Alvah's Books

Pure Simple Cooking: Effortless Meals Every Day
By Diana Henry, photography by Jonathan Lovekin
Ten Speed Press, 2007
192 pages
$21.95 

Yes, the cookbook reviews are back and with one little treasure that we discovered at our local library: Diana Henry’s Pure Simple Cooking! 

The title says it all. There’s no doubt that you will love how easy the recipes are to prepare, how tasty they are, and how beautiful the finished meal looks.

After testing out four recipes, I knew that this book was a keeper and I had to get my very own. So off I went to Amazon, bought it and I’m expecting my copy to arrive in the mail any day now. In the meantime, I am hoarding the library’s copy.

What’s to like about Pure Simple Cooking? Is it Jonathan Lovekin’s photography? Oh yes, and everything I made looks just like his photographs! This is a great feat for me because whenever I make something from a recipe it tastes good, but it always lacks the pretty factor.

For those not familiar with Diana Henry she is the food columnist for Britain’s Sunday Telegraph and the author of five cookbooks. In addition she co-hosts a popular UK television show and was also named Cookery Writer of the Year in 2007. Not too shabby, eh?

Pure Simple Cooking consists of 13 chapters that cover chicken, chops, sausages, leg of lamb, fish, pasta, greens and herbs and a good variety of the seasonal fruits and vegetables.  For the most part, it appears that Ms. Henry’s palate is inspired by cuisines of the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Levant and that is fine here at chez moi since we do have a predilection to those types of recipes.

If you like sausage, specifically Spanish chorizo, then you’re in luck. Ms. Henry section on sausages has a handful of recipes that include this savory and smoky sausage. The one recipe that I we tried Spanish Sweet Pototato with Chorizo, Peppers and Fried Egg.  This was the perfect meal for a coldish night and because we had so much of it leftover, I discovered that it’s just as good for breakfast as it is for dinner.

Our actual first venture was an evening that we really wanted something light, but savory and healthy. I’m a big zucchini fan and so we decided that Zucchini with Ricotta, Mint and Basil would be the perfect dish. The mild flavor of the zucchini along with ricotta salata were perfectly combined along with a drizzle of olive oil and the juice of a lemon. Paired with some crusty bread the meal left you feeling more than satisfied. 

We’re big pasta eaters and so far we’ve repeated one dish: Trofie with Shrimp, Feta, Parsley and Lemon. Trofie is essentially gemilli—tight and thinner corkscrew pasta. The pairing of the shrimp and feta make a great combination and play off each other in a delightful way. There’s also enough garlic in the recipe to give it some bite, but it doesn’t overwhelm or upstage the feta’s flavor.

As someone with a notorious sweet tooth and a penchant for brûlée, I couldn’t resist the Summer Berry Brûlé. Easy as pie to make this dessert only required cream, Greek yogurt, berries and sugar. Combining the yogurt with the cream gave the dessert a wonderful consistency and cut down (a tad) the richness of the two ingredients. To get the sugary sheet that all brûlées share the only thing you need to do is to carmelize the sugar. One thing to note: make sure your broiler is very hot; if it isn’t you’ll have cream/yogurt soup.

As we wait for our copy to arrive, we’re already checking off what we want to try next. I’m already eyeing the Roast Lamb with Prosciutto and Garlic while my husband is making noises about Lamb Stuffed with Goat Cheese, Tomatoes, and Basil.

Tonight’s menu is the leftover Trofie, but maybe tomorrow’s dinner will be one of the lamb dishes.

Musical Chairs
By Jen Knox
All Things That Matter Press 2009
176 pages
$15.95

Reviewed by Randall Radic

Book reviews are strange things.  Supposedly, they are a light critique with a recommendation tacked on at the end.  Or not.  But let’s face it.  What they really are, is one writer (or wanna’ be writer, who is toiling away on a novel) judging the literary outpourings of another writer.  Which means book reviews are very subjective.  Of course, none of the parties involved ever admits to this subjectivity, because reviewers are – ostensibly – objective, dispassionate monitors who make a virtue of inscrutability.  Indeed, reviewers are ascetic, austere, and devout to an astonishing degree.

Right?  Right?!

