Where Serpents Lie by T. Jefferson Parker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"[...] a little girl enrobed in white netting. A serpent's scale inserted into the web of the net. The girl. The snake. The web. The net. What is the story here? "

I almost never read long books. If an author is unable to say what he or she wants to say on no more than, say, 300 pages, tough luck! Next please! I make an exception, though, for well-written books that contain realistic depictions of characters, situations or places, as far as the psychology and dialogues. Here we have the longest book I have read in a very long time - 550 pages - which is just a thriller slash police procedural. What's more, I have enjoyed it a lot.

I first read T. Jefferson Parker about a quarter of the century ago. I read all his early books and liked most of them a lot, precisely because of the prose and realism, outstanding for the genre. The author is an accomplished literary craftsman, who had a chance to practice his writing when he worked as a reporter for the Newport Ensign.

Where Serpents Lie (1998) is a good example of a thriller that transcends its genre: despite following the standard clichés of thrillers it is very well written and several characters are not just paper templates but seem almost like real people. The protagonist is Terry Naughton, the head of the Crimes Against Youth unit in the Orange County Sheriff Department. Two years ago Terry lost his son, a tragic event he feels responsible for. He is now trying to redeem himself by preventing harm from happening to children.

The novel has one of the most shocking setups I have ever encountered. Terry has infiltrated a pedophile group - men who take advantage of a very young girl offered for services by her parents. The entire scene of a "party" before the expected consummation of the deal is very hard to read, even harder because it reads very realistic. Yet this is not the main plot of the novel. Someone who calls himself The Horridus (Latin name for a species of a venomous viper) abducts little girls - so far there are no rapes and the girls are found alive, but criminals of this type are known to escalate their activities. The search for Horridus becomes the main thread of the plot. Terry's personal problems are tightly woven into the procedural thread.

The gruesome opening scene has a sort of continuation when Terry interviews the little girl prostituted by her parents. The realism of the conversation is totally depressing. The author provides a rich, plausible portrayal of the tangle of business interests in Orange County - his journalistic past is certainly an asset here. Also, the novel offers a real sense of the location; I know Orange County quite well from hundreds of visits so I recognized the locations when reading the text. The scene in the Caspers Wilderness Park provides a good example.

I don't particularly like the scene where Terry buys information from a homeless man who sells newspaper articles: it reeks of the tired "word-on-the street" cliché and it does not read as a pastiche. Also, the "profiler" stuff is so formulaic - but it was a common fad quarter of a century ago: it was almost obligatory to have a profiler in thrillers and procedurals.

Yet overall, the novel is an excellent, great read, way, way, way better than 99% of the genre specimens. Had it been shorter by about 150 pages, I might have even given it the maximum rating. Very highly recommended thriller/procedural.

Four stars

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Why Gorbachev Happened: His Triumphs and His Failure by Robert G. Kaiser
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

" In just over five years, Mikhail Gorbachev transformed the world. He turned his own country upside down. He woke a sleeping giant, the people of the Soviet Union, and gave them freedoms they had never dreamed of. He also gave them their own horrific history, which his predecessors had hidden and distorted for sixty years. He tossed away the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe with no more then a fare-thee-well. "

Robert G. Kaiser's Why Gorbachev Happened. His Triumphs & His Failure is the best of the 10 books about Soviet and Russian leaders in the second half of the 20th century that I have recently read and reviewed here on Goodreads (the list is included after the rating). The main reason for my enthusiastic recommendation is that while the book should be clear and understandable to people who have never had close contact with the Soviet ideology it is still deep enough to offer stunning insights and teach a lot of new things to people like this reviewer, who were born, raised, and spent about half of their lives in the shadow of the Soviet ideology.

