Amos Decker is a BIG former professional football player who was violently hit on his first NFL play, resulting in severe injuries and changes to his brain.
He’s called the “memory man” because he’s unable to forget anything.
In this book Amos is sent to Florida with a brand-new partner, FBI Special Agent Frederica White, to investigate the murder of a federal judge. Both partners are pissed at their last-minute pairing, and they immediately see themselves as a bad fit.
Later they discover they are being set up to fail and possibly dismissed for failure.
But Amos Decker never fails. His success rate in finding the murder is 100%.
She had a daughter, Kate, with on-again, off-again love interest DCI Harry Nelson.
I tried the most recent — The Locked Room #14 (2022) — mainly because it was set just at the start of the pandemic. And that was interesting.
The murder mysteries were complicated by Covid lockdown rules.
It is a good book. But I’m not sure I’ll ready more Ruth Galloway. I’m keener on her Harbinder Kaur book series.
Post-holiday blues got you down? The solution is to cozy up with a great thriller! 😌📖
And do we have the recommendation for you—The Locked Room by @ellygriffiths. Ruth is feeling isolated—until Nelson investigates a string of murder-suicides that’s looming ever closer…😱 pic.twitter.com/pBuSZyoWxQ
And the big budget 2007 film is better – The Golden Compass. GREAT cast.
My favourite character on the TV adaptation might be Ruth Wilson as Mrs Coulter. That’s a tough role when you know you’ll be compared with Nicole Kidman who’s perfect in the film version.
The show follows the orphan Lyra, played by Dafne Keen, as she searches for a missing friend and discovers a kidnapping plot related to an invisible cosmic substance called Dust.
Ultimately, I didn’t care much about the plot. The prophecy. The Magisterium. Nor many of the characters. Dust. Angels. I really didn’t care about anything in this show.
Most interesting are the animal companions called daemons.
And there are some interesting special effects and speculative fiction touches.
Read the books. Watch the movie. Skip the TV series.
Colter Shaw is an itinerate “reward-seeker,” traveling the country to help police solve crimes and private citizens locate missing persons.
When he learns of a reward for a missing college student in Silicon Valley, he takes the job. The investigation quickly thrusts him into the dark heart of Silicon Valley and the cutthroat billion-dollar video gaming industry–and then a second kidnapping happens…and this victim turns up dead.
The clues soon point to one video game, The Never Game, in which the player has to survive after being left abandoned.
Is a madman bringing that game to life? If so, Shaw has to stop him before he strikes again…and before he figures out that Shaw is on his trail.
Deaver was chosen to write a new James Bond novel: Carte Blanche set in 2011 and was published on May 25, 2011. So he’s definitely got credibility as an author.
A new series begins – the Hunter and Tate Mysteries.
Book #1 is OK. Easy reading.
I doubt I’ll continue with the series.
True crime podcaster Ella Tate is shaken to her core by the horrific assault and murder of Josie Wheatly, a teacher she has never met … because not only had Josie moved into Ella’s vacated apartment three months earlier, but her Facebook photos reveal a striking resemblance between the two women.
Within days, two people close to Ella are harmed, and she fears that she’s become the target of twisted revenge from her crime-reporting days.
Reluctantly teaming up with her neighbour Tony, a hairdresser who loves the finer things in life, and Liam Hunter, the persistent detective assigned to the cases, Ella struggles to stay one step ahead before she becomes the target of the final kill.
When I realized my favourite character, Lewis, was not going to be in this story, I was disappointed.
BUT a murder mystery set in a December blizzard in Iceland turned out to be right up my alley. 😀
Losing ground in his fight against post-traumatic claustrophobia, war veteran Peter Ash has no intention of getting on an airplane–until a grieving woman asks Peter to find her eight-year-old grandson.
The woman’s daughter has been murdered. Erik, the dead daughter’s husband, is the sole suspect, and he has taken his young son and fled to Iceland for the protection of Erik’s lawless family.
