Finished Th 6/27/19
This was a collection of novellas and short stories of the Jack Reacher series that I bought at the library book sale on Fr 6/7/19.
I was reading the collection over several weeks- kinda 'sipping'.
One of the selections, 'SECOND SON', concerned Jack's life with his family when he was a teenager on Guam. Jack is thirteen and Joe is fifteen; his mother is called to Paris when she learns that her father (also Military) is dying. The story is about how Jack and Joe deal with a gang of kids on the island. Joe was the 'book-smart' brother, but Jack is presented as one who is the brother who can 'think on his feet'.
Another story features Joe where he executes a Soviet spy.
All of the stories were good, and I almost wish that he would have used the ideas and expanded them into novels.
Anything by Lee Child is worth a look, and it it 'the best' of Airport or Beach Reads.
Friday, June 28, 2019
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS PERFECTLY FINE by Gail Honeyman
Finished Mo 6/24/19- June, 2019 selection for the Contemporary Book Club
I bought this as an E-book several months ago because the book was so expensive- new release.
UNRELIABLE NARRATOR:
From the book's page at wikipedia:
"Eleanor Oliphant, the novel's protagonist and narrator, lives in Glasgow and works as a finance clerk for a graphic design company. She is 29 at the novel's outset. She is academically intelligent, with a degree in Classics and high standards of literacy, and every day she completes the Daily Telegraph crossword during her lunch break. However, she is socially awkward and leads a solitary lifestyle. She has no friends or social contacts, and spends every weekend consuming two bottles of vodka. She takes no interest in her appearance, and has not had her hair cut since she was 13. She does not consider that she has a problem. She repeatedly describes herself as "absolutely fine", and when moments of obvious awkwardness arise in her interactions with others (as they frequently do), she tends to blame the other person's "underdeveloped social skills". Her work colleagues regard her as a bit of a joke, and refer to her as "Wacko Jacko" or "Harry Potter"; she regards them as "shirkers and idiots".
Clues gradually emerge to a troubled past. Eleanor has a badly scarred face; knows nothing about her father; spent much of her childhood in foster care and children's homes; and, as a student, spent two years living with an abusive boyfriend who regularly beat her. Twice a year she receives a routine visit from a social worker to monitor her progress. Her mother now appears to be confined to an unidentified institution: she phones Eleanor for a 15-minute conversation every Wednesday evening, and it is apparent that she is both vindictive and manipulative.
Two developments drive forward the narrative. The first is that Eleanor attends a concert (having won tickets in a raffle), and develops a crush on Johnnie Lomond, lead singer in a local band: she becomes convinced that he is the "love of [her] life" and "husband material". She starts to follow his Twitter feed, discovers where he lives, and visits his building. In anticipation of meeting him, she begins an unprecedented regime of personal grooming: she has a bikini wax, and later a manicure and haircut, buys new clothes, and visits a Bobbi Brown beauty store for makeup advice. The second development is that, on leaving work one day with a new colleague, Raymond Gibbons, they witness an elderly man, Sammy Thom, collapse in the street: at Raymond's insistence, they call an ambulance, and help save his life. They are subsequently drawn into a series of encounters with Sammy and his grateful family, and in the process an embryonic friendship grows between Eleanor and Raymond.
Eleanor attends a long-anticipated concert by Johnnie Lomond, certain that this is the moment at which they will meet, and the pieces of her life will start to fall into place. Instead, it is a disaster. First, she finds that she is hidden in the crowd, and that he is quite unaware of her presence. Second, at one point, to fill a gap in the performance, he bares his buttocks to the audience, and she realises that he is not the refined soul-mate she had taken him for. And finally, the dry ice stage effects stir disturbing recollections of the traumatic fire that lies in her past. In despair, she retires to her flat for an intensive three-day vodka-drinking binge, and assembles the materials for suicide – a hoard of painkillers; a bread knife; and a bottle of drain cleaner.
