It’s been such a long time since I’ve blogged—I don’t blame
you if you’ve given up checking my site. My only excuse is the same lame excuse
folks nowadays use anytime they haven’t done what they had promised—I’ve been
busy. Not too busy to read, but somehow, I always find other things to do when
it comes time to reviewing what I’ve read. (And it is March Madness season,
after all!) So to make up for my slackerness, this blog entry will cover three
books that I’ve read over the past several months: John Le Carré’s Our Kind of Traitor, T. Jefferson
Parker’s The Border Lords, and Brad
Meltzer’s Inner Circle.
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After reading Le Carré’s latest, Our Kind of Traitor (Viking; $27.95), I was left with the same
feeling I always have when I finish one of his books: I guess I’m just not
smart enough to understand his books. I seem to miss key plot elements and have
to retrace my steps to figure out just exactly how this character got to
whatever sticky wicket he’s stuck in. In this case, a young couple on vacation
in Antigua meet a Russian money launderer
named Dima who insists on a game of tennis. That brief encounter is enough to
raise alarm bells on the part of the British Secret Service. The agents debrief
the young couple and enlist their help in getting Dima to tell what he knows
about dirty money around the globe. But Dima won’t talk unless the Brits
promise to get his family out of Russia, and more unlikely, Dima’s
children into the top British schools.
The book took me twice as long as most, since Le Carré’s
understated style means that I have to re-read important points in the action.
The ending, in particular, was nearly too dense to understand, and I’d love to
run my interpretation of it past someone else who has read the book. I wanted
to like this book, and for the most part, I did—I just wish Le Carré could make
important twists a bit more obvious, so I don’t miss them the first time
around.
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T. Jefferson Parker’s The
Border Lords (Dutton; $26.95) is the fourth book in Parker’s series
starring ATF agent Charlie Hood. When undercover ATF agent Sean Ozburn, posing
as a meth and gun dealer, drops out of sight, the rest of the Operation
Blowdown team doesn’t know what to make of it. But when the team finds the
bodies of the North Baja Cartel assassins in a safehouse rented by Ozburn, the
team begins to suspect Ozburn of the murders. As one of his closest friends,
Hood tries to reach out to Sean, but is met with suspicion and paranoia.
Working with Sean’s wife, Hood keeps probing until he learns the amazing reason
for why the agent has gone rogue.
And an amazing reason it certainly is. Some might say it
defies credibility—and I would be among them. Parker is such a good story
teller that the book held my interest, but the plot turns on what was,
ultimately, a device that was simply too farfetched.
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Brad Meltzer’s The
Inner Circle (Grand Central Publishing; $26.99) has at its core an unlikely
hero: Beecher White, archivist at the National Archives. Beecher thinks it’s
his lucky day when Clementine Kaye asks for his help in tracking down her
father. Beecher
had a major crush on Clementine when they were kids, and he wants to impress
her now that they’re grown up. In order to impress her, he takes her into the secret
room at the Archives where the President comes to review old documents.
Clementine spills a cup of coffee and in the ensuing chaos, Beecher and another
archivist find a 200-year-old dictionary hidden under a chair—as if the
President might have been trying to hide it. When the other archivist dies
suddenly, Beecher
knows he’s in some deep trouble.
This is a well-plotted political novel with surprising
twists and turns. Beecher
is a pathetic character, but endearingly so.
