This is a short book of under 200 pages. It was good to read this book during the shortened holiday week, not because it has anything to do with kindness to your fellow man or woman, but because it moved fast and didn't take up a lot of my time. Since I didn't have a lot of time to spare this was a perfect fit. It was an unexpected bonus that the story was so good. This was another example of how writers can use the same themes and tropes to very satisfying and even surprising ends. As befits the book I think that this review should be pretty short. Somewhere in Oklahoma a vicious unnamed man from Mississippi is on the run. It's only been three weeks since the man, upset when his foreman jokingly questioned his work ethic, demonstrated that he had a very low tolerance for insults, even in jest. He beat his foreman half to death and maybe to death. He didn't stick around to find out. The reader learns that this is not the first time the man has been on the run. He's no stranger to violence, jails, or prison. But the man isn't worried about the distant future. He just needs to get a car. He needs money. He needs food. The man wants to avoid robbing or hurting a woman, not from morality or gallantry but just because cops respond more quickly and more viciously if a woman is endangered. The man thinks it's the same deal with old people or anyone with kids. But the man is happy when he sees a fat middle aged man coming out of the gas station. The fat man looks like a loser. In no short time the man has carjacked the fat man and threatens to shoot him. But the fat man, whose name is Geoffrey Webb, is unafraid of death. No Webb doesn't care if he lives or dies. But he would like to tell his abductor a story as he drives him out of state.
100 Fathoms Below by Steven L. Kent and Nicholas Kaufmann
I recently heard about this new book co-authored by Nicholas Kaufmann, some of whose work was discussed here. I'm glad I decided to read it. This story uses a classic theme which for me never gets old. It's a locked room murder mystery with the twist that about halfway thru the book the remaining characters figure out the identity of the killer(s). It's always obvious to the reader because the authors give broad hints from the very beginning. This book mixes the supernatural with a military thriller. It worked well. It's just under 300 pages in hardcover. There's little wasted prose or expansive characterization of the various protagonists. The characters are not the stars here; the plot is. In 1983 the US nuclear submarine USS Roanoke (and yes that is a nice little reference to the doomed English colony) embarks upon a classified mission. Unknown to everyone onboard except the captain and later his executive officer (XO), the Roanoke's mission is to enter Soviet territorial waters and obtain proof of an upgraded stealth Soviet submarine. This is very aggressive espionage and could be considered an act of war. The Roanoke is on its own. If detected the crewmen could be killed. If captured the men will likely be tortured or at best spend a few decades in Soviet prison camps. The Soviets could decide to start WW3 over the violation of their territorial waters. No one knows. As far the Roanoke's captain is concerned, the results of his mission aren't as important as completing the mission.
It would be wonderful if GRRM would finish the books. But I've made my peace with the fact that one ending of the story will be revealed sometime in 2019. And that will be that. Maybe GRRM finishes. Maybe he doesn't. Either way there are just oodles of other books to read and things to do. Anyway I thought this short little Q&A with GRRM was interesting. I also would like seeing Fevre Dream made into a movie.
This is a doorstopper of a novel that is just under seven hundred pages. I'm not sure it needed to be that long. It starts quickly but sags a little in the middle. You can make up your own mind about the ending. It is of course a collaboration between Stephen King and his son Owen King. I could not tell which man wrote which part. Obviously the talent runs in the family. It's a good story. It imagines a dystopia in which half the human population goes to sleep and doesn't wake up. Like all good dystopic fiction the authors are using their fictional creation to make some points about real life current human behavior. The book was dedicated to the memory of Sandra Bland, which in some respects shows the reader what points the authors are trying to make. I occasionally thought that some points were a little heavy handed. An older woman I know thought that both Kings missed some rather obvious points about female existence, perspective and desire because they were men. Hmm. I don't know about that. Some writers can very easily create realistic characters that differ from their own particular nationality/gender/race/sexuality/etc combination. After all some would argue, and Stephen King would definitely be among them, that such creative imagination and journeying is the entire point of writing. No writer should limit himself or herself to barely disguised author avatars. I didn't find the female characters here, unrealistic. But I am not a woman. Women may feel differently. There have always been strains of frustration that each gender shows with the other. Currently we're seeing some female supremacism and chauvinism leak through in the #metoo and #timesup or #futureisfemale hashtags. One could argue that this is all just a reaction to a long history of male chauvinism and supremacism that in "Western" culture goes at least as far back as the Biblical Creation story in which Adam, being queried about God about why Adam ate the forbidden fruit, turns around and tells God that it was the woman God gave him who gave him the forbidden fruit (So hey like don't blame me dude, it was all her fault).
