The Road to Omaha – A review

The Road To Omaha

Robert Ludlum

Robert Ludlum’s wayward hero, the outrageous General MacKenzie Hawkins, returns with a diabolical scheme to right a very old wrong—and wreak vengeance on the [redacted] who drummed him out of the military. Discovering a long-buried 1878 treaty with an obscure Indian tribe, the Hawk, a.k.a. Chief Thunder Head, hatches a brilliant plot that will ultimately bring him and his reluctant legal eagle, Sam Devereaux, before the Supreme Court. Their goal is to reclaim a choice piece of American real estate: the state of Nebraska, which just so happens to be the headquarters of the U.S. Strategic Air Command. Their outraged opposition will be no less than the CIA, the Pentagon, and the White House. And only one thing is certain: Ludlum will keep us in nonstop suspense—and side-splitting laughter—through the very last page.

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The return of Mackenzie Hawkins and Sam Devereaux is very welcome because the book is as good as the first. The plot is more outrageous, if that’s possible, and more complicated, but every aspect of the book is so well-written you can’t complain about it. The characters, all of them, are brilliantly done, and the interactions between them waver frequently between humorous and clever; no matter what the situation, they are believable and that’s important.

While not quite as dated as the first book, it does show it’s age, and that keeps it from getting more than 4*, nonetheless I really enjoy the book and would love to see it on the big screen. I can only wonder who would get the job of playing Mackenzie Hawkins, it would have to be someone who can project a very big personality – Johnny Depp playing Jack Sparrow springs to mind, although Depp would not be good as Hawkins.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

JK Rowling

“‘Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. Just stick out your wand hand, step on board and we can take you anywhere you want to go.'”

When the Knight Bus crashes through the darkness and screeches to a halt in front of him, it’s the start of another far from ordinary year at Hogwarts for Harry Potter. Sirius Black, escaped mass-murderer and follower of Lord Voldemort, is on the run – and they say he is coming after Harry. In his first ever Divination class, Professor Trelawney sees an omen of death in Harry’s tea leaves … But perhaps most terrifying of all are the Dementors patrolling the school grounds, with their soul-sucking kiss …

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JK Rowling continues with her fabulous series and doesn’t let anything slip. There are so any good characters in this series, and a couple of new ones get introduced in this book, both good, though I prefer Lupin to Sirius. It’s not just the characters that make this book and the series great, it’s the plot, with Harry’s life becoming both better and worse as he learns more about his parents and how they died, and the writing; there is a good level of descriptiveness to every aspect of this book, but nothing that overwhelms the story, allowing you to access what’s going on without anything getting in the way.

The best thing about this book, compared to the first two, is that the plot doesn’t revolve around Voldemort, there is a different focus, and I believe that keeps the series from becoming boring. If I have one real complaint about any part of this book, it’s that there seems to be a contradiction between one part of this book and something that was mentioned in The Chamber of Secrets: in this book a character says there’s no cure for being a werewolf, but in COS Professor Lockhart mentions performing a spell that gets rid of a werewolf curse.

I’m not sure if Rowling forgot what she had written in the previous book, or if she needed to change that in order to use a plot thread she had come up with.

Regardless of that one niggle, this is a very good book in a very good series.

First Among Equals

Today’s review is for First Among Equals by Jeffrey Archer, a political novel from a man with first-hand knowledge of the political process.

Jeffrey Archer

This is a fascinating look behind the scenes of British politics from the 1960s to the 1990s. First Among Equals follows the careers of four newly elects MPs as they seek to rise from the back benches to the highest office in the land. Written by someone who had been there and done that, as the saying goes, this book has the benefit of in depth knowledge that enables the reader to see how their MPs really worked during that period, and gives an insight into the manoeuvring MPs have to do to keep power, get ahead and the things they wish to use their power for.

There’s plenty of appeal right there but adding to it is the real historical events that are mentioned and included as situations for the characters to deal with.

