Dirty Diplomacy by Craig Murray, Scribner, non-fiction, 366 pp., $26

Before the torture scandals of Abu Ghraib became public, there was the matter of the prisoner who was boiled to death in Uzbekistan. Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to that country, learned of this tragedy and exposed it, urging the British government to distance itself from U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. propped up the repressive Uzbek regime with half a billion dollars yearly in exchange for the use of an air base. For his trouble, Murray was harassed mercilessly by his own government and ultimately forced out of his position.

By his own unvarnished admissions, Murray enjoys a drink or more and he is a serial adulterer now living with his Uzbek lover, Nadira, in London, but his morality is surely greater than the sum of those two parts. He’s like the Bill Clinton of the British foreign service, messy on the personal side, brilliant and compassionate on the other. He no doubt exposed his own flaws to snatch the opportunity from his political foes. Well done and bravo.

Murray traveled the Uzbek countryside, consulting with British businessmen and ordinary Uzbeks whose lives are a torment. Growing cotton is a major industry in the country, and at harvest time, university students and hospital patients who are ambulatory are sent to pick the crop.

The political and judicial issues, however, are what landed Murray in his own vat of hot water. His description of a trial he attended is horrific since even the witnesses are tortured to produce the desired testimony. According to Murray, the post 9/11 rage resulted in the practice of sending prisoners to countries like Uzbekistan where human rights is an unacknowledged concept. Muslims are tortured in the name of the war on terror. When prisoners are executed their families are charged for the bullets. The hideous irony, of course, is that the dictator Saddam Hussein received justice at the end of a rope, while Uzbek President Karimov got a fat check from the U.S. Ultimately, Karimov embraced Mother Russia and tossed us out.

By turns unbearably sad and raucously funny, this book is a must read by a man with courage in spades and an acute sense of perspective and humor. Dirty Diplomacy is an extraordinary book.

Life’s A Campaign:What Politics Has Taught Me about Friendship, Reputation, and Success by Chris Matthews, Random House, non-fiction, 202 pp., $24.95

This is a book about success by a man who is successful. Chris Matthews, host of Hardball, is my favorite political analyst even though I have wanted to reach into the television screen and grab him by the throat many times. A graduate of Holy Cross, Matthews, like others who have been educated by the Jesuits, is certain of his opinions, and views with suspicion anyone whose thoughts differ.

Matthews uses politicians and their tactics to explain how success is achieved or not. Matthews loves the world of politics and its denizens, and he writes about what he knows.

Matthews served in the Peace Corps in Swaziland. The image of him, a young man from Philadelphia, armed with education and the fury of youthful idealism, riding the train to Mozambique is a lovely image. That vision clashes mightily with the reality of his first job on Capitol Hill as an armed policeman, prowling darkened halls and writing political speeches in the dead of night until something better came along, but the point is, he was where he wanted to be, and he was willing to do what he needed to do. Ultimately he wrote speeches for President Jimmy Carter and served as the late great Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill’s top aide. There is no question Matthews knows whereof he speaks.

Matthews puts forth some ideas for success like being optimistic, but is this success at any cost? Matthews cites as an example President Carter telling the truth about the state of the union in 1979 when he said, “We’ve always believed in something called progress. We have always had faith that the days of our children would be better than our own. Our people are losing faith, not only in government itself but in the ability of citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of democracy.” Those words are more true today, yet Matthews contrasts Carter with Ronald Reagan who blew bubbles up our backsides and prevailed in the presidential election. That example and the country’s failure to respond to the truth says more about the electorate than anything else. It says we’ll believe anything that is more pleasant and more convenient because truth demands action and often sacrifice, and Americans don’t like that word. If that’s success, you can keep it.

Matthews is an engaging writer whose anecdotal material is informative and lively. He educates, entertains, and once again, has caused my blood to boil, and that’s fine. His genius is to provoke serious thought and spirited discussion wherever he goes, and no one does that more successfully than Chris Matthews.

A Skating Life by Dorothy Hamill with Deborah Amelon, Hyperion, autobiography, 238 pp., $24.95

When Dorothy Hamill won the Olympic gold medal for figure skating in 1976, she had all the wholesomeness and beauty of a fresh picked apple. She was graceful and lovely, and her stunning wedge haircut became all the rage. No one but a fellow skater could have understood the grueling travel and training required to arrive at the pinnacle. Skating is a tough life. It can be viciously competitive, and the viability of a successful skating career is brief, but Hamill, despite a lot of serious odds, remains on the ice and personally triumphant, and good for her.

