Took A While: "Sierra" by Richard S. Wheeler

Took A While: Sierra: a novel of the California Gold Rush by Richard S. Wheeler, 1996, 0312861850.

I commented online how I never got around to reading a Wheeler novel. Abbott, Sr. recommended this one. I'm glad she did because I was looking for a straight forward western with cowboys, six-guns, horses, rustlers, nasty cattle barons, etc. I would not have chosen this '49er novel on my own.  This is set before the usual western time period of '65-'10, or so. Wheeler sets this in 1847 to 1850 and tells the tale through two different love affairs.

In 1849 Ulysses McQueen leaves (abandons) his newlywed and pregnant wife in Eastern Iowa to trek across the West to gold rush California. Ulysses has a tough journey as he runs low on money, teams up with a friendly gambler, joins a mule train led by a sadistic jerk, and runs low on food and water as he approaches the Sierras. Once Ulysses arrives in the gold fields he does find plenty of gold but his profits are eaten up by extraordinarily high prices for food and equipment. Ulysses's wife Susannah suffers from loneliness. Ulysses's brothers have helped tend and harvest Ulysses' crops but when Susannah bucks the family patriarch she is cut loose and forced to travel the Panama route to find Ulysses in California.

Stephen Jarvis is mustered out of the U.S. Army in California in 1847. California is a new U.S. territory after the Mexican-American War. Jarvis does not want to return to New York and restart his old job as a cooper. He doesn't want to be a cooper in California either. Stephen wants to discover wild California and own his own huge tracts of land. Shortly after his last day as a soldier Stephen meets Rita, a wealthy rancher's daughter. It's love at first sight for both of them, never mind Rita's huge tracts of land. But, native Californios do not like Yankees and the cultural divide is wide. Stephen pledges to work hard, return in a year, and court Rita. Off he goes.

Things happen. Stephen is on the scene at Sutter's Mill when gold is discovered. Stephen starts a store to supply the miners with equipment and food and makes a lot of money. Rita loves Stephen but her family rejects him and marries her off to a native Californio. Rita still loves Stephen and freezes out her new husband. Stephen is devastated after Rita's marriage and throws himself into his work. New Husband asks church for annulment after being married to cold fish Rita.

Susannah's land journey across Panama hits her and her daughter with Yellow Fever and her daughter dies. Ulysses experiences change him from callow youth to experienced man but he cannot return to Iowa a failure. He doesn't write Susannah because of mail costs and guilt. Ulysses gambles away almost all his money in a last ditch chance to make a bundle. Ulysses ends up partnering with Stephen for Stephen to supply land for Ulysses to farm. Miners need food but almost all food is being imported from Oregon and Chile.

Except for the dead infant everything ends happily. Susannah reaches California and she and Ulysses forgive themselves and one another and start over as farmers. The church denies Rita her annulment so she rejects the church and goes to find Stephen. Stephen was leaving California for New York, instead the two of them take Stephen's fortune to start over in Chile. Or was it Argentina?

Comments:
1. An excellent example of fiction that teaches as it entertains. Plenty of detail of the difficult overland trail through the prairies and mountains. Life as a miner. The economy in California. Mining methods and the importance of volume when processing gravel and dirt.
2. Prices were insane in California because most things had to be imported. Those imports traveled a long way. Gold claims were so numerous and productive that gold fever hit most men. Shop owners had to pay high wages to keep men on the job and away from the claims.
3. Most payment was done with gold dust. Smaller purchases were measured by the pinch.
4. I recently read There Are Aliens Behind Uranus, Mr. President. One of the space ships in that book was named after Winfield Scott. That name seemed familiar, so I looked it up. The name seemed familiar because I was thinking of Randolph Scott. Winfield Scott was a hero of the Mexican-American War who led an infantry campaign from the coast into Mexico City.
5. Winfield Scott is not mentioned in Sierra.
6. I got impatient to return to either storyline. Wheeler would take awhile to write about Stephen I'd be wanting to get back to Ulysses, and vice-versa.
7. The prairie travel reminded me of the Hugh Glass story told in Revenant.
8. No Ulysses jokes as he suffers during his journey.
9. It'd be neat to try and walk the same overland trail. The trip would be much easier nowadays as well.
EDIT 10: I just discovered this won the 1996 Spur Award. I am not surprised.

