I keep waiting for the real Grisham—the author of “The Firm” and “A Time to Kill”—to return, but alas, it looks like I’ll have to keep waiting. Grey Mountain has a somewhat promising beginning, and although main protagonist Samantha is a bore from beginning to end, the plot has potential even if the most interesting character in the book gets killed off much too soon. And while I have total sympathy with Grisham’s theme in this book, the constant preaching and repetition put my teeth […]
Tattooed corpses and Muslim fundamentalists prove a heady mix in Thailand
Bangkok detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep of the Royal Thai Police returns in another dramatic, action-packed, and nearly hallucinogenic plot involving tattoo artists, mutilated corpses, golden-hearted whores, hard-bitten police captains, Muslim fundamentalists, and the CIA—all of this against the backdrop of an impoverished nation dependent on drugs and the sex trade for survival and a Buddha-worshipping cop who doesn’t hesitate to bend the rules when necessity and/or his conscience dictates. A strangely brilliant and obsessive CIA operative named Mitch Turner is found murdered in the bed […]
A French mystery that dabbles in immigration issues and murder
Intrepid Parisian detective Aimee Leduc is back with another murder to solve, and it takes place in Belleville, a heavily Arab neighborhood rife with tension, mystery, violence and pathos. Leduc has been asked by the sister of her best friend to help her. The sister is married to a government minister and Aimee had actually attended their wedding several years earlier. Now, the sister suspects her husband of straying and wants Aimee to intervene. But when Aimee, a software specialist, reluctantly agrees to meet Anais […]
King Kong meets Homer in a less than successful adventure
Although this is not their first “Gideon Crew” novel, it is the first I have read and while it was entertaining, it was also a “lightweight.” These authors’ “Pendergast” series has lots of fantastical plots, and yet the protagonist is such a weirdly compelling character with such a mysterious backstory, the villains so devious, the plots so complex, and the locations so atmospheric as to just pull you along for the whole ride. The Lost Island has a fun opening gambit, but a literary plotline […]
Baldacci finally gives us a Puller worth respecting
I’ve done what I had promised myself I wouldn’t do again, which is to read another Baldacci novel about Jack Reacher knock-off John Puller. I hated the first Puller novel and disliked the second. And so I was pleasantly surprised that Baldacci brought his “Camel Club” game to this latest novel, a political thriller with high stakes, fascinating characters and a surprisingly subdued and more human Puller revealing less of the super-hero and more of the grit and angst of a real person. Baldacci, a […]
Nazi Hunting in High Places
This debut novel by author Cara Black centers around her heroine Aimee Leduc, a French female private eye who gets mixed up with violent neo-Nazi skinheads, Jewish survivors of the holocaust, and a secret Nazi organization which is staging a comeback and whose tentacles reach into the highest offices in Europe. The author’s scope is ambitious, her history fascinating, her writing is evocative, and I give her extra kudos for creating a female PI when the genre is so male-centric. But her novel’s biggest weakness, […]
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