The Whalebone Theatre, Quinn - B

                     Cristabel Seagrave, an engaging, charming, and witty young lady, grows up on the south coast of England in the years after WWI. She leads a household of children consisting of a half-sister, born to her dad and step-mother, and a cousin, born to her step-mother and her father's younger brother, after her father's untimely demise. Her own mother died in childbirth. Along with her half-sister and her cousin, they traipse far and wide as the grown ups party and ignore them. Theirs is a world of fantasy, and endless escapades all orchestrated by Cristabel. Her imagination is unlimited and when, in her twelfth year, a whale carcass comes ashore on their beach, Cristabel claims it as her property. She writes the king to advise him, but he fails to respond. She produces a play of the Iliad set in the bones of the whale to the acclaim of the community. She follows with The Tempest. With the help of a visiting Russian painter and local craftsmen, the whale bones are converted into an actual theatre. The theatre flourishes and each summer throughout the 1930's, the Seagrave children put on a show. Cristabel produces, directs and performs, while Flossie, her half-sister, and Digby, her cousin, perform.

                  When war comes, Digby leaves Cambridge and enlists in the army. Cristabel joins the WAAF. Because she is fluent in German and French, she is soon promoted and working at HQ. Flossie goes to work for the Land Army and leaves the family's estate. As 1942 closes, Digby is with the SOE and operating in France. Bored to tears, Cristabel asks a family friend to get her something more interesting. She, too, is soon training for the SOE. In June of 1943, Cristabel parachutes into occupied France. She finds freedom in the unrelenting pace, and purpose in the life of a courier. She stays constantly on the go, never sleeps in the same place twice. By the fall, her radio operator is captured and she returns to London. She learns that Digby's circuit has been rolled up by the Gestapo and no one knows where he is. Thus, he comes under suspicion, and Cristabel is also tainted in the eyes of the SOE. She returns home with nothing to do. In the spring, she is back in their good graces and is off to Normandy. When the Americans arrive, she volunteers to translate and they send her to Paris to gather intelligence. She finds Digby living with a Frenchman and totally opposed to the UK. He feels the SOE willfully sacrificed him and his men, and he does not plan to return home when the war is over. In the fighting just before the American arrival, Digby is killed. Upon her return home, she and Flossie take in tenants, and re-open the theatre.

                  The first half of this novel is extraordinary. It is as fine a tale of childhood that one can come across. However, it stumbles when the war comes. The saving grace of the second half is that it expertly discusses the travails of the moneyed aristocracy of England during the war.

Fortune Favors The Dead, Spotswood - B

                     This novel is set in 1940's NYC and features two female private investigators. The lead is the noted and well-known Lillian Pentecost, and her assistant is Willowjean Parker. Parker narrates.  Parker is a fantastic storyteller, and one with a fascinating background. From the age of 15 until she was hired five years later by Pentecost, she worked in the circus. She has an unusual set of skills: she can pick locks, throw a knife, shoot a pistol, and fight like the devil. They are hired to determine who killed a woman whose very wealthy husband killed himself. They discover a tale of intrigue, homosexuality, blackmail, and of course, murder. Even though they figure it out, they have sympathy for the murderer and let her go. Adequate, but not to be recommended.

Madhouse At The End Of The Earth: The Belgica's Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night - Sancton - B +

                      On August 16, 1897, the Belgica sailed from Antwerp, Belgium. The expedition's commandant was 31 year old Adrien de Gerlache. Somehow, de Gerlache convinced the state, and the Belgium Geographic Society to sponsor an expedition to find the South Magnetic Pole. With a few exceptions, he recruited a crew that could only be described as an ill-disciplined rabble. One notable exception was First Mate Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian who would conquer the pole over a decade later. The other was Dr. Frederick Cook, an American physician who had previously worked on an Arctic expedition. The sail south highlighted the problems with the crew and led to the dismissal of four Belgians at a Chilean port. On Jan. 23rd, they spotted land and began their exploration of the continent. It had been decades since any European had been this far south and the Antarctic was a blank slate. There were no charts and no one had any idea about the size or shape of the landmass. The ship's naturalist "collected specimens from 4000 species of plants, animals, fungi, algae, and diatoms, 110 of which were unknown to science." De Gerlach was determined to reach the farthest south and continued on as the days shortened and it became colder. On March 5th, the Belgica was trapped in sea ice.

