This is a pretty well done true crime story about a serial killer that I had not heard about before. Set in Texas in the latter part of the last century, the author paints at times a harrowing portrait of the killer.and crimes, but it's never too over the top for my taste. Well read also. It is short but that makes it better. It is just as long as it should be.
Set in Louisiana, this mystery involves the murder of a child, which would put off a number of readers. This book is not as bad as the last one I read by her which was fixated on bullying. Instead of just writing a good, fast paced story she fixates on a social problem and then the plot becomes rather wooden because honestly it is rather hard to be on the internet without being aware of the issues associated with the problem.
Even her two main characters are not in an interesting position in their relationship. The only thing I was thankful for was that she did not throw in more romance (like her very early Louisiana books) and the Cajun accent was not too overwhelming.
The first DS Nathan Code book was a winner as far as I was concerned. There was horror and a touch of humor and the relationships between the characters was intriguing. However, DS Cody's second outing is not nearly as interesting.
It began with a brutal murder on the grounds of a Cathedral in Liverpool. Is it a one off or part of a future series? Did the killer know the victim or pick her out at random? And the more that Cody learns about the victim, the less likely it seems that someone would choose her as a murder victim.
Then things slow down and get far less interesting..Too much time is spent on the relationship between Cody and his former girlfiend who appears to be getting on with her life. However she still seems to be hung up on Cody. Then there is her fiance who is handsome, well off and devoted. Add to that some unlikely suspects and Cody's boss whose attitude toward Cody has not been explained. But the excitement and the sense of threat that filled A Tapping at My Door is missing. There was one scene in Tapping in a pub where Cody and his partner had to face off against some dangerous thugs that hated cops that I thought was nothing short of brilliant. There are no moments like that in this book.
Things do pick up at the end but it's too late to save the book in my opinion. I'll read the next one but I will be more wary about picking it up.
Jack Harmon craves silence and a bird's-eye view. From his new home in Palmyra Tower, he can raise binoculars to watch over West London. If he watches for long enough, he will learn who has secrets. He will learn who plans to kill. But Jack does not see everything. October 2013, the month of the great storm of St. Jude. A man dies beneath a late-night Piccadilly line train, verdict: suicide. Jack's friend Stella Darnell, the detective's daughter, suspects it could have been murder.
Stella Darnell owns a successful cleaning service. Her deceased father was a police detective. After his death she began to look at some of the cases he was involved in but did not solve. There are also mysteries in her own life and the lives of her employees, friends and family that are incidental but important to the development of the main plot. This is not a traditional mystery or a traditional literary novel.
Sometime engine driver, sometime cleaner and Stella's friend, Jack Harmon, witnesses the death of a man beneath the wheels of a train where he is a passenger, not a driver. Stella is approached by the dead man's brother to try to find out if his brother, who owned a computer security firm was murdered. Jack meanwhile is offered the opportunity to rent an apartment in Palmyra Tower, a repurposed water tower where some years ago a man died. Stella's mother is on her way home from an extended trip to Australia, where Stella assumed she was meeting a man that her mother found on the internet. Stella is both right and wrong.
Not a fast moving story, it moves back and forth through time and honestly when I started the series I wasn't sure that I would stay with it because the characters are all off kilter and not particularly likeable and at times just plain weird. To begin with I thought they were all probably on the autism spectrum but as more is revealed about their backgrounds, it is clear that that their oddities are based not on neurological issues but on family and childhood experiences. Like an onion, it is necessary to peel off the layers to find out what is at the center of the events in this book. And Thomson does a very good job of pulling them all together.
I enjoyed this book very much and am looking forward to reading the next one that is already in my library.
Anyone who grew up reading early Mary Stewart, early Victoria Holt and early Elizabeth Peters will feel right at home with Named of the Dragon. While those books had stereotypical themes that Kearsley echoes-- for instance after reading a few of these novels you always knew who the good guy and the bad guy were and that it was a really bad idea to go wandering around at night by yourself.
