'Vessel of Fire' chronicles Bar-Kochba rebellion in the Holy Land

The year is C.E. 131. The place is Betsha’al, a small village in the Holy Land. Fifteen-year old Tamar is a potter’s apprentice to her father and over the years she has become a gifted artist. Her  exacting father rejects some of her creative designs and Tamar hides many of her creations in a secret cave. Although she is betrothed to a young man, Yitzak, she has no feelings for him. Throwing pots is the driving force in her life.

One evening when Tamar goes to fetch water for the family, she is accosted by a Roman soldier. She manages to pull away from his grasp just as a kind stranger named Yacob happened to be walking by. Yacob wraps Tamar in his robe and takes her home. When her parents see her torn clothes they imagine the worst. Her mother wails and cries.

“I’ve always taught you to be careful and modest. . . I teach you to be plain and unprovocative, and so you disgrace us with a pig of a Roman soldier?”

One day Roman soldiers enter Betsha’al and arrest Tamar’s betrothed, Yitzak, for treason against Hadrian, the Emperor of the Roman Empire. They murder Yitzak and drag his body through the village. With her future husband gone, Tamar has little chance for marriage. She finds herself thinking of Yacob, but she believes that a relationship with the man who saved her from the Romans is not possible.

As violence against the Jews escalates in the small villages of the region, Tamar’s father knows that if they are to escape death at the hands of the Romans, he, his family, and fellow villagers must flee to caves in the wilderness. With only the possessions that they can carry, they set out on their long journey. Once there, Tamar feels compelled to return to Betsha’al and implores her father to leave. That night, when everyone else is asleep, Tamar quietly slips out of the cave and sets out for home where she must confront the horrors of the war and come to terms with the atrocities committed by
the Romans against the Jews.

Vessel of Fire by Elena Tucker is the first book of  her “Time Pieces” historical fiction trilogy. It chronicles the life of a family during the Bar-Kochba rebellion of the Jews against the Romans. While the story takes place during a single year, Tucker explains in her author’s notes that the actual time period stretched over half a decade.  “Fighting was intense all over Judea,” Tucker writes, “centering around Jerusalem where the Tenth Legion was stationed. . . It is estimated that 400,000 untrained Jewish men gathered in a well-orchestrated revolt that began a few miles west of Jerusalem, and ended with the eventual ‘Redemption of Israel.’ In triumph, a new Jewish calendar was begun, government restructured and new currency issued.”

Tucker cleverly presents the compelling tale of Tamar and her family side-by-side with a current-day story of Dr. Lemuel Fort, one of the world’s leading Near Eastern archeologists on a dig in the ancient city of Beit Sha’al. Lem and his wife, Emily, have experienced a recent tragedy and are trying to repair their relationship. As Lem and his crew unearth the artifacts of past lives, Tucker’s story streams seamlessly back in time to Tamar and her family. At the same time, Lem cautions his students not to forget the people who made and used the relics that they retrieved.

“The problem with artifacts” says Lem, “is that we forget what they really are. . . what we’ve forgotten is who made these lamps: a man just like me or maybe some of you. Maybe he was shy. Maybe he dreamt of women as he worked the clay and sang whatever songs were popular in his day.”

Tucker’s characters have depth and they spring to life through the historical tapestry that she weaves. “What is most important to me,” says Tucker, is that we understand the flesh-and-blood-ness of ancient peoples; they were not merely abstractions or myth. They were smart, feeling, loving people who—however different their circumstances—were folks who struggled and enjoyed life just like you or I.”

This is a story of the ancient and the contemporary, side-by-side, both struggling  for the survival of their families. The book flows seamlessly back and forth through the ages, with characters whose cores resonate with the struggles of a common humanity—two cultures united by the thread of time.

Tucker is an award-winning columnist and staff writer for The Boerne Star. She has also penned a historical novel about Magellan, West About, available through Amazon.com. The Vessel of Fire and Tucker’s second and third books of her “Time Pieces” trilogy, Vessel of Hope and Vessel of Strength, are available as Kindle editions through Amazon.com for the very nominal price of $ 2.99 each, a real bargain for such good reads.

This review was published in the Boerne Star on March 1, 2013

The CIA protects the president . . . the Culper Ring protects the presidency

“. . .suddenly the bullet dropped out through my fingers and fell, breaking the solemn silence of the room with its clatter, into an empty basin that was standing beneath. There it lay upon the white china, a little black mass no bigger that the end of my finger—dull, motionless and harmless, yet the cause of such mighty changes in the world’s history as we may perhaps never realize.”


Those are the words of Dr. Edward Curtis, the physician who performed the autopsy of President Abraham Lincoln.

Every president since James Madison has attended religious services at St. John’s church, a house of worship that sits directly across the street from the White House. When the rector is murdered, Secret Service agents question archivist Beecher White because his name and telephone number have been discovered in the pocket of the suspect, along with a nineteenth-century deck of playing cards. In an effort to clear his name, Beecher and his sidekick, Tot, along with other members of the Culper Ring, jump into the fray only to discover that the prime suspect is one of Beecher’s childhood pals, Marshall Lusk, from Sagamore, Wisconsin.

While investigating the rector’s murder, Beecher finds a peephole in a wall of the church that directs his eye to President Abraham Lincoln’s pew. Coupled with the fact that the rector was murdered with a forty-four caliber, single-shot Derringer pistol, the identical weapon that John Wilkes Booth used to kill President Lincoln, Beecher concludes that the murder is a re-creation of Lincoln’s assassination. Beecher also discovers that the ace of spades is missing from the deck of cards belonging to the alleged killer.

