, , , , , , ,

578.    The Reckoning

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    John Grisham

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Suspense, Crime

420 pages, published October 23, 2018

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

The Reckoning tells the story of Pete Banning, a decorated World War II hero who survived the Bataan death march.  Shortly after returning home to his hometown of Clanton, Mississippi he coldbloodedly walked into his church and calmly shot and killed the Reverend Dexter Bell, his pastor and friend.  In response to all questions, even when facing execution, Pete’s only answer is “I have nothing to say.”  Not until the end of the story do we find out the reason for Pete’s actions.

Quotes 

“Meanness does not inspire loyalty.”

 

“Hearing the truth is like grabbing smoke in our family,”

 

 “Between 1818 and 1940, the state hanged eight hundred people, 80 percent of whom were black. Those, of course, were the judicial hangings for rapists and murderers who had been processed through the courts. During that same period of time, approximately six hundred black men were lynched by mobs operating outside the legal system and thoroughly immune from any of its repercussions”

 

 “Although he performed no acts of combat valor, as required by law, and left his troops behind, MacArthur was awarded the Medal of Honor for his gallant defense of the Philippines. The emaciated men he left on Bataan were in no condition to fight. They suffered from swelling joints, bleeding gums, numbness in feet and hands, low blood pressure, loss of body heat, shivers, shakes, and anemia so severe many could not walk.”

 

 “Pete became the trusty. As such, he served the much improved meals to the other four white prisoners, and to the six or seven black ones on the back side of the jail. Since all prisoners soon knew where the food was originating, Pete was a popular trusty. He organized work details to clean up the jail, and he paid for a plumber to modernize the equipment in both restrooms. For a few bucks, he devised a venting system to clear the smoke-clogged air, and everyone, even the smokers, breathed easier. He and a black prisoner overhauled the furnace and the cells were almost toasty at night. He slept hard, napped frequently, exercised on the hour, and encouraged his new pals to do likewise.”

 

“The Bannings were farmers and landowners, but they were workers, not gentrified planters with decadent lives made possible by the sweat of others.”

 

“Pete offered his reading materials to the others, but there was little interest. He suspected they were either fully or partially illiterate. To pass the time, he played poker with Leon Colliver, the moonshiner across the hall. Leon was not particularly bright, but he was sharp as hell at cards and Pete, who had mastered all card games in the army, had his hands full. Cribbage was his favorite, and Florry brought his cribbage board. Leon had never heard of the game, but absorbed it with no effort and within an hour was up a nickel.”

 

 “Her husband, a devout servant and follower of Christ, was reading his Bible and preparing his sermon, at church, when he was murdered. Why couldn’t God protect him, of all people? Upon deeper reflection, this often led to the more troubling question, one she never asked aloud: Is there really a God? The mere consideration of this as a passing thought frightened her, but she could not deny its existence.”

 

“In August of 1941, the United States supplied Japan with 80 percent of its oil. When President Roosevelt announced a complete oil embargo, Japan’s economic and military strength was imperiled.”

 

“She entered her home and stood in the kitchen, stopped cold by an aroma that was so thick and familiar it overwhelmed her: a mix of cigarette smoke and coffee, bacon grease, fruity pies and cakes, thick beef and venison stews that Nineva simmered on the stove for days, steam from the canning of stewed tomatoes and a dozen vegetables, wet leather from Pete’s boots in a corner, the sweet soapy smell of Nineva herself. Liza was staggered by the dense fragrances and leaned on a counter. In the darkness, she could hear the voices of her children as they giggled over breakfast and got themselves shooed away from the stove by Nineva. She could see Pete sitting there at the kitchen table with his coffee and cigarettes reading the Tupelo daily. A cloud moved somewhere and a ray of moonlight entered through a window. She focused and her kitchen came into view. She breathed as slowly as possible, sucking in the sweet smells of her former life.”

 

My Take

Another enjoyable read from the eminently readable John Grisham.  In addition to the compelling story, I learned a lot about the horrific conditions in the Pacific theater during World War II.  Grisham also makes a strong case against the death penalty with his detailed account of how the electric chair was administered.

