Book Review: No Rest for the Dead

 

Twenty six authors came together in order to write an action-packed thriller and the result is No Rest for the Dead. The original idea was to create a short story collection, but since this is not an especially commercial genre and the proceeds were meant to go to charity, it has been decided that it’d be better if all of them worked together to write a novel.

     If you asked me I wouldn’t say that this book is something special, however it is a well-crafted book that moves at a fine pace and which manages to keep the reader’s interest alive from first page to last. And it is funny, in more than one ways; especially when, let’s say, author number one, decides to make the life of author number two a little bit hard, by driving the story in a completely different direction from the one at hand, and thus make him or her come up with some answers in questions that were not there in the first place. As a result there are many twists and turns and just when one thinks that he’s found the solution to the riddle, something turns up that brings things upside down.
     But let’s take things from the start, or rather from the end; today. Following the last instructions or, maybe we should say, respecting the last wishes of Rosemary Thomas, a curator of a San Francisco Museum, her closest friends and relatives, as well as some other people who were in one way or another connected with her, meet at her workplace to celebrate the anniversary of her death. Rosemary has been tried, found guilty and executed ten years before for the murder of her husband Christopher. All the evidence at the time was overwhelmingly against her and no one, or almost no one, had any doubts that she committed the crime. Two men though were not so sure that she was guilty. The first one was Hank Zacharius, a journalist, who from the very beginning believed in her innocence and did everything he possibly could to help her, while the second was Jon Nunn, the detective who investigated the case and who was responsible at large for securing her conviction. That case has haunted his life ever since and now, as the anniversary of her death is approaching fast, he’s determined more than ever to put his doubts at rest. The truth will set you free, people say, but Nunn is not that certain that that applies in this case, since it was yesterday’s truths, the ones that he could sense but never dared to investigate that caused his fall. The road to redemption will prove long and painful for a lot of the characters in this unique, in a certain way, novel that travels the reader into the dark corners of some people psyches, but also to some special places in the world of art.
     The people who worked on this project are: Jeff Abbott, Lori Armstrong, Sandra Brown, Thomas Cook, Jeffery Deaver, Diana Gabaldon, Tess Gerritsen, Andrew F. Gulli, Peter James, J.A. Jance, Faye Kellerman, Raymond Khoury, John Lescrorat, Jeff Lindsay, Gayle Lynds, Phillip Margolin, Alexander McCall Smith, Michael Palmer, T. Jefferson Parker, Matthew Pearl, Kathy Reichs, Marcus Sakey, Jonathan Sandlofer, Lisa Scottoline, R.L. Stine, Marcia Talley, David Baldacci (introduction), Lamia J. Gulli (editing).

Book Review: Second Son by Lee Child

Second Son is not a novel but a short story, which came out only as an e-book last month.
     The year is 1974, and the then thirteen year old Jack Reacher, arrives with his family in Okinawa, Japan. His father is with the Marine Corps thus the family has to move often from one place to the next, wherever duty calls. Their arrival there though is nothing but accidental, since the Americans are already starting to realize that China has set some big plans into place, so they want to have some of their best personnel close by to keep an eye on the neighboring country’s ground.
     Jack and his big brother Joe do not receive the best of welcomes from the other kids living there. The neighborhood baddies are trying to intimidate them from the very beginning and Joe, ever the diplomat, does whatever he can to stop his hot-blooded younger brother from responding in the kind. And as if that’s not enough they also soon come to realize that they have to give entry exams in order to enroll at the local school, something that have never happened before. In the meantime their father is not having the best of times either, as some important and highly confidential documents go missing from his office.
     From one day to the next things seem to go from bad to worse, the troubles keep piling up, and in the end, as one would expect, it falls to Jack to try and work things out. And he does just that, in his very own special way.
     Through this story we get to learn a few things about how Jack Reacher, the force of nature that the readers love and, Child’s favorite hero came to be. Maybe the writing does not reach the high standards one would expect from the author, but it’s a fine read anyway.
     At the end of the story there is, as a bonus, the first chapter of the next Reacher novel, The Affair, which is going to come out in a few days time; and if we can judge from the excerpt here, we’d say that that will really be an explosive one.