Finally Got To: "The Drummer" by Anthony Neil Smith

Finally Got To: The Drummer by Anthony Neil Smith, 2006, 9780976389521.

Smith was kind enough to send me two copies of The Drummer. One copy was for me and the second copy was intended for the library. The second book was chewed on by the USPS and I banked my own copy for later. I started read this during last week's vacation to New Orleans St. Louis and finished it during WEBELO camp outside Black Earth.

Lead character Merle has been hiding out in New Orleans. About 15 years ago Merle did a poor job of faking his death and split on his debts to the IRS and his successful hair metal band, Savage Night. He landed in New Orleans five years ago, changed his name to Merle, and really likes living there.

When the lead singer from Savage Night shows up Merle gets itchy and angry. That old singer, Todd, has been struggling professionally. Todd wants Merle to tell everyone Merle's not dead, deal with the IRS, and restart the band. A comeback album and tour would bring fame to Todd and money for everyone. Merle wants no part. Merle wants anonymity. Merle wants to beat the stuffing out of Todd.

Merle leads Todd down a dark alley and stops just short of choking Todd to death. Merle agrees to meet Todd the next morning. Todd does not show, Merle bribes his way into Todd's hotel room. Todd is flat on his back, barely breathing, surrounded by empty liquor bottles, and alongside a suicide note. Merle thinks to finish off dying Todd by suffocation, instead he pockets the suicide note that mentions Merle and takes his sweet time calling EMS before leaving. Todd dies.

Well, the box is opened and trouble is coming. He is suspected of murder and avoiding the police. No one can give definite evidence it was Merle at the hotel and Merle tries to keep that up. Merle spends the rest of the novel trying to contain his real identity and figure out who else is trying to out him.  

Merle loves his bible-thumper-no-sex girlfriend but has been lying to her for a year or so. Merle relies on his best pal. Merle deals with car thieves hoping to recover some docs out of Todd's stolen car. Merle gets mugged under odd circumstances. Merle has to fess up to Bible-Thumper-No-Sex Girlfriend. Merle has to fess up to Best Pal.  Someone is pulling strings to keep the suicide in the news and also listing Merle as alive and well, but who? Sounds like we need some flashbacks to Savage Night's sudden rise and implosion under massive fame, drugs, disastrous love triangles and tax cheating.

Can Merle find out and still stay in New Orleans? Of course not, this is a Smith novel.

Comments:
1. Set in 2004 with jokes about "A hair metal band? Why couldn't you [Merle] have been in Oasis?"
2. There were a couple bits that were very funny and I cannot recall what they were.
3. Merle is like a lot of Smith's characters: poorly restrained sexual impulses, anger issues, big ego. Merle thinks everything should be about him. He's a lousy boyfriend and a weak friend. He's out for himself, knows it, and hates himself for it.
4. I brought two books to WEBELO camp. Camp was only three nights and I knew I would not have a lot of time to read. I finished Drummer at 10PM Saturday and went to sleep. On Sunday I pulled out A Twisted Thing by Mickey Spillane and realized I already read the damn thing.
5. EDIT: Yes, I enjoyed the novel. I forgot to write that. I'd give it a 4/5 of Amazon.
6. Actually, I really need to start give ratings and comments on Amazon.

Heard: "The Drop" by Dennis Lehane

Heard: The Drop by Dennis Lehane, 2014, Overdrive download. Jim Frangione narrated.

A short novel. It has been a while since I read or heard a Lehane novel. A story with depressing topics and rotten people where bright spots of kindness and dignity shine through the rough. I have not seen the film version.

Bob is a Boston bartender busily busking bartops while bolstering burly, boisterous buyers with boosts of booze.  (I admit that I used a thesaurus.) Bob's life has been remarkably uneventful. He's spent a decade or so going to church, going to work and going home. He's a devout Catholic who daily Mass and he spends little money. He has no friends. He is very withdrawn. He doesn't date any women. He doesn't crack jokes or kid around. He avoids looking people in the eye.

Bob works for his cousin Marv. Marv used to own the bar, Cousin Marv's, until Chechen gangsters moved into the South Boston neighborhood and took the place over. Before the Cheches arrived Marv ran a small-time gangster crew of loan sharks that Bob worked for. Marv and Co. were never very violent and they weren't going to try standing up to the violence happy new guys. Marv folded his miniature crime syndicate, ceded bar ownership to the Chechens, and now manages the bar that doubles as a nightly drop spot for illegal gambling receipts. Lately, Marv has been thinking about how he used to be a big shot and was feared in the area.

