Ed's Mini Book Review - A Dangerous Man

Cover of A Dangerous Man: A NovelA Dangerous Man is the third and final book of Charlie Huston's Henry Thompson trilogy. To make a short story long, Henry Thompson starts out the trilogy as a former baseball prospect who doesn't make it to the bigs because of a broken leg. He then finds himself involved with Russian mobsters, crooked cops and notorious bank robbers who all claim he is in possession of something he has no clue about. The first book resolves those issues while the second book has him on the run and brings up new issues which all come to a head here, in the final installment.

Henry, through events I don't want to spoil in case you'd like to read the trilogy, is now a leg breaker for a Russian mobster. He's not happy with how things have turned out and looking to pills to dull life for him. That's until his boss tells him to watch over a young hot-shot baseball prospect with a wicked gambling habit. Oh, and did I mention this prospect was drafted by the Mets which brings Henry back to NYC, where his troubles all started?

I just eat this crime stuff up and Charlie Huston is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors but this installment felt a little flat to me. What makes me like Henry Thompson, that he is flawed and makes shaky decisions, wore on me as the series, and this book, went on. How long can he go with making the bad move and not have something planned out that goes a little right? I was also a little disappointed that some issues from the first book weren't addressed as he does end up back in New York after all. I am not sure of the planning of the series, but it seemed that the first book was written, originally, as a stand alone and the this book feels more like a sequel to the second book. Good stuff here but not great stuff.

My Grade: B-

LL

Ed's Mini Book Review - The Murder or Roger Ackroyd

Image via Wikipedia
The second Agatha Christie book, and first Hercule Poirot book for me is this highly rated, but not well known, thriller with a twist that will rattle your knickers. This one had it all from red herrings to dubious characters to head scratching clues that don't seem to add up (to me anyway).

Now the setup is a little convoluted but it's worth it. Roger Ackroyd is a wealthy widower who has a step-son who burns money a little too quickly. Roger is also taking up a relationship with a widow who has just killed herself but not before leaving a letter to Roger. The narrator of the story is the town's doctor and good friend of Roger Ackroyd and before he can discuss the substance of the letter with his good friend the doctor, Roger is murdered and the letter mysteriously vanishes. Enter Hercule Poirot, who has recently retired and moved to town, next door to the good doctor no less, to take the case and conscript the doctor as his assistant.

Since this is my first Poirot novel, it was interesting to read him on the page as Christie wrote him as opposed to the versions of him that I have seen on screen by Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express and by Peter Ustinov in Evil Under the Sun, and now I am very curious to see how he is portrayed by David Suchet (pictured above) on the BBC series. I found him to be more like the Ustinov version and not like the quirky Finney version though I have heard in many of the books he is more like the oddball Finney version. Eh, you see for yourself and that I suggest you do. I don't want to give away any more of the book as I encourage you to read you some Christie. I totally, in a non valley girl way, loved this book. The twists, turns, false leads, and second guesses, all of it had my hooked. Much like my feelings on And Then There Were None, this is what a good old fashioned mystery novel should be.

My Grade: A

LL

Fall is Here! (It's getting colder, why am I all excited?)

Image via WikipediaHappy Fall...er, Autumn everyone. Not that I am wishing a fall on your part just that the seasons are changing ya know and...eh, fugeddabout it.

Anywho's, I am back after some vacation time which was spent relaxing at home with my better half and recharging the old LL batteries for the cold weather ahead, and if you know anything about yours truly, you know I can't stand cold weather. Hopefully that also means getting some more reading done and some more posts about librarian-stuff. I have a couple of reviews to post for The Murder of Roger Ackrody and the last book in Charlie Huston's Henry Thompson trilogy, A Dangerous Man. I also plan on chiming in with my two cents on LibGuides since we just went live with them here at our little ol' college library.

So fun things ahead, at least I think they're fun, especially my Fall Reading List which I'll post shortly. So sit back, enjoy the leaves changing color and some good fall reads....I command you!

LL

Ed's Mini Book Review - And Then There Were None

Cover of And Then There Were NoneContinuing on my little kick of reading some of the Thrillers listed on NPR's top thrillers of all-time, I decided to give an Agatha Christie book a run and the highest rated of her works on the list was And Then There Were None (though I have heard that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is rather highly rated, but not as well known). Now I think I was supposed to read this in High School but like many high school students, I didn't really read it and just skimmed what I needed to to pass (Hey, I'm being honest!).

