Carl Deuker -- Books, Movies, TV

Birmingham gang, led by Tommy.  Interested in horses and money.  Different groups try to thwart them.  Coppers, IRA, horse racing syndicate, Gypsies, Communists (a little).  Good acting, sets, etc., but nothing special.  A solid B.

Awful Bruce Willis movie.  Bad guy robs bank. Bank manager cowers, employee killed.  Bank manager goes after bad guy with Bruce's sorta help.  Bank guy's daughter is diabetic teenager; his wife is 26 (?).  Surprise:  Bad guy captures diabetic daughter.  Bank manager and Bruce kill him just in time to give daughter insulin.  90 minutes but it seemed like two hours

All over the place.  When it's good, it's excellent.  When it's not, it's still okay.  Excellent acting . . . problem with this season is the writing.  Headed back to husband?  To Lenny Bruce?  To Shy Baldwin? Parents out in Queens miserable.  FAther going to be lit critic?  $$$ in that? Mom going to become matchmaker?  Husband opening nightclub and falling for Chinese girl of 20 or so who looks 40. Maybe next year will be better, but the threads are all over the place!

Not great, but good. English gang in 1920 (real gang was earlier).  Dominate Birmingham. IRA and communists also at work in the city. Police want to keep a lid on. Show is likely to be about shifting allegiances, betrayals.

Linklater One day in Vienna.  American (jilted) boy. French girl.  A strolling My Dinner with Andre. Likable from beginning to end, but no real desire to see the other two parts of th trilogy.  So . . . lightly likable.

First half, centered in school with bullying teachers and at home with neglectful parents, was excellent.  Second half, more picaresque, was a bore.

Boring.  QE with one bulldog expression.  Princess Margaret as poor-little-rich-girl.  Charles actually was the most interesting.  No mention of Ireland.  Acting was excellent, as were sets, but the writing was terrible.

Yawn. QEII is a stick-in-the-mud. Philip is going through a midlife crisis which is painfully drawn out. Two episodes were good. 1) Mining disaster in Wales that kills 100's of children.  QE is remote, and then feels the sting of fully-justified criticism. Prince Charles goes to Wales for three months to learn a bit of Welsh so that he can speak in Welsh when he takes on the roll of Prince of Wales at 21.  He learns firsthand of the resentment the Welsh feel toward the English.  Gives a brave, sympathetic speech at the end, but is then dressed down by QEII because royals are not to have opinions, not in public.  They don't take sides. Acting is excellent; writing is weak.

Ah, that sad feeling at the end of a terrific read. What a great accomplishment by Harris. Cicero's life ends sadly, but what a life. If I could give this six stars, I would. I took Latin in high school and we "translated" Cicero and Caesar and Virgil. Amazingly, I managed to get through four years without realizing that Cicero and Caesar were alive at the same time . . . and were deathly (literally) enemies. No idea that Cicero was present at the death of Caesar. A few observations on teaching. Fairly early in my career, the idea of linking the study of history and literature came to the front. I thought, and think, it's a great idea. So when I taught sixth graders American History, we read historical fiction to go along with the history. Pretty obvious. Then, toward the end of my career, this became verboten. "Reading" texts turned into short, mainly non-fiction, booklets whose topics jumped all around. They were fine, but what a hodge-podge . I remembe

Blake Edwards directed.  He, Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick were all alcoholics.  Movie held up very well. SF.  Nursery down in San Mateo.  Lee Remick unable to give up booze.  Realistic, bleak. Nominated for a bunch of Oscars but didn't win for any major awards. 1962

Pretty sad.  Dennis Quaid as water thief, along with his sister.  Billy Bob Thornton sues him after the death of a past lover. Sink hole.  BB discovers Quaid's sister is stealing water from Federal property.  Quaid dies of a heart attack.  Sister shoots Billy.  Sister crashes car and dies. Subplot:  Marisol from season 2 gets her comeuppance.  She's involved in the water theft, is discovered, and has to resign from her job as Mayor of LA. Patty, Billy's partner, is pregnant. Deanna, Billy's daughter, is becoming a lush, but she's involved in the downfall of Marisol (whom she hates) so things are looking up for her. Thornton is great, so is Patty.  It's the plot that was terrible

Nuclear disaster.  Good start to mini-series. Soviet officials in denial, at least partly because of how bad the truth will make the soviets look.  Excellent sets, acting.

