Killer drones

Kill Chain by Andrew Cockburn

Should you believe in the old adage “if you like sausages don’t watch them being made” and you believe that war is sometimes necessary don’t read this polemic.  Mr. Cockburn is thoroughly of the opinion that senior officers should not have the slightest idea of what is happening on the battlefield and their attempts to so discern events is futile, unrewarding and expensive.  Being one of the elite of journalists he is very inclined to toss off remarks such as “the general told me specifically that...” and we are supposed to believe that his conclusion taken from such remarks are gospel and certainly not hearsay.

I am of the Viet Nam war and I am very used to the snarky and frequently incorrect reportage of the elite journalists and those who emulate them.  One of their favorite memes was to quote the black humor that those of us at the point of the spear used to blunt reality, as though it were gospel.  And Mr Cockburn does not disappoint.  Captains appear to assure us that the commanders have no idea of what is happening, Colonels, whom we are told are called “Sun Tzu” by their compatriots, provide us with keen insight on experimental programs as the military attempts to keep up with technology and the ancient rite of the guerrilla - all rotten to the core in their personal opinion.  And since this reflects Mr. Cockburn’s bias it is handed down as though that Chinese Sage had pronounced it himself.

The author is firmly convinced that experimental approaches to command and control, COIN      or Counter Insurgency (that ancient term found in the jargon of early examinations of fighting the disappearing enemy albeit an apparent revelation to him because it was used by someone he disliked) should not be undertaken

Overall an interesting book written by one who understands that war is hell but has no interest in telling us how he would wage it.  He is a bean-counter and attempts to appear authoritative by simply being verbose, telling the same story several times.  In fact I got the impression he was cutting and pasting from various articles he had previously written and perhaps forgot what he had said in the previous chapter.  But then he is a luminary in the field of journalism and perhaps that is considered de rigeur. 

DI Drake's third appearance takes us deep into Wales.

Wales, the land of coal mines, what are to the American eyes unpronounceable names and for those of us of a certain age, Tom Jones.  But there is a lot more there than those trivial pieces of knowledge.  And DI Drake leads us into a view of the Welsh that we would otherwise miss.  Combined with his prickly nature, his OCD and his fears that he will be unsuccessful in solving this grisly murder makes for a melange of interesting activities.

 

First there is DI Drake.  Because of his OCD he is becoming more and more estranged from his wife.  He needs his Sudoku puzzles to provide him with calm along with Bruce Springsteen for company when he drives.  But he also finds that contact with some of the seamier sides of life infuriate him but he cannot let that interfere.  His staff are understanding but they too have their quirks and eccentricities.  And finally there are the citizens of Conwy, a village small enough that everyone knows everyone and their business too.  Big wigs in London want to build a nuclear power plant in the area and need to buy up land, smallholders are unsure and there is, as always, those opposed to the plan.  And an Englishman who owns large swathes of land and cottages by the sea and claims his family has lived in Wales for centuries arouses DI Drake’s ire because he cannot even pronounce Welsh Christian names much less understand the language.  And there is another dark and dirty secret bubbling under the surface.

 

It all starts with a fisherman found on the beach, murdered in a particularly gruesome manner.  He had been one of the small landowners being whipsawed over selling or not selling.  As Drake starts his investigation a second murder is reported, this time of a young girl.  Are the two crimes related?  A hard question that must be answered soon because the Police Superintendent wants action soon.  This is starting to affect relationships at the gentry level - not to be bourne!

 

More than just a Welsh equivalent of a police procedural story it tells of relationships, outlooks, raw feelings.  The language situation I found particularly apt.  The same situation occurs here in the agrarian/fishing South where I live that is now being inundated by New Yorkers and New Jerseyites whose harsh vowels, abrupt ways and lack of understanding grate against the Southern psyche.  This is a good story, one that requires close attention but that is easily given as the author winds his way through the Welsh coast and DI Drake solves a complex murder mystery.

the Marauders by Tom Cooper

The highlights of a hardscrabble town named Barataria on the Louisiana Gulf Coast and the lowlifes that live there.  Creole descendants from the Acadians of Canada who moved south before the Louisiana Purchase make their living as watermen seining for shrimp mainly but also other seafood including the occasional alligator.

 

A cast of the usual colorful characters provide impetus to the plot in a wide variety of ways from a deranged metal detector enthusiast searching for gold, a pair of twins with a garden of Marijuana deep in the swamps and a set of low level criminals intent on finding the garden.  The straight man is a teenager attempting to find his way in life and knowing that the best way is to follow the traditions, build a Louisiana Skiff and drag for shrimp as his family has done for generations.  The BP oil spill plays a large part as well.  I had hoped there would be a little leavening of humor ala Elmore Leonard but, alas such was not to be.

