“The Passage” by Justin Cronin is a story set in the near future. The military discovers a virus in South America that confers upon people who get the virus some amazing powers but with awful side effects. So lets see if we can modify the virus to keep the amazing powers but eliminate the side effects. Hmm, we’ll use condemned prisoners to experiment on. As the experiment progresses, we need a child, lets go find a recently parentless child.

Well, they find the little girl, but something goes wrong, terribly wrong. An all out war ensues, civilization crumbles quickly, except for a few outposts where humans have lived for decades using antiquated technology to survive. They have tall fences and wind energy powered lights to keep the beasts at bay. Can they keep the lights on forever?

This is a great summer read. It is long and absorbing. It is about courage and survival. Give it a shot.

I bought my copy from Tulsa’s Central Library for a dollar. Somebody had broken the binding. Doesn’t bother me. If you live in the Tulsa area and want to read it, I’ll give it to you! Just let me know.

I rate this book four stars out of five.

I bought The Outsiders at the annual book fair at my son’s school. It’s a slim paperback that can be read almost in one sitting. I’ve been interested in the book ever since seeing the movie of the same name. It was filmed on location here in Tulsa so it was interesting to see our former family church shown as a hospital and so on.

This is a very powerful little book. It is set in a city in the 60’s and it is about teenage gangs. There are two types of gangs, “greasers” and “socs” (pronounced “soshes” in the movie.) They don’t really know why they hate each other they just do. The protagonist in the book is Ponyboy, a greaser.

Everything is pretty cool between the gangs until somebody tries to bridge the gap. The result is immediate, violent and tragic. The book is about Ponyboy and his relationship with his family, friends, and fellow gang members and how he is trying to figure out what is going on in this world.

The book is marketed toward teenagers but I loved it. It is awesome and I give it four stars out of five.

The Social Animal is a fascinating non-fiction book. It is about how we make decisions about ourselves, others, and the choices we encounter. It is how we achieve success and how we define success. It presents a lot of research about how quickly we make judgments and how resistant we are to changing our judgments. It talks about how much we let our subconscious make decisions for us and how some people overrule their subconscious. He talks about what character is, how it can be molded and changed. Most of this isn’t just stuff that he believes. He cites research to back it up. Fascinating.

If you love Pop Psychology and Sociology (as I do!!), then you’ll love this book. It has proven to be very controversial among the so called experts so Mr. Brooks must be on to something. I am not qualified to pass judgement on his conclusions but I found him to be very insightful. I am not into building a personal library but I may keep this one. I will loan it out though, or you can to the library. If you buy, get a coupon.

I rate this this book 4.5 stars out of 5. I don’t rate too many books that high. Get it, read it, tell us what you think.

“Worth Dying For” is Lee Child’s latest novel starring Jack Reacher. The good guy, hard as nails, lethal 6’5″ ex Military Policeman. WDF has been out for some time but I avoided buying it because Child’s previous book “61 Hours” was a dud. I’m not the only one who thought that. You can buy it on the remainder table at Barnes and Noble for about $6. So I held off getting Worth Dying For until I saw it in paperback, heap cheap with a 25% discount. So I got it.

I’m glad I did. In 61 hours Jack Reacher was a total dweeb. He was all moony and weak and disgusting. My theory was that he had taken to wearing panties instead of Fruit of the Loom’s for some reason. In Worth Dying For Jack is back in his briefs and is kicking butt and taking names.

He is all banged up at the start of the book because of an accident at the end of 61 Hours. A motorist that Reacher hitched a ride with drops him off at a remote crossroads in Nebraska. The only thing there is a motel with a lounge. Jack goes to get some coffee at the lounge. A medical doctor is drinking at the lounge and gets a call from a patient who has a bad nosebleed and needs help. The doctor declines to help and resumes drinking. That gets Jack all riled up so he convinces the guy to go help his patient. Jack drives him to the house. Well, as expected there is a woman there who got punched in the nose by her husband. Jack makes sure that the doc takes care of the woman and Jack goes searching for the husband.

The husband is part of the Duncan family who basically run the whole area and intimidate the area’s residents through threats of violence. Well, Jack is not intimidated and takes care of the husband. It turns out that the Duncan’s  have a small army of bodyguards. The bodyguards are all former University of Nebraska Cornhusker football players. (I used to live in Texas, the U of Nebraska was called the University of Texas at Lincoln, just like as any Oklahoma Sooner fan knows, the proper name of the OU football team is the “The University of Texas at Norman.” This is because all the good football players come from Texas right? At least in the Midwest that is.) Old Jack mows through the football players in no time.

