The Beat Goes On by Ian Rankin is the complete collection of Inspector Rebus short stories, featuring the irascible Edinburgh, Scotland detective.
The collection of 31 stories includes three not previously published. The stories are presented in chronological order, running over the span of years as John Rebus moves from young Detective Constable to veteran Chief Inspector.
The crimes involve everything from theft and violent assault to murder. But the true focus is the character of Rebus himself, with his sour cynicism and sardonic remarks. Rebus is often in conflict with his plodding bosses. But he plunges ahead regardless, like a rude bulldozer that won't be stopped until a case is closed.
The Beat Goes On is an entertaining set of crime stories and a treat for Inspector Rebus fans.
Monday, August 31, 2015
Thursday, August 6, 2015
BADLANDS by C.J. Box - Murders in an Oil Boomtown
Badlands by C.J. Box is set on the frigid plains of North Dakota, where the shale oil industry has created whole new boomtowns flush with high pay and "man camps" of newly arrived workers. But with the boom comes drugs and brutal criminal gangs competing for the cash-rich territory.
Arriving in the overcrowded town of Grimstad is Detective Cassie Dewell, hired to be the new Chief Investigator of the Sheriff's Department. In her previous job in Montana, she worked a serial murder case that led to the death of her police partner. Looking for a fresh start, Cassie finds herself suddenly dealing with violent gang murders and corruption that may reach into her own new department.
C.J. Box if the author of the popular crime novel series that features Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett. Badlands has the new main character of Cassie Dewell, who appeared in a prior Box novel, The Highway. Cassie is mid-thirties, not very tall, and somewhat overweight. But she's a sharp investigator and a good shot when she has to be. This combination makes her character both realistic and appealing.
Badlands offers the same sweeping sense of rugged landscape and the threat of rough violence as other C.J. Box western crime novels. If this one is part of a new series built around Cassis Dewell, it's a great start.
Arriving in the overcrowded town of Grimstad is Detective Cassie Dewell, hired to be the new Chief Investigator of the Sheriff's Department. In her previous job in Montana, she worked a serial murder case that led to the death of her police partner. Looking for a fresh start, Cassie finds herself suddenly dealing with violent gang murders and corruption that may reach into her own new department.
C.J. Box if the author of the popular crime novel series that features Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett. Badlands has the new main character of Cassie Dewell, who appeared in a prior Box novel, The Highway. Cassie is mid-thirties, not very tall, and somewhat overweight. But she's a sharp investigator and a good shot when she has to be. This combination makes her character both realistic and appealing.
Badlands offers the same sweeping sense of rugged landscape and the threat of rough violence as other C.J. Box western crime novels. If this one is part of a new series built around Cassis Dewell, it's a great start.
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
GIRL ON THE TRAIN a Devious Psychological Mystery
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins is a devious psychological mystery that shifts through a series of plot twists, first pointing in one direction, then changing course again.
The plot structure is elaborate. Events move in chapters told in the first person by three alternating narrators --- Rachel, Anna, and Megan. An added complication is that Megan's chapters take place in a time period a few months earlier than the chapters narrated by Rachel and Anna.
Rachel Watson is the central character, a troubled alcoholic with memory blackouts, who is unhappily divorced and jobless. She rides commuter trains to fill her empty life. Other characters circle around her confused thoughts. Tom Watson, her ex-husband. Anna Watson, Tom's new wife. Scott and Megan Hipwell, former neighbors at Rachel's old home. Dr. Kamel Abdic, a psychiatrist.
When a key character goes missing, followed by the discovery of a body, the truth of what happened can only be worked out through the competing narrative accounts of Rachel, Anna, and Megan. The answers build piece by piece toward the startling exposure of the killer.
The Girl on the Train is a smartly written, compelling psychological mystery read. It's a much more satisfying novel than last year's similar genre novel, Gone Girl, with its manipulative, misleading plot, unreliable narrators, and flagrantly over-written style by the author.
The plot structure is elaborate. Events move in chapters told in the first person by three alternating narrators --- Rachel, Anna, and Megan. An added complication is that Megan's chapters take place in a time period a few months earlier than the chapters narrated by Rachel and Anna.
