The Bureau and the Mole: The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History by David A. Vise
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

" He would be living the kind of fantasy he had dreamed of for years, proving to himself that he was smarter than the FBI, more clever than the Russians, and bold enough to pull this off, without Bonnie or anyone in the family noticing."

I can believe this explanation of what led Robert Hanssen, an FBI Special Agent, to become the most dangerous "mole" in the organization's history. I have known several people who think they are smarter than everybody else and attempt to demonstrate it at any opportunity. Anyway.

I find both the title of David A. Vise's The Bureau and the Mole (2002) and the overlong subtitle, The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History, quite misleading. In fact, the book is framed as a clever juxtaposition of converging life stories and career trajectories of two men, Mr. Hanssen and Louis Freeh, the Director of the Bureau. The author does a good job of presenting the various influences that formed both men. I also suspect that he wants the readers to form their own conclusion about why both these men, driven by their hubris and the arrogance of believing how well they do their jobs (spying against the country in Mr. Hanssen's case, discovering spies in Mr. Freeh's case), eventually failed in a spectacular way.

Mr. Vise's book is to a large extent an indictment of how inept the agency was in detecting moles in their midst, how the illusions of organizational excellence fooled everybody, particularly the people on the top, blinded by their self-perceived excellence. It is quite ironic that Mr. Hanssen's wife discovered her husband's contacts with the Soviets quite early in his spying career. Even more ironic is that the Bureau received a report about Mr. Hanssen hiding thousands of dollars in cash at his home and ignored it. One would like to laugh at the negligence were it not so serious: several agents paid the ultimate price - their lives - for the organization's errors.

The book contains verbatim texts of letters that Mr. Hanssen wrote to his Russian handlers. These are truly painful to read: they reveal Hanssen's "fragile emotional state" and neediness:

"Please at least say goodbye. It's been a long time my dear friends, a long and lonely time."

Appendix II contains selected e-mails written by Mr. Hanssen; I don't find them that interesting. Neither has Appendix III, The Sexual Fantasies of a Spy captured my attention. The sexual fantasies - the reader is warned that they are "graphic" while a more fitting qualifier would be "badly written" - feature Mr. Hanssen's wife. The author - of the book not of the fantasies - states that the wife has declined to comment on the fantasies. Duh!

Among significant criticisms about his tenure, Louis Freeh steps down as the Director of the Bureau in 2001, almost at the same time as Mr. Hanssen cuts a plea bargain deal with the prosecutors. This coincidence provides a neat climax to the story of two parallel lives.

Readable book yet I have no idea how biased Mr. Vise is in his arguments. If what he writes can be fully believed then I am scared. Quite scared that human ambition trumps national interest and that dangerous traitors can operate that easily.

Two-and-three-quarter stars.

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The Whisperer by Karin Fossum
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"I think that everything that has happened to me over the years has taken place underwater. Whenever I think about people I have known, their faces are like pale anemones floating on the currents of the sea. Perhaps I am still underwater. Everything seems to unfold so slowly. Reality is only visible in glimpses, like the flickering of the sun on the surface of the water."

I could not wait for The Whisperer (2016, English translation 2018), the new novel by Karin Fossum, one of my most favorite mystery writers. Moreover, my Goodreads friend, Judith, who recommended the book to me, wrote that she had found it Fossum's best. It took me just two nights, several weeks ago, to read the novel. Now, I have finally found some time to write the review, and I am a little disappointed not to consider it Fossum's best. It is still a very good book, though, way better than most contemporary mystery novels that consist of tired clichés piled upon clichés. Also, it is only the last part of the novel that I have some problems with: I loved reading The Whisperer at least until about four-fifth into the book.

The premise of the novel is fascinating. Ragna Riegel, a middle-aged woman, is in jail, presumably awaiting trial. Inspector Sejer is interrogating her. The reader is not told what her crime was. The plot unfolds slowly but inexorably towards the denouement. That's as much as I want to write about the plot. Given this particular narrative framework of the novel an attempt to provide a synopsis would necessarily have to involve spoilers.

