Jeff Sexton

Pulse Pounding Thrill Ride With Non-Preachy Commentary. This is one of those books that *is* overtly political... *because it is dealing with political assassinations in and around Washington, DC*, among other topics. So while not all books are political and not all reading is political, this book absolutely is - though the act of reading and reviewing it is *not*.

Joyner's background writing for the screen is evident here with his quick cuts to seemingly random groups of characters, which can be a bit hard to follow at first until you manage to get a grip on who everyone is, but at that point the story really does begin to flow quite readily.

And what a story it is. The action is relentless and seemingly non-stop, and yes, the aforementioned quick cuts actually help in this regard. The inventiveness of the reasonings, techniques, and tactics of both our bad guys and our good guys are truly something to behold - Joyner clearly has a lot of ideas here, and for the most part they tend to land exactly as desired.

There is quite a bit of class-based commentary baked into the flow of this story, though it never really becomes preachy and is even at such a level that trying to determine the author's actual views are... not as clear as some would likely want them. For example, commentary on the dark web seems both technology-forward *and* pro-police. Similarly, commentary on class speaks to the lower classes *no matter* their race, and even points out how even some black characters would never face certain things in certain situations. And commentary about immigrants both shows their plight *and* cautions against the rise of illegal immigration. And yet every bit of this commentary is done well in-world and thus seems true to the characters taking each position as they take them, thus avoiding sounding preachy to the readers.

Overall truly an interesting book with a perspective and topic rarely seen in fiction.

Very much recommended.

Contains Most Brutal, Most Sadistic Scene I Have *EVER* Read. Truly Even Better Than Reacher. With this particular entry in the series, LeDuc takes Sinclair O'Malley places that Reacher has gone - and beats him! - *and* gives O'Malley a depth of character that Reacher will never obtain.

And yes, it is via the said most brutal, most sadistic scene I have ever read. I've read some dark, twisted shit over the years, including books with on screen child sexual abuse, rape, and other brutalities. *NEVER* have I encountered one book that had all of that... *in a single scene*. Truly the darkest, sickest, most twisted scene I have ever encountered across reading literally thousands of books across nearly every imaginable genre and niche out there... and yet LeDuc *absolutely* makes it work to further his character and finally more fully explain some of her own more brutal - excuse me, "direct" - methods.

Then there is the one scene in particular where O'Malley takes on one of my absolute *favorite* Reacher scenes in that entire franchise (and yes, I read them all until a book or two into the Andrew Child books)... and LeDuc outdoes Lee in even that type of scene. The scene here is different than the Reacher scene, but to be clear, the scene I'm talking about in Reacher is the sniping competition Reacher has with the militia leader in Die Trying, where Reacher pulls off a particularly impressive feat.

There's a LOT going on in this book, and a LOT - even beyond the scene above - that will be disturbing for some people, including some blatant on screen racism deep in the book (from the bad guys, to be clear), but revealing some of this stuff gets deeper into spoiler territory than I feel is warranted in this review. (I have no problems mentioning the types of stuff in the scene above, mostly because I understand how deeply traumatizing that stuff can be even in one scene, and because it is *only* in the one scene and doesn't really give away much else about the book. I also spoke in generalities that don't even fully give away that particular scene. The other things I'm alluding to here are far more central to the book, and thus even mentioning them would be too much spoiler.)

This may well be the best book in the series to date - and likely absolutely is. But there is also a lot of backstory here that you need to read *at minimum* Book 4, Eastern Drift, to be prepared for, and really you should start at the beginning of this series and work your way to this book, if you haven't yet. Trust me, the reward will absolutely be worth it, *and* this book sets up the future of the series very nicely.

Very much recommended.

Maddock AND Bones. Back Together! And Taking On A Civil War Mystery! This is what I love to see from Wood. Both Dane Maddock and Uriah 'Bones' Bonebrake back together again solving archaeological mysteries and kicking ass when needed.

The mystery - and adventure - here are awesome for this Son of the South who frequently notes how the Civil War is literally still visible in my home region between Atlanta and Chattanooga... and it isn't even hard to find in that particular region. While this mystery starts in Virginia, it does in fact also find itself in a location I've been to a few times - even taken a date or two out there, *many* years ago. Atlanta's Stone Mountain Park, home of the largest bas-relief sculpture in the world... and site of many anti-Confederacy protests over the years.

