Nevada Books

Here are a few sentences from a short article that appeared Nov 21, 2004 in the Washington (DC) Post BOOKWORLD. It was this article that made me interested in this book.

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In the 1950s Walter Van Tilburg Clark seemed on his way to becoming a major American writer, both a popular and a critical success. His first and third novels, "The Ox-Bow Incident" and "The Track of the Cat", were made into movies. And one of his short stories, "The Wind and the Snow of Winter," an elegy for freewheeling days on the Western frontier that still has few equals, was an immediate classic. ... Today Clark, who died in 1971, is at least in print: all three novels, along with "The Watchful Gods and Other Stories", the collection in which "The Wind and the Snow of Winter" appears. But he has become an in-crowd kind of writer, championed by a Stendhalian happy few, such as Wallace Stegner, and otherwise getting little attention.

The author had the advantage of actually meeting people who had had direct dealings with Siegel -- they are probably all gone by now, I am sure.

So, we find that this account provides almost all the information that we have available about the man. The work is seminal in the sense that later books almost all use it as a source; true or not, you will gain little additional knowledge from other sources.

The book contains some interesting photos. The house in which he was killed in 1947 is still there in Beverly Hills, and looks the same.

Life in the Old West was perilous and uncertain. There were fortunes to be made in the gold fields and in the enterprises that followed the gold rush. Yet law enforcement was not well-established, and stagecoach and train robbers could wipe out a fortune as quickly as it was made. The Wells, Fargo Company needed a way to protect the great sums of money its coaches were responsible for delivering. It hired James B. Hume, a California lawman, to take charge of its detective bureau in 1873.

James Hume was a different breed from the stereotypical western lawman who winked at civil rights and abused authority. He was just as concerned that an innocent man be kept out of jail as he was that he find the guilty man. And he had an impressive record of catching the guilty man, the most famous being Black Bart, the "Po8" stage coach robber.

Pioneering methods of criminal investigation which are now used widely, James Hume dug pellets out of a dead stage horse in order to do a ballistics test, and he tracked down Black Bart with the laundry mark from his handkerchief. Determined but patient, he logged an impressive number of solved cases.

This biography by Richard Dillon reads as smoothly as a novel. He used James Hume's own letters and diaries, which are in the Wells, Fargo Museum in San Francisco, for his research as very little had been written about Hume's life. He not only relates the fascinating events of Hume's public life but mines his personality as well and finds a heroic and likable figure.

In a time when we could use more heroes, I enjoyed reading about a real-life hero who contributed to the colorful past of the West and still maintained his integrity.

Nevada politics, for all the billions of dollars the state's economy produces, operates at a small-town level. Nearly all the players know each other, tasty gossip travels fast, and people do shocking things. This book chronicles a series of events most Nevadans would find unbelievable if the story weren't so thoroughly and undeniably documented.
Donald Dickerson's untangling of this labyrinthine conspiracy makes clear how two attorneys managed to convince the state's biggest newspaper that two justices of the Nevada Supreme Court--one the most liberal, the other the most conservative--plotted together to conceal the supposed improprieties of District Court Judge Whitehead, and traces how a few well-placed lies--no matter how improbable on their face--snowballed and crushed the careers of three distinguished jurists. The stunning aspect of the story is the way in which state leaders such as the Attorney General, other justices and the Governor, who knew the truth had their own sins to conceal; some of them stood aside and allowed injustice to prevail; some eagerly and criminally joined the conspiracy--or may even have begun it.
Nevada is a small state, and its legal community is tiny. Since the conspiracy ran from 1993 throught 1996, most of the characters involved are alive, and the guilty and those who declined to speak up still live in that community with the victims.
If Dickerson's strength is his clarity in leading us through the labyrinth, his weakness is in allowing his anger to overheat his prose, though his anger is more than justified.
Dickerson wisely included in the book a CD, packed with the actual documents in the case. Anyone who doubts this incredible story can view the documents and read the testimony. The most astonishing document is the transcript of the testimony of a law partner of the married attorneys who launched the conspiracy by leaking documents apparently faxed to them from the Attorney General's office. The partner's testimony about the atmosphere in her law firm as her partners feverishly telephoned, secretly met co-conspirators, leaked information, examined the results in the newspapers each day and eventually tried to erase phone and fax records in a panic, is more compelling than any John Grisham novel, suggesting this is a story Hollywood should examine.

