Conrad Monk and the Great Heathen Army - Edoardo Albert

   2018; 219 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Historical Fiction; Dark Humor.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

 

    The Danes are coming!  The Danes are coming.!

 

    We’d call them “Vikings”, except they’re coming by land, not sea.  Right now, they’ve almost made it to Medeshamstede Abbey, and when they get here, they’ll pillage and loot the place.  They’re a bunch of pagans, so they’ll also exterminate all the monks there, either by killing them or selling them in the slave market.

 

    Abbot Flory, the head of Medeshamstede Abbey, has done the sensible thing – gathered together everything and everyone of value and fled to a hiding place that was made just for an emergency like this.  The Abbey's most valuable asset is an ancient Holy Book, with a cover made of gold, and inlaid with jewels.  Flory's most pious and most trusted monks are accompanying him. 

 

    Brother Conrad has been left behind at the abbey.  Frankly, Abbot Flory will be thankful if the Danes take that wayward monk off his hands.  The Abbot has made sure no one told Brother Conrad about the secret hiding place.

 

    But what if Conrad finds out about the secret lair before the Danes capture him?  What if he realizes Abbot Flory considers him "expendable"?

    May the saints preserve us if that happens!

 

What’s To Like...

    Conrad Monk and the Great Heathen Army is set in the late ninth century CE, with England on its last legs trying to stave off the Danes who have already conquered every local kingdom except Wessex.  This tale chronicles the adventures of the rogue monk, Brother Conrad, and his pious but clueless companion, Brother Odo.

 

    The storyline may be a farce, but its adherence to English history is astounding.  Outside of our two protagonists, and the rest of the monastic staff, most of the other characters and settings actually existed.  There is a “Historical Note” section at the end of the book in which Edoardo Albert details what is real and what is literary license.  It is well worth reading.

 

    This was a quick, easy, and entertaining read for me.  Conrad’s endeavors are straightforward and highly optimistic.  He aims to locate and retrieve the Holy Book, come to the aid of his fellow monks (“it’s all part of the plan!”), kiss up to the Saxon leaders in Wessex, and try not to get killed by the marauding Danes.  He doesn’t succeed in all these endeavors, but he comes close.

 

    The author resides in London, so the book is written in “English”, not “American”.  I didn’t find that distracting at all.  It's written in the first-person POV (Conrad’s) and I loved the way the dark humor was cleverly woven into a pivotal time in British history.  The use of the subject of “piles” as a conversational ice-breaker made me chuckle, and enjoyed the mention of the town of Stane, which nowadays is called Staines, and is a place I’ve actually visited.

 

    The ending is both exciting and comical, which is no small literary feat.  Yes, Conrad saves the day, but it takes some clever and fortuitous tactics to do so.  The story closes with a satisfying epilogue, letting the reader know what is in store for Brother Conrad in the next chapter of his life.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Tupping (v.) : bonking.  (British, slang).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  3.8/5 based on 186 ratings and 24 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.66/5 based on 145 ratings and 34 reviews.

 

Kindle Details…

    Conrad Monk and the Great Heathen Army presently sells for $2.99 at Amazon.  Edoardo Albert has several dozen other e-books at Amazon for your reading pleasure, both fiction and non-fiction, and ranging in price from $2.99 to $21.95.

 

Excerpts...

    “I am truly sorry,” said Edmund.  I would not have gagged you, but the Danes will soon be here, and I must be able to speak to them without interruption.”

    “Mmph, mmph!”

   “Do not worry.  I will remove the gag when the time comes so that you will have the chance to make your statement of faith.  But first, you must let me speak to the Danes.”

    “Mmph, mmph, mmph!”

    “Of course I will let you speak with them as well.”

    “Mmph.”

    “When the time comes for us to die as martyrs, in sacrifice for our people.”

    “Mmph, mmph, mmph, mmph!”  (loc. 1508

 

    The first thing Aethelred thought to do, when we arrived at where he was camped with his retainers, was to grab me round the throat and start squeezing.

    “Why didn’t you tell us the Danes had another way out of their camp?” he snarled at me, his eyes popping with rage.  “Are you a traitor, a spy?”

