Gladney Booted from Honduras!

Holy moley!

I thought my eyes were deceiving me when this notice from the State Department hit my mailbox a few minutes ago, but it's true.  Gladney has been kicked out of Honduras.

Message for U.S. Citizens – Barring of Two U.S. Adoption Agencies by IHNFA (January 30, 2012)

January 30, 2012

The U.S. Embassy in Honduras informs citizens that the Instituto Hondureño de la Niñez y la Familia (IHNFA ) has barred two U.S. adoption agencies from the local adoption process, effective immediately.  The IHNFA will no longer approve adoption requests filed by families  who utilized the agencies to facilitate the adoption of a local child, as the agencies are no longer registered in Honduras.  Only adoptions approved by the IHNFA can be processed for Immigrant Visas, as the IHNFA is the Government of Honduras’ Central Adoption Authority.
The following U.S. adoption agencies are no longer accredited in Honduras:
1.            Living Hope Adoption Agency, IHNFA’s resolution SG-016-2011
2.            Gladney Center for Adoption, IHNFA’s resolution SG-017-2011

Read the rest of the notice which doesn't say to much at the link above.

I looked around real fast to see what Dame Edna had done to deserve such treatment from such an unworthy country, and so far there's no statement. Here is the Gladney Honduras .FAQ

Inquiring minds want to know!

And what in the world does this Gladney Honduras icon mean?  IHNFA has left Gladney hanging?

Missouri: Bastard Nation Testimony on HB 1137--Oppose

I'll be writing about the latest Missouri situaiton later, but i the meantime, here's our testimony that was submitted to the Judiciary committee on January 25, 2012.

HB 1137:

access to identifying information for adoptions original birth certificate

Missouri House Judiciary Committee

January 25, 2012

OPPOSE

Privilege is the opposite of rights

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization is the largest Adoptee civil rights organization in the United States. We support full access for all adopted persons to their original birth certificates (OBC) without restriction.. HB 1137 is not an unrestricted bill and we oppose it.

Under current Missouri law, the original birth certificates of all Missouri Adoptees are sealed and cannot be released to the adoptee without a court order.

Missouri's current “identifying information access” law is a confusing, convoluted labyrinth that serves only a handful of adoptees who successfully navigate its bureaucracy. Those few who do succeed receive only “identifying information” without the release of the OBC. .

HB 1157 makes no substantial changes in that law. It simply substitutes OBC release for the current informal identifying information forwarded to the adoptee, keeping the rest of the bureaucracy in place. It,fact, this bill actually increases the bureaucracy by adding the Department of Social Services to the list of agencies that can be involved in the release.

HB 1137 reinforces outdated adoption secrecy present in the current law. It includes the misnamed “contact preference form”which enables biological parents, upon request, to prohibit the state from releasing to the OBC. A genuine “contact preference form”as Oregon, Alabama, New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island have enacted permits a biological parent to state a preference regarding contact, with the adoptee, with no legal ramifications. The “contract preference form “in HB1137, is simply a softer name for the “affidavit of nondisclosure form” in current law, and continues to let third parties legally bar the adoptee from receiving the OBC—a privilege or “special right” that no third party, not even a parent, can evoke against the not-adopted.

Furthermore, the submission of a medical history form, mandated for biological parents who file a veto, is invasive and may be in violation of the federal HIPAA. Law. While family medical histories are desirable for everyone, no one has a right to anyone else s, and adoptees should not be the exception. The entire impetus for adoptee rights, in fact, is that adopted people need to be treated the same as everyone else, nothing more and nothing less.

Sooner or later Missouri, and every other state that has not opened OBC’s unconditionally to adoptees, are going to be forced to d so. The issue isn't going away. This is not a matter of if, but when.

Adopted adults, especially since 9/11, are increasingly denied passports, driver’s licenses, pensions, Social Security benefits, professional certifications, security clearances and other entitlements due to discrepancies on their amended birth certificates, and their inability to produce an original birth certificate to answer the problems.

Adoptees without a genuine original birth record could soon be barred from running for public office. At least 10 states, including Missouri (HB 283; ss Lyle Rowland, Mike Kelly) have introduced legislation requiring presidential and vice-presidential candidates to present their original birth certificates to appropriate authorities to prove citizenship eligibility for office. Some of these bills go farther, mandating anyone running for office to prove citizenship through an original birth certificate. It is no stretch to think that someday soon adoptees could be barred from voting due to lack of “legal” identity over problematical amended birth certificates, and the perpetual sealing of the originals.

