Memorial Day 2014

At the First Division Museum http://firstdivisionmuseum.org/museum/exhibits/gallery/wwii.aspx a few years ago, a visitor stood in front of the D-Day invasion exhibit. Next to him, a man bent with age and gripping a cane addressed a boy of about eight or nine who called him, Paw-paw.

"They brought us in over here,." He used his free hand to point at Omaha Beach on a map. The finger shook slightly. It made the visitor think of Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan. "Big guns were set up there and there, all over those bluffs, inside concrete bunkers. They just kept shooting at us. They never stopped."
 
The little boy listened. So did the visitor.
 
"We landed too far out. We had to swim." He paused. "Some of my buddies never made it . . . to the beach."
 
"Did they drown in the ocean?" the little boy asked. The other visitor held his breath. The older fellow shook his head but seemed lost in thought.
 
"Some of them did, yes." His voice faded, perhaps as he remembered what he had seen and tried to think of a way to describe the vision that would be appropriate for a young boy. He leaned a little more on his cane.
 
"Bullets were flying. Closer to the bluffs were mines. The mines were terrible things."
 
"I know about them," the boy said but not with the excitement the visitor would have expected from someone his age. His eyes turned as solemn as the moment.
 
"Yes," the older fellow said. Added, "It was an awful, awful day."
 
He pressed the free hand to his forehead. The boy waited for several moments in respectful silence. Then he took his Paw-Paw's hand and started leading him toward the door.
 
The visitor moved to catch up with them, wanting to say something meaningful, to thank the older man for his service. The man and the little boy passed into the hall holding hands. The visitor realized he had phlegm caught in his throat. He stopped short, coughed a couple of times. Rubbed his eyes. Realized he couldn't think of a remark that wouldn't sound banal or hollow.
 
So, for once, he kept his mouth shut.

Deft Pacing and Well Drawn Characters Carry Complex Puzzle of a Plot

It's tough to build a really good thriller. If you concentrate too much on the technical stuff (thanks, Tom Clancy) you risk losing the folks who could care less whether the villain was armed with an FN 5.7 pistol carried in a Blackhawk Serpa holster or took out Air Force One with a shoulder mounted FIM 92 Stinger manufactured by Raytheon in 1981. But if you lean toward the gooey-kissy hop-into-bed-with-every-babe stuff, you'll find many of your readers deserting in droves. What works for me is when an author creates a good basic story by putting characters we've come to care about into extreme jeopardy...keeps it suspenseful as hell...and teaches us something along the way.

Paul McEuen mixes all of the ingredients of a good story effortlessly into Spiral, his first novel.

The plot is complex but boils down to: killer fungus that can wipe out humanity sought by bad people who want to blackmail the U.S. and get back at a really nasty Japanese businessman whose past includes World War II atrocities. The author is a scientist and professor (and CIA consultant)and it shows, but the cool thing is that he feeds us the technical/scientific stuff in such a way that even the adamantly non-geeks among us can understand and follow the intricacies. And he manages the action sequences as smoothly as a SEAL taking out a cadre of terrorists...putting the likeable good guys into peril that ramps up with every chapter. Inject geo-political drama and bam! a book that keeps its pacing on multiple levels.

One warning and it's sort of a spoiler. There are a couple of torture scenes that are absolutely terrifying, so much so that even I had to skip ahead (note to the author: I think they went on a tad too long) before I got queasy. Think Hannibal Lecter in a lab with some nano-gadgets small enough to put...well, you get the point. But speaking of the villain, she's really, really awful. Not one of those who have a little niceness to balance them out. Evil.

If you love audio books, I recommend that format for your read. I found Spiral because I've enjoyed narrator Rob Shapiro's other performances. He knows how to remain in the background and allow the writer to be the star.

A Brief Return to WGN Radio

Doug talks EASY EVIL on WGN Radio

How Absurd Have Some School Bureaucrats Become?

The folks who administer and teach in our schools have a tough job. No doubt about it. And those who do their jobs right, successfully juggling concerns for kids' education and their safety, deserve our support and as many attaboys as we can give them.

Then there are the petty, the foolish, the hysterical, and the absurd: the bureaucrats who value their image and the appearance of political correctness over everything else.

An example just this week would be the principal of a Mesa, Arizona elementary school who asked a police officer-parent to stop wearing his uniform and gun to pick up his children at school because it scared some of the other kids (http://www.lawofficer.com/video/news/arizona-officer-asked-not-come).

And the teachers at a middle school in Connecticut who call the Geico "hump day" commercial  "disruptive." (http://www.kctv5.com/story/23593314/some-teachers-say-geico-hump-day-commerical-is-disruptive-in-classrooms).

Match these examples with all of the others...every school district that has expelled children for pretending their hands are guns and going "bang" at another child. Or the district that fired a teacher because she revealed her husband threatened her.

Or the high school in my own backyard where administrators produced a list of "inappropriate words" that should not be used by those of us invited to speak at a school-wide creativity event. Among the banned words? "Gun," "gangs" and "murder." After all, if you don't talk about such things, they'll never become a problem, right?

 The Mesa school incident in particular has me shaking my head. A child reportedly told his parents a man with a gun was at school. The parents communicated that the principal. The principal called the officer. Considering that children discussing what they saw could have twisted the story any number of ways, and another child could have reported misinformation to already fearful parents who then overreacted...the principal's request is beyond absurd and borders on the hysterical.

