36. Black

Black - Christopher Whitcomb

Run of the mill thriller. I expected more. I read the book because of the helicopter on the front. I maintained those beautiful machines. They were never used int he book. Stupid book. LOL

I expected more of a military techno thriller from the cover and the description. It was not. It was more of a crime novel with some politics and a bit of terrorism. Whoop-de-doo.

It did not suck, but it was a waste of time compared to other books I have read.

29. The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

A friend wrote this synopsis and little review a while ago.
"Twenty-four children: twelve boys, twelve girls, tributes selected by random lottery every year and sent to the capitol city of Panem to compete in a brutal, bloodthirsty fight for survival, with the last participant standing declared champion.
Welcome to the Hunger Games, a grim reminder to those living in the twelve districts comprising what was once the United States of their place as virtual slaves to the gleaming Capitol at their center.
Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen is this year's female representative for District 12, having volunteered to take her younger sister Prim's place. Sent to the arena with the baker's son and classmate, Peeta Mellark -- a boy who, several years prior, saved Kat and her family from the ravages of starvation after her father's death in a coal mining accident -- neither competitor from the final district seem to be contenders.But Peeta's good nature and Kat's small stature belie the former's cunning intelligence and the latter's experience as a hunter; while a revelation from Peeta during the introductory ceremonies sends Katniss into the first day of competition more than a little off-kilter.
The stage is set, the tributes have arrived, and the cameras are watching...let the games begin.
It is no exaggeration to call THE HUNGER GAMES a pulse-pounding page-turner. Collins grabbed me from the first page and didn't let go. While Katniss isn't always the most likable character (in fact, there were plenty of times I much preferred the affable Peeta, or even sweet, birdlike little Ruth), she is always compelling, thanks to her rational approach to every challenge and her dogged determination.While THE HUNGER GAMES is a plot-driven novel, the characters and their relationships are the heart of the story. Ms. Collins has created a dystopian tale of Orwellian caliber for young adults."
 
I agree with that assessment. It is a great read and is exciting. It is definitely not difficult. It is Young Adult fiction. How difficult can it be?
 
I saw reviews for the movie coming out soon. I will go see it and hope they stick to the book. Will I read the rest of the trilogy? Probably not. There are so many other books to read. I did pass this one off to my teens. Two of them are "already reading something", one has no interest in the book but will watch the movie, and one grabbed it hoping it didn't suck. She will probably be happy with the read.
 
The ruthlessness of some of the children really threw me, but it is supposed to be a different time and their society has changed a lot.
 
The character of Rue fascinated me and I felt genuinely sad when she died. Poor kid.

25. Dominion

Dominion – J.L. Bryan

I stumbled upon this book while searching for something else on the internet. I had heard the name once before through some US Marine Corps friends. Supposedly this book has or had some kind of a cult following with US Marines deployed in Iraq. When I stumbled on it I remembered that and decided I wanted to read it. That worked perfectly for me since I had just gotten a kindle for free and this book was in that format. That is how I read this one.

This is my first time reading a book that the author does not sell at all. It was written and given away freely. The book is “licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License” (creativecommons.org). The author says “this means you’re free to make copies of this book and give them away. Hey, why don’t you give away a copy right now? Thanks!” I have never heard of this before. Get the book for free in .pdf format HERE.

I think musicians should do this online. Give away the music content and earn money on merchandise, concerts, etc. Adapt to the 21^st century and stop worrying about anti-piracy. The more people hear, the more junk they will buy.

Anyway, this book is about America in the future. Terrorists have detonated a nuclear weapon in Columbus, Ohio and killed millions. The government has drastically changed to protect the citizens. They now have a Dept. of Terror and have a state sponsored and run Dominionist Church. Child and Family Services mean something entirely different. The state run news agencies manufacture news to form opinions in the population that they wish to see. Non-conformists are eliminated through mass hangings at sporting events. Lots of stuff like that. It is a very interesting and unfriendly world.

The story is full of adventure and discovery as a man’s eyes are opened further as events unfold. The ending is pretty decent too. It was a fun read and has some pretty good potential to be a great action adventure movie. I am thinking along the lines of Mad Max meets Diehard.

