The Good Son by Russel McLean, part one

Tomorrow I'll tell you about the book itself. Today, I let you know that it arrived on Tuesday all the way from Aber-bloody-deen (or the UK at any rate) in pristine condition and with a pretty slick cover*. I paid as much in postage as the book cost itself, but I consider it worth it even though I have an electronic copy Russel was kind enough to send me a while back.

More importantly (since this is my blog...) Russel mentioned me in the acknowledgements at the back of the book. Not sure what I did or said that deserved the shout out** but it's much appreciated.

I sent an email to Craig Ferguson daring him to have Russel over on the show since it is the first Scottish PI novel in the history of the world. Of course, if Ferguson actually invites Russel over to the show, I'll tip over in a dead faint. Still, Ferguson is Scottish as is Mr. McLean and the Scottish are an unpredictable lot - Skittish Scots, we used to call them when I was growing up***.



* Slick meaning the photo is a nice one, very dramatic, eye-catching, not that something was spilled on it or anything.
** As the young people say.
*** Made that part up.

How We Lost the War in Iraq...(Quite Short)

Plenty of killing. No actual goal - at least not one that would stay still for more than a few days. WMDs, removing Saddam, setting up free elections, then more elections, then another round of elections, then making it so the Iraqi people could fix their infrastructure and run their government smoothly. Essentially, we're down to "We win if we can stop violence in Iraq."

Imagine someone assassinates the president of Iraq the day the last US soldier leaves. By GWBs standards, we'll have lost. Our brave young men and women are fighting and dying without an attainable goal - the greatest failure of the current president (and there are many to choose from) is that he has not yet, not to this day come up with a goal for our military that is achievable. Not to say that would have been easy, but he didn't even try.

Next it's back to crime writing news and such.