The present reviewer admits to being random, contradictory, biased, and quite frequently unable to integrate a proliferation of information.  Which in common parlance means he will not like some books – no matter how wonderful they really are – for any number of reasons, most of which he couldn’t articulate even if his life depended on it.  Why?  Because it’s an emotional thing.  It’s not intellectual. 

He is trying to make a point, so bear with him. 

For example, he thoroughly enjoyed the present book – Musical Chairs, by Jen Knox.  But he can’t really tell you – the all-important reader – why.  So he reverts to his usual deductions.  It’s well-written, which means Jen Knox knows how to string words together into comprehensible sentences.  And her ‘voice’ is honest, unapologetic and – vital! – likeable.  In other words, she’s like the Apostle Peter in the Bible.  She’s a weak, frail, vulnerable human being, who makes lots of mistakes.  Which means – thank God – that she is human.  Which means that despite all her flaws and failures, she is not a fraud or a charlatan.  She’s not pretending to be someone who has their ‘shit’ together. 

Jen and most of her family are gloriously dysfunctional – just like most families.  And they have a tendency toward mental illness.  And – shockingly – she talks about it.  Which is what makes her story and her book so wonderful.  It’s downright refreshing to read a book that acknowledges what most people know is true, but are afraid to confess:  Most people are one brick short of a load.  Which is what makes them and life so interesting.

Which means that on the reviewer’s Read-O-Meter, which ranges from one star (yucky) to five stars (a wonderment) Musical Chairs scores a 4 and a half in the mini-astral department. 

Now, you might be asking yourself ‘what happened to the last half-a-star?’  Subjectivity is what happened.  The reviewer – who has already admitted to being impulsively biased – does not like books that lack presentation.  In other words, the publisher did a lackadaisical job in designing the book.  The font is wrong.  And there’s not enough white space on the pages.  Books without white space remind the reviewer of all those boring textbooks he read in college.  Yuck.  The paragraph and line spacing is tight, which hurts the reviewer’s eyes and makes his brain go shhhhzzzzzz.  And the borders – the side margins – are way too small.  Which makes the reviewer feel confined.

These complaints – of course – are subjective.  But when the reviewer picks up a book the first thing he does is look at the cover.  Then he turns the book over and looks at the back cover and the photo of the author.  Sometimes he reads the author’s bio, sometimes he doesn’t.  The next step is the make or break step.  He flips through the book – randomly.  If the presentation of the text on the page looks good – and meets his subjective standards – he will consider buying the book.  Otherwise, if it doesn’t, it’s bye bye baby bye bye. 

Musical Chairs failed the subjective test.  The only reason the reviewer read the book was because he promised to review it.  And now – after the fact – he’s glad he did.  It’s an excellent book and deserves to be read by oodles of people.  So don’t let the physical parameters of the book dissuade you.  Buy it!  You’ll like it.

Publishers take note.  Books are like cars.  A pleasing arrangement provides the reader with the luxury of emotional commitment.  In other words, the symmetry of a Ferrari is much more appealing than the toadstool configuration of a 1998 Saab.     

Sin: A History     
By Gary A. Anderson
Yale University Press 2009
272 pages
$30.00

Reviewed by Randall Radic

To say the least, the concept of sin is very interesting.  To some people – those called Christians – the subject of sin is vitally important.  Because they want to avoid it at all cost.  If they do, they get to go to Heaven.  If they don’t, they may end up in Hell.

When the reviewer was in seminary, he took a course called Hamartiology, which is a fancy theological term for ‘the study of sin.’  Unfortunately, it was not a hands-on course.  If it had been, the reviewer feels confident in saying he would have scored quite well.  No, the course was abstract and conceptual.  One of the abstractions studied was the Doctrine of Sin.  A small part of which is below.

A.  Definition and Classification.
     1.  Definition
           a.  Sin is a violation of the law or standards of God.  These divine standards are revealed in the Word of God.  Sin is also transgression against divine law.
           b.  The Westminster Catechism’s definition of sin:  “Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of any law of God given as a rule to a reasonable creature.”
          c.  Dr. L. S. Chafer’s definition of sin:  “Sin is that which proves unlike the character of God.”
          d.  The sinfulness of sin lies in the fact that it is against God even when the wrong we do is to others or ourselves.  The essence and law of God are perfectly harmonious.  Therefore, since God’s character and standards are perfect, anything that violates that has been defined in the Scripture as sin.

Pretty boring, huh?  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.   The text goes on and on for another 10 pages.
         
