The Book of I, Greig - B +

                  I is the island of Iona, off Scotland’s western coast. This fascinating and brief novel opens with a Viking raid on the monastery and the murder of all but one of the monks, along with most of the island’s occupants. The next day, the king’s men arrive to bury the dead and remove the survivors to the mainland. A young monk, Martin, and the late smithy’s wife, Una, choose to stay.  Grimur, the eldest Viking, had become so drunk the day before on Una’s mead that his comrades buried him, believing him dead. He rises from the grave with help from Brother Martin, who had been praying for him. When Grimur sees the monastery’s Book of I—page after page of brilliantly illustrated parchment—he decides to help Martin rebuild the island. He repairs the monastery, fixes up Una’s cottage, and moves in with her. Over the summer, a young woman named Bronagh arrives from Ireland, seeking a solitary life devoted to the contemplation of God. They gladly accommodate her, but after two months of prayer she leaves. One day, as Martin speaks to Grimur about God’s love, Grimur goes berserk and tells Martin that the world is about blood, lust, and murder, not love and forgiveness. He then gets drunk, kills one of the horses, and rolls in its blood. Martin retreats into his work, determined to complete the Holy Gospel of John the Apostle before the Vikings return. Late in the year 826, he finishes. Within days, the red sail of a Viking ship appears on the horizon. When they land, however, they are met by a ghost. Grimur, covered in ash and ghostly white, appears before his former companions. Only Helgi, their leader, refuses to believe it and is promptly dispatched to Valhalla by Grimur. Martin takes the holy book to a safer place, while Una and Grimur settle down on Iona. Brilliantly creative.

The Feeling Of Iron, Alonge - B +

                 In the early 1980s, two men in their sixties are approached because of their pasts and asked to help bring a high-ranking SS officer to justice. Shlomo Liebovitz, an Israeli Pole, is flown to Europe by a loosely structured group of survivors that pursues Nazi war criminals and seeks revenge for the deaths of millions. Anton Epstein, a Czech doctor, is contacted by state authorities on behalf of the KGB. Their target is former Maj. Hans Lichtblau. Lichtblau ran a medical and scientific operation in East Prussia that cruelly inflicted wounds on prisoners and experimented with surgical techniques. It is believed that he slipped out of the war zone with the ingredients for a drug capable of enabling a soldier to fight for days without rest. The KGB wanted the drug, and Shlomo wanted revenge. The two men had been prisoners who labored as Lichtblau’s assistants. As the war wound down, Lichtblau, who had been born in America, was able to escape on the Vatican rat line and go to work for the U.S. Operation Paperclip, which employed German scientists. When the Russians came, Epstein headed south to Prague and Shlomo walked west. Two years later, Shlomo disembarked in Palestine. Together, they trail Lichtblau to Central America, and Shlomo lights up a cigar as he watches the Nazi die.

        This is a superb novel that has made most of the best-of lists as the year ends. It deftly tells a complex tale and moves seamlessly between the war years and the pursuit of Lichtblau.

Stray Bullets, Rotenberg - B+

              A shootout at a Tim Hortons ends in the death of a four-year-old boy. The shooter was a lifelong criminal named Dewey, but his buddy Larkin, another of life’s losers who had picked up the pistol and ran away, is arrested the next day. Dewey’s lawyer comes forward and tells the Crown prosecutor, Ralph Armitage, that Dewey will tell the authorities where the murder weapon is in exchange for an assurance he won’t be prosecuted. Detective Ari Greene thinks the deal is bad, and the affidavit the lawyer submitted is inconclusive. When a young Romanian undocumented worker, Dragomir, who saw the whole thing, reads that Dewey’s made a deal, he knows he has to say something. He approaches Armitage and tells him he has the wrong man, that Dewey did it. Knowing he was in over his head and that he was prosecuting the wrong man, Armitage sweeps Dragomir’s information aside in an attempt to bury the truth. A mistrial lets Armitage pass off the second trial to someone on his staff and put the whole mess behind him. However, Greene finds Dragomir and sees that justice is done. Once again, another great book by this author, who is a trial lawyer in Toronto and a very talented man.

Out Of Hitler's Shadow: Debt, Guilt, and the German Economic Miracle, Straumann - C +

        This brief book is about an event, long forgotten but of some import. Dean Acheson realized that the establishment of an independent West Germany, NATO, and the Marshall Plan left unresolved a major impediment to European recovery: Germany’s vast debts were unpaid, and many throughout Europe sought reparations. The US, France, and Britain established a Tripartite Commission to negotiate with Konrad Adenauer. Before those negotiations began, West Germany agreed to provide 3 billion DM to Israel and signed a treaty for the European Coal and Steel Community with France, Italy, and the Benelux countries.

        The Allies eventually agreed to reduce all prewar debts by half and require full repayment of postwar borrowings. Any consideration of reparations would be postponed until German reunification. The London Debt Agreement of 1952 was generous to Germany but certainly helped Europe’s recovery and established a peaceful, stable political environment. Ultimately, Germany paid additional billions to Israel, various charities and European countries, and numerous individuals. After reunification, the US, Britain, France, and the USSR agreed to no war reparation claims. All in all, it was a very successful diplomatic process.