23. The Girl Next Door

The Girl Next Door - Jack Ketchum

Extremely disturbing. Haunting. Intense. Very unpleasant subject matter written in a way that grabs you by the throat and forces you to slam the gas-pedal to the floor knowing the bridge is out ahead and the pain is coming. I absolutely could not put this book down.

I will now have to watch this movie. The author approved. That is different.

This is a story loosely based on a real event from 1965 but placed in the more familiar surroundings of the authors childhood neighborhood. The real world events involved Sylvia Likens and Gertrude Baniszewski.

This book is full of mental illness, child abuse, and eventually murder. Knowing that these things happened make it even worse.

The involvement of the other children in the house and from the neighborhood in the abuse of this teenage girl remind me of Lord of the Flies. Far more violent and disturbing, but similar.

This book really left me feeling uncomfortable, angry and frustrated. It is rare for me to get real emotion from a read, but this one did it.

21. Dark Places

Dark Places - Gillian Flynn

Back in 2009 I read Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. I liked it. I said I would read more of her writing. I am glad I finally did. Ms. Flynn's writing has made her one of my favorite female authors.

He stories are not happy. They have a very dark side to them. They are full of dysfunctional families and females with violent streaks. Her website says one reason she writes these novels is because:

"I think women like to read about murderous mothers and lost little girls because it’s our only mainstream outlet to even begin discussing female violence on a personal level. Female violence is a specific brand of ferocity. It’s invasive. A girlfight is all teeth and hair, spit and nails — a much more fearsome thing to watch than two dudes clobbering each other. And the mental violence is positively gory. Women entwine. Some of the most disturbing, sick relationships I’ve witnessed are between long-time friends, and especially mothers and daughters. Innuendo, backspin, false encouragement, punishing withdrawal, sexual jealousy, garden-variety jealousy — watching women go to work on each other is a horrific bit of pageantry that can stretch on for years."

This book is full of all that. The book bounces back and forth between present day investigation and past events that took place 24 years ago (1985). A family was devastated by the murder of a mother and two sisters by their teenage brother. A surviving sister testified against him. She was seven at the time. All these years later she is finding out that maybe what she said was not true and her brother was wrongfully convicted. Unraveling the events of that time and the repercussion it had on the lives of many people is an outstanding tale.

Sharp Objects was good. Dark Places was even better. I will read anything Flynn writes.

"I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ."

16. Kiss Me, Judas

Kiss Me, Judas - Will Christopher Baer

"The judgement of Phineas Poe, ex-cop, is not at its best. Just released from a psychiatric hospital, he is lured into bed by a beautiful and menacing woman who calls herself Jude. He wakes up in a hotel-room bathtub packed with ice, holding a damp note that reads, "If you want to live, call 911." Jude has stolen one of his kidneys. "Don't worry," she whispers in his dreams, "you really only need one." This brilliantly minimalist novel follows Poe--a grungy, seductive, and deeply vulnerable antihero--as he pursues the mysterious Jude and is plunged into an edgy, drug-blurred underworld where he almost feels like he's come home. Falling helplessly in love with a cruel but tender killer, he fights to avoid becoming her accomplice as well as her victim. As Kiss Me, Judas propels its cast of comic and sinister characters toward a shocking climax. This rare new voice glitters with corrosive wit and razor-sharp images that invade the mind with the arrogance and sexual intimacy of film. Will Christopher Baer doesn't describe arousal and vertigo--he evokes them."

That is what made me want to read this book. It lived up to everything I thought it would be and more. It is dark and disturbing. It is unpredictable. I was constantly trying to figure out what was going to happen next and getting it wrong 90% of the time.

If you want to go for a wild ride in a book that kept me engrossed and turning pages, this is one to do just that.

The characters throughout this book were outstanding. I could really hate them, or feel for them, or be disgusted by them...and sometimes it was multiple feelings at one time. Rarely would I feel bad for a dude that is a big a douche as Phineas Poe, but I did.

