Down Shift

I believe I validated my course of action yesterday by coming into work even though I wasn’t feeling 100%.  My wife was seriously critical of my decision making process but I’ve felt better each day and yesterday was no exception.  My excellent boss did send me home in the early afternoon after he and I talked about my past weekend (I think he may be in cahoots with the spousal unit). 

So Nice to Have Such a Cute Nurse!

I used that time to catch up with the HBO series True Detective which my daughter encouraged me stick with.  I’ve got the season finale lined up for tonight so I’ll write about that tomorrow.  As usual my daughter’s entertainment advice was spot on (well except for the whole Magic Mike fiasco, but I digress).

The situation over in Malaysia continues to confuse.  Jetliners just don’t disappear like this (outside of the cinema).  Everyone jumped on the two stolen passport dudes and it was a bit chilling they ended up being used by two Iranians.  The fact that this came up so fast in the investigation means one of two things – they’re innocent putzs who were just trying to escape Iran or the Iranian Quds Brigade is slipping up in their tradecraft to have been identified so quickly.  It is disturbing that they show up in Malaysia just a few days before the ill fated flight and are readily supplied with the stolen passports and flight tickets. 

All of that points to some organizational type assistance.  We’ll know more when they locate the wreckage which is probably in a Vietnamese jungle since they haven’t been able to locate it in the fairly restricted ocean area.  The scariest scenario is that this was a test of the soft Southeast Asian underbelly of the security system for some future attack.  Again, we don’t know what we don’t know but some hard questions are forthcoming.

I finished up Diane Capri’s latest foray into Reacher land with Get Back Jack.  This is her second novel detailing the search for Lee Child’s (and my personal hero) Jack Reacher which she writes with Child’s approval.  I finished thinking, well Capri is certainly no Lee Child and it pissed me off a little that Reacher was placed in the hands of a less capable generator, even if he’s effectively not in the book at all.  I got over that but never felt pulled into and compelled the way a real Reacher novel does.

Capri spends a lot of time agonizing over the petty insecurities of her lead character, a female Asian American FBI agent trying to track down the elusive Reacher.  In this book she hooks up with some of Reacher’s former Army buddies and all hell breaks loose; at least I think it does.  With very few exceptions Capri avoids the action scenes and arrives for an in depth discussion of the aftermath which is disconcerting.  All events aim towards a major confrontation that gets muted down.  Capri is the master of the anti-climax but we finish knowing exactly how Agent Otto’s feelings were impinged.   On second thought, I’m probably going to avoid future Capri books to steer clear of being so snarky but Reacher has a way of drawing me back as well, so no promises.