For the most part the novel is extremely sad. It is not a fake schmaltzy sadness of popular literature. It is the sadness of loneliness and lost hopes. Ragna Riegel who works as a cashier in a store, is a desperately lonely, middle-aged woman, poor, unattractive, and withdrawn. Because of a botched operation on her throat, she lost the ability to speak - she can only whisper. Her only son left her when he was 17 and the son's father has his own family. Ragna, the Whisperer, has no one close. She has no friends other than her co-workers. Ms. Fossum offers a vivid, deeply realistic, and psychologically plausible portrait of a true "invisible woman", a total nobody in the social world.

The incident with her meeting an Englishman in the street, one of the very few people who notice her, is desperately sad and virtually painful to read. Equally sad is the thread about Ragna's son and her contacts with him. Inspector Sejer, with his trademark gentle interrogation technique, is most likely the first person in many years who is treating Ragna humanely, even if his interrogation aims at getting her convicted.

There are some absolutely fascinating passages in the novel: I love the story about "the jumper" video on YouTube and, naturally, the deeply disturbing incident with pulling the white thread (in some ways it reminded me of one of the best thrillers I have ever seen, Repulsion by Polanski). As always I love Ms. Fossum's writing: simple, economical prose, with no excess verbiage and not too many adjectives or adverbs. I love the gloomy vision of the world, somewhat cynical thus quite realistic:

"He thought about justice; there was not much of it in the world, and there was no order, no plan, no purpose. No reward in heaven, no green pastures. Just a swarming mass, where a few were granted happiness, but most were not."

On the other hand, Inspector Sejer is virtually a saint, a human being with infinite wisdom, patience, and goodness of heart. There are no such people in the world, although I come close... just kidding...

Four stars.


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Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys by Lol Tolhurst
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"The last great English rock band."
(Robert Plant about The Cure)

I absolutely love The Cure's music and I am happy I am not the only one. This seminal 1980s band is experiencing a spectacular renaissance in recent years - they are touring all over the world and giving two-to-three-hour concerts that leave thousands and thousands of enthusiastic fans stunned that their music still sounds fresh, that the vocalist's voice has not diminished after all those years, and that The Cure's melodies, rhythms, and instrumentations still make people happy. The band clearly keeps having fun on the stage! Well over 20 full concerts recorded in the recent 6-8 years by The Cure on different continents are available on YouTube. Perhaps what is the most spectacular is the extremely wide range of the age of the audiences: from kids to people pushing 70, like your reviewer. Well, let's not forget that most members of this extraordinary band are in their sixties...

They gave their first gig 43 years ago and, in fact, the only member of the original band who is the current member is the heart, the brain, and the face of the band, Robert Smith, an extraordinary musician, unconventional singer, main composer and writer of lyrics. The book, Cured. The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys (2016) is an autobiography of Lawrence (Lol) Tolhurst, one of the original trio (Smith, Tolhurst, and Dempsey), the "first punks in Crawley," England. Mr. Tolhurst had met Robert Smith in 1964 when they were five and getting on the school bus. The boys became friends, based of common adoration for Jimi Hendrix, and started making music in 1972.

Mr. Tolhurst writes that the summer of 1976 was a pivotal period for the original trio. They were listening to Mahavishnu Orchestra's Birds of Fire and Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica (two of the most favorite albums of mine as well, certainly not "easy listening" but rather jazzy and sort of avant-garde music in the latter case) and experimenting with making music and performing it. Mr. Tolhurst writes:

"It was a beautiful time, without artifice or pretense. We were discovering our art. Life was very simple and pure.

They gave their first concert in the fall of 1976. Since then they went through numerous personnel changes and - more importantly - changes of musical style. From lean and mean post-punk, new wave, gothic rock, through jazz-influenced melodic pop, to "symphonic" rock, the band was always uncategorizable, other than being the epitomes of the "alternative genre" in popular music.

Now about the most fascinating aspect of Mr. Tolhurst's autobiography. Throughout the late 1970s and the 1980s Mr. Tolhurst was a severe, full-blown alcoholic, permanently drunk, on drugs, or both. He stopped contributing to the band's music and became a hindrance to the band's creative efforts and tour performances. He became un unbearable burden to the band and in 1989, while working on their best album, Disintegration, the band fired him. In 1994 Mr. Tolhurst sued the band (technically he sued Mr. Smith and Fiction Records) over lost royalties and over part-ownership of the band's name. He unconditionally lost the lawsuit and the legal fees almost ruined him. And yet... Mr. Tolhurst autobiography is basically a tribute to Robert Smith, the erstwhile legal enemy.

