The Burning Room, by Michael Connelly

Connelly keeps writing Bosch novels, and I keep reading them. This one is pushing pretty close to the "could this be the last Bosch?" question, but it doesn't have to be.

Bosch teams with a young female partner to crack a cold case where a mariachi musician dies from a ten-year-old gunshot wound, and in the process, takes on a second investigation into an arson that occurred many years before.

Completely satisfying.

Truth Like the Sun, by Jim Lynch

This book is set in both 1962 and 2001. Roger Morgan is an important promoter of the Seattle World's Fair, the expo of 1962, the "Century 21" extravaganza that left its footprint on Seattle, a mark that may still be seen in many places, but none so obvious as the Space Needle, which has come to be the icon of Seattle.

Washington Post Review

New York Times Review

This is also about a young PI reporter, Helen Gulanos, in 2001, who takes on the story of Morgan and the corrupt network of illegal gambling businesses, real-estate traders, and law enforcement with whom he seems to have been involved during his ruthless promotion of the Expo, as well as the subsequent boom in Seattle as the I5 freeway was completed, changing the layout of the city and value of properties.

Many colorful fictional characters are in this story in both eras. Exactly who they represent would be an interesting study, but I doubt that anyone has the desire to fight the lawsuits--not to mention other consequences--that would result from an attempt to publish such a study.

The reviews are lukewarm, but I found this book impossible to put down, and read it in about a day.

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.