The Fire Court, Taylor - B

                                  In this second novel in the series, we are a few months past the fire  and London is rebuilding. Most of the detritus is gone and the Fire Court is the center of everyone's attention. The court was established by the King to sort through the conflicting claims of all those with any interest in the city's real estate. The lot lines are uncertain, and the rights of the freehold are in conflict with those of the tenants. There is no insurance and no real law on the topic. The court's purpose is to encourage and find for those who can build the fastest. Against this background, Marwood and Lovett look into the murder of a widow with a valuable lease. This series is a fun absorption in a far away place and time.

Ashes of London, Taylor - B+

                                  This is an absolutely fascinating novel set in London in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1666. It is chock full of historical details about the beheading of Charles I, the Commonwealth, the Restoration, the reign of Charles II, and tosses in a very good murder/intrigue/theft of a niece's fortune plot to move the story along. The principal characters are James Marwood and Catherine (Cat) Lovett, unrelated and unconnected, except for the fact that they are both children of those who overthrew the first Charles. Marwood works as a clerk for a senior under secretary at Whitehall and Cat has run away from her nefarious uncle. Their paths cross throughout, and as they are the named principals of this series, we will undoubtedly see them again soon.

The Club: Johnson, Boswell, And The Friends Who Shaped An Age, Damrosch - B-

                                 This is a history of an extraordinary group of 18th century Londoners who spent Friday evenings at the Turk's Head Tavern, where they became known as the Club. Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, Richard Sheridan, David Garrick, Edmund Burke, Joshua Reynolds, James Boswell and Samuel Johnson were the cornerstones of the Club. However, it is Boswell, the young Scottish lawyer, and Johnson, a generation older and the compiler of the first dictionary, who are center stage in this tale for the simple reason that they were the most prolific writers. Johnson wrote eloquently and frequently and Boswell was his biographer. Johnson was born in Lichfield, the son of a bookseller. Johnson was unable to finish Oxford for financial reasons. He went to London to become a writer, and edited The 'Gentlemen's Magazine'. He worked for a decade on a Dictionary, which was published in 1755. It is considered a milestone, a masterpiece still recognized as a significant landmark centuries later. He became known as The Great Lexicographer. James Boswell came to London with the approval and financial support of his father, Lord Auchinleck, a noted lawyer and judge. Boswell was a writer, a drinker, and an inveterate note taker, whose journals provide a detailed insight into late 18th century London and which were immensely popular because of his frank and frequent recounting of his vigorous amatory adventures.  In early 1764, Joshua Reynolds suggested to Johnson that they form a club of interesting friends who would meet once per week. Edmund Burke was invited as were half a dozen others. Sir Joshua Reynolds achieved considerable wealth as a portrait painter. He was the first president of the Royal Academy of the Arts. "Of all the members of the Club, Burke was the one who most impressively combined intellectual brilliance, literary skill, and public life." His 'Reflections on the Revolution in France' adeptly predicted the future and is considered a foundation of modern conservatism.  The two most enduring publications from Club members came in 1776: 'The Wealth of Nations' and 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'. Smith and Gibbon are still part of many curriculums and are two writers whose works I have enjoyed. Long after the deaths of its founders, the Club continues today as the London Literary Society.                                                                                                  I have never been a fan of group biographies and nothing here has changed my mind. Furthermore, there is not a single sentence in this book about conversations at, or meetings of, the Club.

Curious Toys. Hand - B+

                                  This fabulous novel is set in and around Riverview Amusement park in Chicago in 1915. The protagonist is Pin, a 14 year old girl disguised as a boy who runs drugs for Max, one of the men working there. She sees a young girl go into a ride with a man, but not come out at the end. Pin later discovers her body.  A serial killer, murderer of pre-teen girls, is on the loose. Because she is a constant visitor to all the corners of the park, she sees, hears, and eventually, figures out who the killer is. Pin reverts to Viv, gets an ally, and saves the day. This is highly recommended. 

The Old Success, Grimes - C

                                           Befuddlement is seldom the reaction to a book in this magnificent series.  But for me and apparently many others, the story here is virtually unreadable. This is the twenty-fifth Richard Jury novel and sadly, the author, approaching 90, has lost more than a step. I suspect this is the end of the line.  For the last forty years, it has been a delight as you opened the latest in the series with relish, looking forward to the extended cast of characters in Jury's life. A sad au revoir.

