A fast-paced tale of vengeance and courage

C. J. Martin has written a thriller of a story about vengeance with a long memory, a man's checkered past revealed, and his daughter's life threatened. Fast-paced and loaded with action and very believable characters including Kazuo Tanaka (if that is his real name) and his daughter, this short story is a teaser for what is sure to come: a full-length novel that, if it is anything like this story, is sure to keep readers awake at night.

Having spent time in Japan, C. J. Martin knows Japanese culture and its players very well. Available in Kindle format. I look forward to reading the novel when it's out.

A definite ***** effort.

Deconstructing the Goose and living to tell about it.

In 2001, pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-La Roche was making billions from its acne medication Accutane. Over the next few years disturbing news began to surface about its possible side-effects, the chief of which was its effect on the brain, evidenced by between 300 and 3,000 young people whose only problem was acne began to experience depression, suicide and violent behavior. Psychiatrist and medical researcher J. Douglas Bremner (author of Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health and other books on medical subjects) began to research the matter. What he discovered – that there appeared to be a verifiable correlation between the use of the medication and depression, suicide and acts of violence from young people who had no history of depression or violence.

What happened from there is material for a good crime – suspense novel as Hoffman-La Roche came after him like a swarm of angry hornets. What Dr. Bremner's book exposes is how an addiction to profit has changed medicine, medical research and the pharmaceutical industry from a focus on patients and medical service to a focus on money and lifestyle. What they did was declare total, no-holds-barred war on him with the end in mind of protecting their money stream and destroying him.

Following his course through the years of depositions, trials and threats is a dramatic and painful one. As a retired mental health professional myself, I am familiar with the way Big Pharma works, and was delighted to see them taken down a peg when they lost the fight and withdrew Accutane from the marketplace. When marketing and profit become a major focus, the whole purpose of both is turned on its head. “People in the healthcare system say they want to help people,” Dr. Bremner writes, “but the for-profit healthcare system drove doctors and hospital administrators to try to make money. A for-profit healthcare system is unethical.” I couldn't possibly agree more.

An “unadvertised” bonus is the story of Dr. Bremner's long personal struggle over the sudden death of his mother when he was a little boy. It is poignant and heart-wrenching and very familiar to me. It took courage for him to include it. Psychiatrists, like other mental health professionals (I was a clinical social worker) are just humans like all the rest of us. This is something we know or sense, but not something that is often shared. My hat is off to Dr. Bremner for sharing it.

A definite ***** read.

As boisterous, hair-raising and funny a crime novel as you're likely to read

The title alone was enough to convince me that I’d found a book I wanted to read. What Robert Adams says in his brief introduction clinched it. “The real experts on crime are not the professionals but the criminals themselves. The Really Dreadful Crime Company sets out to fill the gaps left by the police and carries out its own unique, if not always strictly legal, methods of crime intervention. The next best thing to crime prevention is crime reduction, but if you can’t actually reduce it, at least you can try to bring about a better class of crime.”

Middle-aged Joan Johnson, a part-time private investigator, is mugged one day in her hometown of Hull, England. Getting absolutely no satisfaction from the excuse-making, “too busy” police, she sits down with her good friend Muriel and hatches a plan to make Hull a safer place for all its citizens. Reasoning that criminals know more about crime than the police, and that many criminals might want to leave crime, she proposes the following plan. She will found The Really Dreadful Crime Company and use criminals to investigate muggings, break-ins, harassments, crimes against women and other crimes the local police seem too busy to bother with. Though Muriel is dubious, the idea intrigues her. To Joan’s husband Harold, it is an accident waiting to happen.

The result is one of the most rollicking, hair-raising, funny crime novels I’ve read in many a year. Filled with plenty of action, two rival crime families – the Sleights and the Fiddlers – a bakery that employs ex-cons and serves as a front for the Crime Company, a host of loopy characters and incompetent cops, murder, romance and … The best thing to do is get yourself a copy, sit yourself down and enjoy a great adventure that will have you laughing throughout. I can see this yarn as a wonderful adventure / comic movie or TV series. I’d watch it, more than once.

For you Yanks, one of the crime bosses drives a luxury car called a "merc"; that's a "Mercedes", not a Mercury. I can't imagine anyone mistaking a Mercury (called a "Merc" in the USA) for a luxury car. It's (or was) the Ford product positioned between a Ford and a Lincoln.

A clear ***** read.

Street-centered poetry from a tough part of town

I’ve read enough about Hull, England, to know that it has gone through some rough times, has some mean streets and probably more than a fair share of drugs and too much booze to lubricate and sooth the experience, and has experienced a creative renaissance since the arrival of poet Philip Larkin some years ago. As his publisher says, Mike Watts writes poetry that “looks like Hull, it sounds like Hull and it smells like Hull, a place we are all proud to come from, even if we don't always enjoy the experience of being there at the time.” I can think of any number of cities in the U.S. and elsewhere that fit this description. Though I’ve never lived in one, from reading Mike Watts’ fine book, I can imagine what it's like.

There are some gritty poems in this book, like “Cider Barry”, “Two Things”, “Chaos Magnet” or “Me”. in Cider Barry, “My mate’s a boozer,/ Always smashed on cider,/ Always lost in space,/ Wind milling/ All over the place./ And it troubles me./ It’s horrible./ … He’s no different from me;/ Good home,/ Good family,/ No trauma,/ No tragedy.” Puts a fellow in an awful dilemma. “Come on just a fiver/ You know I’d do the same for you.”/ I know I shouldn’t,/ But tell me,/ What would you do?”

