23 1/2 Lies includes one of the Women’s Murder Club (novel series)
Quite good.
James Patterson is the only author. That’s unusual as Maxine Paetro is typically his co-author. And it’s a novella.
Set in San Francisco, the novels follow a group of women from different professions relating to investigating crime as they work together to solve murders.
Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows is a mystery novel by James Lovegrove.
This book is well written.
But WEIRD for Sherlock Holmes fans.
Instead of typical Baker Street consulting detectivry, this is some kind of supernatural horror story.
This one begins in 1880. Watson has returned from Afghanistan an invalid, but the cause of his injury was not as previously stated a Jezail bullet during the Battle of Maiwand, but rather as a result of his first brush with the occult.
It is not to be his last.
He is dragged by accident into one of Holmes’ cases, and from there their friendship grows.
Holmes has been investigating a series of bizarre deaths in the East End district of Shadwell; poor, unfortunate men and women are dying at the height of the new moon, their bodies aged and shrunken in an improbable manner. …
It’s not for me. I won’t be continuing with the series.
Funny TV sitcom.
Colin from Accounts is an Australian comedy television series created and written by husband-and-wife team Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, who also star as the show’s main characters. …
Set in Sydney, Australia and centred on Ashley (Harriet Dyer) and Gordon (Patrick Brammall), two singles who are brought together by a car accident and an injured dog whom they name Colin (from Accounts).
Ashley and Gordon are flawed, funny people who choose each other after being brave enough to show their true selves, scars and all, as they navigate life together.
Worth watching. Though I did feel the series got weaker towards the end.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Clare Mackintosh is a British author and former police officer..
She became a full-time writer in 2011. And in 2014 published I Let You Go, a best seller.
It’s intense.
Well written.
There are plot twists that surprised me.
Jenna Gray has rented a spare cottage in a small Welsh town on the coast.
She’s timid and doesn’t interact with many people, just her landlord and a woman at a local shop. She’s running away from the death of a child.
In parallel, Detective Inspector Ray Stevens and a female rookie are working on the case of a young boy killed in a hit-and-run right in front of his mother.
Inevitably, the story reveals itself.
Like most everyone, I loved season 1.
The Tourist (season 1) is a 6 part TV show series where an Irish tourist in Australia is run off the road, waking up in hospital with amnesia.
Season 2 explains why Jamie Dornan as (The Man / Elliot Stanley / Eugene Cassidy) is on the run down under.
He goes home to Ireland to uncover his past.
Still surprising.
Conor MacNeill as Detective Ruairi Slater is terrific. What a role!
All the Irish casting is excellent.
BUT I can’t say I enjoyed it as much as season 1.
I like the comedy. The intense drama … not so much.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Lisa Jewell is the best selling author of None of This Is True (2023).
It’s yet another hit psychological thriller — and I’m starting to get sick of psychological thrillers. 😀
BUT this is a good one.
None of This is True refers to unreliable narrators. The story will keep you guessing.
Josie Fair and Alix Summer share the same birthday. Born in the same hospital on the same day, and now, at the age of forty five, they share a curiosity about how their lives might have turned out differently.
Bumping into one another by accident, Alix (a podcaster) strikes on an idea for a series called …
She begins to interview Josie — who tells of a very damaged upbringing and family life.
It’s an intense book. Dark and sad.
Kirkus Reviews noted that the book was “hard to read but hard to look away from.”
Recommended.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Very funny. Smart dialogue.
As funny as 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
MANY pop culture references.
Cameos by Fallon, Colbert, Tina Fey, and more.
It follows four women who were part of a girl group named Girls5eva, which was briefly popular around the year 2000 before fading into one-hit-wonder status.
Now unfulfilled in their various lives, they reunite to try to find musical success again.
I quite like Daniel Breaker as Scott, Dawn’s husband. He plays the one normal person in the show.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I watched season 2, as well. Not nearly as good.
A hard NO on season 3.
I only read the first third of this book. I normally find King books to be superb storytelling — but too long.
I quit at the point where the ghost story started to get too weird and violent.
Bag of Bones is a 1998 horror novel … about an author who suffers severe writer’s block and delusions at an isolated lake house four years after the death of his wife. …
He decides to confront his fears and moves to his vacation house on Dark Score Lake, known as “Sara Laughs”.
On his first day, he meets Kyra, a 3-year-old girl and her young widowed mother, 20-year-old Mattie Devore.
Mattie’s father-in-law is Max Devore, an elderly rich man who will do anything to gain custody of his granddaughter. He was the bad guy when I quit the book.
Pierce Brosnan plays the writer in the TV mini-series.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Swiping Hearts (2023) is a short story by one of my favourite writers.
Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are called upon to tackle a crime unlike any they’ve ever faced.
An unknown subject is using his formidable skills to work his way into the lives—and hearts—of his victims, all with the goal of utterly destroying them psychologically and emotionally . . . for his pure pleasure.
I’ll be arriving Seydisfjordur on the east coast via ferry on Aug. 8th, 2024.
Some buses and vans in Iceland transport bicycles. So I’ll probably cycle and bus, working my way to the west coast.
The most popular cycling area is the westfjords.
I really enjoyed a brief stop on the Westfjords (or West Fjords) during my 2011 rent-a-car tour of Iceland.
Very mountainous; the coastline heavily indented by dozens of fjords surrounded by steep hills. These indentations make roads very circuitous. Sounds like the west coast of Norway.
Total total population in 2020 was 7,115.
CHRIS BURKARD put together a gravel tour of the region he called WESTFJORDS WAY.
Biggest worries for me riding solo are the weather — “Riding in fjords guarantees a headwind and a tailwind. The wind can be so severe that it will push you off your bike …” — and the remoteness. Not many bike shops or resupply points.
BUT I downloaded Lael’s map from the adventure to Komoot. So I’m ready to try it if I get the chance one day.
In a perfect world where everything goes right 😀 … I might even try it summer 2024 as part of my planned Norway & Faroe Islands cycling tour.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Rick McCharles 