Death at La Fenice

When one of the music world's top conductors dies during intermission of La Traviata during a performance at La Fenice in Venice, Commissario Guido Brunetti is given the investigation, and a mandate to solve it quickly, by his very political boss, Patta. Brunetti rapidly discovers that, like many wildly successful, temperamental perfectionists, the conductor has many who might be angry enough to kill him, but he also has a turbulent and murky past, dating back to his connections with the Nazi party during the second world war.

This is the first book in the series, so I was already familiar with the main characters, but it was interesting to see how Leon skillfully introduces us to Guido's political and ineffective boss, Patta, his wife and children, and his wealthy in-laws, as well as some of his colleagues and allies in the struggle against crime.

A very methodical investigation of the maestro's past and present associates eventually leads the good dottore to an unexpected conclusion, and justice is oddly done.

Death and Judgement by Donna Leon

The story follows the case of a murdered lawyer, with impeccable credentials and a list of A-list clients, as Commissario Brunetti methodically works his way to a conclusion. We see a bit of fun development of Leon's minor characters, like the administrative assistant, Elettra, who seems to have a talent for moving an investigation along with her contacts in the Italian phone company, saving Brunetti the time and trouble of obtaining an un-obtainable warrant.

The trail leads into the seamy underside of the sex trade, where hordes of women from South America and Eastern bloc countries are lured to Italy with the promise of a great job, only to betrayed into prostitution and effectively white slavery once they arrive. Again, the official justice system in Brunetti's country doesn't deliver, but Brunetti finds the anwers he's looking for and the perpetrator meets an untimely end.

The theme of all of these stories seems to be about corruption and abuses by the rich and powerful, and it's all expressed with a particularly Venetian sense of fatalism.

Takedown Twenty by Janet Evanovich

So, it seems to me that this series has very nearly run its course. How many ways can Stephanie destroy a car? Evanovich is starting to repeat herself, unless you think getting a car crushed by a fire truck is materially different from getting one crushed by a garbage truck. Stephanie's relationships never move forward, and there's really no personal growth to speak of. We've seen the characters do most of the same things over and over again, and the jokes are wearing a little thin. Stephanie hasn't learned how to be effective as a bounty hunter after twenty books, so I think it's time to stop expecting that it may happen at number 21. It's been fun while it lasted, but I think it's time to move on.

Dressed for Death by Donna Leon

This one took forever for the person reading it (there's only one copy in the entire area's library system) to finish it and bring it back, so I could read it next. Having been to Venice and spending a little time in the surrounding region, it's very interesting to read about adventures and misadventures taking place there.

Commisario Brunetti isn't a flashy sort of detective; in fact, he reminds me a bit of Peter Falk's Colombo, whose persistence and dogged attention to detail eventually solve the crime, though in Italy's corrupted justice system the perpetrator may not be punished in exactly the way we'd expect here at home.

In this, the third in the series, Brunetti's family vacation is put on hold as he is called to the Mestre area of the mainland to investigate the beating death of a male transvestite prostitute behind a slaughterhouse. But in Leon's novels, things are seldom exactly as they seem, and nothing is as simple as an uncomplicated beating death of a gentleman of the evening.Brunetti's investigation leads him into the shadowy world of banking and of charitable foundations with shaky foundations, and leads from a crime of passion to one of calculation.

This is another good one from Leon.

Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich

Stephanie appears, after a brief hiatus in Eleven on Top, to have returned to her job as a bounty hunter, since all of her other career choices ended badly and briefly in that novel. She is still mostly in love with Morelli, but lusts after Ranger (as do Lula, Connie, and most other women who see him).

Things are busy at the bail bonds agency, and it's a bad time to lose Ranger's services for the more dangerous apprehensions, but he jumps on a plane on personal business in the opening pages, and isn't available to help Stephanie and Lula in their shenanigans.

It turns out that someone has kidnapped his daughter, and is trying to assume his identity, as well. When he decides he has to have Stephanie, too, since Ranger has "had" her, things begin to get dangerous, and she plays stalking goat in order to find and capture the impersonator.

