In her third thriller (“The Guest List” and “The Hunting Party”) Lucy Foley keeps you guessing with multiple first person narrators and short chapters designed to leave you hanging.
The star of this twisted tale is Jess, arriving in Paris from London to visit her half-brother, Ben. …
Turns out Ben is missing and Jess can’t get any answers from the denizens of number 12, rue des Amants. …
Guardian – Everyone’s a suspect in ‘The Paris Apartment’
Quite entertaining.
Much better than the average Baldacci.
The April 2023 one kept me guessing.
Mickey Gibson, single mother and former detective, leads a hectic life similar to that of many moms: juggling the demands of her two small children with the tasks of her job working remotely for ProEye, a global investigation company that hunts down wealthy tax and credit cheats.When Mickey gets a call from a colleague named Arlene Robinson, she thinks nothing of Arlene’s unusual request for her to go inventory the vacant home of an arms dealer who cheated ProEye’s clients and fled. That is, until she arrives at the mansion to discover a dead body in a secret room—and that nothing is as it seems. …
In the blink of an eye, Gibson has become a prime suspect in a murder investigation—and now her job is also on the line until she proves that she was set up.
Before long, Gibson is locked in a battle of wits with a brilliant woman with no name, a hidden past, and unknown motives—whose end game is as mysterious as it is deadly.
This may have been the first Agatha Christie I ever read.
As a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book back when I was a kid.
Quite groundbreaking as one of the first serial killer stories.
10 people on an island. No way to leave.
One by one they are murdered in this spooky house.
Like most upper middle class Brits of her age, Agatha was somewhat racist. And even more antisemitic.
She got better over the decades, eventually casting homosexuals in positive roles. Surprisingly, the famously conservative old lady even voted to join the EU.
It was first published in the United Kingdom in 1939, as Ten Little Niggers,[3] after an 1869 minstrel song which serves as a major plot element. The US edition was released i 1940 with the title And Then There Were None, taken from the last five words of the song.
The book is the world’s best-selling mystery, and with over 100 million copies sold is one of the best-selling books of all time.
While reading the book, I simultaneously watched the 2015 mystery thriller television serial that was first broadcast on BBC One ➙ And Then There Were None.
Quite good.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
The May 2023 book by Nora Roberts is great.
Great story telling. Engaging.
My theory is that Nora is increasingly moving away from romance. In this book no bodice is ripped until well into the second half of a long book.
This one is about identity theft. The conman not only takes the identity and steals the money — but also murders the victim.
Morgan Albright … bought a small house in the perfect neighbourhood outside of Baltimore, living with a friend and working two jobs to make ends meet.
Morgan’s life is happy and fulfilling, and she is making progress on her financial and career goals.
Her perfect world is shattered when someone breaks into her home and murders her roommate.
At first, the police assume it was a random act of violence, but after discovering the killer stole Morgan’s identity and her entire savings, they realize the crime fits the profile of a serial killer named Gavin Rozwell. …
Kirkus
l learned a lot from this book. Roberts does a lot of research into the back stories of her characters. In this case, Morgan has to move home with her Mom and Grandmother and reinvent her life working in a small town.
Yes the plot is a bit cheesy. And the characters a bit cliche.
But the story kept me going. It’s entertaining.
I enjoyed the 2023 biography of Agatha Christie.
A surprising life story for such a successful author.
Enter historian Lucy Worsley, whose declared intention is to rescue Christie, who died in 1976 at the age of 85, from the misperceptions that cling to her life and her works of fiction. …
… she revisits the most notorious episode of Christie’s life: her disappearance for 11 days in December 1926 …
Her gift for dialogue and for manipulating social stereotypes, as Worsley demonstrates, was formidable, keenly attuned to the proliferating class anxieties of the 20th century; numerous characters are, interestingly, transitional or dispossessed in some way …
Guardian Review
Over the past few years I’ve been reading her 70+ books. Many are very good.
Despite the books, magazines, TV adaptations, movies — Agatha had money troubles most of her life.
When asked “occupation“, Agatha stated “House Wife” her entire life.
She loved buying and maintaining homes. Loved shopping. Did have a social life.
Yet she was incredibly prolific and productive as a writer. Her plots she jotted down in notebooks.
One of the things I like best about Agatha are her books in exotic settings. She loved to travel. And her second husband was an archeologist. Agatha spent a lot of time with him on his digs in the Middle East.
Click PLAY or see a preview on YouTube.