I don't watch a lot of television so I didn't know that Stephen Colbert was a fan of Chance the rapper, Gilbert and Sullivan patter songs, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Good man. You really should read The Silmarillion if you have the time. There's a lot of good stories contained within, including a fictionalized reworking of how Tolkien met and fell in love with his wife.
I really enjoy Norse mythology. It has a lot of cynicism, doom, dread, bad a$$ boasts, and ultimately hope. It's quite similar to blues in many ways. So I was all set to enjoy this book. And I did. Loki is in the Norse eschatological sense a leading force of evil. But he didn't start out that way. In most of the stories that have been passed down Loki is more a trickster. He's the Norse incarnation of the archetype demonstrated in other myths/religions/stories by such Gods or heroes as Eshu, Anansi, Odysseus, Robin Goodfellow, Brer Rabbit, Bugs Bunny and so on. The trickster is not necessarily evil but he is usually untrustworthy, much as the name suggests. Loki lived up to that name in the various Norse stories. Loki was useful to the Gods (Aesir and Vanir). He often got them out of serious trouble. Of course he usually was the one who got them into the trouble in the first place. Loquacious, elegant, attractive, intelligent, gender-fluid, and often vindictive, Loki is the quintessential bad boy joker. As mentioned, in most of the stories that remain, Loki wasn't always a bad sort. It's just that his sense of humor wasn't always shared by everyone. Over time his jokes, tricks and pranks become progressively more malicious until he commits an act which can't be forgiven. This leads to his expulsion from Asgard and the long foretold Ragnarok, or final battle between good and evil, which will destroy all of existence. This is of course all foretold which of course brings the age old debate between free will and determinism into the forefront. Harris reworks the grim serious stilted language of the Norse eddas into something much easier to read and fun in a different sort of way. She decides to tell everything from Loki's point of view. He is of course a highly unreliable narrator. To hear Loki tell it he was just a free fire spirit of Chaos, minding his own business until Odin named him and thus summoned him, somewhat against his will, into the material planes of existence. Loki becomes Odin's blood brother. Odin swears unending hospitality to Loki. Loki thinks that Odin uses him to do the things that he can't be seen to support. People may love God but no one likes the Angel of Death or wants to lose their firstborn.
The Detroit True Crime Chronicles edited by Scott Burnstein
Jimmy Hoffa. Demetrius Holloway. Young Boys Incorporated (YBI). The A-Team. Pony Down. Best Friends. The Devil's Diciples(sic). Black Jack Tocco. The Chambers Brothers. Tony Jack Giacalone. Maserati Rick. White Boy Rick. Chester Campbell. Billy Jack Giacalone. The Purple Gang. Taco Bowman. Louis Akrawi. Papa John Priziola. Bernie "The Hammer" Marchesani. Rocking Reggie Brown. Eddie Jackson. Big Ed Hanserd. Joe Zerelli. Many of those names will be familiar to those who are interested in organized crime or to those who grew up in Detroit proper or more generally Southeast Michigan. The same way that some people remember where they were when John Lennon or JFK was shot I remember where I was when I heard that Demetrius Holloway had been murdered at a popular downtown clothing store. People may not realize that Detroit area mafiosi and gangsters were the inspiration behind such films and music such as Absence of Malice, New Jack City, and The Ten Crack Commandments. I grew up close to ground zero for the infamous drug gang YBI. Some people in my neighborhood worked for folks in that group. I recall some of the activities mentioned in this book. The funny thing was is that looking back as bad as things were back then I don't remember at the time thinking that I lived in an extraordinarily violent city. It's a cliche but with some notable and fortunately rare exceptions most of the violence was contained among people who were already in that life. Of course my experience was shaped by having extremely strict parents who pretty much saw to it that I went to school and came home without going almost anywhere else. Perhaps other Detroiters would have different memories of those days.