/0 Comments/by
, , , , , ,

575.  A Time for Mercy

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:    John Grisham

Genre:   Fiction, Legal, Thriller, Suspense, Crime

480 pages, published October 13, 2020

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

In A Time for Mercy, author John Grisham revisits Jake Brigance, the protagonist from  A Time to Kill, and many of the same characters from that incredibly popular book.  In this book, Brigance has been assigned to serve as the public defender for Drew Gamble, teenaged boy accused of murdering a local deputy who was abusing his mom.

Quotes 

“Murder must be punished, but murder can also be justified.”

 

“Being fearless, unafraid to take unpopular cases, fighting like hell for the little people who have no one to protect them. When you get the reputation as a lawyer who’ll take on anybody and anything—the government, the corporations, the power structure—then you’ll be in demand. You have to reach a level of confidence, Jake, where you walk into a courtroom thoroughly unintimidated by any judge, any prosecutor, any big-firm defense lawyer, and completely oblivious to what people might say about you.”

 

“Those pricks down at the Rotary Club and the church and the coffee shop will not make you a lawyer and will not make you a dime.” And, “To be a real lawyer, first you grow a thick skin, and second you tell everybody but your clients to go to hell.” And, “A real lawyer is not afraid of unpopular cases.”

 

 “You were enduring these terrible attacks, yet you never sought help?” “From who?” “What about law enforcement? The police?” Jake’s heart froze at the question. He was stunned by it, but prepared, as was his witness. With perfect timing and diction, Kiera looked at Dyer and said, “Sir, I was being raped by the police.”

 

“He prayed long and hard for justice and healing, but was a bit light on mercy.”

 

“They will follow the lawyer who tells them the truth.” Word for word, same as always. “So, what’s the truth with Drew Gamble?” Jake asked. “Same as Carl Lee Hailey. Some people need killing.” “That’s not what I told the jury.” “No, not in those words. But you convinced them that Hailey did exactly what they would do if given the chance. It was brilliant.” “I’m not feeling so brilliant these days. I have no choice but to put a dead man on trial, a guy who can’t defend himself. It will be an ugly trial, Lucien, but I see no way around it.”

 

“He was still wet with sweat and the coffee did little to cool things, but he needed it because it was an old friend and starting the day without it was unthinkable.”

 

“The only way to improve Noose’s favorite courtroom was to burn it.”

 

“They filed in, dressed for the day in short-sleeve shirts and cotton dresses. As they took their seats, a bailiff handed each a funeral fan—a decorative piece of cardboard glued to a stick—as if flapping it back and forth in front of their noses would bring relief from the stifling heat. Many of the spectators were already waving them.”

 

“IN THE PARLANCE of the Bible Belt, those within the faith used many words and terms to describe those outside of it. On the harsher end of the spectrum, the “lost” were referred to as heathen, unsaved, unclean, hell-bound, and just old-fashioned sinners. More polite Christians called them nonbelievers, future saints, backsliders, or—the favorite—unchurched.”

 

“But most Christians I know are quite good at cherry-picking their way through the Holy Scriptures.”

 

 “Dyer was quick to rise and object. He should have remained quiet. “Objection, Your Honor. I object to the word ‘rape,’ which implies a—” Jake went berserk. He turned to Dyer, took a step, and yelled, “Good God, Lowell! What do you want to call it?! She’s fourteen years old, he was thirty-three.” “Mr. Brigance,” Noose said. Jake ignored him and took another step toward Dyer. “You want to use something a bit lighter than ‘rape,’ say ‘sexual attack,’ ‘molestation,’ ‘sexual abuse’?”

 

 “And from the testimony given by your mother and sister, we know that before the camper you lived in a car, in an orphanage, in foster care, and in a juvenile detention center. Anywhere else?” What a stupid mistake! Bust him, Drew, Jake wanted to yell. “Yes sir. We lived under a bridge one time for a couple of months, and there were some homeless shelters.” “Okay. My point is that the home Stuart Kofer provided was the nicest place you ever lived, right?” Another mistake. Do it, Drew! “No sir. A couple of the foster homes were nicer, plus you didn’t have to worry about gettin’ slapped around.”

 

My Take

Another thoroughly enjoyable John Grisham read.  Its not fine literature, but Grisham (like Stephen King and Liane Moriarity) know how to tell a story with believable, real world characters that keeps you reading, wanting to find out what happens next.  I was also happy to catch up again with protagonist Jake Brigance having enjoyed A Time to Kill many years ago.