Schools are supposed to be teaching students to think. To confront problems and come up with logical, reasoned solutions.

It appears some school administrators have flunked that lesson.

Definitely NOT For Kids or the Faint of Heart: Prisoners

Disturbing, dark, and too long at 2.5 hours, Prisoners is nevertheless a compelling film with standout performances. The basics: on Thanksgiving, two young girls go missing and, while a detective searches, the father of one of the girls takes the law into his own hands.

Hugh Jackman's theatre background shows in the preparation and depth he brings to his role as the survivalist father who swears he will get his daughter back. As Jackman rages, Jake Gyllenhaal quietly counterpoints as the detective assigned to the case and Paul Dano fits perfectly between them, his enormous sad eyes and pale, offbeat features making him every parents' nightmare of stranger-danger come to life. In fact, I found Dano the most fascinating of the characters to watch. He's so affective an actor that he can compel our fury in one scene and beg for sympathy in another...all without words...and then darn near disappear while still on screen. 

Director Denis Villeneuve uses weather elements and tight shots to create a cold, claustrophobic atmosphere that gives Prisoners a horror film feel right through the chilling climax and ending. 

There's not much fat to the plot but the brain can only comprehend what the butt can endure and two-and-a-half hours spent in a theatre seat was thirty minutes too long for mine. For that, and for the writers who gave in to the trite idea of detective-as-lone-wolf (any fan of Cops or Castle knows you never go by yourself to search an abandoned building or creepy church basement), I award Prisoners 4/5 stars with a special thumbs up to Melissa Leo(Homicide: Life on the Street) and Len Cariou (Blue Bloods), two of my favorite, and often overlooked, character actors.

Amanda Knox: The Italians Are Calling

The Italian courts, which earlier this year reversed Amanda Knox's acquittal in the 2007 murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher, are seeking her extradition to face a new trial. The U.S. State Department can refuse to grant extradition or they can accede to the Italians request. We have an extradition treaty with Italy. In most cases, it would be a routine matter to sign the papers and send her on her way.

If she is sent back, she will almost certainly spend more than twenty years in an Italian prison. The prosecutors in the case are adamant she is guilty and they convicted her once already. I suspect they will make certain she has the opportunity to resume writing in her diary and brushing up on her language skills.

What is the Obama Administration to do?

Should the State Department refuse to extradite Amanda Knox, some pundits argue, our relationship with the Italian government would suffer. Their fear is that the Italians would then be in a position to thumb their noses at us if, say, a terrorist fled to their country after committing a grievous act here in the states. I disagree. The Italians would certainly lodge a formal protest, the State Department would step in, some quiet offers of compensation would be made and bam! Amanda Knox? Chi è quello? (Amanda Knox? Who's that again?).

The question is...should the U.S. get involved? CNN legal analyst Paul Callan believes, it's an entirely political decision. If enough Americans think Knox should not be sent back, she won't be. Treaty be damned. I absolutely agree.

Has Knox helped her position with her TV appearances and writings? Many Americans believe her claims that she had nothing to do with Kercher's murder. I think she's a cold fish who's been expertly trained how to handle even the toughest reporter's questions and whose book was professionally written by someone else. Has she always been that frosty? I have no idea. There's a strong suggestion she seemed disinterested in the killing before she was arrested but four years behind foreign bars would leave most people pretty jaded.

However, I'm no longer sure she's guilty of murder. The evidence was so poorly handled and the prosecution so clearly inept if not criminally prejudiced, the Italian courts certainly did not meet the U.S. standard of "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt."  And, she's spent four years in an abysmal jail. Some convicted murderers in this country go free in far less time than that.

Were I a Roman, and she in the pit with the lions, I'd throw her a thumbs up.

Pines by Blake Crouch (A Review)

A Secret Service agent awakens and comes to realize he's either suffered a beating or been in a terrible accident. He remembers where he is and why eventually but, like walking up an incline that's constantly shifting, he's off balance and can never fully right himself. He can't contact his boss, his wife or anyone outside the town of Wayward Pines. And those within the community all seem a little odd, graduating to homicidal and then terrifying.

At least a dozen times during my reading of Pines I nearly gave up. It's not a relaxing journey and if you get annoyed by being thoroughly confused, you won't make it.

What kept me going was the realization that if I was having a weird trip, the main character, Ethan Burke, was going through three kinds of hell and it was fascinating to watch him cope.

This is pure action with a hard twist. Ethan is a resilient hero, perhaps a little more Superman than I'd prefer (eventually he begins to sound like Lee Child's Jack Reacher whose every punch has cataclysmic impact) but likable and, especially, sympathetic. I could relate to his struggle to comprehend what the hell was happening to him and why.

If you remember the iconic 1960's TV series The Prisoner, or even Twin Peaks in 1990, you'll be in familiar territory. Throw in some Planet of the Apes and you'll feel right at home.

Pines is the first book in the Wayward Pines series. The second, Wayward, was released this week. Now that I understand the author's concept, I'm curious to see where he takes it.

I gave this book a four out of five star rating on Amazon where the Kindle price is $4.99.