                       Wintering through the polar night was a decision de Gerlach had made on his own. He did not share this with his men and none was more anxious than Cook, the only one to have experienced months of darkness.  There were 18 men aboard. They built snowbanks around the ship to provide insulation. As they moved toward 24 hours of darkness, the most difficult aspect of the crew's life was their meals. Their cook was not really a cook and offered up the same undesirable meal daily. Cook did his best to try and keep the spirits up of everyone onboard. Amundsen prospered because he knew he wanted to someday lead an expedition and spent his time learning all he could. Finally, on May 16, the sun disappeared for 70 days. The men exercised less and suffered from insomnia. In June, a twenty-eight year old Belgian died. As the ship's physician, Cook was extremely concerned and found that the absence of light was wreaking havoc on the men's health. He required those who seemed the most worn down to stand naked before a fire. Also, scurvy was setting in. Life without fresh food for months could be fatal. Cook had them eat raw penguin and seared whale blubber to keep them alive. 

                      On July 22nd, the sun returned. "With the advent of daylight, the Belgica colony churned slowly back to life." However, the men's health continued to deteriorate. Cook advised de Gerlache that no further exploration was possible. They needed to extricate themselves, or they would die. As 1898 headed toward a close, the weather warmed, but the ice did not give up the ship. The crew began to use ice saws to cut an escape path. They cut a path in early February, but the cruel ice closed up their man made canal and de Gerlach was forced to put them on half-rations. On the 12th, the ocean waves were felt for the first time in a year, the canal reopened and the ship's engines began to turn the propeller. "By the first of March, she had muscled her way to within five miles of the open ocean." On the 14th, they were free.

                        The ship arrived in Antwerp in November and the men were feted as national heroes. Although de Gerlache would make a few trips to the Arctic, his diminished health precluded long term ventures. Amundsen would use the knowledge gained on this trip to complete the first North-West Passage in an icebound ship and, more importantly, become the first to the South Pole in 1911. Cook claimed to have reached the North Pole in 1908 and was widely hailed, but he ws also questioned by many. Eventually, the exploring world turned against him.  He would ultimately go to federal prison for fraud.

                         This is superb well-written book. I have read about the expeditions of Amundsen, Shackleton and Scott, but somehow missed this first one to the Antarctic in the the 20th century. Thanks to Patrick and Jennifer Lucas for the loan of the book.

                       

Hatchet Island, Doiron - B+

                        Mike and Stacey are heading to an offshore island for an overnight camp when they are called to a bird sanctuary by an old friend. Local lobstermen are threatening the island because the manger of the island has been voicing opposition to their impact on right whales. When they find two of the three ornithologists murdered, they wind up in the middle of a complex investigation. A billionaire who funds the sanctuary may not be the upright citizen he appears to be. Another good one in a series I've grown fond of.

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, Gage - B+

                      At the time of the 1959 movie The FBI Story, the 64 year old director was one of the most revered men in America. A decade later, he "emerged as one of history's great villains, perhaps the most universally reviled American political figure of the twentieth century." He was "a confidant, counselor, and adversary to eight US presidents." Of those presidents, Nixon was his closest ally, but it was FDR and LBJ who "did the most to empower" him. 