But even if you're not from the Southern United States and haven't grown up with this history all around you (as only certain regions of even the South have), the mystery here is still top-notch, and the action is even better. If you like say National Treasure, the 2000s era movie where Nic Cage steals the Declaration of Independence... now imagine Nic and his best friend are both former US Navy SEALs, with action - and danger - ramping up to challenge even them.

Ultimately this was the same type of dangerous (for the characters) yet fun (for the reader) action/ adventure tale that makes this series so excellent, and this was yet another truly great entry in this long running series.

Very much recommended.

Another Fun Bonebrake Conspiracy / Action Tale. Secret societies. Texas history. Haunted graveyards. A Knight's Tale reference. Battle inside a Duck Boat. And even some cave diving to boot. Seriously... what more do you want in 120 pages of fun action/ adventure? This one has it all, including a couple of hot/ steamy scenes... both in the naked sense and the literal one. ;) Another wild romp, this time through a fair swath of Texas, and featuring Bones' usual witty banter and bone-shattering physicality. Very much recommended.

Another Great (And Short) Maddock Adventure Perfect For Longtime Fans And People New To The Universe. This book is pretty much exactly what I said in the title here - long time fans are going to enjoy this new Maddock tale, and at not quite 70 pages it is about as minimal an investment as it gets for people looking for a new world to explore. And if you do like it... there are a LOT of books to read after this one, including several adventures referenced within this tale with varying degrees of spoilers (for those concerned with such things). Fun, satisfying, and quick ride -the literary equivalent of a theme park rollercoaster, in other words. ;) Very much recommended.

Interesting Blend Of Real-World Physics And Paranormal Into Top-Notch Action Thriller. Sexton... you're doing it again. You just said this book was a "top notch action thriller", yet it is set in the *midwest*. What are you smoking, and can I get some? Why yes, yes I did say that - and I mean it. The tale opens with an all-consuming fire... in the middle of a torrential rain. As we get the perspectives of about a half dozen or so different characters, we find that one of them somehow has psychic abilities. When the scientist and the psychic meet... things get rather interesting and the tale becomes rather twisty yet also very down to earth and relatable. The ending itself is almost Christopher Nolan-esque in how mind-bending it is, and some of the scenes getting us there are edge of your seat thrill rides. Overall an intriguing series starter, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing where Mejia takes this. Very much recommended.

Slow Front Builds To Frenetic End. This is one of those stories that starts out with a bang in its prologue before going back in time and achieving the pace of... well, probably a tired slug racing an exhausted turtle. In other words, it is rather S L O W in the beginning.

But hang around, because as things start picking up they also begin spiraling, and soon enough your heart is beating faster as your brain is getting a good workout trying to read at the pace of the plot.

There's a lot going on in these pages, and a lot that a lot of people won't like - particularly so much domestic abuse, among other issues. But there is also a lot to like overall here, and Holten does a solid job of telling exactly the story she seemingly wants to tell at exactly the pace she seemingly wants to tell it at.

Ultimately, this is one that will have you gripping the final pages, desperate to see exactly how it ends... and that is pretty much what most people want of our thrillers, right?

Very much recommended.

Solid Look At Complexities Both Scientific And Ethical Regarding Interstellar Travel. This is exactly what the title says - a solid look at pretty well all aspects of the complexities of interstellar travel from both scientific and ethical directions, with discussions of the sheer distances involved, the various proposed types of habitation possibilities, propulsion technology, and seemingly every other conceivable facet of the topic at hand.

At 300 ish pages with just 11% or so of that being bibliography, the actual discussion is somewhat brief while still being comprehensive. Technical enough in both science and philosophy to underscore the key issues, yet informal enough to be easily followed along with by most readers. Indeed, the only real problem I had with the text was that 11% bibliography - it needed to be 50% ish larger, from what I've seen across my several years of reviewing advance review copies of nonfiction books, as I've done here.

Overall truly a fascinating book and a great primer for anyone even remotely interested in the complexities of actually achieving interstellar travel.

Very much recommended.