Kansas and Alaska have never sealed original birth certificates. Since 1999 five states have restored to adoptees the unrestricted right to records and identity access: Oregon through ballot initiative, and Alabama, New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island through legislation. No statistics are available for Kansas and Alaska, but approximately 17,000 OBCs in the former states have been released with no reported consequences. (Rhode Island won't open until July 1, 2012)

Rights are for all citizens, not favors doled out to some. Missouri does not segregate rights by religion, ethnicity, age, or gender. It should not segregate rights by birth, adoptive status, or third party “preference.”

HB 1137, as it is currently written does nothing to restore the right of all Missouri adoptees to their own original birth certificates. Unless this bill is amended –basically re-written to restore the rights of all, we urge you to vote DO NOT PASS. All Missouri Adoptees must enjoy equal protection, due process, and dignity. Missouri Adoptees deserve better than HB 1137!

Submitted by Marley Greiner
Executive Chair
Bastard Nation: the Adoptee rights organization
January 25, 2012

Bastard Nation is dedicated to the recognition of the full human and civil rights of adult Adoptees. Toward that end, we advocate the opening to Adoptees, upon request at age of majority, of those government documents which pertain to the Adoptee's historical, genetic, and legal identity, including the unaltered original birth certificate and adoption decree. Bastard Nation asserts that it is the right of people everywhere to have their official original birth records unaltered and free from falsification, and that the adoptive status of any person should not prohibit him or her from choosing to exercise that right. We have reclaimed the badge of bastardy placed on us by those who would attempt to shame us; we see nothing shameful in having been born out of wedlock or in being adopted. Bastard Nation does not support mandated mutual consent registries or intermediary systems in place of unconditional open records, nor any other system that is less than access on demand to the adult Adoptee, without condition, and without qualification.

Ohio Adoptee Rights Historical Document: HB 419 (1995-1996)

In conjunction with Ohio Adoptee Searches I have started a new blog:  Ohio Adoptee Searches:  News and Views on Ohio Adoptee Rights, Search, and Reunion.
 
I'm old enough to remember when adoptee rights and search were two sides of the coin, and search tended to lead to activism.  (Special thanks to BJ Lifton, Florence Fisher, and Jean Paton) No later than the mid-1980s, though, search had been co-opted by therapists and so-called reform organizations who packed the hearing room with nose blowers with beggars' bowls, who despite their use of "rights" language,  chose reunion over rights.  And still do.

The Internet, in many ways, has reinforced this victimization,  through hundreds  preaching-to-the-choir-misery-loves-company forums, Facebook pages, and blogs. Because I'm so damned old, this strikes me as nonsensical. Back in the day search was subversive.  Today it's become the dead end of change.

To cut the the chase my OAS blog is a forum to stir the pot:  educate Ohio adoptee searchers on issues,   the politics and language of open records, the history of sealed records in Ohio and past attempts to rescind our tiered system to  bring all adoptees under the pre-1964 open access law,  practical knowledge on how to navigate the current Ohio system,  while at the same time  energizing and recruiting people into the movement.on a state level. ( snagged one today!) To bring  subversion back into search.

 Nothing  is happening in the Ohio legislature so far this year. John Kasich is our governor and the majority of legislators are walking around in the pockets of the exact people who engineered the destruction of the last serious attempt to open records here with HB 419: Ohio Right to Life, Janet Folger Porter, and Dr. John Willke, the latter two now heading up Ohio ProLife Action. passing out teddy bears with built-in heartbeats to pols, and pushing the  Hearbeat Bill, which if passed, will be the most restrictive anti-abortion law in the country.  Need I say more?

Over the next few weeks I'll be posting historic Ohio documents on the OAS blog.  Below  is an entry I posted tonight on the 1996 defeat  which amended unrestricted access out of HB 419 and created our third access tier that keeps Ohio from ever being a true free state.I'm cross-positing it here for a wider audience and the hope that it can be helpful to Ohio readers and bastards in general as we continue to break open the vaults and let our rights fly free.

I won't be cross-posting everything from OAS, but anything important, like the piece below I will. Ohio Adoptee Searches has a  Faceboook page. I'd love you to: like" it and get some discussion going about Ohio-- and for you to spread the word that an Ohio adoptee rights blog and FB page is now up.

****** 

 In 1995, HB 419, (not online; in my personal possession)  an omnibus bill to reform Ohio adoption and foster care law was heard in the Ohio Legislature.  One very short section of the bill restored the right of all Ohio adoptees to their original birth certificates by rescinding the post-1963 prohibition. If passed, the state  would have once again  recognize the right of all Ohio adoptees to equal  treatment and due process under state law. 

