Sunday, December 30, 2012

CLOSE YOUR EYES by Iris Johanson ****

The story began with a blind girl, Kendra, who had gotten her sight back yet had other higher perceptions and senses she had relied on in the past who then becomes part of a police investigation, like a consultant on serial cases. This case was about some people smuggling a toxic material to another country and lots of bodies were left in the wake. She worked with a cop named Lynch, who talks her into helping because her old boyfriend, Jeff, is missing and she will feel compelled to help him to find the boyfriend.

She does a good job using other senses to make determinations, some small areas were boring or repetitive but in general the book was well worth the time to read. It's fast paced, hard to put down and keeps you wondering where you're going with Kendra. Her best friend gets seriously wounded and is in the hospital. As with every murder mystery I ever read people are so wounded or damaged they can never help the cops with any ID's or any info. Either they were so traumatized, or someone grabbed them in the dark or from behind so most living victims are useless in most murders.Neighbors rarely notice anything or hear anything.

I would get it at the library, it's a good find.

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

DROP DEAD on RECALL by S.W. Boneham***

This book was so so for me. There were times I wanted to strangle either the main character or the writer. The female in the story gets a message to return a call to the cops and never does. Dipshit. Then her dog is supposedly poisoned and she doesn't even call the cops. Who would do that? They didn't even try to determine if the dog had been poisoned. No vomiting, no watching for symptoms which was very obvious as the writer just ignored that stuff while you kept wondering when it would get mentioned. The cops warn dipshit Janet to be very careful with her pets and she turns around missing a cat. Within seconds! And does she report it immediately? Duh. No. She goes out looking for it herself putting up posters etc.

People keep getting murdered. Mostly old old love romance reasons, or we're gonna get caught reasons and everyone but lucky little Janet ends up dead.

The stuff I liked was information about breeding, DNA, things that go wrong and/or things that should go right. There was training involved and agility. So she showed readers some ways to engage and treat their dogs. She also did some on rescue and like that.

Nice last name writing about dogs: BONEHAM, or Hambone. Whatever. Real?
So the murder part of the story made really no sense to me at all. The fight in the dark (always fights in the dark with uncharged cell phones) was irritating. But I generally like the message to the readers about pet ownership. Ok library find but could use a teenage or young audience. I wasn't crazy about it. Sort of childish to me.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn *****

Very interesting novel with plenty of twists and turns. I doubt anyone could be these people but I sure don't know everyone, they're too Boris and Natasha for real life. Really liked reading the book tho, it was fast moving, page turner and plenty of inner descriptions that sometimes are a tad wearing to keep reading about their inner thoughts and feelings or lack of them.

Wife suddenly disappears on their 5th anniversary and husband is of course accused of murder due to specific clues devised to point to him. What happened to the wife? Where is she? If she's so frickin smart how'd she get robbed of 8 thousand bucks anyway, Miss Conniver? Have no clue. She really doesn't live in a real world mentally.

Very popular book to read right now on the top 10 list. Good reading.

Monday, December 17, 2012

FULL DISCLOSURE by Dee Henderson **

A sort of cop story with too many characters, and an absurd job where some chick Ann goes around looking at murders, makes up a story about them and comes to her conclusion, moves on the the next town or case. Haha. So some guy Paul Falcon is a real cop of some kind and they have a mutual friend.

Paul asks the mutual friend about Ann, like is she married etc and one of the questions this dork asks her is if she slept with anyone. AS IF the friend REALLY knows the answer to this question. He says no. Haha again.

So their main objective is to find a 'hit girl' who has sort of quit after her 30 dead guys. Ann is also a writer who writes love/god novels. So let me tell you there is a lot of religion in this mix of crap and you get to read all about it. Not real forensic work is done by anyone in the story. They're mostly there to fall in love and find this one killer by telling stories about it.

