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From the publisher:

A “fixer” in a Polish town during World War II, his betrayal of a Jewish family, and a search for justice 25 years later―by the winner of the National Jewish Book Award.

Eli’s Promise is a masterful work of historical fiction spanning three eras―Nazi-occupied Poland, the American Zone of post-war Germany, and Chicago at the height of the Vietnam War. Award-winning author Ronald H. Balson explores the human cost of war, the mixed blessings of survival, and the enduring strength of family bonds.

1939: Eli Rosen lives with his wife Esther and their young son in the Polish town of Lublin, where his family owns a construction company. As a consequence of the Nazi occupation, Eli’s company is Aryanized, appropriated and transferred to Maximilian Poleski―an unprincipled profiteer who peddles favors to Lublin’s subjugated residents. An uneasy alliance is formed; Poleski will keep the Rosen family safe if Eli will manage the business. Will Poleski honor his promise or will their relationship end in betrayal and tragedy?

1946: Eli resides with his son in a displaced persons camp in Allied-occupied Germany hoping for a visa to America. His wife has been missing since the war. One man is sneaking around the camps selling illegal visas; might he know what has happened to her?

1965: Eli rents a room in Albany Park, Chicago. He is on a mission. With patience, cunning, and relentless focus, he navigates unfamiliar streets and dangerous political backrooms, searching for the truth. Powerful and emotional, Ronald H. Balson’s Eli’s Promise is a rich, rewarding novel of World War II and a husband’s quest for justice.

A novel that may prove more than a little unnerving to many readers. It’s a well written account of a period in history in which the entire world was ushered into a second world war just 20 short years after the ending of the first round. Adolf Hitler devised the persecution of distinct groups of people as scapegoats for his nation to focus on in order to gear up to fighting a war. Hitler selected Jews, Gypsies and even Catholics to focus hatred on and made genocide a norm as a means of getting rid of his devised enemies.

The book focuses on three periods in the life of Eli Rosen in order to tell the story. The first segment is the time that war and occupation were initiated, the second in a period just after the war and a great many displaced persons were living in camps while awaiting possible reconciliation with relatives, and the third twenty years after the war’s end and occurring in Chicago, U.S.A.

Eli Rosen grew up and lives in the Polish town of Lublin. His family founded a successful brickyard which he manages up to the time that the Nazis conquered Poland and appropriated whatever they wanted in the country. He is thrown from a comfortable position as owner-manager of a good business to employee of a man that was his salesman until the Nazi governor of the area took over the ownership of the business. Eli tries to protect his family by any means from the excesses of the occupational government and is forced to enter into a relationship with Maximilian Polesk,i his ex salesman and now appointed as agent of the Nazis for the brick yard.

Eli’s wife Esther is conscripted to work in a sewing factory working on goods for the German army and forced to come in daily for nine or more hours each time. His young son continues in school but only because Eli has made that a condition for continuing to manage the yard giving Poleski the entire credit for doing that.

The second section of the novel describes the plight of the displaced persons after the war is over. They are thrown together in camps; all seeking visas for other countries in order to try and regain some semblance of normality for the rest of their lives. Mr Balson makes the point that many countries, including the United States set up low and arbitrary quotas for the refugees when they had the room and the need in the light of economies returning to normal as hostilities cease. Maximilian Poleski emerges as a fixer – a man with the contacts and influence to sell visas to people with the money to pay him and allow them to bypass the normal sequence of time needed to get a visa.

The climax of the story occurs in the United States in the city of Chicago. Eli Rosen comes to the area and obtains an apartment. His neighbors see him as a man with some means as all he seems to be doing is staying around the apartment. He becomes friendly with some people in the building he is living in. The reason he is in Chicago is explained and his actions become logical. The ending of the novel provides something unexpected for the reader. It is not just a change from the expected but a means of keeping the key persona in the book as logical as the author obviously intended to make them.

Ronald Balson pulls no punches with his descriptions of the horrors visited on ordinary people by an invading army, and than their being shunted off to a side by many countries that want the war to just disappear. His story is a five star version of a period of history that proved a horror for those living in it.

10/2020 Paul Lane

ELI’S PROMISE by Ronald H. Balson. St. Martin’s Press (September 22, 2020). ISBN: 978-1250271464. 352 pages.

