Minette Walters - Disordered Minds

Book Description:

Bestseller Walters (Fox Evil, etc.) delivers another complex tale of murder and deception. In 1970, 20-year-old Howard Stamp is convicted of brutally killing his 57-year-old grandmother with a carving knife; three years later, he commits suicide in prison. In 2002, London anthropologist Jonathan Hughes includes the Stamp case in his book, Disordered Minds, which examines infamous miscarriages of justice. The mentally slow Stamp may have been coerced into confessing to the murder. George (Georgina) Gardener, an elderly councilor living in Stamp's hometown of Bournemouth, has come to believe in Stamp's innocence herself and asks Jonathan for help in clearing the young man's name. The two get off to a rocky start, but they form an uneasy alliance that gradually grows into a deep friendship. Watching this relationship develop is one of the novel's more entertaining aspects. Walters uses to good effect the multiple viewpoints of her numerous characters, as well as flashbacks, letters, newspaper articles and e-mails to reveal the truth behind the decades-old murder. However, as in life, there are no easy answers, and although the ending may disappoint some, it caps perfectly all that has come before it.

Bob Drogin - Curve Ball

Book Description:

In 1999, an Iraqi refugee, soon code-named Curveball, told German intelligence agents of his work on an ongoing Iraqi program that produced biological weapons in mobile laboratories. His claims electrified the CIA, which had little good intelligence about Saddam Hussein's regime and was fixated on the threat of Iraqi WMDs, which later became a centerpiece in the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq. It was only after American occupation forces failed to find any mobile germ-warfare labs—or other WMDs—that prewar warnings about Curveball's heavy drinking and mental instability, and the nagging gaps and contradictions in his story, were taken seriously. In this engrossing account, Los Angeles Times correspondent Drogin paints an intimate and revealing portrait of the workings and dysfunctions of the intelligence community. Hobbled by internal and external turf battles and hypnotized by pet theories, the CIA—including director George Tenet, whose reputation suffers another black eye here—ignored skeptics, the author contends, and fell in love with a dubious source who told the agency and the White House what they wanted to hear. Instead of connecting the dots, Drogin argues, the CIA and its allies made up the dots

Valerie Plame Wilson - Fair Game

Book Description:

On July 6, 2003, four months after the United States invaded Iraq, former ambassador Joseph Wilson's now historic op-ed, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," appeared in The New York Times. A week later, conservative pundit Robert Novak revealed in his newspaper column that Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was a CIA operative. The public disclosure of that secret information spurred a federal investigation and led to the trial and conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and the Wilsons' civil suit against top officials of the Bush administration. Much has been written about the "Valerie Plame" story, but Valerie herself has been silent, until now. Some of what has been reported about her has been frighteningly accurate, serving as a pungent reminder to the Wilsons that their lives are no longer private. And some has been completely false--distorted characterizations of Valerie and her husband and their shared integrity.
Valerie Wilson retired from the CIA in January 2006, and now, not only as a citizen but as a wife and mother, the daughter of an Air Force colonel, and the sister of a U.S. marine, she sets the record straight, providing an extraordinary account of her training and experiences, and answers many questions that have been asked about her covert status, her responsibilities, and her life. As readers will see, the CIA still deems much of the detail of Valerie's story to be classified. As a service to readers, an afterword by national security reporter Laura Rozen provides a context for Valerie's own story.
Fair Game is the historic and unvarnished account of the personal and international consequences of speaking truth to power.

Walter Moseley - Blonde Faith

Book Description:

Set in 1967, Mosley's brilliant 10th Easy Rawlins thriller finds the middle-aged Easy still fighting some of the same battles he fought in his first outing, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990), as an angry young WWII vet trying to make his home in postwar Los Angeles. His family has grown from none to many over the years, and now Easy is dealing with the loss of the love of his life, Bonnie, and his decision to make her leave him. Despite Easy's vulnerability and anguish, he's a staunch friend and a fierce protector of those he loves. Easy's two most dangerous friends, Raymond Mouse Alexander and Christmas Black, have both disappeared and both are being hunted. Easy must find them before those who want to destroy them do. Mosley knows his territory as intimately as a lover knows his beloved, and Easy's tortuous progression from man-child to man may have reached its climax in this searing and moving novel.

Gotham Bar and Grill

We went Gotham Bar and Grll this weekend after a long hiatus (over 15 years for me!). Alfred Portale had pioneered the concept of tall. "architectural" presentations of food. I thought it was too gimmicky and never went back.

However, we were meeting Scott and Jory late Sunday night after they returned from San Francisco and I remembered they had a very nice bar and East 12th Street is convenient to both of us.

The bar is along one wall of this long restaurant. While we were waiting, we enjoyed a Gin Gimlet and some bar 'treats'--wonderful tiny oysters and an order of 'Grilled Octopus' with roasted cherry tomatoes and chick peas. It was as good as any Octopus I have had anywhere - delicate but with good "mouth feel". Chris's 'Raw Oysters' served with onions and vinegar were just like in Paris.