 

The interplay of the various denizens of Barataria is written well, the plot sufficiently convoluted to demand your attention and the outcomes satisfactory.

Pasha - A Captain Kyyd seafaring adventure

Like all good seafaring heroes such as C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower, and Patrick O’Brien’s Jack Aubrey, Julian Stockwin’s Thomas Kyyd has risen far in Britain’s naval forces. In Pasha we find Captain Kyyd has been made a Knight of the Bath thus overcoming his humble beginnings, becoming “a man of consequence.”  And to our further delight his closest friend Renzi has assumed the mantle of Earl of Farndon.  

 

We do not lose anything by all this elevation.  Rather Mr. Stockwin sends his heroes to the Dardanelles and Constantinople during the time of Napoleon’s attempts to break out of Europe in which he was trapped by the British navy. Looking East Bonaparte sought influence at the Court of the Ottoman Empire which would provide him with a land bridge allowing him unfettered access to India and beyond.  To this end he has sent Horace Sebastiani, a brilliant general and diplomat.

 

And around this historical happening we find our heroes in their usual roles but this time separated and each’s activities unknown to the other.  Captain Kyyd’s task is to break into the Dardanelles and Renzi’s to appear at the Ottoman Court as a flighty English scholar but to undermine Sebastiani’s influences. Mr. Stockwin has written an excellent adventure, his heroes have their usual human qualities which keep them from becoming insufferable and the reader can continue to admire them for their fortitude and skills.  And best of all Boney is foiled again.

The digital detective

Mr. Allison hurls us into 21st Century detective procedures with a vengeance.  No longer does the hard-boiled gumshoe detect through tailing the suspect, take pictures of malfeasances and finally grapple directly with the evil-doers.  Now it is all through the Internet, cell phones, virtual machines scattered around the world and a wide array of digital devices and procedures most of which the author explains with care and certitude although there were several occasions when I just had to accept that something worked without knowing why.   Even his car is fitted carefully with digital care.  But that old standby, the gun in the glove box remains.  In this case a Glock.   Our man might be digitally adept but he retains that which we like in our PI’s: a willingness to shoot without hesitation.

 

We still have personality quirks though.  A hero named Chaucer (his father had been an English Professor) but prefers the name Chalk.  The academic’s faint distaste of business and its dealings. A dislike of sartorial splendor. And a mental illness that requires frequent medication.

 

The story opens with a dying movie magnate, glorying in the sobriquet “Hollywood Hyena”, seeking Chalk’s aid in finding his three sons.  Not an easy job since the three were by different mothers each of whom had received the magnate’s sperm through California Cryo Futures, a sperm bank that maintains the anonymity of both its donors and recipients.  

 

The three sons are traced and found.  They all three have a certain similar characteristic - a taste violence.  During the tracing several pharmaceutical robberies occur at each of which a strange message is left always the same words and numbers just in different order each time. Old kidnapings that had involved the Hollywood Hyena come to the surface.  Military veterans start receiving mysterious packages fill with medications and the note “Use or sell” signed GR.

 

Since this book is planned as the first in a series we spend a lot of time learning about Chalk and his background. Ex-FBI, divorced, childless, Bi-polar and paranoiac.  I have read several novels recently in which the protagonist has some form of extreme, for lack of a better word, illness and the reader finds how this affects the plot just as other, more mundane backgrounds (FBI, Soldier, sailor, etc) do. Also I believe that as happens to many writers Mr. Allison suffers from the Curse of Knowledge in that some of his explanations depend upon a more intimate knowledge of the digital subject, so familiar to him, than I think his readers share.  It is, however, a good book, well-written leaving us with a taste for more Chalk.

A review of the new Lee Child's novel "Personal"

Having read every Lee Child book presently published, when I got the opportunity to review his latest, Personal, I turned to a book, How to Read Novels Like a Professor” by Thomas C. Foster.  In it I found the ideal comment, to wit: “The novels we read allow us to encounter possible persons, versions of ourselves that we would never see, never permit ourselves to become, in places we can never go and might not care to, while assuring that we get to return home again.”  And Jack Reacher fills all of those premises and more.  He is a tainted hero of the finest order; think of Shane, Dirty Harry, Yojimbo of Japan, Ned Kelly of Australia, Robin Hood of England and many more.

