#FridayReads, July 12–Bad Luck and Trouble is a deceptively simple thriller that I found compelling throughout. Only the second Jack Reacher novel I’ve read, I’m finding these books are real easy to get hooked on. Reacher is a very interesting character, a drifter and loner, he’s an unconventional investigator–actually more of a crusader for justice and decency than a typical problem solver, a real knight errant, as many of the best protagonists are in suspense fiction.

Just picking up a galley of a fall title, Theodore Roosevelt and the Assassin: Madness, Vengeance, and the Campaign of 1912, that was sent to me by my friend, and long time Carroll & Graf colleague, Keith Wallman, who is now Senior Editor at Lyons Press. He’s been signing up great narrative nonfiction there, and this book on the failed attempt on Teddy Roosevelt’s life, in the midst of a presidential campaign, is a too-little known historical drama. Author Helferich is himself a former publishing executive who worked at Doubleday, S&S, and Wiley before becoming an author. I’m just getting started on this one, but I already like how it begins–with a map showing the separate but intertwining travels of candidate Roosevelt and his maniacal pursuer, a Manhattan saloonkeeper named John Flammang Schrank, over the summer of 1912, when Schrank stalked the man he crazily believed was going to leave the USA open to foreign invaders.

Theodore Roosevelt this week 1912 survived attempted assassin's bullet that pierced this speech manuscript: #Harvard pic.twitter.com/yJFfukAMdj

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) October 11, 2014