Exploring the World Through Moving Pictures (Subtitled: My Great Foreign Film Adventure)

Seven Samurai movie poster

My Own Private International Film Festival

Last week, I went to a local movie theater and saw a highly enjoyable, newly released film. An intelligent, humorous and poignant political & media satire, it is called Peepli Live. If it doesn't sound familiar, that's probably because it's a Hindi film made in India, one that shows not all Bollywood movies need be 3+ hours long nor have people in overly colorful costumes singing and dancing, although I enjoy some of those too. (Peepli Live is currently at BIG Cinemas in Niles, IL and elsewhere.)

Through Netflix, I recently watched--one streaming, one on DVD--two quite compelling, beautiful and unique "war movies" that gave interesting insights on the life of a soldier. One was a Japanese film from 1956 called The Burmese Harp, directed by Kon Ichikawa; the other was Ballad of a Soldier, made in the Soviet Union in 1959 by Grigori Chukhrai.

And yesterday I viewed a powerful crime/gangster/prison drama called A Prophet, a French film that was among this year's nominees for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Though I think the trailer that referenced accolades calling it "as epic as the Godfather" was a bit extreme, it was a very good piece of moviemaking by director Jacques Audiard.

All told, in the month of August, I watched 24 movies. Of these, 19 were films in a language other than English. I'm pretty certain this exceeds the total number of foreign language films I had seen in my lifetime prior to 2009. Since last December I've explored 78 foreign films from 25 different countries in 17 primary languages (none of which I speak or understand). So in addition to plenty of watching, I've also done quite a good bit of on-screen reading.

Although I've never been acutely adverse to watching films with subtitles, and had seen & loved high-profile foreign-language films like City of God, Cinema Paradiso and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it wasn't until late last year that I really began to actively seek out movies from different countries (other than "foreign films" from England, Ireland and Australia).

A Slow-Boat Voyage Into World Cinema

While there are a number of definable reasons for this newfound transition to a much more multi-cultural cinematic existence, which I'll explain shortly, I don't beat myself up too much for my previous myopia.

Developing, and then broadening, one's interests and passions is an evolutionary process and not everyone can, or even should, instantly love everything. As much as I think cultural literacy, and a requisite curiosity, is vital on a variety of levels for people of almost all ages, the truth is that at age 21--half my life ago--my musical tastes were pretty strictly limited to mainstream rock, my appreciation for art extended only to impressionism, reading rarely extended beyond what was on the syllabus and I knew next to nothing about theater, jazz, blues, opera, classical music, architecture or anything else except for the traditional American spectator sports. My horizons weren't all that greatly expanded by age 30 and some of aforementioned art forms I still don't know or love as much as others--and likely never will. And to be honest, given the deliberate pacing of many foreign films and even older & better Hollywood ones, "world cinema" is still to a large degree a taste in the acquiring process.

Now, like almost everyone, I have loved movies--in a general sense--for as long as I can remember. Except for television and perhaps music across all its various forms, I think film is our most unifying medium; I don't know, or even know of, anyone over the age of five who doesn't have some affinity for movies. Sure there are some people who don't like actually going to movie theaters and there are others who don't care much for modern movies and there are many who only like movies of certain genres, but everyone or so it seems likes movies and smiles at the recollection of certain favorites.

Undeniably, at any point in time, there are new movies of vastly differing quality. But I feel fortunate that many of the highly popular movies of my adolescence were actually pretty good films;  Rocky (even II & III), the Star Wars trilogy, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. and even sophomoric humor movies such as Animal House, Stripes, the Blues Brothers, Airplane and Fast Times at Ridgemont High seem to hold up pretty well all these years later.

But beyond the movies that all my friends saw, at a relatively young age I was turned on--primarily by my father--to more classic fare such as Bridge Over the River Kwai, Marty, Casablanca, On the Waterfront, The Hustler, Singin' in the Rain and even substantive then-current/recent films like Network, Annie Hall, Breaking Away, The Marathon Man, The Sting and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. At a young age, I also fell in love with the Kinks' Celluloid Heroes and wanted to know everyone Ray Davies was singing about.

I had a cinema class in high school and Film Studies were part of my college major--I still remember acing a term-paper on the auteur theory as it pertained to Sidney Lumet--and thus was also indoctrinated to movies like A Face in the Crowd, Cool Hand Luke, Citizen Kane (about which and Casablanca I wrote this lengthy post in April) and foreign masterpieces such as Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (which I revisited this month) and Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game.

