I’ve just finished “The Stolen Sisters” by Louise Jensen. Three sisters are abducted when they are kids, and as the twentieth anniversary approaches their lives start to unravel. A decent enough story, though I’m never a big fan of stuff that jumps between timelines.
The Heavenly Table by Donald Ray Pollock
I swear this was written with a Coen Brothers film in mind. It is full of larger than life characters, such as the sanitation inspector with such an enormous penis that he can never have a sexual encounter because whenever he gets aroused the diversion of blood from his head causes him to lose consciousness!
The book follows the antics of three dirt brothers who in dirt poor Ohio in 1917 embark on a criminal rampage with hilarious ineptness.
It is a book not to be taken seriously. It has pathos and violence but made me laugh a lot. I hope the Coen Borthers do make it into a film - it will surely be a great hit.
I haven’t enjoyed a book this much for ages.
BTW - if you ever see it for sale second hand don’t be misled by the picture - the cover is made to look battered and torn, even on my pristine copy.
I’ve recently finished “Simply Lies” by David Baldacci. A former cop turned financial investigator is conned into first discovering a body, then trying to trace the secret fortune that the body has hidden prior to being murdered. A good story, I always enjoy his stuff.
Agreed - Baldacci is usually a good read.
I’ve just finished “April in Spain” by John Banville. A retired pathologist is on holiday with his wife when he sees a friend of his daughter, this friend had disappeared some years ago presumed dead. He sets out to try to find out whether it’s her, but in phoning his daughter to ask her whether it could be possible, he unwittingly forces the person she disappeared to get away from, to act.
It’s a strange book. The story itself is fine, if a little vague. It’s set in “an earlier time”, where for example the only way the daughter can get a photo to her father to try to confirm the missing girl’s identity is by air mail. I wasn’t expecting that, and I probably wouldn’t have read it if I had. It also uses some terminology that was common in, say, the 1960s that I wouldn’t have expected to see in print without the kind of “certain words and attitudes reflect those of the time” warning that you see when obscure TV channels show seventies sit-coms. The copyright date suggests it’s a very recent book, rather than a very old one that’s been re-printed. The language is very ornate in parts, and there’s the impression that a lot of prose isn’t really necessary. Again, I know books are full of that. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it, but I won’t be searching for any more.
I’ve just read “The Secret” by Lee Child and Andrew Child. This is the latest (I think) Jack Reacher book, and it’s set in history when Reacher is still in the army. Someone is killing off scientists who were involved in a possibly shady project from the sixties, and Reacher is part of a team put together to find out who, and stop them. I enjoyed it, decent enough story, sometimes the writing is a bit strange. In that it uses. A lot. Of short sentences. But overall, worth reading.
I’ve just finished “Virals” by Kathy Reichs. A group of teenagers rescue a puppy from a research lab and end up getting infected by something that gives them some enhanced vision and hearing. This comes in handy as they try to solve the mystery of a woman that went missing decades previously.
It’s a decent enough story, but I expect it’s aimed at young adults rather than someone of my age. I don’t recall where I got the book from, I probably presumed that it featured Reichs’ usual character Tempe Brennan, and indeed one of the characters in this is her niece.
I’ve just finished “Private Sydney” by James Patterson and Kathryn Fox. “Private” is an international private investigation firm, and the Sydney office have to search for a missing businessman and a kidnapped baby.
It’s a decent enough story, nothing earth-shattering but I’ve got another in the series on my pile and this one hasn’t put me off reading it.
I’ve just read “The Coffin Maker’s Garden” by Stuart Macbride. Coastal erosion leads to a group of houses starting to fall into the sea, which uncovers human remains in a garden, and a torture chamber and evidence of many victims in the basement of the house it belongs to. Ash Henderson has to try to find the previous owner of the house who appears to still be killing, while also helping to find someoe who is abducting and murdering kids. A good book, I really enjoyed the humour in it. I’ve read a lot by this author and enjoyed them all, in fact I’ve started another one now.
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I’ve just read another Stuart Macbride book, this time “The Dead of Winter”. Two police officers are tasked with taking a former prisoner to a village in Scotland which is where certain types of prisoner are taken to live when they are released, if they won’t be safe in the community. Once they reach the village they are snowed in, and then a resident is murdered and things escalate from there. A good read, once again I enjoyed the way this author writes.
