Extraordinary Rendition - Paul Batista

Byron Johnson is partner in a Wall Street law firm who, at the apex of his career, volunteers to take on the case of Ali Hussein. Ali is a Syrian national who lived and worked in the US for ten years as an accountant prior to being arrested in Europe over 9 years earlier. Byron learns that Hussein has finally been brought back to the US for trial after being kept, without charge, in solitary confinement at various places around the world and has been tortured and beaten during those nine years. He feels that justice should be done and the man should be charged with something, offered a fair trial and have the right to defend himself in a court of law. This is where the story begins.

Extraordinary Rendition is a fast paced, eloquent, witty, sometimes disturbing account of a lawyer facing an uphill battle against forces within the US government which are hell bent on getting a conviction. Members of nameless government departments, the FBI, Homeland Security and the CIA have worked for years to uncover the invisible millions of dollars which they believe travel around the world almost unseen and untraceable. These are the dollars used to fund terrorist activities. They believe Hussein is the mastermind behind securing funding for, amongst other things, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. For nine years they have tried to make him confess and for nine years he has protested his innocence.

Here’s an extract from Chapter 2. Byron Johnson has called a meeting with the US governments lead lawyer, Hamerindapal Rana, who is prosecuting the case. He is trying to establish the nature of the charges and arrange a date for the indictment:

Rana said, “Mr Johnson, you must understand we will indict Mr Hussein at a time and in a place of our own choosing. It may be an hour from now. It may be six months from now. And it may be in Miami and it may be in Juneau Alaska, with Sarah Palin as judge.”

In the five minutes since the start of the conference, Byron had let go of any pretence that this would be what he liked to call a ‘good, cordial meeting,’ He said, “Mr Rana, the man is now in jail in the United States. He’s been in detention more than nine years by my count. I don’t think you have the right to delay indicting him indefinitely.”

“You think so Mr Johnson?” Like his clothes, Hal Rana’s voice was elegant, almost British-accented. Byron, who had the sense that Rana must have spent time in an English boarding school, was intrigued. Rana continued, “The Congress and the president don’t see it your way. We have an anti-terrorism bill that gives us the option to decide when to indict and where to indict, We don’t need to be concerned by whatever speedy trial rights your client may have, because he has none. And, in this case we can indict him anywhere in the country and he can’t complain that it’s the wrong place.”

“So you are going to pick a state where the jury is most likely to convict, right?”

“We’ve been thinking about Oklahoma, Mr Johnson. We relish the idea of putting a terrorist on trail in front of an Oklahoma jury near the site where McVeigh blew up the federal building.”

“I don’t think that’s fair.”

“You don’t? Then you have to complain to Congress. I am just a simple country lawyer.”


This story feels chillingly realistic. Nobody is quite who they seem to be and sometimes it is hard to know who the bad guys really are. Paul Batista paints a disturbingly blurred line between the terrorism of the offenders and the terrorism of the prosecutors. Justice, it seems, depends on good men doing something out of the ordinary to protect the tenets of law. This doesn’t happen every day, certainly not if a lawyer wants to rise to great heights in their career and gain the ultimate prizes: success and accolade.

I couldn’t put this book down. It is brilliantly written, the characters are realistic and it offers real insight into the intricacies of the US legal system, especially those rather complex, controversial and challenging laws pertaining to Extraordinary Rendition and national security. There is another bonus in this book; any lover of New York City will be enthralled by the many vivid descriptions of places, buildings and landmarks in the city. It made me pine to be back there. Of course, like any good thriller there are many twists and turns in the tale. The one at the end left me asking more questions than it answered. I’m still wondering about it now!

Extraordinary Rendition was published in July 2012 by Astor + Blue Editions. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Just brilliant!

9.9/10

The Liar - Stephen Fry

Whilst I was on my break from blogging I managed finally to read some of the old timers of my TBR pile, one of them was The Liar by Stephen Fry. I wasn't sure what to make of it at first and became a little confused as the story jumped backwards and forwards through time, but, it didn't take me long to be completely absorbed in this wonderfully witty and amusing tale of people who keep secrets and tell lies.

