Massacre Pond, Doiron - B+

           A wealthy woman has plans for the hundreds of thousands of acres she has purchased in Washington County, Maine. She would like to donate the land for the creation of a new national park. Every elected official in the state is opposed, as are all of her neighbors. People there need the land to hunt, fish, and work. Ten moose are murdered near her home, her house is shot up and her college age daughter is murdered. The lieutenant in charge assigns Mike a bunch of meaningless chores, but he sticks to his assignment and plays it by the book. On the periphery of the investigation, he sees enough to solve it on his own. 

Nine Lives, Swanson - B

       This is a modern iteration of Agatha Christie's famous 'And Then There Were None.' A dying New England man thinks back to the tragic death of his ten year old sister sixty years ago and plots the deaths of the children of those who contributed to it. He sends a list to nine people with no explanation and no hints about what the list is about. As one of the recipients is an FBI agent, the first death is noticed and a nationwide search ensues. This is a fast paced, well done page turner.

Midnight Murders, John - B+

             This is a finely done fast paced thriller set in a massive psychiatric hospital in the UK. The key character, Trevor, is a cop who got so badly beaten that he has been there for months recovering. When bodies start popping up in the garden, his colleagues descend in full force to solve the murders. The background is the complexities of the institution, its decrepit physical plant, its overwrought doctors and nurses and its philandering director.  

Sword and Scimitar, Scarrow - B+

           This novel is about the 1565 siege of Malta, which pitted the Order of St. John against the vastly superior attacking forces of the Sultan Suleiman. The Great Siege was a pivotal moment in European history. From the time of their conquest of Constantinople in 1454 until their defeat at the gates of Vienna in 1683, the Turks threatened Christian Europe and struck fear in the hearts of all. A few hundred men on Malta were all that was left of the Order that had fought in the Crusades. The Turks had ejected them from Rhodes in 1522. The island was defended by 500 knights, 3,000 soldiers from Italy and Spain, and 3,000 locals. The Turks arrived on May 8th with close to 40,000 men, many of whom were top flight infantry and cavalrymen. Grand Master LaValette ordered all civilians into the forts, the destruction of all crops, the burning of all houses, and the despoliation of all wells. The Turks landed on the south shore on the 9th and began to attack the forts and the city. They bombarded Ft. Elmo at the mouth of the harbor day and night throughout May, stormed it, and took it on June 23rd. Six thousand Turks died in the assaults on the fort; fifteen hundred defenders perished as well. Both sides fought to a standstill over the summer, slowly and inexorably grinding each other down. As fall approached and the rain began, the Turks made a last gasp attempt to seize the town Birgu, where the remaining civilians and soldiers were. Over three days of fighting, they breached the first wall, but failed before they could take the second. The Turks were as exhausted as the defenders. La Valette sensed that it might soon be over. And it was on September 7th when 8,000 men arrived from Spain to raise the siege. Six days later, they attacked and defeated the remaining Turks. I have skipped over the people who  drove the novel forward in order to focus on the history. Well-written historical novels enlighten us on some of the specifics of a time and this one has added immensely to my feel for medieval warfare.

Operation Pedestal: The Fleet That Battled to Malta, 1942, Hastings - B

            The largest Royal Navy fleet since Jutland went to sea in August, 1942. Over fifty ships escorted 14 merchantmen to the besieged island. Germany and Italy fought fiercely to maintain their control of the Mediterranean. 

           The strategic location of the island placed it between the Axis powers and their armies in Africa, and for the British, it was the only land they held between Gibraltar and Alexandria. The Germans began bombing in late 1941. Months of bombing led to food rationing among the 300,000 residents. No supplies could get through and the island was emotionally preparing to surrender. Churchill insisted the island be relieved and the navy started to identify battleships and carriers to accompany the fastest merchant ships available. "Pedestal's air contingent was the strongest the Royal Navy could provide in August 1942, but was sadly inadequate for the challenge...fighting shore based aircraft, most of which flew higher and faster." They entered the Straits of Gibraltar on August 9th. The Italian fleet and 600 Axis aircraft were waiting for them. On the 11th, 37 Spitfires took off for a one-way trip to Malta. At the same time, four torpedoes slammed into Eagle, a carrier. She went down in less than 10 minutes taking 160 men and 16 Hurricanes with her. At dusk, 27 Ju88's appeared overhead, but high altitude bombing proved to be ineffective. On the next day, the fleet sailed through the Sicilian Narrows, only one hundred miles wide and 150 miles from Italian airbases. Wave after wave of air attacks only managed to cripple a merchant ship and the British were able to sink two Italian submarines. Then at dusk, the final wave saw multiple hits on the carrier Indomitable from dive bombers, but she stayed afloat. Recognizing that he had lost one of the navy's seven carriers and almost a second, Adm. Syfret withdrew the capital ships to Gibraltar, and sent the fleet on with cruisers and destroyers as escorts. There was no more air cover. 

          As darkness fell, the submarines attacked. A cruiser, the Nigeria, a destroyer and the most important merchant vessel were hit. The Nigeria was Adm. Burrough's flagship and he transferred to a destroyer with markedly inferior communication equipment. The destroyer Cairo sank. The Ohio, lent by the US and manned by the British, was a tanker full of petrol. The Luftwaffe returned and sank a merchantman, Empire Hope. Another merchant ship was damaged, Brisbane Star,and the Clan Ferguson were sunk. Fortunately, the Ohio continued on. They were still 300 miles from Malta. In the opening minute of the 13th, the first of the nineteen Axis torpedo boats struck, hitting the cruiser Manchester.  The ship was badly damaged and the captain scuttled her. The merchantman Glenorchy, the Almeria Lykes, Wairangi and the Santa Elisa were all sunk before the sun was up. At dawn on the 13th, they were 140 miles from Malta. The seven merchant ships left were attacked by dive bombers and the Waimarama, filled with aviation fuel and munitions, was blown sky high. The Ohio was stopped dead in the water. Spitfires from Malta began to provide some assistance. Another merchantman was sunk around noon. The Italian torpedo planes made the last attack at mid-afternoon.

     Three merchant ships entered Grand Harbor at six in the evening. Another freighter arrived the next day. A total of 32,000 tons out of the 84,000 that started out made it to its destination. The most important item, the one without which the island could not survive was aviation fuel for the 186 Spitfires that provided its defense. The Ohio was still 100 miles away, dead in the water, and taking on water. The RN began to tow it. It limped into the harbor on the morning of the 15th. Because the Axis sank so many ships, history has been divided on who was successful here. And, whether or not keeping Malta in British hands was worth the effort has also been discussed. Nonetheless, a film, 'Malta Story' was made in the 1950's.

            

An Empire of Their Own: How The Jews Invented Hollywood, Gabler - B-

           Hollywood, and the American Dream it presented to the world, was created and run for thirty years by Jews from Eastern Europe. Then their sons managed the greatest era in the history of the industry. The writers, lawyers, and agents were Jews as well. The anti-semitic reaction began immediately, and culminated in the Red-baiting of the 1950's. 

         Carl Laemmle (Universal) was born in Germany in 1867; Adolph Zukor (Paramount) was born in Hungary in 1873; William Fox (Fox) was born in Hungary in 1879; Louis B. Mayer(Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) was born in Russian 1885; and the Warner boys (Warner Brothers) were born in Poland, Canada and the US. "What united them in deep spiritual kinship was their utter and absolute rejection of their pasts and their equally absolute devotion to their new country." All grew up very, very poor. They desperately wanted to assimilate, to be American. And they created the visualization of what America and Americans should be.

       Adolph Zukor, an orphan, came to America at the age of 16. He trained as a furrier, built a successful business, and as the new century began was a rich New Yorker. He turned to the ownership and promotion of arcades showing 30 second videos. He opened a movie theater. He believed that what was needed was longer quality films. He was soon making films of plays and books. He combined his business with Paramount, a fledgling producer of films, and was now running a studio. 

     The affable Carl Laemmle moved to America in 1883, where he spent years failing at endeavor after endeavor. He did reasonably well in an Oshkosh clothing business and while visiting Chicago, was amused by a 5 cent motion picture and purchased a theatre. He began to buy and rent films. By 1911, he was the largest distributor of films in the US and moved to New York. Films were not watched by the broad middle class, but almost exclusively by immigrants. Considered a low-life business, the wealthy establishment eschewed any financial interest in movies. "Laemmle, who failed to scale even the lower reaches of American industry, now presided over a considerable domain - one built on outsiders and the culturally disenfranchised like himself. And these would be his troops in the war that followed when the Jews would take over the movie industry for good." Laemmle formed Universal in the midst of NYC's distribution wars in the 1910's. 

       William Fox was "obsessed with success," quit school at 11 and was a clothing foreman at 13. He and a friend purchased a movie theater in Brooklyn in 1903. Within a decade, he was a wealthy man and Fox Film was a success. 

       Louis B. Mayer, claiming his birth records were lost, took July 4th as his birthday. He was raised in New Brunswick, Canada, and went to work at 12. He left for Boston when he was 19. A few years later, he leased a theater and began exhibiting films. In 1911, he built a 1600 seat theater. He was a principal in the creation of the film distributor Metro Pictures. He produced a few films and decided it was time to head to California. "Another blandishment that must have drawn the Jews to California was that, unlike in the east, the social structure was primitive and permeable." He merged Metro and Goldwyn to form MGM. 

