The reason for these "quarterly" reports is that I just can’t keep up with the speed most of you read. It is not unlikely that I’ll only get one book done in a month and now that my "day" job has me doing less traveling, I don’t go through Books on Tape as often.
 

Lee Child's novel from 2002, Without Fail has Jack Reacher approached by a Secret Service agent that wants him to test their security. Specifically, they want him to get to the Vice-President-Elect. The agent is M.E. Frolich, who worked with Reacher's brother, Joe. We learned about Joe in the first novel. She and Reacher become involved. There is nothing really "earth-shattering" in this novel. I don't mean that as a slight. Lee Child reset the "height of the bar" with his first novel, Killing Floor, and has cleared it every time since (with the exception, in my opinion, of Running Blind/The Visitor. Then again, 5 out of 6 is not bad). This is typical Reacher; self-assured, extremely intuitive, no holds barred, man of action.

Dirty Work, is a Stone Barrington novel from Stuart Woods. A client needs documentation on the philandering of her husband in order to divorce him and get out of the prenuptial settlement he would otherwise be entitled. So Stone hirers, as it turns out, a klutz, to take the pictures through a skylight at the unfaithful husband. But he falls through the skylight. When he wakes up, the guy he tried to photograph is dead. Slowly, to comes to light that the guy was dead before our klutz fell on him. The situation quickly morphs into terrorist/spy thing with Stone in the middle trying to figure out who's doing what to whom. I thought this was an above average Stone novel. We did this on unabridged audio on a recent trip. We have a really good time with Woods' transitional phrases where there is a group of people with Barrington and one or the other of them "turns to Stone".
 

The Face from Dean Koontz refers to a movie star and his good looks. The story focuses on attempts to protect the actor and his family from an apparent threat. The culprit is sending clues which are difficult to decipher and string together. The story jumps around between a former cop who is now in charge of security at the Channing Manheim mansion, a friend of his still on the job, Manheim's son, a 10-year-old, lost in shuffle of the jet-setting life style of his bachelor father, another character, who seems to want to help, and Corky Laputa, our villain. There is an interesting supernatural thread through all this, that at first may seem out of place, but it all resolves itself nicely at the end.

The first novel from Kirk Russell, Shell Games, is an environmental mystery featuring Fish and Game Warden, John Marquez. The current problem facing the Fish and Game Department in northern California, is abalone poaching. Marquez investigates a site with two murdered divers in the midst of hundreds of empty abalone shells. Strange. Marquez is supposed to protect wildlife, not solve murders, but this one has the markings of a killer he dealt with while working for DEA, an unsolved crime that was the reason from his leaving that department. This was a good first novel. It is not the kind of novel I would pick up, normally. I'm a hard-boiled kind of guy. It is kind of difficult to get excited about a character whose main focus is on protecting sea slugs. On the other hand, I wouldn't normally have picked up CJ Box's Open Season, either, but I did and I liked it, too. With the murders, we have a bit of interest from the local police and almost immediately the FBI comes in and has the warden and his crew to back off the prime suspect because of their own investigation on something else. This is where the tension is. Plus there are some politics involved and Marquez is going through problems at home. Most of the time, Marquez is basically pushing the limits of his authority (and even going overboard) to pursue this line in spite of FBI and upper echelons instructions to the contrary. I wondered, as I was reading it, what's the point of having a fish and game warden as a central character, if you're going to have him work the murder and other crime issues? Why not just make the character an FBI guy to start with having the angst come from the local Fish and Game guy? Well, I'm glad I stuck with it because there was a really neat "kick butt - take names" kind of ending. It all seemed to work out. Also, I really enjoy reading stories set in northern California (I grew up in the bay area and its always fun to revisit).

I picked up C.J. Box's second Joe Pickett novel, Savage Run, because I had just read Russell's environmental-based novel, Shell Games. It has one of the top opening lines I've ever read:

On the third day of their honeymoon, infamous environmental activist Stewie Woods and his new bride, Annabel Bellotti, were spiking trees in the forest when a cow exploded and blew them up.

A Superior Death is Nevada Barr's second Anna Pidgeon mystery. She is now stationed a Lake Superior and is trying to track down a murder where the victim was "planted" 200 feet down in a ship wreck visited by tourists who are qualified deep sea divers. The story opens up where a couple (seasonal employees) suspect one of the rangers has "eaten" his wife. The fact is the wife is missing, and is not where the man said she was. But charging someone with cannibalism on that basis is somewhat premature. This side story floats in and out throughout the novel. Anna's mental sarcasms are a hoot, also. In one scene, she was sitting by herself hoping to enjoy the solitude, when an obnoxious teenage girl comes by to "shoot the breeze". As the girl scooted along the bench, Anna silently hoped against hope the girl would get splinters in her butt. This is the third Nevada Barr title I've read and I'm beginning to enjoy these quite a bit. Anna Pidgeon is a National Park Service ranger and her various books take her to different parks. I can almost picture the places and in this case following her down in some of the dives she made to the various ship wrecks (which is apparently one of the main calling cards of this park), was so vivid, my fingers got prunny! A fun read!

