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 audio books as often.
 

The Intelligencer, introduces Kate Morgan, PI, part-time spy, and Renaissance scholar. Actually, it's two stories in one. The present day story centers on Kate being asked by her PI firm to investigate a recently discovered manuscript dating back to the late 1500's. The Manuscript is called the Anatomy of Secrets and is really a bound set of intelligence reports meant for the first Queen Elizabeth. Some of those reports are "coded" and were the work of real historical figures such as Christopher Marlowe, an Elizabethan playwright and a spy (called an "Intelligencer"). This is the other story. Set in May, 1593, in London, the month that Christopher Marlowe is murdered, it follows the people surrounding the Queen and Marlowe and the events that lead to his death. Something about these reports are important enough to someone today that they are willing to kill for it. This is the crux of the book, what could possibly be so important about documents over 400 years old that someone would commit murder to obtain them? It doesn't seem likely that it is just their historical value.

This was a pretty interesting read as it jumped back and forth between the past and the present exposing necessary elements for the plot lines of each other's story line. I am not inclined to enjoy historical fiction because I'm not that knowledgeable about history and historical events. So I'm not familiar with the setting and the setting must be important, or why else have the story be placed in the past? Consequently, I tend to wonder how much of what I'm reading is true and how much is just part of the story. This problem is even more pronounced when it deals with real, historical characters. As a case in point, a few years back I read Tim Powers', The Anubis Gates, which was a time travel novel where an English Literature scholar travels back into time and intermixes with the life of Lord Byron. I like time travel stories for the way they have to deal with the paradox issue, but in this case, much of the story was completely lost on me since I knew very little about Byron (I was actually rather proud that I even KNEW of Bryon at all!). In this case, Leslie Silbert, had an author's note at the end which quite deftly explained exactly how far you could take the various actions in the back story. What was true, what was fiction and why she did what she did. The note was just a couple pages, so it was, by no means, a complete history of the period or the people of the time, but it did serve to help you to appreciate how her "dramatization" of the past fit with the facts and where it deviated for the sake of the story.

I might point out, incidentally, that there may be a tendency to compare (or contrast) this story to The Da Vinci Code (from Dan Brown) merely because it has a code that needs to be deciphered. But that would be unfair to Silbert (and Brown, for that matter). The code isn't the focus of the stories. HOW it gets cracked is much less important than the fact that it DOES get cracked and the message it reveals. So, don't look for cipher clues. This isn't part of the puzzles this mystery/suspense thriller offers.

Death by Hollywood by Steven Bochco, is narrated by a Hollywood writer's agent, Eddie Jelko. This is a story within a story within a story. A client of his, kind of down on his luck, witnesses a murder and proceeds to write a screen play about it which, he'll call Death by Hollywood. This gets a bit complicated because the police don't have a clue as to what has happened, other than someone's dead. But the screen writer knows the victim and the culprit and can fill in the holes about motivation. As the story evolves, the screen writer and the lead detective get together. Each pumping the other for information. The screen writer wants to keep abreast of the investigation. The detective, believing he's talking with an acquaintance of the victim, not a witness, is just trying to get some background. Of course, we get quite a turn of events at the end.

Even though this is his first novel, Bochco has two Edgar awards. Both are for screenplays of TV Episodes (one for NYPD Blue and one for Hill Street Blues). Bochco is best known for his work in Television, producing such series as Hill Street Blues, LA Law and NYPD Blue. Of course, he cut his teeth on a four of the original Columbo episodes and co-wrote 2 others. Known for pushing the envelope of TV tolerance in his more recent works, in this novel he seems like a kid in a candy story, salting the narrative with explicit sexual references (but not that many explicit scenes). Of course, he fills the pages with the F-word, which may be a bit off-putting to some. I did this on audio which was read by Dennis Franz (Sipowitz of NYPD Blue), who is really an artist with the F-word, so I found it not only tolerable, but quite amusing. Bochco also takes the opportunity, via his Writer's Agent character, to expound on the joys of writing and the arrogance of some actors. In particular he went on a rant about a tantrum an actor named Daniel Defoe, threw, which was obviously a very thinly disguised "David Caruso" (the red head character that was the lead detective during the first season of NYPD Blue and wanted to break his contract to "pursue his movie career"). These little side steps take you out of the story, but then, it's about Hollywood from a Hollywood insider. If you weren't interested in that stuff, you might not have picked up the book in the first place.

Bad Business by Robert B. Parker starts off simply enough. Marlene Cowley hires Spenser to follower her husband to see if he is cheating on her. One of the first things he discovers is that there is another investigator who is following Marlene for the same reason. The investigation reveals both individual depravity and corporate corruption. The story is further complicated the murder of an employee at Kinergy, the company where Marlene's husband is the Chief Financial Officer.