      Harry and Jack Warner were the sons of a Polish shoe maker who immigrated to Baltimore. They were complete opposites who hated each other. Their father's devotion to religion was a major dividing point. Harry could speak Hebrew at seven; Jack never tried. Harry believed in promoting tolerance and justice; Jack didn't care. Their entry point also was film exhibition. They soon moved to production and to Hollywood. Their reputation was that they were iconoclastic and aggressive, a reputation they cemented when they were the first to introduce sound. With 'The Jazz Singer', they assured that sound was here to stay. 

     The toughest and meanest of them all was Harry Cohn at Columbia. Born in NY in 1891, he was bit of a street hustler whose brother Jack got him a job at Universal. They left and formed their own company. Columbia teamed up with an unknown director named Frank Capra and together, they built a powerhouse. Cohn wanted power, Capra recognition. Together, they achieved their goals.

     By the 1930's, the studio system, with its emphasis on control, was fully entrenched. "The moguls made the studios in their images to actualize their own dreams." A Warner film was scrappy, quick, topical and a product of a tight-fisted organization. MGM's heroes were tall, elegant and attractive; Paramount's continental. Warner's stars were Cagney, Robinson, Bogart, Raft and Davis, all fighters and strivers, often in urban settings. Warner's America was a tough place where the little guy didn't have it easy. Their films were "the least assimilative." Warner pushed his people, worked them very hard and they often rebelled against his demands. At Columbia, Cohn ran the studio like "a private police state." His America was Capra's, one propelled by ruthless capitalists against whom good guys like Stewart or Cooper pushed back. It was a "populist America of sinister forces at the top pitched against decency at the bottom..." Columbia's stars - Colman, Stanwyck, Arthur and Grant - weren't remotely ethnic. At Paramount, "the pictures purred with the smooth hum of sophistication." Zukor viewed his movies "as a source of intellectual elevation." Universal was known for its westerns and horror films and received half of its revenue from Europe. The studio struggled in the '30's, not the least because it specialized in nepotism; at one point with seventy of Laemmle's relatives on the payroll. "In the thirties, there was no doubt that MGM was the Tiffany of studios..." They had the best talent and paid well for the privilege. Mayer was obsessed with being the best. He wanted to project beauty on the screen; he wanted to be a father to the big MGM family.  His stars were Gable, Astair, Turner, Garbo, Crawford, and Garland. 

   Politically, the Jews of Hollywood were reactionaries. They also were the highest paid people in America. In the mid-30's, forty of the sixty-five highest paid Americans were Hollywood execs. In 1934, they worked together to thwart the gubernatorial candidacy of Upton Sinclair. The younger, better educated Jews who worked for them as writers disagreed. A Jewish actor formed the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. The communist party also took root. The rise of Hitler garnered the attention of the leaders of the industry. Laemmle and Zukor helped hundreds escape. However, not wanting to draw attention to themselves, and not wishing to hurt their European business, the studios were slow to confront the Nazis. Once they began to do so, Sen. Wheeler called for an investigation into why Hollywood was encouraging America to end its neutrality. With the onset of war, Hollywood was on the side of the angels. Hollywood's leftward leanings came under attack later by the House Un-Americam Activities Committee (HUAC). Inspired by rabid anti-semitism, HUAC came after Hollywood after the war. The hearings began in Washington in October, 1947. The studio heads feared that the protestant establishment that shunted them into a marginal business that they turned into a world class industry, was coming to take that industry and their wealth away. Ten witnesses refused to answer the committee's questions and were held in contempt. The industry folded. It fired the Hollywood Ten and promised to not hire known communists.

   The moguls were aging and slowly losing their personal control of their empires. In an agreement with the DOJ, the studios divested themselves of their theater holdings. Zukor, Fox and Laemmle had left in the thirties. Mayer was distracted by his wife's long illness. Cohn simply lost his ability to dominate everything. Jack Warner convinced his brothers to sell the business, which they all did. The next day he bought it back. He and Harry never spoke again. After needing a year to recover from a car accident, Jack came back but the role of the studio was diminishing daily. A decade later, he sold his interest's in his company. Mayer resigned from MGM after a battle with his production team. "Though it was a purveyor of sentiment, Hollywood was, as Mayer learned, a notoriously unsentimental place." He became a bitter, lonely old man. Slowly, the founding moguls passed away, Zukor was the last dying at 103 in 1976. "What remains is the America of our imaginations and theirs. Out of their desperation and their dreams, they gave us this America."

   In many ways, this is an exasperating book. It's quite long and at times goes into incredible detail, yet loses track of the big picture. It opens with specificity about all of the moguls and then focuses on Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer for almost all of the second half of the book. I kept wondering what happened to the others. I do not know how one could run through the 1930's without any mention of all the Europeans who came to Hollywood. From a continuity standpoint, it's been a bit of a challenge. However, it affirms the obvious about this niche area of Jewish immigrant history. The German, Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants of the 19th century disrupted and changed American society, I like think for the better. With fewer people, the Jews did it faster than anyone else I can recollect.

  

     

Berlin Exchange, Kanon - B+

         In this novel set in 1963, American physicist Martin Keller, imprisoned in the UK for a decade for giving atomic secrets to the Soviets, is exchanged and crosses into E. Berlin. His motive in going to E. Germany is that he would like to get to know his 12-year old son. He and his wife had divorced when he was imprisoned. Both are die-hard believers. When he and Sabine have a few moments together, he tells her that she had to be the one who turned him in, and she acknowledges that she was ordered to in order to protect someone higher up. She also advises him that she is dying of lung cancer and it's imperative that he look after their boy, Peter. His KGB handler tells him he has to go to work again, and without a choice, he agrees to keep his ears open at his new place of work. He is assigned to work on the bomb again, and spying on his old friends. He realizes he can't do it and tells Sabine, also born in the US, that they have to take Peter to America, they need to leave. He orchestrates an elaborate scheme to leave and, although there are are some glitches, he pulls it off. A well done effort by a skilled writer of post-war Germany novels. Interestingly, E. Germany exchanged thousands of people and returned them, or sent them, to the west for hard currency. It is estimated that billions of Deutschmarks flowed into the GDR over the course of its failed existence.

The Matchmaker, Vidich - B+

       The story opens in Berlin in the fall of 1989. Anne is an American interpreter for the occupying authorities, and her husband Stefan is a piano tuner who travels the continent. In reality, Stefan is/was a Stasi agent, part of the Matchmaker's tactic of marrying Stasi men to westerners as part of a spy network. Stefan was also skimming from the E. Germans, and had a wife and son on the other side of the wall. He goes missing and the W. Germans think she is complicit, the E. Germans want to find him, and both sides are interested in his Swiss bank account. Anne resolves to help the wife and son and is working to help them escape when Stefan shows up on the night of November 8th. The following evening, when the wall comes down, all are able to crossover, except Stefan, whom the Stasi nab at the last moment. A month later, Stefan's cremains are delivered to the family apartment. For the W. Germans, the pursuit of the Matchmaker is on. For Anne it's simply about trying to understand what happened to her, and extracting a degree of  revenge.  This one stumbles a bit at the end, but Anne does get even.

Blackout, Scarrow - B

            Criminal Inspector Horst Schenke is in charge of the 12 man Kripo unit at the Pankow precinct in Berlin in the freezing December of 1939. His politics are marked by ambivalence. He is called in by the head of the Gestapo to handle what he characterizes as a "delicate matter." The wife of a high party official has been murdered and the matter must be handled with finesse. Subtlety, however, is not the name of the game because the murderer is a serial killer. Schenke manages to fight through the interference of the Gestapo and the Abwehr, while holding to his values as an apolitical investigator. This a good historical fiction/police procedural, one that ably discusses the challenge of enforcing the law in a country ruled by criminals.

Eight Days In May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich, Ullrich - B

        This is an effort by an esteemed  German historian to sort through the chaotic week between Hitler's suicide on April 30th and Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8th. It was sort of a "temporal no man's land" between the past and future. National Socialism had collapsed, but the Allies were not yet in control. 

       Hitler spent his last day bidding farewell to his staff and tending to some of the details of the war. He shot himself in the head and his wife Eva took cyanide at about 3:30 PM. Their bodies were burned and their remains buried in a bomb crater. A few hours later, a telegram from Bormann advised Adm. Donitz that he was now the leader of the nation.

       On the 1st, the Battle of Berlin continued unabated. Donitz "saw his main task as to continue the war on the eastern front long enough to allow as many soldiers and refugees as possible to escape capture by the Red Army." In the Fuhrerbunker, the Goebbels' followed Hitler's suicide path and everyone else tried to escape. From the east, Walter Ulbricht, who would run E. Germany for years, arrived in Berlin from Moscow. 

        On the 2nd, Berlin radio announced that the Fuhrer was dead. The reaction was rather muted. The Wehrmacht announced a cease fire and the surrender of the city. The civilian population was relieved and the conquerors were jubilant. The plunder and rape of German women by the Red Army began immediately. Ulbricht would allow no discussion of this, would take no action, and prohibited abortions. That evening, 600,000 men surrendered in Italy. Werner von Braun and his team surrendered to the Americans in Bavaria.

      On the 3rd, Donitz's government discussed trying to surrender in the west, but to continue to fight the Russians. The military and civilian leadership of Hamburg surrendered the city to the British. German leadership offered to surrender all forces in the northwest to Montgomery, but he refused to accept the surrender of Army Group Vistula fighting the Russians. He offered to accept a tactical surrender of those in the north, including occupied Denmark and the Netherlands. 

     On the 4th, Donitz approved the partial surrender in the west. "Along with entire army groups, individual armies and divisions also tried to save themselves from Russian captivity by surrendering to the Americans or the British." That afternoon American and French soldiers took Hitler's redoubt at Obersalzberg. 

