The Troubled Man, by Henning Mankel

Troubled, and troubling. This is apparently the last Kurt Wallander novel. No, he doesn't get killed.

Wallander's daughter decides to have a child with a man named Hans. Wallander meets Hans's parents, and observes that his father is worried about something.

Soon, the father disappears, and the mystery begins.

This is not only a tale of police work in Sweden, but  one of international intrigue, and a query into what any of us can really know about any other, even those very close to us.

Legacy of Ashes, The History of the CIA, by Tim Weiner

An audio book. While I was "reading" this book, the so-called Senate Torture Report became a major news item. That was unintentional; I read the book on the recommendation of a friend.

Legacy of Ashes is, among other things, a good review of American History since World War II. It is also a sobering look at just how dishonest, desperate, and corrupt the political leaders of this country have been in that period of time, and how willing they were to quickly abandon principle to accomplish their ends -- even though, so very often, the projects of the CIA failed miserably.

An alternative title for this book might have been Why They Hate Us.

As an American citizen, all I can say to the people of the rest of the world is, most of us have no control over these things. Our system has gotten away from us. It isn't exactly our fault, but then, I suppose, it is...

A review on the CIA's website.

A NY Times review.

An article about the CIA in The Guardian. A snippet: "Even the agency’s most successful mission – slowly bleeding out the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s by arming the mujahideen – paved the way for the worst terrorist attack on the US in its history."

The One Percent Doctrine, by Ron Suskind

Deep Inside America's Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11
Simon and Schuster, 2006. 367 pages.

OK, Americans. Required reading.

Think Dick Cheney's a little creepy?

This is a dispassionate analysis of where America's been going for the last six years. It is remarkably unbiased, and sticks to high standards of journalism, i.e. reporting as opposed to pontificating.

But you can't simply not draw some conclusions.

We haven't just become paranoid, we've discarded basic tenets of our system of government under the banner of fighting terrorism and Al Qaeda. Our latest President enjoys his second term in office with one of the lowest approval ratings ever given a US President. There is little or no doubt that he is at the very least guilty of perpetrating an enormous lie about the reason for the Iraq war, and yet he remains in office, and out of prison.

Read this well-written account of what our security services have been doing, and how public servants have been forced to either sacrifice their integrity or resign while the Cheney-Bush juggernaut rolls on.

The Broker, by John Grisham

In case you thought this was going to be a highbrow gig, I'll just set the tone. I just began reading The Broker, by John Grisham. This is a fairly new book, I think published this year or last. As a matter of fact, The Official John Grisham Websiteshows it as January 2005. I'm only in the first 40 or so pages but it's a good one.

Backman has been in Federal Prison on the Oklahoma prairie for 6 years, in solitary confinement, for what is at first a vaguely described crime. Once a powerful DC lawyer, Backman is now very nearly a broken man, lonely and wasting away. But the end of a weak President's term and the desires of a CIA official cause a sudden and unexpected pardon -- Backman is free, spirited away from the USA, to begin a new life in secret.

I love John Grisham. He's given me days of pleasure with his many great novels. My wife and I recently finished The Last Juror, his 2004 publication, and we both thoroughly enjoyed that novel of the South in the late 60s and 70s. I was particularly pleased with it as it reminded me of A Time to Kill, his first novel, which I often think might be his best, or one of his best.

I'll write more about The Broker,but I wanted to get this project under way.