The Dagger shortlists announced

This year's shortlists for the Gold Dagger, Ian Flemming's Steel Dagger and John Creasey's New Blood Dagger have been announced by The Crime Writers Association today, along with the ITV3 People's Bestseller Dagger shortlist. The nominated books in each category are:


CWA Gold Dagger shortlist:

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin
Snowdrops by AD Miller
The End of the Wasp Season by Denise Mina
The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton

CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger shortlist:

Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson
Cold Rain by Craig Smith
The Good Son by Michael Gruber
The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton

CWA John Creasey (new blood) Dagger:

Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson
Kiss Me Quick by Danny Miller
The Dead Woman of Juárez by Sam Hawken
The Dogs of Rome by Conor Fitzgerald

ITV3 People's Bestseller Dagger:


The Sixth Man by David Baldacci. Read my review here
Worth Dying For by Lee Child. Read my review here
Good As Dead by Mark Billingham
Dead Man's Grip by Peter James
Before the Poison by Peter Robinson

Book Review: Worth Dying For by Lee Child

Worth Dying For is the first novel by Lee Child that I’ve come to read, but I wouldn’t dare say that this is much of a surprise since there are so many good crime novels out there that no matter how hard you try you’ll never get to read them all.
     Anyway, the author, whose 61 Hours has been awarded the best crime novel of the year prize recently in the U.K., for one more time delivers to the fans an adventure by his famous hero, Jack Reacher. The action takes place during a two day period in an unnamed town in Nebraska. That’s exactly where Reacher arrives on a cold winter night and, as if from a habit, right away he gets involved in a case that has nothing to do with him. He just sits in the bar of the motel, doing nothing in particular, when the guy that sits next to him, a drunk who turns out to be the local doctor, receives a phone call from a woman called Eleanor Dunkan who says that her nose is broken. He refuses to pay her a visit because, to start with, he is bored, but also because he knows that things like that happen to Eleanor all the time, since her husband Seth is known to have a short temper and a long arm. Reacher though, who has no clue about what is really going on, persuades him to go and see the woman. He even offers to drive him there. So, off they go. And thus the adventure begins, as Reacher will soon find himself in the center of a local clan cyclone. The Dunkans, as he’s to find out are the absolute rulers in the region. They are the law. Everyone is afraid of them and they all detest them, but no one ever dares question their authority. Well, that’s about to change as Reacher will attack Seth and break his nose, provoking the wrath of his immediate family, with the exception of the wife of course.
     While the Dunkans will start making plans to take their revenge on him, he will little by little come to learn all there is to know about the infamous family; or just about all, since there’s a secret that no one apart from them knows. Reacher, who was just planning to pass through the town, will decide to stay for a little longer. And the longer he stays the worse the things get for the Dunkans, as he starts taking out one after the other their cronies, and thus making them feel all the more vulnerable, and so breathing hope into the lives of the poor people. The vagabonds sooner or later will come to realize that the more they deal with Reacher, the more casualties they’ll have to suffer. So left with no other option they ask for the help of their Italian brothers in crime, which doesn’t really seem to be such a good idea since a few Lebanese and Iranian guys will decide to drop in as well. What a fine mess! And it’s exactly this mess that Reacher will have to sort out with the help of a handful of people. Maybe taking a break in that town was not such a good idea after all.
     If Reacher reminds me of someone I’d say that would be Bruce Willis in the Die Hard movies. Reacher though is a real lone wolf, who doesn’t seem interested in creating tide bonds with people, no matter how much he cares for them. He only cares about the road. The road is his destination he seems to think, even though there’s a different image in his mind’s eye.
     This is a brilliant thriller, written in an almost cinematic way, which will surely offer great reading pleasure to all the fans of the genre.