 

These kind of heros share certain characterisitics, some more than others.   A solid belief in the individual, a tendency to live self-sufficiently, a definite distrust of society’s bureaucracies and certainly a firm moral code that doesn’t necessarily correlate with society’s but is based on the ideas of justice and fairness.

 

Jack Reacher certainly matches those traits and with a vengeance.  He is a peripatetic wanderer, wears only one set of clothes and buys a new set every three or four days throwing the old set away and carries a fold-up toothbrush.  He is big (more like a Schwartzenegger or The Rock than Tom Cruise) and fast.  An ex Captain of the US Army Military Police he has tremendous investigative skills.  One of the more delightful qualities of Lee Child’s character is his extensive knowledge of so many things all of which he brings to bear and explains them so very well, with the occasional nugget of information that might or might not be germane but you know is true in the real world no matter how esoteric.  And best of all is his logical train of thought as he examines each situation and works out his responses.

 

In this, the newest of the Jack Reacher novels, Jack, in Washington state, finds an ad in the Army times telling him to call a friend.  Within 30 minutes of his calling a car picks him up, takes him to McChord Air Force Base where he is whisked off to Pope Air force Base in North Carolina.  There he meets an old friend and finds out that there are five elite snipers loose in the world one of whom, John Kott, has a deep grudge against Reacher.  After all Kott has just completed a fifteen year prison sentence and is longing to get even.  The first indication of this cabal of snipers is the rifle shot against the President of France.  At a range of 1400 yards he was apparently saved by the protective glass around him.

 

The list of snipers is cut down as the suspects are found and their innocence proven.  Eventually two remain and the search moves to England where the G8 Economic conference is to be held and it is apparent one if not more of those Ministers will be a target.  To explain more would be to ruin one of Lee Child’s best thrillers except I will say that the title of the book fortells much of the end game.

Night Heron, a taut espionage thriller

Phrases such as “taut writing,” “extreme tension,” “involved plot” seem to be in use for almost every book on the market today that concerns itself with spies and intelligence gathering.  Perhaps even that hoary old cliche “torn from the headlines!” will rear up.  But I have to tell you I found “Night Heron” by Adam Brookes to be all of those and more. I neglected chores, put off other delightful pastimes and generally abandoned myself to this book.  The author is a journalist with experience in the East and Mid-east and he brings an authenticity to his writing that cannot be denied.

 

Prisoner 5995  escapes a Chinese Labor Reform camp after twenty years incarceration, and returns to Beijing.  There he makes contact with a freelance journalist, Mangan, using him as a conduit to send a message to British Intelligence.  The message comes to the desk of Trish Patterson, late of Army Intelligence but now newly in the civilian side.  To her, a former intelligence source, named Peanut (an interesting play on the prisoner’s real name), has resurfaced after a twenty year hiatus.  Mangan is terrified of the contact fearing the Chinese as he already walks a thin line because of his reporting on the “Fellowship.” And Peanut wants what is owed him by the British.

 

Proposing a one-off job Peanut promises more top secret information to come. But is this really Peanut making this offering?  The Brits can’t be sure.  Perhaps he is a “dangle” trying to set up either Mangan or even the British Intelligence Service.  But the proposed information is important and after a series of high level meetings involving several Departments the decision to go ahead is made.

 

But in this age of digitized data espionage is no longer conducted by slipping into offices and photographing secret papers.  A new approach is necessary and Patterson has it in the form of a “gadget” developed by one of their outside contractors.  Sent to Peanut through Mangan the plot enters a new and even tenser section as the “gadget” is put to work and retrieves far more than the designers apparently intended. General jubilation all around.  But a new force is felt lurking in the background, who or what cannot be determined.

 

Things go awry for both Peanut and Mangan when an American infatuated with a lovely Taiwanese girl inadvertently lets slip a piece of information that she reports to her Chinese masters and they must run for their lives.  A hurried contact with Patterson and she sets up an extraction point but can they get there ahead of both the Chinese and the secretive lurkers?

 

If you are any kind of a spy, espionage, secret service type of fan, get this book.  If you are not a fan read it anyway and find out how a well written spy thriller can keep you up all night!

Review of "The American Mission"

Matthew Palmer is a twenty year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service.  He has served in posts around the world in this capacity, most notably in the development of the Kimberly Process whereby diamonds from Africa could be correctly certified as to whether or not they were “conflict free.”  Certainly a solid base upon which a rousing adventure yarn could be built.