For several days I have been struggling with the rating. I really wanted to give this outstanding book five stars. But I can't. I reserve the maximum rating only for perhaps one in 20 books, ones that are virtually perfect in every possible sense, in other words, masterpieces. And I see one clear flaw of Mr. Kaiser's book - the slightly misleading main title. I don't really think the author explains why Gorbachev happened. He explains how he happened, but not why. In fact, I don't think it is possible to answer the "why" question. Mikhail Gorbachev happened to be - through the most powerful force of the universe, that is randomness - the right person at the right time. Most other potential leaders would not achieve that much at that time of the Soviet empire, yet had he come at a different time of Soviet history he would have not achieved much.

I certainly lack the skills to produce a full-blown review of this wonderful book so in the following paragraphs I will just point out - in an itemized form - few things that made the strongest impression on me.

Liberation of Eastern Europe: Since I am Polish by birth the liberation of Eastern Europe from Soviet influence in the late 1980s was probably the most important political event I have ever witnessed. I am happy to report that the author seems to validate my point of view that the liberation was mainly due to Mr. Gorbachev's actions:

"Gorbachev did cause the revolution in Eastern Europe - with a series of practical and symbolic steps, culminating in that telephone call, which informed the East Europeans that he had abandoned the old rule book that had required them to submit to Moscow's discipline."

Mythology of the Soviet society: The author clearly and succinctly summarizes the mythology of the Soviet system. The three most important myths, freely accepted by virtually all Soviet people. were: (1) "the myth of Lenin (transformed into a deity after his death)", (2) the myth of the October Revolution of 1917 believed to be "a massive popular uprising by workers and peasants", and (3) the myth of the Great Patriotic War as "the lonely triumph of Russia over Nazi Germany." While deification of Lenin might conceivably be understood in a society where religion was not officially practiced, the other two myths are patently based on falsehoods.

Truth about Stalin: The author makes an argument that Gorbachev's persistence and successes in denouncing Stalinism were one of the main reasons of the fall of the Soviet Union. I would add here that the first time the world (and then the Soviet people) learned about Stalin being the greatest mass murderer in the history of mankind was in 1956, when Khrushchev gave his famous "secret speech." Yet the times were not ripe then for the destruction of Stalinism. The Stalin myth survived the "secret speech"! I would also add, bitterly and cynically, that even now there are millions of people in Russia who would be happy to have the deranged mass murderer back as the national hero.

Failure: The author also delivers on the promise of the second part of the subtitle - Gorbachev's failure. The reader will learn the captivating story of how Gorbachev attempted to hold the Soviet Union together in the late fall of 1990. And how the tragic events in January of 1991 (massacre of Lithuanian civilians by Soviet military force) eventually contributed to Gorbachev's fall.

Maybe the author is being coy when he writes about an article of his "this one reveals the ungenerous limits of my own imagination." The phrase is quite endearing and it exemplifies how light and readable the author's style is. To sum up (finally!), this a great book: informative, deep, serious yet captivating. I have already ordered two other books by Mr. Kaiser.

Four-and-a-half stars.

My previous reviews of books on Soviet leaders:

The Struggle for Russia - by Boris Yeltsin

Gorbachev: Heretic in the Kremlin - by Dusko Doder and Louise Branson

The Andropov File - by Martin Ebon

Against the Grain - An Autobiography - by Boris Yeltsin

Lenin to Gorbachev: Three generations of Soviet Communists

Brezhnev, Soviet Politician - by Murphy

Khrushchev - by Roy Medvedev

Gorbachev and His Revolution - by Mark Galeotti

Andropov - by Zhores Medvedev


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Pandemic by Daniel Kalla
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"'The clinical syndrome is worse than SARS,' he said. 'Infected patients develop a sudden severe pneumonia often leading to multi-organ failure and death in a couple of days. Sometimes faster. And it's an ugly death, too. [...]'"

