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Fiction In the grip of The Troubles POLICE AT THE STATION AND THEY DON’T LOOK FRIENDLY A Detective Sean Duffy Novel By Adrian McKinty 320 pp. Seventh Street Books Reviewed by Eric Petersen Irish crime novelist Adrian McKinty is back with another quirky thriller featuring his most popular character, Detective Inspector Sean Duffy. Previous entries in the series, Rain Dogs and Gun Street Girl , are also reviewed on this site. Belfast in the 1980s. Ireland is in the grip of The Troubles, the nearly 30-year conflict between Irish Nationalists seeking independence and Loyalists who support the British government. Catholic Nationalists and Protestant Loyalists are killing each other left and right. The Irish Republican Army (IRA), a militant Irish Nationalist group, is waging an escalating campaign of terrorism, including a bombing that nearly killed the hated British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. Amidst this chaos, Detective Inspector Sean Duffy of the Royal Ulster Const...

Fiction No sentimental blather A FRIEND OF MR. LINCOLN By Stephen Harrigan 411 pp. Alfred A. Knopf Reviewed by Marty Carlock It’s 1832, and Micajah Weatherby has just survived a brutal attack on his company by a band of Black Hawk warriors. He is assigned to lead a few soldiers who have come to their aid to the site of the battle to retrieve the bodies of the dead. One introduces himself: “I’m Abraham Lincoln.” He was not as freakishly remarkable in his appearance as it would later become fashionable to recall. Lincoln was exquisitely self-conscious, thought he was ugly, and later reckoned he had no choice but to promote himself as such. But it was his height and strength that marked him in Cage’s mind that day…and something else—the fact that he had introduced himself to Cage when none of the other men had bothered to do so, and the plaintive note of human comradeship in his eyes when Cage returned the handshake. Micajah – Cage – and Lincoln become friends when Lincoln relocates from ...

Fiction Everyone has a price AN UNSETTLING CRIME FOR SAMUEL CRADDOCK A Samuel Craddock Mystery Prequel By Terry Shames 270 pp. Seventh Street Books Reviewed by Eric Petersen Terry Shames is back with the sixth entry in her Samuel Craddock mystery series. The two previous books in the series, The Necessary Murder of Nonie Blake and A Deadly Affair at Bobtail Ridge , are also reviewed on this site. Grizzled lawman and widower Samuel Craddock has come out of retirement to once again serve as chief of police for Jarrett Creek, the small, sleepy South Texas border town where he lives. The town went broke a while back and can't afford to hire a new police chief, and he doesn't need the money. This entry in the series is a prequel that takes place in the late 1970s or early ’80s and opens with a young Craddock facing his first big case not long after being appointed Jarrett Creek’s new chief of police. Some folks in town believe that Samuel is too young for the job. Not your typical...

Polaris: The Chief Scientist's Recollections of the American North Pole Expedition, 1871-73 Translated and Edited by William Barr U. Calgary Press $44.95 (ebook free) Reviewed by Russell A. Potter Since it's already been the subject of quite a number of books -- Chauncey Loomis's Weird and Tragic Shores , not to mention dueling exposés by Bruce Henderson ( Fatal North ) and Richard Parry ( Trial by Ice ), one might be forgiven for thinking that there's not much new to be learned about the ill-fated Polaris expedition to the North Pole commanded by Charles Francis Hall in 1871. One would be wrong, of course. The expedition's doctor, Emil Bessels, published his own account of the voyage in Germany in 1879 under the title  Die Amerikanische Nordpol-Expedition , but until now, there has been no English translation of his memoir. Thankfully, William Barr has undertaken this invaluable project, as he did earlier with Heinrich Klutschak's account of the Schwatka expedi...

At the End of the World: A True Story of Murder in the Arctic By Lawrence Millman St. Martin's Press, 2017 Reviewed by Russell A. Potter The Arctic has been the theme of many a book – tales of  lost explorers, stories of oddball nothern "characters," and ecological parables of that bellwether northern zone. And yet some, though true in every particular to that portion of the earth which is their theme, have had a deep and profound resonance throughout a far wider swathe of our human experience. Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams , and John McPhee's Coming Into the Country come to mind. Lawrence Millman's At the End of the World is one of these. Millman's central story – that of a fit of religiously-inflected madness in which a number of Inuit on the remote Belcher Islands in Hudson Bay set upon their neighbors, whom they regarded as incarnations of  "Satan" –  is the main, but in a sense only partial theme of this book. Our solid-seeming world may en...

Fiction Allies to the bitter end LAST OF THE ANNAMESE 336 pp. Naval Institute Press By Tom Glenn Reviewed by William C. Crawford This enthralling read is an autobiographical novel about the fall of Vietnam to the Communists in 1975. Tom Glenn lived much of the backstory of the ignominious American pullout from the War. His vantage point was as a US intelligence operative. He skillfully overlays a gripping love triangle onto a vivid account of the final days of the American presence in Saigon. The book provides understated commentary on the bankrupt US foreign policy which first thrust our military forces into Southeast Asia. Then we abandoned thousands of our most loyal indigenous supporters. Annamese is a multifaceted, little-known term in the West having various connotations throughout Vietnam’s poignant history. It is alternately an historical name for the country; a French provincial designation; and in this work, a nod to the mythical sky goddess who was venerated by one prominent...