Tigers Between Empires: The Improbable Return Of Great Cats To The Forests Of Russia And China, Slaght - B

          "Once secure at the top of the food chain, Amur tigers had roamed unchallenged across nearly three million square kilometers of northeast Asia for thousands of years." In the 19th century, there were approximately 3,000 tigers living mostly on the Russian side of the Amur basin. After decades of hunting and habitat loss, they were almost extinct a century ago. There may have been as few as twenty or thirty. The Soviet Union began to protect them in the 1930s. On the Chinese side of the river, the number plummeted from 2,000 to approximately twenty in the 1980s.

          The American–Russian Amur Tiger Project began in 1992. "The research questions they sought to answer were—how much space do tigers need—how much prey do they eat—and how do they die." Their success has led to conservation efforts throughout Asia. The Russians contributed the land and extensive outdoor skills, and the Americans had the technology to track, sedate, and collar a tiger. On February 11, 1992, the Project sedated and tagged the first tiger ever captured and released. She was a young 75 lb. cub who they named Olga. Progress was slow, and the second capture seemed unachievable, and they needed more success to obtain continuing governmental support. They caught their second (Lena) on June 22, the day before their permit was set to expire. She was an average-sized adult female weighing 250 pounds. A September catch (Natasha) was another female, 227 pounds and probably three years old. A bit further along in the fall, the team awoke one morning to find three tigers in their snares near a kill site they had discovered the day before. They were able to sedate and collar two of the three, Kolya and Ektarina. They now had five radio transmitters pouring information into their home base. They realized that their second catch, Lena, probably gave birth to cubs and began to pay close attention. When Lena was killed by a poacher, they captured her four eleven-week-old cubs, who were the size of a cocker spaniel. Two survived and were moved to a zoo in Nebraska.

           In early 1994, the team decided to recapture Olga and replace her collar and battery. They tried their first helicopter capture, shot her while hanging out of an ancient Soviet-era copter, and four biologists rappelled down to the site. They were successful, and ultimately Olga was the longest-studied tiger ever tagged and followed, as she was later recaptured a total of six times. However, wary of the ways of the project, she managed her litters to avoid the snares, and none of her cubs were ever captured. Olga was poached in early 2005. She was 14.

          The project continued to succeed, and around the turn of the century it began to work on the Chinese side of the Amur River. The Chinese established game reserves on their side of the border. It was the golden era of tiger preservation and management. Beginning in 2006, Russian government support declined, and President Putin began to plan for a Russian-only staffed tiger project. Nonetheless, Dale Miquelle, the man who had been the American lead since 1992, carried on with his American and Russian colleagues. The new century also saw the introduction of GPS support, providing vastly greater amounts of information than the old VHS system. The deterioration in Russian civil society led to increased poaching unlike anything seen in the first decade of the project. More human incursions and roads meant more tigers dead before their time. Fortunately, in 2012, Russia created the Land of Leopard National Park, which, when combined with a Chinese reserve, provided 2,619 square kilometers of peaceful living. Russia also increased the fines for poaching tigers. The same year, they captured a total of six cubs and began the arduous process of training them to live on their own. The first and the oldest was named Zolushka. All six cubs were released far to the west in an area where tigers had once lived, and five prospered.

          Right about the time that snares were made illegal, foreigners and foreign NGO's fell out of favor, and the project was wrapped into a larger Russian entity. As tensions over Ukraine mounted, Dale flew to America in 2022. He resides in Montana and travels to Asia assisting in tiger conservation. The Siberian Tiger Project is considered to be wildly successful and a major step in saving the animals from extinction. Russia has even built a tunnel on a major highway to give animals safe passage over the road. There are 500 tigers in the Amur region, but they face ongoing challenges from the human population. Today, as China and Russia become politically closer, the two nations have increased the protected reserve areas on both sides of the Amur, and there is hope that someday the population of tigers will again exceed 1,000. This is a fascinating read, leaving one with admiration for the men and women who have devoted their lives to animal conservation.

No Surrender, Hiaasen - B

         Ex-governor of Florida, Clinton Tyree, a/k/a Skink, stumbles upon young Richard one night while he's staking out turtle-egg poachers. Richard's teenage cousin, Malley, has taken off with someone she met online. Skink ascertains that the boyfriend is dangerous and sets out with Richard to find his cousin. On the way to rescuing Malley, Skink gets his foot run over, wrestles with a gator in a river, and is shot twice. Always a blast, and it includes a lesson on ivory-billed woodpeckers.

Wild Instinct, Parker - B +

         This is a very good police procedural set in the OC in California. Lew Gale is a 43-year-old detective, half Hispanic and half Indigenous Acjacheme, who is assigned a new partner, Daniela, and a very high-profile murder case. How does a billionaire developer get shot while photographing a rare owl by a bartender-bum at night in a state park? They track down every lead and conclude it had to be a job for hire. The question then becomes who benefits from the man’s death. Only by stumbling upon a construction site late one night do they finally understand the issues at stake and solve the case.

          This is compelling because of the character development of the two detectives. Daniela struggles to raise an 18-year-old boy while lying to him his entire life about who his dad is. Lew copes with the consequences of injuries in Afghanistan, and most importantly, is the character who speaks at length about his tribe and its centuries-old struggles against Spanish, Mexican, and American oppression.