Nuncio and the Gypsy Girl is not your typical graphic novel.  There are several historical figures, a love triangle, and no action-driven plotline.  It is also narrated by an African Grey Parrot named Nuncio.  Taking place at the turn of the century in Dayton, OH, the characters are right in the middle of the making of many great inventions, and intellectual society.

Which brings us to the gypsy girl- Neci- who is at the center of the story.  She is a young woman who is coming of age and is convinced of a love between her and Ezra, a composer with big dreams.  After leaving Neci in order to follow a path to what will hopefully be his success, Neci tracks him down- only to find him with another woman.

At this point, it becomes clear that the two women will be vying for the affection of Ezra for a good part of the story.  The question remaining is: who will win, or will either?  If Marlene, the “other woman” has her way, Neci will be completely taken out of the picture when she arranges for her to be put in harm’s way.  Will Marlene’s plan be successful, or will Neci find her way back into Ezra’s heart?

While this graphic novel (the first in a three-part series) is not a thrilling page-turner, it does supply a lot of historical insight into the time.  With the placement of many key historical figures and events, there is a certain quality that makes the characters seem very real.  The storyline will hopefully pick up pace a bit in the next two installments, to allow a greater growth of the characters and their struggles.

At first, Nuncio and the Gypsy Girl takes a bit to get an understanding and focus on the drawing style.  However, after the first few pages, the washed-out, slightly dark colors become clearer as one gets used to them.  There is also a feeling of uncertainty that may be felt in the first half of the book, as to where exactly the story is going and what it is about.  But, the wanting to know will keep you reading until the end.

If one is wanting a graphic novel that has a superhero, or something like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Nuncio is not it.  However, the realism and accuracy of the characters and the intrigue of the Gilded Age is enough to find an audience with readers who may not otherwise explore a graphic novel.  That being said, it will be interesting to discover what will happen to Neci and her companions- even if it is a parrot telling us the story.

I loved THE TITANIC PLAN. The story, the writing, the characters engaged me from start to finish. And a hefty book it is, over 8100 locations. By my reckoning, that’s somewhere between 160,000 and 200,000 words. Compared to the size of a mystery or western, it’s portly. But THE TITANIC PLAN is a respectably-sized historical novel. With his rich imagination, Bockman fills in the holes left by history, giving his readers plenty of intrigue, gritty action, surprises, loss, love, and mystery. Bockman’s words flow, his sense of story, unflagging.

The theme of the book is social upheaval, the attempt by powerful financiers at the turn of the twentieth century to manipulate and control commerce in America, contrasted with the gathering storm of the labor movement.

Take the Prologue. It contains the seeds of the whole novel. Picture it, the fall of 1907. J.P. Morgan, in morning suit, bulbous-nosed and full-throated, is singing his favorite hymn. He’s really into it, along with three thousand others, when a messenger hands him a telegram. The news, for anyone else, would be a life changer—the suicide of Morgan’s friend and former head of the Knickerbocker Trust, the institution whose insolvency touched off the Wall Street Panic of 1907. But Morgan continues singing. Punctuating the narration are lines taken from “Rock of Ages.” It is a human portrait of this sharp-eyed financier, a major player in THE TITANIC PLAN.

And the rest of the novel is as absorbing and full of life as the opening scene.

There are two story lines occurring throughout, held together by the main character, Captain, later, Major Archibald Butt who functions as the plot’s linchpin. In real life he was the military aide of Roosevelt and Taft.

One story deals with the Archie’s attempt to find the killer of his friend and fellow soldier in the Civil War, Mick Shaughnessy. It takes him to Greenwich Village, to Washington, to Rome, and traveling back to New York. This story functions separately but is connected through Archie to the second, the attempt by Astor, Vanderbilt, Morgan, and others to control commerce.

THE TITANIC PLAN pits the worker’s movement against Wall Street barons and has a wealth of characters, presidents and anarchists, painted larger than life. Meet J.P. Morgan, his librarian, Bella da Costa Greene, Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Major Archie Butt, John Jacob Astor IV, George Vanderbilt, Emma Goldman, Clara Lemlich, Big Bill Haywood.

Scenes take place on sea and land—in the White House, in a smoky back room of the Brevoort, in the slums of Five Points and The Bend, in McSorley’s Pub in the East Village, and Rome. Major events of the age, like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and the sinking of the Titanic, are woven into the story’s fabric in a way that made this reader feel like she was there.