In the middle of all of this plot, there are plenty of the usual frolics, with Grandma Mazur joining a band with Sally and Lula, and causing her usual scenes at funeral home viewings, even for the new owners of Stiva's.

Pretty good story; a quick read.

Vignettes Four

I can't seem to manage the attention span to write long reviews these days, so I'm just going to lump a few comments together about several recent reads and let it go at that. Life tasks me...it tasks me.

Bitter Bite by Jennifer Estep is a recent addition to the series - I think she just released the latest on Tuesday - and I'm sorry to say that the whole thing has gone stale for me now. The plot, such of it as I was able to endure before closing the pages in sorrow, was far too predictable. Is Estep using too much foreshadowing, or have I simply seen it all before? I don't know, but I do know that I'm done following this series for now. Ms Estep is a really nice person and generally has been a readable author, and a good author, but I think she's just run out of new plot ideas for Gin Blanco, The Spider.

When I was younger, I found the tales spun by Patricia McKillip to be fanciful and entertaining, and read all of her books I could get my hands on. I picked up Kingfisher after a bit of a wait on the  hold list at the library, and eagerly attacked it the other night. Other reviewers may have found this book to be breaking new fantasy ground, or a mystical blending of ancient and modern mythology, but I simply found it confusing, and never really bit on a "hook" to reel me in. I put it down after a few chapters and returned it to the library. Sigh.

Four to Score, by Janet Evanovich, was everything I expected it to be - fluffy entertainment with some lovable characters, inside jokes, and the usual cast of felons to apprehend, a job which Stephanie Plum seems to mess up more often than not, but eventually she unravels something unexpected. She and Morelli finally fall into bed together in this one, but their predictably prickliness keeps them from enjoying post-coital bliss, despite the Morelli matrons' matrimonial ambitions. Need something to while away a few lonely hours? This one will do it.

I've also been working my way through the Honor Harrington novels for the third or fourth time; I've lost track. You'll find my reviews of On Basilisk Station and The Honor of the Queen here, but I appear to have paused at that point until about the tenth book in the series, so perhaps I'll begin again with A Short, Victorious War some sweet day.

Three to Get Deadly by Janet Evanovich

Uncle Mo is a candy store owner in Trenton, beloved by the children of the "burg" and his neighbors, and Stephanie catches a lot of flak over her quest to bring him in to face the charges of carrying an unregistered weapon.


There's a pretty funny bit of interaction between Stephanie and her second grade teacher, who lives next to Mo's store. Stephanie is still terrified of the woman, twenty years later.


Morelli is working a parallel case involving a lot of drug dealers turning up missing, and eventually the tangled and humorous web that Evanovich weaves brings Stephanie to the realization that Mo has gotten caught up with a bunch of vigilantes.


As always, she can't leave things alone, and has to suffer a series of mishaps before the case is solved.

Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich

Just another light and amusing read by Evanovitch wherein Stephanie is assigned to locate and return Morelli's cousin, Kenny Mancuso, to jail, so he can stand trial for shooting a friend in the leg. He and  friends turn out to be involved in a conspiracy to steal and sell military weapons from a local base.




In what appears to be a side issue, Stephanie is hired by the director of a local funeral home to track down some missing coffins.



We begin to get to know Grandma Mazur a bit better, and follow along with her main social opportunity, attending funerals. Grandma seems to have a fixation on viewings, and gets a bit peeved when the funeral is "closed coffin".


At the conclusion of the tale - semi spoiler- Stephanie and Grandma manage to burn down the funeral parlor, which leaves Stephanie with a lasting reputation in "the burg".

One for the Money by Janet Evanovich

After enjoying one of the more recent Stephanie Plum mysteries as a book on tape a few weeks ago, I thought I might as well go back to where it all started and read my way through the series, so I reserved a copy of One for the Money at the library. Somehow or other, Evanovich seems to have leapt onto the scene with this first book as nicely turned out as her more recent ones. Perhaps she has been writing for other genres or in other series before beginning this one.