They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967, Maraniss - B+

 This majestic book, published in 2004, won the J. Anthony Lucas Prize and was a Pulitzer finalist. A special thanks to my brother for the recommendation. The book is about two days in October 1967. The 17th and 18th saw an ambush of an American battalion north of Saigon, and a sit-in at the University of Wisconsin against Dow Chemical, manufacturer of napalm. The replacements for the Black Lions Btn. of the First Infantry Division arrived in Vietnam after three sweltering weeks on a WWII era troop transport. The men they would fight were led by an officer who had marched 600 miles south six years earlier. The Americans would be commanded by Terry Allen, Jr., son of the general who led the Big Red One in Africa and Italy. As the sole supplier of napalm, Dow Chemical was quickly becoming the face of corporate America's support for the war. In the fall of 1967, they were scheduled for four days of recruiting in Madison. The University of Wisconsin was more diversified, had a long Progressive tradition  and leaned more to the left than your standard mid-western land grant university. There had been opposition to Dow's visit and clearly, the opposition would ratchet up this time.  In Vietnam, there were now 500,000 Americans busily seeking out the enemy and not necessarily finding him. There were now many, particularly the war reporters in Vietnam, as well as a growing cadre of skeptics at home, who envisioned a stalemate, at best. In the sector the Big Red One patrolled, there was a sense that their opponent was wearing down. In  Madison, the impending Dow visit generated significant preparation by both the students and the University. The students organized and planned their tactics to disrupt the visit. The University let them know what would, and would not, be acceptable conduct and coordinated a plan of action with the campus and city police. The strategy of the US Army was to search and destroy the enemy, but the challenge was that the NVA or VC chose when and where to fight. They knew the terrain and avoided anything like a pitched battle, where the US's superior firepower would defeat them. On the 16th, led by Clark Welch's Delta Company, the Black Lions headed out on another search and destroy mission. Welch was the only lieutenant leading a company in the division and one of the few officers  commissioned  in the field in Vietnam. They engaged the enemy, believed they may have located a sizeable force, and planned a follow-up action for the next day. Welch had been awarded a Silver Star by a general who then  chewed out Lt. Col. Allen because he was supervising his battalion from the air, instead of the ground. Allen determined to attack the VC head on without an aerial prep. On the 17th, Alpha Company, with only half its complement, 75 men, took the point. Delta Company followed. The now grounded Terry Allen marched with Delta. The Yanks walked into an elaborately planned ambush. Within minutes, the commander of Alpha Company, and two his lieutenants were down. Alpha fell back. The Vietnamese closed in on Delta and opened fire. By the time Welch was hit, half of his company were casualties. Terry Allen was shot twice and died when hit a third time. Clearly defeated, the Black Lions were retreating. They were able to evacuate their wounded, but not their dead, who had to be left overnight. The American army practice of fudging the truth began immediately. The division commander declared the battalion had not been ambushed. The Big Red One did not get ambushed - they were too good. Fifty-eight Americans were dead and thirty-one wounded.  The wounded were operated on in Saigon and all but one survived the first night. At MACV, Genl. Westmoreland was concerned enough to fly to the Division HQ to be debriefed. Again, there was no ambush. The Army press release stressed the victory with 103 dead VC, a number that everyone agreed was pretty much out of thin air.  A young ABC reporter, Peter Jennings, questioned the veracity of the army's  report and referred to the engagement as a regiment sized ambush.  On Tuesday the 17th, the protest began in Madison. On the first day, there were speeches and a sit-in near the interview rooms. The police were restrained and the protesters under control. The next day saw more people protesting and the sit-in obstructed access to the recruiters and to some classes. This was a violation of the school's rules. The campus police called for city backup. The Chancellor and the student leaders met, but could not come to terms. The chief of the campus police ordered the cops to break up the crowd in the building where the interviews were conducted and they came in swinging their billy clubs. The thousand demonstrators outside the Commerce Building started pelting the police with whatever was handy. The police responded with tear gas. By the evening, the crowds dispersed. The following day, thousands boycotted classes.     The following weekend was the first major march on Washington. While people were gathering for the trip, soldiers of the US Army were delivering the news of the deaths of sons and husbands to their families around the country. While the Washington marchers headed to Arlington to levitate the Pentagon, two thousand marched to the Capitol building in Madison. After the weekend, LBJ observed "We've almost lost the war in the last two months in the court of public opinion." At Dow, they debated whether to pursue a public relations policy defending napalm and decided to stay quiet. No one surmised that it would be Agent Orange that Dow would pay heavily for in the future. The following weekend in Milwaukee, Richard Nixon spoke of himself as a 'peace candidate'.  The author grew up in Madison and was a freshman at Wisconsin that fall. He has done an extraordinary research job writing this book. He even walked the battlefield with Clark Welch and VC Colonel Triet. Reflecting on events from over half a century ago, I am struck by how fast the tables turned. In the middle of 1967, there were many opposed to the war, but the American center supported it. A year later, after Tet, Johnson's resignation announcement, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, my recollection is that support had dwindled and the majority were opposed.