Needless to say it, but I will, anyway: I recommend THE TITANIC PLAN to anyone who likes to be immersed in a cinematic sweep of another time, to the reader who, aware of the history of American financial and social movements, believes that the past is prelude.

About the Author:  Writer and filmmaker Michael Bockman has four produced screenplays to his credits. His feature screenplay about the Beat Generation, Starving Hysterical Naked, is the basis for the short film he directed, available for viewing on YouTube.

Between screenwriting assignments he has written numerous articles that have been published in newspapers and magazines. He has collaborated on three best-selling self-help books with English author Lynne Franks—Grow (Hay House), Bloom (Chronicle Books) and The Seed Manifesto (Thorsons). THE TITANIC PLAN is his first novel.

By Jaime Hypes

The Last Way Station is a speculative fantasy novella chronicling Adolf Hitler’s time after his suicide. Reisfeld gives us a world where Hitler is stuck in a kind of purgatory, unable to move on until his ‘caseworker’ finds him fit to do so. Hitler is forced to relive the atrocities he inflicted upon others- from his victims’ perspective, as he is placed into the bodies of each and every person he affected.

His caseworker finds him to be the most difficult charge yet, as the results are not what are expected. It quickly becomes clear that Hitler’s beliefs run deeper than anyone could have imagined, and his lack of empathy is astonishing. The question of how far one can be pushed until surrendering mentally is explored in a whole new way, and the motive behind one’s convictions may be the key.

The exploration of the psychology of evil, the importance of empathy, and what one feels they must do to survive are themes throughout The Last Way Station. With an angle that is different than other works based upon Hitler’s life, this provides a true ‘what if?’ approach. It is not as though the events in the book will change anything in reality, but we are able to explore the reaches of evil and the importance of being held accountable.

The only shortcoming of this novella is exactly that: it is too short. The Last Way Station is an amazing and entertaining (although disturbing) read, but just as it starts to build momentum, it is over. It leaves hope that maybe Reisfeld will expound on his ideas and characters and give us a full-length novel in which to immerse ourselves.

The Secrets They Kept

Unforgettable saga of a family and its secrets, a contemporary woman’s “Zorba The Greek”

Secrets. The word itself slaps us with something scary and ominous. It reeks of ghosts and irrevocable mistakes committed in the dark, hidden, buried so deep that, in time, they become ingrown, take on a life of their own, and mushroom in significance. And of course secrets have a siren’s call, sucking us into the page. Like the voice and the story line in this family saga, they make us turn the page.

In THE SECRETS THEY KEPT, a debut novel, Joanne Tombrakos presents the story of Elena Poulous, an attorney and member of a Greek-American family rich in tradition and large with parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, living and dead. Elena struggles to get to the bottom of her family’s secrets, and in so doing, she connects to life.

The story opens with a surprise. The police knock on the door of her New York apartment and inform her of the death of a stranger who claimed her as his next of kin. As Elena begins to settle his affairs, she encounters a web of secrets that her family members have worked a lifetime to keep buried. In the end, she and others begin to change.

The recent past is brought to life through a box of letters found in the dead man’s apartment, a Pandora’s box if there ever was one:

She smelled the odor of it before she saw it. Musty, almost mildewy. There it sat, not a yard away from her. It was just a small square cardboard box with a lid.

Because of the author’s sense of storytelling, objects like the letter box take on a symbolic presence: a ring, a baby carriage rocking precariously on a dock, the triune number in liturgy, and, in Central Park, the bust of Giuseppe Mazzini. (The narrator informs the reader that Elena intends to find out the significance of the statue, and the statue becomes another index into the protagonist’s character.)

And of course there are letters and letters. Letters that tell secrets.

The sense of place is gripping, Manhattan, Astoria. The voice is strong,

The narrative weaves in and out of eras. It is 1949 in one chapter, 1958 in the next. Scenes take place in Astoria or in Elena’s West Side apartment shortly after the war or in the country of Elena’s childhood or in the novel’s present. They all serve the heart of the novel: the unraveling of secrets, the revelation of character.

The story is filled with minor characters, all connected somehow to the Poulous family—Athena and Rosa, being two of my favorites.

Themes include the destructive pervasiveness of secrets and how they wither us; the sometimes stultifying, other times revivifying nature of cult and family.

THE SECRETS THEY KEPT has it all, the story of a family, complex main characters whose growth we experience, an ending that answers most of our questions but leaves room for imagination. At times comedic, at times tragic, it is the story of secrets woven so deeply into the fabric of Elena’s Greek-American family that they remind us of our own.

