The Honored Dead by Joseph Braude

Since I tend to read mostly mysteries and women's fiction, my reading doesn't usually end up in the Arab world. Joseph Braude's true crime book, The Honored Dead: A Story of Friendship, Murder, and the Search for Truth in the Arab World, takes readers inside the Arab world of Morocco. It's more than a true crime book. It's a study of Arab politics, beliefs, and culture. The investigation into a murder is just a vehicle for Braude to introduce readers to a different world.

Braude's mother was an Iraqi Jew, a woman who remembered the Baghdad of her childhood with fondness. She shared that passion with her son, who grew up to study Arabic, study Iraq, and work all over the Arab world until his misguided naive beliefs got him into trouble. And, that trouble ended a ten-year friendship with the man he considered his best friend. Braude relates his story in greater detail as part of the account of his experiences in Casablanca, Morocco.

Braude's account of his investigation into a murder opens with the victim's friend, Muhammad Bari, the man who befriended Braude, and pushed to learn the truth about his friend's death. He thought Braude could help him. At the time, Moroccan officials had allowed Braude to have "embed-style" access to a precinct of the Moroccan police for four months. He was attached to the Judiciary Police. "Like the American FBI, they gather evidence, interrogate witnesses, apprehend suspects, and arraign the alleged perpetrators of grand crimes," crimes equivalent to felonies. One of those crimes was the murder of Ibrahim Dey, killed in a warehouse. Although the killer was apprehended after three days, Bari wasn't satisfied that the truth had come out about his friend's death. He wanted to know why Dey had died.

To find out the truth, Bari enlisted Joseph Braude, knowing he had access to the police. Braude made it clear to the police that he was looking into the death, and they provided limited access to reports. But, the true story in The Honored Dead is the story of the people and the communities in Morocco where Bari and Braude searched for answers. And, it's the story of a man who knew how to honor friendship, Muhammad Bari.

The Honored Dead is a true crime story of an investigation. But, I was fascinated by the book because of Braude's information about the Arab world, about life and beliefs there, and the opposing forces fighting for control of so many countries, and so many people. The beliefs there are ones we don't share or understand in the U.S.  Braude shared his background, his honesty about his own faults, and his knowledge, as well as admission of lack of knowledge, of the countries and cultures he came to appreciate.

The Honored Dead is an account of a convoluted investigation. Is there a satisfactory answer to the search for truth? Not necessarily. But, I'd suggest readers look at the book as a study of a culture and way of life we don't understand.

The Honored Dead: A Story of Friendship, Murder, and the Search for Truth in the Arab World by Joseph Braude. Random House. ©2011. ISBN 9780385527033 (hardcover), 336p.

*****
FTC Full Disclosure - I was sent a copy of this book to participate in the TLC Book Tour.

Almost Home by Mariah Stewart

Last year, I had the chance to participate in the TLC Tour for Mariah Stewart's second book in The Chesapeake Diaries series, Home Again. In it, Hollywood star Dallas MacGregor returned home to St. Dennis on the Chesapeake Bay, bringing her son. Dallas found a new home, and a new love there. Now, it's time for her brother to come back in the third book. Once again, I'm participating in the TLC Tour, this time for Almost Home.

Steffie Wyler had a crush on Wade MacGregor from the time she was young. She even conned him into taking her to her senior prom when he was home from college in Texas. But, Wade went back to Texas, and, except for occasional visits to his Great-Aunt Berry, he was seldom seen in St. Dennis. And, he only broke her heart again when he came for a wedding, but fled back to Texas following an emergency phone call.

As a lifelong resident, and owner of Scoop, the local ice cream store, Steffie knew everyone in town. And, she met regularly with her best friend, Vanessa, owner of a local boutique, and other store owners, so she was up on the current gossip. So, it came as quite a shock when Dallas and her son walked into Scoop, followed by Wade and a toddler who called him Daddy. What kind of secrets did Wade have? And, why did he show up in St. Dennis, pulling a trailer behind his car?