Aint No Way In Hell A Book-Accurate Movie Of This Tale Is Ever Made. There's just too much that would cause people of most any era - even 1969 when this book was written - to walk out of the theater on. A few certain words beginning in "N". A couple of uses of what was at least at one time British slang for a cigarette but which has largely meant something else entirely in the US. Repeated uses as a pejorative of a certain "Q" word that many now actively adopt as an identity. A rape where the victim then holds her rapist fondly *and wishes she is pregnant by him as the book closes*. (Literally, the last words of the book are this particular passage.) Possible statutory rape between a man in his 30s and a "girl", as she is repeatedly described, who is clearly in the upper half of the teen years but whose age is never clearly established. Several racial stereotypes of varying ethnicities of varying shades of melanin, most all of which are now (in 2024) decried as racist. Even the smoking and drinking is frowned upon and/ or outright ostracized (in at least some circles) in 2024.

And yet... even the action is different than any of the movies, to a degree. For example, Gene Hackman's character from the original 1972 movie? Yes, he falls into the water near the end, as he does in the movie (seriously, if you haven't seen a 52 yr old movie by this point, that's on you ;) ) but unlike the movie, there are no flames involved in the book. Revealing other differences does involve true spoilers, so I won't go there.

But if you're a fan of the movies and can withstand all that I noted above (and more, really), absolutely read the book. The differences between book and movie add a *lot* more nuance to everything and everybody, even as they often take away from the action - and yet add in even more explicit horror/ gore than I've ever seen in any incarnation of the movies. (Even the rape scene starts as a seeming horror/ gore scene that is later, after the rape, explained away.)

So yeah, this book has a LOT of problems by 2024 standards and really even by 1969 standards. Read it anyway, if you can withstand those issues. If not, you're not going to enjoy this, so truly, don't bother.

Recommended. Particularly for fans of the movies.

Memoir That Happens To Contain History. This book is less a history of the grocery store and absolutely less about the even then-current (nearly a decade ago as I write this review) grocery store practices and more about this one particular food writer's experience in... Cleveland, of all places, home of Michael Symon, MTV and WWE's Mike 'The Miz' Mizannin, and apparently this Michael... and his love of grocery stores. In particular, a local brand that while has expanded to Chicago, apparently hasn't spread too far outside of the general Ohio region. And I get it, grocery stores in America are *highly* regional. Outside of supermarket chains like Walmart, Target, and Costco, there are few if any national grocery store chains here in the US - and Ruhlman certainly doesn't go into any of the few (such as Kroger) that exist, instead harping incessantly about the aforementioned supermarkets and their impact on the industry.

Read as more memoir and personal shopping/ cooking / eating philosophical text, this is a clear love story for the grocery store and the author's dad, which is quite awesome - to use Mizannin's word - to read. That aspect worked quite well, for what it was.

But the bibliography alone - a bare 11% of the text - shows just how little actual details of grocery store operations you're going to get, and a very large chunk of what we do get comes from the author's direct interviews with - and being taken to trade shows by - executives from the local grocery store chain that Ruhlman's dad took him to all those years prior to the writing of this book. Which are insightful, so far as they go, but also pale in comparison to the more comprehensive look at the topic through multiple eyes that we see in say The Secret Life Of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr, which is absolutely recommended more than this particular text if you're looking for a more comprehensive examination of the grocery store and its practices. It is this dearth of bibliography that is the reason for the star deduction here.

Still, organized as it is around the various sections of the grocery store, this book works well for what it actually is and how the author and editors chose to organize the information it does present, so I'm comfortable with the single star deduction overall.

Recommended.

Imagine Ted Dekker's Circle Series... Without The Christian Allegory. Now toss in perhaps a dose of Jeremy Robinson or Douglas Adams, and you pretty well know exactly what to expect with this particular book.

You've got the man who goes to sleep in one world... and wakes in another (Circle series). You've got pretty damn insane amounts of balls to the wall action with a lot of inventive scifi aspects all over the place (Robinson). You've got jokes ranging from so subtle you barely pick them up all the way up to slap the stick upside your head slapstick comedy. (Robinson and Adams). You've even got a version of one particular late 90s movie going on to an extent... but revealing *which* movie gets into spoiler territory I'll not go into. Suffice it to say that the parallels here are as obvious as the Dekker ones, and anyone who has seen this movie should easily recognize them.

And yet, Weaver still manages to craft a compelling tale uniquely his own, one full of both action and heart and one that will make you ponder things you may have pondered before, but in newer ways.