Thank God for Gary Anderson’s new book, which is titled simply Sin:  A History.  It is not boring and it is not conceptual.  It’s just the opposite – delightfully quirky and very imaginative.  For it shows how the idea of sin, which was originally conceived of as a physical onus, changed.  Sin changed from being a load that each person bore into a debt that required payment.  In other words, sin went from being a personal burden to being an economic burden.  And this change had a dramatic impact on the history of the Church and its definition of sin. 

Once sin’s transformation is understood, the reader begins to understand why penance came into being, why charity entered the picture, and why salvation – according to some – can be bought and paid for, as if available at the local 7-11 convenience store.           

Professor Anderson is not your typical seminary professor.  For he has taken a remarkably dry subject and injected it with a vital energy.  In his delightful book, sin leaves the stodgy world of abstraction and becomes a commercial system of great reality.  If you owe, then you pay.       

Sin is an easy read because Professor Anderson abandons the usual scholastic style of writing – which is more often than not as boring as heck – and writes with elan, using brilliant allusions and turns of phrase just like a popular novelist.

On the Astral body rating system, where one star means ‘skip it’ and five stars means ‘race out an buy it,’ Sinrecieves 5 stars.  In fact, not reading this book probably constitutes a sin.

In light of the recent news about Mr. Polanski’s arrest in Zurich, I thought I would run this review I wrote about a year ago for the Internet Review of Books:
Polanski: A Biography
by Christopher Sandford
387 pages
Palgrave Macmillan
$29.95

In a small and informal poll, I asked a group of writers to play a game of word association when they heard the name Roman Polanski. Although a few complimentary words were mentioned, the majority were linked, not surprisingly, to the two terrible and ugly events that occurred in Los Angeles so long ago. For many people, Polanski is the devil, no matter what they’ll find in Polanski: A Biography by Christopher Sandford, an honest and balanced account of the controversial filmmaker’s triumphs and tragedies.

There is no doubt that Polanski’s life is sometimes stranger than fiction, but readers who want the prurient details of Polanski’s tragedies or salacious gossip about his sexual peccadilloes will be disappointed that Sandford doesn’t deliver those goods.

Polanski opens at an early turning point in the filmmaker’s career: his departure from Poland to live and work in the West, specifically Paris. As he crossed the Polish border, he brought with him a print of his full-feature film, Knife in the Water, which had received mixed reviews in his native Poland—the state party secretary Wladyslaw Gomulka vividly expressed his reaction to the film by flinging an ashtray at the screen.

Whatever the Poles’ response to the film, it really wouldn’t matter. Thanks to a small import company, Kanawha, which bought the American distribution rights for the film. Knife in the Water enjoyed a cult status in arts clubs and on university campuses across the United States. But what eventually catapulted the film and Polanski to fame was its entry, by Kanawha, in the first New York Film Festival in 1963, and after a photo still of the film appeared on the cover of Time magazine. In an interview with Polanski, a New York Post writer said: “it [is] entirely possible that Polanski will be an unnaturally brilliant boy for the next thirty years until suddenly he will be decrepit. Meanwhile, what a life!”

The beauty of Polanski is it can be read out of sequence. For those who have had enough of the rehashing of the murders and the statutory rape case, these chapters can be set aside without missing a beat.

Film buffs will most likely be interested in the stories behind the camera, Polanski’s attention to detail, his obsessively numerous retakes (“Fandastic, fandastic! We go again.”), and his expertise in technical matters and overall capabilities in relation to filmmaking. As noted by the cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli, the cameraman on Sergio Leone’s The Good, Bad, and the Ugly, who also worked on Polanski’s productions of Bitter Moon and Death and the Maiden:

Polanski was absolutely the best technical director I’d known in fifty years in the job, including those old masters Malle and Fellini. They were good, but Roman was better. [Polanski] knew as much about cameras and lenses, which he could identify at a glance, as I did, and I frequently had the impression that he could have easily made the film with just himself, the three actors and maybe a wardrobe assistant.

This impression by Delli Colli is not off-base. Sandford writes that the perfectionist Polanski, when he was a student at the National Film School at Lodz, “… proved himself to be a gifted and industrious student, who came top of his year in photography exams, and second and third, respectively, in editing and sound.”

