BillP's Book\Miniature\Wargame Blog

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve finished four more books;  Blood Alone: A Billy Boyle World War II Mystery by James R. Benn, Casino Royale by Ian Fleming and two volumes of George MacDonald Fraser’s outstanding McAuslan series, The General Danced at Dawn and McAuslan in the Rough.

This is my third trip through the two McAuslan books and I’m enjoying them every bit as much this time as I did the other two. I don’t have a whole lot to add to what I wrote back in 2009 here: https://billp46.wordpress.com/2009/03/ other than to say that given the recent disappointments I had when re-reading things, I’m glad these held up.

Blood Alone was another installment in the WWII adventures of erstwhile Boston PD Detective (and  Ike’s young nephew) LT Billy Boyle. This time Billy is mixed up in some cloak and dagger behind the scenes stuff for Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily. As with the others, this one is fast paced and well written. I enjoyed it. Potential readers should read them in order to get full enjoyment as there is a bit of an ongoing arc for the characters, but each volume is comprehensible on its own.

Finally, Casino Royale, Ian Fleming’s first James Bond book. Amazon has recently secured the digital rights to this series and is making them available to “Prime” members in their free lending library, so I picked this one up since it had been several years since I read any Bond.  Wow! I had forgotten how tightly written these books are. There is an awful lot going on in only 188 pages. I had also forgotten how internally focused this particular book is. I’d say that the majority of the novel is Bond’s inner thoughts while dealing with the various situations in the book. I am also very impressed with how well the new version of Bond, played by Daniel Craig matches up with the Bond of books (cosmetic physical differences notwithstanding). Anyway, I enjoyed Casino Royale immensely and can’t wait to read the rest of them!

114 for the year

I just finished The Litigators, John Grisham’s latest legal novel. Unlike most Grishams, this one isn’t much a “thriller” there’s little or no suspense, and very little in the way of “justice for the afflicted” that features in so many of his novels. Essentially, this is the story of two rather sleazy, ambulance chasing Chicago personal injury attorneys and a burned out, but good-hearted, young, Harvard educated, lawyer  who’s sick of billing 3000 hours a year for a high-speed mega-firm making their first foray into the “mass-tort” arena, with somewhat unpredictable results.

The book was just “ok”. Honestly, it felt a little like Grisham “phoned in” this one. The basic plot was very predictable, none of the characters (even the young guy) came across as all that believable,  and the final disposition of pretty much everything was facilitated by a sort of a deus ex machine. Still the book was pleasant and engaging and it did move along smartly, so I guess it was worth a couple of hours.

110 for the year

I just finished The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick and I was underwhelmed. The book is set during the early 1960s in a world where the Axis won WWII and partitioned America into a Nazi-dominated East Coast puppet state, a Japanese-Dominated West Coast puppet state and a rather large Rocky mountain based more or less independent buffer state.

The book was a mess. It has several peripherally connected sub-plots, none of which receive much attention and none of which is brought to a satisfactory conclusion by the end of the book. The counter-factual milieu could have been interesting but it wasn’t explored in any comprehensive or detailed way. Only two of the three areas (West Coast and Rocky mountains) are featured in the book.  Finally the bits of the book set in the Japanese dominated West Coast area have this weird and contrived English syntax and feature a strange fascination with the I-Ching, that served no purpose that I could discern.

The book was well written and interesting in a superficial sort of way but there just wasn’t enough explication of the counter-factual to make that the centerpiece. Nor were any of the various plot-lets brought to enough of a conclusion, nor were any of the characters memorable enough. Maybe I just ain’t smart enough to get this book.

109 for the year

This is the third volume in Steig Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, but quite honestly its really a continuation of the second book, The Girl Who Played With Fire in as much as it begins, only moments after the end of that book. I can’t really say too much about this book without giving away key points of the second one, but I can say that it, like the previous two books, is tightly plotted, very fast moving, and with Lisabeth Salander, Larsson has created one of the most compelling fictional characters I can remember. My recommendation on this is superfluous, if you’ve read the first two; you’ll HAVE to read this one. If you haven’t, start with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

108 for the year

I started with the second book in Steig Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy” because I had just watched the Daniel Craig movie version of the first book (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and didn’t want to revisit that story quite so quickly, yet I was still interested in hearing more about the intrepid Lisabeth Salander, so I got this one from the library.

I enjoyed the book immensely. It was tightly plotted and moved fairly quickly, but the real strength of the book is the title character. Lisabeth is a series of paradoxes; a physically slight young woman who is able to physically dominate some much larger opponents, a profoundly moral individual who doesn’t hesitate to mete out physical violence to those she thinks deserve it, an incredibly intelligent person who is almost totally lacking in formal education (she seems to be almost a “self-taught” polymath). She is one of the most incredibly interesting characters I’ve come across and I enjoy reading about her adventures immensely.

Potential readers do need the context of the backstory to fully enjoy this book, so it shouldn’t be started without at least some exposure to the first one. And while, it can be adequately understood by having seen the movie, I think in retrospect, I would have preferred reading the first book before reading this one vice just seeing the movie. Anyway, I’m absolutely certain I’ll eventually read the other two books, and see the movies. Also I’m a bit bummed that Larsson died after finishing only three books, because I’d really like to have seen what Lisabeth became “when she grew up”.

107 for the year.