I recommend the book to all who read not just for pleasure or to be swept up into a new world, but for self-knowledge.

About the Author. Joanne Tombrakos is a writer, born to first-generation Greek-Americans. She lives in New York City and blogs here.

Reviewed by Author C.V. Hunt

4 out of 5

ABOUT:

Britannia, 61 A.D. For ten years, Taras has lived in the young city of Londinium, feeding off the city’s underbelly. But now Theron, his old enemy, has come looking for revenge, and Taras’ nights of living in relative peace are about to end.

Yet not even Theron can slip into town unnoticed, and the Council of Thirteen sends Ramah to deal with the two renegades once and for all. But unknown to the Council, a much older enemy is also in Londinium, and this time even the great Ramah might not be safe.

Set against the backdrop of the Iceni uprising in Roman-era Britannia, 61 A.D. continues the story of Taras, Theron, and Ramah, as they fight their way through history.

REVIEW:

61 A.D. is the sequel to 31 A.D. and is written by David McAfee. I found the first book very inventive and well researched, and I was gladly given the chance to read the sequel.

The Iceni and Trinovante tribes have band together in an attempt to overthrow the Romans for transgressions they’ve suffered. Their plan is to destroy all the Romans in a coordinated a siege on the city of Londinium. This all happened in the year 61 A.D., and thus is the backdrop for this book.

Taras, a Roman, was accidentally turned into a Bachiyr (the term for vampire used through this series), and Theron has vowed to hunt him down to kill him. Taras’ transformation was a mistake, and it has cost Theron dearly. Theron is no longer in the good graces of The Counsel of Thirteen, and has become what he always sought to slaughter – a renegade vampire.

Now Ramah, the Blood Letter, and second in command of The Counsel of Thirteen, is sent to hunt down Theron and being him back alive for his punishment. Theron is chasing Taras, and Ramah is chasing Theron, and now Ramah is being chased by a phantom that the Counsel has long sought after. All of this is happening amongst the slaughter of Londinium.

The conspiracy still lingers in the world of vampires, and no one can be trusted.

FROM THE BOOK:

“I should like to know what I am agreeing to before I agree to it.”

“That is not the deal,” she said, jangling the keys for effect. “Agree to my terms or die with the sun. You choose.”

The Bachiyr turned his head toward the eastern horizon. The sky had begun to lighten slightly. It had not turned pink yet, but the black of night no longer reached the ground. Sunrise was an hour away at most. He turned his face back to her, his thin lips tightened into a grin.

“It would seem I have little choice,” he said.

The story of David McAfee’s vampires is well written. The research is phenomenal in order to place the vampires in a race across time. I love how David has brought the vampire back to his basics – being a monster. This book was good compilation to first book, but I found some of the backstory slightly repetitive. Overall I would definitely recommend this series for the reader that’s looking for murderous vampires.

The story of two twins,  Emma and Ethan, their friend Zak and their supervisor Dr Currant. They live in the year 2028, a sterile world where EVERYTHING is monitored and watched. The cold hearted and ever alert governors of the USA are known as MOM. MOM has even gone as far as to put implants into children under the guise of vaccinations. History has been skimmed of anything that doesn’t fit MOM’s desires.

Processed and patched up, the results have been published as an official document: “The History: Our Past”. Doubted by many but not said public. MOM doesn’t like ‘heresy’ or rebellion. As a consequence time travel is banned. This is where our four conspirators come in.

They believe that the reason that their rights are put aside and their opinions crushed began with the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy,  the thirty fifth president of the United States. His assassination is shrouded in mystery. Supposedly killed by ex-marine Thomas Vallee in Chicago in November 1963.

Dr Currant  doesn’t have his prefix for an obscure reason. He’s clever enough to of built a time travel machine, illegal on all fronts and therefore hidden underground. Nicknamed timetravelle , the machine is the key to changing the present.

Under the façade of three harmless school students come down on a field trip with their bumbling supervisor they go into the murky depths of the past to discover what really happened and perhaps ultimately change history. With the threat of the so called ‘time cops’ on their tails, people employed by MOM to apprehend trespassers of the past and bring them back to 2028 for more than a slap on the wrist, they must make their move within twenty eight days of being in 1963 so as not to cause to much of an impact for the time cops to notice.