 

We find our hero, Alex Baines, toiling in the visa line in an obscure US Embassy in Conakry, Guinea, Africa.  A rising star he rises no more having watched a tribe of Africans in Darfur being wiped out by rebels and the UN peacekeeping force simply allowing it to happen and allowing his umbrage at that fact interfere with his potential success.  We know he loves Africa because he has adopted a young black girl whom he rescued from the genocide.

 

Rescued from this oblivion and given another chance by his former mentor, he returns full of hope only to discover to his dismay that rampant corruption exists in the government of the Congolese country to which he is posted.  As is the fad now among adventure writers, a US company, a mining company in this case, is deeply involved and determined to destroy all greenery within view in their desire to rip from the earth the valuable resources that lie under the ground.

 

Combining efforts with a beautiful young woman, Marie Tsiolo, who wishes to bring her tribal village into the 21st century by teaching them mining techniques, Alex discovers that not only is the government and the mining company corrupt and bent on ecological destruction but his mentor, the Ambassador, as a member of a shadowy group, is a guiding hand behind all this nefariousness.  What is particularly egregious is that the company wants to destroy Marie’s village in its process of mining the copper.

 

Rebels in the pay of the mining company attempt to take Marie’s village but another rebel group assist in the defense.  Perhaps I should not call the defenders rebels because rebels are warlike, piratical and untrustworthy, except, of course, for those which are our allies, who are romantic, gallant and heroic.

 

In any case the book does pick up in action towards the last third with a few narrow escapes and little straining to make ecological or other politically correct points.  Suffice it to say Alex does well at the end, marries the beautiful girl and settles in for a calm reflective life in the saved village watching his daughter grow.

Review of "The Inheritor"

Of the Tom Clancy genre, the plot revolves around an Islamist terrorist who sets up a series of attacks on major US energy infrasturcture.  They are well planned and each comes as a total surprise to the US.  The attacks are certainly within the realm of possibility which makes them that much more frightening.  The terrorist is named Aziz Abdul Muhammad and was hand picked by Osama Bin Laden to succeed him, hence the name “The Inheritor.”

 

Intelligence officer David Cain, Air Force Sergeant Emily Thompson and FBI Agent Dave Johnson work as a team to search out Aziz and his operations expert.  Their search takes them far afield but just as they seem on the verge of solving the problem another attack takes place.  

 

There is certainly a great deal of technical information set out in the story which is very interesting but it does not grab the reader as a Clancy story does.  However unlike Tom Clancy’s approach “The Inheritor” does not end well for America.

First flight and how it happened

Most folks are pretty well aware of Orville and Wilbur Wright and the fact that they catapulted the world into flight.  Ohio license plates proclaim “The Birthplace of Aviation” and North Carolina plates proudly declaim “First in Flight.”  Everyone is familiar with the picture of Orville in flight with Wilbur cheering him on.  But who knows that Glenn Curtiss was nipping at their heels and perhaps even flew before they did?  How about Chanute and Otto Lilienthal?  And a number of others who contributed greatly to both the realities of flight and the misplaced theories that hampered progress.

 

The book “Birdmen, the Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies” reveals the massive effort by many people in Europe and the United States to solve the problem of putting men into the sky and making such an effort worthwhile.  Balloons and dirigibles are visited and examined, gliders tested, power plants built and, most importantly, patents sought and issued that affected the search to make men equal to birds.  Today aircraft are built whose wingspans are longer than the first flight by Orville Wright and yet the basic physics remain the same.

 

Here is a book that gathers together the many threads leading to flight and the men who used them to weave a fabric that today envelops the world in a skein of transworld air routes making the world smaller and more accessible with an ease that can only be called remarkable.

A review of the detective novel "Vengeance is Mine"

Writing a mystery novel that the author plans to expand into a series is a very extensive process in that characters have to be established, themes articulated, any running eccentricities carefully planned.  After all, one is laying a foundation that is proposed to support a continuing activity.  Is the protagonist going to have a foil or foils on whom some action is dependent, etc.  Think of Nero Wolfe and Archie.  Wolfe, while the solver of problems, had Archie who was the doer, the narrator.  But think how interconnected everyone was: when you pick up a Nero Wolfe novel you know exactly how each will act in solving the mystery together.  I am sure you can name a number of other pairings.

Vengeance is Mine is to be the first book in a series   Author Krebs introduces us to Benjamin Tucker, former ace investigative reporter, out of a job but enjoying the freedom to write a book.  We are presented with the earthy man, whose language is frequently salty and also awkward, given to putting his foot in his mouth, uninterested in clothing other than a Tee shirt and jeans, quite content to drive a broken down old car.  Fortunately he is happily married to Maggie Marshak who is the CEO and owner of Marshak’s Department Stores which allows him the wherewithal to pursue the bad guys.  Because of his years as an investigative reporter he has a number of friends on the police force and elsewhere, including a cigar smoking detective Lieutenant Netter.

