Tag: books

Book Review: A Cannibal In Vegas

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Neon Prey is a thriller from John Sandford that sounds more thrilling than it turned out to be for me. It’s another in his long-running series featuring Lucas Davenport, who is now a US Marshal on the hunt for a killer who actually feasts on human flesh.

A freelance enforcer for organized crime named Clayton Deese skips out on bail after a job that goes wrong for him. During the search, bodies are discovered on his Louisiana property. It is discovered that Deese is also a cannibal and on the run. Lucas Davenport and his team of United States Marshals join in the manhunt which almost gets him killed. Deese is traced to Las Vegas with his group of miscreants, and he turns out to be cleverer than Davenport anticipated.

I have read some Sandford novels before, but I had a hard time getting into this one. I think part of my problem is that nothing feels all that distinctive about Davenport. He’s just another determined cop who maintains his cool no matter what. I did respect that he sort of didn’t dwell on the injury he suffers in the first part of the novel that took him months to complete his recovery. He just basically got back into the fray once he got himself back in shape.

Sandford is an efficient writer, but nothing really pops off the page for me. Even the reprehensible cannibal didn’t really keep my interest. I was just ready to finish the thing and move on to the next book.

Anyway, Sandford has his devotees, and that’s fine. I may return to his works, but it will be a while. I may just prefer his other well-known protagonist, Virgil Flowers. Anyway, this was a disappointing port of call in my unending literary journey.

I will return to a more classic crime novelist who wrote a novel that had two pretty good screen adaptations. I am about to revisit Cape Fear by John D. MacDonald in its original presentation.

Film Review: Meet The Thursday Murder Club

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

The Thursday Murder Club is a charming mystery film that manages to stay pretty faithful to the novel written by Richard Osman. The screenplay is written by Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote. Chris Columbus is the director of this piece which stars Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie as a group of retired residents in a village who meet on Thursdays to review cold murder cases. David Tennant, Tom Ellis, Naomis Ackie, and Daniel Mays are also included in the cast.

A small group of residents in a rather swanky retirement village meet once a week to review cold cases. Mirren plays Elizabeth, who once worked for MI6. Brosnan plays a rather brash former union leader named Ron. Kingsley is the empathic psychiatrist, Ben, and Celia Imrie rounds out the group as the recently recruited retired nurse named Joyce.

They are examining a case from 1973 in which a woman was apparently shoved out the window. While the small club is searching for new information, one of the owners of Coopers Chase is murdered nearby. The Thursday Murder Club have their first fresh case; however, they also learn that there are plans to redevelop their village into more luxurious apartments. Not only is there a killer lurking; the club has to find a way to save their new homes.

It’s hard to go wrong with the main cast. I am less familiar with Imrie, but she did great alongside the more familiar names such as Mirren, Brosnan, and Kingsley. Imrie may not have quite the same name recognition as her costars, but she is certainly no slouch when it comes to her charisma and ability. She certainly does have a lengthy filmography herself, so she should have no problem continuing her career.

I had read the book fairly recently, and the movie does follow it fairly closely.

Brosnan and Mirren are as reliably charismatic as ever, while Kingsley still maintains that quiet, yet powerful dignity that also makes him compelling.

In spite of some of this being somewhat of a comedy, there are plenty of somewhat poignant moments that are handled quite well.

Even though I knew the solution to the crime, the film may be worth a rewatch to just admire a group of long-time actors who can still appear to be at the top of their game.

I was just pleased that there were not enough alterations from the source material to evoke real annoyance.

Book Review: A Master Class In Murder

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Murder She Wrote: A Time for Murder by Jessica Fletcher and Jon Land was likely written solely by the latter since the charming Mrs. Fletcher is a fictional character from the television series.

This is my first foray into this long-running novel series. Of course, I was and still am a watcher of the television series that starred the late, and truly great Angela Lansbury.

Jessica Fletcher is invited to a retirement party of a former colleague from her teaching days. She is also interviewed for a high school newspaper; however, the young woman who met with her is subsequently murdered. Jessica and the sheriff in Cabot Cove, Maine discover a connection to a previous murder over decades in the past in which Jessica had her first exposure to amateur sleuthing. This was back before she became a bestselling novelist, and her husband was still living. The readers sort of get two murder plots for the price of one here.

