What are you currently reading?

[QualityBookReviews]

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. J. Parker]

I have an old Henning Mankell, THE MAN FROM PEKING, in audio in the car. My tolerance while driving is quite high, but this is not a good book. It drags on interminably after drawing the reader in with a violent bloodbath of an entire village. The whole life story of two Chinese boys is inserted early on. Also inserted is a diary kept by an American immigrant who built the American railroads. The police procedural isn't really a procedural, since the only active detective is a woman judge who is remotely (it's never clear if her mother was a blood relation or a foster child) connected with some of the dead and starts investigating on a whim. I don't see how this thing got published in its present form.

[Richard Krauss]

Great story!

[Jack Getze]

I loved -- and still have the old paperbacks -- every single one of the McGee series.

[Patrick Balester]

Dead Insider by Victoria Houston

[I. J. Parker]

Dennis Lehane, MOONLIGHT MILE.  I don't understand what readers see in him.  This was a fairly formulaic detective novel with a very unbelievable plot.

[Jack Getze]

I haven't read this one, IJ, but I thought Mystic River was a really great book -- though I almost quit after 25 pages (depressing, sad story, but Key to the whole mystery). Also liked the detective series very much. Have you read anything else by him? 

[I. J. Parker]

Two, I think.  The early one about the lost child, and the one about the madhouse on an island. Didn't care that much for either.

[I. J. Parker]

Val McDermid, TRICK OF THE DARK.  Tossed after 40 pages. The characters are all Lesbians, entangled in various relationships.  I got lost and forgot who was who.  The only male to that point was the murdered man.  He's just mentioned.

[I. J. Parker]

Stuart MacBride, DARK BLOOD.  Scottish police procedural featuring Sergeant Logan, the whipping boy of the entire department. Hard-boiled, possibly also noir, though MacBride can be very funny. Logan is handed all the cases in the department and called on the carpet when he isn't solving them fast enough.  Needless to say, he eventually solves all of them. Memorable foul-mouthed lesbian Inspector is one of his superiors.

[Jemir Johnson]

Target Lancer by Max Allan Collins. Easy Rawlins, Nathan Heller, Tamara Hayle and Michael Tree (another Collins co creation) are personal faves (in the sleuth department) so I gravitate towards almost anything they're in. Thankfully the latest Heller episode about a pre Dallas assasination plot against Kennedy is proving more intersting to me than the book description promised. 

[Shean Baylor]

The Dawn Patrol by Don Wilson

[Susan]

Lullaby Town, by Robert Crais