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360. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Tammis and David Matzinger

Author:   John Carreyrou

Genre:  Non Fiction, Business, Crime, Science

339 pages, published May 21, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Bad Blood is written by John Carreyrou, the Wall Street Journal reporter who broke the story of massive fraud and deception by Silicon Valley startup Theranos which was at one time valued at 9 billion dollars and whose board of directors included such luminaries as George Schulz, David Bois, David Mattis and Henry Kissinger.  Carreyrou tells the fascinating of Stanford drop out Elizabeth Holmes, who fancied herself as a female Steve Jobs, and her quest to revolutionize the lab testing business by making blood tests significantly faster and easier.   However, when the technology didn’t work, Theranos started down a path of deception, obfuscation and harassment of anyone bold enough to challenge them.

Quotes 

“A sociopath is often described as someone with little or no conscience. I’ll leave it to the psychologists to decide whether Holmes fits the clinical profile, but there’s no question that her moral compass was badly askew. I’m fairly certain she didn’t initially set out to defraud investors and put patients in harm’s way when she dropped out of Stanford fifteen years ago. By all accounts, she had a vision that she genuinely believed in and threw herself into realizing. But in her all-consuming quest to be the second coming of Steve Jobs amid the gold rush of the “unicorn” boom, there came a point when she stopped listening to sound advice and began to cut corners. Her ambition was voracious and it brooked no interference. If there was collateral damage on her way to riches and fame, so be it.” 

My Take

I first heard about Theranos when I watched a 60 minutes expose on Elizabeth Holmes.  That piqued my interest to read Bad Blood.  However, I had to wait for my husband Scot to finish it before I had a turn.  After I finished, my mom and stepdad breezed through it in short order.  What a fascinating, page turner!  An extremely compelling true story with lots of larger than life characters, plot twists and a morality tale.  Highly recommended.

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357. The Likeness

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Tana French

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime

466 pages, published May 1, 2009

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Overdrive

Summary

The Likeness is book two in Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series.  It starts six months after the end of In the Woods (book one).  After the events that occurred in the previous book, Detective Cassie Maddox has transferred out of the Dublin Murder Squad with no plans to go back.  She is pulled back in when the victim in a grisly crime scene looks exactly like Cassie and carries ID identifying herself as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie once used as an undercover cop. Cassie goes undercover must discover not only who killed this girl, but, more important, who she was.

Quotes 

“There’s a Spanish proverb,” he said, “that’s always fascinated me. “Take what you want and pay for it, says God.'” “I don’t believe in God,” Daniel said, “but that principle seems, to me, to have a divinity of its own; a kind of blazing purity. What could be simpler, or more crucial? You can have anything you want, as long as you accept that there is a price and that you will have to pay it.”

 

“I wanted to tell her that being loved is a talent too, that it takes as much guts and as much work as loving; that some people, for whatever reason, never learn the knack.”

 

“Some people are little Chernobyls, shimmering with silent, spreading poison: get anywhere near them and every breath you take will wreck you from the inside out.”

 

“Regardless of the advertising campaigns may tell us, we can’t have it all. Sacrifice is not an option, or an anachronism; it’s a fact of life. We all cut off our own limbs to burn on some altar. The crucial thing is to choose an altar that’s worth it and a limb you can accept losing. To go consenting to the sacrifice.”

 

“Have you noticed how easily the very young die? They make the best martyrs for any cause, the best soldiers, the best suicides. It’s because they’re held here so lightly: they haven’t yet accumulated loves and responsibilities and commitments and all the things that tie us securely to this world. They can let go of it as easily and simply as lifting a finger. But as you get older, you begin to find things that are worth holding onto, forever.”

 

“Now that’s a concept that’s always fascinated me: the real world. Only a very specific subset of people use the term, have you noticed? To me, it seems self-evident that everyone lives in the real world – we all breathe real oxygen, eat real food, the earth under our feet feels equally solid to all of us. But clearly these people have a far more tightly circumscribed definition of reality, one that I find deeply mysterious, and an almost pathologically intense need to bring others into line with that definition.”

 

“But give me more credit than that. Someone else may have dealt the hand, but I picked it up off the table, I played every card, and I had my reasons.”

 

“It took my breath away, that evening. If you’ve ever dreamed that you walked into your best-loved book or film or TV program, then maybe you’ve got some idea how it felt: things coming alive around you, strange and new and utterly familiar at the same time; the catch in your heartbeat as you move through the rooms that had such a vivid untouchable life in your mind, as your feet actually touch the carpet, as you breathe the air; the odd, secret glow of warmth as these people you’ve been watching for so long, from so far away, open their circle and sweep you into it.”

