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| 4.03
| 56,617
| 1942
| 1963
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it was amazing
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This is the one, the ribald book of Greek gods and goddesses and their adventures that captivated me in 7th grade, with a male teacher who positively
This is the one, the ribald book of Greek gods and goddesses and their adventures that captivated me in 7th grade, with a male teacher who positively loved the material. What a truly great class of 13-14 year olds, hearing about Zeus cheating on Hera and endlessly being naughty. And the glaring visage of Edith Hamilton on the back, a warning for naughty boys, that we completely ignored. Fabulous, and a foundation of my young, middle and old age adulthood. Extraordinary. The domineering visage of the author, which we ridiculed then, but love now. [image] Full size image here ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Jan 1965
not set
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Jan 1966
not set
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Dec 06, 2020
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Paperback
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| 1591766672
| 9781591766674
| unknown
| 3.57
| 7
| unknown
| Oct 01, 2003
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really liked it
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Overall 3.5 stars, but with several 5-star hidden gems. Definitely worth acquiring and reading. There is a very interesting foreword, worth reading, an Overall 3.5 stars, but with several 5-star hidden gems. Definitely worth acquiring and reading. There is a very interesting foreword, worth reading, and the introduction is by Robert B Parker: a brief biography of Chandler. I am listing my review of Chandler's story here, ahead of the others. The Pencil by Raymond Chandler His very last story - 4.5 Stars Marlowe's ideal-but-untouchable woman, Anne Riordan, appears as an actual player in this story. His relationship with her is by far the strangest, and perhaps the most difficult, in all of Chandler's writing. More below. Chandler died in 1959, and this is his final story (Poodle Springs was only started in 1958, and, in my opinion, poorly finished by Robert B. Parker in 1989). It's satisfyingly complex and convoluted, with Marlowe saving a reformed mobster, but too short for our needs. A mobster's Colt Woodsman, with suppressor [image] Most importantly, in this story we see the last meetings of Marlowe and Anne Riordan, and I find them sad and strange. To understand her better, and the place she occupies in Marlowe's life, I refer you to the excellent, partial article by David W. Madden (preview courtesy Google) Anne Riordan: Raymond Chandler's Forgotten Heroine I include an example of Marlowe and Anne's banter here, which I find quite sad. I like to think that Anne takes good care of Marlowe in his old age. “You’re the damnedest guy,” she said. “Women do anything you want them to. How come I’m still a virgin at twenty-eight?” “We need a few like you. Why don’t you get married?” “To what? Some cynical chaser who has nothing left? I don’t know any really nice men—except you. I’m no pushover for white teeth and a gaudy smile.” I went over and pulled her to her feet. I kissed her long and hard. “I’m honest,” I almost whispered. “That’s something. But I’m too shop-soiled for a girl like you. I’ve thought of you, I’ve wanted you, but that sweet clear look in your eyes tells me to lay off.” “Take me,” she said softly. “I have dreams too.” “I couldn’t. I’ve had too many women to deserve one like you." The women you get and the women you don’t get—they live in different worlds. I don’t sneer at either world. I live in both myself. - The other stories, some are quite fine. The best are titled IN BOLD 1935 The Perfect Crime - 2.5 stars Vaguely Marlowe-esque, but too superficial, too little "show don't tell", and a wordy climax and denouement. Very unsatisfying. 1936 The Black-eyed Blonde - 0 stars Stupid crap 1937 Gun Music - 3 stars Not a bad story, but rushed. The prose was nowhere near Chandler's, but at least he tried. 1938 Saving Grace - 3 stars Adequate, but not Chandler's prose or pacing. Sags in the middle, silly at the end. Malibu, 1939 [image] Full size image here 1939 Malibu Tag Team - 4.5 stars Very Good, almost Chandler. Prose, plot and pacing are good. Colourful characters, Marlowe-familiar, and the easy, smooth voice we love. I caught a fast cab back to the office and picked up my car. It took me about a half an hour to make it down to Long Beach and another ten minutes to find The Enchanted Cottages motel. They didn’t look enchanted to me. Haunted, maybe. - Chandler had a truly memorable voice; and through his narrator Marlowe, he showed me that a detective could be a lot more than a wisecracking stereotype (although Marlowe could crack wise with the best of them). Philip Marlowe remains, I think, the funniest, the most worldly wise, the most charmingly cynical, and the most original creation in American detective fiction. Marlowe was, and will always be, a model for us all. - Jonathan Valin, author 1940 Sad-eyed Blonde - 4 Stars Pretty good, plot, pacing and characters. The dialogue is good but not great. A worthwhile homage to Chandler. Marlowe's .38 Colt Super Match [image] Full size image here 1941 The Empty Sleeve - 4 Stars Quite good, characters and prose and dialogue, but with Marlowe perhaps not quite as sharp as we prefer. 1942 Dealer's Choice - 4 Stars Another good one, with great pacing and a delicious femme fatale. Chandler’s women are complex, some venial, some drunk, some sex cats, some gallant, but in most of his books the seductress, whether Dolores Gonzalez, Velma, or Carmen, is at the root of the trouble. I spent many years working on different ways in which a woman could play a stronger, less sexual role in a mystery and finally, in 1979 came up with V.I. Warshawski. So in a way Chandler is directly responsible for my decision to write a PI novel. - Sara Paretsky Kitty, the femme fatale [image] Full size image here 1944 Red Rock - 3.5 Stars Pretty good in all the ways that count, perhaps a bit too rushed. I don’t see how it is possible to read his books without being dazzled by the author’s economy, his originality, his brilliance—all of that—but most of all by his precision. Who among us doesn’t hear his cadences, his turns of phrase, when we sit down to work? We may never write that well—or even write similarly—but nonetheless we have internalized his work in a way that we couldn’t escape even if we wanted to. We have used it as a jumping-off place for our own work and those among us who are masochists may also use it as the standard of excellence by which they judge themselves. - Julie Smith 1945 The Deepest South - 5 Stars. Superb. Excellent. Unusual. The voice is confidant, more studied and more cerebral than Chandler. Sharper. This is a pleasure, a timeless story, a fact of life. Marlowe here is clearly recognisable, seeing the old story of a young man with a golden cage in his future. Marvellous. ... what I was trying to do with "Dias de combate" was launch a new genre, the new crime novel in Mexico, and not simply follow the tradition of the hard-boiled with a change of scenery. But no doubt Chandler was there; in stories built on dialogue and characters and atmospheres, rather than anecdotes, but which still managed to tell a story. For me, influenced by the Mexican baroque and magical realism, neorealism in the style of Chandler was the best option. Maybe no one can find traces of these influences in my books; it’s not that important. I know how to recognize my debts; I know that Chandler is there somewhere in my novels, and I’m grateful to him. - Paco Ignacio Taibo II I wish I could find English translations of his own books. 1946 Consultation in the Dark - 1 Star Not much to do with Marlowe. Lots of dull dialogue. 1947 In the Jungle of Cities - 3 Stars Name-dropping and a bit tedious. Not worth the trouble. 1948 Star Bright - 3.5 Stars Not a bad story, even some glimmers of the Marlowe we know. VERY unpleasant ending. I owe Chandler for showing me the true potential of detective fiction. For demonstrating that, far from confining the writer inside a formula, the detective story provides almost endless possibilities and directions. In many ways it sets the writer free. - John Lutz 1951 Locker 246 - 3 Stars Marlowe is recognisable here, although pretty uninteresting. 1952 Bitter Lemons - 4.5 Stars. Superb. Personally, I was born in 1952 ... not much interested in Chandler then. But now, for me, there are few better. There is quite a bit of love and echo of Chandler's voice in this story. Lots of passages like this: I drove to Bay City with the windows open, half dreaming in the heat, not thinking about the drive. The smells of Los Angeles guided me. Each neighborhood has its own smell and look: the dry summer dust of the string of flatland towns; the suburban grass and steep hills as you head west; the smell of salt and the craggy coast as you hit the ocean and the coast highway. I drove south down the western end of the continent. This was as far as you could go, as far as your dreams would carry you in the United States. - Raymond Chandler is not one of my favorite writers. He is my favorite writer and has been since the day I happened to pick up a paperback copy of The Lady in the Lake shortly after my fourteenth birthday. Marlowe on the printed page came alive instantly. I knew what he was feeling, suffered his pain, understood his pleasures, though I could never remember the plots. I still get them confused, but I find the characters unforgettable, especially Marlowe, who carries the burden of living with a cynicism which manages to avoid bitterness. My only regret about Chandler is that he wrote so little. - Stuart Kaminsky [image] Full size image here 1953 The Man Who Knew Dick Bong - 5 Stars. Superb A fine Marlowe story, full of heart and truth and honour. There is much of Crais himself in this Marlowe. A true joy to see. I drove around for a while and stopped at the Studio City park and watched some kids playing softball. There was a guy selling ice cream out of a little white cart, so I stood in line and bought a bar. I was twice as tall as anyone else in the line. You wonder why people have kids. You think maybe people oughta have to get special licenses or take classes. How to be a good parent. How to love. How to beat up each other without damaging your child. You think maybe there ought to be a special goon squad that goes around checking up on parents and beating the shit out of those who don’t measure up. Ah, Marlowe. You crab. - Robert Crais - I am a sucker for heroes, and, at a point in my life when I very much needed one, Raymond Chandler gave me Philip Marlowe... What Chandler was doing wasn’t just telling lurid stories (which he did, better than almost anyone), he was exploring the ways a good man might retain his goodness in a modern world, and his themes were the themes of courage and duty and personal responsibility. I found this work profound. I still find it so. It caused me, for perhaps the first time, to consciously think about how I wanted to live my life and what would constitute acceptable ethical behavior and who I wanted to be. This reflection and the themes that grow from it recur in my work. Appropriately, they form the basis of “The Man Who Knew Dick Bong.” Philip Marlowe didn’t just help to shape my fiction, he helped to shape my life. Thanks, Ray. - Robert Crais 1954 Essenced'Orient - 3.5 Stars Pretty good detective story, but I didn't feel much Marlowe in it. I’ve read most of the novels and stories two or three times by now, and I return to my favorites regularly. Virtually all of them have their memorable scenes, and especially their memorable closing lines, but I think my favorite remains The Lady in the Lake. I believe it to be the best plotted of all the books, showing Chandler’s craftsmanship at its peak (This reviewer agrees). It’s a complex story that’s still easy to follow, and even now it reads as if it had been written just last year. There’s an urgency about much of Chandler’s writing that’s lacking in most of today’s private eye novels. I don’t pretend to have captured that mood in my own story about Philip Marlowe, but I’m pleased to have been a part of this project to honor a writer who will probably never be equaled. - Edward D. Hoch 1955 In the Line of Duty - 4 Stars Very good Marlowe, but not quite Chandler. Another story of two heroes, with honour and human truth. 1956 - The Alibi - 4 Stars A nice convoluted plot in 15 pages. A recognisable Marlowe and some good dialogue, a nice human observation in the realm of the philosopher-detective, here: My voice didn’t sound much better than Hanratty’s and I knew in that moment why I’d always liked him. He was an older version of myself. In younger days, when he’d been dapper and successful, he’d been somebody I’d wanted to be. Now, he was somebody I feared I would be. 1957 - The Devil's Playground - 5 Stars. Superb Great prose, very Chandler. Great Marlowe, great pacing, great femme fatale and supporting players. And a great last paragraph, worthy of Marlowe and Chandler, himself. “What’s going to happen to us?” the beatnik man asked Jesse. “Nothing,” I quickly and loudly said. Jesse’s eyes locked on me. “Nothing at all. Because they’re smart. Whatever’s behind them is behind them. They’re running, and they don’t want to make the law dogs any madder, any hungrier for ’em than they already are. Hell, here they just shot up a guy a little. No big deal. Nothing to change their hand.” - In the months before [Six Days of the] Condor came out, I worked as an aide for U.S. Senator Lee Metcalf. One cold and dreary February afternoon in 1974, I muttered about the lack of “weight” of my first novel to the senator’s legislative assistant. She was tough, smart, and broked no nonsense. With a cigarette dangling from her lips, she said: “Kid, if you can ever write something half as good and important as Killer in the Rain, you’re all right.” And I still believe her. - James Grady 1958 Asia - 2 Stars Not Chandler, not Marlowe, mostly a giant cliché. But then, Lustbader is a hack, a thief, a funhouse mirror of truth and honour and heart. Chandler’s work showed me the ultimate importance of atmosphere. His novels and short stories compelled me to realize the power such beauty can have to enlighten and enthrall a reader. - Eric Van Lustbader 1959 Mice -3 Stars I utterly object to Campbell's trashing of Marlowe's marriage just after Poodle Springs. It's a cheap shot, a denial of closure for Marlowe, almost enough to flush the whole mediocre story. *** SADLY I HAVE REACHED THE LENGTH LIMIT FOR GOODREADS *** Review continued in comments below ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 12, 2020