Rachel Watson is the central character, a troubled alcoholic with memory blackouts, who is unhappily divorced and jobless. She rides commuter trains to fill her empty life. Other characters circle around her confused thoughts. Tom Watson, her ex-husband. Anna Watson, Tom's new wife. Scott and Megan Hipwell, former neighbors at Rachel's old home. Dr. Kamel Abdic, a psychiatrist.
When a key character goes missing, followed by the discovery of a body, the truth of what happened can only be worked out through the competing narrative accounts of Rachel, Anna, and Megan. The answers build piece by piece toward the startling exposure of the killer.
The Girl on the Train is a smartly written, compelling psychological mystery read. It's a much more satisfying novel than last year's similar genre novel, Gone Girl, with its manipulative, misleading plot, unreliable narrators, and flagrantly over-written style by the author.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
CHARLIE MARTZ Shows Early Elmore Leonard Work
Charlie Martz and Other Stories by Elmore Leonard is a collection of early, mostly unpublished stories from the iconic crime fiction writer, who died in 2013.
The stories show Leonard beginning to find his trademark style: clean, hard prose along with tight, streetwise dialogue, and salted with simmering menace.
Some of the stories included are crime pieces like the Detroit mobster vengeance tale, "One, Horizontal." Other stories like "The Trespassers," and "For Something to Do," show ordinary people put into threatening situations.
Then there are the Western stories, where Leonard first made his writing mark with novels like Hombre and Valdez is Coming. Two standout tales are the title story "Charlie Martz," and the follow-up "Siesta in Paloverde."
This collection is a varied, interesting read for Elmore Leonard devotees. Leonard was a writer's writer and a rigorous craftsman and Charlie Martz shows how he learned that craft.
The stories show Leonard beginning to find his trademark style: clean, hard prose along with tight, streetwise dialogue, and salted with simmering menace.
Some of the stories included are crime pieces like the Detroit mobster vengeance tale, "One, Horizontal." Other stories like "The Trespassers," and "For Something to Do," show ordinary people put into threatening situations.
Then there are the Western stories, where Leonard first made his writing mark with novels like Hombre and Valdez is Coming. Two standout tales are the title story "Charlie Martz," and the follow-up "Siesta in Paloverde."
This collection is a varied, interesting read for Elmore Leonard devotees. Leonard was a writer's writer and a rigorous craftsman and Charlie Martz shows how he learned that craft.
Thursday, June 11, 2015
FINDERS, KEEPERS a Dark Crime Tale From Stephen King
Finders, Keepers by Stephen King is a new crime tale about a famed, reclusive author's unpublished manuscripts and an obsessed fan who will kill to possess those unseen literary works.
The deranged fan is Morris Bellamy, a ruthless sociopath who murders the Salinger-like author and steals the hoard of manuscripts. Morris doesn't want to merely sell the material, he wants to be the first one to read the unseen works by his idolized author. But he never gets the chance. He's sent to prison for another crime and the stolen notebooks remain where he hid them.
Years later, a teen named Pete Staubers stumbles onto the hidden notebooks and plans to sell them himself on the literary black market. But Morris Bellamy is paroled, and when he finds out who has his stolen trove, he goes after Pete Staubers.
The novel brings back a character from King's prior novel, Mr. Mercedes, retired police detective Bill Hodges. It's the stolid veteran Hodges who enters the picture to try to protect Pete from the maniacal killer Bellamy.
The obsessed literary fan theme has echoes of an earlier King classic, Misery. Finders, Keepers is notable mainly for its vivid character portraits and for being written in the author's earthy, idiomatic style.That said, the novel is an entertaining read from Stephen King, even if not at the top level of some of his past work.
The deranged fan is Morris Bellamy, a ruthless sociopath who murders the Salinger-like author and steals the hoard of manuscripts. Morris doesn't want to merely sell the material, he wants to be the first one to read the unseen works by his idolized author. But he never gets the chance. He's sent to prison for another crime and the stolen notebooks remain where he hid them.
Years later, a teen named Pete Staubers stumbles onto the hidden notebooks and plans to sell them himself on the literary black market. But Morris Bellamy is paroled, and when he finds out who has his stolen trove, he goes after Pete Staubers.
The novel brings back a character from King's prior novel, Mr. Mercedes, retired police detective Bill Hodges. It's the stolid veteran Hodges who enters the picture to try to protect Pete from the maniacal killer Bellamy.
