This is a 2016 — audio first — novella which fits into the lengthy list of Alex Cross books.
Free for Audible subscribers, I believe.
Surprisingly good.
Along Came a Spider killer Gary Soneji has been dead for over ten years. Alex Cross watched him die. But today, Cross saw him gun down his partner.
Is Soneji alive? A ghost? Or something even more sinister?
BookShots
Lightning-fast stories by James Patterson
One of those dumb, entertaining adventure romps.
The Codex (2003) is a thriller novel by Douglas Preston …
It takes place in the Southwestern United States and Central America. …
Maxwell Broadbent, an eccentric rich man with terminal cancer, has spent his entire life collecting valuable art and treasures from around the world.
One day, he writes a letter to his three sons telling them to … find his tomb, promising that the son that finds his tomb will receive all his treasures—worth approximately $300 million. …
Tom is the only one who is not interested in the treasure at all, until he is approached by a beautiful ethnopharmacologist named Sally Colorado, who informs … that his father tried to present an ancient Mayan Codex to a museum for translation years back, only to be rejected since no one knew ancient Mayan at the time.
Years later, after ancient Mayan has been deciphered, Sally and her fiancé, Yale professor Julian Clyve, have deduced from a single surviving photograph that the Codex may contain many ancient Mayan herbal remedies that, if studied and reproduced in present times, could revolutionize medicine and cure many diseases.
Tom reluctantly agrees to help her, and they eventually recruit a witty tribal elder named Don Alfonso, accompanied by the brother trackers Pingo and Chori.
A Death in Cornwall is the 2024 title and 24th in the series from Daniel Silva.
Jealous? 😀
Gabriel Allon is searching for a stolen Picasso.
I enjoy the smart, entertaining dialogue. There is a lot of dark humour.
Some of the most popular characters from past books make an appearance, including a Corsican goat. 😀
A brutal murder, a missing masterpiece, a mystery only Gabriel Allon can solve …
Art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon has slipped quietly into London to attend a reception at the Courtauld Gallery celebrating the return of a stolen self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh. But when an old friend from the Devon and Cornwall Police seeks his help with a baffling murder investigation, he finds himself pursuing a powerful and dangerous new adversary.
The victim is Charlotte Blake, a celebrated professor of art history from Oxford who spends her weekends in the same seaside village where Gabriel once lived under an assumed identity. Her murder appears to be the work of a diabolical serial killer who has been terrorizing the Cornish countryside. …
Gabriel soon discovers that Professor Blake was searching for a looted Picasso worth more than a $100 million, and he takes up the chase for the painting as only he can—with six Impressionist canvases forged by his own hand and an unlikely team of operatives that includes a world-famous violinist, a beautiful master thief, and a lethal contract killer turned British spy.
Silva writes lying on the floor. With pencils. On yellow legal pads.
No outline.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Too slow burn for me.
This is probably my last book in the series.
WHY does Mary have to fall off a horse 5 times in one chapter?
In a long, slow book I can’t recall Sherlock or Mary coming up with even one brilliant deduction.
Good writing — but mainly for putting me to sleep. 😀
The Moor (1998) is the fourth book in Mary Russell series by Laurie R. King.
I was surprised that Mary Russell is already the wife of Sherlock Holmes!
What’s the age gap? Forty years?
The events in the book take place between September and November 1923.
Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes investigate strange goings-on on Dartmoor. Reprising the setting and some of the plotlines of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes and Russell come to the aid of the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould.
Baring-Gould is a real person who inspired this book. He wrote “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and hundreds of other publications. Something of an investigator like Holmes.
The audio book is posted on YouTube. You can listen free.
Slough House (2021) by Mick Herron is terrific.
I never tire of the hilarious dialogue.
Jackson Lamb is one of the great characters of fiction, all time.
… an unsparing look at the corrupt web of media, global finance, spycraft, and politics that power our modern world.
“This is a darker, scarier Herron. The gags are still there but the satire’s more biting.
The privatization of a secret service op and the manipulation of news is relevant and horribly credible.”—Ann Cleeves, author of the Vera Stanhope series
At Slough House—MI5’s London depository for demoted spies—Brexit has taken a toll. The “slow horses” have been pushed further into the cold, Slough House has been erased from official records, and its members are dying in unusual circumstances, at an unusual clip. No wonder Jackson Lamb’s crew is feeling paranoid. But are they actually targets?
With a new populist movement taking hold of London’s streets and the old order ensuring that everything’s for sale to the highest bidder, the world’s a dangerous place for those deemed surplus. Jackson Lamb and the slow horses are in a fight for their lives …
Season 4 of Slow Horses is underway as I post, one of the best TV shows today.
Books and television are both excellent.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Not a great book. But I did manage to finish.
The setting is interesting. A collection of tenants in a low rental London boardinghouse.
Lisa, also known as Collette, is on the run after witnessing her shady boss, Tony, beat a man to death at the Nefertiti Men’s Club.
Now her mother is dying in a nursing home and she wants to be nearby, so she rents a room in a boardinghouse that’s one step up from a homeless shelter.
The shabby home, subdivided into apartments, is owned and managed by a grossly obese man who takes advantage of his down-and-out residents:
While Collette uses the money she has left, about £100,000, to evade Tony and his henchmen, the residents are dealing with backed-up drains that smell awful.
Unknown to the other residents, one of the men has been making a habit of killing young women, including Nikki, the former resident of Collette’s apartment …
I finally read the ORIGINAL in the Aunties series.
Like the sequel, very funny.
It’s like a Wedding at Bernie’s — but with frustrating, meddling, loving Indonesian sisters.
There’s a surprising amount of profanity and sexual innuendo.
“Sutanto brilliantly infuses comedy and culture into the unpredictable rom-com/murder mystery mashup as Meddy navigates familial duty, possible arrest and a groomzilla.
—USA Today (four-star review)
These books are too slow. Not enough Holmesian brilliance.
Not enough action.
A Letter of Mary is the third in the Mary Russell mystery series of novels by Laurie R. King.
This is the first case that Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes work on together as husband and wife. …
August 1923
… an unexpected visit from Dorothy Ruskin, an elderly amateur archeologist from the Holy Land, who met the couple four and a half years earlier during the events from O Jerusalem (novel).
As a gift, Ruskin presents Russell with an inlaid box containing a papyrus scroll, which seems to be a genuine first-century letter by Mary Magdalene.
When she returns to London that evening, Ruskin is killed in a hit-and-run accident with only two witnesses.
When Holmes and Russell visit London to identify the body, they discover evidence of foul play. …
This looks good.
Aldis Hodge has the chops to pull off the role.
Cross is an upcoming American crime thriller television series, based on the Alex Cross novel series written by James Patterson, set to drop all 8 episodes on Amazon Prime Video November 14, 2024.
TV series based on James Paterson’s Alex Cross novels.
Alex Cross uses forensic psychology to analyze killers’ minds, delving into victims’ psyches to identify murderers and bring them to justice.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Morgan Freeman and Tyler Perry have played Cross in the past.
I’m thinking these Alex Cross books are getting better.
Alex Cross Must Die (2023) is quite good.
Suspend your disbelief and be entertained. 😀
“Drop whatever you’re doing, Detective Cross, and head to Reagan Airport,” DC Metro Police dispatch says. “A jet just crashed and exploded on the runway. The chief and the FBI want you and John Sampson there pronto.”
Cross and Sampson race to the crash site. The plane didn’t fail—it was shot down by a stolen Vietnam War–era machine gun.
The list of experts who can operate the weapon is short. And time before another lethal strike runs even shorter.
Rick McCharles 