Well anyway with all this kicking butt and everything Jack uncovers a deep dark secret about the Duncan’s. He ends up fighting the Duncans, some Italian mobsters, and other shadowy types. I’m not going to tell you the secret. Lets just say that it is worse than anything I could have imagined. If you can imagine it, I am really worried about you. You may need therapy.

The book is a totally satisfying guy read. It doesn’t delve into the inner realms of your outer consciousness or anything like that. It is pure tough guy Walter Mitty stuff. Welcome back Jack Reacher! I give this book 3.5 stars out of 5. It’s a great read.

Previous Reviews of Lee Child’s books

Nothing to Lose

Gone Tomorrow

61 Hours

The Pot Thief who Studied Ptolemy by J. Michael Orenduff is another book in the his Pot Thief series starring Hubert (“Hubie”) Schuze a pottery store owner in the Old Town section of Albuquerque. He has flexible hours at his store, he counts among his friends a crooked cop, a priest, and a Basque afternoon margarita drinking companion. He also disagrees with the United States Congress on policies regarding digging for pots on public lands. And he has talents for picking locks and fooling security systems. He is a very resourceful guy and a lot of fun.

In this book he finds out about some sacred pots that belong to the San Roque Pueblo. He wants to return the pots, well, maybe most of them, to the pueblo but they are in a condo complex with a very good security system where he has to use all his talents.

If you would like an interesting, lively mystery, steeped in New Mexican culture this book is for you.

I give this book four stars out of five. Check out the Kindle version on Amazon. It is only $4.59!!! It is a bargain.

Check out my previous reviews of the Pot Thief who Studied Pythagoras and the Pot Thief who Studied Escofier.

“Again to Carthage“, by John L. Parker Jr.,published in 2007,  is the sequel to Once a Runner published in 2007. Quinton Cassidy the collegiate mile runner in Once a Runner is now 10 years older. He has gone to law school and is doing quite well. He hangs out with his buddies and has a cute girlfriend and all that but he isn’t happy. He feels his youth slipping away from him and he wants to prove that he still “has it.”

He mulls it over and decides that he wants to make the Olympic Marathon Team so he excuses himself from his law practice and heads to a family cabin up in the hills and commences a brutal training regimen running over 120 miles a week (about two and half months worth of running for me.)

The book is pretty good but the end of it is the best when Cassidy runs the Olympic trials to see if he made the team. Parker is a former competitive runner himself and his best writing is describing the races and how brutally hard they are for the top competitors. (Like I’ll ever know.)

Parker waited 29 years between the two books. The writing style of the second book is much more mature without sacrificing any of the passion. The first book is a runners cult classic, I’ve seen it on the counters of some of the running stores in town. (My brother, who started running long before it became cool and still runs about 40 miles a week gave it me, he gave me the second book also.)

The book is well written and very interesting if you want to know about the life of a competitive runner.

I give it three stars out of five.

I just finished The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly. It is another book in the Lincoln Lawyer series starring Mickey Haller a criminal defense attorney who, because of downturn in the economy, has switched to defending homeowners against fraudulent foreclosures in southern California.

Mr. Haller doesn’t have an office, he conducts his business in the back of a Lincoln. Mickey has a brand new associate right out of law school, an investigator, who is also a biker, and Maggie, an ex-wife with benefits, and I don’t mean a 401K.

One of his foreclosure clients is accused of the murder of a banker who held her mortgage. So Mickey has to put his foreclosure business on hold and get back in the courtroom. He goes up against a good friend of his ex-wife who happens to be an assistant DA.

This is one of the best books of the courtroom drama genre I have ever read. The trial goes this way and that way between exhilaration and despair as Mickey and the prosecutor hook it up and try and outwit and outmaneuver each  other in the courtroom ruled by “a judge with a grudge.”  The stakes on trial go up every day. There are no slow boring parts. It was literally a page turner. In fact I liked it so much that even though I had a library copy I bought it on my Kindle. There is nothing finer than reading a book on a Kindle (I imagine the other e-readers are similar.) You can just fly through a book.

I give this book a five out of five. I don’t give too many fives, so go to your library and get a copy.