Book Log 2014 #27: An Officer and Spy by Robert Harris

Harris deploys his usual mastery of historical fiction in the service of the Dreyfus Affair, the railroading of a Jewish army officer on charges of being a spy. His eventual exoneration is often told in relationship to J'accuse, an open letter written by Emile Zola detailing the lack of evidence and the institutional anti-Semitism that made Dreyfus an easy mark.

This novel take a different approach, centering on Georges Picquart, the new head of the army's counter-intelligence service. As he begins to settle into his job and reform the office, he comes to the conclusion that Dreyfus was innocent - and that the actual spy is still at large. The army would rather not revisit the case against Dreyfus, and Picquart winds up giving up his career - and puts his life in danger - to help clear Dreyfus and bring the malfeasance of the army's general staff to light.

This story is a retelling of actual events using actual people, giving an example that the best drama often comes from real life (especially when Harris puts his talents to work converting history to prose). You can even look at the story through some modern lenses, such as the reported rise in anti-Semitism in Europe or the inside jobs of WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, though the book easily stands on its own. Highly recommended.

Book Log 2014 #26: Identical by Scott Turow

The latest visit to Kindle County centers on Paul Giannis, a state senator running for mayor whose campaign is ending just as his twin brother is being released from prison after serving a sentence for killing his girlfriend. The girlfriend's brother, who oversees a family fortune, is convinced that Paul was responsible for the killing, and sets his director of security - and a retired cop who worked the original case - to reinvestigate.


As their investigation rolls on, and as Paul continues to weather the very public charges made against him over the killing, there's clearly something not right with the events that led to the killing. A mix of flashback and present-day story lines help flesh out a complicated relationship between Paul's family and the girlfriend's family that also hints at the similarly complicated relationship between Paul and his brother. Less complicated are the relationships of the pair investigating the case - a woman whose girlfriend is, kindly put, unstable, and a man who seems to be marking time until he is reunited with his deceased wife.

Turow is always good, and his modern Greek drama is excellent as expected. That I read it during this past summer's Market Basket conflict (itself a real-life Greek drama) was an added bonus.

Book Log 2014 #25: Slow Getting Up by Nate Jackson

Nate Jackson embodied the Cinderella story as applied to football, working his way from a division III school to becoming (briefly) a starter for the Denver Broncos.  This memoir shows the reality behind the story, from the uncertain life of an undrafted free agent to playing in NFL Europe to injuries. Many, many injuries.

For all the talk in reviews about the book's discussion of sex and drugs (which are discussed, though not often in the sort of detail you'd expect from the headlines), it's really the injuries that frame things, as one-time injuries become chronic injuries that wind up being career-ending injuries. And yet through all of the rehab, Jackson's story underscores the idea that football players just want to play football, and will put up with the injuries in order to get back on the field. It's also notable that Jackson didn't have access to his team medical records (which he quotes from several times) until he filed a worker's compensation case against the team, and was able to get a copy via subpoena.

At a time when professional athletes rarely give more than blandishments shaped by some PR flak, Jackson's recounting of his career is refreshingly honest within certain boundaries (he rarely, if ever, speaks ill of teammates, and doesn't trade in locker room gossip that would have sold more books). The book doesn't quite reach the tell-all level of Ball Four or reflect on being a professional athlete with the clarity and depth of Ken Dryden's The Game, but it's pretty damn good, and well worth reading.

Book Log #24: Raiders of the Nile by Steven Saylor

I'm always excited to find a new Gordianus the Finder novel, but was surprised to find that this is the second in a series of prequels set during the time in his youth where he traveled and then lived in Alexandria. In this book, Gordianus is enjoying his life in Egypt with Bethesda, as he waits out the conflict that makes returning to Rome impossible. That enjoyment is cut short when Bethesda is kidnapped, and Gordianus has to use his skills to find out who took her and how he can get her back. This puts Gordianus among the titular raiders, and sees him embroiled into a wider plot involving the throne of Egypt and the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great.