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From the publisher:

In the next thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling Mitch Rapp series, it’s a race against the clock when ISIS takes out the entire US power grid and throws the country into chaos.

When Mitch Rapp captures ISIS’s top technology expert, he reveals that he was on his way to meet a man who claims to have the ability to bring down America’s power grid. Rapp is determined to eliminate this shadowy figure, but the CIA’s trap fails.

The Agency is still trying to determine what went wrong when ISIS operatives help this cyber terrorist do what he said he could—plunge the country into darkness. With no concept of how this unprecedented act was accomplished, the task of getting the power back on could take months. Perhaps even years.

Rapp and his team embark on a desperate search for the only people who know how to repair the damage—the ones responsible. But his operating environment is like nothing he’s experienced before. Computers and communication networks are down, fuel can no longer be pumped from gas stations, water and sanitation systems are on the brink of collapse, and the supply of food is running out.

Can Rapp get the lights back on before America descends irretrievably into chaos?

This is the 6th Mitch Rapp novel by Kyle Mills, who continues the lead established by Vince Flynn who passed away at the height of his literary career.

Rapp was depicted as a valuable agent for a separate section of the CIA working directly under Irene Kennedy who manages the organization. The character is the same as Vince Flynn created. Mitch has always been cast as an individual that gets the job done on a “full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes” basis. While he does not have James Bond’s license to kill if necessary, granted by the government, he solves many a problem by doing just that.

The present book deals with a theme that has appeared in more than a few stories. That is, an attack on the national power grid which if sabotaged has the means to literally shut down the country; no water, no gasoline, no electricity, phones go out, food isn’t delivered nor even harvested, planes cannot fly. The consequence is that such circumstances could prove fatal for the majority of the people living in that country.

The novel opens with Mitch capturing the top technical advisor for ISIS. He learns from that individual that he was on his way to meet a man that claims to have the wherewithal to bring down the U.S power grid. The CIA sets a trap to capture that man, but it fails and several agents working for ISIS meet with the individual. The impossible happens, the taking down of the grid is accomplished and the consequence is the complete stoppage of the U.S. economy.

The government assigns many experts to try and restore power, but to no avail with the answer looks like it can only be to catch the planner and get him to rectify the problem. As in all other Mitch Rapp books, he attacks the problem head-on, directing his own loyal squad. The action is fast and constant as the group consisting of ISIS members is capable of killing with no fear of their own deaths to deter them. After a great read, the novel ends in one of the most satisfying ways I have encountered putting a capstone on the book.

10/2020 Paul Lane

TOTAL POWER by Kyle Mills & Vince Flynn. Atria/Emily Bestler Books (September 15, 2020). ISBN: 978-1501190650. 384 pages.

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From the publisher:

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Turn of the Key and In a Dark Dark Wood returns with another suspenseful thriller set on a snow-covered mountain.

Getting snowed in at a luxurious, rustic ski chalet high in the French Alps doesn’t sound like the worst problem in the world. Especially when there’s a breathtaking vista, a full-service chef and housekeeper, a cozy fire to keep you warm, and others to keep you company. Unless that company happens to be eight coworkers…each with something to gain, something to lose, and something to hide.

When the cofounder of Snoop, a trendy London-based tech startup, organizes a weeklong trip for the team in the French Alps, it starts out as a corporate retreat like any other: PowerPoint presentations and strategy sessions broken up by mandatory bonding on the slopes. But as soon as one shareholder upends the agenda by pushing a lucrative but contentious buyout offer, tensions simmer and loyalties are tested. The storm brewing inside the chalet is no match for the one outside, however, and a devastating avalanche leaves the group cut off from all access to the outside world. Even worse, one Snooper hadn’t made it back from the slopes when the avalanche hit.

As each hour passes without any sign of rescue, panic mounts, the chalet grows colder, and the group dwindles further…one by one.

Ruth Ware continues her writing of solidly written, entertaining, and well-plotted novels with a murder mystery set in a ski resort that has been snowbound due to a major storm. Erin and Danny work for a company that leases rooms at these resorts to people interested in spending a few days both on the ski slopes as well as having the luxury of a well-run hotel at their disposal. Danny is the chef and the person preparing the meals for the guests with Erin acting both as the hostess and the maid for them. We learn early on that Erin has a background that includes a major personal crisis.

