quippe | Entries tagged with kindle/ebook version

The Blurb On The Back:

The worlds of business, politics and crime collide when two men with the same name, from the same family, die on the same night - one death is a gangland murder, the other, apparently, a road accident. Was it a coincidence? That’s the official version of events. But then a family member, Gina Rafferty, starts asking questions.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Alan Glynn’s crime thriller makes good use of its Irish setting and the impact of property development on the economy and society but the initial murder twist is quite contrived and the plot becomes more contrived as it goes on. It’s not helped by the fact that neither Gina, Norton nor Bolger really feel like fully realised characters, which makes it difficult to empathise with them. Ultimately it’s not a bad read but it didn’t really gel for me.

The Blurb On The Back:

Siglufjörour: an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland, where no one locks their doors - accessible only via a small mountain tunnel.

Ari Thór Arason: a rookie policeman on his first posting, far from his girlfriend in Reykjavik - with a past that he’s unable to leave behind.

When a young woman is found lying half-naked in the snow, bleeding and unconscious, and a highly esteemed, elderly writer falls to his death in the local theatre, Ari is dragged straight into the heart of a community where he can trust no one and secrets and lies are a way of life.

An avalanche and unremitting snowstorms close the mountain pass, and the 24-hour darkness threatens to push Ari over the edge, as curtains begin to twitch, and his investigation becomes increasingly complex, chilling and personal. Past plays tag with the present and the claustrophobic tension mounts, while Ari is thrust even deeper into his own darkness - blinded by snow, and with a killer on the loose.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Ragnar Jónasson‘s debut Nordic Noir crime thriller (translated into English by Quentin Bates and the first in a series) makes full use of its atmospheric location to create a sense of choking claustrophobia but the plot meanders and I found myself bored by the emotionally immature Ari Thór and his girlfriend woes, especially as Ari Thór‘s investigation is driven more by happenstance by evidence, such that I am unlikely to check out the sequel.

The Blurb On The Back:

When Maggie Laird’s disgraced ex-cop husband suddenly dies, her humdrum suburban life is turned upside down. With the bills mounting, she takes on his struggling detective agency, enlisting the help of neighbour Big Wilma. And so an unlikely partnership is born.

But the discovery of a crudely mutilated body soon raises the stakes and Maggie and Wilma are drawn into an unknown world of Aberdeen’s sink estates, clandestine childminding and dodgy dealers ...

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Claire MacLeary’s crime novel (the first in a series) is a disjointed affair whose plot skips about with little tension or connection, plot strands end in an unsatisfying way while the partnership between the two women is underdeveloped. I liked MacLeary’s use of Scots dialect, which gives authenticity but the writing is technically lacking (including head-hopping between characters within scenes) such that I’m not interested in reading on.

The Blurb On The Back:

July 1983, Essex. Fox Farm is, thanks to two corpses, neither picturesque nor peaceful. The body in its kitchen belongs to eminent historian Christopher Cliff, who has taken his own life with an antique shotgun. The second, found on the property boundary, remains unidentified.

DI Nick Lowry’s summer is neither sleepy nor serene. And the two deaths are just the half of it. The fact County Chief Merrydown was a college friend of Cliff’s means Lowry is now, in turn, under scrutiny from his severely stressed and singularly unsympathetic boss, Sparks.

To catalyse his investigation, Lowry enlists the services of DC Daniel Kenton and WPC Jane Gabriel. Gabriel needs direction, if she is to begin a career as a detective. While Kenton, who appears solely focused on beginning a relationship with Gabriel, needs distraction.

Both the heat and the investigation soon intensify. The team find themselves interrogating enigmatic neighbours, shady businessmen, jilted lovers and wronged relatives; all the while negotiating the caprices of Sparks – whose attitudes remain as dated as Fox Farm’s antiques.

Only when they fully open their eyes and minds will they begin to see a web of rural politics, dodgy dealings and fragmented families – one that they must unpick before it ensnares them.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The second in James Henry’s DI LOWRY SERIES is a disappointing historical crime novel that fails to build on the promise of the first novel with a plodding central mystery that takes an abrupt turn about half way through and gets bogged down in Lowry’s marriage break up (with Jacqui in particular losing a lot of her nuanced characterisation) and Kenton’s pursuit of Gabriel such that I’m not sure I’d rush to read the next in the series.