I have, by no means, read all of Parker's novels, but I have read about 10 and this one is the most intricate I've seen. The corporate scandal involves some kind of money manipulations, which, quite frankly confused me to no end (as it did Spenser). I thought is was kind of neat how the explanation of the financial manipulations was handled. Spenser hired an accountant to look into the financial situation with the company. The accountant then tried to explain what the troubled company was doing to stay alive and keep their financial problems quiet. Though the accountant went into details on what happened, completely baffling Spenser in the process, the summation was quite clear. I expect, that to a "money" person, this would be an exceptionally interesting episode. I found it pretty exceptional even though I could not really follow the money thing. But don't go by me, I have trouble with the financial implications of a shopping list.

I knew I was going to love The Clovis Incident by Pari Noskin Taichert from the very first sentence:

        I should've stayed in bed.

Pari has written a whimsical novel set in Clovis, New Mexico. Sasha Soloman is a PR consultant with a cushy assignment for an Albuquerque HMO, so she has let her contacts slip by the way side. Consequently, when she is let go, she is caught flat footed. Also on Sasha's plate is the fact that she is trying to deal with an ailing mother. Additionally, Sasha suffers from hallucinations, which manifest themselves in many forms, including conversations with her cat. Two-way conversations!

Taking her deteriorating life one step at a time, with a quick search, Sasha finds the town of Clovis' Chamber of Commerce is looking to capitalize on some of the UFO dollars currently spent in Roswell. Clovis seems to have it's own "visitations" history and could use a PR specialist to exploit them. But, she'll have to make a proposing bid and get in line with the other PR consultants also applying. Sasha, being desperate, takes the challenge. This also gives her the opportunity to visit her widowed friend, Mae King, a Clovis dairy farmer. Mae is out of sorts, though. A Singaporean aviator who was stationed at Cannon Air Force Base is found face down in one of the stockyard water tanks, dead. So who killed him? Why? And why doesn't Mae want to involve the police?

The "alien" aspect of the story was deftly handled. Pari, without taking sides, addressed some obvious concerns in the context of the story. For instance, said one character who believed she was abducted, "Either I'm going crazy or Carl Sagan -- God rest his soul -- has some real explaining to do.” This occurs relatively early in the book, and has the effect of neutralizing any (pardon the expression) "alienating" aspects of the subject matter. No matter what side of the fence you may be on with respect to alien visitations, this line serves to take it out of play allowing you to continue with the story. At least, it did for me. I don't believe in alien visitations. The reasons are detailed, technical and complicated (click here if you are interested in my thoughts).

All in all, this was a delightful read.

Bone Dry is a medical thriller by husband and wife team, Bette Golden Lamb and JJ Lamb. It centers around a scheme to extort a ransom for services at an Ontological hospital. Chemo therapy, though successful in treating some cancers, also has a tendency to deplete the white blood cells necessary to fight off infections. To counter this, a procedure is to take large samples of the patient's bone marrow prior to the therapy, treat it (purge it of cancerous contaminates), store it, and when the patient becomes too weak to continue the therapy, then the marrow is "engrafted" back. Someone, is "high jacking" the marrow from some patients and holding it for ransom. The hospital doesn't know what is going on. The patients don't say anything for fear their marrow will be destroyed, they just want their treatment. A problem comes up when one of the targeted patients can't afford the ransom and is left to die.

As exciting as this is, this isn't the "calling card" of the story, it is just the premise. The real story is how the people of the story deal with their aspect of the situation. There is Faye, hospital technician, who loves Frankie in spite of his abusive nature and agrees "appropriate" the marrow. But then becomes torn between her love for him, fear of his abuse and fear of "killing" a patient. There is Gina, floor nurse, who is suspicious about the way some of her patients are acting when it comes time for the "engraftment". When taking inquisitive action, she is called on the carpet by superiors for involving herself outside of her field. There is Carl, a high school student with leukemia, that knows his marrow has been hijacked, and his family can't afford the ransom. If he is going to die anyway, then he wants to go to the Senior Prom. There is Tracy, another patient, whose only hope to get the ransom is through her estranged husband.

This is quite the yarn. This is their first novel as a team.
 

Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear is about Maisie Dobbs, a self-made woman, living in Post WWI England as a private investigator. This first episode introduces us to Maisie as she sets up her shop and gets her first case. A man is suspicious about his wife's mid-day wanderings and suspects there is another man. He asks Maisie to look into it. We soon learn there is another man, but not like you'd expect. This one is dead and buried with a headstone bearing only his first name, Vincent. This lead to an investigation into a post-war "trauma" hospital. But before we get too far into that, the story switches gears to fill in Maisie's back story. We flash back to pre-war England where Maisie and her dad are trying to eke out a living and, eventually, Maisie takes on a job as a servant. Here, her natural curiosity and intelligence leads her to her employer's library in the wee hours of the morning, where she is eventually "discovered" and is taken under the wing of the lady of the house. We learn of her background, education and involvement as a nurse in France during "The Great War" and of demons of her past. Returning from Maisie's formative years to "present day" 1929 England, we follow Maisie into the aftermath of the Great War and the toll it has taken on the veterans.