First things first, the title could be a little less indicative. It makes it sound like general trash fiction and to be honest the book doesn’t focus as much on the twins as the title suggests.  Simply ‘Saving JFK’ would have got me hooked. But I suppose ‘Time Travel Twins’ leaves it open for more books of the same series to be created, perhaps of different historical conspiracies. However, the disappointment stretches only so far is mostly overshadowed by the content.

Aside from the main plot I like the fact that the author, W.Green, had time to weave in some character side stories that lead to some nice surprises at the end. The author seems to be a great fan of the 1960′s or if not, at least done extensive research. I don’t think I’ve read a historical fiction book with as much intricate detail as this one. The names of comics, sweet brands and baseball players are thrown around in excess.

The main plot it self is enough to get any reader hooked. If time travel, assassination, history and conspiracies don’t get you hooked then I honestly don’t know what will. It would be nice to see this book gain some recognition and perhaps a sequel.

A long read, perhaps unnecessarily padded out with extra detail, but I personally think that’s what gives it character. If historical fiction is your thing, you looking for a good cheap book and the tagline ‘cheaper than a cup of coffee and more exciting than an impure thought’ interests you then get this book!

You might look at the words “Historical Fiction” and “Young Adult” and decide to pass on The Raven Girl by Kathy Cecala. I almost did, there are other reviewers who typically review the young adult titles and historical fiction isn’t necessarily my thing. I’m glad I didn’t though, because it turned out to be a delightful book; very hard to put down and a quick but interesting read.

The Raven Girl is set in Ireland circa 1488. A strange girl washes ashore on a small island near Galway. Her skin and hair are dark and around her neck is a large pearl from a far-away sea. She is rescued by a young boy, the son of the local priest, who hides her away knowing that the villagers would probably kill her out of superstition. He names her ‘Marra’ meaning ‘of the sea’ and tends to her needs. She convalesces but has brought with her a fever that quickly spreads throughout the village.

Meanwhile, in a small church in the city, a young man named Aedan studies for the priesthood. He is the son of a Spanish wine merchant who had an affair with a woman from the town where Marra has appeared. The woman died in childbirth and Aedan was brought to live with the priests. Although he has recently come to know his real father, he feels closest to the priest who took him under his wing when he arrived at the church.

While Aedan tries to be a dedicated student, his heart calls him to adventure and discovery. When word of the maiden reaches him, he sets off with his priestly ‘father’ to disprove that she is a witch or a mermaid and perhaps to convert her to Christianity. He does find her, and with her the trouble that follows her everywhere. Together they must fend off the pirates from whose vessel she escaped, Aedan’s biological father who would sell her to be a slave, and the villagers who are sure that she is a witch.

In her query, Kathy Cecala mentions that she tutors English classes, and her mastery of the language is evident in this book. While it is clear that she researched the book extensively, she weaves the historical details into the book subtly, not making them the central point of the story, just the colorful backdrop. At its heart The Raven Girl is a good story. As readers, we connect with the characters and cheer them on. Here, Marra explains a bit of her story to Aedan:

She told him of how she had been a pearl-fisher with her father, of her gentle little lagoon and her gentle people, but also of the fierce tribes who lived south, the tribes who killed her mother and brothers. She told him of her father, who she had loved so much, and how he taught her many things. How she and her father had been fishing together far out in the ocean beyond their lagoon, too far, and how Urraco’s ship had come from nowhere, dragging them up out of their canoe. How Urraco killed her father, so quickly. And then the terrible voyage, and the drift of the ship into ice. The fever that had raged aboard the ship. But also, how she had learned Basque, by carefully listening to the sailors.

While this book will appeal to older teens because of the young main characters who persevere against tall odds, it might be disturbing for younger readers due to some depictions of violence and death. The technical details of the book are top notch, I didn’t find a typo until page 85 and that may be a record for the self published books I’ve read.

You won’t know you’re reading a self published book. You won’t know you’re reading a young adult book. You won’t know you’re reading an historical fiction book. All you’ll know as you read The Raven Girl is that you’re reading a good book.

When Dan Morgan (code name Cobra), a former Black Ops contractor, is asked to come out of retirement to help the CIA with a mission, he is hesitant at first.  But when he learns a former comrade (code name Cougar) has been killed and has left a coded message that only Cobra can decipher, he jumps on board.

Like all Black Ops, Morgan has to leave his family behind and cannot give them any information on where he is going or what operation he’s involved in. Not only is his life at stake, but the long term consequences could be detrimental to our country’s freedom and thousands of Americans.