Although my screenwriting and movie directing ambitions--which prompted a move to Los Angeles after college--pretty much died on the vine, I have always considered myself a low-grade film aficionado.

Initially on VHS and then DVD, I have amassed a pretty large and wide-ranging film collection and have always seen what seemed like a solid array of new & old, popular & acclaimed movies in theaters and at home. While these included selected foreign works like Cinema Paradiso, Il Postino, Hero, Wings of Desire, Talk to Her, Saraband, Tsotsi and many favorites coming out of Britain & Ireland--among them In the Name of the Father, The Boxer, Brassed Off, The Full Monty, Bend It Like Beckham, Billy Elliot and The Last King of Scotland--until late last year, my cinematic worldview was largely limited to what Hollywood chose to distribute and promote. Although they've existed for years, I was rarely inclined to venture to the Music Box Theatre, Facets Multimedia, Siskel Film Center (all in Chicago), the Chicago International Film Festival (held in October) or even the World Cinema shelves of my local library.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Foreign Films

Aishwarya Rai

Again, I've never had an active disdain for non-English films, having loved City of God when I saw it back in  2003 (and naming it My Favorite Movie of the '00s last December), seeing La Vie En Rose soon after Marion Cotillard won the Best Actress Oscar in 2008, enjoying the French take on one of my favorite American mystery novels, Tell No One, and going to Facets to see a fine Israeli film called The Secrets prior to a trip to Israel in March 2009. After taking note when Roger Ebert called Indian actress Aishwarya Rai "the world's most beautiful woman" back in 2004, I made a point of seeing some of her films, and some time in the last couple years, I finally got around to watching and enjoying Life Is Beautiful.

But it wasn't until mid-December 2009, and much more avidly in 2010, that I began to truly delve into the foreign film canon. The reasons are split between the motivational and the logistical, but include:

- Time to explore (at least in a reel sense). Due to a lack of full-time employment, which unfortunately (at least financially) remains my situation today, I have had more time to watch movies and pursue new interests. But consequently, I have not had the means to travel abroad, which led me to seek...

- An alternate way of exploring global culture. I was fortunate to travel beyond U.S. borders in 8 of the past 10 years, to places as disparate as Italy, Australia, Spain, Paris, London, Prague, Amsterdam, Cairo and Israel. This has given me an appreciation for how "other people" live, about which films from various locales further my familiarity and, at present, serve as an important and enlightening substitute for real adventures.

- The Chicago Film Discussion Meetup Group - I have been a fan of Meetup.com and participant in several Meetup groups (including a BritPop group I used to host) for several years. At the suggestion of my friend Dave, I started going to the Film Discussion Brunch in December, quickly realized how relatively constrained my film focus had been and within a week watched the Italian classic The Bicycle Thief, the German escapist flick Run Lola Run and, at the Music Box, a Romanian film called Police, Adjective. Although I rarely make it to movie screenings at which Meetups are also organized, I love the monthly (sometimes twice-monthly) discussions over brunch at the Holiday Club, at which we have focused on topics like films of Tarantino, Kubrick and Altman, as well as Italian and Japanese cinema.

- Friends With Broader Film Tastes - In addition to benefiting from and contributing to the film meetups, my interest in world cinema has given me more to discuss with friends who were already well-acclimated. From people like Dave, Paolo, Bob and Jordan, I have been pointed to many rewarding films, including Rififi, Rashomon, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Touchez Pas au Grisbi, Munyurangabo, The Wind That Shakes The Barley and several I have yet to see.

- Skokie Public Library - Although when I lived in Glen Ellyn (which itself has a fine library) I was chagrined that SPL policy excludes lending materials to anyone without a card from within the North Suburban Library, once again being a resident of my hometown has reminded me what a great resource I have available. In addition to a vast collection of World Cinema films--befitting a highly diverse community--the library screens a foreign-language film on the first Monday of each month (open to everyone). This month, a week delayed because of Labor Day, the SPL is showing Coco Before Chanel (starring Amelie's Audrey Tautou and on Roger Ebert's list of Best Foreign Films of 2009) at 7pm on September 13. Although my borrowing of foreign films (which I can have put on the Bookmobile to pick up a block from my home) has slowed inversely to my use of Netflix, just today, I took out Pan's Labyrinth, Central Station, Two Women and Lagaan (along with A Fistful of Dollars and The Fountain; the next Film Discussion will focus on the latter's director Darren Aronofsky along with David Fincher, two of my favorite American filmmakers). While not all libraries may not have a foreign film section as vast as Skokie's, probably every library has more than enough good ones to choose from, often for free.