                     He was born in Washington on Jan. 1, 1895 to a family of modest means. He grew up in a caring home that emphasized hard work and self discipline.  He attended Central H.S., where he was class valedictorian, debate star, and captain of the cadet corps. In his senior year, he led the corp as they marched in Wilson's Inaugural parade. For college, he chose George Washington, studying law at night while working in the Library of Congress. At GW, he joined a fraternity that fostered the Lost Cause myth and cemented his racial biases. He stayed at school for an extra year, earning a Masters of Law. He joined the Justice Dept. in 1917,  just as the US government began the systematic surveillance of its citizens. The war "brought the federal government to life on a grand scale." He worked on German internment, and also observed the crack down on left-wing dissenters and radicals. He impressed his superiors and was appointed head of the new Radical Division in 1919. That summer anarchists' bombs, including one at the door of Atty. Gen. Palmer, sent the nation into a paroxysm of revenge. Hoover was soon tracking anarchists and deporting non-citizens. He was personally on hand in NY to see the deportation of 249 radicals, including Emma Goldman. By year end he became an expert on communism in America, and led a wave of arrests in early 1920 of as many as 7,500 individuals. It would prove to be the biggest mistake of his career. The acting Secretary of Labor refused to sign off on the deportations. Around the country, various legal efforts pushed back on the mass arrests. Palmer and Hoover were overwhelmed by the opposition. Hoover responded as  he would for the rest of his life: attack and investigate those who disagreed with him. After the debacle of 1920, he was fearful of the change in administration, but wound up as number two in the Bureau of Investigation. When the A.G. and the director of the bureau resigned in 1924, twenty-nine year old J. Edgar Hoover became acting Director of the Bureau of Investigation .

                          Under the new A. G., Harlan Fiske Stone, Hoover became a paragon of the nonpartisan administrative state. He built the bureau in his own image. It would be "efficient, apolitical, meritocratic and brimming with energy." At year end, 'acting' was removed from his title and he became director a few weeks before his thirtieth birthday. Only lawyers and accountants, preferably Protestants, would be hired, new agents were trained at Quantico, and a national fingerprint data base was established. People of color, Catholics, and Jews were shunted aside. Hoover had a free hand because, by a quirk of the laws, the FBI was not subject to Civil Service protocols. By 1929, he had built the bureau he wanted. 

                         "For Hoover, the dawn of the Great Depression was a time of good fortune and rising status - in some ways the happiest years he would ever know." The enforcement of Prohibition heightened Washington's concerns about crime, and he used those worries to build an empire based on collecting crime statistics. He created a forensic laboratory to scientifically analyze evidence for local police departments. The arrival of the Roosevelt administration dramatically altered the bureau's arc. FDR's war on crime expanded the FBI's remit, sending armed agents into the fight against violent crime. Hoover's dream of being above the fray was lost as his agents became G-Men policing Machine Gun Kelly, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, the Barker Gang, and many more. Congress expanded the bureau's jurisdiction by increasing the number of crimes that they were responsible for enforcing. Hoover's accountants and lawyers were now carrying pistols and machine guns. The mid-thirties also saw the deepening of Hoover's relationship with Clyde Tolson, the assistant director; at the same time Hoover was achieving historic national popularity. He received an honorary degree from GW and was on the cover of Time magazine. He and Tolson became fixtures on Broadway, at baseball games, and around town everywhere across America. There is evidence  of "an erotic intimacy as well as a hierarchal dynamic..." Their fusion of public and private lives remained at the heart of their relationship for another three-and-a-half decades.

                               Hoover used his newfound popularity as a platform to preach his moralistic worldview to the country. He didn't like the parole system and falsely claimed that all of his men who had been killed in the line of duty were murdered by thugs on parole. He decided to "dust off" the Mann Act and declare war on prostitution. The bureau was now "protecting not only life and property but also national virtue." FDR personally asked Hoover to investigate fascism and communism, thus handing the director causes he would pursue for decades. The president authorized the FBI's spying on political dissidents again. Both men agreed that this was an activity to be kept secret. It was the communist's interest in "labor unions, civil rights, and reform politics" that concerned him the most. Hoover proposed, and FDR agreed, to the FBI leading the nation's counter-intelligence operations. Thus began the extensive search for Hitler's fifth column in the US. Hoover accumulated a vast amount of power at the president's direction. FDR ignored the Supreme Court and told the FBI to wiretap in the interests of national security, and to begin monitoring German activity in South America. On Dec. 7, 1941, FDR authorized the FBI's detention of Japanese aliens in America. By the following day, 773 were arrested. To Hoover's credit, he opposed the mass internment of enemy aliens and American citizens, and he worked diligently for the early end of the programs. When German saboteurs landed on Long Island and in Florida, the FBI quickly captured them and brought them to justice. Both the highly anxious nation and the president offered glowing accolades. By war's end, Hoover had acquired "more friends than he'd had going in, and considerably more power."

