Capriati's Blood

Lawrence De Maria's crackling suspense yarn keeps the reader in thrall as first-person narrator Alton Rhode -- a cop turned soldier turned PI -- tries to hunt down a missing father whose daughter needs a bone marrow transplant to beat leukemia. Billy Capriati is the father and Rhode, just returned from combat and needing a client for his new PI business on Staten Island, takes on the case from the seductive Ellen James, a model and sometime actress devoted to her ailing 14-year-old daughter.

There's not much to go on, and as Rhode tries to track down the missing Capriati based on the few traces from his childhood and college days in Staten Island, he finds himself getting some unwanted attention from local Russian and Italian mobsters, who seem to have something to do with the sudden disappearance of Capriati shortly after the affair that left Ellen James with a daughter.

Both the narration and the dialogue are alive with wit and energy as De Maria, a longtime reporter for the New York Times, keeps the pace going through this relatively short (218 pages) thriller. Rhode is a sympathetic character possessed of a reckless integrity that makes him a soft touch for a part-time thug who is tailing him and a less sympathetic conspirator who dupes him. He takes romance where he can find it, falling not only for his client but for a swimming instructor/philosophy teacher at the college where he begins his search for Capriati.

De Maria renders the quirky charm of New York's forgotten borough with the affection of a native and also offers another convincing portrayal of Florida, the primary setting for his earlier Sound of Blood mystery, as Rhode closes in on his quarry. Telling details and vivid descriptions make both settings come alive.

There are numerous twists in the plot, some more convincing than others, but once you're along for the ride it's a simple matter to suspend disbelief as called upon. The plot needed perhaps one more layer or clever twist to qualify as a full-fledged novel, but in the age of e-books we no longer have to worry about length or complexity as long as the author, as he does in this case, serves up a completely satisfying read.

Punctured

Rex Kusler's debut novel in the Las Vegas Mystery series is as quirky as the town it's set in. Characters often seem at loose ends -- perhaps that's why they are in Vegas, or maybe people are just more open about it there. There is a murder, and a mystery, and enough suspense to keep the story moving along, but the real pleasure is precisely in this slice of life in a unique place.

The protagonist, Jim Snow, quits the homicide department to play limited poker for a living and manages well enough until he hits a losing streak. When his sister's estranged husband is killed in an RV park after selling his trailer, Snow has to undertake the investigation because the sister, who has already collected life insurance on two other deceased husbands, is the prime suspect.

Along the way, Snow encounters a bar owner who came to Vegas to play pool but couldn't cut it, a young woman who came there to be a dancer but ended up as an apartment manager, and an enigmatic tramp who is not homeless because he breaks into the RV park and sleeps every night in a parked yacht. Let's face it, you don't find characters like this everywhere.

People are talky, but this seems to be part of the spirit of the place. They are ready to tell Snow and his little team -- Alice James, a furloughed police detective and nascent love interest who becomes a full-time partner in subsequent books of the series, and Willie, that tramp -- their life stories as soon as they introduce themselves. What else do they  have? It's like all those aspiring actors and screenwriters waiting table in L.A.

Tracking down the murderer proceeds apace, though Snow is unaccountably obtuse in following up on one clue leading to the identity of the potential killer. There is a twist at the end that will not come as a shocker to mystery readers.

If what you want is nonstop suspense and thrills, this may not be your book. But if you're happy to spend some time in Vegas and immerse yourself in a world of quirky characters, laid-back humor, and a philosophy of life that is vastly tolerant, you will enjoy Punctured.

Castle Cape

This suspense novel by C.L. Withers -- a cross between a mystery and a thriller -- is set in Alaska and is gripping virtually from beginning to end. There are murders and mysteries, action and thrills, all against the dramatic backdrop of Alaska's spectacular scenery and elemental wildness.

Anchorage detective Dan McKenna is tormented by the death of his young son in a shooting accident and has given himself over to drink when the action begins with a shoot-out involving mysterious Russian-speaking hoodlums who may well be terrorists. McKenna, accompanied by his faithful German shepherd, Nero, sets out to unravel the mystery, working with or against the FBI and another shadowy federal agency following the leads first to Kodiak Island, and then into the treacherous waters of the Alaskan peninsula.