In some ways, the books gave me an immediate impression of seeing familiar faces, as we encounter Stephanie's cousin Vinnie, his secretary Connie, detective Morelli, bounty hunter Ranger, and even Lula, who is a streetwalker at the beginning of the stories. We also get to meet her close family for the first time; Mom, Dad and Grandma Mazur.


Stephanie blunders her way through her first few apprehensions in the new job, and stirs up a lot of trouble in her main case, which involves bringing in her old neighborhood nemesis, Joe Morelli,  Morelli, a cop, is accused of murdering a confidential informant. He swears it was self-defense, but the perp's gun seems to have disappeared, and witnesses are rapidly doing the same.

Obviously, Stephanie's rookie apprehension skills are not enough to outwit Morelli, so he and she dance around the issue, while they uneasily work together to find his witness and get her bounty

Nefarious Nineteen by Janet Evanovich

My wife and I listened to this audiobook on our way to the coast last weekend, and it timed out just right around nine hours of driving. I have never read any of the Stephanie Plum mysteries before, but it didn't seem to be a requirement to understand "all that has gone before" in order to enjoy this one. The characters in the book were fun and amusing, especially Plum's sidekick, Lula, an enormous black woman with a very strong personality to match her opinions.

The mystery wasn't all that mysterious, but spun out slowly and with enough twists to keep Plum's character guessing, at least, and the entire story was liberally spiced with a great deal of humor. I might have to check out some more of Evanovich's books.

The Diamond Caper by Peter Mayle

I've really enjoyed Mayle's tales of Sam and Elena as they solve little mysteries in France. In this one, a jewel thief has been pulling off a series of perfect crimes, making off with millions of dollars worth of diamonds from wealthy homes, without leaving a trace of any damage or evidence for the police to follow. Elena's employer insures the latest victims, and he asks Sam to poke around and see what he can find out.

Sam and Elena are in the happy position of finally signing the paperwork to take possession of their own vacation home in Marseille. It does need a bit of renovation to make it their true dream home, so they hire the services of a local expert, Coco Dumas. one of Reboulle's former lovers. She rapidly demonstrates that her projects do not proceed at the usual leisurely pace of many construction projects in the south of France (as Mayle has related in his Provence books previously), and they are quite pleased with the rapid progress.

The most enjoyable thing about this series has always been, for me, the descriptive information about the countryside, customs and cuisine. But this particular installment is missing some of that local flavor, without the usual mouth-watering accounts of repasts enjoyed. The mystery of the diamond heists is actually quite easily solved as some small clues come to light. I had guessed the identity of the thief very early in the story, but it was still entertaining to watch it play out.

I hope Mayle shares more delicious details with us in the next book.

Blue Labyrinth by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

 I know I've read several of the Agent Pendergast series by Preston and Child before, including Still Life with Crows and Relic, but for some reason I never put together the idea that they were a series. As expected, this one was twisty and a bit dark, with a truly quirky and unique protagonist.

I think I need to drop back and read a couple books prior to this one to understand what's really going on, because there are a number of cryptic references to earlier events, but the crux of the matter is that one of Pendergast's recently-discovered twin sons, the "evil" twin, who was a serial killer in New York in an earlier story, turns up murdered on the agent's front porch one day, after a long exile in the jungles of Brazil. The agent is never one to leave a good mystery alone, and so he embarks on his own quest to find out who has killed his son, whom he despises, and why the crime was committed.

In parallel, one of Pendergast's old friends, detective d'Agosta, is involved with his own murder mystery, involving the bludgeoning death in an isolated corner of a museum, of one of the technicians who works in the department which handles old skeletons...skeletons in the closet indeed!

This one gets violent, bloody and twisty pretty quickly. I definitely have to drop back and read some of the earlier books so I get some of the major characters' back stories. Preston & Child are always good.

The Corsican Caper by Peter Mayle

 This is another charming little adventure by Peter Mayle, taking place in Marseilles. Sam and Elena are on holiday for a bit, enjoying the home and company of their good friend, Francis Reboul, Le Pharo. When a ruthless billionaire Russian businessman, Vronsky, decides he absolutely must own Le Pharo, he will stop at nothing to get it, including murder, and it is up to our friends from L.A. to thwart his plots, with a little help from Reboul's other friends, like Philippe and Mimi, and the Corsican brothers Figatelli.

