City of Endless Night

By Lincoln Child & Douglas Preston
358 pgs  (Pendergast series #17)

I looked back at my reviews of the last several Preston & Child books and noticed I've been pretty lukewarm about them for quite a while. In fact, I haven't given a book more than three stars since 2013. City of Endless Night finally snapped that streak of mediocrity.

This time around FBI Special Agent Pendergast and NYPD Lieutenant D'Agosta are up against "The Decapitator," a man preying on members of the 1% and taking their heads as trophies. The first victim is Grace Ozmian,the socialite daughter of one of the wealthiest men in New York, whose headless body is discovered in an abandoned warehouse in Queens. But Grace is only the first. Soon headless bodies of other wealthy people begin showing up. The killer possesses a remarkable ability to get through any layer of security his victims have, and to separate them from their head without raising any alarms.

In the press he's given the moniker "The Decapitator" and the accounts of his crimes quickly put the wealthy on high alert. As Pendergast and D'Agosta try to discover who The Decapitator is and stop him, it becomes apparent that Pendergast is also on his list of targets.

As I mentioned before, it's been a long time since Preston and Child have written a book that really delivers. They don't quite hit it out of the park with this one--like they used to so regularly early in the series--but they managed to get in scoring position. Hopefully their best books haven't already been written.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Guise of Another

by Allen Eskens
267 pgs

The Guise of Another is the second book by Allen Eskens, an author I'm becoming increasingly more excited about with each book. It begins with a car accident late at night on the streets of Minneapolis. An amorous couple--engaging in some extracurricular activities while driving--cross over the median and kill a man traveling in the other direction. The name on the man's license is James Putnam, but Detective Alexander Rupert soon learns that's not his true identity.

Alex's career is currently falling apart. He, along with the rest of the Joint Drug Enforcement Task Force he was a member of, is being investigated by federal authorities on accusations that they have been steeling money and valuables from drug dealers during arrests. Alex sees the case of identity theft that just landed on his desk as an opportunity to salvage whatever career he has left.

When Alex is given access to the man's computer by his girlfriend, he discovers records of deposits totaling half a million dollars made on the same date going back years. The dates of the deposits all coincide with trips he insisted to his girlfriend that he had to take alone every year. Alex is able to soon discover the man's true identity, but in so doing, many more questions are raised about how and why he assumed the identity of James Putnam. His discover also leads to several more deaths, and he fears even his own life is now in danger.

For a second time now, Eskens has written a story that quickly grabbed a hold of me and didn't let go. This was one of those books I found myself picking up to read, even if I only had a few minutes available. The story is compelling and the characters are all strongly written. It's worth mentioning that Alex's brother, Max Rupert, a minor character in the book, was the police officer from his first book, The Life We Bury, and I believe he's the central character in Eskens' third book, The Heavens May Fall, which I'm looking forward to reading soon.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Rooster Bar

by John Grisham
352 pgs

Mark, Todd, and Zola are three law students about to start their final semester at Foggy Bottom Law School in Washington D.C., and while for many in their position, it's an exciting time, for them, there's little to look forward to. Combined, they owe over $600,000 in student loans, and because Foggy Bottom is a low-level school, the only have about a 50% chance of passing the bar exam after graduation, and little-to-no chance to find jobs with decent law firms even if they did.

They are victims of a real-life scam Grisham shines a light on in The Rooster Bar, in which for-profit law schools recruit mediocre students, who have no business being in an law school, and then encourage them to rack up exorbitant student loans from the federal government to pay for it, with the assurance that they'll have no problem getting on with a firm when they graduate, who will help them wipe out their debt. The students then graduate and find out those promises were empty, and have a lifetime of insurmountable debt ahead of them. The only people making any money are the owners of the schools.

After one of their classmates decides to take his own life because of the circumstances he now finds himself in, the three classmates come up with a scam of their own. They decide school is a waste of money and time and since lawyers are never asked to prove they've earned their J.D. and passed the bar, why not just start acting like lawyers? Mark and Todd start hanging out around courthouses, hustling clients there with DUI and other traffic charges and taking in cash retainers. Zola starts chasing ambulances in hospital waiting rooms. They change their names and start a bogus firm, and they live and work out of an apartment above their favorite bar, The Rooster Bar.