- Netflix - Although Netflix has long been championed by several friends, I resisted becoming a member until this past January. My reasoning was that between the movies I already owned, the library, HBO & other cable movie channels with plenty of On-Demand selections and Redbox, which charges only $1.00 for nightly rentals (no wonder Blockbuster is going bankrupt), plus seeing a fair number of films in theaters, I couldn't really justify spending $8.99 per month to get one movie at a time by mail. And as I don't enjoy watching movies or TV shows on my computer, instant streaming  capabilities (i.e. movies that run online) were no lure. But in January, I got a Blu-Ray player (this one from Sony, which I recommend once the price comes back down to $138 on Amazon after they get more in stock) that enables me to stream Netflix' selection of instantly streaming movies--more vast than I imagined and ever growing--I decided to get my feet wet with a 2-week Netflix trial. Soon I took the plunge, but in paying $10.99/mo. (including a $2 surcharge to receive Blu Ray discs), I've canceled all my movie channels, stopped renting from Redbox, haven't bought more than two movies all year and can watch films at home not all that long after they play cinemas. In 8-1/2 months, I've watched 28 streaming movies and 27 discs that have arrived in my mailbox about a day after shipping--including 21 foreign films that HBO, et al, don't provide. In turn, Netflix' complex algorithms (which an acquaintance named Meta Brown explains in this insightful video) are constantly recommending more global choices that it thinks I should like.

- Roger Ebert - Long my favorite film critic, even when Gene Siskel was alive and battling him At The Movies and writing for the Chicago Tribune, Roger has always championed great films from all ends of the earth. You can access all his reviews and many other writings through the excellent RogerEbert.com and his Great Movies book series--III was just released--would make a wonderful holiday gift for any film buff. In April, Dave and I went to Champaign, IL, for the Roger Ebert (nee Overlooked) Film Festival. One of the two movies we saw was from England called I Capture the Castle. I've also seen 6 of 15 films on Ebert's Best Foreign Films of 2009 list and intend to see several more.

- IMDB, AllMovie.com, Wikipedia, Yahoo Movies and Fandango - From filmographies of most worldwide directors to plot summaries of a gazillion movies to composite user ratings to local showtimes, a ton of information to help you better discover, learn more about and appreciate foreign films is at your fingertips. There also myriad other great online and published resources, some more explicitly focusing on world cinema, but these should provide a great starting point. Those interested can see all of my IMDB ratings here, as although I rate all movies seen through Netflix on their site and have them fed to my Facebook page, you need to be a member of those websites to see them.

Where to Possibly Begin (or How To Continue)
Your Exploration of World Cinema

As should be fairly apparent, I am by no means an expert on movies in general and foreign ones in particular. Although I have watched a good assortment over the past 9 months, the important films I don't know vastly outnumber the ones I have (and who's to say what's "important" anyway?).

In no particular order, I will provide a list of foreign films that I have found to be excellent, but please don't mistake this for a comprehensive list of the best films of world cinema. For more in-depth guidance, refer to Ebert, IMDB, AllMovie.com, Empire magazine's recent 100 Best Films of World Cinema list (easier to see in full here), Academy Award winners and nominees for Best Foreign Language Film, Paste Magazine's opinion on the Most Essential Foreign Films of the '00s and a ranking of the decade's top grossing foreign language films.

Hopefully, some of my movie buff friends and readers will add some more great choices in the Comments and you likely have friends and relatives happy to share opinions of their own. These are just a smattering (not all) of the globally-produced movies that I have seen since December 2009 that I would give at least @@@@ (and many a full @@@@@), broken down by country of origin. I won't list the languages but all are available on DVD or through Netflix instant streaming with English subtitles. (I also cited some famed directors from the various regions; not all are represented in the lists that follow, nor should inclusions be viewed as comprehensive.)

France - The big directors are Truffaut, Godard and Rohmer
Breathless
The 400 Blows
Rififi
Shoot the Piano Player
Amelie
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
A Prophet
The Concert - This one should still be in selected U.S. theaters. Not perfect, but quite worthwhile.