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Jun 27, 2020
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Jan 02, 2020
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ebook
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| B07VFVRS3K
| 4.22
| 2,213
| Oct 15, 2019
| Oct 15, 2019
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it was amazing
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5-Stars, a sci-fi masterpiece, a gnurd's joy to read. Completely, utterly awesome. Künsken shows total command of prose, plot, action and character. Re 5-Stars, a sci-fi masterpiece, a gnurd's joy to read. Completely, utterly awesome. Künsken shows total command of prose, plot, action and character. Read this book NOW. I love the delicious quantum science, and the outrageously interesting characters and races. Quantum Garden is a triumph, highest praise! As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you. [image] The Quantum Garden starts essentially the day after the previous book, The Quantum Garden, my review. Many of the main characters from book one are here: Belisarius, Cassandra, Iekanjika, St Matthew AI, and Victor Stills. All of them wonderfully realised, all dialogue succinct and true. There's not a wasted word in any of the author's prose. Wonderful. At the end of book one, Belisarius and Cassandra have the Time Gates, and a number of other delicious hard-science tech toys, but with every major nation baying for their blood. There's only one solution to this, and Belisarius has a confidence game in mind, of course. The pacing is terrific, the science hard and delicious, the characters each complimenting the increasingly complex plot. At no time does the author waver from total control of all the elements that make up this terrific book. Without spoiling too much, Belisarius, Cassandra, St Matthew AI, and Stills must go deep into the past through the time gates, to a fascinating world with a brown dwarf for a sun, and the chaos of the original Union Expeditionary Force. Causality traps abound! Brown Dwarf Sun [image] Read this book NOW! So many wonderful quotes... Sorry for so many spoilers.... (view spoiler)[And now Iekanjika knew that from the time she was a captain, Rudo had carried memories of a young colonel visiting her in the past, telling her that she was to be one of her spouses. Regardless of Iekanjika’s competence or other qualities, this information alone would force any careful commander to take Iekanjika as a wife, even if it created one of those odd bits of cyclic causality, where cause triggered effect and effect triggered cause. (hide spoiler)] - Arjona talking with Saint Matthew AI: Belisarius took a deep breath, chilling his lungs. “Are you suggesting I accept irrationality and rationality?" “Those labels aren’t helpful where we are now, when we are now.” “I can’t live like that,” Belisarius said. “We live with lots of things we can’t live with.” - Ieknjika contemplates honour versus expediency: The officers and crew of the Sixth Expeditionary Force did their duty in the future, with honor. And she was here. It had been easy for her to quantify this and throw it in Arjona’s face. One man. One man didn’t outweigh the lives and freedoms of two nations. She’d sent people to their deaths on purpose for tactical gain. This was the same-trading death for strategic gain. But that comfort was hollow. [soldier] was Rudo’s price, not the price of the advantage itself. And the cost in quantity was not the whole cost. Committing a murder would make Iekanjika a criminal. An extra-judicial killing was a dishonor that could be neither erased nor redeemed. And more deeply, to know that Rudo’s ordering of the killing was the suitable response for this time, that this was the way things were done at the birth of Union nationhood, only further tilted the ground beneath her feet. What did she stand on when her new nation was born of this swamp, bereft of honor and duty? Victory? Freedom? For whom? For the politicians posturing on Bachwezi? Or for the people positioning here for control of the Expeditionary Force? Did they deserve the victory Iekanjika might deliver if she could not stand on honor or duty? But maybe she held her honor too highly. She could sacrifice herself for her people, so why price her honor above that? - Arjona contemplates the alien life: His brain ran a series of parallel models, weighing and discarding, mixing and matching possible growth algorithms and energy budgets until he found something that might explain the shapes of the ice. The black, tarry plants could absorb infrared from the brown dwarf, using the energy to melt minute quantities of water. In the moments before the water refroze, the plants moved the liquid upward, shaping the stem-like substrate upon which they could grow. The possibility that the plants of Nyanga could use dwarf heat to sculpt the surface of their world was beautiful. They rode their own ice sculptures to compete for light. The idea was hopeful, haunting and quiet. - Cassandra considers subjectivity versus objectivity: Although Bel’s paranoia about his quantum objectivity had led him to say a lot of things she didn’t believe, she trusted one of them to be true. Bel said that ultimately, a subjective consciousness could discern the algorithms making up even the most advanced objective system. - “Dreams don’t all come true, Arjona,” Iekanjika said. “What you eventually make might not be what you dreamed, but if you care, it might be better than nothing.” - Rudo contemplates honour: “We have a common dream, you and I, and I have no more secrets. You know everything about me, ugly and good. No one knows me better than you do and I’ve had four decades to think about who I was when I met you, and who you were. You were the first honorable person I’d ever met, the first who showed me a dream I should carry. I’d been like everyone else, looking out for myself, trying to pick sides and hedge my bets, and you made me ashamed of that. You showed me a larger dream and you showed me the kind of people who would reach it. I didn’t want to be left behind. When I became a major, I knew I didn’t want to be like [soldier]; I wanted to be like you. If I haven’t ruined everything between us, I still want you leading my staff.” - (view spoiler)[Rudo was only sixty-two years old, but her age was concentrated in the sadness in her eyes. She was still paying those costs she’d incurred early in her life. And as if Ayen really could peer straight into her heart, Ayen knew that Rudo wouldn’t kill her. It was the opposite. She really would have let Ayen kill her. Rudo was aching for a redemption she couldn’t reach. Her only hope for inner peace was the gift of absolution only Ayen could give. (hide spoiler)] Notes: 5.0% "Already terrific! A continuation of the first book, with quantum hard science imagination cool stuff ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 30, 2019
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Sep 16, 2019
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Aug 30, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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| 0910878099
| 9780910878098
| 0910878099
| 3.88
| 16
| 1968
| Jan 01, 1968
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it was amazing
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More than one thousand years old. An astounding book for a young man in the prime of his sexual powers. A lifelong companion for a lucky man. |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 1972
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Jan 1974
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Aug 05, 2019
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Hardcover
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| B07VD7RDJJ
| 4.61
| 721
| unknown
| Jul 15, 2019
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it was amazing
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5 full stars. Wonderful. I'm a year older than Mr Benny, and spent some time in the Mississippi countryside south of Memphis, and even the coast and t 5 full stars. Wonderful. I'm a year older than Mr Benny, and spent some time in the Mississippi countryside south of Memphis, and even the coast and the panhandle of Florida. Time mostly buried deep inside of me, deeply hidden in my heart. This exquisite story brings tears to my eyes, brings those memories alive again. Thank you, Dawn Lee. As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you. Touching, warm, authentic. Marvellous in every way. Wow. Exquisite prose from the start ... All around her, what creatures lived in that lonely place were chirping and calling and beating their wings against the syrupy air. The air here was heavier than it was in the town; dense and ripe with both life and decay. It settled on Miss Evangeline’s bony shoulders, seeped through the thin cotton of her house dress, and mingled with dampness on her skin. Every breath she took, she could hear in the noisy quiet of the bayou, and with every breath she could taste the growth and earth and mire. - Now, she rounded a curve in the road, and saw the place where she had determined to go; knew it because she had been told it was the only dwelling on this road, by someone who thought it crazy for her to go there. Crazy it could be; she had come anyway. It was of no account at all. It was not much larger than Miss Evangeline’s house, and needed just as much paint. People did not drive past this house, and the man that lived there did not care how it looked from the road. The old car was there, and another one besides, but that one had weeds grown up through the open trunk. The yard had more clay than grass, and nothing adorned it but an old and depressed-looking oak in the center of it. Tied around the tree was a rope that laid in the grass, and at the end of the rope was a collar that had no dog in it. - Mr. Benny ate only one candy that morning, and only one candy each day after. He hid the sock in the crate under his bed, and ate his candy with Miss Evangeline after they had their lunch. Every day, he offered Miss Evangeline one of his peppermints or butterscotch, and every day she refused. He made his Christmas last almost two weeks. The last butterscotch he saved for four whole days, and her heart felt too full of loving him, and of wishing a world where Mr. Benny had a candy for every day of the year. - ...more |
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1
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Jul 16, 2019
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Jul 19, 2019
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Jul 16, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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| B016SB754S
| 4.02
| 1,540
| 1955
| Oct 16, 2015
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really liked it
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4.5 Stars Very, very good. Classic 1950s gumshoe, with a complex and satisfying plot. However, the first and last quarters of the book are far better t 4.5 Stars Very, very good. Classic 1950s gumshoe, with a complex and satisfying plot. However, the first and last quarters of the book are far better than the middle. And ... What an extraordinary surprise at 80% through! This is a book that I now remember was owned by my Dad long ago, that I "borrowed" and read as a teen in the early 1960s. I've looked for it off and on for decades but could not remember the title, and I only suspected it was by MacDonald. In particular, the extraordinary scene in the cave has stayed with me for over 50 years: I do not try to excuse it.... I can try to explain it. It is an urgency that comes at times of danger. It is something deep in the blood, that urgency. It is a message from the blood. You may die. Live this once more, this last time. Or it may be more complicated. There may be defiance in it. Your answer to the blackness that wants to swallow you. To leave this one thing behind you. To perform this act which may leave a life behind you, the only possible guarantee of immortality in any form. Overall, I very much enjoyed the story. It did not feel dated, but more of a time machine back to the 1950s. I was born in 1952, and remember much of this era clearly. Our hero, Tal, is quite likeable and initially driven by the lure of treasure. The villain is powerful and scary, but not overdrawn or silly. The female characters are mostly strong - almost a trademark of John D. MacDonald - which I celebrate. As noted, the first quarter of the book is a great setup, nicely paced and characterised. Parts of the middle of the book are a bit confused. I didn’t read this in one sitting, but over several days (with Amazon Bosch as well), and from about halfway through I had to refer back to remember some of the minor characters - there are plenty. As you enter the final quarter of the book, the various threads and characters come together to produce a stupendous ending - very, very exciting and believable. This is a terrific early work by John D. MacDonald. The plotting and characterisations foreshadow the upcoming Travis McGee series, which I've just finished reading. [image] Full size image here Notes and quotes: Tal considers Ruth - ...her dark red hair against the damp ground in the coolness of the night. What shocked me was the stunning sense of loss. It taught me that I had underestimated what she meant to me. I could not understand how she had come to mean so much, in so short a time. More than Charlotte had ever meant. Tal encounters Fitzmartin - I hoped his greed would be stronger than his wish to kill. I hoped his greed would last through the night. But there was something erratic about his thought patterns. There was an incoherency about the way he had talked, jumping from one subject to the next. He had a vast confidence in his own powers. I wondered where he had Ruth. A half mile away. Across country. Maybe she was in his car, and it was parked well off a secondary road. Maybe he had found a deserted shed. As I lay awake, trying to find some position in which I could be comfortable, I heard it begin to rain. The rain was light at first, a mere whisper of rain. And then it began to come down. It thundered on the roof. It made a drench of the world, bouncing off the painted metal of the cars, coming down as though all the gates of the skies had been opened. Antoinette considers the "rat race" of 1956, much like complaints today - "Sometimes I think I’d run off with anybody asked me just to get out of this rat race. That’s on my bad days. Isn’t this day a stinker, though?" I envision the island at the end of the book like this: [image] Full size image here . ...more |
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1
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Apr 22, 2019
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Apr 26, 2019