Good luck getting thru it. I'm not all that eager to continue. Probably won't cuz hitting up library today for refills.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

FREAK by Jennifer Hillier ****

Pretty fast paced story begins with a cop, Jerry who hires a girl, Danny and they're trying to convict a girl Abby for murder because she and her boyfriend Ethan killed a lot of people, I suppose in book one. I hate series. I obviously read this one out of order which is why I hate them.

Meantime some flaws: The killer tells the cops where a body is but the cops must return the next day a Sunday to talk to the killer to get the info. Since when do cops obey killers? Duh.

Jerry's employee Danny worked at the jail where Abby is....o geez no she's not in any way involved in Abby and her killing. Nope. DUH.

So Jerry knows one of the CO's at the prison is screwing Abby yet doesn't do anything about it or tell anyone. The CO is helping her get cell phones etc. and how come in jail you can have a remote and earplugs and a TV in your cell? What kinda prison is this? Supposedly the hardcore one cuz eventually Abby gets moved to one where she can escape and she does...SURPRIZE.

Why didn't the call girl service (Estelle) know that everytime someone went to Jeramiah's room they ended up never coming back again? They were in the paper DEAD or missing. She dumb or what? She just keeps sending girls out to be killed. Very nice. Brainless.

I also don't understand why the bus driver removed the handcuffs during the ride from one prison to another. Not a very good move right? Stupid. So I found a lot of "WTF"s going on. And if there is a series 3 of these books remind me not to read it. I hate when killers get away and keep killing. It's not like this writer is anywhere near as good as Dexter series and he usually has the same main characters with DIFFERENT killers. Not the same ones. Don't like that. Catch killer end of story. Continue new story another day. Hate repeat repeat and more repeat of same crazed looney bin killer.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

GUILTY WIVES by Patterson&Friend ****

Another good Patterson book. There were some repetitious areas, plenty of them but otherwise, easily readable. Some husbands jealous their wives are having affairs decide to frame them for murder without realizing who some of the victims were.

So mostly it's the women going to trial (very much not in their favor) then the year or whatever in a French hell jail with people killing each other etc. That part was predictable and somewhat boring.

When the girl Abby escapes it becomes a little more adventuresome but it's hard to believe she figured out anything about the husbands by filing paperwork to prove they were involved then says she didn't know for sure who did it.

So kind of a medium to slow read, somewhat repetitive/boring in lots of areas but not a bad story in all. I would get it at the library.

Monday, December 10, 2012

DEAD SCARED by S.J. Bolton ***

This one is about an undercover girl who plays colege student to stop what appears later on to be snuff films. There's hardly a believeable drug that would cause someone to kill themselves no matter what wierdness took place before hand. I think someone experiencing all the b.s. these people were would see a doctor! I know I would. Most of them it's unexplained how the drugs got into their system.

There's a lot going on here and it' s not easy to put it all together. There are pasts you don't know about. One thing I hate is "eleven days earlier", "23 years earlier", "Ten days earlier", and this goes on infinitum. Hate that crap. Not only that but it doesn't seem to have much to do with the basic story.

So 23 years earlier when someone was killed it traumatized someone? What? Never says. One person Evi had a boyfriend and believed him dead, but no where does it say she has any contact with him at all. How does that make him her boyfriend?

Most of it is what? what? what? what? Huh? Really? Not cohesive enough for me. Library.

Friday, December 7, 2012

POTBOILER by Jesse Kellerman *

I was reading along about an author, Arthur, who wrote one book, his friend, William, a very popular writer disappears and he finds a manuscript unpublished left behind by him. Arthur has always been in love with Williams wife since college. Meantime I'm not going to give you the ridiculously spelled names everyone has. They are too bizarre to have to read thru never mind pass them along here. Screw it. I hate names I can't figure out how to pronounce in every paragraph. Still tho I was enjoying the story about how he was sending secret code he had no idea about thru the new novels he was given to write.