 

“It was-this always seems to shock people all over again- a happy childhood. For the first few months I spent a lot of time at the bottom of the garden, crying till I threw up and yelling rude words at the neighborhood kids who tried to make friends. But children are pragmatic, they come alive and kicking out of a whole lot worse than orphanhood, and I could only hold out so long against the fact that nothing would bring my parents back and against the thousand vivid things around me, Emma-next-door hanging over the wall and my new bike glinting red in the sunshine and the half-wild kittens in the garden shed, all fidgeting insistently while they waited for me to wake up again and come out to play. I found out early that you can throw yourself away, missing what you’ve lost. ”

 

“The idea was flawed, of course,” he said irritably. “Innately and fatally flawed. It depended on two of the human race’s greatest myths: the possibility of permanence, and the simplicity of human nature. Both of which are all well and good in literature, but the purest fantasy outside the covers of a book. Our story should have stopped that night with the cold cocoa, the night we moved in: and they all lived happily ever after, the end. Inconveniently, however, real life demanded that we keep on living.”

 

“That kind of friendship doesn’t just materialize at the end of the rainbow one morning in a soft-focus Hollywood haze. For it to last this long, and at such close quarters, some serious work had gone into it. Ask any ice-skater or ballet dancer or show jumper, anyone who lives by beautiful moving things: nothing takes as much work as effortlessness.”

 

“Look at all the old wars, centuries ago: the king led his men into battle. Always. That was what the ruler was: both on a practical level and on a mystical one, he was the one who stepped forwards to lead his tribe, put his life at stake for them, become the sacrifice for their safety. If he had refused to do that most crucial thing at that most crucial moment, they would have ripped him apart- and rightly so: he would have shown himself to be an impostor, with no right to the throne. The king was the country; how could he possibly expect it go into battle without him? But now… Can you see any modern president or prime minister on the front line, leading his men into the war he’s started? And once that physical and mystical link is broken, once the ruler is no longer willing to be the sacrifice for his people, he becomes not a leader but a leech, forcing others to take his risks while he sits in safety and battens on their losses. War becomes a hideous abstraction, a game for bureaucrats to play on paper; soldiers and civilians become mere pawns, to be sacrificed by the thousand for reasons that have no roots in any reality. As soon as rulers mean nothing, war means nothing; human life means nothing. We’re ruled by venal little usurpers, all of us, and they make meaninglessness everywhere they go.” 

My Take

Having thoroughly enjoyed two previous Tana French books (The Witch Elm and In the Woods), I had high hopes for The Likeness.  It did not disappoint.  French is such a master storyteller and has such affection for her characters that it is impossible not to become completely absorbed in the story.  Some interesting twists, but this book is worth reading for the quality of the writing rather than the puzzle of its central mystery.

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354. Lethal White

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime

650 pages, published September 18, 2018

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Lethal White is J.K. Rowling’s fourth book featuring Private Investigator Cormoran Strike and his partner Robin Ellacott.  It opens with Billy, a mentally troubled young man, telling Strike “I seen a kid killed…He strangled it, up by the horse.”  This statement sets Strike and Ellacot off on a hunt that turns into a murder investigation of a member of Parliament.

Quotes 

“Pretending you’re OK when you aren’t isn’t strength.”

“Well, that’s where you’re wrong,” Robin contradicted him. The champagne had fizzed on her tongue and seemed to give her courage even before it hit her brain. “Sometimes, acting as though you’re all right, makes you all right. Sometimes you’ve got to slap on a brave face and walk out into the world, and after a while it isn’t an act anymore, it’s who you are. If I’d waited to feel ready to leave my room after—you know,” she said, “I’d still be in there. I had to leave before I was ready.”

 

“I was in therapy for a bit. Now I do CBT exercises.” “Do you, though?” Strike asked mildly. “Because I bought vegetarian bacon a week ago, but it’s not making me any healthier, just sitting there in the fridge.”

 

“Life had taught him that a great and powerful love could be felt for the most apparently unworthy people, a circumstance that ought, after all, to give everybody consolation.”

 

“How often were you aware, while it happened, that you were living an hour that would change the course of your life forever?”

 

“Because men’s crimes are always ours in the final analysis, aren’t they, Mr. Strike? Ultimate responsibility always lies with the woman, who should have stopped it, who should have acted, who must have known. Your failings are really our failings, aren’t they? Because the proper role of the woman is carer, and there’s nothing lower in this whole world than a bad mother.”

