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The
reason for these "quarterly" reports is that I
just can’t keep up with the speed most of you read.
It is not unlikely that I’ll only get one book done
in a month and now that my "day" job has me
doing less traveling, I don’t go through Books on
Tape as often. |
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Tales of the South
Pacific by James A.
Michener is his first and my first of
his. It is a series of episodes about a military unit stationed in the
South Pacific during World War II and their escapades while waiting to
get into the "fighting war". A small piece of it (maybe a chapter or
two) was used as the basis of the Rogers and Hammerstein film, South
Pacific. It was extremely vivid. His description of Norfolk Island,
for instance, was so vivid, I could almost smell the pines and hear the
surf. |
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The Cold Heart of
Capricorn
by Martha C. Lawrence is the second in the Elizabeth Chase series. This
series is my guilty pleasure. I'm really not into the paranormal (it was
intriguing when I was younger, but at this age I find it stretches
credibility too much), nevertheless, Lawrence doesn't "depend" on the
insights of her heroine nor does the heroine. More often than, not the
visions are
misleading rather than helpful. This
time her focus is on a string of rapes as she first “sees” a victim and
reports it and some weeks later, when the event occurs, is called in to
help the San Diego Police Department investigate the brutal serial
rapist. |
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Carol O'Connor's first stand-alone,
Judas Child
is a WOW. It is
about a serial kidnapping/murder. The
culprit lures a “friend” of the target child to call the friend out,
giving the kidnapper an opportunity to strike. The target is killed and
the “Judas” child is eventually released. Very haunting, with an ending
which changes the whole complexion of the book. Extraordinary (I did
this book by listening to the unabridged audio). |
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Dean Koontz's
second in his "trilogy" is Seize the Night
has Christopher Snow, still checking out what was
happening at the Wyvern military facility, takes a side jaunt to look
for some missing kids. This is unusual for Dean. He's never written a
sequel or made allusions to other work, let along a trilogy. However,
though self contained with respect to the missing children, leaves you
itching for the finale which, as of three years later is no where in
sight (I did this book on unabridged audio).. |
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A Certain
Justice from P.D. James has Felicia Altridge as a
very respected defense attorney in England and has less than a few weeks
to live as the book opens. The clues and story revolve around “Ashe”,
her most recent client whom she gets acquitted from his aunts murder and
then, surprisingly, strikes up a romance with Altridge’s “estranged”
daughter.
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The
Poisonwood Bible from Barbara Kingslover has a Baptist family
going on a mission to the Congo in 1959. The story is told in “first
person” by the mother and the four daughters in the form of diary
entries and spans their lives from 1959 to the near present. This is a
fascinating look, spread over three decades, into the times, life and
slow disintegration of the evangelistic family. It's set against the
back drop of the Congo's own attempted emergence to independence from
Belgium. It is a seemingly realistic and well researched account of the
people and history. |
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Kiss the
Girls is the first James Patterson I've read. I picked it
up because I saw that the film was going to star Morgan Freeman and I
really like his performances. Also, I thought I'd read a book before
I saw the film for a change. This is an Alex Cross novel. His
niece is missing from college. The police are less than forth coming
with information and don’t even report the problem until four days after
the disappearance. Cross gets involved and the cases gets a break when
one of the victims escapes. The investigation centers, initially, on on
abductions around Duke university in North Carolina, but then seems,
some how, related to serial killings out of Los Angeles. |
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Elizabeth M.
Cosin is a television screenwriter by trade and Zen and the
Art of Murder is her first novel. "Zen" is
Zenaria Moses, a hard-boiled private eye that gets involved as a suspect
in two cases. First, her brother is found dead in a walk-in refrigerator
at the bar she frequents … interesting, as he supposedly committed
suicide 12 years earlier. The other is the Queen of afternoon talk-show
hosts who hire’s Zen to find her father who, the standard publicity has
maintained, died a long time ago. I thought was a fun read. It didn't
keep me up nights and though I'd like to more of these (she came out
with a follow-up a year later), I just haven't gotten around to it. But,
I will. |
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I've been waiting
for this for quite a while (I did his previous book from an Advance
Reader Copy about 15 months earlier and the last Harry Bosch novel
was thirteen months before that!). Michael Connelly's
Angels Flight
is about a murder on “Angels Flight”, an old
railroad system near Bunker Hill in Los Angeles. A prominent Civil
Rights lawyer is the victim. He is a lawyer, who specializes in suing
the city of Los Angeles (and the LAPD) for civil rights violations. He
was just about to begin a $10 million dollar case a few days after he
was killed … the risk of riot is high and, further, it looks like a cop
did it. |
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Lindsay Maracotta
is another Hollywood insider making her debut in the mystery field. In
The Dead Hollywood Moms Society,
Lucy Farrs, an animator in “the
biz” finds the naked body a neighbor and social climber in her pool.
This was an interesting romp through the “glitz” of Hollywood. |
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John Grisham
comes up with a bit of a twist this time in The Testament.
A rich eccentric (multi-billionaire) holds a “compentency”
demonstration, signs a will and, immediately, jumps out a window.
He has pretty much left his family penniless in favor of a young girl
who has walked away from the modern world and given herself to God. The
lawyer tasked with execution of the will and testament has his own set a
problems which scavenging through the Amazon to find this girl does not
help. |
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