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Feb 21, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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| B07H7Y6JX4
| 4.01
| 28,077
| Feb 19, 2019
| Feb 19, 2019
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it was amazing
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My rating: One Million Stars... It is completely unavoidable now: The frying of the planet until the collapse of civilisation, and then 100,000 years t My rating: One Million Stars... It is completely unavoidable now: The frying of the planet until the collapse of civilisation, and then 100,000 years to recover. Page 1 - "It is worse, much worse than you think. "The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn’t happening at all, and comes to us bundled with several others in an anthology of comforting delusions: that global warming is an Arctic saga, unfolding remotely; that it is strictly a matter of sea level and coastlines, not an enveloping crisis sparing no place and leaving no life undeformed; that it is a crisis of the “natural” world, not the human one; that those two are distinct, and that we live today somehow outside or beyond or at the very least defended against nature, not inescapably within and literally overwhelmed by it; that wealth can be a shield against the ravages of warming; that the burning of fossil fuels is the price of continued economic growth; that growth, and the technology it produces, will allow us to engineer our way out of environmental disaster; that there is any analogue to the scale or scope of this threat, in the long span of human history, that might give us confidence in staring it down. None of this is true." About 40% of the world's population lives within 100 km (about 63 miles) of an ocean. When all oceans rise, where will they live? Can you imagine 3 BILLION REFUGEES? --- I confess to having read only 1/4 of this extraordinary work, and then I had to stop. You and I both know that greed will prevail for just too long to save ourselves and our children. As the climate becomes unliveable, the rich will try to escape with the wealth they have stolen from our lives and our children's futures. Their high walls and private armies are an illusion. They will die with the rest of humanity, clutching their wealth as their children die. Here is my sad review. You know the rest already. David answers questions via Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comment... Direct Heat Since 1980, the planet has experienced a fiftyfold increase in the number of dangerous [to human life] heat waves; a bigger increase is to come. Food as Pollution To avoid dangerous climate change, Greenpeace has estimated that the world needs to cut its meat and dairy consumption in half by 2050; everything we know about what happens when countries get wealthier suggests this will be close to impossible. And already, global food production accounts for about a third of all emissions. Food Production ... without dramatic reductions in emissions, southern Europe will be in permanent extreme drought, much worse than the American Dust Bowl ever was. The same will be true in Iraq and Syria and much of the rest of the Middle East; some of the most densely populated parts of Australia, Africa, and South America; and the breadbasket regions of China. None of these places, which today supply much of the world’s food, would be reliable sources going forward. ...the droughts in the American plains and Southwest would not just be worse than in the 1930s, a 2015 NASA study predicted, but worse than any droughts in a thousand years... Climate change promises another empire of hunger, erected among the world’s poor. Sudden Arctic Methane release ... one Nature paper found that the release of Arctic methane from permafrost lakes could be rapidly accelerated by bursts of what is called “abrupt thawing,” already under way. Atmospheric methane levels have risen dramatically in recent years, confusing scientists unsure of their source; new research suggests the amount of gas being released by Arctic lakes could possibly double going forward. [image] Full size image here Methane is considered to be around 30x more potent to greenhouse as an equal volume of CO2. Runaway acceleration of warming A hotter planet is, on net, bad for plant life, which means what is called “forest dieback”—the decline and retreat of jungle basins as big as countries and woods that sprawl for so many miles they used to contain whole folklores—which means a dramatic stripping-back of the planet’s natural ability to absorb carbon and turn it into oxygen, which means still hotter temperatures, which means more dieback, and so on. Higher temperatures means more forest fires means fewer trees means less carbon absorption, means more carbon in the atmosphere, means a hotter planet still—and so on. A warmer planet means more water vapor in the atmosphere, and, water vapor being a greenhouse gas, this brings higher temperatures still—and so on. Warmer oceans can absorb less heat, which means more stays in the air, and contain less oxygen, which is doom for phytoplankton—which does for the ocean what plants do on land, eating carbon and producing oxygen—which leaves us with more carbon, which heats the planet further. And so on. The terrifying costs Adaptation to climate change is often viewed in terms of market trade-offs, but in the coming decades the trade will work in the opposite direction, with relative prosperity a benefit of more aggressive action. Every degree of warming, it’s been estimated, costs a temperate country like the United States about one percentage point of GDP, and according to one recent paper, at 1.5 degrees the world would be $20 trillion richer than at 2 degrees. Turn the dial up another degree or two, and the costs balloon—the compound interest of environmental catastrophe. 3.7 degrees of warming would produce $551 trillion in damages, research suggests; total worldwide wealth is today about $280 trillion. Secret Exxon Research 1977 [image] Full size image here 1. Exxon knew in 1977 that their products would destroy the planet. Yet by the mid-1980s the whole oil industry had decided to cover up these facts, to claim they were untrue, to hide the coming apocalypse! What kind of greed and insanity drives a whole class of men to trade the planet for money? 2. If they intentionally covered up global warming, then why? Is it a convenient way to stop overpopulation and eliminate 3 billion "poor people"? What else could their intentions be? Here is how I feel before I even start this book (kindly provided by NetGalley). Honestly, it's already too late.The super-rich expect to escape to the poles on luxury icebreakers: [image] Full size image here But the Arctic is actually heating 3x faster than the rest of the planet. No escape there. . ...more |
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Feb 15, 2019
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May 09, 2019
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Feb 15, 2019
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| B07N19S1NH
| 4.21
| 1,493
| Jul 11, 2019
| Jul 11, 2019
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it was amazing
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Ten Stars again for Joseph Knox. W O W. This is his third book, again a supernova noir Masterpiece! Completely, utterly brilliant in every way. Astoun Ten Stars again for Joseph Knox. W O W. This is his third book, again a supernova noir Masterpiece! Completely, utterly brilliant in every way. Astounding, astonishing, dark and wonderful and sad. The best book I’ve read since his The Smiling Man a year ago, and his extraordinary debut Sirens two years ago. This one is even better. My copy is a pre-release proof, inscribed by Joe, and posted to me by the author's own hand ! This is the most excited I've ever been to read a book. (Jospeh Knox provides some incredible background notes at the very end of this review) [image] Full size image here As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you. The book starts with Aidan and Sutty sharing an unwanted duty, watching over a terminally ill criminal dying in an isolated hospital room. You can feel the dull hours piling up, although Aidan seems happy to be on "low profile", and away from Superintendent Parrs' manipulation and abuse. The Firearms guard, Rennick, watches carefully from the old nurses station, but you can tell the dull hours are affecting him as well. The city is Manchester, in the autumn, just as grimy and foreboding as in Knox's previous masterpieces, Sirens and The Smiling Man, and with so many wandering the streets, seemingly unaware of the truth: We climbed the steps out on to the street and hailed a taxi, both staring out the windows as we rode, watching the city stream by. Charity workers going between wild-eyed homeless men. Boys peacocking, loaded with drink, on their way to or from pubs or clubs. And the girls gliding along in formation, doubling up and laughing at life. Aidan contemplates Sutty: My partner Was built like a hip flask. A stout, neckless head on top of broad shoulders, with the whisky breath to match. There was something off, curdled even, about his face, which was bleach- white all over and studded with strange lumps beneath the skin. Somehow it suited his personality, like the warning sign printed on rat poison. He never ironed either of his suits, but filled them to absolute breaking point so they appeared perfectly pressed. - Rennick, the armed guard, was in position as I emerged from the stairwell, Sutty still some way behind me ... and he wore full tactical-style uniform. Body armour and fingerless gloves, as well as the newly issued black baseball cap. With the amount of equipment strapped to his vest, including speedcuffs, radio and taser, as well as the sidearm, medical kit and back-up rounds, he looked like a little boy's action figure. He was reading the newspaper and smiling to himself scratching his ear with a G36 assault rifle. [image] Full size image here Then late one night, there’s a horrible attack on the dying prisoner, launching the complex central mysteries of the book. Nothing is as it seems, of course, and Aidan performs brilliantly, just as we expect, and is hated for it, again as we expect. Superintendent Parrs, as we also expect, steps in with the usual blackmail and threats against Aidan, blaming him for things gone wrong, forcing him into a "shadow investigation" of the murder, and assigns him the sharp and delicious Constable Naomi Black as his partner. Black was seen briefly in The Smiling Man. Pay close attention to her now! Constable Naomi Black I didn't think I’d seen her out of uniform before, and was trying to get a read on her style. Black jeans, Doc Martens and a thick, dark green parka jacket. She had short, afro hair with the tips dyed blond and, taken altogether, looked a little like Liam Gallagher's half-sister. ... She was quick-witted and had a keen eye for bullshit. It was all the more reason to keep her at arm's length ... An imagined Constable Naomi Black, casual dress [image] Full size image here Again, nothing is as it seems. Throughout the book, you feel the tickle of thinking you know what's really going on, fitting the mismatched pieces of the puzzle together. And sometimes, rarely, you catch on early to something important... Mild (view spoiler)[ where is Lizzie's body? Yes. (hide spoiler)] The suspects multiply and are eliminated, again and again. New mysteries arise. A news journalist of questionable ethics drifts in and out of suspicion, and a ex-detective, who has made a life for himself by writing about the original horrific murders of ten years ago, muddies the waters of the investigation throughout the book. After the horrific attack in the hospital, Aidan wanders out into the dawn. Knox's prose is always fabulous: It was 6 a.m. on Sunday morning. The bloodshot autumnal sky tinted the air red, and the whole city looked like a bar with the lights up at last orders. I watched the men still ending their Saturday nights, draining crinkled beer cans, queuing for takeaways. Brand-new couples flagging down taxis, the boys attaching themselves to girls like barnacles. I turned on to Portland Street, skirting Chinatown, passing the twenty-four-hour casinos and strip clubs, the raw-eyed patrons squinting into the dawn. Aidan wanders by the club owned by Zain Carver, a truly evil villain, still successful after the events of Sirens and The Smiling Man. Rubbing my eyes, I turned for home. In recent years I'd lived a few different lives in this town, but it felt like I'd died as many deaths. Looking over my shoulder at that solitary lit window, I got the feeling I was down to my very last one. Last year, Knox promised us that the horrific Victorian prison, Strangeways, would feature in this, his next book. Her Majesty's Prison was an infamous shithole. To me the name sounded fanciful, like the queen summered there or something. It had been hastily rebranded from Strangeways in the early nineties, when a twenty-five-day riot and rooftop protest resulted in millions of pounds of damage and the deaths of two men, one officer and one inmate. In the wake of these protests, and the spotlight it had thrown on to living conditions, authorities had been forced into drastic renovation work on the dilapidated Victorian compound. The rebrand hadn't worked, though, everyone still called it Strangeways. [image] Full size image here Aidan and Naomi meet Adam, a key to the mystery, in his cell at Strangeways. He shows Aidan a book. Again we see Aidan's fine heart, and in noir, those take the greatest beatings: Adam: "It was built two years after Dostoevsky published Crime and Punishment... What does that tell you?" "That the architect didn't read it very closely,” I said. He snorted again and I asked if we could sit down. Sitting there in the segregated wing of Strangeways, wearing pigtails and covered in self-harming scars, I thought Iid never seen someone so alone. When I shifted closer he winced like I might hit him. I held open my hands to show that I wouldn't, and he looked up, half-smiled and nodded. He wiped his face with his prison-issue shirt, smearing some of his make-up. [image] Full size image here Pressed by Parrs, Adian and Naomi must visit Zain Carver in his club: Whatever was happening in the outside world, times were good for the patrons of the Light Fantastic. They'd inherited good times when they were born and they'd pass them on to their gilded children again when they died. I was heading for the bar when a hostess glided towards me. She wore a black cocktail dress and had a smile that looked like the answer to all of life's problems. - Zain Carver was a magician when it came to ruining women's lives. He surrounded himself with these beautiful young assistants and then delighted in sawing them up, making them disappear. Sometimes a new girl on his arm might end up on the game, or in hospital, or