    Normally I would have answered by some jest or pun, or suggested by supercilious silence that the question was beneath my episcopal dignity, but I could not speak due to the king’s hands around my windpipe.  Nor could I affect clerical outrage on account of dangling in the air from my neck.  (loc. 2945)

 

“You know how it is: rumours fly while the truth is stumbling around trying to find the door in the stable.”  (loc. 3660)

    Conrad Monk and the Great Heathen Army is an incredibly clean novel.  I noted just two cusswords in the entire book, which greatly impressed me.  There’s one roll-in-the-hay, but it’s more comical than lewd.  And a prince gets urinated upon, but that was an accident.

 

    A lot of the storyline is devoted to Conrad’s glib tongue and his ability to spin persuasive lines of malarkey to Danes and Saxons alike.  This means there’s not a lot of action at first, which is surprising, given the all the warfare going or around our heroes.  But things build to a suitably-exciting climactic battle at the end, which should satisfy those readers (including me) who like thrills-&-spills in their historical fiction novels.

 

    7½ Stars.  The Epilogue hints at a sequel to Conrad Monk and the Great Heathen Army.  Wessex still stands but the Danes control the rest of 9^th-century England.  Some plot threads are left dangling for Brothers Conrad and Odo to address in their semi-roguish, semi-pious ways.  However ANAICT, their next escapade has not been penned yet.  Hopefully Edoardo Albert is working on it.

Mister Slaughter - Robert McCammon

   2010; 440 pages.  Book 3 (out of 8) in the “Matthew Corbett” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Historical Fiction; Intrigue; Thriller.  Laurels : Goodreads Choice Award for 2010 Mystery & Thrillers (nominated).  Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    New York, 1702.

    Everybody already knows Mister Slaughter is a dangerous killer.  The courts in England want him delivered so they can give him a fair trial, and hang him afterward.

 

    Mister Slaughter currently is in the care of a sanitarium in Philadelphia.  New York has been chosen as the seaport that will extradite him to London, and Matthew Corbett and his mentor, Hudson Greathouse, have been assigned the task of taking a wagon to Philly and picking up the prisoner.

 

    They are quite aware of how dangerous this mission is, but it pays well.  Slaughter will be handcuffed, leg-cuffed, and forced to carry a heavy metal ball around that is chained to his shackles.  Matthew and Hudson will work as a team; one will drive the wagon while the other keeps a pistol cocked and aimed at Slaughter.  They can switch positions as needed.  I don’t see any way things can go wrong.

 

    But Mr. Slaughter can.

 

What’s To Like...

    Mister Slaughter is the third book in Robert McCammon’s “Matthew Corbett” historical thriller series, and so far I’ve been reading it in order.  The first two books were very exciting, and this one continues that streak.

 

    Mister Slaughter admits he’s killed frequently in the past, but always for good reason.  He’s aware of the fate awaiting him in London, and offers an alternative “win-win” solution to our two protagonists.  The reader gets to sit in the wagon alongside Matthew and Hudson and weigh Slaughter’s proposal versus directly delivering him to New York for the standard fee.  I love it when the baddie is just as clever and resourceful (if not more so) as the heroes.

 

    There are lots of other plot threads to keep things interesting.  Can Greathouse find enough money to buy a black slave’s freedom?  Does Slaughter really have access to the riches he claims?  What makes “Sutch’s Sausages” taste so mouthwateringly good?  Is High Constable Lillehorne’s wife (and several other women) playing hanky-panky with Dr. Mallory?  Who the heck is Sirki?

 

    The thriller aspect is done well.  I enjoyed trying to figure out Mr. Slaughter's angles, and Robert McCammon wove plenty of excitement and intrigue into the tale to keep my interest.  The historical aspect also kept me turning the pages.  New York City’s population in 1702 included lots of both English and Dutch settlers, since it had been a Dutch possession until about 40 years earlier.  There were also several Native American villages beyond the city limits, which play a key role in the tale, and I loved the attention Robert McCammon pays to realistically presenting their way of life.

 

    The ending was a two-stage affair, the first being suitably exciting and the second being suitably filled with intrigue.  Plot twists were plentiful in both finales.  The book’s main storyline—the fate of Mister Slaughter—is tied up nicely, and the series' main storyline—an earlier death sentence that has been imposed upon Matthew—edges him closer to his demise.  Mister Slaughter is told in the third-person POV, and is a standalone novel as well as part of a series.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Higgler (n.) : a peddler; a person who travels around selling small items.

