Tag Archives: reading and reviews

Review: Dirty Gold (Jay Weaver, Nicholas Nehamas, Jim Wyss, Kyra Gurney)

Dirty Gold explores illegal (wildcat) mining (mainly) in Peru, and the dubious ways gold brokers – such as those detailed in this book – manage to sell or obtain that gold to be recycled and sold to other entities or made into consumer goods.

I’ll say this right off the bat: writers of narrative nonfiction could use this as a textbook. It is intelligently laid out, the cast of characters not only denoted before the book begins, but named and described in the text in a way that does not require constant flipping to the beginning to see who is who, the history of illegal mining given (but not in an overwhelming way) along with the sociological, economic, corruption, and political ties to it, and how the various schemes worked to get the gold out of South America. It’s masterful.

At its base, this book is about three men in Miami – Juan Pablo Granda, Samer Barrage, and Renato Rodriguez, dubbed the three amigos – working on behalf of a larger company, manage to bring an astonishing $3,6 billion worth of mainly Peruvian gold to their company. In doing so, both they, and their primary local buyer in Peru, go to a great number of steps to obscure the actual origin of the gold. Those steps include the creation of fake/shell companies, smuggling Peruvian gold to other countries in order to export it to the US, and failed or too-loose vetting of the supposed exporting companies in Peru that declared the gold obtained in a legal manner.

If you’re interested in anything related to gold, money laundering, smuggling, political and law enforcement corruption, sociological, ecological, and health impacts of illegal mining, and the utter chasm between those riding high on the backs of those in abject poverty, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Absolutely a five out of five star read. I’d also recommend “A Most Wicked Conspiracy”, about the Alaskan gold rush, another five star read.

Thanks to Public Affairs and NetGalley for the review copy.

 

REVIEW: The Ravine (Wendy Lower)

In 2009, Wendy Lower (author of Hitler’s Furies , another worthy book to add to your TBR list) comes across a photo from Miropol, Ukraine: a woman, toddler in her arms, baby at her feet, being shot by a Ukrainian collaborator during operations in that country during WWII. The title refers to the ravine into which people fell after being executed for no reason other than they were not part of the so-called “master race”.

What follows is an excellent, although horrifying read, of Lower’s investigation into this photo. This entails records retrieved in various countries – the US, Ukraine, Germany, and Israel – talking with people and/or potential witnesses, and eventually spans ten years to finally identify the doomed family as well as the Slovakian photographer who was not supposed to be taking pictures of these operations.

If you’re at all interested in the Holocaust or the European Theater of Operations during WWII, you’ll likely be as engrossed in this book as I was, even given – or especially because of the book’s subject, something no one should ever forget.

Five out of five stars.

Thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and NetGalley for the review copy.

REVIEW: The Darkest Evening, DCI Vera Stanhope #9 (Ann Cleeves)

I love Vera Stanhope, cranky old broad and DCI.

In her latest outing, Vera drives home while a blizzard rages. After taking the wrong turn – that happens to be the road to her ancestral home – she comes across a car blocking the road, mired in the snow. The driver’s door is open, and there’s a baby in a carseat in the back, but the driver is missing. As the snow continues to fall, Vera takes the child into her car, leaves a note on the car, and carries on to said ancestral home, knocking on the door to seek harbor from the storm, and in the process seeing relatives she hasn’t seen in quite a long time.

When a young woman’s body is found on the property, it’s clear the woman is likely the mother of the child, and that the people in the house (both er relatives and the dinner guests they are hosting) probably know more about the woman than they let on.

The investigation is then off, with no shortage of suspects and Vera and her team wringing information out of people and chasing down leads and connections, no matter how slim they may appear.

We get more background on Harold, Vera’s father and black sheep of the Stanhope family, and more insight into how Vera views the familial tree (spoiler: she’s not into having to put on the facade of genteel landowner, benificent landlord). I believe these short interludes were both worthy of inclusion to the story and not disruptive to the narrative. Well done on that.

As Vera and her team put together the puzzle of circumstances, the perpetrator becomes more violent and aggressive, and the final showdown is a lulu.

Highly recommended. Five out of five stars.