back with her parents feeling five years older, a permanent faraway look in her eyes. Sometimes you just never saw them again. As the pieces of the various puzzles start to come together, the pressure on Aidan increases more and more. An unassuming step-ladder seen leaning on a bookcase in Aidan's apartment shifts the plot significantly and dangerously against him. The skilled and nervous Firearms Officer we met earlier, Louisa Jankowski, becomes a terrible personal problem for Aidan and drastically impedes the solution to the case. I imagine her something like this, in full kit [image] Full size image here Aidan is caught in a multi-jawed vice between the truth, the police, the criminals and his own tarnished character. These all continue to thrash and smoke under Aidan's probing, and the pressures on him reach mind-breaking levels. - There are some fine views of Aidan's younger life, as in this gem as he visits Anne, his sister. I nodded. "I stole cars when I was younger." She shifted so she was facing me, but I kept my eyes on the road. "And you think it was because..." "Yeah," I said. "I never went anywhere. I'd just break in and then sleep in the back.” As I spoke I realized I'd never shared this with anyone, and saying it out loud felt like something unlocking inside me. It felt like being cured of a terminal illness. Aiden and Naomi hot rough patches in their partnership - Aiden to Naomi:"I won't let you down again." "It's not me you're letting down." The way she said the words made them sound like the distance between what I was and what I should be. Aidan and Naomi doggedly resolve all but one of the mysteries, but at an horrific price. The climax is astounding and true, the various plots resolving, and then a final unexpected climax, poignant and powerful, tying the scene in the first chapter to this last one. Aidan considers the politicians, the criminals and how he's arrived at this terrible point in his life: Career politicians, failing upwards, always just out of spitting distance, and all the good men with black holes where their eyes should be. Carbon footprints. Panic rooms. Charismatic racists and gifted liars. Salesmen. Businessmen. Salary men. All the good men with black holes where their hearts should be. All the sticks of lipstick smeared into all the collars. Apocalyptic weather reports and the birds, chirping, singing, screaming in the trees. (view spoiler)[ And then I could hear myself breathing, hear myself think. I could see my hand, unrecognizable with cuts and bruises, gripping the door frame. When I let go it felt like the easiest thing in the world. (hide spoiler)] Now suddenly I see where Joe is taking us. Where his next book will go.... Incredible. Pure Genius, Joe! _____________ AFTER you've finished the book, here’s a reminder of that little niggling scene you are trying to remember.... (view spoiler)[ Moving into the last room, taking the books down from the cases, I came upon a battered copy of Crime and Punishment. I turned it over, flicking through to see notes made in pencil. "No, no, don't read those," said Anne, looking over my shoulder. "Did you like it?" "Something you"ll learn about me," she laughed. "I love my Russians. Have you read it?" I shook my head. “You can have this one, just let me rub out the notes . . ." "A friend gave me a copy recently," I said. I thought of Adam, hanged inside his cell. He'd got away from the prison guards, away from the dealers and Zain Carver, but you can't ever get away from yourself. I wondered if that's what I was trying to do in coming here. Moving to a slightly bigger cell for a few days before the inevitable. "I'll probably read that. It's sitting on the shelf at home. It's actually where I've put your letter, it's pressed right in the middle." She smiled and her eyes went to the window, where a streak of pink light cut through the clouds on the horizon. It was starting to get dark. (hide spoiler)] _____________ My Notes: 14.0% Superb. Knox is already on Mount Olympus with the other gods of noir. Fabulous. And here we see Aidan with Parrs smouldering and Constable Naomi Black an unwillingly moth to Aidan's flame. Brilliant. 35.0% Absolutely fabulous! 50.0% Absolutely brilliant! 56.0% An extraordinary few moments of tenderness, Aiden's true heart, in the presence of a badly broken and confused inmate at Strangeways prison. There are surprising tears in my eyes. 62.0% Another supernova masterpiece from Knox. Extraordinary. 71.0% We know Aidan has such a fine heart, and in noir, those always take the greatest beatings. 87.0% Brilliant plotting, sharp dialogue, extraordinary. 100% WOW ! I now see where Joe is taking us. Where his next book will go. Pure Genius. ____________________________________ Notes from Joseph Knox's Newsletter on The Sleepwalker The Sleepwalker is the third Aidan Waits novel, and the culmination of a long journey that I embarked on about ten years ago. Sirens, the first book in the series, took roughly eight years to write, and the sequels, Smiling Man and Sleepwalker, took the best part of a year each. When I signed my book deal with Penguin Randomhouse in the UK at the end of 2016, they snapped me up for three and asked if I had proposals for the next two. I said I did (then quickly made something up). I knew that the second would deal with Aidan’s history and personal identity, so the idea of having a mystery revolve around identity as well made sense, and the idea of The Smiling Man was born. Knowing that books one and two would be slow burns, I wanted the third to open with a BANG – that thrilling devil may care sense of the third part of a trilogy. I wanted an eye popping plot. My idea was that the third would open with a notorious and much-loathed murderer recanting a decade-held confession on his deathbed. The plot would then offer two possibilities: Either he’s lying and trying to manipulate the police, or he’s telling the truth and the real killer is still out there… That killer became Martin Wick, the central figure in The Sleepwalker, and he has kept me up almost every night since. I spent the best part of last year writing and reworking the book, then submitted it to my publisher at the arse end of the 2018. Honestly, I thought I was done with it. The scale and madness completely broke me and, in an effort to save my relationship after ten years of swearing under my breath at pieces of paper, I took a three month trip with my girlfriend, one I’d been promising her for years. While on this trip I got the notes on Sleepwalker back from my editor. To be honest, they were minimal, the work of an afternoon – but I couldn’t let it go… I knew that there was something more there, something deeper, harder, sadder, more complex, that I hadn’t quite excavated. To the horror and disgust of my loved ones, I decided to spend another month reworking the book. With time against me, and pulling 20 hour days, I absolutely tore it down, rewrote large parts and, with the perspective that only a break can bring, delivered what I think is by far my strongest work. If pushed I’d say it has the directness of Sirens but the complexity of Smiling Man, as well as a kind of menace of its own. It’s by some distance, I hope, the funniest of the three, as well as the most violent and, I’m afraid, the saddest and most shocking. Figures from Aidan’s past who have been hinted at will make full appearances, Parrs will cross even further over to the dark side, and Sutty will spend most of the novel fighting for his life. In the midst of this, Aidan will have a new partner. Naomi Black (a minor but vital character in Smiling Man). She’s my favourite part of this new book. Funny and chilled out, but I think the first person who has ever taken Aidan seriously enough to not let him get away with his usual tricks. Their relationship is strained from the beginning, and as the book progresses they begin actively working against each other, even while trying to crack the case. There’s a chance that only one of them will be left standing by the end… With Sleepwalker, my book deal is complete. As someone who struggled for the best part of a decade to write his first book, I can hardly believe that my third will be released this year. I have no idea what will happen next. Perhaps you’ll hear from me again, perhaps I’ll be serving your next pint. Either way, there is nothing else for me to say except thank you for reading my books. Nothing in my life ever prepared me for the privilege of your time and attention, but I was grateful for it. I swear blind that I put everything I could into this book. So much so that the next thing you can expect from me is probably a long silence. I did what I set out to and, for the first time in years, I don’t owe anybody anything. I’m smiling, man. Joseph Knox(xxx) 22/04/19 Sign up for the newsletter here Bonus: James Ellroy, myself and Joseph Knox at the "Mount Olympus" Waterstones, Deansgate, Manchester 2019-05-28. Joe was interviewing James for his forthcoming "This Storm" L.A. detective noir, set during WW-2 [image] Full size image here . ...more |
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May 14, 2019
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May 18, 2019
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Feb 07, 2019
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| B07BDFWLXT
| 4.13
| 15,256
| Sep 04, 2018
| Sep 06, 2018
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it was amazing
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5-Stars! Completely, utterly brilliant! Wow! So nice to be immersed again in Peter's wonderful, flowing prose and extraordinary narrative precision. No 5-Stars! Completely, utterly brilliant! Wow! So nice to be immersed again in Peter's wonderful, flowing prose and extraordinary narrative precision. No one considers and plans every aspect of their books like Hamilton, and it shows. Update: The second read of this book was even better than the first. Highly recommended. This first book is an introduction to the characters and situations of the series, presented along two timelines with the first (The Assessment Team) about 150-200 years in the future, around the time of the alien Olyix ship arrival in 2144, and another (Juloss) about 580-600 years after the arrival. These two timelines are extraordinarily well-written, as you would expect from Hamilton, and interleaved perfectly. The switch between the narrative timelines occurs only 6 times in the 550 page book, at natural points in the story. Perfect. The main timeline, "The Assessment Team", is presented as a kind of Canterbury Tales, a series of novellas, one for each main character showing their present time with the team, and their recent pasts as pertinent to the mystery of the crashed, unknown alien ship. Between each Tale we see the characters of Juloss in the more distant future. In all there are perhaps 50 characters in the story tapestry, but perhaps only 20 are of real importance. They are introduced gradually throughout the book (no overload!). *** Upon second reading (2019 before Salvation Lost), in the chapter about young Callum and Yuri, I really quite hated Yuri for his part in what happened to Callum's wife. But in the later chapter about young Yuri, Yuri's Race Against Time, I quite liked and admired him. Also, the multi-city, multi-planet crime scene tour for Alik's murder horror investigation is mind-blowing. *** Salvation cover [image] Full size image here Interleaved with (1) "Assessment Team" meetings and actions, the "tales" are from the viewpoints of (2) Callum and Yuri (corporate moguls) when they were young men, (3) Alik (an FBI agent extraordinaire), (4) Kandara (a dark-ops super-mercenary), and (5) Feriton Kayne's corporate spy mission to the Olyix mothership. Each character is beautifully portrayed, with their own individual voices and histories. Gradually, as each superb tale is told, the pieces of the central mystery become clear. Clues and events are woven brilliantly into a five-star tapestry. The book has the feel of five or six novellas, but perfectly tying into each other as we proceed. My favourite aspect of Peter's writing is his foundation in the most advanced thoughts in current scientific thinking, and his incredible attention to world-building and plot development. Every page shows his care and love of his craft, like no other author I know. So many elements of the story are not only plausible, but probable (within the story), as well as truly fascinating. Wow. For example: At one point, he mentions the thickness of rock needed to protect the Olyix from cosmic rays, in their journey of millions of years. So many scientists today ignore this deadly aspect when considering trips to Mars. (To wit: Cosmic radiation is so unstoppable and so deadly that most astronauts would get cancer within a 6 month one-way trip to Mars!) For myself, I am extremely well-read in current science and technology. I say that "I am a modern renaissance man", as in … I know everything that I "don't know" …, and Peter is right there, too. I love his love of science, and his love of the mysteries of the universe and our place in it. Peter's invention of portable quantum "entangled portals" of varying sizes, allowing instantaneous travel anywhere, is far advanced from the staid wormhole-and-trains systems of The Commonwealth series, and is far more plot-flexible and liberating for the action of the story. Impression: The twisted interlinking quantum portals [image] Full size image here As the first in a series of books, Peter has produced not only a fascinating introduction to his new universe, but also shown us how a very complicated set of characters and events can be presented without confusion, and with genuine love of his creation. The ending is not a cliffhanger, but a natural breakpoint in the stories. We've been guided wonderfully through Peter's vision, and left wholly satisfied yet eager to continue with this extraordinary new world. - Notes and quotes: This worldbuilding (moonbuilding?) is unique and astonishing. Not sure it would be stable, but Very imaginative indeed, Peter ...more |
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| 4.09
| 79,040
| Sep 03, 2013
| Sep 03, 2013
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it was amazing