Comedy is supposed to be daring, and this definitely was.  Some great moments and episodes, some not  so great.  Fleabag involved in the death of her business partner friend because she slept with associate's boyfriend.  Suicide follows. Sex as constant with Fleabag. Pleasure and pain.  Father remarrying an artist after death of her mother. Tough, up and down, relationship with her sister.  Affair with a priest.  Based on a one-person show, all episodes under 30 minutes.  11 episodes in all.

Ugh.  I'd heard for years how great this TV series was and had somehow managed not to see it. Now, after the surge in TV quality, it looks rather sad as far as production values go.  That would be okay if there was a strong sense of history.  Instead. WWII and the Indian movement for freedom are background noise.  Ronald Merrick, sadistic homosexual non-aristocrat, stands for all that is bad about Britain. Sarah and her beau pretty much stand for the good -- by not pushing British on India.  More soap opera than historical fiction.  Way more

Famous for the swimming scene,which is great, but there's nothing else here. Boring

Opioid crisis. Bosch goes undercover and almost gets killed. Old case is dredged up.  Bosch is accused (wrongly) of falsifying the conviction.  He hires an old nemesis to be his lawyer.  They win, the bad guy goes back to jail, Bosch is vindicated.  Maddy lurks around worrying about Dad--sort of a combination daughter/wife/mom/sister. Lots of furrowed brows for her. Not bad.

England in India during WWII.  Susan and Sarah are sisters.  Sarah unconventional, perhaps headed toward marriage with Indian, which would be shocking.  Susan marries, her husband dies in battle, she tries to burn her baby. Lurking Ronald Merrick.  Sadist, hates the Indians, suppressed gay.  He tortures one Indian who had the audacity to have an affair with English woman, Daphne. Daphne dies in childbirth (the Indian's child).  Ronald loved Daphne, now seems to love Sarah.  She seems much too smart for him.  We'll see. entertaining but not great . . . not close.

Three men (two brothers and a friend) discover 4.4 million in a crashed plane in wintry Dakotas, MInnesota????  One of the brothers is the smart one, a college grad. He at first wants to turn over the $ to the police.  His brother and friend talk him out of that.  DRUG MONEY, they say. No one will claim it. It's not stealing. "Smart" brother agrees.  They'll keep the money hidden till spring, then divide it up and move away.  Simple But. Smart brother decides to return some of the money to the plane because there should be some there.  As he's doing so, a farmer comes along. Billy Bob Thornton, dumb brother, panics and smashes in the farmer's head.  Then smart brother finishes him off and dumps his body in creek. Next, friend wants his share early.  Smart brother's wife wants to trick friend into confessing to the murder of the farmer on secret tape by a ruse.  Tell me how you'd have done it?  Once his confession is on tape, they can keep him und

Not bad.  Apollo Creed's son takes on the son of the Russian who killed his father.  Rocky wants no part of it, so Creed loses.  Then Rocky comes on board and Creed wins.  Interesting that this Creed and this Drago are "sensitive" types who are semi-whiny/weepy.  Times have changed.  Creed 3 coming, I'm guessing.  Main actor was from Fruitvale Station and is quite good.

Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedy.  Lush, NY lives in the late 50's.  Very enjoyable . . . stars don't exactly have great charisma together but they're okay.  Plot is clever. sociology:  DD is mauled in car by college boy who has offered to give her a ride home.  She fights him off but acts as if it is just part of the life of a female.  Times have changed.

Tom Cruise couldn't be more unlike Jack Reacher. Debonair, groomed, polished, small--the exact opposite.  Plot:  Man is accused of randomly killing people; a mass shooting. He's an ex-military colleague of Reacher. Reacher knows he's not a great shot.  The man has been framed. The killings aren't random. One person--a business rival of the bad guy Werner Herzog--is the only target. Other dead are just to throw the police off. Reacher works with lawyer Rosmund Pike to get to the truth, then kills all the bad guys and saves her. Robert Duvall (a parody of himself with his heh-heh laugh) is Reacher's helper.  In the end, Reacher walks away--maybe headed to the hairstylist Terrible

This came out a few years after One Eyed Jacks, and is similar though inferior.  Stylized . . . Clint plays one feuding family against the other, collects money from both, seems cynical, but actually helps the poor against the rich.