YELLOWHAMMER was released in the United Kingdom on 26th July 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Sarah Cook, a beautiful blonde teenager disappeared fifteen years ago, the same night her parents were brutally murdered in their suburban Ohio home. Her boyfriend Brad Stockton – black and from the wrong side of the tracks – was convicted of the murders and sits on death row, though he always maintained his innocence. With his execution only weeks away, his devoted sister, insisting she has spotted Sarah at a local gas station, hires PI Roxane Weary to look again at the case.

Reeling from the recent death of her cop father, Roxane finds herself drawn to the story of Sarah’s vanishing act, especially when she thinks she’s linked Sarah’s disappearance to one of her father’s unsolved murder cases involving another teen girl. Despite her self-destructive tendencies, Roxane starts to hope that maybe she can save Brad’s life and her own.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Kristen Lepionka’s crime novel (the first in a series) has a PI heroine who hits a lot of the detective clichés (an alcoholic whose private life is a mess) but puts enough of a spin on them to keep me interested (notably her bisexuality and the love triangle with femme fatale Catherine and Tom, her dad’s old partner) while the mystery unfolds at a decent pace and had enough twists and turns to hold my interest, such that I’d check out the sequel.

The Blurb On The Back:

January 1983, Colchester CID

A new year brings new resolutions for Detective Inspector Nicholas Lowry. With one eye on his approaching fortieth birthday, he has given up his two greatest vices: smoking, and the police boxing team. As a result, the largest remaining threat to his health is now his junior colleague’s reckless driving.

If Detective Constable Daniel Kenton’s orange sports convertible is symbolic of his fast track through the ranks, then his accompanying swagger, foppish hairstyle and university education only augment his uniqueness in the department. Yet regardless of this, it is not DC Kenton who is turning station heads.

WPC Jane Gabriel is the newest police recruit in Britain’s oldest recorded town. Despite a familial tie to top brass, Gabriel’s striking beauty and profound youth have landed her with two obstacles: a young male colleague who gives her too much attention, and an older one who acts like she’s not there.

January 1983, Blackwater Estuary

A new year brings a new danger to the Essex shoreline. An illicit shipment, bound for Colchester – 100 kilograms of power that will frantically accelerate tensions in the historic town, and leave its own murderous trace.

Lowry, Kenton and Gabriel must now develop a tolerance to one another, and show their own substance, to save Britain’s oldest settlement from a new, unsettling enemy.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The first in a historical crime series by James Henry (a pseudonym for James Gurbutt) is an intriguing affair set in a period of change for the UK police force. Lowry is an interesting protagonist (oblivious of the issues in his home life while confronting the notion of masculinity) and although Kenton and Gabriel are more thinly characterised, the mystery neatly unfolds to draw its various plot strands together in a satisfying way.

The Blurb On The Back:

The body of a young woman is found on the streets of East London, in the shadow of the City’s gleaming towers. No ID on her, just hard-earned cash. But there is no doubting the ferocity of the attack.

DI Simon Fenchurch takes charge but, as his team tries to identify her and piece together her murder, they’re faced with cruel indifference at every turn – nobody cares about yet another dead prostitute. To Fenchurch, however, she could just as easily be Chloe, his daughter still missing after ten years, whose memory still haunts his days and nights, his burning obsession having killed his marriage.

When a second body is discovered, Fenchurch must peel back the grimy layers shrouding the London sex trade, confronting his own traumatic past while racing to undo a scheme larger, more complex and more evil than anything he could possibly have imagined.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Ed James’s police procedural crime novel (the first in a series) is a so-so affair that offers up another tortured male police officer devoted to his job and to finding out what happened to his daughter but with little emotional intelligence and whose interesting plot is spoilt by an overblown finale that was too overdone to be believable such that while I kept turning the pages, I don’t think I’ll continue with the series.

The Blurb On The Back:

Following a brutal attack by her ex-boyfriend, Kate Priddy makes an uncharacteristically bold decision after her cousin, Corbin Dell, suggests a temporary apartment swap – and she moves from London to Boston.

But soon after her arrival Kate makes a shocking discovery: Corbin’s next-door neighbour, a young woman named Audrey Marshall, has been murdered. When the police begin asking questions about Corbin’s relationship with Audrey, and his neighbours come forward with their own suspicions, a shaken Kate has few answers, and many questions of her own.

Jetlagged and emotionally unstable, her imagination playing out her every fear, Kate can barely trust herself, so how can she trust any of the strangers she’s just met?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Peter Swanson’s standalone psychological thriller is a hackneyed affair that’s driven by hackneyed coincidence, implausible characters, a deeply misguided romance with a peeping tom and a deeply silly plot that nods at STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and although I believed in the main character’s anxiety (which is well depicted), she’s very much a victim all the way through the plot, which made it impossible for me to empathise with her.

