Tuesday, October 23, 2018

FINAL TARGET by Iris Johansen ***

The story line was ok, 2 sisters get involved with the president's kid as babysitters and I think she's 7 or so. Author only mentioned age about 3/4 way thru the book. The girl witnesses murders and withdraws into herself in a comatose condition. AND YET she is never fed. Not thru the entire novel. Only one time it was  mentioned that someone brought her food. HOW DID THEY FEED HER? She's comatose for cryin' out loud. Never could deal with that aspect of the story. She should have starved to death less than half way thru the novel. No liquids either. No IV. NOTHING.

Otherwise we have girls with double S names; CaSSie, MeliSSa, JeSSica. How the hell did that happen? Trippin'? I think writer was on something when the book was written JMO.

One of the double S girls dies  (Jessica), she has a sister, (Cassie) who takes over watching the kid named of course Cassie. They seem to communicate mentally while the girl is unconcious throughout the novel. Plus one of the guys can also do the same thing. It's kind of a trippy novel if you ask me.
Serious meds must be involved.

I was soso on the book. Of course girl gets strong and takes over everything and handles a gun like a pro saving her boyfriend. They fly off in a helicopter (thank god she's not flying it) and end of the story pretty much.

President gets his kid back not in a coma, he's kind of a dirty rotten scoundrel wheeling and dealing with killers and people like that. He's not a GOOD guy in any sense of the word. If she didn't write it in 2001 I would immediately think tRump. But not.

Saturday, June 16, 2018

PRIOR BAD ACTS by Tami Hoag ****

The story was plotted well, liked the characters and dialogue sounded real enough. The banter between cops was kind of typical.
A judge made a decision to not let previous convictions interfere with a new charge against someone so he got off. Lots of people are pissed cuz someone killed a mom and her two kids. Most believed this guy was the doer.
With all the people around the area want to see her killed she gets kidnapped twice. Once by the guy who got off cuz of her--he wanted to play mommy with her, then a cop gone bad takes over her kidnapping.
It was mostly kind of strange for people going after a judge and a court appointed attorney but I guess that's the story. If you start off not liking it you probably will end up the same.
I thought it was an ok read.  Nothing special about it.
Apparently there are long running characters like the cops Liska, Kovac etc. He seems to be falling for her.She married a real winna....loves porn sites, calls himself a film maker and makes porno.  Good for her...not.

Friday, June 1, 2018

P is for PERIL by Sue Grafton **

I read this kind of large book. It has way too many people in it and I could never remember who was related to whom or married to what or any relationships or ages. I don't even know (and I read to the end) who or why this doctor was killed. I presume it had to do with either his divorce or money.

There was no closure of 2 smarmy killers one of whom kept pestering Kinsey for dates. 

Names like Fiona, Crystal, Dowan, Purcell, oddball names. I don't know the ending. I wasn't going to reread 30 pages to get the answer but I suggest you pay close attention to the last 2 chapters unlike me and maybe you'll get the end. I'm lost. Don't care.

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

POINT OF ORIGIN by Patricia Cornwell ***

This is the book I missed between the last 2 I read. It's where Benton gets killed supposedly by Carrie, Lucy's first lover.

Some guy named Sparkes has his home and barn burnt to the ground. Ask me why. I. Do. Not. Know.  No explanation for all his race worthy horses to die of fire while screaming in a barn that was burning down Except for one young black male horse. What the fuck does this have to do with any freaking thing else in the book? NONSENSE. Red Herring? Idiotic writing?

So apparently Lucy and Kay Scarpetta are in a helicopter when another follows them, this is at the end of the book. Supposedly the white copter had been seen elsewhere and it was believed that a guy named Newton & Carrie were in it. NOT PROVEN.

So the end was somewhat quickly dealt with, in a hurry and not much information forthcoming.
Didn't really appeal to me for the above reasons. Esp. the dead horses. WTF is that all about?

Sunday, May 6, 2018

TOXIN by Robin Cook *****

This was a fast page turner and I hated putting it down for any length of time. It's about a doctor, his wife and child Becky, who contracted E Coli from eating a burger at a fast food restaurant.

WARNING: If you read this book you may become a vegan. Not kidding, the meat industry is disgusting right from the nail gun to the head of the cow to the mixture of frozen into fresh and other mixes of meat to create what come packaged out of the slaughterhouse. The spinal column often gets included in the food chain and that is what causes mad cow disease so it's in your hamburg whether in a supermarket or fast food place.

Dr. Kim's child Becky contracts a serious rare bacterial E coli and as she's dying he tries desperately to save her in the ER by hand massaging her heart but the heart is so far decomposed there isn't really anything to do for her and she dies. He removes his hand with bits of decomposed flesh from her heart on his gloved hands. He is horrified by what the E coli did to her body. It turned everything inside her to mush. He became furious enough to look into it with a USDA girl who ended up murdered and he found her head in the same place cow heads go. He figured her body was ground to hamburger.