Here is the books description from the author's website: "Have you ever loved someone who's mortally wounded you? Phineas Poe, disgraced cop and morphine addict has just been released from a psych ward. He meets a beautiful woman and killer-for-hire named Jude in a hotel bar. Red dress. black hair, body like a knife. He takes her back to his room and wakes the next morning in a bathtub full of blood, missing a kidney. Dragging himself from a hospital bed, Phineas discovers he wants to get close to Jude like a hunger--and he wants to kill her. Finding her is a downward spiral. Falling for her is the start of a twisted love story that takes him from the snowy streets of Denver to the high plains of Texas where the boundaries between victim and torturer — killer and accomplice — become nightmarishly distorted."

If you are looking for any happy-happy/joy-joy, look elsewhere. It will not be found in these pages, but it is a great read.

86. Whitewash

Whitewash - Alex Kava

Eh. This was just your average every day run of the mill nothing special but it was entertaining.

The part I found most fascinating was the very idea that organic materials left over from processing plants (chicken heads, etc.) could be turned into oil by accelerating the supposed process by which oil is created naturally. Imagine the potential.

The part I found ridiculous is that they could do the same with hurricane debris (lumber, plastics, metals, etc.).

So, what it came to was that the company producing this new oil was having to pay for the chicken heads and stuff because fertilizer companies wanted that same stuff. There was cost involved. On the other hand, due to numerous hurricanes, the government was paying 50 dollars per ton for someone to haul stuff away. So, the corporation that spent billions on inventing and building this plant and making it work so that the country, and the world, would not be dependent on Middle East oil fields, was suddenly so short minded that they took shortcuts that they knew would put dioxins into a river...just to save a dollar short term.

I think that is ridiculous. A corporation invested billions. Now the author wants us to believe they would not refine the process for what they said would be two more years in order to recycle the debris waste safely? That is insane! No corporation is going to risk billions in order to save a few hundred thousand. Especially when they were just about to be awarded a contract that gave them exclusive rights to supplying the Department of Defense.

They threw away a future. They discarded an awesome invention and MASSIVE profit potential in order to save a dollar right now? Totally ridiculous.

Other than that, it was not bad, except that maybe there were too many characters and different story lines that just happened to all coincide in the end and make a nice neat little package. Yeah yeah yeah.

80. The Book Of Fate

The Book Of Fate - Brad Meltzer

This was a pretty decent suspense thriller. Nothing magical.
The character of Wes Holloway was a big time sissy pants.

The title of the book is stupid. There is no "book of fate". It is some crap the crazy killer dude uses as reasoning for all kinds of things that happen to people.

The use of the Masonic symbols would lead one to believe that there was much more to that being tied into the plot than there really is. Once again, it is all tied in through the mental gymnastics of the lunatic character.

Still, it is an exciting book and would make a pretty decent movie. They may have to do some editing of the part where Lisbeth is getting whooped on by the bad secret service dude. That was not very nice.

The CIA guy seemed kind of clueless and had a lack of intuition at times. I would not think he would be in the position he supposedly held if he was nowhere near as bright as even Wes' lawyer friend.

Overall, I enjoyed it.

76. Infected

Infected - Scott Sigler

Extra-terrestrial parasites grow in human hosts until they hatch to build a portal to bring millions of aliens to Earth for some unknown reason.

The graphic descriptions of the parasitic growth, the crime scenes of the "victims", and the war waged within the body of one "Scary" Perry Dawsey, ex-football linebacker superstar, are outstanding.

I really enjoyed this one and will be looking for the sequel to finish the story.

70. Jeremiah: Terrorist Prophet

Jeremiah: Terrorist Prophet - Michael A. Smith

This was a fast paced thriller about a terrorist disguised as a prophet of God who wants to break America apart into separate countries based on cultural factors such as race and religion. One of those areas just happens to be the north west USA. It is to be named New America, will be a theocracy, and will be run by God's appointed superhero, none other than Jeremiah himself.

Jeremiah is part of a decades old plot set up by his mega-rich German uncle. Following each act of terrorism Jeremiah reveals a new chapter of the Book of Second Jeremiah as revealed to him by God. This is the book that shall be added to the end of the bible according to Jeremiah.