After Scott and Jory arrived we continued with our 'second' starters. I had the excellent 'Yellowfin Tuna Tartare' and Chris had the 'Baby Organic Mixed Green Salad" with Sherry and olive oil. Scott enjoyed the same grilled octopus and Jory opted for the Gotham soup of the day which was a creamy cauliflower. For our main course we both had the 'Heritage Pork' on spinach with a puree of fava beans and plums. We eat a lot of pork. In most restaurants I find they do a better job than with beef (the exception being Sparks and Peter Luger). The chicken on Jory's plate looked great and Scott had a serving of Duck with was perfectly done. We acoompanied the meal with a nice Australian grenache.

Overall, a very pleasant meal. We'll be back.

Gotham Bar and Grill

12 East 12th Street

212-620-4020

Jason Goodwin

Book Description:

Goodwin, the author of a well-received history of the Ottoman Empire, Lords of the Horizons (1999), makes a welcome shift to fiction with this impressive first of a new mystery series set in the empire's declining decades. In 1836, though the corrupt elite troops known as the Janissaries were crushed 10 years earlier, there are ominous signs that their influence still persists in the twisted alleys and secret places of Istanbul. A series of crimes, including the barbaric murders of several soldiers and the theft of some precious jewels, leads eunuch Yashim Togalu to delve into the past in an effort to separate legend from truth. With special access to all areas of the sultan's royal court, Yashim uses his network of contacts to try to solve the crimes. The author, no surprise, does an excellent job of evoking his chosen locale. While his sleuth's character may be less developed than some readers might wish, no doubt Yashim will emerge as a more rounded figure in future entries of what one hopes will be a long-running series.

Minette Walters - The Ice House

Book Description:

Ten years ago, Phoebe Maybury's hateful husband David disappeared from Streech Grange after his wife caught him in bed with their traumatized daughter Jane. Now a naked, unidentifiable corpse has been discovered in the icehouse on the Grange, and Inspectors Walsh and McLoughlin have to decide whose it is, whether he was murdered, and who killed him. The cozy British setup is countered by an unremitting ferocity of tone, as Walsh--who planted the story years ago that Phoebe killed her husband--and McLoughlin slug it out with Phoebe and her aggressively lesbian companions, interior designer Diana Goode and magazine writer Anne Cattrell. For good measure, McLoughlin, stung by Anne's accurate taunts that he's fallen for her, also tangles with unblushing liar Maisie Thompson, whose husband has done a bunk (could that corpse be his?); with his long-unfaithful wife; with the village queer- bashers; and finally with Walsh himself. Unholy passions seethe inches beneath a proper surface: a brutal, literate debut--especially welcome to fans of Ruth Rendell

Minette Walters - The Devil's Feather

Book Description:

British author Walters's harrowing 12th psychological chiller spotlights violent suffering and hard-won triumph for Connie Burns, a 36-year-old Reuters war correspondent who crosses a sadistic mercenary alternately identified as John Harwood, Kenneth McConnell and Keith MacKenzie. When she finds MacKenzie training Iraqi policemen in Baghdad in 2004, she links him to serial killings in Sierra Leone two years earlier. An enraged MacKenzie kidnaps, tortures, rapes and releases Connie, who is then too traumatized to coherently divulge details of her abduction. She retreats to a country house in Dorset, where she puzzles over the troubled past of the house ("a place of anguish") and hesitantly befriends her neighbors, the handsome Dr. Peter Coleman and Jess Derbyshire, a reclusive young woman who helps Connie heal from her ordeal. While she gradually recovers, she also lives with the surety that MacKenzie will come after her again. Walters (Disordered Minds) delivers an intense, engrossingly structured tour de force about survival and "the secret of freedom, courage."

Jack Goldsmith - The Terror Presidency

Book Description:

A central player's account of the clash between the rule of law and the necessity of defending America.Jack Goldsmith's duty as head of the Office of Legal Counsel was to advise President Bush what he could and could not do...legally. Goldsmith took the job in October 2003 and began to review the work of his predecessors. Their opinions were the legal framework governing the conduct of the military and intelligence agencies in the war on terror, and he found many—especially those regulating the treatment and interrogation of prisoners—that were deeply flawed.Goldsmith is a conservative lawyer who understands the imperative of averting another 9/11. But his unflinching insistence that we abide by the law put him on a collision course with powerful figures in the administration. Goldsmith's fascinating analysis of parallel legal crises in the Lincoln and Roosevelt administrations shows why Bush's apparent indifference to human rights has damaged his presidency and, perhaps, his standing in history. 8 pages of photographs

Alan Kramer - Dynamics of Destruction

Book Description:

On 26 August 1914 the world-famous university library in the Belgian town of Louvain was looted and destroyed by German troops. The international community reacted in horror - 'Holocaust at Louvain' proclaimed the Daily Mail - and the behaviour of the Germans at Louvain came to be seen as the beginning of a different style of war, without the rules that had governed military conflict up to that point - a more total war, in which enemy civilians and their entire culture were now 'legitimate' targets. Yet the destruction at Louvain was simply one symbolic moment in a wider wave of cultural destruction and mass killing that swept Europe in the era of the First World War. Using a wide range of examples and eye-witness accounts from across Europe at this time, award-winning historian Alan Kramer paints a picture of an entire continent plunging into a chilling new world of mass mobilization, total warfare, and the celebration of nationalist or ethnic violence - often directed expressly at the enemy's civilian population.