Tuesday Cake and Reacher

Heaven on a Plate!

Last week my wife spent time down in Virginia with one of her closest friends.  Last night the other member of the “Tres Musketeros” arrived at our house for a visit.  This friend lives up in Maine now but she, my wife and their friend down in Virginia all met when I was first stationed in Washington DC back in 1984.  They were all young Latino gals who had just moved to the US and became inseparable friends.  These two friends really helped my wife adjust to the US because when they met my wife spoke no English and was married to a guy (me) who was working 15 hour days.  They’ve maintained that friendship over the years and I’ve always enjoyed when they get a chance to get together just to see how happy my wife is.  I really enjoyed this visit because she showed up with a chocolate cake for me!!!!!!!  She makes cakes professionally and even made the cake for my daughter’s wedding – so the cake was in a word –AWESOME!  The best part is that the calorie Nazi (my wife) cannot object to my consumption.  I just have to get this thing down range before she figures out a way to give it away to the neighborhood kids.  On Monday I finished an interesting read, another Amazon recommendation, called Don’t Know Jack, by Diane Capri.    You all should know by now of my obsession with the character of Jack Reacher in the sublime series of books by Lee Child.  Reacher has inherited the mantle of my favorite fictitious hero from Travis Magee of the John D MacDonald’s novels of the 1960’s and 70’s.  How much did I love Magee – I named my son after him.  This new book was interesting because Capri received permission to write a novel where Reacher is a background character and the plot revolves around a search for him and involves several characters from Child’s first novel about Reacher.  I avoid detective novels authored by females because they don’t have the same pace and focus on action than their male counterparts.   This is a conversation I’ve had a few times with my sister who shares my passion for reading in this genre.  Female authors, in my view, take way too much time exploring the emotions and the need to know what everybody is thinking versus moving the plot along.  I know more than a few people are now revving up their feminist engines to accuse me of misogynistic propensities so just take a deep breath and remain calm.  There are a number of female authors that I love reading – just not in the action thriller genre.  Capri is guilty of this in this book as her lead character, a female FBI agent, spends a great deal of time exploring what other people are thinking about her and what she’s feeling instead of moving the plot along.  This book suffers greatly when you compare it against one of the real Reacher novels but I have to admit she finds her pace about half way through and I really enjoyed the book.  It’s obvious she is setting this up as the first in a series of novels with these characters because she included a number of potential tangents without fully exploring them.  I look forward to the next one.  If you like Reacher you’ll like this book, if you’re a female Reacher fan – you’ll love it.  Now I have to go find a way to protect my cake from neighborhood distribution.

The Third Musketero
Cake Maker Extraordinaire!

My Wife Refused to Have Her Picture Taken (bad hair day)
So Here she is Last Week In Virginia

Definitely Worth the Read!