    On the 5th, the people of Prague took to the streets to rebel against the remaining power Germany had in the protectorate. The following morning, Waffen-SS troops attacked the civilian rebels, but soon abandoned the city. The Russians would arrive on the 9th. As the Reich continued to collapse, not just German soldiers, but millions of slave laborers and concentration camp survivors fell into the hands of the Allies. Neither the western powers nor the Russians were equipped to effectively process, house, or feed them.

   The 6th saw continued efforts by the German high command to surrender in the west. Eisenhower let it be known that the only option was unconditional surrender of the Reich's remaining fighters. 

   On the 7th, Donitz authorized an unconditional surrender and Jodl signed it in Reims early in the morning. It took effect on the following midnight. Stalin insisted on a surrender to the Red Army too, and that took place in Berlin on the 8th. Of the three million men fighting on the eastern front, about half surrendered to the British and Americans, and half to the Russians. The war in Europe was over. 

    "Most Germans, even those critical of the regime, regarded May 8, 1945, not as a day of liberation but as an unprecedented national catastrophe." The Donitz government, although it had nothing to do, continued for two weeks before it was abolished and its members arrested. The Allies noticed two themes in the German population. They tried very hard to curry favor with the occupiers, while claiming their surprise at all of the exposed atrocities. Most Germans felt that they were victims. All of the senior ministers, generals and gauleiters were collected in a hotel in Belgium. Fifty-two of the highest ranking Nazis were at the Palace Hotel in Mondorf. Almost all were transferred to Nuremberg for their trials. And as unlikely as it seemed in May, 1945, Germany revived and is now a "nation defined by stability, freedom, and peace." This a very good, precise and concise history of that fateful week.

      

   

Woman On Fire, Barr - B+

                 The title is the name of a painting that is very important to two people. The first is Ellis Baum, the dying son of the woman who was the model for the artist. As a boy in Berlin, he saw Nazis take away the picture and take away his mother. The painter was considered degenerate, and he too was consigned to the ashes. The second is Margaux de Laurent, whose grandfather was a Parisian art dealer who purchased the painting in a 1938 Swiss auction of paintings confiscated in Germany and sold to raise capital. Her grandfather lost it to the Nazis when they occupied France. Its appearance in the apartment of the son of the Nazi collector has set both Ellis and Margaux trying to locate it. This is a well done thriller with some very nice background on the world of high fashion, and the amazingly complex world of stolen art, its recovery and the endless legal/moral issues that the world still faces.

I Am Not Who You Think I Am, Rickstad - C

        Something incongruous about the day his father killed himself always stuck with him. His dad was over six feet tall, but he remembered his dad's feet not touching the floor as he sat on his bed and pulled the trigger. He sets off at the age of 16 to try and sort out exactly what happened and if it really was his dad. A fast-paced, incredibly well done page turner crashes and burns with a weak, preposterous finale.

Watergate: A New History, Graaf - A*

              "At its simplest, Watergate is the story of two separate criminal conspiracies: the Nixon world's dirty tricks that led to the burglary on June 17, 1972, and then the subsequent cover-up." The story is of course bigger and more complicated. The genesis of Watergate was the administration's anger with ongoing leaks to the press. After eighteen wiretaps of WH staff came up empty, Nixon ordered an expansion of the taps when the Pentagon Papers release in the summer of 1971 burst onto every front-page in the country. Although the Nixon administration was not even mentioned, an enraged Kissinger demanded an aggressive WH response to the Papers. Thus, the Plumbers, managed by Egil Krogh and reporting to Ehrlichman, were born. A Hunt/Liddy burglary of Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office came up empty. Throughout the planning for the 1972 election Liddy, now charged with Intelligence for CREEP,  pushed Mitchell for approval of an endless list of burglaries, wiretaps, dirty tricks and illegal acts. Mitchell later swore he never approved anything, and it's likely that the okay for the Watergate break-in came from Magruder. The first entry into the DNC headquarters came on May 28th. They came back to replace a failed bug on June 16th. A little after midnight, Barker, McCord, Gonzalez, Martinez, and Sturgis were arrested. Liddy and Hunt, watching from across the street, quickly fled. "By the time dawn rose in Washington, the cover-up had begun."

            With McCord on the CREEP payroll and Hunt, a WH employee whose name was in a burglar's notebook, stress pulsed through the administration. The Post assigned Woodward to the case and by late Sunday, he knew that Hunt worked for Colson. The first official lie came that same day when Mitchell disavowed McCord. It was soon determined that all of the burglars had CIA connections, leading Nixon to suggest that the CIA be told to call off the FBI in the interests of national security. Dean was sitting in on some of the FBI interviews and reading all the FBI interview files from June until the following April. The president pointed out that the place to get money for the burglars was the Miami Cuban community. 

            The FBI was in management turmoil. When Hoover died in May, Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray as acting director. Gray was a capable former submarine officer with no familiarity with law enforcement. His acting deputy, Mark Felt, was a career agent who believed he should be in charge. He undermined Gray at every turn, and began leaking prodigiously to the press. Almost four decades later, he would acknowledge that he was Deep Throat.

           The WH had Mitchell resign for personal reasons, an idea that was readily accepted because of his wife's erratic conduct, while Dean was successful in raising the money for the burglars and E. Howard Hunt. Within a few weeks, the story died. But, the FBI, the Post and the Times continued to plug away. The administration stated that everyone should cooperate with the investigation, and then spent the summer "constructing an elaborate series of lies, suborning perjury, and constructing half-truths to obfuscate the campaign's darkest corners.'' The President acknowledged to his staff that the hush money was keeping Hunt et. al. quiet. The first indictments came in September with the five burglars, Liddy, and Hunt the only ones to face justice. Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Dean gloated over the success of the containment. The Post, Time, and the LA Times continued to find suspicious kernels of extensive impropriety, but were not yet able to tie it all together. Walter Cronkite mused on CBS that there may be more to Watergate than we know, but the election came without the affair having any impact on the nation or the outcome. Nixon won in a massive landslide. He seemed untouchable.

           Five defendants pleaded guilty and two mounted virtually no defense. Barely any information about motive or all the money floating around surfaced. Judge John Sirica felt that the wool was being pulled over his eyes. In the Senate, a Select Committee On Presidential Campaign Activities was created under the chairmanship of Sam Ervin.  As the committee began its work, and while John Sirica was trying to get the seven convicted men to talk, Dean met with Nixon on March 21st and mentioned the "cancer" on the presidency. Dean detailed at length all that he had done throughout the cover up, as well as Haldeman's and Ehrlichman's involvement. It was the same meeting where Nixon said he knew where to get millions in cash. As March 1973 came to an end, the unravelling began. James McCord told Sirica that Mitchell, Magruder, and Dean authorized the burglary, and orchestrated the payoffs to the burglars. Dean began to realize there was no way out and hired counsel. He met with the prosecutors, as did Magruder  a few days later. Nixon announced there would be new details forthcoming because he was now investigating. Acting Director Gray resigned after acknowledging he destroyed evidence. Nixon summoned Haldeman and Ehriclman to Camp David and asked them to resign. AG Kleindienst also resigned. Dean's secretary called to tell him he'd been fired. Mitchell and Stans were indicted.

        On May 17, 1973, the Watergate Committee began its public hearings. McCord, Magruder and quite a few others preceded the star, John Dean, in June. He spent nine hours reading a 245 page statement. After hearing Dean, Tip O'Neill began to consider how the House would handle an impeachment. One of the WH lawyers told  a colleague about the president,"I've listened to some of the tapes, and he was in the cover-up right up to his eyeballs from the beginning." On July 16, likely the most stunning revelation of Watergate came when Alexander Butterfield, formerly Haldeman's assistant, was speaking. He made the committee, and the world, aware of the extensive recording system in the WH. No longer was Dean's testimony the only source of information about the cover up. Immediately, Ervin issued a subpoena as did Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor. Over the summer, the Committee presented 257 hours of testimony that was carried on all three networks. Watergate dominated America as millions watched daily. Sirica ordered that the subpoenaed tapes be turned over to him so he could determine the merits of Nixon's executive privilege claims. Tension was building for the president on the issue of the tapes and, in particular, the tactics of Cox. A Gallup poll showed less than 9% of the country thought Watergate was important, and Nixon kept preaching that he had nothing to do with the break-in or the cover-up. He said that he needed to get back to running the nation.

      "October 1973 would prove to be perhaps the most historic single month in the history of the American presidency..." Agnew pleaded guilty to bribery charges and resigned the vice-presidency. In the Middle East, Egypt and Syria started what would be known as the Yom Kippur War and placed a first-class foreign crisis on Nixon's desk. Israel was on the threshold of defeat. Nixon ordered an airlift that gave the Israelis the material they needed to safeguard their borders and take the offensive. An appeals court rejected Nixon's arguments and ordered the tapes turned over. Dean pleaded guilty to a one count felony charge. Nixon focused on the idea of having a third party review the tapes, summarize them and make a decision about executive privilege. Cox rejected the idea. On the evening of the 20th, the attorney general and his deputy resigned rather than follow Nixon's order to fire Cox. The deed was done by the solicitor general. The event became known as the Saturday Night Massacre.

