True Fiction

TrueFiction

by Lee Goldberg

Thomas & Mercer

Waikiki Beach, Hawaii is the scene of an horrific airplane crash that kills hundreds aboard the flight and the hotels off the beach. In Seattle, best-selling thriller writer Ian Ludlow is aghast when he sees the TV news feeds – because he knows he was the inspiration behind the crash. Three years before, Ludlow and a number of other writers were recruited by the CIA. Their brief was to create scenarios for terrorist atrocities to help the government prepare for the worst. Now it looks like someone in the CIA enacted Ludlow’s scenario. He discovers that someone has already killed the other writers – now they want him dead too.

Ludlow goes on the run with the reluctant help of his author’s escort, Margo French. They soon realize the scope of government surveillance in everyday life as attempt after attempt is made to kill them. Escaping by the skin of their teeth, Ludlow and Margo know they have to identify their pursuer and stop him before their luck runs out. Only one man can help – former TV star turned survivalist recluse Ronnie Mancuso. When the three team up they have a chance to turn the tables on their pursuer – but it’ll mean going into the lion’s den. Can Ian Ludlow channel his fictional hero and save the day in a plot worthy of one of his books?

Humorous, thrilling and scary, True Fiction is a great caper story of the little guys taking on the all-encompassing secret state in a knock-down drag-out fight to the finish.

Her Beautiful Monster - review

Her BeautifulMonster

by Adi Tantimedh

Leopoldo & Co./Atria/Simon & Schuster.

Ravi Chandra Singh, investigator with Golden Sentinels of London, thinks he’s a holy fool. To him the gods of Hindu mythology are far from mythical: he sees them everywhere (except when he’s making love to gorgeous girlfriend Julia – the gods do have some discretion). His colleagues know about his oddity, yet they’re fine with it. His Machiavellian boss Roger Golden even sees Ravi’s budding shamanism as an asset to the firm. As for Golden Sentinels’ own implanted CIA spook Marcie, who knows what she really thinks?

The case of a Russian oligarch’s missing will leads Ravi and Co to a murderous family of blue-bloods. The case is wrapped up with the firm’s usual skill, but the result has disturbing geopolitical implications. To give them a break, Roger sends Ravi and Julia on an easy fact-finding assignment to observe the firm’s LA office at work. 

La-La Land lives up to expectations, with wannabe movie stars, beautiful people, and celebrities causing scandals. No scandal has the potential to be bigger than the case of Hollywood mogul Gossamer Rand Ross. Ross’ enthusiastic amateur efforts to assist the CIA in a little matter of gun running comes off the rails when brush fires encircle the city. Ravi and Julia are dragged into the middle of it all, and things turn especially hairy when old faces from Ravi’s past show up – including Ravi and Julia’s former lover Ariel, mercenary and sociopath extraordinaire. When Ravi sees the goddess Kali licking her lips, he knows the smelly stuff is going to hit the fan. Are the gods here to help, or are Ravi and Julia heading for a fatal fall?

Her BeautifulMonster is a rollicking journey through the dystopian world of modern mores, where East meets West in a fusion of laughter and wince-inducing pathos. 

Babylon Berlin - review

Babylon Berlin

by Volker Kutscher

Sandstone Press

Germany, Spring, 1929. Inspector Gereon Rath was a homicide detective in his home town of Cologne, but a shooting in the line of duty led to a newspaper scandal his career couldn’t survive. Thanks to his father’s heavy political and police connections, Rath transferred to Berlin and took up a position in E Section – the Vice squad in the city police HQ on Alexanderplatz. Under the avuncular guidance of Chief Inspector Wolter, Rath begins to find his feet in the vibrant and dangerous city. He also falls in love with ambitious police stenographer Charlotte Ritter.

When a dead Russian dissident somehow crashes a stolen car into the Landwehr Canal, the troubled Rath spies a chance to resume a career in homicide as a member of the crack A Section – but this is Berlin and nothing’s as it appears. Somewhere there’s a hidden fortune in Russian gold. A radical group of Russian exiles, a Berlin crime king, and corrupt cops at the heart of Alexanderplatz all conspire to be the first to find it. Rath must pursue a dangerous course through the illegal nightclubs and Communist neighborhoods of the city if he’s to win the case and get the girl – but a shocking encounter on the streets of Berlin throws everything into doubt.

In Babylon Berlin, Noir detective fiction merges seamlessly into the complex and hedonistic world of pre-Nazi Berlin. Kutscher’s period research, descriptions and realistic, sympathetic characters drive a narrative that’s hard to put down. 

Killers of the Flower Moon

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
by David Grann
Random House 
Author web site link
Amazon link

If this book wasn't based on a true life tragedy of epic proportions, you'd swear you were reading a best-selling mystery-thriller it's so engaging. David Grann presents the people and the "culture of killing" that existed in Osage County, Oklahoma during the 1920s. His clear and unblinking style reveals the dark, racist underside of the early petroleum industry, and how far these men were willing to go to make their millions.

We come to know Mollie Burkhardt and her sisters as they are killed off one by one, and we feel her terror and anguish at the knowledge that some person or persons she trusts are exterminating the Osage for their oil headrights.

At one time the richest people in America, the Osage sat on top of the world's then largest oil reserves. From poor ranchers to practically millionaires overnight, the Osage were the envy of the white society that surrounded them. The law took away their rights to handle their own wealth, however. "Guardians" were appointed by federal judges to handle the finances of most Osage, since only whites were seen as "competent." This racist system guaranteed abuses and frauds against the Osage, but the final draw many whites who benefited from the system felt came when the Osage sued successfully to keep their mineral rights, which by the turn of the 20th century meant petroleum deposits.

An Osage couldn't sell or give his or her oil headright to a non-Osage, but if an Osage married a white who became his or her guardian, then he/she could inherit--and sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars--the Osage spouse's headright. Mollie and her sisters were each married (or formerly married) to white husbands. Mollie's older sister Anna was discovered shot in the head from behind. Then Mollie's mother died under mysterious circumstances, suspected to be slow poisoning, and then her younger sister Rita and her husband and maid were blown up along with their newly purchased home. The newly created "Bureau of Investigation" (the precursor to the FBI) under a new young and brash director, J. Edgar Hoover, finally stood up and took notice of the numerous murders of Osage oil headright owners happening in Oklahoma. 

In 1925, Hoover appointed Agent Tom White, a former Texas Ranger, to take charge of the case, which had been terribly mismanaged by earlier agents. White discovered there were many more than just Mollie's family members being murdered--possibly there were hundreds of Osage shot and poisoned in the time period 1915-1930, with many leads pointing to their trusted white guardians and spouses, upstanding members of the community. Sympathetic whites and the henchmen who pulled off the actual killings for their paymasters also met untimely deaths, proving that no one was able to escape the culture of killing once the Oklahoma oil rush began in earnest.

In the wake of the recent actions taken against Native American protestors of the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, Killers of the Flower Moon is a must-read book that demonstrates how the rich, predominately white male members of the petroleum industry are not above committing murder to obtain access to the petroleum resources they want. It is riveting true story about an ugly time period in American history that has been covered up for far too long.

Rating: 4+ sushi rolls (a great read)