The following morning Pastor Kenneth Frick, leader of the Foundry Church, located a scant mile from the White House, is shot twice in the back. When Beecher and Tot put together the evidence, they are convinced that the attempted murder of Frick was a meticulous re-creation of President Garfield’s assassination by Charles Guiteau in 1881. Beecher and Tot learn that Guiteau had a tattoo of a dagger with a red diamond on it. “Two presidential killers,” Beecher concludes. “Two suits of playing cards.”

Because the current president of the United States, Orson Wallace, had attended services at both St. John’s and the Foundry churches, Beecher and Tot believe that he is the common link to the murders of both pastors and speculate that Wallace is the killer’s ultimate target. Would Wallace’s assassination, like Lincoln’s, foist “mighty changes in the world’s history?”

After assassination re-enactments of presidents McKinley and Kennedy, the novel’s twists and turns take the reader over the edge into an accurately depicted but largely unknown presidential hideaway where secrets are born and honor dies. 

In his latest thriller, The Fifth Assassin,  Brad Meltzer entwines the past with the present through the use of flashbacks to Beecher’s childhood and gradually reveals the lurid backstory that drives Beecher and his childhood friends through a web of political ruthlessness, misplaced loyalties, and ultimate betrayals. As the story builds to a critical mass, Beecher must resolve his contradictory feelings in order to preserve his code of honor.

Meltzer is a student of history and this novel unfolds within an accurate historical context. He brings back familiar characters from The Book of Fate and The Inner Circle, probing their psyches and exposing their inner conflicts, and giving the reader a multi-dimensional insight into their foibles and motivations. His characters are authentic and credible and they beg for a series of novels based upon the Culper Ring. There is never a dull moment and the suspense builds with the turn of each page. The Fifth Assassin is great storytelling, brilliantly executed. 

GOOGLE: TAKE YOUR MALICIOUS MALWARE AND GO AWAY!!

When I posted my latest review, The Driving Lesson, I was shocked to find an ad on my blog offering to lower my monthly bills. I have a problem with that--not that I wouldn't mind if someone took care of my bills--but I never authorized Google to place an ad on my blog. A couple of hours later I found another ad from Greenlight Loans telling me that the president had waived mortgage refinancing requirements and that I could qualify for an almost zero percent refinance loan. I finally figured out how to contact Google. After typing a rather lengthy disquisition regarding the legalities of Google seizing my blog and slapping sleazy ads on it, a pop-up window advised me that Google might not have time to respond to my feedback. A new ad appeared--a tutorial on five foods never to eat. I clicked on it and my firewall software warned me that the site was rife with malicious malware. So please do not click on any ads that you see here. In the meantime, I will attempt to have Google remove the ads. If any of you know how to get rid of them, please let me know.

Ben Rehder Hits a Home Run With "The Driving Lesson"

 

Fourteen-year-old Charlie Dunbar adores his grandfather, Opa, and the feeling is mutual. When classes are dismissed on the last day of school for summer vacation, Charlie is surprised to find Opa outside waiting for him. The old  man wants Charlie to drive him to a doctor’s appointment. After expressing his reluctance because he didn’t have his learner’s permit yet, Charlie finally agrees to drive him. Before he realizes it, Opa has directed him to the interstate. With each mile travelled, Charlie becomes a little bit more nervous. Finally, after an eighteen wheeler rumbles up beside Opa’s car, Charlie asks how much further to the doctor’s office. That’s when Opa tells him that they were headed for Seattle.

Just a few days earlier, Charlie had overheard his parents talking about Opa. They mentioned hospice, an unfamiliar word to him. During a driving lesson with his father the following day, Charlie learns that Opa is terminally ill with cancer. Charlie knows instinctively that the doctor’s appointment in Seattle has something to do with Opa’s condition.

By the time Charlie and Opa reach Lubbock, Charlie is feeling comfortable behind the wheel. His mom has been leaving numerous, frantic voicemail messages on his phone, but Opa isn’t particularly concerned. When they get to Amarillo, Opa asks Charlie to stop at a motel. Once inside, Charlie confronts his grandfather and demands to know what is going on. Opa explains his choices in facing terminal cancer: do nothing, follow the doctor’s treatment plan, or take control of the situation and deal with his impending death on his own terms.

“All I wanted to do was spend some time with my favorite person in the world. That’s you,” Opa tells him. “The truth is sometimes none of your choices in life are good. Sometimes you’re faced with a terrible problem, and the only thing you can do is pick the least objectionable solution. Sucks, Huh? Believe me, I wish I had a fourth option, or ten more options, but I don’t.”

Before they leave Amarillo, Charlie and Opa visit Cadillac Ranch, a sprawling auto museum/junk yard for deceased cars. In Tucumcari, New Mexico, they stop at a local café for a bite of lunch and when Charlie glances at the television he does a double-take.

“It was so totally unexpected, like when you suddenly catch a glimpse of yourself in a mirror, except you didn’t know there was a mirror there. . .that’s what was happening now, because there, on the TV screen, was a photo of me in my football uniform.”

By the time Opa and Charlie get to the west coast, they’ve ditched their credit cards and cell phones, disguised their appearances, visited the Grand Canyon, driven through the breathtakingly beautiful Kaibab National Forest, and had their car burgled. They have observed their own faces in every corner they’ve traversed—television news in motel rooms, cafes, and restaurants and splashed across newspapers at every convenience store.