I hadn't read the first book in the series when I read Home Again last year. You don't need to have read any of the previous ones to pick up Almost Home. But, it certainly would make the stories more fun to start at the beginning. You'll get to meet Grace Sinclair, owner of the local newspaper, and the writer of the Chesapeake diaries, short accounts of the lives of the local residents, accounts that appear in each book. As romances develop, and troubles are overcome, life unfolds in the small town of St. Dennis. Romances, humor, in this book, a Ouija board and the possibility of love. Mariah Stewart always introduces terrific characters in these enjoyable pageturners. I read Almost Home in one sitting. Stewart welcomes readers to St. Dennis, making them feel at home with her characters and her community, and it's hard to let them go for another year.

Mariah Stewart's website is www.mariahstewart.com

Almost Home by Mariah Stewart. Ballantine Books. ©2011. ISBN 9780345520371 (paperback), 391p.


*****
FTC Full Disclosure - The publicist sent a copy of the book to use for the TLC Tour

Because I'll be leaving for NYC on Wednesday, I'm not participating in the giveaway for this book. But, here are the other participants in the tour if you are interested in checking for a book giveaway.

Tuesday, May 17th:  Pudgy Penguin Perusals

Wednesday, May 18th:  Luxury Reading – guest post

Thursday, May 19th:  I’m Booking It

Monday, May 23rd:  Joyfully Retired

Wednesday, May 25th:  Simply Stacie

Wednesday, May 25th:  She is Too Fond of Books – guest post

Thursday, May 26th:  My Two Blessings

Tuesday, May 31st:  Book Reviews by Molly

Wednesday, June 1st:  One Person’s Journey Through a World of Books

Thursday, June 2nd:  A Cozy Reader’s Corner

Monday, June 6th:  Colloquium

Wednesday, June 8th:  A Chick Who Reads

Electric Barracuda by Tim Dorsey

I am the perfect person to kick off the virtual tour for Tim Dorsey's thirteenth book, Electric Barracuda.  When I was in Florida, Tim appeared at every one of the Lee County Reading Festivals as a guest author.  He and I debuted the same year.  I was Chair of the Authors Committee for the first six years of the festival, and he appeared with his very first book, Florida Roadkill, and then returned with each of the following books.

Now, Tim Dorsey's books aren't for every reader, and that's a warning.  These are wild chases across Florida with Serge Storms, an antihero who kills pedophiles, and turns in cop killers while he himself runs from the cops with his sidekick, Coleman.  Coleman's high most of the time; the language is quite coarse; there's bathroom humor in the book.  At the same time, Serge is taking out bad guys while the cops, in Keystone Cop scenarios, miss capturing him by inches.  It's hard to dislike Serge.

Electric Barracuda finds Serge and Coleman crisscrossing Florida as Serge creates a Fugitive Tour of Florida.  On his website, he tells people how to enjoy the state by hiding out as a fugitive, and escaping from the cops.  To the chagrin of Agent White of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), Serge manages to keep people informed as to where he is in the state, but still remains one step ahead of the police.  They even add an additional member to the task force, an agent named Mahoney, who swore to bring Serge down.  Oh, but there are surprises in store for Serge and Mahoney both.

This book truly is a screwball comedy, but it also includes fascinating details about so many locations in the state.  Florida residents are Dorsey's biggest fans, since it's easy to recognize the sites and history of the state, every place from St. Petersburg to the small Gulf islands such as Pine Island.  I even recognized the names of the roads. Dorsey includes the state's unusual history including Al Capone, the Everglades, stories of the mob.  Every bit of Florida's odd history is fodder for Dorsey.  Even the other writers of the state are fodder for Tim, as Brad Meltzer becomes a crooked attorney, and Randy Wayne White shows up in a bar. 

Remember that warning.  Don't pick up Tim Dorsey's books if the language or crude situations will offend you.  But, if you like screwball comedies, understand that Florida really is as strange as Dorsey's books, and enjoy wacky situations and characters, you might want to try Electric Barracuda.  It's a book that even manages to surprise Serge Storms in the end.

