There is Nothing Like a Cold (one cent)

Nothing in this world.

There is nothing like a cold, to give you time to read.

So, having awakened with a sore throat on Sunday, which continued for 48 hours, I got to read two books.

The first was a fascinating book, "Shadow Warrior" by Felix Rodriguez, a Cuban native and Castro foe, who was involved in the Bay of Pigs and other contemporaneous anti-Castro measures (and there were surprisingly many of them), chasing Che Guevara in the jungles of Bolivia (while an employee of the CIA) and being the last person to speak with Che before he was murdered by the Bolivian military, as well as accompanying Che's body back from the jungle restreat where he was captured and killed, counter intelligence in Viet Nam, assisting an Argentine reform government, and being involved with the Contras in Central America (before becoming thoroughly disillusioned with Oliver North). Rodriquez, who is just a year older than me, and who now lives (apparently quietly) in Florida, certainly passed his time differently from the way I have. This is a book to read (co-written by a John Weissman).

The second, because a cold calls for light reading, was a thriller by T. Jefferson Parker, whose work I had not read before. "Red Light" is quick reading (another requisite for a cold), filled with somewhat snappy dialogue, but burdened by a predictable, yet unlikely plot that makes the entire book fairly worthless. I won't give it away, but it involes police officers (current and retired), prostitutes (alive and dead), mobsters, politicians, and newspapermen. The customer reviews on Amazon.com are pretty good, but I am not sure why.