Blog Archives
Gone Again
Author: Doug Johnstone
Wow! That was amazing!
I’ve been reading a lot lately – and when I say a lot I mean at least 3 books per week – and I can tell you that Gone Again is one of the best books I’ve read in the last few months. I couldn’t put it down. Luckily I had enough free time in my hands, so I started and finished it in just a few hours 
When Mark Douglas’ wife, Lauren, doesn’t show up to collect their son Nathan from school, doesn’t come home that night and doesn’t pick her phone up, he knows something is wrong. She has disappeared once before, just after Nathan was born, and being pregnant now, could she be freaking out again?
Midnight Exposure
Author: Melinda Leigh
Two hikers disappear in the woods near a small town in Maine, but due to the terrible weather conditions, no suspicion is aroused.
A few weeks later, photographer Jayne Sullivan is assigned to go to Maine and get some pictures of a reclusive sculptor, Reed Kimball, who of course, is reclusive for a reason and doesn’t want the media sniffing around. But when Jayne is attacked, things change and secrets must be revealed…
Involving druid rituals and human sacrifice, it’s a fast paced and easy reading romantic crime book. There’s suspense, and although we have some hints of who might be the killer, it’s not until the end that we really get to confirm our suspicion. Jayne and Reed exhale sexual tension, and there’s even one nice sex scene in the story.
I just found it too much with the “love at first sight” thing, and also that Jayne seems to be a magnet for trouble.
Not spectacular, but still an enjoyable book.
Buy Midnight Exposure from: The Book Depository or Amazon.
The Ice Princess
Author: Camilla Lackberg
Writer Erika Falck is back to her hometown Fjallbacka, after a car accident killed her parents, when one day she “comes across” the dead body of a childhood friend, Alex Wijkner – what presumably is a suicide. Asked by Alex’s parents to write something about her friend, she decides to discover everything she can about Alex – which turns naturally into an idea for a book – uncovering details for the investigation AND engaging in a relationship with detective Patrick Hedstrom, also a childhood friend.
This is the first book I read from Camilla, and I liked her style – chapters with points of view from different characters – but it’s very annoying that the characters find clues and we are not told about it, so we have to wait several pages to discover what was that they found out.
The characters, although simple, are not bad, and I guess she will develop them along the series, but the police, for example, sometimes seems a bit slow, which I can almost understand if they are not used to deal with murders at all – but it should not be an excuse anyway.
The crime and the motives are ok. I didn’t have a clue of what had really happened until the end, but I found the whole thing from the past very unrealistic.
All in all, it was an easy and light reading and I’ll surely get the next book to see if it will live up to my expectations that following Patrick and Erika is worth it.
Buy The Ice Princess from: The Book Depository or Amazon.
Dead Simple
Author: Peter James
It is Tuesday night, and Michael Harrison, who’s about to get married on Saturday, is out with 4 friends to celebrate his stag night. After going to several pubs, his friends put him inside a coffin with a porn magazine, a torch, a bottle of whisky, a walkie-talkie and a breathing tube, and leave him in a cove in the middle of nowhere, planning to come back after a couple of hours – but, drunk as they are, they all die in a car accident.
Next day, a distressed bride calls the police to report her fiancee’s disappearance, and we are presented to DS Roy Grace, a cop that believes in spirits and the occult, and whose wife disappeared 9 years earlier without a trace.
The storyline is promising and the book starts very well, especially when we are transported to the coffin with Michael – but that’s it.
Last to Die
Author: Tess Gerritsen
3 children from different families, living in different cities, and who are strange to each other, survive the massacre of their families and are put under the care of foster parents. Two years later their foster families are killed, but again the (now) teenagers are the only survivors. With no one else to look after them, they are sent to Evensong, a special school for traumatized children – if you read The Killing Place, this is the school Dr. Maura Isles puts Julian “Rat” Perkins (and his dog Bear) after their ordeal on that book – and which is remote and supposed to be absolutely safe.
Detectives Jane Rizzoli and Barry Frost are investigating one of the massacres and start to uncover and pursue the connection between the 3 cases, while Dr. Isles is at Evensong spending a couple of weeks with Julian. With the 3 teens at the same place, weird things start to happen and soon it becomes clear that their lives are at risk and the school is not safe anymore, and the closer Jane gets to the truth, the faster the killer has to act.
Hit & Run
Author: Doug Johnstone
Billy, his girlfriend Zoe and his brother Charlie are coming home from a party, drunk and high on drugs or, more specifically, pills that Charlie steals from the hospital where he is a doctor, when they hit someone on the road. After Charlie checks the person has no vital signals, they decide not to report the accident and head home leaving the body behind. On the next day, Billy, being a (new) crime reporter, is called to cover a story near the location where they hit the man, and he discovers that the dead man was Frank Whitehouse, Edinburgh’s biggest crime lord. And from here things just go crazy.
Crime
Author: Irvine Welsh
After a mental breakdown due to a child murder case he investigated, and still recovering from drug abuse, D.I. Ray Lennox (Filth) goes on holidays to Miami, Florida with his fiancée Trudi, whose only idea is planning their wedding.
While there, they have a fight which ends up with Ray going with two women he met in a bar to their apartment to have some cocaine. Things go wild and Ray is now responsible for Tianna, a 10 year old girl and daughter of one of the women.
Haunted by the memories and ghosts from his recent case back in Edinburgh, Ray’s only quest now is to protect Tianna from a paedophile network.
The book is good and easy to read, but I didn’t get attached to it as with the other Irvine Welsh’s books. I don’t think there is enough depth on the story and the characters, and although the usual combination of drugs-sex-booze-violence, typical from the author, is there, it felt quite a different writing style – which is not my favorite. I love Welsh’s old and usual way of writing.
Buy Crime from: The Book Depository or Amazon.
The Broken Window (A Lyncoln Rhyme Novel)
Author: Jeffery Deaver
Lincoln Rhyme, the famous quadriplegic forensic criminalist from “The Bone Collector”, is asked to take a look at his cousin’s case – Arthur was convicted of murder but vehemently denies having committed it – and it turns out the crime scene and all details are way too perfect, as if someone had planted the evidences to incriminate his cousin. From here, Rhyme and his team come across a series of crimes with the same characteristics, and a big data-mining company comes to light and is sort of involved.
