Hollywood Thriller

Dream Town by David Baldacci
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love this author and this latest Archer thriller doesn't disappoint. I love the way he paints the period -- 1953-- with references to the day's entertainers like Frank Sinatra, current movies being made like "Rear Window" and the fashions. But like always he outdoes himself creating a convoluted tale where nothing is what it seems. Archer is in LA visiting friend Liberty Callahan when one of Liberty's Hollywood connections goes missing and a body is found at her home. Archer pieces it all together but not before almost getting killed, of course. Even though the story happens long ago the characters seem very today.

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Glow-in-the-dark Girls

 

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Long, and very detailed, but it is exactly those details -- like describing the polka dot dress one of the women is wearing -- that brings these girls alive almost a century after they died just doing their jobs. I used to live not far from Ottawa, Il., the setting for one of the factories where young women were hired to paint glow in the dark dials on clocks and watches. They were told to use their lips to keep the brushes pointy, even though the paint they were using was radioactive radium. Months or years later they became ill with assorted pains caused by the radium they injested. It deposited in their bones causing some to lose teeth, others to limp, another to have a growth on her shoulder. It was many years before the cause became known and still many more before the courts made the companies pay medical bills or maybe a little more. I had heard the general story before but Moore really makes this story more about the women and what they went through. She examined family photos of the women so she could describe them and their clothes, visited the houses where they lived, and even takes a few liberties to suggest that their tenacity in fighting for justice probably prevented future injuries on other radioactive endeavors such as The Manhattan Project. Well done.

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New hero for coffee addicts

The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't even drink coffee, but I love it when I can learn a lot and still be entertained. This book tells an interesting history of coffee and the many processing steps and the tasting process as complicated as wine. I also appreciated learning more about Yemen which I had previously only known from reports of war and famine. This is the semi true story of Mokhtar Alkhanshali, an immigrant from Yemen who grew up in the San Francisco area, sort of ditzi and lacking direction. Then he reads the history of coffee tracing back to Yemen and discovers that his grandfather was actually a coffee farmer back in Yemen. Suddenly Mokhtar has a quest. He infiltrates the coffee culture in San Francisco, returns to Yemen and gets to know the coffee farmers in the different parts of his country. War breaks out and he has to fight just to make it down the street. But he manages to take some samples out of the country and get the experts in San Francisco to agree his country's coffee is extra special. I was cheering for him in the end.

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Return to Mackinac

The Dockporter: A Mackinac Island Novel by Dave McVeigh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For those of us who know and love Mackinac Island, revisiting through this book brings all those memories to life again. The fudge shops. The porch of the Grand Hotel. The rock formations. The booming cannon. And, of course, the poor guy shoveling up the inevitable horse droppings. And for those who have never been to Mackinac, the tale revives those days of young abandon, of friends and foes, pranks and hangovers and warm, sweet love. The book is written as a story within a story. Big city photographer Jack McGuinn is returning to the island after a 10-year absence, for a reunion with his dockporter buddies who, as young men, met the ferries to the island and ported baggage to the hotels on their bikes. On the slow freight ferry to the reunion Jack tells a fellow passenger the tale of his final summer on the island, which becomes the bulk of the book. It is an awkward arrangement sometimes when the passenger interrupts the storyteller to remind the reader of the story-within-a-story format but it pays off in the end when the exciting finale of Jack's last summer on the island melds into a surprising denouement at the reunion.

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Patterson and Parton

Run Rose Run by Dolly Parton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Combine the talents of one of my favorite country singers with those of the best mystery/thriller author and you're bound to get something wonderful. I listened to Run Rose Run on a car trip and was thoroughly entertained for two days. Dolly narrates the Ruthanne character on the audio version so it's easy to picture her. But the story is really about a scrappy wannabe singer, AnnieLee, who rises to fame with the help of a retired star (Ruthanne). Annielee is full of surprises, pulling a gun out of her backpack, walking out on Ruthanne and turning down fancy clothes. Although her choices are not always the best her spunk is endearing. Though her career gets a big boost from Ruthanne, the cloud of her unrevealed past keeps interrupting with thugs attacking her repeatedly and following her. When the past is finally revealed it doesn't really seem worthy of so many thugs chasing her but it wouldn't be a thriller without all those encounters. The title is disappointing since the name Rose isn't mentioned until the past is revealed near the end of the book. But now I need to get the Dolly Parton album that goes along with the book so I can hear the songs that are mentioned in the story.

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Don't bother with this one

The Poisoned Rose by Daniel Judson
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Page after page of pointless violence. Finally about page 255 the author starts tying the apparently random violence together and you get hints of who the characters are and the motivations and corruption that lead to all the rest. But it is too little too late. I scanned scene after scene it was just too boring to read. Even the supposedly good folks are terrible: a protagonist who is constantly in a drunken stupor, a sweet innocent 15-year-old who is depicted as purposely trying to lure the protagonist astray. I finished the book hoping for something to make it worthwhile, but I never found it.

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Mystery in style

If Looks Could Kill by Kate White
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I LOVE it! The real trick in a mystery is to give the reader enough hints so that they think they are smarter than the detective. Then as the climax approaches, the detective comes to the conclusion the reader already figured out. While the reader is basking in I-told-you-so, suddenly that conclusion falls apart and a totally different, but ultimately logical, perpetrator is revealed, ideally in the midst of trying to kill the protagonist. Kate White does exactly that in this tale of magazine true crime writer Bailey Weggins who puts on her detective hat when her editor's nanny is poisoned. All the glamour--and politics -- of the magazine biz is drawn perfectly since White was editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan from 1998-2012. White also has an uncanny skill at describing the oddities in facial features: a head too small, eyes too far apart, eyes so dark the pupil disappears. My only regret is that I waited so long to read this 2002 gem.

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