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Big vehicles, narrow roads… and no sidewalks.
~
Monk had almost forgotten how remorseless San Antonio can be toward its plebeian pedestrians. For his morning walk, Monk was more ambitious than just taking that neighborhood walk to the duck pond, deciding to try to scratch his revived itch for pop fiction, needing to fill out the interstices in the re-opened vistas of time and emotional life with something easy and at least superficially fetching, a cute enough slut rather than a serious romance.
He walked down to Walgreens, since the nearer convenience store only carries pornographic fiction, such as a little magazine titled “Family Tales.” Monk has better porn than that at home, though he remembers woefully his pre-Internet days when he would try to scratch that particular itch with such diluted offerings.
At Walgreens he was happy to see racks bulging with fat paperback novels. After perusing all the melodramatic suspense stories and the sugary romantic chick-books, Monk came away with John Grisham's The Broker, a political thriller. Though, while he was in line at the checkout stand, peeking more into the book, he started having doubts, "Maybe I should have went with one of the sex-murder suspenses."
Having begun Grisham's tale, Monk is happy with the choice, as he is reminded of how addictively fun these pop novels can be. One only hopes that he does not start letting this sordid affair crowd out his quality time with his poetry and history.
___ ___ ___
In his final hours in office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six months hidden away in a federal prison. What no one knows is that the President issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure the the CIA. It seems Backman, in his power broker heyday, may have obtained secrets that compromise the world's most sophisticated satellite surveillance system.
Backman is quietly smuggled out of the country in a military cargo plane, given a new name, a new identity, and a new home in Italy. Eventually, after he has settled into his new life, the CIA will leak his whereabouts to the Israelis, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Saudis. Then the CIA will do what it does best: sit back and watch. The question is not whether Backman will survive - there is no chance of that. The question the CIA needs answered is, who will kill him?
-- The tease for John Grisham's The Broker
xXx
Big vehicles, narrow roads… and no sidewalks.
~
Monk had almost forgotten how remorseless San Antonio can be toward its plebeian pedestrians. For his morning walk, Monk was more ambitious than just taking that neighborhood walk to the duck pond, deciding to try to scratch his revived itch for pop fiction, needing to fill out the interstices in the re-opened vistas of time and emotional life with something easy and at least superficially fetching, a cute enough slut rather than a serious romance.
He walked down to Walgreens, since the nearer convenience store only carries pornographic fiction, such as a little magazine titled “Family Tales.” Monk has better porn than that at home, though he remembers woefully his pre-Internet days when he would try to scratch that particular itch with such diluted offerings.
At Walgreens he was happy to see racks bulging with fat paperback novels. After perusing all the melodramatic suspense stories and the sugary romantic chick-books, Monk came away with John Grisham's The Broker, a political thriller. Though, while he was in line at the checkout stand, peeking more into the book, he started having doubts, "Maybe I should have went with one of the sex-murder suspenses."
Having begun Grisham's tale, Monk is happy with the choice, as he is reminded of how addictively fun these pop novels can be. One only hopes that he does not start letting this sordid affair crowd out his quality time with his poetry and history.
___ ___ ___
In his final hours in office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six months hidden away in a federal prison. What no one knows is that the President issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure the the CIA. It seems Backman, in his power broker heyday, may have obtained secrets that compromise the world's most sophisticated satellite surveillance system.
Backman is quietly smuggled out of the country in a military cargo plane, given a new name, a new identity, and a new home in Italy. Eventually, after he has settled into his new life, the CIA will leak his whereabouts to the Israelis, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Saudis. Then the CIA will do what it does best: sit back and watch. The question is not whether Backman will survive - there is no chance of that. The question the CIA needs answered is, who will kill him?
-- The tease for John Grisham's The Broker