Great acting & screenplay.  Brando the "sensitive" younger brother of an organized crime chieftain.  Upset when friend is killed; upset when protester is killed--but not yet upset enough to do anything about it. Eva Marie Saint very good also

Elizabeth & Phillip back together. Nina double-agent. Stan a target to be turned into a Russian operative. Page (daughter) getting suspicious -- at long last -- of her parents.  Enjoyable.

Elizabeth (wife) is a true-believer willing to do anything for communism.  Phillip (husband) is not a true-believer, but he is willing to do anything as well.  CIA/KGB war going on. Not as good as Breaking Bad/Sopranos/Narcos, but entertaining.

I'm on page 45 of 318 of American Prison: Undercover for Mother Jones at a privatized prison in Louisiana. Opening chapters are discussion of his training and his fellow cadets. Book then moves to an historical perspective. Prisons replaced slavery after Civil War as a source of black labor for plantations. They continue to be a source of labor, particularly in the south. USA has (percentage wise) more prisoners than any other country in the world.

Review The parts are better than the whole. This is an Audible original. Very high quality radio drama. Interesting characters. Some difficulty at times with the English accents and with keeping the various characters straight. The main character, a female psychologist with two children whom she semi-ignores because of her work, is quite interesting. In fact, all the characters were well-drawn. A very good "car" listen.

Quite a change from True Detective.  Straight-forward narrative. Walt diagnosed with lung cancer. No money for family. A chemistry teacher, he falls into cooking meth. His goal is to "just be the cook and collect the money."  Not going to work out. Wife:  pregnant, wants him to undergo all treatment to live. Son: cerebral palsy, but teenage hormones also make him snippy. Good character Brother-in-law: DEA agent.  Robert Duvall type.  Sister-in-law: (wife's sister) shoplifting! Very good so far

Lots of sound and fury not signifying much.  The church maintenance man is the villain. He has a crazy place full of strange sculptures where he has killed and buried people from all the parishes of the church.  Matthew Mc. continues to babble on philosophically while Woody Harrelson runs his tongue over his teeth.  Okay, but not as good as what we've seen--Sopranos, Wire, Narcos all much better

Mary Alice and Ezra continue their May/September romance. Ezra pays for her school loans, a winter coat, etc.  Not quite a kept woman, but $ plays a part. E asks her repeatedly if the relationship is "good" for her.  Reader asks the same question!  Phillip Roth model for Ezra. A little affected for me.  Reminds me a bit of Bright Lights, Big City.  Lots of brain, less heart in the writing.

Lots of flash but not too much substance.  McConeghey and Harrelson characters snarl at each other but work together  McConeghey goes undercover; all hell breaks loose; biker gang; black projects; gunfight.  The murderer seems to be involved in some Christian cult, but there's no development . . . the cult is just out there being weird.

"Lydia, Alex, Christine trying to work out a plan for the future after Alex's taking up with Lydia. Their children--Sandy (Alex with Juliette), isabelle (Alex with Christine) and Grace (Zachary with Lydia) are finding their way as young adults. Zachary's death looms over all of them. I'll be interested where this ends up; excellent writing."

Loki is a great figure. The saboteur for no reason.  Before reading this, I'd heard the name and thought "Trickster," but he's much more evil than that.  The enjoyment of other people's misery . . . causing problems even when there's no benefit . . . The writing continues to be great.  Gaiman's prose just flows with the perfect feel of myth but without overdoing anything.  Terrific book.

Great start. Loki the troublemaker takes Thor's wife's golden hair.  Goes to dwarf for replacement. Pits one set of dwarves against the other in a competition to make the greatest gift for the gods.  One dwarf, suspicious, says:  "Okay, but if I win I get to cut off your head." Loki agrees, but then tries to sabotage the work. Dwarf wins anyway. Loki headless? No! Dwarf didn't ask to cut off neck as well. Loki Lives!