Henningsen's work is an intriguing study of this overlooked era in Spanish history. He walks the reader from the beginnings of the witch trials (very similar in formation to the more popularly studied Salem witch trials) through the intercession by the Spanish Inquisition and to Antonio Salzar de Frias' posting of the Edicts of Grace. This is a book of political and theological intrigue and a mystery thrown in for good measure. While reading it, I kept wondering what was going to happen next even though this is a history text and not a novel, though there is more than enough information and a strong enough plot within the history to fashion a novel. If you are a lover of history (especially historical texts), this is one book that is difficult to put down. Even if you are not a lover of history texts, the "plot" of this study is one that will probably keep you hooked until then end.

This book is a fast read, probably even if the reader does not have a background in the history of the Apaches versus the US Military. Stockel's empathy for the plight of the Chiricahua Apache tribe rings true to me, especially in the last chapters that describe her participation in a puberty ceremonial on the Mescalero reservation in New Mexico and a celebration marking the 75th year of the end of captivity for the Ft Sill, Ok, Apache tribe. The author begins with an historical overview of the hostilities between the Apache tribes and the US government, focusing on what is known of women's role in the tribe and retelling the stories of Lozen, sister of Victorio and famous warrior and shaman in her own right, among others. She outlines Apache creation myths and how their belief system manifested itself in tribal customs and daily life.

The most compelling part of the book contains her interviews with four Apache women that took place around 1989. One of the women, Mildren Imach Cleghorn, was a Chiricahua Apache woman born into captivity at Ft Sill for the first four years of her life and whose family elected to stay in Oklahoma rather than be sent to the Mescalero reservation in New Mexico. The other three are no less compelling, but perhaps more revealing of the struggle of these women of Apache blood to live in the mainstream world and on the reservation, raise their children to survive in it, and still maintain and honor their ancient traditions.

After reading this book, which quotes extensively from Eve Ball, Dan Thrapp, Opler, Debo, and other chroniclers of Apache primary history, I think readers will be excited to learn more about the Apache people. Ms. Stockel is not complimentary toward certain New Mexican politicians and the US government's handling of this conquered people, which she readily admits in her preface. What shines through this book is the honoring of these women whose struggles in the face of near annihilation can inspire all of us.

Prey is set mainly in the Nevada desert. At a research lab, an experiment with limited intelligence, nano technology, has gone wrong. Some of the nano particles have escaped into the atmosphere, and are starting to learn, adapt and multiply outside of the laboratory environment. As they become more intelligent, they start to become a threat to the scientists
inside their facility.

I found this book slow moving at first. We are introduced to the main character, Jack Forman, an unemployed IT expert, and his family. His wife works at the research lab, in the desert, but the first part of the book deals mainly with Jack, and the increasingly strange behaviour of his wife. I suppose this is good from the character building point of view.

Once, he visits the research lab, however, the book starts to get going, and the suspense starts to build, as they realise the enormity of the problem that they have on their hands, and the novel becomes a race against time, to destroy the nano particles. Overall, a fairly good read, with a few twists, reasonably good characterisation, but, also, very 'technical' in places.

Crichton does a fabulous job of portraying how our human ignorance can lead us down a path of no turning back. How much do we really know about how computer technology works? What explains the strange anomolies that appear in computer code? "Prey" shows us just one hypothetical example of what could happen. It also makes you wonder how long before science fiction turns into science.

First I want to apologize with the readers of this review because of my English knowledge. My native language is Spanish, so you may find some mistakes here. (It will be great if someone wants to send me a comment with the mistakes for me to know)

About the book: Is not to short, however all the action take place in a few days. Maybe that's why I felt like I was seeing a slow motion movie.