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5-stars, perhaps Child's best Reacher. I read this straight through with only 2 hours sleep. WOOHOOO! Child, you b'stard! 😊 If you saw the movie first, 5-stars, perhaps Child's best Reacher. I read this straight through with only 2 hours sleep. WOOHOOO! Child, you b'stard! 😊 If you saw the movie first, don't worry. It's a good movie that diverges completely from this great book, pretty early on. Reacher finally makes it to DC to meet the woman he talked with several books ago ("61 Hours") while he was being abused way out west. As usual, Reacher arrives just in time to drop deep, deep into the brown stuff. And as usual, he is soon in personal jeopardy, and as usual, his sense of justice rides to rescue Turner. The pace is blistering, confident, controlled. The mystery good and complex with lots of players. There's very good humour and snappy dialogue throughout. Child really is on a roll here! There's none of the over-detailed exposition that mars so many Reacher books. In fact, there are far more memorable quotes in this book than almost any other Reacher. The plot is very good, and the climax is satisfying and believable. My notes and some great quotes: SAW - Squad Automatic Weapon [image] Full size image Turner stares at Reacher over a breakfast table: "You’re like something feral... You’re like a predator. Cold, and hard." She took her first sip of coffee, slow and contemplative. She said, ‘... And that’s the problem, right there. That’s what’s making me uncomfortable. I’m just like you. Except not yet. And that’s the point. Looking at you is like looking into the future. You’re what I’m going to be one day. When I’m all sanded down too.... You scare me. Or the prospect of becoming you scares me. I’m not sure I’m ready for that. I’m not sure I ever will be.’ Our Jack is such a dawg! 😊 She was everything he thought she would be, and she was everything he had ever wanted. Another "the guy went down so fast that ..." from Child. Hahahaaaahahaa! ... and the guy went down so fast and so hard it was like someone had bet him a million bucks he couldn’t make a hole in the dirt with his face. And another: He stayed on his feet for a long second, and then his knees got the message that the lights were out upstairs, and he went down in a vertical heap, like he had jumped off a wall. Okay, don't get too excited now. According to Child, Reacher is 6' 5" and about 250 lbs of hard muscle. This is what that might look like. [image] One of my all-time favourite Reacher quotes: The car parallel-parked neatly and its headlights shut off, and two guys got out, far off and indistinct, just moving shadows really, one maybe larger than the other. The lizard brain stirred, and a billion years later Reacher leaned forward an inch. Reacher belittles Epsin with a great mixed metaphor ... Hahahaaaahahaa! "This is not rocket surgery." And the old Reacher standard: ‘No plan ever survives first contact with the enemy.’ Totally delicious throughout! Echo Burning #5, 4+ stars Persuader #7, 4+ stars The Enemy #8, 5 stars Gone Tomorrow #13, 4 stars The Affair #16, 4+ stars Never Go Back, #18, 5 stars Personal, #19, 4 stars Make Me, #20, 4 stars Night School, #21, 4+ stars The Midnight Line, #22, 5 stars ...more |
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Jun 08, 2018
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Jun 09, 2018
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Jun 03, 2018
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| 0399593497
| B06WP486XH
| 4.10
| 82,138
| Nov 07, 2017
| Nov 07, 2017
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it was amazing
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5-Stars. W O W. This story has real heart and power. Starting about half-way through we see a whole new level of writing from Child. This is by far 5-Stars. W O W. This story has real heart and power. Starting about half-way through we see a whole new level of writing from Child. This is by far my favourite Reacher. As is often the case when the story starts, Reacher is drifting through small-town America, and notices a West Point graduation ring in a pawn shop window. A simple start, but the complexity increases steadily. Again we have strong female characters, feminine but powerful and smart. There's a villain in mostly a supporting role, an old gumshoe retired from the FBI, a beautiful client, a missing sister, and a cast of well-drawn and interesting supporting characters. Rose's Bronze Star and Purple Heart [image] Full size image Hitchhiking: Reacher kept the guy talking all the way through Minnesota, which he figured was his job, like human amphetamine. Anything to keep the guy awake. Anything to avoid the old joke: I want to die peacefully in my sleep like Grandpa. Not screaming in terror like his passengers. The story increases in complexity, and the clues are solid along with the plot and great pacing. There’s a few pages of dull blather, Child-glitch around 1/3 the way through, but just skim those pages; no loss. And as I noted, starting about half-way through, Child climbs to a whole level in writing skill and care. Wow. This is on par with Connelly or Chandler or Knox. We finally see my favourite, the "philosopher-detective", coming alive in Reacher (philosopher-vigilante?), and in Child's descriptions and observations. Wonderful. There is plenty of calm time in the story, perfect for reflection and deepening of the characters. There is deep pain and injustice and heroism in the face of cruel fate, and real heart here. I really cared about the characters in this story. This is a first for Child. Wow. Early on we see Reacher pining over Michelle Chang from "Make Me", and starting to realise how his past lifestyle leads to his future. A gentle melancholy for our hero, nicely presented by Child as the story develops. Chang would be halfway through her first full day back to work. Maybe she had new cases. Maybe she was already back at the airport. Down at the root of the story, there is Greed.... Corporate Greed. The human illness of greed. [image] ... by the start of World War One, legal heroin was history. But the corporations never forgot. About the easy money. The corporations took eighty years to get back in the heroin business. They came in the side door. By that time in history heroin itself had negative PR. Nothing more than underworld squalor and a bunch of dead rock singers. Kind of sordid. So they made a synthetic version. A chemical copy. Like an identical twin, Noble said, looking at Mackenzie. Exactly the same, but now it had a long clean name. All bright and shiny. [Fentanyl] ... "Fifty thousand people died last year. Regular folk. Four times as many as got killed in gun crimes.” But for all of that, there are people in horrific pain who do need and deserve powerful painkillers. Serious ones. An example is given in graphic detail about 2/3 through, and I cried. Warning: You might wish to skim the part about the results of the IED in Afghanistan. Reacher on the bus in Wyoming, Child allows him to be a philosopher: The first part of the state was high plains. Fall had already started. He gazed across the immense tawny distances, to the specter of the mountains beyond. The highway was a dark blacktop ribbon, mostly empty. From time to time trucks would pass the bus, slowly, sometimes spending a whole minute alongside, edging ahead imperceptibly. Reacher was eye to eye with their drivers, across their empty cabs. Old men, all of them. [Reacher remembers what the old truck driver had said] "My wife would say you feel guilty about something." He looked the other way, across the aisle, at the other horizon. Beautiful prose here from Child, again superior to anything he's written before. (view spoiler)[ There were old-time fairy tales where the beautiful sister came home scarred, and all kinds of hidden anger and resentment was revealed, ahead of a warm and tearful resolution. But this was different. There was no narrative template. They were both the beautiful sister. They started level. There was no anger or resentment. There were no issues. They were the same person. Almost. Reacher saw the air between them ebb and flow, sometimes making them a single organism, like an aspen grove, sometimes making them separate, but never completely. They were a unit. They were a they. Always had been, always would be. (hide spoiler)] Again, a higher calibre of writing from Child: Her eyes were green, and they were warm and liquid with some kind of deep dreamy satisfaction. There was sparkle, muted, like winking sunlight on a woodland stream. And bitter amusement. She was mocking him, and herself, and the whole wide world. And again. Wow: The crunch was coming. The money shot. The rubber was about to meet the road. For the first time in his life he paid close attention to what his body was doing. He felt stress building inside him, and he felt an automatic response, some kind of a primitive biological leftover, that converted it to focus and strength and aggression. He felt his scalp tingle, and an electric flow pass through his hands to his fingers. He felt his eyesight grow vivid. He felt himself get physically larger, and harder, and faster, and stronger. Love it: The left-hand guy went down like a slammed door. Gah! Ugly fishes! Reacher dialed again and ordered a large pie with extra pepperoni and anchovies. He waited for it in the lobby. Stackley's old Springfield P9 [image] Full size image Stackley's old Smith & Wesson Model 39 [image] Full size image Stackley's old Colt .45 [image] Full size image . ...more |
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May 27, 2018
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May 28, 2018
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May 27, 2018
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Kindle Edition
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| B07G2KQNRL
| 3.99
| 6,328
| Oct 02, 2018
| Oct 02, 2018
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it was amazing
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5-Stars! Outrageously Imaginative! Delicious hard science, even to the mysteries of quantum unknowns, quantum possibilities. Great prose, fabulous cha 5-Stars! Outrageously Imaginative! Delicious hard science, even to the mysteries of quantum unknowns, quantum possibilities. Great prose, fabulous characters, far better than any "Oceans 11" rip-off you could imagine. Rigorously founded in real science, and extrapolating wonderfully into sci-fi; I'm happy to watch various physical laws be broken now and then for such a great heist plot! As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you, NetGalley and Solaris for this ARC. [image] Some amazing world-building here, and the relationship between the "Puppet" race of humans and their "Divine" masters, the Numen, is extraordinary. I’ve never read such an incredible master-slave-race construct before. This is a heist story, with each extraordinary character fulfilling a role in the crime, each one amazing and full-bodied in behaviour and thought. The heist barrels along, with unexpected but quite plausible twists and turns, and rockets to a dramatic and satisfying climax. Perhaps the last 20% of the book could do with tighter editing, a bit more clarity. The pace is so high and the sci-fi quantum spiel is perhaps a bit too complex for this ending. But that’s a minor quibble to a truly extraordinary book. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. -- Belisarius sold legal and illegal Puppet art and was curating the first exposition permitted by the Theocracy. Smell, lighting and sound influenced the aesthetic of Puppet religious experience, and for the exposition, Belisarius had laced the lobby with the faint citrus odor of Puppet sweat. Quantum Qutrits ... Very, very esoteric! [image] Bel considers the Union request - They were going to die. They were all going to die if they faced the Congregate navy, and they needed him to get to a place where they could die. The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, by Caravaggio [image] Saint Matthew was probably the most sophisticated AI in civilization, the first of the long-sought Aleph-class of AIs being developed with the considerable resources of the First Bank of the Plutocracy. Bel considers cards and gambling - Cards possessed a kind of purity. The apparent evenness of the probability was Platonically untouchable. Politics, violence, foolishness, poverty and wealth meant nothing to probability. (a random card magician picture, apologies to Kevin McMahon) [image] As intelligence was an emergent property of life, so games of controlled chance were an emergent property of intelligence. Intellect was an adaptive evolutionary structure, allowing humanity not only to sense the world in space, but to predict future events through time. Games of chance tested that predictive machine—so much so that games of controlled chance discriminated consciousness from unconsciousness far better than Turing. Artist's concept of a quantum wave function ... [image] Marie the explosives expert - “Happy for help,” Marie said, looking at them, wriggling her fingers. “This’ll be a three-or four-finger job.” Gates-15 frowned at her. “What’s a three-finger job?” “It’s how many fingers get blown off before I get it right. It’s way easier if we spread that around. Many hands make light the work,” she said cheerily. [image] click here for: Underwater Explosion at 120,000 FPS A.I. Saint Matthew - What if I’m the tool by which He actually ensouls machines? That would certainly force us to redefine the role of humanity in His plan. Imagine if humanity was just scaffolding for the creation and ensoulment of machines.” Cassandra ponders love - [Bel] smiled. And some of the weight on her chest lessened, until she realized that his smile was a lie, to make her feel better, and that only a month ago, she wouldn’t have known the difference between a smile and its imitation. (just a lovely thought) [image] Notes: 3.0% ... pretty good so far. 6.0% ... wow, delicious hard science, virtual particles and such. The prose is very good, so good you happily ignore the violation of thermodynamics. 20.0% ... very clever and literate. 39.0% .... the plot deliciously thickens! 50.0% ... Risk and daring were a matter of calculation and feel, forceful attacks and timely folding, and lacing every choice with misdirection. 51.0% ... another fabulous plot twist. 59.0% ... wow, Puppet worship of Numen is really creepy, repulsive. 74.0% Intelligence was the first sense to see through time instead of space. 76.0% ... the Numen-Puppet relationship is unlike anything I've ever read before in science fiction. 96% ... word should be "precessing" She measured her rotational speed and angular momentum against the stars, solving the differential equations to know how to extend her arms and legs to spin without processing. Derek Künsken [image] ...more |
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Apr 22, 2018
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Apr 29, 2018
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Apr 22, 2018
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Kindle Edition
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| 1911215140
| 9781911215141
| 1911215140
| 4.17
| 4,947
| Jun 07, 2018
| Jul 24, 2018
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it was amazing
