Cliff Walk by Bruce DeSilva Forge, $24.99, 318 pages, ISBN 978-0-7653-3237-0 While the daily papers are in trouble, the weeklies are just fine at present, as they’re vehicles for hometown news and advertising and operate on a skeletal budget, dependent on volunteerism to put out each edition. The plain truth of the matter is that all of the downsizing and bankruptcies have put a helluva lot of writers and
Harbor Nocturne by Joseph Wambaugh Mysterious Press, $27.00, 320 pages, ISBN 978-0-8021-2610-8 A few weeks ago, I made some lists, based on preliminary reviews from publishers and booksellers for summer reading fun. One of the books on the list was Harbor Nocturne by Joseph Wambaugh. He’s a retired LAPD detective with twenty-some-odd books to his credit, all revolving around the Los Angeles Police Department. I consider them to be
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin William Morrow, 2010, $24.99, 274 pages, ISBN 978-0-06-059466-4 This week’s Mysterious Book Report, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin, is about one of those students. The odd one out . . .the forgotten and overlooked . . . the poor kid who’s shunned, alone, afraid and often bullied. His name is Larry Ott and he’s all grown up now, still living in
False Negative by Joseph Koenig Hard Case Crime, 256 pages, $9.95, ISBN 978-0-85768-580-3 To keep myself occupied, when I didn’t have my nose pressed to the TV screen watching the minute-by-minute news of the Waldo Canyon fire and waited for the evacuation notification that never came, I got busy reading some pulp fiction on my Kindle. Pulp fiction, for those of you who’re unacquainted with it, is by definition,
Hey everyone, this is a continuation of last week’s column, MBR NO. 59, about summer reading suggestions. Last week we had 1. Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn, 2. Amped, by Daniel Wilson, and 3. The Third Gate, by Lincoln Child. Here’s seven more to fill out your summer reading list. 4. Broken Harbor, (Viking, $27.95) by Tana French, features detective Mick Kennedy and the Dublin Murder Squad trying to
Here’s a suggested list of books for summer reading with a short description of each I cobbled together from various resources: 1. Gone Girl, by Gilliam Flynn, (Crown Publishing, $25.00) A psychological thriller by an Edgar-nominated author, about a marriage gone wrong. When the wife turns up missing and the husband’s lies begin to catch up with him it seems to be a simple one to solve. But, not
The Inquisitor by Mark Allen Smith Henry Holt, $27.00, 325 pages, ISBN 978-0-8050-9426-8 We live in what’s been called the Information Age, because the past 25 years have seen the rise of computer technology and the invention of the World Wide Web. We’re all linked together with access to data and instant information retrieval with devices that were the stuff of science fiction and the comics as recently as
Blood of Victory by Alan Furst Random House, 2002, $24.95, 237 pages, ISBN 978-0-375-50574-1 It’s an undisputed fact that the Twentieth Century was the absolute bloodiest in human history. The Twentieth opened up with the Boer War, in which the British Empire asserted its sovereignty over South Africa at the expense of the white Afrikaans settlers and their German allies. In rapid succession came World War I, “the Great
Borderlands by Brian McGilloway Thomas Dunne Books, 2008, $23.95, 227 pages, ISBN 978-0-312-38406-7 This week’s MBR number 56 concerns people impacted by their chosen governments in a different way. The novel is titled Borderlands. It’s the debut novel of Brian McGilloway who teaches in Derry, Northern Ireland and lives in a small town in the Borderlands—the line along which the Republic of Ireland (Derry) meets the boundaries of Northern
Gone by Mo Hayder Atlantic Monthly Press, $24.00, 416 pages, ISBN 978-0802119643 We’re continuing with the Edgar winners this week, reviewing the 2012 recipient of the Best Book Award. She’s a British author named Mo Hayder, and her novel is Gone. This novel is the latest installment of an ongoing series featuring inspector Jack Caffery and Sergeant Flea Marley. They have had an almost, but not quite, romantic relationship