Thanks to Minotaur Books and NetGalley for the review copy (which was approved after I’d already bought it ).

 

Review: The Nine (Gwen Strauss)

Full title:

The Nine: The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany

How do people withstand the most horrific abuses performed by a nation led by a madman?

There are many books about soldiers surviving what were basically death camps when they were taken prisoner, about well planned and executed escapes, about spies hanging on, in hiding, while an entire militarized police force look for them.

The Nine has all of that, and more. It’s the story of nine women, resistance fighters in WWII, captured and interrogated by French police before being sent off to Germany for interrogation by the Gestapo and ultimately imprisoned at a work camp.

The primary focus is on the author’s great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who ultimately became the de facto leader of the group as they met one another in their journey from freedom to prison and back to freedom again.

Where this book shines comes after all of that – after the beatings, the torture, the forced work, and all manner of atrocities. As Germany was facing defeat, some of the camps, including the one housing The Nine, were sent on forced marches, to move prisoners from outlying areas about to be overrun, to prisons closer to what was left in German hands. During their march, they took a chance and fled the march, running into the forest, heading for France.

This journey, free of guards and the wire of prisons, wasn’t any easier than that. Along the way, they found both people willing to help them, and people who had no interest in doing so, preferring to turn them in. They also found those who wanted to use them for their own ends – soldiers, for instance, who thought the Allies would look more favorably on them if they were found assisting a group of former prisoners.

The author is a poet, and it shows. It’s a fantastic piece of narrative nonfiction, although I would say that if you’re just dipping your toes into the water of the cruelest parts of WWII, or if you’re just learning about it, you might want to start with a broader history first, to understand the whole of the war, then narrow to the final days of the European theater before reading this. Doing so will better inform the reader about that particular point in the war, and how the engineered system developed by the German leadership was breaking down.

Much like Night (Elie Wiesel, another must-read), The Nine captures the sense of how it was to live with daily atrocities, and how people came through them.

Highly recommended – a five star read.

Thanks to St Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the review copy

Pub date: May 4, 2021

Review: Heroes of the RNLI (Martyn R Beardsley)

Almost 200 years ago, Sir William Hillary was key in forming the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) – an organized rescue service made up of people fearless (or scared but willing to do it anyway) enough to head out into gales and storms and anything else the sea could throw at boats and ships to rescue anyone who could be rescued. In his time, of course, those rescue attempts were often just people oaring their way out into the sea. These days, the rescues are more high tech, but no less hair-raising at times.

This book is not so much just a history of the service, but a book of many of the more exciting/dramatic/history-making rescues, with the history of the service woven in here and there as the summaries of those rescues move forward in time. Some of them (Grace Darling) are more well known outside the UK than others – most others, I would say. They all, however, encapsulate quite well the deeds of people willing to risk their own lives to save others.

If you like real life rescue stories, and derring-do on the sea, you’ll likely enjoy this collection of stories and the history sailing underneath them.

Four out of five stars.

Thanks to Pen & Sword and NetGalley for the review copy.

Review: The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization (Roland Ennos)

I’m a sucker for a single-item “history of” books. The best books of this nature, I’ve found, are those that are telling a *story* of the history versus those that are simply a history. Books like Salt (Mark Kulansky) or Longitude (Dava Sobel) are terrific examples of the narrative nonfiction that will pull the reader in to the world of the subject, riding along like a time traveler following a single strand of history.

There were instances where I felt that same tug from The Age of Wood, but unfortunately, I found them to be rare. The book is still quite interesting, chasing down the use of wood over the centuries and to the current day, assuming you’re interested in a rather dry overall tone.

Those with an acute interest in wood, or people just looking to learn something on the subject will likely be more willing to get through an almost textbook-like reading than the casual reader, and it’s worth it, in my opinion. It’s relatively short, which brought to my mind the question of whether the storytelling was not enough to push it to a longer page count and more relaxed narrative, or whether the publisher or author decided about 300 pages was all they were willing to venture into the subject. Either way, the book suffers for it.

There are numerous discussions of things built with wood versus metal, and a somewhat questionable (to me) passage about Amazonian deforestation, and into the modern time period, quite a bit of page count given over to metal – not what I was here for.

