What does @@@ mean?

True enough — nobody asked. Somehow, though, I feel obliged to explain the meaning of the ratings I feature on the book reviews in this blog.

First of all, I don’t recall ever awarding anything lower than @@@, or 3 out of 5. Not that I haven’t encountered books that would deserve it — it’s just that I don’t finish reading those books. I only review books I’ve read from start to finish.

Here, then, is what I mean by the ratings:

@ = Fuhgedaboudit! This book should never have been published.

@@ = Not the worst book in the the world, but I couldn’t get through it.

@@@ = Reasonably well written, enjoyable in some ways, but not a candidate for a National Book Award.

@@@@ = I really liked this book. It may have fallen short of greatness, but it’s a great read. Definitely worth checking out.

@@@@@ = This book is either extraordinarily well conceived and well executed, or it makes an important contribution to our understanding of ourselves or the world we live in, or both. A must read.

Now you can’t say you didn’t know.

Organ trafficking, prostitution, and drugs in the underbelly of Asian society

A review of Vulture Peak: A Royal Thai Detective Novel, by John Burdett

@@@ (3 out of 5)

When I read John Burdett’s first novel, Bangkok 8, I was hooked, and I couldn’t wait to learn more about its fascinating protagonist, the incorruptible Thai homicide detective, Sonchai Jitpleecheep. Bangkok 8 offered up a feast of intimate knowledge about Buddhism as practiced in Thailand, the local brand of animist superstitions, and the corruption that pervades every nook and cranny of Thai society, all revealed in the context of a spectacular murder mystery. In three subsequent novels featuring the detective — Bangkok Tattoo, Bangkok Haunts, and The Godfather of Katmandu — Burdett gradually shifted the emphasis of his writing from Sonchai Jitpleecheep’s exotic inner dialogue to the grisly details of the homicide case at hand. In Vulture Peak, the fifth novel in the Royal Thai Detective Series, Burdett has gone the distance. The local color of Thailand’s red-light districts is still there, and the plot is, if anything, even more convoluted, but the detective has grown tired and his worldview is verging on cynicism. The result is less than fully satisfying.

Vulture Peak — the place, not the title — is the palatial hilltop home outside Phuket on the Thai coast where three bodies have been discovered, so badly mutilated that their gender can’t be determined at first. Heart, liver, kidneys, lungs, genitals, face have all been surgically removed, the bodies left on an oversized bed in the deserted home. Detective Jitpleecheep is ordered by his boss, the famously corrupt policeman, Colonel Vikorn, to learn the identity of the murderer. If the detective solves the case, the colonel can take credit and boost his campaign for Governor of Bangkok — a campaign no one would ever have expected him to undertake. Here is the proverbial mystery wrapped in an enigma, and Jitpleecheep must use all his wile and intuition to unravel the threads of the case.

As the detective sets out with his katoey (transgender) assistant, mystery piles on mystery. Why is Colonel Vikorn running for public office when he is already making billions from the drug trade? Who owns the house on Vulture Peak, and what is it used for? Is the colonel’s bitter rival, General Zinna, involved in organ trafficking? Does he own the house? As new characters crowd onto the scene, the plot grows ever more intricate. To understand what’s going on, you’ll have to read almost to the very end of the book.

Don’t get the impression from anything I’ve written above that Vulture Peak doesn’t erupt in startling prose from time to time. Here, for example, Burdett comments on Christianity (with apologies to you, Dear Reader, if you’re a believer): “Of the world’s three universal religions, one is based on a profound insight into human psychology and one is based on a profound insight into the kind of social structure that is necessary for people to live in peace and harmony . . . The former is Buddhism, and the latter is Islam. The other world religion is an insane collection of primitive magic and mumbo-jumbo, with cadavers resurrecting and walking around with holes in them, lepers suddenly healing and the blind suddenly seeing, virgins giving birth and snakes that talk.”

And again, commenting on Western civilization: “The discovery of nirvana is the psychological equivalent of the invention of zero but vastly more important. Think of where mathematics was before zero, and you have the level of mental development of the West: good/bad, right/left, profit/loss, heaven/hell, us/them, me/you. It’s like counting with Roman numerals.”

John Burdett was born in the UK, became a lawyer there, spent a dozen years practicing in Hong Kong, then left the law to write crime novels. He now divides his time between Thailand and France.