Great start. The principal cast consisted of  Matthew McConaughey ,  Woody Harrelson ,  Michelle Monaghan ,  Michael Potts , and  Tory Kittles . McConaughey is slightly haywire detective teamed with Harrelson in Louisiana. Macabre, cult-like murder occurs.  The two must solve. 

Kiki Camerana is murdered by Felix's stooges.  Felix is turned in by Sineola "friend."  Felix bribes the capturer.  Felix's followers are meeting to pick up the pieces with him gone.  He shows up and reasserts control.  Rafa captured. Neto captured.  Felix kills the son on the "friend" who turned him and sends the head to the mother.  Set-up for season two.  The DEA sends down new agents with directions to play tough to avenge the death of Kiki. Episode nine:  Kiki's wife Mika is excellent. Charlotte's Web scene works--tough to pull off.  Episode ten: Kiki is great in his final scene with Felix.

Kiki Camerana, having pulled off the greatest bust in history, is ready to leave Mexico.  The cartel is in an uproar. Felix, concentrating on cocaine, is ready to let the bust go. Rafa, the marijuana King, is not.  Rafa has Kiki kidnapped.  They torture Kiki to find out what might be happening next. (We've just seen the State Department decide that nothing will happen next.) Early on, maybe at the end of Narcos Cali show, we were shown Kiki's picture on a DEA wall--presumably of agents who died on duty.  Because of that, there's no suspense as to what will happen.  LIke watching a tragedy play out.  Rafa seems on the verge of being killed by someone in the cartel. Neto and Felix both seem in danger as well. Not as good as the earlier Narcos seasons.

The lives of two close-knit couples are irrevocably changed by an untimely death in the latest from Tessa Hadley, the acclaimed novelist and short story master who “recruits admirers with each book” (Hilary Mantel). Alexandr and Christine and Zachary and Lydia have been friends since they first met in their twenties. Thirty years later, Alex and Christine are spending a leisurely summer’s evening at home when they receive a call from a distraught Lydia: she is at the hospital. Zach is dead. In the wake of this profound loss, the three friends find themselves unmoored; all agree that Zach, with his generous, grounded spirit, was the irreplaceable one they couldn’t afford to lose. Inconsolable, Lydia moves in with Alex and Christine. But instead of loss bringing them closer, the three of them find over the following months that it warps their relationships, as old entanglements and grievances rise from the past, and love and sorrow give way to anger and bitterness.

Superb book. 5 out 5

Naveed, Hayat's father, interesting character.  To my mind, his disdain for religion is right on target. He tells Nathan, as they enter the mosque for service, "We are going to the Middle Ages."  However, he's a horrible, philandering husband and an erratic father. In a religious fervor, Hayat sends a telegram to Mina's ex-husband informing him that Mina is about to marry a non-believer.  This after the wild anti-Semitic rantings of the Imam.  Lots of action:  broken arm, burned Quran. Terrific book!

Hayat is now a teenager.  He is still in love with Aunt Mina who is on the verge of marry Nathan, a Jewish scientist/colleague of Hayat's father. Nathan wants to convert to Islam.  Great descriptions of religious fervor in childhood.  Great family scenes, great debates on religion . . . so far, just a great book.  Fingers-crossed nothing changes.

 Pakistani boy (Hayat) in Milwaukee.  Unhappy parents. Father is a philanderer; mother is bitter.  An aunt arrives from Pakistan with her young son.  She is bright--a writer--but beaten down by Pakistani norms. Divorced. Lots of "illogical" but realistic details. The aunt from Pakistan, for example, teaches our main character about Mohammed & the Quran. Absolutely terrific so far, with touches of humor throughout. Hayat's crush/love for the aunt is wonderfully conveyed.

from publisher -- off Goodreads American Dervish  is a brilliantly written, nuanced, and emotionally forceful look inside the interplay of religion and modern life. Hayat Shah is a young American in love for the first time. His normal life of school, baseball, and video games had previously been distinguished only by his Pakistani heritage and by the frequent chill between his parents, who fight over things he is too young to understand. Then Mina arrives, and everything changes. Mina is Hayat's mother's oldest friend from Pakistan. She is independent, beautiful and intelligent, and arrives on the Shah's doorstep when her disastrous marriage in Pakistan disintegrates. Even Hayat's skeptical father can't deny the liveliness and happiness that accompanies Mina into their home. Her deep spirituality brings the family's Muslim faith to life in a way that resonates with Hayat as nothing has before. Studying the Quran by Mina's side and basking in the glow of he

Kiki (?) Camerana is new agent just as the Sineola (sp) gang gets going with a more potent marijuana and a turf war of sorts. (They will be farming in Guadalajara after killing a few of the locals.) Good, not great, start.  Miss Pena, but a little exposition is always necessary.

