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JANUARY - FEBRUARY REVIEWS
HARD
TIME Little Daniel Page was picked up from school by someone who looked almost exactly like his mother. He's been missing for days, and there haven't been any ransom demands. As you can imagine, the parents are frantic to find him. The more time that passes, the more they disintegrate. Although Bev suspects that they are hiding something, the investigation is pretty much at a dead end until a demand is finally made. Meanwhile, Bev has gone through a few partners who have difficulty with her bristly personality. Finally, she meets her match in DS Mac Tyler, who doesn't hesitate to confront Bev when she needs it. At the same time, Bev's superior officer, Superintendent Byford, is dealing with a puzzling case of his own. It seems that someone is targeting a group of police officers who were involved in a hit-and-run incident many years before. Nobody but Byford is aware of the link between the various deaths of this group of men; it's likely that he will be targeted as well, since he was a part of the incident. There is an attraction between Bev and Byford; it's interesting to see how this relationship develops both on and off the job. I found HARD
TIME to be a first-rate book. The
procedural aspects of the various investigations in the department were very
realistically portrayed. There were
three major inquiries that were covered in the narrative; the I really liked the various characters in the book, most especially Bev Morriss and Mac Tyler. As Bev's brittle façade begins to crack, you can see the proud and passionate woman that she had once been. She'll always be "Morriss the Mouth," but her usual self has fewer sharp edges than her damaged version. I did have a bit of difficulty with the slang used in the book. It wasn't incomprehensible but occasionally made me stop to figure out what was meant. I liked the author's approach and the lead character so much that I have ordered the first 3 books in this series. I guess you could say I put my money where my mouth is!
BLOOD
OF THE WICKED
When Bishop Dom Felipe is murdered at
the consecration of a new church in the small town of BLOOD OF THE WICKED provides an eye-opening look at the inner workings of a place that has vastly different views of justice than in the Western world. There are no heroes in this book. Even Silva often goes outside the law to exact revenge or administer his own brand of justice. It's natural to expect that a man in his position would have more ethics than he exhibits. He tends to handle problems by asking the wronged to turn their backs while he does things on his own terms. Although the book was well written and thought-provoking, the unceasing brutality and general lack of integrity of the characters made it impossible for me to like. It's heartbreaking to see the extremes of poverty that exist, but even more so to see how little life is valued. The horrific violence and cruel inhumanity of many of the characters were just too much for me to take. Gage is married to a Brazilian woman and spends part of the year there. Given that, it would seem that his depiction of the various economic and political problems is pretty much on target. THE
SINNER
Obviously, there is huge damage to Cora's psyche from living such a psychological nightmare. As she is interviewed by the authorities, she consistently lies about her past. She is the ultimate unreliable narrator; it's almost impossible to ferret out the truth based on her stories. However, despite herself, she does manage to weave in tidbits of reality. It's only after many, many interviews that Grovian feels that the truth has been revealed. The book has a very repetitive quality
to it, in that Cora often tells the same story but with slightly different
details. That slowed the pacing
enormously. The reader begins to
feel just as frustrated by Cora as Grovian must have been.
There were times when I just wanted to skim past the latest iteration of
the tale. I'm glad that I didn't,
because the ultimate revelation about That being said, I didn't feel that THE
SINNER was a best seller in its native WHAT
NEVER HAPPENS Holt's books feature Adam Stubo, a
police investigator, and his wife, Johanne Vik, who is a renowned profiler who
learned her trade from the FBI in In the meantime, there are a series of
murders that are terrifying As a fan of Scandinavian crime fiction and having an interest in the Norwegian way of life, I really wanted to like WHAT NEVER HAPPENS. However, I never connected with the book intellectually or emotionally. Part of the problem was that I didn't like the two lead characters and was never pulled into an empathetic relationship with them. Johanne was almost pathologically paranoid about her family's safety even before the crimes were revealed; that called into question her competence as a mother, person and professional. On the other hand, Adam, who asked for Johanne's help, was constantly putting her down and totally unwilling to listen to her, even when she was trying to provide information about the crime. I wanted to shake him! Although they seemed to be solidly together, their relationship never felt loving to me. What was interesting was to see these
kinds of gruesome crimes occurring in a land where such things never happen.
