A jaw-dropping exposé of the realities of American presidential politics and US voting culture!
The premise of NO SAFE PLACE is simplicity itself. It’A jaw-dropping exposé of the realities of American presidential politics and US voting culture!
The premise of NO SAFE PLACE is simplicity itself. It’s a fictional biography of Kerry Kilcannon from a rough and tumble youngster, the child of Irish immigrants, through to his election as a senator climaxing with his contesting the crucial battleground of the California primary as the Democrat nominee for president. It’s dramatic, provocative, evocative, frightening, gut-wrenching, compelling and awesome in its realistic depiction of the insanity that is the American electoral system.
A handful of quotations will serve to portray the flavor of Patterson’s brilliant achievement:
On the character, capabilities, and competence of 20th century politicians: “Politicians were … petty men taking small chances for selfish reasons, trying to manipulate just enough of a cynical public to keep themselves in office.” or “A candidate should make speeches … not decisions. Decisions are too important.” and the succinct characterization “… everything that’s wrong with politics in the nineties – cowardice masked as cleverness, leadership b poll, symbolic gestures, careful attention to special interests.”
One might go so far as to say that NO SAFE PLACE was a door-stopper size condemnation of the entire political process in the USA which, in my opinion, is eminently warranted and absolutely deserved.
On racism and illegal immigration: “You and I will never live to see the day that being a white guy isn’t a better deal. And you have illegals in California partly because whites want cheap labor.”
On the 2nd Amendment: “The notion that James Madison wrote the Bill of Rights so that racists and sociopaths and madmen could slaughter innocent men, women, and children with assault weapons or handguns is one of the most contemptible notions that an irresponsible minority has ever crammed down the throats of its potential victims.”
On electioneering and political campaigning: “ … we have a ‘shoot to kill’ political culture premised on permanent scandal, where people in both parties don’t just try to win but to destroy each other with charges and countercharges. And I’ve stopped counting the number of special prosecutors there are.” (Aileen Cannon, are you paying attention? But I digress!)
On the country’s attitude toward its own military and veterans: “One of the ugliest truths of Vietnam was that the Americans who died there were disproportionately poor, disproportionately black, disproportionately less educated. And one of its ugliest legacies is the elitist notion the only men and women who now need serve our country are those for whom the military is a jobs program.”
Electoral reform, abortion, right-to-life and evangelical Christianity (obviously) popped up their heads repeatedly for consideration in a novel that, in a single phrase, needs to be read.
“People … it appears we have a problem of some magnitude here.”
A heat wave in northern New England, a fearsome storm, a fog, and then an all-encom“People … it appears we have a problem of some magnitude here.”
A heat wave in northern New England, a fearsome storm, a fog, and then an all-encompassing mist traps a motley collection of shoppers in a grocery store. The mist is pure evil and what it brings to life with it will raise the hackles on a reader’s neck.
THE MIST is a fast-paced, gruesome, gothic, imaginative, creep-fest that showcases Stephen King’s flair for creating a cast of characters with a myriad of reactions to what is pure over-the-top Hollywood horror. But it’s great entertainment and, goodness knows, it’s easy to recommend to lovers of the horror genre.
WHITE FIRE places Corrie Swanson, Pendergast’s precocious protégé, at center stage while Pendergast lurks A disappointment from a series I once loved!
WHITE FIRE places Corrie Swanson, Pendergast’s precocious protégé, at center stage while Pendergast lurks in his very typical quiet, understated fashion backstage or in the wings. Swanson, majoring in criminology at a prestigious university with hopes to ultimately enter the field of law enforcement and forensic pathology, has begun her thesis reviewing the remains of a group of Colorado miners presumably mauled and eaten by a marauding grizzly bear. Pendergast, in the meantime, is seconded by an overwhelmed local constabulary to assist in the investigation of a serial arsonist with the rather gruesome MO of binding his victims, dousing them in accelerant, and burning them alive. In the entirely expected fashion of virtually every suspense thriller ever written, the story lines ultimately close with one another to a single story line and a hard-hitting climax.
Rather promising premise, wouldn’t you say? Sadly WHITE FIRE fails to deliver the goods.
Corrie Swanson is an unconvincing heroine. In fact, with a laundry list of negative characteristics (she’s spoiled, narcissistic, self-entitled, immature, irresponsible, reckless, ungrateful, and flighty, not to mention self-assured and arrogant to an entirely unwarranted degree), she is an entirely unlikeable young women that it is difficult to root for. Pendergast, on the other hand, remains Pendergast but his persona has devolved into a completely transparent (and sadly derivative) pastiche of a modern Sherlock Holmes imported into the body of a southern US gentleman and FBI special agent. His usage, for example, of far eastern meditation techniques to mentally reconstruct and examine crime scenes effectively in real time as they unfold verges on ridiculous.