Morgan, and the reader, soon finds themselves in Afghanistan wrapped up in numerous missions of spying and espionage from hostage rescue to counter terrorism. Set across three continents and spanning the late 1960s through 2001, readers are in for quite a thrill ride.

This is Maloney’s first book, and much of it is based on actual eye-witness accounts that took place while the author served in the army in 1966.  He was recruited by a special U.S. agency to receive highly specialized Black Ops training. He left his career in 2001 and after sharing some of his experiences (although some are still too top secret to be discussed) with friends and loved ones, he was encouraged to write this book.

Termination Orders is indeed fiction, but the story lines are based on real life, first hand experiences from Maloney’s past.  If you’ve ever wondered about those secret government operations that keep conspiracy theorists guessing and occasionally stir up the headlines, then this book will feed your curiosity a five course meal.

There is very little in the military genre that I will pick up and read.  It does not hold my attention at all.  However, I gave Maloney’s book a try simply because it was a fictional account based on real stories.  I was not disappointed.  There’s enough history and war here to satisfy military buffs, and enough action and adventure and intrigue for the rest of us.

The Noble Pirates
By R. L. Jean
Copyright © 2010
220 pages
$2.99 Kindle at Amazon.com

Just as Sabrina Grainger falls off a party boat into the Caribbean in 2009, so the reader is dropped right into the action of The Noble Pirates, and R. L. Jean (a.k.a. Fiction Chick) makes the reader and her protagonist fend for themselves. Much easier for the reader who is aided by the accomplished storytelling than for poor Sabrina Grainger—a mother, wife, and attorney—whose plunge sinks her nearly three centuries into the world of pirates. None other than the infamous Edward England and his crew of sea rovers fish her out of the sea. At first she believes it all to be a hoax, that her awful smelling rescuers are actors in some kind of role-play. But she finds them as bewildered by her as she is by them.

But she’s the one who must adapt and she does, in highly entertaining fashion, for a good 200 pages or so. Only the time travel resolution at the end offers any disappointment in its incongruity to all that comes before. On its own, the ending is fine, it just lacks the energy of the rest.

And the rest is very good.

England humors her claims to be from the future and takes her to Nassau. However, the Nassau of 1718 does not view women the same way as that of 2009, and Sabrina struggles in her efforts to reverse her situation. Nothing presents itself and so, seeing no alternative, Sabrina lobbies England to let her join him on a pirating venture to Africa. She develops some affection for England but he finds her a nuisance. He hands her over to the honest Captain of a slaver ship, Howel Davis, with whom Sabrina spends most of the rest of the story and for whom she develops a stronger attraction.

Two subordinates, Blain and Taylor, betray Davis and have him jailed for mutiny, leaving Sabrina on her own. When Davis is freed due to a lack of evidence, he is a bitter man and determines he’d be better off, “on the account,” and heads to Nassau to begin his notorious pirating career. Sabrina signs on with a sister ship, follows him to Nassau, and from there doggedly clings to Davis because by now she’s in love with the man. Not only that, she hopes to save his life, which she knows will end in a matter of months.

For when she fell in, Sabrina had a backpack that contained two books, a pirate romance and a history of pirates entitled, Rovers of the Sea. The latter includes biographies of England, Davis, and others she meets. It also tells the time and place of Davis’s death. Even at the risk of affecting the future, she wants to save him from that. Her persistence pays off when he incorporates her into his pillaging and plundering. She apprises him of what she knows—and he believes her story—but that still can’t stop him from captaining his ship toward his place of recorded death. They encounter Blain and Taylor again—another event foretold in the history book—but now Sabrina knows more about how she can get back to 2009. At this point she faces some difficult choices.

The first-person narrative of a modern woman in 1718 justifies the use of idioms from today’s culture, allowing for less self-conscious writing. It also minimizes the danger of anachronisms. This is a clever thing to do, from an author’s standpoint, as it subtly avoids another danger, that of the material becoming dated. More importantly, the blend pays off in both humor and clarity, as in the following:

The first-person narrative of a modern woman in 1718 justifies the use of idioms from today’s culture, allowing for less self-conscious writing. It also minimizes the danger of anachronisms. This is a clever thing to do, from an author’s standpoint, as it subtly avoids another danger, that of the material becoming dated. More importantly, the blend pays off in both humor and clarity, as in the following:England set his pipe down carefully, knitting his brow. “Because we found this floating with ye.” From beneath the table, the captain withdrew my backpack. As I gasped, he continued, “I didn’t let anyone look inside, save myself and my quartermaster, Jameson… It made him mighty wary of ye, lass, and angry with me when I protected ye.”

