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]

Thanks.  That's helpful.

[I. J. Parker]

Helene Tursten, NIGHT ROUNDS.  Poorly written police procedural with a feminine protagonist. A tad oldfashioned in the private hospital murder category.  Mainly, it's just very awkward in style.  It reads like a first novel.  The translation could also be better.

[Celia Cummings]

I'm just over half way through The Watchman by Robert Crais. I'm a bit of an addict to Crais at the moment. I'm working my way through the Cole/Pike series without much of a breather inbetween. I like the way the storylines between books sort of alternate between the two characters, letting us get to know them more and more. I also like that he refers to characters and storylines from previous books, but not in a way that you don't know what he's talking about.

I have to say though, between the two characters they seem fairly invincible! Talk about bionic men - they seem to get patched up and rebuilt in each book! :)

I've added two more to my "to read" list....James Patterson's Tick Tock and Mikkel Birkegaard's Death Sentence. 

[David DeLee]

I'm a big Crais fan. I've read them all and wish I could experience them again for the first time.

And yes, Elvis and Joe do get banged up pretty badly by the end of most of the novels, though IIRC less so in the later ones. Enjoy the ride.

David DeLee

A Cold Wind - a Grace deHaviland novella

[I. J. Parker]

Brian McGilloway, BORDERLANDS. An Irish police procedural.  A debut novel.  It's well written but got a bit tedious in the complexities of the plot.  The sort of book where you wish he'd get on with it already. 

I'm beginning to dislike all the false solutions just so the author can spring a surprise ending on the reader.  It doesn't work if you end up not caring any longer.

[Suzanne]

Janwillem van de Wetering's OUTSIDER IN AMSTERDAM

Likable characters.  Good use of humor.  It made me wonder why

there is so little humor in police procedurals.  It seems to me that

there is probably quite a bit of gallows humor in the real-life police

setting.  Do you think it may be a danger for the writer in that the

humor would undermine the seriousness of it all?

 

Andrea Camilieri's THE TERRA COTTA DOG

I really like the character Montalbano; I lived in Italy for three years,

and he is so very Italian.

 

[I. J. Parker]

I also love both authors.  I think the fact that there is less humor in the average mystery these days may have something to do with the prevalence of noir novels.  You are quite right that humor helps rather than hinders in a crime novel.

[I. J. Parker]

Peter Turnbull, DEEP COVER.  British police procedural.  This one features Harry Vicary.  It was a decent and well-written book, but not necessarily memorable or exciting.

[Tim Scanlon]

Does listening to an audio book count as reading? Because I just finished Hell's Kitchen by Jeffery Deaver.

http://tysonadams.com/2012/04/06/book-review-hells-kitchen-by-jeffe...

I'm thinking The Broken Shore by Peter Temple will be next real book I read.

[Jed Power]

"Sacred Heart" (again) by Marcel Montecino.  Montecino led a very interesting life & died tragically over a decade ago.  I believe his novel "Big Time" is one of the finest crime novels ever written & definitely the most overlooked.

[charlie ness]

I just finished reading 'RedKnife' , the 8th novel about Cork O'Connor by William Kent Krueger. I've read all 8 of these so far - and they get better !  These are about a man and his family in northern Minnesota, great mysteries with very realistic characters . Unusual stories and lots of local and Ojibwe folklore.

I highly recommend this author's books. 

[I. J. Parker]

All the ones I read had snow plows in them.  :)