Italy - Fellini, De Sica, Antonioni, Leone
La Dolce Vita - My favorite Fellini movie of the four so far seen, but La Strada, Nights of Cabiria and 8-1/2 also belong here.
The Bicycle Thief (aka Bicycle Thieves)
Cinema Paradiso
Il Postino

Japan - Kurosawa, Ozu, Ichikawa, Kobayashi
The Seven Samurai
Yojimbo
Rashomon
The Burmese Harp

China/Taiwan - Yimou Zhang, Ang Lee
Raise the Red Lantern
To Live

Germany - Herzog, Fassbinder, Wenders
The Counterfeiters
Run Lola Run
(The White Ribbon) - I didn't love it, but many did and I should watch it again

Belgium - The Dardenne brothers
The Son
Lorna's Silence

Sweden - Bergman
The Seventh Seal
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - I thought these were very good interpretations of the books
The Girl Who Played With Fire

Mexico
Y Tu Mama Tambien
Sin Nombre

Other
Ballad of a Soldier - Russia
The Chaser - Korea
Munyurangabo - Rwanda
Broken Embraces - Spain (Director: Almodovar)
Peepli Live - India
Maria Full of Grace - Columbia
The Barbarian Invasions - Canada (French)
Song for Sparrows - Iran
The Damned United - England
The Wind That Shakes The Barley - England/Ireland
The Secret in Their Eyes - Argentina - The best new movie from anywhere I've seen in 2010

Historical Lessons in Pride & Passion from Mr. Cub

A Conversation with Ernie Banks
Moderated by Phil Rogers, Chicago Tribune
Highland Park Public Library
Monday, August 30, 2010
(Part of the exhibition, Pride & Passion: the African-American Baseball Experience, thru October 1)

San Francisco (by way of New York) has Willie Mays. Atlanta (by way of Milwaukee) has Hank Aaron. And Chicago, with due deference to South Side loyalists (and Minnie Minoso), has Ernie Banks.

Not only three of the greatest living legends to ever play major league baseball, but also the first African-American ballplayers for their respective teams (as Minoso was for the White Sox) after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

So although Banks has been the Cubs icon for as long as I can remember, it's sometimes easy to forget that along with being one of the greatest players of his or any era--though stellar for almost his entire 19-year career, during an astonishing run from 1955 to 1960, Ernie hit more home runs than anyone in baseball (averaging 2-7 more per year than Mays, Aaron & Mantle) as a shortstop despite playing on teams that never won more than 74 games--he was also a pioneer.

As he relayed during a compelling conversation with the Chicago Tribune's Phil Rogers Monday night, as one of several special programs the Highland Park Library is holding in conjunction with its Pride & Passion: the African-American Baseball Experience exhibition, despite showing prodigious talent during a stint with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro League, joining the Cubs was not an easy decision.

According to Banks, even after integration began in major league baseball, he and other Negro League players were quite happy playing in the segregated environment, where great friendships were developed amongst one another (one of Ernie's Negro League contemporaries was Charley Pride, who went on to become a legendary country music singer and is now a part owner of the Texas Rangers). And although he soon came to love the Cubs and Chicago, Ernie relayed that in the early days, crowds of 2,500-5,000 were normal at Wrigley Field, allowing him to personally get to know a good number of fans. The always classy and chipper Banks focused on the camaraderie, even with those in the stands, but I'd have to assume he also faced a significant amount of bigotry.

A couple sweet moments at the event came when Banks introduced another former Negro League player in attendance, Ray Knox (pictured with Ernie at left), and also when he reminisced with a former WGN producer (I didn't catch his exact name) who had worked with him on a radio show way back when.

I thought it was cool that there were so many young kids in attendance (considering that even I am too young to ever have seen Ernie play in person) and most sat down front, allowing for several fun interactions with the still young-at-heart 79-year-old Mr. Cub. Such as when Banks revealed that prior to his legendary baseball career his ambition was to be an international lawyer, and then in response to asking if there were any lawyers in the audience, a kid stated that "being a lawyer is stressful."

