Book Reviews

Last week, courtesy of a tidy little commission I earned at work, I paid off the fines on my library card.

The results for that fine institution? Imagine keeping Babe Ruth on the bench for a year - then handing him a bat with a 50 year old scrub on the mound.

I have single-handedly raised their stats to the point where the mayor can’t touch their budget next year.

Happily, this all occurred when the planets were aligned: I’d just decided I needed to force myself to unwind at night, and my wife - normally only a voracious magazine and web reader - decided to binge on a bunch of books herself.

I have two stacks of books in my bedroom, each one 8 or 9 high, featuring most of the books I listed in a previous post. (one good thing about not having a library card for awhile; all the books I’ve been dying to read are now old news and sitting on the shelf).

I’m itching to get to Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan, but because it’s a three-week rental, I’ve been busy polishing off the 7-day items.

Because I value my audience, as I know you value every single letter I type, I thought I’d give ya a short little review of the books I’ve finished.

Consider this Amazon-lite.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova - overall, an impressive debut. A young girl finds an old book in her father’s library. Otherwise blank, it’s pages feature a dramatic woodcut of a dragon - and the word “Drakulya”.

From this point, three storylines emerge: the tragic 1930 adventures of her father’s mentor as he hunted the apparently very much (un)alive Vlad the Impaler, her father’s tale as he followed in his footsteps, and the daughter’s quest to locate her now-missing father.

It’s a long book at more than 600 pages, and I walked away from it with mixed feelings. The author has talent, and except for brief periods it held my attention until the end, but there are three glaring faults.

At times it read like a travel guide to Eastern Europe, as the characters followed a meandering, tedious quest to locate Drakula’s tomb. You could have cut half the travel out and it still would have been over the top.

Kostova also isn’t the best at dialogue. Who meets a stranger and decides to dump their entire life story on them within minutes? Even if there is such a person, Kostova isn’t skilled enough to pull off constructing pages of oral reminisces that recall details as small as the color of a shirt, seen for a moment forty years back . . .

The last flaw? A tepid, foppish Drakula with all the menace of the Hamburgler.

 

One Shot by Lee Child - The latest Reacher novel. As usual, Child permanently hooks the reader within only a few paragraphs. Child’s mastered that as well, if not better, than anyone.

There’s always the danger that a character like Reacher will grow stale and predictable. I don’t think that’s happened yet, but I did find the resolution of the mystery a little over the top. It’s hard to elaborate without spoiling the book, but maybe it was a bit too elaborate for it’s own good.

Highly recommended if you’re a Reacher fan, but if this is your introduction to the series, close the book and pick up some of the older ones (but not The Enemy).

School Days by Robert B Parker - a great addition to the Spenser library.

Once upon a time, Parker was mailing the novels in, pasting together clichés and calling them books. And while the plots got thinner, the font size got larger, as if Parker himself didn’t have enough left in the tank to finish the job.

That’s changed.

School Days was great. Not only was the ever-annoying love of his life Susan absent (please, please keep her out of town forever) the plot was interesting enough to keep me turning the page.

Not only was the theme of the book strong - the aftermath of a Columbine-like school shooting- it went beyond the mere ‘facts’ of the case to address the gray nature of good/evil, guilt/innocence.

Spenser is at his best when his cases involve a philosophical examination of his world, and he hit’s a bulls-eye with this one.

Plus, the wise-ass Spenser is laugh-out-loud funny at times. J

 

Broken Prey by John Sandford - This was another series that I once thought was losing steam.

I felt the book started slow, but quickly picked up the pace and restored my faith in the Prey novels.

Lucas Davenport is investigating a Minnesota serial killer, who, influenced by the ‘Big Three” (three depraved and infamous killers under lock and key at a phyciatric hospital) ravages his victims in a disgusting fashion.

I didn’t see the identity of the murderer coming, and I certainly bought much of the smokescreen Sandford created hook, line, and sinker. Twists and turns abound, and the intelligence of the killer is frightening in and of itself . .

Recommended.

 

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