Reading The 1000 Books to Read Before I Die

  The Strangler’s Waltz by Richard Lord  Review by Jon Hanson The year is 1913; the place is Vienna, Austria. This bustling city sits at the heart of the Austro-Hungarian empire. It is a city renowned for its art, culture, and zest for life. But underneath the glamour lies a seedy underbelly of drug dealers, prostitutes, pimps, and killers.  As in all cities, it is the job of the police to protect the city. While the partolmen walk a beat everyday, the detectives are the ones who investigate vicious crimes. Two of the best detectives in Vienna are Inspector Julian Stebbel and Inspector Karl-Heinz Dorfner who work in Homicide. They are assigned a case involving a local killer who is strangling women on the streets of Vienna. As the body count grows, the papers begin comparing the killer to the infamous Jack the Ripper and the population becomes more afraid to walk the streets. With pressure mounting from the commissioner and the mayor, can these two detectives solve the cr...

  “Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.”   Wolf Hall A Review by James Romano For the first book I finished reading in 2021, our portal takes us to Tudor England during the reign of King Henry VIII in the historical fiction novel Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.   Wolf Hall is the first novel in a three-book trilogy chronicling the rise, the height of power and then fall of Thomas Cromwell.   Historically, Thomas Cromwell was a councilor to King Henry VIII and for a period of time one of his most trusted advisors.   The historical Cromwell had a storied career, he helped end the King’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon; overthrow the power of the Catholic Church in England; advance the English Reformation and beginnings of the Anglican Church; oversaw the sending of St. Thomas More and Anne Boleyn to their respective graves and engineer the King’s marriage to both Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves. The last of those ma...