The author pays homage to Robert Smith about whom Mr. Tolhurst writes with deep affection and reverence as about his best friend of 50 years, his musical master, and the genius behind one of the most successful rock bands in the world. During the concert in 2000 at the Palace in Hollywood he apologizes to Robert Smith in person:

"[...] I said, 'I have to make amends to you, Robert, and I'd like to do that now, if you don't mind.'
'Okay,' he said.
I proceeded to pour out my part in what had happened to me and how sorry I was that I had hurt him and The Cure [...]"

A touching moment in a very nice book! (By the way, according to sources, Robert Smith financially recompensed Mr. Tolhurst for his legal fees, after their reconciliation. How's that for a really happy ending!)

There are some weaker, amateurish passages in the autobiography, but they are balanced by some highly readable prose, like, for instance, the fragment about the beauty of nature in Death Valley. It does not matter to me to what extent Mr. Tolhurst used professional help with writing and editing. The depth of his contrition is stunning and makes this autobiography quite unique in its genre.

Three-and-three-quarter stars.


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E is for Evidence by Sue Grafton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"What I love about the rich is the silence they live in - the sheer magnitude of space. Money buys light and high ceilings, six windows where one might actually do. There was no dust, no streaks on the glass, no scuff marks on the slender bowed legs of the matching French Provincial chairs."

A wonderful observation! The rich being able to buy space and thus the silence! E is for Evidence was published in 1988 and with it I am continuing my re-read of the earlier installments in the magnificent series. Magnificent up to some point - I want to locate the exact place where the novels become virtually unreadable, like, for instance, V is for Vengeance )

The novel begins when Kinsey Millhone, the slightly unconventional PI based in Santa Teresa (Santa Barbara, California, really), learns that a $5,000 deposit has been made to her bank account; she does not know its origin. Naturally, like the proverbial Chekhov's gun, the deposit will play a significant role later in the novel. At the moment, however, Kinsey is conducting a fire-scene inspection for an insurance company, following a major warehouse fire. During the inspection, Kinsey encounters quite strange behavior from the affected company's CEO. Kinsey is learning some background via a personal connection with the family that owns the company - one of the members of the family was her high-school classmate.

Kinsey's life gets much more complicated when she is summoned to talk to the insurance company's vice-president. Her honesty seems to be questioned. Additionally, Kinsey's second ex-husband suddenly appears in her life. He seems to be in dire trouble and Kinsey, despite her bad experiences with the man yet no doubt charmed by his personality, decides to help him. Then things get really serious:

"I closed my eyes again, wishing that the reeling of the world would stop before I got sick. In spite of the fire, I was shivering."

The plot of the novel is quite interesting. The ex-husband thread, is well-written and even if a bit over-the-top, it does not stretch psychological plausibility too much. Alas, the ending explains everything in a cliché kind of way.

It's funny how my ratings of consecutive novels in the Alphabet Series oscillate: almost 4 for A, not even 3 for B, solid 3.5 for C, barely above 2 for D, and now 2.5, which I am - grudgingly - rounding up.

Two-and-a-half stars.


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Elementary Differential Equations by William E. Boyce
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Yet another review of academic textbook that I have been using for a long time. William E. Boyce and Richard C. DiPrima's Elementary Differential Equations and Boundary value Problems may be one of the most enduring textbooks on the academic market. I believe its first edition dates back to 1971 and the book that I am reviewing here is Edition 10, published in 2012. I have been using this text for almost 20 years, beginning with the sixth edition.