Unfortunately, this didn't happen.  Instead of eliminating the two-tier system  which had plagued post-1963 adoptees for over 30 years , by making those OBCs available by court order only, the bill was amended to create a third tier which not only kept post 1963  adoptees in their  black hole, but gave adoptees born on or after September 18, 1996 the ability to access their OBCs  as  pre-1964 adoptees can--unless a birthparent had filed a "disclosure veto" with the state to bar access.  

Willke and Folger Porter 2011, Coumbus

Although the original records access section of HB 419 had wide support among the adoption reform and legal communities,  state agencies, and adoptees, birth and adoptive parents, it was opposed by Ohio Right to Life (Janet Folger  (now Porter and Dr. John Willke--founders of the current Ohio Pro-Life Action)) which claimed that OBC access for adult adoptees would drive women to seek abortions.  Conflating "confidentiality" and '"anonymity," OBC access and abortion, and implying, as Pat Robertson did a few years later,  that adoptee rights advocates are stealth "choice" advocates, Folger Porter wrote in her autobiography True to Life:

...we fought the effort to make "open adoption records" the women's only choice.  We didn't want those women who felt they needed confidentiality and wanted their records to remain closed to be driven to abort their child, and so we fought the very strong 'open records" adoption lobby and won.  Women were given an option to choose, something my opponents from NARAL fought against.

Folger Porter fails to note that her demand that new records be sealed by default and open only by in opt-out "permission" was replaced with an open default and an opt-out disclosure. 

The end results was the name, though.  Adoptees remained second class citizens.

With a desire to "get something passed" Ohio adoption reformers agreed to the ORTL compromise and pushed for the opt-out disclosure to 'save" what they could.  The result was the creation of a new access tier, a new level of OBC bureaucracy, and a strengthened  status quo, The compromise, with its "special rights" for third parties, has made it virtually impossible for Ohio adoptees ever to regain full and equal access that HB 419 offered.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer covered the  HB 419 hearing at which I testified.  If only wish I  knew then what I know now!  The article is not available on line, but the text is below:

Bill would drastically change adoption laws  

By Mary Beth Lane (Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 11, 1995)

---

COLUMBUS - A sweeping bill aimed at improving Ohio adoption laws by speeding up children's placement in permanent homes is expected to he on the house floor for a vote next month. 

The House Family Services Committee is continuing to hold hearings on adoption, an emotional subject that evoked tears yesterday from some of the Ohioans who told their stories and from others who listened"Anything to reduce the wait is good," said Terri Kowaliw, a Galloway woman who adopted one of her foster children, now 12, after enduring a long wait. "We have tried to fill a hole in him left by 5 1/2 years in and out of the foster-care system." She wiped away tears as she spoke. "I'm sorry" she said. "It's a very emotional thing for me." 

Marley Elizabeth Greiner, a 49-year-old-Columbus woman who was adopted as a child, told the committee of her prolonged search to learn her birth roots. She strongly supports provisions of the bill to open more records to adult adoptees. "Is there anyone here today who can look me in the eye and say I do not share the right of the rest of the people of Ohio to know who my mother, father, sister and brother are?" she asked. 

The bill. sponsored by Rep. Cheryl J. Winkler, a Cincinnati Republican, and drawn from a report issued by an adoption task force named by Gov. George V. Voinovich, has drawn broad support from a variety of groups involved in adoption. 

Among its key elements are:

• Reducing the four years it now commonly takes to remove children from foster care and other publicly funded placement and give them a permanent adoptive home. Public children's services agencies currently have custody of about 3,300 children who could be adopted.

• Hastening the process by ordering courts to render a decision in permanent-custody cases within 200 days.

• Helping foster parents who decide to adopt by counting time spent in foster care toward the six-month probationary period before an adoption is considered final..

• Prohibiting public agencies from delaying adoption based solely on the race of the prospective adoptive family..

• Opening adoption and birth certificates to adopted children when they turn 21 unless birth parents deny access.

Currently, adoptees have no access to adoption records unless they and their birth parents have registered with the state. 

Although there is general agreement on opening adoption records, if the birth parent approves it, the issue of how to open them has created a dispute that may put substitute provisions in the bill. 

Adoption groups now support a process, now in the bill, by which the birthmother would have to specifically decline to release the records. If she didn't decline, the records would automatically be open. 