/0 Comments/by
, , , , ,

562. The Final Solution

Rating:  ☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Michael Chabon

Genre:   Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Historical Fiction

131 pages, published November 2005

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

After finishing this hard to follow book, I’m not really sure what it is about.  The characters include Linus Steinman, nine years old and mute, who has escaped from Nazi Germany with his African gray parrot and 89 old man who was once a famous detective.

Quotes 

“Long life wore away everything that was not essential.”

 

“The application of creative intelligence to a problem, the finding of a solution at once dogged, elegant, and wild, this had always seemed to him to be the essential business of human beings—the discovery of sense and causality amid the false leads, the noise, the trackless brambles of life. And yet he had always been haunted—had he not?—by the knowledge that there were men, lunatic cryptographers, mad detectives, who squandered their brilliance and sanity in decoding and interpreting the messages in cloud formations, in the letters of the Bible recombined, in the spots on butterflies’ wings. One might, perhaps, conclude from the existence of such men that meaning dwelled solely in the mind of the analyst. That it was the insoluble problems—the false leads and the cold cases—that reflected the true nature of things. That all the apparent significance and pattern had no more intrinsic sense than the chatter of an African gray parrot. One might so conclude; really, he thought, one might.”

 

“A delicate, inexorable lattice of inferences began to assemble themselves, like a crystal, in the old man’s mind, shivering, catching the light in glints and surmises.”

 

“it was the insoluble problems—the false leads and the cold cases—that reflected the true nature of things.”

 

“He did not fear death exactly, but he had evaded it for so many years that it had come to seem formidable simply by virtue of that long act of evasion. In particular he feared dying in some undignified way, on the jakes or with his face in the porridge.”

  

My Take

This book was in the Boulder Library’s “Recommended by a Librarian” and had the advantage of brevity, so I gave it a try.  What a disappointment! I cannot even tell you what the plot was.  I’ve enjoyed my previous readings of Michael Chabon (especially The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay), but this book was a Super Dud.  By all means, skip.

/by
, , , , , , ,

559. One by One

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Ruth Ware

Genre:   Fiction, Suspense, Thriller, Crime, Mystery, Foreign

372 pages, published September 8, 2020

Reading Format:   Audio Book

Summary

Getting snowed in at a mountain chalet in the Swiss Alps is just the beginning of the problems facing the membes of the tech company Snoops who are there for a corporate retreat to decide whether or not to take a huge buyout offer.  Bigger problems ensue for them and the two Chalet employees when the murders start, one by one.

Quotes 

“I stop, thinking of Topher and his cushioned, monied existence–the way he has had everything handed to him on a plate, the way he’s never had to scrap for anything, never had to swallow a snub from a boss, or pick up a stranger’s dirty underwear, or do any of the myriad demeaning, boring jobs the rest of us take for granted.”

 

“They are arrogant, that’s what I realize–maybe not Liz and Carl quite so much, but all of them to some degree. They are protected by the magic of their shares and their status and their IP. They think that life can’t touch them–just like I used to do.”

 

“Only now it has. Now life has them by the throat. And it won’t let go.”

 

 “Behind him is a girl with fluffy yellow hair that cannot possibly be her real shade. It’s the color of buttercups and the texture of dandelion fluff.”

 

 “But it’s not just her body language that sets her apart—it’s everything. She’s the only one wearing clothes that look more H&M than D&G, and though she’s not the only one w

earing glasses, the others look like they’re wearing props provided by a Hollywood studio.”

 

My Take

One by One is a crackling thriller.  I had previously read her books In a Dark, Dark Wood and The Woman in Cabin 10 and had really enjoyed them.  I liked One by One even more.  It was very  suspenseful and kept me guessing throughout.  The main character and Chalet Manager Erin is also well developed and gives the reader someone to identify with and root for.

/by
, , , , , ,

557. One Good Turn

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Kate Atkinson

Genre:   Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Foreign, Crime

418 pages, published September 10, 2007

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

One Good Turn takes place during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland when a near-homicidal attack occurs which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander – until he becomes a murder suspect.

