An open discussion on what everyone is currently reading. Make recommendations to others, discuss what is new, hot, bestsellers, anything and everything related to books and the authors.
I finished Michael Connelly's THE BRASS VERDICT. It is another excellent novel about lawyer Mick Haller (also featured in THE LINCOLN LAWYER) and, as the previous novel, it probes gray areas of ethics in the legal profession.
Mick Haller is a fascinating character who finds himself battling conflicting values as a defense attorney. The book is also a page turner and beautifully plotted, though Connelly apparently does not outline his novels. If I have any quibble whatsoever it would be the linking to Harry Bosch (a character I have never related to) as a sort of alter ego of Haller via a late twist. Why, in God's name?
Just finished FRESH MEAT by John Harvey. It's an Inspector Resnick novel, and, like all the other ones, excellent. I have never read anything by Harvey that wasn't topnotch.
I have two John Harvey books in my TBR pile. Ash and Bone and Flesh and Bone. I am going to start Androgynous Murder House Party by Steven Rigolosi later today. I loved Circle of Assassins.
A rainy night . . . A stranded motorist . . . A Good Samaritan passerby … a Nobel Prize–winning professor . . . The setup for a shocking murder designed to cover up an even more sinister crime . . .
World-renowned Dartmouth professor Wilson Bledsoe is returning from a party celebrating his latest honor when he encounters a broken-down pickup on the secluded country road to his home. The next day, the discovery of his body with a vicious racist epithet carved into his chest leads to the quick arrest of two loathsome white supremacists. The local authorities seem ready to accept the case at face value as a racial hate crime. But the murdered professor’s brother, FBI agent Sterling Bledsoe, has inserted himself into the investigation and isn’t ready to buy into this pat solution. A look around his brother’s lab and brief interviews with his students and colleagues pique Sterling’s curiosity about Wilson’s pet project: a nearly completed paper on the mysterious deaths of hundreds of local blackbirds.
Thanks to my mystery book group, I recently discovered Louise Penny. We read her first book 'Still Life'. She is now on her fourth or fifth in the series which features French-Canadian Inspector Gamache and the idyllic village of Three Pines which is populated by eccentrics and murderers. I'm hooked and plan to read all her books. She is a wonderful writer.
I've had another one of those good runs recently - starting out with Stuart MacBride's latest - Blind Eye, then Death Wore White by Jim Kelly - now I"m reading the latest by Leah Giarratano, Black Ice.
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, the memoir of con man extraordinaire Frank Abagnale on which the movie was based. Haven't seen the movie. He's the one who pretended to be all these different kinds of professionals from pilot to physician.
I am reading Sucker Punch. Since this is not the normal kind of mystery I go for I decided because it is summer to try it because a friend gave it for me to read. I am enjoying it.
-Mel