Readers and writers: The latest from John Sandford, a trailblazer at the U, and more

Mary Ann Grossmann, Pioneer Press
·7 min read

Letty comes alive, something is in the basement, college freshmen tell stories, and a look at one of the first University of Minnesota Black athletes, all recommended this week just for you.

“Dark Angel”: by John Sandford (Putnam, $29.99)

‘ ‘Attagirl,’ Cartwright said, raising a finger to the waiter. ‘Nothing quite as exciting as getting drunk on your ass while angry and in possession of a dangerous weapon. Says so right in in the Second Amendment, I think.’

‘I am not that angry,’ Letty said.

‘Yes, you are. You have been since birth. All us Ladies are angry.’ ” — From “Dark Angel”

The “Ladies” are members of the Washington Ladies Peace-Maker Society, which is not a group of tea-drinking socialites. It’s a secret group of women in Washington, most of whom work for government agencies, who meet monthly to test their shooting skills and talk about their favorite guns. A few of them are probably sociopaths.

It’s the kind of organization that welcomes Letty Davenport, daughter of Prey series hero Lucas Davenport. She made her debut last year in “The Investigator,” in which she killed two men on a bridge in Pershing, Texas.

Letty, who grew up in the Prey series, didn’t quite come into focus as a character in “The Investigator.” In “Dark Angel” Sandford has found his groove with her. This book has all the Sandford trademarks — guns, operations run by one government agency without the others knowing about it, heart-stopping final chapters and a twisty plot set against the backdrop of the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Because of Letty’s actions in Texas, she’s assigned to guard Baxter, an overweight, very smart and scared computer specialist with the NSA. They need to drive from Washington to California to find a secretive hacker group called Ordinary People, who seem to be making plans to destroy a northern city’s gas supply. The partners go undercover as a computer guy and his girlfriend who are grifters.

Turns out they were right in thinking information was being withheld from them. (Not a spoiler.) The gas destruction was a lie; the real threat is international. Some of the Ordinary People had managed to infiltrate controls of the Russian train system, causing chaos. The war in Ukraine is beginning and the hackers suddenly become the good guys because the U.S. government wants them to disable the trains again, this time to stop the Russian invasion.

There is plenty of action in “Dark Angel,” with Letty gathering the Ordinary People crew and trying to keep them safe from a ruthless Russian. She’s helped by John Kaiser, a Department of Homeland Security investigator who was her partner in the previous book, and several of the Ladies from the Washington club who are as deadly as Letty with weapons and are not afraid to use them.

With the introduction of the Peace-Maker Ladies, Sandford has invented a scary bunch of women who talk more about their weapons, including the .45 Colt, known as a Peace-Maker, than they do about men.

Letty’s personality is clearer in this book. She’s tough, but not Superwoman, and she’s sometimes funny. The deadpan, humorous dialogue that runs through the Prey books is in “Dark Angel,” too, but it’s between women. The whole book is woman-based, except for Baxter and Kaiser. Even Letty’s highly-placed contact in Washington is a woman, who makes things happen when her people need help in the field. Sometimes she has to admonish Letty: “Don’t destroy any buildings.”

Sandford is in top form again, creating situations in which well-trained women can scare — or shoot — the pants off a guy.

“Morlocks in the Basement”: by Carolyn Colburn (Running Wild Press, $19.99)

Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a horror story. It’s a funny/sad memoir about raising a troubled child by a writer who divides her time between a century-old house in Duluth and a cabin on Lake Superior near the Canadian border.

There are day-to-day musings, such as how the author wanted to fire her housekeeper but was too afraid of the woman to do it, and the joys and torments of teaching pre-schoolers, who love to make a lot of noise and think everything is funny. She admits her cat hates NPR

But woven into the nonlinear narrative is the story of her daughter’s struggles with running away; drugs, court appearances, calls in the middle of the night. It’s about how difficult it is to let go as a parent, and how much the girl is loved.

“First-Year Orientation”: edited by Lauren Gibaldi & Eric Smith (Candlewick Press, $25.99)

Two Minnesota writers are among 16 whose stories are in this entertaining anthology for teens preparing for college, set at fictional Rolland College, “eight hours north of the Carolinas.”.

“We always thought the first days of college should feel a little magical,” the editors write. “Maybe a little scary. Perhaps a little romantic. And as you’ll see in these stories, at this old small college, there’s a little bit of each to be found all over the campus.”

“They Call Me Bull,” by St. Paul author Bryan Bliss, is about one of the stars of the football team, a scholarship player who is there for the education and not for football. He doesn’t want to follow the team’s stupid traditional bonding rules, such as wearing the team’s T-shirts to social events. He’s bullied by the team captain, who’s a jerk, but his friend keeps telling him to just shut up and go along, because the bully will graduate and next year the team will be theirs.

Bull sort of goes along, until he meets a woman who was reading at a party and can’t stand football players and their Big Man on Campus attitudes. She challenges Bull’s decision to stay with the team, heading to a future in which he can live for the rest of his life on the cache of being a star college football player. He will have to decide whether he wants more than that.

Kathleen Glasgow lives in Tucson, Ariz., but she is former coordinator of the University of Minnesota graduate program in creative writing, so we’ll make her an honorary Minnesotan. She tells an involving tale in “Mighty,” about a former film star who had a breakdown, spent time in a recovery facility, and wants to attend a small college where she can shed her notoriety. That doesn’t happen, of course. Students follow her around, begging for pictures of her famous breasts. When she meets a guy who doesn’t care about her celebrity, she remembers the lessons she learned from an older actress about what is real and what is not.

This anthology should be read this summer by every young person who’s excited and scared about this new adventure called college.

“Breaking Through the Line: Bobby Marshall: The N.F.L.’s First African American Player”: by Terry McConnell, foreword by Mark Coyle, University of Minnesota athletics director (Nodin Press, $19.95)

Bobby Marshall, sometimes described as Minnesota’s first Black superstar, was mostly forgotten by the media in the mid-20th century. So sports fans and U alumni will welcome this thorough exploration of his life, his sports talents and high points of some of the games he played.

Born in 1880, grandson of a slave, Marshall graduated from Minneapolis Central High and entered the University of Minnesota in 1903. He had no scholarships and he worked to pay his way. It was not an easy time; Marshall and his best friend, Sig Harris, were not allowed to live in the university dormitories because Marshall was Black and Harris was a Jew.

Besides football, Marshall starred in baseball and track and excelled in hockey before the Gophers mounted a varsity team.

Marshall earned a law degree at the university, and in the 1930s he spent time working with kids’ sports. He died in 1958 and in 1991 he was inducted into the M Club Hall of Fame.

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