Book Log 2013 #27: Bloodshot by Stuart MacBride

The third entry in the Logan McRae series focuses on two sex crime cases. The one that initially involves McRae is a John Doe who is dumped at a hospital after being sodomized to death. The other case, involving a violent serial rapist, actually involves McRae's girlfriend, PC Jackie Watson, whose physical approach to policing compounds the trouble that their suspect, a prominent footballer, is lawyered up and has strong alibis from his mother and girlfriend.

As in the previous books, McRae has to (eventually) balance work in both cases with the needs (both professional and personal) of his supervisors. There's a further romantic complication when Jackie appears to be stepping out with a colleague, which sends McRae into the interested arms of a junior prosecuting attorney. Also as in previous books, McRae has to suffer his ration of shit before finding a way to solving both cases.

It's a pretty disturbing entry in the series - the ending is one of the more mindbending I've come across - but it's another well-written entry, balancing the action and tension of the cases with the personal issues (McRae's love life, McRae's relationship with reporter Colin Miller, and a dive into the BDSM scene in northern Scotland, thanks to a lower-ranking officer). The only thing I didn't like was the title change from the original. A series to pick up if you haven't already.

Book Log 2013 #26: The Baker Street Letters by Michael Robertson

Lawyer Reggie Heath has just moved his legal practice into a building on Baker Street in London, and was in such a hurry to sign a sweetheart lease that he misses the one aspect of the lease that's not exactly boilerplate - Reggie's practice is now responsible for answering all letters sent to the building by people who write Sherlock Holmes, and failing to do so (or going public with the practice) leads to significant penalties.

Thankfully, Reggie has his brother Nigel, whose legal career is in a kind of perilous limbo, to handle the letters. But when he comes across one from a girl in Los Angeles seeking her father, who is somehow connected to a geologic project whose plans were attached, he takes up the case, and eventually flies out to LA to find the now-adult girl. Problem is he does so on the day he has a hearing about getting his law license back, and also on the day a member of the first is found dead in Nigel's cubicle. Reggie takes it upon himself to go to LA to find his brother and hopefully smooth things over with the local bar and Scotland Yard. But he gets forced onto the Holmes case when a man in LA turns up dead and Nigel is arrested.

I can't say I was hooked by this book - there's a lot of time spent in taxis and hotel rooms where things slow down - though the plot (which involves the LA subway and the entertainment industry) is interesting. Funny thing here is that if I followed my usual rule about series and started with this, the first book in the series, I don't know if I'd have kept with it. But having enjoyed the third book, and liking parts of this one, it's a series I'm going to stick with.

(Random observation - for a book written in 2009, there's a suspicious lack of technology involved. No one seems to have a cell phone, for example. Not a problem, just odd.)

Book Log 2013 #25: The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure

In occupied Paris, an architect who is living on the margins stumbles into a lucrative, but troubling offer: modify apartments and houses so they can be used to hide Jews and a local construction magnate will get him commissions to build factories for the Nazis. The architect is reluctant to participate - getting caught would mean certain death, and he doesn't particularly care for Jews - but the money and potential fame of the larger projects brings him aboard.

This causes certain disruptions - his wife considers him a collaborator (as do many other Parisians), and he gets involved in a triangle with his mistress and a high-ranking Gestapo agent - but as he continues to build his small and large projects he begins to understand why the man he's working for is hiding Jews, and how the risks serve a higher purpose.

The book isn't perfect - the characters' inner monologues are little too expositional at times, and there's a subplot involving the Resistance that doesn't do much for me - but it's an interesting book, thanks to the author's architectural background, which is used to great effect.

Book Log 2013 #24: The Given Sacrifice by S. M. Stirling

The latest book in the Emberverse series sees the High Kingdom of Montival putting the Church Universal and Triumphant on the run, making the deliberate slog to their capital city in Montana. This would usually involve detailed descriptions of troop movements, battles, etc, but in this case things wrap up pretty quickly with the apparent destruction of the CUT. There's not much focus beyond the core second-generation characters, and even then some of them show up briefly.

The last third of the book covers the journey to adulthood of Orlaith Mackenzie, the crown princess of Montival. We see snippets of her life in a peaceful kingdom, and its expansion into the Bay Area, where peace is shattered when sea-borne raiders (an apparent mix of Haida and Japanese, with one surprise guest) appear on the scene. The titular sacrifice end the book, and while it's expected I wasn't thrilled with the randomness of it. Even if that was a more likely way for it to happen.

There's nothing inherently problematic with the book, but it did feel like it was written specifically to make a break between all of the previous books and the coming series where Orlaith is in charge. Keep your expectations in check.

Book Log 2013 #23: The Hidden Oasis by Paul Sussman

When a woman goes to Egypt after her sister dies, she discovers that there may have been more to her life there than meets the eye. When she connects with a local academic in the search for the titular hidden oasis - and the weapon it apparently contains - she stumbles into a world of intrigue that includes a local strongman and the CIA.