 

“The feel of her was both new and familiar, as though he had held her a long time ago, as though he had missed it without knowing it for years.”

 

“As suddenly as they had reached for each other, they broke apart. Tears were rolling down Robin’s face. For one moment of madness, Strike yearned to say, “Come with me”, but there are words that can never be unsaid or forgotten, and those, he knew, were some of them.”

 

“I think marriage is nearly always an unfathomable entity, even to the people inside it. It took this… all of this mess… to make me realize I can’t go on. I don’t really know when I stopped loving him,”

 

“Look me in the eye and tell me you’ve loved anyone, since, like you loved me.”

“No, I haven’t,” he said, “and thank fuck for that.” 

My Take

The reason to read Lethal White isn’t the mystery at its core, which is fine but a bit convoluted at times.  The reason to read it is the superb portrait painted by J.K. Rowling of Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacot, the two main, recurring characters in the Cormoran Strike series.  They are so richly drawn and so accessible that it makes reading the book worthwhile.

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348. The Sentence is Death

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Anthony Horowitz

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime

384 pages, published June 4, 2019

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

The Sentence is Death is the second in Anthony Horowitz’s bestselling series starring Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne and himself.  “You shouldn’t be here. It’s too late . . . “

were the last recorded words of successful celebrity-divorce lawyer Richard Pryce, found in his house, bludgeoned to death a £3,000 bottle of wine.  Painted on the wall by the body were three digits.  Enter PI Hawthorne and Anthony Horowitz as they follow a series of bizarre leads to track down the killer.

Quotes 

“I’ve met police dogs with more intelligence than those two. You could tell them everything we’ve done, down to the last word, and they’d still end up running around in a circle, sniffing each other’s arses.” 

My Take

I had a hard time following all of the twists and turns of this mystery.  Part of the problem was that I listened to the audio version, so I couldn’t re-read key passages that contained important clues.  Not quite as good as Magpie Murders which is my favorite mystery of the last ten years, but still a good read.

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344. Then She Was Gone

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Lisa Jewel

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Thriller

359 pages, published April 17, 2018

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Hoopla

Summary

Then She Was Gone tells the story of Laurel whose 15 year old daughter Ellie disappears.  Ten years later, Laurel is a divorced woman in her early 50’s who starts dating a charming stranger named Floyd whose 9 year old daughter Poppy is a precocious, pretty and reminiscent of Ellie.  Things then take a dark and unexpected turn.

Quotes 

“When I read a book it feels like real life and when I put the book down it’s like I go back into the dream.”

 

“I remember being twenty-one and thinking that my personality was a solid thing, that me was set in stone, that I would always feel what I felt and believe what I believed. But now I know that me is fluid and shape-changing.”

 

“Did you know that the parts of the brain involved in decision-making aren’t fully developed until you’re twenty-five years old?”

 

“If she could rewind the timeline, untwist it and roll it back the other way like a ball of wool, she’d see the knots in the yarn, the warning signs. Looking at it backward it was obvious all along.”

 

“If she could rewind the timeline, untwist it and roll it back the other way like a ball of wool, she’d see the knots in the yarn, the warning signs. Looking at it backward it was obvious all along.”

 

“That was how she’d once viewed her perfect life: as a series of bad smells and unfulfilled duties, petty worries and late bills.”

 

“People try and make out there’s a greater purpose, a secret meaning, that it all means something. And it doesn’t.”

 

“She’d never worked out how he’d done it, how he’d found that healthy pink part of himself among the wreckage of everything else. But she didn’t blame him. Not in the least. She wished she could do the same; she wished she could pack a couple of large suitcases and say good-bye to herself, wish herself a good life, thank herself for all the memories, look fondly upon herself for just one long, lingering moment and then shut the door quietly, chin up, morning sun playing hopefully on the crown of her head, a bright new future awaiting her. She would do it in a flash. She really would.” 

My Take

Then She Was Gone was a quick, captivating read.  Author Lisa Jewell does a particularly good job with the main character Laurel and her struggles to keep living after her 15 year old daughter disappears.  There are also several twists that kept me turning the pages of this book.

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343. In the Woods

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Tana French

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Thriller

464 pages, published May 27, 2008

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

In the Woods opens with the disappearance of Peter and Jamie, two twelve year old children, from the woods nearby their small town of Knocknaree in Ireland where they often played with their best friend Adam.  Adam is discovered the next day in the same woods with his tennis shoes soaked in blood and no memory of what happened.  Fast forward 20 years later and Adam (who now goes by Rob) is a police detective in a nearby town.  When another 12 year old is found murdered near in the same woods where Peter and Jamie disappeared, Adam and his partner/best friend Cassie are assigned to the case.  The investigation stirs up lots of old memories for Adam and his life begins to unravel.