She is saved by Raymond, sent round by their boss to investigate her absence from work. He cleans her up, puts her on the road to recovery, and continues to visit regularly over the following days. At his urging, she visits her GP, who refers her to a mental health counsellor. She eventually returns to work, where she is warmly greeted. Gradually, with the help of both the counsellor and Raymond, her full childhood story emerges, including many details that she had suppressed. When she was 10, her mother had started a house fire with the intention of killing both Eleanor and her four-year-old sister, Marianne. Although Eleanor survived, her mother and Marianne died. The weekly phone conversations with her mother have been entirely in Eleanor's imagination."
When I read this I was watching THE MILLENNIUM TRILOGY on Hoopla. I thought that 'Oliphant' would be an angry and scary character. Lizbeth Salander and Eleanor had very similar backgrounds, but Lizabeth went 'dark', and Eleanor went 'light'.
From wikipedia about the author:
"Gail Honeyman studied French language and literature at Glasgow University, before continuing her education at the University of Oxford for a postgraduate course in French poetry. However, she decided that an academic career was not for her and started a string of "backroom jobs", first as a civil servant in economic development and then as an administrator at Glasgow University".
This was a debut novel.
I bought this as an E-book several months ago because the book was so expensive- new release.
UNRELIABLE NARRATOR:
From the book's page at wikipedia:
"Eleanor Oliphant, the novel's protagonist and narrator, lives in Glasgow and works as a finance clerk for a graphic design company. She is 29 at the novel's outset. She is academically intelligent, with a degree in Classics and high standards of literacy, and every day she completes the Daily Telegraph crossword during her lunch break. However, she is socially awkward and leads a solitary lifestyle. She has no friends or social contacts, and spends every weekend consuming two bottles of vodka. She takes no interest in her appearance, and has not had her hair cut since she was 13. She does not consider that she has a problem. She repeatedly describes herself as "absolutely fine", and when moments of obvious awkwardness arise in her interactions with others (as they frequently do), she tends to blame the other person's "underdeveloped social skills". Her work colleagues regard her as a bit of a joke, and refer to her as "Wacko Jacko" or "Harry Potter"; she regards them as "shirkers and idiots".
Clues gradually emerge to a troubled past. Eleanor has a badly scarred face; knows nothing about her father; spent much of her childhood in foster care and children's homes; and, as a student, spent two years living with an abusive boyfriend who regularly beat her. Twice a year she receives a routine visit from a social worker to monitor her progress. Her mother now appears to be confined to an unidentified institution: she phones Eleanor for a 15-minute conversation every Wednesday evening, and it is apparent that she is both vindictive and manipulative.
Two developments drive forward the narrative. The first is that Eleanor attends a concert (having won tickets in a raffle), and develops a crush on Johnnie Lomond, lead singer in a local band: she becomes convinced that he is the "love of [her] life" and "husband material". She starts to follow his Twitter feed, discovers where he lives, and visits his building. In anticipation of meeting him, she begins an unprecedented regime of personal grooming: she has a bikini wax, and later a manicure and haircut, buys new clothes, and visits a Bobbi Brown beauty store for makeup advice. The second development is that, on leaving work one day with a new colleague, Raymond Gibbons, they witness an elderly man, Sammy Thom, collapse in the street: at Raymond's insistence, they call an ambulance, and help save his life. They are subsequently drawn into a series of encounters with Sammy and his grateful family, and in the process an embryonic friendship grows between Eleanor and Raymond.
Eleanor attends a long-anticipated concert by Johnnie Lomond, certain that this is the moment at which they will meet, and the pieces of her life will start to fall into place. Instead, it is a disaster. First, she finds that she is hidden in the crowd, and that he is quite unaware of her presence. Second, at one point, to fill a gap in the performance, he bares his buttocks to the audience, and she realises that he is not the refined soul-mate she had taken him for. And finally, the dry ice stage effects stir disturbing recollections of the traumatic fire that lies in her past. In despair, she retires to her flat for an intensive three-day vodka-drinking binge, and assembles the materials for suicide – a hoard of painkillers; a bread knife; and a bottle of drain cleaner.
