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I recently read Dead I Well May Be by Adrian McKinty I give this book 3 and 1/2 stars out of 5(rounded up to 4). Michael Forsythe leaves Ulster Ireland for the US to escape the troubles. Because he is an illegal immigrant he must find work where he can and ends up working as part of a criminal gang. The plot is believable and the Ulster dialect is readable. I did not like the parts of the book where he fantasizes about his surroundings/memories. This stream of consciousness style of writing periodic interruptions of the plot were distracting and unnecessary.
I found it hard at times to separate the plot and fantasies.
Original Skin by David MarkI first started reading David Mark's books last summer. I won Sorrow Bound(book 3 in the series) last summer in a Goodreads giveaway and enjoyed it enough that I decided to go back and read books 1 and 2 in the series.
This book has several threads: There is a turf war over the growing of marijuana, with new, ruthless gangsters moving in on established Vietnamese grower/sellers. The new gangsters are brutal tortuers, using nail guns and paint stripping burners to torture and murder their way into the business. The second thread concerns a murder written off as a suicide, which Aector Mcavoy suspects may not be a suicide.
The other threads are inter police politics and a family dispute.
I like the author's sense of humor, wherein a character has a 3 course meal--"bag of peanuts, packet of crisps and pickled egg."
I give it 4 out 5 stars.
Lion Plays Rough by Lachlan SmithRecommended for: legal mystery fans
I received an autographed copy of this book from the author through the Goodreads giveaway program. Thank you Lachlan Smith!! I give it 4.5 stars(rounded up to 5). It was a fast, easy read--2 days.
Leo Maxwell is a criminal defense attorney who is out for a morning bike ride when a passing car hits him a glancing blow. The driver, an attractive blonde, stops, picks him and his bicycle up and takes him to his car. Later, she comes to his office to hire him to defend her brother. She gives him $10,000 in cash.
She tells him that his brother will call him from jail. The brother does and Leo agrees to speak to him. Then things go bad. The prisoner brought to him is not the man he talked to on the phone and he already has a lawyer.
The characters are well written and the plot twists are numerous. This is book 2 in the series, but it read ok as a standalone.
I plan to read books 1 and 3.
The book author bio says that the author practices civil rights and employment law in Alabama. There is a separate thread in the book where Leo defends an accused child molester. I found the courtroom scenes to be authentic.
Two O'clock, Eastern Wartime by John DunningI enjoyed reading this book and give it 4 out 5 stars. I borrowed it from a friend. Jack Dulaney is a man with an extraordinary talent for writing radio drama shows in 1942, the golden age of radio drama. He also is looking for the missing father of his girlfriend, Holly Carnahan.
The two threads converge in a story a of a Nazi spy murdering people who might expose him.
The spy is based on a real life Nazi spy, whose biography is Counterfeit Hero: Fritz Duquesne, Adventurer and Spy by Art Ronnie which I read 15 years ago and gave it 4 stars.
The author is an expert on old time radio drama and has a personal archive of 40,000 radio drama recordings.
Two quotes that I liked from the book:
"Fifty years from now it(radio) could be just a medium for hucksters and fools, a whorehouse in the sky."
"How something so big and vital could have been reduced to a theater of babbling deejays and bloated, self important talk show hosts."
Yikes!! Could he be talking about Rush Limbaugh?
From Bruges with Love by Pieter Aspe Recommended for: Translated mystery fans
Read from June 08 to 14, 2015 — I own a copy, read count: 1
I received this ebook free from NetGalley.com. Bruges Police Inspector Pieter Van In is called to the scene of a skeleton discovered on a farm. It is soon clear that the person was murdered. Pieter is married to Hannnelore, an investigating magistrate, who is charge of the case. She is 3 months pregnant and has tried unsuccessfully to give up smoking. She will not give up wine. All in all, parts of this book read like they were written 30 years ago, so I checked and the Belgian 1st edition was published in 1997. This translation is excellent and flows very well.
Pieter's investigation leads him to some very powerful figures involved in the sex trade. There are several threads in the plot, which merge in the end. I enjoyed it and give it 4 stars out of 5.
According to the book blurb, the book series is a best seller in Belgium, and this book is #33 in the series. It read ok as a stand alone.