Tim Dorsey's website is www.timdorsey.com

Electric Barracuda by Tim Dorsey. HarperCollins, ©2011. ISBN 9780061876899 (hardcover), 357p.


*****
FTC Full Disclosure - I received my copy of the book from the publicist in order to participate in the TLC Book Tour.

The Death Instinct by Jed Rubenfeld

"On a clear September day in lower Manhattan, the financial center of the United States became the site of the most massive terrorist attack that had ever occurred on American soil.  It was 1920.  Despite the then-largest criminal investigation in United States history, the identity of the perpetrators remains a mystery."  Did you know this?   Don't worry about that fifty-page rule that you can quit a book if it hasn't caught your interest by page fifty.  Jed Rubenfeld's marvelous historical mystery, The Death Instinct, caught my attention with that preface.     

Rubenfeld introduces three pivotal fictional characters into his historical setting.  Captain Jimmy Littlemore of the NYPD, Dr. Stratham Younger, and Colette Rousseau met on Wall Street just before the bomb exploded.  Littlemore took control of the scene, while Younger and Colette provided medical assistance.  Younger was a veteran of WWI, a battlefield doctor who served at the front where he met Rousseau.  She was one of Madame Curie's radiological truck drivers, the women trained to use X-ray machines and take them to the battlefields.  The meeting of those two, and the events on Wall Street on Sept. 16th, when four hundred people were killed, thrust the three of them into investigations that were pivotal to American history.

As Rubenfeld makes clear in his preface, the identities of the bombers were never discovered.  But, from the events and actual people of that era, the author spins a fascinating story.  He vividly describes the bombings and the battlefields of the war.  He paints a picture of New York, using Littlemore's description of a city on edge, "No jobs, everybody's broke, people getting evicted, strikes, riots - then they throw in Prohibition."  Sigmund Freud and Madame Curie are essential to the plot, and the background of the fictional characters.  Admittedly, I had a hard time with some of Freud's theories in the book, but the history, and the complicated mystery, involving corruption at the highest levels, kept me riveted.

Jed Rubenfeld is the author of the international bestseller, The Interpretation of Murder, a thriller involving Sigmund Freud, and the search for a killer in New York.  Now, he brings us back to the city in The Death Instinct, an outstanding, intriguing historical mystery, for those who like their mysteries meaty with facts, and complex.  It's a story that, in so many ways, will remind you of our present times.

The Death Instinct by Jed Rubenfeld.  Penguin Group (USA), ©2011. ISBN 9781594487828 (hardcover), 480p.

*****
FTC Full Disclosure - I received my ARC in order to serve as a TLC Book Tour host.

Secrets to the Grave by Tami Hoag

You don't have to have read Tami Hoag's Deeper Than the Dead to read Secrets to the Grave, but it helps.  The first book introduced Vince Leone, a special agent with the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, and teacher Anne Navarre.  Following the traumatic incidents in the first book, a suspect was arrested, Anne is waiting to testify in the trial, Leone is now a consultant and married to Anne, and the small town of Oak Knoll, California is back to normal.  I can't set up this book without those details, but I won't give away anything more to spoil the earlier book.

Hoag sets this series in 1986, which makes it interesting to watch the sheriff's department investigate crimes.  They lack the tools common today, from computers to DNA analysis.  And the officers are aware that technology is just tantalizingly out of reach in the future.  That doesn't make it easier to prove the case against the suspect from Deeper Than the Dead.  And, the investigators will struggle in the violent case in Secrets to the Grave.

Artist Marissa Fordham definitely had secrets.  When her body was found, violently stabbed and violated, she was covered in blood.  This was definitely a personal crime.  She left behind a four-year-old daughter, Haley, who saw the killer, but was so traumatized she would only scream until Anne, in her role as a child advocate, stepped in to sooth her.  However, in 1986, again, there was little information about childhood memory of traumatic events, and the sheriff's department could only rely on old-fashioned investigation.  It was an investigation that turned up a number of men in Marissa's life, a great deal of money, and the chilling fact that Marissa Fordham never existed.  When Anne was given temporary custody of Haley, she once more put herself in the path of a vicious killer, with a great deal to lose if Haley could identify the person who killed her mother.  And, Vince Leone can only hope he and the Sheriff's Department can track down a killer before that person reaches the woman he's grown to love.