Quotes 

“They said love made you strong, but in Louise’s opinion it made you weak. It corkscrewed into your heart and you couldn’t get it out again, not without ripping your heart to pieces.”

 

“Love was the hardest thing. Don’t let anyone ever tell you different.”

 

“Julia’s vocabulary was “chock-full” of strangely archaic words – “spiffing,” “crumbs,” “jeepers” – that seemed to have originated in some prewar girls’ annual rather than in Julia’s own life. For Jackson, words were functional, they helped you get to places and explain things. For Julia, they were freighted with inexplicable emotion.”

 

“You said five little words to someone–How can I help you?–and it was as if you’d mortgaged your soul out to them.”

 

“The Grim Reaper, Gloria corrected herself – if anyone deserved capital letters it was surely Death. Gloria would rather like to be the Grim Reaper. She wouldn’t necessarily be grim, she suspected she would be quite cheerful (Come along now, don’t make such a fuss).”

 

 

“Gloria regretted that she wasn’t a knitter, she could be producing a useful garment while waiting for Graham to die.”

 

“Boxes within boxes, dolls within dolls, worlds within worlds. Everything was connected. Everything in the whole world.”

 

“One of the things Jackson liked about Julia was her independence, one of the things he didn’t like about Julia was her independence.”

 

“Sometimes you wondered why anyone bothered crawling out of the cradle when what lay ahead was so darn difficult.”

 

 “No one ever warned you about how ferocious mother love could be, let’s face it, no one warned you about anything.”

 

My Take

While I’m a fan of some of Kate Atkinson’s books (Life After Life and A God in Ruins), other ones that I have read (Transcription and Behind the Scenes at the Museum) are a bit clunky.  You can put One Good Turn in the clunky category.  Actually, it is the most clunky Atkinson.  In this case, One Good Turn does not deserve another.  Skip.

/by
, , , , , ,

553. The Hunting Party

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    Lucy Foley

Genre:   Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Crime

406 pages, published January 24, 2019

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Hoopla

Summary

The Hunting Party is set in a remote luxury estate in the Scottish Highlands.  A group of friends from Oxford choose this locale for their annual New Year’s reunion/vacation together.  However, they soon discover that one of them is a killer.

Quotes 

“Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don’t need much encouragement at all to become monsters. And sometimes you just get a strong sense about people, and you can’t explain it; you simply know it, in some deeper part of yourself.”

 

 “But it is a lot easier to face the day when you know you won’t have to face other people and their happiness.”

 

“It is a dark place form which you can never quite return. It does something to you, the first time. An essential change somewhere deep in the soul, the amputation of something important. The first time is the worst, but with each death the soul is wounded further. After a while there is nothing left but scar tissue.”

 

“I suppose we all carry around different versions of ourselves”

 

“Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don’t need much encouragement at all to become monsters.”

 

“Sometimes these impulses overtake me — the urge to push things a bit further… even the urge to wound. I can’t stop myself, it’s like a compulsion.”

 

“Sometimes solitude is the only way to regain your sanity.”

 

“Here is a person held together by tape and glue and prescription-strength sleeping pills – the only thing I can be persuaded to make a foray into civilisation for, these days.”

 

“There are people who hold out for love, capital letters LOVE, and don’t stop until they’ve found it. There are those who give up because they don’t find it. Boom or bust – all or nothing. And then, perhaps in the majority, there are those who settle. And I think we’re the sensible ones. Because love doesn’t always mean longevity”

 

“Perhaps it’s simply growing older. A sense that she doesn’t have to prove herself any longer, that she knows exactly who she is. I envy that.”

 

“And being around people – people carrying on with their lives, busy and messy, settling down, having children, getting married – just emphasizes how much my own has stalled, indefinitely. Perhaps forever.”

 

“I’ve planned this trip, so I feel a certain ownership of it – the anxiety that people won’t enjoy themselves, that things might go wrong. And also a sense of pride, already, in its small successes … like this, the wild beauty outside the window.”

 

“It’s tricky (…) to be the latest addition to a group of old friends. It seems that I will always be the new girl, however many years pass. I will always be the last in, the trespasser.”

 

“…even if you don’t have much interaction with other human beings – as I do not – it turns out that the instinct to judge one another, that basic human trait, does not leave us.”