As always, there is plenty of French fare for the bon vivants, with descriptions of meals like "a croissant of such exquisite lightness that it threatened to float off the plate."

or,

"Dinner tonight is a simple affair, but alternative arrangements can be made for anyone who is allergic to foie gras, rack of Sisteron lamb scented with rosemary, fresh goat cheeses, and tarte Tatin."

When Sam and Elena go off shopping for homes in Provence, Reboul has some words of wisdom for them.
"Charm is the great excuse for dark, rooms, tiny window, low ceilings, suspect plumbing, rats in the cellar, bats in the bedroom, and anything else that might be seen as a disadvantage. If the property is really on its last legs and falling to pieces, it has un charme fou - a crazy charm."

This passage sounds all too familiar these days.

"Judging by what I saw, face-to-face conversation is finished...All I saw, everywhere, were groups of people who were together but not talking to each other, nor even looking at each other. They were all staring at their cell phones."

If you're feeling a bit overworked, think of poor Reboul.

"'And now, I must go to the cellar and choose the wines.' He paused, and gave a long, theatrical sigh. 'My work is never done.'"

Mine, however, is.

The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke

 This appears to be the book which introduces New Orleans homicide Lieutenant Dave Robicheaux. A friend recommended Burke's stories, so I thought I'd give him a try.

First, this was an amazingly quick read. I picked it up shortly after the third contestant sang on American Idol, and finished it by bedtime (and I get up with the chickens). Robicheaux is a Viet Nam veteran with more than his fair share of post-war issues, including the inability to sustain a relationship for very long and raging, though suppressed at the beginning of the book, alcoholism. When he discovers the body of a young black woman in the bayou one day, he has no idea that her death tied into far more serious crimes.

While visiting an old informant on death row, Robicheaux gets word that the "greasers" want him dead for poking his nose into their business. (By the way, this novel is very old Southern in style, so if derogatory racial and ethnic slurs and stereotypes bother you, you may want to read something else). This, of course, merely pisses him off, and he really starts poking his nose in where it's not wanted. Between mobsters, Central American drug and gun runners, and rogue federal agents, things get pretty hairy quickly, and the violence dials up to a fever pitch.

My friend had said there were some similarities to Jack Reacher in Robicheaux's character, but I found the connection a bit slim. Other than being a veteran and obstinately unkillable, they are two very separate types. The things they do have in common are the lone wolf mentality, though Robicheaux at least does have some family and colleagues, while Reacher has none (aside from his brother who dies in one of the stories - can't recall which), and the willingness to calmly do violence upon the evil ones in the course of pursuing a case to its bitter end.

A fun and quick read, though perhaps a little darker than my usual preferences. I'm keeping Burke on my possible TBR pile for slow weeks, anyway.

Hard as Nails by Dan Simmons

Simmons doesn't waste much time getting Joe Kurtz into trouble. It starts off innocently enough, with a visit to his PO, Peg O'Toole, but soon descends into madness when they are both attacked in the parking garage at her offices by a pair of gunmen, who leave Kurtz in the hospital with a bleeding head wound and Peg in a coma. Joe's enemies start piling on the minute he wakes up in the hospital, with a smack upside the head by O'Toole's wheelchair-bound uncle, a war hero who blames Kurtz for her being attacked, and being interrogated by a pair of detectives, one of whom used to be his close friend, and sometime lover, Rigby King.

Then, there's a whole slew of the usual suspects who may be ready to take Kurtz out of the picture, including Angelina Farino and Toma Gonzaga, heads of the local crime families, who may or may not have hired the legendary assassin, the Dane, to fix Joe's wagon permanently. Big Bore Redhawk, whom Kurtz embarrassed in Hard Freeze, a mysterious killer known as The Dodger, and maybe even a Yemeni terrorist or two are all gunning for him, plus a couple of folks we don't even suspect at first.