The Ohio Right to Life Society wants to substitute a "yes" or "no" box the birthmother would check off. Voinovich aide Jacqui Romero Sensky said the governor has not decided which process he would support. "I don't think anyone is backing away from open records," she said. "The trend is to more and more openness. We just want the birth mother to make a conscious informed decision."

Roe Turns 39; Columbus Protests

This now appears in the Columbus Free Press ins a slightly different form.

Monday marked the 39th anniversary of Roe v Wade. While most local anti-abortion big shots were doing their annual March for Life in Washington with accompanying photo ops, Greater Columbus Right to Life held down the fort here with a 45 minute rally on the steps of the statehouse.with few photo ops.  Except for me, Channel l0 appeared to be the only local media covering the event, but there's nothing on the station's news site.With Occupy Columbus camped out on the corner of S. High and E State, I was looking forward to interesting possibilities, but the occupiers, unlike the Occupy folks in Washington, DC,  who disrupted a "youth event" held by anti-abortion moguls Brian Kemper, Patrick Mahoney, Lila Rose and friends, decided to sit this one out.

I've attended several of these January outdoor events in the last few years.  Usually, within 10 minutes my fingers, even in two pairs of gloves are ready to call it off  This year, however, the temperature was in the lower 50s and the crowd knew it . About 175 adults and a couple dozen small children celebrated  as Grove City State Rep.and keynoter Cheryl Grossman (R H23) ran off a list of  abortion-curbing bills that either passed last year or are now in the hopper.  Ohio ProLife Action's  Heartbeat Bill, (HB 125), which aims to ban virtually all abortion in the state, got special props. While Ohio Right to Life and Ohio ProLife Action  duke it out  over  for turf n the press and in the lobby ,  GCRTL and Grossman, gave big hugs to the state organization and the Ohio Pro-Life Action break-offs. .No seams showing..

Speaker Denise Salyers  a self-defined "victim of  the abortion industry," following the de riguer line of  "abortion harms women"" described with great detail and occasional tears how  her 1984 abortion ruined her life  with drugs, drinks, and suicide until she was redeemed  by God 24 years later.

The rally, as usual, embodied ecumenical catharsis. The Protestant element of  Parsley-type exurbanites and parents with neatly turned-out daughters in Modest Apparel jumpers   were joined by three nuns  uncharacteristically dressed like nuns, and a gaggle of deSales High School jocks and cheerleaders.  But this year, adults ran the show. Unlike past January Roe  events, billed as youth events, there was no throng of girls and boys from Fostoria and Marion comparing Planned Parenthood to Hitler and making  euphemistic prayer huddles;.and no middle school  adoptees at the podium pimping adoption as a cure for abortion.  Strangely, adoption wasn't mentioned at all.

All photographs by the author

Washington: Bastard Nation Testimony in Opposition to HB 2211/suggested amendments

                                                     TESTIMONY

HB2 2211

Adoptee access to their own original birth certificates

Washington House Committee on the Judiciary

January 16, 2011

OPPOSE

Privilege is the opposite of rights

Our Washington representative cannot attend the hearing today so we are submitting this testimony via email.

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization is the largest adoptee civil rights organization in the United States. We support full, unrestricted access for all adopted persons, to their original birth certificates. (OBC).

Bastard Nation's roots are in Washington State, and we would like nothing more than to support HB 2211. Unfortunately we cannot.

The sticking point is HB 2211's “affidavit of non-disclosure,” otherwise known as a disclosure veto. This veto creates a special third party privilege for birthparents that no one, parent or otherwise, possesses: to bypass state law and to personally bar release of another person's birth certificate to the person to whom it pertains.

Already in place for adoptions finalized on and after October 1 1993, HB 2022 would expand this onerous and discriminatory veto privilege to cover all adoptions; thus expanding the pool of segregated adoptees unable to access their OBCs, even when the vast majority of the state's adoptees could..

Interestingly, HB 2211 expires on July 1, 2012, all current vetoes on file. Those birthparents wishing to remain on the veto books would be required to file a new disclosure veto limited to two years duration, and subject to continued filings every two years.

It appears that the sponsors of the bill have it half right. They are willing to permit the state's adopted class OBC access—unless a third part objects—but limit that third party objection to two year increments. That is, the sponsors appear to find something inherently wrong with vetoes, but feel some sort of obligation to the keep them going .Such an attitude may justify past bad legislation but does not justify denying the adoptees of Washington State the restoration of their civil rights. There is no middle way when it comes to rights: a right exists or it doesn't, and it is not contingent on third party approval.

