‘The Great Mistake’ by Jonathan Lee  (2021)  –  289 pages

I pride myself on knowing a lot about United States history, but I had never heard of Andrew Haswell Green before. Green is the primary character of ‘The Great Mistake’. He was a New York City lawyer and city planner and civic leader, and he was responsible for many of the things New York City is famous for including Central Park, the Bronx Zoo, the New York Public Library, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Green was also responsible for consolidating the five boroughs of New York into one city. At the age of 83, he was shot to death outside his home on November 13, !903.

‘The Great Mistake’ alternates between two modes, a fictional biography based on details from Green’s life and the police investigation into the circumstances of his shocking death.

The power of ‘The Great Mistake’ is in its individual sentences. The sentences are subtle and expressive and have a dramatic immediacy that puts you on the side of our hero Andrew Haswell Green. If you are the kind of reader who values fine evocative sentences, by all means read ‘The Great Mistake’.

“The concert of barely connected moments that make up any life.”

If you can write lines like that, congratulations, you are a writer.

The entire novel left me quite moved. Our author Jonathan Lee finds the words and the scenes to express truths that are not often expressed. Green was a man who had to overcome circumstances which became all too apparent to him in childhood in order to accomplish what he did. Whether we are aware of it or not, each of us has had a childhood situation which has shaped most of our entire lives. That childhood situation includes:

Our parents attitudes toward us

Our own interests and proclivities

Our relations with our brothers and/or sisters

Other factors

“Did anyone in the heavens really believe in him, Andrew Green, this awkward boy below, his spirit, his potential for good? His own question frightened him into muteness, the kind of silence the living rarely know, the moon hanging sullied by smoke in the sky, filthy with the expulsions of men.”

Central Park, New York City

Later Green leaves the childhood farm for New York City.

“To be a gentleman in New York, one needed an education. To obtain an education in New York, one needed money. To obtain money in New York, one needed to be a gentleman. The city formed its circles.”

‘The Great Mistake’ was a very poignant and meaningful reading experience for me. Jonathan Lee finds the words and the scenes to express truths that are not often expressed.

Grade:    A

‘High Dive’ by Jonathan Lee    (2016)  – 318 pages

Somehow I missed the news story of the Grand Brighton Hotel bombing when it actually occurred.  The United States was right in the midst of its Presidential and other elections of 1984 when it occurred on October 12, 1984, and the media here gets obsessed with our own elections to the exclusion of all else.   Anyhow the then ruling Conservative Party in Great Britain was holding its annual conference at the Grand Brighton Hotel. The Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was there along with her husband Dennis as well as many other government dignitaries.  Unbeknownst to them, the Provisional Irish Republican Army had planted a big bomb with a long delay timer within the hotel weeks before, set to go off at exactly 2:51 AM on October 12.  The bomb did explode as planned doing severe damage to the hotel, and five people staying in the hotel were killed and dozens were injured.  Margaret Thatcher and her husband Dennis were unharmed, although their room was damaged.

‘High Dive’ is a vivid audacious fictional account of this incident.  There are three main characters.  We have Dennis who is one of the IRA guys who set the bomb, Moose Finch who is the assistant general manager at the Grand Brighton Hotel, and his eighteen year old daughter Freya who is working at the reception desk at the hotel over summer.

I knew I was going to really like ‘High Dive’  when I found out that the hair salon where Freya goes is called Curl Up and Dye.   The writing here is wicked and lively, and there is a surprising delightful curve ball in nearly every sentence.   While I was reading ‘High Dive’, especially for the first 200 or so pages, I got this strong sense of exhilaration that I only get when I am reading the best novels.  Jonathan Lee has a strong empathy for his characters and his handling of scenes is especially well done.

‘High Dive’ is not a technical thriller in any sense of the term.  The actual wiring and planting of the bomb or any of the details regarding the bomb are not even covered in the novel.  Instead ‘High Dive’ is a novel about the emotional lives of the people listed above.

After the bomb is planted at the Hotel, it is a matter of waiting for the ultimate explosion.   As the pages mount up as we are awaiting the detonation of the bomb, the high energy of the novel dissipates somewhat.   Although as I said before, Jonathan Lee has great empathy for his people, the everyday events that Dennis, Moose, and Freya deal with at the hotel are almost too mundane to carry the novel.

But overall ‘High Dive’ is an exceptionally strong performance, and I expect most everyone will feel curiously uplifted by this vivid and devilishly well-written story about a bomb.

Grade:    A-