A serial killer is loose, whose M.O. is to rape, kill and then taking the head of the young women for deposit elsewhere.   They all  have very similar physical characteristics and, in fact, they look a lot like Benjamin’s ex-wife!  To make matters worse witnesses have reported seeing Benjamin in places where he has not been.  To continue with the plot would be to unveil far too soon the twists and turns it takes.  Suffice it to say Benjamin has his hands full and is fortunate to have a loving wealthy wife.  It will be interesting to see what befalls Mr. Tucker in the next book

A review of "The Virgin of the Wind Rose; a novel of the End of Times

An adventure/thriller.  No, an historical adventure.  No again, perhaps a double adventure with each story explaining the other.  Even that doesn’t quite capture this book. One tale, set in the late 1400's in Portugal with Henry the Navigator and the Order of Christ at the forefront.  The other set in present day with Jaqueline Quartermane, a strongly religious lawyer. Using facts, both well known and obscure, Author Craney weaves all together albeit not perhaps as seamlessly as one could want.

Starting with the Order of Christ attempting to prevent the Apocalypse the story envisages the melding in of the Knights Templar remnants and their sailing skills.  History tells us that Henry and the Order of Christ trained and sent out into the world, highly trained navigators with mission to find a way to the India by sailing East which required the faith that the tip of Africa could be turned, thus preventing the hated Spaniards from discovering the possibility.  The upshot of this mission, in the book, produces Christopher Columbus who persuades Queen Isabella that the West route would be successful.  Does this religious order know the whereabouts of the thirteen holy instruments taken from the ruins of King Solomon’s Temple and why do they want to bring them together?  In this activity a palindromic square is brought into play as a method of sending messages.

Jaqueline in the present day, goes to Africa to find out why her fiancee was not responding to her calls and emails.  Arriving in Lalibela and descending into the ground to visit the churches dug out there centuries ago, her adventures begin as she unknowingly follows the traces of the Portugese navigators and attempts to solve the cryptography of the 5 x 5 letter square.

A good romp through history and the bringing together of various discoveries that can be explained in several ways or perhaps unexplainable.  But then, that is what these type of novels are supposed to do: reveal hidden truths and provide the discovery of secret mysteries..  And the well written ones leave you with that question in your mind: Could it have been?  An excellent bibliography closes the book.

From conquerors to kings

We are all aware of the great Norman invasion of England and the resulting massive displacement of the Anglo-Saxon culture.  Also there is Robin Hood that valiant defender of the weak and the poor.  Outside of this I doubt that many really know from where the Normans came and what else these powerful men accomplished.  The Normans; from Raiders to Kings by Lars Brownworth is a well written account of how their daring and energy transformed Europe.” It is the kind of book that makes you wish our textbooks were as good when we were studying history. Names and dates there are indeed but connected to real humans with all their faults, foibles and strengths.

It was those men we call the Vikings who started it all, sweeping down out of Denmark, Norway and Sweden in their graceful seagoing longboats, raiding the coasts of England, Ireland, Scotland and France.  Some were asked by a French king to settle on a vulnerable coast and for a price protect France from further depredations.  These “Northmen” built what we now call Normandy and from there conquered England as Normans.

But of greater interest is how far afield they continued in their insatiable quest for plunder and lands.  It came as a surprise to me to read of the great kingdom they developed in the southern part of Italy, the magnificent capitol of which was Palermo on the island of Sicily. The last Norman king of Sicily was Frederick II. Quoting from the book:   “Like his grandfather, Roger II, he was a great patron of the arts, filling the palaces (that he designed) with mosaics, marbles, paintings, and sculptures.  His court in Palermo became the celebrated intellectual center of Europe, a Renaissance court two centuries before the Renaissance. No wonder his contemporaries referred to him as “Stupor Mundi” - the ‘Wonder of the World.’ ”

William the Conquerer, took England, Robert Guiscard, took a large part of France and the great Count Roger, who took Sicily, were all contemporaries .  To quote the book again: “A hundred years later their descendants ruled over the two most powerful and glittering courts of Europe and the greatest of the Crusader states. The Normans (were) at the great tipping point of European history.  It was their daring and energy that transformed Europe.”

Here is a book to read and re-read. Mr Brownworth has done an excellent job in explaining what happened and why in those years.