The book is written as if the author were the protagonist of the action and, more often than not, he gives you a few paragraph about some technical details, what is great to let you know that all that happens may be possible in the real world, but sometimes feels like out of place. For example the protagonist is in a dangerous situation, and in that moment he takes time to gives us a long thought about how the wild animals behave and the reasons for that behavior.

At the end all the credible theories finish with a revelation worth of a bad science fiction story.

I had to make a pause in the reading about the middle of the book (because I was boring) and then after a while, start reading again to know how everything ends.

Whoa! What a wild tale! Thank goodness it's only fiction. Still, I think the cautionary part of this narrative is that stuff like this happens all the time, with very few people knowing about it, and dire consequences affecting everyone can result. This is a very thought-provoking book. Crichton is at his finest as a storyteller.

This review pertains especially to the unabridged audio book version of Michael Crichton's PREY, read by George Wilson. (Robert Sean Leonard performs the abridged audio book.) I'll address first the reading, and then the story.

I have not really listened to a lot of books. I'd always wondered if listening to a book counts as having "read" it, giving that absurd question far more thought than is worth. One thing I've learned, though, is that despite not seeing the words on a page I retain far more of the story, even the author's language, than I had thought I would. I guess that that's because, as the words are read, one paints the scenes in one's mind, and it's the vivid memory of those scenes, a memory both visual and auditory, that sticks--like old-time radio.

So let me comment on the auditory experience. George Wilson's baritone voice does a nice job with the narrative itself. But is it common for a reader to try to give distinctive "voices" to the characters? In particular, should a male reader attempt to "put on" a female voice? And how about mimicking children: should an adult male reader of a book try to switch to children's voices? This method of book reading might work well with a particularly good actor, but Wilson's attempts fall short of the mark. When Wilson first started reading the words of an Asian-American character, Mae Chang, in a soft, high voice, I started to laugh. It just sounded alternately unintentionally seductive and silly. And forget the arguments between the kids; it's like listening to an adult mock the way children talk. Far better for Wilson just to have read the entire material in his own voice.

As for the novel itself, PREY follows the formula first set out by Michael Crichton in THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN and developed much further in JURASSIC PARK. The formula works quite well; it's like variations on an amusement park ride. What makes Crichton's novels particularly fun to read for someone who likes the "science" in "science fiction" is that Crichton weaves in a lot of factual science material into his narrative. At times, though, the way he weaves that material in can be borderline pedantic; what's worse is that it can destroy the flow of the story and diminish its effectiveness.

PREY is essentially JURASSIC PARK with swarming hybrid nanomachine-microorganisms in place of dinosaurs. (Wouldn't THE SWARMS have been a better title, incidentally?) Both stories involve technology that isn't too far removed from the present, and concern the havoc that results when human beings, full of hubris and highly fallible, attempt to play God. The basic problem with PREY's monsters is that they aren't a feature of popular culture. And swarming dust doesn't immediately strike one as very terrifying. Crichton does a great job, though, at making these swarms frightening. He builds the tension for a satisfying ride through what one would be forgiven for calling Nanoland Park.

There are problems with PREY. Beyond the expected plot holes that suspension of disbelief wants to hide, the occasional hackneyed plot twists and interactions between characters, and the sometimes embarrassingly bad dialogue, PREY takes far too long to get the story going. A good first third of the book takes place in a home in which some strange things happen; developments that seem far less mysterious to the reader than they are to the--supposedly smart--characters. The home scenes basically reveal that Julia Forman, the wife of the main character, Jack Forman, and the mother of two-going-on-three brats, is acting very strangely. Before the action even moves out to the desert--Nanoland Park--the reader already knows that Julia is "possessed" by the evil nanoparticles; we just don't know how or why. We are left to wonder about some of the other strange occurrences, while having to put up with arguments between the brats and, even worse, wimpy Jack's inability to do anything with any kind of conviction at all. Not caring about the characters is not where the reader wants to be when the action begins.