Some local food tastes are mentioned: french fries dipped in mayonnaise and beer served ice cold(unlike the UK)
I wholeheartedly endorse this series. I have read many of them in German. Bruges Inspector Van is an odd duck with many eccentricities that make him a charming and delightful character. For those who like a little wit in their murder mysteries, this series is a good one. Incidentally, The Belgians have the highest per capital consumption of beer in the world. They use mayonnaise as a dip instead of catsup. The mayonnaise is usually served in a small cup at food stands. Bruges is also one of the most scenic cities in Europe. I had completely forgotten about this series, so hats off to you for posting your recommendation, jack
The Switch by Elmore LeonardElmore Leonard books are always a pleasure to read. This book is a solid 4 stars out of 5. Two minor criminals kidnap the wife of a wealthy developer who has a secret bank account in the Bahamas with a million dollars. They demand that million dollars. But he went to the Bahamas to be with his mistress while his lawyer serves his wife with divorce papers. Leonard has the dialect of the criminals down pat. I read it in about 36 hours.
For those of you who are interested in Pieter Aspe's books see book 1 on sale today, $1.99 kindle editionhttp://www.amazon.com/Square-Revenge-...
Finished White Walls and Straitjackets yesterday - here is my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Two more book reviewsStanding in Another Man's Grave
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Death in Breslau
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Some reviews of books I have recently finished.....
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...The Pearls of Broome https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
In the Woods by Tana French I enjoyed reading this book and give it 4.5 stars(rounded up to 5). Two murder squad detectives are assigned to the murder of a 12 year old girl. One of them is Adam Robert Ryan. He was one of 3 twelve year old children that went missing 20 years before in the same woods as the murder scene. He was found holding on to a tree, while the other two were never found. He now goes by "Rob" to keep his identity hidden. No one on the squad knows except for his partner, Cassie. He tells her during the investigation. This is a suspenseful mystery with an ending like a Greek tragedy. I like the author's use of language and her comments on Irish life. Examples:
P.2 "The wood is all flicker and murmur and illusion ."
p.8 "...in much of Ireland the fifties didn't end until 1995...'
p.13 "... lobotomized bugger..."
p.80 "Irish politics are tribal, incestuous and furtive, incomprehensible even to many of the people involved."
message 367:
by
Sandysbookaday (taking a step back for a while)
(last edited Aug 19, 2015 08:51PM)
(new)
Just finished Hidden by Emma Kavanagh. Here is my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...and
- here is my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Vesuvius Isotope
flirts with both Crichton and Dan Brown without falling hard for either. That can be a tough needle to thread, and succeeding is an accomplishment for a first-time author. An intriguing plot and colorful settings are unfortunately dinged by two newbie-author issues. 3.6-ish stars rounded up to four.Read the full review here.
Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists
is a solid journalistic exploration of art theft as it really is, with a focus on, natch, thefts of Rembrandts. If you're into real-life, big-ticket thievery, this book delivers plenty. Expect "interesting" rather than "exciting" and you won't be disappointed.Read the full review here.
Bangkok Haunts
is a virtuoso exercise in voice, characterization and setting. However, tropes that seemed fresh in the series debut are now tics in the third. Also, you need to understand that what you're getting is actually a paranormal mystery. If you don't, you're likely to be very surprised, perhaps not in a good way. Three stars.Read the full review here.
Incriminating Evidence by Sheldon Siegelhttps://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I gave it 4 stars out of 5.
An interesting thing about the above book review. It was accepted by GR, but rejected by Amazon, due a single profane word, quoted from the book. Amazon now owns GR.
The Washing Machine
throws you into the deep end of the very broad and deep subject of money laundering. It'll download a lot of information that was au courant a decade ago, but is now dated as the state of the art has marched on. As long as that works for you, you already have some acquaintance with the subject, and you don't mind reading a 280-page feature article from a serious newspaper, give it a try. Three stars for the intel, two for the prose, which doesn't add up to five.Read the full review here.
Just finished The Prague Papers by Nik Morton. A really entertaining cold war romp - with an interesting twist. it's a psi/spy story...Full review here:-
https://murdermayhemandmore.wordpress...
Lexicon: A Novel
starts out promising a breakneck plunge into a pool of weird and ends up as a standard-issue saving-the-world thriller. There's not enough fantasy to satisfy fans of that genre, but perhaps too much for people who aren't. In the end, it stays too tightly tethered to soar. Three stars.Read the full review here.