Others: Bustarole (n.); Ferrago (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.6*/5, based on 790 ratings and 188 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.32*/5, based on 3,993 ratings and 170 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Said suspect,” Greathouse continued reading, “also charged to stand in connection with the disappearances of Anne Yancey, Mary Clark, and Sarah Goldsmith and the concurrent robberies of their family estates, on or about August 1689 through March 1692, under the aliases of Count Edward Bowdewine, Lord John Finch and . . .”  He hesitated.  “Earl Anthony Lovejoy?”

    “I was so much younger then,” said Slaughter, with a slight shrug.  I had the imagination of youth.”

    “So you don’t deny any of this?”

    “I deny,” came the smooth answer, “that I am a common criminal.” (loc. 1399)

 

    He looked at Matthew and nodded.  “Someday you’ll see your world and not know it, and think it strange . . . monstrous, even.  And you and your Englishmen will yearn for what was lost, and never be able to find it again, for that is the demon’s trick.  To point the way forward, but to close the way back.”

    Matthew ventured, “I suppose that’s called progress.”

    “There is progress,” Walked agreed, “and there is rushing toward an illusion.  The first takes wisdom and a plan, the second can be done by any drunken fool.”  (loc. 3708)

 

Kindle Details…

    Mister Slaughter sells for $11.99 right now at Amazon.  The rest of the books in the series range in price from $11.99 to $15.99.  Robert McCammon has other series and standalone novels for the Kindle; they cost anywhere from $2.99 to $15.99.  He also offers several short stories for $1.99 apiece..

 

“But, dear sir, never blame the wind for wishing to blow.”  (loc. 1455)

    It’s hard to find things to quibble about in Mister Slaughter.  The cussing is moderate (12 instances in the first 10% of the book, and at least one f-bomb later on) but not distracting.  Thrillers inherently contain violence, and that is true here.

 

    There were a couple of typos, including Edmond/Edmund, curtsey/curtsy, and everytime/every time, but overall, the proofreading was good.  Annoyingly, there were no page numbers and the “time remaining” estimates were based on the six sections of the book, not the 35 chapters.  And a dog dies.

 

    But I pick at nits.  Based on the first two books, I had high expectations for Mister Slaughter, and it fully delivered.  There's lots of action, lots of intrigue, lots of twists, plus great character development—even for the secondary ones.  The story is capped off by a thrilling finish and a warning to Matthew to never let down his guard.

 

    What more can you ask for?

 

    9 Stars.  One last thing.  At the back of the book is a short section titled “Matthew Corbett’s World” wherein Robert McCammon details what’s accurate, and what’s inaccurate, in the settings and events used in Mister Slaughter.  I found it utterly enlightening.

The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare - Lilian Jackson Braun

    1988; 249 pages.  Book 7 (out of 29) in “The Cat Who” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Small Town and Rural Fiction; Cozy Mystery; Cat Fiction.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    Welcome to Pickax City!  One hundred or so miles north of Minneapolis, and out in the middle of frozen nowhere.  Smack dab in wonderful Moose County.

 

    They have a saying up here and it’s certainly true: "Country folks is different and Moose County folks is more different.”

 

    Changes are coming to Moose County.  Senior Goodwinter, the owner and publisher of the local newspaper, The Pickax Picayune, still uses a printing press from the early 20^th century.  It’s inefficient but he likes it.  He’s getting old, though, and the locals are wondering if his son and publishing heir apparent, Junior Goodwinter, will modernize things.

 

    Some locals would love that, and some of them wouldn’t.  In any event, it would cost considerable money to upgrade the printing press.  And it’s a well-known secret (is that an oxymoron?) that The Pickax Picayune has been losing money for many years now.

 

    Hey, that newcomer Jim Qwilleran is rich.  Maybe we can talk him into funding the upgrade.  And he likes to talk to his cats, Koko and Yum Yum.  So perhaps we can convince them to suggest it to Qwill.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare is the fourth book I’ve read by this author.  My previous one was in 2019 and is reviewed here.  Amazon lists this as a “Small Town & Rural Fiction” novel, and I’m gradually coming around to seeing their logic in listing Lilian Jackson books in this genre.

 

    Amazon also puts this series in their “Amateur Sleuths” genre, but it’s not a spoiler to say our protagonist, Jim Qwilleran does absolutely no sleuthing here.  There are several deaths along the way, the circumstances of which Qwill occasionally muses upon, but he never does any investigating.

