Fallout (2017) By Sara Paretsky

 

Count me in as one of the legions of fans of Chicago author Sara Paretsky and her fictional private detective V.I. Warshawski, protagonist of a series of nearly 2 dozen really good mystery books, and one so-so movie starring Kathleen Turner. Turner was okay, but Hollywood screenwriters mistakenly (and arrogantly) believed they could improve the storyline … they were wrong.   

I’m sure I’ve read at least a dozen of the mysteries, though not lately.  So, when I picked up Fallout at a bookfair recently, it was like a reunion … there was Lotty Herschel and Max Loewenthal, Sal the bartender, Bobby Mallory from the CPD, and of course Mr. Contreras and the dogs: Mitch and Peppy.  I hadn’t realized how much I missed them.

Almost all of Paretsky’s books are set in Chicago, not so with Fallout.  It starts in Chicago, but the mystery quickly moves on to Lawrence, Kansas and its surrounding farmland.  The case is a missing persons search – but like all of Vic’s cases, gets complicated fast.  Fallout expands into a complex plot of intertwined murders, family dynamics, anti-nuclear demonstrations, police cover-ups, espionage and chemical warfare. (At times I thought I was reading Vince Flynn). The climatic end of the book takes place in a missile silo in the middle of a sorghum field!

An aside: There is quite a bit about Cold War era missile bases in this book, which reminded me of the Nike base in Portage, Indiana where I grew up.  It was operational from 1956 to 1976.

One of the joys of reading a V.I. Warshawski mystery is that Paretsky knows her geography, she has Chicago down perfectly.  She surprisingly knows Lawrence pretty well too.  But then Paretsky was born in Iowa and grew up in Kansas, staying just long enough to get a B.A. from the University of Kansas).   

Recommendation:  You bet, and if you’ve ever read a V.I. Warshawky mystery, then I don’t have to explain why.

Peony (1948) By Pearl Buck

 

I purchased the novel Peony by Pearl Buck at a book fair this summer. Great book, at a phenomenal price -- $5 for a bag of books! I put it in my bag without even reading the dust jacket because I’ve read Buck before (The Good Earth and The Mother) and knew whatever it was about, it would be set in China, and it would be a good read.

What I was not expecting was an opening chapter describing in some detail a Passover Seder.  Peony, the title character, is a bondsmaid for a Jewish family living in K’aifeng in China circa 1850.  Chinese, she was brought into the household (bought) to be a playmate for the family’s young son, David. She has been a part of the family since childhood, though as a bondsmaid, she is not part of the family – a problematic distinction.

Until reading this book, and subsequent research, I was not aware a small Jewish community existed in China as far back as the 1600s. The underlying story is about how it peacefully co-existed with and eventually assimilates into the larger Chinese population. 

Buck tells this story on two levels, one with the character storyline of the book, the other with a fascinating ongoing discussion of comparative Confucian philosophy and Jewish theology between David’s father, Ezra ben Israel; and a Chinese merchant who is his father’s closest friend.

In the storyline, David is the key character. He is infatuated with the daughter of a major Chinese merchant.  Yet, his very orthodox mother wants him to marry the daughter of the Rabbi.  And Peony is secretly in love with David but cannot act on it because of her status as a bondsmaid.

A reoccurring theme in the novel concerns the personal debate within each of the Jewish characters concerning eventual return to the Promised Land vs. staying in China where they have safely lived all their lives. Significantly (or co-incidentally), Buck had the book published in 1948, the date of the re-establishment of the nation of Israel.

Recommendation:  Excellent.

Luce and His Empire (1975) By W. A. Swanberg

 

Luce … and His Empire.  That would be Henry Robinson Luce, born in China in 1898, the son of Presbyterian missionaries.  His achievements include being the Founder, Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated magazines.  No less than Winston Churchill publicly named him one of the most influential people in America. His name is synonymous with the period of history that came to be known as the American Century.

Author W. A. Swanberg’s extensive biography of Luce covers three major topics:  1) his invention of the weekly “news” magazine format used by Time, building it into a world-wide publishing giant; 2) his use of his publishing empire to try and make post-dynasty China both a Christian nation, and a democracy; and 3) his flagrant use of political propaganda, thinly disguised as objective news.  If one is concerned about the state of “news” in the world today, but especially in the United States, then note this: Luce’s legacy has been a “how-to” blueprint for Rupert Murdoch and his Fox News/News Corp. media empire.

Luce was Yale, Class of 1920, which comes with elitist baggage and perhaps one of if not the best alumni networking pedigrees in the world.  Out of Yale, Luce and friend/academic rival Briton Hadden, jointly founded Time magazine with initial investments coming from fellow alumni.  Their initial strategic plan was to not have correspondents, but to gather stories from daily newspapers and condense them, unattributed, in a weekly newsmagazine.  Their premise was that busy people did not have enough time available to read everything, yet they wanted to be informed on current events. 

This business plan quickly morphed into not only choosing what stories were important enough to be printed, but also telling readers why.  As the Time’s editors, they would pick what news they wished to highlight, and re-write it to fit their political beliefs.  The “cover of Time” quickly became the most important place in American politics. The “thankful” public subscribed in the millions – and the advertising dollars came rolling in.  Hadden lived long enough to see their joint business become a financial success but died long before it peaked under Luce’s sole control.

Luce took the company’s financial success, and built it into a publishing Empire, making him one of the richest and most influential men in the world.  He would marshal that power in support of his causes, ranging from supporting the corrupt Chiang Kai Shek in the Chinese civil war (because he was nominally a Christian and definitely an oligarch), to bashing Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, yet have a cordial relationship with John F. Kennedy (or more accurately, JFK’s father Joseph Kennedy).  Militantly anti-communist, Luce was the country’s chief advocate of a Cold War strategy.  Historically, the book spans everything from the Great Depression to the Vietnam “Conflict.”  Luce died in 1967.

Recommendation:  Yes. I found Luce and His Empire to be critical to any examination of Twentieth Century world history; not to mention the birth of today’s biased “journalism” format.