Tag: crime fiction

Day 133: Without Fail

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for Without FailI heard from several sources that Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books are good, so I tried one. Without Fail is more of an action novel than I would usually read, but it is a page turner. Child’s protagonist is an ex-military policeman.

Jack Reacher is approached by Secret Service agent Froelich, who used to date Jack’s dead brother, because she is in charge of guarding the vice president elect. The Secret Service has received threats that somehow arrived inside the agency, which is very worrisome. Froelich wants to hire Reacher to do an audit of their security procedures.

When the threats escalate to violence, the Secret Service hires Jack to help find the perpetrators. In the meantime, Jack gets romantically involved with Froelich.

The book is well written and very fast moving. If you want a little light summer reading that will keep you pinned to the page, I recommend a Jack Reacher thriller.

Day 132: Life Sentences

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for Life SentencesThis is really my posting for Monday, because I’m traveling and will be without wifi tomorrow.

In Life Sentences, Cassandra, the author of two successful memoirs and a novel that was less successful, is looking for ideas for her next book. She attended a diverse middle school in Baltimore where her friends were all African-American while she is Anglo. In looking for a subject for her next book,  she learns that Calliope Jenkins, who was a quiet satellite to Cassandra’s group in middle school, later served seven years in jail, convicted of murdering her own son.

Cassandra decides to write her book about herself and her middle school friends and how their lives turned out, focusing especially on Calliope. However, she is surprised to find a cold reception from her old friends. As Cassandra investigates the past of all the girls, she begins to learn that things were not as she remembers or believed.

Laura Lippman’s novel kept my interest and was well written. I would rate it as better than average without being terrific.

Day 128: Echoes from the Dead

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for Echoes from the DeadEchoes from the Dead is another terrific book by Johan Theorin. It is his first book, and reading it explained a few minor points about The Darkest Room for me.

Julia’s young son Jens disappeared on the island of Öland in 1972, but her father just received a package containing the little boy’s sandal. After Julia’s father takes his friends Ernst and John along to look into what happened to her son, Ernst is found dead.

For years the island’s inhabitants have heard rumors of the return of Nils Kant, a notorious murderer who disappeared just after World War II. We readers know that these two stories are connected, but not how.  Although we also know who took Jens, we don’t understand what really happened to him until the very end of the book.

Julia returns to Oland to try to figure out what happened to Jens, if she can. After years of depression, she begins to take more of an interest in life and maybe to fall in love with Lennart, the island policeman.

This novel is not as atmospheric as The Darkest Room, but it is full of characters that you begin to know. The plot is complex, interleaved with the story of what actually happened to Nils Kant back in the past.

Day 127: Hush

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for HushI have read a few Kate White mysteries, but this one was disappointing. The heroine of Hush, Lake Warren, is a shallow, stupid woman who is so afraid she will lose her children in a custody battle that she lies to everyone all the way through the book, even when it doesn’t seem necessary. She is so stupid that even though she has been told to be careful about her behavior while custody is in question, she can’t resist having a one-night stand with a doctor she’s been flirting with at work. Afterwards, she falls asleep on his terrace, only to return to find he’s been murdered.

Her fears about drawing attention to herself extend to the point of ridiculousness. She doesn’t report that her cat was drugged and all its hair shaved off, that she has been receiving sinister calls, or that a man attacked her with a knife. Even when she finally finds someone she can trust, she never tells him what is really going on.

In the course of investigating the murder herself, she uncovers corruption at the doctor’s fertility clinic. Even an idiot would be about five steps ahead of her all the way. I used to enjoy the TV series “Sex and the City,” but this book reminds me of that sort of vapidity that often appears in chick lit, without the great script. A predictable, even annoying novel.

Day 124: Whose Body?

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for Whose BodyIt has been years since I read Whose Body? by the British writer from the Golden Age of Mysteries, Dorothy L. Sayers. Unfortunately, as soon as I saw the murderer’s name, I remembered who did it, so I was not able to judge how difficult it was to guess.

Mr. Thipps finds an unidentified body in his bathtub wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez. The body bears a resemblance to a missing financier, but it is not him. Who is the dead man and how did the body get into the tub? Where is the missing financier? Is this one case or two? Of course, the police suspect Mr. Thipps. After Mr. Thipps’s mother asks him to help, Lord Peter Wimsey gets interested in the case and decides to find the answer to these questions in his inimitable way.

As always, Sayers is fine in characterization, much better than many of her Golden Age peers. Lord Peter is his usual apparently frivolous self. He and his man Bunter are fun. Lord Peter’s mother, the Dowager Duchess, is adorably ditzy. The plot is clever. However, as with many early mystery novels, it is overcomplicated and very unlikely. For people who haven’t read any Lord Peter books, I recommend Murder Must Advertise as a better starting place.

As a total side note, the cover I’m showing is not the one for the book I read, but is just one I found on Amazon. It occurs to me, why would they show the body of a woman when the victim is a man? This disconnect in publishing is always a mystery to me. One peek at the first few pages would have told the artist the sex of the body.

Day 121: Gone Girl

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for Gone GirlBest Book of the Week!

A lot of people are reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, and no wonder! Usually, I would wait awhile to present another Flynn book after just having reviewed one last week, but I couldn’t wait to do this one! If you like dark, twisted plots, and great psychological thrillers with a smidgen of evil humor, this is the book for you.

Nick and Amy Dunne are having some marriage problems. When they met, they were both cool young Manhattanites. He was a magazine journalist and she a quiz writer and the model for a series of Amazing Amy children’s books written by her psychologist parents. Five years later, they have both lost their jobs and moved to a dying small town in Missouri to help his mother take care of his ailing father. With the rest of Amy’s money, Nick has bought a bar to keep himself and his twin sister Go busy. Their relationship has been deteriorating ever since.

