The Writing In The Water, Lindqvuist - B+

         Julia Malmro, a successful middle-aged writer researching a book, meets a 28-year-old cracker (someone who pierces firewalls for fun). They have a wild weekend fling, and Kim disappears from her life. Kim, though, is more than a wealthy slacker. While hanging out in Cuba, he uncovered a ring of 340 Swedish pedophiles, a painful process given that he was cut by his grandfather and abused by a physician. They reconnect at Kim's summer home a few months later when a group of neighbors are murdered just across the bay. The host of the party is a childhood friend. Kim takes a peek at the dark web and concludes it’s highly likely the victim had been hiding wealth, engaging in illegal activities, and was killed by professionals. Kim shares this with Julia and heads to the sanitarium where the host’s teenage daughter is being held. As she is being cared for by the electrotherapy torturer and abusive doctor who once treated him—and after he rescued Astrid from the lake following the shooting—he’s not about to let her be abused again. He easily saves her and manages to obtain a video from the boy she was talking to when her parents were murdered. Surreptitiously, he slips it to the police, who, among other things, hear Chinese spoken in the video. The lead detective now knows he has a case involving money likely coming from Shanghai, Red Army machine guns, and Chinese spoken in a Shanghai dialect. Kim decides it’s time to visit Shanghai, and at this point, everyone is certain the deceased—and at least one of his guests—was up to no good. In Shanghai, Kim learns that a major Swedish industrialist, one whom the government would not wish to embarrass or offend, was likely also involved. The two men confirmed as the killers, who had failed to kill Kim in Shanghai, are later found executed there. Kim stops in Cuba, does some work, and confirms the identity of the Swedish industrialist. There’s a fabulous ending with all the bad guys hauled in. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the two most successful Scandinavian thrillers to come to my attention—the Millennium series and Jo Nesbø’s books about Harry Hole. This is just as good, if not better.

The Death Of Trotsky: The True Story Of The Plot To Kill Stalin's Greatest Enemy, Ireland - B +

        Lev Bronstein, later Trotsky, was the "precocious son of an illiterate Jewish farmer" from Ukraine. Josef Dzhugashvili, later Stalin, was the brooding, angry, and hateful former seminarian from Georgia. They first met in 1905 and despised each other from day one. Trotsky was a brilliant orator, tall and charismatic. Stalin had a withered left arm and limped because of webbed toes. Trotsky led the Red Army to victory in the revolution, while Stalin was the General Secretary of the party. Trotsky ignored everyone around him; Stalin cultivated and befriended all he met. Trotsky did not even return from vacation to attend Lenin's 1924 funeral. Stalin easily won the succession battle, expelled Trotsky from the party, later the country, and revoked his citizenship. Stalin seldom had much to say; Trotsky wrote prolifically from abroad.
        Ramon Mercader, the man who would eventually assassinate Trotsky, was a movie-star-handsome Spanish communist born in 1913. He fought in the Spanish Civil War and became further committed to the left. His devotion to the Soviet Union was so absolute that his recruitment was very easy.
        Throughout the 1930s, and in particular when the Great Purges began, Stalin tied almost all evils, failures, and counter-revolutionary activities to an affinity with Trotsky. Everything that went wrong in the country was attributed to his influence, even though he had been in exile for a decade and had no role or input in any aspect of Soviet society; his children, grandchildren, and relatives were either murdered or exiled. After a decade of wandering Europe, Trotsky was offered refuge in Mexico and arrived there in 1937. Within days, a handful of Soviet agents followed. Trotsky and Natalia stayed with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. He worked tirelessly refuting every accusation made against him. The NKVD was everywhere and knew every move he made. One of the family's devoted communist friends was Ramon Mercader. Trotsky had a falling out with the famous artist and moved to a smaller house. In 1938, Stalin learned that Trotsky was writing a biography of him. It was bad enough that he published endless denunciations of everything Stalin did, but this was too much. He began to punish those who had failed to capture and kill Trotsky. He assigned the task to an NKVD agent who had recently assassinated a Ukrainian in Holland. Pavel Sudoplatov had to organize an operation in Mexico that did not lead back to Moscow and figure out how to besiege a guarded, secure residence.
         The agents began crossing the Atlantic on forged documents. Trotsky's colleagues throughout Europe were being murdered. He predicted they would kill him at a time when events in the war would reduce the headlines. In May 1940, three months before he was killed, 20,000 communists rallied in Mexico City demanding his expulsion. A few days later, an NKVD force attacked, breached the wall, began firing guns, and threw incendiary bombs into the house. Somehow, no one was hurt. After a few days, Ramon arrived offering his sympathies and the loan of a car for the staff. Natalia had her suspicions, but he was incorporated into the inner circle. He left for a few weeks in New York, and months later he returned to Mexico.
         Stalin was advised of the effort's failure and asked to consider the next option. The primary risk of an assassination by Mercader was that his capture could expose all of the NKVD agents in North America. Nonetheless, he approved the order. Trotsky had become very fatalistic about his future, but on August 20, 1940, he was in high spirits. A terribly anxious Mercader showed up at about 2:20, unannounced, but was ushered in, saying he was coming to say goodbye. Before he went into Trotsky's office, Natalia thought that he looked anxious and unwell. He smashed the business end of a handheld ice axe with a foot-long handle into Trotsky's head. The gory wound was three inches deep. He died the following day.
         No amount of interrogation could stop Mercader from insisting that he was acting on his own because of his disillusionment with Trotsky and that he was not part of the NKVD. He maintained that position through a 20-year imprisonment. After his release, he was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal and lived in Havana until his death in 1978. This is a solid book, with a little too much information at certain points, but all in all informative.