Ordinary Differential Equations is an upper-division mathematics course that I have taught most frequently of all math courses - 20 times. In the 1980s and 1990s I used a variety of textbooks, none of which satisfied my needs and - more importantly - the needs of my students. They were either too superficial, where the authors attempted to avoid the mathematical rigor in order to, presumably, make the texts more "readable" by the students, or they focused too much on rigorous formalisms at the expense of readability. In my view, Boyce and DiPrima's text achieves a perfect balance between rigor and accessibility. For instance, Section 2.4, Differences Between Linear and Nonlinear Equations contains treatment of subtle issues that aren't usually discussed in "easier" texts yet the writing is not prohibitively technical for a student, not even necessarily an A student. I love Chapter 5 that deals with series solutions, where the authors were able to cleanly separate more elementary material on solutions near an ordinary point from the more advanced topics of solutions near regular singular points. I also like the coverage of Laplace transform method and particularly the topic of handling discontinuous forcing functions.

Being an applied - rather than "pure" - mathematician I emphasize applications when teaching differential equations. Boyce and DiPrima's text does quite a good job in presenting to the reader the applications not only from the traditional fields like population dynamics or mechanical and electrical vibrations. True, there are textbooks that better deal with applications, say Borelli's book Differential Equations: A Modeling Perspective, but then I have found these more "applied" texts lacking in the theoretical aspect.

In addition to the nice balance between the formal and the readable and between theory an applications, I like the problems that the authors provide for the students' individual work. Each section has a large and varied set of problems that allow me to customize homework assignments to the level of the particular set of students in my class.

I normally use only the first eight chapters of the textbook and omit the material on nonlinear differential equations, stability, partial differential equations, and Fourier series (the last two topics are the subject of another course in which I use Boundary value Problems which I have also reviewed here on Goodreads.

Other than the fact that mathematical modeling sections of the textbook, particularly Section 2.3, Modeling with First Order Equations, could be improved, I would definitely prefer an edition of the textbook that focuses solely on ordinary differential equations. Students have to pay exorbitant prices (up to $200) for a textbook whose substantial portions they do not need.

Four stars.


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Hear Me Talking to You by David Craig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

" [...] everyone recognized that in running an informant a complex relationship might hatch out. A formidable link could develop, and not at all to do with money or career. In fact, if the arrangement between the detective and source really worked, the relationship was almost certain to get warm and tender."

Sally Bithron, a Detective Constable on the Cardiff (Wales) police force, has an unofficial and unregistered confidential informant, who goes under the pseudonym Godzilla. He tells Sally about a major drug deal to be carried out on Schooner's Way in Cardiff Bay dockland area. Alas, instead of catching the criminals in flagrante, she witnesses a gun battle that leaves several people dead or dying. The carnage shocks the city that has long ago shed its brutal, "Tiger Bay" image.

Sally's superiors ostensibly praise her first-hand account of what transpired on Schooner's Way and her help in the investigation but, naturally, they suspect that she is not telling them everything. Sally cannot divulge her acquaintance with Godzilla as this would put him in danger. Her situation is additionally complicated by the fact that her childhood friend seems to be connected to the events on Schooner's Way and Sally's supervisors suspect she is protective of him. She has to defend herself not only from her superiors and peers on the police force but also from the criminals. Moreover, it soon becomes obvious that the interests of powerful drug lords and gang bosses from London may be at stake.

On the surface David Craig's Hear Me Talking To You (2005) is a police procedural. Many readers will be captivated by a fast moving plot that largely avoids the usual implausibilities and contrived literary tricks that fill up cliché stories in 95% of procedurals and thrillers. However, there are deeper layers to the novel, ones that may interest readers much more than the plot. The relationship between a police detective and a confidential informant is portrayed and analyzed in believable detail. We also get insightful observations of police department politics, for instance,

"[Disbelief] came easily to police of all ranks, but the higher the easier. For God's sake, you didn't get a beautiful smooth uniform like Bullfinch's by thinking well of colleagues."

The author has a remarkable gift for capturing dialogue. Virtually all conversations in the novel are riveting. What I find particularly stunning is that almost every spoken sentence is supposed to mean something else than it appears to mean. A character says something and their interlocutor has to internally translate it into what the sentence was supposed to mean, which is often the exact opposite of what was said. Everybody knows that everybody else is lying; what's more, everybody knows that everybody knows it, and still everybody keeps lying with straight face because it is precisely what the circumstances require. Things would get really bad if someone told the truth. Strongly recommended read!

Three-and-three-quarter stars.

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