The appeal of Grisham's story is finding out how far they can take their scheme before their house of cards comes crashing down, along with the lengths they're willing to go to to keep it up. But I found myself wishing for characters I could root for. Zola is the most sympathetic of the three, but eventually I was ready for all three of them to get caught.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Uncommon Type - Some Stories

by Tom Hanks
403 pgs

Who knew Tom Hanks was a writer? I didn't. I guess it makes sense though. As an actor and a director, telling stories is what he's been doing for years. Why not write them as well?

Uncommon Type is a collection of short stories written by Hanks that all share a common element or theme: an old-fashioned typewriter. Typewriters make appearances in each of the stories. Sometimes it's a small cameo, other times the typewriter is a major character in the story. But it's always one of those old, built-to-last-forever machines for which Hanks must possess a strong feeling of nostalgia for.

The stories in Uncommon Type are each heartfelt and charming, two words I don't think I've ever used individually, let alone in the same sentence together. But that's really the best way to describe them. Take the story "The Past is Important to Us" for example. It's a story about a wealthy man living in 2027 who repeatedly travels back in time to 1939, so he can bump into a beautiful woman wearing a green dress at the New York World's Fair over and over again, despite the risks to his own life each time he goes.

Or "Christmas Eve 1953," which is about a WWII veteran who lost most of one of his legs and hands in the war, but whose experiences in the war have made him that much more grateful for the wife and family he now gets to enjoy now that he's safe at home.

Tom Hanks is a pretty good writer. He's not as good at writing as he is at acting, but still, I was impressed. I'd be interested to see what he could pull off with a full-length novel.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Earthcore

by Scott Sigler
577pgs

Earthcore is the first of Scott Sigler's books to be written, but it's the last one for me to read. Primarily because when it was originally published back in 2001, it had such a limited press run that it is hard to get a hold of a physical copy of the book. I had also heard Sigler had plans to re-release it eventually, s I figured I'd just wait. in 2017 Sigler decided to not just re-release it, but to give the book a major rewrite at the same time.

The book takes place primarily in the Wah Wah Mountains of Southwest Utah, where an old prospector discovers what will turn out to be the largest platinum deposit ever found. The company who secures the mining rights to the deposit will inevitably become one of the most profitable in the world for many years to come. EarthCore plans to be that company.

Connell Kirkland, a young and ruthless executive for EarthCore assembles a team to go after the platinum, which lies three miles below the surface, farther than anyone has ever successfully drilled and mined before. At that depth, the temperature is hot enough to cook a human being in only a few minute's time, so the team relies on state-of-the-art gear and equipment to keep them alive and safe as they make their way to the mother lode.

But this wouldn't be a Scott Sigler book if that's all there was to it. And sure enough, the drilling awakens a danger that has lain dormant for thousands of years.

Not having read the original edition, I don't have anything to compare it to. But I can definitively say the new version doesn't read like a book by a first-time novelist. That's not to say it's an excellent book. It's not. But it's a fun and entertaining story that makes you look forward to the sequel Sigler sets the stage for at the end.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The Pillars of the Earth

by Ken Follett
973 pgs  (Kingsbridge trilogy #1)

Okay, I finally got around to reading Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. I don't know how many times people have told me I needed to read it, but it's been more than a few. It seems like every time Follett came up in a conversation I was asked whether I had read it yet, and I always felt a little pang of embarrassment that I hadn't. Well, my days of feeling guilt are over.

I read "The Century Trilogy" as it was being published and I really enjoyed it, so I knew eventually I'd get around to reading his "Kingsbridge Series," of which this is book one. But I think I was putting it off for a couple reasons. First, the books are each doorstops at around 1,000 pages, so it requires a significant level of commitment to begin. Second, the summary on the cover flap and the description of it given by all those who recommended it doesn't make it sound all that interesting. Why would I care to read a book about the building of a cathedral in England in the middle of the 12th century?

Now I know. And to be fair to the book's publisher, and all those who tried to describe it to me, there's really no way to do the book justice in a synopsis (so I'm not going to try myself). It's so much more than a story about the building of a cathedral though (which, by the way, did turn out to be pretty interesting itself in its own right). The cathedral serves as the hub in a fascinating and compelling wheel of a story, which includes a cast of well-developed and engaging characters. I was sucked in by the plot from the very beginning, and it didn't let up until I had finished.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★