Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy by John Bowe, Random House, non-fiction, 304 pp., $25.95

This is a book about cheap goods and greed, enslavement and misery, and most importantly it is about the bleak future of workers everywhere. It is about the rich getting richer at any cost and the inevitable decline of the lifestyle Americans have become used to and taken for granted, particularly in the workplace. For the U.S. labor force the situation is like the waning hours of a lavish party when the food is no longer replenished and the bar has closed, leaving gluttonous drunks to stumble out the door.

Part-time permanent workers, fewer benefits, the absence of pensions are indicative of what awaits the American worker as more corporations farm out their jobs to foreign markets.

Bowe, an award winning journalist, examines cases of labor abuse in Florida, Oklahoma, and Saipan, a U.S. territory in the Pacific. In Florida, we see migrant workers living in squalid conditions and being confined to what amount to internment camps. The murder of a farm worker goes unsolved, but when three Mexican men escape with the help of local activists and agree to testify about their working conditions, prosecutors actually win a case alleging slavery. In Oklahoma, John Pickle, an industrialist and good ole boy, imports welders from India and confines them while laying off permanently 30 American workers. But it is to Saipan that Bowe gives most of his attention. He lived there for more than three years doing research for this book and Saipan sounds like a slum with palm trees. Although Saipan is a U.S. territory, it was a great place for making name brand garments using cheap labor imported from China and the Philippines because it was exempt from many U.S. controls and taxes. Workers had to pay to get their sweatshop jobs, lived in dirty barracks, and ate contaminated food while we gobbled up the Gap and Target clothing they made. The kicker is, however, that the labels said ‘Made in the U.S.A.’. Saipan was enabled in maintaining its corrupt employment system by our very own uber- lobbyist and now federal prisoner, Jack Abramoff, and his sidekick former congressman Tom De Lay. We learn of taxpayer funded junkets by members of Congress to the island, and Bowe’s descriptions of their activities should result in bipartisan constituent disgust.

According to Bowe, the last time in history that the gap between the poor and the wealthy was as wide as it is now was in the 1920’s. The Great Depression was begun with the stock market crash of 1929 when some of the despairing wealthy leapt to their deaths from office windows, and the poor wore signs around their necks that said, ‘will work for food’.

And then there is Wal-Mart, the cannibal of the free enterprise system, a behemoth that has put American companies in bankruptcy in the name of ‘always low prices’. The price has yet to be paid.

Bowe’s even handling of his subject matter is exceeded by his passion, foresight, and frustration. He is an able writer whose warning shouts can be heard and whose fear and compassion are contagious. The book’s introduction alone is worth the cover price. There is enough there to provoke deep concern about the future of ordinary people everywhere as globalization, the buzz word for greater corporate profits and reduced costs, makes its way to American unemployment lines.

Beyond the Body Farm: A Legendary Bone Detective Explores Murders, Mysteries, and the Revolution in Forensic Science by Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson, Wm. Morrow, non-fiction, 304 pp., $25.95

CSI junkies will love this true account of the anthropological adventures of Dr. Bill Bass, founder of The Body Farm, a facility that tracks rates of decomposition in human corpses. The facility is attached to the University of Tennessee, and it was made a household name by bestselling author Patricia Cornwell whose Dr. Kate Scarpetta series’ protagonist is a coroner.

Bass has had an illustrious career and it’s not over yet. He is slated to be part of the team that will exhume the body of Harry Houdini and examine his remains.

Beginning with a trip to Iran to identify the ancient remains of warriors, the book proceeds to explain, in accessible language, the science used to identify bodies and sometimes the cause of death. Included among Bass’s memories is the exhumation of the famous fifties deejay, the Big Bopper whose greatest song was Chantilly Lace, and it was so popular that there are probably boomers who still remember all the words. This story is particularly poignant because the Bopper’s son was born two months after his father died in an airplane crash 48 years ago. After the coffin was raised and the lid opened, the son saw his father for the first time, and the Bopper was remarkably well preserved. According to Bass, there is embalming, and then there is competent embalming. The facts are fascinating.

Jon Jefferson is an exceptionally good writer, and together with Bass, he writes the Dr. Bill Brockton series, fiction that deals with forensic science. The first two books are Carved in Bone and Flesh and Bone, and their third, The Devil’s Bones will be out next February. This is a sensational series. Together they have also written Death’s Acre, another Bass memoir.

Jefferson’s handling of scientific procedures is deft and often slyly funny. He introduces us to a world where maggots are always welcome and blood is the beverage of choice.

Midnight Rambler by James Swain, Ballantine Books, fiction, 350 pp., $24.95

Swain, the award winning author of the Tony Valentine series, succeeds mightily in this exceptional stand alone thriller about child abduction.

