The Evil Hours -- by David J. Morris

 

Some books make you think, and think, and think, and then some more. David Morris's Evil Hours does that very nicely, enough to rudely interrupt clear thoughts of anything else.

The psychological tentacles of largely war-born PTSD touch many people. Not only combat veterans, but rape victims, fatal accident survivors, and so many others who carry stressful, dramatic, and unshakable instances and images. Many never completely escape their bouts with profound trauma. Some get help, and, unfortunately, too many do not.

Morris addresses as much of this affliction as possible, called by many names until researchers arrived at PTSD in 1980. This book has something for almost everyone because there are numerous PTSD victims, and many know someone who did, or does, have it to some extent. Big city police, emergency room medical staffs, and many others face and deal with their own harmful stress. Research and treatment have grown in recent years, potentially handing Morriss the material to outdo this terrific read with something even stronger.

Parts of Evil Hours read like a NYT bestseller, while a few others lacked the same energy. There's a chance he could be too deep into his topic for any return soon. He experienced his own PTSD when a military vehicle he was riding in was blown up with an IED. As a Marine lieutenant, he also survived additional combat. It is not likely he would be emotionally ready to chance any more PTSD soon.

His research into treatments for the problem was often first-hand, but new paths through PTSD are being found frequently. More information there could be forthcoming somewhere.

My first step-father had serious PTSD from his combat medic days in WWII. I have seen the damage it leaves people with. Some people survive wars, but not the post-war years. The human mind is trained to remember, and that's not always good.

I could recommend Evil Hours for anyone touched directly, or indirectly, by PTSD, but not everyone needs to read it all. Some of the early pages suffer a bit from long chapters, but the continuity will carry the truly interested reader. The final summary chapters are worth the reader's effort.

Morris was seriously unsure of himself, and remained that way. "Was I mad or wise," he wrote in introspect. "Was this loss or insight? Stress or growth? In 2004, these were difficult questions to answer. Ten years later I still don't have the answers."

The Half Life of Valery K -- by Natasha Pulley

 

There has to be a sequel in the works. The characters are too well developed to be completely abandoned and left in a new situation in the UK.

The name Half Life also leaves questions in a reader's mind. It just didn't seem like it did end. Or should.

This picked up steam and rolled to an end with Vitaly picking up the former KGB agent Shenkov at a regional airport in northern England where Vitaly Kolkhanov had been hidden in a protective program, and given a new safer job. The relationship between Valery and Shenkov started edgily, but hardship and events at City 40, plus their mutual experience in Lubyanka prison, brought them close together. A little vodka helped, too.

Things weren't safe or healthy when he was sprung from a gulag to work at an atomic-polluted place called City 40 in 1963. A catastrophe happened there in the late 1950s that contaminated most everything in a 60-mile radius.

This is a work of historic fiction, and I had to really knit-pick to find anything that resembled an error. Some of the UK-based phraseology while still in Soviet Russia could've been stronger in clearer global English. If there is such a thing in that widespread language.

I won my review copy through a Goodreads lottery, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I will be looking for that sequel. The author's flashback chapters were very effective.