Tag Archives: corruption

Tower of Lies: Barbara Res

Devastating expose of the tower of lies Donald Trump has ridden to wealth and power from his beginnings as a fledgling real estate developer to his ultimate goal of authoritarian dictator of a country seemingly entranced by his mixture of a WWE villain combined with a deranged evangelist preacher.

Res, who worked for Trump for decades as his building developer, unmasks the narcissistic venality behind Trump’s carefully constructed facade resting entirely on greed, corruption and fraud.

The entire book reminds me of the saying, “When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time around.”

Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan/Jake Adelstein

Adelstein was the first and only non-Japanese staff reporter hired for a major Japanese newspaper, something unheard of in that insular and xenophobic country. His beat covered the seedy side of Japan, where extortion, murder, human trafficking, the sex trade, and corruption were as familiar as fried octopus balls and sushi. His biggest scoop involved exposing how Japan’s most infamous yakuza boss somehow illegally got a visa to the USA for a lifesaving liver transplant ahead of the many Americans on the waiting list in front of him. This resulted in death threats for him and his family and he had to seek police protection and leave the country.

Full disclosure: Adelstein was roughly the same age I was — and arrived in Japan at roughly the same time I did — when I lived there for half a decade. I have a profound feeling of “natsukashii,” or nostalgia when reading this, which may colour my impression of the book. I loved it.

Damn fine fried octopus balls!

The Gentlemen’s Hour/Don Winslow

Winslow has a character named Dave the Love God in this PI investigation based in the San Diego world of surfers, land developers and drug cartels. Fitting, in that Winslow is the “god” of world building in novels.

His spare terse writing is complemented by well-rounded characters, believable plots, excellent pacing and a knowledge of his setting real enough to make you think he was sitting there as an undeclared character as it all develops.

Winslow is a major literary treasure. Read him.

The Boy From the Woods: Harlan Coben

Coben is a master of crafting deeply nuanced and likeable characters in ordinary life and putting them in situations that are both entirely believable and life-affirming.

Unlike many plot-driven vehicles, Coben gives us no indication where the story is going to end up. I was genuinely and pleasantly surprised with the resolution of the book’s conflict.

Coben is truly a modern master.

Heaven’s Prisoners: James Lee Burke

I know that I’ve already given a twitter-sized book review for Burke’s second installment of his Robicheaux series, so just two short comments here: (1) Burke knows and paints the bayous and sleaze of Louisiana better than any writer I know (2) Burke deeply understands violence and the indelible stain it leaves on both sides of the equation.

Siberian Dilemma: Martin Cruz Smith

Renko is back and just as contrary and stubborn as always. Cruz Smith deftly made the transition in his series after the fall of the Soviet Union and the realities of the new Russia, and Renko leads the way.

Unlike other series where the successful formula gets tiresome after reading the same mix seventeen different ways, Cruz Smith has kept his character and his setting fresh.

The phrase “Siberian Dilemma” is explained by blogger Kurt Campbell in the following way:

“The fishermen of northernmost Russia go out onto the frozen lakes of Siberia in temperatures at times approaching 60 degrees below zero centigrade to fill their catch. They know from experience that the biggest fish congregate at the center of lakes where the ice is the thinnest. They slowly make their way out across the ice listening carefully for the telltale signs of cracking. If a fisherman is unlucky enough to fall through the ice into the freezing water, he is confronted immediately with what is known as the Siberian dilemma. If he pulls himself out of the water onto the ice, his body will freeze immediately in the atmosphere and the fisherman will die of shock. If, however, he chooses to take his chances in the water, the fisherman will inevitably perish of hypothermia. Such is the stark choice presented by the Siberian dilemma.”

There should be no dilemma about whether you should read this book or not. Climb into the frost and cold and enjoy Cruz Smith and Renko’s world.

The characters Saran and Bolot are worth the investment alone.

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets/Svetlana Alexievich

Oral history of the people who “lived” through the transformation of the new Russia from the old fragments of the Soviet Union. In the West, we have vague recollections of the horrors of Stalin and his ilk, recoil in disgust from many of the actions of Putin, but we forget how completely the USSR collapsed and what an abysmal state it was in Yelstin’s time, a time when violence and death dictated the economic landscape and turned Russia into a lawless land devoid of rule of law, into a country of obscenely rich oligarchs who stole the nation’s wealth with Putin’s blessing and vast swathes of poor, beaten-down ordinary people who little more freedom than they did under the Bolsheviks.

In a House of Lies: Ian Rankin

Unlike many top-quality police/mystery writers whose amazing early work gets tired and self-derivative at some point, Rankin’s Rebus series never does. John Rebus may be superannuated, but Rankin’s writing never is.

Go back to his first (non-Rebus) novel and the growth and progression ever since is amazing to see.

Rebus’ Scottish mafia crime boss Big Ger Cafferty isn’t quite as good as the crazed New York Irish mafia butcher in Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder series, but it’s not for want of trying.