 

“They seemed almost at times like actors, I thought, making a great show of what a wonderful time they were having. They laughed a little too hard. They drank a great deal too much. And at the same time, despite all this evidence of merriment, they seemed to watch each other. Perhaps it’s hindsight, making this impression seem like more than it was. I suppose there are probably tensions in most groups of friends. But I was struck by the thought that they did not seem completely comfortable in one another’s company. Which was odd, as they’d told me right at the beginning that they were very old friends. But that’s the thing about old friends, isn’t it? Sometimes they don’t even realise that they no longer have anything in common. That maybe they don’t even like each other any more.”

 

“I was sometimes drawn to men like this. The reticent, brooding sort: the challenge of drawing them out, making them care.”

 

“What’s that expression the French have for it? Jolie laide: ugly beautiful.”

 

“And most people don’t realize how much more they have than they need. They are lazy, and greedy, and blind to how easy their lives are. Perhaps it isn’t their fault. Perhaps they merely haven’t had the opportunity to see how fragile their grip on happiness is. But sometimes he thinks he hates them all.”

 

My Take

Having really loved The Guest List by Lucy Foley, I was looking forward to reading another thriller by this talented writer.  While not quite as good, The Hunting Party was still a very fun, fast read with interesting characters and a few surprising twists.

/by
, , , , , ,

548. The Guest List

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Lucy Foley

Genre:   Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Crime

330 pages, published June 2, 2020

Reading Format:   Audiobook

Summary

The characters in The Guest List are referred to as the bride, the plus one, the best man, the wedding planner, and the bridesmaid.  They are all gathered on a small island off the coast of Ireland to attend the wedding of Will, a gorgeous reality TV star, and Julia, the publisher of a successful lifestyle website.  Everything is picture perfect until things start going wrong, very wrong.

Quotes 

“In my experience, those who have the greatest respect for the rules also take the most enjoyment in breaking them.”

 

“And I’m not worried about it being haunted. I have my own ghosts. I carry them with me wherever I go.”

 

“The rage is growing inside me, overtaking the shock and grief. I can feel it blossoming up behind my ribs. It’s almost a relief, how it obliterates every other feeling in its path.”

 

“Marriage is about finding that person you know best in the world. Not how they take their coffee or what their favourite film is or the name of their first cat. It’s knowing on a deeper level. It’s knowing their soul.”

 

“It’s always better to get it out in the open – even if it seems shameful, even if you feel like people won’t understand.”

 

“Nowhere on earth could possibly live up to those halcyon days. But that’s nostalgia for you, the tyranny of those memories of childhood that feel so golden, so perfect.”

 

“But it’s all about the moment, a wedding. All about the day. It’s not really about the marriage at all, in spite of what everyone says.”

 

“When he broke up with me, he told me that he would love me forever. But that’s total crap. If you love someone, really, you don’t do anything to hurt them.”

 

“You don’t get this. This isn’t your moment. You didn’t create it. I created it in spite of you.”

 

“…Life is messy. We all know this. Terrible things happen, I learned that while I was still a child. But no matter what happens, life is only a series of days. You can’t control more than a single day. But you can control one of them.  Twenty-four hours can be curated.”

 

“If I didn’t pay attention, one of those currents could grow into a huge riptide, destroying all my careful planning. And here’s another thing I’ve learned – sometimes the smallest currents are the strongest.”

 

“There’s another self that I sometimes feel I lost along the way. The girl who always stayed for one more drink, who loved a dance. I miss her, sometimes.”

 

“When I step outside the sun is just beginning to go down, spilling fire upon water. It tinges pink the mist that has begun to gather over the bog, that shields its secrets. This is my favourite hour.”

 

“I’m not interested in fashion for its own sake, but I respect the power of clothes, in creating the right optics.”

 

“But I wasn’t about to complain; we could never have afforded a florist of our choice. I wonder what it must be like to have the money to do exactly what you want.”

 

My Take

Since I listened to the audio version of The Guest List (a format I highly recommend with great voice work by mulitiple actors), I can’t technically call it a page turner.  However, I had a tough time stopping the playback as I really wanted to see what happened next.  Foley knows how to create suspense and tension and uses this skill to great effect.  With the beautiful, but eerie, setting of a small island with an old castle, The Guest List would make for a great film.  I hope to see it made.