      "Condemnation of the president's actions flowed from political allies and foes alike, and even from church pulpits across the nation." The country was outraged. The president's approval rating was 24%. In the House, eighty-four members proposed impeachment. On Tuesday, the president's lawyer announced that he would turn over the tapes. Leon Jaworski was appointed the new special prosecutor and Peter Rodino's House Judiciary Committee began impeachment hearings. Editorials around the country began calling for the president to resign. His lawyers even suggested he resign. Then, the WH went public with the eighteen minute erasure of a Watergate conversation that Nixon and Haldeman had the previous June. When the special prosecutors finally listened to the subpoenaed tapes, they knew they had compelling evidence of crimes by Nixon. An investigation by the IRS^ revealed that the president had paid virtually no taxes because of a gift of papers to the National Archives and that the gift had been illegally backdated. At years end, Sirica graced Time's cover as its Man of the Year. Only fifty-two weeks earlier, it had been Nixon.

     The wheels of justice turned slowly. In March, the grand jury convened by the special prosecutor indicted Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson, Strachan, Mardian, and Parkinson. Nixon was an unnamed, unindicted co-conspirator. In late April, the president released 1300 pages of transcripts that he told the nation showed that he knew nothing of the cover-up until March 21, 1973, the day of his meeting with Dean. Upon examination, the prosecutors noted that the WH had released a fraction of what they asked for. Even so, the country was appalled at what they read."Congress was furious, Nixon defenders dumbstruck, and the general public was repulsed." His former lawyer said, "Nixon released a thousand pages of mumbled plotting, twisting, turning, and double-dealing, all the numbing sleaziness of political men in desperate trouble, the whole mess compounded by countless transcription mistakes, arbitrary omissions, and perhaps worst of all, innumerable references throughout to expletive deleted." Most importantly, the Judiciary Committee and the special prosecutor subpoenaed tapes, and got transcripts. Starting in May, the committee heard testimony three days per week for ten weeks, and then began public testimony in early July. A unanimous Supreme Court affirmed that Nixon had to turn over all the subpoenaed tapes. On July 27, the committee voted 27-11 to impeach the president. A few days later, the transcript of the June 23rd meeting in which Nixon fully endorsed a cover up was released, and the committee's votes switched to make the recommendation unanimous. The WH concluded they probably had seven votes in the Senate. He resigned in a nationally televised broadcast on August 8th. He acknowledged no wrongdoing, just a lack of political support.

      On September 8, Ford pardoned Nixon. It was a very unpopular decision. Perhaps the most important long term consequence of Watergate was that the nation no longer trusted Washington. A noted observer said,"If Nixon's has bequeathed to his presidential successors a permanently hostile news system, he has cursed them all." The author closes with a most ironic observation. We still don't know who ordered the break in or what the burglars were trying to achieve. 

     I am struck by Mark Felt's duplicity and motivation after remembering his rather positive treatment in 'All The President's Men'. I am amazed by Kissinger's balancing act having called the WH staff "maniacs in a madhouse" and knowing full well that the president despised Jews. I am surprised that John Mitchell tried to stop John Dean from joining the WH staff which he characterized as a bunch of "looneys." As for the staff, they just seem grossly incapable and disconnected from reality. And for the president, I find it incomprehensible that he spent hours upon hours rambling on and on while he bathed in his unique mix of paranoia, anti-semitism, and delusion. My most important takeaway is that this book is a masterpiece, and I'd be shocked if it doesn't rack up some very serious awards.

     

        

*Although it would be almost thirty-five years before Deep Throat was identified, Mitchell told Haldeman it was Felt, and the WH decided it couldn't do anything about it without facing Felt's ire and disclosure of all he knew.

^Nixon was assessed a $440,000 tax bill.

April In Spain, Banville - B

                        We find state pathologist Quirke on vacation in Spain, where he believes he sees a woman from Dublin whom everyone thinks is dead. April Latimer was a physician in Dublin when her brother confessed to killing her, but her body was never found. News of her presence in Spain stirs her uncle, a minister in the Irish government, to seek out and find a hitman; because April knows way too much about his illegal arming of IRA members in the north. The attempt at murder fails. The author is a Booker winner and has a way with words that manages to propel a slim story enjoyably along.

Bad Little Falls, Doiron - B

          As punishment for his insubordination and disinclination to follow rules, Mike has been transferred to the easternmost county in Maine, a rural wasteland of drug abuse and criminality. In the midst of a storm, he's called out. It appears as if two or three people had a falling out in the midst of a drug deal in the middle of the blinding snowstorm.  He also falls for a beautiful young woman who has perhaps the most dysfunctional set of relatives ever. His new boss doesn't like him, and just about all of the law enforcement people in Washington County are skeptical. Through his courage and inherent detective skills, he helps sort things out and gets to the bottom of a pretty awful mess.

The Price Of Peace: Money, Democracy, And The Life Of John Maynard Keyes, Carter - B+, Incomplete

            "Keynes was a philosopher of war and peace, the last of the Establishment intellectuals who pursued political theory, economics, and ethics as a unified design." His concerns were not about taxation or government spending, but rather the survival of civilization. His overarching vision of the future was a"vision of human freedom and political salvation."

             In August of 1914, the thirty-one year old Cambridge don hurried to London where the Bank of England had paid out two-thirds of its gold reserves. Everyone wished to hoard gold, but Keynes convinced the government to continue to redeem gold and issue a paper currency. He was appointed to a top position at Treasury. The war "transformed him from an inconspicuous, content academic into one of the most influential figures of his generation." He had a position in Treasury that thrust him into almost every important financial decision of the war. But, on a personal level, his role brought consternation to his Bloomsbury friends, and he became unsettled by the government's increasingly jingoistic sentiments. He was discomfited  by Britain's almost total reliance on the US to finance the war. When Wilson came out with his Fourteen Points, Keynes was one of many supporters. Wilson was perceived in Paris as the person who would save Europe from itself. Keynes went to Paris to represent the Treasury. "German reparations became the central, iconic drama of the peace conference." The British and French wanted blood money. The Americans and Keynes wanted a manageable number that wouldn't push Germany into poverty. America's reasonableness did not extend to forgiving any of its war debt. Overwhelmed by demands for absurd reparations and endless politicking, he resigned from Treasury and returned to England that summer. "The Economic Consequences Of The Peace is a provincial, shortsighted, vicious, and in many respects deeply unfair polemic. It is also a masterpiece and very likely the most influential work Keynes ever put his name to." He brilliantly predicted the ill-fated consequences of the treaty, made a lot of money because it became a run-away bestseller, and annoyed almost everyone in the British government.

             He returned to Cambridge, and began speculating in financial markets. He also met Lydia Lopokova, a Russian ballet dancer. The gay Maynard, one of the country's best known homosexuals, fell for, and eventually married the Russian dancer in 1925. His writings and his ownership of the newspaper 'Nation' meant he was once again accepted in the nation's political circles, even though he had taken on the need for the gold standard. He was asked to join a new committee when the Great Depression descended on the world. He delved into the causes and consequences of the Slump. He published a monstrous book called A Treatise On Money that garnered world wide attention and acclaim. His predilection for government intervention in economies was challenged by an Austrian, Friedrich Hayek, an apostle of laissez faire. Their arguments still resonate today, particularly in America. As he watched the world sink further into depression, he was extremely frustrated by the world's governments trying to solve the problem by raising taxes and attempting to balance budgets. 

            The year 1933 saw someone finally adopt his policies, and it was the United States that would reverse course first. FDR closed the banks, reopened them with a guarantee of their deposits, took the US off the gold standard, and proclaimed that it was the government's responsibility to manage the free market system for the benefit of the people. Cheap credit and public works programs were at the heart of Keynesian theory. At about the same time, he began work on his life's masterpiece. "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money is one of the great works of western letters, a masterpiece of social and political thought that belongs with the monuments left by Aristotle, Hobbes, Edmund Burke, and Karl Marx." Its focus is on alleviating inequality and posits that prosperity "must be orchestrated and sustained by political leadership."

           Maynard's health began to fail in the mid-1930's. He credited his recovery to "Hitler's aggression" and went back to work as an unpaid advisor for the UK when WWII broke out. He eventually accrued so much influence and power that he became the functional wartime Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1944, now Lord Keynes, he headed to America for the Bretton Woods Conference. "At age sixty, with his health failing, Keynes had reached the zenith of his intellectual and political powers. Bretton Woods would be his final grueling test." He was influential in the creation of the IMF and World Bank, but held a losing hand throughout the conference as the representative of a bankrupt nation from a bankrupt continent. It was America's world to rule. He returned to America in early 1946 for the ratification in Savannah of the Bretton Woods decisions and died soon thereafter in London. He was 62. "No European mind since Newton had impressed himself so profoundly on both the political and intellectual development of the world." He lived an astonishing life and dominated political economics throughout his life and for the three-quarters of a century since his death.

       Usually the grade of Incomplete accompanies my inability to complete a book. In this instance, it means I did not finish the last fifth of the book dealing with the consequences of his thoughts which bring the story to this century. It also addresses the fact that I had to skip through innumerable pages of deep dives into the dismal science, which I acknowledge is both beyond me and something I find very boring. Eight years ago, when there was a flurry of writing about WWI, I stumbled upon two of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century: George Kennan and John Maynard Keynes. I would heartily recommend anything Kennan wrote, and in terms of Keynes, "The Economic Consequences Of The Peace" is one of the 33 A's on this blog of 967 books. It's magnificent. Thanks again to Greg Weiss for recommendations that challenge me.

         

Give Unto Others, Leon - B

        In the latest Guido Brunetti novel, we find the commissioner helping an old friend who tells him she is worried about her daughter. She's not really worried about her daughter, but is trying to get the police to look at some of the shabby things her retired husband is doing. It is not the illegalities he may be up to, but rather the younger financial advisor he is likely bedding. It all falls apart for her and her husband as Guido sorts it out, and we are treated to a view of La Serenissima during the pandemic.