Kearsley's book is a less obvious and more complex with regard to plot and characterization, but I really kept waiting for some action besides early morning walks across the fields. There's events that could be paranormal or could be dream sequences that lead the heroine on a quest to find out exactly what is behind events occurring at the home she is staying at for the winter holidays in Wales.
The main character, Lyn Ravenshaw, is a literary agent who was invited on the trip by a sucessful author of books for children who wants Lyn to distract their host and the author's current lover, while the author pursues another love interest. The host is a literary author that Lyn would like to sign to her agency. Living not far away is a well known playwright. There's a young widow with a child who is about the age Lyn's still born baby would have been had it lived and the host's younger brother and a collection of employees and local people, some judgemental and some not.
It's a pleasant sort of way to pass a few hours with a true shot of nostalgia for those of us of a certain age.
This was my absolutely favorite Michael McDowell horror novel. I really regret that we lost McDowell too young because he had a great talent for southern gothic fiction. Listen to the Audible sample for a taste of super narration of one of the scariest books that I have ever read. Whoever picked this as the sample passage did a brilliant job because while the rest of the book is not as gory but psychologically horrific, the theme of Savage Mothers Eat their Children runs through the book. McDowell had an MA in English from Harvard and a PHD from Brandeis but don't let that put you off. While his books are literate and you can spend as much time as you like deconstructing them, the first read just tell you this is a master story telling.
Following a funeral, a group of mourners go to Beldame where there are three beach houses. The one in the middle has been uninhabited for years but there is a presence there, a presence that will creeped me out when I first read the Paperback Orginal in the very early 80s and still creeps me out today. In fact until this was reprinted I wouldn't even loan out my paperback copy for fear of not getting it back.
The horror is ambiguous and subtle but no less scary for that. The atmosphere is suffocating.
The narrator is perfect for the subject matter.
The premise sounded interesting-- so interesting that I had the book in my Kindle library but had not tried it yet. Then I found out I could add the narration for $1.99 so I did and downloaded to listen to it on a trip.
Just to let you know where I am coming from I'm a fan of Sharon (SJ) Bolton, Stuart MacBride, Tammy Hoag, Ian Rankin, Stephen Booth and a lot more whose plots are gritty and gorey and whose characters are somewhat foul mouthed.
However in this book the swearing by the characters struck me as at inappropriate times and sometimes just too much to the point that it lost the ability to support character or give emphasis to events.
The book had a good beginning when Erica Foster, one time eastern european immigrant to the UK as an au pair, now a respected DCI, is brought into a high profile case and put in charge. She also probably has PTSD from her last case that had resulted in the death of five officers including her husband. And that makes me wonder why she and her husband were working on the same team. I thought there were rules against that. At least that was what Jane Casey told me in her Maeve Kerrigan series.
Foster needed some more time off and probably therapy because she immediately causes problems with DCI Sparks, the former head of the investigation without even knowing anything about him. She then annoys the desk sargeant and gets in a fracas with a member of the public. When investigating she fails to keep her colleagues informed of her location and keeps going into potentially dangerous situations without back up even before she gets kicked off the case and Sparks given back his old position. She also is apparently given a car without video and audio recording equipment installed and proceeds to make her situation worse by questioning a witness in it and obtaining potentially valuable information that she cannot substantiate.
Incidents keep happening that do not get woven back into the plot. Not even red herrings.
I have got to stop here because the longer I think about this book the more questions I have as to the author's choices and it really wasn't THAT bad. In fact I think it could have been cleaned up into a better than average read. But something needed to be done with the solution. Definitely weak-- I'm not talking about the actually end of the book which was pretty exciting, but the reason behind all of the deaths and whatnot in the case.
The narration was fairly good and the eastern european names were smoothly pronounced.
Book contains violence, descriptions of explicitly sexual photographs, inconsistent characterization, and adult language.