The Godmother, Cayre - B+

                                  This is a fabulous, brief novel subtitled 'A Crime Thriller' and winner of a number of French awards. Patience Portefeux is an Arab translator for the Paris police, a widow of over two decades, and completely buried by the cost and stress of maintaining her failing mother in a nursing home. Because she hears the plans of drug smugglers and knows of the police plans to stop them, she has a bird's-eye view of France's drug trade and manages to inject herself into the middle of it. Through a series of believable coincidences, she is able to place millions of Euros worth of hashish in her basement and sell most of it off. There are wonderfully told stories throughout this delightful novel, which apparently is being made into a motion picture.

Good Man Gone Bad, Haywood - B-

                                  This novel is the latest in a series featuring Aaron Gunner, south central LA private investigator. He  working on two cases simultaneously, one working for a lawyer defending someone accused of murder and the other, a truly difficult one involving the apparent murder-suicide of his cousin. I'd give it an adequate/serviceable, not much more.

The Light That Failed: Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy, Krastev and Holmes - B, Inc.

"How liberalism ended up the victim of its heralded success in the Cold War is the story this book aims to tell." The prevailing belief that the collapse of communism would usher in a world of democratic principles proved to be incorrect. The lack of an apparent alternative to free market capitalism led to the anti-western ethos dominating in the post-communist societies today. The newly freed countries of Europe were expected to imitate the west and watch as the west opined on how well they were doing.  They joined the EU and were told what laws to enact in  a sort of supervised democracy. The Central Europeans felt that their identity was being threatened. "The origins of today's anti-liberal revolt lie in three parallel, interconnected, and resentment-fueled reactions to the presumptively canonical status of Western political models after 1989." The first is the Polish-Hungarian frustration with a new system that they viewed as just as 'imposed' as the old Soviet system was. Next, offended by the west's hypocrisy, Russia attempted to mirror it by interfering in the west's politics, just as the west did in Russia's in the 1990's. And lastly in America, the fear of being supplanted and dispossessed  by immigrants and the Chinese has driven Trump's message of US victimization. 

"The post-1989 transition to normality aimed at making possible in the east the kinds of  lives taken for granted in the West." For the Central European countries freed from communism, becoming like the west was the universal consensus after 1989.  The reform by imitation projects, however, did not envision the local impediments to democracy and liberalism.  The most significant problem that stemmed from 1989 was that the young and well-educated could now leave. And they did. Some countries in the east have lost a quarter of their population. Why reform your hidebound country when you can freely move to a better one? The combination of emigration, an aging population and low birth rates has befallen the post-communist east. Thus, in 2015, the countries of Central Europe refused to follow Germany's example and admit hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. Although there are virtually no refugees, Muslims or Africans in Central Europe, the Visegrad Countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) have barred their doors to make sure they never arrive.  Indeed, the Poles and Hungarians point out that they stopped the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683 and Western Europe needs to come around to their way of thinking. It is incredibly naive to think you can absorb and acculturate everyone. 

 Once again, I am unable to finish this book and post this brief synopsis for one point and one point only. I had no idea that the former communist countries suffered such massive outflows of people. I find that fact quite compelling.

Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, Miller - C

                                This novel is set in 1809 and features an officer, broken and delirious, returned from war in Spain and deposited at his family's home in Somerset. He was part of a defeated army and had the misfortune of being nominally in charge of a band of stragglers whose atrocities at a small town drew the attention of allied command. When Lacroix recovers, he sets out for the islands off Scotland's west coast rather than go back to the Peninsular. Unbeknownst to him, a two man sanctioned, but unofficial, revenge team is on his trail. The author brilliantly paints amazing pictures of the time including the war, travel around pre-industrial Britain, a hospital in Glasgow and a commune in the Hebrides. But, to my mind, and almost acknowledged by the NYT reviewer,  it is too many loose threads instead of  a compelling story.