2 highlights (Private) Solid mystery/thriller. I found it a little cloying at times. Nap Dumas loves a lot of people and doesn't mind telling the reader. The Nike missile plant has been converted to a Block Operations unit. Helicopter comes in the same night Leo is breaking up with Diane. Leo gets his buddies (boys and girls) to play a nasty trick on her in retribution. All goes to hell. Retribution comes back on Leo and the others. This is my second Coben novel. I've liked them both.

Jorge nearly killed, but survives. Implicates cartel and gets into witness protection program in USA--a new kind of prison.  Accountant comically asks about his home in the USA, not getting that the cartel is coming to kill him NOW. He also testifies.  President of Colombia implicated in corruption. Cartel members Checko and Pacho killed in prison. Brothers Gilberto and Miguel extradited to USA where they're sentenced to life.  Pena mixed feelings. Corrupt government still in power, so not a real victory. He turns in his badge, but can he stay out of the fray?  Narcos Mexico is next--I'm guessing Pena will be there. Terrific show.

Didn't read much today.  Our main character  (Nap Dumas) is learning that his friends, Augie and Ellie, have been keeping things from about the death of his brother--and Augie's daughter.  Maura on the run . . . from what? Reeves (Agriculture worker at the Nike Missile Base) is looking like the villain, but there's more to be unveiled.  Maura, for example.

Miguel captured. Jorge escapes (barely). The president of Columbia is on the take, as is the minister of defense.  The money launderer murdered in prison in Miami.  Pacho and Chacko (?) both turn themselves in after the capture of Miguel, and after killing the leaders of the North Valley group.  Episode 10 . . . will they all get light sentences and live in the lap of luxury? Tonight will tell!

"Great plot. It's 15 years after the death of two teenagers in a "train" accident. Now, more teenagers from the high school have died. Our policeman, the twin of one of the dead boys, investigates. A top-secret Nike base was near the tracks. The dead kids were all part of a "Conspiracy Club." Did they see something they weren't supposed to see? Have they all been murdered? Are more murders to come?"

Suburban New Jersey Detective Napoleon “Nap” Dumas hasn't been the same since senior year of high school, when his twin brother Leo and Leo’s girlfriend Diana were found dead on the railroad tracks—and Maura, the girl Nap considered the love of his life, broke up with him and disappeared without explanation. For fifteen years, Nap has been searching, both for Maura and for the real reason behind his brother's death. And now, it looks as though he may finally find what he's been looking for.  When Maura's fingerprints turn up in the rental car of a suspected murderer, Nap embarks on a quest for answers that only leads to more questions—about the woman he loved, about the childhood friends he thought he knew, about the abandoned military base near where he grew up, and mostly about Leo and Diana—whose deaths are darker and far more sinister than Nap ever dared imagine.

Film noir staple Charles McGraw stars as hard-boiled cop Walter Brown, who's assigned to transport a mobster's moll (played to perfection by Marie Windsor) from Chicago to Los Angeles -- where she's set to testify before the grand jury. Naturally, danger turns up on the train in the form of syndicate goons sent to silence the witness; trouble is, they have no idea what she looks like. Richard Fleischer helmed this fast-paced crime thriller. Could have been so much better.  A female cop is acting as the gangster's moll.  Walter Brown doesn't know it, and he treats her like a criminal.  Then . . . it all comes out and she is killed.  Should be quite a moral awakening, but her death happens and then is totally ignored.  In its place we get a coming romance between the real gangster's moll (who really wanted no part of the mob) and our cop.  Weak ending after a terrific set-up.