Book Review: Bad Intentions by Karin Fossum

If you got tired of the fast paced American thrillers and the British mysteries, of the noir novels of the European south and even of the Man himself, Stieg Larsson, and you seek something different as far as crime fiction is concerned, then you’d better take a look at the work of Karin Fossum. Her novels have been translated in 25 languages so far and according to the press in the English speaking world, she’s "The Norwegian queen of crime."
     I must say that Fossum writes unlike any other crime author I’ve read so far. The mystery in Bad Intentions doesn’t seem so important to her, she hardly pays any attention to it. And that’s exactly why she kind of points out straight from the start how things are going to end up. However, by the time that happens, she embarks on a journey into the souls of her characters and the dark that lies within them, and through the dialogues she tries to share with the reader some philosophies of life. And finally, she points out that any given fact, even a simple, though tragic accident can change somebody’s life for good and, if he’s weak enough, even shred it to pieces.
     It all begins when three friends travel to the Dead Water Lake for the weekend. One of them, Jon, is on leave from a psychiatric facility where he’s been treated for depression. As it looks, a few months back, something happened, which made him lose his will for life; but exactly what we’re not to discover really soon. We’ll find out however that the three of them share a terrible secret. And it’s exactly that secret that led Jon initially to depression and after that to suicide; because yes, Jon will die. He’ll fall from the boat they are riding into the deep waters of the lake and simply vanish, right in front of his friends’ eyes. One of them, Reilly, will want to try and save him, while the other, Axel, will stop him from doing so, because he’s sure that there’s nothing he can do about it; the waters are deep and dangerous and if he dives in he’ll end up drowning himself, he says. So, with no other option available, they return to their cabin, and try to make up the story that they will tell the cops the next day in the morning, when they’ll call them. Axel seems to be on top of the situation, while Reilly is at a loss. He’s so badly shaken that if he doesn’t pull himself together they’ll blow their cover. Things though will go fine after all, as when they meet the cops, inspector Konrad Sejer and his partner Jacob Skarre, they’ll manage to stick to their story. But even if they sound truthful, Sejer has doubts about their sincerity. Something smells fishy to him and he’s determined to find out what.
     As time goes by nothing changes for Axel, who’s confident as ever in everything he does, but the same thing cannot be said about Reilly, who seeks refuge in the words of the Koran, which he’s started studying at just about the same time as Jon’s life took the turn for the worse. He and Axel continue to meet very often and usually their discussions have to do with just one subject: the death of their friend. Every now and then though they talk about their respective philosophies of life and that’s exactly when their differences come to light. They both meditate deeply about life and they both like to shoot aphorisms to make a point. “Imagine if people always told the truth, it wouldn’t work. Society would fall apart”. “If freedom is a torment, then it’s not worth much”. “How quickly it can change, the life we think has been marked out for us”. “Every life is unique and so is every death”. “Better starve free than be a fat slave” (old proverb).
     The dialogues cover a quite big part of the book; dialogues between friends, between cops, between mothers. Every single one of them seems to carry his or her own ghost. Some of them know to cope with it and some don’t.
     In the end the solution to the riddle concerning Jon’s death, will be provided by life itself, by nature, as one more body will appear on the surface of a different lake, and then the cops will only have to put two and two together to set things straight.
     This is fine novel that can be easily read and enjoyed by every fan of fiction; crime or otherwise.
     It comes out in the USA next week

