The Expats
Posted: May 17, 2013 Filed under: Book Reviews | Tags: espionage, mystery, thriller Leave a comment »
The Expats: A Novel by Chris Pavone
Kate Moore leaves her State Department job when her techie husband Dexter gets a job offer from a private bank in Luxembourg. Now an expat American, she takes their two young sons, Jake and Ben, to private school, hangs out with the other expat moms, and waits for Dexter to come home from the office or yet another business trip. They do enjoy occasional weekend trips with the boys to other cities in Europe. Kate is bored and lonely, and becomes suspicious of their new American friends, Bill and Julia. Guiltily, Kate contacts a former colleague to make inquiries, and learns that her husband is under suspicion of stealing millions of Euros. Kate has her own secrets: she worked for the CIA, not the State Department, and was an operative in Mexico and Central America until shortly after Jake was born. Will Kate’s or Dexter’s pasts catch up with them, what secrets will be uncovered, and will love or money win the day? A building unease and suspense keep the pages turning, with the reader trying to figure out who’s telling the truth. But underneath is still a couple who love their sons and enjoy living in Europe. The author is a former cookbook editor who spent some time living in Luxembourg with his wife and twin sons, so the settings and scenes of family life ring true. A first novel, Expats was just awarded an Edgar Allan Poe award for best first mystery by an American author.
Brenda
The Rook
Posted: May 6, 2013 Filed under: Book Reviews | Tags: fantasy, humor, London, supernatural, thriller Leave a comment »
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley
This is a supernatural thriller, and quite fun to read. It’s the first in a series about the Checquy, a secret British spy agency staffed with people with a variety of supernatural abilities or unique physical characteristics, along with normal assistants. The opening sets the tone: Myfanwy Thomas (she pronounces it Miffany) finds herself in a park in London, surrounded by bodies wearing latex gloves, and with no memory. Her former self has left her a letter, however, giving her two options and a safe hideout. Clearly there is a traitor within the Checquy agency. The reader and Myfanwy learn that she is an executive with a desk job at the agency, but is occasionally called on to oversee the Checquy response to supernatural emergencies, such as a building covered with purple fungus that has swallowed the first team sent to investigate screams from inside. Her normal assistant Ingrid is invaluable as Myfanwy tries to get up to speed on her job while looking for the traitor. Lots of action and suspense, along with humor, plenty of eccentric characters, and unique settings including a boarding school for supernaturally gifted children make for a page-turner. I can’t wait to see what O’Malley, a first novelist from Australia, comes up with next. For more information and a video book trailer, visit his website.
Brenda
The Cassandra Project
Posted: December 31, 2012 Filed under: Book Reviews | Tags: future, science fiction, thriller Leave a comment »
The Cassandra Project by Jack McDevitt and Mike Resnick
In 2019, NASA is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first man on the moon, while its current budget has the space program on hold. NASA’s Public Affairs director Jerry Culpepper is stunned when a routine release of old records brings up the possibility of an earlier landing on the moon. A recording of Sydney Myshko, orbiting the moon in an early 1969 mission (not Apollo 9 or 10), suggests he’s preparing to descend. A cryptic diary entry of astronaut Aaron Walker, on another 1969 spaceflight, indicates that he also walked on the moon. Does President Cunningham know the truth, and what secret could need to be kept for 50 years? Is it even possible that the truth could be kept from future presidents, and from NASA? As Jerry investigates the clues, including the possibility that 1969 photos of the far side of the moon have been doctored, he is pressured to stop. Billionaire entrepreneur Bucky Blackstone is planning to launch a private spaceship to land on the moon, and promises to reveal all. The authors have dreamed up a fantastic near-future adventure, fast-paced and believable.
Brenda
Immobility
Posted: November 18, 2012 Filed under: Book Reviews | Tags: horror, post apocalyptic, thriller Leave a comment »Immobility by Brian Evenson
Josef Horkai is a new breed of human. He has super human strength and is able to miraculously heal from any sustained injury. Nature, or rather human folly has singled him out in a new and perilous world. The Planet (Earth) has sustained a catastrophic annihilation event. Most ordinary humans didn’t survive and the ones that did live in a post-apocalyptic world. Survivors hole up in small buildings that endure in a ravaged landscape. Because he is able to live in a world where ordinary humans die of exposure in minutes, he is a valuable commodity to the competing factions that fight over what little that is left. I won’t tell you what these factions are or their purpose, but the book A Canticle for Leibowitz by William M. Miller comes to mind. Another novel also comes to mind: The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which I have not read but I did see the movie. Josef strives to prevail in a world that he has little knowledge of since he has been cryogenically frozen for the past thirty years and sent on a mission that he understands little about.
