The Spy I Used to Love

When Tom Clancy's first novel The Hunt for Red October first burst upon the literacy scene, I stayed up all night reading it.  Year after year, I devoured his subsequent novels and followed the careers of the fictional characters Jack Ryan, John Clark and Diego Chavez.After Tom Clancy's passing last year, Mark Greaney continued the Jack Ryan series with the next generation of spies in the Ryan family.  While Jack Ryan Support and Defend, published this year, has all the action, technology, and government duplicity of a Ton Clancy novel,  I still miss Jack Ryan.  I know it is a current trend to keep pushing after an author has passed on, but it doesn't always work.  I miss the old Jack Ryan.  I miss the USSR - the enemy we loved to hate and I really miss a simpler world order.

MccEwan - The Children Act

I love courtroom drama. It is a holdover from my years of working in the courthouse in Virginia.  Best-selling author Ian McEwan  (Sweet Tooth, Atonment) has created another moving and controversial book.  Fiana Maye, a high court judge in Britain's Family Court has had her share of high stakes cases.  Sworn to uphold the law, she has rendered decisions in cases involving the separation of Siamese Twins, child kidnapping by a non-custodial parent and the usual divorces, child custody and protective orders.  However, as her own marriage is unraveling, she is unprepared for the emotional involvement in another controversial cases involving a young cancer patient who is refusing a live saving blood transfusion due to his religious convictions. I would not say that this book is uplifting, but the writing is exceptional.