Isla Gordon, a reformed party girl gets the shot of a lifetime to prove herself as she’s left in charge of her family’s pro basketball team, but she soon quickly learns that running a basketball team comes with its own set of problems and surprises both on and off the court.
I’ve got mixed feelings on this absurd 1996 thriller.
The premise is interesting.
But the storytelling bogged down with far too much geeky detail.
FBI Special Agent and counterterrorism expert Sarah Cahill doesn’t know the man she’s tracking. But the so-called “Prince of Darkness” knows her—intimately. So when Sarah is summoned to Wall Street to investigate, little does she know that she’s the one under surveillance… until the terrorist infiltrates himself into the deepest, most desperate corners of her life.
Soon Sarah is plunged into a deep labyrinth of intrigue and catastrophe as she races to uncover a diabolically clever conspiracy…before time runs out…and the clock strikes THE ZERO HOUR.
John Sandford is the writer I’ve been reading most over the past couple of months.
As I post, he’d published 34 books in the Prey series, featuring Lucas Davenport.
Eyes of Prey (1991) is only the 3rd book. And it’s very, very dark.
Davenport was depressed, maniacal, suicidal — not far removed from the serial killers he chased.
John Sandford:
Eyes of Prey was the third of the Lucas Davenport series, and, in my opinion, a genuinely nasty book. The first book, Rules of Prey, caught some thriller-fan attention because it was tough — a bad killer, and a bad cop chasing him. Even the Wall Street Journal liked it.
Then, in the second book, Shadow Prey, the bad guys got softer. In fact, the bad guys weren’t all that bad, really, but got killed anyway, which meant there was some moral ambiguity floating around in the punch bowl.
The doctor ordered a little more starkness in the third novel, and I got it with a couple of killers named Carlo Druze and Dr. Michael Bekker. Druze, though, was just a killer. Bekker was a raving blinkin’ maniac, and he’s the one that women seem to like.
So … researched the BEST seasons of the 14, so far.
Season 2 was high on the list. And I would say it was even better than the first year.
Agatha Christie stories set in a tropical paradise.
Richard Poole is still trapped on the stunning Caribbean island as this light-hearted detective drama returns. The sun, sea and sand still continue to irritate him, just as he irritates his long-suffering colleagues.
Freida McFadden (born May 1, 1980) is the pen name of an American thriller author and practicing physician specializing in brain injury.
She began writing as a hobby, self-publishing starting 2013.
Her 2022 book The Housemaid was an international bestseller.
She’s known for the twists and turns in her plots. And unreliable narrators.
Tegan is eight months pregnant, alone, and desperately wants to put her crumbling life in the rearview mirror. So she hits the road, planning to stay with her brother until she can figure out her next move. But she doesn’t realize she’s heading straight into a blizzard.
She never arrives at her destination.
Stranded in rural Maine with a dead car and broken ankle, Tegan worries she’s made a terrible mistake. Then a miracle occurs: she is rescued by a couple who offers her a room in their warm cabin until the snow clears.
At the beginning of this book series, Lucas Davenport — the good guy — wasn’t much better than the criminals he chased.
But over time he became increasingly likeable.
Night Prey (2024) is only 6th in the series. But Davenport is already showing signs of humanity.
State Investigator Meagan Connell believes that Minneapolis has a serial killer on its hands, a killer who has stepped up the frequency of his attacks. Connell is dying of cancer and is determined to catch the killer in the few weeks she has left.
Davenport is called in for his expertise in serial murder.
The BAD GUY this time is an elusive cat burglar obsessed with a woman.
It’s a gritty police procedural trying to find the villain.
The BFG (short for The Big Friendly Giant) … was ranked number 88 among all-time best children’s novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a US monthly.
Sophie, an eight-year-old girl in an orphanage, befriends a mysterious Giant, the BFG.
The 24-foot-tall giant carries her away to the land of the Giants, a place not on any map.
The BFG is a vegetarian. But his 9 neighbours are much bigger and stronger giants, who all happily eat humans every night.
Sophie persuades the BFG to approach the Queen of England for help with the other giants. They plot to imprison the hungry man-eating giants in a deep pit.
I was most entertained by Dahl’s inventive, playful use of language. He invented over 500 new words by scribbling down his words before swapping letters around and adopting spoonerisms and malapropisms.
Horror stories for kids? Yep.
His obituary in The Times was titled “Death silences Pied Piper of the macabre“.
I was interested to read about the process, complicated by ancient history.
One strength of the Catholic Church is tradition.
The big weakness is tradition. It’s very difficult to reform / improve Catholicism, though I respect Pope Francis for trying.
The Pope is dead.
Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election.
They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals.
Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth.
In Conclave, the hero is Cardinal Lomeli, dean of the College of Cardinals and the man responsible for presiding over the conclave. Among the papabile there is Tedesco the traditionalist, Tremblay the ambitious North American and Adeyemi the African with strong views on the role of women and gay marriage. …
Into this gathering there arrives a cardinal no one has heard of – Vincent Benítez, a cardinal in pectore, created by the pope in secret in order to protect his identity. The stage is thus set for a showdown. …
Rick McCharles 