I’ve also recently finished several books that were “just okay” not too bad, but nothing great either.
First was Unafraid: A Novel of the Possible by Jeff Golden. I had high hopes for this one. It is a counterfactual novel about what would have happened if JFK had survived Oswald’s attempt to assassinate him in Dallas. The book starts out well enough, with fairly straightforward examples of Kennedy continuing his policy initiatives but now with a massive burst of political capital from having survived an assassination attempt. The book rapidly goes off the rails however when the author not only draws a total moral equivalency between the US and the USSR of the early ‘60s but also begins grinding his own far-left wing axes and attributing all sorts of internationalist/socialist policy moves to Kennedy. Not recommended
Next up was The Nelson Touch : The Life and Legend of Horatio Nelson by Terry Coleman. This is a decent little biography of the great admiral, but I am afraid rather focused on the negative aspects of his career, life and personality. As a refreshing corrective to the many hagiographies out there it is good, but only good. It is not particularly engaging and does rather tend to dryness. This book should probably be read in tandem with something that provides a bit more detail on Nelson’s naval victories where its extensive info on his personal life and rather questionable actions at Naples will serve as a useful counter-balance.
I also finished A Good Clean Fight by Derek Robinson. This book, set in the North African desert, is something of a sequel to Piece of Cake and follows the men of Hornet Squadron (and several other sub-plots all related to the main plot) as Fanny Barton, the current CO of Hornet Squadron, mounts a costly series of ground strafing mission to entice the Luftwaffe fighters up where Hornet’s aircraft can shoot them down, and thus save his job as CO.
The other sub-plots are all related, sort of, to the main plot and include several major characters; Jack Lampard, commander of an SAS patrol raiding German airfields; Paul Schramm, a Luftwaffe intel officer with a grudge against Lampard; and Henry Lester, an American reporter in Egypt looking for a scoop.
To me, these sub-plots kind of distracted form the travails of the Hornet Squadron pilots, and because there was so much going on, I never got the sense of “getting to know” the characters that I did in the earlier novel. In fact, now that I think about it, there wasn’t enough “carry-over” from Piece of Cake that one actually needed to read that novel first in order to fully understand this one. I think the excellence of Piece of Cake may have set my expectations too high for this book. Perhaps if Robinson had not billed this as a sequel, I would have appreciated it more for what it is.
Anyway, it wasn’t bad. I enjoyed reading it, but unlike Piece of Cake, I won’t be raving about it to my friends.
I also finished A Rising Thunder by David Weber, the latest volume (13?) in the adventures of Honor Harrington. As with most series, this one started deteriorating after eight or ten volumes; in this case, about four or five books ago. Instead of each book being a self-contained story, the author starts ending the books in seemingly arbitrary places. Additionally, it seems like the larger the number of volume the more verbose and bloated the writing becomes. This series has the additional problem of the author moving the main story line from a straight space-navy war between Haven and the Star Kingdom of Manticore to a bunch of folderol about a multi-generational cloak and dagger plot mounted by Manpower Inc. and the shadowy “Mesan Alliance” to subvert the known universe. Anyway, I’m still reading them because I like the characters and the space navy parts of the plot, and I must admit that I’ll certainly read the next one, and probably the ones after that, but I am very glad that I can buy electronic versions of them direct the publisher (Baen Books) for $6 each. As far as my recommendation, who am I kidding? If you’ve read the first 12, you’re probably going to read this one. If you haven’t read any of them, you’re not going to start here.
Finally, I got Kindle version of The Confession by John Grisham from the library. This novel is another chapter in Grisham’s campaign against the death penalty. The book starts in Texas with the disappearance of a white high-school cheerleader. Although no body is ever discovered, an anonymous tip focuses local police on a black high-school football player who despite a total lack of physical evidence, “confesses” after a 15 hour interrogation during which the youth was not represented by a lawyer. A judge sleeping with the lead prosecutor lets the confession into evidence, the testimony of a jailhouse snitch puts the icing on the cake and the kid is convicted and sentenced to death.
Fast forward nine years. The kid is out of appeals and his execution is scheduled within the next week or so. At this point, a recently paroled convict, currently in a “halfway-house”, walks into the office of a Lutheran minister in Topeka KS and confesses to killing the cheerleader showing the minister the girl’s class ring, which the convict has kept as a souvenir, as proof. The rest of the novel is the race between the young man’s execution and the minister’s efforts to save him.
The book was good. It was vintage Grisham. If you liked his other books, you’ll probably like this one. It was fairly well written, compelling and very engaging. I enjoyed it. It was a nice way to kill a couple of hours, but not something I can see myself ever coming back to.
33 for the year
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