Fallen Mountains, Grant - B+

                Earlier this month, I commented on this young woman's second mystery set in the north woods of Pennsylvania. This is her first. A terribly unpopular and incredibly selfish SOB, son of the richest man in town, shows up after an absence of years. His presence invokes memories for his best friend, his old girlfriend, the town's loser whom he used to torment, and the sheriff. His fiancee reports him missing and soon the hunt is on. He has met a gruesome ending, but none of the potential suspects are responsible. Comparing the two books shows the author's growth over a few years and compels me to look forward to her future efforts. One rather likable trait is that the conclusions are not at all negative. I won't say they are happy endings, just not bad endings.

The Goodbye Coast, Ide - C+

           This is an attempt by a pretty good LA-focused author to bring Phillip Marlowe into today's City of Angels. As I have never read Chandler, I have no idea if there's any effort to reflect or recreate whatever his idiosyncratic style was. In this novel, Marlowe accepts two missing persons cases and is thrust into the world of failing Hollywood types and Russian bad guys. The story started off well, but completely dragged to the end. The reviewers seem to like it, so if you're a Marlowe or an Ide fan, I guess it might be worth the effort. 

Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975, Hastings - B+

            "The struggle for Vietnam...lasted three decades and cost between two and three million lives." It destroyed "one US president and contributed to the downfall of a second." The war "was predominantly an Asian tragedy, upon which a US nightmare was overlaid: around forty Vietnamese perished for every American."

            Vietnam was occupied by imperialist France in the late 19th century. By the 1930's, a few hundred French families dominated the 70%of a populace that lived in near-slavery. It was a world of  "institutionalized cruelty" that Nguyen Sinh Cung was born into in 1890. The world would later know him as Ho Chi Minh (Bringer of Light). Young Ho would become a Vietnamese nationalist, revolutionary and communist. By 1940, he was the leader of the Vietnam Independence League (Vietminh). As WWII ended, he declared independence from France. The French announced "ironclad opposition" and began a war that would eventually cost them 90,000 dead. Ho's ruthless and vicious tactics afforded him the chance to dominate the north and rule from Hanoi. The French, motivated to retain all of their colonies in order to restore their dignity, occupied Saigon. The French then captured Haiphong and Hanoi while Ho and his military leader, Giap, turned to guerilla warfare.  The Chinese communists began to help their Vietnamese colleagues in 1949. The Vietminh were soon able to field armies in the north, and in 1951, inflicted major casualties upon the French while capturing vast amounts of abandoned material. 

          The French found a willing paymaster in the US. After the loss of China and the beginning of the Korean War, we would make no distinction between colonialism and anti-communism. The US poured billions into the French effort and encouraged them to seek a definitive battle. The French selected a place called Dienbienphu. They began to occupy the valley 175 miles west of Hanoi in late 1953. Eventually, twelve thousand men fought for the France at what was called a fortress. Slowly, the Vietminh dragged equipment into place as they spent  months surrounding the garrison. It became obvious to the French that their presence in the valley was an egregious error, but they would not walk away. Paris insisted on fighting. The country was ruled "by men burdened by the humiliations of the previous decade and thus constrained in every decision by a yearning to restore national honor, revive la patrie's glory." Giap attacked on March 13th. Soon, the airstrip was closed, artillery battered every corner of the camp, and infantry began to overrun the outer defenses. They surrendered in early May. The US had thought long and hard about intervening, but could not garner the necessary congressional approval.

      Attention turned to Geneva, where the British and Soviets were conducting a conference on Vietnam at which John Foster Dulles turned his back when Zhou Enlai extended his hand. A division of the country was settled upon at the 17th parallel with elections to follow. The French would leave and Ho would lead the north and Diem the south. The British, French, Chinese and Soviets endorsed the Accords, but neither Vietnamese delegation did, nor did the US. The north and south "both fell into the hands of oppressive authoritarian regimes." Nonetheless, a million people fled south as the communists destroyed the middle and upper classes. Collectivization and outright slaughter were the north's policies. The focus of Ho and Giap was internal. War and aggravating the Americans were not on their agenda.

      The south of the country was untouched by war and was home to the Mekong Delta, a rice-producing powerhouse. It was immeasurably more prosperous than the north. However, it was led by a man lacking in charm, unloved by the people, and seemingly uninterested in them as well. Diem, appointed by the French puppet emperor, Bao Dai, was a Catholic in a Buddhist world. For most folks, he seemed a continuation of colonialism. Dulles tried to remove him in 1956 but failed. As American money poured in, corruption ran amok and extended to Diem's family. Corruption, nepotism, favoritism of Catholics, persecution of critics, and a failure to initiate land reform were just some of Diem's problems. "The regime's domestic excesses and shortcomings, rather than its failure to hold reunification elections, provided communists with the tinder to rekindle the war in the South." In the late 50's, southerners asked Hanoi for permission to fight. It was reluctantly granted. In 1959, the Vietcong killed two American advisors in an attack on an ARVN position. A year later, the VC picked up the pace, brutally terrorizing the population and exhorting against the government in Saigon. From the perspective of the US, the problems of South Vietnam were not governance problems, but a security issue requiring a military response. 

     There were some in the Kennedy administration who tried to counter the communists on a social level, but for the majority the belief was "that military power...could achieve political objectives in post-colonial states." Under JFK, the number of military advisors grew from 400 to 16,000. The life and death struggle with communism would continue. The early 60's were a foreshadowing of what was to come. The VC ratcheted things up, the ARVN mostly avoided fighting, the US press pointed it all out, and MACV told Washington everything was going great. The spring of 1963 saw the Diem government begin its final downward spiral. The ARVN lost a pitched battle in the Mekong Delta, security forces violently suppressed a Buddhist protest in Hue, and a Buddhist priest self-immolated in front of western cameras in Saigon. With explicit US approval, the Vietnamese generals disposed of Diem a few weeks before JFK was assassinated. In the north, an aggressive Le Duan succeeded an aging Ho, and with an increase in aid from the Chinese, prepared to pursue unification.

   The decision makers in Washington feared losing to the communists more than anything else and thought about either bombing or invading the north. The US was regularly dropping commandos off in the north, and in August of 1964, there was  contact between a US destroyer and some North Vietnamese patrol boats. The USS Maddox was ultimately found to have a single bullet hole on its upper works. We retaliated with our first bombing of the north. LBJ and McNamara, characterizing the Gulf of Tonkin incident as an attack on America, received from Congress near unanimous approval to our "taking all necessary measures." LBJ was elected in a landslide by a populace that could reasonably conclude war was not on the horizon. He famously said he would not "send American boys to fight a war Asian boys should fight for themselves." Yet, once the election passed, the administration began studying its escalation options. It was obvious to all that the south would soon succumb without direct American military action. "A dramatic expansion of America's war in Vietnam became inevitable."

   The new year saw the VC increase its terror tactics and for the first time, regulars from the north came south to fight. The administration knew a war would be unwinnable, but was afraid to tell the America people or Congress how hopeless it looked. The ongoing turnover of leadership in the south with coup after coup, when combined with the ARVN's lack of will, pointed to abject and immediate failure. VP Humphrey,  Sens. Mansfield and Russell and Democratic eminence grise Clark Clifford all encouraged the President to not fight. Nonetheless, McNamara continued to encourage the president to escalate. Haunted by history- the appeasement at Munich, the loss of China and the ambiguity of Korea - LBJ began to send US troops that spring. Soon, we had 175,000 men there.

     By the end of 1966, there were 385,000 Americans in Vietnam, 6,000 fatalities and a cost of $15B for the year. The US poured vast amounts of money into the country, fueling pervasive corruption throughout Vietnamese society and the US military. The USAF bombed and napalmed the country with limited effect on the enemy. The Army and Marines conducted thousands of search and destroy missions with little consequence. While the VC terrorized specific members of the populace, the US policies of indiscriminate violence killed many as well. 

     The US also escalated the bombing of the north, but it never produced the desired results. The primary problem was that there really wasn't much to bomb. North Vietnam was a primitive agricultural society. Because LBJ did not wish to risk Soviet or Chinese retaliation, Haiphong harbor was off limits, as were targets within specific distances from Hanoi and the Chinese border. The north built up its anti-aircraft skills with Soviet equipment and eventually downed 2,600 Navy and Air Force planes. One of the more important consequences of the bombing was that it rallied the north against the US menace from the air.

        Nineteen sixty-seven saw the war intensify and the anti-war movement begin to fiercely oppose it in the states. "The consequences of the rising tide of domestic turbulence were profound" and led to an army "infected by a cult of dissent, drugs, and disbelief." That summer saw Hanoi call for decisive victory through a general offensive-uprising. It was also the year that saw the upgraded M16 in the hands of infantrymen in Vietnam. Unfortunately, the weapon jammed in the jungle and caused endless problems for the grunts. The Army's reaction - classify the information and deny the truth of what the US men were experiencing. 

