I QUIT the Amos Decker books.
No doubt Baldacci has fun writing these absurd plots, but they MIGHT be making me stupider. 😀
Walk The Wire (2020) is the 6th book featuring Memory Man, the brilliant, obese FBI consultant.
I do like Decker. And I did enjoy learning more about fracking in North Dakota in this episode.
But I have to quit.
Certainly Grisham is an excellent story teller.
I was charmed by the simplicity of this tale. It reminded me more of something that might be written by John Steinbeck.
Inspired by his childhood in Arkansas, A Painted House (2001) is Grisham’s first major work outside the legal thriller genre in which he established himself.
Set in the late summer and early fall of 1952, its story is told through the eyes of seven-year-old Luke Chandler, the youngest in a family of cotton farmers struggling to harvest their crop and earn enough to settle their debts. …
It was made into a television film in 2003, starring Scott Glenn and Logan Lerman.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
McKinty is my favourite author of late.
Gun Street Girl the 4th (2015) in the Sean Duffy series.
Dark themes. Yet I laughed at something on nearly every page.
When Duffy grudgingly takes on a double murder case, he finds himself on the trail of a conspiracy which could cost him everything.
Belfast, 1985.
Gunrunners on the borders, riots in the cities, The Power of Love on the radio. And somehow, in the middle, Detective Inspector Sean Duffy is hanging on, a Catholic policeman in the hostile Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Click PLAY or watch the Tom Waits song from the same era on YouTube.
More entertaining than the fiction of Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, or John Le Carré.
In the case of Philby, truth stranger than fiction.
I can see how Kim Philby evaded detection for so long — but not Guy Burgess. He was a hopeless alcoholic looking for trouble, yet kept getting promoted.
Those closest to him—like his fellow MI6 officer and best friend since childhood, Nicholas Elliot, and the CIA’s head of counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton—knew him as a loyal confidant and an unshakeable patriot.
Philby was a brilliant and charming man who rose to head Britain’s counterintelligence against the Soviet Union. Together with Elliott and Angleton he stood on the front lines of the Cold War, holding Communism at bay. But he was secretly betraying them both: He was working for the Russians the entire time.
Amazon
I’ve sent plenty of money to Amazon via my subscription to Audible.com.
This is probably my last year.
The IOS app is lousy.
Books are overpriced in my opinion. I pay about US $10 each by taking advantage of special deals.
In 2020 almost every audio book I want is available through my library — so long as I’m willing to wait a few weeks.
Like every subscription service, Audible has tried since 2016 to keep my business by including original content unavailable elsewhere. Podcasts. Novellas. Much of that is free for subscribers. Two books / month, for example.
But it’s not enough to keep me.
The Getaway by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen, for example.
2 hours long. Not a bad little psychological thriller. But not enough to motivate me to stay on with Audible.
Not a great book.
BUT the most insight I’ve ever gotten into the weird world of North Korea.
Star of the North opens in 1998, when a Korean American teenager is kidnapped from a South Korean beach by North Korean operatives.
Twelve years later, her brilliant twin sister, Jenna, is still searching for her, and ends up on the radar of the CIA. When evidence that her sister may still be alive in North Korea comes to light, Jenna will do anything possible to rescue her–including undertaking a daring mission into the heart of the regime.
… braided together with two other narrative threads.
In one, a North Korean peasant woman finds a forbidden international aid balloon and uses the valuables inside to launch a dangerously lucrative black-market business.
In the other, a high-ranking North Korean official discovers, to his horror, that he may be descended from a traitor, a fact that could mean his death if it is revealed. …
Amazon
The 5th book in the series was best so far, for me.
Amos Decker is the obese genius with perfect memory.
In this one, our hero returns ‘home‘ to Burlington, Ohio, where his wife, Cassie, daughter, Molly and brother in law, Johnny, were killed.
He is there to commemorate what would have been Molly’s 14th birthday.
Unexpectedly, the first killer Decker ever put behind bars turns up. Released from prison because of terminal cancer.
It’s his dying wish that Decker clear his name.
HUGE Best Seller published September 2020.
And an excellent book. Uplifting and amusing.
Pay close attention as the plot is far more complex than you’d first guess.
The Thursday Murder Club is the debut novel by … Richard Osman.
A group of pensioners … set about solving the mystery of the murder of a property developer. …
The Guardian hailed it as the “fastest selling adult crime debut” in recorded history.
The planned Seven Spielberg movie should be better. Something like the charming old Brits of Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) — in a whodunnit.
A sequel is already written with many of the same characters. I’m keen to see what happens to all 4 in the Murder Club — plus Bogdan, my favourite.
I loved the 2011 book Ready Player One.
And liked the film version.
Can’t recommend Ready Player Two — unless you are a HUGE Prince fan. Unless you loved Ferris Behler’s Day Off when it came out in 1986.
In that case, the 80s pop culture references might keep you going.
Ready Player Two has a dumb plot.
The virtual world OASIS has become far more immersive. And addictive.
Our heros have to SAVE the lives of millions — while yucking it up online gaming.
I would watch a movie version, however.
Fifty Grand was the title of an Ernest Hemmingway short story.
In this Fifty Grand, Mercado, the heroine, is a hot-shot Cuban cop who has fluked a visa to Mexico City so that she can travel from there, via a coyote road, to the Colorado town of Fairview.
Mercado is on a mission to avenge her father’s death in a hit-and-run accident; also to find evidence that he didn’t mean to abandon her on the eve of her all-important 15th birthday.
She poses as an illegal worker at an upscale Ski Resort. Something like Telluride.
McKinty writes no bad books.
But I enjoyed this stand alone book least of those I’ve read.
Rick McCharles 