Inside Man, McMahon - B+

                Two members of the FBI's PARS unit, a specialized group consisting of quirky intellectuals who observe otherwise unfathomable patterns to solve crimes, find one of their CIs dead in his double-wide. When they realize a team of bad guys is on their way, they take whatever they need and torch the trailer to ensure that it isn't obvious he was a snitch. While waiting to draft another CI, they are sidetracked into a serial killer case and switch back to what is now finding a significant domestic terror group. With remarkable insights and deft touches, this team gets it all done. This novel is the second in the series and an improvement on the first.

Murder At World's End, Montgomery - B+

          In another twist on an Agatha Christie classic, it is the spring of 1910, and we are off the Cornwall coast in the house of a Viscount who has every room in his mansion sealed off because he fears the noxious gases that will emanate from the passage of Halley’s Comet. The night—and the comet—pass, as does the Viscount who is found with a crossbow bolt in his eye. He has met his maker in exactly the same manner as his father did two decades earlier. Suspicion falls on the newly arrived Stephen, whose baggage includes a criminal record. He must find the murderer and will do so in conjunction with the person he spent the night with in the attic nursery—bat-crazy old Aunt Decima, who is probably smarter than everyone in the building. They team up with the maid, Temperance, and are miles ahead of the dimwitted nitwit Scotland Yard sends. Off they go on a fun-filled investigation that leads to the murderer. And best of all, it’s the first in a series.

The Last Kings Of Hollywood: Coppola - Lucas - Spielberg And The Battle For The Soul Of American Cinema, Fischer - B+

        The great American studio system began to unravel after its most successful year—1947. There was an ugly strike, Olivia de Havilland sued Warner Bros. to break her contract, Harry Warner and Louis B. Mayer were testifying before HUAC, the Supreme Court ruled that the studios must sell their theaters, and television arrived. “The cruelty and hubris of the men who had created the system” tore it down.

          Twenty years later, the studios were on their last legs and turning to younger people to rescue them. The first of the arrivistes was a film grad from Hofstra, Francis Coppola. He had been working at Warners for five years when he met a recent USC grad, George Lucas. The two began a very close personal and professional friendship. A year later, a skinny kid from Phoenix talked himself into a job at Universal and quit Cal State without even emptying his locker. Steven Spielberg was going to work in television.

