Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

Summary: The NSA’s multi-billion dollar code breaking computer encounters the first code it’s never been able to break. The head of the Crypto division calls in his best troubleshooter to help him figure out what’s going on, while simultaneously sending her boyfriend over to Europe to chase down the personal effects of the code’s designer. It’s a race against time when the code transforms and starts breaking down the machine’s defenses, threatening to open the country’s most secret databases to the entire world.

Setting: Present day U.S. and Europe

Plot: In this case, the summary pretty much says it all.

Criticisms: Can get a bit geeky at times, but not a bad read.

Wrap-up: Dan Brown is pretty good at his craft, and this one’s no exception. He’s not the greatest dialog writer around, but there are some decent action sequences. Not a ‘must read’, but a fun book if you’re looking for something to keep your mind busy.

Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I give this book a solid B.

Tripwire – Lee Child

Summary: A Reacher novel. If you need more of a summary than that, you're not familiar with him, and you need to be. Pick up a Reacher novel, then come back to this review.

Setting: Present day U.S.

Plot: Jack Reacher is contacted by a private investigator while working as a laborer in Key West. After the PI makes contact with him, he’s mysteriously killed (the PI, not Reacher). Who hired the PI? Reacher takes it upon himself to figure that out, as well as trying to figure out who took him out, and why they did it.

Turns out that Garber (Reacher’s old boss) was investigating a soldier who was MIA in Viet Nam and he evidently pissed off the wrong people. Reacher’s left to pick up the pieces, which he does in his standard spectacular fashion.

Criticisms: No technical criticisms.

Wrap-up: Reacher is a wonderful character, but to be honest, I need a break from him for a while. He’s a bad ass, and everything typically works out for him. That’s a bit tiring after a while. I think a bit of separation may bring back some of the enjoyment for me.

Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I give this book an A-.

The Templar Salvation – Raymond Khoury

Summary: Another Templar conspiracy novel.

Setting: Present day and Medieval Europe and Middle East

Plot: At an archaeological dig in Turkey, clues are found to a Templar treasure. FBI Agent Reilly is involved when his ex-girlfriend is kidnapped by a terrorist who is following the clues to the lost treasure, which could topple the Catholic Church.

Criticisms: A couple of plot holes, a character or two who completely disappear. A bit jumpy in some of the transitions to flashbacks.

Wrap-up: Khoury is an author who’s trying to cash in on the popularity of Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code. His transitions are a bit rough, and this series can be a bit plodding at times, but does a halfway competent job of keeping the books moving.

Having said that, I keep reading this series. Maybe I’m a just glutton for punishment.

Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I give this book a C+.

Phoenix Rising – John J. Nance

Summary: A newly revived Pan Am is in trouble. Accidents are plaguing their planes, they’re being turned in to the FAA for bogus violations, and their financial security is anything but stable. From all indications, someone is manipulating their stock valuation, and the lenders are calling in all the chips. Will the new CFO be able to save this fledgling airline?
 
Setting: US and Great Britain, late 1980’s

Plot: It’s not very often (in the books that I read, anyway) that the plot revolves around financing a company.

According to the narrative, Pan Am went out of business and the company has recently been brought back to life, due to the efforts of Elizabeth Sterling, a rising star on Wall Street. When the CFO of the fledgling airline makes some bad decisions (undoing some of the deals Elizabeth put together), management in the company smells trouble coming and entices Elizabeth to sign on as their new CFO.

Now Elizabeth has to restructure all of the deals all over again, but now someone’s been talking to all the lenders and convincing them not to loan to Pan Am. Other things start going wrong as well; maintenance problems with the planes, missing pilot certification records, intruders discovered in their maintenance facilities. It looks like someone is trying to put Pan Am back out of business.

Can Elizabeth find someone who’s willing to lend the necessary money to the new company?
 
Criticisms: Some of the financial material was over my head, but there’s enough action to pull you through the rest of the book.
 
Wrap-up: It might sound pretty boring, but it’s actually a pretty good book. Nance is very knowledgeable about the airline business, and he’s not too bad at the action sequences either. Worth a look.
 
Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I give this book a solid B.

I’ve been lagging.

