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The other day Glenzilla mentioned a political thriller on his blog, so I decided to try it.

I'm happy to report that Fault Line by Barry Eisler is both a gripping page-turner and a thought-provoking novel.

The story revolves around patent attorney Alex Treven and his older brother Ben, a highly trained military assassin. The brothers have been estranged for years, but now Alex thinks he may be the target of a professional hit man because of his association with a new computer encryption program, Obsidian. Reluctantly, Alex turns to his brother Ben for help.

On one level this is a standard espionage yarn and Obsidian is its MacGuffin; on another it's a tale of two brothers confronting their past as they try to navigate the fault line of their relationship, complicated by the presence of Sarah, the young associate who may or may not be mixed up in the tangled plot.

Not only is Ben forced to deal with the family tragedies that he thought he had left behind, but as Sarah keeps pressing him, he begins to question the very nature of his chosen line of work.

One of the many joys of this book is that the author names many of his characters after some liberal blogs and bloggers (cf., Obsidian). Along the way he also mentions a number of real web sites, like www.nononsenseselfdefense.com

Highly recommended!

I just finished reading a wonderful book called The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. It's not new, it was published in 2003, but it might be made into a movie sometime this year.

It's a non-fiction book set in the early 1890's, and it tells three interconnected stories:

1) Chicago architect Daniel Burnham's efforts to construct the World's Columbian Exposition (the White City of the title).

2) Patrick Prendergast, who bears certain resemblances to Charles Guiteau, but Prendergast's target is the mayor of Chicago.

3) A man calling himself Dr. H. H. Holmes, who operates a hotel some of whose guests "never thereafter were heard of again" (the devil of the title).

The stories would each be interesting in themselves, but they intersect in some fascinating ways.

Throughout the entire book there are wonderful little tidbits of history. For example, the designers of the exposition wanted to outdo the Eiffel Tower, which had been erected just a few years previously. The narrative of the man who achieved that and the way he did it form some of the most interesting passages; the author conceals the man's name early on so as not to give away the surprise (for those of us who didn't know the story).

BTW, a scene in Show Boat takes place at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition. Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley make appearances in the book (so there's an Annie Get Your Gun reference).

And I was reminded of Sweeney Todd.

A lot.

I've recently begun the immensely pleasurable pastime of reading and re-reading the books of John Dickson Carr. I own copies of about half of his works and am trying to acquire the remainder. Sadly and inexcusably, his books are largely out of print these days, so that means I must check the second-hand market.

It's hard for me to believe, but I haven't been to the Book Trader in years--so many years that it has long since moved from its cramped South Street location to an even more cramped spot on Second near Market, just down the street from the Arden Theatre. Its shelves are overflowing with thousands of books and its aisles ought to be declared a disaster area.

Still, with all those books, it only had two Carrs; happily I owned neither of them, so my Carr collection grew to 36 volumes.

Carr was the master of the impossible crime, usually but not always some variation of the locked room puzzle.

In the best of the Gideon Fell series, The Three Coffins, Dr. Fell famously gives a lecture for an entire chapter on the various ways that locked room puzzles can be constructed. I've read The Three Coffins at least three times (and will probably keep re-reading it as long as my eyesight lasts). In it Carr describes two seemingly impossible crimes: a murder by gunshot committed in a room whose only exit is under observation by two witnesses, yet when the door is opened only the victim is found to be inside and there is no gun in evidence; another murder committed at point blank range in front of witnesses, but the evidence shows only the footprints of the victim in the snow.

But Carr's masterpiece has to be The Burning Court, a wonderful blend of witchcraft and crime detection.

It opens with a man riding home on a train and finding a photograph in a book that looks exactly like his wife, but the photo is labelled as that of a woman who was executed for murder 70 years earlier.

Soon a murder is discovered that has several impossible aspects and the evidence begins to pile up that his wife is indeed a witch. Is there a rational explanation for the deeds?

Carr keeps the reader guessing until practically the very last page.

Overall The Burning Court is one of the most satisfying and surprising detective stories that I have ever read.

I have a lot of books that I doubt that I'll ever read again, so I decided to try Amazon's reseller program. I offered two books for sale.

The first was a hard cover edition of a recent bestseller that is about to come out in paperback. My copy was in excellent condition, so I offered it at ten dollars, which was about four dollars below the next seller. The advantage of having the lowest price is that it appears at the top of the list.

The book sold within a couple hours.

Amazon provided a shipping label and packing list for me to print out; so I went to the Post Office this morning and mailed it off. Amazon even let me send an email to the buyer, to let her know that it was on its way.

Using standard shipping Amazon adds $3.99 to cover postage; that proved to be not enough. I ended up paying about five dollars to mail it; that included the cost of the mailer and a 75 cent charge to track the package.

So factoring in the mailing costs, after Amazon takes its cut, I will only clear five dollars on the sale.

The other book was a paperback edition of a book that is temporarily out of print. Some resellers on Amazon are asking well over a hundred dollars for it.

When I listed it, the lowest price was about 69 dollars. I offered my copy for $39.99.

This morning I saw that three of the other resellers had lowered their prices to $39.97, i.e., two cents below my price. Obviously they wanted the top spot on the list.

So I lowered my price to $34.99. Within an hour one of those guys lowered his price to two cents below mine.

Well, it didn't do him any good. It looks like my copy has already been sold!

One of my favorite writers and certainly my favorite prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, has just published a new book.

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder could be his best one yet.

I'm watching Amy Goodman interviewing Bugliosi right now.

And I downloaded a sample of the book to my Kindle...

...with intent to buy.