Hopefully nobody's parents got too uptight when Banks humorously recalled Satchel Paige asking him if he could hit a "titty high fastball," especially as far more exuberantly than when discussing his diamond exploits, Ernie urged the youngsters to "learn something new every day" (as I captured in this video):



Other things I learned were that Ernie Banks played a game with basketball's Harlem Globetrotters alongside another future baseball legend, Bob Gibson (as well as famed hoopsters Goose Tatum and Marques Haynes); that one of his favorite mentors in the Negro Leagues was Cool Papa Bell, whom Paige liked to say was "so fast he can turn off the light and be in bed before the room gets dark!" (Ernie said it wasn't true but should be believed nonetheless); and that Banks would vote for Sammy Sosa and Pete Rose to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Asked "What happened in 1969?" Banks deferred to Rogers and audience members for an explanation (which included a black cat and a Willie Stargell home run), facetiously--I think--blamed the Cubs' endless futility on the legion of diehard fans who come out to support the team no matter the results and said that "patience" is the most important ingredient for a Cubs fan, along with loyalty. He also revealed--as shown in the clip below, along with a snippet of his duet with a young fan--the common reaction of opponents like Stargell and Aaron when Banks asked if they thought his team would win the pennant, even as the Cubs held onto first place for much of the '69 season.



All in all, it was quite a fun and informative presentation, and I couldn't help but think that Banks--who I remember meeting once in the late '70s--wasn't just a legendary baseball player, or even a local star who always embodied exuberance (as exemplified by his famous "let's play two" quip), but someone who has truly led a remarkable life.

In closing, Banks recalled his friendships with Aaron and Mays and in a veiled reference to modern-day athletes who get caught up in celebrity, contract negotiations and various misdeeds, remarked that all Hank, Willie and he ever cared about was "playing baseball, going home to their families and coming back the next day."

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While the Banks appearance was wonderful and the Pride & Passion exhibition provides solid (though largely basic) information about the Negro Leagues, Jackie Robinson and subsequent black stars, 30 panels of text & photos plus a few pieces of memorabilia--most interestingly, old postcards of Negro League rosters--probably best merit a trip to Highland Park in conjunction with another special program. The film, The Jackie Robinson Story, will be shown at the library on Sunday, September 19 at 2pm, while on Wednesday, September 22 at 7pm, author Jonathan Eig will be on hand to discuss and sign his best-selling book, "Opening Day:  The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season."

Newest Reacher Novel an Empty Thrill Ride; Lisa Gardner Cop Combo Satisfies

Book Review (other books reviewed below in same post)

61 Hours: A Reacher Novel
by Lee Child
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Lee Child is my second favorite author of what I'll call "fast fiction," meaning mysteries, suspense novels and other books that are enjoyable page turners rather than great literature. But fast fiction is my favorite type of reading and behind only Harlan Coben, I'll put Lee Child's output--all featuring the main character of Jack Reacher--above John Grisham, Dan Brown, Carl Hiaassen as my silver medalist in this category.

Having read all 14 of Child's Reacher stories, I know that I liked some better than others, but can't recall specifics that readily distinguish one from another. None took more than a few days to read, so I would heartily recommend any of them if you need a great quick read on an airplane, beach, etc.

Given that the latest, 61 Hours is still in hardcover, is far from the best book of the Reacher series and ends in a cliffhanger to be continued in Worth Dying For (due out in October), I would not recommend that this is the one you start with, especially if you can't get it from your local library just yet (I waited about 3 months on the Reserve List at the Skokie Public Library).

Still, as Jack Reacher is a good bit like another mortal superhero named Jack, that being Mr. Bauer of TV's '24,'--about which I said that even at its worst it never made me not want to watch--I would say that if you have read and liked other Lee Child's books, there is no need to pointedly avoid 61 Hours. The action moves fast and you find yourself wanting to see what happens next. It definitely counts as a decent thriller.

But even in comparison with other Reacher novels, or even fast fiction in general, the plot line,  characterizations and twists in this one seem particularly slight and subpar, as the nomadic Reacher happens to land in a small South Dakota town that has a secret meth lab run by a Mexican drug lord. As far-fetched as this setup might sound, it's not the problem so much as the fact that I had one of the main wrongdoers pegged about 200 pages before the supposedly super-keen Reacher and kept waiting for the obvious to reveal itself. And while Reacher's typical need to fall in bed with an attractive woman in each book a la James Bond is somewhat frivolous, 61 Hours suffers from the lack of a counterpart for Reacher, except for a long-distance interaction that may develop in the sequel.

So go ahead and read 61 Hours if you already like Child/Reacher, but don't expect it to be awesome, and probably skip it in favor of any of the first 10 works in the series if you don't yet know Jack.

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Book Reviews

Alone
by Lisa Gardner
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Hide
by Lisa Gardner
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I'd never read anything by Lisa Gardner, who seemingly started as a romance writer but subsequently moved into the thriller space, until I picked up paperback versions of Alone and Hide at the recent Little City Used Book Sale. Originally published in 2005 and 2007, respectively, the two books both feature the same two main crime-fighting characters, though Hide works as a sequel to Alone more so due to the crimes depicted and similarities of the victims involved.