Jack Carpenter is an ex-cop living on the beach in Florida. He was forced to resign after he brutalized Simon Skell, the Midnight Rambler, who probably killed a lot more young women than the one for which he was convicted, but the evidence just wasn’t there. After resigning from the force, Carpenter’s marriage failed. His wife moved away, taking his beloved daughter with her. Since then, Carpenter makes an inadequate a living as a consultant to various police departments because he has the rep for finding lost kids faster than anyone else. Carpenter is an honorable man who can’t help beating up on the bad guys.

The body of a missing young woman is found in her sister’s backyard holding a gold crucifix. The evidence points to the sister’s boyfriend. The deceased is one of eight young prostitutes whom Carpenter believes was killed by Skell. Skell’s lawyer secures his release from prison as it becomes clear he did not kill the girl in the backyard. Carpenter isn’t convinced. He had befriended the women while they were working the streets, and he helped them in various ways. Their deaths have haunted him for years.

Carpenter teams up with an FBI agent whose own daughter went missing from college five years ago. The agent encourages Carpenter in his attempt to keep Skell behind bars, but Skell seems to have more friends than one might have imagined. Did he work alone in luring young women to their hideous deaths or did he have lots of help.

Another aspect of this book that is grimly fascinating deals with child abduction at Florida’s Disney World. The bad guys have things down to a science, and Carpenter’s ability to find a single child within hours of the abduction will leave you breathless.

Midnight Rambler is an extraordinary thriller. Swain easily puts James Patterson to shame shame shame.

Death and the Devil by Frank Schatzing, Wm. Morrow, fiction, 391 pp., $25.95

If you enjoyed Pillars of the Earth, you will undoubtedly be pleased with Death and the Devil, a medieval mystery that capitalizes on the death of German architect Gerhard Morart who created the magnificent cathedral of Cologne. In Schatzing’s version of events, Morart was pushed from the scaffolding and fell to his death in 1260. There was one witness to his death, a poor common thief, Jacob the Fox, and sadly for him, the killer has seen him, too. With his big mop of red hair, Jacob is easy to spot. The killer is a large man who is so lithesome that Jacob is convinced he is the devil himself. At the very least, the killer has the heart of the devil as he brutally murders everyone who gets in the way of his locating Jacob.

Jacob is a charming fellow, and he stumbles upon the cloth dyer, Richmodis, a kind and intelligent young woman who introduces the Fox to her uncle, an intellectual priest with a great fondness for wine, and her father, a man who in his later years is feeling useless. Together they determine to keep Jacob safe as they unravel the mystery of why Gerhard Morart had to die.

Schatzing has a tremendous ability to recreate the sights and sounds of a medieval city. He gives us the stink, the noise, and the danger, the thunder of church bells, the hopelessness of the poor, and the arrogance of the rich. He introduces us to the politics of Cologne as the church and the city’s patricians engage in a ruthless battle for dominance.

Occasionally there are words that appear at odd angles. This results, no doubt, from the translation. The book was originally published in Germany three years ago. These few bumps will not detract in the least from the excitement of the tale. Schatzing’s characters have depth, and he explores their pasts in relation to their present.

This is a feast of a novel for those who love historical fiction.

Family Acts by Louise Shaffer, Ballantine Books, fiction, 324 pp., $24.95

This is chick lit at its best. You want women with dilemmas? You want happy endings? Who doesn’t. Louise Shaffer, a former actress on the soap opera Ryan’s Hope delivers every time with delightful, charming stories set in the South and guaranteed to keep you turning the pages. Her previous books are The Three Miss Margarets and The Ladies of Garrison Gardens. A graduate of the Yale Drama School, Shaffer writes with intelligence.

Two young women, one from New York, the other from Los Angeles, are summoned to the small town of Massonville, Georgia to claim a mysterious inheritance from relatives they didn’t know they had. The dynamic personal manager to the stars, Randa, arrives with her 11 year-old daughter Susie, and Katie Harder, a writer for the soap her mother starred in, arrives alone, which pretty much describes the tenor of her life. Randa and Katie discover they are both named for Shakespearean characters, and that their inheritance is a big, rundown opera house. Somehow they’re tied to it, but they’d rather sell it and return to their lives, unfulfilling as they might be. They are assisted by a local lawyer with deep roots in the town, and they plan to sell the opera house to an attractive but ruthless developer. Things begin to turn, however, when Susie unearths the history of the old place and learns what a tangled web was woven by a series of owners, all members of the Venable family, who forfeited anything that didn’t contribute to keeping their theatre alive for each succeeding generation.

Schaffer’s novels are delicious girly treats, and I love them.

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