Adrian Healey is the central character in this story and he is witty, bright, intellectual, snobbish and quite daring. The first time we meet Adrian it is clear he is not like other boys at his school:

"Adrian checked the orchid at his buttonhole, the spats at his feet, gave the lavender gloves a twitch, smoothed down his waistcoat, tucked the ebony Malacca-cane under his arm, swallowed twice and pushed open the changing room doors.

'Ah, my dears,' he cried. Congratulations! Congratulations to you all! A triumph, an absolute triumph!'

'Well, what the fucks he wearing now?' they snorted from the steamy end of the room.

'You're and idiot and an arse, Healey.'

Burkiss threw a flannel onto the shiny top hat. Adrian reached up and took it between his forefinger and thumb.

'If there is the slightest possibility, Burkiss, that this flannel has absorbed any of the juices that leak from within you, that it has mopped up a single droplet of your pubescent greases, that it has tickled and frotted even one of the hideously mired corners of your disgusting body then I shall have a spasm. I'm sorry but I shall.'

In spite of himself, Cartwright smiled............."

And so I was hooked. I had the most vivid picture of the scene and particularly of Adrian Healey in my mind from this moment, and as the story unfolds, the picture becomes more and more colourful.

Adrian proves to be a total liar and looks on the world as his play ground. The book charts Adrian's life through the latter part of public school, during a time when he becomes a runaway and through his university years. He is cool, courageous, rebellious and always in trouble of one kind or another, particularly with the police, various school masters and his parents. Nobody can see through Adrian until he meets Professor Trefusis, who is a master at St Matthew's College, Cambridge where Adrian is reading Philology under his watchful eye. The story turns into a romp of the most extraordinary kind taking in Piccadilly rent-boys, Dicken's lost pornographic novel Peter Flowerbucke and an international espionage conspiracy.

I cannot remember when I last enjoyed a book so thoroughly and laughed out loud so many times. It is an astonishing achievement of comedic writing and now I am on a quest to seek out more of Stephen Fry's books. The only thing I would caution against is that some of the language and some of the descriptions of sexual encounters contained in the story (all of which add to the landscape of the portrait being painted, by the way) might be shocking to more sensitive readers, so, if you are in this group perhaps this is not the book for you.

It was another of those books I did not want to end. It is not the kind of book I would normally choose to read but I do adore Stephen Fry and so when I saw it in the bookshop I picked it up. Then as it been sitting so long on my TBR pile, I thought I should give it a try and I'm so glad I did. Just think, I may not have read it at all, which would have been a terrible loss for me.

Have you read anything by Stephen Fry?

Have you ever picked up a book you would not normally select and loved it so much you follow it's trail?

Speaking of Hilary Mantel, let's talk about Fludd

Congratulations to Hilary Mantel on winning the 2009 Man Booker Prize!

Not being one for getting involved in reading whole collections of books on long lists, short lists or any kind of lists truth be known, I was interested in the choice of the shortlist for this years Man Booker Prize simply because I noticed Hilary Mantel's latest book, Wolf Hall, was on there. I have now read two Mantel books and loved both of them, so the shortlist piqued my interest. Then I read a review Wolf Hall and that interested me even more. The book is a work of historical fiction about life at court during Henry VIII's time and particularly about Thomas Cromwell's part in it. Oooo... right up my street, history, fiction and Thomas Cromwell and his mates! So, as I haven't read it yet I am not in a position to review it here, but, it is going on my Christmas Wish list and if it arrives in my Christmas stocking I'll let you know what I think of it then!

I am going to talk about another book of Hilary Mantel's though, one that I recently read during my book reading fest whilst I was absent from blogging - Fludd. The story is set in a fictional village called Featherington which is a cotton town in the north of England and the action takes place around 1956. It is a work which looks at religion and religious mysticism and one which asks some searching questions about the Catholic Church of the time. Although the word Catholic is never mentioned in the story, parallels to the faith are clear. Mantel's disclaimer at the front of the book is obviously aimed at a higher power than any human authority. An amusing beginning to a very entertaining book.