I found this very exciting--a thriller without a thrilling ending because it is non-fiction. Ackerman sort of wins vindication in his attack on the business practices of Herbalife.  They are fined 200 m by the FTC . . . but they stay in business, so Ackerman sort of loses, too.  Icahn, who stood by Herbalife, also does well. Somehow these guys do, don't they? This book was a great look into big stock deals and bigger personalities.  Rewritten as fiction with a clear victor (Ackerman--as he'd be bringing down the bad guy) this would make a great novel.

Herbalife under attack--spotted as a pyramid scheme.  But . . . other hedge fund guys go on the other side, betting it will withstand the attack.  Millions upon millions at stake in war of egos as well as analysis.  Very exciting stuff. Short sell:  Stock at 100.  Short seller goes to broker and borrows one share.  He immediately sells it and banks the 100.  If the stock goes down to 75, he buys the share for 75 and then returns it to the owner.  Owner gets his share back,  but the short seller has made $25.00.

Closing in.  Pena arrests money launderer.  North Valley cartel spots weakness, tries to kill Miguel.  Gilberto, in prison, is losing power.  Now Cali Cartel is fighting back, attacking North Valley. At the same time, DEA agents are moving in. Jorge has flipped and is helping DEA. Christine, money-launderer's wife, has been captured by cartel. Jorge's wife thinks he is making a mistake.  Very exciting stuff.

Rodrigo captured and in jail.  Cali big four in state of disbelief/fear.  CIA not happy.  Pena now has to get the conviction, which means getting people to testify against Roderigo.  Not easy

Still not enamored with this one. Nice comic moments with Mrs. Montague and her "automatic writing."  Eleanor asks Theodora if she can live with her when the Hill House experience ends. Theodora says: "I don't take in stray cats." Seems like a straight-forward ghost story

Haunting begins.  Names in chalk, then blood. sounds in the night.  Psychodrama being played out with Eleanor and Theodora.  Ghost family picnicking at night on lawn. Flowers turn to weeds; family disappears.  Writing is great, but I don't see that this is headed anywhere--other than a good thrill read.  I'm hoping for more from Shirley Jackson.

Cali family continues to plan on getting out in six months.  Underlings, and some of the upper echelon, are having their doubts.  What will they do out of the game? Second string DEA agents almost seize money from cartel. They do get documents, but corrupt Colombian cops won't release them. Rodriguez is spotted. Pena wants to go get him.  End of show

The haunting has begun. The writing is excellent, but it's pretty much just a ghost story so far.  Lacks the menace of WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE.

Cali cartel brutally kills Domincan rivals operating a beauty shop in NYC. They also kill children by dumping chlorine gas improperly (use the containers for cocaine).  Pena has had enough. Sends new recruits to go after them.

Cali cartel. Agent Peña is back. Cali leaders want to go legitimate. Call business meeting in which they tell their 2nd tier guys that they have only six months more of criminal activity.  then they listen in on (and kill) those that seem reluctant to give up the $$$.  Good start. Subplot involves security guy (good guy) who wants out to start his own firm.  Will the Cali Cartel let him go?  Not likely. In this episode, they more or less threaten him, forcing him to stay six months. 

"So far, this feels a little like an Agatha Christie novel. The various characters are all being assembled at Hill House. There were some creepy moments at a coffee shop--Shirley Jackson at her unsettling best. Now that everyone is at Hill House, my guess is that the rest will be nothing like Agatha Christie."

Discussions of AIDS, Ebola, 9/11, Hurricane Sandy Terrific book; terrific hospital

Prohibition: govt adds poison to rubbing alcohol . . . result is death of the poor who can't get real alcohol from Europe. Electro-shock therapy used, even on children.  LSD used before Leary. Women doctors have a better chance, as do Jews. Cardiac catheterization leads to Nobel Prize for doctor at Bellevue.  Just moving into AIDS epidemic.

Set in Granite Falls, WA.  Chris gets out of jail because of the work of his high school teacher, Edie Falco.  He was a participant in a murder, but not the murderer and not even aware a gun was involved. Falco has miserable marriage; Chris is in love with her. She's in love with him. Will she leave her husband?  Chris is hanging out with her daughter--will he end up with her?  Chris is miserable, trying without much success to get his life back in order.