However that may be, once the Nanoland Park ride begins, the story becomes compelling and fun. (I knew I had got caught up in it when I hesitated to kiss my wife one evening! You'll have to read the story to understand.) It would make a good summer read, or, if you can put up with George Wilson's varying "voices," a good beach listen. What gives this pulp fiction a kind of redeeming value beyond entertainment is that Crichton occasionally also succeeds in making you ponder the world through the lens of science; for instance, he makes the point that our bodies in all their sum parts are essentially swarms of nanoparticles and that our mental activity is actually far more decentralized than what we might think.

This is a quick read. Typical true-crime pulp style. Nothing spectacular about the writing, but the story is indeed unique.

There are a lot of problems with the morals the book is trying to sell though.

Not a bad beach book, but don't expect to learn a whole lot from it.

Jason Moss did indeed turn into Gacy's "last victim". He eventually shot himself. Sad ending.
~RIP Jason Moss~6/06/06~

but why did he choose that date? 6 6 6.
Strange man, yet still tragic.

This book is certainly not the worst True Crime book I have ever read. However, it presents with some obvious problems. It is NOT a journey into the mind of serial killer as much as a journey into the mind of the author. Much of the book is about the author himself and his own thoughts. While the book is organized and understandable, the style of writing is rather juvenile and lacking in depth. That said, the prison visits Mr. Moss had with Gacy were interesting and somewhat frightening; it is difficult to believe that prison guards were willing to leave the author alone with Gacy for periods of time long enough to constitue danger for the author. However, this is what happened. The last scheduled visit with Gacy truly scared the author and he never returned.

I knew the author of this book, having met him when he applied to be a Big Brother in Las Vegas, Nevada. As a True Crime fan, I did not find his interest in serial killers disturbing or exceptional. However, it is a bit odd that he found it necessary to correspond with so many of the high profile serial killers. During a routine "home visit" to his apartment as part of the Big Brother screening and application process, Mr. Moss showed me his album of response letters from many other serial killers, includig Charles Manson and Richard Ramirez. (I enjoy True Crime, but this was a bit too close for comfort for me.) If my recollections are correct, he did serve as a good Big Brother to a little boy who needed a male mentor. He did not present as narcissistic... although the tone of his book is self aggrandizing. However, perhaps Mr. Moss was less stable than he appeared at times. Another reviewer states the author took his own life. Somehow, this does not completely surprise me.

The author apparently had alot of spare time to mess with serial killers. All poor Jeff Dahmer needed was to be loved.

Too bad John Wayne Gacy didn't make soup out of the author.

The worst of all the books on serial killers I've read.

I wanted to use no stars, but, I had to choose one :(

Don't waste your time. This book is more about Jason Moss and his egomania then it is about serial killers. It did not offer any new insight or information at all.

JFK, LBJ, MLK, KKK, CIA, FBI, Bobby, Hoffa, J.E. Hoover, Mafia, Vegas, 'Nam, Fidel, Sammy Davis Jr., Howard Hughes, Rock Hudson, hookers, drugs, and more are all woven through this roller coaster of a conspiracy tale that almost plausibly ties together all the crazy and tragic events that shaped American life in the 1960s and for decades after. The story begins in the moments following the assassination of JFK in Dallas and takes the reader on an almost dream-like journey that ends with Bobby's death in Los Angeles. The story told is masterful, if disturbing, and the characters are "insiders" working with the mob and shady elements within the Federal government to drive the bloody historical events of that period.

Ellroy uses an unusal writing style in this novel which relies on snippets or fragments of thought rather than full sentences to tell the story. Short two, three or four word bursts which describe the action in a way that is effective and gritty, though not necessarily smooth. The result is a read which is compelling, but not leisurely or relaxing. Despite the effort it takes to get through it at times, it is very hard to put down. When you are done, you can finally breathe a sigh of relief and head back to Amazon.com to see what else this guy has written!

Novels such as `The Black Dahlia', `L.A Confidential', `American Tabloid' and `White Jazz `along with his personal testimony `My Dark Places' have elevated ex-junkie drop-out James Elroy to a colossus of American literature and eminent man of letters. Or, as a currently interred bank robber acquaintance of mine recently put it, `His name should be mentioned in the same breath as Steinbeck.'
Elroy's world, littered as it is, with gangsters, pimps, hookers, movie stars, racists and politicians has basically mugged the retro-pulp of Chandler, Thompson and Spillane and run with his kill-gotten gains straight over the wild side and into the abyss of the American nightmare.