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I’ve recently finished “Deadlock” by Quintin Jardine. Featuring former policeman Bob Skinner, it’s set in a time when Covid restrictions are starting to ease, neighbours are helping each other out but an increasing number of elderly people in Bob’s neighbourhood are dying. At first it looks like unfortunate coincidence, but then the police start to dig deeper.
A decent story as these always are, but I couldn’t help being a bit disappointed in the lack of story. The dying pensioners angle comes across as fairly minor compared to a few of the characters getting new jobs. Hopefully just a one-off as previous ones have been much more involved.
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I just finished “Recursion” by Blake Crouch. It was…interesting…and hard to explain.
It’s a sci-fi story which starts with a woman suffering from a mysterious disease called “False Memory Syndrome” (FMS) is on a roof looking to commit suicide. She can remember a whole other life than the one she knows is “real” - a different family, different life with a completely different person - who is real. But only as a shadow memory that conflicts with what they know to be their “real” memories. A police detective who is on his way home tries to talk her down, and when he fails but feels there’s more to the story, tries to investigate further and ends up getting dragged into a whole other adventure as the FMS is caused by a device which was created for noble reasons but had a much larger, more unbelievable capacity.
This story takes a real meta “what if” examination into reality and perception and memories and time. It takes common understanding on what life is and flips it sideways, reaching into ethics and human nature and science to create a unique storyline.
A bit long, and the ending was a little abrupt though appropriately open-ended. Makes you think about how people would really react in the situations encountered, and how good intentions can go south real quick.
An escape for sure but I think it’ll be a while before I delve into one of his other books.
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^ I vaguely remember reading that, too. Not my usual thing, but sometimes that’s good, either because it provides a whole new style to look out for, or because it reminds me of why I like my “usual thing”. I don’t recall my “review” being quite so clear.
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I’ve just finished “Road Closed” by Leigh Russell. A couple of burglars are breaking into homes when it starts to go wrong - first a homeowner dies when they are pushed down the staircase, and then a house explodes when the burglar inadvertently opens a gas tap as they leave. The police are fairly sure who did it but struggle to prove it while one of the burglars tries to eliminate witnesses. A decent enough story, I think it’s part of a series and it does tend to spend quite a lot of time dealing with one of the police officer’s personal life.
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Took me a while, I see, but I finished the next book (The Inspector Erlendur Series), Silence of the Grave. As good as the first one, if not better. Construction in a growing part of Reykjavík that once was all open hills reveals a shallow grave. Erlendur and his team suspect it might be a typical old missing person case - maybe someone who got lost in the snow and remained buried for years. But it’s more complicated than that. As Erlendur tries to keep his own family together, his investigation brings to light other painful family stories. Great read. The next one on the list - Voices.
It sounds like you’ve been reading some great books! “A Brush with Death” and “You Were Gone” seem like solid picks. I totally get the feeling of moving through your pile of random books and then diving into the ones you’ve been saving. John Grisham or James Oswald next—tough choice! Both have such unique styles, so I’m sure whichever you pick will be a good read. What’s your preference: legal thrillers or more of a crime/mystery vibe?
^ I don’t really have one - it’s down to the book itself. For example I really enjoy Michael Connelly books, and he writes the Harry Bosch series (crime / police) and the Lincoln Lawyer series (legal thriller), but the later books are starting to merge the two genres and character pools and the writing is so good that I can get through one very quickly. Then you have the “adventure” sort of thing, such as the Clive Cussler books, which can also be great. I’m generally not much of a fan of books set in the past, though for some reason I do enjoy most of the Wilbur Smith books which can go back hundreds of years.
The 6th Extintinction by James Rollins.
A remote military research station sends out a frantic distress call, ending with a chilling final command: Kill us all!
Pretty cool eh. A very entertaining reading about a biological entity that kill absolutely every thing and is spreading. Nothing can kill it.
But what it is interesting is at the end of the books the author give us what was truth and fiction in the book (Extremely interesting and scaring)
Highly recommend it
I’ve just finished reading a book written by an acquaintance of mine, “The Holyland Murders” by Tony Wiseman. I centres around the murders of ultra-orthodox Hasidim with a link to the Holocaust and the Treblinka concentration camp in Poland. I very much enjoyed the book, and learned a little about life in the Holy Land to boot.
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I’ve just finished “The Lost” by Simon Beckett. A police officer is contacted by a former friend to meet up, and when he arrives he finds his friend and some others murdered and is attacked. As he attempts to recover from the attack, more people start to die and he’s the main suspect, so he tries to figure out who’s behind it all. A good read, I enjoyed it.
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