Books Set in the United States and Britain

An Unlikely Spy by Daniel Silva (1995)

Daniel Silva is known for his spy and espionage series of books in which Gabriel Allon is the hero. The Unlikely Spy, however, is not a part of this series. The Unlikely Spy is Silva’s first novel, and what a tale he tells.

This story focuses on the secrecy surrounding the events that lead up to the Allies’ landing on Normandy on D-Day. The British have an elaborate false network of intelligence using Double Cross to leak to the Germans. The information must be plausible, but not too readily available so that it is believable. Some of the information, therefore, is real, and some is completely false.

Germany has a special V-chain of spies living in Britain to be activated when the need should arise. Among the deeply hidden spies is Anna Steiner, known now as Catherine Blake. She has been quietly living in London for the past 6 years, taking the identities of others who she either killed or who had died as infants.

After Hitler ordered infiltration of MI5, Britain’s intelligence, Catherine is called to duty. She is a beautiful loner who was recruited and manipulated by Vogel, a German Abwehr officer who has fallen in love with her. (Why are all female spies beautiful?)

British Intelligence, for its part, has recruited Alfred Vicary, a middle-aged bachelor who still pines for Helen, the love of his life, who dropped him when her father threatened to cut off her inheritance. Vicary had his knee shattered in World War II. He has been working as a university professor when he was tapped into service by the MI5. His background, therefore, makes him an unlikely spy. He finds that he enjoys much of the work and is quite suited for his new-found profession.

Silva skillfully reveals bits and pieces of the puzzle, switching between the actions of the British and the Germans, leaving the reader to wonder just who can be trusted.

Clearly, a lot of careful research went into writing this book. The story is based on actual events surrounding the D-Day invasion. Even though we all know that the Allies’ plans to invade were successful, Silva carefully describes how the plans were could have been thwarted.

A quick, but exciting read.

Read: April 30, 2010

Books Set in the United States and Italy

The Broker by John Grisham (2005)

John Grisham is known for his legal thrillers. With The Broker, he decided to try his luck with a political thriller. He should stick with what he knows best.

The story begins when the outgoing president makes some last minute pardons, thus Joel Backman is sprung from a federal pen. He had been imprisoned for trying to broker a billion-dollar deal over some software that could control a secret spy satellite system. The rationale, as explained in the book, was somewhat fuzzy.

The aging CIA agent arranges for Backman to be released from prison and sets the scene for him to be assassinated by someone else ~ the Chinese, Saudis, the Israelis, the Russians ~ it wouldn’t matter, just so long as the deed was accomplished. Again, why?

Backman, who had been a powerful attorney on the Washington scene, does not have the background to be a spy, so how does he know how to go about all this business, specially since his had been in prison for the past six years. Furthermore, his new life as a spy trying to stay alive, requires him to use sophisticated computers and telephones ~ something that he had his secretaries deal with in his pre-prison life.

After his release from prison, he is given a new name and ostensibly a new life in Italy. The CIA sits back to wait his assassination. He quickly realizes that he must trust no one, not even his handler. He has a beautiful Italian tutor, who has a dying husband. But of course, how convenient.

The book is a fast-paced read, but is a bit like eating too much cotton candy. At the end, I was left unsatisfied.


Read: April 26, 2010

Books Set in the United States and Kenya

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama (1995)

Dreams from My Father was published long before Barack Obama began his run to become President of the United States. I don’t generally read books by political figures; however, a friend lent me this book. It sat on my shelf for some months before I decided to pick it up and give it a go.

The book tells us very little of his early life. Although he has said publically that his mother was in influence in his life, she is virtually absent in this book. He was born in Hawaii, but lived in Indonesia as a young boy, before being shipped off to Hawaii again to live with his grandparents. The picture he paints of his maternal grandparents is not the one he spoke of during his presidential campaign. The focus of this book, of course, is his search for his father’s side of his history.

As a school boy in Hawaii, Obama encountered few other black classmates and he began to feel the “differentness” of being black. He attended college on the mainland and while a student, turned to books by such writers as Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright. He struggles with his racial identity, where he is unable to fit in with the white students, yet must prove himself to the black students.

Following college, Obama decided to become a community organizer. He was hired by a white Jew, with whom he seemed to have a tenuous working relationship. He went into a rough project community to try to arouse interest in getting its residents involved in making improvements. He was frequently frustrated by the lack of apparent involvement by the residents, but he persevered. In the course of this work, he is told to become a member of a church, any church, in order to gain credibility. That began his relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Obama describes the first sermon he hears the Reverend Wright give. That sermon was entitled “The Audacity of Hope.” From the description, it appears to have been much the same rhetoric that was discussed during the President’s campaign.