I took the backpack eagerly from him, bubbling with excitement. Something from my life, something from the sane world… I unzipped it – it had definitely seen better days – and immediately began fishing for my Blackberry. I pulled it out joyfully, and on a whim tried to turn it on. Nice try, Sabrina. Then I went through the other items quickly: my iPod, also shot to hell; a blister pack of Dramamine for motion sickness (it sure would have been nice to have this a little while ago); my friend Tanya’s makeup bag, most of the items inside in good condition, including three multi-colored, ribbed condoms (Christ, what had Captain England thought of that? At least they were still in their packaging); Sky’s romance, most of it water-logged and illegible (thank God); another of Sky’s books, Rovers of the Sea, still fairly legible since it was still wrapped in a Barnes & Noble bag; a couple bikinis and cover-ups; and finally, our wallets. I tore mine open, pulling out a picture of Sophie and clutching it tightly, the tears starting to well up.

Sabrina carries the narrative well, eschewing sentimentality for a gritty, realistic portrayal of the pirate era she’s landed in. I particularly liked how, soon after this passage, Sabrina casts off her friend’s pirate romance as useless, as if giving a cue to the reader saying, no, this story isn’t going to be like one of those. However, Sabrina Grainger is not just a keen observer with a captivating voice. “I did not know what those choices were, and I could not let that stop me from doing something,” she states at one point. The mantra of the quintessential protagonist.

The supporting characters are great too, capable of cheerful surprises and nasty whims. Whenever one is tempted to view Howel Davis as a Jack Sparrow, he does something cruel and un-Disney-ish. Eventually, I associated him more with Odysseus for his cunning and elaborate schemes.

What should not go unappreciated in the enjoyment of the story is the depth of research. The casual lightness of the prose could make that happen in that the products of the research are neatly woven into the story. It’s clear great effort and care has gone into making The Noble Pirates as accurate and realistic as possible. Therefore one easily forgives the plot devices and grants suspension of disbelief in exchange for sharing Sabrina Grainger’s plunge.

Well done.

Review 169: The Purples by W. K. Berger
By Peter Hassebroek on November 1, 2010
The Purples
By W. K. Berger
Published by Ringer Books
Copyright © 2010
318 pages
$15.99 Paperback at Amazon.com

The cover quote from Michael Balkind says, “Fast moving and funny, The Purples has a hard edge, a soft heart, and an original voice.”  I’ve never read a more apt blurb.

The first page hooked me with the image of a bored gangster creating an igloo out of sugar cubes.  A house of sugar.  The builder is part of the notorious Sugar House gang. A symbol?  Maybe. Because when his hand crushes his little project from shock at seeing Joe Bernstein—previously believed killed by other Sugar House members—it seems a portent of the violent end of the Sugar House gang and the ascendancy of the Purples. Symbol or not, the image remained with me until the end.

Four years earlier, nineteen-year-old Joe Bernstein’s rash attempts to free his girlfriend, Rachel Roth, from a mental hospital land him in big trouble. First with the police, and then with the Sugar House gang who ambush him by the Detroit River.  They cut him up severely, leave him to die.

Fortunately, Joe’s close friend and eventual major-domo, Abie, is there to save him and take him to the house of another friend, the vicious and semi-psychotic Grabowski, to recuperate and nurse his need for revenge, not to mention an obsessive hatred for Henry Ford and his anti-Semitism.  During this period, Joe schemes to crush the Sugar House gang and replace it with his own, The Purples.  He capitalizes on the Sugar House gang’s complacency. A series of murders and betrayals later and Joe is ready to make his aforementioned resurrectional reappearance.  He completes his coup successfully and The Purples quickly get down to business exploiting on prohibition-era Detroit.The gang’s criminal activities are richly described, particularly the bootlegging between Windsor and Detroit that provides the greatest revenue.  The professional side of the enterprise comes relatively easy.

The personal side is another matter.  Joe’s friends who help run The Purples are extremely loyal to Joe but their tendencies for unilateral, violent action, makes them hard to control.  Not only that, he must deal with his obsession over “Heinrich” Ford, denying his brother’s questionable sexuality, and the probing of his nemesis, Harry Riley. The same guy who, using conventional means, successfully arranged Rachel’s release. Then there’s the neurotic Rachel herself, who gets depressed, takes drugs, and eventually returns to the mental hospital with Joe’s blessing.

