True Crime Story: A Novel
by Joseph Knox
RIVETING (12/8/2021)
The cover says True Crime Story A Novel, but on the first pages the author and publisher present this not as a novel but as transcripts about a true crime. So which it it?
By page 30, I didn't care, I just wanted to keep reading.
Zoe disappears from a party in her third month at university, but this isn't a police procedural. The plot unfolds as transcripts of interviews with Zoe's friends and family, telling what they know or thought about events. Each one has their own distinct voice and they all gossip and criticize each other, so the reader gets to know them well. It's a different, fascinating approach to a mystery, and I couldn't put it down.
Palace of the Drowned
by Christine Mangan
Not Compelling (3/30/2021)
I'm sorry to say that I found Palace of the Drowned more depressing than compelling. Frankie is recuperating in Venice after a very public breakdown caused by a poor review of her latest novel. I felt sorry for her but didn't find her very sympathetic or interesting. Venice in winter doesn't raise the cheerfulness level. The book is well-written, with interesting parts, but the reader needs to be prepared for an emotional downer.
The Sun Down Motel
by Simone St. James
Five Stars (11/20/2019)
Simone St. James has written several other novels that combine mystery and ghost story, and here's another 5-star one that takes place in upper New York state. It switches back and forth from Viv, the young night clerk at the Sun Down Motel, who disappears in 1982, and her niece Carly in 2017, who takes the same night clerk job hoping to find out what happened to her aunt. It's a clever meshing of mystery and ghost story that has believable characters, like people you might know. It moves right along without a wasted work or scene. Highly recommended.
The Chalk Man
by C. J. Tudor
Excellent! (12/24/2017)
The Chalk Man has only one narrator and two time periods, making it a welcome relief after some recent suspense novels that had too many characters and too much switching back and forth of time periods.
When Eddie is 12 years old, terrible things happen in his village, and he tells us how he remembers them. When he's 42, he's still living in the same house in the same village and bad things start happening again, involving the same people. But is he telling the whole story? Is he an unreliable narrator?
A very well written, suspenseful and believable novel.
The Gypsy Moth Summer
by Julia Fierro
TOO MUCH PLOT (5/11/2017)
This novel has way too much going on plot-wise--troubled teens, mixed-race marriage, a big aviation factory, a maze, cancer, miscarriages, demented 80-year-old; and in the background, the first Clinton presidential campaign, and gypsy moths defoliating the countryside. I didn't finish it because I didn't believe in the characters or care how the plot points all worked out. The author would have done better to narrow her focus, and not roll all the topics she's interested in into one book.
The Secret Language of Stones: A Daughters of La Lune Novel
by M. J. Rose
I Wanted to Like It Better (4/17/2016)
I wanted to like this book more than I did. The plot elements are fascinating to me--Russian emigres in Paris in the last year of World War I, a young woman learning to be a fine jeweler. But the supernatural and witchcraft elements turned me off. Opaline is the daughter of an artist/witch, and the precious jewels she works "speak" to her. I could have done without the talk of witchcraft, books of spells and potions, and semi-immortal great-grandmothers. And the sentence fragments! One or two incomplete sentences, for emphasis, per page is okay, but dozens on every page really were annoying. I believe young women who've aged out of Harry Potter, etc,, would like this more than I did.
Home by Nightfall: A Charles Lenox Mystery
by Charles Finch
Leisurely Historical Mystery (9/28/2015)
This is a pleasant, leisurely-paced mystery set in 1876 England. Charles Lenox is a gentleman detective who runs a private detection agency. The plot features two mysteries--the disappearance of a famous German pianist, and strange goings-on in Lenox's home village. It gives an interesting picture of noisy, smelly, bustling London, and of intertwined relationships in the little village of Markethouse. This is not a world-beater, but a pleasant read for those of us who like historical mysteries.
This is the first Charles Lenox novel I've read and I plan to seek out the others.
A Good Family
by Erik Fassnacht
Not my kind of novel (5/29/2015)
I'm not sure what about the reviews attracted me to this book, but I gave it up one-quarter of the way through. I know there lots of readers for novels of contemporary American families, but I felt no sympathy for the control-freak, cheating father or the clingy, pill-addicted mother. The two adult sons struggling to find their way were more interesting, but not enough. Quite well written, just not my kind of novel.
The Paris Winter
by Imogen Robertson
Romantic and suspenseful (7/13/2014)
The word that kept coming to mind as I read The Paris Winter was fascinating--fascinating characters in a fascinating milieu in a fascination city. Imogen Robertson is a real pro who knows how to create lively characters and keep the plot moving along without wasted words or scenes. The place and time are Paris, December 1909--January 1910, when the Seine flooded disastrously. The title, The Paris Winter seems inadequate, though, to describe the story of several independent women artists who work together to foil someone who wants to destroy the reputation of one of them.
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