Just reviewed Splinter the Silence, the latest Jordan and Hill novel from Val McDermid - and gave it 5*! https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I just completed Final Claim by D.B. Woodling and gave it four stars (with an explanation). I really enjoyed it and may reevaluate the rating once I reread it.https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Just finished Recalled to death
by Priscilla Masters. 4* for this intriguing reasonably short read. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Golden PeacockMy review, 4/5
Thanks to the author, Lauren B. Grossman, who sent me this autographed copy of her excellent book. It was a Goodreads giveaway. I enjoyed reading it and give it a solid 4 stars out of 5.
A successful author, Rainee Allen, has promised a book to her agent after receiving an advance. But she has writer's block and spends time cleaning out a drawer where she finds a identification/passport souvenir of a Holocaust survivor, Jana Lutken. She decides to find this survivor and write a book about her. She does find her, but the woman has Alzheimer's and remembers very little. Rainee continues to see her and little by little draws out some of her memories.
The book has 2 threads which join about 2/3rds of the way in. The first thread is the present day and second is Jana's memories told in flashbacks. Rainee realizes that Jana may have seen someone who reminds her of her past. This leads Rainee into a shadowy, dangerous world of Nazi hunters and sympathizers. I did not expect the surprise ending. This book held my interest with believable characters and a good plot. I read it in 2 days, finding it hard to put down.
The Perfectionist by Simon Duke is out today, and I wrote a honking huge review of it - link below.In short, it's an intriguing mix of investigative procedural and road trip, wrapped around a tale of personal redemption, and given a chilling menace by a calculating, appallingly accomplished serial killer.
Not a flawless novel by any stretch - this is a relatively 'young' author, self-pubbed and only his second novel - but with a very clever breadcrumb trail of clues and some nifty misdirection and twists...
https://murdermayhemandmore.wordpress...
I just finished a very interesting and thought provoking book. It's fiction based on true facts. The book is Neccessary Lies by Diane Chamberlain. It's set in the early 1960 on a tobacco plantation based mainly on the lives of a very poor family of workers living there and what the Dept of Welfare felt they had the right to do. It also centers around the newest case worker and what she feels she should and must do for those in her charge. It's thought provoking in several scences not only pertaining to her charges but also about her own private life. Worth reading.
One of my favorite authors is Tess Gerritsen. Her newest book isPlaying withFire. In the beginning it seems the book is going to focus on the supernatural. Then it takes a turn and you begin to find what the real FIRE actually is. I was somewhat surprised by the turn and that's what keeps you wanting more.
Another great book by her is Harvest and alsoThe Bone Garden. Both worth of checking out.
The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World
presents a problem in rating. Do I give it four stars for its content (a panoramic rundown of a dozen interesting, recent art-based frauds)? Do I give it three stars for the bloodless prose that turns what should be fascinating stories into feature newspaper articles? Aw, screw it -- three stars, and a hope for a literary co-author next time.Read the full review here.
Just read: Arab JazzTwo police detectives investigate an apparent hate crime in a rundown Paris neighborhood filled with restless young men and women, all potential prey to the users and abusers who lure them in with holy words and pretty blue pills called Godzwill.
The prose whirls and rambles and deftly captures the life of the damaged young Parisian Muslim who is suspected of murdering the young woman he might have loved, if only. Huddled in his book cave, Ahmed ventures out only to replenish his supply of the pulp thrillers he buys by the kilo (literally): "Connelly, Cornwell, Coben. . . . He gets his fix from the second-hand bookshop on rue Petit, a tiny store from a different age that has miraculously survived between the Lubavitch school complex, the Salafist prayer room and the evangelical church."
Meanwhile, a half-world away, a broken young woman defies her Jehovah’s Witness upbringing and sneaks away to celebrate her twenty-eighth birthday with a Hasidic Jew in a Bob Marley t-shirt.
Arab Jazz, from the massive Watchtower Headquarters at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge to a neighborhood in Paris where everyone is just “trying to create some breathing space between their money difficulties and the oppressive religious leaders,” is both sprawling in scope and precise in attention to detail. Brilliantly translated from the original French bestseller, Arab Jazz is a world away.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Another one: Saving AnnaSaving Anna is an unusual police procedural. Jake Talbot, a British police detective, has a vague assignment; “to be in the vicinity and observe” a right-to-die cult obsessed with a healing purple light. Jake’s sister Anna, catatonic since the catastrophic loss of their parents, is among those being targeted by the cult.