His latest `The Cold Six Thousand' is an epic journey; book-ended by the Kennedy assassinations of 63 and 68. Fact and fiction collide as father hating cop Wayne Tedrow Jnr finds himself embroiled in the JFK conspiracy and the vortex of world shaking tragedies that followed. The men that made modern America flicker before us like a scratched Super 8 of moral degeneracy and decay as Howard Hughes, J. Edgar Hoover, LBJ, The Klan, Jimmy Hoffa, The CIA, The Mob, The FBI, Fidel Castro, Sam Giancana, Sonny Liston, Martin Luther King and James Earl Ray lie, cheat, maim and kill, against an horrific tableaux on par with the hellish depictions of painter Hieronymus Bosch.

With the' The Cold Six Thousand' Elroy appears to have split his critics with its almost impenetrable staccato stylings and hipster-speak which would be more at home in the mouths of the 50's beatniks - certainly the delivery is at odds with the timbre of the books corporate gangsters and hoodlum politicians. It's almost as if Elroy was in such a hurry to tell the story that he barely had time to write it - an epileptic Jack Kerouac on an amphetamine comedown.

`The Cold Six Thousand' is, never-the-less, a terrifying thrill ride through an era which has branded world events ever since. Those five terrifying years in which the world was apparently swinging was, if this book is anything to go by, actually `Turning on, tuning in and dropping out' towards annihilation. Today's America was forged in the fires of that terrible half decade and I can hardly wait for Oliver Stone to commit it to celluloid so we can all rest easy and say... "It's only a film."

The Cold Six Thousand is a daringly direct take on the biggest events in America in the 1960s - the assassinations of President John F Kennedy, civil rights leader Martin Luther King and JFK's younger brother Senator Robert F Kennedy. All this set against the first few years of the US involvement in Vietnam, the cold war and the stand-off with Cuba, with considerable influence from such figureheads as FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes and the leading dons of the US Mafia.



Officially we know who killed JFK, MLK and RFK, but after reading this sprawling novel, sequel to the even better American Tabloid, you may wonder if the author's version of events is closer to the truth. All of the 'official' guilty parties feature, including Palestinian activist Sirhan Sirhan who I believe is still in a California jail some 40 years on....but did he pull the trigger of the gun that killed Bobby Kennedy? This novel doesn't specifically and unambiguously answer that question, but Ellroy is in no doubt at all as to who was behind the presidential assassination.



If taken literally (which is difficult not to do) it's impossible not to be disgusted at the extraordinary levels of corruption, racism and political manipulation that lay behind the face of the United States in the Swinging Sixties. The Ku Klux Klan were highly influential in CIA strategy, and although the political impetus behind the US involvement in Vietnam is somewhat glossed over (Linden B Johnson barely has a talking part, unlike JFK in American Tabloid), the CIA's heroin processing 'business' is documented in great detail, as one of the three primary characters Wayne Tedrow Junior (a former policeman) becomes primarily responsible for the labs set up in Vietnam and Laos for creating a massive 'White Horse' production line which has at least two key objectives - to establish a distribution network in Las Vegas among negroes only, and to finance 'The Cause' : collaboration with the Mafia in their attempts to overthrow Castro in Cuba and repossess their casinos which they had invested so much money into.



The other two lead characters, Ward Littell and Pete Bondurant, are carried over from American Tabloid, and for me one of the best features of both books is the description of how the lives and personalities of these two men are shaped and changed by their murderous activities. These men are cold-blooded killers with soft hearts - and in Bondurant's case a rather weak one.



In a way it's amazing that so much history has been squeezed into one riveting novel; if you know nothing about the truth on which it's based it still makes compelling reading, but if (like me) you are among the many who want to know what really happened back then, this story will probably satisfy on another level, and put the whole sordid series of events into some kind of perspective.