As with all of his books, Jeffrey Archer has created believable characters you want to root for, characters you want to fail, and characters you laugh at. At the same time he has created a story that is accessible even to someone like me, who has little to no interest in politics.

If you like a good, character driven story then I recommend you give this a go; if you aren’t touched by Andrew Fraser’s efforts to be a good MP for his constituents, a good husband, and a good father, then I don’t know what will touch you.

A deadly bath

Among my many, varied interests, is a liking for true crime stories, and tonight, while battling my usual sleep issues, I caught an interesting film from ITV about a British serial killer from the 1940’s.

John George Haigh

(24 July 1909 – 10 August 1949), commonly known as the Acid Bath Murderer, was an English serial killer in the 1940s. He was convicted for the murder of six people, although he claimed to have killed nine. He used acid to dispose of the bodies after battering them to death or shooting them because he believed it was an undetectable method of destroying their remains. Haigh dissolved corpses in concentrated sulphuric acid before forging papers to be able to sell the victims’ possessions and collect substantial sums of money.

During the investigation, it became apparent that Haigh was using the acid to destroy victims’ bodies because he misunderstood the meaning of the term corpus delicti, and mistakenly believed that, if the bodies could not be found, a murder conviction would not be possible. Despite the absence of his victims’ bodies, there was sufficient forensic evidence for him to be convicted for the murders and subsequently executed.

(source – wikipedia)

A is for Acid 

This is a TV movie of better quality than is the average, thanks in large part to a wonderfully subtle performance from Martin Clunes, who plays serial killer John George Haigh with a mixture of polite gentility and almost savage violence that makes it easy to understand how he was able to lure people to their deaths and get away with it for a time.

Having seen Clunes in a number of things over the years I was already aware that he is a good actor, but this is perhaps one of his best performances; he plays Haigh as a softly spoken and polite figure who outwardly gives no sign of the violence that lurks within him.

The writing is decent, as is the period setting, though I can’t speak to the accuracy – my research indicates that few liberties have been taken with events, the problem is mostly that the film is perhaps a little too superficial in some areas, at least for my tastes. I would have liked a bit more time to be taken over the development of the relationships between Haigh and his victims prior to their being killed; these were not sudden murders of brutal violence, but killings that were planned and executed for gain, financial or otherwise.

The cast, like the writing, is good enough for a TV movie, with a nice performance from Keeley Hawes as Haigh’s girlfriend, but it’s Clunes that lifts this and makes it something more than average.

If you like true crime stories, this is one to watch, it’s not fantastic but it is enjoyable.

Guilty Pleasures

It’s the end of a busy day, and there’s just time for me to post up a new review before I head off to bed, so here it is.

Laurell K Hamilton

In a world where vampires and other paranormal creatures are openly acknowledged, and in some cases have legal rights and responsibilities, Anita Blake is an animator – she raises the dead for a living. When she’s not doing that she’s a consultant to the police on paranormal incidents, if someone gets attacked and the attacker isn’t human she gets asked to identify the creature and to help deal with it; she’s also the legal executioner of vampires that have gone rogue.

In the first book in this series Anita Blake is called in to help the police with a series of murders. The city’s vampire leader wants her help as well because some of the victims are vampires, and when the killer isn’t found quickly enough Anita finds herself caught between an impatient and angry master vampire and a killer with the strength to rip a person’s heart out.

This book is never going to be considered a masterpiece, or be considered a classic work of literature, but I found it a very enjoyable read. As a fan of mythology and the paranormal, I’m always interested by books about vampires, and in this case the vampires are characters in their own right with enough ambiguity about them to make it tough to say they are all evil and should be killed.

That’s the problem Anita has, she doesn’t really like vampires but the more she deals with them the more she realises that in many ways they’re as human as anyone else – not necessarily good but not necessarily evil either.

What really makes this book enjoyable is the character of Anita Blake; she’s small, has a bit of an attitude problem, and won’t back away from a fight – I like her.