She is saved by Raymond, sent round by their boss to investigate her absence from work. He cleans her up, puts her on the road to recovery, and continues to visit regularly over the following days. At his urging, she visits her GP, who refers her to a mental health counsellor. She eventually returns to work, where she is warmly greeted. Gradually, with the help of both the counsellor and Raymond, her full childhood story emerges, including many details that she had suppressed. When she was 10, her mother had started a house fire with the intention of killing both Eleanor and her four-year-old sister, Marianne. Although Eleanor survived, her mother and Marianne died. The weekly phone conversations with her mother have been entirely in Eleanor's imagination."
When I read this I was watching THE MILLENNIUM TRILOGY on Hoopla. I thought that 'Oliphant' would be an angry and scary character. Lizbeth Salander and Eleanor had very similar backgrounds, but Lizabeth went 'dark', and Eleanor went 'light'.
From wikipedia about the author:
"Gail Honeyman studied French language and literature at Glasgow University, before continuing her education at the University of Oxford for a postgraduate course in French poetry. However, she decided that an academic career was not for her and started a string of "backroom jobs", first as a civil servant in economic development and then as an administrator at Glasgow University".
This was a debut novel.
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
THE WRONG SIDE OF GOODBYE by Michael Connelly
Finished Tu 6/18/19
A Harry Bosch Novel
I got this trade paperback at the library book sale on Fr 6/7/19
Released in 2016 and Harry has left the LA police department and now is semi-retired and works part time for the San Fernando Police and takes private cases. It seems that he works the SFPD mainly so that he can use their printers and computers for his private work. "Harry has been taken on as a volunteer reserve officer by the San Fernando Police Department to investigate cold cases."
The novel is really two separate cases:
1) The Screen Cutter Rapist (San Fernando Case)
2) The Search For Whitney Lance's Heir (Harry's Private Case)
Screen Cutter wears a mask, but leaves DNA
Has prior knowledge of the women, and maybe has had face to face contact
Selects women who are ovulating
The perpetrator is Detective Dockweiler an ex-officer of the San Fernando Police Department. He was demoted to Public Works as a cost cutting measure. He was forever resentful. He tracked his victims while checking properties for illegal electrical hookups.
He kidnaps a female detective, Bella, of the SFPD and Harry finds her in a hidden bunker under Dockweiler's house.
The private case concerns a billionaire, Whitney Lance. He's an 85 year old man who is looking for an heir. He believes that he impregnated a Mexican woman in 1950 and he wants to find out about this individual. "Now well into his 80s, Whitney Lance had left behind a pregnant underage Mexican girl “on the wrong side of goodbye” when he was a college student."
Harry learns that Lance had a son, and this young man was killed in the Vietnam War. The billionaire's company that made the helicopter that the boy died in was owned by the Lances.
Harry was a 'tunnel rat' during the Vietnam War. With a knife, he would crawl through the Vietcong tunnels and clear them of enemy fighters. Harry tells Maddie, his daughter, that the reason he will not eat Vietnamese food is that during his tour of duty he had to eat that food every day. He says that if he ate western food, the enemy would smell him in the tunnels.
Although Whitney's son has died, Harry finds out that this boy had a lover and she had a daughter. The daughter and mother are local LA artists on the Latino Scene.
A sub-plot is that Whitney's elderly secretary writes a phony will in which she rewards herself with ten million dollars of the billions in the inheritance. And, in order to keep this secret, she smothered the old man and made it look like he died at his desk.
All of the Bosch series are excellent and I want to make sure I've read them all.
A Harry Bosch Novel
I got this trade paperback at the library book sale on Fr 6/7/19
Released in 2016 and Harry has left the LA police department and now is semi-retired and works part time for the San Fernando Police and takes private cases. It seems that he works the SFPD mainly so that he can use their printers and computers for his private work. "Harry has been taken on as a volunteer reserve officer by the San Fernando Police Department to investigate cold cases."