His chain of command is muddled, he’s working under both Police Superintendent Bailey and the enigmatic Dr. Weissman of the Ministry of Defence. He is ordered to persuade Frankie Hayward, inventor of an astral projection device, to accompany him to rural Dorset, despite his civilian status and the recent loss of his wife.
Very atmospheric what with hedgerows, pubs and pints, and slang thicker than Devon cream on a crumpet. Not sure how many fags were smoked or dog ends crushed underfoot, but thank goodness for the occasional wad of nicotine gum.
The friendship which develops between Jake and Frankie, a brilliant young man with Asperger’s syndrome, is poignant and bridges the (to me) inexplicable plot developments. As this is the second book in a series, it's difficult to know if the several gaps in the story were residual or yet to be explained in book three. Begin with Toni Allen’s “Visiting Lilly” if you enjoy character-driven mysteries with a dash of the supernatural.
I received this book in exchange for an honest review.
Finished The Never-Open Desert Diner --
. The synopsis hooked me but the book failed to hold on. My Review
A Snow Ball In Hell
is a fun, twisty, profane, hyper-attitudinal Tartan Noir story that will keep you well-entertained while not hiding the fact that the author's messing with you throughout. If you've ever thrown things at your TV during X Factor, you'll love the premise. Just put your disbelief in a locked closet while you're reading and revel in the knowledge that this novel could never be set in Oslo. Four strong stars.Read the full review here.
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s
The Sympathizer
is a mordant, discursive recounting of the South Vietnamese exile experience from the fall of Saigon to the early Reagan years.While the viewpoint is fresh and the prose is often affecting, the author tends to digress whenever a plot line gets going, often killing whatever momentum the narrative works up. Also, the title character's highly accommodating worldview, while useful for a double agent, leaves him seeming to have no firm convictions; after 384 pages with him, readers end up knowing as little about the character’s core than they do at the beginning. Three stars.
Since I reviewed this book for Criminal Element, I can't copy it all here. However, you can read the entire review -- and a bunch of other good stuff -- here.
Thomas wrote: "I received this book free through the GoodReads First Reads program. I really enjoyed this book and give it 4 and..."thomas, i tried to use gr search devices to no avail. do you have a link to the 'GoodReads First Reads program?'
thanks in advance
The Flicker Meni'm promoting this, a high-concept, more or less sciFi novel that i consider fascinating. the ideas presented are too complex--and that complexity doesn't matter. the story surrounding the ideas, and the characters involved, especially how the characters respond to the impossible, kept me intrigued throughout 90% of the book.
here is my amazon review:
i could write 5 separate reviews for The Flicker Men, each coming from a different angle. all of them would avow that the book is great. i‘ve read several of the reviews attached to it, but among those i‘ve read, this gleeful entry is my favorite: “i didn't understand this book at all ... but i still really liked it.” the reviewer is right. we don't need to understand what are unquestionably some of the most challenging concepts humanity has yet discovered, developed, and feared, just to enjoy the flow of ideas, situations and characters. A NOBLE EFFORT, WONDERFULLY FULFILLED. critically, mr. kosmatka shows a ‘quantum leap’ (ugh!) of maturity here relative to his efforts in "prophet of bones." sublimely, kosmatka has the potential for further growth still that will, i'm sure, further scald our senses and leave us whimpering under the lashes of intellectual truth.
but expect more than intellectual over-stimulation (i haven't slept in nearly a fortnight). expect some beautiful renderings of who we are, as kosmatka glibly winks at his readers as he describes us to ourselves—while letting us pretend these are only characters in a book. (wink, wink.) consider just one sapphire he tosses into the morass when he describes his main character's depression. "there are days when i feel everything is an imposition—eating, speaking, walking." okay, okay, i'm bleeding now! stop it, kosmatka, stop it! or this: "i thought of the gun, and its name rose up—panacea." okay! okay! my liver's melting!
before i heap more richly deserved praise on kosmatka’s masterpiece, i'll mention that i wish a more careful editor had had a go at his sublime novel before he published. he has some preternaturally clumsy paragraphs, some slow parts, and some misunderstandings of how sentences work that could be eliminated from his future work, given some minor enlightening by an alternative editor. but his less-than-professional editing is a minor annoyance; no more than that.
i‘m here to praise caesar, not to bury him in trifles, so the rest of this review is more or less repetitions of the delight I felt while I read the novel and since. read on or not, as you wish.
