“Sometimes when a false self cracks, we find there’s nothing inside. One of the sad things you learn in therapy is that there are some people who are beyond help, I mean direct help. They’re like black holes. They can suck the life out of anyone who tries to help them. So you need to take care of yourself, yes?”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett  (FEB 13, 2011)

The amazingly versatile Gruber has done it again, filling us armchair adventurers with knowledge as well as thrills and making the outlandish plausible.

This time he leaves behind themes of previous books – the diabolical intricacies of the art world (The Forgery of Venus), Shakespearean intrigue (The Book of Air and Shadows), Cuban Santeria (The Jimmy Paz trilogy) – to take on the intrigues of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Before you start groaning, let me say that those who find the whole muddle a hopeless quagmire will gain greater understanding and those who prefer their political thrillers in black and white should look elsewhere.

The narrator is Theo Laghari, a Pakistani-American U.S. Special Forces soldier with a back-story any boy would envy. Born to a prominent Lahore family, he enjoys a privileged upbringing, a bit marred by the storms his Polish-American former circus magician mother creates by her outrageous behavior, like going on the Haj disguised as a boy then writing a book about it.

A sudden tragedy ends this comfortable if insecure boyhood, inculcating the young Theo into the code of the Pashtuns (the tribe of his best friend and his grandfather’s best friend, Theo’s foster father) and spiriting him off to Afghanistan where he joins jihad against the Russians, training that well prepares him for his third incarnation in the U.S. military.

The present-day kidnapping of Theo’s mother, Sonia, along with the international group she has gathered together in Pakistan for a peace conference, kick starts the plot. Point of view alternates between Theo and Sonia, with detours to Cynthia Lam, an ambitious Vietnamese-American NSA officer whose facility for languages leads her to believe that intel concerning a Pakistani nuclear bomb plot is a hoax.

Sonia is appropriately larger than life, manipulating her unsophisticated captors with Sufi dream interpretations and Jungian psychology. She can discuss all aspects of jihad, Islam and hypocrisy, and arouses brutal anger as well as doubt.

Religious observance – her native Catholicism in the West and her adopted Islam in the East – grounds her, but she is a Sufi at heart. “They believe that everything written about God is in some sense wrong….He’s always a surprise and trying to chain Him to a human religion is folly.”

This is a talky novel, but the ideas are well put, thought provoking and go some distance toward making sense of Islamic and Pashtun honor, tradition and history, though no easy solution to the mess is on offer. The kidnap situation is highly unstable, including videotaped beheadings, and Theo’s rescue plans unfold in classic thriller style.

There are a number of twists and surprises at the end as well as some unanswered questions and at least one gratifying thread-tying development.

Gruber is a fine writer and researcher (who has in his past life been a chef, a marine biologist, a traveling hippie and rock group roadie, a civil servant at the highest Washington echelons, an environmental expert, a speechwriter and more) who puts his eclectic talents to excellent use in his wide-ranging fiction.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 91 readers
PUBLISHER:	St. Martin’s Griffin; Reprint edition (February 15, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Michael Gruber
EXTRAS:	Michael Gruber discusses The Good Son Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Valley of Bones

Bibliography:

Jimmy La Paz Series

• Tropic of Night (2004)
• Valley of Bones (2005)
• Night of the Jaguar (2006)

Stand-alone thrillers:

• The Book of Air and Shadows (2007)
• The Forgery of Venus (2008)
• The Good Son (2010)
• The Return (September 2013)

Young Adult:

• The Witch’s Boy (2005)

“From the parts of the document written in English, they learned that the money had been the first of three payments for the construction of a large civilian airfield in the Ghazni Province. Given the fact that (it) was over 120 kilometers away, the only thing that made sense was that the Afghan they‘d killed had been a corrupt contractor who was trying to make a quick getaway to Pakistan.”

Book Review:

Review by Katherine Petersen  (DEC 30, 2010)

Author Elliott Sawyer earned a Bronze Star while serving tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as a captain in the 101st Airborne Division. His intimate knowledge of military operations enables the actions scenes to come alive and lend credibility to his characters. Jake Roberts has a not-so-pretty past, and his punishment is to lead a platoon of misfits with past drug, alcohol and assault charges. The battalion commander sends the Kodiak Platoon on the “dirty” missions that no one else wants. During one of these night details, the platoon stumbles across a cache of funds, stolen by a corrupt contractor. Jake and his men opt to smuggle the cash back to the U.S. when they’re discharged rather than turn it over to the authorities. They call it their severance pay.

But things don’t turn out to be that easy. Someone else finds out about the severance money. It could be the nurse Jake has been seeing, someone in the platoon or an unknown. Whoever it is, they’re not afraid to kill. The story grows in intensity as it becomes less and less clear if Jake and his platoon will manage to keep either the severance money or their lives.

Sawyer does a nice job of weaving particulars into the plot action without bogging the story down with unnecessary details. He gives us a glimpse of why some of the members are in the platoon, but doesn’t overwhelm the reader with minutiae. The platoon is comprised of alcoholics, drug addicts, thieves and other miscreants, but when we meet them, they’re sympathetic characters, and it’s hard not to like most of them. The story jumps a bit in places, so readers must pay attention. Sawyer’s character and plot ring true, and he doesn’t glaze over sticky situations: a soldier’s homosexuality, infidelity and foul language have their place in this novel, and, at least in my opinion, they fit. I mention this only as the book might not be appropriate for all age levels.

