Showing 1 - 10 of 22
Just a thought
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 30/05/2019
» I don't mind admitting that I winced when I plucked an 800-page novel from my review bag, having long advocated that authors don't need more than 400 pages to say what needs be said. The back cover describes it as an espionage novel. I don't recall Ian Fleming or John le Carré penning tomes.
Targeted billionaires
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 08/06/2018
» When a rich man meets his maker, I pause for few moments, not to mourn his life but to wonder what becomes of his wealth. Of no use to him now, is it buried with him? Like the pharaohs, he intends for it to accompany him in his next life? Is it inherited by his son? To do what with?
Best of the best
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 16/02/2018
» Generations have their popular writers, but centuries' literary legends are few. Hugo and Tolstoy qualified, Hemingway and Grisham, Goethe and Dickens. Not to mention Shakespeare and Cervantes.
Food for thought
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 05/01/2018
» A corporal motorcycle courier on the Western Front during World War I, Hitler fancied himself the German Napoleon Bonaparte. While he had good political instincts, a military genius he was not. Still, he had several first-rate strategists and tacticians on his staff.
A force of nature
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 28/09/2017
» Lee Child was a passable British author when he decided to try his luck in the States. It was a fortuitous decision. While the US doesn't lack detective thriller writers, he proved better than most.
Supply and demand
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 22/09/2017
» During the era of the Raj, India was the leading poppy grower. It was sold worldwide as a treatment for hysteria in women and hyperactivity in children. Only China refused to have anything to do with it because it was addictive, but two opium wars taught them how to take it.
Three days in May
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 11/08/2017
» Hitler learned a lesson from his unsuccessful Munich putsch of 1924 -- that weapons are legal only in the hands of the government. He spent the next decade getting into the national government. After that Germany built weapons at breakneck speed.
Combating the beasts
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 24/03/2017
» The world is a jungle and its beasts -- humans and animal -- are out to get us. Can the forces, sworn to protect and defend us, keep them at bay? It's touch and go. The basic task is not to catch them after they've struck, but to prevent them from striking.
The actual arch-enemy
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 03/02/2017
» For several years after the start of the Counter Crusades -- the Middle East's invasion of Europe -- it was unhealthy for the European media to say or write anything that was negative to the Holy Book. Its extremist adherents attacked the source and blood flowed. Fleeing the scene, no suicide bombers they, so-called Islamic State proudly boasted of the murders.
A Cold War thriller
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 26/01/2017
» The time was when visiting the USSR was difficult and leaving it impossible. Lenin and Stalin had built the ideal state and close contact with the outside world would only contaminate it. Until Hitler offered a deal they couldn't refuse -- to slice up Poland between them.