The novel is really two separate cases:
1) The Screen Cutter Rapist (San Fernando Case)
2) The Search For Whitney Lance's Heir (Harry's Private Case)
Screen Cutter wears a mask, but leaves DNA
Has prior knowledge of the women, and maybe has had face to face contact
Selects women who are ovulating
The perpetrator is Detective Dockweiler an ex-officer of the San Fernando Police Department. He was demoted to Public Works as a cost cutting measure. He was forever resentful. He tracked his victims while checking properties for illegal electrical hookups.
He kidnaps a female detective, Bella, of the SFPD and Harry finds her in a hidden bunker under Dockweiler's house.
The private case concerns a billionaire, Whitney Lance. He's an 85 year old man who is looking for an heir. He believes that he impregnated a Mexican woman in 1950 and he wants to find out about this individual. "Now well into his 80s, Whitney Lance had left behind a pregnant underage Mexican girl “on the wrong side of goodbye” when he was a college student."
Harry learns that Lance had a son, and this young man was killed in the Vietnam War. The billionaire's company that made the helicopter that the boy died in was owned by the Lances.
Harry was a 'tunnel rat' during the Vietnam War. With a knife, he would crawl through the Vietcong tunnels and clear them of enemy fighters. Harry tells Maddie, his daughter, that the reason he will not eat Vietnamese food is that during his tour of duty he had to eat that food every day. He says that if he ate western food, the enemy would smell him in the tunnels.
Although Whitney's son has died, Harry finds out that this boy had a lover and she had a daughter. The daughter and mother are local LA artists on the Latino Scene.
A sub-plot is that Whitney's elderly secretary writes a phony will in which she rewards herself with ten million dollars of the billions in the inheritance. And, in order to keep this secret, she smothered the old man and made it look like he died at his desk.
All of the Bosch series are excellent and I want to make sure I've read them all.
Monday, June 17, 2019
LOOKING FOR ALASKA by John Green
Finished Su 6/16/19
I got this book from Amazon in hardback after watching Sarah Polley's documentary film, 'STORIES WE TELL'. She was going to make a film of this book, but the project fell through. I also learned that although this book is a fantastic 'Coming of Age/ Young Adult Novel', it has been banned in many places.
John Green attended Indian Springs School outside of Birmingham, Alabama, graduating in 1995. He used Indian Springs as the inspiration for the main setting of his first book, 'Looking for Alaska'.
The book is divided into two sections: Before the death of Alaska Ward, and then After her passing. The days are 'counted down', before and after.
Link to the documentary on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stories_We_Tell
I loved the book and it's one of my favorite 'coming of age' tales.
There is a lot of cigarette smoking in the book, but it was not anything that would shock even a young teenager. And the sex scenes (there really is only one) is quite believable and would hardly raise a youngster's eyebrow. Have 'these old people' checked out some of the sex on, 'The Worldwide Charlotte's Web'?
The book's page on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_for_Alaska
I got this book from Amazon in hardback after watching Sarah Polley's documentary film, 'STORIES WE TELL'. She was going to make a film of this book, but the project fell through. I also learned that although this book is a fantastic 'Coming of Age/ Young Adult Novel', it has been banned in many places.
John Green attended Indian Springs School outside of Birmingham, Alabama, graduating in 1995. He used Indian Springs as the inspiration for the main setting of his first book, 'Looking for Alaska'.
The book is divided into two sections: Before the death of Alaska Ward, and then After her passing. The days are 'counted down', before and after.
Link to the documentary on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stories_We_Tell
I loved the book and it's one of my favorite 'coming of age' tales.
There is a lot of cigarette smoking in the book, but it was not anything that would shock even a young teenager. And the sex scenes (there really is only one) is quite believable and would hardly raise a youngster's eyebrow. Have 'these old people' checked out some of the sex on, 'The Worldwide Charlotte's Web'?