I'm hoping there will be more books in the Deeper Than the Dead series.  Hoag has given us fascinating characters, from Vince and Anne Leone to Deputy Tony Mendez.  In fact, all of the members of the Oak Knoll Sheriff's Department are interesting, with that black humor cops use, and their sense of teamwork.   Tami Hoag's Secrets of the Grave has everything I normally dislike in a book.  There's extreme violence, a woman and child in jeopardy, and more suspense than I normally care for, nail-biting suspense.  In this case, Hoag's characters, and her use of the past as a time period with tantalizing possibilities for criminal investigation in the future, push me to read these books.  And, I highly recommend Deeper Than the Dead, and, even more, Secrets of the Grave.

Note:  I was given my ARC so I could participate in the TLC Book Tour for Secrets of the Grave.   And, one lucky winner can win a copy of both books, Deeper Than the Dead and Secrets of the Grave, provided by the publisher.  If you would like to enter to win this contest, email me at lholstine@yahoo.com.  Your email should include the subject heading, "Win Tami Hoag," along with your name and mailing address.  The giveaway is limited to US/Canada only (no PO Boxes).  The contest will end Thursday night, Jan. 13 at 6 PM MT.  The winner will be drawn, notified, and the publicist will send the books.  Good luck!

Tami Hoag's website is:  http://www.tamihoag.com/index.htm.  Her site on Facebook is: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tami-Hoag/108331142520822

Secrets to the Grave by Tami Hoag.  Penguin Group (USA), ©2010. ISBN 9780525951926 (hardcover), 464p.

*****
FTC Full Disclosure - I received my ARC as part of the TLC Book Tour.

Dear Mrs. Kennedy by Jay Mulvaney and Paul De Angelis

It always sounds so trite to say those of us who are over fifty remember where we were on November 22, 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  But, even those of us who were only six remember, and we remember the sounds and sights of the subsequent days.  Jay Mulvaney and Paul De Angelis, in compiling a collection of letters written to Jacqueline Kennedy, have reminded us how the country and world shared those experiences.  Dear Mrs. Kennedy: The World Shares Its Grief: Letters, November 1963 is a beautiful, moving remembrance of that agonizing time.

By the time the letters stopped arriving, Jacqueline Kennedy had received 1,250,000 pieces of condolence correspondence.  Nine hundred thousand response cards went out on St. Patrick's Day, 1964.  Those letters were sorted over time, and many of them are stored at the JFK Library.  Mulvaney had the idea to compile those letters, and, following his death, De Angelis picked up the project. 

They are letters from people of every walk of life, and all corners of the world.   And, those letters tell a story, not only of a grieving world, but of the history of the country.  They remind us where we were in the world, with comments about Cuba, Russia, the space program, the Peace Corps, Kennedy's call for all of us to step forward.  The letters that came from Hollywood and the Jet Set, notes from Prince Rainer, Pearl Bailey, Oleg Cassini, Lauren Bacall, remind us of the glamour of the Kennedy White House.  There were beautiful notes from politicians, world leaders, journalists.  But, some of the most moving notes came from women and children, those who identified with the widowed First Lady and her young children.  And, as the authors said, these letters also show the lost art of writing beautiful letters, an art that is lost now that we spend so much time on our computers, and children aren't even taught handwriting in schools.

For a short time in 1963, the world stood still, focused on a grieving family, and a grieving nation.  One of my favorite telegrams came from Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century Fox who wrote from Italy, saying that "In Rome on the day following the assassination all of the advertising billboards were removed throughout the city and were replaced with large billboard posters with a full-sized photograph of our late President." 

If you remember November 1963, Dear Mrs. Kennedy will bring back memories.  If you don't remember those tragic days, Mulvaney and De Angelis provide an opportunity for understanding.  The words of so many Americans, and people from throughout the world tell a story of loss, and grief, and knowledge of what we lost.

