September 2016 : What Are You Reading?

Finished The Bourne Identity. Meh. Dated.

Started Lock & Mori, recommended by our daughter. Sherlock and Moriarity (female) as teens.

So-so read. Found it in the lunchroom at work. The Sisters by Claire Douglas

reading Apocalypse Baby which is an unconventional crime novel set in France, about the disappearance of a teen girl from a privileged but troubled family.

Nearly finished with an ARC for Come Twilight by Tyler Dilts. It is fantastic! I don't read a ton of contemporary settings, so it made me laugh when he mentions using the Waze app, etc. That's not the reason to read it though, it's just a random thing that popped into my head while writing this. Contemporary thriller/mystery with a main character I really like.

Currently reading The Dead Place by Stephen Booth, which is set in The Peak District in England.

I read Dead Aim by Ridley Pearson (aka Wendell McCall), set in Idaho. I am now reading some Crispin short stories, Beware of the Trains.

Latest in the Inspector Tom Tyler mystery series: Dead Ground In Between, by Maureen Jennings. Really like this series, and this one is no exception.

Just finished Blake Crouch's Wayward Pines trilogy, a sci-fi/thriller hybrid. Quite the page-turner, although not as thought-through and polished as his Dark Matter.

Started Judgment Cometh (And That Right Soon) by Scott Pratt.

Wrapping up The Game; one of the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series. Read it years ago and it didn't make much of an impression at the time, I'm paying more attention now and bumping up my opinion a noodge or two.

I'm reading The Trespasser by Tana French. The latest by one of my favorite authors.

Ghost of a Chance by Simon R. Green
#1 A Ghost Finder novel
2 1/2 ★s

I mostly really enjoyed this book. JC Chance leads a team of Ghost Finders for the secret Carnackie Institute, an organization which protects England from paranormal disasters. Happy is the team's telepath and pill popper. Melody is the tech support. Something has gone horribly wrong in London's Underground Tube system. Passengers have disappeared by the hundreds and a ghost train tears through the tunnels. While investigating, the team meats up with Kim, a young woman who was murdered at the Tube station just that morning. JC figures that she might be involved with this haunting. To make things worse The Project ( evil nemesis of the Institute) has also sent 2 vile agents to assassinate JC and company. This is where my liking of the book diminishes. One of the Project agents is a mad scientist/doctor who does disgusting experiments on animals an humans. He has a computer topped with a cat's head. The animal is sentient and in constant agony. I cannot abide animal abuse, and even though this is fiction, it makes my stomach churn. It ruined a perfectly good story for me. I may read more of this series as I like the quirky "good guy" characters. But, if I come across more unnecessary animal abuse, that will be the end of this series for me. Time will tell.

Loved this one, very suspenseful: Dead Scared by S. J. Bolton

I am reading The Z Murders by J. Jefferson Farjeon.

Reading Bloody Mary by J. A. Konrath.

This one only sort of fits into the category of thriller, though there are crimes and mystery involved: Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberley McCreight. Couldn't put it down, though!

Picked up a dollar copy of The Nicholas Blake Treasury, Volume 2; new author to me. I'm sorting my way through an enjoyable cast of characters at a 1930's prep school in A Question of Proof. Enjoying it thoroughly.

>18 gmathis: I am planning on reading A Question of Proof next month - I like Blake's mysteries :)

The tone of the story is funny and kind of campy now...I wonder if that was how it was intended to come out 80 years ago!

>20 gmathis: The few I have read have definitely had a touch of humor to them so I suspect it was intentionally campy.

I have finished rereading via audiobook one of my favorite Christie mysteries -- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Still love it!

Tooth and Nail by Ian Rankin. His 3rd Rebus novel-I've read them all out of order over the years and somehow had missed this one.

>22 ted74ca: This is one of my favourites in the series.

I started listening to Nothing Short of Dying by Erik Storey.

I'm reading Death of a Prankster by M C Beaton.

I spent Sunday reading The Track of Sand, another very enjoyable Inspector Montalbano mystery. Now I am listening to Grover Gardner narrate the first Lew Archer book, The Moving Target.

A Darker Place Laurie R. King This is more suspense than mystery. Good if you like a lot of psychology. Protagonist specializes in investigating cults, with varying success. This is a little out of my normal field; I usually go for police procedurals and/or Nordic noir.

Just started The Cassandra Sanction by Scott Mariani, #12 in the Ben Hope Series.

A co-worker has all the Rebus novels, so I've been reading or re-reading some of the older ones. Read Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin this week as well as a DI Helen Grace novel Little Boy Blue by M.J. Arlidge. I hadn't read any of the latter series before, and I can tell I'm at a disadvantage starting out so far along in the series, but I wasn't overly impressed. Maybe I'll try finding the first one in the series and go from there.

