Mr. Mercedes, by Stephen King

Mr. Mercedes is a new foray into the detective genre for King, and I hope it continues. His excellent characterization and style are on display in this book, and the mystery plot hangs together well enough to keep it interesting throughout.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is that King lets us inside the head of the killer, which is a dark and horrible place, but also logical and sometimes humorous. The best parts of the book were where the hero and the killer were battling each other with words and psychology in a private on-line forum. Unfortunately, the hero got the upper hand about half-way through the book and, as a result, the second half of the book wasn't nearly as good as the first half. It's much more interesting to have two characters trying to out-smart each other than to have one just trying to stop the other from doing evil deeds.

Overall, Mr. Mercedes was well worth reading. I look forward to seeing more from King in this genre.

Sphere, by Michael Crichton

Crichton is so frustrating. He has awesome concepts--What if the navy found an alien spacecraft buried on the ocean floor?--but he just can't follow through on them. His plots always seem to devolve into a theme about how humans can't handle their own technology. And his characters never really come alive. They run around trying to solve the mystery and fight each other like grade-school children, but they remain cardboard cut-outs.

But his concepts keep sucking me back in! At least his books are quick, easy reads. I have a feeling I'll be back for more.

The Last Town, by Blake Crouch

This is third book in the trilogy and I was impressed that the first two, Pines and Wayward, had self-contained plots with good structures even though they were part of a larger narrative. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the third book. It had no real conflict developed just for this novel. It was really just the concluding part of the whole trilogy where the first book was the set-up and the second book was the response and attack. This made The Last Town much less enjoyable than the first two. It was fast-paced and an easy read, but I never really got into it. I also thought the ending was a cop-out. Perhaps Crouch is setting up a fourth book, but then it wouldn't really be a trilogy, would it?

Manhattan Nocturne, by Colin Harrison

Didn't I just give an author a second chance only to be disappointed with Mystery Girl? The exact same thing happened with the second book I've read by Colin Harrison, Manhattan Nocturne. From my review of Risk by the same author, I concluded with: "Overall, this book was only so-so because the concept wasn't exciting enough and the stakes never built up during the story." Wouldn't you know it, but Manhattan Nocturne had the same problem.

The story is about a reporter tricked into solving a mystery by a beautiful woman. The mystery is somewhat interesting, but we never care enough about the lead character or the woman to care much about solving the mystery. The stakes just aren't there. It's funny, his career, his family and his life are all at stake at some point, but I just didn't care because the protagonist didn't seem to care much about any of these things. A lot of the inner dialogue of the character was about how flawed and evil our species is. His job was at stake, but he wasn't proud of the work he did. His marriage was at stake, but he cheated on his wife with the beautiful woman and didn't regret it until it led to trouble. His family was at stake, but only by accident and it wasn't a direct part of the plot. His life was at stake in some parts, but he had so much self-loathing that he didn't seem to mind too much except for the physical pain. I think the lesson here is that to make sure the reader is interested in the main character, the character himself must desperately want to achieve his goals. If he doesn't, you end up with a so-so story such as Manhattan Nocturne.

Mystery Girl, by David Gordon

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I loved the first part of David Gordon's The Serialist, but it switched tones in the middle and I ended up not liking it. I thought perhaps Gordon's inexperience building a consistent plot and theme was just a rookie mistake that he corrected with Mystery Girl. Boy, was I wrong. Gordon seems to be opposed to structured plots, on principle. The protagonist of Mystery Girl is a frustrated writer who likes to write dark, stream-of-consciousness, soul-searching novels with no plot and that nobody reads. Unfortunately, this seems to be a description of Gordon's ideal. He ends up writing a mongrel mixture of a commercial mystery with a "literary" modern novel, and he ends up satisfying neither audience.

Mystery Girl has action and mystery, but it isn't structured in a way that makes us care. The protagonist doesn't know what he wants, and as a result the reader doesn't care what happens to him. There's lots of scheming by minor characters and more than a few plot twists, but we just don't care enough to follow all of them and instead we end up focusing on the implausibility of the schemes.

Gordon has excellent style, but little else, and its a shame.

Wayward, by Blake Crouch

As soon as I finished Pines, I immediately downloaded the next book in the series, Wayward. The Kindle makes it too easy, and I borrowed both for free with my Prime account (Crouch still gets some money for borrowed books.) The big secret revealed at the end of Pines was excellent and I wanted to see what happened next to the characters I'd been following. After such a great reveal at the end of Pines, it isn't surprising that Wayward wasn't able to match the surprise. However, there is still a mystery to solve in Wayward which makes the book stand on its own in the trilogy: Why was the Founder's daughter killed?

