Best Books of 2024 – Chapter 4

I once again must credit BookBub with bringing this book to my attention by an author I did not know.  Several years ago, I read a very interesting non-fiction book about Elizebeth Friedman entitled The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone.  If you are not familiar with her and her husband, William Friedman, they were the husband-and-wife team that invented cryptanalysis and broke many secret codes during World War Two (WWII).  So, when I read the synopsis of this historical fiction, I knew I would buy it.

Prior to working on breaking codes during WWII, Elizebeth worked for the Coast Guard cracking smuggler’s coded messages during Prohibition to help the Coast Guard catch the rumrunners.  This book is set in that era and features Elizebeth working diligently to break those codes.  Her antagonist is Marie Waite, a woman who is trying to make herself the queen of rumrunning by acquiring a flotilla of high-powered boats.  The storyline alternates back and forth between Elizebeth and Marie as smuggling routes are run from Cuba or the Bahamas to the Florida coast.  Marie is also trying to create a legitimate business image for herself and in so doing, the two women find themselves in the same room more than once.

One of the most interesting things I learned after finishing the book was that almost every one of the characters in the book were real and the events that took place were factual.  There is also an extensive bibliography of non-fiction books upon which the author drew her information.  Having thoroughly enjoyed this book, I will now need to seek out other books by this author.

Over the years, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading many of Ken Follet’s books.  So, when I ran across this one on my daily BookBub, I was surprised that I had never heard of it.  But once I read the short synopsis, I immediately purchased it.

Set in and around San Francisco, imagine a decades old commune community that is scheduled to lose their land due to the building of a hydro-electric plant.  With the help of the wife of a seismologist who knows seismology quite well herself, the leader decides to blackmail the governor into declaring no new electrical plants to be built in the state of California.  But they don’t choose to use traditional methods, they decide they will threaten to set off earthquakes.  How do they intend to do this?  With a seismic vibrator of course, a device that actually exists and is used by the oil industry to explore for hidden oil reserves on land.

The main characters in the book are the seismologist and his wife, the commune leader, along with his lover, and an energetic female FBI agent.  But the pairings are just the opposite of what you would think.  There is love lost and intrigue with a measure of violence thrown in as the story unfolds.  For me, this was one of those books where I had to literally force myself to put it down each night to go to bed.  It was that good.

If you have not read any of Follet’s books, you might want to start with the one that got me hooked on him as an author over 30 years ago, The Eye of the Needle.    I cannot recommend him enough as an author.  And while this book, The Hammer of Eden published in 1998 is new to me, it is yet another one I would highly recommend.

If you are a fan of Ernest Hemingway, you will love this historical fiction novel written by Erika Robuck.  I first read her historical fiction novel, The Last Twelve Miles which also made my “best of list” this year and having enjoyed it, sought out another of hers.  For reasons I will share shortly, I chose this one.

This is a story of a young woman who gets a job as a maid at the Hemingway home in Key West, FL.  Set in the mid 1930s, she soon finds herself attracted to “Papa” as well as a WWI veteran who is working with other vets to build an overseas highway connecting the Keys.  We get to know her in her work role as her love for these two quite different men grows.  But then the devastating Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 hits wreaking havoc on everyone’s lives.  I thought it ironic that I was reading and writing about this book just as a hurricane hit Florida a mere fifteen days after one hit Louisiana.

After reading The Old Man and the Sea as my classic one year, I decided to learn more about Hemingway and read an excellent biography, Papa Hemmingway by A.E. Hotchner.  As I read Robuck’s book, I was pleased to recognize many of the factual events in Papa’s life that were woven into this story.  And also, having read two books about that 1935 hurricane, I knew much of the destruction that occurred as well.  So, for me, this was a fun read about a fictional character that interacted with real life people in a real-life setting.

Having thoroughly enjoyed reading Hammer of Eden, I decided to try another Ken Follet novel that I had never heard of before: Code to Zero.

With the surprisingly successful launch of Sputnik by Russia in 1957, the US scrambled to join the space age by launching a satellite as well.  After the live televised spectacular disaster of the Vanguard TV-3 exploding on the launch pad in December 1957, the US was desperate for success.  In January of 1958, their latest hope to overcome what had been dubbed “Kaputnik” was the launch of Explorer I.

The book opens with an historical fact.  The Explorer I launch was postponed twice on two consecutive days with weather being given as the cause for the delays.  In fact, the skies were clear over those two days.  Follett then spins a yarn of the most believable and no doubt, highly classified tale that could have alternatively caused the delays.

In Follet’s fictional story, a key NASA scientist awakes two days before the launch and discovers that his memory has been erased.  Being followed by unknown individuals, he then spends the next several days trying to regain his memory racing against the launch clock between Washington, D.C., Huntsville, AL, and Cape Canaveral, FL.  The timeline rockets back and forth between the current time and the early-1940s when the protagonist was in college and subsequently the war with four of his college friends/lovers.  Those same four friends appear in both timelines and as the protagonist learns more about his past, leads him to wonder who of them, he can trust.

I could write so much more about this fun book, but it would spoil the surprises for you.  Suffice it to consider, who would benefit from another US failure.  If this piques your interest, you should read this book.

     To be continued…