 

    That doesn’t mean the storyline is boring, though.  In addition to those fatalities and the uncertain future of The Pickax Picayune, the following plot threads arise: a.) who is the quiet out-of-towner masquerading as a historian?  b.) what is the purpose of Senior’s frequent trips to Minneapolis?  c.) who is Hixie covering up for?  d.) Will Qwill’s housekeeper, Mrs. Cobb, leave his employ for love?  e.) What’s in the metal box?, and perhaps most importantly,  f.) Why does Koko insist on repeatedly pushing books by Shakespeare off the shelves in Qwill’s library?

 

    The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare was published in 1988, and I chuckled a couple of times at the “signs of the times” that pop up.  Everybody carries a portable radio with them, to search for a book at the library, you make use of the card catalogue, cassettes are the most popular way to listen to music at home, and a portable tape recorder is essential when interviewing someone.  I enjoyed the usual smattering of French phrases, and both Qwill and I were leery of the pork liver cupcakes.

 

    The ending is so-so.  One of the fatalities is way too convenient, and the others are “solved” by someone simply explaining what happened, which means things don't build to an exciting conclusion.  Several plot threads remain dangling at the end.  Still, if you’re reading this book for its “coziness”, you’ll be content with how it wraps up.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.7/5 based on 1,735 ratings and 224 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.96/5 based on 9,355 ratings and 374 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Propinquity (n.) : the state of being close to someone or something; proximity.

 

Excerpts...

    “Where are the cats?” Polly asked.

     “Shut up in the kitchen.  Koko has been pulling books off the shelf.  He thinks he’s a librarian.  Yum Yum, on the other hand, is just a cat who chases her tail and steals paper clips and hides things under the rug.  Every time my foot comes down on a bump in the rug, I wince.  Is it my wristwatch?  Or a mouse?  Or my reading glasses?  Or a crumpled envelope from the wastebasket?”

    “What titles has Koko recommended?”

    “He’s on a Shakespeare kick.”  (pg. 43)

 

    “I understand you’re president of the Old Timers Club,” he said.

    “Yes, I’m eighty-two.  The youngest member is automatically appointed president.”

    “I suspect you lied about your age.”

    Her pleased expression acknowledged the compliment.  “I intend to live to be a hundred and three.  I think a hundred and four would be excessive, don’t you?  Exercise is the secret, and breathing the most important factor.  Do you know how to breathe, Mr. Qwilleran?”

    “I’ve been doing my best for fifty years.”  (pg. 112)

 

“Do you still have the cat that’s smarter than you are?”  (pg. 16)

    The quibbles are minor.  I counted eight cusswords in the entire book, seven hells and one damn.  Most of those came courtesy of one of the secondary characters, so I presume Lilian Jackson Braun used them to simply as part of his character development.  There were a couple of typos: of/or and rest room/restroom, but that’s actually pretty clean.

 

    The rest of my ticky-tacky issues have already been mentioned.  The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare is not a cozy mystery tale, let alone a murder-mystery.  OTOH, if you heed Amazon’s advice and read this as a “Small Town Fiction” novel, it is rather entertaining.

 

    6 Stars.  I have at least one more book from this series on my TBR shelf, namely, The Cat Who Sniffed Glue.  I’m willing to bet a very small amount of money that, despite its title, it in no way involves drug use.

The God Particle - Leon Lederman

   1993; 410 pages.  Full Title: The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Particle Physics, Science, Molecular Physics, Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

 

    The Higgs boson.

 

    Thirty years ago, its theoretical existence was the hottest topic among (subatomic) particle physicists.  It was of great importance to discover the basic building block(s) for all of Creation, and every physicist who was searching for it hoped to win a Nobel Prize if/when they were successful.  But alas, thus far, no one had yet seen the Higgs boson.

 

    There were reasons for the Higgs boson’s elusiveness.  It’s incredibly small, has no electric charge, no spin, emits no color, and only exists for about 1 x 10^-22 seconds.  How can you “see” a particle with those properties?

 

    Leon Lederman was a top-of-the-line particle physicist nerd.  He'd won the 1988 Nobel Prize in physics (along with two other scientists) for his work in examining another subatomic particle called a neutrino.  In 1993 he wrote a book detailing the history of mankind’s search for the universe’s fundamental building block, an endeavor which has been going on far longer than you’d think.  Lederman had his own witty name for that oh-so-elusive speck.