Yes, at 600+ pages this is a tome - but it is a fun one that tells a complete story and doesn't really feel repetitive or that any scene/ group of scenes could be left out and still tell the same story with the same depth, so I would thus argue that it is exactly the right length. Even if it *is* my longest read of the year so far, and even if Weaver *did* forget to warn me about its length before I picked it up. And even if the base apparently real science underpinning the entire book does sound like something out of Idiocracy. ;)

Seriously, this is easily one of the more inventive scifi books you're going to read this year, so if you like the scifi genre at all, you really need to pick up this book. If you like action at all, you need to pick up this book. Truly one of the early standouts of 2025.

Very much recommended.

Surprising And Unexpected Yet Powerful. Following Weinstein on social media, I know she was writing this book shortly after the Hamas attacks on Israel in late 2023. As I finished reading this text (that I've had on my Kindle for a couple of months or so even now), Hamas had been parading the caskets of several babies they had murdered earlier in the day. Given that the Surfside Condo collapse in Miami a few years ago now - where Weinstein's family personally knew a few of the victims - clearly contributed quite a bit of emotional heft to the book she was writing at the time, I expected the same to be true here, as Weinstein is quite vocal (yet, to be clear, not preachy) about her Jewish faith and support of the State of Israel. (Haters, go the fuck away. While I've only known Weinstein online to date, she is truly a great person in my own interactions with her, no matter what your own political beliefs may be - and we *do* disagree quite substantially politically.)

So that is the background I approached this story with, my own "baggage" I brought into the Drift, even as I generally approach each and every book with a blank slate - and indeed knew *nothing* about this book beyond its title and that Weinstein had written it when I agreed to read and review it, and even when reading it this remained all that I knew (plus that it releases next week so I needed to hurry up with the reading and reviewing!).

What I actually found here was, as I noted in the title of the review, quite surprising and unexpected - for some reason I expected at least one blatantly Jewish character, if not every single protagonist in the book, to be honest, along with a much more blatantly Jewish plot, along the lines of say Jean Meltzer's books... even though I know from prior reading that this isn't really Weinstein's style. What I *actually* got here was a powerful tale of several flawed duos within families - mostly husbands and wives going trying to work through some level of trauma within their relationship, but also a powerful story (that takes a more prominent role later in the text) between a mother and her daughter.

While there are a total of ten main characters and the story *is* told from multiple perspectives (yes, I know there are readers who don't like that either - if you're at least willing to try it, this is a *really* good one to try with), Weinstein (and, perhaps, her editors) made the smart choice of limiting our number of perspectives to just a few, and never both halves of any of the five duos. This helps both story cohesion and progression, as even with chapter based perspective switches, at least this way we aren't getting first person views of both sides of the dynamic in question.

And the traumas that are happening here... even without being explicitly tied into anything overly "real-world", they're at the same time all too real. I don't want to detail them here due to spoiler potential, but I will note that Weinstein truly shines here in just how real and relatable she manages to make pretty well everything about all of these interweaving secrets and dynamics, and the pacing is done particularly well such that some surprises are tossed in early, others are late and seemingly out of nowhere (yet fit perfectly), and still others are teased well with what becomes for me at least a perfectly satisfactory payoff.

Overall truly a powerful and well written story, exactly what Weinstein is known for, and one that will have the room quite dusty at several different points - you've been warned about that too, now. ;) This is one that will leave you with that beautiful "wow, what did I just read" feeling (in the best possible ways) and will hopefully show you a path through even your own struggles.

Very much recommended.

Perfect Escapism. Even as certain elements of this book are damn near torn from the headlines of the past several weeks - for the record, *long* after Di Maio had completed writing this book, as I've had it myself for nearly four months already - this book really is pure, damn near perfect, escapism. For most people. For those in at least one sadly far too common situation - one my own grandmother experienced during the period detailed in this book - it could potentially be triggering. Yet even in this, Di Maio provides a solid set of escapism, and even in this, there is ultimately purpose in the story beyond "you can survive".

Instead, the vast majority of this tale focuses primarily on one particular lady and the situations she finds herself in during the early 1960s as she attempts a career as a Pan Am stewardess. We see in detail the exacting standards of the position and the more-intense-than-one-may-realize training they underwent. We see the (then) exotic locales that are still wildly different than what most Americans today are accustomed to - and yet those locations have also been increasingly "Americanized" and generally commercialized over the ensuing decades, to the point that this book really hits the nostalgic appeal of the locations in the eras portrayed and, as the text takes place nearly entirely in the early 1960s, largely glosses over all that they have become.