         Coppola and Lucas left for San Francisco to set up Zoetrope Studio as an independent, hoping to free themselves from L.A. and the traditional studio culture. They ran up debt and produced only Lucas’ THX 1138, which Warner Bros. was threatening not to distribute. Francis’ failure to go to the mat for George eventually led to their break-up. In order to keep Zoetrope open, Francis accepted Paramount’s offer to direct The Godfather. The $75,000 fee might be enough to save the company.

          The Godfather became the most successful film ever made. It outgrossed everything before it and made Pacino, Caan, Duvall, and Cazale household names. Francis’ six percent of the profits made him wealthy and the most famous director in the world. Spielberg was overwhelmed when he saw it and sank into despair over a contract that kept him in television. Lucas followed with American Graffiti, another career-defining blockbuster.

           While his two elders prospered, Steven extracted himself from TV and successfully directed a feature film. He was then asked to make a movie about a shark from an as-yet unpublished novel, Jaws. The ever-efficient Spielberg filmed all of the on-land scenes on time. But when production moved to the waters off Martha’s Vineyard, everything went wrong. The boats were too small, the sea was uncooperative, the shark barely worked, and the equipment was not designed for salt water. The shoot ran far over schedule and budget. Spielberg feared being fired and had nightmares about that summer for years. Of course, 1975 saw the birth of the summer blockbuster—Jaws earned even more than The Godfather.

         As 1975 came to a close, the three men were working on Star Wars, Apocalypse Now, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The filming of Apocalypse in the Philippines became one challenge after another. Three weeks in, Francis removed Keitel from the role of Willard and replaced him with Sheen. Before production could recover, a typhoon wiped out the sets. Then Sheen suffered a heart attack.

          Lucas, meanwhile, was in London and Morocco filming Star Wars, uncertain what his team at Industrial Light and Magic could achieve, as the footage initially looked poor. He and his wife, the film’s editor, argued constantly throughout the process. When he screened an early cut at home, a friend suggested the opening crawl to introduce the story. Star Wars exceeded all expectations, outgrossing both The Godfather and Jaws. It was a game-changing phenomenon. Nineteen seventy-seven became a landmark year in Hollywood. Close Encounters opened at year’s end to critical acclaim, while Francis struggled to shape over a million feet of film into Apocalypse Now. Its release kept being delayed.

          The film finally premiered in late 1979, winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Financially successful but critically mixed, it saved Francis from ruin, as he had personally financed it. The Empire Strikes Back was released in the spring of 1980. It too had a difficult production, but its success was enormous. George came very close to complete independence from Hollywood, as the studios were now only handling distribution.

           The studios still had money and infrastructure, however, and they began to fight back. Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg at Paramount partnered with Lucas as producer and Spielberg as director on Indiana Jones. The film was a major success and offered Paramount a franchise that could print money. The studio particularly loved Harrison Ford, the centerpiece of the series.

         Both Coppola and Lucas faced severe financial and personal challenges at roughly the same time. After buying land in Santa Monica and attempting to build an experimental, non-Hollywood studio, Francis had to file for bankruptcy—both for Zoetrope and personally—when the effort failed. Meanwhile, after a decade spent on the Star Wars trilogy, George and Marcia divorced. Her $50 million settlement strained his finances considerably.

          After the phenomenal success of E.T., Universal built Steven his own building on a quiet corner of the lot. They later asked him to direct Schindler’s List. Unsure whether he could handle such a difficult subject for his first truly “adult” film, he hesitated—but ultimately created a masterpiece.

        Francis was eventually able to pay off his creditors after reuniting with George to make Tucker, and by agreeing to direct The Godfather Part III. Lucas, ever the visionary, embraced the digital future and eventually sold Lucasfilm and ILM to Disney for billions. The two men reconciled and returned to working on smaller projects. Steven’s success continued well into the new century.

         Thus, our story comes to a conclusion. The impact of these three men on world culture is almost impossible to overstate. It is hard to think of anyone else whose influence has been so broad and lasting over the past century. Perhaps I am wrong. One thing I am certain of, however, is that the author does not measure up.