I didn't like this book as much as I liked Sussman's previous two books, and I think the reason is that the protagonist of those two books, Inspector Khalifa, only makes a cameo here. Without him and his perspective, this becomes more of a standard thriller, with Egypt serving as a generic backdrop.

I'd say skip this one and move on to the next Khalifa book.

Book Log 2013 #22: Last Train to Zona Verde by Paul Theroux

In Dark Star Safari, Theroux traveled from Cairo to Cape Town, returning to places he first saw while in the Peace Corps and reflecting on the changes in Africa - and to himself - that occurred in the intervening years. Last Train to Zona Verde picks up in Cape Town, and is planned as a last trip through the continent, a journey to see new places, meet new people, and say goodbye.

This trip is up the west coast, and does not go well. There are travel delays (and a notable lack of trains, the preferred method of travel), lack of services, unfriendly locals, and a serious case of theft. This all mounts over the course of the trip, resulting in a first (spoiler alert!): the trip is abandoned, with a fair amount of pessimism towards the purpose of the trip and Africa in general.

The end of the trip says as much about the author as the conditions he encountered, as there's much musing about age and the idea that this is his last big trip. I'd like to think that I'd be game to try such an adventure when I'm 70, but I'm probably not even game now. I am hoping that Theroux will get the travelin' jones and make the one trip he's not made - a lap around the US on Amtrak. I'm not holding my breath.

I can't say I liked this book, as the way things transpire make it hard to use the word "like" in reference to it. But if you've read Theroux's other books you can't not read it, I suppose.

If you follow soccer at all you've likely heard the grousing about the 2014 World Cup draw, which has the US in the "group of death" with Germany, Portugal and Ghana and England in a very difficult group with Italy, Costa Rica and Uruguay, while host Brazil and (of course) France get what are considered to be fairly easy pathways to the round of 16.

All of which got me to thinking - is there a way to improve this? I think so, leading to...

MAKING IT BETTER: World Cup Draw Edition.

Here are my five suggestions for improving the tournament draw, leading off with one major change for the tournament itself.

1. Expand the field. I think the field should expand to 40 teams. That's still less than 20 percent of all FIFA members, and would allow for eight groups of five teams each (which I know presents various challenges, which I will presently ignore). I have no plan for how to expand beyond giving each confederation at least one more guaranteed spot (I'd limit UEFA and CONMEBOL to only one new slot each). But by expanding the field you'd create more cushion within groups. You'd likely still have a group of death somewhere, but not the sort of murderer's row we're getting in some of the groups for 2014.

2. Fix the FIFA rankings. The eight seeded teams for 2014 were determined by their FIFA ranking as of October 2013. The ranking is based on how a team has performed over four years, with results earning points, and with the final ranking based on some sort of averaging. Problem is that teams can game this system, as Switzerland did by not playing as many friendlies, and not against teams that are towards the bottom of the rankings. This article gives a good idea of how the ranking works and how teams can make it work in their favor.

I don't have a particularly good idea of what to use to replace it (Nate Silver's Soccer Power Index is an interesting example), but I don't think teams should be penalized for playing friendlies against lower ranked teams. If FIFA can give Qatar a World Cup based at least in part on growing the game in certain parts of the world, it can easily support that ideal by making games against teams from those areas not be an albatross around the higher-ranked team's neck.

3. Use the improved ranking to place teams in pots. As it stands now, there's one pot that includes the ranked teams and then the pots have some sort of geographic theme to them, so as to avoid any confederation from having more than one team in a group (or in the case of Europe, two teams). There's no seeding in those other pots, which is how you can get teams of similar ranking but different continents in the same group.

If you use rankings all the way through, you'd likely get groups that are more consistent with each other, and still use different pots to bring about geographical diversity (although using the SPI you could still wind up with a group having Germany, the US, and Portugal, as the US would the lowest seed in their pot and Portugal the highest in theirs).


4. Have someone outside of FIFA manage the draw. No one trusts FIFA. Even with a draw as apparently transparent as the recent one, you'll still get conspiracy theories based on FIFA's long history of corruption and cronyism. So just as the Oscar results are tabulated by an outside accounting firm, find someone else to run the draw. Not sure who exactly could do this that wouldn't have a vested interest in some team getting an easy group. Maybe some Canadians. They never make the World Cup.

5. Cut back on the pomp during the show. It's only an hour, but it's like some awful combination of the American Idol results show and the Eurovision song contest. If the lottery folks can draw six balls in under a minute for Mega Millions, we could wrap up the draw in ten minutes, easy. That'd give everyone an extra 50 minutes to complain about their team's group and devise conspiracy theories.

There you go, FIFA. Get crackin'.