Ben Rehder’s new young adult novella, The Driving Lesson, chronicles the cross-country journey of a young man and his grandfather. Like Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley, it’s the road trip and the companion that elevate the story. While Rehder is best known for his Blanco County mystery series, The Driving Lesson shows his depth and breadth as a writer. He skillfully and with great sensitivity weaves a difficult subject—mortality and loss—into a heartwarming, poignant story filled with humor, hope, and love. This is a story that will have you shedding tears and cracking smiles at the same time. Although it is marketed as a young adult novel, The Driving Lesson is a compelling read that adults will also enjoy.

The Driving Lesson is available through Amazon in print, e-book, and audio editions. All of Rehder’s books, including his latest novel, The Chicken Hanger, are available on his web site at http://benrehder.wordpress.com/.

Appeared in the Boerne Star, January 1, 2010
 

Only the Truth

When Billy Ray happens upon a befuddled little waif with a red suitcase standing by the railroad tracks, he approaches her. The girl’s name is Charlene and she asks Billy Ray if she can go home with him. He picks up her suitcase, takes her hand, and they walk the three miles down Makin Road to Billy Ray’s house.

Except for Big Dog, Billy Ray has no family. He’s lived his entire life in the same house on Makin road. Billy Ray’s daddy died before he was born and his momma shortly after. His aunty moved into their house and raised him but she passed on when Billy Ray was only fourteen years old, leaving him to fend for himself. Charlene fits right into Billy Ray’s uncomplicated lifestyle. They settle into a routine, unencumbered by past deeds or future longings—a life lived entirely in the present and bound by simple pleasures. But when an old man moves into the house across the street, the past rears its ugly head and life is forever changed. After the old man dies, Billy Ray must confront Charlene’s past and solve a mystery to save her life. The literary whodunit that follows draws the reader into a series of plot twists and turns that lead to a stunning end.

I like Pat Brown’s nonfiction, especially The Profiler: My Life Hunting Psychopaths and Serial Killers, one of the best memoirs I've read in a long time. I was curious if her novel could stand up to it, and it did. Only the Truth, written in a similar spirit as John Grisham’s The Painted House, is a memorable read guaranteed to hold the reader’s attention from the first page to the last. It is a simple, honest story of unconditional love and loyalty. Billy Ray and Charlene have no preconceived expectations, no desires beyond their life together, and they share a mutual adoration cloaked in naïveté. Their small town of Whitfield Glen could be any “Smallville,” U.S.A., plucked out of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesberg, Ohio, or the small Mississippi towns of Eudora Welty. Brown’s characters have a depth and richness that are increasingly absent in contemporary fiction and she weaves a compelling mystery into the fabric of Billy Ray’s and Charlene’s relationship.

Pat Brown is nationally known for her work as a criminal profiler. She is the CEO of The Sexual Homicide Exchange and president of The Pat Brown Criminal Profiling Agency. Her latest book, 
How to Save Your Daughter's Life: Straight Talk for Parents from America's Top Criminal Profiler will be out in August.

Only the Truth is available as an e-book from Amazon. 

Brad's Gift

When I think of Brad Meltzer and heroes, The Justice League and Identity Crisis come to mind and I conjure up images of  SUPERHEROES like Superwoman, Hawkgirl, and Wonderwoman (in all fairness I guess I should mention Superman, Cyborg, and Batman). But Meltzer’s latest book, Heroes for My Daughter (Harper Collins, April 10, 2012, $19.95), isn’t comprised of fictional heroes—it’s cut from the real thing.

Meltzer has assembled the remarkable stories of fifty-five exceptional people. These accounts are not about individuals of great wealth or enormous power. They are not about people who are driven by political ambitions or who seek personal fame. They are stories of people with indefatigable will, perseverance, and selfless pursuit of the things that are good and right in our world. These are people with limitless inner strength and the courage to stand up for what they believe. They are the very people that Meltzer wanted his newborn daughter to emulate—individuals who embody strength, compassion, ingenuity, empathy, creativity, and perseverance

In his heartwarming introduction Meltzer tells his newborn infant girl, “I didn’t want just one thing for you. I wanted everything. If you needed strength, I wanted you to be strong. If you saw someone hurting, I wanted you to find the compassion to help. If there was a problem, big or small, that no one could solve, I wanted you to have every available skill—ingenuity, empathy, creativity, perseverance—so you could attack that problem in a way that no one else on this entire planet had ever fathomed. And that would be your greatest gift, Lila: That no one—and I mean no one—would ever be exactly you.”

Meltzer tells us why Agatha Christie changed his life. He lets us know the reason why Carol Burnett tugs her ear lobe at the end of each of her performances. He inspires us with the story of Helen Keller (did you know that she graduated Cum laude from Radcliffe and wrote twelve books?). His most poignant vignettes, however, are portraits of the women who have played the most important roles in his life—his wife, his mother, his grandmother, and Sheila Spicer, his ninth grade English teacher.

We need role models for our children. We need role models for ourselves, too. That’s the beauty of Brad Meltzer’s new book—it’s a childrens’ book for adults and an adults’ book for children. He even leaves space in the back for his readers to record the recollections of their heroes.

Meltzer said it best in Identity Crisis. “One of the things I cared most about was letting the reader feel that all of the heroes’ stories—all of them—happened in a shared universe. They’re legends in a complex, interconnected world—the tapestry of continuity that ties our own lives together.”

Thank you, Brad, for your inspirational gift. You’re my superhero.

Mike Blakely's "Come Sundown" is a symphony of words

This review was originally published March 29, 2007 in the Boerne Star


Mike Blakely’s latest historical novel, Come Sundown (Forge, $27.95, ISBN 0-312-86705-0, November 27, 2007), a literary saga chronicling the clash of cultures between native Americans and the white man and the conflict of values between the American north and south is as relevant in today’s world as it was during the Civil War. Blakely’s lead character, French fugitive, whiskey trader and adopted Comanche, Honoré Greenwood, relates the story of the American settlers’ confiscation of Indian land in the midst of fighting over slavery.

