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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 8309853" data-attributes="member: 508">So I don't usually do this (I normally prefer to read one book at a time and finish it before starting another), but while I'm still reading The Big Book of the Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett, it's an oversized book (and a borrowed one at that) so I didn't feel like subjecting it to being read in airports and on planes - I've been on a business trip since Sunday.  So while I brought it with me and read it in the hotel room (and as of this morning before leaving my hotel I've finished all the short stories and only have the two novels left to go), I picked up two other books to read, one on the trip there on Sunday and one on the trip home today (and during the breaks at the week-long meeting I was attending).The first of these was Jeffery Deaver's The Goodbye Man, the second novel in the "Colter Shaw" series about a guy who makes his living earning rewards for finding missing people and the like.  This one dealt with a cult (which he infiltrated), but also answered some questions about his father's death that the first novel had hinted at.  It was good, with the typically excellent Deaver plot-twist swerves.The second book was one I picked up at a library book sale because the title literally jumped out at me and demanded my attention.  It's written by M. E. Harrigan and the title is "9800 Savage Road" - the address for the National Security Agency, where I worked for three years while I was still in the active duty Air Force.  It's a novelization of the intelligence-gathering efforts leading up to 9-11, authored by a woman who worked at the NSA for 37 years.  I'm just over halfway done with it and while I can't comment on the intelligence-gathering aspects of it - I wasn't involved in that part of NSA - the description of the NSA buildings, culture, and surrounding areas are spot on.  And the fictional Director of the NSA in the novel is quite obviously patterned after General Michael Hayden, a real-life DIRNSA (and before that he was the Commander of the US Strategic Command).  It's been an interesting read so far and has definitely been holding my interest.But now I guess I need to finish 9800 Savage Road before going back to and starting the two "Continental Ops" novels, because by my own logic those are two novels I haven't started yet, even though they're in a collection with a bunch of short stories/novellas I have read.Johnathan</blockquote>

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