This is a real life thriller written by a Wall Street Journal investigative reporter who was one of the first people in the media to puncture the lies and bovine excrement put out by Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani about their startup company Theranos. Theranos wanted to become famous for revolutionizing blood testing and laboratory science. Theranos' claim to fame was proprietary finger prick technology devices that were supposed to be able to test for hundreds of different diseases from very tiny blood samples. The results could then be wirelessly and securely transmitted to a patient's doctors. The idea was that by using this process, everyone would save time and expensive lab space. Additionally people who didn't like going into doctor's offices or labs for venous blood draws would be more likely to use the finger prick devices. And most importantly by catching diseases or conditions far earlier than anyone else, Theranos would be saving lives across the world. As an investor wouldn't you like to get in on the ground floor of a company like that? Why sure you would! It would be akin to being in at the beginning of Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Instagram, Microsoft, or Apple-the startup company closest to Holmes' heart. Holmes consciously modeled herself after Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, copying Jobs' black turtlenecks , his self-important quotes and even his deep voice. Holmes tried to pitch her normal alto down to the male tenor or even baritone range. This sounded utterly ridiculous,. It was particularly noticeable on the occasions when Holmes couldn't keep up the fakery or relaxed and forgot to speak in the male range. I guess no one ever called Holmes on it because her peers and investors didn't care what she sounded like as long as she dangled the possibility of millions or even billions in front of them. And Holmes' subordinates or employees learned very quickly that annoying, irritating, or mocking Holmes wasn't very healthy. Holmes and especially her number two, and lover, Balwani ran Theranos via pure intimidation. More on that in a minute. Arguably they had to run the company via intimidation because very little of Theranos' product worked. When things didn't work Holmes didn't come up with new ideas or new products. No. She lied. She faked tests. She hid results from regulators.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Life is too short not to everything you can. Why wait for one author to complete his magnum opus when the world is crammed with impressive authors. I had heard good things about the Clarke debut novel which was published back in 2004. I didn't purchase the book until early 2016. Obviously I just got around to reading it. I am still working on the estimated two hundred unread books in my library. This book was a serious investment in time. It took me more than a few weeks to finish. My trade softcover edition was just over 800 pages. And there were footnotes. Boy were there footnotes. This novel shows Clarke to be an author of both conventional stylings and unique individual ideas. Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell makes definite allusions to her co-national authors who came before her such as the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens, and above all Jane Austen-at least in tone if not subject. There might be a little Tolkien and Dunsany sprinkled in for flavor. I thought this book was slow going for the first hundred pages. Like the older British novelists mentioned, Clarke is a very descriptive writer. She transports the reader back to Regency England/Napoleonic Era. She pays immense attention to detail. Some minutiae will be important to later plot twists and turns. The vast majority, however, is only used to set the table. If you are accustomed to writers who employ a curt and concise let's get to the action style, Clarke will either be a breath of fresh air or a struggle. She's built an alternate history that feels very very real. In the early 1800s the English are in a funk. Napoleon is kicking behind and taking names in his European wars. The King is unfit. And magic is gone. There are still societies of magicians, but they are theoretical magicians. They argue about how magic used to be performed, which magicians had the help of fairies (elves), what happened to the greatest magician of them all, John Uskglass, and whether magic should be performed by anyone who's not a Christian English gentleman. But these men can't cast a spell, enchant an item, or do anything magical. They are like people who have purchased expensive guitars, pianos, horns, amps, and music theory books, who know all of the musician stage flourishes, but who can't play a single note of music.
I'm not really a big fan of the strain in vampire fiction that imagines vampires as tortured romantics who sparkle, bisexual goths, or private eye stand-ins who reluctantly protect humanity against even worse threats. To each their own but I prefer the concept of vampire as monster and/or parasite. I knew that when I started the reread of this older book which I picked up in a now closed bookstore all those years ago. This book has a definite thematic resemblance to King's Salem's Lot. In both stories, the vampire is attracted to a decaying town, a small ragtag group of believers try to do battle against the creature, and human vice is an important part of the story. But because this is Little, and not King, perversion and vice are dominant parts of the storyline to the point where they choke out other elements. YMMV on this. There's a thin line between pushing the envelope of horror imagery and creating things solely to disgust and shock. I think Little tends towards the latter. The Summoning is set in the town of Rio Verde, Arizona. Rio Verde has seen better days. Most of the town's young people leave for greener pastures upon graduating high school. With the closure of mines and rerouting of expressways there's less and less economic activity within the town. One person who notices this acutely is Sue Wing, the daughter of Chinese immigrants.