This is a grim, ultra dark thriller that hooks you from the first page. It is a fast read, but a real nightmare to think about. Other books by Brian Evenson are Windeye, Fugue State, and The Open Curtain.
Joel
A Wanted Man
Posted: November 2, 2012 Filed under: Book Reviews | Tags: thriller Leave a comment »
A Wanted Man by Lee Child
I listened to the latest Jack Reacher thriller on a Playaway in the car, which made for a very interesting listening experience. Ex-military policeman Reacher is hitching a ride in Nebraska, and much of the action takes place on long car rides. Reacher has a badly broken nose before the book begins, so it’s harder than usual for the 6’5” man to hitch a ride, and the narrator, Dick Hill, uses a muffled voice for much of the narration. Reacher gets a ride towards Iowa in a car with two men and a woman, all wearing matching shirts. Two roadblocks later, Reacher discovers that the woman, Karen, is being kidnapped in her own car. Back in Nebraska, a county sheriff and FBI agent Julia Sorenson are investigating the killing of an unidentified man at an old pumping station, and the state police have set up the roadblocks looking for a car with two men. When the CIA shows interest in the victim’s fingerprints and more FBI agents show up, things get really interesting. There is layer on layer of secrets, with undercover agents and multiple plot twists. Reacher, a loner who travels around the country finding trouble and helping the innocent, must use his statistical knowledge and insight into human nature to help discover what is really going on, aided by Sorenson. Unlike most books in the series, most of the action and violence occurs later in the book, and there is no romance this time. What is left is a trip into the heartland of America and a thrilling ride that never lets up on the tension. As I was listening on a Playaway, I never knew how close to the end of the book I was. Interested? Start with The Killing Floor, and see Kay’s post describing the rest of the series here.
Brenda
The Third Gate
Posted: October 28, 2012 Filed under: Book Reviews | Tags: archeology, thriller Leave a comment »
The Third Gate, by Lincoln Child
Ghost Busters meets the Mummy. Jeremy Logan is an “enigmalogist”, a fancy name for a ghost hunter. He is very good and well known for what he does. He meets up with Porter Stone, a world famous archaeologist, who is deep into his latest “dig”. The dig is the tomb of the first pharaoh, King Narmer, who united the upper and lower kingdoms of ancient Egypt. The dig is not going well. The tomb is located under 30 feet of mud choked swamp called the “Sud”, an area of the Nile that spreads out hundreds of miles in south Sudan. This is a very high tech dig involving huge flat boats and drilling platforms, a logistical nightmare. And also a real nightmare as an ancient curse set upon the tomb, that really bad things will happen to anyone that disturbs it, appears to be coming true. This is why Jeremy is called in to try and defuse the curse.
The body count rises as Jeremy teams with Jennifer Rush a woman who has had an NDE or “near death experience” that lasted 15 minutes, and has unusual psychic abilities. She has been communicating with a malevolent spirit that has been plaguing the dig site. Will the curse doom them all? Will Porter Stone become the most famous archaeologist ever, by finding the mother of all Egyptian tombs?
I really enjoyed this thriller. I like books that entertain and that can educate you at the same time. This author has written a lot of thrillers such as Deep Storm, Terminal Freeze, Death Match, Utopia He is also part of the team of Douglass Preston and Lincoln Child who wrote the Pendergast series. (Relic, Reliquary) etc. You can visit them at their website.
Joel
Triggers
Posted: May 22, 2012 Filed under: Book Reviews | Tags: future, science fiction, thriller Leave a comment »
Triggers, by Robert J. Sawyer
In near future Washington, D.C., president Seth Jerrison is giving an anti-terror speech at the Lincoln memorial on the eve of a secret military operation. At a nearby hospital, researcher Ranjip Singh is conducting a memory modification experiment with a young Iraq War veteran. When a bomb goes off, no one dies, but a group of people, including the president and Secret Service agent Susan Dawson, are linked in a chain, each able to access the memories of another person. Dawson and Singh rush to find out who has access to the president’s highly classified memories. Parts of the books are thrilling; Sawyer is quite a storyteller. The reactions and interactions of the memory linked people are fascinating, but to me the ending was not quite as good.
While this is science fiction, I think thriller fans would enjoy this book. Find out more about Canadian writer Robert Sawyer here.
