A sadistic serial killer has been preying on men, beginning with a retired car salesman whose interests appear to be limited to bird watching and poetry and whose body was discovered in a punji stick pit; and continuing with a flower shop manager, found starved and garrotted in the woods.
Wallander soon realises both men have a past record of violence towards women, and after another man is drowned in a lake, he goes on the hunt for an avenging angel…
Sidetracked #5 almost as good. An intriguing plot, wbell told.
In the sweltering Swedish summer of 1994, a sadistic serial killer begins preying on elderly, successful men, violently slaughtering them with an axe before collecting their scalps as trophies …
I signed up for a free month of Britbox to try Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh as the eponymous police inspector.
First episode is based on the #5 book Sidetracked.
Emmy-award-winning director Philip Martin was hired as lead director. Martin worked with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle to establish a visual style for the series. …
Like Branagh, Philip Martin did not watch any of the Swedish-language Wallander films so that he could bring a fresh interpretation to the films.
It is well done.
Branagh, born in Belfast, is terrific. Perfect as the flawed detective with many demons.
But Tom Hiddleston tends to steal every scene in which he appears.
It was Branagh who later asked Hiddleston to audition for the film Thor.
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded is a 2003 book by Simon Winchester covering the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa.
36,000 victims.
Underwater lines of communications were just starting to work well (after the introduction of covering them with rubber) making Krakatoa one of the first worldwide news stories.
I thought I’d read all the Jack Reacher books — but somehow missed the 7th, Persuader (2003).
And this is a good one.
Jack Reacher is working unofficially with the DEA to bring down a boy’s father, Zachary Beck, who is suspected of smuggling drugs under the pretext of trading in oriental carpets.
They stage a kidnap effort on Zachary’s son, Richard Beck.
Reacher rescues the boy gaining access to Beck by working as a hired gun/bodyguard.
I can’t compare it to anything else. Absurd comedy.
A poignant, charming novel about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined.
New Year’s Eve in a small Swedish town.
In a robbery / hostage taking gone wrong, it’s all “Stockholm Syndrome” by the end.
After killing a man in the line of duty (in The White Lioness), Inspector Kurt Wallander finds himself spiralling into an alcohol-fuelled depression.
He has just decided to leave the police when an old friend, Sten Torstensson, asks him to secretly investigate the recent death of his father in a car accident.
At first Kurt dismisses his friend’s suspicions as unlikely, but then Sten is found murdered in exactly the same manner as a Norwegian businessman shortly before.
Against his previous judgement, Kurt returns to work to investigate what he is convinced is a case of double murder.
Fast Ice was published March 2021. Co-author Graham Brown.
18th book in the NUMA (the National Underwater and Marine Agency) series.
This is the first Cussler book I’ve read and can’t claim it’s good.
BUT I did find the plot fascinating.
In the early days of World War II, the infamous German Luftwaffe embark upon an expedition to Antarctica, hoping to set up a military base to support their goal of world domination. Though the military outpost never comes to fruition, what the Nazis find on the icy continent indeed proves dangerous…and will have implications far into the future.
In the present day, Kurt Austin and his assistant Joe Zavala embark for the freezing edge of the world after a former NUMA colleague disappears in Antarctica. While there, they discover a photo of the Luftwaffe expedition of 1939 and are drawn into a decades-old conspiracy. Even as they confront perilous waters and frigid temperatures, they are also are up against a terrifying man-made weapon – a fast-growing ice that could usher in a new Ice Age.
Pitted against a determined madman and a monstrous storm, Kurt and the NUMA team must unravel the Nazi-era plot in order to save the globe from a freeze that would bury it once and for all.
Rick McCharles 