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because so much reading, writing, and living happens after-hours

Late Last
Night Books
because so much reading, writing, and living happens after-hours
Since 2013
Gary Garth McCann, founder and managing editor
an ad-free magazine about fiction by authors Terra Ziporyn * Sally Whitney * Eileen Haavik McIntire * Gary Garth McCann * Peter G. Pollak * Garry Craig Powell * Jenny Yacovissi * Lily Iona MacKenzie * Todd S. Garth * Daniel Oliver
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Author Archives: Peter Pollak

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My Excuse . . .

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

22 MAY 2021 My Excuse . . .

for not posting a book reivew this month is that I haven’t fallen in love with any of the books I’ve been reading lately. Of course, I don’t always post reviews of books I’m positive about, but the book needs to have sufficient substance to do a review.

One of my problems is I don’t get review copies of books and therefore have to rely on recommendations of others. That limits my ability to read books that are pre-press or have just come out. I’m not complaining . . . just explaining.

So, until next month, keep reading and if there’s a book you’d like me to read and review, email me.

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Vietnam: The Story that needs to be told over and over gets its due

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

23 APRIL 2021 Vietnam: The Story that needs to be told over and over gets its due

Jerry A. Rose & Lucy Rose Fischer, The Journalist (Spark Press, 2020)

She probably doesn’t remember, but Lucy Rose Fischer attended my birthday party at my house in Gloversville, New York when I was 7 or 8 years old, and I remember visiting their house probably for a reciprocal activity. I also knew about her older brother Jerry’s being a reporter covering Vietnam and his dying there in 1965. For that reason and because of my interest in Vietnam, I wanted to read Lucy’s book that honors Jerry and shares his story.

I would recommend The Journalist even without a personal connection as a way to keep alive the sad story of America’s involvement in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries post-World War II.

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Silva does it again; a novel of such complexity that we cannot wait for the 2021 sequel

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

25 MARCH 2021 Silva does it again; a novel of such complexity that we cannot wait for the 2021 sequel

Daniel Silva, The Order (2020)

If there were an award for the best opening chapter of a fiction, including characterization, dialogue, plot and theme, the first chapter of The Order would be in the running. Daniel Silva, after all, is no amateur in beginning a novel that feels that it has been recorded by cameras, microphones and probes into each characters mind. The initial scene in The Order suggests something tragic has happened at the Vatican. The chapter’s main character, Archbishop Luigi Donati, fears the worst. It turns out his mentor, Pope Paul VII, is dead and the circumstances are suspicious.

Thus begins a narrative featuring the Church of Rome and the Church’s most trusted Jew––Gabriel Allon. The complexity, including a fictional account of the origins of the Church, is portrayed realistically, with verve and in a tasteful manner, considering Allon’s role, must represent a heresy to millions.

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Three Fantasies

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

23 FEBRUARY 2021 Three Fantasies

Victor LaValle, The Changeling, 2017, Maggie Stiefvater, Call Down the Hawk, & Tasha Suri, Empire of Sand, 2018

Fantasy fiction seems to be in the midst of a crisis. The content of recent novels is ripe with bizarre plots and characters––the more extreme the better. Of course, I’m basing this on a small sample, but it’s worth pointing out in hopes someone will read this and prove me wrong.

I couldn’t finish The Changeling, an award-winning novel. It is billed as a fantasy, but what makes it so is a macabre story line where the fantasy portion only appears half way through the book. The book’s title doesn’t make sense for over two hundred pages. The Changeling is really horror, not fantasy, fiction.

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Maggie Stiefvater’s Call Down the Hawk

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

23 JANUARY 2021 Maggie Stiefvater’s Call Down the Hawk

Call Down The Hawk is book one of The Dream Trilogy by fantasy author Maggie Stiefvater. Stiefvater has created a unique fantasy world in which there are dreamers who can create things in the real world––some times those dreams are under their control; sometimes not. Sometimes they dream duplicates of themselves, which can get complicated. Then there are those who are hunting the dreamers to kill them.

