Al Franken, Giant of the Senate / Al Franken

OK, so only progressives are likely to pick up this book. But Al Franken’s story is unique. An outsider with a long background in show business, Franken tries his hand at national politics. Sound familiar? Maybe it’s the new normal. As funny as Franken is (and he does try to put a lid on it to give his office the serious tone it deserves), he’s extremely smart, and seems to have an excellent political sense, reaches across the proverbial aisle, and sees the “big picture”. And, at least in the book, he inserts a lot of levity into everything. I found it interesting to see how his campaign was organized, how at first he didn’t have the blessing of the Democratic leadership, how he clawed his way up the polls (without the apparent help of foreign agents), and suffered through a months-long recount, before finally being seated as the junior Senator from Minnesota. It’s also interesting to get an insight into how Congressional offices function and what dedicated senators like Al Franken take home with them as homework at night! Franken seems like a real mensch.

Addendum 11/17: As the sexual harassment accusations increase, it seems likely that Sen. Franken's charmed life as "giant of the Senate" may be over.

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The Silent Patient / Alex Michaelides

A woman viciously murders her seemingly doting husband. We meet up with her several years later in a mental facility, where a therapist tries to get her to speak and to reveal her story. Who is innocent and who is the victim? The answer isn’t straightforward. The resolution to the novel features a real twist that will have the reader questioning the chronology of the different narrative threads in the book. A real page-turner.

Transient Desires / Donna Leon

Book 30 of the Guido Brunetti mystery series. I haven’t read them all, but enough to enjoy a visit back with a familiar character in a setting I love. Two female American college students are left wounded and unconscious outside the hospital emergency room in the middle of the night. Brunetti soon discovers who left them there, but the question remains why? The plot involves a nephew indebted to his criminal and abusive uncle, and illegal human trafficking. The book ends rather abruptly, and you may get the sense that after twenty-nine installments of the series, the author might just be phoning it in. Nevertheless, this book represented a nice little trip back to a Venice where real people live and work, and this to me is never a waste of time. I downloaded this to my iPad.

Murder in Passy, An Aimée Leduc Investigation / Cara Black

If you like your mysteries set in European locales, here’s a Parisian detective series that is sure to please. Aimée Leduc is a private eye, born of a French career detective and an absentee American mother (brief hints of angst over this in this installment). She’s appeared in about ten adventures, always set in iconic Parisian neighborhoods : Murder in the Marais, Murder in the Bastille, Murder in Montmartre, and Murder in the Latin Quarter , to name a few. In Murder in Passy (Paris’s tony XVIe arrondissement), Aimée finds herself mixed up in a murderous intrigue involving the French arm of the Basque nationalist movement. The final chase involves the kidnapping of a Spanish princess, a secret torture chamber used by the Gestapo in WWII, and a rooftop escape. The author sprinkles enough French words into the dialogue to either annoy you or make you feel your French 101 was not for nothing— Zut alors! très chic, c’est parfait, désolé, c’est tout! Oh, and Aimée’s frequent stop...

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