It’s a fun, easy read for the most part. I did have some trouble conjuring Angela Lansbury’s portrayal in my mind’s eye with some of the dialogue and scenes. written by Land. Land also did not worry too much about age discrepancies or anything since the television series ended well before the Internet and ubiquitous cell phone use. That was a little distracting, but I was able to set that aside for the most part and enjoy the story.

Obviously, this isn’t really great literature, but it was a fun diversion. The novel series has yet to really slow down. This particular novel was published in 2019 and was by no means the first one. If I feel like revisiting Mrs. Fletcher’s exploits in print, I will have plenty of options. There is actually little doubt that I will do just that.

Until then, I am on to a grittier reading indulgence with Mickey Spillane’s The Killing Man.

Book Review: Unlucky In Love

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

The Inmate is another implausible, yet strangely compelling, thriller from Freida McFadden.

A single mother named Brooke Sullivan has returned to her hometown with her son and moved into her recently deceased parents’ house. She gets a job as a nurse practitioner at a nearby prison where a murderous ex-boyfriend is incarcerated. Brooke reconnects with a childhood friend who was also almost killed by the seemingly sociopathic Shane Nelson. The strange reunion occurs, and Brooke has some reason to doubt her memories of that traumatic night eleven years earlier. Shane is in prison because of her courageous testimony, but Brooke is suddenly doubting herself, especially when another murder occurs.

The novel is written in first person from Brooke’s point of view and often alternates between the present day and eleven years earlier.

McFadden seems to; rely on quite a bit of coincidence as usual. Brooke’s judgment is kind of questionable, which is tempting for me to have limited sympathy. It then occurs to me that my judgment in romantic relationships hasn’t exactly been all that stellar either, although I have not been involved in any gruesome murders, just to be clear.

There are a few twists that are a little hard to buy into, but McFadden did manage to keep me interested in spite of my admittedly mild exasperation.

McFadden is an imaginative and pretty competent writer. I have no real objection to her prose style because the story does flow pretty easily.

In spite of my skepticism I experienced, I did like the novel overall. I am still kind of new to McFadden’s works, but I have enjoyed the few that I have read.

Next up is something which is complete nostalgic fluff. I have decided to try out one of the Murder, She Wrote novels which have been published for many years now. Jessica Fletcher has a new murder to solve while taking a trip down memory lane as she and Jon Land relate the events of A Time for Murder.

Book Review: There Is Only One Win Who Matters

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Win is a pretty good thriller written by Harlan Coben and features a character usually seen in the Myron Bolitar novels. Winston Horne Lockwood III gets to tell his own story here. He is the extremely wealthy, hedonistic financial consultant with a knack for avenging the misdeeds and abuses committed by others. He is charming, yet ruthless. He has few friends but has had many lovers.

Win is met by FBI agents who take him to an apartment which is occupied by a corpse. He does not know that dead man, but he does recognize a rare painting and a suitcase that were stolen from his family home a couple of decades previously. His cousin was also abducted and assaulted around that time, and the perpetrators were never found. Win starts his own investigation which brings him to a confrontation with family secrets and a notorious incident of domestic terrorism which is also connected to his missing heirlooms. He does have a hefty fortune to help him unearth these secrets, but he also has a unique disinterest in playing by the rules. Win’s search for long overdue justice gets the attention of those whose ruthlessness and desperation may cause him to face his own mortality in ways that may surprise even him.

Win is kind of an antihero one would hope to have in their corner in the most dangerous of times. It’s a pretty good mystery with q few unexpected twists. Win operates in a pretty fascinating level of society. I liked the way Coben threads two or three seemingly unrelated atrocities together.

Win’s almost constant crowing about his wealth and how much he enjoys the advantages is refreshing and terribly amusing.

Coben is a consistent and solid writing talent. Coben does expose a depth in Win that seems so rarely glimpsed when he is alongside Myron. I like Myron well enough, but I am glad that Coben resisted the temptation to include him in some kind of literary cameo.

I also think that writing this in first person was a good choice made by the author.

It’s a good read, and I wouldn’t mind another novel told from Win’s perspective.

The unending literary journey brings me to Louise Penny’s Still Life.

Book Review: A Forbidden Romance And An Even More Forbidden Murder

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

A Right to Die by Rex Stout is a mystery featuring Nero Wolfe and is apparently some attempt to address the civil rights movement going on when this novel was published in 1964.