While just as well written as Pines, I wasn't as satisfied with Wayward because the payoff at the end wasn't as big. However, since this book is in the middle, it needs to set up a big finish for the third novel, and it did this well. The last book in the trilogy, The Last Town, isn't out yet, but I plan to read it soon after it is released so see what finally happens to these characters I've come to love.

Pines, by Blake Crouch

I really enjoyed Crouch's Run so I was looking forward to another exciting thriller from the author, Pines, and he did not disappoint. While not as dark or scary as Run, Pines was very entertaining and mysterious.

I didn't realize it when I started, but Pines is the first book in a trilogy (the others are Wayward and The Last Town). Even though this is just one third of the whole story, the book has a good structure and is self-contained. That's one thing I like about Crouch--he gets the four-part structure that makes novels entertaining. He also gets concept, which for Pines is: What if a special agent woke up in a strange mountain town after a car accident and couldn't contact the outside world? The secret of the town, Wayward Pines, is slowly revealed throughout the book until the big secret is revealed at the end.

The only part I didn't like was how the town would have murderous search parties to find a traitor where they all dress up in weird Halloween-type costumes. It wasn't believable that so many people would go along with such a bizarre spectacle. But this wasn't a key part of the novel and it didn't ruin a great story executed almost perfectly.

The Deep Blue Goodbye, by John D. MacDonald

I read this book after I learned that Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe is a fan of the Travis McGee series. Written in 1964, it has a lot of psychobabble that was popular at the time but is distracting today. The main women in the story also acted like helpless victims, which I suppose was normal for that time period, but also seemed out of place in today's culture.

Besides these aspects not standing the test of time, the book was well written with a decent plot. But it wasn't as good as Robert B. Parker, who is my favorite author in this type of hard-boiled detective genre.

I probably won't read another Travis McGee novel, but I may try The End of the Night, which Stephen King mentioned as a great American tragedy. Or I might try The Executioners, on which the movie Cape Fear was based.

The Age of Reagan: 1980-1989, by Steven F. Hayward

I really enjoyed the first volume of Hayward's biography of Ronald Reagan, The Age of Reagan: 1964-1980. I also enjoyed the second volume, but not as much as the first. I liked learning about Reagan's principled stand for lower taxes, a strong defense, the elimination of nuclear weapons, and the evil of communism. I didn't like the stories about the infighting among his cabinet and the political necessity of compromising with congress. These were big parts of Reagan's presidency and deserve to be chronicled--I just wasn't as interested. I also would have liked to read more about his relationship with Margaret Thatcher and the similar economic revolution she brought about in Britain.

Hayward is a great writer and has a wonderful way of setting up each chapter to let us know something interesting is in store for us, either by talking about a controversial topic, such as Iran-Contra, or by putting it in the context of a bigger event, such as the fall of the Soviet Union.

After finishing both volumes of Hayward's biography, I have to rank Ronald Reagan as one of our best presidents. He fought for economic reform which resulted in a growing economy for two decades, he put pressure on the Soviet Union which ended the cold war, and he showed that a principled politician can win and make progress toward smaller government, even though no president after him has followed his lead. We can still hope a future president will.

'Salem's Lot by Stephen KIng

In my continuing quest to read everything Stephen King has written, I've finished 'Salem's Lot, a tale about vampires taking over a small Maine town. This was King's second published novel, and it showed off his skill at style with wonderful descriptions and beautiful phrases. However, the characters were rather thin even though he spent a lot of time developing them. The plot was also lacking, and about half-way through I found it tough to keep reading because I already knew that the rest of the book would be people vs. vampires, and I didn't really care that much about any of the characters.

The introduction to 'Salem's Lot is interesting. Written in 2005--thirty years after publication--King makes a case against plotting in favor of panting. He says that he intended the vampires to win in the end but that his characters took over and slayed the vampire. I'm sure this made it entertaining for King to write, since he didn't know himself what was going to happen. But by just letting the story wander and find its way, it made it much less interesting for the reader, as noted above.

He also mentions that he had another book, Roadwork, finished and that he could have published that one as his second novel. His editor thought Roadwork was more "literary" but that 'Salem's Lot would sell better. They decided to go with the latter, even though it typecast King in the horror genre. I think I'll read Roadwork next, to see the difference.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents, by Stephen Hayward

While Steven Hayward's The Politically Incorrect Guide to The Presidents: From Wilson to Obama isn't as good as his The Age of Reagan: 1964-1980, it was still an informative and entertaining read.