You may not be able to see Russia from everywhere in Alaska, but it's not far, and McKenna's case involves him with Russia now, with Chechnya, and even with the Soviet Union of World War II, when it was an ally of the U.S. He has to deal with an FBI Special Agent in Charge who despises him, an attractive FBI emissary from Washington who is more ambivalent, and a shadowy gentleman, also from Washington, who is the closest thing to an ally McKenna will have.

Pursuing his leads in Kodiak, McKenna makes common cause with a Russian-American family and embarks with their green-eyed daughter in pursuit of his hoodlum-terrorists. They encounter a storm more perfect than Sebastian Junger could ever dream of as the plot barrels into non-stop action toward the climactic encounter in Castle Cape, a formidable, inaccessible promontory.

McKenna is a sympathetic, complex character to whom conflict comes easy. His challenging mission brings out the best in him. His police instincts serve him well in seeing through various ruses of his quarry, and his canine partner proves a ferocious backup on several occasions. There is romance, treachery, and hair's-breadth escapes along the way. A great read and highly recommended.

Sound of Blood

This richly satisfying thriller by Lawrence De Maria is not for the reader in a hurry for a quick crime fix. De Maria, a former New York Times journalist who now lives in Florida, wants you to savor New York and Florida in their full glory and seediness as he tells his tale.

There is a murder, a fiendishly clever one, at the outset, and there is suspense as private investigator Jake Scarne tries to unravel the financial and criminal skulduggery behind it. His nemesis is Victor Ballantrae, who shares traits of financier Allen Stanford and Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch, though not even the entire family of his client, the father of the murder victim, is on his side. Scarne's biggest problem is Alana Loeb, Ballantrae's second in command and an alluring woman with a mysterious past.

These are not cardboard characters. De Maria fleshes them out with quirks and flaws and endearing characteristics -- even the two psychopathic hit men employed by Ballantrae. The action flows easily from Manhattan to Miami to Antigua as the author glides smoothly from billionaire magnates to homicide detectives to slick financial manipulators and to bona fide mobsters.

De Maria takes us to a Florida we know from John D. MacDonald and Elmore Leonard, but his Jake Scarne has as much of the hard-bitten Bogie of "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Big Sleep" as he does of the easygoing Travis McGee. Scarne doesn't want to play the sap, either, but the flesh is weak and Alana's allures are often overpowering.

Sound of Blood has many fresh ingredients as well. The author masterfully weaves in financial fraud ripped from the headlines of the past two years. Ballantrae's jack-of-all-trades assassins are a gay couple. There is little room for a happy Hollywood ending as the plot moves with the inexorability of a tragedy toward its climax.

The author savors some things too much. A key golf match between Scarne and Ballantrae skillfully captures the conflict between the two but runs a bit too long for the non-golf aficionado. There are a few too many random characters running in and out of the plot.

But none of this really slows the reader down. With compelling plot and characters and an authority in depicting worlds at once exotic and familiar, De Maria carries us along on a ride that is thrilling and even cathartic as Jake Scarne battles evil that is not found only in fiction.

Devil's Lair

David Wisehart's epic fantasy is a stunning tour de force -- David Mitchell meets Umberto Eco. The author tells his story of a group of pilgrims in the 14th century who retrace Dante's descent into the Inferno with verve and a truly astonishing command of language.

It's not only that he explores the vast reaches of the English vocabulary but that every description or action is conveyed in a highly disciplined prose and laser-precise diction. Wisehart loves words and the reader revels in the language that compels one to follow William of Ockham, Giovanni Boccaccio, Nadja and Marco da Roma, the last Knight Templar into the bowels of Hell and the fate that awaits them there. The history -- Ockham, Boccaccio, Petrarch are all real historical figures along with assorted churchmen who appear -- and the fantasy are rendered with equal authority.

Wisehart finds words you had no idea existed. His writing is well-suited to e-books because you can highlight a word and find its definition if you so desire (a word of warning, the dictionary function does not have many of the words in this book and you need to use the Google or Wikipedia functions to track them down). Or you can save yourself the trouble and simply enjoy the novelty. You may never have encountered the word "costrel" before but when the character unplugs its stopper and takes a drink from it, you can easily conclude it is a pouch for carrying liquids.