Romance, intrigue, and betrayal in post-World War II Istanbul

A review of Istanbul Passage, by Joseph Kanon

@@@@ (4 out of 5)

Some books build slowly, and just as you begin to wonder whether you have the energy to finish them, you discover you’re a captive and no longer able to put them aside. Then they build and build, until you find yourself on the last page, out of breath from the frenzied rush to the end. Istanbul Passage is one of those books.

Kanon, born in 1946, writes spy stories about the period immediately following World War II and before the Korean War (1945-50). Istanbul Passage relates the tale of Leon Bauer, an American businessman whose poor eyesight had kept him out of the war. In compensation — seeking his own war, really — Leon has persuaded a friend of his in the U.S. consulate to hire him for special espionage assignments, helping smuggle Jews out of Romania and on to Palestine. Now, in 1945, Leon receives a different sort of assignment, which involves helping to smuggle a high-value Romanian intelligence target through Istanbul and on to safety in the U.S. But everything quickly goes wrong. Leon finds himself shooting a man to death in a firefight, and the Romanian turns out to be a war criminal at least partly responsible for one of the most notorious massacres of Jews outside the German camps.

Istanbul Passage is a complex and finely written tale. You can’t read the book without getting to know Leon Bauer — and Istanbul — as deeply as though you had experienced the story yourself. Joseph Kanon is one fine writer!

Kanon ran two major New York publishing houses before he began writing in 1995 when he was nearly 50. His five previous novels — Los Alamos (1997), The Prodigal Spy (1998), The Good German (2001), Alibi (2005), and Stardust (2009) — have won widespread acclaim, and deservedly so, as I’ve noted in my reviews. (To see those reviews, click on the titles of his last two previous books.)

The best books I’ve read so far this year

You have to wait until December to see a list of “best books” in The New York Times Book Review, but right here in this space you can see my list for the first six months of 2012! Of course, it’s a short list, and quite specialized, since there are lots of categories of writing that hold no interest for me. And I don’t limit myself to books that were published after January 1, 2012 (though most were). After all, I’m not The New York Times. But, for what it is, here goes, in no particular order . . . with links to my reviews in this blog.

Nonfiction

The Passage of Power, by Robert A. Caro. Volume 4 in The Years of Lyndon Johnson. Robert Caro’s masterful portrait of Lyndon Johnson’s early days as President.

Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, by David E. Sanger. Barack Obama’s foreign and military policy viewed from the inside.

The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World, by John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan. The power of unreasonable people, and how they’re changing the world.

The Self-Made Myth, and the Truth About How Government Helps Individuals and Businesses Succeed, by Brian Miller and Mike Lapham. A brilliant contribution to the public debate about politics and the economy.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander. One of the most important books published in English so far this century.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo. A searing look at poverty in India that reads like a novel.

The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, by Daniel Yergin. Daniel Yergin’s superb new book: a brilliant survey of energy issues.

Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World’s Greatest Business Case for Compassion, by Pavithra Mehta and Suchitra Shenoy. Aravind: A social enterprise with scale and impact to match Grameen Bank.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann. Astonishing new evidence about the Americas before Columbus.

Trade Fiction

They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?, by Christopher Buckley. Washington and Beijing get what they deserve in this satirical novel of politics and diplomacy today.

The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi. One of the best science fiction novels I’ve ever read.

The Orphan Master’s Son, by Adam Johnson. An unsparing tale of life in the living hell of North Korea.

Incendiary, by Chris Cleave. A wrenching portrait of the human cost of terrorism.

The Fear Index, by Robert Harris. A taut thriller about the world of multibillion-dollar hedge funds.

A Theory of Small Earthquakes, by Meredith Maran. A first novel from a brilliant nonfiction writer.

Mysteries and Thrillers

Mission to Paris, by Alan Furst. A truly superior novel of espionage at the dawn of World War II.

The Midnight House, by Alex Berenson. The Pentagon and the CIA take a lot of punishment in this novel of rendition and torture.

Harbor Nocturne, by Joseph Wambaugh. Joseph Wambaugh’s latest paints Los Angeles in many clashing colors.

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection, by Alexander McCall Smith. An exceptional tale of Botswana’s #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

Buried Secrets, by Joseph Finder. A thriller that explores the intersection of high finance and high crime.

The Ghosts of Belfast, by Stuart Neville. A grim story of war and betrayal in Northern Ireland.

The Bridge of Sighs, by Olen Steinhauer. A fully satisfying murder mystery set in post-war Europe.

