It’s the eve of 1953, and Aloysius Archer is in Los Angeles to ring in the New Year with an old friend, aspiring actress Liberty Callahan, when their evening is interrupted by an acquaintance of Callahan’s: Eleanor Lamb, a screenwriter in dire straits.
After a series of increasingly chilling events—mysterious phone calls, the same blue car loitering outside her house, and a bloody knife left in her sink—Eleanor fears that her life is in danger, and she wants to hire Archer to look into the matter. …
The Husband (2006) by Dean Koontz is one intense book.
Mitch Rafferty, owner of a small landscaping business, receives a phone call from someone claiming to have kidnapped his wife Holly. The caller demands that Mitch pay two million dollars or Holly will be killed, and if he informs the police, Holly will be tortured and left to die. …
On arriving home, Mitch finds his house staged to look like he had killed his wife. He finds blood smeared over his clothes in the closet and splattered on the kitchen walls. …
As instructed, Mitch visits his brother Anson …. During this time, Anson receives a call from the kidnappers …. Anson, who had helped his siblings throughout their childhood cope with their parents, offers to give Mitch the two million dollar ransom amount. …
Like most teen boys my age, I read every Heinlein book I could get my hands on.
Tunnel in the Sky (1955) … a group of students sent on a survival test to an uninhabited planet, who soon realise they are stranded there. The themes of the work include the difficulties of growing up and the nature of man as a social animal.
His juvenile books are rollicking adventures. No profanity.
But on another level, Heinlein was a provocative philosopher on matters of personal freedom, particularly sexual freedom, libertarianism, religion, politics, and government.
Heinlein wrote strong female characters decades before it was cool. 😀
My main takeaway from Tunnel is the truism that rule of law must come first.
Everything else, later.
If you don’t have enforceable laws, wannabe dictators will insist criminals are tourists.
Here’s Georgia GOP Andrew Clyde barricading the doors of the Senate. He later called those attacking him tourists.
Any objective person would want those breaking into their home or business arrested. To deny this fact is to deny rule of law.
As in Lord of the Flies, which had been published a year earlier, isolation reveals the true natures of the students as individuals. The Heinlein book is more optimistic, however.
The colony of young people in Tunnel do establish rule of law. Democracy.
In any case, it’s still worth reading Heinlein books today. They are thought provoking.
Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan had previously collaborated in 2004 on a non-fiction book Faithful, chronicling the 2004 Boston Red Sox season. In Faithful, during a discussion about watching baseball on television, King posits an idea for a story entitled “Spectators”, which later evolved into A Face in the Crowd:
… What if a guy watches a lot of baseball games on TV, maybe because he’s a shut-in or an invalid (or maybe because he’s doing a book on the subject, poor schmuck), and one night he sees his best friend from childhood, who was killed in a car crash, sitting in one of the seats behind the backstop? Yow! …
A dysfunctional family drama compared with Yellowstone and Succession.
Mike is a sports writer. Claims he was only involved to keep facts straight on Pro Football.
But James claims Mike is the best co-author he’s worked with.
Jenny Wolf’s murdered father leaves her in charge of a billion-dollar empire—and a family more ruthless than Succession’s Roys and Yellowstone’s Duttons.
The Wolfs, the most powerful family in California, have a new head: thirty-six-year-old former high school teacher Jenny Wolf.
That means Jenny now runs the prestigious San Francisco Tribune.
She also controls the legendary pro football team, the Wolves.
And she has a murdered father to avenge—if she can survive the killers all around her.
One of those American shoot-em-up non-stop thrillers — but it had enough humour and character development to keep me interested.
I liked how it was set in modern times, the beginning of Putin’s war against Ukraine.
I enjoyed all the computer hacking. Well intentioned Americans trying to disrupt the Russian train system.
This was #2 in the series featuring a badass female killer. I will read more.