Father Angwin is the parish priest in Featherington and is particularly old fashioned in his ministry. One day the bishop comes to call and orders Angwin to get rid of some of the decrepit statues from the church and to spruce the place up a bit. The old priest doesn't want to part with the relics and starts to devise a plan to keep them. Before the bishop leaves that day he mentions to Angwin that he will be sending a curate to "help and assist" him. The priest is dismayed by this news because of a guilty secret he has that he believes will be uncovered; for the last 20 years he has not believed in god but he does believe in the devil and what's more, he believes the devil incarnate is one of the local villagers sent there to taunt him because of his lack of faith!

Not long after the bishop's visit a young man appears on the doorstep of the priest's house wearing priests clothes and carrying what looks like a doctors bag. He is a curious priest called Fludd and seems to have a mysterious effect on everyone he meets. People seem unable to tell Fludd anything but the truth and he has the unusual ability to clear his plate of food and empty his glass of whisky without anybody ever seeing him eat or drink. As the story unfolds Fludd becomes a confidant to Sister Philomena who is one of the young nuns in the parish convent. She has been sent into the convent from Ireland after a childhood bout of psoriasis is mistaken for stigmata. Their friendship develops and Sr Philomena becomes the only person to discover the truth about Fludd.

Hilary Mantel masterfully draws the picture of life in a cotton town in Lancashire in the 1950's. Her wit is sharp and often scathing and inevitably this story becomes a commentary on the Church and a debate about good versus evil. It is also very funny and when Sr. Philomena states that in her world a priest in the family is worth three or four nuns, I was instantly transported back to my own school days attending a convent and had pictures in my mind of the nuns who always seemed to be able to float along the corridors there. It is a wonderful, thought provoking book and well worth the read. I can hear Sister Sheila Mary telling us off in assembly as we speak!

Have you read this or any other Hilary Mantel books?

Wedding Season , Katie Fforde

I'm on a roll reading chic-lit books at the moment and have just finished my very first Katie Fforde book, Wedding Season, which I really enjoyed. The story is very simple and the outcome really predictable, but then, it is a total fairytale, so what else do you expect?



There are three girls who have formed a relationship with each other by working together on weddings. Sarah is the super organised, wedding planner who does not believe in love, Elsa is an accomplished dress designer who is painfully shy and always wears black in order to blend into the background and Bron is a multi-talented make-up artist, hairdresser and cake maker who is caught in a loveless relationship that she would prefer not to be in. So......bring on Hugo the mysterious, who is a well connected internationally renowned photographer, Laurence the Reliable, who is a non drinker and always called upon to be the Best Man at friends weddings and James the unkempt gardener, who is also a gifted art designer and floral artist. Voila! You know as well as I do what is going to happen and the pleasure of reading this book is that along the way some amusing things occur to the main characters and lots of other interesting people are introduced to the story. I particularly liked Fen and Rupert, Pat and her cooking pals and Mrs Lennox-Feathersone.




The characters are well drawn and the situations they find themselves in are on the whole, more or less, believable. There are a couple of things that I could not quite take on face value and had to put down to artistic license - one is that Elsa manages to make and enhance, in less than two weeks, the replica of a dress which had originally taken her two years to make from start to finish and somehow, Bron, who had had some previous success making and decorating train engine birthday cakes, manages to understand how to design, cook and decorate one of the most elaborate wedding cakes I have ever heard described and she had never actually seen the original cake herself. This all adds to the 'cuteness' of the book, in my opinion. It is a fairytale after all, so why not have a little bit of the impossible in there too! The only thing that did grate on my nerves a little was the number of times Ms Fforde linked the word 'professional' to Sarah's character. The picture portrayed is that as Sarah is a professional she could not possibly be in love, too, almost as if being 'a professional' and being in love with someone were mutually exclusive........I couldn't quite get my head around the thought process.