In recognition of the 40th anniversary of the assassination, I decided to do another Kennedy assassination book. JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy by L. Fetcher Prouty isn't so much a book about the assassination as it is about this country's involvement with Vietnam in particular and the CIA's agenda in more general. He does try to tie the two together, but it feels more like Monday Morning quarterbacking. Not in the sense that "hindsight is 20/20" but more like "everyone has their own opinion". He basically blames nebulous entities like the "power elite"  and "the military industrial complex" for the assassination. Col. L. Fletcher Prouty (Ret), was "The Man X" in the Oliver Stone film, JFK. It is Prouty's ideas and view that provides the major theme of the film. Oliver Stone wrote the introduction to this book.

Though the book was disappointing in the sense that it doesn't contain some revelation about the assassination, it was informative on a few points. First, it provides a detailed account of the evolution of the Vietnam situation. Secondly it explores Kennedy's role in Vietnam and third it provides a convincing argument that the assassination was, indeed, a conspiracy.

 
The Vietnam situation really didn't exist prior to 1945 (Vietnam or the situation). Immediately prior to 1945, the area, known as French Indochina, was controlled by the Japanese because of their involvement with WWII. At the surrender of Japan in 1945, Ho Chi Minh declared independence and the US provided him with military aid and other support in an effort to help clear out the Japanese from the area. According to Prouty, however, our objective was to keep the pot boiling on behalf of the "power elite" because war is big business. Then the French came back in and wanted to reassert themselves in the area with the US (according to Prouty) supporting both sides for a while. The CIA, again according to Prouty, was involved in various activities in Vietnam from 1945, through the French's defeat at Bin Dinh Phu in 1954 and until 1965 when the US Marines were brought in and even afterwards. One of the major points was that the CIA was instrumental in relocating about 1 million North Vietnamese catholics from the Hanoi area to the Mekong Delta region south of Saigon. These refugees became the "Vietcong" and were treated as Communist infiltrators when really they were merely dislocated refugees with no means of support and resorted to banditry (again, according to Prouty).

 
Prouty believes that Kennedy was trying to get out of Vietnam. Kennedy's feelings were changing from the time of the Bay Of Pigs fiasco in '61. He felt that the CIA was working behind his back and couldn't trust them and vowed to "break it into a thousand pieces". The clincher was the coup of the Diem regime (just three weeks before his own assassination). The total brutality of the coup convinced him that "…this is their war". He had already made plans to withdraw 1000 of the 12,000 troops in Vietnam by Christmas 1963 and expected a complete withdrawal by 1965. I have read speculation on this before, but most say "there is reason to believe that…" while Prouty states it as absolute fact.

 
Prouty also sites a number of examples on why he believes that there, without any doubt, was a conspiracy to assassinate the president. He attacks the "three bullet" theory, the lack of protection for the President, and he sites the speed at which information about the assassination and the assassin was distributed.

 
The ludicrous assumption of the "magic bullet" (which entered Kennedy's back with a downward projection, turned and exited the throat, turned again and hit Connelly in the back, exited his chest, entered his wrist, exited that and lodged into his leg later to be found on a stretcher in pristine condition at Parkland hospital) created all the damage it was purported to do means that where were at least four shots and probably many more. By itself this means there was more than one gunman and that means conspiracy.

 
As for protection, the motorcade route had it take very slow 90 degree and sharper turns without ground support. Windows were opened that should not have been, Military support troops who were to provide ground security were told to "Stand Down". Being a bureaucracy, it is very difficult to get the government (or military) to fail to do something that it was designed to do. This also points to a conspiracy very "high up".

Pouty said that he has been responsible for protection of the president in the past and wonders if he was sent to Antarctica earlier in the month to keep him from recognizing the security problems. He was on his way back (in New Zealand) when he heard about the assassination. In the New Zealand papers, it told of the assassination and of the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, with a detailed biography listing his stint in the Marines, his defection to the Soviet Union and his return. He said that at the time that edition of the paper went to press, Oswald, back in Dallas had just been arrested and charged with the murder of the police officer, not the assassination. So from where, Prouty, asks, and from whom did this information come? It has all the earmarks of a "cover story".
 
As I said, this book is not all that revealing, but it does paint a more detailed picture of the times. (For reviewletts on other JFK assassination readings, see http://www.book-orphanage.com/tbo/jfk.htm)

The Seesaw Syndrome by Michael Madden, MD is a medical thriller that looks at the consequences of what can happen if doctors, hospitals and researchers get too close to the pharmaceutical companies that produce the drugs under test. Nikki Moriarty, burdened with medial school debt, has one ambition upon completion of her surgical residency: an appointment on the staff of the prestigious Manhattan University Medical Center. She is on her way when she becomes suspicious about a new drug under test. It is supposed to help cancer patients recover weight loss. It does that, but she sees evidence it actually aggravates the cancer. The story becomes more involved and Nikki soon finds herself in a "conscious" coma induced to keep her quiet about her suspicions.

Madden, himself a surgeon, presents a vivid and realistic setting (you can almost smell the alcohol swabs!) In general, I'm not a big fan of "message" stories. But I "forgive" this in medical thrillers. In fact, the "message" is a major attraction for me of medical thrillers. Madden comes up with a truly unique point and exploits it magnificently. This is an excellent first novel.