A black man firsts visits Wolfe and his assistant, Archie Goodwin, to ask for help in looking into a white woman who has become engaged to his son. Wolfe and Paul Whipple had met once before, and that chance encounter made an impression on Whipple. When Wolfe decides to see what he could come up with, the young women is brutally murdered, and the young man is on the hook. Wolfe is convinced that Dunbar Whipple is innocent, and he has no shortage of suspects to investigate as he attempts to make sure that true justice prevails.

This isn’t one of the more memorable entries into the Nero Wolfe series, but it isn’t bad. The plot doesn’t get overshadowed by the cultural issues that serves as the backdrop. Wolfe’s lack of racial animosity seems more of a matter of practicality more than any real sympathy or sentiment.

There is still the familiar humor stemming from Archie and Wolfe sort of bickering, which is one of the draws for me to this series. This series is a somewhat unique because the narrator and assistant to the lead detective isn’t really in awe of his deductive abilities and is willing to give him a hard time when his ego seems to be getting a bit too inflated. Archie also has the street smarts and charm to gather the information Wolfe needs to hit upon the correct answer to these problems that come to their door.

Even if this particular novel failed to make an impression with me, the series as a whole is one that I would recommend for mystery readers with a sense of nostalgia. Rex Stout is dubbed as “the grand master of detection” on the cover. I don’t know about that, but it’s still pretty fun to indulge in the exploits of the brilliant, pompous Nero Wolfe, and his snarky, debonair assistant, Archie Goodwin.

In my next literary indulgence, the sidekick gets the spotlight. Windsor Horne Lockwood III is the ruthless, yet loyal friend to Harlan Coben’s creation, Myron Bolitar. This time, he has his own story to tell, simply entitled Win.

Book Review: Winter’s Lost Love

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

A Woman Underground is a pretty interesting mystery novel by Andrew Klavan and is the fourth installment of his Cameron Winter series.

Cameron Winter is a university professor, who has a past as a dangerous government operative. He also has a peculiar tendency to get involved in the investigation of unusual crimes. He is not exactly psychic, but he has a gift of imagining how something actually occurred when it seems to baffle others who look into these misdeeds. Winter calls this tendency “a strange habit of mind”.

Winter has been seeing a therapist for a while due to overwhelming loneliness and guilt over some of what he had to do for the service of his country. He is one of the most dangerous men on the planet and also one of the most sensitive.

Winter starts to unravel a bit more when he believes that the first woman he ever loved tried to reach out to him because she was in danger. He comes across a book seems to spell out what her life may have been like in recent years. In the meantime, Winter is trying to convince a colleague to not leave his wife over some fantasy involving a hot student. During his therapy sessions, Winter discusses a previous mission to Turkey that went sideways in all kinds of ways including betrayal and very troubling revelations about those for whom he worked.

Winter has been a tortured soul since his first appearance, but he is even more troubled than usual, which is a state of mind that could get him killed as he searches for the lost woman who meant the most to him.

Klavan is a pretty thoughtful and talented writer who weaves his story through events of the character’s past. There is a pretty established pattern on how this Winter novels unfold, but the main plots are usually quite intriguing.

There are times when Klavan’s exposition seems to slow down the action a bit more than I would prefer, however it didn’t discourage me all that much.

There are some interesting twists in the story that I did not predict. Winter’s strange habit of mind got directed to a crisis that I wasn’t expecting, which was pleasantly jarring. He’s probably going to remain a pretty melancholic guy for some time in the series, but it was a bit troubling to read about his near complete mental unraveling. I did give a mental cheer when some of his usual sharpness started returning.

Klavan accomplished his goal, at least with me, in that I am most interested in where the next installment will take this complicated, curious professor with his strange habit of mind.

Next up, I will check in with the detectives of the 87th Precinct in Ed McBain’s Kiss.

Doctor Who Audio Review: Reflections And Invasions

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

The Mirror Matter is a Doctor Who audio novel produced by Big Finish Productions and turns out to be not as riveting as I had hoped. It is written by Kate Orman and performed by Jon Culshaw.

Mirror Matter is a hypothetical counterpart to real matter, but this story proposes to inject some intelligence into the strange phenomenon.

This adventure takes place in the early days of the Third Doctor’s era where he is working with UNIT alongside Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Liz Shaw not long after his exile by the Time Lord.

