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The Tunnel Rats by Stephen Leather. Thriller 9/10 |
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By bookworm on
8/31/2006 10:28 AM
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Stephen Leather’s The Tunnel Rats [ISBN 0 340 92216 8] is one of the Jack Higgins/Frederick Forsyth genre of thriller writing that I usually avoid like the plague – and yet The Tunnel Rats was a really great, absorbing Bank Holiday read. The plot is just ingenious, intriguingly unravelled bit by bit as the narrative tension mounts – the suspense in truly exciting, and when you think you know what is happening, the ante is racked up again.
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Where or When by Anita Shreve. Romantic/Literary Fiction 6/10 |
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By bookworm on
8/30/2006 9:39 AM
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Anita Shreve’s novel Where or When [ISBN 0 316 906409] is based on a Romeo and Juliet theme, but where Romeo and Juliet part, grow up and then meet again. The story is simple, and the work is in the characterisation and narrative, which is quite powerful – however, though the book works through some universally significant themes to do with the issue breaking a marriage with children for new loves, what is going to happen is never really in doubt to the reader, and is pretty downbeat (which some people love, though I try to avoid).
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The Death Card by Walter Satterthwaite. Murder mystery 6/10 |
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By bookworm on
8/28/2006 1:58 PM
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Walter Satterthwaite’s The Death Card [ISBN 0 00 232497 0] is a light murder mystery with “laconic wit” set nicely in Santa Fe – so the context is interesting even when the book labours. The plot is quite slight but the narrative is quickly moving and when the detective’s endless questioning of the suspects gets tedious there is another happening to throw more spanners into the plot and give him even more work to
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The Light of Day by Graham Swift. Booker prize winner 6/10 |
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By bookworm on
8/27/2006 10:56 AM
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Graham Swift’s The Light of Day [ISBN 0 141 01201 3] has the OTT cover crits of a Booker Prize winner “powerful and gripping exploration of ……..integrity and self discovery” “sensational and romantic” “the poetry and the tragedy lurking in ordinary life” etc etc so I was very disappointed in it. The story covers a day in the life of George who is in love with Sarah, and is kept apart from her due to a major crises that happened a year ago.
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The Perfect Husband by Lisa Gardner. Crime fiction 8/10 |
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By bookworm on
8/26/2006 10:27 AM
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I’m ambivalent about Lisa Gardner’s The Perfect Husband [ISBN 0 75281 430 3] – it has an excellent plot, and the narrative is fast and scary and I must admit I was gripped from beginning to end. However, this is from the stable of the Tami Hoag school of writing, that is gratuitous scenes of high octane titillation between flawed little women who need protection plus large mute strong men with problems - style (funnily enough there is a quote from Tami Hoag on the book cover).
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Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles. Vintage English crime fiction 6/10 |
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By bookworm on
8/25/2006 3:17 PM
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Francis Iles crime fiction novel Malice Aforethought [ISBN0 75286 478 5] was first published in 1931 and is a book of its time. With the genteel middle class context of Agatha Christie, but without the detective, Malice Aforethought is a nicely woven murder story, where the reader knows the murderer and who he wants to murder from the first page, and then the narrative details the background motivation, characters (and how it was that there weren’t more murders of folks like these appallingly patronising parasites I really don’t know ) and building bricks of acti
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The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly. Crime fiction 6/10 |
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By bookworm on
8/24/2006 2:32 PM
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Michael Connelly’s courtroom fiction drama The Lincoln Lawyer is cleverly put together: an excellent twisty plot, pretty good characterisation and very expertly contexted in the criminal defence courtroom system of the USA. The narrative has some excellent devices for keeping the reader interested and the writing is literate and fluent. However
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The Devil’s Feather by Minette Walters. Crime thriller 10/10 |
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By bookworm on
8/23/2006 1:48 PM
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Minette Walters thriller The Devil’s Feather [ISBN 0 330 43648 1] is the best book of hers I have read. The plot is many-layered: overtly simple but deeply considered with psychological turns and twists; the characters complex and well drawn, and the various contexts believable and engaging. But the narrative is key: brilliantly chilling and exciting, breath-holdingly charged with tension.
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Harvest by Tess Gerritson. Medical Thriller 6/10 |
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By bookworm on
8/22/2006 11:25 AM
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Harvest [ISBN 0 553 81772 –8] was Tess Gerritson’s first thriller and is in the same vein as her others – based on hospitals and medical practice gone wrong – and written with great assurance and expertise given her background. The plot is pretty open – its one where the reader pretty well can work out what is happening near the outset – and then follows the unfolding of the plot to see how and when the baddies are going to get their comeuppance – and indeed – who exactly the baddies are.
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Sea Change by Robert Goddard. Historical mystery fiction 8/10 |
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By bookworm on
8/21/2006 12:23 PM
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Robert Goddard’s Sea Change [ISBN 0 552 14602 1] is somewhat of a departure for him. The book is set in London just at the time of the financial scandal of the South Sea Bubble – the collapse of a company supporting a fraudulent major funding scheme bought into by the rich and important. The plot takes this context and a range of real historical characters and weaves and enthralling story around the various attempts to hush up the scandal, bring “culprits” to justice and avoid threat to the crown
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