Ideas, Opinions, Genealogy, and Book Reviews
I downloaded Q-23: A Novel of Espionage and Racqueteering by Paul R. Theroux from NetGalley and I found it a quick read and enjoyable. Continue reading “Q-23: A Novel of Espionage and Racqueteering, a quick read”
This is the second in a series. I liked the first and reviewed it about a year ago on this blog. I liked it so much I eagerly jumped at the chance to read and review an ARC of Brooklyn Graves: An Erica Donato Mystery by Triss Stein. Continue reading “Brooklyn Graves: An Erica Donato Mystery”
Sarah Ettritch’s The Deiform Fellowship Two: The Cult is the second in the The Deiform Fellowship series. I thought the premise a bit odd but the title of the first intrigued me and so I gave it a try.
I wrote my review of The Atheist: The Deiform Fellowship One less than a week ago and as I was writing I was thinking about how good this book was and that maybe I should try the second in the series.
I should mention (for the benefit of those who haven’t read my review yet) that Deiforms are agents of God (or at least believe that to be true) and the main character in The Atheist is Jillian. And there is an interesting conflict of beliefs since Jillian is an atheist. Continue reading “The Deiform Fellowship Two: The Cult by Sarah Ettritch”
I was just browsing Netgalley looking for something that would be an interesting read when the title The Atheist caught my eye. So I looked a bit further and the description seemed interesting:
“Jillian Campbell doesn’t believe in God. When local pastor Jim Preston claims to be an agent of God called a Deiform, and declares that Jillian is one too, she dismisses him as a kook. Two days later, Preston is dead, and Jillian stands accused of his murder.”
Continue reading “The Atheist: The Deiform Fellowship One by Sarah Ettritch”
The Penguin Pool Murder by Stuart Palmer is an oldie but goodie. This book was made into a movie in 1932 so it has obviously been around for a few years. And I would guess that there have been many reprints.
This incarnation is digital. I have placed a link to and picture of the Kindle edition to the left but if you look around you can probably find other formats. Maybe even an older edition in physical book form. Or if you follow my Amazon link to the Kindle edition, you can find a DVD of the movie.
The story itself was entertaining and an easy read. I’ve not seen the movie.
It opens in a New York aquarium (near the penguin pool , of course) with a small mystery of a purse snatcher and a teacher taking her class of third graders on an outing. And there is a hunt for the teacher’s missing hat pin. The first few pages did not seem very promising to me.
But a murder is quickly discovered. The teacher, Miss Hildegarde Withers, gets involved in the murder investigation. And the story gets interesting. So don’t give up too quickly.
Enjoy the story. It moves quickly. The case quickly becomes more complicated as the third grade teacher and the detective find many people with motive to kill the victim and many suspicious actions.
I was surprised at least twice near the end. You may be too but in any case you’ll have an enjoyable read along the way.
A first novel by an established non-fiction writer, Black Irish by Stephan Talty is certainly a worthy entry into the crime-novel genre. This book is a first-rate thriller and promises to be a great introduction into a new series about Detective Absalom Kearney
As those who have seen my website know, I have been very interested in Irish genealogy and Irish history for several years. So the placement of this story into an Irish-American community added an extra interest for me.
The book grabs your interest right-off with a gruesome murder. Then you are introduced to Detective Absalom Kearney who is working a missing persons case of a utility worker from “The County” an Irish enclave in Buffalo.
The detective grew-up in the County but still is viewed as an outsider as her County tie is the result of being adopted by a now retired cop from the County. Absalom or Abbie left Buffalo after graduating from Harvard but returned to care for her father.
To make a long story short and grant you the pleasure of being able to read without any spoilers from me, let me just say the Detective Abbie Kearney becomes involved in the investigation of the murder and realizes before anyone else that she has a serial killer to deal with. But there is much too learn about who the killer is and why he is targeting residents of the County
I’ll not say much more (no spoilers, remember). But the clannishness of the Irish enclave and Irish history play large roles. The book is well written and it is a great story with many twists and turns. Just as Abbie has it figured out and it all makes sense, something else happens and you learn that you and she are both wrong. I liked this book very much and give it my highest recommendation.
Apparently other reviewers feel the same way. A few reviews that I’ve found:
Reviews
Brooklyn Bones begins with an incident any parent can relate to. A teenage daughter calls about something terrible and, of course, it is all your fault. The terrible thing gets your attention and then the story slows down a little but definitely keeps your attention as the main characters are fleshed-out.