The book's page on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_for_Alaska
Thursday, June 13, 2019
PLAYING FOR PIZZA John Grisham
Finished We 6/12/19
This was a paperback that I got at the library book sale on Fr 6/7/19. I was unaware that John Grisham wrote comedic novels or any novels that did not involve legal matters.
This novel reminded me of the John Dortmunder series by Donald E. Westlake.
From Amazon Books:
"Rick Dockery is the third-string quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. In the AFC Championship game, to the surprise and dismay of virtually everyone, Rick actually gets into the game. With a seventeen-point lead and just minutes to go, Rick provides what is arguably the worst single performance in the history of the NFL. Overnight, he becomes a national laughingstock—and is immediately cut by the Browns and shunned by all other teams.
But all Rick knows is football, and he insists that his agent find a team that needs him. Against enormous odds, Rick finally gets a job—as the starting quarterback for the Mighty Panthers . . . of Parma, Italy. The Parma Panthers desperately want a former NFL player—any former NFL player—at their helm. And now they’ve got Rick, who knows nothing about Parma (not even where it is) and doesn’t speak a word of Italian. To say that Italy—the land of fine wines, extremely small cars, and football americano—holds a few surprises for Rick Dockery would be something of an understatement."
Lots of details about the Italian food of Parma and general information about Italy. This would be a nice book to read before visiting northern Italy. Parma is 80 miles southeast of Milan.
Part of aA customer review on Amazon:
"Grisham describes each province that Rick is dragged through by the energetic girl, Livvy, who has become Rick's lovely companion with agendas as a forceful tour guide, in such a way that you feel like you are on the same train, bus or car with them viewing ancient cathedrals, dining it al fresco with wine from the region and plenty of tasty treats that will have your mouth watering before you move on to the next province from which Rick would love to escape. Rick is more of a pizza and beer guy who would much rather spend time with his team and his bed with Livvy."
This was a paperback that I got at the library book sale on Fr 6/7/19. I was unaware that John Grisham wrote comedic novels or any novels that did not involve legal matters.
This novel reminded me of the John Dortmunder series by Donald E. Westlake.
From Amazon Books:
"Rick Dockery is the third-string quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. In the AFC Championship game, to the surprise and dismay of virtually everyone, Rick actually gets into the game. With a seventeen-point lead and just minutes to go, Rick provides what is arguably the worst single performance in the history of the NFL. Overnight, he becomes a national laughingstock—and is immediately cut by the Browns and shunned by all other teams.
But all Rick knows is football, and he insists that his agent find a team that needs him. Against enormous odds, Rick finally gets a job—as the starting quarterback for the Mighty Panthers . . . of Parma, Italy. The Parma Panthers desperately want a former NFL player—any former NFL player—at their helm. And now they’ve got Rick, who knows nothing about Parma (not even where it is) and doesn’t speak a word of Italian. To say that Italy—the land of fine wines, extremely small cars, and football americano—holds a few surprises for Rick Dockery would be something of an understatement."
Lots of details about the Italian food of Parma and general information about Italy. This would be a nice book to read before visiting northern Italy. Parma is 80 miles southeast of Milan.
Part of aA customer review on Amazon:
"Grisham describes each province that Rick is dragged through by the energetic girl, Livvy, who has become Rick's lovely companion with agendas as a forceful tour guide, in such a way that you feel like you are on the same train, bus or car with them viewing ancient cathedrals, dining it al fresco with wine from the region and plenty of tasty treats that will have your mouth watering before you move on to the next province from which Rick would love to escape. Rick is more of a pizza and beer guy who would much rather spend time with his team and his bed with Livvy."
The book is very much an 'airport or beach' read, but enjoyable none the less.
Link to the book's page at wikipedia:
Monday, June 10, 2019
WAYFARING STRANGER by James Lee Burke
Finished Su 6/9/10
This is a paperback that I bought at the library book sale on Sa 4/13/19.
The book is part of Lee's, 'Holland Series'. James Lee Burke is known for the Dave Robicheaux character and this book deals with Weldon Avery Holland who is a cousin of Texas lawman Hackberry Holland.