In the first half of the book, as the pilgrims set out on their quest, the surreal horror of the Black Death becomes nauseatingly real, as the bubonic plague drives whole towns to despair and sends Ockham and his band into Hell to recover the Holy Grail and thus rescue the world from this calamity. The plague is almost by definition allegorical, and these early chapters resemble Andrzej Szczypiorski's Mass for Arras in their portrayal of a world gone mad.

Then in the second half, the fantastical visions of Dante's nine circles of the Inferno are recreated in compressed prose. The creatures, the damned, the devil himself parade by in dizzying succession as the pilgrims make their way to their goal. They see the famous, including some surprising residents of Hell thought to be in heaven, and friends and relatives from their own pasts. They cope with dangers and vicissitudes as they pursue their goal. Here Wisehart matches Tolkien and the darker Rowling in the boldness of his images.

If anything, you find yourself wishing the prose was a little less compressed and intense, that the suspense and sense of menace were somewhat more drawn out. But the quick succession of events and phantasmagorical images immerse you in what truly becomes an epic.

In the midst of all this, Wisehart's little band of characters keeps the reader's sympathy as much as Frodo or Harry Potter. Ockham is the excommunicated logician who can attain salvation through faith. Boccaccio is the worldly poet who gives up everything to follow his friends. Nadja is prone to epileptic seizures that bring on heavenly visions -- or are they demonic temptations, or just delusions? And Marco finds qualities of heroism he had no idea he possessed.

Wisehart has written verse plays -- something of a lost art -- and it's not by accident that poets are major figures in this epic. There is some verse, but much of the prose, too, is darkly lyrical. This is an accomplished work that demonstrates conclusively, if anyone still doubted it, that independent authors can produce literature on a par with the best that mainstream publishers put out and propel to bestsellerdom.

The Illumination

This thriller by Jill Gregory and Karen Tintori has two Americans attempting to safeguard a relic of the primordial light of creation, keeping it out of the hands of various malefactors and delivering it to the Israeli Antiquities Authority. The authors keep a fast pace as diverse villains -- an Iranian fanatic with the evil eye, a Florida cult leader with ambitions to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, a super-secret government agency, and an arch-conservative Jewish terrorist organization -- all seek to get the powerful relic for their own ends.

Museum curator Natalie Landau, aided by a new-found ally in the person of a former television journalist and occasional CIA asset, is the one trying to keep the object out of their hands. After some narrow escapes in New York, she and her ally, D'Amato, experience some more narrow escapes in Rome and jet to Jerusalem for the climactic action.

Natalie is a sympathetic and self-reliant protagonist, displaying a phenomenal ability to fend off brutish male attackers through her mastery of martial arts. In fairness, though, accepting Natalie's feats requires no more suspension of disbelief than for your typical male protagonist in action thrillers.

The authors are quite good at unveiling and developing the esoteric secret of the Eye of Dawn and linking it to the widespread belief in the evil eye. In fact, you have a much better idea of the prevalence of this belief in the Middle East after reading this than you do after finishing Jason Goodwin's most recent thriller, An Evil Eye.

Most of the other characters lack any real dimension and at times seem derivative from The Da Vinci Code and other thrillers in this genre. But the pace is good, the writing is crisp and the sense of urgency is maintained through the end.

The Grand Mirage

I haven't made too much headway in my reading lately because I've been busy proofing my own book, The Grand Mirage, which was published as an ebook last week and will become available in paperback sometime next week.

It's been a whirlwind since I decided at the end of August to self-publish this historical thriller. I'd worked on it for literally years and just couldn't find a publisher to buy it, despite the yeoman efforts of my agent, Mel Parker. But I feel like it is a good book and there are people out there who will enjoy reading it. So I enlisted the help of Jose Ramirez, signing up for his "expedited" program at Pedernales Publishing. He's really serious when he says expedite and four weeks after signing the contract, the ebook was available for purchase.

Reading the book through twice in two weekends (and embarrassingly finding new mistakes each time) eased any qualms I might have about taking this step. In all modesty, I think it's just a very good read, with adventure, romance and intrigue, an exotic setting, sympathetic characters, the whole shebang. I'm not saying it's destined to become a classic or a bestseller, but it deserves an audience.