On their fifth wedding anniversary, Amy disappears, leaving evidence of violence. Of course, Nick is the police’s prime suspect, and it doesn’t help that he hasn’t been altogether truthful with them. The public, galvanized by the Amazing Amy connection, almost immediately turns against him. The investigation turns up money problems and worse. Secrets are flushed out.

Most of the first part of the novel is narrated alternately by Nick and by diary entries written by Amy. Amy seems disingenuous and appealing, almost giddy, reminding me sometimes of Bridget Jones. Nick commits many lies of omission. Here’s a hint. Both Nick and Amy are liars.

Just when we think we know what’s next, the plot twists. The book is completely engrossing and very darkly funny, suspenseful and chilling. Think psychopath, but guessing who that person may be is just one of the book’s pleasures. In the reviews, I’ve seen several comparisons to Patricia Highsmith, and I think that’s about right.

Day 115: Dark Places

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for Dark PlacesHappy Independence Day!

I just got a notice from Amazon that the latest Gillian Flynn book is finally shipping, so in celebration, I thought I’d post a review of a previous Flynn book. Gillian Flynn writes great, dark mysteries about women who have been severely damaged.

In Dark Places, Libby Day is the only surviving victim of a famous crime. When she was seven years old, her entire family was murdered, supposedly by her 15-year-old brother Ben. She survived by climbing out the bedroom window and hiding in the snow.

As an adult, she has been subsisting on the fringes of society, supported by donations made after the crime, sales of family memorabilia, and money from a book deal. But now she is almost completely broke and embittered, with no friends and her only relative serving a life sentence in prison. Although she is an unlikable character, a liar and manipulator, you somehow end up completely identifying with her.

The bizarre Kill Club contacts her. They are a group of amateur true crime buffs, and they want to hire her to investigate the murders. Most of them believe that the seven-year-old Libby lied in her testimony years ago and that Ben was wrongly convicted.

The true story of the murder is told partially in flashbacks, from the points of view of Libby’s mother and her brother Ben. As usual with Flynn, I found this book to be dark, enthralling, and perceptive.

Day 112: Fever of the Bone

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for Fever of the BloodVal McDermid is the author of an excellent series featuring Tony Hill, a troubled profiler. In Fever of the Bone, someone is luring teenagers over the Internet and murdering them.

Tony’s friend and colleague Inspector Carol Jordan’s new boss won’t allow her to employ Tony, so he goes off to Manchester to consult on a case. Later, two boys disappear in Bradfield. Neither Carol nor Tony know it, but they are both working on cases with the same killer.

Tony has also inherited some property from his father, whom he never met. He just wants to ignore the situation, but Carol thinks it’s important that he try to find out about his father.

As usual with a McDermid novel, the book introduces interesting characters and has an involving plot.

Day 108: The Cruel Stars of the Night

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for The Cruel Stars of the NightThe Cruel Stars of the Night is Kjell Eriksson’s second mystery featuring Ann Lindell but the first one I read. Although the series is labeled Ann Lindell mysteries, the novels actually feature an ensemble cast of characters and take awhile to develop the personalities of the team in the Uppsala Violent Crime Division.

The chapters in this novel alternate between the investigations of the Violent Crime Division into suspicious incidents involving old men and the thoughts and experiences of Laura Hindersten, whose father is missing. After awhile, having information not available to the investigators, you realize how the two narrations are linked, but the team takes longer to connect the dots.

One of the two suspicious deaths of elderly men is that of Petrus Blomgren. He wrote a suicide note, but he was murdered before he could kill himself. The police are sure that Laura Hindersten’s father, a professor and Petrarch scholar, will turn up, but she is convinced that something horrible has happened to him.

The novel makes for an interesting enough story, although the only fully developed character is that of the serial killer. I am interested in reading more, though, and getting to know Lindell and her coworkers Sammy Nilsson, Allan Fredericksson, and Stig Franklin, better.

Day 98: The Poison Tree

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for The Poison TreeWhat starts out as a seemingly ordinary novel about a young woman who makes a fascinating, exotic new friend builds slowly to the macabre in The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly. This is not a traditional mystery, but more the foreboding story of how several characters’ lives are changed irrevocably by the incidents of a careless summer in 1993.

In a story that begins ten years before the novel’s present, Karen Clarke is a naive but high-achieving linguistics student who is soon to graduate from a college in London. Her academic success has more to do with a natural ability to learn languages than application, and she finds herself unable to decide what to do with her life. After being very focused for years, she is inclined to let her near-term future be decided by fate.

One afternoon near the end of the term she meets the flamboyant, charismatic Biba Capel and is immediately captivated by her and drawn into her circle. Biba lives in a sprawling, ramshackle house with her brother Rex and other assorted people, and they spend most of their time partying.

The novel’s present day begins with Karen picking up her husband, Rex Capel, from prison, where he has served 10 years for murder. With her is their ten-year-old daughter Alice. Karen has been supporting her small family, economically and emotionally, for years, and knows she must continue to do so, as Rex will find it difficult to get work. She is very protective of Rex and Alice and afraid their new life will be ruined if people learn about their past.

How Karen goes from the carefree life she adopts that summer—which she spends with a bunch of irresponsible young people partying all night and sleeping all day—to the fearful present involves the Capels’ tragic history. As she learns about this history and learns more about her friend, she is drawn into tragedy.

Well written and absorbing, the book slowly builds from normalcy to a sense of dread.