Then the action speeds up and never stops until the end. The book is Brooklyn Bones and the author is Triss Stein. This book is the first in a series featuring Erica Donato. Continue reading “Brooklyn Bones by Triss Stein”
I was born in the Bronx in 1950 and moved to the suburbs a few years later. I mention this little bit of personal history because I have read several of Hamill’s books as an adult and it always make me nostalgic for the New York that existed before I did.
In the introduction to The Christmas Kid: And Other Brooklyn Stories, Pete Hamill does identify nostalgia as New York City’s most enduring emotion and I understand that entirely. The city is a very special place but it seems it was always a bit better when our parents or perhaps just a decade or so before we were born.
A New Yorker or even a near New Yorker like me definitely feels the nostalgia. But anyone from anywhere could relate to these stories. Such is the magic of his storytelling. Although the stories are specifically about working-class people in a certain neighborhood, they are really universal.
Pete Hamill is one of my favorite authors so I was pretty sure I was going to like this book. And I liked it even more than I expected. This book is a collection of 36 short stories. Pete Hamill was raised in the tenements of a working-class area of Brooklyn and these stories are set in the Brooklyn of his youth which spanned the Depression and the Korean War. The author is gifted at telling us about the time, place, and characters.
Most of these stories were published in the Sunday Daily News in the early 1980s. The stories vary in length; several are 5 pages or so; some are about 15 pages. Some have happy endings; some don’t; but that’s the way it is.
The nice thing about a collection of short stories like this is that you can enjoy without much commitment. With a longer book, I often find myself in a situation where after reading 50 or even 100 pages that are just OK, I wonder if I really want to spend the time reading hundreds of pages than might be the same or might get better. With short stories the commitment is only a few more pages. By the way, there were no stories in this book that I even considered not finishing.
Definitely add this to your reading list if you like Pete Hamill’s other books. Give it a try if you are not a fan or maybe even never heard of Pete Hamill. Reading a few short stories is not a big investment of time and you may find a new author worth following.
Based on a little known and disturbing aspect of Irish history and a mix of real and fictional characters, “Ratlines” by Stuart Neville is an intriguing story.
This is clearly a work of fiction. At the beginning he lays out a few historical events. And then tells you:
The rest is just a story
But what a story.
First, the historical events that inspired this story. As I said some facts are given in the beginning of the book and then in the Acknowledgements at the end, the author list a few sources of the history including a documentary you can find on YouTube
Or if you prefer reading about this
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1538969/Ireland-welcomed-Hitlers-henchmen.html
So with a base of real characters, Neville adds fictional characters and fictional events and weaves a complicated tale of intrigue involving Nazis, the IRA, Irish intelligence, a love story, and much more. What makes it more interesting to Americans is that this story mainly takes place during the preparations for President Kennedy’s visit to Ireland.
As would be expected in a story involving Nazis, the IRA, and Stuart Neville, there is violence. But as in his previous books (reviewed here: The Ghosts of Belfast and Collusion), the violence seems to fit into the story which is more about right and wrong (often the lesser of two wrongs) and a complex character dealing with inner conflict.
In this book the complex character is Lieutenant Albert Ryan of Irish Intelligence, who left neutral Ireland to fight the Nazis for the British and now is asked by his government to protect Nazi war criminals in Ireland such as Colonel Otto Skorzeny (formerly an SS officer and now a well-connected resident of Ireland.)
I read the galley from netgalley on my Kindle and the book won’t be released until early January, 2013. I guess my only real disappointment is that the book won’t be available this year for gift giving.
Other reviews:
The book is published by Soho Crime. If you like good books, especially with an international flavor, you might want to check out Soho Press.
For several years now, I have enjoyed Daniel Silva’s series of novels about Gabriel Allon. Gabriel Allon has a remarkable and unusual set of talents. He is a gifted art restorer as well as a professional spy and assassin.
Daniel Silva also has unusual talents. According to Daniel Silva’s page at Amazon
I have been enjoying this series since the late 1990’s and look forward to each new novel. Since I have read most, if not all, I can say with a good degree of confidence that Silva provides enough of a background in each novel that I think it is entirely possible to enter the series anywhere (but there is something to be said for beginning at the beginning). This brief background is certainly not so much that it bores the series enthusiast or bogs down the story in any way. Since only 1 or 2 novels come out each year these backgrounds are helpful to review relevant highlights of story that you might have read several years ago.