I’m not prepared to give up on the series and put paid to my love of Pendergast on the basis of a single disappointment but I certainly hope that BLUE LABYRINTH, next up in the series, returns to the form I’ve come to expect.
“She was a slut, she was loud and crass, and she had the attention span of an insect … but she was so good, so much fun to have around.”
This was o“She was a slut, she was loud and crass, and she had the attention span of an insect … but she was so good, so much fun to have around.”
This was obviously not a murder victim it was easy to get a read on! But DCI Erika Foster, a young widow still in mourning, recovering from the untimely murder of her husband, and dealing with her own personal demons, is on the job and on the hunt for a relentless serial killer.
THE GIRL IN THE ICE is a gripping suspense thriller with a well-crafted compelling and suitably bizarre and gruesome plot. How could one fail to be drawn in by the death of young wealthy socialite followed by a series of three prostitute murders in which the victims were found hog-tied and strangled with the corpses unceremoniously dumped in bodies of water around the city of London? But, more than that, it’s also a brilliant, personality-driven series debut with a masterful “show, don’t tell” bit of character development that will serve as the superb foundation for what is obviously going to be an exciting series to follow.
Definitely recommended. DCI Erika Foster is obviously a character with plenty of literary mileage to come that will appeal to lovers of the suspense thriller and police procedural genres. I’m definitely looking forward to the second novel in the series, THE NIGHT STALKER.
“Well, it was probably one of us,” he says icily. “and you don’t know which one. I guess you have a problem, don’t you?”
Shari Lapena is a favourite C“Well, it was probably one of us,” he says icily. “and you don’t know which one. I guess you have a problem, don’t you?”
Shari Lapena is a favourite Canadian thriller authors so my expectations were high when I pulled this one off my shelf. Rats … SOMEONE WE KNOW was a disappointing failure – a melodramatic soap opera non-thriller murder mystery with an unwieldy collection of poorly developed, unlikeable characters and a very unclear solution with what was supposed to be an ending twist that left me simply scratching my head. Like Lapena’s character who didn’t know which one, I guess I had a problem!
An adulterous wife with round heels who seemed willing to fall into the sack with most anyone she met is murdered in the first chapter. Suspicion of course (both police and readers’) is aimed immediately at the lengthy list of sex partners. To muddy the melodramatic waters, Lapena adds two problem teenagers – one who is an out of control drunk and the other who seems addicted to a combination of cyber-stalking and breaking and entering! Ultimately, everyone seems to be sleeping with everyone else as a second murder puts the cap on the goings on in a very creepy neighbourhood!
The average rating for SOMEONE WE KNOW would suggest that my opinion is an outlier and, accordingly, I’m willing to accept that perhaps I just wasn’t in the right frame of my mind to allow this one to win me over. But … it is what it is and I’ll have to let you make your own decision as to whether to read it and how you might feel about it.
I’m not going to recommend it to anyone! But I’ll cautiously add that I have other Shari Lapena titles on my shelf that I’m still willing to read at some point in my limited reading future. Time marches on relentlessly!
“We do it by raising dark money to fund policies and candidates that we like”
What Baldacci’s END GAME lacks in credibility, it makes up for with t“We do it by raising dark money to fund policies and candidates that we like”
What Baldacci’s END GAME lacks in credibility, it makes up for with the timeliness of its cautionary note against the incursion of neo-Nazism in US politics.
Will Robie and Jessica Reel are deadly, lethal assassins – fearsome weapons in the CIA’s black ops tool chest to be deployed anywhere in the world that their terrifying skills might be called for. In END GAME, they have been given the mission of recovering Blue Man, their missing handler who disappeared on a fly fishing vacation and whose interrogation by unfriendly foreign powers could seriously undermine national security.
That lack of credibility I mentioned? It’s truly jaw-dropping. Readers witness, for example, a solo mission against 17 enemies loaded for bear with the directive to assassinate 16 of them and secure the sole remaining enemy for questioning (of the “enhanced” variety, no doubt); marksmanship of the never-miss, one-bullet, one-target-hit variety regardless of the environment or the speed and direction of the movement of the target or shooter; religious cults à la Branch Davidian variety; hard-drinking, bullying neo-Nazi skinheads; and, of course, sweaty sex complete with the earth-shattering, bedspring damaging climax; a climactic escape toting guns loaded with blanks from a locked-down hardened missile silo against seven armed opponents!!