Says Greenwood, “I felt as if the fate of the entire world rested on my shoulders. In reality, looking back, I was nothing more than a pawn in a trifling struggle that would scarcely warrant a paragraph in the book of world history. But it was my paragraph to write, and I was prepared to fill my ink well with blood.”

Hence, with ensanguined pen, Greenwood, called Plenty Man by the Indians, recounts the tale of his involvement with the Indians during the American Civil War.

Long time friend and confidante of Kit Carson, Greenwood finds himself embroiled in a complicated test of loyalties between his compadre and his adopted band of Comanches. Summoned by Carson to join the New Mexico Volunteers of the Union Army as a scout, Greenwood leaves behind his beloved Cheyenne bride, Westerly, and joins Kit in Albuquerque. There, in New Mexico, he enlists in the Union army only to find that his old nemesis, Luther Sheffield, is also a member of his unit. Violent clashes and heavy combat at Valverde Ford and Glorieta Pass with the Texas Confederates, renegade Indian attacks, and the constant necessity of having to watch out for Sheffield’s attempts on his life all take a toll on Greenwood. Fearing that he will soon be pitted in battle against his adopted Comanches, Greenwood resigns his post as Kit Carson’s scout and returns to his tribe.

“Trouble raged in the West, where Colonel Kit Carson’s forces had invaded the very heart of Navaho country, striking where no soldiers had ever ridden before. I knew the hoops of time would roll and whir and come crashing to earth again, and I feared they would in time come violently trundling down the Canadian River Valley to my very home,” recounts a worried Greenwood. And in time, that was exactly what occurred.

“I was in the big, bloody middle of it. It happened sixty-three years ago. . . They called it the Battle of Adobe Walls. It happened on November 25, 1864,” recalls Greenwood. “Telling this grieves me to this day. . . But you should know what I have suffered, so that you may appreciate the strength of the human spirit, and the will of man to rise above the heaviest of sorrows.”

Come Sundown is one of those rare books that you can’t put down, one that stays with you long after you’ve placed it back on the shelf. Blakely, also a singer-songwriter, skillfully crafts an unforgettable story of a war within a war—the Civil War and the Indian Wars spawned from enmities between the north and south—and does so with an approach skillfully orchestrated to have the reader feel that he/she is a character in the novel.

Blakely’s use of language is fluid, a poetic prose, and his dialogue is immaculate. His characters are endearing, believable, and enduring: Chief Shaved Head; Kills Something; seer and medicine man, Burnt Belly; Blue; Plenty Man’s wife, soul mate and companion, Westerly; Kit Carson, and, yes, even Greenwood’s nemesis Luther Sheffield.

Come Sundown is symphony for all the senses; a painting whose brush strokes have been laid on the canvas of a tale as strong and sure as those rendered by Charles M. Russell and with the bravado of a violin and bow in a baroque concerto delivered by Vivaldi himself.

Blakely is a Spur Award winner for his novel The Summer of Pearls.

Brad Meltzer probes George Washington's "Culper Ring" in "The Inner Circle"

Beecher White loves his job as a researcher at the National Archives in Washington, D. C. “As they told me when I first started as an archivist three years ago,” says Beecher, “the Archives is our nation’s attic. A ten-billion-document scrapbook with nearly every vital file, record, and report that the government produces. No question, that means this is a building full of secrets. Some big, some small. But every day, I get to unearth another one.”

In Brad Meltzer’s new political thriller, The Inner Circle, a 26 year-old secret threatens to derail a presidency wrought with lies and deceptions and pits the survival of the president against the preservation of his office.

When Beecher’s old flame, Clementine Kaye, asks him to help her search for the identity of her deceased father, Beecher tries to impress her by sneaking into a SCIF—Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility—used by the President of the United States, Orson Wallace, for viewing top secret documents. Clementine inadvertently knocks over the President’s chair and discovers a tattered and mostly gutted old “Entick’s New Spelling Dictionary” hidden in its bottom. On close inspection Beecher finds an inscription on the book’s inside front cover: Existus Acta Probat. The outcome justifies the deed. Beecher instantly recognizes the motto as an aphorism used by George Washington on his bookplates and concludes that the original owner of the book was, in all probability, our first president. Because the book was concealed, Beecher also presumes that it is serving a clandestine purpose. Beecher’s security guard friend, Orlando, instantly grasps the implication of the discovery and yanks the security system’s videotape so that no one will discover that they were there. Beecher stashes the dictionary under his blue lab coat and pulls Clementine from the room. Soon after, Orlando is found dead under suspicious circumstances.

Beecher shares the old dictionary with his mentor and fellow archivist Aristotle “Tot” Westman and they discover that the relic was used by Washington in 1775 to communicate with his Culper Ring, a small band of loyalists who spied on the British during the Revolutionary War.

“The Culper Ring weren’t soldiers. They were normal people—a group no one could possibly know—even Washington didn’t know their names. That way they could never be infiltrated—no one, not even the commander-in-chief, knew who was in it.”

When Tot checks the archive’s records he finds that that the old dictionary has been checked out by someone named Dustin Gyrich 14 times in 14 weeks, each time coinciding with a Presidential visit to the SCIF. Further research shows that Gyrich has been checking out books in the National Archives for over a hundred and fifty years.

In The Inner Circle the Culper Ring didn’t disband after the Colonies beat the British. This secret organization is still going strong and Beecher’s discovery of the 200 year-old dictionary triggers a chain of events that brings to light the permanency of the spy ring and tests the very cannons upon which our country was founded. Beecher could not foresee that he and Clementine had stumbled upon a presidential secret so important it could place their lives in jeopardy.