The coronavirus is first found in China, then it spreads all over the world. The virus does extreme damage to lungs of many infected patients. Some patients survive thanks to ventilators. Why am I repeating things about Covid-19 that everybody knows and is tired of? Because the thriller Pandemic was published quite some time ago, in 2005, and does not deal with Covid-19 but with the fictitious coronavirus that causes ARCS, Acute Respiratory Collapse Syndrome, and is much more deadly than the worst flu.

The author of Pandemic, Daniel Kalla, is an actual MD, and the medical aspects of the novel seem to be portrayed realistically. The story is extremely prophetic and predicts events to happen 15 years in the future (from 2005 to 2020) with incredible accuracy.

Alas, the novel also contains a thriller layer: the virus is used as a weapon by a Middle Eastern terrorist organization. They acquire blood from a dying patient in China. Don't ask me how they get the blood from the patient, read the book. Just a little teaser:

"The gurgling amplified, and drool formed at the open end of the tube. The patient writhed on the bed [...] He coughed in frequent spasms. With each cough, bloody sputum sprayed from the tube's end."

The entire terrorist plot is cliché, predictable, and grossly implausible. Grossly, I mean it.

Yet this is not the worst thing about the novel. It is mainly doomed by its "human-interest story," one of the most laughably cliché stories I have ever read. This is a colossal pile of c..p including such "literary devices" as marital problems, the use of sodium pentothal, the "truth serum", "confused" sexuality, coincidences heaped on top of coincidences supported by coincidences, and - most ridiculously - James Bond-style exploits performed not only by medical school professors but also by division directors in Homeland Security Department.

Virtually all characterizations are paper-thin. From the very first pages of the novel it is obvious that the protagonists are literary characters who have nothing in common at all with real people. Absolutely worst is Dr. Duncan MacLeod, a "gangly Scottish virologist" and "emerging pathogen expert", who says "Shite!" virtually every time he speaks, and is always loud and obnoxious.

Five stars for the prophetic setup and plausible medical background of the story. 0 stars for the rest. The average yields

Two-and-a-half stars.

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The Struggle for Russia by Boris Yeltsin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Not a single reform effort in Russia has ever been completed."

I can't get away from reading books about Soviet/Russian leaders of the second half of the 20th century. Almost half of my life, until 1982, I had lived in the shadow of the Soviet empire. Boris Yeltsin's memoir The Struggle for Russia is the ninth book on the topic that I am reviewing here on Goodreads (the full list is below the rating). The publisher states that the book is a lightly edited text of Mr. Yeltsin's journal from the period between August 1991 and October 1993, one of the most turbulent periods in the Russian (no longer Soviet!) history.

Disregarding chronology, the book begins with Mr. Yeltsin's notes from 1993. Particularly captivating is the journal entry dated October 4, 1993, during the dramatic days of the so-called "constitutional crisis" - a standoff between Yeltsin, Russia's president, and the Russian parliament, freshly dissolved by the President. Yeltsin orders the army to storm the Moscow's "White House," and his opponents try to get the Air Force to bomb Kremlin. There are heavy casualties.

The journal entries are arranged in such a way that the reader can see political, economic, and social developments that led to the crisis of fall 1993; the book concludes with Mr. Yeltsin's return to reminiscing the dark days of Sep and Oct of 1993.

The actually chronological beginning, Chapter 3 of the memoir, portrays the August 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. This is fascinating read, events are described hour-by-hour with high degree of realism, when no one knows anything, and all events seem completely chaotic. We read about Mr. Yeltsin's famous speech atop the turret of the tank. He writes:

"This improvised rally on the tank was not a propaganda gimmick."

I am not quite sure if I believe it. It might have been a well designed turning point in the struggle. Anyway, the coup fails, Mr. Yeltsin signs a decree to suspend the activities of the Communist party in Russia, and in a few months the dissolution of the Soviet empire becomes a fact.