Robie and Creel seem to be endowed with a skill set that would put Rambo, MacGyver, John McClane, John Matrix, Jason Bourne, and James Bond to shame (not to mention Katniss Everdeen, Lara Croft, and Daenerys Targaryen).
It’s all quite laughable when you really stop to think about what you actually read and yet somehow Baldacci manages to pull it off and make END GAME a competent, thoroughly enjoyable thriller of the extended shoot-‘em-up interminable car chase variety with a satisfying ending that seems to put a cap on the Will Robie and Jessica Reel series.
Definitely recommended but leave your literary expectations in park for the duration of the novel!
Newly minted FBI agent, Caitlin Hendrix, on her first assignment with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit hHis wife “… had vanished. She was the fifth”
Newly minted FBI agent, Caitlin Hendrix, on her first assignment with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit has obviously been tossed into the deep end with no PFD. She’s facing her first Unsub, a savage serial killer who seems to have the ability to grab his victims within sight and sound of dozens of witnesses but to make them disappear more quietly and more completely than David Copperfield’s Statue of Liberty. INTO THE BLACK NOWHERE leaves the proverbial station on a single track, the engine puffing slowly but steadily, checking each clue, gaining traction and steam with each turn of the wheels, inevitably closing in on the suspect, a solid but really quite fascinating and compelling police procedural. Then, just past the halfway point of the novel, the wheels come off, the tracks split into a wild and twisted myriad of possible routes, turns, dead-ends and sidings. INTO THE BLACK NOWHERE has definitely become a high speed, edge-of-the-seat, hang-onto-your-hat suspense thriller.
If you’re a fan of television forensic shows such as CRIMINAL MINDS, or forensic thrillers à la Jeffrey Deaver or Tess Gerritsen, then INTO THE BLACK NOWHERE will be right down your alley. And (no big surprises here), there’s clearly a sequel coming. Definitely recommended.
A horrifying psychological thriller that rivals Truman Capote’s true-crime masterpiece IN COLD BLOOD!
Three young teenage girl friends, sworn to eternaA horrifying psychological thriller that rivals Truman Capote’s true-crime masterpiece IN COLD BLOOD!
Three young teenage girl friends, sworn to eternal secrecy under a blood pact, commit a brutal mass murder and enter what most Canadians think of as a very flawed young offender justice system.
Rick Mofina, now definitely on my list of favourite thriller authors (with special kudos to his being a fellow Canadian), has crafted a high-speed thriller that took me into the proverbial wee hours and refused to allow me to set it down. Grisly mass murder, social work, suicide, dysfunctional families, wealth vs poverty, young offenders, legal and police procedures, jurisdictional issues, forensics and technology, psychology, revenge … THEIR LAST SECRET has it all. An extraordinarily easy 5-star recommendation and a solid addition to my Top Ten 2024 Favourites list.
“People killed for money reasons – they fall down steps, they drown, they disappear.” But “This … this was personal. This was hate. Contempt. Control.“People killed for money reasons – they fall down steps, they drown, they disappear.” But “This … this was personal. This was hate. Contempt. Control. Rage.”
A serial rapist is free with the case against him dismissed on a legal technicality. The officer who arrested him on the basis of a faulty search warrant is now himself under investigation for police brutality and assault that may well become a charge of attempted murder. A female detective faces the collective misogyny, indeed hatred, of an all-male deep South police force that threatens to also spill over into violence. Toss a deeply disturbed family with a non-functional autistic son far, far out on the spectrum, more than a spoonful of alcohol abusers, and a string of hot, sweaty sexual interludes into the blender for good measure and you’ve got A THIN DARK LINE.
I’ve read more than a handful of these over the years – suspense thrillers that focus so intently on drama, atmosphere, setting, and character development that the author forgets to craft a plot that needs to move purposely, urgently, compellingly and quickly. At just under 500 pages of painfully small print, A THIN DARK LINE moves far too slowly and takes far too long to reach a climax and dénouement to ever clear the bar of “gripping” - a combination that, for this reader, averages the rating out to a modest 3-star assessment with the added qualification that I will continue to read other Tami Hoag efforts.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet THE WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB - Lindsay Boxer, police sergeant and homicide detTo make a bad pun, this one is definitely a bust!
Ladies and gentlemen, meet THE WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB - Lindsay Boxer, police sergeant and homicide detective; Yuki Castellano, prosecutor and assistant district attorney; Claire Washburn, medical examiner and forensic scientist; Cindy Thomas, writer and investigative journalist. Their novels are as predictably formulaic as the proverbial Hallmark movie but that formula (as of the writing of THE 19TH CHRISTMAS) was (note the intentional use of that past tense) working like a well-oiled high speed machine so don’t expect authors Paetro and Patterson to be breaking the pattern any time soon.
