Book Recommendations

[blues]

@Ed L

Back in the latish 70's when I was applying to NYPD, they were recruiting many new folks to do undercover ops against various political organizations. I know one of my buddies, a Puerto Rican from the Bronx, was selected to do a UC op on Puerto Rican separatist / terrorist groups at the time.

I ended up going federal, but I was recruited in a similar fashion by my first agency. They had me going in on traditional organized crime targets as well as a 1% motorcycle club operating in NYC and Long Island. When that assignment was completed I was sent to the academy a few months afterward.

It seems that NYPD and the feds were doing similar ops to target what they considered "organized" threats.

[Ed L]

@blues,

One thing that I didn't explain is in the case of the author, Richard Rosenthal, the NYPD had him infiltrate the Jewish Defense League before he attended the police academy. They did this because of his unique background, being Jewish and former Army intelligence, because of the immediacy, and because they felt if he went to the academy it might make him more traceable and recognizable. They also did not want him to pick up any cop-like behaviors.

According to the book, he took the NYPD test and did the standard interviews, then got invited to take additional interviews. At first the interviews were kinda generalized, then they got specific about him infiltrating the JDL. They had him set up with BOSSI, later known as Special Intelligence Services. He kept in contact with them by phone and also met with them at no name offices that they used as a front. This happened in 1969. I am 1/3 through the book. It's quite interesting how he joined the JDL in an outer borough group and worked his way to the main NY JDL group run by the founder, Rabbi Meir Kahane, and advanced into various positions of trust. There were some members who were openly suspicious of the author, but he managed to deflect it. If I had to come up with a motto for the JDL of that time to describe their level of competency it would be, "JDL: Baader-Meinhof we're not."

From: https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780965457880

"In 1969, just before he was to be sworn in as a New York City police officer, Rosenthal was recruited as an undercover agent for the force's ""intelligence gathering"" department. His job: infiltrate the Jewish Defense League, the militant group led by Rabbi Meir Kahane that had disrupted public hearings and assaulted some members of other extremist groups, and was seen to have the potential for more trouble. So Rosenthal told people he decided not to join the force, drove a cab as cover and--sans gun, badge or training--quickly became a regular at demonstrations protesting the Soviet Union's unwillingness to let Jews emigrate. His presence was opportune: the JDL was expanding its violent aims, gathering weapons and bomb-making materials."

[Stephanie B]

Hell and Back is the latest Longmire book. I'm a couple chapters into it; I don't call it a "mystery", for it isn't. In the acknowledgements at the beginning, the author says it is "a Western gothic-romance with tinges of horror."

I don't know if this book is going to pass the 100-page test (if a book doesn't grab me within that many pages (sometimes less if it's obviously sucky), I close it). But even two chapters in, I'll venture to say that this is not a standard Longmire book and if you like those, you may want to think hard about skipping this one.

I understand that authors may feel the urge to take their characters in different directions. But when it comes to best-selling series, that's risky. People who order up a steak dinner don't expect (and probably don't want) the taste of fish or tofu. I'll see how it goes, but this book may have the potential for blowing up the Longmire series like a German torpedo hitting a gasoline tanker.

So far, I'm thankful that I got it from the library.

[Pepper]

I really enjoyed it. It was a cover to cover in one sitting book for me. I have the time.

[blues]

I read the first handful of Longmire novels until my eyebrows started hurting from being raised for too many hours on end.

I made it through the TV series with much the same reaction...but my wife enjoyed it a lot so I went along for the ride.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Been getting into The Parker Series, written by John Connolly - strange series. It's well written and some of them are pretty good lone wolf detective investigates crimes along with a pair of assassin - antihero buddies who also look for bad guys.

But then there is a strange supernatural thread where entities intervene in the thriller story. Like when a Neo-nazi is being pursued and going to take out Parker and his daughter goes all Carrie on the bad guy. Also, Parker has a daughter murdered horribly but she pops up and intervenes from the behind.

Like them, he uses the language well. Deep South is a good Southern based mystery without the supernatural.

[feudist]

The story of the first "War on Crime"
Author Bryan Burroughs accesses millions of declassified FBI documents about the 1933-1934 "Dillinger Days" .
He follows all the episodes in a nearly minute by minute account of Dillinger, Nelson, Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, Karpis and the Barkers. As well as the flounderings of publicity addicted Melvin Purvis and the downright sinister machinations by jealous and vindictive Hoover. Current FBI leadership hasn't fallen far from the tree.
Well told and detailed.
Also recommended by Burroughs is Days of Rage, about the (actual) Domestic Terrorist movements in America during the 1960 and 1970s. This one will leave you shaking your head in disbelief at the MSMs complicity in memory holing the unbelievably vicious activities of many "Civil Rights icons" who remain highly influential as today's liberal darlings.

[Stephanie B]

So far, I'm thankful that I got it from the library.

A solid *meh*. Craig and James Lee Burke ought to do a Longmire-Robicheaux mashup, since they've both drifted into the Terrain of the Weird.

Unless you're a serious fan, then this one deserves a pass. Maybe he'll get back on tack for the next book. I don't know. but I'm done unless I hear otherwise.

[0ddl0t]

I just finished listening to Jack Carr's terminal list book series. Book 1 (The Terminal List) was okay, books 2-3 were better, book 4 started getting a little preachy/unnecessarily political, and book 5 (In The Blood) was a bit of a disappointment. The series is perfectly adequate revenge porn to have playing in the background as you do something else.

[LHS]

I just finished S. Craig Zahler's "Wraiths of the Broken Land"

I really enjoyed his first movie, "Bone Tomahawk", and when I discovered he was a novelist before he became a filmmaker, I knew I had to give his books a whirl. This book is supposedly the one he wanted to make into a film, but couldn't get enough funding to do it, so he used the basic plot as an inspiration for Bone Tomahawk. The basic plot is pretty simple: a family and their friends ride south into Mexico to rescue their womenfolk from sex slavery in a brothel. The violence is, as you might expect if you've seen Bone Tomahawk, intense (to put it mildly). I almost put it down after the first chapter, and again after the second. But I powered through and was rewarded with a very well-written book with complex characters, period dialogue, and a few interesting plot twists. It felt like a Cormac McCarthy book with the nihilism dialed back to a more tolerable level. It's certainly not for everyone, but I enjoyed it.

Also, he's not a gun guy, and kept talking about swapping tubular magazines in the characters' repeater rifles, which from the descriptions were either lever guns or Spencers (he kept talking about characters cycling the trigger guards to load new rounds). Maybe he was thinking about the tubular speed loaders that existed for Spencers, I don't know.