A native of Connecticut, Hamill was ferried across the country by self-sacrificing parents. The lives of her two siblings were upset by the amount of time their parents were forced to spend away from them, and the financial problems that arose because skating is a costly pursuit. Both of Hamill’s parents suffered from untreated depression, and it was alcohol that evened the ragged edges for them. Despite all that, the Hamill kids done good. Dorothy’s brother is a doctor, and her sister Marcia is a microbiologist.

Hamill, in this determinedly frank account, captures the poignancy of the emotional deprivation she endured as a result of her mother’s inability to seek the kind of closeness most mothers and daughters enjoy. She was divorced twice, and made bankrupt by her second husband. His only gift to her was her daughter, Alex, with whom she enjoys the kind of relationship she missed with her own mother. Hamill suffers from a seasonal depression disorder and osteoarthritis. She still struggles today with emotional problems, but unlike her family, she has sought and received effective treatment.

The book is pleasantly written, but the redundance of Hamill’s disputes with her parents over money is distressing, and one wonders how her 80 year-old mother is taking it all.

A Christmas Beginning by Anne Perry, Ballantine Books, fiction, 190 p., $17.95

Superintendent Runcorn of the London police, unmarried and lonely, has chosen to spend the Christmas holidays on an island off the coast of Wales. The winds are brutally biting, and snow covers the rugged landscape. During one of his solitary walks, Runcorn discovers the slain body of Olivia Costain, sister of the local vicar, a single woman whose presence in the vicar’s household is causing a financial strain. The beautiful Olivia, even in such a desolate place, did not lack for competing suitors. The question is who would slaughter her like an animal and leave her lifeless body in a graveyard.

Olivia’s closest confidant was Melisande Ewart, a woman Runcorn met in London while working a case whose memory Runcorn has never let go. It is the lovely Melisande who pleads with Runcorn to find Olivia’s murderer. Runcorn would love to oblige except for the presence of the pompopus Inspector Faraday, once one of Olivia’s suitors, who is presently engaged to marry Melisande. Runcorn is out of his social element, but he is infinitely more qualified than anyone present to solve a vicious and vexing crime.

Like all of Perry’s novels, A Christmas Beginning glows with period detail and a depth of understanding of human emotions.

Anne Perry is the undisputed queen of the Victorian mystery. Long live the queen.

One-Way Ticket by William G. Tapply, St. Martin’s Minotaur, mystery, 292 pp., $23.95

Boston lawyer Brady Coyne gets an alarming call from an old law school chum, Dalton Lancaster, who is being treated for injuries sustained in a brutal beating. Dalt has had his problems with gambling, and Brady doesn’t buy Dalt’s story that he’s given up the vice for good and that the beating has to be unrelated, especially since the creeps who beat him told him to pay his debt in a week. Brady traces the root of the problem to local mobster Paulie Russo, and as it happens, Dalt was telling the truth. It is Dalt’s son Robert who owes Russo a lot of money, but then Robert disappears without a trace. There is a ransom demand, however, and Robert’s grandmother, a judge, is willing to bet the farm to get her grandson back. Brady will have to be the go-between.

Brady, meanwhile, has his own problems as his love Evie Banyon departs for the west coast to care for her dying father, and she bought only a one-way ticket. She’s asked Brady not to contact her, and Brady’s only chance at sanity is finding Robert and bringing him home.

Tapply tells a good story with style, hair- raising action, and wit. What more could you ask.

Candy Cane Murder by Joanne Fluke, Laura Levine, and Leslie Meier, Kensington, mysteries, 390 p., $16

Three of my favorite cozy writers have teamed up to create a Christmas novella that’s full of charm and humor. Hannah Swensen finds Santa dead in a snow bank; Jaine Austen needs to know who killed the nasty neighbor on Hysteria Lane; and Lucy Stone goes back in time to when she and Bill were a struggling young couple with a baby in tow and one on the way in Tinker’s Cove, Maine. These writers never disappoint. Get out the tea and settle in for some fun. As always, recipes are included.

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