The Blurb On The Back:

As the witch pyres of the Spanish Inquisition blanket Renaissance Europe in a moral haze, a young African slave finds herself the unwilling apprentice of an ancient necromancer. Unfortunately, quitting his company proves even more hazardous than remaining his pupil when she is afflicted with a terrible curse.

Yet salvation may lie in a mysterious tome her tutor has hidden somewhere on the war-torn continent. She sets out on a seemingly impossible journey to find the book, never suspecting her fate is tied to three strangers: the artist Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, the alchemist Dr Paracelsus and a gun-slinging Dutch mercenary. As Manuel paints her macabre story on canvas, plank and church wall, the apprentice becomes increasingly aware of the great dangers that surround her. She realises she must revisit the foul necromancy of her childhood – or death will be the least of her concerns.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Jesse Bullington’s second novel is an exuberant, sweary dark fantasy rich in Medieval detail that carried me from page to page. It’s easier to empathise with the main characters than in THE SAD TALE OF THE BROTHERS GROSSBART (although Awa’s naivety did annoy me at times and Paracelsus and Monique are little more than caricatures) and although the pace did sag at times, the story was such that I kept reading on and I would definitely check out his next book.

The Blurb On The Back:

When a rotting torso is discovered in the vault of New Scotland Yard, it doesn’t take Dr Thomas Bond, Police Surgeon, long to realise that there is a second killer at work in the city where, only a few days before, Jack the Ripper brutally murdered two women in one night. But this is the hand of a colder killer, one who lacks Jack’s emotion.

Dr Bond, plagued by insomnia and an unshakeable sense of foreboding, has begun to spend his sleepless nights in a drug-induced haze in the opium dens down by the docks. He’s not the only man who looks like he doesn’t belong there. There is a stranger, a man in a long black coat, who spends his nights studying the addicts as they dream.

More headless and limbless torsos find their way into the Thames, and as Dr Bond becomes obsessed with finding the killer, he begins to suspect the stranger might be the key. As his investigations lead him into an unholy alliance, he starts to wonder: has a man brought mayhem to the streets of London, or a monster?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Sarah Pinborough’s novel, the first in a new horror series, draws on the real life case of the Thames Torso and people from the time and mixes it with east European mythology. As a fan of Pinborough’s other work and having an interest in Ripperology, I was keen to read it but while Pinborough has a great feel for period and Bond is a complex character – a drug addict in denial with an almost sixth sense about the crimes – the plot never quite gelled for me and the alternating viewpoints (the narration’s predominantly divided between Bond, Kosminski, Inspector Moore (the detective assigned to the case) and James Harrington (a young man travelling across Europe in search of adventure) meant that I never really felt connected to any of them. At the same time, the ending was too drawn out for me, which led to an anti-climactic finale. As such, although this is an okay read, it never really sprung to life for me and while I’ll check out Pinborough’s other work, I’m not sure I’ll continue with this series.

The Blurb On The Back:

A mutilated body in Crawley. Another killer on the loose. The prime suspect is one Robert Weil. Is he an associate of the twisted magician known as the Faceless Man? Or just a common or garden serial killer?

Before PC Peter Grant can get his head around the case a town planner going under a tube train and a stolen grimoire are adding to his case-load.

So far, so London.

But then Peter gets word of something very odd happening in Elephant and Castle, on a housing estate designed by a nutter, built by charlatans and inhabited by the truly desperate.

Is there a connection?

And if there is, why oh why did it have to be South of the River?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The fourth in Ben Aaronovitch’s PETER GRANT SERIES is an enjoyable but meandering affair that felt like filler. I welcomed the return to the Little Crocodiles storyline and the revelation about a returning character but the plot moved through contrivance rather than investigation and the rushed ending with its telegraphed twist may infuriate some fans. I kept turning the pages and enjoyed what there was, but this isn’t as great as the earlier books and felt like filler.

The Blurb On The Back:

I've never minded that my name's Barry Loser because my coolness has always cancelled it out, but ever since Darren Darrenofski joined school with his horrible little crocodile face he's been completely ruining my life about it. "I Am Not A Loser" is the first of three notebooks belonging to Barry Loser. Follow Barry as he tries throw off his loserness, take revenge on the terrible Fronkle-burping Darren Darrenofski and finally become a winner.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Jim Smith’s book (the first in a trilogy) is an amusing-enough story with some great illustrations that’s likely to appeal to fans of the WIMPY KID books but it didn’t have enough of a heart for me and I found the characters to all be equally unlikeable. The drawings are a lot of fun and the story unfolds at a decent pace. Ultimately though, there was just something missing from this for me and I’m not sure that I’ll be reading on.