Letty Davenport, the tough-as-nails adopted daughter of Lucas Davenport, takes on an undercover assignment that brings her across the country and into the crosshairs of a dangerous group of hackers.
Her previous actions at a gunfight in Texas — and her incredible skills with firearms — draw the attention of several branches of the US government, and make her a perfect fit for even more dangerous work.
The Department of Homeland Security and the NSA have tasked her with infiltrating a hacker group, known only as Ordinary People, that is intent on wreaking havoc.
Letty and her reluctant partner from the NSA pose as free-spirited programmers for hire and embark on a cross country road trip to the group’s California headquarters.
While the two work to make inroads with Ordinary People and uncover their plans, they begin to suspect that the hackers are not their only enemy.
Someone within their own circle may have betrayed them, and has ulterior motives that place their mission — and their lives — in grave danger.
When CIA operative Jenny Silkwell is murdered in rural Maine, government officials have immediate concerns over national security. Her laptop and phone were full of state secrets that, in the wrong hands, endanger the lives of countless operatives.
In need of someone who can solve the murder quickly and retrieve the missing information, the U.S. government knows just the chameleon they can call on.
Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine … Devine must ingratiate himself with locals who have trusted each other their whole lives, and who distrust outsiders just as much.
I don’t recall reading any other books by Anne Perry, who died April 2023, aged 84. Heart attack.
Twenty-one Days (2018) is the first book in the Daniel Pitt series.
Not bad. Historical fiction.
Too slow for me. Mostly talk. Little action.
But the mystery of the murder kept me interested.
Almost literally yanked out of the courtroom where he’s defending dicey private inquiry agent Roman Blackwell on a charge of homicide, Daniel Pitt, who’s been a junior barrister for only a year, is tapped to assist his distinguished colleague Toby Kitteridge in the much higher-profile defense of Russell Graves, a tell-all biographer charged with bashing his wife, Ebony, to death in her bedroom and setting her head on fire.
The case is already winding down when Daniel steps into the Old Bailey, and his emotional last-minute questions aren’t enough to save Graves from a guilty verdict.
But Marcus fford Croft, Daniel’s head of chambers, doesn’t intend to let that verdict stand. He demands that Kitteridge and Daniel get it reversed …
In 1994, it became public knowledge that Perry had been convicted for murder as a teenager while living in Christchurch, New Zealand. In 1954, at the age of fifteen, she and her 16-year-old friend Pauline Parker murdered Parker’s mother, Honorah Rieper. After serving a five-year sentence for the murder, she changed her name and returned to the United Kingdom.
Duma Key (2008) by Stephen King is another scary story from the world’s best story teller.
The first 2/3rds of this one are entertaining. … (I should have quit after his art show.)
I laughed out loud. Often.
Wireman is one of the better characters in fiction, I can recall.
At my age, I appreciate King’s many pop culture references.
But it’s a horror — not my favourite genre.
As usual, there is a fair bit of the paranormal, as well.
And the book is too long. Like most King books.
Edgar Freemantle, a wealthy Minnesotan building contractor, barely survives a severe worksite accident wherein his truck is crushed by a crane. Edgar loses his right arm while suffering severe head injuries impairing his speech, vision, and memory. During his long recovery, he experiences suicidal thoughts and violent, abusive mood swings, spurring his wife to file for divorce.
On the advice of his psychologist, Dr. Kamen, Edgar relocates southward and rents a beach house on the island of Duma Key, off the Florida coast. …
King wrote this shortly after he was struck by a van and while he questioned his mortality.
Sequels, especially ones that follow a great series-starter, are always hit-or-miss. They often have a lot to live up to and I must say that Death Comes to Marlow was brilliant and just as fun to read as the first book in the series, The Marlow Murder Club …
Judith, Suzie, and Becks face a locked-room conundrum complete with lots of family drama on the side.
The mystery had lots of fun twists and turns, red herrings and even a second body later on in the story. …
Rick McCharles 