It begins with a terrific scene where Weldon is sixteen years old and is at home in Texas with his aged grandfather. As a young man his grandfather went up against Bill Dalton and John Wesley Hardin. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow and another couple camp on their land. Weldon and his grandfather figure out who they are (bullet holes in the car and an awareness of the news) and at the end of the chapter, Weldon fires a handgun at the car because one of the outlaws spits at his grandfather.
The the next big scene finds Weldon as a young man during WWII. He's caught behind enemy lines on the Western Front after the Battle of The Bulge with his friend, Herschel Pine. They find there way to a recently abandoned Nazi death camp where Weldon finds his future wife, Rosita Lowenstein. They get married and come back to the US.
“You’re an honorable and brave man,” “You’re my sister and lover and wife and mother and daughter and all good things that women are,” “You fill me with light when you’re inside me.”
Hershel comes up with a welding technique based on how the Nazi Tiger tanks were assembled. He applies this to pipelines and this is a fantastic improvement to move oil from the wells to where it's needed. Weldon and Hershel form, 'The Dixie Belle Pipeline Company'.
Hershel marries a young naive woman named Linda Gail. This is a very beautiful girl who runs into a Hollywood producer and goes to Hollywood and becomes a star.
"....Linda Gail, a pretty, gaptoothed Bogalusa girl with ungovernable worldly ambitions. She yearns for the country club comforts of River Oaks, Houston’s wealthiest neighborhood, a place whose appeal is lost on her humble, hapless husband. River Oaks, in Weldon’s reckoning, is dangerous territory, the habitat of people like Roy Wiseheart, the charismatic but messed-up son of a nefarious H. L. Hunt-style oil baron, and of Roy’s scary wife, Clara, a snobby and anti-Semitic “human tarantula.”
This opens up the novel to the wicked film industry and exposes the noble and good character of Weldon to this sleaze.
I loved the book and I found another novel of the Holland Series on my shelf and I will read it soon.
This is a paperback that I bought at the library book sale on Sa 4/13/19.
The book is part of Lee's, 'Holland Series'. James Lee Burke is known for the Dave Robicheaux character and this book deals with Weldon Avery Holland who is a cousin of Texas lawman Hackberry Holland.
It begins with a terrific scene where Weldon is sixteen years old and is at home in Texas with his aged grandfather. As a young man his grandfather went up against Bill Dalton and John Wesley Hardin. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow and another couple camp on their land. Weldon and his grandfather figure out who they are (bullet holes in the car and an awareness of the news) and at the end of the chapter, Weldon fires a handgun at the car because one of the outlaws spits at his grandfather.
The the next big scene finds Weldon as a young man during WWII. He's caught behind enemy lines on the Western Front after the Battle of The Bulge with his friend, Herschel Pine. They find there way to a recently abandoned Nazi death camp where Weldon finds his future wife, Rosita Lowenstein. They get married and come back to the US.
“You’re an honorable and brave man,” “You’re my sister and lover and wife and mother and daughter and all good things that women are,” “You fill me with light when you’re inside me.”
Hershel comes up with a welding technique based on how the Nazi Tiger tanks were assembled. He applies this to pipelines and this is a fantastic improvement to move oil from the wells to where it's needed. Weldon and Hershel form, 'The Dixie Belle Pipeline Company'.
Hershel marries a young naive woman named Linda Gail. This is a very beautiful girl who runs into a Hollywood producer and goes to Hollywood and becomes a star.
"....Linda Gail, a pretty, gaptoothed Bogalusa girl with ungovernable worldly ambitions. She yearns for the country club comforts of River Oaks, Houston’s wealthiest neighborhood, a place whose appeal is lost on her humble, hapless husband. River Oaks, in Weldon’s reckoning, is dangerous territory, the habitat of people like Roy Wiseheart, the charismatic but messed-up son of a nefarious H. L. Hunt-style oil baron, and of Roy’s scary wife, Clara, a snobby and anti-Semitic “human tarantula.”