Sooner or later Washington and every other state that has not opened OBCs unconditionally to adoptees are going to be forced to. The issue isn't going away. This is not a matter of if, but when.

Adopted adults, especially since 911, are increasingly denied passports, drivers licenses, pensions, Social Security benefits, professional certifications, and security clearances due to discrepancies on their amended birth certificates, and their inability to produce an original birth certificate to answer the problems. Proposed changes in passport application regulations will make it literally impossible for some adoptees to ever receive a passport without an accessible paper trial to the OBC.

Adoptees without a genuine original birth record could soon be barred from running for public office.‭ ‬Last year, at least‭ ‬10‭ ‬states, introduced legislation requiring presidential and vice-presidential candidates to present their original birth certificates to appropriate authorities to prove citizenship eligibility for office.‭ ‬Some of these bills go farther,‭ ‬mandating anyone running for office to prove citizenship through an original birth certificate.‭ ‬It is no stretch to think that someday soon adoptees could be barred from voting due to lack of‭ “‬legal.‭”birth certificates.

Should these rights and entitlements be abrogated for adoptaees because OBC access might make some people “uncomfortable?”

As I said in the beginning, were it not for the disclosure veto in all it;'s forms,, including modified, we and our members would happy to support HB 2211.

We recommend that Washington State make history, and simply expire permanently all vetoes currently in place. Amend HB 2211 with the following:

• remove the expansion of the disclosure veto 
• vacate all disclosure veto language from the current law
• unilaterally expire all vetoes currently on file on the effective date of HB 2211
  

Kansas and Alaska have never sealed original birth certificates. Since 1999 six states have restored to adoptees the unrestricted right to records and identity access: Oregon through ballot initiative, and Alabama, New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island through legislation. No statistics are available for Kansas and Alaska, and Rhode Island's records won't be opened until July 1, 2012, but approximately 17,000 OBCs in the latter five states have been released with no reported ill consequences.

Rights are for all citizens, not favors doled out to some. Washington does not segregate rights by religion, ethnicity, age, or gender. It should not segregate rights by birth, adoptive status, or third party preference.

Unless you amend HB 2211 to a clean bill to recognize the right of all of the state's adopted people to their own OBC without restriction, then vote DO NOT PASS . Washington adoptees must enjoy equal protection, due process, and dignity, not favors.

Submitted by Marley Greiner
Executive Chair
Bastard Nation: the adoptee rights organization
January 16, 2011

Bastard Nation is dedicated to the recognition of the full human and civil rights of adult adoptees. Toward that end, we advocate the opening to adoptees, upon request at age of majority, of those government documents which pertain to the adoptee's historical, genetic, and legal identity, including the unaltered original birth certificate and adoption decree. Bastard Nation asserts that it is the right of people everywhere to have their official original birth records unaltered and free from falsification, and that the adoptive status of any person should not prohibit him or her from choosing to exercise that right. We have reclaimed the badge of bastardy placed on us by those who would attempt to shame us; we see nothing shameful in having been born out of wedlock or in being adopted. Bastard Nation does not support mandated mutual consent registries or intermediary systems in place of unconditional open records, nor any other system that is less than access on demand to the adult adoptee, without condition, and without qualification.

Bastard Nation in Slate

Yippie!  Bastard Nation got a nice and extensive plug yesterday in Slate::   Luke  Marci and Me:  After 34 years the Internet gave me a sister I'd never known.  in which writer Luke O'Neil recounts the discovery of his sister, he knew about, but had remained illusive.

Luke discusses BN and sealed records about mid-way through the first page.

 Comments are mainly good, but contain a number of expected snarks in two categories.

(1)  It's a Pandora's box.  You're better off not knowing

(2)  Searching betrays adoptive parents.

I'll  be commenting  there later today.

Thanks, Luke!

Adoption Noir: A Review of Ed Lynsky's "Ask the Dice"

I'm a fan of adoptee noir, so it was a pleasant surprise to find Ask the Dice a member of that growing subgenre.  No doubt some adoption deformers will get the vapors at the thought of a hit man who just happens to be adopted (hit man, might be too benevolent--from the way Tommy Mack Zane tells it, the number of dead pile up in the hundreds), but as a Bastard I found it refreshing and so un-PC. Even better, he's a TRA hit man, black and adopted by a white Washington DC couple out of an "orphan home" in Champagne's Folly, Texas, his landing point after his parents mysteriously committed suicide, giving him an extra layer or two of adoptee angst and screwed upedness. He clearly loves his adoptive parents Amanda and Phil Zane, but feels apart, different. Being 5 or 6 years old and finding his mother Nela hanging in the kitchen a week after his father Bradford shot himself doesn't help.Thankfully, Tommy Mack suffers no primal wound and doesn't blame his career choice on adoption.