All these events and more, personal and professional, create a complex story.  But the weaving is so precise, one never feels lost and there are no loose ends.  It all culminates in a tense, exciting, and extremely satisfying climax with the Collingwood apartment massacre.  Other than date and setting, it bears only a vague resemblance to the actual event, but is gripping nonetheless.

Throughout Joe Bernstein is a highly subjective narrator, but a reliable one in terms of the actual events.  His voice is simple and intimate, befitting a reflective gangster.  The consistent use of “whilst” for while seemed a tic at first but when read aloud effectively enhances the voice without resorting to odd, phonetic spellings.

Take, for instance, the scenes to which he is not a direct witness and which he must imagine from second-hand reports at the time, or revelations from letters and testimonials many years later.  In those scenes, Joe drops the first-person pronouns and one tends to forget it is Joe talking.  A reminder will come, jarring at times, to set things aright in the reader’s mind.  This worked for me in that it made Joe a more credible and vulnerable narrator. His telling of the story is as rewarding as the content.  This is most evident when dealing with the District Attorney, Harry Riley, and Nan, Riley’s wife.

In Joe’s eyes, the relationship between Riley and Nan is idyllic, and sugar-sweet.  The passages on them are somewhat sentimental and involved, unlike comparable scenes with Rachel, a girl for whom he almost died.  When read ironically, though, these passages offer a sad revelation about the Joe who is telling the story years on, a bitter man perhaps, but certainly one envious of what Riley was and had.

When Riley finished his swim they came in from the dock together, their arms wrapped around each other.  They went into the little cabin and he lit a fire whilst she cooked fish in a pan on the stove.  They ate side by side in front of the fire, with their feet out and their toes curled to the heat.  After that, they sat at the table to play cards, never once talking about Baird’s visit.  Then they got into their pajamas and snuggled up together in their little bed, and after a while she sat on top of him, with the blanket pulled up over her shoulders, covering them like a tent.  Her body moved up and down just a little and very quietly, whilst they looked each other in the eyes.

And the whole time, Solly Levine was watching through the cabin window.

Solly Levine, one of the Purples sent by Joe to spy on Riley, would never have reported what he saw in such detail, let alone using such language.  Why would Joe prettify the scene then?

Indeed, Joe spends an inordinate amount of detailed narrative on the passionate aspects of that relationship and so little on his own with his girlfriend, Rachel.  Joe also refers to Riley, with his war record and one leg, as the “supposed hero.” Joe Bernstein is a complicated guy; he has issues; he has a heart.  This elevates The Purples beyond a well-told gangster story.

Make no mistake though; Joe Bernstein is a gangster through and through.  Violence is his first resort to get his way and he is ruthlessly Machiavellian in taking action.  Referring to the need to deal with the remnants of the Sugar House gang he says, “As for the ones getting killed, that was hard luck and I won’t deny it.”  And there’s always something in his way because he’s always going after something.  This is no indecisive, passive protagonist.

Joe Bernstein, Max Bernstein, Abie Zussman, Grabowski and his half-dog half-wolf enforcer pets, Solly, and the rest of The Purples in this novel are all fictional characters.  The Purples gang was real though, even led by a Bernstein.  The Sugar House gang was real.  So were some of the other characters, although their names were changed.  The major events—the Palmer raids, the cleaners and dyers war, the murders of the police officer and a small boy, the Collingwood Massacre, and of course the prohibition—actually occurred.

Their representations in this novel, however, are fictional and all the names changed.  It’s an interesting intertwining of truth and invention.  I found it best to defer my curiosity about discerning between fact and fiction until I’d finished reading the book.  There’s a wealth of material on the delightful website for this book.  The contents are in the voice of the narrator, Joe Bernstein, too.

The writing, editing, marketing, and all aspects of The Purples are all polished; there is nothing to mark this as a self-published work.  Given W. K. Berger’s writing credentials—he’s an award-winning journalist who has published non-fiction books with Penguin and Random House—this comes as no surprise.  One would assume he knows how to put a professional book together.

In the end, the publishing status is irrelevant because the result is so well executed and the appeal of The Purples is universal.  Lucky for me he did self-publish; otherwise this terrific book might not have come my way.