Breakdown, by Sara Paretsky. Sara Paretsky’s latest detective story hits home.

Believing the Lie, by Elizabeth George. Elizabeth George’s latest Inspector Lynley novel, unpredictable as always.

The Silent Oligarch, by Chris Morgan Jones. A refreshingly original new thriller that explores international intrigue with minimal violence.

Agent 6, by Tom Rob Smith. A superb suspense novel set in the USSR, Afghanistan, and the U.S.

Joseph Wambaugh’s latest paints Los Angeles in many clashing colors

A review of Harbor Nocturne, by Joseph Wambaugh

@@@@ (4 out of 5)

When you read Joseph Wambaugh on the endlessly diverse “coppers” of the LAPD or the equally colorful denizens of their turf, you know you’ve met the truth. Listen as he describes three of Hollywood’s zoned-out derelicts:

“Their shirts and trousers were so stained and filthy they’d lost their color and seemed to sprout from them like fungus. Two had splotchy skin with open sores, and there were not twenty teeth among them. As younger transients, they’d covered more territory than Lewis and Clark, but as they got older they’d begun to vaporize into spectres that nobody really saw until they spoke. The unholy ghosts of Hollywood Boulevard.”

No, the world of Joseph Wambaugh and his creations who people the Hollywood police station isn’t pretty. It’s wild, gritty, funny, outrageous, and above all endlessly surprising. Wambaugh has walked these streets. He knows whereof he writes.

The harbor of the title is the shore of San Pedro, a portion of the Port of Los Angeles. Two of the town’s younger residents, Dino Babich, a longshoreman, and his childhood buddy Hector Cozzo, reflect the variously Croatian and Italian history of the place, and their renewed relationship becomes a central factor in the plot.

The story Wambaugh tells revolves around human trafficking and prostitution — and the unsavory people who profit from it. The plot works well and offers up tension and surprises to the end. However, Harbor Nocturne is much less a novel of suspense than it is a character study of the Los Angeles Police Department, as embodied in the coppers of Hollywood Station. If there is an overarching theme to this novel, it’s the extraordinary diversity of Los Angeles today, where 200 languages are spoken. The book features characters of Mexican, Serbian, Italian, Croatian, Korean, Russian, Japanese, African, and Jewish as well as plain old white-bread European descent.

Harbor Nocturne is the fifth and most recent novel in Wambaugh’s Hollywood Station cycle, which began in 2006. Like its predecessors, Harbor Nocturne takes us inside the station and inside the heads of the cops who staff its evening and early-morning “midwatch.” Familiar characters from the earlier novels feature prominently here: the sun-bleached surfer cops “Flotsam and Jetsam”; aspiring actor “Hollywood Nate” Weiss; and young Britney Small, who earned the respect of the “OGs” — the Old Guys of the station — by shooting a violent offender to death. and wishing she’d gained it some other way.

Wambaugh, now 75, is the author of 20 previous books, 14 of them novels. From his very first novel, The New Centurions, in 1971, Wambaugh has been winning acclaim and selling books about the police in very large quantities. The man knows how to write!

An exceptional tale of Botswana’s #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

A review of The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection, by Alexander McCall Smith

@@@@ (4 out of 5)

Many years ago, when I was pretending to be a science fiction writer, I got to know a famous figure in the genre. Though he himself never admitted as much, I was told that he had worked himself through a prestigious college in the 1950s by turning out shelves-full of sci-fi novels at a penny a word. He rented an office near campus and would show up every weekday morning at 9, remove the cover of his typewriter, and begin typing — nonstop, and without hesitation — until precisely noon. At that point, he would recover the typewriter and leave for lunch and his afternoon classes. Now, some four decades later, I’m inclined to believe that story, because he is credited with having published a total of more than 300 books, a fair number of them award-winners.

Alexander McCall Smith must be a little like that sci-fi writer. Not a lot — just a little, just in the ease with which he manages to write. After all, he has published a total of just 72 books: 36 novels, 21 children’s books, 3 short story collections, and 12 academic texts. But, to give the guy a break, during most of his 64 years he was employed full-time as a teacher of medical law at the University of Edinburgh and other universities. In fact, Smith is renowned worldwide as an expert in the field of medical ethics. By comparison, the sci-fi author I alluded to above has worked full-time as a writer ever since graduating from college.