Sorry, everyone (all 3 of you). I’ve been reading, but I’ve been too lazy to put together my reviews. I’ll post them over the next few days, but I skipped reviewing a couple of light-weight books in favor of a couple of meatier ones.

Expect 4 or 5 more reviews in the next few days, but the books (and their reviews) will be a bit lighter.

If you enjoy my reviews, feel free to comment on my reviews and let me know! I don’t know who’s actually reading this.

The Gold Coast – Nelson Demille

Summary: A WASP lawyer lives with his wife on the Gold Coast of Long Island, and his life has gotten to the point where it obviously needs some excitement. I don’t think a mafia boss moving in next door is just what the doctor ordered though. This may sound vaguely like a sitcom plot from the ‘80’s, but it’s really not.

 

Setting: Long Island, 1980’s

 

Plot: John Sutter lives an existence that’s a bit more complicated than you’d expect from the outside. From the outside, he’s a successful tax lawyer with a beautiful wife who lives in a mansion. Inside though, it’s a bit more complicated. He’s getting a bit bored with his life. His marriage blends two of the oldest (and therefore, most prestigious) families on the Gold Coast. The money (and the roof over his head) belong to his wife, because of the draconian pre-nuptial he signed. His salary, while comfortable, places him among the lowest earners in their circle of friends and acquaintances, while his last name and family history place him among the highest, in terms of status. His wife (based on the same family factors) is quite a bit lower on the social register, while she’s much wealthier. All of this is explained quite well, within the terms of the story.

 

Enter the antagonist. Frank Bellarosa  is the largest remaining head of the different organizations in the mafia, and he’s bought the estate next door to the Sutters.

 

In the beginning, John fights off Bellarosa’s efforts to reach out and start a friendship. In time (over the course of the book) John needs to call on Bellarosa for a favor. Italians love their favors, don’t they? Now, John owes Frank. Turns out, Frank may have purposefully caused the situation that forced John into needing a favor from Frank to start out with.

 

Just that last sentence might have given you an idea of how twisted this book can get, but wait, there’s more! Now, let’s add Susan Stanhope Sutter (John’s wife) into the mix, and she gets some sort of relationship going with Frank (we’re never point blank told whether it was a sexual relationship or not), and that complicates John’s life even more, making him reevaluate his marriage in addition to his career and the direction his life has taken up to this point.

 

Now, Frank is indicted for a murder that he (allegedly) did not commit, and he calls a favor in from John to defend him in the eventual court case. John’s a tax lawyer, but he would bring “blue blood” to the proceedings, along with being a member of one of the oldest families in America.

 

Criticisms: Parts can get a bit gruesome. There’s quite a few ethnic slurs thrown around. Stereotypes abound.

 

Wrap-up: I don’t know how Demille does it, but all his books are impeccably researched, and he knows what he’s talking about. He gives good information about the first families to crawl off the Mayflower, the social structure and geography of one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the United States, the mafia, law (including tax law), Italian culture – and that’s just this one book!

 

This book boils down, though, to one man’s journey from a happy normal life, to a state of mind where he sinks his own $300,000 boat to keep it out of the hands of the IRS (a felony, by the way), takes tours of mob areas of New York City with the head of a mafia family, and takes on the U.S. Attorney at a very personal level. It comes across as a decent into madness kind of journey, but presented in context, his actions (no matter how outrageous they are) are mostly within the boundaries of what we would consider “normal behavior”.

 

That’s one of the things that make this book such a joy to read, John comes across as a normal guy, and when he encounters situations which don’t meet his definition of “normal”, his behavior (while at times a bit aberrant) is the exact thing we would all like to do in his situation.

 

Overall, it makes you think, and makes you feel for John (and for Frank as well), as they’re pushed outside their comfort zones and the rains of reality wash off the patina to show their true colors.

 

Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I give this book a solid A.

Gates of Fire – Steven Pressfield

Summary: The fictionalized historical account of one of two Spartans who survived the battle at Thermopylae, previously fictionalized in the movie “300”.

 

Setting: Ancient Greece.

 

Plot: I put the plot back in for this review. It’s worth it!

