Another Series of Police Procedurals

I’ve also knocked of the first four volumes in Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series of detective novels. Bosch is an LAPD homicide detective whose career lurches from disaster to disaster because of his inability to maintain even the merest semblance of respect for his superiors. Although an absolute genius at solving homicides and catching bad guys he’s constantly clashing with his supervisors and Internal Affairs.  He kind of reminds me of Dr Gregory House in the eponymous TV series.

I’ve finished the first four of the series books so far, The Black Echo, The Black Ice, The Concrete Blonde, and The Last Coyote. They’re pretty good for what they are, a pleasant way to while away a few hours on an airplane or a beach.  As with most series, the books are a bit formulaic, there’s a murder, Bosch is called out to investigate it. He finds a love interest. The higher-ups in the LAPD try to screw him or interfere in some way. Bosch interacts with a variety of resources and eventually closes the case, usually with a bit of an “action sequence” which sometimes involves Bosch being captured by the perpetrator.

Anyway, I enjoyed the four I’ve read, and I’ll probably read the rest of them eventually, but only as they become available from the library. I wouldn’t buy them or anything.

128 for the year.

Outstanding Military Fiction

Recently I finished two books there were each in their own way simply outstanding.

Frederick Forsyth’s Christmas themed The Shepard tells the story of a young RAF Vampire pilot flying his fighter jet home from West Germany for Christmas leave. The young man is enjoying his flight and thinking about his prospective holiday when he suddenly realizes that the navigation and radio systems on his aircraft have utterly failed and he is somewhere over the North Sea leaving him no way to find England, and he’s running out of fuel.

Forsyth does an excellent job of putting us into the head of the pilot throughout the entire tale. As the plot develops we follow along with his realizations and feel the tension building along with him. Forsyth also does an excellent job of laying out the more salient aspects of the story in a gradual fashion so that only slowly (along with the pilot) do we realize what’s going on. This is one of my favorite Christmas stories and I read it nearly every year about this time.

James Jones’ From Here to Eternity is another outstanding work of military fiction. The book deals with the lives of US soldiers in the “Pineapple Army”, men who were stationed in Hawaii before WWII. The book primarily deals with the plight of Robert E. Lee Prewitt a bugler and sometime boxer who has asked for a transfer out of the regimental bugle company after another, less capable, bugler is promoted over him. Prewitt finds himself in the regiments’ “jockstrap company”, commanded by the Captain who coaches the regimental boxing team. Since the Captain’s promotion to Major depends upon winning the Divisional boxing title, and Prewitt was an outstanding boxer before quitting the sport after blinding an opponent, Prewitt faces intense pressure to join the team. The pressure is administered by 1SGT Milton Warden, who by the way, is conducting an affair with the Captain’s wife. For the next 860 pages the plot thickens and the novel culminates with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and its aftermath.

The main attraction of the book is not necessarily the plot or the characters, which frankly, we‘ve seen before.  The great strength of the book, at least for me, is Jones’ ability to describe the milieu of the Regular US Army in pre-War Hawaii warts and all. It was a fascinating look at a world that ended when the first Japanese bombs fell on Pearl Harbor. I enjoyed it immensely. Readers should be advised that editions of the book that were published prior to 2011 (ebook) or 2012 (hard copy) were edited by the publisher to remove some of the rougher language and more controversial sexual content. Since my first exposure to the book (of which the movie is a mere shadow!) is from the new ebook, I don’t know how extensive the cuts were.

124 for the year

A Couple of Non-Descript Cruise ship “tell-alls”

I just finished; Chronicles of a Cruise Ship Crew Member; Answers to All the Questions Every Passenger Wants to Ask by Joshua Kinser and The Truth About Cruise Ships – A Cruise Ship Officer Survives the Work, Adventure, Alcohol, and Sex of Ship Life by Jay Herring. The two books are cut from the same piece of cloth, in as much as they both recount the adventures of crew-members on various Carnival cruise ships. Kinser was a drummer on one the on-board bands, while Herring was an IT manager aboard his ship. Both books tell pretty much the same story, although Kinser’s seems a bit more focused on imparting information as he structures his book in a series of chapters which purport to answer commonly asked questions. Herring’s is basically a description of one long alcohol fueled “sex-capade” punctuated by intermittent, brief, periods of actual work. Neither book was anything special.

122 for the year