I can forgive all of these small things, though, because this is such a light hearted, easy, summer read which deserves to be consumed whilst sitting in the garden on a warm sunny afternoon, book in one hand and a glass of chilled white wine in the other. Lovely!



Have you read this or any other Katie Fforde books?

Which is your favourite Fforde book?

Romance novels - Love them or hate them ?

Skipping through the lives of Vince and Joy and Michael Parkinson, in the same week!!

On my second to last book haul trip to the local secondhand book store I came away with my very first Lisa Jewell book. Dot, from http://dot-scribbles.blogspot.com/ had reviewed a recent Lisa Jewell book, 'The Truth About Melody Browne' and I remembered her saying that Lisa Jewell books always cheer her up. So when I saw Vince & Joy sitting on the shelf in front of me I decided to see for myself if Lisa Jewell is a cheery book writer or not.
 

She is!

Vince and Joy meet each other on a camp site where they are holidaying with their parents. Joy is 18 and Vince is almost 19 when they meet and they fall madly and completely in love with each other. Joy's parents are in their 60's and Vince's are much younger and trendier. Vince and Joy are made for each other and they spend as much time together, away from their parents, as they can. One night whilst the couple are frolicking in the woods, their parents get into an altercation which ends up in a fight between Joy's dad and Vince's step dad. When Vince and Joy return home that night, all is not well and in the early hours of the morning Joy and her family leave the camp site without saying goodbye. Although Joy leaves a letter for Vince, it is raining heavily and most of the ink on the page gets washed away. All Vince can read in the note is "I am so ashamed". They are both devastated by their loss.

Moving on seven years we pick up the story of Vince and Joy again. We meet Vince's room mate, the wonderful Cass and her spiritually inclined cat, Madeleine and Joy's friends, her landlady, Julia and the irrepressible cross dresser, Bella. Without giving too much away it seems that fate guides Vince and Joy to dance around one another but never actually pick up their relationship. Somehow their lives move on in different directions. And this is how it goes into the future until we finally meet the couple again more than 17 years after they first met and fell in love.

This was a delightful book to read and I loved the characters, even the kooky ones were well drawn and believable. The story is light hearted but also asks a couple of serious soul searching questions, too. I can thoroughly recommend this for the summer and have now secured my second Lisa Jewell book, 31 Dream Street. I'll keep you posted.










In the same week I skipped through the lives of Vince & Joy, I also read the autobiography of Michael Parkinson 'Parky'. I've always been a fan of Michael Parkinson and was very excited to have this book thrust into my hand by my dog rescuing neighbour, as repayment for my regular walks to the beach with her 'new' dog in tow (well, you always knew I would end up as chief dog walker, didn't you!)

Parkinson has had a charmed life. That becomes apparent almost immediately as we wander through his times as an only child, fuelled by his mothers ambition for her son and lead through his childhood and short-lived cricketing career by his doting father. Stories of meeting the rich and famous adorn every page and I couldn't help but marvel at how fate had been very kind to Parky, opening doors and shining lights on pathways for him to follow, all of which lead to him become one of the most famous interviewers of all time. He spoke highly of every one of his guests and even Meg Ryan, who he termed his only failure, and Emu who he loathed, were treated with kind words. The only thing I could find fault with in this book was his criticism of what he sees as 'the establishment' and some people he had worked for. This negative reflection felt out of place and smacked somewhat of ingratitude in an otherwise positively charged story of a man who made a career out of being sociable and trying to make people feel comfortable. I enjoyed the book overall, though, it is funny in parts and poignant in others. I would recommend it to anyone who is a fan of Parky or those of you who like autobiographies.

UEFA Champions League Cup final trip to the bookshop

Wednesday was the UEFA Champion League Cup final day and as you know, I am a BIG Manchester United fan. I have to say I was nervous as a kitten up a tree and that wouldn't be too far off the mark. The time difference between Hong Kong and Europe always means that any given day comes sooner to us here and we have to wait so much longer for a European or US event to happen, or so it seems. I had my Manchester United shirt on 10 hours before kick off and was already pacing the floor in agony. Then I had a thought, "How about a distraction?" What better way to calm the nerves than to spend hours prowling around the shelves of the village bookshop? Off I trotted!



