Los Angeles is full of actors. For psychologist Alex Delaware, finding out what's real and what's not is about to become a matter of life and horrific death ...Called in to evaluate an aspiring actress accused - along with her boyfriend - of staging her own abduction, Alex is indifferent when the case seems to go nowhere. But then the girl is savagely murdered, and suddenly a straightforward script takes a decidedly unexpected turn. Dylan Meserve, the victim's boyfriend, has also disappeared ...Is Dylan a deranged killer, or another victim? Alex and detective Milo Sturges begin auditioning suspects and trawling the depths of LA's seedy underbelly. Then more dead wannabes start turning up ...
Now Kellerman's Alex Delaware novels were a definite staple of my teen-reading but I must say he is losing his touch. Although he still twists like a master, this was not as fabulous as I remember thinking his earlier works were ... but then again, perhaps I need to give them another read, maybe I'm just showing my age ;)
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Gone by Jonathan Kellerman
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Hidden by Katy Gardner
A trail of blood winding through a squalid flat in Margate leads DCI Dave Gosworth to the body of Jacqui Jennings, her skull smashed with a chisel. For Dave it is just the start of a long and puzzling case...Forty miles away in South London, a young single mother named Melanie Stenning is blissfully unaware of Jacqui's life and death. But that trail of blood will one day lead straight to her door - with terrifying repercussions. For Melanie is about to fall in love with a stranger...Fourteen months later, Melanie has a new husband, and new baby and a new home on the isolated Kent coast. But when her seven-year-old daughter Poppy disappears, she is forced to question everything in her new life, including the man she loves. Because DCI Dave Gosworth has come knocking - with some chilling questions...
It was a pretty good read ... not a straight line story, I guess. It jumped around telling you how you got to this point once you were already there. The ending had a bit of a twist but nothing I didn't see coming after a certain point. Sometimes there's comfort in knowing when the author removes the character's primary suspect, the real person who dunnit has got to be a character you're already familiar with and not some random new person out of the blue - well, I guess that would be far more of a twist, but a far less enjoyable story.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
The Girls by Lori Lansens
'I have never looked into my sister's eyes. I have never bathed alone. I have never stood in the grass at night and raised my arms to a beguiling moon. I've never used an aeroplane bathroom. Or worn a hat. Or been kissed like that...So many things I've never done, but oh, how I've been loved. And, if such things were to be, I'd live a thousand times as me, to be loved so exponentially' In twenty-nine years, Rose Darlen has never spent a moment apart from her twin sister, Ruby. She has never gone for a solitary walk or had a private conversation. Yet, in all that time, she has never once looked into Ruby's eyes. Joined at the head, 'The Girls' (as they are known in their small town) attempt to lead a normal life, but can't help being extraordinary. Now almost thirty, Rose and Ruby are on the verge of becoming the oldest living craniopagus twins in history, but they are remarkable for a lot more than their unusual sisterly bond.
This was an interesting book and I did quite enjoy it. No twists or drama, just a good reflection on a fictional life. Sometimes I enjoy a good girly book ;)
Monday, June 4, 2007
The Empty Chair by Jeffery Deaver
Lincoln Rhyme has travelled to a world-famous spinal cord injuries center in North Carolina for some risky, experimental surgery. It may make him a tiny bit better, it may kill him. But before he has a chance to undergo it, the local police department are drafting in Rhyme and Amelia, using their forensic skills to help find two women kidpapped by a psychotic young man known locally as the Insect Boy. After a cat and mouse game through the abandoned swamps of North Carolina, Lincoln and Amelia manage to find him - then Amelia, convinced of his innocence, breaks the boy out of jail. And Lincoln has to find them both, while Amelia uses all the skills her mentor and lover has taught her to evade him. Her actions are to have more disastrous consequence than either of them anticipate ...
I enjoyed this, like all of Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme novels. It has some great twists.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's, a form of autism. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour's dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.
I enjoyed it. Not quite as much as Extremely Loud tho. I like the way both these authors have managed to capture the honest and directness of a child-like mind. Before all the pre-conceived notions of adulthood step in.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Lazybones by Mark Billingham
Someone - a woman or somebody pretending to be a woman, is writing to convicted rapists in prison, befriending them and then brutally killing them when they are released. DI Tom Thorne must discover the link between these killings and a murder/suicide that took place twenty-five years before; a tragedy to which the only witnesses were two small children, now adults and nowhere to be found...How can you escape a past that will do a lot more than just catch up with you? And how can Thorne catch a killer, when he doesn't really care about the victims?