/by
, , , , , ,

539. The Searcher

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Tana French

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Foreign, Crime

451 pages, published October 6, 2020

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

The Searcher tells the story of retired detective Cal Hooper moves from Chicago to a remote village in rural Ireland with the intention to fix up the broken down cottage he’s bought, to walk the terrain, and to escape his former life.  His plans change when  he is pulled into helping a local boy who wants help in finding his missing brother.  Against his better judgment, Cal is once again acting the dectective.

Quotes 

“He appreciates mornings not for their effect on him, but for themselves. Even smack in the middle of a temperamental Chicago neighborhood, dawn sounds rose up with a startling delicacy, and the air had a lemony, clean-scoured tinge that made you breathe deeper and wider. Here, the first light spreads across the fields like something holy is happening, striking sparks off a million dewdrops and turning the spiderwebs on the hedge to rainbows; mist curls off the grass, and the first calls of birds and sheep seem to arc effortless miles. Whenever he can make himself, Cal gets up early and eats his breakfast sitting on his back step, enjoying the chill and the earthy tang of the air.”

 

 “Over the last few years it’s been brought home to him that the boundaries between morals, manners and etiquette, which have always seemed crystal-clear to him, may not look the same to everyone else. He hears talk about the immorality of young people nowadays, but it seems to him that Alyssa and Ben and their friends spend plenty of their time concentrating on right and wrong. The thing is that many of their most passionate moral stances, as far as Cal can see, have to do with what words you should and shouldn’t use for people, based on what problems they have, what race they are, or who they like to sleep with. While Cal agrees that you should call people whatever they prefer to be called, he considers this to be a question of basic manners, not of morals.”

 

“The mountains on the horizon look like someone took a pocketknife and sliced neat curves out of the star-thick sky, leaving empty blackness. Here and there, spread out, are the yellow rectangles of windows, tiny and valiant.”

 

“He feels that nineteen-year-olds, almost all of them, don’t have their feet on the ground. They’re turning loose from their families and they haven’t found anything else to moor themselves to; they blow like tumbleweed. They’re unknowns, to the people that used to know them inside out and to themselves.”

 

“The sky, dappled in subtle gradations of gray, goes on forever; so do the fields, coded in shades of green by their different uses, divided up by sprawling hedges, dry-stone walls and the odd narrow back road.”

 

“Landscape is one of the few things he knows of where the reality doesn’t let you down. The West of Ireland looked beautiful on the internet; from right smack in the middle of it, it looks even better. The air is rich as fruitcake, like you should do more with it than just breathe it; bite off a big mouthful, maybe, or rub handfuls of it over your face.”

 

“Trey says, with absolute bedrock certainty, “He wouldn’t do that.”

Cal reached the point a long time ago where those words make him tired for all of humanity. All the innocents say that, and believe it to the bone, right up until the moment when they can’t any more. My husband would never do that to our children, my baby ain’t no thief. Cal feels like he ought to stand on a street corner handing out warnings, little pieces of paper that just say: Anyone could do anything.”

 

“Etiquette is the stuff you gotta do just ’cause that’s how everyone else does it. Like holding your fork in your left hand, or saying ‘Bless you’ if someone sneezes. Manners is treating people with respect.”

“Everyone was talking about talking, and the most moral person was the one who yelled at the most other people for doing the talking all wrong.”

 

 “The wind combs the heather and gorse with a low ceaseless rustle. Its smell has a sweetness almost too cold to catch. The sky is a fine-grained gray, and from somewhere in its heights a bird sends down a pure wild whistling.”

 

 “The morning has turned lavishly beautiful. The autumn sun gave the greens of the fields an impossible, mythic radiance and transformed the back roads into light-muddled paths where a goblin with a fiddle, or a pretty maiden with a basket, could be waiting around every game and-bramble bend. Cal is in no mood to appreciate any of it. He feels like this specific beauty is central to the illusion that lulled him in stupidity, turned him into the peasant gazing slack-jawed at his hand full of gold coins till they melt into dead leaves in front of his eyes. If all this had happened in some depressing suburban clot of tract homes and ruler-measured lawns, he would have kept his wits about him.”