THEN hit chapter 56 and I'm done. I couldn't figure out anything after that. Had no intention of reading it or bothering myself with it. The whole thing looked like one person wrote half the book and some creepy weird person came into the room and wrote the rest. Seems to be about unrest in some foreign tiny coountry nobody GAS about. Me neither. I flipped thru pages and pages and finally get to chapter 86 which is back to being almost readable.

The wife Carlotta is being held prisoner until he does something. I have no idea what and don't care. I may finish it I probably won't. Stupid ass book with stupid ass premise and stupid ass people's names. Must have been some creeptoids nightmare and aren't we privileged to read it. YUCK.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

NIGHT WATCH by Linda Fairstein ***

It was a sort of good story but in the beginning Ms. Protagonist Alex Cooper is in France with her new boyfriend and gets a call after only a short weekend or something to come home to some major event in NY where they just cannot continue the case without her.

She gets there and all kinds of other people have taken over the case. She does not one frickin thing the entire book till near the end when she goes to court to correct errors the first prosecutor made. And at the end, that story doesn't end. To be continued. Did the guy rape the maid or not. Who the fuck knows. I don't and I read the entire book, shouldn't I get rewarded for putting up with all that shit by knowing the end??

Meantime her boyfriend has no clue people are smuggling coke or drugs thru his wine bottles. That's the big deal of the story. I don't even know why I continued to read it. He seemed rather stupido if you ask me. And Alex with all her admirers didn't do a damn thing throughout the novel but eat drink and be merry. Didn't care for it at all.  Lee Child liked it good for him, wonder if he read the stupid thing. Pointless.

Not only that but you have to put up with lots of history lessons. Not interested in history of bars. Sorry too many history b.s. and bored me forcing me to skip pages and pages.

Sunday, December 2, 2012

1 LAST THING BEFORE I GO by Tropper ***

This is a story about a one hit wonder drummer who is divorced and has a daughter. He lives in sort of a motel with other losers who are also divorced and lonely. He's pretty lonely and pathetic. Apparently once the music world has dropped everything to hear your every word then suddenly you're like a normal person-- life sucks. No duh.

Some of the loneliness stuff I liked because I'm like that and it felt real to me esp on page 227 when he describes it to his ex. But he pretty much screws anyone, for any reason, then just before his ex wife is to remarry he screws her too. I can't use the term make love for anything he does with a woman. He screws them. He's not really a very nice person and I don't at any point have any empathy for him at all. He's a sad sack loser. He thinks he's a nice guy and he has warm happy thoughts while screwing women but he doesn't do anything for me that makes me think he GAS.

So while he's lonely and waiting for his life to go back to the way it was; married in a house with his teenage daughter, he finds out he's going to die. Does he want to live? A little stent will save him. He sure takes his sweet time figuring that out, most of the book really.

So it's easy to read, easy to follow, some repetitive religious family stuff quite a bit of it actually but it's not a bad library find. Interesting enough not to toss away in favor of something else. Not bad, not great-my opinion.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

The WRONG MAN by David Ellis *****

The story was about a lawyer defending a homeless vet who wouldn't speak at all, just enough to incriminate himself in a murder he didn't commit. The judge in the story was a prick, as was the prosecution, if that's how the justice system is managed I'd think the prisons are full of innocent people because there didn't seem to be any justice in this story at all.

The lawyer was forced to do his own investigating with help from friends and colleagues FOR FREE. This included the mafia, an old bombing in another country and countless killings. I found the courtroom stuff sort of interesting in that I would never want to be involved.

So the more that is dug out about Mafia, hits, killings etc, the more he's attracted to a female who he knows very little about and she was met at a bar with 2 goons after her. Sort of a set up.

There was, I think personally, a lot of repetition, a lot of off-track stuff, some confusing areas for the reader but I liked it enough that I'd buy it because it takes awhile to get thru and isn't an easy story line. A bit different. Apparently he was one of the James Patterson helping writers I guess Patterson starts up a story outline and hands that to a newbie writer to give them a chance at having a name on a cover with him then they get famous and write their own books.