Full title

Nine and ten could have been one episode.  Pablo is discovered and shot dead by Colombian police.  Peña is in Miami--perhaps about to lose his job?  Tata begs for help from the Cali! cartel. Interesting that they try for sympathy for Pablo, realize it is ludicrous, and then show some of the photos (real) of the victims of his various bomb attacks. Next episodes (Narcos 3) will be about the Cali cartel.  There are many "leaders" so it will necessarily lack the focus of Narcos 1 & 2.

Interesting description of Garfield's death.  Shot by an assassin, he was then treated by a leading doctor--but a doctor who did not believe in Lister's antiseptic treatment.  Garfield dies.  (Doctor put his unwashed fingers into the body looking for the bullet.) Author suggests that had Garfield been a pauper and brought to Bellevue, where cleanliness was practiced by doctors, he would have lived. Founding of Johns Hopkins (rich man with no children) and the move of pathologist from Bellevue to Baltimore.

Civil War trauma cases advance medicine.  Period of time with anesthesia but without antiseptic measures leads to more surgeries ending in death from infection afterward.  Squalor of poor in NYC under Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed. Lister (1870) touts cleanliness. He's a Brit; Americans don't want to listen.  In the audience is Johnson of later Johnson & Johnson fame.  Nursing takes hold.  Florence Nightingale in the Crimea; Dorothea Dix closer to home. 

You can't go home again.  Pablo goes to his father's subsistence farm, stays for a lengthy time.  He tries to reconcile with Dad, even suggesting that he'd like to bring his family and farm next to Dad.  Dad tells him he's ashamed of him.  Limon kills Maritza when he steals the money he gave her.  It's accidental, sort of.  Tata is out of money and will be forced onto the streets where she and her family will be killed.  Pablo and Limon return to the city--I think Bogota, though it's not clear.

Pablo's family tries to get out, but is turned away in Germany due to efforts of Murphy.  Cali cartel, Castenas, DEA--all closing in.  Colombia cops want to be the ones who stand over him when he's dead.  Hard to see how Escobar will make it two more episodes.  filmmakers do try to make him sympathetic with his love of family.

I will definitely read another by Baldacci.  This one was great for 75%, but endings matter, and I didn't find this one satisfying.  Our murderer--and intrasexual raped in her small Utah town as a teenager--has been talked into symbolically killing her victimizers by shooting up another school in another town.  That's a stretch. She hates Decker because, at a counseling session, he said he wanted to be a cop and help people. Another stretch. Her accomplice is really a murderer/thief with a phony website supposedly for victims to find ways to revenge themselves. Decker blames himself for the murders because he mentioned wanted to be a cop and thereby set off all these terrible events . . .  a stretch. Decker understands why Billy killed his family and sort of forgives him/her. Another huge stretch.  The writing is great; the plot . . . not so much

"Bellevue reminds me of Seattle's Harborview but with a longer history. Book becomes a medical history of NYC. Typhus, Cholera, introduction of ether, slums, bleeding, leeches, etc. Book also follows the movement of medicine from a disreputable field to where it is today.  Very interesting book."

The anti-communist thugs and the police are both after Pablo.  Mom goes to church . . . breaking his directions . . . she's followed home and Pablo's safe house is shot up.  More and more die around Pablo. He now plans on sending his family out of Colombia and taking on the Cali cartel, the anti-communist murderers, and the police.  Hard to feel sorry for Pablo, but also hard to feel any admiration for those who bring him down.

I was a little concerned that the ending might be a little hard to pull off.  Spoilers follow . . . so stop reading if you intend to read this. Murderer is also gifted with total recall after trauma.  Her trauma was a rape in Utah high school.  Belinda/Billy shot up the high school killing in Burlington the "equivalent" of those who raped her back in Utah. So, football players, coach, vice principal.  A bridge too far for me, as is the connection with the Austrian Leopold.

Pena goes against his code and involves the communist-killers in the hunt for Escobar.  They are vicious--responsible for the massacre of entire "communist" villages in the countryside.  Pena has no confidence in the new commander of the special police, so . . . Maritza helps Pena/friends find some of the Escobar group.  Kills some. Drug trafficker from Miami is kidnapped by the same group.  What happens to him is not clear from this episode.  Velasco, a major Escobar player, is killed. Escobar flees with his family.  Noose is tightening.

