Hilda C. Landers Library & Archives

Although I have not warmed to Alexander McCall Smith’s other fiction series, I relish each new installment in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. In fact, after reading the first few books in the series out of order I purchased all of the books then on the market and read them in order, even rereading the ones I had already completed. I keep them all with the expectation that I’ll want to read them again some day.

The Double Comfort Safari Club follows McCall Smith’s usual framework of unfolding a handful of dilemmas for Precious Ramotswe to resolve with her usual blend of common sense and insight into human nature. Although Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni does not figure prominently in this installment, wicked Violet Sephotho is back and again up to no good. Grace Makutsi (and her talking shoes) finds herself facing a potentially-tragic development regarding her fiance Phuti Radiphuti. The title references a detective agency case where Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi find themselves a bit at odds with nature once they leave Gaborone and travel to a rugged area of Botswana to locate a safari guide.

In this volume, as with all the previous installments, McCall Smith intersperses his story lines with simple observations about the strengths and foibles of humanity and life in general. I suspect that if McCall Smith ever released a “Precious Ramotswe’s Guidebook for Life,” it would be an overnight best-seller.

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Mary Hall
Rating: Highly Recommended

Operation Wandering Soul takes place mostly in a Los Angeles hospital. It’s located in a poor section of the city, where most of the patients coming in have no money and were brought in due to injuries received while committing crimes. The main focus is on the pediatrics ward. The doctor is a man named Richard Kraft who takes care of a small group of patients that range from a child born without a face, to a girl who is losing her leg due to a mysterious disease, to a 12-year-old boy aging 3x faster than normal. Dr. Kraft is slowly becoming disenchanted in the world around him. He lived all over the world when he was a child and, to be honest, he hasn’t been happy since he moved to America.

In Dr. Kraft’s opinion, this is a world in which adults do more harm to children than good, including himself. It’s a world which would have been better if children were led away to live by themselves rather than living the lives they have now. Powers emphasizes this point by including moments in history and in stories in which adults harmed children and how they were better off without them. It starts off with the evacuation of all the children in London during WWII where a lot of the children were taking to “safe places”: temporary homes in which they were forced into labor, assaulted, and even beaten. A short chapter by chapter summary of Peter Pan was included to show how peaceful the world might be if there were no adults. He even included the Children’s Crusade and wrote about their unfortunate fate at the hands of the Turks.

The book climaxes when the children of the pediatrics ward want to put on a play. In this play, a pied piper leads all the children from a village away to a better place. All the children, that is, except three: the fast-aging child, the boy without a face, and the girl without a leg. The most emotional part is that all the children involved play themselves.

I recommend this book with reservations because you have to be willing to put effort into this book to understand and enjoy it. You can’t just fly right through without thinking about what you are reading or you will miss key points. I had a hard time finishing it because it was long and it was just overall difficult to read. I may give this book another try later on.

Availability: SMCM
Review Submitted by: Marissa Parlock
Rating: Recommended with Reservations                                                    

With the Old Breed is not only the best of all the war memoirs I’ve read this summer but it’s also the only one that I’ve ever read that belongs in the same league as William Manchester’s Goodbye Darkness. Sledge, who was a mortarman with the 1st Marine Division, is terribly graphic in portraying the reality of combat at Peleliu and Okinawa, where Marines fought in the midst of rotting maggot-infested corpses and atrocities were committed by both sides. But sugar-coating the true nature of those campaigns would have done a disservice to those who fought them.

With the Old Breed is on the required professional reading list issued by the Commandant of the Marine Corps. I was initially puzzled as to why the book, which is revered in the Corps, was on the section of the list recommended for senior enlisted personnel and captains rather than the section recommending books for junior enlisted and lieutenants. I think the answer is because of the book’s focus on leadership in the crucible of combat: those whom Sledge respected (particularly his company commander, Captain Andrew Haldane) and those whom he felt failed their Marines.