 

“He also can’t see any reason not to let himself sit there and think about Donna, seeing as he already fucked up and called her. Cal never had much time for nostalgia, but thinking about Donna seems like an important thing to do every now and then. EH sometimes gets the feeling that Donna has methodically erased all their good times from her memory, so that she can move on into her shiny new life without ripping herself up. If he doesn’t keep them in his, they’ll be gone like they never happened.”

 

 “I’ve only myself to please. There’s great freedom in that.”

 

My Take

Having read numerous books by the incredibly talented Irish writer Tana French, I was eagerly anticipating reading The Searcher.  While I found it to be a decent read, it doesn’t live up to her previous efforts.  There is not the same engagement with the characters and the central mystery feels mundane.

/by
, , , , , ,

502. Moonflower Murders

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Anthony Horowitz

Genre:    Fiction, Crime, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense

608  pages, published  November 10, 2020

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In Moonflower Murders, best selling author and creator of Foyle’s War and Midsomer Murders Anthony Hororwitz picks up where his mystery Magpie Murders left off. As with Magpie Murders, Moonflower Murders cleverly features a book within a book.  The protagonist of the modern day mystery is Susan Ryeland, a book editor who returns to the United Kingdom after several years decompressing in Greece.  She comes home to solve a mysterious disappearance that is connected to a mystery novel she previously edited.  That novel features the famous literary detective Atticus Pund and is included in the book in its entirety.

Quotes 

“Everything in life has a pattern and a coincidence is simply the moment when the pattern becomes briefly visible.”

 

“What makes them dangerous is their belief that they should not be stopped, that they are justified in what they do. I will not speak of my experiences in the war, but I will say this. The greatest evil occurs when people, no matter what their aims or their motives, become utterly convinced that they are right.”

 

“On the one hand, they’re monstrous egotists. Self-confidence, self-examination, self-hatred even … but it’s all about self. All those hours on their own! And yet at the same time, they’re genuinely altruistic. All they want to do is please other people. I’ve often thought it must demand a sort of deficiency to be a writer.”

 

“Pünd had never seen murder as a game, not even as a puzzle to be solved. His work was an examination of humanity at its darkest and most desperate. You could not solve crime unless you understood its genesis.”

 

“There were books everywhere, hundreds of them on shelves that had been designed to fit into every nook and cranny, and it goes without saying that anyone who collects books can’t be all bad.”

 

 “I do not know what has brought you here or how you have been driven to an action as extreme as the one you are now contemplating,’ he said. ‘You must be very unhappy. Of that I am sure. Will you believe me if I say that no matter how bad things may appear, they will be better tomorrow if you allow tomorrow to do its work? That is the way of things, Miss Mitchell, and I am the living proof of it.”

 

“Atticus Pünd had no time for religion. During the war, he had been persecuted not for what he believed but for what he was, a Greek Jew whose great-grandfather had emigrated to Germany sixty years before he was born, unaware that although he was bettering his own life, his decision would lead to the extinction of almost his entire bloodline.”

 

 “We had managed to drift into that awful arena, so familiar to the long-term married couple, where what was left unspoken was actually more damaging than what was said. We weren’t married, by the way. Andreas had proposed to me, doing the whole diamond-ring-down-on-one-knee thing, but we had both been too busy to follow through, and anyway, my Greek wasn’t good enough yet to understand the service.”

 

 “It wasn’t that she would judge me. It was more that I would feel myself being judged.”

 

My Take

I read Magpie Murders during the second year of my reading quest and loved it.  I followed that with several more books by the incredibly talented writer Anthony Horowitz, but have not liked any of them nearly as much as Moonflower Murders, the sequel to Magpie Murders.  Horowitz knows how to spin a complex, incredibly clever trail that keeps you turning the pages long after bedtime.  I highly recommend (but read Magpie Murders first).

/by
, , , , , ,

497. Troubled Blood

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Joni Renee Zalk

Author:   Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling)

Genre:   Fiction, Crime, Suspense, Thriller, Mystery

944 pages, published  September 15, 2020

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

Troubled Blood is the fifth book in J.K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike detective series.  Strike and his partner Robin Ellacott are hired by a woman whose mother, Margot Bamborough, disappeared forty years ago in 1974 without a trace.  As they investigate this cold case, Strike and Robin encounter tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer and witnesses who cannot be trusted, along with their own long simmering feelings for each other.

