Lies

I recently discovered someone in a position of authority lied. Not a little lie. Not a white lie. He told me something very specific, then walked into a a meeting with five other people and denied he'd said it. There was no miscommunication. There was no alternate way to interpret what happened. I wasn't drunk or suffering from a concussion when he told me this. I hadn't been struck on the head with a hammer. I didn't have amnesia. None of the above. He lied. End of story.

At this stage in my life, I don't think, for example, cops, firefighters, principals, teachers, CEOs, presidents, or even priests and ministers, are immune from being unscrupulous. They're human. Robes or collars or badges don't have magic powers. But for ME, abuse of power invokes a whole set of fictional scenarios. Because with all due respect for the terrifying serial killer books out there, what strikes fear in ME when I read are those books where someone is on trial for their life . . . and they are being set-up. People are lying on the witness stand, being bought off. Or a prosecutor refuses to look at a different scenario. You need only watch Law & Order--or read the paper--to see innocent people railroaded. Or to see the guilty go free. But to me, it would be absolutely TERRIFYING if (knock wood) one of my kids was set-up, if I was set up . . . if a friend was . . . it's a morass that has got to be a nightmare you wish you could wake up from--but can't.

Sometimes, terror and nightmares aren't the kinds of sick torture scenarios with serial killers eating brains--I mean, heck yeah . . . scary. But to me, it is sometimes it's the things that humans do--that then snowball. The woman who says she was raped, or that her kids were kidnapped--and innocent men get questioned or even imprisoned. The little white lie that then becomes an alibi for a guilty man. Those are the kinds of things that REALLY scare me.

Along with clowns.

But that's a discussion for another day.

Thoughts?

Haven't Done THAT in a While

Insomnia last night. THAT I do all the time. But . . . the sequence of events. You see, I fell asleep--I was due to call my best friend around 10:00 p.m., but . . . fell asleep around 9:00 (and now I have to call Pammie today so she does not think I am a hapless b*tch). When I woke up it was 1:00 a.m. My body, of course, now believed that I had certainly had enough sleep. So I was wide awake.

I decided to read. I do that all the time. It was WHAT I decided to read. And so, in a couple of hours, I read an entire book. And it wasn't physics. It wasn't nonfiction or history. It was a novel. In fact, it was a SPY novel (for the record, I think I have only read one or two in my entire life). And it was awesome!

For me, it was fantastic. I have no plans--now or ever--to write a spy novel. So it was very fun to scamper through a book in a couple of hours, and just enjoy a fast-paced story. Nothing to compare to my own writing. Just story.

The book was The Second Perimeter by Mike Lawson. And he has a NEW book coming out in June. Actually, I think they classify his books as thrillers (I don't know if the first book had spies). But here's what I loved about this book.

• The main character is a smart guy, but he is a fixer because he can't get a legit job in the legal field because his dad was way up the mob food chain. He happens to be the fixer for the Speaker of the House.
• His best friend is a BRILLIANT lesbian. A former spy. Whose lover is a classical musician. There are a lot of books with secondary gay characters--but usually men, not lesbians. Emma is well-drawn, we get into her POV, and she is just absolutely the smartest person in the novel--and any room she walks into. I like that. A lot.
• The author doles out little tidbits of back story in single sentences. I STILL (and maybe it's because I didn't read the first book) don't know a lot about DeMarco. I know ENOUGH. See . . . that is what I think makes this guy a fantastic writer. I know enough.
• Description. Brilliant writer again. In one scene, a widow is kind of plump and plain, but he writes (paraphrasing here) that she had enormous red-framed glasses that DeMarco says the widow's best friend probably talked her into because the glasses made her look so young and hip. The glasses didn't. I love that. In ONE detail, for this minor, one-scene character, I got a glimpse of her to totally fix her in my mind for the scene. (And MY best friend would NEVER let me get glasses like that . . . she tells it to me straight.)
• Both villains were incredibly well-drawn and I had a tremendous amount of conflicted sympathy for them.
• It focused on human rights abuses and didn't let the U.S. off the hook even though the writer used to work for the Navy, and I was horrifically frightened when I started that maybe he would be all "rah-rah" for torture of enemy spies and the CIA, and then I would have to hurl the book out the window. But then I remembered who GAVE me the book. My mom. And she shares my politics. Oh, I am 187 miles to the left of her, but we are both left of center. Yet the writer still was clear the world is a dangerous place.

If you are a regular blog reader, you know I cheer my friends on when they have new releases, but I do not read a lot of commercial fiction, largely because I like to rest the fiction side of my brain and read about physics. But I loved this book.

And here's the thing.

I read the book in three hours. Around 3:15 a.m., I felt like I COULD have gone to sleep. Could have. But damn, there was no way I was going to sleep without reading the ending. It was--quite literally--a book I could not put down. A page turner. And THAT is writing 101, gang. I can't imagine an editor NOT buying this book. I actually plan to write to Lawson to tell him how much I enjoyed it. I'd LOVE to know if the book sold quickly or at auction.

What was the last book that made YOU stay up to 4:00 a.m.?