There are those who will argue that both Polanski’s achievements and tragedies are inseparable, some naming as an example the director’s version of Macbeth—his first film after Sharon Tate’s death. Sandford cites several American reviewers who make that same connection to the very violent film and Manson. However, as the author notes, the British critics reviewed the film on its own merits and not as a cathartic exercise by the director. Even Polanski observed, “When you tell the story of a guy who’s beheaded, you have to show how they cut off his head. If you don’t, it’s like telling a dirty joke and leaving out the punchline.”

There always will be unfortunate correlations between his films and the two events. Even Roy Jenson, the character actor in Chinatown, who acted opposite Polanski in his cameo commented, “Roman did it explicitly because of Sharon Tate. He wouldn’t let another actor handle a shiv if he could help it. No one else was ever going to play that part.” How true is that? Only Polanski knows. However, there is an interesting aside, which Sandford notes, in the closing credits of the film: Polanski’s role is listed as The Man with a Knife a possible wink to the audience alluding to his first film? Again, only Polanski knows.

Sandford relies on many of these tidbits from more than 200 interviews with actors, writers and other Polanski collaborators, as well as previously sealed court documents and magazine and broadcast interviews that the understandably media-shy director has granted over the years. And just as in the informal poll taken for this review, Sandford also discovered through these conversations the contrasting opinions people have of the director. Some think of him as “our greatest living director, but almost a saint in terms of his personal experience; while certain others take a notably different line, favoring words like ‘evil’ and ‘bastard’ among the even more colorful epithets.”

Polanski is not a deep psychological study of the director—that should be left to the psychoanalysts—but it does provide readers with a very comprehensive and fascinating account of a talented yet flawed man who can charm his audience as well as repel them.

[Editor's Note: This review was written for the September/October issue of ForeWord Magazine]

When Autumn Leaves: A Novel 
by Amy Foster
Overlook TP
304 pages
$14.95

When Autumn Leaves, the title of Amy Foster’s debut novel, refers not to Johnny Mercer’s song of lost love, but to the gentle and wise witch Autumn Avening, who has been notified of a promotion and has to select her successor from a list of thirteen names. It’s no easy task, for each person on that list holds a special power, which may or may not benefit the town. Autumn decides to hold a contest for an apprentice and choose her disciple.

This is the first book in a series about the town of Avening and its magical inhabitants. Foster introduces the main characters that readers can assume will be making their appearances in subsequent books with an expanded storyline. Each one has a whimsical quality that might be seen as personality quirks or traits in mere mortals; these qualities bring a unique twist to Foster’s story about the splendor and wonder of everyday life.

To read the rest of the review, please visit ForeWord Magazine

The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square
By Ned Sublette
Lawrence Hill Books 2008/2009
360 pages
$24.95

 Reviewed by Randall Radic

The World That Made New Orleans is a masterpiece of a book.  Ned Sublette wrote it.  From the press release that the publisher sent along with the book, the following facts are ascribed to Ned:  he is the author of a previous book called Cuba and Its Music, the co-founder of a record label called Qbadisc, he co-produced a public radio program called Afropop Worldwide, and he is a singer/songwriter.

In other words, Ned is very, very talented.  Intrigued, the reviewer watched and listened to one of Ned’s music-videos on YouTube.  Ned was performing ‘Ghostriders in the Sky.’  His voice was passionate as well as vivid.

What the press release fails to disclose is the elegance of Ned’s book, which is a sugary confection akin to pink cotton-candy, light and sweet, yet carrying remarkable charm and urgency.  The book is about the origin of the city of New Orleans and its delightful quirks.  In telling the story, Ned uses figures of speech to go beyond science, history and poetry to indicate the deepest reality of the city.  The technical term for what Ned does is called “metaphorical ontology,” which in simpler terms is “the WOW factor” that most historians strive for but miss.

For example, for a brief period Louisiana was a French penal colony.  Condemned prisoners were branded on the shoulder with a fleur-de-lis.  This brand meant the wearer was sentenced for life.  And get this:  the fleur-de-lis still appears on the New Orleans flag, which means it is either a co-incidence of great singularity or a wonderful example of respectful humor.