*****
As part of the TLC Book Tour, they are offering one blog reader a copy of the book.  So, here's my contest.  Anyone can enter the contest by sending me an email at lholstine@yahoo.com with the subject heading, "Win Dear Mrs. Kennedy."  The contest will end on Thursday night, Nov. 18 at 6 PM MT, when I'll use a random number generator to draw the winner.  But, if you're over fifty, I'd be interested in knowing where you were when you heard President Kennedy was shot.  I was in school, but I was home sick watching all of the funeral proceedings. 

Dear Mrs. Kennedy: The World Shares Its Grief: Letters, November 1963 by Jay Mulvaney and Paul De Angelis.  St. Martin's Press, ©2010. ISBN 9780312386153 (hardcover), 240p.

*****
FTC Full Disclosure - I was sent a copy of this book to participate in the TLC Book Tour for the book.

The Lost Dogs by Jim Gorant

The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick's Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption was a difficult book to start.  Now, notice I didn't say Jim Gorant's book was difficult to finish.  If you're like me, you'll skim through those sections in italics, and delve into the meat of the book.  The italicized parts, as the dogs observe what is happening to them on Vick's property, is heartbreaking.  But, it's easy to get through that part to the rest of the book, a rewarding, and, at times, triumphant story.

Gorant quotes Gandhi, and it's worth repeating here.  "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."  When Michael Vick spent his football earnings to buy fifteen acres in Smithfield, Virginia, and then used that property to raise dogs for dogfighting, it said a great deal about Vick and his friends.  But, the story of the people who found the evidence against Vick is a true crime story of good triumphing over opposition.  A rural Virginia deputy, Bill Brinkman, pushed for an investigation.  When nothing worked on the local level, he turned to Jim Knorr, an undercover senior special agent with the USDA's Office of the Inspector General.  And, Mike Gill from the U.S. Attorney's office, not only took over the case, but pushed to determine if those dogs could be rehabilitated.

And, the section of the book about rehabilitation is absolutely wonderful.  It took time and a number of organizations and individuals, but the story of the reclamation of these pit bulls is remarkable.  Sixty-six dogs were removed from Vick's property.  Some died before they had the chance to be evaluated.  But, there was a remarkable team put together to evaluate and place each individual dog.  Of the forty-nine dogs evaluated, forty-seven were given a second chance. 

Wait until you read the stories of the people and dogs who worked together to find a second life for these dogs.  Jonny Justice is one of my favorites, a dog who now participates in the Paws for Tales program, listening to children read at the public library.  But there are dogs that are now therapy dogs, dogs that are family pets.  And, there's a summary that provides an individual profile for each dog who wasn't followed in the course of the reclamation story.

Jim Gorant has taken a story of tragedy, and turned it into a remarkable story of people who cared to save Michael Vick's dogs.  The Lost Dogs is, in the end, a triumphant story of people who took on a difficult task, an investigation of a popular football player, and then a reclamation effort to save the dogs the player and his friends tried to destroy.

I understand this is a difficult subject, but The Lost Dogs is a rewarding book to read.   I have one copy of the book to give away.  If you're interested in winning, email me at lholstine@yahoo.com, with the subject line "Win The Lost Dogs."  Include your name and mailing address.  Entrants in the U.S. only, please.  The contest will end at 5 AM tomorrow (Friday) morning, and I'll draw the name by random number generator.  The publisher will send a copy of the book.

*****

"Jim Gorant has worked as a magazine editor and writer for twenty years, and is currently a senior editor at Sports Illustrated. His work has appeared in such magazines as Men’s Health, GQ, and Outside. Also the author of Fanatic: Ten Things All Sports Fans Should Do Before They Die, he lives in New Jersey."

The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick's Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption by Jim Gorant.  Gotham Books, ©2010. ISBN 9781592405503 (hardcover), 304p.

*****
FTC Full Disclosure - TLC Book Tours sent me a copy of the book, so I could participate in Gorant's blog tour.