Reading about the "awkward months" between August and December 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev yielded power and Soviet Union, one of the most powerful empires in the history of mankind, ceased to exist, is captivating. For me, perhaps the most interesting layer/motif in the book is the relationship between two men who managed to changed the world so significantly: Mr. Gorbachev and Mr. Yeltsin. Although they often were bitter political enemies, Mr. Yeltsin's admiration for Mr. Gorbachev is patently obvious from the pages of the journal.

Readers will likely enjoy Mr. Yeltsin's impressions from his contacts with leaders of other countries, such as Margaret Thatcher, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Helmut Kohl, and Lech Wałęsa. There is some humor in the text, like the passage about an incident when Mr. Yeltsin's car got stuck in the ditch; he had to walk 10 miles to the nearest village for help, yet every single resident of the village was drunk.

There is a lot of serious stuff in the memoir: about Russia, its people, its history, and its problems. I am unable to rate the book higher because I believe that the book will be fully understood only by people like this reviewer, who know what life under Soviet rule was.

Three stars.

My previous reviews of books on Soviet leaders:

Gorbachev: Heretic in the Kremlin - by Dusko Doder and Louise Branson

The Andropov File - by Martin Ebon

Against the Grain - An Autobiography - by Boris Yeltsin

Lenin to Gorbachev: Three generations of Soviet Communists

Brezhnev, Soviet Politician - by Murphy

Khrushchev - by Roy Medvedev

Gorbachev and His Revolution - by Mark Galeotti

Andropov - by Zhores Medvedev


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A Cold Mind by David L. Lindsey
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

" Particles of rat hair clung to his skin in various places from his forehead to his chin, as did reddish-gray smears and daubs of the rotting animal.

Evokes a truly yummy image, doesn't it? "Daubs of a rotting animal" has a nice cadence to it. Over a quarter of a century ago I read David L. Lindsey's Mercy and liked it very much. So I reached for A Cold Mind, an earlier (1983) book by the author, and got quite a bit disappointed. One of the publishers' blurbs screams in all capitals "DEFIES YOU TO PUT IT DOWN!" Well, putting the book down was not a problem for me - I managed to do it too many times. Picking the book up, though, was more of a problem. I found the novel overwrought, overlong, and quite a bit boring. Readers who like the 'serial killer' genre will rate the novel higher, I am sure. For me, it just barely reaches the minimum needed for marginally positive recommendation.

The novel is a police procedural with a slight components of psychology. Detective Stuart Haydon is investigating the death of a young woman found drowned in the Houston bayou. While the medical examiner suspects that the woman worked as a prostitute, the exact cause of death cannot be easily established. Soon connections emerge to recent deaths of two other women. All three were call girls and all three died after displaying signs of an illness that lasted several days.

From the web I have learned that this is the first novel in the Stuart Haydon series. I find this a little surprising since for me there is not much interesting about the detective's character. He is good at what he does, and seems to be an intelligent, experienced, and hard-working cop. Yes, he does have a dark secret, but I find laughable the author's efforts to furnish our protagonist with a memorable aspect of his persona. It feels to me like a crude attempt to entice the readers to buy next books in the series, where the secret will be explored in more detail and maybe even explained.

The detectives discover an album full of pictures that show "gloriously delicious" bodies of the call-girls involved in sexual activities. Particularly interesting are pictures taken through red, blue, and yellow filters - the colors will play some role in solution of the case.

My review sounds pretty vicious so far but the novel is not without strengths. I find it well written - in fact, very well for the police procedural genre - and I liked reading small snippets of text about Houston. I know the fourth largest city in the country only from driving through it: Mr. Lindsey's novel made me want to know it quite a lot better:

"The tunnels that honeycomb almost fifty blocks of downtown Houston and interconnect a fraternity of corporate buildings can be attributed not to a single Daedalus, but to a host of architects employed by the city's billionaire corporate powers. [...] the disparity of the design from block to block produces a true subterranean labyrinth."

I have also enjoyed repeated mentions of PCs (personal computers) used in police department. 1982/1983 were the very early days of the PC era.

