Lakis Fourouklas's Blog, page 15

Book Review: Hot Stuff by Don Bruns

Hot Stuff by Don Bruns is the sixth book in the
Stuff series featuring private investigators James Lessor and Skip Moore
(available November 16, 2012).

 



An attractive sous chef at the famous restaurant L’Elfe is murdered and
half the employees are suspect. The lack of police progress toward
solving the murder leads Chef Jean Bouvier to seek a quicker solution.
He hires private eyes James Lessor and Skip Moore to go undercover and
discreetly investigate his restaurant staff. But their investigation
turns up far more than they bargained for.





Amanda, the victim, was a friend of Skip’s girlfriend, Emily. So Emily
can tell them some things about Amanda’s background, but she hides a
lot. Because Amanda once helped her out in a difficult situation, Emily
now feels that she owes her something, so not only does she want
Amanda’s murder solved, but also she wants to protect Amanda’s memory
from rumors.



Continue at Criminal Element

Book Review: Motorcycle High: The Adventures of Rock Pounder by Dave Harrold

Motorcycle High by Dave Harrold is a high-octane and fun-loving adventure that takes the reader on a long and dangerous journey, full of action and betrayals, femme fatales, mobsters and spies.

Rock Pounder, adventure rider extraordinaire, is planning a round-the-world trip on his motorcycle. His goal is Amsterdam and the herbal refreshment that awaits him there. But when you're a legend—among women, adventure riders, and spies—nothing is ever as simple as it seems.

This is one of those books that are simply way too fun not to like. And Rock Pounder is one of those heroes that no matter how hard you try, you simply cannot forget; not only for his character, but also because he’s quite a character. He’s cool, he’s fearless, he loves his bikes and his women and he has a past that still haunts and entertains him. I will let him speak for himself.

Let me tell you about Rock Pounder. I’m mad as hell. People are starting to push me around because they think I’m old. They don’t know who I am. They don’t know that I’ve helped start three revolutions—and I’ve personally been in charge of one. I’ve ordered countless men into battle and I’ve fought many myself, and I’ve supplied money and guns to people across the globe. I’ve made love to pretty women all over the world, including two princesses and a billionaire drug lord, who was also a woman, by the way.
     I look at life, and I feel like I have at least one more big job in me, before I retire to my place in Mexico. The United States pays me $10,000 a year to keep my eyes open as I travel around. But right now nothing’s going on, and I’m looking for action.

And that is exactly what he’s going to get: nonstop action; bike and car chases through the wilderness of the Russian countryside, meetings with spies and mobsters, and secrets agents and much more. And all that despite the fact that:

I’m really a pacifist most of the time. I don’t carry a gun, and I don’t like to hurt people. But there are some things I won’t put up with, and beating up a defenseless priest is one of them.

Whether he likes it or not, Rock, will have to resort to violence more than once during this journey, this adventure; an adventure that will really start, not in the US, but when he and his buddies reach Siberia.

Well, today it started just like it does in every big city in the world. You get lost trying to get out of town. After about 20 minutes of wandering around, we found the right road and headed to Khabarovsk, about 650 due north into Siberia. I was just thinking about why we do this, why we take these long trips. I guess it’s because you like to go where there’s no help, where you’re totally self-sufficient, where it’s just you, the motorcycle, and the elements. There’s no motorcycle shop, maybe no gas stations or motels, just pure adventure. I guess that’s why we go, and we just don’t go around the block on the motorcycle too much.

Going around the block would probably be the best thing that could happen to him in this case, but that’s not meant to be. Instead he’ll travel through Siberia, go to Russia, Ukraine and Poland, sleep in luxury and out in the open, face betrayal and find a true friend, and then think, constantly think about his life.

Rock feels like he’s blessed and cursed at the same time. He really enjoyed his ride through life, but he cannot help but think that maybe it’s time for him to call it a day. What started his wanderlust was a book, Around the World in 80 Days, but if things keep going the way they do now, it’s doubtful that he’ll have, in the end, 80 days to live.

What do they want from him? Why can’t they just let him be? he keeps wondering. Who are they? His boss, “Fat Man” Manfred, and the CIA. They are interested in a package that contains a computer program that could change the world. And so is the Russian government, and so is the Mafia who’s after him. The problem is that he doesn’t have the package. The problem is that, even though he doesn’t know it yet, he’s going to get it.

Oh well, when you think about it it’s all business as usual for Rock. He’ll just do what he has to do, while trying to avoid his silicon-made ex-wife, his pursuers, a woman who lusts after him and… and…

What I liked the most about this novel is not so much the action, but the interactions; the interactions between some of the main characters; the love and hate relationships, the lack of trust between them. I’ve also enjoyed Rock’s sense of humor, his stubbornness and his lust for travel and adventure. To put it simply, Rock is here to entertain, and entertain he does.