Before you say it, I know I don't need any more books to put on my TBR pile, I really don't. I've been thinking about this a lot and to counteract any criticism in this area I have now invented an ever growing list of 'Books To Look Out For' ('BTLOF'), which is entirely different to TBR and has come about since I started visiting other peoples blogs. Before blogging I would mooch along the shelves of the bookshop without a lot of focus, alighting on books if a cover caught my eye or if I came across anything that was written by an author I liked. Now, when I go shopping for books these days it is not for additions to the TBR pile at all because I have a purpose, I have a BTLOF list which is different and makes me feel much better when handing over the cash!!

Here are my purchases from yesterday:

The Distant Land of My Father, Bo Caldwell.

This is a book about an American girl, Anna, who was born and brought up in China. When the Japanese invade Shanghai during WWII, her father sends Anna and her mother back to California, for their safety. As time passes, the father does not return to his family and Anna gives up hope of ever seeing him again. Then, years later, when she has a family of her own, her father turns up in her life again.
Can't wait to read this, to be honest. It has all the ingredients of my favourite kind of book.



Peter Ustinov, The Gift of Laughter, John Miller.

This is a biography of Peter Ustinov which was written with his absolute collaboration. Ustinov is one of my favourite entertainers and I have heard excellent things about this biography......I'm excited at the prospect of reading it.





Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud, Sun Shuyun.

'Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud' is a Buddhist saying which means 'the search for a mind clear of doubt'. This book is a memoir of Sun Shuyun who was born in China during the cultural revolution. Her family were devout Buddhists and under the communist regime were forced to give up practicing their faith. Sun Shuyun learns the way of the communists as she grows up but shares a bedroom with her grandmother. Here she learns Buddhist prayers and listens to stories of historical hero's as her grandmother remained a practicing Buddhist, in spite of being forbidden to do so. Sun's favourite hero becomes Xuanzang. When she is older she decides to retrace the footsteps of his epic journey from China to India and back again, one which he took in order to bring Buddhist scripture and teachings to the Chinese people. Sun's book tells of a spiritual discovery where she finds the faith of her ancestors as she tries to understand what drove Xuanzang on. Another can't wait to read for me!





Five Finger Discount, Helene Stapinski.

I have read this book before and loved it, but somehow it went missing from my library. I probably let somebody borrow it and it never returned. Imagine then, the delight I felt when I saw it there, sitting in the bookshop waiting for me to find it again. Helene Stapinski is a now a journalist and this book is a memoir of her childhood. Her family are a bunch of murderers, crooks, petty swindlers and mobsters and she grows up in New Jersey City. She tells of corrupt local officials and the way her father would smuggle all kinds of wonderfully exotic foods from Cold Storage, where he worked. It is a funny and poignant view of a family surviving against the odds and her struggle to escape an inevitable future. I will read it again and it can now go on my "Read and Loved" shelf.





Bangkok 8, John Burdett.

I am not one for thrillers and cop stories usually, but, the blurb on the back cover of this book had me convinced I would like it, not least of all because it is set in Bangkok, where we lived for three years. I always think that tackling a book set in familiar territory is easier to read and identify with, than one where you have to paint the scenery yourself. I am not sure how I will go on with the violent scenes, I'm usually a bit squeamish, but, I'll give it a go and let you know.





So there you have it, my haul for the day and before you tell me that I did not pick up one single thing off my BTLOF list, I already know, but, in my defense I have to say that I would have added all of them to that list had I thought about it earlier ;)



Now, if only the Manchester United team could have been bothered to turn up for the Cup final I would have had a perfect day!! (You think that comment is bad, the non-reader thinks all the team should be fined a million pounds each for playing so badly!! I wouldn't go that far, but, I see his point!). Terrible game, boo hoo!!




Have you had any bookshop hauls recently?