If not for the accomplished writing and Houston bits A Cold Mind would not clear my threshold of recommendability.

Two-and-a-half stars.

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Live from New York: An Oral History of Saturday Night Live by Tom Shales
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Saturday Night Live is more than just a television show. Since its premiere in 1975, the show has served as a trendsetter in American humor and had a remarkable effect on American mores, manners, music, politics, and even fashion. "

What a lame way of choosing the epigraph to a book review! The above quotes the first two sentences in Tom Shales' and James Andrew Miller's Live From New York. An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (2002). In contrast to the reviewer's cliché approach, the book itself is actually unconventional. Almost the entire book is a compilation of quotes (on average a paragraph long) from interviews or conversations with people connected with the show: actors, writers, producers, TV network bosses, and - of course - the one and only Lorne Michaels, the Main Guy, the Boss, the creator of the show and its Guardian Angel. That the resulting mélange of monologue snippets, arranged chronologically, reads astonishingly well is due to skillful editing of the authors, who provide occasional segues.

In 1975 the bosses of NBC network needed to fill schedule space left after the network agreed to Johnny Carson's demand to stop airing the reruns of the Tonight Show on weekends. The network wanted to produce a comedy show aimed at a younger audience, they wanted to have "the first television show to speak the language of the time", something like - in words of Lorne Michaels - a cross between Monty Python and 60 Minutes.

The first show aired on October 11, 1975, with George Carlin hosting and the famous Not Ready for Prime Time Players cast (Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, and Gilda Radner). This cast, little changed, lasted until 1980, and established a standard of excellence for several "generations" of casts that followed. The seamless merging of the actors' outstanding performances and excellent writing produced one of the best things ever on American television. The following insightful quote comes from the authors of the book:

"Saturday Night Live invigorated viewers because it represented so many departures from the safe, the sane and the expected."

I first watched the reruns of the "first generation" of the show about 1983 (I found the 1983 version of it, despite the presence of Eddie Murphy, completely unwatchable) and I remember being quite surprised that one could see a show as good as SNL. 99% of everything else on television was seemingly aimed at middle-school-level viewers. Who can forget Aykroyd's "Bass-O-Matic" sketch? His Julia Child's parody? Belushi's Samurai Deli? Radner's Emily Litella? Weekend Update with the strait-laced Jane Curtin being called "an ignorant slut"? And so many excellent hosts giving lifetime best performances, such as, say, Julian Bond's in 1977. Sorry for the reminiscences, back to the book.

In 1980 came the low point of the show's history, Lorne Michaels left and neither Jean Doumanian nor Dick Ebersol managed to attain the greatness of the original. I have to credit the authors of the book for attempting to classify the show's changing casts into several generations. The book ends in spring of 2002, with the sixth - I think - generation of casts, so the 21st century shows are not mentioned at all.

What I mainly like about the book, other than its unconventional form of conversation/interview snippets, is the clarity with which it shows that making TV shows is first of all a business, a money-making venture, and it takes a genius like Lorne Michaels to sneak in some quality despite the guidance (i.e., harmful interference) of the total morons at the helm of a TV network. I very much like that someone in each generation of the show reminisces about Gilda Radner. She was the best and the sweetest! Bill Murray comes across as the most insightful, eloquent, and convincing raconteur of all performers. His tribute to Ms. Radner is truly touching!

Readers interested in dirt will find a lot of it here. The legendary drug abuse and sex excesses of the first generation are frequently mentioned as are the intrigues, conflicts, loves and hates. Ms. Curtin says it well:

"The fact that here we all were, our lives forever intertwined, and you had these love-hate relationships with people, and things got said that were just so incredibly perfect and mean and funny and honest. Some people laughed, some people gasped. It was pretty cool.

Apologies for an overlong review, but the book's size is 565 pages - the longest book I have read in many years. Way too long but very interesting!

Three-and-a-half stars

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