Both books worked well as satisfying suspense thrillers, with Alone being a bit more engaging throughout--as state trooper Bobby Dodge struggles to prove, not in the least to himself, that he was justified in killing the supposedly abusive husband of a beautiful woman with a tortured past. But though Hide was slower to get rolling, its twists in the end made it just as good if not better, as Dodge and detective D.D. Warren are on the trail of a serial killer who may or may not be connected to events that surfaced in Alone.

A bit strangely, while I felt that the two Gardner books were of higher quality than the latest by Child, I still look forward to reading the next Reacher installment much more so than another book by Gardner. But if you're looking for something to pass the time, you won't go wrong with Alone and Hide.

You Can't Judge A Book By Its Lover

Book Reviews

The Man From Beijing
by Henning Mankell
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Although Henning Mankell has been writing best-selling crime novels for nearly 15 years, I hadn't heard of him until this past February, when Entertainment Weekly gave his new book--The Man From Beijing--a short but glowing review, in which the reviewer states, "This is hands down the best thriller I've read in five years."

So I put it on reserve with the Skokie Public Library, and when my turn came, I was very excited to read it.

But as it turns out, it wasn't even the best thriller I've read this month.

Despite the title, the book mostly takes place in Mankell's native Sweden, where a brutal massacre has wiped out a small village.

Over the past year, I've read and enjoyed all three books in the Millennium series (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, etc.), by the late Stieg Larsson, another Swedish crime fiction writer whose works weave throughout his homeland. This was another reason I was optimistic about the new book by Mankell, who in the past has centered his novel around an inspector named Kurt Wallander, but wrote The Man From Beijing as a stand-alone novel.

But whereas Larsson's books constantly made me want to read the next page, discover the conclusion and tackle another of his thrillers, 50 pages into The Man From Beijing, I realized I was reading only to reach the end, not because I was anxious to learn what would happen next. The small-village massacre becomes linked to happenings in the American West from over 130 years prior, leads to dozens of non-thrilling pages about modern China and is ultimately relegated to the background of a story that meanders a whole lot.

And while it seems that Mankell was aiming for a book with considerably more consequence than your average page-turner, it didn't ever approach great literature or enlighten like a non-fiction take on some of the same matters might have. So basically I was left with a thriller that didn't thrill.

Though Mankell appears to be a well-regarded author, the Amazon reader reviews more closely approximate my take on The Man From Beijing than Entertainment Weekly's. Almost a third of the Amazon reviews give it 1 or 2 stars out of 5, so perhaps my @@1/2 is a bit generous if anything.

I'm sorry I wasted a full two weeks getting through it, especially because a few days in, the Skokie Public Library let me know that another thriller I had on reserve was ready for me. Fortunately, after finishing The Man From Beijing, I was able to read the book below in just 4 days, and liked it much better.

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Caught
by Harlan Coben
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I have now read all 17 of Coben's books currently in print (his first two novels no longer are) and each has taken me about a week or less to finish.

While his books--split between his Myron Bolitar mysteries and stand-alone thrillers--are not works of high art, they are stay-up-all-night page turners, filled with more than a bit of humor and shrewd societal insight.

His latest hardcover, Caught, is no exception. While probably not his best book, not quite meriting the 5 stars that 96 of 151 reviewers on Amazon have bestowed and without nearly the complexity of The Man From Beijing, it is a whiz-bang thriller that is extremely enjoyable to read.

Far more so than the Mankell book.

Although I had pegged some of the surprises in Caught before I got to them, I won't reveal much here. But it starts with a man getting caught, as part of a TV show sting, in the home of a teenage girl he had contacted over the internet. Not all is as it seems and the newswoman from the show becomes the central character in a proverbial roller coaster ride across all 388 fast-moving pages.

Although Caught is a stand-alone novel, not a caper involving the Myron Bolitar character, Coben does utilize characters from past books, which adds to the fun for those of us who know his North Jersey oeuvre.

But even as your first foray into Coben, you should find Caught quite satisfying, although you also wouldn't go wrong starting with his earlier stand-alones like Tell No One and Gone For Good.

Along with Lee Child, whose works all revolve around a character named Jack Reacher, Coben is my favorite thriller writer, and I've yet to be disappointed.

If you likewise love a good page-turner, perhaps it's about time you 'Caught' on.