Look Closer by David Ellis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Simon is a law professor, the only child of two lawyers, both of whom are long dead as the story opens, his mother by suicide, his father murdered. Simon was once suspected of the murder, but that was in the distant past. Vicky, the woman in his life now, is the sister of Monica, also dead of suicide after being dragged into addiction by some scumball. Simon and Vicky met in a suicide survivors support group.

But soon we see Simon’s journal entries. It seems he has run into Lauren, a beautiful woman who once worked in his father’s law firm. She was Simon’s first crush and those amorous feelings seem to be coming back to him, but she is married to a rich older man. Vicky, meanwhile, professes not to love Simon now. She meets Christian, a conniving money manager who promises to make her fabulously rich once she gets her hands on Simon’s trust money, which is currently tied up and untouchable. Everybody seems to be scheming to cheat everyone else out of that trust money, and at least one of these characters ends up dead at some point.

That’s a great setup and it hooked me in from the beginning. I had to ration my reading so the book would last longer and I could enjoy the suspense for days. As you might expect, I used the word “seem” for a reason: because things, some of them anyway, are not as they seem. The book is full of twists and turns right to the end. You won’t know whom to root for, if anyone, as all the characters seem rather unsavory. There’s that word seem again. Withhold judgment; that’s all I can say.

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Extinction by Douglas Preston
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In a twist from Jurassic Park, the author has conjured a super-rich vacation enclave where de-extincted megafauna roam free in the Rocky Mountains. Visitors can see mammoths and other non-aggressive vegetarian species from eons past. A young couple vacationing there is murdered under mysterious circumstances. From there the tale becomes fanciful, fast-paced, and “shocking” (although you’d have to be pretty slow not to see that some sort of scientific skulduggery was going to be revealed). Overall it was interesting enough to keep me going and is worth a few stars, but the characters were all incredibly dislikable except for the heroes, a spunky female state agent and a crusty male local sheriff, who, of course, start out at odds and slowly become attracted to each other amid gunfights and explosions. The plot is eye-rolling all around, but if you like schlock sci-fi thrillers, you’ll enjoy this one. By the end I was just glad it was over.

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If you’ve read my blog regularly, you’ll be familiar with how this works. If not, the short version is that the location company What3Words.com has assigned three-word combos to every one meter square spot on earth and I have fun finding W3W combination that are prophetic, ironic, or simply entertaining. You can see more here and here, or just search W3W in the search box above.

I could have told you Matt Gaetz’s nomination would be sunk because attorney.general.gates lands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. So does Gates.withdraws.nomination.

Personal names are not used by W3W unless they happen to be valid words in one of the languages they support. Trump and Musk happen to be such valid words, so you can have a lot of fun with them. For example trumps.cabinet.selection is deep in Russia. An illegal spy?

The pressure is now on the U.S. Senate to serve as a guard rail to keep Trump from appointing unqualified people to key positions (Rudy Giuliani as FBI Director? One of the cop-killers from Jan. 6?) So I searched Senate chamber for any clue as to how well they would do. Sadly, the best I could find was that it is one of those prime.actors.areas.

Setting politics aside, I see that California is expecting an atmospheric.river.storm, so I decided to look up where it will hit. According to W3W that will center on West San Jose about 8 miles from my house. Yikes!

Lastly, on a whimsical note, I just read that some crypto billionaire bought that stupid “art” consisting of a banana duct taped to a wall for $6.2 million. Since duct is not a valid W3W word (confuses with ducked) I had to settle for duck.taped.banana, which is located in a federal intelligence facility in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. That’s not creepy!

I think high inflation is harmful for an economy and should be stopped or reduced if possible, But the reality that is often overlooked is that it actually helps many people. In particular, retirees. Many retirees have some form of pension or rely on Social Security. In my experience these all have cost of living adjustments (COLAs) every year. But the COLAs typically use the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to compute the increase. The CPI, in turn, includes housing as a major component, about 1/3. But most seniors do not have increased housing costs. Homeowners usually have paid off, or soon pay off, their mortgages by retirement so their costs go down. If not, the monthly payment is usually fixed, not increasing. Renters and homeowners both usually move to cheaper areas for retirement and often downsize from a full-size house to something smaller, e.g. a cottage, cabin, or trailer. Obviously, individual circumstances vary, but the bottom line is that disposable income for these folks goes up faster than their living costs during inflation.

How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain by Peter S. Goodman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Goodman has written a well-researched book explaining not only how the U.S. came to have the massive shortages around the time of the pandemic, but also why inflation is baked into our economy. The basic principles are set forth clearly: way too much dependence on China to manufacture our goods, adoption of just in time (JIT) manufacturing here in order to minimize inventory costs (and thus inventory) and pay higher dividends, consolidation of many vital sectors to monopoly or near-monopoly status (ocean shipping, longshoremen, meatpacking, computer chips), weak antitrust enforcement, etc. The details are fascinating, although it does get somewhat repetitive as the same factors play out again and again. The author makes a wise choice of explaining step-by-step how one small toy manufacturer in Mississippi, Glo, had to get its product manufactured in China and shipped to the U.S. in time to fulfill orders for the Christmas season during the worst of the Covid pandemic. It was harrowing and the reader is cheering for Glo in the face of a dearth of shipping containers, overcrowded ships, broken contracts, a failing U.S. rail system, and so on. I was tempted to rate the book a 4, but it’s a bit dry for the average reader. Still, I recommend it.

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Deer Season by Erin Flanagan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book a great deal, but find it hard to categorize. I think I found it on a list of “thrillers,” but it’s not the typical action-filled thriller. It’s not really a psychological thriller, either. The tension comes from the building suspense over Peggy, a flirty teenage girl who goes missing. The small farm town focuses their suspicions and hatred on a young retarded farmhand, Hal, who is both handsome and simple-minded. He has a crush on Peggy, despite the age difference. Is she dead? Did she run away? Hal went missing from his deer hunting party the same night Peggy went missing, and he came home with blood on his truck, deer blood he claims. Later, a private detective is hired to unravel it all, but it is not really a detective novel either, as he is a rather minor character.

The book shines as a beautifully-written depiction of small town farm life in Nebraska in the 1980s. Alma and Clyle, Hal’s employers, are the central characters. Alma loves Hal like a son, perhaps as a substitute for the children she could never have. She is fiercely protective of him as the town turns against him. Their marriage appears to be in trouble. Peggy’s 12-year-old brother Milo, another central character, goes through a coming of age process. The author absolutely nails it with respect to Milo and his obnoxious cousin George – the obsession with girls, the pimple popping, and the rest of it. The farm life is described in detail, but almost invisibly as the inevitable and endless chores interrupt scenes as mundanely as sunrise and sunset. I found myself imagining that existence, growing up there. The mystery deepens chapter by chapter as Peggy remains missing, but it is resolved in the end with a clever twist. The author, a professor of writing, is very talented. She has penned a beautiful description of a dreary but very believable setting and relatable characters. While it’s not a page-turner, it’s so realistic that it makes you feel like you live in a time warp in Gunthrum, Nebraska while you read.

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