There is constant puzzlement over the fact that there could be a serial
killer like this in Quite surprisingly, what saved this book for me was the resolution. What happened as far as the brains behind the crimes was concerned was most unusual and defied expectations. I can't tell you how many times I've had a good book ruined by a bad ending. In WHAT NEVER HAPPENS, the opposite occurred — a book that I wasn't enjoying very much was brought up in my estimation by the denouement. I have to give credit to Holt for coming up with such a satisfying conclusion, even if the book overall didn't work for me. NOVEMBER - DECEMBER REVIEWS BROTHER'S
KEEPER Vince
Maguire is an expatriate American journalist who is living in After
putting a few clues together, Vince makes his way to northern Owad
excels at building suspense, and the reader is never certain what the truth is.
As much as you'd like to believe otherwise, it looks highly likely that
Teddy has betrayed his brother. Relying
on his skills developed through years of investigative reporting, Vince uncovers
the truth, with his heart being broken more than once.
I enjoyed
Owad's writing style. He has a deft
hand with dialogue, and the narrative progressed at a good pace.
The descriptions of life in - Maddy Van Hertbruggen CROSSING
THE DARK Mona's
entire focus in life becomes nurturing her daughter and trying to help her move
on. The reality is that Perdita has
no chance of becoming the carefree young girl that she once was.
Although she goes to therapy, she is never able to return to a semblance
of a normal life. As her daughter
falls into a pit of despair and depression, Mona herself is going off the rails.
She's begun to pick up men for one night stands and moves towards
prostituting herself. At the same
time, she harbors dangerous feelings towards Cesar, especially when it seems
that the justice system isn't going to make him pay for what he did.
In the meantime, she is jeopardizing her career and future.
Her partner, Nick, tries to keep things together, but the task is more
than any one person can accomplish. Ordinarily,
I like psychological thrillers, but I really did not care for CROSSING
THE DARK. There wasn't one
character who had any noble traits. All
the relationships were deeply flawed. There
was an inappropriate and unprofessional bond between Nick and Mona; the father
was a real bastard and I could barely stand to read anything about him.
Too much time was spent on Mona soothing her daughter and fighting with
her ex-husband. Even
though it appeared that Mona was operating out of love and concern for Perdita
at the expense of everything else, it didn't seem very caring for the two of
them to continue living at Les's house, no matter how difficult for Mona to
manage a place of her own. For her
daughter's mental health, she should have removed her from the psychological
abuse that he scattered with every word. And
she does nothing about the fact that Les and Perdita are sitting around getting
drunk together. Even though she
sought therapy for Perdita, the counselor never provided her with the tools that
she needed to be able to move on with her life.
There was no way for it to end but badly. I was
really turned off by Mona's deviant sexual behavior, but the nail in the coffin
for me was how she cared for her daughter. Certainly
this family faced a completely horrible situation, but there was no grace in how
the tragedy was handled.
HOUSTON
HOMICIDE HOUSTON
HOMICIDE is a
historical police procedural set in During
the course of the investigation, Steve (and I never cottoned to that name,
always thinking of him as Ted!) pulls in an outside resource, an old cohort and
renowned private investigator, 80-year-old Clive Watson.
Clive is extremely well connected and able to turn up information that is
totally unavailable to Steve. Unfortunately,
he is mourning his wife and has a tendency to dwell on that to the exclusion of
all else. There's
only so much romantic angst that I can tolerate.
What with Steve in a tailspin because of his wife leaving him and Clive
wallowing in grief over the death of his spouse throughout most of the book, it
was a double whammy. These threads
drained the narrative of their energy and made the characters seem pitiable, not
exactly what you want in a detective or PI.
Clive had the potential to be a quirky and interesting individual, but he
never came to life. Overall,
the characters didn't have much depth and I never connected to any of them.
The interactions between the characters didn't ring true, most
particularly in the relationship of Steve and his boss and Steve and his wife.
The one area where the book excelled was in its depiction of the setting.
You could easily believe that you were sitting in I was
disappointed in HOUSTON HOMICIDE.
It's difficult in a collaboration to determine exactly what each person
contributed. I was expecting a more
"Crider-like” book, with his trademark warm characters and gentle humor,
and that was totally missing. I
found some of the writing to be irritating, such as the constant references to
people smoking. They never smoked
cigarettes; they smoked Winstons or Maddy Van Hertbruggen is what
we call a Mystery Addict. E-mail Maddy : maddyvh @ tx.
rr. com
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