The whole mess centers around a battle for control of the heroin trade, and Kurtz ends up playing middleman in the final "negotiations". Some of it was quite predictable. I think I've just read too many stories - I know when a tried and true plot device is being pulled out of the cupboard and dusted off one more time. Plenty of violence and twisty plottings, some backstory on Kurtz' life in an orphanage, and just a hint of Joe beginning to trust at least a few folks in the world.

Hard Freeze by Dan Simmons

I feel almost like I'm detecting a formula here - Put Joe Kurtz up against at least two or three people or groups of people who want to kill him, and revel in the ensuing chaos. Things haven't settled down all that much since we last saw Joe, but he and his secretary, Arlene, are running a very successful internet business that finds high school sweethearts, and Arlene would like to expand into online wedding planning. Since their office building is being torn down by the city, she wants Joe to take some time to hunt up a new space for their business, and for him to find $35K to get things up and running.

In the meantime, Little Skag has decided to have Joe killed, and set some stupid and predictable killers on his trail, a trio known in Attica as The Three Stooges. Joe's number one informant, the homeless professor known as Pruno, sets Joe up to meet with John Frears, a man who is trying to find the former colleague of his, presumed dead, who tortured, raped and killed his teenaged daughter, and whom he recently saw alive and well in a nearby airport. The deceased Don Farino's daughter, Angelina, recently returned from Italy, wants to use Kurtz to help her eliminate a rival crime family from the picture. Kurtz also has some issues with Donnie, the man who got custody of his daughter, Rachel, after her mother was murdered and he went to prison for twelve years for the revenge killings of the perpetrators. Not to be forgotten, a corrupt cop named Brubaker has decided that Kurtz was responsible for the death of his former partner, also a corrupt cop, and is out for his own pound of flesh.

So, things get very complicated, very quickly, and it takes a lot of violence on Joe's part before he can keep his appointment with Arlene to go office hunting. Kurtz' unique combination of the direct approach and the subtle scheme make this an interesting and worthy sequel to Hard Case.

Hardcase by Dan Simmons

 Simmons demonstrates his versatility in switching genres to mystery, with a leading man who is just about as tough as Child's Jack Reacher, Joe Kurtz. As the story begins, former PI Kurtz has just been released after a dozen years in prison for the brutal killing of the murderers of his partner and lover, Sam(antha). While he was there, he befriended the son of a mafia boss, "Little Skag" Farino, and he uses that connection to wangle a job with the boss, whose power appears to be on the wane, to investigate the disappearance of his accountant, and to figure out who is behind recent attacks on his business interests.

The phrase that comes to mind when describing this book is "It's not paranoia when they REALLY are ALL out to get you." Kurtz only has a few true friends left on the outside, his former secretary Arlene, whom he re-hires to start up his new business, a couple of old homeless guys who worked as his informants before he went to the pen, and a weapons dealer named Doc who supplies him with a couple of pistols. Everyone else in this book has their own agenda, and they all seem to involve shafting Kurtz in some way.

There's Don Farino's lawyer, Miles, who has been skimming off profits for years, plus a couple of hoods in the street gang that is ripping off the Don's shipments, Malcolm and Cutter. There's the Don's bodyguard, Carl, who takes offense to Kurtz' attitude and ambushes him later, and the dumb quintet of rednecks from the White Aryan Army of the Lord who try to invade his fortress of solitude in an old warehouse. There's the corrupt cop, Hathaway, who tries to frame him for murder and parole violations (oddly enough, his new PO keeps him out of jail on that one), and the brother of one of the people he murdered that got him put in prison in the first place. I might have missed someone, but you can see there's a whole queue of folks waiting for a shot at Kurtz.

He deals with most of them with brute and blunt force, while using his fox-like street smarts to get to the bottom of the mystery and survive for the sequel. Great, mindless entertaining violence.

Glory In Death by J.D. Robb

Second in the In Death series by Robb (Nora Roberts, really), Glory in Death hits the ground running with a gruesome murder of a hard charging female attorney, Cicely Towers, in a hard core section of town. Aside from all of the low-lifes she has sent to jail over the years, no one seems to have a motive for murder, unless it's someone in her family hoping to get an early bird special on their inheritance.

