Nora Roberts is a great story teller — but I can’t recommend her most recent book.
The ROMANCE is classic Nora Roberts. Very good.
But the main plot about a debut author chased by an extremely stupid stalker is … weak.
Review – Nora Roberts’ The Final Target Review: Worth the Hype?
The audio book reader is excellent, as usual ➙ January LaVoy.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Wow. Original. Interesting. Uplifting
What a great movie.
The Life of Chuck is a 2024 fantasy-drama film written, directed, and edited by horror auteur Mike Flanagan.
Moving away from his signature macabre horror style, Flanagan delivers a life-affirming, emotionally resonant adaptation of Stephen King’s 2020 novella of the same name.
The film took home the prestigious People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
The movie explores the life of an ordinary accountant named Charles “Chuck” Krantz through an unconventional reverse three-act structure:
The underlying thesis reveals that the global “apocalypse” in Act III is actually the fading consciousness and brain decay of Chuck himself as he lies dying in a hospital bed.
The film acts as a metaphor for the Walt Whitman philosophy that every single human “contains multitudes” and holds an entire pocket universe within their mind.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Ironwood (2026) is a crime thriller novel written by one of our best working authors, Michael Connelly.
The 2nd instalment in his Catalina series.
The book follows the investigative exploits of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Detective Sergeant Stilwell on Catalina Island, California.
A nighttime drug drop goes terribly wrong. Two cops are shot.
Another thread follows the cold case of female hiker who mysteriously disappeared on the island 4 years prior.
It’s Michael Connelly, so good.
Reviews are great.
BUT … for me, I find Stilwell less intriguing the Bosch or Renée Ballard series. And even the Lincoln Lawyer series.
Renée Ballard is in this one. Bosch mentioned.
Some were unhappy with the unresolved ending. BUT I’m keen to read book #3 and find out what happens next.
The Recovery Agent is the first book in an adventure-mystery series by #1 New York Times bestselling author Janet Evanovich .
Launched in 2022, the series introduces Gabriela Rose, a professional recovery agent who specializes in finding lost treasures and stolen heirlooms for wealthy clients.
Something of a silly Indiana Jones clone.
Suspend your disbelief.
I probably won’t continue with the series — though ex-husband, Rafer, is very entertaining. Laid-back, charming, and infuriating to Gabriela, Rafer is a slovenly surfer dude.
Paramount Pictures has acquired the rights to Janet Evanovich’s bestselling Recovery Agent book series for a feature film adaptation, with Gal Gadot producing and potentially starring as globe-trotting agent Gabriela Rose.
Entertaining.
The murder mystery itself is silly, however.
Co-writers Zackary Grady and Achilles Stamatelaky.
Estranged son, Milan Patel, organizing the Met Gala in NY City finally returns home to small town Montana.
At the arrival party, his father dies mysteriously.
Accident? Murder?
Murder at the Patel Motel is an Audible Original audio play with multiple narrators and sound effects, often described as feeling like an “old style radio play” …
… a lighthearted cozy mystery, “extra cheesy,” and genuinely funny rather than intense or gritty. …
The novelty is starting to wear off for me.
Police Constable Peter Grant; an officer in the Metropolitan Police and the first official apprentice wizard in sixty years.
The dialogue still amusing. But lack of a clear story line in these books is frustrating.
It’s mostly police procedural.
Foxglove Summer (2014) is the 5th novel in the Peter Grant series by English author Ben Aaronovitch.
Peter Grant travels to rural Herefordshire, where the disappearance of two eleven-year old girls is a media sensation, the focus of an intensive police search – and might have grave magical implications as well. …
He finds that unicorns are all too real and that their horns are deadly weapons; that fairies do exist and even in the 21st century they do sometimes kidnap human children and replace them with changelings …
One of my favourite series, I decided to reread most of them from the start.
Better the second time, I found.
Whispers Under Ground (2012) is 3rd in the Rivers of London series.
Our central character is Police Constable and apprentice wizard Peter Grant.
Quite entertaining.
It’s a light read. I mainly enjoy the dry British humour.
The story begins just before Christmas when a reputable American art student, James Gallagher, is found stabbed to death on the tracks at Baker Street Underground station.
Because the murder weapon—a sharp piece of pottery—is heavily saturated with magical traces, the Metropolitan Police’s secret magical department, “The Folly,” is brought in to investigate.
As the son of a wealthy US Senator, the victim’s death threatens an international incident.
Peter has to work alongside a deeply religious FBI Special Agent, Kimberley Reynolds, who has been sent to monitor the case.
The investigation dives deep into London’s complex subterranean geography, taking Peter through:
Excellent.
The Bomb Maker (2018) by Thomas Perry has a really good BAD GUY.
How can he be stopped?
The opening sentence of chapter one draws you straight into the action with its vividly detailed, almost fetishist description of a bomb’s construction.
So enticingly described are the levels of concentration needed not to blow one’s self up, and the obsessive degree of planning needed to cause the maximum amount of damage, that by the end of the chapter, we almost want to see …
Fullness of Time is an interesting sci-fi novella.
Mixed reviews — but the plot kept me going.
One family has some kind of genetic / medical disorder allowing them to see briefly into the future.
Hiram Granville, a modern Leonardo, secured more than a thousand patents during his lifetime, often just ahead of others who had already been working on the same ideas.
His son, John, an economics genius, never lost a cent in the stock market—or any other financial deal—and was investigated for insider trading on more than one occasion.
Now Cat, a documentarian; her researcher, Mercy; and Cracker Jack, an electronics whiz, are doing a film about the Granville clan.
What they find as they research the family is madness, suicide, a seemingly total seclusion, and a frightening glimpse about what it means to peer into the future.