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FIVE STARS! AGAIN! Extraordinary, assured, delightful, fascinating, enlightening, and my favourite: the Detective as Philosopher. A masterpiece, Abir. FIVE STARS! AGAIN! Extraordinary, assured, delightful, fascinating, enlightening, and my favourite: the Detective as Philosopher. A masterpiece, Abir. Truly wonderful! Thank you for the advanced reader copy. A truly fabulous evening with masters Robert Crais, Joseph Knox and Abir Mukherjee at Waterstones in Staines - [image] Full size image As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you. Two and a half years since "A Rising Man", as this book opens, we find our hero struggling with his serious opium addiction, and then being roused from his drug-slumber to stumble upon a slaughtered corpse, and then trying to race away across the roofs of Calcutta, being chased and shot-at by the police! Kukri Knife, the murder weapon: [image] And from there on, the pace never lets up, the mystery deepens, the clues come true-but-jumbled, and we struggle along with Sam to do his duty as his personal life sinks into a swamp. Surrender-Not ("Surendranath") Bannerjee is ever more resourceful. He and Sam are truly bonded as a team, and as friends. Since only Sam knows about the corpse above the opium den, he cannot pursue this murder openly. "Luckily" there's another similar murder and he and Bannerjee, and Taggert and the brutal Military Intelligence Department "H" are hot on the trail, often at cross-purposes. All of this wonderful action and mystery is set during the 1920s Independence uprisings and protests, beautifully woven into the fabric of the thriller. The clues pile up, we solve the mystery slowly along with Sam and Bannerjee, the action is intense and real, the dialogue sharp and fascinating, the culture and history amazing, and just a touch of romance to make Sam's heart ache. Notes and Quotes: How I imagine young Annie: [image] The beautiful Annie has a break-in at her house and calls Sam. After investigating and seeing Sam's concern, Mukherjee again star-crosses the beautiful friends: Sad words, Annie to Sam (now struggling nightly with his growing opium addiction): 'I'll be fine, Sam,’ she said. It sounded like she meant it. ‘l was just a bit shaken by everything. I shouldn’t have troubled you.' ‘I could come back later,’ I said, ‘and stay over . . . if you’re concerned? ' The words were out of my mouth before I even realised. She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Would that be all night, Sam, or just till two in the morning?' Opium smoking kit: [image] Sam aches for Sarah still, and considers his thwarted love for Annie: My wife Sarah died four years ago, and like a man scared of his own shadow, I’d spent every Christmas since running away, first into a bottle, and then to Calcutta; because looking back at the past was like picking at the scab of an unhealed wound. If there had been joy in my life since then, it had come from Annie Grant. The irony was that, while I ran from my memories, my inability to move forward -- to consign my time with Sarah to the past -- had probably crushed any prospect of a future with Annie. There is one thing Sam and Annie know: - He loved her before she was rich. The exceptional Sikh soldiers, so far from their homes We alighted as a detachment of Sikhs in olive-green uniforms and turbans marched past in time to oaths shouted by their sergeant. It was hardly a surprise to find these men from the Punjab here, a thousand miles from their homeland. The regiments billeted here tended to be from far away: Jats, Pathans and the like. It was a well-known fact that native troops were more willing to do our bidding when they were far from home... [image] The bending of rules: Both independence protesters and Raj soldiers were weirdly ... bound by the rules of the curfew. The fact that the demonstration itself was illegal had been conveniently overlooked by all concerned. As usual, the whole thing felt like a game where both parties agreed which rules applied and which could be discounted. Rules, after all, were important. You couldn’t play the game without them, and fortunately the Indians seemed to love rules as much as we did. How else could you explain both races’ love of cricket, a game so insipid and with rules so arcane that it took five full days to play it properly and which even then, more often than not, ended in a draw? Indeed, at times it felt like the whole non-violent struggle was just some long--drawn-out Test match... Hispano-Suiza 1924, Annie's handsome and rich new beau, Schmidt, owns one of these: [image] Sam struggles to maintain calm in the face of Annie's new suitor, the handsome and very rich tea-baron, Stephen Schmidt: The door opened and in walked Annie. She wore a blue silk dress and an ornate diamond-studded silver necklace hunger from her neck. It looked like she was preparing to go out for the evening. "That’s a good question", she said, "How long do you plan on staying, Stephen?" "For the foreseeable," he smiled. [Sam worries] That was rather longer than I’d been hoping. Annie looked from him to me. I see you’re both getting along." "Absolutely," said Schmidt. "Like a church on fire," I said. Sam remembers his dead wife Sarah and how he ended up in Calcutta after WW-1 ... He didn’t know [Sarah] was dead until months later. Rather I was in hospital myself, pumped full of morphine and recuperating from war wounds which, if there truly was a God, would have killed me. Instead I’d survived, continuing to live, when death, would have been preferable and more justified. Maybe Annie was right. Maybe my penance was a life-sentence. It was Sarah's death that had driven me to Calcutta, and it was Annie's presence that made me stay. And yet Sarah's memory still lived with me, and shamed me daily. I hated to think of me now: a whisky-souses opium fiend. Would she recognise any part of the man she'd married? The thought burned like a red-hot needle in my temples... Howrah Bridge, Calcutta [image] Sam contemplates the absurdity of British rule in India: It struck me that was the real problem. To see a man as your enemy, you needed to hate him, and while it was easy to hate a man who fought you with bullets and bombs, it was bloody difficult hate a man who opposed you by appealing to your own moral compass. And we British considered ourselves a moral people. What else was the vaunted British sense of fair play but a manifestation of our morality? ... the British and the Indians weren’t that different, and the way to beat us was to appeal to our better natures --- to make us comprehend the moral incongruity of our position in India. We could only control India through force of arms, but force was useless against a people who didn’t fight back; because you couldn’t kill people like that without killing a part of yourself too. Actual History note from Abir: Porton Down has, for over a hundred years, been the home of the UK Ministry of Defence’s science and technology laboratory. Their scientists, as they were later to do with British and Australian troops, DID carry out biological tests, including mustard gas experiments, on unsuspecting Indian troops, though these experiments took place mostly during the 1930s rather than during WW-I. The clandestine tests were carried out at a facility in the city of Rawalpindi, now in Pakistan. Anyone interested in reading more on the subject should track down a copy of: (at Amazon UK) Gassed: Behind the Scenes at Porton Down by the journalist Rob Evans. . ...more |
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Apr 18, 2018
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Apr 22, 2018
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Apr 18, 2018
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| B01K6RP0MO
| 4.06
| 5,999
| Jun 01, 2017
| Jun 01, 2017
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it was amazing
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Superb! 5 stars! This is wonderfully plotted and paced, with just the right balance of action, description and dialogue, steeped in a amazing variety o Superb! 5 stars! This is wonderfully plotted and paced, with just the right balance of action, description and dialogue, steeped in a amazing variety of Indian culture and history, and seasoned with colourful characters and a dash of romance. As in the first book, A Rising Man (my review), the mystery is complex, and we (and Sam) are presented with far more possible solutions than we can manage. Clues are presented frequently, along with red herrings, but it's so hard to tell the difference! Delightful and challenging. This book is more courageous, confident and better than book #1. Well done! As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you. Book epigraph before page one: You can’t make an omelette without breaking heads. Quotes and thoughts below: In Calcutta, Prince Adhir to Sam ... We’ve surrendered this land to you and for what? A few fine words, fancy titles and scraps from your table over which we bicker like bald men fighting over a comb.’ Sam to Adhir as they ride in a silver Rolls Royce, plated with solid silver! ‘A prince, a priest and a policeman drive past the Bengal Club in a Rolls-Royce …’ I said. ‘It sounds like the opening to a not very amusing joke.’ ‘On the contrary,’ said the prince. ‘If you think about it, it is actually most amusing.’ [image] The lovely Annie Grant appears again, although Sam somewhat blew up their romance in the previous book, stupid git. I imagine most women would go off a man who’d accused them of complicity in murder. I had of course tried to explain that I hadn’t technically accused her of anything; but it’s difficult to resurrect a romance by resorting to technicalities. [image] According to Surrender-not, Calcutta was where the science of modern fingerprint detection was born. He claimed it was two Bengalis –one a Hindu, the other a Mohammedan –who’d done the work. Of course the classification system they’d devised bore not their names, but that of their supervisor, Edward Henry. He’d gone on to receive a knighthood and become commissioner of Scotland Yard. [image] (Wikipedia does remember and credit their names, but like most bosses of any race or nationality, the technique bears his name. In fact, one of my bosses during my research at MIT tried to steal my work, as well as that of three other graduate students in following years.) "The Henry Classification System is a long-standing method by which fingerprints are sorted by physiological characteristics for one-to-many searching. Developed by Hem Chandra Bose, Azizul Haque and Sir Edward Henry in the late 19th century for criminal investigations in British India, it was the basis of modern-day AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System) classification methods up until the 1990s." The monsoon. Far more than just rain, it sustained life, brought forth the promise of new birth, broke the heat and vanquished drought. It was the country’s saviour, India’s true god. Monsoon in Calcutta [image] Walking into Howrah station was akin to entering Babel before the Lord took issue with their construction plans. All the peoples of the world, gathered under the station’s soot-stained glass roof. Howrah Train Station [image] The murder weapon, a Colt Paterson revolver, patented by Samuel Colt in 1836 [image] 45% Some delightful, ribald humour here in the provenance of Carmichael's golf bag! Well done, Mukherjee! Annie and Sam: It's interesting how Mukherjee has placed Annie more out-of-reach of Sam now. She started as a mere secretary, although a beautiful and important one, in the first book. Their's was a gentle romance of almost-equals in societal terms, although clouded by her involvement with the shady industrialist, Buchan. In this book though, Annie's newly wealthy status has elevated her into circles above Sam, and the heartache he feels is poignant. She is not unkind to Sam, her respect and attraction still remain, but she clearly relishes her increased power and freedom, and the romantic attentions of the powerful and wealthy here. The loss of his dead wife and the possible loss of Annie are dangerously dark clouds in Sam's life, especially with his growing addiction to the escape of opium. Colonel Arora's pick for the midnight run: Alfa Romeo 20/80 [image] Before the tiger hunt... A bearer handed out the guns. Good ones, too. Made by Purdey’s of Mayfair -gunmakers to the King, as well as to international aristocracy and any other rich bastard who felt a need to shoot things that didn’t shoot back. And to end, an outstanding, breakneck climax, and a masterfully complex and satisfying resolution. Once again, we arrive at the surprising solution just as Sam does - wonderful! She took my hand. ‘I hope we meet again some day, Captain. In the meantime, remember what I told you. Your soul craves the truth. You have that now. Justice is a matter for the gods.’ ...more |
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1
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Apr 07, 2018
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Apr 08, 2018
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Apr 04, 2018
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Kindle Edition
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| 3.91
| 11,741
| May 05, 2016
| May 05, 2016
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it was amazing