Another knockout example the book relates is the origin of the city’s name.  New Orleans was named for Philippe II, Duc d’Orleans, who for a while held the lofty title of Regent of France.  Philippe II was a gourmand, and an amateur composer who liked to party “like a Rock-star.”  So it should come as no surprise that he enjoyed spirited beverages and the company of pretty women.  Ned quotes Francine du Plessix Gray, who wrote of Philippe II saying, “The Regency was the most dissolute period in French history and might well vie with the late Roman Empire as the most debauched era of Western civilization.”

The World That Made New Orleans is full of such juicy stories.  The kind of thing where the reader goes “Wow!           

Ned begins each chapter with an appropriate epigram.  Together, these epigrams form a series of architectural fore-thoughts, which tell a distinct story about New Orleans and its world.  For example, in chapter 11, which is called The Eighteenth-Century Tango and relates the story of gumbo, Ned cleanses the reader’s palate with this epigram:

“but if he eats flour and okra he’s a true Congo” – Jesus Alfonso (of Los Munequitos de Mantanzas)

The chapter goes on to explain the ins-and-outs of gumbo, where it came from, how it’s made, so forth and so on.  It’s a pleasant chapter to loiter in.

 In fact, the whole book encourages loitering.  Why?  Because of the little touches, the little asides, which, for reasons mysterious and inscrutable, enhance the elegant pattern of the story.  In other words, Ned does not submit to the dreary treadmill of ‘writing history’ – that conspiracy of dullness.  Instead – thank God! – Ned allows his words to move to the emotion of the story’s music.  Or do the words generate the shape of the music?         

It doesn’t really matter, does it?  All that matters is this:  Ned Sublette has taken a wide range of events, which are only roughly amenable to classification, put them in hat, waved his magic wand, and pulled out a magical story about a marvelous city.       

Don’t make the mistake of putting this book on any ‘to-be-read list.’  Instead, buy it and read it right now.

The Neurology of Angels
By Krista Tibbs
Friction Publishing Company 2009
284 pages
$14.00

Reviewed by Randall Radic

The title of Krista Tibbs’ book hints at what’s to come.  Neurology of Angels?  Who says angels have a nervous system?  Surely someone somewhere does.  And just as surely someone else will say angels don’t have nervous systems.  Someone else, inevitably, will say angels don’t even exist.  So first, the question of the very existence of angelic beings must be resolved.  Once that’s done, then a discussion of venation may occur.  The situation is a mess because both objectivity and subjectivity enter into it.  Or as Woody Allen would say:  “Being right just pisses people off.  Why?  Because even though you’re right you’re still wrong, because nobody agrees with you.”      

The Neurology of Angels is a novel about the pharmaceutical industry.  The gist of the story is this:  a group of well-meaning people all want the same thing – to cure a deadly disease.  Only they can’t agree on the best and most efficient way to achieve their common goal.  Which means it is a heart-rending story, because people watch helplessly as their loved ones die. 

The main character’s name is Galen.  No, not Galen of Pergamum, who was a physician in ancient Rome and probably the greatest medical researcher in that period of history.  This Galen is Galen Douglas, who is also a medical researcher.  He’s trying to find a cure for a horrible disease called Transient Forebrain Ischemia (TFI), which recently took the life of his fiancée.  As the story opens, Galen discovers a drug that will cure TFI.  This is the point where the discussion surrounding the existence of angels comes into play.  Nothing is ever simple.

Before anyone can be cured, three great tasks akin to the Labors of Hercules must first take place.  Money has to be raised to develop the drug, clinical trials of the drug have to occur, and the regulatory guidelines of the FDA have to be satisfied.  As these tasks are undertaken, the personalities and lives of three families crash into one another.  This crash of lives gives the story its humanity, which is what makes the book interesting.  Each family wants to cure TFI and save lives.  Each family has its own agenda.  Each family believes their way is the right way.   

Krista Tibbs tells the story well.  She could have easily descended into concise, arid prose calculated to bore the reader to death.  She doesn’t.  Instead, she weaves a tender tale of persons who are frail and vulnerable – like most of humanity – yet who aspire to do what is right.  And – like most of humanity – their convictions create susceptibilities.  One of which is the difficulty of breaking the habits of a lifetime.  On the other hand, the story has all the necessary ingredients required to repair these susceptibilities:  love, kindness, faith, and joy.  Combining these virtues could provide an answer.

