After Ski Weekend, this book was mostly a refreshing return to form. We open in Shadyside High with some kids arguing in a library. If it had just opened with some narration from a killer, I’d feel right at home. Jill, Andrea, and Diane are in the library avoiding studying when their friends Nick and Max arrive and manage to set a file folder on fire. Admittedly, that sounds like the kind of thing I’d have done in high school…if I somehow lost about 50 […]
A wonderfully bizarre and amusing thriller touching on everything from designer drugs to global mining companies, pirate radio stations, laundrette raves and even fox droppings.
Ned Beauman’s first two novels Boxer, Beetle and The Teleportation Accident were wonderfully wordy and esoteric highlights on the literary calendar. Strange, extremely well written and historically mind-bending, they were the sort of novels you’d find being passed around from friend to friend with an assertive plea to “read this weird book.” The Teleportation Accident cemented the love of critics and booksellers as it was longlisted for the 2012 Man Booker prize, and now he’s back and hopefully poised to make an impact on a wider audience with Glow. It’s a little […]
Lying *is* the job description.
I don’t often read thrillers, but I always enjoy David Ignatius’ writing, so I picked this one up at the suggestion of Mr. Luxury. Here’s the summary: There’s a new super-duper-secret CIA unit that is trying to buy peace with America’s enemies, specifically those in Pakistan. Young, intrepid Sophie Marx joins this super-secret unit because it gives her the chance to do spy things instead of just sit in an office in Virginia. Soon, unfortunately, their super-undercover operatives start showing up dead, and Sophie is […]
In the beginning was the word.
What makes a human? Is it bone, flesh, or muscle? The brain and central nervous system? Or is it the words we think, speak or put down on paper? Strange Bodies is an unusual thriller with a literary bent that verges on unsettling at times. Dr Nicholas Slopen has been dead for a year. So when he turns up at the door of an old girlfriend, looking and sounding different but otherwise identical, she doesn’t bat an eyelid. Perhaps it was a case of mistaken […]
Uneven story undermines new Pendergast thriller, White Fire
This is the 13th of the Preston & Child novels to feature the enigmatic, brilliant Special Agent Aloysius X.L. Pendergast and I think it’s time to give the man a well deserved break. Somewhere along the way, Preston & Child thrillers have become all about Pendergast to the detriment of the other characters in the series. After the harrowing and incredibly convoluted events of Two Graves, White Fire is a welcome break from the labyrinthine plotting that has plagued recent novels in the series. However […]
There are all kind of ghosts in this life, and this book has most of them.
Nothing about this is the way I thought it was going to be. I really, really liked it. I think the main reason I’m always so surprised when I enjoy Stephen King novels is that the very first book of his I ever read was Cell, which I didn’t like, and which I now know is considered to be one of his inferior offerings. This is an especially dumb mindset to have now as I’ve read quite a few since then and enjoyed all of them […]