A Second Chance by Jodi Taylor

Review by Cyndi J. (cyndij)

A SECOND CHANCE is third in the Chronicles of St Mary’s, all about time-traveling historians. You should start at the beginning – read my previous reviews of JUST ONE DAMNED THING AFTER ANOTHER and A SYMPHONY OF ECHOES.  The tone is shifting away from amusement; there’s more than one dark episode here although we still have some funny scenes as well as nice snarky dialogue.

As in the last book, the story proper begins with a trip into the past that’s supposed to be an easy in-and-out, but turns into a hair-raising life or death experience, but this is just an appetizer.

It’s off to Troy, the bit of history that Max has long dreamed of watching.  We know we’re going there thanks to the unnecessary prologue Taylor inserted (I don’t like them- others will disagree I’m sure). Troy will take up the better part of this story, what with the intial reconnoiter and then the team spending quite a while observing daily life. The pacing  is a little slower than I’ve seen in the other two books; Taylor spends  a while settling the team into Troy and describing the setting.  That’s fine, it gives us a chance to catch our breath and anticipate the chaos we know is coming. I quite liked the explanation of the Trojan Horse and how it was that Troy became so vulnerable.

However, now we come to a couple really big surprising events.   As a reader, I know there are many books left in the series, and with a good chunk of this book left to go, I had theories on where Taylor would go with it/them. I wasn’t right this time

After Troy it’s off to Agincourt. I remembered it from Henry V’s speech in Shakespeare’s play, but that’s all, and was curious enough to look up the real story. Just as in Troy, it’s got some grim scenes in it and ends in a startling way.  I really was not expecting that either.

In the first book we’re shown that History will not tolerate changes. If you do something to alter the past, History (and if you’ve read the previous books, you know who that is) will drop a rock on you or something equivalent in order to keep the timeline pure.  But that turned out to have some wiggle room, and now Taylor rips off the cover and throws it away. We are firmly into alternate timelines and anything can happen.  I am still on the fence about the two Muses, though, they are a bit too much deus ex machina for my liking.

As I mentioned, this book has less amusement factor than the first couple, but wow she really threw in some twists. I’m definitely intrigued to see what happens next. Taylor hasn’t really succeeded in getting me emotionally attached to the characters, even the main ones, but no matter, I’d still like to know how (or if) she’s going to resolve Max’s current problem.  I hate spoiling plots for myself, so I won’t look ahead.  Number 4, A TRAIL THROUGH TIME, is now on my reading list.

The Case of the Queenly Contestant by Erle Stanley Gardner

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Tall queenly suave Ellen has a sad story. Twenty years before in her California burg, Ellen won a beauty pageant at 18 and a chance for a screen test in the City of Angels. But she disappeared to have the baby of rich kid about town Harmon Haslett. She totally broke off relations with her own family due to shame of having a love child in the late Forties.

Ellen asks Mason about the law of privacy invasion because a newspaper in her hometown is thinking of running a “Whatever happened to…” kind of column on her doings and whereabouts after she seemed to have vanished in Tinseltown. For the sake of her son, Ellen does not want probes into a past better left in the past. Perry feels she is not forthcoming with all her concerns and she leaves his office with both lawyer and client dissatisfied.

Working on his own dime because he is attracted by a fight, Mason kicks over some rocks and finds himself surrounded by especially duplicitous people, such as Ellen’s indiscreet female friend, a bent cop turned PI, a sleazy lawyer, and a tough fixer man, not to mention, unfortunately, Ellen his own client. Added to the fog of mystery is the sudden disappearance and presumed death of rich Harmon Haslett, heel of a father but still a tycoon back in the burg. Gardner doesn’t tell us why Harmon’s yacht was sunk so readers are thus free and happy to assume it was attacked by a pod of killer whales off the Portuguese coast.

Hey, it happens.

