Remember
My City of Ruins
Bruce Springsteen
There’s a blood red circle on the cold dark ground
And the rain is falling down
The church door’s thrown open, I can hear the organ’s song
But the congregation’s gone
My city of ruins
My city of ruins
Now the sweet bells of mercy drift through the evening trees
Young men on the corner like scattered leaves
The boarded up windows, the empty streets
While my brother’s down on his knees
My city of ruins
My city of ruins
Come on rise up, come on rise up
Come on rise up, come on rise up
Come on rise up, come on rise up
Come on rise up
Now there’s tears on the pillow, darling, where we slept
And you took my heart when you left
Without your sweet kiss my soul is lost, my friend
Tell me how do I begin again
My city’s in ruins
My city’s in ruins
Now with these hands, with these hands
With these hands, with these hands
I pray, Lord (with these hands, with these hands)
I pray for the strength, Lord (with these hands, with these hands)
I pray for the faith, Lord (with these hands, with these hands)
I pray for your love, Lord (with these hands, with these hands)
I pray for the strength, Lord (with these hands, with these hands)
I pray for your love, Lord (with these hands, with these hands)
I pray for the faith, Lord (with these hands), alright (with these hands)
I pray for the strength, Lord (with these hands), come on (with these hands), come on
Come on rise up, come on rise up
Come on rise up, come on rise up
Come on rise up, come on rise up
Come on rise up, come on rise up
Come on rise up, come on rise up
Come on rise up
Summer reading suggestion: Cut Time
There is still enough summertime left for summer reading, and I have just the book in mind for those with an interest in the sweet science of boxing–or just in fine non-fiction. It’s called Cut Time: An Education at the Fights. You’ve never read anyone write about boxing like this. This is a masterpiece of deep research, acute observation and prodigious writing. It contains my favorite all-time description of the result of a punch: “It looked like he had been shot with a tranquilizer dart just as he stepped on a landmine.” And there is also a remarkable chapter that somehow succeeds in drawing a comparison between an aging boxer and an Italian grandmother. Who happens to be my grandmother. The author: a certain Carlo Rotella…
Phase Six, by Jim Shepard: The Maestro is Back
Talented writers predict the future. Not because they have supernatural powers, but because they have a deep understanding of history and the human condition. They see what’s going to happen because they know what’s going on. I’m not surprised that my friend Jim Shepard set out several years ago to write a novel about a pandemic that unleashes suffering, chaos and fear across the globe—and that it turned out to be prophetic. Phase Six has all the traits that set Jim’s work apart. Prodigious research that brings people and places alive—from a remote coastal settlement in Greenland to a top-security U.S. government lab in Montana–and makes complex science comprehensible. An ear for dialogue and an eye for detail. Profound empathy, especially for children, like the 11-year-old Patient Zero at the heart of the narrative. And a storytelling voice full of wisdom and wry humor. I was blown away by the insightful portrait of the main protagonists, two brave women who are disease detectives for the Centers for Disease Control; I recently did months of in-depth reporting about the CDC and got to know the institution and the people well. Phase Six reaffirms Jim Shepard as one of America’s finest living fiction writers. That’s one reason I call him the Maestro. The other is because he was my professor in college many years ago. He’s a big reason I became a writer, and he has my enduring admiration, affection and gratitude.
To The Point with Warren Olney
I have had the pleasure of being interviewed by Warren Olney, an esteemed veteran of public radio in Southern California, many times over the years. We have talked about my books, geopolitics, intelligence, law enforcement, migration and other topics at home and abroad. Our latest conversation on his To The Point podcast was about the globalization of rightwing terrorism.
A Christmas Memory
Past Presents of Christmas
Last Dance Should be Your Next
As the title suggests, Jeff Fleishman’s great new novel, Last Dance, unfolds like a dangerous and captivating dance through the sun-splashed underworld of Los Angeles. But it also feels like the jazz music that his cultured and solitary protagonist, LAPD homicide Detective Sam Carver, plays on the piano in the wee small hours of the morning. In Fleishman’s world, everyone’s always riffing: the cops, the criminals, the witnesses, the bystanders, the author himself. This book paints vivid and elegant word pictures of big ideas–art, love, death, nostalgia, obsession—and pleasingly precise details—the right way to make an espresso, the infernal glow of wildfires in the Southern California night. Jeff’s books are as much about mood, images, character and landscape as they are about the mystery itself. (In this case, the suspicious death and subsequent corpse-napping of a Russian ballerina that may or may not intersect with all kinds of geopolitical mayhem and skullduggery.) That’s why I like them. Here’s a great way to spend a pandemic holiday season: hunker down with the Sam Carver series, Last Dance and its predecessor, My Detective. My boy Fleishman knows what he’s doing.
In Memoriam: Salvatore G. Rotella
An American story.
Washington Post Magazine article: Rotella meets Texas troubadors
My brother Carlo is an American Studies professor at Boston College. In his case, that means he gets to prowl around out in America reporting and writing brilliant books and articles about boxing, literature, neighborhoods, television shows, and all manner of music and musicians. His latest piece in this Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine (edited by the great David Rowell, a formidable author himself) is an insightful and amusing portrait of Midland, a Texas country band that, as far as I can tell, is both retro and nouveau. I don’t have Carlo’s knowledge of or enthusiasm for country music, but I like this band! They remind me of both the Eagles and the Atlanta Rhythm Section. And they come off as hard-working, down-to-earth, high-powered artists with a badass style. Watch out for Midland and that Rotella kid. They are going places.
Mysteries of Italy
Mystery Readers Journal had an excellent idea: an edition dedicated to crime fiction set in Italy. From Sciascia to Camilleri to Donna Leon, rich and fertile terrain! And they graciously invited me to contribute a piece about Rip Crew, my latest novel, which takes place partly in the region around Naples and on the island of Lampedusa. It was great fun writing about arancini, ferry boats, my Italian crime-fighter friends, and the experience of my father’s Sicilian immigrant family as well as African migrants in Italy and the other odysseys I’ve chronicled in journalism and fiction. The edition is available online and the old-fashioned way too. Tante grazie, Mystery Readers Journal. Cari saluti and a very happy Fourth of July from an author whose family lived the American Dream…
These Women, by Ivy Pochoda
My friend Ivy Pochoda has many talents. A poetic voice, haunting characters, an understanding of human nature at its best and worst. She’s particularly good at weaving a narrative from the multiple perspectives of characters moving on the urban grid. Each story is like an elaborate dance, a multidimensional chess game. Ivy’s new novel, These Women, is a tour de force. This is crime fiction at one level, but it is much more. It’s about monsters and angels and ghosts, about grief and memory and obsession. I am reminded (with a few modifications) of Ross MacDonald’s line about Raymond Chandler: Ivy writes “like a slumming angel” and has a remarkable sense of “the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles” and the people who live and die on them.