This older novel was the author's debut into a pretty crowded field and the first in a trilogy. I think it kind of stinks that so many publishers and authors shoehorn stories into a trilogy when so many of them would be just as well served by having one stand alone story. However, I do admit that this story left me wanting more, which I suppose is all a reader can ask. The story themes will be familiar to anyone who has read high fantasy; there's not too much that's new here. The book's enjoyment comes not from brand new ideas but in how the author weaves together some classic tropes and storylines. The author sets the story in a world much like our own High Middle Ages. Countries that are fantastic versions of England, France, Wales, The Ottoman Empire, Songhai, and other Eurasian or West African nation states vie for economic and political primacy. Ryan uses a framing technique in which the person we believe to be the protagonist tells the story of his life to an enemy who will shortly it is believed, oversee his execution. The protagonist is Vaelin Al Sorna, Sword of the Realm to King Janus of The United Realm, aka Darkblade, Young Hawk, and Hope Killer. Vaelin has been captured by his enemies in the Alpiran Empire and is going to be executed, or so everyone believes. Curious about the life of Vaelin and how he became one of the greatest warriors of the Sixth Order, the caste created to defend and expand the Faith, the Alpirian Imperial Chronicler decides to take down Vaelin's story. Vaelin's story starts when he is just ten years old and is abandoned by his father, the former Battle Lord to King Janus, at the gates of the Sixth Order castle.
Black Detroit: A People's History of Self-Determination by Herb Boyd
Herb Boyd is a journalist and historian. This book is a sober overview of African-American history in Detroit from its founding to current day, a personal narrative (the author is a Detroit native), and an impassioned love letter to all those various Black people, men, women, and children, famous and anonymous, who made Detroit ground zero for Black resistance to racism in all of its forms from slavery to segregation and beyond. Although the South was notorious and in some aspects unique in its racial segregation and state and individual terror utilized to enforce white supremacy, the North, including Michigan and Detroit, saw non-Blacks express just as much racial hostility towards Blacks. Blacks had to deal with housing segregation, public and private establishments that excluded Blacks, sundown towns or neighborhoods where Black presence was only barely tolerated during the day as domestic labor, police contempt for and violence against Blacks, and of course ubiquitous employment discrimination in every single trade or career. Despite all of that or perhaps because of all of that Black Detroiters, their backs against the wall, had no choice but to come out swinging. Because of its proximity to Canada, Detroit was one of the key hubs of the Underground Railroad. Boyd examines this theme of resistance from antebellum days through the present day. I learned that the author is related to one of my high school classmates. That classmates's family was active in the movement during the sixties and seventies. Boyd details their tragic encounter with the Detroit Police STRESS unit which was notorious for harassing, beating and murdering Black citizens. It is indeed a small world.
Which one of you SOB's is ready to do some man's work today? Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough! In 1066 when William of Normandy invaded England, defeated its Saxon king and took the English crown, subduing the Britons and Anglo-Saxons, he did not give up his lands in France, or more precisely Normandy. His descendants were just as aggressive, at one point ruling just over half of what is today modern day France, though technically they were still considered vassals of the French King. This Norman-English presence grated on continental French sensibilities and noble interests. The French began a long campaign to reduce English suzerainty in France, peacefully if possible, violently if not. In the 14th century a particularly complex chain of events left the English King with arguably the best claim to the French throne. As a result, long simmering national and dynastic tensions boiled over into the war we know as the Hundred Years War. Although ultimately the French would triumph, ending English claims to French lands or thrones, the English won many of the war's best known battles. Perhaps it's because the English were more adept propagandists (The Battle of Agincourt was memorialized by Shakespeare in "Henry V") and because we speak English that we know more of the English victories and not their final defeat. Overall the Hundred Years War helped to speed the transition of England and France from feudal territories into nation states. It was also a precursor to the English War of Roses but that's another post. The Battle of Agincourt was an English high point. An English army of about 6000 sick and half starving men soundly thrashed a French army at least three times its size. Some people claimed the English were outnumbered by as many as five or six to one. Whatever the numbers were, contemporary chroniclers were shocked by the English victory. In this older book Bernard Cornwell takes the reader on an exciting and apparently realistic excursion into 15th century morals, ethics, hygiene, and warfare.
King's most recent book shares a title with Camus' famous 1942 existentialist novel and makes a slight head fake at some of the ideas bandied about in that book. But this is King, not Camus, so you already know that things such as the human element, the desire to express and receive love, and pity for those lacking such connections will eventually show up. And they do. I have the opportunity to read as often as I used to do but I can't think of too many horror novelists or even popular novelists who can so quickly and seamlessly build true life characters as King. There have been King plots I didn't care for and occasionally some settings or themes I wasn't crazy about. But his characters have always leapt off the page, at least for me. And this book was no different. Here, King moved the setting from his beloved Maine to set the action in small town Oklahoma and Texas. YMMV on this. King did the research. None of the characters employ Maine drawls or aphorisms. On the other hand, although the book is set in the present day, some of the adult characters, mostly in their thirties, forties or fifties, have memories of key events in their lives that would really be more in line with key events of the life of a seventy year old writer from Maine. A 45 year old in 2018 probably won't remember where they were or what they were doing when John Lennon was assassinated. You will notice this occasional dissonance. Something which I would prefer not to believe but which physics shows to be true is that matter, in the form of electrons, can be in two separate places at the same time. Even more weirdly, observing one electron can impact the behavior of its "twin", at a distance. Apparently this only happens at measurements that are far too small for humans to perceive. In our reality I can't be simultaneously at home writing this blog post and also doing the same thing at work.