One early morning Bob is walking home from work and hears something in a trash can. Bob looks. Bob sees. Bob finds a beaten puppy stuffed in an outdoor garbage can. Lady who lives at the garbage can house sees Bob. Bob and lady, Nadia, take dog into Nadia's place and clean the dog. Bob ends up keeping the dog. Things happen.

The bar is robbed. A violent former boyfriend of Nadia is the one who beat the dog and abandoned it to die; former boyfriend wants the dog back. Marv is scheming to rob the Chechens. Bob is excited and happy with the dog; he's feeling emotions that are new to him because of the dog and his new romantic attraction to Nadia. The Chechens are scary.

It's a neighborhood story. People know one another or identify themselves by their street, their parish, or shared friends. Lehane gives us the people and shows us how they act and why they do what they do. Bob is lonely both by nature and upbringing, but can kill when pushed. Nadia is used to crappy men. Marv wants to cash in after what he sees as years of humiliation and a crappy mid-life existence. Former Boyfriend is nuts and wants the dog back because he wants power over others.

Lehane writes well about the place and the characters.

Finished: Reborn: a Dead Man adventure by Goldberg, et al

Finished: Reborn: a Dead Man adventure by Kate Danley, Phoef Sutton, Lisa Klink, Lee Goldberg, William Rabkin, 2014, 9781477823569.

This is a full Dead Man novel, not a novella or compilation.  Different sections are not listed under one author so I can't tell who wrote what part. I'm still waiting for Klink to write something I don't enjoy so I can snark up my typing with "Klink Goes Clunk".

Story:
A Byzantine ship crewed by slaves and occupied by Moloch-worshipping lords sinks in a massive storm. Present-day marine archaeologist finds the ship perfectly preserved on the floor of the Black Sea. Marine Archaeologist raises the Byzantine ship to take back to Seattle. The ship is spooky and crew members on the recovery ship start dying.

Back in Dallas, Tanis is a somewhat shiftless 26-year-old barista and half-assed community college student. Years ago Tanis's father abandone the family and Tanis lives, and fights, with her mom and worships her brother, Brett.  Tanis quits her job after a one too many bad customers and her mother tells her to move out. Tanis drives off in a huff, her truck speeds out of control, she drives through a freeway guardrail and dies in the crash.

When Tanis awakes she is in a steel box, bangs on the sides, and is pulled out of a morgue refrigerator. Then, of course, Tanis starts seeing dead people. Tanis sees a psychiatrist. Tanis starts a blog to deal with seeing so many rotting people. Matt Cahill shows up and says "Hey there, want to join up with the dead-people-seeing-and destroying crew?" Tanis says, "FU." Tanis is in the middle of bank robbery carried out by dead people, she is rescued by Cahill. Tanis has enough and runs off to Mexico for booze and sex with her psychiatrist. Psychiatrist is actually Mr. Dark. Yeeach. Tanis looks for Matt Cahill.

The two story lines combine with Tanis joining Cahill and some "freaks" we learned about earlier in the series. They are looking for the laboratory derived virus that leaves people immune to Mr. Dark's touch. They also have to stop the Byzantine ship from spreading evil and, then, awakening Moloch.

Heads are chopped off. Arms are chopped off. Throats are cut. Spines are severed. Heads are smashed. Impalements. Blood spray. Chainsaws, knives, sticks, hammes, and an ax. Sex on the beach. Weird green light. Dead children. A trip back to the Black Sea. Quick read, fun entertainment.

Comments:
1. This was announced 18 months ago and see no other Dead Man titles since. I have not looked to if Goldberg and Rabkin have quit the series or taken a break.
2. Never done through Cahill's eyes. This was all Tanis and Marine Archeologist.
3. Tanis dies and then comes back to life,again and reappears to rescue Matt Cahill.
4. Cahill has an ax. Tanis has a hammer.

Listened: "Kiss Her Goodbye" by Mickey Spillane and Max Alan Collins

Listened: Kiss Her Goodbye by Mickey Spillane and Max Alan Collins, 2011, Overdrive.com download.