Stiefvater is a master at creating fantastic worlds. The problem to this reader is that the world overwhelms the story. The lack of a defined plot in the early chapters made my following the story a challenge. That’s an issue which only improves slightly as the story progresses.

That’s not to say she doesn’t create interesting characters as well as well as interesting possibilities.

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Tana French offers top-notch Irish mystery writing

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

23 DECEMBER 2020 Tana French offers top-notch Irish mystery writing

Some of the finest thriller and crime writers of all time have come from the British isles starting with Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. Ireland’s Tana French is on the path to joining the coterie of highly regarded contemporary mystery/thriller authors who include P.D. James, Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Sayers, and Lee Child.

French has a unique story-telling style that may not suit all readers­­––particularly if your preference is for short, action-filled scenes. French constructs her stories as if building a castle, stone by stone.

Both novels I read had female protagonists struggling to following their intuition and not the rules set for them by their male counterparts. This is done without preaching which I appreciate.

In The Likeness French sets the story around a unique set of circumstances––the victim of a murder bares an uncanny resemblance to a former member of the Murder Squad, a specialist in going underground in disguise.

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Revolutionary Jack Reed’s Story Worth Knowing

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

23 NOVEMBER 2020 Revolutionary Jack Reed’s Story Worth Knowing

Alan Cheuse’s 1982 lyrical biography of John Reed is mistitled. While the title refers to Reed’s fellow travelers of the cultural and political upheaval that took place during the first decades of the 20th century, it is Reed’s life story that Cheuse has told no doubt because Reed in many respects was one of the main players in that era’s story.

Reed is best known for his Ten Days That Shook the World, the story of the Communist takeover of the Russian Revolution. Before travelling to Russia where he passed away in October 1920 from typhus, however, he had chronicled for alternative magazines like The Masses, the labor movement wars in the U.S. and the rise of the socialist movement in the U.S.

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Books for Sale

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

23 SEPTEMBER 2020 Books for Sale

Do you have too many books? I know I do. When I retired and downsized to a condo, I divided my book collection between the condo and a summer home with enough to fill multiple bookcases in each building. I even built a bookcase into a closet in the condo.

Some of you might be saying you can never have too many books, but why keep books you have already read and don’t intend to read again?

Okay, you might keep some books for professional, religious or family reasons, and if you have one signed by a famous author, you might be thinking about passing it on to your children or grandchildren. But what about those books you read so long ago you can’t remember what they were about?

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Strange Happenings: A Review of Sarah Water’s The Little Stranger

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

23 AUGUST 2020 Strange Happenings: A Review of Sarah Water’s The Little Stranger

Chosen by a book club I belong to, due to the volumes of praise attached to the front and back cover, I anticipated a more compelling story than The Little Stranger turned out to provide. I’ll try to explain why.

The Little Stranger is described as a modern gothic novel. The author inserts story elements that cannot be explained by standard logic––the vision of a ghost and events for which there is no rational explanation and for which Waters provides no justification.

Readers may feel comfortable with unresolved gothic tropes. I don’t. The key question is whether these elements are critical in determining the story’s outcome. If they are, all the more reason that I, as a reader, feel they need to be explained either by providing a rational cause or by a theory that says in this world, ghosts exist.

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A Prophet’s Message: Natan Sharansky on the value of identity

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

24 JULY 2020 A Prophet’s Message: Natan Sharansky on the value of identity

Did you know that “Refusenik” Natan Sharansky and his supporters played a major role in bringing down the Soviet Union? Sentenced in 1978 to 13 years of forced labor for the crime of being a leader of the international human rights movement and seeking to emigrate to Israel, Sharansky’s refusal to confess to his “crimes” became a touchstone in the West for those opposed to the totalitarian regime’s repressive policies at home and abroad.

Once freed, Sharansky became a leader in Israel. He helped form a political party that gave voice to Russian émigrés, served in two governments and was chairman of the Jewish Agency for nearly a decade. His record, personal appearances and writings should have made him a bigger star than he is today.