Think of a WMC novel as a mash-up of two or three novellas or short stories, each involving one of the WMC ladies as a lead protagonist – a murder, trial or legal issue, medical drama, rape, breaking news story, kidnapping, bombing, arson, social issue … you get the idea. The stories weave in and out of one another in real time to produce a single larger novel but the interaction between stories is typically minor, incidental, or coincidental (or in this case, nonexistent).
Story #1 was an intriguing drama involving an illegal immigrant, a wrongful conviction for murder, and, of course, WMC attorney Yuki Castellano. Story #2 is a straight-up police procedural in which a nefarious, ostensibly über-intelligent mastermind criminal (à la Moriarity) leads the police on a twisted maze of red herrings, false leads, and police resource gobbling distractions as he works his way toward zero hour and the ultimate payday, a heist forecast to net its perpetrators a multi-million if not billion dollar payday! As the bloody body count also ratchets through the roof, it’s obvious that this nasty piece of work is intent on eliminating any possible witnesses along his twisted path to the target booty.
"What are we looking for? We have a bunch of pieces and parts that add up to a big fat pile of nothing."
Well, they sure got that right because then came the bust, literal and literary. The immigrant murder trial is simply reported as having been won without the reader so much as sniffing the inside of a courtroom. The criminal mastermind, in a definitely anti-climactic climax is nabbed with undue ceremony (probably because Patterson and Maestro had reached the required number of pages for the novel). And guess what the objective of that heist was! I mean it … guess! Your guess will be as good as anyone else’s because, if Patterson and Maestro had anything particular in mind, they’re forgot to include it in the published version of the novel. A ridiculous ending if there ever was one.
Save yourself some grief and skip the novel. It simply isn’t worth the time. Go right to the epilogue and read that because there is a little bit of (ridiculously) unrelated personal stuff that might find its way somehow into 20TH VICTIM.
“ … the right ingredients for tabloid fare … the bloodsucking, schadenfreude-loving people of America are captivated.”
DEAR WIFE is a gripping, heart-b“ … the right ingredients for tabloid fare … the bloodsucking, schadenfreude-loving people of America are captivated.”
DEAR WIFE is a gripping, heart-breaking, and utterly compelling thriller on the basic theme of domestic violence and the plight of women who are suffering at the hands of brutal partners.
A tale of two women! Beth Murphy is running from an abusive husband and executing a plan that she’s been meticulously putting together for nearly a year. Sabine Hardison, also the victim of a brutal misogynist who would contend that slapping his wife with an open hand is not the same as beating her with a closed fist, is missing. Time passes and the police are sadly coming to the conclusion that they are hunting for a body and the victim of a domestic murder. Her husband, quite unexpectedly, tops the suspect list.
Trust me when I tell you that, first, you will find DEAR WIFE impossible to put down. Second, you will unavoidably make an assumption about the identities of the victims. Third, you will be wrong and you will be shocked at Ms Belle’s twist ending. And, last but not least, despite the brutality of the theme, the final sentence will actually make you smile. (HEY … NO CHEATING!)
Definitely recommended as a 5-star thriller and an easy addition to my Top 10 Favourites for 2024.
In his foreword, Deaver continues, “To me, that big oh-my-God surprise is what short stories are a“The title of my anthologies is no coincidence.”
In his foreword, Deaver continues, “To me, that big oh-my-God surprise is what short stories are all about.”
When I gave a 5-star review to TWISTED, Deaver’s first collection of this type of short story and novellas, I recognized his skill at producing his pre-announced surprise endings that were absolutely expected from the first word in the story but both unknown and unknowable in their reality until Deaver pulled back the curtain for that final reveal. I also complimented his mature skills as an author in putting these twists into such a polished literary setting,
“Deaver brings to the short story all the sophisticated skills that have been the foundation of his success as a novelist. He has a gift for dialogue, vivid characterization and suspense and his stories show deep insight into the emotions, the motivations, the fears and the love and happiness of his widely varied cast of characters. Despite its fundamentally gritty nature, his writing shows uncommonly refreshing humour and a capacity to convey deep feeling.”
Unfortunately MORE TWISTED might have been more accurately entitled LESS TWISTED. The writing skill, the dialogue, the characterization, and the suspense were all there but those endings were, not to put too fine a point on it, simply less convincing, less shocking, less satisfying, and, well, less twisted. I don’t think I’d go quite so far as to say they were predictable but they came disappointingly close. The anthology, in its entirety, was moderately enjoyable but came nowhere near producing the delight that I felt with that first effort.
