A silly comedy. I enjoyed all the oddball characters in the cast.
Critics hated it.
This is a sequel. I missed the original.
JJ is persuaded to accompany his daughter Sophie on her school trip to Italy, where they become involved in a terrorist plot.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
The 10th book (2017) in the Virgil Flowers series ➙ Deep Freeze.
Originally disappointed in these Virgil Flowers books, I’ve come to like them. Or … perhaps they got better over the years.
Class reunions: a time for memories — good, bad, and, as Virgil Flowers is about to find out, deadly — in the thrilling new novel in the #1 New York Times-bestselling series
Virgil knows the town of Trippton, Minnesota, a little too well. A few years back, he investigated the corrupt — and as it turned out, homicidal — local school board, and now the town’s back in view with more alarming news: A woman’s been found dead, frozen in a block of ice.
There’s a possibility that it might be connected to a high school class of twenty years ago that has a mid-winter reunion coming up, and so, wrapping his coat a little tighter, Virgil begins to dig into twenty years’ worth of traumas, feuds, and bad blood. In the process, one thing becomes increasingly clear to him. It’s true what they say: High school is murder.
One of the better Sherlock Holmes spinoffs.
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (1994) is the first book in the Mary Russell series by Laurie R. King. It was nominated for the Agatha best novel award
Sherlock Holmes is well retired at age- 54 in 1915. Keeping bees and studying everything in rural Sussex Downs.
A 15-year-old Jewish-American wonder child — Mary Russell — bumps into the old man in the woods — and the two quickly become odd friends.
Mary becomes a worthy apprentice. Then enters Oxford University in the autumn of 1917.
The book is a series of adventures NOT written up by John Watson.
Click PLAY or watch the author introduce the book on YouTube.
The good news ➙ local buses can carry your bike underneath with luggage.
But — overall — visiting the islands by bicycle is challenging.
Off-road biking is prohibited. There are few cycle paths. You must share the road with distracted tourists — though most are slow moving.
You are allowed to cycle through the many tunnels — though I only did it twice. One local lady told me they are used to going slow behind bicycles.
The weather is mostly windy and rainy. Wind is a bigger problem than rain. 😀
Wild camping is forbidden in the Faroe Islands. And it’s not that easy to get anywhere that is out of sight.
Campgrounds are mostly organized for motor vehicles — but you are allowed to tent. It’s expensive.
I did a bike tune-up, replacing the chain. Iceland is coming up!
Cost was about $160.
BUT a couple of days after the maintenance, I broke a chain while out on quite a remote road. Had to hitchhike back to the bike shop.
I had the same bus driver almost every day. And every day he told me the Faroe Islands are not made for cycling. And ever day he was correct. 😀
related – cycling trip report by Tobias Woggon & Max Schumann
I’ve read a few of the Alex Cross novels now. Junk food. 😀
BUT I was surprised at the complexity and plot twists in his 2022 book.
(Daughter tied the High School record in 400m in this book.)
The bad guy is known as the Family Man — very EVIL.
A serial killer who targets entire families.
A precise killer, he always moves under the cover of darkness, flawlessly triggering no alarms, leaving no physical evidence.
Cross and Sampson aren’t the only ones investigating.
Also in on this most intriguing case is the world’s bestselling true-crime author, who sees patterns everyone else misses.
The writer, Thomas Tull, calls the Family Man murders the perfect crime story. He believes the killer may never be caught.
Booking 10 months in advance, I picked a relatively inexpensive room in a Vestmanna guesthouse. About USD $54 / night.
It turned out to be an excellent choice.
There are no hotels in Vestmanna — but many people get there to take a scenic boat trip to bird cliffs.
This guy pioneered hydroelectric power in the Faroe Islands. From Vestmanna.
It is an authentic, working fishing port.
I stayed 9 days. Hiked and cycled everywhere there was to go from my town.
There is a hostel with campground close to the airport. But I’m glad I had the more comfortable guest room in Vestmanna.
One night we had great weather. I hiked up and over the mountain to see the sunset. This was 9:41pm in August. And it was setting very slowly. 😀
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
You Like It Darker (2024) is a collection of 12 short stories.
Stephen King modified the title from a Leonard Cohen lyric.
I love King the story teller. But generally don’t like horror. #conflicted
I did like this collection. He’s amazingly good at drawing you into unusual characters in unexpected situations.
“You like it darker? Fine, so do I,” writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life—both metaphorical and literal.
“Two Talented Bastids” explores the long-hidden secret of how the eponymous gentlemen got their skills.
In “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” a brief and unprecedented psychic flash upends dozens of lives, Danny’s most catastrophically.
In “Rattlesnakes,” a sequel to Cujo, a grieving widower travels to Florida for respite and instead receives an unexpected inheritance—with major strings attached.
In “The Dreamers,” a taciturn Vietnam vet answers a job ad and learns that there are some corners of the universe best left unexplored.
“The Answer Man” asks if prescience is good luck or bad and reminds us that a life marked by unbearable tragedy can still be meaningful.
Entertaining.
The 9th book (2016) in the Virgil Flowers series ➙ Escape Clause.
John Sandford is an excellent writer.
Two large, and very rare, Amur tigers have vanished from their cage, and authorities are worried sick that they’ve been stolen for their body parts. Traditional Chinese medicine prizes those parts for home remedies, and people will do extreme things to get what they need. Some of them are a great deal more extreme than others — as Virgil is about to find out.
Then there’s the homefront. Virgil’s relationship with his girlfriend Frankie has been getting kind of serious, but when Frankie’s sister Sparkle moves in for the summer, the situation gets a lot more complicated. For one thing, her research into migrant workers is about to bring her up against some very violent people who emphatically do not want to be researched. For another… she thinks Virgil’s kind of cute.
Matt Damon, Jing Tian, Pedro Pascal, Willem Dafoe … this movie should be good.
But it received mixed-to-negative reviews from critics, and was considered a box-office bomb for losing up to $75 million.
A bad plot. But super interesting special effects on the Great Wall of China.
During the reign of Renzong Emperor, a group of European mercenaries travels to China, searching for gunpowder. A few miles north of the Great Wall, they are attacked by a monster.
Only Irishman William Garin and Spaniard Pero Tovar survive.
They sever the monster’s arm and bring it with them. Upon reaching the Wall, they are taken prisoner by the Nameless Order, led by General Shao and Strategist Wang.
The Nameless Order exists to combat Tao Tie, alien monsters that arrived from a meteorite and attack once every sixty years.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Very good.
The Chalk Pit (2017) is the 9th book in the Ruth Galloway series.
Boiled human bones have been found in Norwich’s web of underground tunnels.
When Dr Ruth Galloway discovers they were recently buried, DCI Nelson has a murder enquiry on his hands. The boiling might have been just a medieval curiosity – now it suggests a much more sinister purpose.
Meanwhile, DS Judy Johnson is investigating the disappearance of a local rough sleeper. The only trace of her is the rumour that she’s gone ‘underground’. This might be a figure of speech, but with the discovery of the bones and the rumours both Ruth and the police have heard that the network of old chalk-mining tunnels under Norwich is home to a vast community of rough sleepers, the clues point in only one direction.
Rick McCharles 