The obsessed literary fan theme has echoes of an earlier King classic, Misery. Finders, Keepers is notable mainly for its vivid character portraits and for being written in the author's earthy, idiomatic style.That said, the novel is an entertaining read from Stephen King, even if not at the top level of some of his past work.
Monday, June 1, 2015
GATHERING PREY - New Crime Thriller by John Sandford
Gathering Prey by John Sandford is the latest in the popular crime novel series that features Minnesota State Police investigator Lucas Davenport.
What begins with a young panhandler drifter going missing leads Davenport into a multiple murder case that just keeps spreading in scope.
Lucas gets on the trail of a roving, rag-tag crew of disciples led by a sociopathic, self-styled guru named Pilate. The disciples travel the country in a road convoy, luring and killing random victims to suit their whims.
As Davenport closes in along with a posse of local police officers, the hunt turns into a multi-state chase that leads up to a wild gun battle in a one-horse town in the backwoods of the Michigan Upper Peninsula.
The novel moves like a bullet train through the twists of the chase and the running shoot-out with the fleeing, ruthless disciples. John Sandford continues to produce inventive new plots built around the long running main character of Lucas Davenport. Gathering Prey is an outstanding read that further confirms Sandford's place in the top rank of crime thriller authors.
BEACH RATING: 4 Palm Trees
What begins with a young panhandler drifter going missing leads Davenport into a multiple murder case that just keeps spreading in scope.
Lucas gets on the trail of a roving, rag-tag crew of disciples led by a sociopathic, self-styled guru named Pilate. The disciples travel the country in a road convoy, luring and killing random victims to suit their whims.
As Davenport closes in along with a posse of local police officers, the hunt turns into a multi-state chase that leads up to a wild gun battle in a one-horse town in the backwoods of the Michigan Upper Peninsula.
The novel moves like a bullet train through the twists of the chase and the running shoot-out with the fleeing, ruthless disciples. John Sandford continues to produce inventive new plots built around the long running main character of Lucas Davenport. Gathering Prey is an outstanding read that further confirms Sandford's place in the top rank of crime thriller authors.
BEACH RATING: 4 Palm Trees
Saturday, May 23, 2015
AQUARIUS - The Dark Side of the Sixties
Aquarius (NBC May 28) is a new crime series that journeys through both the psychedelic exuberance and the darkest depths of the iconic 1960s decade.
The Sixties era was a time of political turmoil over the Vietnam war, when many kinds of revolution were in the air. It was a period that encompassed psychedelic drugs, the Summer of Love, and visionary rock music from The Beatles, Dylan, The Doors, and Jefferson Airplane.
But the Sixties was also infamous for the crimes of the notorious Manson Family - a ragged communal cult that committed a series of horrific California murders under the mesmerizing sway of the demonic Charles Manson.
Aquarius begins in 1967 Los Angeles as LAPD detective Sam Hodiak (played by David Duchovny) looks into the case of a missing teenage girl. He learns the girl may have joined a creepy band of hippie drifters. That puts Hodiak on the trail of the people who would become the Manson Family killers.
The TV series is set against the colorful backdrop of the Sixties culture scene, when the wild permissive freedom of the era degenerated into the frenzied, amoral blackness of the bloody crime scenes left behind by the Manson Family cult. Aquarius shows that beneath the surface of good vibes and pounding music, something evil and violent was already stirring.
The Sixties era was a time of political turmoil over the Vietnam war, when many kinds of revolution were in the air. It was a period that encompassed psychedelic drugs, the Summer of Love, and visionary rock music from The Beatles, Dylan, The Doors, and Jefferson Airplane.
But the Sixties was also infamous for the crimes of the notorious Manson Family - a ragged communal cult that committed a series of horrific California murders under the mesmerizing sway of the demonic Charles Manson.
Aquarius begins in 1967 Los Angeles as LAPD detective Sam Hodiak (played by David Duchovny) looks into the case of a missing teenage girl. He learns the girl may have joined a creepy band of hippie drifters. That puts Hodiak on the trail of the people who would become the Manson Family killers.
The TV series is set against the colorful backdrop of the Sixties culture scene, when the wild permissive freedom of the era degenerated into the frenzied, amoral blackness of the bloody crime scenes left behind by the Manson Family cult. Aquarius shows that beneath the surface of good vibes and pounding music, something evil and violent was already stirring.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