       January 30, 1968, Tet, was arguably the most important day in the thirty-year history of the Vietnam War. The north unleashed all it had across the entire country and suffered massive casualties. Only a few hundred southerners joined in. Although the US and the south prevailed, it cost LBJ the WH because Tet destroyed the fallacy of MACV that victory was around the corner The broadcasting of touch and go fighting in Saigon, particularly at the American Embassy, proved that very little had been accomplished in three years of US involvement. "Perception is critical, and the events of February 1968 became a perceptional disaster for American arms." Sixty-seven thousand fighters attacked 36 of the country's 44 provincial capitals. A small commando unit breached the walls at the Embassy and their feat was broadcast around the world. Also flashing around the world was one of the most famous pictures of the war, an ARVN officer blowing the brains out of a captured VC. Art Buchwald wrote with a Little Big Horn dateline that George Armstrong Custer now sees "the light at the end of the tunnel." The most severe fighting took place in Hue where it took almost the entire month to displace the NVA from the city. The NVA and VC were demoralized by the loss of a third of their attackers. Indeed, they had put so much into their failed effort that it would take years for them to recover. But it mattered not. On February 27th, Walter Cronkite stunned America. "To say we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of evidence...optimists who have been wrong...To say we are mired in a stalemate seems the only realistic yet unsatisfactory conclusion...It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out is to negotiate-not as victors, but as honorable people who lived up to their pledge to victory and democracy and did the best they could." Gloom descended on the WH. A month later, Johnson announced he would not run again. In May, the US and North Vietnamese began desultory talks in Paris. The war continued and the year 1968 would end with 16,899 more dead Americans. After one of the most tumultuous years in US history, Richard Nixon would now try to find peace with honor.

    The NVA and VC suffered through casualties and supply challenges knowing that they would eventually win. It was clear that the US did not have the willpower to push through to any semblance of victory. Indeed, the US Army was "crumbling from within." It was now plagued by drug abuse, racial strife and lack of discipline. "From 1968 until the end, the effectiveness of American forces was in serious decline."Nixon and Kissinger felt that the US could not walk away and, at the same time, did not have plan, even though Nixon had campaigned saying he had one to end the war. They expanded it by authorizing the bombing of Cambodia and began to withdraw American combat troops, replacing them with ARVN soldiers. In late April, 1970, US and ARVN soldiers invaded Cambodia, leading to massive anti-war disturbances in the US. In early 1971, a heavily US supported ARVN invasion of Laos was an total failure, one that led to the WH becoming very concerned about whether Vietnamization could hold the war together until after the 1972 elections. In March 1972, the north unleashed a major offensive in the Central Highlands. Throughout the spring, the southerners fell back under the unrelenting northern efforts. In response, Nixon unleashed the heaviest bombing of the war. The southerners eventually prevailed in the battles of 1972, leaving both sides emotionally and physically exhausted.

     The ultimate settlement comprised many provisions, but only two counted. The communists could stay wherever they were in the south and the US would leave. The north was certain it would be only matter of time. Nixon and Kissinger were sure they had obtained the 'decent interval' they were hoping for. The happiest consequence of the peace for the US was the return of the 588 POW's. The war continued without the US. Two years later in April, 1975 Saigon fell. The communists brutalized the losers. As for the US, a general summed it up best: "The Vietnam war did more to change this country than anything in our recent history. It created a suspicion and mistrust we've never been able to redeem."

   An American professor at the University of Texas, and an author of a Vietnam history reviewed the book for the Times. He states, that unlike most historians who try to shade the war in gray, Hastings sees it in black and white. The only real problem is that it's all black. Hastings castigates the barbarism of the communists, the incompetence of the southerners and the the American penchant for destroying the country they were allegedly trying to help. The reviewer suggests that there is not enough focus on motives, just consequences. 

   Notwithstanding my respect for this author, this has been a real slog. At 752 pages of text, it is a bit long. But the primary challenge for me has been the lack of narrative. By telling the story through the experiences of thousands, the book has a chopped-up feel to it. That said, my positive takeaways are led by the highlighting of the institutional brutality of the communists, who ruled with a Stalin-like single-mindedness. Both the people of the north, and the south after 1975, paid a high price for their independence. The tragedy of the south is that it was prosperous and had potential, but there simply never was any leadership. Hastings suggested it could have been like South Korea. Instead, it's still part of a top-down dictatorship. And as for the US, I once again am astounded by our institutional delusion and still befuddled by a democracy's decision to consistently lie to its people.                                                                      

    

These Silent Woods, Grant - B+

         This is a magnificent novel about a man, Cooper, and his daughter, Finch. Cooper left what I am guessing is the wilds of Pennsylvania and served three tours in Afghanistan. His best friend in the Rangers, Jake, was badly wounded, but was alive thanks to Cooper's efforts. Back home, Cooper's girlfriend Cindy has a baby, but dies in a car accident soon thereafter. Because he is suffering from PTSD, Cindy's parents, powerful members of the community, obtain a court order and take the baby. He kidnaps the baby, goes deep into the woods, and stays at Jake's family's place. Cooper and Finch create a loving, and very close to nature, almost idyllic life together. For eight years, Jake comes to resupply them every December. One year, Jake's sister, Marie, shows up because Jake has succumbed to his wounds. The same week, a young woman goes missing in the national park near Cooper and Finch's cabin. Their world is about to unravel, when a mysterious neighbor deflects the authorities in a different direction. This is a wonderful tale of love and nature. Highly recommended. 

Damascus Station, McCloskey - B+

        This is a superb spy thriller set in Damascus a decade ago. It is a debut novel by a former CIA agent based in the Middle East. It is very, very good. Sam loses a colleague, Val, in Damascus, but like everyone else working for the US, he is not overly concerned because she had a diplomatic passport. Unfortunately for Val, the passport did not help, as the Syrians murdered her in custody. The man responsible for that crime is targeted and will be killed. Sam is tasked with recruiting a young woman, daughter of a minister, whom they suspect may have her doubts. Mariam winds up working for Sam and the CIA, although in the middle of her recruitment, she and Sam wind up in bed. She soon proceeds to provide Damascus Station with pure gold. At about the half-way point in the novel, the story gets very complicated, stretches one's imagination a bit, and finishes in sequential scenes of both individual and city-wide violence. Nonetheless, the book excels at tradecraft revelations and gives insightful specifics of the hell that is the civil war in Syria.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Christie - B+

               This ninety-six year old novel is considered the greatest murder mystery ever written.  It is narrated by Dr. James Sheppard, the general practitioner in King's Abbot. Roger Ackroyd was troubled by the suicide of his fiancee, Mrs. Ferrar, who had confessed to him that she had poisoned her husband a year earlier.  Ackroyd was reading a letter she had posted to him explaining that she was being blackmailed when he was murdered in his study. The letter is missing, presumably taken by the blackmailer/killer. All facts point to Ralph Paton, Ackroyd's step-son and fiance of his niece, Flora. Paton was in financial trouble and Ackroyd was considering cutting him off. Ralph disapeared the night Ackroyd was killed. The following day, Flora asked Hercule Poirot, noted private detective, now quietly retired in the village, to find the murderer. He accepted immediately and began to interview the staff. One of his first conclusions was that Ralph, notwithstanding all of the circumstantial evidence, was innocent. Slowly and methodically, which is Poirot's method, he examines the people in the household and unearths something each person is holding back. However, whatever the lie is, he says it is not relevant to his search.  He pursues and deduces - oh what an insult to Dr. John Watson - that the narrator is the killer. It was Dr. Sheppard who had learned how Mr. Ferrar had died and proceeded to blackmail the murderer/widow. He did so to pay his extensive gambling debts. Greatest ever? I think not.

The Last Platoon, West - A*

          This fabulous novel is set in the last days of our war in Afghanistan. The WH is trying to tamp down Talib activities in Helmand Province and put a dent in the poppy/opium trade. It's harvest time and an Iranian with millions is buying up the valuable poppies.  There's conflict among the locals as some are fighting with the Americans while others are negotiating with them. Diego Cruz, an enlisted man promoted to captain, with extensive combat experience, is sent over by an old superior to embellish his promotion opportunities and to lead a platoon providing security to the fire base that is central to the efforts in Helmand. Cruz's presence unnerves the colonel at the base who happens to be a political officer with no combat time under his belt. The mission is complicated by the presence of three CIA men who are there to interdict the opium trade and, at the direction of the president, capture the drug lord known as the Persian. The Marines find a vast store of heroin in a cave under a mosque, torch it and capture the drug lord. The following night, however, under cover of a sandstorm, the Taliban counter. Suicide bombers make it inside the wire. The concussed political colonel relives Cruz, who ignores him and goes out to re-seal the barbed wire perimeter. With nine dead, no amount of ass-covering by the colonel can save him from being relieved. Cruz lands on his feet with a job offer from the CIA. As for the mission, it was all part of a cynical play by the WH to to have Helmand be declared a neutral province in a deal with the Taliban. The author is a Marine combat vet with a tour as a civilian high up in the DOD, lending credence to both the combat and the politics. This is a delight and I thank Linda Meir for the recommendation.

        Perhaps, the most amazing takeaway here is the extensive use of technology on today's battlefield. Not only are there drones everywhere providing spot-on visual  intelligence, but our people have the ability to listen in on any local Afghani cellphone conversations. Wearing headphones, everyone in the squad can talk to everyone else. Most of the men follow the terrain around them with iPads capable of identifying friend and foe, and of course, the US can always call in fire support from nearby and high in the sky. 

