To plagiarize every blurb-filled review of a Michael Bay summer blockbuster ever, Crashers is a high adrenaline rush of a summer read, filled with kick-ass fighting heroines, international intrigue, gun fights, multiple airplane crashes, and dedicated government servants. Okay, that last bit probably wouldn’t appear in a review of a Michael Bay movie. If you can suspend disbelief, or at least if you can read tongue in cheek, it’s something light and fun to read on a nice relaxing vacation.

Simple premise: it’s possible to hook into the control systems for an airplane remotely. Bad guy figures out how to do so, and uses his power to crash one. It’s a dry run for a second terrorist attack on a plane that possibly will come later in the book if the good guys don’t figure it out. The first is not announced as an attack, so no one knows that bad guys are involved (except us readers).

The crashers are the members of the National Transportation Safety Board (N.T.S.B.) team that investigates the crash. Dr. Leonard Tommy Tomszak is the guy in charge, even though he resigned after his first crash in charge because he couldn’t solve the case. He’s a pathologist. Also on the team are an ex cop bomb expert, an ex-sub sonar expert (she’s the cockpit voice recorder analyst), a jet engine engineer, and numerous representatives of airplane parts manufacturers as well as bunches of others. They think the crash is your normal run of the mill airplane disaster. Will they figure it out in time? Which, by the way, they have about 3 days according to the blurb on my A.R.C. Tension tension tension!

The one review point that matters is that the conflicts and pace of the book are well-plotted. Starting a couple dozen pages in, the book did well to keep my attention on what’s going to happen next? which is what a thriller should do.

Not that it really matters, but the facts and situations and characters are paper-thin and ludicrous. Only two characters get much of a back story. The time line is ridiculous. I can’t comment on how accurately he portrays an N.T.S.B. crash investigation team, but if it’s anything like how he does computers… Seriously, how many times have I seen an 18 year old high school computer genius (who is taking web design classes at community college) step in and do what experienced programmers can’t easily do? In real life, never. In movies, they do this a lot. One does not slave Microsoft Access to G.I.S. to produce a Powerpoint animation of how shrapnel hits a plane fuselage. If you are using Microsoft Access, you aren’t a genius. As the writers of Star Trek said in an interview, they had characters tech the tech in their scripts when they planned to have geeky stuff substituted later. This is that. So I suspect that portrayals of other stuff is kinda off too.

But, whatever! I was able to get past that actually. One doesn’t look for realism in a book with lots of explosions. It’s go go go, all the way to the end.

A couple other blogged reviews:

• Mysterious Orientations
• Mysteries Galore

Title: Crashers
Author: Dana Haynes
Imprint / publisher: Minotaur Books / Macmillan
Format: Advance readers cpy
Length: 343 p.
Publication date: June 2010
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-59988-1

I received Crashers free of charge from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program, which asks that I post a review on LibraryThing in return. In accordance with my policy on review copies I will donate $13.74 (the price of the book on Amazon) to the A.L.S.A.

Quite a number of former prisoners the U.S. held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba have been released. I have not read any of their accounts of their time spent in prison. The only account of that prison that I’ve read was from the former chaplain there, James Yee. I refuse to use the word detainees as it feels like doublespeak to me. I’d rather use words like prisoner and victim, because those words appropriately impart greater emotional weight.

Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen who lived his entire life in Germany, was kidnapped in Pakistan and sold to the U.S. military as a possible terrorist. He was held in Kandahar, Afghanistan and in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He alleges he was tortured during his captivity, particularly during the period at Kandahar. In 2006, the U.S. repatriated him to Germany where he currently lives without restriction on his freedom. He was never charged with any crime and independent judicial review of his status as an enemy combatant judged that allegation as ludicrous.

Reading his account was vicariously painful. I have no independent way to assess whether Kurnaz is telling the truth. I suspect he largely is, the exceptions being due to faulty memory. His treatment includes no methods worse than what we’ve learned happened in Abu Ghraib. The summation of his treatment is much worse though. Five years worth of frequent minor torture makes for a major case. Isolated incidents of unnecessary force we can live with as a country. Weekly beatings, stress positions, contempt of cop control by guards, extreme temperatures, undernourishment, and isolation should prompt collective outrage. That the outrage has come from only a part (though significant) of the U.S. populace is a shame.

His homecoming at the end moved me the most. Mistreatment makes me angry, but I am not an angry person by nature. I don’t feel anger in a visceral way. But loss is a whole ‘nother story. Kurnaz married a Turkish girl (who he only names by pseudonym) shortly before traveling to Pakistan. He had no contact with her while imprisoned, and on his return finds out, second-hand, she’s divorced him. Reading his account of meeting his parents and brother brings home the loss. Kurnat also had several close relatives due while he was illegally imprisoned. None of this changes even if he wasn’t tortured.

Kurnaz never got even an oops, we goofed from the U.S. government.

His account is pretty much what I expected. That he’s a likable kid is apparent in this account, and I don’t see a hardened militant faking it his attitude. There are no great revelations, nor will anyone find it much different than other accounts of people held incommunicado. But I believe it’s important to read something from a victim of our national shame, and Kurnaz account does well enough for that purpose.