 

    He called it The God Particle.

 

What’s To Like...

    The God Particle is divided into a preface, nine chapters, and three (shorter) interludes.  The first five chapters discuss the history of the hunt for the basic building block, which goes all the way back to ancient Greece, most notably a guy named Democritus (460-370 BCE) and even Thales, a century-and-a-half earlier.  Democritus labeled the object of his quest the “a-tom”, but he mostly relied of philosophical reasoning to formulate his conclusions.  Amazingly, his suppositions have held up remarkably well down through the centuries.

 

    Chapters 6-9 focus on the modern-day "atom" (different from the a-tom) and its component parts: initially just the electrons, protons, and neutrons, then a plethora of even tinier particles such as leptons, positrons, gluons, muons, and last but not least, the bosons.  These latter chapters also chronicle Leon Lederman’s direct contributions to particle physics, mostly while he was employed at, and director of, Fermilab, located just outside Chicago.

 

    There were times, especially in the last half of the book, when my comprehension of what I was reading approached zero.  Yet it was still enlightening, as I gained insight to how things like the measuring instruments and the particle colliders were designed, and how you measure something that you can never directly see, that might appear anywhere, headed in any direction, and only around for billionths of seconds.  Happily, Lederman doesn't let the text get bogged down by doing complex calculations.  He presents them and references them, but doesn’t bore you with how they were developed.

 

    Lederman’s writing style is witty, folksy, and anecdotal, which kept the book from becoming boring.  At times, it’s even gets a bit snarky, such as when he  dubs the looked-for item the titular “God Particle”, a moniker which he says somehow managed to thoroughly ruffle the feathers of both theists and atheists alike.

 

    Be assured that you will learn about all sorts of things by reading The God Particle.  Examples include: Galileo’s stopwatch, the derivation of the word “boson”, how to make anti-matter, and why that famous CERN particle accelerator over in Switzerland, known as the “Large Hadron Collider”, has to be  circular in shape, and huge, in this case more than 16 miles in circumference.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 452 ratings and 157 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.15/5 based on 3,898 ratings and 186 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    The difference between chemists and physicists is not really insurmountable.  I started out as a chemist but switched to physics partly because it was easier.  Since then I have frequently noted that some of my best friends talk to chemists.

    The chemists did something that the physicists before them hadn’t done.  They did experiments relevant to atoms.  Galileo, Newton, et al., despite their considerable experimental accomplishments, dealt with atoms on a purely theoretical basis.  They weren’t lazy; they just didn’t have the equipment.   (loc. 2114)

 

    Like many physicists, Fermi loved making up math games.  Alan Wattenberg tells of the time he was eating lunch with a group of physicists when Fermi noted dirt on the windows and challenged everyone to figure out how thick the dirt could get before it would fall off the window from its own weight.  Fermi helped them all get through the exercise, which required starting from fundamental constants of nature, applying the electromagnetic interaction, and proceeding to calculate the dielectric attractions that keep insulators stuck to each other.  At Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, a physicist ran over a coyote one day in his car.  Fermi said it was possible to calculate the total number of coyotes in the desert by keeping track of the vehicle-coyote interactions.  These were just like particle collisions, he said.  A few rare events yielded clues about the entire population of such particles.  (loc. 5334)

 

Kindle Details…

    The God Particle costs $12.99 at Amazon right now.  Leon Lederman has two more physics-related e-books for you at Amazon: Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe for $14.49, and Quantum Physics for Poets for $12.99.

 

I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s seventh husband, I know what to do, but how do you make it interesting?  (loc. 1448)

    The quibbles are minor.  There were only 14 cusswords in the whole book (and no f-bombs), which admittedly is pretty clean.  But somehow that seems like a lot for a non-fiction, scientific tome.

 

    And I'm not going to sugarcoat it, despite the author’s frequent quips, The God Particle is a slow, difficult read.  On a complexity scale of 1-to-10, or should we say “Neil deGrasse Tyson-to-Stephen Hawking”, the book is a lot close to the latter than the former.