Excitement builds.  Great plotting.  Probably two murderers . . . reference to IN COLD BLOOD.  Men meeting in prison.  Killer hates Decker . . . but why?  FBI agent is latest to die as killer steals Decker's old cop uniform and uses the uniform to get her to drop her guard. My worry is that the ending will be unsatisfying.  Our murderer has killed a dozen people . . . vendetta . . . and Decker has no idea why? HMMMM.

Times getting tougher for Pablo, but he is resourceful and a murderer.  He kills the colonel who was out to kill him by an ambush -- one of the conspirators who brought the police to the ambush was, in fact, not part of the conspiracy.  She thought she was bringing Escobar to his death.  World of deceit and wealth. Not much on psychology, but an incredible story.

Amos Decker puzzles out the actions of the school murderer--discovering an unused (except by the killer) bomb shelter passageway under the school.  The school murderer is the same killer who murdered Decker's wife and daughter. Two killers?  Met in prison?  Now, an FBI detective haas also been murdered.  The plan seems to be to kill people around Decker and then kill him last. Procedural crime thriller--like it. Decker is autistic after football injury.  Remembers everything; not much on empathy.

Escobar is a hunted man, making him more dangerous than ever.  He declares war on the police, killing hundreds in Medellin in response to the government's refusal to negotiate with him. All the time, he professes his love for his wife and family.

My first Baldacci.  Like it so far.  Vicious murder of cop's family.  Cop (Amos Decker) falls to pieces. Now (18 months later) a confession to the murder--but nothing is right about it. Decker was blindsided by a vicious hit in football which activated memory capabilities and color-number associations.  This makes him doubly suspicious of confessed murderer as he has no memory of the murdererer, yet the "murderer" insists that he killed Decker's family to avenge a slight.

Escobar escapes and reestablishes his tyranny of violence. Connie leaves Murphy and goes back to Miami.

Doug Stanton Remarkable events, and a remarkable book. Doug Stanton treats the subject with great respect while at the same time telling a gruesome story that needs to be told.  I first heard of the Indianapolis when I was in the city, walking along the river, and saw a plaque commemorating the dead.  It was all knew to me, and lingered.  Now, years later, to read this story . . .  One incident that will stay with me forever.  Sailors are on the verge of rescue. Water is supplied. A cup is filled and passed down to the end of the line. All of the sailors are near death from lack of water. Not one drinks out of turn. The greatest generation

A dark, choose-your-own adventure story about a programmer who relives his own childhood and his feelings of responsibility for the death of his mother while he attempts a complicated video game. Set in 1984. Finally, boring. 

English princess kidnapped.  Kidnappers demand the P.M. have sex on TV with a pig or they will kill her. PM goes from never to (after the princess's finger is cut off). . . I have to to keep her alive, my career alive.  Nation, fascinated, watches the sex.  Response--humorous, then repelled. PM's wife is repelled by her husband. Princess released.  It was all performance art.  The "artist" hangs himself.

Entire History of You involves a chip implanted that records all actions during the day.  People can rewind encounters to look for things they might have missed the first time and to confirm/deny memories. Main character has a lousy job interview. . . goes to party where he sees his wife talking easily with another man . . . jealousy . . . correct . . . wife has had an affair with the man . . . MC, drunk, goes to the man's house and nearly kills him.  He demands the man erase all recordings of his wife.  Man does.  MC returns home . . . still green monster . . . confronts wife . . . The chip is ruining his life.  He takes a razor and cuts it out of his neck.  Too late? Hard to tell

Pablo Escobar, growing paranoid in his gilded prison, murders two visitors/narcos partners.  When the men don't return to their families, word gets out about their possible death.  Minister of Justice goes to gilded prison to try to trick Pablo into leaving and facing justice. Pablo takes him hostage. Columbian special forces attack. Pablo escapes, though most of his men apparently are killed or captured. Murphy & Pena.  Pena apparently sold Murphy out (taken hostage) to another cartel in order to facilitate the capture of Escobar.  I didn't follow how all this worked. Murphy's wife wants to go back to USA.  Murphy says Columbia is his home. Divorce coming up? Murphy and his wife seem to be about to adopt a Columbian child left orphaned after the murder of her mother.