Brenda
11/22/63
Posted: January 30, 2012 Filed under: Book Reviews | Tags: alternate history, thriller, time travel Leave a comment »
11/22/63, by Stephen King
If you’re intrigued by time travel, mysteries, romance, and alternate histories, then 11/22/63 is the book for you. Although this book is anything but a short story, you’ll find yourself unable to put it down until the last page. I found it to be one of his best works to date and proof that King continues to be a great storyteller.
The story begins in 2011, when Jake Epping, an English teacher from Lisbon Falls, Maine, reads an essay from one of his students, Harry Dunning. It’s about the time decades earlier when his father killed his family and injured Harry.
As the story progresses, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, describes how he has discovered a time portal to 1958 in his storeroom. Al has been traveling back in time regularly to buy inexpensive hamburger for his diner and plot Lee Harvey Oswald’s whereabouts. He is planning to stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy when he is diagnosed with lung cancer.
Al eventually persuades Jake to take his place as the time traveler who will stop Oswald from assassinating Kennedy. This is where the story really begins because saving Kennedy is only one of the book’s interconnected storylines. Jake’s first test is to go back in time to save Harry Dunning’s family from being murdered. Jake goes through the portal to 11:58 a.m., Sept. 9, 1958 – the portal always drops a person at this exact time and date. After partially succeeding in his mission and learning from his time travelling mistakes, he returns to the present, then goes back to try to save Kennedy. He must live several years in the past, until Nov. 22, 1963 when he can attempt to save the President. Jake becomes George Amberson (an identity provided to him by Al), moves to Jodi, Texas, teaches high school, falls in love, and tracks down Oswald.
There are numerous questions that you will have to read the book to have answered. Will Jake prevent Kennedy’s assassination? If so, how will it change the course of history? Will Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. be imperiled? What about the Race Riots and Vietnam? How will Jake’s personal life be affected by his stepping back into history?
Throughout the book Jake learns that the past and the future are connected in some very unexpected ways … and changing the past is not always as easy as you’d think.
George
Jack Reacher series
Posted: December 20, 2011 Filed under: Book Reviews, Booklists | Tags: Audiobook, thriller 1 Comment »
Jack Reacher Series, by Lee Child
For some reason I kept putting off reading Lee Child. I know his books are very popular, but I kept pushing them to the bottom of my “to read” list. So eventually I got around to the first book in the Jack Reacher series, Killing Floor. Then I immediately read the second, the third…. For weeks I read nothing but Lee Child.
Jack Reacher is an amazing character. He is big (really big), a loner, a drifter, self-sufficient, smart, and he travels light. When his hotel room is trashed one night that means his toothbrush is broken and tossed onto the floor. He is ex-army and he knows self-defense. He can take on any number of assailants, using head butts, elbows, knees, and any other body parts that are available.
He knows from past experience that he should eat when the opportunity arises because you never know when you might have the chance again. Same thing with sleep.
All in all, Child has created a likeable tough guy, interesting and complicated plots, lots of tension, with some humor thrown in. Occasionally though, I kind of wish Reacher would settle down (for at least a little while) with one of the lovely, beautiful, caring women he encounters. I have been on the waiting list for the final book, and I finally have it at home. Can’t wait to read it! For more about Jack Reacher, visit the author’s web site. Kay
Here is a list of the Jack Reacher novels, in order of publication:
2. Die Trying
3. Tripwire
5. Echo Burning
6. Without Fail
7. Persuader
8. The Enemy
9. One Shot
10. The Hard Way
12. Nothing to Lose
13. Gone Tomorrow
14. 61 Hours
15. Worth Dying For
16. The Affair
Your library also owns the entire series on compact disc. They make great listening!
Prague Cemetery
Posted: December 8, 2011 Filed under: Book Reviews | Tags: France, historical fiction, thriller Leave a comment »
Prague Cemetery, by Umberto Eco
“I hate, therefore I am” describes the main character Simonio Simonini in this historical novel set in mid-nineteenth century Paris. Simonini, as well as his alter ego Abbe Dalla Piccola, is a talented forger and conspirator who seems to be behind numerous slanders concerning Jews, Jesuits, Freemasons, the Illuminati, and other groups lurking behind government and heads of state, all trying to subvert the body politic with their schemes for world domination. Simonini hates the Germans, the French, the Italians, the British, and just about everyone else. He is phobic about women and values fine cuisine. The novel is about his escapades during the Franco- Prussian war and his involvement in “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and the Dreyfuss affair.
I like Eco’s writing because he is funny and erudite, but it is an acquired taste. This book is not for everyone as it shows the rampant anti-Semitism present in Europe at that time. The Prague Cemetery takes conspiracy theories to the ultimate level, and is recommended for fans of conspiracy thrillers.
Joel