As the story opens, a group from a tech company named “Snoop” which has successfully developed a product that can follow anybody electronically without their knowledge and allow them to be spied upon, has booked the resort for a few days. They are in the process of possibly receiving a buy out by another company which will mean fortunes for the current stockholders: all of whom are at the meeting. There are two of the guests that are opposed to the buy out feeling that once their product is released to the public the stock they own will be worth more than any purchase by another company.

Since the group is at a ski resort it is decided that they will go out and do a downhill run on their first day there. There are a few good skiers among them coupled with others with lesser skills. Unfortunately, tragedy strikes immediately. One of the groups with lesser ability does not return to the resort with the others. Using their own product the determination is made that that woman’s phone is buried under tons of snow and that she must have been killed. The police are called but cannot come immediately due to the imminent arrival of a major snowstorm. That storm hits and causes the resort to become isolated with no possibility of either leaving or having anyone come to them.

In the vein of Agatha Christie’s classic “And Then There Were None,” people begin dying bringing terror to the group afraid of being next on whatever list is being used to decide who is to be killed. The story is told via a series of first-person narratives and we clearly follow the plot until a good who done it reaches its inevitable end. The use of a ski resort being snowed in provides an interesting twist to Ware’s tale of murder and is another landmark on her reputation as a skilled author.

9/2020 Paul Lane

ONE BY ONE by Ruth Ware. Gallery/Scout Press (September 8, 2020). ISBN: 978-1501188817. 384 pages.

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From the publisher:

‘The right of the cat over the mouse, of the strong over the weak. The natural law of existence.’ Augustus Mungo St John, A Falcon Flies

The son of a wealthy plantation owner and a doting mother, Augustus Mungo St John is accustomed to the wealth and luxuries his privilege has afforded him. That is until he returns from university to discover his family ruined, his inheritance stolen and his childhood sweetheart, Camilla, taken by the conniving Chester Marion. Fuelled by anger, and love, Mungo swears vengeance and devotes his life to saving Camilla – and destroying Chester.

Camilla, trapped in New Orleans and powerless to her position as a kept slave and Chester’s brutish behaviour, must learn to do whatever it takes to survive.

As Mungo battles his own fate and misfortune to achieve the revenge that drives him, and regain his power in the world, he must question what it takes for a man to survive when he has nothing, and what he is willing to do in order to get what he wants.

An action-packed and gripping adventure by bestselling author, Wilbur Smith, about one man’s quest for revenge, the brutality of slavery in America and the imbalance between humans that can drive – or defeat – us.

The author is a very well established South African born writer of tales of high adventure featuring leading protagonists of mighty heroes and dastardly villains. Each of these is portrayed as larger than life, in love with gorgeous women. The heroes usually get the girl and the villains their just desserts and we see great deeds done in righting all wrongs.

The current book utilizes a different slant on things. Mungo St. John is the son of wealthy plantation owners in the American south of the 1840s. Slavery has been used as sources of cheap labor since time immemorial and Mungo reaps the rewards of cheap labor when he goes off to attend university in England.

Called back from his studies, he returns home and finds that his parents have been killed and their plantation seized by the very evil Chester Marion. And to put a capstone on the evil done him, his childhood and adult love Camilla, who was actually a slave, has been taken by the brute. Mungo declares that he will find a way to destroy Chester Marion, take back what is his and kill the brute that has wronged him.

He gets work on a ship that is involved in the transport of slaves from Africa to Havana where they will be sent to buyers in the U.S. In most of Smith’s books Mungo would not get involved with the hideous crime of buying and selling human beings but in this novel he does in order to make the money needed to destroy Chester Martin.

In my opinion, Smith’s use of flawed characters makes “Call of the Raven” stand out as one of his top novels, and that is among the many excellent works that he has already had published. An excellent and exciting read and obviously one that will cause Wilbur Smith’s fan club to continue to grow.

9/2020 Paul Lane

CALL OF THE RAVEN by Wilbur Smith. Zaffre (September 8, 2020). ISBN: 978-1499862294. 448p.

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