… fast-moving encapsulation of German history …
… Hawes sees the birth of Germany as we know it with the partition of Charlemagne’s kingdom into West Frankish (France) and East Frankish (Germany) …
Kirkus
I read this wanting to know more about the history of Germany. It’s not nearly so well known to me as Great Britain and/or France.
The author argues that historically and culturally, eastern Germany is quite different from the rest.
It’s been true for hundreds of years. And was true in 1933 when the east of Germany voted more for Hitler.
Eastern Germans are more likely to be anti-American, anti-NATO and anti-Western.
Some are pro-Putin.
Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is one of your typical right wing hate groups: anti LGBTQ, anti-Muslim, anti-Gay marriage, anti-everything.
Here’s where the AfD party was most popular in the 2017 federal election.
The author almost argues that it would have been better if Germany had not unified.
Despite trillions in subsidy provided by the west, many in the east would rather go back to the Soviet Union.
If there is ever a referendum on separation, I hope it happens.
Second in the series after The Escape Artist.
This one’s better.
Jim “Zig” Zigarowski, a mortician who spent most of his career at Dover Air Force Base.
Nola Brown is a badass. And a U.S. Army’s artist-in-residence–a painter.
Zig is called in to personally work his magic on the body of Mint, a former member of the military whose colleagues insist on an open-casket funeral.
Zig comes through …
… an even bigger surprise when Nola Brown, the infamous mystery woman who saved his life in THE ESCAPE ARTIST, shows up at the funeral.
What could possibly be their connection? …
bookreporter review
Well researched. This crazy plot is based on real technology.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
A TV quiz show host became one of our most successful murder mystery authors when he published The Thursday Murder Club novel in 2020.
The most borrowed library book one year in England.
The sequel — The Man Who Died Twice — was a big hit, as well.
The Bullet That Missed is #3. Also charming and funny.
As this installment opens, the four septuagenarian members of the club—former MI6 agent Elizabeth Best, retired nurse Joyce Meadowcroft, psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif, and longtime union organizer Ron Ritchie—are investigating another murder from their cold-case files.
It seems that Bethany Waites, a local TV journalist, was about to crack a huge tax avoidance scheme when her car went over a cliff 10 years ago …
The mysteries are complex, the characters vivid, and the whole thing is laced with warm humor and—remarkably, considering the body count—good feeling.
Kirkus
Reviews are great. But I personally found this the weakest of the 3 books.
The silly plot dragged.
Quite a few new characters. Too many?
The more Ibrahim Arif, the better. He’s my favourite.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I really shouldn’t read Nesbø.
Too dark. Too much gore.
I should quit as I quit Karen Slaughter. And for the same reasons.
Phantom is the ninth novel featuring crime detective Inspector Harry Hole. …
Inspector Harry Hole is returned from his self-imposed exile in Hong Kong when he is told that Oleg, the son of his on-off girlfriend Rakel Fauke, has been arrested for murder …
Since Hole has become a father figure to Oleg, he comes to Norway to determine the truth …
Hole discovers that the drug scene in Oslo no longer revolves around heroin, but around a highly-addictive morphine-based drug called violin. …
Hole becomes convinced that the police have the wrong suspect and that Oleg has been arrested to take the heat off the real violin dealers. …
Book trailer videos are typically the very worst on YouTube. This one is far better than usual.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Definitely a slow start.
But there’s something weirdly compelling to the suspense.
In THE MIST, readers follow series protagonist Hulda Hermansdottir as she returns to work following a personal leave necessitated by an undefined tragedy.
Hulda will soon face a disturbing – and puzzling – case: a mysterious death at a remote farmhouse in the Icelandic countryside, where two bodies have been found.
Weaving together Hulda’s personal life with an extended flashback at the farm in the lead-up to our victims’ deaths, THE MIST is a complex and heartbreaking mystery, a feather in the cap of an already-exceptional crime fiction series.
If you’re in the market for elegant suspense that relies more on atmosphere and character development than blood and gore, Ragnar Jonasson’s superb Hidden Iceland trilogy might just be your perfect match. …
Crime by the Book
The Hidden Iceland series is told backwards chronologically. In Book One, THE DARKNESS, readers meet police officer Hulda Hermansdottir at the end of her career with the Icelandic police. In Book Two, THE ISLAND, readers rewind in time, and meet Hulda in the middle of her career. Finally, in Book Three, THE MIST, readers meet Hulda early on in her career, when she is just finding her footing and establishing herself in the police force. …