Book Review: Live Wire by Harlan Coben

It’s been a few years since the last time I’ve read a novel by Harlan Coben, but I can still remember pretty well his favorite fictional character, sports agent Myron Bolitar, who seems to be moonlighting most of the time as a detective.
     In Live Wire we see Myron getting into a shitload of trouble, as he tries to help one of his clients, the ex tennis player Suzze T., to set things right in her life. The latter is now the proud owner of a tennis academy and with child, the father of which is an infamous musician called Lex Ryder. Or is it? Somebody has a different opinion on the matter and posts it on Suzze’s Facebook profile; and that’s when it all begins, as Lex, just after reading that puts on a disappearing act. Now Myron has to trace the tracks of the musician, as well as find out who’s behind the post. The first he can do easy enough, but when it comes to the second things get a little bit complicated, since the one to blame for all this is none other than his sister-in-law Kitty, someone he haven’t seen for sixteen years.
     When he catches a glimpse of her at a club from a distance, he feels like his world has been turned upside down. What was she doing there and what was her relationship with Lex, whom he also spotted at the same place? That’s the big question. And there are a few to follow, concerning the absence of his brother, the whys of her return to town and so on. He suspects that she has again fallen into drugs, but has no time to find out if that’s so, as she manages to escape with the help of the club’s bouncers, along with Lex.
     The more Myron looks into these interconnected cases, the more things get complicated. As he knocks on doors that do not open and asks questions that go unanswered, he finds himself heading from one dead end to the next. And something that starts as a simple investigation, as time goes by, turns into a fast paced chase, which through its various twists and turns brings to surface lots of secrets and lies. Myron, who feels like he’s a victim and a victimizer at the same time, will put his life at risk in order to bring the truth to light; whichever truth that might be. During his long and dangerous pursuit he’ll come face to face with bouncers and cops, with drug dealers and their minions, and to survive he’ll have to ask for help from his friends: Esperantza the brave, Big Cyndi the, er, big (whom somewhere the author likens to a Volkswagen Beetle) and Win, a muscular and trigger happy millionaire, who likes picking up fights, and nowadays keeps a couple of lovers that go by the names of You and Mee.
     This is one of those books you can read in one sitting, since the writer manages to keep the reader moving fast, page after page, giving him some laughs on the way, but also making him meditate, at least a bit, on the big subjects of love and humanity. And he’s not soft on his hero; he slaps him around every now and then and kind of pushes him to change his way of thinking.
     Crime literature at its best.

Theakston's Old Peculier award longlist has been announced

The long-listed books for the U.K.'s most generous crime fiction prize has been announced. It includes six novels by women which is a first for the prize. The winner will be revealed during the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate on the 21st of July. Here's the list:

Blacklands, by Belinda Bauer
From the Dead, by Mark Billingham
Blood Harvest, by S J Bolton
61 Hours, by Lee Child
Winterland, by Alan Glynn
A Room Swept White, by Sophie Hannah
The Woodcutter, by Reginald Hill
Rupture, by Simon Lelic
Sister, by Rosamund Lupton
Dark Blood, by Stuart MacBride
Fever of the Bone, by Val McDermid
Fifty Grand, by Adrian McKinty
Still BleedingStill Bleeding, Steve Mosby
The Twelve, by Stuart Neville
Random, by Craig Robertson
The Holy Thief, by William Ryan
The Anatomy of Ghosts, by Andrew Taylor
A Capital Crime, by Laura Wilson