In the end he and his ex wife connect, he gets a job at the killing warehouse and is literally sick to his stomach at what he sees. His job is to sweep the blood, guts and gore from the floor into a grate. The USDA officials that are supposed to be inspecting are up on a catwalk joking around on the job site NOT doing their job. The USDA is part of the problem and something needs to change in order for us to be eating real clean beef. One of the heads of the cow fell onto the disgusting floor of the slaughterhouse and that's likely how the E coli was passed into the meat. The head is used in hamburger as well as every part of the body; they even scrape the bones and get a greasy grey slime they add to the hamburg. Good luck with that vision.

Not eating hamburger anymore-- you can if you like but read the book first if you're so tough.

AT RISK by Patricia Cornwell ****

Off the Scarpetta track we have this awful novel. She sometimes uses first names, or last names this is VERY confusing. Lots of characters, cops, victims, suspects. In the end I really am confused who killed who and why.

A cop lets some female off at the end and she probably killed someone but her tits must have been huge and the male cop let her go free far as I can tell. No justice.

The novel was slow, boring at times,confusing and if there was a mystery 20 yrs ago I'm mystified who done it. It's all tangled up with other murders, or copy cat killers. I didn't get it. Don't want to get it and don't bother getting it.

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

DEAD ON ARRIVAL by Matt Richtel ***

Ok, this is a confusing book to say the least. Most of the characters are well drawn, story told ok, descriptions fine, but the storyline is dysfunctional. It begins with a plane full of people who look dead--the answer is still out on that one. The (pilot, copilot & professor) land to a hangar with no communications and everyone looks dead-again the answer is still out on that one.

The professor, Dr. Lyle, is a PHd world class specialist of infectious diseases but what is going on is NOT related to a virus or anything infectious. It's our phones and radio towers seeming to have this super power to knock everyone on the planet into a knocked out stasis until some will awaken after this Jackie moron pretends she can put them all to sleep and awaken them even if in a car driving and they fall into the drool stasis. She is insane and in love with the professor who is desperately trying to figure her out and stop her.

She puts people into a catatonic state but you never ever find out if they come out of it, how they come out of it, why EVERYONE is affected by radio waves even if they don't own iphones etc. I don't really understand this theory. How can people be knocked out if radios are turned off or they don't own a phone, or the phones are turned off? HUH?

I would love to ask the author these bothersome questions cuz I am confused and head is spinning like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. I'm not puking green.....yet.

So...WTF???

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Y IS FOR YESTERDAY by Sue Grafton *****

I'm always up for reading Sue, like the pace, the murders etc unless they're old cases. I hate old cases. This one was an ongoing one. The thing this time was a lot of characters to learn, 2 of them named for flowers, Poppy and Iris. I guess naming characters has it's moments when you can't come up with something and there on the desk is a flower book. Go Sue. Other names were pretty common and not easy to remember but that's probably just my own pet peeve.

The storyline was good, ok for summer at the beach reading. Better writer than most too.

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

EXPOSED by Lisa Scottoline ****

This was a real page turner but had a lot of filler. I could have cut about 3 chapters out of there. It got overboard with relatives at the bedside of some kid you never meet who needs a bone marrow transplant.

So Bennie & Mary work together as lawyers, Mary just made partner and she gets hired by a whistleblower who has no idea he was a whistle blower and it's his daughter in bed needing the marrow. Then his dad has a heart attack and he gets arrested for murder, it become Mary's mission to exonerate  him which puts her and Bennie in harm's way.

Not a bad storyline, kind of a new one from the rest of the novels that dig up 100 yr old cases and beat them to death like a dead horse. Was a good pace, people were well defined and I liked it.

Friday, February 9, 2018

ENIGMA by Catherine Coulter ***

Some people have unique genes and some mad scientist wants to keep them and test them all their lives, using their DNA to keep young.
That's the basic storyline as I could figure it out. The book is otherwise kind of dragged out. Lots of names it took me awhile to get first and last together, then some had similar names like Savich, Sherlock, Liam, Cam, Cabot and I'm not fond of introductions all around in the first chapter. Give me room to breathe PLEASE. So I don't know exactly what the ENIGMA was all about. There wasn't a proper description in the book. Clueless.
What made these people enigmas? Why did some asshole breed people who were drugged to produce a baby they think they can steal from the hospital. Mom didn't seem properly fkng crazy having the kid stolen. She just cried a bit. Whoopee.
I think this was written in a hit or miss style and mostly miss.

Friday, January 26, 2018

SNEAKY PIE FOR PRESIDENT by Rita Mae Brown ***

I haven't finished reading yet but I just wanted to get this off my chest before I finish. How on earth can someone justify allowing cats free roam? Even intact dogs? There never is any mention, no social conscience about feral cats, unwanted thousands of kittens by people letting intact cats run free. The cat problem is 100x worse than unwanted dogs. The ferals have a terrible life, they get hit by cars, killed by dogs, eaten by coyotes or foxes, maimed or fatally injured until they die a painful death full of infection and disease. They never have a 'free' meal unless women with no life feed them- some don't even catch and release (altering them) so they can't breed.