He murders a guy who is a rapist and killer. He murders two boys who have been a blight on society all through their teen years. He poisons the water supply to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. He blows up the New York Stock Exchange. He threatens the use of biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction...and the race is on to catch the bad guy.

While all this is happening he uses a national news television program to get his message out to the masses. Of course, the masses, being crazy fundamentalist Christians looking for any "message from God" they can follow blindly and fanatically, no matter how absurd, insane, or non-biblical it is, they all join in and Jeremiah starts a movement. Yeah, right.

Then the heroic government agents and "enlightened few" (I swear, they used those exact words.) prove that Jeremiah is actually a kid from Minnesota who supposedly died on a ski trip to Europe, has been plotting and planning for years, is associated with all kinds of known terrorist, separatist, and fundamentalist extremest groups, and is blowing smoke up everyones booty.

So, Jeremiah has two nuclear weapons he plans to use to bribe Washington into giving up about a third of it's territory, abandoning military assets in place, and peacefully relinquishing the reigns to him. Sure. That is gonna happen. Oh, it doesn't.

But...Jeremiah gets away (again and again and again, ugh)...and the end of the book is him revealing himself to someone as they begin establishing their "nation" from within...for the sequel...in the trilogy...which I will pass on.

The book was fun and exciting and a real page turner. It was also predictable and full of me guessing correctly about where the author would go next. I enjoyed the read, but there was nothing challenging.

One paragraph I really did enjoy was when the FBI agent was explaining how Jeremiah was able to get such a following to the President's chief-of-staff. Superhero Steve said
         "I see a melting pot that no longer makes stew. It has quit boiling and the ingredients are starting to separate out. Not only have we given up on integrating people of different colors, cultures, and religious backgrounds, but we've got thousands of groups that have circled their philosophical wagons around some central belief, whether it's religion, abortions, guns, sexual orientation, whatever, and they don't want anything to do with anyone who believes differently."

Yup.

17. The Stepford Wives

The Stepford Wives - Ira Levin

This book is exactly what I expected from it. The darned thing has been sitting on my shelf for longer than I can remember. Actually, longer than I have had a shelf. So, I finally read it.

I got precisely the story I thought it would be. I loved it.

I especially love that there is no happy ending or last minute reprieve. It is what it is...and we really never know exactly what it is anyway.

10. Next

Next - Michael Crichton

This was not my favorite Crichton novel. It was exciting enough and had all the requisite Crichton tecnical speak, but it was lacking something for me. I am not quite sure exactly what that was.

The story did raise a lot of ethical questions and possibilities for debate on advances in biotechnology and  the effects some of the legal and governmental decisions can have on many different levels.

The plot was OK. I think Crichton wrote it because he had not written a novel about biotech yet. He has covered many other scientifica and medical fields quite well. This one seemed a bit forced. like he had a thought and worked very hard to get his ideas across. It was like that was the purpose for the book and not to tell a good story.

I did this one as an unabridged audio. It took a while to get through the whole thing. After the book ended there was a portion where the authors opinions were stated in an interview. He says that patenting genes is stupid. Just as stupid as patenting a nose and then having to license everything that has anything to do with a nose. He is absolutely correct. How can there be a patent on something that you did not invent or design? Just because it was discovered by someone does not make it their property in all shapes and forms. That is why this book was written. I agree with him on that point. I just wish the story worked better while imparting that "wisdom" upon us readers.

I did not hate it. I enjoyed it. Perhaps I am being to hard on the book because it was written by Michael Crichton. I expect a LOT when reading his books.

82. Drive

Drive - James Sallis

The protagonist in the book is named....drum roll, please..."Driver". Well, I am sure that is not his real name, but it is the only name used throughout the book when referring to this character. Why is that? Ask driver himself. That is what he does. That is all he does.

Driver was an orphan. He was raised in foster care. As a teen he left and headed to California. He met a man who was a stunt driver in movies and the man took a liking to the kid. Driver became a stunt driver for films himself.