Hammer has been hiding and recuperating in Florida after being seriously wounded in a mob shoot-out. That shoot-out left a mob boss's son dead from Hammer's .45. Hammer gave Velda the harsh brush-off for fear that her hanging around his hospital bed would get her killed. Pat Chambers finds Hammer sends word that their former colleague and mentor Inspector Doolan has died. Hammer hats his heads and goes north to 1979(ish) Manhattan.

Doolan killed himself after a fatal cancer diagnosis. Hammer does not believe Doolan would do that. Pat Chambers lays out all the evidence showing Doolan killed himself. Hammer attends the funeral, meets the mobsters who show up at the visitation, puts a Browning pistol in Doolan's casket, witnesses a murder mugging up the street from the funeral home. Hammer is Hammer and he starts poking around in Doolan's and the mugging victim's background.

Hammer sees things that don't match up. Doolan made enemies as a Police Officer and after retirement worked to clean-up a crime riddled neighborhood. Doolan was also running some private investigations. One of those investigations was at a Studio 54 stand-in. A mobster's son runs the Studio 54 Stand-In but says he is legit. A South American singer named Chrome is a beauty and smiles at Hammer.

Things happen. Someone tries to kill Hammer in a hit-and-run but kills a prostitute instead. An assassin steals into Hammer's hotel room. Public sex and cocaine love at Studio 54 Stand-In. Hammer sex with Assistant District Attorney.  Chrome works to seduce Hammer. Hammer wears a hat. Hammer was gone for only a year but everything in NYC seems different. Hammer has also changed and is fighting post-shooting pain and stiffness.


Comments:
1. Of all the Hammer novels I've read or listened to (and there are plenty more left) I think this one would be most adaptable to a film version. Hammer is reintroducing himself, and us, to New York. his friends and allies and enemies. This has the usual mix of action, cogitation and sex along with Hammer's worry and wanting for missing Velda.
2. Christa Faust recently commented online how she sick she is of tv and movie scenes set in night clubs with characters hunting and chasing each other through crowds of gyrating people under flashing lights. Hammer visits the Studio 54 stand-in and does not approve of the sex and drugs. Hammer is never confused about what he believes and why he acts but others don't understand his reasoning on sex, drugs, and violence.
3. The brief Foreword on this one says that Collins combined two manuscripts and wrote everything together. The novel is dedicated to Stacey Keach. It's weird listening to Stacey Keach read a dedication to Stacey Keach.
4. Hammer visits a the mobster who sent the hotel room assassin. Hammer is looking for information and, maybe, a truce. Things don't turn out that way and Hammer goes on a killing spree with his .45 and battlefield pick-up M3 submachine gun. Velda later says he killed 24 people. Not very believable but fun to listen to and there is a nicely done section where Hammer is hammering away with his gun and has a flashback to the war in the Pacific.
5. That flashback felt more Collins than Hammer, it reminded me of Heller.
6. Hammer biography note. I wondered what the timeline was for police and Army. Hammer mentions he lied about his age to join the Army and then joined the PD after discharge. He lasted a couple years with the NYPD until he quit the job. Doolan knew Hammer was not right for police work and helped push Hammer out. Hammer knew Doolan did this and accepted that Doolan was right about Hammer's personality and methods.

Heard: "The Farm" by Tom Rob Smith

Heard: The Farm by Tom Robb Smith, 2014, Overdrive.com download.

When my wife and I moved to Arizona at the end of 1999 we only knew one person there. Pastor Tom (P.T.) was my church's youth pastor when I was in middle and high school. When we married out-of-state in mid-1999 we asked him to officiate the ceremony.

P.T. had worked at my church for a while while attending grad school - as I recall. He then took a job in the Northwest Territories for a time. He left that position after a couple years, went elsewhere, and landed in Casa Grande, AZ working as a prison chaplain.  He was 1.5 to 2 hours away from us so we did not often see him. He later moved to Buckeye, AZ and we met him for lunch one day north Phoenix near my wife's workplace. My wife was working that day and she returned to her job after lunch. P.T. said he wanted to talk with me. OK, we stayed at the restaurant table and talked.

P.T. filled me on how his suspicions and certainties that he was being followed and observed. He couldn't identify who these people were but he had strong suspicions. P.T. told me these people were politically powerful. They'd been in his house. They were conspiring to have him fired from his job. P.T. was worried for his safety  He was scared and unsure how to proceed.This conspiracy seemed to be following him since his time in Canada.