From the first page The Inner Circle is a high energy adventure that draws upon interesting and little-known historical facts, taking the possibilities of the future and the certainties of the present and intertwining them with the secrets of the past. As with all of this author’s thrillers, the plot and sub-plots twist and turn as the story unfolds, making it impossible for the reader to guess the outcome. Meltzer resurrects his evil character Nico from The Book of Fate as Clementine’s father and cleverly uses him as an omniscient narrator to decipher and reveal the old dictionary’s hidden missives.

As a thriller, The Inner Circle is an absorbing read. The author’s view of history adds a fascinating dimension to the story. One of Beecher’s co-workers illustrates Meltzer’s take on the history-making process. “. . . history isn’t just something that’s written. It’s a selection process. It chooses moments, and events, and yes, people—and it hands them a situation they should never be able to overcome. It happens to millions of us every single day. But the only ones we read about are the ones who face that situation, and fight that situation, and find out who they really are.”

The Inner Circle is a very well crafted story with authentic characters and a clever plot. This is a thriller that probes the dark side of political omnipotence and leaves the reader with an uneasy feeling that perhaps it is all too real.

"In the Still of the Night" is a murder in disguise

In life, as in death, things are not always what they seem. That was certainly true in the death of Ronda Reynolds. On the morning of December 16, 1998, Ron Reynolds called 911 and reported that sometime during the night his wife had shot and killed herself. Although her body lay just a few feet from the bed where Ron had slept, he claimed that he had not heard the single gunshot that took his wife’s life. The beautiful 33 year-old former Washington State Trooper lay in a pool of blood, wrapped in an electric blanket, a single gunshot wound to her temple. The cause of Ronda’s death was initially reported as undetermined, months later as suicide, back again as undetermined, and finally as suicide.

Within just a few months of Ronda and Ron Reynolds’ marriage, Ronda realized that she had made a serious mistake in her choice of a husband. The unmistakable signs that Ron was engaged in an extra-marital affair with his ex-wife and his preoccupation with money led Ronda to her decision to end the marriage. Ann Rule examines the facts and circumstances surrounding the death of Ronda Reynolds in her new true crime drama, In the Still of the Night.

“A death investigation is such a delicate procedure,” says Rule. “The best detectives must always view it first as a homicide, second as suicide, third as accidental, and finally as a natural death.”

Based largely upon statements made by Ron Reynolds, Lewis County Sheriff’s investigators assumed that Ronda’s death was a suicide. Only one detective, Jerry Berry, ascertained that the young woman’s death was homicide. Ann Rule deftly ferrets out truth from fiction in this mystery and puts the facts together as a cohesive whole that leads to the unmistakable conclusion that Ronda Reynolds was murdered.

Rule and Ronda’s mother, Barbara Thompson, worked together for over a decade to unravel the truth about Ronda’s death. Acclaimed forensic law enforcement consultant Vernon Geberth believed that the crime scene was staged and called the investigation a “major police malfeasance.” According to Geberth, “there are very few cases of which I can state with such strength and conviction that this was a homicide.” New York forensic and behavioral evidence expert, Ray Pierce, called the ruling of suicide “ridiculous.” Would a judge and jury agree? This reviewer will not disclose the results of the trial which sought to discredit the coroner who made the suicide ruling in Ronda’s death.

Ann Rule has often been called the “queen” of true crime. In the Still of the Night reinforces her well-earned title. As usual, her character development is strong and thorough and brings the reader into the story. Rule’s former police experience and her involvement with high-profile criminal cases have helped her hone and perfect her detective skills which she brings to bear in Ronda’s case. Together, Ann Rule and Barbara Thompson are undefeatable.

 

“To let a politically corrupt law enforcement agency lie, cover up, and disregard a human life to benefit their self-image is unacceptable,” says Barbara Thompson on her web site http://www.justiceforronda.com/story.htm. “The Lewis County Sheriff's Department and all other law enforcement agencies in our country need to be held accountable for their actions, so that no other parent, ever, will have to experience this type of indescribable nightmare.”

‘Following the Flag’: A chronicle of an Air Force career

I’m no student of military history so I have to admit that I had mixed feelings about reviewing Lieutenant General (ret) Lloyd R. Leavitt’s memoir, Following the Flag. Leavitt chronicles his military career beginning with his four years as a West Point cadet through 31 years in the Air Force.

Leavitt’s class of 1950 was the first to enter West Point after World War II. Of the 1,008 who enrolled in that prestigious university four years earlier, only 670 graduated. Leavitt, among the graduates, chose to attend U. S. Air Force flight training.

“It was 2 August 1950.” Leavitt writes, “I closed the car door and walked toward the operations (“ops”) building at Goodfellow AFB.” . . . “My exciting new life included not only switching from Army fatigues to Air Force flight suits and sporting the gold bars of a second lieutenant but marrying Anne Sullivan during graduation leave.” Unfortunately, many of Leavitt’s graduating class of 1950 were quickly deployed to Korea where 13 were lost before year’s end. After flight training at Goodfellow, in February, 1951, Leavitt was jubilant when he was sent to Williams AFB, Arizona for F-80 jet fighter training.

In March 1951, President Truman attempted to end the Korean War with a cease-fire proposal and, in his belief, avoid World War III. General Douglas MacArthur voiced his opposition with his outspoken eagerness to escalate the war. He was promptly fired. Just five months later, Leavitt graduated from jet fighter pilot training and became fully engaged in the Korean War and in the U.S. Air Force.

