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Speaker 1: The book review. The thriller is a new one from

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Speaker 1: James Lee Burke, the Hadacle Boogie, which is the name

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Speaker 1: of a song traditional song from the South, sometimes called

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Speaker 1: the Hadda, called stump and so on, but the version

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Speaker 1: which is referred to in the book is by a

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Speaker 1: country in Western singer and it's called the Cadacoll Boogie.

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Speaker 1: It's the twenty fifth outing for Dave robi Show and

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Speaker 1: once again he is in partnership often strained partnership with

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Speaker 1: Cleat Percell. The crime at the heart of the Hadacolled

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Speaker 1: Boogie is the murder and dismemberment of a young black woman.

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Speaker 1: Her body is dumped on Roebi Show's property. But as

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Speaker 1: always in these James Lee Burke Robishow Cleeper Cell mysteries,

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Speaker 1: there is a crime which is more of a catalyst,

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Speaker 1: and the two pursue larger scale issues of justice and

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Speaker 1: Burke displays his extraordinary ability to inject electricity into prose.

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Speaker 1: The themes are familiar to previous books, the environmental devastation

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Speaker 1: that is happening in South Louisiana, the racial sins of

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Speaker 1: the United States of America, the blood wrenched, drenched legacy

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Speaker 1: which is everywhere in the South, and there is again

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Speaker 1: plenty of allusion to another world. Cleat Basil has genuine

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Speaker 1: They're not things he's imagining. You are asked to believe

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Speaker 1: that these are genuine conversations that he has with Joan

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Speaker 1: of Arc who has become a kind of load star

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Speaker 1: for him. And the way that Burke rhapsodizes about his

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Speaker 1: homeland on the horizon, lightning was striking the water, but

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Speaker 1: without sound, like gold wires in the bottom of clouds.

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Speaker 1: The last of the sunlight was like a cool fire

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Speaker 1: burning brightly inside the clouds. It's these immoral books. They

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Speaker 1: are books which are troubled by America's history and America's inability,

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Speaker 1: its refusal to confront that history. And it's set in

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Speaker 1: the early two thousands, and in an afterward Burke says

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Speaker 1: that he needed to set it there because there was

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Speaker 1: a feeling that the new century didn't bode well for

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Speaker 1: the US. The indifference to the melting of the Arctic,

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Speaker 1: the rising of the oceans, the sands of war blowing

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Speaker 1: in the midst the possible return of an evil man

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Speaker 1: in the Kremlin. And in two thousand and five, there

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Speaker 1: wasn't the possibility of the evil Orange Man returning to

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Speaker 1: the White House. But there we go. So there's a

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Speaker 1: sense of foreboding, a sense of grimness about the future,

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Speaker 1: and that Dave and Cleat are amongst a very small

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Speaker 1: band of very brave people who are fighting to keep

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Speaker 1: America on the right path. And if that all sounds

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Speaker 1: high faluting, it's not. It's there's a propulsive narrative which

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Speaker 1: takes you through and it's you know, it's all sorts

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Speaker 1: of stuff that's going on, and there's a lot, and

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Speaker 1: it's just absolutely fabulous. The Literary Thrill I Suppose is

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Speaker 1: a debut from an American author, Larissa pam Pham. She

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Speaker 1: had a book previous, but that was a collection of

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Speaker 1: essays and this one it's kind of metafictional in a way.

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Speaker 1: Is the central character in the book is a first

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Speaker 1: time author, Christine, who's on a book tour self arranged

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Speaker 1: in order to promote a book in which she talks

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Speaker 1: about a former art professor. And on this tour she

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Speaker 1: gets an anonymous email that's not how I remember it,

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Speaker 1: and she knows it is from her formous art professor,

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Speaker 1: and she did use her personal experience to inform the

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Speaker 1: novel and she is a little concerned about what might happen.

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Speaker 1: So they're two halves to the book. In the first half,

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Speaker 1: Christine connects with strangers and from people are from her

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Speaker 1: past on tour stops, and there's a lot of not

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Speaker 1: a lot of because it's a slim book. It's a

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Speaker 1: two hundred page book, and it's sparse and evocative, but

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Speaker 1: there are also meditations on art and women and art,

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Speaker 1: which again contribute to the narrative rather than overwhelm it.

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Speaker 1: And in the second half, she accepts an invitation from

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Speaker 1: Richard to come to his home on a remote island

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Speaker 1: off the coast of Maine, and what happens there as

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Speaker 1: they wrestle with the past and the degree to which

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Speaker 1: he accurately described that past in her novel form the

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Speaker 1: narrative thread of that second half, and the prose is elegant,

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Speaker 1: it's lithe it's ellergaic, and she muses with enormous impact

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Speaker 1: about life, about love, about interesting, about power, about art,

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Speaker 1: about writing, about survi, about agency. A writer with an

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Speaker 1: enormous amount of promise, certainly one to watch. The book

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Speaker 1: is called Discipline, and it's by Loisa pam Pham. And

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Speaker 1: then the nonfiction book is an absolute delight. It's called

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Speaker 1: The Tree of Life and subtitle is Solving Science's Greatest Puzzle.

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Speaker 1: And it's by an evolutionary biologist whose name is Max Telford.

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Speaker 1: And he attempts to take and succeeds, to my not

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Speaker 1: particularly expert ear and eye, he succeeds in taking the

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Speaker 1: Tree of Life from its very very very beginnings and

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Speaker 1: pointing out how it is all connected. Earliest life is

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Speaker 1: connected to contemporary life and to future life. He points

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Speaker 1: out that a tree on its own is like a

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Speaker 1: perfon pieced together jigsaw puzzle with no pictures on it.

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Speaker 1: So what he does with book, with this book is

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Speaker 1: take that perfect jigsaw puzzle and paint pictures onto it.

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Speaker 1: So the Tree of Life is a portal to the past,

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Speaker 1: and it's full of similarle and metaphor, and it goes

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Speaker 1: into really deep scientific detail about very technical things which

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Speaker 1: are not part of most people's common knowledge, but the

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Speaker 1: way that he creates illusions around them make them so accessible.

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Speaker 1: There's something called anumal crest cell, and he describes that

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Speaker 1: as a Bedouin warrior following invisible song lines. And what

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Speaker 1: he does is so he discusses worm anuses and the

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Speaker 1: importance of word worm anuses in the development of another

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Speaker 1: form of life which was slightly above the worm, which

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Speaker 1: led to another form of life, which led to another

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Speaker 1: branch of the tree, which then returned to the trunk

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Speaker 1: and up the trunk, And so it goes on his erudite,

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Speaker 1: he's informed, he's amusing, and at the end of this

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Speaker 1: it's again not a huge book, it's three hundred odd pages.

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Speaker 1: At the end of it you have a sense of

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Speaker 1: how John Matham, looking at himself in the mirror, has

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Speaker 1: a link back to these tiny microorganisms which started life

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Speaker 1: four billion years ago. Highly recommended for those who are

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Speaker 1: interested in reading popular science. The Tree of Life Solving

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Speaker 1: Science's Greatest Puzzle by Max Telford