How did I react? Well, P.T. was earnest. He was believable. He was an unimpeachable authority figure since I was a teenager. How could I not believe him? P.T.'s education, training, and experience was in counseling and included mental health treatment. So, when he said, "Give me any test and I'll pass, I know this is happening," what could I do but believe him? 

Maybe a vindictive person really did have it out for P.T. and that person did have a couple friends with authority. It wasn't impossible that a whisper campaign had followed P.T. from Canada. I was a bit skeptical and thought he was worrying too much and exaggerating things. But, I also had enough faith in his observations and experiences that maybe something was happening.

Apparently a similar thing happened to Smith, except it was Smith's mother who was convinced people were out to get her. So, Smith wrote a book where a narrator gets a call from his dad saying that the narrator's mother has been hospitalized for her mental health. The narrator, Daniel, then gets another call from his mom. She has landed in London to meet with him.

Mom tells the story: Mom and Dad retired to Mom's home country of Sweden. They never told Daniel that they were broke. The purchased a remote farm property and hope to get by on farming and fishing and maybe hosting vacationers. Their nearest neighbor is Hakan, a wealthy and rude man concerned with power. Hakan's teen daughter, Mia, is adopted and Mom thinks her black skin leaves her an outcast.

Mom is very suspicious of Dad's new friendship with Hakan, She thinks, she knows, they are up to something and Mom starts to collect evidence. When Mia disappears Hakan says she ran away. Mom knows Mia is dead and collects more evidence. Mom tells the story and sounds crazier and crazier. But, there are questions.  Daniel ends up getting Mom admitted to a mental health facility. Three months later Daniel flies to Sweden hoping that he can find answers about Mia's disappearance that will help his mother accept treatment and recover.

Anyway. This write-up is running long. Audiobook narration by James Langton and Suzanne Toren was quite good. Toren had the tough task of being both nuts and believable. Mom sees patterns everywhere: the LCD panel on a outboard boat engine, a quilted wall hanging, the way Mia dresses, Hakan's sideways smile in a photograph. Her evidence is bizarre at best.

There do turn out to be hidden secrets. You knew there would be. Those secrets are a bit surprising and make sense.

Finally Done: "1914: Voices From the Battlefield" by Matthew Richardson

Finally Done: 1914: Voices From the Battlefield by Matthew Richardson, 2013, 9781848847774.

Richardson uses diaries, letters, and memoirs from soldiers to tell the main battle histories of 1914. Starting with the German push into France, brief stalemate outside Paris, attempts by both sides to swing north and flank one another, down to fighting around Paris and then to Ypres.

A neat book that fell victim to my tendency to study rather than enjoy NonFic titles. The maps were not very good. Speaking of which, I think I bought a WWI themed book of maps...yep, just found it listed on the shelf: Mapping the First World War: battlefields of the great conflict from above by Simon Forty. Those maps are from the British national archive and from the period.

Anyway. I liked this but must admit I was not enthralled. There are several times I lay reading this in bed and falling asleep. [Lay? Laying? Lying? No matter.] But, Richardson did a neat job of writing his own narrative of the battles which included researching details down to platoon and company level and then integrating the many personal stories of Allied and German soldiers.

Comments:
1. The English Army in that first year was all professionals. The reserves that were called up had done several years in active duty before finishing their enlistment. They were still speed shooting their rifles.
2. The English soldiers were motivated to fight. So were the Germans. They both considered the other the aggressor. Discipline, unit pride, faith in each other, etc. kept them on the line under massive artillery attacks.
3. Massive and prolonged artillery attacks started out early in the war. That was not something that developed. I was reading through The Western Front Companion that covered how walking barrages were developed over time.
4. No civilian voices. British troops do write about refugees and civilians who hunker down trying to wait things out.
5. Throughout the book are portraits of some of the memoir writers and some of the many dead from each battle.
6. No stories of note for me to repeat. Human wave tactics seemed to be the norm. The Germans would advance across flat land against massed rifle fire, machine gun fire and artillery. It's amazing anyone survived enough to reach the enemy let alone overcome the enemy position.
7. Richardson mentions how several of the soldiers he includes wrote professionally in their pre-war and post-war lives. I'd like to look up a few of those titles but do not want to hunt through 1914 to find those people again. The bib. does list some of the full published memoirs he pulled from.
8. Reminds me of the first two books from Siegfried Sassoon's Sherston trilogy. The second book, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, was damn good. I still haven't read the third book.