Seeing the younger Gordianus in action is interesting, as he already has many of the skills needed for his profession but not the experience that would later help him navigate the twisting political currents of Rome. Otherwise, the story has the same feel and tone as the other Gordianus books, allowing it to fit into the series even with it being set well before the first Gordianus novel. Looking forward to seeing how Gordianus gets back to Rome and establishes himself.

Book Log 2014 #23: The Adjacent by Christopher Priest

A photographer returns to the UK from abroad after the death of his wife at the hands of terrorists. Her death came from the use of something called a quantum adjacency weapon, which obliterates everything within its triangular field. It's even being used within the UK, where the Islamic government can't stop it (or the extreme weather that's tearing up the country).

Meanwhile, during World War I and II we see the first ideas leading to the development of the weapon (a magician has an idea about adjacency as a way to camouflage planes). Many of the characters have similar names to those of the characters in the future story line, and you start to get the idea that the weapon doesn't so much destroy as relocate.

Not that this is ever made clear, as the book is happy to let you sort out how all of these story lines - and one set in a country that may be on Earth, but just not the Earth we're on - fit together. In fact, not much about any of the story lines is explained, underscoring that the important thing is really the characters and how they seem to find each other across the timelines. I enjoyed the inventive structure of the book, and as this is the first book by Price that I've read I'll have to start working his stuff into the rotation.

Book Log 2014 #22: & Sons by David Gilbert

I'm of two minds about this book, as while I appreciated the writing and the depiction of the the struggles sons often have establishing themselves outside of the ambit of their fathers, I never quite warmed to it. Not sure if I couldn't quite identify with the characters and their conflicts (my own relationship with my dad was much less problematic) or their place in the Manhattan of prep schools and upper classes, but I could never fully engage.

The book is narrated by the son of a life-long friend of A. N. Dyer, a Salingeresque author whose monogram is too cute by half given the title of the book. Like Salinger, Dyer wrote an influential novel while young (the title: Ampersand), whose success has colored his career and his personal life. We first see Dyer as he's preparing to give a eulogy for the narrator's father, who has recently died. Dyer is preoccupied with the whereabouts of his teenaged son, ostensibly the product of a dalliance with a Swedish nanny. Dyer sees in his youngest son a chance to succeed where he failed with his two older sons (who are contemporaries, if not exactly friends, of the narrator). That preoccupation leads Dyer to crash and burn with the eulogy, which then leads to the narrator moving in with Dyer (fortuitous as the narrator is without job and spouse given his own sexual indiscretions).

From there we get a story of Dyer trying to reconcile all of his sons, while the narrator's return into their lives leads him to learn more about his own father and the nature of his friendship with Dyer. There's probably more to say about that, but where I couldn't connect I found myself reading the book to appreciate the writing, and kind of let the story just kind of happen. So I'd say it's worth reading to at least see a well-crafted novel, and quite possibly to get more out of it than I did.

Book Log 2014 #21: The Lincoln Myth by Steve Berry

A secret passed from US President to US President is used by Lincoln to strike a bargain with the Mormons, in which Lincoln promises to leave them in return for the Mormons not antagonizing the Union while they're trying to fight the Civil War.

Jump to the present day, where a splinter group of Mormons is trying to discover that secret in order to use it to gain independence. In doing so they capture a Magellan Billet agent in Denmark, and Cotton Malone is called out of retirement yet again to find and recover the agent, and perhaps help defuse the situation with the Mormons while he's at it.

Malone is saddled with a partner, a young Magellan agent who hits most of the stereotypical points for such a character: brooding, disdainful of working with an older partner, and skilled but without the wisdom to use those skills in the most efficacious way (there are personal reasons for some of this, which wind up getting solved in a convenient and slightly mawkish manner). I will say that it's a better attempt than the two people from the Napoleon book. Cassiopeia Vitt is also involved, as she has a relationship (also convenient) with one of the more colorful Mormon characters.

All in all this is a better book about a Constiutional/Founding Fathers question that one might expect, though Berry's afterword is unusually strident about his position on the matter (I am curious to see if he does the same with the forthcoming The Patriot Threat, which is based on the semi-popular theory that the feds can't collect income tax due to irregularities with the ratification of the 16th Amendment). But I do miss Cotton shooting up World Heritage Sites.