The Fixer by Joseph Finder Dutton/Penguin/Random House, $28.00, 375 pages, ISBN 978-0-525-95461-3 Do you remember a public works scheme called The Central Artery/Tunnel Project? It was started in 1982 and completed on the last day of December 2007. It was projected to cost 2.8 billion dollars, the final tab amounted to some 14.6 billon and will ultimately cost the taxpayers about 22 billion after interest on the bonds is
Chain of Events by Fredrik T. Olsson Little, Brown & Co/Hachette, $26.00, 432 pages, ISBN 978-0-3163-3500-3 A thrill is defined as: a trembling sensation caused by fear or emotional shock, and a thriller as: a person or something that thrills . . . buckle that together with the word phenomenon, anything that can be perceived as a fact by the senses, and you come up with thriller phenomenon .
All Day and A Night by Alafair Burke Harper Collins, $26.99, 352 pages, ISBN 978-0-06-220838-5 In the argot of the penitentiary—prison slang—an inmate saying that he’s “got all day” means that he’s serving a life sentence. The term “all day and a night” means a life sentence without the possibility of parole, also referred to as life without and sometimes as LWOP. I know these terms because I just
The Heist by Daniel Silva Harper Collins, $27.99, 467 pages, ISBN 978-0-06-232005-6 One of the greatest tragedies in the world today—and God knows there’s no shortage of them to choose from—is the huge and ever-expanding loss of the world’s art heritage due to theft . . . crimes that are often underwritten by some of the globe’s wealthiest citizens and performed by teams of well organized professional criminals. The
Prayer by Philip Kerr Putnam/Penguin, $26.95, 409 pages, ISBN 978-0-399-16765-2 Across the world today, debates are raging between believers and non-believers about the existence of God, and the power of prayer. Radicals are trying to establish theocracies where everyone will adhere to strict religious law, as in Iran, where there’s no separation between church and State, because the church is the government. It’s where religious authority figures interpret the
The Final Silence by Stuart Neville Soho Press, Inc., $26.95, 340 pages, ISBN 978-1-61695-548-9 If you think about it, all of us have two faces. The first is the one we show to the world and the second is our private self—the inner person—the person we truly are, where our secret interests lie. Usually they’re harmless enough . . . a dedicated coin or stamp collector for instance, maybe
Night Heron by Adam Brookes Little Brown and Co., $26.00, 387 pages, ISBN 978-0-7515-5248-5 The next war between the superpowers will most likely take place in cyberspace, because that’s where all the world’s command and control systems are located . . . and it’s highly probable that in the twenty-first century . . . the coming cyberwars will be fought by multinational corporations rather than governments. Why? The answer
Midnight in Europe by Alan Furst Random House/Penguin, $27.00, 251 pages, ISBN 978-1-4000-6949-1 If you’re a fan of noir fiction, tales of WWII exploits or spy thrillers, you’ll love this week’s MBR . . . an espionage novel set in Paris in 1938, on the eve of World War II, just as the Spanish Civil War is coming to an end. Generalissimo Franco’s Nationalist forces, together with their Nazi
The Cairo Affair by Olen Steinhauer Minotaur Books, $26.99, 408 pages, ISBN 978-1-250-03613-1 The Middle East and North Africa has been the focus of the world’s attention since the beginning of the Arab Spring in 2010, and now, the Syrian War has bled over into neighboring countries and spawned one of the most savage, retrograde and degenerate groups of terrorists to ever come along. It’s name is ISIS and
Natchez Burning by Greg Iles Wm Morrow/Harper Collins, $27.99, 791 pages, ISBN 978-0-0-231107-8 The nineteen-sixties was the decade that came close to ripping the fabric of society of the United States of America into small pieces and tossing them to the four winds. It was a time of unrest, when ages-old values were questioned, ages-old wrongs were held to light, fought over and started to be corrected by brave