the double-slot experiment at the heart of the book confounds everyone, but no other writer has conveyed the depth of wonder it creates, the depth of trouble it mandates, nearly as well as has kosmatka. his concise and exemplary rendering of what it means and how that meaning changes us, is as spiritual as it is intellectual as it is frightening. the glue of the universe, as i had discovered it, quickly disintegrated; became unworkable. that was his impact on me. i‘ve read erudite chapters on the double-slot experiment in excellent books that succeeded in telling me everything about it, but failed to help me understand anything about it. kosmatka succeeds in conveying that which other exceedingly bright, exceedingly educated writers are no more aware of than i was. Those writers expertly exposed the what; kosmatka elegantly exposed the why.
consider just this small gleaning from The Flicker Men, an exchange between the knowledgeable main character and his virgin companion:
“[his research partner] opened the slot and pulled out the screen. And [the main character] saw it. On his face. The pain of believing something that can’t be true. “An interference pattern,” he said. “How could that be?”
“It’s called retro-causality.” [the main character replied.] “By erasing the results after the experiment was run, I caused the particle pattern to never have occurred in the first place.”
yeah, that.
erase its results, and the experiment never took place.
out of context, i cannot convey the potency of this scene… but The Flicker Men does. read it. explore the edges. explore yourself.
there are many similar giggle-points where the voluptuousness of reality, the radiant beauty of what we can perceive but not fully grasp becomes, in the constructions of kosmatka, nearly attainable.
this review has not done justice for kosmatka’s work. Only reading it can.
The Flicker Men makes me want to eMail God, just to tell God about this book! i'm certain God would get all the jokes, and if we can get god laughing hard enough, maybe all the pain and hate and insanity in human life would ebb, would, like the reality perceived before the double-slot experiment, disintegrate, would become unworkable, would manifest the underlying, frightening beauty just beyond our loving fingertips.
F. Stephen wrote: "Thomas wrote: "I received this book free through the GoodReads First Reads program. I really enjoyed this book and give it 4 and..."thomas, i tried to use gr search devices to no avail. do you ha..."
It is actually the Goodreads giveaway program. Go to Browse at the top of the screen and click on Giveaways. They ask that you create a "first reads" shelf and put it at the top of your shelves.
F. Stephen wrote: "thank you!"You're Welcome.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie SocietyI thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is written in a series of letters, between an author and various Guernsey Island residents. The letters reveal what it was like for the island residents to be occupied by the Germans during WWII. I liked the authors cure for hiccups: "you pinch your nose shut with two thumbs, and plug up both ears with your fingers, while a friend pours water down your throat without let."
Love and Fear: A Gulliver Dowd MysteryI enjoyed reading this book. It was an easy read--only 154 pages. I received this free book from Orca Book Publishers through LibraryThing in return for an honest review. Gulliver Dowd is an unusual private eye. He is only 4 feet tall. His short size can be an advantage, because people are not threatened by him. He can, however, take on men much bigger than himself without a problem.
He is hired by a mob enforcer to find the daughter of the enforcer's boss. Gulliver knows and respects both men, but does not like either of them. They know something about Gulliver's sister's murder.
Gulliver is very good at what he does. How he solves this case leads to a satisfying ending. This book is a solid 4 out 5 stars.
Lilac GirlsI enjoyed reading this book. I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher, Random House , for sending me this ebook in return for an honest review. This book follows three women at the start of WWII in 1939. The first is Caroline Ferriday, an American socialite working in the French consulate in New York city. The second is Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager who is arrested after caught working as a courier for the Polish underground. She is sent to Ravensbruck, a women's concentration camp. The third is a new doctor, Herta Oberhauser. She is unable to find work as a doctor in 1939 Germany, where women doctors are rare. She answers a newspaper ad for a position as a camp doctor at a "re-education" camp at Ravensbruck.
The book follows these 3 women until about 1960. Once I was halfway through the book, I found it hard to put down, reading 50 to 100 pages a day, because I wanted to see what happened in the lives of these 3 women.
The author has an explanatory note at the end of the book. Several of the characters, including Caroline and Herta, were actual people. Others were based on actual people, specifically, "the Rabbit women," a group of Polish women who underwent gruesome medical experiments at Ravensbruck.
Much of this story is very depressing. The horrors of medical experiments at Ravensbruck are graphically described. There is a humorous line when Caroline describes her father's color blindness: "One morning at breakfast, he appeared in a yellow jacket, burnt orange trousers, and red socks."
This book is a solid 4 out of 5 stars.
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Read the full review here.