Quotes 

“I had learned early to assume something dark and lethal hidden at the heart of anything I loved. When I couldn’t find it, I responded, bewildered and wary, in the only way I knew how: by planting it there myself.”

 

“I am not good at noticing when I’m happy, except in retrospect.”

 

“The girls I dream of are the gentle ones, wistful by high windows or singing sweet old songs at a piano, long hair drifting, tender as apple blossom. But a girl who goes into battle beside you and keeps your back is a different thing, a thing to make you shiver. Think of the first time you slept with someone, or the first time you fell in love: that blinding explosion that left you cracking to the fingertips with electricity, initiated and transformed. I tell you that was nothing, nothing at all, beside the power of putting your lives, simply and daily, into each other’s hands.”

 

“Maybe she, like me, would have loved the tiny details and inconveniences even more dearly than the wonders, because they are the things that prove you belong.”

 

“Human beings, as I know better than most, can get used to anything. Over time, even the unthinkable gradually wears a little niche for itself in your mind and becomes just something that happened.”

 

“She informed me, matter-of-factly, that she was old enough to know the difference between intriguing and fucked up. “You should go for younger women,” she advised me. “They can’t always tell.”

 

“We think about mortality so little, these days, except to flail hysterically at it with trendy forms of exercise and high-fiber cereals and nicotine patches.”

 

“If she had hurt me, I could have forgiven her without even having to think about it; but I couldn’t forgive her for being hurt.”

 

“People need a moral code, to help them make decisions. All this bio-yogurt virtue and financial self-righteousness are just filling the gap in the market. But the problem is that it’s all backwards. It’s not that you do the right thing and hope it pays off; the morally right thing is by definition the thing that gives the biggest payoff.” 

My Take

After reading and loving The Witch Elm earlier this year, I definitely wanted to read more by the incredibly talented Tana French.  In the Woods is the first of her six book Dublin Murder Squad series and did not disappoint.  French compensates for a slowly building (at times meandering) plot, by creating detailed and nuanced characters in a richly drawn atmosphere.  This is a mystery and you want to know what happened, but you are also happy to spend time in the compelling world created by French.  I look forward to reading more from this impressive writer.

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340. Miracle Creek

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Drue Emerson

Author:   Angie Kim

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime

357 pages, published April 16, 2019

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Miracle Creek is a literary courtroom drama about a Korean immigrant family and a young, single mother accused of murdering her eight-year-old autistic son.  It takes place in a small Virginia town and explores the intertwining lives of people who are very different from each other.  All is not what it seems as the courtroom tension builds.

Quotes 

“But that was the way life worked. Every human being was the result of a million different factors mixing together — one of a million sperm arriving at the egg at exactly a certain time; even a millisecond off, and another entirely different person would result. Good things and bad–every friendship and romance formed, every accident, every illness–resulted from the conspiracy of hundreds of little things, in and of themselves inconsequential.”

 

“to Americans, verbiage was an inherent good, akin to kindness or courage. They loved words—the more, the longer, and more quickly said, the smarter and more impressive.” 

My Take

In Miracle Creek, author Angie Kim combines compelling character studies with a taut courtroom drama.  You also come away from the book with a deeper understanding of the highs and lows of living with an autistic child.  A page turner of the best kind.

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322. Find Her

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Lisa Gardner

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Crime

402 pages, published February 9, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Find Her is a crime thriller that tells the story of Flora Dane, a young woman who  was kidnapped while on spring break.  For 472 days, Flora was held captive and did what she needed to do to survive.  Once released, Flora turned into a vigilante avenger.  Hired to find another abducted young woman, Flora finds herself ensnared again with her potential murder or release leading to a taut climax.

Quotes 

“Survivors make it because they learn to adapt. Adaptation is coping. Coping is strength.”

 

“Because it’s one thing to survive. It is much, much harder to truly live.”

 

“There’s no rewind, or erasing, or unmaking. The things that happened, they are you, you are them. You can escape, but you can’t get away. Just the way it is.”

 

“IN A DETECTIVE’S WORLD there was one true blight on society, and it wasn’t the master criminal; after all, superpredators were few and far between. It was the media.”

 

“I don’t know who I am,” I say. “No one does. Everyone spends their lives figuring that out, even people who’ve never been kidnapped.”

