The Lazarus Trap by Davis Bunn; 2005; 288 pages; WestBow Press; Nashville, TN; 0-8499-4485-6; 11/23-11/25

Waking up in a jail cell with your shoes already stolen and your memory gone, isn’t the best way to wake up.  Jeffrey Adams wakes up this and ends up working for the SEC in their fraud unit.  In between are so many improbabilites and dangling plot points that this is one of Bunns’ lesser work.  I am a big fan of Mr. Bunn, but I had many questions at the end of the book that I was dissapointed.

Jeffrey Adams turns out to be Valentine Haines, an executive with a company named insignia.  Haines had found out that the CEO and two cronies were stealing from the company pension fund and decided that the only way to gather enough evidence of this was to steal some money from the pension fund himself.  The executives were using him as a fall guy for their wrongdoing and attempted to kill him.  They failed, giving us a seeming Lazarus.  They find out he is still alive and the rest of the book is him trying to rescue the money before he gets killed.  There are things left undone, one of the characters undergoes a 180 degree character transformation, another is told to quit his job or be exposed as a thief (never concluded) and does the main character return to his wife or to his girlfriend.  Rr

American Band, Music, Dreams, and Coming of Age in the Heartland by Kristen Laine; 2007; Gotham Books, New York, NY; 324 pages; 978-1-592-40319-6; 11/19-11/23

I must admit that I am a huge fan of marching bands, my favorite part of Brad Paisley’s Online video is when the marching band plays it.  I picked this up thinking it would be interesting.  As I read it though the characters rose up around me and I felt like I was walking with them through the halls of the school, marching with them and hanging out with them.  The writing is so good that I felt surrounded by the people the author was writing about. 

The book follows the Concord Marching Minutemen through a season of marching band competitions and performances.  She follows the director and several of the key students as they prepare for the state competition.  What separates this from most books like this is that Ms. Laine shows us all aspects of the people and their lives.  We get to know them throughly especially several of the students.  This is one of the best books that I have read in quite awhile.  It is a book that I will recommend to many people.  RRRR

The Death Artist by Jonathan Santlofer; 2002; William Morrow, NY;344 pages; 0-06-000441-X; 11/16-11/19

Kate McKinnon, is an ex-cop who has a Ph. D. in art history, who has authored an extremely popular art book and a public television about artists.  A serial killer is performing for Kate by recreating famous paintings with various people in the art community, collectors, dealers, critics, and curators.  Santlofer strings you along effectively making almost everyone in the art community a viable suspect and making you see how it could possibly be that particular character.  Most suspense novels make it painfully obvious who the killer is, but here it is not a surprise but a logical choice.  I am looking forward to reading the next book in the series.  RRRR

The Only Road North,  9,000 Miles of Dirt and Dreams by Erik Mirandette; 2007; Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI; 301 pages; 978-0-310-27435-3; 11/15-11/16

Eric Mirandette went straight from high school to the Air Force Academy and after a couple of years couldn’t remember why he wanted to be there.  The Air Force granted him a two year leave to find that answer.  He went to Morocco and helped start a ministry to the refugees from the sub-Saharan countries, he also helped rebuild homes in Al Hoceima, which was destroyed by a earthquake in 2004.  After that he, his brother Alex and friend Kris rode dirt bikes from Capetown to Cairo, through some of the poorest countries on the planet.  As they rode and encountered numerous difficulties of many different types, they discovered much about themselves, about their relationships with one another and about their relationships with their God.  Part way through the trip they were joined by their friend Mike, who often rode shotgun on one of the bikes.  They made it all the way to Cairo and spent a couple of weeks there preparing to return home.  As they were visiting a market in Cairo a homicidal bomber detonated a bomb which killed him and the 18 year old Alex Mirandette, among others.  The bomb not only contained explosives but also thousands of nails.  Kris, Mike and Eric have all recovered physically from their injuries and will continue to deal with the emotional and psychological trauma.  RRRR

коли под наемBaseball and the Blame Game, Scapegoating in the Major Leagues by John Billheimer; 2007; McFarland & Company Publishers, Inc., Jefferson, NC; 216 pages; Inter-Library Loan from the University of Vermont, Burlington, VT; 11/12-11/15

A very thorough examination of why some players who make misplays or commit error are forever blamed for their mistakes and others aren’t. It examines why Fred Merkle shouldn’t be blamed for failing to touch second, why Steve Bartman, Bill Buckner and Mitch Williams should not have received death threats for the mistakes they made.  The author contends that a player likely to be remember for their mistakes if the play for an east coast team, if they are not a superstar, the play resulted in the lead being lost, if it was in the late innings and if it was a mental error.  Since the author  is a member of SABR there is a lot of math involved, complete with charts and graphs.  It was interesting to read and very enlightening about Ernie Lombardi, Johnny Pesky, and Fred Snodgrass among others.  RRRR