The 2012 US National Book Awards Winners Announced

The 2012 US National Book Awards winners were announced yesterday. The books that have won the prize are:



Fiction



The Round House by Louise Endrich



Non-fiction

 

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo



Poetry



Bewilderment by David Ferry



Young People's Literature



Goblin Secrets by William Alexander

 

The UK's National Book Awards Shorlists

The National Book Awards shortlists have been announced yesterday. The winners will be revealed in a ceremony on Tuesday 4 December. Here are the candidates in three of the most important categories. For the rest you can follow this link.



Autobiography/Biography of the Year



My Animals and Other Family by Clare Balding
Patrick Leigh Fermor by Artemis Cooper
Back Story by David Mitchell
Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie
Who I Am by Pete Townshend
Camp David by David Walliams


Popular Fiction Book of the Year


1356 by Bernard Cornwell
The Thread by Victoria Hislop
The Rose Petal Beach by Dorothy Koomson
Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James
Citadel by Kate Mosse

Me Before You by JoJo Moyes

Crime Book of the Year


A Wanted Man by Lee Child
Kind of Cruel by Sophie Hannah

A Question of Identity by Susan Hill

The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz

Perfect People by Peter James

Gods and Beasts by Denise Mina

The 2013 IMPAC Longlist

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award has unveiled its longlist that includes 154 novels published in English in 2011. I guess the picture above gives you an idea for whose book I'd voting for if I had the chance. But since I don't I've decided to give you the links to the reviews I've written about some of the books that are on the list. Click on the titles to read them .



Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin. Buy here.

The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi-Adler Olsen. Buy here.

On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry. Buy here. My second favorite of last year but just as good as the first.

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman. Buy here.

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht. Buy here. A good book but a badly written review, I have to admit.



Books that I have read but did not have the time to review in English. If you speak Greek you can look them up at my other blog: http://lakisf3.blogspot.com

 

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.

Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar.

Snowdrops by A.D. Miller.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.

The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje.



If you want to see the full list click here.

Book Review: Never Coming Back by Hans Koppel

Never Coming Back is a story about cruelty and sin, redemption and revenge, and it’s one of the darkest novels I’ve ever read.

Hans Koppel doesn’t hold anything back in this story, in which he depicts a far from perfect world; a world where young people torture their schoolmates and where some other people need to take the law into their own hands to deliver justice. But do two wrongs make one right?

The moral dilemmas in this novel are aplenty, and its characters are nothing but innocent. It doesn’t matter if they are good at heart or not. It doesn’t matter if they are the victims of their own weaknesses, and yes, it doesn’t matter if they’ve regretted their past actions. What matters is that they did something wrong, and, sooner or later, they’ll have to pay for it.

But even those of them who have no dark secrets to hide seem quite unhappy, living desperate lives, struggling to survive in a world that they really don’t like.

“Look at me: unmarried, no children, a reporter for a weekly. I do saccharine interviews with washed-up TV celebrities and village eccentrics, write racy short stories about young women at their peak, twenty-seven years old. Short stories are read by women who are seventy-two. Same numbers, just inverted. I have no ambitions, no prospects. My only luxury in life is ice-cream in summer, a beer in the pub and sometimes, when the urge takes me, a trip to the cinema in the middle of the week.”

And this is one of the characters that, with difficulties or not, lives a quite straight-forward life. His ups and downs are all the same, repeated time and again, unlike those concerning some of the other people in this story; people like Ylva, who’s just been kidnapped by a sadistic couple and held hostage in the basement of a house, just across the street from her own, and like Mike, her husband, a man who doesn’t really love her, but is afraid to admit it, even to himself.

The complexity of their relationship is one of the most important elements in this story. Ylva is the strong one, the one who sets the rules, and Mike is the guy who just goes along, following in her footsteps, rather than walking by her. Her abduction comes as a shock to him, even though for some time he thinks that she’d just run away with another man. But no, he says, no, she would never abandon Sanna, their eight year old daughter.

So in here we have three victims, but we have three villains as well, since Ylva’s act is a double one: the couple who took her, did it in order to avenge something she did more than twenty years ago; something that have changed their lives forever.

The author asks big questions the answers to which are nothing but simple, and, as it usually is the case with Swedish writers, he thrashes to pieces the notion of an ideal world that foreigners have for his country. He makes a joke out of the cops, he has a good go at the press, he reflects on the xenophobia and he brings to light the darkness that lurks in the hearts of even the most respectable people.

Never Coming Back is a novel that’s easy to read but not so easy to stomach. There’s too much violence in here but there’s too much truth as well. This is not a perfect world, people are no angels, and it’s an author’s duty to point that out. And Koppel does that in a great way, delivering to us an intense and gripping novel that’s well worth reading by every crime fiction aficionado, or even from anyone who just wants to forget about the princesses of the past and the modern day fairytales and take a look at the dark side of life.

Book Review: The Scroll by Anne Perry

The Scroll that comes out today, is an eBook short mystery that’s full of intrigue, big questions and quite a bit of personal drama.



It all begins when Monty Danforth, a man who works in an antiquarian shop in Cambridge, starts unpacking and cataloguing the books delivered to him in crates by the Greville estate. Among the things that he uncovers is a mysterious scroll that seems to be written in Hebrew.