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Schooling’s False Promises. A Review of Fredrik deBoer’s “The Cult of Smart” (St. Martin’s Press, 2020)

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

23 JUNE 2020 Schooling’s False Promises. A Review of Fredrik deBoer’s “The Cult of Smart” (St. Martin’s Press, 2020)

What major federal policy has every president from Lyndon Johnson to Barak Obama agreed on? Answer: Advancing educational opportunity as a path to societal equality. They may have differed on how to expand schooling, but not that it was a goal to be achieved in order to reduce social inequality. Why then have the results not lived up to the promise? The answer is simple according to Fredrik deBoer: schooling can never produce social equality––not because we don’t spend enough or because teachers aren’t good enough. It’s because not all people are academically talented.

Marshaling studies that expose the raw underbelly of schooling’s failures on top of insights from his personal experience as a teacher, and capping that off with a measure of behavioral genetics, deBoer concludes, “as long as our education system creates winners, it will also create losers.”

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Chances are you’ll enjoy the latest novel by Richard Russo

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

23 MARCH 2020 Chances are you’ll enjoy the latest novel by Richard Russo

In Chances Are . . . the latest novel by Richard Russo, three friends are getting together on Cape Cod 44 years after they celebrated having graduated from college at the same location. Worthy of a full-length novel? Not until you discover that the co-ed who joined them on the prior occasion was never seen again after leaving the sea-side cottage the morning they all departed for unknown futures.

A mystery? Yes, but in the hands of Richard Russo what we have is so much more than a whodounit. Russo’s skill at bringing the depth of his characters’ beings to the surface and hooking us on them is what makes him unique among modern novelists. He is able to keep us as much interested in these average guys as does our anxiety to learn what happened to young Jacy.

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So You Want to Write a Memoir!

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

23 FEBRUARY 2020 So You Want to Write a Memoir!

Writing a memoir can be a most rewarding experience––one your family and friends will thank you for having done. A memoir is your opportunity to leave concrete documentation of your life in a form that is easily accessible to present and future generations.

Every family has stories. That’s human nature. But all too often people have questions about the past they wish they had answers to when someone important to them is gone. You may have felt that way upon the passing of a parent, sibling or other significant person in your life. Don’t make your offspring wish they knew more about your family background or how you met your spouse or why you moved to a certain city.

Here are some reasons you might want to write your memoir:

  • To share your life’s story with your offspring, other relatives and friends.
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Some Library Gems and “Fool’s Gold” Finds

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

23 JANUARY 2020 Some Library Gems and “Fool’s Gold” Finds

One of the pleasures of being “retired” is having the time to discover new authors. I also discovered a new cheap way of doing this. My local library in Howard County Maryland has a shelf of books they are purging from their collection that are on sale for $2.00 each. And when you pay $2 for a book, you don’t feel you have to finish it if it’s not your cup of soup.

I’ll start with an author I discovered whose books who I’ll keep reading: Charles Finch. I bought Finch’s “An Old Betrayal,” the seventh in a series featuring Charles Lenox mysteries.

A test of an author’s writing craft is to pick up a book in the middle of the series and not feel lost or that you have to go back and read the others from the first onward.

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Identity Guilt: A Review of Tommy Orange’s “There,There”

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

26 NOVEMBER 2019 Identity Guilt: A Review of Tommy Orange’s “There,There”

I suspect Tommy Orange fears he’s not being judged on the same scale as other authors. He’s like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. When Thomas got into Yale, people let it be known they thought he only got in because of affirmative action.

I suspect Orange fears he only got a book contract and won awards for his novel is because he’s Native American. I suspect he worries that he’s not being held to the same standard as other authors and having read the book I suspect he’s right.

There, There is an award winner due to the content, not the writing or the structure of the novel. His non-fiction Prologue, which cites ways in which Native Americans have been victimized over the centuries, seems designed to pull at our heart strings before he introduces the characters of his novel.

