Booked (and Printed): August 2024

 

Booked (and Printed) August 2024 While August’s temps were too hot, the days were noticeably shorter than those at summer’s height and a few even showed the promise of autumn. Heck, here and there leaves are shimmering red and gold. My reading volume was normal for August, but my eyes were sore all month and so much of my reading happened on Kindle to allow me to adjust the font size to “super old guy with angry peepers.” I read five books—two story collections, two novels, and a single nonfiction true crime—along with two individual short stories. You’ll notice, however, I’m only going to talk about one of those shorts because I don’t remember a thing about the other, besides the author’s name, and the magazine where I read it: a late-1980s Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM). Well, that issue went missing in what I think of as “The Case of the Missing EQMM” and it’s a true mystery because I’ve been looking for it for three weeks. Now, I’m wondering if a rascally poltergeist is playing tricks. But alas…onto that solitary story I wrote in my ledger and remember well. “THE SPY CAME D.O.A.,” by W. L. Fieldhouse, is a solid whodunit featuring Army CID investigator, Major Clifford Lansing, printed in the Feb. 1979 issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. When Lansing is called into investigate the murder of a colleague working undercover on a narcotics investigation in Nuremburg, Germany, he discovers a long line of criminality and treachery. Fieldhouse does an excellent job of shuffling suspects across the page and mixing action scenes into the narrative to keep things interesting. I guessed the culprit earlier than I should have, but that didn’t bother me a whit.

As for the books. Four of them are new—published in 2024—and the fifth is an old favorite. TIEBRAKER, by Jack M. Bickham (1989), is my version of comfort reading. It’s Bickham’s first mystery featuring aging professional tennis player and part-time spy, Brad Smith. In this one, Smith is sent to Yugoslavia to cover a new tournament, the Belgrade Open, for a tennis magazine. But his real assignment is to help the young tennis phenom, Danisa Lechova, defect to the United States. Tiebraker is a wild ride with a marvelous Cold War-era Eastern Bloc setting, a bunch of action, romance, and a brilliant dosing of tennis. I’ve read it five times (maybe more) and I’m sure I’ll read it again. You can read an old review I wrote for Tiebreaker here. Steve Hamilton’s AN HONORABLE ASSASSIN (2024), is a thriller that reads so fast it is easy to ignore the implausibility of the plot. It is Hamilton’s first solo job since 2018 and his first Nick Mason novel—there are three so far—since 2017. It should appeal to anyone who likes an adrenalin-rich and low-calorie thriller. Check out my full review of An Honorable Assassin here. LONG HAUL: HUNTING THE HIGHWAY SERIAL KILLERS, by Frank Figliuzzi (2024), is a scary but fascinating look at serial killers working America’s highways. It is centered around the FBI’s Highway Serial Killings initiative, which identifies and tracks these murders. After reading it, I’ll never look at truck stops with same innocence as I once did. My full review of Long Haul is here. Lee Child’s SAFE ENOUGH AND OTHER STORIES (2024), is a collection of 20 standalone tales without Jack Reacher anywhere in sight. The stories are thoughtful, exciting, mysterious, and…good! Check out my review of Safe Enough here. The final collection (and book) of the month, HERETIC 2: MORE STORIES, by Philip José Farmer (2024), is a cool collection of three of Farmer’s early stories—one novella and two shorts—from the 1950s. They, like pretty much everything Farmer wrote, question authority and religion in an entertaining and thought-provoking manner. I’ll have more to say about this one in the next few weeks. Last, and I suppose least, is Robert Littell’s A NASTY PIECE OF WORK (2013), because I gave up the fight a little more than halfway to the finish. I’ve enjoyed Littell’s spy fiction, including his extraordinary novel about the CIA, The Company (2002), but what appealed to me most about A Nasty Piece of Work—its P.I. status and New Mexico setting—wasn’t enough to overcome the longwinded narrative, including pages-long descriptions of women’s ankles and feet. I couldn’t pin down when the novel took place, either. It felt like it was written in the late-1980s—no cell phones, descriptions of an Afghanistan that seemed more Soviet Union-era than post-9/11—and then half-heartedly updated to give it a 21st Century feel. It didn’t work. On any level. Fin— Now on to next month…

Review: "Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers" by Frank Figliuzzi

 

Long Haul by Frank Figliuzzi Mariner Books, 2024   I don’t review much non-fiction here, or anywhere else, but a slim true crime, Long Haul by a former FBI Assistant Director, Frank Figliuzzi, grabbed me by the nose and kicked me in the gut. Long Haul is a different kind of true crime tale than I usually read because its focus is a broad view of a specific type of crime (murders around the U.S. highway system) with a specific type of victim (generally female sex workers) committed by men working in the trucking industry; i.e. long-haul truck drivers. While Figliuzzi discusses specific cases of truck driver murderers, such as John Robert Williams, the so-called “Big Rig Killer,” who confessed to killing dozens of women he picked up at truck stops, he primarily focuses on the FBI’s Highway Serial Killings (HSK) initiative while questioning—without making any conclusions—if the lonely isolation of the road creates murderous monsters or these monstrous men are drawn to the industry for some reason. According to the HSK, there have been at least 850 killings in the United States in the past few decades linked to long-haul truck drivers with more than 200 of those festering in the unsolved bin. Figliuzzi tackles the murders from three angles. The first is by gaining an understanding of the trucking industry. He interviews an old-time truck driver, now retired, with more than 40-years pushing rigs and tags along for a week with a current driver to see what the roads are like today. He provides the reader with a bug-spattered view of both the rewards and the problems of driving—isolation and a type of sedentary overwork coupled with low pay and the chaos of quotas, deadlines and uncontrollable factors like weather, traffic, and truck maintenance. Second, Figliuzzi interviews the FBI’s lead analyst in the HSK, and an expert with the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation, to get a handle on the breadth of the issue. What he discovers is the problem may be larger than the numbers indicate because the initiative relies on local law enforcement agencies to enter data in the FBI’s ViCAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program) database, but many don’t. And finally, Figliuzzi interviews social workers and survivors of truck stop human trafficking. These women’s stories are harrowing and sobering. Sobering to me because my father spent the better part of his working life in the trucking industry as a diesel mechanic and later, after retiring, as a driver for a large commercial outfit. He told stories that seemed funny to my much younger self. Like, as a mechanic, finding a woman stashed away in a truck’s sleeper against company rules. She was screaming high and my dad figured the driver was trying to hide his girlfriend, but maybe it was more sinister than that. Long Haul was like listening to my dad tell stories about long roads, angry customers, spoiled loads, infuriating break-downs, and all the strange things he encountered as both a driver and a mechanic. But while his antidotes were meant as entertainment, Long Haul’s perspective is darker. It is as fascinating and as hair-raising as anything I’ve ever read; and I tell you, I’ll never look at a truck stop the same way.

Click here to purchase the Kindle edition or here for the hardcover at Amazon.