Overall, it isn’t terrible, but it isn’t great, for a book about a resource indispensable to humans ancient and modern, which I’d think is a fascinating topic.

Three out of five stars.

Thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for the review copy.

Review: From the Woods (Charlotte Greene)

It all starts innocently enough: a group of friends decide to go hiking/camping in an area of a national forest that is only open to a small number of people each year. Then it all goes spectacularly wrong.

Before that happens, though, Fiona has to be prodded into joining her friend Jill and her married friends Sarah and Carol. Fiona and Jill have the usual sort of non-assertive/almost bully relationship that is fairly common in fiction.

But talk her into it they do, and the four head out to meet their guides and Roz, the leader of the guide company. Of course Fiona is drawn to her immediately, and Roz to her, even with the rather brash Jill acting like a twelve year old.

At first, it’s a pleasant ride on the horses, but they hear what sounds like someone chopping down a tree – which means someone else is on the trail who should not be there. When Roz and two guides scout up ahead on the trail, they come back a bit skittish. When asked what’s wrong, they don’t say and the group keeps going until they reach the first camping area.

Fiona and Roz are in that scoping out phase of one another, and it’s one part sweet and one part trope. There’s lots of staring, the “accidental” brush of hands, etc. Meet cute in the middle of a forest.

It turns out that Roz and the guides had found runes carved into trees, and when Fiona and one of the others go to the latrines, they find more. The group now has a decision to make: do they continue, or turn back? Continue it is, even with the awareness that someone is in the forest an carving weirdo runes into trees, setting bear traps, and digging pits. This is the part in movies where someone realizes there’s a killer on the loose, and instead of barricading themselves in their house with a shotgun, they’ve left a sliding door open and hear noises in the basement, so they go down into the basement, without turning on any lights, to see what it is while you scream, “Are you out of your mind?

That should give you an idea of what happens next. People vanish from the camp site. Someone falls into a bear put. Another gets a big chomp from a bear trap.

There’s a mystery to solve, and solve it they do, although I had a hard time believing the ending, it was still an okay book. Everyone finds that well of strength within themselves, pushing themselves into doing things that in their other, “real” world they could never see themselves doing, and I think that’s a very good thing that people as a rule should be doing in their part of the world, even if it seems to them o be inconsequential: those small steps add up.

If you’re looking for sexytimes scenes, there are none in this book – something I kind of enjoyed after reading two other books with what seemed like one per chapter. Nothing against the sexytimes, but if you’re not writing erotica, where those scenes are the point of the story, throwing in too many scenes of that type in genre fiction really is a detriment to the story.

I’m giving this a four out of five, as the book is written well enough, the bad guys sufficiently creepy, and someone finds their strength that they didn’t even realize they had.

Thanks to Bold Strokes Books and NetGalley for the review copy.

Review: In Cold Blood (Jane Bettany)

In Cold Blood is a mystery with quite a bit of social commentary on the route between the discovery of a skeleton buried in someone’s back yard and the ultimate apprehension of the perpetrator(s). If you have issues with the pronouns people apply to themselves, you should move along.

For everyone else: DI Isabel Blood (nice name for a detective) and her team are called to the site where a skeleton has been unearthed by a brother and sister rehabbing a house in which she used to live. DI Blood has some anxious moments where she considers if the bones could belong to her long-missing dad, and the teeniest thought that her mother may be a murderer.

Fortunately, that turns out not to be the case, but it raises another question: whose body is in this shallow grave, and what, if anything, do all the neighbors remember about the woman who lived there?

Most have no idea about Celia, the woman who lived in the house, what she did, or who she was. The next door neighbor and her autistic son are about the best witnesses, but they also track down Celia’s niece, who was in Australia during the timeline reconstructed by DI Blood and the forensics team.

The investigation continues, with some lines of inquiries trailing off into nothing, which is not very exciting when it happens, but it’s realistic.

This is a debut novel, but doesn’t read like one. – the story is well told, and the twisting, winding road to the truth and the perp is an interesting one.

Solid four of five stars.

Thanks to HQ Digital and NetGalley for the review copy.

