"Buying In," by Robert Walker

"Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are," by Robert Walker (New York: Random House; 2008), 291 pages.

Buying In is a refutation of the professional marketers' arguments that "brands are dead" and that "advertising no longer works." Author Rob Walker argues that people are embracing brands more than ever, that brands are fracturing, and people are able to access these brands through combinations of technology, viral marketing, and the use of key people or word-of-mouth agents and promoters marketing products on behalf of corporations, acquaintances, and friends. Marketing is now entwined with cultural and social connections. Walker also explores a practice he calls murketing (a combination of murky and marketing) and how people buy products not just for their use, utility or function, but also as expressions of their identity. It’s as though you are what you buy.

Buying In appears to be like Malcolm Gladwell's books (the covers seem to be somewhat similar), but it has none of Gladwell's diverse subject matter or arguments on a range of subjects. Buying In is about marketing and how innovative marketing programs have been successful in a technological age. The narrow focus of this book is its greatest strength, and makes this book mostly of interest to marketers and merchandisers. Non-marketers, like me, might find this book repetitive and a long-winded explanation for what should be a simple story. It may also be of little value to the novice reader of marketing books, unless it is a steeply discounted remainder copy at a discount store.

"9 Dragons," by Michael Connelly

9 Dragons, by Michael Connelly (New York: Hachette Book Group; 2009), 469 pages.

In 9 Dragons, Michael Connelly gives the reader another Los Angeles-based fictional crime story, centered on Connelly’s always intriguing character, Vietnam veteran and formerly retired Los Angeles Police Department Detective Harry Bosch. In 9 Dragons, Bosch is once again confronted with murder and death, and once again shows rare fortitude in the face of a rising tide of indifference among his fellow detectives who seem too willing to accept easy solutions and an easy way out. Not Bosch.

In 9 Dragons, the story unfolds in three parts. In the first part, Bosch and his distracted partner investigate the murder of an ethnic Chinese male store owner. Bosch follows some leads, interviews witnesses and the surviving family members at their other place of business, and follows up on some leads with other units of the Los Angeles Police Department. At the same time, Bosch explores the possibility that the murder is related to Chinese organized crime.

Bosch’s ex-wife and daughter live in Hong Kong. When his daughter goes missing and is later conformed to have been kidnapped, Bosch thinks her disappearance is related to his murder investigation and immediately flies to Hong Kong to find her. In Hong Kong he joins with his ex-wife and her boyfriend to commence the search. This search forms the second part of the story, and is made notable for two notable events: the death of Bosch’s ex-wife, and Bosch’s righteous killing rampage pursued in his successful quest to find his daughter and return her to Los Angeles with him. The third part of the story is Bosch’s solving of the murder. He realizes that his daughter’s disappearance and kidnapping is unrelated to the murder investigation, and, that the murderer had been leading him astray all along with a series of lies that started at the start of his investigation.

Connelly’s 9 Dragons is another fine addition to the growing collection of Harry Bosch murder novels. The story has Connelly’s regular account of the difficulties faced by police officers that are married to their job: they often loose their families, and wives to the demands of being a police officer. Harry Bosch is such a police officer: he is married to the job; he never gives up, and is often the last and only person who cares about finding justice for the dead victim.

This book is not great literature – it would be hard to claim that it was. Rather, it is exceptional crime fiction, or murder mystery fiction ideal for consumption on a long plane flight, or in front of a fire on a cold, wet afternoon, while waiting in the dentist’s office, or any other moment you have a spare bit of time for a fast-paced and gripping story that’s both authentic and well told. Read it and you won’t be disappointed.

“’Tis,” by Frank McCourt

“’Tis,” by Frank McCourt, (New York: Scribner; 1999), 367 pages.