Book Review: The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly

The Lincoln Lawyer, Mickey Haller, returns to action in The Fifth Witness, a courtroom drama. Haller is a successful defense attorney who used to make a living by working from the back sit of his car. However, things are changing fast in this unstable world of ours, and he has to change with them. In order to make ends meet, the good lawyer has turned to foreclosures, one of the most lucrative sectors of our times in the U.S. His practice is suddenly booming and, for the first time, he has to ask for help. So he hires a young woman, just out of the law school, which shows a lot of promise and rents an office.
     Haller doesn’t find foreclosures as interesting as crime defense, but he’s quite happy that business keeps pouring in. After all, saving people’s homes is not a bad thing. He misses though those rushes of adrenaline, which only crime trials can give. And what he misses is exactly what he’s going to get, as one of his customers, Lisa Trammel, is arrested for the murder of a banker.
     Trammel is a desperate woman, who’s run out of luck, when the economy collapsed. Her husband went away, leaving her behind with a kid to raise and a big mortgage to pay. As she’s about to lose her house she starts a campaign against the banks, which inevitably draws on her person a lot of publicity. Fame, nevertheless, will bring with it misfortune, since when a banker is killed she’ll be considered the prime suspect and arrested at once. All the evidence shows that she’s guilty. She used to demonstrate outside the back, she gave some people a hard time, a restraining order has been issued against her, and she was spotted by a witness very close to the scene of the crime.
     Haller, as expected, will rush to the rescue. He’ll take her case and find his way back into crime defense with a bang. He has no idea if she’s innocent or guilty, he doesn’t even want to know; all he cares about is winning the case for her. The thing is though that Trammel herself is doing everything she can to make his life difficult. Irrationality seems to be her modus operandi. She does almost everything he tells her not to and then some more, and as time goes by the less he trusts her. He hates himself for working for a customer he doesn’t like, and whom he started to despise. But that’s part of the job and he knows it.
     The Fifth Witness is not just a courtroom drama; it’s a story of ambitions as well: the ambitions of a lawyer winning a big trial; of a prosecutor who does not hesitate for a moment to play dirty in order to reach her goals; of a woman that just loves to be at the spotlight; and of a man who will stop at nothing to have things his way.
     The story moves at a great pace, the action is almost nonstop and all the twists and turns are nicely done. Most of the characters seem to be at a dead end or another. Their love connections are failing and their existential beliefs come into question. Their everyday lives are illuminated and they don’t look too good at all.
     Maybe, just maybe, this novel is the best Michael Connelly brought out since The Poet. A great read.

Book Review: Edge by Jeffery Deaver

Is Edge going to be a stand-alone novel for Corte, the hero of Jeffery Deaver’s latest outing? Well, if I can judge from the character I’d say no. Corte, plain, simple Corte, seems to have in him a lot of stories, too much juice, and I really wouldn’t mind if he came to replace Kathryn Dance who, unlike Lincoln Rhyme, his other favorite hero, seems to have run out of steam already.
     Corte works at a witness protection service, a private company. His latest assignment is to offer protection to Ryan Kessler, a decorated police officer, who seems to be the target of a yet unknown hitman. He and his family seem, for no apparent reason, to be in a life-threatening situation and Corte has to work really hard to save the day. But he has more than one reason for taking this assignment, since the man posing the threat is none other than Frank Loving, an expert interrogator and remorseless killer, who was behind the murder of Corte’s mentor, a few years back.
     The two men, during the long and fascinating course of the story, seem to involve themselves into a game of cat and mouse, exchanging roles time and again. As each of them works hard to get into the head of the other and guess his next moves, the pace gains momentum and the twists and turns just keep the reader guessing about what’s coming next. However, Loving definitely has the upper hand in this game and Corte, even though he hates him, finds himself every now and then, admiring the criminal for the analytical capabilities of his twisted brain; capabilities that are not quite out of his league since he’s quite familiar with them; an extra bonus of playing strategic games.
     As time goes by, painstakingly slow for the Kessler family, the heat keeps rising and a lot of secrets and lies come out in the open. As it seems one of them has a secret history, while the rest are so stubborn and obviously clueless that it looks like they want to die. Thus Corte, having no another option, just needs to rush from the one place to the other, in order to keep the fragile bonds between the members of the family tight, while at the same time trying to find Loving, and also figure out who’s the person working so hard to get him fired. In this fierce and lonesome battle, he only has two people he can turn to: Dubois, his highly intelligent assistant, and his boss, who despite everything still has his back.
     From the first explosive moment until the very last, everything seems to hang from a weak thread: Corte’s career; the Kessler family’s survival; the wishes for revenge and redemption of some of the heroes. Deaver looks deep into the psyches of these people and what he sees is a world made of glass that could explode and turn into pieces at any given moment. The psychological portraits he creates are nicely crafted, and the characters really seem to come alive on paper; with all their faults and their never-ending passions.
     Perhaps this is one of the very few books by the writer that could make a good movie. His world is not easy to adopt for the big screen, but maybe, just maybe, this is about to change.
     Deaver’s new book will be coming out soon. The title is Carte Blanche and with it, as you probably already know, the good author will be taking a free dive into the 007 world.