Mason digs in and finds still more intrigue. He discovers that Ellen had her and Harmon’s son but left the child to be raised by that staple of fairy tales, a kindly childless older couple. They didn’t live a lonely hut in the woods. If they had, they would not have been recently killed in – you guessed it in one – a car crash and thus not available to back up Ellen’s story. Plus, in the wake of Harmon’s providing lunch for some orcas, a nurse, the “diabolically clever” Agnes Burlington, who attended at the time of the out-of-wedlock birth, wants to seize the chance to make money out of this potentially embarrassing information.

And we all know what happens to blackmailers in Perry Mason novels. Busted, charged, and jailed with no bail, prime suspect Ellen tells Mason not to argue the circumstantial evidence. Luckily for her, Mason disregards her instructions, and does challenge the reasonable inferences the evidence implies. With what result I need not reveal at this time and in this place.

Though I readily admit the Mason novels of the Sixties are a mixed bag, I recommend this one for its tight story, variety of players, and timely for 1969 theme of changing attitudes about single women having babies. Sure, Gardner has assumptions about the roles and attitudes of men and women that we would expect of somebody born in 1889. But at least he had sympathy for the long row women have to hoe in this world.

Drug Lord: The True Story of Pablo Acosta: The Life and Death of a Mexican Kingpin
by Terrence E. Poppa

Review by jjares

This is the true story of the drug kingpin of Mexico, Pablo Acosta. Terrence Poppa extensively interviewed the drug kingpin and many associates. As a result, a startling, disturbing expose of Mexican and American policies that don’t do enough to stem the drug tide emerges. Starting as a marijuana salesman, Pablo quickly added heroin. When the Columbian drug lords came calling with cocaine, Acosta allowed them to use his distribution system — for a fee. After a while, the Columbians got too powerful, and Acosta tried to kill them off.
Acosta saw himself as a Robin Hood for the poor of Mexico. He “loaned” money to the poor (people were proud and wanted to feel there was a chance they could repay the loan), built and repaired schools, built nursing homes for the elderly, paid for surgeries, and provided civic support for the poor areas in his region of northern Mexico. Acosta avered that the government should have been doing these good works, not a drug lord. Acosta saw himself as a benevolent Papa. However, he killed rivals, stole thousands of American cars, trucks, and airplanes yearly, and corrupted officials, the police, and soldiers.
One of the author’s most upsetting declarations is that in the 1970s and 1980s, the Mexican government (state, local, and federal) and the Mexican Army were all part of the drug business. They protected approved drug dealers (Pablo Acosta paid them $100,000 monthly to conduct his business). The government also planted, grew, and sold marijuana on its own. US agents got virtually no assistance across the border to stop drug shipments because the Mexicans were making too much money by turning a blind eye. The only reason the Mexican government killed Pablo Acosta is that he talked with journalists, telling the dirty secrets of the Mexican government and military.
As soon as Acosta was killed by Guillermo Gonzalez Calderoni of the Mexican Federal Judicial Police, he was kicked upstairs (gotten rid of, so the corruption could continue). However, it later came out that Calderoni was actually acting for the PRI (Partido Revoucionario Institucional). Calderoni worked through orders of the PRI (more info below), so they could appear to be trying to stamp out organized crime. In reality, the PRI was the drug cartel. The author points out that the deeply ingrained corruption ceased when Vincente Fox became President of Mexico. However, the author states that before Mr. Fox, the crime went all the way to the President of Mexico.
One of the most surprising things I learned from this book is that the Acosta clan sampling the goods. That is one of the cardinal taboos in drug dealing — to imbibe in the product. Unfortunately, this seems to have created the conditions under which drug lords were taken down. After they became addicted, they became unreliable as drug dealers.
Please note that this is the 20th year update of the original version (1998). With a well-trained eye, the author offers an update on the drug scene since Pablo Acosta. Things have changed in the Mexican drug scene. Now, there are $ 30+ billion of drugs pouring into Mexico yearly. However, the government is no longer acting as a mafia leader, controlling organized crime for the benefit of the people in power. The PRI (Partido Revoucionario Institucional) is no longer controlling the government. Now, the highest levels of government are separate from the drug traffic. However, so much money is to be earned that when one drug lord crashes, several more are ready to take his place. Politicians, bureaucrats, and moneyed citizens are now running the drugs. They aim to do it quietly, with no fanfare.
It took decades for reform-based Mexicans to oust the PRI from the government. The author points out that the US must support the democratic Mexican government trying to remove drugs from their economy. It is an uphill battle.  This is an eye-opening book. I cannot recommend it too highly. The author tells his story in such an engaging way that the pages fly past.