The Narrows, by Michael Connelly, may constitute a spoiler, but I am not going very far with it. However, if you haven't read The Poet, or haven't in a while, maybe you should stop right now and do that first. And, while you're at it, avoid almost any reviews and even the DJ flap on The Narrows. Actually, it might be a good idea to read or review Blood Work, Void Moon, and A Darkness More Than Night. While you're at it, rent, buy, or borrow then watch the film of Blood Work. Pieces of all these are in The Narrows. Only "who" of The Poet is spoiled in this book, the other titles mentioned aren't really spoiled, but if you haven't read them, you'll be missing some of the fun.

Of all of Michael Connelly's titles, only The Poet can be said to have a "loose" ending. That is, it isn't crystal clear that the bad guy died. Actually, for me it was, but then, I'm easy, and, as it happens, wrong. The Poet lived and in The Narrows he is back. This time, Harry Bosch is on the case. Harry Bosch gets involved, even though he wasn't on the Poet case, because, as was shown in A Darkness More Than Night, he knew Terry McCaleb, a retired FBI agent who had files on The Poet case. McCaleb's wife approaches Harry to have him look into Terry's death. We learn that Terry has died of apparent heart failure. At the same time, but in a different thread, we find that Rachel Walling, also an FBI agent, who worked on the Poet case, is called back into an investigation that appears to be the Poet's work. Rachel, worked with Behavioral Sciences back then, but doesn't anymore, however, because of her familiarity with the case, she is called back in. The activity, which has captured the attention of the FBI, is out by Las Vegas off the freeway at a place called Zzyzx Road ("ZEE ziks"). Harry, through his own investigation, ends up at Zzyzx as well. The FBI tries to strong arm Harry into revealing what he has without giving anything back, but, of course Harry will have none of that. This, however, is where he and Rachel hook-up.

This is an intriguing story on many levels. For me, the calling card of a Michael Connelly story is the inevitable plot twist, though this has one, it is very small. What you do have is a number of characters for his other works returning here. Not just from the Bosch novels, but from the stand alone's as well. You have characters from Blood Work, Void Moon and almost all of them from The Poet, except, ironically, Jack McEvoy, who was the lead of that story. So this tells us for sure that all these stories and the Bosch novels share the same universe. It was almost like reading a Stephen King novel with all his allusions to the Dark Tower.

On a Michael Connelly level, he has given a nod of the head to a number of real people. Of the most obvious is Terry McCaleb which is a nod to Terry Hansen, a friend of Michael's from his very first book and the inspiration of basic setting of Blood Work. McCaleb comes from Connelly's wife's side of the family. Another nod to Terry is found in the name of a doctor in Las Vegas, Dr Hansen. Ed Thomas, the now retired cop from The Poet, is a bookseller in Orange at a store called Book Carnival and is a nod to the real Ed Thomas, who has a real store in Orange, called Book Carnival and is one of the few stores that has hosted signings with Michael for all of his books to date.

Incidentally, the Ed Thomas character in The Poet was originally supposed to be Harry Bosch. But at the time, the Bosch character was optioned out to films. If Bosch was to remain in the book, then The Poet would become one of the optioned novels. This was not what was intended, but the letter of the agreement would make it that way. So, at the last minute, the Harry Bosch character was substituted for another detective in the LAPD, who became the Ed Thomas character.

On still another level, this story gives Michael a voice to comment on the film, Blood Work. Though it is common for books into film to loose something in the translation, you are usually left with only two out-comes. Either the film was faithful to the book or it wasn't. Good or bad, that is the end of it. But in this case, Michael has brought back many of the characters of Blood Work, the book, who are aware of Blood Work, the movie by Clint Eastwood. So Michael gets the last word that gives voice to his characters to comment on how they were portrayed. I've never seen that done before. I thought it was kind of cute. 

Jerrilyn Farmer's Perfect Sax has Madeline Bean, event coordinator, come home to a house full of cops and forensic specialists that are dealing with what they all thought was Madeline's dead body. This was just a "perfect" ending to an equally perfect day. During the event, a fund raiser, a very valuable Tenor Saxophone was stolen. Madeline loans her car to an employee and then needs to beg a ride from a friend. The friend's husband goes on a rampage, chasing down and smashing his car into another event attendee whom he believed had stolen the sax that he had bid on and won. Madeline elects to get out of the car rather than risk death and finds herself downtown, after midnight, with her forgotten purse still in the car. All of this was just for openers. One of the first things I noticed was Farmer's extremely smooth flowing prose. The words seem to flow like an unobstructed mountain stream. The second thing I noticed was that, unlike a lot of mysteries, Madeline doesn't appear to be much interested in sleuthing. In fact, we aren't even sure IF she's going to do any investigation until way late in the book. Instead, during the coarse of Madeline's day to day life, information just comes out which, only later, becomes significant in terms of the "who done it." This was a half serious, half comical and completely enjoyable read.