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection is the 13th and latest in Smith’s best-known series of novels about the #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in Gaborone, the capital of the small, land-locked nation of Botswana, bordering South Africa. To my mind, it’s one of the best. As always, the story revolves around the lives of Mma (“Ms.”) Precious Ramotswe, founder and proprietor of the agency, and her consistently exasperating assistant, Mma Grace Makutsi. Grace graduated from the local secretarial school with an unprecedented grade of 97 percent on her final exam — and she never lets anyone, and I mean anyone, walk into the office without learning about it.

Here, for example, is a typical comment by Mma Makutsi on a statement by Mma Potokwane, Mma Ramotswe’s friend, who was despairing of her life at the time:

“Nobody is useless,” she said heatedly, “and you are less useless than nobody else, Mma. Definitely.” This remark was greeted with silence while Mma Ramotswe and Mma Potokwane had tried to work out what it meant. The spirit in which it was made, though, was clear enough, and Mma Potokwane simply thanked her.”

In The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi are confronted with a series of surprises: the completely unexpected visit of their idol, Clovis Andersen of Muncie, Indiana, author of The Principles of Private Detection; the shocking dismissal of Mma Ramotswe’s good friend, Mma Potokwane, as matron of the orphan farm; and the arrest of Fanwell, a young man who apprenticed with Mma Ramotswe’s husband (“the finest mechanic in Botswana”), Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, and now works for him as a certified mechanic. Each of these story lines moves along at the measured pace of life in the near-desert of Botswana. As always, of course, Mma Ramotswe solves every mystery and rights every wrong, but this time she receives timely help from her hero, Clovis Andersen.

If there’s a single word that sums up the novels in the #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, it’s “charming.” These are books full of gentle humor, folk wisdom, and a view of life and the world that is both generous and optimistic. However, The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection dwells more on the story’s setting, exploring the land, its history, and its people more in-depth than in previous books in the series. In the background — always in the background, but unmistakably present — are poverty, the AIDS epidemic, and the tragic events that unfold with alarming frequency in Botswana’s neighbors.

If you haven’t read any of the previous 12 books, you might find The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection to be a good place to start.

An historical thriller with an insider’s view of Communism in Eastern Europe

A review of The Confession, by Olen Steinhauer

@@@@ (4 out of 5)

1956: Nikita Khruschev’s Secret Speech denouncing Stalin’s crimes; the Hungarian uprising and unrest in Poland it triggered; the British, French, and Israeli invasion of Egypt following Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal; Sputnik’s launch. It was a watershed year, somewhat comparable to 1968 more than a decade later. In The Confession, we view the world of 1956 through the eyes and the troubled mind of Ferenc Kolyeszar, a policeman in a fictional Eastern European country somehow nestled among Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania.

However, Kolyeszar is a novelist as well as a policeman, having published a well-received novel about his experiences as a soldier resisting the German occupation at the outset of World War II. Now 37 years old, he is writing The Confession to chronicle his shattering experiences at home and at work against the backdrop of fateful world events.

Kolyeszar’s story involves the unraveling of his marriage to Magda, the disappearance of a senior official’s young wife; the sometimes rocky relationships among Kolyeszar and Stefan, Emil, Leonek, and Brano, his fellow police officers in the District; Stefan’s reopened investigation into the murder of his partner immediately after the War; and the visit to the District of a KGB Colonel from Moscow named Kaminski. These parallel story lines weave in and out of one another, converging in a climactic end-game that brings a just conclusion to The Confession. Along the way we become immersed in the endless strain as Communist rule solidifies in Eastern Europe with mounting ferocity. This is an engrossing and skillfully written story.

Olen Steinhauer’s The Confession is the second in a cycle of five novels set a decade apart from one another about the men of the District. Its predecessor, The Bridge of Sighs, was written from the perspective of Kolyeszar’s colleague Emil Brod and took place in 1948-49. The subsequent three novels carry the story forward to the fall of Communism in 1989. To my mind, judging from what I’ve read so far, this five-book cycle is as insightful a history of Eastern Europe under Communism as any history of the period.

A thriller that explores the intersection of high finance and high crime

A review of Buried Secrets, by Joseph Finder

@@@@ (4 out of 5)

Buried Secrets opens much like a standard-issue detective novel, with Nick Heller approached by an old friend to investigate the mysterious disappearance of an old friend’s daughter. Heller is not a PI, really, but, well . . . a sort of private spy who just happens to be a former Special Forces soldier with connections in the FBI and other, unnamed federal agencies.