There were 3 ferals nearby and I caught all 3 and had them fixed 2 were females. Someone wanted to keep one, I said fine hand over $60 that's what it cost for the spay. NOPE. Wouldn't pay, I didn't give her the cat. The next year, if these females were left intact would have been 8-16 kittens then 32-60 kittens the next year-if each first round of kittens had 2 litters a year of 6 that would be 24 in a year. Imagine the problem, it's HUGE. Rita Mae Brown needs to grow the fk up and address this issue with her readers if they're so hung up on cats and their b.s. stories.

Get a social conscience or stop writing about free roaming cats and intact dogs. And do not tell me this b.s. about how cats stay in their own yard. Neither dogs nor cats have any sense of where your friggin property line is so stuff it. Most wander right down your driveway and decimate the bird populations. Good for you!


The LAST HACK by Christopher Brookmyre **

This one was slightly above 1 star. I couldn't finish it. Too boring and the guy is from England with the crappy English terms I don't care to bother with, it interferes with my reading pleasure. BORING.
Wasn't thrilling for me-says it would be in the cover flap. NOPE.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

BLACKOUT by Marc Elsberg *

One star for taking time to write a novel. Bored the shit out of me. There are days to remember as well as cities & countries; Milan, Rome, Ybbs-Persenbeug, Brauweiler, Lindau, Berlin,  Schiphol, Paris, St. Laurent-Nouan,  Calabria, Basilicata, Apulia, Campania, Enel, Sicily,  Colon, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Austria in less than 20 pages: ETC. So good luck with that.

Now lets count people to memorize as you drift off to sleep in 10 pages: Pero Manzan, Gulia, Paola, Valentina Condoto, Guiseppe Santrelli, Herwig Oberstatter, Jochen Pewalski, Sophia Angstrom, Lara Bondoni, Chloe Terbanten, Fleur van Kaalden, Frauke Michelsen, Helge Brockhorst, Holger Rhess, Mr. Badersdorf. There are more after 10 pages I can't bear to go on.

Mostly this is a boring repetitive story about power being hacked and all over the European countries they are going black and nuclear power plants are heating up and people are scared all over and on and on with the power going out descriptions. I DO NOT FUCKING CARE. Just say all over Europe went black and get on with some kind of story line I can happily follow to the end. BUT no such luck.

So there ya go I quit at page 96 it was relentlessly repetitive over and over the same old shit. Good thing I took out 2 books from the library and I hope the next one isn't quite as completely off the charts. It sucked. "More than 2 million copies sold". I bet.


Tuesday, January 16, 2018

The BEACH HOUSE by James Patterson/De Jonge *****

His stories are always an easy read, A few assumptions I wasn't happy about one was "the break in last summer at our house I figured whoever had caught up with Sammy was looking for the pictures."
HOW THE FK DOES he come up with that out of thin air? Nothing to prove anything in that sentence, just made up spur of the moment.

Aside from characters making assumptions out of thin air I thought the writing was good, characters drawn as well as can be expected (there were a lot of them), he writes in a crisp terse manner with as little frivolity as possible. Good summer read on the beach, heck beach is in the title so go for it.

Patterson has written so many books and adds new writers frequently enough to almost be a ghost writer, trimming other newbies work to a bearable reading size. So I liked it, and if you like Patterson you'll like it too.

Saturday, January 6, 2018

THE BROKER by John Grisham ****

Basic storyline: Guy is in jail 6 yrs for (not really positive) trying to sell software that hacks into a Chinese Satellite? The hackers are all dead the guy in jail was put there so the gov't (outgoing pres.) who could care less about him, watch to see who kills him first after pardoning him. The choices are Israelis, the Russians or the Chinese or our own country. I have NO IDEA why all these countries want to kill him. None whatsoever. No one even knows what's on the disks he has, it's all RUMORS about hacking a satellite.

Also this guy's American court lawyer ends up dead too. Joel Backman figures he's next. He also knows the gov't is waiting to see who'll kill him over the disks. He went to jail so he could avoid being killed but now he's tossed into Italy and has tutors teaching him Italian. He meets his second tutor a female and of course we all know 6 lonely years in prison can make the nastiest ugliest female into a princess which Joel decides in  the end to return to.

Mostly a lot of moving around, disguises, trains, walks. Half the time he has no idea he was being followed but he learned to duck into little side streets and find his way home. and loses some followers quite easily.

Pisses me off: what happened to the stolen briefcase? I think I remember it had nothing in it anyway but it's talked about quite a bit. Why would 3 countries who have no idea what he was trying to sell them (I assume) before he went to jail think he had anything they'd want? I don't get that. And I don't get the part where America has his son's house bugged and heard the names of  hotels at the end where he could meet his son YET I don't know which one he didn't mention cuz no one showed up anywhere that I know, even the wrong place. Never wrote that in.

So there some aspects of the novel that obviously needed a better explanation. I did get lost here and there with the idea of 3 countries trying to grab the software they had no idea existed or what it consisted of. I was ticked off 3 hackers were killed before I even knew what they did. I doubt they knew either. I think it was a bit above fair but not by much.