The Enemy. Finished 1-21-13, rating 4/5, 464 pgs, pub. 2004

Book 8 in the Jack Reacher series (Book 1) (Book 2) (Book 3) (Book 4) (Book 5) (Book 6) (Book 7)

She had lived through desperate times and she had stepped up and done what was necessary.  At that moment I started to miss her more than I would have thought possible.  At that moment I knew I would miss her forever.  I felt empty.  I had lost something I never knew I had.

Chapter 19

Jack Reacher, loner extraordinaire, wasn’t always such a hard man.  There was a time when he had a job, a family and friends.  He was a star in the military police force and he was content with life.  This story of his time at Fort Bird was quite a departure for Reacher and I liked it but Reacher didn’t feel completely known to me either.  This is a military police procedural with some mom and brother time thrown in for fans.  His mother’s storyline was powerful.  I liked the change of pace, but am looking forward to the roaming Reacher with nothing but a toothbrush to take on the world.

Why should you be reading the Jack Reacher series?  Because he’s alpha male dreamy.  He isn’t held back by rules but is ruled by what is good and just and he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty in the pursuit of justice.  He’s a tall, commanding man who, if you count the number of women he’s charmed out of their clothes, knows his way around a woman’s body.  Wonder if I can get Reacher to take a bus to Cleveland?

I found this paperback on my shelf and was ready to read it after seeing the Jack Reacher movie.

Gone Girl. Finished 1-11-13, rating 4/5, thriller, 415 pages, pub. 2012

I don’t often actively choose a book to be the first I read in a new year, too much pressure.  But as I was walking through the library after Christmas, Gone Girl just called out to me from the shelves.  I couldn’t resist.  I mean I’ve been reading so many raves about it that I was excited to read it.  Thankfully, I was not disappointed.

Nick and Amy sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.  First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes blood on the kitchen floor.  As with most other reviews of this book, the less I say about the story the better.  It’s best to go in with no expectations.  I tried skim the reviews because I didn’t want my experience to be spoiled but I still caught a few hints that led me to a few good guesses.  It didn’t ruin the book at all.  But, in all honesty, I think Flynn does a good job of keeping you guessing no matter what you might expect.

I read Sharp Objects, Flynn’s first book, but I didn’t really care for it.  This one I really liked.  They are both dark novels with characters not always easy to like, but somehow, this one really worked for me.  I don’t know if it will end up on me year end favorite list, as seems to be the case with almost everyone who has read it, but it is one that I can happily recommend for the thriller lover with a twisty streak.

The Informationist, Finished 12-10-12, rating 4/5, 315 pages , pub. 2011

She nodded.  “You and every person who serves merits thanks and commendation, and you most certainly have it.”  She was silent for a moment.  “I can appreciate patriotism, but that’s about as far as it goes.  I’m not like most people,” she said,  “I have no devotion or affinity to any particular country-for that I assume I’d have to experience a sense of belonging.”  She looked at him and searched his eyes for an indication that he understood, then added, “Patriots defend their homeland, Miles.  Where is my home?”

Chapter 7

Vanessa Michael Munroe is a tough woman in a man’s world.  She makes her living finding information and selling it to businessmen who need it to make a deal.  She speaks over 20 languages which serves her well since she spends most of her time overseas, blending in with the natives wherever she goes, even passing as a man is if serves her well.  She grew up in Africa to missionary parents and spent many years working for Francisco, a gunrunner, and when her latest assignment takes her back to Cameroon she runs into her old mentor.

Munroe is an interesting character, but a hard woman to like.  She kills with little remorse and doesn’t seem to have any moral boundaries.  It isn’t that she’s heartless, because she’s not, she can break just like the rest of us.  She’s complicated, but not necessarily in a way that attracts a lot of compassion.   Let’s just say that I wouldn’t want to sit down and have coffee with her, but if I needed to get information and I had millions of dollars, she’d be the first person I’d call.

I thought the African setting was great.  I learned so much and still never felt like I was overwhelmed with too much information.  It was a perfect way for me to experience some of the wilder parts of Africa.  And as much as I liked the setting the mystery was solid and kept me guessing til the end.  I am really looking forward to continuing on with Munroe with the next book in the series.

Many of you remember that I was able to spend a little time with Taylor Stevens at the Bouchercon in October and I am so relieved that I liked the book as much as I liked the author 🙂  I won this book at Book Den last year.  Thanks, Jennifer!

Finished 11-21-12, rating 3.75/5, romantic suspense, pub. 2011

Julie DeMarco loved her big Italian-American family and they loved her, even though her blonde hair and blue eyes made her an obvious outsider.  Her mother married into the family and then had another daughter.  Julie never knew anything else.  Then one day at a photography exhibit she sees a photo of a little girl standing at the gate of a Russian orphanage.  She is scared when she feels a connection and wonders if the girl could be her.