And then there is the other kind of driving. Driver is also a getaway driver. He is one of the best. He works with professionals. When he is hired for a job he makes sure they understand he drives, and that is all. He does not carry anything. He does not arm himself. He does not plan the job. He does not rob or make phone calls or anything. He just drives...and he is the best.

So, does this Driver guy think that if he is only driving and not actually doing the job that he is no breaking the law? I doubt that, but I think somewhere in his subconscious he is able to live with himself easier.

During a job there is a double-cross and Driver ends up with a lot of loot and trying to clean up the mess so he won't be murdered. All he wanted to do was drive, but it didn't work out that way for him this time. The bad guys come after him. Then he goes after them. It gets pretty violent, but it also has a bit of a humorous side to it also.

This was one of those books that took a while to get used to the writers style, but once I did I wanted to read the whole thing. It was a fun and exciting story with a twisty curvy plot.

80. The Snake

The Snake - Mickey Spillane

A quick romp through solving a crime with an over confident lawman.

Mike Hammer is his name. With a name like that would you expect anything but over-confidence? To tell you the truth, that is exactly what I expected when I picked this book up. I did not think it would be outstanding writing or an intricate plot. I expected a "wham bam thank you maam" kind of book. That is exactly what this is.

It was called pulp-fiction back when it was written. I hear Spillane and Hemingway had a few arguments about if these books were worth publishing. Spillane didn't claim to be a great author. In fact, he even said once "I am a commercial writer, not an author."

Some other Spillane quotes:
"Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney."

"Hemingway hated me. I sold 200 million books, and he didn't. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents, but still... you look at all this stuff with a grain of salt."

"If the public likes you, you're good."

"Now I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am."

"Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book."

"My work may be garbage, but it's good garbage."

 and my favorite:  "I have no fans. You know what I got? Customers. And customers are your friends."

So, when I read this book from a perspective that Spillane is writing it to make a buck rather than write the best book...then this is outstanding. It makes me want to read "I, The Jury" and "Kiss Me, Deadly". I will find them both and follow Mike Hammer through those ridiculous, never gonna happen, no way in the world scenarios that he kept getting into and out of a million times.  :-)

I couldn't help but think if the old Dragnet TV show. This guy was like that, but cockier.

It was fun. I will give it a rating of good, but it is a different kind of good. It is good because the expectation was not to find another Vonnegut type of writing.

78. Amazonia

Amazonia - James Rollins

This book took forever to read. I carried it with me for about a month. I read a few pages here and there. I kept trying to really get into the story, but it just didn"t grab me and not let me put it down. The book was just good enough to keep me coming back and the plot was just good enough to make me wonder what would happen next, but overall it was found lacking.

It starts out great. A man wanders out of the Amazon jungle after being missing for four years. He has regenerated an amputated arm! He is also riddled with numerous aggressive cancers that kill him before he is able to share his story. From that point it is discovered that he is highly contagious and people begin to die throughout the world.
A team is put together to trace his footsteps back into the Amazon in hopes of finding a cause and possibly a cure for what has happened.
So far, so good. It goes slowly bad from there. Nothing drastic, mind you, but it is full of jungle cliché and b-movie silliness.
While traveling the Amazon, what are the typical things encountered by everyone?

Well, there must be the obligatory death by alligator (caiman in this story)...check!

How about the mysterious jungle people and the legends that are meant to keep out all strangers...check!

Oh, and the "outsider" who after some tragic event has been accepted as a member of the "tribe" and is fully trusted by indigenous folks with all their secrets...check!

There needs to be a second group to throw a monkey wrench in the works in the name of corporate greed. Of course the big evil drug corporations will hire the "ends justify the means" evil tracker guy to steal the cure once our heroes find it. And of course this guy will have fallen in love with a sadistic tribal woman who is the world's greatest shrunken-head artist. (Can you feel the ridiculousness yet?)

These things just felt like jungle-story cheese to me. And then there were other things.

How about the group gets attacked by a cross between giant venomous frogs and piranhas. These little critters killed an entire tribe of natives, but just by coincidence the groups "medicine man" happens to have some powdery substance that puts these things to sleep.

