Copyright 2019 by Columbus Rose Ltd. Published by Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group, New York.

David Baldacci is a prolific author. I have read and reported here on 13 of his books. I have probably read a few more that I didn’t report on here. But he has probably written more than 50 novels in all, so I still have a few to go. And I will keep reading his books because they are damn good.

One Good Deed is the first of one of his shorter series – just 3 books, as of now, in the series featuring Aloysius Archer, an ex-con and World War II infantryman. This book is set in 1949 in Poca City, a dusty prairie town somewhere near – but not in – Texas. Maybe Oklahoma? Doesn’t matter. What matters is that it is a town which has suffered 6 years of drought, has a pig slaugherhouse that is about the only place where an ex-con can get a job, has a guy named Hank Pittleman who owns the slaughterhouse, the bank, the hotel and just about the entire town and a rancher named Lucas Tuttle who owed Pittleman $5000 and who put up a 1947 Cadillac as collateral. The town also has a very attractive parole officer, Ernestine Crabtree, and an equally attractive daughter of Tutlle, Jackie, who has become Pittleman’s “chattel.”

There are a few other characters who get introduced along the way – another ex-con who is willing to murder for a buck, a state cop who gets involved when people start dying, Pittleman’s wife and several of the hired help at both Pittleman’s mansion and Tuttle’s ranch. It is a rich set of characters and some pretty interesting settings, too, including the Cat’s Meow, Poca City’s main watering hole and yet another of Pittleman’s businesses. That is where Archer first meets Pittleman and Jackie. Pittleman hires Archer to collect the debt from Tuttle. As Archer soon discovers, that isn’t going to be easy because Tuttle’s condition for repaying the debt is the return of his daughter – and she refuses to return. It is also complicated by Tuttle burning the Cadillac, making recovery of the collateral impossible. So Archer is faced with the possibility that he will have to go to work in the slaugherhouse to earn money to keep his hotel room and to repay the $40 advanced to him by Pittleman. He eventually does go to work there, but only for a short time and only after sleeping with Jackie, taking up temporary residence in Ernestine’s house and being suspected of murdering Pittleman who turns up dead in his room just down the hall from Archer’s the night he beds Jackie.

It certainly looks like Archer will be headed back to prison, possibly to hang, except that the detective, Shaw, believes that Archer is innocent and that Archer has the instincts to become a detective. They team up to solve the murder of Pittleman and several others that follow.

I initially wasn’t eager to read this book as I much prefer contemporary stories to period pieces like this one. But, as always, Baldacci charmed me and completely drew me in to this complex story and these fascinating characters.

I am a bit puzzled by the title, though. What was the “one good deed?” That was lost on me.

8 out of 10.

Copyright 2010 by Vince Floyd. Published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon and Schuster, Inc, New York.

I am not sure when or where I got this book – some exchange library somewhere – but I was lucky to find the first book in a long (25 books) series featuring Mitch Rapp, the “American assassin.” I will probably read more books in this series because I enjoyed this one very much. Rapp is an interesting guy – a natural-born assassin – in the mold of Jack Reacher and John Puller. These guys are all larger-than-life and share an ability to triumph when faced with overwhelming odds and survive life-threatening situations. Complete fantasy, of course, but so what? They make for good adventure reading.

In this book Mitch Rapp is recruited for a super-secret project to develop American assassins that can be deployed to deal with situations that defy diplomatic solution. Unlike the other 6 men in the program, Mitch has no military training. But he does have martial arts training and soon proves that he can handle challenges from the other candidates and the instructor himself.

His first assignment, after he completed his training, was the assassination of an international arms dealer in Istanbul, Turkey. He arrives first and is ordered to wait for two others – his instructor and another neophyte assassin. But Mitch sees an opportunity and takes it, killing the dealer while he is walking his dog. Mitch escapes without detection and the news of the assassination creates a stir in the international community – who did it? Speculation included Russia and Islamic groups as well as the Americans. But no one knew with certainty.

Except for his superiors who were split between outrage for ignoring orders and admiration for completing the job so quickly and efficiently.

The admiration wins out and he is given a second assignment – the assassination of a Swiss banker who controls funds for terrorist groups. That is a team job and is executed successfully, leaving the wife and his dogs unharmed. But they manage to obtain the information needed to access the bank accounts and drain them of over $40 million. How the terrorist groups react to the loss of the money and how the Russians get involved is the rest of the book.