I’m intrigued by one observation that Sledge makes about Japanese strategy on Peleliu. He notes repeatedly that Peleliu was where the Japanese, who previously had tried to repel American landings at the waterline, changed their strategy and withdrew to interior defensive positions which forced American troops to carry the fight inland. However, earlier this summer I reviewed a book on the U.S. Army campaign at Biak, New Guinea, where the Japanese commander had withdrawn his troops to defensive positions in ridges and coral caves and turned what was expected to be a several-day campaign into one that lasted about three months. I’m curious as to whether Marine planners were aware of what the U.S. Army units had experienced on Biak only a few months earlier.

Sledge, who became a college professor after he left the Corps, writes well and his observations about humanity and combat seem as timely today as they were in 1944 or in 1981 when the book was first published. Once you finish With the Old Breed, you may also wish to read the sequel, China Marine, detailing the several months that Sledge spent in China disarming Japanese troops after the Japanese surrender. I read China Marine prior to reading With the Old Breed and I wish I had read them in the correct chronological sequence.

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Mary Hall
Rating: Highly Recommended                                                                         

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The scant number of memoirs and war novels based on the Korean War seems only to reinforce the belief that Korea was America’s “forgotten” war of the 20th century. Arguably there was no better candidate to write a combat novel of Korea than Brigadier General Ed Simmons, a noted military historian and author of numerous non-fiction books and articles about the Marine Corps. General Simmons, like Captain George Bayard, his protagonist in Dog Company Six, was a Marine infantry company commander who fought at both Inchon and Chosin Reservoir. That may be why this book reads so much like a memoir, despite some cosmetic changes in detail such as portraying Dog Company as a rifle company rather than a weapons company.

General Simmons does a superb job conveying small-unit combat operations in Korea and his Marine characters seem genuine. I was engrossed by his description of what it was like to fight in the bitter cold at Chosin Reservoir. The only flaw I found in the book was a distracting plot line involving Captain Bayard’s fiancé, a Senator’s daughter who complicates his commitment to the Marine Corps. Otherwise, this is an excellent combat novel.

For those curious about the title, “six” is the radio call sign for a company commander, in this case D (“Dog”) Company in a Marine infantry battalion.

Availability: SMCM
Review Submitted by: Mary Hall
Rating: Highly Recommended                                                                         

General Lucian Truscott Jr., the only American officer to command a regiment, a division, a corps, and an army in WWII, began his storied Army career as a cavalry officer during World War I. The Twilight of the U.S. Cavalry contains his recollections about life in the cavalry as it started to transition from horses to mechanized units. However, it is not a narrative of General Truscott’s life; indeed, one learns more about the General from the preface written by his son (himself a combat veteran of Korea and Vietnam) than from the General’s own book.

General Truscott describes individuals and events at his cavalry posts, which included forts in Hawaii and on the Texas-Mexico border. He writes of being stationed at Fort Myer during the veterans’ Bonus March on Washington in 1932 and his early interaction with George Patton (indeed, Truscott is featured as one of the major characters in the movie Patton). In addition to providing vivid descriptions of the riding demonstrations and polo matches, General Truscott also provides such obscure information as the method used to guard gold shipments as they were transferred from train to the U.S. Gold Depository at Fort Knox, KY. I especially enjoyed his lengthy chapter on Fort Leavenworth KS, where I lived as a child – it was quite a jolt to read a description of my own house.

For those interested in reading more about General Truscott, H. Paul Jeffer’s Command of Honor appears to be the only full-length biography available. But for those interested in learning about cavalry life between the wars, I highly recommend The Twilight of the U.S. Cavalry: Life in the Old Army, 1917-1942 by Lucian K. Truscott Jr.; edited and with a preface by Lucian K. Truscott III.