 

King Xerxes from Persia is taking over the world, and King Leonidas of the Spartans refuses to allow Xerxes’ forces to march in unopposed. He selects 300 warriors (and their squires) and leads them and their allies to make a stand at a natural choke point in northern Greece. Of those 300 warriors and their associated support personnel, there are 2 survivors. The narrator is one of them, commissioned by King Xerxes to tell the story of the Spartans.

 

The narrator tells the story from the point of view of one of the squires; essentially a helper to a knight and a punching bag for that knight as he goes through training. The story covers the squire’s journey from a sacked and abandoned village in northern Greece all the way to Sparta in southern Greece, and his assignment to different Spartan knights.

 

While the stories in the narration are quite entertaining (humorous, compelling, poignant and sometimes quite ghastly), the concepts that Pressfield presents are quite hard hitting, and force quite a bit of self-examination. The concepts of valor, honor, and duty are explored in great depth, and attempting to compare any values that you (the reader) hold dear against the values that the Spartan warriors (and their wives) lived by on a daily basis leaves you with a haunting feeling of inadequacy.

 

A bit of an example: The whole city knows that Leonidas will be calling up 300 knights to go face Xerxes. Only knights who have male descendants will be chosen – effectively, Leonidas is acknowledging that this is a suicide mission. The wife of one of the main characters conspires to save her nephew by claiming him as her own son, knowing full well that her husband (who’s fathered only daughters) will now be eligible to be called up. She knows that her husband’s sense of honor will be shattered if he’s not allowed to participate in the defense of their homeland. The king pulls her aside afterward and explains his reasoning for choosing only certain knights (including her husband) to participate:

 

“When the battle is over, when the Three Hundred have gone down to death, then will Greece look to the Spartans, to see how they bear it.

 

But who, lady, will the Spartans look to? To you. To you and the other wives and mothers, sisters and daughter of the fallen.

 

If they behold your hearts riven and broken with grief, they, too, will break. And Greece will break with them. But if you bear up, dry-eyed, not alone enduring your loss but seizing it with contempt for its agony and embracing if as the honor that it is in truth, then Sparta will stand. And all of Hellas will stand behind her.

 

Why have I nominated you, lady, to bear up beneath this most terrible of trials, you and your sisters of the Three Hundred? Because you can.”

There’s a bit more of an explanation, she cries a bit, then declares:

“Those were the last tears of mine, my lord, that the sun will ever see.”

There are so many parts of this book that gave me the chills; it’s very rare to read such a strong story of valor, honor, and duty. Current era stories about the military (and some civilian stories too) highlight these same concepts, but for the most part, the protagonists in the current stories succeed against insurmountable odds, or know heading into a situation that there’s a chance that they won’t survive.

 

These soldiers knew for a fact that they would not be returning from the Hot Gates. Theirs was a suicide mission. Their goal in facing down Xerxes in this particular spot was twofold: to hurt him enough in this one battle that he would think twice about taking on all of Greece’s military might, and to set an example for the rest of Greece in the lengths that they should all be willing to go to to preserve their country and their way of life.

 

Contrary to the popular image, there were not only 300 men standing up to the Persian invasion. There were 300 Spartan knights, but some allies joined with them in this battle; true historical accounts differ, but there were between 7,000 and 10,000 defenders. Historical accounts differ as well on the number of troops the Persian king brought; anywhere from 250,000 to 2,000,000 troops are acceptable numbers within the context of the true story. There is also no hard evidence of how many casualties were suffered by the Persian troops. I have seen figures quoting as many as 50,000 casualties of this one battle on the Persian side alone.

 

Nearly universal though, are the number of Spartan deaths. Leonidas sent all of the remaining allies away at the end, and only the remaining Spartans of the original 300 (along with their remaining squires) and one ally (numbering around 200 troops) remained at the end. Historically, there may have been a handful of survivors from the final clash, but it’s universally agreed that none of the Spartan knights survived.

 

Criticisms: Quite gory at times.

 

Wrap-up: This is a very hard book to read. The language can be quite antiquated at times, but it really gives you a good feel for the time period. Some of the moral concepts brought up force what can be some painful introspection. Extremely gory at times. A very good book, but definitely not for everyone. If you can watch 300 without flinching at the amount of gore, and the time period interests you, I would highly recommend this book.

 

Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I give this book an A.