The Fallen Angel is the latest addition to the series. Gabriel is retired from Israeli intelligence and is progressing nicely with his restoration a Caravaggio masterpiece in the Vatican. But he is asked to look into a possible murder or suicide in St. Peter’s and quickly uncovers a vast conspiracy, and as he progresses finds great threats to Israel and world peace. As a follower of the series I know that he will get involved with his old job, save Israel and the rest of us, and return to his art restoration.
But how the tale is told is the thing that keeps me coming back. Daniel Silva tells the story well. I hope Gabriel’s retirement is interrupted often in the coming years. All of the books in the series have been wonderful.
The Last Storyteller: A Novel of Ireland starts slowly but it builds and does that well until you are totally engrossed in the story and never quite sure where it is going.
When I first started reading this, I was not impressed. After 10 pages or so I looked toward the end and figured I had another 300+ pages to go and really thought I might want to just give up at that point. But I decided to try a few more pages and then a few more and soon I was sure I wanted to read it all. Now that I’m done, I’m glad I gave this book a chance.
A well-told story has a certain quality. This book does not seem similar at all to the book I earlier reviewed about the French philosopher and essayist (see Montaigne: How to Live ) but the Montaigne book came to mind when I started this review. But when you think about it good stories are like Montaigne’s essays in that they are about “how to live”. A good story is entertaining but has a larger point.
Frank Delaney is a master storyteller. And this is a story about a storyteller. A group of stories within a story or perhaps a story next to other stories. Maybe both. At any rate, a good story. The story takes place in the Ireland of the middle 1950s, a time of great change. The narrator Ben MacCarthy of the Irish Folklore Commission is trying to record the old culture before it disappears. An important part of that culture was the seanchai or traveling storyteller.
The story is complex. It includes Delaney’s retelling of several traditional Irish stories through characters in his book. These tales are well told and are a very enjoyable part of the book. The story is also a love story. You see, Ben lost his wife to a rather vile character many years back and his quest involves not only storytelling but recovering this lost love. And getting to know his children born after he lost his wife. It is a long story and Delaney tells it much better than I could, so I’ll leave it there.
Give “The Last Storyteller” a chance; I think you’ll not regret that.
I’ve long been a fan of Michael Connelly’s books. I decided to read or re-read The Black Echo by Michael Connelly because it was the first of the Harry Bosch series which I have enjoyed over the years. It has been so long since I may have read it that I wasn’t sure if I read it or not, but after a few pages I knew that I had. I did not remember it well enough that I knew what was coming so I was surprised by most of the twists in the plot but at least parts of the story were familiar. I totally enjoyed this mystery and as a bonus Harry worked with Eleanor Wish who will feature in other books of the Harry Bosch series.
I do not wish to say too much about the plot or specifics about characters as I don’t want to spoil the surprises for that rare reader who has not yet discovered this series. But, in short, both Harry and Eleanor are very interesting characters and the story is well-told with a number of surprising twists. For me, it was a re-read and a very enjoyable experience. For someone new to the series, it may be a bit different but I can’t imagine not enjoying it. I think this would be a great introduction to the characters as well as a great story. If I was thinking about trying a Harry Bosch book because so many people love the series, I would probably start at the beginning with The Black Echo .
I would guess that the new reader would be fine jumping into the series with any book that sounds interesting to him or her. Michael Connelly does work enough background of the characters into each book that I’ve read that the new reader should be able to enjoy the stories. But it is interesting to start at the beginning and watch a character develop and age. In The Black Echo Harry is close to 40 but in the later books he is at an age when lots of us are retired.
Michael Connelly has written quite a few books and I have enjoyed all of those I’ve read. If you are interested in learning more about this author you might want to check out Michael Connelly’s Amazon page
On an unrelated note, I just wanted to add that I started reading this book on my Kindle. I had borrowed it from the county library and I’m not quite sure how borrowing ebooks works. But when it was ready (and there was a waiting list), it was sent to my Kindle by Wi-Fi and through my Amazon account. I did enjoy reading the book on the Kindle and my only gripe was that the loan period was one week which included Christmas Eve and Christmas day. Since I hadn’t finished by the end of the week and the book on my Kindle disappeared, I borrowed the actual book from the library to finish the story.
New York: The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd.
I read this one awhile back and just noticed it while browsing in Borders. It is a wonderful historical fiction about New York City. Follows several families across multiple generations to tell the story of NY City from Dutch days to the present.
I’ve read several novels by Edward Rutherfurd and generally they are long but quite enjoyable and are well worth the time it takes to read a longer book.