The author doesn’t pander to one any one of the clashing viewpoints in the story.  She does, however, make it clear that while the three great tasks of bringing a miracle drug to market occur people are dying.  They are dying because of three basic circumstances:  the exquisitely subtle civilization in which they live, the security provided by over-evaluation, and the fact that bureaucracies cannot conceive of any other recourse.

All that being said, it is not a depressing or sad book, offering no hope.  In fact, it is just the opposite.  It is a persistently optimistic book.  Which means it has a moral.  The moral to the story is this:  have faith, wait, and hope.  Which is what angels do, right?

Nothing is Strange with You
By James Jeffrey Paul
Xlibris Corporation
278 pages
$29.99

Reviewed by Randall Radic

October 2, 1930.  Gordon Stewart Northcott asked for a blindfold.  After receiving it, the floor opened beneath his feet and Northcott plunged down.  The rope around his neck brought his fall to an abrupt halt. Northcott died and justice was served.

Chilling.

There’s a curious field of suppressed energy about this book.  It’s the true account of a man named Gordon Stewart Northcott.  He was a real piece of work, as they say.  Exaggerated, quaint, and absurd are adjectives that come to mind when trying to describe him.  And of course, don’t forget insane, demented, crazy, deranged, and mad as a Hatter.

Northcott kidnapped his own nephew, because he needed help.  Northcott was a child molestor and a murderer.  He abducted little boys, violated them sexually and, usually, killed them.  Northcott forced his nephew, Sanford Clark, to help him procure his victims.  After Northcott was done with them, he forced Clark to help him bury them.  Sometimes they weren’t quite dead when they were buried.

Northcott’s father, George, knew what his son was up to.  But because he loved him, he didn’t try to stop it.  In fact, with an air of simplicity both charming and suspect, he almost encouraged the secretive work.  Northcott’s mother, whose name was Louise, doted on her little boy.  She had a commitment to him that could not be disrupted.  So she killed for him.  None of the three family members – George, Louise or son Gordon – could speak anything remotely resembling the truth.  They were all pathological liars.  

Written by James Jeffrey Paul, who put years of labor into researching his material, the story is told with in a coldly detached voice, which accentuates the spookiness of the tale.  No wonder Clint Eastwood took one small part of the story and made it into a fascinating movie.  The movie was called The Changeling and starred Angelina Jolie.  Only most people don’t know that the unseen, dark monster behind the events of the movie was Gordon Stewart Northcott.          

Included in the book are actual court transcripts of what was said, and by whom, at Northcott’s trial.  As one reads it, one comes face to face with Northcott’s brooding absorption with his secret ideas – the caprice of intrinsic deviancy.  Also included are the letters that Northcott wrote to his parents from his cell on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.  The letters are disturbing, formless, chaotic, devious.  It would appear Northcott had an obsession with complication as an end in itself.          

Nothing is Strange With You is a remarkable book.  Why?  Because it operates a priori – it attempts to infer the truth of murderous, horrifying events, directly from the nature or condition in the mind of the perpetrator of the events.  And does so successfully!  The success is this:  the perpetrator – Northcott – is presented as a passenger, a listless subhuman hominoid, who is too preoccupied in depravity to recognize his stage in dying.  And in the end, when the State of California executes him, all they are doing is confirming his death. 

This is a book that needed to be written.  This is a book that needs to be read.

Prophecy of Power
by Andrew Parker
Bedside Books/American Book Publishing 2009
242 pages. 
$22.00

Reviewed by Randall Radic 

The title of this new religious thriller sums it up:  a prophecy of power, potential and talent reside in the author, Andrew Parker.  All the elements of a rock ‘em sock ‘em bestseller are in his novel, Prophecy of Power. 

There’s a skeptical rabbi, who wonders if Judaism is indeed the one, true religion.  The rabbi, whose name is Jacob Droutman, begins comparing one religion with another, as he searches for the truth.  The quest leads him to a seminar on the Book of Revelation.  The seminar’s speaker – Dr. Renton – is a slick purveyor of the most irresistible type of religious snake oil – prophecy.

There’s a mysterious femme fatale, too.  She hands Jacob Droutman an envelope containing information about three missing students, who may or may not be dead.  Soon afterward, Droutman’s landlord is found murdered.  As the police homicide unit investigates, two CIA agents show up, informing the police that they are taking over the case “for reasons of national security.”  Suspicious of everything and everybody, the police decide to continue an unauthorized investigation. 