                              "With the end of the war, Hoover began to use the state power he had acquired...to promote and enforce his other animating ideas: conservative beliefs in order and hierarchy, in religiosity and racial segregation, and above all in anti-communism.." At the time of his death, FDR was leaning toward approving the FBI over the OSS as the department to run counter-intelligence operations worldwide. At the end of the year, Truman shut down the OSS, but also quashed Hoover's ambitions by announcing that counter-intelligence would be run by the military and that the FBI would be a domestic-only operation. Hoover had begun to focus on communist espionage activity as the war wound down, and "found his central postwar mission."  In a 1947 speech to the American Legion, Hoover went public with his Red Scare concerns in a speech that drew national attention, and is believed to have helped Republicans gain control of both houses.  Next, he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee, thus cementing "an alliance that would shape the Bureau's relationship to Congress - and the nation's debate over communism - for the next two decades."  With the help of the FBI, HUAC went after Hollywood, and its left leaning writers, producers, and directors. The FBI instigated a series of prosecutions of the leaders of the Communist Party of America under the Smith Act, which proscribed calling for the government's overthrow. Of greater importance though was the army's cracking of the Soviet's codes, which afforded Hoover access to many more leads in his hunt. The Venona project, the name of the code cracking program, led the FBI to Klaus Fuchs, Harry Greenglass, and eventually Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The fact that the Rosenberg's went to their deaths without ever confessing meant the government couldn't prosecute many about whom they had suspicions, but no evidence. Joe McCarthy's embrace of hysteria over communism is well known, but he also raised issues about homosexuals and perverts in government. The FBI helped with investigations of the Lavender Scare, but without much enthusiasm from the boss. 

                          Ike ran on an anti-communist agenda, embraced Hoover and propelled him to the highest points of his long career. The administration expanded the bureau's charge to investigate all federal employees for any reason, and loosened restrictions on wiretapping. The FBI Story, written by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and an authorized biography in all but name, was a national bestseller. He continued his pursuit of the communists with the adoption of a counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO), a disinformation operation. In 1958, the director himself published his anti-communist thesis in 'Masters of Deceit,' another runaway bestseller. J. Edgar Hoover, a national treasure, was at the apogee of his career.

                         The 1960's were not as kind to Hoover, as communism faded from the public's view, and "more divisive matters took center stage." "His surveillance, harassment, and intimidation of civil rights leaders and activists" became the memorable part of his legacy. Hoover despised Bobby Kennedy's casual manner, unorthodox style, and preference for shirtsleeves. Bobby had a buzzer put on Hoover's desk to summon him. They sparred over policy toward organized crime. When the Freedom Riders brought direct nonviolent action to the field, Hoover opted to investigate the civil rights activists and not the southern police forces, because he viewed the activists as those starting the trouble. He initiated the investigation of Martin Luther King, who had two associates with communist connections. He became convinced that the Reds were orchestrating the movement. After the March on Washington, an FBI memo characterized MLK as "demagogic" and "the most dangerous Negro" in America. On the day of John Kennedy's assassination, Lyndon Johnson told Hoover he was a "friend and brother." In the spring of 1964, LBJ exempted Hoover from the government's mandatory age 70 retirement rule. With the Kennedy's gone, the FBI increased its spying on King, his offices and his colleagues. They recorded King engaging in sexual activities in the Willard Hotel. Hoover opined that the Willard tapes "will destroy the burrhead." Nonetheless, Hoover owed his job to LBJ and agreed to fully cooperate in the enforcement of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. After the 1964 election, Hoover turned his attention back to exposing King. He called him a "notorious liar" before his Nobel acceptance speech, passed tapes of King's debauchery around Capitol Hill, and had a tape mailed to King's residence in Atlanta. When America, particularly its young college students, turned against the escalation of the war in Vietnam, Hoover assumed Moscow was behind it all. Egged on by LBJ and fueled by his forty-year obsession with communists, Hoover testified before Congress about the Reds on campuses and began the surveillance of the protesters. When MLK came out against the war, Hoover continued to constantly criticize him, and when MLK was assassinated, many wondered if Hoover's incessant castigation had led to the violence. The FBI immediately and thoroughly initiated the largest manhunt in American history and arrested James Earl Ray as the assassin.  