King Richard: Nixon and Watergate: An American Tragedy, Dobbs - B+

         This is a limited re-telling of the Watergate story, focusing on the early days of Nixon's second term, Jan. 20 - July 17. It hones in on the inner workings of the WH as each individual slowly realizes what a mess he has gotten himself into, and that there is no way out. As Kissinger put the finishing touches on the peace deal with N. Vietnam, the Watergate burglars were being pressured by trial Judge John Sirica to state who they had taken their orders from.  Sirica sent Liddy and Magruder to DC jail to await sentencing. Howard Hunt insisted on money from John Dean before he went to jail, prompting the White House Counsel to tell the president that Dean, Mitchell, Magruder, Haldeman and Ehrlichman had all committed crimes and that there was a "cancer" on the presidency. In late March, the first cracks in the dam appeared when McCord's sentencing was deferred because he indicated a willingness to cooperate with Judge Sirica. Nixon and Haldeman decided that Magruder and Mitchell were expendable. Dean was concerned that he was too. Dean retained counsel and began to bargain for immunity. In mid-April, Hunt "told all" and Magruder struck a plea bargain deal. With information piling up, the DOJ briefed the AG, who told Nixon he needed to get rid of Haldeman and Ehrlichman. At this point in mid-April, Nixon struck upon a theory he would try to foist upon the world and the WH press corps: that he just learned about all of this and now was the chief investigator. He and Haldeman listened to the tape of Dean's "cancer" meeting to try to establish that the president did not approve of buying off Hunt, when the eventual release of the tapes showed that he actually did. Nixon eventually asked Haldeman and Ehrlichman to resign, and he announced their departure on national tv. Dean was unable to reach a deal with the prosecutors, but was entitled to "use immunity" for anything he testified to before the Senate Select Committee. On June 25th, John Dean began to testify, mesmerized the nation, and dug the administration's grave before the Watergate Committee. A month later, Alexander Butterfield disclosed the existence of the taping system. Nixon decided to not destroy them because the tapes would exonerate him. "The story of Richard Nixon's fall is neither a Greek tragedy nor a Shakespearean tragedy but a uniquely American drama that we continue to live with today. It is a story without an end because it is the story of us all."

         Most Watergate histories are top-down, and this one is the opposite. This is not a big picture of what happened, when and how it all unravelled, but rather an inside the coverup look at everything falling apart. There is an extensive recounting of who said what to whom in the WH that highlights the completely delusional thinking that went on in Nixon's world.

        

Trespasser, Doiron - B+

   This is the second book in the Mike Bowditch series. The Maine Game Warden is called out late at night, near the and of a 12 hour shift, for a car/deer collision.  He finds the car, but there's no driver and the deer is gone. He has an idea which local lowlife may have taken the deer, but for the life of him he can't sort out where the driver went. A state trooper comes by and tells Mike to go home. It's now a police matter and he has it in hand. When it turns out that the driver is found murdered, Mike blames himself and goes off the reservation seeking to find out what happened. Like all police procedural series, this one has its quirks and idiosyncrasies. Here, it is that Mike is a bit smarter than many around him, and likes to charge ahead and cross a lot of lines. Hopefully, as the series progresses, every police officer in Maine isn't mad at him. 

A Game Of Fear, Todd - B

                 Rutledge is off to the Essex coast in the spring of 1921. A woman sees a murder outside her window, but there is no body. She is a member of the landed gentry and her suspicions need to be addressed. No one believes her, but Rutledge does his duty. He soon determines that what she saw was a performance to scare her, so someone could access her house. Not long after Ian's arrival in Walcher, a war widow is found murdered on the nearby closed airbase. Clearly, there is someone very bad nearby and Ian goes to work to solve the case. This is a fine addition to the long running series. There is a superb blending of the present and all of the overwhelming anxieties and sadness from the war. To top it off, Ian's promoted to DCI. I compliment the authors for only advancing the tale 2+ years in Ian's time over two and a half decades.

Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather, Seal - B

     "Based on one of the bestselling novels of all time, it revitalized Hollywood, saved Paramount Pictures, announced the arrival of Francis Ford Coppola..., minted a new generation of movie stars, made its writer, director, and producer rich, and sparked a war between two of America's mightiest powers: the sharks of Hollywood and the soldiers of the Mob." 

      Watching Joseph Valachi testify before Congress in 1963, "a dead-broke writer" living on Long Island decided to write a novel about the Mob. Mario Puzo had grown up in Hell's Kitchen, where his Sicilian-born mother managed her seven children in the rough and tumble neighborhood in the Depression. Paramount gave him an advance after seeing the first 100 pages, and when completed, the novel was a sensational success. Fame and fortune followed for its author. The novel was so realistic that people in the Mafia could not believe that it was based on research, and that Puzo had never met a real mobster.  He was hired to write the screenplay and moved to Hollywood. Francis Ford Coppola, a director more interested in art than big studio productions, and with a few flops to his name was to be director. Coppola worked closely with Puzo on completely redoing the screenplay to hew closer to the novel, and away from the studio's suggested approach. Coppola had a vision for the film and had settled on who he wanted for every principal role. He won each and every casting battle with the studio. But the battle over Pacino as Michael was the one he almost lost. Evans hated the fact that Pacino was short and stated over and over again that he would not get the role. Evans wanted Redford, O'Neal, Hoffman, Nicklaus, anyone but Al. Coppola persisted, and was almost fired before Evans finally gave in.

    The Italian American Civil Rights League and a real life crime figure threatened to stop the production but they ultimately relented Shooting started in NY in the spring of 1971. The film was "shot in 120 New York area locations over 67 days." Clearly, Francis Ford Coppola is the genius who made this magnificent film as great as it is, and for him, the entire process was the most difficult time of his life. There was no fun or satisfaction in the filming. He, his pregnant wife and two children were living in his brother-in-law's two bedroom apartment in Manhattan for the simple reason that Francis was broke. Every day he waited for Evans, who had sent Jack Ballard to be his eyes and ears on the set, to fire him.  Ballard second guessed every move Coppola made. Pacino too was very uncomfortable in a key role working with such well known actors. The dailies they were seeing at Paramount involved a Brando they couldn't quite hear. There were people working on the film calling for Coppola to be fired, so Francis fired six of them. But when Evans saw the restaurant scene when Michael kills Sollozzo and McCluskey, everything changed. The scene saved Coppola's and Pacino's jobs. 

     Nonetheless, the tension and constant oversight of Ballard who fought every expenditure, meant that stress and anxiety were the handmaidens of  the filming of The Godfather. Post-production and editing began: Evans in Hollywood and Coppola in San Francisco. Both men claimed the credit for making the movie the masterpiece it was. Evans, though, did have the clout to convince the studio to allow it to run almost three hours. The next battleground was the music. Evans hired Henry Mancini; Francis wanted Nino Rota. Once again, Coppola prevailed.

     Both the NY and Hollywood premiers were met with stunned silence. Coppola was so discouraged that he accepted an offer to write a screenplay and flew to Paris to work on it.  The film was a phenomenal success. "It broke Gone With The Wind's record in a week and a half." It was soon grossing a million dollars a day. Oscars followed, and for those with points, Coppola, Puzo, and the producer Al Ruddy, vast wealth came too. As for Coppola and Evans, they continued to hate each other and hurled insults back and forth. For Godfather II, Coppola had it written in his contract that Evans would have nothing to do with the film. Evans went to his grave believing it was his film.

      The first half of this book dealing with Puzo and his struggles is much better than the second half covering the actual production, perhaps because so much has been written over the years. Obviously, the major takeaway is Coppola was brilliant and patient, while Evans comes off as evil incarnate.

  

    

Smoke and Ashes, Mukherjee- B

               The setting is Calcutta at Christmastime in 1921. The entire city is on edge as a visit from the Prince of Wales is days away and the Congress Party is protesting.  Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee are investigating a series of brutal murders tied to a test conducted by the army and the military is  keeping them away from the facts. The murderer is a Gurkha soldier who is AWOL and who is possibly targeting the Prince as well.  Sam and Surrender-not (his British imposed nickname) investigate the murders, liaise with the leaders of the Congress Party, and make all the correct calls to protect the Prince. There actually was a massive protest when Edward visited Calcutta, but the threat to his life is fictional. This is the third in the series and it continues to excel at addressing the tensions between the occupiers and the occupied. Sergeant Banerjee, as a servant of the Raj, is in a particularly difficult position, experiencing the racism of the British and the disapproval of his own people. Sam Wyndham's opium addiction is explained as a result of the morphine he received as treatment for his combat injuries. The novel closes with Sam headed off to rehab. 

The Anomaly, Le Tellier - B

           This highly-acclaimed French novel is an international bestseller and winner of the Goncourt Prize. An Air France Paris to JFK flight takes off, experiences severe turbulence over Nova Scotia and lands at Macguire AFB in NJ - 106 days after it has taken off. Th original flight faced the same turbulence, landed on time and all 243 people on board have moved on with their lives. Unsure of what it all means, the US releases everyone and offers the late arrivals a chance to enter witness protection and establish a new life. As a third Air France 006 approaches the US mainland a few months later, the US blows it out of the sky. The Times reviewer posed a question or two: "Is it science fiction dressed up as philosophy? Metaphysics disguised as a high-concept thriller?" I for one have no idea.

Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages, Jones - B

          This history begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and finishes with the Protestant Reformation. "By the end of the fifth century A.D., the Roman Empire in the west no longer existed." With its expiration, the west inherited traditions of slavery and Christianity, an infrastructure of roads and aqueducts, the Latin language, and a legal system. "It [Rome] was the foundation on which everything in the Middle Ages was built." The western empire had been lost to barbarians from the east. The Huns were forced to cross the Volga and enter Europe because of a 4th century 'megadrought' on the steppe. The Huns compelled the Goths, Alans, Suevi, Burgundians, and Vandals to move further west. Over the course of a century, the various barbarians, and the kingdoms they established, replaced the the greatest empire history has ever known. The century after the fall of Rome saw a rebirth in Constantinople. The Emperor Justinian led the way with a law codification that"set a gold standard for constitutional reform in the Middle Ages." He built the Hagia Sophia and recaptured North Africa from the Vandals and Italy from the Ostrogoths.  The empire was frequently at war with Persia, but it would be Arabia from which a monumental challenge arose in the 7th century. Syria, Palestine and Egypt quickly fell to the Muslims, thus severing from the empire lands it had ruled for seven centuries. All of North Africa and Spain followed. The Arabs even twice threatened Constantinople itself. When their efforts at conquering the imperial city failed, they turned east and went as far as Pakistan. When it was decreed that the Arab language must be used by all in government, a cohesiveness was brought to the vast empire that stretched from Spain to the Asian sub-continent.