I hadn't read any books by this late writer of alternate history for a long time. I had this one on the list of books to read for a while so I decided to give it a shot. The prose is very short, punchy, and for lack of a better descriptor, male. This is something Mickey Spillane would have felt at ease reading and possibly even writing. There are no flowery long examinations of how someone felt or what did someone really mean when they said so-and-so. Conroy doesn't provide a lot of examination or deconstruction of character motivations. Character doesn't drive this book. Plot does. Although the US victory at 1942 Battle of Midway was in hindsight a forgone conclusion given that the US had cracked the Japanese naval communications code and had a pretty good idea of where and when the Japanese hammer would fall, allowing the Americans to prepare countermeasures and ambushes, in real life the Americans also benefited from luck. The Japanese commanders, unaware of the true American strength and torn between searching for more American ships and launching attacks on American ground bases, were atypically indecisive. Repeated contradictory orders about whether to load aircraft with bombs (ground attack) or torpedoes (ship attack) left the Japanese carrier task force with carrier decks crowded with armed and fueled planes, while the small number of fighter planes were chasing off American torpedo bombers at sea level. The Japanese fleet was therefore a sitting duck for bombing attacks launched from American carriers the Japanese hadn't even known were in the area. Four Japanese carriers were sunk. Over 3000 Japanese sailors or soldiers were killed. The Japanese lost the strategic offensive against the Americans.
This older book which I picked up on sale is, given President Trump's recent decision to violate the Iran nuclear deal at both the behest and joy of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, still a timely and very entertaining read. The book can be enjoyed strictly as a modern spy thriller or as a brief against excessive foreign entanglements. I thought that the bad guy was very well characterized; the good guy was a bit less compelling. This is an installment in a series. I was unfamiliar with the author before but I will be reading his other works. Don't worry. This book is virtually stand alone. The reader can follow the story without having read previous installments. The author does judicious information dumps along the way to get the reader up to date and hopefully whet his appetite to read earlier books. So don't think that you can't read this book unless you've read the others. That is so not necessary. John Wells is an ex-CIA agent who is still in the game. A storm is on the way. Previously John Wells provided proof that the United States was being manipulated into war with Iran by rabid Zionist, casino billionaire mogul, dual Israeli-American citizen, and Presidential financial backer Aaron Duberman (think a barely fictionalized Sheldon Adelson). Wells and a few CIA agents barely prevented a war against Iran based on lies enthusiastically created and spread by Duberman. Duberman viewed Iran as an intolerable threat to Israel. He wanted the United States to attack and invade Iran. Wells went after Duberman but wasn't able to get him. Duberman has fled to Israel where he feels he's untouchable.
Dr. Cook is a Navy veteran, surgeon, opthamologist, real estate guru, teacher and of course a writer. Most of his books are thrillers based around a medical ethics issue of one kind or another. Dr. Cook has stated that it's of more use to write a mystery to get people interested in the challenges of morality in medicine in a rapidly changing world than to write a long dry paper explaining the same issues. I picked up the hardcover for a bargain price, but I believe that the paperback is available now. Host is about 400 pages in hardcover. I liked the story but thought that the characters weren't engaging enough. I happened to read a lot of this while I was visiting a loved one in hospitals so the theme was either a weird bit of serendipity or foreshadowing depending on how you look at it. As we age it is almost certain that we will spend more time and money in hospitals, whether it's on our own behalf or for those we love. Although we can try to put this off via healthy eating and living, as we are not jellyfish, sooner or later we will break down and die. It's just part of being human. When this happens in our eighties, nineties or beyond, those we love can be philosophical and accepting about everything. Even the person who knows that death is approaching more quickly can surrender life with a smile on his face. But we also feel, rightly or wrongly, that there is a time for sickness and death. And that time is old age. We often get really upset when someone kills a child not just for the harm to innocence but because the child presumably had so many more decades of life ahead. When someone dies in the hospital at ninety we can feel differently than if they did so at thirteen.