Tim Frazer Again by Francis Durbridge

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

The longest–running BBC thriller series of the early 1960s was The World of Tim Frazer. It was so popular in fact that professional writer Francis Durbridge was encouraged to write three novels starring the engineer-spy Tim Frazer. Laid-back and relatable, Tim is an everyman character that we like in comfort reading such as this lightweight 1972 classic.

A fellow agent, Leo Salinger, in Tim’s unnamed spy agency is struck and killed by a car in Amsterdam. The driver, comely Englishwoman Barbara Day, is cleared of culpability. But Tim’s boss, the enigmatic Ross, wonders if Salinger was bent, a disturbing thought since hiring Salinger would reflect badly on Ross’ judgement. Tim is sent to Holland to shadow Barbara Day to see if she makes any shady contacts.

Barbara Day seems to be just what she is, a partner in an antiques business. Tim returns to London, only to meet a weird situation. He discovers the body of American tourist in Barbara’s apartment. The cops think Tim knows more than he is saying and boss Ross tells Tim that he is on his own in dealing with the cops.

The story is complicated without confusion. Weird artifacts like metronomes and tulip bulb catalogs stir up our curiosity. Iffy bad guys start fights and attempt murder, though violence is minimized. There’s a Master Controller that even the thugs are scared of, mortally. As I said, Tim as hero is approachable, without the lone hero baggage of Jack Reacher or killer machine relentlessness of John Wick. The writing is smooth and readable despite the frequent and odd use of jarring adverbs like “exasperatingly” and “hostilely.”

Shergar: A True Crime Story of Kidnapping, Racehorse, and Politics by Conrad Bauer

Review by jjares

The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This is the first mystery that stars the series hero Commissario Salvo Montalbano. Set in Sicily in the early 1990s, the story opens with two garbage collectors discovering a body near The Pasture, a den of dope dealers, dope takers and prostitutes. The corpse in the BMW is local big shot Silvio Luparello, partly clothed but no apparent signs of suspicious death.

Indeed the local bigwigs seem relieved that Luparello’s autopsy shows that he died of natural causes. They want him below ground as soon as possible. Montalbano is not satisfied because he assumes that appearances are always deceptive. He even comes around to thinking that surviving big shots want the silence over the death to resound, make people mutter about cover-ups, and thus bring Luparello’s political faction into disrepute.

Camilleri didn’t write puzzles so the mystery is not the main draw here. Amazing are the smooth connections between the interviews Montalbano conducts with his superiors and subordinates and persons of interest. The interviews run the gamut, from locker-room smutty to comical to profound (such as the deep explanation of the title).

Montalbano is a brilliant creation. He’s a street-wise man of integrity who takes brave stances against supervisors, bishops, judges, mobsters, managers, land-owners, bureaucrats and all the other syndicates that want to keep The Little Guy down. But he’s also cranky and short-tempered when he’s hungry. Camilleri also includes pointed social critiques, drawing a straight line between the story and the centuries-long history of misgovernment, corruption, and exploitation in Sicily.

Highly recommended. It’s amazing that from the very first novel in the series of 28 Montalbano novels, Camilleri determined what he wanted to do in the books and he did it successfully time after time. That he wrote all these books after the age of 69 should give us of a certain age heart.