Change was the theme of his presidential campaign. Change was also a theme of his early working career. He tried to effectuate change as he worked in the projects of Chicago as a community organizer. His efforts are truly admirable and consistent. Still, while working there, he feels like an outsider ~ a young man looking for his place in the world.

The main theme of Dreams from My Father, is, as the title suggests, Obama’s quest to learn about his absent father. Obama met his father only once, long when he was about 10 years old. His memory created a fantasy, and ideal man, so that 11 years later, when Obama was 21 and learned that his father was dead, he had no sense of loss.

Finally, Obama decides to travel to Kenya to meet his father’s complicated, tangled and extended family. His father had been married several times and had several children. At least two of his wives, including Barack Obama’s mother, were white Americans. All the children, except Barack, lived and grew up in Kenya.

Obama discusses the issues of race and class, as it is played out in Kenya and America. He also analyzes race in terms of human psychology that manifests itself in the prejudices towards one another.

President Obama is a very articulate speaker. He is also a good writer. He is good with words. This book conveys his quest to find his place in the world, first by finding his past through his missing parent(s) and then by helping change the plight of those less fortunate than him. Perhaps it was his sense of loneliness and need to fit in that lead him on his path to the White House.


Read: April 19, 2010

Books Set In The United States: New Orleans

Nine Lives by Dan Baum (2009)

Nine Lives, as the title implies, follows the lives of nine New Orleanians who lived through Hurricane Katrina. The Katrina episode, however, does not begin until the end of the book. Instead, Nine Lives attempts to explain the attraction and pull the city of New Orleans has on its residents and why the people of New Orleans are so adamant about remaining in the city after the flooding following the levee breaches in 2005.

The book’s title is also a pun on the phrase “Nine Lives.” The individuals highlighted in the book have suffered tragedy after tragedy, and yet still survive. Hurricane Katrina is another major setback, yet they persevere.

Dan Baum met with, and interviewed, the nine individuals extensively for days on end. He also interviewed others who, either knew the Nine lives spotlighted, or who could provide background information about their segment of society in New Orleans. The Nine highlighted in the book did not necessarily know each other, although some of their lives did intersect.

The nine lives of the book represent a good cross-section of the New Orleans residents. The individuals include residents of the Lower Ninth Ward, politicos, a self-made man who rose to become King of Rex, a transsexual, a police office, and are both black and white. Having lived through Katrina and its recovery attempt (which 5 years later is still ongoing), I understand the characters. I wonder, though, how this book translates to the “other America” ~ those who are not so intimately involved in the Katrina experience.

New Orleans reveled in its “bad boy” reputation as a corrupt and crime-ridden city. It was an open secret that the police department of the city was on the take, and that the schools were some of the worst in the country. New Orleans didn’t try to retain business, and when the oil bubble in the 1980s burst and many of the oil companies pulled up stakes, many of the old and monied residents, found themselves barely hanging on. They kept up appearances, however, to keep their social status. Music and Mardi Gras define New Olreans. New Orleans without Mardi Gras is unimaginable. Mardi Gras and music must go on despite any other tragedy.

The book begins with the teenaged Reginald Lewis in 1965 in the aftermath of Hurricane Betsy. That storm caused considerable damage to the Lower Ninth Ward, but the residents of that neighborhood rebuilt their community and remained. Over the next 40 years, that neighborhood slowly became more violent and isolated from other parts of the city. Lewis becomes a streetcar track repairman for years. It is tough, physical work, but he works himself up through the ranks as far as he can as a black man living in the city that fought integration. In the early 1990s, Lewis was instrumental in starting a second-line club of musicians to march in their neighborhood Mardi Gras parades. This lead to his collecting a wide assortment of elaborate Mardi Gras costumes, which became so vast, that he eventually established a Museum of Dance and Feathers.

Joyce Montana is the wife of the Tootie Montana. For years, Black men costumed themselves as Mardi Gras Indians during the Mardi Gras festivals. As Indians, they used to fight and brawl until Tootie Montana came along. Tootie was famous for sewing elaborate beaded and feathered suits. He would spend a year and much money in designing and creating costumes for the festivities. Tootie died two months before Katrina hit. His wife was left to struggle on her own.

Billy Grace is a self-made man who came from a humble background, but married into an old family who owned the famous “Rex House.” The year before Katrina, Grace was captain of the prestigious Rex krewe. When the storm hit, Grace was out of town on business, but his in-laws remained in their Garden District mansion. The house was on high ground, so survived the storm, only to be burned to the ground in the post-Katrina era.