Boy, I am glad I gave this a try all these years later. This is what I was expecting with The Hound of the Baskervilles. A tight, suspenseful whodunnit that doesn't disappoint. The set-up is something that I think most people are familiar with as it has been copied, spoofed and ripped-off for decades. We have ten people, all called to a remote island with differing letters, expecting something far from what they find. Soon after they arrive, they are called to dinner where a record plays, accusing each and every one of them of murder. Placed in each of their rooms is a variation of the nursery rhyme, Ten Little Indians and in the living room is a chess board with ten pieces on it. As our story progresses and the ten start to die off in ways depicted in the rhyme, pieces are removed from the chess board. Who has called them to the island and is he or she amongst them?

I think you can probably guessed that I loved this book. I was a bit worried that it would seem dated being written over seventy years ago but that was not the case at all, adding to the genius of the work. It keeps you guessing all the way through and just when you thought you know who is behind it all, they meet an untimely end and you have to start from square one again. I am being as cryptic as possible because I don't want to give any hints or give anything away. Just go out and pick up a copy from your local library. You'll that me for it.

My Grade: A+

LL

Ed's Mini Book Review - The Hound of the Baskervilles

I posted a few weeks ago a list of the Top Thrillers of all time according to NRP, so that got me looking up and down the list to see which ones I have read. The verdict was, not that many. So I decided to knock a couple off that list and start with some classic Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles.

I've never read any of the Holmes mysteries before and after giving it a start, I remembered reading somewhere that the mysteries are told from the perspective of Dr. Watson, Holmes' sidekick/companion. Add to this my envisioning of the character as they looked in the recent Guy Ritchie adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, and I have a very rich setting in my mind of Jude Law as the primary and Iron Man himself, RDJ as Sherlock Homes.

On to this mystery and it pains me to say, that I was rather disappointed. Now I am getting that feeling as I did with Neuromancer about reviewing a classic but hear me out on this one. First of all, I loved the atmosphere of the book, with the creepy old Baskerville Hall and the seemingy haunted bog. That really took me in and kept my interest.

What bothered me most about the book was the lack of mystery. Holmes has it solved with a quarter of the book left. The rest is the laying of the trap and the explianation of how he solved it. I was expecting something a little more climactic or another plot twist that never came. Maybe I was expecting a tale with more complexity, fed by my generation growing up with mysteries trying 'out twist' the next and didn't enjoy the weaving of the yarn so to speak. The bottom line, however, is that I was a bit underwhelmed.

My Grade: C+

LL

Late Summer Reading List

Image by cmcgough via FlickrHi ho library nerds. I have been able to get a good amount of reading done this Summer and have updated my reading list a few times.

So, instead of updating that one over and over again, I will add a new list (even though the summer is almost over), so here goes.

Dead Men's Boots by Mike Carey

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Lamb by Christopher Moore (another requested read).

Ed's Mini Book Review - Monster Island

Image via WikipediaMonster Island is the second book I've read from David Wellington, the first being 13 Bullets. This one had me back in to the zombie book realm which has been a while for me. Basic premise is that of a lot of zombie books, outbreak has ravaged the world and zombies have taken over most places. The first twist we get here to the basic zombie paradigm is that we have our group of heroes purposefully journey to an area that they know is overrun in order to procure some medical supples. That place that is overrun is none other than Manhattan.

This piqued my interest right away because many zombie books don't deal with the big city. They instead focus on the person living in a small town or in the sticks so to speak because that's easy. It's easy to have a survivor from a place where there aren't that many people around to turn into zombies or an area where getting to an isolated or relatively safe location is feasible. This book, sadly, skips that but we do get Manhattan after the outbreak and see what's left.

The next major twist in the rote zombie paradigm is with the character of Gary and how he progresses/comes to understand what happened to make the dead rise. Gary is a med student who throws his lot in with the superior numbers, the zombies. Wait, what? How does he do that, you say? That I will leave alone in case you decide to read the book, but in any event this goes along to explain what is happening. For my tastes, while appreciate it being a little different from the typical zombie fare, I wasn't a big fan of the revelation. Reminded me a bit of The Rising by Brian Keene, but it's not exactly like that explanation, and if you've followed my reviews, you know I wasn't a fan of that book.

To sum this bad boy up, Monster Island is an overall solid addition to the zombie genre. A little less of a survival horror book and a bit more into the 'whys' of what has caused the outbreak, though I am not sure the reasons given by certain dubious characters are the correct ones. Certainly entertaining but nothing groundbreaking. Enough to get me to read the next book in the trilogy, Monster Nation.

My Grade: B-

LL