“The afternoon I graduated and received my silver wings changed my emotions,” Leavitt writes. “Exhilaration was still there, but trepidation was gone. It had been replaced by confidence. A better Air Force lay ahead, and I would be part of it. I realized the Air Force was truly my home.”

Thus commenced the colorful, amazing 31 year military career of Lloyd R. “Dick” Leavitt—a lifework that spanned the Cold War, 100 missions in F-84’s during the Korean War, flying in the Strategic Air Command, and four years in the top-secret U2 project. He simultaneously flew a mission over the Soviet Union when Gary Powers was shot down over Siberia. He performed 152 combat missions in Viet Nam, was an eye-witness to the Cuban missile crisis, and later worked as a systems analyst for the Pentagon.

While much of Leavitt’s material is technical, his approach is informal and conversational. I found myself totally intrigued with his writing style and his easy manner of presenting scholarly information. While he writes from a tactical viewpoint, he peppers his material with anecdotes, letters to his wife and children, and, from time-to-time, confessions of personal flaws. I was on the edge of my seat when Leavitt recounted his “longest day,” when in flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to a destination in Brazil his U-2 had a complete electrical failure at 68,000 feet over the jungle.

“A strange emotion came over me,” Leavitt writes, “one that I had never experienced before. I knew there was no way out of this emergency. I would soon die.”

Flying by his wits, Leavitt managed to spot the Uruguay River and from that landmark he caught sight of Buenos Aires and managed to land safely. He had flown the disabled aircraft more than eight hours. When he finally landed, the U-2 had almost exhausted its fuel.

Leavitt retired from the Air Force on August 31, 1981. He continued to work as a consultant in private business for several more years. Following the Flag is published by the Air University Press.

This review was published July 29 in the Boerne Star and on November 27, San Antonio Express News

Always be nice to the fat kid

The imminent birth of his first-born child was not a good time for brand new parent, Brad Meltzer, to get stuck at a red light. As he waited for traffic to resume, he considered the universal question—who and what will my child grow up to be?

“It’s a moment where there are no limits or detours or any of the restrictions that reality eventually brings,” writes New York Times best-selling author, Brad Meltzer, in his new work of non-fiction, Heroes for my Son. “And it was in that moment of unbridled love and pure naïveté that this book was born.”

Meltzer started working on his book that very night and listed two fundamental requirements for his son to become a “good man.” They were: love God, and be nice to the fat kid in school.

One of the author’s favorite stories is about the perseverance of the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur. In anticipation of their plane crashing, every day they brought with them materials to patch it up. Over and over the duo would crash and rebuild, crash and rebuild until, finally, their little plane conquered gravity and flew, unassisted, above the earth. They refused to give up until they realized success.

Meltzer hand-picked a collection of 52 heroes—men and women—who best exemplify the qualities of “character and honesty, leadership and humility, tenacity and dignity.” He included black and white photographs and brief vignettes of lesser-known moments in the lives of extraordinary individuals that illustrate their exceptional accomplishments.

So who are Brad Meltzer’s heroes? You are, no doubt, familiar with many of them: Amelia Earhart, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa, Abraham Lincoln, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Others are more obscure: Frank Shankwitz, Jiep Gies, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Dan West. All of them are fascinating.

There is no universal agreement as to the qualities requisite for designation as a hero. Dr. Scott LaBarge, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Santa Clara University, believes that all of us need heroes “first and foremost because our heroes help define the limits of our aspirations. We largely define our ideals by the heroes we choose, and our ideals—things like courage, honor, and justice—largely define us.”

The state of Texas can learn a valuable lesson from Brad Meltzer’s collection of heroes. The Board of Education in this state has ousted Thomas Jefferson, Ted Kennedy, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Marie Curie, and Copernicus, among others, from its social studies text books. Who will replace these time-honored, respected champions of history?

Heroes for My Son is a treasure. Meltzer writes in his introduction, “There are thousands of heroes. And I think that’s what I like best. This isn’t about how to be remembered—it’s a book about how to live our lives, and what we are capable of on our very best days.”

Brad Meltzer, the school children of Texas need your heroes.

Holiday spirit summons ghosts of past deeds

China Bayles is a gutsy woman. She walked away from a lucrative, high-profile career as a big ticket criminal defense lawyer in Houston, traded her high heels for sensible shoes, and used the contents of her 401K to buy an old stable in the heart of the little Texas Hill Country town of Pecan Springs. She opened an herb shop, Thyme and Seasons, on one side of the dwelling and rented the other side to Ruby Wilcox, a new age maven who China describes as “a hoot, that’s all anybody can say—and we certainly say it often enough.” Ruby’s shop, the Crystal Cave, offers books on astrology, tools for divination, and classes on getting in touch with your inner self.

China and Ruby are more than just business neighbors. They are best friends and co-owners of a catering company and they have an affinity for insinuating themselves into the middle of murder investigations, much to the chagrin of China’s new husband, Mike McQuaid, a private investigator and faculty member in the Criminal Justice Department at Central Texas State University. McQuaid has custody of his teenage son, Brian, and the couple is also raising China’s eleven year old niece, Caitlin.

Holly Blues, Susan Wittig Albert’s 18th China Bayles mystery, is set in Pecan Springs during the Christmas holidays. Sally Strahorn, McQuaid’s mentally ill ex-wife and Brian’s biological mother, appears out of the blue claiming to be penniless and homeless. Sally has been diagnosed with multiple personality disorder and her alter ego, Juanita, is a trouble maker.