 

Review: Bulletproof (Maggie Cummings)

This is the second book by Maggie Cummings I’ve read (Brooklyn Summer is the other). this popped up as recommended for me since I read boatloads of mystery/crime/police procedural/thriller novel. This is a romance with police procedural elements. If that is not your thing, this is not the book for you.

If you’re looking for romance and sexytimes, the story of Dylan Prescott, NYPD detective, and Briana long, US District Attorney will be a good read. The two meet (sort of) on the basketball court, as Briana watches two teams play from the stands with her friend and roommate Stef. They meet for real at a bar, later. There is, of course, the instant attraction. The fire starts to burn, they exchange some innuendo, and they part for the night after telling one another they were not looking for anything serious,.

Neither of them told the other what they do for a living, but they find out the next day at the office, where Dylan’s team is tracking a drug operation, and Brianna is the USDA assigned to the case.

This flirting in the office and at the bars continues, and we get scenes from Dylan’s side and Brianna’s side until finally the two get together in bed. If you are not a fan of explicit sex scenes, this is not the book for you, unless you want to skim past those pages – if you do, you’ll be skimming a number of pages here. If you don’t know what packing is…well, you’ll figure it out.

There isn’t a ton of character development going on here, but to be fair, that isn’t really why people read these sorts of books, and most lesrom revolves around jealousy anyhow – which is exactly what happens here, when Brianna leaves the Fed for a job with a well known defense attorney with whom Dylan has some history.

The book does have police work in it – probably enough to justify classifying it as a police procedural and having readers of the genre (like me) pick it up. That portion of the book is fine, and is actually one of the handful off books in the genre that show the more tedious side of police work. It isn’t all car chases and busting down doors. Still, that part of the book is thin, story-wise, and the two main characters could have been in any profession, and the story wouldn’t be harmed by it.

Overall, a solid three out of five stars.

Thanks to Bold Stroke Books and Netgalley for the review copy.

Review: Fallen Angel – DI Gaby Darin #3 (Jenny O’Brien)

Fallen Angel is the third book in the DS (now acting DI) Gaby Darin series. While it is not necessary to have read the first two books in this series, I think it would have helped immensely if I had. Although I did grok much of the backstory via the author dropping in some details here and there. Even with those details, it took awhile to get the feel of the room, as it were.

Acting DI Darin is assigned to the North Wales office, and since there isn’t a lot going on as the story opens, Darin Goes through several cold cases, selecting a few to review for possible followup. One of her staff, DS Owen Bates, ifs ahead of her, and presents to her the case from 25 years earlier: the death of Angelica Brook, and 18 year old who seemed to have simply vanished from her room one night only to be found dead later, dying of hypothermia, her body staged. Angelica also happens to have been the sister of Bates’ wife.

This is my first small quibble: involving family members in an investigation of this sort is a no-no, because they’re emotionally involved and that could be a bonanza for a defense attorney. Since this is a sideways adjacent kind of situation, I let it go. The team reopens the case and starts running down all the clues and the scant evidence from that case – but now, of course, there is a lot more information available, better testing, and so on. Still, nothing seems to be coming to fruition for the team.

While this is going on, there’s also the story of a local family, the Eustaces. A young woman and her husband take care of her mother who has dementia. One night, their house explodes in what looks to be a terrible accident. But things are definitely not what they seem.

I won’t go further than that, as even though the plot is very complicated. revealing more would take some of the fun of unraveling the clues and teasing out the murderer(s). I will say that the internal thought of Di Darin annoyed me from time to time, as she seemed, to me, to be spending an awful lot of time thinking about two men in her orbit: what they thought of her, and if she would sleep with them.

The ending wrapped up a tad too neatly, but it did come together nicely.

Other than these minor things and Darin making moonfaces at some guys, it was a good read, and while I didn’t get the exact relations between some people and families at the end, I did pick out the murderer(s).

Overall: 3.5 stars out of five, rounded down to 3 for the reasons above. Sitting inside while the snow flies and reading this wouldn’t be a bad way to spend an afternoon.

Thanks to HQ Digital and NetGalley for the reading copy.