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Mary Hall
Rating: Highly                                                                                                     

This novel follows the lives of two fortune-less sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Elinor represents the times picture of sensibility: polite in all society and able to keep her emotions to herself when around others. Marianne, on the other hand, is headstrong, loves freely and openly and lets the entire world know it. The difference between the women, as Marianne says, is that Marianne conceals nothing and Elinor reveals nothing. As both women go through love and loss, Elinor must act as the social front for Marianne’s emotional roller-coaster, concealing her own pain and suffering. But, like all Austen novels, both women get what they truly need in the end.

Availability: SMCM
Review Submitted by: Lauren Grey
Rating: Recommended                                                                                      

Ted Mason reported to USS CALIFORNIA as a radioman in the U.S. Naval Reserve at a time (1940) when life on battleships, in their waning days as the backbone of the fleet, revolved around conducting drills, competing in athletic rivalries with other battleships, and keeping the ship in spit-and-polish condition. It’s rare to find a narrative focusing on the experiences of a junior petty officer in the pre-war Navy, but what makes Mason’s book so gripping is his description of events on board USS CALIFORNIA during the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor.

Assigned to the maintop during General Quarters, he had a bird’s eye view of the attack, which he survived by jumping overboard when the order was given to abandon ship; had his General Quarters station not been outside, he likely would have died, as did his best friend (another radioman) and the chief petty officer who mentored Mason (and who ultimately saved Mason’s life by assigning him to the mainmast). Although the book opens with a chapter on the 40 hours or so prior to the Japanese attack, Mason then takes the reader back in time to his Navy schools and sea duty experiences prior to December 1941, and does not return to the morning of the attack until end of the book. This was highly effective in holding the reader’s interest.

Battleship Sailor provides a valuable glimpse of life as a bluejacket in the west coast Navy in the months leading up to U.S. involvement in WWII. It should appeal not only to anyone interested in learning more about shipboard life in the days of teak decks but also to those who wish to read a first-hand account of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Mary Hall
Rating: Highly Recommended                                                                        

In The Hunt for Red October, a new Russian nuclear sub, the Red October, is attempting to defect to the United States during the Cold War. The United States wants to help her, but the Russians wants the sub destroyed before it can reach the hands of the “imperial enemy.” Jack Ryan, a CIA analyst gets dropped into the middle of all of this. The story constantly jumps back and forth between the subs, the White House, Moscow, and other places that are involved in the race to find the sub.

The novel is fast paced and Tom Clancy packs every chapter with overwhelming naval details. For me, the book offered a fascinating insight into the backward tangle of politics between the US and Russia during the Cold War.

Availability: SMCM
Review Submitted by: Lauren Grey
Rating: Recommended                                                                                      

Just by reading this title, you’re probably thinking “How could a coffin be in fashion?” We’re not talking about something used to hold dead bodies during burial. It’s actually referring to a person named Coffin, John Coffin specifically. Coffin’s a detective at Scotland Yard. And, although the latest baffling case isn’t his to solve (three vanished boys have been found murdered) he becomes directly and emotionally involved. In fact, the case just kind of falls into his lap as all three bodies have been found buried underneath the floors in his house, which he had just purchased from a woman named Rose Hilaire.

There are four main suspects in this case: Uncle Mosse, who was the previous owner of the house and died in it; Rose Hilaire, the woman who sold the house to Coffin and the owner of Belmodes (where a cupboard has been uncovered which was full of one of the victim’s blood) who also suffers from blackouts and has a vivid nightmare of seeing one of the boy’s being murdered; Steve Hilaire, son of Rose who mysteriously had the boots of Ephraim Humphreys (the latest boy to be murdered) in his gym bag; and Gabriel, a clothing designer working for Rose who would try just about anything to push Rose out of the way to own a factory like Belmodes. The case is full of twists and turns, in which nothing and no one is as they seem. The book keeps you guessing until the very end, which may surprise you.

Overall, I thought this book was enjoyable and easy to read. It was not the best mystery book I ever read, but it was a great way to pass the time.

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Marissa Parlock
Rating: Highly Recommended