The Princess of Las Vegas

The Princess of Las Vegas by Chris Bohjalian 400 pages

 

There is nothing more exciting than getting my hands on the latest Chris Bohjalian novel.  I love to sink down into my favorite chair and enter another compelling and entertaining world that this master storyteller creates. In this outing, “The Princess is fake, but the murders are real.”

 

The main character, Crissy Dowling, is a sensation on the Las Vegas stage. In a town full of impersonators, Crissy stands out as a Princess Diana look-alike, which draws British royals fans from, all over the world. However, it’s not “The Strip,” but the seedy portion of the strip where the casinos are down on their luck, looking rundown and out of date. But the tickets to shows are cheaper, so that’s some consolation.

 

By day, Crissy lounges in her private cabana, enjoys an Adderall and Valium cocktail, eats until her heart’s content, then purges so as not to gain weight.

 

Crissy’s life is the same, day after day. That is until Betsy, her estranged sister who could be her twin, blows into town with a newly adopted daughter and a rich boyfriend. Betsy has barely made her presence known when then bodies start to pile up.

 

First, it’s the two co-owners of the Buckingham Palace Casino where Crissy pretends to be a long-dead princess. Then things start to twist and turn. The mob (What’s a Las Vegas tale without the mob?) is trying to bring cryptocurrency to Vegas, but it is not without its price tags. Sometimes I felt as if I was in a James Bond novel.

 

A lot of the action takes place around cryptocurrency that I admit I don’t understand. Therefore, The Princess of Las Vegas receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

Now comes the hard part, waiting until March 2025 when Bohjalian’s next novel is due to be released. It sounds more my cup of tea: historical fiction set during the American Civil War.

 

 

 

Final Flight

Final Flight by Eric C. Anderson   284 pages

In March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpar International Airport.  Nothing unusual happened during takeoff. The pilots were experience. The flight was crowded with 227 passengers and 12 crew members taking a red-eye to Ho Chi Min City. A little less than one hour later, the plane disappeared from both Kuala Lumpar and Ho Chi Min City’s radars. As far as I know, neither the plane’s fuselage nor bodies has ever been located. There were no distress signals.  It just disappeared as if it never existed.

Great start for a thriller novel. Fast forward to 2023. And that’s where I got lost.  There were too many details, too many characters, too much going on that I couldn’t follow the plot.  But here’s the synopsis from the book jacket:

“Former Air Force maintenance officer Jason Montgomery and his erstwhile wrench-twister, Rob "Ski" Kalawski, have just landed the gig of their lives. China Air's aging fleet of Boeing 777s now desperately needs navigation hardware and software upgrades. It's a multimillion-dollar contract, and they're just the guys to do it. Too easy, right?

“Wrong. The Japanese firm supplying the gear knows the Chinese will reverse-engineer and steal it, so they've planted a deadly navigation bug to trigger at the first sign of theft. Jason's just the middleman, but he finds himself trapped between yakuza gangsters, a tattooed dragon-lady sales exec, and murderous Russian mobsters looking to make a profit on the missing airplanes and passengers. If these crazies don't start behaving like moral adults, people are going to die by the hundreds . . . and they do.”

I would like to blame my lack of “getting it” due to the major distraction of the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020, but I haven’t had any trouble focusing on the other 20 or so books I’ve finished since March. There were too many characters who were too hard to keep straight and too many details that caused my brain to glaze over.  By the end, I was just reading words.

“Final Flight” was nothing like I expected or hoped it would be.  Therefore “Final Flight” receives 1 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Son of a Bitch

Son of a Bitch by Jason B. Sheffield  382 pages

I enter a lot of book giveaways. It’s so much fun to get an email telling me I’ve won or that the book simply shows up in the mailbox.  This is one of the books. I was intrigued by the synopsis; it sounded a little different. The cover art didn’t do much for me, but a book about a bitter son defending his super bitch of a mother caught my attention.

Crater “The Dragon Lady” Scales is a Mafia lawyer, as tough as the wiseguys are. But now it’s her turn to sit in jail after being caught giving a client a blowjob while she was supposed to be conferring with him about his defense.

And speaking of defense, her defense lawyer is her estranged son, Benjamin Scales. Fifteen years ago they had a major falling out and been in contact in all that time.