So, we escape the piranha-frogs with minimal loses. Whew...but then they are attacked by a flesh-eating swarm of locusts. Once again, the medicine-man uses some ancient natural jungle herb remedy to keep the bad monsters from attacking (though not hurting them) and the group escapes. Once again, the only guys dying are Army Rangers. (Military is expendable when we are writing a book that is supposed to be pro-environmental solutions only. Man made solutions would not help make the jungle itself seem so supernaturally powerful.)

Then we need to get across a swamp. Oh, man, what will we do now? Let's build rafts! The rafts then get attacked by more caimans. But these fellas are not normal. They are ancient. They are well over 100 feet long! Once again...Rangers die.

Then there are the giant black jaguars that look like shadows at night. Please!

Finally we make it to the goal. This is the place where a tribe lives that was supposed to be only a thing of legend. But they are real...and it is totally whacked! A giant tree has captured all manner of creatures for centuries and is keeping them alive in its root system. It is analyzing their DNA and altering it to suit its own purposes. This tree has altered human DNA to enslave the offspring. The tree has created the piranha-frogs, the man eating-locusts, the giant jaguars and who knows what else! GET OUT OF HERE!

I carried this book all these weeks and plodded through it just to read some crack-head junk like that? So, the events of the story were just good enough to keep me interested, though they felt kind of goofy and clichéd. The climax was totally cartoonish in my opinion and wouldn't even make a decent believable Saturday morning monster movie from the 70's.

Overall, it was OK...but barely. Maybe that is why it took me over a week to even try and type this blog entry.

63. Executive Power

Executive Power - Vince Flynn

I tried again to find the "magic" I felt when reading the Clancy novels of the 80s and 90s. I failed again. Darn.

This is just another of those political thriller novels where the ultra-cocky super-hero CIA guy saves the world over and over.

This time, yet again, the terrorists want to obliterate the Zionist state from the planet and will stop at no ends. Yet again the uber-tech gadgets utilized by the USA come in handy and allow pieces to come together through sheer technological advantage that would otherwise, and in reality, go undetected.

I used to enjoy these kind of stories a lot. Now it just seems so superficial. I was surprised by that.

56. Panic

Panic - Jeff Abbott

Lots of guns and violence and plot twists. This was a non-stop battle between an "innocent", the CIA, a rogue group of killers, and all kinds of other people somwhere in between good and bad guys.

This book was so full of twists and turns that it was hard to tell who was lying, who were the good guys, who were the bad guys and how the story would turn out.

Of course, from the beginning I thought the main character would end up with the girl. He did. They live happily ever after. They beat the international ruthless gang of killers. They beat the CIA. They beat MI5. Yeah, yeah, yeah...but it was fun to follow along.

I really enjoyed the Des character. He was such an awful human being.

The book didn't have a lot of substance, but it sure was packed full of action.

52. The Hot Zone

The Hot Zone - Richard Preston

This book has been on my shelf for years. I added it to the "To Be Read" challenge just to get it off the shelf. Now I don't have to look at it ever again.  :-)

Richard Preston also wrote The Cobra Event. That was an awesome book that had one scene that still haunts me to this day. I expected this book to be somewhat like that one. It was not.

This book is non-fiction. It recounts times and events that occured in the 1970s and 1980s concerning outbreaks of deadly diseases like Ebola and Marburg.

It was interesting. It was scary to think about what could happen in the worst case scenarios. It was even scary to think about lesser scenarios. The book failed to alarm me to the point where I care enough to worry about it once finishing.

Much of this information was used to create the fictional Cobra Event novel. That was much more exciting. Then again, this book was true. It was interesting. That's about all. I was not thrilled.

36. The Ghost War

The Ghost War - Alex Berenson

This was a decent espionage story that spanned from North Korea, to Afghanistan, to China, to Iran, and of course, America.

We have our super-hero CIA agent. We have the typical problems in his life. We have the typical inner turmoil over being a killer for his country. Yada yada yada.

I don't know. The book was OK. Not really a story that grabbed me. Not really a character that thrilled me. Not really bad guys that repulsed me.

