Category: books

Wolf in Winter by John Connolly

On By Rick McIn booksLeave a comment

I finally got around to trying one of the John Connolly novels.

Best known for his series of novels starring private detective Charlie Parker.

The Wolf in Winter (2014) is 13th in the series.

Quite good.

It reminded me a bit of a Stephen King plot.

The community of Prosperous, Maine has always thrived when others have suffered. Its inhabitants are wealthy, its children’s future secure. It shuns outsiders. It guards its own. And at the heart of Prosperous lies the ruins of an ancient church, transported stone by stone from England centuries earlier by the founders of the town . . .

But the death of a homeless man and the disappearance of his daughter draw the haunted, lethal private investigator Charlie Parker to Prosperous. …

johnconnollybooks.com

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Theodore Boone: books 5-6-7

On By Rick McIn booksLeave a comment

The Fugitive (2015)
The Scandal (2016)
The Accomplice (2019)

I enjoyed the first 4 books much more than the final three. Greatly amused by a 13-year-old boy who considers himself a Kid Lawyer.

5th in the series is The Fugitive. And it’s pretty good, actually.

On a Washington D.C school trip Theo spots Pete Duffy who had skipped town after his trial for murder ended in mistrial.

The Scandal was a dull plot concerning teachers manipulating exam scores to raise average grades for their school. Some kind of argument against standardized testing.

Last is The Accomplice. Didn’t really work for me.

The Skin Collector by Jeffery Deaver

On By Rick McIn booksLeave a comment

The Skin Collector (2014) is 11th in the series. And very good, as always.

A new type of serial killer is stalking the streets of New York …

… The Skin Collector: a tattooist with a chamber of torture hidden deep underground. But instead of using ink to create each masterpiece, the artist uses a lethal poison which will render targets dead before they can even entertain the prospect of escape . . .

Drafted in to investigate, NYPD detective Lincoln Rhyme and his associate Amelia Sachs have little to go on but a series of cryptic messages left etched into the skin of the deceased. …

jefferydeaver.com

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Point Blanc by Anthony Horowitz

On By Rick McIn books, TVLeave a comment

Point Blanc is the second book in the Alex Rider series, written by British author Anthony Horowitz. The book was released in the United Kingdom on September 3, 2001 …

Weirdly, a teen is recruited by MI6 to infiltrate the Point Blanc Academy in the French Alps.

It’s something like a teen 007 saving the world through an incredible series of unlikely events.

It didn’t work for me.

I liked more the TV adaptation called Alex Rider. BUT didn’t get through all of season 1.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths

On By Rick McIn booksLeave a comment

I tried a second book in the very popular Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths.

Well written. But not really my cup of tea.

Ruth is a forensic archaeologist who assists the police from time to time with investigations.

In this book she is the harried mother of a toddler, asked to investigate an archeological study that had been unearthed by a College friend. Close to Blackpool, England.

It appears he had been murdered, perhaps due to the nature of the dig.

The plot is interesting. But Ruth’s complaints and worries eventually began to wear on me.

I wanted the book to end.

WHY so much poverty in the USA?

On By Rick McIn bad news, books, economics, ethics, GOP USA, government, human rightsLeave a comment

I feel the GOP USA has only one overriding goal ➙ make the rich, richer.

To that end they don’t want to improve education, health care, nor raise the minimum wage.

Greedy Americans are why there’s so much poverty in the most affluent nation of the world.

Green River, Utah

The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of Evicted, Matthew Desmond, reimagines the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it.

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy.

Why?

Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages? …

Private opulence, public squalor: How the U.S. helps the rich and hurts the poor

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

The Simple Truth by David Baldacci

On By Rick McIn booksLeave a comment

The Simple Truth (1999) by David Baldacci is quite good.

The plot sounded more Grisham — a murderer in prison for life wants to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Suddenly everyone who has anything to do with the possible case is at risk of being killed.

This one is definitely above average for Baldacci. I recommend it.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

On By Rick McIn books, moviesLeave a comment

Excellent. Literary students should be studying this book.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a novel by Gabrielle Zevin. 

Amazon named it the best book of 2022.

I’d heard the hype — but didn’t rush to get a copy. The plot didn’t sound all that intriguing.

Over the course of three decades, the relationship between two friends, Sadie Green and Sam Masur, changes as they develop video games.

But it is fantastic. A modern classic.

Delightful. Original. Charming.

All true.

Modern and philosophical.

How many novels feature a love story where the couple are not sexually involved?

All that said, I found the second half of the book not nearly as good as the beginning. Anticipating a poor ending — I am pleased to say the wrap-up is very well done.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Paramount Pictures and Temple Hill Entertainment purchased the film rights for Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow for $2 million.

The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver

On By Rick McIn booksLeave a comment

The Broken Window (2008) is the 8th book in the Lincoln Rhyme series.

As always, Deaver backs up his entertaining stories with great research.

Though the book was published 2008, it parallels what could happen in 2023 as hackers are winning the war against privacy.

…  a killer has access to the world’s greatest data miner called Strategic Systems Datacorp. He is using detailed information to commit crimes and blame them on innocents.

Lincoln Rhyme, Amelia Sachs, and characters from the previous books, team up to stop the criminal.

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz

On By Rick McIn booksLeave a comment

Anthony Horowitz is an excellent murder mystery writer.

This one from 2016 is a bit of a sequel to the very popular The Magpie Murders.

Moonflower Murders (2020) finds Susan Ryeland broke, running a small hotel in Crete.

For ￡10,000 she’s convinced to fly home to England to investigate the disappearance of a woman from another hotel.

Why?

Because there are parallels between how Cecily disappeared and another novel that Ryeland had edited in the past.

It’s a story within a story.

In fact, if you read this book ➙ you read 2 books. The one based on the other.

The second is called …

Atticus Pünd Takes the Case

In the novel Pünd and his new secretary are hired to investigate the murder of Melissa James, a former actress turned wife and hotel owner. As with the case of Frank Parris, there are many potential killers who could have murdered Melissa such as her husband …

Magpie murders was adapted for TV. It must have been successful as now Moonflower Murders will be coming to the small screen in 2023.