Buy it, read it, enjoy it!

Petroplague

I’m always a sucker for disaster movies on TV – asteroids, global warming, earthquakes, you name it – so in my new exploration of e-books I readily took up Amy Rogers’ techno-thriller about bacteria that start eating up the world’s oil supply.

This plot device, based on extrapolation of the bacteria that are used to help clean up oil spills, is not completely original, I learn from Amazon, because a 2007 book – Ill Wind by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason – has a similar premise for its point of departure.

But it all depends on execution, and Rogers does a pretty good job of focusing this potentially global disaster in a dramatic action starring a Latina graduate student at UCLA and restricting the initial disaster to Los Angeles. Motor-driven LA is, of course, the perfect place to feature a gasoline-eating bug and the picture of a city paralyzed and quarantined by the disappearance of all petroleum products is captivating.

Los Angeles is also an excellent choice because of its geographic isolation – a fact few of us non-West Coasters are even aware of. The author uses the mountains ringing LA to great effect as a way of trying to contain the disaster and as a challenge for the heroes trying to provide the silver bullet to end the disaster scenario.

Christina Gonzalez is the grad student who is working with the “mad” scientist character Dr. Chen to tinker with these bacteria so they can be used to convert the hydrocarbons in hard-to-get oil sands into methane – natural gas – that is much easier to recover and kinder to the environment. It is a two-step process, and unfortunately for the planet’s outlook, only the bugs performing the first step – converting petroleum to hydrogen and acetic acid – are the ones who get loose.

Rogers draws Christina as a full and sympathetic character. And her two sidekicks, cousin River and her boyfriend Mickey, also grow into reasonably well-developed characters, with flaws and virtues in equal measure. A good editor would have trimmed the early interaction of these characters, which take on an amateurish quality, to get to the faster-paced action more quickly.

There is also a certain amount of wit in the writing, which, along with the generally good quality of the narrative, keeps the reader turning the pages. The evil corporate guy is a thin villain, and the LA mayor, a Latino who conveniently for the plot served as a helicopter pilot in Iraq, also needed some more fleshing out for the role the author had in mind for him.

Judging by the editorial and reader reviews of Ill Wind, Rogers’ treatment of this disaster scenario, in what is essentially a self-published book, compares favorably to the earlier book, which has the benefit of being “curated” by the very hot editors at Tor.

Techno-thrillers, as Michael Crichton demonstrated so well, are a great niche, so I’m sure Amy Rogers will be out soon with another book. And, who knows, maybe late some night Petroplague will appear as a disaster movie on TV.

The Essene Conspiracy

This thriller by S. Eric Wachtel is part of my new effort to read self-published e-books as I prepare to self-publish my own book. I read and recently reviewed Jim Bruno's excellent Tribe.

I'll confess I spotted this book, evidently a print on demand copy in the thriller section of Politics & Prose and simply did not want to take a chance spending $14.99 on an author I knew nothing about. Even so, the $9.99 price tag on the Kindle version was relatively high.

The novel starts with a lot of promise -- the mysterious murder of the Israeli finance minister, a sympathetic American "security consultant," and a plot that eventually involves the Essenes (as in Dead Sea Scrolls), the Ark of the Covenant (as in Raiders of the Lost Ark), and that chapel in Rosslyn, Scotland (as in Da Vinci Code).

Unfortunately, the book failed to fulfill its early promise and broke down seriously as it moved to a climax that lacked any action or suspense. The author spends a page in the final chapters showing us a statue in the Justice Department and then tells us about a firefight to wrap up the conspiracy in two sentences.

Author Wachtel evidently worked in finance and the money-laundering scheme that launched the plot is well told. Likewise, the scenes in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the descriptions of Israeli officialdom show glimmerings of real potential. But the putative hero, Harry McClure fades into the background as the plot progresses and spends virtually all of his time showing off his cigars, his office, his single malt Scotch, his country house (we get it, we get it -- he's rich and knows how to live well, whoopee). The most active he gets is clipping off the end of cigar and pouring a drink. Wachtel's author bio says he's working on another Harry McClure plot, so I hope he figures out how to get a little action into the narrative.