Flipping back and forth between two: A Bitter Truth from the Bess Crawford series and There's Trouble Brewing, second in my 3-in-1 Nicholas Blake volume. Not making much progress on either, because I like them both so much, the indecision is hampering me! (Surely this does not happen to you.)

Born of Illusion by Teri Brown
3 1/2 ⭐️s
What a fun quick read. Didn't realize it was a YA, but it wasn't filled with the angst of typical YA stuff. The main character, a young woman of 16, lives in 1920s New York, in a pleasant apartment above an old cantankerous gentleman. She and her mother are mediums, and do high end shows 4 times per week. She does a magic show and her mom does the psychic stuff. However, her mom is a complete fraud. The girl, however, is not. She has visions of the future, can channel the dead and can read emotions. She's kept these talents hidden all of her life. Oh, did I mention that she can pick a mean lock, and is rumored to be Houdini's daughter? Professional intrigue, kidnappings, and romance abound. This wasn't quite what Zi expected, but a fun read nonetheless.

I have read a cozy, Heaven Preserve Us - pretty good but I am not rushing out to get more.

I needed a familiar, comfort-type read, so I started The Wings of the Sphinx by Andrea Camilleri. I really enjoy this series!

I have been reading a lot of Poirot stories at this point. Agatha Christie is an excellent writer

Finished the first Nigel Strangeways book, A Question of Proof. A fun academic/school mystery from 1938.

My latest read is by Chris Bohjalian whom I've just discovered this year; I've been really enjoying his work. This one is very different from his others though, more of a ghost, psychological thriller suspense novel, with shades of Stephen King and Rosemary's Baby and the Stepford Wives. Very good, though-I couldn't read it at night. The book is The Night Strangers. And warning, for those of you who are pilots or have pilots in the family, it includes very graphic descriptions of a plane crash. I was going to recommend this book to my daughter, but then remembered in time that her husband is an airline pilot...

Just finished indulging in a reread of the third Archy McNally novel, McNally's Risk, by Lawrence Sanders.

Next up in mystery is Gideon's Art, by J.J. Marric.

When the Music's Over by Peter Robinson is an excellent police procedural except for the unnecessarily detailed description of the body of a young, female murder victim who had been subjected to horrific brutality. I very nearly put the book aside when I encountered this scene early in the story, but because I am reasonably familiar with the author's work I suspected that there would not be much more of this dwelling on the very grim. I was right and am glad I proceeded.... I'm fast approaching the final chapters and still don't know who done it (though I have my suspicions).

I am listening to Grover Gardner narrate The Chill…

Just started The Quiet Game.

>40 Andrew-theQM: I loved The Quiet Game!

>41 rosalita: I have heard lots of good things, and enjoyed the start. :)

I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh. Loved it!

Ah, Treachery by Ross Thomas. Brilliant as his stuff always is.

In the last month or so I have read, Without Trace, by Simon Booker,
The Bookman's Wake, by John Dunning,
Bryant & May: Strange Tide, by Christopher Fowler, and have nearly finished Deadly Nightshade, by Elizabeth Daly.

The Bryant & May was the best 4/5 - love that series.

I'm reading the second Hugo Marston mystery by Mark Pryor, The Crypt Thief, and enjoying it. Hugo's an engaging character. The Bookseller is the first one.

I'm currently reading another Montalbano -- The Potter's Field.

>47 leslie.98: Read a number in this series, but not this one. Enjoy!

>47 leslie.98:, >48 Andrew-theQM: I love the Montalbano series. He's got a new one coming out in the U.S. in November.

>47 leslie.98: >49 jnwelch: Still writing these at 91 is impressive!

>50 Andrew-theQM: Agreed! And the quality stays so high.

Finished The Last Descent: A Travel Writer Mystery by Jeff Soloway and I'm sorry to say that my initial impression was pretty close: "...I'm finding the depiction of the protagonist's hand-wringing over his love affairs to be overly melodramatic." Unfortunately, it actually turned out worse than that. There were a couple of places where I wanted to throw the book against the wall, except that it was an ebook on a Kindle and that would have wrecked an entire library!

I still think the Travel Writer series has good potential. Soloway is good - his plots keep my interest and he crafts his images inventively. I think he just made a mistake changing the protagonist's character from a cynical snarky veteran journalist as was he depicted in the previous Travel Writer novel to being a weak, unstable and love-besotted character in The Last Descent. Soloway had a foil playing that role in the earlier story; I don't think it works as well when the protagonist takes it on.

Next up: Murder in the Generative Kitchen by Meg Pontecorvo which combines two of my loves - mysteries and science fiction. I'm looking forward to reading it!
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>52 TempleCat: I really liked Murder in the Generative Kitchen. I had one small complaint but I won't spoil it for you.