Our other primary narrator from this period is another view of the trials women went through in this period, and here Di Maio does a particularly superb job of showing that looks can indeed be deceiving, and sometimes one must actively seek out the real truth in matters.

Our final perspective - yes, this is technically multi-perspective, but there really are just the three - is a modern day person looking back on the halcyon days portrayed in the rest of the story. It is through her eyes that we see both all that was, story wise, and... even a glimpse of Di Maio herself, as she notes in the Author Note. (No, not even spoiling that here, although that particular tale sounds pretty fucking awesome. :) )

Ultimately this is one of those books that does a truly phenomenal job of providing maximal escapism through exotic travel in a long-gone era... and it is one that is going to tug your heart strings quite a bit at times, both making your heart race from a variety of situations and in making the room quite dusty indeed at points.

For those who may have worried where Di Maio was or if she was coming back at all or if she could come back and stay just as good as she once was, with her last major release being almost exactly three years to the day before the publication date of this book... I'll tell you now: I've now read over half of Di Maio's major releases, first encountering her with 2019's The Beautiful Strangers, and at least of the books I've read from her... this may well be the best one yet.

Very much recommended.

Brilliant Examination - Yet Outdated By The Author's Day Job Just Before Publication. Define irony. One sense may be writing a book wherein you detail how one Supreme Court decision in particular a few decades ago allowed for an exponential growth in the number of laws and regulations Americans must abide by... and then just a handful of weeks before publication of the book you made this point in, joining with five of your eight colleagues in your day job in announcing that you collectively have... *over ruled*... that very prior SCOTUS decision in question. One might consider that a form of irony.

Beyond the discussion of Chevron though, Gorsuch and apparent longtime assistant Nitze do a truly admirable job here of showing just how much the laws and other edicts with force of law of the United States have grown in just the last few decades alone, primarily at the National level, but with brief examinations of the volume of State and local laws as well. Various case studies are used to illustrate various ways in which the explosion has occurred and how it has harmed every day working class Americans of nearly any imaginable stripe, and showing how many Americans can be in violation of some rule or regulation... and not even know it until cops raid their house with guns drawn in order to kidnap these "perpetrators".

Indeed, some of the cases are quite sobering and harrowing indeed, including the one that opens the book - that of a Florida fisherman suddenly accused of tampering with evidence... due to a law that passed as a result of the Enron scandal. In other cases, Gorsuch and Nitze show various other "offenses", including at least a few - such as civil asset forfeiture and occupational licensing - that will be on Gorsuch's desk in his day job over the next couple of years, thanks in large part to the efforts of groups such as the Institute for Justice, which actively seeks to combat the very problem Gorsuch details in this book.

One thing that I can't speak to that I normally do in this space is the length of the bibliography, as I read the Audible edition of this book on my way back home to Jacksonville, FL from my homeland north of Atlanta, GA yesterday. (Though I *can* note, from that, that it can easily be read at 1.5x speed on a 7 ish hr drive. ;) )

Truly both a well written and genuinely important book for all Americans to read.

Very much recommended.

Editing Miscues Mar Otherwise Solid Suspense Story. The story told in this book really is quite solid. It may not work for *everyone*, but I found it enjoyable and it seemed to fit well enough with the characters as portrayed that nothing was so far "out there" as to be too distracting. There are several twists and turns and while I realized the link possibly before the author meant me to - or possibly much later than Ray meant me to, due to the aforementioned editing miscues - it wasn't anything that harmed my enjoyment of the tale. More of a "I know something you don't know" to hold over the main character until she finally realizes it herself.

But the editing miscues. Ugh. Not enough to deduct a star over, because it isn't really an "objective-ish" issue, but it absolutely marred my enjoyment of reading this book. Specifically, the way the timeline bounced around with little warning and with even less differentiation. Nothing about the way the text was formatted or the way these jumps into the past were written gave any indication beyond the "x time earlier" at the beginning of the chapter, and while that can (and has) worked in other books... for some reason it just *didn't* here, and I'm not overly sure why. It could absolutely be a "me" thing though, so read this book and see for yourself - and write your own review so I can have a more complete picture of whether or not this *is* a "me" thing. :)

Ultimately a solid story that shows promise for this author's continued career, but I do hope the editing issues can be resolved (or shown at least to be just a "me" problem).

Very much recommended.