        The 8th century in Europe saw an impressive consolidation of lands on both sides of the Rhine by Charlemagne and a concurrent assault by the Vikings from the north. On Christmas day in 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Roman Emperor. His empire extended from the Baltic to Tuscany and from Bavaria to the French coast.  The empire didn't last and was carved up by his heirs in the middle of the 9th century. At the same time, the Vikings descended on Europe conquering and wreaking havoc. They eventually settled down and established important political entities throughout northern Europe, and of particular import, the Danelaw in England, and Normandy in France. The 10th century saw a significant rise in the wealth and power of the monastic system, led by the rise of the Cluny monastery. William of Aquitaine endowed Cluny, and its abbots became international leaders in the golden age of monasticism. Cluny itself was the largest church in Christendom. The monasteries became "centers of literacy, education, hospitality, medical treatment, elderly social care, and spiritual counseling..." A Cluniac monk was elected Pope Urban II. 

           In the late 10th century, Otto, a German king, defended against a Magyar attack by utilizing heavy cavalry, horsemen fully armored and very capable of defeating the plains horsemen who had been threatening Europe for centuries.  "For the next two centuries, powerful, mounted warriors dominated battlefields, while also beginning to burnish their status in society at large." Knights became the epitome of chivalry, "which would inform art, literature, and high culture long beyond the end of the Middle Ages." In the late 11th century, the besieged Byzantines asked for help from their western brothers, a request that led to the Crusades. Pope Urban II urged a crusade to release the Holy Land from Islam's oppression. Anyone who died while crusading was assured a remission of sins and immediate entry to heaven. Spilling vast amounts of Muslim, Jewish and Christian blood, the Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099. The crusader states in the Levant would survive for two hundred years. The first challenge came from a Kurdish warrior and leader, Saladin, who reconquered the Holy land in 1187. Europe responded with another crusade. Frederick Barbarossa, King Philip II of France and Richard the Lionheart of England all took part. They recovered Acre and the ports on the coast, but not Jerusalem. A new pope, Innocent III, directed the crusading spirit inward, inspiring troops to advance the reconquest of Spain, to conquer and convert the pagans in the north of Europe, and to wage war against heretics, particularly the Cathars in southern France. In 1291, the last crusaders left the Holy Land. "Crusading - a bastard hybrid of religion and violence, adopted as a vehicle for papal ambition but eventually allowed to run as it pleased, where it pleased, and against whom it pleased, was one of the Middle Ages' most successful and enduring poisonous ideas."

            The 13th century would see Europe threatened from the east by an extraordinary and powerful force - the Mongols, who would conquer Eurasia from Korea to Hungary.  As violent and brutal as they were, they rebooted trade between Asia and the west, enhanced the transfer of technologies, knowledge and people, established an efficient postal service and implemented a rule of law. Arguably, their achievements would not be surpassed for centuries. 

            The 13th and 14th centuries saw a commercial revolution that changed way the world traded.  Money and goods were flying around the world. Power was now in the hands of merchants and bankers; kings and emperors had to give way. In Italy, the city states of Venice, Padua, Florence, Pisa, and Genoa dominated the finances and politics of Italy and the Mediterranean. At the same time, there was a vast increase in the numbers of books published as scholarly pursuits took hold. Works of antiquity were translated and universities grew. The expansion of learning led to some of the first challenges to the established church by men such as Jan Hus and John Wycliffe. It was also an era of major construction projects.  "The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were a golden age of monumental architecture in the west, in which some of the most iconic buildings in world history were erected." These structures sent "spires and towers soaring toward the heavens, telling interwoven stories of wealth, power, piety, and dominion." The progress Europe was making toward the future was shattered in the 14th century by famine and plague. The Little Ice Age contributed to a famine from 1315-1321. Twenty-five years later, the Black Death tore through Europe, killing an estimated half of the population. "The first economic consequence of the pandemic was to wreak havoc on prices and wages." Riots and revolts followed, the most famous of which was the Peasants' Revolt in England. The populist uprisings were suppressed, but did lead to the loosening of feudalism's ties.

            First in northern Italy, and later throughout Europe, the cultural movement known as the Renaissance began. There was an increased interest in the glories of Greece and Rome, and  rapid technological advances in painting, sculpture, construction and education. It was "the culmination of a long road back to civilization".  The art of Leonardo, the sculpture of Michelangelo and the dome of Brunelleschi highlight the extraordinary leaps made in this era. 

         When the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453, trade with the east became more complicated and rulers in Portugal and Spain were motivated to seek alternative routes. This led to the historic world-changing discovery of the Americas and the European exploration of Asia. In 1522, Magellan's circumnavigation was completed, global empires were being created, and the Middle Ages were coming to a close. In 1455, Gutenberg published his Bible. "Mechanized printing changed western culture in the fifteenth century as fundamentally and profoundly as the creation of the smartphone changed it at the turn of the twenty-first." The availability of the printed word and the increasing exchanges of information throughout Europe led to the last act of this story - the Protestant Reformation. Ironically, the first item Gutenberg printed was a Papal Indulgence, the 15th century financial/confessional abuse that led the list of concerns about the church articulated by Martin Luther. The printed version afforded the church immeasurably more sales opportunities than was the case for those written by hand. The sale of indulgences transitioned from a service to scandal under Pope Sixtus IV in the 1470's. Luther's Ninety-Five Theses were published in 1517. His ideas spread completely throughout Europe in a year. "By the 1530's, the western world was no longer medieval." England withdrew from the Catholic church. Protestants and Catholics were fighting in France and Germany. An imperial army had sacked Rome in 1527. "The rise of the printed word, encounters with the New World, the collapse and fracture of the church militant, the demographic rearrangements caused by waves of the Black death, the humanistic and artistic revolutions of the Renaissance - all these things and more recast the shape and the feel of the west, in ways that contemporaries explicitly recognized, even as the process was taking place."

           

Into The Forest: A Holocaust Story Of Survival, Triumph, And Love, Frankel - B-

                     In September,1933, Miriam Dworetsky and Morris Rabinowitz were married in Vilna, Poland.  The couple moved to Zhetel, a town of 5,000, 80% of whom were Jews. Daughters Rochel and Tania arrived in 1935 and 1937 respectively. When the war began, Zhetel was occupied by the Soviets. Life went from bad to worse two years later when the Germans came. The Wehrmacht passed through, and then the SS and the Einsatzgruppen arrived. Some of the early roundups that summer missed the extended Rabinowitz family. However, most of Miriam's family was killed in December. In February of 1942, the Jews of Zhetel were moved into a ghetto. A few months later, the liquidation of the ghetto began. Before it was finished that August, the Rabinowitz's fled to the woods hoping to join the partizans. "The Bialowieza Forest was an ancient place...one of the earth's last remaining primeval woodlands." Soon, there were 800 Jews hiding in the woods. When winter began, the Germans stopped hunting and decided to let the weather do their work for them. The following year, Morris spun his group off from the larger one and hid deeper in the forest. The summer of 1943 saw 65,000 German troops attack the forest. Somehow, Morris' evaded the SS and survived. The following summer saw the arrival of the Red Army, and the departure of the Germans. The Rabinowitz's had beaten the odds - the family was alive and intact. Only 200 of Zhetel's Jews made it. Morris took his family to Lublin and began to plan an escape to Palestine. In 1946, they boarded a train for Austria and walked into Italy. The UN's DP camps provided the Jews with housing, food and a return to some sort of normalcy.  The opportunity arose to go to America and the Rabinowitz's took it. They settled in Hartford, where they prospered.  Rochel, now known as Ruth, fell in love and married Phillip Lazowski. Life had come full circle: a dozen years earlier, Miriam had let a young Phillip join her and the girls as the family survived the first selektion in Zhetel. Tania married a few years later. Morris and Miriam died in the early 1980's. Their life was a testament to love.

The Temple House Vanishing, Donohue - C+

              This is a coming of age story set in an all-girls boarding school in Ireland in the early 1990's. Louisa is a new scholarship student who comes under the spell of the handsome young art teacher, Mr. Lavelle, and one of his proteges, Victoria. The disappearance of Mr. Lavelle and Louisa twenty-five years earlier is being investigated by a journalist. Everyone thinks they ran away. The police think he killed her. Neither are correct. 

Five Decembers, Kestrel - B

                 Joe McGrady is a Honolulu PD detective who catches a gruesome double homicide a few weeks before Pearl Harbor. The murder of a young American man and a Japanese woman is front page news. Joe flies to Hong Kong following his prime suspect and is captured and taken to Tokyo when the war breaks out. A Japanese diplomat, Takahashi, rescues him from a harsh imprisonment. The young woman in Hawaii was Takahashi's niece, so he hides and protects Joe for the duration of the war in the hope that Joe will catch the killer after the fighting. Joe survives and catches up to his prey in Hong Kong. This is perhaps one of the most preposterous plot lines I've ever seen.