“Well, all I see right now is a whole lot of fog.”
Although the speaker was referring to the solution to an apparently endless string of unrelated “Well, all I see right now is a whole lot of fog.”
Although the speaker was referring to the solution to an apparently endless string of unrelated murders, I couldn’t help but feel that she was talking directly to me as a befuddled reader!
Primo CIA assassin Will Robie works to prove the innocence of his own father in a murder in his hometown (in a backwater redneck Mississippi setting that would have been far better used by the likes of author Greg Iles). But, for this reader’s money, the tragic circumstances that sent him home to become involved in this case was what SHOULD have been the basic plot. Instead, the introduction and Robie’s clear issues with PTSD became incidental and Baldacci proceeded to lead his readers down a twisted, tortuous, byzantine road that was like trying to decipher a road map printed in disappearing ink.
I’m a big Baldacci fan and I’m sure that I will continue to read his books but this one was a definite bust for me and qualifies as the weakest of everything in the Baldacci canon that I’ve sampled so far. I’m hoping for a return to his previously unqualified excellence.
The kindest word I can think of is "disappointment"!
If I hadn't so thoroughly enjoyed many previous novels by Karin Slaughter, I would have done the wThe kindest word I can think of is "disappointment"!
If I hadn't so thoroughly enjoyed many previous novels by Karin Slaughter, I would have done the wall-banger toss much earlier.
It is an unavoidable reality that prolific authors will inevitably pen what some readers think is God's gift to literature but they will also craft what readers will characterize as their worst effort. At three novels, it is obvious that one will be the best, one will be the worst, and one will fall somewhere in the middle. For Karin Slaughter's sake, I fervently hope that PIECES OF HER is that rock-bottom effort which will make anything else she produces look better by comparison.
This one was an absolute hot mess of indecipherable plot, names, motivations, and events that I gave up on as far along as page 480 out of 630. I no longer cared and, indeed, I found it was actually making me angry in the attempt to understand where it might possibly have been headed.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, two of the most extraordinary museums in the world
With Preston and Child’s The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, two of the most extraordinary museums in the world
With Preston and Child’s classic horror thriller RELIC standing as a brilliant example of what can be done in the setting of Manhattan’s world class, sprawling museums, you’d think that a writer with Linda Fairstein’s proven abilities would have no problem penning something in the Alexandra Cooper series and blasting it right out of the park! The grisly discovery of a perfectly preserved woman’s body (raped before her murder, no less!) with forensic signs of arsenic poisoning inside a sarcophagus awaiting shipment to parts unknown set the table for a sex crimes thriller that I could hardly start to read quickly enough.
But my enthusiasm waned as Fairstein’s mystery quickly devolved into a Agatha Christie style “Poirot”-esque character driven tale that was cluttered, muddled, tortuous and byzantine to a fault. Jealousy and possible motives for murder were scattered like dandelion seeds in a spring breeze and became impossible to understand. The investigation unraveled into a knot as twisted, as sprawling, and as endless as the exhibits in the museums, in their basements, and in their countless storerooms.
Indeed, it became slow enough and uninteresting enough that I toyed more than once with the idea of setting the novel aside as one of my few DNFs. But I’ll admit to being fascinated by Fairstein’s asides on the larcenous history of artifact accumulation by western white society and the unthinking white privilege politics of cultural anthropology. It’s too bad that I had to put up with such a lack-lustre mystery while I was learning so much about the museums.
“The President of the United States was a drunk, an adulterer, and a woman beater.”
“He smiled to the press, kissed babies and flirted with enchanted o“The President of the United States was a drunk, an adulterer, and a woman beater.”
“He smiled to the press, kissed babies and flirted with enchanted old women, held important meetings, flew around the world as his country’s leader, and he was a fucking asshole who screwed married women, then beat them up and then got them killed.”
No doubt about it. David Baldacci’s fame today as one of the world’s premier thriller authors started right out of the gate with a jaw dropping debut. In an instance of almost blinding prescience, ABSOLUTE POWER posited criminality in the oval office, political cover-ups and the gritty all important question as to how far the administration of the White House would go to protect the occupant of the Oval Office as a matter of political necessity.
I wonder if Baldacci wakes up these days, reads the morning news about a president already proven to be a con man, a grifter, a thief and a rapist facing 91 criminal indictments, and shakes his head over the extent to which even the most outlandish ideas in fiction seem to ultimately be overshadowed and outdone by reality.
ABSOLUTE POWER might have benefited from a moderate amount of editorial trimming but there’s no doubt it was an eyebrow raising suspense thriller when it was published 30 years ago and it seems even more timely and important today. Definitely recommended.
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