 

“You know about trauma bonding, right?” the agent asked abruptly. “Forget kidnapping victims, you see it all the time with battered women. They’re isolated, at the mercy of their dominating spouse, going through intense spells of abject terror followed by even more emotionally draining periods of soul-wrenching apologies. The trauma itself creates a powerful bonding element. The things these two have gone through together, how could anyone else ever understand? It becomes one more thing that makes a woman stay, even after her husband has beat the crap out of her again.” 

My Take

Find Her is a quick, captivating read.  I had previously read Lisa Gardner’s novella The Fourth Man and can definitely recommend Find Her over that short book which was just okay.  In Find Her, Gardner creates a compelling protagonist in Flora and hooks you into Flora’s world and experiences through lots of interesting details on survival and recovery.

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320. The Witch Elm

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Lynn McInnes

Author:   Tana French

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Crime

528 pages, published October 9, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The protagonist in The Witch Elm is a modern day Dubliner named Toby, a carefree twenty something with a job at an art gallery, a nice flat and the perfect girlfriend.  Toby’s idyllic life is shattered when he is attacked in his home and left for dead.  During his recovery, he moves into the family home to take care of his Uncle Hugo who is dying of cancer.  While there, a long decomposed body is found inside the hollow of a large wych elm tree on the property.  As  Toby and his family begin to uncover the mystery, layers and layers of duplicity are revealed that has Toby questioning his own sanity.

Quotes 

“But we’re so desperate, aren’t we, to believe that bad luck only happens to people who deserve it.”

 

“The thing is, I suppose,” he said, “that one gets into the habit of being oneself. It takes some great upheaval to crack that shell and force us to discover what else might be underneath.”

 

“I knew straightaway, from his smile, that he wasn’t a doctor; I’d already got the hang of the doctors’ smiles, firm and distancing, expertly calibrated to tell you how much time was left in the conversation.”

 

“Once the fear took hold, I was fucked. I’d never known anything like it could exist: all-consuming, ravenous, a whirling black vortex that sucked me under so completely and mercilessly that it truly felt like I was being devoured alive, bones splintered, marrow sucked.”

 

“I’ve never got the self-flagellating middle-class belief that being poor and having a petty crime habit magically makes you more worthy, more deeply connected to some wellspring of artistic truth, even more real.”

 

“Faye had always been sweet, flaky but sweet, unlikely to ask about your problems but deeply concerned about them if you reminded her they existed.”

 

“The wych elm’s whole crown was gone, only the trunk left, thick stubs of branches poking out obscenely. It should have looked pathetic, but instead it had a new, condensed force: some great malformed creature, musclebound and nameless, huddled in the darkness waiting for a sign.” 

My Take

I thoroughly enjoyed the many hours of reading that I spent with The Witch Elm and discovered a deep appreciation for the writing talent of Tana French.  Her characters are so multi-dimensional and so thoroughly fleshed out that you feel as if you are living your life right alongside of them.  While the book excels as a character study, there is also a fascinating mystery at its heart that keeps you reading long after it is time to turn off the bedside light.  Highly recommended.

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317. The Outsider

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Stephen King

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Crime, Suspense

561 pages, published May 22, 2018

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

When an eleven-year-old boy’s violated corpse is found in a town park, all the evidence, from eyewitnesses to fingerprints to DNA, point to Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls.  Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney arrest him with what seems to be a bulletproof case.  When Maitland’s alibi checks out, the authorities start to questions their rush to judgment, but have no answers as to how the two contradictory circumstances are possible.

Quotes 

“If you can’t let go of the past, the mistakes you’ve made will eat you alive.”

 

“I believe there’s another dozen thoughts lined up behind each one I’m aware of.”

 

“I would like to believe in God,” she said, “because I don’t want to believe we just end, even though it balances the equation—since we came from blackness, it seems logical to assume that it’s to blackness we return. But I believe in the stars, and the infinity of the universe. That’s the great Out There. Down here, I believe there are more universes in every fistful of sand, because infinity is a two-way street.”

 

“Dreams are the way we touch the unseen world,”

 

“My tongue runs like a supermarket conveyor belt on payday.”

 

“Money was no cure for sorrow, Alec reflected, but it did allow one to grieve in relative comfort.”

 

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’ ” 

My Take

The Outsider is quintessential Stephen King.  You get to affectionately know a cast of characters comprised of normal people in a normal town that have to deal with something completely abnormal.  King, a master storyteller, delivers the goods once again.

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