Thanks to Starbucks for the free copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Life with the Radleys: Radio 4, dinner parties with the Bishopthorpe neighbours and self-denial. Loads of self-denial. But all hell is about to break loose. When teenage daughter Clara gets attacked on the way home from a party, she and her brother Rowan finally discover why they can’t sleep, can’t eat a Thai salad without fear of asphyxiation and can’t go outside unless they’re smothered in Factor 50. With a visit from their lethally louche uncle Will and an increasingly suspicious police force, life in Bishopthorpe is about to change. Drastically.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Matt Haig’s novel is essentially a cosy, middle class domestic drama with vampires. It’s a witty, frothy read that kept me turning the pages and I loved the extracts from The Abstainers Handbook, which keep the tone light. However the plot is predictable, it doesn’t add a great deal or do much that’s original with vampire mythology and the characters at times border on stereotype as Haig over-emphasises how normal the Radleys are. As such, it’s an enjoyable read but not a great one.

The Blurb On The Back:

'These days, watching television is like sitting in the back of Travis Bickle's taxicab, staring through the window at a world of relentless, churning shod . . .'

Cruel, acerbic, impassioned, gleeful, frequently outrageous and always hilarious, Charlie Brooker's SCREEN BURN collects the best of the much-loved Guardian Guide columns into one easy-to-read-on-the-toilet package.

Sit back and roar as Brooker rips mercilessly into Simon Cowell, 'Big Brother', Trinny and Susannah, 'Casualty', Davina McCall, Michael Parkinson . . . and almost everything else on television.

This book will make practically anyone laugh out loud.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

SCREEN BURN is the first collection of Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe columns for The Guardian and covers the period from April 2000 to September 2004. With forewords by Graham Linehan and Brooker himself, it’s as much an interesting look at English cultural history as it is a bleakly comic read. I’m not sure that this will convert non-Brooker fans to his warped genius but it is a satisfying book with plenty to say and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Blurb On The Back:

Kami Glass is in love with someone she's never met - a boy the rest of the world is convinced is imaginary. This has made her an outsider in the sleepy English town of Sorry-in-the-Vale, but she doesn't complain. She runs the school newspaper and keeps to herself for the most part - until disturbing events begin to happen. There has been screaming in the woods and the dark, abandoned manor on the hill overlooking the town has lit up for the first time in 10 years. The Lynburn family, who ruled the town a generation ago and who all left without warning, have returned. As Kami starts to investigate for the paper, she finds out that the town she has loved all her life is hiding a multitude of secrets- and a murderer- and the key to it all just might be the boy in her head. The boy who everyone thought was imaginary may be real...and he may be dangerous.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Sarah Rees Brennan’s latest novel (the first in a YA gothic paranormal trilogy) is a disappointing story populated by one-dimensional characters and peppered with one-note humour that fell flat. It’s an odd misfire from the usually reliable Brennan but I won’t be reading on.

The Blurb On The Back:

Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a new way of living – one without massacres and torn throats and bonfires of the fallen, without revenants or bastard armies or children ripped from their mothers’ arms to take their turn in the killing and dying. Once, the lovers lay entwined in the moon’s secret temple and dreamed of a world that was like a jewel-box without a jewel – a paradise waiting for them to find it and fill it with their happiness.

This was not that world.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The second in Laini Taylor’s SMOKE AND BONE TRILOGY is another beautifully written novel with incredible imagery and displaying a stunning imagination. However, Karou and Akiva’s denseness about obvious things really irritated me and felt like padding and as with the first book, there isn’t a huge amount of plot here. The quality of the writing meant that this wasn’t obvious until I finished it and while it did disappoint me, I will read the final book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Would you like to eat whatever you want and still lose weight?

Who wouldn’t? Keep dreaming, imbecile.

In the meantime, if you’d like to read something that alternates between laugh-out-loud-funny and apocalyptically angry, keep holding this book. Steal it if necessary.

In his latest collection of rants, raves, hastily spluttered articles and scarcely literate scrawl, Charlie Brooker proves that there is almost nothing in this universe, big or small, that can’t reduce a human being in a state of pure blind hatred.