This was a good read with a nice twist ending ... even tho you knew the twist was coming and I was concentrating pretty hard to figure out whodunnit, I didn't get it right.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
The Cold Moon by Jeffery Deaver
It's the night of the full Cold Moon - the month of December according to the lunar calendar. A young man is found dead in lower Manhattan, the first in a series of victims of a man calling himself the Watchmaker. This killer?s obsession with time drives him to plan the murders with the precision of fine timepieces, and the victims die prolonged deaths while an eerie clock ticks away their last minutes on earth.
this book was fab, as Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme's novels usually are (I'm still undecided about the rest of his stuff tho). Although it starts a little slowly, it twists and twirls it's way to the end ... any book that causes a gasp out loud because you can not believe that just happened, is definitely one I'd recommend reading! And this one does just that :)
Thursday, May 3, 2007
The Betrayed by David Hosp
Washington D.C. A woman is found murdered in her own home; her throat slit, her corpse brutalised, subjected to the most appalling torture before she died. A piece of incriminating evidence leads to the swift arrest of a local drug dealer. Case closed. But local cop Jack Cassian has questions. The victim came from one of the city's wealthiest families. So why was she living in such a rough part of town? Why is her mother, the icily formidable Lydia Chapin, so hostile and unhelpful? Teaming up with the dead woman's sister, Sydney, to find the answers, Cassian's investigation leads him from the crack dens of the inner city to the country clubs and gilded offices of the nation's political elite. The answers lead only to further questions - and, before they know it, Sydney and Cassian are slipping deep into a labyrinth of money, power and deceit to uncover a decades-old conspiracy and could rock the nation. Can they survive long enough to learn the secrets of ...the Betrayed?
Blegh. This was decidedly average and you can figure out exactly who dunnit towards the end anyway. Not merely because the kill off half the cast in the process :P Not very impressive.
Monday, April 30, 2007
The Sacred Art of Stealing by Christopher Brookmyre
With one of the most baldly obscene opening paragraphs of any modern novel, The Sacred Art of Stealing slaps its way into orbit with more expletives than prepositions. But get through the gang-rap obscenity nonsense and there's a clever, off-beat storyline handled with funky dexterity. 30-year-old Detective Sergeant Angelique de Xavia is taken hostage in a bank robbery, run by a bizarre quintet of robbers dressed as clowns who entertain the bank staff by creating artworks on the blanked-out windows. De Xavia connects uncannily with Zal, one of the gang, and there is a mutual magnetism, even though the only part of him she can see through his mask is his fearsome blue eyes. Siege over, robbers on the run, they meet up face to face and she is much taken by the art-loving Las Vegas criminal. He understands her, the pressures of her job - well, he would, wouldn't he?
I loved this book. It starts out a bit like Lock Stock or Snatch. And it has some fabulous twists which, if you've been paying attention, you'll know usually make a book for me.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult
Jack St. Bride was once a beloved teacher and soccer coach at a girls' prep school - until a student's crush sparked a powder keg of accusation and robbed him of his career and reputation. Now, after a devastatingly public ordeal that left him with an eight-month jail sentence and no job, Jack resolves to pick up the pieces of his life. He takes a job washing dishes at Addie Peabody's diner and slowly starts to form a relationship with her in the quiet New England village of Salem Falls. But just when Jack thinks he has outrun his past, a quartet of teenage girls with a secret turn his world upside down once again, triggering a modern-day witch hunt in a town haunted by its own history...
It was okay. The same formula mass-produced flavour of her other books I've read. At least this one had a happy ending (compared with The Pact) and an ending at all (compared to Keeping Faith). So I guess she is improving. I still can't quite understand why people rush out to buy her books yet, tho. It's the sort of thing I'll read if it's around ... me, I need mystery, intrigue and a serious twist in the ending for a book to rank worthy ;)
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Wicker by Kevin Guilfoile
When his teenage daughter is killed, and no one is arrested for the crime, Dr. Davis Moore does the unthinkable: he clones the unidentified murderer from the genetic evidence and has the child adopted by an unsuspecting couple, the Finns, who name him Justin. With his partner as Justin's pediatrician, Moore is able to follow the child's development, hoping to eventually identify the killer through their similarities. But that's not as easy as it sounds.
This was brilliant. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it had a lovely twist, a couple actually, at the end that even I didn't see coming. If you like murder mystery, read this one.
