Final Marathon Prep and The Perfect Southern Family

A week before the marathon, I had the misfortune of attending the Maryland Rutgers football game, which besides being a rotten game, also was cold and rainy. When I went to work on Monday, the guy who sits next to me had a bad cold. On Tuesday, I started to feel the beginning signs of a cold. I immediately went to the store and bought the zinc cold medicine which I believe at times has prevented me from getting colds or made them less severe. I started taking them every two hours. It seemed to be working for a couple days. However, on Thursday morning, I took my car into the shop. I walk a couple of miles from the dealer to the train station. It was colder than I thought it was going to be and I think that put the cold over the edge.


By the afternoon on Thursday, the cold was pretty bad with the marathon less than 48 hours away. I put an message on the Runners Word forum asking for advise. Most of the responses mentions things I was already doing, the one new idea was to drink tea. I really dislike the taste of tea, but Virginia is a big tea drinker so we have a lot at home. I started drinking a cup of tea on Thursday and then drank about a cup an hour on Friday. I think it really helped.

The Devil's Punchbowl

I have read most of the books by Greg Iles. He is consistently good author, but none of his books have been great.

His latest book, The Devil's Punchbowl is about Penn Cage who has been featured in several other of Iles' books.

http://www.amazon.com/Devils-Punchbowl-Novel-Greg-Iles/dp/0743292510/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255618766&sr=8-1

Penn Cage is the perfect southern gentlemen with the perfect parents and perfect girlfriend. He was an prosecutor in Houston, who became a bestselling author. When his wife died, he moved back to his hometown of Natschez, Mississippi to raise his daughter. When the last book about Cage ended, Turning Angel, he decided to run for mayor of Natchez, which results in his girlfriend Caitlin Masters leaving him because she does not want to stay in Natchez.

In The Devil's Punchbowl, Cage has been the mayor for two years and found that being mayor and making a positive change for the town is not as easy as he thought. His childhood friend, Tim Jessup gets him involved in fighting some big time criminals that have taken residence in Natchez.

I listened to the book on my MP3 player during my runs. I did not care for the reader, who was hard to understand at times. The story was quite long, but pretty good. The bad guys were unrealistically evil. However, Cage and his family are familiar and likable characters. Cage gets back together with Caitlin.

I would have liked to have seen more of Tim Jessup character . Iles developed a big back story about Jessup, but then he is killed early in the book. In fact, the editing for the book seemed wierd. It was not tight, there were a lot of side stories that did not add to the main story.

Overall, on the strength of the Penn Cage character, I give The Devil's Punchbowl a B-.