It was a mediocre political/military/espionage thriller. That's about it.

21. Child 44

Child 44 - Tom Rob Smith

Set in Stalin's Soviet Union in 1953, this story is intriguing and insightful. It not only was an excellent crime novel, but it explained how the people of the Soviet Union thought. How they would act to protect themselves in many different ways..

I found it fascinating how each person’s existence was based on their relationships with everyone else around them. Everyone went through life behaving as if the smallest problems with anyone at all could cause an investigation. These were investigations in which the accused was presumed guilty and was never able to prove their innocence, even if they were. The accusation alone made them guilty.

One of the premises of this book is that during Stalin’s reign there was no crime in the Soviet Union. There was no crime because the State said there was no crime. Whatever the state said must be true, even if the facts prove otherwise. There could be no crime because the State promised it’s citizens that it would provide a paradise where all their needs were met. The only way there could be a crime is if the State failed in some way. That was not allowed.

So, in this book there is a serial killer. He is murdering children all over the Soviet Union. They are all found naked, mutilated, with their mouths full of “soil”, and with a string tied around their ankles. There murders are routinely covered up and “solved”. The blame is always placed on some crazy person. A drunkard. A foreigner. A Lunatic. An orphan. All the people who would not cast a shadow on the Soviet system. These people were outside the Soviet system. They were vagrants and problem people.

This is where the protagonist, Leo Demidov, becomes involved. He works at the MGB. This is the predecessor to the KGB. Leo works as an agent who investigates and arrests political dissidents. He goes after the people who take “actions detrimental to the Soviet way of life”. Needless to say, admitting there are multiple murders that have resulted in confessions, yet are all incorrect, is something that is “detrimental to the Soviet way of life”. If one confession is wrong then thousands are suspect. The entire legal system is based on these confessions. It would all fall apart if a coverup is exposed.

There are alternate plot lines taking place for the whole first half of the book. It took quite a while for me to realize which plot line was the main story line. They were all interesting.

Anyway, for reasons unrelated to the murders, Leo falls from favor. He and his wife, Raisa, are arrested and sent to the far eastern regions of The Soviet Union to work. He has a rival at the MGB who has succeeded in setting him up and getting himself promoted.

Leo’s world is shattered. He has dedicated his life to the Soviet Union. He has bought the party line in totality. Now he has nothing. The very system he loved has sent him packing. He now learns to see things and think very differently.

At that time he discovers the body of a murdered child and realizes that the same evidence was present at a murder he covered up in Moscow. He convinces the local militia general that they need to investigate.

The story rolls from there. The killer’s identity and motives eventually are revealed. It is not a big surprise, but the unfurling of the chase was very interesting and exciting.

Something that I found both heart-wrenching and sad was the attitude of the Soviet people and it’s government towards orphans. I have adopted four children from Ukraine. I know what happens to these kids and how they are literally “non-persons”. Yes, “non-persons” is a legal term used to define them. I swear to God.

During the story there were two times that orphans choked me up. One was when the militia arrested an orphan and railroaded him for a child’s murder. The teen boy was executed for a murder he did not commit and was accused of it only because he was an orphan. An easy target.

The second was early in the book. Leo and Vasili are pursuing a “criminal”. Leo catches him, but Vasili ends up executing two of the man’s friends to set an example. The man and woman are executed in front of their two daughters. Leo later has to interrogate Brodsky (the prisoner) in Lubyanka prison. The conversation goes as follows.

“-The children? Mikhail’s daughters? Where are they now?

-They’ve been placed in an orphanage. They’re safe.

An orphanage- was that meant as a joke, was that part of this punishment? No, this man wouldn’t make a joke. He was a believer.

-Have you ever been to an orphanage?

-No.

-The girls would’ve had a better chance of surviving if you’d left them on their own.

- The State is looking after them now.”

The State is looking after them now. Yeah, just like it was looking after my four children.The State sucks today. I am sure it sucked much more under Stalin.

This was an excellent book. Especially for a first novel. I will read more of Tom Rob Smith’s work, despite the weird name.