Julie has had a rough year.  Her mother died, taking answers about her birth with her, her ‘father’ is drinking himself to death and her fiance is pushing for a wedding date.  Julie tells her fiance she’s not putting him off, but it’s not hard to see that she is and he is not supportive of her wild goose chase.  Neither is her sister, which I never did understand.  But Julie plunges ahead in her search with the help of sexy, bad boy photographer, Alex.

I found this book to be highly enjoyable and hard to put down.  There were a few twists I didn’t see coming and some danger that kept the suspense alive.  Oh, and the sex helped move the story along too.  While I found some of the storylines somewhat simplistic and the end just a bit too neat, I also found the book highly addictive.  A fast read that will keep you guessing.

I bought this for my Nook.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette, rating 2.75/5, fiction, 336 pages, pub, 2012

I accepted this for review because I enjoyed Semple’s first book and she was gracious enough to let me ask her a few questions a few years ago here on the blog.  I read nothing but positive things about it from other bloggers and it’s even up for a best book award at Goodreads.  So, it was bound to be a disappointment, right? Unfortunately, it was.

Bernadette, a reknowned architect, has been stuck in suburban Seattle hell for almost 20 years and her husband mentally checked out of her wacky ways way back as he focused on his very important job at Microsoft.  Bee, their daughter, never felt neglected or unloved so the parents were successful in raising a daughter with a bright future.  The story focuses on where Bernadette had disappeared to, but this doesn’t really happen until the last third of the book.

It was an epistolary novel, mostly.  There were chunks thrown in from Bee, especially at the end, that broke up that narrative in a less than positive way.  I liked the emails, police reports, newspaper articles, FBI reports, text messages that made up the story of Bernadette’s disappearance, but until the very last few pages I never cared about Bernadette or her husband Elgin. At the very end I appreciated Bernadette’s journey, but getting there was a journey I wouldn’t take again. Bee, was a sympathetic character but not one I connected with.

There were exotic locales, Antarctica playing a big role in most of the book, and plenty of laughable/hateful characters depicting the wealthy suburbanites I am all too familiar with so I think this could be a great movie.  The characters often felt like caricatures that could definitely work on the big screen, but for me I found them a bit too whiny on the page.

I was hoping to be entertained, but I grew bored early on and didn’t care at all until the crazy end.  What happened to Bernadette?  It’s a doozy.  I know I’m in the minority for not really liking this one and I’m okay with that.

I want to thank Anna at Little Brown for sending me a copy of the book 🙂

A is for Alibi, finished 10-27-12, rating 4/5, mystery, 214 pages, pub. 1982

After I finished the 1000+ IT, I knew I wanted to read something short and satisfying.  I’ve had this book on my shelf for a while but knowing that I was SO BEHIND in the series it was never much of a temptation.  Until I came across the book featured in Books to Die For.  This is a little of what Meg Gardiner says about it, “In Kinsey I discovered a young woman doing a job that had previously been restricted to male private investigators, and doing so in a thoroughly grown-up way, inhabiting her life and her story with confidence and uncertainty and charming, flawed honesty.”  With that recommendation I finally started the alphabet series.

For those who have yet to meet Kinsey she is a hard-edged private eye with an aversion to attachments.  Divorced twice and a one time cop it’s her policy never to sleep with anyone involved in a case, unless they prove irresistible, as in this case.  She’s hired to find the real killer of Laurence Fife, hired by the ex-wife who served eight years for his murder.  The cold case becomes hot again as Kinsey tracks down all the usual suspects.

I really liked this quick mystery.  There were many suspects for such a short novel, but it never seemed too much.  I was kept mostly guessing until close to the end.  It wasn’t perfect for sure, sometimes Kinsey being too oblivious to gloss over and a few extraneous storylines that went nowhere, but I thought it was a solid mystery for a series debut.

I know some of the appeal of Kinsey is that she was one of the first women in the central character detective role, but I think she proved herself worthy of more than just a cursory pat on the back.  Kinsey didn’t give much of herself away in this book and I’m looking forward to getting to know her better as I continue through the alpahbet.

Books to Die For: The World’s Greatest Mystery Writers on the World’s Greatest Mystery Novels

In this collection, 120 mystery writers were selected to write an essay on the book they consider ‘the best.’ It is not meant to be read at one time.  I like how Connolly and Burke say it in the Introduction, “obviously ideal for dipping into when you have a quiet moment.”  For that reason I’ll probably not try to review the book as a whole, but will add some commentary when I review a book that’s in here.

I’ve only read a dozen of the essays, but I can tell you that I recommend this book for mystery lovers.  Give it as the perfect gift, even if it’s to yourself 🙂  I picked this up at Bouchercon and had it signed by 30 of the authors.  I’ll have to see how many more I can get as the years go by.

Since I’ve read 7 of the 120 novels (a sad total, right?) I’m going to give you a taste of the essays on the books I’ve read and then my thoughts on the book.  The book lists them in chronological order but I think I’ll list them in order of how I like them best.