Kate's boss, Commander Whitney, is too closely involved with the case; he and his wife are Cicely's children's godparents, and through the course of the novel, his strong support for Eve's investigation alternates with his interference to protect the family from the harshest of her interrogative skills.

The first murder is followed by two more, a beloved small time actress, Yvonne Metcalf, and then by the technical editor of Channel 75 news, Louise Kirski.

I figured out who the murderer was about halfway through the book, and watched in impotent frustration as Lt. Dallas chased down red herrings and wild geese.

The murder mystery is interrupted regularly by the romance element, Eve's stormy relationship with the mysterious and powerful businessman, Roarke. To further complicate things, Roarke is involved in business dealings with the Tower family, and was intimate with Metcalf in the past. Eve's insecurity about relationships and her reluctance to say, "I love you" eats up a good portion of the narrative. By the way, Robb writes crappy sex scenes, in my opinion. I won't even quote them to satisfy the prurient interests.

A bit disillusioned, I may give up on the series, unless I have a really slow day at the library.

Flashback by Dan Simmons

***Profanity Warning - some bad words down near the end of my review***

 It's surprising that I haven't reviewed more Dan Simmons books here. His Hyperion was the first book I ever reviewed, for a science fiction forum on AOL dot com back in the dial-up days, and I've read a few of his novels in the interim, but the only one I've talked about on this site was the sequel, Fall of Hyperion.

I don't know whether to classify the setting for this novel as dystopia, a horror show of near future America. I don't know that Simmons frequents right wing political and economic alarmist blogs, but he could have scooped up the details right out of their pages.

On a side note, I have a tough time taking the apocalyptic rhetoric of the bloggers seriously sometimes, as it turns out when one pursues the references to their obscure origins, that the studies and charts, with their circles and arrows on the back, are coming from someone trying to sell you something. When they bemoan the coming financial meltdown, or disclose the proposals for government wealth confiscation, it turns out they're selling bullion, hedge funds, or offshore tax havens. When they tell you all about Homeland Security's acquisition of armored cars and billions of rounds of ammunition, they've got pallets of generators and survival rations in the warehouse, at a low, low bargain price that would make Cal Worthington and his dog, Spot, sit up and beg.

But don't get too smug, my leftist friends. At the core of your global warming...climate change...scare lies Al Gore's carbon dispensation scam, and all the energy-saving CFLs and LED bulbs recently mandated by the government over those awful incandescents are simple high-margin products paying for GE (paid no income taxes, but paid a gazillion to lobbyists) CEO Imelt's golden parachute. I haven't figured out what the anti-GMO crowd's profit angle is just yet, but be patient, my pretties.

Getting back on track,

• U.S. Economy in total free fall, new bucks worth 1/100th "old bucks".
• Israel nuked, and the  surviving Israelis slaughtered, dying of radiation-induced cancers, or living in refugee camps.
• The Reconquista has most of the Southwest under 'Spanic control.
• The global Caliphate has established mosques and sharia law enclaves throughout the U.S., supplanting the constitution
• The U.S. military is pimping itself out to fight as mercenaries for Japan, India, and other emergent powers - on the bright side, the cash-strapped Russians are doing the same.
• Japanese "advisers" have effective control over federal, state and local governments, and a new "Co-Prosperity Sphere" seems to be taking shape.
• The educational system no longer pretends to be anything but a warehousing system for young people, and no actual History, Mathematics, or English is taught there. Urban teens roam the streets in gangs, like something out of Clockwork Orange.
• Prisons have been moved to former sports stadiums, and the guards only real function is containment - the prisoners run the asylum to their liking.
• Flashback is the new drug of choice. It gives the user to relive, with perfect recall, minutes hours or days from their lives.

