Our Notebook
The Last of the Doughboys: The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War by Richard Rubin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Read the comments of the other reviews here; they’re all accurate. This is an incredible book, which combines personal history with the kind of quest – visiting the surviving World War I veterans – many of us would like to have gone on but never can seem to find the time, and superb writing.
Excellent.
The Pain Scale by Tyler Dilts
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
With the advent of self-published e-books, it’s very difficult to cull through the chaff to find a few good books or a good series, and there still isn’t any reliable book review source (except for Goodreads!).
IMO, Tyler Dilts clearly demonstrates the skills and technique of a best selling author. These police procedural novels involve a Long Beach homicide detective named Danny Beckett. I’ve now read two of them and am about to purchase the third and newest when it’s released in a couple of days; the first – A King of Infinite Space – was entertaining, but a little rough around the edges. In this second book, both the characters and the author have matured, and have created a novel satisfying on many levels.
I judge most current crime fiction by J.A. Jance, Sue Grafton and Michael Connelly; their novels are almost always well thought out, well crafted and plotted, and with the subplots resolved by the end of the book. They knows the geography and people they write about, and the pacing is steady – few of their books end up with a final chapter that rushes to the conclusion and gives you the inescapable suspicion that it was dictated to the word processor in order to meet a publishing deadline.
Not many current authors live up to their gold standard, but I think Dilts will. I’m glad he’s not rushing this series but taking his time (they are coming out every couple of years)