 

    Finally, there are way too many typos, among which include linker/Tinker, sim/sun, rime/time, subde/subtle, and gaundet/gauntlet.  I suspect most of these arose during the conversion-to-digital phase.  It looks like that happened in 2012, so I'll not blame Leon Lederman for the errors.  But jeez, didn’t the publishing company have its proofreaders check for these things?

 

    But I pick at nits.  I greatly enjoyed The God Particle.  It was both enlightening and entertaining, no small accomplishment when the topic is Physics.  Keep in mind though, that my degree is in chemistry, and I am therefore inherently a science geek.  If, unlike Democritus, Newton, Einstein, Hawking, et al., you don’t care at all whether there’s a universal building block out there somewhere, you should probably give this book a pass.

 

    8½ Stars.  Full disclosure: Leon Lederman’s primary reason for writing The God Particle was to drum up public support for the continued funding of Fermilab’s Superconducting Super Collider which in 1993 was being built in Waxahachie, Texas and plagued by financial issues and lots of structural snags.

 

    This book was his last-ditch effort, and it failed.  Construction had started in 1988, Lederman’s book was published in 1993, and the project was scrubbed by the US Congress later that year.

No Time Like The Past - Jodi Taylor

   2015; 376 pages.  Book 5 (out of 14) in the series “The Chronicles of St. Mary’s”.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Time Travel; Humorous Fantasy; Historical Fiction, Romance.  Overall Rating: 10*/10.

 

    The good news: The Institute of Historical Research Department at St. Mary’s Priory is alive and well.  That’s a miracle since in the previous book chronicled a vicious attack by the Time Police on St. Mary’s.

 

    The bad news: That attack was repulsed, but not without massive damage and several deaths.  Repairs and replacements cost a lot of money, and Thirsk University, St. Mary’s employers and purse-holders, rightfully expect a return on their investment.  The time-traveling historians at St. Mary’s desperately need to perform a spectacular, and financially lucrative, jaunt into the past.

 

    Madeleine “Max” Maxwell has come up with a promising plan.  Hop back a couple centuries, acquire some items that would/will make great “artifacts” after a couple hundred years, and bury them in a secure place.  Zip back to the present, show Thirsk University where to dig, and let them be showered in glory for finding a trove of valuable relics.

 

    What could go wrong?  Well, there’s a reason why this plucky team of chrono-hopping historians is called “the disaster-magnets of St. Mary’s”.

 

What’s To Like...

    No Time Like The Past is the fifth book in Jodi Taylor’s time-travel-with-historical-fiction-with-romance  "Chronicles of St. Mary’s" series.  I’ve been reading the books in order, and so far they’ve all been wonderful reads.  There are five time-jumps in this book, which is about average, and all to awesome time-space sites in the past.  The main one here is a visit to Thermopylae in 480 BCE to watch the 300 Spartans hold off the massive Persian army for several critical days.

 

     I was impressed by the attention to detail the author pays to each of the historical sites.  The descriptions of the settings really added to their “realness”, and I learned interesting history facts such as the name of the guy who betrayed Leonidas and the Spartans (Ephialtes of Trachis).  The details concerning another time-trip, this time to Florence in 1497 CE for an event called The Bonfire of the Vanities, were just as fascinating, and timely as well, since I just recently read Tom Wolfe’s novel by that name.

 

    In addition to all that chrono-hopping, there's a fair amount events going on at St. Mary’s here.  Max (Chief Operations Officer) and Tim Peterson (Chief Training Officer) swap jobs, meaning both have new duties to learn.  A “friendly” boat-building contest with Thirsk personnel is proposed, accepted, and taken very seriously by both entities.  And on the Romantic front, Leon and Max prepare to take the next step in their relationship.

 

    The book, and the series, are written in English, as opposed to American, which I always find to be a treat.  Besides the usual variances in spelling, I needed to look up the “translations” of the following phrases: pulling your plonker, jacket potatoes, pissed as a newt, toad in the hole, priest hole, and spotted dick.  Have fun researching these, and get your mind out of the gutter on those last two.

 

    There's lots of trivia sprinkled throughout the text.  I learned what the acronym “ASBO” stands for, the etymology of the word “bankrupt”, and the definition of “swive”.  A few puns are also woven into the tale, to which I can only say, “that’s offal”.