You might want to have a look at Edward Rutherfurd’s page at Amazon
Tabloid City has a double murder, a terrorist, a dying newspaper, financial fraud, New York, the Lipstick building, the Chelsea hotel, and more stuff. Well, it’s a thiller and it’s complicated and Pete Hamill tells the stories well and moves among them with apparent ease and ties them together into a bigger story about New York City. And nobody is better than Pete Hamill in writing about New York.
The stories are told in brief, sometimes very brief, snippets. When he moves on to the next story, I often missed the story he just left as I wanted to know more, but usually that feeling didn’t last more than a few sentences as you were pulled into the next story. I highly recommend this book to the Pete Hamill fan. If you are not a fan but think you might be interested in his writing, this is a great way to start. The book is only 280 pages and it moves quickly so it really doesn’t seem that long. As you move about with several characters you get a lot about the city as it is now but also a flavor of the New York City of a generation or two back. So all you have to lose is spending several hours with a good book. And if you like the New York City history aspect of Hamill’s writing I suggest Forever as your next Pete Hamill book.
I like Pete Hamill’s writing. I usually don’t finish books I don’t like and so I don’t review them. And if you’ve browsed through this blog, you may have noticed several reviews of Pete Hamill’s work. I also like New York and I think the 2 things are related.
In my review I don’t like to tell too much of the story because I think it may diminish the pleasure or reading the book. On the other hand if the reviewer doesn’t say enough you may not be interested and will definitely miss the pleasures of the book. So if you like a longer review, here is a good one by the Women of Mystery. I completely agreed with the review and since they are mystery writers from the New York City area, their opinions about this New York City thriller are well worth reading.
The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly may be the best in the Lincoln Lawyer series but I can’t say that. It may be, but I’m not the person to say. I had read the first Lincoln Lawyer book years ago. It was OK but I liked other books much better (including his Harry Bosch series). So I haven’t read them all so can’t really say this is the best. But I can say it is very good.
Also Michael Connelly is a very good story teller. In each of his books that I’ve read to date (and it must be close to 20 books now), he constantly surprises you and keeps your interest piqued. One more chapter leads to the next and it is hard to put down the book and take a break to take care of the other things in life. And many of his books are not short quick reads (this is over 400 pages) so this obsessive period where you get little done besides reading usually last several days for me. I started reading his crime stories which were mostly told from the point of view of the investigating detective. I found it surprising when he introduced the Lincoln Lawyer and demonstrated that he is so good at telling stories both through the eyes of a detective and a defense lawyer.
I skipped the next few in the series. But having seen the recent movie on the Lincoln Lawyer and heard this book was very good, I decided to give this book a try. I was not disappointed.
To very briefly summarize the plot (without giving much away), the bad economy has hurt business for Mickey Haller. There are still plenty of criminals and those accused of crime but fewer can afford to pay a defense lawyer. So Mickey has moved over to the new booming business for lawyers, homeowners who are facing foreclosure. But no sooner does the book start than things become much more interesting. A foreclosure client is accused to killing the banker involved with her loan. Yes, Michael Connelly does make the world of foreclosure interesting. And the murder defense makes things more interesting.
The book is excellent as a legal thriller and is also very relevant to current events. The foreclosure mess is very much in the news these days. I’d highly recommend The Fifth Witness.
I headed over to Amazon to see what everyone thought of the book. I thought the book was very good but wanted to know what others thought. There were over 200 hundred reviews so I just read the first few and they were very positive. Then I looked at the summary and about 25% of reviews gave the highest rating (5 stars) and all the rest were the lowest (1 star). There was nothing in between which seemed very odd. Then I remembered a blog entry that discussed the 1 star protest against high Kindle prices (http://thebookstop.wordpress.com/2010/11/06/thoughts-on-kindle-book-pricing-and-the-one-star-protest/) and I read further and that what was happening. The negative reviewers seemed to agree it was a very good book but gave it a 1 star because the Kindle price was too high (in their opinion of course).
I don’t think a review should be based on the price of a book or whether the reviewer thinks the version they read (or refused to buy) is overpriced. The publisher incurs many of the same costs – editorial, publicity, marketing, etc. So I would not expect the books to be extremely cheap since that would mean ignoring some very real costs. But save the cost of actually printing and shipping the book. Preparing and distributing the Kindle versions would also involve cost but I would think these should be lower than warehousing the printed copy and mailing it to the buyer. (Amazon, correct me if I am wrong here. ) It is generally the case that the Kindle version is a little cheaper but I have also seen cases where the Kindle version is actually a little bit more. This makes no sense to me. But it seems to me that the complaint is to the merchant or maybe the publisher, certainly not the author, and the price of various editions has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the work which is what most of us read reviews for.