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| Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport |
The Bangkok to Chicago flight was about to board. Our hero shuffled toward the gate, exhausted after three weeks away from home, pinballing across Japan and Thailand. A terrible realization dawned:
It’s a 14-hour flight to O’Hare. And he ... had nothing ... to read. Acting on instinct, he bolted into a small gift shop, spun a black wire rack. With experienced fingers he deftly plucked up “The Cardinal of the Kremlin” by Tom Clancy.
That book saved my life. I’d have gone mad otherwise. It was also the last thriller I read until Wednesday, when I was rushing out the door, toward a long weekend in Washington, D.C. The cab was out front. “Oh a book!” I thought, grabbing “Shadow State” by Frank Sennett.
Why that book and not, oh, “Theogony Works and Days Testimonia” by Hesiod, also waiting to be read? First, “Shadow State” was published last week. Second, Sennett is a Chicago author, longtime journalist, now mellowed into public relations. We had lunch once.
As someone who left nine books on the doorsteps of many a media acquaintance who just shrugged and let them die there, squalling, ignored, I feel a moral obligation to at least start any book sent my way. To read the first page. Usually the first page is plenty. Most books are crap.
“Shadow State” isn’t crap. I kept reading. There’s no choice.
To continue reading, click here.
How do you do it? Best review ever. I will buy the book and read it, post haste.
ReplyDeleteAlmost everyone in DC wants the airport's name changed back to just National Airport, as most people in DC have the right idea & flat out hate that pile of shit Reagan, who always thought that government was the problem!
ReplyDeleteHow ironic that the airport is named after the man who fired all the air traffic controllers in 1981.
ReplyDeleteMy wife is addicted to crime stories, detective novels, mysteries, and thrillers. She has bookcases full of them. On the other hoof, I've been strictly into non-fiction since my college days, so her books remain untouched by the hands of Grizz, and always will. . As the postal workers say...to each his zone.
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