It won’t help you lose weight, feel smarter, sleep more soundly, or feel happier about yourself. It WILL provide you with literally hours of distraction and merriment. It can also be used to stun an intruder, if you hit him with it correctly (hint: strike hard, using the spine, on the bridge of the nose).

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

This book is a collection of Charlie Booker’s newspaper columns for The Guardian between August 2009 and July 2012 and includes his Screen Burn columns (which he stopped writing in October 2010) together with a couple of the monologues that he performed on 10 O’CLOCK LIVE. If you’re a fan of Brooker than there’s nothing in here that you won’t already be familiar with although that doesn’t make the content any less funny. If you’re not familiar with Brooker’s work then I think that the collection serves as good an introduction as any of his other collections (maybe better because it shows how he’s moved on as a writer). Given that this is a collection of columns and monologues, there is a sense of this being just money for old rope but if you’re a fan that won’t matter because this old rope is funny as hell.

The Blurb On The Back:

They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but if you ask Castor he'll tell you there's quite a bit of arrogance and reckless stupidity lining the streets as well. And he should know. There's only so many times you can play both sides against the middle and get away with it. Now, the inevitable moment of crisis has arrived and it's left Castor with blood on his hands. Well, not his hands, you understand; it's always someone else who pays the bill: friends, acquaintances, bystanders.

So Castor drowns his guilt in cheap whisky, while an innocent woman lies dead and her daughter comatose, his few remaining friends fear for their lives and there's a demon loose on the streets. But not just any demon - this one rides shotgun on his best friend's soul and can't be expelled without killing him.

Looks like Felix Castor's got some tough choices to make, because expel the demon he must or all Hell will break loose. Literally . . .

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Mike Carey’s final book in the FELIX CASTOR SERIES is a satisfying conclusion to the overall arc, tying together various plot lines but maintaining enough tension and twists to keep you turning the pages. I didn’t like the Juliet storyline, mainly because the domestic violence seemed so out of character that I thought it should have rung alarm bells and because it gets given a happy, consequence-free ending. Nevertheless, I’m really looking forward to reading Carey’s next work.

The Blurb On The Back:

Names and faces he thought he'd left behind in Liverpool resurface in London, bringing Castor far more trouble than he'd anticipated. Childhood memories, family traumas, sins old and new, and a council estate that was meant to be a modern utopia until it turned into something like hell . . . these are just some of the sticks life uses to beat Felix Castor with as things go from bad to worse for London's favourite freelance exorcist.

See, Castor's stepped over the line this time, and he knows he'll have to pay; the only question is: how much? Not the best of times, then, for an unwelcome confrontation with his holier-than-thou brother, Matthew. And just when he thinks things can't possibly get any worse, along comes Father Gwillam and the Anathemata. Oh joy . . .

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The fourth in Mike Carey’s FELIX CASTOR SERIES is another gripping page-turner that pulls together different strands from the earlier books to make a thrilling read that really adds to the series. Although it doesn’t work as a standalone book – you do need to read the preceding books to get the most out of it – I think it’s well-worth the investment.

The Blurb On The Back:

Before he died, Felix Castor's fellow exorcist John Gittings made several calls asking for help. If Castor had answered them, John might still be alive. So when a smooth-talking lawyer comes out of nowhere to claim the remains, Castor owes it to John's unhappy ghost and even more unhappy widow to help out.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The third in Mike Carey’s FELIX CASTOR SERIES is a gripping tale of crime families, possession and divided loyalties that kept my gripped from beginning to end. I would completely recommend reading it.

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I Read, Therefore I Blog

A Book Review Blog Belonging to Caroline Hooton

Entries tagged with kindle/ebook version

Winterland by Alan Glynn

Snowblind by Ragnar Jónasson

Cross Purpose by Claire MacLeary

Yellowhammer by James Henry

The Last Place You Look by Kristen Lepionka

Blackwater by James Henry

The Hope That Kills by Ed James

Her Every Fear by Peter Swanson

The Enterprise of Death by Jesse Bullington

Mayhem by Sarah Pinborough

Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch

I Am Not A Loser by Barry Loser and Jim Smith

The Radleys by Matt Haig

Screen Burn by Charlie Brooker

Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan

Days Of Blood And Starlight by Laini Taylor

I Can Make You Hate by Charlie Brooker

The Naming Of The Beasts by Mike Carey

Thicker Than Water by Mike Carey

Dead Man’s Boots by Mike Carey