Despite the fact that Sally has caused serious problems for the McQuaids in the past, in a burst of holiday generosity China impulsively encourages her to spend time with Brian and invites her stay with the family over the Christmas holidays. China soon realizes that her beneficence is sorely misplaced when Sally begins receiving menacing telephone calls from a stalker who is tied to the murders of her parents nearly a decade ago. When Sally’s sister, Leslie, is found dead in her home town of Lake City, Texas, Sally is named a person of interest.

Holly Blues, is a fast-paced whodunit packed with murder and mayhem, spiked with humor, and laced with uncommon sensibility. Albert’s characters are often quirky, but they are believable, warts and all. Her prose is tight and flows easily with details that give her characters depth and authenticity. For instance, the description of the Pecan Springs Chief of Police, dubbed “Smart Cookie’ by the author, is classic Albert:

“Sheila was uniformed in her usual natty blue and gray jacket, shirt, pants, and cap, her blonde hair scooped into a bun at the back of her head. Even so, and with a radio on one hip and a holstered weapon on the other, she’s beautiful. Somehow, it doesn’t seem fair that there’s so much firepower—intelligence, competence, confidence, and damned good looks—loaded into one woman. But while Smart Cookie might look like Miss Dallas costumed for the cover of Law Enforcement Magazine, I wouldn’t mess with her, if I were you. She can outshoot any of her officers, any day. And she don’t take no sass, as the locals say.”

While Holly Blues is part of a series of herbal mysteries, it can stand alone. The author inconspicuously weaves background information about her recurring characters into the first chapters of each book.

Albert earned her PhD in English from the University of California at Berkeley. She served as an Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas, Austin, and later became the first woman dean of Newcomb College in New Orleans. After a few years she returned to Texas as Vice President of Academic Affairs at Texas State University in San Marcos. She did not feel fulfilled as a college administrator and professor and one day walked out and never looked back.

Says Albert in her memoir, Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place, “And on that day I walked out of the university, I felt astonishingly, astoundingly free—as free as those wild birds—and I could sing my own glorious hurrah. It was only a step, but it was the first, and it was necessary.”

In addition to the China Bayles mysteries, Albert is the author of  The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter, a mystery series featuring author Beatrix Potter. Albert and her husband, Bill, collaborated on the The Robin Paige Victorian Mysteries from 1994 – 2006. Albert is currently working on a new mystery series, The Darling Dahlias, the first of which is due out in July. She has also authored several non-fiction books.

Like I said, Susan Wittig Albert is a gutsy woman.

You can read the first chapter of Holly Blues at http://www.abouthyme.com/China/CH1HOLLYBLUES.pdf.

China Bayles fans can subscribe to Albert’s weekly newsletter, “All About Thyme” at http://campaign.constantcontact.com/render?v=001QhuZciaLI3XkXzIeiZE9mJAVHXYTEZdWkFq6OIvsnvq6DvRTlz-m4P_3qH8qtY10IuLxxEhZgm5mNOrS-pqeCc7xiC3MRiQg_ZnuZjiv-dioPuuiI8iVJhgOq-vFDIpNS-w0QwQtwHE%3D

This review was originally published in the San Antonio Express News on April 11, 2010 and in the Boerne Star on April 15, 2010.

Diane Fanning's "Mommy's Little Girl" will break your heart

There is no crime quite so heinous as the killing of one’s own child. In recent years the headlines have been riddled with names of child-killing mothers such as Andrea Yates, Susan Smith, Darlie Routier, and Casey Anthony. New Braunfels true crime writer Diane Fanning analyzes the case of Casey Anthony, the young Florida mother accused of murdering her two year old daughter, Caylee Anthony, in her new book Mommy’s Little Girl.

When two-year old Caylee Anthony was reported missing by her grandmother in June, 2008, there was an outpouring of public sympathy from across the United States. When the little girl’s body was discovered five months later by a utility worker just a quarter mile from the Anthony home, public sympathy was transformed to public outrage. And then when chloroform and gasses from human decomposition were found in the trunk of Casey Anthony’s car, the young mother was arrested for capital murder.

Anthony claimed that little Casey had been kidnapped a month earlier by her babysitter. When she pointed out the babysitter’s apartment to the police, the officers discovered that it had been vacant for months. When asked why the kidnapping had not been reported when it happened, a month prior, Anthony was unable to provide a coherent response.

Fanning skillfully traces Casey Anthony’s string of lies, deceptions, and erratic behavior to a logical conclusion: the young mother is the most likely killer of her two-year-old daughter.
Anthony had claimed to friends and family that she was employed by Universal Studios in Orlando when actually she had been fired by that company months before. She repeatedly stole checks and money from her mother, grandmother, and friends. During the one month interlude during Caylee’s “secret” disappearance, Anthony got a tattoo “Bella Vita” (beautiful life) on her shoulder and partied and drank incessantly. When asked by her friends the whereabouts of her daughter Caylee, Anthony claimed that the toddler was with her nanny.

This is a dark and gruesome tale of an unthinkable act of a mother whose cunning and duplicitous acts destroy everyone unfortunate enough to be in her path. It is also a story of a family so dysfunctional that the month-long disappearance of a toddler went unnoticed.
The Casey Anthony trial is set for next summer. Florida prosecutors are asking for the death penalty.

Fanning based her book on a careful review of more than 6000 pages of transcripts of police interviews, police reports, and other official documents, as well as audiotaped and videotaped conversations and interviews, plus information gathered from on-site research and personal interviews.

Fanning is the author of the Edgar Award finalist Written in Blood: A True Story of Murder and a Deadly 16-Year-Old Secret That Tore a Family Apart, as well as nine other true-crime books, the Lucinda Pierce mystery series, and a Molly Mullet mystery.