Very interesting character, very well written. I will look for #2 in the series.

9 out of 10.

Copyright 2023 by David Benjamin. Published by Last Kid Books, Madison WI.

Yes, I know… two Benjamin books in a row. Totally luck of the draw. I keep a list of the books in my “to be read” pile and pick from that list randomly. Just happened to get two Benjamins in a row.

This one, unlike the previous one, is a novel. Two of its characters – journalists Steve Knight and Mie Nishamura – appeared previously in Black Dragon. Two other main characters – Mireille, a waitress, and Cavendish, an author – are new. The other main characters are Cavendish’s fictional creations. I guess I should also include the numerous Paris bistros as characters as they figure prominently.

I really liked the literary structure of this book. Steve and Mie, while having a drink in Le Petit St-Benoit, a small bistro, observe the interaction between a lovely waitress (Mireille) and a sad patron (Cavendish). They are strangers but Steve and Mie love to invent stories for people they observe. Initially they invent a “dying physicist” persona for the sad guy and the waitress is merely helping him enjoy his final days. But their imaginary lives evolve. Eventually the waitress becomes “Princess Anna” who has fallen from a high royal position and is slowly regaining her foothold in humanity by waiting tables. The story, in their minds, evolves as Steve and Mie see the couple several more times in other bistros.

Meanwhile, we, the readers, are introduced to the real couple. Mireille is in love with a violent, abusive boyfriend but simply can’t pull away. Cavendish is a famous author of one great book but is two years into a literary drought. But as Cavendish learns more about Mireille’s tragic love life and her violent boyfriend, inspiration strikes and he begins a new novel about – you guessed it – a beautiful waitress with a violent, abusive boyfriend. But this story is set a hundred years earlier, in the era of the apaches – Parisian gangs. The title of his new novel is Apache Dance.

Soon the lives of the two real couples, along with the imaginary lives of the third couple as they evolve in the incipient chapters of Apache Dance, become intertwined, all while Steve and Mie visit a long list of Parisian bistros.

There is a lot of French terminology (and some Japanese terminology too) in this book, but Benjamin has helpfully provided a glossary of French terms, along with a thumbnail sketch of each of the (mostly) real bistros that appear in the book.

The intertwining of three couples, along with the delectable descriptions of the bistros and their fare, was captivating. This is a book that should be used as a textbook in a college course on how to write.

One complaint: Benjamin is not particularly adept at describing violence. Some of the violent scenes were, to me, jumbled and hard to envision. But the rest of the prose was absolutely superb. The illustrations, by his wife Junko, were also charming.

8 out of 10.

Copyright 2025 by David Benjamin. Published by Last Kid Books, Madison WI.

This is the 14th David Benjamin book that I have reviewed. And while it is true that he is one of my oldest and best friends, I would not read 14 books by anyone if I didn’t enjoy them. He is a very good writer.

One of his specialties is the “screed” – a short (about 1,000 words) essay. He publishes one screed almost every week. You can find them all – over 600 of them – here. This is his third book containing collections of his best screeds, the others being Almost Killed by a Train of Thought (2019) and Christmas in a Jugular Vein (2024).

Reading one of these collections of screeds is entertaining but makes me marvel at the breadth of Benjamin’s interests and the depth of his thoughts. He has a way of looking at something that makes me look at it differently (example: who is the “+” in “LGBTQ+”?). In this book he categorizes the topic. Here is the list of topic categories, most common category first:

• Satire – 12 (I include here the 3 “Bienfang” essays, which is a particular kind of satire)
• Memory – 11
• Paris – 8
• Language – 6
• Culture – 4
• Technology – 4
• Civics – 3
• Journalism – 3
• Movies – 3
• Covid – 2
• Guns – 2
• Travel – 2
• America – 1
• Death – 1
• Faith – 1
• Gender – 1
• Horror – 1
• Olympics – 1
• Polemic – 1

He is nothing if not eclectic. Many of his essays are autobiographical (I am mentioned by name in two of the “Memory” essays and can attest that the events he mentions really happened). The “Death” essay is about his wife’s mother who survived the bombing of Hiroshima to die at 93. Some are touching. Many are thought-provoking. All are worth the few minutes it takes to read the essay.

9 out of 10.