 

    The ending was not what I expected, which is always a plus.  But it’s both logical and a bit humorous.  The final chapter addresses the romance storyline, and closes with an amusing epilogue.  No Time Like The Past is told in the first person POV (Max’s), and is both a standalone book and part of a series.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.6*/5, based on 7,326 ratings and 606 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.36*/5, based on 11,143 ratings and 662 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “For God’s sake, Max, look at this place.  “Look out there.”  I rolled over and looked at the screen.  “It’s total devastation.  We’re going to be paying for this lot for the rest of our lives.  I’m going to have to have at least forty kids to inherit the debt.”

    Fortunately, at that moment, Mr. Lindstrom’s voice came over the com.  “Max? Markham?  Can you hear me?”

    “Tell them I’m dead,” said Markham, making no move to get up off the floor.

    “I’m fine, but Markham says he’s dead.”  (pg. 150)

 

    “Hold on,” I said.  “Were you studying tactics and things at—what do they call it—officer school?”

    “Not for very long.”

    “You surely didn’t set fire to that as well?”

    “No, of course not,” he said, wounded to the core.  “Not the whole thing.  It’s a big place, you know.”

    “So just a small corner of it?”

    “Barely even that.  Just a few rooms.  Maybe a bit of corridor.  There was plenty of building left so I don’t know why they made such a fuss.”  (pg. 308)

 

“Just think about it—being killed by your own wedding present.  How bizarre would that be?”  (pg. 305)

    No Time Like The Past rates a rare 10-Star rating, so unsurprisingly, the quibbles are microscopic.  I counted ten instances of cussing in the first 20% of the book (75 pages) equally split between an excretory function and the Underworld.  Later, there’s a roll-in-the-hay, and a reference to boobs.  All of this was tastefully done.

 

    A couple of typos also showed up along the way: Pa Lace/Palace, top/stop, Lies’/Lies, hear/head, and ally/allay.  These were all in the paperback version, so they can’t be blamed on the printed-to-digital conversion.  They caused my editor’s mind to stumble a bit, but weren’t numerous enough to where it became a distraction.

 

    But I pick at nits.  I’m now 5/14 through this series, and the storyline in No Time Like The Past felt just as “fresh” as those for each of the earlier books.  I don’t know how Jodi Taylor selects the chrono-hopping destinations for the plucky historians at St. Mary’s, but they're always fascinating, and I’m eager to see where they get sent in the next book, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

 

    10 Stars.  One last helpful hint about the oft-pondered time-travel enigma of “can I go back in time and shoot myself?”  St. Mary’s has an ironclad rule that bans any of their historians from chrono-hopping back to place where there is a possibility of “meeting yourself”.  If such a situation should arise, one's fellow St. Mary’s operative has orders to shoot to kill the “modern you”.

Simple Simon - Ryne Douglas Pearson

   1996; 250 pages.  Book 4 (out of 5) in the “Art Jefferson Thriller” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Technothriller; Movie Tie-In.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    How do you test a new encryption system?  Well, you could give a coded message to all your geeky IT guys who weren’t part of its development team and challenge them to try to bust it.

 

    But the head of Comsec-Z, the folks that spent the last five years and ten billion dollars of Uncle Sam’s money creating the new system (called KIWI), wants a more robust round of testing.  After all, KIWI is slated to be used throughout the United States federal government for all sensitive communications.

 

    Hey, why not try it out in a puzzle magazine?  Insert an encrypted message into one of the editions, with a secret message.  Have it say something like: “You’ve solved Puzzle 99!  Call this number (insert a private Comsec-Z telephone number here) to claim your prize!”  Then just have someone monitor that phone in case it rings.  It won’t, of course.  But still.

 

    That phone number has been routed to the desk of Leo Pedanski, a cryptographer for Comsec-Z.  As expected, it’s never rang.  So far.

 

    Leo Pedanski is about to have the worst day ever in his long career at Comsec-Z.

 

What’s To Like...

    Simple Simon was my introduction to Ryne Douglas Pearson’s 5-book thriller series featuring a black FBI agent, Art Jefferson, and a 16-year-old autistic boy, Simon Lynch.  It’s not a spoiler to reveal that Simon solves the encrypted message in the puzzle magazine and that Art becomes his de facto bodyguard when Comsec-Z reacts unkindly when Simon calls to claim his prize.