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MUST READ! What a delight. Thrilling! Superb prose, great characters and dialogue, a flawed hero, amazing pacing and rhythm, and a delicious complex m MUST READ! What a delight. Thrilling! Superb prose, great characters and dialogue, a flawed hero, amazing pacing and rhythm, and a delicious complex mystery of my favourite kind: The pieces are presented as the story develops, and you arrive at the solution along with the detective! Awesome! And it's Mukherjee's first book! What a joy, and an amazingly satisfying historical experience as well, which bumps this book up to Five Stars. (I’ve also read the second and third books in the Sam Wyndham series. They keep getting better! ) Apparently, Abir Mukherjee became a noir fan after a friend forced him to read Gorky Park. Good choice! And bless his silver-tongue, Joseph Knox recommended "A Rising Man" to me just last week! (Ten Stars: Joseph Knox Sirens and The Smiling Man) As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you. This is such a great introduction to the last days of the Raj, wrapped in a murder and other mysteries. Politics abound, but the policeman pushes forward relentlessly. This reminds me of Renko in Gorky Park in many ways. Wonderful. [image] There is a minor romantic interest in the lovely Annie, and some supporting characters to provide clues and red herrings, all perfectly pitched and balanced to provide great entertainment throughout the entire book. No lags, no overwriting, no padding, no silly cartoon plots or characters, and with a satisfying conclusion, this is the Real Deal. I will be starting Book #2 "A Necessary Evil" in a few minutes! There are so many fine quotations in this book, so much care and thought, and almost my favourite kind of gumshoe: the "philosopher-detective". What a delight! Here are a few - It was the architecture of domination and it all seemed faintly absurd. The Palladian buildings with their columns and pediments, the toga-clad statues of Englishmen long deceased, and the Latin inscriptions on everything from palaces to public lavatories. Looking at it all, a stranger could be forgiven for thinking that Calcutta had been colonised by Italians rather than Englishmen. The Raj Bhavan [image] Nothing, save maybe for war, quite prepares you for Calcutta. Not the horrors recounted by returning India-men in the smoke-filled rooms of Pall Mall, not the writings of journalists and novelists, not even a five-thousand-mile sea voyage with stops in Alexandria and Aden. Calcutta, when it arrives, is on a scale more alien than anything the imagination of an Englishman can conjure up. Clive of India had called it the most wicked place in the Universe, and his was one of the more positive reviews. Sam considers the opium from local Calcutta Chinese... ... we’d fought two wars against their [China's] emperors for the right to peddle the damn stuff [opium] in their country. And peddle it we did. So much so that we managed to make addicts out of a quarter of the male population. If you thought about it, that probably made Queen Victoria the greatest drug peddler in history. Upon meeting a beautiful young woman, Sam thinks: How does a man survive three years of bombing, shelling and machine-gun fire and yet still tremble with nerves when asking a woman out for lunch? I'd feel the same way meeting this beauty: [image] Military intelligence had granted the Commissioner’s request .... ‘Any and all assistance’ would be provided to us. That was a nice touch; like someone punching you in the face, then asking what they could do to help stop the bleeding. Digby: ... all mouth and no trousers. Reminds me of "All hat and no cattle", and other sayings - all bark and no bite; all bluff and bluster; all booster, no payload; all crown, no filling; all foam, no beer; all ham, no let; all hammer, no nail; all icing, no cake; all lime and salt, no tequila; all mouth and no trousers; all mouth and trousers; all shot, no powder; all sizzle and no steak; all talk; all talk and no action; all wax and no wick; all motion and no meat; all show, no go. Byrne on "Moral Superiority": Now how d’ye suppose one hundred and fifty thousand British keep control of three hundred million Indians?’ ... ‘Moral superiority.’ He let the phrase sink in. ‘For such a small number to rule over so many, the rulers need to project an aura of superiority over the ruled. Not just physical or military superiority mind, but also moral superiority. More importantly, their subjects must in turn believe themselves to be inferior; that they need to be ruled for their own benefit. ... Why else would we build that bloody great monstrosity the Victoria Memorial out of white marble and make it bigger than the Taj Mahal?' The Victoria Memorial, Calcutta [image] The Infamous Black Hole of Calcutta was at Fort William. [image] As Sam, Digby and Bannerjee search for the truth .... April 13, 1919, Amritsar. This was Baisakhi Day. That evening, a little after 5 pm, Brigadier General Dyer had ordered his small troop of soldiers to fire indiscriminately and without warning at a crowd of more than 20,000 people — men, women and children — who had gathered at Jallianwala Bagh. The official death toll was 379 but given the size of the gathering, the actual toll could well have been over a thousand. Brigadier General Dyer, "The Butcher of Amritsar" [image] . A truly fabulous evening with masters Robert Crais, Joseph Knox and Abir Mukherjee at Waterstones in Staines - [image] Full size image Notes: 1.0% "... apparently, Mukherjee became a noir fan after a friend forced him to read Gorky Park. Good choice." 4.0% "... already Very Good! This was recommended to me by Joseph Knox, author of the extraordinary Sirens and The Smiling Man " 30.0% "... terrific. So nice to find an intelligent, interesting book with fine prose." . ...more |
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2
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Apr 03, 2018
not set
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Apr 07, 2018
not set
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Apr 03, 2018
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Kindle Edition
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| 4.16
| 210,125
| Jul 19, 2005
| Jul 11, 2006
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None
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not set
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not set
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Mar 11, 2018
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Paperback
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| B06Y5YLG18
| 4.06
| 2,356
| Mar 08, 2018
| Mar 08, 2018
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it was amazing
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W O W ! A supernova masterpiece. Ten Stars again! The best crime noir trilogy of all time. . Even more dark, powerful and complex than his first book .. W O W ! A supernova masterpiece. Ten Stars again! The best crime noir trilogy of all time. . Even more dark, powerful and complex than his first book ... and it works! Everything works beautifully. The story is a finely crafted demon Swiss watch. There is astounding power and confidence here, incredible pacing and prose. Two books and Knox is already A Master. Warning: Child peril/abuse in the flashback chapters of the monster Bateman (view spoiler)[and the terrified little Aidan at 8 years old (hide spoiler)]. All are extraordinarily heartless and brutal. You can skim all of them if you wish, but do fully read the critical chapter VI.6 and the subsequent Bateman chapters. Knox continues the noir atmosphere of beautiful and vulnerable young women: Sophie, Alicia, Amy, Aneesa, Karen, Naomi (Constable Black), and the buzz of beautiful young and penniless students, perhaps doomed. Aidan cannot help himself, he's fated to forever be a moth to their flames. In this, Knox understands our hearts, young and old. There should be a word for it. That phantom limb, reaching out from your chest, towards things you’ll never have. (from "Sirens") [image] A lifetime of windmills will never change the gallantry and heroism of Aidan regarding beautiful young women. There are more windmills than we can ever conquer. I know. I still sometimes charge at them, holding back the tears. There are so many quotes from Knox's wonderful prose that I'd like to share, so much passion, so much noir, but I’ve included here just a few. Unlike the grey, deep cold of "Sirens", this book is set in a blistering summer in Manchester: The heat that year was annihilating. The endless, fever dream days passed slowly, and afterwards you wondered if they’d even been real. Beneath the hum of air conditioners, the chink of ice in glasses, you could almost hear it. The slow-drip of people losing their minds. The city was brilliantly lit, like an unending explosion you were expected to live inside, and the nights, when they finally came, felt hallucinatory, charged with electricity. Aidan's loathsome partner on the night shift... Sutty had no family and no friends that I knew of. The rumour was that he’d once been a promising detective, before he became addicted to human tragedy and was slowly seduced by the night shift... ... He was at once attracted to, and repulsed by, the people. The boys were all snowflakes and fuckwits, the girls were easy or, worse, feminists, but he’d happily sit in cells, listening to them all night, he’d even drive them home when they were lost or drunk or both. To the untrained eye, these instances could look like sympathy, but in truth he enjoyed seeing people cast low. In truth, he encouraged it. He’d routinely let the names of informants slip to violent criminals, he’d drop young girls working as escorts in the worst parts of town. He told me he’d once attended an AA meeting, poured a bottle of vodka into the free coffee and waited, watching, as people got drunk. [image] The Palace Hotel, Manchester Discovery of the body... His own sweat was glazed across his face, and I thought I could feel the heat pouring out of him. He looked well groomed for a midnight intruder, cleanly shaven with a sharp haircut. I stopped when I saw that his eyes were wide open. They were cobalt-blue and staring into the next life like he was done with this one. .... It was his teeth that sent me out of the room, though. The muscles in his mouth had contracted viciously, and locked into a wide, wincing grin. Aidan at the hospital to interview a witness... The nurse was a sick-looking man with grey, translucent teeth. He sucked them, audibly, as we walked. I wondered if he’d begun working here as a healthy person and then slowly absorbed the aura of madness and death surrounding him. After the pub, and the tugging of heartstrings with old flame, Sian... I finished my drink and left to the sound of ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues’, knowing it couldn’t get any better than that, wondering if Sian had put it on the jukebox for old times’ sake. I climbed the stairs feeling loose, absent-minded even, and emerged on to the street still humming the tune. Double-decker buses roared by like bright, empty boxes of light. I’d started to walk back into town when I heard a movement behind me. I turned and saw someone, the shape of a man, standing by the entrance of The Temple... [image] The "missing missing" ... The missing missing were people who dropped off the face of the earth and kept on going, with no one in their lives who noticed, or no one in their lives who cared. When they were found dead, with no means of identification, it was almost as though they’d been born that way. Aidan tries again to escape himself... As a boy I’d vanished from foster homes with this [bus station] as my destination. The only fixed idea in my head. Sometimes I got as far as the next city, sometimes I was back in care before they noticed I was gone. I remembered oblivion nights, sleeping outside, waiting for the doors to open, and all of my first kisses, with girls, with drink, with drugs. I remembered running away here as a teenager, with the first love of my life, and coming-to outside the next morning. The girl and the money were both gone, and she’d written a Dear John letter on my left hand in red biro. [image] The Midland Hotel, Manchester. They said that Hitler had wanted it as the Nazi HQ of Great Britain. Aidan's fate in love... Sian wore a shimmering silver dress with her hair pulled up and her porcelain shoulders on show. The sun had started to catch her skin, and a light constellation of freckles was visible about her cheeks. Greeting old friends, pausing for photographs and talking to large circles of people, she was impossible not to look at, impossible not to love. She moved through the party like an aura, and even the places she’d been and gone from held something of her radiance, her afterglow. [image] Epiphany... When I got to the door and raised my hand to knock I saw my own reflection. The dark, lived-in suit. The bags under my eyes that I could never quite sleep off. The deep cuts and bruises from my fight with [him], like he’d reached out from inside my head and made the mental scars physical. I waited for my face to warp and alter in the glass but it didn’t change. It had finally settled on a look and, after months of doubt and confusion, I suddenly recognized myself so well. I was my father’s son. The violent man I thought I was pretending to be. What an extraordinary book. What an extraordinary new talent, Joseph Knox. Wow. ARC courtesy NetGalley.co.uk, Thank you. . Joseph Knox [image] Update: Joseph notes - Based on a real life murder, this thing was six months of 16-20 hour days to write. Home invasions, arson, revenge porn, and the death of an unidentifiable man. A varied case load for Aidan Waits, stretching all the way from bad to worse... #sirensbook #secondbook #thesmilingman #josephknox Joseph kindly honours my review via Twitter, 8 March 2018: Thank you so much, William. I must admit I saw your Sirens review. Maybe the best I’ve ever had! What’s funny is you’ve picked out some of the few lines that I had to fight for. I’m just sorry that the next one will be a long old wait for you... My Reply to him: I understand how hard and well you worked for these two books. If you continue to work hard, and fight for your true voice, you will continue with your extraordinary success. The homage to Chandler is exquisite. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 27, 2018
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Mar 04, 2018
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Feb 27, 2018
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Kindle Edition
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| 0008283346
| 9780008283346
| B075WMSZY9
| 4.15
| 7,133
| Aug 01, 2017
| Nov 30, 2017
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it was amazing
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More than 5-Stars! Exquisite heart, exquisite prose. A small masterpiece. A small miracle of light and joy and pain and, in the end, of love and life. V More than 5-Stars! Exquisite heart, exquisite prose. A small masterpiece. A small miracle of light and joy and pain and, in the end, of love and life. VanderMeer once again transports us to his dystopian world of "Borne". Notes and quotes: And even then she did not know that the sky was blue or what the sun was, because she had flown out into the cool night air and all her wonder resided in the points of light that blazed through the darkness above. But then the joy of flying overtook her and she went higher and higher and higher, and she did not care who saw or what awaited her in the bliss of the free fall and the glide and the limitless expanse. Oh, for if this was life, then she had not yet been alive! - The Strange Bird had perched for safety on a hook near the ceiling and watched, knowing she might be next. The badger that stared up, wishing for wings. The goat. The monkey. She stared back at them and did not look away, because to look away was to be a coward and she was not cowardly. Because she must offer them some comfort, no matter how useless. Everything added to her and everything taken away had led to that moment and from her perch she had radiated love for every animal she could not help, with nothing left over for any human being. Not even in the parts of her that were human. - In the lab, so many of the scientists had said “forgive me” or “I am so sorry” before doing something irrevocable to the animals in their cages. Because they felt they had the right. Because the situation was extreme and the world was dying. So they had gone on doing the same things that had destroyed the world, to save it. - At true north lay the great bear Mord, [the Magician's] mortal enemy for control of the city. At true south lay the Company building, a place that the Strange Bird knew as a kind of laboratory on a scale far outstripping the one from which she had escaped. To the west, the Magician’s regard for her transformed children, her observatory headquarters, while to the east, forever changing in the intensity with which the Magician regarded them, were a scavenger named Rachel and a competitor of the Magician’s named Wick. Rachel worked with or for Wick and Wick made creatures much as the Magician did, and used them to barter for goods. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 12, 2018