I really, really, really wanted to like this book. But, and you knew this was coming, I just couldn’t care about the characters. From the opening scene, I was put-off by them. I put this book down several times, picked it up several more times, but one night I found that I didn’t’ care what happened to either Carter or Ben.  Therefore, Son of a Bitch receives 1 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Gangster Nation

Gangster Nation by Tod Goldberg              AudioBook:  11 hours, 25 min.  357 pages              

Great book – well written and like a good Scorsese crime film plot it has all the old school mob and new school g’s.    Lots of plot twists, guilty and innocent fatalities, hitmen, FBI, surveillance, Quantico spying technology, and some of the best dialogue.    Like the hitman in Grosse Pointe Blank you get to know Sal the main character and hitman extraordinaire what has happened in his life up to 9/11, much of his murderous past, his love for his family and come to know that while his career is extreme, other than that he is a pretty honorable, nice guy that would make good friend material.   Hey, we all have our flaws, doesn’t mean underneath all that we aren’t good folks.   Like with the Red Baron, he was known as the Bloody Red Baron for all his kills but in his biography he says he didn’t go out seeking to kill anyone, actually he preferred just to down their plane and hope his opponents were able to survive.   He said he didn’t go out to kill but to perform his job to the best of his ability.    Sal Cupertine is like that, too.   In many places you will be reminded of the characters in Pulp Fiction or Casino with Las Vegas seeming not just the background but playing another character in this book.  I love Sal’s cover, too.  Bringing the Rabbi element in is such a clever touch.    Tod Goldberg brings a lot to this book and I thoroughly enjoyed the story from beginning to end.   Another of those you don’t want to put it down till the end books.   I did not realize until today that this book is part of a series and this is the second book in the series.   Now, I must go back and read the first and continue to the next volume because there is a real cliffhanger ending to this one and I am pleased to know the story continues and if you read it, you will be, too.     Kudos for Tod Goldberg this is a hit in so many ways and on so many levels.

Art of Political Murder

The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? by Francisco Goldman, 357 pages

In April of 1998, the Recovery of Historical Memory Project, a group within the Archdiocese of Guatemala City's Office of Human Rights, published a massive work entitled Guatemala: Never Again, documenting decades of human rights abuses during the country's civil war.  Two days later, Bishop Juan Gerardi, the chief architect of the report, was found bludgeoned to death in his garage.  The police centered their investigation on a priest who shared the rectory with the bishop, speculating that the bishop had caught the priest in the midst of some sexual misdeeds.  Others theorized that Gerardi had run afoul of local gangs or uncovered evidence of embezzlement by prominent ecclesiastics.  The victim's own human rights investigators, meanwhile, conducted their own independent investigation, following leads that implicated powerful figures in the Guatemalan military.

Part history of Latin American oppression and corruption, and part true crime thriller, The Art of Political Murder is both informative and interesting.  Goldman spent much of his childhood in Guatemala, and his easy familiarity with the country, its language and customs grants the book an added layer of authenticity.  His judgement is, perhaps, a bit less sure - a serious problem when reporting on a case with minimal physical evidence, unreliable witnesses, and surrounded by rumor and gossip.  While Goldman seems certain of his conclusions, readers may find themselves more doubtful.

Little Blue Lies

Little Blue Lies by Chris Lynch, 217 pages

Oliver would be heartbroken when Junie Blue breaks up with him except for the fact that he refuses to accept it.  He continues to call her and show up at her house.  Her father, Ronny, who never liked him anyway, takes delight in tormenting him with tidbits but no real information about June.  June, one of the strongest characters I’ve ever seen in a book, doesn’t mind O hanging around, except when she does, and then she tells him to buzz off.  Because O is no fool, he goes away when he’s told.  O’s biggest problem is that he’s pretty sure that June still loves and needs him, and he also suspects that she may be in trouble but he isn’t sure how to help, especially when she’s pushing him away.  This is a good romance for teens, told from the perspective of O, so it might have some appeal to boys too.

In The Age Of Love And Chocolate

In The Age Of Love And Chocolate by Gabrielle Zevin      286 pages

Maybe it was because I was sorry to see the series end but when I finished this final book on the trilogy I was left feeling kind of disappointed.  I liked the story all of the way through and I felt like it ended well so I’m not sure what the problem was.  Maybe it was a little predictable or wrapped up too neatly, but that isn’t usually a problem for me.  The story is still all about Anya Ballanchine who is starting a new nightclub that will serve cacao, since it is legal to distribute for medicinal purpose, unlike chocolate, which is not legal at all.  Anya’s business partner, Mr. Delacroix, has cost her a boyfriend, Win, who is Delacroix’s son and doesn’t approve of the partnership.  Anya, in the meantime, is also the guardian of her younger sister, Natty.  Natty has begun acting out, as many teenagers do, and Anya, who is really still a teenager herself, doesn’t know what to do.  Not to mention the fact that her cousin-in-law, Sophie Bitter, who tried to kill her, is still at large.  Anya has a lot on her plate but problems do seem to have a way of working out for Anya, one way or another.  Despite how I felt after finishing, I think that most fans of the series will like this conclusion.  The series is definitely an interesting peek into one possible future of the world.