I cannot miss this opportunity to add that there appears to be a case for an allegation of history repeating itself, with the US invading Iraq under the one context while the world was/is convinced that the real motive was to get its hands on a valuable commodity. Back in the 1960s, it was a US invasion of another country cloaked under the paranoia of Communism (as opposed to terrorism today) while the commodity of choice back then was heroin. Ellroy finished The Cold Six Thousand only a year or so before the US started the Iraq War - now his words have a sense of prophetic familiarity.



Truly a must-read.

Vivid, vicious, hyper-masculine and uber-stylish, the novel begins on the day Kennedy is killed and follows three men tied up in his assassination through the next five years, culminating with the killings of RFK and MLK. Cameos by J. Edgar Hoover, Jimmy Hoffa, Sonny Liston, Howard Hughes and others speak to the depth of research Ellroy has put into play. The word "ambitious" isn't near strong enough for this one -- it's a classic, a novel that deserves study.

Ellroy's characters are always strong symbols, and between them, the three protagonists span the gamut of American hope and horror. I particularly found Ward Littell fascinating; a brilliant lawyer who works tirelessly for the both mob and Howard Hughes, yet mollifies his conscience by skimming from both to funnel anonymous donations to Martin Luther King.

Highly recommended.

Dig it: James heard the cheers. James wanted more. James wanted to be a "serious" writer. He birthed a book in his brain. The train to get him there.

There you have it: The "literary" style of The Cold Six Thousand. In a nutshell.

Armed with James' knowledge of American history, I could have written this novel. So much of the book follows the same pattern: Write a sentence with few words. Write a similar sentence. Write another similar sentence. Then flip it up with a different sentence. Variation for Six-Thousand in this regard meant occasionally using three sentences instead of four. And on and on it went.

To be fair, every now and then Ellroy did have nice turns of phrase ensconced within this repetition. But it seems he got so amused with his own style that he overloads the reader with an abundance of people and places and slang and events. The story becomes muddled in the process. I'm not one to admit that reading must be easy, but come on, at least it needs to be clear. Ellroy fails in this regard.

I respect Ellroy and know he can knock it out of the park, but I feel letdown with this book. Why did he seek the recognition of literary writers to begin with? Was he not happy with his reputation as one of the hippest and most commanding voices in crime fiction? Literary fiction, in my opinion, has always been easy to write. I should know: I used to crank out the artsy product myself, and to acclaim at that. Genre writing, on the other hand, is tough business. Why did Ellroy decide to jump from the Black Diamond of fiction to the Bunny Slope? If you want a satisfying read, don't buy this book.

I thoroughly disliked this book. The characters are one-dimensional and flat; the dialogue is excessively cliched, and the plot revolves around a sadistic serial killer and mind-altering drug experiments. The plot wouldn't have bothered me so much if the book was not marked as a "Christian" thriller. I can think of many ways that people can be introduced to the concepts of Christianity that do not involve reading (or writing) books this banal.

Skin was a gripping tale of five people who are inserted into a mind game and must find a way to convert the "evil" in it. The twist is that these people don't know they're in a game! Ted Dekker spins an incredible tale of suspense and endless twists. I throughly enjoyed the whole book! I do wish that there could have been less bloodshed and more lives spared, but it was wonderfully challenging to solve and a gripping read!

If you like Ted Dekker, then you will love this book. If you haven't read anything from Ted Dekker, don't start here because there are references to his other works which will just leave you confused.

As with most of Ted's books, this is about good vs evil. The ultimate idea behind the book is understanding the "ugliness" of all of mankind, not just the obvious evil in the world.

Ted is a Christian author and delivers a non-preachy representation of man's sinful nature in a dramatic and compelling way that will keep you reading.

This guy has an imagination like no other. Never know what will happen next. Wow

As with this purchase, all our purchases through Amazon have been seamless and prompt. The book itself catches you within the first two pages. Dekker is awesome, weaving his mysteries and keeping us involved with familiar characters --at least if you're a reader of Dekker. I highly recommend this book!