I vowed to never read a history book about or a novel set in the bestial, vulgar world of Josef Stalin.  But, it'd hard to read about the 20th century without coming back to the Bolshies.  Anne Applebaum won a Pulitzer for her book on the Gulag, thus making this required reading for me.
                                         The sub-title of this book is "The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1945 - 1954" and it opens with one of the most famous quotes of the century; "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent"- Sir Winston Churchill.  "False Dawn" is the first half of the book and covers the years up to 1948, when Stalin kind of tried to not show his hand.  He mouthed compliance with the Yalta Agreements about "free and unfettered elections".  But the fact remained that the Red Army was on the ground in Poland, E. Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and Yugoslavia.  The Soviets took over all police and security powers immediately.  Death, deportation, or imprisonment followed for anyone who showed fascist tendencies,  To be educated,wealthy, intelligent, a nationalist, or opposed to communism was to be "fascist".  All civic organizations eventually fell under a communist umbrella.  Radio stations and the press were compromised. Land was disbursed, trade was prohibited, and industry nationalized.  The  communists believed that after the wartime failure of the capitalist states, they would prevail in elections.  Rudely awakened in elections everywhere, falsification and brutality overtook the democratic process.
                                       Part Two is called "High Stalinism" and it portrays the institutionalization of the Soviet system in "all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe".  Politically, there was no longer any opposition. Opponents were either gone, in jail, or dead. The Czechs went to Paris to sign up for the Marshall Plan. Stalin called and told them to leave immediately.   Knowing the people disliked them, the communists pushed harder, dismantled the churches pretty much everywhere except Poland, conducted show trials modelled on Stalin's in the late '30's and controlled all aspects of life.  Particular emphasis was placed on indoctrinating the young.  The people pushed back and rioted in Berlin and revolted in Budapest.  The Red Army and its tanks crushed these last post-war attempts to throw off the yoke of Soviet communism.
                                     The Czechs failed in 1968 and the Poles in 1981.  But we knew  that with the creation of the Solidarity movement in Poland, something very dramatic had taken place. The workers had had enough of the workers' paradise.  Thankfully, it all ended in Europe in 1989.