Gradually, we learn that this is by no means a typical detective story. As he searches for Alexa, the pretty teenaged daughter of hedge fund billionaire Marcus Marshall, Heller soon finds himself enmeshed in a deadly game involving international criminal forces and probably the Russian regime to boot. Along the way, Heller rekindles an old love affair that seems to suggest a partnership in future stories.

Buried Secrets, like all the other Joseph Finder novels I’ve read, is a cut or two above other thrillers — in its intricate plotting, its in-depth charzacterizations, and its hard-hitting writing.

Buried Secrets is the second of Joseph Finder’s Nick Heller novels and his tenth overall. His books are all thrillers set in the world of business and finance. However, Finder first gained notice as a graduate student in Russian affairs at Harvard in the early 1980s when he wrote an expose about the controversial American oilman Armand Hammer, tieing him to the Kremlin. Though Hammer threatened to sue for libel, he never did, and the opening of the KGB files years later confirmed Finder’s assertions. Hammer, who was close to Richard Nixon, was effectively a KGB agent.

A grim story of war and betrayal in Northern Ireland

A review of The Ghosts of Belfast, by Stuart Neville

@@@@ (4 out of 5)

You may never have read a murder mystery like this one. The protagonist, Gerry Fegan, is a former hit man for the IRA responsible for the deaths of twelve people (the “ghosts” of the title), and it’s never much of a mystery when he begins killing again. The mystery lies deeper, somewhere in the vicinity of his stunted family life and the treacherous relationships among the others in his violence-prone faction.

As Fegan reflects, “You can’t choose where you belong, and where you don’t. But what if the place you don’t belong is the only place you have left?”

The “detective,” Davy Campbell, a Scottish paramilitary officer who has lived underground with the IRA for many years, is a killer himself. The contest of wits and physical prowess between these two pawns in the grip of history unfolds against a background of political corruption and betrayal in Northern Ireland. The action takes place following the Good Friday Agreement that laid to rest — presumably for all time — decades of intercommunal violence between Protestants and Catholics.

The Ghosts of Belfast is skillfully written. His characters are all too believable, all the more so for their profound cynicism and greed for power and money — to my mind, a principal reason for the unending violence in Northern Ireland. No one comes off well in Neville’s story, not Fegan and Campbell, and not the men who manipulate them. I suspect that anyone who witnesses sectarian violence first-hand anywhere in the world might feel the same about the central actors on both sides of the wars they observe.

Stuart Neville is a young Northern Irish writer who achieved instant acclaim for The Ghosts of Belfast, the first of his four novels. The book was nominated for numerous awards, winning the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

A fully satisfying murder mystery set in post-war Europe

A review of The Bridge of Sighs, by Olen Steinhauer

@@@@ (4 out of 5)

It has been three years since the Second World War ended, leaving his country in still in ruins and under the rule of a one-party Communist government headed by Comrade Mihai. The despised Germans and their sympathizers have been driven out or executed, but their legacy taints daily life at all levels of society. Just 22 and fresh out of the police academy, Emil Brod reports for duty to the homicide department in The Capital, only to be thrown, unaided, into investigating the murder of one of the country’s leading citizens. Treated to hostility by his fellow officers, Brod stumbles headlong into the murky circumstances surrounding the murder. Soon, he finds himself in the arms of the murdered man’s wife, who helps point him to a connection with a celebrated war hero rumored to be a candidate for the Politburo and a possible successor to Comrade Mihai. The Bridge of Sighs tells the tale of Brod’s persistence on this case in the face of official disapproval and several attempts on his life.

The Bridge of Sighs is a deeply satisfying novel that joins complex characters with a credible story in a well-researched setting. The book was nominated for five literary awards, and it’s not difficult to see why.

Published in 2003, with the action taking place in 1948, The Bridge of Sighs was the first in Olen Steinhauer‘s five-novel series set in a fictional Central European country most closely resembling Slovakia.

The Bridge of Sighs was followed in successive years by The Confession (set in 1956), 36 Yalta Boulevard (1966), Liberation Movements (1968 & 1975), and Victory Square (1989). The series thus spans the duration of Communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe.

Immediately after finishing his Central European saga, Steinhauer wrote an espionage trilogy featuring Milo Weaver in 2009-12: The Tourist, The Nearest Exit, and An American Spy.

Olen Steinhauer is a young man, and one worthy to watch.