 

    I liked the focus on autism.  We get to hear what Simon hears, see the world as it appears to him, and struggle with his jumbled up thought processes.  Simon’s personal quirks were fascinating.  When writing, he meticulously avoids using the letter “e”, but can’t give you a reason why he does that.  He likes jigsaw puzzles, but only if they have exactly 500 pieces.  Any more or any less, and he ignores them., and he builds those 500-piece ones with all the pieces face down.

 

    To be honest, I know very little about autism, so I can’t say how accurately it is portrayed, but it gives the storyline a unique tone.  The baddies have formidable resources at their disposal when they come looking for whoever “solved Puzzle 99”, including a psycho assassin from overseas, and Art Jefferson’s task of protecting Simon is made even harder because of the boy’s disorder.

 

    The ending is okay.  It’s suitably exciting and has a nice twist that allows Simon to finally shake off his pursuers, but the actual showdown between Jefferson and the baddies seemed a bit predictable to me.  The epilogue felt a bit too convenient, although it does reinforce the maxim that karma is a b*tch.

 

    Simple Simon is a fast, easy read.  Things unfold at a brisk pace, and never bogged down.  The chapters are short, with 26 of them covering 250 pages.  ANAICT, Simon doesn’t appear in the first three books in this series, but Book 5, Simon Sees, is a continuation of Simon's and Art’s relationship.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.2*/5, based on 187 ratings and 106 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.67*/5, based on 352 ratings and 44 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    He set the cup back on the coaster on the lamp table and cast his eyes to The Tinkery.  They danced over the cover, unwilling to remain still.  There were too many colors, and they bled together so that one color was not itself anymore, and then it was another color.  In his mind’s eye, Simon saw pictures as unbalanced, imprecise, and unsettling.  A picture of a chair was not like looking at a real chair.  The world reduced to two dimensions disturbed him.  (loc. 389)

 

    It was difficult to think of the man that way with his tongue torn out and one knee bent forward at an impossible angle.  That this…woman had done that frightened Heiji more than a bit.  If only she were tame his thoughts might be of pleasure.

    “Mitsuo, don’t imagine yourself with me,” Keiko said without looking at him.  “Imagination is the second most dangerous thing a man has.”

    Heiji snickered a bit, nervously.  He had been too obvious in his musings.  “The second, is it?”

    “Yes.”

    “What is the first?”

    “A heartbeat.”  (loc. 932)

 

Kindle Details…

    Currently, Simple Simon sells for $4.99 at Amazon, as do the other four books in the series.  Ryne Douglas Pearson offers more than a dozen other e-books, ranging in price from $1.99 to $4.99, plus two short stories, each costing $0.99.

 

“Under a tree by a house, by a field washed with rain, lies a boy all alone with his thoughts and his dreams.”  (loc. 132)

    There are a couple of things to quibble about, but nothing major.  I counted only 16 cusswords in the first 20% of the book, which is commendably sparse for a Thriller novel, Four of those were f-bombs.  There’s a racial epithet later on, plus a mention of an erection, and a couple of bouts of torture, but, as shown in the second excerpt above, at least these weren’t lurid.  Still, Wikipedia’s labeling of this as a “Young Adult Novel” seems a bit misguided.

 

    There were a fair amount of typos.  Hyphen issues, such as “thirty year old”, “mid bite”, “well armed”, and “two handed” were distracting, but maybe this occurs during the document-to-digital conversion.  Others, such as breech/breach, shirt tails/shirttails, and/an, and Arm/arm (twice!), just mean another round of editing ought to be done.

 

    Overall, Simple Simon was an enjoyable read, although for me, it wasn’t a page-turner.  The plotline seemed predictable, at least up until the aforementioned twist in the ending.  I still recommend it though, particularly for the insight into the challenges of coping with autism.

 

    7 Stars.  Simple Simon was the basis for a 1998 movie, Mercury Rising, which featured Bruce Willis as the protagonist FBI agent.  Several changes were made in converting from book to movie.  The most obvious was the racial switch of Art from black white, but his last name also went from Jefferson to Jeffries (why??), and Simon’s age dropped from 16 years old to 9 years.  More alterations are listed in its Wikipedia article.

 

    Mercury Rising grossed $93 million at the box office, but garnered mostly bad reviews, and Bruce Willis “won” the 1999 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor for his performance that year in this and two other films.  I rarely watch movies, but I did watch this one many years ago, and I thought it was quite good, no matter what the critics say.