The principal villains also show considerable promise at the beginning. Mayer Rubin becomes a Hasidic Jew, spends time in Israel, and is infected with the idealism of the Essene conspiracy, which aims to rid Temple Mount of its Muslim sacred buildings, rebuild Herod's Temple and restore the Ark of the Covenant to it, establishing a theocracy in Israel. The author develops a lengthy back story for Rubin, but then, as he does with McClure, just drops him and shifts to a new set of characters that are never fleshed out.

This book would have benefited enormously from a good editor. Wachtel is evidently not a practiced writer, but equally evidently he has some talent for it. He simply failed to follow through, lapsed into telling instead of showing, got way to caught up in details (people are always saying goodbye when they don't need to), and numerous other mistakes of a first-time and untutored writer.

So we see that the limits of self-publishing are quickly reached. This could have been, if not a good book, at least a much better book with some help. Wachtel will have an opportunity in subsequent efforts to improve and presumably will.

In any case, I'm a sucker for thrillers that involve Essenes, early Christianity, Templars and all those esoteric things that by now constitute a real sub-genre. So even with its flaws, I enjoyed reading this.

Tribe

Cross-posted on Amazon

James Bruno’s riveting tale of skulduggery in the CIA and Central Asia is a page-turner par excellence. Or, if you’re downloading the latest e-book from this Kindle bestselling author, a page-scroller sans pareil.

Bruno shifts the rollercoaster action of his latest spy thriller effortlessly from the Khyber Pass to the Old Executive Office Building to the “Wild East” of Yemen and the reader just needs to hold on for dear life.

Tribe’s story of a conspiracy to have the U.S. government hand back control of Afghanistan to the Taliban in exchange for American oil companies getting to divvy up the riches of the Caspian Sea is Realpolitik at its most real. Bruno, author of Permanent Interests and Chasm, brings his trademark insider’s knowledge of government intelligence agencies together with a narrative skill that rivals anything David Ignatius has written, and does him one better in conveying the curious blend of bravura and bureaucracy that characterizes the CIA.

Bruno adds his own mordant wit and deeply professional cynicism to the mix to create a potboiler that has everything – action, suspense, sex, humor, and, in an American take on John Le Carré’s gray world of espionage, a meditation on the bigger issues of trust and betrayal and how to find room for patriotism or integrity in a world of runaway egos and ambition.

The hero of Tribe is Harry Brennan, who in attitude and magnetism could be portrayed on the screen by Clint Eastwood in his prime (the author even toys with the reader and mentions Eastwood in describing his character). This Harry is dirty as well, as he is not always successful in resisting the seductions – of power, sex, and revenge – that are thrown his way. He acknowledges his failings, but does not lose sight of which side he wants to come down on.

While Tribe begins with an attack on an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and climaxes with a thrilling hostage rescue in Yemen, most of the action in between takes place in the tony townhouses of Georgetown or the equestrian estates of Virginia where Washington’s movers and shakers ply their trade. It is tempting at some points to figure out if Bruno has mounted an elaborate roman a clef, but in the end it isn’t necessary because the author’s vivid characters stand on their own.

The action in exotic locales like Central Asia and the Arabian Peninsula has an eyewitness feel to it. But it is ultimately the layers of intrigue within the U.S. government – and the Establishment that governs behind the façade of our democratic institutions – that packs the real punch in this novel. Bruno skillfully and authoritatively peels back the cant and hypocrisy of the ruling class, and mercilessly exposes the greed and venality that motivates so much of what happens in Washington.

Tribe, we realize as this thriller reaches its climax and denouement, is about loyalty, and that is not a quality confined to Afghani or Yemeni clans that Harry Brennan gets involved with. It refers as well to the primordial ties of family and friendship, of camaraderie and shared values that manage to survive the ravages of our putative civilization. Harry, in the end, is faithful to his tribe.

Bruno is in the vanguard of those talented authors who are exploiting the rapidly expanding digital medium for books. He has found his audience in the burgeoning e-book market and gained a loyal following. Because he can deliver the goods in authenticity and a lucid prose style, Bruno is proof that the post-publishing house world can produce suspense novels on a par with the franchise names on the print bestseller lists.