Christopher Snow is different from all the other residents of Moonlight Bay, different from anyone you’ve ever met. For Christopher Snow has made his peace with a very rare genetic disorder shared by only one thousand other Americans, a disorder that leaves him dangerously vulnerable to light.

His life is filled with the fascinating rituals of one who must embrace the dark. He knows the night as no one else ever will, ever can—the mystery, the beauty, the many terrors, and the eerie, silken rhythms of the night—for it is only at night that he is free. …

Amazon

Quite good.

Koontz does have a knack for coming up with interesting and original characters.

I liked the first in a series of 28 Eve Duncan novels – Face of Deception.

So tried #2 – Body of Lies. But didn’t enjoy it nearly as much. It dragged.

Eve Duncan … is a forensic sculptor driven by a need to liberate innocence from the shroud of death.

… at the weird behest of a shady senator, Eve rebuilds the visage of the politician’s late rival, a challenge that nearly results in her murder, strains her romance with a hard-bitten detective, and uncovers a fantastic global conspiracy over energy profits and much else. …

Book 4 in the Will Robie series.

I’d hoped Robie partnering with another American black ops assassin, Jessica Reel, would make for the BEST book in the series, so far.

BUT this book is everything I don’t like about Baldacci.

Unbelievable. Predictable. Jingoistic. North Korea evil but redeemable by the USA, USA, USA.

The subplot with Reel’s father, Earl Fontaine, was the one section well done. I wish the rest of the book was that good.

Though there are two more books in the series, I’m OUT.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

An excellent book. Wilderness survival.

Two best friends together on a long, remote canoe trip to Hudson’s Bay. Their friendship tested by forest fire, white water, and violence.

Heller knows the outdoors intimately. And writes skillfully.

He traveled the world as an expedition kayaker. Worked as a logger, offshore fisherman, river guide.

Highly recommended.

Amazon

I’d not read this one Rebus book … or had I?

Happily, my memory is so BAD that it seemed vaguely familiar, but not uninteresting.

Naming of the Dead is a crime novel by Ian Rankin.

… the 16th of the Inspector Rebus novels. Set in Edinburgh in July 2005, in the week of the G8 summit in Gleneagles. …

… Rebus is nearing retirement (“nobody would blame you for coasting”), and becomes sidelined until the apparent suicide of MP Ben Webster occurs at a high-level meeting in Edinburgh Castle. …

At the same time, a serial killer seems to be killing former offenders, helped by a website set up by the family of a victim. …

Fegan was an IRA killer in northern Ireland.

Went to prison for 12 years for his crimes.

Finally out of jail — now that “peace” has come — he is being haunted day and night by 12 ghosts of the people he killed.

This was Neville’s first book. And it’s much admired by fans of Irish literature, a high standard.

It’s profane and violent. But the plot is certainly engaging.

Amazon.

Erik Larson is one of our best non-fiction writers.

The Devil in the White City is the best of his books I’ve read, so far.

This one is excellent too. An inside early look at Berlin under the physically unimpressive Adolf Hitler and his lickspittles.

WW II would result in 70–85 million dead, or about 3% of the 1940 world population. Hitler personally responsible for many of those millions.

He committed suicide April 30, 1945. Could Hitler have been stopped earlier?

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin is the true story of American Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, particularly the years 1933 to 1937 when he and his family, including his daughter Martha, lived in Berlin. …

Martha, separated from her husband and in the process of divorce, became caught up in the glamor and excitement of Berlin’s social scene and had a series of liaisons, most of them sexual, including among them Gestapo head Rudolf Diels and Soviet attaché and secret agent Boris Vinogradov. 

In fact, daughter Martha was once presented to Hitler. One of the Führer’s henchmen hoped the dictator would be attracted. An American concubine would make his hateful regime more palatable to the USA.

Whodunnit?

Agatha Christie would like this book.

Shari Lapena is one of the best murder mystery writers working today.

Fred and Sheila Merton are brutally murdered the night after an Easter dinner with their three adult kids. Who, of course, are devastated.

Or are they?

They each stand to inherit millions. …

Readers try to eliminate suspects one at a time.