Hayward takes the approach of rating the presidents based on their job description, which is basically:

• Preside over the military as commander-in-chief
• Execute the laws passed by congress
• Ensure the laws passed are constitutional (if not, veto them)
• Nominate Supreme Court justices

Furthermore, the President must take this oath of office:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Hayward's book is important because it reviews each of the presidents, starting with Woodrow Wilson, grading them according to how well they performed their job description and upheld the oath of office. He starts with Wilson in 1913 because it was Wilson who first significantly expanded the job of president beyond the job description laid out in the Constitution. Before Wilson, presidents performed their duty by commanding the military in times of war (e.g. Lincoln, Madison) or keeping the congress in check by vetoing unconstitutional laws (Hayward gives wonderful examples from Madison, Pierce, Buchanan and Cleveland).

I agreed with most of Hayward's ratings for the early presidents. But for the presidents since Reagan, I thought he had a Republican vs. Democrat bias which wasn't supported by the examples he provided. Since this book was published in the election year of 2012, I believe part of the purpose was to get people to vote against Obama and so the later rankings had more partisan bias. But this doesn't detract from the value of this book which is the assessment of how the U.S. Presidents of the last hundred years lived up to their duty to protect the Constitution.

Permutation City, by Greg Egan

I heard about Permutation City from H. C. Bonner's blog who contacted me about my Fourier Life website. Since I'm also interested in cellular automata and how they might be used to discover the origin of life, I downloaded the sample of Permutation City onto my Kindle.

The book started out well. It was well-written with a good style, a somewhat rare quality of science fiction. There was mystery and interesting characters, so when I got to the end of the sample I purchased the book (only $2.99).

With the Kindle sample, usually around 5% of the book, it is easy to judge character and style, but it's impossible to judge the structure since the first plot point--the central conflict--doesn't appear until around 25%. And if the book doesn't follow a standard structure, it's also impossible to tell from the sample.

In the case of Permutation City, the first plot point didn't come until 88% of the book! As a result, for most of the book I was wondering: Who are these people? What are they after? How do they fit together? Why should I care? Once I got the answers at the 88% mark, I was interested. But because the book was almost over, the development and resolution were rushed and quite unsatisfying. The central idea of the book was intriguing, but the flawed structure destroyed any chance of making it into an interesting story.

The Age of Reagan: 1964-1980, by Steven Hayward

The Age of Reagan: 1964-1980 by Stephen Hayward is an excellent book. It is subtitled "The Fall of the Old Liberal Order" which is the main reason I read it. Reagan is in the background for most of the book--this story is more about the conditions that occurred in the 15 years before Reagan was elected which paved the way for the "Reagan Revolution."

I turned 12 in 1980 so I don't remember anything political of the sixties or seventies. I didn't have any experience with gas lines and I was only vaguely aware of the Iranian hostage crisis. My first political memory is an assignment by our teacher to find out whom our parents supported in the 1980 election. I remember my teacher was for Anderson and my mother supported Reagan, explaining that "since he's an actor, his speeches won't be boring."

The Age of Reagan: 1964-1980 was an excellent history lesson for me. I read it mostly on my Nexus 7 Android tablet which was great for looking up additional material as I was reading, such as Nelson Rockefeller flipping the bird to the media, Reagan's debate with Buckley over the Panama Canal, and Jimmy Carter's famous "malaise speech," among many, many others. Seeing many of the events described in the book first-hand also allowed me to confirm that Hayward is an honest observer of the events, even though he is biased toward Reagan and his ideas (as am I).

The years 1964-1980 are important because, according to my father who was 23 in 1964, those were the years when things in America took a turn for the worse. After the years of the great depression and World War II (1930-1945), the fifties and early sixties were a return to normalcy. The economy was growing, and there was a great sense of optimism in the country. It was just that optimism and prosperity that got the liberals into trouble once Johnson was elected president in 1964.

LBJ used the power of government to declare a "War on Poverty" at home and to expand the war in Vietnam abroad. The failure of both of these wars was an early indictment of liberal ideas and allowed Nixon to be elected in 1968. However, Nixon was one of the worst offenders against free markets, implementing price-and-wage controls and taking the dollar off of the gold standard. Nixon also did great harm to the Republican party by lying about Watergate. This allowed the Democrats to reclaim the presidency with Carter, who introduced more regulations on energy production and had a disastrous appeasement strategy in foreign policy highlighted by the Iranian hostage crisis.

The extreme government interference in the economy and weak stand against communism by LBJ, Nixon and Carter paved the way for Reagan to easily win the election in 1980 on a campaign of free-market reforms and a strong, moral opposition to the Soviet Union. I plan to read the second volume from Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989, and I hope it's as good as the first volume. LBJ, Nixon and Carter demonstrated over 15 years that government manipulation of the economy doesn't work. But it wasn't until Reagan demonstrated that free-markets work that the rest of the world took notice and started their own reforms toward capitalism. This, I believe, is a big part of "What Went Right."