FICTION: COLD-CASE THRILLER
Worth Dying For by Lee Child
The last time we saw Jack Reacher, he was in a hell of a spot. In the final pages of “61 Hours,” published earlier this year, Lee Child’s iconic hero — the ex-military cop turned vagabond — was trapped at the center of a conflagration so intense that it triggered alarms on missile-tracking satellites. Mother of Mercy! Is this the end of Reacher?
It comes as a relief, if something of a puzzlement, to find Reacher upright in the opening pages of “Worth Dying For.” We’re told that he’s hurting — “Every tendon and ligament and muscle from his fingertips to his rib cage burned and quivered” — but even at half-strength he’s still able to crack a few heads when the situation demands it, which it does soon enough. Child keeps us waiting for an explanation of how Reacher survived the earlier carnage. In the meantime, he sets his “250- pound gutter rat” off on a fresh round of mayhem.
Longtime readers will recognize the pattern: Reacher washes up in a small town and stops for a cup of coffee. By the time it cools, he finds himself pulled into a web of intrigue, locking horns with a drug kingpin or foiling a political assassination.
This time he is passing through a remote corner of Nebraska, where the “land all around was dark and flat and dead and empty.” When he intervenes in an apparent case of spousal abuse, he runs afoul of the powerful, creepily evil Duncan family, who are desperate to protect their interest in a mysterious international trafficking scheme. At the same time, he digs into a cold case involving a missing 8-year-old girl.
Some readers may feel that Child’s explanation of how Reacher survived the inferno at the end of “61 Hours” is a trifle thin, given the care that went into fanning the flames in the earlier book. Be that as it may, “Worth Dying For” is a model of suspenseful storytelling and an outstanding addition to a series that stands in the front rank of modern thrillers.
Reviewed by Daniel Stashower
Washington Post Writers Group
NONFICTION: CELEBRITY TATTLER
Full Frontal Nudity: The Making of an Accidental Actor by Harry Hamlin
We know Harry Hamlin is a heartthrob (the authority on these matters, People magazine, named him “Sexiest Man Alive” in 1987), but who knew the man famous for playing an attorney on “L.A. Law” was such a scofflaw? His “sordid life of crime” began at the tender age of 4, when he routinely went outside the house to pee in the food bowl meant for the family’s Dalmatian. Then, in the fourth grade, he was kicked out of school for writing a book report on “Mein Kampf.” Later, while studying theater at UC Berkeley, he was busted for possessing drugs at San Francisco’s airport. He spent several days in jail, where he was assigned toilet cleaning duty. His fellow inmates would miss the bowl on purpose.
Hamlin’s frustrations with his genitals bookend “Full Frontal Nudity.” It opens on an awkward bathroom encounter with a nursery-school teacher that leaves him disturbed and insecure. It ends with him taking a role in “Equus,” a play requiring him to drop trou and put his insecurities on full display night after night. This is a hormonal coming-of-age story. Hamlin rarely talks about his wife, ex-wives or fatherhood. He doesn’t reflect on the craft of acting. The words “L.A. Law” never appear. Instead, his focus is his college years, and he only serves up stories about the good stuff: sex, drugs and the friendships that helped to define him as an adult. Like an out-of-the- blue e-mail from an old buddy who wants to fill you in on all the crazy stuff he’s been up to, “Full Frontal Nudity” is irresistible, funny and surprisingly affecting.
Reviewed by Sean Callahan
Washington Post Writers Group
NONFICTION: BASKETBALL DIARY
Play Their Hearts Out: A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machine by George Dohrmann
In the cutthroat world of grassroots hoops — hypercompetitive club basketball for grade-school and high-school kids — Joe Keller had a regrettable reputation. As Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter George Dohrmann writes in “Play Their Hearts Out,” “he became a laughable legend: The man who discovered Tyson Chandler, a once-in-a-lifetime talent, and then let (fellow grassroots coach Pat) Barrett steal him from right under his nose.”
Dohrmann chronicles Keller’s attempt to redeem his reputation in the grassroots world — and to get rich while doing it. The book, a tour de force of reporting, filled with deft storytelling and vivid character studies, focuses on Keller’s relationship with basketball phenom Demetrius Walker and the coach’s efforts to build a team capable of winning a youth basketball national championship.
Keller discovered Walker one day in 2000 as the 9-year-old dominated a youth game. He became the boy’s coach — and a father figure.
“Demetrius is the best player his age in the country,” Keller boasted. Eventually, swayed by Keller’s lobbying, Clark Francis, the editor of a newsletter called The Hoop Scoop, which rates grade-school basketball players, called Walker “the best 6th grader in the nation.”
Walker initially lived up to the hype, leading Keller’s team to the Amateur Athletic Union’s 13-and-under national championship in 2004. It was the peak of their partnership.
While Keller is skilled at identifying young talent — 20 of about 25 kids who played on his grassroots teams earned college scholarships — in Dohrmann’s telling he isn’t exactly nurturing. “There had always been something worrisome about (Keller and Walker’s) bond — a coach who’d been no father to his own son, Joey, leaping into that role for one of his players — and a happy ending was never preordained,” Dohrmann writes.
Keller, in Dohrmann’s view, did not coach for the kids; he was in it for himself. When Dohrmann asked the coach what would happen if Walker never made it to the NBA, Keller responded, “Well, then all this would have been a waste of time. Demetrius would have been a bad investment.”
Keller eventually left coaching to run basketball camps, just when Walker seemed to need a father figure most. As the young player entered high school, the hype had made him a target for other players looking to make a name for themselves. Eventually, Walker cracked under the pressure. In 2006, at a camp for high-school players looking to impress college coaches, he refused to participate, hiding in a bathroom stall.
He e-mailed Keller, who was spending less and less time with him: “I don’t understand how you say I’m like your son, but you aren’t there for me anymore.”
Keller replied, “It’s a shame we can’t continue our relationship. I guess we have to go our separate ways.”