A Simple Plan by Scott Smith was chosen by Michael Koryta “The plotting of A Simple Plan is, and should be, widely praised, but I’d argue that the greater genius  of the novel is in the way in which Smith renders the voice of Hank, our narrator.  In those early pages, Hank is compelling and familiar and reasonable.  Oh so reasonable…  He’s not a typical suspense novel protagonist-no military skills, police background, or heroic traits.  No, he’s the accountant at a feedstore in a small midwestern town.  He has a pregnant wife and a troubled brother and the weight of two lost parents and one lost farm hanging over him, but these are problems we know or can relate to.  This man is one of us.  He’s speaking for us.”  To me this is a forgotten gem and I think everyone should give it a read.  Just reading his essay not only made me want to read it again, but to also finally read Koryta!

Tell No One by Harlan Coben was chosen by German writer Sebastian  Fitzek.  “To sum up, for its inconsistencies alone Tell No One is a “book to die for” for me.  It starts with a question that sounds almost supernatural, but leads to a real story, which leads to a logical ending.  It’s about extraordinary people we have never met in real life, but take at face value…With this book Coben has not invented a new genre, but he has pushed the boundaries toward new frontiers.  It makes him one of the few popular authors whose style can be recognized without looking at the name on the cover.”  This was my first Coben book and the one I always recommend to thriller lovers.  I’ve read all of his books and even though there’s no Myron it’s probably still my favorite.

Clockers by Richard Price was chosen by Gar Anthony Haywood. “Part of the great pull of Clockers is the anxiety a reader is made to feel throughout, waiting for Strike or Rocco to prove himself more compassionate, more alive than Price would lead us to believe he is.  In the hands of a lesser writer, characters this detached and manipulative, wading through daily existences this harsh and seemingly pointless, would tax a reader’s patience…But Price lends each man just enough humanity, just enough hope for his sorry future, to make writing him off impossible.”  It’s been many years since I read this one but I remember being blown away by the dialogue.  I think it may be time for a reread.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote was chosen by Joseph Wambaugh.  “This book is less interested in the bogeyman terror of the event or the whodunit aspect of the investigation that in the psychological exploration of the criminal mind and motive, which had not been done in such depth since Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.”  My thoughts are here.

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain was chosen by Joseph Finder.  “If you haven’t yet read it, or haven’t read it in a while, you’ll be surprised at how well it holds up.  The prose is lean and spare, completely stripped of ornamentation or affection.  It reads like the confession that it reveals itself to be.”  You can find my thoughts here.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier was chosen by Minette Walters.  “For those who see Daphne du Maurier as a romantic author, the book ticks every box in the developing Jane Eyre-love between the older Maxim and his younger second wife.  For crime buffs, it is one of the few murder stories where the voice of the victim resonates loudly on every page, playing not only with the minds of the other characters but also with the reader’s.”  I listened to the audio of this a few years before I started blogging and liked it, but didn’t fall in love with it.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt was chosen by Tana French.  “For me, this book redefined the territory that mysteries can claim.  When I started writing, more than ten years after I first read it, I was writing within a landscape that The Secret History had redrawn for me.  I aim to write mysteries that take genre conventions as springboards, not as laws, and never as limitations on quality or scope: books where the real murder mystery  isn’t whodunit, but whydunit and what it means.”  Listened to this on a road trip way, way back when and remember liking it but not a whole lot else.

Added 2/15

A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton was chosen by Meg Gardiner. “Deftly plotted, vivid, and convincing, the story has twists, multiplemurders, and some we-intended B&E by the heroine. It has sex. It has regret, and gunplay.  It has a cast of motley neighborhood characters that, over the course of the series, become beloved.  And in the center of the action it has Kinsey…  My thoughts here.

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle was chosed by Carol O’Connell. “There are 56 short stories, but I recommend Doyle’s finest of four novels, The HOund of the Baskervilles, to understand why Holmes’s story can never end, but extends from the horse-drawn-carriage era of 1887 into the twenty-first century-with fresh horses.”  My thoughts are here.

Finished audio 10-23-12, rating 3/5, thriller, pub. 2011

Unabridged audio 12 hours 20 minutes.  Read by Peter Berkrot

Glen’s wife dies in a horrific traffic accident that kills a father and son in another car, leaving him with their 10 year-old daughter and anger that she was drunk and caused the accident. As he tries to normalize life for his daughter, there’s another death in their small Connecticut town.  And then another.  When Glen starts putting the pieces together he discovers layers of secrets and murderers to spare.

I liked Glen.  He had a great relationship with his daughter, was a stand-up boss and neighbor, and a good friend.  The problem was the number of coincidences in the book.  Ever heard of these underground purse parties where you can buy knock-off designer bags?  What about prescription drugs that come from China sold under the (prescription) table?  And electrical parts that aren’t up to code also from China?  Well, not one, not two, but all three make significant appearances in the many storylines of this book.

It was too much, all the murders, the counterfeit sales, the characters that come and go with no purpose.  It was a fast and easy read and I wanted to stick it out to the end to find out how it all came together.  It was an enjoyable, if unbelievable thriller.

A word about the narrator, I didn’t like Berkot’s voices for women.  Every one sounded just plain annoying.  Other than that he was fine 🙂

I checked this audio out of the library.