As a young gynecologist, Frank Minyard was a wild man. Although he had married well, he was a womanizer. His wife overlooked this for the status of being a doctor’s wife. Minyard’s epiphany in the 1960s following a depressive crisis pushed him into establishing a methadone program in the city’s jails. His interaction with Black’s horrified his wife, who left him. This ultimately lead him to running for Parish Coroner, a job that he held for the next 40 years. It was Minyard’s office that was responsible for identifying bodies and signing death certificates for the victims of Katrina. He objected to using the word “drowning” or “natural causes” on the death certificates for people who had actually died from heat exhaustion, dehydration, stress, neglect and “political” causes.

Belinda Carr and Wilbert Rawlings are both residents of the Lower Ninth Ward. Both want better lives for themselves and their families. Both are caught in the circumstances of their surroundings. Belinda becomes a teenaged mother, but still dreams of going to college. Wilbert finds himself as a band leader at some of the roughest publics schools, attempting to change the lives of students who are forced to raise themselves amidst non-existent parents. Both have difficulty staying in relationships.

Tim Bruneau is a young idealistic police officer, who was severely injured while chasing a teenage perp. In the hours after Katrina, before the levees broke, he comes across the body of a young black woman. Unable to comprehend why the morgue hasn’t arrived, he tells his superior that he will transport the body to the morgue himself. He wraps the body and places it in back of his car, which he takes to the morgue at University Hospital. The doctor there informs him that he will not accept the body because it is the city’s “trash.” Bruneau drives around with the body in the backseat of his vehicle until he is told to “undo what he did”, and he is forced to drop off the body back to the street.

John/JoAnn Guidos is the transsexual who, after attempting to live as a man, finally realizes that he is really a woman in a man’s body. He also realizes that he can experience his dream only in New Orleans. He opens Kajun’s, a neighborhood bar shortly before Katrina. During the storm, it becomes a haven for those who chose to stay in the city.

Anthony Wells was the most troublesome character. His story is told in first person. He was in and out of jail and, in the post-Katrina evacuation was forcibly transported to Knoxville, Tennessee. He believes that the people of Tennessee “owe” him.

Katrina is still with the citizens of New Orleans. Baum describes why New Orleans is essential to the people living their and why they remain. It is well written and the reader becomes connected with the nine who chose to share their experience to the rest of the country.

Read: April 10, 2010

Books Set in Lithuania and Israel

Sea of Lights by Yael Remen (2009)

Sea of Lights is the account of the author's father, Avraham Binder, who was a book binder and artist. He was born in Vilna, Lithuania in 1906 and died in 2001 in Israel. The book is billed as a work of fiction. During his lifetime period, Binder survived pogroms, the Holocaust and the creation of the Land of Israel. Unfortunately, this book could have used a good editor. It is over 600 pages long and seems to record every detail of Avraham Binder's life. I felt like it was recorded in real time.

When I got my copy of the book, I was excited about reading a saga about a Jewish family spanning the century. After reading the first few chapters, I thought that perhaps the book was originally written in Hebrew, and this was simply a poor translation. Then I realized that the author, although born in Israel, had actually been living in the United States for years. Sea of Lights is a self-published book. There are numerous typographical errors, including the inexplicitly misspelling of a charactor's name. There were also too many extraneous details that seemed to have no place in this book.

That said, Sea of Lights follows the life of Avraham Binder from his birth to his death, seemingly recording every minute detail and memory. His father was a book binder in Lithuania and he was expected to follow into the business, which, as a good son, he did. In his spare time, he and dreams of being a painter to his life. He left Hebrew school to enroll in art school, which was run by the Germans before the start of World War II.

He becomes involved in the Zionist movement and as a young man immigrates to Eretz Yisrael, which is under the British Mandate. He enrolls in the prestigious Bezalel art school in Jerusalem, but artistic differences force him out. He moves to Tel Aviv where he opens a bookbinding business, while continuing with his painting.

World War II breaks out and some of his family members join him in Tel Aviv. His younger sister, Tzila Binder, is a painter in her own right. She meets and falls in love with the married Israeli poet, Natan Alterman. They have a long-term relationship, which is wife is apparently aware of and does not actively disapprove.

Avraham was madly in love with the beautiful Rachel, however, she marries his close friend. This devastates him. He begins a relationship with his landlady, who is considerably older than him. When she becomes possessive and jealous, he leaves her. She later commits suicide. Avraham eventually meets and marries Sara. His wife and mother do not get along. The author's depiction of Sara is not kind. She seems like a selfish woman.

The author seems to want to provide, in addition to her father's story, the history of modern Israel. Unfortunately, this does not work well. Events are described without a clear connection to the characters. It is too bad, because there is probably a very interesting story about Avraham Binder.


Read: April 3, 2010