                         Hoover welcomed the election of his fellow conservative and long term friend in 1968. Nixon's law and order theme was right out of the FBI playbook. The FBI turned its focus to the Black Panther Party, again focusing on sexual promiscuity and "jiving with white girls." When they couldn't find evidence, they made it up. The FBI vilified Fred Hampton and closely coordinated with the Chicago PD in the raid that killed him. Concerned about the Weather Underground, the Panthers and the near total student opposition to the war by the time of Kent State, Nixon encouraged the bureau to be more aggressive. Although the FBI was already bugging or wiretapping dozens, Nixon wanted more. When Hoover demanded a signature from either Nixon or Mitchell, the White House relented. Hoover was now 75 and losing his iron grip on the bureau. He was soon pouring  criticism on the press, former colleagues, students, university leadership, and generally appearing as a bitter, vitriolic old man out of touch with the country. His reputation completely cratered after the theft of files from an FBI office proved how far and deep his paranoia and hatreds had permeated FBI policy. One of the more egregious examples was the directive to investigate every Black Student Union in the US. When Hoover expressed reluctance to take the lead against Daniel Ellsberg, Nixon set up the Plumbers and decided to ease Hoover out. A number times Nixon was scheduled to tell Hoover it was over, but he couldn't do it. Hoover died in bed on May 2, 1972.

                          In the mid-70's, The Senate Church Committee began to investigate and publicize many of Hoover's abuses.  It highlighted his withholding of information from the Warren Commission, his targeting of MLK and the Black Panthers, and the FBI's extensive use of disinformation against Americans. Two of his top men were convicted of crimes. Congress set up oversight committees for the intelligence community. "In death, Hoover ended up as the nation's greatest political villain..."

                           This is a very long 732 pages in a book that has received high praise as the definitive biography of Hoover. A few reviewers have said that it is a modest step away from all that has been heaped on his reputation in the last half a century, primarily because two liberals, FDR and LBJ, expanded the authority of the Bureau. It is very hard to find any exculpatory conclusions about this bitter, shallow hypocrite who accomplished much, but wreaked havoc over they country in his last decades in power. 

                      

Insomnia, Pinborough - B+

                    This blistering page-turner features Emma, a mom, wife, and solicitor heading toward her 40th birthday with a set of overwhelming anxieties. Knowing her mother lost it on her 40th, Emma starts acting like her mother, throwing her family and her law firm into disarray. Somehow, someone is provoking her into this conduct. Is it her sister? Is it her husband? This is a fascinating, probably have to finish it in one reading, read. Whew. 

The Maid, Prose - B

                     This is a fine, yet off-putting to the point of discomfort, novel about a naive maid at the Regency Grand. Molly the maid is the first person narrator. She has recently lost her Gran, whom she has lived alone with for her entire quarter of a century. She lives her life reciting Gran's bromides about how to carry on in the face of adversity. Molly is fully committed to being an excellent maid and loves her work. Her lack of worldly experience leads to her being hoodwinked into unknowingly helping a cocaine ring operating at the hotel. Before she knows it, she's arrested for murder and for drug trafficking. Thankfully, her friends and supporters at work help her prove her innocence. A number one bestseller and soon to be a major motion picture.