Steve Gross

Pretty standard thriller except the protagonist is not a man of honor - he steals, he lies.

Decent FBI-type mystery. The author shows a lot of potential but is still pretty raw. Lots of angst, flashbacks, ideas that are all repetitious and not very interesting.

One of those books that changes everything you think you know. The author makes these points:
1) In 1790, Russia started taking over Poland
2) Polish magnate-owned towns had all kinds of people and lots of Jews who ran businesses and fairs
3) Russian nationalism set in around 1840, effectively destroying the towns, which then became the dirt-poor shtetls that modern Jews think are beloved
Lots of new archival material. Very interesting if you like Eastern European history.

This book suffers from all books that espouse a Documentary Hypothesis; namely, the lack of any evidence whatsoever. Everything is conjecture. On top of that, the author often contradicts himself in consecutive sentences. The writing is muddled. Stick to RE Friedman if you want a well-written story.

I thought this was a YA book my 13 year old son could read. The protagonists are three high school kids. However, there are adult situations and a slight amount of inappropriate language. Interesting but you apparently need to read the entire trilogy to get any kind of resolution.

Not very sophisticated writing - pretty much at the earnest high school level.

Real Victorian fiction, filled with long discursive speeches and obsessed with Death. A good adjective for this book is macabre.

Most of the book is really about the guests, not the behind the scenes working of the Tonight Show. The author comes off as somewhat self-important and self-focused. No one is buying this book to learn more about Dave Berg.

This book will tell you a lot about how movies are actually made.

If the accounts in this book are accurate, the Rebbe was one of the most amazing men who ever lived. Good mussar reading.

Slightly better than average thriller.

The best Sherlock Holmes pastiche I have ever read.

This is the kind of book that you need to take a break every few chapters and let your anger subside over the behavior of the government officials that allowed under a 1000 Nazis to emigrate to America. The author does a good job of untangling literally hundreds of characters and many different threads, some still classified.

I was looking forward to the hype I had read about this book. Unfortunately, the author constantly chose to make his points by telling political anecdotes, mostly anti-Republican. He also writes in a snarky, arrogant manner. I wonder if he'll look back in twenty years and be proud of this.

I rarely read these Science vs Religion books because I don't think that either of them has much to say about the other. Aczel has large axes to grind against Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss. If you want a picture of the current state of the art, look here.

I have to agree with the reviewers who say that nothing really happens in this book. None of the characters are likeable. Often amusing.

Any Reacher is a good Reacher but this was not particularly Reacher-y.

The first official Hercule Poirot pastiche. Writing in another author's style is hard to do and the author does not succeed here. Poirot is too talky and too British and not much happens. Skip it.

This is the third book in the Freakonomics series and deserves to be the last. This franchise is out of gas. While the book is around 200 pages, even that seems to long for a collection of bromides and anecdotes that don't say much that is new or startling.

Standard Rollins Sigma thriller, which is a compliment. Usual potpourri of science, adventure, exotic locales.

Better than usual, although all the usual suspects appear.

Average thriller

Fictional retelling of several Houdini stories and legends, interwoven with the story of the protagonist.

Gripping techno-thriller.

This book reminds me of a computer Adventure game. You talk to one person who gives you a clue about a second person; talk to the second person who gives you a key to a locker. In the locker you find...
Well, you get the idea.