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 wasn't much of a fan of AN EASEFUL DEATH I will confess, and I will write up a review in more detail, but this one was better, less focused on the personal / dreary stuff (there is a much better balance this time round) , an interesting central story - sex slaves / people smuggling etc.
Was about to read Peter James' "Dead Simple" - then I came across a book I'd started a while back and thought it had been lost: Steven James "The Rook"
Have also just finished R.J.Ellory's "A Simple Act of Violence" - am now interested to read his other works!
Another Scandinavian: Mari Jungstedt UNSEEN and UNKNOWN. Both are passable but not in the same class as other Scandinavian crime books. They are basically serial killer stories with digressions into adultery by secondary characters.
Passable is the correct word.
I'm reading The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders by Marshall Browne. This also is passable, but Browne is not the new Michael Dibdin. I'll read his next, Inspector Anders and the Ship of Fools, before final decision.
I just finished "Lullaby Town" by Robert Crais and started "Free Fall" by him. I am really enjoying his books and can't hardly wait until I can read the rest of them. I also have "The Murder Book" by J. Kellerman waiting in the wings. I started it awhile back but put it up when I got the Crais books. I've always liked J.K. and look forward to get back to reading his books.
I hope everyone is having a happy reading day. :=)
A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.
~~ Chinese Proverb
DOUBLE by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini isn't working for me the way the rest of the Sharon McCone series does. Normally the continuous Sharon viewpoint plunges me into her feelings and relationships and doesn't give me a moment to resurface.
With the chapter-by-chapter viewpoint tradeoff, between Marcia Muller's Sharon and Bill Pronzini's Unnamed Detective" aka "Wolf," at the halfway point I still haven't gotten particularly involved with any of the characters. I even paused in DOUBLE to reread two favorites.
Just started Stieg Larsson's THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE. In case any one wonders what makes this a bestseller, I offer this suggestion: start with a thirteen-year-old girl, naked in a rucked-up nightgown and chained hand and foot to a bedstead, waiting for the man who put her there to return for more. Then move on to the couple in a thin-walled hotel, where the woman gets beaten up over sex every night. (I'm only a few pages into this one and already in suspense what will come next).
I'm reading another Scandanavian police procedural, Death Angels, by Ake Edwardson. Unlike other Nordic police inspectors, Erik Winter is in his thirties, unmarried with numerous sex partners. We'll see if he's as bright as Wallander.