Fanning will be discussing and signing her book at Read All About It Bookstore in Boerne on Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 5:00 pm. Light refreshments will be served. Call Read All About It at 830-249-7323. You can check out Diane Fanning’s web site at http://dianefanning.com.

Book Details: Mommy’s Little Girl by Diane Fanning, ISBN 978-0312365141, St. Martin’s True Crime, November 3, 2009. paperback, $6.99. Available through all booksellers.

Susan Wittig Albert's 'Together, Alone' is an amazing book

Boerne Star, Tuesday, September 29, 2009

I have enjoyed Susan Wittig Albert’s China Bayles mysteries for many years. I relish Albert’s quirky plots, savor her droll sense of humor, and laugh out loud at her eccentric characters. For me, tucked within these page-turners is an enormous amount of insight into the human psyche, an element often lacking in series fiction. I was delighted, therefore, when Wittig Albert’s memoir, Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place, was recently released. It did not take many pages of reading to become totally absorbed in her personal narrative. Together, Alone embodies a rare power and intensity, a raw honesty, if you will, that elevates the ordinary and mundane of everyday life to a noble position of human existence within the context of time and place.

Growing up on a farm in Illinois made an indelible mark on Wittig Albert’s psyche. Her greatest desire was to live as her grandparents had.

“My dream, when I was a girl, was to live as my grandparents lived: in a small white house on a low green hill, with woods and fields and streams holding me in a sweet, enduring embrace through summer sun and winter blizzards, easy times and hard.”

That idealized life, however, was not to be, at least for a while. Immediately after high school graduation Wittig Albert got married and gave birth to three children in rapid succession. A full-time mother and wife, she carved out enough time to enroll in the University of Illinois where she earned her bachelor’s degree. She then accepted a fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley where she was awarded her Ph.D. in English. Divorced with three children, life was a whirlwind when she was offered a teaching post at the University of Texas at Austin and a few years later a full-time administrative position at Newcomb College in New Orleans, followed by another administrative job at Texas State University in San Marcos.

“Before long,” Wittig Albert writes, “my dreams and daytime imaginings were full of remembered landscapes, and I began to think of having a small place in the country with chickens, a garden, fruit trees. I could drive back and forth to the university—many people did, and it satisfied them. But that wasn’t what I wanted. I couldn’t really live in the country, in a full, whole-hearted way, if I had to divide my day between home and work. In order to have the kind of life I wanted, I had to leave the life I had. And on that day I walked out of the university, I felt astonishingly, astoundingly free—as free as those wild birds—and I could sing my own glorious hurrah. It was only a step, but it was the first, and it was necessary.”

Shortly after leaving academia Wittig Albert met Bill Albert, a software engineer who was also at a crossroads in his life and ready to move on. Albert owned five acres of Texas Hill Country land and the two married and moved to his secluded place which they named Meadow Knoll. They set up housekeeping in Wittig Albert’s eccentric old RV, Amazing Grace, with an uncertain future before them.

For Wittig Albert, achieving a balance between marriage and her need for solitude was critical for her success both as a writer and a human being.

Together, Alone is an amazing personal narrative. Through Wittig Albert’s self-examination and metamorphosis she empowers women of all ages and stations to similarly discover their own place in their own time.

Over the years, Wittig Albert has proven to be a prolific writer. With 20 China Bayles mysteries, 12 novels written collaboratively with her husband under the name of Robin Paige, six Beatrix Potter mysteries, and numerous non-fiction projects she is a compelling literary presence in the Texas Hill Country.

Book Details:
Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place, University of Texas Press (2009), $24.95, ISBN 978-0-292-71970-5

'Scribbling kid' Cary Clack publishes memorable columns

If you have never read Cary Clack’s columns in the San Antonio Express News, you’re in luck. Trinity University Press has just published 84 of more than 2000 of Clack’s columns in book form, Clowns and Rats Scare Me (ISBN 978-1-59534-037-5, Trinity University Press, 2009, $16.95). Clack’s thoughtful and often humorous commentary examines national issues such as terrorism, politics, civil rights, and culture and scrutinizes the mundane—Martha Stewart, strip joints, clowns, rats, and snakes.

Clack credits the late Maury Maverick, Jr., legendary civil rights lawyer and journalist, for jump-starting his career. “Were it not for Maury,” Clack writes, “I wouldn’t have this column. He’s the one who took some of my scribblings to the editorial board a few years ago, and that led me to getting a column on the op-ed page and eventually getting hired.”

Some of Clack’s most soul-searching and provocative commentaries focus upon September 11, 2001. In 12 days at Ground Zero he hammered out 12 heart-breaking, poignant columns that seized the surreal tragedy that brought our nation to its knees. “The world as we know it ended Tuesday,” writes Clack. “The two airliners that destroyed the World Trade Center not only changed the geographic landscape but also forever altered the nation’s psychological and emotional landscape.”

Naomi Shihab Nye’s foreword to Clowns and Rats Scare Me pays homage to Clack’s skill in capturing his readers’ attention. “Cary Clack has a brilliant knack,” Nye writes. “More than one, actually. He writes in strong, surprising sentences, with an uncluttered, sparely elegant tone.”

Clack’s knack, however, occasionally arouses contentious feedback from his readers. One column he wrote on ethnic cleansing in Bosnia generated a heated comment that called him “a scribbling kid.” Instead of responding negatively to that characterization, he embraced it. “The truth is,” says Clack, “that growing up in San Antonio, Texas, I’ve always been a scribbling kid. My first grade teacher, Mrs. Wyatt, who was also my mother’s first grade teacher, told my mother I would be a writer. I don’t remember not writing.”