At first he doesn’t seem to know what to make of it since he can’t understand a word of the language it is written in but apparently someone else does, since before too long an old man, who claims to be a collector, arrives accompanied by a young girl. The man offers to buy the scroll straight away but Mr. Danforth refuses to grant him his wish, since he wants to have it evaluated first.



The visitors depart, promising to come back at a later time, but not before warning him that the scroll could prove to be quite dangerous because of its contents. What did they mean by that?



“Ha had always had a weird imagination, a sensitivity to the presence of evil. He told the most excellent ghost stories to the great entertainment of his friends. He was known for it, even loved. People liked to be given a frisson of fear, just enough to get the adrenalin going.”



Well, now he feels that kind of fear taking abode in his very soul, and he doesn’t know how to appease it. He knows that he needs to solve the mystery surrounding the scroll but would that prove enough?



In the end he has no choice so he decides to ask for the help of his good friend, Hank Savage, a pragmatic scientist, thus someone who doesn’t share his beliefs of the supernatural. Hank will offer him a helping hand but just by pointing out that the text on the scroll is written in Aramaic and not in Hebrew. Apart from that he can’t tell anything much since he only understands a few words of that long lost language.



So, where is he supposed to turn to now? That would be the million dollar question if two new ones didn’t arise in a brief period of time: Why are the church and a scholar of sorts interested in the scroll? And how did they, just like the old man, come to know about it?



As the story moves on the mystery deepens and the end comes with a bang that may solve a part of the riddle but gives birth to new questions in the mind of the reader.



Anne Perry delivers a well-written story, with a great plot and a few fascinating characters that drive the narrative from peak to peak. If you love mysteries you will love this short foray into the genre.

Book Review: Make Believe by Ed Ifkovic

Make Believe by Ed Ifkovic is the third Edna Ferber
historical mystery set in the glamor of Los Angeles in the 1950s
(available November 6, 2012).

 



It’s 1951 and Edna Ferber is in Hollywood to support Max Jeffries, a friend who was part of the film production of Show Boat—until
he was blacklisted as a Communist. When Max ends up dead, Edna searches
for answers in the tawdry side of Hollywood, where she encounters the
likes of Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra.





Edna is a celebrity too, but a minor one if compared to Frankie and Ava. She’s written some books, among which is Show Boat,
which was adapted for a Broadway musical and several films. However,
she’s never been quite happy with what’s been done with her work, and
she definitely doesn’t like Los Angeles, where yet another film version
of Show Boat is about to premiere, this time starring the notorious Ava Gardner.



Continue at Criminal Element

Book Review: The Safe Man by Michael Connelly

If you’d like a couple of thrills and chills, you can get them through The Safe Man, this ghost story that just came out as an eBook short.

It all begins when a certain Brian Holloway is summoned at a house on Shell Island to open a safe, that came along with the house, built in 1929, which used to belong to a rich industrialist. He’s welcomed there by the unlikeable new owner of the property, an author that goes by the name of Paul Robinette.

Robinette wants Holloway not only to open the safe but also remove it, since he believes it could prove dangerous for him and his daughter; someone could break in to open it and thus put their lives in danger.

Holloway doesn’t quite follow the man’s logic, but he has a job to do, so he gets on with it. Opening the safe though will not prove so easy since it seems to be the one and only of its kind. It’s so rare actually that almost no one in the profession knows anything about it.

Anyway, after a lot of effort he manages to drill a hole in, and uses a scope to look inside in order to get an idea of what he needs to do next. But when he does that he sees for a fleeting moment something, like a shadow, inside that gives him the chills. When he finally manages to open it though, he finds it empty.

Did he really see something, or was it but a figment of his imagination? Oh well, he was asked to do a job and he did it. But why is he still so preoccupied with what happened? And why does he keep thinking about the girl that appeared by his side in the room while he was working?

He has a very bad feeling about the whole thing and when he hears from a man in Canada who knows the history of the safe that feeling turns into fear. Before he can do anything to appease it though, something else happens; something extremely bad: Robinette’s daughter goes missing and he’s the prime suspect, since his father was a big time criminal, and the cops think that the apple may not have fallen that far away from the tree.

So from the one moment to the next he finds himself cornered and his life falling apart. Is there anything he can do to avoid the oncoming disaster? Was what the man from Canada told him indeed the truth? Did he open that safe door only to let out a curse that would come to haunt his life?

There are so many questions, and if you are interested in finding the answers, the only thing you need to do is read this well-written story.

Book Review: Return of the Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

 

Return of the Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett is a
traditional detective story anthology containing two unpublished
novellas featuring private investigator Nick Charles and his wife Nora
(available November 6, 2012).





One would be justified in asking what these stories have to offer to
the modern reader almost seven decades after they were conceived. The
answer is: a lot. First, they give us the chance to rediscover the work
of an old master. Second, they offer the opportunity to learn more about
him and his love-hate relationship with the movie industry. Third, they
showcase the book’s links to the movies, through the thorough
introductions by Richard Layman and Julie M. Rivett.



Continue at Criminal Element