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.

[Suzanne]

Save your money by not buying comics; I'm told they're called graphic novels, but whatever they're called, they are not worth the time. I bought one by Ian Rankin just to see. Imagine no descriptive information and conversation limited to Twitter length. Awful, awful.

I am continuing to read Peter Robinson's series. Banks is a comfy hero, and all of his characters read true.

[I. J. Parker]

Robinson is very good.

[HappyRuby]

I'm reading The Price of Love by Peter Robinson. Short stories + novella. Just finished Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly Bosch traveled to Hong Kong in this book. I recently saw a slide show of Hong Kong and the area that Eric Stone presented so I had a good picture in my mind when Bosch was searching for a specific building.

[HappyRuby]

The Templar Legacy is the only one on your list that I've read.

[I. J. Parker]

I've been reading Scandinavion mysteries -- with indifferent results. THE REDBREAST by Jo Nesbro is an ambitions and long novel, tying together a current crime and the events of World War II. The constant shifting of POV and time in very short segments of narrative, to the point of breaking up individual events into several pieces, splinters the stories to such an extent that the effort of keeping things straight simply wasn't worth it.

The next book I tossed after starting, getting bored, and checking the ending (always a fatal move). It was Asa Larsson's THE BLACK PATH. I recall now not liking another book of hers. Between the boredom of the slow build-up and the excessive violence of the ending (a case of pornography of violence) this novel also has nothing to commend it.

[Harley Sachs]

There was a series of Swedish police mysteries written by a couple whose names I've forgotten. The series grew more and more bleak as the series progressed and as I recall, the author or authors committed suicide. I guess it doesn't pay to write stuff depicting despair if you risk becoming depressed in the process. there's a mystery lovers journal with each issue devoted to a specific locale and I had an essay in the Scandinavian issue. It was an in effect a bibliography of Scandinavian mysteries and authors. Unfortunately, the copy is back at my Michigan office or I coujld provide you with details. I've looked for some of the authors' forks in translation without any luck, but then my small town library in the pper Peninsula doesn't have access to a great deal.

[I. J. Parker]

That would be Sjowall and Wahloo. They were superb. I don't object to dark mysteries, just to poorly writen ones. :)

[I. J. Parker]

I'm still reading Scandinavian. Just finished Hakan Nesser's WOMAN WITH BIRTHMARK. Like previous Nesser novels, this is an excellent police procedural and highly recommended.

[Karen from AustCrime]

I'm having a bit of a wade on the weird side with Nick Cave's The Death of Bunny Munro, whilst I also read Roger Rogerson's memoir The Dark Side. Just finished Denise Mina's Still Midnight which was absolutely fantastic.

[Suzanne]

I like Denise Mina a lot; I preferred the Glasgow trilogy to the Paddy Meehan series.
Now I'm reading Gelene Tursten's THE GLASS DEVIL. I like the fact that her police detectives seem like real people.

[Karen from AustCrime]

Suzanne - I've never quite warmed to the Paddy series as much as the Garnethill Trilogy either - so I hope you'd like Still Midnight also - love Helene Tursten incidentally :)

[Harley Sachs]

I'm reading "The Shanghai Tunnel" about a widow who moves to Portland, Oregon and discovers her husband was a crook. It's well constructed, so each scene ends with a tag that keeps you reading.
--Harley L. Sachs www.hu.mtu.edu/~hlsachs where you can read about my latest mystery, "The Lollipop Murder"