Jo Nesbø is a super popular Norwegian writer. But I don’t much like Inspector Harry Hole, the lead character of his dark crime novels. An angry drunk much of the time.
At the start of The Redeemer (book #6), Harry is on the wagon. And even attends AA meetings.
Harry is both Oslo Crime Squad’s most brilliant detective, and its most frustrating. He struggles with authority
… the assassin – calling himself Stankić – arrives in Oslo and kills a Salvation Army officer, Robert Karlsen, during a Christmas street concert. Stankić has a facial anomaly known as hyperelasticity, wherein his facial muscles can be manipulated voluntarily to stop people from recognizing him. …
When a murder attempt is made on Robert’s brother Jon, it is believed that the Karlsen family is being attacked. …
From there it’s a long, complicated plot. Well written.
Still … I’m not a huge fan of this series. I’m only reading it because I’m back in Norway.
London Rules is 6th in the Slough House series — where the washed-up MI5 spies go to while away what’s left of their failed careers.
The “slow horses,” as they’re called, have all disgraced themselves in some way to get relegated here. If they can’t be fired for any reason, they are reassigned to work under Jackson Lamb.
Herron is a very funny writer. Most of the best lines are from Lamb who’s a bigoted, philistine, obese, spectacularly flatulent, alcoholic chain-smoker.
But smart. And loyal to his misfits.
Oscar-winning actor Gary Oldman plays Lamb in the TV series.
In this book — the weakest in the series, so far — the head of MI5 is trying to protect the prime minister.
Politicians are corrupt and much mocked.
Over at Slough House, somebody wants to kill their tech geek, Roddy Ho. Nobody can imagine why.
The new book is also set specifically after the EU referendum.
Its antagonist, Dennis Gimball, is the UK’s leading Eurosceptic MP, with a wife who writes a tabloid column.
As in earlier books, which featured a floppy-fringed bicycling Westminster populist, Herron adeptly negotiates the rules of satire and the laws of libel to create fictional public figures who simultaneously hit more than one real-life bullseye.
During a series of terrorist attacks on Britain, Slough House detects a threat to Gimball, making the reader wonder whether the espionage rejects are capable of saving the politician and, frankly, whether we want them to. …
Spook Street (2017) is the 5th book in the Slough House series — and the best so far.
Herron is an entertaining writer. Most of the best lines are from boss Jackson Lamb who’s a bigoted, philistine, obese, spectacularly flatulent, alcoholic chain-smoker.
Oscar-winning actor Gary Oldman plays Lamb in the TV series.
What happens when an old spook loses his mind? Does the Service have a retirement home for those who know too many secrets but don’t remember they’re secret? Or does someone take care of the senile spy for good?
These are the paranoid concerns of David Cartwright, a Cold War–era operative and one-time head of MI5 who is sliding into dementia, and questions his grandson, River, must figure out answers to now that the spy who raised him has started to forget to wear pants. But River, himself an agent at Slough House, MI5’s outpost for disgraced spies, has other things to worry about. A bomb has detonated in the middle of a busy shopping center and killed forty innocent civilians. The “slow horses” of Slough House must figure out who is behind this act of terror before the situation escalates.
Though Kingsolver lives in southern Appalachia, I can’t fathom how effectively she puts herself into the mind of the boy — Demon Copperhead. It’s a coming of age story.
Ground zero of the opium epidemic. Demon is born to a drug-using teenage single mother in a trailer in Lee County, Virginia.
Since his mother is in and out of rehab, Demon is partly raised by the sprawling, warm-hearted Peggot clan.
Almost everyone in this dirt poor place is drastically hurt by the Sackler family’s killer drug OxyContin.
“I don’t know a single person my age that’s not taking pills,” Demon says at one point.
The Sacklers paid a $6 billion settlement to avoidcivil lawsuits. It’s fair to call them killers.
I listened to the audio book. Recommended, as the reader has the right accent and tone of voice.
Dylan’s father was going blind when DT wrote this poem. Some suggest that dying of the light is a reference to darkness and being blind.
For me it’s always urged not to capitulate in the face of evil and wrongdoing.
If you see something wrong, take ethical action. Do something. Do not ignore it.
In the context of social media I often get the comment … “Why are you so negative?”
Typically from friends who don’t like me challenging some statement they’ve made that I consider wrong. (I’ll unfriend if you insist the world is only 5000 years old, by the way. 😀 )
I’m surprised as this book seems a bit simplistic compared with others in the Christie archive.
It begins at a Hallowe’en party.
A girl at the party claims to have witnessed a murder, which at the time she was too young to realize was such.
Though disbelieved by those around her, the girl herself is drowned in an apple-bobbing bucket and Poirot must solve a two-pronged mystery: who killed the girl, and what if anything did she witness? …
Don’t let her age fool you. Maud may be nearly ninety, but if you cross her, this elderly lady is more sinister than sweet.
I’ve never cheered a homicidal lady more. 😀
En route to a luxury vacation in South Africa, Maud recalls half a dozen earlier times when her generally untroubled life was threatened by someone who ended up coming to grief. …
A guidebook to growing old without a single regret for victims who deserved just what they got.
Rick McCharles 