The protagonist of Simmons story, Nick Bottoms, is a former police detective, whose wife died in a car accident six years ago. He rapidly descended into Flashback addiction, spending every cent and hour reliving their time together. His job is gone, his PI business down the tubes, his only son is estranged and living with his grandfather, and his only lifeline at this point is being hired by a Japanese billionaire, Nakamura, to re-open the investigation into his son Kireigi's murder in Denver, on which Nick was the chief investigator before his fall from grace. The story is told somewhat like a "buddy flick", as Nick is saddled with an unwelcome partner, the inscrutable former head of Kireigi's security, Sato.

Nick and Sato revisit the scene of the crime, holographically, and start a long series of interviews with eye witnesses.

I wondered, when Nick's son and his grandfather flee Los Angeles with a caravan of heavily armed truckers, and Nick and Sato head to New Mexico in up-armored Land Rovers, given Simmons' literary history, if this was an opportunity to indulge in a bit of "travelers' tale" narration, as well as to expand the background and give us a glimpse of what's going on outside of the big cities.

I think the most telling thing of all, which really encompasses the whole theme of the novel, is that Nick drives a GM Gelding. Not a Mustang, not even a Pinto, but a Gelding. It seems to me symbolic of what America has become, in Simmons' dark future, an impotent shadow of its former self.

An all too rare fun bit "The quality of 3D digital rendering was on the level of virtual movies or TV series being streamed these days, including the popular Casablanca series starring Humphrey Bogart, Claude Rains, Ingrid Bergman, and such constant new guest stars as nineteen-year-old Lauren Bacall...guest stars from different eras such as Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kathleen Turner..."

And, in a discussion of the financial crash that finally took the country down for good,
"'The president has a lot of smart people around him,' Leonard said, standing and getting ready to move away from the retired old fool.
'It's too fucking late for smart people,' slurred the economist, his gaze going out of focus again...'The smart people are the ones who've fucked up this country and the world for our grandkids, Mr. Hot Shit English Lit. Remember that.'"

And, on the future of health care,
"The X-rays had been inconclusive, so the doctor had ordered a CT scan and an MRI to determine if it was cancer and, of course, with the National Health Service Initiative, neither test would cost Leonard a cent. But since the waiting time for both of those NHSI-covered procedures now ran to nineteen months and longer, Leonard suspected he'd be dead from whatever was causing the pain and cough before he got the test."

A scary, gripping cautionary tale, written with Simmons' usual flare. I definitely need to catch up on this author I've neglected for a while.

Naked in Death by J.D. Robb

 I'd read some positive reviews of J.D. Robb's In Death series a long time ago, and I encountered a coworker reading one of them the other day, as well. After a bit of casual quizzing, I decided to reserve the first in the series at the library, and I have to say it wasn't too bad. The books are vaguely science fictional - taking place about forty years in a future where all guns have been outlawed unless you're a wealthy collector, coffee and real beef steaks are luxuries for the rich, and prostitutes - licensed companions - are respectable businesspersons, for the most part.

When a licensed companion who also happens to be a U.S. Senator's granddaughter is murdered brutally with a rare firearm, New York's finest homicide detective Eve Dallas is assigned to the case. She's still a little shaken up from her last encounter with a murderer - an abusive father who knifed his wife and carved their young daughter into pieces, so she's just a little off balance as the investigation progresses. It's immediately evident that this is going to be a serial killer, as the perpetrator leaves a card under the body that says "1 of 6".

It's not a big surprise, then, when the next victim is another licensed companion, but not politically connected. There don't seem to be any ties between the two women, and Dallas is under pressure from the Chief of Police to solve the case quickly to get Washington off his back. One of Eve's first suspects is a man known as Roarke, an Irishman of dubious antecedents who has grown extremely wealthy, is known to the family of the first victim, and who collects antique firearms. When she meets with him to interrogate him about the murder, however, both he and she find a romantic attraction between them that is totally irrational, and provides some extra conflicts in the course of the tale.

So, if it wasn't for a few little bits of window dressing, you'd never know this was a future crime novel rather than a contemporary one. As science fiction it's pretty lame. It is a good mystery/thriller, though, even though I knew from the beginning who the killer was - I've just read too much of this stuff over the years to miss the clues. On the romance side, it does get a bit steamy, so this book should appeal to a wide variety of audiences. I've got the next one on hold.