But back to the book.  Tommy Mack  is a contract killer for the blind, dirty-minded, and mysterious Watson Og (love the name!) the crime boss of the WDC area who lives in a crappy bungalow in order to keep a low profile and resembles (n my mind) William Burroughs in green aviator glasses. He has two hot-to-trot nieces, Gwen and Rita, in his charge (more or less) which is where the trouble starts.

See, Tommy Mack  is...well...getting tired of his job. After all, he's been whacking skimmers, cheats, witnesses for the prosecution, snitches,  thugs a boxcar of plain troublesome people for Mr. Og since he was 18, and now at the age of 54 he'd like take down his shingle. Mr. Og has other ideas, or shall we say, he's planning to take Tommy Mack's shingle down himself. It was a little unclear to me just why Mr Og has a hard-on for long time trusted employee Tommy Mack, other than he has one on for everybody, and the dice shook out Tommy Mack this time around. I mean, this is a guy who will knock off his own family if they "misbehave" or even if they don't. He seems to be in to object lessons.  Besides, Tommy Mack has a tendency to act up sometimes even to the point of fudging a hit.he deems unfair.

I won't spoil the fun--too much.  After Mr. Ogg frames Tommy Mack for the murder of his niece Gwen, the cast of characters grows. Old friends D Noble from the 'hood who's been playing dead from AIDS  for the last few years  and Esquire, a gay hulk of a car upholsterer who favors hammers and knuckle dusters if he must; and new friends Danny, a female  Northern Virginia gun dealer  and Big  Jamal, a midget with a Glock, join Tommy Mack's crew to eliminate Mr. Og permanently from the WDC scenery. As they join forces,   To pepper the pot, Tommy Mack, starts to draw the dots together  and comes up with some startling revelations about his own life. The denouement--well think of Red Harvest.

Tommy Mack is a traditionalist.  He abhors cell phones and has a rolodex in his head of phone booths in DC Metro. In his off-hours, he  listens to old school jazz, (especially Bird)  watches vintage black-produced  film noir,  and writes poetry. As someone who misspent much of her youthful should-be-sleeping time listening to XERB and XERF blasting all the way from the Mexican border to Canton, Ohio, I especially like his (and Lynsky's/ *6E0 X Radio Station: Texas 1940s.

Some of the writing  in Ask the Dice is a little clunky; some of the plot and narrative improbable, but you can say the same about Chandler, Hammett, and Cain (anybody ever actually read Double Indemnity?) all of whom Lynsky seems to draw on. I was hoping that Mr Og was shagging his nieces, but alas! That is, as far as we know. Tommy Mack should have been younger by 10 years  younger to tighten up the timeline. Mr. Og is supposedly only a "person of interest" to the WDC police  (and I assume the FBI) when he's a crime boss in the nation's capital  connected to "the Baltimore family."  In real life,  WDC, has plenty of criminals, but no traditional crime family  unless you count Congress. The idea that he can maintain a low profile and that Tommy Mack, even with a clean record, isn't on John Law's radar doesn't make sense unless District law enforcement is more lax than my local doughnut munchers. I also found Tommy Mack less street smart that he should be, but then ,he's used to being the hunter, not the hunted. Thank goodness for Esquire!  Despite the flaws, some of them minor, it's a great read, especially for those of us who enjoy noir and creepy crime bosses.

Tommy Mack's adoption  story was left open ended, even if it appears to be closed in the book. There's a lot more going on there that we don't know, but our protagonist has other things on his mind--sorta.--and says he doesn't care.  He will.  He's adopted and I've never known any adoptee to let their story hang. for very long.  Tommy Mack's return to Champagne's Folly, during a road trip, courtesy of Mr Og, was handled with sensitivity. and I'd like to see more of that part of the story.  A search for the truth that goes deeper than what's he's already done  I hope Lynsky and  Tommy Mack revisit and dissect the story a la James Ellroy's My Dark Places.

A sequel?  Here's an idea:  Tommy Mack Zane, after  returning to Champagne's Folly to investigate  his parents' deaths and uncover his adaption secrets, takes on the Texas adoption industry and the legislature and gets our records opened.. How Tommy Mack accomplishes this miracle we'll leave up to Ed Lynsky..