Title: Five Years of My Life: An Innocen Man in Guantanamo (originally Fünf Jahre Meines Lebens in German)
Author: Murat Kurnaz; Helmut Kuhn
Translator: Jefferson Chase
Cover creator: David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Imprint / publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Format: Hardcover
Length: 255 p.
Publication date: February 2008
ISBN-10: 0-230-60374-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-230-60374-5
Subject: Kurnaz,Murat, 1982-
Subject: Prisoners of war — Legal status, laws, etc. — Cuba — Guantánamo Bay Naval Base — Biography
Subject: Human rights — Government policy — United States
Subject: Combatants and noncombatants (International law) — Biography
Subject: Military bases, American — Law and legislation — Cuba
Subject: Detention of persons — Cuba — Guantánamo Bay Naval Base
Subject: War and emergency powers — Unites States
LC classification: KZ6496.K87 2008

This book reminds me a lot of the movie Pump Up The Volume. The only real common plot element is a teen working underground inspires a rebellion among fellow youth against unjust authority. But the main similarity I think is more the feel of the work: wishful thinking. I agree with the politics. I think kids need to rebel, not for their sake, but for society’s. But I still think the book is wishful thinking.

Marcus Yallow is a teen geek. He ditches school one day with three friends to play an alternate reality game (A.R.G.) which involves running around the streets of San Francisco looking for clues. As they do so, terrorists blow up the Bay Bridge. In the panic and confusion, the band of youth are picked up by the Department of Homeland Security (D.H.S.) and held for six or so days incommunicado, subject to minor torture. One doesn’t make it back.

Although scared and afraid, Marcus fights back against the fascist D.H.S. takeover of San Francisco through underground computer networks, flash mobs, and culture jamming. But fear of D.H.S. keeps him underground and keeps him from revealing his incarceration and the one friend left behind.

I really liked the book, despite the tendency for Doctorow to info dump lots of background on various geeky topics. I think the information is cool. Though it does sometimes come across as lecturing by the author/protagonist. But I bet a lot of people purposely fry their R.F.I.D. chips after reading the book as a result of the info dump.

One question in my mind though is whether the book will break out of the geek set. I just can’t see non-geek kids really getting in to this with all the technology-geekism. Civil liberties aren’t really sexy enough for high school kids to get interested in droves. It should be. And Little Brother has as good a chance of any book at doing it. But… wishful thinking.

For those already of the techno-civil liberties mindset, this is a great book.

Plus, Little Brother is available free from the author’s web site. The Creative Commons licensed version also has a dedication to a bookstore before each chapter. What I love about the dedications, other than them being totally cool, is that he includes chain book stores as well as little independents. Too many times the chains are vilified as if they don’t provide hundreds of thousands of titles at low price to people who want to read. Doctorow sings their praises just as much as he does the small guys.

Title: Little brother
Author: Cory Doctorow
Imprint / publisher: Tor
Format: E-book (published version is hardcover)
Length: 155 p. (hardcover is 384 p.)
Publication date: April 2008
ISBN-10: 0-76531985-3
ISBN-13: 978-00765319852
Subject: United States. Dept. of Homeland Security — Fiction
Subject: Terrorism — Fiction
Subject: Computer hackers — Fiction
Subject: Civil rights — Fiction
Subject: Counterculture — Fiction
Subject: San Francisco (Calif.) — Fiction
LC classification: PZ7.D66237 Lit 2008

I tend to be a sucker for stories of the righteous being downtrodden and still winning. It’s no surprise that I liked this story. In particular, I liked it because I am really tired of reading stories about those the Bush administration and it’s flunkies beat down, and when called to task the Bush administration wins. Well, this time they didn’t win. Legally, James Yee won on all points. He was still drummed out of the Army, but that happens often enough for simple office politics.

For those who didn’t follow the story in the newspapers, here’s the basic story as recounted in this book. James Yee is the son of a Chinese immigrant family (I can’t recall offhand whether it was his parents or grandparents who came to the U.S.) who joined the Army and attended West Point after graduating high school. While at West Point, he converted to Islam. After his enlistment was finished (aided by early discharge bonuses when the military downsized in the early 1990s) he attended an Islamic school in Damascus, seeking to be an imam (which I believe it the equivalent of a priest). When he returned to the U.S., he re-enlisted in the Army becoming a chaplain. Shortly afterward, the U.S. plunged into the war on terror and re-christened the Guantánamo base (famous from A Few Good Men) as a prison for foreigners swept up. Since most of the prisoners are Muslim, the Army assigned a Muslim chaplain to the camp. Yee was the third of those.

Despite 10 months of glowing reports on his work there, Yee was viewed with suspicion by his Christian and nationalistic superiors. He was arrested when he left the base on leave, then held in solitary confinement for 76 days. Despite bombastic rhetoric about his ties to Islamic terrorists, he was never charged with any terrorist crimes, and eventually the charges for the minor crimes were dismissed. Basically, his life was turned upside down for nothing.

The story is compelling, and so is the book. Yee’s ghostwriter, Aimee Molloy, has done a fine job of pacing the text. Boring and repetitive tales of nothing from before Yee’s enlistment aren’t included. There’s enough to give you an idea of what Yee was like. The bulk of the book is what life was like working in Guantánamo. And of course, the latter part of the book regards Yee’s legal woes.

Title: For God and country: faith and patriotism under fire
Author: James Yee, Aimee Molloy
Imprint / publisher: PublicAffairs / Perseus
Format: Hardcover
Length: 240 p. (includes index)
Publication date: 2005
ISBN-10: 1-58648-369-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-58648-369-2
Subject: Yee, James
Subject: United States. Army — Chaplains — Biography
Subject: Chaplains, Military — United States — Biography
Subject: Chaplains, Military — Islam
Subject: Muslims — United States — Biography
Subject: Chinese Americans — Biography
Subject: Guantánamo Bay Naval Base (Cuba)
Subject: War on Terrorism, 2001- — Social aspects
Subject: Muslims — Civil rights — United States — Case studies
Subject: False imprisonment — United States — Case studies
LC classification: UH23.Y44 2005