In “Me”, “I’m afraid of change,/ I’m afraid to change,/ I can’t explain why./ Perhaps this life will do./ Perhaps this life will have to do.” “You want to see angry?” he asks in “Chaos Magnet”; “I’ll show you angry./ Try spending a day in the life of me,/ Try fighting chaos constantly.”

Did I say “gritty”? Gritty and hopeless when faced with a life that looks dead-ended in a dead-end kind of place. But is life limited to that? No, but circumstances can make it seem as though it is, especially when booze and drugs are stirred into the mix.

Mike Watts is one of the leaders of the ThisisUll stable of poets, writers and musicians in Hull, England. You can check them out at http://www.thisisull.com/

Five stars for this one.

Like a good piece of chocolate you can't get enough of.

Teresa Geering is an enchantress, and Shasta Summer is the second of four enchanting fables published by Night Publishing. Here you’ll meet a young girl named Summer who is magically transformed into a beautiful young woman named Shasta, her “eccentric” Aunt May, a fairy queen and her princesses, a magical village named Shasta (I want to go and live there), a young man named Merlin who is imprisoned in a black cat of the same name, love between Shasta and Merlin, time travel, murder, and a sinister presence named Erasmus, the main character in The Eye of Erasmus, the first book of this series (published in June 2010). Every page is enchanting and thoroughly enjoyable.

I find Teresa Geering’s prose as fabulous and mesmerizing as is J. K. Rowling’s: magical, well-told fables that can be read enjoyed by people of any age. I can’t wait for the next to novels in this series to appear so her readers can enjoy them. I know I’m eagerly looking to them. Once you pick one of these books up, you won’t put it down until you’ve read it again and again and again.

A definite five stars

Tulagi Hotel: First class storytelling at its best

A review of “Tulagi Hotel”, by Heikki Heitala and published by diiarts.com, 12 April 2010. Available in hard cover, paperback and Kindle

Heikki Heitala has written such a fine novel that spans World War Two in the South Pacific to the decade after the war when one of the fighter pilots, Jack McGuire, buys a surplus float plane and returns to the Solomon Islands to find a life for himself. Originally from a Nebraska farm and terribly shy, Jack’s one excitement in life has since boyhood been airplanes and flying. In WWII he goes into military service and becomes a fighter pilot.

There is no Hollywood glamour and action-for-action’s sake in this fine novel. These are real people with real lives and real feelings who live in a real world filled with the pains of growing up as a shy kid on a Nebraska farm, is a nice guy, becomes an ace fighter pilot, tries to find love and fails at it, lives what most of us would think of as an idyllic life on an island in the South Pacific, and like so many men in his position, finds his closest friend and confidant in a bottle of alcohol. Utterly human and likable in spite of themselves, this is a story that, once read, is not forgotten.

Heikki Heitala is a fine writer. I look forward to seeing a next book from him. This is an unqualified 5 star read.

The Yellow Rose of Texas

As most people know “The Yellow Rose of Texas” is a famous song that appeared soon after the Battle of San Jacinto during the Texas Revolution. Most people don’t know that the song was written about a young part black woman (the word used back then was “mulatta”) named Emily West (or Emily Morgan) who became famous during the Battle of San Jacinto in which Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was defeated and taken captive. The lyrics most of us are familiar with go as follows: “She’s the sweetest little rosebud,/ That Texas ever knew,/ Her eyes are bright as diamonds,/ They sparkle like the dew,/ You may talk about your Clementine/ and sing of Rosalee,/ But the Yellow Rose of Texas/ is the only girl for me!”

These are the original lyrics, which appeared soon after the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836: “There’s a yellow rose in Texas/ That I am going to see/ No other darky know her/ No one only me/ She cryed so when I left her/ It like to broke my heart/ And if I ever find her/ We nevermore will part. (Chorus): She’s the sweetest rose of color/ This darky ever knew/ Her eyes are bright as/ diamonds/ They sparkle like the dew/ You may talk about dearest May/ and sing of Rosa Lee/ But the yellow rose of Texas/ Beats the belles of Tennessee.”

Shannon Richardson’s takes the known outline of Ms. West’s life and develops it as a novel. What is the “real story” of Emily West’s life? No one knows. But the outlines are there, and these Ms. Richardson develops into a novel that is both interesting and at times harrowing. Emily Richardson comes across as a strong, compassionate young woman who will not be trifled with and who values her relative freedom in Texas.

One of the details that is known about her life that Ms. Richardson is that General Santa Anna captured her and kept her as his servant before the battle in which he was taken captive and his army defeated. Did they have a sexual connection? Knowing his history as a world class womanizer who liked young, sexy women, it is likely. As vain, self-centered and arrogant as he was, I have difficulty imagining her taking any kind of interest in him at all, so I had difficulty imagining her feeling love for him as she does in the novel. As a love interest, I am very skeptical of it, because nowhere in the novel is she depicted as being naïve and available; it just doesn’t work for me.

Santa Anna, on the other hand, is portrayed pretty much as he is in history: as pompous, vainglorious, cruel, vindictive, untrustworthy and at times incredibly stupid in his military decisions (the Battle of San Jacinto being one of the most prominent of his errors in judgment). Ms. Richardson takes one liberty with his history that doesn’t work because I’ve never been able to find any evidence for it, and that is that he was born in New York near West Point, was half Indian, that he ran away to Mexico to avoid persecution for a killing and was adopted by the couple whom history records as his parents. It’s an interesting story, but just not necessary, especially when it contradicts history and isn’t necessary to the story anyway, since he lived in exile on Staten Island for a time when he was seventy-four.

As a novel, I found The Yellow Rose of Texas an interesting and a pretty enjoyable read except for the few caveats I’ve mentioned above. I think her Blood Moon: The Casino Murders, which I recently reviewed, a much better book.

My rating of Yellow Rose is a strong ***.