Strange spores have been detected, and the Doctor is able to identify it as Mirror Matter, which has been lurking on Earth for billions of years. He realizes that this Mirror Matter is not native to this planet, and the spores will change the nature of the planet and humanity on a fundamental level. There are also other human forces that want to take control of the Mirror Matter, but the Doctor knows that is not going to end well for anyone.

Culshaw, as usual, does a fantastic narration, which is enhanced by his impersonation of the late Jon Pertwee, who originally portrayed this version of the Doctor. Even if the story is a bit on the dull side, Culshaw seems to always help it make much more bearable with his enthusiasm and delivery of the prose.

The action depicted was a little hard to imagine at times. Also, I guess I had some trouble being interested in the concept of Mirror Matter, which is supposedly a real scientific idea.

Orman has been involved periodically with Doctor Who for years writing novels. She is an interesting writer, for the most part. There is nothing terrible about her writing style, but I just had a hard time staying interested in the plot.

I have plenty of memories of enjoying Orman’s previous works, and I expect that she will win me back.

As for Jon Culshaw, it is always great hear him coming through my speakers and this was no exception in spite of my other misgivings about this release.

I am still all for Big Finish, audio novels, and the Third Doctor. Hopefully, the next installment will be more engaging.

Book Review: The Family Of Madness

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Helter Skelter is probably the definitive volume that sheds light on the crimes masterminded by Charles Manson in 1969 which resulted in the brutal slayings of several people, including actress Sharon Tate. Vincent Bugliosi, the lead prosecutor of Manson in the subsequent trial of him and several of his so-called Family, wrote the book alongside Curt Gentry.

Bugliosi’s account of his investigation and gathering of the evidence needed to secure the convictions is pretty compelling. He and his co-author do a decent job of laying out the facts of the case and Bugliosi’s impressions of Manson and the insanity of his Family’s motivations to commit their heinous murders.

The book is a tough read, but there was a lot of facts and issues that needed to be presented. The account is quite thorough, but it does drag a little at times. That is probably not really the authors’ fault though since there was so much going on with putting the case together.

The book is also a pretty good lesson on what some prosecutors have to go through to put a case together. It was instructive to have Bugliosi’s perspective as he relates how he gathered and organized the evidence.

It was a bit of a chore to get through, but it was worth the effort. The murders planned by Charles Manson was a huge media sensation starting in 1969, and it is quite interesting to get an inside account of the personalities involved and the trial preparation.

I don’t know if saying I enjoyed this piece is all that appropriate, but I am glad to have read it. Bugliosi and Gentry do a pretty good job of laying out the details of a what turned out to be a terribly complicated case.

Next up, I am going to dig into Andrew Klavan’s A Woman Underground.

Book Review: Not The Most Welcoming Inn

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier is a gothic thriller first published in 1936 and reads a little easier than expected in spite of the typical lengthy exposition of its time.

The protagonist is Mary Yellan, a young woman whose mother has recently died. Mary is on her way to Jamaica Inn where she is to be reunited with her aunt. Aunt Patience is married to a man who is quote a brute and involved in some unsavory activities on the moors in Cornwall. Uncle Joss begins the new arrangement by bullying and intimidating Mary, who feels duty bound to remain at the inn to protect her aunt. Mary meets her uncle’s brother and becomes attracted to him against her better judgment. A peculiar vicar is also lurking around is may not be the ally he presents himself to be.

Mary gets a close look at what her uncle does to supplement his income and has even more reason to wonder how long she has before her life is on the line.

Du Maurier is best known for her novel Rebecca which was published later. She does have a distinctive eloquence in her prose, and I can appreciate how she became so respected.

The character of Joss Merlyn, the abusive uncle, comes across as a bit campy in his bluster. It got a little difficult at times to imagine him as authentic. The tension between Joss and Mary was quite compelling in any case.to read.

Du Maurier also does well with describing the hostile and oppressive environment surrounding the inn. Sometimes it seems to go on a little long, but one must also understand the time in which that was written and what was expected versus the short attention span of today’s audience.

This is a little bit of a departure from my usual reading interests, but I was glad to find this one.

Next up, I am taking on the Big Kahuna of the true crime genre. I am delving into the intricacies of the Charles Manson case as told by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry with Helter Skelter.