The Mission Song, by John leCarré

Audio book.

Excellent, of course, which is no surprise. "Salvo," Bruno Salvador is a British subject born in The Congo. He is a brilliant interpreter with a command of many African languages and dialects, as well as several European. In the usual leCarré fashion, he winds up recruited by British Intelligence, and does several jobs for "Mr. Anderson," interpreting sound interceptions and interviews from recordings.

The story gets into gear when Salvo is sent on an unusual mission, where he is to use an assumed name and identity, for people with whom he's not acquainted. This happens coincidentally with his discovery -- through an interpreting job -- of the love of his life, although he is a married man.

While this novel does not depart from leCarré's dark view of modern history and international affairs and the cold-hearted, cynical people who orchestrate them, its denouement is uncharacteristically uplifting, in a way still consistent with the writer's world, drawn from his own history and experiences.

Lincoln, by Gore Vidal

OK, the truth: I got tired of this book and abandoned it after reading about two-thirds of it.

I recall that I liked Gore Vidal when last I read his stuff, so maybe this was just my problem, or maybe this just wasn't his best book.

I recently heard a Lincoln biographer interviewed on NPR say that there have been something like 14,000 books written about Lincoln. Whew.

I grew tired of what seemed like stilted, unreal dialogue. I also became aware of a consistent use of segue to move from one scene to another. This is a legitimate and useful tool in storytelling, but it should (in my humble opinion) be transparent, or at least hardly noticeable, when used skillfully.

I did learn a few interesting things about Lincoln -- unfortunately in the context of fiction, so I'll have to do more research before I can truly "believe."