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Buried by the New York Times: How America’s Premier Newspaper Downplayed the Holocaust

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

23 OCTOBER 2019 Buried by the New York Times: How America’s Premier Newspaper Downplayed the Holocaust

Laurel Leff, Buried by the Times (Cambridge, 2005)

One of the unfortunate casualties of the media’s war on Donald Trump and his ‘fake news’ response is a clear-eyed assessment of the extent to which outside factors influence what newspapers choose to print or not print. As a case in point, consider Laurel Leff’s thorough analysis of the New York Times coverage (or lack thereof) of the Nazi’s murderous campaign against the Jews of Europe. Leff exposes the Times’ intentional downplaying of what was happening out of a fear of being criticized for playing favorites due to the fact that the Times’ owner and publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, was Jewish.

Sulzberger was a proponent of the idea that Judaism was a religion and not the cornerstone of a people, a nation.

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The Poe Festival (Oct. 5-6): An Opportunity for Fun and Learning

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

23 SEPTEMBER 2019 The Poe Festival (Oct. 5-6): An Opportunity for Fun and Learning

Honoring writers who paved the way with their contributions to the literary world is a great way to introduce young people (as well as the still young-at-heart) to the joys of the written word. In Baltimore, we are especially grateful for the existence of the Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum and the annual International Poe Festival and Awards which will take place this year Saturday and Sunday, October 4 & 5, from 11 am to 4 pm both days.

Poe’s place in the literary firmament is assured by those who champion him as an forerunner of the genres of science fiction, mystery and horror, but he is also a must read for his poetry and his critical essays. He belongs in the pantheon of early American writers that includes the Transcendentalists as well as Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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The Power of the Mind: A Review of Rachel Kadish’ The Weight of Ink

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

23 AUGUST 2019 The Power of the Mind: A Review of Rachel Kadish’ The Weight of Ink

It’s the year 2000 and a cache of documents from the 17th century written in Portuguese, Hebrew and English has been discovered in a London suburb. With the help of a graduate assistant, an elderly female history professor begins to uncover the mystery of their origins. For her, it’s a last chance to go out on a high note; for him, it’s a distraction from a Ph.D. thesis on Shakespeare that’s not going well.

But The Weight of Ink is not just about that discovery and what it reveals about the past, although what they learn is quite startling. Instead, Kadish tells us the story of the people who composed and preserved the documents themselves. Dry? Pedantic? Just the opposite.

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Book Review: Stewart O’Nan’s City of Secrets

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

23 JULY 2019 Book Review: Stewart O’Nan’s City of Secrets

Jerusalem has been called many things. “City of Secrets” probably not until that is Stewart O’Nan chose that title for his 2016 novel of the tumultuous years in the “Holy Land” after the end of the Second World War.

The title implies the story is about the city of Jerusalem, which to a large extent it is, but it’s primarily about one member of a group of people campaigning to get Great Britain to fulfill its 1917 promise that the land west of the Jordan River become a homeland for the Jewish people.

O’Nan assigns his protagonist the single un-Jewish name “Brand.” Brand is a Holocaust survivor who makes his way through the blockade set up by the British to prevent Jewish refugees from the Holocaust from reaching the Holy Land beyond the small annual quota.

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Interview with Running Breathless author Morey Kogul

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

23 JUNE 2019 Interview with Running Breathless author Morey Kogul

These days many of us are glued to the news as conflicts near and far are reported with up to the minute details. Can you imagine then how it must have felt to residents of Dubno in Soviet occupied Poland in June 1941 to hear rumors that Germany was about to invade? Jewish families in particular had few if any choices to assure their survival. In one family a young man decided to ride his bicycle to a near-by town to learn what he could. For Wolf Kogul that was the beginning of years struggling to survive war, tragic loss and future guilt.

Each story of that time adds concrete knowledge of those terrible years, bringing the truth of specificity that history books can only generalize about.

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