The story is now cooking with gas! 

Rabbi Droutman, pulled in ever deeper, finally goes to Israel to try and find the three missing students.  If he can find them, maybe he can discover their ‘secret.’  A secret so potent, world governments are willing to kill for it.

Now we are talking!  Prophecy of Power has every ingredient necessary for a thrill-a-minute ride.  Almost.

Parker writes well.  For example, his description of Lansky Lounge, a local bar where the good rabbi indulges in a daily health regimen is a doozy:  “Lansky Lounge was the Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky’s old boardroom and they kept his hideout dark and dangerous.”  And Parker’s ear for conversational sound-bytes is finely tuned.  There’s nothing phony or affected in the speech patterns of the characters.  In other words, the dialogue isn’t forced.  Rather it’s smooth and natural.

There are, however, a couple of glitches in the story.  For one, the story unfolds too fast.  It’s like taking a hit of crank and then watching Jason Statham – who is also high on crank – as he tries to keep his heart rate up in the action flick of the same name, Crank.  The overall effect is one of supreme twitchiness.  One scene jumps into another scene before the first scene is over.  Which means the reader is left breathless and wishing he was allowed to inhale before he was forced to exhale. 

For two, the story and the characters – which are definitely intriguing – lack development.  Which is directly connected to the first glitch of too much velocity.  Most readers want to watch the characters and the story evolve.  In Prophecy of Power, they explode.  Which means readers can’t enjoy the nuances and flaws of the people populating the story.  Nor can they relish the interactions that result because of all those human flaws.        

All in all, Prophecy of Power is a good book.  It has a zippy plot with lots of electrifying hanky-panky.  Who doesn’t like tales revolving around the Book of Revelation?  The Apostle John’s apocalypse has it all:  demons, angels, Second Advent, Rapture, Armageddon, Gog and Magog – and oodles of prophecy.  Combine all that with the writing talent of Andrew Parker and, well, it could be one hell of a story.

But it’s gotta be developed just a little bit more.  If that had taken place, then a good story would have become a kick-ass thriller.

Julie & Julia
by Julie Powell
Back Bay Books/Little Brown and Company, 2005
307 pages
$14.99

I was planning to post this review with my regular ones and keep it in my dry, third-person style, but since it does deal with food (and I am sucker for food memoirs) I thought I would it include it in the Sunday review.

I learned of Julie Powell and her Julie/Julia project when the book was first published in 2005 and  I was reminded of her endeavor when I saw the film crews in my Park Slope neighborhood one day. For those not familiar with the story, Julie Powell in a fit of ennui from her secretarial job decided to cook every recipe from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year’s time and record her adventures in the kitchen in a blog.

The reward to this personal challenge was national recognition, a book and movie deal, and a writing career–a dream come true for many bloggers and writers.

Because I like to cook and eat, I was very excited to read Powell’s book–thanks to Laura of the Book Tree for giving me the opportunity to win a copy.

Yet my enthusiasm soon soured after I read the first few pages, but I plodded on with the hope that Powell would get to what appealed to me–cooking and food. Although she knows how to turn a sentence, my interest wavered when she wrote at length about her childhood in Texas, the discovery of her parent’s copy of The Joy of Sex, the sex lives of her friends and so forth, these anecdotes held very little interest for me.

What I wanted to know was her relationship with food and cooking. Frankly, I was more interested in her bone marrow adventure rather than her job woes or her ovarian problems. When she stuck to cooking I kept reading, but when she meandered away from it, the book was set aside and I started reading something else.

Yet there’s more that didn’t appeal to me about the book and most of it had to do with Powell’s sarcasm and her over-the-top hysterics over cooking live lobsters, preparing aspics, and offal, her cutesy a la Rachel Ray acronym for Mastering the Art of French Cooking became tiring, and cussing out the Great Child. For the most part, much of the food that she writes about seems unappetizing, and I have to consider whether it’s my own personal bias against this Julia Child tome (her later cookbooks appeal to me more rather than this classic one.)

Although I wasn’t engaged with the fodder between the cooking, my kudos do go to Powell—an inexperienced cook—for attempting to master 524 complicated recipes in 365, and preparing meals late into the evening, night after night. That dogged determination to complete her project and not disappoint herself or her “bleaders” certainly merits a publishing and movie deal.