Read Any Good Books Lately?

It’s been suggested that, if I want to grow my followers into double digits on this blog, I need to tone back the strings of snarky posts.  With that in mind, I hereby launch “Reading with the Wirehead,” wherein I’ll comment on the books I’ve read during this deployment.  I invite you to comment, make suggestions, or even tell me how morbid my reading list is.

Twenty-plus weeks into my deployment, I am starting to get into that introspective stage, looking back on the whole experience.  And when my gaze paused on the stack of books waiting to be shipped home, and the books waiting to be read, I realize I’ve gotten quite a bit of reading done here.  Late at night, waiting for the Lunesta to kick in, I generally manage to get in at least 30 minutes of reading, oftentimes more.

Reading at KAIA was problematic, what with the dark tents full of shift workers, balancing the Maglite flashlight to illuminate the page.  Here at BAF, I’ve got the luxury of a light at the head of the bed, and I don’t have to worry about disturbing someone else’s beauty sleep.

I’ve read a lot … a LOT … of F. Paul Wilson, but more on that later. 

To set the stage for coming over here, I read Afghanistan:  A Military History.  Subtitled A Military History from Alexander the Great to the War Against the Taliban, author Stephen Tanner takes the reader on a wonderfully informative journey through the centuries and provides a rich history of the people and culture in the process.  After reading about the way the Afghans manhandled the British in the 19^th century and the Red Army during the 80s, the issues we’re dealing with here become clearer.  And nation-building sounds more and more difficult to achieve.  This should be required reading for U.S. national security policy-makers.

Another one of my early reads was A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert C. Wilson.  It was a singularly grisly murder mystery set in Portugal, spanning the World War II years to the present day.  A critic described this book, which won the British Crime Writers’ Golden Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel for as a “gripping and beautifully written mystery.”  It’s full of hinky plot twists and turns which come together neatly and logically at the end, and peopled by complex, three-dimensional characters.

More recently, I finished up Olen Steinhauer’s The Bridge of Sighs, a murder mystery set in an unnamed, fictional Eastern European country in 1948-49.  Much like A Small Death in Lisbon, Steinhauer weaves a complicated tale with rich, believable characters.  This was the first in a series of five mystery novels, and I’ll be reading more of his work.

I discovered Philip Kerr a few years ago, and dipped my toes in the water with March Violets, the first novel in his Berlin Noir trilogy.  About a month ago, I finished up number 2, The Pale Criminal, where protagonist Bernie Gunther, private eye, has been drafted back into the Berlin police.  It’s 1938, and Nazi politics intermingle with police procedural as our man tries to solve a series of murders where the clues lead back to heavy hitters in the Partei.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, and book 3, A German Requiem, is on the shelf, waiting to be read.

Is anyone picking up on a pattern here?  Murder mysteries, police procedurals.  I’m like a junkie jonesing for my next fix, ever since Ian Rankin retired Inspector John Rebus after 21 installments of some of the finest police procedural writing out there.

My, but I do go on.  Time to wrap this up.  Next time, it’s all about FPW.