Finding the boy becomes more complicated when Peter is met at the airport by a man from the United States Embassy. For reasons both unknown and unofficial, it seems that Peter’s own government doesn’t want him in Iceland. …
Wesley King is the author of over a dozen novels for young readers.
His debut, OCDaniel, is an Edgar Award winner, a Canada Silver Birch Award winner, a Bank Street Best Book of the Year, and received a starred review from Booklist.
The author suffered in silence with Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) when he was a kid. This coming-of-age novel is quite autobiographical.
13-year-old Daniel is shy and smart. He’d be bullied if not for his best friend Max who is a school football star.
Daniel is on the team too — as back-up punter and water boy. He really doesn’t want to get on the field.
The only stranger kid in his Grade is Sara Malvern who does not speak to anyone. Though she keeps her grades high.
Daniel is shocked with Sara approaches him with a personal problem. And speaks.
She fears her father has been killed by her Mom’s new boyfriend.
It’s partly a murder mystery.
Simultaneously, Daniel is secretly writing a book called The Last Kid on Earth.
It’s something like the 1st book in the Harry Potter series. But at Mystwick magic is created along with music. The book is available, as well, but the audio version includes all the music. Better.
Amelia Jones has always dreamed of attending the Mystwick, as her mother had gone there.
She is accepted into the academy by accident — and faces plenty of challenges.
Paul Theroux is a jerk — but still my favourite travel writer of all time.
He’s age-81 as I post. Still going strong.
Theroux says he’s mellowed. And I’d admit his most recent books are much more positive than his scathing critiques of the past.
In 2015, he published “Deep South” detailing four road trips through the southern states of the United States. Excellent.
In 2019 he published OnthePlainofSnakes: A Mexican Journey, his account of his extensive travels in his own car throughout Mexico.
In some ways it was a continuation of his Deep South investigation.
Near the start he recaps the deaths and damage done by the drug trade. The insatiable American market. The brutal competition in Mexico to supply it.
He does a terrific overview of illegal immigration before the pandemic. Mexico a net zero. Now mostly more desperate folks from Central America as well as many from India, the Caribbean, and even China.
Over the decades it’s gotten more and more difficult to cross the border illegally. And not because of any wall. Walls are considered a joke in Mexico.
In another instant, his comments come across as self-serving, as when he longs for a simpler Mexico with “inexpensive meals that were delicious, cheap motels that were comfortable, and friendly people who, out of politeness, seldom complained to outsiders of their dire circumstances: poor pay, criminal gangs, a country without good health care or pensions, crooked police, cruel soldiers, and a government indifferent to the plight of most citizens.” …
I was amused to read of all the time Paul paid bribes to crooked cops. An conspicuous car with Massachusetts licence plates — a sitting duck.
Theroux is mostly critical of ReTrumplicans. I like that too, of course.
“The per capita income in Oaxaca is the same as in Kenya and Bangladesh,” Theroux says.
“You’re dealing with people who have very little money and get very little help from the government. But they have a great culture they’re very proud of, their family values are very strong, and they’re very self-sufficient and creative. They mend their clothes; they fix their shoes; they’re actually able to take something that’s broken and repair it; they have a lot of cottage industries.
I admire that, and I admire the ones who pick up and go to the border. Most of the people I’ve met who crossed the border just wanted to earn some money to send back and then go home; they weren’t here to go on welfare or be the parasites they’re identified as.”
In fact, Theroux says, “the book was inspired by everything that Donald Trump and other people were saying during the presidential campaign about Mexico, Mexicans, and the border—their uninformed opinions and stereotypes.”
He adds, “One of the great reasons for traveling is to destroy stereotypes, to see people and things as they really are, to see the dynamics and the complexity of a country. As soon as he started saying things like, ‘There’s too many of them, they’re coming over the border, they’re rapists,’ I had a great reason for taking a year or two to get to the bottom of it.” …
Rick McCharles 