Miscellaneous
Freedomland - Richard Price ($15.00/$1.00, copyright 1998, 655 pages, Trade Paperback)
I'm a big fan of Price's work. In fact, I spoke about his novel "The Wanderers" a couple of months ago. A white woman, Brenda Martin, stumbles into an inner-city emergency room and announces that she has just been carjacked by a black man and her young son was asleep in the back seat. Detective Lorenzo Council - who grew up in the Housing Project that's the scene of the crime - is assigned the case. Council jumps right in to the search but he has his doubts about Brenda's story. Then a reporter gets involved and sensationalizes the whole situation causing some serious tension between the Black Inner City and the next door White Suburb and all this takes place within 72 hours. This book is big and I have to admit that I expected to hit some padding but Price really does a great job of moving it along. His characters ring true and he keeps the suspense going until the end. I enjoyed it.The Rhinemann Exchange - Robert Ludlum ($1.95/$.50, copyright 1974, 446 pages, Paperback)
I first came across Ludlum's work in the late '60's/early '70's and this is one of my favorites. During World War 2, the U.S. and Germany make a back-door deal to exchange industrial diamonds for a design for a new bombing element. The swap is to take place in Buenos Aires and Agent David Spaulding is assigned to the swap. The thing is, he only knows about getting the bomb part until a third party tips him off about the other side of the deal. He takes it on himself to right what he sees is wrong. Ludlum keeps the action moving at a brisk pace. He does a great job describing the locale and his characters are well defined. I enjoyed it.
That's it for this month.
I still have a couple of books stacked up in the Living Room from that Book Sale and I just got 3 more in the mail from one of the Discount sites I use.
Spring is finally here so enjoy it and ....
Keep reading.
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