This story will appeal to mystery fans in general but also to fans of books with military action. While it may not have the nonstop action of a Tom Clancy novel, the scenes are remarkably well written, and in combination with a tightly-woven plot and intriguing characters, it’s a a good debut. I hope Jake Roberts and his men make another appearance soon.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 7 readers
PUBLISHER:	Bridge Works (November 16, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Katherine Petersen
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Elliott Sawyer
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer

Bibliography:

• The Severance (November 2010)

“Pat Tillman understood that outside the wire, bad things happen. But he was an optimist. Archetypically American, he was confident that right would prevail over wrong. When he swore the oath of enlistment in the summer of 2002, he trusted that those responsible for sending him into battle would do so in good faith. At the time, he didn’t envisage that any of them would trifle with his life, or misrepresent the facts of his death, in order to farther careers or advance a political agenda.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (JUL 27, 2010)

Where Men Win Glory, by Jon Krakauer, is a book about several things – Pat Tillman, the NFL, the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. army and its role in Pat Tilman’s death, friendly fire during wars, and the history of our involvement in the Middle East. Each of these topics is covered in a wonderfully page-turning manner, with the reader not wanting to put the book down. At the same time, Krakauer provides a huge amount of information that may be new, surprising or downright horrific.

Pat Tilllman was raised in Almaden, California to a family of free thinkers who encouraged their children to be individualists and speak their minds. Pat always had an opinion about something and was never shy in sharing it. He had a lot of faith in himself and his ability to perform well in whatever he chose to do. As a youth and a young man, he chose to excel in athletics, first baseball and later, football. Pat was not built like the typical football player. He was smaller but he was fast, agile, and had an uncanny ability to predict his opponents’ next moves. This made him a good football player, so good in fact that he played college football and moved on to the major NFL leagues where several teams competed to have him play for them.

Pat was a rather wild young man in his youth who liked to drink, carouse and occasionally fight. He was taught that honor and revenge were both admirable. At one point in his young life he got into a misguided fight that changed his life. He ended up in prison for a very short time and realized that he wanted to spend his days more productively. He started to read a lot, choosing from classics such as Emerson, Homer and Chomsky. He was rarely seen without a book in his hands. He also was an avid journaler, perspicaciously looking inward and outward in a very philosophical way.

After 9/11, Pat felt the call of patriotism and enlisted in the U.S. army, walking away from a 3.6 million dollar NFL contract in order to serve his country. He ended up in the Rangers, an elite group of army special operatives. Pat was unusual for a soldier in that he ended up not being in favor of the war he was fighting. He felt that the invasion of Iraq was a political ploy and that the U.S. should be focusing more on Afghanistan. He also understood the power of “spin” and public relations. When the army was busy using Jessica Lynch as a poster girl, Pat knew in his gut that the story behind her heroism and her rescue was skewed and that Bush was using her for P.R. to save his election from going down the tubes. Despite Pat’s personal feelings about the war, he remained a patriot and felt that he should do his utmost best all the time to defend and protect the United States. He himself would never grant interviews nor would he let the military use him in any way for public relations.

Krakauer does an excellent job in explaining the background of the war that Pat Tilman was fighting. Initially, the U.S. provided guns, ammunition, bombs and bomb-making instructions to the Taliban. This was done by the CIA during the time that the U.S. was involved in the cold war with Russia and Russia was in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban. After Russia left Afghanistan in defeat, the Taliban then used the weapons and instructions the U.S. had given them for terrorist acts against the U.S. A similar story took place in Iraq, where the U.S. gave political insurgents weapons and ammunitions only to have these same insurgents turn against them.

Pat and his family were very close and Krakauer does a fine job of examining the roles that his parents, his wife, his friends and his siblings played in Pat’s development and life as a man. Interestingly, Pat’s brother Kevin enlisted in the army at the same time as Pat and they ended up serving along side each other until the day that Pat was shot at and killed by his own troop members.

Pat’s death by friendly fire and the U.S. government’s cover-up of the details and circumstances surrounding his death, make up for a large part of this book. With painstaking detail, Krakauer takes the reader through every step of Pat’s mission until the time of his death by friendly fire. Krakauer also investigates the investigators, showing how the army misled, lied, delayed and mishandled most every aspect of reporting the true circumstances of Pat’s death. Ultimately, Pat’s mother made such a tenacious case for the truth that congress became involved.

Ironically, Pat Tillman was used as a public relations vehicle in much the same way that Jessica Lynch was. Pat would have hated this. He didn’t want special treatment in the army and he certainly didn’t want the army to invoke his name as a hero for a war he didn’t support.

Krakauer does a brilliant job of utilizing Pat’s journals, interviewing his friends, family and members of the military. He provides maps, documents and has done extensive research for this book. Despite all the details, this book is accessible to any reader, even one like me who had little knowledge of many of the historical aspects of the war prior to reading this book. Pat Tillman was an amazing human being, one that I ended up admiring immensely. I thank Mr. Krakauer for bringing Mr. Tillman to life and for delivering the truth that Mr. Tillman and his family so deserved.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 470 readers
PUBLISHER:	Anchor; Reprint edition (July 27, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Jon Krakauer
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our short review of: Into Thin Air

Bibliography:

• Eiger Dreams: Ventures among Men and Mountains (1990)
• Into the Wild (1996)
• Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster (1997)
• Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (2003)
• Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman (2009)

Movies from books:

• Into the Wild (2008)