books

Three books you might enjoy

Two are crime novels, one a political treatise you might find amusing. Another is a crime thriller.

The best crime novel is John Sandford’s “Night Prey.” Sandford is a best-selling writer, a fugitive from the newsroom of the Star-Trib in Minneapolis. This one dates from 1994 but still is fresh and fun. It’s all about a lurking psychopath who is fixated on a female target, watching her from a close rooftop. Lucas, a wealthy computer game designer, likes the cops’s life and he is a good one. No need to go into plot —- that’s Sandford’s job and he does it well. You’re rooting for the target woman all the way and Sandford makes the trip fun.

Less original is Sue Grafton’s “K is for Killer,” one of her alphabet series keyed by the title letter. This is not Sandford-level but entertaining as Kinsey searches for a missing person as a private eye. She knows the local crime scene, and becomes involved with a teen prostitute as a source. The writing i nimble and fun and the plot nicely complex. It’s good enough to make you keep and eye out for her next one, keyed to the letter L.

 A very different book is Patrick J. Buchanan’s 2007 “Day of Reckoning” of 2007. I got steered to it by a mention of it in a political column as worth a read, despite Buchanan’s lack of political action of late. Funny thing is, he suggests a solution to the Iran nuclear crisis very much like the one cobbled together by the U.S. and others.

Most of the book is an attack on George W. Bush for invading Iraq with phony weapons claim. George W. gets no praise here, which maybe why GOP has pretty much abandoned Buchanan.

Lots to contemplate here as Buchanan ticks off recent history of where the U.S. went wrong. But it’s all George W.’s fault.

Lee Child is a very popular thriller writer, with one major character, Jack Reacher, former Army MP major  now a wanderer carrying only a folding toothbrush and a couple of thousands in cash.

His comes to the aid of a embattled innocent. Child’s prose is clean and neat and his bad guy foes always tough in the final sequence. 

Child’s “Echo Burning” from 2001 follows the formula well, in this case helping a battered wife after she picks him on as a hitchhiker and tells him of her abuse. She’s caught with a young daughter with the family of her jailed husband who detests her as a “beaner.”

The husband is released from jail but murdered and the wife is accused. How Reacher works it out is of course the novel. It reads well, the plot is messy but fun. 

Child is a Brit, but he captures America’s flavor well. A fun read, not literary stuff but action enough.