Not his best — but Koontz is a genius of the interesting plot.
And he’s a very good story teller.
It’s a horror story. But one with a surprisingly uplifting ending.
… Billy Wiles has not even turned on his PC since his fiancée Barbara fell into a coma several years ago. Leading the life of a recluse who spends his spare time alone at home doing woodwork, he leaves his secluded house only when he goes to work as a bartender. …
… takes the law into his own hands when, out of the blue, he is threatened by an anonymous adversary ..
This is the first full novel (2006) in Steve Berry’s Cotton Maloneseries.
Comparisons to The Da Vinci Code (2003) are inevitable. This is a mystery involving the supposedly extinct order of the knight Templar, and their most treasured secret, the Great Device.
There seems to be a religious thriller genre.
Personally, I can’t recommend this book. The story and characters were not compelling for me. And the puzzles used to find the prize too confusing. When the secret is finally revealed, … a let down.
The author was a trial lawyer for 30 years. It took him 12 years and 85 rejections before selling a manuscript.
The ancient order of the Knights Templar possessed untold wealth and absolute power over kings and popes—until the Inquisition, when they were wiped from the face of the earth, their hidden riches lost.
But now two forces vying for the treasure …
Cotton Malone, one-time top operative for the U.S. Justice Department, is enjoying his quiet new life as an antiquarian book dealer in Copenhagen when an unexpected call to action reawakens his hair-trigger instincts–and plunges him back into the cloak-and-dagger world he thought he’d left behind.
It begins with a violent robbery attempt on Cotton’s former supervisor, Stephanie Nelle, who’s far from home on a mission that has nothing to do with national security. …
“The novel’s overcomplicated conspiracies and esoteric brainteasers can get tedious, and the various religious motivations make little sense. - Publishers Weekly.
“A long, tortuous journey to an unsurprising, though thoughtful, end.” – Kirkus Reviews.
I don’t understand what this book is talking about.
An extraordinary ‘nonfiction novel’ weaves a web of associations between the founders of quantum mechanics and the evils of two world wars
The first section of Labatut’s book moves at a dizzying pace. He begins with a guided tour of a chamber of horrors in which we encounter some of the more diabolical inventions prompted by two world wars, and are introduced to a blur of real-life characters including the drug-raddled Hermann Göring, who crushed a cyanide capsule in his mouth to avoid the hangman’s rope …
The real villain here, however, is the chemist Fritz Haber (who died in 1934), who directed the programme of poison gas attacks that killed tens of thousands of soldiers in the first world war, an accomplishment that drove his disapproving wife to suicide. …
After this hair-raising opening we are launched into somewhat more tranquil regions of spacetime, where float more familiar characters such as Einstein and other 20th-century physicists and mathematicians …
The second half of Labatut’s book is largely taken up with the struggle for supremacy in modern physics between Erwin Schrödinger and Heisenberg. …
Labatut has written a dystopian nonfiction novel set not in the future but in the present.
YES it’s ultra violent. TRUE – dozens of bad guys die because they never seem to shoot straight. 😀
Too much Mission Impossible silliness, of course.
But Reacher is iconic. A true original.
In season 2, Reacher reunites with his U.S. ArmyMilitary Police unit, the Special Investigators, when one of their own is murdered under mysterious circumstances.
Some fans of his books like me wonder WHERE they can go in season 3?
A letdown is likely. Most of the Reacher books are like season 1 ➙ He wanders into a random town. Somehow gets involved in a big fight with a bad guy. Wins without car chases or gun fights.
It’s the story of the evolution of a mass shooter from age-13 to 17.
… student Todd Bowden discovers that his elderly neighbor, Arthur Denker, is Kurt Dussander—a former Naziconcentration camp commandant who is now a fugitive war criminal.
Todd, fascinated with Nazi atrocities perpetrated during World War II, blackmails Dussander, forcing him to share disturbing stories of what it was like working at Nazi extermination camps and how it felt to participate in genocide. …
I’ve not seen the film. 54% on Rotten Tomatoes. Ian McKellen stars as Dussander.
… soon finds herself a suspect in a murder case when she enters the village’s annual quiche-making competition in an attempt to ingratiate herself with the community. She sets out to clear her name and solve the mystery of the quiche of death.
This is a case where the TV show is better than the source book – Quiche of Death (1992).
And her character “Molly Gray” is both likeable and entertaining.
Somewhere on the autism spectrum, Molly must be the best maid in the world.
This is the sequel to the 1st book in the series, The Maid.
Easy reading. Almost young adult. Definitely a cosy mystery.
For a while I suspected the murder mystery itself might be simplistic. I was wrong.
There are twists and turns enough to keep any reader guessing.
With her flair for cleaning and proper etiquette, she has risen through the ranks of the glorious five-star Regency Grand Hotel to become the esteemed Head Maid.
But just as her life reaches a pinnacle state of perfection, her world is turned upside down when J. D. Grimthorpe, the world-renowned mystery author, drops dead—very dead—on the hotel’s tearoom floor. …
As the high-profile death threatens the hotel’s pristine reputation, Molly knows that she alone holds the key to unlocking the killer’s identity. But that key is buried deep in her past: Long ago, she knew J. D. Grimthorpe. Molly begins to comb her memory for clues …
I wouldn’t call this her best book, but — as always — the story moves quickly. And she’s a master of presenting interesting, engaging characters.
Very readable. But definitely a cheesy romance, as well. 😀
Published Nov. 2023, the most recent of her more than 230 novels, this is the first in a planned trilogy.
A woman inherits a haunted seaside mansion in Maine from a long-lost relative.
Sonya MacTavish isn’t having the best year. After finding her fiancé in bed with another woman, she wonders why she ignored so many obvious red flags about him. …
… uncle left her a large, rambling mansion in a small coastal town in Maine, but his will stipulates that she must live in the house for three years in order to claim her inheritance. Sonya’s innate stubbornness and strong survival instinct come in handy after discovering the house is haunted by a bevy of ghosts, collectively known as the lost brides. …
Rick McCharles 