Chart Throb by Ben Elton
"Chart Throb" is the ultimate pop quest. Ninety five thousand hopefuls. Three judges. Just one winner. And that's Colin Simms, the genius behind the show. Colin always wins because Colin writes the rules. But this year, as he sits smugly in judgement upon the mingers, clingers and blingers whom he has pre-selected in his carefully scripted 'search' for a star, he has no idea that the rules are changing. The 'real' is about to be put back into 'reality' television and Colin and his fellow judges (the nation's favourite mum and the other bloke) are about to become ex-factors themselves. Ben Elton, author of "Popcorn and Dead Famous" returns to blistering comic satire with a savagely hilarious deconstruction of the world of modern television talent shows. "Chart Throb" is about one winner and a whole bunch of losers.
It was okay. I appreciated it more when I caught a bit of American Idols on tv last night. It wasn't nearly as good as I remember High Society being.
Lopz reviewed this book on 16 October 2007:
This book is absolutely brilliant. Ben Elton is a master of satire and deconstructing the often ridiculous elements of pop culture today. He takes us through a 'behind the scenes' look at Chart Throb, the fictional "bigger, better" version of Britain's hottest talent show, The X Factor, produced in real life by Simon Cowell. Calvin Simms is the Simon Cowell figure, and the other two judges mirror perfectly the characters of Louis Walsh and Sharon Osbourne. Elton uses the our current obsession with reality TV to smash all perceptions of a talent show that exists to make people's dreams come true. Instead, he exposes the money and power hungry moguls behind shows like X Factor and American Idol, and the desperation and delusion of the majority of contestants. His take on this booming industry is cynical, hysterical and so spot on you find yourself gasping frequently at the obvious truths what reality TV is really about.
Of course, whether Elton's exposes are indeed just a product of a clever imagination or they have more than just a resemblance to reality is for the reader to decide. The book is a work of fiction, but you can't help but feel it is uncomfortably close to the truth. Personally I believe it is a little of both. I enjoyed every second of this book, but there is a downside: I will never again look at TV shows like this in the same way, and my housemates have started to yell at me when my newfound cynicism rears its head during X Factor. ;-)
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Hide by Lisa Gardner
In bestseller Gardner's first-rate follow-up to Alone (2005), Bobby Dodge, once a sniper for the Massachusetts State Police and now a police detective, gets called to a horrific crime scene in the middle of the night by fellow detective and ex-lover D.D. Warren. An underground chamber has been discovered on the property of a former Boston mental hospital containing six small naked mummified female bodies in clear garbage bags. A silver locket with one of the corpses, which may be decades old, bears the name Annabelle Granger. Later, a woman shows up at the Boston Homicide offices claiming to be Annabelle Granger. Her resemblance to Catherine Gagnon (whose life Bobby saved in Alone) helps stoke a romance between her and Bobby both subtle and sizzling. The suspense builds as the police uncover links between patients at the hospital and long-ago criminal activities. Through expert use of red herrings, Gardner takes the reader on a nail-biting ride to the thrilling climax.
I've read a couple of Lisa Gardner's books and enjoy them. This one was gripping. If you like crime fiction, you'll enjoy this. Although none of the lead characters are forensics experts (which usually seals the deal for me), it's good reading.
Monday, March 26, 2007
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
Thriller writer Connolly (Every Dead Thing) turns from criminal fears to primal fears in this enchanting novel about a 12-year-old English boy, David, who is thrust into a realm where eternal stories and fairy tales assume an often gruesome reality. Books are the magic that speak to David, whose mother has died at the start of WWII after a long debilitating illness. His father remarries, and soon his stepmother is pregnant with yet another interloper who will threaten David's place in his father's life. When a portal to another world opens in time-honored fashion, David enters a land of beasts and monsters where he must undertake a quest if he is to earn his way back out. Connolly echoes many great fairy tales and legends (Little Red Riding Hood, Roland, Hansel and Gretel), but cleverly twists them to his own purposes. Despite horrific elements, this tale is never truly frightening, but is consistently entertaining as David learns lessons of bravery, loyalty and honor that all of us should learn.
I quite liked this book. It's not quite what you expect and although it does have the twisted fairy tales and it's not kiddie reading by any means, the book is still essentially about a young boy. As far as twisted fairy tales go, however, my favourite still remains Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
The Beast by Roslund & Hellstrom
Two children are found dead in a basement. Four years later, their murderer escapes from prison. The police know if he is not found quickly, he will kill again. But when their worst fears come true and another child is murdered, the situation spirals out of control. In an atmosphere of hysteria whipped up by the media, Fredrik Steffansson, father of the murdered child, decides he must take revenge. His actions will have devastating consequences. Winner of Scandinavia's most prestigious crime-writing award: The Glass Key for Best Crime Novel of the Year.
This one was okay and translated well. I quite liked the ending but it had extra bits in the middle that just seemed to be there purely as a comment on humanity that didn't really have that much to do with the central story-line. There are far more better written stories in the same genre.