’Tis is a fine book; a frank and fascinating life story full of spirit, suffering, drama. ’Tis is the second autobiographical book by Frank McCourt where he tells the story of his adult life after his return to the United States from Limerick, Ireland. He leaves behind his life of childhood poverty and returns to the city if his birth, New York, as an impoverished, Irish-accented immigrant. At the age of nineteen McCourt returned to New York. With the help of a priest he gets a job at a hotel for the wealthy (the Biltmore), where he encountered the great disparity between the wealth of the American establishment and the people who serve them at The Biltmore, namely immigrants. McCourt was then drafted into the United States Army, has his bad, poverty-ruined teeth seen by a dentist. The United States Army didn’t send him to the war in Korea, but instead sent him to Germany where he displayed his talent for training dogs and typing reports. After his discharge from the United States Army, he returned to New York City and worked a number of jobs, but mostly he worked on the docks. McCourt learned the importance of education and in satisfying his desire to learn (like the college kids he saw each day on the subway), used the G.I. Bill, a bit of initiative to start to overcome his childhood poverty, and lack of a high school education to overcome his chromic lack of self-confidence, to enroll in New York University. At New York University he studied to be an English teacher, and while he wasn’t studying or working, ignored the advice of others to stick to his own (Irish Catholics) and fell in love with a Yankee protestant girl. McCourt completed his degree and through a stroke of good fortune commenced his vocation as a teacher in a technical school. Life as an inexperienced teacher in a technical school was challenging: he struggled to retain the class’s interest in English where the classes were filled with vocationally-oriented students who saw the class as essentially killing time until they went off to become mechanics and hairdressers. McCourt eventually married his Yankee protestant girlfriend and eventually established himself as a respected teacher within the New York City public school system.

McCourt’s “’Tis” is a fine stand-alone book: the reader need not have read his earlier book “Angela’s Ashes” to understand his upbringing as a child in a very poor family in Ireland. A theme of this book is how his upbringing scarred him and held him back through a chronic lack of confidence, shame, and embarrassment. The book also shows how difficult life can be for a poor immigrant in the United States; however, it also offers others hope because McCourt showed how with hard work, a bit of luck, and help from kindly souls, he eventually succeeded in his chosen profession as a teacher in one of New York’s finest public high schools, a school that had its graduates regularly attend the best colleges in the United States. As McCourt’s life became incrementally more successful, we also see him move further away from his Irish Catholicism, something that in his youthful poverty defined him. The transformation in this book of Frank McCourt through his adult life proved to be quite remarkable.

"Spy Catcher," by Peter Wright

Spy Catcher by Peter Wright, (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987), 392 pages.

As the title suggests, Spy Catcher is a book written by someone who used to catch spies. This particular spy catcher was Peter Wright, the former MI5 operative who spent nearly all of his working life in the intelligence and counter espionage business from the 1930’s through to the 1970s. Wright was a self-taught acoustics engineer who, like his father, worked for the English electronics company Marconi M.D. Wright was a particularly gifted self-taught engineer whose expertise was used in many World War II projects, post-war naval communications research, and eventually as MI5’s first scientist. While working in MI5, Wright put his skills to great effect in development and implementing MI5’s communications interception system that included the detection and deciphering of clandestine Soviet spying transmissions and conversations. He explains his role in MI5’s communications interception or signals intelligence counter-espionage activities, MI5’s collaboration with other intelligence agencies in the United States, and how signals intelligence and new technologies along with old fashioned human surveillance methods were used to detect both Soviet agents and British traitors.

Wright’s account of his career is notable for it covers two distinct types of work. The first was his role as a scientist/engineer and his invention of new technologies used to intercept, transmit, and monitor communications across London and various embassies throughout the world. His experiences are at times astounding for they show the great lengths gone to by MI5 to monitor and detect and counter the large scale Soviet infiltration of English intelligence, political, and military institutions. The second part of Wright’s career focused less on his development of scientific and engineering devices, and centered on the signals intelligence material obtained by those devices to identify Soviet agents as well as the famous English traitors such as Burgess, Blunt, Maclean and Pilby.

The strength of this book is its portrayal of successful Soviet infiltration of Britain’s establishment by a generation of men (mostly) educated at Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the 1930s, and the great difficulties faced by The West in detecting it and countering it. Wright shows just how complete the Soviets compromised the British military, intelligence agencies (such as Wright’s own MI5) and even parliament. So successful was this infiltration that Wright believes that it included his boss, the head of MI5 itself, Sir Roger Hollis.

This book is a first-rate account of the life of a spy catcher. It is a serious and well written account of the actual life of an actual Cold War era intelligence industry insider. In Peter Wright’s world, spying is a deadly serious business where people were put in life or death situations as players in the very real struggle between the Soviets and The West during the Cold War. This book is a both a damning indictment of The West for the ease at which it was compromised, but it is also a fascinating exposé of the business of spying during the Cold War. It’s a very entertaining and worthwhile book.