This 2011 novel by Stephen King is a very long book. 11/22/63 is just short of 1100 pages. The novel wasn't exactly a chore to read, King is simply too good of a writer for that, but it was a serious investment of time. 11/22/63 isn't a horror novel; it's not full of creepy crawlies or things that go bump in the night. It is speculative fiction. King, as he is prone to do, leaves all sorts of Easter egg hints to his other works throughout 11/22/63. The referenced King novels which were obvious to me were Christine, The Dead Zone, Insomnia, and IT though I'm sure I missed others. John Fogerty wrote the lyrics in his song Proud Mary "And I never lost one minute of sleeping/Worrying about the way things might have been". In Candide, Voltaire created a pompous philosopher Pangloss who dismissed complaints by saying "This is the best of all possible worlds". In The Silmarillion J.R.R. Tolkien's God stand-in tells the Satan analogue that there is nothing that Satan can ever do that God hasn't already anticipated and will use to bring some greater good which Satan never could have conceived of bringing about. Omar Khayam wrote that "The moving finger writes and having writ moves on. Nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy years wash out a word of it." Many self-help gurus and life coaches urge us to look forward, not backwards. How many people enjoy spending time, romantic or otherwise, with someone who's always complaining about the people who did him/her wrong back in sixth grade or how they didn't get this job 15 years ago and thus all the bad fortune they've had since is not their fault. It's annoying, no? Despite what some physics and some religions may claim, humans only experience time in one direction. We can't stop it. We can't rewind it. We can't transmit information back in time to ourselves. And we can't even be certain events in our life impacted us the way that we think they did. So we have no choice but to look forward.
Ursula K. Le Guin recently passed away. She was among other things, a sci-fi/fantasy author who combined what would today be considered social commentary with a unique and inventive imagination and style. Although I enjoy the European based pseudo-medieval/Dark Ages/Roman era/Renaissance era that provided fertile fuel for works created by such authors as Tolkien, Vance, Anderson, Martin, Howard. and many others, Le Guin always went her own way. And fiction was better for that. For me her most enjoyable and influential works were the Earthsea series. These were unusual in fiction at the time of their creation then and even today because most of the protagonists were what would today be called people of color. These books have dragons, wizards, quests, the entire Hero's Journey, all in a world that is universes apart from the then popular Tolkien or Howard knockoffs. Le Guin also challenged ideas about sexuality, identity, gender, economics and society in such works as The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Lathe of Heaven. But what was really different about Le Guin's works were the ideas that the "good guy" would not and should not "win" by greater application of effective violence. The struggles Le Guin described were just as much internal ones to find balance as they were external ones to win victory. Violence might occur but it was almost never the answer.
The Rise and Fall of a Casino Mobster: The Tony Spilotro Story by Frank Cullotta
If crime stories aren't your thing then you know what to do with this review. If you are interested in such tales this concise story may fill some holes in your knowledge. However, the book jumps around in time so much that by the ending the reader will still have may unanswered questions. If you've seen the Martin Scorsese movie Casino starringRobert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, Sharon Stone, Frank Vincent, and James Woods, you know this story's general narrative. The author was a technical adviser on Casino. Up until the seventies and eighties, the criminal organization known as the Chicago Outfit, on its own and with various other satellite crime families, owned pieces of several Las Vegas area casinos and hotels. The Outfit maintained influence over various entertainment unions, talent agencies and actor management companies. Via control of the Teamsters Union, shared with East Coast and Detroit area crime families, the Outfit bankrolled new business ventures across the U.S. The Outfit used these businesses to diversify profits and launder monies from dirtier businesses. The Outfit placed two people in charge in Nevada. These two Outfit Nevada managers were Mr. Inside (Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal) and Mr. Outside (Tony "Ant" Spilotro). Each man had different responsibilities. Lefty worked inside the casinos. Lefty's job was to hire and manage casino personnel, stay clean, maximize casino profits and ensure that the skim (the amount of money stolen before taxes were reported) was generated every day. Spilotro worked outside of the casinos. Spilotro's tasks included making sure the skim got back to Chicago, stopping any rival mobsters from extorting Lefty, preventing Lefty or other Outfit affiliated mobsters from skimming the skim, taking over other criminal rackets for Chicago and "fixing" any problems. Spilotro's "fixes" could range from bribes to business mergers to threats to torture, beatings or murder. It all depended on Spilotro's mood, his orders from Chicago and how serious the problem was.
