Liesl Weiss, the protagonist, was simply not a character I could cheer for.
The resolution no kind of surprising twist.
I downloaded this mystery because it was set in a library. And Jurczyk herself is a librarian at the University of Toronto and worked in its rare books library as a graduate student.
Well … there is humour, mainly around quirky Ida — some sort of online detective hacker. She’s terminally ill so doesn’t much worry about anything she does.
The plot is confusing.
Opening Shot: “1994.” The camera pushes in on a house on a lake. SWAT teams arrive in rafts and put up their weapons.
The Gist: The SWAT teams are there to invade the house, in the French Alps village of Levionna, which is the headquarters of a cult led by Caleb Johansson (Stefano Cassetti). Johansson ends up being the only survivor after a mass suicide …
He’s America’s Best Lawyer Until He’s Its #1 Murder Suspect
Can this actually be James Patterson?
It reads to me more like John Grisham.
Excellent.
Stafford Lee Penney is a small-town lawyer with a big-time reputation for winning every case he tries. In his sharp suits and polished Oxford shoes, Penney is Biloxi, Mississippi’s #1 Lawyer and top local celebrity.
Just as Penney notches his latest courtroom victory, his wife is scandalously killed. He spirals into a legal and personal losing streak, damaging his reputation and ruining his career. …
Perhaps this 2024 novel had a LOT of influence from co-author Nancy Allen.
She practiced law in the Ozarks for fifteen years as Assistant Attorney General and Assistant Prosecutor. She served on the faculty at Missouri State University for sixteen years, teaching law classes.
… set during World War II. It revolves around the characters Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind French girl who takes refuge in her great-uncle’s house in Saint-Malo after Paris is invaded by Nazi Germany, and Werner Pfennig, a bright German boy who is accepted into a military school because of his skills in radio technology.
It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Overall, I was disappointed.
Too long. Poor storytelling. It rambled too much.
There were dozens of scenes that could have been left out — leaving the core story stronger.
WHY have 4 diamonds? That added nothing but unnecessary pages.
I’m astonished that the Pulitzer judges were impressed.
The mini-series — 4 episodes — is MUCH BETTER.
Don’t listen to the critics who gave it only 27% on Rotten Tomatoes.
I commend the screen writers for improving so much of the messy book.
Werner Pfennig is a much stronger character on screen.
Marie-Laure is played by Aria Mia Loberti who is legally blind. She responded on a whim to an All The Light We Cannot See open global casting search posted online. An amateur. Well cast.
I’d agree with critics that the NAZIs are cliche in the TV series . No nuance.
That was my biggest complaint with the mini-series.
It is the eighth book to star the character Fletch, but is a prequel set before the events of first seven books in the series. …
Irwin “Fletch” Fletcher is moved off of obituaries and wedding announcements at the News Tribune and is assigned his first journalistic interview, only to have the subject turn up dead in the newspaper‘s parking lot. He investigates, beginning his dual profession of journalist and investigator.
Amusing. But I don’t think I’ll continue with any of the other Fletch books.
I’ve really enjoyed the James Patterson books with co-author Nancy Allen.
The difference is Nancy Allen.
In this book, there are two separate trials.
Ruby Bozarth, a newcomer to Rosedale, Mississippi, is also fresh to the State Bar — and to the docket of Circuit Judge Baylor, who taps Ruby as defense counsel.
The murder of a woman from one of the town’s oldest families has Rosedale’s upper crust howling for blood, and the prosecutor is counting on Ruby’s inexperience to help him deliver a swift conviction.
Ruby’s client is a college football star who has returned home after a career-ending injury, and she is determined to build a defense that will stick
Ruby never belonged to the country club set, but once she nearly married into it. As news breaks of a second murder, Ruby’s ex-fiancé shows up on her doorstep — a Southern gentleman in need of a savior. As lurid, intertwining investigations unfold, no one in Rosedale can be trusted, especially the twelve men and women impaneled on the jury. They may be hiding the most incendiary secret of all.
Pilot of the Airwaves went on to become an enduring radio favourite, reaching No. 13 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, earning Dore the Record World New Female Artist of the Year, an ASCAP award and charting in Canada, Australia, and Europe.
I wouldn’t say this film is as good as Sideways, but it has something of similar feel.
A cantankerous, unpopular teacher, Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti); a bright, abrasive student, Angus (Dominic Sessa); and Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), the school’s head cook and a recently bereaved mother, find themselves forced to spend the winter holiday together in an otherwise empty New England elite academy …
… it’s about finding family where you least expect it.
Sam’s day takes an unexpected turn after she picks up the wrong bag in the changing room of her local gym. The bag, a genuine Marc Jacobs unlike Sam’s designer knock-off, belongs to Nisha, an American in London and pampered second wife of billionaire businessman Carl. Sam, who works for a printing firm and who is the sole breadwinner in her family, has meetings straight after her gym visit and so has no choice but to wear Nisha’s red crocodile-skin Christian Louboutin heels. The shoes seem to have a hypnotising effect on clients and lead her to land a series of new contracts.
Nisha, meanwhile, declines to wear the tatty flats she finds in Sam’s bag, and leaves the gym in flip-flops and a robe. When she arrives at her hotel for a lunch date with her husband, she finds two men at the door of her room who inform her she is not welcome. Carl, it transpires, has called time on their marriage, cancelled her bank cards and begun a romantic relationship with his assistant. –