Joseph Zizza
Weak, belated sequel to the very entertaining Trent's Last Case. Completely lacks the sparkle of that book, constantly going off on tangents both unrelated to the “case” and uninteresting to this reader. The denouement is unconvincing and staged in a ludicrous way. The book felt dated in a way that transcended its period setting, and left the impression that it would have felt dated even in 1936. It is hard to say whether the participation of co-author Walter Allen helped or hindered, but there is an unevenness of tone which betrays the dual authorship. Some of it was entertaining but it was never sustained beyond short bursts. Very disappointing to a big fan of Trent's Last Case.
Easily the worst Reacher in the series, this novella puts a 16/17 year old Reacher in Manhattan, behaving EXACTLY as if he were the 35 year old Reacher we all know and love as the cape-less Superman. He is more knowledgeable, level-headed, mature and street savvy than any action hero you've read about, but he's a teenager looking for girls in NYC while enroute to visit his big brother. Utterly lacking credibility, it's best redeeming feature is its brevity.
This book isn't perfect. Sometimes it glosses over events that would be hard to explain convincingly. Other times it jumps forward too abruptly. But I loved it despite the flaws. It tells the story of a man who dies of a heart attack at 43, then wakes in the past at 18, with all the memories he had before he died. This beginning unfolds in many unexpected ways, but ultimately it is a life-affirming and moving story, one I wish I'd read when I was younger, so I could benefit from the insights and even wisdom it contains. If you have ever wondered what it might have been like, if only...–then read this book.
A weak and unconvincing conclusion to what started as a very promising trilogy. I liked the characters and the setting as well as the story in the first entry (The Final Empire), followed Vin's character development avidly in the second (Well Of Ascension), but found little to enjoy in the senseless re-animation of Elend and the thoroughly unimaginative battle against “Ruin”, who came across as a cartoon villain from a children's story. The narrative ran out of steam, the characters became flat and did not develop, and the good work of the first two volumes was undone by this very disappointing third volume.
Started out well enough, with a strong atmosphere of mystery and dread, but just wore out its welcome with repetitive, unconvincing encounters with groups who were either white hats or black hats. The starkly Manichean perspective which oversimplifies a complex world fails to engage over an extended period and eventually caused me to lose interest. There are some evocative passages, and Bennett can write well, but I found this considerably less successful than “A Company Man”, which had various shades of grey, bringing its depiction of the world closer to the complexity of my perception and experience of it. After all the hype I've read about Robert Jackson Bennett, this book left me disappointed.
This is a different kind of fantasy, a fantasy of dislocation and uncertainty, set in a near-contemporary time, in a place where two cities from different countries simultaneously occupy the same space (or do they?) and the events that bring the paradox into sharp relief and test the mettle of a police inspector and his ability to deal with the individuals who police the rule about not acknowledging one city while living in the other. Absolutely fascinating.
Wildly overrated “novel” about a bunch of beatniks travelling around and having “adventures”, mostly involving drugs and sex and being liberated and putting it “to the man”. Pathetically trying to be cool and irreverent but coming off immature, like rebellious teenagers. I don't understand why people rate this book highly. It's not much and what there is is repeated again and again.
Steve Hamilton's latest book in the likable Alex McKnight series is a very weak entry. The falling-off in plot inventiveness is shocking, even for a twenty-first century crime novel. It's all been done before, so what matters is how well it's done, and making it feel as if it is new. Hamilton fails here, delivering a cliche plot with no wit, style or additional “oomph” to set it apart from a half dozen or more crime novels with the same plot device. The background is interesting, as usual, and Hamilton is clearly aware of how much the Michigan Upper Peninsula setting affects readers' affection for his novels, but there is nothing new here. I've read it before, written better and delivered with more conviction. Hamilton has either run out of ideas or has gotten very lazy. Disappointing.
This is a failed attempt to create a pastiche of Sherlock Holmes, James Bond and Oscar Wilde, with a dash of macabre to add spice. Gatiss is not up to the job, overreaching himself on all four counts, but most especially the Wildean aspects. It reminds me of an over-cooked, over-spiced cake, sickly to the palate and making one sick afterward. Utterly dreadful.
Very promising beginning–a plot revolving around a real terrorist event and its aftermath–becomes a complicated cover up with an obscure explanation and is then completely let down by a cop-out ending that never explains what the whole book has been about. DeMille thanks his son in the afterword for suggesting a way out of the corner he'd written himself into, but I found the ending completely disappointing.
I enjoy the novels of [b:Raymond Chandler 2052 The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41AGA624Z5L.SL75.jpg 1222673], but for me THIS is the best hard-boiled private eye novel ever. Hammett's laconic style, his punchy dialogue and his concise and driving storytelling make this the standard to measure all others against.
An gripping journey into a universe that looks like ours, but not quite. Weird, scary, absorbing and inventive, Gaiman explores a darker landscape than Stephen King, without as much gore as Clive Barker, and with the kind of creepy discomfort that characterises Michael Marshall's novels (as well as John Connolly's earlier ones). I found this delivered on the promise of the Sandman graphic novels Gaiman wrote, but I have not enjoyed his other novels nearly as much.
Before Crumley began believing his own publicity releases, he was a real contender, and could have been a worthy successor to Hammett, Chandler and MacDonald. At this point he was flexing his writing muscles and they are considerable. Gritty, funny, hard-edged and violent. A blast of a novel, and probably an influence on some more well-known ones, including Cormac McCarthy.