|
|
|
JANUARY - FEBRUARY REVIEWS
TOUCHSTONE
U.
S. Bureau of Investigation (prior to it being called the FBI) agent Harris
Stuyvesant is in Throw
all these individuals together, chasing their various goals, and you have an
over-500-page historical thriller that is a spellbinding read. Author
King never encounters an estate, a room, vista, or character that she doesn’t
describe lovingly and in detail. It may not be lean, hard writing, but it is
elegant in its simplicity, and exceedingly well done. This lady can write. We
are tied into the times and wait expectantly as names like Baldwin, Churchill,
and MacDonald march across the landscape, striving to stave off the strike,
making history, while the lesser mortals work out their salvation with the
threat of a bomb set to explode hanging over the last desperate try at bringing
the sides together. If you like grand historical thrillers that cover a wide sweep of history, provide churning suspense, and never miss a step, you can’t do better that this. It is, too, in the end, a love story that no one with a heart can resist. RECOMMENDED. - Michael F. Hennessey
DEATH
SONG
Author
McGarrity has published ten other novels and, as fellow mystery writer Tony
Hillerman has remarked, he just “gets better and better.”
His characterization is spot-on, his dialogue is sharp, and his sense of
place makes one long for the vast spaces of The
plot crackles all the way to the final pages, holding us in suspense to the end.
Gone are some of the staid mannerisms of some of McGarrity’s earlier
work. He has settled into a natural voice and pace that grabs us and hauls us
into the story. It is clear that he has mastered his craft and in DEATH
SONG he comes up with his “A” game. RECOMMENDED. NOVEMBER - DECEMBER REVIEWS THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD First,
the title. Bloomsday is 16 June 1904, the
day celebrated in James Joyce’s most famous novel, ULYSSES. Each year, Bloomsday is commemorated in This is
the third book in the Forsythe saga. The first two, DEAD I WELL MAY BE, and THE
DEAD YARD, were best-sellers, and McKinty can expect nothing less from this
one. Set in But this
time it’s different. Bridget’s daughter, Siobhan, has been kidnapped and
Bridget wants Michael to come to It is to
the author’s credit that we readily suspend our disbelief at some of
Michael’s feats. In one instance, after an assailant has given him a knife rip
across the stomach, he sews himself together in true Walter Mitty fashion
(“It’s only a broken arm; I set it myself.”), binds it up with duct tape,
and carries on. What a man! He out-Marlowes Marlowe for toughness. This is
taut, brutal, coarse, fast-paced, and gripping stuff. I loved every page, and
can’t wait to get hold of the earlier Forsythe books. McKinty writes with wit
and with a definite literary touch which raises this above the average crime
story level. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
DEADFALL There
is not much as suspenseful in fiction as a group of men pitted against nature,
and a number of bad guys out to get them. We learned about this in DELIVERANCE,
didn’t we? Well,
here are four hunters, dropped off by helicopter in Author
Liparulo delivers a solidly-plotted thriller, moving the story along at an
accelerating pace. If, perhaps, he
spends too much time on description, he does it well, letting the elements tell
their own story of an indifferent nature. RECOMMENDED.
DARK AURA The
only character in this novel playing with a full deck seems to be the
protagonist, Carla Day, part-time deputy sheriff in the small town of Stanton Mills
in Del Oro County, California. This includes Carla’s boss, Sheriff Cherie
Ghent, who may be bright, but is kind of loopy. The same goes for the other
characters, including Carla’s father, a retired university Egyptologist in the
early stages of Alzheimer’s. Maybe
it’s something in the Perhaps
we shouldn’t be too surprised at the whacked-out antics of these people,
seeing that Del Oro County is near the Central Valley where a high percentage of
the methamphetamine in the Anyway,
the whole town believes in the special powers of what they call “indigo”
children, who suddenly seem to be disappearing. Then one of the indigos, the
young mother of another indigo, falls, or jumps, or gets pushed from a ledge and
dies. As happens, stories vary, and all three possibilities are attested to.
Sheriff Cherie is busy chasing drug smugglers, so it falls to deputy
Carla to come to grips with this puzzle. In the best bloodhound fashion, she
follows all leads, even the nutty ones. She narrows the field down and closes in
only to get smacked with a surprise
twist that hits us just as hard. This is
author O’Hehir’s third Carla Day novel. The others are MURDER NEVER FORGETS and ERASED
FROM MEMORY. She writes with
authority in this well-plotted novel, presenting us with a set of characters who
may not be well-adjusted to the real world but who are nonetheless memorable.
|