Quotes 

“We aren’t our mistakes. It’s what we do about the mistake that shows who we are.”

 

“Every married person he knew seemed desperate to chivvy others into matrimony, no matter how poor an advertisement they themselves were for the institution.”

 

“Then he closed his eyes, and like millions of his fellow humans, wondered why troubles could never come singly, but in avalanches, so that you became increasingly destabilized with every blow that hit you.”

 

 “. . . she’d seen a flicker of something in his face that wasn’t mere friendship, and they’d hugged, and she’d felt . . . Best not to dwell on that hug, on how like home it had felt, on how a kind of insanity had gripped her at that moment, and she’d imagined him saying ‘come with me’ and known she’d have gone if he had.”

 

“But he was her best friend. This admission, held at bay for so long, caused an almost painful twist in Robin’s heart, not least because she knew it would be impossible ever to tell Strike so.”

 

“But people who fundamentally change are rare, in my experience, because it’s bloody hard work compared to going on a march or waving a flag. Have we met a single person on this case who’s radically different to the person they were forty years ago?”  “I don’t know . . . I think I’ve changed,” said Robin, then felt embarrassed to have said it out loud.  Strike looked at her without smiling for the space it took him to chew and swallow a chip, then said, “Yeah. But you’re exceptional, aren’t you?”

 

 “How could he say, look, I’ve tried not to fancy you since you first took your coat off in this office. I try not to give names to what I feel for you, because I already know it’s too much, and I want peace from the shit that love brings in its wake. I want to be alone, and unburdened, and free.  But I don’t want you to be with anyone else. I don’t want some other bastard to persuade you into a second marriage. I like knowing the possibility’s there, for us to, maybe . . .  Except, it’ll go wrong, of course, because it always goes wrong, because if I were the type for permanence, I’d already be married. And when it goes wrong, I’ll lose you for good, and this thing we’ve built together, which is literally the only good part of my life, my vocation, my pride, my greatest achievement, will be forever fucked, because I won’t find anyone I enjoy running things with, the way I enjoy running them with you, and everything afterward will be tainted by the memory of you.

 

 “If I’ve taken you for granted,” said Strike, “I’m sorry. You’re the best I’ve got.”

 

“I think there are a lot of nutters in the world, and the less we reward them for their nuttery, the better for all of us.”

 

“He was well aware that he hadn’t told Polworth the whole truth about his relationship with Robin Ellacott, which, after all, was nobody else’s business. The truth was that his feelings contained nuances and complications that he preferred not to examine. For instance, he had a tendency, when alone, bored, or low-spirited, to want to hear her voice.”

 

“And there was something more, something highly unusual. Strike had never once made her feel physically uncomfortable. Two of them in the office, for a long time the only workers at the agency, and while Robin was a tall woman, he was far bigger, and he’d never made her feel it, as so many men did . . .”

 

“The roses, which were for Joan, were also for him: they said, you won’t be alone, you have something you’ve built, and all right, it might not be a family, but there are still people who care about you waiting in London. Strike told himself ‘people,’ because there were five names on the card, but he turned away thinking only of Robin.”

 

“. . . Strike explained about his failed attempt to buy Robin perfume, the previous December.

‘ . . . so I asked the assistant, but he kept showing me things with names like . . . I dunno . . . “Shaggable You” . . . ‘  The laugh Robin failed to repress was so loud that people turned to look at her . . .  and I panicked,’ Strike admitted . . .”

 

“Robin was thinking, is this where single people end up, people without children to look out for them, without double incomes? In small boxes, living vicariously through reality stars?”

 

“She’s lived with it for forty years . . . People who live with something that massive stop being able to see it. It’s the backdrop of their lives. It’s only glaringly obvious to everyone else.”

 

My Take

Having read the four previous Cormoran Strike novels ( The Cuckoo’s Calling, The Silkworm, Career of Evil and Lethal White) I was really looking forward to Troubled Blood.  I was not disappointed.  While J.K. Rowling is adept at spinning an engrossing mystery, this series really shines when it focuses on the protagonists Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacot.  The two are fascinating characters and the “will they, won’t they” dynamic really works.  At 944 pages, Troubled Blood is a commitment to read, but it is well worth the time.

/by