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Nov 14, 2018
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Jan 30, 2018
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Kindle Edition
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| B01FLFM7HC
| 3.76
| 4,145
| Jan 12, 2017
| Jan 12, 2017
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it was amazing
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W O W ! TEN STARS ! First novel by Knox, a Masterpiece. Utterly thrilling. The best crime noir trilogy of all time. . There should be a word for it. Tha W O W ! TEN STARS ! First novel by Knox, a Masterpiece. Utterly thrilling. The best crime noir trilogy of all time. . There should be a word for it. That phantom limb, reaching out from your chest, towards things you’ll never have. Complex and very dark, painful and relentless, brutally real and noir and powerful, with superb prose... And best of all, even so young, the tragic hero is my favourite kind of gumshoe: the Philosopher-Detective. A truly extraordinary book. Astounding that this is Knox's first novel, which took him eight years to write. Although the prose and pacing are a bit uneven in the first two chapters, Knox soon finds his true voice and then captures you and drags you along relentlessly, ever deeper, increasing in confidence, complexity and power, rushing pell-mell until the surprising denouement, an unseen resolution that's far better than I expected. Wow. Knox's disgraced young cop Aidan Waits is savagely twisted by the unremitting greed of the powerful and the crooked, by the depraved, and so cruelly by the complicity of the beautiful, naive victims. He's betrayed most of all by his own flaws, a Greek-tragedy noir masterpiece. As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you. [image] The story is set in the dark and cold city of Manchester, itself struggling to survive the new century, and replete with beautiful and tragic young femme fatales, the Sirens, to whom we and Aidan are helplessly drawn. There are the usual brutal villains, a police commander dubiously trustworthy, a rich and powerful but distant father to the beautiful and vulnerable Isabelle, and Aidan's outrageous yet fascinating friend, "the Bug". The primary villain has some questionable heroic qualities towards Aidan, and there are a number of secondary police and other characters of unknown loyalty and motives. All of the characters are beautifully drawn, free of cliché and completely real and alive. Even the minor characters are rendered with care and love. There are so many quotes from Knox's wonderful prose that I'd like to share, so much passion, so much noir, but I’ve included here just a few. From page 2, already powerful: All I knew was where it had started, a year before. The three strikes against me and all the reasons I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t have explained the girls, the women, who had briefly entered my life. Briefly changed it. [He] wouldn’t have understood their laughs, their indignations, their secrets. For the rest of the night my eyes drifted to the people on the street, the girls, the women, and I felt like I was seeing the lives they wouldn’t live. [image] Page 44, Aidan meets Sarah Jane. The truth is that she was a cruel kind of beautiful. Someone you might remember on your deathbed, wondering where your courage had been on the day you met, wondering why your courage only ever surfaced at the wrong time and for people who weren’t worth it. [image] Page 66, Aidan turns to booze and amphetamines, too often. The speed made me feel omnipresent and untouchable. I was everywhere, setting a hundred different moving parts in motion. The people were just things seen from a distance. The unblinking, lit windows on a tower block. Page 112, Aidan thinks about his childhood in the orphanage. The male dormitory was filled with boys like me. Around my age, and all new arrivals. Now I see that the personality types –quiet, sullen, outrageous and violent –were all just different expressions of fear. I suppose mine was somewhere in the middle. I watched everything and gave away as little as possible about myself. We hadn’t been allowed to take our things with us, and I thought of the facts of my life as a kind of currency. Not valuable, but the last thing I had left to hide on my person. Only to be used in case of emergencies. It’s a bad habit I’ve never quite broken. [image] Page 174 The daylight was awful. It floodlit the insane, the terminally ill, turned loose again for the day, laughing and crying and pissing their pants through the streets. It was like the lights going up at last orders, turning the women from beautiful to plain, exposing the men for what they all are at their worst. Ugly, identical. Page 187 When I started walking it was still early. I tried to disappear into the streets again, just another vagrant that your eyes scan past as you cross a road. Weak, white-grey light thawed the city, the traffic flowing again like blood in its veins. I wanted to be swept along with it and forget myself. To see my reflection warp and alter in the bottles behind a bar. I saw the same afternoon tug in other people, too. Invisible lassoes around their waists, pulling them into street-side pubs. Page 192, Aidan meets with one of the Sirens in a pub. ‘You sound like you’re saying goodbye.’ ‘Just don’t get to know me.’ She looked away. ‘It’ll be easier if you don’t get to know me.’ There was always an edge of performance with [girl], but when I think of her, when I think of the real her, I think of that night. Her hair up, that jacket, that skirt, that conflict. I felt the second drink working on me. Putting the beat back into the music, the shine back on every surface. I didn’t know what she was thinking. I didn’t know what she was trying to say. I never really got to know her. [image] Page 262 The dismal grey morning had turned into a dismal grey day. The pavements were blocks of ice under my feet, and I could feel the cold through the soles of my shoes. I thought about the past, the sunspots. The terrifying blackouts of my youth. I thought about never seeing my sister again. I thought about [girl]. First scared, then alone, then dead. [image] Page 357 It had been dark for a couple of hours. When our headlights penetrated the gloomy interiors of surrounding cars, all kinds of characters were lit up like staged vignettes. Some looked back at us, blank-eyed, wondering what kind of couple the Bug and I were. Some stared vacantly straight ahead. I felt something lurch inside me when we started up again. A part of me could have sat in that traffic for ever. The end, I thought. It’s only the end. Last page. Wow. Knox creates an extraordinary ending here, an incredible homage to Marlowe's lament for the girl "Silver Wig" in The Big Sleep, Chandler's last line: "... I never saw her again"... The saddest ending in all of noir, recalled deep in the heart of every one of us who has ever loved and lost - - Knox: I watched [her] from the window, my hand pressing hard into the glass. There should be a word for it. That phantom limb, reaching out from your chest, towards things you’ll never have. She crossed the road with wide, lovely strides, and I always wonder what she went on to. The last shred of sunlight caught her hair when she turned the corner, like the start of one thing and the end of another. The dusk itself. I never saw her again. [image] . Joseph Knox [image] "My first book [Sirens] took eight years to write, and for most of that time I thought I’d never finish it..." Joseph kindly honours my review via Twitter, 8 March 2018: Thank you so much, William. I must admit I saw your Sirens review. Maybe the best I’ve ever had! What’s funny is you’ve picked out some of the few lines that I had to fight for. I’m just sorry that the next one will be a long old wait for you... . Knox noted: An all-time favourite [book]? The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley. From the 70s, it feels like a new and dangerous kind of noir, and was a big inspiration for me in writing crime. A truly fabulous evening with masters Robert Crais, Joseph Knox and Abir Mukherjee at Waterstones in Staines - [image] Full size image ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 22, 2018
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Feb 23, 2018
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Dec 23, 2017
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Kindle Edition
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| 0836220889
| 9780836220889
| 0836220889
| 4.61
| 147,813
| 1987
| May 1987
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it was amazing
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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not set
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Nov 19, 2017
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Paperback
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my rating |
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| 4.03
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it was amazing
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Jan 1966
not set
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Dec 06, 2020
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| 3.57
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really liked it
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Jun 27, 2020
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Jan 02, 2020
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| 4.22
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it was amazing
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Sep 16, 2019
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Aug 30, 2019
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| 3.88
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it was amazing
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Jan 1974
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Aug 05, 2019
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| 4.61
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it was amazing
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Jul 19, 2019
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Jul 16, 2019
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| 4.02
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really liked it
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Apr 26, 2019
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Feb 21, 2019
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| 4.01
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it was amazing
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May 09, 2019
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Feb 15, 2019
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| 4.21
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it was amazing
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May 18, 2019
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Feb 07, 2019
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| 4.13
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it was amazing
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Sep 23, 2019
Nov 06, 2018
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Aug 28, 2018
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| 4.09
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it was amazing
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Jun 09, 2018
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Jun 03, 2018
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| 4.10
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it was amazing
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May 28, 2018
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May 27, 2018
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| 3.99
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it was amazing
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Apr 29, 2018
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Apr 22, 2018
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| 4.17
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it was amazing
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Apr 22, 2018
not set
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Apr 18, 2018
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| 4.06
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it was amazing
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Apr 08, 2018
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Apr 04, 2018
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| 3.91
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it was amazing
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Apr 07, 2018
not set
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Apr 03, 2018
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| 4.16
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not set
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Mar 11, 2018
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| 4.06
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it was amazing
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Mar 04, 2018
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Feb 27, 2018
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| 4.15
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it was amazing
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Nov 14, 2018
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Jan 30, 2018
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| 3.76
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it was amazing
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Feb 23, 2018
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Dec 23, 2017
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| 4.61
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it was amazing
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not set
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Nov 19, 2017
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