This opens up the novel to the wicked film industry and exposes the noble and good character of Weldon to this sleaze.
I loved the book and I found another novel of the Holland Series on my shelf and I will read it soon.
Tuesday, June 4, 2019
CATCH ME by Lisa Gardner
Finished Mo 6/3/19
I bought this paperback at the library sale on Sa 4/13/19 for fifty cents.
This is kind of a 'female empowerment' novel in that all the major characters are women- even the villains. Although you would not refer to a Mickey Spillane novel as 'male empowerment', this was so heavily slanted towards the women's perspective that I think it must be noted.
At the end of the book she informs the reader that the names of the people that are killed in the novel were raffled off for charity. Theoretically, one of the dead men could have been called, 'Ken Worden'.
The novel deals with a mentally unbalanced mother would brutally abuses her children, and one of the girls grows into a serial killer. That's the premise in a nutshell. She feeds the girls crushed light bulbs with peanut butter.
A young woman has two of her best friends murdered on the same day- one year apart. She believes that she will be next, so she approaches a Boston detective and lays out the theory.
The young woman had been working as a police dispatcher and training in martial arts and firearms for over a year.
The rather muddled plot is that one of the police detectives is actually her blood thirsty sister.
From Goodreads:
"Charlene Grant believes she is going to die. For the past few years, her childhood friends have been murdered one by one. Same day. Same time. Now she’s the last of her friends alive, and she’s counting down the final four days of her life until January 21.
Charlene doesn’t plan on going down without a fight. She has taken up boxing, shooting, and running. She also wants Boston’s top homicide detective, D. D. Warren, to handle the investigation.
But as D.D. delves deeper into the case, she starts to question the woman’s story. Instinct tells her that Charlene may not be in any danger at all. If that’s true, the woman must have a secret—one so terrifying that it alone could be the greatest threat of all."
Link to Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11720382-catch-me
I read the novel to the end and it was faintly interesting, yet the writing was pretty sub-standard. However, there are so many better novels in this genre that I wouldn't go out of my way to read another by this author. This is strictly a 'beach novel'.
I bought this paperback at the library sale on Sa 4/13/19 for fifty cents.
This is kind of a 'female empowerment' novel in that all the major characters are women- even the villains. Although you would not refer to a Mickey Spillane novel as 'male empowerment', this was so heavily slanted towards the women's perspective that I think it must be noted.
At the end of the book she informs the reader that the names of the people that are killed in the novel were raffled off for charity. Theoretically, one of the dead men could have been called, 'Ken Worden'.
The novel deals with a mentally unbalanced mother would brutally abuses her children, and one of the girls grows into a serial killer. That's the premise in a nutshell. She feeds the girls crushed light bulbs with peanut butter.
A young woman has two of her best friends murdered on the same day- one year apart. She believes that she will be next, so she approaches a Boston detective and lays out the theory.
The young woman had been working as a police dispatcher and training in martial arts and firearms for over a year.
The rather muddled plot is that one of the police detectives is actually her blood thirsty sister.
From Goodreads:
"Charlene Grant believes she is going to die. For the past few years, her childhood friends have been murdered one by one. Same day. Same time. Now she’s the last of her friends alive, and she’s counting down the final four days of her life until January 21.
Charlene doesn’t plan on going down without a fight. She has taken up boxing, shooting, and running. She also wants Boston’s top homicide detective, D. D. Warren, to handle the investigation.
But as D.D. delves deeper into the case, she starts to question the woman’s story. Instinct tells her that Charlene may not be in any danger at all. If that’s true, the woman must have a secret—one so terrifying that it alone could be the greatest threat of all."
Link to Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11720382-catch-me
I read the novel to the end and it was faintly interesting, yet the writing was pretty sub-standard. However, there are so many better novels in this genre that I wouldn't go out of my way to read another by this author. This is strictly a 'beach novel'.
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